Dans Le Noir

I was planning to blog about The Man of Steel, the Caped Kryptonian, the Smallville Sensation today; but I have a little more reading and listening to do before I talk about two different eras for the son of Jor-El. Meanwhile, as they used to say in the comic books...

The patchy, often disappointing third season of BBC 's Being Human ended this week, with Aidan Turner's commitment to the Hobbit seeing his character written out, although I'm dubious about its permanency.Jason Watkins' malevolent vampire king will however be missed from the series. There was no resolution for poor Tom, the werewolf boy but hopefully Annie's completely unconvincing love for Mitchell is played out. I trust that in Season 4 we won't see anything as woeful as the episode that had George's dad fake his own death to live in a caravan.

 I'd been trying to get my hands on a copy of Big Finish's audio short story collection Short Trips since November of last year. What a disappointment! The original hardback book series was more often miss than hit but this selection had nary a decent story to recommend it. The weakest entry might be the incomprehensible "A Stain of Red in the Sand" with its queasy references to "memory meat". But Katy Manning's Scottish accent then made me wince throughout "A True Gentleman". Readers such as William Russell, India Fisher and Louise Jameson (in the surprisingly-brief "Death Dealer") bring warmth and pace to their stories however and the highlight for me was Colin Baker's self-penned "The Wings of a Butterfly": an absurdist, timey-wimey episode with a soundscape inspired by the trial scenes from The War Games.
Whovians might be better to spend cash on the latest publication from BBC Children's Books. The Good, the Bad and The Alien, by former Eastenders writer Colin Brake, returns Doctor XI to the Old West (see The Runaway Train audiobook) for an undemanding romp with ornery varmints and Space Meerkats!

The prose style, while simplified a little for reluctant readers, isn't really any less sophisticated than last year's hardbacks. Better still, it's a flip-it-over-two-in-one volume; you also get Oli Smith's impressive cyberspace story, System Wipe. It doesn't offer the inevitable "compare the meerkat" joke of Brake's book but it does feature a friendly robot who likes reading. I liked this pairing enough to delay putting it in my classroom bookcase alongside the rather more juvenile Death Riders/ Heart of Stone.

This afternoon, I watched Frank Miller's film of The Spirit. I expected to hate it; I'd read a couple of damning reviews and I'd been bored by 300 and uncomfortable with Sin City - I went with Gary six years ago (!) and I got the impression that, even though he was grinning, he also found its excesses ludicrous and enervating.
  The two-dimensional casting of Miller's movie didn't bother me at all; I particularly like the young Sand and Denny.I usually roll my eyes at the appearance of Samuel L. Jackson and his scenery-chewing antics. But his absurd, camp performance was absolutely suited to this film. There were moments that made me wince: the Spirit with his trousers round his ankles; the tiny foot-shaped clone; the windy, mock-Spillane narration; and the generic superhero-movie orchestral soundtrack. But I thought that, in visual terms, this was a rare attempt to explore the vocabulary of comics on film. Traditionally, superhero movies have slavishly attempted to look "real"- perhaps to gain wider audience acceptance but ultimately leeching the wonder and bravura of the medium with tedious Naturalism. Miler's hyper-real world with its noirish shadows and blotches of colour seems a challenge to that humdrum world-view. However, if you want a modern take on Eisner's mold-breaking hero, I recommend this, one of the best comics I've ever read:

This week's library pick from Elgin was the latest in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series: published last year, Mary Ann in Autumn visits the former Barbary Lane residents in late middle age.

Its central plot connects back to the very first book as history repeats for the titular heroine. This frivolous and unlikely tale of abused junkies, clowns, gay Mormons and toking transexuals hinges on improbable coincidences; however, I'm glad Alison reminded me of the warmth and charm of Maupin's style during our stay at Fawcett Mill last month.

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