I had a batch of books to return to the library which, of course, was when I finally got around to reading them:
Girl Comics was a TPB of the eponymous Marvel Comics miniseries (the most recent one, since apparently they're reusing the name of one of their vintage 60s era romance comics), featuring their female superheroines and villainesses in stories written and illustrated by female artists.
It was mostly fairly cute, humorous stuff centred around the most popular heroes, but a few more obscure characters also got a spotlight, as did several of Marvel's female creators through the ages, such as Louise Simonson and Marie Severin, and others who got text-spotlight pages about their historical contributions to the company. On a more personally interesting level, there was a page on Tarpé Mills (
Wikipedia), whom I don't know at all first-hand, but only from the updated revival of her 1940s-era creation, Miss Fury, whose newer adventures I picked up in those assorted Dynamite Comics bundles. And here I'd thought she was a modern retro-period creation.
Anyway, medium recommend if you're in the mood for a touch of superheroine fun with a dose of comics industry history. This was a pleasantly light-hearted and not overly fluffy read with some nifty stories and art by creators including Colleen Coover, whose work I've liked since her
X-Men: First Class backup strips, and if this TPB should show up in the sale/discount bin at the local comicbook shop at some point, I'd be happy to pick it up.
Dexter Down Under by
Jeff Lindsay with art by
Dalibor Tajalic. This is apparently an out-of-continuity original graphic novel published by Marvel Comics that was meant to tie into the TV show and not the novel series which it adapts. I was wondering about that, since the story didn't seem to fit into either the TV-verse or the book-verse (which is very different, since they noticeably forked off sometime around Season 2-ish and went their own ways).
In any case, this was a standalone story about Dexter going on an Australian adventure as he's called in for his expertise to help the locals track down a serial killer who's been preying on immigrants. This ends up being a part-pastiche of
The Most Dangerous Game (weirdly enough, I've kind of read at least 3 of them within the past month).
Mild recommend if you like pastiches of
The Most Dangerous Game or the Dexter franchise enough to look up not-particularly-connected associated tie-in work that is at least written by the original author. It was an okay, but not particularly original or compellingly-told story, and worth a curiosity library read.
From the Fast Reads shelf, finished
Jo Nesbų's recent crime novel,
Blood on Snow, which were apparently originally written by him under a pseudonym, and which was indeed a fast read. This was advertised as a standalone on the cover blurb, but Wikipedia tells me that it's now been turned into the Olav Johansen series, with a few more installments yet to come, as well as a potential film adaptation. That does clear up some confusion I had about a few character fates in the ending, which I read as being of ambiguous and not particularly optimistic outcome.
The setup of this is of a uncommitted "fell into it for a lack of anything better to do and also an unpromising childhood upbringing" career hitman who one day takes what he thinks is a job for the wrong hit for particular reasons, which turns out to be a wrong hit for entirely different reasons. I'd say that Hilarity Ensues, but actually, it doesn't. The relatively short tale and uncomplicated first person narrative of this makes it seem like a simpler-feeling style of novel than his Harry Hole series or his
Headhunters standalone, but it still tries with some twists and surprise revelations which Change Everything In Retrospect, or at least try to.
There were some interesting allusions to
Les Misérables and some meta regarding the rewriting of stories within one's mind to get a story which feels truer to what one wants to see than what one actually gets, and how that trips up the narrator of the novel into missing certain things about this particular hit. But overall, this felt a bit too light and insubstantial compared to most of my previous Nesbų reads, although I will say that even with the pared down and simplified style which I'm not entirely sure I like, it is considerably more interesting than
The Son, which was pretty much a flop for me (but then, overt Christ allegories don't really do it for me, even in Nordic crime novels).
Very mild recommend if you're curious as to what Nesbų's non-Harry Hole work looks like. The story is reasonably coherent and has a few interesting introspective moments, but is not particularly engaging, IMHO. Unless you really, really like ambiguously maybe-redeemable hitmen suffering crises of conscience which may or may not end survivably. That said, I am curious enough to have a look at whatever sequels come out, especially as to how they'll treat some apparent developments for the main character which I'd consider unexpected considering the apparent end of the 1st novel, but from the library again.