Comics Stuff : More Goon!

What can I say about this? I was a little burned out over Christmas and New Year? I wasn't really, I just wasn't really in the mood to blog. These posts then, all from January 4th with small notes of apology attached to each one. And with reference to that please read the post dated December 31st! I'm going to be blurring the laws of time on these few post-Christmas / pre-New Years posts so events might not occur in order. I'm also padding a little with some book, comic and movies stuff. Just so's you know. Today = Comics.

The Goon#33, no dialogue just pictoral thought bubbles. Eric Powell is a bleedin' genius.


Someone should give him a big gold medal or something. Maybe just a lot of money. Whatever makes him happy. Then again he already has his own Girl's Roller Derby team - what else could a man want?

Alex's Book Club - The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Ah yes, just to bring you down from Christmas with a bump, a quick post about a notoriously depressing masterpiece:


In fact I found Cormac McCarthy's The Road (coming soon with extra Mortensen to a cinema near you!) to be not nearly as depressing as I'd feared. The story is bleak for sure, but it's so beautifully written as to be almost uplifting. It's a wonderful book and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who can avoid getting hung up on the apocalyptic nihilism of the story.

Blueprints

This Saturday post is brought to you by the grace of the following Thursday! Whoops!

Almost a week without a post. And I don't have a job right now!

Hmmmm.

At least I'm not killing time on this thing! (read: I'm killing time on other things) Actually I have finally been hitting something of a groove with some writing and music, so I'm gonna keep chasing that rainbow and not worrying too much about this. A-a-a-and to be honest, I'm kinda thinking of knocking this blog on the head at 500 posts. Um, not to beg for validation or anything, but if you ever read it and enjoy whatever it is I'm writing about here let me know. Anyway Bruce Sterling says the death of the blog is imminent (I think he said that...) and by no means do I want to be here when the party gets lame.

Ok, I'm gonna get up now, my knees are getting muddy.

For now - business as usual.


Philip K. Dick's The Transmigration of Timothy Archer was just as good as "Teenage" Longarini told me. Prior to this I'd only read Dick's sci-fi works, but this exploration of madness, inspiration and the human mind was just as thought provoking.


Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3 has been getting solid reviews from what I've seen (except from Pitchfork, but then, whaddatheyknow?), and from the tracks that got released before it came out I was pretty excited. And for me, after an initial three listens (I had to turn it off because they're cutting up the road outside my appartment with giant circular saws at the moment, which is just as grating as you would think) it doesn't disappoint at all. When I got round to American Gangster, which folks said was better than Kingdom Come, I was underwhelmed. But with Blueprint 3 I am, dare I say it, a little overwhelmed. Just a little. That 9-11 bit is tremendous, but then, the last track featuring Mr. Hudson is fucking awful.


And my friend Jesi finally moved back to America, taking little Kame-san here with her. I'll miss the little bastard and his cold, calculating reptilian stare. I think if I ever do get a pet, it might well be a cold blooded one.

About pets in general - I forgot that having a pet means you have something that you can pretend to talk to when you're actually talking to yourself. Now that the turtle's gone, I back to just plain talking to myself again.

Alex Recommends Comics! Enki Bilal's The Nikopol Trilogy a.k.a down the Nikopol Hole

In a way, my love of comics is all the French's fault. I mean, I have a single Spider-Man comic drawn by Erik Larsen which my parents bought me as a kid and which accounts for my love of that guy, but when I was in my formative years the books that I repeatedly got out of the library and read again and again were the Asterix and Tintin books.

So put the blame on French language publications (as if you weren't already).

Enki Bilal's Nikopol Trilogy (ususally published as a single volume, but a check on Amazon looks like the English language version is out of print right now) is much more "grown up" than Asterix and Tintin, but equally awesome. Also, his name is awesome - it's Serbian, though he's French. C'mon say it. Enki Bilal. Enki Bilal. If you were called Enki Bilal (whether you're a boy or a girl) you'd be getting a lot more action - if you know what I mean.


Roughly, it's the story of an astronaut who was frozen and shot into deep space as some kind of punishment and who returns to a future-fascist-dystopia-Paris only to be possessed by the Egyptian god Horus who wants to use his body to take over the world. But in the Nikopol Trilogy, no-one's plans ever progress smoothly. There's mistaken identity, double crossing, poltical machianations and a violent god who solves every problem by zapping people's brains with his god powers. Most of all there's a sense of utter chaos on fast-forward. In fact, I'd guess that could be one criticism levelled at it. Bilal has so many ideas and his world is so perfectly realised that at times it feels like you're just being given a tour of his imagination and the characters trapped inside, vivid though they are, are just being bounced around like pinballs. For me that wasn't so much of a problem, I just loved the whole batty rollercoaster ride.

It reminded me a little of Grant Morrison's recent work too, in that it demands the reader keep up and doesn't pander at all. At many points we join the story in progress, and an apparent narrative gap is half explained with a throwaway line that makes us do some of the leg work. I like that, and it adds to the sense that everything is a little out of control in this world.

Even though the narrative is twisted and spiralling and doesn't exactly have a particularly neat ending, apparently this trilogy of graphic novels that was published over ten years in the 80s and 90s was recently adapted into both a computer game (Nikopol: Secrets Of The Immortals) and a movie called Immortal. The movie, directed by Bilal himself just shot up my ones to watch list even though it apparently got mixed reviews. It's based on this stuff, it's gotta be crazy as a box of nuts.

Also also also - there's chess boxing. Chess boxing is a crazy futuristic sport that Bilal includes in the final part of the trilogy - a game where people box, then play chess while beaten and bloody - and some genius decided to make it into a real sport. Man, seriously, I pray that life imitates art and in the 2200s that's the most popular sport on the planet. The ultimate test of brains and brawn.

J-Pop (Noisy Art Pop Punk Type): Midori and Ni-Hao!

This Friday post is brought to you by the following Monday and the fraction 7/13.

So Midori are playing at Rising Sun again this year. Last year I saw about two minutes of their set and it looked insane. From picking up their CD in stores I always thought they'd suck, but actually they're pretty darn good. Piano punk!

And Andy posted this Ni-Hao video I'd never seen before (but which is too good not to share):

There's a video for another of their songs where they're dicking around in a clothes shop and it's amazing, but I can't find it online. WHAT THE HELL? Isn't every recorded video ever available online by now? Hurry up internet!

Alex's Book Club - The Cutmouth Lady by Romy Ashby

This Wednesday post is brought to you by the following Monday and the letter "P".


The Cutmouth Lady is definitely my favourite collection of coming-of-age short stories with a lesbian twist in which the main character is an American schoolgirl going to catholic school in Japan. I mean, I'm not sure I've ever read another book that fits into that particular pigeonhole... but this was very good.

I bought it at a used book market in Ueno, Tokyo where I walked every single aisle looking for English language books and this was one of the few I found. It was only a few hundred yen, so like last night, when people were offering me books for free, I found it hard to refuse.

The back cover copy is pretty lurid ("a perverted gaijin schoolgirl in Japan") and when you boil it down in the corny way I did above it sounds pretty sleazy, but it was way better than I expected it to be because it stayed away from being too shocking or outrageous. The stories unfold in a wonderfully unhurried way, and the way the core theme of wanting something that you don't even know you want pulses away below the surface of it all is really well done.

I found a glowing write up of it here (I'm not sure I'd go so far, but it is good) and probably you can get hold of it here I reckon.

Thumbs... up!

Product Review: Sapporo Yubari Melon Soda

Melon soda is a viciously sweet, luridly green soft drink popular in Japan. It doesn't taste much like melons, maybe a little, which is good coz I don't like melons. It tastes like sugar and additives in the best way, and looks like Nilbog juice as Bunny pointed out. Yubari is a town in Hokkaido that is struggling as I have informed you before, but which is famed for deliciously sweet melons with bright orange flesh. One of the few melons that I really like the flavour of (if only they weren't so darned expensive) Sapporo (the drinks company, not the city) has brought these two entities together in the inevitable way:


Sapporo Ribbon Yubari Melon Soda. It's really nice, though actually I couldn't say it's much nicer than Sapporo's regular Melon Cream Soda, which I love. This certainly has more of a fruity taste, but I expected to be supping on the elixir of the gods and what I got was just... great. Oh and it's bright orange (like Yubari Melons) not bright green. Still - I recommend!

Greatest Bands Ever #751: The dB's

Sorry about all these "cultural" posts. Things are a little busy and stressful while I try and sort out my... um life. Anyway, virtue lies in the daily application of one's mind to a problem and blogging. Or something like that. Anyway, anyway...

The dB's

The first time I heard the dB's I was just utterly astonished that I'd never heard them before. The first two albums Stands For Decibels and Repercussion (which admittedly, having read that those are the best, I haven't progressed beyond) are staggering feats of power-pop genius. The melodies are so catchy, the arrangements and performances sizzle and pop, everything seems both tossed off and meticulously arranged at the same time. If you like guitar pop, I can't recommend them enough. Well, I can try obviously, but in the end you'd just get bored of me harping on about them and just stop listening.

Greatest Bands Ever #243: The Nation of Ulysses

The Nation of Ulysses

Unlistenable, but you get the idea.

Further evidence.

And Plays Pretty for Baby is the most exciting record ever, bar none.

That is all.

Alex Recommends Comics! Scott Pilgrim

So, to return to recommending comics that THE ENTIRE WORLD should be reading (including that shemp wot set me on this mission) I'd like to point you in the direction of Brian Lee O'Malley's ongoing magnum opus Scott Pilgrim :



Dear sir, when you asked me to recommend comic books, you requested single volume works. Scott Pilgrim is currently running at 5 volumes and will conclude at 7, so you may wish to disqualify it from your investigations. HOWEVER, if ever there was a comic book that was specifically designed to hammer your specific pleasure buttons (i.e. indie rock and geekery) until you beg for mercy, this is that comic book. I can't believe it didn't just jump to the front of my mind as soon as you asked. Buy all and read all and you WILL NOT REGRET IT.

That goes for everyone else too, but to the guy who wanted me to recommend comics - Scott Pilgrim is so right up your alley, it's going through your bins.



Thank me later.

Alex Recommends Comics! Seaguy again! And WE3 and Vimanarama!

I am in the process of obtaining certain footage - certain Eurovision footage. This will probably result in a brain melting marathon of both semi's and the grand final, which in turn will lead to a giga-post next week clocking in at somewhere far beyond indulgent.

But some poor sap also mentioned that he wanted me to recommend some single volume graphic novels or comic books here. I do use comic panels to fill space... ahem, as visually arresting blog posts pretty regularly, and I did want to post about this today anyway so here's a good place to start. Seaguy is so freakin' awesome it hurts my teeth. These panels are from the second issue of the second mini-series, which came out last week:




I'm not sure if I should go over it again, since I'm pretty sure I've written about it quite a few times now. It's a demented, surreal, rapid-fire, super-hero subversion where everyone's a hero, but the heroes are no longer needed as a massive Disney-esque corporation works to opiate the world with pink goo and children's cartoons. It's illustrated in a fabulous, classic style by Cameron Stewart and Grant Morrison's writing is like a stream of awesomeness, straight from the subconcious.

I'm kind of cheating to include it here, since that ol' sap wanted one volume stories and Seaguy is going to be three when it's finished. But only the first volume is out at the moment (possibly out of print, since it came out in 2005) and it's so short and fun in itself, and one of my favourite comics of all time, it seemed like a no brainer.

Also it leads onto another two easy recommendations: We3 and Vimanarama . Seaguy, WE3 and Vimanarama were all three issue mini-series that were published at the same time as part of a rough "Crack!Comicks" concept by Grant Morrison. They're all amazing and they're all wonderful as short, stand-alone graphic novels. Vimanarama is a cosmic-Bollywood-apocalypse story set in the North of England and WE3 is Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey except with cyborg tank-pets. It's so good that people talk about turning it into a movie every now and then, which... eh, probably means nothing. What does mean something is that Vimanarama is drawn by Phillip Bond and WE3 by Frank Quitely and they might be two of my favourite artists ever too. I love all of those books.

So there you go, recommendations and amazon links and all's well with the world.

Movie Review: [rec]

[REC] is a simple, well-executed, Spanish zombie movie that works with a concept so catchy that an ultra-faithful American remake followed less than a year after the original. It's not at all original, borrowing heavily from any number of other movies, but it is very well done, so much so that before long you're not really comparing it to anything.

I especially liked the pacing. It's a very short movie, the cut that I saw was only and hour and fifteen minutes, which is perfect. My pet hate in almost any art form is bad editing, and people who let things run on for no good reason. Which is nothing like saying I don't like long books, movies, albums or songs; I love lengthy pieces of work when that serves the art, it's just that so often I finish a movie thinking "well, that could have been twenty minutes shorter and twice as good". The pacing in [REC] is awesome, it starts slowly, then ups the stakes with a big burst of violence, then cranks the tension, then cranks the tension some more, then cranks the tension some more, then lets it all go in a final act that seems to get faster and faster and faster before it hits the final scene like a needle hitting the run-out groove. Perfect.

Oh man, I could rant about things being too long until the cows come home. Pretty much my whole problem with Harry Potter probably comes from reading the fourth book and wondering why it couldn't have been like a whole third shorter. After that, there was no way I could've sat through another one. There's creating your world, there's adding subplots to make the structure more interesting and engage your reader, and then there's telling us a whole load of crap that we don't need to know, and describing things that you have no need to describe.

Anyway, [REC]. THUMP! That was my stamp of approval hammering down on it, so check it out.