Sorry so quiet this week. I'm back to attacking the next chapter of the novel, and when inspiration (or even motivation) strikes, that's got to take priority over blogging. In the meantime, here's something lovely to listen to.
Busy weekend here, so may be Monday or Tuesday before I can get a proper blog post up, but I'm still thinking about what I want to say about Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and then last night I watched Saw, so should get another torture porn post up soon.
A propos of nothing, here's a Neko Case song I have stuck in my head:
Have a great weekend, everyone!
The other reviews I've found of this original graphic novel range from lukewarm to negative, with muted praise for Genovese's art and a pretty uniform list of complaints as far as the story is concerned. I guess I could make all the same points in my own words, but why bother for something this lackluster?
The one issue on which I'd differ with most of these reviews is that they make Awakening out to be some kind of standard giallo. It's not. Some of the reviewers confess that they're not familiar with the genre, and seem to be taking Shaffer's word on that. Apparently, he said in an interview (which I can't find online) that Awakening is his homage to the giallo. I can sort of see that, I suppose, but he's really done it a disservice. Some gialli can be quite thin indeed in terms of story and character, but even so, what we have here is even thinner and less developed than most. Weighing in at a measly 104 pages, it's almost like a thumbnail sketch of a giallo. With about 20 more pages' worth of fleshing out, it might actually begin to resemble a lower-tier example of the genre; with a few more than that, it might even rise to the level of some solid middle entries. Then again, who knows how high Shaffer might have raised his game if he'd really gone for it, letting the story determine the page-count? This shows enough promise here and there that I'm confident he could have done a lot better with more room to work with.
That said, I don't find much else to quibble with in the other reviews, so here they are in no particular order:
A secret "underground" society has existed on the rooftops of London since the early 20th century, but that society is now at war with itself. A genuine supervillain with night-vision powers and Doctor Doom stylings has raised a small army of skinheads to crush any who would stand in the way of the violent New Age he intends to usher in, which will culminate in apocalyptic war with the street world below. Those who oppose him aren't fighters--they only ever wanted to live "above it all," peacefully apart--but they are much more experienced and knowledgeable about the roofworld. Robert and Rose are strangers when they happen to catch a rare glimpse of the roofworld, but pursuing and exploring it draws them together. Meanwhile, a detective tarnished by his failure to solve a lurid tabloid-headlining case sees the bodies falling out of the sky as his last chance to redeem his reputation and career.
Now, running and swinging over rooftops is a fantasy that really appeals to me, but I'm afraid Fowler bites off much more than anyone could chew by going all-in with a whole society that literally lives on rooftops 24/7, and never comes down to street level as a matter of principle. Even back at the time of writing, before google earth and the whole anti-terrorist surveillance explosion, just between all the various kinds of helicopters (police, media, hospital) flying overhead, people in tall buildings looking out of windows, normal people going up on roofs for any number of reasons, etc., there's simply absolutely, positively, categorically no way such a society could go any length of time before they were detected, reported, investigated, and brought down to earth. That's to say nothing of all the other practical difficulties involved in securing things like shelter and food. That's to say nothing of all the practical difficulties involved in maintaining a permanent infrastructure of connecting lines around the city for them to move building-to-building.
Then, the absolute refusal of the "good guys" to have anything to do with the street world under any circumstances often looked so stubborn and stupid that they completely lost my sympathy. In real life, I never admire martyrs to causes that don't make sense to me. Whenever I hear of someone dying because they steadfastly refused to compromise some absurd taboo, I smile and think, "Good! Hasta la vista, moran." I often felt the same way about the roofworlders. Just to give a few spoilerly examples . . .
Their network of lines between buildings is impressive, but it's still limited in such a way that the skinheads can make a systematic hunt for them along all its routes. When Robert suggests they get the hell off that grid until things cool down by taking the extraordinarily easy and sensible step of just strolling down a fire-escape or riding down an elevator, they reject the very idea out of hand. When more of them get killed as a result, I found myself shaking my head and thinking, "That's what you get for being so foolish and irrational." Then, a situation arises when twelve of them are about to be ritually murdered on a building that's been rendered inaccessible to their normal maneuverings, but that remains entirely accessible in all the ordinary ways from street level. This mass-sacrifice would be as easy for the police to stop as it would be all-but-impossible for the roofworlders to stop. They don't go to the police, and even hinder police involvement, when one stumbles upon the situation. No, they have to do it their way, the unnecessarily and gobsmackingly and hopelessly hard way. And I found myself shaking my head and thinking, "Good--go ahead and let your stupid friends die," and indeed some do get sacrificed as a result.
I have other problems with this book. Most of the main characters are unsympathetic for other reasons on top of those I mention above. Then, Fowler apparently loses track of who's been killed, and shows one character in action after a spectacularly gruesome death. But the reasons above are my real deal-killers. It's a shame--a book set on the rooftops of London?!?--that should be like porn for me. Very disappointing, and not recommended.
Still on summer vacation, but I can't resist mentioning two things. Firstly and foremostly I just read Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay and loved it. The film might be more widely known, but the novel is definitely also worth reading, at least if you're into Shirley Jackson and other more subtle horror writers.
Secondly I want to correct some false information I've given. When I told you that the infamous Lorenzo Lepori is no longer doing comics, I was simply wrong: apparently he's involved in a comic called Fisietto (here's an Italian Wikipedia link, too). Unfortunately for us, Fisietto doesn't seem to be the kind of evil smut we all know and love, but comedy. Too bad, but I wish him well anyway, he's my hero forever.
And that was that. The fumetti cover on the top is from De Sade n. 160, by the way, and believe me, that fumetti is a total piece of crap.
When Bantam finally exhausted the Doc Savage books for its decades-spanning series of reprints, the character still remained popular enough for the commissioning of new titles. The first of these was Philip José Farmer’s Escape from Loki (1991), an origin story far removed in tone and style from every preceding Doc novel. Seven more “New Adventures” would follow, all by Will Murray, a writer ideally suited for the task. To honor Lester Dent and the others who ghosted the Doc stories in the 1930s and ‘40s, Murray adopted the Street & Smith house name of “Kenneth Robeson” for publication. His books — based on/inspired by notes and outlines found among Dent’s papers after his death — carry on the Doc Savage tradition in grand style.
Packed with old school thrills and action, The Forgotten Realm is yet another (the umpteenth!) “lost city” yarn that nonetheless works like gangbusters. It puts Doc hot on the trail of “X Man” — an escaped lunatic from a remote Scottish sanitarium, an amnesiac originally found wandering the ruins of an old Roman fort, dressed in a toga and speaking Latin. Now that this mystery patient has vanished, the obsessed inventor/explorer “Waterloo” O’Neill will do anything, kill anyone, to find him. Joined by trusty aides Monk, Ham and Johnny, Doc battles O’Neill’s murderous crew on a deadly journey to the heart of darkest Africa. There, across a scalding lake in the fabled Mountains of the Moon, they discover Novum Eboracum: an outpost of Imperial Rome, unchanged for two thousand years. Archeologist Johnny is truly “superamalgamated” like never before!
The Man of Bronze is fluent in classical Latin, of course, and his dramatic address to the senate of Novum Eboracum greatly impresses the patricians. Doc’s seemingly miraculous treatment of the sick also wins him great popularity among the common people, who translate his name as Medicus Saevus. However, the city-state’s corrupt ruler, Imperator Kizan, is quick to recognize a threat to the status quo and arranges to have the newcomers condemned to death in the arena. Weaponless, the men are pitted against ravenous lions and a monster gorilla…
Murray knows the Doc Savage mythos backwards and forwards. He obviously loves these characters and their world of high adventure. A genuine enthusiasm for the subject — something not seen in ghostwriters merely doing a job for a check — is readily apparent. Murray’s Doc novels are longer than those of the original series but never feel padded, since he often uses the extra ink to flesh out the characters a bit further (while always staying within canon). He utterly nails Lester Dent’s pulp “voice” yet avoids the clunky, awkward turns of phrase into which Dent (a scribe perpetually facing deadline pressure) sometimes lapsed.
Anyone who enjoys the original Doc classics will thoroughly dig Murray’s turn at bat as Kenneth Robeson. I hope he’s someday able to continue the tradition. The legacy is in good hands.
Grade: B+
