Thursday, October 8, 2009

FFB: Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks

"Behind every great fortune there is a great crime"
(Italian proverb)

I have been meaning to write about Hicksville as a friday forgotten book for a while.

It is a graphic novel that tells the story of:
"World-famous cartoonist Dick Burger has earned millions and become the most powerful man in the comics industry in the few short years since the publication of his first Captain Tomorrow graphic novel. But behind this rapid rise to success there lies a dark and terrible secret, as biographer Leonard Batts discovers when he visits Burger's hometown in remote New Zealand. For Hicksville is no ordinary small town. In Hicksville sheep-farmers and fishermen argue the relative merits of early newspaper strips, while in the local bookshop and lending library obscure Mongolian minicomics share the shelves with a complete run of Action Comics. But why does everyone there seem to hate Dick Burger? And what is the secret of Kupe's Lighthouse? Weaving together real and imagined histories of the much-maligned medium of comics and the often marginalised country of New Zealand, Hicksville is a moving comment on art, business and the importance of turangawaewae - finding a place to stand... " (descrpition from the Hickville Website)

I discovered the book via the WEF (The Warren Ellis Forum) back around the turn of the century. Old Man Ellis was one of the many champions of the book, and so am I. Not only is it an entertaining and engaging, but it made me think about the culture that sorrounds comics and what role I as a reader and fan play in that culture. The book is very much a reaction to the celebrity of comic creators and the fascism of fanboys. It's a great story and well worth spending an afternoon with. The TPB looks to be currently out of print, but your local comic shop should have copies. A new edition has been promised for the near future. I should also mention the follow up series Atlas (which has had all of three issues in the span of almost a decade), which is a related book (sorry it's been so long since I read the last issue that I really don't remember how it is related)

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

It is October again, and I was thinki...

It is October again, and I was thinking back a couple of years when I used to have a October writing project over on my mog com page. Mog is a music blogging site that I participated in for three years before calling it quits. I realize that a lot of the people that read this blog didn't get to see those posts, and some of you might be interested in looking at some of them.

The story is that I was on the train from Stockholm to Uddevalla in September of 2006. I was new to mog and wanted to do something in the coming month to celebrate my favorite month and one of my favorite types of music, Horror Punk.

anyway, below is a set of links to my entries from that month.

thought's, comments, zombie fighting tips?

Friday, October 2, 2009

FFB: Torso by

FFB: Torso by Brian Michael Bendis

It's good to note that there is a resurgence in interest in Crime Comics these days. DC comics has just announced that Megan Abbott will be joining Ian Rankin and Jason Starr among others in writing crime graphic novels. I have sort of have been waitng for this for the last 10 years, back when I discovered to crime comics underground and the work of Brian Michael Bendis. Bendis is best known these days as one of the main writers at Marvel comics, having relaunched Spiderman for the company several years back. Prior to that he just a little guy making indie comics in black and white. His early work was mainly in the crime comic world, with AKA Goldfish and Jinx-- and then came todays forgotten friday book, Torso.

From Wikipedia:

Torso tells the story of the real life "Torso Murderer", a serial killer
who was active during 1934 to 1938. He received his nickname because he
left only the torsos of his victims. Without fingerprints or dental
records, these victims were very difficult to identify in a time before
DNA testing. The investigator on the case was Eliot Ness, Cleveland Safety Director and former head of the Untouchables.

I discovered the book on the recommendation of the owner of my local comic shop The Vault of Midnight. I liked the combination of the historical fact and the drama that Bendis creates to drive the story along and for my money in those early days Bendis had some of the best dialog in the comics world. It's available in TPB (Trade Paperback) and well worth checking out.

Sept reads

Mark it now! the September reads edition of the Restless Kind Blog

Blood is a Rover by James Ellroy
Tarot Card Book Mark: Gold
MARK It NOW: Ellroy's Back. If you are a fan, you've already started to dig this one, if not-- start with the LA Quartet and work your way to this one. Anything he's written after 1985 is well worth checking out.

Jack Wakes Up by Seth Harwood
Tarot Card Book Mark: The Purse or Bag
Originally a podcast novel, Jack Wakes Up is Harwoods first published novel. This is a solid first novel, with some interesting ideas. Jack Palms is a recovering adict who started in one action flick but nothing more. He's the guy who had all the lines, and now finds himself in a situation where he is called on to do for real what he did in the movie. A strip club, eastern European gangsters, a local drug dealer and a cop who seems to owe Jack one fill out the story, as Jack tries to figure out who killed an old buddy of his. All of this leads to a lot of expected places, and a few unexpected. I liked the growing friendship between Jack and the guys that he is working with that was a fun touch that and their real identies were played out nicly, a little bit at a time. Harwood shows promise here but this is obviously a first novel. I found it confusing in a few places, and feel like the story could have been told in somewhere around 50 less pages. I do how ever encourage people to check the book out and will give Harwood's next book a read.

Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott
Tarot Card Book Mark: Falling

The Trunk Murders come alive. This book put me in mind of the books I have read by Pulp master David Goodis. The story is simple on it's face, but underneath it's a twisting mass of desires, lusts, desperation and loss of faith. The story is a riff on the infamous Trunk Murders of the 1930s, with a twist. It's the story of a woman who finds herself abandoned in a world that she is not ready to negotiate and how she gets sucked down into a life of compromise and a downward spiral of civility. It's a character driven book, the plot is there -- but it's not what drives the story. Overall a solid read that I suspect will be well worth revisiting.

Officer down by Theresa Schwegel

Tarot Card Book Mark: Playing Cards

Windy City Police story, an officer shoots her partner. Wasn't that the premise of the 80s show Midnight Caller--- in part at least. I liked it enough that I plan to read the follow up Probable Cause.

First Quarry by Max Allan Collins
Tarot Card Book Mark:Drowning
Hard Case Crime book for the month
I haven't been the biggest fan of Collins in the past, but I really enjoyed this quick and fun novel. Quarry is a Nam' vet who with nothing else to do becomes a hitman. This is the story of his first assignment. Sent to Iowa to wack a college professor, he quickly finds himself in the middle of a nasty domestic situation or two. Both complicate his job and send him off on side adventures. Fast and fun, the book never gets bogged down with extraneous plot or subplots. The writing is crisp and drives the story along at a solid tempo. all in all a great little dervision, and I look forward to reading more of the Quarry books.

Parker: The Hunter (Graphic Novel)
Adaption by Darwyn Cooke
Donald Westlake book for the month-- ok sort of.
A pretty straightforward adaptation of The Hunter, this beautiful graphic novel evokes the best parts of the first of Stark's Parker novels. I have to admit that The Hunter is the least favorite of the Parker books I have read, as it's more a revenge story than a heist story. I really liked revisiting the first of the Parker story in this format, I liked the art and I like the project of adapting all of the Stark books as graphic novels.

I also read Cat Burglar Black by Richard Sala this month, a nice compact little graphic novel that ended with the promise of more to come.

thought's, comments, spare gold medal paperbacks?

Note:
Tarot Card Book Marks? I have a really lame deck of Tarot cards that I pulled off a free cart at the Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library sale a couple of months back, and I started using them as book marks for giggles mostly. I just pull a card at random from the deck, make note of it, and when I am done it goes in the discard pile. Sometimes the card ends up to have a relation to the book in questions, sometimes not.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

A couple of things:

1) had a great time at Aunt Agatha's author signing for Megan Abbott, Theresa Schwegel and Tasha Alexander last night. All three were fun, bright and engaging. I have added a link for Aunt Agatha's over on the right hand side, check them out.

2) I have played around with the colors on my blog site, just changing things up. Let me know if you like it, don't like it, or what hurts your eyes.

3) I will be on vacation for the week, so everyone play nice and I will be back on the other side.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Trouser Press Record Guide

Friday Forgotten Books: The Trouser Press Record Guide by Ira A. Robbins (Editor)

I'm a sucker for a good guide book/ Reference volume. I have owned many over the years covering many areas of pop culture: Film, Books, Writers, and of course Music. I think my first guide book was a brick sized video guide that I bought sometime in the mid 80s on vacation.

Today's forgotten book is one that I consider to be one of the best ever published, The Trouser Press Record Guide: The Ultimate Guide to Alternative Music. The guide was an outgrowth of the Trouser Press Magazine which covered underground and alternative music from the early 70's to the early 80's, which as we all know was a great era for that kind of music.

I picked up my first copy of their guide book (a 4th edition pictured above) in the early 90s at Tower Records in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was drawn to it because it had entries on a lot of the bands who were on the soundtrack for the film Dudes. I had been searching for many of them for years and the inclusion in the guide made tracking down their records easier. It was from the guide that I learned of not only when and by which label they had released their records, but often times the fact that members of various bands had new projects or older projects that I should check out.

Over the years I turned again and again to the guide as a resource for information on bands, scenes and styles that I was interested in. When I discovered the band Jet Black Berries on the soundtrack for The Return of the Living Dead, it was my trusty copy of the Trouser Press that I turned to, and discovered their previous incarnation as New Math, and a bit about their history. This discovery would later play a role in my adventures as a record label owner when we reissued the music of New Math.

Last weekend I had a couple of people over, for drinks and music. I had asked people to bring vinyl singles, 45s, 7"s and what ever. I had pulled my copies of the Trouser Press (I have a first edition that I picked up at a Friends of the Library sale years ago) so that people could look up bands that I was playing that they may have never heard of. When I handed the book to one of my friends she quickly became adsorbed in looking up obscure bands that she recalled from her youth, and was amazed to find not only the bands she was looking for, but information on connected bands.

The problem with many of these guide books has been that they don't tend to age well. They are only as current as the day they roll off the presses and it is impossible to include everything. However, The Trouser Press, in all of it's incarnations (there was a 90s edition that I had and sold off years ago) has held fast as a document of not only the underground music of it's time, but of what an ideal guide book should be.

Of course you can check out the Trouser Press on line HERE, there are the entries from the past editions, an FAQ about the Trouser Press and a message board.

more Friday Forgotten Books can be found at Patti Abbott's Blog Here

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Unturning the Stone

For the last week or so I have been checking out the TV adaptions of Robert Parker's Jesse Stone novels. I have found them to be moody, engaging, and well produced. Tom Selleck shows restraint and professionalism as a small town police chief who is imperfect but doing his best to do his job and live his life. It is strange to see Selleck playing Stone after having recently revisited Magnum PI on DVD. Where Magnum was a fun pulpy romp, the issues and gravity of the Stone story lines tend more to abuse, small town power and the limits placed on those who enforce the laws in those communities. The setting for these films is breath taking and like any great noir plays as much a role as the characters who inhabit the landscape.

I have so far watched Stone Cold and Death in Paradise, and enjoyed both. I look forward to viewing the rest.

Filmography from Wiki

1. Stone Cold (20 February 2005)
2. Jesse Stone: Night Passage (15 January 2006) a prequel to Stone Cold
3. Jesse Stone: Death In Paradise (30 April 2006)
4. Jesse Stone: Sea Change (22 May 2007)
5. Jesse Stone: Thin Ice (1 March 2009)
6. Jesse Stone: No Remorse (2009)
7. Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost (2010)

The Restless Kind