Bran the Blessed

So I finished Enoch Anson More Jr.' Out of the Past, about an American thawing out the mummy of a Hindu woman who knew the Buddha. It's a fairly enjoyable read and the prostelytising the main character and his sister do at the woman is not sucessfull, which is something I highly praise because I am sick of the literal "holier then thou, oh look at these primitive savages, they think their senseless nonsense is an actual credible religion, let's make them realise how much more sensible our religion is and supplant theirs" attitude of many Christian writers I've come across. Maurus Jókai in his "The City of the Beast" has a Hebrew discover Atlantis and then proceeds to try and "save it" from destruction by cursing everyone with terrible plagues, afflictions and all manner of grief and he's portrayed as the good guy ! So I'm glad when this doesn't happen for once, not entirely.

Well, I just wondered if by "ancient" you meant colonial period (since you mentioned colonialism) or if you meant pre-Aryan, or somewhere in-between, or what. I doubt there's a lot of fantasy from India available in English that deals with the pre-Vedic period.

I definitely meant the pre-colonial stuff.

And I never heard about that either. Mind you I hoped there'd be some older examples to look up too. I did find this list on Goodreads though the creator wants to exclude the stuff that'd be the most interesting to me.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/46524.Indian_Fantasy_and_Science_Fiction

What do you mean by "ancient India"? There's always the Talbot Mundy books. I enjoyed his novel Om quite a bit. Mundy had respect for the culture.

Well Ancient India : P

And I meant if there's any notable Indian writers who wrote in that vain.

I was wondering, are there any good "traditional" (as in non experimental) fantasy novels set in Ancient India written by actual Indians ? Cause I've been badly burned on ones written by British colonialists before, Nathaniel Newnham-Davis and his Jadooh for one. Just started reading another one, Out of the Past by an American, Enoch Anson More and already it's much more lively by page 52 than Newnham-Davis' entire book, and I've got "The Mercy of the Lord" short story collection from India by Flora Annie Steel and Jungle Tales by Croker all lined up but I was wondering if there's anything more genuine to be had.

?

Oh and the main bad guy is named Popop.

And you're supposed to take him seriously.

I mean if he started sending you mail about how God can cancel your debt if you send him some money then I'd believe it. : P

Oh and Mastodons can smell people through solid rock apparently.

Who knew ?

I know y'all don't really care about this, as no one really does, including me, but after finishing Anona of the Moundbuilders, I have to say, this has been one of the few books I've read where the main character has been largely absent from their own book and has in fact been almost completely inconsequential to the proceedings.

The funniest bits were when the main character talks about how they played hide and seek to pass the time while stuck in a subterranean prison for more then half a decade, or how she promises, several thousand years ago, to institute popular elections among the Moundbuilders !

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1730848280

I mean this is just embarassingly bad.

Starting Anona of the Moundbuilders and literally first page there's racism. I'm still gonna read it but they sure did not waste any time.

That's the really depressing thing about Milligan's tail dive to a dull ending. The comic was doomed anyway, so they could have done anything with it. Have John marry Etrigan instead of Shelly, get the rhymer preganant and end the series with him ruling Hell as its Regent until his heir comes of age (Etrigan would have died in childbirth, shitting a miniature demon out of his arse). Do a barking mad Cabbalistic space opera like Nameless. Have John make a deal with the taoist tongs Warren Ellis left out of London's occult landscape and overrun the south with hopping vampires as a protest against David Cameron's re-election. Bring back the Beard Hunter from Doom Patrol and have John try to prevent him getting into an apocalyptic battle with BRIAN BLESSED that would wipe London (and most of the rest of the home counties) off the map if it takes place. You name it (and you can probably think of madder shit than I can) they could have done it, because it didn't matter with the comic getting cancelled whatever they did with it.

I thought I was being called.

Well the ending seemed like something they forced on him rather suddenly, and it appears he wanted to finish the stuff he wanted to do.

Mind you I was not a fan of the ending because if they were gonna end it, give John his happy end and don't screw us over with some weird artsy thing. Yeah that's not really the theme of the series but it would leave less of a bad taste in my mouth then what we actually got.

fuck that i just want a book starring jjj, call it:

 

RELENTLESS - A true Journalist at War!

 

Starring John Jonah Jameson Jr. on the just cause of stopping the greatest menace to society: Super-Beings.

I've always found the idea of reading things like TV shows in novelised form to be a bit of a stretch as so much is based around the performance of the individual actors. And Comics kinda feel weird in this sense to me too. Though some writers love to fill their paragraphs with meaningless pseudo artsy drivel like Frank Miller waxing poetic about the reek of a godamn sewer.

That's probably why Spider Man stars Peter Parker, who varies between mid-20s and early-30s, rather than starring JJJ.

A comic book starring J Jonah Jameson is something I did not know I needed until now.

I'll go check now. The flag might have not come up or something.

 

I think that's the problem with Pollack's run in a nutshell, right there. It's a bit like Morrison, but nowhere near as good. If they want to collect something she did for DC, the New Gods series seemed to suit her a lot better.

(It's surprising how many SF and fantasy novelist's talent goes awol when they start scripting a comic instead of working in prose: it's hard to believe Anima was written by Elizabeth Hand or the same KW Jeter who wrote Farewell Horizontal and Dr Adder couldn't do any better than that shoddy Mister E miniseries...)

Maybe it's cause you have to be a lot more descriptive in a book then in a comic ? I've seen some comics, especially ones features on AT4W, where the narrator goes on forever into such absurd detail that it's basically like reading a book with illustrations and that's usually pretty boring.

Yeah, I remember Muktuk! That was a fun book. I always like LaBan's stuff.

 

Yeah, that was the same Prophet, from the Cable cross-over, but this version of Prophet is very different from that original Image book. It's pretty much reinterpreting Prophet as Lone Sloane, if you are familiar with that series from Heavy Metal. It was reprinted by Dark Horse Comics in the 1990s, which is where I came across the series.

Nope. The only Heavy Metal thing I've ever seen is the not very good second movie.

I read Muktuk but it didn't really latch on

 

Probably was not in the mood for comedy at the time. I dunno

It was an interesting thing to focus on, but I guess it needed to be longer to properly shine.

Also finished Tiger Lung now. Pretty good. Given how much time and effort the author has put into this, it's sad that this trade is all thee is.

Can we get one story about nomadic Shamen fighting Supernatural evil that will maybe at least get the obligatory 12 issues please ?

Yeah, probably one and the same.

 

I thought the new take was very good. Set against the back drop of an intergalactic war that the Earth lost several thousand years ago. Highly recommended. Really not at all like it's predecessor aside from the name. trades should be readily available and cheap.

Not sure, did you ever read Muktuk Wolfsbreath, the Vertigo limited series I mean ? This is very similar to that, though a bit better written because the Terry LaBan had to introduce his characters and a whole bunch of shamanic concepts as well as have a plot with a big twist wrap up in only 3 issues so that's excusable. Haven't read that newer, seemingly more comedic version of Muktuk though.

Oh, man, Prophet was a bad Image comic from the 90s that was recently stood on it's head by Brandon Graham and Simon Roy. Deep outer world sci fi stuff, very much recommended.

Wait that Prophet ? I have a crossover with him and Cable from ages ago. It has a blue dude look into a glass cube and then being sucked inside and the token hostage female character gets one panel in the background.

So it's good then ?

Edit: Yeah it's hard to find in other ways too. Hint hint.

Big fan of his (Simon Roy) work on Prophet so may check that out too !

This was pretty hard to find. And what is Prophet then ? Cause I might check it out.

Just started reading Tiger Lung. Pretty sure most of you have never heard of it but I am a sucker for prehistoric fiction, especially one with supernatural elements. Pitty there's only the one trade of it.

The current set of hardbacks reprinting the whole of Zenith (including the Fleetway copyright clusterfuck in book 3) aren't available in the 'States, then?

By the way, speaking of Morrison, kinda, are they ever gonna collect Rachel Pollack's run after Morrison ?

Oh Dom, do you have a full inbox ? Cause I sent you a message a bit ago and not sure if you've seen it.

@ Seventh:

 

I don't know, I liked Milligan's run. I dunno, it just happened.

 

you monster!

I preffer it to Azzarello's any day : P

Sebastian O wasn't very dark.

No but it was amazing and it's a crying shame Morrison never made more of it.

@ Seventh:

I don't know, I liked Milligan's run. I dunno, it just happened.

@ Christian:

Honestly yeah, looking back, that big mythical ending of Delano's original run seems really wasted considering the John Ennis decided to write afterwards.

Oh and I did praise Carey for being able to do a continuous story arc all throughout his run which wasn't much of a thing before.

I think that's a bit unfair on Azz, Dave. Sure, the whole thing dribbled away into a massively unimpressive damp squib of an ending, but Hard Time and Freezes over were both excellent stories, and a couple of the one shots mixed into the rest of it weren't bad, either.

I dunno, it felt like he went even further then Ennis, who seemed to have the supernatural around as window dressing so he could have a lot of gore and guys beating each other up and Azzarello seems to have just thrown it out almost exclusively and just focused on the fisticuffs.

Nameless and Annihilator were both pretty reminescent of his '90s output as well, I thought.

I don't think I've heard of either of those. Or if I did I totally forgot.

You know, Ennis seems to have done crude for ages, and people loved him for it.

Of course now you look back and you see while Delano liked to experiment, Ennis mainly wanted to do two things:

1) Wank his Lucifer-lite, who is now the Lord of Hell, even though Sandman Lucifer exists still, but this one's even better cause he doesn't bother to be an interesting character but just swears and eviscerates people a lot.

2) Somehow work Ireland into things, though not in any actual interesting way given it's rich history and many legends he could make use of, just simply having someone be from Ireland and have an issue where they talk about Irish economic woes of the early 90's which, looking back, is an interesting time capsule but makes for a dreadfully boring comic book especially as Kit had all the depth of one of those cheap painting prints you buy just to hang something in the background where no one will ever care about it.

Mind you Ellis seemed to be basically doing the worst things Ennis was doing but ten times as much in his super-brief run.

However I will say this, Ennis at least had more respect for the series to have it take place in Britain most of the time and trying to have John be somewhat close to the original idea of John as a character. He may have been an underperformer overall, but at least he tried somewhat. Not like Azzarello.

I mean, people can say what they want about Milligan but Azzarello surgically amputated the supernatural out of the series and transplanted the whole thing to America for a long, unfunny, meandering road trip whose sole achievement was that it's idiotic final villain was a pretty good parody of Bruce Wayne.