Nick Bryan

Reviews

X-Men: Days Of Future Past – “Open Mouth. Insert Wolverine.”

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This week, I went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past, a movie attempting to properly fire the X-Engine back up for their cut of that sweet Avengers money. There are millions of characters in the X-Cupboard, after all, and they were among the first entrants in the current run of super-movies.

So, hell, do a comeback, why not. But, oddly, this isn’t a reboot or straight continuation of the excellent X-Men: First Class prequel. Instead, they’re bringing back cast and director from the first two films and mashing everything together into an epic time travel story.

Wow. That’s so comic book. I’m totally on-board. But will it be a good movie?

WARNING: Full spoilers throughout. And the ending is impressively weird, so if you’ve somehow avoided ruining it for this long, I’d keep going until you see it.

X-Men: Second Class?

Despite the returning of the Halle Berry/Patrick Stewart timeline dominating most of the promotion, this is far more a sequel to X-Men: First Class than older X-Movies in plot terms. However, thanks to the higher budget and return of Bryan Singer as director, the movie feels more like the old early-2000s efforts. It’s a strange mish-mash, and I occasionally missed the less actiony character focus of First Class, but the driving plot keeps things moving, and I was never bored. Manages a more serious tone than the Marvelvengers movies without seeming dour.

As you may gather, there are a lot of characters in this movie. So many, to be honest, a lot of them don’t get much to do. It’s particularly frustrating seeing Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart up there again, but without space to shine. Anna Paquin apparently had her entire subplot cut – I suspect the director’s cut DVD of this film will be a good one. But really the old cast are just there to jack up the stakes for the First Class section of the plot.

Still, we get Peter Dinklage as a villain – puts a lot into a small role – along with some impressive Sentinel effects. Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy have intense moments, as does Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique. Future-X-Men (the new characters, rather than the returning cast) get cool fight-power-demo opportunities too, even if they stop short of developing personalities. As everyone says, the Quicksilver bit is great.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Wolverine

And Wolverine, yes, he is there. Central to the film for cash-based reasons, yet so inessential that Magneto literally wraps him in metal and tosses him into a river with twenty minutes to go, where he stays for the whole final showdown. I can’t bring myself to get internet-furious about this, as Hugh Jackman is very charismatic and watchable in the role still, but nor can I pretend it doesn’t feel a bit perfunctory.

Still, manipulating events in service of the franchise is hardly new in these movies, and at least it doesn’t derail the story itself much.

Indeed, shoving Wolverine centre-stage just because he’s popular is precisely the sort of thing the comics have been doing for years, and you don’t see me ditching them. Between the multi-character-cramming, the plot that demands a decent understanding of past movies and the straight-faced delivery of ridiculous codenames, this is one of the most comic-booky superhero films I’ve seen in a while. It manages to feel like a single movie rather than a TV episode, but still does a lot of shifting bits around the X-Men game board. Ambitious considering we’re talking about a series which began over a decade ago.

(And again, I’m not complaining. Love me a good superhero comic.)

One More Days of Future Past?

The most superhero-comic thing in this film is the ending, though – and this is where I do real spoilers, so last chance to turn away.

Although it’s not the whole point of the movie (which is good), a major effect of this time-screwing is to somehow erase the events of X-Men: The Last Stand from history, restoring the school and several dead characters to life.

Now, that movie was awful and pointlessly destructive, I have no problem with this, but it’s always a risk making this your big ending as it skates close to being self-indulgent. Fortunately there’s enough meat to the story for this to just draw a laugh.

Also, it makes the meta-narrative of the movie great fun: director Bryan Singer reaching back in time to stop the X-Men movie he didn’t direct from happening. Bryan Singer is Wolverine. Excellent.

My Writing Music – Songs to mash the keyboard to

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Some writers don’t listen to music while they work, needing constant silence to produce their genius. However, I require an endless rolling soundtrack to drown out the screaming choirs of my own insanity (10 points for knowing where I stole that last phrase from), so I get through a lot of tracks.

A lot of the choices go in phases – new records come out, or I fancy immersing myself in the music of one artist, so I load my phone up with their albums. Then I listen to this person exclusively for a while, until I’m sick of them and don’t want to hear anything they’ve done for months.

A few songs/sounds do survive the gap though – elevate themselves above the flighty phases and become evergreen presences. Here, then, are my perpetual audio companions. Apologies if a few of them turn out to be part of temporary phases and I’m just blinded by momentary love.

Warren Ellis – SPEKTRMODULE

SPEKTRMODULE - by Warren Ellis

SPEKTRMODULE is an irregular ambient music podcast by British comics/novels writer Warren Ellis and is rarely far from my writing playlist. It helps that there’s loads of it and new ones sometimes slip out, but even with that, it’s a good soundtrack. A nice combination of atmospheric and relaxing, and always my first go-to when I don’t feel like listening to music with lyrics.

You can see all the episodes in their category on his blog, or subscribe to the iTunes feed here. Well worth a look.

In other beepy/electronic music, I sometimes listen to the Social Network and Girl With The Dragon Tattoo soundtracks by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, but they’re a little too scary to relax into.

Gorillaz – The Fall

This is the lesser-known fourth Gorillaz album, the one with less budget, very few famous guest artists and sparse/instrumental songs recorded on an iPad about Damon Albarn’s loneliness while touring America.

It didn’t top the charts like other cartoon monkey records, but it is great writing soundtrack material. Haunting and driving in equal measure. And just in general, if you like a good Blur/Albarn song, there are some nice ones on here, especially Little Pink Plastic Bags, The Parish of Space Dust and Amarillo.

The new Damon Albarn solo album Everyday Robots is pretty too, though a bit too languid for work-motivating purposes – in my opinion, at least.And to complete this segment, here’s the excellent song Amarillo in YouTube form.

R.E.M. – Up

I really like R.E.M., for which I blame their total ubiquity on my parents’ stereo when I was younger. Although considering they and Blur/Gorillaz are two of my favourite artists, it’s also possible I like music where the focus is just as much on the clever lyrics as the songs – this might be a writer trait? I don’t know. Someone tell me I’m normal, for god’s sake.

Putting self-analysis aside, a lot of R.E.M.’s stuff is hooky, attention-seeking indie-rock and not always ideal background work music. The album Up, however, shifted towards whispering, downbeat stuff or, even on the less grim songs, a swirl of noise rather than louder, more straightforward indie.

A music-minded person might say this is the album where R.E.M. most tried to replicate their good friends in Radiohead, but either way, this album really works for me as writing music. More so than most Radiohead stuff, actually, although Kid A does come out when I’m hitting the misery juice hard.And now, for a sample, the song Suspicion which I’ve always found pretty lovely.

Honourable Mentions

At this point, there is a risk of hitting some stuff that’s just a phase. For example, the new Elbow album The Take-Off And Landing Of Everything has lasted well, but I imagine it won’t be with me forever. Their classic The Seldom Seen Kid is a bit of an evergreen though.

Every year for a while now, around the time the sun comes out, I pull out The Duckworth Lewis Method album, and their 2013 release Sticky Wickets has joined it this time. Good times, very seasonal, if sometimes a bit loud and jangly for heavy work deadlines.

At the opposite end of the spectrum to most things we’ve talked about so far, I sometimes like a little higher-energy pop music, especially when crashing out first drafts. I’ve got the three-disc Genesis Platinum Collection for a lot of this, for better or worse. Also: the second Little Boots album Nocturnes, which really deserved more attention, and The Bones Of What You Believe by CHVRCHES.

That’s probably enough music to be getting on with – what can I say, after following Kieron Gillen on Tumblr for long enough, you start to think about the role of music in your writing. If you have any recommendations in a similar vein, feel free to leave them in the comments below. Ambient stuff in the style of SPEKTRMODULE would be particularly interesting to me – need a precise level of atmospheric but not too attention-grabbing.

Black Panther by Christopher Priest – A Homage

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Black Panther #1 cover by Mark Texeira

I recently subscribed to Marvel Unlimited, a Netflix-esque system that gives me all-I-can-eat Marvel comics for a fairly low price. Not bang-up-to-date ones, but I’ve not read half the comics I wanted to over the last decade due to financial concerns, so I can keep trawling for a while.

However, as well as striking out for new material, I’ve also re-read some old favourites, and I’d like to talk about one of those now: Black Panther by Christopher Priest and various artists, a series that ran from 1998 to 2003. The Black Panther character has existed since 1966, King of a fictional African nation called Wakanda, and mostly associated with standing in the backdrop of Avengers groupshots in the later decades of the twentieth century.

Attentive readers may note Priest also wrote Quantum & Woody, a series even closer to my heart than Black Panther. I started reading Panther due to following Priest over from Q&W, barely knowing who the character was, and Priest made me love it in approximately one issue. If you want a gushing tribute to Q&W, here’s one I wrote in September 2012.

But anyway. Black Panther. What was that about?

“The bathroom had no door. I still had no pants.” – Everett K. Ross wins my heart in one page.

Everett K. Ross by Mark Texeira

As you may have guessed from both the name and his status as King of an African nation, the Black Panther (aka T’Challa) lives outside the standard white American superhero demographic. And yes, particularly in the old days, black superheroes did have a bad habit of having the word Black in their alias.

Characters outside the standard demo didn’t tend to hit mega-sales in the pre-2010s US mainstream Marvel/DC comic market, but Priest found ways to embrace that. First up, he introduced Everett K. Ross, T’Challa’s new state department liaison and self-proclaimed King of Useless White Boys. With Ross serving as narrator, comic relief, audience POV character and exposition monkey, Priest took a different tack with the title character.

He made Black Panther effortless, dangerous and scary, and T’Challa a ruthless, brilliant schemer with the world’s finest poker face, an enigma one step withdrawn from the reader thanks to the Ross-focused storytelling. He also dug into the real implications (or as real as you can get in a fictional superhero universe) of the politically active King of a nation choosing to wear tights and play superhero, and the international politics of the Marvel Universe. All while Everett K. Ross flippantly monologued about the oddness of superheroes and explained T’Challa’s labyrinthine plots to us.

And seriously, labyrinthine is not hyperbole. I was in my mid-to-late teens when this comic came out, and re-reading it at the ancient age of thirty, I now realise how little of it I understood, especially in the latter, really confusing storylines. The out-of-sequence storytelling in the opening two or three years didn’t help matters, nor did reading it in twenty-two page monthly chunks.

Ironically, comics have milked death beyond death

Black Panther #14 cover by Sal Velluto

All those things probably contributed to the constantly middling sales on Black Panther, but reading back now, I’m glad Priest stuck to his guns, as it’s great. A uniquely idiosyncratic, smart take on a genre that really has been milked to death and back again. People talk about adult comics as the ones with tits and blood, but this is adult in the sense that it can be denser than a lot of political thrillers. In many ways ahead of its time, considering how much reading comics in collected edition format has exploded in the 2000s, not to mention recent industry moves to diversify a little from the white male superhero demo.

I’ve focused on the writing as that’s my area of interest, but I would be a prick not to mention the artwork – especially the gorgeous painted art by Mark Texeira and Joe Jusko in early issues and the reliably beautiful, clear, emotive work by Sal Velluto after that.

Sadly, Priest’s Black Panther had the poor fortune to be published just before collected editions of everything became standard practice, so it’s not available through many venues – except the afore-mentioned Marvel Unlimited, which has it free and easy, but for some reason it’s not on Comixology yet. Well, they have one issue, but it’s a midstoryline episode published because it crosses over with Deadpool, and would be utterly incomprehensible to a new reader.

Indeed, the series as a whole is quite dense on Marvel Universe guest stars at times. Still, considering we now live in a world where everyone in the geekosphere knows roughly who the Avengers are, it’s worth a go if you can find it and fancy a good, different superhero read.

Post-Panther Notation

Black Panther (Kasper Cole version) by Dan Fraga

The above is talking about the bulk of the Black Panther series by Priest, specifically issues #1-49. After that, other things happened…

  • With #50, the series underwent radical retooling – Priest stayed on as writer, but New York cop Kasper Cole took over as Black Panther after finding a costume abandoned in an alleyway. Cole’s adventures never hit the dizzy joyous heights of the best Priest/T’Challa/Ross stories, but they’re good, engaging super-crime stuff.
  • Alas, the Kasper Cole revamp was not enough to get sales up, and the book ended with #62. Which is about fifty more issues than a low-selling book gets nowadays.
  • Proving that point, Priest and artist Joe Bennett launched an ensemble book called The Crew partly spinning out of Black Panther, featuring Kasper Cole teaming up with a few other characters. It lasted seven issues, and that’s a shame, as it was excellent. Also available on Marvel Unlimited, happily.
  • Priest himself hasn’t done much in comics since the early 2000s, but seems to be dipping his toe back into the water at the moment, with an upcoming Quantum & Woody sequel mini-series and a short story in a recent Deadpool anthology issue. My fingers are predictably crossed that this leads to more – and not necessarily on existing superhero characters, I’d be just as up for a new property for a smaller company.
  • If you want more in-depth (and at times brutally honest) essays on Panther from the author himself, there’s a few on his website.

More blognotes may follow if I want to spotlight anything good on Marvel Unlimited. Or I might just plough through endless old Avengers and X-Men issues rather than taking the time to write about them. Let’s wait and see!

Best of 2013 – Top Ten TV Edition

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Hello, and welcome to the final section of my Best of 2013 series. Earlier posts covered Music, Movies and Podcasts and Books and Comics, and now we’re finishing on TV, the only area of culture to get a whole post of its own. Well, I do blog about it a lot, so I seem to have accrued more opinions. To make those thoughts easier to digest, they’re arranged in an internet-friendly Top Ten format.

If you want to compare and contrast, my Top Ten of 2012 appeared on The Digital Fix as I was TV editor at the time. I am no longer, as I wanted to devote more time to the fiction writing, so we’re over here for the 2013 countdown. I’ve stuck to show which actually aired in 2013, and there are some omissions simply because I haven’t seen them – Netflix’s new House of Cards series, for example, may well have made the list if I’d viewed it. (I got the DVDs for Christmas if that helps.)

Here we go.

#10 – Count Arthur Strong

Count Arthur Strong

A new sitcom based on a radio series by and starring Steve Delaney, who cowrote the TV version with Graham Linehan, Count Arthur Strong followed a former variety star who now hangs out in a Polish cafe, through the eyes of his deceased business partner’s son. A lovely dose of old-school sitcom silliness, with a sprinkling of genuinely moving material about age and our attitude to it.

Enjoyed this a lot, and even though not many people seemed to watch it, a second series was commissioned. Hopefully the BBC will keep giving this time to develop, as I think it’s a great funny-yet-sad-yet-uplifting show. Check it out on DVD or similar if you can.

#9 – Homeland

Homeland

Homeland had a strange conclusion to 2012’s second season, a confused few weeks that suggested the writers were feeling trapped by the success of the Brody character and subsequent commercial pressure to keep him alive. Well, this year they shoved him off-screen for most of the run and only brought him back as a doomed, broken man, crushed by the meta-knowledge that his story arc had long ago concluded and he was living on inertia.

If nothing else, the people who rooted for him to die must be feeling vindicated. A slow start, some early episodes were flat-out dull, but the last half of the season was so tense and well-characterised that I wanted to give it some recognition.

#8 – Doctor Who

Doctor Who: Day of the Doctor

The placement of Doctor Who was one of the biggest headscratchers for me compiling this list. The anniversary special Day of the Doctor was among my favourite TV episodes of the year, and I kinda enjoyed last week’s Time of the Doctor for what it was, but that eight episode run in spring was… just rather middling, in my opinion. Nowhere near as consistent as the shows higher up the list.

So I weighed up all that, and it’s landed here at #8. Still, the anniversary stuff really was excellent – the surrounding celebrations as well as the special itself – and I’m looking forward to the Peter Capaldi run next year.

#7 – Orphan Black

Orphan Black

It’s always good to see a genuinely new and interesting property in the sci-fi field, as too often the same motifs get rather hammered, and Orphan Black certainly took clones to new heights. Not a perfect show, hit a few cliches quite hard, but the chemistry between the different multiples, all played impressively by Tatiana Maslany (even if one or two of the accents were dodgy) was fun to watch, and a couple of episodes did brilliant things with the confusion.

This is getting a few extra points for being exciting and new, might collapse in on itself next year, but for now, a fun addition to the genre TV club.

#6 – Borgen

Borgen

This was #3 in the list last year, so has taken a tumble. Much like Who, a hard show to place, as both the second and third series aired on BBC Four in 2013, and the second was once again excellent. It was as good as the first one and if only that had been in contention, Borgen would be up in the top three or four again.

But series three, sad to say, suffered from a less nuanced storyline on a couple of fronts, amplified by one of the main characters being scaled back dramatically (due to actor availability, I’m told by the internet, rather than a writing decision).

All told, although series three was still a classy show, it wasn’t quite as riveting. Shame. Nonetheless, I hold that Borgen was the best straight political drama since the mighty West Wing. At least check the first two series out, they’re amazing.

#5 – Fresh Meat

Fresh Meat

I was kinda excited for Fresh Meat to come back, it was pretty entertaining last year and I still think the JP character, as played by Jack Whitehall, is one of the great monstrous sitcom creations of our time. Still, the third series smashed my expectations. The ensemble clicked, characters who had been digging into ruts (Oregon, Kingsley, Josie) found new ways to be funny and the old reliable favourites (JP, Vod, Howard) were as good as ever.

One of my favourite things in recent days, the third series of Fresh Meat hardly put a foot wrong and ergo it gets to shoot up the charts from #9 last year.

#4 – Him And Her

Him & Her: The Wedding

Or Him And Her: The Wedding to use its full title. This was the final series of Him And Her, and my sentiment about it being over might be pushing the show up the ranks a tad, but this was properly lovely. The first two series were among the most heartwarming, upbeat, up-the-underdogs fun things I’d seen in a while, and although the third started to struggle within the “one set, hardly any characters” set-up, they reacted perfectly with this fourth and final one.

So we have a bigger cast, a wider backdrop and a comedy-drama that worked for me on every level, humanising even the characters who started off as caricatures, and ended on a smile, thank god. Glad they’ve ended Him And Her at the right time, but I’ll miss them.

#3 – Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones

For whatever reason, Game of Thrones season 2 didn’t leave as lasting an impression on me, but this third one I loved. Maybe because I’d recently re-watched the show and read the first three books, meaning I had a firmer grasp on who everyone was, but this was amazingly compelling viewing every week for the most part. So much going on that even when a storyline doesn’t work (the endless Theon-torturing scenes, for example), it’s hard to get too bothered.

It had an iconic TV moment (the Red Wedding), it had dragons and witty political headgames, it had a lot of characters trudging through the woods towards their destiny (the danger inherent in only adapting the first half of a book), it was great. Can’t wait for season four.

#2 – Hannibal

Hannibal

I’ve enjoyed Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls in the past, both from showrunner Bryan Fuller, so it was exciting to hear he was bringing his quirky-morbid sensibility to a known property in the form of Hannibal, a prequel to Hannibal Lector’s movie/novel appearances. Fuller tones down the quirk and pushes more genuine horror here, and the result is a grisly, atmospheric, scary yet charming series, focusing on the sinister friendship between Lector (played this time by Mads Mikkelsen) and FBI agent Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), when Hannibal was at his cannibalistic peak.

Touching on a range of interesting cases but mostly telling a single exciting story culminating in a brilliant finale, this was one of the most compelling shows of the year. I raced through it at high speed, and I’m very happy that we’re getting a second year – even better, it’s coming pretty damn soon. It would probably have been number one, if 2013 hadn’t been the year when another charismatic villain ended his story…

#1 – Breaking Bad

Yes, a TV reviewer puts Breaking Bad at the top of his likes list. I imagine you’re all very surprised. Nonetheless, this was a brilliantly executed ending, staring down sky-high expectations and producing something special. As Dexter proved this very year (sigh), ending a long-running anti-hero series and providing the right degrees of catharsis and justice is a massive bugger, but the drug-cooking adventures of Walter White came to just the right conclusion, ditching many of the distractions and focusing back in on the central relationships.

It produced one of the best single episodes this year in Ozymandias, it had Bryan Cranston doing yet more best-on-TV acting, it was really good. I wouldn’t go as far as saying BEST THING EVER ON TV NOTHING ELSE CAN COMPARE WHAT’S THE POINT as I don’t think that’s a worthwhile argument, it’s just using the quality of Breaking Bad to be implicitly pissy about other shows, but it’s a great accomplishment nonetheless. Interested to see the upcoming Better Call Saul spin-off, but even if that turns out to be a misfire, this was a great complete work.

Honourable Mentions

That was a rather long post, wasn’t it?

Anyway. Other shows I liked this year but didn’t quite make the top ten: The Fall was very well-acted and atmospheric but a touch generic and disappointingly ended, In The Flesh did a surprisingly good job of making zombies interesting and How I Met Your Mother has been reinvigorated by the prospect of finally concluding.

Also watched the second season of Parks And Recreation on BBC Four, it was hilarious and uplifting, but I’m so far behind the “new” episodes, I felt odd listing it. Still, check it out.

And with that, I think I’ve filed 2013 away. Back soon enough with some 2014 thoughts, but thanks to anyone who read anything on here in the past year, hope your New Year’s Eve celebrations are pretty rockin’. Ta-ta.

Best of 2013 – Books and Comics Edition

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I’m off home for Christmas tomorrow, I should be packing a bag, so it seemed an ideal time to type up the second installment of my 2013 cultural intake summary! This time: Books and Comics!

If you want to see my movies, music and podcasts of choice, that was last week. TV to follow next, once I’ve formed an opinion on the Doctor Who Christmas special.

But first, it’s time for stories told in page format. From a wide perspective, the big development this year was my moving entirely digital in both these areas. I can comfortably read digital comics on my widescreen monitor (though if anyone wants to buy me a tablet for Christmas, don’t let me stop you), and started properly using my Kindle all the time. It’s great, my room is much less drowning in paper. But what was I reading, exactly?

Books

A Dance With Dragons - George R.R. Martin

My biggest single reading project this year: consuming most of the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin – the books being adapted as Game of Thrones on the telly. I finished the second book just after Christmas last year, and am coming to the end of the most recent volume now.

I’m not a huge epic fantasy person, but I have enough sci-fi/fantasy tolerance to deal with the tropes and detailed worldbuilding moments, and the the real hook of these books is the characterisation, the way everyone has a motivation and an angle. If you enjoy the sprawling scope of the TV show and want more, then believe it or not, there’s loads more characters in the books. Now, I can join in waiting for Martin to write the next one, which sounds like a damn good party.

Going way back in the past to established literary classic territory, I also read The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, which was short but perfectly formed, a nice balance between black humour and the genuinely disturbing. Also The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which is every bit the tearjerker you’ve heard. The trailer for the film still makes it look awful though.

London Falling - Paul Cornell

Consumed A Serpent Uncoiled by Simon Spurrier and London Falling by Paul Cornell, both by comic authors whose work I’ve enjoyed, both great stuff with unique voices on the crime genre. London Falling has a sequel coming and has recently been optioned for TV, all good news.

Also: The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, ultimately rewarding but very slow to get going. The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie was an excellent action-heavy introduction to a fantasy universe and I’ll be continuing the trilogy very soon. Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig married a cool concept onto a memorable character with style.

That’ll probably do – and yes, I’m aware none of those books came out in 2013. If you want a complete list of my reading, complete with star ratings, I keep my Goodreads profile fairly up to date.

Comics

Lazarus - v1

2013 saw me re-enter reading comics in the biggest way for a while. The biggest reason for this is probably the rise of digital, finally bringing new comics down to a price I was actually willing to pay. I was also put on to a few interesting new books – the best of these was probably Lazarus by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark, about a seemingly unkillable warrior in a future universe of warring families, struggling with herself both inside and out.

Just as reliably good was the longer running Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory, in which a detective investigates messed up crime and food-based superpowers. I finally caught up with that book this year, and although I’ve now fallen behind again, it remains a fun, surprising and blackly hilarious bundle of joy.

I also read the first volume of Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra’s The Manhattan Projects – more overtly sci-fi than I often go, but a lot of ideas and clever plots being thrown around and I imagine I could get a lot of re-reads out of that. Imagine an aggressively adult Doctor Who.

I read a few bits by Kieron Gillen this year too – his Journey Into Mystery for Marvel and Phonogram for Image with Jamie McKelvie. JiM probably spoke more to me personally, but the craft on display in Phonogram is undeniable. Next stop: Young Avengers.

It never feels like I’m properly reading comics unless I’ve got something by Garth Ennis on the go, and currently it’s Hitman, his 90s series for DC about a superpowered contract killer in the superhero universe of Superman and Batman. Once again, a brilliantly executed black comedy with a real human heart. I always like those.

Superior Spider-Man #1

Superhero-wise, I’ve mostly been reading random snippits from Comixology sales, but Superior Spider-Man has been consistently great and I’ve also just checked out All-New X-Men and the current Wonder Woman, both of which make old icons seem impressively new and interesting.

Lastly, and as a reward for anyone who read this far, one of my favourite comics of the year is available free online (and in print, if you like paper books) –  Crossed: Wish You Were Here is a free weekly webcomic which makes a zombie-esque Apocalypse seem tense, human and horrific in a way I’d almost forgotten they could. Written by the earlier-mentioned Simon Spurrier, it’s really good. His X-Men: Legacy run is worth a look too, and the firmly surreal mini-series Numbercruncher.

That blog post was way longer than I intended, but the list still seems frustratingly incomplete. Dammit. Still, I must pack those Christmas presents now. Take it easy, blog-readers. I might manage some kind of Christmas broadcast on here before the big day, but if not, hope it’s great.

Best of 2013 – Movies, Music and Podcasts Edition

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As half-predicted in last week’s WriteBlog, my fiction-writing has slowed to a standstill thanks to festive distractions and an inconvenient cold. I’m just about keeping up with Hobson & Choi commitments, but aside from those, all quiet.

So, both to keep this blog ticking over and because I genuinely love reviewing stuff, I’m going to do a few posts about stories, shows and stuff I enjoyed during 2013. These are in no particular order and may involve items released pre-2013 that I’ve only just got round to dealing with, though I’ll try to keep those to a minimum.

This time out: movies, music and podcasts. Subsequent posts will cover books, comics and TV.

Movies

Django Unchained

My film viewing has been slack, so this shouldn’t be a long segment. My favourite film from 2013 was Django Unchained, released on January 10th in the UK, so it does count. The ending ran a bit long, but I enjoyed the characters and knowing meta-Western aesthetic a lot. Christoph Waltz was as amazing as everyone says, but no-one was bad in this movie. Well, except Tarantino during his cameo.

Elsewhere, I didn’t even keep up with superhero movies that well – not seen Man of Steel or The Wolverine – but Iron Man 3 was excellent, one of the best Marvel movies bar Avengers and maybe the first Iron Man. Heavy on character and light on costumed punch-ups, but I think we’re all getting a bit numb to shiny fights anyway.

Speaking of which, Thor: The Dark World was decent superhero fun-action, but we’re so saturated with these films at the moment, “decent” isn’t necessarily enough to make a huge impact. Still, it was enjoyable and didn’t let the side down.

The World’s End was a fun cap-off to the Cornetto trilogy that has been rumbling through my entire adulthood; Zero Dark Thirty has already been reviewed on this very blog, and was compelling and light on triumphalism; I finally saw The Hunger Games just as everyone else watched the sequel and it did a great job of capturing what I liked about the books and converting the unfilmable parts into film.

Also saw Looper and yes, that was a dynamic, entertaining sci-fi movie, although maybe I’ve watched too much Doctor Who to be totally blown away by time travel mindscrewery.

Music

Arcade Fire - Reflektor

This should be even shorter as I’ve dropped out of current music almost entirely – Frank Turner released Tape Deck Heart, which was listenable and stayed on rotation for a while, but the new Arcade Fire lasted even longer, especially once I cut out the draggy second and third tracks. Seriously, try it yourself if you’re struggling to get into Reflektor – cutting We Exist especially makes a difference.

The Duckworth Lewis Method debuted Sticky Wickets, their second cricket-pop album. Yes, I’m aware songs about cricket veer into novelty music territory, but since half the band is indie-pop maestro Neil Hannon (of The Divine Comedy), it was still excellent, catchy work. Recommended, especially if you’ve enjoyed Hannon’s stuff in the past.

Finally, we dive full-on into the novelty music vortex, as both of the former Amateur Transplants duo released new parody albums in the last few months. Adam Kay’s album Specimens features more inventive offensiveness, whereas Suman Biswas’s Still Alive After Amateur Transplants is catchier and longer. Both are good purchases if you enjoyed their previous work, or Weird Al-style word-swapping pun-parodies in general.

Podcasts

The Bugle

The podcast champion of this year is probably satirical-surreal mocknewscast The Bugle, even though it always is and they’re almost too obvious a choice. The schedule was patchy at times this year, probably due to John Oliver’s increasing stateside celebrity, but news stories like the US government shutdown and the UK’s huge pig semen exports meant they were always on form when they did release.

Elsewhere, I subscribed to Welcome to Nightvale like everyone else in the geekosphere, and yes, it is excellent. Creepy, funny, endearing, generally lovely. Perhaps less predictably, I also listened to the entire backlog of Me1 vs Me2 Snooker with Richard Herring. It’s an acquired taste, perhaps best kept for when you’re also doing something else, but I got strangely into it.

Daniel Ruiz Tizon, South London’s master of darkly comic melancholy, seems to have put his Daniel Ruiz Tizon is Available podcast on hiatus for now. However, he did also write and star in The Letter for Resonance FM, a tragicomic series of monologues that distilled the best of his recent work into a single run. If you’ve never tried his stuff before, this is definitely the one to go for, and if the end of his regular show means more work like The Letter, I will have to grin and bear it.

House To Astonish

Finally, I listen to a few podcasts about comics, the best of which continues to be House to Astonish, dissecting recent comic book news and releases with exactly the right levels of fannish enthusiasm, cynicism and good humour. I also picked up Silence! this year, which also has good thoughts, analysis and chat. And yes, despite reading largely American comics, I only seem to like comics podcasts hosted by British folks.

Not entirely a podcast, but the makers of Alternate Cover also released a sci-fi sitcom called A Brief History of Time Travel this year, which is worth a look if you enjoy the Hitchhiker’s Guide/Red Dwarf Brit sci-fi comedy genre.

And that is it for now. Hopefully there’s stuff in there you haven’t already seen and might consider giving a shot. If I’ve missed anything of note, let me know in the comments below – especially in the podcast category, always looking for more good listening. I shall return in the near future to cover another category or two – probably Books & Comics unless plans change.