Post 100. 2009

With yesterday's Chateu Neuf du Pape still gnawing at my brain I present this, my 100th post. It's taken me a good long while to get here, but I hope it's provided at least a couple of folk with something fairly entertaining to read.

And so, I give you...

2009

As 2009 prepares to level up (marked by an iridescent cascade of booze and Jools Holland's ever tedious Boogy Woogy piano) I offer a quick and ill thought out look at what 2009 gave to my world.



Twitter

2009 is the year of Twitter. You could not conceive of a better illustration of the terrifying power of the internet than this simple, elegant and free web service.

It scares people, and it should.

This year has seen everything from regime change,  to journalistic practice and the Christmas Number One scorched, 140 characters at a time, by the focussed energy of a 'social network'.

This is a powerful thing, but it's so extremely versatile and has become the first thing I look at when I boot up my laptop. It's my 'hub' for chatting to friends, getting breaking news, catching up on comics gossip, reading scraps of fiction, writing a diary.

It's hard to define. It's everything and it's nothing, it's an empty vessel you can use for whatever purpose you can think of. It's the now and the future and as yet unsullied by the corrupting influence of big media business.

I love it. Join me.

Moon

My film of the year (although, to be fair, I've seen far fewer films than I normally do) was the low key and assured directorial debut of Duncan Jones, and I can tell you very little about it.

It's thoughtful sci-fi, haunting, sad and funny with an utterly compelling performance from Sam Rockwell. If you haven't yet seen it, please do so, but avoid reading anything else about it.

Trust me.

Raymond Chandler

I may be a little late to this party, but it seems that Raymond Chandler is a bit good and is definitely my writer of 2009.

The subject of a million parodies I've never read any of his novels until this year when a increase of noir in my diet and a loose book token prompted me to pick up The Big Sleep and I'm very glad I did.

Chandler writes solid, masculine fiction with blunt yet colourful prose that just plain connects with me. Read the following sentence without smiling, (it's impossible):

"the minutes went by on tip-toe, with their fingers to their lips" 

Exquisite.

Comics

2009 has been a great year for comics and a great year for my friends in comics. Really.

The Paper Jam Comics Collective have been collectively and individually productive and proactive and remain a great, great set of lads and lasses.

My mate Abby is picking up more colouring work and commissions, Adam's work is getting a lot more play and attention and Lee's drawing frikkin Batgirl.

And it's been a great year for the medium.

David Mazzucchelli produced a masterpiece with a study of character and symmetry with Asterios Polyp.

Writer of the year Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams have performed an amazingly dynamic facelift on Detective Comics.

And Darwyn Cooke has produced my book of the year with his adaptation of Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter.

It has been a fabulous year to be a comic geek.

...and last, but by no means least.

Alison

In February. By the power of pungent animal magnetism I managed to lure a beautiful, intelligent UKTV Food addict 150 miles north of the most basic creature comforts to the heavily-accented industrial wasteland that is Newcastle. She quickly stole the TV remote, bullied me into moving to a bigger house and proceeded to fill it with cushions.

She makes me happy every day.

Things to look for in 2010:

And to save on time, here's a few suspected highlights of next year.

1. The Radically Improved UK Plug

Apple, Sony or some other big money electronics producer are going to make a huge deal out an RCA Design Student's graduation piece.

And so they should, because it's ace.

2. Shutter Island

Martin Scorcese does horror and early word of mouth is crazy positive. This is a no brainer.

3. Proof of life on other planets

This is in the post, surely.

4. Me

I have plans for Twenty Ten. Some involve cooking, some involve dieting, but plenty more involve writing. It may not show on the blog, but I'm up to stuff, wish me luck.

And that's that.

Have a great New Years eve and may 2010 see you in health, wealth and happiness

Tea and sympathy

Been sick this week, which hasn't been pleasant. Throat sore, ears popping and generally knackeredness every time I tried to do anything. Which meant that I was forced to sip hot Ribena and watch Sky Movies on the sofa, fortunately, that bit was ok. Here's a couple of things I done sawed...

The Iron Giant is just about perfect. I knew this already, I guess, but must have forgotten. It's stunning; managing to be a love letter to 50's sci-fi, a treatise on paranoia and an amazingly rounded 'buddy comedy' all at the same time.

And the design of the whole film is amazingly slick. Do give it a watch.

The Incredible Hulk is better than I remember it, too. Great turns from Tim Blake Nelson and William Hurt as a brilliant, swaggering prick frame some very well conceived action.

Pick of the bunch being Tim Roth going all supersoldier on Hulky Pants, it really sells 'superpowers' in a way that the brilliant Iron Man film never had to leaving me genuinely excited for what's to come.

So that's that for now...

Oh, got a new blog up as well, should be updated every day I'm in work, it's called a prelude to tea and should be pretty self explanatory.

Things I have totally done...

Eventful week.

I have a rough, malleable, mental list of things I want to do in life.

Some are things I want to achieve, write comics, publish a novel, open a bar that you can't get into without naming three Grant Morrison comics (keep out the riff raff)... Others are things I just want to experience, jump out of a plane, go into orbit (Branson, pull your finger out), rob a bank, punch a tiger etc.

Managed a couple of the lower end experiences in the last six days.

1. Ride a horse.



Horse fact. 1: Horses are big. Really.

Organised by good friend and experienced rider Yvette, myself and a few hardy souls trekked out to a local equestrian centre and took and hour long, novice lesson in danger... I mean, riding.

It was pretty cool really, I feel I connected on an emotional level with my steed; Jimmy. So much so that he was perfectly comfortable taking a slash for a good minute and a half. It smelled.

2. Archery.



Man, I'm so rock and roll.

I must have had too much Robin of Sherwood in my diet as a kid but I've always had a passing fascination with bows and arrows, never shot one though, until last Thursday when, under the supervision of a bored, disinterested corporate events organiser I twanged the shit out of some bows.

It's harder than it looks. If you haven't done it, and get chance, really take care when you knock your arrow because what lazy, disinterested, crisp eating, corporate events organisers fail to tell you, is that if you don't line your arrow up on the string just so you'll miss the crap out of everything.

Great day though, rode a quad bike, and a rage buggy and that evening I got drunk at the free bar and had an argument about which is the worst turtle.

Although I'm clearly a more rounded, better human being thanks to these experiences, I really need to work on the harder end of my list in the coming months.

PS: Dear Paper Jam Comics Collective, I'm sorry I've missed the last few meetings, it's not you it's me. I should have something for the anthology and normal service will resume shortly.

New News!

Not really.

Saw Space Hulk in the flesh today and man it's sweet. Good thick cardstock and the models are beautiful, stunning bits of plastic, you even get a C.A.T., reports are it plays well too.

But is it £60's worth of sweet? When I've yet to buy Batman? And y'know furniture?

In other news, seems I got linked from the BBC website. Who'd have thought it?

Comics, murder and me

I was born in 1975 and I've always loved comics.

Always.

Part of it was the fantasy element so common in the form, I was always drawn to the fantastic in a way neither of my brothers or any of my family were. It was my thing.


Part of it was the violence they contained, if I'm honest. Fantasy and death has a great hold on a developing mind (something Games Workshop has known for decades).



But that was only a small part of it. Comic books, before I could read even, just connected with me; the idea of pictures making stories was completely natural, there were worlds between the panels and I sensed them, wanted to know it all.



This meant I'd pick up pretty much anything I could, lots of annuals, subscriptions to 2000AD, then Transformers uk with its many back-up strips, later the Megazine, Toxic, Aliens UK. Anything that fit the mold.



On my 13th birthday, 1989, I bought the Batman Year One TPB from a gift shop in Centre Parks which I'm sure they had stocked due to the Tim Burton Batman film. This was my first "Graphic Novel", far from the last.



I'd order them from a local Waterstones whenever I could, the usual suspects at first, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Clairemont's X-Men. For a while this was the only way I could get hold of American comics.



This is until a dedicated comics shop, Arcadia Comics, surprisingly opened in nearby Ashton Under Lyne. This must have been 1991, 92' as it coincided with my first part time job.



This is the first place I bought monthly comics (on a weekly basis) I had a 'pull list', bought long boxes, I'd later understand how interesting a time it was for comics in general.



The speculator boom was in full swing, Image comics had just launched and the notion of superstar creators was completely new to me. Exciting too (around this time I convinced myself I'd be a professional comic book artist one day). Surfing this wave of cash and optimism a lot of great comics were happening, hidden between the chromium foil and die-cut covers.



Amongst the new imprints and publishing houses were some real gems; DC's Milestone line consistently told rock solid stories with a genuine social conscience, the Jim Shooter helmed Valiant, a superhero universe with an epic sense of scale and a tightly reigned continuity and Vertigo were coming into their own with their more or less 'adult', literate sensibilities.



And, for the first time I get a sense of a larger 'comic book community' that people other than me were passionate about them. I'd read the letter's page in Comics International and even made it to my first convention, UKCAC 93, in distant London (with my Dad).



This was a long time before the internet existed in a publicly accessible form and the only place I could really talk comics was the shop.



Ron, the owner, was a cliche. Overweight, grumbling, balding, perpetually bagging people's standing orders. But he would chat and did put me onto a lot of books, Grendel, John Buscema Conan, the odd one-shot I'd miss or never consider.



My mum would go in at Christmas or my Birthday and get a surprise which he'd advise on. To be honest, I think he unloaded a bit of stuff he couldn't otherwise sell this way, but it left me with some interesting oddities.



Then. I drifted out of it. I'm not sure exactly when, end of college, start of university, '95 ish. But I stopped buying comics from Arcadia, I'd still get the odd TPB for my Birthday, but for a few years that was it. My roving geek eye had decided that films and film making were for me and I took a degree in Television production at Manchester Metropolitan University.

I didn't enjoy University much, there was the odd highlight, the odd lass and a lot of hard work. I left with a first class honor's degree and (thanks to some great teaching) a belief in myself as a fiction writer and a solid grasp of what that means in a professional context.

I made corporate and educational films for a couple of years before chancing my arm as a freelance writer in the games industry, I had one job, for the now defunct ATD who soon employed me as a Games Designer. I love games, too, but that's really a different story.



Here I was surrounded by geeks with a diverse set of passions, including comic geeks like myself. But with no local comic shop my habit simmered, buying the odd TPB from bookshops and borrowing a few more from friends.



It would take a near collapse of the British games industry (ATD and then my next employer Acclaim going into liquidation, amid many more nationally) before I fell off the weekly comics wagon. 2005, no games work anywhere, I'd moved back in with my parents and taken an admin job at an exam board after a period of pretty soul destroying unemployment.



Arcadia had moved but still existed (I think, although I may be confusing this with an earlier visit back home), Ron was selling a lot of second hand computer games these days but it was a shop on the decline. I recognised a fair bit of stock on the walls from my previous patronage.



But my job placed me in central Manchester each day, and I discovered Traveling Man comics, a light, airy store that was on my route home (if I made the right detour), I started picking up a TPB a week, then frequenting their weekly comics night, made some good friends and fell right back into it.



Not for the first time, my love of comic books had done me some good, My job felt like a real step backwards and I found it hard living with my folks again (great though they are), but the comics night got me back into writing for pleasure and helped me suffer the grind of applying for more games jobs.



Then, while at work in April 2007 I read some shocking news. Arcadia's owner Ron, full name Ronald Castree, had been accused (the later convicted) of the 1975 murder and sexual assault of school girl Lesley Molseed. Which through the one of the most infamous miscarriages of British justice led to the wrongful conviction of Stefan Kiszko, a simple man who suffered sixteen years of incarceration, harassment and abuse, until his conviction was overturned. Kiszko died two years later, his mother, who had always protested her son's innocence, died four months after that.

Since his conviction, a lot of other details about his life, and how he treated his family have come to light. it makes for sickening reading, this man has destroyed many, many lives.

Over a lifetime, a lot of us will find ourselves in contact with someone who does terrible things, I'm fortunate that this is as bad as it's got for me, no one I know was hurt and my acquaintance with the guy was passing, but it strangely tarnishes something that's very much part if my life. Comics.

Thinking back is a strange feeling, I don't like that my love of comics brought my mum and some of my friends into contact with the him, I don't like that a lot of the first money I ever earned went into his till and I don't like that I can't look at a couple of long boxes, or a few images on this page even, without thinking of a child abusing murderer.

Ron Castree will live out his life in small brick rooms, disowned by his family, suffering daily abuse and indignity.

I'll always love comics and hope my life is never tainted, in no matter how small a way, by his like again.

Cool Stuff This Week [August 21 2009]

Man, this planet be lousy with the cool stuff.

So... what've we got.

Batgirl Issue 1


So. The bat books are kicking arse right now, I've already bored folks with my unapologetically glowing opinion of Batman and Robin, 'tec is a master class of dynamically balanced form and content and Batgirl, well, Batgirl is simply a pleasure.

It's Spiderman, it's Invincible, it's of a noble tradition of four colour heroes who don't quite know what they're doing. A kid going out at night kicking arse and struggling with the mundane pressures of life the rest of the time.

This is good, solid comics, well written and well drawn. Check it.

Squares

Newcastle's finest indie pop collective. Squares. Fronted by friend of the show and all round talent Daniel Clifford launched their latest album not a fortnight ago and I was fool enough to miss it. Squares are an oddity, art rocker pop designed to make you smile, the musical equivalent of a cup of sweet tea, served with TWO bourbon biscuits.

And what's wrong with that?

In other news.

SPACE HULK

Goddamn it. Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.

Cool Stuff This Week [August 9 2009]

A quick one.

So, the Batman Arkham Asylum demo dropped on Xbox Live and it's pretty choice. Clear, simple mechanics (rather gymnastic hide and seek interspersed with punching folks faces off), no pretensions of open world play (well defined 'level boundaries') and a lot of effort in the polish (Paul Dini script, nicely acted and delivered)

It feels like you're hunting folk down, which was undoubtedly the design intention. Lovely.