Rambling stream of comics conciousness

Nothing much of any interest to say today -what's fucking new, right? Just a few bits and pieces that have been running around my head of late. Number one: Marvel's actually quite a bit better than DC at the moment isn't it? I mean I'm enjoying my Blackest Night and all, but if you look at Marvel they've got all the cool writers - Hickman, Aaron, Fraction, Remender, Brubaker, Millar, Ellis, van Lente, Abnett & Lanning, Cornell, Diggle. That's quite a list. I'm not saying that the writers at DC are shit, I mean they've got Johns, Morrison and Rucka, but the geezers at Marvel are hipper, funnier, edgier and dare I say it, younger (I think).

The whole Norman Osborn Dark Reign bollocks bores me, but you know...Old Man Logan, Ghost Rider, Cap, The Fan Four, Secret Warriors, Iron Man - those are all top quality comics. I'm not even reading Hercules, Daredevil, The Guardians of The Galaxy, Nova or The Punisher, but I hear they're all brilliant too. They can't fail to be when you look at the calibre of creators working on them. It really is an amazing line-up. In fact I'd say you could pick up just about any Marvel book at the mo and enjoy it - take Doctor Voodoo for flip's sake. Two issues in and it's fucking brilliant. Really. Remender writing a mental voodoo story with all sorts of A list baddies. Great art from some fellah whose name escapes me (sorry) and a lot of it is set in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans which in itself is a fantastic idea. Issue two has all these demons running about in the wrecked city killing the population. It's the perfect setting - Nightmare in New Orleans! Brilliant. Where else are the demons going to go but a disaster-hit city mired in despair and misery?

Meanwhile, nothing much seems to be happening with DC's books. I'm soldiering on with the whole New Krypton saga, but it really isn't much good at the moment and it's costing a lot to keep up to speed with the stodgy story. Blackest Night? It's good, but I reckon it must be a turn off to a lot of people who aren't heavily invested in the DCU. Flash Rebirth has been terrible thus far and seems to have disappeared completely. Wednesday Comics was good. Batman and Robin is brilliant. Nothing else is really getting me excited, although I am enjoying The Mighty which is set outside the DCU.

Anyway, I'm once again trying to force myself to drop some titles and it's the DC stuff which is looking most likely for the chop at the mo. Meanwhile I'm having to force myself not to pick up all the Marvel books.

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Grabbed a copy of 2000AD the week before last. Been enjoying the old stuff so much, I thought it was time for one of my yearly attempts to get into the current incarnation of the comic. Nyeer. It was OK.The Dredd story was enjoyable enough, but the rest left me a bit cold. There's this one story about a war between Heaven and Hell where a naked woman strolls about being asked to give blowjobs to demons. I'm reading it and thinking, fuck's sake, you couldn't give this to a kid to read. Which is a shame really, because the beauty of classic 2000AD as far as I'm concerned is the way that it offered up subversive, independent thinking in the guise of adventure stories for kids. Yes there was violence, but it was over the top, slapstick stuff. There wasn't any bad language or sex and you could happily bung it on the bottom shelf at the newsagents. I know that the market for the thing is 30+ men now, but for me it's lost what made it great. Anarchic comics for 11-year-olds, that's what I want, even if there isn't any demand.

Two more

Tense times at LLC Mansions as we prepare for an afternoon of cold turkey on the nappy front. Yes, imaginary web chums, when the boy wakes up from his nap I will be depriving him of his nappy and putting him into a pair of robot themed pants. Magic shit and piss filled moments will no doubt ensue, wish me luck.

Enough toilet training, what of comics? Well, I managed to read a whole trade yesterday! I Kill Giants, by Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura. For those who don't know, it's the story of a precocious 12-year-old girl who says she kills giants. Obviously this gets her into all sorts of scrapes with other kids who think she's a weirdo. Whether she's telling the truth or not is for you to find out. All you need to know is that she has some other problems going on in her life, which make things difficult for her.

This thing has been buried under a mountain of critical praise, so I was pretty keen to get cracking on it. I think I would've liked it a lot more had I not gone into it thinking it was going to be the most wonderful book of all time. Like Asterios Polyp, I'd heard such glowing reports about it that I ended up being slightly underwhelmed. It is worth reading, but it also feels a bit worthy. I dunno.

Kelly does an excellent job of putting the thought processes of kids on the page, that's for sure. The fact that the main character, Barbara, is a lot brighter than her peers but still very obviously a child is handled really well. All the other kids are very believable too.

The art is clearly manga-influenced. It has a rougher, scratchier edge than manga proper, but the influence is there all the same. Occasionally it's difficult to tell what's going on, particularly in the fight scenes which are pretty chaotic, but perhaps this is a deliberate thing. The characters look great though.

So, as a whole, worth a look. Perhaps it's the cynical old bastard in me, but some of the more obviously emotional stuff in the book left me feeling a bit like I was watching a made for TV tearjerker. Like I said though, I'm a heartless cad, so don't listen to me.

On the single issue front, only book I've read this week is the first installment of Rick Remender's Doctor Voodoo. Decent enough start, some interesting art from Jefte Paolo. Has a bit of the Eric Canete about him, draws an old, saggy, worn out looking Doctor Strange which I thought was a novel approach to the character.

The story is actually quite heavy, not the tongue-in-cheek hi jinks I was expecting at all. I'll probably pick up the second issue. Oh and it's one of these $3.99 books which is designed to appeal to us old men. How do I know? Because it's got back matter, that's how. Yup, I think this age of comics will eventually be remembered as the back matter age, an era where comic companies loaded up their books with historical notes and critical essays to satisfy a rapidly aging audience of amateur comic historians.