Comics in the Post

Alright, here's my acquisitions for this month, you'll notice all of 'em are comics.

It seems that for the moment I have stopped buying novels.

This is down to several factors: Primarily, there's the medication.

Because of the quite literal alteration in my brain I'm less contemplative and more inclined to go with the flow, less eager to 'make my mark' and 'to attain goals' and on the whole I find I have less drive, not to say no drive, to finish novels, 'finish' as in 'to have them done' as in ' to never have to look at this book again' as in 'enjoyed it' as in 'understood it' as in 'it's given me all it could give and it now belongs on my shelf' and so on and so forth.

Looking at what I've bought then it's a little bit disconcerting to notice that I'll gravitate towards the visual rather than the imaginative for my fiction, I always thought that I was the imaginative type rather than the mindless consumer I now so obviously seem to be, but... anyway... As for other factors... I'm also quite preoccupied by Nier Automata, which is a ps4 game which starts out deceptively straightforward but soon evolves into an experience unlike any I've come across in my quite extensive gaming travails. I hope to talk about this one some time in the future. Maybe when I've finished excavating the rabbit hole that this game has ended up being.

But maybe it's just also that right now I'm not having a novel reading 'season'.

You know how that sometimes you just come across a novel that reinvigorates your lust for reading and that when it's done you just plow through a whole bunch of novels desperate for that same feeling of new worlds and new experiences, and sometimes you get lucky, but more often you just don't... and everything ends up settling into this stale routine, into this quiet doldrums, where you just forge your way through whatever's next without ever getting touched by what you're reading... maybe it's that...

Or maybe it's that I am still preoccupied...

There's this thing in my head that I can't seem to get out.

I don't want it out... and yet I very much do... because it is horrible in the way that is has superseded importance over everything I used to care about.

I don't want it, but it's there and I can't quiet it, even with medication, to a state that I could be enraptured by what I used to be fascinated about before.

Even more than before, nothing seems to matter anymore... nothing but this one thing...
But there is a gradual lessening to this particular obsession nonetheless.

Anyway....

 Comics.

Comics kind of subvert the normal brain processes used when consuming fiction.

When reading novels, imagination and interpretation is everything. You read and you visualize, you imagine, and you do all the work.

In visual media (tv and movies) you consume whatever's given and barely do any work and, as a consequence, in the quiet there's room for self indulgences or distractions.

In comics however there's a need for the interpretation of what is given on two levels: the illustrations and the given prose, whether that be dialogue or narration.

You look at what is given and you couple that to an interpretation to what you are seeing and you tie that to what you interpret from the given dialogue or narration. Sometimes it's easy and straightforward but more often that not you'll find that you are constantly pressed to pay attention to what you are consuming (Jamie Delano's Hellblazer is definitely like this), and more than that, to give it your time, your thought and your undivided attention. There's exemptions to all of this but for the moment I think I've made my point.

So here we are. All of these books are comics...

Because reading them is both easy and isn't...

Let's get the most interesting one out of the way first, right; the smallest book first: Junji Ito's Uzumaki. My first ever Manga comic.

I've never felt any pressure to delve into manga or anime until I watched a few of Supereyepatchwolf's youtube videos on various anime and manga series, mostly when I was in the heaviest of the adapting to the medication stage, and when he talked about Junji Ito's horror manga I knew I'd found something I probably would like to use to dip my toes into a new type of media.

Long story short: I liked it, and enough to have already ordered 2 new novels of Ito's Manga series.

I might talk about some of this. I might not.

Next up: Slaine the Brutania Chronicles 4 ( the finale).

I've been looking forward to this one.

Simon Davis' take on the Celtic barbarian is my favourite of all that has gone before in Slaine's long long run, including the epic Book of Scars, and I'm looking forward to see how this one wraps up.

Here are the four Hardbacks for the Brutania Chronicles for those who might like to have a gander at that.

Next up we have some Mignolaversity stuff.

Up first is Frankenstein Underground, which follows the journey of Frankenstein after he was clobbered in 'Hellboy in Mexico' (which is, oddly, for some reason, a personal favourite of mine).

Don't know much about this one except that it's the next stop in my Hellboy universe read (following the 2018 reading order).

Then we have the next stage of the BPRD: the Hell on Earth volume 1, and Abe Sapien the drowning.

I must say; I hate that the omnibi take so long to get released.

I wonder if we'll learn the fate of Ben Daimyo any time soon.

The sleeveless books for those who are interested.

Then my next stop is the Judge Dredd Universe: the Complete Case Files Volumes 18 and 19.

I'm guessing this is mostly one-offs except for the 'Mechanismo' storyline, which is ok because I primarily read Dredd for some good old dip-in-and-out escapism. Unfortunately a lot of this is Garth Ennis, who kind of misses the point with a lot of his material. But I'll put up with it for now because his run won't last much longer... right?

And then, lastly, volumes 18 and 19 of Vertigo's long running Hellblazer series.

I've mentioned these in my previous post but it's safe to say that I won't be reading these any time soon. My current Hellblazer reading schedule is 'no more than one issue per day' even if I skip a day or two. I want to make this experience last. 

And that's it for now.

But believe you me: This is not the end.