Heartstone

Heartstone is the fifth of C.J. Sansom's Tudor mysteries featuring the hunchback lawyer Shardlake. In previous books he'd been tasked with dangerous mysteries with political ramifications by two of the most powerful men in Tudor England - the doomed Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer. In this book he primarily sets out to do a favour for the Queen (Catherine Parr) by looking into a legal matter connected to one of the Queen's old servants. Along the way he resolves to look into another mystery involving a character introduced in the last book involving the woman's commitment to an insane asylum (Bedlam). Add to that yet another mystery connected to his new house steward. All three seem to present no danger to himself but Shardlake soon discovers that things aren't what they seem. The book proclaims on the cover 'Shardlake goes to war', the backdrop to the story being the threatened invasion by the French in 1545 after the King's foolish attempts to invade France. I used to have a bit of a thing for the Mary Rose, having been involved with a school project regarding it and watching the raising of the ship on tv in the early 80s. I used to have dreams about being a soldier on that ship when it went down. The scenes aboard the Mary Rose are very striking, haunting and sad. Sansom does a good job of portraying the futility of war without being too preachy or trite. I worried a little early on that the writer seemed to be dwelling on too many characters who had little or no connection to Shardlake's mysteries but his reason for doing so pays off in the end.

Blue Meanie

It's always a bit odd having a bird look directly at you. You wonder what they are thinking about. This one looks like it has 'got the hump' with us. Debbie thinks he looks fierce - mean even. Maybe he wants to know why we haven't done anything about that sparrowhawk who keeps trying to brain himself against our windows. The sparrowhawk dived into our front window last week. He'd already gifted us a sparrowhawk print on our back patio windows last year.

Kick-Ass

Got a copy of the Kick-Ass graphic novel for Christmas. I love this book. Ok I've already read it back on its original comic run beginning in 2008 but it's great to have all the issues collected together. Now if you watched the movie first (which I also adore), well I'm sorry to tell you that you made a big mistake. Reading the comic book after the movie means you are going to encounter all the 'feel good' changes that the movie introduced first and then get them taken away by the book. You aren't going to like it. That's why those changes were added - to make you 'feel good'. You'll also have all the explosive power of all the splash page issue endings completely defused by having watched them all at once in the movie. So if you just got hold of the DVD and you missed the movie, do yourself a favour and file it until you've read the 8 issues in this collection. They didn't outsell Spider-man for nothing. I think you'll find you love both comic and movie better if you do it this way.
Sometimes everything just comes together to make something special. Mark Millar's script is funny, dark and shocking. John Romita, Jr's art is just perfect. It's strange to say that because I'm not usually a fan of his work. His style has certainly evolved over the years from his early imitation of his dad's work to today's distinctive style. And he does have a distinctive style - you never have to check the credits to recognise his work. His big strength has always been the way he gets the action across rather than on the prettiness of his line work but it's clear something about his style just suits this book. Also the colouring from Dean White should not be underestimated. My copy has a lot of bonus material featuring Hit Girl which show some comparisons of JR Junior's covers inked and then coloured that really emphasise how good Dean White's colours are.
Volume 2 is now underway. It's still very cool though the wait between issue one and two has been a bit torturous.

Slow Storm

Although Danica Novgorodoff's Slow Storm is a good 170+ pages in length the sparsity of the written narrative makes this book a short one sitting read. It's sort of a character piece about a Mexican illegal immigrant, Rafi, and Ursa, a somewhat unloved female firefighter who spends most of her working hours fighting a sometimes vindictive sibling rivalry with her brother and fending off the unwanted advances of another of her workmates. Their brief connection occurs at a time of emotional crisis when Ursa is at breaking point and Rafi is caught in the fallout. It sort of works with some quite poignant scenes though the best thing about the book is the quality of the artwork. The character linework can look a bit too simplistic but taken as a whole it does succeed in both telling the story and painting the emotional landscape. The literal landscapes of Kentucky and its sky and weather painted in startling watercolour washes are superb. Combining storms and weather with mental turmoil is a much used device but the art is good enough to break through any possible triteness. Although on the surface very little is happening there is a lot going on below the surface. Relationships, family, religion, homesickness, dreams, resentment, guilt, wonder, love, hope, freedom - the list goes on. Well worth a look.

American Vampire

Remember when vampires were still scary? Perhaps you don't. I should break out my copy of Salem's Lot to remind myself that these bloodsuckers used to be more than just pale possible boyfriends in the latest teen/vamp/rom. Stephen King is one half of the writing talent on duty for this tale of mostly very bad vampires in the wild west of the late 1800s and the movie making era of the 1920s. King's introduction to the book has a lot more to say about the current state of vampire fiction and he doesn't mince words. This is also the first time King has written for comics. I know many of his stories have have been adapted for the genre but always by usually established comic book writers. This time he does it himself, which means basically writing the dialogue (no problem there) and, in place of the narrative, describing the contents and layout of the panels so the artist knows what to draw. He does a pretty good job barring a little muddiness in the way the supporting cast find their places in the opening part of the story. This book holds the origin story of our hero Skinner Sweet as told by King. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word hero as this guy was a very bad man even before he became the first American vampire. Sweet is a good creation, a vampire who revels in his new powers, whose love interest doesn't get beyond a craving for blood and candy. He's brash, violent, cunning and relentless. Alongside King's story in each issue is a later story set in Los Angeles about an aspiring young actress doing extras work for silent movies, who runs afoul of a nest of old European vampires who have an unstable truce with the powerful new vamp on the block, Skinner Sweet. This story is ably written by series creator Scott Snyder. Rafael Albuquerque does the artistic honours brilliantly in both arcs which helps the stories stand together. Under both stories is a suggestion of a subtext about America and its emerging place amongst the old world order. The book features the first 5 issues and also includes an afterword by Scott Snyder, variant covers by various artists, samples of script instructions by King and Snyder and early concept art. Altogether a nice piece of work.

The Nobody

Canadian writer/artist Jeff Lemire brings H.G. Wells' classic psychological sci-fi tale The Invisible Man forward in time a hundred years to 1994 in three acts. Lemire's spare narrative and simple black and white artwork (sorry black, white & icy blue tint) are well suited to the subtle storytelling of The Nobody. The original novella put forward several philosophical theories about what would happen to a man freed of the moral constraints of society by the escape route of invisibility. J.R.R. Tolkien was also fascinated by such ideas and used them in his stories about a magical ring that could make the wearer invisible. Lemire's take on the story is somewhat more subtle, drawing on small town paranoia, as did Wells, of the mysterious stranger and the irony of an invisible man who is quite the largest and most visible event to visit the place, but adding little alternative perspectives with protagonist and satellite characters , most notably Vickie, vying for their visibility in society. The way familiarity makes people or things fade from our attention is another of the clever observations subtly suggested, usually with hardly any scripted direction beyond the panels of artwork. There's plenty of space in the telling of the story for the reader to expand their own thought on the subject. Just goes to show that you don't need to fill the page with words to tell an intelligent and subtly poignant tale.

Dunnocks on the Run

If in a hundred years in the deep of winter there are still robins & dunnocks still in England, I'm sure there will be somebody looking into their gardens and feeling sorry for the poor harried dunnock, bravely scurrying about on the hard ground and the frozen twig from that most autocratic garden bird - the robin.