Comics - Read
READ covers fiction, fanzines, zines with no fans except for us, websites, blogs, magazines, artist's books and other independent releases. Chances are, if it's been published then we know about it and chances are, if it's not in ThreeThousand, then we didn't like it. READ is for people who were born with ink in their veins and a fat balding critic on their shoulder. READ has also created more best-sellers than Oprah's Book Club and more wannabe to be writers than Hunter S Thompson.
Haunt
My best friend Neil and I went to see Spawn at Greater Union when I was a kid. He took LSD. I couldn't understand a word he said. I'm not sure what happened to Neil but one thing's for certain, that movie was a big deal for Todd McFarlane and that Mexican actor who played Luigi in the Super Mario Brothers movie.
Monster Men: Bureiko Lullaby
Monster Men is Japanese manga gone septic. Sex with foetuses still in their wombs. Nun rape. A mutated sperm who has daddy issues. Takeshi Nemoto's Monster Men: Bureiko Lullaby, is a squalid cartoon collection, finally translated into English.
The book's central tale takes in the life of a transvestite sperm who, after being ejaculated to life by a masturbating sailor off the deck of a ship into the nuclear burn of an A-bomb test, embarks on a Henry Miller-esque voyage of discovery.
Watchmen
Like the Beatles were to rock ‘n' roll, Alan Moore is to superhero comics. The Pom who blew the lid off, who started it and ended it.
And Watchmen is both the beginning and the end of the superhero genre in comic books. It represents the stillborn renewal and maturing of the genre, as well as calling into question the motivations and proclivities of all previous superhero activity.
Bat-Manga: The secret history of Batman in Japan
Since first appearing in 1939, the Batman franchise has been reinvented on a regular basis. Over the last 70 years we've had camp Batman, grumpy Batman, depressed Batman and countless variations on those basic themes. Oh, and then there was the short-lived Japanese Batman.
Back in the ‘60s when Adam West was hamming it up for TV cameras, a Japanese company licensed the rights and created their own comic book.
Tango8: Love and Food
In the same way that Sesame Street trains kids to watch TV, MAD Magazine trained me to read comics: get a few quick jokes then move on. Other than Mandy Ord's excellent Rooftops I've never read a graphic novel in my life. Really. If I lived in Japan and had to read manga novels I'd kill myself (possibly in a Japanesy way like dressing up as a cutsy tear drop character then knifing kids coming out of a baseball game before running flat chat into an oncoming fugu).
The Walking Dead
Here's something that annoys me about interesting stuff: as soon as it gets juicy, it's all over. This truth I apply across the board to relationships, independent publishing, acne, everything. But especially to zombie movies. So many questions are still left unanswered in this, the greatest of genres.
Wooster Comix
Anyone who saw the amazing milk crate man perched near Richmond station will be familiar with the Wooster Collective.
Wooster celebrates ephemeral street art from around the globe, and they’ve recently released the product of their first foray into the comic world, Wooster Comix.
Some time last year, Wooster asked their favourite artists to create a set of narratives based on the characters and street iconography of their work.
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