Book Review: Seven Wild Sisters

So this month, the book I read had one of my favourite authors (Charles de Lint) team up with one of my favourite illustrators (Charles Vess), for a modern fairytale called Seven Wild Sisters (2002).

The novel follows seven sisters and their dog, who begin a day with chores and end with a war between fairies, including a creature called The Apple Tree Man and features challenges, music, and adventure. The book was simply a delight start to finish.

I'd first come across Charles Vess (who you can see more of at his website, Welcome to Green Man Press ) in Neil Gaiman's Sandman, as well as in the superb Stardust, so when I heard he had collaborated with Charles de Lint for this title, I was really excited to check it out.

The main story focuses on a young woman named Sarah Jane, who begins a cautious friendship with a backwoods wise woman known simply known as Aunt Lillian, that begins with chores and ends with a dangerous journey into another world.

A wonderful book and well worth the read.

Book Review: The Unwritten

Back in March I asked a couple friends about which current comics they were reading, as one of the titles I'm currently collecting just finished, I thought it would be fun to try something new. One of the first comics brought up was a series by Mike Carey and Peter Gross called The Unwritten. Last week I got the first volume of this series in from my public library and I've got to say - this is a pretty amazing series and I can't believe I hadn't heard of it before.

The premise of the series is pretty interesting; the main character, Tom Taylor, is the son of a famous author named Wilson Taylor, who wrote a massively popular book series about a boy wizard called Tommy Taylor. In the first issue while appearing at a convention, Tom is accused of not being his father's son, which causes a backlash of anger from fans of the book series. The intriguing part is that Tom may actually somehow be from another world - in fact, he might actually even be the boy wizard everyone assumes the character was based on.

The series feels a lot like a mix of Sandman and Fables to me - which is about as high a compliment as I can give a new comic series. I'm only six issues in and the series is ongoing, but seriously, if you are into dark fantasy, give it a look.

Genre Character of the Week: Matthew the Raven

It had to happen at some point, I've been doing genre characters of the week since I focused on Miles Vorkosigan last October, and even with my very large list of favourite characters I knew someday I would have to tackle some of the major genre works out there.

Today I'm taking a look at Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. Not the title character himself (wow, would that be tricky), and not the Golden Age Sandman (he'll get a post eventually). Nope, I've always had a pretty special spot in my heart for one of the minor characters of the Sandman series: Matthew the Raven (pictured left).

Matthew first caught my attention in The Doll's House storyline. Morpheus was using Matthew to keep an eye on Rose Walker, a human of some interest (I'm going to try to stay away from major spoilers about the Sandman storyline for those of you who haven't read it yet). One of the first things Matthew describes is feeling Morpheus in the back of his head while he is watching the girl, and confesses he still hasn't got used to that feeling.

This, for me, was the first time I realized Matthew was new to The Dreaming (The realm ruled over by Morpheus, a.k.a. The Sandman, a personification of Dreams), and as he seemed, strangely, to be the most human denizen of the Dreaming, he quickly became a favourite character of mine.

Matthew has got a lot of heart, and a lot of baggage, for a raven. He does what Morpheus asks of him, but is often confused at Morpheus' actions and decisions, as they don't line up with what Matthew sees as right and wrong - in a lot of ways Matthew speaks for the audience, not unlike the character of Hugo "Hurley" Reyes in Lost.

I first read Sandman as it came out - which back in the '90s meant there was no Wikipedia, only BBSs which offerred conjecture but no definite answers as to the backgrounds of characters. I had a lot of theories about Matthew as he developed over the 75 issue run of The Sandman, but I had to wait until issue 72 before my theories were confirmed (pictured right). Although I won't tell you exactly who Matthew is, I will say his character arc in The Sandman is an arc of redemption and you can begin reading his back story here.

In the end Matthew is a very human character, and sits very high on my list of personal favourites. Although there are tonnes of reasons to read The Sandman, watching the character of Matthew grow and develop is definitely one of mine.

Bookmonkey's Top Five Scary Comic books

As we get closer to Halloween I try to read or see some new scary stuff as much as I can. This is the one month of the year where you can proudly read all sorts of horrific titles on the bus and nobody minds. My biggest problem is actually selecting which stuff to read as there is so much of it out there. My solution - categories.

Two weeks ago I looked at the 5 horror novel classics I figure everyone should check out, today I'm going to look at comic books. So here goes, my five favourite horror titles in comic books:

5. Arkham Asylum, by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean

This comic was actually the first graphic novel I ever purchased. Flipping through it on the shelf at the comic store, I was simply in awe of the artwork; Dave McKean's painted panels freaked the hell out of me, each character looked different than the standard comic book versions but way WAY scarier. The basic idea is that the inmates at Arkham have taken over the Asylum and will only see reason if Batman comes to play. This story is a little hard to read, as each characters word balloons are very different, but believe me, it is totally worth a visit (or revisit) for Halloween.

4. Swamp Thing #1:Saga of the Swamp Thing, by Alan Moore

Really all I can say here (because if you haven't read it I am not going to wreck it) is issue 21 "The Anatomy Lesson." Go get Saga of the Swamp thing #1 (issues 20-27) and start reading. This is some of the freakiest, scariest stuff I have ever come across and for you first time readers I am completely envious of you, this stuff is simply comic gold.

3. Sandman, by Neil Gaiman

Like probably half of the comic book readers who started in the early '90s, this is were I started too. These books are so good I have difficultly trying to break it down into a synopsis. I think my friend Mike described it best as saying "In every issue there is at least one panel that I would classify as Nightmare batter." From Serial Killer conventions to the Cuckoos to the Devil himself, this comic has it all.

2. The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman

I started purchasing this series for my brother-in-law Jeff as he is a big fan of zombie stories, but while they were sitting in my house waiting for his birthday or Christmas to come around I would take a peak, and then another, and then I got hooked. Done entirely in Black and White, these comics go beyond the end of every zombie film you've ever seen and attempt to answer the question "What happens next?" I've been following the survivors of this zombie plague for the last five years and I don't want it to end!

1. Hellblazer, by Jamie Delano

This comic is one of my favourite titles over all, but with one simple rule. Read the comic issue by issue, rather than purchasing the graphic novels. I'm not exactly sure of what DC is trying to do here, each graphic novel is a collected story, but there isn't actually any attempt to label them vol. 1, 2, 3, etc. so if you want the whole story of this very broken, talented bastard, you will have to read them issue by issue. Frustrating, expensive, but totally worth it, as hands down Hellblazer is the scariest comic I've ever read.

So now that you have my top five, how about the rest of you? Any scary comics I should be reading? I'm always looking for more.

Things I've Noticed #3: Following your favourite comic-book author may bankrupt you

A quick look at my history with comics in a convenient timeline:

Ages 4 – 10, (1980-1986): I’m pretty much limited to Archie comics

Ages 11 – 13 (1987 - 1989): My own personal Dark Ages - I only read a few scattered X-Men I found in friends basements, dentists offices, etc.

Age 14 (August 1990): Wandering into my local comic book / used book store I came across Sandman #18 (Dream of a Thousand Cats). I had a couple extra bucks and the Dave McKean cover artwork totally grabbed me so I went for it, and I've never looked back since.

Since then I’ve been a big purchaser of series, mostly collections in trade paperbacks as I don’t have the patience to wait month by month for my stories to finish.

My problem with comics actually came a few years back. Basically I had my favourite three series (Sandman, Swamp Thing, Transmetropolitan) and was looking for a fourth. As I had followed Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore into their other works I decided to give Warren Ellis a try.

I looked him up in my library and found they had two books of his, Planetary and The Authority. As Planetary was pretty much stand alone I started there – it was awesome. The libraries copy of the Authority was stolen, lost or damaged before I could give it a look, so I headed off to my local comic book store, where I was told it actually was a continuation of a previous comic of Ellis’ called Stormwatch. Figuring I should probably read Stormwatch before I started the Authority, I decided to look into purchasing the previous 8 years worth of comics (I attempted this in 2001).

Two weeks of research later and here was the problem in a nutshell:

1) I wanted to read more Warren Ellis, so

2) I wanted to give The Authority a try, but

3) The Authority was made up, principally of surviving members of Stormwatch, and

4) Ellis only started writing Stormwatch at issue 37.

5) Before that, the title was written by Ron Marz, who spent a great deal of time tying it in with James Robinsons WildC.A.T.S., to the point where I would need to read WildC.A.T.S. to understand the earlier run of Stormwatch

6) and I didn’t have the three bazillion dollars needed to purchase all these old titles

So there you have it. It’s now been almost 8 years since I decided that maybe reading The Authority would be cool and I haven’t done a thing. I’m scared that in the incredibly complicated tie-in, crossover, dingo-crazy world of comic books that I will end up obligating myself into purchasing more comics than my house can physically hold.

Instead, I’ll call it a day, and go back to my dependable, never-charnging, you can always count on me classic: Archie.

OH MY GOD!?!