‘Deadpool: Dead Presidents’ – Posehn, Duggan & Moore (Marvel)

Like I said yesterday, the micro-library up the road had a handful of comic books so I just grabbed them and ran off home for a read :o)

Not that you really want to know about my week but it’s been a bit crappy, what with one thing and another, so I was in the mood for something utterly brainless and fun. I knew ‘Deadpool’ would be a good bet to satisfy this need, having picked up a few of the comics over the years. This was the first time that I’d read anything full length though; thanks to the whole ‘Marvel Now’ thing I was able to jump into a Marvel series and not have to worry about what happened years ago in issue whatever etc. Not that continuity seems to be a big deal with ‘Deadpool’; a quick look at Wikipedia shows that writers on the series tend to just go with whatever is entertaining and works. Like I said, just what I was after.

Dead American Presidents are rising from the grave and attacking the living. Regular superheroes aren’t going to get involved (it’s a public image thing) so the authorities turn to the only man who can get the job done and is totally expendable at the same time; Wade Wilson is on the case!

I’ve read a few Marvel comics in my time (college was great for that) and a lot of comics in general. I don’t think I’ve read anything as irreverent as ‘Dead Presidents’ though. It is fantastic; nothing is sacred and when that involves a whole load of bad jokes, and a grudge match between Deadpool and Abe Lincoln, then it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’m there for the ride. I was sniggering like a school boy for most of the book; when I wasn’t sniggering I was quietly in awe of Tony Moore’s ability to cover a panel in Deadpool’s innards (or monster innards for that matter, they all look the same spilt all over the pavement…) The action is right in your face and nicely over the top, I’ll quite happily read more ‘Deadpool’ if Moore is on art duty.

There’s not really a plot as such, more a series of encounters between Deadpool and various presidents that are fuelled by violence and bad jokes. To be honest, not a lot more than that is needed to make this book work (although you do get intriguing flashes of Deadpool as a character on the outside who just wants to be a part of something bigger) and it’s clear that Posehn and Duggan are having a lot of fun here throwing Deadpool out of helicopters accompanied by bad puns. I had a lot of fun too, just what the doctor ordered in fact.

If you’re after something deep and meaningful then this is the wrong comic book for you; sorry but that’s just the way it is. However, if you want to read a comic book where a zombie Roosevelt punches out a bear then ‘Dead Presidents’ is very much the comic book for you. It was for me too :o)

Frontier & Gollancz announce authors for kickstarted “ELITE: DANGEROUS” Books.

I was quite possibly the only boy at school who didn't have a copy of 'Elite' for their computer (which was fine by me actually, I much preferred playing 'Knightlore' instead) so this news doesn't have quite the nostalgic feel for me that it will for other bloggers. I'm always up for some entertaining sci-fi though and this news sounds good in that respect.
Check out the press release,

Frontier Developments plc (AIM: FDEV) and Gollancz, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, are delighted to announce the authors who will be writing their three tie-in novels set in the world of ELITE: DANGEROUS, the ground-breaking Kickstarted sequel to best-selling computer game ELITE.

Frontier received crowd-sourced funding for ELITE: DANGEROUS via a hugely successful campaign on the Kickstarter website, and now has over 45,000 backers. Gollancz contributed over £13,000 to secure the rights to publish three related books. After much discussion and many volunteers, Gollancz editor Marcus Gipps selected the authors and collaborated closely with Frontier to ensure continuity and reflect the evolving game world.

The original game ELITE was one of the best-selling and most iconic computer games of the eighties, and has been credited with inspiring generations of game designers and players. It was the first game to be packaged with an accompanying novella – ELITE: THE DARK WHEEL, by Robert Holdstock; an award-winning and much-respected author, and had a long relationship with Gollancz.

ELITE: WANTED, by Gavin Deas, is a rip-roaring space epic told from two points of view – the hunted, and the hunter. When a routine bit of piracy goes wrong, the crew of the Song of Stone realise that there's a bounty hunter on their tail. One who might, finally, be able to outclass them. The Dragon Queen is feared across space, and for good reason. But even the bounty hunter doesn't realise what she's been hired to do. Or what is in the container she's been sent to retrieve. And she's not the only hunter in the game...

Gavin Smith and Stephen Deas are regular Gollancz authors – having produced 15 books between them over the last few years – and their combined talent makes this a gripping tale.

ELITE: NEMORENSIS, by Simon Spurrier, tells the story of an unlikely pair of star-crossed lovers who steal a spaceship and go on the run, attacking at random and revelling in the fame and glory their violence brings them. Celebrated by the jaded youth of the Federation and urged on to ever more flashy acts of destruction, they know it won't be long before they are caught and killed. But someone is following the couple. Someone who knows why they are so obsessed with each other. Who knows where they are heading. Who knows why. Someone who knows more about them than they do themselves. And has another plan for their deaths...

Simon is currently writing X-MEN for Marvel Comics and CROSSED for Avatar Press, and has written for Judge Dredd, Wolverine and many other popular characters. He has published two novels with Hodder and five licensed novels based on Warhammer and 2000AD properties.

ELITE: DOCKING IS DIFFICULT, by Gideon Defoe, humorously explores what life in the future is really like. On what might be the worst planet in the universe, a young man dreams of the stars. Adventure! Lasers! Women! And the ultimate goal - to become Elite! Unfortunately, Misha has to do his chores first. And learn how to talk to Phoebe, the beautiful customs officer. And leave the planet. But the death of a famous author unexpectedly drags Misha and Phoebe into a system-wide conspiracy, complete with smuggling, international art thieves, multi-system corporations, canapés and exploding pigs. This is Misha's chance to prove he has what it takes! After all, surely anyone can be Elite if they dream...

Gideon is best known for his comic novels featuring THE PIRATES! and was the scriptwriter for the Oscar-nominated Aardman film THE PIRATES! IN AN ADVENTURE WITH SCIENTISTS, based on his books.

The books will be released for sale as eBooks in major digital stores on the 15th of May 2014. Other ebook retailers will put the books up over the next few days, and the hardback editions should also go live everywhere shortly. Collector’s hardbacks will then be published for sale alongside the retail release of the game later that year.

Funnily enough, 'The Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists' has been playing pretty much non-stop since Hope watched it on Saturday. I can't stand Aardman stuff normally (for... reasons...) but 'The Pirates' is actually very watchable. But yeah, back on topic. The blurbs for the three books all look good. I'm up for reading them, how about you?

The 'Library in a Phone Box' Comic Book Post!

It’s another one of those days where I’ve found myself in the middle of two books (‘The Godwhale’ and ‘The King in Yellow’) and eager to get going with another one (‘The Goblin Emperor’, I’ve heard loads of good things about it). If that wasn’t enough, I’ve found my commute taken up with an overwhelming need to beat my top score on ‘Subway Surfers’ (137740 just in case you were wondering). It’s times like this when you have to take a step back from the reading pile (or it will grind you down) and the games on my phone to read some comics instead :o) Today sees a regular on this blog and a newcomer that I’m kind of half and half on. Which one should I go for first? I know, lets go for…

‘X’ #12 – Swierczynski, Maia (Dark Horse)

X faces his greatest challenge of the series as four villains—suicidal maniac Deathwish, stargazing supercriminal Carmine Tango, risk-taking assassin Gamble, and a new threat no one suspected—converge on Arcadia’s lone vigilante . . . but the cruelest stab of all comes from a friend!

I said this before with #11 but it’s worth saying again because… bloody hell, ‘X’ is a particularly brutal read. Every time I think that Swierczynski and Maia have taken ‘X’ as far as they can they never fail to surprise me by ramping things up an extra notch. #12 is no exception with the fight from #11 being ramped up by adding three more villains to the mix. There’s only so much that one vigilante can take, especially when another betrayal is playing out off-screen (so to speak). X may be down but the last panels show that he is by no means out; it’s a long way back to the top and I have a feeling that X will be climbing over the bodies of several enemies on the way back up. Swierczynski and Maia have come with up a comic that is essential reading as far as I’m concerned, read it for yourself and see. #13 cannot come soon enough as far as I’m concerned.

‘Chew Volume 7: Bad Apples’ – John Layman, Rob Guillory (Image)

Just up the road from us is an old phone box that people have turned into a micro-library. It’s great, not only do I have another place to get rid of unwanted books but every now and then I come back home with a couple of books for myself. This explains why I have started reading ‘Chew’ at volume 7; not the best place to start reading a series (although it could have been worse, could have been volume 8…) but you have start somewhere and it was a free book after all.

‘Bad Apples’ was a quick, fun read (is it me or are trades getting slimmer…?) that I enjoyed more for the art than the story. Not that the story was bad in itself, it just felt like it was bridging a gap between two plots that I didn’t know anything about. Not the books fault at all and there is a lot of stuff going on that a newcomer can get straight into (like Tony Chu’s relationship with his daughter). It was Rob Guillory’s artwork that did it for me, very dynamic and with a lot of sly humour in the details; I liked the touch of anime in the characters as well.

Would I read the rest of the series? Maybe… If I do I’ll be going along the ‘old fashioned route’ of starting with volume 1, it also depends if I come across any more volumes in the micro-library :o) I’ll definitely be keeping an eye open.

Books in the Post...

Afternoon all, did you have a good weekend? I did (very busy, playing with the kids) although the clocks going forward caught me out; what felt like a nice lie-in was no lie-in at all, thanks for nothing stupid clocks with your insistence on going forwards...
Anyway, the weekend was also about books turning up in the post and that's what this post is about. The two books that arrived are pretty cool and I fancied showing them off. Check em' out...

Rorqual Maru was a cyborg - part organic whale, part mechanised ship - and part god. She was a harvester - a vast plankton rake, now without a crop, abandoned by earth society when the seas died. So she selected an island for her grave, hoping to keep her carcass visible for salvage. Although her long ear heard nothing, she believed that man still lived in his hive. If he should ever return to the sea, she wanted to serve. She longed for the thrill of a human's bare feet touching the skin of her deck. She missed the hearty hails, the sweat and the laughter. She needed mankind. But all humans were long gone ... or were they?

It's amazing what a well written blurb can do isn't it? I've been looking forward to reading 'The Godwhale' for months and early indications (well, I'm about halfway through the book) are that it will live up to that promise. So far, I've been absolutely captivated by the characters, the world and the premise; long may that continue :o) I've already got plans to read 'Half Past Human' based on how much I'm enjoying 'The Godwhale'. Has anyone else here read it?

In a world where the Plantagenets never fell, Lord Darcy is Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy…
Welcome to a world where the Plantagenet kings survived, the laws of magic were discovered and the physical sciences never pursued. In the resulting Anglo-French Empire, a detective like Lord Darcy needs more than a keen mind and an observant eye. Luckily, Darcy can call on the aid of Master Sean O’Lochlainn, forensic sorcerer.

In a world where all the cover art talk tends to focus around the new shiny releases, Gollancz have been quietly going about their business putting gorgeous cover art on older works. Doesn't this cover look lovely? Far better than the one below that I found while having a mooch around on Google...

Oh the early eighties, what a time it was for cover art that didn't quite hit the mark. I much prefer the Golllancz cover which looks a lot fresher, bringing Lord Darcy to the fore instead of hiding him away. I am woefully behind with my Fantasy Masterworks reading (I have a horrible feeling that I promised to do something about that...) so I can see 'Lord Darcy' being an Easter holiday read I think...

Either of these two books tickle your fancy?

‘The Art of Ian Miller’ – Ian Miller & Tom Wyte (Titan Books)

I first came across Ian Miller’s work on the covers of Michael Scott-Rohan’s ‘The Winter of the World’ series back in the late eighties. Actually, that’s not quite true; the first time I came across Ian Miller’s work (although I didn’t realise it at the time) was on the front of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook ‘The Citadel of Chaos’ (which I still need to read but anyway…) I guess what I’m trying to say here is that Ian Miller is one of those fantasy artists who has done a lot more work than you think; you’ve probably even seen his work and not realised it – like all that work he did for Games Workshop back in the day (late eighties again) that I didn’t realise was him until I read the back of this book.

‘The Art of Ian Miller’ has over three hundred pieces of artwork, spanning a career that is decades long, and is a book that I got lost in for what felt like hours the other night. Every single piece of artwork is full of detail that demands your full attention and is also full of ominous undertones that really capture the darkness in the worlds that Miller portrays; be it Gormenghast (I saw little hints of the ‘Winter of the World’ covers there), Lovecraft’s mythos or just the strange stuff that apparently goes on inside Miller’s head.

These are dark and dangerous worlds that Miller gives us a window into and he gives us some commentary on each piece at the same time. I got a lot out of the history of each piece but got a little lost when he started to explain the process of how each piece was created. If you’re really into your art then you’ll get a lot out of this; I on the other hand just like to look at the pictures and there is plenty of scope in this book to do just that.

For those who didn’t know it already, ‘The Art of Ian Miller’ clearly shows that Ian Miller has the imagination and skill to capture iconic moments of fantasy in just the way they were intended to be. Not only this though; Miller has more than a few dark visions of his own (those trees…) and it all makes for disturbing yet compelling viewing. If you get a chance, have a look for yourself.

‘Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster’ – Terrance Dicks

Because not only do I have a few of these books still lurking on my shelves but I had a belting headache on the way into work and wasn’t quite up to tackling ‘The King in Yellow’. I’ll do that on the way home instead.

Doctor Who novelizations are almost pointless these days given that you can have a quick poke around online and just, you know, buy the DVDs. For people like me though, they will always be a reminder of the days when these books were the only way that you could catch up with Doctor Who adventures that were already years old by that point. Take ‘Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster’ for instance; when the last episode aired (20^th September 1975) I was only four days old so there was no way that I would have ever seen it. Enter the books then, nearly all of which felt like they were written by one Terrance Dicks. The first truly prolific author in genre fiction? Not at all but it felt like it when I was five or six and just starting to go to the library.

I’ve brought more than a few Doctor Who DVDs since then but never watched ‘The Loch Ness Monster’ so, once again, I was very grateful to Terrance Dicks and his ability to seemingly pull a finished book out of thin air. You want some blurb? Well, here it is…

Centuries ago, a Zygon spaceship crash landed in Loch Ness. Now, with their home planet destroyed, the alien creatures plan to take over Earth. Their most powerful weapon is a huge armoured dinosaur-like creature of terrifying power that they brought to earth as an embryo - the Loch Ness Monster.
The Doctor, Sarah and Harry soon discover that the Zygons have another weapon. They can assume the identity of any human they capture. Who knows which of their friends might really be a Zygon?
UNIT faces one of its toughest battles as Broton, Warlord of the Zygons, puts his plan into action and the Loch Ness Monster attacks.

My commute into work is just over an hour (on a good day) and that was just enough time to polish off ‘Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster’; a light entertaining read that seemed to be written especially for a commute. There is nothing deep about this book at all; Dicks always seems to take the approach of ‘telling it exactly how it happened on the telly’ and that never seems to leave any room for character development or even a little more description of the background scenery. In a sense that approach is what made the Doctor Who novelizations so appealing to kids like me; the knowledge that what you were reading was exactly the same as what would have been on the TV. As a reader though, it’s hard to ignore the fact that ‘The Loch Ness Monster’ is very light on everything you would expect from a good read. There are thrills and adventure but there’s not a lot else. One thing that Dicks does do well though is capturing the essence of the main cast (again, tying it back to that whole ‘what you would have seen on TV’ approach). The Doctor has that hint of the alien about him, the Brigadier is very uptight (but resigned to the Doctors way of doing things) and Sarah Jane is resourceful and keen to do the right thing. It’s not enough to raise the overall quality of the read but does give you a feel for the characters and that’s always welcome.


‘Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster’ is more than likely one for people like me then, trying to re-capture memories of reading the Target novelizations as a child. That nostalgia will get through this book (and the rest) but if you don’t have that nostalgia, ‘The Loch Ness Monster’ is nothing more than a fairly enjoyable way to kill an hour’s worth of commuting.

'Heroes Die' - Matthew Woodring Stover (Del Rey, Orbit)

So that’s another book I can cross off the ‘Really Should Have Read Years Ago…’ list and about time too because ‘Heroes Die’ could easily be the best book I read  this year; right now I don’t see anything else coming close even though we’re only at the end of March. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Readers of my old blog will know that I've been reading the ‘Caine’ series entirely out of order; starting from book three and going on from there. In my defence, these books are difficult to come by over here so I figured that I’d pick up where I could and see where it went from there. I’d heard enough good things not to want to hang around… It’s fair to say that the results were mixed; ‘Caine Black Knife’ and ‘Caine’s Law’ are great books but it’s clear that you really need to have read from the beginning of the series to get the most out of them. So the other day then, I took ‘Heroes Die’ to work with me on the train and completely got lost in the world of Caine. Seriously, when I get home tonight I might just end up ignoring a whole load of jobs around the house (that really need doing…) and dive straight into ‘Blade of Tyshalle’ (I’m a firm believer in making up for lost time with books).  Have some blurb to kick things off…

Renowned throughout the land of Ankhana as the Blade of Tyshalle, Caine has killed his share of monarchs and commoners, villains and heroes. He is relentless, unstoppable, simply the best there is at what he does.

At home on Earth, Caine is Hari Michaelson, a superstar whose adventures in Ankhana command an audience of billions. Yet he is shackled by a rigid caste society, bound to ignore the grim fact that he kills men on a far-off world for the entertainment of his own planet--and bound to keep his rage in check.

But now Michaelson has crossed the line. His estranged wife, Pallas Rill, has mysteriously disappeared in the slums of Ankhana. To save her, he must confront the greatest challenge of his life: a lethal game of cat and mouse with the most treacherous rulers of two worlds . . .

 Where do I start with ‘Heroes Die’? I’m still getting over the rush of five hundred odd pages of Caine’s controlled rage and desire to beat the system on two worlds so he can save his estranged wife… ‘Heroes Die’ is a book that will leave you gasping by the end (and at several points before that) with just how Caine does this. Caine is ferociously violent and has no compunctions about killing or destroying anything that comes between him and his goal (including a god-emperor who is actually trying to rule fairly and well). Caine is also ferociously intelligent though and ‘Heroes Die’ is about him realising this and using it to blindside everyone in a gripping finale. Stover has a habit of meandering with his prose at times (although you could argue this is a necessary approach given how important Caine’s perspective is to the plot) but it all comes together superbly right at the end, making you realise that the whole book is a lot leaner and tighter than you thought at first. There is a point to everything and, more often than not, there is also a point in everything as the body count rises. Stover generally focuses on the supporting cast here (I can think of dozens of soldiers, gang members and a torturers apprentice who wish that they’d stayed in bed instead of coming in to work) but that’s only so the death of a main player has even more impact when it happens. I was absolutely heartbroken (really, I was) when a certain character died.

In keeping with the theme of the book, Stover plays the Ankhanan scenes like a blockbuster film and so ‘Heroes Die’ is full of running battles and spectacular set pieces all tied together by Caine’s laconic commentary. It’s a little bit more than that though as the ‘Earth’ strand of the plot is also a commentary on capitalism gone mad and where it could ultimately lead our society. Hari Michaelson (Caine when he’s back on Earth) occupies quite a privileged position in this society, as an Actor who quests in Ankhana for the entertainment of the masses on Earth, so it’s interesting to see him rebel against it in the way that he does. A gilded cage is still a prison for some people I guess.

‘Heroes Die’ is a dark and brooding affair that explodes into bloody action at all the right moments. Quite frankly, it’s an awesome read that I would recommend to anyone who likes their fantasy dark and very grim (see what I did?)

Orbit publish all the ‘Caine’ books in the UK but only as eBooks so UK readers after a physical copy will have trawl Abebooks and places like that. It’s worth it though, it really is.