(2004) Alan Moore, Titan Books, £24.99, hrdbk, 160pp, ISBN 1-401-20165-2
I'll get the biggest grumble out of the way first: the price. At £24.99 I have to say that Titan Books are taking the piss! This book costs US$24.95 and the exchange rate has been hovering around $1.80 to the pound for some time now so how, even taking into account shipping costs, Titan thinks they can justify the price tag is beyond me. So, get yourself onto the internet, check out Amazon and order from there - even taking into account your freight costs it'll still be cheaper. Titan Books please note - considering you don't (as of old) reprint under your own imprint (which used to be great as we Brits consistently used better paper than the US) and now just stick on your own bar-code sticker, you are taking the piss with your pricing! There is NO justification for this and, in this www.world where ordering from abroad is so easy, it is counter-productive to continue to price this highly, especially when the exchange rate is so favourable with the US right now. I don't know whether it's greed or inertia that is stopping you from dropping your prices, but either way it is gross stupidity. Grumble over.
None of which has anything to do with the brilliant, wonderful, excellent Alan Moore and the funniest title he produces for ABC (America's Best Comics, an imprint of Wildstorm, itself an imprint of DC). Containing issues 7-12 of the comic book, this volume has further tales of Kevin Nowlan's Jack B Quick, experimenting on aliens and encountering puberty; Rick Vietch's Greyshirt, including a musical and an encounter with Melinda Gebbie's Cobweb who gets into the sixties and newspaper comic strips; Jim Baikie's First American & USAngel in their own docu-soap; and Splash Brannigan by Hilary Barta encountering alternate worlds. Anthology titles are notoriously hard to pin down (or make popular), and everyone who does read them will have their own favourites. I favour Greyshirt and Cobweb myself (so nice to see the cross-over, from issue 12), and I especially liked Joyce Chin's take on Cobweb from issue 11. Enjoy!
Tony Chester
Post script 2008: Tony's grumble above obviously had a certain logic to it for -- for whatever reason -- Titan's prices fell in 2006/7.
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