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It’s Comic Book Month at the local library, which coincided with two recent blind purchases.

The latest Parker volume from Richard Stark and Darwyn Cooke. I think I bought the previous volume, The Outfit, sight unseen, too.

And the final chapter of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill‘s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century.

– Oh, and whilst browsing at the local library, how could pass up a blurb like this: Six new stories of love, crime, alcohol, and severed heads. Yep, Jason is back with Athos in America.

If I’m not writing, I should be reading, right?

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Screamin’ toward another deadline but here’s some recommended reading for the comics-leaning amongst you – anything by:

Charles Burns
Jason
Dupuy-Berberian
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2010 in Pictures, Text and Theatre

Comics

    The Arrival – Shaun Tan
    Ball Peen Hammer – Adam Rapp and George O’Connor
    Berlin Volume 2 – Jason Lutes
    The Education of Hopey Glass – Jaime Hernandez
    Ex Machina: Dirty Tricks; Ring Out the Old – Brian K Vaughan & Tony Harris
    I Kill Giants – Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura
    I Killed Adolf Hitler – Jason
    Low Moon – Jason
    League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier – Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill
    Omega the Unknown – Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple
    Planetary: Spacetime Archaeology – Warren Ellis & John Cassaday
    Powers: The Sellouts; Forever; 25 Greatest Dead Superheroes of All Time – Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming
    Scalped: The Gravel in Your Gut – Jason Aaron & R M Guera
    Stitches: A Memoir – David Small
    Usagi Yojimbo: Tomoe’s Story – Stan Sakai
    The Walking Dead – Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard
    The Complete Zot! – Scott McCloud

A bit sad to see the end of Planetary and Ex Machina but The Walking Dead and Scalped carry the torch onward.

Books

    Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
    The Constant Gardener – John Le Carre
    The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-city Neighbourhood – David Simon and Ed Burns
    Crafty TV Writing – Alex Epstein
    Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets – David Simon
    Notes from a Small Island – Bill Bryson
    The Road – Cormac McCarthy

I suspect Blood Meridian has ruined all other western fiction for me.

Scripts

    30 Rock – various
    The 40 Year Old Virgin – Judd Apatow and Steve Carell
    The American – Rowan Joffe
    The Blind Side – John Lee Hancock
    The Book of Eli – Gary Whitta
    Green Zone – Paul Greengrass
    Michael Clayton – Tony Gilroy
    Out of Sight – Scott Frank
    Scrubs (pilot) – Bill Lawrence
    Starting Out in the Evening – Fred Parnes and Andrew Wagner
    The Shield: Circles – Shawn Ryan
    Three Kings – David O Russell
    Valkyrie – Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander

I’m pretty sure Out of Sight and Three Kings are re-reads, but I just can’t remember for sure. And if they were, they were just as enjoyable this time ’round.

Theatre

    His Mother’s SonLeilani Unasa
    Le TauvagaLouise Tu’u
    Raising the TitanicsAlbert Belz
    Two Old WomenVelma Wallis

I suspect I may be cheating here by having just one actual production – Belz’s Titanics – surrounded by three readings but… these were the ones I marked as having made an impact.

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Jason Rules

Single name creatives usually make me suspicious. Except Prince, of course, because he’s freakin’ Prince, so shut the hell up. It’s the others I worry about. Like McG. Or Pitof. I’d include Fabio but I’m still working through whether it’s jealousy about his hair and/or pecs or just plain suspicion.

And then there’s Jason. The name itself might conjure Halloween-type movie images, rightly or wrongly, but he’s a Paris-based cartoonist who insists on doing graphic novels with no description and less dialogue than a thirty second television commercial.

There’s only one way I can describe his work, full of absurdity, surrealism and hilarity and yet still telling a story – from the blurb for Meow, Baby!:

STARRING: One mummy, one god, one angel, one devil, one plasic surgeon, one Dracula, one Van Helsing, two ambulatory skeletons, one ice cream girl, two policemen, one space alien, one rocket ship, one Egyptian explorer, one werewolf, one family of cavemen, one Frankenstein monster, one pizza delivery guy, one Godzilla, one family of zombies, one Terminator, one set of potential in-laws, one mob of angry villagers, one naked girl in a shower, one Rubik’s cube, one hitchhiker, one opthalmologist, one Darth Vader, one Frenchman, one time clockone pterodactyl, one Jules, one Vincent, one teacher, and one Elvis.

And pick up Living and the Dead – where “horror, humour and romance commingle” – while you’re at it.

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