Batman: So much black and white

I lost track of the monthly continuity of the big superhero universes a long time ago, but now I can't even keep track of how many groovy short story collections there are, or even how many black and white Batman comics exist.

There is a flood of black and white anthologies at the moment, often with an added colour (usually red), but DC have been publishing B+W Batman tales in special anthology mini series and back-ups since the 1990s, and every now and then I find a new collection of them that I genuinely had no idea existed, even though it's full of great writers and fantastic artists like JH Williams III, Greg Smallwood, Emma Rios, Kelley Jones, Nick Derrington, Sophie Campbell and many, many more.

I got a 2020 one from the library the other day, and it was full of stories I'd never seen before. Most of the writing was just a bit obvious, but there is also a beautiful array of these modern artists, letting their freak fly. I should ignore all the colour comics more often.

Comics of future past: The Best of 2000ad Monthly

I was born just a little too late to be in on 2000ad from the start. I was only two years old when it began, and even though I was reading it from a young age, I wasn't that ahead of the game.

The first ones I remember reading were three years into the comic's existence - Fiends of the Eastern Front was slightly too intense for my young brain - and I was reading it regularly by the time I was eight. But even then, I knew there had been years of thrill-power before that, and I had access to absolutely none of it.

And then the reprints started showing up everywhere, and I read all of the Judge Child Quest and the Apocalypse War in the Eagle reprints - the ones with the excellent covers, surprisingly solid color work and some effort to make it fit the dimensions of a new page.

But most of my slightly historical thrills came in the pages of The Best of 2000ad Monthly, which was just all killer and no filler. You'd get dozens and dozens of pages of of golden age Strontium Dog and Nemesis The Warlock and DR & Quinch, with some of the truly great Dredd stories - the issue that reprinted every part of the Judge Death Lives, while also giving us some relatively non-racist Robo-Hunter, was truly something to behold

It was the single most exciting comic I'd ever seen in my life. So much concentrated thrill-power in so many pages. It can't have been good to me, creating expectations in my comic thrills that have never been seen again. I was getting regular Bolland and McMahon and Gibbons and Ezquerra and Fabry and all the greats, I literally did not know how lucky I was.

It would take me a long time to get all those older issues that I missed out on, I only became Seto Thargo a few years back. So I have all those reprinted stories in their original form, but I'm also grateful that I got to read them in such a condensed form.

Each issue of the Monthly was three times as expensive as the regular prog, but was well worth the $1.65. It was quite possibly the best bang for my buck I've ever had in comics, and one I'll never have again. That level of thrill-power remains rare.

In dreams, I talk to you

Despite hundreds of books and essays on the subject, nobody really understands how dreams work, even though we all have them, all the time. 

I don't know why they happen, I don't know what is happening in our minds when we dream this stuff, I don't understand them at all. But I do know I have three kind of dreams these days. 

The first is the vast majority of them, which are the ones that instantly fade when I wake up, with residual nonsense images already disappearing from my mind. Strange people and unlikely events that are gone in seconds, even if I try to hold onto them. 

There's been a couple of times I've written the greatest book or movie script ever written in a dream, and it seems so obvious, and then it's swiftly gone in the morning. Some dreams stick around in the memory for years, but the vast, vast majority of them are already gone by the time I get out of bed.

The second type of dream is one where I am glad to wake up, because they are so horrible, or so terrifying, or just really, really annoying. I dream about car crashes and losing loved ones, and those type of dreams have certainly got more intensive since I became a parent, because I know what the worst thing in the world could ever be.

I also have dreams of my teeth crumbling to dust in my mouth, and being on planes that are going down among the high-rises of a city, and being late for vital appointments. I wake with relief, and also the lingering existential shits about how easily my whole world could turn to shit, but mainly relief. 

The third dream is one that I hate to wake up from, because it's such a good time. For most of this life this wasn't something normal like getting close and personal with some crush, or winning the lottery, or going on a magnificent holiday, it was finding a hidden stash of lost 2000ads, or a treasure trove of Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest books. I would even think about how glad I was that I wasn't dreaming in the dream, as I pull out a digest-sized collection of Martian Manhunter comics by Alan Moore and Gil Kane. 

These days, now that I've clocked up a half century of life on this fucked up world, I don't have these kinds of strong feelings about old comic books, although I'm always glad to stumble upon some Bolland Strontium Dog that only exists in my head. 

Now I'm far more likely to wake with regret when I meet people I have loved and lost over the years, and get to talk to them, and hear their voice, and even though I know it's a dream and I'm not talking to my dear, old Dad, it's as close as I get, and I get to tell him about the grandchildren he never met.

Those dreams still break my heart, but they're still the only place I get to have a cup of tea with my Nana, or sink a beer with one of my uncles, so I still cherish them. Those sorts of dreams I never forget. Those sorts of dreams I never want to.

Mazeworld: To exit from the maze is to be reborn

- Mazeworld Book One: The Hanged Man 

Art by the extraordinary Arthur Ranson 

Words by Alan Grant

Letters by Ellie De Ville

The depths of human stupidity can always be plumbed further

- One of my favourite caption boxes of all time. It's from a Judge Dredd story, obviously - one of the 1980s annual stories by Wagner/Grant - but I also find it to still be extremely pertinent on a daily basis.

Flash Gordon: He'll save every one of us!

Queen's Greatest Hits album was the first actual LP record I ever bought with my own money, and one time at a pub quiz I proved I was the biggest Queen nerd in the room by easily naming 10 of their albums (this was before the movie, when their music found whole new audiences).

But if I had a ray gun to my head and was asked to name the best Queen album ever, I would almost definitely pick the Flash Gordon soundtrack. 

It's certainly the one I've listened to the most, on long road trips in my car, or as background noise in the house. I bought the cassette tape from the DEKA store in Timaru in 1989, and still have that tape, and it still sounds totally rad. There is a particular appeal in soundtracks that are composed entirely of one rock band's efforts - the Young Fathers' music in 28 Years Later being a prime recent example - but nobody ever did it better than Queen.

It's almost a musical - the scintillating riffs spliced with judicious use of dialogue, and you can easily follow the story of Flash and Dale and their pals overthrowing the evil Emperor.  I never get sick of hearing General Kala's dispatching of War Rocket Ajax to bring back Flash's body.

It's also got a terrific wedding march - I listened to it on the day I got married to get the blood pumping - and some moody, long bits of ambient dreaminess as they sail through the void, with the occasional thudding drums pushing through to remind us of the emergency.

And above all, the thumping, soaring theme song - with that insistent, pounding bass, and the plaintive wailing for someone, anyone, to save the world.  

I've listened to all of Queen's albums to various degrees over the years, but the Flash soundtrack is still the one I want to listen to the most. It's great for listening to during a long writing session, and it's even better when I've got nothing more to do than lie back and listen, and let Queen take me to another world.

House of the Dragon: There are no sides

Now that the thoroughly excellent Dunk and Egg TV show has finished its limited run, the publicity machine is already kicking in for the the third season of House of the Dragon, which is only a few months away.

Unfortunately, it looks like the people who sell that TV show are ignoring the complex and loud subtext of the story and are sticking with a 'whose side are you on?' theme. And that is bonkers to me, because it's missing the entire point of the thing.

With all the fictional reference books about the history of Westeros and the world in exists in, there are a thousand weird stories to tell about the people who live on that world. The Dance of the Dragons isn't particularly one of my favourites, but it is still an intense and stylish show. 

But it is properly annoying when a pop-up ad on some news website demands to know if I'm for the Greens or the Blacks, and I do find it somewhat offensive, because that's the kind of thinking that sparked this fictional war and the infinite carnage and untold misery caused by some cunts who think they deserve to rule the land. 

Both sides in the Dance of the Dragons have some despicable and nasty people doing things in their names, and both sides have innocents, and both sides are full of good people forced to do what they can for the survival of their families.

It's these complexities, these details, that make the vast brushstrokes of this story so vivid. And it's certainly not dependent on whose side you are on. If you're not on the side of the smallfolk and other innocents, it doesn't matter who you support. 

They're all monsters. They're all dragons.

Aprils Fool's Day: Always a day behind the bullshit

I've always hated April Fool's Day. Right from the start - I hated getting tricked as a kid. I thought it was dumb.

I particularly hate April Fool's Day now as a journalist, because even with all the evidence you can gather, you ultimately have to trust people at their word, and can be severely fucked if they go back on it, and there is just one day in the year where you can not trust any motherfucker.

And I very much hate it in the internet age, because I have been tricked a number of times on April 2, when people on the other side of the world are still playing the fool, while the rest of us have moved on.

Who is more foolish - the fool, or the person being fooled? It's the fucking fool.

Project Hail Mary: You look pretty good down here

Project Hail Mary is a movie about how the need to help other people is a universal constant, even if those people look like rocks and don't have a face, and that's just the kind of message I need to hear more often right now. And judging by the audiences it is getting, I'm not the only one.

It's grim times around the world, and I see people doing the most abhorrent things to their fellow humans on a daily basis. You don't even have to be a full-time doom-scroller to see how nasty people can get out of there, with violence and brute ignorance running rampant.

So any kind of film that offers something resembling hope is always welcome, no matter how fantastical. (I mean, I could handle the science fiction of the interstellar engine drive and such, but was taken aback from frequent assertions that all the nations of the world were working together to solve this problem.)

I am also in the mood for stories that don't feature being dicks or arseholes or bullies, because I don't care about these fucking dolts, even though the rules of English fiction dictate that all bullies must face justice at some point. And like The Martian, there isn't anybody like that here, and it's so damned refreshing.

Dickheads are the easiest way to generate conflict in a story - creating drama through selfishness and meanness - but I still truly believe in my heart that people want to help each other when we get the chance, and we should pay little heed to those who insist otherwise. 

And a movie with no bad guys other than the cruel indifference of the universe - where nobody is being a dick just because they can, just because the story needs it - is the type of movie I really needed right now.

Also this film has sad karaoke, and if you really want to get into the proper depths of human feeling, you can do it with sad karaoke.