Doctor Who: The Pirate Loop - Simon Guerrier

The twentieth of the 10th Doctor books is a strange mix of humour and violence. The Doctor dies twice, as does Martha, Mrs Wingsworth dies many, many times, as does most everyone else.

The story revolvers around a lost spacecraft called 'Brilliant' which is simultaneously caught in a time horse-shoe (like a time-loop but with a bit missing) and being attacked by space pirates badgers.

The three main pirate characters are the stars of the book. Archie is great fun with his new found obsession with canopes. Jocelyn and Dashiel also slowly come around to the light side. Jocelyn's 'I do n'all' was a great line.

The story reminded me of the old multi-part storylines but told at modern break-neck speed. It's got a strong storyline and a solid cast and the nice ambiguous touch at the end was a cool way to go out. One of my favourites of this series so far.

Powers vol 7: Forever - Brian Bendis & Michael Oemng

I thought it was about time I dug into another one of these as there are a stack of them on top of the speaker in front of me. 'Forever' was the story of the Powers. In particular the story of Walker and his equally immortal nemesis Wolfe. We see them tangling all the way through time from the Neanderthal origins a la 2001, through some sort of Robert E. Howard hyperborean wet dream into China around the time of the boxer rebellion before it stops briefly in the 1920s / 30s where Walker is making his first tentative steps at heroing and then into present day.

It was good fun if a little inconsistent with some of what's gone before but not in any major way.

The art as ever was very nice but I wish he'd sort his layouts out. There're many occasions in each book where you're just not sure whether you're meant to go down the page or across the staples. It does get to be a little frustrating.

B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth and Other Stories - Mike Mignola & others

I'd already read one of the later BPRD books so I was intrigued to check out this original one. It turns out to be an anthology book of five (maybe six) short tales.

The first, 'Hollow Earth', is a nice introduction to Johann Krauss - the disembodied astral projection in a rubber suit. The story sees him and the team rescuing Liz (the firestarter) from a subterranean monster type thingy waving a staff / sword doohickey similar to the one in the Witchfinder book I mentioned in an earlier post. It's a fine intro to the team - taking some other origin story sideroads along the way - and proved to be excellent fun.

The Lobster Johnson story - again his first - was also a bit of fun but was there ever a more naffly named character.

The only real low point came with the final story about the boats, drums & sharks which apart from being fairly mawkish had some of the ugliest art I've seen in a long long time.

I'm slowly building up my exposure to Hellboy and his assorted spin-offs. So far I'm very favourably impressed.

Ratcatcher - James McGee

Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood is to all intents and purposes a Sharpe clone. McGee has even given him a backstory as a 'chosen man' at Talavera. I read up on this and he said that it was important but this importance rings a little false in the final pages of the novel and really could have taken a variety of other forms.

The story was solid enough though with Hawkwood assigned to trace the whereabouts of a stolen dispatch case containing plans for a secret weapon of which I'll say no more apart from there is some factual evidence towards this device having been attempted at the time - who'd have thunk it?

The book takes us on a whistle-stop tour of London at the beginning of the 19th century, in particular down the many inhospitable back streets where Hawkwood's ex-Sergeant, Harper - oops! sorry - ex-Sergeant Jago rules the roost.

It was an OK read. It cost bugger all from Lidls and passed a couple of hours in a hassle free manner.

Runaways: Homeschooling - Kathryn Immonen & Sara Pichelli

Truthfully I have absolutely no idea what this book was burbling on about. Some kids, a dinosaur, a crashed plane and an uncle who did something and then some funny looking flying machine.

It left me confused and bored but mostly confused.

Oh, and the back up story about 'What if they became the young avengers?' was even worse.

X-Men: Original Sin - Daniel Way & Mike Deodato, Mike Carey & Scot Eaton

A team written effort to bring Wolverine and his estranged psychotic son Daken together. It's a typical X-book. Full of flashbacks and Wolvie soul searching but it's not the worst of them but equally it's not the best of them either.

Both writers are in tune and it's hard to tell one from t'other and the artists are more of the same.

Lot's of hacking and slashing with only the peripheral characters not getting up again in the usual tedious nothing ever really changes X-world kinda way.

Ultimate Spider-man: Chameleons - Brian Bendis, David Lafuente & Takeshi Miyazawa

Gosh this comic has changed. A few years ago I borrowed a load of the original Ultimate Spidey run and was really impressed with them. A solid re-invention of the character. They hadn't tried to remake the wheel they'd just carefully updated all the parts that needed it and left the rest all alone. It was solidly written and the art was clean and slick. So, I had high hopes when I borrowed this one from the library this morning. Same writer, different artist combining to make a pretty poor comic all things told.

The writing is still pretty solid but do young people really speak like that? The ones I teach certainly don't. Some of the plotting was a bit off too. The dark Kitty (Pryde) thing was unlikely but the Chameleon and Chamelia (I kid you not) was just weak.

I'm not impressed with this artist either. His layouts are ridiculously hard to follow as half the time you're not sure whether you're meant to be reading across the staples or not. His faces are lifted straight from the Big Bumper Fun Book of Shitty Manga Cliches and it all generally looks ugly.

It's a real shame this book (along with the rest of the Ultimate line) was allowed to go to the dogs quite this badly.

The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft - Mac Carter & Tony Salmons

What an absolute mess of a book, it's all over the place.

The story is an attempt to link old Howard into his own stories and drag his cosmology kicking and screaming into his biography. It's in trouble right from the off as it assumes too much familiarity on the part of the reader with HPL's life whilst not really giving one the chance to experience the mundane before the chaotic intrudes. It all boils down to some haunted book related twaddle and the demon who needs Howie-P to be the 'gate' into our world. It's a load of hackneyed piffle filled with characters who are paper thin and cliched to the level of a soap opera.

The art is OK. nothing particularly eye-catching but diverting enough from the script.

I've never been a HPL fan but thought I'd give this a shot. I'm now a fan of neither.

Doctor Who: Wishing Well - Trevor Baxendale

Another of the 10th Doctor books from the BBC. I've got hold of the entire set of these and am about halfway through - actually I think i've passed the halfway point. Yay me.

This one was about a haunted well in Derbyshire that turned out to be home to a big alien weed thing. It was a little more violent than the norm for these books and reminded me very much of the old Pertwee episodes. A bit slight on plot but good dumb fun.

The Horus Heresy: Prospero Burns - Dan Abnett

As much fun as the other writers in the the HH series are - and some are real fun - Abnett is streets ahead. This is his third contribution to the series and it's another absolute corker.

This is the follow up to 'A Thousand Sons' which was the story of the downfall of the Thousand Sons Legion along with their Primarch Magnus. This tells the tale of the Wolves of Fenris and their eventual role as the Emperors executioners to punish that downfall.

The story unfolds from the perspective of a 'skjald' (a storyteller / historian) from Earth called Kasper who arrives on Fenris to study the wolves but ends up as their remembrancer and storyteller.

The book is subtle and nuanced throughout - not a common occurrence in pulp and particularly not in Warhammer - and the story unfolds at it's own pace without ever feeling rushed or incomplete. The moment when the book absolutely burst into life though was with the arrival of Russ, the Wolf King. The interplay between him and Constantin Valdor is wonderful. This is the moment you truly realise that Abnett intends to do way more interesting things with the Wolves than you expected.

I liked the William King Space Wolf books. They are easy, mindless fun - I didn't absolutely hate the Lee Lightner ones either. They are in a far lower league than Abnett's new version though. King's Wolves are comedy vikings punctuating their scraps with beer and banter. Abnett's are the prime military fore in the galaxy. Bezerkers yes but focussed, disciplined and utterly consumed by their calling. Their world seems real and their lives seem truthful.

It's an absolute blast from start to finish. I'm generally loving the HH series and pretty much each new installment is a cracking read but here's hoping it's not too long before there's another Abnett episode.

Warhammer 40k: Helion Rain - George Mann

Another Black Library audiobook, this time detailing the Raven Guard trying to dispatch an invading Tyranid Swarm.

Mann is the author of a few cracking pulpy steampunk books so it was interesting to see what he would do with space marines. It wasn't awful by a long shot but to be perfectly honest it wasn't too good either. I suppose the main problem with it was that it was a little cliched. It used all the same sort of overblown phrasing that usually appears - 'stentorian gaze', that sort of thing. I find it all a little forced and more than a little hackneyed. He'll be 'girding his loins' next.

Still it was big and violent and silly with lots of action and it helped make the drive back from dropping a friend off the other night a lot less arduous.

Sin City vol 1: The Hard Goodbye - Frank Miller

It's been ages since I read this and I'd forgotten just how good it was. The entire book is Marv's quest to avenge Goldie. It's beautifully noir in both text and imagery and Marv is exquisitely realised. His mix of barbarism and deep understanding of his own nature is a joy to behold.

With Miller the art is always going to be something special but here it's utterly wondrous. The scene in the rain after Marv's escaped from Kevin the Cannibal and the cops is beautiful. I just don't even understand how you would go about drawing something like that. Marv's face in the panel on page 134 is defined by the rain as opposed to it raining on him.

I've read a few of these Sin City collections but obviously not enough. Hopefully the library will get some more in.