Holy crap, is this game terrifying. And that’s just the intro. Sure, the creepy nursery rhyme theme is a little derivative but I think that’s something computer games are actually really good at. You take the really good bits from genre work (films mostly) and you squish it all together (see Halo, amongst many others). It’s not art, but it’s fun. And this game is packed full of blood-squirty dismembering fun.

The only possible hiccup is that like Condemned and Call of Cthulhu before it, it may be too scary to finish.

Why yes, I am a scaredy cat.

Fallout 3

Depending on what mood I’m in, I could well call Oblivion my favourite computer game. It’s certainly the game I’ve spent the most amount of hours on, by a hee-uge margin. I got it years ago, and because of the finding time thing, I still haven’t completed it. So I’m very much in the target market for a post-apocalyptic version.

Not spent loads of time on it yet because I really do want to finish Dead Space, but I should imagine a lot of ‘09 is going to spent on this one. And, hopefully, Elder Scrolls V in ‘10.

The Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire

I’ve been meaning to get this one for a while. The follow up to Deadly Genesis (reviewed here previously), and like the previous story an entertaining yarn. Brubaker’s an excellent writer, and very good at doing a Claremont-style story in the modern Marvel house style. I feel like I’m damning with faint praise, but that’s not the intention. To be honest, it’s nice to read a superhero comic that doesn’t irritate me on any level.

Lovecraft’s Haunt of Horror and Cthulhu Tales

Sorry, that last one got a bit catty.

A couple of Mythos comics were added to the haul this year, and although I haven’t had chance to read them yet I’ve skimmed through. The MAX title is the hardcover of Richard Corben’s straightforward Lovecraft adaptations, and looks gorgeous. The second is the first paperback collection of BOOM! Studio’s ongoing anothology title. BOOM! Haven’t made a single misstep yet with their Cthulhu titles, and I doubt they’re going to start here.

Arkham Asylum 15th Anniversary edition

Really needs a post to itself. In short: brilliant, better than I remember it. Unfortunately the good bits were all left in Morrison’s original script, so this is the first version I’ve ever read that makes a damned bit of sense. A flawed masterpiece.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

Late to the party on this one, as I’ve only just upgraded to a graphics card that can handle the game. I assume we’re all geeks here, and we’re all familiar with the Games Workshop property that is, perhaps, nerdness incarnate.

Let’s just say, if Fallout 3 doesn’t suck up all of my time, then Dawn of War will be getting the rest. Hoo boy, I hope you’re all ready for another dip in productivity. Damn shame I’m fucking awful at RTS games.

The Steel Remains, by Richard Morgan

Britain’s best SF writer tackles fantasy. Half way through this, and it’s very good.

The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom

Picked up at random for being a haunted house book on the cheap at Asda. Last book I got from there was Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box, and that one was fantastic.

Again, only half way through it. Good points and bad points and I haven’t made my mind up about it yet, but it’s entertaining and it cost about three quid so I shouldn’t really complain either way.

That’s that faint praise thing again, isn’t it?

Anyway, turns out there’s a competition running in connection with the book, and the first prize is a weekend in that haunted hotel in Ludlow (Ludlow?) that’s been mentioned here before, more than once. The town’s obviously cornering the market in this kind of thing.

It’s odd to think of the Avengers being the biggest brand Marvel currently have, considering the way their mutant line has dominated the company for twenty-odd years. With the cartoon and then the movies it seemed they were also the highest-profile property beyond the source material too.

And then came Spider-Man, and the Scotsman’s departure, and the next thing you know Brett Ratner’s cocked up the gravy train and even Captain America (Captain America?) is kicking your arse in the Diamond sales chart.

Funny, but I’ve never been the biggest X-Men fan. I’ve never disliked them, but I can’t say I’d rank them in the top ten, maybe even top twenty of characters or titles. But I’ve read a lot of their comics over the years, mostly thanks to dear friend Triggi and the British reprint titles he bought through the 90s.

Outside of pressed trees, I enjoyed the cartoon for what it was, and went nuts for the first two films. Thanks to a lack of reverence for the Claremont years (just never really got his work, I suppose, which so informed the X-Men’s world that it probably explains why I’ve never rated them all that highly) I wasn’t horrified by Morrison’s take. The opposite, really. So there was no way to be anything but disappointed with what followed, and after a short time I dropped the title. I wasn’t as taken by the Whedon stuff as some (although the art was very pretty), but then I don’t quite understand the Kitty Pryde fetish readers who are slightly older than me seem to have.

After spending about three hundred words telling you about why I find the X-Men a bit meh, imagine my surprise that recently I’ve been missing them. Because there really is a unique atmosphere to Xavier’s team. More often than not the soap-operatics are cringe-worthy, the dialogue (for the international characters in particular) awful, the reoccurring situations tiresome (the Savage Land again?) and worst of all, the continuity impossibly convoluted even in an industry that thrives on minutiae of detail.

Of course, you take that all together and there’s a familiarity to all of that, something that plays to the mindset of someone who, for example, spends decades reading the same damn kids’ stuff over and over. The X-Men are like super-hero comfort food (well, insofar as super-hero comics are all comfort-eating of a kind), everything you’re addicted to in one easy package.

I picked up X-Men: Deadly Genesis on impulse. I mean, the aftermath of House of M wasn’t so interesting to me that I need to know what happened next, and further twists to Summers family history isn’t exactly compulsive, but damn if Ed Brubaker hasn’t earned some credit thanks to his exceptional work on Daredevil.

Turns out, the collection is exactly what’s needed to get me back into the X-Men. Brubaker’s talented enough to sidestep the annoying pitfalls usually associated with the characters (although, great big FAIL for regional accents), writing a pretty straightforward mutant adventure. It’s far more traditional than Morrison’s take, a lot more nostalgic, but still streamlined enough for modern sensibilities. Nothing hugely consequential happens (though the marketing material wants you to think so) besides Banshee’s death (but come on, did people really freak out about that? An X-Man dying? Seriously?), and that’s OK because all we put our money down for Beast being smart, Wolverine being stealthy knife guy, and everyone else standing round looking angsty. Professor Xavier comes across as a bit of a dick, but come on, he sticks teenagers in leather and makes them fight. He is a bit of a dick.

All-in-all, a comfortable comicky read.

Popping back to the Doctor again, how random was it that Mike from the Young Ones is playing the Sontaran commander? Weird. I wonder who they’ll get to play Davros.

It shouldn’t really be a surprise that it appears to be the Dalek’s creator who’s the major bad guy in Series 4. He’s really the only major one left to show up again, after the Master. I’m not too sure how I feel about it, outside the fact that it’s Russell T., so it’s bound to be awesome. Rose showing up seems a bit of a shame, as her character arc finished so perfectly, and her return’s a bit of a gimmicky.

I think the problem with Davros is something that’s been mentioned a number of times in Who fandom: before him, the Daleks were a threat all on their own, but after he turned up they just sort of ended up being Evil Henchmen. The new series has put so much into making the Daleks deadly once again it’s a damned pity they’re going to get relegated. I’d rather have had the Cult of Skaro developed a bit more as Dalek leaders, but then the last Dalek two-parter turned Sec into a tentacle-headed American and it all fell a bit flat. Maybe they do need the old guy back again, although I have to say I’d rather have seen a modern spin on the Sea Devils.

I’m in a bit of a quandry about continuing to get Morrison’s Batman monthly, too. I recently picked up Brubaker’s X-Men: Deadly Genesis in hardback (more on that soon), and it’s  a really great format to read the story in. With the Batman delays, plus the fact that the story so far reads so much better in one go rather than month by month (or longer, lets face it), I’m enclined to switch to the trades for Batman RIP. The same kind of goes for Final Crisis, or its tie-ins. I suppose the question is whether month-to-month delays and a fragmented story line will be better or worse than having all the good bits spoiled in advance.

And finally, I picked up this month’s Empire with the coverage of the Summer superhero films, and I have to say the more I see of The Incredible Hulk the more I like the look of it. Sure, it’s going to suck, but if I could make room in my heart for Ghost Rider then this one shouldn’t be too much of a leap. Despite enjoying the first Hulk, I do think they fumbled the ball a bit by largely ignoring the TV series.

The thing is, that’s the touchstone for most people and the character, and stuff like the pre-transformation green contact lenses generate the kind of pleasant memory the film-makers should be taking advantage of. Plus, part of the “hero’s journey” this time is Banner’s acceptance that, by the end of the film, the world needs a monster like the Hulk to save it (or, at least, New York), and isn’t that the kind of thing we read comics for?

Oh, and just so no one thinks I’ve forgotten, I’ll do a round-up at some point of all the Changaround posts, if not next week then the week after. Cheers to everyone who’s taken part so far.

George Pelecanos on Batman.

Or Daredevil, or any crime comic. I mentioned Pelecanos as part of the original challenge as an example of switching someone in from a different media, but it didn’t occur to me that people probably won’t recognise his name. He’s a crime novelist and screenwriter who’s been involved with The Wire, and I think a couple of films.

When I worked in the bookshop way back when I ran the crime section as well as Dragons, Spaceships and Underpants Guys. Outside of the Rebus novels (and more on them shortly), I hadn’t really read that much crime fiction, so I got through a lot in a short time to avoid looking like a slack-jawed shelf-filler should someone who knew their stuff appeared, because no one wants to be that guy who works at the Local Comic Shop but isn’t aware of more than two publishing companies.

Pelecanos was one of a set of American crime writers who do a specific kind of work, not so much mysteries or serial killers as examinations of police officers and the criminals they hunt. It’s very, very good stuff, and I don’t think I’d be too far off in suggesting that Ed Brubaker’s Criminal owes a lot to that school of writing, if not Pelecanos himself. And he doesn’t deal with small issues, either. The racial politics of Washington, D.C. (the actual living city rather than the white stone buildings of the capital, mostly) feature heavily, in novels set in the present and the 60s and 70s.

Although he’s not one of the biggest sellers in the field, I think there’s an objective argument to be made that he’s the best crime writer currently working, not to mention one of the best writers, period. So, yeah. Stick him on Batman.

Ian Rankin.

While I think Pelecanos is probably the best working crime writer, my favourite is Rankin, author of the John Rebus novels. Again, he’s in the top tier of British novelists writing anything, never mind crime, concentrating more on the study of people involved in both the police and the criminal community of Edinburgh rather than straight up murder mysteries, although there’s a lot of that too. And Rebus is the classic archetype of dogged, alcoholic investigator without any self-awareness or ability to play at politics, who pisses off (sometimes deliberately, sometimes not) damn near everyone he meets and will not let anything drop when he’s got his teeth into it.

It’s hardly surprising that the one comic Rankin’s been connected with is Hellblazer, via fellow Scot Denise Mina. I’m really looking forward to the run, should it ever appear, and there’s plenty of other titles I’d like to see him take a crack at. Maybe Marvel’s horror line, actually. Hellstrom, say, certainly as the last Max series seemed to take its cue from Contantine. Maybe the Question, too: original, rather than Montoya.

Alan Heinberg.

And speaking of the Question, last year at the Bristol convention, in a panel on telly writers in comics with Paul Cornell, Alan Heinberg mentioned that he was once involved in an attempt to make a Vic Sage Question series, although it fell through. He’s obviously a big fan of the character, and it would be interesting to see what tack he’s take. Although it would never come out.

A couple of things prompted this post. Firstly, J. Michael Straczynski coming to DC has prompted speculation as to what he’ll be working on. The Flash has been a big topic round here recently, and JMS has mentioned his preference for the Barry Allen version, so that’s got be a possibility. There’s Aquaman: a big name is about the only thing that will save the character at the moment, and if you think the New Avengers turnaround was big, imagine the craziness of an Aqua-title selling over 100,000. How about JLA? Is Dwayne McDuffie a permanent addition, or there for just 12 months? Is James Robinson going to be on Superman for the forseeable future, or just as long as he was on the Bat titles?

Secondly, I mentioned in comments not long ago that I’d like to see an Ed Brubaker Green Arrow title. Which has led to this question: given the chance, who should switch companies and work on a different title?

Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Yu on Blue Beetle: Nope, not Batman. I’m not sure why Bendis seems to be a lot of fans’ choice to take on Gotham based stories. I can kind of see Miller’s 80s Daredevil being a good fit for 80s Batman, but not Bendis’ take. Good grief, can you imagine what the dialogue would be like? But he wrote the book on 00s era teen superheroes with Ultimate Spider-Man, and this kind of star power on the title would save what is probably my favourite current DCU ongoing. Even if it meant the main character inexplicably swearing in Hebrew. Second choice: Joss Whedon and Michael Ryan. Would be choice #1, but it would never ever come out.

John Rogers and Rafael Albuquerque on Runaways: Whedon’s run has been brilliant, of course, but oh so very delayed. His run was always meant to be short, so why not replace him with the team behind the other awesome teen-hero title? Just a damn shame Rogers is likely to be tied up with TV work for the foreseeable future (and also a damn shame he won’t be getting a crack at the Flash. He may very well be the perfect match for the title with his science background).

Brian K. Vaughan and Mark Bagley on Batman: I really like the current writing team on both Batman titles. It’s just a shame about all the bloody fill-ins. So the only guy I’d like to see take over would be Vaughan, who’s probably my choice for best current comic writer behind Morrison. And I know that Bagley’s already at DC for the new weekly; I’d just rather not have awesome and consistant on a Bat-title (something that they currently have a little trouble with) than burned out on Trinity.

Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch on Superman: Oh, come on, they’ve been begging to have a crack at it for years. Let’s see what they’ve got. Millar’s not going to screw up the chance by Ultimatising Superman. Sure, his last Superman run was uninspiring (way back during Loeb’s tenure on Superman, Millar either plotted or dialogued one of the other titles- Adventures?) but he was hardly left off the leash to do his thing. Besides: (a) his Swamp Thing run was brilliant, (b) Aztek and the Flash with Morrison were also brilliant, and (c) he’s already proven he knows what makes Superman tick by deconstructing then reconstructing the character’s conceits so brilliantly in Red Son.

This is fun. I’ve got something queued up already for tomorrow, but I think I’ll carry on with this on Friday.

At the moment, the number of monthly issues I buy is dropping as the titles hit obvious trade collection points. The Superman titles have already been dropped, and I’ve promised dear friend Paul C that I’ll pick up Geoff Johns’ Legion story in trade, and I suspect the Morrison Batman run will be another one. Blue Beetle’s gone after #26 until John Rogers comes back on, and I may do the same with Daredevil. Eventually, the only stuff I’ll be getting month after month will be the two GL titles.

I don’t really want to drop Daredevil for, and believe me it sounds odd just thinking about a product this way, sentimental reasons. It was the first American-sized comic my Dad got me when I was a kid, for a start, and I kind of regret the last time I dropped the title. I loved the Kevin Smith/Marvel Knights reboot and kept on getting it up until I’d overdosed on Bendisism around the “Golden Age” story arc and dropped it. Problem is that on re-reading the issues were so much better when put together (probably the worst written-for-trade offender I’ve ever come across) that I ended up picking up the gap issues as paperbacks when I started picking up Brubaker’s run. And speaking of Brubaker, even though I only have a casual interest in the X-Men, his recent writing has been so good I’m tempted to get his Deadly Genesis/Shi’ar collections, and the Captain America hardcover.

Superman’s a good example of why trades make more sense to me, actually. As much as I loved the One Year Later story, my enjoyment was seriously impaired by delays, crap Countdown tie-ins and rushed fill-ins dropped on poor old Kurt Busiek (same complaints with both Batman titles, actually). Trades would have at least given me a whole story in one.

The other big one to get the boot is Ultimate Spider-Man. With the exception of the Flash (now that they’ve gone back to the Waid-run numbering) it’s the title that’s got the most big number momentum, by which I mean I’ve been getting it from the first issue right up to #118, making it a hell of a habit to break. But like I’ve repeated many times, habit ain’t a good enough reason to carry on shelling out the dough. Besides, I think the title’s lost a lot of its mojo recently, and not only due to Mark Bagley’s exit. There just doesn’t seem to be much forward going on with it.

Of course, that’s the thing with Bendis. Occasionally, it’s not clear what he’s getting at until you read everything together, so I’d be surprised if I don’t start getting this in a shelf-friendly format. Which is yet another significant advantage to trade paperbacks. I’m damn near out of longbox room, but there’s always space for another bookshelf.

So I don’t mean to be critical when I say that there are some writers that I don’t find as engaging as others. There are a lot who I think are objectively pretty poor, and that’s usually confirmed by the views of others. But what I find interesting are the writers championed by people I respect whom I don’t necessarily feel the same way about.

Forgive my less than incisive critical insight, by most of the time I couldn’t really tell you why I like some of the writers I do. The example I always use is Tom Clancy: a hackish doorstop-crafting right winger whose work I really dig for no good reason at all. It doesn’t even make sense to me.

In comic book terms, there are a number of writers who I really rate. Grant Morrison, of course. Mark Waid, John Rogers, Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern, Matt Fraction, the Phonogram guys. And there are just as many who I don’t really get: Sean McKeever, Tony Bedard, most of the Marvel Adventures writers. Here’s a couple of controvertial ones: Dan Slott and Gail Simone. Both are excellent writers that just don’t really click with me, even though I like some of their work well enough. And I have no idea why, other than the fact that somethings don’t click, and that’s just that. And I’m really not having a go. I mean, I didn’t get a hang of Shakespeare until last year, and that’s not bad company to be in, fiction-wise.

It’s not to say that there aren’t greyish areas. I think some of Mark Millar’s work is really good- Swamp Thing and Red Son in particular- and some of it I’m not keen on. As much as I love Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-man, I was a bit luke-warm on his Daredevil, and by virtue of familiarity some of his dialogue ticks have started to get a little annoying. I’d assumed Ed Brubaker was just another mediocre Bat-hack, but you don’t need me to tell you that Criminal is amazing, and his Daredevil may well be the best since Frank Miller’s.

I mention John Rogers above, and it’s his and Keith Giffen’s Blue Beetle that’s prompted the post in a way. I’ve said before that I’m never picking up a title just to keep the run consistent, and I’m certainly not getting any fillers ever again. And unfortunately, as much as I want to support the book, I don’t think I’ve ever read a filler comic I’ve ever liked, and I’m not liable to pick up Will Pfeifer’s issues.

That said, and in complete contradiction to the above, I’m absolutely picking up the Spanish-language one-off because it sounds like a fantastic and intriguing experiment. Maybe fill-ins would have a better rep if they all tried to do something a bit different.

Crime fiction has sometimes been dismissed in much the same way spaceships and unicorns have been. But unlike the latter examples a certain amount of rehabilitation has taken place. Writers like Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler have been reassessed as proper literature (to a certain extent), and in the cinema crime drama is practically the definition of worthy film-making. Crime fiction is considered a true literary pursuit (The Name of the Rose, for example).

But back in the day pulp fiction was nothing but lurid, base entertainment, often sharing creators with SF, fantasy, horror and, of course, comics. Even now the crime section in bookshops is kept separate just incase the real fiction catches something. In fact, the reason I started reading crime stuff was that I was responsible for the section as well as SF when I worked in the bookshop. And there are plenty of crime authors that have no ambitions beyond formula. Despite this, why did crime get the promotion to acceptability?

The most obvious answers are believability and a real world setting. Realism may not always be to the forefront, but plot holes are easier to explain when your characters aren’t fighting orcs or driving giant robots. And God knows a good spread of excellent directors were drawn to the genre in a way they weren’t to science fiction.

As with the bookshop example, there’s still a kind of association between crime and SF; just look at how much of the latter works use film noir or detective fiction tropes. It’s particularly noticable in comics today. Frank Miller was perhaps the first to really hammer home his use of Daredevil as a way of writing crime stories. He’s been followed by the likes of Brian Bendis and Ed Brubaker, two mainstream superhero writers who’s interests lie more towards crime fiction than anything else.

Runaways

I didn’t pick up any of the original first run. On the surface, it wasn’t the kind of thing I’d pick up – I can take or leave teen soap opera, or super-teams. But good word of mouth, cheap manga-sized reprints and a growing respect for writer Brian K. Vaughan got me to hop on, and I haven’t regretted it. It’s got a great hook (the runaway children of super-villains) and consistently great art from co-creator Adrian Alphona and fill-in artists like Takeshi Miyazawa. The characters are memorable, well-rounded and mostly female. The latter is rare and welcome, not least because they aren’t sexualised.

Joss Whedon’s recent run has been brilliant, and I wish he and artist Michael Ryan weren’t leaving after six issues. I’d even put up with continual delays, because it really is a book that’s worth the wait. I’m a little worried about the next creative team: Terry Moore is a good writer, but I’m not a hige fan of Humberto Ramos. It would be a real shame to cock up what’s probably the longest continually awesome run of a Marvel title ever.

Iron Man

Speaking of consistently good runs, I don’t think Iron Man’s title has ever been this good, not least considering the backround to which it’s been taking place.

If we include Joe Casey’s Iron Man: The Inevitable miniseries, which practically was the monthly series during Warren Ellis and Adi Granov’s much delayed run, and hell, I’ll chuck in Adam Warren’s Hypervelocity mini because I actually enjoyed that more than I thought I would, then we’ve got 35 really good issues over the past few years.

I love Iron Man. He was probably my favourite Marvel character as a young ‘un. But Christ, I’ve read some awful stories featuring him. Every time it’s looked like his title was picking up, it got shit again. The early 90s isn’t worth thinking about, Heroes Reborn was awful, Heroes Return started well but got crap, don’t start me on Mike Grell… Since I’ve been old enough to collect comics, the quality on the one title I really, really wanted to get was too poor to consider wasting my money on.

What makes this recent run even more of a triumph is the Civil War background it had to run against. Warren Ellis did a brilliant job of breaking the character down to the essentials, shoving out the ridiculous crap of recent years. The Knaufs’ writing has been intriguing and interesting in the way it ran with Ellis’ new status quo. In the meantime, New Avengers and Civil War ran off with the current questionable take on the character, leaving the main title essentially irrelevant, while still having to deal with the fallout of starring a character who is for all intents and purposes the Marvel Universe’s main super-villain.

Like I said, it’s a testament to the skill of these writers that they’ve made something so good out of something I dislike so much.

Iron Fist

I have zero interest in this character. I don’t care about Marvel’s 70s kung-fu cash-ins. I have no emotional connection to Danny Rand, Luke Cage, and whoever those Heroes for Hire women are. If anything, I’m inclined to dislike these characters and the way they’ve been shoe-horned into importance by the writers who did grow up with them.

Despite all that, I love this title. The art is gorgeous, the story has the perfect balance of backstory, momentum and action scenes. I have no prior knowledge of anything to do with Iron Fist, but I have no problem following along. Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker are easily Marvel’s most valuable assets at the moment.