Things for December

Christmas... The time of year when you just want five sodding minutes of peace and bloody quiet to yourself, and traditionally there's no better or easier way of putting that message across than burying yourself in a big fat book. I did a similar post to this a few years ago, but here we are in an odd moment of motivation, and so it is - the "best" books a comic-liker could hope to find themselves reading over the festive period and beyond.

Apologies for this terrible picture - my camera's died, so this is the best my phone can offer.

The majority of these books can be found for a few pennies on Amazon Marketplace, but some of them you might have to look a bit further for... They're all definitely worth it though (if you like this sort of thing).

Well there's Flo on my left and Mary on my right

Told you I'd been busy...

The last few weeks have been of the travelling variety - this time last week I was in Glasgow, my first ever trip north of the Wall, which was a lot of fun. Couldn't go to Glasgow without meeting up with that chum-of-chums, Mr. Adam Smith (you know, him from Khaki Shorts and so on). Along with himself he brought along fellow member of the Khaki Khollektive, Mr. Rob Miller, and I was given a "tour" of Hope Street Studios, owned by Jamie Grant and the former home of Northern Lightz and Wasted - much original artwork was perused over, from Miller and Smith and also Shug 90 and the indescribable John G. Miller (including an exercise book full of his stuff from when he was still in school, of a Scottish Tijuana Bible-quality, if that can be imagined).

The other Miller (as in Rob), ever generous as always, gave me a few bits as souvenirs, including the hefty tome above. John Miller's stuff really is like nothing else, and there's three big collections of his stuff available from Braw Books - go and seek! Think I've got nearly everything they've published now, whoops. 

Also in my goody bag was The John G. Miller Scrapbook...

As if his comics aren't nuts enough, this is a collection of clippings, ramblings, rantings and imaginary (or not?) newsletters:

"Recommended". 

Finally, from the Miller called Rob, there's this:

Big Moff - Strap On Japan, telling the tale of Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton (of Arab Strap fame) on their farewell tour of Japan... If you've any idea what all the references mean, you'll "love" this one:

The whole thing's one of the funniest books I've read in ages, had me giggling all the way back to Merseyside, so it did. As did this attractive looking pub situated opposite Hope Street Studios:

From Hope Street, we trekked across town to the Briggait, home of Wasps Artist's Studios, where we had pizza and beer and met three more Scottish folk and one Canadian. One of them pulled a big pile of papers from a drawer and handed them over for perusal purposes - top of the pile being this nice bit of original Dudley D. Watkins Oor Wullie-based fun:

The rest of the pile (hundreds and hundreds of bits of paper) was all original Frank Quitely stuff - he's a bit of a "big deal" nowadays what with all his X-Men, Batman and Superman shenanigans, but all the stuff we were looking at was from the GOOD kind of comics, including tons and tons of his stuff from Electric Soup - including one of my all-time favourite comic pages (scan from Electric Soup shown here, not the original):

It was only as myself, Miller and Smith were saying our farewells before going our separate ways that they thought to mention that one of the guys we were sitting with was Frank Quitely himself... So at least I didn't show myself up being all "I love your work!" and so on, hey hey!

A couple of weeks BEFORE Glasgow, I found myself working the floor at the Manchester Film & Comic Con, where I first met a Mr. Gary Whitlock (of Acne, Gutter and Adroit fame - my issue of which I shamelessly brought along for him to sign) - from Gary I got one of his new books, Creatures of the Weirdieverse:

From Whitlock's Monkeyhound Studios, it takes its inspiration from Ken Reid's Creepy Creations and World Wide Weirdies, and my current favourite amongst Gary's lot is this one:

Later on in the day, I met Mr. Lew Stringer, who's been in most comics by now. An affable chap, he already knew my name which threw me a bit, and I felt a bit "special" when both Lew and Gary said that they read this blog thing here (hello you two!), so that was a nice chit-chat. From Lew, I got one of his new books, Brickman Begins:

Being a "digest-sized paperback", I can't fit this one under my scanner without wrecking the book, but it's definitely worth "getting" - there's a few new comics in here but it's mostly a compilation of all of Brickman's appearances from 1979-2005, from the pages of such publications as Fantasy Express, After Image, Metamorph and various small-press things, plus guest contributions from the likes of Mike Higgs, Hunt Emerson, Kevin O'Neill, Ian Churchill, Dave Gibbons and so on... I like it muchly, I do.

Whatever you take from this lot, at least it's proof that I HAVE been busy, yes?

Crazy golf with a Swedish couple we befriended

And so back to Scotland once more, this time in a celebratory vein. If you "enjoyed" any combination (or even all three) of Electric Soup, Northern Lightz and Wasted, this may be of interest. It's a thing that you can actually buy in real life! Presenting, for your pleasure, The Khollected Khaki Shorts:

You can go and buy it from the Braw Books shop, for just under ten of your Earth pounds, right now if you want. Definitely worth it, 220 pages collecting the "best of" the 28 issues that were made between 1999 and 2011. Because I'm dead cool and so on, I was already familiar with a lot of the stuff in there. Bought the final last issue spectacular thing when it was first out, and then early last year, co-founder Adam Smith sent me as many of the older issues as he could find - nice of him, yes? You can pretend to be hip and with it by familiarizing yourself with some of the contents before ordering yourself a copy, by following on and reading this summary sort-of-thing about Glasgow-based underground sensation Khaki Shorts, right here...

Cheap Strong Beverage with an Uncompromising Bouquet

It would've been nice to've had this one done by Saturday, but there we go. Another delayed celebration it is. The next few things getting "looked at" are from that Scotland place, but don't worry - these're nothing like that last Scottish comic seen here. So get your Irn Bru ready - we're starting with...

This one!

Started in Glasgow in 1989, by misters David Alexander and Tommy Sommerville, Electric Soup seems like so much more than the Viz wannabe that the media made it out to be. So people aren't allowed to make grown-up comics with rude words in them because there's already one of those? Balls to that! I'm feeling a bit guilty now with that "Viz-A-Likes" words I've been using, but a lot of them undeniably ARE cash-ins... It's just that a lot of comics sprung up around the same time, and people like to encapsulate things, so that's what's getting done. Electric Soup is one of the good ones, so let's just leave it at that. After looking at some pages from it, obviously.