Whats everyone reading?

[Dandontdare]

James Ellroy Perfidia.

I went through a phase of reading tons of crime books, but haven't read any for a long time - Ellroy sounds a good a person as any to rekindle my love of moider!


Just finished Warren Ellis' IGNITION CITY - I refuse to call it "atompunk" or any of these horrible genre names, but it was fantastic read, rather like a mash-up between his own Ministry of Space and Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - a bunch of washed up space heroes (clearly based on people like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon) eke out a miserable life in a shanty town at Earth's last spaceport - Rock Raven's (Dan Dare?) daughter arrives to find out which of them murdered her father.

There was a number 1 on the spine, and a large cast of characters with hanging plot-threads, so it seems to be setting itself up as the first in a series, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any further volumes.

[Professor Bear]

Dragon's Claws was always overlooked in the annals of British sci-fi comics in favor of some other book with Robocop in it or something, but that's a shame as despite the things that comics snobs will pick up on like the superhero trappings, over-exposition, cornball dialogue, daft standalone plots (like one of the main characters' backstory being that they used to be a Batman), and random fight scenes, there's still a great deal to admire in a dedicated all-ages dystopian science fiction comic that borrows from 1970s sci-fi like Rollerball and Soylent Green, and the gorgeously desolate Geoff Senior landscapes make me wish that someone at 2000ad had found a future war strip for him so he could get some of the recognition he deserves as one of the most solid and visually distinctive comics artists to come out of the UK.
The collected edition from 2008 also reprints a crossover issue from the more popular and longer-lasting character Death's Head, but that one falls a little flat despite sharing creative talent with Claws - not ever idea is a winner, I suppose.  I think it is fair to say I am a big fan of 1980s Marvel when they were plowing their own furrow before it all went horribly wrong and they chased down a completely different audience than the one that had kept the company financially successful for decades (which didn't actually exist as it turned out because this is the UK and not North America), but even leaving aside nostalgia and bias, Dragon's Claws deserved a bit more success than it enjoyed, as despite the professional wrestling-style premise of The Game that leads to some superhero-esque visuals (which admittedly can be viewed as elements it shares with pulp sci-fi/action novel series such as Doomsday Warrior and The Survivalist which were popular at the time), it remains a very European-flavored slice of sci-fi no matter how liberally it homages American films and comics, all cynicism, grit and unhappy endings before those things became tired staples of the spandex brigade.

Also finished Station Eleven.  It remained a good post-apocalypse read, but did fall afoul of some overly-familiar tropes and heavy-handed world-building - is twenty years really enough time to build entirely new mythologies?  I suppose the reliance on coincidence to propel the plot can also be dismissed as having the in-world justification of there not being that many people left after a viruspocalypse so they might all be reasonably expected to know or be connected to each other in tenuous ways, but when you have their connections predating the viruspocalypse it comes off as a bit lazy in an otherwise solid book and I look forward to despising the two-film adaptation.

[SmallBlueThing]

Just finished The Martian by Andy Weir, and while it pains me to agree with Richard & Judy,  everything they say in their reviews as part of their TV book club is absolutely spot on.  Truly one of the most gripping science fiction thrillers of recent years,  and possibly the best of its kind since Arthur C Clarke's A Fall of Moondust fifty-odd years ago.  Weird that it's immediately a film,  like it really has been pounced on,  chewed up and spat out before it's had a chance to percolate in the wider culture.  Still,  I read it in three days flat and so maybe its time is now.  Maybe it's just one of those novels that has a window to smash otherwise it will be lost forever.  The book is magnificent, and if the film is clever enough this could really be the 2001/ Alien of the new century.
In ten years,  when we've seen three sequels and Mat Damon has become the first man to go back to Mars three  times, I'm sure we'll all be sick of it.  But until then,  I'm going to be optimistic and hope in Andy Weir we have a Clarke for a new generation.

Comics wise,  basically everything.  I'm now up to fifty titles a month, so it's easier to list what I don't read.
I don't read DC.  Except Aquaman,  Wonder Woman and Constantine.
Best things that pass before my eyes on a monthly basis are Letter 44, Walking Dead,  Nailbiter, Dan Slott's Spidey,  Howard the Duck, Conan the Avenger now they've changed the artist, Gail Simone's Red Sonja,  Daredevil,  Afterlife with Archie and Sabrina. Rat God was fun,  as was Autumnlands too.

SBT

[maryanddavid]

fifty titles a month,

[SmallBlueThing]

fifty titles a month,

I know.  And yet there you are,  publishing lovely comics ever so often as well.  You monster.

SBT

[Famous Mortimer]

Off work with sciatica, so in between playing games from the Steam Sale I've been reading the Iain M Banks "Culture" novels. They're bloody brilliant.

[Karl Stephan]

5 issues in to Rumble from Image. Art is next level.
Orc Stain is interesting.


Also finally read Frank Miller's 300 and Holy Terror. I didn't like the latter much.

[von Boom]

Just finished Armada by Ernest Cline. A very good follow up to Ready Player One, but not quite as good. If you enjoyed Ready Player One, though, you'll probably enjoy this one too.

[Professor Bear]

The Martian by Andy Weir.  The storyline isn't quite as gripping as I'd been led to believe, but the main protagonist keeps it interesting by playing to the book's clever central conceit of being an adventure undertaken by the geeks and nerds of the real world of rocket science rather than the heroic figures of traditional action-adventures.  Mark Watney is no Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger - in fact he's not even a Matt Damon, so it'll be interesting to see how that pans out - he's a comics-reading RPG player who didn't get laid in high school and who saves his own ass by falling back on the power of education and being able to do maths, and instead of ruminating at length on the philosophy of "a man alone against nature" as might be expected of the genre, he rails at disco music and the stupidity of Roscoe P Coltrane for never going to the Dukes' house and arresting them when they weren't in the car.  He gets a bit soppy at the end, and I'm not sure the constant switches between first and third-person narratives works as well as it should (it's something I haven't seen since the Doomsday Warrior series, where it was equally unconvincing), but it's a pleasantly distracting read.  It'll be interesting to see how the po-faced Ridley Scott makes a movie of what is essentially a light-hearted mumblecore sci-fi.

[J.Smith]

Finally got back to making my way through the bulk of my 2000AD collection about a week and a half ago. Earlier this year I had started with Prog 2005 and, as I recall, got to the last quarter of 2011 before really taking a long break. Turns out I should probably have done so sooner because it's been months since I read all that and by the time I picked up where I left off I had forgotten some things, which perhaps coloured how I felt about some of the strips.

Spoilers from here on, though I presume everyone here's read all this anyway.

For example, I don't remember the first series of Age of the Wolf being silly at all and yet, despite how seriously dark the second series got, with the surprisingly nasty execution of two main characters midway through, it had a group of bad guys - who, I get it, are future chavs - talking in text speak too, which rather had me scratching my head, feeling completely out of tone with everything else. Otherwise, I have to admit, going through 2012 was a bit of a struggle at times, having found myself usually only consistently enjoying two strips at a time, one of which was always Dredd because of the Day of Chaos storyline (which I was reading for the first time so more on that in a bit) and Trifecta. It got so bad that I was skipping Future Shocks after seeing who had written them or entire 3hriller's if the first part didn't make a strong impression. Some of the series' that I did read but didn't completely enjoy, such as Grey Area, Cadet Anderson and Durham Red, I simply sped through as fast as possible when it came time to read 'em because previous instalments had been so terrible. Thankfully, the starting line up of 2013 was really quite great (which I will again talk about in a sec), so I don't see that particular problem I had repeating itself any time soon, especially as the following line up includes Stickleback, Zombo and Dandridge.

Anyway, enough negativity:

Beginning just where I needed to pick back up my journey through these Progs, in late 2011, Day of Chaos was great from beginning to end. At first I was struggling with the slow countdown and 24-like tracking of the important players involved in Eve of Destruction in 2012 but the pay-off was tremendous. Of course, I knew how bad things were to get in the end, having read stories set afterwards (I re-subscribed after the first line up of stories in 2014 had finished), but I never knew the specifics, so seeing things go from bad to worse and from worse to Dredd bleakly thinking how pointless it is to bother testing the 40,000 people trapped in a stadium where the bug's started spreading at all - well, that was just incredible. It's a shame that several of the shorter or one-off stories that followed this epic seemed to be written before it but it's hard to complain much when the year ends monumentally with Trifecta, which of course reads even better in the Prog. Quite the bloody year for Dredd (and Low Life had been as fun as ever earlier that year with The Deal).

Apart from that, the other obvious contender for best story of the year was Nikolai Dante reaching its climax. It was funny how I had the same thoughts as some of the letters published before it was finished. First, no, this can't be John Burns' final story; then, no, this can't be his final cover; and finally, no, this can't be the end! Thankfully, it all lived up to my expectations, expectations it had instilled in me because of the quality of recent storylines. It did not at all end how I suspected it might, did Sympathy for the Devil, but after reading it all again when I reached the final episode I saw just how amazing that ending truly was. Probably my favourite series in 2000AD that isn't called Judge Dredd or Indigo Prime, which is saying something considering that I've still to read the beginnings of the entire series.

It was good to see Indigo Prime but, knowing that it doesn't reappear until 2014, I can tell I may have to read it again to keep up, but thankfully I have the second trade for that. Sure is good though. Before I read Dead Eyes as part of this long trawl through piles of these things I read the collection of earlier storylines, which are interesting for not, apart from a one-off story, really exploring who Indigo Prime actually are and what it is the rest of them do. What's interesting by comparison to that is that this series almost feels like a reboot. Where pretty much every previous series focused on only one or two operatives at a time, this has a much larger cast of characters and spends a huge amount of time at HQ. Everyone acts as a team too and in a way that makes it feel like a sci-fi TV series, one where everyone has to work together to save the day, every day, against the clock and increasing drama.

The joke, in twisted John Smith fashion, is of course that the characters are morally bankrupt, not really heroes at all. There's a line in the second series that says it all, one of Mariah's when she's trying to locate Spacesick Steve. It's referring to the bug-ridden world he's on but it seems to me an intentional joke about the way Indigo Prime view the various worlds they look over too, especially with the foreknowledge that they destroy this very world as they make their escape. What she says at one point is "insects burning under magnifying glasses", referring to people suffering in this particular world. But consider what happens later - "Whoops, anthropocalypse!" indeed - and it takes on a greater meaning. Throw in the Overseers and it all feels like a dark parody of superheroes, the countless reboots of those characters and the bajillion cities and people killed that no one gives a fuck about in the name of these heroes saving the day (it's a nice coincidence that this was running at the same time as Day of Chaos, which concerns itself very greatly with an entire city being brought to its knees, destroying the lives of its remaining people). And then this story ends with them adopting a "Don't fuck with us" policy simply because the government on the insect-infested world tried to use their technology (worth pointing out that they were only trying to save themselves and don't succeed anyway, not that that stops Arcana from sending them to their deaths in a world where everyone nuclear war's about to take place) and main character since Dead Eyes, Danny Redman, finds himself face to face with the Nihilist in the mirror. A true hero indeed. Incidentally, I love the Nihilist as the name for a villain even more now and can't wait to to read the 2014 story again when I get round to it, where of course who I presumed to be John Smith himself even made an appearance, which seems doubly important after the second episode of the first series, Everything and More, opens with a guy yelling at you, the reader (and Winwood mentions that he believes they're all fictional creations).

TL;DR: John Smith's a genius. And since I've gone on long enough already - and this goes without saying anyway - the art of Edmund Bagwell is really, really, really great in these two stories and Lee Carter is a perfect fit too. Really hope it'll be back soon, it's the best.

And finally, as for what I've read of 2013, everything but Dredd of all things really stuck out, this being Savage: Book 8, Ampney Crucis: The Entropy Tango, Strontium Dogs: Mutant Spring and the final, rather overdue, series of The Red Seas. First, I must say that I love how Edinington is drawing his various series' together, as shown in Ampney Crucis, where Stickleback's son makes an appearance. At its first outing I didn't really care much for this series but I do like how it's got progressively more mad to the point where something else has seemingly taken over the protagonist's mind entirely as he's stranded in a parallel world to his own. Good stuff. Alas, although its final series was pretty good, especially with splash pages galore, I will be happy to see the back of The Red Seas, a series which I completely lost the plot of. Funny thing is, I appreciated how this finale didn't get caught up in all that, bowing out rather gracefully by simply being as fun it could possibly be, the ridiculous final twist and all. So although I thought that I was for sure not going to enjoy this one bit, it gets a thumbs up from me.

As for Savage and Strontium Dogs - I loved these both, especially in comparison to both series' last story arcs, which I didn't enjoy. Well, actually, to be more specific, whereas I probably still wouldn't enjoy book 7 of Savage that much upon rereading it, I have a better appreciation for the previous two Strontium Dog story's. It was never clear in the first series or the second but its obvious that Wagner was building up to this Second Mutant War all along and it certainly worked for me. Very excited to see where this is heading next. As for Savage, book 8 was Mills at his best as far as I'm concerned. It feels a bit overdue but it was a brilliant twist to see things from the Volgs' perspective and realise more than ever how far gone Savage himself is. It certainly makes me wonder more than ever how the series is going to end. As part of my subscription I've already seen the Quartz cover of him in his robotic body earlier this year but I do wonder where Savage will end up.

Long post, but I can't help myself when things are so great. Yes, I complained a little about 2012 there but the comic would always be worth it to me for the art and the thrills that are good, such as those mentioned above and others still that I didn't bother to talk about, like the second series of Ichabod Azrael, more goodness from Absalom (a new favourite) and new series, Aquila.

[Dandontdare]

Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky. Who says there are no new concepts in comics? This is a raunchy and very funny story of a girl who freezes time when she orgasms - she calls this "the quiet" and enjoys her 'unique' gift - until she hooks up with a guy who also has this gift (although he calls it "cumworld"  ). naturally they team up to rob a bank. Lovely art and I'll be picking up vol.2.

Trees by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard. If I see Mr Ellis's name on a book, I will buy it no questions asked, but this one didn't really hit the spot. Nice concept (vast pillar-like alien ships land all over earth ... and do nothing for a decade. This proves the existence of intelligent alien life, but they don't seem to recognise us as being intelligent life). Multiple plot threads showing different characters around the world living in the shadow of the 'trees' but this is obviously going to be a long-running saga and I didn't feel that the first volume gave much satisfaction - loads of set up, but no resolution. Decent art though.

IF.. the graphic novel by Steve Bell - Bell's collected Guardian cartoons from 2010-2014 - glorious glorious stuff.

Also, binging on Farside cartoons (Cheers Bolt-01!)

[Radbacker]

The Scarlet Gospels, Clive Barkers final and definitive word on his creation Pinhead.
Well I started it git about 30 pages in and had to put it down, there is sat for 2 weeks while I contemplated if I had the stomach to continue, I love a bit of grue in my books but by god the opening chapters of this thing are absolutely monstrous and definite proof that Barker's still got it.  After regaining my composure I dived back in and have got to say this is one of the best Barker books in a long time, gruesome and dark but with a strange uplifting feeling like all the best Barker. 
A bit of Meta commentary on how this creation was taken from him and effectively destroyed by Hollywood (at least that's the impression I got as Pinhead [spoiler]totally and utterly destroyed the Order of Gash mentioning several movie created Cenobites and how he just doesn't like them[/spoiler].  I couldn't help but picture Scott Bacula as Harry D'Amour, shut up I love Lord of Illusions 
Unfortunately the end of this seems to wrap his character up so I guess if Barker is done with The Great and Secret Show/Everville series.

overall great book and I think it's time to dig out all my old Clive Barker books and give them another read see what other easter eggs pop up in this.

CU Radbacker

[Hawkmumbler]

But the real question remains....what happened to Chatterer? 

[Keef Monkey]

TI love a bit of grue in my books but by god the opening chapters of this thing are absolutely monstrous and definite proof that Barker's still got it. 

I know what you mean, I was a bit taken aback by the intensity too! It's very, very rare I read something that shocks me but I think I just wasn't prepared for it. It's a real statement of intent though - the movie sequels turned Pinhead into a bit of a panto villain, so to in one chapter reassert him as a really, really evil motherhonker was very impressive. I remember I first opened it up to read on the train while sitting right next to a priest who was reading a kindle bible and that felt very wrong. Great book.

As for what I'm reading, I just picked up the first volume of the Batman refresh thing (the new 52 series?). I've always been really into Batman but it struck me that my interest in the movies, shows and games has never actually extended to picking up the comics apart from the odd collection I inherited from other people (and none of those were actually the 'big' stories).

When I saw they'd reset to issue one relatively recently I figured it's a good chance to jump on board! Although since I bought it I've now realized there are about half a dozen Batman titles a month or something, which is reminding me why I don't really touch DC and Marvel. Can I just read 'Batman' or do I need to read all the other comics with 'Bat' in the title to avoid story gaps?! Hopefully not!

[Hawkmumbler]

Just stick to the Alan Grant, GMOZZ, and Matt Wagner runs and you'll be happy.