Reading: HAM HELSING #2: MONSTER HUNTER - Rich Moyer

1st Line: "Ten years ago."

Review: Fresh off his notoriety from defeating evil in his first adventure, our semi-clueless but forever upbeat pig hero is invited with his crew of friends to hold court over his young fans at Camp Fish Head Lake.. Showing up ready to shine, Ham finds instead that all the camp counselors seem to be missing, or busy somewhere, so as the misfit kids start arriving the gang decides to chip in and coordinate the kids and run things, just until the counselors return.

Instead, the kids start disappearing and it seems a monster is stalking the camp! Can Ham Helsing live up to his rep and find out what is going on - not to mention defeat this new monster? It doesn't help when an old, very familial enemy from his past - along with one mean, manic chicken - also invade the camp, seeking their own form of revenge ... so I guess it's more like: Can Ham (not the most observant pig in the pen) and his crew save the kids, save the camp, AND save their reputations from all this evil?? I thought topping volume one of this graphic novel series for kids (with snarky humor to also ensnare the adults - and it works) was terrific, but volume two - with it's Friday the 13th-meet-Looney Tunes vibe - is even better, with both the stakes and the humor ratcheted up. I love Rich Moyer's sense of humor nearly as much as his artwork, both of which shine in this full-color second volume as the gang initially remains very clueless to the fact there even ARE camp kids disappearing, let alone they are being stalked, for the longest before catching on. Amidst the humor and silliness, the book's messages of friends sticking together, inclusion, and finding the strength you didn't even know you had in yourself to overcome a problem, are (as in book one) understated yet will hit home for kid readers. I also LOVE that book three seems to be on the way, via an end teaser here about an ancient clan of vampires on the rise. Funny (at times laugh-out-loud funny), spooky without being too scary for young readers, and just so, SO wonderful to look at (seriously, how has this NOT already been optioned for an animated series on FOX, or something?), this is not just another winner for Moyer, but a sequel that's even better than its predecessor, . You will never look at bacon in the same way after once again experiencing the hero that is ... HAM HELSING! (Available June 14)  4.5/5 stars

NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Reading: TINY FOX AND GREAT BOAR #1: THERE - Berenika Kolomycka

1st Line: "This is Tiny Fox."

Review: In 2022 the artwork in children's books, picture books, graphic novels has really grown to an all-new level, the talent behind the illustrations sometimes so amazing, while reading you get sidetracked wondering how a certain page or graphic would look framed on your wall. Genuine art, and one reason that - as an adult - I will still read kid's books, graphic novels, and graphic novels to the grave.

Then, amidst the bluster and bright colors, the smoke and the noise, comes a book like Tiny Fox and Great Boar: There, a first-in-a-series picture book that beings with a young fox who, when he goes to sit under his favorite tree one day, discovers a boar already there. 

It's a story about friendship, the natural world, and knowing someone who has your back when that world gets scary. Of working together and compromise, and being apart without falling apart. It's a simple story of friendship, perfected by author Kolomyoka's equally gentle, simple watercolor illustrations. A great bedtime story - a great anytime story that deserves not to be overlooked among the bright colors and bluster. Adorable, and highly recommended; a keeper.  (Available April 12 in Hardcover)  4/5 stars

I received a free ARC of this title from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Reading: SCI-FU BOOK 1: KICK IT OFF - Yehudi Mercado

1st Line: "This is a journey into sound."

Review: The 1980s are sort of my jam, as is New York. So a graphic novel about a young mix-master named Wax in Brooklyn who - along with his rapper partner/best friend and family - is transported to the far off planet of Discopia, where Wax must use his DJ-ing and kung fu skills to save a planet, had no trouble getting my attention. Even better, writer/artist Yehudi Mercado has populated these colorful, action-packed pages of this graphic novel with plenty of laughs, real friendships and relationships, and some deadly - if not altogether bright - intergalactic supervillains. From Wax's scenes of learning sci-fu in order to fight the baddies and a robot army, to the genuinely cool beats laid down on the pages of the fight scenes, opponents battling just as much to out-rhyme each other in the name of music as to winning the battle ... it all works here, for all ages. Great book, and I already can't wait for the sequel!  4/5 stars

NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Watching: DEATH ON THE NILE (2022)

Director: Kenneth Branagh

127m/PG-13

After the train wreck (pun intended) that director/star Branagh made out of Murder on the Orient Express, I approached Death on the Nile (one of my favorite books by Agatha Christie, whose work I have been reading for something like four decades) with nausea and trepidation. As expected, I hated it - but oddly, not for all the reasons I expected.

It's hard not to watch this one without comparing it to the wonderful 1978 film version starring Peter Ustinov - especially considering Branagh obviously borrowed ideas and dialogue from that one for his version - but to start, the story is about a young, beautiful heiress named Linnet Ridgeway (a wooden Gal Gadot), who has just betrayed her many long years of friendship with Jacqueline De Bellefort (Emma Mackey - and look quickly, you don't see much of her throughout) by stealing away Jackie's soon-to-be husband, Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer, former actor now publicity disaster) for herself. Married now, Linnet and Simon decide to honeymoon in Egypt, but soon find their celebration thwarted at every turn when Jackie suddenly and mysteriously shows up - wherever they go - to taunt and low-key threaten them. With the famous Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot making his own trip down the Nile, Jackie and Simon beseech him to help steer Jackie away ... but when Linnet is found shot to death in her bed one morning, Jackie with an iron-clad alibi, it's up to Poirot to ferret out the clues among the suspects on board (many of whom had plenty of reason, as it turns out, to hate Linnet), and discover the killer.

First, the elephant in the room: Branagh took obscene liberties with both the canon and Poirot's backstory, opening the film with a flashback scene that details how Poirot came to wear his famous and elegant mustache. It's ridiculously melodramatic, and comes off as nothing more than Kenneth Branagh showing off ... well, Kenneth Branagh.

And what I would soon realize, watching this, is that THAT is the problem with the film: Branagh doesn't understand how mysteries work, and Branagh wants only Branagh as the focus of the film, making sure he is in nearly every scene. Those of us who've loved Christie since childhood, and have watched and read in the mystery genre for decades, understand that, in mysteries, you generally start off introducing the detective (amateur or otherwise), and end with the detective's solution to wrap up the novel ... but in the middle, while the detective detects the actual focus is on the victim(s) - who they were, their past - and, more importantly, the suspects. You let the suspects interact with the detective and each other, telling their side of why they are innocent even as both detective and reader tries to muddle through what are lies and what are truths. The detective is there, but the suspects shine. Not with Branagh as Poirot. Here, he has put together a strong ensemble cast ... then doesn't let them shine. It's all about Poirot, his emotions and frustrations and reactions. With the exception of Sophie Okonedo, who grabs what Branagh gives her and rings every ounce of magnetism she can from it as Salome Otterbourne, the rest of the cast is filler. Totally unlike the 1978 version. Also different is that in that version viewers get a very strong sense of how Poirot came to his solution; how he followed the clues. Not so with Branagh's Poirot, who seems to pull it together from thin air. The scenes of Poirot and various suspects standing in the tiny meat freezer with Linnet's covered body, meat hanging around them, are unintentionally funny (and insulting, when in a later scene, Branagh seems to want to make it funny when Poirot actually straightens out one of the corpse's feet, as they stick out under the sheet, so both are pointing in the right direction). The effects are bloated - Egypt looks like it was colorized by Ted Turner on a bender - and I can't even get into the finale, where the solution comes with a loaded gun (see, Branagh's Poirot is a tough dude), deductions Poirot seems to have gleaned from nowhere, and one dead body that somehow remains standing up, even after death. And don't get me started on the tag scene at the end, which again gives both Christie and the canon she created the middle finger.

Sadly, Branagh is already committed to ripping Christie a new one yet again, with a third film. One can only hope he'll actually read a few of her books - or some mysteries in general - in the meantime, at the least. He's so talented an actor and director, but has no business doing both with these films, where you're talking ensemble pieces and not The Branagh Show.  1/5 stars