22 March 2016
Written by Brian Michael Bendis and Neil Kleid I remember the excitement back in 2000 around the arrival of Powers the comic book, co-created by Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming – Bendis was a rising star of indie crime comics and the book seemed to be a perfect fusion of his noir approach and superheroes. Fortunately, the excitement was justified…
19 February 2016
With the news of DC Comics Rebirth (they are keen to state that it’s NOT a reboot, but c’mon …) relaunching the DC universe of titles with new #1 issues after 52 issues of the DC New 52 reboot of the entire DC universe (which happened only back in September 2011), readers of comic books must be wondering: what the…
18 August 2015
I recently read the collected Captain America and Bucky: The Life Story of Bucky Barnes, which was written by Ed Brubaker and Marc Andreyko. Comprising Captain America and Bucky #620–624, it was a perfectly fine story – a well-told tale of how Bucky came to be Cap’s sidekick – but it seemed to lack the spark I got from reading…
20 July 2015
Continuing with the theme of my favourite works by a writer I enjoy: today is the turn of Peter Milligan. The man, the mystery, the enigma (deliberate reference – see later); Milligan is an unusual writer who revels in his unusualness and intelligence and literary passions. His website is called Ineluctable Modality, which comes from a quote from Ulysses by…
6 March 2015
I’ve been blogging (sporadically at times) about comics for over 10 years now. A lot has changed in that time, such as the proliferation of the comic book movie, and so have my comic book habits. As I discussed when I praised libraries, I get a large part of my comic-book fix from borrowing collected editions, mainly due to the…
8 December 2014
Image ©Richard Davenport I’ve been reading the comic book adventures of Usagi Yojimbo – created, written and drawn by Stan Sakai – for over 20 years of the 30-year existence, so it was a delight to see a live-action play at the Southwark Playhouse. Like the books, the play is for all ages (from 7 years and up) and is the…
28 October 2014
As should be apparent from the fact that I blog about comic books I’ve read, I enjoy reading rather a lot (in both senses: I enjoy the act of reading very much and I enjoy reading an enormous number of books). I also enjoy reading legal copies of books – I believe that creators should receive payment for their hard…
25 September 2014
It took me a long time to visit the exhibition at the British Library, mainly because it was happening while I was in the process of moving house (and it was a complex and fraught move, but you don’t need to hear about that …), so I felt there was no rush to share my thoughts. Another reason was the…
23 August 2013
Power Pack #27, written by Louise Simonson, pencils by Jon Bogdanove, inks by Al Gordon, colours by Glynis Oliver, edits by Carl Potts, editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, published in 1986. I don’t want to use the phrase ‘Holy Grail’ to describe something rare and long sought because (a) I grew up Catholic and I don’t want to associate a positive thing…
11 August 2013
I get some press releases from comic book companies. Not many, but enough for them to be a regular feature in my inbox. I’m not sure quite how that happened – my email address has been harvested by a social media company that has been selling it on incorrectly to PR companies, but I don’t know if comic book companies’…