Whatcha reading?

[Silent Majority]

7) Best of 2000AD Vol 1. - Various. Comic. This took a bit of time to sink into because it wasn't ordered chronologically. The idea behind it is that you treat this collection of the long running British dystopian comic which is most famous for being the birthplace of Judge Dredd, more like a mixtape, which means that different levels of freshness and ingenuity sit slightly uncomfortable next to one another. I do prefer the older stories and the older art style which feel like they have more to them, but I would think that, wouldn't I? I am, after all, me. There's something both too shiny and slick while simultaneously a bit worn out in terms of ideas about the newer stories. The closing story, from 1990, is absolutely brilliant.

8) The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society - Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audiobook. 2023. The rare text that is funny, warm, and academically rigourous. Quite entry level, which suits me down to the ground as this is a topic which I've read little on. I loved the tone of a friend rolling their eyes at absurdity and the depth of knowledge clearly explained. A must.

[Dr. Medulla]

Tub book:

Watchmen. It's been many, many years since I've re-read this and the time away improves the experience like good wine. I'm two-thirds thru and what really stands out for me this time around is how much of a MacGuffin is the murder of the Comedian. It pushes various characters to make moves, but it's not like the solution/revelation is important. It's a phony mystery in the best noir tradition. Also, I always think to Alan Moore hilarious relating of Steve Ditko's understanding of Rorschach—he's like Mr. A except that he's insane.

[Flex]

Tub book:

Watchmen. It's been many, many years since I've re-read this and the time away improves the experience like good wine. I'm two-thirds thru and what really stands out for me this time around is how much of a MacGuffin is the murder of the Comedian. It pushes various characters to make moves, but it's not like the solution/revelation is important. It's a phony mystery in the best noir tradition. Also, I always think to Alan Moore hilarious relating of Steve Ditko's understanding of Rorschach—he's like Mr. A except that he's insane.

I feel like watchmen almost sort of gets poo poo'd by Comics Books Knowers these days because of its ubiquity and because of Moore's (understandable) frustrations with its legacy. But it's still a great fucking read. It works best if you know a bit about superhero comics, but I think it's a good enough noir - as you say - that it stands alone quite well too. Not an opinion I used to have.

[Dr. Medulla]

Tub book:

Watchmen. It's been many, many years since I've re-read this and the time away improves the experience like good wine. I'm two-thirds thru and what really stands out for me this time around is how much of a MacGuffin is the murder of the Comedian. It pushes various characters to make moves, but it's not like the solution/revelation is important. It's a phony mystery in the best noir tradition. Also, I always think to Alan Moore hilarious relating of Steve Ditko's understanding of Rorschach—he's like Mr. A except that he's insane.

I feel like watchmen almost sort of gets poo poo'd by Comics Books Knowers these days because of its ubiquity and because of Moore's (understandable) frustrations with its legacy. But it's still a great fucking read. It works best if you know a bit about superhero comics, but I think it's a good enough noir - as you say - that it stands alone quite well too. Not an opinion I used to have.

Doubtless the movie adaptation and then the tv series follow-up has tainted the whole thing for Serious Comic Book Readers™. It brought the unworthy into the circle and so it's better to jettison the comic.

[Silent Majority]

Been years since I've read it, but I would probably enjoy going back to it now

[Silent Majority]

9) The Shepherd's Crown - Terry Pratchett. Audiobook. 2015. Last novel Pratchett came close to completing, though this isn't completed in the sense that everything has been polished and connected and expanded as any of the previous Discworld novels. His hard drive was ceremoniously steamrolled so, like Michael Jackson's never performed final shows, this is it. It's a good novel and that's a beautiful testament to a creative life well lived.

10) Billy Summers - Stephen King. Paperback. 2021. KP. King writes with unfurling assurance, doing exactly as much as he wants to, neither more nor less. A story about the transformative power of writing through a hitman and a life he saves along the way. There's a few moments when King completely fails to update his customary boomer references for a main character born in the early 1980s, but we can forgive him those off kilter notes in so grand a lithe country rock song as this.

11) Marvel 1602 - Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert. Hardback. 2003. DB. Took me a while to get into this because I at first took it as a pleasant What If story. It actually grew in my estimation when the story showed itself and how it was connected to the regular continuity. Marvel's current ubiquity also worked against it for me for a while, but it's a lovely story well told.

12) The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life - Stephen Bartlett. Audiobook. 2023. Bartlett is a youngish billionaire who's done a great job centering himself and his brand, particularly through Dragon's Den, the UK equivalent of Shark Tank. Quite a good business book, I've learnt that you got to keep a fluency in the shared language and acronyms.

[Kory]

Tub book:

Watchmen. It's been many, many years since I've re-read this and the time away improves the experience like good wine. I'm two-thirds thru and what really stands out for me this time around is how much of a MacGuffin is the murder of the Comedian. It pushes various characters to make moves, but it's not like the solution/revelation is important. It's a phony mystery in the best noir tradition. Also, I always think to Alan Moore hilarious relating of Steve Ditko's understanding of Rorschach—he's like Mr. A except that he's insane.

I feel like watchmen almost sort of gets poo poo'd by Comics Books Knowers these days because of its ubiquity and because of Moore's (understandable) frustrations with its legacy. But it's still a great fucking read. It works best if you know a bit about superhero comics, but I think it's a good enough noir - as you say - that it stands alone quite well too. Not an opinion I used to have.

Doubtless the movie adaptation and then the tv series follow-up has tainted the whole thing for Serious Comic Book Readers™. It brought the unworthy into the circle and so it's better to jettison the comic.

There's another faction, though, that side-eye books like this because they might/do encourage other comics creators to treat the entire art form as nothing more than a movie-TV pitch, which I agree is a big problem right now in the industry (see: Kirkman/Millar most prominently). I like Watchmen though.

[Dr. Medulla]

Tub book:

Watchmen. It's been many, many years since I've re-read this and the time away improves the experience like good wine. I'm two-thirds thru and what really stands out for me this time around is how much of a MacGuffin is the murder of the Comedian. It pushes various characters to make moves, but it's not like the solution/revelation is important. It's a phony mystery in the best noir tradition. Also, I always think to Alan Moore hilarious relating of Steve Ditko's understanding of Rorschach—he's like Mr. A except that he's insane.

I feel like watchmen almost sort of gets poo poo'd by Comics Books Knowers these days because of its ubiquity and because of Moore's (understandable) frustrations with its legacy. But it's still a great fucking read. It works best if you know a bit about superhero comics, but I think it's a good enough noir - as you say - that it stands alone quite well too. Not an opinion I used to have.

Doubtless the movie adaptation and then the tv series follow-up has tainted the whole thing for Serious Comic Book Readers™. It brought the unworthy into the circle and so it's better to jettison the comic.

There's another faction, though, that side-eye books like this because they might/do encourage other comics creators to treat the entire art form as nothing more than a movie-TV pitch, which I agree is a big problem right now in the industry (see: Kirkman/Millar most prominently). I like Watchmen though.

But I would think that a failed comic(s) wouldn't be especially attractive to Hollywood. Doing good work in the comic would be a prerequisite for persuading adaptation, no? I can kind of understand the worry, but good stories are good stories, whatever the greater intent.

[Kory]

Tub book:

Watchmen. It's been many, many years since I've re-read this and the time away improves the experience like good wine. I'm two-thirds thru and what really stands out for me this time around is how much of a MacGuffin is the murder of the Comedian. It pushes various characters to make moves, but it's not like the solution/revelation is important. It's a phony mystery in the best noir tradition. Also, I always think to Alan Moore hilarious relating of Steve Ditko's understanding of Rorschach—he's like Mr. A except that he's insane.

I feel like watchmen almost sort of gets poo poo'd by Comics Books Knowers these days because of its ubiquity and because of Moore's (understandable) frustrations with its legacy. But it's still a great fucking read. It works best if you know a bit about superhero comics, but I think it's a good enough noir - as you say - that it stands alone quite well too. Not an opinion I used to have.

Doubtless the movie adaptation and then the tv series follow-up has tainted the whole thing for Serious Comic Book Readers™. It brought the unworthy into the circle and so it's better to jettison the comic.

There's another faction, though, that side-eye books like this because they might/do encourage other comics creators to treat the entire art form as nothing more than a movie-TV pitch, which I agree is a big problem right now in the industry (see: Kirkman/Millar most prominently). I like Watchmen though.

But I would think that a failed comic(s) wouldn't be especially attractive to Hollywood. Doing good work in the comic would be a prerequisite for persuading adaptation, no? I can kind of understand the worry, but good stories are good stories, whatever the greater intent.

I think that makes instinctual sense, but what it most often seems to lead to is creators churning out piles and piles of ideas to see what sticks, and then abandoning the ones that don't get optioned, whether they were actually good or not. I don't think the comic necessarily has to be well executed to get optioned (in the same way that pilots usually aren't very good), they just need the kernel of an idea—mostly since it's not going to be targeted to the same audience. I think in some/many (not all) cases, it definitely leads to a comic reading like a cynical pitch and not like a well-thought out comic story that can stand on its own.

[Dr. Medulla]

I feel like watchmen almost sort of gets poo poo'd by Comics Books Knowers these days because of its ubiquity and because of Moore's (understandable) frustrations with its legacy. But it's still a great fucking read. It works best if you know a bit about superhero comics, but I think it's a good enough noir - as you say - that it stands alone quite well too. Not an opinion I used to have.

Doubtless the movie adaptation and then the tv series follow-up has tainted the whole thing for Serious Comic Book Readers™. It brought the unworthy into the circle and so it's better to jettison the comic.

There's another faction, though, that side-eye books like this because they might/do encourage other comics creators to treat the entire art form as nothing more than a movie-TV pitch, which I agree is a big problem right now in the industry (see: Kirkman/Millar most prominently). I like Watchmen though.

But I would think that a failed comic(s) wouldn't be especially attractive to Hollywood. Doing good work in the comic would be a prerequisite for persuading adaptation, no? I can kind of understand the worry, but good stories are good stories, whatever the greater intent.

I think that makes instinctual sense, but what it most often seems to lead to is creators churning out piles and piles of ideas to see what sticks, and then abandoning the ones that don't get optioned, whether they were actually good or not. I don't think the comic necessarily has to be well executed to get optioned (in the same way that pilots usually aren't very good), they just need the kernel of an idea—mostly since it's not going to be targeted to the same audience. I think in some/many (not all) cases, it definitely leads to a comic reading like a cynical pitch and not like a well-thought out comic story that can stand on its own.

That would seem an indictment of comics more broadly if editorial is letting that stuff thru. The emphasis on star creators selling the book rather than the content. For all the carping of creators toward heavy-handed editorial back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, there is value in someone who has the power to say no.

[Kory]

Doubtless the movie adaptation and then the tv series follow-up has tainted the whole thing for Serious Comic Book Readers™. It brought the unworthy into the circle and so it's better to jettison the comic.

There's another faction, though, that side-eye books like this because they might/do encourage other comics creators to treat the entire art form as nothing more than a movie-TV pitch, which I agree is a big problem right now in the industry (see: Kirkman/Millar most prominently). I like Watchmen though.

But I would think that a failed comic(s) wouldn't be especially attractive to Hollywood. Doing good work in the comic would be a prerequisite for persuading adaptation, no? I can kind of understand the worry, but good stories are good stories, whatever the greater intent.

I think that makes instinctual sense, but what it most often seems to lead to is creators churning out piles and piles of ideas to see what sticks, and then abandoning the ones that don't get optioned, whether they were actually good or not. I don't think the comic necessarily has to be well executed to get optioned (in the same way that pilots usually aren't very good), they just need the kernel of an idea—mostly since it's not going to be targeted to the same audience. I think in some/many (not all) cases, it definitely leads to a comic reading like a cynical pitch and not like a well-thought out comic story that can stand on its own.

That would seem an indictment of comics more broadly if editorial is letting that stuff thru. The emphasis on star creators selling the book rather than the content. For all the carping of creators toward heavy-handed editorial back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, there is value in someone who has the power to say no.

I wouldn't argue with that.

[Dr. Medulla]

Tub book:

Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations . This came up in a conversation a few days ago, and I haven't read it in at least a dozen years, so why not? Written at the end of the 1970s, Lasch assessed American life as anchorless, drawing no inspiration from its past and unconcerned, if not despairing, for the future. Instead, Americans had embrace a therapeutic culture, of an endless pursuit of feeling good, of being validated by others. In short, narcissism on a grand scale. The book was a surprise bestseller (I believe it inspired Jimmy Carter's malaise speech). I somewhat identify with Lasch in as much as he was a disaffected former leftist who was accused of turning conservative, regardless of his criticism of the right. He was, more to the point, an older style leftist who saw little of value in the New Left. He was also pretty grouchy. So I have some sympathy for him and his perspective, even if I certainly don't agree with everything (on popular cultural matters, for example, there's a fair amount of daylight). But Lasch is still someone worth reading, especially in our present day of heightened culture of narcissism nurtured by social media.

[Silent Majority]

13) Nothin' But a Good Time: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Glam Metal - Justin Quirk. Paperback. 2020. A speedy run through of the biographies of the key bands, the excesses, the tragedies and triumph and some motioning towards the political history of the times. Good fun, lightweight and a pleasant waste of time. Probably the book the genre deserves.

14) 500 Years of Struggle: A People's History of Nottingham - The Nottingham Communist Party. Paperback. 1949. Bought this from my local radical bookshop, which I'd been meaning to support since they were vandalised by anti-LGBT fascists. I also picked up Colin Ward's Anarchy in Action, which, when I read in a PDF sent to me by Gene Mayes, took me off my Wes Streeting trajectory and enabled me to see politics from a new vista at 16. More than half my life ago now. The bookshop republished this history of Nottingham, as well as a biography of Malcolm Hulke, the radical Doctor Who writer, which I won't be able to resist for much longer. The blurb advised it cost three pence in the late 1940s but I bitterly paid four quid while cursing rampant inflation. For the text itself, a gratuitous, approving passing reference comparing Stalinism to Cromwell is quite representative in the orthodoxy getting in the way of a truly historic account.

[Silent Majority]

15) Johnson at 10: The Inside Story - Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell. Audiobook. 2023. A completely fair and balanced account of an incompetent and lazy man which brings all the more power to just how coruscatingly critical it is. His team were mediocities or malcontents. Johnson is shown as opportunistic, selfish and dishonest, though with genuine potential to be Great, in the way Thatcher, Churchill or Ivan the Terrible were Great. He simply never rose to the task as set by his own lights. Seldon has been writing these first draft of history immediate rundowns of Prime Minister's times for nearly thirty years and they're always worth a read. We'll have a pamphlet on Liz Truss' time late this year.

[Dr. Medulla]

15) Johnson at 10: The Inside Story - Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell. Audiobook. 2023. A completely fair and balanced account of an incompetent and lazy man which brings all the more power to just how coruscatingly critical it is. His team were mediocities or malcontents. Johnson is shown as opportunistic, selfish and dishonest, though with genuine potential to be Great, in the way Thatcher, Churchill or Ivan the Terrible were Great. He simply never rose to the task as set by his own lights. Seldon has been writing these first draft of history immediate rundowns of Prime Minister's times for nearly thirty years and they're always worth a read. We'll have a pamphlet on Liz Truss' time late this year.

This is tangentially related (or maybe it fits with what you describe), but an old professor friend once told me that once you get your foot in the door as an academic (well, perhaps I should stick to academic historian), it's not that hard to stand out because the vast majority stop trying once they get tenure. To be a "star," you just have to want to keep at it with research and publishing. There's a whole lot of simplification and exaggeration to his point, but the basic gist is that the difference between people who stand out and those who don't is complacency, about getting "there" and deciding that's enough.