Comics quickie

As long as I’m touching on one geeky hobby of mine, I might as well touch on another — comics.

Neil Gaiman’s Midnight Days TPB (Vertigo)
This odd little volume collects a variety of Gaiman work not collected elsewhere — some Swamp Thing, a haunting Hellblazer tale, and the Sandman Midnight Theatre mini-series (which only makes me wish that DC would collect more of the Sandman Mystery Theatre stories). It’s a strange bunch, with Gaiman’s normal off-beat mysticism. They all made me want to read more of the storylines in question, which is, of course, part of the problem with a limited collection of this sort. I might have to go back and reread some of my Sandman TPBs now. If you’re a Gaiman completist, you will drool over this; if you’re not, it’s still got some decent material in it.

Murder Mysteries HC (Dark Horse)
Wow. Based on a short story by Neil Gaiman, and adapted/illustrated by P. Craig Russell — well, I can just stop right there, because, damn, I’d pay good money to see those two write a phone book, let alone a story about the first murder in Heaven. Beautiful, haunting, disturbing … yeah, that’s about what I’d expect. Oh, and, of course, brilliant.

Nodwick Chronicles II: Of Gods and Henchmen TPB (Dork Storm)
For those unfamiliar with Nodwick, it’s a D&D satire (the bloodthirsty fighter, the over-intellectualizing wizard, the perky-good cleric, and the seriously put-upon henchman/bearer/punching-bag/target, Nodwick) that manages to be both really funny, occasionally dramatic, well-drawn (in a cartoony way), and generally entertaining. Picking up the collections is a good way to read this — I may be shifting over to that mode.

Collected Dork Tower III: Heart of Dorkness TPB (Dork Storm)I don’t dare do just the collections on Dork Tower, though, because I couldn’t stand missing out on the hilarity of this book every month. John Kovalic nails gaming geeks, not to mention comic geeks and sci-fi/fantasy geeks, and just geeks in general, in a way that’s side-splitting but never mean. He intersperses one page quickies with an ongoing soap opera that reaches a jaw-dropping climax in this collection. There’s also bits and pieces of other strips and backup material that were in the original magazines, too, which is either annoying or a nice bonus, depending on your point of view.