Superman Smashes the Klan

I don't read superhero comics very often. When one of my favorite comic writers publishes one, I read it. I have loved all of Gene Luen Yang's books. Previously he published the Boxers and Saints volumes, American Born Chinese and last year's Dragon Hoops. With this Superman volume Yang takes on the Klan of the Fiery Kross, a pseudonym for the Ku Klux Klan.  

The story takes place in 1946 when teenagers Roberta and Tommy Lee move with their parents from Chinatown to Metropolis, the home of Superman. Tommy makes friends easily but Roberta wants to go back to Chinatown where she was comfortable. One night the Lee family awakens to find that their house is surrounded by the Klan of the Fiery Kross and see a burning cross in their yard. Superman leaps into action but his exposure to a mysterious green rock leaves him feeling nauseous and weak. He is only able to defeat the Klan later with the help of Roberta and Tommy. During this conquest, Superman sees visions of his deceased parents asking why he is only using half of the powers he was born with. Superman works through his memory to figure out what is holding him back.

While this was an enjoyable story of good versus evil, the poisonous remarks of the Klan members against this Chinese family gave it a bad tone. I found it difficult to overcome the hate that sprung from its pages. I presume that this was the effect that Yang was going for and that he presented an Asian family as the victims due to the AAPI discrimination that has been ongoing since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The comic is advertised for young adult reading and I would agree with that. It would be helpful to present the realities of hate to youths, but not those too young for the message.

5 out of 5 stars.

Sentient

Sentient is a science fiction story set in a comic book format. It is the story of the U. S. S. Montgomery, a space ship with both adults and children on board. The ship is traveling from an earth that is almost uninhabitable due to climate change to a colony located somewhere in deep space. One of the adults is secretly a separatist and she kills all the adults on board in a surprise attack. The separatists are a group that want the new colony to be completely disassociated from the earth's government. When the children find out that they have been left to finish the mission, they rely on their AI Valarie to learn new skills so that they can fly the ship to its expected destination. The kids have just barely learned their new skills when they are confronted with a dangerous force that threatens to doom them. They need to rely on Valarie in order to fight these forces but Valarie has only been programmed to complete minor tasks.

This is an awesome story. It has all the tension and character development that you would see in a novel length book within its 163 pages. The pace was fast and the plot premise was fascinating. The main characters are Val and the two oldest kids, Lill and Isaac. All three have tremendous growth in the story. Val becomes more of a parent than a machine but her machine capabilities allow her to learn the particular language that the kids speak. Lill is the most stubborn character and she gets the group into some trouble when she wants to leave the ship to explore a docking station where the Montgomery stops to refuel. Isaac is a tech prodigy who learns more and more about how the ship operates as the needs of the space ship develop as each day goes by. 

Great comic!  5 out of 5 stars.

Credo

Credo is a graphic biography of Rose Wilder Lane. I thought it would be about a suffragette but Rose Wilder Lane is the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wilder wrote the Little House on the Prairie books. I was not aware that she wrote these books with her daughter making huge edits. The books were written mainly by Lane but the ideas for the stories came from Wilder. 

Lane was an accomplished 20th century writer, feminist, war correspondent, and one of the  founders of the Libertarian Party in the U. S. She was anti-government and anti-marriage and did not believe that gender should hold anyone back from experiencing all that the world has to offer. Lane was one of the highest paid female writers in America, traveling all over the world in search of a story. She even traveled to Korea and Vietnam to cover those wars for the newspapers that she wrote for. However, she is mainly known as being the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder. There are several different opinions on how much Lane contributed to the Little House books but the original manuscripts have survived and there is no doubt that Wilder did not know how to write. Lane rewrote the stories so that they were readable. What most people do not know is that she wrote biographies and fiction on her own. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and read it twice in succession. It is amazing to me that she was friends with President Herbert Hoover, writer Dorothy Johnson and Johnson's husband Sinclair Lewis. With these people as friends, I would expect that Lane's name would be easily recognizable. Unfortunately, it isn't. She was lucky in her career, raising the glass ceiling for women in succeeding generations.  Her credo was an article she wrote concerning her political opinions. It was marketed as her credo, hence the name of the book.

Credo was a great history lesson for me and I highly recommend the book. 5 out of 5 stars.