I’m in Melbourne now. We haven’t found a house yet, I haven’t found a job yet, but I’m here. I spent a couple of days in Brisbane on my way here to hang out with a few dudes (but not enough), and now I’m here and I’ve hung out with a few dudes here too. All these dudes rule.
For some reason I thought Jack White died today. Kind of weird that I should see his photo in a news post and just assume he’d died, but a lot of people have been dying lately. No public figure will ever be as big a deal to me as Jack White was when I was fifteen. So it’s as much The White Stripes, De Stijl and White Blood Cells as I can fit in before I leave the house today.
All this travelling around has left me way behind on comics. I’ve had a bunch posted to me and I’ve picked up a few singles from back issues and bargain bins but that’s about it. Some books I’ve read:
Batwoman #2: Batwoman is a very good comic that I don’t read. I don’t know why, I guess I just read too many comics, some have to get left behind. Lately I’m interested in picking up random issues in the middle of runs and seeing how much I enjoy it, and I found this one for $1 in a bargain bin here in Melbourne. Good comics should be good whether you know the back story or not. I had no back story and this comic was very good. Bit of a lacklustre ending, but incredible art (of course) and some pretty excellent story telling. Would like to read some more.
Secret Avengers #20: These done-in-one Ellis and Co. Secret Avengers comics have been excellent. None of them have quite lived up to the McKelvie opener, and as great as Alex Maleev is, his art isn’t really sexy enough for a Black Widow story. Still, time travel. Enough said. Also Beast talking about time travel the way I talk about time travel. Ugh I need the Stuart Immonen finale NOW.
Dark Horse Presents #7: I didn’t pick up this series when it first came out, but I grabbed DHP #6 for the Fabio Moon feature and in the process realised this is an excellent anthology series, then went ahead and bought every copy I could find in a back issue sale. I haven’t read all those, but I needed this month’s issue for Mignola’s Hellboy Versus The Aztec Mummy and Brandon Graham’s The Speaker. Those were some excellent 8 page comics. That Hellboy story, oh man. I love a good continuity-free Hellboy comic (PAMCAKES) because I’m like fifteen years behind on that title. The Speaker was excellent, as you’d expect. I can’t wait for that King City collection coming out in a couple of months. And I didn’t even realise there was a Usagi Yojimbo story in here until I got to that page. Also read part one of Concrete Park and really liked that one. Post-apocalyptic stories are a dime a dozen in comics lately, but that one stood out for some reason. Will read more.
FF #13: DOOM!
I’ve been reading so many books lately. I just looked at goodreads and in the last two months I’ve read The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Right now I’m reading Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Kavalier & Clay was my favourite of the bunch, but I’m loving The Great Gatsby, and the only reason I haven’t finished Fever Pitch is because I’ve enjoyed reading it so much that I won’t let myself finish it.
Well that’s my consumption of late. I’m going to see Kanye tonight, and Girls next week, so those are things that are exciting. There are a heap of other dudes playing in the coming weeks but those two up there are the priority. Oh I got a Windows Phone too, that thing is really cool. I just need to get a job and a house now.
