tin_robot wrote:

China Mieville's new take on Dial H for Hero (plain "Dial H" in the new incarnation) is delightfully weird so far.  Feels kind of like Morrison's old Doom Patrol run so far - too early to tell if it'll develop a coherent plot, or just remain bizarre, but either way I plan to stick with it a bit longer to find out.  (Speaking of Morrison's Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo's been out for a while now as a TPB - if you haven't read it, then do.)

Wait, he's done a comic now?

And if it's good ol' China then it'l just get even more bizarre as it goes on.

I got round to reading Marvel Zombies. fuck me it's bleak. Think the story ran out of real ideas for the living element too, which was really disappointing.

I need more self contained stories. Suggestions gratefully received.

The Filth
Batman: Hush
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman: The Dark Knight
Batman: Long Halloween
All Star Superman
Superman: Red Son
Watchmen
V for Vendetta
The Ballad of Halo Jones

Also get the complete Sam & Max just because

Also Sas if youv've not read Scott Pilgrim i'm not sure why as it is pretty much right up your alley.

Actually yeah, sas, by self contained do you mean 'one shot TPB' or like Bollockoff has suggested, a series that is now finished? If it is the latter then I can make more recommendations like The Invisibles.

Olimite wrote:

Hated the Invisibles.

Me to, a tad to messy/crazy for me.

Finished From Hell a few months back as it was on the list, enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than I thought I would, fooking great.

TPB is a trade paper back, so it'll contain a run of comics in a book form. I'm actually making things worse with that quote because a 'graphic novel' is written expressly as one volume whereas a comic like All-Star will have been printed in strips by DC and then collated into TPBs.

Check our DMZ, its pretty good

They're cute until they piss on something so maybe i've not got to the bit of The Invisibles piss on something.

I've been reading through Guy Delisle's series of travelogues recently.  Delisle is a french-canadian animator who has found himself travelling the world both with his own work, and with his wife's (who works for Medecins Sans Frontieres).  He's written up his travels in separate comics relating to the destination - Shenzhen (China), Pyongang (North Korea), Burma and Jerusalem.  Autobiographical comics about destinations that feature in the news are getting to be something of a cliche, but Delisle's stuff feels slightly different to the others.  For starters, he's often not necessarily interested in the country he's visiting.  He's not there to write a comic, or to expose injustice, he's just there.  Which makes for a remarkably different tone to most of these things.  Equally much of the time he's stuck at the periphery of things.  It is, frankly, more representative of the experience you or I might have, albeit with more attention to detail than I'd muster.

Which doesn't always make for great reading.  Shenzhen, the first of the books, is in truth a little dull.  It's a diary of one bloke's frustrated boredom as much as it is a tale of China.  Things pick up with Pyongang - Delisle is as bored, but this time he's genuinely captive, and so entertains himself by gently pushing at the boundaries of the fake world he's been forced to occupy.  There are no amazing revelations - no-one breaks down and confesses that North Korea is an evil dictatorship.  But it's fascinating none the less.



By Burma, he's following his wife, and has brought their child along, and we're introduced to the politics and intricacies of his wife's work with an NGO, and the hassles of raising a small child in a foreign dictatorship.  And finally on to Jerusalem where his approach proves surprisingly enlightening.  He remains throughout an almost disconnected observer, running a commentary, but often willing to admit that he doesn't really understand what he's commenting on.  (Particularly in Jerusalem where, being atheist, he becomes increasingly bewildered by the actions of jews, christians and muslims alike.)

Anyway, a good read if you can pick them up somewhere.

Bollockoff wrote:

My interest is piqued. Looking at them on Amazon and should be a purchase next pay day.

I have, for a variety of reasons, a spare copy of Jerusalem.  It's yours if you want it.  (If you like it, you can always donate the cover price to Medecins Sans Frontieres if you feel so inclined...)

I am indeed in the UK - the charity seemed appropriate given the book's content.  PM me your address and I'll try and get it out to you as soon as I get vaguely organised...

A shot of some lovely ladies that impressed upon me at Kapow! Thought why not post them here.

Read Alan Moore's latest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen at the weekend.  It's the final part in the "Century" arc, taking place in 2009.  As before there's quite a lot of pleasure to be derived simply from spotting cultural references ranging from the obvious, to the moderately obscure.  There were, for me at least, a couple of laugh out loud moments as well.

However...  It's starting to feel like Moore's chief ambition in life is to be on the next series of "Grumpy Old Men".  It's kind of hard to argue with the general thrust of his argument - that modern culture's vacuous, and empty, that it doesn't hold a candle to what came before it.  But the glee with which he populates the comic with the same said pop culture highlights seems to undermine it.  Yes, Harry Potter is underdeveloped and infantile, but the ultimate weapon used to dispatch our ill formed antichrist, whilst genuinely hilarious, is every bit as facile. 

Which means it all starts feeling a bit muddled, and I spent the whole thing not entirely convinced what point Moore was trying to make, other than "it were much better in the old days".  Perhaps that's what LoEG has always been about...