My life in books

I should have realised that having the Dora Milaje work with Spiderman was an obvious choice - “you are the one Anansi blessed.” Anyway, Nnedi Okorafor, reaslised it, which is how we got the three-volume run of Wakanda Forever, featuring Good ole Spidey, The Avengers and the X-Men with our glorious heroes, the Dora Milaje of the secret country of Wakanda.

Nakia, a Dora Milaje who has lost her loyalty, is living in the US as the villain Malice, but now she has stumbled onto something important - a talking drum stolen from Wakanda - and she is capable of dong real harm with it, so the other Dora Milaje have sent a team out to retrieve them both - from Spidey’s home territiory. No way he’s not getting involved. To say nothing of Ororme, Storm Goddess, and a few more of the Avengers.

It’s an exciting, self-contained story that makes good use of the Dora Milaje mystery, and the powers of Spidey, Ororme, Captain America, Rogue and a few other familiar faces, including that of the Black Panther himself.

Haven is the third volume of collected issues of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s brilliant, beautiful, and disturbing graphic narrative, Monstress. Maika Halfwolf and her companions, Kippa the Arcanic fox-child and Ren the cat, are for the moment safe in Pontus, an independent city-state where refugees from all over the Known World have gathered. Pontus is protected by a magical shield, an artifact created by Maika’s ancestor, the Shaman Empress. But the shield was deactivated after the war, and it needs one strong in the Shaman Empress’ blood to reactivate it. The rulers of Pontus offer Maika a deal - permanent sanctuary if she will activate the shield for them. Maika continues to struggle against the blood and power cravings of the creature, Zinn, the Monstrum summoned - and beloved and loving in return - by her ancestor, that dwells within her.

As usual, Takeda’s art is breath-takingly beautiful, intricate, and evocative. Liu’s story continues to give us more clues into Maika’s past, the line of the Shaman Empress, and the mysterious mask, a fragment of which is in Maika’s keeping.. We also discover more about the Cumeae, and how deeply they are controlled by the Monstrum, siblings of Zinn, and their desire to bring about another war.

The complexity of the story and the worldbuilding behind it continues to wrap me up and carry me away to a fully realised other world with each installment I read. Also profoundly important to this story is the deep intention of the authors to make this a story that recognises the ones who are too often forgotten - the refugees, the damaged, the wounded, the victims of all the political games and the conflicts between the powerful who seek only more power, while the people who suffer in their battles want only to live in peace and happiness. And then, there’s the unavoidable fact that every person of importance in this story is a woman. Where so many other texts make women invisible, or limit the women who matter to the story to a rare handful, Liu and Takeda make virtually every plot point in this story turn on the actions of a woman. This in itself would make Monstress a very special text, but when there is so much more on top of this... I admit I’ve not exactly been an rabid consumer of graphic narratives, but this is easily one of the best I have seen.

The first volume of the comics featuring Black Bolt, Black Bolt Volume 1: Hard Time, written by Saladin Ahmed and illustrated by Christian Ward, is up for a Hugo award, so naturally I read it. And, although the quality of both the writing and the illustrations are solid, I bounced right off it.

Perhaps it’s just that, way back when I was a comics reader, in my youth, I was always more into the DC comics than I was their rival, Marvel. And there are some stylistic differences, though I’m not sure I can pinpoint them. But I just found no point of connection with Black Bolt, and that made reading the comic a rather intellectual exercise, rather than one of identification and enjoyment.

I did not find the story particularly compelling, which is odd, because usually, one way to get me emotionally invested in a character is yo have them treated unjustly, which one assumes is the background to the opening set-up. Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans (whom I gather are some sort of mutant or possibly a human/alien hybid), wakes up in a prison, with his power, which is to destroy with the sound of his voice, gone. He escapes, his initial confinement, only to find himself in a large prison with other not particularly human inhabitants, who want to fight him. So he fights some people, and then he allies with them, and they go on to fight more creatures, go after the jailer, and despite some success, end up imprisoned again. Then they escape again, and go after their jailer again. In between, there’s a lot of dying and being reborn, and some dark brooding on his former life, which apparently involved getting imprisoned on a variety of other occasions. If anything, I found myself more engaged with one of his enemy-turned-allies, Crusher Creel, also known as the Absorbing Man, because we get a coherent backstory on him, and it is the sort of ‘young boy with horrible family life gets no breaks’ story that does create some empathy.

It looks as though it’s going to be a redemption story. It’s pretty clear that Black Bolt, intentionally or not, has done a lot of unpleasant things, and has a lot to seek redemption for, and the whole prison experience of this first volume has been about underlining that for him, but... in the end, I just don’t care quite enough to find out more. Others who are more into this line of the Marvel universe may differ.

I read Bitch Planet Volume 1: Extraordinary Machine (which collects issues 1 - 5 of the original graphic series), created by writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Valentine De Landro, because Bitch Planet Volume 2 was nominated for a Hugo, and I figured I needed to start from the beginning to get the full impact. Reading Bitch Planet was a very odd experience. As a graphic narrative, it’s really, really good, and it’s also intensely painful. It’s a very dystopic graphic narrative, one that is extremely well-written and drawn, with excellent characters and a very powerful story. It’s also a story that I didn’t really want to engage with, largely because I’ve read too many novels in which the society is blatantly patriarchal and authoritarian (in Bitch Planet, the leaders are called Fathers) and women are reduced to the role of things, commodities, objects to be used for the pleasure, satisfaction or comfort of men, and those who don’t comply, or aren’t pleasing, satisfying, comforting enough, are punished, discarded, or erased.

And that’s the state of things in the universe of Bitch Planet. Women who don’t please men, who are non-compliant, inconvenient, or in some way unsuitable, are seized and sent to a prison planet known officially as the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost - also known as Bitch Planet, because all women who don’t serve men are bitches, right?

There are of course two ways to present this scenario. There are people, mostly men, who would consider this a utopia, a paradise. It’s very clear that the creators of this comic are presenting this as a nightmare, but one with roots in reality - rather like Atwood’s intentions in The Handmaid’s Tale, a classic dystopic nightmare of this particular genre. The creators are also trying to do some educating along with the storytelling, for each issue of the comic contains real world, here-and-now essays about sexism and feminism (unfortunately, these essays are not included in the trade volumes, which is a pity). There’s also some very powerful reflections on the whole American carceral state here that the reader can easily unpack, plus the parodies of the old-style ads younused to find in comic books and pulp magazines are perfect, and perfectly deconstruct the ways that consumerism enforces compliance. It’s an admirable project, just... not one I really wanted to see yet again, when the real thing is happening in the daily newspapers.

So. The narrative is centred on the Bitch Planet prison system, and in particular on Kamau Kogu, a black professional athlete with a strong will and a distinctly revolutionary attitude. She’s being framed for the murder of another inmate in order to pressure her into participating in a brutal sports event known as Megatron that is compulsory viewing for all citizens (bread and circuses, anyone?) - and a money-making scheme to help fund the prison system. Another key character is Penny Rolle, a black woman of considerable size sent to Bitch Planet for, among other things, “... repeated citations for aesthetic offenses, capillary disfigurement and wanton obesity.”

Meiko, another inmate, convinces Kamua to go along with the prison administration and put together a team - with her advice - in order to gain access to a gathering of the fathers in a location that she has intimate knowledge of, because she designed it. Kamua agrees, but as we learn later, she does so in part because she hopes that the process of assembling this team will help her locate her sister, also incarcerated on Bitch Planet.

Meanwhile, in scenes set on earth, we gain a glimpse into the way this society works and the position of the sport Megatron in the culture. We also see, in the background of panels depicting news shows, hints of some kind of women’s movement gathering around the slogan “Eleanor Lives.”

This is not an easy story to read. In today’s world, where perceived non-compliance can get you killed in the blink of an eye if you are racially marginalised person, where refugees, men and women, are imprisoned and separated from their children fir the ‘crime’ of running from a home that’s become a deathtrap - largely because of imperialistic interference and exploitation by ‘developed’ countries - and where the rights if marginalised peoples are being eroded daily, this hits far too close to home.

Black Panther: Avengers of the New World, Book One is the beginning of a new narrative arc in the Black Panther comic written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The rebellion is ended in Wakanda. A new constitution, a new, more representational form of government is being forged. But T’Challa and his people face a new crisis - the disappearance of the Orishas, the gods of Wakanda, who have until the recent rebellion been an active force in Wakandan life. But now prayers and entreaties go unheard, and not even the Black Panther can commune with his patron orisha, Bast, as he has in the past.

But there are other threats. Strange, violent reptilian beings have begun appearing, entering Wakanda through portals that Wakandan science cannot control, and Wakanda’s shamans cannot close without facing their own deaths. All that is known is that these Simbi are ancient enemies from Wakanda’s far-distant past. And the Simbi are not alone. Other creatures appear, giant ape-like creatures called Vanyan, the spider-men known as the Anansi, and other dooms from the past.

Guided by the spirits of former Black Panthers, T’Challa seeks out a potential ally, the ancient sorcerer Zawavari, who appears to know something about what is going on. He manages to close a gate, killing a troop of invading Vanyan, but falls into a coma - first uttering the chilling words that the gods are dead, and predicting that the Originators will return. With Zawavari unable - temporarily, they hope - to help, Shuri persuades T’Challa to seek the help of his former wife Oromo, the warrior goddess known as Storm.

As the crisis worsens, news is brought to T’Challa of a new religious cult - in the name of the “twice-risen” god Sefako - sweeping the land, filling in the gap left by the disappearance of the orishas.

And there are other enemies circling Wakanda as well - Zeke Stane, Doctor Faustus, Fenris, and the rebel Zenzi are planning to take advantage of Wakanada’s unrest. The first dign of their involvement comes when T’Challa learns that Fenris has kidnapped T’Challa’s old friend Asira and given her to Wakanda’s enemies, the Azanians. Aneka and Ayo of the Dora Milaje are sent to rescue her, but are taken prisoner by Doctor Faustus and Klaw.

It’s an action-filled, tense beginning to the next Black Panther adventure. I find the missing orisha plotline more engaging at the moment, but that’s probably because I lack context for all these villains and their history with the Black Panther. I’m certainly enjoying the fact that in Black Panther, we have a hero surrounded by women without whom he would be quite lost. And I find the idea of Wakanda, an uncolonised African nation, ever resisting, very powerful.

The second volume of Majorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s graphic narrative, Monstress: The Blood, continues with the orphaned refugee Maika Halfwolf’s search to uncover the secrets of her long-dead mother. Maika, with her Arcanic companions, the foxchild Kippa and the feline nekomancer, Master Ren, have persuaded an old comrades of her mother’s to take her on a voyage that follows her mother’s journey to a dangerous and mysterious island known as the Isle of Bones. Meanwhile, the various great powers are searching for her, because they suspect she has the weapon her mother used to end the last great war between them - though they have no idea of what that weapon might be. And others are trying to stop her from reaching her intended destination.

The story remains complex and interesting, with Maika as a most unusual protagonist. Her position as a survivor of multiple abuses, including being made the host of a vast and violent intelligence that drives her to seek blood, makes her a walking contradiction, victim and predator. The multiple quests - her seeking to understand her mother’s actions and the thing inside her, while the great powers of her world seek her, fir the thing she carries, offer further conflicts.

The artwork continues to be breathtaking in its complexity, beauty and impact. When I read the first volume, I had not done a lot of reading of graphic novels. I’m still not a big fan of them, but some, like this one, have definitely captured my imagination. This is compelling storytelling, in a visually stunning form.

I have a confession to make. As much as I adore Octavia Butler’s work, I have never read Kindred. I don’t think I could. It’s a thing I have, that goes along with being deeply emotionally drawn into the lives of the protagonists of the books I read, and the films I watch. I have a hard time handling any kind of slave narrative, or any narrative where people are unjustly accused an punished, especially if it is a true story, or a historically accurate fiction. (I had a hard time with parts of Les Miserables, too, but the fact that I read it in my struggling French as part of a course enabled me yo distance myself enough.)

But I’ve always wanted to read it, and so when Damien Duffy and John Jennings released their graphic novel adaptation of Kindred, I decided this was one way to come as close as I could without freaking out too much while reading it. I find the visual format just distancing enough.

I’m still overwhelmed by the narrative. Not just the realities of live in a society based on slavery, but the way that the characters from the modern era, Dana and Kevin, have to struggle against the mindset of what being a member of the slave class, and the owner class, can do. And the exploration of how relationships are twisted and distorted by the fact of slavery - not just those that cross racial lines, but those between black slaves, and white slave owners. The sexual exploitation. The destruction of families, the denial of kinships, white slave owners selling their own black lovers, siblings and children. The forced and stolen labour. The dehumanisation. The brutal punishments. All the things that one knows about, but can hardly bear to think about.

I’m still overwhelmed by the impossible situation that Dana is placed in. To have to facilitate rape in order to ensure one’s own existence, to act as the guardian angel toward a man who consistently commits or orders acts of violence against the humans he holds a power if life and death over, because he must survive to father the child you are descended from. But Butler has that habit, of putting her characters into situations that you don’t think they can bear, ad yet they do.

I’ve read enough about Kindred over the years to know that Duffy has done a fine job of incorporating the story and the themes that Butler addressed in her novel. And I’m grateful for the style the illustrator has chosen - just realistic enough, but not too realistic, another slight act of distancing that makes the subject matter easier to bear.

I will be seeing some parts of this in my mind fir some time to come, I think. And it’s good that I have finally had some experience of the novel, albeit at this distance. Maybe someday I will be able to read the novel for myself.

I finally got around to reading the second volume of Tom King’s graphic novel The Vision, subtitled Little Better than a Beast, which continues the story of Avenger Vision, a synthetic being, and his equally synthetic family, trying to live as human beings.

It’s a tragedy. Partly because they are trying to be what they cannot be, partly because society cannot let them be what they are, partly because of the problem at the core of the superhero story, the one about having so much power snd attracting evil and dealing with that in the middle of a world full of ordinary people. Some superheroes deal with it by having secret identities - that’s the DC universe way, for the most part, and it kind of works most of the time.

But Marvel heroes don’t always do that, and Vision is so very different that he couldn’t do it anyway. So this story about a superhero trying to have a normal family life becomes a meditation on fame, power and difference. It’s also a frightening look at how a chain of poor decisions can lead to horrifying results. Lies, denials, betrayals, spreading out like ripples, reinforcing each other and evoking terrible consequences.

One of the characters becomes obsessed with quoting Shakespeare, and there is something very Shakespearean about this story. Figures larger than life, fatal flaws, and cathartic consequences. Hidden guilt coming to the surface. And destruction. And renewal, and the seeds of more to come.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' re-imagining of the black comic hero the Black Panther, is thoughtful, exciting, deeply political.

Vol 1 of Black Panther, titled A Nation Under Our Feet, delivers us into a country in great turmoil. Previous writers - as I learn from various summaries on the Internet - have left the series a legacy of contradictions and tragedies. The country of Wakanda, a technologically advanced African society largely hidden from the rest of the world, ruled by a long line of absolute monarchs with mystical powers able to become the Black Panther. An orphaned king who left his people to be a superhero to the outside world, bringing the destructive wrath of evil supervillains down on the country he left in the hands of others.

Coates begins with a Wakanda in chaos. Unrest, rebellion, revolution threaten. The king, T'Challa, is here no wise and benevolent king, but a confused and conflicted man, not understanding why his people are at war with each other, and with him. The first novel casts T'Challa as, in fact, the 'bad guy' by default, because of his lack of comprehension, his lack of connection to his people. The various rebels seem on the side of good - especially the two renegade warriors Ayo and Aneka. Formerly members of the king's elite, all-female bodyguard (shades of the Dahomey warrior-wives of the king), they have become vigilantes fighting against a brutal leader in northern Wakanda whose regime is one of enslavement and rape of women. It is in this subplot that we most clearly see that T'Challa - and his advisors and military leaders and others of the royal faction - are completely out of touch with the situation of the people, and trapped in an out-moded mythos in which the king's word is unquestioned law, and tradition outweighs true justice. If T'Challa is to learn to become both leader and hero, he has a long way to go.

The artwork, by Brian Stelfreeze, is strong and powerful, with appropriate touches of a softer and more mystical style when the subject matter demands it.

I keep meaning to read more graphic novels, but somehow it's mostly during the Hugo season that I actually do, and that's because of the Best Graphic Story category. I've enjoyed several of the specific volumes I've read for the Hugos, but somehow I rarely follow up on the multi-part stories.

Monstress Volume 1: The Awakening, written by Marjorie Liu and illustrated by Sana Takeda, is another of those graphic novels that was enjoyable while reading - though also deeply disturbing - but I'm not at all certain I'll be continuing to read it (unless more volumes are nominated for Hugos in future years). Not because it isn't a good story, because it is. But after lots if attempts, I've come to understand that I shy away from reading graphic novels because it is physically difficult fir me, and few stories are compelling enough to override that.

Some of those who read these reviews know that I have severe multiple chemical sensitivities and am bedbound due to multiple disabilities. What this means is that I can't read anything printed on paper - it's too toxic for me, especially paper with lots of ink, like graphic novels. So everything I read must be electronic. But because I spend all my tine lying in bed, everything I read, I read on an iPad. Any other device is too heavy. And I have arthritis and poor eyesight. There's no reader out there that allows me to read graphic novels without a lot of pinching and swiping around each page to get all the important dialogue and visual detail. And by the time I've read a few pages, my fingers and my eyes hurt. So.... I tend to shy away from graphic novels. Nonetheless, I will do my best to read those nominated and not let my circumstances bias me against the medium. So.... On with my thoughts on Monstress.

Visually, Monstress is a stunning piece of work - intricately drawn, dense but never 'busy,' a feast for the eyes. Takeda blends artistic traditions to create marvellous images, though she is at her best with inanimate subjects - architectural designs and atmospheric backgrounds, clothing, machines, furniture, and so on. Her living characters seem curiously unfinished, rather like dolls.

The narrative is complex and disturbing, set in a post-war, almost post-apocalyptic world where two enemy civilisations, still opposed but not actively at war, appear to be recovering from a cataclysmic event. On one side, the human federation in which considerable power lies with the all-female sorcerer-scientist order of the Cumaea; on the other, the non-human Arcanes, rumoured to have access to powers or beings known as the monstrum.

The story focuses on Maika, an Arcanic, a former slave of the Federation, living with other escapees and dispossessed arcanics in a sort of demilitarised zone between the two nations. She possesses powers she cannot use at will or control, though they appear when she is in great distress. She is connected in some way to the catastrophic event that ended open warfare between humans and arcanics. And she is seeking the truth about her mother and herself, a truth that she believes can only be found among the Cumaea.

At the beginning of the story, Maika has allowed herself to be captured and enslaved by humans. She and several other Arcanics, all children, have been claimed by the Cumaea as slaves, but from almost the beginning it is clear that the Cumaea - like other humans - see the Arcanes as animals and so fit subjects both for torture by those who seek pleasure in the children's pain, and scientific experimentation by those who seek to know more about the Arcanes and their power.

The story is hard to read, even harder to look at. Takeda's brilliant artwork is often used to portray scenes of humiliation, torture, vivisection, and violence. In an afterword to the first issue, Liu talks about the genesis of the story in her grandparents' memories of war and xenophobic hatred and violence - based on timing, I'm guessing her grandparents would have been survivors of the invasion of China by Imperial Japan, or both. Malka is a refugee, an orphan, an escaped slave, an amputee, a victim of war and violence and racial hatred, and she carries within her the power to wreak vengeance, or to simply spread violence indiscriminately as survivors of trauma often do. She has the capacity to be a monster, and it stems from her suffering and pain. It's one hell of a story, relevant in all times of violence and war, about what these all too common pursuits of humanity can do to our souls.