4 out of 5

A collected edition of ‘Another Myth’ and ‘Myth Directions’

Yes, you’re familiar with the pitch of comedy and fantasy, and you’re already off in your Terry Pratchett land, gaily slappin’ yer kneecaps and giggling at the creative punnyness of it all.  I’ll confess: I haven’t read Pratchett.  I pretended to start the first Discworld book, but maybe because of the relative ‘popularity’ of the series, I shied away…?  Maybe because what I was told about it just sounded like the jerk-off’s guide to funny fantasy, like everyone who drops the “meaning of life is 42” joke and then wants to add to their bookshelf has the new Pratchett book.  Also, he’s written with Gaiman (right?  Am I making that up?), so that sort of rolls that ball down an alley of Sandman arsery that I just can’t get on board with.  Some years later, I picked up Peter David’s ‘Apropos of Nothing’ series, and initially quite liked it.  It was sort of what I imagined Pratchett’s books would read like if they were stripped of British randomness and given American Three Stooges style humor.  Alas, David’s repetitiveness of style became more and more apparent as I continued with the trilogy and read more of his comics, and my discomfort with how he writes ‘adult’ sexy scenes (dunno if it’s because he’s this oafish family dude that it’s hard for me to picture it… I mean, that’s not fair, but it might be true) just started to make the series really blase.  AND, let’s just face it, mf’s, fantasy books have that stigma to them, yes?  So lotsa barriers preventing me from finding my way.  Have I mentioned that LOTR sorta irks me and I’ll probably never read it?

Also, P.S., I love Douglas Adams, and admittedly have some snobby pride regarding having read the whole series of Gently and Hitchhikers… which plenty of cats have done, but you’re also plenty aware that more than half those shitty “42” people just read the first book.  Eat my ass, 42ers.

Anger?  Maybe.  Where was I?  Robert Asprin.

Why?  Well, Phil Foglio.  I picked up Mythadventures! the comic from a dollar bin, written and drawn by Phil, based on the books by Robert.  Phil does a lot of the same fat-guy fantasy stuff that Willingham does, but for some reason – I trust Phil.  I believe in his pen, I don’t see it all as sweaty scribblings.  Like Peter David, Willingham, maybe I sort of have a sheepish grin on my face when we’re at the bar together.  But Phil?  Man, suspenders and all, I’d love to know that guy.  But – some of his stuff is still too fantasy for me, no matter how much I dig his cartoony art style.  And I couldn’t tell why MA was so much fun, if it was because of the humor, if it was because of Phil or the source material…  The good news – the great news – is that the comic adaptation is exactly what an adaptation should be – using the source as a guide to create a separate entity.  The book is pitched with a tone that works so much better as a book, and the comic took on a tone that worked better there.  Same story, different styles.  But I DO have Asprin to thank for what I think sells this – it’s an interesting quirk to his writing where we surf through total fantasy tropes – sorcerer’s apprentice learning the ropes, weird names like ‘Skeeve,’ different races like Imps and Devils – but it’s done neither straight faced or tongue in cheek.  It’s done humanly.  Our anchor is that apprentice, Skeeve, whose teacher – Garkin – your typical smart-alec teacher template – in another simple move that sets the tone – is killed in the first few pages when trying to play a practical joke on a friend of his, Ahz… who’s from another dimension, making him a dimension traveler or, womp, ‘demon’.  Ahz is also a magician, but Garkin’s joke is to take Ahz’s powers away when bringing him to this Earth-like dimension, and only Garkin can remove that trick / spell… and damn if there isn’t an ultimate evil with the name of Isstvan on the rise, so Ahz takes Skeeve under his wing as his new apprentice, no tears shed for Garkin.  Bing bang boom.  The ‘humanly’ hitch is Skeeve.  He’s new to most of this, so he asks a lot of questions, but just the reasonable ones.  And instead of giving him a dicky ‘wait and see’ response, Ahz… answers him.  It’s really refreshing.  Asprin doesn’t pull the tired fantasy joke of withholding answers to build to puns or plotlines, he presents it as it happens.  And despite a lot of winks rumbling under the surface – this dimension is ‘Klah,’ and so we are all ‘Klahds,’ for example – he doesn’t really milk it.  He puts it out there, and moves on.  The humor is mostly situational.

Still, on the whole you can pick out where the plot is going to twist or turn, but there’s a nice humble-ness to the whole thing.  The endings of each book are disappointing, but not cop outs.  They’re normal.  Given the context, they’re reasonable solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems, solutions normally achieved through loopholes or misdirection that avoid a lotta scuffle, ’cause in the MA world, magic, on the whole, is a lotta’ mumbo jumbo to disguise a few basic spells.

Bottom line – I really, truly, enjoyed the books.  It’s refreshing when you read things that you recognize are good, but when you set the book down, you’re not exactly yearning to pick it back up.  But even though these first two MA stories might not have been super complicated, super dense, or thought provoking, per se, I’m going to remember the adventures of Skeeve and Ahz for a lot longer than I could remember the name of any of Harry Potter’s friends.  The editing on the version I got is pretty shitty – lots of typos – and Asprin’s writing style is as humble as the story structure, not really reaching for unique wordings or anything, but I’d rather that and want to keep the book on my shelf than a lotta pretty poetry for nothing.

Looking forward to reading more.