Happy New Year!

Various things have struck me in the last few days about our lives up in Yorkshire.
I suppose that coming to the end of our first full year here has put my mind in reflective mode.

I’m still not completely settled into this new life. So much change and upheaval is obviously going to take an awful long time to get used to.
But in many ways, I hope I never really get used to it. That is always a possibility. Assuming a good, long life of 70+ I’ll have spent half my life in the Midlands as a city boy and half my life as a rural townie up here in Pocklington. It is feasible then that a large part of me will always see myself as a city boy.
Similar, I suppose to the mental image you have of yourself, the life snapshot you take of yourself and place in your self-image section of your brain. Mine was taken sometime in 1990 or there abouts and no matter what the birth certificate says or the mirror shows, I’ll always think of myself as a wide eyed 20 something.
I imagine Molly will have no such problems, as a transfer at age 7 should be considerably easier than my transfer at 36.

But whether I ever completely settle into this Yorkshire life is immaterial.
I find myself regularly amazed at the life I’m suddenly leading up here. I can’t believe that just 15 months ago I was finishing up my Birmingham life, packing up 35 years of city boy living and preparing to swap it all for life in rural Pocklington.

All it takes is a little thing, looking up in the sky and seeing the gliders overhead, taking a walk around town end to end in 10 whole minutes, or maybe just looking up at night at my Yorkshire sky.

And then I realise that I’ll never even think of going back, that nothing in the world could be better than the life we have up here.

There may be a part of me that is forever a city boy, but over the last year I’ve realised that the city boy only really needs an occasional visit to Birmingham to get his city fix. For the rest of he year I’m simply happy being the townie up here.

So Happy New Year everyone, from Bruton Mansions up here in beautiful, small, rural, idyllic, peaceful Pocklington,
My home.

Happy New Year to you all.

PROPAGANDA Best of 2007 – number 1Shooting War

My absolute favourite thing I’ve read in graphic novel format all this year – I really can’t recommend it highly enough……..

Shooting War

Written by Anthony Lappé
Art by Dan Goldman

“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. George Orwell.

After reading this for the first time I knew it was going to be one of the best graphic novels I’d read this year. And on the second reading I knew it was the best. It really is that good.

Shooting War features Jimmy Burns; a young video-blogger, full of youthful bravado and stylish beyond measure, who just happens to be filming his latest anti-corporate rant outside a Starbucks when he manages to capture the suicide bombing that not only takes out the Starbucks but Jimmy’s upstairs flat as well. His life is gone, replaced with fame after self titled “extreme news” network, Global News, uploads his video feed across the nation. Jimmy is an instant celebrity journalist and is offered the posting of a lifetime – straight into downtown Baghdad into the middle of a conflict that’s become a shameful embarrassment to American administrations post Bush.

(the aftermath of the Starbucks bombing on the street and on the feed via Global News,
“your 24-hour home for terror news”)

Jimmy is initially reluctant, but as the network head explains:

“Bottom line. There’s nothing left for you here. Your apartment has been napalmed. Your gear is fried. By my watch your fifteen minutes are just about up.”

“I know you. I saw it in your eyes. You’re hooked now. You need the action.”

So Jimmy ends up in Baghdad. Smack in the middle of a disaster, in a war that’s been going on for far too long, with an occupying American force sitting in the middle of an increasingly confused civil war, allegiances blurring on all sides and chaos reigning.

The authors have taken today’s events and extrapolated them forwards a few years. It’s 2011, John McCain, a current Republican candidate, is a President struggling to cope with the “intractable quagmire” of a war he’s inherited from previous administrations. There’s a global oil crisis, gasoline is $10 a gallon, the Americans are increasingly aware they’re fighting a pointless, un-winnable war and the enemies seem to change almost every day.

Through the course of his posting in Iraq, Jimmy Burns grows to realise not just the insanity of his situation, but the subtle combination of both tragedy and farce that are keeping the war going. He finds himself a pawn of the terrorists, hated by the more corporate media and tolerated, barely, by the American forces.

The plot is a complicated web of wargames, lies and deceits on all sides as Burns uncovers and is manipulated by, a new type of terrorist; the Sword of Mohammed group, who fund their activities through call centres, web hosting, bot-nets and video games and will think nothing of using a mini nuke to remove their commercial competition in India. But if the terrorists are driven fanatics verging on madness, the same can be said for the Americans. Indeed the same could be said of anyone who gets involved in such an insane situation. As the insanity levels increase and the Global ramifications of the war in Iraq become clearer, Burns questions his motivations for being there, starts to doubt his place in the world and eventually makes a fateful decision to change the course of the war.

(new citizen journalist meets one of the few respectable Old School practitioners
in the form of veteran reporter Dan Rather, dispensing Yoda-like wisdom to Jimmy Burns)

Shooting War was initially published online as a Smith magazine webcomic, but this print version is a vastly expanded and altered version of the original. The authors have taken the freedom of print and created something very powerful; an achingly sharp political satire on the Iraq War, corporate America and the increasing impact of “civilian journalism” in response to corporate controlled traditional media.

But despite all of the satire, this is no dry political treatise on the ills of war and the mistake that is Iraq. Lappé crafts a very fine action adventure amongst the satire, incredibly fast paced and genuinely exciting (even if the excitement leaves you a little guilty after a while).

To pick out any particular set piece from the work is almost too hard, there’s just too much going on that warrants mention, but a particularly effective piece to emphasise the delicate balancing act between action and satire comes some way into the book as Burns is trapped in Baghdad, watching with horror as a small army of US military robots trundle through the streets pounding all hell out of the neighbourhood. A quick cut away reveals the robot’s control room, where bank after bank of Dilbert like cube dwellers play warfare via Playstation and watch their kill scores beamed live onto big screens. Two pages later Burns is inside a hospital walking through wards of men, women and children brutally mown down by these wargamers

“Is this another US military murder or just more unfortunate collateral damage?” asks Burns.

“When does it become a war crime? Is an objective war correspondent not supposed to ask that question?”

It’s an eerie, disturbing moment, perfectly illustrating how fine a line between telling a story so well and reporting on events the authors have had to tread. That the images and the plot stays with me even now is testament to how well they’ve managed it.

What gives Shooting War the legitimacy that any book of this sort usually lacks is the impeccable resume of the writer Lappé. As an experienced war journalist, Lappé went out to Iraq in 2003 to film the documentary Battleground: 21 Days on the Empire’s Edge for the Guerrilla News Network. His experience shows in the sense of realism throughout this wonderful book (you can read some of Anthony’s thoughts on Shooting War back when it was still running online here on the blog – Joe).

Of course, something this good needs an artist to match and Dan Goldman delivers a perfect artistic accompaniment to the story. He’s working in a mixture of photography, computer generated art, illustration, montage and computer FX is worked together to make one seamless whole, capable of driving home the terrible events in the story with violence and power. Goldman’s lush visuals embed the reader into the story in the same way Burns is embedded in Iraq; we’re together experiencing the horrors, the confusion and the madness first hand. It’s an impressive trick and Goldman pulls it off with aplomb.

Even as I was writing this review I found myself reliving the book. It’s now had the third reading and is just as good, just as exciting, just as incendiary as the first time round. It’s quite simply the book of the year.

Shooting War is a full-colour, 192-page hardcover graphic novel published by Grand Central Publishing (US) and Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) by Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman. It started as a serialized webcomic and online community on SMITH Magazine.

Review originally posted at Propaganda on the FPI weblog here.

PROPAGANDA Best of 2007 – number 2 Fluffy

Fluffy

Written and illustrated by Simone Lia

For a book featuring a very cute talking bunny Fluffy is an almost unbearably sad tale. At the heart of this desperate sadness is Fluffy, a talking baby rabbit who genuinely believes that a man called Michael is his daddy. And although Michael knows he must tell this poor deluded little rabbit the truth so many things seem to keep getting in the way.

Because as troubled and deluded Fluffy is, it’s nothing compared to the mess that Michael is in. He’s a seething mass of anxiety, despair and stress, desperate for closeness, yet struggling with the demands placed upon him from Fluffy and the unwanted attention of Fluffy’s nursery school teacher. Michael has a feeling that life is just too much for him to cope with, that there’s too much weighing down upon him, too many things demanding his time, and it’s heartbreaking to see Fluffy’s love for him causing him such pain.

(panels from Simone Lia’s Fluffy, published by Jonathan Cape.
Could the question about hair be a subtle joke? Hair-hare-rabbit, geddit? Never mind…)

In a telling spread, Michael’s brain map looks at his current situation and does the simplest thing it can – decides to run. His weakness is palpable. He’s just not strong enough to cope with his life. And you’re angry at him; angry that he is letting Fluffy down. But thankfully, in running to Sicily to visit Michael’s family at least some of the problems are resolved, not the least of which is Fluffy’s partial acceptance of his Rabbit nature, Michael’s acceptance of Fluffy’s unconditional love and the Nursery Teacher calling off her pursuit.

It’s testament to Lia’s writing and gorgeous artwork that we, the reader, never question the logic of a baby talking rabbit desperate for love from his daddy. It’s an even greater achievement to make the reader care so much about the characters. The sense of longing and dependency from Fluffy, the sense of anxiety, stress and desperation from Michael are all expertly realised in Lia’s wonderful story.

But in the end, as if she realised that the despair was becoming a little too much for this funny animal story, Lia gives us salvation in Michael’s acceptance of his lot in life and a pledge to find beauty in the moment. The most wonderful scene occurs late in the story as Michael’s brain turns his thoughts from “my life is a mess” to “everything is beautiful”.

Michael leans back and simply realises that it’s all worthwhile, that there is no reason to worry, no reason to be stressed and every reason to live his life and look after the one thing that has always loved him – Fluffy. The realisation strikes in the top two panels, as Michael accepts that his life will not be the perfect thing he wanted. And it doesn’t matter. All that matters is here and now. All that matters is one tiny life is dependent upon you and you’ll never be happier than when you accept this. That perfect moment in the last panel is all that truly matters.

What Simone Lia manages to do so very well in Fluffy is capture a parent’s intense feelings of desperation, the continual worry and that guilt ridden selfish thought that your life is being taken over by someone else. We all suffer this at some point as we realise that our lives are no longer our own and they’re being controlled by our small bundle of joy. Lia quietly and powerfully paints a powerful, emotional portrait of what it’s like to be a parent.

(relationships are always tricky, especially when you seem to be experiencing an ‘Amelie’ type moment;
(c) Simone Lia)

Fluffy is an absolute joy of a graphic novel, full of unanswerable questions about life, love, responsibility and reality. Simone Lia’s art matched the emotional power of the story with a simplified style, cartoonish, fanciful yet capable of conveying intense emotional range in a few lines. Fluffy is achingly sad in parts yet manages to end in a way that fills even our cold, grown up hearts with joy. It’s a perfect Christmas present and a perfect book.

Originally posted at the FPI blog here.

PROPAGANDA Best of 2007 – number 3 Fell

Fell Volume 1 Feral City

Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Ben Templesmith

Warren Ellis is one of a key group of incredibly good British comics writers working in comics today, and in my opinion is in the top three (and that’s my top three – don’t argue) with Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. What I’ve always found fascinating with Ellis is that he’s continually experimenting, not only with the types of stories he tells but also the means of telling them. He’s always trying to find new and innovative ways of delivering comics, always looking at new technologies, new methods and new marketing strategies to challenge the accepted status quo.

Fell is the result of one of Ellis’ experiments in storytelling, from an idea formed as a response to the apparent demise of the comic as a throwaway pamphlet. The key idea is to produce something cheap and satisfying – a 16 page thin pamphlet for $1.99. But to also make each issue totally self-contained, an exercise in pure storytelling.

The first eight issues presented here all stick to pretty much the same formula; almost like TV drama in it’s structure with each self contained issue setting up and then resolving a story, yet within the greater drama there are points of ongoing character development. Fell is a stunning collection of great stories, all infused with Ellis’ trademark gonzo style familiar to all of us who’ve read his work on Transmetropolitan and that pays obvious dues to the work of writers such as the late, great Hunter S Thompson.

(welcome to Snowtown – the first page of Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith’s Fell: Feral City,
published by Image)

Fell is set in Snowtown, a part of the bigger un-named city that no longer wants any part of its little diseased suburb. Because Snowtown, quite obviously from the very first page of the book, is rotten to its core. It’s the Feral City of the title, a nightmare of urban decay with a populous either already driven mad by the depravity and desperation of the place or rapidly getting there. No one in Snowtown is normal, no one appears sane.

Richard Fell was the great police detective in the big city. But something happened, something big, nasty and very, very serious. Only the mysterious debt owed by the Police Commissioner keeps him on the force. As it is he’s shipped out of the city, across the bridge to Snowtown and told he’s to stay there until things blow over. This is Fell’s big secret, the credo he lives by: everyone is hiding something, even him.

The scale of the problem facing Fell is pretty obvious from his first meeting with his commanding officer, who patently isn’t well:

“You see, we cannot win. We are in hell, you and I. And I think you were probably transferred here so that I didn’t die alone. And I’m grateful for that. I think we will be friends. I have to take quite a lot of pills now.”

Every issue here, every 16 pages is a fantastic little story, there’s no filler, no slacking of the pace, the format simply doesn’t allow it. Ellis writes exactly as we know he loves to; filling his pages with the bizarre and the depraved, Nixon nuns with firearms, suicide bombers, voodoo worshiping basket cases, the sick, the twisted, the just plain stupid and the general flotsam and jetsam of a society gone over the edge. But he never allows the story to be overwhelmed by what’s going on around it. The basic police procedural plotline is always to the fore, necessarily so with only 16 short pages to tell the story in.

My favourite piece is the interrogation issue, where Fell and a suspect play out a deliciously twisted two-hander across the issue, with Fell trying to open up the suspect and get him to talk before the police run out of time and have to release him.

Fell: “Yardley & 88. Lots of people, lots of noise.”

Suspect: “I guess. I see lots of people”

Fell: “Corner Apartment?”

Suspect: “How’d you know that?”

Fell: “You like to watch. Corner apartment. Big windows. Playing with a couple of guns and just watching”.

Fell: “I threw the word “Noise” at you. You came back with “see.” So right now I know you’re visually geared.”

Suspect: “Look…”

Fell: ““Look”? Do you get it? How many other people would have said “Listen” to get me to focus on what they were saying to me?”

And it carries on like this, Fell completely disconcerting and dismantling this guy, until he cracks. It’s a simple plot device, but it’s quite wonderfully done. You’re drawn into the room, into the heads of both Fell and the suspect as Fell slowly yet surely pulls the suspect’s psyche apart.

A truly great piece of writing from Ellis is made so much better by the choice of artist, something that Ellis (or his editors) doesn’t always get right). When Ellis gels with an artist the result is often incredible; think John Cassaday on Planetary, Bryan Hitch on Authority or Darick Robertson on Transmetropolitan. Here, the art is handled quite beautifully by Ben Templesmith, famous now for his work on 30 Days Of Night. But as good as that was, the work on Fell has been much, much better.

Working to a very simple layout, usually a 3-tier page, between 5 to 9 panels per page, Templesmith manages to produce some incredible art; conveying both a sense of style and visual flair. But much more importantly, given the limited number of pages available to tell these fantastic little stories, Templesmith also proves he’s an excellent storyteller, his art functions incredibly well in service to Ellis’ writing. It’s visually interesting, detailed where necessary, veering into abstraction where necessary, but never failing to convey exactly what it should about the story.

(Father Jack’s worst nightmare – a Richard Nixon nun in Fell,
published Image, (c) Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith)

Fell is a stunning example of a great writer at the height of his powers teamed with an artist producing incredible work. This ranks up there with Planetary, Desolation Jones and Transmetropolitan as some of Ellis’ best works. A tour de force of everything that’s good about genre fiction in comics and quite simply the best example of crime fiction I’ve read for a while. Highly recommended.

Originally posted at FPI blog here

PROPAGANDA Best of 2007 – number 4Exit Wounds

Exit Wounds

Written and illustrated by Rutu Modan

Koby Franco is a young man working a taxi in Tel Aviv, his life is a slacker’s mess, he lives with his Aunt and Uncle and co-owns the taxi with them. Life is nothing but a cycle of work and sleep, with seemingly very little else to fill it. He speaks to his sister rarely and his Dad not at all after an estrangement following his Mom’s death.

But this changes on the day he’s hired to taxi Numi, a female soldier. Suddenly he’s confronted with the possibility that his Dad’s just died in a recent suicide bombing. Numi’s own life is suddenly and intricately entwined with Koby’s as it becomes obvious that Koby’s father and Numi were lovers up until a few weeks ago when he disappeared. She needs Koby to give a DNA sample to prove the identity of an unidentified corpse from the blast, but Koby is angry and storms off.

(Numi and Koby don’t exactly hit it off at first in Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds, published by Drawn & Quarterly)

But his interest and curiosity are piqued and he starts looking for his Dad on his own. Reluctantly he agrees to help Numi and the pair go on a road trip of sorts trying to discover the truth and, in doing so, come to realise that the man they are searching for has a far more complicated life than that of father or lover. By the end of the book Koby’s father’s fate is still uncertain, but his life and his secrets are slowly revealed until it seems that his non-appearance in the story contributes far more than his presence would have.

Strangely for me, the first thing to mark this book out as one to read was the sublime artwork. It’s immediately recognisable as European clean line but it’s one of the finest examples of the clean line style I’ve seen for years. It’s also a sublime mix of influences; with Hergé and Joost Swarte the most obvious. It’s the combination of simple foreground lines, a glorious, bright palette of colours in the foreground and most importantly, a subtle fade / wash effect on the backgrounds that gives every panel a slightly ethereal feel. I’m not an art fan generally, I’m far more interested in the writing. But this book warranted three separate readings, and at least one of these readings was purely concentrating on the artwork.

In Exit Wounds Modan has blended a very tender love story, a detective tale, a road trip of personal discovery and a meditation into love and loss into one fluent and moving book. But if you like your fiction complete with a tidy resolution you’re not about to find it here. There’s no traditional beginning, middle and end. Instead we’re visiting a moment in these character’s lives, observing their reactions to strange and unusual situations and then moving on. It’s a literary device rarely used in comics, but works spectacularly well in Exit Wounds.

(family arguments come head to head with the reality of suicide bombing and sudden, violent death in Exit Wounds, (c) Rutu Modan)

But one problem remains – if it’s this good, why hasn’t it been feted high and wide by the Guardian and other usual notable sources? It’s perfectly suited to join Maus, Palestine, Chris Ware, Persepolis and Fun Home as examples of literary Graphic Novels that cross over to real world success. But Exit Wounds hasn’t made the same critical inroads (although it has been highly lauded in comics circles).

The title probably has something to do with that. Call it Tel Aviv; A Love Story or something similar and the Guardian would have been all over it. A closer reading of the indicia shows that the title came from the translator; Noah Stollman. Modan should have ignored the suggestion. Someone who writes this well would surely have been able to give us something better than Exit Wounds, with its off-putting connotations of Hollywood shoot-em-ups.

But please, please, don’t be put off. Just because the Guardian hasn’t shouted about it means you get to impress your literary friends with your discovery. Go down to your local store and demand Exit Wounds.

Originally posted at FPI Blog here.

PROPAGANDA Best of 2007 – number 5All Star Superman

All Star Superman

Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant

When I reviewed All Star Superman on the basis of just the first issue (back in February) I concluded it was probably one of the best treatments of Superman I’d ever read. After reading the collection, I’m possibly even more impressed.

Morrison has taken Superman; a dull, tired character (after all, how many great stories can you honestly get out of God – the Superhero?) and just simply breathes new, vibrant, incredible, original life into him. But he’s done this not by ditching all the complex continuity and all the bizarre ideas that other writers have tried to ignore or simply write out of history, but by embracing it all. All the Super-Pets, the multi-coloured Kryptonite, the strange villains, the complex and convoluted time travellers, the Fortress of Solitude and it’s half million ton key, time telescopes to contact once and future Supermen, Baby sun eaters fed by miniature suns created on cosmic anvils, Lois Lane as Superwoman, Jimmy Olsen the boy reporter and his signal watch – it’s all here in Morrison’s Superman and all fits into the mythos perfectly well, so great is Morrison’s skill at integrating classic and much loved yet slightly silly elements into a modern, relevant comic.

He’s taken everything iconic about the character and distilled it into his version, perfectly integrating decades of history, continuity and myth into a perfect reading experience.

From the very first page it’s obvious that this is very special. You’ll never see a better origin story than the first 4 panels of this book. It set the tone of the entire tale; perfectly concise, succinct and managing to tell a complicated tale in a very simple fashion.

(one of comics all-time great origins summed up in a few panels
and still managing a nod to Moses in Morrison, Quitely and Grant’s All Star Superman, (c) DC)

But this isn’t all about Grant Morrison’s writing. His continuing collaboration with Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant is a thing of artistic perfection. Their Superman is all about quiet power with enormous restraint, their Clark Kent is a completely believable clumsy human. Every character is perfectly realised and wonderfully drawn. Quitely may get all the glory but Grant’s inking and colouring produce a life and vibrancy rarely seen in comics and the whole book is awash in glorious, vivid colour.

There is so much going on in the book that a lot of it could pass you by on a first reading. This is where Morrison really earns his reputation of one of our greatest writers. His stories are superficially simple, fast and uncomplicated, but there is layer upon layer just waiting to be discovered. He writes every story in such a way to let you fill in the action. You don’t see the daring rescue, or the simple intervention to avoid some coming catastrophe, all we see is a before and after panel, it’s up to you to fill in the bits in between.

(even the world’s greatest superhero has his limits in All Star Superman, (c) DC)

Taken individually, the six issues here are shining exemplars of how to produce an old fashioned self contained comic. Every issue has enough to leave you gasping at the sheer enjoyment the comic provides. But throughout the book there is a larger story, and Lex Luthor is the key. In Morrison’s world Luthor is a perfect villain; evil, twisted and complicated. And it is Lex’s scheme to send Superman into the sun in issue 1 that reverberates throughout the book. This solar close encounter has effectively poisoned Superman. He finds out that he’s dying, Luthor has finally won. And this victory, this oncoming death informs everything in the book from that point onwards.

I’m not going to give anymore of the plot than that, because this really is one of those books that you deserve to pick up and be delighted by without knowing every little plot twist. Suffice it to say, you’re all in for a wonderful time.

It makes the grown up me feel the same way I did when the I did as a child reading Claremont and Byrne’s X-Men and the way the teenage me felt on reading Alan Moore’s Captain Britain or later, his Miracleman. And it fills me with the same excitement as I felt on first reading books like Sandman, Animal Man, Zenith, Transmetropolitan, Preacher, Planetary and any and all of the wonderful genre books of the last couple of decades. It’s instantly recognisable as a near perfect book, with Morrison, Quitely and Grant producing the most perfect Superman ever seen.

Originally posted at FPI blog here.

PRPOAGANDA Best of 2007 Graphic Novels

First, a mention of three books that didn’t make it to the list this year, but will very probably make the 2008 best of list. All three have been briefly perused and all three look incredible. Two of them are unread merely because they’ve been snatched from my grasp, wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree; Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier and Posy Simmonds’ Tamara Drewe.

The third unread great this year is a difficult one to actually admit to. Because it’s been sitting on my reading shelf for at least 6 months, waiting for me to free up the time I reckon I need to fully absorb and enjoy it’s brilliance. It’s Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot.

I’ve dipped in and out enough to realise it’s a wonderful work, but kept saying to myself I’d free up time to really devote myself to it. Alas, it’s nearly 2008 and time has not been kind. But enough of what I haven’t read, here’s the Propaganda 2007 list:

#1 Shooting War
#2 Fluffy
#3 Fell
#4 Exit Wounds
#5 All Star Superman

Two of my choices were easy ones and for those that know me, pretty obvious ones. Something by Warren Ellis and a Grant Morrison book would usually be right up there in my faves for any year to be honest; such is my enjoyment over the years of the work of both writers. I’ve written before of my possible inability to realise either writer is really capable of a bad piece of work, but this year Warren tested that idea to breaking with the awful Doktor Sleepless (reviewed here) and I still haven’t been bothered to pick up many of Morrison’s Batman comics or finish reading Seven Soldiers. But the two books here are classic genre works. Ellis’ Fell is just a great police procedural deliberately written to strict formatting rules whilst Morrison and Quitely are redefining my long held belief that Superman is a dull, washed out character with beautifully controlled stories exploring the full potential of the icon that is the big red S.

The other three are from new writers, if not to the medium, at least to me. Fluffy was a sheer joy to read, powerful, emotive and both heartbreakingly sad and wonderfully uplifting. Exit Wounds and Shooting War approach the subject of our troubled modern times in two very different ways. Rutu Modan looks at life in Israel through the eyes of normal, everyday people and gives us an intriguing and unsettling view, exploring the concept of identity and family along the way.

But Shooting War was the absolute revelation of the year. Coming out of nowhere, this book is a jaw-dropping portrayal of American aggression in the Middle East, a mix of political satire, war reportage and near-future science fiction. But it’s no bland treatise on the evils of US imperialism either. It’s a sharp political satire and a fast paced action adventure tale with a message as deeply embedded as the reporters involved. Quite brilliant.

And worst of the year? Well, I thought it was going to be Stephen King’s Dark Tower, beloved by everyone but me it seems. But last weekend I had the misfortune to waste 2 minutes of my life on The Ultimates. A spectacular new low (see here for that review). Expect reviews of all five of my favourite works here on the blog over the next few days.

Merry Christmas everyone.

It’s Christmas Day. Go do something nice.

Still the night before Christmas……..

And still, technically Christmas Day, but that doesn’t start till I’ve actually been to bed.

The presents are all stacked. All I have left to do is the stocking just before I head to bed.
Hopefully this year she’ll stay asleep a little later than the 3:20am the other year. I’d put the stocking in at 2:50, got into bed at 3:00am and must have had 10 minutes of sleep before we hear her go to the toilet, find her stocking and come excitedly charging into us with those lovely screams of
“HE’S BEEN, HE’S BEEN!!!”
Despite all our best efforts she was more likely to fly than to go back to sleep and we eventually gave up at 4:30am and got up.
Keeping fingers crossed.

This year’s stash looks very nice. Although like parents around the world both Louise and I started to get paranoid that it looked a little small earlier…. insane!

So Merry Christmas to all. And to all a good night.

Twas the night before Christmas……

Well, actually, by the time I post this it’s well into Christmas morning, but what the hell.
I started doing it on Christmas Eve so my sentiments in the right place.

As usual, the past few days have been lovely, watching Molly get more and more and more and more and more and more (you get the idea) hyper. Yesterday was a visit from Auntie Sharon, Uncle David and cousins Helen and Rachel. A lovely meal out was had by all.

Molly displaying swag from Auntie Sharon.

And then today was spent doing Christmassy things, putting out the Santa stop here sign, checking on Santa’s progress round the world on the NORAD tracks Santa website, and generally getting more and more excited. Molly’s currently asleep, having fought it and fought it and fought it for many hours.
Hopefully she’ll wake up late tomorrow. Although her idea of late on Christmas Day would probably be something like 6am. I’m fully expecting to be sitting bleary eyed in the lounge opening presents in a few short hours time.

Earlier we spent a little while getting the traditional tray for santa ready:

Personally I love the little notes. Just in case Santa and rudolph get a bit muddled up.

Then it was up to bed. Stocking was put in place just next to a menagerie of Christmas cuddlies and she even found time to calm down long enough to write a little message, complete with a couple of impressively long words all of her own and a couple of glaring spelling mistakes (but, seeing as it’s Christmas, we didn’t have the heart to correct.)

It’s now nearly 2:30am and she’s just completed her regular toilet stop. It’s now safe to put the presents out downstairs and get the stocking ready. Then I can head for bed, hoping and praying (with little chance) of getting more than 3 hours sleep…..