Why I like books! from Al Davison on Vimeo.

By Howard Hardiman

On one hand, it simply confuses, this prose with illustrations little non-comic with the name of an old, old friend written on the front. This is Badger’s Dairy. It says so on the front cover.

And there he is again on the back cover…. that’s the little critter I remember falling for so long ago now….

And in truth, all the way through Badger’s Diary, Hardiman gives me pictures of Badger, lovely little black and white things, just like these:

But this is something very different. And at first I couldn’t really make out the connection. What had Howard Hardiman writing about his own experiences of loss, isolation, and a series of small flats, mostly too expensive to afford, certainly too expensive to enjoy, have to do with poor little lonely, lost, isolated Badger……

Oh.

Yes. I see.

It never really occurred to me before this that Hardiman, a lovely man who I look forward to saying hello to each time we meet at various conventions was actually writing himself as a small, terribly sad, awfully fragile little Badger.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, maybe the connection’s merely one of my own invention, but like all fiction, no matter how grounded in fact, it ceases to be what the author meant the minute the reader attributes a meaning to it. So in that sense, my reading, whatever Hardiman’s original intent, is true, at least for me.

These short prose pieces are lovingly written, hazy nostalgia butting up against harsh reality of modern life, of struggling withrents, of moving in, moving out, sharing experiences with friends, of the guilt of having so much compared to others not so fortunate, even as the ongoing near poverty existence of an artist living in London means chatting to the local homeless guy whilst worrying about getting back the grand in deposit on the last flat. Every piece in here is thoughtful, lovingly written, harsh reality mixing nicely with poetic allusion.

It’s not comics, not this time. And as much as I’d love to see another Badger comic I feel happy and content knowing that Hardiman has moved on, leaving behind the sad, lonely little Badger, and off to bigger and potentially bettter things.

Badger’s Diary, along with his current, far more hard-hitting current comic series; The Lengths, is available from Hardiman’s webstore.

This weekend sees the First Fictions literary festival at the University of Sussex, in conjunction with the publishers Myriad Editions (home to graphic novel works like Woodrow Phoenix’s Rumble Strip and Darryl Cunningham’s upcoming Science Tales). The festival will also see the announcement of the winner of the First Graphic Novel Competition; as we mentioned a few weeks ago the original entries, which we’re told were of a very high calibre, have been whittled down to a final shortlist of seven nominees, with the ultimate winner to be announced this weekend. Work from the shortlist nominees will be exhibited at the festival and the winner will have their graphic novel published by Myriad in 2013. The judging panel consists of Bryan Talbot, Ian Rankin, Steve Bell, Myriad’s Corinne Pearlman, Hannah Berry and Ed Hillyer. The artists competing for the prize are:

Adam Blackman & Dylan Shipley: A Rat’s Tale

Gareth Brookes: The Black Project

Konstantinos Chrisoulis: Dryland

Hannah Eaton: Naming Monsters

Tom Eglington: Amber Sands

Thom Ferrier: The Enlightenment of Iwan James

Paula Knight: The Facts of Life

I see a couple of names in there that are already established faves with the blog crew for their own self-published work, some names I don’t know yet but look forward to getting to see some of their work further down the line. Obviously we’ll try to bring you news of who won as soon as we hear it, but if you are on the south coast please do go along and give them some support, there will be some top comics and books folks there, some damned good reading and initiatives of this sort encouraging new talent are always to be applauded and supported.

The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)

Deadline by Mira Grant (Orbit)

The Other by Matthew Hughes (Underland)

A Soldier’s Duty by Jean Johnson (Ace)

The Postmortal by Drew Magary (Penguin)

After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh (Small Beer)

The Samuel Petrovich Trilogy by Simon Morden (Orbit)

The Phil K is always a good indicator of hot new science fiction talent, although I’m dismayed to realise I haven’t actually read any of the nominees this year, that’s unusual for me, but even I can’t read everything (I do try though!). Although I do have Company Man and Deadline in my try to get these read pile and I did read Robert Jackson Bennett’s previous book, Mister Shivers, which was a simply superb slice of very unusual horror told on the dusty roads of Depression era America and is much recommended.

Comics

The Corporate Skull, Jamie Smart (webcomic)

The new chapter has just started this very week online, but over the last few months few things have made me laugh out loud as much as Jamie Smart’s Corporate Skull, taking the mickey out of big business and corporate office culture, loaded with cynicism and sarcasm, decorated liberally with bad language, foul behaviour and violence and bodily excretions. It’s everything rude and crude but expertly and cleverly crafted. I said several months ago that it was “arse splittingly funny” and I stand by that comment, mostly because the aforementioned bum is still recuperating from the previous comedic splitting. Sick genius. The doctors say it is good therapy for Jamie to work it out of his system.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec Volume 2, Jacques Tardi, Fantagraphics

For my money Jacques Tardi is one of Europe’s great comics creators, a true maestro who can turn his hand and alter his style to suit almost any genre, from gruesome, angry It Was The War of the Trenches to hardboiled 70s crime and, of course, his famous Adele Blanc-Sec series. A plucky heroine writer who investigates the bizarre and always becomes entangled in the oddest conspiracies and plans. This second helping collects two of the original French albums and serves up a heady cocktail of conspiracies, secret societies, black magic practiocners, mad scientists (and boy does Tardi do a great, cackling mad scientist – he even brings in some from his brilliant The Arctic Maruader into this) and all set against a beautifully realised backdrop of Belle Epoque, pre-war Paris. Fantagraphics are translating a huge swathe of Tardi’s work and in fact I’d recommend and and everything they have so far translated and republished, but for the sake of this piece I’ll go with the wonderful Adele.

Hair Shirt, Patrick McEown, SelfMadeHero

This is a superb, dark piece from SMH, a labyrinthean maze of childhood memories and how they shape and influence the character and outlook of the protagonists as adults, set in one of those depressing, featureless “it could be anywhere” type of towns, with emotional paths triggered by the reconnection between childhood friends and almost-sweethearts John and Naomi, it’s a fascinating through a glass darkly tale that I could see making an engrossing film in the hands of someone like Guillermo del Toro. Dark, brooding, intense and fascinating.

MetaMaus, Art Spiegelman, Penguin

Spiegelman’s Maus must be about the most famous graphic novel on the planet, known not only to comics readers like Watchmen but to the wider reading public because of its reception and the Pulitzer Prize highlighting it even to readers who normally don’t read in the comics medium. That, however, is also something of a millstone for a young artist to carry around for the next few decades of his career and Spiegelman talks about that, as well as how he came to make the original comic, discussing the craft, the family history, his relationship with his father, the approach to the art and layout, it’s a truly exhaustive (it comes with a DVD packed with more material) look inside one of the major literary works of the 20th century, but it is also deeply personal too, not just in terms of discussing Spiegelman’s relationship with his father, the man whose tale he is telling, but also how the book has affected his own children growing up in its shadow. Penguin also republished the original Complete Maus in the same hardback format as MetaMaus to mark the anniversary of its publication, they make a very handsome set.

Don Quixote, Migeul de Cervantes with some help from Rob Davis, SelfMadeHero

Several years ago a poll of some of the best writers from many countries picked out this masterpiece of Spanish literature as the favourite novel for most of today’s respected international authors. They were right. It’s an astonishing book that has crossed centuries, influencing artists, writers, playwrights, poets, painters, film-makers and readers; several centuries of readers have fallen in love with this mad knight who dreams of a golden past of chivalry and adventure. Is Quixote a dreaming madman in a cynical age or is it the world that is wrong and his vision which is the more wonderful? Is it a Quixotic madness to even attempt to adapt this great work into comics? Perhaps, but as one who has loved this book for years I think Rob too has supped from the same cup of divinely inspired madness that made our tottering knight charge at windmills; it’s a wonderful madness we all need to embrace from time to time to rise above the mundanity of the everyday. Rob has put a Herculean effort into this adaptation – a read of his blog shows the effort and thought and love he’s put into each frame, how to approach the characters, even the effect of changing colours and shadows, and it shows in the finished work.

Quixote is one of those books that belong to the world and to the ages, given that immortality that belongs to few books across the long centuries, the few that become immortal, the Poes, the Dickens, the Austens, that will be read for as long as there are books and stories. If you’ve loved Quixote you will delight in this joyful adaptation of the work, if you haven’t had that pleasure yet then Rob’s is the perfect, accessible introduction to it, and afterwards you’ll want to read the book itself and treasure it. As a bookseller and booklover I can’t think of a higher compliment than that.

Hector Umbra, Uli Oesterle, Blank Slate Books

Much acclaimed on it’s German language release I was delighted to see Blank Slate translating Uli Oesterle’s brilliant Hector Umbra, his first full length work to make it into English. A brilliant mixture of buddy movie, religious conspiracy, science fiction and dark magics, with more than a tinge of the excellent Mike Mignola flavouring it as Hector, between drinks, tries to find his missing DJ friend Osaka, stumbles into a megolomaniac attempt to subvert humanity, even finds himself, in an almost Hellboy moment, entering into Hell to be given information from a recently dead friend. Stylish and funny as we see bizarre sights, drinking, shagging, lunacy and more around Munich and strange realms hidden away from normal sight. Think Mike Mignola meets Quentin Tarantino meets Wim Wenders.

Rime of the Modern Mariner, Nick Hayes, Jonathan Cape

Coleridge’s famous poetical work, inspired in part by the great age of exploration as ships sailed to undiscovered corners of the world, is reworked visually here to great effect by Guardian cartoonist Nick Hayes, who follows the rhyme and beat of Coleridge but refashions the work to a more contemporary topic of the environment and man’s disastrous effect on those great, world-spanning oceans, the cradle of all life. The book itself is unusual for a graphic work, being similar in format to a thick hardback novel rather than the normally larger album format, but this is perfect for the few frames on each page, designed to work in time to the beat of the verse. There’s some lovely work in there too – Nick did a Director’s Commentary for us back in the spring, where he talked us through some of the work in his own words, go and have a look.

(Nick Hayes and William Goldsmith at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2011, pic from my Flickr)

Vignettes of Ystov, William Goldsmith, Jonathan Cape

Another unusual work from Cape in 2011 was this first major work from Will Goldsmith, whose work can also be seen in the Imagined Cities anthology Karrie Fransman put together. Ostensibly a series of short, two-page tales, each taking in a different story of a different (and usually eccentric and odd) dweller in a fictional, roughly Eastern European city, although the stories slowly start to become interlinked as you progress through, a little like Carver’s Short Cuts. Visually it is unlike anything else I’ve read in recent years, it’s a remarkable, unusual art style that demands re-reading to take it in. Unique.

Insurrection, Dan Abnett & Colin MacNeil, 2000 AD/Rebellion

I’m a 2000 AD boy, no question about it, original generation there right for the very first Prog and I still like to dive into the tales from the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic today, with a special fondness for the Dredd-verse. This story from veterans Dan Abnett and Colin MacNeil is set in Dredd’s universe but doesn’t feature him, taking place on a Mega City colony in deep space, fighting for independence. Following an alien attack where the Judges ignored pleas for aid everyone, including sentient robots, genetically uplifted apes and mutants, were given citizenship in return for fighting to save the colony. War over they judge marshal is told to revoke that citizenship, which he refuses, leading to a colossal showdown with the feared SJS, the Special Judicial Squad we first really saw way back in The Day The Law Died years ago, the Judges who investigate the other Judges. It’s a great future war tale, seemingly good guys against bad, but Abnett deliberately muddles the morality to make it more dramatic while MacNeil creates some brilliant B&W art (see my review here for more).

Batwoman – the New 52, JH Williams III & W Haden Blackman,published DC Comics

Over the years I have largely slipped out of the habit of picking up monthly or weekly issues – yes, I know, sounds sacriligeous for someone in my position, but I have collected them for more years than I care to recall and these days I generally prefer to wait for the collected trade edition. But along with the rest of the blog gang I had to have a look at DC hugely ambitious New 52 experiment, effectively rebooting the main DC Universe, all re-starting at issue 1, a great spot to leap on for anyone new to them, or, like me, who had missed out several years of continuity. It was a great success for the most part and now 5 issues later I find myself still checking the racks for some of them, most notably Batwoman.

I can’t help but go back to it every month – interesting storyline with Kate Kane’s Batwoman facing a supernatural, very creepy threat as well as a more natural world threat from a government agency and a screwed up wannabe sidekick. But the team also deliver a good personal side to Kate’s non superhero life – the problems with her sidekick being emlematic of her her problems with relationships in general, like her missing, presumed dead, twin who returned as a psychotic villain, her estranged father, her detective lover who doesn’t know she is Batwoman… But mostly it is JH Williams III’s art. Simply fabulous, probably some of the best artwork you will see in a mainstream comic right now, achingly gorgeous, atmospheric and with some fantastically kinetic layouts across double pages that as well as looking great scream out to me this is comics and this is the sort of wonderful visualisations of a story only this medium can do.

And as a bonus we have a very strong female lead, every inch the equal of the Batman, quite independent of him, strong but with doubts and troubles but a tremendous determination to do her ‘duty’ honourably. And the fact that she is a lesbian is, I am glad to say, simply a part of her character, played for emotional nuances but not for titillation or exotic allure. Kudos to the guys for that too. And on the New 52 front I also need to give shout outs for Gail Simone’s Batgirl and Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato’s The Flash. And boy, am I surprised to find myself reading Flash again after all these years, but there you have it…

Nelson, edited Rob Davis & Woodrow Phoenix, published Blank Slate Books

It’s been an outstanding year for comics work again, and especially for the UK scene. Nobrow, Blank Slate, SelfMadeHero and Cape have all distinguished themselves and it feels to me like the UK scene, both professional Indy presses and the self published small presses, are just getting better, more diverse and more intersting. Good time to be a reader – the only drawback is more good books than I have time to read and it is murder trying to make a list like this out of so many fine candidates! But, hand on heart, I have to stick with what I said in my review (see here) of Nelson, where I called it:

“a fascinating, unusual landmark publication in Brit comics, a moving tale that works not only as a snapshot of a woman’s life but as a snapshot of the finest comics talent working in the UK right now.”

In a year of quite brilliant works Nelson still stands out for me, a bold experiment by Messrs Phoenix and Davis and all at Blank Slate to craft a single tale covering decades of a woman’s life, each segment by a different artist yet all coming together as more than the sum of it’s parts. I think it is one of those books we will still talk about looking back from future years, a major moment in the renaissance of UK comics publishing. And we even got to raise money for Shelter just by buying it. I’m running up my flag and saluting Nelson as my best graphic novel read of 2011.

Books

Sea of Ghosts, Alan Campbell, Tor/Macmillan

First book of the Gravedigger Chronicles from the Scottish author Alan Campbell who impressed with his previous debut series, the Deepgate Trilogy. As with that debut his new series is an inventive, different and often disturbing take on a genre which can all too often fall into formulaic generic tropes. What starts as a fantasy on a world in which magic is real mutates throughout until it becomes half science fiction, half fantasy, with a compelling, driven lead character and a world where even the oceans have been poisoned by magica;/scientific meddling to become The Brine, the simplest splash of which is toxic and has horrible effects on the human body – and Campbell excels in grisly fates in a manner equalled only by veteran SF scribe Neal Asher. Compelling but not for the faint hearted.

The Ascendant Stars, Michael Cobley, Orbit

Book three of the Humanity’s Fire series sees Michael Cobley really coming of age – I enjoyed his original fantasy series he debuted with, but I think Mike’s switch to grand space opera science fiction was a wise one and this entire series marks him really growing into a much more assured, mature writer, with a brilliant tale of lost human colonies, major intrigues among major alien powers, a strong evnironmental thread and an exciting mixture of the big scale (major starship battles) and the personal (we get to know our heroes very well as they struggle for freedom), and his main planet with a colony composed of Scots, Norwegian and Russian descendants sharing their world with a friendly native species makes for a great and memorable cast of characters. Enjoy Ken MacLeod and Iain M Banks? Then you should be reading this.

The Reapers are the Angels, Alden Bell, Tor/Macmillan

Years ago a papercut from a radioactive book gave me special bookseller senses – sometimes a publisher will send me a book I know nothing about, the author is totally new to me, the book I know nothing about other than the blurb on the PR handout, and yet I get the tingle. And when I get that tingle it means I just know that this book is good, that I am going to like it and I trust the tingle because that instinct rarely leads me astray when it comes to reading. And I got the tingle for Reapers are the Angels and it was, again, pointing me to some bloody good reading. Both zombie tales and post-apocalyptic SF are ten a penny, it takes something to do either sub genre in a fresh way – Bell’s book combines both sub genres and it does so superbly, with his young girl wandering the remains of America after a zombie outbreak, trying her best to survive in a lethal, brutal world (where the remaining humans can be as dangerous as the walking dead), yet she has evolved her own quite moral code and a unique way of looking at the world and still seeing some wonder in it. It’s an amazing piece of work and – thank you – Bell is assured enough to keep it to a decent length and not feel compelled to bloat it to some 600 page monster as too many modern writers do. Beautifully self contained work.

Germline, T.C. McCarthy, Orbit

Another book that gave me the tingle is TC McCarthy’s Germline, a tale of future-war which draws on elements of the contemporary war on terror campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq with the historic (like Vietnam) with science fiction (parts of it are reminiscent of 2000 AD’s Rogue Trooper, including regiments of genetically created super soldiers). This is no war for ideal, not even pretending to be for ideals, it is purely for the remaining resources on the planet, and for every hi-tech future weapon there is the down and dirty tunneling and trenches of the Great War. Our main character is a reporter, but this is a war where you can’t stay an observer and our drug loving hack finds himself going through an Apocalypse Now like journey into the heart of darkness, along the way finding some strange buddies and even falling for one of the genetic infantry women. It’s dirty, gritty, very realistic and utterly gripping.

Echo City, Tim Lebbon, Orbit

I’ve been reading Tim’s work for a good while, he’s a brilliant, very unusual writer, coming from a horror background that also permeates his fantasy and I’ve often found it galling that he wasn’t published by a major imprint in his own country. Well this year Orbit fixed that and gave us his Echo City, a bizarre conurbation, totally self enclosed, wrapped around by an impassible, toxic desert, ruled over by a despotic family, political dissidents banished to a ghetto strip between the city walls and the desert proper. But someone has created a genetically manipulated being to cross that desert – and return. And on the return they learn that something – something unspeakable – is happening. Not just the fight between dissidents and the ruling elite or old and new ways of thinking, but something is rising from beneath the city. A city built endlessly on the bones of it’s own past, layer upon layer of new city built atop the old, vast undercity beneath, the river running through to vanish into the shadows below, where the city’s dead are fed into the falls to vanish – something is rising from deeper than even these dark levels… Scary, different, disturbing, mature dark fantasy from one of our very best.

Rule 34, Charles Stross, Orbit

Charlie is another writer I have admired for years, endlessly inventive, with a great take on using technological and societal trends to great (and cynically funny) effect. In Rule 34 he gets to indulge in the Great Edinburgh Detective Novel along with some near future science fiction, with a unit dedicated to policing all the weird cases that are spawned via the web, and our long suffering but tenacious female detective finds a bizarre murder case rapidly spinning into something much larger, going well beyond the city and even the country. It’s fast-paced, well delivered, clever and darkly humorous stuff from the guy who has become one of the best of the UK SF crop.

Supergods, Grant Morrison, Jonathan Cape

Half a potted history of the superhero comics and half a form of biography, Grant’s Supergods is an interesting read for anyone who’s grown up reading the four-colour pages. The earlier chapters dealing with the history of the early capes is fine but not anything you don’t really know already, although it has the benefit of having someone who has himself written many of these characters commenting on them and their creators. But for me the book really becomes much more interesting when we get to the 60s and Grant talks not only about the comics from then but on the ones he as a youngster was picking up and what they meant to him personally, then on to his early work (an anthology put out by the old Edinburgh SF Bookshop, which would eventually be the Edinburgh Forbidden Planet), constantly changing his style as the years pass, it offers an interesting insight into his own creative processes as well as his views on other trends in comics publishing and other writers and artists – you won’t always agree with them, but it’s always interesting.

Film & TV

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec

Luc Besson’s big screen adaptation of Jacques Tardi’s Belle Epoque heroine takes elements from a couple of the original bande dessinee to make it to it’s running length, but despite mashing together different story elements from different books it cracks along at a good pace and delivers much of the same joy of adventure and gorgeous visuals (especially of Paris in the 1910s), a very fine comics adaptation and sheer fun throughout – here’s hoping he adapts some more.

Troll Hunter

One of my highlights of my annual sojourn at the Edinburgh Film Festival was this Indy monster flick from Norwegian director/writer André Øvredal. Made on a budget of only three million Euros it uses the found footage device like Cloverfield or Blair Witch, but much better (and less annoying) than either of those, supposedly recordings by media students doing a video project, reporting on a licensed bear hunt when they find a loner who follows the hunt for the rogue animal but never takes part. Tracking him night after night they find out he is actually a member of a secret government department tasked with keeping the public safe from (and ignorant of) trolls. And we get to see all manner of trolls, from forest to cave to gigantic beasts who roam above the Arctic Circle. Funny and very inventive, never showing its tiny budget, it is sheer fun and the film fest audience gave the director a huge cheer at the end. (see here for a spoiler-free review)

Hugo

The brilliant Martin Scorcese adapts Selznick’s wonderful tale, his first foray into 3D (and surprisingly not annoying in 3D), turning the book into a fairy tale – an orphan living within the walls and tunnels of a 1920s Parisian train station, mending and maintaining the clocks while avoiding the station police who will bundle him off to the orphanage, working on restoring a 19th century automation his father was trying to repair before his death.  Befriended by a young girl (Kick-Ass’s Chloe Moritz), menaced by a grumpy toy shop owner (her godfather) the pair are lead not only into the mystery of the clockwork mechanical man but of one of the great magicians of the 19th century, a curator of automata and wonders and the first, great genius of the early cinema. The dawn days of the film become part of the magical, fairy tale like story. 20s Paris in winter is a magical, enchanting land, and Scorcese makes much of the giant cogs and wheels of that era’s engineering and machinery while celebrating the first wonders of the silver screen. A pure joy.

The Borrower Arrietty

Another gem from the Film Fest for me was the new Studio Ghibli – I know I’m far from alone in being a huge admirer of Myazaki-san’s studio and their wonderful animations and the chance to see this tale, adapted from Mary Norton’s classic book The Borrowers, is a visual wonder as we see the tiny Borrowers living hidden in the human household, and how one Borrower girl and one seriously ill human boy come together despite the vast difference in sizes. The art is a delight showing our world at the Borrower’s tiny scale (so small when they pour tea from the pot it doesn’t flow like our water does, it comes out as large droplets), even the sound is used to convey the scale, the rustling of shirt fabric enormously loud to Arrietty’s miniscule ears. It is charming and a pure visual feast of traditional animation (with a few CG elements). See here for a review

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Maverick director Werner Herzhog gained exclusive camera access to the Chauvet caves of southern France, one of the great historical discoveries of the last couple of decades, a series of caves used by our ancestors for rituals, for art… For the oldest human artwork we know of, a glorious series of cave paintings over 32, 000 years old. Just consider that for a moment – human artwork many times older than any beautiful work that survives from Rome, Ancient Greece or even Egypt or Ur or Babylon. These may have been stone-age people, but they are modern humans, just like us physically, and in their art we can see they are much like us mentally, spiritually. Art paintedin darkness lit only by flickering torches, which would have made the animals depicted seem to move. The artists are clever, using their material wisely, using the surface qualities of the rock and the curves and undulations to emphasise the art, making a horse seem dynamic as it curves around a bend in the wall. The work is far too delicate to be open to the public, only scientific teams are allowed in to a now sealed, climate controlled environment, Herzhog’s access therefore as close as we can get to this miraculous find. It’s a treasure in paint and stone and human effort and cleverness reaching out of the darkness across long millennia to us. It’s so beautiful it will make you cry with wonder. The human spirit and art eternal…

As usual I have rambled on far, far too long and been a bit self indulgent, but again my excuse is that I read far too many extremely good comics, books and saw some fabulous films again through the year, and this is me missing out many I would have liked to include as well (I haven’t even managed space to give proper mentions to the Big Bang Theory – much improved this year with a stronger female strand to the regular male geek cast – or Doctor Who or the surprise that was The Fades, the brilliant adaptation that is A Game of Thrones, the growing pleasure of Fringe (one of the best SF shows of recent years, I think), SyFy’s Haven, Warehouse 13 and Lost Girl).

Looking forward to in 2012

Okay, as I said I have gone on too long already, but what the smeg, a very brief look at some books and comics coming up that I’m looking forward to this coming year: Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, Mary & Bryan Talbot, Jonathan Cape. Bryan was kind enough to give me a peek at some of this collaboration with his wife Mary some months ago and I’m eager to read the finished book – Mary was kind enough to to pen a Director’s Commentary about Dotter for us and I’m delighted to say you will be able to read it on the blog tomorrow. Kochi Wanaba, Jamie Smart, Blank Slate – I love Jamie’s work and adored what I saw of Kochi online. It’s an amazing mixture of the supercute and the bizarre, almost grotesque and I’m chuffed to see him getting this lovely hardback edition from Blank Slate.

One of the great European classic has been promised in new English editions to use several times over recent years, but never appeared – now, at last we’re going to see it again: Corto Maltese: the Ballad of the Salt Sea, Hugo Pratt, Universe. Hopefully this summer sees the third part of the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill, Knockabout/Top Shelf. This final part brings us up to contemporary times after we last saw the League in the Swinging Sixties (with a coda in the punk era of the 70s). Peepholes, Laurie J Proud, Blank Slate Books looks absolutely fascinating – it was due late 2011 but will now be this year, but a pleasure delayed simply increases the final satisfaction (and I hope to have Laurie also doing a Commentary for us too in the near future).

And I’ll leave you with a couple of 2012′s science fiction works that caught my eye – Empire State, Adam Christopher, Angry Robot. I was treated to an advance copy at the end of 2011 but the book is out this month – if you follow our Twitter feed you’ll already have seen me singing the praises of Adam’s novel – set in a 1930s/40s city that seems like New York but is actually the Empire State, like an alternative version of the New York we know, with gangsters and speakeasys and superheroes in rocket boots like characters from the old Republic serials of the day. A city that is all that exists, surrounded by a mist around its rivers, and yet there is a mysterious enemy ships sail off to fight… Somewhere. Hugely stylish, with elements that reminded me of hardboiled noir of the 40s and 50s, the old serial movies, Rocketeer and Dark City- probably the first really interesting SF book of the New Year for me. And this year also sees the return of one of my long-term favourites, Ken MacLeod, with Intrusion (Orbit) – Cory Doctorow has seen it already and described it as “a new kind of dystopian novel: a vision of a near future “benevolent dictatorship” run by Tony Blair-style technocrats who believe freedom isn’t the right to choose, it’s the right to have the government decide what you would choose, if only you knew what they knew. ” Ken told me a little about it recently but to be really honest all I need to know is it is a new Ken MacLeod and that means I’ll be reading it.

Alessia Zambonin, Annie Stegg, Lois Van Baarle

Ballistic Publishing

(cover to the tenth in Ballistic’s D’Artiste series, this time with the theme of fashion design, art by Lois Van Baarle)

We’ve been delighted to carry the Ballistic series of digital art books for some time on our webstore, and I’ve been impressed over the years with the exceptionally high quality, the books beautifully produced and always on very high quality paper to show off the colour art at its finest. The D’Artiste series has been running for quite some time now and has become something of an institution in digital art circles, not just because of the aforementioned high quality art reproduction but because, as with a number of Ballistic’s books, it isn’t just a case of sit back and enjoy the pretty pictures (although it is quite pleasurable to do just that!). The D’Artiste series is also billed as a ‘digital arts masterclass’ and that is indeed just what this range does – not only showcase artwork but talks you through the creation process, from basic figure sketching and layout to layering, rendering, colouring, backgrounds, making a character and their design approriate to the requirements, be it a computer game, painting, comic, animated work or any other medium.

(Dorothy by Jessica Oyhenart-Ball)

This tenth volume in the series concentrates on the topic of fashion design, an important and yet often overlooked area of character creation, and one that obviously offers up the artist an extra skill they can use in a variety of different jobs or commissions as well as in regular work, be it illustration for journals or ads, design for animation or comics or games or film. Alessia Zambonin, Annie Stegg and Lois Van Baarle are the main artists featured here, talking about and showing not only their work but also offering up tutorials in creation and design, covering everything required for the fashion look for your character, from the obvious – what style of clothing suits that character for that story or environment – to detailed aspects, such as how best to render it over the character’s pose, getting the proprtions and colours right,  the look of the fabric (increasingly important especially in game design given how much sharper and more detailed graphics keep getting) and how it hangs on the character or moves as they do, using accessories to finish the look and enhance the feel of the character and more, all brought together in step by step, well illustrated tutorials.

(a segment from Lois Van Baarle’s tutorial on backgrounds and colouring)

This volume also takes in some examples of finished work from invited artists selected by and commented on by the Zambonin, Stegg and Van Baarle, which means there is a real diversity of digital art to take in, from Steampunk to Western to Anime/Manga inspired fantasy characters.

(one of the invited guest artist images – the Marshal by Italy’s Paolo Parente)

With each of the invited guest artist images the principal three featured artists discuss why they liked the image and what aspects of the design they thought worked particularly well and why, so there is plenty of inspiration there to draw on for your own designs. As with the rest of the popular D’Artiste series you are basically getting a beautiful art book combined with a serious tutorial; if like me you can’t draw you can enjoy the high quality reproduction of those who can as well as getting an insight into how that art is produced, but if you are an artist then there is a lot in here to help and inspire you, to make you perhaps consider some aspect of visualisation that you hadn’t paid as much attention to, all skills which are of value to any artist looking for work as well as for personal satisfaction in honing their craft.

FPI: Can you pick three comics/webcomics/graphic novels which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

Mark: Oh hell. Like I predicted last year, the renaissance in the UK original graphic novel publishing scene has really started to bear rich fruit, and it’s proving hard to narrow my decision down to just three. SelfMadeHero, Nobrow and Blank Slate have all published great book-after-great book in an amazing cycle of one-upmanship where the winner has been the Anglophone comic-reading audience. This is complicated further by the fact that the comic that has defined the artform in these islands for five decades has also had its best year in ages, too.

(above – page from Hair Shirt, by and (c) Patrick McEown, published SelfMadeHero; below – Adam Cadwell’s page from Blank Slate’s superlative team comic marathon Nelson)

So I’ll go with Patrick McEown’s Hair Shirt (SelfMadeHero); Rob Davis, Woodrow Phoenix et al’s Nelson (Blank Slate); and 2000AD (Rebellion). I’d have thrown Uli Oesterle’s Hector Umbra (Blank Slate) in there too, but it technically didn’t originate in 2011. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy it. You should. And Joe is inserting a handy link to do just that right here (yes, indeed, you can order it here, and it is brilliant – and the English translation does originate from this year even if the German original doesn’t, so it does count! That sneaky Kardwell did that just to slip an extra book in, for which I salute him – Joe). BUY IT! DO IT NOW! NOW!

(above – one of the stunning pages of artwork 2000 AD, published Rebellion, treated us to in 2011, the always brilliant D’Israeli’s interpretation of Hondo City for Lowlife; below – the brilliant Hector Umbra by Uli Oesterle, published Blank Slate Books)

FPI: Can you pick three books which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

Mark: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt (Granta)

Always thought it better for a book to be “interesting” than “good”, which is probably why I wrote my BA thesis on Tender Is The Night rather than The Great Gatsby, and my MA thesis on George Moore rather than Jimmy Joyce. And when you work as a librarian, and talk about books all day with your colleagues and customers alike, you do tend to feel obliged to read large chunks of the Booker shortlist every year. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt was easily the most enjoyable book the usually dreary and worthy Booker crowd have endorsed since Vernon God Little. One of those books you can’t help but choose a dream director and cast for in your head, as the movie of the novel unfurls in your imagination.

Luther: The Calling by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster)

Luther: The Calling is the best spin-off novel I’ve ever read, hardly much of a claim when you consider how inconsequential that sub-section of fiction has been over the years. This one managed to both be a damned fine thriller of the post-Thomas Harris variety, and Cross’s love-letter to the performances of the cast of the first series of his procedural-cum-grand guignol. I loved that first series of Luther, but even as a fan I realised the twists in the penultimate episode were kind of shonky, they rather came out of nowhere, and partly this novel is a knowing correction of those pacing mistakes. And it turns out Cross is also a stylist who writes great sentences.

Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt (Canongate)

As a kid in love with Jack Kirby’s The Mighty Thor comics, I picked up the massive compendium of world myth in my school’s library, and Byatt’s book rang true to how those stories resonated with me. She was exposed to them as a nature-loving rural kid in a country threatened by imminent Nazi invasion, while her father served abroad in the RAF. I read them as a nature-loving rural kid growing up during Northern Ireland’s Troubles and the Cold War, feeling both threatened locally by the prospect of terrorist violence, and existentially by the prospect of nuclear war and its attendant mutually assured destruction. This might be the most atypical book of Byatt’s career, but it’s the one that resonated the most with me.

FPI: Can you pick three TV shows and/or movies which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

Mark: I think I haven’t darkened the door of my local fleapit once in the last year, so any movies I’ve seen have been on DVD. I loved Attack The Block, a movie which mightn’t have been terribly original, but its brilliance came from the playful fusion of genres, and a real love of language.

Community season two rocked my world. I watched the first half of the series drunk, and the second half hungover, and that may have affected my rational judgement, but I came away from the experience thinking this might be the best nerd-oriented TV series since Spaced. It certainly resembles that show in cinematic ambition, intent and construction. And I’ve completely fallen in age-inappropriate love with Alison Brie.

And oh alright, Luther season two. As I said earlier, I loved the first series but was all-too-aware of its failings. It aspired to be a police procedural where everything spiralled into an operatic level of mayhem, but all-too-often just seemed like a bizarre episode of The Bill which descended into a bloodbath. The final two episodes eventually hit the tone they were grasping for, and the results were magical. In the second series, essentially two movie-length specials shown as four episodes, they stepped straight back into that groove, somewhere between the works of David Milch and John Webster.

FPI: How did 2011 go for you as a blogger? Are you happy with the way you got your work out this year?

Mark: In terms of regularity of posting, I’ve had a quiet year, I must admit. It’s always hard to update a blog as regularly as you’d like when your familial and professional lives have been in something of a chaotic state. When you’re pushed for time, it’s so much easier to just compress an idea into a tweet than take the time to compose a full blog entry. I really must try harder next year. But in terms of my blog influencing the universe on a cosmic level, this has probably been my best year yet. I mean it. No, I’m not mental. GGGNNNNRRRRTTT.

FPI: What can we look forward to from you in 2012?

Mark: Between the London Olympics and an unavoidable global apocalypse at the next winter solstice, I fully expect it’ll be a bumper year for blogging.

FPI: Anyone you think is a name we should be watching out for next year?

Mark: I’m almost embarrassed to plug the books I’m looking forward to in 2012, because anyone flicking through the last couple of years of these things will see that a tip from me is a surefire sign a book is going to miss its deadllines egregiously. Let’s just say that I’m still looking forward to Warwick Johnson Cadwell‘s Gungle (and his Hunch Parsons); Glynn Dillon‘s The Nao Of Brown; and any of the ever-growing list of projects Paul Pope has on the long finger (The completed THB, Battling Boy, La Chica Bionica, Psychenaut, Pulphope 2, the new edition of The One-Trick Rip-Off).

Al Ewing and Brendan McCarthy‘s Zaucer Of Zilk starts in 2000AD next year, and that should be a hoot. Dan McDaid keeps previewing panels from some unnamed project he’s working on for Oni Press at his blog, looking forward to seeing more of that. Dan’s a great writer as well as a damned fine artist, and after some delays due to backstage legal wrangling, his epic Doctor Who Magazine serial The Crimson Hand is finally being collected by Panini. I hope Marvel put out a fancy hardback collection of The First almost as soon as the last issue is released.

(some Doctor Who awesomeness by Dan McDaid)

As hilarious as it’s publication history has been, Chris Weston‘s work is uniformly gorgeous, and the world deserves to know what happened The Blue Blade. Paul Holden keeps posting outrageously intricate pages from The Department Of Monsterology on Twitter and Facebook. No comics artist goes out there and bares his soul for the amusement of strangers on the internet like PJ, he deserves a hit, if just to see what effect it would have on his online persona. One name the FPI readers mightn’t be as familiar with is David Wynne – he does indie and webcomic work that’s like the right-side of Warren Ellis’s brain pumped full of happy juice and grafted to the drawing hand of Paul Grist. People should go and buy his comics just to free him from the day-job he clearly hates.

(Particle Fiction #14 art by and (c) David Wynne)

And anyone who says that’s just a list of stuff by my mates from Twitter is a liar.

There’s a bit of a buzz among some of the science fiction reading crowd at the moment over the new book by Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet. As with the well received Pontypool it posits a situation where one of the most uniquely developed faculties that make humans what they are – complex language – becomes a sort of disease, but unlike that work this is a world where the language of children becomes toxic to all adults, causing dangerous illness and even death (I’m sure many parents already feel that trying to understand the language their offspring and other kids use among themselves already creates serious neurological damage!). The children themselves are immune, somewhat like the classic Star Trek episode where they crew find a world where only children are still alive, anyone who gets past early teens becoming prey to the virus which killed all the adults years before. The increasing isolation this scenario in Flame Alphabet would create between adults and their own children strikes me as adding quite a lot of emotional drama into the story and I’m certainly rather intrigued to read it now – one to watch for, methinks, coming out in the US from Random House this month and in the UK this summer from Granta. Multimedia guru Matt Staggs pointed me towards this rather cool short animation Erin Cosgrove created as a trailer for the book: