Penetrates Like An Infection

I just got round to finishing this yesterday; my first foray into the world of Stephen King. I know, I know, I should've read something a lot sooner, but when offered the mystical choice between horror, fantasy and sci-fi at the age of eleven or so, I clearly went the sci-fi root and ditched the alternatives. More fool me, really.

Aside from some issues I had towards the end, and a Guilty White Liberal realisation I had while wandering around at lunchtime, I really enjoyed it. I think I was most interested in (and grateful for) the parts that surrounded the odd taster of supernatural horror - the slice of life elements in a world destroyed by plague, the formation of a new community. Brian K. Vaughan had clearly been taking notes...

Because I burn through books stupidly quickly when I actually get time to read them, I'm always drawn to the hefty doorstops these days, and 'The Stand' didn't disappoint. There's plenty of character- and world-building, so that I did actually care when a favourite character was callously offed just over halfway through. So many times these days I end up reading novels or comics as an almost intellectual exercise, because the author has given me no reason to invest in anything more than the twists of the plot.

My main problem with the ending of the book was probably the same problem that afflicts all adventure novels that include godlike or Lovecraftian elements - the human characters end up being witnesses to events, rather than participants. I didn't really feel that the quest element of the last couple of hundred pages had any real connection to the literally deus ex machina that puts a cap on things (nor did I feel that the antagonist was ever really a threat...) - in fact, the 'four blokes go off on a camping trip' was more 'The Stand By Me' than anything else. I'm sure another reader has pointed that out in the last twenty-five years.

There are some stunning elements to it, though - and the scene involving a committee meeting, a bomb and a disgruntled pervert manages to crank up the tension perfectly.

I didn't realise until I'd finished it how much of a filthy film of wrongness the book had laid over my subconscious for the duration, so for all my protestations of cynicism, it still managed to get to me. Which is good...

All that remains is to conclude with the thought that this seemed to be a peculiarly race-selective plague... Aside from Mother Abigail in the role of 'Hollywood's racially diverse quasi-religious symbol' (see Morgan Freeman as God, etc.), all of the cast seemed to be white. Maybe King knew his middle-class-college-kid audience back then, or maybe he was just writing for the terrible miniseries that would still be in the future at that point, and mentally casting 'appropriately'. But still weird...

Anyway, well worth a read if you haven't already picked it up in an airport or station within my lifetime.

'The Stand' at Amazon

This Is That Fresh Feeling

So, I've decided to start blogging. As with all internet trends these days, this means I am approximately five years behind the rest of the curve, and am only adding to the wealth of cyber-landfill that seems to have accumulated on the internet in between the porn and pictures of kittens wearing hats.

Still, if everybody else is doing it...

Seriously, though, there is a reason I've set up this here receptacle - I'm bringing my three-and-a-half year-old webcomic to an end in, ooh, four weeks' time, and I'm hoping the free time I gain from casting off those shackles will allow me to bolt on many new creative shackles of various sizes.

And, rather than posting them on my website and confusing everybody, I thought I might as well put them up here.

Also, because I like to inflict my opinion as much as the next chap or chapess, there will be intermittent reviews culled from whatever popular culture I've devoured at that moment. I doubt there will be much hatin', but we'll see.

I will also be pimping whatever I'm doing at work, hopefully in a 'dirt cheap viral marketing' way, not in a 'leaking trade secrets' way.

So: art, cartoons, short fiction, songs when I get writing and recording again; reviews and recommendations; work pimping... and more news as and when we have it.

We'll see if I can keep the 'song lyrics as blog titles' going further than the second post.

Yell out in the comments section if you want to - it would make a nice change from operating in the Dubious Tales vacuum!