Shores of Night

Hello,  Welcome to the Shores of Night, where I talk about too many things. Welcome back if you've walked this beach before; at least you know where the half buried skull is (be careful, it bites). To stretch the metaphor, you know what sort of flotsam and jetsam washes up here: comics, roleplaying games, a bit of politics, a bit of philosophy (though that seems too fine a word for what I talk about). Add in some interest in history, paganism, and religion in general, and whatever the tide drags in, and you know what litters the shore.  Or just life updates and complaining, which is all very much grist to the mill. Today's flotsam takes the form of something I'm rolling around in my mind: roleplaying. I've been involved in the hobby for a long time - over 30 years - and it's ebbed and flowed around me. There have been times when I've loved it and times I've hated it. I've never really felt indifferent towards it and ever since 1994, it's felt like a ...

Hello!  Welcome to Shores of Night, where I talk about probably far too many things for a blog, and where today we're talking about the character John Constantine. Last time I wrote about  My Issues With Superheroes , and why I'm moving away from reading their adventures. In that piece, I mentioned my love for John, though I admit it's a relationship that's had its wobbles over the decades.   The biographical bit is that I discovered John in 1994, in a one-shot written by Jamie Delano just after the Garth Ennis run had finished. I was hooked from page one. It felt different to everything else I'd read: raw, exciting, full of a deep, sarcastic voice. It chimed not only with who I was at the time, but also with the country I came from. More than that, the story was small, intimate even, worlds away from the superhero epics I was used to, in the best possible way. John was smart, and he had a sort of sleazy charm I wasn't used to seeing. He cared about people, not ...

Hi!  Welcome back to the blog, or welcome if you're new. My name's Grim, and today I'm going to have a mini rant about superhero comics. I know it's not really anything important, and the overwhelming everything threatens to eat our sanity, but... I just feel the need.  Until recently, I would have said I was a fan of superheroes. I discovered them at around 12, and started borrowing X-Men comics from my local library. For the next four years, I was a devoted Marvel fan, making a regular pilgrimage to the next town over where a newsagent stocked comics. I didn't know about Forbidden Planet, one short bus ride away in Coventry. In fact, it would take a long time for me to learn about actual comics shops. In the late 80s and early 90s in the UK, comics were still a niche thing, considered childish and crude. It wasn't like you could turn on your TV and see films or shows about them, unless they were cartoons. Even then, you had to hope that the BBC or ITV saw the ...