Gold Brick III

by on November 30, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Comics

The Gold Digger color series starts out big. Three multi-issue stories flow directly into each other before there’s any sort of break. In the middle of this, Brianna, Julia, and company finally return from Jade after being missing for several issues… and no one’s talking about what happened.

The third part of the lead stories features one of my favorite names from Perry, Uhm Di Turrok, The Halls of the Extremely Dead. This is a bigger, badder, trap-filled complex (and poor Stripe gets pretty beat up!)… that Gina eventually gets through, and the guardian of the place tells her to come back in one year, when she’ll be ready to learn the secrets of what all this is protecting. (Now, how can he know ahead of time just when everything will be right…?)

My understanding is that Perry started working out a really big story about the time he did Beta. And this volume has a lot of groundwork for that story. And even then, it draws on earlier bits. Gina is getting hints of the mystery of the nomad artificers, who date from the beginnings of the universe, and first came up in the limited series.

After that winds down, we finally find out what happened on Jade: Julia’s nemesis, G’nolga held Brittany hostage to force her to throw a match and lose honor. Much of the rest of this volume deals with the Arms-Master tournament, as she tries to reclaim her title. It’s the biggest story yet, all on Jade, as there are plans afoot to effectively take over Jade by use of little-noticed privileges that come with the title “Arms-Master of Jade”. The final few issues break up into a couple of smaller stories, and the first half of a two-parter.

Physically, this volume is a bit smaller than the previous ones. The page count of the color series (understandably) went down to 24 pages, so this volume is a mere ~450 instead of 600, and is shrunk a little from standard comics size (~9.5″ instead of  ~10.5″ tall), which does occasionally make some of the lettering a bit small. Though the paper quality is much improved the binding is iffier; my copy of this tends to creak and pop alarmingly, and a couple of pages are partially lose.

Overall, this is very solid volume (well, solid story) of Gold Digger, with over half dedicated to one really well-done story. There’s been a couple of printings, I don’t know how they differ, if there’s any real differences between them. So while it’s out of print, it doesn’t seem that hard to get.

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The English Civil War: A People’s History

by on November 22, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Purkiss’ history of the ECW was something of a slog for me to get through. The general idea as given is admirable: to look at the English Civil War as something that involved people, and see how various people were impacted by it.

In general, the technique for this is good. She’s gone through a lot of primary sources, and found ones with fairly consistent records for an extended period of time, and used them to generate narratives at the personal level, with lots of extensive quotes. There’s a lot of contextualization around this, and it pays off.

However, outside of that, the results aren’t nearly as good. I suspected that Middlekauff’s The Glorious Cause rested too much on ‘everybody knows’ facts about the American Revolution, and I’m sure that Purkiss has done this here. She’s English and writing for an English audience, so I can’t say how on-target she is on her assumptions, but I found her brushing by statements as if they were self-evident, and they were not for me. The trained bands of the early fighting are mentioned but not described. I know generally what they are because I’ve read Haythornwaite’s book on the ECW, which goes into them. Here, they’re a blank spot.

And that’s a symptom of the larger issues of the book. It’s roughly chronological in format, but has extended breaks to talk about particular social issues at length, which breaks up the chronology enough to make it difficult to keep track off. Some of the major battles get very good treatment, using descriptions from participants to at least show how the action felt for some of the non-commanders (actually quite valuable). Certain areas get similarly good treatment, as one of her sources has a bunch of letters showing what was happening around a manor in hostile country. But there’s not a lot of consistency or solid presentation here.

At best, this is a good second or third book to read about the ECW. Find a good regular general history first, then turn to this to start filling in some of what was going on away from the most dramatic parts.

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Evermeet: Island of Elves

by on November 14, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

In the original Forgotten Realms boxed set, Evermeet is a somewhat mysterious place off the map, where the elves have slowly been retreating to as their continental holdings fall. It’s impossible not to compare with Tolkien at that point, with the elves going over the sea to the West.

However, it’s not really meant to be that mystical of a place. Magical yes, but still a part of the Realms. And this novel explores its history in a format similar to Spock’s World. Major incidents in its history are presented, culminating in a major invasion of the island in the present time, which serves as the main framing story. It starts with the earliest history of the elvish pantheon, and then the arrival of elves in Abir-Toril, and a couple other things before even getting to the creation of Evermeet.

So, this is really broad sweep of history, with chapters being separated by centuries if not longer. The impressive bit is that each section feeds into and informs the ‘present’ framing story. That starts fairly simple, and then layers in complications as the novel goes along, and gains a lot of interest because of it, though it starts reaching past what is easy to keep track of on a ‘casual reading’ level.

I do feel the ending went for a cop-out. A bit more willingness for a permanent change was called for, though at the same time, things do change, and it opens the door to some interesting possibilities. As a last note, I do wish more time had been spent getting to know Evermeet as a unified place. There a few pieces you get familiar with, but never a feel for just how big it is, or overall geography. At least in the Kindle version, there’s no map.

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Gold Brick II

by on November 6, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Comics

This is a straight reprint of the second half of the Gold Digger B/W series, so its another ~600-page volume reprinting issues 26-50. Unfortunately, it does suffer from there being two cross-overs and one spin-off during this period that aren’t in here. Those should be fixed with volumes 2 and 3 of the color remaster, which is the primary thing making me think about getting them (along with the slowly ageing newsprint).

Again, there’s a lot of single-issue stories in here, but there’s some bigger ones too. Most notably, the Dynasty storyline takes a fair chunk of the volume, as things kick off in issue 30, and it runs through 38. However, the first half or so of that is the main characters getting distracted by other problems that crop up at the same time as El Dorado suddenly disappearing. And, it turns out that events in Asrial vs Cheetah (a two-issue Ninja High School crossover) kicked off this storyline before issue 30 (it’s not actually directly plot related, but it will be in the remaster).

While Stripe goes to save his people’s homeworld, Gina and the rest end up having to save themselves from the return of Dr Peachbody from the first volume. Time Warp is the place where the Brick really falls down, as it was an interleaved story of four issues of GD and four of NHS, so there’s gaps here (this is the second-biggest reason I’m looking at the remaster), so there’s holes in the story here. Thankfully, the original issues actually have decent recaps of the previous NHS issue’s action, so it can still be followed, except that part 8 was in NHS…. After that wraps up it still takes a couple issues to focus on the Dynasty, and then that fight actually wraps up in a couple issues.

The other big story is Beta, which starts in Gold Digger Beta #1, which was going to be a color spin-off series running concurrently with the main one. However, after one issue the new story was folded into the main series while plans were made to transition to color full-time (and getting Beta #1 in there is the biggest reason I’m looking at the remaster). At the same time, Brianna and a couple others set out to Jade, and that actually turns into a bigger story that’s just as important.

In fact, a lot of this volume relies on Perry handling multiple on-going stories, and he generally succeeds. I feel that the Dynasty got too stretched out by all the things allowed to interrupt it as it gets going, but it does work as a story. During the later part, Perry experiments a bit more with layouts (which have always had a very dynamic manga-influced style), with a page with a single small panel in the center, and one two-page spread that goes sideways (he needed all the height he could get for it, and it works very well).

Things largely devolve back to single-issue adventures at the end of the volume/series, but Perry continues juggling old villains (Dark Bird), and introducing new ones, such as the wererats and Gothwrain, who becomes one of the main problems in the future.

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Gold Brick I

by on October 29, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Comics

The Gold Bricks started as a project to get the original 50-issue black-and-white Gold Digger series into a convenient, but impressive format, with 25 issues per volume. They’ve continued since then with 25-issue collections of the color series. On one hand, the production’s a little cheap, with ~600 pages on thin newsprint paper that that has yellowed over the years, but the binding is amazingly solid.

The regular series sees a refining of Perry’s art and character design, though it remains very loose in feel. As a regular series, and 25 issues, there’s a number of story arcs in the first volume. One of the more impressive things, reading it all now, is just how little ‘throw away’ pieces there are: a lot of things in here continue being central parts of the series for a long time to come, or secondary characters show up for a story… and then show up again a dozen issues later at a logical point. The fact that Fred Perry is writing all of this doubtless does wonders to keep things consistent, but it can be amazing just how much he juggles. Some characters do fade away though. Tark and Mesha from the original story slowly get sidelined, and then basically take a job that rotates them out of the recurring cast.

Perry loves making references to popular culture as part of his light-hearted tone (the computer-book from Inspector Gadget showed up in the limited series), and he spends a couple moments explaining one, establishing the A-Wing as one of that world’s next generation fighters. Which is a fun way of underscoring that superscience is a part of that world. A lot of the stories in here are short, and as the series went on, story titles got dropped; here’s the bigger stories:

Issues 1-4 — The Curse: The first story of the continuing series, and the second big story for GD (I kind of wonder if Perry had originally planned it out as a second limited series). We start with another ancient-ruin-exploration-gone-wrong (Gina was beaten to the loot by Croesus no less), a demon, and the creation of Brianna. That last is introduced really well, with the issue starting with the aftermath, and going back to figure out what happened.

Issues 4-6 — Tooth and Claw: The end of The Curse melds straight into the next story, which I always felt didn’t have quite enough groundwork laid, but was still quite logical. Britanny’s relationship with Stripe has disturbed the relationships within El Dorado, and now that comes back to bite Britanny. Not only do we get a rematch with Jetta and Thabian, but we finally get to see more of Gina and Britanny’s dad, Dr. Theodore Diggers, and get an idea just what he can do (that he was a powerful mage had been established in the mini-series, now we get to see what that means).

Issue 6-7 — Night Flight: Dark Bird returns for a rematch with Ace. This story really shows off that Fred Perry loves flying and aircraft, and he does a good job narrating a multi-plane dogfight.

Issue 7-8 — Crime Syndicate X: Early on, we get a mention that Cheetah had spent time ‘super heroing’ in high school with a friend, and that gets picked up with Cheetah running into her old pal the Pink Avenger in New York, and things go into a typically wacky take on superhero adventures, though with something of a nasty twist as the main villain is smart enough to find out heroes’ identities and threaten friends and family.

Issues 13-19 — The Lich King: This story technically starts with #15, but the the issue and a third before lead straight into it. Meeting the werewolves brings in more details on the end of the war between them and the werecheetahs, and leads directly to the next big story dealing with Dr Digger’s father,  and a very epic story with the fate of Gina and the realm of the undead at stake. It’s the biggest story so far, and is very well paced, and introduces Jade, the alternate world of magic, and Gina’s mother (who is every bit as competent as the rest of the family).

Aside from those, there’s eleven issues in here that are single-issue stories, mostly with lots of high-action plots, with more character-focused bits being banter and side-pieces to the rest, though issue #24 takes a break from high-speed action but still has lots of character-based conflict. Issues 11 & 12 establish that GD and Ninja High School are in the same universe, with the Rat Exterminators and Dog Supreme showing up from NHS. The number of characters grows explosively in these stories, and most of them are seen again later. There’s also several bits of circling back to the limited series to continue things introduced there.

One nice continuing thing in the series is that there’s multiple references to time passing. A previous issue’s events are often a week earlier, so between that and multiple-issue stories, it probably isn’t keeping up with publishing time, but it’s a lot better than many series of this type. Overall, this volume is a little over two years of growth in the characters, and the extreme sexiness gets toned down just a bit, which helps. (Not that there isn’t still a lot, but it does tone down a bit. Gina especially tones down a bit, though she is getting into a love triangle by the end of the volume.)

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