Robots...

Book: The Destroyer #47: Dying Space

Author: Warren Murphy

Published: 1982 (Pinnacle Books)

Pages: 196

Can fun writing be automatically thought of as good because it makes the reading experience a pleasure, even if that pleasure is laughing hard at seriously-meant dialogue and plot twists?

I think there’s inherent value in something like that, mostly because this book kept me very amused for a couple hours. It’s pure paperback pulp about a missile-controlling robot that is accidentally brought to life by two garbage men. The robot skins (!) one of the garbage men and takes his form to stay unnoticed while he goes to destroy Remo, a wiseass assassin who…you know, I don’t know what Remo did to the robot to piss him off so much. It was covered in previous books.

Anyway, they all end up in Moscow so the robot can stop the Russians from firing a nuclear missile—at the moon. The moon. Not at anything more alarming. Which, to whatever astrophysicists are reading this to keep their minds off NASA, I know blowing up the moon would screw us over down here. But in an indirect way that I’m sure y’all could figure out how we could live with. In this book, Russia is just so jealous of the US’s moon-conquering abilities that it wants to destroy the moon so we won’t have anywhere else to expand our empire. It apparently never crosses their minds to blow up our direct, terrestrial, and no doubt much easier because much closer nerve systems of big cities on either of our coasts.

So that was dumb and took all the tension out of the final couple chapters, which were action-packed and included a drunk randy scientist trying to make up for her unappreciated habits by helping the robot she built and a Russian commander who likes the “kinky boom-boom” Remo apparently stumbled into when he was trying to escape her room.

Two women in power; both of their sexualities are used as jokes meant to break tension. At least they’re both brilliant (when a man isn’t around to make them feel good). Hmpht.

They don’t get to live happily ever after, either, but everybody else does except in the epilogue the robot comes back to life and resolves anew to kill Remo. Of course he does.    

Nobody expects the...you know...

Book: The Witch of Cologne

Author: Tobsha Learner

Pages: 462

Published: 2003 (HarperCollins)

Everybody in this book lives in terrible fear of the Spanish inquisition, especially the protagonist who is a Jewish midwife who dabbles in kabala just to make sure but only really believes in actual science that she had the balls to learn because she pretended to be a boy to get educated and then she turned out so awesome at it that nobody cares except the meany priests bent on revenge and power.

This is a very serious book that takes itself, True Love, and fighting for freedom very, very seriously. Its whole tone is covered in that layer of misty gravity historical novels seem to think they need to convey that this is some important shit going down. Look, lady, I can tell, not the least reason because you insist on telling me everything and showing me nothing (except sex scenes, which, I mean, good job on that part). You get inside everybody’s head, which would be awesome except that they’re all cardboard. It especially bugs me that Mary Sue and Mr. Too (not their real names), the protagonists, are portrayed as the only two enlightened enough to even consider that everyone is equal. All the other characters are like, “Scandal!” or at the least, with fond chuckles, “You crazy kids.”

I guess it is hard to portray how new the idea of equality was back then without American readers of today finding the arguments cartoonish and obvious. But I bet it’s not impossible. 

And I know it’s possible to portray all the devastation of a doomed romance without overwriting about souls and destiny and how unicorns fart rainbows when these two fornicate but only in secret because Society doesn’t want them to be together.   

Here’s a list of things I said out loud as I was plowing through this, in rough chronological order.

• How’d she get such a good manicure in the German Jewish ghetto of the 1600s?
• It’s a crime for a book with this cover to be SO BORING. (The plot gets better, though.)

• “Speak plainly, Wilhelm, my gout has shortened my temper.” Ha. This. Do more of this.
• Does one pronounce the city Cologne like the stuff men use to smell pretty cologne? Is that where that came from? Where’s the Wikipedias I left lying around here?
• There was seriously someone called the Witchfinder General?
• Besser tsu shtarben shtai’endik aider tsu leben oif di k’nien; better to die upright than to live on your knees. That is this book’s motto, right there.
• I HATE WHEN AUTHORS GO, “blah blah was blah blah as if it were blah blah, as indeed it was.” IF IT WAS LIKE THAT JUST SAY SO. DON’T DOUBLE BACK ON YOUR METAPHORS. THEY WILL BITE YOU IN THE ASS FOR THAT.
• Her “nether hole.” Um. Is that…the, ah, female opening designed for sex, or does that mean—okay, I can’t tell from this scene and am just going to move on. She had a good time, anyway.
• Of course she’s pregnant. (Not related to above scene. Different lady.)
• And—wait, he actually DIES on the rack? Huh. That works for the narrative. Yay, no last-minute saving bullshit.

Terrible things. Happen to saintly people. Another one. Okay, it’s symbolic corn-punching time. *rolls up sleeves* 

When bear and chicken part ways

Book: Fuzz and Pluck: Splitsville

Author: Ted Stearn

Published: 2008 (Fantagraphic Books)

Pages: They weren’t numbered and I didn’t count them. A lot. Ish.

I was going to draw a review of this book, then spent the last three days realizing that no, I still can’t draw in any recognizable form. So!

This is a comic about Pluck, a chicken with no feathers, and Fuzz, a stuffed bear, as watched by their guardian angel doppelgangers, as they start off working at Mr. Lardy’s fast food restaurant. They get separated when Fuzz goes to run an errand for Mr. Lardass and gets chased away by a dog and then rescued by an old dude who’s obsessive about making his ferry run right between two (perfectly good but don’t tell him that) bridges, and Pluck gets fired when he beats up an insulting customer and ends up joining a gladiator team that battles for their own jobs on a floating stadium. Pluck is a runaway success and ends up getting chucked overboard by a jealous teammate (a boxing rabbit) and rival team manager (a sentient lemon half) into the very river in which Fuzz floats in the ferry after accidentally killing its owner.

…Actually, I think my drawings made just as much sense as this.

• Engaging story that didn’t make sense but didn’t act like it had to.
• Cool pen and ink drawings, especially of Sourpuss (the lemon).
• Not really funny; not sure if it was supposed to be or not. Not sure how or if this was broken down in another medium (ie, strips or pages posted on a website); seemed designed for a straight through read.

And ye gads and little fishies, another yellow book cover. This is seriously and for real the second-to-last library book I will ever read until I get done with my other books. I SWEAR. *puts hand on copy of White Teeth*