February Reading Log

    

Short month = short-ish reading log. Take a look!

3 Articles I Like This Month

"'I'm Meant to be Alive': How Drew Robinson Is Learning to Live" by Jeff Passan, ESPN. 47 minutes.

On April 16, 2020, former Texas Ranger and San Francisco Giant Drew Robinson shot himself in the head. Miraculously, he survived his suicide attempt. Now he's making the most of his second chance at life.

"10 to Remember" by Dale Petroskey, The Dallas Morning News. 13 minutes.

Recollections of the 10 National Baseball Hall of Famers who passed away in the last year by the former president of the Hall of Fame.

"A Homeless Man Gave Me an Apple. I Didn't Deserve It." by Leah Waters, The Dallas Morning News. 5 minutes.

The story of a homeless man's act of generosity to a writer, and one of the best writings on grace that you'll read for a while.

Reading Through the Fantastic Four- #1-20, Annual #1

Y'all have probably learned by now that I have a tendency to start huge reading projects, and this month I embarked upon another: reading (for the second time, mind you) every single issue of the Fantastic Four comic published since 1961.

The FF have long been my favorite superhero team, and their title has had some glorious runs over the last 50 years. So, with the help of my numerous collected editions and a CD-ROM containing PDFs of every issue from #1 through #519 (one of the best purchases I've ever made), my plan is to read one issue every day until the job is done. At that rate we're looking at about 2 years of reading, which will have me finishing in time for Marvel Studios to finally deliver their crack at an FF movie.

This month I read through the first 20 issues of the title, as well as the double-sized first annual. There are some growing pains in the early issues, but for the most part this a treasure trove of great villains (Sub-Mariner, Puppet Master, the Mad Thinker, the Skrulls, and, of course, Doctor Doom), outsized personalities, and campy fun. The FF is largely responsible for what became Marvel's trademark: heroes with personal problems and obvious flaws, as opposed to the more idealized heroes DC was offering at the time. The Thing is sullen and grouchy, Mr. Fantastic is egotistical and awkward, the Human Torch is immature, and the Invisible Girl is a stereotypical damsel in distress (something it would take decades for writers to finally remedy). Yet despite these flaws, the characters remain a lovable family, adventurers you root for even as they quarrel amongst themselves.

If I were to pick a favorite story from this bunch, it would probably be Doctor Doom's first appearance, in which he sends the FF back in time to retrieve the pirate Blackbeard's treasure, a chest full of mystical jewels. On their voyage, the Thing disguises himself as a pirate captain and it is revealed that he in fact is the famous Blackbeard (time travel hijinks!) Returning home, the team manages to trick Doom by returning a chest full of worthless chains. It's a lot of story for 20 pages, and a lot of fun.

Check back next month, by which time I'll have read everything from the wedding of Reed and Sue Richards, to the introduction of the Inhumans, to the famous Galactus trilogy. Excelsior!

WHO MOVED MY PULPIT?: LEADING CHANGE IN THE CHURCH by Thom Rainer

Written for church leaders, Thom Rainer's Who Moved My Pulpit is a primer on leading churches to make needed changes. Like most of Rainer's books, it is breezy, practical, and simple, the kind of book that could easily have been a pamphlet but for the anecdotes and explanations.

If you're familiar with Rainer's work, you won't find much new in here. Leaders wanting to move their church toward change need to bathe the process in prayer. They need to cast a coherent vision. They need to build a coalition of eager members. They need to communicate, communicate, and overcommunicate. They need to find easy victories, low hanging fruit to keep people engaged and encouraged during the process. And they need to stick to the vision.

None of it's new, but it's helpful to be reminded of, and to read the stories of churches that have followed these steps and succeeded (and the stories of churches that have neglected these steps only to fail.) For pastors and lay leaders, this book will take you less than 2 hours to read, and would be time well spent.

THE COMING OF CONAN THE CIMMERIAN by Robert E. Howard

“Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.”

Thus Robert E. Howard introduced the world to the adventurer who would for decades star in his short stories and novellas, only to be eventually adapted after Howard's death into comics, novels by other writers, and movies starring first Arnold Schwarzenegger and later Jason Momoa. This book, the first of three collecting all of Howard's original Conan stories as well as assorted Conan miscellania (unfinished drafts, maps, etc.) offers the earliest glimpses of the sword-and-sorcery character.

It doesn't take long for Howard to start finding a formula in these stories. First, Conan encounters trouble (often in the form of a damsel in distress). Unafraid, Conan leaps into the fray hoping to win the girl and/or capture the treasure. Upon doing so, he learns that something supernatural is afoot, whether a Lovecraftian monster or an ancient god. Armed with little more than his courage and brawn, Conan either slays or flees his foe in the nick of time.

What you won't find in the stories is much in the way of character development. The stories have little to no connection with one another, and in every story Conan remains the same stoic barbarian, slow to speak and quick to draw his sword. You root for Conan less because you are given a reason to than because he's the protagonist (and, inevitably, the most competent warrior in the story.)

If you like the sword-and-sorcery genre that caught fire in the 1970s in genre literature (mostly thanks to Dungeons and Dragons), these pulp fiction stories are foundational. And for the most part, they're fun enough, if wordy and dated (the depiction of women in the stories is beyond problematic.) With two more volumes of Conan stories to go (I found all three at a Half Price Books a couple of years ago), I can't say I'm champing at the bit to read 600 more pages of these tales, but that has more to do with my tastes than the quality of the work. If you're a fantasy buff, these are must-reads. If you merely dabble, I'd keep these stories closer to the bottom of your to-read pile than the top.

THE RED PONY by John Steinbeck

Hot take: John Steinbeck is a really good writer. I know, I know, where do I find the courage to make such bold statements?

The Red Pony is an episodic novella that leans into a favorite Steinbeck theme: the loss of innocence. It tells the story of Jody, a California farm boy who is given the titular red pony only to see it get sick and die a painful death. Next Jody and his parents are visited by Gitano, an old Mexican man who says he once lived on the land where their farm now rests and has come to stay on the farm until he dies. Instead, after a conversation with Jody about the mountains beyond the farm, he steals an old horse and vanishes into the night, presumably into those mountains. The third chapter is another horse story, this time about the pregnancy and traumatic birth of a colt, a birth which results in a new foal but also the death of its mother. The final chapter sees Jody's grandfather come to visit, ready to tell familiar tales of the Old West, only to be reduced to melancholy by a cruel word from Jody's father.

As you can perhaps tell, there is little to no plot connections between these four stories. What binds the stories (which were initially published in a variety of magazines in 1933, 1936, and 1937) is the way Jody sees adults, once thought to be infallible, fail to live up to their promises. The Red Pony is a series of disappointments for a boy who is becoming a man, a building realization that the world is neither as simple nor as wonderful as he believed in boyhood. With maturation comes the nuanced and sad understanding that adults, like children, are merely trying their best.

Is it an upbeat novella? Well, no, clearly it's not. But thanks to Steinbeck's prose, it's a thoughtful series of tales that resonates with you long after you finish it. Beautifully written, The Red Pony makes you think and feel, which is what the best stories ought to do. It'll only take a couple hours to read this one, I certainly recommend it.

ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOL. 5 by J.M. DeMatteis, Don Perlin, Jerry Bingham, et al.

Months ago I made my way through the first four Essential volumes dedicated to Marvel's favorite non-team, a loose assortment of B and C-level characters usually led by Doctor Strange. At its best, these were kooky Bronze Age stories that didn't take themselves seriously, at worst the book was an aimless Avengers-lite. Volume 5 sees the book enter the 1980s and its final iteration under writer J.M. DeMatteis, an era in which the lineup most stabilizes around the same cast (Doctor Strange, Nighthawk, Valkyrie, Hellcat, Son of Satan, and Gargoyle) and the villains often have a supernatural bent.

The good news is the book is more focused with DeMatteis at the helm. The Defenders, clearly not a top priority at Marvel, had often seemed to be a book with little reason for existing, a tertiary title that was either handed off to a lesser-known writer or was hurriedly thrown together by one of the big guns at the last minute. With DeMatteis, a respected Marvel writer, committed to the book (in fact, he would stick with it until its eventually cancellation 50+ issues after starting in this volume), the book's disjointedness gives way to a sense of continuity and flow.

The bad news is that DeMatteis decided to take the team seriously, trading weirdness for conventionality and humor for melodrama. Perhaps because he wanted the book to be taken seriously at Marvel, he tried to replicate the formula that worked for The Avengers or DC's Justice League of America. The difference, of course, is that The Defenders doesn't have a Captain America or Superman to give the team and the book the necessary glamor.

So the result is a series of well-told but immediately disposable superhero stories, the kind of comics you enjoy while reading but know you will never return to again. The art matches this tone, with artists like Bronze Age stalwart Don Perlin providing serviceable, house-style art that rarely makes mistakes or big impressions. The stories in this volume are perfectly inoffensive, a fun way to spend 20 minutes over coffee every morning, but even seemingly important developments (the introduction of Gargoyle, Daimon Hellstrom's decision to claim his heritage as the Son of Satan, Nighthawk's "death") never quite resonate.

With DeMatteis in it for the long haul and the team's roster remaining the same for the book's final 50 issues, it looks like I know what to expect for Essential Defenders Vol. 6-7—and unfortunately, it looks like I've already read the best The Defenders had to offer. Not every comic can be a classic, and these aren't, but they're fun. Sometimes that's enough.