I'm actually posting this from my phone, as my computer is on the fritz at the moment and I'm killing time as I reinstall Linux. I'm taking a short break from Solar: Man of the Atom because my wife was kind enough to get me Spawn of Mars. It's a collection of comics from EC that all feature artwork from Wally Wood and let me tell you, it's nearly fantastic.
The key draw to this book for me is Wood's artwork, which is as colorful as can be despite being in black and white. The pages just bleed with detail, from the knows and dials on the instrument panels of spaceships to the clothing the characters wear made realistic with wrinkles, seam lines, buckles, and straps. I seriously cannot praise this artwork enough. It is unbelievably good.
The stories themselves? Like Child of Tomorrow, they're short and simple. With the average story only being seven or eight pages, there's not a lot of room for depth and development. The fact that they're short and sweet makes the book easy to pick up and put down and makes it perfect for when you have ten or fifteen minutes to kill here and there. Many of them have twist endings that you'll often figure out by the third or fourth page, which pretty much kills for any chance of a dramatic impact, but it doesn't take much away from enjoying the stories themselves.
All in all, it's a wonderful book and I'm really glad I have it. It's making me want to look into Fantagraphics' other EC offerings as these comics are really good. In fact, last night I checked out Fantagraphics' website as a whole to discover they sell collected editions of tons of classic comics from Prince Valiant to Steve Ditko's non-Marvel works. I'm thinking I might have to set some money aside in the near future.
I'm listening to Capital by Thomas Piketty.
What's great about it is that I've read a slew of Political Science 101-type articles and books, such as Winner-Take-All Politics and "Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult". It's getting a bit stale for me, all the dead-horse-beating. I started reading American Amnesia and I had to stop and return the book because I know already. The dismantling of the mixed economy. Rich people getting richer. The handwaving dogma of the job-creators.
Capital, though? It's not Poli 101. I'm not quite sure where it's at in the Econ & Hist department, but it's refreshingly higher up. The translation is lucid and engaging, and my only fear is the fear of all audiobooking: It won't stick as well as the physical page. But I think I'll supplement with the "physical" copy I have on iBooks. This book makes me excited. Walking down the street and hearing this:
puts a big old grin on my face.