As usual, new chapter of NERVOSA is available!

Please read and if you do and want to read more, please sign up for the site (it's free) to up-vote and become a fan of the story. The more votes and fans it has, the higher its ranking on the site and the higher the ranker, the more visible, so the more people can discover it.

Same goes for KINDLING DAYS, too, of course!

And if you'd rather read a physical book, there are still some copies left of THE CASTLE-TOWN TRAGEDY, my book of three occult detective novellas featuring Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder.

This is a limited edition hardcover--only 150 made--so if you're interested, order yours ASAP as it'll become a real collector's item!

Number three in a series of posts on stuff I like. Although maybe this one is more of a "think I might like" sort of deal.

Well, either way, I finally got around to reading the first volume of ATTACK ON TITAN.

It's something I've been meaning to check out for a while. I am a big fan of both survival-horror and sci-fi-horror (ALIEN is one of my all-time favorite movies), so this seems like it would be right up my alley.

Well, kind of.

I won't go too much into details on the story, cuz I'm sure many, if not most, of you know it. Sometime (maybe?) 2000 years in the future, Earth is invaded by the Titans - a race of naked, genital-less, often mutilated-looking giants that range in height from about 15 to 50 feet tall and have a taste for human flesh. Humanity is no match for them (in a bit of exposition, someone estimates that 30 humans are killed for every Titan killed when humanity tries to fight them) so they build a giant wall around the last secure human territory and live in relative peace for a century... until a colossal titan named, erm, the Colossus Titan, nearly 200-feet-tall appears and begins smashing down the walls.

So then, after having ready volume 1...

The pros:

It's a bare-bones (so far) survival-horror story that gives you just the right mix of action, exposition and character development to keep it going at a brisk pace without seeming like the story is too thin. Although it does telegraph its twists pretty far in advance, I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing for this kind of story. None of the characters are terribly fleshed out so far, but we're given enough information that A. they fit neatly into the character roles this kind of story but B. they don't seem entirely one-dimensional, either and there's lots of room to grow. Growth I hope we'll see sooner rather than later, because if they aren't fleshed out more that would be a problem.

Cons: the art is... not good, would be a polite way to phrase it. There are horrible perspective and anatomy problems that crop up quite frequently, If they were consistent, it could be called a style, but they're not - it's a different issue every time, page to page and even panel to panel. At first I thought it was a style: the quiet moments better drawn (still not good art, mind you, but the best Isayama shows us in volume one is during the peaceful scenes) and the action scenes more hurried and surreal. But the two "styles" crept up on each other, then ran together, the further I got into the book and I realized it was probably just the artist rushing to meet deadlines. It's actually a little surprising, as one thing I love about manga is that the art that gets published in mainstream magazines has always seemed to be held to a much higher standard than what you'll see in western comics. Frankly, if I posted an ad looking for an artist and these were samples I'd received from an applicant, I'd politely decline.

Overall, however, despite the complaints, I liked AoT all right. I am genuinely curious about the mystery of the Titans' appearance as well as the relationship between Mikasa and Eren and how they ended up growing up together while clearly not siblings. But is it enough to keep reading? I'm not sure. Maybe once I finish off a chunk of the rest of my to-read pile.

First, there's a new chapter of NERVOSA! Go read it! Things are starting to get weird and they're only going to get weirder!

Second...

A brand-new story serialized online!

KINDLING DAYS is the story of firefighter Shunta Arashiyama, who has spent twenty years rushing into burning buildings. It's his life, his passion -- it's all he knows. But when his career is taken away and a young girl--family of a sort, but a stranger all the same--crosses his path, he'll learn that fires, and lives, are both started with a single spark.

I'm writing this one Japanese cellphone style, meaning very short, minimal, semi-poetic chapters. I plan to update this one daily, so please make sure to sign up for the site (free) and sign up to get updates to your email or phone.

Start reading KINDLING DAYS here and make sure to let me know your thoughts!

Sunday's NERVOSA chapter has been posted.

Please go read and enjoy!

Go read it! Please enjoy, comment, sign up to get updates right to your phone!

Chapter 22 has been posted. Go read it! That's all for now!

Go read the newest chapter!

That's all for now!

Number two in a series on "Stuff I like," today let's talk about Paul Kirchner's surreal comic strip The Bus.

Some folks might remember, as I do, The Bus from Heavy Metal Magazine in the '80s. I wasn't a regular HM reader back then (though I have had a subscription for a number of years now) as I honestly wasn't really the target audience back then; my comics reading then was mostly limited to superheroes and independent comics that smacked of superheroes, but were only kinda-sorta.

However, the major exception was Marvel's Conan line of black & white magazines, which lead me in a roundabout way to Heavy Metal and The Bus. 

I grew up in a town that my father always referred to as "subrulia" - too close to your neighbors, too far from the grocery store. The options for buying comics were, shall we say, limited. There was a convenience store that carried them, but the selection varied from week to week so much that it was hard to follow a particular series (though I tried). One thing they always had--though on the magazine stand instead of the comics spinner--was Marvel's black & white line of Conan Magazines. I was already familiar with Conan from Bob Howard's short stories and novellas (which I devoured way too early) and got hooked on the comics, as well.

But the magazines didn't come out nearly often enough for my taste and many times I'd ride my bike to the store only to be disappointed there were no good comics and no new Conans.

Until the day I spotted suspiciously-familiar looking art on another magazine's cover: Frazetta on Heavy Metal. Well, I'm actually not sure if it really was Frazetta, to be honest, I don't seem to have whatever HM that was still in my possession, but it sure as hell looked like the art from one of my Conan paperbacks., even if the name on the magazine looked like it was a music magazine.

Well, obviously it wasn't and as I flipped through the magazine, I was shocked to discover the comics inside. I mean... what the hell were these? It was definitely not something I should have been reading, I realized that immediately.

And I didn't buy it that day, but I wanted to. I wanted to pretty badly, so came back a day or two later, convinced the clerk at the register wouldn't even sell it to me. As I recall, they (I don't remember if it was a man or a woman) didn't even bat an eye.

Haha, success! I took it home and poured over the pages, amazed there were such comics out there. They didn't look or feel anything at all like what I was used to. Was I hooked? I can't honestly say I was... but, after that I flipped through HM whenever I saw it and occasionally bought it when it looked promising.

And one thing that made it promising as far as I was concerned... was The Bus.

Like a lot of people, my introduction to comics was comic strips.

And here was The Bus, probably the weirdest comic strip I'd ever seen.

The concept was so simple. A man and a bus and the bizarre things surrounding them. Easy set-ups: a waits for a bus and something bizarre occurs. Or something happens while he awaits the bus. Or occasionally, the bus itself is what's bizarre. You get the idea.

The writing was minimal, but elegant. And like the writing, the art was simple, but clean and attractive, unlike the often hurried, blobby art you find in typical newspaper-strip bigfoot cartooning.

The art was beautiful, the stories were... bizarre. Often nonsensical, always surreal. I often had no idea what was supposed to be funny and that was part of the fascination. Was it some sort of adult humor I wasn't mature enough for? Or did my brain just not work right to fit itself around the humor?

I didn't get it, but I loved it.

And years later, when I started going to comic conventions and so forth, I sought out Heavy Metal back issues--initially for specific artists--and in one of the very first, there was, almost hidden in the back amongst ads, a Bus strip. A comic I'd forgotten about until then. And it came flooding back, how much I loved the weird little strip I didn't understand. I started looking for issues of HM specifically for Bus strips, until other collecting obsessions overtook me.


Well, imagine my delight when, a couple years ago, I saw a little hardcover collection of every Bus strip in my comic book shop - published by a French company I'd never heard of (that I don't think even does comics otherwise - at least not in this country). It was expensive, though. Very expensive for such a thin tome, and as much as I wanted it, I held off... until last year when I saw that the same company was publishing a sequel edition of all-new Bus strips. Without any thought, I pre-ordered it and bought the first book.

I waited until I had both in my hands and read them back to back in one sitting. And I'm so glad I did. The surreal humor, the beautiful art... I was not only able to recall the strips I'd read as a kid and enjoyed, I understood so much more than I did back then. It really was worth the wait.

Just a quick update to say NERVOSA chapter 20 is up... and things about to get weird shortly!

I'll have another update with some meat to it soon.