Locke and Key Vol 6: Alpha and Omega by Joe hill (Writer). Gabriel Rodriguez (Artist), Jay Folos (Colorsist).RObbie Robbins (Letterer) .

This volume is the last in the series and therefore should be the climax and the apex of good storytelling and excellent art.  But there is neither of that here.  The storytelling is boring and art? Well, the art is bland especially when you compare both to volume five.  Speaking of which. here is what happened in that volume:  Bode's friend at school, Jay seems to sense that he isn't who he says he is and so he shoves him in front of a school bus and kills him;  Then while he's in Kinsey's room he breaks her jar of grief and pain hoping it will find it's way into Ty's head where it will drive him mad, which it does.  So Kinsey uses the head key to open his head and Bode is hoping for a look inside his head to find out the location of the Omega key but instead, he finds the key itself and takes it;  Kinsey takes her grief and pain and puts it back into her own head. Ty and Kinsey go to the clock and use the time key to travel back in time to the Revolutionary time period to see the keys being made and then they go to 1999 when their dad was a teen and had the keys along with his friends, including Zach and what happened there.

Rufus sees Bodie's ghost and knows that the person inside Bodie's body is not him and begins to strangle him causing him to be sent to the insane asylum for a long time.  Nina, Tyler, Kinsey, and Bodie's mother stop drinking.  Everyone is getting ready for prom. Kinsey is going with Jamal and Jamal and Scott reenacting the scene from Carrie with Scott as Carrie;   Tyler will eventually go alone and meet up with Jordan. 

There's a party going on in the cave and Dodge plans on crashing it and killing most of the people there and making slaves out of the rest.  Rufus escapes the asylum with the help of Miss Voss and heads towards town to stop Dodge.  Tyler also has a plan for stopping Dodge who has a plan for stopping everyone else by using the Shadow Crown and causing shadow demons to attack everyone; 

Not everyone will make it out alive.  This volume, however, was not the grand finale I had hoped for.  For those that are curious Netflix is currently airing their version of this comic.  I haven't seen it as I wanted to read the comic first.  This book is well written, after all Joe Hill did write it.  But the plot is lacking and so is the art.  This series did not go out with a bang but with a whimper. I give it three out of five stars.

Quotes

“I hope you know your dad loved you.  Your dad thought you were made of solid gold. And so do i.” “I wish. Gold is soft.  It would be easier to hammer me into a new shape,  People are a lot harder to change.

-Joe Hill (Locke and Key Vol 6 p 8)

Secrets are hell. Secrets are the prisons we make for ourselves.

-Joe Hill (Locke and Key Vol 6 p 14)

Falling in love in high school is like thinking you can fly a 747 because you know how to fly a kite.

-Joe Hill (Locke and Key Vol 6 p 67)

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Close Up by Amanda Quick

Let me just say that this book, written under Jayne Ann Krentz's nom de plum is a great deal better than The Vanishing written by Krentz months ago that I reviewed very negatively here on this site.  Maybe it helped her to be writing under another name.  I don't know.  This book is sorta one of her Burning Cove books only most of it takes place in Adeline Beach where Vivene Brazier works as a photojournalist by night but doesn\t tale the credit for her pictures because sh's trying to make it into the art world and the art galleries won't accept you if they know you've been doing photojournalism.

One of her murder scenes is the Dagger Killer.  She must have caught his eye at a crime scene because he followed her home and tried to kill her there, but she fought him off and injured him and the police caught him and put him in the hospital to heal.  He escaped the hospital and was run over by a car and died. 

Nick Sundridge is a PI who just finished working on a case where this guy would marry a woman then take a life insurance policy out on her and then take her out on a cruise and then an"accident" would occur and she'd die leaving him rich.  But this particular young bride's aunt was suspicious and wanted him looked into.  Now the guy may be going to jail.

Nick and his partner Rex, his trained dog, are off on their next case: Viviene Brazier.  Luther Pell of Burning Cove who has mobster connections has come across a book of poems that is actually a record of a hit list and Viviene's name is on it, though her entry is incomplete.  He has no idea who wants her dead and while they're working on deciphering the poems they have no idea who the hitman is.

Vivienne's sister Lyra is getting married to Harrison, the very man that Viviene was going to marry but broke it off with. Is Harrison seeking the extra money from the inheritance?  Also, Viviene dated an artist who stole her idea. Viviene could expose him;  There are others out there who stand to profit from Viviene's death.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters of Nick and Viviene and Rex were utterly delightful.  Viviene is going against her rich parents and being cut off financially in order to follow her dreams.  Nick worries about his gift and whether he can ever be with a woman without scaring her away.  Rex is the best dog anyone can hope to have.  Lyra, the sister is a hoot.  And of course, we have the usual cast of characters from Burning Cove that show up later in the book;  I give this book a solid five stars out of five.

Quotes

People say passion is a reckless, potetionally destructive force, and I’m sure that is frequently the case.  But I think love is infinitely more dangerous.  Passion blazes hot and fierce and then it burns out.  You’ll ger scorched but you’ll prpbably survive.  Love is more complicate. More mysterious.

-Amanda Quick (Close Up, 169)

Okay, that sounded like progress, he decided.  He tried to think positive.  There were no innocent third parties involved here, just a hired killer and the client who paid him to murder Vivian.  No relationship was perfect.

-Amanda Quick (Close Up. 170)

He spoke her name as if it held a kind of magic; a name to conjure with in the darkness of night.  He scooped her up in his arms and carried her Through the scented garden to the front door door of the villa.

-Amanda Quick (Close Up. 203)

The desire for revenge is an acid that destroys everything it touches.

=Amanda Quick (Close Up. 212)

People rarely use a lot of logic or common sense when they indulge in an affair.

-Amanda Quick (Close Up 214)

 Nothing like a road trip to give a woman a new perspective.

             -Amanda Quick (Close Up p 277)

 

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The Defenders Vol 1: Diamonds Are Forever by Brian Michael Bendis (Writer)., David Marquez (Artist), Justin Poonsor (Colorist), VC's Cory Petit (Letterer)

Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Matt Murdoch all get attacked by a man named Diamondback who is supposed to be dead.  They get together and figure out who has done this and head out into the city to find him.  Luke Cage finds him first and gets poisoned while at Black Cat's place and left to die. Black Cat takes him to the local clinic.  Blade shows up with an antidote and he administers it; When Daredevil, Iron Fist, and Jessica Jones go after Diamondback together The Punisher shoots Jessica Jones.

You learn the history of Diamondback or Willis, and Carl Lucus, or Luke Cage, who ran with a group called the Rivals.  Then a girl came along, Reva Connors who claimed to like them both.  She rejected Diamondback for Cage and it drove him wild.  Diamondback planted diamonds on Lucus and it sent him to jail where he was experimented on.  When the mob found out about the diamonds they killed the woman in retaliation.  When Cage got out of jail he couldn't forgive Diamondback.

How is Diamondback alive? And where do Black Cat and The Punisher's loyalty lie?  This is a very interesting book that shows how the superheroes come together to form the Defenders of New York City much like the Avengers take care of Earth.  I really liked this book and I give it five out of five stars.

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Star Wars Darth Vader Dark Lord of the Sith Vol 2: Legacy's End by Charles Soule (Writer). Giuseppe Camuncoli (Penciler), Daniele Orlandini (Inker), David Curiel (Colorist). VC's Joe Caramagna (Letterer)

In the previous comic, The Clone Wars are over and Anakin was left for dead by Obi-Wan on Mustafar where the Emperor picked him up and restored his body in a cybernetic creation.  Anakin is devastated that Padme is dead and can't be brought back to life.  The Emperor tells him he must pour all thoughts of revenge into the building of the Empire. The Emperor becomes rather pissed when he finds that Darth Vader doesn't have his lightsaber. This means that he'll have to defeat a Jedi and win his lightsaber and then take all the grief and anger in him and turn the kyber crystal red, giving him a Sith lightsaber. He attacks the Jedi historical collection housing base in order to pursue the database of Jedis who took the vow to stay out of it or those who before the conflict and taken the Barash Vow to live outside the Jedi Order until his path becomes clear to him.  Now that the Jedi are gone and the man standing before him is one of those responsible for the destruction of the Jedi his new path seems clear: to take him out and his master.

Darth Vader is continuing his mission of killing off Jedis.  When Palpatine gives him a job to do which involves getting a hold of Jocasta Nu, who was the Jedi Guardian of the files of information that the Jedi had.  If you watch the movies she's the librarian that you see telling Obi-Wan that his planet is missing;  Jocasta in this comic is trying to get down everything she can in Holocrons to set up a school to train new Jedi.

She goes back to the library to get the list of names of those who have the potential to be Jedis but can't resist attacking Vader's Head Inquisitor who is a Jedi who has turned to the dark side, who is going through the Holocrons.  This mistake is costly as Vader shows up and captures her even though the Inquisitor wants to kill her but Vader has orders from Palpatine to bring her alive.  Vader does something that will piss off Palpatine if he finds out about it and the next thing you know a death threat is being made against him that traces back to the highest reaches of the Empire.   

This is a pretty good comic.  I really enjoyed reading about Jocasta Nu who is a real badass.   She will die to protect the list or the information in the library.  And I find it interesting that Vader will go against Palpatine.  I give this book five stars out of five stars.

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

This book is a favorite of mine and I've read it countless times but this time was special as my daughter is reading it with me.  It begins with a house.  Arthur Dent's house to be precise.  It is being torn down to make way for a bypass.  This is the first Arthur is hearing of it and he is determined to stop the bulldozers from rolling.  His best friend Ford Prefect has other things on his mind, like hitchhiking his way off this planet before it blows up to make way for an intergalactic bypass and he plans on taking his best bud Arthur with him.

Sadly the only ship available to hitchhike on is the Vogon one that is currently blowing up Earth and who hate hitchhikers.  But their workers the Dentrassis loved to piss off the Vogans and they let hitchhikers on. This is an important detail that Ford notes for the entry on Vogons because he is a writer for that amazing book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He was doing research on Earth when he got stranded. Earth's entry used to read Harmless.  Now it reads Mostly Harmless.

Meanwhile, Ford's semi-cousin Zaphod Beeblebrox, who is president of the galaxy, and Trillian is currently stealing the Heart of Gold a spaceship that has an Infinite Improbability Drive that when you first take it out takes you all over the universe.  But even that can't explain the unlikely odds of the two of them picking up Arthur and Ford just as the Volgons are about to shove them out the airlock after reading them poetry which, Vogon poetry is the third-worst poetry in the universe and painful to hear.

Once the four get together the real adventure starts when they discover a legendary planet that isn't supposed to exist and decide to explore and get into all sorts of trouble.  My favorite character in this book is Marvin the depressed robot who was created to express human emotion for the Heart of Gold spaceship and instead only expresses depression with phrases such as "Sorry, did I say something wrong? Pardon me for breathing which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it Oh God, I'm so depressed. Here are another one of those self-satisfied doors.  Life.  Don't talk to me about life." In the poorly made movie version of this novel, he is played to perfection by Alan Rickman.   This hilariously written book with fabulous characters and fun entries into the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy makes this book a must-read.  It's on my top ten of all-time favorites.  I highly recommend this book.  I give it a ten!

Quotes

  And then one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place.  This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.  Sadly, however before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occuried, and the idea was lost forever.

-Doulas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 1-2)

Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so.

-Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 24)

The ships hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don’t.

- Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 34)

Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy.

-Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 48)

This is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn’t previously aware of.

-Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 50)

He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrissis’ underwear, the piles of Sqornshellous matresses and the man from Betelguese with the small yellow fish offering to put it in his ear he had been able to see a small packet of cornflakes.  But he couldn’t, and he didn’t feel safe.

-Douglas Adams (The Hithhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 56)

“Space,” it says, “it big.  You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it it.  I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist but that’s peanuts to space.”

=Douglas Adams (The Hithhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 76)

Do you realize that most people’s lives are governed by telephone numbers?

-Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 101)

“We’ve met,” said Arthur sharply. When you’re cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail past a few hard driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself and then accidently change down from fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out of your hood in an ugly mess, it tends to throw you off your stride in much the same way that this remark threw Ford Prefect off his. 

-Douglas Adams (The Hithhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 105)

He turned unfathomability into an artform.

=Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 110)

Curiously enough the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias was Oh no, not again.  Many people have speculated that if we knew the exactly reason why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.

-Douglas Adams (The Hithhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 134)

Computer if you don’t open that exit hatch this moment I shall zap straight off to your major data banks and reprogram you with a very large ax, you got it?

-Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 137)

“Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.”

-Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 140)

Look would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?

-Douglas Adams (The Hithhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 163)

“Now see here,” said the voice,” you’re not dealing with and dumb two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low hairlines, little piggy eyes and no conversation, we’re a couple of caring guys that you’d probably quite like if you met us socially!  I don’t go around gratitutiously shooting people and then bragging about it afterward in seedy space-ranger bars like some cops I could mention!  I go around shooting people gratituously and then I agonize about it afterward for hours to my girlfriend!”

-Douglas Adams (The Hithhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy p 206)

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Locke and Key Vol 5: Clockworks by Joe Hill (Writer), Gabriel Rodriguez (Art). Jay Fotos (Colorist). Robbie Robbins (Letterer)

In the previous comic, Kinsey begins to change some. She dyes part of her hair green and makes friends with some misfits from school. But things go wrong with her friendships when she uses her key to take away her grief and agrees to share a memory with one of them, then does so with the other as well making the first one jealous.  Also, she is looking at getting back together with Zach, who it turns out is the Dark Lady of the Well and a bad person who is just using her to get the Omega Key that her brother Ty has.  Ty has been hanging out with Zach and others and been noticing odd things like the pack of wild dogs that happen to come by.  Or when he visits his gay friend in the hospital and he describes on to the people who hurt him as having a lip ring like Zach's.   Or how Kinsey is now begging him to let her have to Omega Key to hold for a while which was Zach's idea.   Also, Bode has been taken over by Zach when Kinsey and Ty get together and kill Zach.  His spirit goes into Bode and he's still looking for the Omega key.

The beginning of this book goes back to the Revolutionary times and the Redcoats have killed Ben and Miranda's parents for not telling them where the rebels are hiding.  Their brother Joshua is one of those hiding in the caves and they sneak off to them to bring the men a goat to eat and find that their brother is dead and that soon the other men will be too due to a doorway into the caves that the men opened up that let in a demon.  Now, the demons that tried to get in were turned into an unusual metal but one of the men got too close to the door and looked inside and the demon got inside of him that way and he's been killing people ever since. Also, the door, though shut and covered in rocks, call to the men to open it and look inside.   Ben decides to make a lock for the door with the demon metal and to make keys with the remaining metal; Then they'll flood the cave back up the way it was and Ben and Miranda will go and find someplace to hide until the Redcoats leave in a couple of weeks and the rebels will turn themselves in.

Bode's friend at school, Jay seems to sense that he isn't who he says he is and so he shoves him in front of a school bus and kills him;  Then while he's in Kinsey's room he breaks her jar of grief and pain hoping it will find it's way into Ty's head where it will drive him mad, which it does.  So Kinsey uses the head key to open his head and Bode is hoping for a look inside his head to find out the location of the Omega key but instead, he finds the key itself and takes it;  Kinsey takes her grief and pain and puts it back into her own head. Ty and Kinsey go to the clock and use the time key to travel back in time to the Revolutionary time period to see the keys being made and then they go to 1999 when their dad was a teen and had the keys along with his friends, including Zach and what happened there.

This was a really good book with so many amazing stories to tell.  Also, the artwork is so incredible. There is a picture of Kinsey's grief and pain and it looks like a black demon wearing a newspaper dress with a sash reading Rampage and he's/she's sitting on an old fashioned white facet that is on top of a black hooded figure with metal fingers and hands;  I really can't do it justice. It's just an amazing piece of artwork and it's just one of many in this book.  This book is really worth buying for the art alone, but the story is stellar too. How Zach wasn't always evil, but he sure is now.   I give this book five out of five stars.   

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The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes is presented with a case by Peterson the commissionaire who comes across a goose with a tag on it labeled Henry Smith and a hat.  Holmes investigates the hat and discovers that it belongs to a man who has just had a shave and shows he had a big intellect due to its large size.  He also showed foresight by doing something to the hat to protect it from the wind.  He once had money but now he does not.  His wife does not care for him anymore or else she would have dusted the hat.  That is why he was bringing home such a fine goose.  

When Peterson finishes off the goose he finds inside a blue diamond. He rushes over to Holmes to see what he can make of it.  Holmes recognizes it as the Countess of Morcar\s Blue Carbunkle that was stolen from her hotel room days ago and whom John Horner is being held in police custody for the robbery because he had been there near the jewel and because he had a history of robbery.  Henry Smith came to pick up his hat and his goose and he seemed innocent so how did the Blue Carbuncle wind up in his goose and who is the real thief?

This was a delightful little story that takes place right after Christmas leaving Holmes in a charitable mood.  It was fun trying to figure out who stole the diamond and how they got it out of the hotel and how it somehow wound up in a goose.  I thoroughly enjoyed this story.  I give it four out of five stars.

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