‘The Hobbit’ (Illustrated Edition) – J.R.R. Tolkien, Illustrated by David Wenzel & Adapted by Charles Dixon (Ballantine Books)

We all know the story of ‘The Hobbit’ so I’m not going to take up your time with some pointless blurb ;o) If you don’t know the story then there’s a film, looming on the horizon, that will take care of that for you (or you could just read the book…) and that means publishers are scrambling to find anything related that has been previously published and can be wheeled out again. Books like this illustrated edition for example (a book where the cover looks like it has been reworked to look more like the forthcoming film).

This illustrated edition was previously published by Eclipse Books and Del Rey, in the US, while Harper have published it in the UK. This book does come with six new pages of artwork though (don’t ask me which pages they are, I never read the original…) so could be worth your time if you’re looking for a new copy.

As an adaptation, this book works very well for the most part. The main elements of the plot are all covered and, in a move that I particularly appreciated, the poetry is kept to a bare minimum. I used to love reading it when I was a lot younger but, these days, I find that it gets in the way of the actual story so it was a bit of a treat not to have to deal with it. It’s also interesting to be reminded of some of the smaller details in ‘The Hobbit’ and wonder if they will make it onto the big screen. Dixon is very faithful to these details and I was left wondering if the film will show us the mountain giants (throwing rocks) like the book does.

I couldn’t help but wonder though if Dixon was perhaps a little too faithful to the detail. A lot of the panels are crammed full of descriptive passages that the illustrations convey perfectly well by themselves. This leads onto the feeling that the text and illustrations are both fighting to make themselves heard (or seen) instead of working together and getting on with it. You could say that this leads to a more engrossing work where you have to take the time to really uncover the detail. I however felt that this end result was more counterproductive despite there being an awful lot here to get your teeth into.

The illustrations are gorgeous by the way. David Wenzel really captures the look and feel of Middle Earth on paper; it’s not the film that we’re all used to but no less absorbing for all that. I’ll be keeping my copy and can see myself flicking through the pages, every now and then, and just getting lost in how lovely it all looks.

Adaptations are always a little difficult to sum up but ‘The Hobbit’ (Illustrated Edition) does the job that it has set out to do. Perhaps it’s a little too faithful to the original text, a move that doesn’t quite suit this format, but it’s a lovely book to read and I can see it whetting appetites for the film when it arrives.

Eight and a Half out of Ten

‘The Only Good Dalek’ - Justin Richards, Mike Collins (BBC Books)

The Daleks are undergoing a little bit of a renaissance in my house these days, not only because of the latest series of ‘Doctor Who’ but also because Hope has developed a real fascination with science fiction robots. If she’s not running around with her C3P0 and R2D2 toys then she’s yelling ‘Exterminate!’ or ‘Delete!’ at people in the street. Oh well, any excuse to get another piece of Dalek/Doctor Who merchandise into the house… :o)

‘The Only Good Dalek’ is another title that I’ve had my eye on for a while but have only just got round to securing a copy. All good things come to those who wait though, or do they…?
I’ve already reviewed ‘The Dalek Project’ here, I had a few issues with it, and was hoping for better things from ‘The Only Good Dalek’. This graphic novel offered more of the same problems though and I was left wondering if this is a format that BBC Books really want to pursue as it is. This is a real shame considering that the strips from ‘Doctor Who Magazine’ have been collected rather nicely by Panini, IDW are doing some good work here as well).

Blurb copied and pasted as I’m having a bit of a lazy Saturday over here…

Station 7 is where the Earth Forces send all the equipment captured in their unceasing war against the Daleks. It's where Dalek technology is analyzed and examined. It's where the Doctor and Amy have just arrived. But somehow the Daleks have found out about Station 7 - and there's something there that they want back! With the Doctor increasingly worried about the direction the Station's research is taking, the commander of Station 7 knows he has only one possible, desperate defense. Because the last terrible secret of Station 7 is that they don't only store captured Dalek technology - it's also a prison. And the only thing that might stop a Dalek is another Dalek!

‘The Only Good Dalek’ has proved to be a very difficult review to write, as I really wanted to avoid repeating what I’d written for ‘The Dalek Project’. That’s more or less impossible though in terms of the artwork (Mike Collins is doing it again here) so I’m just going to jump right in and quote what I said last time,

‘I’m really half and half on Mike Collins’ artwork which can come across as rushed at times (almost scribbled) which works in terms of showing how urgent the situation is but also just ends up looking, well… rushed really.’

As with ‘The Dalek Project’ though, Collins does throw a few gems out there for us to come across as we read. He’s a dab hand at space battles for a start and he certainly doesn’t shy away from showing us the number of grisly ways that a person can die fighting the Daleks.

The plot itself is, again, very straightforward with a couple of little twists that aren’t all that surprising but do pop up at just the right time i.e. just when it looks like things might be running out of steam. For all the action and excitement though, and there is loads, I couldn’t escape from the feeling that there wasn’t actually an awful lot happening. If I had to sum the book up in one sentence it would be ‘Daleks cannot be trusted and space stations are places where it’s very easy to get lost’. An awful lot of running around happens here, something that I think comes across a lot better on the screen as oppose to a comic. The fact that I can sum the book up in one sentence would rather suggest that there isn’t an awful lot here to get your teeth into.

But it’s the Daleks though! :o) Despite my misgivings about the book, as a whole, it’s still all too easy to get into just how relentlessly evil these aliens are. I found that it was very easy, sometimes, to put my misgivings to one side and just watch the Daleks doing what they do best, Richards’ Daleks exterminate all other life with the best of them.

And before I finish here, I’ve got to say that if ‘The Only Good Dalek’ is canon (and as a BBC book I’m pretty sure that it is) then there is such a thing as a ‘good Dalek’ and the Doctor knows it as well. I don’t know what that was all about in the book… I always swore that I’d stay well clear of canon so I won’t do it again :o)

‘The Only Good Dalek’ is another fun read that doesn’t quite stand up to more determined scrutiny. It’s still worth a look (whether you’re a fan or not) but you should bear that in mind before giving it a go.

Seven and a Half out of Ten

‘Doctor Who: The Dalek Project’ – Justin Richards, Mike Collins (BBC Books)

There are some TV shows, films and so on that you take one look at and just know that they would be perfect for a comic book adaptation. There are also shows etc that must never be allowed anywhere near a comic adaptation but that’s a post for another day I think…

‘Doctor Who’ is very much a show that is not only ripe for adaptation (action, adventure and some weird looking aliens) but has already been adapted on more than one occasion; IDW currently being one of the publishers to visit if you’re after a story and can’t wait for Saturday night. BBC Books also turn out the occasional graphic novel themselves. I still need to get hold of a copy of ‘The Only Good Dalek’ but this was offset, the other day, by the arrival of ‘The Dalek Project’ for review.

Daleks are a pretty big deal in our house at the moment, for reasons that I went into the other day, so I’ve had to fight pretty hard to get ‘The Dalek Project’ out of Hope’s hands for enough time for me to actually read it! As always though, I got there in the end but (as much as I enjoyed it) I had more reservations than I thought I would…

Blurb copied and pasted as I am so behind with, well… everything.

1917. It's the height of the Great War and Hellcombe Hall is a house full of mystery: locked doors, forbidden rooms, dustsheets covering guilty secrets, and ghostly noises frightening the servants.

Most mysterious of all, the drawing-room seems to open directly onto a muddy, corpse-filled trench on the Western Front . . .

Arriving at this stately home, the Doctor meets Lord Hellcombe, an armaments manufacturer who has a new secret weapon he believes will win the war: he calls it ‘the Dalek’.

Soon, the Doctor and his new friends are in a race against time to prevent the entire Western Front from becoming part of the Dalek Project!

Before I get going I’ve got to say that I’m a ‘Doctor Who’ fan and no matter how bad a book or TV episode is, I will sit through it and come away having enjoyed the experience. I do notice the bits that don’t seem to work though and ‘The Dalek Project’ has a few of these. Basically, I had fun reading the book but I don’t think it would come anywhere near a ‘Top Ten Favourite Stories’ list if I had one (now there’s an idea…)

One thing that you can always rely on a ‘Doctor Who’ story to do is tell you just what the villains are up to but, more importantly, why they are doing it. There is always a reason (be it ‘villain gloating’ or whatever) that tightens the plot, giving it urgency and direction. That isn’t the case here.
We get to find out what the Daleks are doing (casting moments of history in a new light) but the one thing we never find out is just why they are doing it. Given that Daleks always love to explain why they are plotting, the change in tack left the plot feeling directionless and with no urgency whatsoever. The Doctor usually fights the Daleks to stop something really bad happening; in this case it was more about him fighting them because they are Daleks and that didn’t feel right to me. If I’ve missed something please let me know.

Luckily, the rest of the plot is driven by the Daleks doing what they do best (Exterminate!) and this means confrontation and escape along with bits of landscape, and people, being blown up. That in itself makes for some exciting moments that speed the plot along nicely. The ‘haunted house’ side plot doesn’t work nearly as well though as the Dalek presence is revealed far too early for any spooky stuff to actually happen.
Starting the story at the end though... I liked that as it really forces it home that the Doctor travels through time (if you didn’t know already…) His adventures don’t have to start at the beginning while the ending can be years later but feel as if only seconds have passed in the meantime.
The Doctor himself comes across well on the page with just enough quirks to satisfy first time readers, looking for a memorable lead, as well as fans who want something the same as Matt Smith’s portrayal on TV.

I’m really half and half on Mike Collins’ artwork which can come across as rushed at times (almost scribbled) which works in terms of showing how urgent the situation is but also just ends up looking, well… rushed really. Hidden here and there in the plot though are some lovely detailed moments like the ‘First World War Daleks’ and the nightmare of the trenches. It’s worth really having a look at each page for moments like these.

‘The Dalek Project’ has a bit of a hollow feel to it then but is a fun read while it lasts. I’d say that if you’re prepared to just go with the flow here then you’ll get a lot out of this book but I don’t think it stands up to more scrutiny than that.

Seven and a Half out of Ten

'Fever Moon' - Karen Marie Moning, Al Rio, Cliff Richards (Del Rey)

I've been stuck with a really grim data input job for the last week and a bit; lots of box ticking and field filling on a computer screen... It pays the bills but I'd be lying if I said that I'd enjoyed it. In an attempt to break the monotony, of staring at the same words on a computer screen, I've been reading a few more comic books than I would do normally; lots of bright pictures to wake me up :o) They don't get a lot brighter than what you find within the pages of Karen Marie Moning's 'Fever Moon' (more on that in a bit), a book that I was always going to read, even though it's another Urban Fantasy.

Truth be told, I've pretty much given up on the larger part of Urban Fantasy as I've realised that I'm into Urban Fantasy that deals with setting rather than angst and slightly dodgy relationships. 'Fever Moon' looked very much like it would fall in the latter camp but... It had been a hard week and it's a graphic novel; it was a read that was always going to happen.
As it turned out, 'Fever Moon' wasn't a bad read at all. There were problems but most of these managed to avoid the 'Urban Fantasy Trap'...

Here's the blurb,

Dublin is a war zone. The walls between humans and Fae are down. A third of the world’s population is dead and chaos reigns. Imprisoned over half a million years ago, the Unseelie are free and each one Mac meets is worse than the last. Human weapons don’t stand a chance against them.


With a blood moon hanging low over the city, something dark and sinister begins to hunt the streets of Temple Bar, choosing its victims by targeting those closest to Mac. Armed only with the Spear of Destiny and Jericho Barrons, she must face her most terrifying enemy yet.

'Fever Moon' is a very good mix of compelling (albeit predictable) storyline married to artwork that does an amazing job of what Moning obviously wants it to convey. At least three quarters of my attention was drawn to Al Rio's art. There were elements of the plot that I wasn't too keen on ('Though Barrons brought me back... The cure was endless sex' Really? Not again...) I found myself wanting to stick around and see how Rio, and to a lesser extent Richards, brought it all to the page. The setting is beautifully drawn as are the characters acting within it.

The story itself offers an intriguing world with an intriguing mystery sitting within it. Who is the mysterious assailant stalking the wartorn streets of Dublin? Annoyingly, a lot of the answer to this question refers back to previous books within the larger series. I wouldn't normally make a big deal of this but it's done in such a way that it seriously interupts the flow of the tale if you don't know what you are looking for. A little bit of sepia toning isn't quite the signpost that it was intended to be. I found myself going over the same two pages over and over again before I figured out what was going on... Not helpful at all. 'Fever Moon' is definitely one for long term fans (who will recognise this scene for what it is) rather than the casual reader.

The way its handled is a bit of a shame really as the plot does have a lot going for it. There's a lot riding on Mac's actions and the tension builds up accordingly with some amazing set pieces interspersed throughout the book. Mac is an interesting character to get to know, in such a short space of time, and her attitude towards the job at hand carries the plot forward in just the right way.

Again though, it's a shame that this had to be cut with all the flirting that people feel is necessary in an Urban Fantasy tale. 'Fever Moon' was doing just fine all on it's own; it didn't need the relationship stuff to move things forward, if anything those themes held things back a little.

A good read then but it was a shame that 'Fever Moon' felt the need to travel down certain well worn paths that it really didn't need to. This is a setting that could be a whole lot more if it struck out on its own...

Eight out of Ten
 
P.S. It's been bugging me all day, I knew I'd come across this series before...

'Girl Genius Volume One: Agatha Awakens' - Phil & Kaja Foglio (Tor)

If you were around a couple of days ago you'll remember that 'The Battle of Blood and Ink' didn't exactly set the world on fire for me. Quite the opposite in fact. If you haven't read the review yet, scroll down a couple of posts and you'll see what I mean.

I love reading comic books & graphic novels and it takes an awful lot to sour the experience for me. The experience was well and truly soured here though and I'll admit to not being too keen on getting back in the saddle straight away.

The 'Girl Genius' book did look intriguing though as did the comment next to my cover art post that the webcomic had won so many Hugos that it had been voluntarily withdrawn to give others a chance. That is really sweet of the authors isn't it? That's also a lot of hype for someone who hasn't read the books to deal with. Is any book so good that it has to be voluntarily withdrawn from the Hugos so the rest of the competition stands a chance...?

You're getting cut and pasted blurb again today as I'm writing this along with a lot of other stuff I need to be doing at the same time (that means the possibility of spoilers, you've been warned)...

The Industrial Revolution has become all-out war! Mad Scientists, gifted with the Spark of genius, unleash insane inventions on an unprepared Europe. For centuries, the Heterodyne family of inventors kept the peace, but the last Heterodyne disappeared twenty years ago, leaving their ally Baron Klaus Wulfenbach to maintain order with his fleet of airships and army of unstoppable, if not very bright, Jaeger Monsters.


At Transylvania Polygnostic University, Agatha Clay dreams of being a scientist herself, but her trouble concentrating dooms her to be a lowly minion at best. When her locket, a family heirloom, is stolen, Agatha shows signs of having the Spark in a spectacular, destructive fashion and captures the attention of the Baron—and the Baron’s handsome young son, Gilgamesh.

I had a whale of a time reading 'Agatha Awakens', that's the bottom line here. I wasn't too sure what to expect here but once I got going I couldn't stop reading (quite literally, this is a book that is all too easy to devour in a single sitting). To be honest, I don't pay a lot of attention at all to the Hugos but it's pretty clear why 'Girl Genius' has scooped a handful of these awards. It's an engaging read that is humorous and full of action in all the right places.

In the aforementioned cover art post, I did have a couple of reservations about a cover that looked as if it wasn't sure whether it wanted to be Manga or not. I didn't like the air of uncertainty that came over as a result and thought it could have benefitted by being one thing or the other. This theme remains the same going into the book but it somehow felt easier to deal with as the plot moved on. Most of this was down to the 'Manga Effect' only really applying to the characters and as I got to know them more it really didn't matter how they were drawn at all. Agatha, Gilgamesh and the rest are all characters that are full of life and people that you really want to get to know more about. More on that in a bit.
What really balanced things out though was the sheer amount of detail and colour on display. The world that Agatha has to find her way in is beautifully drawn with no expense spared in terms of detail. Now this is what I'm after in terms of a Steampunk tale, something fully immersive for all the right reasons.

The story itself starts out along familiar lines, and ends on a familiar note as well, but it's all the bits in between that make the difference with enough surprises and little twists to make you feel like you're reading something a little different even if you're not. The humour on display is infectious, to say the least, and I couldn't help but chuckle pretty much the whole way through. It's the cast, and the way that you get a real insight into their personal journeys, who made this for me though. Agatha, in particular, comes across as someone that you really want to get to know more about with her determination not to let the world get the better of her (even though the odds are stacked against her every day).

Phil and Kaja Foglio have come up with something very special here and I'll certainly be in line for Volume Two if I don't jump headfirst into the webcomic beforehand. It felt like I was the only person who hadn't read 'Girl Genius' before now but if you haven't read it yet then I recommend you set that straight right away.

Nine out of Ten

'The Battle of Blood and Ink' - Jared Axelrod & Steve Walker (Tor)

These days I normally have quite the low tolerance threshold for books that really aren't working for me. Fifty to a hundred pages in and if it's not working out then down the book goes. Every now and then though a book pops up that I end up finishing despite myself. 'The Battle of Blood and Ink' is only a hundred and thirty five pages long and I kept thinking to myself, 'it's not that much further to go, stick with it for a few more pages and then have some chocolate as a reward...' I also kept thinking, 'it's steampunk so something cool is bound to happen in a couple of pages.' It turns out that I was wrong.

In a slightly different approach to the normal reviews here you're getting a 'copied and pasted' blurb here (the reasons for which will become apparent later on...)

If you're visiting the flying city of Amperstam without the latest printing of The Lurker's Guide, you might as well be lost. This one-sheet is written, edited, and printed by Ashe, a girl raised on the streets of the flying city, and is dedicated to revealing its hidden treasures and deepest secrets-including many that the overcontrolling government doesn't want anyone to know. The stakes are raised when Ashe accidentally uncovers the horror of exactly how Amperstam travels among the skies and garners the attention of those who would rather that secret be kept in the hands of the city's powerful leaders.

Soon Ashe is on the run from thugs and assassins, faced with the choice of imperiling her life just to keep publishing, or giving in to the suggestion of a rich patron that she trade in her voice and identity for a quiet, comfortable life. It's a war of confusion for Ashe, but one thing is very clear: just because you live in a flying city, you can't always keep your head in the clouds.

I think my biggest issue here was with the art, or lack of it. We're talking about a steampunk graphic novel here and if steampunk is about anything it's about the whole look of the thing isn't it? We're talking all the ornate glory of 'Victoriana' with added airships and deathrays. At least that's what I thought until I opened the book and got reading. Everything is in black and white for a start and normally that doesn't have to be a bad thing if the detail is there to back things up (I'm thinking 'The Walking Dead' here). With 'The Battle of Blood and Ink' though, all the black and white art does is to show up just how little detail there is. It all feels very transparent and I was left very aware that I was looking at a backdrop to the story rather than a background that added to the proceedings in any way.

Moving onto how the characters themselves are depicted... It seems to be the fashion these days to give the reader a few preliminary sketches, at the back of the book, to show you how the character came to be (and what they could have been). 'The Battle of Blood and Ink' is the only graphic novel I've ever seen where the cast of characters actually regress from their preliminary sketches. It should have been the other way round, it really should. If that wasn't bad enough, the characters all look really awkward during the course of the plot; everything looks staged rather than in motion...

Moving onto the plot and I think that the nicest thing you can say here is that it is ambitious, wanting to say an awful lot about a number of things. The only problem here that there's only a hundred and thirty five pages to fit all of this ambition into and it was never going to fit. What you get instead is a passing nod to a number of themes, none of which are truly expanded upon. I'd like to think that this is all about setting things up for the future but we are led to believe that a few of these sub-plots are actually rounded off and finished up with. If they are then it's not a particularly satisfactory conclusion, not when you don't get to actually see how things work out. I did like the one page issue of 'The Lurker's Guide' though, I wish we could have had a little more along those lines...

I think a hundred extra pages could have done 'The Battle of Blood and Ink' the world of good as we would have been able to get a better look at the city of Amperstam and its inhabitants. We would have actually seen character development and why things were happening instead of being forced to take the books word for it. As it is though, 'The Battle of Blood and Ink' comes across as poorly planned and poorly presented. Don't let me stop you giving it a go (one man's meat is another man's, erm... something else?) but I can't see myself picking up any more books in the series.

Five out of Ten

‘Mouse Guard, Labyrinth and Other Stories’ – Various (Archaia Entertainment)

Ever since I read ‘Legends of the Guard’, way back at the beginning of last year, I’ve been meaning to read more ‘Mouse Guard’ (of which there are two volumes, I think) but all the usual stuff got in the way and I never got round to it. Can’t complain really, I did read some great stuff in the meantime :o)
Thank the comic book gods for ‘Free Comic Book Day’ then! I knew there was a ‘Mouse Guard’ book up for grabs, in certain bags, but when I saw how many people were camped outside Forbidden Planet on Saturday morning (seriously, the queue went right down the street…) I didn’t think I had much chance of bagging a copy. Shows how wrong I was… Amidst the other comics, and ‘Fake Blood’ energy drinks, was a lovely looking copy of ‘Mouse Guard’. Happy me :o)

It wasn’t just ‘Mouse Guard’ though. What I thought was going to be a book all about noble warrior mice was actually about a whole lot more with five other stories making up the rest of a very slim looking volume. I always find it funny how books that look really slim end up being the books that are jam-packed full of story and that was the case here. ‘Mouse Guard…’ wasn’t just an evenings read, it was a read for the commute to work as well and I couldn’t ask for a lot more than that from a free comic book (not really). Anyone else here read this book?

Free Comic Book Day seems to be all about introducing people to comic books by giving them a taster, or preview, of something cool and then watching them go out and buy the rest of the series. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve fallen for that line on occasion…
‘Mouse Guard…’ is no different with at least two of it’s tales clearly set up to leave the reader with questions that could only be answered by parting with cash for the rest of the series. I guess this approach is fair enough although McCann and Lee’s ‘Steps of the Dapper Men’ was perhaps a little too obvious in its intentions, just raising questions and not really bothering to tell a story. Lee’s artwork is lovely but I wanted more than just something to look at.

Jeremy Bastian’s ‘Cursed Pirate Girl: Ramblings From An Old Sea Dog Who Likes To Be Called Alice’ took more of a balanced approach and actually told a self contained tale (that will naturally lead into more) but this time round the artwork really worked against the tale. It was far too detailed, for such a short space, and ended up drawing far too much attention away from what was rather an amusing little plot.

Royden Lepp’s ‘Rust: Oswald’s Letter’ is the only tale that takes this approach and gets the balance right with a self contained tale working alongside sepia art that is gloriously effective because it is deliberately unassuming and modest. This artwork not only complements the slightly bleak tone of the story but also pushes that story to the fore; a boy’s poignant letter to his father. Of the three stories mentioned, so far, I think ‘Rust’ is the one I’d like to see more of.

The other the stories in the collection worked a lot better for me in that they all went to show that you can create interest in a wider series without having to be quite so obvious about it. All three tales are completely self contained with the merest of hints at a wider setting and that worked a lot better for me than being dumped with a cliff hanger right at the end. The following three tales were all a lot more subtle and I want to read more as a result, it’s that simple.

David Petersen’s ‘The Tale of Baldwin the Brave’ took top billing and for good reason with its tale of one mouse who refused to give up despite the odds. From what I can gather, this seems to be the message of the series as a whole and I liked the way that Petersen took the whole microcosm thing one step further by having the story told as a puppet show. It was simple but all the more effective because of this and the tiny hints of things going on around the edges just got me all the more interested.

I’ve always been a big fan of ‘Labyrinth’ so I’ll be completely honest and say that I was all geared up to enjoy ‘Labyrinth: Hoggle and the Worm’ before I even got going. It didn’t let me down though with a twist in the tale (pun possibly intended) that I couldn’t help but chuckle at. Cory Godbey’s art really captured that fairy tale weirdness of Jim Henson’s setting and a large chunk of my reading here was just spent staring at the pictures. Lovely stuff :o)

Nate Cosby’s ‘Cow Boy: Long While Ago’ rounded things off in some style with a tale of the old west that comes with a difference. Old western themes of sin and redemption are played out here against a cartoon background that places emphasis on these grim emotions rather than detract from them. I can see the series possibly getting a little repetitive but I wouldn’t mind seeing how it plays out in the meantime.

‘Mouse Guard…’ has a lot going for it then, even though three of the six stories were perhaps a little too obvious about what they set out to do. If you have a copy waiting to be read then I think you’re in for a little bit of a treat.

Eight and Three Quarters out of Ten

‘A Game of Thrones: The Graphic Novel (Volume One)’ – George R.R. Martin, Daniel Abraham, Tommy Patterson (Bantam)

In this new age of the HBO show (forthcoming computer games and so on) is there anything left to say about 'A Game of Thrones’ that hasn’t already been said? We’re all up to date with the books now and there’s the promise of more seasons of the TV show to come (two more or is it three?) That’s not even counting the flood of merchandise off the back of the show…
Well, it turns out that there is something new to talk about with the arrival of Volume One of the ‘Game of Thrones’ comic book series. Marvel (and previously the Dabel Brothers) has already published the tales of the Hedge Knight Ser Duncan the Tall but this is the first time that the main series of books has made that transition to comic book format.

Not wanting to fork out for another long running comic book series (which this could well end up becoming) I waited for just this moment, a hardback edition collecting the first six issues of ‘A Game of Thrones’. That in itself comes in at an impressive one hundred and eighty three pages so I was interested to see just how well ‘A Game of Thrones’ lends itself to the comic book format. As it happens, the transition was a lot smoother than I would have thought possible and it’s thanks to one Daniel Abraham that it works so well.

I’d be very surprised if there was anyone reading this post who hasn’t already read ‘A Game of Thrones’, or seen it on the television, so I’m not going to go too deeply into the blurb here (thus hopefully avoiding too many spoilers for anyone who isn’t familiar with the book). Lets just say that issues one to six cover the time between the first ranging beyond the Wall to Daenerys beginning to make a home for herself within the Dothraki Khalasar.

Like I said, the story itself has been covered extensively elsewhere and perhaps shouldn’t be the focus of this review anyway. What I was more interested in, right from the start, was how it adapted to this medium and it did very well in this regard.

My copy of ‘A Game of Thrones’ weighs in at an impressive eight hundred and seven pages which isn’t counting the appendices. That’s a lot of detail then and there’s no way that it would all fit into a comic book series, not unless you were happy for the adaptation of the first book to run for a hundred issues at least.
What Abraham does then is to take the more important moments in the book, dress these up with some of the minor details and present this to the reader as a fait accompli. It’s an approach that worked very well as far as I was concerned. I felt like I was getting a clearly defined tale that worked very well within the parameters of the format. There may have been plenty missing but it didn’t feel like there was anything missing out and that was the main thing for me.

It was also interesting to see that Abraham was able to do this by taking the focus off individual characters and merging everything into one ongoing tale rather than the approach that Martin himself takes (with each chapter devoted to one particular character). Maybe I’ve been out of the ‘Reading ASOIAF Game’ a little too long but things seemed to flow much more smoothly here with a story that gradually unfolds rather than jumping to and fro across continents and even timelines.

I suspect that Tommy Patterson’s artwork will come to grow on me more as the series progresses. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, Patterson really brings the world of Westeros to life (aided and abetted by Ivan Nunes’ colours) but the facial expressions he lends to his characters don’t seem to back up the whole ‘gritty, harsh and Machiavellian’ thing that Martin wants his reader to be a part of. It feels like they’re all smiling at the most inopportune times!  It’s a small complaint though and I think that, as the story progresses, Patterson should be more than up to conveying some of the darker moments to come.

Volume One then is an excellent start to the ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ series in comic book format. It neatly side-steps all the problems that I foresaw and, if it continues in this vein, promises great things for the future. I’m certainly there for the long haul now.

Nine and a Half out of Ten

‘Orcs: Forged For War’ – Stan Nicholls & Joe Flood (First Second)

It was about ten years ago (a time when I didn’t know that the internet existed outside of Amazon...) that I read Stan Nicholls’ first ‘Orcs’ trilogy and was underwhelmed enough not to go back and read the second trilogy when that was released a little more recently. You’re going to cut me a little slack as far as remembering what it was that irked me about these books; really, just count yourself lucky that I can remember books that I read ten years ago! All I have is a feeling of dissatisfaction that has travelled down the years and put in an appearance when I opened a package, at the weekend, to find that the world of ‘Orcs’ has returned in graphic novel format.

Now, I do try to be as fair as I can in situations like this and give books a fair go. So I didn’t enjoy the first trilogy? I never read the second trilogy so who’s to say that things haven’t improved in the meantime? If you can’t remember why you didn’t enjoy the original books in the first place then don’t take it out on the new book! And... It’s a comic book for goodness sake; you literally cannot go wrong with reading a comic book in the sun at the weekend.
Well, I gave ‘Forged For War’ a go and was reminded only too well about what it was that turned me off the books in the first place. At the same time though, ‘Forged For War’ made for a nice weekend read in the sun...

The world of Maras-Dantia is a world at war and the peerless Orcs are the grunts stuck on the front lines, fighting for masters who really don’t care if they live or die. The Orc Stryke heads up the ‘Wolverines’, a band of fighters whose reputation in the field often means that they are volunteered for the most dangerous jobs going. In the face of what they have done before, escorting a group of Goblins (looking to test a dangerous new weapon) doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Stryke’s soldiers are used to obeying orders but when the secrecy surrounding this mission might just be hiding something else... All the Wolverines can rely on are the swords that they hold and the Orc stood beside them.

Secret missions are great aren’t they? No-one knows what is going on and anything could happen in the meantime... Except here. You may not know what’s going to happen but you know exactly how it’s going to end up as Nicholls make it clear very early on that betrayal is the order of the day and the hammer is going to fall hardest on Stryke’s men (I mean Orcs, sorry...) Once I knew what was going on I found myself waiting for the ‘big reveal’ and the surprise, just vanished; especially when Nicholls made it clear who was going to be betraying who... This kind of transparency was what annoyed me when I read Nicholls’ books the last time.

What ‘Forged For War’ does have going in it’s favour though is the sheer energy of it’s plot and protagonists. It didn’t quite work for me but what this energy does do is power things along so that you only notice the large jolt in the plot as a minor bump. Nicholls is happy to throw his characters up against... well, pretty much everything really and while the outcome is never in any doubt watching Orcs face off against everything else makes for some exciting reading (especially the last few pages).

Nicholls does well to achieve this through his writing but Joe Flood’s art plays no small part in the end result. I’ll admit that, in the early stages of the book, I thought that Flood’s art was quite basic (and a mean part of me thought, ‘just like the plot...’)
As the pages went by though it became clear that what Flood’s art may lack in detail is more than made up for by his concentrating on the savagery and raw brutality of the Orcs and what they must face. Flood leaves you in no doubt, with some powerful imagery, just what war in Maras-Dantia can be like and that ended up being a large part of what kept me reading.

‘Forged For War’ comes before the main storyline so can be read by anyone who hasn’t read the books themselves; I think it goes without saying that fans will enjoy it the most though.
As far as I was concerned, it was a fun read but Nicholls very nearly robbed me of the main reason to stick with it. Things balanced out though, the story may be a little too linear and obvious for me but its energy carried me along smoothly. Like I said, a good books to read in the sun.

Eight out of Ten

‘Blood Work’ – Kim Harrison (Del Rey)

One of the many things that I love about reading, in general, is how a book leaves me feeling after I’ve finished it and put it down. Of course I’m going to love it if a book leaves me feeling lots of positive things, I mean who wouldn’t? We’d all rather feel good about a book that we’ve enjoyed reading. Funnily enough though, I actually quite like it when a book leaves me feeling negative about the reading experience I’ve just had. I may not agree with how the writer tackled their subject matter (or any number of other things) but if it engages me and leaves me feeling strongly about something by the end... well, that’s a definite plus. If it’s jammed full of typos, continuity errors and overly reliant on lazy clichés that’s another deal entirely though!

What really gets me is when I’ve sat down and read a book (all the way through to the end) only to find that I’m left feeling absolutely nothing at all; nothing in the book has leapt out and grabbed me in any way, shape or form. I don’t know about you but that just makes me feel like I’ve wasted my time reading the book. You’re never going to know until you pick the book up, to start off with, but even so...
Here’s ‘Blood Work’ then, a book that left me feeling absolutely nothing at all.

I’ve copied and pasted the blurb for ‘Blood Work’ (from Amazon), the reasons for this will hopefully become clearer as we go along...

Hot-as-hell, tough-as-nails detective Ivy Tamwood has been demoted from homicide down to lowly street-crime detail. As if rousting trolls and policing pixies instead of catching killers wasn’t bad enough, she’s also been saddled with a newbie partner who’s an earth witch. It’s enough to make any living vampire bare her fangs. But when a coven of murderous witches begins preying on werewolves, Rachel Morgan quickly proves she’s a good witch who knows how to be a badass.

Together, Ivy and Rachel hit the mean streets to deal swift justice to the evil element among Cincinnati’s supernatural set. But there’s more to their partnership than they realize—and more blood and black magic in their future than they bargained for.

‘Blood Work’ is a book that aims to let readers know just how living vampire Ivy Tamwood ended up being partnered with earth witch Rachel Morgan for I.S (Inderland Security) business. Now, I haven’t read the series but I’m sure it’s been going on a lot longer than the publication of this comic book so my first question was ‘wouldn’t long term readers know all this already?’ Seems like a bit of an odd one considering background setting in the series should have covered this. Never mind I thought, at least I can come in at the beginning and get to know these two characters right from the start.

That’s what I thought anyway...

‘Blood Work’ just happens to be a book that throws it’s readers in at the beginning of Ivy and Rachel’s partnership but assumes that you’ve read the other books already and will get what’s going on. As someone who’s never read any of Kim Harrison’s books (what am I missing?) confusion totally reigned as far as I was concerned and I had no idea what was going on. I know there was a case to solve but it was totally lost under a mass of references that I knew were happening but was oblivious to their meaning. Stuff happened but I had no idea why. I guess there’s only so much room for background information in a comic but others manage, why couldn’t ‘Blood Work’? I can’t engage with a story if it doesn’t want to engage with me, that’s the bottom line I guess.

This wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the artwork had been of a slightly higher standard. Unfortunately, Pedro Maia and Gemma Magno combine to offer up artwork that does a basic job of scenery setting but then goes and fills it full of characters that are posed very awkwardly and don’t seem to be able to move smoothly. I couldn’t even engage with the artwork...

‘Blood Work’ was so inaccessible that I’m foregoing the normal score here and rubbing my poor tired eyes in a flurry of ‘what the...?’ Maybe I’m being too harsh on it, not having read the other books, but this really felt like a book that had no interest in engaging its reader. Doubtless, long term fans will find more to appreciate but I can’t believe that the dynamic between Ivy and Rachel hasn’t been gone over already? Oh well, onto the next book... 

‘Scarlet Traces: The Great Game’ – Ian Edgington & D’Israeli (Dark Horse Books)

I’m a sucker for sequels, aren’t we all? If you’ve enjoyed the opening chapter of a series then it’s only natural that you’re going to want to go back and get more of the same in the follow up. Well, it wasn’t quite like that for me this time round but I couldn’t help but go back anyway for the sequel to Edington and D’Israeli’s ‘Scarlet Traces’...

Right at the very beginning of this month I reviewed ‘Scarlet Traces’ and found myself saying that ‘Scarlet Traces’ is a lovely look at what H.G. Wells’ classic could have led onto but falls short when it tries to tell it’s own story within it. There was enough there though to hold my interest so while I won’t be going out of my way to find future books, I’ll grab them if I see them and you’ll see the results here’. At the time, I thought this was a fairly safe thing to say as it didn’t look like there were any sequels to pick up. One visit to the library later and I was to be proved very wrong. Looking at the cover for ‘The Great Game’ I had my reservations but it was a sequel and, no matter what I think of a book, if there’s a sequel then I find myself really needing to know what happens next. So, what happened next? More reservations and issues, that’s what...

The action has now moved forward to the mid nineteen forties and the British led invasion of Mars had ground to a halt with a war of attrition having been fought for the last forty years and costing thousands of British lives. Plans are brewing though, the Martians are planning a brutal counter attack and there is something else happening on the Red Planet that the British Government don’t want you to know about... What is photo-journalist Charlotte Hemming doing in the middle of the war zone then? Charlotte’s not entirely sure (other than that a face from the past pointed her in that direction) but what she will find there could well redefine the face of our galaxy.

‘The Great Game’ appears to have a lot going for it, at least as far as the blurb goes. I mean look at it; you’ve got the continuation of a pretty momentous finale from the last book as well as the chance to meet a familiar face and see how Britain has moved on from the end of the nineteenth century. It’s all looking pretty good so far so it’s a real shame then that the book fell down sharply for me as far as the plot and it’s depiction went.

Artwork first and I’m really not sure what happened here as ‘Scarlet Traces’ gave us artwork that may have been a little too bright for the eyes (and perhaps too revealing) but was very detailed and gave us a real in depth look at how Britain could have evolved ‘post Martian’ invasion’. To be fair, we do get more of the same this time round and attention has been paid to the fact that Britain has been through even more changes in the intervening forty years. What I wasn’t keen on at all was the way in which the artwork started out looking very sketchy and like it hadn’t much attention paid to it. Maybe I was spoiled by a prior volume that had artwork geared more towards online publication... Whether that was the case or not, it felt like the artwork was being pushed to one side for the sake of the story and that didn’t feel right to me. There were some absolutely gorgeous scenes of warfare on the Red Planet itself but it felt like these came too little too late in terms of the overall effect.

I think the fairest thing I could say about the plot itself is that repeated reading will probably throw up things that you will miss first time round; I think that’s probably what happened with me (although I did read the book more than once). How many times do you read a book before reviewing it though? I had to stop sometime and that’s where you find me, with a story that somehow felt incomplete and a little confusing. I think the confusion can be attributed to the sketchy artwork which the reader relies upon to gain clues but finds there isn’t enough detail to get the answers that they are after. It felt like there were a lot of good ideas (the machinations of the British government and the movement of life across our solar system) but not enough room to really let them grow organically into something cohesive. What you get instead is the ‘villain’ telling Charlotte everything right at the very end (because she’s surely going to die anyway, right?) and I’ve seen that device used far too many times for it to be truly effective here. A little bit more attention paid to developing the story and this wouldn’t have had to happen.

Like I said, I’m a sucker for sequels but I also know when to stop reading and that point is right here. ‘The Great Game’ rounds off the events begun in ‘Scarlet Traces’ but not in a good way at all. How can a story ooze such potential yet leave me so disappointed? Oh well, onto the next book...

Six out of Ten

‘Lenore: Cooties’ – Roman Dirge (Titan Books)

I know I bang on about this every now and then but one of the reasons I feel so privileged to be running this blog is that it gives me the chance to check out books that I wouldn’t even normally dream of picking up. For someone like me, who’s in a book more often than not, that’s just pure heaven :o) Of course it doesn’t work out all the time but that’s half the fun of it really, you never know quite how it’s going to turn out until you get going. When it does work out though… long-term readers of the blog will know that I’ve discovered some absolute gems that will stay in my head for a long time to come. These days it’s taking me a while to get round to everything in the reading pile but there is still treasure hidden in its midst. I didn’t think I’d ever say this but ‘Cooties’ is pure gold.

So there’s this little ten-year-old girl called Lenore who has been dead a long time now. It hasn’t stopped her returning to the world of the living though, enraging the lord of HECK enough to send a horde of Nazi zombies to bring her back (that’s if her stalker doesn’t wear her down first…) Lenore isn’t without allies though and if that wasn’t enough, she has a neat habit of being distracted at just the right moment…

‘Cooties’ is the kind of book where the main character is so gooey and sweet that you have to remind yourself that you’re a guy and maybe you should be doing ‘man things’ like mowing the lawn or fixing a tile on the roof. Every time you find yourself starting to think these thoughts though Roman Dirge steps in and twists things ever so slightly so that you’re suddenly reading about Nazi zombies taking a lone vampire in a bloodbath the likes of which I haven’t seen since… well, I haven’t. You literally have no idea what’s going to happen next (a Spam Witch?) and that’s what kept me turning those pages.

I’m really glad I kept reading as ‘Cooties’ is also one of those books that will have you giggling like a fool just when you least expect it. I’m not just talking about Lenore’s tale either although she is funny enough to carry the whole thing by herself. I love the way that she’ll bring everything to a complete halt just because something has randomly caught her eye or she’s misunderstood what Ragamuffin (a vampire cuddly toy) has just said.
This would be more than enough on its own but we’re lucky enough to get random outtakes from Roman’s life as well, all the funnier and surreal for being true (I think, I don’t care, they were funny…)

I’ve never read any of Roman Dirge’s other work but the guy writes with the air of someone totally on top of his game and showing no signs of loosing his grip. If that wasn’t enough, he can draw as well. The land of Nevermore is a gloriously muted backdrop to the outright weirdness that plays out, very dreamlike which I guess was the target being aimed for.

There aren’t many books where I finish and then go back to the start and get going again, ‘Cooties’ joins that select band. A book that makes me laugh so readily, and freely, has a place on my bookshelf for as long as it wants to be there.

Ten out of Ten

‘Scarlet Traces’ – Ian Edginton & D’Israeli (Dark Horse Books)

Having felt like death warmed up (micro waved at full power in fact) for a large chunk of last week it was kind of understandable that focussing on pages of text really wasn’t going to happen. Seriously, it’s only in the last couple of days that words have stopped trying to jump the pages. When I’m feeling rough though... all I want to do is curl up with something to read and that’s where comic books (once again) come in! :o) I’ve found that my comic book reading has taken me away from traditional superheroes and towards stuff that perhaps doesn’t enjoy the same kind of focus that a comic book with superheroes would (I’m obviously not counting ‘The Walking Dead’ here). Each to their own, and all that, but it’s turning out to be not for me.

When I saw ‘Scarlet Traces’ in the library I really thought my luck was in as it seemed to tick all the boxes that I like to be ticked. Steampunk, death rays and the after-effects of the failed Martian invasion of Earth... and a story as well! I couldn’t go wrong, could I?

Ten years after the failed Martian invasion of Earth, Victorian Britain has eagerly embraced the remnants of Martian technology, using it to thoroughly establish the dominance of the British Empire across the planet. However, there is something rotten at the heart of the empire...

Women are disappearing, only to reappear on the banks of the Thames completely drained of blood. Has the Dulwich Vampire returned or is something else entirely going on? It’s the job of former army Captain Robert Autumn and his manservant Archie Currie to find out and they will soon find themselves on a path that takes them from the Gin Palaces of the East End to the empire’s own hidden corridors of power...

The first thing that strikes you about this book is the very distinctive artwork of the man D’Israeli. I’m talking quite literally here with a book where the artwork chooses to go ‘brash and bright’; a book where you might want to consider investing in some sunglasses maybe? I’m wondering if this approach was perhaps a result of the book’s original incarnation as a semi-animated piece online? Who knows...

D’Israeli’s bright artwork had mixed success in terms of what it seeks to achieve on the page. It highlights the garish alien qualities of what the Martians left behind but it also highlights the seamy underbelly of London and in doing so makes that seamy underbelly a little less dark and dangerous. You can see exactly what’s going on and there’s no real mystery as a result. You’ve got to love the level of detail that D’Israeli has put into this ‘alternate London’ and it’s all too easy to spend a few minutes happily looking when you could be reading.

Edginton’s story also enjoys mixed levels of success, at least as far as I was concerned. I loved the exploration of what the assimilation of Martian technology meant for the Empire; what they gained but consequently what they lost at the same time. This exploration is far reaching and covers a Scotland effectively under martial law as there is no longer any need for their workers and the populace are beginning to starve. There is clearly a lot of thought gone into this piece and all credit to Edginton for taking this idea and running with it the way he has.

The actual plot itself didn’t do an awful lot for me though. Things weren’t signposted as such but the ending (when I got to it) felt like something that had been done before and I missed the impact as a result. It looks like there are more books to come so maybe there’s time yet for something fresher; that wasn’t something I found here though. Events leading up to the finale were rendered efficiently but not in a way that had me hooked. By that point I was reading for the art and a look at this alternate British Empire, not the plot...

‘Scarlet Traces’ is a lovely look at what H.G. Wells’ classic could have led onto but falls short when it tries to tell it’s own story within it. There was enough there though to hold my interest so while I won’t be going out of my way to find future books, I’ll grab them if I see them and you’ll see the results here.

Seven and a Half out of Ten

‘Conan Volume 7: Cimmeria’ – Truman, Corben & Giorello (Dark Horse Books)

If you scroll down the page a bit you’ll see that this week has been a great week for reading (mine!) here on the blog. Being honest though, I’ve got to say that the cumulative affects of lack of sleep (over the last few days) meant that I found myself naturally gravitating towards the stuff that I knew I’d enjoy. That’s just the way it goes round here sometimes and I wouldn’t be too surprised if you saw more of the same in the future.
 Anyway... I was looking for something to read that would end the week on a high and ‘Cimmeria’ seemed like the best way forwards here. I’ve been enjoying Truman and Giorello’s run on ‘Conan’ for a while now and ‘Cimmeria’ was a great way to fill in some of the gaps that inevitably occurred while I was collecting the comics a year or two back.
Well the gaps can now well and truly be considered filled in as far as this storyline goes. The artwork is as lovely as ever (even more so at times) but the plot itself didn’t seem up to the same high standards this time round...

Weary of the duplicity of so called civilisation, Conan finds his feet taking back towards his dark and misty homeland of Cimmeri, where a foe would never dishonour himself by stabbing you in the back and life is so much straightfoward. After so long away, Conan wants the kind of honesty that only his homeland can offer. Cimmeria has it’s own internal bickering though and Conan must swiftly come to terms with this if he is to protect the woman that he first loved. A raiding party of Aesir hint at a truce in danger of being broken and Conan’s first love Caollan lies at the heart of it all…

‘Cimmeria’ is split into two tales, Conan’s return to his homeland and the journey that his Grandfather Connacht made when he left. The two plots dovetail well and not only is this a nice way of getting two stories for the price of one but Cimmeria as a country is shown to exert a very strong pull on it’s countrymen. You get a really clear picture of what it means to be Cimmerian. I’m no scholar of Robert E. Howard and couldn’t tell you how much of Connacht’s story is based on what Howard actually wrote (my suspicion is very little if any). It does however remain a very interesting story that suggests where Conan got his own wanderlust as well as showing us Conan’s world through a set of fresh eyes. You can’t argue with that and Connacht’s story was the highlight of the book for me, especially how it is rendered through Richard Corben’s striking artwork. There is no way that you will get the two tales mixed up here…

It’s a shame then that the same cannot be said for Conan’s own story (although Tomas Giorello comes up trumps again with his artwork and has pretty much supplied the definitive Conan as far as I’m concerned).
Conan’s tale is an expansion of the Robert E. Howard poem ‘Cimmeria’ and those initial lines (coupled with Giorello’s art) really take you into the setting itself. I’m finding out more and more about Howard at the moment and I can add ‘writes a mean poem’ to that list. The rest of the story doesn’t quite capture that same feel though; Truman’s writing here (good though it is, intrigue and blood drenched action in equal measure) fails to maintain this feeling and suffers for it. What you have is a story with atmosphere but not the atmosphere we were promised right at the start…

‘Cimmeria’ is visually stunning but very much a book of two slightly uneven halves that affect the flow of the story as a whole. This won’t stop me reading though, the ‘Conan’ books, from Dark Horse, are well worth your time.

Eight and a Half out of Ten

‘Killraven’ – Alan Davis & Mark Farmer (Marvel)

The reason I’ve been mostly concentrating on comics from Dark Horse and Image (ok, mostly Dark Horse) is that not only do my favourite comic books come from these publishers but I’ve also found that their stories are a hell of a lot easier to get into than those from Marvel and DC. I mentioned it before but it feels like there’s just too much back story to get caught up in sometimes. At least that’s what I thought until Sue came home from the library with a couple of comic books for me (thanks Sue!) It always seems to escape my notice but Marvel’s output isn’t just limited to the big superheroes and mutants that we all know and love (even if the size of the back catalogue scares us to death!) There’s a whole load of lesser known characters out there to be checked out. Take ‘Killraven’ for instance...
In the near future, Martians have invaded the Earth once more and this time the humble germ has totally failed to stop them gaining a foothold on the planet and settling in for good. This time it’s the turn of humanity to stand up and take their planet back but how can they do this when the Martians hold the upper hand in terms of technology? One man is prepared to try regardless of this and the advantage he holds is that he was trained as a gladiator by the very people he will take the war to. Enter Killraven...

The original ‘Killraven’ was actually published way back in the seventies and what I’ve been reading instead is Alan Davis’ 2002 rewrite of the original series (collecting issues one to six). According to Wikipedia it’s an alternate version of the original that’s set in one of the many alternate Earths of the Marvel universe. I’m not going to go too deeply into that because not only is something that I don’t know much about, I also know that going down that route will make my head hurt...

‘Killraven’ is heavy on spectacle and action and this made the whole thing a guaranteed page turner as far as I was concerned. There is so much going on that I had to keep reading so that I could take it all in. One thing that I’ve realised though is that I like my comic art to stand out from the pack a little; just so I feel like I reading something that’s different and had a little effort put into it (I’m thinking Eric Powell and Kyle Hotz in particular). I didn’t get that feeling from Davis’ art which left me feeling that I may as well have just dived into any one of the other Marvel comics that I’ve read in the past. There’s nothing wrong with it but it didn’t really do anything different... Does all Marvel artwork have to be the same? Gregory Wright’s colours did rescue things though, injecting a sense of vibrancy and urgency into the proceedings that kept things moving nicely.

As far as the story goes, well... I guess if I had to sum it up in four words it would be ‘entertaining but somehow flat’. Can something even be entertaining but flat at the same time? I think so, it definitely was here.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that these first six issues are setting things up for events to come as well as trying to swiftly get readers up to speed regarding what has gone before. It felt to me that too much attention had been paid to these two areas and as a result we only get brief glimpses of what is happening right now. This imbalance meant that ‘Killraven’ has a lot of potential that went unrealised. What you do get is entertaining enough but it felt like it could have been a lot more.

The characters we get to spend time with don’t really help matters either as their circumstances have led them all to be in serious need of development in one way or another. On the one hand you can’t really blame the opening issues of a series for having under-developed characters as you’re expecting them to be built up over the course of a long series. On the other hand though, you can quite reasonably expect your characters to be a little more developed than they were here. Killraven and his team may have only known killing in the arena but they come across as unwilling to connect with their new surroundings in anything but the most stereotypical ways. If they don’t want to connect then why should we...? The story may be an exciting one but that sense of detachment makes it a tough one to get into.

I could see myself digging out the old ‘Killraven’ comics on the basis of what I read here but felt like this version could have done a lot more to impress me. Like Michael Bay’s ‘Transformers’ movies, Alan Davis’ ‘Killraven’ is entertaining enough on the surface but has nothing going on underneath...

Six and Three Quarters out of Ten

‘Conan: The Hall of the Dead and other Stories’ – Kurt Busiek, Mike Mignola, Timothy Truman & Cary Nord (Dark Horse Books)

I’ll come straight out and say that my plans to read the Fantasy Masterworks editions of ‘Conan’ have rather hit a brick wall in the last few weeks (ok, ever since I said I was going to read them...) You’re not interested in all the details, trust me on this, lets just say that the whole ‘Conan’ reading project is still very much a work in progress... Thank Crom then for the Dark Horse collections! They may only be based on the original works but I’ve always thought that Conan was well suited to the comic book format and I’ve seen nothing to disprove that yet.

‘The Hall of the Dead’ made for some delicious holiday reading last week and will tide me over nicely until I get my act together and crack open the books themselves...

As a young man, Conan proved his worth as a thief in the narrow alleyways and tall towers of the City of Thieves. The one thing that he never learnt though was to curb his excesses and this led to him bringing unwanted attention both upon himself and the other thieves looking to make a living without being noticed...

Now Conan must escape the attentions of the City Guard as well as his fellow thieves. It looks like sanctuary might lie within a ruined temple just outside the city but Conan will find that this is where the true danger really lies...

Dark Horse have built up a more than decent reputation as purveyors of some gorgeous looking ‘Conan’ comics and ‘The Hall of the Dead’ does nothing but ensure that this reputation remains intact. Cary Nord’s artwork is such that I could spend ages looking at it before I remembered that there was a story to go with it. His backdrops are superb, carrying a dreamlike quality that cements this fantasy setting. When things kick off though, Nord shows that he is more than able to keep up with the pace, delivering action scenes that really capture what Conan is all about – derring do and a willingness to take on superior numbers armed with nothing but a sword and a whole load of attitude.

This all looks good on the page but what you can’t get away from is how simplistic the plot is. Conan constantly bounces from one danger to another and doesn’t do much else than that. In one sense that is the whole point of Conan I guess, the guy is a force of nature and will solve his problems in that manner. It’s worth mentioning though that while you can really immerse yourself in the setting, Conan himself doesn’t have that same depth to him. Depends what you want out of the story as a whole I guess.

earing this in mind then, how do the writers rise to the challenge of telling a story where the main character perhaps doesn’t carry the plot in all the ways that would really benefit the book as a whole? In the words of Mike Mignola (from the introduction)...

‘Robert E. Howard wrote only a two-page outline for ‘The Hall of the Dead’ but all the big stuff (ambush, lost city, living skeletons, snake in a bag) was already there. I just had to fill in the weird atmosphere and throw in some frogs.’

Howard has given the contributing writers the bones upon which to flesh the story out and they all do a fine job of filling in the gaps. Mignola’s take on ‘The Hall of the Dead’ is the stand out effort here; a great exercise in weirdness with a fearsome frog monster for Conan to take on. Nord’s artwork shows off the fight in the best possible way but it was Mignola who took Conan right into the belly of the beast and going off on that kind of tangent is what makes the story work so well.

Busiek’s opening chapters capture the spirit of Conan without necessarily expanding on it.; it’s all in keeping with the character himself but I couldn’t help but wonder if there was more tale to be told. Truman, on the other hand, delivers an exciting dose of action by taking the simple approach of filling in any gaps with more foes for Conan to vanquish. It may be a simple approach but is certainly effective.

Despite the odd niggle ‘The Hall of the Dead’ has a lot going for it and was a great way to idle away a few hours last week. Now, onto the books themselves...
Eight and a Half out of Ten

‘The Amulet of Samarkand’ – Jonathan Stroud & Andrew Donkin (Corgi)

What with one thing and another, I really wasn’t in the mood to push it reading wise over the weekend so fancied something light and relatively easy going instead. The comic books I normally read don’t fall into this category at all (I dare anyone to say that ‘The Walking Dead’ is a light and easy going read...) but I did happen to have a couple on the pile that looked like they could be worth a look while the baby was using me as a climbing frame...

I’d read Andrew Donkin’s adaptation of ‘The Arctic Incident’ back in March last year and enjoyed it enough to be on the lookout for more of his work. It turned out that my review ended up giving me the chance to have a look at a review copy of Donkin’s adaptation of ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’ as well and I couldn’t say no to that. As it turned out, ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’ was exactly the kind of light and easy going read that I was after but not an awful lot more than that...

In a modern day London (and what looks like an empire beyond it) controlled by magicians, apprentice magician Nathaniel is out for revenge and will stop at nothing to get it. What Nathaniel has in mind involves the summoning of five thousand year old djinni Bartimaeus for a campaign of revenge that will begin with the theft of the fabled amulet of Samarkand. What Nathaniel doesn’t know though is just what kind of a wizard he has chosen to take on in the vicious Simon Lovelace. The resulting feud will escalate throughout the corridors of Parliament itself and Bartimaeus is caught firmly in the middle...

I don’t normally do this but before I go on to talk about the book itself, I’m just going to say a couple of words about... erm... the book itself...
After a few pages my copy of ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’ suffered a sudden and violent case of pages starting to come away from the spine and I wasn’t so much reading the book as I was ‘holding it gingerly and hoping for the best’. A few more pages in and this stopped being a problem but it wasn’t as if I was being particularly rough on the book to start off with... I don’t know if this was a one off case so if you’re thinking about picking up a copy for yourself then you might want to have a quick flick through first and see if all the pages stay where they are meant to.

Once I got past this small issue I ended up really getting into and enjoying this adaptation of ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’; I haven’t read the original book but felt that this version told us all the important bits that we needed to know. Having said that though, it felt like this format couldn’t fit in everything that the original book did. I came away with the impression that there was a positive wealth of background history that there wasn’t room to showcase. You could say that this lends a nice sense of depth to the background setting but, at the same time, the story itself felt a little too lightweight with nothing to properly back it up. Reading from a more ‘adult’ perspective, I couldn’t quite buy the reasoning behind Nathaniel’s desire for revenge either. It seemed a little too petty to hang a whole story off although a young adult reader might totally get it.

Having said all that though, ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’ was still a lot of fun to read. The plot was a little too linear for my tastes but there is always something exciting going on (you know how it’s going to go but it’s great to look at) and it’s all vibrantly rendered by Lee Sullivan’s art and Nicolas Chapuis’ colours. This is a graphic novel that’s a joy to look at. Bartimaeus takes centre stage with a bucket load of self-confidence (bordering on arrogance) that had me rooting for him the whole way through with his refusal to let mortal danger get in the way of a good quip. You know what? I even found myself warming to Nathaniel in the end after some of the stuff that happens to him…

Despite some issues with the way the story is told, I couldn’t help but enjoy the exuberant way in which ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’ is presented here and that got me back into the story before I realised what was happening. Fans of the original book will probably enjoy it more than I did but it’s still a great little read for a Sunday afternoon.

Eight out of Ten

‘Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard (Vol. 1)’ – David Peterson et al (Titan Books)

My time in London can be measured in many ways; the number of jobs that I’ve had for instance (eight jobs in six years but most of those were temporary contracts, honest!) or the number of places where I’ve lived (three places in six years, all within a couple of streets of each other). The measurement that I don’t like to talk about though is the number of mice that I’ve had to kill since moving to London (the mouse capitol of the UK apparently...) The current total stands at five (two with a frying pan, one with a place mat, one with a chopping board and one with a pile of dirty washing plates, he shouldn’t have tried hiding in the kitchen sink...) and I’m sure there will be many more to come...
It’s hard to see the nobility in an animal that seems to delight in getting at all your food and leaving its waste behind; the instinct is to kill the little beast before it finds the chocolate stash (although any that I can catch in the humane trap are released). David Peterson’s ‘Legends of the Guard’ has taught me a lesson or two though and in some style. I’ll still do all I can to keep mice out of the house but I think I’ll have a little more respect for them while I’m doing it...

In the western mouse city of Barkstone, the June Alley Inn is the place to go for fine food, fine beer and tall stories. This is even more the case tonight as the teller of the best tale will have his bar tab cleared while the losers will have no excuses but to finally pay up. The only rules are that each story must contain one truth, one lie and must never have been told in the tavern before. Everyone has a tale to tell but who will win...?

David Peterson’s ‘Mouse Guard’ (a tale of the heroics of medieval style soldier mice) is one of those series that I find myself looking at, thinking ‘I really should pick this one up’ and then somehow never getting round to it. I finally got round to it over the weekend (although ‘Legends of the Guard’ is a collection mainly featuring contributions from other writers) and I’m very glad that I did. This collection just blew me away with the storytelling and artwork on offer; here is a book that I literally lost myself in for hours and I think I’ll be tracking down Peterson’s other works to see if he can maintain this standard on his own. Before I even start talking about the book itself I have to say that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone here. ‘Mouse Guard’ appears to be the logical ‘next step’ for anyone who grew up on the ‘Redwall’ books but it goes far beyond these in taking a life all of its own.

The plot that ties the separate stories together may have been done before but Peterson steers the book past this potential pitfall by keeping things simple and getting to the individual tales as quickly as possible. Without giving too much away, I would also say that I agreed with the final choice of winner but it was a close run thing. There were any number of tales that could have won their teller a clean bar slate and this made for a generally very high standard of tales throughout the book.

I say ‘generally’ though...

The tales that really worked for me were the ones where both writers and artists really stuck to the vision that you can just tell Peterson has given us in previous volumes. I know I haven’t read the previous two books but you can tell from the Peterson’s artwork (and what you see of his part in the book) that we’re looking at something a little more gritty and heroic than you would normally find in a comic book about mice. It’s a real shame then that while Katie Cook’s ‘A Mouse named Fox’ does a good job of extolling the heroic virtues of that smallest of animals her overly bright and cartoonish artwork detracts from the tale and clashes with the more sombre tones on display in the rest of the book. Guy Davis’ ‘The Critic’ fell flat for me when he decided to replace written dialogue with pictures in speech and I spent ages trying to work out what the story was actually all about. I still don’t know if I’m on the right lines here...
Joao Lemos’ ‘Epilogue’ didn’t do it for me either although I did like the possible idea that it could have been that the best story was in fact never told. It just didn’t seem to tie in well with the rest of what was on offer...

When ‘Legends’ gets it right though... Well, it gets things right in some style and more than makes up for the short fallings that I found in other stories. What you have here is a collection where stories merge seamlessly with their artwork to produce stirring tales of heroism, triumph and tragedy that showcase the massive personalities in these tiny creatures. Ted Naifel’s ‘A Bargain in the Dark’ and Karl Kerschl’s ‘Bowen’s Tale’ show us how brave a mouse can be despite the dangers it faces. Alex Kain and Sean Rubin’s ‘Potential’ and Mark Smylie’s ‘Crown of Silver, Crown of Gold’ show that (despite tragedy) good can still come from adversity. Alex Sheikman takes things in a slightly different direction with ‘Oleg the Wise’ and shows us that even a mouse can become too big for its boots and believe its own publicity. Stirring heroics make this a tale to follow though and you do find yourself wondering if the foregone conclusion could in fact be averted? My favourite tale though was Ha and Francis’ ‘Worley & the Mink’ where the hero of the title is a humble accountant looking to get his money back on a deal and finds himself having to deal with something far more dangerous. I love ‘brain over brawn’ stories and this one was handled superbly.

What a way to start my year’s reading for 2011! ‘Legends of the Guard’ is a gorgeously put together volume full of gorgeously told tales and you can’t ask for a lot more than that without looking just a little bit ungrateful. Highly recommended and a book that I’ll be reading over and over again for years to come.

Nine and a Half out of Ten

‘The Exile’ – Diana Gabaldon (Del Rey)

Every so often, I get a strange kick out of parading the fact that there is a multitude of sci-fi/fantasy authors out there that I haven’t checked out yet. Have a click on the ‘Random Thoughts’ tag and you’ll see what I mean. Don’t ask me why I’ll quite happily admit to not being as well read as I could be, I don’t honestly know...
Diana Gabaldon is one of those authors who would have made it into the ‘I’ve never read anything by...’ posts sooner or later. One of those authors with loads of books under her belt that everyone else seems to have read, apart from me that is.
Well, I’m sure that one day this would have been the case if I hadn’t received a copy of ‘The Exile’ for review. Not only have I got a bit of a graphic novel thing going on right now but ‘The Exile’ also looked like just the right kind of book for me to find out what Gabaldon is all about (without getting bogged down in something that I don’t have the time to read).
As it turned out, I had a lot of fun with ‘The Exile’ but couldn’t help wishing that I’d perhaps started with something else instead...

It’s 1743 and Jamie Fraser has come home to Scotland, after a lengthy exile overseas, but it’s not a happy homecoming. Not only is there a price on Jamie’s head, courtesy of the British Captain Jack Randall, but he is also set to become an unwilling pawn in the machinations of the MacKenzie Clan where the only two possible choices he could make may well lead to his death.
And then Claire Randall suddenly appears, a woman who will throw everyone’s plans into chaos but who also has an agenda that she cannot reveal to anyone. Jamie falls in love with her but just what is she hiding from him? As events play out in the stronghold of Clan MacKenzie, Jamie Frasier wonders if Claire is a witch but the truth is a little harder to swallow...

‘Experience Jamie’s side of the story!’ Well, that’s what it says on the cover. The only problem I had here was that Jamie’s side of the story was the only side that I’d experienced... ‘The Exile’ works best for those who have already read ‘Outlander’ and are after a little change in perspective in order to flesh things out. It doesn’t give you the whole story here, it was never really meant to. For people like me, it’s like reading half a story with tantalising glimpses of what the rest of the story is really all about. This isn’t the book’s fault at all but is worth bearing in mind if you’re thinking about picking it up without having read ‘Outlander’ first. Just a thought ;o) (Although I was left wondering if someone who had already read ‘Outlander’ would feel that they were reading the same story again…)

Having said that though, the story here is worth following to its end. Like I said, I’m not how I’d feel if I was reading the same story over again but I had fun reading it this time round. Gabaldon really kept the pages turning for me with a nice mixture of mystery and action along with a burgeoning relationship that developed naturally and wasn’t forced in all those directions that I seem to see fictional relationships going these days (you know the ones I mean). The pacing is deceptively gentle yet smooth at the same time. Half the time I didn’t even realise that I was turning the pages, things were executed that smoothly. I knew how it had to end but I still found myself wondering right up until the last panel, just the way I like it sometimes.

The real star of the show is Hoang Nguyen’s absolutely gorgeous artwork and that very almost proved to be the downfall of the book itself. Nguyen’s male characters all look suspiciously similar (which made following the story difficult at times) but I could just sit there and stare at his landscapes for hours, they are wonderful and really capture the spirit of the Scottish Highlands. The only problem there is that I found that the artwork was taking over from the story itself, at least as far as I was concerned. Either Nguyen needed to tone things back a little or Gabaldon needed to inject a little urgency into her tale to balance things out; that balance wasn’t there though.

‘The Exile’ proved to be a very entertaining read; one of those books that has me thinking that I really should go back and try the earlier works if I ever get a spare second. However, I would have got a lot more out of it if I’d read those earlier works first and I’ll reckon that you’ll feel the same. If you’re a Gabaldon fan already then I reckon you’re in for a bit of a treat.

Eight and a Half out of Ten

‘Kick Ass’ – Mark Millar & John Romita Jr (Titan Books)

This is perhaps one of the more stupid and obvious questions that I will ever ask on the blog but I’ve managed to type this far so I’m going to go the whole way. Have any of you guys ever wanted to be a superhero? Yep, I thought so :o) Lets try and narrow it down a bit though. Would any of you guys still want to be a superhero? Cool, a few hands have gone down but we all know that those people are trying to protect their superhero identities. I can understand that... ;o)
I wouldn’t mind being a superhero, even now. I don’t know what powers I would want to have though, I would probably settle for looking damn cool and being able to fight crime without getting too beaten up myself! That’s the thing about fighting crime though; you’re going to have to take a few bruises yourself, that’s just the way it goes.

For those of us who are unwilling to take a beating and would prefer to live vicariously through someone else’s, Mark Millar and John Romita Jr have teamed up to give us the chance to do just that in ‘Kick Ass’...

Dave Lizewski is an ordinary American teenager who is about to become so much more, just by following his dream. For someone who loves comic books there is only one career path you can go down and Dave is about to tread that path. The city has a new hero and he is about to... well, you know ;o)
There are other heroes operating on the mean streets and a team up is inevitable. Can comic book idealism conquer organised crime though? That remains to be seen...

I don’t think I’ve ever read a comic book where the title sums up the feeling I was left with in just two simple words. In fact, this is one of the hardest reviews that I’ve ever had to write purely because I’m trying my hardest to avoid the blindingly obvious way of describing just how cool ‘Kick Ass’ is. ‘Kick Ass’... it just does.

Here is a book that lets you live out that dream of ‘If I were a super hero’ in a massive dose of Technicolor mayhem. It’s no holds barred stuff, Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. don’t appear to want it any other way. Romita’s artwork, and White’s colours, in particular really make the sheer power of what’s going just jump off the page and maul your eyeballs. Artwork and plot combine to make the pages turn almost without you realising.

‘Kick Ass’ isn’t just about the violence though (although there is something cool about a ten-year-old girl feeding a mobster into a car crusher, I can’t deny it). At its heart, ‘Kick Ass’ is also a strangely bittersweet book about the fragility of childhood dreams and how they are ultimately lost in the face of adult reality. Comic books are cool but only comic book heroes are ever going to get the better of a man with a gun. Amidst all the violence, there’s also a sense of naivety being pounded into something a little more cynical and nasty. The sense of inevitability makes it all the more sad somehow.
It’s also a rites of passage tale unlike most others. Dave grows up in any number of ways throughout the book and sometimes I wasn’t sure which he found hardest, it’s tough being a superhero and a teenager...

Read it for the high octane action and body count; read it for a real searching look and just what it means to face up to your actions (even when you’re sure you’re doing the right thing). ‘Kick Ass’ worked (for me) on all the levels it set out to do a job on. Another one that’s highly recommended around these parts!

Ten out of Ten