There is a tendency in apocalyptic literature to go for the frenetic juggler narrative-wise. Given the scenarios usually at play, this is reasonably understandable since we’re generally talking epic fights for survival and not a stroll in the park on Sunday. The problem with going hard and big, a Continue Reading
Comics
Comics review: Misfit City vol. 1
Depending on where and who you are, Cannons Cove is either the site of your greatest, fondest childhood memories or a backwater with little to offer but boring jobs and creative nothingness. For fans of The Gloomies, an iconic film that defined many peoples’ childhoods, including dismissive uber-fans who Continue Reading
Christmas in July #5: I took joy in Mutts A Shtinky Little Christmas by Patrick McDonnell
Mutts, a delightfully retro, self-aware comic strip by Patrick McDonnell is not your usual humourous newspaper diversion. First published in 1994, and described by the immortally-great Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts) as “one of the best comic strips of all time”, Mutts has always had a keenly-felt beating heart at the Continue Reading
Drawing Wallace the Brave: Will Henry brings his protagonist to life
As a writer who is, naturally enough, most comfortable with moving words merrily around a page, I am endlessly fascinated by the way artists, whose talents I most assuredly do not share alas, exercise their creative gift. This fascination increases inestimably when it is an artists drawing a comic Continue Reading
The creativity of mental playfulness: Calvin and Hobbes’ Bill Watterson speaks to what really matters
Brain Pickings, a fascinating website run by the supremely-dedicated Maria Popova which she describes as “an inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness, spanning art, science, design, history, philosophy, and more”, and Bill Watterson’s masterfully-clever, exuberantly funny and visually imaginative comic strip Calvin and Hobbes are a perfect match. Even more so Continue Reading
Comics review: Oblivion Song (issues 1-3)
The apocalypse is big business these days. For some reason, and it may have something to do with the fact that ever since the optimistic blush of post-World War Two idealism wore off in the early 1970s that we’ve become more and more convinced the world is going Continue Reading
Comics review: Wallace the Brave
Childhood is a magical, wonderful time. In the world of Wallace the Brave, drawn by Will Henry, the pen name of Jamestown, Rhode Island-based Will Wilson, it’s all that and more, a whimsical, fabulous place where you can muse on what it would be like to “heroically [ride] a Continue Reading
Comics review: Atlas & Axis
One of the things I have long-loved about the European style of storytelling, and the reason why I have consumed everything from Agaton Sax and the Moomins as a child through to The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery as an adult, is that it is not afraid Continue Reading
Comics review: Motherlands (issues 1-3)
If I was the multiverse I’d been looking for a new PR agent. The idea that there are multiple versions of our reality sitting cheek-by-jowl in the wilds of space and time – and yes, I’m not a scientist so this is a fantastically wobbly explanation for the concept Continue Reading
Comics review: The Snagglepuss Chronicles (issues 1 & 2)
When news first emerged that DC Comics were going to re-interpret a sizable array of Hanna-Barbera’s most iconic stars such as The Flintstones and Scooby Doo and give them a modern makeover, there some doubt expressed that this could be achieved with any sort of creative substance. After all, delightful Continue Reading