• The Love as a Foreign Language Summer of Love tour and the Art of the Reprint!

• Summer Comic Reads from around the Web

• Lanterns & Peacemaker

• Films I’ve Been Watching

Love as a Foreign Language’s Summer of Love Tour Continues!

J. and I have had a wonderful time out on our book tour, catching up with old friendships and making new ones along the way! We wanted to say thank you very much to our friends at The Dragon in Guelph, Wayside Comics & Cocktails in Newmarket, and Heroes World in Richmond Hill. It was a real pleasure to be a guest at these stores, and both me and J hope to see you all again soon!

That’s not the end of the tour, of course! I’ll be appearing at the Beguiling on August 29th from 6:30 to 8:30pm alongside incredible Canadian legends, Ho Che Anderson, Jay Stephens and Nick Craine.

We'll be discussing the process of reprinting books, introducing newer readers to stories, as well as going into these unique works. It’s a real privilege to be able to showcase Love As A Foreign Language alongside them and their books, and I hope you come out. It’ll be a fun night in the city!

Summer Reads

The last week of August is here, which means you’ve still got time to cram in some summer reads! Here are some things I’ve enjoyed around the ole internets:

• Zach Rabiroff wrote some great articles about 80’s Marvel figures like Jim Shooter, Mark Gruenwald and Gerry Conway for the Comics Journal. His most recent one is this piece about Alan Moore, broken up into two parts (pt. 1 and pt. 2). Enjoy!

Lanterns & Peacemaker

I was incredibly fortunate to have found two days to myself where I could finally relax this summer, so I spent it watching the latest offering from DC: Lanterns (2026). Unfortunately the show didn't click with me, so I tried out Peacemaker, which I found to be delightful.

(Note: No spoilers, but I do run down Lanterns. Please stop here if you'd prefer to not read any more.)

Lanterns is a comic book police procedural featuring Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), focusing on their relationship in 2016. The first episode also introduces us to two other timelines (1996 and 2026), but I'll leave it there to avoid spoilers. The second episode is interesting with it's introduction of other characters, but that's about as much as I’ll say about that.

It didn’t click with me. My main issue with both episodes was how the show dealt with exposition, which was structured in such a way as to be really dull. Characters throw out large chunks of information that land with no emotional resonance so they end up feeling like really dry lectures. Along with a lack of characterization, scenes feel empty because they have no context for reactions. This leads to the show feeling empty and being about watching Stewart run around doing inexplicable errands for Jordan.

This is not to say that the performances of either Jordan or Stewart are done badly -- Pierre and Chandler do a fantastic job with their characters, and I'm always happy to see Kelly Macdonald (from Trainspotting! That made me feel incredibly old). Pierre is a picture-perfect John Stewart, and Chandler makes a surly Jodan quite charismatic — truly no small feat, since some of the lines he's given are a little grating. His interrogation scene in the first episode, for example, was difficult to take seriously.

It’s also upsetting seeing the obvious inspirations for Lanterns. From True Detective to Michael Mann's Manhunter, I was too aware of the roots showing to actually be able to take the show seriously on it’s own merits.

With this low reception, I chose to watch Peacemaker.

(Note: No spoilers, but I end up running down Lanterns by comparing it with Peacemaker)

Peacemaker is, of course, a comedy while Lanterns is a grim and dark show that tries to throw some comedy in there in bizarre and offputting ways (ie. the truck scene). That being said, what Peacemaker does is wholeheartedly embrace the fact that it's a superhero show that shoehorns in the HBO levels of sex and violence that they need for their older audiences. Lanterns seems to immerse itself in the police procedural part a bit too much and glosses over the superheroics, despite them being core elements of the plot. To put it more simply, Lanterns feels as though it's embarrassed by it's source material instead of reveling in it, resulting in a show that's uneven in it's tone.

Peacemaker is anchored by John Cena and written by James Gunn (who also handles the majority of the directing as well). The show is intelligent and well-crafted, using it's outsider character to give his take on the bizarre world of the DC Universe. Gunn follows the psychologies of these characters to reveal fascinating lives — moreover, Gunn doesn't judge them for their weirdness, but for how they deal with it. This flexibility results in a show where we become interested in how they navigate their emotions in a world that’s home to a weirdness that is their normal.

I imagine that Lanterns will get better in it's third episode — after all, that's where Peacemaker unveiled it's larger story arc and revealed some mystery — and I’ll be forced to eat my words. However it feels, unfortunately, like copaganda writ large, unlike Peacemaker, which had some interesting ways of interrogating that authority. I guess we'll see how it all goes.

Films I’ve Been Watching

Can you believe another newsletter has come and gone? Unbelievable! See you next month (which is actually next week)!

- eric