Eruditorum Press

Stupid games *and* stupid prizes? In this economy?

Elizabeth Sandifer

About Elizabeth Sandifer

http://www.eruditorumpress.com

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

Posts by Elizabeth Sandifer:

A story is a machine that kills fascists. A story is a machine that kills whatever you want it to. (The Last War in Albion Book Two, Part Six: Before Watchmen: Minutemen)

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Previously in The Last War in Albion: Darwyn Cooke got the job of writing and drawing Before Watchmen: Minutemen in part on the strength of his previous work on DC: The New Frontier, which, like Watchmen, was a formally thoughtful and heavily historicized look at the history of comics.

Figure 854: The portentous opening monologue
resolves into a gag about writing styles. (By Darwyn
Cooke, from Before Watchmen: Minutemen #1, 2012)
Before Watchmen: Minutemen shares much of that formal thoughtfulness, taking an often playful angle on Watchmen’s style. The comic opens with two pages of four stacked page-width panels that evoke the lush visions of The New Frontier while also utilizing the object-to-object transitions that define Watchmen. The first page, for instance, jumps from a first person perspective of an infant Hollis Mason staring out of his bassinet, defined by an arc traversing the panel, to a skyscape of New York City from within a tunnel, also providing a central arc, to a Kirby Krackle-filled panel of the Solar System, the sun providing a third central arc, and finally to a panel of Doctor Manhattan’s forehead. Over these panels is a portentous monologue, in caption boxes that wind down the page in a backwards S: “You come into this world, and your point of view is narrow. If you’re lucky, it’s a safe and loving place. As you grow, your view of the world broadens and you struggle to find your place within it. If you’re strong, you learn to survive it. Over time you may not decipher the mysteries of the universe, but you can make your peace with that and find strength in what you know to be true. If you’re wise enough to approach this seeming impasse with humility, you may even find a sustained happiness. Then one day you meet a guy, and he throws a wrench in the gears. He takes away your understanding of the world you live in.”  The approach continues on the second page, only with the object-to-object transitions slowly zooming out to represent the whole of the circle until, in the third panel, the entirety of a clockface, the time still hours before midnight, is visible. The text here stutters – the caption box reads “you hope that over time…” while a dialogue box, the speaker off-panel, repeats “over time…” The fourth panel simply zooms out further from this scene, the clock moved to the midground, while in the foreground, at the right of the panel, a typewriter containing the first page of the epilogue to Under the Hood is visible. The off-panel dialogue continues with a punchline rivaling “that’s quite a drop” from the seventh panel of Watchmen: “this is terrible.”
Figure 855: Cooke subverts the nine-panel grid.
(By Darwyn Cooke, from Before Watchmen:
Minutemen #3, 2012)
But Cooke’s moves following this punchline pull in two different ways. On the one hand, the opening panel of the third page features Hollis Mason staring out at the reader as he says (ostensibly to his dog), “I’ll just have to face facts, girl.
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Belated Comics Reviews (August 19th, 2015)

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Happy to say that my comics have made it to the correct shop, and then out of the shop and to my home, where I have read them and ranked them from worst to best of what I was foolish enough to pay for. (Though strangely, Loki didn’t make it home, and I don’t think I saw it in the shops. Will follow up and review it next week one way or another.)

EDIT: After several people expressed disappointment about the lack of Loki, I got a digital copy and added it to the list.

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #4

A great issue #2.

Guardians of Knowhere #3

For most of this, it runs along without any of Bendis’s most infuriating writing tics. The Angela/Gamora confrontation is excellent character work with added punching. The plot moves off of Yotat and towards things recognizable as characters we care about. Mike Deodato draws gorgeous lightning. It’s a solid comic. And then it does a cliffhanger that amounts to “a person appears.” No explanation of this person. Maybe she is identifiable, but she’s not identifiable in a way that I can identify, and I’m nearing a quarter-century of reading Marvel comics. It’s not a cliffhanger in any useful sense; there’s no excitement. There’s a question, sure, namely “who is that,” but there’s no reason for me to be invested in the answer to it.

Doctor Who: Four Doctors #2

It’s a bit longer on action sequences than plot, in a way that’s not entirely satisfying, but that’s probably going to come out in the wash given that it’s a weekly event. All the same, this is mostly reapers chasing people as opposed to actually moving forward. But there’s enough charming and funny bits to make it an enjoyable trip.

Secret Wars: Secret Love #1

A fun anthology one-shot. The Daredevil story’s a bit off the boil for me, but the others are varying shades of delightful, with the Ms. Marvel/Ghost Rider story probably being the highlight from any serious perspective, and the Squirrel Girl/Thor story being the highlight from any moral one. Nice way to get some oddball talent into Marvel, and it’s always nice to see an odd genre like the romance comic get a revival.

Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders #2

The only possible complaint to have about this book is that it deserved more than two issues to tell its story. Still, it’s an enormously compelling case for Faiza Hussain as a character. Really, she needs an ongoing role in the Marvel Universe. Preferably as Captain Britain.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #17

A marvelous ending to Ewing’s run. Ewing is not a hugely subtle writer, which is manifestly not a criticism. He writes big, broad, and bright comics that wear their hearts on their sleeves. And this one’s heart is basically Alan Moore’s definition of magic and some infrastructure of Promethea. Given that Moore does not write big, broad, and bright comics that unabashedly scream their themes as text as loudly as possible, this is a delightful thing to do.…

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Faerie Tales (The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past)

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So we imagine ourselves to be, what, the heroes of our own stories? The protagonists of whatever story we think it is that’s being told? Or worse, some sort of god with the privilege of directing the protagonist; a consciousness that’s been put in charge of a body in the world, tasked with saving it, redeeming it, making it so that there was a purpose all along.
The bulk of our task is to find soft places in the world. Places where we pass from the seen Overworld to the hidden Underworld, and plumb the depths of dungeons to excise monsters that lurk beneath the surface of all things. This, at least, is classic Zelda, but A Link to the Past introduces a second sort of soft place in the form of portals to its bespoke gimmick, a shadow world with its own dungeons and monsters. 
The portal to faerie is a common enough image; the eccentric space where the border of the world frays. That space when you push through the bushes at the back of your yard, or the room in the basement of the school, or the corner of the store where the Nintendo used to be. The dungeon is one example, certainly – a space that opens up into a vast interior whose dimensions are utterly unsuggested by its mere gateway. But this is a different sort of example – not a cave carved into the world, but the world’s shadow; the Dark World; the second quest. The place that is not here, where we are not ourselves. 
As such, we are the only person there. The only one who knows our sins and our triumphs. Only us, our arms stretched outwards, amputated stumps grasping desperately for some means of controlling the world. All of this is predicated, of course, on the idea that some means of controlling the world exists, as opposed to the likely reality that we are in fact just the chaotic after-images of a sufficiently complex algorithm. 
It’s a matter of curious existential fact that the childhood of the Legend of Zelda series is, in Zelda canon, a discarded dystopia caused by a failure to beat the 1998 release The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A game I have never beaten because, ultimately, I was pissed off that it’s possible to blow the Skulltula quest before you actually get the quest. I played through that hell in 93 with the bonding plant in Return to Zork, thank you. Which means, I suppose, that this really is my world. The truth of who I am, created by my own later gaming inadequacy.
Certainly it’s a memorable game. A fundamental aspect of my childhood, so essential to my sense of self that it is difficult to quite believe in the possibility of a human consciousness that has not played this game. How can you be truly human if you are not shaped by the precise cultural influences that produced me, after all?
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Saturday Waffling (August 15th, 2015)

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I was pleasantly surprised when, along with the expected release of the Janelle Monáe-led The Eephus EP, the end of the week brought a new FKA Twigs EP as well. The Eephus is solid; its main effect is to stress the intriguing talent of Jidenna, whose “Classic Man” is probably the highlight, getting the obligatory remix with Kendrick Lamar verses (not as good a version, but charming in its own right). Monáe’s “Yoga” (also featuring Jidenna) is also great. The remaining tracks are somewhat filler, although Roman GianArthur’s “iKnow” is decent.

Also essential viewing is the entire Wondaland crew’s “Hell You Talmbout,” a live cut about police brutality.

The FKA Twigs release, M3LL155X, is of more consistent quality. Nothing comes close to “Two Weeks” in quality, but that’s the sort of song few artists ever hit the quality of twice in a career, so that’s churlish. The standout track is probably “In Time,” though as I said, they’re all quite good. The above link is a combo music video for the first four tracks, and is disturbing and weird and wonderful.

What’ve you all been listening to?

Or, alternate second topic, Vox Day decided to reply to a couple days old tweet in which I suggested he was a massive sequence of junk DNA by calling me a pedophile and insulting my appearance, which seemed like rather weak game from such an accomplished troll. I mean, it’s not even good libel.

Which led to me tweeting claims like “Vox Day is incapable of maintaining an erection unless there’s a photograph of Francisco Franco visible” and “Vox Day has the Innsmouth Look” with the hashtag #betterlibel.

Please, amuse me with further high quality libel about Vox Day, either here or on twitter.…

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The Point is to Change the World (The Last War in Albion Book Two Part 5: Before Watchmen: Minutemen)

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Previously in The Last War in Albion: Actually, it basically just left off in the middle of More’s lengthy description for the first panel of Watchmen.
Figure 849: The ending of Watchmen is foreshadowed
by its first panel. (Written by Alan Moore, art by Dave
Gibbons and John Higgins, from Watchmen #12, 1987)
THE SECOND ITEM OF REMARK IS A 1” DIAMETER SMILEY BADGE, COLORED A VIVID SUNSHINE YELLOW AS IT LAYS THERE IN THE GUTTER SMILING UP AT US AGAINST A BACKGROUND OF LURID BLOOD RED. IT HAS SOMEHOW LODGED IN THE GUTTER SO THAT IT WON’T GO DOWN THE DRAIN, AND SIMPLY REMAINS STUCK THERE, STARING UP AT US WITH ITS JARRINGLY INANE EXPRESSION. A SMALL SPLASH OF CRIMSON STAINS THE FRONT OF THE BADGE. A SINGLE TINY SPATTER ACROSS ONE BLACK CARTOON EYE ON THE FACE OF THE BADGE. THAT’S BASICALLY THE WHOLE OPENING IMAGE, UNLESS YOU WANT TO STICK A CANDY WRAPPER THAT’S ABOUT TO FLOAT DOWN THE DRAIN, IN WHICH CASE WE HAVE A PACKET OF MELTDOWNS, WHICH ARE LIKE TREETS (ENGLISH) OR M&M’S (AMERICAN) ONLY WITH LITTLE BRIGHTLY COLORED ATOMIC SYMBOLS ON THE WRAPPING. ONLY INCLUDE CANDY WRAPPING IF IT DOESN’T DETRACT FROM THE SIMPLICITY OF THE IMAGE WITH THE GUTTER, THE BLOOD AND THE BADGE, THOUGH, BECAUSE THIS IMAGE IS PRETTY IMPORTANT. IT GIVES US THE BLOOD SPATTERED SMILEY-BADGE, WHICH IS A PRETTY WORKABLE SYMBOL OF THE COMEDIAN’S MURDER, WHICH RUNS THROUGH THE ENTIRE SERIES, AND IT ALSO GIVES US A FAINT SUBLIMINAL PREDICTION OF THE ENDING WITH ITS IMAGE OF THE GUTTERS OF NEW YORK AWASH WITH BLOOD. ANYWAY, SEE WHAT YOU THINK AND LEAVE OUT THINGS LIKE THE SWEET WRAPPER IF YOU THINK THEY’RE EVEN SLIGHTLY DISTRACTING. WE’LL HAVE PLENTY OF TIME TO GET ALL OUR CUTE BRAND NAMES IN LATER ON IN THE SERIES. THE ACTUAL TEXT UPON THIS FIRST PAGE IS ALL TAKEN FROM RORSCHACH’S JOURNAL, WHICH WILL BE A MORE-OR-LESS CONTINUING FEATURE OF THE NARRATIVE THROUGHOUT THE SERIES. I MENTION THIS IN CASE YOU THINK IT MIGHT BE NICE TO VISUALLY DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN RORSCHACH’S JOURNAL AND ANY OTHER CAPTION BOXES THAT MIGHT OCCUR BY GIVING IT A SPECIFIC COLOR A SPECIFIC SHAPE OR LETTERING STYLE OR SOMETHING. I SUPPOSE IT’D BE NICE IF WE COULD ACTUALLY GET SOME OF THE CHARACTER OF RORSCHACH HIMSELF BY THE WAY HIS JOURNAL IS WRITTEN, ALTHOUGH I SUPPOSE A SUITABLY WARPED-LOOKING STYLE OF HAND WRITING MIGHT BE OFF-PUTTINGLY DIFFICULT TO READ OR TIME CONSUMING AND DIFFICULT TO MAINTAIN. MAYBE YOU COULD SUGGEST A SORT OF SCRUFFINESS WITHOUT GETTING TOO ELABORATE, THOUGH. PERHAPS A MORE RAGGED EDGE OR A FAINT SPATTERING OF MESSY INK BLOTS INT HE BOXES HERE AND THERE AS IF THEY’D BEEN LETTERED BY A PEN WITH A SPLIT NIB OR SOMETHING. ANYWAY. THE OPTIONS ARE THERE, SO JUST DO WHAT YUOU WANT. IN FACT, IF YOU’RE ANXIOUS TO SEE ANYTHING THAT EVEN SMACKS OF VISUAL FLUMMERY THAN PLEASE FEEL FREE TO MAKE RORSCHACH’S BOXES THE SAME AS EVERYONE ELSES AND RELY UPON THE TEXT IN THEM TO SET THEM APART FROM OTHER NARRATIVE WITHOUT IMPOSING ANY VISUAL GIMMICKS NEEDLESSLY.
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Comics Reviews (August 12th, 2015)

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Years of Future Past #4

Rough going. There’s some novel plot twists, but everyone is such a cardboard cutout here that I have trouble caring. An exemplar of the sort of comic I really need to stop spending $3.99 on.

A-Force #3

Effective superheroics, with little more to be said. Art felt a bit uneven between two different inkers, and the plot is starting to lose me, though I’m not sure if that’s an A-Force problem or a Secret Wars problem. Either way, at best adequate.
Mercury Heat #2
Still not sparking; the underlying concepts are interesting, and get moments of good play, but I suspect this is one where I’ll like the second arc, once the cards are on the table, more than the process of laying them there. Luiza’s hatred for her own skillset is by far the most compelling aspect, but the book is being slow in establishing that in favor of a lot of worldbuilding, which isn’t bad, but isn’t quite amazing either.
Secret Wars #5

On the original release schedule, this sort of exposition slab of an issue, excluding almost all of the cast in favor of a tight focus on Doom and Valeria, would probably have been a bold and interesting more. Under the increasingly glacial pace of Secret Wars, I’m well past just checking my watch and wondering if it’s October yet, not least because the odds seem certain that the All-New All-Different Marvel relaunch will start before Secret Wars #8 ships.
Grant Morrison’s 18 Days #2

Morrison is now one of three writers, so we’re pretty clearly transitioning from stuff he actually did to stuff he at best has notes for. We’re also pretty clearly moving from where his overly elaborate work resetting the myth into a Jack Kirby knockoff is the focus to a retelling of a classic of world mythology. On the whole, then, an improvement.

Doctor Who: Four Doctors #1


An endearingly frothy summer event for Titan’s Doctor Who line. Cornell gets to business quickly and engineers a good cliffhanger, and the Keys of Marinus callback is a nice treat as well, but I’m less than convinced by his Tenth/Twelfth exchanges, which seem to capture neither Doctor particularly well. Still, fun. The “Clara is Slytherin” gag’s particularly nice. Edwards’s art is capable, though marred by occasionally excessive photoreference, which leads to a jarring difference between his everyday Tenth Doctor and the one who appears in a couple of close-ups. 
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #15
It feels like this comic has done a few climaxes more than is earned, but as the proper, final issue of Year One (and Ewing’s final bow on the title) it’s a good one that shows how well sketched this set of companions is. I don’t pretend to understand the Source anymore, but this was fun and moving, and really is one of the best runs of Doctor Who comics ever.
Stumptown #7
As is often the case with Stumptown, I suspect it will read better in trade, but this is a lovely and world-grounded PI yarn that hums along entertainingly before sparking with real charm at the end.
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All the Birds in the Sky Review

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All the Birds in the Sky can be pre-ordered on Amazon here. Doesn’t look like UK pre-orders are available yet, which is sad.  The first four chapters are online, starting with chapter one here.

So, with the eligibility period for the 2017 Hugos just four months from opening, I think it’s time to talk about the clear frontrunner for Best Novel, which is Charlie Jane Anders’s All The Birds in the Sky.

In some ways, it’s tricky to articulate just why this book feels so fresh and necessary. Its component parts, after all, are aggressively familiar. The “there’s a science side and a magic side and they have a bit of a rivalry” setup is a standard mash-up post-Harry Potter, and the overtly eschatological bent is pretty standard issue as well. There are, one suspects, dozens of really lousy novels with the setup “a witch and a boy genius team up to avert the apocalypse.” The thing is, All the Birds in the Sky is not any of those novels. Instead, it’s the debut novel of Charlie Jane Anders.
Anders has been buzzing about the short story market for a few years now. She won a totally deserved Hugo in 2012 for “Six Months, Three Days,” a novelette whose first sentence serves as a perfectly adequate description: “The man who can see the future has a date with the woman who can see many possible futures.” And if there’s only one thing you criticize the Sad Puppies movement for, it should probably be that they’re a bunch of fascist shitheads, but if you go for two the fact that they kept “As Good As New” from the 2015 ballot because they preferred to nominate John C. Wright is absolutely the correct second choice. It’s a post-apocalyptic story in which the last survivor (a playwright and pre-med student) finds a genie’s bottle with an ornery ex-theater critic and goes about figuring out how to save the world and get it right this time. 
In both cases, the appeal is similar – the stories take hoary old chestnuts of genre fiction and put them into the material reality of the present day. It’s sci-fi/fantasy that’s at once firmly rooted in the history of the genre and both from and about a world where young women’s social lives are organized via a device in their pockets that’s in many regards far more advanced than a Tricorder. 
And that’s what’s fresh and vibrant about All the Birds in the Sky. Its standard genre tropes are well-chosen tools for doing a story that’s about growing up, realizing who you are in the world, and then, far more importantly, realizing that the entire narrative of growing up and realizing who you are in the world is complete and utter bullshit and that the world is a terrifying and confusing place comprised entirely of people who are trying desperately to fool each other into thinking they aren’t total fuckups. The magic/science opposition is there to be a binary opposition, with all the useful truth and false dichotomies implied.
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