Sabbat Worlds - Dan Abnett (ed)

This is a compilation of short tales all based within Abnett's Sabbat Worlds crusade. I imagine this is intended as a space-filler whilst he recovers from his illness. Black Library have pulled out all the stops though and got all their major players on board who've risen to the occasion with a real solid selection of stories.

Graham McNeill revisits the Phantine airforce from 'Double Eagle' and shows how and why each character is so anti-social. Matthew Farrer does an almost excellent little tale about a Chaos insertion into a Mechanicus scrapyard. Aaron Dembski-Bowden has a fine stab at the death of Warmaster Slaydo. Abnett's wife Nik Vincent does a 'Traitor General' type story about Imperials struggling against the invaders.  Nick Kyme's Blueblood about the loathsomely arrogant Volpone. Sandy Mitchell produces an Arbites and Administorum tale about greed and chaos.

The defining point of the book though are the two Gaunt's Ghosts stories. The first, 'Iron Star', tells an odd little tale about Gaunt's struggle for life after he loses his eyes. It alternates between the Ghosts of his past helping him to survive the trauma whilst the Ghosts of his present fight to save his life.

The second story is an excellent early Ghost story detailing the moment when the newly formed Ghosts become Gaunt's. Stuck in the middle of nowhere on an pointless mop-up action, the Ghosts find themselves besieged by Chaos converts. There's a nice little backstory about Rawne and his cronies and an even nicer one about just how much respect Dorden is held in.

I loved that last story and pretty much the rest of the book also.

New York: Life in the Big City

Will Eisner
W.W. Norton & Company

With an unparalleled eye for stories and expressive illustration, Will Eisner, the master and pioneer of American comics art, presents graphic fiction's greatest celebration of the Big Apple. No illustrator evoked the melancholy duskiness of New York City as expressively as Eisner, who knew the city from the bottom up. This new hardcover presents a quartet of graphic works (New York, The Building, City People Notebook, and Invisible People) and features what Neil Gaiman describes as "tales as brutal, as uncaring as the city itself." From ancient buildings "barnacled with laughter and stained with tears" to the subways, "humorless iron reptiles, clacking stupidly on a webbing of graceful steel rails," Will Eisner's New York includes cameo appearances by the author himself; several new illustrations sketched by Eisner, posthumously inked by Peter Poplaski; and three previously unpublished "out-takes"—a treasure for any Eisner fan, and sure to become a collectible. Introduction by Neil Gaiman.

I'm a recent convert to the joys of Will Eisner. Recent for no other reason than I hadn't come across any. I've read a load over the last two years though. This one is by far my favourite.

'New York: Life in the Big City' is a hardback collection of 5 books - 'New York', 'The Building', 'City People', 'Notebook' & 'Invisible People'. All tell the stories of or are observations regarding or just plain fictions concerning life in that particular city.

The warmth and charm of Eisner's art is easily matched by that contained in his words. He is rarely sentimental, often damningly cynical, but there's an almost desperate yearning for life and love that underlies the book.

I adored this.

A Sickness in the Family - Denise Mina & Antonio Fuso

Mina was the writer of a couple of Hellblazer arcs a little while back which I have here but have no memory of reading which doesn't bode well for this. 'A Sickness...' concerns life and death in a dysfunctional Scottish family.

The book is good if a little silly in parts. There's a nice amount of twists and turns and the ending is open. The art gives one part away too early in the game but that's a small quibble. On the whole very enjoyable and I think I should head over to the shelf and drag out those Hellblazer volumes.

Apocalypse of the Dead - Joe McKinney

This is the 2nd in McKinney's trilogy of zombie novels. Whereas the first was a fairly simple survival story about a Houston cop trying to get home this one is on a much larger scale.

The infection has spread and spread fast.  Pretty much overnight the US has fallen to the hordes.  The story follows several groups of people, a very cool retired US Marshal along with the other residents of his old peoples home and an escaped con he's stuck with.  A party bus full of rich kids and porn stars, an immune redneck and the doctor trying to synthesize a cure, a party of escapees from the original outbreak led by an insane cop and finally 'The Family', a group of religious nuts led by the very mad Jasper Sewell.

The story tracks all the groups journeys across the country until  they arrive at the grasslands camp that The Family have set up and are running.  It seems like a haven but it's not long before Jasper's mania becomes noticeable and everything goes profoundly wrong.

I really enjoyed this book.  Zombie novels are generally fairly crappy affairs but this one had a bit of scope and a vision that raised it's head up.  There were chunks of it that I just didn't  like - some of The Family stuff and Jasper in particular was just too far fetched - but on the whole it seemed like a nice run.

McKinney has a very personable writing style and I'm looking forward to tackling the third one.

Hitman: 10,000 Bullets - Garth Ennis & John McCrea

Now that was a much more coherent & cohesive read. The series hits it's stride here and a new character (Nott) takes the stage as two bow out (Pat & Wendy).

The conjoined mobster from the previous volume has finally hired some serious talent to take out Tommy who had (not) killed his dad but had killed his twin.


During the search for Tommy Pat is murdered and Tommy goes nuts and he and Natt take the fight to the mobster and his crew. The final story features the cast from Noonans sitting and chatting about the closest they've come to death.

This is a really under-rated gem from Ennis' past and I'm glad DC have started to make them available again.

Hitman - Garth Ennis & John McCrea

If you look above you'll see I read the third volume of this series a little while ago when I borrowed it from the library. In the meantime I've managed to locate the other two and have had me a reread.

This (and the next) are very much Ennis finding his characters voices and trying out the type of storylines that would serve him so well ever since.

Tommy is a hitman who only takes contracts on supes since he was bitten by some alien thing in one of those crossover event story things and developed x-ray vision and telepathy.

These early issues are all about scene setting and slowly introducing the characters. To spice things up there are appearances from The Demon and Batman (who Tommy pukes on).

It's fun but nowhere near as gonzo as he can be. His run on Hellblazer is obviously fresh too as there're lots of Hell references.

Dead City - Joe McKinney

A half-decent zombie book is a real rarity so it was a real pleasure to come across this first in a trilogy completely by accident.

McKinney apparently is a cop so the prime character in this boom comes as no surprise and there are several long moments of fairly pointless detours into copworld but on the whole this is a fairly enjoyable little first night of infection romp as the hero cop attempts to get home to his wife and kid.

There's a fair bit of schmaltz and no real depth to what plot there is but it is an entertaining enough way to pass a couple of hours.

Hellblazer: Pandemonium - Jamie Delano & Jock

And it's like he never went away. Delano once again proves why he's the quintessential Constantine writer. The other have all grabbed a bit of him - Ennis really got the romantic manipulator, Warren Ellis got the heart of gold, Azzarello the scary bastard and Carey the family man - Delano's version is all of these and more. He is scarily well realised and a wonderful bastard to boot.

Constantine is forcefully pulled into the Iraqi war by some deeply unwise government spooks and is sent out to participate in the interrogation of a captured Iraqi who has been doing some weird shot. Along the way he meets a friendly native before discovering that an old nemesis is one of the major players in the situation.
It's a lovely little one piece story filled with humour and warmth and ridiculous devilry. It's beautifully painted by Jock with a real sense of dislocation to the art.

I'd love it if they got Delano back on the title but that's not likely.

Judge Dredd: Mechanismo - John Wagner & Colin McNeil, Peter Doherty

A silly, short Dredd tale about the implementation of robot Judges in MC1. Dredd’s against it from the off – why does no-one ever listen? – and is soon proven correct as the robots go off piste and start exceeding their protocols.

Annoyingly there’s no end to the story, at least not in this collection. It dates from 1993 so they’ve had plenty of time to do so in the comic but here it’s one that got away.

The art is split between McNeil’s big bold painterly style and Doherty’s slightly more comic-booky one. The change is jarring when it happens but this soon wears away and both artists do a nice job.

Doherty also does the honours on the short and daft back-up strip, ‘The Man Who Killed Judge Dredd’. Fun and silly in equal measures it’s just a shame the first story didn’t have an ending.

Damnation Alley - Roger Zelazny

I’d been waiting years to give this book a try and finding this audio version was the perfect opportunity.

What a disappointment. Apart from the poor reading the book itself is an almost complete vacuum of plot and character. The lead is a humourless Hells Angel who pretty much does nothing but drive and kill a ridiculous amount of people. Any and all supporting casts are dropped or killed. The prose is stilted and uninteresting. The plot is non-existent and I was bored throughout.

Marvel Boy - Grant Morrison

This one is Morrison let loose on an old Marvel character that he can redo in his own way. The result is a fairly straight forward sci-fi supe character.

Noh-varr (groan) is a Kree warrior whose dimension ship crashes on Earth where the crew are wiped out by a crazy trillionaire in an (early) Iron Man suit by the name of Midas.

Noh-Varr (still groaning) is understandingly pissed off at this and proceeds to carve a giant ‘Fuck you!’ into New York before dedicating himself to turning Earth into the new Kree planet. He doesn’t get much opportunity as he is soon tackling a living sentient corporation as well as Midas and his hunter / killer daughter.

It’s a groovy little book that fairly romps along. It’s very much Grant’s standard superhero mode but as his standard mode is light years ahead of most others best then that’s something I can be pretty happy about.

A Cure for Cancer - Michael Moorcock

Now that was every bit as bonkers as the first book in the series but with added weird on top.

Jerry Cornelius no longer appears to be the androgynous superbeing Cornelius Brunner that he became at the end of The Final Programme. Instead he is Jerry once more except he’s ebony black with white hair.

Throughout the novel he is an agency of change; an anarchic harlequin forcing change on an unready / unwilling world. At all points he is challenged by Bishop Beasley and his attempts to return the world from its chaotic state.

This really is a product of its time. This sort of psychedelic narrative can be a real chore and I love it as much as I hate it. For Moorcock however it perfectly reflects the unorthodox narrative he wishes to tell.

The Final Programme - Michael Moorcock

You can pretty much always rely on Mr Moorcock to fire an LSD bomb into your eyes.

I’ve read quite a few Moorcock books over the years and they’ve been predominantly bonkers. I remember the 'Dancers at the End of Time’ series particularly addling my teenage brain. I’d never had the opportunity to read the Jerry Cornelius books until now though. I kinda knew this story as I really love the movie adaptation of it but, unsurprisingly, the book is way stranger.

Cornelius is a dandy adrift amidst a collapsing society. His intellect and his need for people keep him centre place within a society falling into entropy. Into this life walks Miss Brunner who needs information collected by Cornelius’ father and hoarded by his drug addled brother. The quest for this information and the subsequent use she puts it to leads Jerry into a revelation as to his nature and a new existence.