Clockwork Watch: The Arrival

London: Steam billows out from every corner of the city while huge Zeppelin airships float in the sky overhead.  Enter the world of Clockwork Watch where Victorian values are coupled with Anachronistic Technology, not least of which are the Clockwork Servants - the mechanical slaves that keep this society ticking along - this is the world of Steampunk.

Writer: Corey Brotherson
Art: Jennie Gyllblad
Original story: Yomi Ayeni
Publisher: Clockwork Watch Films Ltd

What's it about?
The Ranbir family arrives in London.  Chan Ranbir is the Head of Science at Calcutta University and has brought the family to England to continue his ambition to create a clockwork world.  Young Janav Ranbir resents his father, his dedication to his work, and the way Chan speaks to him.  Tinku supports her husband but wishes for more for her son.  As the first clockwork servant is developed there are questions of how the Unions will react and what impact will this have on everyday people's lives.

Black Out

Writer: P M Buchan
Art: Jack Fallows, Mike Barnes, Joe Whiteford, and Philip Marsden
Demonology by Andrew Waugh
Fat Jackie by Philip Marsden
Self published

What's it about?
Black Out collects 11 stories and they are all, with the exception of The Demonologies, incredibly crude.  If you like Tank Girl, or Viz magazine, you'll probably like this. Wages of Sin is about a dirty fucker living in a hovel who gets haunted by Death and the Devil.  Zingo's Lament is a one pager about a clown who eats kids (or not) and gets sent to hell. There's one story where a fat bloke gets so high on mushrooms he decides to dress as jack o' lantern and carves a face into his belly.  It's horrific but it's also really, really funny.  What's Inside A Girl? is a tale of unrequited teenage love, with misunderstanding, booze, acid and cannibalism.  Then there are sex dolls and love in the afterlife ending in a suicide.

You get the idea.  It's horror/comedy and most definitely for mature readers only.

I Don't Like My Hair Neat

Continuing the Thought Bubble theme, next up is Julia Scheele's I Don't Like My Hair Neat.

Art: Julia Scheele
Writer: Katie West and Chrissie Williams:
Self published

What's it about?
I Don't Like My Hair Neat is a collection of stories. The first (and main) one is Positive - an 18 page story about a woman fearing she might be pregnant.  How did it happen? Who is the father? What will the kid look like?

The Last Tape In Hell

Normally at New Readers... we review trade paperback editions of comics.  This works well with comics from the big publishers, but doesn't work so well for independent or self published comics. Back at the start of December I did a quick post about Thought Bubble 2012, a UK comics convention happening in Leeds.  A lot of  comics on sale at Thought Bubble are of the self published, single issue type, and I didn't want my readers to miss out on the fantastic stuff in the UK independent comics scene.  So, I will be spending a little while going over the very best of the ones that I bought.

These words will be culled from/inspired by short reviews I did on my other blog, Pai.  Depending on the sense of the original blog, they are likely to be edited to make more sense to new readers of comics.

Onwards...

The Last Tape in Hell

Writer and artist: Sarah Gordon

What's it about?
This is a short, glossy comic with few words but the most amazing colours.

It's set in Hell.  Satan is hard at work doing administrative, hellish type things.  His old cassette player is spewing out the sounds of hell (which turn out to be Dooom....Dooom...Dooom).  The cassette player suddenly breaks, and the tape becomes chewed up.

Merry Christmas!

Apologies for the blog silence.  December is never a good time to try and restart anything.

To make it up to you, here's a Christmas comic from Mike Maihack:

If you want more of this check out Maihack's previous strips:

Last year's Christmas comic
The first Supergirl/Batgirl one he did
The second one he did

And keeping with the Super theme, Comixology currently has a 99cent (about 60 English pence) sale on Superman comics.  The DC Women Kicking Ass tumblr has done a list of those titles most relevant to Lois Lane.  I highly recommend you check it out and I wholeheartedly endorse her recommendations for Birthright and Superman For All Seasons.  Those two are fantastic, fantastic comics.

As for titles without a Lois focus, I'd also recommend Red Son, All Star Superman, the For Tomorrow arc which cover Superman vol 2 issues 204 to 215 (I've not read this myself but I have heard very good things about it), the Superman/Batman issues and Trinity.

Links given are to the first issue of each story arc or series.

It's a ten day sale which finishes on Saturday so hurry up and take a look!

Happy holidays!

British Comic Awards

The British Comic Awards are a new institution, launched at this year's Thought Bubble comic convention in Leeds.  I had the pleasure of attending Thought Bubble on the Saturday and bought a big stack of comics, many of which will be reviewed here.

Unfortunately I missed the awards themselves, but the nominees and winners are on the website and I encourage you all to go have a look.

I have read one of the winning books, Hilda and the Midnight Giant, and it's a great, whimsical book.  It would make a great Christmas present for kids.

I'll be back in a week or so when I've got some proper reviews written up.

Five titles for new readers

The ever excellent DCWomenKickingAss tumblr has done a post titled 'Five titles to get a dude into comics'.

Don't be swayed by the tongue in cheek title, these are series for all readers!

She has suggested books for fans of the Arrow TV series, the Avengers and Dark Knight Rises films, the Syfy channel, and readers of Stephen King.

If you want more inspiration you can read our posts on Green Arrow (digital comics here, Smallville inspired comics here), the Avengers and the Dark Knight Rises, but do check out the DCWKA tumblr too.

Coming up will be reviews of the best comics I found at the Thought Bubble comic convention a couple of weeks ago.