Defoe 1666. Pat Mills (Writer), Leigh Gallagher (Art), Ellie De Ville (Letters). Rebellion (2009)

Superb writing and beautifully expressive art combine to in a griping and inventive comic.On the 2nd of September 1666 a great comet passed over London, houses were set on fire and many died. The earth cracked open and gases flooded up that reanimated the dead and a desperate battle between the living and the living dead began. A bite from a zombie is infectious, it will turn the living into a zombie too, Titus Defoe fights the tide of zombies using weapons designed by Issac Newton and inoculated against the zombie infection by a cordial. It becomes clear that there is much more to the comet and the zombie attacks than chance, there is a much greater battle being fought. The story unfolds with great panache, the reveals are well paced, the action is amazing and the cast are exciting and engaging.

Pat Mills has managed to find a genuinely new way of telling a zombie story and using it to reach for a much bigger story at the same time. By placing the story in the context of post Civil War England he has an extraordinary context where huge political, social, religious and economic divisions strained the fabric of society. The story utilises historical characters in a wonderfully inventive way to place the zombies in the context of a greater war that is spoken of but critically never fully explained. The adds depth to the savage action on the front lines of the struggle against the "reeks".

Leigh Gallaher's black and white art is astounding, his command of both savage action sequences and the way that his cast are both wholly individual and expressive is a joy. He takes full advantage of the story and gives it a fierce reality that makes the struggle against the"reeks" a grippingly close run affair.

Any comic where the reanimated head of Oliver Cromwell stuck on a pole leading a New Moral Army of zombies in an assault on a naked Charles II in his palace is only one small episode has ambition, this comic fully realises that ambition and then pushes even further. Brilliant.

Appleseed. Geneon Entertainment (2004) DVD

This is a very engaging and enjoyable animated science fiction film. Deunan Kane is kidnapped from a battlefield and taken to the city of Olympus where she finds out that the war had already ended and that her missing lover Briareos is now a full cyborg. Olympus is the last human city and is populated by humans and biological robots called Bioroids who provide the administration for the city. The city is ruled by a computer called Gia and a council of human Elders, Olympus is intended to be a Utopia. There is trouble in Olympus, a group of humans wish to remove the Bioroids and Deunan finds that she is central to the struggle and the survival of Olympus. The reveals are nicely done, the action is staged with great flair and ambition and there is a genuinely interesting idea at the heart of the film.

The CG animation is excellent, it uses motion capture to build upon which creates a very natural sense of movement and interaction among the cast. The backgrounds are breathtaking in their scope and detail. The guns and the armoured suits the cast use are lovingly rendered, they are a major part of the cast in themselves. The story does not get lost in the detail, the interactions and machinations of the cast are the drivers in the film, the cast get to express themselves as much in action as in speech and the mix is nicely judged.

This is a very ambitious film that very self consciously uses technology to talk about technology and how humans interact with it. Smart, inventive and highly entertaining, a winner.

Between The Lines. Janis Ian. CBS (1975)

This is the most romantic collection of songs I have heard. This is not a collection of love songs, though love is an important idea in the songs, they are adult romantic songs that measure the way ideas and dreams shape and haunt us. We grow up with ideas about how our lives will unfold, how central romantic relationships will feel. The reality of our lives usually diverges widely from these ideas, they still retain a considerable force as a measure of what could or should have been. A romantic adult retains these dreams in a modified form, there is still the hope that they could be fulfilled, there is a undying hope that they may become true.
The songs in this collection are drenched in this struggle between the hope for fulfillment and the sharp reality of living and the compromises that it entails. "At Seventeen" is the most explicit accounting of the divergence between reality and the dreams and the price that is extracted for having them in the first place. "Bright Lights and Promises" looks at what a life is like when the dreams you had are all you have to cling to as you move through a life you could never have imagined, a life that is based on simulating romance.

"Between the Lines" walks headlong into the difficulty of being a couple, how can it possibly be made to work and the beautiful "Light a Light" catches the aftermath of love and its dreams. The music is lush and mellow on the songs, it captures and frames the mood with precision and deepens the impact. It is subtle and pervasive, it does not come forward over the vocals, it gently frames them. Janis Ian's vocal are pure and clear, she has a mellow tone that expresses emotion clearly. This is a great production of a lovely collection of songs.

Hunter's Moon. David Devereux. Gollancz (2007)

This is very fast paced, gripping and very English thriller. The narrator gives his name as Jack, he is an agent for a very secret British security department that deals with supernatural threats. A group called The Enlightened Sisterhood were plotting something serious and Jack is sent to investigate it and if required deal with it by eliminating the Sisterhood. Jack is paired with a female agent who has infiltrated the Sisterhood and with some assistance from Jack joins the inner circle. The plot moves at high speed, the reveals are well paced and the action is really well staged. The climax is savage and satisfying.

David Devereux manages to weave the magical aspects of this story into the action in a seamless fashion, they are just one of the tools of the trade, used well or badly depending on the person involved. Jack is a great character, he is a very competent professional, dealing with dangerous problems and people with force and ultra dry black humour. The use of magic is never a means to avoid logic, it is used to increase the tension and the depth of the threat.

Happily David Devereux has conjured up a superb set of villains to oppose Jack, thoroughly competent and effective, they are a force to be reckoned with. The way that the leaders of the group control their followers is brutal and very credible, it reveals the personalities involved as much as providing dramatic force. The tone of the book is restrained, there is dirty work to be done and it will be completed, the calm and determined professional brutality is very English. Gripping and tense, a superb thriller.

Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex. The Lost Memory. Junichi Fujisaku. DH Press (2006)

This is an enjoyable science fiction thriller set in a credible and well developed context with an engaging cast. The story is set in a future Japan in a world where replacing body partially or completely with prosthetic limbs or full bodies is commonplace and having a cyberbrain, a computer addition to your brain is virtually required to manage in an information saturated society.

A seemingly unrelated series of terrorist incidents carried out by teenage boys with no previous history or discernible motive, called the "Good Morning Terrorists", attracts the attention of Section 9, a Public Security group with responsibility for combating terrorism. Led by Major Motoko Kusanagi, who has had a full body replacement, the team from Section 9 investigate the incidents as well as the threat from a criminal gang to a visiting diplomat. The plot moves nicely, the reveals are well staged and the conclusion is enjoyably paranoid and explosive.

The writer manages to translate the context of the literal information society that is presented in very visual terms in the the animated series in a very unforced way. A lot of context and explanation has to be provided to ensure that the reader can understand the actions and choices of the cast and it is do in a very natural fashion. The cast are well developed, the Major is an engaging and professional security officer, the rest of her team are varied and lively. The story itself has a very enjoyable flavour of conspiracy thriller films of the late 1970's, as the plot unfolds it becomes clear that there is something very nasty lurking in the background.

While the story is set within the continuity from Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex 1st Gig, it is written by one of the writers of the animated series, no previous knowledge of any of the Ghost in the Shell comic books, films or the SAC series is required to enjoy it.

3:10 To Yuma. Columbia Pictures (1957). DVD

A classic Western, tense and gripping. Glen Ford plays an outlaw, Ben Wade, who is captured pretty much by accident by Van Heflin, playing rancher Dan Evans. A plan is hatched to move Ben Wade to a nearby town to wait for the 3:10 Yuma train to take Ben Wade to the jail in Yuma. Dan Evans takes the lead in transporting and guarding Ben Wade for the bounty on offer. The battle of wills between Ben Wade and Dan Evans as they wait in a hotel room for the train and Wade's gang arrive in town and act to free their leader is the heart of the film. The action is sparse and forceful, the tension is developed steadily as the time to the train departure draws closer. The conclusion is satisfying and truthful.

Glen Ford gives an extraordinary performance in this film, Ben Wade is highly intelligent, he is an outlaw because he wants to be, he enjoys it. From the opening scenes it is clear that he is a dangerous killer, he also commands the devotion as well as the loyalty of his men. He charms a bar girl (Felicia Farr) by actually seeing her as the woman she is rather than the job she is doing. His battle with Van Heflin is conducted with words and a deeply cruel insight into the character of his prison guard. He is fantastically dangerous and is deliberately, politely destructive.

Van Heflin gives an equally amazing performance, he has a significantly harder role to fill. He is an downtrodden everyman who takes on a job out of desperation and finds that he has a wolf by the ears. The blows that Ben Wade land on him do not break him, rather they forge him into a man who sees that what was just a job has become a duty and in deciding to do his duty Dan Evans becomes himself, a better man. This ability to make a good man watchable and interesting, to make his struggle not be sentimental nor stupidly noble, just a matter of fact acceptance of what needs to be done provides a steel core to Van Heflin's performance. It gives depth and strength to the battle with Ben Wade and gives a what is essentially a chamber piece force, tension and conviction. This film is compelling and gripping, a must see.

CVO (Covert Vampiric Operations) Rogue State. Jeff Mariotte (Writer), Antonio Vazquez(Art), Fran Gamboa (Colours), Tom B. Long (Letters). IDW. (2005)

A solid premise and a thoughtful plot are let down by a cramped conclusion. One of the US Government's secret services is C.V.O., Covert Vampiric Operations. They are being attacked and killed while in parallel there is a palace coup taking place in a South (Central?) American country of San Felipe. The two plots run in parallel as a trio of CVO agents refuse an order to turn themselves in a proceed to establish what is actually going on. The reveals are nicely done and the action is graphic and well choreographed. The conclusion is very cramped, it feels as though the series was brought to an abrupt halt ahead of what had originally been planned.

There are a great many good things about this book, the absolute best being the complete lack of a back story to CVO as an organisation or for the agents. They were made into vampires by CVO, the how and why is not explained. This gives a welcome forward momentum to the story, there is no looking back and the reader is forced to take the whole premise for granted. The vampire trio are interesting and varied, they each have a presence and individual personality, their interactions are excellent. The rest of the major parts are well done also, there has been care taken to step beyond cliche while not straying too far from stereotypes.

The art was a bit too dark for my taste, the colouring overwhelming the details, in particular in some of the action sequences. The figure work is strong and nicely suggestive, the facial expressions are expressive and forceful. All told, while it is not completely successful it is still well worth a read.