A brief trip to Borders/My girlfriend reviews Doctor Who #1

Nipped into our local Borders today to get out of the rain and have a mooch about in the graphic novel section. It's not all that bad really, stocks all the big Marvel and DC titles + a few of the old indie classics (Maus, American Splendour etc etc). Standard Borders fare.

One point worth mentioning is the new section for floppies. Excellent news, no?! Well maybe. Sadly I don't think it's going to last. Take a look at these pics...


Yup, they've pinned it to the end of a magazine rack and hidden it behind a massive plastic box of HELLO! magazines. Seriously, no casual browser is even going to notice it's there. Even if you do see it, you're not going to be able to browse through the titles as it's physically impossible to get in between the shelf and the HELLO! box.

And listen to this, they're asking £3.25 per comic! WTF!? I can't imagine that they'd sell anything at those prices. Anyone mug enough to pay that premium is probably too stupid to find the cunningly hidden things anyway.

Terrible job.

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Picked up IDW's new Doctor Who comic. It's OK. Nothing special.

That's my incisive review out of the way, now here are the thoughts of my girlfriend: "Urgggh. It looks horrible. What terrible art." (She thinks all comic art is terrible so this is not a surprise)

Pauses to flick through.

"This is intended for children, why are you reading it?"

Stares intently at artist's impression of David Tennant.

"I don't think David Tennant would be very happy with this"

Stick those on the back cover of your collected edition IDW!

The Disintergrating Top!

OK this is about the grimmest piece of pre-code sadism I've ever seen.



1952 folks. Yup, 1952.

Panels taken from Chamber of Chills #6 reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Horror Comics

Shopping List

Damn this shit licking bug! I was sure I'd kicked it, but fuck me, I wake up this morning and it's back for a nausea inducing day trip to my stomach. Thus my plans to fill the nerd sack before heading down to Clapham for an evening of heavy drinking with old friends were a complete write off.

I'll be fucked if I'm letting the thing keep me away from the nerd emporiams of London's West End tomorrow though. I'm going to pick the following sequential treats up on the way to work if it kills me...

Green Lantern #28
Quill! Quill!

Northlanders #4
Bleak viking angst from Sven The Returned, the most disagreeable main character in a comic since Eric O'Grady donned the Ant-man armour.

Teen Titans Year One #3 (of 6)
Oh you know, this isn't very good. It takes about two minutes to read and is clearly intended for people considerably younger and less jaded than me, but the pictures are pretty and well, I've started so I might as well finish.

Boys #16
I have this on the list, but I'm actually debating whether to pick it up or not. Haven't got round to reading the last few issues yet because I got a bit fed up with it all. I don't know, it just seems like Ennis is laying the sex and violence on with a trowel. It's stopped being shocking and is now just routine and perhaps boring.

Amazing Spider-Man #552
Hasn't gone wrong yet. In fact it's been so good that I've ditched Ultimate Spidey which (Immonen art aside) has gone down the pan. This issue sees the debut of Bob Gale on script. He wrote Back to the motherfucking Future for feck's sake!!! RESPECT!

Twelve #3 (of 12)
I picked up the 2nd printing of Issue #1 last week and, (despite the fact that it's written by Straczynski), found this tale of Golden age heroes emerging from suspended animation to be pretty good fun.

End League #2
Ignore the fact that you've seen it all before and instead revel in the sight of a lobotomised Thor going apeshit. Aahhh, sweeet comic goodness!


I will try to resist the temptation to buy THIS but it's going to be difficult, because let's face it, as expensive as it is, it's a thing of beauty.

SHORTS

In my rather slapdash guide to the comic shops of London's West End, I named Orbital as my favourite place to buy comics. Well, I have to say that since I wrote that guide, GOSH! has overtaken Orbital as my comic shop of choice. It's cleaner, more welcoming and stocks a wider range of non-spandex comics. Orbital is still worth a visit for the 50p boxes, but GOSH! are better in just about every department EXCEPT for back issues. They even have their own BLOG now.

With all that in mind, I'm planning to go back and do a Stalinist style revision of my original guide to the West End. I'm sorry, I know it's wrong. It'll be up tonight.

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From Captain America #35...

Bucky Barnes morphs into a young Mel Gibson.

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I've been rereading my copy of The DC Universe stories of Alan Moore over the last day or so and it's clear that Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons were hugely influenced by it when putting together the current run of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps.

I've banged on at great and unnecessary length about Tygers. But the compendium also features the story "For the man who has everything" which stars Mongul and a plant called Black Mercy. It's a classic which Johns reprises in Green Lantern #7 and #8.

We also get stories featuring The Spider Guild and Bolphunga, both of whom pop up in the Green Lanterns Corps. Then of course there's the first appearance of Mogo and errm, did I mention Tygers?

If you are enjoying Green Lantern then the Moore compendium is a must. Even if you're not, how can you say no to a book which features both Killing Joke AND Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

Highly recommended.

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Talking of Tygers (again), I'm guessing that Moore was partly inspired to write the story after reading the Ray Bradbury classic "Here there be Tygers".

Even if the similarities aren't immediately obvious, the story was definitely on his mind when he created Mogo. If you don't know the Bradbury classic, then I recommend tracking it down. Failing that, this funky old Russian cartoon adaptation should suffice...

RIP Gary Gygax

The man who invented D&D has missed his last saving throw. See HERE

I was utterly obsessed with D&D from the age of 10 until 13 and spent far too many of my formative years treading on D4 and wittering to bored adults about encumbrance AC, HP, STR, CHA and DEX.

My character Thork the Dwarf was a legend in my own mind, while as a Dungeon master my mammoth campaign known only as "The Big Adventure" became a cause celebre amongst the 11 year olds in my road.

Even now the urge to play the game seizes me from time to time.

I have Gary Gygax to thank/blame for all of that.

RIP

Kill Quill

As someone who usually treats the onset of a cold as a sign that they are about to die of a particularly painful form of cancer I don't tend to get much sympathy from my nearest and dearest when I'm under the weather. Given that my girlfriend and our son both got hit by the hideous gastro bug that laid me out on Friday night though, I think there are at least a couple of people out there who know that I was genuinely sick this weekend.

Yup, the bug that struck us was a motherfucking piece of invisible evil. Seriously, by Saturday lunchtime the missus and I had gone from feeling mildly queasy to the point where we were both literally crawling about on our hands and knees willing the good lord to end our pain. We puked and crapped until our backs ached and our heads thumped. Both of us got badly dehydrated, and right in the middle of it, as I lay in delirium mindlessly gibbering about the weather, next door's hulking ginger tomcat decided to invade our flat and start attacking me. It was horrible. I have a vague memory of fending him off, but the box headed fuckbag still took a chunk out of my hand before I managed to raise myself from the floor and shoo him away.

Fuck knows how we managed to deal with our sick six month old at the same time as all this was going on. The poor mite had a tough old time of things and is still struggling to keep his food down. Thankfully he's looking a bit livelier this evening. In fact we all seem to be coming out of it now.

Obviously then, I've not done much comic reading over the weekend. I did have another look at Tygers this afternoon in honour of the next issue of Green Lantern which features none other than Quill of the Five Inversions (SEE HERE FOR PREVIEW PAGES).

Sadly my excitement over the return of this Moore/O'Neill creation is tempered slightly by the fact that he appears to be killed almost as soon as he reappears. Looks like he's the poor bugger destined to provide the blood which the red lantern needs to be anointed in to start sparkling.

Oh well, it'll be nice to see him again however briefly.

Ill

I have winter vomiting bug. Doubt you'll hear much from me until I can stop being sick