Comics : Blake & Mortimer (1) : The Yellow "M"

Time to review books from one of my favourite comic series, Blake & Mortimer. I thought it best to start back at the beginning to the first book The Yellow "M" (though actually the 6th in the series in the original language) by Edgar P Jacobs.

Why are the Blake & Mortimer books so wonderful? And they are. Well one reason surely has to be because of the wonderful period and reality they are set in, Britain in the post-war 1940s (though it could be any time in the 30s or 40s) and with a large dollop of interwar period weirdness, occultness and classic mystery.

The Yellow M is a mysterious super criminal who is terrorising London, even stealing the Queen's crown! As Blake & Mortimer investigate the criminal they uncover the mysterious technology of the Mega Wave, mind control and murder!

As with all of the Blake & Mortimer books the story is intense, you certainly get your money's worth as far as word count is concerned! The plot is deep, intricate and complex though also reminds one of old serials with dastardly bad guys putting our heroes into peril after peril. Some have criticised these books for being too wordy, for explaining everything that is going on even when it is obvious from the pictures but this to me just adds to the classic serial feel. You can just imagine the narration by someone with a very posh clipped RP accent.

It is also so beautifully drawn in the clear line style. This isn't just a comic book, it isn't just a work of art, its a precious treasure. So precious the Yellow M would be sure to try and steal it...

• The Yellow 'M': Blake and Mortimer 1 (Amazon)
• Cinebook website

Hyper local paper

Its been years since i've received a free newspaper through my letterbox. I used to get one of the Sutton Coldfield free papers until they probably decided we were too poor in my area of Erdington (my Mum still gets it, but she lives near the High Street where all the elite hang out). So when i got home today and found a copy of the Tyburn Mail waiting on my door mat i was very surprised and pleased.

It appears to be an initiative by Castle Vale's hyperlocal Vale Mail to produce a newspaper for a wider area, including the Vale, Pype Hayes, Erdington Hall and Birches Green (where i am) and very good it is too. They've done a good job with this and i hope they are successful and continue with it beyond their planned 3 month trial period.

In between the gradual decline and fall of the national press, the faster decline and irrelevancy of the regional press and the rise of social media and online journalism is there a space for free sheets like this?

McLaren

The last few days i have been doing some training at the NTI in Masshouse in Birmingham city centre. It and the adjoining Eastside is a fast changing part of the city with new buildings going up and a station for the planned High Speed 2 railway project. One thing has remained unchanged throughout my life though and that is the McLaren building, one of the skyscrapers of Birmingham, according to Emporis only the 15th tallest now following recent new build, when i was a kid i thought it reached into the heavens!

An inglorious end

I have just started Project 024 which is a model of a Hannover Cl IIIa fighter bomber of the WW1 Luftwaffe. It is going to push me more than any other model to date i think because of the highly complicated camouflage which consists of a number of irregular polygons of colour. This is quite hard to explain but you can see the sort of thing i mean here. When my model is completed i hope it has a better outcome than this real one which came to a rather inglorious end.

TOTP (09/09/1976)

Jimmy Saville in orange is our host tonight, ABBA are number 1, will we see them live in the studio? Well maybe, more chance of seeing them than Elton and Kiki Dee anyway but more on that later...

Eddie & the Hotrods - get out of Denver
Might not be 100% on that title, i find it difficult to understand what Jimmy says sometimes. Anyway this is good old fashioned pub rock and roll and its glorious! Some of the audience are actually moving to the music too. Its a super high energy rock and roll thrash, proto-punk in a way. Tonight can only go downhill.

Twiggy - here i go again
The ex-model is back with her country hit, this time she is a studio and not 100% sure where the camera is.

The Wurzels - i'm a cider drinker
More country yokel novelty nonsense, having established people from the countryside are slow and obsessed with land and incest in their first hit this time we also find out they are alcoholics too. This steals the familiar tune from "Una Paloma Blanca" which is always a good idea when you want to extend your unwelcome stay as a novelty act...

Jimmy is surrounded by sailors and he introduces Ruby Flipper, who are only here once this week to perform Lou Rawl's "you'll never find another love like mine" with a vaguely Spanish air to their dancing frolics.

Cliff Richard - i can't ask for anything more than you babe
High pitched low jinks, the Producers play around with some SFX though and we get multiple Cliffs on screen at the same time. Some people may want more than one Cliff Richard. I don't.

Bay City Rollers - i only wanna be with you
In time honoured tradition the boy band delight the girlies with a retro cover which is pretty awful but oddly passable.

Kiki Dee - loving and free
What? Kiki Dee is here? But not with Elton this is a solo song. She sits and sings a decent country tune. A fibre optic light features, perhaps it was new and funky back then, nowadays pound shop fodder.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - blinded by the light
I'm happy to see this prog psychedelia make the charts, this is a repeat of their earlier TOTP performance though.

ABBA - dancing queen
Well ABBA arn't here live in the studio alas, its a stage performance somewhere and they are all dressed in blue. Jimmy interrupts half-way through as they are apparently out of time so the number 1 hit play us out. TTFN.

Comics : Star Wars #42

I enjoyed reviewing the old Star Wars comic i found in my loft so much that i bought another of the Marvel comic series on Ebay. Number 42 this time, which i did have as a childhood as oddly i remember Han Solo's buff body in one scene as he is stripped to the waist and having steam or some kind of vapour blown over him. Er... yeah moving on...

Set in between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back this has the Rebel gang stuck on some kind of massive space station. Luke and Leia and the 2 droids are on the run from a Senator Greyshade meanwhile Darth Vader is searching for a cyborg rival. In the exciting cliffhanger Han Solo is forced into a gladiatorial combat where he is shocked to find out his opponent is Chewbacca!

The highlight of everything is the cover though, and boy does Darth Vader look angry! I suspect The Emperor erased all his unseen episodes of Masterchef off his Sky Plus.