Reviewing the Mail: Week of March 4, 2023

One book, another one from the library - I've been digging through their lists recently, finding graphic novels (mostly new ones) that are available. I guess I've gotten old enough that I don't feel like I need to buy everything - or maybe one flood that destroyed a few thousand books is enough for one life, and if I mostly borrow books they won't build up to that again.

The Last Mechanical Monster is a 2022 graphic novel from Brian Fies, author of Mom's Cancer and A Fire Story. (And Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, somewhat more relevantly - his big projects so far have alternated serious-thing-that-happened-to-me and then a lighter, more SFnal story with more fictional depths.)

This is explicitly, and oddly, a direct sequel to the 1941 cartoon "The Mechanical Monsters," set I think some decades later but not quite as many decades as have passed in the real world. And I'm pretty sure Superman does not appear in any form in this book, for fear of lawyers. But the cartoon is in the public domain, so the robots can be the same, and I guess some or all of the other original elements of the cartoon's story also appear here.

So: giant robot, of a group originally used for evil, now reappearing many years later, without a Superman to smash it. Maybe not evil this time? I guess I'll see.