Book Review: Justice League Dark Vol. 2 by J. Lemire et al.

Justice League Dark Volume 2: The Books of Magic written by Jeff Lemire and Peter Milligan and art by Mikel Janin, Lee Garbett, Daniel Sampere, Cam Smith, and Admira Wijaya

See my review of Volume 1 here.

After a quick visit to a vampire apocalypse that ends all too quickly, the story shifts as the magic-powered version of DC's Justice League is drawn into a new ultimate, world-ending problem. Several baddies are looking for the Books of Magic, four legendary tomes that were thought lost for centuries. John Constantine has some information about it and wants them badly. Madame Xanadu has had visions of Constantine acquiring the books and causing the world to end. She works behind the scenes while Constantine is recruited by Steve Trevor (yes, Wonder Woman's boyfriend) who works for a shadowy government agency. It sent agents into the Peruvian jungle to check on Felix Faust, a wizard with a scheme involving the books. Constantine cons the rest of Justice League Dark into going south to investigate, setting him on the path to acquire the Books of Magic.

The main plot has a lot of little twists that are more or less believable. Since the characters and story are so magic-dependent, the storytelling does jump erratically from time to time. Some people get short shrift, like Zatanna whose backwards magic never seems to work against any of the bad guys. The book has a lot of characters so there isn't enough space for everybody. I enjoyed it enough to keep going with the story for volume 3.

Mildly recommended.

Movie Review: Dune: Part Two (2024)

Dune: Part Two (2024) co-written and directed by Denis Villeneuve based on the novel by Frank Herbert

See my review of Part One here. 

The story picks up with Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) and his mom (Rebecca Ferguson) integrating themselves into the Fremen society on Arrakis. She wants him accepted as their new messiah who will kick out the off-worlders; he just wants revenge on the Harkonnens for the death of his father and the rest of the family. One way for him to get revenge is to help the Fremen fight the Harkonnens, so he is partially fulfilling his mother's ambition. He has nightmares that uncountable numbers of people will die if he goes down the path to messiah-hood, so he wants to avoid that. The Fremen/Harkonnen conflict boils over into much larger issues and much larger, longer-term plans by various factions in the galactic empire, including plans by the Emperor (Christopher Walken) himself.

The movie continues on in the tone and style of the first part. The epic sweep is grows as more of the story happens off of Arrakis, other planets including the emperor's home world and the Harkonnen planet are featured. Actions scenes become expansive with both large-scale battles taking down spice harvesters and smaller-scale (though more important plot-wise) hand-to-hand combats. The characters grapple with a lot of political issues and being in the hands of fate. Paul is especially worried about his supposed destiny as Dune's messiah and struggles to fit in with the Fremen, especially his girlfriend Chani (Zendaya). The actors do a great job and aren't overwhelmed by the epic scope of the storytelling. The movie is very entertaining, beautiful to look at, and tells an interesting story.

Highly recommended--I liked it just as much as the first film.

Cute Kid Pix February 2024

More photos that didn't make their own post...

The Cub Scout Pinewood Derby was postponed due to snow and finally happened early in February. My youngest's den has only two members, so he had a good chance of coming in first. Their two cars were evenly matched with very close finish times. My son's car won three out of four heats, but both boys' cars advanced to the finals (three cars per den go ahead). They finished in the middle of the pack in the finals. 

Getting ready for the first round

I should have been standing on the other side!

One of the final heats

At a den meeting, they met with the new mayor of Laurel, Maryland, Keith Sydnor. They had a good discussion about civics.

Posing with the AOLs and the mayor

While Mom and the youngest were out of town, the rest of us went on a bike ride on the Matthew Henson Trail in Montgomery County, Maryland. It was fun but I have fallen out of bicycling shape. I need to bike more!

Trail's namesake

Waking from nap/taking a break

Challenge at a playground

Harder than riding a bike

Easier than riding a bike

Typically we get a treat during or after a bike ride but no bakery was nearby. We went home and made brownies.

Harder than buying at a shop

The next day I went geocaching in Odenton and was near Shipley's Do-nuts, so I brought some home. The bottom middle one is a Skittles-covered donut!

Yum!

In other dessert news, the Anne Arundel County Public Library had a fundraiser where the librarians crafted an ice-cream flavor with a local creamery. All purchases of Dragons Love Toffee supported the library. Naturally I had to try some.

No competition there

Yum!

The month ended with the Blue and Gold Dinner, a celebration of the Scouting movement at which the oldest scouts in our pack move on to the troop level. My youngest will be moving up next year! The event included a cake auction for which we donated a campfire cake.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever...until it's eaten!

Book Review: Lincoln's Battle With God by Stephen Mansfield

Lincoln's Battle With God: A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America by Stephen Mansfield

Abraham Lincoln's life is an epic story that is hard to condense into one book. Choosing a theme is a way to provide focus, much like Spielberg's Lincoln film that focused on passing the 13th Amendment rather than his whole life. In this book, Mansfield focuses on Lincoln's attitude toward religion, specifically Christianity, and how that changed over his lifetime.

Lincoln grew up dirt poor, the son of fundamentalist Protestant parents. At the time, the American midwest was in the midst of a tent-meeting revival craze. As he grew up, these traveling religious programs, with their uneven mixtures of sincerity and showmanship, made the young Lincoln more skeptical about religion. Also, his father was strict but self-serving in this faith, often using Abraham for his monetary value rather than raising him to be a devote Christian. His dad discouraged Abraham's reading habit, thinking it was a symptom of laziness. Ironically, Lincoln read the Bible a lot as a child and even conducted "church meetings" for his siblings while the parents went to Sunday church.

As a teenager and young adult, Lincoln became a skeptic and anti-religious. He would argue with people about the Bible, pointing out inconsistencies and errors he found. He struggled with depression throughout his life, especially since his mother died when he was young. Other close friends were lost in his youth. He had a hard time with women, eventually convincing the socialite Mary Todd to marry him after a failed courtship. He was known as the village atheist in Springfield, Illinois, where he practiced law and served in the state government.

He experienced a turn when he started to read The Christian's Defence at his father-in-law's house. The book helped him to deal with his depression over the loss of their child Eddie. He did a lot of soul searching, especially as he ran for national offices. There's a famous story that as he sat in Ford's Theater just before he was assassinated, he was telling Mary Todd Lincoln that he'd like to go to Jerusalem after the presidency was over.

Mansfield does a fine job tracing Lincoln's religious thoughts and opinions throughout his life. He acknowledges that a lot of resources have biases either toward or against Lincoln coming to a Christian understanding by the end of his life. Mansfield pieces together an argument based on Lincoln's actions and writings. He shows both the atheistic early years and Lincoln's more faithful understand of the existence and role of God in his life. During the American Civil War, many of Lincoln's speeches show a more nuanced understanding of Divine Providence, how God does not necessarily "choose sides" and make the (self)righteous victorious. 

The writing is lively and persuasive, with plenty of footnotes to validate his argument along the way. The book ends with an appendix of Lincoln's wartime speeches, including both Inaugurals and several calls for days of prayer.

Highly recommended.

Game Review: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 by Z-Man Games

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 designed by Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock and published by Z-Man Games

OVERVIEW:

Building upon the success of two previous games, Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock have crafted a sprawling co-operative board game experience in Pandemic Legacy: Season 1. 

Leacock made the original Pandemic in 2008. It is a co-operative game where players crisscross the globe fighting the spread of four diseases while trying to discover cures for those diseases. Each player is a different character who has a special action only that character can do (like the Dispatcher moving other characters' pieces on the Dispatcher's turn (with permission)). The game requires a careful balancing of collecting and using resources (cards from a player deck). The diseases pop up in various cities and will cause problems when too many people get infected (causing "outbreaks" that spread to neighboring cities). The game is wildly popular for its co-operative nature, the difficulty in winning (it is not an easy game but it is not too difficult), and the heroic theme.

Daviau made Risk Legacy in 2011. Players competed militarily to control the world. The twist from classic Risk is that the players control different factions (not just different colors) that have the ability to take actions that other players can't. Even more, the player has two options of an ability and must choose one, destroying the other, i.e. it can never be used. The rules say to tear up the card or component and throw it away. Also, at the end of the game, players (usually the victor) will make permanent changes to the playing board. Subsequent games play a little differently, and more differently as more games are played. A campaign is introduced that changes the game and makes it more exciting as it goes on. The game is wildly popular for its innovations, the permanent changes made, and "something new" with each subsequent play.

Leacock and Daviau combined the Legacy concept and mechanics with the Pandemic co-operative experience. The result is a game that starts with an initial typical game of Pandemic that has a sudden change half-way through the first play. One of the diseases morphs, creating new rules and objectives for the game. Components are destroyed and stickers go on the board, changing how the game is played. As players win or lose each game, resources and rules are added or taken away. 

The campaign is played over an in-game year, starting with January and going to December. Each month, players have two chances to win. That is, if they fail the very first game, they get to play January again, though if they fail a second time, the game moves on to February. Ultimately, the players have twelve to twenty-four games. A victory brings bonuses but also penalties. The player deck includes "Special Event" cards that players can use to remove diseases, perform extra actions, or other special abilities. The number of these cards fluctuates--if the players lose, their budget is increased and they can add extra event cards; if they win, their budget is decreased and they need to be selective about which cards to include since fewer card will be added. As the game challenges shift, different cards seem more valuable than others.

The board also changes. When an outbreak happens, the overrun city starts rioting and panicking. If things get too bad, it becomes hard to move through the cities. Players can also add permanent stations (as in the base game) to help them move around the board and solve problems. Also, stickers become available to add to the player cards so they have more than the regular use of traveling around the board, building stations, or finding cures. Choosing which cards get stickers and when to use the abilities is a fun and interesting twist.

Game board from publisher's website with spoilers removed

Player characters get modifications, beyond just adding names to the characters (we had a Quarantine Specialist whom we called "Isa Lationist"). They can get special relationships with other characters, enabling them to trade cards, use extra actions, or other abilities. Individual abilities can also be added. If a character is caught in a city that has an outbreak, a scar sticker is added that causes a disability (like not being able to find cures). Too many scars means the character dies, i.e. permanently removed from the game. The character development is an interesting part of the game.

At the end of each play, players can make modifications to their characters or to the board, hopefully making things easier for the next game. Sometimes new components are added, creating new challenges. The initial objective of finding cures for diseases quickly changes with new, different objectives that are more or less easy. Often, players have the option of solving just three of a multitude of objectives. I don't think we ever had more than five objectives. When some objectives are solved, a reward is given and that objective is trashed. These expiring objectives often move the story forward.

The overall story is interesting and exciting, though obviously discussing it here would contain many spoilers. We enjoyed the storyline a lot, which leads to...

OUR EXPERIENCE

We played with an initial set of characters that remained consistent for the first few months. We lost the very first game, which meant our resources increased and we had a leg-up on the subsequent plays. The game is challenging but my wife and son had been playing plenty of Pandemic over the past year. They had a good sense of what was possible and how to set up future moves or avoid potential obstacles (like drawing a card that causes an outbreak). We had a mixture of successes and failures through the games, which kept things exciting for us. We were happy every time we got back to the game. 

Since our playgroup was limited to family members, we were able to play through the game relatively quickly, in less than two months. Having the Christmas holiday and some snow days helped too (along with no traveling over Christmas). The excitement had us returning, sometimes the very next day, to make more progress with the new things we just discovered. 

The legacy aspect is fun, though some of us have a hard time tearing up cards or destroying components. Losing characters, which only happened a few times, was not so traumatic. The game comes with a variety of characters and new ones are added that help with the new objectives. Adding stickers to the board and to the rulebook (with explanations of new rules) was not a problem. The growing complexity never got too far out of hand, though we did miss a key rule in the first few games (adding the rioting stickers to outbreak cities) that probably made things easier than it should have been. The final state of the game is not playable but is a satisfying conclusion to the story. Assuming you achieve the final objectives.

Players can calculate a score at the end based on the state of the world and what they accomplished over the twelve to twenty-four games. We had an average score. That was a bit anticlimactic but we played for the fun experience, not the score.

Even though we ended with a board game we can't play any more, we thought we got our money's worth, considering the quality of the story and the game. Also, the number of plays is good, we have a bunch of games that we've only played two to five times. Getting twenty plays out of one game is satisfying.

Recommended, though you need a play-group that is dedicated to playing through the whole game.

SPOILER FINAL PICTURES OF OUR GAME!

The final state of our world!

The history of our campaign!

Book Review: Scott Pilgrim Vol. 3 by B. L. O'Malley et al.

Scott Pilgrim Color Edition Volume 3: Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness written and drawn by Bryan Lee O'Malley and colors by Nathan Fairbairn

See my review of Volume 1 here and Volume 2 here.

As predicted from last time, Scott winds up fighting Ramona's ex-boyfriend Todd and Ramona fights Scott's ex-girlfriend Envy. In an interesting twist, Envy is dating Todd and they are in a band together that's about to go big-time. Scott and his band have shown up as the opening act before Envy's band (at her invitation). All the crowds are rooting for Envy and Todd while the readers root for Scott and Ramona. 

The build-up to the fights takes a while, with a lot of witty backstory thrown in and some more pathos for Scott's most recent ex, Knives Chau, who shows up for the action. The over-the-top antics continues once Todd's superpowers are revealed--he has telekinetic abilities thanks to being a hardcore vegan. He went to a special indoctrination camp, I mean, college for vegans where he learned their mystic arts and was granted substantial powers. There's some fourth-wall-breaking jokes thrown in for fun which I found enjoyable.

I remembered Todd from the movie (which I guess I should review at some point) so the surprise twist victory was not surprising but still fun. The book is very hip and well-written, even if we readers discover more and more that Scott favors the loser side of being a lovable loser.

This edition includes some bonus stories from a Free Comic Book Day publication and other alternate covers and sketches, making it extra-enjoyable.

Recommended.

Movie Review: Leap Year (2010)

Leap Year (2010) directed by Anand Tucker

Anna (Amy Adams) has been dating her boyfriend Jeremy (Adam Scott) for four years. She's a stager, setting up apartments or houses with furniture to make them look homey and desirable to potential buyers. She likes to plan out everything and leave nothing to luck. She's been hoping Jeremy will propose, especially since they are buying a ritzy Boston apartment together. She's so convinced that he will pop the question before his business trip to Dublin that she tells her dad (John Lithgow) and a friend who spotted Jeremy coming out of a swanky jewelers. At the fancy restaurant dinner that night, he pulls out a small box containing...earrings. She is disappointed, especially when he gets called away for work. Her dad tells her about the ancient Irish tradition where women can propose to men on February 29, which is coming up in a few days. That's how his grandparents got engaged. Anna is desperate enough to go to Ireland to take the situation into her own hands. Through traveling misadventures, she winds up in Dingle, Ireland, where she meets cantankerous pub owner Declan (Matthew Goode) who is desperate for cash and agrees to drive her to Dublin for 500 Euros. They have a lot of comic misadventures along the way. Will it lead them to fall in love, maybe, by the time they get to Dublin?

The plot is a fairly standard romantic comedy set up where the girl pines for one guy but eventually falls for a completely different guy who, at first appearance, does not seem like her type. The "opposites attract" trope plays out through the usual travel problems--missed trains, bluffing their way into a bed and breakfast by pretending to be married, cooking a meal together, crashing a wedding, etc. The comedy part has nothing that an avid movie-goer hasn't seen before, just the unbelievable premise (which a lot of the characters don't believe in either though according to wikipedia it was a real thing). The movie has no surprises to deliver. Adams's character is a little unlikeable at first but she subtly shifts into a more appealing person. The other actors do an okay job, though Lithgow is hardly in the movie, so he does not have quite enough time to flesh out his character. I found the movie mildly entertaining though probably won't watch it again unless someone else wanted to, or maybe for the next Leap Year when I've forgotten my opinion of the movie.

Mildly recommended, if you are in the mood and have a generous level of tolerance.