As was reported on this very website last week, Heroes has been dropped as a TV series and I was very much saddened by this news. It’s almost unbelievable the way its popularity has risen and fallen over the last few years, and this final cull was a rather messy end to a show that promised so much.

I remember many moons ago X-Centric Ned telling me about the show and to watch it on Sci-Fi Channel as they were going to repeat the first three episodes. It was on a Saturday night and I was ridiculously hungover from the night before and those three episodes absolutely pulled me out of my malaise. They were just awesome to watch back to back and I was left gagging for the next episode. The whole series was superb and the characters all genuinely likeable and empathetic. The comic-book setup of the show was perfect and a real original concept at the time. And it was a hit through the spoken word and mates telling mates – I bet Sci-Fi channel couldn’t believe their luck that they had such a goldmine on their hands.

It then became a huge juggernaut of a show but sadly, even as little as halfway through the second season it started losing its way and got muddled, with people switching off in their droves shortly after the writers strike ended and the new material came back out. I was gutted for them and stuck with the second season trying to get people to change their minds, but I knew deep down that they had bottled it. The third season I simply watched for continuity reasons only (although I would argue that certain episodes were quality), and come the fourth I’ve completely lost it. No idea what is going on and I don’t miss it.

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So Atomic Robo is back in town and he's been sorely missed let me tell ya. I was first introduce to Atomic Robo by fellow podcaster (of the Comic Racks) and sometimes blogger on this very site Iz McAuliffe as a Dig This! choice for the Sidekickcast. I devoured Volume 1 and have subsequently been making my through the following volumes but couldn't wait until I reached this one in trade format so I'm cracking on with volume 4 in single issues.

I have to say this book held very few surprises, it's a story we've all seen before; an unassuming character ends up saving the day whilst the more suitable candidate buys the farm very early on but there's a charm in this book both in the way it's written and drawn that goes beyond the average everyday stuff. The main bonus of any Atomic Robo story is that they know how to tell fun stories that don't drag on and on, this is very much a done in one with minimal exposition and it's all better for it.

If you want some pulp fun with lasers, vampires and robots (and let's be honest who doesn't?) then this is the book for you. If you don't want that, get a life. 4 Stars (out of 5)

Wanna know why it took me so long to read this book? Fun Home. You heard of Fun Home? It's a graphic novel written by Alison Bechdel about her life as a child and growing up different (she's a lesbian) and the lessons she learnt along the way. It won loads of awards like American Born Chinese, is respected like American Born Chinese, is a book people say you "should" read like American Born Chinese.. oh, and it sucked. I fucking hated it. Boring, pretentious and with a main character (the writer) you just wanted to punch the whole time.

So while there was no real reason to lump the two together I'd always hesitated to read this book thinking I'd be in for the same ride. Luckily while on a drunken weekend staying on a friend's houseboat I was sold on the concept, mainly by "Mate, its got frigging MONKEY IN IT!" and picked myself up a copy.

So what's it about? Well you have three stories going on. The first is the tale of Monkey - the Great Sage Equal of Heaven. Or to anyone who grew up in the 70's, the cool guy who flew around on a cloud and beat people up with a stick in the awesome Monkey Magic tv show. The second is the story of Jin Wang, a young boy born in San Francisco to Chinese parents who moves to a new city and school where he is the only Chinese boy in the class. And the third is about Danny, an American boy who'se life is thrown into turmoil by the visit of his bumbling and obnoxious cousin Chin-Kee. Yeah... you read that right. Chin-Kee. Complete with buck teeth and "Me rike vely much" speech.

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As this is only the first volume I'm pretty much going to spoil it, but only in order to tell you how good it is. I couldn't sell this book to myself without talking about how it ends so dont see how I could do so to anyone else.

So, where to start?
Ok lets do the art which is black and white (a turn off for some readers, I know), a bit cartoony (another turn off) and even a little manga (another turn off) but in this book it really works. It also has that cool indie thing going on and.... actually, thats it. This book just looks frigging cool but without you feeling like its trying to.

The story sounds a bit saved by the bell. Scott Pilgrim is a 23 year old slacker who shares a flat with a gay friend. He is also in a band and has just started dating a 17 year old student when he meets Ramona Flowers who he becomes obsessed with, eventually convincing her to also date him. The first volume is about his chasing this girl, their early relationship and his band's first big gig.
Ok, at this point you are probably either thinking "Sod that, its too High School Musical" or mentally filing this book under "Comics I can give the girlfriend to hopefully get her into my nerdy habit". But hang on. Did I mention that the reason he is obsessed with this girl is because she is using his head as a subspace highway shortcut while delivering packages for Amazon? Not enough?

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From the beginning X-Men kinda pissed me off. A mate of mine used to get them all and would lend me stacks, all of which always felt too much like hard work to properly enjoy. Every story would require you sorting through 4 or 5 different titles and getting them in the right order, and would invariably make no sense to anyone with less that three years comprehensive X-Men knowledge. The fact lots of it was written by Chris Claremont, a writer whose work always feels like a chore to read, didnt help either. So as a result, the X Universe has pretty much passed me by although I have recently got into the solo Wolverine stuff after being sucked in by the rocking Mark Millar/John Romita run. I also read and enjoyed Ultimate X-Men while it lasted which delivered on its "You only have to read this title for it all to make sense" promise.Because of this when deciding which Marvel Essential collection to get after having loved reading the formative issues of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Hulk, I decided to give the mutants another try and picked up Essential Uncanny X-Men volume one.

I'm sure you know about these Essential collections, but for anyone who doesn't they are basically black and white reprints that print every issue of a title from the beginning and really let you see how the characters formed and evolved over their earliest appearances. Some of it is a little rough round the edges and some characters take a while to get into their stride, but this X-Men one was just painful.

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Link: http://www.boom-studios.net/

Picked this book up completely blind, had no idea of the concept and never heard of the writers or artists involved just loved the Chris Brunner B cover (above) so much that I had to have it. The four part mini-series is set pre and post Katrina New Orleans and flashes back and forth between the two time zones. The creator of Nola; Chris Gorak was a resident of the Big Easy for a while and was moved by the terrible treatment of the people of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He decided the best way to show his support would be to tell a revenge story against 'the man'for all the people of his favourite town as a way to express the anger and disappointment they felt. Enter Nola.

Pre-Katrina we meet Nola; a young woman living with her mother in New Orleans, she doesn't seem to have much luck with men confounded by the fact that the only man in her life is a filthy rich scumbag married man she's been having an affair with. Post-Katrina Nola is a woman on the edge, horribly disfigured she hides her face with a scarf and desperately wants to return to the recently ravaged New Orleans. She's looking for revengeand she's not going to let anything get in her way, be it destroyed bridges, an exclusion zone or even over zealous cops, nothing else matters to a woman who has nothing left to lose.

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Right.

Here we go.

My first ever blog, review or whatever you want to call it on the web, so be gentle with your comments …

I thought I would start with something easy so have decided to review Issue 1# of Cowboy, Ninja, Viking from Image. This is the first Image title I have picked up as, for those familiar with the Sidekickcast (the best UK comic podcast!), you will know that I have only recently got back in to comics. On my comic crusade, I have been picking up a lot of issue ones so I can start fresh without having to pick up extensive back catalogues.

The book focuses on the main character Duncan, who has a multiple personality disorder. As is explained in the first issue, Duncan was part of an experiment to utilise his condition so he could be used to combat the war on terror. Duncan has three distinct personalities, the Cowboy, Ninja and Viking. He takes on each of these distinct personalities and there is great dialogue in the book between the three personalities, with Duncan being the medium.

The twist is that Duncan was one of many of what they call “Triplets” and the only success story. This is the set up for, what I guess, is a number of issues whereby Duncan runs into/finds/hunts the other Triplets.

I think this is a brilliant idea for a comic and applaud the creator AJ Lieberman who writes the story. The book reads really well and the story jumps from one place to the other keeping you interested throughout. The art is also fantastic (drawn and coloured by Riley Rossmo) in black and white except for the colour of sky blue, which is used to great effect throughout the issue.

It also has a different shape to regular comics, which makes it stand out on the shelf and an intriguing buy.

My advice, pick this up!

'There must be some kind of way out of here,
said the joker to the thief'

This book doesn't have anything to do Bob Dylan's culturally invasive song but with a subtitle that clearly references it how could I not throw in some of the lyrics? Salem Brownstone is a young man that arrives in the town of New Mecco to claim his inheritance from a father he never really knew. What he discovers there is a weirdly wonderful story of the strange and strangers. The fate of the world hangs in the balance and the responsibility of saving it rests firmly on the shoulders of young Mr Brownstone.

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Link: http://www.boom-studios.net/

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What a striking image (see above), who wouldn't buy a comic book with a cover like that? The image in question is by Tim Bradstreet (The Punisher, HellBlazer, Criminal Macabre) who does one of two covers for the 28 Days Later series from Boom! Studios the other cover artist is no slouch either as it's on Mr Sean Phillips of Criminal fame. You can't help but be drawn to this book as it stands out from everything else on the stands but of course we can't just judge a book by it's cover even if the cover on it's own is probably worth the price of addmission alone.

Luckily the quality doesn't end with the cover, we reviewed issue #1 of this series on the last episode of the Sidekickcast and it got four stars, it was really well handled but alot of setup. This issue feels like it moves at breakneck pace right from the offing, we've dealt with the setup now it's time to get into the nitty gritty of the 28 Days Later world; namely zombie killing and running for your life. The series bridges the gap between the first and second movies, focusing on Selena's return to the zombie infested mainland Britain and it's here that the book really succeeds. I believe this is the same world, it feels right. The pacing and momentum are just like the movies and the one character we recognise feels spot on; talking down to soldiers who are way out of their depth. Even the new characters we're introduced to feel right, they talk like Alex Garland wrote them, no mean feat and writer Michael Alan Nelson should be applauded for this.

The art very much does the job it needs to, ably telling the story and artist Declan Shalvey has a suitably dark and murky style that leaves you feeling a little dirty with each flip of the page. There's a great scene down a lift shaft that I don't want to give away but it had me genuinely terrified, playing on primal fears of the dark and enclosed spaces, add zombies to that mix and you have some shit your pants style anticts that won't won't leave your mind for some time. This is a prime example of the work Boom! Studios have been doing for a while now, good solid art and writing focusing on telling good stories no matter if it's an original concept or a tried and trusted franchise.

If you want to return to the 28 Days Later world you can't do any better than taking a look at this series and whilst you're at it you may aswell take a look at some of the other awesome Boom! Studios product out there. Oh and if anyone knows where I can get a full on poster of the Tim Bradstreet covers I'd be very appreciative.

Link: http://www.red5comics.com/

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In a week that has seen the U.S. military order $6.1 million worth of military robots it seems appropriate to take a sneaky peak at Drone, the latest offering from Red 5 Comics coming in November.

The premise is pretty simple; a bunch of geeks hack into a top secret military satellite feed that allows them to access a live video feed of experimental military drones, then everything goes wrong. It feels like a throwback to eighties classic WarGames with a little mordern day Transformers and Iron Man thrown in for good measure, all good so far but does it work? The answer is yes, totally and brilliantly. I was instantly transported back to my childhood, all excited at the prospect of slipping into the virtual controls of the military Drones of the title.

The script is packed full of geek pop culture references and paced to perfection building the tension to a cliffhanger finish which left me scrambling for more. Like any good science fiction the story takes it's inspiration from a future that is not too distant making for a believable concept and most importantly makes you think; what if? We really aren't too far away from using robotic avatars on the battlefield and it seems as though this book will address the reality and consequences of this possibility.

WarGames was a story for the burgeoning MTV generation, Drone does the same thing for the Ain't it Cool generation and it's highlly recommended.

Drone #1 // Drone (#1 of 4)
Written: Scott Chitwood
Art: Randy Kintz
Colors: Garry Henderson
Letters: Troy Peteri

Publication Date: 11-11-2009
Price: $3.50
Diamond Code: SEP090954