Our end-o’-week roundup of what you missed while working for The Man!

Greeting, book adventurers! If you’re reading this, congratulations for surviving the annual Daylight Savings highway massacre. There’s about a million too many sleep-deprived drivers on the road for my taste on this fine, pre-Halloween Sunday, and it’s best to just stay at home, unless you’ve got an optometrist appointment or something. While you’re lounging, check out these book reviews we cooked up for you o’er the last five days!

MONDAY >> 10.23.06
I don’t really understand the Marvel Ultimates line. I mean, I understand it, but WTF? Anyone who gets confused by the backstory that comes with a classic character’s history doesn’t deserve to be reading. The first comic I ever bought with my own money, UNCANNY X-MEN #160 (August 1982), was full of backstory and complicated drama that I didn’t understand, but it hooked me anyway, and I have every issue from then until 300 or so. So many of today’s writers are such screaming ninnies that they won’t even touch a book unless they get carte blanche to mess with a hero’s basic legend. In my day, we only let Alan Moore and his ilk do that. What was I talking about? Oh, yeah — BOOKGASM Grand Poobah Rod “Cupcakes” Lott (as Doug Bentin calls him behind his back) thought ULTIMATE MARVEL TEAM-UP ULTIMATE COLLECTION was far from ultimate, though it was uneven and sometimes even uneventful.

Doug Bentin took a look at THE WIDOW OF SLANE AND SIX MORE OF THE BEST CRIME AND MYSTERY NOVELLAS OF THE YEAR, and, besides being prone to inclusion in a wide variety or run-on (or seemingly run-on) sentences, he finds it to be a solid, workmanlike effort. Is it surprising, then, that one of the work’s co-editors is none other than Martin H. Greenberg, the Anthologist for the Ages? No.

Whereas THE WIDOW OF SLANE (et al) had two solid editors (Ed Gorman was Robin to Greenberg’s Dark Knight), WICKED KARNIVAL HALLOWEEN HORROR needs some help in the editorial department. Rod liked the volume anyway, especially at this time of year, but here’s a hint for next time, guys: Just because the guy at Kinkos says he knows how to make a book doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth.

TUESDAY >> 10.24.06
Music-obsessed Dylan and Stones fans will totally go nuts for Brian Hinton’s BOB DYLAN COMPLETE DISCOGRAPHY and Alan Clayson’s THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE DISCOGRAPHY, but that doesn’t mean Rod Lott will. Oh, no. Lott prefers Yma Sumac, or something appropriately Charotic.

Some comics are so bursting with ideas that a spin-off or two doesn’t hurt a bit; one of these is FABLES, and Rod said FABLES: 1001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL is a great complement to the regular book, for noobs and FABLES veterans alike. So click the link already.

With all the criminals “murdered” by off-the-books paperback vigilantes on a monthly basis, how can we still have any? Since the Spider started offing people by the bushel in the pulp era, these guys must have killed at least 2.3 billion lowlives, and this week’s BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS, looks at another trio of gun-wielding sociopaths with anger management issues: The Death Merchant, the Executioner, and the obviously impotent Penetrator. Bruce Grossman weighed these vigilantes’ crimes against literature, and only one was found worthy. Can you guess which one?

Doctors of the world: Susanna Clarke is ill. Get to work! THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU AND OTHER STORIES (which Rod Lott totally dug) is enough to tide me over for now, but this collection of stories set in the world of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL won’t last long in my “to read” pile. If you value my sanity at all, dear Hippocratic healers, please help Ms. Clarke get back to health (and the awesome writing that comes with it).

WEDNESDAY >> 10.25.06
The online literary community is all over sleazy websites that give great reviews in exchange for advance reading copies, publicity and other “favors.” We don’t do that here at BOOKGASM; we judge books on their merits and their merits alone. That said, Rod Lott raved about the World Wrestling Entertainment-licensed BIG APPLE TAKEDOWN, which features the WWE superstars “taking down” a terrorist plot in, you guessed it, New York City. I wouldn’t even think the WWE would have anything that could corrupt an introverted, bookish, 30-something website editor living in central Oklahoma, but then I saw the BIG APPLE cover, and it all became clear. Rod still claims he like the book for the words, but I have my doubts.

The coffee table books produced by the Charles S. Anderson Design Co. and Michael J. Nelson make me wish I had more coffee tables. Despite my lack of tabular surface area I still totally want FLUFFY HUMPY POOPY PUPPY: A RUFF, DOG-EARED LOOK AT MAN’S BEST FRIEND, and Louis Fowler correctly labeled this book a must-own.

If you haven’t noticed, the volume of posts is going up here at BOOKGASM HQ, and with that, it seems, is an uptick in title length. THE STRANGE CASE OF HELLISH NELL: THE STORY OF HELEN DUNCAN AND THE WITCH TRIAL OF WORLD WAR II is Wednesday’s example, and Bruce Grossman thought the books was “totally wicked.” In other news, people attending séances in England felt the need to inspect female psychics in the nude to make sure they not using “trickery.” Those séance-goers are some sly bastards.

THURSDAY >> 10.26.06
If there’s one thing we’ve come to expect about Thursday’s FRAMES O’ REFERENCE column, it’s that Allan Mott isn’t bashful to tell us about himself, and I now know more about his college years than I do my own. Persistence pays off, though, in this case, as it al ties neatly together into a review of DIRECTED BY ALLEN SMITHEE, with, much like college, is totally overblown and pretentious.

If MARVEL ZOMBIES sucked, I would petition those chickens at the U.N. to classify it as a crime against humanity. You only get one chance at making a world in which all your heroes are zombies who want to eat Galactus, and thank L Ron they did it right. Louis Fowler, an expert on both zombies and globe-absorbing desires, is the perfect reviewer for this, and he deemed it good, so there’s no excuse not for you to buy it this afternoon.

Whereas I hate 99 percent of the forward e-mails I get from my various graying relatives, I do read the ones containing the Darwin Awards. These tales of deadly idiocy always warm my heart, showing me that yes, there is some justice in the world, and it’s catching up to the stupid people first. That’s the part of THE DARWIN AWARDS 4: INTELLIGENT DESIGN that the Marvelous Mark Rose liked; there are some crappy essays (oxymoron?) accompanying the main course here, but they’re worth it just for the eels in the rectum.

FRIDAY >> 10.27.06
Oh, crap. A few entries up, I made a joke about how essays are, by definition, crappy, and here I am, capsulizing Doug Bentin’s essay about Robert Bloch. This is a fine mess I’ve gotten myself into. Well, if anyone can make an essay more creepy than crappy, I guess it’s Bloch. Not only did he write PSYCHO, but he also inspired the Misfists’ awesome song “Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?” and that in itself is a good thing.

Unpatriotic supporters of presidential assassins will get their sick glee from LINCOLN’S ASSASSINS: THEIR TRIAL AND EXECUTION much in the way they giggled over James L. Swanson’s MANHUNT. Rod Lott – pinko-loving hummus-eater that he is — liked having this coffee-table supplement to MANHUNT, but he likes a lot of things real Americans don’t like (such as his unnatural obsession with naked Charo), so you’ve been warned.

Have a Happy Halloween, everyone. Next week we’ll have a ton of reviews as usual, plus exclusive deets on the BOOKGASM All Hallows Eve party. –Ryun Patterson

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