400

Life goes back to normal on Monday. I'm listening again to The Doctor's Tale, featuring Doctor Who in an exciting  adventure with Geoffrey Chaucer and set at Epiphany, which is tomorrow. That makes tonight Twelfth Night. The holidays seem to come and go more rapidly every year; I suppose that's down to ageing and today's post is, to my astonishment, my 400th. I gave a lot of consideration to what I might write about today. Marvelosity by Alex Ross, marking twenty years since his treasury-sized Superman story with Paul Dini? The debut of Arnold Drake and Gene Colan's Guardians of the Galaxy, fifty years ago?

In the end, the theme occurred to me when reading Elgin library's copy of A+X=Amazing (2013) "People Change" by Christos Gage and David Williams depicts the Beast and Wonder Man attempting to salvage their friendship over beers. The Absorbing Man joins them for a karaoke rendition of a Barbra Streisand/Neil Diamond hit and the Grapplers, the Circus of Crime and Wolverine, natch, are also in the mix. The central concerns, as we say in the English department are friendship, naiveté and maturity.

Photo by Martin Burns

These ideas were very much in my mind, a week ago yesterday. I had been down in Glasgow, visiting my family and catching up with my friend of twenty-one years and his wee boy, who's just started secondary school like my nephew. I was also invited to a reunion of the teachers and students of Glasgow Arts Centre's Actors Lab, in a pop-up in the Gallowgate. The adult drama classes at the GAC in the early 90s were the inspiration for me to work professionally in the theatre ( for a while, until the financial extremes became too much for me).

There were people there I hadn't seen in decades and others, happily, more recently: two former housemates, an ex-landlord and folk I'd acted with and directed nearly 30 years ago. It was rewarding to be reminded of all we achieved then -and now. And today, I found out that a teenage James (Charles Xavier) McAvoy was part of the crew on a production of Troilus and Cressida I worked on in the autumn of 1994!

I came back up a week ago tomorrow, since I expected the Hogmanay trains would be rammed. Despite being back in Elgin for nearly a week, I still have a pile of graphic novels, paperbacks  and Big Finish audios to attend to: tsundoku, as they allegedly say in Japanese. For the rest of this post, though, I think I should talk a bit about the comics I read over the holidays, since that's what we're here for.


With a movie coming out this year, DC has re-launched Geoff Johns' version of Shazam with a new iteration of the Marvel Family I'm wary of Johns because of all the deaths and torture that festoon his stories but I enjoyed the colour and charm of this first issue. I'm going to trade-wait this series; the same goes for The Green Lantern. Grant Morrison's take on the intergalactic lawman.


The DC Nuclear Winter Special was a blackly comic take on the festive season, starring Aquaman, Green Arrow, a butch but maternal Supergirl and Damian, Batman 666. I am not a fan of DiDio and Johns "grimdark" DC universe for reasons outlined above and most of these bleak stories didn't appeal. I made an exception for the poignant Dini/Ordway Firestorm story which revived the 50s sitcom androids, The Nuclear Family, from a favourite 80s series, the Barr/Aparo Outsiders

I liked the festive fare from Marvel much more. Like Harley Quinn, Deadpool is an ultraviolent and vulgar character who breaks the fourth wall and whose popularity seems part of a revival of the crass and trashy 90s. I was very pleasantly surprised by Jason Latour's Seasons Beatings therefore, where the Merc with a Mouth teams up with Squirrel Girl and movie smashes Miles Morales and Peter Parker are reunited. Also, there's a story with West Coast Avengers Kate Bishop and Quentin Quire, a wacky humour series I've been reading lately.


 This was more enjoyable than the X-Men special 9 with 24 vignettes- an idea Mark Millar used much more successfully in his all-ages Superman ). It was also more entertaining than Marvel's  Hallowe'en special I picked up belatedly in Aberdeen last month, which is indebted to the Simpsons parodies of EC comics. The highlight of that collection of gruesome Amicus super-heroics, for me, was a 1975 pin-up of slinky Satana.

Speaking of Marvel's cheesecake characters, I bought a second copy of Daredevil 108 from March 1974. This was my introduction to shaven-headed Titan priestess Moondragon, This Steve Gerber/Bob Brown Xmas comic fitted in a lot of character development and in addition to sparking the Black Spectre arc, it marked the demotion of the Black Widow as DD's co-star on the cover.

When I got to Glasgow just after Boxing Day, I picked up the first issue of IDW's Marvel Action Avengers. This licensed comic features the movie Avengers and I have to say, I prefer this line-up and approach to that of Avengers 700. I particularly dislike Jason Aaron's characterisation of Namor as a merciless eco-terrorist.

Finally, I got a lot of enjoyment out of the charming, first Champions annual. Inuk shapeshifter and teenager Snowguard reminds me of DC's Equinox, who never really got the chance to build a fan following or a substantial role in the DCU.


Today, I'm paying the council tax, finishing a Netflix series and meeting a colleague for lunch. I'm ready to go back to work I think, but there's a huge amount of prelim marking on the horizon. Happy Three Kings Day when it comes.


Coming soon: Luke Cage, Mike Grell, Thanos and 12 Angels Weeping


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