Whats everyone reading?

[Satanist]

Read Batman:The Long Halloween last night and it was top stuff. Full roster of rogues and a story that reads like a good Frank Miller. In which I mean it's a quite gritty noirish tale. Arts lovely as well.

Anyone else read this as when I bought it last week the guy in FP tried to put me off it so I wondered if it wasn't that well received?

[SmallBlueThing]

I have very little time, or shelfspace, that i choose to give to batman, but 'the long halloween' is one of the ones that do it for me. There's at least one more by jeph loeb and tim sale, 'dark victory', but ive never read it. 

I can also recommend their marvel efforts: spider-man- blue, hulk- grey and daredevil- yellow.

SBT

[the 'artist' formerly known as Slips]

Game of Thrones, which Ive just finished.  It also has some parrallels with Dune, which I read earlier in the year.  Inspite of the skill of the author, the character driven plot, some great characters and lack of any real action being huge pluses, I just couldnt help feel a little let down at the end. 

It just seems like one long prologue to another book.  Like its all a big setup. 

Im now reading another Nordic thriller before venturing into more of Game of Thrones. 

yer Slips

[Roger Godpleton]

I got the new big Daniel Clowes retrospective book. It is very large and is printed on nice paper. It has a number of things Dan Clowes has drawn.

[Mardroid]

On the comic front I'm reading Ultimate Spiderman volume 2. I think I read it before a while back, but it was long enough ago to seem quite fresh. Pretty good.

On the novel front I'm still chugging my way through Varney the Vampire.

I'm finding it highly readable, but boy is it bloated! Lots of 'blah, blah', Victorian types stating the obvious for expositionary purposes...

I can sort of see now why it's thought of badly. As I said, it's still highly readable and  I think there might be an interesting twist coming. I've got to the stage where I'd like to finish it quickly and move onto the new Dark Tower novel I recently bought Wind Through the Keyhole. I've been looking forward to that for a while.

I also found volumes 11-13 of The Walking Dead at the local library. I resisted picking them up because there's a whole lot of volumes set before that I haven't read. I think I got up to 6 or 7. They were still based at the prison. [spoiler]It involved Rick and the woman with the Samurai sword - I think her name is Michonne- fall foul of a nasty piece of work. Pretty disturbing stuff, particularly what happens to her. I got to their escape and her understandable but equally disturbing vengeance....[/spoiler]

I'm wondering if jumping back on this late into the saga was a mistake. Trouble is the library doesn't seem to stock the books in between, or if it does, some blighter's had them on loan for years. I may see if one of the other local libraries (I'm blessed with three of em) has the other copies. If I can't find them - and I don't really want to buy them at the moment, although that might change in future - I may just take a chance. My memory isn't that great anyway.

[mogzilla]

on the las bit of "fever" by our very own hoo haa ,cracking as i expected and quite liked the whole prequel to present thing! go buy it NOW!

[TordelBack]

The Children's Illustrated Bible - actually two of them, the Hamlyn version from the late 70's, and the Noughties DK version.  The wife and I are atheists of long sad conviction, but I've been feeling guilty about the huge lacuna in my kids' education that is the whole sweep of Judaeo-Christian myth. 

We've read several versions of the Greek myths, Roman myths, two versions of the 1,001 Nights, D'Aulaire's fabulous version of the Norse myths (highly recommended), British legends, Irish myths, and many of them multiple times. We've visited important 'real world' locations featured in many of those myths and proto-hostories, and acted out key scenes.  What we haven't ever read are Bible stories.  Closest we got was Narnia.

So I initially borrowed the Hamlyn volume from a religious friend, and having worked through as far as Numbers, and jumped forward to Daniel & Co, I figured it was proving enjoyable enough to get our own more modern copy.  Taken as another set of Old World myths, the Old Testament is great if horrible fun, perfectly full of gore, magic and spectacle for the Boy, although I did find myself skipping some of the vilest bits (even in the Kids' version it gets pretty rough).  He's liking it fine, with Exodus and the Plagues on Egypt a particular favourite.  The Hamlyn illos are better paintings, but there are far more in the DK one.  We haven't made it to the New Testament yet, which looks decidely boring compared to the genocides and burning cities of the earlier stuff. 

What really strikes me, who as a formerly highly religious spode who actually took extra Bible classes as a teenager, is the contrast between the adventures of Jehovah/Yahweh and those of the gods and powers of other myth cycles.   I mean no disrespect to those who hold these stories as divine Truth, but I'm approaching them as myths, and in the context of myth Jehovah comes across as a colossal prick.  Where the Bible differs is that his rampant dickery goes completely unpunished - in any other body of myth, a god who carries on like God does would get their arse handed to them.  Having watched (for example) the Norse gods uttelry destroyed because they couldn't keep their promises or uphold the rules of hospitality, or the Titans brought down because of the way they treated their kids, it's very odd to see Jehovah throwing hissy fits and scattering his toys about the Holy Land, and reaping nothing more than obedience from his abused worshippers.  I'd go so far as to say He sets a very bad example. 

Anyway, these are good stories, beautifully illustrated.  Shame about the morality, but at least it's better than we encountered in the later Famous Five books.

.   

[judgefloyd]

The Children's Illustrated Bible -

Anyway, these are good stories, beautifully illustrated.  Shame about the morality, but at least it's better than we encountered in the later Famous Five books.

.   

I liked your post, TordelBack.  My only memory of Famous Five is when they see a man with long hair and one of them knows he must be evil because her Dad said long-haired men aren't to be trusted.  I must have missed the bit where Timmy the dog slays the first-born of Egypt.  Seriously, what do you mean about the Famous Five morality?
  Not wanting to get into an argument or anything, I'd say the old Testament Yahweh is a very different character to those other gods.  For a start, he's much less anthropomorphised - not so many human touches like bonking human ladies or fighting with his relatives.  That's just an observation; not meaning to excuse the massacring etc
Myself, I've almost finished the very-pulpy A Princess of Mars and I'm liking it.  John Carter does a lot of casual killing after his little sermons about what a callous commie bunch the Green Men are.  Then again, he's doing it all for love of the bereft-of-clothing Dejah Thoris, so that's fair enough.   He has just introduced one of the nicer Martians to the human idea of 'friend' and is hoping to introduce Dejah Thoris to this earth thing called 'a quick root', so I'll read on

[Third Estate Ned]

Just finished The Final Solution. Since it's such a controversial issue I was expecting something special and so was a bit underwhelmed by the story. In comparison I've just read Judge Dredd Satan's Island, which you might consider a less consequential one-off, and I enjoyed it a whole lot more. Maybe because it's been talked up into a such a big event, I expected the build up to be more monumental but ultimately it was quite unengaging. I guess if you already know the shock ending, there's no pay off.

I've previously said on here that I loved the artwork and I stand by that but since it's concentrated in one volume there were some things about it that got on my tits a bit in one read, including the common criticism that it's hard to tell what's going on sometimes. When Feral presents himself flicking the middle finger, leather jacketed, replete with skateboarding pals, it made me cringe and was every bit the same as Poochie's introduction into Itchy and Scratchy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEzjm7I5YCQ

The graffiti announcing every band Harrison was ever into added to that impression. The Top Dog extra was a treat compared to the disappointment I felt about the main attraction. Never mind, eh?

Currently halfway into Mega City Undercover and I absolutely love it. It captures the atmosphere of earlier Dredd stories but Flint's artwork is something else. Is there any more Lenny Zero collected out there or did he just promise to enjoy Mega City One and leave it at that?

[Dark Jimbo]

Currently halfway into Mega City Undercover and I absolutely love it. It captures the atmosphere of earlier Dredd stories but Flint's artwork is something else. Is there any more Lenny Zero collected out there or did he just promise to enjoy Mega City One and leave it at that?

That's it to date, hence the lack of a dedicated 'Lenny Zero' trade and the existence of 'Mega City Undercover' instead - a nice idea, but it did mean that 'Low Life' got stiffed on a trade line of its own because of the need to pad out the Lenny Zero stuff to book length.

[Third Estate Ned]

Ta for the answer. Couldn't they just put out a second Mega City Undercover volume and continue the Low Life strips?

[Dark Jimbo]

They have done - but it means that Low Life may be the only series getting collected under a different name.

[Third Estate Ned]

Gah, shows what I know. I've even seen this before and it didn't register.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mega-city-Undercover-Living-Low-Life/dp/1781080410

I suppose it gives the publishers scope to draft in any other stories that might fit the Wally Squad description if they issue a third trade. Here's hoping for more Lenny Zero in the future, then.

[Dark Jimbo]

Here's hoping for more Lenny Zero in the future, then.

Well...
http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php/topic,35334.msg664344.html#msg664344

[Third Estate Ned]

There you go, then. There are two interesting combinations here. The Diggle/Jock one that seems to work extremely well and then, providing he's in it, the Dredd/Zero conflict. And it does leave you conflicted being that they're both anti-heroes and they both have qualities that make for interesting reading. You can't decide who should lose out in the end because, as is stated in the story by one of the characters, Zero is so self-pitying.