cdave | Entries tagged with reviews

And both [Ultimates comics] are incredibly quick reads. Okay, perhaps that’s what I should have expected, but these comics are $4 / £3 each. And that works out to about £1 a minute or £60 an hour. When the comics are costing about the same as my plumber there’s something horribly wrong. - Richard Bruton

Even

jamesb has been talked a little about the cost of comics recently.

I finally remembered to head down to my local library to raid their comic shelves. Seems they don't have any Sandman (although I can order it from other local libraries), but I did pick up:

7) Bleach by Tite Kubo Volume's 1 & 2 (Manga)

This is very popular Anime series at the moment, and I've only seen one episode, so when I saw it on the shelves I snapped it up.

It's about a high school student, who can see ghosts, and accidentally gets recruited to be a sort of combination monster hunter / grim reaper. And frankly he's kind of pissed off with the whole situation.

The first volume is essentially an origin story, giving us a lose background into this world, and a few short battles. The second volume introduces a few more characters (I get the impression no-one in this place is going to be left without some mystical power for long), and a bit more about the way this afterlife thing works.

I can see why it's popular. The battles are fun and all, but there's a wonderful sense of humour throughout.

Guess what's happening in this thumbnail? With all it's dramtic shadowing, and extreme close ups.

He's ( answer here ) Bizarre.

8) Flight Explorer Volume 1 anthology editor Kazu Kibuishi (Graphic Novel)

I'm not going to pretend to know a lot about the Flight anthologies. They've been produced as something quite different for a few years now and are coming to an end soon. Full colour, and luscious art, they are often ... quieter tales than your typical super hero comic.

They're produced "via the internet" in some sense. At least most of the contributes are geographically spread, and are often bloggers.

Flight Explorer is the first (but hopefully not last) in a line pitched at the same market as the DFC, the 8 to teen market that seems to be so neglected in comics today.

The art is cartoony but brilliant for it, and the stories from a moment in the life a little girl and her monster friend's first experience of snow, to an action packed tale of a space mouse crashing beside a tribe who are under threat.

9) Watching the Watchmen by Dave Gibbons

Seeing the thumnails and early sketches for the iconic Watchmen moments is pretty neat, but Dave's tale of how it was produced is what really made this for me. And hats off to him for refusing to get drawn into the drama of what happened next. It's a story that needs hearing, but this celebration of the art of the Watchmen was not it.

Oh, and the library had a clever promotion on. They offer a cheap DVD rental service (with a lot of art house stuff as well as block busters), and to encourage the DVD crowd to read more they had a box of wrapped up mystery books on the counter you could borrow, and get a free DVD coupon.

Current Mood: chipper

Okay, I may have failed to keep updating what I read in 2009, but I still have most of the books on one shelf, so will try and do a catch up post soon.

Meanwhile, I'd better start this year's list while I can still remember them.

1) Matter by Ian M. Banks.

Bought this ages ago, and took on Christmas holiday to France with me. On the basis that it would save me having to take 3 smaller books :)

The main "problem" with the Culture universe is that the Culture are at the top of the pecking order. Creating conflict within this utopia is tricky, so most of the novels are set at the edges. This is book that set largely outside their sphere of influence. This novel is largely centred around characters from a relatively primitive culture who are fully aware that they are several levels down from the movers and shakers of the galaxy.

Personally, this was a downside for me. The bits of this novel I enjoyed the most were the massive scale epic space opera moments. I just wasn't terribly interested as to what was happening to the these people's culture.

2) The Brentford Triangle by Robert Rankin

2nd in the The Brentford Trilogy

Hanging around with

jamesb made me realise I'd been ignoring Rankin's books too long. Having bounced off The Da-da-de-da-da Code, when I won a review copy at the BSFA raffle, I eventually read The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of The Apocalypse and loved it, so went back to the start (pauseing briefly for Radio 7's broadcast of The Brightonomicon).

I felt this book flowed better than the The Antipope. Massively chaotic and surreal fun. Loved it. Glad I picked up the 4th book in the trilogy (with a Josh Kirby cover) for a song at the Novacon auction.

3) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

"Not Science-Fiction" my arse. I preferred ( cut for very minor structural spoilers. No plot spoiler. )

{ETA: Ooh! "what makes this [edition] unique is that the ending was rewritten for the Corgi edition, so dedicated fans will want to track this one down, to find out what happened in the original ending."}

4) Generation X by Douglas Coupland

I'd describe the protagonists of this as the 90's equivalent of "turn on, tune in, and drop out". The book follows three twenty somethings, who have chosen not to Be All They Can Be, but instead to work low paid, low responsibility jobs, until they've saved enough cash go backing round some far odd part of the world searching for themselves. The book is largely made up of series of stories which the characters tell each other, and serve as vignettes of the attitudes young adults in the late 80s.

I picked this up because I red a couple of his later novels last year. Personally, I preferred them, as they had a less fractured narrative.

The neologisms presented throughout in the footnote meet the "ignoble" test for me. First they make you laugh. Then they make you think.

Current Mood: thoughtful

I'm at skip=200 going back to see others posts, but before that here's my thoughts.

( Cut for spoilers )

Current Mood: enthralled

I read the Drop Dead Monstrous anthology last Autumn after picking it up at the MCM expo, from by Sweatdrop Studio's stall (A UK small press Manga publisher). Richard Bruton's reviewed it if you're interested.

I his review he writes that it, like many anthologies is:

patchy, all the strips are punchy, truncated things and it has the feel of the artists just throwing their odd little rejected stories onto the anthology pile. Okay, maybe a little harsh, but you know what I mean.

I like comics anthologies. I'd guess I've probably picked up about 3 or 4 small press anthologies a year for the past few years. More often than not I do enjoy the stuff in them. They all have something that's not my favourite, but that's sort of why I like them. It's a chance to see stuff I'd normally reject on quick glance when deciding what to buy. Even if I don't like a story, or art style, I've not spent that long on it anyway.

Which segues into this weeks reading list:

*) The DFC
Thinking about the DFC as an anthology, it would be a clear favourite. But that's probably not fair because most stories run over multiple weeks so do have a chance to say more.

I mean I've even grow to like most of the stuff I didn't get at first after reading Richard's interview with Molly, his young daughter.

Richard: I just didn’t see any story in it, just friends standing around chatting.
Molly: I like the way it’s about a group of friends hanging around and talking about stuff. Maybe it’s just meant to be for kids Dad?

This was the issue where they announce the closure :(

The Weird Wild West wrapped up it's first run. The Bad Guy got away, setting up for a second season that won't happen :(
With inking, I normally prefer a fat line that changes width, but I really love the sketchy quality of the lines in this epsiode in particular.

13) Born On A Blue Day by Daniel Tammet.
This is the autobiography of a high-functioning autistic savant.

It's a pretty moving story following his life from his birth, through to the release of a documentary about his ability to absorb languages (he gave a live televised interview in Iceland, less than a week after starting to learn the language). His synaesthesia and love of numbers run strongly through the book.

While much of the book is about the difficulty of his life, the chapters where he breaks out the comfortable rhythms and moves overseas for a year, or first meets his partner Neil, are really uplifting.

At one point he writes that he finds it very difficult to understand phrases such as "Jack isn't tall, he's a giant!" Since he can't mentally go back and change it to "Not only is Jack tall, he's a giant!" As such the book has a curious precision to it's prose, that is interesting in itself.

Current Mood: contemplative

The BBC's Radio SciFi season is coming to an end on Listen Again.

Don't have time to write up too much, but I just wanted say there's only too days left to listen to Cry Babies by Kim Newman.

Takes the idea of cryogenically freezing an embryo to a ridiculous extreme, and in the process asks some important questions, while having a protagonist I really empathise with.

As the ignoble awards put it in their motto "first it makes you laugh, then it makes you think". Just what I want from an SF short.

Current Mood: happy

*) The DFC
I'm still so sad that this is almost certainly ending. There a list of where most of the artists and writers can be found online, compiled by a fan.

There's no sign of it in the comic though. I hate to be pragmatic about it, but I guess I'll need to look at what happens to my direct debit.

*) Whatmen! by author Scott Lobdell, artist Alejandro Figueroa
A one shot Watchmen parody. 300 pages down to 30. If I tell you that the second page features the comedian falling out his window, butt naked, after slipping on a piece of smiley faced soap, you get the idea.

The art is very much captures the style of the original. Often times a panel is a detailed joke based on the original. For instance the first time we see Doc NYC, he is gigantic and standing in the same pose as the first time we see Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen. But the giant machine he's poking at is a washing machine.

12) Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation by Tom Siddell
This is the print collection of the first school year at Gunnerkrigg Court webcomic. It's absolutely gorgeous. A hefty hardback with shiny black paper that really shows the muted colours well. The pull quote on the back is from Neil Gaiman.

"Lots of different flavours in there -- it's a semi-gothic funny-sweet school story with mysteries and robots and so forth -- but I kept finding myself reminded of the early days of reading Bone. Nice stuff."

Distributed by Diamond, I ordered this from my local comic shop.

Meanwhile back at the webcomic we've just found out a major part of the main character's back story. Nearly 4 years after the comic launched! He's a master of the slow reveal.

Check out his answers to fans' questsions too. He somehow manages to answer most questions without actually telling anyone about the plot. :)

13) Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Based on Ben's Blog and Guardian column. A series of detailed, well thought out, often irreverent chapters debunking everything: from homoeopathy to big pharmaceutical companies, and from the media driven MMR frenzy to nutritionists. A passionate argument for evidence based medicine.

Nice to see a shout out to

shpalman in the back.

Current Mood: geeky

It looks like the DFC may have to shut down.

( Sarah's daily doodle of this )

I've managed to find RSS feeding blogs for all but one of my favourite strips creators, so hopefully I'll be kept informed of their future work, but it won't be the same. No other comics anthology I've ever picked up (okay that's probably less than 30) stands up to an issue of the DFC in my eyes.

I'll try and track down and post something about all of them soonish.

Oh, and this weeks reading list.

*) The DFC.

*) Dead of Night: Devil Slayer issues 1 - 4
Catching up on a backlog of regular comics, so expect more *s in my reading list.

This showed a lot of potential. The first issue follows the first few hours of a soldier returning to his third tour of Iraq. Ending in a ambush, with the final page being the first revelation that this is something more fantastic than a simple war story.

However from then on it ( descends into cliché. )

10) Zot! The Complete Black and White Collection by Scott McCloud.

As he says in the intro to this collection, these days he is better known as the author of "Understanding Comics". A brilliant textbook of the comic form, in the form of a comic. Actually many of you will know him from the Google Chrome Comic.

I'm very much a fan of good black and white line art, and Scott's stuff in particular.

This book covers his comics from 1987 to 1991. It very much changes in tone as the book progresses. It starts as a visually arresting superhero story, with his only powers essentially being flight (artificial), dexterity, and boundless optimism. With the plot being driven by the villain of that ark. By the end is instead a compelling tale about the lives^* of group of fairly geeky American high school students.

^*Well sexual awakening is probably the correct term. There's a whole issue devoted to too of them in a bedroom discussing if the time is right for them.

Every few issues, there's a page or two of directors commentary from Scott, that gives some fascinating insights into where the character's came from and what he was trying to do.

I'll definitely re-read all 575 pages of this one at some point soon.

11) Umbrella Academy story by Gerard Way Art by Gabrial Ba.
Lent to me by

raven_mocara.

The art reminds me is a slightly tighter version of the graffiti style I particularly like in Jim Mafood.

The first page is picture of a wrestler doing an elbow drop onto a space squid. For no real reason that has anything to do with the plot. Brilliant!

Most of the humour in this comes from the same sense of the surreal.

However for all these silly asides, this is actually a fairly dark tale. The hero's have been raised together, but been separated for some time, before being called back. Each has their own power, but also their own neuroses.

I can't quite decide if this is too silly for a serious story, or too serious for a silly story. Either was something doesn't quite sit right. I've spotted it's still going at the comic shops, so I may track down the second volume to see if it improves.

Current Mood: worried

( 8) Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland )
( Busy, but probably not that interesting to read. )
( 9) Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi )

Current Mood: busy

*) The DFC It didn't arrive in Friday or Saturday's post! Eep!

7) Slan by A. E. van Vogt.

This is one of those classics of SF I hear name-checked a lot, so I thought I should add it to the to-be-read piles. Bought at Zombiecon. Read on the tube. My prior knowledge of it extended to the fact the phrase "Fans are Slans" had been used, as Slans were super human.

However far from it being the tale of supermen, it's the tale from the point of view of two lonely children. Who are reviled for simple being born Slan. That is belonging to a race that once ruled the Earth. They are not only mind readers, but smarter and stronger than humans too.

I won't write too much about it as one of the things I really enjoyed was the twists. This book is full of them. Each of them was surprising, made sense, and revealed more about the history of this world.

The story was first published in the 1940s, and as such has plenty of whizz bang atomic energy rays an the like. I see this as a good thing.

Far from the ending being a Deus ex Machina (as this reviewer thought) I thought it by far the most telegraphed of the twists.

In short. I enjoyed. A ripping '40s yarn, worthy of it's classic status.

This edition finished with two chapters from Slan Hunter by Kevin J Anderson (based on notes by A E van Vogt), which pick up from the end of the novel. If you liked the Dune prequels you may like this. I didn't like the Dune prequals much and didn't like what I saw of this.

I've just looked at a couple of reviews online.

"melodramatic situations and snappy (if dated) dialogue all match the original seamlessly." - Publishers Weekly.

I disagree here. John Petty is suddenly promoted from a sinister, if ultimately outwitted, villain, to a Bondesque gloater who decides to place the object of his murderous desires in an easily escapable box.

Here's a fairer review (by someone who presumably read the whole book).

"Ultimately, I'd have to say that this volume honors its predecessor in a fairly commendable manner—but it's not, and possibly never could be, the Slan II from some imaginary 1943 that we all dream of." Scifi.com

Current Mood: pleased

*) The DFC.

In a recent Mezolith (prehistoric myths) a pregnant woman eats the forbidden flesh of a raven, and gives birth to a dead baby. It's wrapped in the ravens wings, and "buried" in tree. It comes back to life eats insects and grows for years, before being discovered and brought back to the tribe. But she rejects them, and goes and lives with the ravens on a near by cliff. She is now a powerful shaman.

This is a kids comic remember.

3) Band Of Gypsys by Gwyneth_Jones

Wikipedia sums it up. "Unlike previous episodes, Band Of Gypsys can’t easily be read as a stand alone."

( A book in which nothing much happens. Spoilers. )

In short I didn't like it. Possibly because it demanded knowledge of previous books in the series I hadn't read. But mostly because nothing particularly interesting happens in it.

Current Mood: disappointed

These things come threes.

One of my half written blog posts is a break down of last year's new year's resolutions (mostly FAIL, but that was meme of the year). One of which was to blog about each book I'd read.

makyo actually posted a list of all the books he read last year.

So I'll keep a better list of what I've read this year. Even if I don't manage to write anything about it. For the purposes of numbering I'll not count weekly or monthly comic, but I'll try to mention them.

(I'll start with Christmas since that's the last date I can remember what I'd finished reading)

( -4 to 2 )
{edit: Oops missed one: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin}

Current Mood: accomplished

Sudden realisation: Some people born in the '90s are old enough to drink now.

I ran into an old friend I haven't seen since University on Regent Street the weekend before last.

We spent about 5 minutes catching up as we walked round to Oxford Street. Realised that we both knew a reasonable chunk of what we'd been up to since Uni via facebook and went our separate ways.

It's kind of sad really. Social networking sites mean you never completely lose touch, so you can never really serendipidously reacquaint.

Should I get the time I want to write up my thoughts on a couple of books I read recently. I usually don't get around to it, so I'm hoping that putting this here will prod me into action.

Special Topics In Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womak

They're sort of related, in odd ways. Both are "written" by teenage girls about a year of their life. Both books change character as the book progresses, so you feel you're not reading the same book you started out with.

They're also very, very different. I don't know if I'd have related them to each other, if I hadn't read them (almost) one after the other,

Anyway, I enjoyed them both, and would recommend them.

Current Mood: busy

Very busy at work. No lunch break today.

--

Why do cats sit on papers?

--

Some photo's of the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe. Increasing large bundles of bank notes paying for nothing. An every increasing number of zeros added to new note issued. They knocked 10 zeros off the end earlier this year, and may have to do it again before the year is out.

--

Nurse led drop in centre say: I've likely sprained big trapezoid muscle, which would take around two weeks to start feeling completely better. So take ibuprofen to reduce inflammation. Full range of movement available from both shoulders. Excess movement in left should probably just an elongated tendon, talk to GP next time, but don't worry about it. So I won't.

--

Saw Bond in Basingstoke with: Fuzz,

piesandmash, March and March.

America has exploding petrol. Europe doesn't.

As spotted byFran.

--

Read "Kitty and the Midnight Hour" by Carrie Vaughn (first recommended to me by

makyo over three years ago!) basically in one sitting. Train and tube ride home. A bit before going to sleep. Then a bit more as I was over 3/4 of the way through. Took around 2.5 to 3 hours.

Basic premis: A werewolf running a late call in night show on the supernatural. Werewolves, Vampires, and other unspecified things (and lists only get three items in before being interrupted) are real, but generally try and stay hidden from public view.

( Cut for world spoilers. Not really plot spoilers. )

--

More love for the UK online battery shop. They spotted a mistake in some invoices from ages ago, so sent out a polite email with an updated invoice, telling me that I can ignore it, unless I was using it for VAT reasons. I like when shops own up to things without prompting.

Current Mood: busy

I saw this quite distinctive photo of a fallen angel caught in telephone cables in the paper ~~last week~~ over a week ago. Given that it's in central London, and open to 7pm for one week only I thought I'd pop down after work.

( Some thoughts on the exhibition )

And then I went to the Tate Modern for lunch ~~today~~ ~~a couple of~~ a few days ago to see the new turbine hall exhibition.

( Some thoughts on the exhibition )

Current Mood: contemplative

The other day the Google blog observed that "fewer teens are wearing watches now because they use their phones to tell time instead"

I'd been wondered about that myself a while ago. Fortunately I knew an author who was looking explain, the mythology of mobile phones and other modern fairy tales.

I don't normally read Fantasy, but I really enjoyed these. So I can only make obvious comparison to Gaiman's stuff where you're being shown the gritty stuff that lays just below and around our realities.

( More on Banter-Latte )

Current Mood: amused

Went to see WALL·E last week. It's brilliant. The best thing I can say about is: that about 3 hours after seeing it, I suddenly remembered that it's supposed to be a kids film (I've been watching a lot of Ghost in the Shell recently, so animation does not equate with kids film in my head)

Went to a treetop adventure place over the weekend. Part of a chain called Go Ape. Seriously good fun. A couple of hours of Rope ladders, treetop bridges, zip lines, and Tarzan swings into cargo netting. It really deserves a better write up, but I don't have time right now.

Icon love! Seen here, based on these T-shirts.
I hate the cost of transatlantic shipping.

Science is like a good friend: sometimes it tells you things you don't want to hear.

From Charlie Brooker's TV rants seen at

andrewducker's

Current Mood: amused

I don't remember the first search engine I used, probably Yahoo, or Lycos, but I remember the first I switched to. Hotbot. It didn't proclaim that it reached more of the web than the others, or that it was faster, but it let you use keywords like NOT or AND in your queries, so you could filter the results and get more relevant ones.

This week there's a new kid on the search engine block

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance.

This is such '90s fallacy. No-one cares if you have the deepest search there is. Internet search engines are all about relevance; Returning the best first page possible.

I've just tried out a not very scientific search on my name, and ~~Cool~~ Cuil fails on several accounts.

Not using popularity tests means that the first 5 pages consist of dozens of pages an artist selling prints in many online shops. Yes these pages use his name more than I do, but that just leads to spammers creating pages full key words. This isn't helped by the fact that there doesn't seem to be a way to exclude words. Otherwise it would be easy to filter out results with "poster" or "print".

I had to scroll through to page 6 to find anything that wasn't a shop page. But by then the spammers had started to creep into the result.

The policy of catching all websites seems to have had an interesting effect. Google never managed to cache all of my old blogger site, so I had a look for that. They don't seem to have it at all. But they do have a whole bunch of spammers who have copied the text from my site. Neat I didn't know I was so popular.

I thought I'd try and see how many there were. Filtering out the other sites that may accidently match my query. Searching on the page title (without any punctuation), which is also the first words on the page, and was included in the results returned ... nothing.
What?
It's right there on the page. 90% of the results Cuil already showed me had that exact text. How can they not find any matches?

It's not the size of your cache. It's what you do with it that counts.

Current Mood: disappointed

On Sunday morning, I'd arranged to meet up with a few friends in London.

( Waited for a bit )

( Got told off for wearing an XKCD t-shirt )

( Went to the Imperial War Museum's main hall )

( ... then went into the basement )

( Beer, Batman (no spoilers), Beer )

Woah. That's around a thousand words. I never write that much.

[1]If I ever have a weekend without any plans (not had one free since before Easter) I ought to go down to the Science Museum, and have a go at drawing some of their sketching steam engines.

Current Mood: happy

Having a decent customer service is important to me when I but things. It's why I won't use Dabs any more and use CCL online instead.

So I'm very pleased to be able to recommend Advanced mp3 players.co.uk.

There was a minor cock-up. I'd ordered an mp3 player that was out of stock, and due to be back in stock on Friday. I paid for next day delivery to get hold of it by Saturday. However it didn't arrive. I emailed them on Sunday, and had a reply at 9:20 on Monday morning. It seems that by the time it arrived, they had missed the cut off for next day shipping. So the refunded me the cost of the next day shipping. Great service, and incredibly cheap too.

Current Mood: pleased

Statute of limitation on spoilers must have run out by now, but just in case, review behind cut.

( Chapter 1 and 2. )

So far then. Some good characterisation in the interaction between Bond, and M. Two bits of spy background info-dumping to set up the enviroment. Everyone else has felt like background. I guess they are, but still...

Current Mood: nerdy

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Entries tagged with reviews

Reading list: Library special edition.

Reading list - 2010.

Torchwood thoughts

(no subject)

Cry Baby

Reading list.

Nooo!

What I did last weekend, and what I read.

Slans.

Reading 2009: Band Of Gypsys

2008 Books

Meanderings

A few unconnected thoughts.

Couple of art exhibitions.

Why have I not linked to banter-latte before?

Robot Brooker's treetop science.

Google killer this 'aint (yet)

War I did on Sunday