RED MARS (Robinson, 1992)

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Robinson hooked me (and many others, it seems) with MINISTRY OF THE FUTURE's near-future (and getting nearer every day) climate apocalypse bureaucracy and doom and solidified it here: RED MARS is sci-fi and worldbuilding at its most intriguing – and prescient.

The closest analogue to MARS I can conjure is Mervyn Peake's GORMENGHAST series, that rare fantasy series which captured my heart and mind (and reminds me I need to procure the other two) with limited characters – as well-drawn and real as flesh and blood – and excruciatingly detailed worlds not my own (indeed, much of my own frustration in my current WIP is that I'm not seeing the world well enough yet, small and tiny though it may be); Robinson made me feel, with each page turn, as though I was there with that first hundred, uncertain of my allegiances, celebrating and mourning and building and destroying with them. Unflinchingly human, all:

"Here they were eating their dinner, talking over the low boom from the north, in a perfect illusion of dining room conviviality; it might have been anywhere anytime, and their tired faces bright with some collective success, or merely with the pleasure of eating together – while just outside their chamber the broken world roared, and rockfall could annihilate them at any instant. And it came to her that the pleasure and stability of dining rooms has always occurred against such a backdrop, against the catastrophic background of universe chaos; such moments of calm were things as fragile and transitory as soap bubbles, destined to burst almost as soon as they blew into existence."

Robinson once said in a City Arts Lecture that you don't write novels as a tool for self-expression but as a way to inhabit the lives of others: RED MARS takes you not just into the minds of deeply drawn and deeply flawed people, but into what feels like each and every dust particle on the red planet; this is a towering achievement. BLUE and GREEN on the docket, but I need to catch my breath first.

My complete reading list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.

“yami baito,” Pokémon edition

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via SoraNews24:

Card shops are having to incorporate security systems on par with jewelry and antique shops to keep ahead of increasingly aggressive burglars with eyes on a mint-condition Charizard. Just this week one caper that spanned most of the country was thwarted by the Tokyo police, who arrested 35-year-old Masaki Omori of Okinawa for stealing some 1,500 cards...

It all began when Omori applied for a "yami baito" or "dark part-time job" which is a one-time, high-pay, and high-risk criminal endeavor at the request of someone, often made over social media.

The suspect flew to Ibaraki on 11 April using his own money and rented a car from there to travel to Akihabara. At about 5:00 a.m. on 12 April, Omori smashed through a window of the unoccupied store and proceeded to take about 1,500 cards worth approximately 1.15 million yen (US$8,240)...

The whole article is an insane must-read.

DAREDEVIL Vol. 2, No. 99 (Brubaker / Lark; Marvel, 2007)

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Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-) read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review/memory/whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box07): Finally, a trip off the DC track and on to the Marvel one for a spell, relief that it's a good one – not that I'm partial to DD or anything, this particular issue being part of a set I repurchased (DD Vol. 2 1-106) after my entire Bendis / Brubaker DD set, the last runs that I picked up in single issues, vanished at some point in the last ten years (though I swear I've seen them around) but anyhow the comic itself.

Another reminder of why DD is one of my holy trinity, Stan’s best (co)-creation, the truest blank slate in the Marvel Universe, in some hands a swashbuckling do-gooder, in others, like the team here, a crime book / legal drama with a blind ninja martyr in red tights trying to do the best he can and, thanks to his own not-inconsiderable issues, screwing it all up (and getting the shit kicked out of him) before turning the same somewhat around, leaving broken people (especially Milla, good god, Milla – Bendis and Brubaker were just brutal with her), physically and emotionally, in his wake – and feeling crap about it but still doing the same thing night after night after night.

VERY cool to see Mr. Fear and The Enforcers (the latter having debuted way back in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 10) as the main antagonists: nothing like a little turning of comics lore into something new and exciting and terrifying through a stark noir palette. Speaking of: can't get enough of Michael Lark's work here – much as I love the Brubaker/Phillips team, there's something about the Brubaker/Lark pairing that grabs me in ways the former doesn't (or, rather, hasn't in awhile). Maybe it's the fondness I hold for their work (along with Rucka) on GOTHAM CENTRAL (which I want to complete in single issues) that clouds my judgement here, but jesusfuck look at the panel quartet pictured above, the tiny changes from panel to panel, especially Chico's expressions – that's just perfection.

Such an excellent issue of such an excellent series which makes me want to revisit all of Bendis and Brubaker's work on the title (Bendis, especially, has never again reached the heights he reached during his time on DAREDEVIL) – but I've got a few of the issues in the shortboxes, so I'm sure they'll turn up in this space...