Halloween Special: "Gotham by Gaslight"

This is a one-shot comic book, a graphic novel I suppose. Its popularity got DC comics to start what they called the Elseworlds imprint, a series of comics that were like what-ifs; basically characters out of the ordinary.

I bought this back in 1991, but it came out in 1989, and is one of the earliest works by pencil artists Mike Mignola, the creator of Hell Boy.

Like the Elseworld titles that followed, the basic premise of a well known character is tweaked. Here, The Waynes are London socialites around the latter half of the nineteenth century, and when they're gunned down, their son Bruce eventully adopts the mantle of the bat. As an adult, he hunts the baddies of the East End, and eventually is tasked with hunting down Jack the Ripper.

The story is fun and brisk, and because there aren't any real consequences for a beloved character, they can stretch and play. The art is moody and dark, and you can see what Mignola took from Frank Miller's 1986 classic The Dark Knight Returns, a watershed moment for comics that, along with The Watchmen, elevated the comic book artform to new heights. Mignola was an artist that was influenced, like almost everybody in the industry, by those two works.

This is good, and classic.

One of the Elseworld stories I don't think I have is one where Kal-El's space craft crashes and he's rescued by the childless Waynes, and is raised as their son, Bruce. He takes up the mantle after they're gunned down. How wild does that sound? Bruce Wayne is really Kal-El, and Batman has Superman's powers.

But it all started with "Gotham by Gaslight".

"A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez", Selena Roberts: Where's My Lawyer?

I've written about this book before, over on the original site. My mother found the book for ninety-nine cents at some place and sent it to me. I decided to write about it today to coincide with a sports blog post about A-Rod trade rumors.

So...let's say you play baseball. You play hard, you practice hard, you're kicking ass all throughout high school and for a quick year at college before getting drafted in the early rounds. Finally making it and becoming a star, you're financial power secured for generations.

Then a book is published claiming you used steroids all throughout high school and in college and in the pros. Ah hell no! I don't fucking think so! Time to put that financial power to good use. If you're clean, you're suing the writer, the publisher, the parent company, every-damn-body, right? I would. I would grind everybody's face to dust over that shit, just like Curt Schilling said.

That's what this book is about; the little child that was abandoned by his dad, always needing reassurance, always needing to be the best, and using every opportunity to get to that spot. Selena Robert's book alleges is pretty exacting detail how steroid use appears to have started for Alex Rodriguez in high school, and continued all the way through his years with the Yankees.

She spoke with him directly more than once, trying to get some kind of reaction from him...and got nothing. At least not in the form of contradictory fightin' words. Or lawsuits.

So take it how you want. I don't put stock into the "that's so wrong I won't dignify it with a response" line of reasoning. We're talking about a baseball player who's totally obsessed with his stats and his place in baseball's history and his legacy, and that these allegations could compromise all that, but he's already admitted to doping at one point! How hard is it to jump to the conclusion that this book is accurate?

Undeniable fact: A-Rod came back after an off-season during high school with more than thirty pounds of lean muscle added to his frame. The odds of adding thirty-plus pounds of lean muscle in a few months even for high school aged kids is pretty low (read: nigh impossible)(unless you're Andre the Giant, maybe).

Alex Rodriguez is strange case. His numbers are through the roof. But the Bronx fans...I've been at games where they boo him. Possibly the greatest player ever (before the steroid revelations, of course) getting booed at his home park. I've even been at games where he hits a homer, and was groaned at, a nearby middle aged lady hollering, "Do it when it matters!" with a shake of her head.

You can't be a fake asshole in New York. They sniff that shit out right away. And that's one of the main reasons they don't like the West Coast. Being a fake asshole is the leading industry in LA.

"Noa Noa", Paul Guaguin: Leaving it All Behind

I don't know where I bought this, but I'm sure I didn't spend more than a buck.

Paul Gauguin was one of the great initiators of Post-Impressionism,which makes him one of the fathers of Modern Art. Although he wasn't well regarded in his lifetime, now his works are sought after and prized.

Tired of city life in Paris, Gauguin left (as a forty-three year old), and went off to live in the South Pacific, specifically Tahiti. Pulling a "French Thoreau" I guess; going all the way to the So. Pacific.

The cover image from this copy is from a wood cutting from Paul's time during this, his first, visit.

At first he's disappointed. Europe has long fingers, and they've reached all the way to the Tahitian "metropolises". Eventually he gets further and further from the major towns, into the backwoods of Tahiti, which sound pretty fucking in the cut.

"Do you want to live in my hut for always?" is how he realized that the young beautiful native girl in his hut was now his wife. She was arranging food on a banana leaf.

The type set is strange in that the printed words may cover only slightly more than half the white-space on each page. But the tone, the angst, the feeling of leaving it all behind and fleeing for the tropics...that's the truth behind wanderlust. That's all there.

There's also the inevitable feeling of disappointment, since the world you're fleeing is too tempting not to replicate (it creates wealth), and thus infects anything of significant size.

Gauguin did it. He was one of the few that actually did it. This journal is breezy and quick, and as it unfolds, you can see his awestruck eye move into cynicism, and then into practicalities of life in the jungle.

It's one of the blueprints, if you're all about ditching your families and bills and running away to the jungle...at least philosophically, anyway.

"South", Shackleton: Boo Yah! A Story for the Ages

What's the craziest true story you've ever heard of? There are some wild ones, like anything involving either Nikola Tesla or Evariste Galois or Chuck Yeager.

Or Ernie Shackleton.

This book I bought somewhere after hearing about the story. I think I asked for it for Decemberween one year also, and I think I actually have two copies at the apartment. I think this copy has a font that's easier on my eyes.

Okay, so the story: this book is the memoir and partial journal of Shackleton's ill-fated journey to the South Pole.

It was the time of the last great explorers, and as the North Pole had just been mobbed, the South Pole was next. Shackleton's team was in a race with another team, a second team that, as a SPOILER, actually beat Shackleton to the Pole. In fact, Shackleton never made the Pole. But that doesn't matter to the story; it's incidental.

The picture on the front of the book is from their first trial, when their vessel got caught, and then crushed, in the pack ice miles away from shore. The crew drug the supplies--including the twenty-foot-long lifeboats--600 miles across the floes. Six-hundred-miles. When they got to a rock formation called Elephant Island Shackleton took three of his strongest men and set out again in one of those long-boats on a patch of sea. In order to save his crew, he knew he needed to get away from Antarctica, and cross the angriest ocean on the planet, the Southern Ocean, to get word out and have at least a chance.

The four of them rocked and rolled on unbelievably heavy seas in a 20' open long-boat---basically a glorified canoe. And they eventually landed on a small island near South America, were picked up by a larger vessel, went to Argentina, got supplies and another ship, and went back for the crew members that were left behind.

They found them, and saved them.

Ernest Shackleton did not lose a single man from his floe-crushed ship Endurance. They spent months surviving and waiting, and Cap'n came back.

If four guys riding sixty-foot waves of stormy frigid ocean for 850 miles in twenty-foot long open canoes doesn't get your excitement meter running, then you should stop snorting meth from bony hooker asscracks.