Another pretty sparse month. Maybe next year I can get back
to a more productive reading schedule.

As usual, any links are Amazon affiliate ones which could in theory
earn me something.

==

Wonder Woman 4: Diana Prince Paperback
(Styled "Diana Prince Wonder Woman" on the cover)
by Various
https://amzn.to/4glcFbu

Despite being iconic, Wonder Woman has always had trouble carrying
a solo comic book title, leading to many relaunches and reboots of
the character over the decades. This omnibus collects five comic
stories from the 70s, during a period when (apparently -- this all
takes place before the volume opens) the Amazons have left Earth,
and in electing to stay in Man's World, Diana's powers have been
stripped.

Whatever the in-story rationale, the marketing impetus for the
change was to move Diana in an Emma Peel/Modesty Blaise action-adventure direction and add some Denny O'Neil 70s' social relevance ("Women's
Rights!" "Labor Fairness!") to the title.

How does it work? Well as presented here, not all that well. To
be fair, these are non-contiguous issues, and in fact include an
issue of "The Brave and The Bold", DC's Batman team-up book, but
the stories are not that compelling. The first arc sees Diana
teaming up with would-be tough-guy private-eye Jonny Double to
protect a Hugh Hefner type chauvinistic mogul from (seemingly) a
conservative religious cult. Apparently the order came down from
editorial during the run that that was not the way DC wanted to go,
and the cult became suddenly (and not very convincingly) a front
for one of Diana's (not particularly compelling) enemies. I believe
there was also an intent to make Double Diana's Willie Garvin, but
it didn't take and neither did the tease at love interest (Steve
Trevor is not mentioned in these stories). Diana's elderly, blind,
Chinese mentor I-Ching (inspired by Master Po?) is a more solid
presence though his aphorisms can grate after a while. The arc
also quickly disposes of Diana's trendy boutique and money problems,
which I suspect readers found almost totally non-engaging.

The next arc is the most interesting (though oddly pedestrian given
the elements) as it introduces Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser to the DC
universe, and who better to do that than Frit... Samuel R. Delaney?
This two issue arc teams Diana with I-Ching, Catwoman, & the Nehwon
duo in a tale of cursed gemstones (neither Helical nor Timelike
however), thievery and dimensional portals. In the end, I think
any random new characters on the other side of the portal could
have worked, maybe Leiber needed the money..

The forgettable Batman crossover involves Bruce & Diana in an ongoing
civil war in a fictitious South American country as imported into
Gotham by the expat communities with the denouement being surprisingly supportive of implicit violence.

After that, we get the bit of relevance, women's rights & labor
issues I mentioned up front, and it's every bit as compelling as
you might think.

Finally, the last issue establishes that Editorial finds the whole
thing a bit of a dog's breakfast and returns both the Amazons to
Earth and her powers & classic raiment to Diana, though there are
apparently some new ongoing mysteries about the sequence of events
which are not unraveled here.

In toto: hardly Diana's best period, but weren't the 70s like that
for all of us?


Accipiter War: Fort Brazos: Book One
by Patrick Seaman & Blake Seaman
https://amzn.to/3OJ2cuF

Stealing Fire: Accipiter War # 2
by Patrick Seaman & Blake Seaman
https://amzn.to/3OD9S1z

One morning in the (apparently fictional) town of Fort Brazos TX,
everyone wakes up with the world's worst hangover, except for the
5% of the population which wakes up dead. To make matters worse,
when the 95% stagger outside and look up they see not the familiar
plains of Texas, but a huge illumination tube in the sky, and oceans
& continents on the *other* *side* of the world. Apparently they
are in some sort of huge cylindrical habitat with their town (and
the namesake Fort outside the city limits) copy-pasted into an alien
landscape.

As things gradually clarify it turns out that Earth has been destroyed
and these thousands of Texans (and others...) have been taken by a
group they come to call the Gardeners to become troops in a war
against the Accipiters, whom the Gardeners' managed revelations claim
were the force destroying Earth. Why don't the Gardeners do it
themselves? Who knows? What if we don't want to do it? Remember
that 5%? That was the Gardeners making a point. Is any of this
actually true? Who knows?

In the beginning, I thought this was going to be a 1634 type story
about a transplanted community making its way in an alien world,
but it quickly became apparent that the more correct template for
the series is the Battlestar Galactica reboot, from which you can
see the authors borrowing a number of character templates including
Dr. Baltar (gradually subverted), Starbuck and Ellen Tigh while a
(actually not so) random group of survivors attempt to build a new
society and somehow make enough progress on the goal set for them
to avoid being discarded.

There are a number of viewpoint characters, but the main two are
arguably county Sheriff John Austin & Air Force Major Gail Finley
who become in turn the President & Vice President of the new polity
and who are gradually, and against all better judgment, clearly
falling in love despite anything they might tell themselves. How
can they and the group of humans they lead actually do anything
about the Accipiters? Well, obviously the authors will have to
keep hat rabbiting with some regularity.

Does it work? Basically yes. The writing is a bit awkward,
especially in the opening chapters and I wondered at first if I
would drop the book, but the story gradually pulled me in, and
either the writing got better, or I was involved enough to stop
caring about it.

Book One basically establishes the situation and characters.

Book Two actually introduces the means (to some extent) to get on
with things but does suffer from some Dumarest level recapitulation
in the opening chapters.

There are at least two more books in the series, and I do expect
to pick them up.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

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