Off the stack

Polished off volume three of The Drifting Classroom last night. Man, I love this book. It's a wild, anarchic ride which is by turns hilarious and disturbing. The comparisons with Lord of The Flies are obvious, but it's unfair to pigeonhole this as a knock-off, it has a crazy sensibility which is all its own. I'll be picking up volume four on Friday.

Other collected editions on my list include the special bookplate edition of Darwyn Cooke's Parker and volume 10 of The Walking Dead. I've also ordered the new Invincible trade from Amazon, but Walking Dead is one trade I cannot wait for. It gets bought and read on the day it comes out. I'll zoom through it at Drifting Classroom speed.

Made some progress on the single issue mountain this morning, knocking off Irredeemable #5, Sherlock Holmes #3, Chew #3 and Blackest Night Tales of The Corps #3. The last comic on that list is one which some fans have been complaining about. Apparently they feel ripped off by the fact that a good chunk of it is taken up with a pencils only, director's cut of the Blackest Night #0 issue. I can understand this, but personally, having the chance to check out Ivan Reis' incredible pencils is a plus not a minus point for me. After all, the man is a monster! Stripping out the inks and colours really shows up the detail in his work.

Plus, in one of the other stories, you totally get to see Kenny Rogers as a Green Lantern...

Chew #3 was strong, strong, strong. We get properly acquainted with Tony's love interest, Amelia Mintz, a restaurant critic who can write about food so accurately that her readers get the actual sensation of eating the food she's writing about. She's great. There's also an appearance from E.G.G., a pythonesque team of beret-wearing food standards-hating terrorists. Black humour, wonderful cartooning and characters with clear voices. Chew really is worthy of the hype it's been getting.

Two to read

Read a mountain of comics yesterday. Mediocrity abounded. Two nice single issues though: Batman and Robin #1 and Chew #1.

By now I'm sure you've read a gazillion reviews of Batman and Robin so I won't blather on for too long about it. Suffice to say that it's a really nice Batman comic. Being a Grant Morrison joint I was expecting to have to don my thinking cap and fire up the ol' Wikipedia, but no this was as straightforward a start to a story as you can get. I didn't read any of The Battle for the Cowl muck, but I can see that Dick Grayson is now Batman and that Damian wassisname (Bruce Wayne's son or summink) has taken his place as Robin. There's a nice little dynamic going on between the two of them with Robin the more serious of the two. Anyway, it works well. There were some good character defining moments such as Damian's treatment of Alfred as a menial rather than, you know...ALFRED! The new villains were suitably wacky - loved Mr Toad (POOP! POOP!) And, of course, Frank Quietly's art is always a delight. Smashing stuff.

Chew isn't a superhero book as such, but the lead character does have the most original and possibly yuckiest superpower I've seen in a comic for yonks. Written by John Layman and drawn by Rob Guillory, this is a cop book with a difference. You know that psychic cop in Heroes? Fat Fellah, bad actor? Well Tony Chu, (the lead in Chew), is a bit like him, except that he does his psychic detective work by chomping on human flesh. Urggh! Yeah, he gets glimpses of stuff from the food he eats. Thus he doesn't like eating burgers because he sees cows being slaughtered, but he does like chewing off serial killer's faces because he gets a full MO and a list of their victims by doing so. Yup chums, it's a gross idea - but it works! Not least because Layman garnishes his story with a sprinkling of dry, black humour. He's also chosen an artist who has added to the lighthearted feel of what could have been a very dark book with a cartoony (sorry I hate that word, but it's the only one that fits) style. It's a really enjoyable package and I recommend it to you.