Friday 29 March 2013

The invisible age




I can feel it now, creeping up behind me, the cool, chilling breath that tickles the back of my neck. it is following me around and getting closer withe every passing day.

30.

and I can't escape it any longer, it is an age I never considered facing, and yet, in the past few months, the reality of my advancing years is becoming unavoidable.


it feels like a finishing line, that now I am hurtling towards it, only so that I can cross it.

But before I get there, I want to make sure the milestone birthday greets me as a wizened man that has achieved things in his life.

My debut novel only really needs the cover artwork finalising and laying out, and I fully intend to have it published next month.

My debut album is also gaining momentum and I think an end may possibly be in sight for it, ideally with a single released in May ahead of an album release in June, which would be great timing since I mark my third decade on the planet on the thirtieth day of the sixth month of the year of our lord, two thousand and thirteen.


days off recently have been spent recording vocals and intertwining them with the music that has been sat waiting for an accompaniment, waiting for completion. and I just hope that I can pull everything together in time to make it all right, to set myself a deadline and meet it, with a hearty, manly handshake.


and in my 'real' life, things are ok there I guess, everything feels rather wrapped up and in place, with my serious relationship and our home and our plans for the future, the past year's redundancy and current entry level job on a minimum wage are not exactly ideals, hardly part of anybodies 30 year plan, but that is what life has given me, and I still have a roof over my head and a girlfriend that loves me and a family around me to support me and various friends and acquaintances in my life that help to make my life complete so I can't complain really.

But for now, the countdown ticks away the second, minutes, days and hours relentlessly.

Saturday 23 March 2013

Impact Detonation

oh, 90s comic books, what a bizarre, long and twisted love/hate relationship we have.

a relationship that I have revisited since loading a bunch of CBRs onto my gizmo, ready for reading without un-pollybagging my old issues.

back when I first laid hands on my new gizmo and took it to the Lake District with me, I powered my way through Contagion and Legacy, two back to back Batman arcs that spanned the Dark Knight Detective's titles and various spin-offs.

from what I can remember now, Contagion was so-so, and Legacy was marginally better due to the returning threat of Rās Al Ghūl, his daughter Talia and the reveal of her new suitor as Bane, making a welcome return but becoming an ultimately squandered character, since he could never really replicate the impact made since his debut in the Knightfall event.

And the problem was that after such wide spanning, multi-issue, crossing-over, behemoth storytelling that had spun Knightfall into two separate strands of Knightsquest and the seemingly concluding chapter of KnightsEnd, the last thing Batman fans really needed was another all encompassing threat to the comics world and to wallets.



which was exactly what Batman fans got when the KnightSaga span off into the rather oddly timed Prodigal and the runt of the litter Troika, which I have just finished re-reading.

very briefly, Prodigal deals with the fallout of KnightsEnd and the return of Bruce Wayne to the mantle of the bat, who then very swiftly hands it over to Dick Grayson, former Robin. Rendering the climactic climax of KnightsEnd slightly anti-climactic. After this 12 parter, Bruce Wayne comes back proper, unveiling a new batsuit (black, rather than blue and grey, and kind of pointless) and tackling Russian criminals running around being a bit rubbish all over four separate bat-titles with collectors edition embossed covers.



And that was that really, these flailing add-ons that did little to shake things up following such whopping, game-changing and era-defining cross-overs.

It was the age of comics that dragged me in, entertained and enthralled me, but to be absolutely honest... it did have a number of lows lumped in with all those highs.

The 90s was a boom era for new comic books, new artists and new tricks, I still have such a fondness for those days gone by, the regular trips to Barnet or Tottenham to stock up and get my comics fix for the week, yet all the sugar coating in the world won't change the fact thatTroika was perhaps really over stretching the gimmicks, the crossovers, and the reader's patience at the time.