Hey Loz, Whatcha Readin'? (With apologies...)


'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children' by Ransom Riggs and Cassandra Jean. So apparently this is a teenage fiction book which has been adapted as a graphic novel. I haven't read the former, in fact I haven't heard of the former, so the one thing I can't say is whether this is a good adaptation. As a story it's certainly okay, young boy blah blah blah family mysteries blah blah blah strange quest blah blah blah eldritch horrors from the dawn of time blah blah blah (and I love the way that the dictation software I'm using has problems picking up words like 'stuff' without confusing it for 'staff' yet, first time out of the gate, correctly gets ' eldritch horrors from the dawn of time') children hidden from the world that fears or hates them blah blah blah shape-changers! Yeah, it's fairly close to what 'The Uncanny X-Men' would be if it were a British comic written in the Seventies and set in Wales. It has an 'Elidor' vibe as well, long autumn evenings as we head towards December, not entirely convinced that the sun will remember to come back for us after longest night. And the fact that I've just spent most of this paragraph dancing around the subject of the actual book probably tells you all you need to know.

I finished it a few days ago and already I can't remember any of the characters names other than the titular Miss Peregrine and that's only because her name is on the cover of the book, if it was called 'Aberystwyth' I'd be completely screwed. To be fair this isn't really the authors fault, I'm like that with most stories these days. But I also find I can't remember anything about them, like what makes them peculiar. The main character, our Harry Potter or new-recruit-on-his-first-day-on-the-new beat, is, according to the dust jacket, Jacob and he discovers his peculiar power during the course of the book. This is why, despite being written by an American, the book feels very English. Most of the powers are pretty rubbish. No diamond hard skin or optic blasts here. The only child that has a useful power is a boy that is invisible, ye. Yet oddly when the kids are trying to sneak up on someone who has a gun, despite it being night-time and the guy not being able to see in the dark he still somehow manages to shoot the invisible kid who isn't saying or doing anything to attract attention.

I like Cassandra Jean's artwork for this. It's a bit scratchy but handles the long exposition chapters well. It's mostly monotone with occasional pages of colour for emphasis. It doesn't really convey the creeping dread of the first half of the book but then neither does the script, something of an achievement when the first half of the book mostly consists of Jacob discovering a mystery about his grandfather, going to a remote and rainy Welsh island and then walking around caves and a large, deserted, tumbledown manor house. It's as though the book suddenly realises it's not being scary and mysterious and so switches hurriedly to action and adventure. The story feels disjointed, whether this is what the novel is like as well I can't say. It is, of course, the first book in a series. The baddies seem interesting but the other characters are bland so I don't think I'm going to be coming back to this universe any time soon.



'Nemo: the roses of Berlin' by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Yes, another LoEG story from Alan 'does not have issues' Moore and the second story about Janni Nemo. And, spoiler warning, despite her skin colour and this story being set in Nazi Germany Moore somehow find it within himself to write a story without using one racist slur. Maybe someone bet him that he wouldn't be able to do it. It's 1941 and in the crazy alternative universe of the league Charlie Chaplin's Adenoid Hinkel is Das Führer when Janni's daughter and son-in-law are shot down and captured in Berlin, forcing her parents to make a desperate secret attack to retrieve them.

The League format is well established by now so needs little explanation, all fiction is real so work out the obvious, and less obvious, references and then check them against the online annotations to see how many you got right. It's nice to have a rest from the Lovecraft of the last few years and instead get some good early twentieth century science fiction. If, like me, your German doesn't extend beyond counting to twelve then the online annotations will be necessary for the several pages of German which are not translated in the book and which are actually plot. Jack is nice as being one of the few League men who aren't scumbags or the ridiculously ineffective Allan Quatermain. Similarly Janni is not the stereotypical one-dimensional action girl and has actual depth. There are some great panoramic shots in this book which give O'Neill the chance to go balls-out crazy and he does not disappoint. You probably can't jump into the series at this point but as all that precedes it is of equally high quality it won't be a drudge to read that 1st. It's always so nice to have Moore go back to things mentioned in throwaway comments in stories he wrote sometimes a decade previously and explain them without screwing the continuity.



Finally, 'Super Graphic' by Tim Leong. If you want me to explain the plot of this one just remember that episode of Blackadder where Doctor Johnson has to explain the plot of his dictionary to the Prince Regent. Yes it's the 'information is beautiful' approach to comics, so we have Scrooge McDuck's family tree, a pie chart showing distribution of wins between Spy Vs. Spy, the timeline of Tintin (and then the timeline of Herge's alterations to Tintin), a breakdown of the different types of Marvel Universe trading cards and the evolution of Superman's chest logo. Is any of this in any way useful? Probably not. Is it fun to flick through? Definitely. Should you try to actually read it through cover to cover? God, no. How far did I get trying to read it cover to cover before giving up? 'The Chris Ware Sadness Scale', which rates all his stories on a scale from 'sad' to 'soul crushing depression'.