A started reading this for an extremely minor Animal Man appearance and glad I went back and read this properly from the beginning. Pretty enjoyable aA started reading this for an extremely minor Animal Man appearance and glad I went back and read this properly from the beginning. Pretty enjoyable and short 4 issue-series set in the late 1940s that owes a lot to Watchmen and the dark revisionist superhero fad, with some domestic violence, heroes being bad and insane, and several deaths. The art and script was good, and the plot gripping. A bunch of the blonde-haired male heroes looked similar, but besides that, the characterisation was great - I was familiar with only some heroes, but that didn't matter....more
The found the first chapter a little hard to get into - briefly introducing some characters and scenarios that may or may not appear in the story lateThe found the first chapter a little hard to get into - briefly introducing some characters and scenarios that may or may not appear in the story later on - but once the book started properly it was enjoyable, witty, full of interesting ideas, and inclusive of endearing characters. I’ve never been to London (the closest I've come is Peter Ackroyd’s 'London: A Biography', and having a flight booked and cancelled in 2020) so I likely missed out of lot of references in the streets of the superior London, but it didn’t make my experience of the novel less enjoyable, and I imagine that the kind of references Moore would include would be quite obscure even for the locals. It was an interesting mix of fantasy and real historical events and characters, and I could never really tell where one started and one ended, though I am vaguely acquainted with Austin Osman Spare as a historical figure. The pacing of the whole book was a little off - not enough tension in parts, and the whole story seemed to be resolved about three quarters through before an action packed final quarter seemingly out of nowhere. The last little chapter seems to set up the next book with its reference to Joe Meek, who sounds like an intriguing subject for a book, and I will continue to follow the series. Apparently a TV show is also in the works, with Moore's involvement!
I’m not very good with audiobooks (I can't take in the text with just audio alone) but at several points I tried listening at the same time as reading this. It was useful for parts set in the Great When, which are all printed in italics and are a bit more florid. The speaker had a nice voice, and these otherworldly sections were complemented by some moody ambient rumbles in the background....more
I didn't know a lot about this serial killer going into it but the book had impressive recommendations on the back cover and from my comic dealer. It I didn't know a lot about this serial killer going into it but the book had impressive recommendations on the back cover and from my comic dealer. It primarily follows the life of Tom Jensen (father of the author) who was the lead investigator on the Green River Killer case over about 20 years. It jumps back and forward in time between Tom's life (pre-police force, through the investigation in the 1980s, then to catching the killer much later) and also a time in around 2003 when the cops were cutting a deal with Ridgway to help find additional bodies and bring closure to more families. We mostly see the aftermath of Ridgway's violence from the eyes of the police, and sense its affect on Jensen and the families. Ridgway's perspective is used sparingly and effectively - we see him hunting for victims once or twice, and only see actual violence right at the beginning of the book, and it is SCARY. The depiction of Ridgway in the 2003 scenes is intriguing. He seems - not remorseful - but insecure about it, and maybe a bit embarrassed. It's very different than the usual depiction of serial killers as egomaniacs, taunting the police. Nevertheless, Ridgway was/is very, very bad who did some shocking things, and maybe that's why he felt embarrassment and not exactly guilt. The art was solid but the style wasn't spectacular. It was pretty understated. Maybe it was the absence of colour and the heavy blacks, but it somehow reminded me of Sean Philips and David Mazzucchelli. The layouts weren't anything inventive, but the characters were pretty expressive. This would work pretty well as a TV show or film, but it probably didn't have the action and gore to be a popular entry in the "serial killer" genre in those mediums. That's probably what makes this interesting and, by the end of it, quite sad. 3+ stars...more
The main story was great and followed the developments onboard a spaceship of colonisers terrorised by a xenomorph, from the perspective of their andrThe main story was great and followed the developments onboard a spaceship of colonisers terrorised by a xenomorph, from the perspective of their android. The people are originally organised as socialists (they are the Union of Progressive Peoples from William Gibson's Alien 3 script) but the social structure rapidly devolves into a military dictatorship when they find that consensus decision making is not going to be effective in the rapidly changing situation. The art was also great, and worthy of this Treasury-sized format. This main text is broken up with shorter, unrelated stories that were all fine - mostly just slight variations on Aliens killing a bunch of people. That the main storyline was broken up like this didn't really bother me as each chapter/issue was set 50+ years apart....more
A picked this up for cheap, maybe based on the cover art and Dave Gibbons name attached to it. I haven’t really read any Rogue Trooper but it didn’t mA picked this up for cheap, maybe based on the cover art and Dave Gibbons name attached to it. I haven’t really read any Rogue Trooper but it didn’t matter as this one-shot is fairly self contained. Reading about it afterwards, it’s the first appearance of a rebooted character and this version became a longer series through the 90s. Anyway, this was cool to read in an hour or so and I didn’t really know where this was heading, beginning as a war story and turning into a sci-fi survival and revenge situation. The art was sometimes impressionistic and I couldn’t tell what was going on but I liked it. ...more
This was beautiful. Many times it felt like a slow meandering immersive Wim Wenders film. Other times it was chaotic, busy, and full of life like a puThis was beautiful. Many times it felt like a slow meandering immersive Wim Wenders film. Other times it was chaotic, busy, and full of life like a punk version of a Brecht Evens book, and set 1000 km to the east. 4+ stars....more
Very very good but very disturbing. A great little story. I don’t know if the anthropomorphic animals made it more sickening because there was such a Very very good but very disturbing. A great little story. I don’t know if the anthropomorphic animals made it more sickening because there was such a sharp disconnect between their cute Sylvanian Families world and the brutality of the violence. It may have been worse to watch humans getting cut up, and maybe Samantha would have been even less sympathetic of a character. I found it very interesting that other domesticated and wild animals existed in this anthropomorphic animal town, and that they were all OK with eating meat. There is a scene with Samantha encountering some “real� bears and I’m not sure what it all meant but it loved it, and the dream sequences. Really interested to see what else Patrick Horvath does. Recommended to all sickos....more
Every time I read Chris Ware, I'm in awe all over again. I didn't think anything else could get close to Building Stories in terms of storytelling, arEvery time I read Chris Ware, I'm in awe all over again. I didn't think anything else could get close to Building Stories in terms of storytelling, art, and grand concepts but he constantly surprises me. The first section was about a school and, while I always enjoy the art, it didn't grab me. The narrative suddenly turns into a pulp sci-fi story, and this was gripping. It turns out that this was written by William Brown, whose real (love) life we learn was pretty sad and pathetic. Next the story follows one of the teen bullies from the school, from birth (a baby piecing together shapes and faces) to death, with a lot of awful behaviour on the way, and this was really amazing. I forgot that some of the tiny text somewhere on the packaging mentioned that this story takes places at about the pace of one page per year, and I don't know how accurate that was, but it probably would've helped me make more sense of it. The final story is about one of the teachers, who seems the most goodhearted character in the book but no less downtrodden. The only gripes I had with the whole thing was that, aside from the story being unfinished, much of the writing/art was tiny. The tiny panels and pictographs are impressive but tiny words do get a tiring after hundreds of pages. Perhaps I need to arm myself with a magnifying glass the next time I read this....more
I received a used copy as a present and glad I got a chance to check this out as I probably wouldn’t gave picked this up based on the interior art. ItI received a used copy as a present and glad I got a chance to check this out as I probably wouldn’t gave picked this up based on the interior art. It's a confusingly put together collection. There were 3 'Hip Flask' books/issues released before this, which I hadn't read. This trade then collects Elephantmen #1-7 plus #0 (which was published between #4 and #5 and includes pages from the first Hip Flask issue), but none of this is very clear when reading the collection. The first few tales were like short stories involving different characters (who we would have presumably been introduced to earlier) but the vignettes soon start fitting together into a fuller universe.
It's a noir-y sci-fi story with a horrific backstory about animal experimentation - a bit of a cross between Blacksad and We3 with cool character design. A lot of the art in this does not appeal to me though. I think it's the digital colouring and clunky lighting effects. Many of the women are overly sexualised. The final issue contains a story-within-a-story about pirates and the art is murky and the layouts confusing. However, the art jumps up several notches for the Hip Flash reprint story when Ladrönn is the artist.
The end of the book includes a bunch of comic artist profiles that I guess were included in the original issues. That’s cool, if a bit odd, but there's not much need for these to be included here. According to these pages, Dave Gibbons was approached about doing art for the Elephantmen series, and that really would have been something to behold.
I’m intrigued by where the story goes next but not sure I’m willing to suffer through the aspects of this I don’t like, so I might just pick up Ladrönn's earlier Hip Flask issues and stick with those. ...more
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