My 2024 Reading Stacks #1

My Favorite Thing is Monsters v.2 and Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons.

Two of my favorite reads of the year: oversized-pages division.

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place.

I’ve previously written why I don’t do eBooks. Perhaps someday I’ll also explain why these capsules are exclusive to MCC and not shared on Amazon, Goodreads, or other sites where their authors might prefer I’d share them. In the meantime, here’s me and my recent reading results.

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The Billy Ireland Museum Presents Original Art from the Golden Age of Comics

Alex Raymond Rip Kirby 6-27-1953!

Alex Raymond, the Rip Kirby strip for June 27, 1953.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I drove three hours from Indianapolis to attend the third annual GalaxyCon Columbus in the heart of Ohio’s very capital, met one of my all-time favorite performers, bought comics, chatted with fellow fans, and fled the place around 12:30 Saturday because it wasn’t the only comics-related event I wanted to check out in town. Fortunately we just missed the Great Convention Center Wi-Fi Crash of 2024 and the ensuing descent into temporary cash-only savagery.

We got our first taste of the Columbus comics scene in 2015 when we attended the inaugural Cartoon Crossroads Columbus and, while we were in town anyway, visited the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University, a graphic-storytelling tribute space with rotating exhibits and free admission. ‘Twas a fun Saturday for us, but for some reason we took and posted very few photos from the occasion.

This year GalaxyCon partnered with the Ireland for a bit of cross-promotion that included a Friday night VIP event attended by some of the con’s guests. We couldn’t work out the logistics to attend that soiree, but I wanted to see the museum’s latest showcase — a fascinating gallery of original art from the Golden Age of comic books and strips. We snapped quite a few more pics this time.

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Heartland Film Festival 2024 Screening #4: “Superboys of Malegaon”

Young filmmaker holding a digital camera, watching forlornly as the woman he loves is driven away offscreen.

Movies will break your heart, kid.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! Since 1992 my hometown of Indianapolis has presented the Heartland International Film Festival, a multi-day, multi-theater celebration of cinema held every October. Local moviegoers have the opportunity see over a hundred new works in the realms of documentaries, narrative features, shorts, and animation made across multiple continents from myriad points of the human experience. Some participants stop in Indy on their grand tour of Hollywood’s festival circuit; some are local productions on shoestring budgets; and a wide spectrum of claims are staked in the innumerable niches between, projects with well-known actors screening alongside indies with enormous hearts.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry…

Full disclosure: Superboys of Malegaon was a last-minute addition to my festival itinerary, made possibly by one of my patented “six degrees” rabbit-hole investigations of the seeming interconnectedness of all cinema. Follow:

After loving Andrew Garfield’s back-to-back performances in The Social Network and the first Amazing Spider-Man (disregarding this judge’s low score for the second), I followed him to his next project, 99 Homes, which was the first film I ever saw by director Ramin Bahrani, whose most recent feature film was Netflix’s The White Tiger, which shined thanks in large part to its young leading man, one Adarsh Gourav. Fast-forward to this past September, when I spent a good hour or more reviewing the descriptions and cast/crew listings for every single Narrative Feature on Heartland’s site to check for familiar connections. Eventually I got to Superboys, which also stars Gourav.

Between his name and its capsule summary’s strong resemblance to the warm-hearted Be Kind Rewind…well, here we are. It’s funny how many roads lead to and from superheroes. Little did I know the Rewind similarities would end after a time, while the final twenty minutes would reveal strong ties to another, much larger pop-cultural touchstone — one of the all-time greatest, at least according to my generation of geeks.

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My 2023 Reading Stacks #4: The Ludicrously Delayed Triple-Sized Wrap-Up

Bunch of books piled on our dining table, mostly graphic novels.

I usually prefer showing off all the covers, but we are waaaaay past the deadline that nobody gave me.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife Anne or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-five years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

Yeah, this is beyond late and into the realm of “why bother now?” It isn’t even the only “year in review” post still on my to-do list. The stacks have cluttered the area around our computer desk this entire time and really need to be moved so I don’t start mixing them up with the books I’ve read so far in 2024, but in my mind they can’t be moved till their capsules are finished. I hate to post an abbreviated entry simply to get something “over with”, but the time has come, gone, lapped around and come again. In the spirit of spring cleaning before summer begins this very week, here’s everything else I read last year but with (mostly) shorter capsules than usual. Longer capsules could be provided upon request, I guess?

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My Free Comic Book Day 2024 Results, Ranked

Two black-and white panels: angry hunter points his shotgun in the face of a small-town sheriff. Sound effects are in Japanese.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. Art by Masaaki Ninomiya.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Saturday was Free Comic Book Day! Per annual tradition, publishers and retailers nationwide collaborated to offer some four dozen comics gratis to any and all comers. Some comics generously featured brand new stories. Some contained excerpts from upcoming or previous works. A few were, at best, ad pamphlets. I visited four central Indiana shops, came away with 23 freebies in all, and bought additional cool things from each place.

Per my own annual tradition, my reading results came out as follows, ranked subjectively and upwardly from “Not My Thing” to “Buy More on Sight”:

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Happy Free Comic Book Day and May the Fourth 2024!

11 different free comic books, including two Star Wars titles.

The second half of my haul, alphabetized — i.e., the half with the Star Wars comics in it. Happy May the Fourth for those who observe!

It’s that time of year again! Today marked the 23rd Free Comic Book Day, that annual celebration when comic shops nationwide offer no-strings-attached goodies as a form of community outreach in honor of that time-honored medium where words and pictures dance in unison on the printed page, whether in the form of super-heroes, monsters, cartoon all-stars, licensed merchandise, or entertaining ordinary folk. It’s one of the best holidays ever for hobbyists like me who’ve been comics readers since the days when drugstores sold them for thirty-five cents each and superhero movies were a rarity and an embarrassment to the genre.

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C2E2 2024 Photos, Part 4 of 5: Artists Alley!

A dozen new comics and graphic novels, one bagged Star Trek back issue, and a tin sign with Fallout's Vault Boy handing you some Nuka-Cola.

My Artists Alley loot pile, plus a few freebies, a Fallout tin sign, and a back issue Anne really, really, really wanted.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

My wife Anne and I just got home from the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, Funko Pops, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We were undecided for months because this year it was scheduled the same weekend as one of our hometown shows, Indy Pop Con. Ultimately Chicago lured us back…

…not just with actors, but with their promise of comics! Lots and lots of funnybooks and graphic storytelling narratives for all ages, temperaments, and cliques. C2E2 consistently has the best Artists Alley of all the cons we attend regularly. Though the pandemic reduced their ranks a tad even for a while after the vaccines came around, this year’s lineup felt like its strongest in years. The Windy City once again welcomed hundreds of creators to the festivities — a mix of returnees and new faces, pros and wannabes, purveyors of handicrafts and sellers of reading matter. Longtime MCC readers know the latter is always my primary objective. It’d been a while since my last major book-spree. I’d missed the splurging.

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My 2023 Reading Stacks #3

Covers of the first two books reviewed below.

Two books about movies, some of which are based on books. One book technically works as a sequel to the other.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife Anne or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-five years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

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My 2023 Reading Stacks #2

Hardcover memoirs by Patrick Stewart and Brian Cox. See reviews below.

From the Department of Candid UK Actor Memoirs That Have Been Mined for Clickbait Fodder by Entertainment News Sites.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife Anne or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-five years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Blue Beetle” End Credits

A wide-eyed, astonished Blue Beetle stands still while the alien energy shield around him shears a bus in half.

If too few people see this action-packed gem in theaters, we fans will never stop calling it “criminally underrated” until the day you die.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I’ve name-checked Blue Beetle ten times in past entries over eleven years. Four of those instances referred directly to Jaime Reyes, who inherited the mantle in 2006 from his Charlton Comics predecessors that DC bought in the early ’80s. Of those four, only once have I gratuitously yet heartily recommended Jaime’s original series, which began in the hands of co-creators Keith Giffen (R.I.P.), Leverage co-creator John Rogers, and artist Cully Hamner, and was carried expertly to the finish line by Rogers and Brazilian artist Rafael Albuquerque. I stopped reading subsequent Beetle books from other teams due to letdown. (If there’s been a grade-A Jaime story printed since 2012, I’m open to recommendations.)

Despite DC Comics’ big-screen misfires, their few rousing successes in recent times gave me the hope I needed to raise my expectations for the Blue Beetle film. I was thrilled by the film, and thrilled to be thrilled. Director Ángel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings) and screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer (Miss Bala) don’t try to reinvent the wheel, but their combined talents go a long way toward differentiating Jaime from the hundreds of other superheroes who reached the American mainstream first.

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