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“Legend”: The Homecoming

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“The Homecoming” opens on one of the more triumphant notes Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has done in recent memory. There’s a slow pan across the new set for the Promenade upper level into Quark’s, where the man himself in engaged in one of his classic verbal sparring matches with Odo. The energy carries through to the scene where Quark visits a brooding Kira in her quarters to deliver Li Nalas’ earring. Finally, we get a jovial and upbeat Ben Sisko having a charismatic father/son moment with Jake, followed by a friendly and breezy lunch date with Kira. Well, up until she springs the news she wants to take a Runabout to Cardassia 4 to spring a jailbreak.

The sense we get is of a show that’s on top of the world, elated by its recent success. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is *back*, refreshed and energized to continue the creative high it came off the previous season on. And it has every reason to be comfortable and pleased with itself: Late 1993 into early 1994 was the critical, creative and commercial high point for Star Trek as a franchise, and it’s on Deep Space 9 that this is manifesting the most visibly and effortlessly. This must have been around the time I started taking serious notice of the show too, because it’s “The Homecoming”/“The Circle”/“The Siege” that’s among the first crop of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine stories I can recall having an active understanding of the plot and character details from, as opposed to merely faint recollections of dissociated images and scenes. Most of this was due to my having recently getting into Starlog’s official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine around this time (or really, the following Spring) to catch up with the series, but that warrants its own chapter later down the line.

The ironic thing is that by definition, a peak is a high as one can possibly go, and there’s nowhere to go from there but down. And while this second/seventh season is in many ways just as good as the crop of episodes that came out the year before, there’s an impossible-to-ignore shadow hanging over all the proceedings here, and as good as this opening volley was and is, it also marks the beginning of the end of Star Trek’s imperious phase. This won’t become clear for another few months though, nor will the plans being drafted behind the scenes that will conspire to make life a living hell for cast and crew alike over the next year, and ultimately bring about Star Trek’s end.

For the moment though, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is riding high. The first half of “The Homecoming” is truly iconic to me-There’s Kira and Chief O’Brien in undercover civilian attire in a fierce shootout to liberate Bajoran POWs on one of the very few alien planets where it makes absolutely perfect sense that it’s plainly a quarry.…

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Let’s Kill Hitler Again

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Hi all, sorry about the extended time away. Think of it as a winter hiatus, a polar opposite to, say, the summer hiatus preceding Let’s Kill Hitler. Anyways, I’m back!  And I’ve six thousand words to share.

I just happened to rewatch Series 6 recently with very good friends, so it’s on my mind, esepcially Let’s Kill Hitler. It’s one of those episodes that, for me, gets better every time I watch it – it’s very amenable to esoteric exploration, and being so familiar with all its beats, I no longer notice the tonal whiplash and the jarring pace. “Plus, she’s a woman” still sticks out like a sore thumb, but still, that’s a relatively minor complaint compared to all the wonderful stuff going on in this story, and even more so in the context of its production.

For those unfamiliar with the production schedule for Series 6, many of the stories were shot or placed out of order. Black Spot, for example, was repositioned to the first half of the series, switching places with Night Terrors. Let’s Kill Hitler, on the other hand, started production after they’d already filmed The Girl Who Waited, The God Complex, and Closing Time, even though it was meant to precede those stories in the broadcast schedule. So there’s a sort of foreknowledge to the production of this story – as if it were traveling backwards in time and inserting itself into a flow of events that had, in effect, already happened.

And I think this is important to understand when decoding LKH, because the show itself seemed to fully realize its aesthetics with Nick Hurran’s direction of The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex, where the visual elemt to the storytelling is every bit as (if not more) compelling as the stories themselves. Which is not to say that Moffat’s tenure was never about visual storytelling prior to Hurran, only that Hurran really took it to a stratospheric level. And surely Moffat and his production team realized this as Hurran’s work was already done by the time they got around to making Let’s Kill Hitler. As such, I’m inclined to consider LKH primarily in terms of its visuals and aesthetics, because that’s where a huge part of the storytelling occurs, though there are many thematic layers worth exploring as well. Which we will.

 

The Wheatfield

The very first scene of this episode was actually the very last one shot for the entire series – after The Wedding, in fact, because the production team needed to let the wheat grow. So I’m not surprised that the visuals and aesthetics and thematics of this scene are impeccable, helping it to function as a microcosm of the episode as a whole. Consider the fact it’s filmed out of order, and travels back to be inserted at a particular time and place, which is true for LKH, but is also true for the conceit of Melody “inserting” herself into her parents’ history, not to mention how the character of Mels is inserted into the show’s mythology itself.…

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A Very Rough Initial Take on Rabid Puppies 2

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Back in August, in response to Vox Day crowing about how his Xanatos gambit had come off so perfectly or something equally stupid, I made a stab at predicting how he’d play things in 2016:

I think we can safely assume that the Rabid Puppy slate in 2016 is going to consist of five nominees in every category, to try to maximize the number of categories with no non-Puppy nominees. I suspect he’s also going to pointedly include nominees that exist to dare the left to vote against them.

Vox is, of course, nothing if not banally and irritatingly predictable, having just released the first chunk of his Rabid Puppies slate for the year, his picks for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. And sure enough, his five picks include not only a writer whose sole publications have been through Castalia House but Andy Weir, author of The Martian, who would have been on the ballot last year were it not for the Puppies, and who I’ve had penciled in on my balloting spreadsheet since November.

First of all, then, my sincere sympathies to Andy Weir, who I’m sure had absolutely zero desire to be put on the Rabid Puppies slate, who self-evidently doesn’t and didn’t need Vox Day’s help and who really should have been allowed to enjoy his Oscar season in peace and without any of this nonsense. Now an award that he would have been up for anyway (if not ineligible on the basis of having won it last year) is fundamentally tainted. This should serve first and foremost as a reminder that Vox Day is a complete and utter dick, and that the only reason anyone would support him is that they are too.

Second of all, then, my initial thoughts on how to reply to the tactic. For one thing, I’m still going to nominate Weir. He deserves it. Frankly, his breakout success is literally the exact sort of thing the Campbell Award exists to honor. He stormed on the scene and got a Ridley Scott movie for his trouble. I’m going to carry on with my ballot in all other categories, and if Vox turns out to make some of the same picks as me, so be it. I’m perfectly at peace with that.

Because, you see, when it comes to voting?

I have a plan.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 3.04: And Now His Watch is Ended

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Daenerys sees the tower through the trees

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:

Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister, the Hand of the King Tywin Lannister

The Lion, Jaime Lannister

Dragons of Astapor: Daenerys Targaryen

Bears of Astapor: Jorah Mormont

The Direwolves: Catelyn Stark, Bran Stark

Roses of King’s Landing: Margery Tyrell

The Kraken, Theon Greyjoy

Direwolves of Winterfell: Sansa Stark

The Direwolf, Arya Stark

Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly

The Stag, Gendry

Stags of King’s Landing: King Joffrey Baratheon

The Dogs, Sandor Clegane

Spiders of King’s Landing: Varys

Bears of the Wall: Lord Commander Jeor Mormont

Winterfell is abandoned and in ruins. Riverrun is silent. Harrenhal is barren.

The episode is in eleven parts. The first runs three minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The opening image is of Jaime Lannister’s severed hand hanging around his neck.

The second runs four minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Jaime to Tyrion Lannister.

The third runs three minutes and is set at Craster’s Keep north of the Wall. The transition is by image, from Varys closing the crate over the sorcerer who cut him to a door closing.

The fourth runs two minutes and is set in the North. The transition is by hard cut, from Samwell turning away from Gilly to Bran running in a dream.

The fifth runs six minutes and is in two sections; it is set in King’s Landing. The first section is two minutes long; the transition is by hard cut, from Bran’s face to Varys and Rosalyn talking. The second section is four minutes long; the transition is by dialogue, from Varys speaking of prodigies in odd places and Roslyn to Margery.

The sixth part runs five minutes and is set in the North. The transition is by hard cut, from Cersei scowling to Theon and Ramsey riding through the woods.

The seventh runs two minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by allegiance, from Ramsey Snow to Locke, also serving Roose Bolton.

The eighth runs ten minutes and is in three sections; it is set in King’s Landing. The first section is three minutes long; he transition is by family, from Jaime to Cersei and Tywin Lannister. The second is four minutes long; the transition is by hard cut, from Tywin to Olenna. The third is three minutes long; the transition is by dialogue, from Varys and Olenna talking about Sansa to Sansa, and by family, from Olenna to Margery Tyrell.

The ninth part runs five minutes, and is set at Craster’s Keep north of the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Sansa and Margery to a funeral pyre. It features the death of Jeor Mormont, stabbed in the back by his own men.

The tenth runs five minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by hard cut, from Rast to the Brotherhood Without Banners riding.

The eleventh runs six minutes and is set in Astapor.…

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“And the stars are old”: Descent, Part II

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Last time on Star Trek: The Next Generation…

“’Descent’ marks an important turning point in a number of respects. Up front, it’s the first time Star Trek: The Next Generation has done a cliffhanger season finale more or less only because this is the sort of thing it does to close off filming block seasons; in other words, the first time the cliffhanger finale structure is implemented as a matter of course and functional habit instead of being the result of unexpected necessity.” 
“This is not the same as critiquing, say Captain Picard’s specific actions in that episode: In fact, the whole reason Alynna Nechayev is here is to further reinforce that he acted wisely and correctly-Let’s not forget that Nechayev is the first Starfleet Admiral *overtly* coded as actively evil. Her very condemnation of Picard’s choice lets us know that he made the right one. Rather, what “Descent” is attacking is the notion that moral choice was ever necessary: There is no moral dilemma in regards to the sanctity of life; it should be preserved and respected above all else no matter what, end of, and ‘I, Borg’ was stupid to insinuate that wasn’t the case and to put Captain Picard and Guinan in the position of neglecting that.” 
“Because what the Borg have done here in ‘Descent’ is, terrifyingly, assimilate the very concepts of individual positionality and human empathy themselves. They’ve taken two of the most sacred tenets by which Star Trek operates, ground them into the engines of capitalism and turned them back against us in an attempt to quell any resistance we could offer before we reached a point where we were prepared to effect change. 
The Borg’s endgame is, and always has been, to kill off Star Trek as Star Trek: The Next Generation before it transitions to the form that will do battle with them on their own terms. And even if they were to fail here, they’d still be ready for us in the future. Either way, they win.”
“And who better to mastermind it all than a psychopathic fascist android?”

And now, the conclusion…

It’s hard not to go into “Descent, Part II” without acknowledging that this is the beginning of the end for Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s televisual voyage. The news had broken over the summer, so there’s no point in pretending the shadow of cancellation wasn’t looming long over the seventh season. Let’s clarify a few facts first and foremost then: Yes, Star Trek: The Next Generation was prematurely canceled. Yes, it was canceled because Paramount wanted to launch a film series with the Next Generation cast. Production costs had gone up and, with the show as popular as it had ever been, they thought it would be more profitable to start a new film series than to continue the TV one. They were wrong.…

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Eruditorum Press Hugo Eligibility List

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Edit to add: I forgot the category in which fans of this blog could plausibly put someone on the ballot – James Taylor, cover artist for all Eruditorum Press books, is eligible for Best Fan Artist, a category that required just 23 nominations to get on the ballot last year.

Hugo nominations have officially opened. If you were registered for Sasquan, you are automatically eligible to nominate (though you’ll have to join MidAmericon II to vote); otherwise you’ll have to register for MidAmericon II. If you’re eligible, you should have an e-mail coming in the next few days with details on how to nominate. 

I’m working on my nomination ballot, and will post it when it’s ready in the course of a “everybody post your ballot in comments” post. It remains my view that everyone should make their ballots public this year, just because that’s a sound anti-Puppy tactic.

Anyway, if you want to nominate anything we do over here for some bizarre reason, here’s a rough guide to it.

  • Jack Graham and Jane Campbell are both eligible for Best Fan Writer. The case could be made that I am as well; I personally disagree with this case.
  • Pex Lives is eligible for Best Fancast. They’re the name on the libsyn account all our other podcast content posts to, so as far as I’m concerned they get the credit for Shabcast, the Eruditorum Press Doctor Who Series 9 Podcast, City of the Dead, et cetera.
  • Guided By The Beauty of Their Weapons is eligible for Best Related Work. So is Recursive Occlusion, but as it’s included in its entirety in Guided by the Beauty, why vote-split?
  • TARDIS Eruditorum is eligible for Best Related Work. Yes. The entirety of it.

Eruditorum Press as a whole is not eligible; it does not meet the criteria for Best Semiprozine or Best Fanzine. TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 6 is also probably not eligible; it would depend on whether it’s considered to be “substantially revised” from its original electronic publication, and the precedent set by booting “Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus” last year makes me suspect it’s not. 

Now go nominate something with an actual shot at getting on the ballot.…

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While The Past and Future Exist Simultaneously (The Last War in Albion Book Two Part Twenty-Four: Miracleman at Eclipse)

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{Impressively, Alan Moore’s second publisher for Marvelman/Miracleman was an even bigger trainwreck than his first. It is perhaps unsurprising, given this, to find out that Dez Skinn negotiated the bulk of the deal. The financial plan for Warrior had always involved selling the strips to foreign markets, and Skinn was determined to sell them as a package, reasoning that “strips like Spiral Path – which I put into an anthology alongside Shandor and Bojeffries Saga – were not the stars of the show,” but that Warrior would never have happened without them and that they deserved the same shot at foreign publication as the heavy-hitters like V for Vendetta and Laser Eraser and Pressbutton. But ironically, it wasn’t the lesser Warrior material that made selling the strips abroad a challenge, but the nominal crown jewel, Marvelman, as neither of the two biggest comics publishers would touch it. DC was the obvious first choice, since they were already having considerable success publishing Alan Moore in the US market, and were indeed interested, but Dick Giordano pointed out that there was simply no way that they could publish a comic called Marvelman, citing the number of problems they were already having with Captain Marvel, which they’d bought from the smoldering ruins of Fawcett and started publishing under the name Shazam! But the obvious second choice proved no better; Marvel wouldn’t touch it either, pointing out that if they were to publish a strip called Marvelman it would be read as representing the entire company, which was perhaps not quite what they wanted Moore’s psychologically damaged take on superheroes to do.

Figure 920: An advertisement for the never-published Challenger #1 from Pacific Comics.

That left smaller companies. Initially the plan was a company called Pacific Comics, but after contracts were signed and the first issue of Challenger, headlined by V for Vendetta, advertised Pacific abruptly went belly up in August of 1984, leaving all of the Warrior properties homeless once again. Ultimately they were acquired, alongside some other remnants of Pacific, by Eclipse Comics, created by siblings Jan and Dean Mullaney, but edited by cat yronwode (lack of capitalization per her wishes), a small publisher originally out of New York, but by this point run out of Guerneville California. But there were still other problems. Not only was Marvel uninterested in publishing Marvelman, they were uninterested in the idea of anyone else publishing him. This started with Marvel UK’s dispute with Skinn over the latter’s decision to break the informal truce they had by actually publishing a comic called Marvelman on the cover instead of featuring him inside Warrior, but rapidly spread to the US branch of the company.

In Moore’s telling, the figure at the heart of the dispute was Jim Shooter, who he characterizes as “one of these comic book industry führers,” which doesn’t actually rate very highly in the list of awful things Jim Shooter has been called by his fellow professionals.…

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Totemic Artefacts: Playmates Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Wave 1

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I first learned Playmates were going to be doing a line based on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on the cardback for one of my Star Trek: The Next Generation figures. In fact, on the back of my new Sela figure you can still see in bold red lettering the excited announcement that “toys and accessories” from the new show are “coming soon!”. Some of the figures from Star Trek: The Next Generation Wave 2 and the Original Series line (here called “Classic Star Trek”, which is how I knew that show for ages) even came with a mini checklist of all the Playmates toys released so far, with headshots of the figures and close-ups of the vehicles, playsets and prop replicas.

On the back of that checklist was one of the first-ever promotional shots of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cast-It’s the one where everyone’s standing around in costume in front of a brown shag curtain haphazardly draped over the walls and floor of a photo studio somewhere. This was the first static image I ever saw of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cast together in one place, and it was the first chance I had to get a good look at them. What’s also interesting about this promo is what it promised was coming in the Deep Space Nine line: All of the characters you’d expect, as well as vehicle toys of Deep Space 9, the Runabout and a Caradassian Galor Warship. That will be interesting to go back and examine in a few months, methinks.

Even though I followed this launch fairly closely (well, as closely as I could at the time at least), it took me a *very* long time to actually bring anyone from this line home. At first it was due to simple wariness: While the characters looked cool and all and I dug the general design aesthetics, in 1993 I still wasn’t completely 100% sold on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as an overall thing yet. So while I definitely saw these on store shelves at the time, I took care to admire them from afar-I was afraid to outright ask for them, and given a choice between spending my action figure money on one of these as opposed to a Wave 2 Star Trek: The Next Generation figure, the choice seemed clear. This turned out to be a cripplingly poor decision on my part, however: Within just a few months I was utterly hooked on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and I would have killed for these figures and, of course, that was just when the Playmates Star Trek line in general was starting to retreat from department stores, and the first casualties were the lowest selling toys. Namely, the comparatively more niche Deep Space Nine figures, which seemed to disappear as quickly as they had appeared.

For practically an entire *decade*, I languished in regret knowing I had very likely missed my one chance to bring home my second space family, as well as the last remnants from the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew (namely Tasha Yar and Ro Laren).…

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Minnesota Normal

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Matt Fraction posted this on Tumblr yesterday on the subject of Fargo, the 1996 Coen Brothers movie about a kidnapping in Minnesota, and the subsequent investigation by a heavily-pregnant police sheriff Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand). He (quite rightly, in my opinion) defends the film and the filmmakers from the charges of being ‘arch’ and ‘mocking’. In reaction, here are some thoughts of my own.

(If you haven’t seen Fargo, go see it, because the following piece – like Matt Fraction’s – contains spoilers. And also because it’s a really good film that everyone should see.)

Formally, the film works in the same way as an episode of Columbo, i.e. it is one of those police procedurals in which we, the audience, see every detail of the crime, and know ‘whodunnit’ before the detective, and get to watch the detective figure it out. But whereas Columbo is a classical detective in other respects – he’s near-supernaturally insightful, always one jump ahead – Marge Gunderson is hardly a detective at all. Or rather, she’s a detective in a way that is far more like real life. She’s never one jump ahead. She amasses evidence and she follows it. She doesn’t display any leaps of insight. She doesn’t really deduce anything. There is a famous bit where she corrects another officer’s mistake (the “I’m not sure I agree with you 100% on your police work there Lou” bit) but it isn’t played to emphasize her special abilities. On the contrary, it emphasizes her basic competence over the routine incompetence of one of her colleagues. In other respects, she doesn’t distinguish herself. At first, she makes nothing of Jerry Lundergaard’s attempts to fabricate licence plates, despite being left alone with – and noticing – the pad on which he’s doing it. And why should she? She has no context that would make any reasonable person see it was significant. The usual leap of imagination of the detective is a contrivance. It’s actually the writer feeding insights to the detective at strategic moments in order to make the plot work. She sees the framed photo of Mrs Lundergaard in Jerry’s office and there is no standard cop-eureka moment when, as she stares at the photo, she suddenly puts things together. Why should there be? She doesn’t know Mrs Lundergaard is missing yet. She catches Grimsrud not because she tracks him down but because she happens to drive past his hideout and recognise the ‘tan Ciera’ parked outside.

The film resolutely resists depicting Marge as special in any way. She isn’t particularly clever, insightful, glamorous or charismatic. Indeed, by conventional standards (by which I mean standard conventional depictions, which the movie flouts and undermines) she looks the opposite of all these things. Extraordinarily unextraordinary, she is simply competent at her job, fond of her husband, polite to her colleagues, etc. Moreover, she is vulnerable to the frailties of the flesh in ways that we real people know full well (even if we don’t all know what it’s like to be pregnant) but to which movie people routinely display superhuman indifference.…

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Comics Reviews (January 27th, 2016)

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You know the drill, I’m sure. Digital codes redeemable at this url for the first person to try them.

Chew #54

A twenty-page fridging as this book continues its long march towards an ending that should have come at least fourteen issues ago.

Saga #33

Another “oh, right, those guys” issue for me, although it reintroduced its characters well enough to actually be followable, which is nice. I’m firmly out of love with this book, though, and honestly considering dropping it and waiting for it to all be over and go on some eventual big Comixology sale. It occurs to me that it’s basically become A Song of Ice and Fire with all the attendant problems – too many characters who are spread out over too many settings, and switching among them in single point-of-view chapters that feel like they take too long. Ah well. Loved the “writer gets first byline” gag though.

All-New All-Different Avengers #4

There’s a cute “political correctness” gag here, but for the most part the “all-different” part of this title is an increasingly bleak joke. This is ruthless traditionalism with a diverse cast. Fair enough, and probably something that should exist, but hard to get excited about. Al Ewing’s been doing the same vibe with a much bolder and fresher tone for years now. I do like Thor’s characterization, but ironically the final cliffhanger, in which Iron Man wonders if she’s “really who she claims to be,” is really one that only would have worked during the interminable “who is the new Thor” plot. Instead the answer to “why is she acting like she’s not immortal” is straightforward, even if it’s the first time she’s actually seemed like an interesting character.

Digital code: THM8ZFRF8513

Black Magick #4

This picks up, with the cop book/occult thriller balance feeling well-struck. It still feels more style than substance, and I’m hoping things settle in the arc-ender (presumably before it takes a break so Nicola Scott can catch up, as she’s not a monthly artist). On the whole this remains a bit of a disappointment to me – not least because I remember years ago when Rucka said he was waiting for Nicola Scott to be free to do another book of Queen and Country, so it’s especially frustrating to see them not quite clicking into high gear on a great premise instead of that. But I’m holding out hope.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #3

This continues to fall slightly short of outright sparkling, and there’s something a little depressing about seeing Ms. Marvel reverse engineered into a formula, even if it is well-executed. But this is probably the best issue yet, and it’s starting to become clear how this is going to work as an ongoing book. The first half is a bit weak – the fight scene is muddy and hard to follow, depending on a “everyone’s chasing the ball that gets tossed around” sequence in a space that isn’t visually clear enough to support that.…

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