Tag Archives: Top 10

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (10) Germanic & Gothic Wars

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Do you want naked Germans humping your statues? Because this is how you get naked Germans humping your statues. Sack of Rome in 410 painting by Joseph-Noel Sylvestre (1890)

 

(10) GERMANIC & GOTHIC WARS

 

“Give me back my legions!”

The Roman-Germanic Wars – the longest wars fought by the Roman Republic, Roman Empire and eastern Roman Empire, both in space and time, the wars of the crisis and fall of the classical empire.

In space, they were fought along Rome’s northern frontier from the Rhine through the Alps to the Danube. I’ll see Turner’s Frontier thesis about the frontier defining American history and raise it with the Roman-German frontier defining world history.

In time, they exceeded even the seven centuries of Roman-Persian Wars, extending both before and after the latter if you count them extending through the Gothic Wars and Lombard Wars fought by the eastern empire.

And yes – I’ve effectively featured Roman-Germanic and Roman-Gothic wars in my special mentions for the Crisis of the Third Century as well as the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, with the Goths playing the leading role in the latter. It’s not overstating it to attribute the fall of the Roman Empire to the Goths, even if as Youtuber Tominus Maximus quips, they’d didn’t mean to do it.

However, the Roman-Germanic wars date back before the empire to the republic, prior to the Republic’s wars with Persia, with the Cimbrian War in 113-101 BC – a war often overlooked for the more glamorous Punic Wars, despite a Roman defeat in the Battle of Arausio exceeding that at Cannae and the first threat to Italy or Rome itself since the Second Punic War.

The Republic saw more Roman-Germanic Wars with Caesar’s Gallic Wars – which despite being primarily directed at the conquest of Gaul also had campaigns against Germanic tribes such as the Suebi or across the Rhine, even if the latter weren’t much more than skirmishes compared to the subsequent wars.

When it comes to the classical empire, the Roman-Germanic Wars might be classified as falling into three phases.

The first phase was essentially when the Roman Empire held the initiative against the Germans – to the extent that there was the serious possibility of the empire incorporating Germania as a province or provinces, potentially pushing the imperial border from the Rhine to the Elbe or Weser. Famously that possibility was lost with Varus and his three legions in the Roman defeat at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest at the hands of Arminius, German turned renegade from his Roman citizenship.

Despite this defeat, the Roman Empire still (mostly) held the initiative against the Germans, although they used it more for pre-emptive or punitive expeditions, not least to avenge the defeat at Teutoburg Forest, rather than imperial expansion.

The second phase might be considered as one in which the initiative oscillated between the Romans and the Germans in clashes at and over the frontier. The Romans were mostly robust enough to retain both the initiative and frontier, but from the Marcomannic Wars in 161-180 AD onwards Germans and Goths were able to make substantial incursions within the empire – as in the Crisis of the Third Century or the invasions of the western empire fought by Julian or Valentinian.

The third phase is that of the decline and fall of the classical empire, when the Germans – particularly the Goths – increasingly held both the initiative and territory within the empire itself, from the Gothic War of 376-382 and the Roman defeat at the Battle of Adrianople in 378 onwards. Ultimately, the western empire and Rome itself fell to the Germans and Goths.

The fall of the classical or western empire wasn’t the end of Roman-Germanic and Roman-Gothic Wars, as the eastern empire continued fighting them – against the Vandals in north Africa, against the Visigoths in Spain, and above all against the Ostrogoths in the Gothic Wars of 535-554 in Italy.

The Byzantine-Gothic Wars were initially very successful against the odds under the leadership of Belisarius, but bogged down with an impressive revival by the Ostrogoths and ultimately ended with a Pyrrhic victory for the Romans – (re)conquering Italy from the Ostrogoths but then left desperately clinging on to increasingly small parts of it against a new Germanic invader, the Lombards.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (9) Crisis of the Third Century

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Battle between Romans and Goths on the Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus dated to 250-260 AD

 

(9) CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY (235 – 284 AD)

 

Before the Fall came the Crisis…

With the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire deserving first special mention, is it any surprise that the Crisis of the Third Century, that dress rehearsal of the fall, is far behind?

The Crisis of the Third Century – also known as the Military Anarchy or Imperial Crisis – had much the same scope as the decline and fall. Indeed, the Crisis of the Third Century was part of the decline, even if the empire narrowly forestalled its fall for another two centuries. Many of the fundamental problems of the empire from the Crisis endured to the fall, even when in muted form.

Narrowly forestalled its fall, that is, as in the empire “nearly collapsed under the combined pressure of repeated foreign invasions, civil wars, and economic disintegration” – “at the height of the crisis, the Roman state had split into three distinct and competing polities”, the so-called Gallic Empire and Palmyrene Empire vying with the central Roman Empire in its western and eastern provinces respectively.

Indeed, had it collapsed – or fragmented – it is hard to imagine the eastern half of the empire enduring in quite the same durable form as it did two centuries later. For one thing, the empire was divided into thirds rather than halves – with what was to become the eastern empire, that is, apart from the Palmyrene Empire, more resembling a quarter than half, albeit not unlike the eastern empire after it had rebounded from Arab conquests. It also lacked the capital founded by Constantine – Constantinople, with its nigh impenetrable defenses against all but the most overwhelming siege – or indeed the seat of imperial government founded as its own distinctive new Roman empire.

Although mind you, the eastern empire pulled off its own near miraculous recovery from crises – note that plural, crises – to rival that of the third century, like it looked back at the classical empire’s direst crisis and said hold my beer.

Two things saved the classical empire in the Crisis of the Third Century, even if it went from classical to late empire.

The first was that, as fearsome as the foreign invasions were, they lacked the ability or even intent to conquer territory or form their own states within the empire, rather than raiding it for plunder albeit on a larger scale than ever before. Even the Sassanid Persian Empire – the closest adversary the Roman Empire had to a rival peer state – for all its successes only raided Roman provinces and moved its border slightly away from its capital.

The second was a series of soldier emperors or barracks emperors – mostly the so-called Illyrian emperors originating from that region as the then heartland of the Roman army – who managed to hold the line and turn the tide to restore the empire, “an accomplishment many historians regard as about as unlikely and impressive as any of Rome’s Golden Age achievements in building the empire in the first place”.

Foremost among them of course was Aurelian – Restitutor Orbis or Restorer of the World, who reunited the empire by defeating the rival Palmyrene and Gallic Empires – but he built on the achievements of the emperors who came before him, Claudius Gothicus and arguably also Gallienus, and had successors who consolidated his achievements, notably Probus and the emperor who is credited with finally ending the Crisis, Diocletian.

At the core of the Crisis was the political instability of imperial succession (and usurpation) suggested by the other names used for the Crisis (Military Anarchy and Imperial Crisis).

Tacitus had observed that the ‘secret of the empire’ had been exposed with the succession crisis after Nero in the first century – “that emperors could be made elsewhere than in Rome”, a secret that excited “all the legions and their generals”.

Despite this observation, those legions and their generals had mostly followed the various imperial dynastic successions for the first two and a half centuries of empire – its founding Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Flavian dynasty, the adoptive succession of the Five Good Emperors, and the Severan dynasty.

In the Crisis, however, the legions and their generals had become very excited indeed – as one so-called barracks emperor succeeded another, usually by usurpation. And that’s just the line of imperial succession generally regarded as legitimate – beyond that there were literally countless usurpers, some of which we are still discovering through archaeology or coins.

Indeed, it often seems from the Crisis that where even the most minor commanders of a legion or legions had even the barest degree of military success (or were just left outside or stranded by the ebbing tide of imperial authority), they would proclaim themselves as emperor – or their legions would.

Not surprisingly, with Roman commanders and their legions marching either to advance their own imperial claims or against those of others, that saw them abandon the defense of the empire’s borders.

That was compounded by drain on population by the Cyprian Plague that raged through the empire, and which struck military barracks or manpower particularly hard – indeed the capture of Emperor Valerian by the Persians, the first time an emperor was captured by foreign forces, was attributed to his army being laid waste by plague.

The population decline of the empire also compounded its economic instability, characterized by the collapse of its currency and trade.

Through the gaping holes left in the imperial borders poured the empire’s recurring foreign enemies to raid it – further compounding the empire’s economic decline as the empire’s problems became an intense feedback loop as each problem cranked up the others.

Foremost in notoriety as the empire’s recurring enemies were the German barbarian tribes – who had grown in military capability (and relative population) through two centuries of contact with the empire, although they were not yet as capable as they were when they brought about the fall (and mostly replaced those Roman commanders and their legions vying within the empire).

The capabilities of the Germans were increased by forming new tribal coalitions or confederations – particularly the Franks, who raided across the Rhine through Gaul as far as Spain, and the Alemanni, who raided through the Alps into Italy, even threatening the city of Rome itself (the first external threat the city had faced for centuries) and giving Aurelian himself pause, inflicting his only defeat before he rallied to victory against them.

And across the Danube came the Germans who were ultimately to do more than anyone else to bring about the fall of the empire – the Goths, raiding as far as Greece and even Asia Minor because they managed to get themselves a fleet and there’s nothing worse than barbarians with boats.

All these German raiders paled in comparison to the Sassanid Persians – which as I noted was the only state on Rome’s borders that came close to being Rome’s peer – as they raided deep into Rome’s eastern provinces, particularly Syria.

As was typically the case, Rome’s worst enemy was itself as it fractured into three rival empires fighting among themselves. The core empire remained around Italy, fortunately including the Illyrian military heartland of the empire and its breadbasket in north Africa – but it lost its western provinces to the Gallic Empire led by usurpers, and its eastern provinces to the Palmyrene Empire, essentially a client state that had loyally led the defense against the Sassanid Persians but had gone rogue under its queen Zenobia.

Fortunately, along came Aurelian – breathing two centuries of life into the empire before the fall.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Poetry & Literature: Top 10 Literature (Complete Top 10)

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Limestone tablet from Sumer with pictographic writing; may be the earliest known writing, 3500 BC. Ashmolean Museum – a real page-turner

 

Exactly what it says on the tin – counting down my Top 10 Literature, by author and literary work.

But what is literature?

By its widest definition, literature is any written work but this top ten follows the narrower definition of written fiction or “writing considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays and poems”. After all, I have my separate top ten lists for books in mythology, history, and philosophy or science.

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

And as usual, I make my own rules and break them anyway, following the vibe. I also have my Top 10 Poetry, so I tend to rank poetic literature there but the distinction between poetic and prose literature can be fuzzy, particularly as some authors alternate between the two, often in the same work. Accordingly, I will include a poetry ranking in entries.

On the other hand, I also tend to focus almost exclusively on novels or short stories in my literature rankings. In other words – not plays or drama, although they do pop up on occasion. Accordingly, I’ll note them when they do, including any notable adaptations on stage or screen.

Also, it’s not all literary fiction either – that is, novels or stories. Some of my favorite literary writing is in the form of essays and observational humor or comedy, although as with poetry, the distinction between literary fiction and non-fiction can be fuzzy, again with some authors alternating between them, often in the same work. So again I’ll include items of note here in the category of essays as broadly understood.

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

 

As I also have my Top 10 Fantasy and Top 10 SF lists, I tend to reserve my Top 10 Literature for non-fantasy or non-SF literary fiction.

However, such distinctions of genre are also notoriously fuzzy and some of these works might be argued to have wandered in here from the fantasy or SF sections. Such is the nature of fiction and imagination, both of which have elements of fantasy at their core, but it’s also because I tend to lean towards fantasy as a genre in written fiction.

Not to mention comedy, which also looms large in my favorite literary fiction – and much the same argument might be made for elements of comedy also being at the core of fiction and imagination.

Accordingly, I will include a fantasy & SF ranking in my entries, in which I’ll also include comedy rankings.

 

 

(10) MARGARET ATWOOD –

OLD BABES IN THE WOOD (2023)

 

“I’m the plot, babe, and don’t ever forget it.”

Yes – that’s from her story collection Good Bones but it’s my favorite Margaret Atwood, voicing the evil stepmother in fairy tales, and in a way encapsulates all her writing, both fiction and non-fiction.

Otherwise, Margaret Atwood needs little introduction as an icon of modern literature – a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and critic (among other things). One might have anticipated that I would feature one of her novels as my top 10 entry here – with The Handmaid’s Tale as perhaps her best known – but I was introduced to her through her short story collections, indeed through Good Bones. However, I went with her 2023 collection Old Babes in the Woods for my usual tenth place wildcard entry from the present or previous year – and Atwood never loses her shine in her story collections.

She does however show her age in this collection – not in her mastery of form or style of course but in subject matter. As The Guardian reviewed it, “most of the characters in Margaret Atwood’s latest book are old or headed that way, and their stories unwrap what T.S. Eliot called the gifts of age. There are chips and fragments of lives, full of sass and sadness”.  The standout for me was “My Evil Mother” – a vignette or series of vignettes narrated by a woman about her mother who may or may not have been a witch. There’s just something about the way that Atwood plays with fairytale stereotypes of witches or evil (step)mothers.

She deserves her own Top 10 or indeed two of them, one for her shorter works featured in collections such as this, and one for her longer works I have enjoyed as well. But her poetic style perhaps shines brightest in her shorter works.

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

Yes – she writes poetry, so earns my poetry ranking. It’s good too although her lyrical writing style walks the line with poetry even in her prose – very evocative, whether fiction or writing in the style of essays.

She also writes in a style that is easy to imagine as drama or plays on occasion – and indeed her work has been adapted to screen, again with the most famous (and visually iconic) being The Handmaid’s Tale.

She does write actual essays, although her short pieces often straddle the line between story and essay but in the most engaging way for both.

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

 

Speaking of The Handmaid’s Tale, some might say she wandered in here from the science fiction section, particularly for that novel – one of the most famous SF dystopias up there with 1984 and Brave New World. Atwood herself resisted the suggestion it was science fiction, although recently she’s embraced her inner fantasy nerd and the science fiction label to some degree, including in some stories in her latest book. She’s even written graphic novels! So she gets my fantasy & SF ranking as well.

As for comedy, she does have a certain black or dry comedy about her but I wouldn’t really rank her as a comedic writer.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

(9) IAIN BANKS –

THE WASP FACTORY (1984)

 

“Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I’d disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim.

That’s my score to date. Three. I haven’t killed anybody for years, and don’t intend to ever again.

It was just a stage I was going through.”

Says it all really. I’m a big fan of the importance of first lines or openings in books or stories. They should pack a punch or two – and Iain Bank’s The Wasp Factory certainly does that.

As for the book is about, well, let’s just say it’s one of the strangest coming of age books I’ve read, about a pyschopathic teenager living in a remote Scottish island with some big twists in the tale and not for the faint-hearted – par for the course for Banks, really. The titular Wasp Factory is a weird shamanic divinatory device the protagonist has constructed. Interestingly, it was Banks’ first novel and he wrote it to resemble science fiction – with the island resembling a planet and the protagonist an alien.

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

No poetry ranking – apparently he did write some but I haven’t read it. Nothing of note in drama either – I’m not aware of any screen or stage adaptations.

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

 

Banks definitely earns my fantasy & SF ranking for his SF books, most famously his Culture series of novels, although he published them as Iain M. Banks as opposed to Iain Banks.

There are comedic elements in Banks but I wouldn’t rank him as a comedic writer.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(8) TOM ROBBINS –

ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION (1971)

 

“Real courage is risking one’s clichés.”

Writer of comic novels, “often experimental in form and subject”, with “satirical, political and erotic elements”. Also fantasy or literary magical realism.

Another Roadside Attraction essentially – but entertainingly – meanders through musings on religion from the lens of the 1960’s.

The plot is too convoluted to encapsulate here without spoiling it, but it does indeed involve the titular roadside attraction – or at least attempt at one by an archetypal sixties couple, with Amanda Ziller or the female member of the couple resembling a pagan goddess figure. Things heat up when one of their friends smuggles out of the Vatican a certain mummified corpse that shouldn’t have been there – or anywhere if certain books are to be believed.

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

I’m not sure if he’s written any poetry but he certainly has a lyrical prose style.

“When he starts a novel, it works like this. First he writes a sentence. Then he rewrites it again and again, examining each word, making sure of its perfection, finely honing each phrase until it reverberates with the subtle texture of the infinite. Sometimes it takes hours. Sometimes an entire day is devoted to one sentence, which gets marked on and expanded upon in every possible direction until he is satisfied. Then, and only then, does he add a period.”

As for drama, at least one of his books – Even Cowgirls Get the Blues – has been adapted to film

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

 

Did you not see my reference to fantasy and magical realism? Definitely one of my top ten entries that wanders more into fantasy than most.

Also did you not see my reference to writer of comic novels – not the most comedic entry in my top ten but definitely one of the more comedic entries.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(7) KURT VONNEGUT –

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE (1969)

 

“And so it goes”.

Kurt Vonnegut has his own eponymous literary adjectives – or adjectives, Vonnegutian as pertaining to Vonnegut or his works, and Vonnegutesque more broadly as reminiscent or in the style of Vonnegut’s works.

Of course, he earned his eponymous adjectives with his signature style and themes. For the former, I always think of his conversational prose or playful synchronicity, and for the latter, I always think of his absurdist satire.

Vonnegut definitely wandered into here from the science fiction section. Of course, the literary establishment tend to identify him as ‘proper’ literature rather than science fiction, despite the time travel and aliens in his most iconic work, Slaughterhouse Five.

“Satirical, anti-authoritarian, humanist, absurdist and often brutally depressing world-view” (although tempered by his recurring theme that love may fail but courtesy will prevail).

The focus of Slaughterhouse-Five, is the bombing of Dresden in the WW2 – as it was for Vonnegut himself as a prisoner-of-war in the city at the time (even if he understandably relied on over-estimates of the civilian casualties).

Hapless protagonist Billy Pilgrim, stand-in for Vonnegut as POW in Dresden, has come “unstuck in time”, due to being abducted by the four-dimensional Tralfamadorian aliens.

Among other things, they place Pilgrim in an alien zoo to mate with a fellow abductee, adult film star Montana Wildhack – which, incidentally, is my own fervent aspiration in the event of alien abduction or invasion. Or really just any excuse for it.

And it gets weirder from there – interspersed throughout with characteristic running gags of synchronicity or serendipity. In this case, the recurring first dirty photograph in the world, made a year after photography itself.

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

Yeah – I can’t give Kurt a poetry ranking. He had one of the most, ah, prosaic prose styles of my top ten, albeit easy-going for the reader. Unless you count “So it goes”.

He did write plays however so I suppose he should get a drama ranking but even more so he earns a ranking for essays if only for the conversational introductions to his books. I particularly liked his introduction to Jailbird – which I might rank higher than Slaughterhouse but for that book’s iconic status – in which he quips a student summed up all his writing in just seven words. “Love may fail but courtesy will prevail”.

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

 

As I said, he wandered into literary fiction from the SF section – and also is one of the more comedic writers in my top ten.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

Yeah – I can see why they just used his name and the title on the cover. I mean, they couldn’t exactly just put a piece of liver on it…

 

(6) PHILIP ROTH –

PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT (1969)

 

“Doctor, this is my only life and I’m living it in the middle of a Jewish joke!”

And it even has a punchline. No, seriously.

Well, I suppose it could be worse – he could be undergoing a Kafkaesque transformation into a breast, the titular (heh) fate of Roth’s protagonist in a subsequent book, The Breast. No, seriously.

Philip Roth put the kink into my literary fiction. And he did it with this book – his fourth and most controversial novel that nevertheless gave him “widespread commercial and critical success”.

Portnoy’s Complaint is his magnum opus of kink, perpetually warring with the Freudian Jewish-American guilt from that kink – a confessional of unsatiated satyriasis. Or dare I quip of sexual Judaism – or a comedic spin on Chesterton’s Song of the Strange Ascetic, of one who does have the guilt and cannot have the fun.

Again no, seriously. The titular Portnoy’s complaint even has a clinical definition at the outset, virtually synonymous with satyriasis.

“The novel tells the humorous monologue of “a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor”, who confesses to his psychoanalyst in “intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language.”…Portnoy’s Complaint is a continuous monologue by narrator Alexander Portnoy to Dr. Spielvogel, his psychoanalyst”.

Apparently in the one session, albeit of a few hours or so – the bill from that had to hurt – and he’s still (literally) only just getting started.

And oh boy – Alex Portnoy is one sick puppy. Men will compulsively pursue one sexual misadventure after another before going to therapy.

Let’s just say you won’t forget one chapter title in particular – or one scene in a chapter of similar scenes of frenzied onanism that I’m sure was the inspiration for the titular scene in the American Pie film, except with the liver that was the family’s dinner.

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

“Roth is known for his distinctive writing style, which is at once analytical, empassioned, confessional, foul-mouthed and extremely verbose.” Now if that’s not poetry, I don’t know what is!

Also “several of his works have been adapted into films, but rarely with results considered satisfactory by critics”.

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

 

Not so much on this book but Roth definitely flirts with fantasy, at least as magical realism – see the aforementioned transformation in (and into) The Breast. And science fiction, at least as alternative history.

As for comedy, one of the most comedic entries into my top ten. Portnoy’s Complaint reads up as stand-up comedy performance – and has been literally “likened to the stand-up performances of 1960s comedian Lenny Bruce”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

Poster of the 2001 Australian film adapted from the novel, directed by Richard Lowenstein (and distributed by Roadshow Entertainment) and starring Noah Taylor

 

(5) JOHN BIRMINGHAM –

HE DIED WITH A FELAFEL IN HIS HAND (1994)

 

I haven’t just read He Died with a Felafel in His Hand – I’ve lived it!

JB was first published in Semper Floreat, student newspaper at the University in Queensland, where he studied law among ‘rat-faced bastards’ who wouldn’t lend him their notes. Damn law students!

Fortunately he did not graduate to become a lawyer but instead became a published writer with his 1994 share-house living memoir He Died with a Felafel in His Hand – an eclectic gonzo collection of “colorful anecdotes” about living in increasingly squalid share houses in Australia and with increasingly dubious housemates (included the titular deceased felafel-holder).

And not just any writer – Australia’s own gonzo writer in the style of Hunter S. Thompson, albeit without the trunk full of acid and other drugs (or at least, not quite full).

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

No poetry ranking as such, but he does score my drama ranking – with Felafel adapted into the longest running stage play in Australian history, a cult film in 2001 and a graphic novel. It was also arguably adapted as its own sequel The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, which was less a sequel than a more straightforward linear narrative fictionalization of the original (or ‘remake’).

And as Australia’s own gonzo writer in the style of Hunter S. Thompson, he also writes humorous essays or pieces, as well as other non-fiction.

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

 

Birmo scores high in my fantasy & SF ranking, as of late he’s taken to writing highly entertaining SF thrillers (including the so-called Birmoverse) and space opera.

Also one of the outright comedic entries in my top ten.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(4) PETER CAREY –

BLISS (1981)

 

“Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death that was to have the greatest effect on him”.

More than a touch of fantasy – or “magical realism” as they call it in literary fiction.

Indeed, almost my favorite subgenre of fantasy, posthumous fantasy, with that first death of Harry Joy. He gets better.

But his ‘afterlife’ takes a turn for the worse.

“Written as a dark, comic fable, the story concerns an advertising executive, Harry Joy, who briefly ‘dies’ of a heart attack. On being resuscitated, he realizes that the life he has previously drifted amiably through is in fact Hell – literally so to Harry”

Resonant with mythic and symbolic imagery – one of the biggest influences on my own imagination. Not to mention one of two Australian entries in my top ten – publishing his works through the University of Queensland Press, no less.

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

I don’t know about poetry but Carey earns my drama ranking for the film adaptation of Bliss in 1985 as something of a cult classic, albeit award-winning (in Australia). It has subsequently been adapted to stage.

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

 

Yes – Carey earns my fantasy ranking, for that aforementioned touch of (posthumous) fantasy or magical realism.

Not the most comedic entry in my top ten but Carey also earns my comedy ranking for his dry black comedy.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(3) DOUGLAS COUPLAND –

GENERATION X (1991)

 

“Kind of scary, kind of sexy, tainted by regret. A lot like life, wouldn’t you say?”

Popularized the term Generation X with its title, as well as numerous other neologisms.

McJob – “a low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one”.

Or ‘veal-fattening pens’ for office cubicles. Or ‘pull-the-plug, slice-the-pie’ for the “fantasy in which an offspring mentally tallies up the net worth of his parents”. I wonder if my mother still pops in here – hi, Mum!)

Essentially a latter day Canterbury Tales on the eve of the second millennium – a framed narrative of a story-telling contest by a group of youths of the titular generation and varying dysfunction.

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

No poetry ranking as he hasn’t written any poetry, although he does get lyrical in his prose. He does earn a drama ranking as he has written screenplays – although ironically not for this novel, which would seem to be eminently suited to stage at least.

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

 

Coupland hovers on the edge of fantasy and SF – at least in some of the stories his characters tell here. While not the most comedic entry in this top ten, he does have a dry comedic style.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

 

 

 

(2) JEREMY LEVEN –
SATAN: HIS PSYCHOTHERAPY & CURE BY THE UNFORTUNATE DR KASSLER J.S.P.S (1982)

 

“The truth of the matter is, I am not the Father of Evil…I am not a seducer. Or an accuser. Or a destroyer…But let me tell you something. You never hear of a vengeful Satan, a Satan of wrath, a Satan who brings on pestilence and famine. That’s the other fellow. You should keep this in mind”.

Somewhat loosely a fantasy, but the titular character is primarily a plot device for black comedy and satire – a black comedy of life itself and a satire of religion. A theological version of my top entry and as indelibly planted in my adolescent psyche.

 

The raunchy cover of the edition I borrowed to read in my youth but sadly not the cover of the edition I bought later

 

Although devilishly funny in its entirety, the highlight (and centerpiece) of the book is the seven psychotherapy sessions with hapless psychologist Kassler, agreed by the latter in a literal deal with the devil in exchange for Satan’s revelation of the Great Secret of Life.

I and my sense of religion were never the same after reading this book – and Satan forever changed for me from a supernatural figure of childhood Catholic fear to a more mythic figure of the human condition, as forlorn and lost as any of us.

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

No poetry ranking but Leven does earn a drama ranking as an actual screenwriter. Sadly, while his first novel Creator – also a great read – was adapted to a film, this one wasn’t. Which is a pity as it would have made a cracking film.

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

Given its plot and premise, this book could well be argued to be fantasy – as indeed could all three of his books. And it is one of the funniest books in my top ten.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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(1) JOSEPH HELLER –

CATCH 22 (1961)

 

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22…”

Yeah – this is the big one. This is the book that changed me forever. If you peel back the layers of my psyche, you’d find this book lodged deep in my mind. Even more than any fantasy or science fiction book, this book is the lens by which I see the world.

An absurdist and at times black comedy. Life is the laughter of the gods – but sometimes they have a black sense of humor.

A satirical antiwar novel – it focuses on Yossarian, an American bombardier in the Second World War, who would very much like to not be a bombardier in the Second World War.

Distinctive non-linear or “non-chronological omniscient third person” narrative, with the plot seemingly an assortment of random events on base or shifting focus across several characters (among the most humorous character vignettes in literary fiction) – although linked by the main focus on Yossarian and recurring story arc of mysterious references to Snowden.

And of course the novel originated the titular expression to describe a no-win situation or a double bind.

“A wild, moving, shocking, hilarious, raging, exhilarating, giant roller-coaster of a book”.

 

POETRY (DRAMA)

 

No poetry ranking but Heller does get my drama ranking for writing plays and screenplays, including three plays based on Catch-22. Catch-22 has also been adapted to film in 1970 – it’s not bad but it’s not the book either – and a six-episode miniseries by George Clooney in 2019 – again not the book but not bad either, probably better than the film

 

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

 

The absurdism verges on fantasy but Heller can’t be ranked in the fantasy (or SF) genre, at least in this book – on the other hand, Catch-22 is the best comedic book in literary fiction.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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TOP 10 LITERATURE (TIER LIST)

 

S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

(1) JOSEPH HELLER – CATCH 22

(2) JEREMY LEVEN – SATAN: HIS PSYCHOTHERAPY & CURE

(3) DOUGLAS COUPLAND – GENERATION X

If Catch-22 is my Old Testament of literary fiction, Satan: His Psychotherapy & Cure and Generation X are my New Testament

 

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(4) PETER CAREY – BLISS

(5) JOHN BIRMINGHAM – HE DIED WITH A FELAFEL IN HIS HAND

(6) PHILIP ROTH – PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT

(7) KURT VONNEGUT – SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE

(8) TOM ROBBINS – ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION

(9) IAIN BANKS – THE WASP FACTORY

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(10) MARGARET ATWOOD – OLD BABES IN THE WOOD (2023)

Top Tens – Poetry & Literature: Top 10 Poetry (Complete Top 10)

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Books and scroll ornament from a 1923 magazine – public domain image

 

The gods speak in verse –

And move in dance

 

I live in a mythic world so I tend towards a mythic view of poetry – not unlike that of (and overlapping with) Robert Graves who saw all poets writing, consciously or otherwise, to the Theme of the Goddess.

As for what poetry is, there’s a plethora of quotations about poetry or poets, often in poetry or by poets, poetic of themselves and worthy of their own top ten.

One of those was by poet W.H. Auden – “Of the many definitions of poetry, the simplest is still the best – memorable speech”.

Wikipedia offers a somewhat fancier definition – “Poetry (from the Greek word poiesis, “making”) is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings.”

You know what? I prefer the more playful definition by TV Tropes:

Pretty words.

No, really. That’s what poetry is. Sometimes it rhymes, sometimes there are more line breaks than usual. All you really need to make a poem, though, is to put it together so it sounds good, or at least sounds the way you want it to sound.

 

Anyway, this is exactly what it says on the tin – counting down my Top 10 Poetry, by poem and poet.

 

 

(10) ISHMAEL REED –

I AM A COWBOY IN THE BOAT OF RA (1972)

 

“Who was that
dog-faced man? they asked, the day I rode
from town”

One mythic trippy poem but then – “O the untrustworthiness of Egyptologists who do not know their trips”.

What’s not to love about this fusion of Egyptian mythology (and my favorite dog god Anubis), the American West and much more in the whole damn fantasy kitchen sink? Afro-American poet Ishmael Reed rocks it – or perhaps more precisely, jazzes it – in his most well-known poem that has been “dazzling, confusing, confounding and infuriating readers” since it was first published.

“Bring me my Buffalo horn of black powder
bring me my headdress of black feathers
bring me my bones of Ju-Ju snake
go get my eyelids of red paint.
Hand me my shadow
I’m going into town after Set”

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(9) SYLVIA PLATH –

LADY LAZARUS (1963)

 

“Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call”

Sylvia Plath – broken-winged angel, haunted by her own ghost. She loved her pale rider and his name was death. She wrote poems that “play Russian roulette with six cartridges in the cylinder”.

Lady Lazarus – dying and rising writhing from her own resurrection.

I know that feeling. I believe in the underworld – I’ve been there. And although I came back from the black abyss, I’m not sure that I came all the way back – or worse, that I brought it back with me.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(8) WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS –

THE IVY CROWN (1954)

 

“We are only mortal
but being mortal
can defy our fate.
We may
by an outside chance
even win!”

Is there a poet in the house? William Carlos Williams – tweeted poetry, most famously in that poetic ear-worm about plums. The dude was a doctor – must have had a great bedside manner

Forgive me
It’s malignant
So sad
And so young

And then there’s “The Ivy Crown” with its cosmos-crossed lovers (“I love you or I do not live at all”)

“Just as the nature of briars
is to tear flesh,
I have proceeded
through them.
Keep
the briars out,
they say.
You cannot live
and keep free of
briars”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Posthumous portrait by William Hilton c.1822

 

(7) JOHN KEATS –

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN (1819)

 

“What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?”
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”

Ode on a Fury Road – if Keats were to replace pipes and timbrels with flame-throwing electric guitar – and ecstasy with insanity, all shiny and chrome?

Although I’m probably the only one to think of Ode on a Grecian Urn for Mad Max Fury Road. It’s just how my mind works.

 

 

John Keats – a life tragically cut short at the age of 25 by tuberculosis, but attributed by Byron to bad reviews by the Quarterly Review

“Who killed John Keats?
I, says the Quarterly
So savage & Tartarly
‘Twas one of my feats”

Ode on a Grecian BURN, Quarterly!

Typical pagan sensuousness from Keats, evocative of a damn good night out, although with maidens perhaps a little less loath – but that’s classical mythology for you.

Beauty in art transcends life, although lacking the actual consummation of the latter – as with the lovers who are left for the urn’s eternity without, you know, actually getting it on:

“Forever warm and still to be enjoyed
Forever panting and forever young”

O yes!

Also a touch of darkness a la The Wicker Man?

“Who are these coming to the sacrifice?”.

O yes, who indeed? Spoiler – it’s just a heifer… or is it? Perhaps it’s someone – a virgin – in the costume of a heifer…”and all her silken flanks in garlands dressed”? You heard it here first – John Keats was the trope creator of the folk horror genre! It’s surprising how few of the lines you have to change in the poem to play it as The Wicker Man, beat for beat – it totally works!

 

 

Again I’m probably the only one to think of Ode on a Grecian Urn for The Wicker Man. Still – animal sacrifice? That urn is metal!

And of course the aesthetic philosophy of Keats in two lines, dropping goodness from the usual transcendental trinity for the duality of beauty and truth:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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1795 portrait of Coleridge by Peter Vandyke. To be honest, it looks like he took some opium before this too

 

(6) SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE –

KUBLA KHAN (1816)

 

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”

 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge – opium dope fiend, who attributed his best poem “Kubla Khan” as a “A Vision in a Dream. Or, a Fragment” and prefaced it to be part of a much longer epic poem upon waking from a literal opium dream, only to be sadly interrupted in writing it by “a person on business from Porlock”. Yeah sure, Coleridge – we know you just ran out of poem.

“But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!”

 

A celebration of creative energy and the poet as shamanic figure. 1980s band Frankie Goes to Hollywood characteristically adapted it into a celebration of roving male (homo)sexual energy in their “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” – “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a pleasure-dome e-RECT!”. But there’s nothing like that in the original, is there?…

“And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced”

Oh my! Welcome to the Pleasuredome!

As for the poet as shamanic figure –

“And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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William Butler Yeats photographed by Alice Boughton in 1903

 

(5) WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS –

THE SECOND COMING (1919)

 

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold”

 

The Apocalypse according to Yeats, which sees Christianity winding down (or is that up?) and something else about to take its place. Something not pretty – something with a lot of apocalyptic chaos and violence, drowning out the innocent and good.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity”

Well that or he predicted the internet.

And like any good apocalypse, the focus is its beast, modelled on Great Beast of the Apocalypse, or as I like to call it, that sixy beast. Spoiler alert – it’s the sphinx. Or some kind of apocalyptic Godzilla-sphinx, as featured in the most famous lines of the poem.

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(4) ALFRED LORD TENNYSON –

ULYSSES (1842)

 

“I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me”.

Well there’s a job description for you!

Alfred Lord Tennyson – archetypal poet of Victorian literature and poet laureate.

And his Ulysses – poem in blank verse and dramatic monologue. Dramatic monologue to whom is not clear, but by whom is of course the classical hero of Iliad and Odyssey, Odysseus, or as the Romans called him, Ulysses.

Companion poem to his similarly Homeric “The Lotus Eaters” but complete opposite in tone and thought – where “The Lotus Eaters” resists the heroic call to action for slacking off and, well, eating lotus (because we’re just so wasted, man), “Ulysses” accepts it and indeed issues it

“Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world”

Tennyson often tended to the heroic, particularly in the Victorian mold – which can stick in the modern craw a little, as with “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (although it is damn fine poem and eminently quotable). Even Ulysses has been accused as “part of the prehistory of imperialism” and admittedly its protagonist does sound a little like a “colonial administrator”

However, Ulysses is particularly effective – and emotive – as that last call to heroic action, literally riding (or sailing) off into the sunset in one’s own twilight.

“We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(3) e.e. cummings – i carry your heart with me (1952)

 

“i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)”

e.e. cummings – modernist free-form poet, delighting in the sheer exuberance of wordplay, idiosyncratic syntax and punctuation. yes – he even made punctuation sing.

“i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you”

what earns him god-tier ranking is my love of quips and koans, something i strive to emulate in my own writing – and he was the poet of quips and koans. he has some cracking one-liners – some of my favorites in literature or anywhere.

as in “Buffalo Bill’s” – “how do you like your blue-eyed boy Mister Death”

or “pity this busy monster, manunkind” – “we doctors know a hopeless case if – listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go”

while i was tempted to give the top spot to one of his erotic poems, i chose one of his more conventional – or as conventional as they get – love poems. indeed – perhaps his most classic love poem

“here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)”

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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(2) DYLAN THOMAS –

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT (1951)

 

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night”.

Wales’ leading poet, druid dude and pantheistic Jedi of the Force – “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower”. Also “prince of the apple-towns” in Fern Hill and the young dog in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

“Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

A “roistering, drunken and doomed poet”, who left the world at 39 – “I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me”. Don’t we all?

“And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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(1) T.S. ELIOT – THE WASTELAND (1922)

 

“And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust”

 

Apocalyptic poet. Also one of the most name-dropped poets, including in Catch-22 (“Name me a poet who makes money!”)

Also Old Possum, as in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Yes – T.S. Eliot is the origin of the musical Cats.

 

 

Also – the Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-ah! Well, not quite. That is the Lord Humungus from Mad Max: The Road Warrior. But Eliot was the Poet of The Wasteland.

It would be interesting to adapt The Wasteland in the style of Mad Max. Except it would involve a lot less BDSM leather kink and a lot more mind-screw.

It would also be interesting to adapt The Wasteland into horror – it verges on it already. That fear in a handful of dust for one. For another, the titular theme of the mythic Waste Land as post-apocalyptic setting without redemption or resurrection – “That corpse you planted last year in your garden. Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?” The Wasteland as zombie apocalypse, perhaps? Or slasher film?

 

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper”

 

Even The Wasteland is laid waste in The Hollow Men, a more straightforward and shorthand poem of the same themes. Shout-out also to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the third of the Eliot holy trinity. The central bathos is there in the title – the juxtaposition of the lofty “love-song” with the commonplace and ludicrous banality of the protagonist himself.

 

“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.”

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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TOP 10 POETRY

(TIER LIST)

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER):

(1) T.S. ELIOT – THE WASTELAND

(2) DYLAN THOMAS – DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

(3) e.e. cummings – i carry your heart

If T.S. Eliot is my Old Testament of poetry, Dylan Thomas and e.e. cummings are my New Testament.

 

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(4) ALFRED LORD TENNYSON – ULYSSES

(5) WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS – THE SECOND COMING

(6) SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE – KUBLA KHAN

(7) JOHN KEATS – ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

(8) WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS – THE IVY CROWN

(9) SYLVIA PLATH – LADY LAZARUS

 

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(10) ISHMAEL REED – I AM A COWBOY IN THE BOAT OF RA

Top Tens – Comics: Top 10 Comics (8) Mark Millar – The Magic Order

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(8) MARK MILLAR –

THE MAGIC ORDER (Image 2019-2023)

 

“We live in a world where we’ve never seen a monster, and The Magic Order is the reason we sleep safely in our beds.”

 

The Apocalypse according to Mark.

Mark Millar, that is.

Of course, that epithet of the Apocalypse according to Mark applies much more to his American Jesus – indeed literally but it is intriguing how often Millar gets apocalyptic in his comics, literally or figuratively.

I have two favorite particular subgenres of fantasy. The first and narrowest is what might be termed apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic fantasy, particularly if based on the actual Book of Apocalypse. The second is posthumous fantasy – not in the sense of being published posthumously, but set posthumously or fantasy set in the afterlife.

And I’ve been I’ve been a fan of Mark Millar even since his surreal and characteristically irreverent fantasy comic Canon Fodder in 2000 AD, one that was again apocalyptic in a literal sense and one of the few fantasy works to combine both subgenres. Well, apart from the original Book of Apocalypse.

The Magic Order isn’t apocalyptic in the literal sense but is in the figurative sense of its stakes. The titular order secretly safeguards the world from supernatural and magical threats – such as guarding a magic tome containing the dark spells of Old Atlantis so powerful that it is “”said to cause two world wars and can slay a deity”.

“Magic meets the mob in THE MAGIC ORDER, as five families of magicians-sworn to protect our world for generations-must battle an enemy who’s picking them off one by one. By day, they live among us as our neighbors, friends, and co-workers, but by night, they are the sorcerers, magicians, and wizards that protect us from the forces of darkness…unless the darkness gets them first.”

The first volume featured the American Magic Order while the second and third volumes move to the Magic Order in Europe and Asia.

By the way, Millar returned to posthumous fantasy in his 2017 Reborn comic.

But in a sense this entry bookmarks a place in my top ten I tend to reserve for Millar with one series or another, although The Magic Order does indeed rank as my favorite Millar title at this time. The point is that he consistently writes his own independent creator-owned comics under his unified label Millarworld, usually for Image or Icon – such that I could compile my Top 10 Mark Millar Comics.

It helps that his comics have a healthy rate of adaptation to film or television. The former include titles such as Kickass and Kingsman. The latter is particularly so after his Millarworld label was purchased by Netflix to adapt his comics for television, with my favorite so far as the animated adaptation of Supercrooks. Sadly, The Magic Order is still in production as I understand it.

He also has a very personable profile on X or Twitter.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – Comics: Top 10 Comics (9) Charles Soule & Scott Snyder – Undiscovered Country

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(9) CHARLES SOULE & SCOTT SYNDER –

UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (Image 2019 – PRESENT)

 

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early…what the hell is that?!

 

Undiscovered Country starts from what might seem to be a familiar premise but one that becomes increasingly audacious…and beautifully weird. The titular Undiscovered Country is the United States or or what has become of it after it literally walled itself off from the rest of the world for thirty years (the Sealing) – land of the free and home of the brave become literal land of the lost. And by walling, I mean not just the massive physical walls but the ‘Air Wall’ of experimental force shield technology. Of course, there’s more than a few echoes of contemporary political events – and even more so in 2020 for the premise of its plot, a global pandemic that requires a team seeking a cure to breach its borders and venture into this strange and deadly ‘undiscovered’ country.

And that’s where things go “from prescient to Beyond Thunderdome: giant land sharks, tribal lunacy, jingoistic madmen galore…Forget the Land of the Free. This was Mad Max by way of the bastard son of Roald Dahl and Hunter S. Thompson. If they let the baby smoke crack a lot”. And then there’s the fact – evidenced by those mutated land sharks and jingoistic madmen – that as an effect of that force shield, much more time has seemingly passed in the lost United States than should actually be possible…

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – Comics: Top 10 Comics (10) Kieron Gillen – The Power Fantasy (2024)

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(10) KIERON GILLEN –

THE POWER FANTASY (Image 2024)

 

“Superpowered.” You have certain preconceptions. They’re incorrect. Here, that word has a specific technical definition. Namely, “any individual with the destructive capacity of the nuclear arsenal of the USA.”

 

Okay – I’ll admit that this entry is aspirational, in turn reflecting that it is my usual wildcard tenth place entry for the best of the present or previous year.

And by aspirational, I mean it is this year’s comic that I want to read but haven’t read yet.

In fairness to myself, the first issue was only just released in August 2024 – with issues to follow each month after that. So it will be some time before the first collected edition comes out – generally it take six issues or so before they are released together in a collected edition.

Also in fairness to myself, I have enjoyed previous series written by Kieran Gillon for Image Comics, so have high expectations for this one.

 

“You are of the Pantheon. You will be loved. You will be hated. You will be brilliant. Within two years, you will be dead.”

 

The first was The Wicked + The Divine from 2014 to 2019, a series I previously ranked in my top ten and still one of the best from Gillen or Image Comics. It featured the Pantheon, a shifting rotation of gods in the Recurrence – when twelve gods (and goddesses) return (or incarnate) as young people for a bright, shining two years before burning out, as they have every ninety years for millennia. Except, you know, God, because that would just be boring. We’re talking beautiful, sexy, pop-star pagan gods and goddesses here, although they change with each Recurrence. Or something like that because the rules are not entirely clear and keep changing.

 

The second was Die from 2018 to 2021, a series I would previously have ranked as my wildcard tenth place entry in my top ten. It featured “a pitch-black fantasy where a group of forty-something adults have to deal with the returning unearthly horror they barely survived as teenage role-players” – a concept the writer pitched as “Goth Jumanji” but was more using Dungeons and Dragons as an intriguing exploration of fantasy as a genre.

That extends to the character classes of the game in the story as an intriguing exploration of character classes in Dungeons and Dragons – Dictator (like a bard with mind control mojo), Neo (a cyberpunk mage powered by fairy gold), Godbinder (like a cleric cutting deals with gods), Grief Knight (paladin literally powered by emotion), and Fool (combination of rogue and bard powered by luck). Indeed, the classes and game mechanics were so intriguing that Gillen spun off an actual role-playing game for them.

 

“There are six such people on Earth. The planet’s survival relies on them never coming into conflict.

Come dance to the ticking of the doomsday clock…”

 

So I’m looking forward to the collected edition of Power Fantasy…although I also want to read We Called Them Giants released in collected edition in October 2024 – which also qualifies it for my wildcard tenth place entry.

 

RATING: 4 STARS**** (based on my ratings for his previous series)

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Top Tens – Poetry & Literature: Top 10 Poetry (1) T.S. Eliot – The Wasteland (1922)

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(1) T.S. ELIOT – THE WASTELAND (1922)

 

“And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust”

 

Apocalyptic poet. Also one of the most name-dropped poets, including in Catch-22 (“Name me a poet who makes money!”)

Also Old Possum, as in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Yes – T.S. Eliot is the origin of the musical Cats.

 

 

Also – the Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-ah! Well, not quite. That is the Lord Humungus from Mad Max: The Road Warrior. But Eliot was the Poet of The Wasteland.

It would be interesting to adapt The Wasteland in the style of Mad Max. Except it would involve a lot less BDSM leather kink and a lot more mind-screw.

It would also be interesting to adapt The Wasteland into horror – it verges on it already. That fear in a handful of dust for one. For another, the titular theme of the mythic Waste Land as post-apocalyptic setting without redemption or resurrection – “That corpse you planted last year in your garden. Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?” The Wasteland as zombie apocalypse, perhaps? Or slasher film?

 

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper”

 

Even The Wasteland is laid waste in The Hollow Men, a more straightforward and shorthand poem of the same themes. Shout-out also to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the third of the Eliot holy trinity. The central bathos is there in the title – the juxtaposition of the lofty “love-song” with the commonplace and ludicrous banality of the protagonist himself.

 

“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.”

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (8) Peloponnesian War

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Destruction of the Athenian army at Syracuse – illustration from John Steeple Davis, The story of the greatest nations, from the dawn of history to the twentieth century, published 1900 (public domain image used in Wkipedia – “Pelopponesian War”)

 

(8) PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 BC)

 

Greek against Greek – Athens vs Sparta.

There was a point when I cracked during the film 300. It was when Leonidas spoke about the necessity of Sparta fighting Persia because even “those boy-loving philosophers” in Athens were fighting Persia. “Screw you, Leonidas”, I yelled “the Peloponnesian War isn’t over!” And after the ushers bounced me from the cinema, I ruminated on this slur on the Athenians. There was of course the fact that they were the true Greek heroes of the Persian Wars.

But there was also, you know, the Peloponnesian War of Athens against Sparta (or Peloponnesian Wars, as there was first and second war with a brief peace between them).

And we’re still fighting it, in that the war between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta underlies the grand ideological conflict in Western civilization. Few things may actually have an ideal Platonic form, but Sparta did – Plato’s Republic, with its philosopher-kings or guardians who perceive the Forms of the true reality, trained from childhood to govern in the interests of the polity (by physical and moral regimen) and bound by stricter rules than the rest of the populace.

It has been argued that Plato’s Republic was a dystopian satire rather than a utopian ideal, but it is difficult not to see it intended as the latter – or worse, as Plato’s distaste for his own democratic Athens (which after all, executed his beloved teacher and philosophical mouthpiece Socrates) and idealization of a philosophical version of Athens rival, Sparta, although he and his ideas didn’t do too well when put into practice with attempts at a philosopher-king in Syracuse.

And so we are still fighting the Peloponnesian War against Plato’s mystical fascism or totalitarian Spartanism as it has recurred throughout Western political ideology – the General Will of Rousseau, the dictatorship of the proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard in Marxism or communism, the Fuhrerprinzip of fascism or Nazism, and so on.

Of course, I know this is mostly my projection. I’m not sure if Western political ideology has actually been influenced by Sparta or even Plato and his Republic to that extent (or how much Sparta and Plato influenced each other for that matter). But I’m not the only one to see such parallels and I’m sticking with it – it has a certain mythic resonance. Hence its god-tier special mention entry second to the Trojan War, which might otherwise seem extravagant for a war between Greek city-states.

And what about, you know, the historical Peloponnesian War, you ask? To paraphrase Martin Prince’s sneer from The Simpsons, I’m aware of its work – namely, that Sparta won, with a little help from their Persian friends, albeit to be humbled later by Thebes, before the Macedonians and Romans swept over all the Greek city states.

And that Athenian political ideas didn’t work too well in Syracuse either, with the disastrous Athenian Syracuse Expedition sometimes likened to the American experience in Vietnam, only a lot worse for the ultimate defeat of Athens in their not so cold war against Sparta.

As I said previously, Plato’s ideas – and Plato himself – didn’t fare too well in Syracuse, when he came closest to implementing his Republic and its philosopher-kings in practical reality through Syracuse and its tyrant. Closest that is, as in not at all, founding the time-honored tradition of how intellectuals fare when courting people in power or political tyranny – running afoul of tyrants and narrowly avoiding execution or literal slavery and imprisonment.

Of course, history is a lot messier than our black and white projections of it. Lest we think of the Spartans too much as the bad guys, while their allies wanted Athens destroyed and its population enslaved after its defeat, it was the Spartans with their warrior code of honor who declined to do so – particularly as they regarded that all of Greece owed Athens a debt of honor for its role in the Persian War. And screw you, Thebes and Corinth! I’ve got a letter for the Corinthians and this time there’s no love in it. I’m an Athenian fan.

And for that matter, even the Spartanism or mystical fascism of Plato in my projection may be more nuanced than that, given it has a recurring appeal to or arguments for it. Even I’m a fan of one of the many pop culture versions of Plato’s Republic – Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One. Mega-City One is essentially Plato’s Republic in twenty-second century America, with the Judges as its philosopher-kings or guardians and the Law as its Forms. Judge Dredd – he is the Forms!

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Comics: Top 10 Comics

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The famous and iconic cover of Superman’s very first appearance in Action Comics

 

COMICS: TOP 10

 

Exactly what it says on the tin – my Top 10 Comics, including webcomics (as three of my top ten entries, indeed three of the top five).

You don’t need me to explain what comics are, but I might need to explain some things.

First, comics are my guilty reading pleasure I have retained from childhood, much like animation in TV or film. And much like animation, whatever the comic, I’ll usually enjoy checking it or its characters out.

Second, perhaps surprisingly after the first, I don’t read that many comics, let alone actively follow them. For most comics, I don’t go beyond checking them or their characters out in brief overview or review to reading them in depth. Usually, my interest is satisfied by the idea of a comic – or ideas in a comic – rather than the comic itself.

In particular, I don’t follow or read any comics from the ruling duopoly of DC and Marvel, with the exception of the former’s, ah, former label of Vertigo, although I have an enduring interest in and familiarity with many of their characters – but more in their film or television adaptations (or in their art and cosplay) than their original comics.

Anyway, these are my Top 10 Comics.