Current Readings

  Second time reading this book and I am certain there will be a third. It easily ranks among my favorite and, in my view, among the best novels published by the Black Library. I am not sure I have encountered another Warhammer 40K novel that manages to accomplish so much in just 314 pages. Of course, it helps that it was written by Bowden , yet he is not the only outstanding author working with the company. Still, in this case he reaches a peak that seems to condense everything one might hope to find in this universe. We have betrayal, violence, reversals, melancholy, futility, clashes and killings, self-destruction, alienation and doubt, rule through fear, Grey Knights, the Inquisition, Chaos enemies, and the Space Wolves, what more could one ask for? The only thing missing is the Emperor trading blows with Horus, but that took place at another time. It is genuinely impressive how Bowden achieves this balance between a character-centered narrative, with a clear protagonist in the...

There’s more hunger in the world than love. Image publishes many remarkable comics, and Monstress is one of them. I had preordered Compendium One a few months before its release, and there was a delay that made me anxious, as for a moment I thought my order might be canceled. Fortunately, that did not happen, and now this massive volume sits on my shelf, from which I have read the first six issues that make up the initial paperback. I did not want to read it straight through and start and finish all 1,152 pages at once because, as always with something I truly enjoy, I prefer to follow the rhythm of my mood while also setting a stopping point for the future, so that something remains waiting for me a little longer. This is especially true with comics, where the reading pace tends to be faster. The sentence I quoted at the beginning appears in the opening pages and stayed with me. It is one of those thoughts that make immediate sense and feel self evident, yet I had never articulat...

The structure changes in the third volume of Criminal, The Dead and the Dying . We follow three stories, each with a different protagonist, yet connected, though not always knowingly or willingly. That is the first shift in the famous Brubaker – Phillips series, but not the only one. Other elements are just as easy to notice and worth paying attention to. In Second Chance in Hell we meet Jake, a boxer and a survivor, a tough man who knows how to endure hardships. Unfortunately, he ends up becoming a victim. You could argue that everyone here is a victim in one way or another, but Jake is singled out even more, and what sets him apart is that he still tries to hold on to a sense of morality, as much as that is possible in this bleak world. In A Wolf Among Wolves, Teeg is a monster. He wasn’t always one, but the war transformed him. Whatever he might have wanted to do or to give, it all drowned in the mire of violence, power, and drugs. Danica appears in The Female of the Species, ...

For several years I kept coming across Chris Carter’s books, but I never really felt compelled to open one. I knew they were crime novels and followed the classic pattern with a recurring protagonist who solves cases and so on, yet because I had already read plenty of similar books in the past, I never paid much attention to them. As a result, I had no real opinion about his work, or perhaps I did, in a way, maybe it was just prejudice. You see, the covers of the Greek editions are completely outside my aesthetic taste, so that definitely played a part, although I think it was mainly a sense of saturation. In the end, I realized that everything needs its own time and the right moment. So I find myself at the house of a good friend, and during our conversation he mentions the second book in Carter’s Robert Hunter series and asks if I have read it. I tell him I haven’t and explain more or less why I have never engaged with them. He says, come on, this guy is good, and most importantly, ...

  I should have written and posted texts about these two books quite some time ago, but at some point during my reading I kept delaying them so they would not end, just to make my reading journey last a little longer, and as a result they were left behind. I eventually drifted out of their atmosphere and had to go back and review certain things in order to remember them. Normally each book would have had its own separate post, but because I behaved the way I described, they will both be included in a single one, presented in a concise and hopefully clear manner. At this point I should mention that, in terms of the internal timeline, these two works deal with events that are separated by a very long period of time, since one refers to the early stages of the Horus Heresy, specifically Istvaan V, while the other takes place after the Siege of Terra and the climax of the previous conflict. I am pointing this out to clarify just how different the events they cover actually are. Startin...

In the 1980s, as is well known in the world of comics, many important developments took place, most notably the coming of age of the medium. Certain titles, guided by their creators, moved toward darker paths, exploring themes and ideas that had previously been avoided, or perhaps that audiences had not yet felt the need to engage with. This point, however, deserves further analysis, since artistic creation and life are not separate entities. One influences the other, and those who produce art do not differ all that much from those who receive it, in this case the readers, as they belong to the same social reality. As history has shown, it was a period in which certain things needed to be said, and fortunately they were. It was during this time that works such as The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke were published, along with The Cult , which is the focus of this text. I place it in the same category, even though it is not often mentioned, although that may simply be my pe...