Recommendations: Webcomic

Recommendations

Hey guys.  It’s been a while since I did one of these, and I think it’s high time I wrote another, especially as this one is a (marginally) contributing factor to my spotty blog progress of late.

You see, I’ve been catching up with what used to be my favourite webcomic.  I used to be well into webcomics a couple of years ago.  In fact I think I had about a dozen bookmarked that I would keep up on.  However, with the advent of a more challenging (or at more fulfilling) job really cut down on the time I could spend reading these things and the regular reads slipped and then eventually I just moved on and didn’t read any more.  If anything, I switched over to reading blogs for some reason, even though the effort is probably about the same to keep up.

Recently, I have rediscovered one particular comic that I used to follow religiously and have been catching up on the many, many issues that have been added to it over the past couple of years.  It is just as good as I remember, so I have no problem wit recommending Sam and Fuzzy (www.samandfuzzy.com) for you to read.

First, a few reasons why I rate it so highly.  The black and white art style is distinctive and very well balanced, never including too much detail to be hard to decipher at a glance.  The creator (Sam Logan) never seems averse to trying out different styles or artistic tricks to accentuate the frames and this helps keep the whole thing fresh and interesting.  Another cool aspect to the art is that it isn’t computer-based (primarily), which helps to further distinguish itself from the wealth of other webcomics out there, presenting a more hand-drawn aesthetic that, for some reason or another, just seems more amiable.  Probably the wrong adjective to use under the circumstances, but I stand by it.

At first glance, it does appear to be just another ‘straightman with psychotic sidekick’ style of setup (in this case, Sam, a guy who looks a bit like Sonic the Hedgehog and Fuzzy his amoral anthropomorphic teddy bear friend with gravity defying eyebrows) and, to be honest, that’s kind of how it started.  It was initially joke-a-day (well three jokes a week).  However, it has since grown out of that niche and has developed its own coherent plot which has been going for a good few years now.  One of the things I definitely admire about the comic is the way the author has been able to take stupid ideas (demonically possessed fridges, hamster biker gangs, the Ninja Mafia) and incorporate them in a whole where they somehow fit, let alone use them effectively in a story.  It’s really admirable.

And last, but certainly not least, it’s genuinely funny.  However, I’m aware that humour is highly subjective, so the best way to present my case is to point you in the direction of the comic itself.  Go read it.  Good boy/girl/thing.

Annoyingly brief at the moment, but work is selfishly allowing less and less time for my verbose blathering.

Never mind, eh?  More stuff coming at a suitably nebulous later date…

Ashes To Ashes Sucks: Part 1

Well, it’s been a week’s break fro this blog.  Not planned by any means, though.  Work was hectic for a couple of days, then some prawns kicked me in the arse and had me off work for a couple of days, and Friday I decided to make it a whole week blog-less and just enjoy my lunch.  Anyway, I’m back now and I’m thinking about talking about something non-40K, which is a bit of challenge for me at the moment.  Battle reports are easy for me to write, because there’s a solid format, and most of the work (i.e. the game itself) is already done for me.  Trying to write about something else throws up a number of problems, starting with what to write about in the first place.  To solve this problem, I’ve decided to back up to an (almost) throwaway comment I made in one of early posts.  Ashes To Ashes was a terrible series.  That’s as true now as it ever was, but I suppose I should waste my time and yours trying to justify this ultimately subjective viewpoint beyond the typical ‘I said it, so it must be’ reasoning that I seem to apply to so many things I say.

In order to find out why I dislike the series so much, you have to look at its precursor (and far superior) series, Life On Mars.  For those that don’t know, Life on Mars was a two-series BBC One show that started in 2006.  The basic premise was that a modern-day policeman called Sam Tyler (John Simm) gets hit by a car and wakes up some 33 years in the past.  Most of the time, the episodes were a 1970s police procedural show with occasional anachronisms thrown in by Tyler as he tries to use modern methods and ideologies decades before their time in pursuit of his work.  Very episodic, but definitely above average.  However, what really made the programme interesting (for me at any rate) was the overarching plot of Tyler’s situation.  It boils down to three alternatives.  He’s either in a coma, has genuinely gone back in time or his whole future life was a delusion and he is therefore more than slightly mad.  To the show’s credit, all three options were eminently plausible (in so far as time travel via head injury can ever be plausible) based on the hints that the programme was giving. 

But that’s just the broad outline. Tyler is undeniably the main focus of the programme (I think he is actually in every single scene of the entire two series run), but there are also three very important side characters.  The first (and most popular) is that of Gene Hunt, Tyler’s immediate superior in the Manchester CID.  He was brutish, belligerent and a borderline alcoholic.  He was also smart in a variety of ways and nearly always certain in what he was doing and, as such, was very much the antithesis of Tyler.  This was the source of most of the main conflict in the show.  They played well off each other, with Gene being right on occasion and Sam being right at other times.  Gene was also a very good comic character and Philip Glenister plays him very well.  However, the comic aspects of Gene Hunt can run the risk of overwhelming the tragedy and hypocrisy of his character (aspects that can often be ignored by a stratum of the audience.  I’ll address that at some point.)

The next character is that of WPC Annie Cartwright and serves very much as an anchor and moral compass to Tyler, being a warm and caring character, again very different to Sam who comes across as cold and calculating through most of the series.  This is also a great source of conflict throughout the run, with the added romantic tension between the two of them providing another layer to the programme.  In my opinion, Annie is definitely one of the best female characters I’ve seen TV as she manages to be a very strong and realistic character with falling into cliché.

The final character I’m mentioning (there are more, but I don’t want to type a full dissertation here) isn’t really a character so much as an apparition. The Test Card Girl is an occasional character who pops up out of Sam’s TV when it’s left on for too long (or at dramatically appropriate moments) to offer cryptic advice or muddy the waters of the overarching plot.  She is creepy as hell (in the manner of many supernatural little girls in fiction) and adds to the surreal feel of the show.  It’s very possible to forget the sci-fi style elements to Life on Mars in the middle of an episode, and one of her appearances is always jarring in the way it reminds you about the weird overall metaplot to the show.

Anyway, that’s a brief outline of the series.  I’ve tried to avoid spoilers as I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who may not have seen it yet.  If you haven’t, then please source a copy of the DVD or Netflix it or Lovefilm or whatever you do and watch it.  It’s a cracking programme and well worth your time.

I can’t say the same for its follow-on sister series but will be addressing that tomorrow.  There will be spoilers.

And rage…

More Recommendations: This time for your ears!

Right then.  I may as well fling some more recommendations at the metaphorical wall to see if they stick.  As it was books this time, I’m thinking music.  Complement the visual with audio.  See where that gets us. 

TROPHY SCARS is the band I’m recommending to you now.  They’re one of my personal favourites (obviously).  But I’m only recommending their two most recent EPs: Darkness, Oh Hell and Never Born, Never Dead. 

I don’t get on with their old stuff.  They started off as one of your standard screamy post-punk bands, which to me just sound like noise.  They had their flashes of excellence, but there was too much unpleasantness for me to really enjoy.  Then they went hard for a jazz theme mixed in with all the rock, and it’s worked wonders.  I suppose the key to whether or not you’ll enjoy them lies with their vocalist Jerry Jones.  This guy has such a harsh rasp to his voice; it can really make a song ugly.  This can sometimes be a good thing, but not often, and I found with their earlier stuff that his vocal work very much worked against the quality of the musicianship quite often.  That said, he’s toned it down as of late and it fits very well with the tracks on the above EPs.  He can sing normally when he wants to, but his default setting is very much in gravel-garglingly gruff range.

Darkness, Oh Hell is definitely my favourite of the two EPs, being fairly heavy and dark in the songs and subject matter.  I could well go on a tear praising all of the songs on here, so I will.  The only track on list I don’t love is ‘Sauves-moi de l’enfer’, but that’s only an intro track.  It’s dark and atmospheric, but doesn’t really go anywhere if you get what I mean.  It does, however, lead into the next track well, and the next track’s a doozy. Nausea is my favourite track on the EP and indeed is one of my favourite songs, full stop.  It’s full of energy, strong jazz tones and engagingly apocalyptic imagery.  It’s very densely layered (as are all their songs, come to think about it) and is basically a monologue from the Antichrist.  Or something along those lines.  I’ll cover the other tracks very briefly, as my blogging time is running out.  Darkness, Oh Hell is catchy as anything and slows the pace of Nausea, but maintains the energy, working to a more definite and deliberate tempo and keeping the jazz influences.  It also ends with a cool protracted Twin Peaks sound bite, which actually drove me to buy the series (I’d heard of it, but never bothered to get into it beforehand).  Trazodone is the third track and is similarly excellent; telling a dark story about what I think is a drug addict burning someone to death in their bed.  Whether on purpose or by accident is left up in the air.  Sad Stanley is about the decline of a relationship and the final track, Time in Heaven, Forever in Hell details the aftermath.  TiH,FiH is particularly heartfelt and moving to me, and starts off with a fantastic guitar/piano pieces that compliment each other perfectly.  It’s up there with Nausea in my opinion.  Sometimes higher depending on my mood.

Never Born, Never Dead maintains to strong southern jazz motif establish by Darkness, Oh Hell but changes the mood.  By equal parts melancholic and romantic, this EP is all about relationships, seemingly through different lifetimes.  Very well structured and assembled, the tracks on display here all boast impressive density and variety of instrumentation, but never get overwhelmed with no particular element of the compositions running roughshod over others.  It’s technically very impressive and lyrically very affecting.  The tracks Never Born and Never Dead in particular can make me tear up on occasion; one being about a declaration of love between two people on their deathbeds and the other concerning a funeral from the perspective of the departed spirit.  Both are beautiful and I recommend them heartily.

Anyway, that’s it from me for the week.  Lunchtime’s up.

So long, my imaginary readers!

Recommendation

Although I talk about 40k a lot, this blog wasn’t going to be solely about that topic.  To this end, I’ve decided to fling various Recommendations at your faces every now and then.  And, last time I checked, the time is approximately ‘Now’.

These recommendations are a little bit of whatever, really.  From films, television, anime, music, books, whatever I like that I’d like other people to have a look (or listen) at too.  Feel free to ignore these if you’re only here for tales of embarrassing 40k-related shortfalls and unnecessary hyperbole.  On the other hand, if you do try out the recommendations, let me know!  Some interesting conversations can be had regardless of whether or not you liked them.  So, with all that prelude out of the way, let’s start with: Some Book Recommendations!

Three of them, all by the same author.  More of an author recommendation, I suppose.

Michael Marshall Smith

He is probably my favourite fiction writer currently and he specialised in two fields.  He does Sci-Fi as Michael Marshall Smith and modern-day crime writing as just Michael Marshall.  His crime stuff is good, don’t get me wrong, but (in my opinion at least) it’s not a patch on his more fantastical stories.  I highly advise you seek him out if you’re into slightly oddball scifi.  The three books I want to talk about are Only Forward, Spares, and What You Make It.

Only Forward was his debut novel and was my introduction into his writing.  It’s about a guy called Stark, and it’s easiest to think of him as a sort of detective, although he doesn’t really have a job as such.  It’s very much got a Scifi Noir feel to it and is genuinely hilarious in many places, sad in others and very creepy elsewhere.  It has a bit of abrupt turn from comedy to horror, but it works.  I won’t be summarising the plot or anything, because that would be counterproductive.  I loved it when I first read it, and it hasn’t lost any of its charm now.  The whole thing is delivered first-person, but in a very conversational style which I found fun and interesting.  He pulls a couple of nice little tricks with perspective that I really enjoyed, although I can definitely see why it wouldn’t gel with some of his readers.  I only have one problem with it.  The ending feels rushed and anticlimactic.  You’re going on at a good and quick pace throughout the book, with things building and building and then, bam, it’s over.  It’s standard novel length, I think (about 300-350 pages) but the end happens in about 2 pages.  There’s no real denouement.  It’s a bit jarring and feels underdeveloped and a little too tidy.  Don’t let that discourage you.  Really; don’t.  the book’s fantastic and that’s the only complaint of any substance I can give.

Spares was his second novel and it has a lot over Only Forward, although I do prefer the debut.  It follows many of the same tropes as Only Forward (big detective guy as main character, talking appliances, sudden shifts into the metaphysical) but is definitely its own story.  Again, its very funny, with a large number of touching moments and sad reflections and occasional dabblings with horrific imagery.  The big detective guy this time has more of the generic crime thriller name of Jack Randall, but don’t hold that against him.  He’s a complete drunken, drug-addled mess.  This brings me to one of the strengths and simultaneously one of the weakness of Spares for me.  Because the book is written from an exclusively first person perspective, when Randall starts tripping (and he does, often) things get weird and when he’s in The Gap (you’ll have to read the book to find out what that is), it can sometimes feel like he’s ramming random words together.  Nevertheless, it’s a small point.  I feel it shares a similar problem with Only Forward regarding the end.  It’s an improvement on the first book, but it doesn’t properly fix things in my opinion.  I still think the endings are the weakest part of his books, just because they’re too sudden and feel too slapdash.  Awesome book though.  Highly recommended, possibly even more so than Only Forward.

What You Make It differs from the previous two books because it’s a collection of short stories rather than a novel.  As with most short story compilations, you’ll get some that you (hopefully) like and some that (probably) won’t.  All are well-written, but apart from that, they don’t have too much in common with one another.  One of the things they do share though, is tone.  This is a dark collection of stories.  I read through them all a few years ago, and can agree that it a very good book and would advise others read it too.  But I won’t read it again.  There is very little joy to be had (at least during my read through; your mileage may vary) and it left me feeling drained and a little depressed.  Again, that sounds bad, but I do heartily recommend you pick it up.  It really is very good.  .  I will warn you: one of the stories here made me feel stunned and sick to my stomach.  It was the biggest reaction I’ve had to a story for some time, possible ever.  I won’t tell you which one; I don’t want to spoil it for you.

Anyway, that’s my Recommendation for the week. 

Hope you enjoy it!