Of late I have mostly been reading...

[ginghamkitchen]

god bless you. i have been reading 1970s captain britain and 1980s fantastic 4 - i dont know whether to be ashamed or just brazen it out

I've got a full run of Captain Britain's I bought at the time. Awful, brilliant comic!

[chimptown]

I've got a full run of Captain Britain's I bought at the time. Awful, brilliant comic!

i can respect that.

brian braddock is temping at worlds most top secret nuclear project (while smoking a pipe) before returning to thames university as a student when power station is invaded and he falls into a seige something stone circle and chooses the amulet of god and goddess of north sky (or something) and finds himself as a super hero. flawless

looking forward to hitting the alan moore ones as i remember them melting my head when i was younger

[Ian Townsend]

.... 'Weird War', 'House Of Mystery'....,

Used to LOVE the various American full colour cartoon Weird / Mystery titles. So many good stories and so brilliantly illustrated. I remember a few of the stories really vividly to this day. 'The Mothball Fleet.' I think that was a Weird War Tales one; all about an old guy fishing near a Navy ship he'd served on. I guess you have to read it really....

I'd love to get my hands on a run of them magazines.

Are they prohibitively expensive to get because of collectability or are there cheap reissues of them?

[ginghamkitchen]

Used to LOVE the various American full colour cartoon Weird / Mystery titles. So many good stories and so brilliantly illustrated. I remember a few of the stories really vividly to this day. 'The Mothball Fleet.' I think that was a Weird War Tales one; all about an old guy fishing near a Navy ship he'd served on. I guess you have to read it really....

I'd love to get my hands on a run of them magazines.

Are they prohibitively expensive to get because of collectability or are there cheap reissues of them?

I don't think they are particularly expensive and they're quite often in shops if they have a decent back catalogue. ACE comics in Colchester is excellent. The DC Showcase and Marvel Essentials reprints have covered the more mainstream titles like House Of Mystery, House of Secrets, Unknown Soldier, Haunted Tank, Enemy Ace, etc large paperback b & w reprints. e-bay tends to have individual titles for a couple of quid each. I bought about thirty copies of Sgt Fury a year ago for a fiver. I was collecting Horror Comics before I even owned a record, I've got hundreds and hundreds, including all the Charlton titles like 'Haunted Love'.

[J.R]

I remember House of Mystery and tried re-reading it a little while ago via the DC Showcase reprints but was left a little underwhelmed. They just don't really excite in black and white.

Also comic related, I pulled out all my old EC reprints from my parents a couple of weeks ago and have absolutely loved reading through those.

[ginghamkitchen]

I remember House of Mystery and tried re-reading it a little while ago via the DC Showcase reprints but was left a little underwhelmed. They just don't really excite in black and white.

You're right. I also miss the ads. That said, I always thought 'House of Mystery' wasn't a patch on some of the other titles - nowhere near weird enough.

[J.R]

I'm still reading through those ECs. The Shock Suspenstories comics are particularly good, especially the stories dealing with racism and police brutality & corruption which are eye opening for a comic book from the 1950s.

Harvey Kurtzmans art also seems to be way ahead of its time.

Comics Code was lame.

I'm also slowly reading Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov which deserves a mention. I'm only slowly reading it because it's not exactly cheery stuff. Some of the stories haunt me for days.

[MPFlapp]

Rudolph Wurlitzer - "Slow Fade" - corking read... just re-published in a nice hardback signed edtion and softback... Hardback is well slick...

Details over at DC - Fuz this might fit in to your Americana fiction list

[Mumbles]

After picking up a vintage paperback copy of 'The Ipcress File' from my local Oxfam and thoroughly enjoying it, I've beem getting engrossed in Len Deighton's trilogy Spy Hook, Spy Line and Spy Sinker. Not a genre I'm used to reading I'm really into these - picking out details of cold war Berlin, and an interesting use of chronology. Any of these books can be read individually and the final, Sinker fills in gaps but seen from a different point of view. Page turning!

[babycart]

After picking up a vintage paperback copy of 'The Ipcress File' from my local Oxfam and thoroughly enjoying it, I've beem getting engrossed in Len Deighton's trilogy Spy Hook, Spy Line and Spy Sinker. Not a genre I'm used to reading I'm really into these - picking out details of cold war Berlin, and an interesting use of chronology. Any of these books can be read individually and the final, Sinker fills in gaps but seen from a different point of view. Page turning!
]

I got some early Deighton a few years ago and was surprised by how good they are. Anything up to about 1970 is great, although I reckon he spread it a bit thin thereafter.

This is a lot of fun, too.

[ginghamkitchen]

'London Dossier' is excellent - don't forget the slang chapter where they conclude that Cockney and Criminal slang is good old fashioned fun, but Gay slang is rather unpleasant.

[ashra]

Haunted Tank

Great concept. I'd love to come across a big box of 70s horror / mystery comics - I find comic shops a bit intimidating - no idea where to begin! Just read a good anthology of Horror comics - http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuille...horror-comics/ that's got me wanting to read more.

There was one artist that I loved in there called 'Mike Ploog' (I think!)

[eine]

Chosen because I wanted a fast paced thriller to propel me back into reading. I got more than that: a weird, neatly written ride through both a blind man's mind and the Kafkaesque city he finds himself. I was gripped till the end, where he breaks through the veil in the 'Highlands' of the country.

Recommended and on the look out for more by this writer, who I hadn't come across before - Rupert Thomson anyone?

[Sie Vulture]

"Mao's Great Famine"... Feels like a history A level. Need to keep notes.

[babycart]

Recommended and on the look out for more by this writer, who I hadn't come across before - Rupert Thomson anyone?

I never miss his books, and am always surprised at how overlooked he is, even though he occasionally overreaches himself (I didn't enjoy Soft or Divided Kingdom as much as his other work)
His first novel, Dreams of Leaving, is one of the best novels of 80s England - a rewriting of the Moses story set in a fever dream London; Book of Revelation is a cool euro-neuro thriller set in the seven circles of Amsterdam and his last novel, Death of a Murderer, is a superbly creepy meditation on evil featuring the ghost of Myra Hindley.