Devin Grayson’s “X-Men: Evolution – Volume 1” collects the first four issues of the comic featuring artwork and colors by Udon with Long Vo, Charles Park & Saka with letters by Randy Gentile. The issues serve as a prequel to the series of the same name that aired on Kids’ WB from 2000-2003. The series, based on the early “X-Men” comics, features a younger version of the team set in contemporary times that debuted shortly after “X-Men: The Movie.” The stories focus on Charles Xavier forming his school and recruiting other mutants to the cause of peaceful co-existence with humanity, beginning with Ororo Munroe, Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Kurt Wagner. Each issue focuses on a specific character. It also briefly showcases the ideological split between Magneto and Professor X. It’s a fun companion to the animated series for fans of the show and works well as a prelude to the series episodes.

James Tynion IV’s “The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country – The Glass House” collects the first six issues of the “Sandman” spin-off comic as well as “The Sandman Universe Special: Thessaly” #1 featuring art by Lisandro Estherren, Patricio Delpeche, and Maria Llovet, colors by Delpeche and Llovet, letters by Simon Bowland, and covers by Reiko Murakami. In the story, the new Corinthian and the cat that was Madison Flynn investigate the Prophet organization and its connections to a new club, The King of Pain. The angel Moroni continues to work to spread the life story of Madison in order to attain new power while the owner of The King of Pain, Azazel, seeks to tempt the Corinthian to embrace his old ways. Drawn into the investigation, Thessaly finds herself an unlikely ally of Lucien, Madison, and the Corinthian, though she remains at odds with the Dream King. The story reveals that all of these occurrances connect to the larger conflict between Dream and Desire, with Desire launching their plan back during the events of “Three Septembers and a January” from “The Sandman” #31. These additions to the Sandman Universe continue to expand the world beyond Neil Gaiman’s original epic, though Dream only makes minor appearances so as to leave his narrative largely intact should Gaiman return at a later date. Tynion ably adds to the larger meta-narrative than began in the 1990s with various “Sandman” spin-offs. This second volume resolves much of a story points from the first volume, though it leaves the door open to continue exploring Desire’s plans. The ending may strike some readers as abrupt, however. Hopefully the larger narrative of Dream and Desire continues to play out in future volumes.

David Bushman and Ken Deep’s edited collection “The Companions of Doctor Who” features essays exploring the importance of the Doctor’s companions throughout the sixty-plus years of “Doctor Who.” They structure the book in reverse-chronological order beginning with Donna and Wilf as they appeared in the sixtieth anniversary specials, though those episodes had not yet aired when essayists Shaun Lyon and Joseph Dougherty wrote so they mostly focus on their time with the Tenth Doctor, alluding to the Fourteenth Doctor in their conclusions. From there, Mackenzie Flohr examines Yaz and the Thirteenth Doctor; Amanda-Rae Prescott looks at Bill Potts and the Twelfth Doctor; Scott Ryan examines the role of Clara Oswald; David Bushman takes a look at Amy Pond and the Eleventh Doctor; Dr. Gina Rosich explores the complicated legacy of Martha Jones and the Tenth Doctor; Joshua Lou Friedman takes a look at Rose’s time with the Ninth and Tenth Doctors as the first companion after Doctor Who’s revival in 2005. This first half of the book covers the revived “Doctor Who” while the second half begins with Yee Jee Tso looking back on his own character, Chang Lee, in the 1996 “Doctor Who” movie. Following Tso, Joshua Lou Friedman and Sophie Aldred write about Aldred’s character Ace and her time with the Seventh Doctor; Paul J. Salamoff examines Sarah Jane Smith, who traveled with the Third and Fourth Doctors before appearing in special episodes, spin-offs, the second series of the revived “Doctor Who,” and even her own show; Charlie Ross, Lucy Chase Williams, and Amy Krell all give insiders’ insight into Ian Marter, who portrayed Harry Sullivan alongside the Fourth doctor; Edwin Thrower writes about Jo Grant, who traveled with the Third Doctor before reappearing in the “Sarah Jane Adventures” and “Tales of the TARDIS”; Ken Deep discusses Jamie McCrimmon’s time with the Second Doctor; Barnaby Edwards writes about Ian Chesterton’s travels with the First Doctor as the model for other male companions, who are often outliers when many of the most well-known companions are women; and Ken Deep closes out the book with an interview with Carole An Ford, who played Susan Foreman alongside the First Doctor. The book is a nice companion to the franchise and a good introduction for newcomers who might feel overwhelmed by the Doctor’s long history and numerous companions. Each author brings their own insights and clearly writes about their favorites, so the chapters are a joy to read. A lovely volume for Whovians to purchase for themselves or as a gift for fellow fans.

Alyssa Wong’s “Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Omnibus, Vol. 2” collects “Doctor Aphra” (2020) #1-25 written by Wong with pencils by Marika Cresta, Ray-Anthony Height, Robert Gill, Minkya Jung, Federica Sabbatini, and Natacha Bustos; inks by Victor Olazaba; colors by Rachelle Rosenberg; letters by Joe Caramagna; and cover art by Valentina Remenar, Leinil Francis Yu, Sunny Gho, Joshua “Sway” Swaby, Sara Pichelli, Nolan Woodard, and W. Scott Forbes. The story continues the saga of the “Star Wars” galaxy’s favorite rogue archaeologist, Chelli Aphra, following the events of “The Empire Strikes Back” as the Rebel Alliance is on the run and Darth Vader holds a grudge against Aphra for the fallout from their partnership. Meanwhile, she’s put together a new team consisting of herself, Black Krrsantan, Detta Yao, Doctor Eustacia Okka, Just Lucky, and TA-418 while they try to evade Ronen Tagge, a member of the wealthy Tagge family who seeks out rare, one-of-a-kind pieces just so that he can be the last to hold them before destroying them in the ultimate display of privilege. Dealing with these artifacts eventually brings Aphra into conflict with Domina Tagge, whose family business threads a narrow path in the Empire in order to enrich itself and maintain a political status quo beneficial to their plans. Aphra’s emplyment with Tagge leads her to missions involving Crimson Dawn and malevolent Ascendant artifacts. This volume concludes with an Ascendant artifact taking possession of Aphra, leading her associates to unite in order to free her from its grip. Wong’s writing advances Dr. Aphra’s narrative while expanding the scope of the “Star Wars” galaxy to include more groups paralleling the Jedi and Sith in the ancient past. Cresta, Height, Gill, Jung, Sabbatini, and Bustos’ art all brings Wong’s story to dynamic action while Rosenberg’s colors pop. A great collection for fans of Doctor Chelli Lona Aphra, though less than half as long as the first omnibus.

Esmé Louise James’ “Kinky History: A Rollicking Journey through Our Sexual Past, Present, and Future” explores the history of sexuality in a compelling manner that will entertain and educate readers from academics through to casual readers while building on her social media and graduate work. She structures her book into five main subjects: sin, pleasure, queer identities, kink, and pornography. Each explores these works using classical texts as well as current historical analyses. Discussing contraception under the heading of sin, James explores historical forms of contraception, many of which may horrify modern readers. In the modern era, she links contraception to syphilis in the early sixteenth century following Jared Diamond’s research (p. 24). Similarly, in exploring sexual toys as a form of pleasure, James argues that correcting the false history of the vibrator is of critical importance. She writes, “It matters how we tell history. In linking the story of hysteria and the vibrator, we achieve a story that is funny, cheeky, and a little bit sexy – perfect for Hollywood and Broadway adaptations. It’s also insanely harmful. It paints women from recent history as mindless creatures who would allow doctors to essentially assault their bodies because their husbands said they’d been acting irrational. This isn’t the story we should be telling” (p. 84). Addressing queer history, James argues, “These stories have always been in the history books – we just need the right reading tools to be able to find them again. This is a task of great importance” (p. 95). To illuminate these stories, James highlights the lives of Elagabalus and Julius Caesar from ancient Rome, Anastasia the Patrician from sixth-century Byzantium, François-Timoléon de Choisy from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and an unnamed person from newspaper reports in the 1930s (p. 121-123). Further, she highlights cultures that recognized an intersex or third sex including the Galli in ancient Rome, the Mahu from pre-colonial Hawai‘i, and he Muxe people among the Zapotec community in pre-colonial and modern Mexico (p. 125). Though she cautions against mapping our current concepts of gender onto the past, James illuminates how LGBTQIA people have always been part of the human tapestry and have played a role throughout history while understanding gender as much more than a simple binary in their own times and terms. Turning to kink, James uses sources from the ancient world through James Joyce. She questions, “How much more could we learn about the function of a human if we stopped treating these desires as ‘freaky quirks’ and instead worked to show that they function in a holistic view of a human?” (p. 166). She moves from body parts to clothing to pain and more, alternating between literature, letters, scientific studies, and evidence from the ancient world through early modern history. In her final section, James examines pornography, though she touched on notions of pornographic materials throughout her study. She writes, “While we have a range of erotic art and literature dating back to the ancient world that we now classify as pornography, this was not even considered as a distinctly separate category until the early nineteenth century” (p. 210). Further, “pornography – a genre now often associated with heteronormative depictions of sexuality – was actually popularized as a genre by two (likely) queer men who wrote through the eyes of female sex workers” (p. 215). Above all, ethical production and consumption is important and James notes how one may healthily consume the material under these conditions, bringing her to her conclusion. James argues that sexuality is a form of empathy, best understood as a way to connect and worthy of understanding while dispelling myths. “Kinky History” is critical reading for the public with research that straddles the boundaries between popular and academic writing.

Paul Michael Peters’ “Mist and Moonbeams: Stories from the Great Lakes Edge” features five novelettes set around Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Peters organizes the stories based on the mnemonic “H.O.M.E.S.,” with that sense of home running through each novelette. The Huron story, “You Can’t Start a Fire with Moonlight,” focuses on a forbidden love and the pain of its loss. Turning to Ontario, “A Hummingbird in Winter” takes place in the twenty-second century with human connections driving the narrative as main character Dash finds his world changed after a chance encounter. As Peters reaches Michigan, “Confessions of an Efficient Cause” takes on a noir tone as the dark winter of 1992 parallels a threat to students in Chicago and the detective who seeks justice on their behalf. On Erie – the shallowest of the lakes that empties the quickest – “Careful, Icarus” is a heist story in Cleveland featuring a character who hopes one big score can change his life for good. Finally, Peters closes out with Superior and his story “Love in Her Big Two-Hearted,” which follows recent widow Sonny as she seeks out a new adventure through a canoe trip in order to quench her sense of unfulfilled dreams. The stories are entertaining in their own way with their brevity often working to their strength. The book will appeal to those looking to try something new and would find a good home at any library or rental cabin along the Great Lakes. In fact, I was struck while reading this by how perfectly this book would fit in hotels or private rentals along the lakes for vacationers to have something to read after a day exploring the sights. The variety and brevity of the stories are perfectly suited to this type of reading while the local settings would entertain readers as a diversion while they visit the Great Lakes Region.

David Stabler’s “What Is the Story of Captain Picard?” explores the fictional biography of the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D as well as the making of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and its place in the “Star Trek” franchise, past and future. Stabler notes how Gene Roddenberry and the “TNG” writers chose Picard’s name in honor of brothers Jean Felix and Auguste Piccard, Swiss chemists and balloonists, while basing Picard’s personality on C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower. He explores the development of the other main characters on “TNG,” notable adversaries, and some of Picard’s greatest adventures. Pointing the way forward, Stabler discusses the character’s legacy and how it influenced spin-off series “Star Trek: Picard” in 2020, the second season of which was in production at the time Stabler wrote. He concludes, “Today, it is impossible to imagine ‘Star Trek’ without Picard” (p. 106). This book will appeal to young Trekkers looking for a convenient reference work as they learn more about “Star Trek” or to parents who want to introduce their children to the franchise. It also nicely compliments the non-fiction biographies in this series and would go well alongside books on science and aviation pioneers like “Who Were the Tuskegee Airmen?”, “Who Was Neil Armstrong?”, “Who Was Jacques Cousteau?”, “Who Were The Wright Brothers?”, and “Who Was Galileo?” or titles focused on entertainers like “Who Was Chuck Jones?”, “Who Was Lucille Ball?”, “Who Is Stan Lee?”, and “Who Is George Lucas?”. Another book in the “What Is the Story” series focuses on Captain Kirk.

Rosa Carr’s “Air Fay” tells the story of Aria, who finds herself transported to the world of Fairy without any memory of who she is or where she came from. Encountering Laredo, another Fairy with secrets of his own, she learns more about the world and begins to uncover secrets of her past and her destiny. Carr crafts a detailed world of Fae that can exist parallel to our own human world, though the writing is occasionally wooden and the conflicts occasionally feel forced to achieve a plot goal rather than the actions of well-rounded characters. Specifically, Laredo’s sullen moods read as clichéd efforts to create conflict or remove him from the story for ease of plot and his big secret is all-too-obvious for following well-worn tropes. Despite these weaknesses, Carr’s writing shines in the third act when her characters reach their central conflict. The action and world-building reads as much more believable while the characters’ actions feel natural. “Air Fay” will entertain middle readers who enjoy fantasy and is likely to find an audience among those looking for something new at the library.

Erik Larson’s “The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War” chronicles the last months of the Buchanan Administration and the growing threat of Civil War as South Carolina seceded from the Union and demanded the forfeiture of Fort Sumter. Despite all the bluster of various Southern officials, Larson argues that every contemporary knew slavery to be the true cause of the posturing and eventual conflict. He writes, “…For all the South’s efforts to blame the crisis on Northern tyranny in imposing tariffs, collecting revenue, and ordaining ‘internal improvements,’ the crux of the crisis was in fact slavery. This was obvious to all at the time, if not to members of a certain school of twentieth-century historiography who sought to cast the conflict in the bloodless terms of states’ rights” (p. 274). Further, other contemporaries similarly understood that any mention of other causes was merely a disguise for slavery’s place in the body politic as “a cancer whose inner damage was masked by the victim’s outward appearance of health” (p. 345). Larson employs his research background to dramatize historical events, alternating between different principals in the federal government as well as the southern states and even diarists and newspaper writers. Many soldiers left records behind so that Larson can share their insights and actions as well as those of the political leaders. He uses honor culture as his insight into the Southern mindset, with his work demonstrating the influence of Gerald Linderman’s “Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War” or Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s earlier text, “Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South.” The code duello further punctuates each section, helping to frame the conflict as a duel of sorts. Despite this framing device, Larson reminds readers that the conflict held deeper meaning as to the nation’s character. As an example, Abner Doubleday, part of the United States defense at Sumter, viewed the battle over the fort as a fight “for the survival of the United States. ‘The only alternative was to submit to a powerful oligarchy who were determined to make freedom forever subordinate to slavery’” (p. 429). Larson concludes, “Here lay the greatest of ironies: In thirty-four hours of some of the fiercest bombardment the world had ever seen, no one was killed or even seriously injured, yet this bloodless attack would trigger a war that killed more Americans than any other conflict in the country’s history” (p. 463). Amid our currently rising political tensions, Larson’s work finds an readership yearning to understand how a civil war begins. Readers should be wary of mapping sectional boundaries onto current events, but may look to Doubleday’s comments to draw comparisons to the class-based masculine posturing that inspires much of contemporary political furores.

In “Dune: The Graphic Novel, Book 3 – The Prophet,” Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson conclude their adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” with art by Raúl Allén and Patricia Martín with Jesús R. Pastrana, and covers by Bill Sienkiewicz. The story begins approximately a year after Paul Muad’Dib Atreides joined the Fremen and learned their ways. He cements his power and his legacy as the Kwisatz Haderach when he summons a great worm to ride and drinks the waters of life. Meanwhile, Baron Harkonnen continues to lose his grasp on Arrakis and faces increasing pressure from Emperor Shaddam IV. Paul’s mother, the Lady Jessica, acts as the spiritual leader of the Fremen and an advisor to Paul alongside Chani. Paul’s sister, Alia, unsettles the Fremen as she was changed in-utero when her mother drank the waters of life. The conflict comes to a head as Paul reunites with Gurney Halleck and draws the Emperor to Arrakis. This graphic novel continues to faithfully adapt the story of “Dune,” including elements that the film and miniseries adaptations left out due to time constraints. Fans of the series will enjoy Allén, Martín, and Pastrana’s art as they neatly compliment the story and action. A must-read for fans and a great way for new readers to explore the world of “Dune.”