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[Live. Die. Repeat.]

Bizarrely, Warner bros. seems to be trying to retroactively change the name of the film to Live. Die. Repeat. and bury the actual title.

Finally, this decision starts to make sense. There's a sequel in development putatively called Live. Die. Repeat. Repeat.

[Breath of the Wild]

So, am I the only one who found Zelda tedious?

Tedious is maybe a bit strong but I can't get on the "10/10, best game ever" bus.

Still playing Breath of the Wild in bursts. It's beautiful but kind of boring, but I've still managed to play 50+ hours and only just unlocked half of the map.

[The Star Diaries]

Been dipping in and out of Stanislaw Lem's The Star Diaries. Short stories linked by a laconic narrator who is forever finding himself in unlikely situations. Proper sci-fi in the way there is no interest in or attempt to explain any of the technological aspects, that's all just scene-setting for the social satire. Some of this is a bit on the nose for me (our man's experiences as Earth's deputy to the United Planets is fairly predictable, for example) but there's enough invention and deadpan Polish wit in each story to keep me going.

I'm also about a third of the way through Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. Fuck me, this is astonishing. The vivid writing, the clear sense of the increasingly deranged voice of the narrator, the sheer effort that must have been needed to make the structure work. The book is written in the form of a critical commentary on the eponymous poem but very quickly becomes about the preoccupations, misinterpretations and delusions of the commentator. The footnotes, cross-referencing and foreshadowing involved in both even serve to make the e-book format the perfect way to experience the book. I've never read anything quite like it.

You couldn't really say the same about The Gunslinger. For various reasons (I'm a massive snob, I shy away from overlong books and I wouldn't willingly read a horror novel) I'd never read a Stephen King book but the brouhaha over the film piqued my interest. My first reaction was pleasant surprise to find this is a sci-fi/fantasy  novel conceived in the correct fashion. Which is to say, cobbled together from short stories originally published separately in magazines. Although points off for having a clear narrative arc through the stories.

Quite liked the indeterminate Mad Max with No Name set up and the first couple of stories build a nice kind of atmosphere which the third then tries to turn on its head. There are a couple of things that always put me off a book. One is characters with portentous titles rather than names. Stuff like the "The Boy" or the "The Man in Black." I mean, this is just about okay in a short story when the writer has been listening to too much Johnny Cash but really grates over the long run. The other is tedious prophecy/tarot/psychoanalysis/dream sequences. Basically anything where the writer wants to shoehorn in some obnoxious foreshadowing or leftover metaphors that he couldn't fit into the actual story. This has both.

Overall, fairly slight but the whole thing did slip down in an afternoon so I'll maybe try the next one at some point.

Just to prove that it's not only my childhood comics heroes that I'm happy to disrespect on the internet, I read the first chapter of 2023 by the Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu. Utter dogshit.

Finally! That Inspectre reprint rolls around.

Said nobody, ever. :-)

Not true Jim. I have an ever-shrinking list of unread and never reprinted Thrills and I'm always happy to cross one off.

I thought you could keep going to find everything after you kill Ganon. Is this not the case?

If it helps, I have no idea who Bradley Walsh is.

[Angelic 1]

Still to better things and Si Spurrier's latest Angelic 1 is a complete trimuph of a first issues. Flying monkeys trying to make a young female conform as they battle flying killer Dolphins.... yep so much packed in, so much fun, such a nice use of future speak that doesn't throw you out the story and bad joke reveal at the end works a treat. In many a haul this would be book of the haul, alas magnificent as this is its got stiff competition.

I imagine it's a common complaint, but I rarely read a single issue multiple times these days. I've read this through three or four times already. It's a great opener. Mixing up some of Spurrier's recurring tricks in a more dayglo version of Kingdom's anthropomorphic post-apocalypse setting. He's also paired op with an artist who some might dismiss as "cartoony" but, for me, really makes the mix of organic and technological pop. The fazecat thing is the perfect synthesis of all of these things.

Finally got my copy on Friday morning but haven't had a chance to read it yet.

While we're waiting for the next volume, I see IDW have The Man from the Great North listed to fill the gap. Never heard of it before but sounds pretty interesting.

[breath of the wild]

Just finished breath of the wild. I may have left it too long because I was ridiculously overpowered when taking out Ganon. My first Lynel was tougher.

According to my profile I've played this for 115 hours and I've only just taken out my third Divine Beast and haven't bothered to find the Master Sword yet. Did have a wander round Hyrule Castle last night and it seemed weird that you can basically climb up the outside of one tower and walk straight into the final boss room. I didn't.

The difficulty spikes are quite weird. The bosses I've fought have been uniformly easy and I've been all but invincible to any normal enemy since the first Divine Beast (the one that gives you an automatic resurrection + health boost) but Lynels will still fuck me up. I realise it's a deliberate approach to making all areas immediately accessible while still making some harder to beat but MAAAAANNN!

Never played the original of this and had it marked down for the Switch but the lure of knocking over some trophies on the Playstation might win out. Anyone care to recommend one or the other platform?

[Kev Walker]

I'm not sure who the cover's of or by. Credits I can make out are John Smith, Kev Walker, Jim Campbell, Steve Yeowell, Colin MacNeil, Charles Gillespie, Andrew Clarke and Adrian Salmon.

Finally! That Inspectre reprint rolls around.

Smith & MacNeil could = Strange & Darke.
Pussyfoot 5 would be a stretch for Yeowell but I can't see any of his infrequent Dredds which would fit the bill.

I realised that instantly and almost edited my post but incorrectly assumed nobody would care enough.

Thank you!

As long as you don't read the last story in the first volume before the first story in the second...

It doesn't matter if you do. They don't have to be read in order.

Sure and you can watch Memento backwards but I was replying pedantically to someone saying the Psi Files were printed in chronological order.

[chronological]

The psi-files exist if you want a complete and chronological run of Anderson.

As long as you don't read the last story in the first volume before the first story in the second...

Comedian Sean Hughes (51) ...

Blimey. Sad news.