My Scottish Stash (Of Independent comics)

If you read my previous post you’ll be aware that I recently took a bit of a break from my usual routine and ran a half marathon in Edinburgh Scotland. Whilst in that rainy, tourist packed city I managed to find a hidden away comic book shop-
http://www.yelp.co.uk/biz/deadhead-comics-edinburgh
I took a lucky dip and selected five locally produced comic books. Here’s what I picked up, a quick description of the book and whether or not I thought it was any good, or not.

Title: The Steamin’ Headmaster
Publisher: UK Comics Creative Limited
Website: http://www.comicsy.co.uk/rapidcomics/store/products/the-steamin-head-master/

A book about a drunk Glaswegian headmaster who gets kicked out of his house by his rightfully angry wife and ends up living a drunken bachelors life, of sorts, at the school. Whilst messing around in various parts of the school in his underpants and swinging a bottle of booze around his head he comes across his equally strange science teacher buddy and together they hatch a plan to do some crazy sci-fi experiment involving a disgraced former colleague and a millipede. The book doesn’t quite work, perhaps unsure as to whether or not it’s a comedy, horror or serious look at the moral implications of genetic manipulation between man and animal. The first half is fun, but the conclusion is a bit of a let-down, packing too much into a short number of pages and ending with a silly panel of a giant millipede that left me feeling a bit confused. My lasting impression of the book is of a good idea that got a bit lost in translation. It started off fun, got a bit weird and ended up a bit of a mess. Rating 5/10

Title: Saltire
Publisher: Diamondsteel Comics Ltd
Website: http://www.diamondsteelcomics.com/

I was looking forward to this one, having heard about it on various comic book websites. However, after reading the book I was a bit disappointed with it. The story follows Roman era Scots battling the invading Roman legions, and there’s not much to it at all. Saltire is a superhero/God and he helps the locals fight against the Romans, and that’s about it really. I found it to be a bit childish, shallow and not very rewarding. The art was not bad, but there was a tone of seriousness to it that was a bit po-faced and severely lacking in fun. That’s okay sometimes, but there wasn’t enough meat in the story to justify the serious tone, and by the end of it all I was getting a bit bored with the silly, largely undeveloped characters. I was a bit upset by this book. I thought it would be great, but it wasn’t even good. Rating: 5/10

Title: Maximum Alan
Publisher: Black Hearted Press
Website: http://blackheartedpress.tictail.com/product/maximum-alan-1

This one looked like a lot of fun. The front cover is designed to look like a Watchmen comic, and it appears to be offering a cutting piss take of all things Alan Moore related. What I actually got was an amateurishly drawn joke stretched way to thin, loads of inside jokes about comics that even I didn’t understand and a silly plot that got a bit tiresome half way through the book. This book was certainly bizarre (as is claimed by David Lloyd on the front cover) but it wasn’t that funny, and not half as good as I wanted it to be. Rating: 4/10

Title: The Freedom Collective
Publisher: Rough Cut Comics
Website: http://www.roughcut-comics.com/pages/frames.htmlhttp://www.roughcut-comics.com/pages/frames.html

This one is a lot of fun, taking the piss out all of those old American comics of the 1960’s anti communist era that portrayed everything Soviet as bad, and everything American as good. The book comes from a Kremlin perspective, so everything communist is good, and everything capitalist is bad. It’s a good idea, and there’s a lot of mileage to be had from reversing western propaganda and showing how it might work if the other side uses the same, simplistic and deceitful tactics to deceive their own populace. The book plays it for laughs and there are underlying assumptions to be wary of, but there are moments when it gets it right, in particular the panels that show a large mountain of money flowing underneath the White House, and the portrayal of the US president as a Mafia boss, which is closer to the truth than a lot of people would like to admit, even to themselves.  Reading this book makes me long for a modern equivalent that tackles contemporary US propaganda, perhaps looking at what is happening in the Ukraine right now where the US has sponsored a coup to overthrow a democratically elected government, and how the US corporate media is misleading the American public about what has happened, what is happening, and who is responsible. Where’s that book? We certainly need it right now in this era of corporate mainstream media deceit and connivance with the rich and powerful.  This book however is all about the comic code era propaganda in American comics, not what’s happening in 2014. It’s a lot of fun, drawn very well and I’d fully recommend it to anybody reading this review. Rating: 8/10

Title: Laptop Guy
Publisher: Black Hearted Press
Website: http://blackheartedpress.com/comics/laptop-guy/

This book is undoubtedly my favourite of the five books I picked up during my time in Edinburgh. The plot follows an eternally optimistic, yet obviously doomed, comic book writer as he takes time off from his McJob to come up with the big idea that is going to make him the next big thing in the world of comics. Things are looking pretty bleak (Sherlock Bones anyone?) but then a work colleague horribly mutilates himself as a result of his own doomed attempts at artistic creativity, and the amazing Laptop Guy is born. This book is absolutely hilarious. It’s the kind of book that leaves you properly laughing out loud, as opposed to typing LOL at your own half asset attempts at humour on facebook. The art, in particular the facials of the hapless comic book creator himself, is perfect and furthers a sense of the ridiculous that makes this book an absolute riot. Check out that cover. Check out that stupidly optimistic face, surrounded by his ridiculous creation. This book is awesome. It’s probably the funniest comic book I’ve read in a long, long time and it was well worth going all the way to Scotland and running a half marathon (in the rain) to get my hands on it.  Check out the website, and get a copy for yourself. You won’t regret it. Rating 10/10

Edinburgh Half Marathon 2014: Free Running through the Rain Soaked Streets of Kilt Town

It’s nice to get off the Internet for a couple of days and explore the world as it used to be, so that’s what I decided to do over the past couple of days. No mobile devices for me, just five days in the wilderness where I’ve been trying to avoid bumping into people with headphones on and brains off.

The location for my trip back into time was Edinburgh Scotland, and the reason for my being there was to run their half marathon. The rest of this article will be a race report, but before I dive into the details I’ll quickly sum up my experience of the city of Edinburgh.

It’s very hilly, so if you ever visit be sure to wear a decent pair of walking shoes, because after hiking around for an hour or two you’ll have achy breaky feet and be looking for the nearest pub to put them up for a bit. Don’t worry about finding a pub though, the place is full of them. Pubs and blokes in kilts actually. The two go together as the kilt wearing blokes are on stag does and looking to be all manly by getting drunk with a bunch of their similarly attired skirt wearing buddies.

Of course you are more likely to bump into the kilt-wearing drunks during the early evening. During the day you’ll find yourself being engulfed in waves of foreign tourists looking for tartan scarves and Loch Ness monster souvenirs, two things that I immediately acquired for myself of course.

I won’t bore you too much with the weather. It’s Scotland, so it rains, a lot. You get a bit of sun as well, but Scotland is very green, so very wet as well. Just bring a brolly and don’t moan about it.

Here’s the race report then:

You start off in what they worryingly call ‘pens’ depending upon the race time you have predicted for yourself. I thought I would do it in about 1:50. So I started off in the Green pen with a load of other runners. Just before the race it started to rain, a lot. Why does it always rain on me? Because you’re in Scotland mate, so I put on a bin-bag and got wet with everybody else.

The official race beginning was about ten minutes delayed from where I was standing, so after a bit of a wet wait I slowly shuffled past the start line with everybody else in the Green pen, started my stopwatch and set down to running down a wet street and trying to get into some kind of rhythm. This was actually a lot of fun, as there was a kind of released from jail/tribal feeling of euphoria as we began to run through the now closed off streets of Edinburgh, past the shops and pubs that we had been dodging traffic to get to earlier on in the day and week. I spent this part of the race running past people, and I kind of assumed that I’d quickly join a pack of runners where I would settle into some kind of rhythm for the race. That didn’t happen though, and for most of the race I would be dodging, weaving and accelerating past people. A few people overtook me as well, but it wasn’t many and I found that to be a bit surprising. You normally get into individual races with people in runs, but not in this one. I was part of the crowd of runners, but tribal feelings put to one side for the moment, I was really just running by myself for the entire race.

After the first mile I saw a sign and assumed that the rest of the course would be similarly sign posted, distance wise. I was wrong, it wasn’t. The next sign I saw was at ten miles. Before that though came a long and enjoyable run down the seafront where I took in the sights as best as I could before getting worried about my time and putting my head down to try and do some serious running.

The serious running portion of my race moved into a tough running portion at the ten-mile mark when I saw that sign and thought, ‘Oh, I better get moving then, only three and a bit miles to go.’ So that’s what I did. I went into 5k mode and started to accelerate past even more runners. In this last three miles or so of racing I wasn’t overtaken by anybody. I was tiring, but knowing the finish was coming I ignored the tiredness and sang happy black metal tunes in my head as I angrily thundered down the streets looking for that finish line.

That finish line took what seemed like a bloody age to come, and at the end I was getting pretty fed up of not seeing it. I shouted at a bloke standing on a corner watching the race, ‘How long to go?’ and he was kind enough to let me know, ‘About a mile.’

After hearing this I forced more acceleration into my legs and saw that the crowds lining the streets were increasing in number, indicating that the finish was getting close. Finally I saw the big FINISH barrier, checked my watch and saw that I might not make it to my under 1 hour 50 minute target, so for the last three hundred metres or so I went into a full sprint, passing other tired sprinters as I finally finished in a time of 1 hour 49 minutes and 51 seconds. YES, I made it, with nine seconds to spare, so punched the air in a private celebration as the indifferent crowds around me chuckled in mild amusement.

So that was that. My first half marathon, done and I managed to do it in the time I had been training for. I probably could have done it faster, but the crowds of runners bottlenecked at places forcing me to slow down, and there was a lack of mile markers to give me an idea of how well I was doing. I finished well and I loved the tribal feeling at the beginning of the race as we were running like newly freed prisoners from our pens. The last three miles was difficult, and it rained a lot, but that’s what I was expecting anyway.

Now I’m back in my plugged in and tuned out routine of daily Internet news and reviewing everything that passes by my orbit, and this is the first review since my return. Next I’ll get onto the comics and other stuff that I stupidly obsess over. I found some pretty decent independent comics in Edinburgh from a local publisher called Black Hearted Press, but I’ll talk about that later on my blog.  It was nice to unplug for a while. It’s probably something I need to do more often, and so I will. A few days a month I think. I’ll find stuff to do. It’s a big world and it doesn’t need to hear me moaning about it on a daily basis.