Catching Up

I don't normally post this late at night (or early in the morning, however you want to look at it), but things have been very busy lately and probably won't let up for a while, so I thought I'd better grab whatever chances I have to update this blog. I've been on a pretty short deadline on the current project (it's something I can actually talk about -- eventually), so I've been on a real writing binge. I managed to work a couple of library trips in and even went back to Recycled Books in Denton but didn't find anything of note other than a couple more old Shirreffs Westerns.

I read THE BATMAN CHRONICLES, Vol. 1, a trade paperback reprinting the first year or so of Batman stories from DETECTIVE COMICS in 1938-39 and the entire contents of BATMAN #1 from 1940. If you're a comic book geek (and I am), it's pretty interesting to watch Batman's development, both visually and as a character. The art by Bob Kane starts out pretty crude but improves greatly over the months covered in this volume, especially once Jerry Robinson starts inking Kane's pencils. The scripts by Bill Finger and Gardner Fox are consistently good. The early Batman is surprisingly violent, killing crooks right and left. He mellows a little by the end of this volume, with the introduction of Robin and the start of his wisecracking phase. Overall a thoroughly enjoyable book.

We watched the DVD of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, which I enjoyed quite a bit but with a few reservations. I tend to like Viggo Mortensen and I always like Maria Bello (she's great in a fine film called THE COOLER, with William H. Macy, one of my favorite movies of recent years). The action scenes in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE are very well-done, but I kept expecting something more from the plot, some twist that never arrived. I'm still glad we watched it, though.

I'm currently reading GIRL POSSESSED, a Gold Medal-ish crime novel by Dean Owen that was actually published by Gold Star Books, a completely different and much more obscure publisher. If you didn't know that I've been helping with some Dean Owen research lately, you can read all about it on Mystery*File Online.