COMICS BY DATE

A short biographical story….

Thanks to Eric Nyquist for permission to use his art. For more of Eric’s work please visit his site: www.ericnyquist.com.

It’s not often that a novel really gets under my skin, but this one did. Excited to read the final two novels in the series, once they are published.

Listened to a wonderful discussion about today’s Common Reader on the BBC Radio 3 show “Nightwaves” and couldn’t resist doing my own survey in the local train station…

Occasionally, I do a Comic Crits review of an artist I like. Here’s one for Neil Welliver.

It’s a tad unfair to criticize a work that was very much of it’s time, but isn’t S. F. supposed to be NOT of it’s time. As I reread this I wondered if it is Asimov, and his ubiquity, that gave S.F. it’s reputation for bad writing, that sadly still persists in the wide world
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Trying something a little different this time, part of what I hope to be a new strand, if folks like it: Comic Crits on various visual artists. I’m hoping that they’ll bring a slightly different viewpoint to aspects of well-known artists, as well as introduce new ones. 

Now that I have had a little time to reflect on this review, I feel I was a bit harsh. It’s actually a great book, perhaps even seminal. I just wish I had enjoyed reading it more. For some reason, the characters never lept to life for me, but I suppose having that and great
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Hats off to my niece, living in Bonn, who turned me on to this extraordinary book.

It’s a bit shameful how many books I start and don’t finish. If books are conversations it feels like I’m snubbing the authors. Oh well.

This is the kind of book I would ordinarily not read except for the fact it’s the selection for January in my book club. I think without the book club my reading would devolve into stories about killing aliens with high-tech weaponry. Enjoy.

I know liking Star Trek is often cited as an indication of immaturity, but when I was a sensitive ten-year-old and watched it for the first time,  an episode called, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, it seemed not only adult, but funny, moving, exciting, and smart in equal measure. I still think that. Most
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Shatner Rules, by William Shatner

I’m proud to announce you can read Comic Crits on Tor.com, two weeks before they appear here.

Listened to this one. Fantastic. We started it as a family on a long car trip, and now we are all hooked.

Anything that claims that it contains “more than 300,000 words of Fantastic Fiction” might not be aimed at the discerning reader, but actually…

A friend turned me on to Gene Wolfe about a year ago, with “The Book of the New Sun” series. With “Home Fires” he departs from the sword and sorcery genre, big time.

Not a review, this time…

By special request, I’m taking a break from the written word. Conor, this one’s for you!

A book club book, I enjoyed it more than the review suggests. Unusually, it was exactly the right length for what it had to say.  I have to take it on faith that a deep understanding of math is somehow transcendent; I’ve tried, but apart from a passing fascination with the Golden Ratio, I hit
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Thanks to Eric for the suggestion.

He just had an essay in the New Yorker about Spiral Jetty recently. He calls himself a gatecrasher; wandering into genres as he pleases. I think that’s what makes his insights so fresh.

Trying a new inking technique. Too slick! I think I’ll go back to the good ol’ pen and paper. I’ve also decided to put the star rating system on hiatus because it’s silly.

I had to read this for our book club, but was pleasantly surprised.  A child’s P.O.V. of her white farming family growing up in Africa as African nations won their independence from colonial rule in the 1970s.