#this and the book club reviews reflecting the writers deaths in the game

[velvetjune]

imagine being director Northmoor of the FBC and one day you revel so much in your power that you literally explode. and instead of doing anything else about it, the FBC goes “when life gives a secret paranatural government agency lemons…” and throws your possibly-alive, moving corpse in a power plant so they don’t have to worry about their power bill. then going onwards, people only refer back to you using ominous light-based puns

[popculturebuffet]

Blacksad: Somewhere In the Shadows Review

Hello you beautiful people! I have a WEIRD relationship with Noir. It’s weird because i’ve never really dived into the films of type, though I really should, But as a kid I absolutely LOVED the tracer bullet arcs in Calvin and Hobbes, where everyone’s favorite hyperactive and imaginative six year old would plant himself as the hero in a noir pastiche.. ironically like myself Bill Watterson was also not a huge noir buff and just relied on Cliches but hey, it worked. 

Still love these. So from fourth grade on it imprinted a lifelong love of a good bit of detective noir. Not enough to you know, get me to read any traditional noir books or watch any noir tv shows or detective procedurals but I still love a good mystery from time to time and some of my favorite comics such as Howard the Duck by Chip Zdarksy and Peter David’s second run on x-factor run on the genre while having fun with it’s cliches. 

I also love anthropormphic animal stories. Dunno why, I just do, so once I found out about Blacksad, a comic that combines disney quality art from a former disney animator with gripping, adult noir that rips your heart out... I couldn’t resisit trying it. Telling the tale of John Blacksad, a cynical private detective and the cases he steps into via gorgeous, straight out of a disney storyboard art, the series is by  Juan Díaz Canales (writer) and Juanjo Guarnido (artist), the latter a former Disney artist who worked on several Disney films, meeting in the 90′s while working on licensed works and hitting it off, leading to this series.  That’s.. really all I could find about the making of the series in English. The only other fact is the series is designed for first release in France, which has a huge comics market, hence the various volumes being called “Albums”, with them later being released in Spain and then english, currently in the latter through Dark Horse Comics, who last year collected the current 5 albums and some side stories into one big volume. And with Dark Horse having infrequent sales including Blacksad on comixology it’s easy enough to pick up all 5 volumes in one complete package on digital for 9 bucks, as it is right now. Seriously I’m not trying to shill for Comixology or Dark Horse, I just love these comics and suggest picking them up. The creators DO intend on new volumes... it’s just both have been busy with other work so they’ve been stuck in development hell since 2013. However given there have always been, if much smaller, the biggest being 5 years, gaps between the Albums, I don’t think the series is dead quite yet and with Dark Horse fully backing it, taking the series from only two volumes getting translated to both translating the first four AND translating the fifth within a year of it’s release, we’ll undoubtly get the next one quickly. The series has also spawned a game, Under the Skin, which i’ll probably also cover some day as i’m dying to play it, but i’m waiting for a sale because it’s around 30 bucks and I can wait. It’s also been nominated for an Eisner three times to no suprise and has had fans in Stan Lee, Jim Steranko, Tim Sale and Will freaking Eisner. Yes the GUY the awards were named after liked the series.  So yeah, I love this series and highly support it, but the thought of covering it hadn’t occrued to me.. in part because I already had three comic retrsopectives going, my looks at The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Scott Pilgrim and New X-Men, and simply because I just hadn’t thought of it till Kevin, frequent patron and comissioner of the blog whose paid for tons of reivews, suggested covering the second Album, Arctic Nation, which has our hero searching for a missing little girl he feels has been taken by the titular white supramacist movement.. and if your wondering “Wait how the fuck does that work their animals”, John is black coded due to his black fur, while the white suprmacists are all Arctic Animals.. a touch I really like as I’d honestly never thought of that as a metaphor but it fits like a glove, especially given that most white furred arctic mamals are pretty agressive looking. So yeah I’ll be covering that one next month for Black History Month, among many other things, but I felt I wanted to cover the series in order and since again, it’s only the second of five and I had a free space on the schedule. So without further adew, join me somewhere in the shadows and under the cut as we enter the world of one John Blacksad. 

We open as you’d expect for a Noir with a heady narration and a murder. John was brought in by Smirnov, the chief of police and an old aquantice who serves as his Commissioner Gordon. Since the victim is John’s ex, he was brought in to see if he knows anything and as you’d expect warned not to look into it further, as John dosen’t buy this was a simple robbery. His response is exactly what you’d expect. 

I mean.. what did you expect? You called him out of bed to see his former lovers corpse, KNOWING he’s one hell of detective, dosen’t give up on things easy, and would probably be curious. For him to say “Cool gonna go smoke some reefer and take in a looney tunes short at the theater, call me when you find the murderer?” Also  this series takes place in the 50s. Because of course it does. 

So John goes back to his office to brood, reflecting that the office feels like the remains of an ancient civlization because “It seems to be all that remains of the civlized person I used to be”. Hell of a line. 

We then get his backstory with the victim, Natalia. She’s a famous actress, who John first as a younger man when hired to investgate some death threats she’d received with a boquet of flowers. John shows off just how good he is at his job in just a few panels. 

IT not only shows in just a few panels just how ferocious our hero can be when needed and how good he is at his job, easily having tracked down the man responsible and scared him shitless without breaking as sweat, but how fucking gorgeous the art is. I meant it when I brought up the old disney comparison, as Steranko even mentioned in his introduction to the collection of the first three volumes how it looks like animation cels on the page. IT’s utterly breathtaking and ONLY gets even more lush and beautiful as the series goes on and perfectly fits the noir stylings with it’s realisim, making it’s animal characters feel utterly human and real while still keeping their animal traits in perfect detail. 

John impressed her, and as we see in the next page under his narration they not only had really steamy passionate sex, and why yes we do see them naked even if the bits are covered it’s still very much nsfw and we saw Natalia’s naked corpse earlier, so that ship had already sailed anyway, with Natalia taking him on both as her lover and her on staff detective and the two were much in love.. until the fame apparenlty got to her judging from the visuals, and the realtionship fell apart. 

Before we move on i’d like to talk about the narration which CAN be a bit overwrought here or there and is a bit overused.. but does have it’s mometns of being utterly effective as with above, contrasting John’s statments about a sucessful job and being hired on.. with the beginnings of his and Natalia’s relationship and their passionate lovemaking. IT’s not BAD and it works for the setting, but it can be distracting, but thankfully the series levels this out as we go and they learned from it so no harm done. Just the kinda thing that happens early in a series life when the creators are getting a handle on things, so no harm done. 

But naturally John isn’t going to take the love of his life, responsible for the happiest days of said life, being brutally murdered lying down and is going to find the bastard who did this. So he goes to an old friend, Jake Ositombe, a championship boxer and Nat’s former bodyguard who he recommended to her. Given we see him knock the shit out of his opponent without the slightest effort, yeah good call. Also yes we share the same name and no it’s not weird to type about another Jake, adventure time sorta.. knocked that out of me. Jake dosen’t know much since she fired him a long time ago as one of her lovers hired private security, and the last one he knew of was a guy by the name of Leon.  John, naturally, easily finds the guy’s apartment, Leon Kronkski, a screenwriter.. but also rules him out as the guy lived in a humble apartment and clearly didn’t have the cash to hire his own hired goons. 

He does find a clue, a matchbook for some place called the Cypher Club.. and another when the man’s sweet  mouse landlady shows up, who John charms by pretending to be Leon’s friend and flashing a big smile, finding out a msyterious man with “big bulging eyes”, took him. This scene also to me is great in subtly showing off John’s skill. While the previous flashback showed how badass he is, shoving a gun down the throat of a stalking wannabe murderer with pure rage in his eyes.. here we see a lighter approach, how despite his serious and dour nature.. he easily slips into being cheery and looking like an average joe off the street. He bluffs the landlady not because the plot says so.. but because like any PI he’s just that good at slipping into whatever roll he needs to get the info he needs. He can be his dour self or a charming happy go lucky guy without missing a beat. 

So with that he goes to the studio leon worked for where his boss.. is a walrus j jonah jameson?

But yeah J. Jonah Walruson wants pictures of spider-man.. moving pictures.. but he can’t film them with his star dead and his screenwriter indefintiely gone, with the same bulging eyed man having told JJ he’d be gone indefintely. Nothing suspicious about that!

So naturally John’s next plan is to find the guy.. who is already after him as you’d expect with both a knife to slash at our hero with and the fog covering him so he can hit and run. But unluckily for him .. well i’ll let john say it...

John  headbutts the myserious snake, who only managed to get his coat before and tries to interogate him.. but gets a quick jab to the gut and the guy gets away. 

We soon meet our big bag, who has a big speech about insects and things being usefufl.. and once they stop being useful.. they become dead and collectable, telling the snake man to back off John.. and sending his right hand man to go take care of the Snake who apparently took something from the office. Realizing his numbers up the Snake Man goes to a lizard bar, picks up a package from a friend and runs out the back, knowing he’s being followed.. and we get some hints there’s also racial tension between lizards and mammials here as the bartender, said friend, has the entire bar circle around the guy preventing him from following our mysterious bulging eyed man. 

Meanwhile John goes to the Cipher Club, a wretched hive of scum and villiany. Given Nat was a glamorous movie star, it’s very clear she was here to hide from something or someone, and the bartnender, a wild pig. 

No not you sweetie. The wild pig tells John leon was indeed here and a local rat, in both senses of the word, offers to take John to him.. though understandably John is supscious of the guy he just met in a seedy bar taking him anywhere except to get some heroin. Did Heroin exist yet? Questions for later. But he’s got a case so he follows. Though suprisingly the guy DOES actually come through and it’s not ENTIRELY a trap: he takes john to a tomb for Noel Krinsok.. an anagram for Leon’s name. Unsuprisingly he’s dead. And also unsuprisingly, two hired goons

Show up. As I said not ENTIRELY a trap but it’s obvious given the rat split moments before that our mysterious big bad knew where john would be headed next, and thus while giving him a clue, also set him up to get his head knocked in. And while John is badass.. these guys are a bear and a rhino,  both stronger, bigger, and with suprise on their size, as well as a tombstone to knock john’s head into. They easily beat him senseless and hope he got the message, though john gives a defiant fuck you before being punched out for it. He returns home, feeling like he’s aged 20 years “But no one respects the elderly anymore”, PFFT, and heads home to his rathole, not literally this time, apartment to lay on his cot and think as he gets some rest. 

And while the trail for Leon is cold. our mysterious murderer accidently tipped his hand: only someone with a LOT of money and influence could make a man disappear like this, and it tracks with what we’ve seen so far. The guy has multiple henchman and despite being a big star with plenty of clout, Natalia had to hide in a dive bar just to get away from him and even THEN clearly wasn’t so lucky given she and her new lover both wound up dead.  But Blacksad has bigger problems.. he wakes up in a jail cell.

Turns out Smirnkov had him arrested.. but for his own protection as the case is getting too hot and while he was late on that front given John’s face is hamburger, it’s clear from his tone and demeanor that while he may of been harsh with John earlier.. the two are old friends, and the Chief is simply worried about him winding up dead, and John takes you know being thrown in prison in stride. Which while not a bad scene it is a BIT suspect that a black coded character was thrown in jail for nothing and it’s treated very lightly and as a simple protection between friends, though given they wouldn’t think of coding john like that till next volume, I brush it off as accidental implications in hindsight. 

Smirnkov though also called John here.. because he needs his help. Since Natalia’s Murder Case is pointing very high up, so his superiors have ordered him to bury the case and as he puts it “the bastards know where to squeeze”. And given in volume 3 we learn Smirnov has a wife and children, it’s very obvious where they squoze and to the volume’s credit while we don’t know that yet it’s VERY clear from Smirnov’s body language they went after some form of family. So while he has to give it up.. John does not. So he brought him to jail to offer a proposal: John goes after this son of a bitch and nails him to the wall.. and Smirnov will FULLY protect John no matter what he has to do.  Now naturally given the rightful reckoning for police that’s been going on for almost a year, this SHOULDN’T play well. You have an officer outright telling an outside party that he and his boys will cover up his crimes. But.. honestly even in that framework.. it still works. That’s because.. the system has failed here. The higher up and more corrupt cops put pressure on the honest and hardworking family man Smirnov to stop a legitimate investigation into a horrible murderer.. because the guy is rich. And even now we’ve seen time and time again how rich assholes effortlessly escape the consequences of their action: How our own president who actively asked other nations to interfere in our election escaped his first impeachment trial, but hopefully not the second, aquitted. How Jeffery Epstien took YEARS to bring down with his years of ellicit parties involving innocent women and children he fucking enslaved. How Bill Cosby got away with all kinds of sexual assault for decades. The rich are often literally above the law in this country, so having a down on his luck detective, who retroactively himself is a minority, go after him with the full support of an actually GOOD police officer who genuinely believes in these people being held accountable but is held back by his family’s safety.. it works. John isn’t able to skirt consequences BECAUSE of a corrupt system.. but because the system’s so broken and slanted in the rich’s favor, that the ONLY option an honest officer like Smirnov has is to go outside it. And when asked WHY he’s doing all of this, Smirnov merley replies

... I got chills, their multiplyin. So John plans to find the bulge eyed snake after a hot shower.. only for the guy to hold a gun to John’s head, having been waiting for him and wave the murder weapon, in a baggie around, the item he had retrieved, feeling John’s trying to replace him as number two. However before he can do anything our snake  pal is shot full of holes by the rat from before, who John dispatches with his own gun. 

So the Snake starts to expire.. but feels a kinship with John “We are nothing right cat? Spent so much time waiting for the right chance and when it happens it all falls to pieces”. The Snake explains his roll in things: He was one of the private security our big bad hired to guard Natalia. But being supscious he also hired the rat to follow her around, and thus found out about her affair, brutally torturing and murdering Leon and shooting Natalia in the head. And we finally get a name as our snake friend tragically expires. 

The snake’s death and tragic dying moments are something I forgot about.. but damn if their not really good writing, taking a character who before was seemingly just a murderous goon.. and comparing him to our hero. Another working class joe, and one who just caught up with the wrong asshole at the wrong time. He easily could’ve been john in another life and vice vers and it’s a good parallel. 

So John’s nightmares finally have  name and he naturally goes to confront the guy since he has an almost literal get out of jail free card. Turns out Smirnov is the richest man in town, and has his own big tower. Huh.. sounds familiar, and John simply sneaks his way up and once Statoc’s guards from before hear him rustling about.. sneaks up on them and clocks both one at at time with a fire extinqusher. 

Statoc warmly welcomes our hero inside, and has the fucking lizard balls, as he’s some sort of lizard himself, to offer John a JOB

I mean he’s clearly lost a lot of his goons and most of them were incompetent. He fails to realize that John can’t be bought, is here for vengeance and has no intention of selling his soul to some rich asshole who killed someone he loved for the creepiest and most asinine reasons imaginable. He says john’s Concisence is why he can’t pull the trigger and that he lacks “cold blood”.. before we cut to the next page, where John’s shot the fucker in the head and left a gaping hole where his lack of a brain was. 

And again what makes this work is the aftermath: John is clearly shaken, having ONLY been able to pull the trigger beause of Statoc’s smug grin and clearly not taking the sight of Statoc’s dead body bleeding out well. And while Smirnov keeps his word, covers for him despite the two guards clearly providing an iron clad argument against john and knoiwng thier blatantly covering this up.. he’s not happy about it. 

This is WHY the narrtive still works. Statoc stacked the law against the bad guys. .but despite this being a necessary evil.. it’s still an evil and subverting teh law at this rightly leaves him not in a great place mentally. John himself isn’t even if he plays it off as otherwise, as we get our final bit of narration and one hell of a closing line. 

Final Thoughts:

Somewhere in the Shadows is a bit rough around the edges, leaning a bit too heavily into the noir pastiche and Blacksad being a harboiled detective, something the next volume would ease up on. That being said.. it’s still a masterpiece, with gorgeous art and masterful pacing. While it’s the shortest of the stories, like those after it the pacing is sublime and never feels like it has any down moments or stuff that could’ve been cut, and the mystery keeps you on edge the whole time. Having forgot a lot of the details since last read I was on the edge of my seat the entire story and loving every second of it. Somewhere in the Shadows is the perfect starter for the series, introducing an important charcter in Smirnov and the noir nature and giving us a case personal to John so we can see who he was before, what he is now.. and what he WILL be for the rest of the series. The moment that MADE him into an even harder man than the one we follows here.. when he took a life in cold blood. A masterful story, seriously check it and the other volumes out, on comixology, in stores, great stuff. Next time we look into john and as I said, he’s taking down some racists and we also meet his sidekick weekly for the first time. As for me tommorow I dive back into my Tom Luictor retrospective but hit pause on our boy for a bit to take care of some of the larger plot.   Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure. 

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

My 118 in 2018 (goal achieved)

I did it! I achieved my goal of #118in2018 and I wanted to take this time to reflect on my cinematic journey over the past 365 days. 

Here are the absolute worst films I saw this year in which I hated every second and wanted to die. These are in chronological order rather than rank but honestly I think everyone knows Life Itself was the most truly, epically abysmal thing I saw this year. These are also some of my best reviews so like - you should really check those out (links below).

Phantom Thread

The Maze Runner: The Death Cure

Winchester

Early Man

Tyler Perry’s Acrimony

I Feel Pretty

Life of the Party

Life Itself

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Suspiria

Here are my favorite/the best films I saw this year. These ARE ranked, roughly, and usually are a combination of technically astonishing while also being entertaining, engaging, and rich in emotion and complexity.

Black Panther

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse

Eighth Grade

Annihilation

Paddington 2

A Quiet Place

Three Identical Strangers

Sorry to Bother You

A Star is Born

First Man

And here are the movies I thought I was gonna like only ok but actually loved beyond belief. They may not be the BEST, but they were among the most entertaining and endearing that I saw all year - the sleeper hits, if you will. Real salt of the earth stuff that you can happily spend a Saturday night with from Redbox. These are ranked in order of how surprised I was that I loved them this much.

The Hurricane Heist

Blockers

Den of Thieves

Upgrade

Alpha

Overlord

Venom

Christopher Robin

The House With a Clock in Its Walls

Widows

Anna and the Apocalypse

Love, Simon

For those of you interested in the performance of the blog, here are my top 10 posts in terms of engagement as of 12/31/2018 (people really love to talk about horror movies!):

Hereditary (499 notes)

A Quiet Place (458)

Widows (203)

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (200)

Sorry to Bother You (145)

Blockers (110)

The Nun (106)

Halloween (106)

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (86)

Christopher Robin (81)

And finally, here is the list of all 119 movies I viewed in theaters along with links to all the reviews. Thank you to everyone who read, followed, liked, reblogged, subscribed, or otherwise helped with this journey. I love you all - here’s to #119in2019!

The Greatest Showman - seen 01/02/18 with Fiancee

All the Money in the World - seen 01/03/18 with Pug Girl

Insidious: The Last Key - seen 01/06/18 with Fiancee and Owl Friend

I, Tonya - seen 01/08/18 with Fiancee

The Post - seen 01/16/18 with Fiancee

Proud Mary - seen 01/18/18 with Sleepy Gay

Paddington 2 - seen 01/21/18 solo

The Commuter - seen 01/22/18 with Fiancee

Call Me By Your Name - seen 01/25/18 with Fiancee

Phantom Thread - seen 01/27/18 with Fiancee

Den of Thieves - seen 01/28/18 with Sleepy Gay

The Maze Runner: The Death Cure - seen 01/31/18 with Owl Friend

Winchester - seen 02/01/18 with Fiancee and Pug Girl

Hostiles - seen 02/10/18 solo

Peter Rabbit - seen 02/10/18 solo

Fifty Shades Freed - seen 02/11/18 with Fiancee

Black Panther - seen 02/15/18 with Sleepy Gay and Owl Friend

Annihilation - seen 02/25/18 solo

Game Night - seen 02/26/18 with Fiancee

Death Wish - seen 03/2/18 with Sleepy Gay

Early Man - seen 03/04/18 solo

Every Day - seen 03/06/18 with Fiancee

The Hurricane Heist - seen 03/09/18 with Pug Girl

The Strangers: Prey at Night - seen 03/10/18 with Fiancee

Gringo - seen 03/11/18 with Owl Friend

Thoroughbreds - seen 03/12/18 with Fiancee

Love, Simon - seen 03/17/2018 with Fiancee

A Wrinkle in Time - seen 03/18/2018 solo

Red Sparrow - seen 03/18/2018 with Pug Girl

Unsane - seen 03/26/2018 with WIFE

Flower - seen 03/30/2018 with Wife

Pacific Rim: Uprising - seen 3/31/2018 solo

Ready Player One - seen 04/02/2018 with The Writer

A Quiet Place - seen -04/05/2018 with Wife, Sleepy Gay, and Owl Friend

Blockers - seen 04/08/2018 with Wife

Tyler Perry’s Acrimony - seen 04/11/2018 with Wife

Truth or Dare - seen 04/13/2018 with Wife, Owl Friend, Sleepy Gay, and Pug Girl

I Feel Pretty - seen 04/22/2018 with Wife

Rampage - seen 04/24/2018 with The Writer

Avengers: Infinity War - seen 04/26/2018 with Sleepy Gay, Owl Friend, Pug Girl, The Photographer, The Knitter, and The Guy Who’s Read the Comics

Isle of Dogs - seen 04/29/2018 solo

Tully - seen 05/08/2018 with Wife

Overboard - seen 05/10/2018 with Owl Friend

RBG - seen 05/11/2018 with Sleepy Gay

Bad Samaritan - seen 05/12/2018 with Pug Girl

Chappaquiddick - seen 05/12/2018 solo

Life of the Party - seen 05/16/2018 with Wife

Disobedience - seen 05/20/2018 with Wife

Deadpool 2 - seen 05/21/2018 with Sleepy Gay

Breaking In - seen 05/24/2018 with Wife

Solo - seen 05/27/2018 with Owl Friend

Book Club - seen 05/30/2018 solo

The Producers (1968) - seen 06/03/18 with Wife

Action Point - seen 06/04/18 with Wife

Upgrade - seen 06/06/18 with Pug Girl

Hereditary - seen 06/07/18 with Wife and Pug Girl

Ocean’s 8 - seen 06/09/18 with Wife

Hotel Artemis - seen 06/13/2018 with Owl Friend and Sleepy Gay

Tag - seen 06/14/2018 with Wife

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom - seen 06/20/2018 with Pug Girl, The Writer, and The AMC Queen

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? - seen 06/30/2018 with Wife

The First Purge - seen 07/03/2018 with Pug Girl, Sleepy Gay, and Owl Friend

The Incredibles 2 - seen 07/04/2018 solo

Ant Man and the Wasp - seen 07/05/2018 with The Writer

Uncle Drew - seen 07/07/2018 solo

Three Identical Strangers - seen 07/15/2018 with Wife

Hotel Transylvania 3 - seen 07/15/2018 solo

Sorry to Bother You - seen 07/16/2018 with Wife, Sleepy Gay, and Owl Friend

Skyscraper - seen 07/18/2018 with Sleepy Gay

Unfriended: Dark Web - seen 07/23/2018 with Wife and Pug Girl

Mission: Impossible - Fallout - seen 07/25/2018 with Pug Girl, The Writer, and The AMC Queen

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again - seen 08/01/2018 with Wife

Eighth Grade - seen 08/06/2018 with Wife

Slender Man - seen 08/09/2018 with Wife

BlacKkKlansman - seen 08/10/2018 with Wife, Sleepy Gay, Pug Girl, and Owl Friend

Christopher Robin - seen 08/11/2018 solo

The Meg - seen 08/12/2018 with Wife, Sleepy Gay, and Owl Friend

Alpha - seen 08/25/2018 solo

Crazy Rich Asians - seen 08/25/2018 with Sleepy Gay, Pug Girl, and Owl Friend

Searching - seen 08/31/2018 with Wife

Juliet, Naked - seen 09/06/2018 with Wife

The Nun - seen 09/08/2018 with Wife

Destination Wedding - seen 09/10/2018 with Wife

A Simple Favor - seen 09/14/2018 with Wife

The Predator - seen 09/18/2018 with Wife, Sleepy Gay, and Owl Friend

Lizzie - seen 09/26/2018 with Wife

Hell Fest - seen 09/27/2018 with Wife, Sleepy Gay, Pug Girl, and Owl Friend

Life Itself - seen 09/29/2018 with Wife

Assassination Nation - seen 09/29/2018 with Wife

Smallfoot - seen 09/30/2018 with Sleepy Gay

The Wife - seen 09/30/2018 with Wife

Night School - seen 10/08/2018 with Pug Girl

A Star is Born - seen 10/09/2018 with Wife and Sleepy Gay

Venom - seen 10/14/2018 with Pug Girl

The House With a Clock In Its Walls - seen 10/15/2018 solo

Bad Times at the El Royale - seen 10/18/2018 with Wife, Sleepy Gay, and Owl Friend

Halloween - seen 10/19/2018 with Wife and Owl Friend

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween - seen 10/21/2018 solo

The Old Man and the Gun - seen 10/22/2018 solo

Colette - seen 10/23/2018 with Wife

First Man - seen 10/25/2018 solo

Johnny English Strikes Again - seen 10/28/2018 solo

The Hate U Give - seen 10/30/2018 with Wife

Bohemian Rhapsody - seen 11/02/2018 with Wife and Owl Friend

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms - seen 11/03/2018 with Wife

Suspiria - seen 11/03/2018 with Wife

Overlord - seen 11/12/2018 with Sleepy Gay, Owl Friend, and Pug Girl

Can You Ever Forgive Me? - seen 11/17/2018 with Wife

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald - seen 11/18/2018 with Wife and Pug Girl

Widows - seen 11/20/2018 with Wife

Boy Erased - seen 11/26/2018 with Wife and Mother-In-Law

The Possession of Hannah Grace - seen 12/01/2018 with Wife

Ralph Breaks the Internet - seen 12/02/2018 with Wife

Robin Hood - seen 12/03/2018 with Pug Girl

The Grinch - seen 12/09/2018 solo

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse - seen 12/14/2018 with Wife

The Favourite - seen 12/15/2018 with Wife and Dad

Anna and the Apocalypse - seen 12/17/2018 with Wife, Pug Girl, Sleepy Gay, and Owl Friend - 118th MOVIE, 2018 GOAL MET

Mary Poppins Returns - seen 12/22/2018 with Wife and Mother-in-Law

[pragmastery]

Nearing the end of month two of the year, I am realizing that my reading challenge might be a little low for how much I have been reading just in the first few months while I am in school and working.

So, I have upped my Goodreads Reading Challenge to 50 books with the hopes of maybe doubling that to 100 by December, since for many years I have doubled my reading challenge and will be less busy after I graduate in June.

With that, here are the books I plan to read in March:

[All book covers are from Goodreads.]

The Capture (Guardians of Ga’Hoole #1) by Kathryn Lasky

I run a movie book club for my library, and this is the book for March. Naturally, I have to also read the book and write a trivia game for it before we watch the movie to test the kids on if they actually read it.

I loved this movie when it came out and have a good feeling about the book series. If I like it enough, I might even read the rest of the series since they are shorter kids books.

I am excited to feel like a kid again and re-watch the movie after reading the book. I just hope that I don’t dislike the movie after reading the book and seeing major differences, if there are any. I remember the movie being gorgeously animated and the story being super interesting with a vivid world and interesting characters.

Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy #2) by Robin Hobb

I know that this has been on my Monthly TBR for many months, but I do actually plan to pick this up this month, even if I don’t finish it within the month.

I really loved the first book, so much so that I recently purchased it for my own library at home, so I have high hopes for this one. I love a slow burn political fantasy with interesting magic and relateable characters. I know this book will deliver just that for me, and I need a guaranteed good book this month.

Additionally, my favorite book-tubers Peruse Project and Books with Emily are both reading this series right now, so I need to keep up with them to avoid spoilers and feel motivated by their reviews.

This series is a bit long though and the writing “slower” in pace, but I enjoy every word usually, so I am not worried about liking it. I have this book in audiobook as well as one physical copy at work and another at home, so I should be able to finish it this month.

I am considering taking this book with me to Washington at the end of this month, because it is a mass print paperback, therefore travel sized, and I know I will like it. I will have a few hours of travel time to read it and I feel like the vibe of this book will match the gloomy vibe of Seattle.

As you can probably tell, I love Seattle and plan very far ahead to make sure the trip is perfect. Seattle is my spirit animal cx.

The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones 

I got this book for 50% off at Barnes and Noble last month, so I am really excited to read it. I don’t know why this wasn’t on my 2020 Anticipated Books List, because I have had my eye out for this one since it came out in September last year.

This book is about a young grave digger who has to protect her town from corpses that began walking out of an old enchanted forest. On her journey she has to work with a mysterious map maker who lost his memory to discover why these corpses, called bone houses, keep terrorizing the town.

This seems like my kind of story: dark, mysterious, magical, and death. What’s not to enjoy?

Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1) by Michael Crichton

The predetermined theme for my bullet journal this month is tropical leaves, so naturally, I converted it into a Jurassic Park theme. Having those dino feels has made me in the mood to pick the book up, so that’s what I hope to do this month in honor of my journal theme.

I have actually never read this book (I know I am a hypocrite), so I am excited to give it a go. I loved The Lost World, and dinosaurs are ingrained in my personality, so I hope this lives up to the hype.

Because this isn’t a book that is part of my goal to lower my long term TBR, I will not be devastated if I don’t get to it. I have other books that I’ve owned for years that I need to get to before this one, but if I have the time or the urge, I will pick this book up.

I have also considered this mass print paperback for my trip to Seattle, but I am so indecisive. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Age of War (The Legends of the First Empire #3) by Michael J. Sullivan

The fifth book of this adult fantasy series comes out February 4th, so I would like to finish the other books in the series before I buy the new one. I need to get started. I really want to get caught up in this series as soon as possible, but I also want to read this when I can give it my all. Right now school has been so much that I haven’t felt like I can give it the attention it deserves, so I will keep it on my TBRs every month until I am ready.

As many of you know, the first two books of this series were my favorite books of 2019, so I have a feeling this series will again challenge my top books of the year. I am extremely excited for these books, and I will continue to keep them on my TBR lists until they are all finished.

I have the hardback signed copy of this book and the audiobook is available from my library, so I hope to get at least a bit through this before April.,

Graphic Novels

I read a lot of graphic novels at work and on my breaks between classes. There really isn’t too much to say about them before I read them, so here are some of the graphic novels I currently have checked out and plan to read this month:

These are the books that I want to read this month, but what I really want to know is: what YOU are reading this month.

Please share your TBR and current reads in the comments!

Don’t forget to check out my posts every Monday.

-Knight of Cups ❤

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What's on your TBR? Nearing the end of month two of the year, I am realizing that my reading challenge might be a little low for how much I have been reading just in the first few months while I am in school and working.

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Christopher Tolkien, The Mysterians, Taliesin, Vampirella

Tolkien (Notion Club Papers): Christopher Tolkien died a couple of days ago, which marks the end of an era – the last person who participated in the core Inklings meetings; the writing and discussion group that met in the evenings to read works in progress and have discussions stimulated. CT was probably the person I would (in a theoretical way) most have liked to get to know, as a friend, for long and detailed discussions – because there was so much that only he could have told.

Men’s Fiction (Wasteland & Sky): That’s the way men’s adventure used to be. At least, that’s what it was in the 1950s. What it became was slightly different. As the decades went on they started to get less and less heroic until they forgot what heroism was by the end of the 20th century. This is a pattern that can be seen with film at the time. The 1970s was a miserable time, by all accounts. Coming after the turbulent ’60s, the ’70s are regularly known as the nadir of western culture.

Cultural Musings (Jon Mollison): Today’s post is hopefully the start of a decent trend for 2020.  The Pookinator fired some interest shots across the cultural bow when he pointed out that the Chick Tract on D&D is genuinely cursed because: It’s friendly fire. It’s directly responsible for mountains of apostasy.     It covered up actual child abuse by making the “Satanic Panic” look like a ridiculous joke.

Celtic Myth (DMR Books): Thankfully, I have the recently-published The Book of Taliesin. It’s a new translation of a thirteenth century book of Welsh poems; the Llyvyr Taliesin (or ‘Book of Taliesin’, for all those sadly burdened by the crushing inability to speak the language of Heaven). You can thank National Poet of Wales Gwyneth Lewis and ex-Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams (yes, really) for their hard work in translating it for a Saxon-speaking readership.

Vampire Fiction (Karavansara): I mentioned it yesterday, and I read it last night and today as I sat around a doctor’s waiting room – Vampirella: Blood Invasion, the first Vampirella novel, written by Nancy A. Collins and published by the fiction branch of Dynamite publishing is a very fast read, and a fun one. For the uninitiated, Vampirella is a character created fifty years ago as a host for a series of anthology magazines, that later evolved into an indie comic-book character in her own right, with her own universe, recurring characters, timeline and everything.

Clark Ashton Smith (Adventures Fantastic): lark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was born on this date, January 13.  Along with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, Smith was considered one of the Big Three of Weird Tales. Smith lived the longest of these three gentlemen, but his writing career wasn’t much longer. He wrote during the 1920s and 30s but stopped writing around 1937. Smith was a poet as well as a short story writer, and it shows in his lush, baroque prose.  In fact, one of the more common criticisms of Smith is that reading him requires too much work and too large of a vocabulary. His stories were often set in imaginary worlds such as Hyperborea, Poseidonis, and Zothique.

Comic Books (Hero Envy): It’s a bit hard to believe, when I look back at all the comic book characters I was fortunate enough to get to co-create or at least co-develop.  But I’d grown up in small town Missouri loving comics, so when I got a chance to work in the field in 1965, at the ripe old age of 24, I grabbed it, and soon would be working for Marvel Comics and Stan Lee as his editorial assistant and “staff writer.”  I suppose Banshee was the first super-type I dreamed up, although Stan wouldn’t let the character be a woman, as he should have been.  I wasn’t wild about the idea of making up heroes for Marvel.

Gaming (Tentaclii): Board Games UK has an in-depth and very informed review of the new board-game Cthulhu: Death May Die. Even if you don’t care to play such Derlethian things, it appears to be quite a minor work of art in itself, with fine card-art and hand-painted miniature pieces.

Men’s Adventure Magazines (Mens Pulp Magazines): In the Men’s Adventure Magazines & Books Facebook group, members sometimes post interesting examples of artwork from vintage men’s adventure magazines (MAMs) recycled for other purposes. One of my favorite examples was posted a while back by Timothy Isaacson, a group member in Illinois who has diverse tastes in art and music. 

Pulp Art (DMR Books): When I walked into the Huckster’s Room at the ECOF in the summer of 2019 at Chicago, one of the first tables I visited was that of my friend and fellow author and Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, Gary Buckingham.  In short order, Gary introduced me to a guy set up near him–a jovial and loquacious fellow by the name of Bob Garcia.  In short order Bob was lauding the virtues of his wares (as might any good vendor).  I can tell you, his expositions fell on willing ears when he immediately began telling me about a book of which he had but a few Publisher Copies (PC) remaining which contained examples of the works of a man I greatly admire, that being the immortal Virgil Finlay.

Cinema (RMWC Reviews): While Tetsujin 28-go got the Mecha genre officially rolling in 1956, the first on-screen post-Tetsujin manga mech would come from Toho Studios in December of 1957 in the sci-fi special effects extravaganza Chikyū Bōeigun (literally translated to “Earth Defense Force”) more widely known as The Mysterians. Directed by Ishirō Honda, (who had previously directed 1954’s seminal classic Godzilla), The Mysterians tells the story of scientists investigating strange astrophysical and geological phenomena, when an earthquake wipes out a mountain village.

Fantasy (Pulprev): Modernity has ruined fantasy. At one end of the scale, there is the slice-of-life tale, with ordinary people doing ordinary things, just with some counterfactual elements. At the other end, there is a setting that appears totally foreign to our reality–and yet the people who dwell in it base their actions on values, issues and ideologies extremely similar to ours; and on closer inspection what appears to be an alien realm is merely a distorted reflection of modern-day ideology. In the middle are tales set in worlds that aren’t too dissimilar to our own.

Fiction (Glorious Trash): The Raven saga continues with a second volume that seems to be set shortly after the first; Raven and her guru warlock (plus occasional bedmate) Spellbinder are still in the same region in which the previous volume concluded, however now Raven is training some new character named Silver on how to be a warrior in the army Raven’s apparently decided to form. Oh and meanwhile the novel has opened with that same future prologue with some unnamed old guy traveling around a desolate world and telling tales of long ago – tales about Raven.

Sensor Sweep: Christopher Tolkien, The Mysterians, Taliesin, Vampirella published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[indiecomicsofnj]

Comic Review

Deadhorse: The Ballad of the Two Headed Dog

Deadhorse Volume 2 #3

“This Isn’t Happening”

Writer and Letterer - Eric Grissom @grissom

Line Art - Phil Sloane @philsloan

Color Art -  Marissa Louise @marissadraws

30 pages color

Back cover by Claire Connelly @thinkillustration

Released in print and digital April 2018

Frankenstein’s Daughter 

Grissom, Sloane and Louise have returned with “Deadhorse:The Ballad of the Two Headed Dog” #3, struggling against slow publishing momentum but delivering a solid issue that trades in deep intrigue, mystery, and death with it’s hallmark of quirky character humor and a long game that rewards followers of the series.  

When we last saw Pike, Elise, and Edgar, they were separated and on the run as agents of billionaire industrialist Charles Gadsworth pursue them to obtain Pike’s key which will unlock a powerful and near magical box that may or may not destroy the world. This is the ninth chapter of the overall series which has built a world around these characters with a depth that goes back generations. One of the tools Grissom uses to create the story depth is supplemental material from the world of Deadhorse in the form of articles, interviews, diaries, and project reports. The inclusion in issue three of a “Top Secret Report” from the Deadhorse project shares the diary entries of a character we haven’t heard from since the opening scene of the series.  It’s this type of payoff that keeps the reader’s interest and builds trust that Grissom knows the story he’s telling and is creating a long ride worth rereading.  This depth of world building going back generations amplifies one of the main themes of the book which is family and the effect that a family’s history has on it’s children.  Grissom has been very open in sharing his family history in his weekly newsletters (sign up for this great weekly read here ) and knowing the source of some of the story helps build a more meaningful, shared experience of comic reading.    

Phil Sloane’s line art continues to be a great match for a story that likes to juxtapose violence/horror and humor, sometimes in the same panel. He uses a flexible grid structure, altering the number of tiers to keep up with the pace of the story yet keeping the order clear. Marissa Louise uses cell shading to render the characters with the addition of some texture brush in the backgrounds. She deftly achieves the low-angled Alaskan sunlight illuminating a room’s interior in one scene and then just as easily switches to the dark interior of a rock club without it being muddy. I like the texture overlays she uses when they are subtle and add variety to the page but found the bold and repeating “old newsprint texture” on some of the pages distracting.  Sloane and Louise show great story telling intuition during the hallucinogenic-dream sequence where their design choice of not changing line style or color palette leaves the reader to wonder alongside the character if this is really happening.  The disconnect between what the reader is being shown and what is really happening creates a disorientation that along with the pace, reflects the character’s state of mind as the story cuts between Elise and Edgar’s peril and Pike’s.  

“The Child is Father of the Man…” is the quote Grissom uses in the first issue of Deadhorse and which he reflects in each chapter in the manner in which Pike, Elise, and Robert Gadsworth deal with their family’s past and how they move forward in building their futures.  There is an analogy there to how the team continues to push through work on this book to finish it despite all the challenges of juggling a book and family/work life.  One of the big things that I found inspiring when I first met Eric and Phil is that they were regular people who just wanted to tell their story and not just dream about it. “This Isn’t Happening” finds the team three and a half years from the last issue but still moving forward, showing that they are committed to finishing their story and inspiring others as they do so.

- submitted by G.R. Lear 6/26/18 @unlimitedwondercomics

[hottytoddynews]

*Mary Ann Connell will have a book signing at Off Square Books in Oxford this Tuesday, April 11, at 5 p.m. She will also have a signing on Monday, April 10, at the library in Louisville, her home town. Other reviews follow in Memphis and at Lemuria Books in Jackson during the rest of the month.

Click the photo above to purchase ‘An Unforeseen Life.’ 

This is the story of a formidable lawyer and veteran college administrator who recalls bidding for Chi Omega alongside her good friend Mary Ann Mobley. Readers will recognize in Mary Ann Connell’s memoir the strengths of a Southern lady who has shown herself not only intelligent and energetic but also possessed of that quiet distinction described as “well-brought-up.”

In “An Unforeseen Life,” Connell looks back on a life that began in Louisville, Mississippi, a marriage that took her to the Delta, and a career path that opened up when she enrolled at Ole Miss. She writes with equal focus of preparing her home for meetings of the Browning Club and preparing exhibit folders for trial, and her memory of entering a rush bid in Fulton Chapel rhymes with her recollection of enrolling for graduate study at Harvard Law School.

As an undergraduate, Connell wrote for The Mississippian. She never missed a class when she took a course from Jim Silver. She made a B in bowling when her team partner Jake Gibbs made a C. She was chosen as Miss Ole Miss.

Mary Ann Connell (then Mary Ann Strong) and Bill Connell, in 1959, a year after she was named Miss Ole Miss.

There are many accomplishments recorded in this book – also a great deal of hard work. There is no self-indulgence; the book narrates more often than it pauses to reflect. As well as success, there is sadness. Connell speaks of her young brother’s death in a tragic childhood accident, of suffering a miscarriage on the same day that her father died, of her husband Bill (a notable photographer in Oxford) and his losing struggle with cancer.

Connell remembers well the era of her youth, “when women did not openly disagree with men.” Her husband loved her deeply, but thought other men were crazy when they suggested that she serve on a hospital board of directors or the vestry of St. Peter’s Church.

When Connell enrolled in law school, she did it secretly. She balanced first-year courses with four young daughters, Girl Scout meetings, and Sunday-school teaching. Her husband found out only when a friend asked her about Torts class. “Bill was furious,” Connell writes, acknowledging her deception, but making a lawyer’s pun. “I kept my opinion to myself, but I did not believe Bill was acting like the reasonable man.” Her self-assurance was vindicated.

“As law school progressed and I was able to prove to Bill I could fulfill my role as wife, mother, hostess, and participant in the community, he softened . . . . When grades were posted on the bulletin board on the first floor of Farley Hall, Bill would gather the girls together, and the six of us would make the trip to view my grades from the previous semester. When my grades were good, he would give them the cue and they would all shout out, ‘Good job, Mama,’ and celebrate with me.”

Bill Connell and newsman David Brinkley on the porch of Jeu Sing’s store, a Delta Chinese grocery at Rena Lara, in Coahoma County. Bill Connell entertained Brinkley and his NBC film crew during Brinkley’s visit to the Delta in 1963.

Connell served as university counsel during the administration of three chancellors – Porter Fortune, Gerald Turner, and Robert Khayat. She sketches quickly the fast pace of legal work in academia: how her office handled NCAA inquiries, Title IX matters, Ku Klux Klan marches, student shenanigans, and tragedies (the 1987 highway accident in which five Chi Omega sorority sisters died).

She balances the resentment that arose when Ole Miss banned the waving of Confederate flags during football games (technically, by banning flagstaffs and other sticks from the stadium) with the recognition that the University achieved: the establishment of a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, an honor that the school had sought for decades. When Theora Hamblett bequeathed 350 paintings to Ole Miss, a copyright lawyer in Washington asked a fee of $30,000 to register copyright to the works. Connell looked up the law, traveled to Washington, and did the work herself.

Five chapters cover the trial of Billy Brewer’s lawsuit against the University, for wrongful termination following a recruiting scandal. The trial ended with Chancellor Khayat and Ole Miss athletic director Warner Alford on the witness stand, testifying against Brewer.

“Warner, Robert, and Billy had been teammates. Billy was the holder for Robert when he kicked field goals for Ole Miss. [They] practiced for hours after all the other teammates had finished. Billy and Robert were drafted the same year and were rookies together on the Washington Redskins team. Warner and Billy had worked together for nearly a decade as athletics director and head football coach . . . .

“As Warner and Robert took the stand to testify against their lifelong friend Billy Brewer, I couldn’t help but remember the first day I met them both as eager, hopeful freshmen with huge hands, taking the donuts I hoped to save for Dan Jordan.”

Those lines testify to the density of social connections witnessed by this book – in Mississippi as a society, in the continuing life of a university, in the career of its author.

There are touches of Eudora Welty in this book. Connell’s great-aunt was called “Sister” by her family; Connell called her “Aunt Sister.” There are touches of Faulkner – or perhaps, given Connell’s eye for irony, that other great writer associated with Ole Miss, Florence King. One of Connell’s first clients was a countryman who hesitated to tell his legal troubles to a woman, but found no one else in the law-office at 7:30 in the morning. Grateful for her advice, he later presented her with a bulging sack of freshly-killed raccoons.

Connell’s career may have been unforeseen (as her title suggests). She never claims to have set out to break the barriers that faced women who were reared in the Mississippi of her childhood, but she notes how each of those barriers fell. And it is clear that it was Connell’s efforts that carried her. In her college and her community, she was pushing as hard as anyone else and harder than most, and she could draw on the connections that she forged. Rather than complaining about the ceiling being glass, Connell records in passing how it shattered around her.

There is a phrase that is often seen on t-shirts: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Perhaps. But well-brought-up women very often do.

Allen Boyer, Book Editor for HottyToddy.com, is a native of Oxford. He lives and writes on Staten Island. His book “Rocky Boyer’s War,” a WWII history drawing on his father’s diary, will be published next month by the Naval Institute Press.

For questions or comments, email hottytoddynews@gmail.com.

The post Book Review: ‘An Unforeseen Life: A Memoir’ By Mary Ann Connell appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

[stag28]

"What is clearer is that roughly 40,000 years ago, just as our own lineage expanded from Africa and took over Eurasia, the Neanderthals disappeared. Scientists have always assumed that the timing wasn’t coincidental. Maybe we used our superior intellects to outcompete the Neanderthals for resources; maybe we clubbed them all to death. Whatever the mechanism of this so-called replacement, it seemed to imply that our kind was somehow better than their kind. We’re still here, after all, and their path ended as soon as we crossed paths. But Neanderthals weren’t the slow-witted louts we’ve imagined them to be — not just a bunch of Neanderthals. As a review of findings published last year put it, they were actually “very similar” to their contemporary Homo sapiens in Africa, in terms of “standard markers of modern cognitive and behavioral capacities.”  [..] Neanderthals buried their dead. They made jewelry and specialized tools. They made ocher and other pigments, perhaps to paint their faces or bodies — evidence of a “symbolically mediated worldview,” as archaeologists call it. Their tracheal anatomy suggests that they were capable of language and probably had high-pitched, raspy voices, like Julia Child. They manufactured glue from birch bark, which required heating the bark to at least 644 degrees Fahrenheit — a feat scientists find difficult to duplicate without a ceramic container.  [..] there’s evidence that Neanderthals extracted the feathers of certain birds — only dark feathers — possibly for aesthetic or ceremonial purposes. And while Neanderthals were once presumed to be crude scavengers, we now know they exploited the different terrains on which they lived. They took down dangerous game, including an extinct species of rhinoceros. Some ate seals and other marine mammals. Some ate shellfish. Some ate chamomile. (They had regional cuisines.) They used toothpicks. [..] The real surprise of these discoveries may not be the competence of Neanderthals but how obnoxiously low our expectations for them have been — the bias with which too many scientists approached that other Us.  [..] “This is like putting together a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle where you only have five pieces,” [..] There was a lot of cave left to dig through. But it was like looking for needles in a haystack, and the entire haystack was merely the one needle they had managed to find in an astronomically larger haystack. And most of thathaystack was now inaccessible forever. I could tell it wasn’t productive to dwell on the problem at this scale, while picking pine-nut husks from the hearth, but there it was. “Look, you can almost see what’s happening,” Finlayson eventually said. “The fire and the charcoal, the embers scattering.” It was true. If you followed that stratum of sand away from the hearth, you could see, embedded in the wall behind us, black flecks where the smoke and cinders from this fire had blown. Suddenly, it struck me — though it should have earlier — that what we were looking at were the remnants of a single event: a specific fire, on a specific night, made by specific Neanderthals. Maybe this won’t sound that profound, but it snapped that prehistoric abstraction into focus. This wasn’t just a “hearth,” I realized; it was a campfire. [..] While we stood talking, one of the women uncovered a small flint ax, called a Levallois flake. After 50,000 years, the edge was still sharp.  [..] Neanderthals became “mirrors that reflected, in all their awfulness and awesomeness, the nature and humanity of those who touched them.”  [..] It’s easy to get snooty about all this unenlightened paleoanthropology of the past. But all sciences operate by trying to fit new data into existing theories. And this particular science, for which the “data” has always consisted of scant and somewhat inscrutable bits of rock and fossil, often has to lean on those meta-narratives even more heavily. [..] In the past, scientists might turn to the surrounding artifacts, interpreting more primitive-looking tools as evidence of Neanderthals and more advanced-looking tools as evidence of early modern humans. But working that way, it’s easy to miss evidence of Neanderthals’ resemblance to us, because, as soon as you see it, you assume they were us. So many techniques similarly hinge on interpretation and judgment, even perfectly empirical-sounding ones, like “morphometric analysis” — identifying fossils as belonging to one species rather than another by comparing particular parts of their anatomy — and radiocarbon dating. How the material to be dated is sampled and how results are calibrated are susceptible to drastic revision and bitter disagreement. (What’s more, because of an infuriating quirk of physics, the effectiveness of radiocarbon dating happens to break down around 40,000 years ago — right around the time of the Neanderthal extinction. One of our best tools for looking into the past becomes unreliable at exactly the moment we’re most interested in examining.) [..] Almost every archaeologist I interviewed complained that the field has become “overinterpreted” — that the ratio of physical evidence to speculation about that evidence is out of whack. Good stories can generate their own momentum. [..] Paabo’s work, and a continuing wave of genomic research, has provided clarity but also complexity, recasting our oppositional, zero-sum relationship into something more communal and collaborative — and perhaps not just on the genetic level. The extent of the interbreeding supported previous speculation, by a minority of paleoanthropologists, that there might have been cases of Neanderthals and modern humans living alongside each other, intermeshed, for centuries, and that generations of their offspring had found places in those communities, too. Then again, it’s also possible that some of the interbreeding was forced. Paabo now recommends against imagining separate species of human evolution altogether: not an Us and a Them, but one enormous “metapopulation” composed of shifting clusters of essentially human-ish things that periodically coincided in time and space and, when they happened to bump into one another, occasionally had sex. [..] Scientists often turn to historical first contacts as frames of reference, like the arrival of Europeans among Native Americans, or Captain Cook landing in Australia — largely histories of violence and subjugation. But as Zilhão points out, typically one of those two cultures set out to conquer the other. “Those people were conscious that they’d come from somewhere else,” he told me. “They were a product of a civilization that had books, that had studied their past.” Homo sapiens encountering Neanderthals would have been different: They met uncoupled from politics and history; neither identified as part of a network of millions of supposedly more advanced people. And so, as Finlayson put it to me: “Each valley could have told a different story. In one, they may have hit each other over the head. In another, they may have made love. In another, they ignored each other.” [..] It’s a kind of coexistence that our modern imaginations may no longer be sensitive enough to envision. So much of our identity as a species is tied up in our anomalousness, in our dominion over others. But that narcissistic self-image is an exceedingly recent privilege. (“Outside the world of Tolkienesque fantasy literature, we tend to think that it is normal for there to be just one human species on Earth at a time,” the writers Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse explain. “The past 20 or 30 millennia, however, have been the exception.”) Now, eating lunch, I considered that the co-occurrence of humans and Neanderthals hadn’t been so trippy or profound after all. Maybe it looked as mundane as this: two groups, lingering on a beach, only sort of acknowledging each other. Maybe the many millenniums during which we shared Eurasia was, much of the time, like a superlong elevator ride with strangers. Some paleoanthropologists are starting to reimagine the extinction of Neanderthals as equally prosaic: not the culmination of some epic clash of civilizations but an aggregate result of a long, ecological muddle. Strictly speaking, extinction is what happens after a species fails to maintain a higher proportion of births to deaths — it’s a numbers game. And so the real competition between Neanderthals and early modern humans wasn’t localized quarrels for food or territory but a quiet, millenniums-long demographic marathon: each species repopulating itself, until one fell so far behind that it vanished. And we had a big head start. “When modern humans came,” notes Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at Britain’s Natural History Museum, “there just weren’t that many Neanderthals around.” [..] The fauna that Neanderthals subsisted on kept migrating away, faster than they could. Though Neanderthals survived this turbulence, they were never able to build up their numbers. (Across all of Eurasia, at any point in history, says John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “there probably weren’t enough of them to fill an N.F.L. stadium.”) With the demographics so skewed, Stringer went on, even the slightest modern human advantage would be amplified tremendously: a single innovation, something like sewing needles, might protect just enough babies from the elements to lower the infant mortality rate and allow modern humans to conclusively overtake the Neanderthals. And yet Stringer is careful not to conflate innovation with superior intelligence. Innovation, too, can be a function of population size. “We live in an age where information, where good ideas, spread like wildfire, and we build on them,” Stringer told me. “But it wasn’t like that 50,000 years ago.” The more members your species has, the more likely one member will stumble on a useful new technology — and that, once stumbled upon, the innovation will spread; you need sufficient human tinder for those sparks of culture to catch. “There was nothing inevitable about modern human success,” Stringer says. “It was luck.” We didn’t defeat the Neanderthals; we just swamped them. Trinkaus compares it to how European wildcats are currently disappearing, absorbed into much larger populations of house cats gone feral.  [..] Gibraltar, with its comparatively stable climate, would have been one of their last refuges, he explained, and he likened the population there to critically endangered species today, like snow leopards or imperiled butterflies: living relics carrying on in small, fragmented populations long after they’ve passed a genetic point of no return. “They became a ghost species,”  [..] Gorham had written his name directly over the spot where, some 39,000 years earlier, a Neanderthal had made his or her own mark. The full sweep and synchronicity of this history hadn’t seemed to occur to Finlayson before. Hesitantly, he said, “Maybe there are special places in the world that have universal human appeal.” I felt a similar, uncanny rush when I noticed that, at some point while he talked, we had each instinctually taken a seat on the rock ledge, next to the hashtag, and were now sitting side by side, staring into space where the two ancient campfires once burned. It’s not an especially spiritual experience when one human being walks into another human being’s kitchen for the first time and simply knows where the silverware drawer is. At the back of Gorham’s, though, that intuition was spread across two distinct kinds of humans and tens of thousands of years. Ultimately, why we are here and the Neanderthals are not can no longer be explained in a way that implies that our existence is particularly meaningful or secure. But at least moments like this placed our existence inside some longer, less-conditional-seeming continuity. [..] We had misunderstood the present in the same way archaeologists can misunderstand the past. What was possible was suddenly exposed as grossly insufficient, because, to borrow Finlayson’s metaphor, we never imagined that the few jigsaw puzzle pieces we based it on constituted such a tiny part of the whole."