Age Of The Dragons (2011)

Imagine the elevator pitch "Moby Dick, but with a dragon".

Concepts don't come much higher and much more sublimely brilliant than that.

What a shame then that Age Of The Dragons ultimately fails to meet these expectations.

Now I've never actually read Moby Dick, but I know enough to recognise the character names have remained unchanged - Ahab (Danny Glover); Ishmael (Corey Sevier); Starbuck (David Morgan); Stubbs (Vinnie Jones), Flask (Larry Bagby), Queequeg (Kepa Kruse) - and that large chunks of dialogue are either lifted almost verbatim from Herman Melville's classic novel or, at least, are very close.

There are some great fantastical touches, like having Ahab's small crew serving on a land barge that wouldn't have looked out of place in one of Philip Reeve's World of Mortal Engines novels.

Unfortunately, the tense atmosphere of the hunt is undermined by shoehorning in of a stupid romantic subplot with Ahab's adopted daughter Rachel (Sofia Pernas) and the dumb revelation towards the end that Ahab knows exactly where the Great White Dragon nests... turning it not so much into a hunt as just a journey.

In the book, it should be noted, Rachel is the name of the vessel that ultimately rescues Ishmael from the sea - so you can see what they were trying to do here, it just comes across as a bit heavy-handed.

There are other plot holes as well, but there's enough monumental scenery chewing by Glover as the scarred captain, haunted by dreams of his youthful failure to save his sister from the White Dragon, and dramatic, cod-Shakespearean dialogue, to carry the story through these choppy waters.

The CGI effects are quite primitive as well, giving the movie the feeling of a slightly upmarket Asylum production, but the snowy scenery and rumbling landship provide adequate compensation in this department.

Surprisingly, I'd say this hour-and-a-half film needs to have been longer, with more plot development, some better explanations of the various characters' motivations, Rachel should have been cut from the story totally and the White Dragon should have been rather harder to track down.

Besides that, it's great!

Oh, and the movie could have done with a better title than the rather bland and generic Age Of The Dragons.

Although there are no traditional extras on the DVD, it actually includes - unmentioned anywhere on the DVD box - an entire second dragon-themed movie, Dragon Hunter which, if memory serves me right, isn't much cop at all. But still, a nice surprise nonetheless.

Ahab's "ship" The Pequod

What's To Be Read?

My current "to be read" (TBR) books

As a notoriously slow reader these days, I have been inspired by Booktube (particularly Michael K Vaughan's channel) to really try and pull my finger out this year.

Last week, I actually finished two books: Philip Reeve's latest thrilling World of Mortal Engines offering, Bridge of Storms, and then a short history of the fascinating Mansa Musa, the 14th Century emperor of Mali.

Although I had a vague knowledge of this celebrated - and incredibly wealthy - ruler, it wasn't until he popped up as a character in Apple TV's criminally underappreciated Time Bandits series that my interest was truly piqued. 

I'm currently reading Mark Finn's Sailor Steve Costigan homage Fight Card: The Adventures of Sailor Tom Sharkey, but this week's potentially record-breaking, red-alert heatwave (thanks global warming) is putting the kibosh on reading as its scrambling my already shaky concentration.

Nevertheless, I still have a "to be read" collection of four books by the side of the bed that I am determined to get as soon as possible.

This is, of course, on top of any new comics that arrive and my concerted effort to read the core rulebook of the Dragonbane roleplaying game, which has really taken my fancy of late.

A mix of novels and short story collections, the books on my reading list (as pictured above) are:

• Cruise of Shadows, a collection of early-to-mid 20th Century weird fiction by Jean Ray, a Belgium author I hadn't heard of until a few weeks ago when the Strange Studies of Strange Stories podcast did a breakdown of his short story, The Mainz Psalter, which is included in this collection. It was such a mind-blowing, Lovecraftian tale that I knew immediately I had to read the full thing and some more of Ray's work. I have to thank Rachel for getting this for me as a present, which arrived this morning and immediately jumped to the top of my TBR list.
• The End of Everything, by M. John Harrison. A post-apocalyptic take set on Britain's South Coast. Like the subsequent books on the list, I know nothing really about this story except that its marketing on the Blackwells book store site made it seem really interesting And this special edition - signed by the author - includes a bonus short story.
• Corpse Priest by Carson Winter. I think this one might have been mentioned on Michael K Vaughan's booktube channel, but the fact that it's described on the back cover as a mix of "sword and sorcery and cosmic horror" makes it sound like just the sort of thing I'd like.
• Warriors of The Boundless by Mike Chinn. This was a Christmas present, although I can't for the life of me remember where I first heard of it. It sounds like something Michael Moorcock would have written in the '70s or '80s. The back cover blurb talks of infinite worlds, bizarre lifeforms, and "now something is wrong, something is not where it should be and needs to be returned by any means necessary". The book contains six interconnected stories of epic fantasy.

I Never Set Out To Be A Funko Collector!

My most recent Pops!: Dunk and Egg

I have no recollection of when I first acquired a Funko Pop! or even which one it was, but now - like something out of the Twilight Zone they seem to be multiplying and filling every nook and cranny in the house!

Wikipedia says of the divisive little figures:

"In 2010, the Funko Pop! line was created. Funko Pop! vinyl line are figures modelled in a style similar to the Japanese chibi style. The figures have large squarish heads, disproportionately small bodies, and large, circular black eyes"

I know some people don't get the appeal, but I find them very cute (and affordable) manifestations of the various niches within my geeky hobbies.

My most recent acquisitions were Dunk and Egg from the excellent A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms and I was very excited to receive a random (one in six, I believe) chase variant of Dunk, dressed as a knight. Of course, this means, at some point I'll need to pick up the original Dunk in scruffy clothes figure.

Originally, I had a single shelf over the door into the gamesroom that was to be the home of my modest Pop! collection, but then more continued to arrive and the horde spread out. So now you can find on book shelves and on top of glass cabinets in several rooms.

Most have been removed from their boxes (one of Rachel's rules for my collecting habits), except for a handful they consider truly collectible (mainly Pops! related to the Mortal Engines movie, based on the book by Philip Reeve).

I'll get round to releasing Dunk and Egg soon, but, at the moment, they seem quite content boxed-up as they are.

A few aren't particularly well-balanced (and have a habit of jumping off shelves in the middle of the night) and so have to lean back on books, but mostly the figures are remarkably stable and remain where they're placed.

Frieren on the far left and He-Man on the right 

Clark Kent changing into Superman, and Krypto

Sue Storm and the Kerblam! Man, hiding behind Scooby-Doo action figures

Pops! have become so pervasive in our house that Rachel even got me a personalised one: me in Pop! form (see below):

That's me, that is

Superman and Lois Lane in flight

Keeping watch from on top of the new bookcase

My original shelf in the gamesroom - filled up very quickly!

Know Me, Know My Shelves

Works of, or inspired by, George RR Martin, JRR Tolkien and Jim Henson

Despite the heat wave plaguing our little corner of the world this week, I think I've finished organising my wonderful new bookshelves (put together for me by Rachel's dad last year).

As they are, the shelves are a pretty decent encapsulation of the inside of my brain, focussing on my favourite authors and favourite themes.

From Westeros to the World of Mortal Engines, via the Hyborian Age and Mega-City One, right through to the Planet of The Apes and the Wild West, this is a guided tour of my psyche and my primary, literary gaming inspirations.

Of course, these are not my only book shelves in the house, but are my most recently built and filled.

Pretty sure, now, there's no more room for any more shelves... although there's always room for more books.

Philip Reeve

Conan The Barbarian

Robert E Howard

HP Lovecraft and The Cthulhu Mythos

Westerns - there are more Western paperbacks in another cupboard

Judge Dredd & 2000AD (plus a sneaky little RPG that has yet to find a home)

Planet of The Apes

Black Angel (1980)

A knight finds his village destroyed and abandoned.

He tries to track the attackers down and avenge his family, but almost drowns.

A maiden, prisoner of the Black Knight, saves him, so he vows to free her, even though she warns him not to.

Roger Christian’s legendary short film (above), a remake of which, that would expand Black Angel into a feature length fantasy epic, has now been in development since 2015 .

I last shared this online in 2019 (it's a favourite of Philip Reeve and he recommended it to me), but there have, sadly, been no updates on this crowdfunded labour of love since 2022. Much to the chagrin of the project's backers (check the recent comments on the IndieGoGo page).

RPG REVIEW: DuckQuest by Darcy Perry

Cover art by Jon Hodgson

Picture a game that mingles Marvel's Howard The Duck and Rocket Raccoon, with the adventures of Usagi Yojimbo, Stan Sakai's rōnin rabbit, and a dash of Disney cartoonery, then pepper it with humour akin to Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.

Now you'll have an idea of what's to come when you leaf through the pun-packed pages of Darcy Perry's DuckQuest: Quack Starter Edition (from 2021).

Initially created as an adjunct to one of Darcy's Kickstarter campaigns for the wonderful, often anthropomorphic, miniatures he produces through Star Hat Miniatures, the game is now available for the general public to purchase as a gorgeously illustrated 64-page PDF (click here).

Back during the Kickstarter, Darcy explained the genesis of DuckQuest:

"Unlike other games where ducks are relegated as side-kicks or comic relief, imagine they're the star players; the heroic explorers on an epic adventure. It's an idea that didn't go away. The more I looked around, the more I noticed that ducks got a raw deal. Something had to be done. So combining the need for ducks to be represented in a better light and a lifelong dream of writing my own fantasy heartbreaker RPG. I took the plunge and dived in!"

Mechanically, DuckQuest is an ultra-lite and streamlined d20 game (the core mechanic is essentially roll a d20, add a stat, score over a Target Number), with a freestyle magic system (that still retains some simple mechanics to rein in overzealous players), and a wonderfully Tunnels & Trolls-like method to condense monster statistics to a minimum.

Although the book's fluff skews towards the players taking the role of ducks in the game, there's nothing stopping them from playing crows, cats, dogs, squirrels, turtles etc

Emphasising the science-fantasy leanings of the game, the A-Z of 26 suggested character backgrounds (their 'quackstories') even embraces cyborgs, time travellers, and stranded spaceship pilots.

After picking a quackstory and a suitable name, character creation primarily involves allocating one to five points between the five QUACKtributes (Quickness, Ugly, Arcana, Cool, and Kismet), determining physical (Heart) and mental endurance (Psyche), adding in some quirks (which are largely for flavour and roleplay prompts), and then sorting out what equipment you have.

The Dramatic Universal Cosmic Kudos System (DUCKS) core rules (light as they are, but with a basic scenario concept of "quests", often involving killing monsters and stealing their stuff) are certainly evocative of the 'old school'.

However, there's also strong elements of more modern narrative sensibilities in the rules, such as starting objects in a character's possession being colourfully named but their exact "crunch" being down to player suggestions and gamesmaster fiat.

An example of the game's gorgeous
and idiosyncratic art

Employing all the main polyhedrals (even up to a d30), DUCKS includes a small number of simple mechanics - such as dice steps and exploding dice - that tick all the right boxes for this fan of funky dice play.

With a core mantra of "it doesn't have to make sense, it just has to make fun", a great deal of emphasis in the book is put on a group shaping the game and the default setting of  Aqualoonia (if they even choose to set their campaigns there) to their own whims.

To be honest, beyond the evocative place names on the map, and occasional bits of lore dropped in along the way, Aqualoonia is largely a blank slate for players and gamesmasters to fill in as they see fit.

For instance, some of the breadcrumbs scattered through the text send my brain racing off towards the world of my beloved Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve's literary masterpiece, so that's another avenue my imagination could explore through the funhouse lens of DuckQuest..

The core game book also contains a delightfully inspirational page of "duck cryptids", compiled by legendary games designer Jennell Jaquays. These are folk tales and ghosts stories of the feathered folk that can work as delicious background matter and plot hooks.

DuckQuest, full of fowl humour and loving parodies of pop culture, is not a game to be taken seriously.

That said, it is a fully-functioning roleplaying system with enormous campaign potential thanks to its easy-to-grok "levelling up" rules and bulging bestiary of killer critters - ranging from tiny mushroom men to kaiju-sized monstrosities that would give Cthulhu a run for his money.

Given the solid framework that Darcy has created, DuckQuest is also primed perfectly for hacking, should you come up with a house rule or two on the way to conjuring up your own campaign.

Six Degrees of Separation

The movie Hombre is one of my favourite Westerns. It was recommended to me by a tutor on my scriptwriting degree course (as inspiration for the Western I was writing as part of my finale project).

The movie is based upon a novel by the late and lauded Elmore Leonard.

The other day, randomly, I picked up my copy of Hombre and read the first chapter. This got me wondering what stories were included in the chunky hardback, The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard, which I'd purchased last year.

The book flopped open to a title page I hadn't seen before... revealing that it was signed by Leonard himself.

This made me grin like a loon, as I'm a sucker for such dedications in books. Remember my excitement when I found the signed book in a sale at our local second hand book store.

Being a homebody generally, it's very unlikely that I'll get to pose for selfies with my favourite authors, actors etc

So I prefer "signed items" instead. I have a collection of signed Philip Reeve books (my favourite author) and head shots of stars of Classic era Doctor Who - from Carole Ann Ford and William Russell to Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy. These latter pictures are proudly framed and displayed on the office wall, while my Philip Reeve library has its own shelf in one of the lounge cupboards.   

Back in February, I acquired from an online store (not Amazon) a limited edition (#365 of 750), first edition (with red page edges) of Red Sonja: Consumed by Gail Simone (which was signed by the author).

I was most delighted by this, and then when I shared it on BlueSky, Gail herself replied, hoping I'd enjoy the book.

The other week, a postcard winged its way across The Atlantic, signed by Dungeons & Dragons YouTube "influencer" Ginny Di.

This was a reward for supporting her Patreon (which I've been a member of since 2020).

It wasn't just Ginny's signature - and the details of an enchanted weapon to be used in a RPG - that made this magical though. It was the fact that a postcard had managed to find its way over here to the UK without getting mangled or lost. 

A signature is a sign of caring (I know many things get signed in a production line-like setting, but the fact is the creator is still doing it).

I may spend 90 per cent of my life within the four walls of our house, but receiving a signed item from someone whose work I admire (even it's purely by chance, such as the Elmore Leonard book) is a connection.

At one end of the process, the artist has signed their work and at the other end I get to hold it in my hands and appreciate the time spent both creating their art and signing my book, picture, postcard etc

Isekai? It's Narnia Business!

Isekai (Japanese: 異世界; transl. 'different world', 'another world', or 'other world') is a sub-genre of fiction. It includes novels, light novels, films, manga, webtoons, anime, and video games that revolve around a person or people who are transported to and have to survive in another world, such as a fantasy world, game world, or parallel universe, with or without the possibility of returning to their original world.

Portal fantasy, also called portal-quest fantasy, gateway fantasy or crossworld fantasy, is a plot device in speculative fiction, particularly fantasy fiction and science fiction, in which characters enter a self-contained fantasy world through a portal, typically within a quest-based narrative that focuses on exploring and navigating that world. Portal fantasy works typically feature protagonists who enter alternate realities, explore unfamiliar landscapes, and encounter distinctive characters. Overall, portals in speculative fiction act as catalysts for narrative movement, worldbuilding, and thematic exploration.

With a new vision of C.S. Lewis's Narnia coming to Netflix at the end of the year and the fact that I am listening to the BBC radio play adaptations of The Complete Chronicles of Narnia, I'm entertaining different approaches to hooking players into any future fantasy roleplaying setting I conjure up.

Given that the current hot contender for "game du jour" is the upcoming video game and anime-inspired Twilight Sword, I can't help but be drawn to the concept of isekai (see the definition above if you're not au fait with the term) - although I don't know if it would be appropriate for that particular game (on the other hand it is baked into Break!! as a core character concept).

But, more specifically, my current travels in Narnia have got me wondering about the idea of "child adventurers".

I know these days this is a much more common concept - thanks to the ubiquity of Stranger Things, a whole heap of anime, and RPGs like Tales From The Loop and Kids on Bikes -  but it's an idea that takes me back to the early days of Steve's Villains & Vigilantes campaign in the 1980's, where a core concept was you play "yourself with superpowers".

You didn't roll random numbers to generate your statistics, but rather you and your fellow players 'graded' each other on a scale of three to 18 for the the primary stats of your characters, then you generated random superpowers and bingo! That was how the Acrobatic Flea was born.

But, of course, the big difference between superhero roleplaying games and Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy adventures is that supers games are generally skewed towards keeping the player characters alive, where as dungeon delvers tend to be fragile, little snowflakes when they are just starting out.

There is a long literary tradition of "child adventurers" - in fact many of my favourite books have juvenile or young adult protagonists (e.g. Philip Reeves Mortal Engines saga, The Wizard of Oz and, of course, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland) - but literary tropes don't necessary work as written in a roleplaying format.

I like the idea of "Earth" men and women traveling to an alien world (e.g Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter books), as it means you don't need to explain everything to the players beforehand and they can explore the world as they go along, and I have no qualms about tooling up imaginary child characters with swords and bows, but what are the logistics of such a starting point?

How would I go about generating statistics for the player-characters? Would the players play younger versions of themselves (as per Villains & Vigilantes) or roll new characters? How would players, particularly those who were parents, feel about putting (fictional) young characters in harm's way?

ASPIRATIONS FOR 2026

Don't Want To Rush These Things: After 19 years, work shall begin on my castle

As we reach the end of January (which seems to have dragged on for about 30 weeks) I thought it was about time to lock in some aspirations for 2026.

HEALTH

Obviously after last year's health debacle (losing about seven months of the year because my legs stopped working properly and being in a great deal of discomfort), I want to get better this year.

More exercise and a healthier (urrgghhh!) diet are key. Hopefully, at the very least, I can bring my blood sugar levels down so I can get the steroid injections in my spine that will allow me the freedom to do more beneficial exercises.

READING

I've already stated that I want to get back into reading more this year (eyes willing), both novels and comic books, as both have slipped in the last seven or eight months.

I'm hoping to dig into my collection of recent Conan the Barbarian pastiche hardbacks, as well as the upcoming new Philip Reeve novel, and a random assortment of other books that either I've purchased for myself or were gifts.

I also have a massive backlog of comics to get through. Even though my pull-list continues to shrink, fresh issues keep arriving every month and I keep getting further and further behind.

My Read Judge Dredd Every Day is going... okay. I read either a story from volume one of the Complete Case Files or fresh material from current issues of the weekly 2000AD or the monthly Megazine pretty much every day. Pretty much.

CASTLE

For my 40th birthday (god, I can't believe it's been that long), Rachel's dad built me a tower that I could then decorate - along the line's of Rachel's dolls house hobby - and while I've collected a lot of "bits" to go inside it, two decades on and I still haven't started proper work on it. 

I keep flip-flopping on the theme of the tower in my mind (sometimes it's a superhero HQ, sometimes it's a U.N.I.T. base from Doctor Who, and sometimes it's even a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasy castle!). This year I really must get on with it.

I'D RATHER BE KILLING MONSTERS

The tabletop roleplaying Facebook group I started over six years ago, I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters, is ticking over nicely, with almost 460 members but I'd really like to kick it up a gear.

I want to make the group more interactive, get more conversations flowing.

At the moment it feels as though there's about a dozen of us doing all the heavy-lifting. I'd like to get more members of the group engaged and talking about their own games, the campaigns they're running or playing in, monster/treasure/trap ideas etc

And, of course, I'd always like to increase the membership.

PROJECT 60

This is the big one for me, my core focus for the geeky projects I want to have in place before I turn 60 at the end of this year. Yes, it includes everything I've set in stone above but the two major things I'm channelling my energies into are establishing a singular roleplaying campaign for me to run - that will have legs - and a (skirmish) wargame with painted miniatures and terrain that I can play solo or invite friends over to play.

The current top contender for a roleplaying game is the anime fantasy Twilight Sword.

When it comes to skirmish games, for a while I was spreading myself a bit thin by embracing several genres and settings, but I've finally decided that I need to concentrate on just the Western game Dead Man's Hand.

I'd hoped to get started on terrain building and painting last year, but my osteoarthritis put the kibosh on that. This year I will make up for that.

Putting The Fun Back in Defunding The Rich, To Give To The Poor

The trailer for the new "gritty" Death of Robin Hood movie led to a brief conversation with author Phillip Reeve about the paucity of "fun" Robin Hood films that hove closer to the original legends.

This got me thinking about the wonderful vintage TV serial, The Adventures of Robin Hood, which is still a fixture of Talking Pictures TV's Saturday morning line-up years after I first found it on their schedule.

Starring Richard Greene as Robin, this is the show whose theme music became an the immortal earworm:

One of the other reasons I love this rollickin', rebellious, series from the mid-1950s is that I soon realised every episode could supply me with either a top-notch story hook or an interesting non-player-character (often both) for whatever pseudo-Medieval roleplaying game I was noodling with at the time.

After loyally watching the half-hour show, week-in, week-out, for months on Talking Pictures, I eventually invested in the 18-dsic box set, containing all 143 episodes.

My discs

The Adventures of Robin Hood is most definitely a "fun", Boy's Own Adventure take on the legends of Robin and his Lincoln Green-sporting band of Merry Men, and one of my favourite iterations of the outlaws of Sherwood Forest.

The best is, of course, the mid-80's Saturday evening TV show Robin of Sherwood, where Michael Praed and then Jason Connery (after a mystical bit of Time Lord-style regeneration) took the title role in a show that blended arcane magic and myth with traditional tropes to create a truly unique and memorable programme.

This was another show oozing with very British ideas for a particular take on Dungeons and Dragons-kind of gaming.

Robin of Sherwood

Prairie Rascals (2025)

Arkansas, 1871: When Annie Harper's homesteader husband is murdered by desperadoes on the trail of hidden gold, she sets out in search of revenge - and the money. A Western adventure from Bonehill Films, starring Rosanna Lambert, Laura Frances Martin, Mylo Sermon, Amanda Lindseth, Nicholas de Jasay, Louis John Brzozka, Xanthe Baylis and Nick Riddle.

The latest cinematic offering from author and illustrator Philip Reeve - after his 2023 Arthurian offering Gwenevere - Prairie Rascals is a delightful, thrilling 50-minute tale of desperate treasure hunters in the American West.

Trapped in a loveless marriage, Annie Harper (Rosanna Lambert) is more annoyed at being left to bury her murdered ne'er-do-well husband Frank (Louis John Brzozka) than she is saddened by his loss.

Frank robbed the Confederate Army during the Civil War and hid a chest of loot at a secret location.

The psychotic Hannigan Sisters - Cat (Laura Frances-Martin) and Belle (Amanda Lindseth) - have got wind of this and relieve him of his "treasure map" before putting several bullets in Frank and setting his cabin alight.

With the local sheriff (Arran Hawkins) being too afraid of the sisters to raise a posse and pursue them, Annie decides to take the law into her own hands, stealing the sheriff's hat, gun, and horse.

Heading after the wicked sisters, Annie meets romantic, pacifist, greenhorn Charles Doolittle (Mylo Sermon) stripped to his long johns and tied to a tree.

A dilettante from the East, on a "walking tour" of the West with his gruff guide Muldoon (Nicholas De Jasay), Charles was completely unprepared for the likes of the Hannigan Sisters and found himself robbed and trussed up.

Wanting recompense for his predicament, Charles falls in with Annie on the trail of the sisters... and the buried treasure.

As with the majority of Philip Reeve's sci-fi and fantasy novels, Prairie Rascals is dominated by strong female leads, without shying away from the Western genre's requisite gun fights, heel turns and plot twists.

Released this week to the general public via YouTube and filmed in Dartmoor National Park, in England's West Country, Prairie Rascals was written by Philip Reeve and Brian Mitchell, and directed by Philip and his wife, Sarah.

Philip even wrote the lyrics for Ballad of the Prairie Rascals, which plays over the end credits. The music was by Brian Mitchell and vocals by Glen Richardson.

A jolly country-and-western ditty, the ballad serves as a "what happened next..." for the surviving characters and really makes me want a sequel to Prairie Rascals.

With many of the actors here also having appeared in Gwenevere, it's clear that Philip is attracting a great troupe of performers to his Bonehill Films.

Long may they continue to produce such wonderful little movies.

• You can read Philip's "behind-the-scenes" insights on the production here on his blog, Station Zero.

PROJECT 60: What's To Be Read?

Inspired, in large part, by Booktube - and Michael K Vaughan, in particular - I'm setting myself some personal "book reading challenges" for 2026.

In recent years my reading has gotten a bit slack, for various reasons (a combination of health, the easy ubiquity of television, and general laziness), and so I have been inspired to inject a bit of discipline into this important pastime.

The first challenge (seeking to emulate Michael's "reading Superman every day") is to Read Judge Dredd Every Day.

The plan is to start at the first page of the first Complete Case Files (which reprint every Dredd yarn in chronological order) and read on from there. Over the years I have accumulated (as shown above) the Complete Case Files 1 - 20, with some waifs and strays from the later volumes.

So, that should keep me going for a good while. 

The other challenge I'm setting myself is to read the new Conan The Barbarian hardback novels (see below), published by Titan, as well as the Red Sonja novel written by the peerless Gail Simone.

I think this is a solid basis for getting some organised reading going in the New Year.

Hopefully, by then, I will have made significant headway into my backlog of monthly comics (I'm pretty sure I'm six or so months behind on most titles), as well as trimming my pull-list to prevent such scenarios arising again (and for financial and space reasons).

There's also a new Philip Reeve book, Bridge of Storms, due in February, which will obviously jump to the top of my TBR pile the moment it drops on my doormat.

Audiobook-wise, I'm working my way steadily through Stephen King's Dark Tower saga - with diversions to other worlds between each volume - and hope to start book four, Wizard and Glass, in late January/early February.

This will be new territory for me, as I'd originally read the first three books pretty soon after they were published (not that I could remember much past the first, so the audios felt like new stories anyway).

This is an exciting prospect - even if Wizard and Glass is over 27 hours long - as I've oft wondered how the tale of Roland the Gunslinger concludes... and have been very diligent in avoiding spoilers for all these years.

I have a shelf of King books, outside of The Dark Tower they're mainly collections of short stories but I also have The Shining, which may get a look-in next year, depending on how the Conan reading goes.

Stephen King shelf - with my original Dark Tower cassettes (left), with King reading the story

Philip Reeve Takes Us Back To The World of Mortal Engines

Philip Reeve, my favourite author, returns to his incredible World of Mortal Engines next February with Bridge of Storms, a sequel to the last year's fabulous Thunder City.

On a futuristic Earth prowled by mobile cities and airships:

Tamzin Pook and her group of unlikely fighters-turned-friends have managed to make it out of Thorbury alive. Now with a massive, terrifying, armoured, and un-dead Revenant (and its pet kitten) as one of their gang.

For their next mission, Tamzin and her friends head to the city of Museion to help save it from the ferocious predator suburbs that surround it and keep it trapped in the mountain valley known as the Frying Pan.

Here, Tamzin, Max Angmering, Oddington Doom, and Hilly Torpenhow are in for the toughest fight of their lives. But as they battle for the fate of Museion against the terrible predators that surround them, people on board Museion start to die one by one from a traitor within.

They've got to figure out an escape, but every direction looks like a trap.

Featuring an evocative Ian McQue cover, Bridge of Storms is due for publication, by Scholastic Press, on February 12.

On his blog, Station Zero, Philip has also revealed that a third book in this current series has already been written and will, hopefully, be published in 2027.

BOOK REVIEW: Thunder City by Philip Reeve

I realise I'm a bit late in getting round to Thunder City, Philip Reeve's latest book set in the World of Mortal Engines, but the wait didn't dampen my appreciation of this amazing book.

For me - and I love all the books in this world - this was the best since the 2001 original, Mortal Engines.

Thunder City is a vivid - and surprisingly violent - ensemble action-adventure about a plucky group of rebels trying to retake an usurped traction city in the far-distant future of a reshaped Earth.

A postmodern Victorian scientific romance, peppered with sly jokes (the one about a certain tourist attraction in Paris made me laugh out loud) and cinematic references, as well as the usual rich assembly of engaging and interesting characters, Thunder City was a blast from start to finish.

The ending certainly leaves the door open for more stories about the protagonists and I just hope we don't have to wait quite so long for our next visit to the World of Mortal Engines.

Mortal Engines' Author Philip Reeve Takes Us Back To The Old West For His New Film

Arkansas, 1871. When her homesteader husband is murdered by outlaws seeking the gold he stole in the Civil War, homesteader Annie Harper sets out alone to beat them to the place where the treasure is hidden.

In late 2023, my favourite author, Philip Reeve - creator of the peerless Mortal Engines and Railhead books - gave us Gwenevere , a delightful short film encapsulating his love of Arthurian mythology.

This week, his production company - Bonehill Films - released the first trailer for his follow-up film, Prairie Rascals, a short Western, again shot around where he lives in Dartmoor.

In the introduction to the trailer, Philip writes that this is:

"... [a] teaser trailer for our new film Prairie Rascals, starring Rosanna Lambert, Laura Frances Martin, Mylo Sermon, Amanda Lindseth, Nicholas De Jasay, Arran Hawkins, Xanthe Baylis and Nick Riddle. Music by Nick Riddle, vocals by Rosanna Lambert.

"We hope to screen the finished film locally this summer and autumn, and upload it to the Bonehill Films channel next Christmas."

Returning from the Gwenevere cast are Rosanna Lambert taking the lead role of Annie Harper, Queen Gwenevere herself, Laura Frances Martin, as "ruthless desperado" Cat Hannigan, and former Lancelot Arran Hawkins as the cowardly sheriff.

You can read about the film shoot here on Philip's blog - Station Zero - and, last year, on Twitter (aka X), he published a selection of costume design sketches for Prairie Rascals, which you can see below: