What comic are you reading at the moment.

Got a chance to hit a decent comic shop recently so have been wading my way through my picks there.

Trades:

The Closet - this was a great, queasy horror read from James Tynion IV. I say "queasy" because it's psychological horror - no gore or immortal killers here, just a kid with night terrors and an absolute binfire of a father failing to do anything to help.

Phonogram volume 3 - I have read this on release and still have the singles, but for some reason forgot to get the trade (and also missed the omnibus that included the b-sides, so I'll be keeping the singles for the foreseeable). It's a nice excuse to see Kohl, Indie Dave, Kid With Knives etc again, but re-reading it after WicDiv I think its best insight is one that a secondary character has about knowing when to move forward to the next part of their life. Although the single-issue Scott Pilgrim homage is just phenomenal and justifies the price of entry alone (IMO).

Sink Volume 2 - I've written before about liking the horror work of John Lees; both Hotell and Sink are great (albeit quite different) settings, but there's a common sense of what horror can be about that makes both of them grear. Sink, in particular, plays with tonal shifts between horror and comedy, and does so with aplomb. Long may it last.

Glass City Volume 1 - an ambitious first volume of a longer-form sci-fi/noir story, the opening of this does a good job of setting a scene and then upending it. I enjoyed this, though I wish it had been longer as it felt like the story had just gotten going when I reached the end.

Still to read - Dept of Truth volume 3, Ice Cream Man volume 1 (I've already read up to vol 6 on digital), Delicates.

Small press:

Lang Walk Hame - a gloriously daft comic/poem about the trials of walking home from the pub and needing a wee, all written in what is described by the author as 'Scotswegian'. Exactly the sort of specific character and identity that makes indie and small press stuff great.

Dr. Acula & Space Plumber - a couple of 1-page gag comics, done really well and with really nice artwork.

Hidden Lives - An interesting anthology format using an almost flash-fiction approach, i.e. testing how short a story can be while still telling you something interesting about its protagonists. Some stories were stronger than others, as is often the case, but overall I enjoyed this and am glad I took a punt on it.

There's a list of the stories that have been published in the series that might help.

Forbidden Planet in Glasgow, on Sauchiehall Street. There are a few comic shops in Glasgow alright but as an infrequent visitor I've found the FP there to be best for what I'm looking for (a good spread of indie and mainstream stuff, plenty of trades, and a decent showing of local small press and alternative comic). Although if it were closer I'd gladly make Little Shop of Heroes over in Dunfermline my local, they have been really good for online orders and are also a good match for my finicky tastes :D

My comment about "a decent comic shop" is mainly me being a bit mean about how Edinburgh has 2 comic shops (Forbidden Planet and Dead Head), but neither of them are very good, and definitely not by the standard of "comic shops in a capital city with a significant student population". The Forbidden Planet is one of those ones that seems more interested in selling Funkos than comics, and despite not being a small shop feels small because the management have crammed too many rows of shelves in. And all you need to know about Dead Head is that it was set up by someone allegd to be the inspiration for Bernard Black from Black Books....

Ooh, been a while since I posted about my reading (partly as I've not been reading a massive amount). I got a new 11.5" tablet and it's proving to be much better suited for reading digital comics, so I'm going to spend 2023 making a proper dent in my sizeable digital backlog.

But first, print! I read Brenna Thummler's Sheets a while back and liked it, so it's perhaps unsurprising that I also enjoyed Delicates, the sequel. The sequel builds on the first book's characters and setup, with a nuanced look at how bullying can affect people and how you don't have to be the bully in order to be part of a bigger problem...

I also read It's Lonely At The Centre Of The Earth by Zoe Thorogood, which is a fantastic slab of autobio comics about dealing with suicidal depression and a global pandemic. I really liked the way that a variety of different art styles are mixed in a way that meshes very naturally throughout, and the writing mixes humour with a fairly blunt and self-aware tone to good effect.

On the digital front, I read Dottie's Inferno (which I think was part of the Humanoids bundle a while back) and enjoyed it - the art style made for some fun hellish grotesques, and the humour is fairly consistent.

No, I can just about handle webcomics on my phone but for regular digital I'd find it infuriating. I have a fairly venerable 8" Dell tablet that's not really right for the job - 8" is still too small a screen to be comfortable, and to make it worse it's running Windows 8.1 so the options on comic-reading software for it that do touch input well are... limited. Can't complain about it too much though, while it was expensive enough it's still going 9 years on.

Actually, if anyone has any recs for Android comic readers I'd be happy to hear them :)

Quite a few of my (legit) digital comics are CBZ, but that's a thought - I'm so used to the desktop version of Acrobat being bloated I hadn't even thought of using it on Android :D I'll give it a go for the PDF ones, though ideally I'd like something where I can have a decent bookshelf view and manage my entire library easily...