First of those, which has been on my wishlist for just about forever, is Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell, which takes its cues from Paradise Lost's opening chapters to write the tale of Lucifer's rebellion in heaven.
I'm curious to see how Brust approaches the tale. He's mostly known for the Vlad Taltos series, a high fantasy/ science fiction mash-up. I've never been much interested in them but apparently Brust experiments with narrative style a lot, which is something that tends to be interesting but detracts from an easy reading experience. He jumps around from book to book, and as the series currently has like 15 books out about now I could see that being rather irritating. As To Reign in Hell is rather short and stand-alone to boot, I don't think this one will suffer from those issues.
Next is the latest Vastarien issue, 2.2, the summer 2019 edition, this time with colour artwork.
I don't know though, I don't really pick these up for the artwork, though I guess it does add something. Haven't begun reading yet, but I'll do so soon. These days are dark, and if the previous issues are anything to go buy, I'll find what I need in here.
The issues themselves, though still of stellar quality, have gone down a bit in page count, which is a bit sad. I'm uncertain if the magazine will survive much longer.
I hope it will, but there's only so much nihilistic fiction the average reader is willing to put up with, so I can't see Vastarien lasting indefinitely.
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Next up are two videogame tie-in comics.
The Flesh and Flame one is alright, although the writing quality is certainly less than the previous Witcher comics, but it's still an acceptable story, easy fare and easily digestible art.
If you want a really good Witcher comic though, you'd best pick up either comic 1,2 or 3. Fox children, number 2, in particular was very good, even though a lot of it was re-purposed from the Season of Storms novel. I found it a lot better than its prose counterpart though. Season of Storms kind of just felt like a whole bunch of short stories thrown together. Which again reaffirms my opinion that Sapkowski might have some damn good ideas, but that he just unremittingly sucks at long-form fiction.
The previous Bloodborne comic was really good so even though I haven't yet read this one I'm sure it'll be satisfying. The Bloodborne comics really manage to capture the dark melancholy mood of the video game quite well. Recommend you pick those up. Especially if you like werewolves and the gothic genre. It isn't exactly that but it's pretty close to it, and I don't think there's anything like it out there. Just like the video game it's minimalist in its storytelling but lush in its art.
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The Mignola section.
I confess I have come to almost dislike Mignola's comics, because whenever he tends to have an idea or when an interesting character makes their appearance, even if it's in the middle of an ongoing story, he tends to just hand it over to someone else in order to make it stand alone. This detracts hugely from the comic of which they're spun off from. The BPRD series just became plain awful after a while. Escpecially with that Ragna Rok ending, which if you want that to make sense you better be willing to explore the side-paths.
Don't get me wrong. Individually the different series are pretty good, but all together they're a bit of a mess.
Some people love this though, this type of interconnected universe thing.
But in my opinion it is the very worst type of storytelling, especially in a monthly medium.
I'm absolutely not a fan, as I find them unwieldy, inelegant and just a damn pain to keep up with. It also doesn't help that when all of these different characters come together it can't help but become a different beast than when you're reading them alone. I have more problems with it, but as I'm just kind of hung up on the Mignola-verse here I'm going to let it go.
(And despite Mignola's protestations about how faithful the recent Hellboy movie was to the source material, and his exclamations about how much he liked it more than the Guillermo Del Toro movies, the general audience tends to agree with me; a bloated, incoherent mess. It might be cool, and awesome, but it's just not fun to watch it because you can barely keep up with it.)
Sorry about that, sometimes it just spills out of me.
Crimson Lotus is tied into the Helboy universe via the Lobster Johnson series, where she is a one-off villain who stands alongside the Black Flame to wreck the Lobster's day. That is honestly a very good story in what is without a doubt my favourite Hellboy property, but I could have done without this spin-off. That being said, The Crimson Lotus could be very good.
Joe Golem: The Drowing City, then, is the long-awaited adaptation of the Drowning City novel by Mignola and Christopher Golden. That novel was one of my favourite books that I read... the year before last, I think. This comic is the third in the Joe Golem comic series, and they've been pretty good, fleshing out Joe's past (a bit) and giving the reader some cool flashes of some truly fucked-up witches.
The series takes place in the same universe as Baltimore, and I'm hoping that when it continues past the Drowning City it won't crash and burn like Baltimore did. But the record doesn't give much hope for it.That's just my cynicism talking, but in my opinion the ending to the Baltimore saga ended up being a colossal failure.
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Nothing bad to say about these beauties though.
The best Ongoing Sci-fi comics of the day.
Seven to Eternity is Rick Remender's writing at his best, and the artwork is still fucking stellar.
Saga on the other hand, I haven't read yet since volume 5 or so, but I think that now would be a good time to catch up with it. Once upon a time dubbed "Star Wars for Perverts" it has long since started to outshine the luster of its by now quite tarnished forebear. I'm just hoping it'll still take a while before this piece of perfection is stripped apart by Hollywood.
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My Occult Vertigo shelves are starting to strain the more I try to make my collection complete.
Vertigo is still continuing its re-release of the Hellblazer series in their handsome trade paperbacks.
We're up to 21 now, and I'm guessing we're going to hit 26 by the end. It's a bit of a shitty number to end on, but at least the story arcs are still damn good.
Volume 20 was a very impressive collection of stories, all of impeccable quality, and I'm hoping this one will continue that trend. The Laughing Magician story line has been hyped up, at least. It's a bit sad to think that soon I'll have read all of Hellblazer.
And, with that in mind, I've begun to look at the series and characters that also play around in Constantine's sandbox. I had already read the Sandman saga, but I bizarrely never picked up Death's stand-alone stories.
This was swiftly remedied though, and though it comes across as a bit throw-away to me, I did find it enjoyable to read. I've never been too enamoured with the Death Endless character but I don't hate her either. She's just a bit too much of a manic Pixie dream-girl for me I guess. One of Gaiman's idiosyncrasies and I've never like the man or his writings too much. He's got skill and fascinating ideas, but for some reason, he just rubs me the wrong way. I'm guessing that the Ink-Stained Beard and his unabashed love for all thing Gaiman might have something to do with it. Damn you Beard!
Anyway, it was an okay comic, a little bit empty, but I do confess to laughing out loud at a certain part.
Death talks about Life is a piece written during the whole 'Aids-scare' in the eighties, and though I did find it a bit eye-rolling to read at first, I actually appreciated it at the end.
I'm re-reading Lucifer right now, because I never actually got around to reading the last volume, and Death is slated to make an appearance soon.
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Next one is Gideon Falls, of which I still haven't read the first Trade Paperback but of which I thought I best purchase the next copy anyway.
Murders and cosmic horror, what's not to like?
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And then there is this one... hmmm, seems to be something wrong with the quality of the picture...
Strange, cant' seem to change its colouring...
Hmmm... ah well...
Here it is, the cloth hardback edition of Simon's Necronomicon!
I've read it now, and eh... I'm obviously not the target audience for this one. I don't believe in magic, really, but there's people who do, and who make claims, and who look on this book and the contents herein and who state that it has value, but... eh, I think if magic is real then it doesn't need to be so needlessly obtuse, and this one was written to be so.
Of course, the book also states that it is not for beginners, but that shouldn't really matter, right? Some things should be made clear. My main problem with the book is that it didn't distinguish enough between its actual information and its myth-building (and with that last I mean that the book pretends to sometimes be other than what it is. For instance the Author's name just being presented as Simon, which is just a way to make the work mysterious and appealing.) The Sumerian background was interesting but it was here that that myth-building problem comes into being. How much of this can you trust to be fact? Of these things, what can you build on?
Anyway, I just bought it for curiosity's sake so I don't need to write an essay on the damn thing.
There's sites out there that dissect the book and can give you background and explanations on the minutiae to be found herein.
Warlock Asylum International News is perfect for this.
Alright, that's all from me.
I do apologize for the serious lack of content these days. Stuff happens sometimes, and then that leads to a lot of stuff not happening, if you catch my drift.
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