Last of the bookcase

All the books are packed away, four bookcases full. A lot of the most treasured books and comics are definitely ocming with me - I can't live without having my Nth Man handy - but the vast chunk of them are going into storage, and the boxes full of 2000ads and Vertigo comics from under the bed are already there.

All that is left to pack away is these eight books, and if all the rest somehow vanished, this would be a good place to start. A book devoted to the wonder of Charles Schulz, four different David Lynch/Twin Peaks things, the single best collection of DC art comics collected in the 21st century, and the World Of Ice and Fire for when I get by the sudden urge to read up on Sothoryos. And Iain Sinclair's Lud Heat, which I have never read in order, because where is the fun in that?

The Monarch is fucking right!

I dunno, it's been years since Game of Thrones ended now, and every time I see an article - one that somebody was actually paid to write - that just assumes that everybody in the entire world was disappointed in the final season, I turn into the Monarch when Dr Girlfriend said she didn't watch that stupid show, and start raging that it was spectacular!

I gotta get over it - and come to terms with the idea that other people don't think a lack of dialogue is a feature, not a bug - but sometimes it feels like it's everybody else that keeps picking at that scab and making me bleed again.

All the X-Men: Kitty Pryde is a jerk!

I bashed through all the Claremont X-Men issues for the first time recently - going from Giant Sized X-Men #1 to the end of Inferno - and it was weird to read the whole thing in order, instead of the bits and pieces I could pick up when my X-addiction was at its heights.

I learned a few new things, especially when reading comics that were published just before I started really collecting X-Men, and fully realising how important the strengths of the regular artists. But there is also one sad, inescapable conclusion that I came to, and that's that Kitty Pryde really is an absolute jerk. 

Of course I thought she was wonderful when I first started reading X-Men. She was a bit older than I was, sassy as heck and a completely normal girl who also happened to be a ninja. She could beat you down the video arcade, get out of scrapes that would defeat every other X-Man, and had really great hair (exceptional hair when Alan Davis got involved).

But reading the X-saga now, with all the prejudices and complaints of a 40-something dude, Kitty comes across as an absolute pain in the arse. She brings the perkiness to a truly obnoxious degree, but is also an.entitled little shit in her dealings with the New Mutants, forever relgating them to the b-team, because she's the nerd who is too cool to hang with her inferiors.

By the time we get the fifth speech about bigotry delivered with all the fervor and logic of a 14-year-old, you're left wishing that Professor X had been more stringent and moved her to the X-Babies. 

You still feel terrible for her when the Marauders fuck with her molecular cohesion and she is finally forced to leave the group, and the Shadowcat who became a vital part of Excalibur might be the best version of the character, with all the youthful vigor, but far less brattiness.

I'm a hell of a lot older than Kitty now, and feel a little creepy slagging off a teenage girl like this, even if she is fictional. But she really was the absolute worst.

Rogue was the best. 'Nuff said!

Singing it as loud as I can

The lovely wife turns 40 today, and all that is truly good in my life has come from the moment she walked in late on the first day of journalism class in 2004. We've gone around the world and seen some things, and have made two new humans together that are a constant source of joy. Nothing else matters, compared to that.

Happy birthday, squishalicious!

EC Comics in space!

I have never strayed too much from the horror comics when it came to the classic EC magazines. I appreciate the crime and the pirate stuff, and some of the war comics are impeccable, but it's the rotting ghouls, with their fetid breath etched in ink as they close in on their deserving victims, that was the good stuff. 

And I never really dug the science fiction .They had moments of artistic brilliance - the one story that had the hard-nosed space commander finally going soft, literally, is an unmatched nightmare image - but most of the comics were just too repetitive.

There were only so many times that an alien race turned out to be massive, or incredibly tiny, when they meet humans face to face; only so many times the Earth could be wiped out by alien happenstance and human idiocy. And there were only so many times they could do stories about hard it was to do these stories on a regular basis.

The designs for the aliens and the spacecraft were always impeccable, as crammed as they are onto the page. It took me years to realise the best way to read EC stories with a modern eye is to ignore the oppressive caption boxes completely, and now I resent them for crowding out the art by eternal talents like Orlando and Wood.

The one exception I would make is for the issue of Weird Science-Fantasy that is devoted to a pretty fucking comprehensive 'Flying Saucer Report'. The documentary format of this issue, which features real life encounters with UFOs in recent years, also has some lovely saucer action from the usual stellar roster of artists.

And the best part is the tone of the issue, which is a pure tirade blaming the government and the Air Force and anybody in power for covering up the truth about alien visitations, heckling them in the pages of this funny book.

Okay, so the Roswell thing really probably was a weather balloon, but we never got those answers this comic was demanding, and the mysteries are just as deep as they were 50 years ago. There is a sinking sense of reality in the idea that if the last idiot president didn't blurt out the truth, there's no truth to share. At least the rage of the EC crew is still palpable.

No better than a stick

There are these tiny little moments when you're a young kid that are, looking back, extraordinarily profound on a personal level. Moments of absolute clarity and existential truth, hitting you like a metaphysical anvil on the skull.

Like when you really get your head around the concept of death, or that your parents are actual flawed human beings; or that you need to work for the rest of the life just to live.

Or when you realise that as much as you appreciate comic book art and will spend your whole life chasing after it, you're absolutely fucking rubbish at doing it yourself.

It's almost fortunate that I came to this realization early, in my first or second year of schooling. I had been capable of drawing a mean stick figure - and I still rate my stickmen - but bulking that out into a whole second dimension just wasn't right.

I tried so hard, but my figures always bulged in the wrong places, and looked like absolute grotesques. Never mind perspective or anything like that, I couldn't draw a fucking nose.

One of the many great lines in Withnail and I is when Uncle Monty laments that there is nothing as crushing for an actor as knowing you will never play the Dane. Well, I was six years old when I figured out I'd never be able to draw like Brian Bolland or Jim Aparo.

It was a fairly fucking heavy realisation, to have at that age, and I can still remember the exact moment, what classroom I was in when it really hit home. Moments like that do tend to stick in the brain.

I still kept doing art classes until I was 12 or so, and I did keep at it, but the results were uniformly terrible, and I moved on. 

It never put me off following hundreds of different artists - to this day, the main reason I buy a new comic book is the artist, rather than the writer. And I never felt jealous of my friends who could do it, and was always just in awe. I've got friends publishing minicomics that are just amazing, and I absolutely encourage that kind of thing as much as humanly possible, because doing art is good for you.

But don't ask me to try and draw anything anymore. I know my limitations, and have known them for quite some time now.

Walt Simonson's Star Wars (part 2 of 2)

 

The Force was so strong in Simonson.

Do you have it in you in make it epic?

I'll ride or die for Mad Max 2 until the day I fall victim to the white-line nightmare, but this just became the only movie in the world I have to see right now.

I can not tell you how happy it makes me that they keep the Australian accents.

Toxic masculinity at the film festival

Back in my old life, back before 'keeping my young children alive' became my one and only priority, film festivals were a big fucking deal in my life. I would look forward to them every year, and there was always one movie that was instantly an obvious must-see.

And I remember once in the 90s, telling my mates that the one film that had all the buzz this year was this thing called In The Company Of Men and we all had to go check it out. And while it was a pretty good film, I still feel bad about that forced recommendation, because man, those guys in that film are such complete cunts.

It's well made, of course. Neil LaBute is an extremely talented writer, and the actors are absolutely terrific - it was the first time I ever saw Aaron Eckhart use that massive jaw for sinister effect, and I still wonder how the wonderful Stacy Edwards didn't become a superstar.

But the main characters are such utter shitheads, playing bullshit juvenile power games that can really harm people, and nobody had a good time watching that. Nobody in my group of friends anyway. They all agreed that it was worth seeing, but it was a fucking downer of a way to spend a Friday night, and I also couldn't quite shake the feeling that my insistence that we all had to see it was the same sort of entitled toxic masculinity the movie was ripping into.

There's been so many films about these kinds of cunts since then, and it's never stopped being depressing how many dickhead alpha bros see them as a guidebook, not a warning. But this sort of movie is still essential, because the world does, unfortunately, need constant reminders about why these people are so shitty. But they're not the sort of thing you should ever force anybody to watch.