Comics Roundup 17/10/2008

Air #3, by G. Willow Wilson & M.K. Perker

I was saying last time that this seemed to maybe have become a bit less interesting than the first issue suggested. I think they recovered well with this one, which features such exciting things as psychic travel and making countries disappear through the power of thought. I continue to like the angularity of the art.

The Age of THE SENTRY #2

Normally I give as authors of a comic whoever gets their name on the cover. There are no names here (apart from a guy who has signed half of the cover illustration), while the interior stories have different writer-artist teams on each. So it is all a bit complicated.

Anyway, I bought this comic because on the cover it has a Very Fierce Bear running rampage. He turns out to be Ursus the Ultra Bear. This title is one of those ones like 1963 or The New Frontier, where people write a comic in the olde style of the early 1960s. This Marvel title has guest appearances by various Marvel Universe characters, drawn in an appealing Kirby/Ditko pastiche style. The main character, though, is the new (to me) hero, The Sentry.

The stories themselves are total genius – in one, a bear (Ursus the Ultra Bear, as noted) is given superpowers by the evil Cranio (the man with the tri-level mind). The Sentry is initially unable to defeat Ursus, and so is mocked in print by Truman Capote. In the next, The Sentry is all sad because the other superheroes seem to be avoiding him, leaving him with only Watchdog (the hound of courage) for company. Why are they avoiding him, and what is the secret of Area B? All is revealed.

This is easily the greatest comic issue I have read this year. I am a sucker for that kind of retro comic action, but when it comes with a dog character as well realised as Watchdog I simply cannot resist. This comic also implies that all is not quite what it seems, with the 1960s setting masking… something, so I reckon this could appeal to people who like meta-fiction as well as more straightforwardly up-and-at-'em titles.

Comics Roundup 10/10/2008

100 Bullets # 96, by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso

One character is driving in the car, with another character in the boot, talking on the phone to another character who is annoyed at what he has been doing. More exciting action, in a title fast heading to its conclusion.

Madame Xanadu #2, by Matt Wagner & Amy Reeder Hadley

I have been enjoying the more recent issues of this, so when I saw this back issue I snapped it up. In this one the enchantress Nimue (main character of the story blah blah etc.) has not yet moved to the court of Kublai Khan, but instead is knocking around a Camelot that has fallen to Mordred and Morgana. Merlin is also in this, as something of a bad ass.

While bits and pieces in this were quite enjoyable, I didn't like this as much as the more recent issues set in Mongolia; its narrative seemed to have too many sub-elements and lack overall coherence.

Comics Roundup 3/10/2008

House of Mystery #6, by Matthew Sturges, Tony Rossi, Luca Akins

So I was skimming this in a shop, and I thought "Wow, pirates", and then I thought "hey, some of the pirates are Furries", so I decided that I had better buy it. I've never seen this title before, it seems partly to be some people stuck in a mysterious house somewhere, with other parts of the story being flashback. It seems a bit like the kind of wooo, spooky stuff you expect from Vertigo, making me wonder if it is some kind of Sandman spin-off. Whatever, I found it entertaining enough and intend to give the next issue a go.

It comes with a preview of a new title, Unknown Soldier, which seems to be some revival of a "classic" DC character. I found the preview interesting, because it is set in a part of Africa where bad things are happening. Unlike that dreadfully emo Superman story from a while back, this is set in very specific location (northern Uganda), and I reckon the title will gain strength from that engagement with actual real-world issues, as opposed to focussing on a nebulous and eternally fucked up "Africa".

Batman # 680, by Grant Morrison, Tony Daniel, and Sandu Florea

This odd story continues, with a Batman going off the deep end big-time finding himself up against The Joker – oh noes! As is the way of these things, The Joker seems to be trying to make the Batman go mental, while various shady characters look on in fascination. As is also the way of things, there is a great OMG WTF twist ending to this, so I can't wait for the next issue.

Four Eyes #1, by Joe Kelly, Max Fiumara, and Nestor Pereya

This is a new title from Image, set during the Great Depression, with resonances for how we will all be living in the near future. However, something is a bit different to how the historical record portrays the 1930s – in Four Eyes, as people queue at New York soup kitchens, dragons fly overhead. For as yet unexplained reasons, dragons have reappeared in the world, and though large and terrifying these strange creatures largely leave people alone. People, however, have taken to trapping dragons and training them to fight each other to provide a cruel spectacle for a desperate public. The main character is the young son of a guy who steals baby dragons for the dragon fights.

This is an odd book, playing its outlandish central premise entirely straight, giving the reader a very evocative portrait of Depression-era America. The art is striking too, reminding me a bit of Sam Keith's work, though it still has its own originality. I look forward to seeing how this oddity develops.

Forged in conflict: a new master race of squirrels

Red squirrels in Britain and Ireland have been suffering for some time, thanks to competition from grey squirrel interlopers. The grey squirrels carry a virus, to which they are immune. However, the red squirrels die within weeks if the virus is transmited to them. This biological warfare has proved disastrous for the reds, and their numbers across these islands have plummeted.

Now, though, hope is at hand. Scientists have discovered red squirrels who seem to be immune to the virus. The little fellows are displaying antibodies for it, meaning that it has infected them in the past, but they remain hale and healthy. With the viral threat increasingly under control, red squirrel sources report that the time has come to go back onto the offensive.

Would you like to know more?

The Final Countdown, Part 1: Pictures & Background

You may or may not have heard of the Bowlie Forum. It was one of those Internet forum things, having its origin as the forum for Jeepster, then the record label of popular band Belle & Sebastian. After a while Bowlie cut loose from Jeepster (which in any case went into an undead state), but it retained its roots in B&S and indie fandom. It was an entertaining place to hang out and chitter chatter about stuff, but then the guy who ran it decided that he had enough, and he announced that it was going to end in August this year. Meetups had been a Bowlie thing, and The Final Countdown was to be the final Bowlie get-together, taking place about two weeks before the end. I must confess to having coined the name for this last meet-up, which explains why it was named after a song by LAIBACH. Apart from that I had nothing to do with the event's organisation.

The meetup took place in this pub-club in Brixton, at which Bowlie related bands got to play and other people played records between their sets. We couldn't get B&S themselves, as they are money-grubbing sell-out breadheads (and they have some kind of mysterious best-not-go-there feud with the guy who ran the Bowlie forum); instead we got bands that either had a forum member or two in the line-up or else were judged by the programmer to be the kind of thing we would like.

I will tiresomely go through the bands in future posts, but first I must salute the genius of whichever of the event organisers decided to project every image file ever uploaded to Bowlie onto a screen for a few seconds each. OK, so this led to me seeing many pictures of cats, but it also led to many oh-the-nostalgia moments.

Come back next time for unmissable discussion of the bands who played at this exciting event!

more awesome pictures

Liam Ó Maonlaí v. The Musicians of Mali

So I went to this free concert thing in Meeting House Square over the summer. It was free, but you had to get tickets for it. Someone else arranged this, such things are beneath me. When we arrived, Liam Ó Maonlaí was on stage with some tradders, largely being ignored. I think this is the curse of free concerts, people just show up and don't pay attention. Or maybe it is the curse of Liam Ó Maonlaí.

Next up were Afel Bocoum. Or next up was Afel Bocoum. I am not entirely clear on whether this is the name of a person or a band. I think a person. He is this fellow from Mali, and he plays with a load of other local musicians. The instrumentation and musical style comes across as very traditional, but I think the songs are often new, with Afel Bocoum singing about important concerns in his country – the problems of AIDS, deforestation of the Niger river banks (leading to desertification), and the country's semi-presidential constitution. Or so I have heard – he sings in foreign, so I cannot really tell.

Tinariwen are a Tuareg band from Mali. They presented an interesting contrast with Afel Bocoum, in that they seem much more to have achieved a synthesis between traditional and Western models of music. There is a very rock element to their sound, with their main guy playing lead electric guitar and plainly being a man of considerable talent with that instrument. Other rock instruments also feature in the line-up, but the band retain what look like more traditional instruments, as well as backing singers whose style seems distinctly non-western. The compositional style seemed a bit unusual too. I was really impressed by this lot, they seemed almost like a new direction in music, with the melange of elements taking things to a whole new level. Even Liam Ó Maonlaí joining them for an encore couldn't spoil things (in fairness to Mr Ó Maonlaí, I left this concert feeling almost well-disposed towards him, and it was interesting how comfortable the Malian musicians seemed to be with him).

One great thing about Tinariwen is their visual look- they play wearing Taureg robes, with the faces of most of the men obscured by the veils worn for protection against sun and sand. So you get a load of guys in long robes and covered faces playing guitars – deadly. There is maybe a gimmicky element to this, but it is a great gimmick.

I picked up albums by each of Tinariwen & Afel Bocoum, Amassakoul & Niger respectively. They are both excellent and very different from each other.

That's it...

I fear that I must stay away from the Internet for a while, as I really need to get to work on my own Ethiopian travelogue. There are a few shitey Frank's APA reprints queued up over the next few days, so you won't be completely without me.

Thee Headcoatees "Bozstik Haze"

As you know, Thee Headcoats were a garage punk influenced band formed by Billy Childish. Thee Headcoatees were this all-women band he conjured into being to cover Headcoats songs, in the process unleashing the musical career of Miss Holly Golightly. Famously, Thee Headcoatees records outsold those of the band whose tunes they were covering, or so people say. This is a reissue of one of those albums, containing loads of rough tunes like Mama used to make (if she was a bit of a bad girl skank). It's a pity there aren't more clubs in the world playing this kind of music, or that when these clubs exist in my town I don't turn out to be too *tired* to go to them.

My latest awesome scheme

So I was reading about how Oxfam are getting some DJs in to play reggae music in one of their shops, as a way of raising money for Ethiopia (suffering badly because of rising food prices etc.). And I found myself thinking "Wouldn't it be great if they raised money for Ethiopia with Ethiopian music?". Then I thought "Hey, I know, I could do up a totally illegal compilation of music from Ethiopia, and give a copy of it to anyone who promised to donate X* amount of money to Oxfam!" That should raise 50p for the food-challenged people of Ethiopia.

Now all I have to do is, eh, make the compilation.


*where X is a to-be-decided amount of money.

A dirty old man writes

One side effect of the current WORLD CRISIS is that I have been reading the Financial Times that bit more frequently. I was particularly amused by their problem page, which is one of those ones where people write in with a problem and then readers offer their advice. Most of them are serious workplace related things, but then there is this charmer.