Reviews and Comments

Brubaker and Phillips could have done things the easy way in Criminal, with a linear timeline and just showing the exploits of the criminals from wherever in the US criminal happens (never been there so I actually have no clue where that may be), but instead they create layer after layer of extra details that end up making this series extra good.

In this volume we have two issues that merge the stories and characters from the world of Criminal with the comics they read. The issues are a mix of the "actual" issues of Savage Sword and Deadly Hands and criminal issues. Very original and quite well thought indeed.

On the other hand we also have long novellas like All My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, that is both artistically and thematically quite distinct and Bad Weekend, where we see the insides of a comic con from the point of view of an old author.

Criminal is great and, with these issues, it has shown that it will be in constant evolution so I am looking forward to the next volume!

As a disclaimer, I have to say that I am a quantum physicist and I know about the topic quite a lot, so some parts of the comic that I believe common knowledge, might not be so. With that out of the way, I will move on to the review per se.

This is a lovely comic where we follow the journey of the lookalike of a certain franco-belgian pair of reporter and dog through the Quantum Lands. It is quite a delight to read, as everyone that decided to venture those territories has suffered the same bewilderement and frustations as our host, Bob.

Without going into many spoilers, Bob meets a great number of important physicists and they offer they guide as they journey together through the Quantum Lands and unravel its mysteries.

Sometimes it does delve into some esoteric and hard to understand topics, but I can say that this comic is one of the gentlest approaches to the topics that I have seen.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with some interest in quantum physics.

This book is the first novel that theorises about people travelling to other times, preceding The Time Machine by several years. Thing is, H.G. Wells most likely had no idea about this novel, as it was written by a very successful zarzuela (kind of like Spanish opera) playwright and diplomat but Enrique Gaspar i Rimbau had zero (or next to zero) contact with scientists.

How can I say that? Well, I am a physicist by trade and a reader of science fiction by hobby and I can count with my fingers the number of science fiction written by Spanish authors. Probably I do not even need all of them and if we restrict ourselves to science fiction that is not a satire or purely social commentary but also has some speculative fiction, the number (that I know of) is even lower. Back on topic, Mr. Gaspar i Rimbau probably hadn't talked to a physicist in his life because there were simply no Spanish physicists at the time and the novel uses a number of theories that were out of date even for the time it was written.

But that is not a big problem, as this book is, first and foremost a zarzuela and a satire. And there is where Mr. Gaspar i Rimbau shines. The satire is on point to the society of the time, there is a lot of erudition on the history of the different places they visit (special note about the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which I wasn't expecting) and it clearly has a structure and plot twists made for the theatre.

It also reads very fluidly and the chapters are very entertaining on their own too.

So, all in all, this is a good book. Only it is not a good science fiction novel.