Nick Bryan

Archives for December 2014

BEST OF 2014 – Top Ten TV

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I used to be an Internet TV Reviewer, you know. Writing blog-length reviews of TV show episodes, expressing my critical thoughts, trying to be funny without tipping into bitchy snark. I eventually burnt out on sheer volume of critiquing, not to mention it wasn’t justifying the time spent neglecting fiction, but still, I never reviewed purely for attention. I did it because I love the work.

So, I haven’t reviewed a TV series weekly since Game of Thrones season 4 finished in April, but I have run down my top ten TV shows every year since 2012 on The Digital Fix and here in 2013, so I see no reason to stop now. Let’s see this year’s list, which includes The First Ever Non-Fictional Shows To Chart.

#10 – The Fall

Relegated to honourable mentions last year, The Fall jumps to the proper chart for series 2. Gillian Anderson’s Stella Gibson closes the net around misogynist serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan), desperate to stop him before too many innocent women die.

And if that sounds like a lot of other shows, fair enough. The appeal of The Fall is mostly in the execution – the acting (Anderson especially is magnificent, Dornan very strong too), direction and writing are all at a high level, digging into the motivations of everyone involved and making the investigation challenging without the police looking like idiots.

It gives in to a slightly cheap semi-cliffhanger at the end, but The Fall was still amazingly good viewing. And it lets me imagine a final season of Dexter that wasn’t terrible!

#9 – Homeland

At long last, a year or two later than they probably should’ve, Homeland sloughs off Damian Lewis’ Nick Brody and reinvents itself as a spy thriller revolving around Claire Danes as Carrie Matheson. She’s in Islamabad, a new and wholly un-American backdrop, to make her latest morally ambiguous battle with terrorism seem fresher.

Much like the previous season, it starts off slow, but was completely compelling by about halfway through. Claire Danes is still great, but Mandy Patinkin as Saul is what really sold this season for me. His performance during his kidnap plot is gutwrenching, scenestealing work. To be honest, I feel bad not placing this run of Homeland a little higher, but alas, ’twas a competitive year and the final episode was a tad disappointing.

#8 – True Detective

As you may note if you’ve read a lot of these year-end list, most people had True Detective a little higher than I’ve ended up placing it. I’m not saying it wasn’t a fantastic work of technical TV, with Woody Harrelson and the much-praised Matthew McConaughey delivering well-written dialogue pitch-perfectly. Not to mention a considered, atmospheric look and, yes, that astounding unbroken long shot.

But still, this chart is a list of what I enjoyed the most, and although it was well done, there were long stretches when I felt I was admiring True Detective rather than enjoying it. Not to mention, yes, I am one of those people who found the ending a bit of an anti-climax. Still nicely done, but after all the slow, slow build, I was hoping for more actual incident. So here it lies at #8, falling just short of…

#7 – Doctor Who

It’s only climbed one place since last year, but that doesn’t convey the extent to which I feel Doctor Who has improved in its eighth series. It mostly just represents the scale of the competition. So yeah, this was Peter Capaldi’s first series in the part, and I thought probably the best since the first Matt Smith run, restoring a little mystery, fun and drama to the whole affair.

It helped that (perhaps bruised by scathing criticism last year), showrunner Steven Moffat and his writers were clearly determined to retool Jenna Coleman’s Clara into a character with the depth to carry the show. Some said this resulted in a run focused on the assistant to the detriment of the hero, but series seven was more about the Doctor, and it just felt rambling and ungrounded as a result.

This one had some heart, plus a compelling arc around Missy. The Christmas special wasn’t bad either – albeit marred by obvious rewriting at the end after Coleman changed her mind about leaving.

#6 – Brooklyn Nine Nine

Brooklyn Nine Nine coming in here means True Detective isn’t even the highest ranking police-based show on the list. The American mainstream sitcom genre ran a little dry lately, so a new one coming through with the right combination of wacky jokes, character banter and real feelings is always a cause for celebration.

Will we end up hating Brooklyn Nine Nine when it reaches season eleven and we’ve heard all its jokes a thousand times? I’ll be honest, I can’t rule it out, but for now, it’s so nice to have a new, assured, reliably uplifting comedy in town, I’ve given it a generous placing. Captain Holt alone (the amazing Andre Braugher) would probably get this into the list somewhere. Oh, and the first season is just up on UK Netflix.

#5 – Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle

The first ever non-fictional show to appear on this annual list (although not the last one this year) is Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, a one-man stand-up show featuring the so-called comedian’s comedian talking at extreme length about the topic of the week. After a year or two to get the format right, they’ve found the confidence to just show one man talking for the whole episode, with only a slightly different man to break it up.

Lee’s grim, knowing, deadpan humour is not  to everyone’s taste, obviously, but again, this is my list, and as far as I was concerned, this was one of the most successful TV exercises of the year. Absolutely nailed all its targets, and having Chris Morris as Lee’s main interrogator was the icing on the cake.

#4 – Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones must surely be one of the most successful TV shows in current Western society. The epic saga of Kings fighting Kings to be King, with some Queens and some incest, and god knows what else. This wasn’t actually their best year to date, there was some slack plotting as characters clearly just killed time waiting to get somewhere, and also a confusing rape scene that just made certain character arcs harder to grasp.

Still, here it is at #4, because even when the characters are rambling along, the dialogue, acting and moment-to-moment storytelling is always great. Not to mention, whenever Game of Thrones hit a big set-piece scene (Joffrey’s wedding, the Viper’s big fight, the invasion of the Wall, Tyrion’s trial, the final few scenes of this season), they utterly nailed it. Great show, still one of the most watchable things currently running. I await season five with interest, as we’ve finally finished book three and now, surely, entirely new things gotta happen?

#3 – Last Week Tonight

Not too long after our first ever non-fictional show, here comes the second. Last Week Tonight is HBO’s vehicle for John Oliver, freshly poached from The Daily Show and ready to show us what he’d do if given a desk, some graphics and the chance to be sarcastic about the news.

Well, after a few weeks to find his feet, Oliver has settled on his offering – long-form investigative journalism that takes dry subjects and somehow makes them intriguing, funny and accessible. For sheer cultural impact this year among leftie internet types, Last Week Tonight may be unparalleled in TV terms.

Not to say it’s a flawless venture – in particular, the fun-video segments thrown in to break up long spells at the desk often fall a little flat or overstay their welcome. But when this show works, it really works. And I’d say that even if I didn’t have a lot of affection for John Oliver from The Bugle.

#2 – Hannibal

When I wrote last year’s Top Ten TV, Hannibal landed at #2 and I was confident, with the mighty Breaking Bad gone, it would ascend to the #1 spot in 2014. As you can see, that hasn’t happened. However, Hannibal remains one of the most uniquely stylised, strange, funny, scary, charismatic dramas on TV. It clearly lives about six feet up itself, but it always has a sense of humour about both that and the horrible things it does to its characters.In short – yes, Nick Bryan likes a bloody dark comedy. Surprising.

Still, Hannibal had another great year developing its universe further, making major changes to the show’s set-up but still remaining fundamentally recognisable. Intelligent, self-referential and with a magnetic central performance from Mads Mikkelsen as the cannibal himself. Oh, and it finished off its second season with the other big thing that makes me like a TV show – an absolutely killer cliffhanger that didn’t feel unearnt or cheap. Bravo. Can’t wait for season three.But it still isn’t at the top, thanks to the arrival of…

#1 – Orange Is The New Black

Every so often, a show arrives that works in every way, has a huge and varied cast yet almost no weak spots, good acting across the board, minor characters that are almost as compelling as the supposed lead.

In 2014, Orange Is The New Black was that show. It was the best, most absorbing and affecting thing I saw this year, bar none. Netflix gets a lot of good press for their original content, but even if the rest of it was garbage, the creation of this series would probably justify the entire initiative.

From the writer of Weeds and starring so many good people that I feel bad singling anyone out, Orange Is The New Black is funny, addictive and brilliant. I watched both seasons this year, which may explain why it’s had such a particular impact upon me, but the 2014 season was excellent. Even the mostly-absence of major character Alex (apparently for schedule/contract reasons rather than a desire to quit) didn’t slow them down much, and it seems she’ll be back in a bigger way next season.

I was particularly impressed with the direction of Piper in season 2 – for much of the first one, I thought she’d end up becoming one of those lead characters who was the worst thing in their own show, but they’ve really made her work, simply by allowing her to grow believably, rather than keeping her as a tedious static anchor. They’ve also introduced a new character who is basically Piper from when she first arrived, to hammer home that contrast.

Amazing show. If you have Netflix and haven’t seen it, I recommend rectifying that. If you don’t have Netflix, consider signing up for the free month just to hammer through Orange Is The New Black.

Honourable Mentions

My prime honourable mention this year is Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, definitely #11 in the list. It improved by leaps and bounds after the dull first two-thirds of season 1, and at this point, midway through season 2, is close to becoming the espionage-with-superpowers show we all hoped it would be. The Walking Dead also had a very good year.

Other nearly-almosts were Orphan Black, Sherlock and House Of Cards – I watched both seasons of House Of Cards this year, liked the first one a fair bit, but it just fell apart in season 2 for me. With the exception of a couple of exciting episodes around the beginning and end, there were no interesting characters left and watching it was a chore. Oh, and The Newsroom might’ve crept in with its final season if the second half were as good as the first.

And that, at last, really is that. Wait, one last shout-out for Arrow, which I didn’t include in the list as I’ve barely seen any 2014 episodes, but season 2 especially is just stellar. If you have any affection for superheroes, or action-driven TV in general, check it out. Looking forwarding to starting The Flash soon too.

Okay, I’m finished now. I swear. That was 2014! Let’s all move on with our lives!

BEST OF 2014 – Comics

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Originally, this summary of 2014’s comics-reading was going to share space with the books, but those damn prose-hives ended up taking up so much space that I let them have the entire post. So now, that means I could either not list my favourite comics of 2014 or give them an entire post to themselves.

I think it’s obvious which way I was going to go. If you want to know what I was reading a year ago, here’s the post for that. Now, onwards back into the comics of 2014, a year where my comic book consumption came dangerously close to being defined by a single app…

Unlimited Power!

My 30th birthday was in late March, and my main presents were a tablet and a Marvel Unlimited subscription. Marvel Unlimited, in case you missed it (as it isn’t that well promoted), is a Netflix-esque service providing infinite on-demand access to a huge range of Marvel comic books for a regular subscription fee. It’s updated every Monday with another week of books, so you do effectively get the entire line, albeit six months behind the new stuff.

It’s a great deal, especially at the current price, even if the app has some teething moments at times. I’m on iOS, so don’t know how good the Android version is. Works especially well if you, like me, are interested in a wide variety of Marvel series and more or less switched to collected editions a while back, so don’t mind being six months off the pace.

However, with this much stuff available, it is possible to get Marvel-fatigued. You read Unlimited for hours, because it’s there, and you start to wonder if there’s a world outside Spider-Hulk-X-Iron-Man. I didn’t even realise it was possible to forget Batman nowadays, but at times, I came close.

Anyway. Most of the comics I read during my inaugural nine months on Unlimited ended up being X-Men series. I’ve always stopped myself fully buying into the mutants until now – there are just so many of them and money is not abundant. Still, with a never-ending subscription, why not?

So I caught up on a few core series, using the Schism storyline as an entry point, and it was there that I discovered Jason Aaron and various artists’ Wolverine & The X-Men. Now, everyone, this comic is amazing. Fun, breezy tone, bright, clear, charming art, a light touch and an amazing ability to make you laugh, cry and even feel genuine hope. A reader who takes their mutants Deadly Seriously might find the silliness a turn-off, but as a newcomer who hasn’t read X-Men regularly since Grant Morrison left, this was absolutely the charm offensive they needed to get me back on-board.

(If you want dead serious mutants, I’m most of the way through Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force just now, and it’s a proper-hardcore-action-movie series. Personally, I prefer a bit more charm, but I can’t say this particular book doesn’t pull off the stern style.)

The current runs on All-New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men, by Brian Michael Bendis, are also doing good stuff. I read a lot of the Bendis Avengers run, and it too-often felt like the Avengers weren’t soapy enough for him, a whole book revolving around superhero action didn’t play to his strengths. Well, the X-Men are plenty soapy, he’s been teamed up with some excellent artists (Stuart Immonen rarely does wrong), and the result is two smooth, solid series. Not as good as his still-ongoing brilliant run on Ultimate Spider-Man, but few things are.

I also just now read the entire of Peter David’s 2000s run on X-Factor, up to the end of the Madrox series a year or two back. This was absolutely what I want from an X-Men comic (and serialised fiction in general): balancing a huge cast of clearly defined characters, giving everyone their moment without sacrificing plot movement. Suffered sometimes from inconsistent art and the occasional supernatural storylines didn’t really grab me, but still good.

Lastly in our Unlimited-X-Men section, I read X-Men: Legacy, the recent reboot by Si Spurrier, Tan Eng Huat and other artists. Starring lesser-known mutant Legion (ostracised son of Professor Xavier), Legacy takes an indepth look at both the X-Men premise (from the main character’s slightly bitter POV) and Legion’s own towering cosmic powers, combined with serious mental health issues. It’s a very odd series, I imagine it won’t be for everyone, but Spurrier, Huat and co did something really unique here, very strange, compelling and ultimately lovely. Worth a look.

Gillen Division

After that epic X-section, I hope you see what I mean about kinda being overwhelmed by Marvel comics. Marvel Unlimited – it’s a thrill, but perhaps ultimately a danger.

However, I did read some other publishers’ output this year. Most recently, I powered through all issues to date of Uber, the WW2 superpowers epic by Kieron Gillen, Caanan White and others.It would’ve been easy to collapse into sensationalism, but there’s clearly research and thought at work here, as well as ruthlessness. Gillen cleverly keeps much of the real-life horrors off-screen, reserving the nastiness for when his “tank-men” get busy.

White and the other artists are more than capable of realising both emotion during the conversations and gore when it oozes through. Highly recommended as long as you have the necessary strong stomach.

Also written by Gillen, I read Young Avengers and The Wicked & The Divine, his latest collaborations with Phonogram artist Jamie McKelvie. Both of them have been highly acclaimed from various quarters, but I must admit, Uber spoke to me a little more. Still, the craft experiments at work throughout these two series are fascinating – Gillen and McKelvie have worked together long enough to start playing around within their stories, and Young Avengers in particular features plenty of fun-gimmicks-are-fun moments that mesh beautifully with the teen aesthetic.

The Wicked & The Divine (which, disappointingly, they refuse to shorten as TWATD) perhaps speaks to a more passionate fannish persuasion than I possess – as this essay may reveal, I probably engage with creative works in a more ponderous fashion. Still, the straight-up cliffhangers, plot twists and fights are smoothly executed. TWATD may be the closest we’ve yet seen to Gillen/McKelvie doing a “mainstream” urban fantasy, albeit one tailored heavily to their interests. It has the cold open, the reveals, the shocks, and they make it all look effortless.

I’ve now written a fuckton of words and all I’ve covered are the X-Men and the work of one writer. Bloody hell. This is what happens when I hardly write any reviews all year, it just splurges.

Batman & Other Animal(man)s

Since I did a whole bit on Marvel earlier, let’s talk about DC. I re-read the Garth Ennis run on Hellblazer recently, but since I wrote a separate post on that earlier in the month, I won’t repeat myself here. It’s good, though.

Finally read the first two acts of the Grant Morrison run on Batman/Batman & Robin/Final Crisis, after a pleasingly-timed Comixology sale let me grab the whole thing. Like most Morrison comics, I finish a huge segment, stop and think “Okay, I may need to go back and read that again.” Still, this first read got me into the plot, and even with all the big stuff going on, Morrison always tells a good story with plenty of cool Batman moments to keep me invested. Looking forward to Batman Incorporated in 2015.

Also in the Morrison/DC segment, I finally read his Animal Man run, and it was great. Threaded the needle beautifully between straight superheroics and building the inevitable meta-strange breakdown at the end. Like all the best Morrison work, the series never lost its grip on human feelings throughout all that, complemented with great storytelling by Chas Troug and other artists.

We may finally be coming into the closing straight of this year’s best comics – the problem is, I almost exclusively read stuff I’ve seen emphatically recommended, so it’s all good and not much can be excluded from these lists. Here are some final bullet points:

  • Caught up on Chew the other morning, and bloody hell, that’s one hell of a ramp-up to the last few storylines of the series. Still great execution by Layman/Guillory, and unlike many five-year comic runs, hasn’t lost momentum.
  • Ms Marvel is just as likable and fun as everyone says, and it’s brilliant to have Adrian Alphona back doing regular comic art again.
  • From a similar generation: Loki: Agent Of Asgard is intruiging and readable, especially worth checking out if you badly miss Gillen’s Journey Into Mystery.
  • Trees by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard is a slow burn but hard to look away from. Between this and the fun storytelling experiments in his Moon Knight issues with Declan Shalvey, this has been a great year for Ellis, and his mostly-weekly email newsletter Orbital Operations is a good read as well.

Okay. Phew. I think I’m done with comics for 2014 at last, hopefully you found something interesting in that piece and if not, well, I still enjoyed writing it, so never mind

Coming soon: the season finale of the 2014 round-up posts… the Top Ten TV.

BEST OF 2014 – Books

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My original plan, as threatened in last week’s podcast/film/music summary, was to dig into my favourite books and comics of the year in this single post. However, due to circumstances beyond my control (me banging on for too long), I am going to leave this one with just the books and return to the comics at a later date. Probably quite a soon later date, as I still harbour the ambition of getting these blog posts out before 2014 itself ends, and I still gotta do the TV as well.

If you want to see how my tastes have evolved, you can consult the 2013 equivalent of this blog post. For now, though, let’s dig into the best printed prose stories of the year, most of which I read digitally.

YA – Why, eh?

My major shift in books-direction this year was to start reading YA, because I’ve begun to socialise with a lot of YA-likers and also (inevitably) started to wonder if I could write it myself. So, if anyone else wants a good entry point, I’ll lay out the best of my mostly-scifi/fantasy sampling.

I’ve read The City’s Son and The Glass Republic by Tom Pollock, the first two in his Skyscraper Throne trilogy set in a fantastical London. Although the first one is a strong opening adventure that set out a potentially fascinating world, the second was a year-highlight, a genuinely excellent emotional journey through cool concepts that I’d recommend to anyone. Must track down the third one. (By which I mean: I’ll buy it when it gets cheaper on Kindle.)

Elsewhere in the YA exploration, Pantomime by Laura Lam is a lovely, fragile book about Micah Grey, a teen coming to terms with his own identity under confusing circumstances – and also set in a circus. Control by Kim Curran is the sequel to her alternate-reality-wrangling scifi book Shift, and in a similar way to the Tom Pollock series, the first one does some interesting world building, but the second is the one which really made me pay attention. Happily, the third and final part is coming soon.

Also read The Curse Workers trilogy by Holly Black, about magical con-men, and although they never quite top the excellent first book, it’s all an exciting adventure.

At the younger end of the target-age spectrum, but also among the most excellent: Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens is a mega-likable school detective story and Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls is beautifully characterised and creepy. Very creepy.

Aged To Perfection

I’m going to creep back towards adult novels now, via the bridging method of fantasy author Joe Abercrombie. I read the last two books in his adult trilogy The First Law, as well as his new YA book Half A King this year and all were great. The biting wit and intense adventure are strong across the board.

Tore through The Cormorant, the most recent in Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black supernatural crime series too, and it’s the best one yet. The first two were fun adventures, but this third part was blow-me-away good, and I’m pleased to hear it should be continuing this year with Thunderbird. His urban fantasy book The Blue Blazes was fun too.

I also read Feed by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) and although I’ve not read her work before, I did enjoy the combination of genuinely creepy horror plotting and someone writing about the internet/blogging in a way that suggests they actually understand it. All too rare.

Getting into sundry other territory now, I also liked:

  • The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, a sweet robot-romance by Cassandra Rose Clarke
  • Fight Or Flight by Chele Cooke, the second in her Out Of Orbit scifi adventure series
  • Deadlines, a weekly newspaper-crime serialised thriller by Chris Brosnahan
  • Gun Machine, a heavily armed crime novel by noted comic writer Warren Ellis
  • Mayhem, Jack-The-Ripper-esque gritty crime by Sarah Pinborough.

Phew. I read a lot of books this year, and that was just over a third of them.

I refrained from listing my own book, as that seemed like supreme arrogance, but if you want to see The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf on a similar list, you can head on over to Nimbus Space here. Just popping that in. Coming soon: the comics!

BEST OF 2014 – Podcasts, Films, Music

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Right, 2014 is one week and a few Christmas crackers away from ending, so it’s time for bloggers to work out their Favourite [THING] Of [YEAR] lists. I am no exception, especially as I’ve hardly reviewed anything for ages and kinda miss it.

So, exactly as I did last year, I’ve broken my enjoyment down into a series of headings. In this first effort, we’ll tackle the podcasts, movies and music. One of those segments will be much, much longer than the other two.

Podcasts

Last year’s favourite podcasts, The Bugle and House To Astonish, both experienced erratic schedules in 2014, due to John Oliver’s new TV show and a presenter having a baby respectively. I think this proves conclusively the destructive nature of my love. (Although The Bugle produced some excellent episodes in the last few weeks, since afore-mentioned TV show went off air.)

Still – this clears the way for some newcomers on the scene. Firstly, yes everyone, I too listened to Serial, and quite enjoyed it. Sagged a bit in the middle for me, but I thought they provided a more convincing non-ending than I ever expected them to. I’ve watched true-crime-based films and documentaries before and judged Serial as another of that genre, albeit in a new medium. Seemed to stand up well.

Best newcomer for me personally, though, was Rachel And Miles X-Plain The X-Men. If a charming, funny, affectionately-poking-fun look back at the X-Men’s labyrinthine comic book history appeals to you, this podcast nails the pitch. So good, I signed up for their Patreon campaign. Their weekly YouTube reviews of current X-Men books are worth watching too.

Over in the weird-comedy section, the very, very funny ManBuyCow podcast put out the latter half of their second series at the start of 2014, hopefully 2015 will see series 3. The theme tune alone is worth listening for.Lastly, and most topically, both Tea and Jeopardy (the silly-but-fun scifi/fantasy books discussion show with Emma Newman) and Daniel Ruiz Tizon (South London’s master of melancholy) put out daily Advent Calendar shows during December, and both have been great in their own ways, exploring festivity and helping us all build towards Christmas

.I also attended the recording of the Daniel Ruiz Tizon Is Available Bumper Christmas Annual last night, wrapping up a good year for him as he took his show from podcast to Resonance FM, but kept on chronicling the small victories and defeats that band together to make up our lives. You might be able to hear me laughing in the background throughout the annual and saying something about Doctor Who towards the end. Looking forward to seeing what Daniel does in 2015.

Movies

Okay, this is going to be short, especially if we restrain it to viewed films released during 2014. It’s basically just the two Marvel movies (Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and The Lego Movie, all of which were very good, broad adventures with a unique flavour.

If I had to put them in an order, I’d say Guardians just edges out Lego for the top spot, but if you’ve any interest in those films and haven’t yet seen them, definitely rectify that. They all entertain and emote with balanced skill.

I also caught up on some late-2013 movies recently: Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, both of which were enjoyable, engrossing adventures. Catching Fire perhaps suffers a little from middle-of-trilogy-setting-up-for-last one syndrome, but they did inherit that issue from the book.

Frozen, meanwhile, aside from that very catchy song, is almost painfully likable and does interesting things with standard Disney tropes. Could’ve maybe used a few more memorable songs aside from Let It Go, but the story still held me regardless.

Music

I’ve mostly tuned out of current music, but I bought a few current releases this year – new Elbow album The Taking Off And Landing Of Everything was definitely much better than their last one, including a few songs that made me feel properly sad/uplifted as only they can.

I also listened to the new Taylor Swift album 1989, mostly to see what the fuss was about, and found it a fun hour of pop. After a few stern Twitter recommendations, I went back and tried Red, her previous one, and yes, that’s the country-catchy stuff. It stayed on rotation much longer.

New Weezer album Everything Will Be Alright In The End turned out to be an addictive collection of fun-but-not-stupid indie-rock, and no-one was more surprised than the band’s own fanbase. If you used to like Weezer and drifted away, the new one strikes a good balance between memorable choruses and genuine emotion. I especially like the songs Cleopatra and Da Vinci, but other people have different favourites, and it’s probably a good sign that there are enough high quality songs on the record for these arguments to exist.

Also played Weird Al Yankovic’s Mandatory Fun for a while to great enjoyment, although like many parody albums, it got old eventually.

Lastly, as with the movies, I also discovered some 2013 music belatedly – primarily CHVRCHES album The Bones Of What You Believe and Nocturnes by Little Boots. Both smooth, driving, haunting music and great for writing to, I’ve found. There’s a song on The Bones Of What You Believe that very much is the theme song of the fantasy novel I’ve just finished, to me. And I hardly ever have those kind of thoughts.

Right – probably two more posts to follow in this series, Books & Comics and Top Ten TV, same as last year. I’ll attempt to get both out before 2014 dies, although one of them may slip and I can only apologise if so. Gotta see the last episodes of Doctor Who, Agents of SHIELD and Homeland before I can do TV, for starters.

2014 – A Writrospective

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Because it’s a retrospective about my writing, you see? So it’s a writrospective! Even if you don’t care about me or my work, surely it was worth clicking on the blog post just for that pun? See diagram for more details.

Anyway. I have more or less reached the point where all my free time is booked for the remainder of the year. Might squeeze in an hour or two somewhere, but I doubt any more substantial writing work will happen before 2015 hits.

So I thought I’d take this chance, late on a Thursday night, to look back on what I did/achieved this year, in and around writing, and whether it met my lofty goals from twelve months ago. Don’t worry, it won’t be pure self-congratulation – I missed almost all of those goals, but not completely.

ONE – Self-Publish Hobson & Choi

At the start of the year, roaring through the second major storyline, I’d already more or less settled on the idea of self-publishing my Hobson & Choi webserial in some form. We were some distance away from the final format but my vague goal was: get one – maybe two – H&C books out by the end of 2014.

Well, The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf appeared in July 2014, book two is scheduled for late January 2015. I think I’m going to say this goal was almost entirely a success. Don’t worry, misery-fans, this is the only one.

Not only has that first book sold a few copies (not millions, but more than I’d conservatively estimated), but it was stocked by the excellent Big Green Bookshop as part of their small press programme and sufficiently demanded by readers to graduate from the small press shelf to the big press table.Look, here it is in situ:

That picture definitely makes me happy I paid for a decent cover so my book wouldn’t look embarrassing next to others. Anyway,  if you live anywhere near Big Green and want a copy, go grab one there. And if you too are a bookshop and want to stock H&C, get in touch and we should be able to sort something.

For the non-bookshops among you, stay tuned for Rush Jobs in around a month. Cover reveal coming dangerously soon after January starts. Sign up for the launch blog tour here if you want.

TWO – Finish drafting fantasy devil-based novel, send it to agents

I haven’t entirely managed this one. But as of about a month ago, I have completed the first clause, a good draft is done, so I don’t feel like a complete waster. Basically, two things happened to get in the way of this goal:

  1. The above-mentioned H&C self-publication.
  2. Editing, beta-reading and yet more editing took longer than I expected.

On the one hand, I’m quite pleased with the systematic, steady and ultimately (I hope) successful approach I took to editing this one. On the other, it still took a while. There are only a handful of scenes in the book that haven’t been rewritten and/or replaced entirely once since the first draft, and some multiple times.

I know a few people who are currently trying to get editing done, we all finished our first drafts at a similar-ish time, and I think we’re all finding the next stage takes a lot longer than we expected. Such is life. When screwing around with a big house of cards, one change has more knock-on effects than you expect.

Still, damn near there now. I’ve been working on my cover letter and hopefully the second half of the target can take a battering in the new year. Woohoo/gulp.

THREE – Write first draft of new lighter-hearted adventure novel

We’re basically at the Total Failure section now. Well, I lie, I wrote the first 1,500 words of this novel yesterday, largely to avoid admitting I’d blown this target.

Obviously, this plan imagined a world where I finished the fantasy book much earlier, spent the last third-ish of the year sending it to agents and could do a decent chunk of this first draft for NaNo. Instead, I spent NaNo concluding those edits and this didn’t happen.

Still, once the Rush Jobs publication is out of the way, I live in hope that I will be able to forge on with this and have (at the very least) a non-shit first draft done by the end of 2015, if not a complete second or third out to betas.

And this, kids, is how I live, constantly balancing targets to make sure I can never relax for a second. I also have about five thousand words of notes on the project after this one, but I’m not putting that on the official to-do list yet, as I value my mental stability.

Still, despite the theoretical missing of many targets, I got a lot done this year, and that’s not even counting the almost-50 chapters of H&C webserial I wrote. I have almost two real books (as illustrated above) to show for it. Writing-wise, things are moving along. I even went to my first ever convention at Nine Worlds and had a great time.Go team me.

Maybe I deserve the enforced fortnight off writing I’m about to have. If I don’t make it back before Christmas, have a good one. I should go to bed now. The now-regular annual Top Ten TV Shows should follow after I’ve seen the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

Hellblazer by Garth Ennis – Classic Constantine Contemplations

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Inspired by the launch of that Constantine TV show, Comixology recently held a generous sale on Hellblazer, the original for-mature-readers John Constantine series. I took this opportunity to finally read in order the entire Garth Ennis-written run on that title, the work that broke Ennis into American comics and first teamed him with Steve Dillon, with whom he’d later create Preacher.

For the uninitiated – Hellblazer is a horror comic about John Constantine, trenchcoated modern-day wizard antihero, confronting supernatural/magical unpleasatness in a modern setting. He was created during Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing stories, before spinning off into own series after fans enjoyed his manipulative schemes and wry British comments.

Hellblazer distinguished itself from other urban fantasy via particular emphasis on straight-up awful horrific moments and a tendency to reference real modern-day British issues rather than just the affairs of its own fictional universe, all of which made it a massive cult hit.

Long time ago, when we were young…

Now – I’ve only read Ennis’ run in segmented chunks before, mostly due to DC/Vertigo’s until-recently-quite-shitty approach to reprinting Hellblazer. The original issues came way before every single comic book got a collected edition as a matter of course, but thanks to Ennis/Dillon’s later success, there was a half-arsed attempt to collect this early collaboration. Sadly, these had no helpful volume numbering and an annoying habit of skipping non-Dillon issues.

I, meanwhile, was a teenager in a suburban-Essex library where neither Google nor Wikipedia had emerged yet. Not a chance in hell(blazer). But DC have, at last, started collecting early Hellblazer in easy-to-follow numbered volumes. On the down side, they’ve cancelled the monthly comic and relaunched it as the no-longer-so-horrific all-ages Constantine series, but… y’know, it’s something.

Stories within stories

John Constantine is sad, he is so very sad

Not getting into big spoilers, the ongoing storylines of Garth Ennis’ Hellblazer hinge on two points:

  1. In the first (very well-regarded and good) storyline Dangerous Habits, John discovers he’s dying of lung cancer from his years of smoking. Escaping that certain death requires such a big, risky deal, he ends up dealing with the repurcussions for the rest of the run, right up to the climax.
  2. Constantine finds himself in an unusually healthy and normal relationship with Kit, a dead friend’s ex, to whom he makes a lot of promises about not fucking it up by getting in deep with magic. These prove difficult to keep, especially with the aftermath of that first point hanging over him.

As is the joy of monthly comics, there are a lot of diversions into horror vignettes along the way. Still, the Ennis run broadly reads as one big novel covering those two interweaving stories. Scattered references to past Hellblazer storylines, but you can basically read it as a complete unit in itself. It’s fine. God knows I only knew the bare-bones basics when I started, and I’ve still not read that much other Hellblazer now.

The Litany

I first kinda-sorta read chunks of this run in my late teens, and re-reading it now, a lot of it came lumbering out of my past recollections. I didn’t realise to what extent I’d half-absorbed it, nor how much I’d failed to understand some of the broader themes – especially the many references to political and social issues of the time.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m still not shit-hot on the tensions of 80s-90s Britain, but the ideas about race and class in these Hellblazer issues shot straight over never-left-suburbia teenage Nick’s head. Good to see all this time reading liberal Twitter has changed something in me.

It’s interesting reading this as an early Garth Ennis work, spotting some of the tools he’d later become extremely known for – pontifications on self-destruction and the effects of extreme actions; the enduring nature of male friendship; crowbarring a war story into an unrelated plot; creating strong and likable relationships, then putting them under extreme pressure.

It also features a predilection towards demons delivering rather long, ponderous and flowery monologues, a tendency Ennis thankfully dialled down in later works – Preacher, in particular, featured a lot of heavenly beings, but less of their unvarnished soliloquies.

Also, it’s so easy to think of Hellblazer as a forerunner to other tortured urban fantasy antiheroes, you forget how much more genuine horror there was, how many times Constantine was faced with magic not just as a vague swirly force, but a really on-the-nose, awful esclation of something wrong with the real world. There’s not as much extrapolating through metaphor, far less excuse to think, actually, this isn’t really happening. Because a lot of it clearly is, and that’s when this book really works. The visceral stuff.

Ennis was, I gather, pretty young when he wrote this, and he’s definitely youthfully angry about some stuff. Another character type Ennis always writes well, and often applies to the many forces that displease him: idiots bringing about their own doom.

I’m a sucker for Dillon’s art after growing up on Preacher, and he’s great for this kind of stuff, creating a grounded real world around Constantine – a plausibility that only makes it more brutal when fucking horrible magic hits home. William Simpson, the other main artist involved, is excellent too – his work carries a washed-out, ghostly feel, bringing out the End-Of-The-Line-Mate sense permeating Dangerous Habits.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t all a grim journey into the heart of darkness – yes, things inevitably get bad before the big showdown, but before that, in order to make us care about JC and chums, there’s a lot of real human warmth in there. Yet another Ennis trick – writing dialogue that actually feels like human conversation rather than… well, like dialogue. Look, here’s John talking to a rabbit.

Whereas today, on the other hand…

The weirdest part about reading this book again, to be honest, is realising how much it’s influenced me. Much like when I revisited Quantum & Woody a while back, this is a series that got to me young, even if always as a supplement to Preacher, and a lot of the lingering regret and tone of world-weariness does come up in my work. I look at John Hobson (of Hobson & Choi fame) after this re-read and think, actually, there’s a bit of the Ennis Constantine in there. Only without the magic, obviously.

I’m also following the Constantine TV show, and I think one reason old-school Constantine fans aren’t all taking to it is a lack of the two points I mentioned that distinguish Hellblazer from standard urban fantasy: genuine horror and real world relevance. But on its own merits, it’s a reasonably entertaining pulpy supernatural antihero show, helped along by Matt Ryan being quite good as John himself (even if other characters can be a bit flat).

That, in summation, is every thought I had after re-reading the Garth Ennis Hellblazer run. Hope you enjoyed the piece. Do check out the comics in question if they sound appealing – they genuinely are quite good. The Ennis stuff is Hellblazer #41-83 plus a few specials, or volume 5-8 of the recent collected editions (only the last six issues of book 5 are by Ennis).

And if the comparisons with Constantine make you want to buy the first book in my Hobson & Choi series, I won’t discourage you from doing that either.Now, I might even try reading some other Hellblazer some time.