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Rereading Grendel: The Incubation Years by Matt Wagner, Hannibal King, Tim Sale and Joe Matt. The subtitle of Scott McCloud’s classic Understanding Comics, which you should read now if you haven’t read...
View ArticleFade
Britpop is 20 years old, and Kurt Cobain is 20 years dead, and I have specific memories about both those things. But I also, like every other middle-aged man being sold a media package that claims to...
View ArticleDJ
Of all the foulmouthed female rappers out there that I treasure, Amanda Blank is my favourite. That’s based, really, on a handful of songs – her remix of Britney’s career pinnacle Gimme More, a track...
View ArticleComics Unmasked at The British Library
I went to see the Comics Unmasked exhibition at the British Library last week. Along with my kin; a couple dozen bearded geeks ogling original pages from Watchmen and V For Vendetta, marvelling that...
View ArticleFinally, I have seen the day…
Rereading Grendel: God and the Devil by Matt Wagner, John K Snyder, Jay Geldhof and Bernie Mireault. Science fiction, the genre of new ideas, has a telling weakness for old ideas. It spans galaxies...
View ArticleWe’ll Be Coming Back
Calvin Harris, much as he doesn’t get any credit for it, took a huge risk with his career. His first album, all those quirky Casio toytunes tracks like Acceptable In The 80s and The Girls, was a big...
View ArticleDave Sim thought aloud to himself
Rereading Glamourpuss by Dave Sim. The key question of Glamourpuss is answered twice within the series; once on the first page, once on the last. The first answer is a creative one. The second answer...
View ArticleNothing will ever be real again
Context: the below is an essay written for the gallery catalogue of abstract comics creator Gareth Hopkins’s exhibition The Intercorstal: After Smith in Bremen last year. It was intended for those...
View ArticleA work as grand and various as that
Reviewing Jerusalem by Alan Moore, published by Knockabout in the UK and Liveright in the US. Let’s divide things arbitrarily into threes. If Alan Moore’s career is considered in the usual periods of...
View ArticleSometimes I think I drive up my own ass and disappear
Rereading Time2: The Epiphany and Time2: The Satisfaction of Black Mariah, by Howard Chaykin. The third of the three was Howard Chaykin. It was. Because we like to arrange things in threes, because...
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