Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road

Saturday, June 03, 2023

♪Like A True Nature's Child♪

Because there is nothing more precious than an all natural Bookstooge holding his all natural rockstar baby. Just as Nature Intended, awwwwwwww. (you can tell everything is all natural because of the trees in the background)

Friday, June 02, 2023

Earth and Sky (Bone #21) ★★✬☆☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Earth and Sky
Series: Bone #21
Author: Jeff Smith
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 24
Words: 1K

From Boneville.fandom.com

The Two Stupid Rat Creatures bicker over whether to bake Fone Bone, Thorn, and Gran’ma Ben in a quiche, or make stew from their bones. They are interrupted by Gran’ma Ben, attacking them with her sword. They retreat, and Gran’ma gives Thorn her sword, which agitates the rat creatures. Gran’ma suggests that Thorn may be close to The Turning. She interrogates one of the Two Stupid Rat Creatures, who confesses that they have been ordered to evacuate the valley, but is interrupted by Kingdok, who knocks out Thorn and Fone Bone, and attacks Gran’ma Ben. Fone Bone comes to, and calls for the Dragon’s help.

Smiley hears Fone Bone’s faint calling, but Phoney has another problem – the customers are nursing their beers. The pair suggest various possibilities, and Smiley mentions the Midsummer’s Day Picnic, which Lucius kept secret from Phoney. Smiley and Wendell both hear Fone Bone calling, and a search party goes out to find them in the woods. Wendell and Euclid find blood all over the ground and trees.

Kingdok continues to throw Gran’ma Ben through the woods, hitting her against a tree and discussing how much he hates the Flat-Landers. As he is about to kill her, Thorn ambushes Kingdok and slices off his arm with Gran’ma’s sword. He suffers an attack of the Gitchy Feeling, and hallucinates Gran’ma and thorn as queen and princess respectively. He cries out, and the Two Stupid Rat Creatures escort him off into the night. Fone Bone finds Gran’ma Ben and Thorn, and dress Gran’ma’s wounds as she warns Thorn that the Lord of the Locusts is seeking her.

Smith is an absolute MASTER at dragging things out, not telling the readers anything substantive and recycling whole pages of art.

With that being said, I am done with reading Bone issue by issue. I thought I could tough it out until issue #27, but this issue has shown me that I have reached my limit. Starting next month, I am going to be reading the omnibus versions which collect 7-10 issues in each one. I’ll be reading The Dragonslayer in July, which collects issues 20-27. I don’t mind re-reading 2 issues, as it won’t matter.

I am just stunned that Smith has defeated me this way. What boggles my mind even more is how he got through the whole series without the fans simply giving up on him. What kind of person does it take to hold on to a series like this and make it succeed? What kind of, waaaaaaaait for it, BONE HEAD puts up with deliberate shenanigans like this?

★★✬☆☆

All My “Bone” Reviews

Thursday, June 01, 2023

Let It All Bleed Out ★★★★☆

Title: Let It All Bleed Out
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 172
Words: 69K

From the Inside Cover:

Alfie Doesn’t Mind Being Called Square

Alfred Hitchcock is frankly shocked by the temptations that surround us today. X-rated movies. Sweaty centerfolds. Naughty novels. Kids who used to cut grass now smoking it. All of this fills Alfie with alarm.

Let’s return to old-fashioned fun, he pleads. A nice gory stabbing. A neatly drawn strangler’s noose. A proper pistol shot in the dark. A scream of horror that makes you walk away whistling.

For, as the master shows in this nerve-twisting new collection, fads come and go, but evil is here to stay. So let’s strip the mod clothes off the victims, and—

LET IT ALL BLEED OUT

Table of Contents:

COLD NIGHT ON LAKE LENORE

Jonathan Craig

THE ATTITUDE OF MURDER

Nedra Tyre

HAND

William Brittain

SHERIFF PEAVY’S DOUBLE DEAD CASE (A NOVELETTE)

Richard Hardwick

RICH—OR DEAD

David A. Heller

YELLOW SHOES

Hal Ellson

THE MAN WHO HATED TURKEY (A NOVELETTE)

Elijah Ellis

COFFEE BREAK

Arthur Porges

A PADLOCK FOR CHARLIE DRAPER

James Holding

MAC WITHOUT A KNIFE

Talmage Powell

THE CHINLESS WONDER

Stanley Abbott

NO TEARS FOR AN INFORMER

H. A. De Rosso

A RARE BIRD

John Lutz

THE COMIC OPERA

Henry Woodfin

As much as I really like the stories Hitchcock puts together, I am realizing that having a smaller amount actually works in its favor. Being left wanting more actually enhances the stories I’ve already read. Instead of being a book glutton and gorging myself and feeling sick, having just enough is the correct amount. Looking back over the various books, it seems like 300 pages is the upper limit. After that I start to feel too full and get cranky about stuff I wouldn’t normally.

Cold Night on Lake Lenore was a great opener. A man patiently waits for the perfect opportunity to kill his wife. It arrives but he is seen by another woman, who thinks he did it to be with her. He marries her and the last thought is of him thinking he just has to wait for the perfect opportunity again, and that he’s a patient man. It got me thinking about the kind of people who murder others. I’d like to think that the kind of person who could do something like this (murder someone and yet showing perfect restraint until the “perfect” moment) doesn’t exist, as the willingness to do the one would preclude the ability to do the other, but alas, all you have to do is read the news and you read about some guy who’s killed 3 wives and they only caught him because he got cocky about disposing of the remains of Number 4. Just goes to show humans aren’t just simple blobs of matter, even if that’s a negative example, sigh.

The Chinless Wonder was kind of on the other side. A loser of a man decides that he’s sick of being himself and gets a disguise and creates a new identity and hooks up with some chick. Everything is going extremely well until he gets mixed up with the mob. In the end, the girl and her boyfriend were playing him and set him up for the murder of his alter-ego and then to really nail him, the mob boss. Oh, it was priceless watching the pieces move into place. I wasn’t sure exactly where the story was going but after he helped sink a big sack in the river, I figured it out and like I said, just watched the pieces move into position. It was a thing of wonder.

This was just long enough to satisfy me and yet still leaving me wanting more. The perfect combination really.

★★★★☆

All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

May '23 Roundup & Ramblings

Raw Data:

Novels – 16 ↑

Short Stories – 1 ↑

Manga/Graphic Novels – 4 ⭤

Comics – 4 ↓

Average Rating – 3.44 ↑

Pages – 4781 ↑

Words – 1369K ↑

The Bad:

Lapvona – 1/2star of vileness

Speaker for the Dead – 2.5stars of cerebral navel gazing

Web of Spiderman Annual #1 – 2.5stars of 13 year old boy wish fulfillment

The Good:

The Black Cauldron – 5stars of middle grade goodness

The Queen of Swords – 5stars of old school fantasy kicking butt and taking names.

The Yellow Sign – 4.5stars of Fantastic Madness realized

Movie:

Shrek the Third was a silly continuation of the franchise, but one I still enjoyed quite a bit despite it admittedly going into stupid territory instead of clever territory.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Well, this was a tough month for me. I had an eye bleed (my second in 2 years) and had to get another shot in my left eye to deal with it. If that doesn’t clear it up, I could very well be looking at eye surgery. 3 decades of being a type one diabetic (insulin dependent) are starting to hit me. I honestly expected a heart attack before this. I’ve been mentally prepared since about 16 for the heart attack, so this eye thing has kind of blind sided me (ba dum tish!). In all seriousness though, it is a serious issue and one I’ll be having to deal with from now on. While not as scary as Mrs B being sick at the beginning of the year, this is scary enough and has left me very unsettled. It also pretty much overshadowed everything else for me.

On the fun side of things, Dawie and I were able to play some Warhammer 40K Magic the Gathering. Using whatsapp we took turns and had a couple of rousing games. The final one came down one life point separating the winner from the loser. That’s the kind of Commander game I like. I played the Necron deck while Dawie played Tyranids. Here’s a pix of the commander of the necrons:

Plans for Next Month:

I’ve got the final Shrek movie to watch and review. Then comes the very hard (for me) chore of figuring out what I’m going to watch and review next. For whatever reason, movies and tv shows are just wicked hard to review. Watching them seems like work sometimes and then adding talking about them? But I’ll soldier on. I’ve talked with people at various times about potential projects, but I never end up writing them down and so I forget.

So it will be review, review, review. I’ve got a few ideas for non-review posts but they’ll probably be spur of the moment silliness. My days of addressing current social issues with deep and thoughtful posts are done. Senator Bookstooge, that hoary headed font of wisdom, has retired from the political arena. I’ll leave it to the young bucks.

I’ve also been thinking how crowded my posting schedule has become. It is becoming more of hindrance than anything. To me and to the readers. I’ve come across blogs where so much posting goes on that it is hard to keep up. I don’t want to become that and I’m already well down that path. So something has to change in that regards. I’ve got a couple of ideas.

One is to simply cut down the number of book reviews I do. The problem is that I’ve tried that and while I always have the best of intentions, well, it never seems to work out the way I want. I just keep reading those books! Of the making of books there is no end and of the reading and reviewing of books there is no end either. Sigh.

The second option is to start another blog and post certain categories there and not here. Off the top of my head I’d probably put the magic cards, manga and comics over there. That would immediately free up 3 days a week here. So I might actually have some empty days, which would be nice. The main problem is that while the actual work load wouldn’t increase, the act of figuring out what goes where and dealing with all the setup of a new blog, could be daunting. Plus, since I’m such a stickler, I’d be figuring out all the silly stuff like tags and links. What about my Author Index? Suddenly I’d be having to link to two blogs to deal with that. I can just foresee there being problems, which is why I’ve always kept everything at one blog every time I did a blog.

If there is a third option, or if any of you have some ideas, I’m all ears. Input would be appreciated. This is something I’ll be giving some serious thought to over the coming month and will try to arrive at a decision for July.

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

A Pelican at Blandings (Blandings Castle #11) ★★★★☆

Title: A Pelican at Blandings
Series: Blandings Castle #11
Authors: PG Wodehouse
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Humor
Pages: 185
Words: 66K

From Wikipedia:

Lord Emsworth is in clover at Blandings, with the only guest, Howard Chesney, easily avoided by eating alone in the library. His peace is shattered by the arrival of his sister Connie, along with a friend she has met on the boat over from America, Vanessa Polk, and the news that Dunstable is soon to descend upon the castle adds to his misery. Desperate, he calls on his brother Gally for aid.

Gally is in London, meeting his godson Johnny Halliday, who announces his engagement to Dunstable’s niece Linda. He hurries to the castle, sharing a train carriage with Dunstable, who tells Gally how he has bought a painting of a reclining nude, having heard how anxious the wealthy Wilbur Trout is to buy it; Dunstable plans to bring Trout to Blandings to sell him the picture at a large profit.

At the castle, Connie urges Dunstable to cosy up with Vanessa Polk, her father’s wealth proving an easy lure, and Emsworth’s woes are compounded by his beloved Empress’ refusal to eat a potato. Gally hears from Linda that her engagement to Halliday is no more, and Halliday himself visits, to explain the incident, a grilling he was obliged to give Linda as a witness in a court case he was defending, which led to their split. He begs Gally to invite him to the castle, but Gally, explaining his position in Connie’s bad books, sends him home, promising to do his best on his behalf.

Wilbur Trout arrives, and we learn that Vanessa Polk was once engaged to him, and still harbours tender feelings. He tells her the tale of Dunstable’s treachery, and she hatches a plan to steal the painting. In London, Halliday hears from his partner Joe Bender that the painting sold to Dunstable was a fake, and he calls in Gally’s help. The capable old Pelican arranges to swap the real picture for the fake, but decides to take a bath before replacing the original in the empty frame.

Emsworth, visiting his pig after a worrying dream, falls into the muddy sty, then finds himself locked out, Gally having turned the key on his return from meeting Johnny. He enters the house via Dunstable’s rooms, waking up the Duke when surprised by a cat, and later returns to wake the Duke again when he sees the empty frame. When the rest of the household see the picture, now replaced by Gally, the Duke’s low opinion of Emsworth’s sanity persuades him to call in psychiatric help; Gally recommends Johnny, who he pretends is Sir Roderick Glossop’s junior partner.

Vanessa Polk, having spotted him for a crook, persuades Chesney to help her steal the painting, but he recognises Halliday, newly arrived at the castle, as the attorney who defended him after an earlier crime went wrong. He plans to leave to avoid being unmasked and return by night for the painting, but seeing Halliday at the top of the stairs, pushes him down. Halliday falls, taking Dunstable with him, and while he angers the Duke he endears himself to Linda, who finds herself kissing his face as he lies prone in the hallway. Linda, now firmly in favour of Halliday, reveals she cannot marry without Dunstable’s consent, which he refuses after the stairs incident, and also having recalled Halliday’s father, who he never got on with.

Connie calls Glossop’s office, finds Halliday is an imposter and ejects him from the castle. Trout and Vanessa meet up in the night to steal the painting, but Chesney fails to turn up, having crashed his car on the way. The two realise they love each other, and leave next morning to get married. Connie insists that Dunstable write to Vanessa proposing marriage; but the letter is intercepted by Gally, who shares with Dunstable his knowledge that Vanessa is not really an heiress, and makes the Duke allow the wedding of Linda and Johnny in exchange for the return of his letter, under threat of a breach of promise suit if it were to reach Vanessa. Connie is recalled to America by her husband, and the Duke returns home, leaving Emsworth once again master of his domain.

A nice light and amusing read that kept me happy for a couple of hours. That’s all I ask of these books and thankfully, they provide it in spades.

My only issue is that I know I only have one more Blandings Castle book to read. So that kind of cast a melancholic cloud over the time.

★★★★☆

Monday, May 29, 2023

The Yellow Sign (The King in Yellow Anthology #8) ★★★★✬

Title: The Yellow Sign
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #8
Editor: James Hodge
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 199
Words: 72K

From the Publisher & Bookstooge.blog

FBI Agent Erica Blaine has suffered more than most. After narrowly escaping being at the center of a cult sacrifice she’d been tasked with infiltrating, Erica has spent the last few months hitting the bottle, trying to avoid dealing with the trauma of what she experienced and those she couldn’t save. Her ruined hands, always gloved, are an unavoidable reminder of her pain and anguish.

As is the voice that won’t allow her a moment of peace.

But when her old Army buddy goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Erica is pulled back into the Lovecraftian world of cult infiltration. The Yellow College welcomes her with open arms, but as her sanity crumbles beneath the weight of hallucinations, old traumas, and lost memories, how can she expect to save her friend when she can barely tell what’s real and what isn’t?

Have you seen the shores of Carcosa?

The Yellow College believes that Erica is the chosen vessel for the King in Yellow to manifest himself in. This will usher in a new age as the King reigns openly. What they don’t know is that the King has his own plans, for them, for Erica and for the world.

In the end, the college sacrifices itself in a feeding frenzy of madness and despair and Erica becomes a synthesis of herself and the King in Yellow, a new being called Nihilo. Who will bring death, destruction and madness everywhere she walks.

This starts out slow. But being familiar with how the mythology of the King in Yellow always works itself out, I was expecting that. I could see how that would be off putting to those who are either familiar with King in Yellow mythology or have not read much beyond the original 4 stories by Chambers. I would NOT recommend this as a starting place for people to read more of the King in Yellow.

This was published in ‘22 and I think I’ve made the right choice at placing it as #8 in this “series” about the King in Yellow. It is also a full novel. Most of what has been written before has been short stories. Those are easier to pull off and can rely on The Idea. A novel takes a lot more work and has other limitations that a short story doesn’t. Like characterization and plot.

I felt like Hodge did an admirable job of writing up a full length novel around the concept of the King in Yellow. With an FBI agent as the main character investigating cult like behavior, I wasn’t sure if he was going to try for the “happy ending” or the real deal King in Yellow type ending. Thankfully, he chose to go with a real King in Yellow ending and that pushed this from a 3.5star rating up to it’s 4.5star rating. I was very pleased with just how gruesomely this ended, with the promise of continuing madness (not that there is more story to tell, but that the character of Nihilo will continue on the Earth).

There are two things that kept this from getting a 5star rating from me. First and foremost, was the just plain gratuitous use of the word “fuck”. I felt like it was thrown around like a teenage girl uses “like yeah, duh”. It didn’t really convey anything except Erica’s dissatisfaction with a situation and that was already shown in other ways, so it just felt gratuitous. If you took them out, nothing would have changed. The second, which is more of a niggle than anything, was that Hodge’s interpretation of the King is more Cthulhu’ic than pure King in Yellow. When Erica meets the King, he is described in terms that are more fitting to an eldritch tentacled horror than the King of Madness as Chamber’s described him. I like my King in Yellow to be completely separate from the Cthulhu mythos, even while I realize that particular boat has sailed. Like I said, a mere niggle.

I believe this was Hodge’s debut work and as such I am planning to keep an eye out for anything else he writes. I couldn’t find a website for him, but I also didn’t look that hard. I’m not a fan of authors as people, just authors as authors.

★★★★✬

Circle of Protection: Artifacts - MTG 4th Edition

Sunday, May 28, 2023

The Drawing of the Dark ★★★☆☆

Title: The Drawing of the Dark
Series: ———-
Author: Tim Powers
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 311
Words: 111K

From Wikipedia.org

The year is 1529, and Brian Duffy, a world-weary Irish mercenary soldier, is hired in Venice by the mysterious Aurelianus to go to Vienna and work as a bouncer at the Zimmerman Inn, former monastery and current brewery of the famous Herzwesten beer.

Meanwhile, the Ottoman Turkish army under Sultan Suleiman I has achieved its most advanced position yet in their march into Europe, and is prepared to undertake the siege of Vienna. With the Turkish army travels the Grand Vizier Ibrahim, a magician who intends to use horrific spells as part of the siege.

Duffy spent time in Vienna years ago, and as he returns, he is haunted by memories of past events, and also finds himself having visions of mythical creatures and being ambushed by shadowy people and demonic monsters.

Upon arriving in Vienna, Duffy reconnects with Epiphany Vogel, a former girlfriend, and her father Gustav, who is working on a painting he calls “The Death of St. Michael the Archangel”. It seems the painting is never quite complete, and the elder Vogel is continuously adding additional detail to the work, causing it to gradually become more and more obscure.

Then Duffy finds himself not only drafted into the city’s defensive army, but also led by Aurelianus down mystical paths from the surprisingly old brewery to even more ancient caves beneath the city, in search of defenses against the approaching army and clues to Duffy’s very nature.

As it turns out, Aurelianus knows more about Duffy and his past than Duffy himself knows, and his real purpose in hiring him is to protect the hidden Fisher King, secret spiritual leader of the western world, and to defend him and the West against the Turkish advance. And the real reason that Vienna must not be captured by the Turks is that it is the site of the Herzwesten brewery. Its light and bock beers are famous throughout Europe, but the dark beer, produced only every seven hundred years, has supernatural properties and must not be allowed to fall into enemy hands.

Meanwhile, others are drawn to Vienna in anticipation of significant events. The so-called “dark birds”, magically sensitive individuals from far flung corners of the world, arrive in the city hoping for a sip of the Herzwesten dark, and a small group of middle-aged Vikings have improbably sailed their ship down the Danube River to Vienna, having sensed that the prophesied final battle of Ragnarok will take place there.

This book can be summed up with the tabloid headline “Magical Beer Saves Western Civilization – read more on page 3”. It is ridiculous.

Not a bad novel, but I simply couldn’t get past the ridiculousness of the premise. Powers like playing with history and showing a “secret history” behind the events we all know and as such, I thought he did an excellent job here.

But I cannot get past Magical Beer saving civilization as we know it. I can’t. So 3 stars for a solid “secret history” fantasy but that’s as far as I’m willing to stretch here.

★★★☆☆

All of My “Tim Powers” Reviews

Saturday, May 27, 2023

Literature Meme

Hahahahahaa, this still cracks me up, even after seeing it in my draft pile for over a year.
/wipes eyes

Ahhh, a good laugh is just what the doctor ordered.

Friday, May 26, 2023

Web of Spiderman Annual #1 ★★✬☆☆

Title: Web of Spiderman Annual #1
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 37
Words: 3K

From Marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Web_of_Spider-Man_Annual_Vol_1_1

Spotting a broken window outside of a jewelry store, Spider-Man swings inside to stop a robbery. Inside, much to his surprise, Spider-Man discovers that the robbery is being committed by a number of small humanoid robots. Chasing after the machines, Spider-Man watches as they begin to combine into a single large robot. When the masked hero tries to stop it, the robot begins to emit a high pitched noise that makes it hard for Spider-Man to concentrate. Through a force of will, Spider-Man is able to snare the robot with a web-line and the pull the robot to the ground. However, this only makes it worse, as the robot begins to flail around. The machine then rights itself, and with the sonic attack taking its toll on Spider-Man, the robot ropes him out and sprays him with knock out gas before fleeing the scene. Spider-Man manages to fight off the effects of the gas and breaks free from his bonds, and is able to sneak up on the robot and knock it out with a single punch. Recovering from the effects of the gas, Spider-Man recovers the robot’s severed head as a souvenir. As he leaves, the wall-crawler blames himself for not taking pictures of the battle as he could have sold them to the Daily Bugle. Examining the robot’s head, Spider-Man is impressed by its design and it reminds him of his of his days as a high school student. He then begins to chastise himself for allowing his identity as Spider-Man has been taking more priority to that of Peter Parker.

Elsewhere in the city, a young boy named Max is throwing out old sports equipment and toys into a nearby dumpster. A task made more difficult because of his leg braces and that his hands begin to cramp up. He suddenly hears a bunch of noise behind him, and when he turns around, Max discovers that some of his classmates have tied tin-cans to his legs. The kids chase Max, forcing him to run for it. When the intelligent child hurls insults at the other kids. Unable to understand Max’s vocabulary they threaten to beat him up, but he manages to flee the scene and get back home. Inside, Max has an advanced workshop where he conducts his experiments. Turning on his computers, it activates a robot that Max called “Future Max”. Max tells his robotic invention that his nervous system is slowly failing him, Max tells Future Max that he will eventually use mechanical parts to replace his own nervous system. Suddenly there is a tapping noise that comes from a brick wall. Max rushes to it, it is the girl who lives next door named Beatrice. He tells her about his day, making up a story about playing ball with his friends. Unaware of who Max really is, she hopes he wasn’t playing with the local bullies who she saw bullying a handicapped child. Beatrice then shows Max a surprise by pushing out one of the bricks that she chiseled loose so they can hold hands together. The idea of Beatrice learning the truth about him frightens Max. When she asks him to touch her hand, Max tries but his hands cramp up again and he accidentally hurts her. He apologizes but convinces her that he needs wants to keep the mystery of their friendship. Beatrice can’t understand it, but Max assures her that they can finally meet soon, but has to get back to work on his science fair project. It’s then that Max’s combining robots return home, and as he goes to work on repairing the damaged machine, he puts aside a letter from Reed Richards, declining his request for nerve restoration research due to time constraints.

The next day, a street hustler named Alexis Sharp decides to play a small con by offering to walk an elderly woman across the street in order to pick her pockets. Unfortunately, the plan backfires when her pet poodle bites Alexis’ finger, forcing him to punt the dog across the street and flee. Checking out the newspaper, he finds an article about an upcoming science fair and decides to use his con-man skills to find an inventive child with a wealthy family to bilk on false promises of marketing their child’s invention. Later, at the science fair, Max is setting up his science fair project. He crosses paths with his intellectual rival, Chester, who has assistants to help him set up his own project. However, these assistants are more interested in playing video games and eventually abandon Chester, leaving him to set up alone. Also present is Peter Parker, who is impressed with the imagination and ingenuity the children have put on display. Peter is impressed by Max’s invention, a device that increases the strength of your grip. Peter introduces himself to Max, who is excited to meet Parker, as he knows that Peter used to attend the same school and won his share of science fairs. As they begin talking about Max’s invention, the boy is happy to finally speak with someone who understands him. Peter offers to try and convince his editor at the Daily Bugle to do an article on Max and his inventions. Max is briefly interested but soon becomes engrossed in his work.

No sooner is Peter gone, Alexis Sharp approaches Max’s display and is impressed by what he sees. Trying to convince the boy that he is an agent, Max declines his representation. Sharp isn’t ready to give up and spots a love letter to Beatrice and another from Reed Richards that gives him an idea on how to manipulate the boy to suit his needs. Alexis then tells the boy that he is a colleague of Reed Richards, and that he works with people on an exchange basis. He convinces Max to build an exoskeleton that Alexis can wear to prove that his invention works. This finally gets through to the boy and he accepts Sharp’s card. Later that evening, Max is working on his exoskeleton, having to cannibalize Future Max in order to construct it. Max hopes that Reed Richards is impressed with is invention and agrees to cure him so he can finally reveal himself to Beatrice. As he works, Max accidentally bumps a water tank, spilling water on his mechanical arm brace. This causes a jolt of electricity that Beatrice hears from the other side of the wall. Beatrice asks Max if he is okay, and suggests that they meet up the following day. Max tells her he can’t for now, telling her to trust in their love for each other.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man returns home to his apartment and discovers that a local stray cat has managed to get into his apartment again. As it rubs up against the severed robot head, it suddenly calatters to life. Peter examines it more closely and realizes that it is build using the same principals as Max’s grip enhancer at the science fair. Putting on his mask, Spider-Man decides to make a social call to young Max. At that moment, Max is putting the final the final touches on the exoskeleton for Alexis Sharp, who helped fund the construction by calling in some underworld markers. As Alexis begins to test out the suit, Max begins to become suspicious of Sharp’s credentials. Suddenly, the doorbell rings and Max goes to answer it. It turns out to be Spider-Man who has come to talk to the youth. Seeing the robot head, Max tries to explain his situation. Hearing about Sharp’s alleged relationship with Reed Richards, Spider-Man asks Sharpe if he had heard about what happened with Richards’ daughter. This is a trick, as Reed doesn’t have a daughter, and Spider-Man catches him in a lie.[Continuity 1] Realizing the jig is up, Alexis Sharp tries to escape in the suit.

Spider-Man follows after him, and Sharp decides to fight back. Seeing that the battle suit is heavily armed, Spider-Man lures Alexis to an area that is scheduled for demolition. With no innocent people around, allowing the pair to cut loose. Down below, Max arrives and attempts to use a device to deactivate the armor, but it short circuits. An officer arrives on the scene and gets the boy to safety as Spider-Man and Sharp fight on. As the battle rages on, Max manages to slip by the police and get close enough to Spider-Man to tell him about the exoskeleton’s vulnerability to water. Spider-Man tells Max to get to cover and then uses this knowledge to lure Sharp to a nearby water tower. Knocking the crook into the water shorts out his armor, leaving him immobilized. Spider-Man then webs up Sharp and leaves him hanging for the police. The next day, Peter Parker arrives at Max’s house to take photos of him for the Daily Bugle article. Max tells him that he can’t take the photos as he has a date with Beatrice. Admitting that he is nervous, Peter reminds him that he helped Spider-Man that he is more brave than he thinks. Sure enough, when Max goes to visit Beatrice, they hit it off immediately.

Oh goodness. This was supposed to be a double sized issue, which means 48 pages at a minimum. However, once all the ads are removed, it was a measly 37 pages.

It is basically a one shot story about a smart kid with some sort of degenerative nerve disease being tricked into building a suit of armor for some insane guy who quotes movies (I’m not even going to say anything because I already know what I think of movies in general) and Spiderman fighting the badguy and the kid going on a date with the girl next door.

Let’s discuss that boy/girl love interest thing, shall we? The kid is in highschool. He talks to this girl, who lives in the apartment right next door, through a brick wall, a brick wall that is one brick thick. But they have never seen each other. Ever. Never ever never ever. Not even when going to school or coming or going out of the apartment building. So when they finally have their date, she invites him inside her apartment for dinner. I realize this was 1985, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t customary for single women living on their own to invite underage boys into their apartments.

And speaking of apartments. This kid has an entire laboratory in the basement. Now, maybe he’s living in some sort of town house and not an apartment building. But his single mom is raising him and he’s got a degenerative nerve/muscle disease. But he builds an Iron Man suit from egg beaters and junk material (no, seriously, Spiderman sees an eggbeater and comments on it), with sonic guns AND mini-missiles AND a machine gun. In his basement. This isn’t suspending reality, but pure wish fulfillment. I could see my 14year old self eating this up and absolutely loving it. But now, it’s beyond ridiculous. I just laughed and rolled my eyes.

Dave and I are going to be taking a break from this comic series for a couple of months. Dave because of being busy at work and me because I really need to evaluate if I want to actually read any more. The story, and hence the writer, is what separates the good from the bad and ol’ Ann Nocenti didn’t appear to be up to the job on this issue. So this will be the last Web of Spiderman review for at least a couple of months.

Now, I know that news is going to devastate you all. I can only imagine the turmoil, angst and old fashioned pain you will suffer because of this. And because I am a responsible blogger, I just want to reassure you all, THAT I WILL BE LAUGHING IN GLEE EVERY SINGLE SECOND THAT YOU ARE IN MISERY. Then I will pat you on the shoulder and say something banal like “there, there, it’s ok”. That makes it all ok.

Here’s Dawie’s take on this:
Dawie’s Review of Web of Spiderman Annual #1

★★✬☆☆