…mind, its not as if he’d gone away anywhere, but his mug has been absent from this blog awhile. Here’s a pic I took yesterday afternoon whilst I was out back having a read in the sun.
What was I reading? Nothing too wild. I’ve been trying to read through a DC Omnibus of 100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello with Argentine artist Eduardo Risso. Its a neo-noir graphic novel anthology, very dark and violent full of flawed characters and twists of fate. I think they did 100 issues or something like that (it won the Eisner award), and rarely for this kind of long-run thing, Risso did all the art throughout (I think) and its tremendous stuff, I love Risso’s graphic art style, which seems very European, distilled through what is usually an American ‘thing’ (its all set in America, at least it has been so far). This beast is only half the story and its over 1,300 pages. I bought it well over a year ago but as usual never got around to it, but the second Omnibus volume arrived a few weeks back which finally kicked me into action. Yeah, I have shelves of books on the to-do list as well as all the Blu-rays. Retirement can’t come soon enough, if only I last that long. I wonder if the shelves will last that long- these Omnibus books are routinely bloody heavy.
I sincerely hope that, no matter how interesting the premise of 100 Bullets is, that it never gets adapted for a TV series by HBO or a film series, anything like that. A series of deluxe hardbacks I bought a few years back, collecting a 72-issue series titled DMZ written by Brian Wood and drawn (mostly, but not completely) by the brilliant Italian artist Riccardo Burchielli was a gritty story about a near-future America following a second Civil War, in which Manhattan had become a demilitarized zone (DMZ) and the setting of various misadventures involving a roster of interesting characters. I remember reading the books and thinking how crazy (albeit fascinating) the premise was, but then to my horror the real-world seemed to be catching up with it, all the polarized politics in America leading up to when Trump got the big job and all the crazy stuff that has followed. Anyway, DMZ was turned into a limited series on HBO which, from what I have seen of the horrible trailer (couldn’t subject myself to watching the series) was an adaptation in title only and looked nothing like the books I’d read. It was a pretty incendiary comic book/ graphic novel series predicting all sorts of horrors and they turned it into…ugh.
You know how it is; Hollywood loves to grab great ideas and run off and ruin them. Its a rare adaptation that turns out right, so safer to leave well alone.
the ghost of 82 
Ooh, those 100 Bullets collections sound good… I mean, I’m as bad at keeping up with things I intend to read as I am with getting round to Blu-rays I intend to watch, but I do love a big chunky omnibus…
They are pretty good value, too, when one considers how many issues they contain and what buying each of those issues would have cost all together. And of course like buying a Blu-ray boxset of a tv show or movie collection, there’s the benefit of being able to read the whole thing fresh in one go compared to waiting for it to all unfold over a number of years.