(no subject)
Just got back from a weekend in Bristol, which was right fun. My brother lives there, and evil_underlord was attending Comics Expo with the rest of Underfire for the weekend so we took a little trip . When we got there on Friday night, my Dad pulled the old trick of also being there and surprising us and taking us out to dinner and a bar, which he does a lot, but it gets me every time. We tried to get him back when he turned 50 last year by meeting him in New York, but our Mum is a terrible liar, so he found out.
On Saturday the bro and me went to the zoo which was amazing - we saw monkeys and geckos and lions and gorillas and what looked like a giant guinea pig and baaaaaaaaaby meerkats, which were tooth-achingly cute, and seals and penguins and weird fish with big teeth and strange nocturnal things with big eyes and mole rats and something called a plumed basilisk, also known as a Jesus Christ lizard because it can run on water, except that it can't do it for very long, so I think it should be called a Luigi lizard after Luigi in Mario 64 DS, and this is why I am a bit sad. And also, a tapir, which had enormous pendulous bollocks and kept sort of... squirting stuff, presumably to mark its territory, which was everything within a 10-metre squirt radius. Sorry, disgusting, but worth mentioning for the amusement value. Bro filmed it.
This morning we went for breakfast (we ate a lot of food, because a while ago we ate there and I left my phone behind, and the owner drove it to me before I left for Brighton, so I felt I owed them - also, we were hungry) and then, before we caught the train, stopped in briefly at the convention where I bought lots of comics...
Comics I bought
Love Mode by Yuki Shimizu. I didn't let the Tokyopop stall holders bully me into buying the second volume because I was being strong and assertive. Wish I'd been weak, as I read Vol 1 on the train home and really enjoyed it. It's relatively explicit, but it still has a pleasing Silly Japanese Comicbook Romance plot (it begins when a student gets mistaken for a male escort because he and the escort have the same name, the escort just got taken randomly to hospital, and he is meant to be meeting a blind date who has, unbeknownst to him, cancelled, in exactly the same place, and they have sex before they both realise the mistake - and this isn't a spoiler, because this all happens in about the first three pages). The art was the best of everything I bought - minimalist where it needed to be, well put together, and, well, the boys were bish. Would recommend this.
Yaoi vol 1: Anthology of Boys Love Stories, various writers/artists. Appears to be American rather than Japanese - manages to be pretty good nonetheless (although it's got a few spelling and grammar errors, which really bothers me considering ones that are originally written in Japanese are often immaculate). Three stories - one about demons in a circus (obviously), one about gang members, and one about a prisoner of sadistic hillbillies. I won't lie to you, they all wind up with boys having sex. All the stories are good, but I had the nagging feeling that they could all have been stretched to an entire volume each, and might have been better for it, as the plots felt a bit rushed and there wasn't much tension. Still, boys had sex in it.
Zesty! vol 1 by Margot Redding. Haven't read this one yet. I'll report back if I get around to it. According to the blurb it's about a "flamboyant gay playboy", heir to a corporation, but also a corporate saboteur, who hooks up with a secret agent ninja. I was about to make a comment along the lines of "Tuh! Those wacky Japanese, eh?" but it's by someone called Margot Redding, so perhaps not. Anyway, I'm still writing this bit and I have no reason to be, so let's stop. Oh, except I should point out it apparently used to be a web comic.
King of a Miniature Garden - no author, but go here. This is small press, so the three volumes I bought were only about 16 pages each. Good stuff, could have done with being longer, but it makes sense that it wasn't as it was all inkjetted, handfolded and stapled up. Story so far seems to be about a boy in love with a boy and being married off to a girl. Good so far and the art is above average - but I'll reserve judgement until I can read a conclusion.
Finally, The Devil's Panties, vol 1 by Jennie Breeden. Not manga but worth mentioning. This is an anthology of a webcomic, information about which can be found here. I liked the art a lot, and the characters are cute. I am aware that this probably works much, much better as a daily webcomic in very small doses than as a whole, just because it is a webcomic. When you're reading only three or four panels a day, the writer can get away with leaving out plot points, not mentioning a particular character for a while or replacing the regular strip with one about Jesus. It's almost a shame this has been compiled, because, like I say, I really like this as a webcomic. Also, irrelevant sidenote: I chatted with the artist for a while (she claimed I should buy the comic because it was about me), and then, this evening when I came online I discovered that most excellent dude Rapscallion of Customers Suck was also there, and had her draw the main character on his arm. Small world, eh?
Also at the convention, I had my picture taken with a Stormtrooper, and I met a Dalek! It was very exciting.
Bedtime; Fera out.
On Saturday the bro and me went to the zoo which was amazing - we saw monkeys and geckos and lions and gorillas and what looked like a giant guinea pig and baaaaaaaaaby meerkats, which were tooth-achingly cute, and seals and penguins and weird fish with big teeth and strange nocturnal things with big eyes and mole rats and something called a plumed basilisk, also known as a Jesus Christ lizard because it can run on water, except that it can't do it for very long, so I think it should be called a Luigi lizard after Luigi in Mario 64 DS, and this is why I am a bit sad. And also, a tapir, which had enormous pendulous bollocks and kept sort of... squirting stuff, presumably to mark its territory, which was everything within a 10-metre squirt radius. Sorry, disgusting, but worth mentioning for the amusement value. Bro filmed it.
This morning we went for breakfast (we ate a lot of food, because a while ago we ate there and I left my phone behind, and the owner drove it to me before I left for Brighton, so I felt I owed them - also, we were hungry) and then, before we caught the train, stopped in briefly at the convention where I bought lots of comics...
Comics I bought
Love Mode by Yuki Shimizu. I didn't let the Tokyopop stall holders bully me into buying the second volume because I was being strong and assertive. Wish I'd been weak, as I read Vol 1 on the train home and really enjoyed it. It's relatively explicit, but it still has a pleasing Silly Japanese Comicbook Romance plot (it begins when a student gets mistaken for a male escort because he and the escort have the same name, the escort just got taken randomly to hospital, and he is meant to be meeting a blind date who has, unbeknownst to him, cancelled, in exactly the same place, and they have sex before they both realise the mistake - and this isn't a spoiler, because this all happens in about the first three pages). The art was the best of everything I bought - minimalist where it needed to be, well put together, and, well, the boys were bish. Would recommend this.
Yaoi vol 1: Anthology of Boys Love Stories, various writers/artists. Appears to be American rather than Japanese - manages to be pretty good nonetheless (although it's got a few spelling and grammar errors, which really bothers me considering ones that are originally written in Japanese are often immaculate). Three stories - one about demons in a circus (obviously), one about gang members, and one about a prisoner of sadistic hillbillies. I won't lie to you, they all wind up with boys having sex. All the stories are good, but I had the nagging feeling that they could all have been stretched to an entire volume each, and might have been better for it, as the plots felt a bit rushed and there wasn't much tension. Still, boys had sex in it.
Zesty! vol 1 by Margot Redding. Haven't read this one yet. I'll report back if I get around to it. According to the blurb it's about a "flamboyant gay playboy", heir to a corporation, but also a corporate saboteur, who hooks up with a secret agent ninja. I was about to make a comment along the lines of "Tuh! Those wacky Japanese, eh?" but it's by someone called Margot Redding, so perhaps not. Anyway, I'm still writing this bit and I have no reason to be, so let's stop. Oh, except I should point out it apparently used to be a web comic.
King of a Miniature Garden - no author, but go here. This is small press, so the three volumes I bought were only about 16 pages each. Good stuff, could have done with being longer, but it makes sense that it wasn't as it was all inkjetted, handfolded and stapled up. Story so far seems to be about a boy in love with a boy and being married off to a girl. Good so far and the art is above average - but I'll reserve judgement until I can read a conclusion.
Finally, The Devil's Panties, vol 1 by Jennie Breeden. Not manga but worth mentioning. This is an anthology of a webcomic, information about which can be found here. I liked the art a lot, and the characters are cute. I am aware that this probably works much, much better as a daily webcomic in very small doses than as a whole, just because it is a webcomic. When you're reading only three or four panels a day, the writer can get away with leaving out plot points, not mentioning a particular character for a while or replacing the regular strip with one about Jesus. It's almost a shame this has been compiled, because, like I say, I really like this as a webcomic. Also, irrelevant sidenote: I chatted with the artist for a while (she claimed I should buy the comic because it was about me), and then, this evening when I came online I discovered that most excellent dude Rapscallion of Customers Suck was also there, and had her draw the main character on his arm. Small world, eh?
Also at the convention, I had my picture taken with a Stormtrooper, and I met a Dalek! It was very exciting.
Bedtime; Fera out.