The Harvey Award-Nominated Alan Moore: Storyteller by Gary Spencer Millidge (Ilex Press, 2011): Signed and Dedicated Edition

Following on from that signed first edition of Jack Higgins's The Eagle Has Landed, I thought we could take a look at some of the other signed books I've acquired since this series of posts ended in September 2011 (although there have been one or two – actually make that three or four... or even five – signed editions in the interim). And let's begin with a book in which I myself had a hand, and which has recently been nominated for a Harvey Award:

Namely, Alan Moore: Storyteller, by Gary Spencer Millidge, a terrific tome which I edited it in my capacity as managing editor at Ilex Press in Lewes. I blogged about it in July of last year when it was published, but later that month we held a signing for the book at Gosh Comics in London (which moved premises shortly after; it's now on Soho's Berwick Street), attended by both Gary and Alan – and indeed by a few Ilex staffers, myself included. Under those circumstances, it would have been remiss off me not to get a copy signed for myself, which is precisely what I did:

Splendid stuff. As I mentioned above, Alan Moore: Storyteller was nominated for a Harvey Award a couple of weeks ago, the winners of said awards to be announced at the Baltimore Comic-Con on 8 September. Previously Ilex won a Harvey for Helen McCarthy's The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, and I reckon we're in with a shout of bagging another one for Alan Moore: Storyteller – assuming, of course, comics professionals – the ballot is only open to those who work within the comics industry – get off their bums and vote for the damn thing (needless to say, if you're a comics professional, I'd be eternally grateful if you could head to the Harvey Awards website and vote for the book before the ballot closes on 17 August).

Gary has blogged about how much it means to him to be nominated, to which I'd add that it means quite a lot to me too, for reasons I outlined in a post on the Ilex blog last year. I was fairly pleased with what I wrote back then, so, rather than go over the same ground again, I figured I might as well republish that post here on Existential Ennui, not only for posterity's sake but because it accurately – albeit somewhat prolixly – summarizes the impact Moore and his work has had on my life and, perhaps, gives some small indication of the passion and commitment that went into Alan Moore: Storyteller (not least from Gary). You can read the piece in full below, and I'll be back in a bit with some more signed editions – graphic novels, appropriately enough – and a Westlake Score-and-review...

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Alan Moore: Storyteller: A Dream of Flying

NB: Originally published on the Ilex Press blog, July 2011.

You might have noticed over the past few months that we’ve been blogging fairly relentlessly – incessantly, even – about a certain book named Alan Moore: Storyteller. We’ve posted an excerpt from fantasy legend Michael Moorcock’s foreword to the book; added a link to the book’s author, Gary Spencer Millidge’s own thoughts on Storyteller, and posted a series of clips of Mr. Millidge in conversation with Ilex’s own Tim Pilcher at May’s Bristol Comic Expo; got very excited about the internet buzz that’s been building on the book; got even more excited about the imminent signing session for the book at London’s Gosh! comic shop; and even, courtesy of Ilex’s Vasiliki Machaira, presented a quite startling art installation created out of proofs of the thing. And those are just some of the Moore missives we’ve posted in the run-up to publication this week; take a saunter through the rest of this blog for further entries.

The reason there’s been so much frantic Alan Moore activity on the Ilex blog is because, quite simply, Alan Moore: Storyteller is an extraordinary work, and an important book not just for Ilex but for the comics field in general. It’s the most comprehensive, most sumptuously illustrated authorized biography yet published on Alan Moore’s life and career. You’ll be able to see that for yourselves as it hits bookshop shelves and online retailers this week – both in the UK and, via Rizzoli, the US – and I could spend an eternity extolling its virtues, such as the surprising and intriguing CD of songs and performances by Moore and friends that accompanies the book; or the never-before-seen, unpublished V for Vendetta script included as a double-gatefold; or the little-seen, legendary Big Numbers chart, which details how that groundbreaking uncompleted series would have played out over its full twelve issues; or the behind-the-scenes family snaps and notebooks and sketches that Mr. Moore kindly made available to Gary; or, indeed, Gary’s words, which, with the aid of copious quotes from Alan, paint a vivid picture of the man behind such towering achievements as Watchmen, Lost Girls and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

But rather than do that, to celebrate the publication of Alan Moore: Storyteller, I thought I’d do something that readers of my personal books blog, Existential Ennui, have become more than familiar with; something that I find eminently easy to do; something, in fact – some would say ad infinitum, perhaps even ad nauseum – I never seem to tire of doing: I thought I’d talk about myself.

See, the publication of Alan Moore: Storyteller is, for me, the culmination of a decades-long love affair with Alan Moore’s comics. It’s a fascination that began nearly thirty years ago, in March 1982, when, without any kind of fanfare, a comics magazine called Warrior appeared in British newsagents. I can still recall the exact newsagent in which I purchased that first issue of Warrior: it was on Elmers End Road in Beckenham, south London; I think it’s still there – the newsagent, I mean, not the single copy of Warrior #1 that was sitting on its magazine racks; I bought that. With so many milestones in the comics medium since then – a good number penned by Mr. Moore himself – it’s easy to forget how revolutionary that first black-and-white issue of Warrior seemed. But revolutionary it was: an anthology comics title in the best tradition of British comics publishing, but quite unlike any seen before.

The garish cover of Warrior #1 was exciting enough. Drawn by Steve Dillon, it featured a cyborg with what looked like a meat cleaver on one arm; an incredibly sexy woman wielding a gigantic futuristic rifle; and a sidebar promising a sword-brandishing priest, a bizarre Guy Fawkes lookalike and a silhouetted superhero. Under that cover I was soon thrilling to the adventures of Axel Pressbutton and Laser Eraser, Father Shandor, Demon Stalker and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s peerless V for Vendetta. I’d never seen anything like these comics tales, and was shaken to my twelve-year-old core by the mature, complex writing and artwork on display.

But the story that really blew my tiny young mind was the lead one, a short tale entitled “A Dream of Flying”. Written by Moore and illustrated by Garry Leach, in just eight pages it detailed the rebirth of a superhero of whom I’d never even heard. In the story, a tired, middle-aged newspaper journalist, Mike Moran, plagued by headaches and by unlikely dreams of being a super-powered hero, goes to cover the opening of a nuclear power plant in the Lake District. The event is hijacked by terrorists, and in the midst of the ensuing chaos Moran remembers a word he’s been trying to recall, a word that, for some reason, holds a strange significance for him. Uttering the word – “kimota” – he’s transformed in a blinding flash of light and a crack of thunder into a young, muscled man possessed of incredible abilities and dressed in a form-hugging costume. Besting the terrorists with a clap of his hands, he bursts through the roof of the facility and rockets into space, shouting out his now-remembered name: “I’m Marvelman… I’m back!”

What was remarkable about this story was how real it all seemed. To a twelve-year-old kid raised on the larger-than-life, bombastic adventures of Spider-Man, Moore’s naturalistic dialogue and poetic captions and Leach’s meticulous, wonderfully authentic artwork were a revelation. Prior to reading that first instalment of Marvelman – eventually published in colour as Miracleman in the States – the edgiest comics I’d come across were those contained in the weekly sci-fi anthology 2000 AD. Indeed, I’d doubtless already read some of Moore’s other work in that title, without his name having properly registered.

But “A Dream of Flying” was something else. The first page of the story, showing the terrorists driving towards the nuclear plant in a lorry, remains for me the single page that paved the way to discovering a more grown-up, more nuanced style of comics storytelling. Essentially, all that first page of “A Dream of Flying” is is two blokes bantering in the cab of a truck. But more than the visual spectacle that followed, more than the bullets bouncing off Marvelman’s raised hand, moreso even than the image of him circling the Earth at the close of the episode, for me that one page opened up the possibilites of the comics form: just two men, talking rubbish, the one a bit alarmed by the other, in a manner that was all the more astonishing for how low key and… ordinary it was.

Alan Moore would go on to craft infinitely more elegant stretches of dialogue, countless sentences and scenes that, examined with an older, more critical eye, far surpass the nascent, occasionally awkward stylings of his debut episode of Marvelman. But “A Dream of Flying” – and particularly that first page – will always be special to me. Despite the fact that it was a story about a superhero, it was my gateway to comics that weren’t about superheroes – comics like Fast Fiction, or Escape, or Eightball, or such future Moore masterpieces as Swamp Thing and From Hell – and a doorway to the names behind those comics, to creators who had little to do with the superhero genre: Eddie Campbell, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware; hundreds of others. It was the story that would, in time, lead to me working in the comics and graphic novels industry myself – first at Titan Books, now at Ilex – and then eventually, inexorably, to my editing Alan Moore: Storyteller, a book of which I am immensely proud.

Whether Alan Moore: Storyteller would have appeared if I hadn’t come to work at Ilex, I really couldn’t say. (Yeah, OK Tim: it probably would have.) But what I can say for certain is that without Alan Moore and Garry Leach’s “A Dream of Flying”, I wouldn’t have ended up editing Alan Moore: Storyteller. And so in a way – at least for me – a near-thirty year circle is now…

…complete.

Alan Moore: Storyteller by Gary Spencer Millidge (Ilex Press, 2011)

It's not often that I devote a blog post to one of the books I've worked on in my day job as managing editor of illustrated books publisher Ilex Press, but when a book turns out as splendidly as this one has, and when I know that book might be of interest to my small and doubtless ever-dwindling readership, well... I think a post is justified:

This is the UK hardback first edition of Alan Moore: Storyteller, published this very week by The Ilex Press (published simultaneously in the US by Rizzoli), with a cover design concept by the incomparable Chip Kidd, and beautifully designed overall by the supremely talented Simon Goggin, overseen by Ilex Press' doyenne of art direction, Julie Weir. Written by comics aficionado, cartoonist (he created the comic book/graphic novel series Strangehaven), designer (he also penned Ilex's essential Comic Book Design) and friend of Alan Moore, Gary Spencer Millidge, it's an authorized, highly illustrated, 300-plus page biography of Moore's life and work.

It is, if I do say so myself – I edited the thing, with the able assistance of Ilex Press' unflappable senior editor, Ellie Wilson (and with the gently guiding voices of Ilex's Tim Pilcher, Roly Allen and Ilex publisher Alastair Campbell – no, not that Alastair Campbell – in the background) – a bloody amazing book. Not only are Gary's words revealing and insightful; not only does it boast copious quotes from Mr. Moore; not only does it feature such little-seen rarities as an unpublished V for Vendetta script, the legendary Big Numbers chart detailing all twelve issues of that never-completed series, a cornucopia of family snaps, notebook pages and sketches kindly provided by Mr. Moore himself, and lots more besides; but it also comes accompanied by a splendid CD, whereupon you'll find a selection of incredibly scarce songs and performances by Alan Moore and friends, all lovingly mastered by longtime Moore collaborator Gary Lloyd.

I'm not going to bang on at length about the book here on Existential Ennui; I posted a prolix, meandering, self-serving missive about it on the Ilex Press blog yesterday, in which I largely, as is my wont, talked about myself, so go read that if you have a day to spare. Instead I'll restrict myself here to noting that, like another Ilex volume I blogged about last year, The Art of Osamu Tezuka, God of Manga, I'm really rather proud of Alan Moore: Storyteller. Having been a huge fan of Alan Moore's work for getting on for three-quarters of my life, I can happily report this the hefty volume is everything I, and therefore by extension any self-respecting Moore fan, could possibly want in a book about Alan Moore.

Anyway. Do please go read my Ilex Press post on the book; despite my disparaging remarks above, I'm actually quite pleased with that essay (I may even steal it back and post it on here). And should you feel so inclined, you could, if you haven't already, glance at my other Ilex blog posts, such as this one on Richard Stark's The Hunter as featured in 500 Essential Cult Books; or this one on Sci-Fi Art: A Pocket History; or even this one on 500 Essential Cult Movies, featuring The Night of the Hunter. And then I'll meet you back here for the next post, for which I'll be staying on a comics tip in order to discuss deadpan Norwegian cartoonist Jason...

The Vesuvius Club (Lucifer Box #1) by Mark Gatiss: Signed First Edition (Simon & Schuster, 2004)

Continuing this random offering of posts on books I've either had hanging around for a while or ones I simply fancied blogging about – and after yesterday's slight birthday detour – here's a novel I bought because it's the first book in a trilogy, and I picked up the third book in the series in a Sydenham charity shop earlier in the year...

This is the 2004 Simon & Schuster hardback first edition and first printing of Mark Gatiss's The Vesuvius Club. It's the first of League of Gentlemen/Doctor Who/Sherlock writer/actor/producer Gatiss's three books starring lascivious secret service agent Lucifer Box. Each book is set in a distinct historical period: book two, The Devil in Amber (2006) is set just after World War I, while book three, Black Butterfly (2008), is set in the 1950s; I blogged about Black Butterfly back in March and outlined the themes of the series then. As to The Vesuvius Club, let's have a look at the dustjacket flap blurb to see what this one's all about:

As well as detailing the plot, you'll start to get a sense from that glance at the jacket and endpapers of the excellent design of the book. For, as in the case of Black Butterfly, the various designers and illustrators – and indeed stray Doctor Who aficionados – involved in the look of this first edition of The Vesuvius Club have really gone to town. The jacket was designed by the Simon & Schuster's in-house team and David Mann, but the illustration is by Ian Bass, from a concept by former Doctor Who Magazine editor Clayton Hickman. (Hickman and Gatiss were both active in Doctor Who fandom before they became involved in the show in a professional capacity – as indeed were current and former showrunners Steven Moffatt and Russell T. Davies.) A number of other Bass illustrations pepper the book's interior, too:

Incidentally, Bass and Gatiss also created a graphic novel version of The Vesuvius Club, which was published in 2005. But back to the leering appreciation of the first edition of the novel: the orange arlin case replicates Bass's front cover illustration in a black deboss, while the endpapers, as we've already glimpsed, reproduce Edwardian era adverts (in a similar fashion to issue six of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's original League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book series, from 1999):

It is, like Black Butterfly, a thoroughly lovely book to gaze at and handle (and hopefully to read; I've yet to start it), and all involved are to be applauded for going the extra mile in its design, particularly in this day and age, when the overall look of novels – ends, case, etc. – has, as I've lamented previously, become something of an afterthought.

Oh, and there's one last thing to note about this particular copy of The Vesuvius Club:

It's signed on the title page. Splendid.

Next on Existential Ennui: a Westlake Score... and a Lewes Book Bargain...

The History of the Runestaff Quartet by Michael Moorcock (Mayflower Paperbacks): Lewes Book Bargains

Following on from yesterday's review of Donald E. Westlake's pseudonymous 1967 Ace science fiction paperback Anarchaos, for the rest of this week I'll be blogging about a bunch more '60s and '70s SF and fantasy paperbacks. These books, however, were all written by celebrated British author Michael Moorcock, and were all bought as a job lot in February (that's how behind on blogging about my book acquisitions I am) from the Lewes branch of charity shop Oxfam – hence the "Lewes Book Bargains" in the title – at the same time as I nabbed those James Blish Cities in Flight hardbacks. The nice lady behind the till at Oxfam informed me at the time that they'd only recently arrived as a single donated collection, so as well as the Blish books I grabbed all of the Moorcock ones, which I think comprised the lion's share of the collection. (I left some Robert Heinleins and Philip Jose Farmers behind; I think they're still on the shelf if you want 'em.)

I bought the Michael Moorcock paperbacks for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Moorcock had been on my mind as he'd recently written a brilliant foreword to a book about Alan Moore I'd been editing at work (Alan Moore: Storyteller, available soon, folks). I've never read any of Moorcock's novels, but had always meant to, and so here was the perfect opportunity. But around the same time The Guardian newspaper ran an excellent interview with Moorcock by Hari Kunzru, illustrated with some of Bob Haberfield's wonderfully trippy covers for the Mayflower paperback editions of Moorcock's novels, and quite by chance it was the Mayflower paperbacks that the Lewes Oxfam had for sale. So over the coming days, I'll be showcasing them in a series of posts, beginning with these:

From left to right we have The Jewel in the Skull, published in paperback by Mayflower in 1969 (this copy is the second printing from 1972); The Sword of the Dawn, again published in paperback by Mayflower in 1969 (my copy is the third printing from 1972); and The Runestaff, once again published by Mayflower in 1969 (and again, my copy's a reprint, the first reprint from 1969). Together, they form the series The History of the Runestaff. Or rather, they almost do. You might have noticed I identified these books in the post title as a quartet. That's because there are four books in the series... and as you can see, I only have three – volumes one, three and four, to be precise. Which is a bit of a bugger, but I'm sure if I keep my eyes open I'll stumble upon volume two, The Mad God's Amulet, the cover to which you can see on the right there.

The novels were all published straight to paperback in the UK by Mayflower, but the first three in fact debuted in the States earlier than the British editions, published by Lancer from 1967-68. A couple of them also went under different titles: The Mad God's Amulet was titled Sorcerer's Amulet, while The Runestaff was titled The Secret of the Runestaff. Which only serves to further complicate Moorcock's already legendarily complicated bibliography.

I mentioned cover artist Bob Haberfield up top, who illustrated many of the Mayflower paperback covers for Moorcock's novels around this period. But on reflection, I'm not entirely convinced the covers of my three copies were illustrated by Haberfield. Certainly The Sword of the Dawn is by him; there's an image of that one on his website. But the other two? I'm not so sure. Haberfield did provide the cover for a later printing of The Jewel in the Skull, and for the 1973 third printing of The Runestaff, but the earlier printings seen above are markedly different in style to the rest of his work. So who illustrated them? If you know the answer to that, the comments section awaits...

I shan't attempt to summarize the novels, as their back covers already do a creditable job of that. But I will mention that they focus on Dorian Hawkmoon – and Hawkmoon also features in the next set of Moorcock novels I'll be blogging about (although again, annoyingly I'm missing one of the set). And those definitely boast Bob Haberfield covers...

Must Be Thursday 22/7/10

Ooh, you lucky, lucky people, you. It's my weekly round-up of the new comics I'll be purchasing this week – or at least thinking about purchasing – a whole two days early! Shit the bed! The reason for this being, Existential Ennui will be on its summer hols from tomorrow, probably for about a week, maybe longer depending how much I miss blogging (so almost certainly longer then), and I couldn't leave you without my incisive and witty thoughts on the week's slate of new comics. The only problem being I'm working from the unconfirmed list of comics, so things might change by the time Diamond Comic Distributors release their proper official list on Tuesday. But, y'know. Live fucking dangerously for a change, why don'cha?

So, to the comics! And it's a potentially interesting week for the indie publishers, a half-decent week for Marvel, and a rubbish week for DC Comics. Let's look at those indie titles foist:

























Up top there is a new series from the one and only Alan Moore, Neonomicon (Avatar, regular and wraparound cover), which sounds like a convention for crusty dayglo ravers and probably isn't as big news as it maybe should be. It's a sequel to The Courtyard, also published by Avatar, which was a comics adaptation of a Moore prose story, and which I didn't read, chiefly because the comics weren't actually written by Moore himself. So that puts me at a slight disadvantage with Neonomicon. I did, however, read the preview, and that was about a couple of FBI agents who visit a madman who speaks in tongues. I think it's all something to do with Lovecraft, but we shall find out. So helpful, aren't I?

Also on an indie tip, there Jeff 'Bone' Smith's interdimensional action thriller Rasl (Cartoon Books), which has got a bit bogged down in a history lesson about Nikola Tesla of late but, judging by the cover, looks like it might be picking up again; and an anniversary issue for The Walking Dead (Image), #75 to be precise. Happy seventy-fifth birthday, Walking Dead! You don't look a day over, uh... no, can't think of a payoff for that one.

Moving on, here's the only comic being published by DC this week that I'm remotely interested in:













DC Universe Legacies #3 by Len Wein, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Dave Gibbons. It kinda speaks volumes about DC's current output (the recently raved-about Action Comics and Grant Morrison's Bat-books aside) that the only DC comic I'm buying was put together by such an old skool collection of creators. And it's not like DC/Vertigo/WildStorm don't have any comics out this week; they do, around twenty-five of the buggers, plus sundry variant editions and graphic novels. It's just all so sodding pedestrian. I mean, who, exactly, is buying Azrael, or Supergirl, or even Justice Society of America these days? Er, says the man intending to buy DC Universe Legacies...

Things are slightly better over at Marvel this week, but only slightly:













That's Avengers #3 and New Avengers #2, both written by Brian Michael Bendis, with art from John Romita Jr. on the former and Stuart Immonen on the latter. Swings and roundabouts on these Avengers relaunch titles thus far; I like the fact that Hulk-of-the-future the Maestro is involved in Avengers (that's him behind Kang on the cover), but conversely I can't for the life of me recall what happened in New Avengers #1 right now, so a little from column A, a little from column B there. Other than those, it's shit like New Mutants and Lady Deadpool over at Marvel this week, but there is, also, this:













Amazing Spider-Man #638, wherein Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada attempts to put right all the stuff he fucked up with that bloody awful 'One More Day' story from a few years ago and the subsequent misguided snoozefest the Spider-Man comics have been ever since. At least, that's what I'm hoping wll happen here, 'cos at this point it'll take a fucking miracle to get me reading Spidey comics again...

And that's yer lot for a wee while. As I say, I'll be back online in about a week, hopefully having read a few books, so maybe I'll waffle on about those 'pon my return. In the meantime, if you're really bored, you might find an old post you haven't read before if you click on the archived posts to the right there. I wouldn't recommend it myself, but takes all sorts. Cheerio.

On Collecting

Call it a hobby. Call it a compulsion. Call it a disease, even. For some of us, collecting is in our blood.

I've been pondering how my collecting habits have changed over the years, both in what I collect and the way I collect. (And yes, I know what you're thinking: the days must fly by chez Louis.) Increasingly over the past year, I've been collecting modern firsts (Patricia Highsmith, Donald Westlake and others), but I've also been doing a large part of my collecting online, so much so that I've developed a daily habit of checking eBay for particular authors and titles, checking Amazon, checking AbeBooks... It's got to the stage where if I don't see an auction to watch on eBay every day or something to buy elsewhere online, I'm slightly disappointed. (Today I'm not disappointed; I found something to watch on eBay, and the lead on a couple of Peter Rabe books I mentioned yesterday paid off. Huzzah.)

I don't do all of my collecting online, of course. I still haunt bookshops, book fairs, comic shops, junk shops and the like. I still get the thrill of anticipation when visiting a shop I've never been to before, or even a shop I have been to before, even if it's just up the road. For instance, I'm off to Tunbridge Wells tomorrow with the bird to meet a friend, but I know that trip will involve visits to the various second hand bookshops there, and that's what I'm really looking forward to (particularly because I've seen a book listed online at one of the shops, which I'm really hoping will be there...). I mean, it'll be nice to see our friend... but y'know... books...

Even so, internet shopping has utterly transformed the way I collect. Not everything you might want to find is online, but most things are. Gawd knows how I'd have followed my Westlake/Stark obsession years ago without the internet. I guess it'd have involved visiting bookshops and book fairs even more, picking up catalogues and the like – basically the way I used to collect comics. I was a regular at comic marts in the late 1980s and then again in the late 1990s/early 2000s, when I got back into comics after a ten year break, mostly at the London marts, turning up on the dot of opening time, rifling through comic boxes, wants list in hand.

I've always collected something. The first thing I remember collecting was, bizarrely, the backs of football stickers. I've never been remotely interested in football, but for some reason, back in primary school, when footie stickers first came in, me and a friend started collecting the peel-off backs, picking up the discarded ones. After that, it was probably Star Wars bubblegum cards, and then American comics, starting with Captain America, then Batman, Superman, eventually discovering Alan Moore and Warrior, Watchmen, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, then graduating to indie and UK small press: Fast Fiction, Escape, Eddie Campbell and Chris Reynolds and John Bagnall and the like.

In early teens – concurrently with the superhero phase of comics collecting in the mid-1980s – I got into music in a big way, and started collecting records. I was heavily into electro and hip hop, so I'd make regular trips up to Groove Records on Denmark Street in Soho (long gone now – the shop, not the street) and the other record shops up in town and buy the latest import electro 12"s (all of which I've long since sold, guh). After that, and following a brief flirtation with electro pop, I got into indie: Wedding Present, McCarthy, Creation Records. And so a new phase of collecting began, which changed again when I discovered (or maybe rediscovered) dance music: techno, R&S, rave, hardcore. That led to a job as a music journalist on Mixmag, whereupon I started getting free records, and that obsession ballooned.

Somewhere along the line I rediscovered comic books, and as my interest in dance music waned I found myself working for a comics and graphic novels publisher, Titan. And then I started getting free comics and graphic novels. And my comics collection grew to a ridiculous size (which it still is, despite regular culling). And now it's books – novels, first editions, which again has grown and grown.

And now this post has wandered off the trail somewhat, if it was even following a trail. So I'll stop there.

Review: A God Somewhere, by John Arcudi and Peter Snejbjerg (WildStorm, 2010)

For reasons I won't go into I was up before 5am this morning (again), but for once I used the time wisely and finished reading writer John Arcudi and artist Peter Snejbjerg's A God Somewhere. It's an original graphic novel about a young man, Eric Forster, who inexplicably gains superpowers, and what subsequently happens to him, to his brother Hugh, Hugh's wife Alma, and their friend Sam, who acts as occasional narrator, and from whose viewpoint the graphic novel unfolds.

There have been countless attempts at a 'real world' approach to superheroes, most successfully from Alan Moore with Marvelman and Watchmen, which A God Somewhere is already being compared to. Actually those comparisons are misleading; in its unassuming manner I think it's probably closer to Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen's underrated Superman: Secret Identity, although it's a lot more violent. But either way, A God Somewhere doesn't have its protagonist donning a costume and fighting crime. Instead, we witness Eric's gradual disintegration, as he turns increasingly violent and ends up public enemy number one.

And it's the violence that's really notable here; there are dismemberments and buckets of blood aplenty, with hundreds of deaths over the course of the story. In one particularly gruesome scene Eric stamps on a soldier's head and the soldier's eyeball pops out. It's shocking, but then that's the point.

One thing that works really well is the opaque nature of Eric. There are occasional narrative captions, but they're from Sam's perspective; we never really get inside Eric's head, so it's never clear why he does the things he does – in particular the path of extreme violence he embarks on. That's unusual in superhero comics – where generally motivations are clearly explained – and the book is all the better for it, leaving it up to the reader to come up with their own theories. That even goes for the small things: Eric grows a beard and lets his hair grow long, but it's never explained if that's a choice, or if he's simply unable to cut his hair because of his powers (a la Superman shaving with heat vision – a power Eric doesn't have).

Something that worked less well for me was the race element. Sam happens to be black, and encounters racism as a result, but that's never fully developed and doesn't have anything really to do with the main story, so it just kind of sits there. There's a parallel theme of faith and religion that's better explored, particularly in an unsettling sequence where Eric recounts a dream where he's God.

A God Somewhere is full of ambiguities, but those ambiguities only help to make it more compelling. It's a disturbing, engrossing read that manages to transcend the often hackneyed tropes of superhero comics, and Snejbjerg's artwork (and Bjarn Hansen's colours) is utterly sublime.

More Shelf Porn!

Where were we? Ah yes, the main bookcase. Well, my main bookcase. There's another one with all of Rachel's books on it, which is, frankly, a bloody mess. I tidied my main bookcase up over the weekend. Hint hint. But here's a section of one of Rachel's shelves, with all her Agatha Christies on:











Lovely. Back to my shelves. From the top: (Well, nearly the top; the very top shelf has got CDs on it. Chaos!)











All fairly self-explanatory. And the next shelf down:











And the next one:











Nice bit of double-stacking there, I think you'll agree. Those Marvel hardback graphic novels sticking up at the back are the first couple of collections of Ed Brubaker's Captain America. There's also a French collection of Jim Woodring's Frank nearest to us, next to another Paul graphic novel (see previous post), which is obviously in the wrong place. Jesus. In the front row are some Jim Thompson paperbacks (you can just about see The Killer Inside Me and Nothing More Than Murder), various other paperbacks, a first edition hardback of Brian Aldiss' book about science fiction, Billion Year Spree (the yellow cover down the other end), and, nearest to us, a novel I actually edited – Tank Girl: Armadillo. Next!











And the bottom one:











And now, full frontal shots (phwoar, slight return) of the top two and bottom two shelves, but not the middle one, which I inexplicably forgot to photograph. Top two shelves:











Looking a little disorderly there. Possibly could do with another tidy. And finally, the bottom two shelves:











On the upper shelf there we have some old Marvel Treasury Editions sitting on the top (including Kirby's 2001: A Space Odyssey adaptation); the two collections of Chris Ware's sketches; lots of Fantagraphics' indie Mome anthology; and all sorts of magazine-size comics, including all the A4 copies of the brilliant British anthology Escape (the A5 ones are on the lower shelf in the previous picture). And on the lower shelf, Superman/Batman graphic novels (the whole of the Jeph Loeb run, which I really liked, so ner); Alan Moore's Top Ten hardbacks; various other DC hardbacks; lots of books by Norwegian cartoonist Jason; the whole run of Lucifer graphic novels (I also have the original comics, saddo that I am); a few more indie things, some more DC stuff, and right on the end, Joe Matt's first oversized hardcover Peep Show collection. Marvellous. Any questions, see me after.

Of course, this doesn't include all the comics I have stashed in the big spaces above the built in wardrobes, nor all the comics I have in my mum and dad's loft, nor all the books I have up there too. Hoarder much?

Late Lamented Letters Pages

Letters pages in comic books finally fizzled out a few years ago. The last one I remember seeing was in an issue of Captain America some way into Ed Brubaker's run. DC had already dropped them across their line a few years before that. Now neither Marvel nor DC run letters pages (as far as I'm aware). Which is a shame, because that's a window on the readership that's going to be lost for anyone looking back. Sure, there's the various internet message boards, but those threads don't necessarily stay around forever. Whereas a letters page in a physical comic book acts as a near-as-dammit permanent time capsule, shedding light on what the most fervent fans were thinking at the time.

Why is that important? Honestly, I don't know if it is. But I've been re-reading old Alan Moore Swamp Things, and the letters pages are often fascinating: the shock in the missives at Moore's first few issues (where Swampy's origin was stood on its head); the arrival as editor of Karen Berger, future Vertigo supremo. If you check the names of letter-writers in old comics, you'll often recognize a future comics writer or artist, firing off adolescent fanmail to their favourite book. In years to come, will we be able to look back at archived message board threads and spot the stars of tomorrow? Or have we lost something unique, something maybe even worthwhile?