Tops and Bottoms 21/2/2023

Evening,

What a week it has been. We had one of the biggest and best guests so far on the recent episode of the ACP. Garth Ennis is a big name for us and we have loved loads of his work over the life of the pod. His Punisher work and Sara have been big highlights over the last eight years and change. Plus all the multitude of books he put out before that. You don’t hear many interviews with him and thanks to our buddy Eamonn Clarke from the Mega City Book Club podcast for hooking us up.

You can have a listen to the interview here. Garth talks a lot about his approach to writing and how it has changed over the years. We also compare ourselves to The Rifle Brigade. I can play the bagpipes!

Back to the task at hand. For those new to the site, every week I post about my favourite read from the week and the least favourite. I keep a note of everything I read and give it a 1-10/10 score.

There are some amazing comics out there. And, a lot of shite.

Tops.

Most of this week has been spent in a Cardiff hotel. So I paid a visit on the dwindling stock in the nearby Forbidden Planet. They have some of the softcover B.P.R.D. Collections. Honestly I feel bad. I haven’t put my nose back in this universe for maybe five whole years. So these bricks are great. This is actually a reread as I had read ‘The Long Death’ as it was coming out in issues. However, a number of the other stories are new to me.

The art really does speak for itself. Three issues of cracking storytelling with wow moments on every other page.

Bottoms.

I pine for the glory days of the Valiant comics line. They’ve actually had two from my view here. But every time a comic comes out from them these days I am reminded how far they have fallen. Not just the super delayed Eternal Warrior trade paperback but worst of all for me is this mess that just looks like a series of badly photoreffed images thrown together on the covers and throughout the interiors. Did we even get issue 5 in the UK? I, like others got issue 4 and then a month later issue 6. And until it was pointed out to me I had neither noticed nor cared.