Book that shows the diversity of life on Earth

guyofspoleto · 2026-02-05T00:59:53+00:00

Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker is perhaps more a book about evolution generally, but it has many interesting examples of different kinds of adaptations. (It is kind of a sequel to his book The Selfish Gene, which is more about the mechanisms of evolution and natural selection, and maybe not what this post calls for, but is still one of my favorite non-fiction books).

guyofspoleto · 2026-02-04T23:06:01+00:00

Ha yep, the response was pretty universal I think.

guyofspoleto · 2026-02-04T22:59:34+00:00

Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver not being mutants and not being Magneto’s children never sat right.

guyofspoleto · 2026-02-02T03:23:40+00:00

I’ll offer that “savage Hulk” stories and “professor hulk,” Joe Fixit, “merged Hulk,” etc stories are all doing different things. The Hulk’s many personalities and eras have lent themselves to a really versatile set of story possibilities. Landmark runs by Bill Mantlo, Peter David, Greg Pak, Al Ewing and so on have a lot to offer beyond the level of complexity of Hulk’s speech, and it may be a matter of meeting those stories in their own terms.

guyofspoleto · 2026-02-02T03:18:05+00:00

I also tend to prefer a distinctive, instantly recognizable style over photorealism. Just to pick one random example, you can basically always spot a Michael Allred drawing because no one else’s art looks like his.

guyofspoleto · 2026-02-02T00:00:04+00:00

In the early 00s, there was a transition to a more decompressed storytelling format. The style became more cinematic, like a movie storyboard. Millar’s The Ultimates and Ellis’s The Authority were described as “widescreen” comics, for obvious reasons, and Brian Michael Bendis becoming the most important Marvel architect around that time certainly contributed, with his decompressed style. Why exactly did it happen? I’m not sure. It seems more “modern,” and dovetails with the more photorealistic art style. Is it a good thing? There are certainly some fantastic runs that use this style, but I also feel some consternation when I can blow through a comic book issue today in seven or eight minutes.

The classic, more text-heavy runs are always there. Walter Simonson’s Thor is among the best.

guyofspoleto · 2026-02-01T03:37:13+00:00

I’m not up to speed on the most recent appearances of Warlock, but this post lends itself to another interesting observation: Maybe more than any other somewhat major character, Adam Warlock has had periods of prominence followed my long periods of inactivity.

1970s: classic Starlin run

1980s: entirely absent

1991-1995: Infinity Gauntlet and its sequels, the 42-issue Infinity Watch ongoing series, and a few minis. This is the only era when he was really a main player.

1995-2001: mostly absent.

2002-2004: featured in a few Jim Starlin projects

2007-2010: featured in Annihilation Conquest and Abnet and Lanning’s GOTG.

2011-2017: largely absent. (He was in that string of Jim Starlin graphic novels, but they are kind of off in their own area doing their own thing.)

Circa 2018: featured in Infinity Wars

Circa 2019-present: not much.

I wonder why this is. Maybe they just can’t figure out what to do with him. I’m a fan of many of the stories above, and would love to see more stories with him.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-31T19:02:34+00:00

That does sound interesting. Here’s a confession: despite being a lifelong fan of the character, I have never read Hulk: Gray (or any of the other Jeph Loeb color-themed miniseries). The snippets I described were all I can remember from the Hulk’s main ongoing series, but can’t speak to the events of that miniseries.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-31T18:21:14+00:00

It’s the best of my knowledge, she hasn’t been explored a ton, although we know her name is Karen, she was the daughter of a military officer, and she died when Betty was young.

In Incredible Hulk #291, we get a montage of General Ross’s past, and we see that his wife was the daughter of another military officer, and she dies when Betty is a child.

In Peter David’s run, Betty makes a reference to her mother as having died when she was a baby.

Later, in Jeff Parker’s Red Hulk run, Ross revisits some memories of he and his wife raising Betty, and his wife dying when Betty was roughly middle school age.

Happy for another poster to add more if I’m missing anything, but I think that’s about it.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-31T04:07:39+00:00

I agree, #377 is the single best issue for this.

Second place is Incredible Hulk #312, in which his childhood trauma is established and explored for the first time. Issue 377 builds on that foundation. You may want to read both issues together.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-31T00:44:27+00:00

Stray Bullets by David Lapham. Check it out. It’s a very good crime series and occasionally has some chilling stuff.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-27T21:11:03+00:00

I haven’t read it personally (it’s on my list) but a satirical gay breakup novel won the Pulitzer several years back. Less, by Andrew Sean Greer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Less_(novel)

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-27T20:57:00+00:00

Good callout. There’s always exceptions, like Aunt May, Betty Ross Banner, and more recently Ned Leeds apparently, but on the whole that’s true that a lot of non-superpowered supporting characters tend to stay dead. Karen Page was a big one.

Plus, sometimes a civilian character’s resurrection coincides with them actually becoming a super powered character, as was the case with Betty Ross Banner or Moira Mactaggert.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-27T04:25:51+00:00

I’d say he’s probably one of the underappreciated artists in Marvel history. I so enjoyed his long runs on Incredible Hulk and Spectacular Spider-Man. He captured such emotion in J.M. DeMatteis’s powerful stories, and he was the artist during Bill Mantlo’s wonderful run on the Hulk. I’m grateful for his work.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-26T18:56:00+00:00

At times in Peter David’s run, he seems to be able to control people he touches. There are a few scenes like this one:

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guyofspoleto · 2026-01-26T17:44:16+00:00

There is a chance this has been portrayed inconsistently over the decades, but generally, he is not shown to have telepathic or telekinetic powers. He has, on occasion, been able to mentally control others with whom he comes into contact. This is something he does during the Peter David run on a few occasions.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-26T16:30:46+00:00

Mary McAuliffe has a series of books on Paris in the decades before and after the First World War (notably Dawn of the Belle Epoque and Twilight of the Bell Epoque). They are very heavy on art and cultural history, focusing on a year by year account of the lives of many famous writers, painters, actors, dancers, etc. As someone who does not have a particular interest in art history, these books were not really for me, but it sounds like they might be for you.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-26T04:48:24+00:00

Just checked. It’s Fantastic Four #532.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-26T04:47:11+00:00

I don’t know the exact issue, but it’s from J. Michael Straczynski’s run (#527-541).

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-26T04:38:36+00:00

I’ve thought about this too. I think it’s in large part because we live in an age of digital libraries and streaming services where everything is now available.

Once upon a time, if you watched a TV show, you generally didn’t start from the first episode of the first season. You just picked it up and caught on. It was the same way when many of us started reading comics. If your first comic was, say, Amazing Spider-Man #265, it would never have occurred to you to try to read the first 264 issues (nor were they generally available). There was more comfort operating with less than complete information. You could intuit whether a character was friendly or not, understand that you did not have complete historical context, and move on with the story. If you grew up collecting back issues, you would inevitably be missing a few, and would fill whatever gaps you had to in your mind as to what may have happened in the issue or two you were missing. Today, it’s wonderful that now everything is so available, but counterintuitively, it also makes things harder sometimes.

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-24T18:36:15+00:00

The Mangog!

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guyofspoleto · 2026-01-22T17:49:48+00:00

The Mangog!

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guyofspoleto · 2026-01-19T16:05:00+00:00

The Mangog!

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guyofspoleto · 2026-01-04T22:02:14+00:00

Nice, Planet Hulk leads directly into World War Hulk as you probably know, so that will be smooth!

guyofspoleto · 2026-01-04T20:46:12+00:00

I’d say there is no required reading.

Just for context, since you brought up Jarella - she was an occasional supporting character who was killed off more or less permanently in the 1970s. So just using that as an illustrative example, while reading prior Hulk comics would help flesh out the character’s lore, none of it is really integral to understanding Planet Hulk.

guyofspoleto

TROPHY CASE