Features// Comics@SPOnG: This Week's Picks

Final Crisis #6
Writer: Grant Morrison
Pencillers: JG Jones, Carlos Pacheco, Doug Mahnke
$3.99

Superman enters the fray! The final pay-off to Batman: R.I.P.! A tiger in a tweed suit and a jet-pack! I'm not even kidding...

I read this, enjoyed it and then quickly realised that I didn't really understand it. Such is often the way of Grant Morrison's comics. The Scottish scribe twists your sobbing brain in innumerable different directions on a rollercoaster ride of pure, mind-pulping fantasy then, as it suddenly stops, sending your grey matter careening onto tracks in front, you find you need to go again to understand what just happened.

Final Crisis, if you haven't been reading, is Morrison's smart, suave and faintly terrifying take on the now slightly-bothersome trend of event comics. It's intelligent and largely self-contained, not giving you the urge to read a bazillion tie-in comics and not interrupting your regularly-scheduled reading in other titles. I read a compelling forum post suggesting that it's a comic designed to save comics, but I'll let you make your own mind up on that.

This issue, it must be said, felt a little fragmented compared to previous instalments. As Final Crisis heads toward its climax, there's a sense that Morrison has a lot to pack in, and that makes it a bit of a challenging read. Frankly, I'm not even going to try to sum up the chain of the issue's events. Suffice to say that there's plenty of action on the streets of Bludhaven, Superman returns, Morrison at least gives the impression of tying off his Batman run, the Flashes start the race of their lives and I wasn't kidding about the tiger.

The fragmented nature of the narrative will be added to for some by the fact that three artists lend their pencils to its pages. Personally, I think they're all great and their styles are similar enough that they don't jar.

It's confusing, but it's damn exciting. I can't wait to see how this ends. When you've been reading 10-20 comics a week for a good few years, that says quite a lot.


The Walking Dead Volume 9: Here We Remain
Writer: Robert Kirkman
Penciller: Charlie Adlard

Open your curtains! Turn on all the lights! Book a session with your therapist in advance! The latest collection in the most brilliantly horrible comics series on the market is here!

Much like when I used to have to play William Shatner's version of Common People alongside Johnny Cash's tear-making rendition of Hurt, I've started having to ready my copy of Garden State or Little Miss Sunshine to watch immediately after reading The Walking Dead, just to make me feel like life could ever be OK again. It's a trying series – effectively a violent soap opera set in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. It's not brutal because of the gore, it's brutal because it doesn't pull any emotional punches.

Here We Remain sets a new status quo for the series. In the aftermath of the massacre at the prison, the book gets going with Rick and Carl, alone and on the road. As they progress Rick starts to seemingly begin losing his grip on sanity and they (thankfully!) run across some other survivors.

This book is a welcome breather from the non-stop violence of the last volume. It dwells on the relationship between father and son, with only the occasional burst of grim, bloody action. The pace is refreshing and Kirkman delivers a pleasing sense of humanity to his characters.

Adlard's pencils are solid as ever, with their stark realism bringing pathos to the book's protagonists. This is consistently one of the best series on the market. If you're not reading it, go get Volume 1 one now. If you are... well, I probably didn't need to tell you to buy this.


Hope you enjoyed this peek outside the world of games. Come back next week - there might be more.