On Friday I went to the first day of Mark Sinker’s Underground/Overground conference, about the British music press from 1968-1985 – dates that spanned the rise of the underground press, its colonisation of the music papers, and the besieging[…]

1978: The Shooting Star
It’s the spider I remember. In The Shooting Star, boy reporter Tintin is investigating an apocalyptic threat, a star on a collision course with our world. He visits an observatory, hoping they can tell him what’s going on.[…]

NEW THRILL!
This is an origin story. Thirty years ago, give or take a day, I went to my local newsagent and I bought a new comic. The next day I asked the newsagent, Mr.Mann, he of the back room full of protein supplements and ‘marital advice’ pa[…]

Sisyphus was a rockist.
This is a list – scribbled down over lunch, then expanded – of ways that writers who focus on pop music have approached it. I agree with some. I disagree with some. Some of them I’ve tried, some I’ve only read. A few h[…]

More comics reviews, this time focused on manga. Contains spoilers in places!
Thermae Romae I (Yen Press)
Surely the greatest time travel/bathhouse design manga ever written, Mari Yamakazi’s charming Thermae Romae has the pace and pleasures of […]

More comics reviews originally from goodreads.com
SUPREME: BLUE ROSE (Image Comics)
The 1990s saw a rash of metafictional superhero comics by British writers – Grant Morrison’s Flex Mentallo and Animal Man, Alan Moore’s Promethea, […]

This is a post listing the records I’m listening to for my YEAR OF ROCKISM**, as outlined here (cut and pasted from Tumblr):
I’m going to listen to one album on a once-a-day basis for a week, a different one each week. Not in order to write a[…]

Graphic novel reviews, originally posted on goodreads.com
ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM, Vol.1 (Viz Media)
This first volume unfussily sets up the hit manga’s premise – an octopus being has destroyed the moon, then become a teacher of a remedi[…]

Marvel Comics’ famed innovation in the 1960s was introducing characters who were “human” with “relatable flaws” as opposed to the super-icons of rivals DC. These relatable flaws gave each Marvel character a core storytel[…]

Fans of long, chronological blog projects will know that when one actually finishes it’s cause for no small celebration. Phil Sandifer’s TARDIS Eruditorum reaches its final entry today, an essay notionally about the 2008 episode “Si[…]