Finally arrives

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Final Crisis. Final Crisis. Final Crisis. The comic book equivalent of the Led Zeppelin reunion surely? I mean in terms of the wait, the lead up, the endless milking of the cash cow with prologues, preludes and even a motherfucking sketchbook. Grant Morrison promises a lot for this seven issue series but judging on this first issue he may have a lot to squeeze in the following parts. The problem I had with this comic is that it jumps, starts, twitches and slugglishly moves from scene to scene, character to character without any flow or seeming narrative drive. Of course this is Morrison and I may be missing the clues and mythic undertow to certain conversations and symbols hidden in Superman's belt buckle. Already there's talk of the appearance of the number 23 and the importance of 1001 and how the Dark Seid possesed guy links to Harmony House in the Invisibles. Some fuckers need some sunlight. For everyone else a space god gets found in an alley, a geezer gives a caveman...

An impassioned plea from a concerned citizen.

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Hi there. Yeah, I know, I know. You don’t read comics. But just gimme a minute to say my piece before you run off to the exciting environs of ‘Count to a Million’ or ‘Show Your Hot Family Members’. Please? My friend and I swap comics every couple of weeks or so. Whatever I’ve blown all my non-drink money on in exchange for whatever he’s blown all his non-drug money on. Come the next time we swap meet (tee hee) I’ll run through everything with the usual ‘Did you like blah blah blah?’. As you do. This week everything was met with a ‘Yeah, it was alright’. After about ten of those I felt a little deflated. He hadn’t shared the same enthusiasm I had for the righteous sequential art I’d gifted him. Conversation dies. Back to the X-Box. I frag a n00b. ‘Oh… But I LOVED ‘Criminal’. My god, I swear if I could have captured his eyes at that moment I would just print them here as the review and you would all rush out and buy this book immediately, so convinced would you be by...

Rotten comic debut

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Vinyl Underground’s like a fireworks display. Big and flashy yet ultimately pants. This new Vertigo series is set in modern London where a bunch of occult detectives solve murders that the regular bobbies are stumped with. That sounds like a premise with vague promise at least. However writer Si Spenser makes do with perverted stereotypes of tossers where real characters should be. I can see Spenser's pitch now: "It's Hellblazer meets the Bill with no trousers on! Cor blimey!" The main character is called Morrison Shepherd ,who seems to be a riff on George Best ,who somehow gets a criminology degree whilst in jail for drug offences. Sure. His partners include a mortician assistant who doubles as a porn star and a fellow called Perv who seems to be a sex offender for lack of a better description. For some reason these wanks hide out in an old Subway station and act as subversive crime fighters wherever a strange murder is to be found.

Time travelling fun

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Booster Gold, issue 3, is written by the double team of Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz and is ably drawn by Superman pro Dan Jurgens. Booster Gold isn’t a character I’m very familiar with, I read some of 52 but not all, but this issue does feature everyone’s favourite scarred cowboy Jonah Hex who I am. Gunslingers are cooler than guys in capes, dig? Anyways, in order to save Superman in the past, Booster Gold and his robot are sent back in time to the old West by Rip Hunter to sort shit out. There Gold ends up in a drinking contest with Hex but that is just the start of his troubles. I enjoyed reading this issue and I’ll be sure to pick up future ones, it’s faced paced but not to the detriment of character or plot. Most of all with time travel and cowboys, it’s fun.

It's Cap America versus desert nazis

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I've never picked this title up before but I get the general consensus from different sites that it isn't very popular. Yet, it's no Allstar Batman I can say that for sure. Wolverine Origins 18 is the third part of a story but I managed to drop right into it and have an ok time of understanding what was going on. It's a WWII set tale with Captain America and his pal Bucky teaming up with Wolverine, in a pre superhero civilian guise, in the Tunisian desert to rescue some soldiers or something. Cut down to its basic level this story is really just an excuse to show off Captain America being hard, with Wolverine standing off in the sidelines looking on. Since the artist in question is Steve Dillon this is ok, cos he can draw good like. Even though the story is kind of static and the tension between Bucky and Wolverine is toothless Wolverine Origins 18 is worth picking up just to check out Captain America punching Nazis.

Superhero by numbers, DC style

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Justice League Of America #14 epitomises the problem I have with ensemble books, especially when the cast is doubled with the Justice League’s counterparts, the stupidly named Injustice League. (That has to be from the 40s right?) All this overcrowding means there’s too many characters and not enough pages or panels to do them all ‘justice’ as it were. The main crux of the story is that most of the Justice League have been captured by a bunch of the usual faces such as Lex Luthor and Poison Ivy and it‘s up to Superman and Black Lightning (a black guy who shoots lightning) to save the day in a rather ponderous manner. Despite the cover no D.C. superheroes get any sort of Chinese water torture inflicted upon them which is sad, as surely Wonder Woman deserves some terminal electricity treatment. JLA #14 is part three of a four part story but it was easy to pick up and follow what was going on. All in all it’s typical D.C. superhero fare, the usual villains scowl and act by the...

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Set in the thriving Medieval inspired city of Camorr, The Lies of Locke Lamora is a stunning début novel from Scott Lynch. The first book in the Gentlemen Bastard sequence, Lynch has managed to produce a thoroughly engrossing read. The Lies of Locke Lamora is a tale that is told in two intertwining threads, consisting of Locke's current mischievous and brilliant confidence games and episodes of his upbringing and training. The book manages to be a stunning fantasy novel without making the fantasy the main focus of the story. Lynch manages to create a world in which alchemy, sorcery and legends of elder races support and enhance the plot in subtle and important ways, without being overpowering story elements and overshadowing the plot. Locke is a marvellous confidence trickster and thief, who is full of intelligence and bravado. With his fellow Gentlemen Bastards, the Thorn of Camorr as he is known, devises elaborate and masterful schemes to deprive nobility of their...

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This is the story of Kevin Katchadourian, who, shortly before his sixteenth birthday, kills seven of his classmates, a teacher and a cafeteria worker. Kevin’s story is told in a series of letters written by his mother, Eva, to her estranged husband, Franklin. The letters are an introspective look at Eva and Kevin’s entwined lives and the impact each has on the other. Eva is an intelligent and affluent woman who has searched all her life for an answer to a question that even she is unable to be truly able to verbalise. Eva, an Armenian living in the USA, meets, falls in love with and marries Franklin. Their two very different worlds compliment each other and result in a happy marriage—Eva, a woman with a desire to travel and see the world searching for something she can’t quite picture or find, and Franklin, the all American man who loves all that America stands for. Eva starts her own business researching and writing travel books for cheap world travel for the age of the...

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The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom This book, first published in 2003 and then adapted for a film in 2005, tells the story of and eighty-three year old war veteran called Eddie, or more accurately, it tells the story of what happens to Eddie after his death. I've seen this book hanging around bookshops for a while now, and have often been tempted, but was, frankly, put off by how thin the volume was. However, I am glad that I finally got around to getting it. "...five people..." follows Eddie’s journey through the afterlife, as he meets five people who help him put his life in perspective and answer his questions about his own existence. They may be friends or loved ones, or even strangers but they all changed the path his life took, and are here to explain that and to teach Eddie some valuable lessons. Albon's writing style is gentle and uncluttered, painting mental images of scenes and characters with ease, but without ever straying into...

A quick rundown of comic books out to buy this week.

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Solo #10 Written and illustrated by Damian Scott, with Brian Stelfreeze, Randee Carcano and Rob Markman. Published by DC comics The DC comics series SOLO gives the best writers and artists in comic books the opportunity to showcase their talents. The latest issue is focussed on Damian Scott, who readers might know from his striking work on Batgirl and cover art on Robin. Scott works within the superhero genre with 3 stories including a moving Flash story where the hero finds himself trapped in nightmares about out running death, while an innocent man is executed for the murder of a police officer. The script in this issue of SOLO is not its selling point, however, Scott’s Hip-hop inspired art work is what makes the book worth reading. Far from the panel to panel approach we expect from comic book, Scott presents wild graffiti inspired pages crammed with colour and detail, with double page spreads that are alien to superhero comics, and would seem more suited to a New York...