Ken Aldred

Absolutely. It works. I did that with the screaming goats compilation from the last Thor film, and feel quite satisfied with that.

JLA by Grant Morrison Vol 1 Secret Files and Origins 1, and JLA 1 to 9 2023 total = 26 Good stories by Morrison, patchy artwork from Howard Porter.

Shame I only have a console. Always fancied having a go on the Skyblivion mod.

Ambush Bug Year None 1 to 6 A bit of a disappointment compared to the brilliant original mini-series from back in the 80s, as the jokes and bizarre situations, unlike in those back then, didn’t land and do much for me. Perhaps it was just something that ran out of steam and was best in very limited doses. 2023 total = 16

Sandman Universe ; The Dreaming Vol 1 , Pathways and Emanations = Sandman Universe 1, The Dreaming 1 to 6 2023 total = 10 A fairly slow-moving fantasy comic, not as good as Simon Spurrier’s brilliant Hellblazer series, but an okay read. That said, Bilquis Evely’s artwork is great, having a style perfectly suited to fantasy material, with a hint of Mike Kaluta in it.

It is. Few left now from the period when I started collecting comics, in my case here, through the DC reprints in the early 70s. A time beginning to feel very distant, more and more.

Nice. I’ve always wanted to see an authentic comics adaptation of the King James Version. Thanks for the heads up.

Then, no doubt another weekend of Ascender later in the year.

Absolute bargain bin gem. Superb Garcia-Lopez artwork, and Helfer’s an underrated writer.

Bedtime reading.

This was good Frank Miller. For me, as a read it fit in more with some of the European, Heavy Metal material I was buying at the time.

Dark Knight Strikes Again 1 - 3 Miller’s idea seemed to be that he was trying something different and wanted to shake things up a bit and be somewhat unpredictable, but this is basically a very bad story, especially from an all-time great, well outside his noir-and-ninja comfort zone. At times the bigfoot art style is okay, but then you reach half a dozen or so incomprehensible pages which look like they’ve been scribbled out in Sharpie by a three-year-old. The women are generally written as submissive characters and drawn in hyper-sexualised poses, and there’s an air of misogyny at times. There’s the common trope of a literal Superman going up against the wrongs of an oppressive regime, basic Nietzsche 101 as commonly interpreted for comics, again. First time I’ve ever read it. From a non-iconic creator it’d be bargain bin fodder.

And that film really sucked. Awful.

Yup. Read very good things about this one. Seems to be a year for quality remakes.

I liked those aspects more. More in a social, than multiverse or fight scene mood, I suppose.

Watched it for the second time. Very inventive, a lot going on, Michelle and Short Round were great, but I agree more with the online opinions I’ve read that the daughter deserved a Supporting Actor award more than Jamie Lee, and it seemed more of a lifetime achievement accolade. Very inventive film, but I wasn’t that thrilled by it.

Perfectly happy with a book with nice presentation, regardless of the sticker grade. Found many in the 9.0-and-up range. For the OP, though, ultra high grade chasing has a degree of obsessive-compulsive disorder and / or elitism associated with it. Mine, I suppose, is an alternative manifestation of the former; a focus on a minty-looking appearance from the outside, with what’s viewable through the thick plastic of the slab, and at the lowest grade price.

It really was. I was gutted when issues 121 and 122 weren’t distributed to the U.K. newsstands.

Likewise, never into them at the time, more a thrash fan, but, an absolutely brilliant guitarist who I only discovered much later …

Quite a dark book to begin with, interesting concept. One of the first series I collected as a kid. I believe it was initially supposed to be outside of regular continuity, but Kirby was asked to join it in, which resulted in the quite poor Hulk storyline towards the end : a series which ran out of steam and inspiration. Still very fond of it. Raw copies. Cheap ones.

That would’ve been my pick as well.