What comic are you reading at the moment.

Oh yeah, I think I have the first 2 Gideon Falls trades on digital, they were really good. With that kind of art style the real measure of the artist is being able to keep that balance between the abstraction in visual terms and the need for clarity in terms of storytelling and narrative. Sorrentino nails it in the two trades I read.

Yeah, DC haven't been great about keeping those big collections in print :( They do turn up from time to time so best to keep an eye on the usual outlets and see if a copy turns up at a reasonable price.

No idea if you'll see this in time, but if you're still looking for Absolute Sandman vol 2, Gosh! Comics in London have a 2nd hand copy at a reasonable price.

It's been a while since I posted here, and I've done a fair bit of comics buying and reading recently.

The Nice House On The Lake, Volume 1

This is some good, interesting stuff. I'm liking the art and narrative, with the only minor niggle being that there are a few too many sets of pages that are a set of panels across both pages but split in a way that doesn't make it [i]at all[/i] obvious, which means a double-take when reading. I'm on for volume 2 when it releases.

The Fey and the Furious and Monday, Monday

Enjoyable though often slight-feeling stories set in the world of the Rivers Of London books. Library reads as these are very much read-once comics for me, though I will say that the art standard has been improving over the last few volumes, particularly in terms of better mesh between colour and linework.

A Tomar Por Curro

A Spanish collection of single panel and shortish comic strips, with a theme I can best describe as the "antiwork" movement. Some very inventive strips in here, and quite a few laughs as well.

Eternals: Only Death Is Eternal

Being honest, I picked this up because it's a Panini reprint trade that was going cheap (£10) and I like Gillen's writing enough that I was willing to take that gamble. I enjoyed this more than I thought I might, because while the base Eternals premise isn't one that interests me much, Gillen's focus and characterisation is pretty strong, and the trade ends with a pretty good hook for "ooh, I wonder where this goes". I may check out the next trade in due course.

Department Of Truth: The Shining City On The Hill

I am really enjoying this series, it's like a murkier, weirder complement to Hickman's Manhattan Projects. And yet not without gentle moments, which land all the more effectively because they contrast with some of the horror and brutality happening elsewhere. This feels like it could be a less overtly humorous companion piece to Hickman's Manhattan Projects.

The Dreaming Volume 2: Empty Shells

My continuing lack of easy local access to a good comic shop means that I largely passed on the Sandman Universe title reboots when they first launched - I recall picking up a couple of the first issues, but forgot to come back for the trades when they first released. Hence only getting around to this now. I'm glad I did get around to them, though, as Spurrier has done some really good work here (much like he did on his Hellblazer run). Where I remember certain aspects of the first volume feeling a little slow, the pacing here was just right. I'm a bit disappointed there's only one more volume left, but equally I'd rather that the story conclude while it's still going strong than outstay its welcome.

Red Mother Volumes 1 & 2 (digital)

I got these as part of some bundle or other. I had thought I'd enjoy them quite a bit, as I like my weird horror stories and this seemed to fit the bill. Unfortunately, over the course of 2 volumes it makes the classic blunder so many horror stories do of establishing that there's a conspiracy to manipulate the main character for nefarious purposes - and then suggesting that apparently the entire world is in on it. Which, for me at least, has the opposite-to-intended effect and saps the tension from the story somehow. A pity, as the art's not bad and there are some nice visuals occasionally.

Bite Me Comic

This is an odd one - a small press magazine special issue done in the style of comics like Misty or Mandy. The storytelling feels (intentionally) throwback, but since it also includes a couple of strips that originally appeared in Misty, it's quite nice to see some of that art style again - like in Tomb of Dracula, there was some really good artwork being created for horror comics in the 70s and 80s. As with all anthologies some stories are better than others, but overall I enjoyed this as a bit of a different mix of stories.

Horror Buffet #1 (small press)

A very short collection of one-page horror stories. I liked the art and the use of colour - a limited set of colours is used in each strip to help set a mood - and the goal of telling a creepy story on each page works well. I just wish it wasn't so short - only 6 pages of comics! - because if there were more to it, this would be easy to recommend. An author to keep an eye on, at least.

Love & Rockets Volume IV #11

It makes me oddly happy that a comic as eccentric as Love & Rockets is still coming out, so picking this up was as much a desire to support it in some way as it was a specific desire to read some of the current storyline. Being that I am way behind on my L&R (like, Amor Y Cohetes is the last collection I bought and I haven't read any of the previous Volume IV issues) I'm missing the context for most of this issue, but read on its own it's still an engaging and interesting read.

I hit a couple of comic shops in Glasgow recently and one of them was doing 2-for-£1 lucky-dip bundles of single issues from the last few years, which is why the following reviews are such a random assortment.

Leviathan #2

John Layman & Nick Pitarra doing some sort of monster/kaiju feature? Sounds like fun! Issue #2 is not quite as good an entry point as issue 1, but you get the general idea of what's happened so far and what's coming next. Except that sadly, it seems this title has been cancelled. Oh well.

On The Stump #1

A weird political satire in which politicians have to win cage fights as part of passing legislation. The art is fairly good, with the fights having a similar energy to Tradd Moore's art on the Luther Strode books (though not quite as dynamic). The story seems like it's going to be too earnestly about its theme to be interesting, with a distinct feeling that characters may end up standing around and exposit directly at the reader. Not for me.

Protector #2 (also known as "First Knife", apparently)

This is more like it - weird sci-fi involving Simon Roy, whose work I've been enjoying since the excellent Jan's Atomic Heart way back when. As with Leviathan, issue 2 isn't the best place to start (not least because this is a 5-issue mini) but it still more or less works. This feels like it's not a million miles away from the Prophet reboot that Roy worked on with Brandon Graham, although fewer aliens appear to be involved. The art is just lovely, with a Brandon-Graham-like use of sound-effects and a nice combination of colour and toning effects. It was enjoyably weird enough that I will check out the trade at some point.

As a bonus, looking up the creators of this issue pointed me to this Gumroad page with an anthology title called Slavic Nihilism which sounds like my jam.

Gung-Ho: Black Sheep #2

I'll be honest, I've never heard of this title or either of the creators listed on it. Storywise, it looks to be a fairly derivative YA affair - which is a shame, as I've been bored of Generic Post-Apocalypse as a setting for a while now. Having said that, the art here is appealing - fully-painted and without outlines, it's a refreshing change from a lot of Direct Market comics. I don't think I'd be fussed to read more of this story, but I'd like to see more comics by the artist.

Dying Is Easy #2

I was intrigued when I first heard about this because I've enjoyed some of Joe Hill's writing, and hearing that he was back to doing more comics (after a novel that I thought was pretty dreadful) caught my attention. Again, this is #2 of a 5-issue mini so not the best place to start - but even with that, it feels a bit slight. Martin Simmonds - whose art works really well in Department Of Truth - feels kind of wasted here, like there's not enough story to tell visually. So this feels like it's going to be one of those trades that really could have just been a novella or a short story by the writer, rather than a story that has a distinct visual identity.

John Carpenter's Tales Of Science Fiction: Vortex 2.0 #5

Well, if issue 2-of-5 was a bad place to start, 5-of-8 is even worse, right? (It gets worse - the 2.0 after "Vortex" is because this is a sequel miniseries...) But on the plus side, John Carpenter's involved, right? Well, kind of. His name's in the title because the core story idea is one of his, and he is a co-publisher at Storm King Comics, but the writing and development of the comic are by a separate team. Narratively it reads like a sort of mix of The Thing, Alien and Dead Space. The art is serviceable if not particularly distinctive.

There is a part of me that's definitely interested by an anthology comic series helmed by John Carpenter, but I don't know if I'm as keen with a setup where the writing and art tasks are handed off to different teams rather than being directly handled or overseen by Carpenter himself. Not sure if I'll read more of this.

Friday #1

This is a physical print of the digital comic by Brubaker and Martín which I picked up on a whim. I've been meaning to check it out for a while as I generally like all of Brubaker's work - unsurprisingly, I enjoyed this too and the setup (a former "kid detective" returns as an adult to the town she left behind and gets roped into a new mystery) is handled really well by Brubaker, with Martín's art being a really good fit. I'm not yet decided whether I'll go digital or print-trades for this, though.

I went back to Jason Lutes' Berlin, which I got about 40% through months ago and then put down for some reason. I couldn't tell you why that was, because I raced through the rest of it over the weekend and it was excellent. A phenomenal combination of a city's history, larger historical events in context, and a sprawling array of characters trying to navigate those events.

Criminal is all self-contained stories in a shared world with recurring characters. If you liked the first volume I'd say you'll enjoy the rest - if I had to pick a favourite story it'd probably be Last Of The Innocent, but all of them are really good comics.

I read the first volumes of That Texas Blood and Velvet yesterday.

TTB seems like an interesting start to a crime series - the writing feels somewhere between Criminal and some of Cormac McCarthy's writing (chiefly the Border trilogy and No Country For Old Men, I suppose), with art by Jacob Phillips (son of Sean Phillips and colourist on Criminal for a while now).

Velvet seems more of a spy/action thriller, with Epting's art making me think a bit of a Brubaker's time on Captain America (which I didn't read but heard good things about). The first volume has me wanting to know what happens next.

Yep, Crossed is exactly what came to mind when I watched The Sadness. I don't think I've read the original mini (IIRC there was something about it that struck me as Ennis at his most edgelordy, but I could be wrong there) but I did read the Wish You Were Here webcomic (later collected in 4 trades, I think) written by Si Spurrier - that was a pretty good read, that balanced the grimness with dark humour.

In a certain sense it is an anthology series, certainly the feeling I got when reading it is that after the initial plot-and-wider-shared-universe gubbins is gotten out of the way in the first volume, Gaiman wanted the series to be somewhere he could basically tell whatever stories he thought were interesting and experiment (along with the artists) in doing so, without having to stick too rigidly to one plot-heavy throughline. Perhaps picaresque is a better frame of reference, since there is a common protagonist throughout.

On another note, I remembered to pick up the Heavy Metal bundle from Humble (2 days left) but won't get a chance to look at it as I'm away for the next few days. I did note that Humble also have a pretty decent Pride Month bundle that, amongst other things, has a few Jamie Hernandez titles.

I've been really enjoying Dept of Truth, it's a good balance of bonkers premise and overall plot. There's a dash of LoEG to the way it takes every conspiracy and throws them together, but more in the sense that doing so creates a canvas with interesting possibilities.

The art style reminds me a bit of Gideon Falls, which I must get back to.