Lit City Blues

I am curiously ambivalent about X-Men Grand Design. On the one hand, it's a monumental, well-nigh impossible task, and Ed Piskor-- who wrote, drew, colored, and lettered this volume, making this the first entirely by a single creator that Marvel had published since 1985-- takes an incredible swing at this monumental, well-nigh impossible task.

I'm just not entirely sure he hits the ball out of the park.

Part of that is simply the sheer scale of what he's attempting. He's attempting to take the entirety of the X-Men Silver Age comics and condense them down into a single volume. It's an eight-year run of comics. In contrast, there is an excellent podcast out there attempting to untangle the entire history of The X-Men one issue at a time (Jay & Miles X-Plain The X-Men), and they've been at it since 2014. They are currently on episode 526, from what I can tell. Five hundred and twenty-six.

That's the scale of what Piskor is attempting.

I didn't have a lot of familiarity with Silver Age X-Men, but this first volume features the formation of the original team of Cyclops, Marvel GIrl, Beast, Angel and Ice Man and explores the backstories of Professor X, Cain Marko, Magneto-- and even though he seem like he's going to be more of a figure in this than he turns out to be, Namor.

Opposing them and gathered by Magneto, you see the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, which features Mastermind, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Toad. As the two teams engage in various battles with each other, in the background, we see a rising tide of anti-mutant hysteria, led by Robert Kelly, Bolivar, and Larry Trask, and the eventual emergence of the Sentinels, as well as Cameron Hodge and his anti-mutant supremacist group, The Right.

The first volume also includes a Piskor reproduction of X-Men #1, which is awesome-- granted, I can't say that I have a ton of interest in Silver Age Comics or the history of comics in general as an artform, but even I was like, 'oh snap, this is pretty cool.' and that's me, who is not at all a hardcore comics person.

Everything art-wise is on point. The lines, the colors, the giant-sized treasury, and the general look and feel of the pages are all designed to make you, the reader, feel like you're holding one of those Silver Age issues in your hands. And it works. It's a remarkable piece of art in that respect-- but, narratively...

I just don't know. I don't know what it is-- it doesn't feel like Piskor is phoning this in- his reverence for the characters and the source material is way too obvious and can be felt in every page. If I had to put a finger on it, it might be that the size and scope of what he's trying just kind of collapses back in on itself, like a dying star in some parts. It feels like he's trying to give you a decade's worth of comics in two volumes, and as a result, you see the broad strokes of the history, but it lacks a lot of the character work you would get in individual issues and arcs. But what else can you do? Those broad strokes, attempting to construct a coherent narrative out of all this history, that's what this is. Piskor does it and does it well. I don't know if anyone else could have managed it quite this well.

The Lady Astronaut series finishes up with the fourth and final volume, The Martian Contingency. This volume flips back to Elma York and her husband, Nathan, and their arrival on Mars.

Look, I'm going to be up front with everyone: Elma's not my favorite character. She starts out strong in the first book, becomes unbearably naive in the second book, and dances towards that again in this book, but rallies nicely at the end. I actually really like her arc in this book, because it does something that we haven't seen since the first book. There, Elma overcomes her anxiety and learns how much power she actually has when she becomes the public face of the astronaut program. Here, Elma has to learn how to be in command.

So, they're on Mars, and things are going well, but Elma starts noticing things. A very nice mural has been painted over some racial slurs. There is what appears to be a makeshift jail cell in an airlock. Members of the first expedition dodge her questions about it, and she gets frustrated. But before she can get to the bottom of it, events intervene.

A critical supply drop goes off course and crashes into the surface. Mission Control stonewalls their request for guidance and supplies, and the new Martians worry that they're about to be evacuated. Wanting to preserve the mission, they take matters into their own hands and tell Mission Control they won't leave-- only to find out that Director Clemons, longtime head of the IAC, has died of a heart attack, and Elma's old rival Parker is taking over.

Parker immediately separates everyone by gender, sending the women up to the Goddard, the colony ship in orbit, and keeping the men on the surface. Elma is initially (along with everyone else) outraged until Parker sends her a coded message that lays out the problem: he needs to be confirmed first and, until he gets that done, he asks Elma to trust him. Nicole (still President) chimes in as well, urging trust. Elma considers this, considers the events of the second book, and how their relationship changed, and actually goes along with the plan.

She takes command of the Goddard, and work continues on Mars to complete the second dome expansion.

In the meantime, Elma settles into her role and immediately courts controversy: one of the crew members reveals a pregnancy. Medically, they are nowhere near ready for babies on Mars, and the crew member in question (who thought that Elma's tried and true rhythm method would work for her, even though Elma's math was off thanks to being on Mars now). It gets insanely complicated, as the crew member wants an abortion, and it is the early 70s, so abortion is an issue.

I actually loved this part of the book, because Elma gets called out a little bit and has to face up to the fact that, as commander and because of who she is, she's got influence and a certain amount of power over people, whether she wants to admit that or not. She finally understands the truth of that, and despite Nicole sending a message via Helen that the abortion should not proceed, she takes advantage of a communications lapse between Earth and Mars (Earth moves behind the sun for a bit) to authorize it anyway- and, more importantly, owns the decision.

On Mars, something goes disastrously wrong with the carbon dioxide scrubbers, and Nathan is among those seriously affected. Elma finds out that Nathan has been hiding medical conditions from her and, more importantly, finds out what happened on the First Expedition. Here's the thing, though: the well-meaning white lady of the previous book actually listens and gives the people of color who had the experience space-- but also, insists that they report it. It's such a sea change from the second novel; it's almost jarring in a way, but it fits the arc that Elma goes through in this book. She gets and owns the power that a part of her has always felt that she deserved, but in the end, she realizes that what she really wants to do is fly.

She turns down the opportunity to take over as head of the Mars base and settles into life with Nathan on Mars.

Overall, this felt like an ending and curiously open-ended in many ways. The series has been pretty good up to this point in giving us glimpses at how climate change brought on by the meteor strike is changing Earth, but it seems to fade into the background here. And there are hints here and there that they think they might be able to ameliorate the effects of it somewhat? It's unclear... the ultimate fate of Earth is left open, and the characters are just kind of chilling on the moon and Mars? I'm torn about it.

On balance, I think this finished strong. Elma's character was far more palatable than when we last saw her, and while I do miss Nicole (The Relentless Moon was really my favorite novel in this series) I think ending this on Mars, with the goal of having gotten humanity off planet achieved was the best finish possible.

So, without meaning to, I begin a rewatch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and originally, this post was going to be about that, but I want to put a little bit of a spin on it, especially given what's happened with Starfleet Academy. Now, granted, I know Star Trek in general is up in the air given the current merger between Paramount and the WB, but let's assume that the franchise returns to both big and small screens over the course of the next few years. I do think Trek has a problem; they're going to have to sit down and really think about it-- and no, it's not the alleged wokeness of it all.

It's the writing.

I don't think that Nu-Trek has figured out how to write for the streaming era quite yet. The striking thing about watching the first two seasons of Deep Space Nine is the amount of character work the writers get to do, because of the amount of time they have to work with, episode-wise. You can do more-- you can, as the kids say, 'cook' when you've got 20-26 episodes to work with. It allows you build out your characters more and actually develop evolution and story arcs in the way an 8-12 episode order, which is more common in the streaming era doesn't allow for.

Kira alone evolves over the course of the first two seasons-- 'Past Prologue', 'Battle Lines',' 'Progress', 'Duet', 'Sanctuary', 'Crossover', 'The Collaborator', 'Second Skin'-- that's nine episodes centered around Kira's character in the first two seasons and doesn't include the pilot ('Emissary') or the first season finale/second season premiere, which is essentially a four-episode arc ('In The Hands Of The Prophets', 'The Homecoming', 'The Circle', 'The Siege)'.

The crazy part is that you could break down most of the other cast members the same way-- I'd say there might be some overlap between Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton) and Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) as there aren't many truly 'Jake-centered' episodes in the early going, but really and truly, they all get their moments. And again, why? Because the structure and length of the season allowed the writers to give them that.

Contrast that with the first season of Starfleet Academy and indeed all of Nu-Trek to some degree or another. The structural limitations that these shows have mean that we're given glimpses of really interesting things that feel half-formed because they seem to be unable to really have the time to develop and round out the characters the way they used to be able to. Whether this is a product of newer writers to the Trek universe or the change in structure, I don't know-- but for all the complaining about Starfleet Academy, if you scrape aside the 'but it's woke' bullshit, this is what the heart of a lot of the criticism gets at. There's no time to get to know these characters. There are way too many 'CW High School Show' tropes being thrown around and not enough competence porn.

But that's kind of unfair to the writers as well. Honestly, my boldest take on Starfleet Academy is that 'Come Let's Away' (Episode 6) should have been the pilot. We should have been dropped right into that situation, because it told us SO MUCH about the universe the show currently occupies. This isn't the Federation the way it used to be-- it's a vulnerable Federation, a rising/returning power in the Quadrant, and there are forces that don't want to see it return. That would have been one hell of a way to introduce us to these characters and how they react to danger, loss, and work together as a team. Everything could have flowed from that moment-- it's legitimately one of the strongest episodes of the season, and they buried it in episode six.

'Vox In Excelso' was another excellent moment that didn't quite stick the landing, because again, you have one episode to build around. Why not make it an arc over multiple episodes? Why not allow us to explore Jay-Den's character more? It's a fascinating episode, primarily because the idea that the Klingons are a dead end as a culture has been kicking around in multiple iterations of Trek dating back to the Original Series movies-- their fate here is a logical endpoint, but what DOES THAT MEAN. SHOW US. EXPLORE IT A BIT-- but how can you really do that in a 12-episode season?

Another example of weird writing choices was the character arc of Phillipa Georgiou in Star Trek Discovery-- the character builds up to a point where she's forced to admit that she's changed and maybe isn't the brutal Terran from the Mirror Universe she used to be and then gets sent back in time via The Guardian of Forever to save her life and then appears in the Section 31 movie as a completely different character. So annoying-- and what a waste of potential that movie was as well. Honestly, probably far worse than anything Starfleet Academy has offered so far.

(The Burn was... an interesting choice, but I think better ones were available in Trek canon if you dug a little bit. Omega particles, for instance.)

What I am curious about with Nu-Trek is the thought process behind some of their decisions-- like, I don't know if the plan was always to send Discovery to the future, but it felt like a brilliant, game-changing choice for that show. In Starfleet Academy, Sam's character gets flipped on a dime in order to repair her injury, and it brings added context to The Doctor that would have been amazing to explore. (The choice to make it the original Doctor and not the one that left the Delta Quadrant planet to go home hundreds of years in the future was an interesting one as well.) Despite the frustration with the writing on Nu-Trek and the difficulty diagnosing what, if anything, is wrong with it, I will give them credit: they take big swings —sometimes those work. Sometimes they don't, but I like the flashes of ambition we see from time to time with Nu-Trek.

I think going forward, I like the idea of adopting what James Gunn is (reportedly) doing for the DC Universe: if the script isn't right, don't make it. I'd love to see any of the following:

Star Trek United, but with a clear planned three-season arc (similar to Andor.) Have a complete story laid out and ready to go. It's a great pitch and would allow you to give Enterprise a better capstone while also exploring something we don't really see in Star Trek-- the political side/machinations of how the Federation actually works.

A better Section 31 movie: The Hunt for Red October is just sitting there waiting to be tweaked, and if done right, it would be perfect. Keep Rachel Garrett, by all means. Ditch the weird kitschy technicolor crap and just tell a spy story, preferably involving Romulans. (What's The Tomed Incident? No one really knows what drives the Romulans into their period of isolation, which only ends at the time of TNG? There's a story here, I just know it.)

There are other pitches out there that you can dig up-- a fascinating one that I see a lot is 'a planet discovering warp drive and then getting admitted to the Federation' like an inverse First Contact story. I do think there is something to the notion that competence porn is resonating with viewers right now, and it's always been a key and underrated component of Trek-- it's a group of really smart people solving problems and doing it well. Whatever you do, whatever story you tell, if you find that at its core, you're going to be in a good place.

I'll keep picking my way through Deep Space Nine until Strange New Worlds drops again in July. But as this post was supposed to be about Deep Space Nine, I suppose I should talk about it...

Season One gets a lot of crap in some quarters, mainly for 'Move Along Home.' I honestly don't think it's that bad of an episode-- 'Dax' is a solid courtroom drama, which is always good at, but honestly, even if it was nice to see Q ('Q-Less') and Lwaxana Troi ('The Forsaken') again, 'Duet' is just an incredible episode and leads directly into a really strong arc of episodes about the ongoing mess on post-Occupation Bajor. What's crazy about 'Duet' is that it was obviously meant to be a bottle episode-- light on the special effects for budgetary reasons and writing just holy shit, it sings. The performances —Harris Yulin as Marritza going eyeball to eyeball with Nana Visitor as Kira — are absolutely electric. Easily a top episode of Star Trek altogether-- if it's not on a list, your list is wrong.

Season Two finds more of a groove, I think, and introduces The Maquis, which is a nice 'shades of grey' aspect to the Federation that we get to explore over the course of the next few seasons. The Mirror Universe and more Bajoran political twists and turns keep it entertaining, but the introduction of the Jem'Hadar in the final episode really begins Deep Space Nine's incredible run.

Okay, I'm going to admit something: I might have been just a wee bit too harsh about The Calculating Stars, because this book provides so much context about its predecessor that it almost functions as a separate part of the same story in many ways.

Don't get me wrong: I get why Kowal split these two books up. Trying to flip back and forth between one narrative and another AND have two separate primary POV characters seems positively migraine-inducing to contemplate. But if you think about The Calculating Stars and The Relentless Moon as two different sides of the same coin, it makes so much more sense. I was genuinely disappointed in The Calculating Stars and felt like the series had fallen off quite a bit to the point where I was wondering if it was worth finishing it out. The Relentless Moon dragged me all the way back in, and now I'm definitely finishing this series out.

The Relentless Moon switches us to a new narrator: Nicole Wargin. She's back on Earth, while Elma is on her way to Mars with the first Mars expedition, and tensions are rising. People are starting to question the necessity of spending so much money on the space program when there are parts of the world that have not recovered from the effects of the Meteor. There are people who don't believe in climate change caused by the meteor, despite evidence all around them indicating that temperatures are rising and the problems are getting worse.

Nicole has struggles of her own: she wants to be in space and loves being a pilot, but has to balance her ambitions with those of her husband, the Governor of Kansas and prospective presidential candidate Kenneth Wargin. Nicole is something of a chameleon, shifting from pilot to perfect politician wife and back again with ease, but Kenneth, her husband, also knows that she wrestles with a demon of her own: an eating disorder.

A rocket launch goes awry, there's rioting in the new United States Capitol of Kansas City, and then, during an astronaut husband's poker night, Nathaniel York, Elma's husband, collapses from what everyone thinks is an ulcer, but turns out to be something more sinister: poison.

Suddenly, the FBI is investigating the space program, and Nicole is sent to the moon, not as a pilot or an astronaut, but to send a message to the Lunar Colony Administrator that the program has been infiltrated and they suspect that there is a saboteur somewhere on the moon.

Those suspicions soon prove correct, as the pilot (Eugene) of their trip to the moon gets violently ill en route. The landing goes awry, and one of the landing struts collapses, forcing them to evacuate the shuttle and for Nicole to leave her top-secret cargo behind. Once safely in the colony, power outages start cropping up. There's an outbreak of polio. (Which is a nice historical touch on the part of Kowal: there's a vaccine, but it's not widely available yet.) Nicole breaks her arm and is worried that it will heal incorrectly and keep her grounded permanently, but gets to work trying to find the saboteur.

In the middle of all of this, Kenneth announces a run for President. She's doing press appearances and giving interviews, and almost gets electrocuted, and then just when she thinks she might be getting somewhere, Kenneth offers to go and find out more for her and gets assassinated in the process.

Now, it's personal. Nicole's friends-- including Eugene, Myrtle, and Helen rally around her, and some of them-- Myrtle especially are aware of her eating disorder and have to force her to eat to keep going. Resenting the hell out of them for it, she does, more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this. She's forced to deliver a eulogy from the Moon and blames (rightly) the terrorists for her husband's death and urges people to fight against them. She figures out that all of this is building towards something potentially catastrophic, like a bomb, and races with her friends to find those responsible and eventually does so.

The post-script of the book fast-forwards a couple of years later, when Nicole, now President, welcomes home the crew of the First Mars Expedition, and Eugene has been elected Mayor of the New Luna Colony. She eats every day, because food is fuel and she has a job to do.

Okay, where to begin? First of all, the title is right on-- The Relentless Moon, because Nicole is just getting hit with one thing after another throughout, and she gets put through the wringer here, but does fight through everything- including the loss of her husband to get the job done.

Second, I love the context it provides for the previous book. Elma and company don't know why they can't contact Earth; they just know they can't-- here, the characters know that there's a massive blackout that affects most of Kansas and their ability to contact Earth, which they have to work through and figure out that the satellites have been hijacked as well.

Finally, I just love Nicole. Elma, bless her cotton socks-- and I know this was one of my principal critiques of the previous books-- falls into the 'white lady discovering racism and trying to be helpful in all the wrong ways' trap way too much for my liking. There's almost a certain amount of naivety to her character that I was willing to forgive in the first book, but by the second book, I'm just sort of shaking my head and being like, 'Elma, come on, girl.' Nicole, on the other hand, is very clear-eyed about people and how much or how little to trust them. She's not naive about racism or extremism. It's a refreshing contrast-- especially when you learn that she spent the war not just as a pilot but as what is heavily implied to be a spy of some kind.

Did Kenneth have to die just because it's 1963 in this timeline, so a prominent politician should, of course, be shot? I go back and forth-- It's a pet peeve I have with alternate history/timelines-- if you're going to be all Missy Elliott about it (put that thang down, flip it and reverse it) and I can tell what's coming next because you've obviously just tweaked the history just a wee bit, I find that annoying as a reader. Here, it serves an unfortunate plot purpose-- Kenneth reveals he had a heart attack on one of Nicole's previous missions that he didn't tell her about, and that as a result, he probably wouldn't be able to survive a launch. For all that they're trying to establish humanity off planet, the uncomfortable truth they have to wrestle with is that not everyone is going to get a ticket off.

Nicole as President? Eh... imagine if Jackie Kennedy had been a fighter pilot, highly educated, could speak multiple languages, and had become an astronaut while being married to JFK? It's not wildly out of the question though, given recent events and the fact it took NASA decades to put a woman into space and the Soviets just kind of did it make me want to press 'X' for doubt on this one, but given who the character is and the loss of her husband, it's at least plausible, which is about all you could ask for, as a reader.

The Reboot Project has a new name: The Long Defeat!

The more I think about it, the more I think it's the writing. You can see the outlines of really fascinating and interesting stories that just... go nowhere. Or kind of get explored, but not really?

I fell down a local history rabbit hole and explored the old streetcar lines a bit. It was fascinating to find out how much of our history is hidden in plain sight all around us, and that the built environment we lament is something that has changed multiple times throughout history.

*NERD ALERT*

Emma Mackey is very good.

This movie would have made a ton of money in 1998.

I have no earthly idea why it's getting so much critical love in France, of all places.

I want to say something about this book without sounding like a crusty old fuck, but I'm afraid it's impossible. So, my apologies, dear reader, if this offends your sensibilities, but I think it's got to be said. This book nearly lost me on the entire series, because there's only so much 'white woman discovering racism' that I can read in one book before it becomes, you know, a little much.

(Obviously, that's not to say that racism doesn't exist or shouldn't be portrayed in books or anything like that... at all. Obviously, racism is bad. Obviously.)

But that being said, Elma York- a woman who is very aware of her Jewish identity and the burdens that she carries in post-War America- seems to blunder into 'oh, I've stuck my foot in post-war racial dynamics in a well-meaning but ill-conceived attempt to be helpful yet again' an awful lot here. It's not like Elma isn't aware of racism-- on the contrary, there are whole plot lines in the previous book (The Calculating Stars) that are wrapped up in: a. recognizing that people of color were not prioritized in evacuation and relief following the meteor strike, and b. recognizing that people of color are being discriminated against when they're setting up the astronaut program to begin with. These books do not ignore, dance around, or soften the racial politics of post-war America. It's just that the character who starts to see and recognize and speak out against the racism she encounters in the first book seems to retreat into Bambi-esque naivety about it in this book, and feels frustratingly inconsistent.

But as The Fated Sky begins, people are on the moon. There's a moon base, and Elma is flying back home to Earth, and along the way, her shuttle is hijacked by Earth First terrorists who want the governments of Earth to start paying more attention to the folks at home rather than spending all the money on the space program. (You see, in this universe, despite the fact that they're all pretty convinced that a runaway greenhouse effect will make Earth uninhabitable thanks to the meteor strike in a few decades, people still don't believe them-- which is a really nice and accurate touch that Kowal brings into these books from our current timeline.)

Elma is not scheduled to go to Mars, but a spate of bad publicity has created an opening for her, given her popularity and notoriety as 'The Lady Astronaut.' She's become the public face of the program, in many ways, so after talking it over with Nathaniel (and the two of them mutually deciding that the stars come first), she agrees.

(While I have some issues with the way Elma interacts with racism in this book, I do love the part where she and Nathaniel agree that she should go to Mars if she wants it. Nathaniel recognizes that while the thought of a career and a house and kids is appealing to him, he knows that Elma would never be truly happy unless she could fly somewhere. So that means, no kids, no house, no white picket fence-- but Mars instead.)

So, Elma is going to Mars-- except UH-OH, her addition means that someone has to be subtracted from the mission, and it turns out it's her good friend Helen. (From Taiwan!) So that's awkward, and Elma is upset about it, and she would never have agreed to it if she had known-- except, here's the thing: she kind of should have known, which is another frustratingly inconsistent thing about how this character is written in this book. She was a WASP pilot. She reported Stetson Parker due to his sexual harassment of other female pilots. She's aware of her own Jewish identity. She's becoming aware of how racism really affects people of color, but somehow she's blind to the power of publicity and how it can help the program.

Thankfully, the frustrating ways that Elma is written fall off a bit once she actually gets to Mars. She's put in a rather unusual position in that she's resented for being on the team-- another member of the team, Flannery, who was on the hijacked shuttle with her, is under suspicion for having helped the hijackers. The other ship is crewed by a white South African who comes along with all the racial baggage you would expect from a white South African in the early 60s. There are also two casualties along the way, and they lose contact with Earth for the better part of a month, but eventually they get to Mars.

Here's the kicker, and honestly, what saved the book: Elma and Parker actually develop, if not a friendship, then certainly a better understanding of one another. I was sort of kind of wondering if they were going to embark on a strange 'enemies to lovers' type of situation, but thankfully, the book waved off from that-- at least so far. And while Elma does not get to land on Mars on this trip, she makes a promise to come back permanently-- and sure enough, the postscript at the end of the book sees her landing with a wave of colonists that includes her husband, Nathaniel, and her friend Helen.