By Warren Ellis and Gianluca Pagliarani This might be a week late, but I wanted to talk about Ellis' graphic novella from Avatar (under his Apparat label), Aetheric Mechanics. The basic premise is Ellis' version of Sherlock Holmes – this is a good thing: I remember an Ellis-written draft of…
As I've got older, I'm reading more non-fiction for pleasure than I used to – I always thought I was a fiction-only chap – which includes more autobiographies/memoirs; for example, I've recently been enjoying Andrew Collins' books. The interesting thing about reading biographies is the differences in writing style and…
I've seen most of the comedians who had an impact on my burgeoning enjoyment of comedy in a live setting – I saw Ben Elton while he was still funny, I saw Rik & Ade doing Bottom on stage, I saw Newman & Baddiel (although not in the notorious Wembley…
Mega-City Comics (I've used the hyphen based on the shop sign), named after the cities in Judge Dredd, has been around for over 20 years, selling comics from its location in Camden to the huge number of people who come to visit the market. When I was a younger man…
Wonder Woman #1–4 and Annual #1 by Allan Heinberg and Terry & Rachel Dodson Wonder Woman, the DC-mandated component of the 'trinity' of DC superheroes with Superman and Batman, suffers from not having a consistent concept throughout. From the early days of bondage Wonder Woman of William Moulton Marston, through…
How do Marvel solve a problem like the Hulk? A fondly remembered television series, a film by a renowned arthouse director, and a character on t-shirts and lunchboxes and underpants. But is the character himself worth effort? The film critic Mark Kermode calls him a character who essentially doesn't work,…
The Spirit #1–6 and Batman/The Spirit by Darwyn Cooke and Jeph Loeb & Darwyn Cooke Confession time – I haven't read any of the original issues of The Spirit by Will Eisner. Being versed a little in comic book history, I am aware of the character obviously (and not just…
Do you have a demarcation in your comic book tastes? By this I mean, can you split the books you buy into different categories? For me, I can distinguish between the comics designed to entertain and amuse, and the comics that are about being more serious, more adult, more heavy.…
For Christmas, my lovely girlfriend got me a Marvel calendar – a lovely gift, with each month highlighting a different Marvel hero or villain or team. At the side of the diary section, there is a classic cover with an introduction to the character (for those who don't know anything…
I'm not the sort of fan who feels so passionately about something that I could come up with the infamous remark from the Star Wars fan who, on coming out of The Phantom Menace, said, 'George Lucas raped my childhood' (apocryphal though it may be). It's only fiction, after all,…