Michelle's corner

This was an interesting article that popped up on my radar today. Kids daub racist graffiti, and end up with a punishment of reading...

 "These kids had no prior record so there was no way they were going to get a custodial sentence at a penitentiary. The sentence I gave was harsher than what they would normally have received. Normally it would just be probation which would mean checking in with a probation officer once a month and maybe a few hours of community service and writing a letter to say sorry. Here they had to write 12 assignments and a 3,500-word essay on racial hatred and symbols in the context of what they'd done… It was a lot of work."

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-47936071

Another author is reporting that Amazon has examined their Twitter account, and used what they found there, to terminate their Amazon Associates account, and withhold any money they owe her.

More information here - https://twitter.com/violetblue/status/1111372655007944708

If you want to do your favourite authors a favour, ensure you follow them on multiple platforms, and consider which purchase means would give them the most % of the deal.

If you're an author, don't rely on Amazon. They have been known to pull books for having too many hyphens. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/dec/18/amazon-book-hyphens-graeme-reynolds-high-moor-2-moonstruck - make sure you've got multiple presence points.

This isn't your average superhero comic book. In fact, I had a bit of a time working out what, exactly, it was.

Long story short, two warring gods (one good, the other evil) end the war by giving each other their new born sons, so that each son would be raised by the opposite god.

The son given to the evil god has a hell of an upbringing (almost literally) and escapes to Earth, becoming a famous escape artist... drawing no doubt on the experiences escaping his torment.

Then another war breaks out and the book swaps often between Earth and the far away war, and the decisions, dealings and double-dealings going on.

In some places, I found it was difficult to keep track of what was going on, especially when people who were dead kept popping back up, and I was wondering whether they were Mr Miracle calling them back in his memory, or whether this was going to be another one of those, "wake up and it's all a dream," books.

There was a deal of humour and references dashed in here, but in the end it failed to engage me and also lost me in a few places; with occasional bits of unbelievable thrown in for good measure. Different, certainly. Engaging... no... especially as they try and tie up a few loose ends before announcing that this is it and there won't be any more in this series.

Ok - where do I start with this one? It's brutally honest about what it's like to be a GP these days. The coloured panels reminded me of the use of colour by Jon McNaught's, "Kingdom," that I read a while ago. However, Williams is noted on the back as being the founder of graphicmedicine.org so presumably he has the experience to make this real.

And it reads, "real," if you know what I mean. When an author knows their stuff.

Dr Lois Pritchard is working as a part time GP in a Welsh surgery. Under pressure from the usual, and the not-so-usual patients demanding her attention; this life of mediocrity takes a turn for the worse when her estranged mother gets in touch out of the blue... and someone in a car has been taking photos of her... what's all that about?

Life is, as life does... and Pritchard has to deal with juggling a number of balls, but it all leads on a journey which changes her perception of life.

All in all, I think Williams told a reasonable story in this graphic novel. He injects some of life's dark humour along with some of life's bad timing and the occasional piece of drama. But the downside is that it's drama that I already know... thanks to actually living life myself. As such, the story was enjoyable, if not riveting, and the presentation and choice of colours, characterisations, etc. were well done. It was a good read.

I didn't know what to expect from part 2, but it was an improvement from the first.

The story ran the whole length of the book and took some twists and turns that I didn't see coming. A baby is born, but the mother needs medical attention beyond what's available on the ship; and everyone ends up in danger. One rescue mission turns into another as the crew are hunted, tricked and trapped.

The cover artwork included between sections was gorgeous and the strips themselves were high quality. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

It tidies up its own storyline very neatly and leaves the door open to the comics that are following... which I am currently receiving but haven't started reading yet.

The comparatively bland cover doesn't do justice to what waits inside. A complete story which I didn't want to put down. This is certainly a keeper.

Emma G Wildford. A woman in love, in England where women are still thought of as the weaker sex and men's clubs are still very much a place where women aren't supposed to go. Her lover has left for an expedition to Lapland and has penned a note for her to open in the event that he doesn't return. After a period has passed, Wildford decides to go after him and find out what happened. The note remains unopened.

Zidrou and Edith have not shied from writing of the sexual advantage that men took of women at the time... perhaps because those attitudes still remain today and still have to be talked about and aired. That, indeed, is a core message of this story... that some people (men or women) take advantage and chicken out, underestimating the strength of love and devotion that a partner can feel, and the lengths that some will go to for their true love... leaving the dirty work to other agents instead of having the courage to do what needs to be done, in person.

The ending demonstrates that not all people are like this, and that honest people can feel considerable disdain for those who shirk their responsibilities. In other words, this holds up a mirror to life and opens some very raw wounds.

But it does it very beautifully; the time in which this story is set, enables Zidrou and Edith to do justice to the subject matter, while delivering some beautiful artwork and philosophical viewpoints.

I believe that the original book is in French, so check your language before ordering. Er... what I mean is, check the language of the book you're ordering, not the language you use in your order of... you get the point.

Arriving this months is the second (and final) part of the Firefly Legacy Edition, and issue four in the new comic series for Firefly.

The interesting inclusion is this month's ComicBook Of The Month. "Mister Miracle." 

"For those wishing that an adult superhero comic meant more than just swearing and violence, Mister Miracle might just be the series you've been waiting for all along." - Hollywood Reporter

So... this is going to be interesting. I've read the review on Page45's web site and it hasn't left me any the wiser. I have to admit that their reviews and mine, are not in sync. We seem to hunt for different things in our comics.

In the mean time, I have read the comicbook of the month, which was comicbook of the month, three months ago, and I have yet to formulate a review; although I've got a fairly good idea where I'm going with it... which is primarily because they are causing me to think on them.... they aren't comics which can be read, enjoyed and forgotten. The subject matter on many of these works are like classic art, commenting on life, society and our values.

OK, so where do I start with this. Perhaps Masamune's most well known and influential work, translated into English and published from left to right this time.

Well, it took a bit of getting used to, for slightly different reasons this time.

Early on in the book came this stunner...

Seriously... I didn't know that cyborgs had periods. Those that choose, in the future, to abandon their physical body and hope to leave all its quirks behind, will be very upset to learn this.

A few other attitudes also didn't help...

As it happened, the body that Major Kusanagi chose was a standard model that was augmented, rather than being a completely custom cyborg... but this still rankles.

And when in the heck did a cyborg get drunk?

Masamune has a strong sense of humour, however...

...which is mixed in with a very strong sense of society, ethics and where we are going... potentially globally... and he's not scared to challenge these things...

The drawing of the characters, particularly Kusanagi, change quite considerably depending on the situation. The western style would, I strongly expect, to keep the same identifying characteristics and rely very much on the expression of the faithfully drawn character, to convey emotion. With Masamune's work, he changes the drawn appearance of the character considerably, according to the situation and the emotion...

I mean, would you even guess that this is supposed to be Togusa in hospital?!?!

Conclusion - This is a reverenced work, and in many aspects, rightfully so. It has managed to bring forward a credible vision of the cyberised human brain and the various ethical considerations therein; namely things like cyborg bodies needing maintenance, lacking the abilities of taste, touch, etc. and the potential problems of obsolete hardware meaning death through the inability to obtain parts... also through poverty and being unable to afford spares.

The artwork style and some of the comments do feel out of touch with a world which is progressing beyond sexist attitudes quite quickly... and it feels at odds that so much power and progress is given to a female lead character, while in other places she is referenced as, "government property." Which, actually, is part of the problem that all of the cyber operatives of Section 9 are facing... their service for the price of their spare parts. Although it does seem that service in Section 9 leads to a vastly increased requirement for spares and tuning... but that's another argument.

The anime does a far better job, in my personal opinion, than the manga here. There is one case where the manga does score, and that is where the anime ends up going into a monologue to bridge some of the ethical gaps; while the manga has the ability to stretch such discussions across panels.

I'm happy that I have this in my collection, but if you want to engage with the world of Ghost In The Shell, then tracking down the Blu-Rays now, would be the better option, in my personal opinion... they've shaved off many of the manga's rougher edges.

So, more Page45 comic books arrive. We have the latest comic in the second Firefly series (I haven't read any of them yet) and another Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex book.... I know, I said I wasn't going to buy any more of these, but I forgot that I pre-ordered this already. Finally, "The Lady Doctor," is comic book of the month at Page45. Don't worry, I am currently working my way through last months book of the month, after realising last month, that not only had I not read the book of the month for the month previous to that, but there was a book of the month for the month prior to the month that I had forgotten about... so that was a lot of months to catch up on... which I then proceeded to do, in one month-ish. There is the second book in the legacy Firefly series which is released this week, and will arrive next month. Arrgghhh... this is getting confusing.

We British are a curious bunch. We have comedies recorded in our recent history which will never be re-broadcast because our society has changed so much that it is now ashamed of what was impressive and lauded talent of the time.

One of those comedies is, "It Ain't Half Hot Mum." It came to the fore in my memory because one of its stars, Windsor Davies, recently passed away. He made a recording with his long time comedy partner Don Estelle, who had died more than a decade earlier. I happened to be searching for Bernard Cribbins on Discogs and ended up searching for anything that the duo had recorded. (I sometimes get side tracked in odd and unexpected ways.) I knew they had a hit with, "Whispering Grass," but I turned up only the one album which had never been released on CD... and somehow I ended up hunting down Estelle's autobiography... which is difficult to find.

I finally tracked a copy, but one of the reviewers wrote thus...

Estelle died in 2003, having fallen off the British public's radar to such an extent that he was singing and flogging records in shopping centres. It was in his final years that he put the finishing touches to his autobiography: Sing Lofty - Thoughts of a Gemini, widely regarded as the worst (and rarest) of the genre. Encouraged by TV, radio and all-the-excellent-things-in-life's Danny Baker to climb over the dead bodies of your nearest and dearest to get hold of a copy of this bitter literary marvel, I coughed up a 50p reservation fee to have it fished out of Hampshire County Libraries storage facility, and I was not disappointed. It is - to use the language of the professional book reviewer - shit.

I should point out that Estelle comes across as a decent chap who loved making music, enjoyed the friendship of people, and lived to work. This review is not meant to be an attack on the man himself, it's just that his book is - by some distance - the worst I have ever read. And that includes the Dan Brown paperback I once threw out of a train window. So bad, that I took seven pages of notes, and I NEVER research or take notes for any of the crap I write.

Faced with a price of fifteen of our currently-not-so-great British spondulicks to get hold of a hard copy, I read through the review and decided to let the man rest.

Instead, I settled back to watch the first episode of, "It Ain't Half Hot Mum," which I have on DVD, as the whole production was made available by the BBC some years ago. However, due to the stereotypical depictions of Indians and Michael Bates blacking up, they won't re-broadcast. From a logical perspective, it's a bit bonkers really, as Bates was the only actually "genuine" Indian in the entire cast, having been born in Jhansi and later commissioned in the Indian Army; serving in the Burma Campaign with the Brigade of Gurkhas. His knowledge of the people enabled him to put in a performance that various Indian people were reported as loving the show. But that's how screwed up we are in this country; killing things because of the perceived offence of other people, rather than any actual offence. But that's another story.

No... I'll leave Estelle's autobiography to rest in peace, and settle back to enjoy some of his best ever performances, along with the rest of the cast in, "It Ain't Half Hot Mum."

I could award this book more stars, or I could award it less. It totally depends on where I come from in looking at this book.

McNaught has used a particularly plain art style and limited colour pallet, but very cleverly and effectively in order to tell his story. The larger book size enables him to carry smaller panels which alter the perception of time and slow down the reader, whilst also panning the scene as a lens might, and offering a changing dimension to the action which I don't see often. At least, that's how I perceived it.

His story is of a single parent and her two children, going to somewhere that she loved as a child. However, modern times are very different and what children love now, is different to a few decades ago.

He has used speech bubbles as carriers of sound, which gave me trouble in, "Testation," that I read last. At least in this book, the sounds do resonate with my memory, and encourage me to linger on each panel, envisaging the sounds as well as processing the art.

The car journey itself takes a bit of a strain on the relationship of those involved, and the weather isn't all that great. McNaught doesn't pull any punches on his view of present day society and the modern child's experiences, wants and needs after not that many years of change in society.

He lets the reader glimpse some of the things which could make life just a little bit better; things like socialising against being on your own playing computer games.

The thing which let the book down for me, was that there wasn't really an overarching journey of change. No one came out a changed person, but rather I was left looking at the poor state of humanity and our modern society.

It's almost as if McNaught was holding up a mirror to me and saying, "This is your life. Are you going to do anything about it?" but I took that as a bit of an insult. I already know what life is like, and there are limited things within my power to do... and I'm already doing them. And nothing much is changing.

So, the artist is skilled, sure. But the take-away from this story isn't one which empowers. It doesn't engage. It sort of flat-lines in telling things how they are.

Yes, I know, it's a mouth full. Testation is episode 2 in the, "Stand Alone Complex," series of the Ghost In The Shell franchise/stories/series/whatever.

The book itself is in English, but it is still laid out in Japanese style, which means almost completely back to front, except it does read from top to bottom. Why it was done this way, I haven't got a clue. It took quite a few pages to get used to it, but fortunately I already knew the story as I have all the animé on Blu-Ray. The question was, how different would it be in book form?

The Japanese presentation is different to how I read Western artwork. A lot of action is actually written, instead of using much in the way of motion lines. I expect motion and dialogue to be separate, expect for some sound effects, but this was new to me. There were some panels with a few of these in the one and I had to sort of pick it apart.

The action, and some of the action wording, didn't sit right. I also couldn't envisage the actual happenings, if you know what I mean. In this section, one Tachicoma is supposed to be hurrying around from the rear of the tank it's following, to the front, in order to attack it. I had problems with translating the wording, "pop," into anything, although, "Ratatatatatat," and," Skree," did work... but there were worse sections than this.

The artist does manage to convey emotion well, like this scene when a village is evacuated. I connected with the close up of the child among the adults legs, and the stream of people unhappy, but compliant, about having to evacuate.

For this kind of story and action, the animé definitely wins out over the manga. It's a good story, well presented, drawn well and a few twists and turns along the way. Its presentation of action scenes, however, which are a good chunk of this book, didn't communicate themselves to me very easily.

I won't be getting any more books like these, but I have others of the Ghost In The Shell series which are left to right, so maybe the action scenes will be tuned to my expectations... perhaps. It's worth giving one of these a try.

I know, I know. I should have posted more, but life has been tiring. I've picked up an infection from somewhere. It didn't hit me like an oncoming train, like many of them do, but I've been drained and, "bone tired," if you know what I mean.

I have made progress, however. I'm nearly finished with one of the Ghost In The Shell, "Stand Alone Complex," books. I don't think I'll be getting any more, but the reasons why will come out when I've finished it.

The follower cull took a while, but it appears that I'm settled down at 160. There have been some accounts with nothing on them at all, but as they havne't posted any spam, I've let them be, as they could be people using them to just keep tabs on people. Anyway, that's my thinking for the moment.

So, I'm going to relax and try to unwind again. Hard day at work, need another cuppa, and maybe I'll finish that GITS book tonight.

I decided to sort out the books I'd read, and then I came across this, which was the Page45 comic book of the month for November 2018. I've had it all this time and haven't even looked at it!

So... that's next on the TBR pile.

I know... Neal Asher's, "Zero Point," is in my reading list, but I've yet to find the moment to give it a second chance. It was just too busy when I first tried to read it.

Let's see how time goes, I guess.

This was Page 45's comic book of the month for December 2018. About 125 pages. ISBN 978-1-78352-685-7

Four young people in Mumbai. They have dreams of art, writing, acting and music.

Their dreams are being constantly depressed by their circumstances, family, life, the usual struggles that I think most people will recognise and empathise with, no matter what part of the world they're in.

The majority of the book defines each of the four, their passions, their personalities and the weight on their shoulders; together with the ways that they struggle to continue on, chasing their dreams.

Finally, something happens which completely changes the game and all bets are off. The record player is kicked and the needle flies straight out of the groove, and things really change during those last few pages. Then the perspective alters and the reader is left knowing that it isn't the end that matters... it's the journey. That then makes it a second read, knowing where the real flavour of the work is.

Created through supporters backing it at unbound.com this book was a positive choice by Page45 I feel. Yes, the comic books can be quicker to read and more expensive than text books, but it's a different journey; there's an extra dimension to the characters and events which... for some people, this is a negative as it ties their own imagination down and forces them to the creators vision... but considering the art as art in its own right is an extra dimension to the story itself, and can be enjoyed for in its own right. This is something which I'm slowly starting to appreciate.

I'll return to this story and artwork. I enjoyed it.

So these arrived today...

The Firefly comic is the next in the current series. The Ghost In The Shell books are because I'm pondering the ethics of the works that Masamune has created. Stand Alone Complex, however, is a bit bonkers; despite being in English, it is still read in Japanese fashion, from back to front. I'd better not try enjoying this with a glass of wine.. it'll do my head in.

Comic book of the month, however, is, "Emma G Wildford," by, "Zidrou & Edith". The first three pages are in French, and that's not too much for me to pulse through a translation program to get the gist of what's going on. The description on Page45's review goes like this...

"Journey back in time to the roaring twenties, and across England and Lapland, to experience the charming and thrilling adventure of Emma G. Wildford, a tale that mixes mystery, grand adventure, and love.

It's been fourteen months since Emma G. Wildford's fiancé, Roald Hodges, a member of the National Geographic Society boarded the good ship Kinship and set sail for Norway... and she has had no news of him since. Every day, she questions the other members of the Society about his whereabouts, and his current situation, whether good or ill, but to no avail.

Before he left, Roald gave Emma a mysterious envelope to open, but only in case something happened to him. Rejecting the very thought of Roald's death, Emma decides to leave behind everything - her life, her comfort, her England, to go to Lapland in pursuit.

Along the way, Emma's certainties and beliefs will be challenged in every way, changing this quest for her fiancé into a quest for her true, essential self. Beautifully illustrated and rivetingly written, Emma G. Wildford is a character that will imprint herself on your mind and memory forever!"

Exactly what's going to happen here, I'm not sure. But one thing I do know, is that I've got to finish the comic book of the month last month, before I start on the comic book of the month, this month. However, having come back from a 14 hour shift, and facing another one tomorrow... it won't be this week. Nor this weekend, as... you guessed it... I'm working.