(I also grabbed Justice League Dark but I really DO need to read more of that before I can say anything about it.)

Tachikawa School-G Pen

So, over to the left there is a quick sketch of WW, using the School-G for the lines and some Zig Graphic Twins for the shading. The School-G is basically like a cross breed between a cartridge pen and a traditional G nib… which frankly is an awesome idea. I’ve been getting into G nibs lately, and the idea of being able to throw one in my handbag is very appealing.

Now (art quality aside), the WW sketch there shows the biggest flaw with the Tachikawa, and that’s that unless it’s on the right kind of paper, it bleeds massively. This is pretty frustrating because of course, my default sketch book isn’t the right kind of paper.

A quick test on Bristol Board shows its okay on that (but my wallet is pre-emptively crying) and over to the right is another quick test I did on some printer paper. Once I’ve done some more experiments I’ll come back with more conclusive things about it.

The big negative out the way, what about the rest of it? Well, you’re not going to get quite the range of thicknesses that you’ll get from a traditional nib from it, but you can still get a decent range—I’d say between a 01 and a 07 fineliner depending on pressure, if you can avoid bleed. Maybe a little thinner if you’re featherlight and fast, and it is available in an extra fine as well. It’s a little rougher on the page but it’s clean, fast and forgiving; It dries very fast and you’re not going to get an accidental, picture-destroying blob of ink falling off the pen. It plays just fine with watercolour markers. And again, it’s a nib pen you can throw in your bag without thinking about it. You do need to use it at least every couple of days to stop it drying out, but as I want to get better with a nib that’s actually a feature rather than a bug for me.

So, conclusions on the Tachikawa School-G for now: Needs the right paper and won’t replace a G-Nib if you like really high line varience, but it’s a really good tool to be able to throw in a pencil case or when you don’t want the mess you can end up with from the real thing. More thoughts when I’ve gotten more used to it.

Wonder Woman #1 & #2

If I hadn’t heard such good reviews, I’ll admit getting me to buy a Wonder Woman comic would have been a hard sell, especially with the less than stellar portray of women in some recent *coughCatwomanCough* comics. Wonder Woman has never been a book I’ve been hugely interested in, and I’ll admit I’ve maybe unfairly assumed it would be very saturday morning, straight laced superhero stuff, with a character who’s history has been pretty absurd at times.

But I’ve heard good things and it’s about time I read some main stream DC, so I picked up the first 2 issues and was pleasantly surprised. Here’s some reasons why:

• Rather than straight punchy-punchy heroism (which for the record is fine), we’ve got mystery/horror with a dose of greek myth thrown in. I mean, I knew she was greek based but this is nice and heavy on the ‘gods and goddesses being jerks to humanity’ side of things, and Diana getting lumped protecting Zola feels almost more like something out of a noir story to me.
• On that note, Diana’s attitude. She’s kinda surly and no-nonsense, and just gets on with things. I like that a lot.
• Also she is huge. With muscles. She feels really powerful even without gimicks.
• Also despite having a scene where she’s completely naked, she never feels that sexualised. She’s not ashamed of her body, but she’s not flaunting it either. With recent comics news, that’s just so refreshing.



• And she head-butts a centaur.
• Not knowing much about the series beforehand isn’t getting in the way, we get a little dose of backstory in #2 and it looks like the rest is incoming.
• The art is decent, the colouring isn’t afraid to be moody, there’s bags of energy and nice bold inking. The dialogue is solid too and the characters are all interesting so far.
• And she head-butts a centaur.

My only big negative is not really the team’s fault and that’s the huge amount of ads in there. If I didn’t want to support the singles due to it being good (usually my real reason for buying singles) I’d be waiting for the trade to escape having my immersion broken every 3 pages.

So yeah, I think this will stay on my pull list, and hopefully the quality stays up. As this is interesting stuff indeed.

I’ve always had a bit of a love for Michael Marshall Smith’s work. His SF books are fantastic, and I hugely enjoyed The Straw Men, under his Crime Fiction persona of Michael Marshall. I adore his character work, though he seems to shine best when he has licence for things to get a little strange. So, I was really excited when I realised he’d donned another hat as ‘M. M. Smith’ and written a YA novel. Well, ‘Novella’ technically, but that really is just a technicality with this one.

The Strangers is a little misleading on the outside. Its short length and 11-year old protagonist could easily trick you into thinking it’s going to be superficial or simplistic, when it turns out it’s anything but. The one thing I’ve always said about MMS’s work is he writes about being drained, tired and emotionally shattered better than anyone else I can think of, and that skill is out in full force here. For all the touches of the fantastic, it’s a deeply personal and emotional book, made all the more poignant by the youth of its narrator.

The Servants tells the story of a boy named Mark, who has been forced to move from London to Brighton with his sickly mother and his new stepfather, David. Angry and frustrated, Mark finds a new perspective when he meets the old lady that lives in the flat under their house, who introduces him to the hidden world the servants had once occupied. A world that may be less confined to the past than it seems. The ghost story of the servants is intertwined with the complex relationship between Mark, David, his mother, and their own pasts, and beautifully captures the helplessness, confusion and frustration of a child who’s whole life has been upturned by things he doesn’t quite understand.

MMS captures Mark’s rage perfectly, putting the reader in an interesting position of sympathising with him while knowing things are not quite the way they might seem. As the book progresses, hints of the greater complications in his situation are carefully woven in in ways that we can pick up on even if Mark doesn’t. Childish stubbornness mixes with denial and his genuine incomprehension, and before the end I found myself feeling for Mark’s loathed stepfather as much as I did for Mark. There are points where it becomes simply heartbreaking. Like the later books of A Series of Unfortunate Events, it’s one of those rare children’s books with an overarching message of “There’s always more to what is happening than you understand.”

Alongside the real-world story, of tiny battles over diet coke and take away food, and musings over falling off skateboards, MMS also introduces us to the mysterious world of the servants. If I had one criticism on this book, it’s that I wish there’d been more time spent there. When I first finished the story I was a little dissatisfied with the glimpses of the ghostly world but on reflection, it’s used in an incredibly clever way, leading to an intensely personal and emotional little novel. What we do get is vivid and intriguing, snapshots of the inner working of a historical house and glimpses of the drama inside and above that grows into something more fantastic again.

Metaphors and clever narrative techniques aside, the prose is rich, vivid and engaging. While it’s told in 3rd person, it’s heavily influenced by Mark’s thoughts as it paints the faded glory of Brighton and the claustrophobic strangeness of the world under the stairs—evocatively tapping into the way a person’s inner thoughts can soak through all their experiences. MMS is on top form emotionally, and also keeps a spark of wit and humour going throughout that stops it ever getting too cloying. The whole thing adds up to a sad, strange but beautiful little novel that I’d recommend to anyone, not just YA readers.

You can read a sample chapter of The Servants on its Amazon page, here.