The Ricochet Reviewer: Books, Movies, and Comics

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2024 by Arthur J. Burks A pair of socialites are shipwrecked on a jungle coast,  where they are captured by a mad scientist who is experimenting with the surgical transfer of brains between subjects.  This is pretty mediocre stuff even by pulp standards. Arthur J. Burks is clearly padding his word count (though we can’t blame a hard-working pulp scribe for that).   Arthur J. Burks Nevertheless, I had fun reading it. It played out effortlessly in my mind like a 60-minute programmer from the 30s starring Bela Lugosi as the evil Dr. Barter.

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2024 by Peter Straub Ancient evil and modern scientific malfeasance converge  on the cursed town of Hampstead where four descendants of the town’s founders must contend with both a deadly force that arises every generation and the accidental release of a cloud of bioengineered poison.  This weighty tome has many passionate devotees, but I cannot count myself among them.  The plot seems strung together from a grab bag of horror tropes: the recurring evil, the menace from a government lab, and a couple psychics thrown in to boot.   These elements are not well integrated; the whole “thinking cloud” aspect is dropped early on.  I prefer a more grounded type of horror than Straub provides here: characters regularly hallucinate (or do they?) bizarre images that effectively place them in volatile fantasy landscapes where it seems anything might happen.  To paraphrase the late great Roger Ebert: “When anything can happen, it is difficult to...

Director: Christopher Nolan Writers: Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, story by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, characters by Bob Kane (what about Bill Finger?) Stars: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Monique Gabriela Curnen Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale), the guardian of Gotham City, has begun to wonder if he can ever hang up his cowl or if he is fated to battle the criminal element in darkness forever.  His hope of a normal life hinges on the "white knight of Gotham City," DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who can act in the light and within the system; if he can take Batman's place, it will be a powerful indicator that Gotham has become a healthy city.   This transition appears to be on track until the Joker (Heath Ledger) begins his rise in the criminal underworld.  He is anarchy and unrestrained self-interest incarnate, pure and simple.  The Joker and Batman are opposites, an...

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2024 Random Marvels Project Dipping my net into the ocean of Marvel and seeing what comes up. Writer: Joe Kelly Art: Michael Lark & Stefano Gaudiano  Art Assist: Matt Southworth I don’t love the idea of introducing a spiritual dimension to Spider-Man’s powers (which was apparently introduced long before this story was published), but I have to admit that I like the story they are telling here. Kraven’s family continues to hunt down the various spider-powered characters… …and wear down our favorite wall-crawler, since only his sacrifice can resurrect Kraven the Hunter. And how’s this for a WTF ending? I think I know what really happened, but I’ll have to wait for the next issue for confirmation. Hunting the Hunter, Part Two: A Prophecy Writer: J.M. DeMatteis  Artist: Max Fiumara  Flawed spider-clone Kaine accepts a job to assassinate Kraven the Hunter, which doesn’t go as expected.

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2024 by Anne Rice Armand, a minor figure in some of the previous Vampire  Chronicles, fleshes out his backstory, filling in some of the gaps in what we know of him from the other novels.  Raised a devout Eastern Orthodox Christian, a painter of ikons who is nearly sent to live in a monastery, Armand is kidnapped and ends up in the hands of the ancient vampire Marius, with whom he shares a hedonistic life of luxury.  This early part of the novel, and Armand's subsequent imprisonment at the hands of the vampire Santino, are quite strong.   The last third of the novel is unfocused and confusing.  I'm still not quite sure what happened to Lestat, and the fate of Armand's young friends, clearly intended to surprise us, seemed like an inevitability to me from the moment they were introduced.  Anne Rice's prose is as effective and elegant as ever, and a growing concern with religion is becoming evident. "Armand the Young Vampire" (Chinese)...