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13 Nov 2008
Born out of the 70s and 80s-mired misapprehension that CB radio talk was the vernacular of the future (let’s blame Burt Reynolds for that), this weekly 2000AD serial nevertheless became one of the British comic’s best for a while. That’s partly down to…
30 Oct 2008
For almost half a century, novelist, poet and New Yorker writer John Updike has chronicled the concerns, thoughts and sexual foibles of the American middle class. Not always successfully though, as can be forgiven amidst a career which embraces almost…
2 Oct 2008
CARTOON SATIRE It’s obvious right away that pseudonymous Scots comic creator Curt Sibling is taking the mickey, but the way in which he does it really has to be spot-on in its execution to succeed. This self-published, black and white anthology takes…
SCI-FI ADVENTURE Following cold on the heels of Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ controversial, and some might say ugly, early 90s update of Britain’s noblest comics hero, this seven-part revival from Richard Branson’s comics line, now repackaged in…
18 Sep 2008
BIOGRAPHY Subtitled ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@*!’, this was the first collected book of comic art which the Jewish-American Spiegelman had published. Created between 1972 and 1977, the volume is reissued with an illustrated 20-page…
4 Sep 2008
The other outlet for Dredd's continuing adventures in near-future totalitarianism alongside 2000AD is the Megazine, relaunched this issue, including a free mini-graphic novel collecting Dredd stories illustrated by Jock. Regular writer John Wagner is…
Many Scots cynics, upon seeing the title of this new coffee table volume by our most famous actor, might be inspired to enquire just how much research on the subject can be done by an ex-pat who hasn't lived in the country for decades. It's an…
14 Aug 2008
It was the death of her husband Desmond Wilcox that shaped the philosophy behind Esther Rantzen OBE’s new book If Not Now, When? A self-help book, after a fashion, it expands on the virtues of enjoying life at every available opportunity, even into…
‘Rebel Inc involved a lot of chaos and a lot of confusion,’ says Kevin Williamson, founder of the one-time cult Edinburgh imprint. ‘And I can tell you that my days as a publisher are definitely over. I gave it all I could for ten years and wouldn’t go…
7 Aug 2008
Young Parisian author Céline Curiol laughs when I tell her of the proliferation of post-Carla Bruni articles seeking to define the particular character of the French woman, and then makes her apologies for a lack of further insight. ‘I’m going to have…
FUTURISTIC TALE (Rebellion) Set in a time after a mythical future Russian revolution, adventurer and rogue Nikolai Dante is one of the most feared men in the land, and that’s just by all the women he inevitably ends up charming into bed. On the way…
With Alex James coming to chat about his past life as a Britpop superstar, we reflect on the bits of Blur that we remember ‘There’s No Other Way’ As much of a Madchester rip-off as it was (those guitar lines ride in the slipstream of The Stone…
22 Jul 2008
With a new Bond movie on the way in the creator’s centenary year, 007 fever is rising. David Pollock flicks through an exhibition celebrating the cover designs of Ian Fleming’s pulp novels With Daniel Craig now installed as an updated, reinvigorated…
17 Jul 2008
POLITICAL NON-FICTION (Granta) Although any balanced reader might browse the political essays and features of left-wing American commentator Barbara Ehrenreich and get a vague sense of agitprop being deployed, perhaps that’s just the author’s bold…
19 Jun 2008
SUPERHERO (DC) In the arena of American superhero comics, Batman and the X-Men’s Wolverine are probably the most over-saturated characters. It can be a minefield trying to guess which titles featuring either character on the cover are actually…
HORROR (Eureka Productions) Graphic novel adaptations of classic works of literature are becoming more popular these days, and American series Graphic Classics pack in more updating for your buck with an anthology format. They’re not quite in the…
22 May 2008
Forget Teddy Sheringham or Craig Brewster. Each would have to play on for almost another 20 years to match the footballing career of Roy Race, who turned out for and then player-managed the famous Melchester Rovers from 1954 to 1993 (with a brief…
ANTHOLOGY (Bad Press) Devised by sometime 2000AD writer Alan Grant, and the artists at Glasgow’s Hope Street Studios (which includes the All-Star Superman team of Jamie Grant – no relation to Alan – and cover artist Frank Quitely), Wasted is the…
8 May 2008
SPY SATIRE (Small Press) You can see the work of Edinburgh cartoonist John Miller on posters and adverts hanging in the city’s Deadhead Comics, but none hint at his proclaimed double life as the template for James Bond, with inspiration imparted to…
FAMILY COMEDY (Bloomsbury) William Sutcliffe, Edinburgh-based spouse to Maggie O’Farrell and schoolmate of Ali G, is still best known for his 1997 coming of age debut Are You Experienced? Eleven years and three more books later, his fifth novel…
10 Apr 2008
DYSTOPIAN SCI-FI (Rebellion) Neither a part of the Hollywood-friendly American comic book market nor as established in the British psyche as he was during the 80s heyday, it’s an oft neglected fact that Judge Dredd has become the focus of one of the…
27 Mar 2008
SURREAL FICTION (Faber) Printed in the author’s native France in 2005 to much acclaim, Voice Over looks like repeating the trick in this new English translation. Certainly, no less an author than Paul Auster has championed the 30-year-old New…
28 Feb 2008
SHORT STORIES (Jonathan Cape) The unheralded winner of last year’s Booker Prize with fourth novel The Gathering, Anne Enright here presents her second collection of short fiction. The first was also her debut publication, 1991’s The Portable Virgin…
INDEPENDENT (Missing Twin Publishing) The modestly home-made comics of Edinburgh cartoonist Malcy Duff are abstract almost to the point of alienation, but there’s something about their cinematic grace and unashamed abstraction which sits comfortably…
14 Feb 2008
CRIME THRILLER (Polygon) As the winner of last year’s Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year, Edinburgh’s Allan Guthrie is right at the forefront of the expanding sub-genre known as Tartan Noir. That Ian Rankin, the godfather of the style…
DVD (PG) 111min (Metrodome) Howard the Duck originally appeared in an issue of a 1973 Marvel comic entitled Adventure Into Fear, and perhaps his greatest moment came when thousands of American citizens actually voted for him in the 1976 US…
17 Jan 2008
SUPERHERO (Marvel) Marvel’s Ultimate line was intended to reinvent the company’s main characters for the 21st century, to drag them out of the hands of continuity-obsessed fanboys for a while and show off how well superhero stories could function as a…
29 Nov 2007
SUPERHERO SCI-FI Silver Surfer: In Thy Name No 1 (Marvel) With extensive work for 2000AD, various licensed and original novels, and his recent Gutsville series for Image already behind him, Simon Spurrier is the hottest young British writer in…
15 Nov 2007
FAMILY SAGA When I Forgot (Portobello) The first novel by young Norwegian filmmaker and journalist Elina Hirvonen is a slim but well-formed volume. At 180 pages it’s a day’s read, although many of the evocative situations Hirvonen conjures will…
HORROR The Thirteenth Floor (Hibernia) The 80s British comic boom is best-remembered these days as the glory days of 2000AD, when such creators as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison came to prominence. Yet, other contemporary comics from the same…
4 Oct 2007
Purported by his own press material to do ‘what Elmore Leonard did for Detroit and Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles’, Michael Harvey is unlikely to join that esteemed noir canon any time soon. Yet, with this brisk and engaging debut thriller, he’s…
20 Sep 2007
In the current Marvel universe, Captain America is dead. Still, that doesn’t stop him being reincarnated when David Morrell – the novelist who created Rambo – comes calling for a scripting job. The majority of this first issue of six is about as…
Purists might be shocked by the news that Dan Dare is to return in a new series written by Preacher’s iconoclastic author Garth Ennis, yet no update could surely go further than Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ Dare , which saw our despairing hero…
6 Sep 2007
SPORTS MEMOIR Certainly among the most quixotic sports memoirs to have been published in recent times, this trip down memory lane from the iconic Geordie darts commentator Sid Waddell is a blessing for fans of the man and the sport (although it’s…
2 Jul 2007
CHICKLIT If ever a book could carry an accusation of being designed to inspire contention, Girls of Riyadh might well be it. A tale of four young and fashionable middle-class Saudi girls who live under the strictures of Islamic tradition, yet who are…
21 May 2007
FANTASY HORROR Created by two of British comics’ brightest new talents, Gutsville No.1 is a steampunk fantasy yarn that has absolutely no truck with even the furthest reaches of possibility. Yet it’s all the better for that, as Simon Spurrier has an…
7 May 2007
SHORT STORIES
26 Mar 2007
MUSIC HISTORY The concept of ‘keeping it real’ is one that has been ever more bastardised by popular music recently, when even the most formulaic and constructed of bands can drop the phrase as some self-imposed token of relevance. Hugh Barker and…
26 Feb 2007
Is it possible, I wonder, to detect a softening of attitude as the years advance for Iain Banks, the one-time enfant terrible of the Scottish literary establishment? Perhaps, but only in the ways which don’t quite seem to matter so much as you get…
29 Jan 2007
Those of us at a certain age might remember the tooth-gnashing wait every Wednesday morning for 2000AD to drop through the letter box. The boys’ adventure comic was first published in February 1977, and the particular pool of creative genius and…
SUPERHERO Having run for the past few years as a fanboy-friendly graveyard for all of Marvel’s most colourful and perhaps least inspiring villains, this first issue of Warren Ellis’ tour of duty as writer promises to make it a title worth…
12 Jan 2007
HORROR DRAMA If anyone, anywhere still finds clowns anything other than deeply sinister, this book is the one to change your mind. Excessively violent and twisted, it’s like some garish cross between The Magic Faraway Tree and Stephen King’s worst…
6 Dec 2006
ADVENTURE TALE Although his previous two Young Bond adventures have been successes in their own right, the franchise’s revival thanks to Casino Royale should ensure that this third adventure by Charlie Fast Show Higson eclipses those predecessors.
11 Nov 2006
SUPERHERO Seemingly an excuse to reel out every other car boot sale bad guy that the archives of DC forgot. A bunch of vaguely uninspiring villains are banded together as the Secret Six by a mysterious power to challenge Lex Luthor’s Society, an army…
SUPERHERO Yet another chapter in DC’s gargantuan Infinite Crisis, this one at least lends a little character work to the usual monolithic superhero dust-ups that usually infest such crossovers. We start off with Superman undergoing a crisis of…
12 Oct 2006
COMEDY DRAMA Judging by the predicaments experienced by the anti-hero of his third novel, Ian Pattison looks to be exorcising his Rab C Nesbitt ghosts. Tucker, a fortysomething one-time screenwriter, currently reading scripts to make a living, lives…
28 Sep 2006
POLITICAL THRILLER Twenty books into his celebrated career, you don’t pick up a John Le Carré novel without knowing what to expect. Doubtless boosted by the recent cinematic success of The Constant Gardener, his new one has it all: ruminations on the…
18 Sep 2006
COMICS As a child brought up on the surreal and sometimes vicious images of British artist Brendan McCarthy, it’s a pleasure to report I don’t feel nearly as damaged as I should. Once a regular on 2000AD - where he forged an ahead-of-its-time…
1 Sep 2006
ADULT SUPERHERO When you see Garth Preacher Ennis’ name at the top of a front cover, you pretty much know what to expect. While this latest series of his is set in a world of superheroes and villains, it’s not all men in tights battling to uphold the…
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