Abhimanyu

Rogan. Since I'm supposedly just one of your alter egos...please give me mod power too. Tell me the password/teach me how to manipulate the mere mortals.

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The Box says "No".

I hate it when I arrive at a thread late and everyone's said what I wanted to say

But I will add:

Alan Moore's Promethea

Pat Mills and Simon Bisley's Slaine: The Horned God series if only for the artwork.

John Mueller's Oink which no one seems to have heard of, but I found absolutely astounding, derivative as it may be of some other post apocalyptic tales like Skreemer etc.

you misunderstand, Mark.

When I say most of us are going to see it - I most definitely do not mean pay to see it. You must think I'm crazy!!! I'm terribly hurt that you have me down as someone who would Pay to see Constanteen :(

what i mean is that most of us are going to see it when it comes on TV or some other free medium.

I demand an apology

I absolutely hate producing definitive best of lists specially as a film fanatic. There are different kinds of movies, different kinds of genres, different expectations of genres etc etc could go on forever.

However, that said, if someone put a gun to my head (yeah i know, am being hypocritical)

Favourite: Pulp Fiction

Best: Apocalypse Now/The Godfather (just CANnot pick)

I don't seem to have this "how do you think it feels' story in the copy i got from the library. is it in the british edition or something. how stupid is it to make two different editions!!

anyone know where I can get it?? i dont want to have to go buy another more expensive edition for one story.

I think most, if not all of us, are going to watch this movie. It's sad that they had to defile Hellblazer to make it........cos otherwise I suspect many of us would perhaps even have Enjoyed it.

Ah, smoek and Mirrors, one fo my favourites as well, like the rest of the folks said - apart from some weak stories, it is mostly excellent (though we will all probably disagree on the identity of the weak stories...) :p

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which ones did you guys think were weak. I don't like poetry too much myself so I skipped the poetic stuff for now. I loved Chivalry, The Goldfish Pool and Troll Bridge.

They cut out the gay sex in SFU? But did they keep in the fact that David was gay? I can't imagine it making sense otherwise...

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yeah they cut out the gay sex scenes and nearly all kissing. Yeah they do keep in all verbal references. Just the physical stuff. I think they know that they'll be fucked over royally but the massive religious fundamentalist/conservative lobby in India if they show something as Bad as Gay Sex <gasp>. Its ludicrous. You have to remember that they demolished theatres all over India for screening the only serious Indian film to deal with female homosexuality.

Hell, TV programmes are under enormous assault in India. Western tv has a massive urban audience which is probably why its still survived but under constant duress. People keep complaining about the violence and the 'immorality' etc etc. All movie channels are censored - nudity, profanity, gore is cut on a regular basis. The channel that shows the HBO stuff was the last bastion of uncensored material as ash said but now they've started it too, as I detailed in the earlier post. The conditions of things with regards to freedom of speech in art/culture in India is dire to say the least. Its very disturbing to a lot of people.

Well, yes, but the supremacy of Sandman goes without saying, for me at least (I'm yet another of those types who got into comics through Sandman, so it'll always have a place in my heart). I was trying to keep my post focussed on his prose writing, as opposed to his comics - that's all.

 

Christian - I can see where you're coming from there, but I'm going to respectfully disagree ;). Smoke and Mirrors has some excellent stories, but I still find the book as a whole frustratingly inconsistent. Nature of the beast, I suppose, but still...

 

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im going to agree with Christian's endorsement of Smoke and Mirrors. The Goldfish Pool and other stories is one of the best short stories I have ever read (and I read a LOT of short stories). I really loved Troll Bridge as well. There's some really great stuff in there. Also, Mark, I've never come across a short story collection that didnt have some great stories and some not so great ones. As far as I've seen, all short story collections are inconsistent in that way.

I have loved comics ever since I discovered that they could tell stories that are worthy of any literary award (whether or not they ever get them) in a format that takes one-hundredth the time to absorb and process of conventional novels. I can read brilliant stories in short amounts of time which is a HUGE factor for someone who is so up to his neck in college readings that extracurricular reading is left with pathetically small amounts of time allotted to it.

Another factor is my love for cinema. Comics do some of the same things - combining the visual element with the writing and this is a great thing for me. I have this instinctive deep down attraction to interesting Imagery. Just one fascinating image is something i can stare at for hours and good comics provide these for me in large doses.

Third and extremely important - comics provide the sort of themes/genres/characters I absolutely Love. I am a die hard sf/fantasy/horror fan and comics nowadays provide some of the best examples of genre writing. I'm not saying that books don't provide the same but its just that comics do too and do so in a more convenient format. If i had the time and money i sure as hell would read a shitload more books than i do now.

that picture of Gary Oldman's character from Hannibal is rather like what Arseface should look like if Warner ever makes a Preacher adaptation (rated PG 13 for language, brief nudity, fantasy violence and one drug reference).

Not like fast zombies, no sir. And not in Rogans esthetic offense fashion, either. Just scary.

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thats exactly why I loved them. I like scary as hell. I wish more movies were.

Right! My goal will be to get it under $25 a shirt with shipping included.

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hope you can work things out, spiderlegs........I really want those t shirts!! also, could you find out if your guys can do Tim Seelig's design on a black t shirt (assuming everyone else wants one of those too, obviously cant do one just for me)? It would be a shame to waste his amazing design.

how did you get my e-mail ? I didn't think it was on view here, or my other websites

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Ludicrously good. The only reason WB could have to not commission some work from you is their seeming desire to piss off nearly every Hellblazer fan there is. btw, this may sound dense, but where exactly are the prices on the gallery to which you linked above? Do you have any other Hellblazer artwork that's not posted on the site?

HBO rules...

 

I hope they start Deadwood soon here... for now they just started Carnivale... that's one of the weirdest/coolest things i've ever seen on TV.

 

The funny thing is... stuff like Sopranos and 6 feet under doesn't come on HBO here... we have another channel which shows Sopranos and 6 feet... which is actually good.. because HBO india censors a lot.. and this other channel does not censor a "fucking" thing... which is excellent when it comes to Sopranos

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Ash, that was true till a few months ago. When I was in India last summer I caught a few episodes of both the Sopranos and Six Feet Under on Zee English (episodes I had seen before in the US in their graphic entirety) and they censored a Lot. They dont censor language, you're right about that, but a lot of the more gory/strong violence was cut and in Six Feet Under, ironically enough, all the gay sex/kissing is cut. Trust me, they cut PLENTY. Mostly violence on the sopranos and sex in SFU.

Shanice, you thought The Gift was his best performance......???????

im an undergraduate right now but i graduate in 2005. So unless I get into grad school with some sort of financial aid im going to become a skiver :(

not sure how many people will agree with me here but I think Adam Clayton from U2 is very good. He's often upstaged by the Edge's guitar but I do like his rhythms....

I'd really love to see Gaiman come up with a truly great novel, because I love his imagination and think his prose style has developed strongly over the years, but he hasn't produced anything even approaching a magnum opus as of yet - Sandman aside.

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Aargh!! Sandman aside???? I think thats more of a magnum opus than most modern writers have come up with. It's like saying Milton never came up with a magnum opus as such - Paradise Lost aside.

Keeyah, you're not alone - I enjoyed Salvation. Its far from the best of the series but I did think it was a huge amount of fun. That meat goddess was sick!

"A war in Hell is about to spill onto the streets of London, as rival demon-clans battle for control of the mundane world. Caught in the middle is gangland enforcer Carver Hale - a man with a bloody past and a hell-bound future. You could say he's got some heavy connections in the Underworld..."

 

Written by Mike Carey too.  There were rumblings of a Carver Hale collection last year but no sign of it as yet.

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holy shit, this Carver Hale sounds amazing!! how/where can i get my hands on some??? or is it only available in individual 2000AD issues

Then you just like a good book, Akhira! :)

I guess all the mythological stuff could be considered confusing....

 

"Good Omens" was a really good book! It's hilarious and a fun read! Check it out!

"Stardust" was a good story. It's the type of fantasy I enjoy, and it was an easy read. Just nothing ground breaking.

"Neverwhere" is also a really good book.

All of these books came out before "American Gods" though. And, I don't consider as ambitious as "American Gods", even though all are good books and fine reads.

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I just think you need to know a lot of stuff to really be able to appreciate American Gods fully. I'm surprised people thought it started off slow - the atmosphere of the book builds so superbly and in such an ominous and oppressive way that it grabbed me immediately. It helped that there's something very sympathetic about Shadow as a narrator.

But if you know a decent amount of world mythology then American Gods isnt the slightest bit confusing and is definitely one of the best fantasy/horror novels ive read to come out of recent times.

I agree with Christian about Good Omens and Stardust. Terry Pratchett is another amazing writer.

I loved Neverwhere and found it absolutely wondrous. I guess its one of those books for which an overactive imagination is a requirement. See, I'm the sort of guy who would Almost believe in these things. When I went to London last summer I even checked out some of the places he mentioned and daydreamed endlessly on the Underground, making my journeys a lot more bearable :)

Thanks, Josh. I may not be replying, but I am reading this stuff. That last one is truly alarming.

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anyone catch the debates today? I thought Kerry was supportive of gay marriage but it seems he isnt. It's too bad that its a choice between bigoted and even more bigoted nowadays.......though I didnt see it myself, I read on yahoo that both bush and kerry agree that marriage should be restricted to heterosexuals.

I'm not sure if ALL of the lyrics would apply to Constantine but "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails is a song that never fails to remind me of Hellblazer.

For the best commentary on this topic, everyone go and watch Sacha Baron Cohen's interview with what sounds to me like hte same guy Christian is talking about. Some idiot from a ministry who makes a profession of curing gay people. COhen interviews him under his gay Austrian Bruno guise and its absolutely bloody hilarious. Anyone desperate to watch this may find it on supernova i think. i recommend it highly.

HBO seems to be the only people producing good TV these days. I just caught the first few episodes of The Wire on dvd and its really good. Not as good as HBO's classics like The Sopranos but still pretty damn good. I love the depiction of law enforcement politics as opposed to just life on the street type stuff.