‘Creepy Comics 1’ (Dark Horse Books)

As a boy, if there was a minor operation to be had (and time off school afterwards) then you could bet that I’d be taking up a hospital bed somewhere. It wasn’t that I was particularly ill or anything, it was just that various small parts of me would need removing from time to time. That’s just the way it goes I guess. It goes without saying that the resulting time off school was always the best part, especially when a Grandparent would show up with comics for me to read while everyone else was in lessons :o)
One time while I was off the ‘Get Well Soon’ comic pile threw up an issue of ‘Scream’, a relatively short lived UK comic that I will always remember for a story about a tower block run by an AI that would systematically kill off everyone that threatened his residents. I think that may have been the moment I fell in love with horror comics…

This was a love affair that died spectacularly during my teenage years and was barely remembered when I got back into reading comics at college. The ‘Zombie World’ comics took care of that though and, more recently, so did ‘The Mammoth Book of Zombie Comics’ and ‘The Mammoth Book of Horror Comics’. I’m always after more horror in my comics though and the first collected volume of Dark Horse’s new ‘Creepy’ series (collecting issues #1 to #4) seemed like a great place to get my fix. Have you seen how much the older volumes of ‘Creepy’ are going for? Before I spend serious money on those (and it would be serious money) I thought I’d check out the latest stuff first. There was also the fact that I’m a sucker for Eric Powell’s artwork and this book is full of it. Having read the book, there’s definitely potential for future issues and I’ll probably be there to see how it all pans out. I’ll be hoping for stories that are more ‘hit’ than ‘miss’ though as that’s how I’d sum up Volume One…

If your comic book is called ‘Creepy’ then that’s making a serious statement of intent. Not only are you making promises on the quality of the content but you’re also hearkening back to the ‘Creepy’ of yesteryear, a series that was very well received back in the day. I guess the bottom line is that the revitalised ‘Creepy’ of today should have been called ‘Some of it is Creepy but there’s a lot of filler that isn’t’… I know that’s a long title for a comic book cover but sometimes you’ve got to be honest about these things.

‘Creepy Comics 1’ can be split into two halves. You’ve got the stories that are genuinely creepy, the stuff where the revelation sends a genuine shiver up your spine and you can’t get it out of your head. You also have the stories that forego these chills and set out to just plain shock you instead. Not creepy at all in other words.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal but a number of these stories don’t really shock at all. Neil Kleid’s ‘All the Help You Need’ has a great concept but the ending can be seen a mile off. It’s the same kind of issue with Mike Baron’s ‘Muscle Car’ but this tale takes a big step backwards when it decides to concentrate purely on the gore. Doug Moench’s ‘Pelted’ could have been something special but Angelo Torres’ art was far too plain and functionary to do it the justice it really deserves.

Braun and Haffner’s ‘Xchange’ though… That was the one story that set out to shock yet somehow ended up being quite creepy at the same time. I won’t spoil the ending, even though you can probably guess just how Hitler managed to escape Germany at the end of the war, I’ll only say that’s it very well handled and worth sticking around for.

It’s not just about the shocks though, thank goodness. ‘Creepy’ does show moments of real… well, creepiness and that’s what not only made the book one that I stuck with but ensured that I’ll check out future volumes.

I really want to see more along the same lines of Joe Harris’ ‘The Curse’ for a start; a genuinely unnerving tale of what ultimate power can do to the unprepared. It’s also a tale that introduces you to the darkness in everyone as well as making you question just what reality really is. ‘The Curse’ spans several issues of ‘Creepy’ but there are also one shots that do the job just as well. Take Joe R. Lansdale’s ‘Drawn Out’ for starters, a tale that really ratchets up the tension and has you wondering just how unlucky one man can be. Not that he didn’t deserve it… Andrew Foley’s ‘Fit for a King’ is another such tale, one that shows you what can happen when a cannibal chooses not to finish a meal… Michael Woods’ ‘Chemical 13’ marries horror all too well with the horror of the Nazi concentration camps and is more than ably drawn by Saskia Gutekunst. The collection signs off in just the right way with Andrew Mayer’s ‘Om Nom Nom’, a tale of the grotesquely cute that ends up being just plain grotesque in its creepiness. Lukas Ketner’s art really catches the tone of this piece perfectly.

There are more tales that are just as unnerving but I’ll let you find them for yourself. There is a lot of filler in this collection but when ‘Creepy’ hits the spot it does so in such a way that you won’t get those stories and images out of your head. I’d like ‘Creepy Comics 2’ to be more consistent in what it promises to deliver and I’ll be there to see if it makes good on that promise.

Eight and a Quarter out of Ten

Some cover art that caught my eye...

In case you were wondering where all the reviews are this week... I'm well and truly into 'A Dance With Dragons' at the moment (about four hundred pages in) so I'm sure you'll understand that there hasn't been time for much else! ;o) Thoughts so far? I wish they'd hurry up and get on with whatever they're going to do. It's not so much 'A Dance With Dragons', more like 'Dragons telling each other how strong the King is and why they can't fight him even though he's a little boy'... Oh yes, there's also lots and lots of detail about what people are eating; makes me hungry just reading it! There are flashes of brilliance but I thought the book would have taken off by now, I'm far enough in to keep reading though and the potential is there. I'll see how I feel in six hundred pages time...

I might be able to post a review (maybe two, we'll see...) before the end of the week. In the meantime, here are a couple of covers that have caught my eye over the last couple of days.

This one caught my eye in a reproachful way initially, gently reminding me that I still haven't read 'The Winds of Khalakovo'. Soon, I promise! Once the guilt was out of the way, I was able to fully appreciate what looks like a very crisp, fresh cover (Nightshade are good at coming up with these); even if I'm not a hundred percent convinced about the perspective employed on the front. I'd rather see what the guy is leaping onto personally. Pat loved 'The Winds of Khalakovo', anyone else read it?

It's like I was saying the other day... A cover doesn't necessarily have to be good just so long as it's eye catching. Some bright orange letters make sure this cover catches your eye, even if it took me a little while longer to work out what the rest of it was all about. Is this a cover that draws you in, asking you to make sense of it, or is it just badly drawn with some splashes of colour? I'm going for the former but it could just as easily be the latter... I'm not sure whether I'll give 'The Troupe' a go or not, still thinking about it.

And now it's back to the 'Dance' :o)

Audrey Niffenegger comes to Solaris for Magic anthology

From the Press Release...

International best-selling author Audrey Niffenegger is to pen her first ever story for a commercial trade anthology, after signing to Solaris’ forthcoming short story collection, Magic.


Solaris are proud to announce that Niffenegger, whose novel The Time Traveller's Wife has sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide, is to produce a story for the themed anthology of the occult and arcane, due for release in November 2012 in North America and the UK, in both paperback and ebook.

The story marks Audrey’s first ever appearance in any commercial trade anthology and is the third themed collection from Solaris editor-in-chief Jonathan Oliver. The previous critically-acclaimed anthologies include The End of the Line, which featured stories set on the Underground, and House of Fear, which rebooted the haunted house for the 21st Century. The titles garnered ecstatic reviews, with The Times describing End of the Line’s stories as “exceptionally good”.

“I'm delighted to be involved in this project,” said Audrey Niffenegger. “My story is called The Wrong Fairie and is about Charles Altamont Doyle. He was a Victorian artist who was institutionalized for alcoholism. He was also the father of Arthur Conan Doyle, and he believed in fairies.”

“It's really very exciting to be working with Audrey, whose novels The Time Traveller's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry show an author with a great talent for subverting genre norms and delivering the unexpected,” said Jonathan Oliver. “Audrey's story is sure to make a great addition to Magic.”

The line-up for Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane is set to include other high profile authors, including Richard and Judy Book Club-choice Alison Littlewood, NYT Bestseller Dan Abnett, and celebrated authors such as Christopher Fowler, Storm Constantine, Robert Shearman, Paul Meloy, Sophia McDougall, Will Hill, Gemma Files, along with new writers such as Sarah Lotz, Lou Morgan and Thana Niveau and more.

I'm not too bothered about the news as such, having never read any Audrey Niffenegger, but the news about the shape of Solaris' next anthology has got me excited. Solaris produce good anthologies you see... :o)

2012 World Book Night... Now with added SFF!

I didn't really pay much attention to World Book Night, last year, and only really caught the tail end of all the fuss and bother about there not being any SFF on the list. One year on and World Book Night has not only 'redeemed' itself a little bit by including SFF on the list but has showed that it knows what it's talking about by including 'Let The Right One In' and Iain M. Banks' 'The Player of Games'.

Having never read 'Let The Right One In' (any good?) this post is all about plugging 'The Player of Games'; it's been a long time since I read it but the twist in the tale has stayed with me all that time. A stunning work of SF as far as I'm concerned, maybe I'll read it for World Book Night...

Anyway... If you want to be a giver on World Book Night, or if you want to find out more about 'The Player of Games' then click on this Link and get going. I'll tell you now though, give it a read; you won't regret it :o)

‘Game of Thrones’ Episode One: ‘Winter is Coming’

What with one thing and another I never got round to watching the first season of ‘Game of Thrones’, I kind of figured that I’d read the books so wouldn’t be missing out on a huge lot… would I? On the other hand…The thing is, I’d always fancied checking out at least one episode; I’d really enjoyed the books and wanted to see how it all translated onto the small screen. Like that was ever going to happen though, I’d have to wait at least a couple of years for the box set price to drop and even then I’d still be way behind everyone else. Who knows, at that rate George might have even finished writing the series by the time I caught up with Season Three…(probably not but it’s not like I don’t have a heaving pile of books to get through in the meantime).

Then I saw this post and was off down to my local HMV in the time that it would normally take for Robert Baratheon to father another bastard child. I might still have to wait a little while for a cheap box set deal but the first episode should be enough to keep me going in the meantime.

Before we get started, is there anyone who hasn’t read the books? How about anyone who hasn’t seen the first episode of ‘Game of Thrones’? Really? I don’t believe that…;o)
Look, if you haven’t read the books or seen the show then you need to be aware that I’m not going to skirt round any spoilers; if I see one coming at the end of a paragraph then I’m just going full steam ahead. The season defining spoilers don’t come along until much later but even so, you’ve been warned.

The bottom line is that ‘Winter is Coming’ really worked for me, I’ve definitely got my eye on the box set now (even though I’ve read the books). Some of the CGI scenery is a little too obviously CGI (I thought the Direwolf pups looked fine myself) but when that’s the only thing wrong with the episode, well… you can’t complain really can you?

What we’ve got here is an episode that introduces us to the Seven Kingdoms, sets up all the players on the board and then has them jockeying for position while nasty stuff is starting to happen up North beyond the Wall. Those scenes in particular were superb as far as I was concerned, tense and shocking moments that held my attention straight away. The producers/directors (I can never tell the difference) are obviously not afraid to skimp on the blood and that is definitely in keeping with GRRM’s grim medieval world.

There’s only an hour to get all the initial stuff set up and so it’s inevitable that not everything will fit in. It seemed to me that events took precedence over characterisation although the main players do get a chance to shine. Peter Dinklage in particular shines as Tyrion Lannister.  When an actor replaces my own mental image of a character then I just know that they’ve done a good job. When I next read the books it will be Dinklage’s Tyrion that I see. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's Jaime Lannister was almost as impressive but looked a little too much like Prince Charming (‘Shrek 2’) for me to be totally convinced. Sorry, that’s just the way it goes sometimes. And just where is Rickon Stark? I couldn’t see him but that’s not saying that he wasn’t there. Help?

Like I said, all the main events (from the opening chapters of ‘A Game of Thrones’) are covered in enough detail that the viewer is left with a decent idea of who means what to whom and why certain events are still resonating down the years. You can see how certain events build up a good head of steam (poor Bran) that will carry things along nicely in terms of pacing. From what I could see of the scenery, Ireland looked like a good place to film Winterfell. Where were the Dothraki scenes filmed? That looked gorgeous as well.

Apart from a couple of ropey CGI moments, ‘Winter is Coming’ really kicked things off in fine style and promises good things for the rest of Season One. You probably all knew that already though ;o) Don’t expect to see me talking about the rest of Season One anytime soon as I’m waiting on that box set…

‘Millennium Falcon: Owner’s Workshop Manual’ – Ryder Windham, Chris Reiff and Chris Trevas (Del Rey)

Now I’m sure you’ve all been reading the blog long enough to know that I cover genre fiction here and not really anything that’s non-fiction. That’s just the way my preferences lie I guess, I want to lose myself in worlds of speculative fiction not have them stripped down and opened up for inspection. With this in mind then, why am I talking about the ‘Millennium Falcon Haynes Manual’…? A work of non-fiction arising from a fictional universe, that counts as non-fiction for me!

Star Wars and the Haynes Manual… An unlikely combination that has somehow awakened a severe bout of nostalgia in me. The ‘Star Wars’ element pretty much speaks for itself, I challenge anyone my age not to feel just a little bit nostalgic about the original trilogy (notice the important distinction there…) The Haynes Manual though… Well, that brings back memories of my very first car, a Mini that was older than I was, and the Haynes Manual that came with it. I’ve got to admit that I barely looked inside said manual (the stuff that happened to that car couldn’t be fixed by a mere manual!) but it was very much part of the whole ‘rites of passage, I don’t have to walk anywhere now that I have a car’ thing that crops up in everyone’s life. Two nostalgic things then, what happens when you put the two together? Put it this way, I wasn’t rushing to watch the films so I could see the Falcon in action. It wasn’t a bad read though, it made for a interesting hour or two.

If you’ve owned or read a Haynes Manual in your time then you’ll know the format which is basically an in depth look at where all the bits in your car are meant to go if they are to work properly. That’s what you’ve got here with the Millennium Falcon manual, a detailed guide to what is what and how it all works together to keep the ship moving. It’s not a hard format to stick to and the end result was that I felt like I was holding a proper manual instead of something based on a spaceship in a film. I couldn’t ask for a lot more than that and the authors take things a step further by going into a lot of detail, not only about the craft itself (I never realised that the Falcon had its own tractor beam projector…) but about the Corellian Engineering Corporation, the company that originally built the YT-1300 freighter. That’s a lot of information for fans, all accompanied by detailed schematics of the Falcon and its component parts.

The book definitely looks very good and there’s a lot of information inside for fans. The thing is though; it’s a tough one to get through, very tough in fact. You see, the thing about manuals is that they’re not really there to be enjoyed, a manual is there to give you information in order to get things working again. The authors succeed in adopting this tone, for the most part, although I did find myself wondering why the manual needed to include information on previous and current owners. What does that have to do with how the ship itself works? Sometimes though, the authors succeed in adopting this tone a little too well and the resulting material makes for dry reading to say the least. It’s the kind of book that a die-hard fan would love but a more casual fan might put down, after a while, because it’s so heavy going.

Having said that though, the ‘Millennium Falcon: Owner’s Workshop Manual’ did make for some nice nostalgic reading even if it ultimately wasn’t entirely for me. Before you pick this book up just ask yourself, ‘how much of a fan are you?’

Seven and a Half out of Ten

Reader of many books, finisher of none...

"I've been waiting for ages for this book and it's here! Time to start reading! A hundred pages later and... "Actually, this other book has been on the pile for ages, I really should give it a go..." A hundred and fifty pages later... "Why am I reading fantasy when it's horror that I'm really after, I'll check out this other book instead." Seventy five pages later and...

That's me at the moment; reader of many books and finisher of very few of them (I've got a couple ready for review but the number of partially read books outweighs this right now). Do you have this problem? I really wish I could settle on just one book at a time...

This post then is about some of those books that I've started and then put down to move onto something else entirely. This should give you an idea about what to expect over the next few weeks, if I ever finish them off...

'Neuromancer' - William Gibson

I put this one down thirty eight pages in when I realised that I wanted to read something where the air of cool felt natural instead of being so forced. What? Don't tell me you don't feel the same... Look, it's a re-read so the plan is still to go back and see if the actual plot is as good as I remember. I'll see if I still feel the same then.

'The Emperor's Knife' - Mazarkis Williams

I made it through all of thirty nine pages here when I realized that the book was just that little bit too bulky for commuting on the Jubilee Line. What I was really after was something smaller, probably a mass market paperback of some description. What I read though looked very promising indeed and it's not as if I'm commuting at the moment... :o)

'Brimstone Angels' - Erin Evans

I was really enjoying this 'Forgotten Realms' novel (I made it fifty four pages this time!) but wanted to read a couple of shorter works, for the blog, before my job ended. I'll be back into 'Brimstone Angels' before you know it :o)

'The Call of Cthulhu' - H.P. Lovecraft

If there was one lesson that I learned last year it's that a man can only read so much Lovecraft before all the stories (short and otherwise) blur into a squamous mass of tentacles and you can't tell the difference between 'The Picture in the House' and 'The Rats in the Walls'. I bailed out at page one hundred and seventy this time round, just as 'The Colour out of Space' was about to begin... A title like that means I will be back to find out more; I just needed to read something different.

'Giant Thief' - David Tallerman

You know what? I have no idea why I put this book down at page fifty one. Let me get back to you on that one...

'A Dance With Dragons' - George R.R. Martin

I know exactly why I put this book down (at the end of the first 'Tyrion' chapter)... It's simple, I wanted to read a book that I didn't have to do warm up exercises in order to be able to hold for any length of time! Don't get me wrong, I love reading 'door stopper' fantasies but damn 'ADWD' is heavy!

Would you like to see any of these books reviewed here? Would anyone care to hold 'Dance' for me while I read it...? ;o)