What I Read in July

The Dead Love Longer by  Scott Nicholson (good supernatural detective tale)

THE CON MAN by Ed McBain (another 87th Precinct novel)

THE LAST HEROES by Steven Grant (artist Gil Kane's final superhero comic series)

THE DEAD MAN #3: Hell In Heaven by William Rankin an Lee Goldberg

ANIMAL KINGDOM: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel by Iain Rob Wright

GULLIVER OF MARS by Edwin Arnold

Marvel Visionaries: Roger Stern - SPIDER-MAN Vol. 1 (sadly mediocre tales of the wall-crawler from Peter Parker, The Spectacular SM) 

I decided that all of my reading for the month of July would be done on the beloved Kindle. I have a growing list of books on that thing that I can't wait to get to and it seemed a good time to dedicate a full four weeks to plowing through as many as possible. Of course, I still ended up reading several comic book collections, but I didn't see that as stepping outside of my parameters. After all, there is still no good way to read a comic book on a screen be it Pad or computer. I suspect that will eventually change but until then I will continue to love the trade paperback collections that line my shelf waiting for my time.

The comic collection THE LAST HEROES is the final super hero work of the great artist Gil Kane but I have to admit that I didn't much enjoy it. The story was unfinished when Kane passed away leaving writer Steven Grant with only the first part of a three part tale told but that is only one of the reasons it isn't a satisfying read. I actually found Kane's page layout overly complicated and often confusing. He is still one of my favorite old school comic artists but this was not his finest work.

The 87th Precinct novels continue to be good cop dramas an I wish I had started reading them years ago. Then I might have a chance to read them all before I die! The DEAD MAN series of modern pulp adventures is still going great guns with the thrid entry. I found this one to be the weakest of the run yet but I still enjoyed it. I need to race through several back to back soon just to try to catch up- I think there are ten already!

ANIMAL KINGDOM is a pretty good bit of gruesome apocalyptic fiction. Set in Britain it has many of the faults I associate with the trashy horror fiction of Guy N. Smith but I love this type of book as much FOR those faults as for anything else they supply. I felt the book was a little overlong but well worth reading for fans of nasty horror trash. You know who you are!