Uncertainty Is Ok (Friday Devotional)

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

- Romans 12:3

If you’ve spent much time with a three-year old lately, there’s a one-word question you’re used to hearing: “Why?” For small kids, it’s a question that’s constantly on their minds—and as a result, constantly on their lips. Here’s a sampling of a conversation Andrew and I had in the car the other day:

“Daddy, why is that called a water tower?”

“Because it stores water.”

“Why?”

“Because the city needs lots of water.”

“Why?”

“Because we need water to drink and take baths and wash clothes.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s no other way to do those things without water.”

“Why not?”

It’s usually at about that point in the conversation, on the 4^th or 5^th why, that we’ve hit a dead end. I’ve run out of answers; my fount of wisdom has run dry. It’s at that point that I have to begrudgingly say the words that bring the conversation to a screeching halt: I don’t know.

Nobody likes admitting that. We like to think we have all the answers we need, that we’ve prepared ourselves adequately for whatever the world throws at us, that our education is essentially complete. Uncertainty is uncomfortable, and we prefer to make our way through life with as little of it as possible.

But the truth is that nobody this side of heaven knows everything. We all have blind spots and deficits. What’s difficult is acknowledging that—especially when you disagree with someone.

In a week of tremendous controversy and struggle, many have dug into their preestablished positions, hanging on for dear life in the face of conflicting arguments. The intensity of the moment has made them more certain that they’re right and always have been, that they have nothing new to examine or learn, that nuance is an unnecessary vice.

But believers in Jesus Christ are cautioned to respond to difficult moments not with stubbornness and certainty, but grace and humility. Instead of condescending to our neighbors, now is the time to listen to them; instead of arguing with people, now is the time to reach out with intentional acts of kindness. In a time of unbelievable uncertainty, people aren’t looking for your answers, but your empathy. So may you be willing to set aside your preconceived notions and come to your neighbors with open ears, an open heart, and an open mind—because sometimes admitting you don’t know isn’t a mark of weakness, but maturity.

May Reading Log

I read two very big books and three smaller ones this month, along with plenty of good stuff online (plus the daily barrage of bad news). On to the reviews!

4 Articles I Like This Month

"My Priceless, Worthless Baseball Cards" by Ryan Hockensmith, ESPN. 11 minutes.

A reflection, inspired by the author's collection of 150,000+ baseball cards, on what nostalgic creature comforts mean to us in this time of pandemic.

"Ordinary People Are Leading the Leaders" by David Brooks, The New York Times. 3 minutes.

When you're online, it probably feels like we're as divided as ever right now. But when you talk to people in person, you learn that, regardless of the stances of our various political leaders, the American public is mostly on the same page right now about how we're handling COVID-19. A refreshing take.

"The Day the Live Concert Returns" by Dave Grohl, The Atlantic. 6 minutes.

An ode to the live concert and why live music matters, not just for us as individuals but us as a society. Worth the read for the last paragraph alone.

"What if 'Roe' Had Not Needed to Lie?" by Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, The Dallas Morning News. 2 minutes.

In the wake of the bombshell revelation that Norma McCorvey, the famed 'Jane Roe' of Roe v. Wade who spent years after the case as a pro-life advocate, was being paid for her so-called "conversion" to the pro-life position, Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa argues that being pro-life means being not just anti-abortion, but pro-woman.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE SON OF GOD by N.T. Wright

N.T. Wright's work has been formative in my theological education. Thanks to him, I know far more about the first century world than I used to. Thanks to him, I better understand what it meant for Jesus to fulfill the Law rather than abolish it (i.e. how Christianity is related to Judaism.) But the debt I owe him is that, after years of reading his books at both the popular and academic level, I came to understand why the resurrection is such a big deal.

The Resurrection of the Son of God, the third part in Wright's series on "Christian Origins and the Question of God" (look for the fourth and final part in July's reading log...it'll take me 2 months to read all 1,500+ pages of that volume), is a tightly focused examination of what the first century world believed about resurrection, what the Bible says about it, and why it matters for Christian faith. Wright's final conclusion is that Christ really did rise from the grave, that in doing so he revealed himself to be Lord and Messiah, and that his resurrection is the firstfruits of God's new creation.

The most valuable thing this book does is thoroughly dismantle the popular notions about what Christians believe about life after death: that when you die, your soul goes up to heaven where you live with God for eternity. As Wright convincingly shows, that is not what anyone in the early church believed, and it is not what Jesus promised or Paul taught. The gospel witness is not about eternal disembodied bliss, but about resurrection, about a day to come when the dead shall rise, transformed and redeemed by the power of God to reign with Christ in a new creation.

In Wright's telling, resurrection is the glorious endpoint of all the metanarratives of Scripture—it is the restoration of creation, it is the end of Israel's exile, and it is the full fulfillment of the promise that God is with us. With meticulous attention to both the historical details surrounding the writing of Scripture and to the exegesis of the Bible's texts about resurrection, Wright makes his case compellingly, correcting popular misconceptions with a mountain of historical, biblical, and theological evidence.

For many, even many Christians, the resurrection of Jesus is simply a happy ending to the story of Jesus's passion, one final miracle before he ascended into heaven. But as Wright shows, the resurrection is where all the hopes of the faithful find their fulfillment; it is where God announces once and for all that he is doing something new. I cannot thank Wright enough for his work in this volume, which I would probably now count as the most personally influential theology book I've ever read. If you want to know why Easter matters, you'll find no shortage of answers here.

PARTING THE WATERS: AMERICA IN THE KING YEARS 1954-1963 by Taylor Branch

The story we were taught in school about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s goes something like this: Rosa Parks, in an act of spontaneous outrage, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man and was arrested. In response, Martin Luther King, Jr. led the black citizens of Montgomery to boycott the buses until the laws were changed. MLK then went from city to city throughout the south giving speeches and leading nonviolent marches, until he finally gave his "I Have a Dream Speech" in Washington D.C. and convinced the nation—and the White House—that America's black citizens deserved equal rights. His assassination in 1968 marked the end of the movement, if not the struggle for equality. The end.

It's not an entirely inaccurate story, to be sure, but it's awfully oversimplified. The true story of African-Americans' movement for civil rights began long before Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, and even once King became its de facto leader, he was not some messianic figure acting alone. The protests of the movement were not universally welcomed, nor were they all successful. And while the White House—Kennedy and later Johnson—put the wheels in motion to ensure that the movement's righteous purpose resulted in legislation, it was only after years doing their best to duck the issue altogether.

In short, the story of the Civil Rights Movement is a lot more complicated than you might think, and Parting the Waters, the 900+ page first book in Taylor Branch's trilogy on the movement, provides all the painstaking details you could want. Exhaustively researched and written matter-of-factly, Branch introduces readers to figures who don't make the front cover of the history books even as his spotlight remains on Dr. King. His blow-by-blow accounts of all the conflicts the movement had to endure—between King's SCLC and the more established NAACP, between King and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, and between King and the Kennedy administration (especially Attorney General Robert Kennedy)—show how miraculous it is that the movement accomplished anything at all, given the headwinds it was facing.

Parting the Waters has a lot of ground to cover, and occasionally gets so deep in the details that you start to lose the forest for the trees, but there can be no disputing its value as a resource for students of history. Check back next month as I read part 2 in the trilogy, Pillar of Fire.

HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad

Given the length of Parting the Waters, I needed to make sure that the classic novel I read this month (you may recall that I've committed to reading one each month in 2020) would be short. At less than 100 pages, Heart of Darkness seemed to fit the bill. Little did I know how long it would take me to trudge through those pages.

Heart of Darkness tells the story of Marlow, a steamboat captain who travels into the Congo in search of a mysterious trader named Mr. Kurtz. Marlow's obsession with Kurtz, the foreignness of the land, and the assistance and conflict he finds from the African natives on his journey serve to show the reader that darkness is something which transcends civilization and is present within each of us.

Unfortunately, Heart of Darkness is the perfect example of the kind of book which is more fun to discuss than to read. Joseph Conrad is a big fan of the loooong paragraph and doesn't use a lot of dialogue, so I found myself frequently losing the thread. What's more, there are long stretches where nothing really happens in the story and where he's instead letting nature provide the symbolism—again, that can be fun to discuss, but it's a drag to read.

Sometimes called "the first modern novel," Heart of Darkness has a great deal to say about race, colonialism, sin, and power. I just wish those things were a little easier to find on the page instead of having to learn about them in the Cliff Notes.

ESSENTIAL HULK VOL. 7

This is my third (and final) reading log in a row featuring Bronze Age Hulk stories, so you'll pardon me if I keep this one short. Roger Stern's writing run is tremendous fun; the rest is forgettable. The art isn't anything worthy of praise or condemnation. Plot-wise, this volume sees General "Thunderbolt" Ross suffer a nervous breakdown, the divorce of Glenn Talbot and Betty Ross, and the death of Hulk's one-time love Jarella.

But mostly, Hulk smashes. And what more could you ask for than that?

ESSENTIAL MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN VOL. 1 by Gary Friedrich, Doug Moench, Mike Ploog, John Buscema, et al.

Would you have guessed that a mute, hulking monster out of Victorian literature would make for a decent comic book protagonist? Yeah, me neither, but that's 1970s Marvel for you, full of surprises.

This collection of stories began as a simple retelling of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but after a few issues the story continues as Frankenstein's monster seeks revenge on his creator. From there you get a few more stories about the monster's travails in Victorian Europe before he is frozen in Arctic waters and then reawakened from suspended animation in modern times. It's at that point that the book starts to resemble The Incredible Hulk, with the monster taking on various antagonists even as he also deals with persecution from a society that fears and misunderstands him.

To be honest with you, I was kind of dreading reading this particular Essential, since I have no connection to the source material and had a hard time imagining Frankenstein's monster carrying a solo title. But as Marvel horror goes, this book was closer to Tomb of Dracula (some of the best Marvel Bronze Age stuff in any genre) than it was Brother Voodoo or The Scarecrow. The stories are strong, the characters interesting, and the titular monster acts less as a protagonist than a catalyst, which serves the stories well. As 1970s Marvel horror goes, this is worth the small time investment it takes to read it.

Worth Remembering (Friday Devotional)

“And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.”

- Matthew 10:42

At dinner a few nights ago, Lindsey and I started talking about family vacations we’ve taken, and we were curious to see which ones Andrew remembered. After running through a few of our most recent trips, we asked if he remembered when we went to Maine in September 2018. He said yes, but given that he wasn’t yet 2 years old when we went there, we weren’t quite convinced. So we asked what he remembered about the trip.

He paused pensively. Then suddenly, his expression of concentration gave way to a big smile and he exclaimed, “I liked when we stacked butter together!”

I should explain. While driving across the state to get to Acadia National Park, we had stopped at a roadside diner. Unfortunately, the place was packed that day and Andrew was hungry, so we were looking for any distraction we could come up with to keep him happy until the food came. Lindsey, with the ingenuity unique to preschool teachers, grabbed all the rectangular butter packets next to the salt shakers and told Andrew we were going to stack them like blocks. It did the trick—he was perfectly happy until the food came.

And as we learned at dinner almost two years later, that moment of happiness was no small thing for Andrew. Because when we asked him for one memory of Maine, he didn’t mention fresh lobster or ocean views. His fondest memory was stacking butter packets.

You never know what people are going to remember. For all the time and planning that go into big events, sometimes it’s a conversation in the parking lot that lingers in people’s minds. All the advertising in the world is powerless compared to a friend’s anecdotal experience. When it comes to making a lasting impression, personal relationships are far more powerful than any strategy or initiative.

So followers of Jesus Christ have to understand that our most powerful acts of evangelism, service, and love are often not the moments we planned ahead of time. For the lonely widow, your offer to eat lunch with her may be a more powerful witness to Christ’s love than any Bible study you could teach. For the harried single mother, an offer to babysit for free is a better description of Jesus than any evangelistic tract you could put in her hand. As Jesus himself said, simply offering someone thirsty a cup of cold water can be a greater testament to your faith than you could imagine.

You never know what people are going to remember about your witness, so the difficult but necessary task is to bear witness to Christ with your whole life, not just planned moments. Even the briefest interactions and the most seemingly insignificant conversations can make an impact on someone. So may you make those little moments worth remembering.

Worth Revisiting (Friday Devotional)

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

- Hebrews 4:12

Like millions of people around the world, I spent hours of my free time the last month watching ESPN’s 10-part documentary The Last Dance, which told the story of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls through the lens of their final championship season together. While I have no personal memories of the Bulls’ glory days (I was 1 year old when they won their first championship and 8 when they won their sixth), watching the documentary was still largely an exercise in nostalgia, a chance to re-watch highlights I hadn’t seen in a while.

But to my delight, The Last Dance not only tread familiar ground, it also showed me things I’d never seen and taught me things I’d never learned. I knew Dennis Rodman’s reputation as a hard worker on the court and a partier off the court, but I never knew what teammates and coaches thought about him until watching their interviews. I knew Scottie Pippen was an underappreciated sidekick to His Airness for most of his career, but I didn’t realize how underpaid he was in comparison to his peers. I knew Michael Jordan was the most famous athlete in the world at his peak, but I didn’t realize what all that entailed until I saw it on camera. Returning to these familiar figures with fresh eyes gave me new perspective on what to think about them.

We learn new things when we revisit even the most well-worn stories, and if that applies to old basketball teams, it’s certainly true of the Bible. For those who have been reading Scripture for many years, certain passages may be so recurrent after countless Bible studies, wedding and funeral readings, and sermons that you assume there’s nothing left for God to teach you through them.

But as Hebrews 4:12 reminds us, God’s Word is “alive and active.” The Holy Spirit has a way of lifting even the most familiar words off the page and into your heart, of transforming stale explanations from yesterday into fresh power for today. So I encourage you to think about a part of the Bible you think you’ve got down cold and then give it another look today with an open mind and a humble heart—because no matter how much time you’ve spent in it, God’s Word is always worth revisiting.

Run the Bases (Friday Devotional)

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.

- Galatians 6:9

Since the weather turned warmer, Andrew and I have been spending a lot of time in the backyard playing baseball—or at least baseball as he understands it so far. In our modified version of the game, he holds the ball with one outstretched hand and then swings with the other arm until he connects, like tee ball without the tee. Sometimes he hits it a few feet, sometimes he gets enough backspin on the ball that he hits it behind himself, and sometimes he misses the ball altogether. But no matter what happens to the ball, as soon as he’s done swinging he’ll drop his bat, shout “Run the bases!” and run a lap around the perimeter of the yard. Home run or strikeout, it makes no difference—nothing’s going to stop him from running the bases.

Ours is culture that focuses largely on results instead of process or effort. Championship teams get parades; runners up are seen as disappointments. Oscar winners are immortalized; the other nominees are largely forgotten. CEOs make headlines and 7-figure salaries; middle management toils away unnoticed.

This societal obsession with success has a way of stunting our relationship with God. When we pray, we’re disillusioned if our request isn’t immediately fulfilled. When we evangelize, we’re disappointed if the listener walks away unchanged. When we give, we wonder why Jesus doesn’t multiply every offering into something we can immediately see.

But the truth is, not every experience is a home run. Sometimes your impatience or your doubts or your misunderstanding prevents you from seeing what God is doing at a given moment. Sometimes moments you interpret as failures or as wastes of time are actually the cornerstone of something new God is building.

So instead of focusing on the visible results of your walk with God, give yourself over to the process. Seek justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God without regard for what will be produced by those actions. Love like Christ for his sake instead of with a goal in mind. Your faithfulness may produce a spiritual home run, or you may have to resign yourself to a strikeout. But either way, run the bases.

Remember What Remains (Friday Devotional)

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
    for his steadfast love endures forever.
O give thanks to the God of gods,
    for his steadfast love endures forever.
O give thanks to the Lord of lords,
    for his steadfast love endures forever.

It is he who remembered us in our low estate,
    for his steadfast love endures forever;
and rescued us from our foes,
    for his steadfast love endures forever;
who gives food to all flesh,
    for his steadfast love endures forever.

O give thanks to the God of heaven,
    for his steadfast love endures forever.

-      Psalm 136:1-3, 23-26

In this season of pandemic, we have seen the world around us turned upside down. Schools shuttered for the remainder of the year, sports leagues postponed their seasons indefinitely, and churches moved their worship online. Wearing a face mask in public, once the mark of a criminal, has now become a sign of good citizenship. Most difficult, we all went weeks without seeing beloved friends and family members.

With so much changing so quickly, I’ve found myself comforted more and more by those aspects of my routine which remain in place, those parts of my day that look just like they did two months ago. My alarm still goes off at the same time it did at the beginning of March. I still curl into a comfy chair with coffee and a book for a couple hours before my family wakes up. I still run the same 2-mile route around the neighborhood every day. In a time when so much else has changed, there is comfort in the familiarity and the repetition of a daily routine.

Reading Psalm 136 is an exercise in remembering what remains consistent even when change abounds. As the writer gives thanks and narrates Israel’s history, the refrain is metronomic, with every other line of the psalm repeating, “For his steadfast love endures forever.” The effect is simple yet powerful, reminding the reader through repetition what never changes or fails. The world is always changing, the psalm seems to say, but the love of the Lord endures forever.

In a time when the world can feel unrecognizable, it’s important to hold onto and honor that which hasn’t changed. It’s important to know what remains when all else fades away. And as the psalmist does, it’s important to give thanks to the Lord—for his steadfast love endures forever.

April Reading Log

For some, a month at home has meant much more reading than normal. For others, it has virtually eliminated the time (or desire) to read. For me, not much changed—since I do my reading between the hours of 4:30 and 6:30 in the morning, this part of my routine remained intact. So here's what I read in the month of April!

2 Articles I Like This Month

"If I Wrote a Coronavirus Episode" by Various, Vulture. 28 minutes.

How would our favorite TV characters handle sheltering in place due to coronavirus? Thanks to Vulture, which rounded up the showrunners from some of TV's most popular shows, now we know! A fun diversion from all the serious news this month.

"We Are Living in a Failed State" by George Packer, The Atlantic. 12 minutes.

In this compelling editorial, longtime Atlantic writer George Packer lays out the sad reality that COVID-19 has exposed: America is not functioning properly, and now our social, political, and economic decay is costing us lives. A sober but powerful look at how our nation's underlying conditions have made this crisis even worse than it had to be.

THE LAST WEEK: WHAT THE GOSPELS REALLY TEACH ABOUT JESUS' FINAL DAYS IN JERUSALEM by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan

When we think about Holy Week, there are certain days whose details we know well: we know about Palm Sunday's processional, Maundy Thursday's supper, Good Friday's crucifixion, and Sunday's empty tomb. But the gospels, which give us a broad overview of Jesus's three years of ministry only to tightly focus on this final week in Jerusalem, have more to say about Jesus than we tend to make time for during Holy Week. By looking at all the events of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday's triumphal entry to Easter Sunday's resurrection, we are shown the full scope of Jesus's message and mission.

This the task of Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, two progressive Christian scholars well-known for their work in the quest for the "Historical Jesus," which seeks to determine 'what really happened' for those unwilling to take the gospels' accounts on faith, in The Last Week. Using the Gospel of Mark as their text, Borg and Crossan devote a chapter to each day of Holy Week, dispelling what they see as misconceptions about Jesus and offering sorely needed context to Jesus's actions in Jerusalem.

In the end, the gospel they perceive Jesus to be preaching is an anti-imperial message about the kingdom of God, one which declares that Jesus is Lord and therefore Caesar is not, and more broadly, that Jesus's way of the cross is ultimately more powerful than the domination systems of worldly powers. While not dismissing the personal element of the gospel, Borg and Crossan's emphasis is on the political aspect of what Jesus said and did.

Borg and Crossan have valuable exegetical and theological insights in The Last Week—in fact, I used this book as a reference guide for a series of daily video Bible studies I led my church in during Holy Week. However, I read the book with a grain of salt, and I advise other readers to do the same. You don't have to be a fundamentalist to be uncomfortable with the way Borg and Crossan dismiss the historicity of parts of the Bible while affirming other parts. Their research and conclusions, while academically sound, are nevertheless a step too far in their skepticism to be fully affirmed by the faithful. For teachers of the Bible, The Last Week is a complicated meal—taste and see, but I don't advise you to swallow it whole.

HOW TO PRAY: DEVELOPING AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

This book was a gift from the leader of our church's women's Bible study group, since this is the book they intended to read through in April. COVID-19 prevented that from happening, but I was still curious to see what the book had to say, so I gave it a quick read after Easter.

Written by Ronnie Floyd, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee and former president of the National Day of Prayer, How to Pray is a practical guide through the Bible's teachings on prayer, with a special emphasis and why and how we are called to go to God. Drawing from both Scripture and his own experiences, Floyd does a good job explaining what barriers stand in the way of effective prayer and how they can be overcome, and concludes with his own personal prayer plan.

Admittedly, Floyd doesn't break any new ground in this book—prayer is a pretty well-worn topic—and the book doesn't hold many surprises. However, he is an effective communicator, and does a good job distilling things down to what matters most; there's not a lot of fluff in this book. How to Pray offers some good insights into prayer, some good tips on how to pray more effectively, and a pastoral reminder of prayer's importance. If you want to grow in your prayer life, I'd love to let you borrow my copy of this book.

RABBIT, RUN by John Updike

I picked a bad month to read this book if I was supposed to sympathize with its protagonist. Rabbit, Run tells the story of how its titular character, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a husband and father, impulsively leaves his pregnant wife without a word of explanation and shacks up with a prostitute. After being befriended by the local Episcopal priest, he eventually returns to his wife's side the day she gives birth to their second child, only to abandon her again weeks later, a decision which results in an unimaginable tragedy. Running back to his partner in his affair, he learns that she is pregnant and then flees her too.

Rabbit Angstrom, who starred in four Updike novels, has never been considered a hero. But especially now, when we're all holding our families a little tighter and when individualism has given way to solidarity, he came across as the epitome of selfishness, a character I reviled throughout the book. His main character trait, as the title suggests, is that he runs from his responsibilities in search of some purpose or meaning that he doesn't believe he can find at home. The way he treats the people around him, especially women, is appalling. Though the story is told largely from his perspective, Rabbit nevertheless comes across as irredeemable.

His story, and Updike's telling of it, is captivating. Updike manages to say a great deal about everything from sex to religion to masculinity in this novel, and the prose is beautiful throughout. The trouble is that Rabbit is intended to be an everyman, the kind of Don Draper-esque salesman whom Updike saw as the symbol—for better and for worse—of America in the 1950s. But Rabbit's selfishness is so over-the-top that, at a certain point, I couldn't buy him as an everyman anymore; he was just too loathsome to stand in for that role.

Did I appreciate Rabbit, Run? Yes; it's a modern classic for a reason. Did I enjoy it? I can emphatically say no. Few books could have been a worse fit for a shelter-in-place read. Glad to have read it, and glad to be done with it.

BASEBALL BETWEEN THE NUMBERS: WHY EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT THE GAME IS WRONG by Baseball Prospectus, edited by Jonah Keri

Ever since the publication of Moneyball in 2003 (not to mention the subsequent movie 8 years later), baseball has been going through a revolution in the way the game is analyzed. Statistics like batting average and RBI, once the backbone of statistical analysis, have given way to OBP, OPS, and WAR. Conventional wisdom has ceded is authority to sabermetrics. The nerds have won.

Baseball Between the Numbers, a 2006 collection of essays by the folks at Baseball Prospectus, is a handy guide to the fights (and, in most cases, victories) sabermetricians waged over the last 2 decades. Analyzing everything from statistical analysis to front office methodology to on-the-field strategy, these essays use numbers, charts, and graphs (sooo many charts and graphs) to look at how baseball can operate more efficiently.

Reading this nearly 15 years after its publication, I was amazed by how many of these essays, which were presumably controversial takes at the time, are now settled dogma in the game. It turns out that essays like these have been making a big impact over the years, and the numbers have won out over gut feeling. You can understand why when you read them—while none of these writers are going to win Pulitzers anytime soon for their prose, they craft convincing arguments with the aid of hard numbers.

If you've ever killed half an hour on Fangraphs, this book will be familiar territory. If you're a more traditionally minded fan, it may be an acquired taste. Nevertheless, no one can doubt the influence on the game of books like this one.

HARLEEN by Stjepan Sejic

I've got to be honest: beyond the whole Margot Robbie of it all, I don't really get the surge of interest in Harley Quinn. First debuting in the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series TV show and comic book, Harley eventually worked her way into the mainstream DC Universe, where for me she was a welcome addition but far from a superstar. Nevertheless, she's somehow found herself the star of 2 DC movies and has become a fixture not just in Batman's rogues gallery, but the DCU at large.


Harleen is writer-artist Stjepan Sejic's new take on Harley's origin story, chronicling Dr. Harleen Quinzel's descent into love and madness when she becomes the Joker's psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum and eventually his partner in crime. Portraying Quinzel as a doctor committed to using empathy to heal the criminally insane, Sejic does a remarkable job making readers sympathize with Harleen even as we see the cracks in her psyche beginning to form. Harleen is convinced that the Joker can be saved; as readers we know otherwise, and the story's job is to confirm our preconception while still maintaining the tension.

I had never read anything by Sejic before, but was impressed overall, especially by his art, which isn't flashy but tells the story well. The writing was occasionally a little stilted, but delivered on the promise of making me care about Harley Quinn in a way I never had before. For fans of Harley's movies and Batman's villains, this is a psychological thriller worth a read.

ESSENTIAL HULK VOL. 6 by Len Wein, Roger Stern, Sal Buscema, et al.

The more Bronze Age Hulk comics I read, the more I think that, despite a lack of innovative or even memorable stories, this is the definitive era for the not-so-jolly green giant. In the 1980s, Peter David would begin a 12-year run writing The Incredible Hulk which would tackle big questions about anger, psychology, and personality. No one really disagrees; that's the best run of Hulk comics. And yet the conventional conception of the Hulk—a "giant green rage monster," as Tony Stark quipped in The Avengers movie, a brute who smashes unthinkingly and talks like Frankenstein's monster—was solidified in the 1970s.

The Essential Hulk Vol. 6 continues walking us through those definitive Bronze Age comics, running from issue #201 through 226 of The Incredible Hulk. A few major developments occur: Betty Ross and Glenn Talbot's marriage falls apart, Bruce Banner moves to New York, and Doc Samson becomes a regular member of the supporting cast. But by and large, these comics tell simple, predictable stories. Hulk wants to be left alone. An antagonist (usually a villain, but sometimes a superpowered agent of the U.S. military) engages the Hulk in combat nonetheless. Hulk gets angry. Hulk smashes.

As I said in my review last month for the fifth volume, it's all good fun, albeit not especially memorable. Writers Len Wein and then Roger Stern keep the stories moving and provide enough soap opera-style background drama to fit the serialized nature of comics storytelling. Sal Buscema, whose work can be found in just about any Bronze Age Marvel book, provides great-but-never-amazing art that excels at storytelling but is unlikely to make you ooh and aah over a particular panel or page.

The Essential Hulk Vol. 6 tells the kinds of stories that don't move the creative needle, but are still delightful. Most people picking up a Hulk comic aren't looking for Shakespeare, they just want to see Hulk smash. In that regard, this book delivers.

UNDERSTANDING COMICS: THE INVISIBLE ART by Scott McCloud

What is a comic? Why do we like them? And are they really art?

These and other question are all examined and answered in Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, a 200+ page art lesson told in a graphic format. With a tone that is at turns professorial, humorous, and insightful, McCloud manages to break down the entire medium, showing how comics are far more than superhero kids stuff and how and why they rise to the level of art. So much of how we read and understand comics is intuitive; McCloud manages to explain how technical things like layout and spacing shape our reading.

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from this book, which is an unquestioned classic among comics readers. After finishing it, I can understand why creators and critics especially praise it to the skies, since it reveals to casual readers the things they wrestle with every day. For me it was an interesting intellectual exercise, and one that made me see the medium a bit differently, but it's a book I'm more likely to return to as a reference than as something to read for fun. If you like comics or even just have a general interest in art, this is a fine book, and one-of-a-kind as it relates to comics.