June Book Log

It's beach read season, so I decided to tackle some lighter fare: some comics, a dumb thriller, a baseball book, and a refresher on what it means to be Baptist. Take a look!

Reading Through the Fantastic Four- (4th series) #1-16, FF (2nd series) #1-16

Pity the creative team who has to follow an epic, years-long saga like Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four (and FF) run. Do you try to follow the through-line and pick up where they left off? Do you zig where they zagged? Either way, you're almost certain to disappoint.

Matt Fraction drew the short straw and got to be the sacrificial lamb after Hickman's departure, and he opted to go in both directions at once. On the one hand, he retained many of the most distinctive features of Hickman's run—the black-and-white costumes, the kids of the Future Foundation, Reed's quest to "solve everything." However, where Hickman's run was heady and bombastic, Fraction goes for a light-hearted tone, more Saturday morning cartoon than The Iliad. And, predictably, by trying to split the baby, it all falls apart in the end.

Things start promisingly, with Fraction sending the core family (Reed and Sue, Ben, Johnny, and Franklin and Valeria) on a cosmic road trip, while leaving behind a replacement team led by Scott Lang's Ant-Man to watch over the Future Foundation. From this starting point, the book divides into two books, Fantastic Four—which chronicles the Richards' adventures through time and space—and FF, which keeps track of the team back home.

Fantastic Four is a pretty traditional superhero book, illustrated by the reliable-but-past-his-prime Mark Bagley, who can move from humor to gravitas relatively seamlessly. However, the book feels directionless, like it's spinning its tires until the road trip reaches its inevitable conclusion. FF, in contrast, is almost a straight humor book, illustrated by Mike and Laura Allred, whose pop art style makes for great gags but not always ideal narrative storytelling.

It all works until it doesn't; both books start energetically but lose steam when the novelty wears off and the creators visibly get bored with their assignments. The dual runs culminate in a pair of borderline incomprehensible stories where the teams face off against a Doctor Doom-Kang-Annihilus merged superbeing called—and I'm not kidding here—Doom the Annihilating Conqueror. It's messy and dumb and, less than 2 years removed from Hickman, a little embarrassing.

In retrospect, Matt Fraction never stood much of a chance coming after Hickman. You've got to hand it to him for trying, but that doesn't mean you have to pretend he succeeded.

DISTINCTLY BAPTIST: PROCLAIMING IDENTITY IN A NEW GENERATION edited by Brian Brewer

On June 13, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to narrow once again their definition of what it means to be a Southern Baptist by declaring that any local church which calls a woman ''pastor" is not in harmonious cooperation with the SBC and must be removed from is fellowship. The central question, of course, was about women in ministry, but it also brought up further questions about the autonomy of the local church, the priesthood of all believers, ordination, and more. For many, those who agreed with the SBC and those who didn't, this was the first time in a while that they asked, "What does it mean to be a Baptist?"

In Distinctly Baptist, a collection of sermons by professors at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, that question is answered with 14 Baptist distinctives ranging from belief in salvation by grace through faith and the authority of Scripture to a congregational church polity and a commitment to social justice. Relying on history for context and Scripture for explanation (after all, the SBC's recent legalism notwithstanding, Baptists' historic battle cry has been "no creed but the Bible!"), Truett's professors eloquently lay out what has made Baptists unique over our 400+ year history.

The result is not only a primer on Baptist belief, but also an implicit defense of denominationalism in an era when people's choice of church tends to have much more to do with location, worship style, and the size of its youth department. With each sermon, I was reminded that it means something to call yourself a Baptist, that denominational identity is about far more than identity politics or internecine power struggles—Baptists are a freedom loving, Christ exalting, Bible reading, fiercely independent people.

The SBC gets to decide who belongs to their convention, but they don't get to decide who calls themselves a Baptist. That job belongs to the baptized, Spirit-filled believer and his or her church... and if the SBC doesn't like it, that church and that believer will carry on in Jesus' name, guided by their own biblical convictions. What could be more Baptist than that?

INFERNO by Dan Brown

Ok, I'm starting to forget what I liked about Dan Brown books. In theory, the mixture of history, conspiracy, and action offers an Indiana Jones-meets-National Treasure vibe. Robert Langdon, Brown's protagonist, is a charming and intelligent everyman (while the movies were just ok, Tom Hanks was excellent casting for the role.) And Brown, while light years from being a great writer, does manage to end every chapter with a cliffhanger, which is what you want from a beach read.

But man, this one tried my patience. Inferno begins with Langdon waking up in an Italian hospital with a head wound and no memory of what has happened to him <eye roll> and we're off to the races, as Langdon escapes an assassination attempt and learns he's in possession of a map with ties to Dante's Inferno. Naturally.

I'll be honest, I lost track of the plot about 2/3 of the way through—the book didn't exactly have my full attention—but it weaves between Dante trivia, a mysterious organization called the Consortium, and a scheme that threatens to kill millions. And there's a twist at the end where one of Langdon's allies is revealed to have been a villain all along.

If it sounds familiar, it's because we've already done this three times by this point, in Angels & Demons, The Lost Symbol, and, most famously, The Da Vinci Code. All thrillers rely on tropes, but few authors cling to the same formula as shamelessly as Dan Brown, and this deep into the Langdon books, it's getting pretty tiresome. I'll read Origin, the fifth and (for now) final Langdon book, one of these days, but I can't say I'm looking forward to it. Maybe my disappointment is my fault—by now, I guess I should know not to expect originality from this series.

NOW I CAN DIE IN PEACE by Bill Simmons

It now feels like a lifetime ago, but Bill Simmons owned sports media in the 2000s. Starting as a blogger called the Boston Sports Guy, in 2001 he was picked up as a national columnist for ESPN: The Magazine and ESPN.com's Page 2, where he continued to write primarily about Boston sports teams. Eventually his star shined so bright that he was given the keys to his own vanity sports site, Grantland.com (may it rest in peace) and was simultaneously put on TV as an NBA studio analyst. In 2015, overworked and fed up with his bosses at ESPN, Simmons left to start his own media empire, The Ringer (basically Grantland without the benefit of ESPN's backing), and as a result he has largely faded into the background ever since.

But in the early 2000s, when the New England Patriots were launching their Brady-Belichick dynasty and the Boston Red Sox were in mortal combat with the hated New York Yankees, millions of fans were going to ESPN.com every day to see what Simmons had to say about his beloved Boston teams. Writing from the perspective of a diehard fan and with the voice of a pop culture-obsessed frat boy, Simmons was a new breed of sportswriter, utterly rejecting the notion that a columnist needed to be an impartial observer. Simmons was not there to inform, but entertain; he was no expert bringing news to the masses, but a member of the masses giving voice to their passions, their superstitions, and their traditions.

Now I Can Die in Peace is a collection of Simmons' notable Red Sox columns dating back to 1999, when Pedro Martinez and Nomar Garciaparra were bringing Boston back to national relevance, up through the Sox's epic 2004 march to a curse-breaking world championship in 2004. In column after column, Simmons traces the rise (1999-2002), disastrous fall (2003) and triumph (2004) of the Sox with his trademark, decidedly un-PC (seriously, these columns would never be published today) humor and passion. Footnotes added with the benefit of hindsight offer context and meta humor about Simmons' observations and predictions, both when he hit the nail on the head and when he was hilariously wrong.

For a sports fan whose formative years happened smack dab in the middle of this run, this book was pure delight. I'm no Red Sox fan, but I hate the Yankees, and I didn't miss a game of the 2003 and 2004 ALCS. Reliving those years through this book was a blast. For any baseball fan, Now I Can Die in Peace offers a running diary of one of the biggest stories in baseball the last 50 years. If you're looking for a book that captures what makes this game so meaningful to so many, this is a fun, irreverent place to turn.