Alasdair Stuart's Blog

Well the first thing I did was realize I need to keep better track of the stuff I’m doing. And then I cleaned up some admin left over from last year, and I signed with an employment agency and cooked lots of things, but that last one we’ve already covered. So, let’s take a look at the places you could find my stuff this month:

-Duane O’Brien is a game designer, and one with a brilliant idea. Octo: Games of Spring, is a collection, print only, of one page roleplaying games from some of the best, most innovative designers on the planet. Duane’s eating printing and shipping costs and all proceeds are going to some startlingly worthy causes. I talk to him about it here.

-I interviewed Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer on the new Captain Marvel series which, to my mind, is the first time the character has been truly great in years. Captain Marvel’s kind of a hot button topic for me, because a lot of her old look neatly embodied everything that’s wrong with how comics view women. Or to put it another way, if you put a highly decorated air force pilot in a pair of black thigh highs and a leotard, people aren’t going to ask about her flight credentials. What Kelly Sue’s done is make her not only fun but human and interesting. The book’s brilliant, Kelly Sue is a fun interview subject and you should read the interview, then order the book, here and here.

-Equally brilliant is Sarah Cawkwell, Black Library author, force of nature and one of the nicest people I’ve met. I talked to Sarah about writing, how she got started with BL, what it’s like to be a woman in an area traditionally viewed as male-centric and what pieces of writing she’s proudest of. The interview is here.

-I’m a newcomer to the work of James P Blaylock and it was a pleasure to get The Aylesford Skull to review and interview Mr Blaylock. Both these pieces can be found here, and here, whilst my review for SFX is here.

-Welcome to the Empyrean. You’re dead. That’s the bad news. The good news is everyone gets to go to the Afterlife and it’s FUN. Jonathan Lock’s Afterlife Inc was, initially, one of my favorite indie comics of last year. On reflection it’s now one of my favorite comics ever. The story of the new boss in the beyond, the…odd circumstances he came to power in and what happens when Heaven isn’t a place on Earth, but you can send soldiers there, this is dizzying, massively inventive and incredibly sweet fantasy. It’s a beautiful book in every sense of the word and the review is here.

-If you’re a DC Comics fan and you like movie versions of their characters, like me, then, well…I’m really sorry. The chain of disastrous choices that DC make about every movie that doesn’t have Christopher Nolan behind the camera seemed to continue this week when it was announced that the Justice League movie would only happen if Man of Steel did well. Or did it? In a moment of slightly desperate optimis, I talk about why this might be a really good thing here.

-It has been a fine, FINE month for nerdrage. Not only did we have the fact the BBC appear (Note that word) to be pretty seriously short changing the Doctor Who 50th anniversary, the horror that a director that had touched/tainted/saved/obliterated the Star Trek series could be given Star Wars with the announcement of JJ Abrams as the director of episode 7, but we also had the confirmation that Princess Leia would not only be the star of the new Star Wars comic but fly an X-Wing! LOTS! QUICKLY! SOMEONE COVER HER ANKLES!

The responses to this ranged from welcoming to intrigued but troubled to ‘BUT SHE’S A WOMAN!’ and every repulsive derivation therein. So, myself and my learned colleague Steven Ellis put together two, two header pieces about the announcement; one a discussion, one a review. I’m all in favor of it, he’s interested but has issues, with Star Wars as a whole in fact. They’re interesting reading and can be found here and here.

-Anomaly is a vast, literally the thing’s a foot long, hardback graphic novel with staggering painted artwork, some fun AR components and a neat twist on the usual sci fantasy fare. I reviewed it here.

-The Wolfmen and Fall of The Wolfmen are a pair of excellent graphic novels set in a very nasty version of the London underworld. They’re also two of the huge range of great, varied books that Accord are putting out. I review the Wolfmen duo here.

-The Rose Black books are that rare breed; a modern vampire story that isn’t either A)A bad Twilight knockoff or B)A bad Twilight satire. Rose is a devout Christian, a spy and a vampire. She’s also in a lot of trouble in Demon Seed, in a story that neatly combines genetics with supernatural horror. Oh and if you look closely, you can see this exact book on the desk in the comic shop in Utopia, just before everything goes sideways. The review’s here

-Mephistos is another one of my favorite titles at the moment, following Maria, a quiet, friendly woman and her neighbour, who works in hell. But is actually quite nice. Even after she tries to kill him with a frozen chicken. Gentle, sweet and very funny, it’s a great book and the review can be found here.

-The nerdbait returns! Dredd has reached DVD and blu-ray (How long, I wonder, until we start saying that the other way round?) and I wrote a piece about what went wrong with the film’s marketing. The piece, in which I examine who killed the movie’s chances (Like a Judge, you see? Investigating a…crime…I’ll go), is up here.

-Finally, and also in nerdbait news, hilarity ensued earlier in the month when an interview with Rob Williams, one of the writers of Judge Dredd and on an absolute tear at the moment, was asked about ‘Closet’ an upcoming story dealing with homosexuality in Mega City 1. He was asked about Judge Dredd’s sexuality, explained how it didn’t really matter and…the quote was twisted into YOU ARE KILLING DREDD BY MAKING THIS MACHO FIGURE WEARING TIGHT LEATHER AND WIELDING A NIGHTSTICK A HOMOSEXUAL ICON! by fans who, apparently, don’t know how to read.  The piece I did about why 2000AD examining issues like this is why it’s great, is here.

-I’ve been incredibly lucky in my reading in the last couple of months. Firstly, after strep throat-induced MASSIVE insomnia for a fortnight, I was actually starting to panic about whether or not I’d be able to sleep. Which, of course, meant I didn’t sleep. Which, of course, meant I panicked and round we go. Anyway, Marguerite, being a genius and wonderful, suggested I read a chapter or so of a book before sacking out to help my brain close down. As a direct result, I’ve now read a couple of books I can see myself returning to over and over again. One of them, Warren Ellis’ frankly astonishing Gun Machine, is reviewed here.

-The new Star Wars comic I reviewed for SFX? I also reviewed for Bleeding Cool. It’s really good, sprinkles enough of the tone of the new Battlestar Galactica over the top to add some edge but is still recognisably all the bits of Star Wars I love. The review, which also re poses the age old question of which one would win, a Sopwith Camel or an F18 Hornet (It’s all in context, chaps, don’t worry), is here.

Neil Gardner, top audio producer and general all around good egg, has launched a new blog. Minifig of the Day is just that, a picture of a standard, or custom, Lego mini figure. Neil very kindly let me guest post, talking about my little Lego martial artist and what he means to me, and the piece is here.

SciFind is one of my favorite new sites, and they’re a pleasure to write for, because I’m basically completely off the chain for them. I wrote a wrap up of 2012, which gave me a perfect excuse to promote some of my favorite stuff, here. I also put together a reaction piece for them on David Bradley’s casting as William Hartnell in An Adventure In Space And Time here, and a piece about Duncan Jones getting the World of Warcraft gig here.

Who has two thumbs, speaks limited German and is the new co host of Escape Pod?! Da! Wait that’s wrong. Anyway it’s me, and I hosted three stories this month.

-Real Artists by Ken Liu is a chilling, and oddly cheerful, discussion of why certain stories have universal appeal and how they get it.

-Scout by Bud Sparhawk is a calm, considered, horrifying story about the exact nature of the self that’s lost during war.

-Concussion by David Glen Larson is equal parts sport story and desperate struggle for survival as a head injury allows a dying alien spacecraft to communicate with an American football player.

-Finally, Elias, Smith and Jones by Mark English is a glorious story about how a major propulsion breakthrough was discovered by a crew who specialized in ‘re-acquiring’ items from their owners. A must for Firefly fans, this one.

-Meanwhile, over at my true podcasting home, we had three fantastic stories hit in quick succession:

-The Persistence of Memory by William Meikle, explores grieving through music, the echoes we leave behind of ourselves and what happens when we let our past prey on us.

-Enzymes by Greg Stolze is brilliant, and unclassifiable, and sort of a love story, and sort of a tragedy and brilliant. Top five in the stories I’ve ever hosted for the show. Just amazing work.

-As is Venice Burning by AC Wise, equal parts horror story, romance, time travel and Lovecraftian fever dream. Venice has never looked so beautiful, and so very doomed.

So that was my January. As ever there’s about four or five things that didn’t quite make the date cut, but they’ll be covered next time. A good start to the year, lots of traction and I can feel my work load staying steady. In fact, a short word about that; I’m doing the Million Word Challenge, along with 11 other people. If you write 2700 words a day for a year, you hit a million words, which is widely regarded as the point after which your writing starts getting good. I’m on course for about 92,000 in January, so I’m off to a solid start. You can find out more here.

In the meantime, did I mention my book?

The Pseudopod Tapes Volume 1 is a collection of all the writing I did for Pseudopod in 2012, revised and expanded so you don’t ever have to read me ask for donations. You can just hear that. On the shows. Every week. And sometimes when you’re sleeping… It’s available in print or ebook form and it’s something I’m incredibly proud of. Adele and the crew at Fox Spirit along with superlative cover artist SL Johnson did amazing work, as did the nice people that put it on cake for the launch party. So if you fancy reading me instead of listening to me, give it a try.

Want to talk to me about the article? Or hire me? Come see me on Twitter at @alasdairstuart or email me.

(Still from the excellent These Glory Days)

Here are the answers to the parade I posted over the weekend. This post is utterly crammed with links so if you don’t recognize a character click on their name, or if a book looks interesting click on the title for an Amazon page.

-Jack is of course, the Jack from the story.

-The irradiated teenagers are from The Chernobyl Diaries, as are the creatures hunting them.

-The astronauts are the crew of the Prometheus. Holloway is the one who’s on fire, Fifield is surrounded by his hounds (And wouldn’t his life have been much easier if he’d actually followed the map? He’d MADE?). The vast shadow is the Engineer ship that crashes towards the end of the movie and the small, stocky woman leading them is of course, Liz Shaw. One of the things that I really liked about Prometheus was its exploration of her faith and how she refuses to lose it even in the face of the endless horrors she suffers. I don’t agree with it, at all, but I do find it interesting.

-The presidential convoy is Abraham Lincoln from Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. It’s a patchy as hell movie but it’s a lot of fun and Dominic Cooper as Henry the English vampire is excellent. Hence his deserved cameo appearance here.

-The girl behind them is Elizabeth Olsen’s character from Silent House, the real time found footage movie based on the 2010 Urguayan movie La Casa Muda, made in 2010.

-The polite Edwardian couple are the lead in The Woman in Black and his wife, both very dead and both so relieved to be reunited at last that they don’t really care about anyone or anything else,not quite yet anyway.

-Hadley and Sitterson, ladies and gentlemen! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with blood all over their hands. I loved The Cabin in the Woods and these two are a very big reason why, Likewise, Amy Acker as Lin who’s following behind them with the rest of the cast stalking along behind her, delighted that the Cabin staff suffered as much as they did on the way out.

-Sigourney Weaver’s character cannot possibly be human in The Cabin in the Woods. Look at the sequence she appears in, there’s only one entrance to the sacrificial chamber and it’s behind Dana and Marty when they come in. The Director, when we first see her, steps UP onto the platform from the other side. She’s an avatar of the things that sleep beneath the Cabin and the gloves she’s always wearing are another indicator that she’s less, or more, than human.

-Alec Holland and the Swamp Thing come next, their newly separate status reflecting how the new Swamp Thing series starts. Following them is Buddy Baker and family from Animal Man, another one of the best new DC titles and closely connected to Swamp Thing.

-The Edwardian police officer is Chief Inspector George Suttle from the excellent Vertigo mini-series The New Deadwardians. The trade’s out shortly and I highly recommend it and everything else Dan Abnett has done. He’s talking to Governor Arcadia Alvarado, the lead in Saucer Country, Paul Cornell’s excellent UFOlogy/political thriller.

-Her bodyguards, the two identical twins, are from Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips’ excellent series Fatale.

-The tall brawny woman is Amelia Cole, the lead in Monkeybrain Comics excellent series Amelia Cole and The Unknown World. Her friend is Autumn Ackermann, the lead in one of their other, also excellent series The October Girl.

-John Constantine comes next, along with his wife, Epiphany, a new addition to the family.

-Behind them, the cast of The Stuff of Legend, a superb and horrible comic about toys battling to rescue their child from the boogeyman.

-The Winchester boys come next, of course, and as always they make an entrance. Their passengers this year are Castiel, still looking startled to be there and the legendary Mr Bobby Singer. Following them are, of course, everything they’ve ever hunted and Lillith, front and centre. Where she always wanted to be.

-The bare chested man is Fornicus, Lord of Pain and Desire, the Pinhead analogue from The Cabin in the Woods. The sphere is definitely Fornicus’ but I like to think Pinhead sent some Cenobites to walk with him this year, as a sign of solidarity.

-The giant irradiated ants are from every giant irradiated ant movie ever made, although I like to think of them as survivors of Them! Their handlers are the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Frankenstein’s monster.

-The slaughtered kings are just that, the Shakespearean kings, the Jacobean kings and all the rest. They’re accompanied by the movie versions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, played by Tim Roth and Gary Oldman.

-The Director again, walking with her people this time.

So there you go, that was the Halloween parade for this year. Hope you had fun guessing and do try the Churros, they’re great.

Want to talk to me about the article? Come see me on Twitter at @alasdairstuart or email me.

I was always going to be an easy sell for Arrow, the new CW-produced TV series based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow. I was a comics retailer for seven years, I’m still a comics journalist in various capacities and I’ve written one or two in my time. Nothing large, nothing you’ll have heard of odds are but I speak fluent comic. I can order coffee in it, book a hotel room, ask directions to the cinema and arrange for a meal with a variety of people, all of whom have different dietary requirements. I speak comic fluently. With that in mind, Arrow was always going to attract my attention. If nothing else, the several sterling years service Justin Hartley did as Green Arrow on Smallville are amongst my favorite supporting character turns of recent years. Hartley played Oliver Queen as an analogue of the movie version of Tony Stark; quick witted, dry, self destructive. He was a billionaire playboy genius philanthropist too, he was just much more interested in team work than Tony ever was.

Arrow, and Stephen Amell’s portrayal of Oliver Queen, are very, very different.

For a start, the stylistic change since Hartley’s years on Smallville is there for all to see. We’re in the era of the Mixed Martial Artist and Parkour runner as male body image ideal and that’s exactly what Amell looks like. He has a shaved head within a scene of getting back to the states and his workout regime is one part Parkour, one part Yoga and one part Muay Thai kickboxing.

Let’s stop and talk about violence for a moment, specifically the martial arts. The fighting style of an action character, nowadays, is as much a calling card as their costume or their car. One of the things that made Haywire so distinctive was not only Gina Carano’s status as a legitimate world class martial artist but a world class Thai boxer. She moved, and fought, differently to everyone else in Western action cinema and it left an impression that’s propelled Carano out of the myriad failings of that particular movie into what looks to be a long and deserved career.

The sense of veracity, of real effort and skill she brought with her locked neatly into the functional brutality of the Bourne movies. Both Matt Damon and Jeremy Renner’s characters are trained in how to cause as much damage as fast and efficiently as possible and the end result is a series of fight scenes which tell you as much about what isn’t present as what is; they fight on auto pilot, precise human drones executing their orders where characters like Carano’s Mallory have a welcome, and at times vital, frayed edge to them. Likewise, Arrow. I was impressed initially that Amell looked the part and that the stunt team had given the character a coherent fighting style. Form follows function and character follows form in stories like this.

Amell’s Queen isn’t just a hood, an old bow and a seething sense of justice though. This sort of character, Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen, is very much a cookie cutter in terms of initial narrative form. All three have horrific past trauma, all three have vowed to use their wounds as the foundation to make amends to the world. All three pretend to be feckless playboys. Although, let’s face it, it’s a safe bet for Tony we could call it method acting.

But with Oliver Queen, Amell lets you see the effort it takes to put the mask back on. It’s an extremely still, measured performance and the only times he lets himself be awkward are when he’s shifting gear back up into feckless billionaire mode. It almost pains him to do, there’s such a palpable sense of Oliver wanting to get the real work done and resenting having to put his ‘face’ back on. Five years alone on what may be the most unpleasant looking island in recent televisual history haven’t just honed Oliver Queen, they’re stripped everything away. He’s a sharpened point of obsidian, just like one of his arrowheads and anything that gets in the way is a nuisance at best and a threat at worst. This is a man with no qualms about killing, almost no sense of grey areas and that, for now, is clearly powered by what we see him start to learn about his father.  There’s no front left to Oliver Queen and putting one feels pained, forced, uncomfortable.

It’s a central performance of remarkable nuance for what should be the latest instalment in the CW’s ‘Pretty people hitting one another’ programming band and, were it the only good performance in here, it would still be enough to hang the show off. However, the rest of the cast is built up in such a way that it becomes clear Oliver has swapped a shipwreck for a jungle. If the island belonged to Prospero, then Starling City belongs to Claudius.

Or, more specifically, Colin Salmon as Walter Steele. Salmon is indicative of much of the rest of the cast, all of them well known for being solid to exceptional supporting players. Salmon had a memorable turn in the first Resident Evil and was the best Bond the Broccolis were too afraid to cast during the Pierce Brosnan years, reading Bonds’ lines during screen tests but relegated to a supporting role for the actual films. He’s joined by Katie Cassidy, who made her name as the first, savagely effective incarnation of the demonic Ruby on Supernatural. Here she’s Oliver’s former lover, Dinah Lance. The producers have sensibly ditched the incomprehensible comic origins of Dinah and instead positioned her as a Lois Lane-alike, albeit an attorney. The transition from two fisted vigilante to lawyer is remarkably smooth; she still likes to fight, it’s just a different kind of combat, and Cassidy plays the role with exactly the weary, aware charm it requires. She’s one of the most interesting leading ladies of her generation and Arrow shows every intention of giving her a role to sink her teeth into.

That same charm is present in John Ramsey’s  role as Diggle, Oliver’s assigned bodyguard. Ramsey’s turn in a recent season of Dexter was a standout and he impresses here too, albeit in an entirely different way. Diggle, named for the writer of Year Zero, the story much of Oliver’s origin in the show draws from , is a polite, quiet wall of physical calm and, as a result, near infinite threat. His interactions with Oliver are courteous, intimidating and very funny, but what really impresses is that Diggle is written as a man with his eyes open. One memorable scene, at Oliver’s welcome home party, sees him confiscate drugs from his little sister and throw them away. He does this all but silently. Diggle notices. It’ll be interesting to see how his relationship with his boss changes based on that little moment.

Diggle, though, is not the only one to notice it. Oliver’s best friend, Tommy Merlyn, played by Colin Donnell, is every inch the feckless playboy Oliver can no longer pretend to be. Tommy assumes his friend will drop straight back into a life of debauchery, complete with wine, women, song and litigation. He’s charming, feckless and amoral. Next to Oliver he barely looks alive, despite being the more animated of the two. What makes him fascinating though is the tiny little hints, breadcrumbed through the script, that Tommy notices far more than he lets on.  Tommy sees Oliver dump the drugs and, when they’re kidnapped earlier in the episode, Tommy’s statement to the police feels rehearsed, edited. He may be the more brash of the two, but Tommy could be as much a threat as anyone else on the cast. Each one presents a different threat to Oliver, whether it’s the natural affection he feels for Reza, the maid who raised him , or the fact that Tommy doesn’t register as a threat at all. He’s even under threat from the law, in the form of Detective Quentin Lance, played by yet another effortlessly great character actor, Paul Blackthorne. The father of Dinah, and her sister, who Oliver took with him on the disastrous cruise five years ago and died when the boat sank, Blackthorne plays Lance as a calm, focussed, enraged father. He knows there’s more to Queen than he’s letting on, but his own prejudices are already starting to lead him down the wrong path.

A best friend who may be more than he seems, a former lover grieving not only for the loss of their relationship but of a relative, a grieving father determined to bring him to justice, a father in law with everything to lose, a bodyguard who sees too much and, in the closing seconds of the first episode, a mother directly responsible for his time in hell. This is a cast of characters of near-Shakespearean inter-relation, each one intimately connected to at least one another and each one with their own agenda and quite happy to defend that agenda with other people’s lives. No one is safe, no smile ever meets the eyes and nothing on the surface is true. There’s something rotten in Starling City, and it’s least favorite son, driven by his dying father’s legacy, has returned to clean it up. The oldest stories are often the best ones and the only question Arrow leaves hanging is whether or not any of the cast will be upright by the closing curtain.

Want to talk to me about the article? Come see me on Twitter at @alasdairstuart or email me.

And then I spent a week writing 12,000 words on a project I’m going to err on the side of caution and assume I can’t talk about yet, prior to writing another 12,000 to finish it off this week. How have you been?

Blogbusters isn’t on the site yet this week but do go have a look at the archive, hyper-linked back there. Do people still say hyper-linked? Is that still a thing? Anyway, this week my piece on the 10(Ish) Best Sidekicks ever went up. I had a lot of fun doing this one, there are a couple of my all time favorites in there and some of the comments are fascinating. Admittedly some of the comments are exactly the same ‘“You kids reduce your decibels! I know your dad!’ curmudgeonly nonsense that you get from certain Doctor Who fans but most of them are great and show exactly how difficult it is to quantify what a sidekick is. Case in point; I didn’t include any characters from Buffy and Angel because they’re all either mentors or protagonists, and whilst several people seemed in favor of including Raj from The Big Bang Theory he’s a main character as far as others are concerned. It’s one of those areas which fascinates me because it shows how fractious geek culture is, albeit in a mostly good-natured way for once. Science fiction is whatever we’re pointing at when we say ‘That’s science fiction’ and a sidekick is apparently the same. It’s a fun piece anyway, go check it out.

I definitely bought comics this week. Did I mention Kelly Sue DeConnick‘s Captain Marvel is one of the best series in years? In one move she’s turned Carol from the owner of the stupidest costume in comics (Because let’s face it kids, thigh high boots, a leotard and a scarf just screams kickass USAF pilot now doesn’t it?)into a fascinating set of contradictions; a pilot who doesn’t need a plane anymore, a woman at the top of her profession who’s only just starting to realize she deserves to be there and a kind, compassionate, endlessly emotionally strong human being who can, if called upon, punch you in the face with a tank. It’s a brilliant book, totally worth your time. I look forward to having the time to read this month’s issue.

I did, however, have time to watch the new trailer for Jack Reacher, the first movie adaptation of the eponymous, six foot plus, drifter/former military policeman/bringer of doom books written by Lee Child. The books are fun, very modern pulp and the movie…stars Tom Cruise. Who you will note is not six foot plus of anything. I’ve had my doubts but the new trailer’s gone a long way to assuaging them as you’ll see.

The Last Reel, by Lynda E. Rucker is film horror in my favorite way. There’s something about celluloid and horror and this story is a beautiful, wide-eyed look at the things that move in the gate, and the things that move outside it too.

And that’s me for the week. Incoming this week is an interview, an afterword piece for one of the best writers, and finest people, I know and 12,000 more words. At least some of which will include exactly how to use the big fake whale the Natural History Museum have in an action sequence. Hopefully I’ll be able to talk about what the project is too.

See you soon.

Oh also? The hidden links are back. There are a few extra links in this piece which will give you some hints as to what I’m going to be writing about shortly. Click stuff, see what happens.

Want to talk to me about the article? Come see me on Twitter at @alasdairstuart or email me.

Blackhawks is one of the more eccentric of The New 52, reviving a set of characters created by Will Eisner, Chuck Cuidera and Bob Powell in 1941. The Blackhawks were a squadron of fighter pilots, each a different nationality and united to fight in World War II. The concept was immensely successful, although as World War II ended and more time passed, it became increasingly difficult to sell the idea without plugging it into more conventional superhero trappings. The characters were revived twice, made several appearances elsewhere but the concept as a whole began to fade into DC history.

This version, written by Mike Costa, manages to not only honour that concept but nest it inside two separate, but complimentary, modern tropes. The first is the re-imagining of the squadron as a much larger unit,with ground forces, logistical staff and UN backing. This places them, interestingly, in almost exactly the position the original version of Stormwatch occupied, and also allows for a larger cast and scope. There are echoes of the classic Larry Hama run on GI Joe here, with the team’s secret headquarters, vast array of aircraft and concealed headquarters, along with their code names and differing specialities all elements that echo Hama’s work whilst still honouring the original cconcept. They’re still an elite unit of international misfits but by placing them in a deliberately contemporary, grounded setting, Costa is able to expand the focus of the series but not lose sight of it.

The second is the inevitable engagement of pop culture with the War on Terror. Pop culture, by its very nature, reflects the time in which it was produced, as shown by the original series using World War II as a backdrop. That engagement has, over the space of the last ten years run the gamut of responses, from gutpunch emotional reaction to cynicism to it becoming a backdrop rather than an active element of fiction. Geopolitical chaos has become a fact of life, and, at its best, pop culture has explored both the human consequences of that and the ways in which society has reacted.

Which all seems like a colossally over intellectual approach to a comic involving fighter planes, power armour and a Russian who is called the Irishman but this is the background that Costa plays with and he plays with it well. He neatly sketches out the idea of the Blackhawks as an elite special forces unit who are tied to the United Nations but not as tied as some might think. It’s another standard trope, one which Ellis used to great effect in his run on Stormwatch and which was later explored by Greg Rucka in Checkmate and it works well here, once again. The end result is the sensation that the Blackhawks are essentially this universe’s attack dogs, the unit that the UN unleash when something difficult and unpleasant needs doing. He does a good job of sketching out the characters too, with the unflappable Canada and Kunoichi, the team’s resident pointwoman and seeming adrenalin junkie the two standouts. Again, none of these characters are unique or revolutionary but none of them need to be. This is high tech pulp, and as a result the more familiar the characters the better.

Blackhawks is a known quantity but a welcome one. Costa’s script has some nice action beats to it and the art, by Graham Nolan on layouts and Ken Lashley on finishing and cover is brawny but expressive, giving the characters and the tech room to shine. All in all, this is certainly one of the more left of centre of the DC New 52 but it’s also one of the best put together. It’s a smart, ideas-heavy fast paced modern thriller and it deserves to be given a chance to shine.

The Warren Ellis run on Stormwatch was the first long term run on a series that I genuinely connected with. The idea of a UN-controlled superhuman crisis intervention team was always an attractive one but under Ellis the book became something tighter, more mature than it had been before. Ellis wrote Stormwatch officers as humans, people with ideals and agendas and flaws all struggling against a job which often seemed designed to stop them doing any real good in the world. That constant struggle, between what was right and what was necessary ultimately spawned the sequel book, The Authority, and indirectly changed the visual and intellectual grammar of Western superhero comics for most of the following decade.

For me though, Stormwatch was always a more attractive concept than The Authority. Stormwatch were mortals, normal people with abnormal abilities trying to do their best and often failing. They were human as well as superhuman and that humanity was one of the book’s most important elements. It’s also one of the elements that Paul Cornell’s relaunch of the book keeps in place.

Cornell reimagines Stormwatch as something closer to the Knights Templar, an organisation that has existed for centuries and which has tasked itself with protecting the Earth from superhuman and supernatural threats. Cornell cleverly weaves his other book, Demon Knights, into the background, establishing them as an early iteration of Stormwatch and in doing so neatly moving the book into territory closer to Jonathan Hickman’s excellent Marvel series SHIELD, than Ellis’ previous run on Stormwatch.

This historical context also provides a broader canvas for Cornell, and he clearly relishes exploring the idea of Stormwatch being something closer to a monastic order than a small fire team of soldiers. Adam One, one of the new characters is a good example of this. An immortal strategic advisor, Adam is equal parts priest and general, a man who has advised world leaders but can’t quite remember some of their names. History but with the corners knocked off, superhumans who were suits to work instead of capes. Stormwatch was always a curiously English type of superhuman comic and under Cornell’s reign that only looks like it’s increasing. He’s aided no end by Miguel Sepulveda’s clean, rounded, expressive art.

The first issue does a neat job of exploring what Stormwatch does in this new iteration, as one team is sent to Moscow to try and recruit a new member, a second is dispatched to investigate a mysterious artifact and, alone on the moon, Harry Tanner discovers something impossible just as something impossible discovers him. If the book has a weakness it’s that it tries to do too much in one issue as Cornell introduces established characters, a modified status quo and newcomers at the same time as moving three linked plotlines along. They all work, and will no doubt all dovetail but all three could benefit from a little bit of extra space. Harry Tanner, the splendidly named Eminence of Blades, in particular is a fascinating character in a difficult situation and I could have stood to read a lot more of him. I suspect, as the series goes on, we will.

Interestingly, this minor reservation actually gives the book a different feel. There’s a real sense of Stormwatch being a global organisation dealing with global threats and the fact that each of the missions presented here is equally important drives home how impossible their job is. Stormwatch are the line between us and chaos and the line as it’s presented here, is stretched pretty thinly, even with the addition of DC mainstay the Martian Manhunter and newcomers like Harry and Adam One.

Stormwatch feels idfferent to every other book in the launch. There’s a cautious altruism to the way the characters are presented, a desire to do the right thing even though they may not be thanked for it, that’s tempered with the pragmatism of working in the military. That’s ultimately the glue that holds the book together, through three plot lines, moments of gleeful pop culture invention and the combination of two universes’ worth of characters; the greater good. Stormwatch have been reimagined as the guardians of humanity and I can’t think of anyone better suited to the job.

It’s not often that you get to sit in on the start of a universe. This month, DC Comics have relaunched their entire line, scrapping every book and restarting most with new first issues and a new status quo established by Flashpoint, the last massive, universe spanning crossover. It’s a standard narrative model with comics and one which I both encountered and learned to fear time and time again during my time as a retailer. Crossovers killed momentum in individual series, they rarely had lasting consequences and a lot of the time they turned people off buying the extra issues until, due to a vagary of the comic industry too tedious to explain, it was far too late for us to get them.

The New 52, as they’re being called, looks to be a little different. The central titles are all there, of course, but there’s another wave of books which are odder, more eccentric, deliberately experimental. I’ve read most of the flagship books so far and all the odder ones and it’s a fascinating, not to say remarkably consistent, piece of world building from the ground up. Whether it’ll stick, or indeed if any of the most interesting books are still alive in seven months time, I have no idea. I do know it’s been a fascinating ride so far, especially with those outer edge,more eccentric books.

Demon Knights is one half of a pair of linked books, both written by Paul Cornell. Set four centuries in the past it opens with the fall of Camelot and neatly explores what several of the DC Universe’s more supernatural characters were doing on that day. Cornell uses the fall of Camelot as a backdrop, a fulcrum around which several characters seize opportunities or find opportunities seized from them. The most interesting of these is Jason Blood, reimagined as a hapless apprentice of Merlin who not only sees the long game but happens to have a demon, Etrigan, caged for just such an occasion. Jason and Etrigan are fused and Merlin disappears, muttering about how this will all become clear centuries from now. It’s an obvious point to make given his pedigree with the show but there’s something of Doctor Who to Cornell’s portrayal of Merlin, particularly the 7^th Doctor and his combination of polite, quiet, erratic charm and terrifying strategic mind. Camelot has fallen, Camelot will rise again and Merlin may have just ensured that it does. It’s an interesting take, simultaneously echoing the Nicol Williamson and Joseph Fiennes takes on the character and producing something which, although glimpsed briefly, is fascinating. It’s a nice approach to Blood’s origin too, explaining his longevity and showing how he evolves over time, coming to terms with the monster he shares space with.

Cornell really comes into his own over the next few pages though, as Madame Xanadu, another supernatural DC mainstay, opts to stay in England rather than sail off to Avalon. The portrayal of Arthur’s heroic death is typically impressive but Xanadu’s ‘Oh SOD this’ as she jumps overboard not only grounds it but honours it. The King is dead but everyone else isn’t, and Xanadu’s decision to stay looks to be an important part of the book’s overall plot.

In a gutsy move, that plot then picks up some time later with Jason and Xan on the outskirts of the village of Little Spring. Some time has clearly passed and the two have an easy, comfortable banter that walks the reader through the introductions of the rest of the cast. The splendidly named Vandal Savage, a villain in modern DC continuity is a large and charmingly up front barbarian whilst Sir Ystin, last seen in Grant Morrison’s 7 Soldiers of Victory series,is neatly repositioned here as a slightly andogynous drunk, pining after the fall of his version of Camelot. They’re joined by Exoristos, an Amazon and Al Jabr, an Arabian craftsman in a sequence which not only sets up the group status quo elegantly but also sets them in the gloriously traditional setting of an inn. Here, Cornell plays with the traditions of the tabletop roleplaying group and modules that started with ‘You all meet up in a bar’ and turns it into something easy to follow, but still complex and nuanced. By using this traditional setting, Cornell marries his cast of established characters and newcomers to create something that feels organic straight , even before the arrival of the central villainess and the two big surprises concealed in this issue. The first is that Xanadu is in a relationship with Etrigan, not Jason Blood, and Jason remains unaware of it whilst the second is that the villainess may not be so villainous at all. The Questing Queen is a glorious idea, a monarch who strides across the land with an army of slaves on dinosaur mounts and gives every impression of being evil. Yet, she talks about repairing the world, rather than conquering it. There are early hints this is a book as much about clashing ideologies as it is about a medieval demon punching dinosaurs in the face and I honestly can’t think of a writer better able to balance the two than Cornell. Only time, and sales, will tell if he’s going to be given the opportunity to do it.

Demon Knights is easily one of the strangest books to be launched in The New 52, but it’s also one of the best. Cornell’s script is tight, funny and incident and idea heavy whilst Diogenes Neves’ pencils, backed up by Oclair Albert’s inks ground the book in a believable medieval context, even if that context is heavily fictionalised and involves dinosaurs. This is smart, tightly paced and designed pop culture storytelling and all involved should be very proud. If you haven’t picked it up yet, you’re curious about the new DC Universe, or if you like the idea of knights fighting dinosaurs, start here, you won’t be disappointed.

Demon Knights Issue 1 is available now