SHTOINK!

BRRRAPP! Ah, that's better. 3 days of stuffing myself silly over Xmas and I can only just manage to move off of the sofa. FFFRRRAAPFT!

It's OK though as I've been sitting down enjoying my Christmas presents - An electrical box with 'Blue Rays' in it or somethin' (sounds a bit like a porno), a couple of 'hilarious' books of footy annecdotes, and a large tin of crumbling shortbread biscuits - helpfully washed down with some Mulled wine. CHOMP CHOMPLE SLURP GLUP

My best treat of all though has been...

The Completely MAD Don Martin (Mad's Greatest Artists Series)
This large, very heavy, two volume set is just gorgeous, and incredibly funny. I may have mentioned it before that, as a kid growing up, my sense of right or wrong was pretty much defined by reading Marvel Comics, and that my sense of humour was fashioned from reading MAD Magazine!

MAD had great artists and writers like Sergio Aragones, Mort Drucker and Al Jafee, but it was "MAD's MADDEST Artist" Don Martin that stood out for me. His wacky genius hit my giggle button everytime and I spent hours trying to copy his artwork and drawing his characters - their strange ears, big noses, bent feet and the gawky way they walked - his use of onomatopoetic sound effects, brilliant and bizarre.

I remember creating a short strip about an intrepid Buck Rogers style space hero called 'Otho Bludge'. Otho had to save his girlfiend 'Vera Lynn' from I don't know what. Anyway, it was rubbish and full of bad puns - my poor attempt at being Don, but it made it to my school magazine and I think a couple of people liked it. Don Martin was my inspiration but sadly I had no real talent to take it further.

Don Martin was the funniest comic book artist of his time, and part of my soul. Thanks Don. I thoroughly recommend this amazing collection of his work.

Visit The Don Martin Dictionary of Sound Effects to hear SNAP PLOOBADOOF! (Wonder Woman Releasing Her Amazon Brassiere) and others.

Fruit of the Vine

Want to read something really, er... creepy? OK, check out Scott Smith's excellent 'The Ruins'.

The Ruins is a story about a group of students who are on holiday in Cancun. They decide to take a break from the lazy hours on the beach and visit an archaeological dig in the jungle. Local Mayan Indians try and deter them from going, but the tourists continue on up to the mysterious ruins unaware of the terror and hell that awaits...
It's Smith's second novel. His first bestseller, the quite brilliant 'A Simple Plan', was published 13 years previously! Hopefully we won't have to wait so long until the next one.

The Ruins is a cracking read, full of tension and dread. Pepper the story with gross-out body horror scenes that David Cronenberg might approve of and you have a book that's hard to put down. Cleverly, the book has no chapters, so when you are reading there's no place to take a natural break and you have to keep on to the next harrowing moment, and then the next...

To quote Stephen King: 'does for Mexican vacations what Jaws did for New England beaches in 1975'. The Ruins website

Now, not long after I finished the book I discovered that it was being made into a film, due for release in April. My initial thought about this was 'oh dear, this could just be another trashy bunch of kids in peril movie' - I hope this isn't the case and it turns out to be better than the teen horror genre norm. The good news is that Scott Smith has written the screenplay; He received an Oscar nomination for his film adaptation of A Simple Plan, so this is a good sign for his vine infested Ruins... Just watching the trailer though I can see a fairly major character change from the book to the film - I can't imagine why this was necessary, fingers crossed that it works.

Ne le dis à personne (Tell No one)

A few years ago I read a smart thriller by Harlan Coben called Tell No One; When the story begins, the lead character, Dr Beck has spent every day of the last 8 years trying to cope with the loss of his wife, brutally murdered by a serial killer. All of a sudden a message appears on his computer that could only be from her. Could the impossible be true? Could she still be alive? The message warns him to 'tell no one'.

It was a good book but I soon forgot about it. Old age and a Swiss cheese brain I guess. If you'd asked me yesterday about the plot I would have struggled to remember anything. So I was quite interested when I recently heard it had been made into a film - a French film no less - it's locations and characters transposed from the USA to France. An American crime thriller with wine and subtitles? Could that work?

I went along to my local megaplex to watch it this evening. At just over two hours Tell No One is long but perfectly paced. It's a very impressive suspense film. There's plenty of action but it's never over the top and doesn't overwhelm the excellent acting. If Hollywood had produced this movie I'm sure it would have been more lightweight, with plot points sacrificed, dumbed down for a mass target audience. This film has a touch of French style and class about it. The cast are uniformly great, it's well shot and is totally engrossing. I highly recommend it.

Tell No One is definitely worth a trip to the Cinema. Sit on the edge of your seat with a tub of Chunky Monkey and try to figure out what has happened to the Doctor's wife. If she really is alive then where has she been? Why can't anyone else know about her? Trailer

Send In The Clowns

Dean Koontz writes his entertaining thrillers faster than I can read them! If I were to read all of his books I wouldn't get round to reading anything else. So to avoid being overkoontzed I only tend to pick one up every couple of years.

Life Expectancy tells the tale of an ordinary man. Just as Jimmy Tock is about to be born, his dying grandfather prophesises five dark days in his grandson's life. Five dates in which Jimmy will face 'terror, violence, malice and perversion'. How will Jimmy and his family deal with the terrifying events that await him?

This is a nice easy read and ideal to take away on holiday. It's always engaging and at times very exciting. There's also a high level of humour to offset the racked up tension.
How do I rate it amongst all of his other books? Well I'd have to say I like Life Expectancy better than Fear Nothing, Ticktock, Shadowfires and Lightning, but would place it behind Phantoms, Dark Rivers Of The Heart and Intensity.

Bruce Campbell Sex God

Everyone loves Bruce Campbell. Cult Hero, Sex God, Actor, Author and Shemp. After liking the successful Bubba Ho-Tep I was looking forward to seeing The Man With The Screaming Brain. Bruce writes, directs and stars in this low budget loopy Bulgarian Transplant comedy. Arrgh! What a mess! Bits of it are kind of fun and Bruce even gets to repeat his old Evil Dead 2 possessed hand schtick. Super sexy Tamara Gorski plays a crazy maid from 'Gypsy Town' and she helped maintain my interest throughout the movie. By the end however it felt like I was the one needing a brain transplant.

BC's entertaining autobiography (If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor) now has a companion piece: Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way. Supposedly it's an "autobiographical novel" and "everything in the book actually happened, except for all the stuff that didn't".

I'll be sticking it on my Christmas list.

A Lucifer to light your Fag

The Curse of the Metro. The free Metro paper that litters the London Undergound is an entertaining read on the train into work. So much so that it had caused me to stop reading books on my daily commute. Realising this I popped into the nearest Borders and had a browse...

Almost immediately I was drawn to the cool cover of The Vesuvius Club. 'A LUCIFER BOX NOVEL' by Mark Gatiss. It's the first of no doubt many ripping yarns featuring Edwardian dandy Lucifer Box - Portrait Painter by day, Agent for His Majesty's Government by night. A very entertaining, humourous tale of murder, intrigue, horror and sexual abandon! Dashes of Oscar Wilde mixed with Sax Rohmer.

The chapter titles provide a good indication of the style of the book and what's in store. Here's a few of them...

• MR LUCIFER BOX ENTERTAINS
• THE MYSTERY OF THE TWO GEOLOGISTS
• THE HORROR IN THE CARDBOARD TUBE
• WHAT KITTY BACKLASH HAD TO TELL
• A LONDON DERRIÈRE
• INTO THE CRIMSON CHAMBER
• THE LAIR OF MR LEE
• THE ENGINES OF VULCAN

Nice black and white illustrations throughout add to the telling the story. I'm looking forward to seeing the forthcoming Graphic Novel of The Vesuvius Club and then reading Lucifer Box's next exciting adventure.