Sputt, Sputt, Sputt

Y'know, when you're driving to work, and you smell radiator, and you get off the highway and pull into a parking lot, and you (carefully) open the hood, and the inside looks like the final scenes of a Vulcan slasher movie?

Yeah, not good.

buxom_bey, I borrowed your car.

Books: Sith, Eternals, Lanterns, and the Black Star

Star Wars: Vader's Quest by Macan, Gibbons, McKie

Sometime between the end of Star Wars and the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader learned that A) the guy who blew up the Death Star was named "Luke Sykwalker," and B) that this kid was very likely his son. I can only imagine that this was a pivotal moment in Anakin Skywalker's life, possibly a moment that almost brought him back from the dark side.

I can still only imagine it, 'cause this graphic novel does a lousy job of showing us that moment. It starts with Vader learning the name "Luke Skywalker", and ends with the first face-to-face meeting between father and son. Unfortunately, we learn practically nothing about Vader's reaction, except that it gets him angry/upset/intense enough to crush a recording device in his hand. The "meeting" also barely counts, since they don't actually talk to each other at all. ( Cut for minor spoilers . . .  )

So, not recommended.

Eternals by Neil Gaiman and John Romita, Jr.

A big beautiful hardcover collection of the recent miniseries starring Jack Kirby's Eternals. It's not quite as epoch-marking as some of Gaiman's other comics work, but it's a deftly done restitching of the Eternals and their complicated history back into the mainstream Marvel Universe. The little conversations between Iron Man and Sersi were some of my favorite bits. Recommended, but you might want to wait for the trade paperback. Meanwhile, I'm going to pick up the collection of Kirby's orginal Eternals stories.

Green Lantern Corps: To Be a Lantern by Gibbons, Gleason, Rollins

This is the story of the new, post-Infinite Crisis GLC, now 7200-strong. Probably because having two Lanterns per sector of the galaxy makes for an interesting cop-partners dynamic — indeed, they are definitely playing with a "Hill Street Blues" riff here, except that headquarters is an armored planet at the center of the galaxy, and the staff shrink is a sentient planet named Mogo. The ensemble cast includes Guy Gardner as the Troubleshooter, Salaak as the Protocol Lantern, and Kilowog as the Drill Instructor, plus assorted newer faces, many of them rookies. (I also liked the bit about the new Korugarian Lantern believing her ring is cursed, what with one wearer going evil and another getting vivisected.) Recommended.

The Black Star Passes by John W. Campbell

A collection of three Golden Age SF tales by the guy who discovered Heinlein and Asimov. They show all of Campbell's strengths and weaknesses. Like, the science is often speculative in really unlikely directions, but it's based on real science. Or, for a weakness, there are no women characters at all — women are only even referred to once. And, the main characters are pretty much ciphers. But, the stories are full of action and great big things going boom.