Saturday, January 03, 2009

Dr Who, I presume?

Got a nice surprise this morning when my new copy of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ turned up in the post. This tale is one of my all time favourites, its imagery having stayed with me from when I read it as a teenager, always staying in my top ten. I think it’s up there with the best of horror from Stoker and Stevenson with beautiful prose and not a shred of over writing anywhere. What’s even better is that this version is encased in brown leather and has been put together as a limited addition by Bill Amberg. There are several companies now doing these limited finely crafted books. I mentioned the Subterranean Press before who do great Gaiman book as well as many others authors and while I don’t believe in buying every thing from these more expensive producers, when they do a book that you believe is a classic then they are wonderful to put on your shelf once your paperback has split and died.

They are about to announce the new Dr Who on the BBC…if you don’t want to know look away now (but how you plan to stay in a state of ignorance until 2010 is going to take some feat of ingenuity and no doubt some serious life style choices)….It is Matt Smith, who I think certainly looks Dr Whoish. Good Luck to him.

I read another of the Louvre graphic novels last night having thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Museum Vaults’. This one ‘Glacial Period’ is less good in so far as it feels like a much bigger story that got cut down slightly too much. It is set in the future and involves a group of arctic explorers travelling across the vast glacier that has covered Europe. It involves genetically modified dogs that talk, a hint of interspecies romance, anthropomorphic museum pieces and a misinterpretation of the history of man. The art work is nice, using thin pen lines and a simple board of colour, but it falls someway short of the previous work.

Read this week:

Glacial Period by Nicolas de Crecy

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