Whats everyone reading?

[mogzilla]

despite fruitlessy searching for drop dead gorgeous by wayne simmons i did manage to find the reprinted "autumn" by david moody so now i can see what the fuss was about.

[SmallBlueThing]

Well, i finished 'to sail beyond the sunset' last night, and thought i'd stick some ponderings here.
This is the first heinlein book ive read, and it wont be the last. Yes, in this instance his political bent is somewhat obvious, and doesnt tally with mine, but that's okay since his narrator is just so bloody likeable in all other ways. I fell for maureen johnson/smith hard, and her presence throughout the novel was like spending time in the company of the mother/daughter/sister/lover/wife who is so perfect she sadly could only exist in fiction.

That she is all the things i mentioned- often to the same individual, probably gives the book its reputation, and since she spends the entirety of the book benefiting financially from the predictions of her timetravelling brother/son/husband/lover and trying to resurrect her father so she can bed him, should make the novel distasteful. But it never does. Maureen is more than a 'free spirit', she's everything halo jones could have been over the course of her very long life, removed from the expectations of weekly childrens' comics.

In fact, there's more than a whiff of halo about the whole thing, except it's more convincing and the characters shine more brightly.

Safe to say i loved the book more than any ive read in an age- it's funny, filthy, complicated, full of marvellous period detail and gorgeously expansive visions of the future. And i love maureen. Have i said that?

SBT

[Ignatzmonster]

Lent the first two vols of Rick Remender's Punisher. Not bad. He's at his best when he's putting Punisher in ridiculous ultaviolent situations. He also has a good eye for collaborators: Pearson, Opena, Haut are strong and individual styists that can't be confused for the Marvel house style. Remender does kind of start to lose control when he gets into the motivations of the characters. Leave that shit to Garth Ennis I say and back away.

Hellblazer: India. Milligan still doing great with Constantine. Camuncoli/Landini and the Biz make one of the best illustrator relays for a single character I've seen in some time.

Woodrell's Winter's Bone. Friend pushed this on me. Pretty close to the movie but gives a greater sense of the girl's world.

[HOO-HAA]

despite fruitlessy searching for drop dead gorgeous by wayne simmons i did manage to find the reprinted "autumn" by david moody so now i can see what the fuss was about.

Where were you looking, dude?

Oh, and Autumn...? Yeah, my all-time favourite apoc-novel.

[Hoagy]

With all their sordid info-accumulation facebook sends me an ad I find useful for once.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/1906735395/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books

Not sure how Al Ewing feels about it as he's forever raging against the spam on there. *shrugs*

[TordelBack]

Planetary.  Have always wanted to try this, having heard good things. Finally managed to borrow the first trade, and I'm 3/4 of the way through.  Somebody please tell me it gets better than this - I'm having trouble staying awake.  I like Cassaday's art, but the individual stories feel like back-up strips to something else, or shorts from Tom Strong's Terrific Tales.  Is this all it is, a series of homages to other genre stuff with cynical X-Files superfolk commenting on it while snapping at each other?  I'll persevere to the end of this one, but I do wonder if I'll bother trying to bully a second trade out of the library...

Transmetropolitan it ain't.

[Mikey]

I really liked that aspect of the first Planetary book TB. To me it felt like a themed anthology, sort of like 'The Twilight Zone'. The story becomes much more, um , coherent as it continues IIRC, so I'd say stick with it a while yet.

My reading round up; Surface Detail was up to the usual fantastic standard and has given me a new favourite line - 'All you ever were was a small piece of the Universe, furiously thinking to itself.' I'll say no more than it's a great read!

I've also been catching up with The Walking Dead vols.8-11, up to vol.10 now. It still engages and surprises me and can be unrelentlingly grim, but I think it may be starting to lose me a bit. I've always thought the dialogue was a bit am dram, but now it's starting to grate a bit. Adlard has done a superb job on it of course, but I'll see how I feel after vol.11.

Next in line is likley The Third God by Ricardo Pinto, the third book in the 'Stone Dance of the Chameleon' books. I loved the first, enjoyed the second immensely, but it's been around 7-8 years I think since then. It took him a while!Has anyone read the series including the third?

M.

[radiator]

Planetary.  Have always wanted to try this, having heard good things. Finally managed to borrow the first trade, and I'm 3/4 of the way through.  Somebody please tell me it gets better than this - I'm having trouble staying awake.  I like Cassaday's art, but the individual stories feel like back-up strips to something else, or shorts from Tom Strong's Terrific Tales.  Is this all it is, a series of homages to other genre stuff with cynical X-Files superfolk commenting on it while snapping at each other?  I'll persevere to the end of this one, but I do wonder if I'll bother trying to bully a second trade out of the library...

Yeah, I never got the fuss about it either. Read the first two trades and certainly wouldn't rate it as anywhere near Ellis' best work. The Authority is much more fun.

[Ignatzmonster]

Planetary.  Have always wanted to try this, having heard good things. Finally managed to borrow the first trade, and I'm 3/4 of the way through.  Somebody please tell me it gets better than this - I'm having trouble staying awake.  I like Cassaday's art, but the individual stories feel like back-up strips to something else, or shorts from Tom Strong's Terrific Tales.  Is this all it is, a series of homages to other genre stuff with cynical X-Files superfolk commenting on it while snapping at each other?  I'll persevere to the end of this one, but I do wonder if I'll bother trying to bully a second trade out of the library...

Transmetropolitan it ain't.

That was kind of my assessment Tordelback. Ellis now and then would say something interesting (I'd never realized how important Thatcher was to the Vertigo brand), but the main characters were dull as ditchwater. Get it through your local library if possible. Would have prefered more issues of Fell personally.

I thought this comparison of Planetary to Astrocity was pretty good. The writer is more pro-Planetary than I am but that kind of helped.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/astro-city-vs-planetary-superhero-reconstruction-v,41795/

[Mardroid]

Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz

Interesting story that's actually got quite creepy.

Strontium Dog S/D Agency Files 01.

I got this at FP. (Last time I was there, I couldn't find any and ended up getting 02 instead. There were a few there this time.)

I've heard it said that the second was when S/D really took off, but I'm really enjoying volume one, pretty much from the start.

Only complaints I would make is that the print reproduction is a bit iffy on the earlier Starlord strips. There's part where the black has leaked into speech balloons. I also get the impression that much of the earlier Starlord pages were actually in colour and the conversion to greyscale here doesn't entirely work. Don't get me wrong, I like grey-scale art when it's created that way, but there are contrast issues here.

I also found it a bit difficult to read certain captions as it's black writing on grey (possibly another colour originally) background. And of course there are certain double page spreads where the speech balloon pans across the spine of the page. Something that would work in the central spread of a comic, but is distorting in a collection format. Some of the line work is a bit faint here and there too, particularly on the Gibson drawn story in Starlord. (The second part, with the T/K alien who reforms matter.)

These are small issues though, and are all to do with the reproduction rather than the original art which is largely cracking.

It's interesting to see how much S/Ds armour style and weapons seem to change, even compared to Dredd! I noticed the primary blaster he wielded in the Starlord period has a barrel rather like the Lawgiver mark 1. On a quick flick ahead I spotted the big 3 barrel blaster, but I know that design changes back and forth a bit later. (Or he has a few. I'd imagine Westinghouse have a number of models. )

[radiator]

It's interesting to see how much S/Ds armour style and weapons seem to change, even compared to Dredd!

Apparently that's very deliberate by Carlos - he reasons that a bounty hunter like Johnny wouldn't have a 'uniform' as such, so his clothes and weapons chop and change between stories - while keeping to a similar style.

The repro issues are because the Starlord strips were full colour and I think there's also a difficulty reprinting that stuff because of the different paper/production method of the comic - it wasn't newsprint like 2000ad.

[Mardroid]

Apparently that's very deliberate by Carlos - he reasons that a bounty hunter like Johnny wouldn't have a 'uniform' as such, so his clothes and weapons chop and change between stories - while keeping to a similar style.

Thanks for the feed-back that makes sense.

I've notice he's lost his guns a couple of times already too! [spoiler]Once in a sun and in Hell world swamp so far. Heh.

Electronux underwater though? He's lucky he just came out of that one stunned.[/spoiler]

[SmallBlueThing]

Mardroid, i read that as 'electronux underwear'.

SBT

[Teivion]

'Wrong About Japan' by Peter Carey.

[mogzilla]

despite fruitlessy searching for drop dead gorgeous by wayne simmons i did manage to find the reprinted "autumn" by david moody so now i can see what the fuss was about.

Where were you looking, dude?

Oh, and Autumn...? Yeah, my all-time favourite apoc-novel.

looked in every bookshop in york and waterstones in my home town preston but to no avail,will have to do the online route methinks along with the autumn sequel.