Pages

Thursday 10 January 2013

...and the Blood Flowed Green by Alan Nolan

Review by The Mole

Marion ‘Mick’ Mulligan is a sci-fi writer but you are unlikely to have heard of him as he didn't sell many of his books. He was then abducted by aliens. Normal abductees are returned to where taken from but not Mick, he is dumped on a lawless planet where he makes friends with Crk-Tish-Crrrkkk and together with Runt, his robot friend, they try to get back to their home planets. Passing through many unlikely situations and several different planets they start their journey.
The whole story is told with a great deal of humour!

When I was a child I read a lot of comics: War comics; Superhero comics; Dandy, Beano, Victor, Valiant and all those. When I was a young man I saw an Army Territorial Reserve soldier reading a war comic, like those of my youth, which he assured me was 'a training manual'. So comics are gone to be replaced by the Graphic Novel to try to give them more acceptability - it's a shame it was felt that it was needed.

This was my first Graphic Novel and I haven't read a comic in many years now. The layout seems less random than when I was a kid and the inclusion of those 'information' pages on things connected with the story but not part of - like the adverts of old - was a format change. All in all I was thoroughly impressed with where the concept has gone to.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book with its humour and totally unrealistic but fantastical drawings and I'm sure kids will enjoy this immensely. I know that as a child I read comics extensively - never getting enough - and anything that gets kids reading has to be a good thing but not only reading - escaping - escapism is a great stress breaker and kids have always had stress.

I do remember comics going missing for a while as dad read them - and why not? It should still apply today and I'm sure that dads everywhere would enjoy this one.

Publisher - O'Brien Press
Genre - Humour, Graphic Novel

Buy And the Blood Flowed Green (Murder Can be Fatal) from Amazon

No comments:

Post a Comment