Book Review: Usagi Yojimbo/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Complete Collection by Stan Sakai et al.

Usagi Yojimbo/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Complete Collection by Stan Sakai and Peter Laird

A book containing all the crossover stories with the ronin rabbit, Usagi Yojimbo, and the heroes in a half-shell, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Here's the story-by-story reviews:

Turtle Soup and Rabbit Stew--is an out-of-continuity (for both franchises) meet-up of Usagi with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Well, just Leonardo, who falls through time into feudal Japan and has a quick encounter with Usagi. For the few pages it lasts, the story is fun.

The Crossing--Usagi has another run-in with Leonardo, this time at a river. Usagi wants to cross dry, so he demands the fat friar resting on the riverbank give him a ride across. The friar's hat hides his face. He turns out to be Leonardo, who starts an epic fight with Usagi. The story is entertaining (even if borrowed from Robin Hood) and has a nice ending.

The Treaty--Leonardo is bringing pizza over to April's so the gang can have movie night but he falls through another space/time hole and winds up with Usagi. Usagi is transporting a treaty between two lords. The Neko Ninja Clan wants to steal the treaty. A horde of them are about to rob Usagi when Leonardo shows up. There's a bit of action, drama, and one horrible injury (the pizza gets stomped on) before Leonardo goes back. The story is short and fun.

Shades of Green--Usagi and his friend Gen the rhino wind up in a village surrounded by the Neko Clan who want the most valuable thing in the village--a rat with unusual powers named Kakera. The rat convinces Usagi and Gen to help. The rat believes they need more help, so he had the two ronin collect some turtles from a nearby pond. The rat performs an incantation and the turtles transform into the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles. Usagi has already had some adventures with them, so they don't wind up fighting first (as often happens when Marvel superheroes first meet). They band together to help the rat escape from the clan. The story is a good blend of action and fun. 

Namazu, or The Big Fish Story--There's a legend of a giant catfish that was subdued by a god and pinned in place under a great sacred rock. Part of the rock has fallen out and earthquakes are becoming more frequent as the catfish struggles to get free. Usagi meets Kakera, who quests to replace the rock. He knows it will be tough so he summons the four turtles to help out. On their way to the sacred rock, they run into Jei, an ultra-creepy samurai who has brought dozens of hirelings to prevent the repair. The usual action happens. The story's legend is more interesting than the actual action, but still fun.

The book ends with some background on the folklore and the making of Namazu as well as an extensive collection of sketches and covers from individual issues of these stories.

Recommended, the combination of Usagi and the Turtles is a lot of fun.

Movie Review: Saint Maud (2021)

Saint Maud (2021) written and directed by Rose Glass

Maud (Morfydd Clark) is a young nurse who has switched out of hospital work and has been doing palliative care for a couple of months. Her latest patient, Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), is an American dancer and choreographer who lives in an isolated house above an English seaside town. Amanda is slowly dying. Maud recently had a "religious" experience and is now devoted to God and wants desperately to do His will. She feels that she has come to help Amanda have a deep and meaningful relationship with God too. The situation starts out okay.

Things do not stay okay. Amanda is bemused by Maud and finds some connection at first. As their relationship deepens, the differences between them become more apparent and more abrasive. Maud has a very checkered past that is slowly revealed as the movie goes on. Sure, there's an opening sequence that hints at something horrible but it is unclear whether the viewer is getting a preview of the end of the movie or something else is going on. The other thing that becomes very clear about Maud is that her conversion does not seem genuine, as if it is all in her head, not in her heart or soul. Her withdrawn personality does not help her in dealing with others. At one point, she goes out and tells Amanda that she is meeting a friend, but there is no friend. Maud is a Christian without a community, which is not Christian at all. She has no guide or reference point, she just talks directly to God and sometimes gets guidance (again, it seems like voices in her head, not voices from beyond). She gives the impression that she's gone crazy, not that she's got religion. So conflict arises and some horrible things happen.

The tone of the movie is very heavy and very dark. It explores the loneliness of the two main characters though the focus is on Maud. She has such a hard time dealing with other people that her behavior sours the very few relationships she does have. The movie does a great job getting into her head and seeing things from her perspective, making her sympathetic. The sound design and the visuals make Maud's view of things very vivid. But viewers recognize that she often does not connect to others or to reality, generating the horror in the film. Clark's performance carries the film. She makes this delicate, warped character into a person. I kept wishing she would pull out of her doomed spiral but there's nothing in her life to get her out. Her faith is not genuine, it is just another coping mechanism that ultimately fails her.

Recommended, but you need to be a horror fan and patient enough for a slow burn and attentive enough for a finely-crafted work.

Book Review: Rosaline's Curse by Katharine Campbell

Rosaline's Curse by Katharine Campbell

In this sequel to Love, Treachery, and Other Terrors, Rosaline is a princess whose life has gotten progressively worse. She had a twin brother with whom she would get into mischief. In their teens, they decided to "recover" relics of their national hero, Ilona the Godslayer, from neighboring Kalathea. They were successful except that they started a war with Kalathea. During the war, her brother died and she was betrothed to their best friend Lord Julyan. She was smitten with him but the more she got to know him the less she thought of him. She got to the point of not wanting anything to do with him but the political situation was not in her favor. If that was not bad enough, she was put into an enchanted sleep, only to wake up in 2017 when an archeology student named Mark discovered her in an English castle and touched her. She can't speak English but Mark and the other archeologists want to take care of her. They communicate with her through his cell phone which can access a translator program at least her Latin speech can be translated. Things might be looking up.

But her bad luck runs true--her fiance is still alive and after her. And she's hit by a car and winds up in hospital. She thinks she's cursed for stealing the bones of Ilona and the only way to get rid of Julyan (who is passing himself off as a benefactor who funds Mark's college) is to return the relics to Kalathea. Julyan is really Jace, the male half of the evil fairy twins from the first book (so that's why he's still alive). He wants to leave behind his life as a fairy and try out marriage with Rosaline. His twin, Acacia, wants him to go back to the fairy lifestyle they've been leading for thousands of years, torturing innocent humans for their own amusement. The easiest thing for Acacia to do would be to kill Rosaline but fairies are not allowed to harm humans without causing harm to themselves. If she could set up some indirect circumstances or get Rosaline to give up that protection, Acacia would get what she wants. 

The story is a light-hearted fish-out-of-water fairy tale that uses the modern setting well. In addition to the evil twins' machinations, Rosaline has to deal with motor vehicles, internet-enabled devices, and endless paperwork. She is fascinated by it all and has a nice spirit of adventure. She also has her Christian values that don't quite sync up with Mark's modern take on things like pre-marital sex or respecting international borders. He's skeptical about her age and the fairies until he gets some hard evidence. He's also not aware (as the reader is immediately) that he and Rosaline are destined to be together. They have a rough ride getting to know and appreciate each other. He clearly cares much more about her than Julyan, who only looks for his own good. Good and evil haven't changed over the centuries even if technology has.

The plot moves along at a nice pace and I like the twist of having the villains from the previous story be the main connection, though Rosaline is a descendant (several generations removed) of the heroes from the first story. The jump in time allows for different sorts of complications than were in the first book, though this novel keeps the romantic-comedy vibe that worked well before. Campbell does a great job providing both familiar and new elements, a challenge for sequels. She rises to the challenge and gives the reader a fine, entertaining novel.

 Recommended.

I did receive a review copy from the author (thanks!) but my opinion is my own.

Cute Kid Pix June 2022

 Some more photos that didn't make their own blog posts...

The scouting year ended for my Cub Scout with the usual fun bridging ceremony.

Moving to bear-hood

I wear two neckerchiefs!

In another crossing, our oldest graduated from eighth grade with a ceremony at the high school he will attend in the fall!

We sat too far back!

My daughter signed up (okay, I signed her up) to work on her school's garden over the summer. She's only doing one day a month (plenty of other parents signed up their kids). We had a fun time, which you probably can't tell from the picture.

All done

We were allowed to take home anything that was harvestable. We forgot to bring a bag, so we brought a literal handful home.

Two pods of a pea

My youngest also finished out his baseball season. He's in a league where everyone gets a trophy. At least they made it through the first round of playoffs and were beaten in a close game by the number two team.

A good time was had by all!

In the store, I saw this off-putting and strange candy and I thought, "That would do nicely in a "For Science!" segment on The Family Gamers Podcast. Also, it was on sale, two for four dollars. So I bought two, saved one for our family, and sent one off to the podcasters. The segment is all about eating weird things "for science," though often the items are yucky like insects or overly-spiced things. This offering is more in the odd-ball category, like "why would they make that?" 

For Science!?!

I took my son to the gym and he did some rock climbing. I did some too but he can climb higher than I can!

Better than being a social climber

Ice Cream Summer Part III

Part of an on-going series as we make home-made ice cream all summer long!

The next flavor we tried from the recipe book was the premium vanilla. The big differences from the basic vanilla are using eggs and a vanilla bean. The store was out of vanilla beans so we used two teaspoons of vanilla as a substitute.

The first step combined heavy cream and whole milk on a saucepan with the vanilla. The mixture is heated to a slow boil and left simmering for half an hour. I guess with the vanilla extract, the thirty minutes could have been cut down but I was not sure how important it is to evaporate the dairy somewhat. 

Adding vanilla the wrong way

Meanwhile, I combined three-quarters of a cup of sugar with two large eggs and three egg yolks, beating them into frothy goodness with a low-speed hand mixer. It took a minute or so, easily done before the cream/milk/vanilla stuff was ready. 

Separating eggs is a pain!

Frothy!

Once the thirty minutes were up, I took a cup of hot liquid from the mix and slowly added it to the egg/sugar bowl, beating at a low speed. Once that was combined, the egg mix went into the main saucepan to cook over medium-low heat until the mixture would "coat the back of a spoon." It didn't take long. 

Making the combo

What did take long was cooling the whole mixture down to a chilled temperature before putting it in the ice cream mixer. After twenty minutes on the counter, the bowl spent over an hour in the fridge trying to get cool.

Preventing contamination

After that, the process was the usual 25 to 30 minutes in the machine.

A yellow vanilla

The final results were good. The ice cream was creamier than the regular vanilla though it tasted more like custard (the egg flavor was still there). Perhaps the vanilla bean would have been more dominant.

The completed ice cream

This vanilla was tasty but I am not sure it is worth all the extra effort that goes into making it. I would definitely plan ahead better next time, especially for the long cool down before going into the ice cream mixer.

I went back to the regular vanilla recipe for my wife's requested flavor: chocolate-covered pretzel. She bought the pretzels at the store. I briefly thought about using the basic chocolate ice cream recipe but thought that might be too much chocolate. 

Ingredients

Regular vanilla is pretty easy to make. I broke up the pretzels into little bits by hand since I thought the blender or food processor would pulverize them too much. I added the chunks in the last five minutes of blending. the mix was overflowing the mixer with a whole cup of additives!

The final ingredient

The final product

As it turned out, the chocolate was barely tastable. The pretzels kept their crunch, so there was good with the bad. Maybe the chocolate base should have been the way to go.

The next recipe was S'mores ice cream. I made the usual chocolate base, planning on adding some graham crackers and marshmallow fluff.

Soon to be S'mores

Using the previous experience with food processing the chocolate and sugar with the warm milk, I upgraded to the blender so there'd be no overflow.

The blender

The blended

For the graham crackers, I used the graham cracker crust part of my cheesecake recipe (without putting it in the springform pan, naturally). The recipe has a pack of graham crackers (one of the three that comes in the box), three tablespoons of melted butter, and a tablespoon of sugar. To pulverize the graham crackers I used the food processor (so it still saw some action). Then I mixed in the sugar and butter in a bigger bowl. The result was 225 grams of graham cracker mix or about 1.75 cups in volume. 

A tight fit

Measure twice, add once

That seemed like a lot to put into the mixer (especially after the near overflow with the chocolate pretzels), so I put in half and did some layering with the rest of the crust mix. I layered in the marshmallow fluff as well.

Adding to the mixer

Making layers of graham crumbs and marshmallow

I have to say that adding the marshmallow fluff was the hardest part. It did not spread easily (or at all) over the ice cream. It hardly came off the rubber spatula! To make it less lumpy, I put another dollop of chocolate/graham ice cream on top and that smushed it out. I may try a different brand of fluff in the future or maybe slicing up actual marshmallows, though that won't get the ribbon effect that is typical.

Finished product

The whole batch of ice cream did not fit in our tupperware, so we had to eat a serving immediately after finishing. It was delightful. Even later, after dinner and some extra freezing, the ice cream scooped well and had an awesome flavor. The graham cracker layers did cause some separation probably because they were too thick. When we scooped, the ice cream above the graham cracker layer would come out without the ice cream below it. Maybe I can mix the graham crackers and the marshmallow?

More experiments next week!

Book Review: Fantastic Four Masterworks Vol. 1 by S. Lee et al.

Fantastic Four Masterworks Volume 1 written by Stan Lee and pencilled by Jack Kirby

The original Fantastic Four stories were the beginning of Marvel Comics. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby decided to try a new idea. The team-based comic The Justice League was popular but the superheroes worked and played together fairly well (this was the early 1960s, not today). Lee and Kirby wanted to make a team that was more realistic--when they weren't fighting bad guys, they had problems and got on each others' nerves. Sometimes they'd have personal problems as they were fighting the bad guys, making a different kind of drama, a different kind of comic book.

The team naturally has four members. Reed Richards is a brilliant scientist who wants to fly a rocket to Mars. He works with Ben Grimm, the ace pilot to fly the ship. Reed also brings along Sue Storm, his girlfriend. She brings along Johnny Storm, her hot-headed brother. They fly up out of the atmosphere and are hit by Cosmic Rays, which transforms them. Reed's body becomes super-pliable and calls himself Mr. Fantastic. Sue gains the ability to turn invisible and takes the name the Invisible Girl (later she becomes the Invisible Woman). Johnny turns into living flames for short periods of time and calls himself the Human Torch. Ben is transformed into a rock monster with incredible strength and endurance, called the Thing. They use their powers for the good of others. 

But Johnny has a smart mouth that really annoys Ben (and sometimes Reed). Ben is a bit of a sad sack, wishing he'd turn back into a regular guy. He's very grumpy and constantly threatens to leave the group. Ben has also taken a liking to Sue, creating another tension. Reed can be a little full of himself or a little too scientific in dealing with personal problems. They all have some difficulties with their celebrity status too.

The villains have more character than the usual supervillains. Mole Man starts removing atomic power plants (an early eco-terrorist?) though that's mostly to support his overthrow of a world that rejected him for his bad looks. The Sub-Mariner mourns the loss of his Atlantean underwater kingdom and wants revenge on the surface world. Sue Storm catches his eye and he catches hers, making her sympathize with the villain. On the other hand, Doctor Doom just wants to rule the world and show off how great he is (he's the sort of guy that talks about himself in the third person). He was a scientific rival to Reed back in grad school but a horrible accident disfigured him. Doom is interesting in his mixture of science and "dark arts," i.e. sorcery, so he has some extra challenges when fighting him. I feel compelled to state that a lot of the science in the book reads like magic (which I think is true of modern fiction as well). 

The book also shows its age a bit. The team uses flare guns to signal each other (Reed should get to work on some walkie-talkies or some such devices). A couple of the villains are finished off only to come back two or three issues later with some barely plausible excuse of how they survived. Sue starts off as more girl than woman, i.e. as a romantic interest, but she does her share of fighting and using clever tactics. The plots show a lot of creativity, sometimes too much like the story that involves Lee and Kirby for a couple of pages as they play a part in Doctor Doom's plan to take down the Fantastic Four. The aliens from space look pretty goofy. If you make allowances for its time (like you should for the 1930s special effects in King Kong), the book is a fun read and it's easy to see how it became a hit.

Recommended, highly for Marvel fans.

Movie Review: RRR (2022)

RRR (2022) directed by S. S. Rajamouli

In the early 1900s, British military leader Scott Buxton (Ray Stevenson) and his wife (Alison Doody) take a young girl from an isolated village. They basically want the girl as a house pet, to sing and paint the wife's hands with elaborate pictures. The villagers can't put up a fight but Komaram Bheem (N. T. Rama Rao Jr.) promises to bring the child back from Delhi. He goes to the big city, fighting the British and a bunch of jungle creatures on his way. Once there, Bheem tries to come up with a scheme to bust the girl out of the leader's fortified headquarters. At this point, he's a wanted man because of his adventures in the jungle and because the British know he's coming for the girl.

Maybe a decade earlier in another part of India, Rama Raju (Ram Charan) sees his village attacked and loses many friends and family. As an adult, he vows to arm everyone who will fight against the English. He leaves a girlfriend (Alia Bhatt) in the village as he goes to Delhi where he begins a career in the English army, trying to rise through the ranks until he gets access to what he needs. He's an amazing officer though is often passed over for promotion because he's Indian. He has the chance to get a big promotion if he can bring in Bheem.

As luck would have it, they are both in the area and are traveling incognito (Rama is trying to infiltrate the rebels) when a kid is in peril. They work together to save the child in an amazing, over-the-top sequence. There's already been plenty of over-the-top scenes (Rajamouli is the guy who directed Baahubhali) so it does not seem out of place. The guys who should be enemies become friends, creating a lot of tension in the story. In the bigger picture, they should be friends because they both want to get out from under the heel of the British, who are about as dastardly as you can get in this film, except for the one lady who is the love interest for Bheem. Rama and Bheem flip from being brothers to being enemies a few times.

The movie is chock full of amazing, unbelievable actions sequences that are so well filmed and put together that I went with the implausibility. The scenes are so much fun. As an Indian film, plenty of dance sequences and songs are added. The film ends with a big song and dance number that pays tribute to the Indian revolutionaries who got the British out in the early 1900s. The film is joyous and delightful. There are some gruesome bits of torture and injury, so the film is not for the pre-teen crowd. If you are old enough, this is a very entertaining film.

Recommended.