The Bad Day and Heavy metal Dredd

I had a pretty shitty day.
When the worst was over, I had some rum and Played some Metal Gear Solid 5, which is after about 80 hours still alot of fun. I'm less than halfway, taking it really slow and currently trying to find a way to wash the blood off of my face.

The Horror... The Horror!

I mostly enjoy the music and finishing up secondary objectives and generally stalling before I continue with the next storyline mission.
At around 8 (20:00) when it was too early to start exercising I got a little frustrated with the game.

In need of some relaxation I picked up what seemed to be an accessible read.
Accessible and next on the reading list of course. I'm talking about Heavy Metal Dredd.
For some reason a heavy metal magazine in the 90's comissioned some Judge Dredd strips filled with metal or rock references and no holds barred ultra-violence.

I'd heard the violence was over the top and that this wasn't going to be like any other Dredd stuff I had read, but I didn't mind as I'm almost always ok with anything anyway and I like my violent fiction. It also had some Simon Bisley art, which I knew from Slaine's The Horned God storyline, and I liked it reasonably well (Though his stuff in Slaine's Book of Scars is way more better than that). Looking at the index  I saw that less than half had Bisley credited as artist. I saw some Macneil and some fellow I didn't know called Hicklenton, fine I thought, I didn't come here for the art anyway. I bought it because I'm a completionist and this had to be read before the Judge Dredd/Batman crossover, even though it's not canon.
With John Wagner and Alan Grant writing the bulk of the stories It would be okay at the least.

I was wrong.

It wasn't my thing and

I might've read it at the wrong time.

And there were shitty Jokes involving music that I absolutely didn't get. Though I did get a joke where a resident of the Ozzy Osbourne block bites the head off of a Bat-glider.

But the rest is pretty much few hits and mostly misses.

This is some horrific Silent Hill-looking shit.

Bubble head nurse ain't got nothing on this.

That's not to say that it's all bad. And perversely I quite liked some of the extremely violent stories.
In particular "The return of Johnny Biker" for its storytelling gimmick and both the "Monkey Beat" and the "Kiss of Death" stories which were so horrific it felt like they belonged in a horror anthology.
Special mention has to go to "The Night Before Chrismas" which did genuinly feel, barring the blood, like a regular Judge Dredd story.

But yeah, this is extremely niche. It is all like this, extremely violent, offensive swearing, offensive jokes and shitty music references (Sorry, i'm not a metal fan).
If this is your thing or if you are a mega fan of Judge Dredd, you probably already have it, but for most people I can't really recommend it.

Now I'm going to go exercise while I start my re-watch of Black Sails.
One episode each day (presumably) and in a month, on into the fourth and final season.
I'm cautiously optimistic...

Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Flint.

Review: Predator vs Judge Dredd vs Aliens

PvJDvA is a really nice hardover collecting the two crossover storylines where Judge Dredd fights a Predator in one story and Aliens in another. I've seen alot of reviews and comments lamenting that the title and cover here are misleading and I can't say that they're wrong. On the one hand, it's a really good title and I'd be hard pressed to think of a better name for this collection, though there is only one aliens story and that is Incubus, so the little addendum "Incubus and other stories" in the title is blatantly misleading. The art on the cover just seems to reinforce the confusion and I do think that another type of drawing might have been better. Though again, ask me for a suggestion and I won't have a clue.

So not a great start, but a look at what's beneath the dustjacket makes it all better.
Some beautiful black faux leather with shiny red letters embossed on the center. A very nice bit of work.

Naked and Beautiful.

Anyway, now the nitpicking and bookporn are out of the way; the two stories are in full color with the original single issue covers included, sometimes with variant covers as well. And they look for the most part really good. I particularily like the chapter 2 Dermot Power cover for predator and literally all the Aliens covers. Seriously, they all look fantastic. The quality for the art and the story varies with both crossovers so I'll begin with predator first.

Predator vs Judge Dredd was ok.

Sexy psi-judge, screaming predator, pugnacious Dredd.
Instant classic cover.

A Predator comes to Mega City One and starts killing off judges and soon Judge Dredd is in hot pursuit. As the bodies start to pile up Dredd is aided by auxiliary Psi-Judge Schaeffer, a descendant of Dutch Schaeffer, (Arnold Schwarzenegger from Predator 1). With the might of the Judge department at their backs, it's a race against time as they try to stop the Predator's deadly killing spree.

The story felt like it could've been something much more special. in fact, it felt just like a regular dredd story. What could have been something epic turned out to be a run-of-the-mill Judge Dredd 3-parter with a foregone conclusion where Dredd tackles a hostile alien at large in his city. It's pretty familiar and seemingly the only thing that makes it stand out is the Predator brand recognition. Does that make it bad though? Should it even have been something more epic? Maybe easily slottable into the rest of the Dredd canon was the better call. The nature of the Predator makes it perfect for small storylines rather than epic ones. But even with that taken into account I have some quibbles. And maybe that is my fault, I don't know, maybe my hopes were up too much. Pre-read expectation is always the enjoyment killer.

But then, bad art might kill some of it too.

Second, about the art; it's a personal thing; I didn't like it so much because I'm not a fan of this type of art. I prefer Dredd with clean lines and less ridiculous cartoon proportions, both for people, buildings, shadows and the predator itself.

But damn anyway if the art for the climax wasn't balls to the wall awesome. I'm sure you might have glimpsed the art somewhere before as everybody does seem to pick the final battle art to endorse this particular story. The dreadlocked predator engulfed in flames at the top of a building, Lasers, napalm, war droids and a close combat knife-fight where Dredd fights without a shirt, looking like a steroid abuser  vs the Predator set against a backdrop of smoke and fire.

Alien bbq.

I've got some more to say later, but as it's spoilerific I'll do it at the bottom of the post behind a jump.
Now for the second story.

Judge Dredd vs Aliens or "Incubus" was pretty damn good.

Very inventive... Note the
Powertower bleeding into the light effects
coming off of the Alien egg.

Where the Predator story could easily have slotted in almost anywhere in the Dredd continuity. Aliens v Dredd definitely has it's place in the canon leading me to believe I was definitely a little too early in reading it (I'm right now just past complete case Files 15 and about to read America). There are elements of three storylines present, all of which I have had no familiarity with. I recognised the Mechanismo robots but apparently there's ties to the "Out of the Undercity" and "Origins" storylines as well. I got this information from the Dredd Reckoning site review;
http://dreddreviews.blogspot.be/2012/10/judge-dredd-vs-aliens-incubus.html.
The site is well worth checking out for Judge Dredd fans, and that review in particular as it has some in-depth critical ruminations on themes that I had no idea were in both the Alien Franchise and the Judge Dredd vs Aliens story. Reading it did make me realize I don't really have alot of thoughts on AvD So I'll just keep this short.

A new power tower is being built in Mega City One and a protest at a nearby hospital gets in the way of traffic flow where Dredd and fellow judges are sent in to ease congestion. When shots are fired and a man is gunned down by a known felon Dredd rushes him to the hospital. Before the man can be taken to surgery a creature bursts from his chest and escapes into the hospital's airducts. As a team of verminators is sent in to exterminate the creature, Dredd follows up on information of the known felon's past whereabouts. As bodies pile up and acidic blood rains down on an unsuspecting city, Dredd and the Justice department find more than they were prepared for.

A particularily bloody adventure.

A Very violent, action packed story filled with blood (acidic or not), gore and gunfire rendered in pretty great artwork by Henry Flint. I'm not a huge fan of his faces but when he draws fire or when acid is nastily chewing through judges his art is damn fun to look at. This is in part due to Chris Blythe's fantastic coloring.
Energy weapons, fire and acid have their own eye-catching glow and the effect it has on nearby objects is mesmerizing. Also, though everything is pretty grounded there's a big variety of colors on display, just coming from Strontium Dog, it's quite noticable.

A fast paced plot with lots of moving elements with mounting stakes and repercussions. Alot of fun and easy to read.
My favorite part was the Verminators' storyline, when their mission spectacularly goes out of control.

Very recommended.

Yeah, it really goes to hell from here.

And by the way, as I'm not someone who's such a big a fan of the Alien franchise, and don't know much about it, can I just say that Incubus is a good name for the Alien. Of course, the name is the brand and that could never be changed but it becomes a little problematic if you drop the Alien in a world that has already had who knows how many different alien species. In comes Giant;

And though that explanation of the Incubus demon is a little selective, the general gist of it, and the name, work both really well.

Exposition spouting Giant (junior?) makes a good case,
Though it really made me wonder
where he got that bit of esoteric information from.

Ok, For those who feel like this might be something they want to read. stop right here because I'm going to talk about some elements of the Judge Dredd vs Predator story. I will literally spoil the ending.
For those who don't give a damn and who'll never pick this up either way or to those who've read the story. Read on. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Review: Strontium Dog: The Final Solution

"The Final Solution" follows up directly from "The no go job" where it was revealed that obtaining the relics was but the first stage of an elaborate plan. Now, Key figures of the New Church stage a coup and overthrowing the government, they install themselves as its leaders. By the use of blood sacrifice and dark magic they will try to get rid of the mutant population of Britain.
Meanwhile, Alpha and Mcnulty, having completed their jobs and having received their payment, go back to Smiley's world for a memorial service. Where some shocking events force them to go in pursuit of their erstwhile employer and into direct conflict with the new brittish government.
This is an epic where, when it's all over, both Johnny Alpha and his world won't be the same.

Awesome but fucking bizarre.

The illustrations are done by two different artists, In Part 1 Simon Harrison's still incredibly detailed and macabre art fits very much with the gothic New Church storyline and I found alot here to like.

I thought the grafiti was a particularily nice touch. In Milton Keynes, where before there were mostly just rocks and dirt and someone's easy idea of depicting squalor, here we have an actually lived-in look.
On the other hand, though bad-ass, the faces still look odd; and they get a way more monstrous look at times, sometimes literally (in Feral's case) and don't even get me started on everyone's wavy hair.
As much as I've come to like his incredible art (Yes, even the faces), Harrison wasn't the right artist for Strontium Dog from the start. The facial expressions necessary for introspection and to elicit an emotional response just aren't there. He is amazing at action scenes as his bodies have a constant sense of motion but his faces have only extremes and not much subtlety. It's been a complaint of mine since the beginning of his run and it's what makes me want say that somebody did make a good call to eventually switch artists. But it was way too late though.

Gothic Chique.

And maybe the response from fans wouldn't have been so negative if Harrison had actually completed the art for the whole of "The Final Solution" but at a pretty crucial point in the storyline, Colin Macneil takes over.

A little too radical, but you know, at least Mcnulty looks normal.

In Part 2, after 31 issues of Simon harrison's art, in both the "No go Job" and a huge part of "The Final Solution", with maybe 5 issues left to go and some huge cliffhangers under our belt, the art changes radically yet again. And this time it's definitely too big of a difference to be comfortable. From black and white to colour and from eldritch detail to basic functionality. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad by any standard. But the change is too jarring and we don't really get much chance to actually connect with it. Before you know it, it's all over. Though issue 27 hits pretty hard and elicits a real emotional response.

That one made me wonder how it would have been if Macneil had done the entire two storylines from the beginning. But alas. that's not what happened.

There's a few more stand alones and I quite liked "Incident at the birth of the universe", though the psychedelic visuals made it at times hard to make out what was actually happening.
Another is "The town that died of Shame"  which was a nice quick western-style story with a typical Johnny Alpha showdown. Pretty standard Strontium Dog with some nice moments of melancholy.

But the most notable is of course the "Top Dogs" three parter. wherein Johnny and Wulf arrive in mega city one hunting a bounty and have to elude and eventually face off against Judge Dredd himself. At the time when it came out it was a throw away story and Grant or wagner (I don't really remember who) has always said the Judge Dredd and the Strontium Dog universes don't really overlap. But other writers have run with it since, most notably Garth Ennis in "Judgment Day", and I've also seen some really recent information that suggests that these universes will start to overlap more and more.

Der Dredd against der Johnny.

In the end, when it's all done I find I actually enjoyed the collection, with a few reservations.

I have a few more things to say here. I've been tiptoeing around it in both the review of Agency files 4 and here and I'm pretty sure that now,  more than 20 years after the facts I shouldn't even be concerned about spoiling things but hey, I wanted to see if I could do it. So the rest of this review will contain major spoilers for both the Final Solution and folluw up series, Strontium Dogs.

Warning SPOILERS, bias and reduced professionality after the jump;

Review: Strontium Dog: Agency files 04

alrighty then, short explanation:
On earth in the year 2150 there was an atomic war that devastated Britain. The nuclear bombs dropped and the fallout caused mutation in a bunch of the population. This was possible because the fallout contained the radioactive isotope, strontium 90.
The survivors rebuilt their lives, barring the mutants, who because of their deformities were not allowed to live or even work among the normal-looking humans. They were segregated in Ghettos and the most useful among them were allowed to take jobs and become Search and Destroy agents, SD for short, called Strontium Dogs by those who malign them.
As their normal human employers don't care if they live or die, they will track and hunt down the worst and most dangerous criminals of the galaxy for money, i.e. they're bounty hunters.
One of these Strontium Dogs is Johnny Alpha, a mutant whose eyes emit alpha rays and allow him to have x-ray-vision, and also, when it's convenient, mind-reading powers.
As in these stories, most mutants don't usually have all that useful mutations primarily consisting of bodily disfigurements, x-ray-vision is a pretty good mutation to have.

Now here in Agency files 4 Johnny Alpha teams up with Durham "the Bitch" Red in the "Bitch" storyline, where the bounty hunters must retrieve Ronald Reagan, who has been kidnapped by alien freedom fighters. This one is a 25-parter that was pretty fun though it did remind me of how problematic time-travel stories are. It's nice to have Johnny stand up for the oppressed in a big way again. And it's also fun to have a female Strontium Dog for once, I can't actually remember If there's been one before, but apparently there is also a spin-off series about her, written by Dan Abnett. The premise of that actually sounds great but the books are out of stock at this time so I guess I'll go and do something else with my money.

In the "Royal Affair" the king of Britain, Clarkie the second, hires a mutant bodyguard, Johnny Alpha, to protect him while he goes to the mutant ghetto slum of Milton Keynes to carry on his affair with a mutant commoner. A marriage proposal and chaos ensue.
This is why I still like reading early 2000ad comics. It's silly bollocks of course but also just a fun little 5-issue story. Fast paced set-up, escalating cliffhangers, which is par the norm for most things 2000ad. It comes with every issue being only 5 or 6 pages on average I'd guess.

The Eponymous "Clarkie the Second".

The "A Sorry Case" 4-parter has Johnny Alpha take on a job to get a man from his jailcell to an airport that will take him offworld, for reasons that are unspecified. Turns out he is a bad luck jinx.
I really enjoyed this one. It has Colin Macneill art, which is similar but cleaner than the regular Ezquerra art. This story caught me in a good mood and put me in an even better one. I would've liked more issues of just chaos sprouting up around Alpha and his charge.

Somebody's playing with Alpha's blaster and it ain't him.

In the 10 issues of  "The Rammy" Johnny Alpha and Middenface Mcnulty are on trial for staging a  free-for-all fight with a big cash prize where they drew out several big-time criminals from their law protected hidey holes. We revisit the events against the backdrop of the court trial.
A decent but at the start a little boring story. there were too many recaps until the action really got going. It also had a pretty ambivalent ending where I'm pretty sure some loose ends didn't get resolved.

In "Stone Killers" Alpha teams up with Durham red to investigate the murder of several Strontium Dogs. The trail leads to the "Stones", a freelance muscle gang, hired by an unknown to kill Search and Destroy agents. Disquieting revelations spin an interesting plot.
"Stone Killers" is a good 13-parter filled with a quiet air of dread and foreboding and where Alpha blurs the line between hero and villain.

There are also a few stand-alones which don't merit that much attention, but what does though is the 8-parter "The No-Go job".
There is something you will notice immediately as soon as you turn the page.
The art has radically changed.
At first I was dismayed by this, it looked chaotic and the characters looked eldritch. The faces looked like they had taken a detour to some sort of grimdark elf-quest before arriving on the page; Johnny's face, outside of the times when he is wearing his helmet, only vaguely resembled what it ought to have looked like and where "Middenface" Mcnulty had some growths on his head before, now he actually looked like his name-sake. Alright, I get that last one but I still don't like what Simon Harrison did with that nose. Where before he had nobility, he now just looked like a clown.

There's a stunning amount of detail on display though and, over the next few issues, as I picked out more and more tiny details, I actually began to appreciate the art. It's one thing to put so much stuff in your first few issues but when you sustain it for the whole run it actually becomes quite impressive.

The "No-Go Job" is a particularly interesting story as it serves as the prologue to "The Final Solution." Alpha, Mcnulty and his dog, dougal, and some friends are hired to find and retrieve holy relics from a feud-planet, a planet available for hire so small armies can settle their differences in reservable  warzones. Accompanying them is their employer, a high ranking official of the New Church with his own shady agenda.
The art gives the whole thing a grim atmosphere and soon the story begins to back that up. The deaths are mean spirited and the very end signifies we are heading for something major in the storyline.

Strontium Dog is pretty standard pulp fare but 2000ad has always had a buck-the-system tone to its comics and there is usually some political or social satire between its pages. Milton keynes being "Europe's largest mutant ghetto" is an easy and obvious example, or even the parallels between the treatment of mutants and the current-day refugees. It's not exactly hard to spot.
And as always, whenever americans are on the page, the writers manage to get their digs in. most of it very unsubtle. Reagan in "Bitch" is depicted as a hard-hearing, completely clueless, bumbling fool who nonetheless sometimes dreams he's a spandex wearing superhero who can end the cold war by heroically nuking the shit out of Russia. Or see the panels below, which show him, besides being comically clueless also as an evil politician in it for his own gain.
On-the-nose satire that might be still relevant today? No, I'm pretty sure you're just imagining that.

Remind you of any one you know?

I'm not going to touch on politics here on this blog, as I know fuck-all about it, but with 2000ad it's sometimes hard to avoid. I mean, it's not as if it's trying to be subtle now, is it? I could've just let it go, but as it is an important part of the comic I didn't want to dismiss it either.

In any case I find it hard to say anything about most comics apart from "I liked it."
I mean, the Strontium Dog comics have had storylines where they travel back in time to apprehend and kidnap Hitler so he can stand trial for his crimes or that time when they went to hell in order to chase down a renegade search-and-destroy agent.
It's hardly material to take seriously. Because in the end the early 2000ad is a comic written with the teenage boy audience in mind.

Don't take it all too serious and you'll have fun.

A random thought concerning American Gods

You know, I was re-reading American Gods recently, and I was struck with a thought.
With new episodes of the X-files coming up somewhere in late 2017 or 2018 and the American Gods show having cast  Gillian Anderson as Media...

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a promotion for the American Gods tv show disguised as an X-files episode where Scully and Mulder are walking across a street or are sitting in a room or whatever...
It's business as usual and then suddenly Scully would halt and start to stare right at the camera until Mulder moves off screen, apparently just going on with the episode without her. And then she would start holding an apparently one-sided conversation and then eventually she would ask "Did you ever want to see Scully's tits?" And she would start to unbutton her blouse. and then the screen would go black as if someone just shut off the tv. A few seconds of blackness and then. WHAM. AMERICAN GODS. And cue trailer.

Or maybe even no title and no trailer. Fades to black and then back to commercials. That would seriously freak people out. "What the hell did I just see, Etc"

I know that this is supposed to be the Lucy character from the book, but this and other pictures could still be an elaborte ploy to make us think that it won't be Scully doing that scene...

I think that would be brilliant.
And don't tell me Duchovny and Anderson wouldn't be up for it, Have you taken a look at their twitter accounts?

PS; And you can bet when Ricky Whittle as Shadow turns off the tv at that point in the show. People are going to be swearing and cursing so hard that it would be a miracle if his head didn't explode.

Review: Chronicles of Hate volumes 1 and 2

Written and illustrated by Adrian Smith, a freelance artist and illustrator who has contributed to, among others; Diablo, Warcraft, Magic: The Gathering and Warhammer. Which is a pretty impressive list of names to have on your resumé. Warhammer is what I personally know him from and when I saw some illustrations of these two comics online, I knew I recognised the style and I bought both volumes immediately.

It took me a while though, but when I finally did get round to reading them, I wasn't disappointed.
There might be a little bit of allegory going on here.

The story;
Three beings chain their mother, the Earth, and the world goes to hell. The sun freezes over, the moon catches fire and while the core of the earth cools, the oceans turn to sludge, their vapors choking the air. Humanity goes insane and degenerates and as the ages pass the lineages of men grow apart, some growing monstrous, others weak and small. Cannibalism is rife and as the powerful enslave and feast on the weak, dark things grow sentient and begin to stalk the forests.
But now mother Earth is healing and is growing strong once more. and in this time she chooses Worm, the weakest creature among those who are bred for their meat and entrusts him with the quest for her salvation...

The first thing you notice while glancing through the books is how little dialogue there actually is. In fact, without the first page, which details the nightmarish but epic background of the story, you wouldn't be able to fill half a page. But even with the minimal amount of dialogue, the art still packs a hefty emotional punch. The big mouths and expressive foreheads of some of the more monstrous characters make for some exeptionally well done facial expressions.

The art on the whole however, while pretty damn amazing, restricted as it is to every shade of grey, is sometimes a tad too dark and at times I really had to strain to make out what was going on.
What is on show though is literally jaw-dropping.
I mean, look at this.

Massive battles, vast armies marching across tainted lands, hulking monstrosities, elaborate gothic armor endowed with what is probably every spiky object known to man, all in panels that you wish you could frame on your wall.

On the other hand, some of the sequences don't flow all that great and as there are many battles we are given more often impressions of the larger whole rather than a continuous flowing story. It's a minor quibble and is to be expected in any comic with large scale action. And even despite that, there's such an enormous amount of detail on display that I was willing to overlook the problematic parts.
But I do have to make a small note that in the latter half of the second book, the art, while staying broadly the same, sometimes turns a little more towards the impressionistic. I'm assuming there was a bit of rushing as the second book is about 26 pages longer than book 1.
It's by no means bad, and does work quite well on its own, but it did make the last big battle even harder to follow.
In contrast though, there was a chase scene in the second book, where Worm is being chased by zombie-like creatures, that was just incredibly well done. The village scene, which I've partially shown here, is also very effective.

So all in all, I'm really very pleased with the whole thing. The art is amazing. It has an archetypal story where nature fights against the rampant depradations of man, and while the ending is a bit abrupt, it is unambiguous and very satisfying.

And Worm is such a loveable little bugger.

Three-rooted Worm. Our Hero. Our Savior.

Review: The Goddamned: Before the Flood

Ooh, a provocative and probably very offensive title? Well, the very name of this comic is a warning sign, so if you are already offended by its title, this one might not be for you. But maybe if you read on I can give you an idea.

This Comic was written by Jason Aaron, drawn, painstakingly, by r.m. Guéra and colored by Giulia Brusco. Before Aaron and Guéra made their indian reservation crime series "Scalped" together, Jason Aaron was already thinking about The Goddamned. And here it is, all his favorite themes rolled into a caveman story; religion, faith, violence and a dark but serious look at the creationist world view.
And in these 5 issues we visit the scene and the question, of the world before the flood and how disgusted exactly God had to be, to be able to decide to just drown it all.

This is a comic I read recently that I was just blown away by. I loved it.
Went in expecting much and I got even more.

Graphic ultra-violence with well thought out and well-executed fight sequences, gratuitous swearing, nudity, dark mythology, monsters and interesting, flawed characters with grey morals.

We follow, for the most part, in this 5-issue arc, Cain, the biblical first murderer on his quest for death. This isn't exactly the Cain you might know but rather a different take on the first killer. Sentenced by god to live forever this Cain is a beautiful 1600 year-old immortal who is more than a little adept at killing and who has no qualms about doing so. The Mark that God gave Cain to identify him as the first murderer and set him apart from other men is in this comic depicted by having him be unmarked. He has no scars, no blemishes, nothing wrong with his body in any way whatsoever. And in a world that is as horribly brutal and fallen as this one is, a man without scars tends to stand out. It's a very nice interpretation of the Cain Mark.

There are references to the biblical God, to angels and their half angelic offspring, the Nephilim. But apart from that and Cain's immortality, the supernatural elements are kept rather restrained. Oh and by the way, though Cain might not be able to die (the jury is still out on this) he can and does suffer, horrifyingly so.

Other biblical characters show up; there are glimpses of a very different kind of Adam and Eve than the ones you might be used to, whose brief scene together I found both appalling and amusing.
There is a twisted version of Noah and his Ark, assorted beasties, odd-looking dinosaurs, various degenerating bestial humans and more blood and gore and unrestrained violence than you'd find on a medieval battlefield. All serve to showcase some of the worst that humanity is capable of doing to one another.

Future arcs will apparently follow different characters, in the same world but not necessarily in the same age, and the creators don't rule out that Cain won't be re-visited or that he might even show up in other characters' stories. Immortals tend to have longevity, after all. But for now this arc can and does stand on its own.

If epic, dark biblical fantasy is your thing, if you like the art you see, if you aren't easily shocked or offended or just like to push the envelope; you'd do well to check this out, provided that you can stomach it of course.
Because the years before the flood were awful "and the earth was filled with violence" and Jason Aaron, Guéra and Brusco will rub your nose right in it.

Did I mention that the dinosaurs look odd?

Honey Nutz

Feeling down or do you need some energy? Try Honey Nutz!

It's tasty, healthy and not expensive at all!

Yes, those are exactly what they seem to be.

No, I'm just kidding, this isn't an advertisement. This nasty-looking thing isn't even for sale.
I got it from my brother, who makes this stuff for himself. A real nature lover with a funny but sometimes weird sense of humor.
It contains walnuts and honey and apparently is good with yoghurt.
As I don't eat yoghurt I'll just wait until I get some ice cream or pancakes, or maybe even both.
But you know what? Honeyed walnut is surprisingly good on its own too.

Though I'll grant you, It doesn't look it.

This isn't a completely frivolous post. I actually was trying out several ways to improve lighting and reducing glare when I take pictures. It's still a work in progress. That first picture took me ages and even then I'm not totally happy with the final result. But sometimes you just have to be satisfied with how it turns out.

Major Book-Haul

Alot of books in one go. Two more Strontium Dogs make a complete set.
The 4 Dredd Sort-of-standalones that I wanted to get to before reading Case Files 16 and 17. The Predator vs Dredd vs Alien book, Heavy Metal Dredd and the Batman Crossover one. Also the most famous Dredd story, America. Curious about that one but i'll probably read the Strontium dog omnibi first, before I read any more Judge Dredd. The reason for that is that there's a vague sort of Crossover event in Complete Case files 17 (I think) between Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog.
So I took a little side-tour and got to know another one of the 2000ad comic's most popular characters.
Then We got the 2 Pretty deadly Comics and the 4 remaining Fantasy Masterworks I could still get from the Bookdepository.
Pretty excited about most of these but hey... What's that...?

Damnit Bookdepository. One of the downsides of living here in Belgium, and reading mostly english books and comics, is that most of my purchases have to come from an online store. This usually entails some risks.

Anyway, let's take a look at those masterworks.

Alright, looking nice!
A beautiful cover for Mythago Wood. Not a fan of the Little, Big one though.
I'm looking forward to reading Mckilip's Riddlemaster trilogy and the aforementioned Little Big. I had previously Read only Aegypt by Crowley, also in the new Fantasy Masterworks line, and I'm hoping that this will be a more positive reading experience.
The other two, since they're part of a series can wait a while before I get to them.

Pretty Deadly has some nice looking covers. Western horror mythology indeed, I love stories with gods and monsters and an occasional spin on religion or the apocalypse. Heard it was brutal and had a good story. That Blurb is definitely intriguing me too.

And then we have the 2000 ad comics, right now very definitely still a guilty pleasure but maybe in the future I'll be able to hold up America as an example of some good comic story telling. I've certainly heard enough about it.

And then the end of Johnny Alpha (the first run at least) . Let's see what made Tim Bisley cry.

All right, this blog probably won't last long but I'm going to give it a go anyway.
I'll have to see what I will share, as normally I'm a very private person. I keep to myself.

I don't really want to share my opinions (but I will) as I'm very self-conscious and don't handle criticism well. So then what is the point of this blog? I'm not vocal so why am I here on a medium designed to share your thoughts with the world and whoever reads them?

I suppose there was a burst of manic energy; I recommended someone else to start blogging in order to fill some of her time and I got swept up in the energy. Thinking about engaging myself and writing some reviews, some books that I wanted people to know about or just plain posting pictures of book purchases. I do love me some books.

So how will I handle it?

I know that I like to browse around other blogs, looking for things I like and hanging around for as long as I'm interested. The things that keep me there?
A wall of text is boring. Pictures are ALWAYS what catches the eye. Usually, for me, it's books. Covers of comics or a novel or a nice screenshot of a good game, pictures of people's private bookshelves, posted for all the world to see. especially bookshelves :)
That isn't to say that I don't like well-thought out arguments or reviews. It means that blogs without cool, interesting eye-catchers don't get a second glance before I click on the next. Unless of course you found the blog via a link or recommendation or who knows what.
Bottom line: Maybe try to post a picture with every post. Maybe some funny pictures to keep the seriousness down.

There you go. :)

Most posts will be about books, the book-haul ones will be easy; just a picture, some blurb maybe and some hype. The reviews will need alot of work as I'm one of those types who is always going to be dissatisfied with what he's written. or maybe I'll just say sod it and post whatever I got regardless. It all depends on how comfortable I am sharing This is very much a journey of self-exploration. See what keeps me going and what keeps me interested,

Most likely this will get abandoned in a week when my positive mood evaporates and I'll end up deleting all of it.

 but maybe, just maybe I'll keep it up.