Sunday Spotlight: Cliff Chiang

I've only really seen Cliff Chiang's artwork on the Dr Thirteen series but I think his art is gorgeous. And his women are wonderfully cheeky.

See more of Cliff's art at his website or here.

Friday Night Fights: Eye-Popping

It's Friday again and time for Spacebooger's wince-inducing Friday Night Fight's One Panel of Pain.

Last week, in spite of a bloody entry, I didn't manage to hold on to the title. Still, let's try some blood and brains again this week and see how well that goes down a second time (hopefully with a better scan this week). And let's try an old faithful - yes, that, erm, infamous scene from Infinite Crisis where Black Adam pushes his fingers through Psycho-Pirate's head. Gruesome! I love the little touch with the eye...

(this shunkkch-ing panel is taken from Infinite Crisis #6 written by the current master of mainstream bloodsplatter Geoff Johns, pencils by Phil Jiminez and inks by Andy Lanning)

Stone Rocks!

Head over right now to Action Age comics to read the first 8 page installment of the Chronicles of Solomon Stone! This latest story of the World’s Greatest Half-Vampire Private Detective (really!) is brought to you by Chris Sims, Matthew Allen Smith and Benjamin Birdie and features a Dalek, ghost dinosaurs, viking werewolves, the She-Queen of the Vampazons, and much more.

Nation (by Terry Pratchett)

A new (well, six months old) Terry Pratchett novel is always something to cheer and be happy about. Unusually, Nation is one of Pterry's few non-Discworld books and also touted as a Young Adults novel - I picked it up from the "Teen" section of my local library. However, I don't know why this is for younger readers; it's written in the same style as Pterry's recent Discworld books and, if anything, deals with darker and more serious material than many of his other works. Perhaps it's just because the two main characters are young teens?

The story - based on a very familiar, alternate 1870s Earth - concerns Mau, a young lad who lives on one of the many small islands in the Southern Pelagic Ocean (i.e. an alternate Pacific Ocean), who has just completed his one month ritual to become a man. Returning back to his home, a tsunami hits killing all of his family and fellow island folk. The tsunami also causes a ship carrying Ermintrude (who decides to call herself Daphne because it sounds more adventurous than her real name), a 'proper' young English girl and daughter of a Governor, to crash into Mau's island. Only she survives, and together with Mau they have to deal with the dead and somehow rebuild Mau's nation, even though they don't understand a thing about one another.

There's a sad and melancholic vibe running through this book. Mau has to deal with the dead bodies of his friends and family whilst coming to terms with being the only one left of his "nation". Daphne comes to realise that Polite Society doesn't really work when you're marooned on a faraway island and is slowly forced toward adulthood with the acceptance of the death of her mother. All the while, questions about belief, religion and science are raised and considered. It's sort of gloomy stuff but written with Pratchett's familiar wit and wordplay. And the ending isn't so much "happy ever after" as acceptable and realistic. Sort of depressing but also uplifting.

It's a strange book, not as brightly amusing as Terry Pratchett's Discworld books but still interesting and engaging. A very, very good read and highly recommended to fans of Pterry's other stories or, because this is a standalone story, anyone wanting to get into his books. It's also recommended to anyone of any age - not just teens!

Grade: Very Fine.

Primeval - Episode 2 (season 3)

They certainly know how to do spooky scary suspense, don't they? This episode of Primeval was full of it. Most of this episode was set in a spooky abandoned house containing a scary sprite-like monster which was always creeping up on people.

It all started with Cutter discovering, via a weird, wire-frame 3-D model (best line in the episode - "Couldn't you have done all this on a computer?"), that he could predict where anomalies would appear. But not when - which is kind of limiting considering they could appear at any point in time within millions of years. Of course, Helen Cutter must already have some way of predicting when/where anomalies appear or go to because she's able to use them so well.

Anyway, this model showed that an anomaly should appear in an old abandoned house so (some of) the team went off ghost hunting. I mean, dinosaur hunting. Except this week's creature was certainly not dinosaur-like. Must be a future monster (any ol' excuse to have a sneaky, chameleon, imp-like creature). There was also stuff about some kids going missing in the house years ago - obviously they went through an anomaly. So - y'know - the usual stuff.

This episode was creepy and scary but it did drag at times. The story could have been told in a half hour episode not 45 minutes. Lots of atmospheric shots and suspenseful score as folk crept around used as padding but not too much story. Still, the scariness was done well for an early evening TV show.

The main interesting bits were the introduction of Danny Quinn - hopefully, he'll be back (he left the police force in the end so he could join up) - and Helen Cutter getting her henchmen to steal her husband's DNA, setting up next week's clone episode. In fact, the preview of next week's episode looked pretty exciting. Again, another surprisingly good episode. Grade: Fine.

Sunday Spotlight: Alan Davis

What can I say say about Alan Davis. He has to be my favourite comic book artist ever. Who's also worked on some of my favourite comics of all time - Captain Britain, Excalibur, Avengers, Clandestine and more. His clear, smooth, rounded style is simply... perfect.

I could post images all day. But instead, if you want more, head over to Alan Davis' official web site or to this comic art site.

Friday Night Fights: Invincible

Wahay! I actually won last week's Friday Night Fight, with a poorly scanned-in Avengers image. I'm guessing the George Perez art helped. Must keep that in mind in the future.

Anyway, enough of the celebrations. It's that time again for another Friday Night Fights: One Panel of Pain, hosted by Spacebooger.

And this time, it's Invincible who's taking a beating. To be honest I could pretty much post any panel of issue #12 of Invincible because there's so much pain in there. But here's Invincible himself getting smacked around by his father, Omni-Man.

(this panel is taken from Invincible #12 written by Robert Kirkman with art by Ryan Ottley and colour by Bill Crabtree)

Random TV Stuff

Sorry there have been no posts recently, but I've been busy with real life stuff and it's near the Easter holidays. Still, here's a brief run down of some of the TV stuff I've seen this week.

 

Primeval (s3 ep1)

Season 3 of this started with a “Walking with Dinosaurs meets Night In the Museum together with a little touch of Stargate” episode, where the team found an anomaly trapped in an Ancient Egyptian "Sun Cage" whilst fighting off a giant crocodile. And it was actually pretty good.

When Primeval started a few years ago, I remember watching about half the first series and then getting bored (it was all CG monster-of-the-week stuff). Then I caught the final episode of that first series and was fascinated by the whole time-travel paradox thing, where the team discovered that the camp and dead body they'd found in the first episode were due to their own actions in season one’s final episode. Also, due to their time-travelling hi-jinks, one team member now no longer existed. For some reason, I then missed the second series - I never even knew it was on! Although, since realising that season 3 was about to start, I have since managed to catch a couple of episodes repeated on one of the digital channels (ITV2?).

It's quite an interesting little show. Sure, there's still a monster-of-the-week element to it, but there's also an intriguing time-manipulating season-wide story running through the episodes. And the group dynamic between the characters is well played. Plus – bonus extra - we even got to see Hannah Spearritt in her pants again. Hurrah!

 

Smallville - Bulletproof (s8 ep12)

This week's episode wasn't as good as last week's (Legion) but it was still pretty entertaining. Other than that, I don't have much to say about it. Not knowing the Superman books that well, I wasn’t really aware of who Dan Turpin was. But the stuff with Lana actually seems to be getting more interesting.

 

Heroes - Shades of Gray (v4 ep6)

I was so busy that I didn't get to see Heroes this week. Perhaps I'll catch it on BBC's iPlayer or a repeat.

 

Doctor Who - Planet of the Dead

I have now seen the first trailer to the Easter Special episode of New Doctor Who (which will be shown on Saturday April 11th - my daughter's birthday). Looks marvellous! I wonder what the "planet of the dead" is all about? Can’t wait.