Comics I Read Last Week - Week 6

Welcome to week six of Comics I Read Last Week, the weekly feature where I talk about comics I read last week. Pretty obvious really. It's supposed to go up on a Wednesday, but sometimes stuff happens. Stuff happened this week and that's why this one's going up on a Thursday.

Stuff happens way too often.

Anything That Loves
Charles “Zan” Christensen, Adam Pruett, Agnes Czaja, Alex Dahm, Amy T. Falcone, Ashley Cook & Caroline Hobbs, Bill Roundy, Ellen Forney, Erika Moen, Jason A. Quest, Jason Thompson, John Lustig, Jon Macy, Josh Trujillo & Dave Valeza, Kate Leth, Kevin Boze, Leanne Franson, Leia Weathington, Lena H. Chandhok, Margreet de Heer, MariNaomi, Maurice Vellekoop, Melaina, Nick Leonard, Powflip, Randall Kirby, Roberta Gregory, Sam Orchard, Sam Saturday, Stasia Burrington, Steve Orlando, Tania Walker, Tara Madison Avery, Mike Sullivan.

It's a good thing the page for Anything That Loves on Northwest Press's website had that list of contributors on it, because I did not fancy typing all those names out myself.

This is how that page describes the book:

From confessional, personal accounts to erotic flights of fancy to undersea identity politics, this collection of comics invites the reader to step outside of the categories and explore the wild and wonderful uncharted territory between “gay” and “straight”.

Yeah, so that.

This is another one I grabbed in digital form on Kickstarter for the massive sum of ten dollars, which is actually one cent more than it currently costs to get a digital copy of it. I feel ever so slightly cheated, but only slightly.

There are two reasons I decided to back this anthology. One is Sam Orchard. The other is Erika Moen. I'm a big fan of both of them.

With both of them on board there was no way I wasn't going to pick this up.

 

Obviously, being fans of theirs already, their work was some of the highlights of the book for me, but other things that really stood out in a very good way included Kate Leth's illustrated lessons (her art style is adorable), Ashley Cook and Caroline Hobbs' tale about merpeople and humans and Lena H. Chandhok's 'Comics Made Me Queer'. That's the comic I grabbed those five panels down below this paragraph from if you're wondering.

Kevin Boze's Platypus is another good one. The last panel (which I cut off along with the preceding four because I'm evil) made me smile.

I really enjoyed Minnie, an ongoing series by Margreet de Heer and there's a full ten pages of that, so that's pretty cool.

There's a neat nine page story by Leia Wethington called Bedfellows. That was definitely another high point and Roberta Gregory's history of her career in comics is a must, whether or not you've ever read anything else by her.

Finally, Amy T. Falcone's conversation with her younger self is kind of brilliant.

There are some other really good comics as well and some that I didn't enjoy quite so much, but overall I think it was ten dollars well spent and I'd definitely suggest that other people check it out too.


Goats: Infinite Typewriters
Jonathan Rosenberg

Goats is a now discontinued webcomic by Mr Jonathan Rosenberg, him who now writes and draws Scenes from a Multiverse. You should click that link and check it out, because it's very good. It is. Really, go open that up in another tab to read after you finish this blog entry.

Infinite Typewriters is the first volume of the Infinite Pendergast Cycle (whatever that is) and the first colour volume of Goats. The comic starts with a Thor worshipping goat having a theological debate with a Satanist chicken. That's about the time the bug-eyed grey aliens point out that people on their planet worship pancakes and then the chicken goes and conveniently explains the previous plotline.

Shortly after that an atheist and an agnostic have a fight about how sure they can be of the non-existence of God,  so  they take the ship belonging to the aforementioned bug-eyed grey aliens and go visit him for answers.

After that it starts getting weird.

There' a hiking trip to creepy abandoned town, an incident at a comic con, a bit of dimension hopping,  multiple Hitlers, some pope outfits and some murders. There's a couple of those.

Oh yes, and the chicken's engineered himself a son who may well be the most dangerous thing in the universe.

It's a good read, but not for the easily offended or the religious and moderately easily offended, but if you don't think that describes you and you like your comics on the wacky side then check it out. It's only $9 from the website and that's not bad for 171 pages of entertaining nonsense. Also if you decide not to read it you'll never know what on earth this panel's about, will you?

Battle Angel Alita Volume 1
Yukito Kishiro

I finally found my missing copy of this on Sunday. I actually started this the week before last, read about twenty pages and then misplaced it for a week and a half. I do stuff like that on an unfortunately regular basis.

The story starts with a man named Daisuke Iko poking around on a scrap heap when he finds the head and partial torso of a very old cyborg. Surprisingly there's still a brain inside and despite being such a wreck it's what's left of the body is still keeping it alive. Iko takes her home, fixes her up and when it turns out she can't remember a thing about her life he names her Alita after his recently deceased cat. As you do.

Battle Angel Alita is, as you might guess from the title a little bit on the violent side. When I say a little bit I mean there are exploding heads and people having limbs ripped off. Okay, those limbs are usually robotic, but you know, it's still not pleasant and quite a few people die.

There's also a baby rescuing dog, which is nice.

There's a weird thing, which I've noticed in anime before of huge characters getting bigger or smaller depending on the page. A character can be nine foot tall one moment, thirty feet the next and twelve feet in the scene after that. Volume one of Battle Angel Alita has that with the main villain. It's weird. I kind of get it, but it's still weird.

Other than that it's pretty good.


Jazz and Jess: Memory Lost
Nate Hammond

Jazz and Jess is probably the longest running, non-defunct zombie webcomic in the whole entire universe. The site is unfortunately down at the moment. Hopefully it'll be back by the time you read this though, so try clicking the link anyway.

Memory Lost is a 12 page prequel comic that doesn't feature any zombies, but does feature Jess, Jazz, a cat and Jazz's imaginary friend, Evil Jazz.

His imaginary friend is a bit weird.

Jazz and Jess is a neat, unique looking comic and worth checking out. The prequel comic's only a pound as well, so well worth picking up if you enjoy the main comic (when it's back up).

Secret Origins Special #1
Neil Gaiman, Mike Hoffman, Kevin Nowlan, Mark Verheiden, Mark Waid, Todd Klein, Pat Broderick, Tom McCraw, Alan Grant, Sam Kieth, Albert DeGuzman, Joe Matt, Bem 89, Augustin Mas, Dick Giordano, Matt Wagner,

Here' one I've got to have read at least half a dozen times now. Released back in 1989, DC's Secret Origins Special is a pretty funky comic. Coming in at 53 pages excluding ads it consists of three individual stories wrapped in the larger story penned by Neil Gaiman about a TV film crew making a program about the costumed villains of Gotham.

The first couple of pages concern Batman trying to warn off the guy in charge. This of course fails. It would have been a really short comic if it didn't.

He wants to get the Joker on camera to give his story. Being a wanted serial killer though he's a little difficulte to find. In fact everyone's a little difficult to find. That is, everyone other than Scarecrow who will only do the show if his segment can be a lecture titled "The Human Fight-or-Flight response re-evaluated  when viewed as intrinsic to theatrical badinage, with specific reference to the latter plays of William Congreve (1670-1729)". For some crazy reason they decline his offer. They've also been banned from Arkham, so things aren't looking too great for them.

The only people they can find to see them throughout the whole thing are a former lackey of the Penguin called Knuckles, Two-Face's wife Grace Dent and some guy they've never heard of who just got out of prison and goes by the name of Eddie Nigma whoever that is.

First up is the interview with Knuckles. This section's written by Alan Grant and is the story of the time Penguin kidnapped a thug during a prison transfer and how it relates to how he became the bitter, hateful and downright dangerous individual he is today and despite what a certain movie might tell you it has nothing to do with being abandoned as a baby and left to be raised by penguins in an abandoned zoo where someone forgot to take the animals with them and yet they somehow managed not to starve to death or maybe it was clowns. Clowns in an abandoned zoo? Clowns need feeding too, right? It's been a while since I've seen it. I might not be remembering it right.

Next up is Gaiman's Riddler story. Nigma, who won't confirm whether or not that's really his name, has been out of jail for a year and is now a reformed character, holding down a regular job as caretaker of Finger Yard, the final resting place of all those wacky giant props and that's where he wants to do his interview.

Of course exactly how reformed he really is, well, that's a matter of opinion. Dressing up in his old costume and reminiscing about the good old days doesn't necessarily bode well. There's a fantastic bit in his interview where he talks fondly about the various villains that were around back in his day. It was all fun and games back then. People didn't get killed by their antics. It was all a bit ridiculous, a bit harmless. It's as much the musings of a fan wondering where the comics he used to enjoy are as anything else. As he says "Did I miss something? Was I away when they changed the rules?"

Next up is Grace Dent's story written by Mark Verheiden where we find out about the time a villain put away by good old district attorney Harvey Dent comes back for revenge after years in self-imposed solitary confinement and bites off slightly more than he expected when he decides to go through Grace to do it. You've got to feel sorry for Grace, still living in the home that the two of them moved into together, still hoping and believing that Harvey will get better and come back one day.

Finally, the issue wrap up with the end of the show and a bit of street reporting, asking various passers by in Gotham what they think about the costumed loonies, including a certain cigarette smoking, blond haired, trench-coat wearing English tourist. Of course there's also a bit of a twist at the end, but I won't spoil it.



Come back next Wednesday where I'll be talking about ponies, magical girls, a badger, a cursed fox and more Batman.

A Couple of Cool Canadian Comic Kickstarters

Y'know what's great about Kickstarter and the like?

Really cheap PDF copies of comics you never would have read otherwise.

Y'know what's also great about Kickstarter and the like?

Being able to help awesome things get made. 

There are a couple of projects I'd particularly like to bring your attention to.

First up, because it's finishing soonest, is Nelvana of the Northern Lights, a project to collect together and reprint every issue of Canada's first female superhero comic.

Created in 1941, Nelvana ran for 31 issues and until now it has never been reprinted. There aren't that many known copies still out  there, because y'know it was the 1940s and you didn't have comic collectors sticking them in little polythene bags with bits of card then storing them in air tight climate controlled, laser equipped, titanium lined stasis units to stop people from breathing on them. 

I might be exaggerating slightly there. 

Anyway, Canadian comic obsessives (I mean that in the nicest way of course) Hope Nicholson and Rachel Richey have acquired the rights to put this comic back in print, every single issue of it and they've tracked down copies of each one, copies whose owners are willing to let them take them out of the climate controlled, laser equipped titanium lined stasis units and scan them.

Ten Canadian dollars will get you a reprint of the only colour issue of the comic, fifteen will get you a digital copy of the complete Nelvana collection and thirty will get you a nifty processed wood version of it (also known as a book).

There are also a bunch of artists who you may well have heard of drawing new art specially for backers, so go check that one out. It looks cool.

The second cool Canadian comic Kickstarter is for Jonathan Dalton's A Mad Tea Party, which has absolutely nothing to do with current day US politics before you ask.

As well as sporting a nifty collection of hats (please watch the video above for nifty collection of hats) Mr. Dalton is the creator of several comics including this really neat sci-fi comic called A Mad Tea Party, which is still not about US politics but is available to read online here.

I'll steal the description for the comic from the Kickstarter page, because his description is way better than mine.

"A Mad Tea-Party is the story of Connie and Matilda Sakura- two perfectly ordinary girls who just happen to be genetically engineered. Their parents fought a war against giant alien robots and saved the Earth from being invaded. But now it's the girls' turn to deal with the post-war political fallout. Connie has been kidnapped by teenage revolutionaries and Matilda has to rescue her, even though she's the one who doesn't have any useful genetic enhancements.

A Mad Tea-Party is a young adult book, so it is suitable for most readers, especially if you like complex stories with unconventional protagonists."

The bit he forgot to include there is that it's also really very good.

For a piddly little seven Canadian dollars you can get all 288 pages of A Mad Tea Party in digital form, plus Chop Suey #1 and #2 and the brilliant Lords of Death and Life. I have a print copy of that one sitting on my desk and it's looking lonely. I think it needs a friend. I'm thinking A Mad Tea-Party will be a good friend for it, so I've picked the slightly more expensive, but still a bargain $22 dead tree option (including free shipping to any inhabited place in the known universe). Have a look at the Kickstarter page and consider throwing some money at it so my lonely little comic can have a buddy to sit next to.

Comics I Read Last Week - Week 5

Welcome to Comics I Read Last Week, where I talk about comics that I read last week. It's pretty simple really.

First up...

88 Blues
Nam Dong Yoon (Translated by Kim Hyun Sook)

88 Blues is another one I got through The Whole Story and I think the opening page sums the comic up pretty well:

"In Korea the current generation of college students face fierce competition for jobs. Even when they finish their schooling, many will be lucky to find jobs that pay $1000 a month. After taxes and deductions, that leaves them living off of $880 per month. This is the 88 Generation. This is their story."

Where Son of a Father felt a little hit and miss to me, I found 88 Blues much more entertaining.

It's a pretty short one, 27 pages including covers and title page, but it's really good and think the shortness works for it.

The Real Ghostbusters #108, 119, 124, 135, 136, 137, 140 
John Marshall, Dave Harwood, Glenn Dakin, Brian Williamson, Gordon Robson, Stephen Baskerville, Lesley Dalton, Stuart Bartlett, Deborah Tate, Dan Abnett, Jinny McKenzie, Anthony Larcombe, Steve White, Stu B, Stuart Place, Dave Hine, John Freeman, Zed, John Burns, Anthony Williams, Glib, Stuart Place, Phil Gascoine, Spolly, Emma Marshall, John Carnell, Tony O'Donnell, Ian Rimmer, John Carnell, Hel, Lynn White,

That is a big damn list of people, but I suppose that's what you get with seven issues with only three of them being consecutive. At least they're all from 1990 and 1991. That's something at least.

Like the Slimer! comics I mentioned last week these were published by Marvel in the UK and Now Comics in the US. They even have a half page version of the very Beano like strips from the Slimer! comic and issue 140 contains a five page Slimer! (complete with the ! in the header image on the first page), with appearances by two of Slimer's supporting cast from that title.

Other than that each issue has one or two longer comics, a prose story, a usually clearly made up feature called Dead True, a one page article about a real haunting or two, a summary  from the Ghostbusters case files and a section called Spengler's Spirit Guide, which varies between a massive outpouring of terrible puns and ridiculous wordplay...

"Doctor Sigmund Frayed, the

noted psychologist (it says

here in my notes), analysed

Glossop's case and told him

that basically what he had

was a leather-effect

Sampsonite valise with built

-in castors and towing strap."

...and a heavily Douglas Adams inspired piece on the nature of wishes. There' also a feature in some of them called Winston's Diary. I'll  assume I don't have to explain what that one is.

Issue 136 is an odd one. The main story, titled The Return of the Frightful Four, features the return of three of the Frightful Four and their clever scheme to release their fourth member from the containment facility. Where things get weird is when one of the team try tearing a hole in reality leading into the containment facility and instead comes out on another page of the comic.

To get out of the scene they're in the characters climb right out of the panel and into another, which is already odd and fourth wall breaking, but it gets odder, because they don't just jump around in the story. They end up elsewhere in the issue as well, appearing in Winston's Diary and the Spirit Guide. It's pretty funky.

Other stories include a dead tennis player turning up several years late for Wimbledon, a wishing well that actually works, a mysterious door that appears in someone's house, a party in the underworld, an inter-dimensional portal that just happens to be in the Ghostbusters' fire station, a sleepwalking spectre, a possessed bicycle, a very quickly scuppered revenge scheme by the son of Gozo, son of Goza (y'know, the one who unleashed a giant marshmallow on New York) and the appearance of a couple of ageing in superheroes, one of which looks more than a little like the Question.

They're fun comics and I wish I still had more of them.

Frank: The Comic Strip
Ryan Estrada

Frank the Goat is the official mascot of Live Journal. Once upon a time Ryan Estrada wrote and drew his official comic. The comic's in four chapters. Chapter one, Ballard tells the tale of how Frank got his job in t he form of a song performed by Frank himself.

I like the fact that this chapter's drawn in two different styles. Current day Frank is drawn in the same style as the other chapters, while scenes from the past are done in a very different one.

Chapter two is all about Frank's fancy date with a sheep called Meme (pronounced Mimi). She has a very odd way of talking. Chapter three is a good old fashioned murder mystery. Seven characters who (mostly) don't know each other are invited to dinner only to find that their host is dead, but who did it? Finally in chapter four Frank (and a bunch of characters from the other chapters) have to deal with a cursed tag.

It's a really neat comic and you can read it here.

Now, I did mention last week that I'd be covering volume one of Battle Angel Alita as well. Well, that was the plan last Wednesday when I knew where it was. See, I'd only read twenty or so pages at the time and, well, um... I lost it. I'm sure I'll find it again though.

Anyway, come back next week for more reviews hopefully including that temporarily misplaced copy of Battle Angel Alita.

Comics I Read Last Week - Week 4

Welcome to week four of my weekly blog feature "Comics I Read Last Week" in which I talk about the comics I read last week. Pretty simple really.

Bone Volume 2
Jeff Smith

I talked about the first volume of Bone back during the first one of these. I resisted the urge to read the second volume straight after, seeing as it likely won't be until the end of the year before I get to read the rest and I wanted to make it last at least a bit.

Bone is a lot of fun. The protagonists are fun. The monsters are fun, both genuinely threatening and fantastic comic relief at the same time. The cow race is brilliant. The whole thing is just a great read and a whole lot of fun.


Plagued
Ryan Estrada

Cartoon Coup
Ryan Estrada

There's a bit of dialogue in an episode of Jonathan Creek where a publisher finds out that the author she's talking to didn't make Jonathan up, but has really been working alongside him to solve murders. The moment she finds out that Jonathan is a real person he's suddenly a much less believable character.

I'm not entirely sure that Ryan Estrada is a real person. I mean, I've interacted with him on Twitter, he's commented on one of my comics,  but I'm still not entirely convinced that he isn't a character out of a series of ever more over the top comedy movies. The kind that start off semi-believable but by the third instalment the main character's found himself sleeping in the open during a typhoon and accidentally entering a foreign country as an illegal alien.

Did you know that Ryan Estrada has slept out in the open through two typhoons and once entered Burma illegally? Like I said, I'm not sure if I really, truly believe that Ryan Estrada is real.

Plagued by Ryan Estrada is the true story of how he survived a disaster that mostly existed within his own mind and also the true story of a man who survived a real one not long before that. It features a plague of insects, frogs falling from the sky and incident with a naked man running around in the middle of the night. And it's a true story.

Cartoon Coup is a collection of different stories including those two typhoon incidents, the time he set himself on fire, the time he found himself in the middle of a corporate coup orchestrated by crazy people he'd never met before, the time a homeless man offered to kill for him and the first time he ever got paid for producing comics.

Ryan Estrada is a character out of a series of increasingly ridiculous comedy movies, only the movies are comics and non-fiction.

They're also very good.

You can check out his comics over at ryanestrada.com.

Duckula #5-7
Various (uncredited)

Yep, more stories about the vegetarian vampire duck. I think I said pretty much all there is to say about the comic as a whole last week. These three issues are very much more of the same. There's one story in issue six that's a bit disappointing, like someone had a great idea for a story, didn't really know where to go with it, but went ahead and wrote it anyway.

The Marlin the Magician story that started in issue one wraps up in issue seven, which is lucky really because my copy of issue eight has been missing for years, though I do have issues nine to twelve still., so that's good.

Dennis the Menace annual 1976
Various (uncredited)

This book is old and smells funny.

Finally here's one that's seven years older than I am. I can't remember if I got this one for a pound in a charity shop or for 50p in a different charity shop. Either way it was a bargain.

Dennis seems to have stayed largely the same since he was created back in 1951 and many of the strips in this book could easily be redrawn for publishing today with very few changes. The art however...

Yeah, some of the art is interesting to say the least.

It's basically what you'd expect from Dennis and Gnasher with the exception that almost every strip ends with a panel of Dennis getting hit with a slipper. Dennis's dad become a much better character when the editors decided he couldn't just hit Dennis whenever he thought he'd done something wrong. He had to start actually thinking when it came to punishments and that always makes for a much more interesting strip.

Bizarrely in one story Dennis questions why his dad bought a dog lead, because they don't have a dog. They don't have a dog? Did he forget poor old Gnasher?

Dennis is Gnasher's favourite person in the world and he forgot he has a dog.

Either this strip is from before Gnasher was introduced in 1968 or that's just mean.

Slimer! #9, 12 and 13
Hilarie Staton, Howard Bender, Michael Hawkins, John Stangeland, Joseph Allen, Tammy Daniel, Michele Mach, Katherine Llewellyn, Tony Caputo, Gordon Morison, Dan Nakrosis, Mark Braun,

Slimer! was published by Marvel UK in the UK and Now Comics in the US. These issues are all from 1990 and each one contains one eight to nine page story, two short stories and an unrelated single page comic called The Daily Howl about a newspaper by the same name staffed by various horror movie monsters with help from Douglas the tea boy, the one and only human staff member.

Being a go-fer is a dangerous job.

The Daily Howl and all but one of the six shorter Slimer comics come across a bit DC Thompson-like to me. There's something very Beano and Dandy about them. Obviously that's not a complaint, because I love those comics. It's these pages, and a spot the difference where Slimer has great big piles of bangers and mash that look like they came straight out of a Bash Street Kids strip, that make me think that it was actually Marvel UK as opposed to Now who were responsible for this comic.

None of these comics are at all weird.

Actually, I do have one complaint about one of those stories and it's, well is it just me that thinks that maybe someone should have thought twice about putting in a strip with this as its punchline?

If I'd asked you to guess where I'd be most likely to find dodgy and kind of offensive stereotypes, a 1990s spin-off comic about a wacky sidekick ghost or a 1970s collection of strips about a juvenile delinquent would you have guessed the wacky sidekick ghost? I know I wouldn't.

The three main stories involve Slimer going up a pack of wolf ghosts, a dodgy looking pair trying to collect Slimer's slime to sell as engine coolant (they discovered it's cooling properties when one of them accidentally drove through him during a ball game) and a slightly Garfield-esque story about Slimer eating too much.

The other story is a bit of an oddity. It's the first part of a tie in with the first movie, in which Walter Peck (Yes, the man who according to the film version of Peter Venkman has no dick) is trying to ruin everything for the Ghostbusters again. Now that it's been thoroughly proven that ghosts are real and he's an imbecile he is trying to get them shut down for keeping a pet ghost around. That guy is really an arse.

What's weird about it is that it's as much a bit of prose as it is a comic. As much of the story is told in the paragraphs of text at the top of the pages as is in the actual panels. It's a really weird half hearted way of doing a comic. 

And on an unrelated note is it me or does one of the kidnappers in this panel look a bit like Andy Capp?

Join me again next Wednesday for some more Ghostbusters related stuff, volume 1 of Battle Angel Alita, 88 Blues by Nam Dong Yoon and whatever else I feel like reading between now and Sunday.

Pound World Sell The Coolest Toys

When people mention pound shops and toys you might picture dolls with their faces printed in the wrong places, toy guns that look like they'll slice a child's hand up if they hold them,  little plastic houses with furniture twice the height of one of the floors, clone action figures in entirely inappropriate metallic colours, superhero merchandise that looks about as legitimate as a nine pound note and plastic horses whose boxes claim they're ponies and whose heads have fallen off and are rolling around loose in those lying boxes.

And that would all be entirely fair because I've seen all of those things myself, but there are also the totally brilliant toys as well. No really, there are.

This lot for example:

A bunch of cool stuff.

That lot are all pretty awesome and came from my local Pound World and only half of them only cost 50p.

Zoobles!
Zoobles are cool. They're little balls that turn into brightly coloured animals or little brightly coloured animals that turn into balls. One or the other.

They don't look like a whole lot when you take them out of their packets, but tap them against that little magnetic base their heads pop up and you get...

Aren't they cute? ^-^
One weird thing though, Redford (the one in the middle) is blue according to the packet, but the actual Redford there is purple. That's weird, right? I know the figures come in different colours in different sets. Maybe the individual packets have different colours as well and it's just coincidence that the other two match their packaging colours?

Only one way to find out!

Nope! The Redfords have just been packed in the wrong packets. Maybe that's how these ones ended up in Pound World?

Anyway we have...

Buzzabelle!

Harry! (I'm totally going to get Harry in some more colours.)

And of course Redford.

Aren't they cute?
There are eight in this wave. I am so getting the other five.

Next up something I normally see for about £2 each in most stores, but are currently in Pound World on a 2 for a £1 deal.

Littlest Pet Shop figures are adorably cute, so it's pretty obvious I'd be a fan of them. Unfortunately in this case I got the same one twice, but hey, who's going to complain about getting two Tweety-birds for a pound?

"We tought we taw a puddy tat!"

You do find some odd things in pound stores though. Tie in toys for the French release of the Magic Roundabout movie?

Check!

I once read that The Magic Roundabout wasn't so much translated from French to English as a new writer sat down and just made up new dialogue to go with what they were seeing.

I'd like to think that when The Magic Roundabout movie hit France they returned the favour. Hell that's apparently what happened in the US and the UK and US speak the same language! Mostly.

Last up some Hello Kitty toys!

I like Hello Kitty toys. I'm a big fan of Hello Kitty toys. If you were feeling charitable you might call me a collector of Hello Kitty toys. For the less charitable amongst you, hoarder might also be an appropriate term to use.

I also like constructable things, though the buildable Hello Kitty figures are a little disappointing in that regard. None of the pieces from these two figures are compatible with each other, not even the bows. How am I going to make new outfit combinations from all my duplicates if I can't swap parts!?

Oh well, they're only 50p each, so I can't really complain.

"Now you go over there and I'll photograph you pretending to cook."

So to sum up, Pound World have cool toys and you should go have a poke around in there occasionally, specially if you like small, cute things.