Author Archives: Steven Howell Wilson

Life With Lazarus – Day 1 – Let’s Go Get Our Boy

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After a late Saturday night, it was not easy to roll out of bed at 6:30, but Dr. Hutt had told us that one day of hospitalization ended at 8:00. We’d spent about $2,600 so far, and knew we would need more as the days went on; so we wanted to be sure to get Laz discharged by 8:00.

It was not a good morning. I will not go into why, but, frankly, I had no patience. When a family member is ill, possibly dying, even if it’s a four-legged family member, it puts things in perspective. It also drains your emotional resources. I was in no mood to take responsibility for anyone else’s feelings. My own were too much for me.

Anyway, we got to the vet and they brought out Lazarus. He had a Fentanyl patch in a shaved spot on his back. It seemed to make him walk like a drunken man. That worried me, because the patch said it was applied at 11PM, and Dr. Hutt had said it took 12 hours to kick in. Would this get worse?

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Life with Lazarus – Day 0, Continued – Some Prefer the Roller Coaster

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Ethan, Jess and I got to my book signing with about five minutes to spare. We have an amazing used bookstore in Howard County, in Glenwood, called “Books With a Past.” Recently, the owner, Erin, branched out and opened another location in Savage Mill, an actual textile mill that’s been turned into a shopping and dining venue, plus art studios. The new store is more focused on new books and book-related knick-knacks, and Erin says science fiction does better there. That maybe because the Family Game Store, of which my old friends Laura Burns and John Cmar are part-owners, is next door.

I spent the next two hours texting back and forth with Renee, and trying to be upbeat. Fortunately we didn’t get a lot of customers. That’s an awful thing to say, but, if we’d had hundreds, I don’t know if the stress might have broken me. In text messages, I learned that Lazarus definitely had pancreatitis, and that that could be caused by Feline Leukemia and Feline AIDS. So we were testing for that. After that, he needed to go to the ER for at least the rest of the weekend, and Renee would drive him there.

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Life with Lazarus – Day 0 – You Don’t Look Right

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My very brief post two days ago hit the low spots of a couple of very bad days, but, as these days are still going and their events are foremost on my mind, I’ve decided to share them with you. Not a happy story, and I don’t know its ending as I write this. But it’s a story, and the characters in it are special to me. So here goes. 

So I’m sitting in the family room, having just dragged myself out of bed on a Saturday morning. I’d planned to take it easy. I’d been going and going with house renovations and work, and I decided, before my 1PM call to sign autographs at one of our local bookstores, I would just eat breakfast, talk to my wife and get my books ready to sell.

Lazarus shuffled into the room. Lazarus does not shuffle. Lazarus waltzes with grace and purpose, looking up at you only enough to let you know that he has arrived, and he is now in command of the operation. Today he shuffled, and he didn’t look in command of anything. He moved tentatively toward a square of morning sunshine on the floor, but didn’t seem particularly enthused about it.

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I Just Finished – Dark Shadows: The Heiress of Collinwood by Lara Parker

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“Our revels now are ended…”

That quote, from The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1, is familiar to most, if not all, fans of Dark Shadows. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when there were no VCRs or DVRs and you could only watch a show once, and that when the TV station decided to play it, many fans of the Gothic soap opera listened ad nauseum to the show’s soundtrack LP. It featured music from the show, with narrations over a lot of it by Jonathan Frid and David Selby, the two most prominent stars. The last track on the album is Jonathan Frid reading Prospero’s soliloquy from The Tempest about actors and dreams. It’s a moody piece, and a fitting capstone to, well, pretty much anything.

Lara Parker ends her novel with the last sentence: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

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When Things Happen Too Fast

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When I got up this morning, this was the furthest thing from my mind. Two days ago he was bashing his head into my feet while I was trying to work, and I was saying, “Dammit, Lazarus, knock it off!” Last night he seemed very tired. This morning he wasn’t hungry. Tonight we know he has liver cancer and is bleeding into his abdomen. We don’t know the how, the why, or most of all the when. But he’s leaving us. Fourteen years went by too fast. Hope these last days slow down a little. At least, on his meds tonight, he’s not hurting. Tomorrow he may be able to come home and spend his last days with us. However many there are.

Dammit, Lazarus…

 

Superboy (1949) #124

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From October, 1965, another three-story issue, this one featuring:

“The Insect Queen of Smallville” – Superboy’s girlfriend, Lana Lang, becomes a super-hero! Now, it’s important to understand that, if you’re Kal-El / Clark Kent and it’s not yet 1970, “girlfriend” is another word for “arch-nemesis.” Like Lois Lane in his adult life, Lana exists at this point only to try and prove that mild-mannered Clark Kent is actually the last son of Krypton. Also like Lois, she’s really bad at the job, and similarly obsessed with it.

This time out, Lana happens upon a spaceman in the woods, as teenage girls in small towns in the Midwest were wont to do back in the day. Said spaceman (now we would say “extraterrestrial,” but this was literally a little, green man.) She frees him from beneath a fallen tree. In gratitude, he gives her a ring which allows her to assume the powers of any insect.

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I Just Finished – Rocketship Galileo by Robert A. Heinlein

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I’ve waited many years to read this one. I began reading Heinlein (with The Star Beast) in 1981. I’ve read most of his work, and, indeed, broke down this year and treated myself to the Virginia Edition, leather-bound copies of all of Heinlein’s work, including non-fiction articles and screenplays.

But this, his first novel published in book form, and the first of his juvenile novels, was a book that I’d always heard was badly dated and not as entertaining as his others. Now that I’ve finally read it, I disagree. Rocketship Galileo is as captivating, speculative and amusing as any Heinlein adventure (although Starship Troopers was rarely, if ever amusing. That one came from a dark place within the Grandmaster.)

It’s called “dated” less because of the naiveté of the idea that the first expedition to the moon would be the result of a contest for inventors–and particularly teenaged inventors–and more because the villains are–wait for it–Nazis.

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I Just Finished – Royals #6

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I’m a bit behind on this series. I think #9 just came out. It’s not on the top of my “need to read this right now” stack, and I do have a lot of unread comics. Still, I do try to get to all of them.

I must confess that the cosmic side of the Marvel Universe is something I haven’t kept up with, and it’s gotten a bit complex and confusing for me. But, despite the fact that I’m not a royalist and hate the idea of inherited governing power, I’ve always liked the Inhumans. So I’m following this series to see what they’re up to. Black Bolt is missing and imprisoned, Medusa is terminally ill, Maximus is hanging around like a second-rate Loki. But I do enjoy Al Ewing’s writing, so this book is holding my interest. And I must admit, Ewing is making me like the character Gorgon for the first time ever. I’ve always considered him just an ass, sort of Ares to the Inhuman pantheon—a warlike, temperamental child. But writer Al Ewing has given him three dimensions and even made him a little sympathetic.

I miss Triton and Karnak, but it’s nice to see Crystal front and center. She so rarely was, in the Inhuman stories I grew up with. I had heard she had married Ronan the Accuser. I can’t see that ever happening, and I’ve been emotionally distanced from her scenes with him in this series so far, as their relationship crumbles. I just don’t feel it. Granted he’s cuddlier than Quicksilver, but this is a woman who’s loved the Human Torch. Ronan is way outside any type she’s established. Of course, she did once have a fling with a Realtor from Jersey, so…

Anyway, if you’re engaged by the Inhumans’ TV series and want to read current comics about them, this is a pretty good one. I would also recommend finding a trade collection of the original Fantastic Four issues that introduced them.

 

I Just Finished – Kingsman: The Golden Circle

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I enjoyed this. It was far more comfortable, over all, than the first Kingsman film. Not that I remember that much of the first one. You don’t watch James Bond films to memorize their plot points, you watch them to go on a stylish thrill ride. And Kingsman is nothing if not a tribute to the James Bond films of Sean Connery and Roger Moore.

These films are hyper-violent. In the first one, there’s a seven-minute shootout in a church that goes beyond comic excess and is just uncomfortable. I had to look away. Although this one features a couple of encounters with a meat grinder, they’re over quickly and didn’t bring me the discomfort that the church scene did.

Halle Berry and Jeff Bridges are nice additions to the cast. Bruce Greenwood was a properly good ol’ boy villain as the President of the United States.

I have two complaints: First, some characters from last time out—one in particular—are ignobly written out of the franchise. They deserved better. Second, the film has three villains, and the biggest, nastiest comeuppance is saved for the least villainous, least interesting of them. He was a guy who did wrong, but he’s also given one of those “lost everything” reasons for turning bad. So he didn’t deserve what he got, while two other villains deserved exactly what he got, and they got a bit less.

Still, don’t think, just enjoy. That’s the secret.

I Just Finished – Uncanny Avengers (2015) #28

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This series continues to delight. Johnny Storm is now a billionaire, heir to Reed Richards’s patent earnings. Of course, it’s pretty clear Reed’s on his way back, but still, it’s an amusing turn. Quicksilver is being written as something other than angry, for a change. If I’m honest, Rogue as team leader still feels forced to me. Is there a female X-Man (irony unintentional) who isn’t leading her own team? I get it, it’s long overdue that we had equality on that score, but it still feels a bit forced. On the other hand, anything that puts Jean Grey, Rogue, Kitty Pryde and Polaris into the limelight is okay with me.

But my favorite part of the issue was simply the first panel in which we see the Beast’s blue, furry, smiling face as he snatches an escaped balloon and returns it to a young Avengers fan. He’s been blue and furry right on through, but ol’ Hank hasn’t smiled a lot in recent history, and that’s a bad thing.

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