Whats everyone reading?

[Barrington Boots]

I had no idea there was any more Professor Challenger stuff... this definitely needs exploring. Challenger is a dick, but I'm pretty sure his boorishness is presented as such, rather than him being a poorly aged protagonist, so I'll be looking those out I think.

Back in Tarzan-world, I finished Tarzan of the Apes which was pretty awful, and skipped a few books ahead to one with a lurid cover. This is more like it - Tarzan is training a huge lion to be his new best mate until a group of baddies, which includes the sinister Estaban Miranda who is the spitting image of Tarzan himself, knocked him out with some drugged coffee and left him to be captured by some degenerate priests from the lost city of Atlantis. This is all within the first 50 pages as well.

It's extremely pulpy, silly stuff although Burroughs is an appalling snob: Tarzan is a posh lad so is inherently noble and wise as is the evil Russian aristrocrat but everyone else is either a cheerfully subservient African or a greasy criminal cockney. Also Tarzan himself is basically a posh D&D ranger as he lives in a big house with servants and stuff and is very well spoken but also a friend to the animals. An enjoyable read nonetheless.

[Link Prime]

Catching up on some Christmas presents:

Fantastic Four: Full Circle - an over-sized deluxe hardcover by Alex Ross with a cracking script and mind-bending art. Has an eternal place on my bookshelf.
It's a full 10/10.

Batman / Spawn III - Some nice artwork by Capullo & McFarlane, but I couldn't make heads nor tails of the story.
Unwisely, McFarlane chose to write it himself - previous crossovers in this series have been written by Miller and Grant / Moench / Dixon, and they were far superior reads.
It's a token 2/10 for the artwork.

[GoGilesGo]

I hear you. Thirty years ago I delighted in the Flashman books, but I'm reluctant to return to them now.
It's all well and good saying that these are stories narrated by a self-confessed cad in the glory days of empire, but that doesn't keep the racism and sexual exploitation from leaving a bitter taste.

I'm not condemning the books—they're rollicking good reads. It's just a matter of my changing tolerance.

I've been reading the Flashman books in order over the last 8 few years and agree with the above. However I just finished the final installment, Flashman on the March and found it was respectful, even reverential towards the Abyssinians / Ethiopians Harry meets on his journey. GMF spends a lot of time fleshing out interesting characters and our hero is sympathetic to almost all of them. Of course every women he meets is gagging to sleep with him but, this is, after all, Harry Flashman.

[JohnW]

My feeling was that Flashman went off the boil with the last two books, and Flashman on the March is the only one I've never reread.
Of course that could all be down to my changing tastes. It might even be an unreasonable dislike for the guy who replaced Barbosa as the series cover artist. I'm simple that way.

The last of Fraser's books that I really admired was his memoir Quartered Safe Out Here.

[Barrington Boots]

I'm a fan of Flashman on the March. Definitely top 3 Flashman books for me.
The story hits all the usual beats but Flashman is less odious than usual, I agree. I didn't know anything about the British in Abyssinia before reading it either, so it's an interesting read.

[BadlyDrawnKano]

I picked up "Omega Unplugged" by Mark Griffiths and John Ridgeway in a charity shop on Tuesday and really enjoyed it. The story's fairly simplistic but it allows Ridgeway to draw some quite unusual scenes (a psychic battle especially), I had no idea John was now in his eighties but he's still got it and then some, and it was lovely to see new art from the man.

[JohnW]

So I read Hound.
It's a retelling of the Irish epic The Táin.
You may not be familiar with the source material but you'll recognise something in the hero who knows his way round a gae bolga and can leap like a salmon.
The story is a sound adaptation and the art is beautiful throughout, occasionally verging on the sublime. In places it reminds me of Frank Miller from back when we had good reason to like Frank Miller. One thing I don't care for, though, is the artist's habit of shrinking panels. For instance, if he wants to repeat a scene but at a greater distance – to zoom out, basically – he doesn't draw the scene smaller, he just shrinks it by computer artistry. This might be more economical but I don't like it. The line weights lose their necessary weight along with their essential inkiness. But I quibble.
The price of this made me cry, but given that it's 500 pages and in hardback, I got what I paid for.

Returning to modern fiction this weekend I finally read Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes. It's no Day of the Triffids, but what is? Also, I'm a lot older and wearier than I was when I read Triffids.
What rubbed me up the wrong way on this one was the authorial voice, which was authentic, but authentically oh-so upper-middle-class post-war Home Counties.

That one out of the way, I made a start on How High We Go In The Dark, because end-of-the-world stories was where I was at.
Climate change causes an ancient virus to escape from the Siberian permafrost. End of the world ensues. Four quid on Kindle? Yes, please.
But no. I was hoping for Station Eleven, and this isn't it.
I'm sure the characters are well-realised and sympathetic, but they're not relatable. They're mostly all young and Japanese-Californian and living in the very near future, whereas I'm middle-aged and Irish and have barely made it out of the 1980s.
I'm not much more than a third of my way through this, but it's beginning to lose me.

Back to history books and comics, I think.

[Barrington Boots]

Returning to modern fiction this weekend I finally read Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes. It's no Day of the Triffids, but what is? Also, I'm a lot older and wearier than I was when I read Triffids.
What rubbed me up the wrong way on this one was the authorial voice, which was authentic, but authentically oh-so upper-middle-class post-war Home Counties.

Not read this for a long time, but the bit where the aliens come up out of the water and capture people on the island seared itself into my young mind as a scene of true horror. I've read way worse stuff since but it's one of those things that never left me. I literally can't remember another thing about the book.

I definitely want to read Hound, but at that price it needs to wait till a few expensive events have passed!

[GoGilesGo]

Not read this for a long time, but the bit where the aliens come up out of the water and capture people on the island seared itself into my young mind as a scene of true horror.

Agreed. This is one of the all time great moments from Wyndham. Terrifying.

A book about slow-creeping climate change with great visuals (the motorboat speeding across a submerged Trafalgar Square; the fully laden frigate being split in two by an unseen, underwater power surge; THAT island attack)...I am staggered this has never been adapted into a film.

What rubbed me up the wrong way on this one was the authorial voice, which was authentic, but authentically oh-so upper-middle-class post-war Home Counties.

The whole thing is narrated ex post facto from a nice cottage in Somerset for heaven's sake...The ultimate cosy catastrophe

[JohnW]

Reckless by Brubaker and Phillips
A friend just returned my copy and, seeing as I've got the latest instalment still sitting in cellophane on my table, I thought I'd give it a reassessment.
If the first four pages ('This Thing I Heard') don't grab you, then you needn't bother with the rest. However, if that's the case then you probably needn't bother with comics at all.
Even if not everything Brubaker has done down the years has been to my taste, there's no denying his storytelling ability. I only wish he hadn't called his hero Ethan Reckless. It might enhance the eighties primetime vibe, but it's still hard to take seriously.
Seán Phillips is as dependable as always.
The hardback volumes are expensive, but damn me if they don't look nice.




Notre Mère La Guerre
This is yet another expensive hardback that's been keeping me occupied. It's been doing so since before Christmas because I still can't speak French. I'm not bothered. It was the artwork and the general quality of the production that drew me.
To slow down my understanding further, this is a murder mystery, and those tend to confuse me even when they're in English.
Still. Just look at that art.

[Tjm86]

Season of Skulls by Charles Stross.  For those familiar with Stross' laundry novels this is a welcome continuation on the current run.  With the UK now run by a Demonically Possessed Prime Minister, superhuman (demonic parasite infested humans) forming a special unit of the Met, vampires and elven warriors, things have come a long way from the early days.

Long gone is the shabby, dog-eared, pseudo-Le-Carre Secret Branch of the Civil Service.  Magic is not just out in the open but running the show, enjoying public executions and turning Marble Arch into a shrine of skulls.  To say that Stross seems to have a fascinating way of satirising contemporary British society is possibly an understatement!

This volume of the series is fascinating for its setting and devices.  Revolving around a need to extricate the heroine, Eve Starkey, from a curse inflicted on her by her now dead but actually not completely dead but unfortunately head priest of an esoteric cult headquartered on an obscure channel island, the plot is breathtaking.  It takes in a whistle stop tour of modern London, an early nineteenth century version of Portmeirion, a cultic asylum near Grantham, regency London and Bristol, before returning once more to this bizarre take on the Village. [oh, this is a pocket-universe in the Dream Roads with the potential to become reality given the correct circumstances].

Stross' humour has always verged towards the dark.  Given that the whole series revolves around a sort of mash-up of Lovecraft, Fleming and Le-Carre with a healthy dose of civil service procedural arcania, it has always been slightly more than a little tongue-in-cheek.  Throwing in Jane Austen and the Prisoner add in more layers to play with.  It sounds like it shouldn't work but it does.  In some respects the core ideas wouldn't be completely out of place in Tooth.

For those who have never dabbled with this branch of Stross' work, it is well worth a look.  I'm not sure how well this one would work for someone unfamiliar with earlier volumes in the series.  Much of what happens in the two books preceding this is relevant but possibly not completely essential so it could possibly be read as a standalone. 

At a minimum the preceding two books in the series should be read first for anyone who has not read any of the series to date.  They mark a departure from the previous volumes with the ascent of the Demon PM and barely touch on much of what preceded these books.  That said, those other volumes have so much to offer it would be a shame to ignore them completely. 

[BadlyDrawnKano]

Reckless by Brubaker and Phillips
A friend just returned my copy and, seeing as I've got the latest instalment still sitting in cellophane on my table, I thought I'd give it a reassessment.
If the first four pages ('This Thing I Heard') don't grab you, then you needn't bother with the rest. However, if that's the case then you probably needn't bother with comics at all.
Even if not everything Brubaker has done down the years has been to my taste, there's no denying his storytelling ability. I only wish he hadn't called his hero Ethan Reckless. It might enhance the eighties primetime vibe, but it's still hard to take seriously.
Seán Phillips is as dependable as always.
The hardback volumes are expensive, but damn me if they don't look nice.

I've never read much by Ed Brubaker and I have no idea why, I know he's a greatly acclaimed writer, and I'm a big fan of Sean Phillips too, so I must rectify that at some point soon.

Tom Strong Compendium Issues 1 - 16 by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse + + + - While I liked this from the get go initially it wasn't something I found myself loving, it was fun but I didn't really click with the characters. That all changed with issue 10, and over the last six issues it's become something I adore, the beautiful brightly coloured art is often stunning, it's packed with amazing ideas, and for my money it's the funniest thing Moore's ever written too.

[JohnW]

I've never read much by Ed Brubaker and I have no idea why

He's well worth your time.
Straight-up crime stories are his strength, so Criminal is Brubaker at his best. He writes a very believable reality, which means that superheroics or the supernatural tend to undermine his story. Thus Fatale left me cold, and his run on Gotham Central was great as a police procedural but lost me as a Batman story.
Himself and Phillips have been a team for donkey's years and even though I don't love everything they've produced, they haven't come up with a dud yet.

I've had Tom Strong on my shelf for twenty years and should give it a reappraisal. I read it at the time because it was Alan Moore, at whose altar I worshipped, and I felt that if it didn't thrill me then that was my fault. I suspected it of being meta or postmodern or whatever you call it.

[BadlyDrawnKano]

I've never read much by Ed Brubaker and I have no idea why

He's well worth your time.
Straight-up crime stories are his strength, so Criminal is Brubaker at his best. He writes a very believable reality, which means that superheroics or the supernatural tend to undermine his story. Thus Fatale left me cold, and his run on Gotham Central was great as a police procedural but lost me as a Batman story.
Himself and Phillips have been a team for donkey's years and even though I don't love everything they've produced, they haven't come up with a dud yet.

I've had Tom Strong on my shelf for twenty years and should give it a reappraisal. I read it at the time because it was Alan Moore, at whose altar I worshipped, and I felt that if it didn't thrill me then that was my fault. I suspected it of being meta or postmodern or whatever you call it.

Thanks for the heads up about Ed Brubaker, I'll start with Criminal, funnily enough it turned up in my local Oxfam a couple of weeks ago, but they wanted a tenner for it and I thought that was a bit much (and when I got home saw it was £3.55 on ebay). I'm on a self imposed ban in June as my backlog is ridiculous (when I've finished Tom Strong I've also got the Top 10 Compendium to read, as well as a lot of Dredd and Strontium Dog) but it's my birthday in July and I've put it on my Amazon Wishlist!

With Tom Strong I expected it to get meta, or suddenly become horrific, but I'm 19 issues in now and it just seems like it's Alan Moore having fun, playing around with mad superhero ideas, and I'm enjoying the crazy plots which nearly always come with a happy ending. I've still got 17 issues to go so it might go horribly wrong, but otherwise I think this was Moore allowing himself to write something that wasn't bleak or disturbing for once!

[Dark Jimbo]

With Tom Strong I expected it to get meta, or suddenly become horrific, but I'm 19 issues in now and it just seems like it's Alan Moore having fun, playing around with mad superhero ideas, and I'm enjoying the crazy plots which nearly always come with a happy ending. I've still got 17 issues to go so it might go horribly wrong, but otherwise I think this was Moore allowing himself to write something that wasn't bleak or disturbing for once!

You've got it exacxtly. I think people would enjoy Tom Strong more if they didn't know who had written it. Moore's name carries certain expectations of metanarrative or genre deconstruction or whatever, but most of the America's Best line is just him having fun, simple as that.

You're just about at the absolute peak, BDK - issues 20-22 are the absolute high-water mark of the series for me. After that, Moore bows out, and a series of other writers take over. Their contributions vary massively, which is probably why the rest of the series feels less essential - Peter Hogan's probably the best, doing a very passable imitation of Moore (they brainstormed most of the plots together). There's a Michael Moorcock two-parter and a Steve Moore one-off that are just... not good. Which is surprising, given the pedigree of those writers, but there you go. Moore comes back to write the final issue, and without any spoilers, it's a crossover spectacular that might be a bit lost on you if you haven't read any of the rest of the America's Best line - particularly Promethea.

After that, please try to track down a copy of The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong - it's glorious stuff by Hogan, Sprouse and a plethora of guest artists (collected in a TPB called America's Best Comics). Then Hogan gamely kept the ball rolling a little longer with Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom, and Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril (this latter is a return to Terra Obscura, from issues 11-12; but you should read Hogan 's two Terra Obscura series first).