Whats everyone reading?

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Gotham Central (Vol 3): Unresolved Targets

If you're familiar with the series you'll know this is basically a police procedural comic, with the  spin of it being set in Gotham City.

If you were only to buy one GC trade, this would be it. I'd almost go as far as to suggest that if you were only to buy one Batman trade, this would be it. It has the best written Joker I've ever read.

[House of Usher]

Having read Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and About A Boy this year (for work), I am now reading UK small press comics picked up at the Cardiff Comic Expo.

So far I've read several issues of Zarjaz, two of Dogbreath, Into the Woods, edited by Stacey Whittle, and issue #2 of Lou Scannon by a bunch of lads in Cardiff.

[brendan1]

Ive been reading a lot of contemporary thrillers recently, travelling on the train and a need for small sized chapters.  Most interesting are the Nordic ones. 

Yesterday I just finished The Sisters Brothers, which I think has the best cover of a book in a long time.  Its also a damn good read.   

Its described as cowboy noir and its an apt description.  Everyone and everything seems covered in dirt.  Id add that this is not a book of gunfights and horses, its more a book of characters and horses.   

From the 1st of March Ive decided to re-read Dune, as its been a while. 

I finished that over the weekend. It's really enjoyable. I think one of the cover quotes says something like "Cormac McCarthy with a sense of humour" and that is pretty accurate.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

BATMAN/JUDGE DREDD -Die Laughing part 2.

Lovely work by Jim Murray. Forgot what a great artists he is particularly the Mirror scene and when Joe Dredd dispatches Judge Death.  Cracker!

[Zarjazzer]

My Hallowscream comics have arrived! What a great birthday present! Also Kingdom- Promised Land I'm a loving it in a non-carnal fashion.

[HOO-HAA]

Reading THE LIGHT AT THE END by John Skipp & Craig Spector. Oh my word, what a book! Pulp horror gem. Great characters, wonderful flow to the writing. So far, it's a 10 out of 10! 

[Evil Pants]

Some new comic reviews by me. The original post can be found here:

http://fourcoloursandthetruth.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/wednesday-comics-woundup-near-death-bulletproof-coffin-and-the-silence-of-our-friends/

Near Death by Jay Faeber & Simone Guglielmini (Image)

Faeber has been slowly gaining a rep for his interesting take on a dysfunctional superhero family in Noble Causes, but I never really thought him as anything other than a talented, underrated superhero writer.....until Near Death. It's the story of Markham, a badass hitman who starts our story badly shot and....wait for it....NEAR DEATH. Heh. While under the knife, he has a vision of what he identifies as Hell, where his dead victims tell him that he needs to make up for what he's done.

The beauty of Faebers' tight scripting is that not only are we told all of this by page 12 of the first issue, but we're well into Markham's new mission of redemption by page 13. Faeber credits the TV work of Stephen Cannel for the inspiration behind Near Death, and while that shows, its other 80′s TV shows like The Equalizer that really came to mind while reading this. Each story is fairly self-contained to one or two issues, with a larger theme of attempted redemption being ever-present, but rarely an actual plot point. The TV feel is prevalent in the writing, but Simone Guglielminis' fine, expressive artwork is what grounds this story firmly in the comic book medium.

This book was an extremely welcome surprise. It's a well-crafted, exciting, and hard-hitting addition to the 'hitman" genre, and fits well alongside books like classics like The Killer or Button Man.

Rating: A

The Silence Of Our Friends by Mark Long, Jim Demonakos, & Nate Powell (First Second)

This is the story of Jack Long, a white reporter specializing in "race stories" in 1967 Houston, and his family. It's also the story of Larry Thompson, a black professor trying to organize SNCC campus marches, and his family.

Silence is an autobiographical account of how those two families came together, but it's also a snapshot of one of several "ground zeros" of that era of American history. Co-written by Long's son Mark, the script is an emotionally powerful one, but it never delves into melodrama. It's the shades of grey that I particularly appreciated, with much care and detail given towards making the characters (and as a result the story) as well-rounded and objective as possible. Both men truly want to "do the right thing," to steal a phrase, but they're also not immune to societal pressures, and their motivations are not all together pure.

And yes, it's that Nate Powell that handles the art chores here and he continues to showcase why he's become one of the most distinctive voices in modern comics. The man captures movement more effectively, than almost any artist working today, and things as simple as weather, or a choir singing, become characters in their own right, under Powell's hand. My only question would be how First Second could have possibly have allowed pages as beautiful as these to be condensed into a digest size book?

An early pick for "Best of The Year" consideration.

Rating: A

Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred by Shaky Kane and David Hines

This second volume of Bulletproof Coffin is a love letter to 1950′s and 1960′s comics, as seen through the eyes of Shaky Kane and David Hine. I find it ridiculously difficult to explain what BC is actually "about," so I usually just say that  it's about cliches...specifically comic clichés.

On its surface, the first issue is a typical superhero origin story, with the Shield Of Justice telling us exactly how and why he became a costumed vigilante. It's only upon a closer look that we find that its really the near-terrifying diary of a crazy person using superhero trappings to disguise his ever-increasing paranoia.

The second issue continues along the same path, with Tales From The Haunted Jazz Club, an homage to not only EC comics but also the horror anthology books that DC made so famous in the 1970s. The issue contains three stand-alone horror stories, as told by patrons of a 1950s beatnik jazz club. The horrors here are all physical in nature, and are all variations of the "mad scientist going one step too far" genre.

These stories have been told a thousand times, to be sure. And that's kind of the point. These talented creators show how even the most hackneyed of stories can read as eminently fresh, with Hine and Kanes' absolute love for this medium shining through on every page.

Rating: A+

[Gonk]

Richard Wright's "Native Son" is a difficult book to read. Oh, it's well written, I could read a section of it in one evening. It's knowing what to make of it afterwards. Are these just blatant cultural stereotypes? How can anyone be so cold blooded? And some of the sequence of events are just too unbelievable, like Bigger's stakeout on the Chicago rooftops. Still I was gripped by it. There is something in Wright's character in this that resonates, he seems all too familiar.

[I, Cosh]

Richard Wright's "Native Son" is a difficult book to read. Oh, it's well written, I could read a section of it in one evening. It's knowing what to make of it afterwards. Are these just blatant cultural stereotypes? How can anyone be so cold blooded? And some of the sequence of events are just too unbelievable, like Bigger's stakeout on the Chicago rooftops. Still I was gripped by it. There is something in Wright's character in this that resonates, he seems all too familiar.

How odd. I picked this up in a charity shop the other week having never heard of the book or the author and I'm currently about two-thirds of the way through it. It's equal parts interesting and frustrating. All the characters except Bigger (and to a lesser extent his mates) are pretty broad types but it's a very unusual viewpoint for the time and place. Wright does what feels to me like a bang up job of expressing the pressures pushing down on a poor, disenfranchised, black criminal. There's always a problem for me in a writer articulating feelings that his character can't articulate, particularly here where much is made of the frustration coming from the inability to express the feeling, but I suppose that's what a writer's for.

I wonder how he'll get out of the mess he's gotten himself into...

[Gonk]

It's a difficult one ain't it Cosh. It seems a pretty sensationlist story, but there is something about Bigger's character that we can recognise which gives the book it's momentum. What a thing to admit to though, that you actually identify with a character who is a rapist and a murderer. Like I said a difficult book.

[TordelBack]

Mezolith Book 1, Haggarty and Brockbank.  I want to live my life over again and this time spend every waking moment working at becoming an artist so that I can one day be as good as Adam Brockbank and get to draw this almost perfect book. 

Thank you County Library, thank you so much for thus unexpected treat.  I'd heard good things and liked the idea, but had never seen Mezolith, until today. Back when I still thought I had some sort of chance at writing comics (1986-1994, I think), this was the story I wanted to produce.  I even have a script in an old notebook somewhere (which I wrote on the overnight train from Holyhead to London), which if it could be translated into something good by an actual writer, would fit nicely in between episodes 2 and 3 of this collection.  I have a pile of wildly-variable Stone Age comics (the best of which is the wordless Taitou) which I have bought over the years in the hope of finding something half as good as this.

Who do I have to kill to get more of this made.

[TordelBack]

Quick correction:  the wordless Upper Palaeolithic comic I referred to is actually called Ticayou.

[SmallBlueThing]

Absolutely. Mezolith is one of the best comics ive ever read and that we likely wont see any more is a tragedy. Perfect synthesis of story, art and format. I want a volume two of this more than i want food on my table tonight.

And i really want Adam Brockbank on Slaine.

SBT

[Gonk]

Nikolai Gogol's unfinished novel "Dead Souls" reads to me as a story that rings in with today's spirit of the age. Although it was first published in 1842 in the then Russian Empire, few readers will have trouble recognising the central character Chichikov in a lot of contemporary behaviour in Britain.

Chichikov is more or less a confidence trickster who is travelling the Empire in a horsedrawn carriage trying to make a fast buck from the people and places he stops at. His money making scheme is ingenious and involves a scam that was more or less reported in the papers a few weeks ago. This was the story about some NHS local health practices that had kept a lot of deceased people registered on their lists, and so were receiving extra funding from the government for these non existent patients. Chichikov hatches an almost identical scheme.

The author's style throughout this novel is one of caricature and satire, of a social outcast wandering through the world. It was unfinished and believed to have meant to have religous overtones for the ending.

[Davek]

Didnt have a chance to pick up my comic order today so ended up reading my daughter's Ralph Wiggum Simpsons one shot:



Had me laughing and I'm looking forward to getting the next in the series (Milhouse)...for my daughter