Daddytank joins the team of CounterComic fans, this time reviewing the amazing 'From Hell'.  From Hell - Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell  In my heyday of comic reading, graphic novels were a pricey proposition. I used to gaze at these amazing tomes in Forbidden Planet or Games Workshop and wish that I had the patience to save up for them but I needed my weekly fix of Judge Dredd, Nemesis, Rogue Trooper, Slaine etc. I needed 2000 AD. And it was through 2000 AD that I came to be familiar with the name Alan Moore.       “Watchmen” is considered by many a comic nerd to be the ultimate graphic novel, but that honour is given by other comic nerds to another of Moore’s works, “From Hell”. And up until six months ago I had read neither. Now I realize that at this point anyone reading this will be thinking “…what’s this twat doing a review on graphic novels for when he’s only just read Watchmen, released in 1986/7.” Well, that’s why I wrote the first part. It was sort of an excuse. Anyway, on with the review.   “From Hell” is a gothic nightmare. Eddie Campbell must have gone through litres of black ink creating his ...

  Scott Carelli loves comics and other geek-related stuff. He talks about it weekly on his podcasts Two Geeks a Mic and a Podcast and True Believers on Geekshow.us. He also created and produces an audio series called Geek by Night also on Geekshow.us. Check them out!   After two comic reviews for series heavy in supernatural elements (Preacher, Lucifer), I thought the best choice would be to review a comic that’s much more realistic and profound. The kind of story filled with thought provoking social commentary that causes you to question the very fabric that makes up our society. Something that is so somber and disheartening that you’ll never look at humanity the same way again. Naturally, only one subject immediately came to mind: Zombies.   Yes, you read that right. Zombies, when used correctly, should make you see humanity in a different light. It might not be pretty, but it’s real and it’s honest. The best zombie stories aren’t about the living dead, but instead use that as the setting for a story about people and how they live and deal with an impossible situation. Not since Romero have zombies been used this well. Not until The Walking Dead.   Created by Robert Kirkman ...

In case you haven't heard yet, Mercury Rev are back. Best known for 1998's critically acclaimed Deserter's Songs, the pop-minded proggy psychedelicists have been ploughing their own wonky furrow for twenty years now.  Seeming to lose their way a little in the past couple of years, their new album, Snowflake Midnight, is by most accounts pretty good. Does it translate well live? Hell yes.     Before the band appear, we are shown a lovingly crafted intro video on the huge screen on stage, accompanied by the otherworldly babbling of the Cocteau Twins. An image of a Ken Wilber book flashes up, but before I can make out which of the bald brainiac's works it is, the image changes to a young and wild-eyed Iggy Pop. Next comes John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, then a shot of Phil Hine's book Condensed Chaos. Seeing the chaos magick classic up blown up super-big makes me grin, and it's a grin that doesn't really fade for the next one and half hours.   Frontman Jonathon Donahue is still an intriguing elf/goblin combination, with wide eyes and a bottle of red wine that he takes slugs from throughout the show- presumably fuel for his Dionysian revels. We're not just ...

This book made an exceptionally long wait for the train home from this weekends 'Unconvention' in London, far more bearable and amusing. I mean come on, what's better than reading stories about Koi?...no, really!   Jonathan Downes is one of those writers that you'll naturally levitate towards if you're a fan of the 'Fortean' way. He runs the amazing Centre for Fortean Zoology, has written a whole load of books, and goes looking for crazy anomalous creatures in the wildest parts of the world, thus making him instantly one of my heroes.   After finally meeting the man at the Uncon this weekend, I was persuaded by a young lady, I think maybe his daughter, into buying this book. At first I was reluctant, I mean, how can a book about Koi Carp be any fun to read right? I know nothing about carp, nothing at all; luckily for the reader, neither does Mr Downes! We've all been there; broke and desperate for work to pay the rent. But I would never have had the balls to trick a Koi Carp Magazine into running a series on the 'Fortean aspects of their hobby'.    After a hilarious forward, we are propelled into the semi-true Fortean-world of Koi ...

    Release The Bats - ATP/Capsule Halloween Party   Lightning Bolt When someone told me that Lightning Bolt were playing here in Birmingham, I started to run around making a high pitched sort of girlie noise. I love Lightning Bolt and I firmly believe that they are the best band in the world. If you don't agree then take it outside. So imagine my surprise and horror when I turned up at quarter past seven (have you ever got to a gig that early?) and while walking in I thought "...that sounds like Lightning Bolt." It was Lightning Bolt. Finishing. I am not having a good year for gigs, having missed Secret Chiefs 3, Dillinger Escape Plan and Nine Inch Nails in the last year. Anyway, it sounded like a new tune so hopefully they have an album coming out soon.     Pissed Jeans I had never heard of three of the bands in the line up and this was one of the surprises. The vocalist came out and stripped to the waist before he'd even started, but he had reason to because when they began their Neurosis / Isis style assault, he expended a lot of energy. I mean a lot. A disturbed hybrid of Mick ...

When Scott offered up his first review, and it turned out to be Preacher, I cursed the skies for not calling shotgun on reviewing that classic series first! However, not to be outdone, I eyed up my own collection of oddball comics and imediatley landed on Lucifer....must be the devils work (drumroll please).   Now, you may be suprised to hear that I actually do not like Neil Gaimen's Lamented goth-fest Sandman, in fact, a mere glimpse of it's 'Sisters of Mercy-esque' covers bring bile to my throat. I might have to re-read the series, however, as my hatred spawns not just from the work per se, but more from the pretensious idiots that idolise it! I swear to god, if I see one more girl trying to dress like 'Death' from the book, I will actually go insane!   Anyway, bearing this in mind, I naturally avoided this long-running spin-off for many years, but the devil got the better of me (ow! they keep coming), and a couple of years ago I found myself flipping through the first book whilst trying to kill some time.  An hour, and a dirty look from the comic-shop's manager later, I decided that I should probably invest in ...

The Heretic's Guide to Thelema By Gerald Del Campo Megalithica Books   Thelema. This ancient Greek word meaning ‘will' first took prominence in Rabelais' famous 16th century religious satire Gargantua and Pantagruel. Rabelais' book featured the ‘Abbey of Thelema', whose monks and nuns proclaimed no law other than ‘Do as thou wilt'. Conceived as a humorous literary criticism of the strictures of late medieval religious hegemony, the book caused considerable controversy in its day for daring to poke fun at the establishment. In fact, the book's cultural impact was such that it heavily influenced the various Hellfire Clubs that came into vogue amongst the European gentry some two centuries later. By 1922, an English occultist by the name of Aleister Crowley was to form a real Abbey of Thelema, based on his own magickal and mystical system of the same name. Crowley's Abbey was doomed to failure, but his version of Thelema with its oft-misunderstood central maxim of ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law' lives on to this day. Crowley's writings, now in much wider circulation than they ever were during his lifetime, have since gone on to spur generations to seek after the hidden truths at the heart ...

Title: Hanson Brothers - 'It's a Living'  Label: Wrong Records/Southern Records Released: Available Now Format: CD/DVD & Double Vinyl         I love it when I get pleasant suprises, and this the latest opus from NoMeansNo's oddball Bar-comedy-punk side-project The Hanson Brothers, has plenty of them!   The first thing that surprised me was my own lack of any observational skills, and how I should probably eye-ball the press release a bit before slamming CDs into my Mac. This CD has a DVD on the otherside, which really baffled for a second! (I had put the disk in the wrong way!)    First up, the music! THB play a blend of punk rock that harks back to the good-ol days of the Ramones and The Ruts-era Punk, but with the added twist of cleverly placed (and actually funny) odd-ball comedy. The CD is setup to sound like a live radio-session, interspersed with band interviews and rants, which actually works really well. If, like me, you are a fan of NoMeansNo, you will instantly recognise the 'sound' of this record...in fact this kind of reminds me of their earlier releases, but with more of a, dare I say, comedy-concept.    The DVD, which I ended up rewinding once I realised my mistake, is, ...

Charles Fort, the Grandfather of anomalous-research, really does have to be respected, if for nothing more his influence on alternative thinkers, and Paranormal researchers bearing even the minutest quantity of wit. Fort gave an antiquarian middle-finger-salute to the almost cult-like scientific community of the time, by daring to docment that which was virtually ignored by the mainstream. You may recognise his name, well, at least part of it from such great longstanding publications as The Fortean Times, which still exists today as a testament to the mans influence. Fort, basically, took it upon himself to catalouge the weird happenings of his time, and publish them in a almanac-style . He occasionally injected his own opinions, though often preferred to remain impartial (much like the magazine of his namesake). This book, a complete collection of Fort's writings, makes it clear very early-on why Fort's work has remained the staple of so many bookshelves. The man's wit must be commended; whilst dedicating his life to such a bizarre topic must demand a degree of seriousness, Fort doesn't forget to laugh at it from time to time. Considering the vast compendium of strangeness on offer in the book, one of the oddest things on offer is the ...

One of the greatly ignored mediums of our little corner of the web so far has been comics which, in my opinion, produce some of the most compelling, original and revolutionary concepts of our time. When I first thought of who to 'pen' a regular feature, it was imediatly obvious; Scott Carelli, one of the first guests on our podcast, has a passion for comics and all things 'geek' unlike anyone else I can think of, he's also really good at expressing that passion in the written word...   When I was asked to begin writing reviews for comics with a counter-culture spin for Sitting Now, only one comic immediately came to mind: Preacher. Part Western, part Horror story, part Religious Epic, and a lot of weird, Preacher is as counter-culture as it gets. Created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon, Preacher is the story of a small town Texas minister, named Jesse Custer, slowly losing his faith in the god he’s devoted his life to. In one bizarre instant, his life is changed forever, and with his gun-toting ex Tulip and a hard-drink Irish vampire named Cassidy, he aims to find out why and who’s to blame. The story that ...