WEARING THE LION, sophomore novel from 2024 Nebula Award-winner AND Best First-Novel Locus Award winner John Wiswell

WEARING THE LION
JOHN WISWELL
DAW Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.99 ebook, available now

2025 Nebula Award nominee for Best Novel.

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: This second novel from Nebula Award-winning John Wiswell brings a humanizing, redemptive touch to the Hercules story in this mythological fantasy for fans of Jennifer Saint and Elodie Harper

Heracles, hero of Greece, dedicates all his feats to Hera, goddess of family. Heracles’ mother raised him to revere Hera, as her attempt to avoid the goddess’ wrath. Unbeknownst to Heracles, he is yet another child Hera’s husband, Zeus, had out of wedlock.

Hera loathes every minute of Heracles’ devotion. She finally snaps and sends the Furies to make Heracles kill himself. But the moment Heracles goes mad, his children playfully ambush him, and he slays them instead. When the madness fades, Heracles’s wife, Megara, convinces him to seek revenge. Together they’ll hunt the Furies and learn which god did this.

Believing Hera is the only god he can still trust, Heracles prays to Hera, who is wracked with guilt over killing his children. To mislead Heracles, Hera sends him on monster-slaying quests, but he is too traumatized to enact more violence. Instead, Heracles cares for the Nemean lion, cures the illness of the Lernaean hydra, and bonds with Crete’s giant bull.

Hera struggles with her role in Heracles life as Heracles begins to heal psychologically by connecting with the monsters—while also amassing an army that could lay siege to Olympos.

Nebula Award-winning author John Wiswell brings his signature humanizing touch to the Hercules story, forever changing the way we understand the man behind the myth—and the goddess reluctantly bound to him.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: "Mythology" might be one of the English language's biggest mistakes or disservices or just downright screw-ups of all time. It has a lot of competition, to be sure...you'll have your own ideas about that, I don't need to elaborate...but walling off the best possible way to understand human nature's thorniest problems behind this etymological fence:

mythology(n.) early 15c., "exposition of myths, the investigation and interpretation of myths," from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek mythologia "legendary lore, a telling of mythic legends; a legend, story, tale," from mythos "myth" (a word of unknown origin; see myth) + -logia (see -logy "study"). Meaning "a body or system of myths" is recorded by 1781. (etymonline)

...is wasteful, even dangerous. Thank goodness we're embracing retellings, modernizations, again. And even more praises be sung to the Divine that John Wiswell joined the chorus.

What Author Wiswell excels at in this story is upending your expectations...seems to be a trope in this case, go read my review of Someone to Build a Nest In, 2024 Nebula Award-winner AND Best First-Novel Locus Award winner that it is...of what love, grief, trust, and faith mean, require, and offer to you. Hera and Herakles, the Fury, the monsters, all get bound in unquestioned roles, then get jailbroken by Author Wiswell's perspective shift. It's a great way to de-mythologize a violent and triumphalist myth, putting it into a twenty-first centurian's comfort zone while making its subtexts very sharp. That contrast between the meaning we've learned to associate with the multiple millennia of unacknowledged retellings of Heracles' story and what Author Wiswell does with it is *chef's kiss* piquant.

Introducing a goddess to the idea of accountability is permaybehaps the most satisfying part of Author Wiswell's reimaging of the tale. That a being who was, until now, entirely untouched by any sense that her actions having consequences in others' lives was in any way a cause for her own emotional involvement is so in keeping with this #MeToo moment. It's also in sharp contrast...I'd even say rebuke...to the rising tide of publicly-flaunted bigotry and intolerance. Hera never faces up to the devastation her setting of the Furies on Herakles for something simply not his (Zeus's infidelity that resulted in his birth) doing caused in the original. Of course not! Divine beings aren't subject to rules like mere mortals are, say the myths of a culture that contended their royals are divine.

The entire story revolves around that most current of cultural concerns, accountability. Herakles facing up to his murderous rampage's consequences, then his puruit of revenge's limitations; Hera to her misuse of power and her misplaced anger; "Granny" the Fury's, well...existence; all in the end are changed in some very relatable, and pretty satisfying, ways. How that happens with Hera and Herakles as equally unreliable narrators is predictably sort-of stop-and-start in effect on the pacing. It becomes a bit more choppy than I as a reader prefer. My one other complaint, more of a whine actually, is that including all twelve canonical Labors made the read slower than was optimal for a humorous tale. Brevity is the soul of wit became a maxim instead of a truism because its self-evidence is actionable.

So the missing half-star is explained. The four-and-a-half remaining are slathered in the cream-cheese-and-pecan frosting of contentment. The happiness I felt at Herakles loving the Nemean Lion...the way every act of violence (after the inciting act) results in Hera, and Heracles, figuring out their wounds and their capacity to endure and even recover from them...the sly, quiet side-eye humor...I was badly in need of them all.

Dunno about y'all, but fiction that transmutes an ancient tale of violence and rage and hate into one of healing and chuckles feels damn close to miraculously soothing in my 2025 world.

Author Wiswell, thank you. I needed this story at this moment and you made it so good to read I couldn't stop.

THE FIELD GUIDE TO THE DUMB BIRDS OF THE WHOLE STUPID WORLD, great Valentine gift for your birder love

THE FIELD GUIDE TO THE DUMB BIRDS OF THE WHOLE STUPID WORLD
MATT KRACHT
Chronicle Books
$15.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: This must-have sequel to the bestselling parody book The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America proves that all birds are fascinating, wonderful, idiotic jerks—no matter where in the world they reside.

Following in the tracks of the first uproarious and beloved bird book in the series, this hilarious sequel ventures beyond to identify the stupidest birds around the world. Featuring birds from North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, author Matt Kracht identifies the dumb birds that manage to live all over the freaking place with snarky yet accurate names and humorous, anger-filled drawings. Offering a balance of fact and wit, this uproarious profanity-laden handbook will appeal to hardcore birders and casual bird lovers (and haters) alike.

ENTERTAINING AND EDUCATIONAL: This laugh-out-loud funny spoof guide to all things wings includes a matching game, a bird descriptor checklist, and tips on how to identify a bird (you can tell a lot by looking into a bird's eyes, for example). Plus, each entry is accompanied by facts about a bird's (annoying) call, its (dumb) migratory pattern, its (downright tacky) markings, and more.

POPULAR AUTHOR: Matt Kracht is an amateur birder, writer, and illustrator who enjoys creating books that celebrate the humor inherent in life's absurdities. Based in Seattle, he enjoys gazing out the window at the beautiful waters of Puget Sound and making fun of birds. Other amusing titles from Matt include The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America and OMFG, BEES!

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Do you love a birder? You do?! Why? Couldn't you find a normal person, one that doesn't glue (super expensive, need upgrading all the time) binoculars to their face at the smallest rustle of a leaf?

Well, it's your life, you do you. Or them, I suppose....

As Valentines Day is coming up very, very quickly, you might need a last-minute gift idea since you have the terrible taste to hang out with a bird nut. No doubt forgetting it's the romantic holiday is completely within such a goofball's capabilities. If the hinted-after super-de-dooper binocs are outside your budget, but something bird-y is still required, believe me when I tell you a reference book ain't a lot cheaper than the binoculars. Go for this book, it's more fun than you usually have with the bloody birds, and it's about $20.

Enjoy the artwork.

Even *I*, no bird-fancier bones in me anywhere, got a ton of good laughs at the expense of all these dumb birds from all over the entire stupid world.

UNCLE OF THE YEAR & Other Debatable Triumphs, famous gay actor writes vignettes a la Sedaris...and succeeds at it!

UNCLE OF THE YEAR & Other Debatable Triumphs
ANDREW RANNELLS
Crown Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the star of The Book of Mormon and Girls, candid, hilarious essays on anxiety, ambition, and the uncertain path to adulthood that ask: How will we know when we get there?

In Uncle of the Year, Andrew Rannells wonders: If he, now in his forties, has everything he’s supposed to need to be an adult—a career, property, a well-tailored suit—why does he still feel like an anxious twenty-year-old climbing his way toward solid ground? Is it because he hasn’t won a Tony, or found a husband, or had a child? And what if he doesn’t want those things? (A husband and a child, that is. He wants a Tony.) In deeply personal essays drawn from his life as well as his career on Broadway and in Hollywood, Rannells argues that we all pretend—for friends, partners, parents, and others—that we are constantly succeeding in the process known as “adulting.” But if this acting is leaving us unfulfilled, then we need new markers of time, new milestones, new expectations of what adulthood is and can be.

Along the way, Rannells navigates dating, aging, mental health, bad jobs, and much more. In his essay “Uncle of the Year,” he explores the role that children play in his life, as a man who never thought having kids was necessary or even possible—until his siblings have kids and he falls in love with a man with two of his own. In “Always Sit Next to Mark Ruffalo,” he reveals the thrills and absurdities of the awards circuit, and the desire to be recognized for one’s work. And in “Horses, Not Zebras,” he shares the piece of wisdom that helped him finally come to terms with his anxiety and perfectionism.

Filled with honest insights and a sharp wit, Uncle of the Year challenges us to take a long look at who we’re pretending to be, who we know we are, and who we want to become.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Impostor Syndrome played for laffs. And it got them from me! What I don't always understand is how the idea of this common mental illness is so undertreated in the world of psychology, except of course among women in whom it was first identified forty-five years ago. That makes sense because it's a subtle way of (in)validating women's power.

Actor Rannells is a gay man of a certain age writing about himself and his multivalent struggles to achieve success, find love, gain self-esteem and confidence, and then Own It. If Impostor Syndrome does nothing else, it weaponzes the "virtue" of modesty to create eternal insecurity and "unworthiness" in those not inoculated against those insidious underminers of personal satisfaction and empowerment by virtue of gendered, class- and race-specific messaging. Just look around at those whose self-esteem is most on public display to get the import of this effective means of social control.

Those reflections being delivered, the story itself is a laugh-out-loud collection of short essays, the precise proper length to be read while in down-time from tasks of ordinary living...waiting in waiting rooms, between required or assigned busy-work bursts...and they deliver not simply respite from these but quietly effective food for thought. Rannells has lived an active public-facing life. His reflections on how that's worked for him, what it's cost him, where it's led him, are both completely personal and universally applicable in their outlines. (Funny how often those things go hand-in-hand, isn't it?)

What I enjoyed most about the read was how much honesty Actor Rannells brings to his gayness. He denies, hides, celebrates, and ultimately integrates his sexual and romantic focus on his own gender in a social milieu, the theatre, where it's not exactly uncommon. The process isn't direct, and is never over...gay men never stop coming out...but it's a lot less time-consuming as he ascends the career ladder with candor and humor. Aging has its good points. He's in charge of his own life and future in ways he never thought he could be as a young gay man. But the eternal struggle to believe himself actually possessed of that power, and the deservedness of that success, that is the ongoing "gift" of Impostor Syndrome, is the quiet but inescapable burden of his humorously delivered anecdotes.

I'm older than Rannells, older even than his decade-plus older partner, and I still recognize and relate to all the struggles he underagoes. I found comfort, fellowship, and fun in this read. I hope you'll take it with you to the next doctor's office or bureaucratic waiting room you go into.

NOTES FROM THE INTERNET APOCALYPSE, 3-star humor

NOTES FROM THE INTERNET APOCALYPSE
WAYNE GLADSTONE
Thomas Dunne Books
$11.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says:When the Internet suddenly stops working, society reels from the loss of flowing data, instant messages, and streaming entertainment. Addicts wander the streets, talking to themselves in 140 characters or forcing cats to perform tricks for their amusement, while the truly desperate pin their requests for casual encounters on public bulletin boards. The economy tumbles further and the government passes the draconian NET Recovery Act.

For Gladstone, the Net's disappearance comes particularly hard following the loss of his wife, leaving his flask of Jamesons and grandfather’s fedora as the only comforts in his Brooklyn apartment. But there are rumors that someone in New York is still online. Someone set apart from this new world where Facebook flirters "poke" each other in real life and members of Anonymous trade memes at secret parties. Where a former librarian can sell information as a human search engine, and the perverted fulfill their secret fetishes at the blossoming Rule 34 club. With the help of his friends, a blogger and a webcam girl both now out of work, Gladstone sets off to find the Internet. But is he the right man to save humanity from this Apocalypse?

For fans of David Wong, Chad Kultgen, and Chuck Palahniuk, Wayne Gladstone’s Notes from the Internet Apocalypse examines the question “What is life without the Web?”

My Review: When I was a teen, something Amazing happened to me and my generation. My drama-fag friends and I, at various peoples' houses, spent every Saturday night watching The Funniest Show Ever Made: Saturday Night Live!! Brand new, unprecedented, unlike anything else ever!!!!!!!! (Remember we were adolescents. Caps and exclams and complete lack of perspective were then, as they are now, de rigueur.)

One Saturday night, I couldn't go to whoever's house to watch that week's episode for some reason. I made my mother, at the time 55, watch it with me by promising it would be Hilarious, Momentous, Life-Changing!!!! She, faithless to the dour brand of nutsoid Protestant Puritanism she'd taken to supporting, agreed and watched the whole thing.

I howled! I clapped! I bopped along with the musical guest and Supergenius G.E. Smith! And, as the credits ran, I turned to Mama and demanded, "wasn't that the funniest thing ever?!" She smiled at me and delivered the most withering possible response: "It was indeed! Imogene Coca and Sid Caesar were hilarious in the first sketch, and Jack Benny and Rochester were perfect in that second one."

That is precisely how I feel now: This book was right funny indeed, back when Peter de Vries did the social satire in 1965, and Thorne Smith did the smutty bits in 1935. And damn me if I didn't see Trudeau's Zonker Harris from 1975 somewhere in there.

There is nothing new under the sun, chick-a-biddies, and when enough sunrises have awakened one, there's a distinct lack of surprise in shock humor and topical tropism. Those over 40 are strongly discouraged from reading this book; those over 30 reminded to expect smiles not guffaws.

Book-A-Day #30: VILLAGE BOOKS by Craig McLay

VILLAGE BOOKS
CRAIG McLAY
Kindle Original
$3.99, available now
Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Village Books is a local institution…which is good, because most of the staff probably belong in one.

There’s the manager, Dante Andolini, who’s hiding more than just his hypochondria from his overbearing mother…Sebastian Donleavy, whose hedonistic lifestyle is two rails short of being on the rails…Aldous Swinghammer, whose philosophical eccentricities have not been the biggest hit with the ladies…Ebeneezer Chipping, whose crotchety exterior hides a burning passion for the Spanish émigré next door…Mina Bovary, whose crazy husband may have just gone AWOL with an arsenal of fragmentary explosive devices…and the store’s long-suffering assistant manager, who is spinning his wheels in retail while he waits for something better to come along.

That something better may be new assistant manager Leah Dashwood, an aspiring actress with an ambitious plan to transform the store and its staff in a way that will turn their carefully disordered world on its head. Will the store survive? Will it be bought over by its evil corporate competition? All questions will be answered (but not necessarily in that order) in this hilarious debut novel.

My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt, the thirtieth, was a "double-dip" and frankly I don't care what they picked, I was ready for this game to be over last week.

This is a first novel, and it's not too awful terrible well-constructed on a plot level. Too many things are dropped, then re-appear; too many people are shuffled from pillar to post and then needed back at pillar so whoopsie-daisy there they are. Motivations are, to put it mildly, unclear.

But you know what? I liked the characters. I liked the crazy bookstore people. I laughed out loud several times:

Trying to make her angry is like trying to find a corner on a bowling ball.
***
He went to India to "find himself" last year, but evidently he wasn't there, and he came back empty-handed.

Most of the humor isn't pull-quotable because it requires some familiarity with the situation. No matter, it was amusing, and several things rang very true. The Irish publican who served a drink called "the Englishman's Tits" to people he doesn't like. It's a shuddersome decoction. It involves beets.

So I meandered through the plot holes, I skipped over the male fantasy-fulfillment stuff, I sighed in mild annoyance at the pat ending. And I enjoyed a few hours of uncomplicated pleasantries exchanged among people I thought needed a swift kick. I'm not going to tell you to break your thumbs one-clicking it, but believe me it's got a little something extra to reward the tired, smile-hunting Kindle reader.


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THE TELEPORTATION ACCIDENT review

THE TELEPORTATION ACCIDENT
NED BEAUMAN
Bloomsbury USA
$25.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.8* of five

The Publisher Says: HISTORY HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE HUNGOVER.

When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that is happening to anyone anywhere. If you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't.

But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid.

From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes an historical novel that doesn't know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can't remember what 'isotope' means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.

LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT.

My Review: My review, if I was up for it, would be nothing but retyping the entire novel in this space. You don't need to read my yodels of praise and warbles of inducement to buy the book, you need to read the book.

Is the book funny, as is claimed for it in so many "real" review sources? Here's something I marked on page 7:

Klugweil, meanwhile, was a twenty-four-year-old so languid as to be almost liquid, except when he went on stage and broke open some inner asylum of shrieks and contortions, wild eyes and bared teeth—which made him perfectly suited to Expressionist acting and almost useless for any other type. He'd been at university with Loesser, who had always wondered what he was like during sex but had never quite had the cheek to make an enquiry with his dull girlfriend.

Page seven and I'm chuckling, building to a snorting laugh. This is my kind of humor, this droll and dry as a good martini sort of language making ironic-verging-on-facetious observations of all those about the main character...and which observations comment quietly on the main character himself.

What about the romance mentioned so prominently in the book's sales materials, and in "mainstream" reviews? Loesser pursues the elusive, rich, and utterly madcap Adele Hitler (no relation) across continents, despite this exchange from page 54:

"You'll fuck the man who brings your coffee just because he's handsome, and yet I chase you for two years and --"
She waved her hand as if to swat him away. "Oh, please let's not get into that again. 'Love is the foolish overestimation of the difference between one sexual object and another.'"
"Who said that?"
"I saw it on the wall at a party."
"Oh, so it must be true! And all my devotion means nothing?"
"I'm flattered, but there'd be no point in us even trying. You're the sort of man who couldn't stand it if I were unfaithful, but you're also the sort of man I couldn't help but be unfaithful to. You're that type. You're an apprentice cuckold."

Well, all righty then! That's him told. Loesser's anguished suspicion that Adele is right wars with his indignation at being evaluated, pigeonholed, and relegated to a non-starter position before he can make so much as a move. This propels the rest of the novel.

For noir tropes, we have Loesser's falling in with one Dr. Voronoff, famous in the demi-monde of Paris for his impotence cure: Insert the testicle of a monkey between a man's own testicles and let its nature suffuse the aging roué with unquenchable virility. For madame, there is a similar cure for the debilities of aging: Skin cream made from the foreskins of newly circumcised babies. Fresh, innocent skin cells from a body part famed for its stretchiness...well, what could possibly make more sense? A can't-fail nostrum for wrinkles and crow's feet! And Loesser, plus an accomplice-cum-con man called Scramsfield (who promises Loesser that he will reunite him with Adele, already vanished to Los Angeles), will happily liberate wealthy, stupid American women from their desperately needed money in order to survive the Great Depression.

After a spectacular failure in the quackery trade makes Paris too hot for Loesser, he continues his pursuit of Adele to Los Angeles, and here the story becomes an extremely strange (even stranger, I suppose) send-up of Golden Age science fiction tropes, decadent capitalist stereotypes, rumors of Hollywood loucheness, all of which so deeply informed the interwar popular culture's storytelling.

Teleportation. Actual physical teleportation. Research and development for same. It's almost incalculably difficult to imagine how this could be done on a macro scale in today's scientific universe, but thankfully Beauman hasn't set his story in our world but in 1935 (as it now is in the story). And here we come to a place in the narrative where, although there is no diminution of the chuckle-inducing phrasemaking or the wince-cringe-and-giggle observation that's characterized the book until now, the window-dressing is just that, decoration.

The heart of this book is yearning. Everyone in the book yearns for something, be it a person, a state of feeling, a quantum of knowledge, a passed opportunity, a deed desperately regretted that's in need of recall; yearning and searching for the way to fill the void left by the object yearned for. Adele, that object of Loesser's yearning, seeks to fill her own void by assisting in the creation of an actual, physical teleportation device, being the amanuensis and magician's assistant to Professor Bailey of the currently rechristened California Institute of Technology. The Professor has the most yearning of anyone in the entire book, stretching back to a time in Los Angeles history when what was then the Throop College of Technology welcomed a Midwestern boy called Bailey....

I don't believe anyone would thank me for the spoiler that completes that sentence. It's worth the trip to discover it yourself.

This novel was longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize, and I see why. Beauman's linguistic playfulness and inventive use of tropes in ways both satirical and satisfying to trope fans is amazing when one considers his revolting youth. (He is under thirty, which I consider an affront to God. No one born after Man left the Moon for the final time to date should understand the world Beauman builds with deft and dextrous motions. Ain't natural.)

I left this reading experience amused, satisfied, and to my own surprise, quite moved. I liked the process of getting to the end of the story. I liked the scenery painted for me along the way. I liked the moral, or to give it less gravitas, the point of Beauman's engrossing, enfolding, bemusing narrative. I really want to know what happens next in Beauman's career. I hope I can keep all my buttons in the proper buttonholes until he finishes his ideas' fermentation.

I've rated the book under five stars, which all of the foregoing would seem to support, because I wasn't catapulted to a new level of spiritual awareness or aesthetic ecstasy (0.1 off), and because the dust jacket of the hardcover edition is coated in some sort of spoodge that has the hand-feel of the years-old bacon grease that coats the interior of a none-too-clean greasy spoon's range hood (0.1 off, after an entire star disappeared; seemed unfair to Beauman, since *he* didn't choose this icky stuff. If I come to find out he *did* choose it, another star off, and no mistake).

NO STRAIGHT LINES, compendium of Queer graphic artistry

NO STRAIGHT LINES: Four Decades Of Queer Comics
JUSTIN HALL
Fantagraphics
$35.00 trade paper OR $12.49 via Kindle!

WINNER OF THE 25th Lambda Literary Award—BEST LGBT ANTHOLOGY!

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: No Straight Lines showcases major names such as Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, and Ralf Koenig (one of Europe's most popular cartoonists), as well as high-profile, crossover creators who have dabbled in LGBT cartooning, like legendary NYC artist David Wojnarowicz and media darling and advice columnist Dan Savage.

No Straight Lines also spotlights many talented creators who never made it out of the queer comics ghetto, but produced amazing work that deserves wider attention. Queer cartooning encompasses some of the best and most interesting comics of the last four decades, with creators tackling complex issues of identity and a changing society with intelligence, humor, and imagination.

This book celebrates this vibrant artistic underground by gathering together a collection of excellent stories that can be enjoyed by all. Until recently, queer cartooning existed in a parallel universe to the rest of comics, appearing only in gay newspapers and gay bookstores and not in comic book stores, mainstream bookstores or newspapers. The insular nature of the world of queer cartooning, however, created a fascinating artistic scene. LGBT comics have been an uncensored, internal conversation within the queer community, and thus provide a unique window into the hopes, fears, and fantasies of queer people for the last four decades.

These comics have forged their aesthetics from the influences of underground comix, gay erotic art, punk zines, and the biting commentaries of drag queens, bull dykes, and other marginalized queers. They have analyzed their own communities, and their relationship with the broader society. They are smart, funny, and profound. No Straight Lines has been heralded by people interested in comics history, and people invested in LGBT culture will embrace it as a unique and invaluable collection.

My Review: I don't like comics, comix, graphic novels, or whatever the hell you call them. It's too much work for too little story to my text-adapted eyes. But, in a quest not to ossify into one of Those People, I continue to expose myself to stuff I hate to see if I hate it, or merely don't understand it.

Nope. Hate it.

At least there were no superheroes. Those just grate on my last nerve with a fine-toothed wood rasp.

So why three stars in the ratings, since I hate the damn stuff? Because this is My People talking! I would give an identical collection featuring straight people doing straight people stuff *pause for bad memories to pass* negative stars.

As an aside to the squeamishly homophobic (read: boringly average heterosexual male), the amount of gay-male sex in here will make you *intensely* uncomfortable, but there's a goodly dose of lesbian sex to make it better.

As this is a history of LGBTQ subjects treated graphically, it is very very interesting when considered in that light, and shows the increasing sophistication of the audience as material becomes available in greater quantity. The subject matter is, well, pretty much what you'd expect it to be, and pretty much what all fiction is about: Ourselves.

At $35, it's a big investment that I don't see making if you're not GLBTQ or very interested in the history of social-issue artistry.

Today's Review Posts for 9 April 2013

MORE BATHS, LESS TAKING in Politics & Social Issues

MURDER IN THE RUE ST. ANN in GLBTQ (Chanse MacLeod #2)

WICKED BUGS in Science, Dinosaurs & Environmental Issues

THE PALACE OF ILLUSION in Literary Fiction & Short Story Collections

STILL LIFE (Chief Inspector Gamache #1) in Mystery Series

All reviews posted in this blog are subject to
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.