Where has the year gone!
Halloween is tomorrow.
I’ve never been a massive fan in all honesty. I suppose that I come from the generation where November 5th and Fireworks Night was the bigger celebration and it always rather irked me that Halloween took over. But i have thrown myself into it, partly due to Vince and Dan’s encouragement. It’s been a month of horror books, horror movies and especially horror comics. Some good, some bad, some good/bad and some bad/bad. (Short hand for , Terrifier was brilliant, Alien: Romulus looks like an expensive Children’s Film Foundation production and was watered down, badly acted bullshit).
Friday is, as all good lapsed Catholics know, All Saints Day. The perfect day to head in to London to see Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. There’s also a Question and Answer session with the filmmakers. Fingers crossed I can get away in time.
As you may have noticed it has been a busy time here at NIA. Two podcasts and a couple of posts in the last week or so and new projects shaping up ready to go. First up is the deep dive that myself and Eamonn did on the British cartoonist Giles. This also included a trip to the Cartoon Archives at Kent University. This was an absolute joy. You can listen here.
Then on Sunday I interviewed the geezers from TBH Comics (Kieron Squires, Damian Edwardson and Dan Butcher) to talk about their new horror comics crowdfunder Grim Scary Tales: New Nightmares. This one gets a little raucous but is full of some great tips on how to get round that pesky Algorithmic Hell that is current shaping/ruining our lives! Go have a listen and then go back this great project. This episode also has an introduction from Dave Sim himself.
Over at the ACP this week we had the return of one of our favourite comics writers Shawn Gabborin. We really get into how you go about writing a horror comic as compared to other subjects in the medium. How do you treat a page turn? How do you develop a character? What is needed to escape the tired cliches of modern horror. It’s a cracker. Have a listen here.
Small Press Comic of the Week.
I’m a sucker for a cannibal story and was lucky enough to get a preview copy of this from the artist Chris Geary. Written by Simon Lewis this is the sequel to Flesh and Blood that I reviewed last year. I’ll be doing a deep dive on it on the next ACP but just finished reading it in one go (122 pages and a it races along) and felt that I needed to give it a mention on here too. It’s published by White Hart Comics and will be getting a proper release at the upcoming Thoughtbubble Unicorn Festival in Harrogate next month.
Can I also tease that it has one of the best openings of a comic that I have read for a while.
Highly recommended.
Tops.
Ghost Machine has not let me down yet. Their line of comics under the stewardship of Geoff Johns is consistent in it’s quality. I have everything they put out on my pull list. It’s often a fight for the top spot with these releases but Rook Exodus steals the top of the totem pole again due to the brilliant art of Jason Fabok!
This is the last issue in the current arc that gets going again in 2025. We are left on a dying world with a war between the factions that have been left over and the animals they control. But with a twist. I suspect that a trade of the first arc will be released soon and I urge you to get on it if you haven’t already.
Bottom.
The above looks OKish but it just strikes me as a massively obvious piece of storytelling. It includes all the obvious characters in its own sort of half-arsed Moore attempt. But none of the style, edge or depth. It opens in such a boring way that I feel like it needed a strong editor to tell the team to, “For God’s sake can we just try and make it even a little bit interesting to a reader?” And why is the cover so unremarkable? Who decided it should look like a half finished colouring book?
Everyone just needs to stop copying what they think is popular (yet, massively vanilla so as not to ‘offend’) then making a washed out version of what it should have been.
Anyway.
Roll on next week. If you get a second then subscribe to this WordPress site and you’ll get some Tops and some Bottoms in your box every Wednesday.
Tip of the week – Talking about yourself does not make you interesting.
Many thanks for reading.
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