Game of Thrones: Everybody's a general now

"Yeah, I know, I see where you're coming from, but all I want is some analysis of the way the last half hour of this huge climactic battle had literally five lines of dialogue, and summed up a sprawling and complex and intense saga with almost no talking, relying on mute characterisation, a thrilling score and outrageous spectacle in a way I've literally never seen on screen before, and all I can find instead is endless 'they put the trench behind the troops! LOL!' takes."

- Another thing I said to a real person abut Games of Thrones today, and I still can't fucking believed my face remains un-stabbed.

Game of Thrones: At Zenith point

'Look, all I'm saying is that a story where things get progressively worse and worse, and all hope is finally snuffed out, and it's all getting horrifically awful by the minute or page, and then, when things are at their very darkest, everything turns out okay, and everybody gets to go home again, those are my kind of stories.'

- Something I said to a real person about Game of Thrones today, and for some reason, she didn't stab me in the face for it.

'The Hitch-Hikers Guide to The Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book'

Glunklegrumph, slurplurg, snuggle flitch, grungefuthock, oomfslup, flimphlesnook, aargh glumf, eeklphlurge and poofle shnuk.

This one is for Dan

They still got the Outlander poster up at the Majestic

When I went back home recently, I had to check to see if the glass display case at the movie theatre which turned into a video store which turned into nothing was still showing posters from the classic viking/alien movie Outlander and Steve Soderburgh's Che, because if they were, it's the longest any movie posters has ever been on display in the city of Timaru, and I fucking love the fact that it's Outlander and Che.

Oh yeah, they're still there. That's brilliant.

God bless you, Ms Kondo

I don't subscribe to the minimalism aesthetic espoused by people like Marie Kondo - I'm here to build my own library, and it's one that is fucking full of joy - but I'm so grateful for what she's doing.

Secondhand bookstores are my favourite kind of stores, and have been slowly dying for decades. A large part of the readership have gone fully digital, while using internet auction sites and charity stores to get rid of their books, bypassing the humble shop completely. Cities that used to have dozens of stores now have just a handful, and the world is a worse place because of this.

And then along came Kondo, and the few stores that remain are suddenly getting these amazing collections of books, as everybody goes through their stuff and gets rid of everything that doesn't mean anything to them. The few shops in town are suddenly full of brilliant books that have been unlocked for the public.

The best bookstore in my town, which narrowly avoided extinction recently by moving into a church building, is heaving with great stuff - I head in there every week and always find something new and fascinating. The shelves housing its comics and graphic novels section is heaving with a huge variety of printed beauty, from mid-80s Marvel fun to some ultra low-press offerings from all over the world.

I still get rid of a lot of my books and comics, just like anybody else, but I still have thousands and thousands of the fuckers because I always judge people by their bookcases, and expect the same in return. And I always come out of Hard To Find Books every week with something, whether it's another weird benefit comic I'd never heard of, or that Archie v Punisher comic I'd always wanted to read, or a bunch of Hellboy that I needed to plug the gaps.

Because you might not want these things cluttering up your precious living space, but they sure as shit give me some joy.

Scans from an Armageddon

It was only 20 years ago - in the late 90s! - that the idea of a comic convention was so unusual in New Zealand, that they published a tie-in comic with work by Dylan Horrocks, Ant Sang and the immortal Barry Linton:

And for added goodness, the Armageddon 1998 Megazine also featured this short essay by writer Devin Grayson, talking about how shit it is to be constantly pigeon-holed as a female creator (which is just as bloody relevant in 2019 as it was back then):

Love at first Hobbit

At the Highfield Primary School library, they put the new books up on a special shelf, but sometimes you had to wait a couple of weeks before you could actually check them out, so all the other kids could see what was going to be available.

Waiting for The Hobbit to be moved from the red section to the green when I was 7 years old was the longest two weeks of my life.

There had been books beforehand, including a huge infatuation with the Hardy Boys and an obsession with Terrence Dicks' Doctor Who stories that never, ever died. But this thick and chunky novel, with a golden dragon on the cover, was the sexiest thing I'd ever seen in my short life, and I was desperate to get my grubby hands on it.

It didn't disappoint either, and I ripped through it in three days, even though it was the longest thing I'd ever attempted. I pity the poor teachers who were suddenly inundated with Hobbit fan fiction or art whenever we had to create something in class. I had no idea what Gollum looked like, and drew him as a lizard man with a tail, before subsequent re-reads gave me a better idea of how he appeared.

And I did read it over and over again, and loved it every time. I'd move onto a new obsession with Stephen King's The Stand in just a few years, but for a while there, the Hobbit was the greatest story I'd ever read.

I didn't get to the Lord of the Rings for another decade, weirdly put off by the humongous appendices at the end. The Hobbit was this perfect book, a weird and rambling story that didn't need a next-level sequel. It was all I wanted in my fiction, and worth that eternal two-week wait.

Frank Quitely Drawings and Sketches: The smaller, the better

Most hardback books that focus on the art of a particular comic artist come in an oversized format, showing off all the fine detail that goes into a piece of classic comic art.

Frank Quitely Drawings and Sketches - published by BHP Comics last year - is not a big book, but it's not a slight book either. Barely larger than the average paperback and just 100 pages long, it's still packed with gorgeous art from Quitely, showcasing his most appealing pencils and sketches and finished pages from just a couple of the projects he has worked on in the past decade or so, with notes from the artist and script excerpts.

Quitely is objectively brilliant comic artist, design work, instantly recognisable and always a delight to read. There is such an incredible inventiveness and humour in his layouts and figurework, with caricatures that somehow look more realistic than real life.

And the size of the thing really helps sell his work as well, because Quietly's art looks even neater when it is shrunk down. His line can look wavering up close, but locks in when reproduced at a smaller size, creating the ultimate detail work.

There is some risk of eye strain looking at this stuff - one reproduced double page spread from Multiversity with 32 panels goes right to the limit of readability - but in this neat little format, Quitely's work still stands out, and is worth a little strain on the optic nerve.