Fantasy Bazaar No.2 - The Boys

Following on from our first review of Y: The Last Man last week, we continue with Fantasy Bazaar No.2. This week we’re featuring a relatively recent comic from Garth Ennis (Preacher) and Darick Robertson (Transmetropolitan). With titles like these behind the team, you know The Boys is going to be good. The first volume was published in 2007 with four volumes having been released to date. The Boys focuses on a world, very similar to ours, where Super Heroes live as crime fighters for normal people. But these are not exemplary boy scouts like our pals Superman and Spider-Man. No Sir. These are power hungry men and women. People whose private lives leave a lot to be desired. People who, when it boils down to it, may not differ in psychological profiling to some of the criminals that they are responsible for apparently ’saving the world’ from. And it is … There’s more

Comics for the Noob

All the furore over the release of a movie based on “the greatest comic of all time” had me worried I might have been missing out on something. So, the week before the Watchmen premiere I started reading the graphic novel. Once I had learned to slow down and appreciate the artwork and not just the dialogue and exposition, I was hooked. I finished it on the morning of the film’s release and rather than ruin the movie for me, it enhanced it. It added so much. The comic was as rich , complex and intricately woven as any great novel I had read. It was a thriller that had me dart through the pages to discover the story, but then made me want to reread it immediately to appreciate the intricate universe it was creating. Once I had finished, I had no idea where to turn next in my … There’s more

I’m a graphic novel virgin

With all the talk of Watchmen on Twitter and elsewhere recently, I decided to seek out the book and read it before seeing the film. A few comments I read indicated it would be a good idea to do this as well. So I set off for the closest branch of Waterstones to discover a whole new section of books that I had never seen before - the Graphic Novel section. All kinds of shiny books on the shelf which I’m sure I will return to look at in closer detail. Back to the Watchmen though, and the purpose of this post. I started reading at the weekend and found myself trying to read it in the same way as a text only book. It wasn’t long before I was found myself having to flip back the pages to try and work out who was who. I wasn’t paying attention … There’s more