On FOUNDATION and my Asimov history

So, a TV series based on Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION series is coming out, probably already started by the time anyone reads this. As I mentioned in a previous post, I wasn't even aware that this was a thing a month ago, when I came across one of the ads for it. Which is kind of weird, because in a previous phase of my life it would have been all I was thinking about for months prior to its debut. So I've had Asimov on the brain a lot for the last month.

(as to the TV show, while the first ad I saw for it looked good, subsequent investigation has seriously tempered my enthusiasm. And watching stuff on AppleTV is a pain. I've been willing to do it for TED LASSO, but not much else. It's a ten episode season, so I'll probably wait for five to air and start those, see how long I last)

Isaac Asimov's writing was pretty much a defining feature of my teen years. As I recall, it started when I was twelve. I was a pretty voracious reader prior to that, but most of the stuff I was reading prior to that was very much kids' stuff. Nothing I'm too ashamed of, but I know a lot of it involved precocious kids who were too smart for their age and had to solve the problems of grownups. We're talking Danny Dunn, Encyclopedia Brown, The Great Brain.  Anyway, that year we had a daily reading time in school, which in retrospect was probably break time for the teacher, where we had to sit and quietly read a book from the school library for, if I'm recalling correctly, fifteen minutes a day. The second one I picked was NIGHTFALL AND OTHER STORIES, a short story collection by Asimov. Not sure why I picked that. I might have been familiar with Asimov's name, maybe from the science fiction magazine bearing his name. I was definitely motivated by it being a short story collection, much more suited to 15-minute chunks of reading five days a week. Anyway, I don't think it's exaggerating to say that book changed my life, in tiny increments, over the next month or so. There are just whole ways of looking at the world that I'd never encountered before, a huge variety of imaginative settings used to tell stories about basic human truths. Also, and this can't be overestimated, Asimov wrote introductions to every story, which gave some fascinating insights into the process of writing and publishing that were all new to me.

Now, at twelve I was pretty undeveloped as a cultural consumer. I watched a lot of TV, but probably the only show I loved back then that I can still watch with anything other than nostalgic affection is THE MUPPET SHOW, and, y'know, that's kind of sui generis. Maybe DOCTOR WHO, I kind of go hot-and-cold on that. The only movies I remember seeing that I'd still watch today are THE WIZARD OF OZ and WILLY WONKA, maybe the STAR WARS movies. I was late in developing any affinity for music, so it would be a take a few more years for me to like anything, and a few more for me to really discover my groove.  There are a few comics I was reading back then that I still think highly of (the Perez/Wolfman TITANS and Giffen/Levitz LEGION among them), but even those I'd place as solid second tier behind that stuff that really clicked with me, which was still years in the future for me, even if it was mostly published decades in the past. So Asimov took root in a pretty fertile but empty field. After painfully finishing NIGHTFALL in fifteen minute increments (no, I couldn't just take it home, yes, I asked) I took it out as a regular library loan and re-read it in days, and then revisited favourite stories and scenes (in retrospect, I could have just lied and said I finished it, then taken it out as a regular loan. Oh, stupid honest 12-year-old Bob...). The school library was lacking in more, but the public library came through (hat-tip to https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/). I'm not sure, I think I, ROBOT was next, maybe some of the Robot or Empire novels. The man wrote a lot.

It didn't take me too long reading works by and about Asimov to become aware of the the FOUNDATION series (in fact, looking at the dates, it seems FOUNDATION'S EDGE was published just a few months prior to my discovery of NIGHTFALL). I admit I was initially a bit intimidated by it. I don't think it was helped by the covers of the available library copies being kind of weird. I've yoinked copies off the internet:

Tell me that's appealing to a 12-year-old boy. Also, for some reason I could never wrap my head around the fact that SECOND FOUNDATION is the third book (something whoever did this graphic didn't seem to know, either).

Obviously I eventually got over my issues, and exhausted all the other available Asimov science fiction in the library (little knowing what awaited me scattered throughout Dewey's decimal system). And probably had another birthday, so I was thirteen and officially a man, mazel tov. Okay, maybe not, but I was ready for the next level of storytelling, and this was it. Still kind of hard to believe that it was written from 1942 to 1950. It feels much more modern than that. Anyway, I have no idea how many times I read those books in the ensuing years. At least twice before I tackled FOUNDATION'S EDGE, and again after I finished that, and every time another book in the series came out (1986, 1988 and 1993) I'd re-read at least the original trilogy (my feelings about the later books are, let's say, complicated and still evolving, and a tale for another time). So I'd say at least seven times I read the trilogy in ten years.

But it's been a while. I still revisit Asimov on a regular basis, maybe every year or so, but I'm more likely to hit some of the short stories, maybe one of the (not quite) stand-alone novels, or some non-fiction. I think it's been at least 20 years since I've read the original FOUNDATION books. There was a time I'd have thought that was unthinkable. There was also a time when nothing would excite me more than then thought of a screen adaptation of FOUNDATION. But that was before THE BICENTENNIAL MAN and I, ROBOT broke my hearts. I'm still intrigued, even though it looks like some of what's going to be in the first season comes from the prequels PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION and FORWARD THE FOUNDATION, which are okay on their own merits, but a bit problematic in the grand scheme. There also seems to be a lot of original material in the adaptation, which, given the past work of the writer/producer, does not feel me with glee.

So I've got a few weeks, I think I might re-read the original trilogy again, maybe some of the other books. I'm just kind of sorry that it took this to get me to think back on my history with Asimov in such detail (trust me, the first draft of this post was much longer, and all the tangents in my head that didn't even make it to the screen would have made it three times longer). And hopefully, regardless of quality, this TV show will bring a new readership to Asimov's work (I haven't looked at how they're marketing the inevitable re-issues of the book, I hope they aren't trying to sell PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION as the first book and ideal starting point. I assume not, since Hari Seldon is being played by an old guy and Gaal Dornick appears to be a major part of it, and Salvor Hardin is in the cast list, so maybe flashbacks to the events of the prequels?). It definitely does deserve it. 

My own advice would be to pick up an Asimov short story collection (anything with "Robot" in the title), read a few of those, maybe pick up a short novel (THE CAVES OF STEEL, perhaps, is your best bet), then dive into FOUNDATION, remember that FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE is the second book and SECOND FOUNDATION is the third (fool me once...). Then, no matter what you think of it all, take a break. Do not dive right into either the sequels FOUNDATION'S EDGE and FOUNDATION AND EARTH or the prequels PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION and FORWARD THE FOUNDATION. Let the original trilogy sit in your head for a while. At least six months is probably good, ideally a year. Then re-read it, and then read the other four gradually, in publication order (EDGE, EARTH, PRELUDE, FORWARD). Actually, before you read EARTH there are other things you need to read, and a few more that might help, but revealing what and why those are here would be a spoiler (even saying this much is a spoiler, for which I can only apologize). Which I suspect will be spoiled by the end of the first season of the show.

But that's just my thoughts. Do it your own way, but definitely try the books, regardless of what the TV show turns out to be. I'm sure they'll be more readily available for the next little while than they ever have been before, even if you have to buy AppleTV branded editions.

State of the weblog address...

Linus: Oh, well. It was a short summer, Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown: And it looks like it's going to be a long winter

For some reason I always think of that line from one of the more obscure Peanuts animated specials this time of year. September 1969 release, I was just months from being born then. And more relevant a few weeks ago when I started to write this.

Anyway, if anyone is still reading this... I'll resist the natural urge to ask "Why" and just say "Thank you". And feel free to chime in if there's anything you'd like me to post about.  I know this exists mostly for my own amusement and future reference, but that's no reason anyone else shouldn't be amused or informed by it as well.

So, let's go around the horn on some topics I think I might want to discuss here, but history shows I won't get around to.

So a TV adaptation of Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION starts in a few days. There was a time in my life when that's all that would be on my mind at this point. Instead, I didn't even know that it was a thing until a few weeks ago. I kind of liked the first ad I saw, which I didn't even realize was FOUNDATION going in. I allowed myself to get unreasonably enthusiastic for a few minutes, until I looked it up and saw who the writer/producer was, not someone to be excited about, and the second ad I watched was less interesting. I'll probably still watch it, having learned no lessons from I, ROBOT and THE BICENTENNIAL MAN, maybe waiting until the first half of the season is over (I have Apple TV+ free for a few more months. Unfortunately you can see why they have to offer it for free, since it has easily the worst interface of any of the main streaming sites).  Before that, I should probably write some more about Asimov here, for posterity. His writing, in particular the original FOUNDATION trilogy, was a big part of my life in my teens, though it's been a while since I revisited it.

Other TV I've actually watched which might come up, TED LASSO is still enjoyable, if less so than the first season. The last year of BROOKLYN NINE-NINE was pretty decent. SCHMIGADOON was an entertaining diversion. The "last" year of BOSCH was a bit meandering, but okay. LUPIN started off pretty good, didn't really deliver on the promise with the back half, but was okay. JUPITER'S LEGACY, kind of hard to believe that got made and released. INVINCIBLE was decent in places, but all kind of inexplicable. I did discover and love TASKMASTER after the producers started putting it on-line. Other than that I mostly still watch older stuff. Watched all of STAR TREK - DEEP SPACE NINE a few months ago, most of it for the first time. Better than I expected. Carried on to watching highlights of VOYAGER, also mostly for the first time, and it was mostly worse than I expected. 

In politics, the superfluous Canadian election just wrapped up, with the Liberals winding up with a minority government almost identical to the one they won just two years ago.  Let's see if this one lasts the full four years. For me, that was close to the ideal result. In general my views on most issues lie a bit to the left or the Liberals, but maybe not quite as far left as the NDP or Green Party (or in some cases even further left than any of them, but tempered by being realistic enough to know the country will never go that far left in my lifetime). So a Liberal party pulled to the left by being forced to get the cooperation of the NDP for a majority puts most things closer to my liking. For the local riding, I voted for the Liberal, although as usual I ended up regretting it. Federally this is a pretty safe Liberal riding, has been ever since I moved here back in 1988, so I could probably get away with voting for the NDP or (when they run a candidate) Green without risking helping a Conservative get in. But I'm never 100% sure (especially with the riding picking Doug Ford in the last provincial election), so in this stupid first-past-the-post system I always play it safe. And then the Liberal wins by 35%. There really needs to be a better system...

In comics, I'm still on my new paper acquisition moratorium (which means I don't buy anything printed within the last ten years, except under certain circumstances (one of those circumstances is "if I feel like it", so it's not that strict)). I still manage to read a lot of new stuff, in both print and digital, thanks to the local library and the occasional digital sale. And until the pandemic hit I could hit a local hotel conference room convention every other month and pick up a stack of cheap back issues. And I own an unholy amount of old paper which I really should get around to reading to re-reading if I'm going to justify holding on to it all. 

I haven't been reading as much comics for the last little while, for a variety of reasons. My eyesight went a bit south just prior to the pandemic, I probably need some prescription reading glasses at some point. Been delaying going to the eye doctor, even after things opened up. For now, reading in bright lights or with off-the-rack glasses helps somewhat.  Also, I kind of get disgusted by the comics industry every now and then (for obvious and justifiable reasons), and let it bleed into my love of comics. One story about vileness or stupidity in the industry can sour me on reading comics for a month. I know, I shouldn't do that, I'm going to try to avoid it in the future. Anyway, a few things that probably deserve a closer look are some of Rick Veitch's recent comics, some DeMatteis work, a few of the things Joe Hill is "curating" over at DC, the long overdue O'Neill/Moore CINEMA PURGATORIO book, all sorts of stuff.

Never really get into music on this weblog. I decided to be a middle age cliché and get a turntable, first time I've had a working one in well over a decade. A pretty cheap model, but enough for me to finally get the vinyl out of the basement. It's about fifty records, mostly bought in the 1980s, a few later, plus a few dozen more left at the house by my brother. Nothing too interesting, almost (but not quite) everything readily available on-line now, but some interesting nostalgia bait, plus the listening experience is definitely different. In almost all ways inferior, but definitely different. Might start posting about one record a week as I listen to what I have and decide what is worth keeping and what can safely be disposed of. 

Slowed down quite a bit on watching movies over the last few months, after a brief period of averaging two a day. Maybe I'll get settled into a comfortable medium. Of some stuff I watched recently, I still think that SUPERMAN (1978) is a great, only slightly flawed movie. I'm finally going to get around to watching the "Donner cut" of SUPERMAN II soon. I thought TENET was pretty incomprehensible on first viewing, and I'm not sure good enough to earn a second viewing.  WONDER WOMAN 1984 was very disappointing, after the first movie was as close as a modern super-hero blockbuster has been to being good.  I thought A QUIET PLACE PART II was okay on the merits, but quite a letdown compared to the first. 

Curious case of the missing metal

Mike Sterling of Progressive Ruin fame is providing an invaluable service to comics with this new site, which reminded me of something I meant to post about.

A little while back I was looking for the last few issues of the Aparo/Barr (BATMAN AND) THE OUTSIDERS run I was missing, and came across this seemingly normal copy of #18 of the Baxter format series, nicely bagged and boarded.

"I'll buy that for a dollar", I said, and proceeded to do so. Taking it home and opening it up, it seemed okay, until I started to leaf through it to admire the Jim Aparo artwork, and it started to fall apart.

Which was odd, to see a book that was so sharp on the outside evidently had been manhandled enough through the years for the interior pages to be coming out.  But closer inspection revealed something much odder.

The comic had no staples at all. For a second I thought that someone had taken them out for some unknowable reason, but it was quickly evident that there had never been staples.

Not just not on the cover, but all the way through, right to the center spread.

Which, got to say, is pretty neat. I've seen an occasional one-staple comic, even a three staple comic, but never a no-staple (among comics meant to be stapled, of course). A few of the pages are stuck together with some light glue, which I guess is a pre-staple part of the binding process. It would be slightly neater if they were all loose, which would have been the case in other binding processes.

So, kind of cool to get a nice surprise like this when opening up a sealed comic you got, as opposed to the usual surprise you sometimes get of finding coupons cut out, whole pages missing, major tears on some pages, random writing or colouring or some other defect. I have occasionally come across books which were signed by one of the creators, but never anyone all that exciting, and even then I'm not really into autographed comics where I didn't meet the creator in person to get the autograph.

Also kind of neat to see a reunion of the CAMELOT 3000 team of Brian Bolland and Mike Barr on the backup (one of two such reunions I know of), and the odd artistic team of José Luis García-López and Jim Aparo on the cover.

Blue Devil #22 [1986] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Blue Devil #22 [1986]

BLUE DEVIL was one of the longer lasting DC comics launches of the mid-1980s based on an original concept, starting with a preview story in FIRESTORM and then a 31 issue series plus an annual.  The character was created by writers Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn, who wrote most of the issues, and artist Paris Cullins, who left the interior art after a half-dozen issues, but returned for the annual a year later, and stuck around on covers for the whole run.

The series revolves around a stuntman and special effects expert, Dan Cassidy, who designs a giant Blue Devil prop suit for a movie, only to find himself trapped in the suit following a chance encounter with a real demon. He eventually settled in as a costumed adventurer with light-hearted escapades in Hollywood and on the fringes of the DC Universe, 

By this time the artists are Alan Kupperberg and Bill Collins joining creators Mishkin and Cohn on the story "Bounty Hunter". Dan and his friend are travelling cross country and stop in Las Vegas, where Dan had been back in #6, so he reunites with his alien friends Jorj and Lehni who settled down there in that previous issue. 

As luck would have it, an alien bounty hunter shows up in Vegas around the same time, and chaos ensues. This is a decent issue overall, a bit of a step down in quality from the first year of the book, but part of a solid middle run before it began to coast in the last year. There are also a few pages advancing some subplots with the rest of the regular cast, and a full three page letter column, including namechecks for some fifty or more writers whose letters they couldn't print. 

Unfortunately most of the series has never been reprinted, other than a few "Year's Best" digest reprints back in the day and a few issues tangentially related to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS reprints in a few expensive anthologies of such crossovers a while back. The whole series is available digitally.

Spin World #3 [1997] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Spin World #3 [1997]

SPIN WORLD was a bit of an oddity from the mid-1990s, a four issue science fiction series drawn by a fairly successful mainstream comics artist, Brent Anderson, probably near the peak of his career with ASTRO CITY coming out at the time, but published in black and white by a small and rather niche publisher, Slave Labor under their Amaze Ink imprint. How this came to be is explained by Anderson in the first issue, where he goes over the 20 year journey this comic took to being published, starting when he did six illustrations for Eric Vinicoff's novella "Spacing Dutchman" in 1976. Short version is that Mike Friedrich asked him to adapt the story to comics for one of the StarReach books, the project passed on to Fantagraphics when StarReach folded as a publisher, but that didn't work out. Later Neal Adams wanted to publish it, with thoughts of selling it in Europe, but that didn't pan out for various reasons. In 1991 DC agreed to not only publish it, but expand it with adaptations of two other related Vinicoff short stories in the same setting, making a three issue fully painted prestige format series. By the time Anderson finished the line art two years later, DC no longer thought the book was viable. So eventually four years later it wound up at Slave Labor, now with greytones instead of fully painted art.

Which is all a shame, because it seems to be pretty much an unknown work now, and it's pretty decent stuff overall. At some point someone should really look at getting a decent edition of it out, ideally replacing the greytones with the full colour it was drawn for, either painted or computer coloured in a painterly style (which wouldn't have been technically viable when this came out). The tones aren't bad in this particular issue, but in some of the other issues they came out a few shades too dark, and obscure the linework, and pure black and white would have been better. It could probably have also used one more pass by an editor at some point.

This issue features the second half of the original "Spacing Dutchman" story that started off the whole thing, an adventure set aboard a space station in the late 21st century which rotates to create gravity, hence the "Spin World" of the title. The first issue had a prequel story, "The Snake & The Staff", set earlier and featuring two characters who have a minor role in "Spacing Dutchman". The final issue adapts "Politics of Plenty", which has the lead of this story in a supporting role and explores the alien technology which is the McGuffin of this story a few years down the line. Neither of those other stories really deal with the space station, which makes it a little odd that it's the title of the whole book.

This story involves a government agent who arrives at the station trailing a mysterious woman, hoping she'll lead him to an old Nazi war criminal who's been cloned countless times since WWII. This gets him involved in the politics of the station, which culminates in an attempted invasion to acquire a piece of alien technology. And a hologram of Sherlock Holmes is somehow involved. Not sure about that last bit. Pretty entertaining stuff, though overall I think the stronger parts of the series are the other two stories added later, which make up #1 and #4. Anderson's artwork is quite good in this, the peak of his earlier style, heavily influenced by Neal Adams, which he had evolved away from a bit by the time of his ASTRO CITY work published alongside this.

Anyway, pretty decent obscure little book, would love to see it done up right someday. Single volume, full colour, maybe with a bit more framing material to integrate the three stories better (I'm not sure if Vinicoff  wrote any more stories in this setting).

Elfquest - Two-Spear #2 [1995] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Elfquest - Two-Spear #2 [1995]

This 5-issue mini-series was one of my few exposures to Elfquest comics not done by creator Wendy Pini. There was this unusual period in the early-to-mid 1990s where there was a small publishing empire built around EQ, with as many as six books a month, set in different time periods in the complex universe the original series spawned, plus some alternate universe stuff.  For my part, shortly before this time I had caught up to 1993, the point where Pini began opening it up to other creators. Continuing beyond that seemed more than a bit daunting, but this series, set in the past of the original series, seemed like it might be a good way to dip my toe in.

The Two-Spear of the title is the fourth of the previous chiefs of the Wolfriders, who gave main series lead Cutter his "Blood of Ten Chiefs" title. A few bits of his back story had been alluded to in the earlier comics, as some of them affected the main narrative, and I believe there were several prose short story Elfquest books that I haven't read which also flesh out parts of his story. This seems to be the main place where he's explored, courtesy of writer Terry Collins and artist Delfin Barral.

It's a pretty intense story. Elfquest was always known for displaying a lot of Pini's disparate influences, so it would casually go from adventure to high fantasy to humour to horror to drama in telling her long and complex tale. In this series, it's like taking one thread of Pini's tapestry and focusing on it exclusively for over 100 pages.

It's been a long while since I've read any Elfquest, and even longer since I've read this series (I tried to start THE FINAL QUEST when it began in 2013, but quickly decided I needed to go back to the beginning and also fill in some holes in my reading before reading that). By itself this is an intriguing story, advancing Two-Spear's war with the humans and eventual descent into madness and drawing on some of the origin backstory of the elves (I don't think any of the main backstory was newly presented in this book). Barrel's artwork, a lot of it seemingly done just in pencils, sometimes with greytones, is an interesting contrast to Pini's usual slick animation inspired style, while remaining true to her character designs. Looking at the other issues, there seems to have been some struggle to reproduce the art, too light in some places and too dark in others, this issue seems to strike the best balance.

I think sometime soon I'll finally start at the beginning again on Elfquest, and then re-read this whole series when I get to that point, and finally get to THE FINAL QUEST series.

The entire series is currently available free on-line, along with most Elfquest comics published prior to 2013. The first issue starts here. It also appears in Volume 9c of the 1998-2002 Elfquest "Readers" collections, but not apparently in the more recent reprints yet.

MY LAST SUMMER WITH CASS by Mark Crilley

MY LAST SUMMER WITH CASS is the first new fictional comics work by Mark Crilley in quite a while. Having spent the first two decades of his career working on fantasy/adventure comics like AKIKO (1995 to 2004, 52 issues and a one-shot, collected in 8 volumes, plus 10 prose books adapting and expanding on the story), MIKI FALLS (2007 to 2008, 4 volumes) and BRODY'S GHOST (2010 to 2015, 6 volumes and a one-shot comic, collected in one book in 2016).  He's also done a lot of art instruction work, both in print in a dozen books and on video on his popular Youtube channel.

This new book is a departure from his previous work in a lot of ways. It's complete in one volume, instead of serialized. It's full colour, while the previous books were mostly black&white (often with copious greytones), except for some short bits. And in the widest deviation from his previous work, there are no fantasy elements in MY LAST SUMMER WITH CASS.  Just a real life young adult story about art and friendship.

The "My" of the title is a young girl named Megan, who spends summers in her childhood at a cabin with another girl named Cass, where they discover a mutual love of creating artwork, and especially working together on pieces. After a few years apart they're reunited as teenagers when Megan convinces her parents to let her spend a few weeks in New York City, where Cass now lives. While some aspects of their relationship continue as if there was no pause, in other ways they find they've very much grown in separate directions, as Megan tries to fit in with Cass's big city lifestyle.

This is a pretty entertaining book. Crilley's art has always been detailed and expressive, but he seems to turn it up a notch in this book, maybe because he now has the extra tools of full colour to work with, maybe because he's drawing real-world settings. For me personally the story is a little less appealing than normal for Crilley, but then I'm increasingly far removed from the lucrative young adult audience this is clearly aimed at.  Even with that, I found a lot to like in the discussions about art that are interspersed with the relationship drama.

Highly recommended, especially to readers who liked stuff like Raina Telgemeier's comics, in particular DRAMA and SISTERS.