Batman : Zero Year
Feb02

Batman : Zero Year

  Batman: Zero Year     Legend of Batman is another set of collections from Eaglemoss, the quality of which I raved about last year when the company launched its series of Star Trek graphic novels.  And this looks to be every single bit as good, if the initial two volumes here are anything to go by.  Mind you, it is probably necessary to be a complete bat- fanatic if the intention is to collect all of the dozens of volumes.  I’m...

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Justin Cronin’s The Passage
Jan24

Justin Cronin’s The Passage

Regions of Blackness: Justin Cronin’s The Passage     Being the busy season that was in it – you know, when you attempt to be vaguely sociable whilst making a reasonable go at a happy face – I had only read a few short stories and a couple of comic books over the Christmas and New Year period.  So when the rather stunning cover photograph on the paperback edition of Justin Cronin’s The Passage caught my eye, I paused. Paused...

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Anno Dracula 1899 And Other Stories
Jan24

Anno Dracula 1899 And Other Stories

Anno Dracula 1899 And Other Stories   Buried deep within this grab-bag of odds-and-ends from the wonderfully eccentric Mr. Newman is a story so exquisitely beautiful that it is worth buying this collection for alone.  But I’ll return to that later because, sadly, Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories is in most other ways a bit of a con. I was under the impression that it was a volume of uncollected tales that were set in the Anno...

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John Boyne – This House is Haunted (2013)
Jan18

John Boyne – This House is Haunted (2013)

This House is Haunted     I’m always on the look-out for a good modern-day ghost story; and that’s ‘ghost’ as opposed to ‘horror’, although if you want to mix in a bit of both, that’s all right with me. The last time I came across one was several months ago:  Closing Time in Neil Gaiman’s 2006 collection, Fragile Things.  I’m not a big fan of Gaiman’s longer pieces (I found it impossible to finish American Gods) but some of...

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he by John Connolly
Nov25

he by John Connolly

An Infinity of Echoes: he by John Connolly     “Each evening thereafter he travels to the hospital to be with Lois. “On the ninth day, his son dies.”   Was this what it was really like for him at the end, this joyless existence at St. Monica’s Oceana Apartments, ‘at the dawning of the last days’? And here am I, slipping into this curious way that John Connolly has chosen to tell his story.  Referring to him only as ‘he’ and ‘him’; and...

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The Anti-Irish Sentiments of H. P. Lovecraft
Nov25

The Anti-Irish Sentiments of H. P. Lovecraft

‘Criminals and Mongrel Wretches’: The Anti-Irish Sentiments of H. P. Lovecraft   From the Chicago ‘Irish American News’, November 2017     Well now, I’m not the better for that!  In fact, I’m almost sorry that I came across this correspondence from 1918/20. You see, I’ve been a lifelong devotee of the writings of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890 – 1937) of New England.  When I was a schoolboy in the 60s and 70s he was pretty much...

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