Only last night I watched that flaccid serving of spaghetti-o's, Battle: Los Angeles, little thinking that the next day it would be freshened by the heroes having to fight off, not humanoids but Pogo's "us", in masks.
History is like the thing I stepped on, on the way to junior high when I was fifteen. I thought it was a wad of gum. I couldn't dislodge it till band practice, when I successfully scraped some off on the music stand, brown furred skin blackened with dried blood. What happened to the shoes? I don't know but the feeling of the thing being stepped on and clinging to me, the vision of it hanging on the slender metal leg--all in the past but through memory and the gift of horror, ever present.
What could better suit history that refuses to confine itself to the past, than the present scenario? Starting in LA, a ragtag People and a few mil grunts fighting for the future of civilization? Where do you fit in this, and how do you cope? Do you doomscroll, escape, try to ignore? I say "try" because no one can escape.
Instead, I recommend a companion, New Tomorrow by Cody Goodfellow. I've been carrying it around for weeks like soldiers at the Front did, the book of poetry against the chest. New Tomorrow takes place in a past that is all so present, you can smell its blood. I don't know how long it took to write but I do know that he has to have transported himself and lived in this version of time and place, for every time I checked, he's as faithful to a parallel history and it's all so immediate and fresh, I couldn't help thinking he must have made it up or he was wrong, but he's more accurate than Movietone news. Yet fearless.
"...the government they voted for is threatening to mow them down, and they've got scab vigilantes running around spreading conspiracy theories. So, the only question is . . . Which side are you on?"
His cavernous voice seemed to come from just behind her ear, even as she cautiously approached him, still itching to use her lightning projector. "I sympathize with the workers' plight, but I'm on the side of law and order," she said.
"So, you stand with the factory owners, the Pinkerton mercenaries, the hastily sworn-in deputies, and soon, the Army. They don't need you. You'll have to find your fun somewhere else."
"I don't do this for sport..."
"To protect your investments, then?"
"He threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, I know all about you. I can see right through your mask, but I don't need to. All that shiny gear didn't come on a worker's salary, and it makes one wonder if you'd have taken up this game at all if America had foxhunting. But it's just more fun, isn't it, to hunt men?"
...It was putting it too broadly to say the masked vigilante craze had started a few years back.
It starts in 1918 on the Western Front, and ends in 1932, in NYC. It's unashamedly political, yet never self-righteously so.
"Drop your gun, or I'll libel you to smithereens!"
The mil tech is fun and believable. There's a helluva plot, but not artificially twisted, just as startling as reality. And it's so multifaceted.
Many of her peers were little more than publicity stunts to sell toys and newspapers. Others were exploited precisely because they were unwilling or without the means to fend off commercial use of their name and likeness.
His action is visual, not verbal. And he can be downright lyrical though he never writes to see himself write.
The flying car floated away from the pavilion like an untethered balloon. Amid the scurrying men and women, she could pick out dozens sleepwalking after the music. The flying car veered south with a flock of NYPD autogyros on its tail, passing over the South Ferry Terminal, and the human bombs trailed after.
There's more to defend and fight than any respectable novel needs. But these are heart-sickening times, so the extras here are welcome defibrillating jolts. And there's an actual alien. As a companion, New Tomorrow will, I'm sure, be sickly necessary for mental health, too, until humans are a species too silly to be contemplated seriously as having existed.
One of the great pleasures is the quotes at the start of every
chapter, wittily numbered by Mike Dubisch, whose art throughout makes
this a deluxe production at a dimestore price.
Get it. Published by Oddness.
484 pages
This is the official description, much more understandable than my dribble that doesn't do justice to it as the thrill it is. Entertainment with a brain and heart.
Overview
As America reels in the depins of the Great Depression; munitions heiress Matilda Lynch battles gangsters and anarchists in the armor of the SILVER SENTRY, never suspecting that her most dangerous enemy... is right behind her.
Petty thief Spider MacGowan escaped jail but was forced to don a cursed mask to become the infamous WHITE DEVIL; but using evil to destroy evil will leave him powerless before the greatest threat the world has ever known.
Joined by KID AMOEBA, a single-celled invader from an alien world, and the HAYWIRE GANG-identical triplets who wreak havoc on all they touch-these unlikely heroes will become enemies of the nation they protect when they discover the unspeakable truth behind a miraculous invention that promises to lift America's elite out of economic despair and let them colonize the stars.
Swashbuckling pulp action and mind-boggling mysteries await all who dare to explore the strange world of...
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