The Outcast! In two parts, part one

I finished up on the third volume of Outcast just in time to watch the first episode of the tv adap.
I thought I'd review the books BEFORE watching though.

Before I get started, I may have to admit something. I have not read The Walking Dead. I've watched most of it, but I haven't read a single issue. Which seems a bit ridiculous. I do know that Robert Kirkman, responsible for both TWD and Outcast is considered to be a great, but so far, I'm not feeling it.

Kyle Barnes is living a shitty little life in a shitty little town, where everyone thinks he's a shitty guy. Well, everyone except his foster sister. They think he's a shitty guy because they all think he beat the crap out of his wife and young daughter. Except he didn't. And they think that he beat and hospitalised his mother as a child because she was abusive. But she wasn't, and he didn't. Somehow Kyle is a magnet for demonic possession. Somehow all the people that he cares about become vulnerable to possession just because he's around. Coming home and discovering a demon inside his wife using her body to hurt their child is not even the worst thing that's happened. Figuring out that his daughter *spoiler* has inherited the same "ability" when his foster sister throws her policeman husband out of a second floor window is still not even the worst thing.  

The actual devil moving in next door? maybe. Him babysitting the niece? *shudder*

There is a grand conspiracy at work here. Every demon that Kyle and his Reverend partner  come across knows who he is, "the outcast". And they seem to have big big big plans for him. Plus, it seems that he can exorcise them completely just by using his touch, or his blood. And as long as he's got there quick enough, they'll be okay. If the demon has been there long term, however, they'll end up comatose like his mother.

It's a slow burner. Maybe too slow for some people. The story takes it's time, nothing happens quickly,  and no questioned have answers have yet. The small-town setting adds to the slow atmosphere. Also giving everything a claustrophobic feel. 

So far I waver between a 5-6/10. I can believe in it's potential, I'm just not sure if everyone will have the patience. Perhaps the tv show will offer a more visceral immediacy, and a few more chills.

I have to wait for the Mother to fall asleep, or something because it's too scary for her. Unfortunately, taking care of her is my job, so my scary show time is minimal. 

Red Thorn #6 is here!

I unfortunately did that thing where I got super excited and thought that I had the entire arc ready to go, only I was WRONG! So I had to wait for #6. 

Still, it's freaking brilliant. So, American born artist Isla heads to Glasgow to try and find out what happened to the sister who died before she was born. Instead she finds magic, monsters, old gods, new gods, and a WHOLE lotta trouble. Meet Red Thorn, ancient Scottish God, who has been chained underground for centuries. Isla is about to release him. Hence the trouble.

Slight Spoiler? Neither Isla, or originally her sister were drawn to Glasgow by accident. A secret in their blood gives them the power to change reality through their art. In high school she accidently brought to life a drawing who decided to attend her school for a whole semester. And then kill a teacher by stabbing them with a pencil 27 times. Of course. I love this reality bending power. It's both a beautiful plot point, and a great meta-narrative idea. I love me some meta. It's got some similarity to Art Ops, and to Unwritten, and lets be honest to American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Which I love. It turns out that she's not he only one either. Red Thorn has a plan to collect people with this power in order to get revenge on the guy who captured him so long ago. The thing is, he's looking to not just change his present, but also the past with Isla's power.

Some of my favourite parts? The "New Gods". Evil Old God Cadros, who slaughtered the old gods to take all the power for himself, has been, ah, inteferring with belief. 

Red Thorn is a tattooed, manipulative, morally questionable, hyper-sexual, confident BASTARD. Very Glaswegian. He's a fabulous character. I love how he has plans on top of plans on top of plans. I love how far he's willing to go to get what he wants, lying, stealing, and fucking with everyone. (Let's be honest, he's working on just fucking everyone, too. Centuries of celibacy to make up for). I'm fascinated by him, I can't wait to see what he comes up with, but MAN is he trouble.

 

I also freaking love Tarek. Like Isla, he has the power to change reality through his drawings. Only his power is over spaces rather than people. He can actually create and change places through his art. 

Making him mute is an interesting dynamic. His loss of power and agency with words, compared to his power and agency through art is great. Being so young and having been dismissed by his father because of his disability, gives him a vulnerability and makes him easily manipulated.  With Isla getting a little, ah,"lost", (not spoiling that bit), I'm very worried about him.Though, I also wonder if he is going to prove to be a lot more powerful than expected.

David Baillie, I adore you. 8,5/10, and I'm betting that number goes up with Vol 2.

(btw, I've also just read a great debut urban fantasy novel set in Glasgow, this time about a half Maori, blue-haired werewolf by Maria Lewis. Read it)

Another Image Update: Mythic, Monstress, Luminae.

Mythic is just super fun. An ordinary guy discovers that there is a super secret agency responsible for policing and cleaning up magical disturbances. There's an immortal seer named Cassandra, a Native American Shaman who's twin brother is a hell beast, a fertility goddess, and that's just for starters. The whole lot is led by a gigantic baby who is. you know, life itself. They're generally pretty competent and good at sorting out all the problems. I mean, Nate's first job on the team is helping a couple of elemental beings through some couples counselling so that it will stop a drought. Because, of course it does.  The elementals get it on, it rains, they all have drinks.

The big problem is that all these mythic being, mythic wars, mythic problems are all just so irrational. And there is a force at work that is willing to go to war, to mix magic and machines in order to take out all the magical beings. They even take all the mythical figures prophesied to end the world in Ragnarok and turn them into magic/ machine hybrids. As you do.

Volume one is issue 1-8. I'm hoping that there will be more. It's clever, gory, funny, and a 7/10 for me. 

Now, Monstress was actually a bit of a mistake. I thought that all of the issues for the first TPB has been released and I WAS WRONG! Enter tears and trauma. 

However, It's brilliant. It gets described as steampunk kaiju, which is pretty apt. It's so much more though. It has a fantastically feminist dealio going on, It's kind of an alterno history with a matriarchal as well as a magical twist. The idea is that The Ancients are immortal, all powerful, god-like beings. Whilst living amongst the humans, they, umm, made babies with said humans. Thus was born the Arcanic's, who are monstrous, and beautiful, and powerful, and scary,  sometimes winged, clawed, furred, and sometimes human-looking. Which the humans find scarier. Of course there was a huge war.

                                      

Then, of course, there arose a religious order of scary freaking nuns with psychic powers known as the Cumaea. SCARY NUNS! SCARY PSYCHIC NUNS. Who capture Arcanics and torture and experiment on them for their intrinsic magic, which they distil as "lilium" and use to improve their own powers. Gross. I mean they, and their brutal, all-female, soldiers seem to think that they're doing their duty to save the humans from the evil Arcanics, but......UGH.

Enter crippled, mysterious, teenage Arcanic, Maiko, who has herself sold to the evil Cumaea in order to discover the truth about herself, her mother, and about the strange demonic power living inside her.

Extra feminist points for the demons, ghost demons, living demons, and the one living inside Maiko having that monstrous-feminine, vagina dentata (I love you Barbara Creed, and one day I will sneak into your film studies lectures, 'kay)  bodily horror of the power of female genitalia.

(Extra points also for the multiple-tailed, talking cats who consider themselves the children of the gods.)

Tentative 7,5/10. TBD once I read the final part of the story arc (grumble, grumble...)

Last up, Luminae. I wanted to love it. A group of mystical female warriors? Check. A strange, female, messiah who must be protected at all costs? Check. An evil darkness infiltrating and hunting them throughout the lands? Check,

Incredible beautiful and detailed art work that you could just stare at? Check. Coherent storyline? Depth of character? Logical worldbuilding?

Not really. 4/10. Which makes me feel like a bitch "sigh"

Image Comics Update

So, Wolf by Ales Kot is looking like a favourite. Supernatural detective with secrets? Check. Teenage girl who may end up being the actual antichrist? Check. Sudden time jump to five years into the future for volume 2? Oh, man. I want the last two issues so, so, so bad. 8.5/10

Lets all just accept that I am a Terry Pratchett fan. Almost every member of my family cried on the day that he died. Just a fact. Reading Huck, I am unavoidably reminded of Captain Carrot. Huck, and Carrot, have this beautiful naivete which both contrasts, and highlights and compliments their sheer strength and ability, and the power of story, narrative, and expectation of the foundling, the third son, the boy with the mysterious birthmark that has become almost an ontological part of our socio-cosmic world-view. Pratchett, in his way, knew how to play with the audiences expectations, the way that the reader seeks to see familiar stories, and figures in everything. Huck, is just BEAUTIFUL. 

His mystical abilities to "find anything" mean less than his need to do the right thing, to make a difference. He doesn't give a shit if his to do list is paying for the dinner of every body in line behind him at the drive-in, or heading to Africa to save 200 kidnapped schoolgirls. He is just that innocent. And I LOVE him. Oh, Huck. I would ring you fresh milk and band-aids, and help you fill in all your horrible paperwork just so you could go on being yourself. I don't care if you are a cold-war era, super-soldier experiment. I really don't. I don't care if your long lost twin brother turns up with all the details, or if he proves to be a lying, sneaky government plant using you to find your long-lost mother. You are exactly what I need in my comic books. That moment when you told your empathic mother to brainwash you into breaking through the unbreakable glass imprisoning you? I'm really, really, really excited for Volume 2. GO, HUCK!

Also WicDiv? OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG,

TV adaptations: upcoming AND arrived.

We can probably blame the MCU for Comic books being such hot property these days. Yay, MCU!

I'm so bored by Arrow, but I really like The Flash and I'm cool with Legends of Tomorrow. I liked Constantine, but I can understand why it doesn't have the mass appeal of lighter DC fare. I struggle a little with reading Classic Hellblazer because of how morally ambiguous it is, and how depressed it can make me feel. Even New 52 Constantine can be a little difficult to take. He's, well, he's an asshole. He is not a nice person, and the people around him are pretty sure to get hurt.

Supergirl is a favourite. I really enjoyed her "adorkable" demeanour, the way she wrestled with her power and what it could mean, and the part of her that was a normal, confused, 20-something who worried about her job, and men, and social expectations as well as the superhero stuff. I loved the relationship between the sisters, and I really, really, really, want a season 2.

Marvel is totally winning when it comes to their partnership with Netflix. Daredevil and Jessica Jones are both extraordinary pieces of filmmaking and storytelling. As adaptations, they take every part of the source material that works. As film, they have a visual power that is breathtaking. I'll rather them both  9-9.5/10, and I'm TOUGH. I'm really looking forward to Luke Cage (sweet Christmas!), and I'm all on board with Game of Thrones Finn Jones taking on Iron Fist.

Agents of Shield works WITH the MCU, and Agent Carter is one of my favourite television characters ever. She's brilliant, tough, and determined, and can I be her when I grow up?

When it come to the independent titles, there is a lot more scope to breathe and explore. Not being weighed down by decades of history and canon lets them have so much more freedom when it come to their adaption. 

iZombie, and Powers season 1 may require a seperate review, but I can honestly say that I enjoy the tv episodes just as much as the comic books.

Given their success, I am super excited for a couple of things. Vertigo's Preacher, the story of a man named Jesse Custer, running from his cultish upbringing, and finding himself possessing and  possessed by the all-offspring offspring of an angel and a demon, literally possessing the "word of God" is due in days. And I'm super excited.

Anything with the ghost of John Wayne, an Irish vampire named Cassidy, a character literally named Assface, and a mission to track down God and MAKE him live up to his responsibilities has my vote.

The other upcoming excitement is the adaption of Robert Kirkman's Outcast. You may know him from, oh, THE WALKING DEAD!!!!!!!

The fact that there is a whole series based on only two TPB's gives me hope, and some worry. It looks freaking amazing though.

Plus season 2 of Powers is coming, and they've reached the moment where the comic book series begins, "Who killed Retro Girl?" I waver between liking the tv Christian Walker, and missing the comic book one, but I do like what they've done with it so far. Okay, Playstation, bring it on.

(and yes, I am re-watching the whole thing in preparation)

Two too perfect to bother really reviewing

There a list that I have in my head of all the books I'll be buying the nieces. And the nephews, we don't gender bias in my family. Watching age two and age almost four run around quoting The Paper Bag Princess, and  yelling "hey dragon" at each other makes my pretentious, academic, feminist, intellectual shiver in delight.

Little sister/ Fellow Aunt and I have this thing about "curating your own media", and choosing the texts for yourself that make you feel good, rather than misanthropic. I read Twilight to see what the fuss was about. I read "some" of 50 Shades for the same reason, but couldn't do it (it's not just the content. It's the terrible writing). I wouldn't do up again. Life is too short to read bad books. Life is also too short to not eat the dessert, and not drink the wine.

So when I find books, Graphic or not, that make me genuinely excited to share with the nibblets, I get so happy. So, here are two of them.

Lumberjanes is what happens when you send a whole bunch of girls off to summer camp, and you DON'T make the beautiful and blonde, or make it all about boys and bullying. Or finding your heretofore unknown identical twin sister. If you take a bunch of girls and make them clever, and brave, and silly, and scared, and cranky, and chubby, and aesthetically and sexually diverse, and full of interesting, layered, REAL qualities. You make them real friends, full of loyalty AND disagreements, love AND impatience. And then you let them have all the adventures. Did you get lost in the forest after dark and find some kind of mystical weirdness? You'll get through it together. Have the boys from the all male camp across the lake been possessed by something kind of evil and/ or gross? You can do it together. Three eyes shape-shifting bears? Magical foxes? They deal with it like they deal with canoeing, and crafts, and transgender campers. Like hard-core lady-types, Like Lumberjanes.

This is a camp for hard-core lady-types, complete with instruction manuals (like, literal pages included in the comic) and I freaking LOVE it. Vol 1 and 2,as well as author Noelle Stevenson's Nimona are 10/10's from me. Hello, freaking brilliant gender politics, feminist tropes, and plain old fun. The fact that they swear in punk rock goddesses (What the Joan Jett!) and believe in "friendship to the max" just makes me love them more. Even without added dinosaurs.

Volume three, now in my hot little hands, will be part of our family history and heirlooms. 

Next, Princeless!!!!!!!!

Imagine a kick-ass, clever, fabulous, mixed race Princess whose family shoves her into a dragon guarded tower so that she can be rescued by some stupid, ridiculous, shiny-armoured prince that she'll be forced to marry. Yeah, NO. This Princess is going to make friends with her (female) dragon, rescue herself, and then set off to rescue all of her elder sisters. Hells, Yeah! 

Princeless questions ALL of the fantasy tropes. She goes off to find armour, and finds a half-dwarf best friend (maybe more) Bedelia, who has been stuck under her fathers thumb in his shop pretending to be the dutiful daughter who never wanted anything else. Pfft.

They are both freed from who society wants girls of their sex and rank to be. And they just want to help other girls escape. And not just girls. Princess Adrienne's twin brother, Devon, the only male in the entire family, is as trapped by his circumstances as his sisters. His father wants him to be manly, princely, kingly, and warriorly. And he's not. 

Add in the kind of fuck-ups that 16 year olds get into, the kind of mistakes that people make regarding societies equation of beauty and goodness, werewolf maiden-warriors, pirate princesses, and its a whole lotta fun. Even Adrienne's parents get into the action. The Father who thinks he knows best is going to get his preconceived notions shattered, and mother? Well, I have a strange feeling about the super, secret, black knight who was the Kings mysterious ally way back when. 

10/10. Read it. Buy it. Love it.

Nailbiter - even better the second time around!

I decided to re-read the first three TPB's of  Joshua Williamson and Mike Henderson's Nailbiter so that it would be fresh in my mind for volume 4. I'm really glad I did. I actually decided to upgrade my original Goodreads ratings. It's clever, scary, funny, layered, and holds up to multiple readings. The artwork is fab. It's clean, almost spare lines in many places, and beautifully, almost cinematically framed. The colour palette is subdued for the most part, letting the blue, blue eyes of some characters, and the violetnt red of blood spatter to leap off the page. I especially love the TPB covers. Simple, but powerful. Creepy enough that I wouldn't be comfortable with it up on my wall.

Volume 1: There will be blood. Oh, yes there will!

Serial killers are clearly a fascination for a lot of people. The sheer number of procedurals on tv, as well as shows like Dexter, The Fall, The Following, prove that there is a rabid audience for all the guts and gore that people can come up with. And WIlliamson is not going to stint on the guts or the gore.

Nailbiter is set in smalltown USA. Normal in everyway, except for the fact that it happens to be the birthplace of sixteen different serial killers. SIXTEEN!

There are a lot of people obsessed with the how's and why's of the 'Buckaroo Butchers', as they are collectively known, and they're pretty fascinating. The Book Burner torched libraries because he was bullied as he couldn't read. The Terrible Two were fraternal twins who targeted other sets of twins. The Blonde would wait until guys catcalled her on the street, then kidnap them and sew their mouths shut. The big gun, however, the headliner, is #16, The Nailbiter

Having been found not-guilty at his trial, Edward Charles "the Nailbiter" Warren has decided to move back home to Buckaroo, where his ex-girlfriend just happens to be Sheriff. Cue a slew of new murders, a creepy masked, machete-wielding mystery, and a crushing history where everybody in town is connected to at least one of the butchers. Cue Sheriff Shannon Crane having to deal with a town ready to string up her ex-bf, missing FBI investigator Eliott Carroll, and uh "special interrogator" Nicholas Finch on the hunt for Carroll. Cue the discovery of a secret underground labyrinth/ jail holding the mutilated Carroll, and it is just the beginning. You'll be as obsessed as everyone else.

Volume 2: Bloody Hands. 

Warning......spoilers are coming. To Be Continued.

I LOVE I HATE FAIRYLAND

What the MUFFIN HUGGIN',  FLUFFED out piece of surrealistic, psychedelic SPELL did I just read! And may I have some more, please. With cherries on top? If this comic was a drug, it would be LSD mixed with red cordial and speed. Meet Gertrude, her wish came true and she ended up in Fairyland.

Big mistake Gertie. Apparently all she needs to do is find one little key to one little door to find her way home. Simple, easy, right? I mean it's fairyland! It Queen Cloudia with hair like a cumulus (except when she's like, seriously pissed off, and then its more like a cumulonimbus). It has towns made out of pillows, or lakes filled by giant snot-monsters. It is a mind-FLUFF of a place that never stops, never shuts down, never shuts up, and sweet little Gert has been stuck there for 27 years. In the sugar-raged out body of her 8 year old self. Cue fun and games and GORE! He he he!

Everything that any self respecting Goth-girl ever loved about Lenore or Ruby Gloom is right here. The ridiculous depraved cuteness of Jhonan Vasquez SLG Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, the sly subversive humor Lisa Myhre's Nemi, the marketing possibilities of Emily the Strange, yep. All of that. And so much more.

We all know that I love a meta-narrative, and not only is Gert TOTALLY aware of genre conventions,

there are also fourth wall breaks that Deadpool would be proud of. 

 And the narrators have the life span of a Spinal Tap drummer! (Watching Narrator #4 realise exactly whose story he's gotten stuck narrating is freaking brilliant! Poor, guy. He was just trying to do his job and support his family.)

I love I hate Fairyland as much as Gertie actually hates Fairyland. Which is a FLUFFIN' lot. Skottie Young is now on my auto-buy list. I'm talking ten out of MUFFIN FLUFFIN' ten. And this would be even without his collaboration with Neil Gaiman on Fortunately the Milk, aka the best children's book ever FLUFFIN' written. Seriously, time travelling dinosaur scientists, and volcano gods, and pirates, and everything. I will now proceed to read all of his Oz books. Be right back.