It’s a brand new imagining of Superman - get this: an alien boy sent via spaceship from his doomed home planet Krypton to Earth where he’s raised by the kind Kents and discovers he has superpowers. Superman grows up to be a paragon of truth and justice, using his superpowers for good against evil. Wait - “new”? Absolutely not.
Sheriff Nick Corey is in a bit of a pickle. He’s trying to get re-elected, only it’s clear to everyone he’s an incompetent sheriff who doesn’t do his job. His wife hates him and is probably cheating on him. Not that he cares because he’s cheating on her with other women around town. But it does bother him how the pimps at the local brothel don’t show him the respect his office deserves. What’s an honest god-fearing man to do? Simple: kill everyone.
Jacob’s comic Frank Kafka is being adapted into a TV show - and that experience is always a positive one, right? And then his elderly auntie gets ransomed. Meanwhile, Angie’s dad dies and the mob takes back his bar - she’s out of a home and a job in one fell swoop. What’s a girl to do - and how does her story connect with Jacob’s, and a lunatic called Tracy Lawless?
Ian Penman is a music critic and this book collects several of his most brilliant essays on such musical titans as Charlie Parker, Elvis and Prince, looking at their rollercoaster lives and legacies. I’ve never heard of or read anything by Penman before but I was really taken with It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track (which is a line from Auden’s poem Walks).
Absolute Batman has been DC’s biggest hit comic of the past year - and I’m not really sure why as it’s quite… meh.It’s a striking redesign, I’ll give it that. The thinking behind the look seems to be “What if Batman looked like Bane at peak venom usage?” He’s more massive in this series than he’s ever been elsewhere. And he’s got… what are those things on his hands, umbrellas?!
Goes Like This is a collection of short comics and art pieces from 2002 to 2022 by Jordan Crane. And, like a lot of collections like this, it’s a mixed bag of good and forgettable stuff.
Anna and Tom are a young Italian couple living in Berlin, working their freelance, yet profitable, online advertising jobs. They have disposable income, they go to cool parties, they travel around Europe, and they document it all online to the supposed envy of their peers. They’re living the perfect life or are they oh wow I wonder if they’re not woah wouldn’t that be mind wooooahh
Gu and Dam are a couple. Then Gu dies. So Dam eats his corpse. As you do.What an absolute load of bollocks. I thought Choi Jin-Young was going to do something with her concept of couples’ cannibalism - which is the unusual and macabre angle that drew me to this novella - but she didn’t. The book is instead the boring story of a boring relationship, ending the way it began, to no effect, despite knowing more by the end about the “characters”.
The Grand Inquisitor is an episode from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s final novel The Brothers Karamazov, wherein one of the brothers relates a fantasy he has concocted for some reason of Jeebus’ Second Coming in 16th century Spain at the height of the Spanish Inquisition’s powah. After performing crowd favourite magic tricks, Jeebus is whisked away by the head of the Spanish Inquisition and talked to at length about the “true nature” of humanity.
Lex is dying of something mysterious - can Superman help him find a cure before it’s too late?Pretty basic premise and obvious from the title. But was it entertaining - could a story of Lex slowly dying and Superman carting him through a round robin of familiar Superman locales be? No and probably no - at least not in Mark Waid’s hands.
Fredric Wertham was a pioneer in 20th century psychiatric medicine. He was involved in examining convicted killers like Albert Fish and Robert Irwin, was instrumental in ending segregation in America’s schools, and played a key role in the censorship of comics, particularly crime and horror comics, leading to the creation of the Comics Code Authority (boo!).
If you like horror novels but wish they had more floor plans, this is the book for you!The author is approached by a friend who’s thinking of buying his first house - but it’s got a weird layout. Uketsu and his architect buddy look into it and wild theories - that of course prove true - start flying about this being a murder house. The previous occupants being the Japanese Bloody Benders, murdering guests who stay in their house! But whyyyy…
Magneto dies (again) creating an apocalyptic electro-magnetic pulse that wipes out all power on Earth, killing millions. With the remaining Brotherhood of Evil Mutants controlling the planet’s final reactor, Nick Fury rallies the surviving Avengers for a last ditch heist to secure it - and fails. With everyone dead at the hands of the Brotherhood, it’s down to Wolverine… to get Revenge!
Brian is a quiet civil servant who slowly becomes a regular patron of the British Film Institute (BFI) and a part of the small community of film buffs who congregate every night at the South Bank to watch that night’s programming.
