majorarcana

Posts Tagged ‘Comics’

The year we make contact

Highlights of the year thus far:

Breaking Bad - discovered through work colleagues, the ongoing saga of a middle-aged chemistry teacher who discovers he has terminal cancer, and with nothing to lose sets up a crystal meth lab, proves to be consistently entertaining and amusing well into its second season, although I’m slightly concerned that the friends who recommended it were pretty insistent it was the ‘wrongest’ thing on television, bigging it up in my head as Chris Morris’s Oz or somesuch, and yet sitting there watching it, all I can think is how utterly reasonable it all seems.
Not freezing to death during one of January’s many cold snaps. Fucking hell, it’s been cold in the flat though. I hand in my notice next week, which means I should be out of this shithole by mid-April, thank fuck.
Catching up on As It Occurs To Me, which I completely failed to listen to in the run up to Christmas. Richard Herring as brilliantly puerile as ever. Why won’t people let him be on the telly? I also caught his Hitler Moustache show at the Leicester square theatre last week. I saw a pre-Edinburgh preview last year, which was pretty funny, but this was a much more refined, focused act, with lots of new material. He’s a very funny man.
In a similarly late to the party vein, I also picked up the first issue of Dodgem Logic. The Moore stuff is predictably essential, Graham Lineham and Josie Long’s contributions are brief but brilliant, with everything else coming across as a bit meh… And yet, whilst there’s a vein of knee-jerk hippy bollocks there, something appeals about the just-throw-everything-at-the-page editorial direction. It’s the sort of thing I feel should be being done better somewhere on the internet, and yet for some reason isn’t. Interesting to see how it develops.
Saw Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. Not great, but nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be.
My love of Grant Morrison’s ongoing Bat-saga is unconditional and unfailing, which I’m sure will come as a surprise to no one, so isn’t something I’ll go into here. His new creator-owned series Joe The Barbarian on the other hand, was an unknown quantity as I managed to completely miss all the hype and the interviews. I needn’t have worried of course - the first issue is a slowly paced scene-setter, but sets up the series concept beautifully, with incredibly lush artwork by the previously unknown to me Sean Murphy.
Booking myself a trip to SXSW in Austin next month. Not that physically booking it was really much of a highlight, but something to look forward to. I used to joke about how I was boycotting America whilst George W. Bush was in power, but I’ve recently realised I did, in fact, boycott America whilst George W. Bush was in power.

I like the way I teased doing essay-length posts in my end of year round up, but have in fact made even less effort, resorting to bullet points rather than full posts. Something else I started doing this year was Project 365 - a photo a day for a year. Well, the loss of my camera lead, coupled with a few drunken nights where I forgot I was supposed to be taking a picture at some point meant I didn’t even make it through January (seems wholly appropriate the dream was born and died in a pub, mind. I only heard about it the day before NYE, chatting to a colleague in a pub, moments before he made off into the night with a stolen clay pot). Looks like my online fail is destined to continue. Thank you for your continued patience.

Posted on February 14th, 2010
by
nick.brownlow
No Comments »

Oh God, why is the internet so slow in this house?

Hmm. I did promise to say something about my holiday, didn’t I? A post of sorts exists in notebook form, but looking over it, it’s a rather dull effort so I’m probably going to consign it to the ether. The short version is I went walking in the Lake District towards the end of October, and had a very nice time. There’re pictures and everything.

At the start of the year, I had the goal of doing a minimum of a blog post a month, which obviously I didn’t stick to, and then after my personal life imploded I assumed I’d have a lot more time on my hands and thought hey - maybe I can manage two or three a month - but that didn’t happen either. To be honest, I’ve thrown myself into my day job a bit over the last eight months, and haven’t felt I’ve had a lot to write about (although 15 posts is slightly better than what you would have got in the original plan…). I have to rethink what I want to use this place for again, I think. Most of the blogs I’ve followed over the years have abandoned news/links/micro-posts because there are better outlets for that sort of thing now. The trend seems to be for longer essays, which of course takes time and effort. And if I was going to go down that route, I’d like to do something that might actually be of interest to anyone apart from immediate friends and family - as I’ve pretty much done everything a blogger could do to drive casual traffic away from this site over the last few years, it might be nice to come up with something that might conceivably attract an audience for a change. Less prattling about meeeeeeee next year whatever happens, I reckon.

Creatively, as ever, I need to get more writing done. I’m also getting a bit hacked off with stuff I actually make the effort to finish and place ending up with publications that subsequently crash or disappear without trace. I’m hardly prolific, and the fact the one or two pieces I’m proudest of have effectively been in limbo - in some cases for years - is pretty sickening. I recently found out my major completed project of last year, for a book that was supposed to be out last January, probably now isn’t going to be in the book at all, and will likely end up as a promotional pdf. All very demoralising, and I certainly need to rethink my focus next year.

I’d thought about doing a separate best of the year post, but I think I’ll just blurt it all out here: Book: Bad Vibes, Music: St Vincent - Actor, Film: Moon, TV: Err, The Inbetweeners? Was that this year? It was for me, Comic: Batman: RIP - fuck you internet, I loved it.

See you next year, unless I get chatty between now and new year. Have a good one.

Posted on December 26th, 2009
by
nick.brownlow
No Comments »

A lean, filthy, ravenous army

For those not following my epic struggle with the forces of pestilence and decay on Twitter, it transpires that the block containing my new flat has a rat infestation - the result of a lack of decent refuse collection facilities and some of my fellow tenants’ rather relaxed attitude to rubbish disposal. Traps have been prepared, poison has been purchased, but so far non-violent solutions - ensuring no food or rubbish is left out during the night - have been the most effective. Or at least I’ve stopped hearing them. It’s good to know sometimes an accommodation can be reached with even the most implacable of foes. More as the situation progresses.

Saw the new production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia at the Duke of York’s Theatre last week. Great show, with great performances, sets, lighting, all of which the play thoroughly deserved. I hadn’t seen it before and have somehow managed to avoid reading it, but it’s easy to see why many consider it Stoppard’s best, and possibly most representative work.

There are two types of post-apocalyptic novel, it would seem - the ones where the survivors gamely struggle against the harsh realities of their new environment, perhaps discovering or re-discovering new skills and attitudes, and eventually succeeding in re-establishing some sort of civilization. Occasionally there’s even the suggestion that the apocalypse might have been a good thing - the survivors are able to re-connect with certain core human values now that the flab of contemporary civilization has been cut away. And then there’re the others - of which the first half of Conrad Williams’ One is as extreme an example you could hope to find. The catastrophe - a massive gamma ray burst which kills everything on the surface of the planet suddenly, painfully, and in the case of humans, graphically - and the protagonist’s awful journey, motivated by an irrational unwillingness to accept his five-year old son is dead, is simply unrelentingly horrible and refuses to give even the slightest conciliatory offering. It’s among the bleakest things I’ve ever read; a truly awful end-of-the-world scenario and portrayal of survival as something only the hopelessly insane would be even remotely interested in. Unfortunately, I thought the second half of the book lacked some of the first half’s intensity, and the introduction of more survivors, a half-hearted crack at re-establishing a modicum of civilization, and a rather unlikely-sounding extraterrestrial threat didn’t really add anything IMHO. It’s still worth persevering with, however, and Williams has firmly established himself as one of my favourite writers in the genre.

RIP Captain Britain & MI:13, which I enthused about back in the day. Like so many new titles, it faced the insurmountable challenge of building an audience in a market notoriously apathetic to the new and/or different, and was found wanting. It won’t have done Paul Cornell any harm, as pretty much everyone who read it loved it, and whilst his take on Brian Braddock was a little bit too jingoistic for my liking at times, the image of Captain Britain killing a vampire by punching its heart right out of its chest has comfortably eased itself into a respectable position on my favourite comics moments ever chart.

Jonathan Nash and Mil Millington’s Sexton Blake. Great fun, extremely funny, and available on iPlayer for the next four days.

Posted on August 3rd, 2009
by
nick.brownlow
1 Comment »

Showers

Life upheavals dominated last month, and may continue to do so for the forseeable future. Rather than go on about that, however, I did want to take the time mark the real tragedy of April ‘09, namely the passing of James Graham Ballard, a writer who’s had a profound and lasting effect on me. The quality and character of the tributes he’s received in the mainstream press are their own testament. In Ballard we lose not just a great writer, but a truly visionary thinker whose influence extends far beyond the medium in which he worked. Normally I’d be slightly cynical about and dismissive of the mass media coverage that accompanies the death of a famous writer, even in the case of a personal favourite (perhaps especially so), but quite frankly, Ballard’s ideas and insights are always worthy of wider discussion, and I applaud the recognition of that.

Reading for April:

Compositions for the Young and Old by Paul G Trembelay
Local by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly
City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer

Nothing quite on the Ballardian level of course. Stand-out read was probably Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly’s Local, a handsome hardcover collection of their 12 issue series from Oni. Touchingly poignant and meticulously constructed, it’s a fantastic achievement that beautifully marries craft and concept. That Vandermeer bloke is bloody good too mind.

Posted on May 8th, 2009
by
nick.brownlow
No Comments »

Fail

As you can probably see, the Year in Film project went off the rails again in the final few weeks. I blame that last exam, myself, although I doubt I’d have been bothered to go to the cinema nine times in one month anyway. Glancing back at the archives I’m quite disappointed; I didn’t really go out of my way to see anything that was a bit different, and most of what i did see was mediocre, formulaic crap, to be honest. The whole project began as an attempt to try and overcome my apathy towards going to the cinema, and yet if anything I feel even less enthusiastic about it now. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just old and twisted and bitter and see no joy in the dance of flickering celluloid, or for that matter the world. Or maybe it’s the pricing, programs, scheduling, cost/quality of food, comfort, advertising and usual clientele of London cinemas. But really, who cares?

I will be renewing my BFI membership though, which was a great present from the girlfriend, and one I’d wished I’d got more use out of. I’m also considering joining the Ritzy, which I guess is more or less my local cinema, and is also an extremely pleasant place to take in a film. I think I’ll enjoy myself a lot more if I concentrate on seeing stuff I genuinely want to see somewhere I actually don’t mind being rather than places like the Cineworld Trocadero, which is a bit like dying and going to Hell (I imagine).

The Long Blondes have split up, which is shit.

Now the exams are all over until next year I’m going to puts some thought into redesigning the site too, which I never really look at myself, but quite frankly looks atrocious and reflects a half-baked, unfinished design idea I never really thought through properly about a year and a half ago. I’m thinking of just using an out of the box Wordpress theme this time, as I clearly don’t have the patience or photoshop skillz to come up with a decent one of my own (although I did like the fact a colleague referred to it as “the satan worshiping motherfucker” theme).

Friends have stuff out:

JT is a zombie in Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set which starts next week, and will not stop going on about it.
Paul Holden has an iPhone comic out written by Al Ewing. Their Dead Signal was probably the most gloriously mental strip to run in 2000ad in a long while, and of course they were the team behind the controversy-blighted Murderdrome. I’ve been following this, but haven’t posted anything about it because as we’ve already established up-post, I am shit. I have however mentioned it a bit around the office, which may well be the densest area of iPhone ownership in southern England, so hopefully they’ll have snagged a few sales off the back of that.