Humor, Heroes, and History (100 Books ... 58 Left)

35. Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry
36. The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan by Wendy McClure
37. Garfield Minus Garfield by Dan Walsh w/Jim Davis
38. Batman: Strange Apparitions by Steve Engelhart, Marshall Rogers, and Terry Austin
39. Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Woflman and George Perez
40. The History of the DC Universe by Marv Wolfman and George Perez
41. Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? by Alan Moore, Curt Swan, George Perez, and Kurt Schaffenberger
42. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn


So I'm getting a little back on track here because if I'm going to be on pace I have to hit #50 by next Tuesday. Being 8 off the pace isn't too bad.


I posted on the Zinn book over at Stop Trying to Inspire Me, so check it out there.


As for the others, it's pretty much a smattering of different stuff, some of which I've read before. I've looked through the Richard Scarry book about 100 times with Brett but I finally got the time to sit down and read it to him before putting him down for a nap last week and it's really fun. We just got him another one of Scarry's books for his birthday and I'm sure he's going to have a lot of fun looking at the stuff in it.

The humor books are ones I've been pretty familiar with for a while because of their presence on the internet. McClure's book is on the infamous 1974 Weight Watchers recipe cards that she featured on her blog some years ago; Garfield Minus Garfield is a book version of the website where Garfield is removed from several strips and we see Jon in his lonely, sad world. And I have to say three things about that: a) it makes Garfield funny again; b) the fact that Jim Davis not only condoned this but did a few "minus" strips himself (in the book) is awesome; and c) my sister and I collected the fuck out of Garfield books when we were kids and it's awesome that this was a Christmas gift from her.

The comics are classics that I've read seemingly a million times. I highly recommend the Batman and the Superman books because you don't really need to know much about the characters to enjoy them. The Batman stories are from the late 1970s and are the type of quality stuff you've seen in the better movies. Tou've got some quality Joker stuff in there too and a great subplot involving Hugo Strange, Gotham's crime "boss" Rupert Thorne and a love interest of Bruce Wayne's, Silver, who figures out that he is Batman and it ultimately means that they can't be togther. The Superman story is the "last" Superman story, an imaginary story in which a reporter from the Daily Planet interviews Lois Lane 10 years after Superman's last battle versus all of his villains. It's one of those great "ride off into the sunset" type of stories you'd expect from a hero with a history like Superman's.

Crisis is a bear. If you have read any DC Comics you've heard of some of the elments of Crisis, especially in recent continuity. For the unitiated, the premise is this: there are multiple versions of Earth existing in multiple parallel universes, and when our story opens, the ruler of the anti-matter universe, the Anti-Monitor, is "eating" up universe after universe (the destruction is shown by a white wall of anti-matter sweeping across the worlds, literally erasing everything it touches). The only person with enough power to stop him is The Monitor, who recruits heroes to fight him.

Over the course of 12 issues there are momentous events like the deaths of The Flash and Supergirl and a complete realignment of DC's continuity. Honestly, it's one of those gargantuan epics that comic fans drool over; the difference between this one and some of the others is that this one is really tightly written and literally has a cast of thousands (seriously, issue #9? A team of super-villains led by Lex Luthor and Braniac take over three earths and the fight that ensues is right out of the old Super-Friends show). I reread it because I recently sold my individual issues plus several crossovers and tie-ins on eBay so I wanted to reread the collected hardcover version, which I am keeping. I highly recommend the trade paperback.

History ... is a companion to Crisis, and proceeds to tell the history of the universe now that it has been "rewritten" by the events of the series. It's a prose book with some beautiful illustrations by George Perez (my favorite comics artist of all time) and is impressive not just because it's great to look at but because Wolfman and Perez go into such depth, trying their best to mention just about every character in DC's collection.

Up next? More history, more comics, and mockingbirds.