Welcome to Freethinking which will include dvds, rock music, graphic novels, science fiction,horror,etc.
Freethinking supports anything which promotes true equality irrespective of gender, race, culture, sexual orientation, etc.
Caution: contains the occasional rude word, strong views on religion and politics, and will probably upset those of an intolerant disposition.
His cat rescue blog can be found at
http://catrescuesunderland.blogspot.com/
I've recently been getting pains in my shoulders, particularly in the early hours of the morning and mentioned this when I went to see my GP for a regular checkup last Friday. I'd been the previous week to have blood samples taken for testing. My good chlorestorol was very good, my bad chlorestorol was could have have been worse, could have been better but best if it goes down. Everything else was clear. I mentioned that I felt I was SAD, that is suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder as I'd been feeling less chirpy than usual since around the middle of October. I was half-joking but surprisingly Dr Mackrell agreed with and could up the dose of Cipramil if I wanted but as I've already increased this from 10ml to 20ml since my last visit I didn't really want to up it again.
She got me to raise my arms and stand up to no great effect though there was a bit of pain when I bent my arms and raised them up to shoulder height. Her suggestion was that I use one firm pillow instead of two soft ones. I don't have a firm pillow so I just use the one soft and the pain has got worse since I started doing that but it could be coincidence.
I should also go and get an X-ray and she gave me a letter to hand in. There are several clinics and two small hospitals in the area which have X-ray drop-in centres so I could take my pick. Now today, Susan was off driving the charity van into the wilds of Durham which meant I could have the car and decided to kill two birds with one stone. I went to the clinic on the other side of the river for my X-ray, the clinic being not too far from my heart-op recovering old bud Barry (see earlier posts). I didn't have to wait too long for the X-ray where I was told to stop wobbling as I stood with my left side to the machine. I never realised how hard it was to stand still. The second photo was easier as my front was pressed against it. I'll find out the results in about three weeks.
Barry still has a long way to go in his recovery. He has been out of the house but no further than a walk around the block. Sneezing or coughing hurts his healing chest. His ability and willingness to concentrate is quite impaired (probably because he still has the anaesthetic still in his system) and hasn't even checked his email in the 10 days since his release, though his conversation is perfectly lucid and intelligent. I'll probably call round again in another week.
Imagine a blend of Will Eisner, Carl Barks (of Donald Duck fame), Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Alan Moore and you aren't even beginning to approach the genius that was Osamu Tezuka who is one of the great graphic storytellers of the 20th Century. Tezuka created an enormous range of graphic stories (okay, call them comics if you want), enormous in terms of number, tone, and scope, from the most fun to the most adult seriousness, yet almost all with an amazing blend of playfulness and profundity that managed to evoke Tezuka's enormous humanitarian compassion and, perhaps, best exemplified in the 8-volume Buddha sequence which contains themes that can also be found in his Astro Boy (Mighty Atom) stories.
Congratulations to Helen McCarthy and her editors for this lavish informative and beautiful book on the life and work of this wonderful gifted man. It follows his life and work from its beginning to its end, packing in a profusion of illustrations which never quite drown out the text which is sufficient without being either too little or too much. Together they provide a magnificent and deserved tribute to this man and his work.
I particularly liked (everything really) the decade by decade survey of his major works for that period with one page per title. It's particularly useful as there is so much by Tezuka that has still to be published in the West.
Quibbles? Well, a couple but do not let them put you off buying this book. Tezuka re-used a number of characters from book to book and it's right that this should be included but there is just a bit too much by including too many supporting characters that I lost interest in this chapter long before the end. Also it would have been nice to have English translations of the text in original samples for which there are no English language editions. Like I said, quibbles.
This is a terrific book about the genius that was Osamu Tezuka and may well be my favourite book of the year.
This installed easily enough but, following the advice of another reviewer, I entered the full 64-character code to do so and I urge you to do the same. I tried the 'short cut' for an earlier version of this product and ended up in a right mess.
While you can do quite a bit with this piece of software, I wanted to primarily to create a boot disc, transfer files, and to make a copy of my hard disk. This worked quite well apart backing up the hard disk but this was my fault. I hadn't made sure I had enough space on my external hard disk and ended up having to repeat the procedure (which takes a few hours) but was successful.
There are utilities on the disk which I may well make use of at some future date -a file shredder, drive cleanser, clone disk, system cleanup and other stuff I don't understand.
But so far I'm quite happpy in that it's done what I wanted it to do and did so relatively easily and simply. More experienced users will probably get more out of it.
Absolute Death: Neil Gaiman (DC, 2009)
I did wonder just how they would do an Absolute edition 360 pages long, when there have only been two 3-part miniseries which take up half of that at most, featuring the character and written only by Neil Gaiman.
In part, DC cheated by reprinting two stories, which have already been reprinted the Absolute Sandman volumes, featuring Death. But it's only a little cheat as the first story is the introduction of the character to the Sandman mythos and can be considered essential to an Absolute collection. The second story, hmmm -no, that is a cheat.
Then we get to the meat of the book, the two miniseries which are terrific, but then you already knew that as few people are likely to buy this who aren't familiar with the character unless they've got more money than, umm, money.
Next up we have a couple of stories, one from a little seen original Vertigo sampler, and one from a comic I'd never even heard of and, therefore, hadn't read the story before -whoohoo! Last of the stories is from Endless Nights -a definite cheat, though at least that volume hasn't been reprinted in the Absolute Sandman and remains a standalone.
The final 100+ pages are taken up with a miscellany of galleries, scripts with orginal pencil artwork, and sundry bits and pieces of ephemera.
So really, it's pretty much all you ever wanted to know about Death (the Gaiman character) with lots of pretty pictures by some brilliant artists. Despite being a somewhat hotchpotch collection, it's also weird and wonderful and thoroughly brilliant and an essential companion to those Absolute Sandman editions that you and I have occupying pride of place on our bookshelves.
Toshiba PA4153E-1HE0 500GB 2.5" External Black Steel Hard drive
I've got the 500Gb version -actually in practice 465Gb which is fine- and, well, I'm impressed.
First off, it is simplicity itself. You plug it into a USB slot, wait a minute or so (more or less) for your computer to recognise it, then it's ready to go. You can either drag and drop or use backup software for more complicated backups, then do something else while it's copying the files and that is it. Do make sure you use the safely remove hardware button. It's powered from your pc so less clutter of cables. Really, it's just about idiot-proof unless you forget to use the safely remove etc.
It looks good if you like simplicity which I do. So portable you can slip it in your pocket and forget it's there; it's a small featureless (but for the tiny light and small slot) black box with 'Toshiba' printed on the front, about the weight of a Classic Ipod but flatter, wider, and more solid and it comes with a simple black leather case to protect it.
Any quibbles? Only the teensiest. There are two USB leads but one is a backup in case your pc doesn't provide enough power and it's easy to get the two mixed up. It's also easily solved as only one of them will load it up. The lead itself is quite short so less clutter. The lead is short which is bad depending on where your USB slot is. Mine just about stretches from the top of my pc to the slot.
There is a 175 page manual about the size of the thing itself but you only need to read 5 pages (including pictures)as the rest are in other languages and it comes with a PDF file so once it's installed you can chuck the manual away.
Great. Highly recommended. If you need a 500(465)Gb external hard drive, buy this now.
Post Script
The computer stuff came free for review courtesy of Amazon Vine. The books, I bought.
This incredibly neat little device -known as Toshiba 2.5" USB Hard Disk Drive- which is about the same weight as a classic Ipod only flatter and wider, is a 500Gb (465Gb free memory) external hard drive (HDD) which I managed to obtain for review on the Amazon Vine programme and have since reviewed it. It's small attractive in a minimalist way, is powered by the pc, and really easy to use. Absolutely great.
Also received from Amazon Vine is Acronis True Image Home 2010 PC Backup & Recovery which pretty much tells you all you need to know about what it is. I also got the previous edition for review from Vine and couldn't get it working because of problems with the registration code and lack of help from Acronis.
Before installing it, I checked the reviews and noted one which suggested -keying in the 64-digit code rather than the 8-digit which you then email to Acronis and they send you the full one to copy and paste- as it didn't work. This was also what caused me problems the last time. So I copied in the 64-digit code and it worked perfectly and installed easily. As it should as it was Windows 7 ready. Now all I've got to do is try it out. An initial attempt at copying all my mp3s didn't work but there is a lot more to it than that.
I'm still having problems with Windows 7. About 10 minutes after starting it up in a morning it crashes. I then have to switch it off at the mains and wait at least 10 minutes before switching it on again. After that it is fine for the rest of the day. That is unless I install software which requires a reboot in which case the same thing happens. This is annoying but at least I know what I have to do to get it going again: switch off at mains, wait, switch on, ignore the first screen, select the first Windows 7 (I accidentally installed two copies of W7, one on the second hard disk I have), select Install As Normal and not the Check For Problems option and all is usually well.
Despite this, Windows 7 is still my favourite O/S of all the Windows O/S's so far. What you can do with the toolbar to control the open programs is really good. It's also easy to have two open side by side.
I've accepted that I've lost paid for downloaded software most of which I probably won't replace. The one that I will is Slysoft's Any DVD which turns your pc into a multi-region player and I've already downloaded and installed the trial version which works perfectly.
I watch all my DVDs on the pc because of my large flat widescreen (24") and use headphones (on loud) while Susan watches tv in bed in the next room so neither of us disturbs the other. I'm not counting the cries of: "Ian, get me a drink of water!", "Ian, get the cats in!" "Ian, are you sure the doors are locked?" "Ian, I want to talk to you!", "Ian. I'm going to sleep now. Turn off the tv and the lights!" "Ian, it's late, go to bed!"
Now here's an interesting thing. I've recently watched the 1981 slasher and then two weeks later (yesterday to be specific) the remake in heart-stopping (this may be an exaggeration) 3-D. And, just to spoil the ending -of this post, not the movies- I enjoyed them both. Equally? Well, we'll see.
Now a low-budget early 80's slasher is not neccessarily a movie I'd normally be interested in despite my love of horror. However, Stacie Ponder writing on her Final Girl blog (see sidebar) mentioned it en passant in a complimentary manner and provided a link to her earlier review. I checked it out, it sounded fun, so I ordered it from Amazon marketplace for around a fiver and discovered that, gosh, Stacie was right.
It is a low budget movie and that is quite obvious but it is relatively well-made within its limits. It's also not about screaming teens. The set up is this. It's a small mining community and twenty years before the story proper, a mine explosion traps some miners of whom only one survives because he's eaten the others, presumably after they were dead of natural causes. The survivor, Harry Warden, goes on a rampage and kills those responsible for the disaster. He also leaves a warning that if there's ever a Valentine's dance -the disaster happened on, oh you guessed- he'll be back. Despite being incarcerated, there isn't a dance for 20 years when.... Yes, you guessed right again.
Our core characters are TJ (who has just recently returned after being gone for a few years and become a miner again), Axel his best bud (who is also going out with) Sarah (the girl TJ left behind), and sundry other male and female buds also in their mid-twenties who, at various times, end up playing corpses, but then you knew that too.
They may carry pickaxes but Harry has one specially for each of them
Harry Warden (or is it?) despatches various people involved in the dance until it's cancelled so the young people decided to hold a dance in, and you'll never guess, the mine! Oh, you guessed that as well. Needless to say it's pickaxe time and Harry (or is it?) goes to town -well, the mine actually, that was just a figure of speech and you guessed that as well. Bugger!
The gore is fairly tame, though enough to justify the UK 15 rating, and was reputedly trimmed. There is no sex except for an early scene where a woman strips down to her bra and panties but doesn't get involved with hanky panky. I guessed who the killer was about 15 minutes before the end but I'm not going to spoil it for you. And generally the movie plays fair with, in hindsight, several clues as to his/her identity planted. It's not a great movie but I had fun and I'll be watching it again.
Sarah and pickaxe fodder
The remake rings several changes not least by reversing the order of the climactic set piece. After a brief establishing setup, we have the Valentine's party in the mine and Harry Warden (who had earlier survived a disaster, not by cannibalism, but by killing his workmates so they wouldn't use up the air) gets busy slaughtering any teen he can find. Axel, Axel's gf, and Sarah (TJ's gf) escape but leave TJ at Harry's not so tender mercies but he survives and buggers off. It also disposes of the Valentine's Day theme apart from the heart-shaped boxes of chocolates with real hearts in them.
Ten years later, Axel is chief of police, Sarah is his wife, his ex-gf is a slut, and he has a bit on the side. TJ, who now owns the mine following the death of his father, arrives purely to sell the mine. Tensions between Axel and TJ arise as the former thinks the latter is after his wife. Oh yes, and Harry Warden (or is -okay, we've already been there) starts killing people only in a much gorier fashion than the earlier movie but then this is 18 rated. There is also a lot of explicit sex and nudity, but it's all in one scene.
I guessed who the killer was within a few minutes of the start of the 'present-day', though I changed my mind several times backwards and forwards. I wouldn't have been uncertain if I'd been able to figure out one thing which I won't mention.
Despite numerous reviewers on Amazon telling people not to watch it in 3-D because it was crap compared to the cinema, I persevered through the whole thing. I will watch it again sometime but in normal 2-D (a copy of which is on the reverse of the double-sided disc). Although better made, I didn't quite like it as much as the original because neither Axel nor TJ are particularly likeable so you can't really root for either of them.
But still, I had a good time. Thank you Stacie Ponder and you, yes you, go check out her blog.
A good 72mins live CD taken from 3 consecutive sets in November 1966 as the sharp-eyed among you will have spotted. It's a nice live Muddy to add to the collection if only because of the lack of a piano which probably makes it unique for his live shows. Don't why, maybe everyone he liked was sick or on holiday. Whatever, it makes for a different dynamic as he and the band plough through some of his most popular songs. The band -George Smith on harp, Luther 'Georgia Boy' Johnson guitar, Sammy Lawhorn guitar, Mac Arnold bass (the only one I haven't heard of), and Francis Clay on drums -are tight and able.
Nice one.
While I was never a big Motown fan -I only have one 2-CD best of the label in my collection- one of the first vinyl records I bought back in the mid-60's was a 6-track Marvin Gaye e.p. (that's extended play for anyone under forty) containing I can't remember what but I'm damn sure Can I Get A Witness was on it. Indeed it wouldn't surprise me if they were same as the first 6 cuts on this album. On second thoughts, no, I Heard It Through The Grapevine had to be on it and that's 16th here. Or am I getting mixed up with Smoky Robinson and the Miracles? Whatever, Marvin Gaye was one of the best voices on the Tamla Motown label and his early death at the hands of his father a genuine tragedy for music.
Seeing as we're talking about R'n'B in the 60's sense of the phrase, Soul Music on the Stax label was a southern answer to it and nobody did it better than Aretha Franklin. I've got the odd track of hers on my Ipod but this 2-CD best of looks to be (as it hasn't arrive yet) from the track listing to be as good as you can get from this powerful singer.
Hmm, I've just noticed that all three of them have the 60's in common. So you can take the boy out of the 60's but you can't take the 60's out of the boy.
Yes, at the third attempt the poor soul finally made it. He had the operation on Wednesday morning and I went to see him just after lunch on Friday afternoon last week.
It's a bit of a trail through consisting of bus, metro train, and bus but it didn't take as long as I was expecting because I didn't have to wait for the bus or the metro and at the other end the buses to the Freeman Hospital were every 10 minutes and only a minutes walk from the Metro station. But that was during the day. I wouldn't have liked to try it on an evening.
Barry was still in ITU, intensive care, and getting in was like going through customs. Inside I had to shed my jacket and bag,wash my hands and put on a plastic apron before I could see him. And there he was, all wired and tubed up. Apart from the various bits and pieces monitoring his heart, he also had a couple of drips inserted into his arm. Plus a catheter. Having been on the other side of the counter about three years ago when Barry was looking at me all tubed and cathetered up and lying on a bed, I could afford to indulge in some mild schadenfreude at his discomfort. The lucky sod had been unconscious when the catheter was inserted so I told him it was agony when it was removed. This wasn't true, as I admitted, a little later, but I couldn't resist the chance to wind him up.
He was sitting in a chair and in good spirits but obviously weak and hadn't eaten much. Been there, not eaten that. His voice was also low and I had to put my hearing aid in to catch what he was saying. They were generally pleased with Barry's progress and the operation had been relatively straightforward. They'd repaired rather than replaced his heart valve which should be good for another 20 years now instead of the 4 or 5 prior to the op.
I've since heard that his progress has continued to be good. He was due to go home today but was kept in a for another day because of fluid retention. I'll call him on Sunday after he's settled back in at home and arrange to call round soon with some DVDs to stop him getting bored while he's housebound.
Get well soon, mate, we're overdue for a trip to the pub.
We’re talking mid-teens to mid-twenties when I read Cordwainer Smith, maybe from around 1964-1974, maybe a little earlier, maybe a little later. We’re talking about the time when SF was hard to come by compared to today’s embarrassments of riches. We’re talking about the time when I was either at school or a student with little money to build up a meagre SF collection. I read every hardback SF in the library that I could find –the branch library round the corner, the school library which had some SF Book club editions, and late the college library with its small fiction section. I bought American SF magazines picked up cheaply in newsagents and second hand bookshops –Astounding/Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy and its companion magazines Worlds of IF and Worlds of Tomorrow. It’s possible I favoured Galaxy which had a flavour of social SF which made it more accessible and appealing to me. I do remember it often featured stories by Cordwainer Smith with their memorable titles and strange stories that were as memorable as their titles, though I remember most well the surreal Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (published in F&SF) which could have sprung from a painting by Salvador Dali (another early enthusiasm of mine).
Now it’s nearly forty years later and distanced from some of the enthusiasms of youth and have moved some way away, but never out of sight, of Science Fiction. Perhaps, like many others before me, I felt that it’s SF which has left me and not the other way around as when in the mid-60’s a new generation of writers with better skills began to displace the old guard which looked faded and dusty rather like EE Doc Smith did to me back then. But, just recently I’ve felt an urge to return to the SF of my youth, to reinvestigate it, to see if it could still charm me, or to see if I really had moved out of its neighbourhood.
A newly published attractive set of volumes containing the complete short fiction (and much more, and with two more volumes yet to come) of Roger Zelazny had just appeared from NESFA Press and I bought all four from Amazon.com and I’ve just finished reading the first. An impulse buy, a 900 page collection of Henry Kuttner & CL Moore of which I’m currently 200 pages in. Robert E Howard’s The Complete Chronicles of Conan, the stories in their original form before Carter & De Camp buggered about with them has been sitting on my shelf for over a year and soon to be joined by a companion volume of Howard’s other fantasy heroes.
And then there are NESFA Press’s two volumes of the complete SF of Cordwainer Smith: The Rediscovery Of Man (all his short stories) and Norstrilia (his only novel). Originally published by NESFA in the 90’s, they’ve been kept in print in these solid editions ever since and the Science Fiction world should be suitably grateful.
We all know that Cordwainer Smith was really Paul Linebarger, a diplomat and expert in Far Eastern affairs, a man with important political connections, who died at the terribly early age of 53 when he was probably coming into his prime as a writer and would, no doubt have otherwise delighted us for many years to come. He had a new cycle of stories already planned.
And I think I’ve answered the unwritten question: do I enjoy his stories as much as I did when I was young? Yes, yes, yes. Perhaps I appreciate them even more.
Almost all the stories share the same timeline, albeit one spanning thousands of years and here they are published according to their internal chronology, rather than their publication date, in order to convey a coherence which otherwise might be lacking. The title The Rediscovery of Man refers to a period when the Instrumentality, the rulers of humanity, have allowed some danger back into the lives of the cocooned conditioned humanity. Norstrilia the novel is chronologically towards the end of the era and should be read after the stories as characters from some of them are either referred to or appear.
What is startling and so good about these tales is that they are not written from a conventional perspective. It is as if they were written in the future when their concerns are different from ours, when humanity is not quite as it has been. The narrator knows the end of the tale and often cheerfully informs us, the reader, of it and allows the story to proceed matter of factly to its inevitable end. We are presented with a story that is known to those of its time but are privileged to learn the secrets behind the story, the reality behind the myth, the final true fates of its protagonists.
So welcome to the future of the scanners and pinlighters; the Underpeople and their heroes D’Joan (whose story echoes that of Joan of Arc), T’Ruth the strange turtle girl who helped Casher O’Neil take back his stolen world, and C’Mell who saved the boy who bought the Earth; the return of pain and danger to Man; the secrets of the planet Shayol and Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons; and wonders more strange than anyone could have imagined except Paul ‘Cordwainer Smith’ Linebarger, SF’s best kept secret.
I miss the days when there were only typewriters and you had to re-type everything to make changes.
I miss the days when computers were the size of a room and you only saw them on tv.
I miss the days before central heating when ice froze on the inside of my bedroom window and the toilet was outside in the yard and we used torn-up newspapers to wipe our bottoms.
I miss the days when there weren't any Indian takeaways and we didn't know what a pizza was and they said that cats were used in Chinese restaurants and we ate good wholesome British food.
I miss the days when everyone caught hooping cough and measles and chickpox and german measles.
I miss the days when pop music cost a lot and a long playing record was a rare treat the sort you got for christmas even if it wasn’t very good anyway and only lasted thirty minutes if you were lucky.
I miss the days when the love that dare not speak its name didn’t speak its name unless it wanted to end up in prison.
I miss the days when an examination sorted us children into sheep and goats.
I miss the days when my aunt said wasn't it terrible about the Jews in Nazi Germany but mind you they did bring it on themselves.
I miss the days when everyone smoked like chimneys and didn’t worry about it and the upstairs on buses had their own cloud layer.
I miss the days when you didn’t see black faces and when you did you said look there’s a nigger and there was nothing wrong with that.
I miss the days when a woman's place was in the home and she didn’t complain about it.
I miss the days when I didn’t know how to make a cup of coffee because it wasn't expected of me and no-one thought to show me how.
I miss the days when vegetarians were considered to be eccentric or worse.
I miss the days when a half-caste child was a shameful thing.
I miss the days when there were only two channels on tv and both of them were in black and white and the telly broke down regularly.
I miss the days when you didn't neuter your cat you just drowned the kittens.
But when it all comes down what I enjoy the most in music is a gutsy hard blues-rock electric guitar solo and gutsy hard blues-rock electric guitar solos don't come much better than those on the double-CD by Gary Moore. There's nothing subtle about this CD, this is in your face, balls against the wall, amp turned up to eleven, blues and blues-rock. The first CD is a collection of the best from his previous blues albums.The second is a collection of previously unreleased live performances.
On both CDs are contributions by his Blues idols, the late Albert Collins,BB King, and his absolute total favourite about whom he wrote a song King of the Blues (which I bet he never plays within the hearing of BB), ladeez an' gemmun, the late great Albert King. These total nine tracks and are among the best in the set as Moore happily gives his heroes room to strut their stuff.
Moore can play it quiet which he does from time to time and surprisingly effectively too -The Thrill Is Gone with BB King is especially good. His own song Still Got The Blues is achingly wistful (by Blues standards at any rate). It's also a measure of his songwriting in that his own , like the one just mentioned,stand up to the covers he plays. His voice is an effective blues voice and better than you might expect.
It's been a few years since I've listed to Gary Moore and I'd forgotten just how good this man is. It won't happen again, not now I've this set to listen to. Big big fun.
POST SCRIPT
I was playing the live CD while writing the above and realised I liked it so much I checked out his more recent releases on the excellent All-Music Guide (AMG) and went and ordered two of his more recent blues albums for prices around four quid.
I'm not a huge reggae fan, I'm not even a big one, but I do like the occasional fix. Just now and again, you understand. Truth be told, I prefer the ska rhythm, but I like reggae enough to buy a compilation now and again and I've ended up with a small but varied collection of ska and reggae, and pretty much all from the Trojan label. In fact if I've any on any other label I'd be surprised.
This collection dates from the second half of 1968. The original version was a cheapo collection of 12 singles released during that period and proved so popular they released a total of vinyl albums in the series. I missed it at the time preferring samples such as The Rock Machine Turns You On and probably wouldn't have noticed it if it had been thrust in front of my face. Rock, at the time, was God.
It's since been recycled in various versions until this one which amps up the number of tracks to 48 by including a load of B-sides and other singles from the same period. The original (and this extended edition is no different in tone) was a determinedly popularist piece aimed at the white audience whose knowledge of Jamaican music was probably restricted to Millie's My Boy Lollipop and, as such, contains a fair quota of highly accessible covers. Try these: Kansas City, Spanish Harlem, Ob-la-di Ob-la-da (the only version of this horrendous song I've not hated, up to and including the Beatles original -hi, Ian P!), Angel of the Morning, Soul Limbo, (Booker T & the MGs, thankyouverrymuch), Jerry Goldsmith's In Like Flint (hi Barry!), and a load more including bizarrely I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman.
Curiously, most of the artists are people I've never heard of, though this is no reflection of the quality of the music. Indeed the most famous names are the producers like Lee Perry, Bunny Lee, and Byron Lee (producing himself with the Dragonaires).
This is very lightweight early reggae and all the better for it. Great fun, and rounded off with an informative booklet. There's another deluxe volume which is going on my Amazon wish list for another time.
I’ve been reading –well, no, not reading, re-reading- quite a few Alan Moore graphic novels recently for the simple reason I’ve been buying them in attractive and expensive hardback editions. I have all the original comics and in some case trade paperbacks, but they are just so good it’s nice to have them on good quality paper, sometimes with enlarged artwork and occasionally re-coloured. The latest book to arrive is volume 1 of Tom Strong the Deluxe edition from America’s Best Comics, an imprint of Wildstorm Comics which is now an imprint of the mighty DC.
And thereby hangs a tale.
Some time ago, Moore fell out with DC over, we were informed at the time (though it’s widely believed there were other reasons), there imposition of the ‘For Mature Readers’ tag, and he vowed never to work for them again. For several years, Moore worked on his own projects including, with Eddie Campbell, From Hell from Tundra Press and, with his future wife Melinda Gebbie, on Lost Girls. He also had to earn a crust and did a fair amount of work-for-hire for Image and the independent imprint, which was distributed by Image, Wildstorm. Most of his work for hire stuff was, while competent superhero stuff, relatively minor Moore. The one exception being his re-working of the Superman-clone Supreme into a genuine riff on Superman in a seemingly sincere homage to the character.
Moore then struck a deal with Wildstorm to publish America’s Best Comics, his own imprint and he would write –and this news frankly staggered comics fans- four monthly titles. Needless to say it wasn’t long before he fell behind. But then, if memory serves me correctly, almost before ABC were published, the owner of Wildstorm sold it to DC though it was nominally independent of this. Moore only continued on the understanding that he would have nothing to do with DC and because it would have resulted in financial hardship for the artists who had contracted to work with him. And, for longer than most people expected, this worked and it resulted in Moore producing some of his best work for years.
The titles were: Tom Strong Promethea Top Ten and Tomorrow Stories the anthology title which was the weakest of four being a combination of homage (Greyshirt, a Spirit clone), humour (an absurd child genius), and satire (The First American, which was painfully unfunny), and a Plastic Man figure made of sentient ink
What I haven’t mentioned so far is that all these stories are set in the same ABC universe –I’ve already mentioned that the final issues of Promethea and Tom Strong are linked- and there are references throughout all of them to characters or events from other titles.
Promethea turned out to be the most ambitious, successful and beautifully illustrated of the four thanks to the amazing talents of JH Williams III. Significantly it’s the only one to have received the Absolute treatment (see my review on Amazon for details). But the other titles weren’t peanuts either.
Top Ten is, on one level at least, an amazing job. Set in a city where everyone has either super powers or enhancements to simulate them (either scientific or magical), where aliens and travellers from other worlds, dimensions, parallel universes are regular visitors, where sentient robots (‘clickers’) are the despised underclass, the focus is on an elite group of police persons. Moore managed to juggle all this, a large squad of key characters, subplots and a central plot in a marvellous display of invention and wit. It didn’t last a dozen issues which is hardly surprising because it must have taken an enormous amount of work. It also spawned a prequel in the form of an original graphic novel The 49'ers.
But, Promethea aside, it was Tom Strong which proved to be the most endurable of the ABC titles. It lasted as long as Promethea (indeed the final issues are closely linked) and even had a lesser spin-off anthology title, Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales, written by Moore plus diverse hands which, for a while, alternated with the main title (later issues themselves written by others) on a bi-monthly schedule.
Tom Strong was Moore’s riff on the superman, but not Superman, derived more from the Philip Wylie figure in the novel Gladiator. He does have considerable strength, an extremely high intelligence, and a high resistance to physical damage but he is very human. Tom Strong is a humane celebration of all that is fun in superhero comics which ranges from domestic crises, time travel, parallel worlds, supervillains, space travel, Nazis and more. Tom is 99 years old as the series opens and the stories often have flashbacks to earlier adventures. Tom always tries to resolve conflicts without violence and by using reason. His wife is black (though this is never an issue except on one occasion), indeed there is a great deal of implicit social commentary which is always there either as text or subtext resulting in this being the most human of superhero stories. I the course of the series, Moore uses just about all the tropes of the superhero which have been used during the genre’s history by the uses of flashbacks to incidents in Tom’s earlier life which are often illustrated by different artists. There is a wonderful parody (see below) of men’s magazines on the cover of the issue where Tom encounters Ingrid Weiss –a sexy Nazi superhuman- in Berlin as the Russian attack. While the super hero genre is often parodied in these pages it is done with affection.
There’s an elephant in the living room and I’ve no doubt that anyone aware of the ABC line (hello, Ian P) has already spotted it.
The first title to be actually published under the ABC imprint was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This was to outlast the imprint itself and eventually as, unlike the other titles, it was owned by Moore and artist Kevin O’Neill, the latest volume is being published by the independent Top Cow and not Wildstorm/DC.
Probably the most commercially successful (it spawned a widely disliked –though I’m quite fond of it- movie with Sean Connery), it takes the premise that all fictional (including books, comics, tv and cinema) characters exist in the same universe. This ultimately makes for an incredibly dense reading experience as you try and catch all the references. Indeed there have been three professionally published books by Jess Nevins devoted to explaining them. They are a wonderful read but I’m not prepared to tackle them in an essay just yet.
While writing this relatively brief piece, it's occurred to me that Moore might be more interestingly examined by looking at the different themes or types of graphic stories he's written to uncover underlying links between otherwise disparate title such as that one above and, perhaps, Lost Girls.
There are bands and singers that you know you like but never get round to buying any of their records. Until you do and then you wonder why you didn't do it long ago. The Levellers are one such. I've just picked up One Way Of Life: The Best of the Levellers and (short title) Headlights, a live album and they are both fucking great.
What I like about the band is their sheer intensity, and the far-left political and social committment inherent in almost all of their songs. Lyrically they stand firmly in the long tradition of British left-wing folk music. Their interpretation of it is, however, firmly in the rock camp (albeit sometimes veering in the direction of folk-rock) with added fiddle. Everything is played and sung with utmost sincerity and, as I said, intensity to produce stomping intelligent anthemic rock/folk-rock, whatever. The live album is playing as I'm typing this and I keeping getting urge to jump up and punch my fist in the air as I wordlessly roar approval. Which is quite inappropriate for a 61 year old retired librarian, but there you go, that's the effect they have on me.
