Hero - Wing Shing Ma

Graphic novel adaptation of one of my favourite films. Very well executed and, for a fan of the film, nice to own. I certainly wouldn't recommend reading it instead of seeing the film though. It seems a little empty with the beautiful fight scenes rendered as a handful of still images, although the art is good. I seriously wonder how much point there is in adapting things to comic form. There seems to be a craze for it at the moment and I just don't think it necessarily adds much. But yes, as a person who doesn't foresee ever reaching the point of having seen the film Hero "enough times", this is a very lovely book to have on my shelf.

Phonogram: Rue Brittania - Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie

A very good, very clever comic written by the type of person you would want to punch if you knew them in person. This is made clear in the glossary of Britpop at the back, which is almost as informative an interesting as it is arrogant and condescending, but not quite. Ok, Britpop was never my thing, especially viewed as something set up in opposition to the soul-shaking musical phenomenon of grunge, and of course it irks me to see Radiohead dismissed as "experimental rock for people who don't listen to experimental rock" so yeah, I'm biased on the music front. As a comic it's just the right length to let its brilliant premise sustain it (magic powered by music, mages who centre their personalities on and thus draw power from musical scenes) so I can't slag it off even though I really want to.

Hawksmoor - Peter Ackroyd

SPOILERS!! (sort of)

An extremely dense and difficult book. The kind of book I didn't particularly enjoy reading but am glad I did read, because I got something from it that I know I couldn't get anywhere else. It's hard to find anything to say. Should I try and interpret the story as a story at all? Or just focus on ideas? Even then it's obscure. I think it's a book all about outsiders. Dyer and Hawksmoor are united by their outsider status. If I had to go for a literal interpretation of the story and to solve the mystery (ha!) I'd say Hawksmoor was a reincarnation (or something) of Dyer, and was the murderer. But that doesn't really matter. "Poet's novel" is right.

Locke and Key vol. 4 - Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

Still excellent. Still not hufely keen on this style of art but I can see that it's done well, with lots of details and highly expressive faces. The story is moving forward too, and reading this one made me retrospectively realise that vol. 3 was mostly padding. It's a common thing in TV and comics that try and tell a definite story in an indefinite episodic format. Once you've noticed it you can't unnotice it and not many things are more off-putting in a work of fiction. But this is one story that seems to be back on track.

Dark Tower Comics vol. 3-4 - Robin Furth & Jae Lee

Honestly, disappointing. I'm getting sick of Jae Lee's refusal to draw backgrounds. His characters are quite good realisations of the original characters, but they act everything out in front of a big blur of smoke and colours and the occasional table. Given that these are fantasy stories set in a richly imagined and (in King's prose) deeply detailed world, Lee's style is completely wrong for this project. And the writing is underwhelming, and the story is unnecessarily different from the one established in the novel. Bit of a shame, really.