Doctor Who: Hunter's Moon

Paul Finch
BBC Books

'There's no end to the horror in this place - it's like Hell, and there are devils round every corner.'
On Leisure Platform 9 gamblers and villains mix with socialites and celebrities. It's a place where you won't want to win the wrong game.
With Rory kidnapped by a brutal crime lord, the Doctor and Amy infiltrate a deadly contest where fugitives become the hunted. But how long before they realise the Doctor isn't a vicious mercenary and discover what Amy is up to? It's a game that can only end in death, and time for everyone is running out.

Stopping at an outer rim space station to visit an old friend seemed like a good idea until Rory and the TARDIS get taken away in a gambling debt and Amy goes legging it after them. The Doctor is forced to disguise himself as a big game hunter in order to infiltrate the gangsters who have Rory lined up to be the prey in their next hunt.

It fairly romped along this one. Lots of action, some fun villainy, a bit of human interest and a couple of cool Doctor moments.

Nothing to make a fuss about but good solid fun.

Judge Dredd: The Restricted Files vol 2

John Wagner (writer)
Alan Grant (writer)
various artists
Rebellion

This volume collects together forgotten and rare gems from the Thrill-power archives. Readers can experience Dredd strips that haven’t been reprinted in over thirty years. This collection of classic strips is a must read for any comic fan!

This is a collection of stories from annuals and specials from the 80s and the stories are typical of the time.  Lot's of puns and silliness interspersed with some Dredd style ultra-violence.

Being from specials and annuals the stories are all short little self contained tales.  It's really familiar stuff but that doesn't detract as it's great stuff.

Two classic writers alongside loads of groovy artists make this a proper fun read.

Doctor Who: The Way Through the Woods

Una McCormack
BBC Books

'As long as people have lived here, they've gone out of their way to avoid the woods...'
Two teenage girls disappear into an ancient wood, a foreboding and malevolent presence both now and in the past. The modern motorway bends to avoid it, as did the old Roman road. In 1917 the Doctor and Amy are desperate to find out what's happened to Rory, who's vanished too.
But something is waiting for them in the woods. Something that's been there for thousands of years. Something that is now waking up.

I rather enjoyed this little ditty.  I took a slow evening and a bit to read it which is generally the case for these.  They tend to be a little slight but also usually good fun.

There's something about the woods;  no one goes there, no one talks about it and even the motorway avoids it.  People have been going missing in there for years and every 50 years or so someone doesn't come home.

In 1917 Emily Bostock disappears into woods but luckily for here she's accompanied by a shy young man called Rory who has friends who are looking to put an end to the shenanigans.  Unfortunately, The Doctor has been arrested and Amy is having  trouble talking the woods' last victim into putting herself at risk. But eventually all the pieces fall into place and the problem is revealed and easily remedied in characteristic 11th Doctor style.

Petrograd

Philip Gelatt (writer)
Tyler Crook (artist)
Oni Press

Introducing the untold tale of the international conspiracy behind the murder of Gregorii Rasputin Set during the height of the first World War, the tale follows a reluctant British spy stationed in the heart of the Russian empire as he is handed the most difficult assignment of his career: orchestrate the death of the mad monk, the Tsarina's most trusted adviser and the surrogate ruler of the nation. The mission will take our hero from the slums of the working class into the opulent houses of the super rich... he'll have to negotiate dangerous ties with the secret police, navigate the halls of power, and come to terms with own revolutionary leanings, all while simply trying to survive Based on historical documents and research, Petrograd is a tense, edge-of-your seat spy thriller, taking the reader on a journey through the background of one of history's most infamous assassinations, set against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous moments in 20th century history.

I only known two things about Rasputin.  Firstly that he was Russia's greatest love machine and secondly that he was a cat that really was gone.  Phillip Gellat on the other hand seems to know a lot more, particularly with regard to how he met his end and the people involved.  How much of this book was based on established fact, I have no clue.  It tells of the British Secret Service and their manipulation of the crown prince of Russia into carrying out the assassination and also of the nascent revolutionary movement in the country.

I wasn't really expecting to enjoy this as much as I did.  It was engagingly written and very nicely drawn and provided a very diverting evening's read.

Snowpiercer

Jacques Lob (writer)
Jean-Marc Rochette (artist)
Titan Comics

Snowpiercer is the enthralling and thought-provoking post-apocalyptic graphic novel that inspired the critically acclaimed movie starring Chris Evans (Captain America, Fantastic Four). Originally published in French, this marks the first time that Snowpiercer will be available in English.
In a harsh, uncompromisingly cold future where Earth has succumbed to treacherously low temperatures, the last remaining members of humanity travel on a train while the outside world remains encased in ice.
The surviving community are not without a social hierarchy; those that travel at the front of the train live in relative luxury whilst those unfortunate enough to be at the rear remain clustered like cattle in claustrophobic darkness. Yet, things are about to change aboard the train as passengers become disgruntled.

I watched the film a couple of months ago, it was OK.  It was nothing particularly earth-shattering but still fun.  My friend Steve on the other hand loved it so much he went out and bought the book.  It isn't very good.

As with the film it shows the journey of a rear-ender all the way to the front of the massive train as it traverses a post-apocalyptic frozen wasteland.  Unlike in the film here he is a prisoner in the company of a liberal minded third class passenger. The story of the journey through the train is similar but resolves differently and quite unsatisfactorily which I won't spoil for you here; I'll let them do that for you.

The art is significantly better than the words but the lack of scale brought about by the scenario has left it feeling a little cramped and stilted.

It's a nice idea but not one that's been particularly well realised.

Trees

Warren Ellis (writer)
Jason Howard (artist)
Image Comics

Ten years after they landed. All over the world. And they did nothing, standing on the surface of the Earth like trees, exerting their silent pressure on the world, as if there were no-one here and nothing under foot. Ten years since we learned that there is intelligent life in the universe, but that they did not recognise us as intelligent or alive.
Trees looks at a near-future world where life goes on in the shadows of the Trees: in China, where a young painter arrives in the “special cultural zone” of a city under a Tree; in Italy, where a young woman under the menacing protection of a fascist gang meets an old man who wants to teach her terrible skills; and in Svalbard, where a research team is discovering, by accident, that the Trees may not be dormant after all, and the awful threat they truly represent.

I'm writing this two months after I read the book with an operation and an ongoing morphine riddled recuperation in the intervening time so my memories may be a little addled but it's a good excuse to go back and reread.

'Trees' tells the beginning of the story of the arrival of the titulat 'Trees'; huge, great towering pillars that have smashed into the Earth and then proceeded to do almost absolutely nothing whatsoever except, sort of, occasionally pee on those nearby (see image).

Now though, 10 years on, we join the various narratives of several people living in the shadows of these inscrutable towers.  A scientist monitoring a new breed of black flower, a young woman escaping an abusive boyfriend with the help of an enigmatic stranger, an ambitious New York politician and an artist discovering himself in a walled city in China.

As is often the case with Warren's work he begins his story with a focus on world building and an overview of his characters.  You get to meet them and are offered a glimpse of who, where and what they are with the rest to be filled in as and when it suits the story rather than the breathless headlong rush into the story that comic writers are often guilty of.

Howard has a lovely eye for both detail and features and has successfully translated the various people and locales featured without any of them  looking like they are drawn from a template (in the case of the former) or a guide book (the latter).  His artwork, even at this early day, feels at home within the demands of the story and I'm very much looking forward to more.

I'm always excited by a new Ellis book particularly when it's the beginning of a longer series and this shows bags of promise for a very entertaining ride so hopefully volume 2 won't be long in coming.

Doctor Who: Ten Little Aliens

Stephen Cole
BBC Books

Deep in the heart of a hollowed-out moon the First Doctor finds a chilling secret: ten alien corpses, frozen in time at the moment of their death. They are the empire's most wanted terrorists, and their discovery could end a war devastating the galaxy. But is the same force that killed them still lurking in the dark? And what are its plans for the people of Earth?
An adventure featuring the First Doctor as played by William Hartnell and his companions Ben and Polly.

I picked up the set of 50th anniversary Doctor Who reprint novels a while ago but this is the first chance I've had to get into one.

So, start at the beginning I say with this adventure for the first Doctor along with companions Ben and Polly.

The TARDIS materialises on board an alien craft amidst a console room with ten dead alien bodies in it.  Soon our intrepid explores are joined by a cohort of soldiers hunting said dead aliens.  Of course things are rarely straight forward for the travellers and soon both dead aliens and live humans are disappearing or being disappeared (in pieces).

I've not read a Hartnell Doctor book before and have seen very few of his episodes but obviously I know of his personality and it seems fairly well reproduced here as he manipulates events from the back.  Ben is shown to be a bit of a gung-ho idiot and Polly is a shrieking victim.

The story is fairly bloodthirsty and not altogether satisfactory in it's mix of military sci-fi and enigmatic all-powerful, psychic alien races.  Coles writing is engaging enough but the 'choose your adventure' section in the middle of the book was just bloody annoying.

In all an interesting excursion into the world of a Doctor I'm not very aware of but not an altogether successful one.

Doctor Who: Touched By An Angel

Jonathan Morris
BBC Books

"The past is like a foreign country. Nice to visit, but you really wouldn’t want to live there."
In 2003, Rebecca Whitaker died in a road accident. Her husband Mark is still grieving. He receives a battered envelope, posted eight years ago, containing a set of instructions with a simple message: "You can save her."
As Mark is given the chance to save Rebecca, it’s up to the Doctor, Amy and Rory to save the whole world. Because this time the Weeping Angels are using Mark himself as a weapon to change history. Will the doctor stop mark or will the angels feast? 

Another good solid 11th Doctor story.  This here writer fella is meant to be one of the top DW authors so perhaps that should be expected.

Like everyone else I adored 'Blink' and the Weeping Angels seemed like a fabulous invention but I'm not convinced they still work though.  I wonder if they would have been better off left as a one off villain or maybe twice with the 'Time of the Angels' / 'Flesh and Stone' two parter.

Here the Doctor is chasing after a man sent back into his own timeline in order to save his much missed wife which would then cause a paradox upon which the Angels can feed.

It is a corking read, full of Doctor silliness, Doctor technobabble & Doctor emotion and there are some great lines but, and it's a fairly sizable but, the Angels just don't really work.  They're so lacking in personality that it's hard to believe they can scheme and plot to the extent we are expected to believe they have.

With a slightly more adult theme than has often been the case with these new series books this was one that offered a chance to get a slightly more mature read but still one with that fairly daft Doctor Who premise very much at it's core.

Kraken

China Mieville
Pan Books

A dark urban fantasy thriller from one of the all-time masters of the genre.
Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears?
For curator Billy Harrow it's the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. It might just be that the creature he's been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it's a god.
A god that someone is hoping will end the world.

Well, what a chore that turned out to be.  I'd tried reading a Mieville book the other year and failed miserably.  At the time I put it down to my ambivalence towards stories with aliens in.  I still think that was the case but I'm pretty sure that his prose style would have finished me off not long into it.

This one, 481 page novel, took me the best part of 4 weeks to get through.  I was determined to get to the end but by god (Kraken) it was a chore.

The story itself wasn't the problem; it's one in a long line of magical London stories featuring various religious cults, magic assassins and elemental avatars.  The characters are solid and the story is inventive enough but the way he writes is like wading through mud.  There was no sense of momentum; you could read for an evening and discover you were only 20 pages from where you started.  I like a book that pulls you through the pages as quickly as it pulls you through the plot and this just wasn't one of those.

I'm glad I read it because I wanted to read at least one of his but this I think will be the only one.

The Town That Didn't Exist

Piere Christin (writer)
Enki Bilal (artist)
Humanoids Publishing

The town of Jadencourt has fallen on hard times. The people are poor, the workers at the factory are on strike, and the aristocrat who was keeping the factory open has passed away. Just when things seem like they can't get any worse, the town learns that the factory has been left in the hands of the aristocrat's estranged granddaughter. When she tells the townspeople her vision for their future, it is something that they never would have thought possible.

So, what happens when you get what you want and what happens when you only want to please someone.  These are the two questions at the heart of this tale by these two masters.

Taking over the family business from her dead uncle, Madeleine strives to create a town where all are equal and where the self important and self obsessed bosses are on a par with the communist and utopianist workers.  

Based on conversations with her carer (for lack of a better term) she reinvests the time, money, and energy of her newly acquired company into creating a utopian domed town where all are equal and nobody wants for anything.  What she gets is a town where all are bored but some accept it as the price of equality whilst some see it as a price not worth paying.

The book ends on a poignant note overlooking the town in it's bubble as though it was a specimen on a slide or a preserved view, remote and exclusive and untouchable.  A dream worth viewing but perhaps not experiencing.

Fortune & Glory

Brian Bendis
Oni Press

Brian Michael Bendis' 'Fortune and Glory' exposes the stupidity of Hollywood producers, and the enthralling mood swings and ego nosedives of an indie comicbook creator caught up in the maelstrom of the motion picture industry.

This is a short little cartoony hardback telling the story of Bendis' flirtation with Hollywood following the release of his early crime books.

It tells of how he came to the attention of various Hollywood players and ended up doing the rounds of the various producers in trying to get 'Goldfish' and then 'Torso' turned into movies.

It's written in a Harvey Pekar style with Bendis' own talking head cartoony art to illustrate it.  I'm a fan of cartoon art and his style is personable enough but never managed to grab me anywhere interesting but was perfectly functional.   He always spins a good yarn though and so the whole story unfolds in an engaging manner.  

It is very much Pekar and that's not really a bad thing but obviously at heart there's a bit of curmudgeonly gold missing which is not to say that what is here is not to be enjoyed because it most assuredly is.

Tharg's Future Shocks

Various writers & artists
2000AD

here we have a tiny little pocket book of 2000AD shorts which I assume is part of the same series of releases as the Dredd ones.

This collection features a huge assortment of non-classic (read that as not written by Alan Moore) contributions to the series.  There're a lot of stories here that I remember and loads that I don't.  For the most part they're all a bit un-brilliant and slightly naff in places.

There's lots of very nice artwork though from some 2000AD heroes like Glenn Fabry, Massimo Bellardinelli, Ron Smith and Chris Weston who all bring the pretty.

I am perhaps feel like I'm being a little harsh here as there were some fun reads but with a few exceptions they didn't really get the 'shock' part working for them.

Aetheric Mechanics

Warren Ellis (writer)
Gianluca Pagliarani (artist)
Avatar Press

The year is 1907, and Britain has entered into a terrifying war with Ruritania, whose strange metal planes darken the skies, and whose monstrous war engines cast looming shadows from across the channel. Doctor Robert Watcham, lately returned to London from the front, makes his homecoming to Dilke Street. There lives his old friend and England's greatest amateur detective, Sax Raker. Even as his beloved city prepares for war, Raker is himself about to embark on the strangest (and, perhaps, the most important) investigation of his career: the case of the man who wasn't there. Is the mysterious, vanishing killer, at last, evidence for Raker's long-held belief in a secret criminal mastermind? Is it some apparition uniquely belonging to this city, a place that seems to have lost all semblance of sense two years ago? Or do all the signs point to something much, much worse?

Warren Ellis did a good few of these one off books for Avatar of which I've only read a couple; not from lack of interest more from just completely missing them.  This time out he's channelling Arthur Conan Doyle with a steampunk, sci-fi Sherlock Holmes riff.

Britain is at war with Ruritania (the fictional country where 'The Prisoner of Zenda' is set) whose giant robot war machines have seen Doctor Richard Watcham fleeing from the front back to the company of his detective friend Sax Raker and immediately into a case concerning a man who wasn't there.

There's a similarity here to Mark Hodder's first 'Burton and Swinburne' book which comes to light in the finale but here there is a much more classic sci-fi feel.  It's a bit of a giggle and shows that Warren would write a formidable Holmes story should he ever wish to.  This one, on first read, I tended to spend wondering why it's so Sherlockian until it all becomes clear in the end so a second reading is essential purely for fun allows it to show it's colours more strongly.

The second time through also gives you the chance to bask in the glory of Pagliarani's artwork.  His incredibly detailed line work is a joy to the eyes and feels entirely at home in the setting of the book.  Just check out this (I think unused) alternative cover he drew for the book.

A short but fun read with plenty of eye candy.

Sex Criminals volume 1: One Weird Trick

Matt Fraction (writer)
Chip Zdarsky (artist)
Image Comics

Suzie’s just a regular gal with an irregular gift: when she has sex, she stops time. One day she meets Jon and it turns out he has the same ability. And sooner or later they get around to using their gifts to do what we’d ALL do: rob a couple banks. A bawdy and brazen sex comedy for comics begins here!
By Matt Fraction (Satellite Sam, Hawkeye) and Chip Zdarsky (Prison Funnies, Monster Cops).
Named one of Time Magazine's top 10 graphic novels for 2013.
Collects SEX CRIMINALS #1-5 

So, there's this girl, Suzie, and she has this thing that happens when she comes; the world, quite literally, stops.

Then there's this guy, Jon, it's the same for him.

When they meet and realise they start planning, planning to help the library books.  Unfortunately, in doing so they trigger the ire of what, I suppose, I must call the Sex Police.

Fraction is usually well worth a read, particularly when he's heading in a direction of his own choosing as with Casanova, and here he has created a book which is fun alongside the silly.  It's written as commentary and flashback which I do find slightly irritating usually but that's enlivened here both by the wit of the scripts and by Zdarsky's lovely, playful, cartoony art.

The artist is new to me but I really like what he does and he reminds me a little of Stuart Immonen on Warren Ellis' Nextwave series.

Truthfully I'm not entirely convinced I'm going to buy the next one as it was all a little too pop for me and funds are always tight but I'd certainly borrow it from a library.

Happy!

Grant Morrison (writer)
Darick Robertson (artist)
Image Comics

Meet Nick Sax, a corrupt, intoxicated ex-cop turned hit-man, adrift in a stinking twilight world of casual murder, soulless sex, eczema, and betrayal. With a hit gone wrong, a bullet in his side, the cops and the mob on his tail, and a monstrous child killer in a Santa suit on the loose, Nick and his world will be changed forever this Christmas - by a tiny blue horse called Happy! Collects issues #1-4 of the mini-series.

Now this was a strange one to be reading knowing it has Morrison's name on the header; for the most part it felt far more like a Garth Ennis one.

'Happy!' is the story of an ex cop hitman, Nick Sax, having a terrible night of it getting chased by the mob and the cops whilst he tries his best to ignore a tiny, blue, flying, horse that wants him to rescue a little girl.Sax is having none of it though.  He just wants to get out of town and avoid any more bullets being inserted into his body.

The finale of the story comes along rapidly and both unpleasantly and kinda silly and again has large shades of Ennis to both the events and the scenario.

Here we have Morrison going down a path he doesn't travel too often and for the most part pulling it off alongside the artist responsible for the visuals of two of my favourite comic series doing what he does in fine form.

In all a fun but slightly confusing read.

Superman Action Comics volume 1: Superman & The Men of Steel

Grant Morrison (writer)
Rags Morales (artist)
Andy Kubert (artist)
DC Comics

DC Comics took a bold step and renumbered the longest-running monthly comic, Action Comics, to #1 for the first time since 1938 as part of the DC Comics—The New 52 event.With this renumbering comes a new creative team featuring comics legend Grant Morrison and fan-favorite artist Rag Morales. While Morrison is no stranger to writing the Superman character, having won three Eisner Award's for his work on All-Star Superman, Action Comics will be something new for both old and new readers and present humanity's first encounters with Superman, before he became one of the World's Greatest Super Heroes. Set a few years in the past, it's a bold new take on a classic hero.
Superman: Action Comics Vol. 1: Superman and the Men of Steel includes issues 1-8 of the monthly series

The blurb on the cover of this reinvention of Supes ( by a USA Today reviewer) reckons that it's the best Superman story that he has ever read.  I think he needs to read more.

It's certainly not a bad read but it does pale into insignificance next to Morrison's own All Star Superman and many others (such as Moore's 'Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow' or even John Byrne's 1980's reinvention, 'Man of Steel').

This new book is part of DCs New 52 thingy which I can't really be arsed to keep track of but it's current reinvention that will place hold the line until the next one comes along. This one plays the big S as a young fella at the start of his career both as a reporter and as a hero.  The others are all similarly nascent to differing degrees with Lex being fairly well advanced.

The story takes us from the jeans, t-shirt and ape beginnings through Clark's discovery of his origins and out into the future with the Legion of Superheroes.

It's big, silly fun very much in line with Morrison's classic run on JLA and was fun but I don't really feel any need to go back to it.

My Dead Girlfriend

Eric Wright
Tokyopop

When Finney falls in love with a girl who also happens to be a ghost, he decides to stop at nothing to win her heart, even if that means his own death. This book is a playful reflection on the tribulations of adolescence set in a place where the inhabitants are scarier than the horrors of school, dating, and puberty.

A random charity shop find leads me down a new path for me, American manga.

The story is of a young lad, the only 'normal' in a school full of ghosts and ghoulies.  He lives with the ghosts of his parents and ancestors and is in full knowledge that he'll end his days in a manner most ridiculous.  Then, into his life comes the girl of his dreams but there is, of course, a problem, she's also a ghost.

The whole thing looks and reads like a fairly innocuous US animated series and there's very little to actually hang onto.  The art is clean and clear and the story rolls along but it just isn't very engaging.  It is essentially vapid but not complete dreck.