that's my john

I FINALLY HAVE THE HELLBLAZER TRADES I WANTED!

( pix )

I have literally wanted these books for eleven years. But for whatever reasons, DC held off from collecting them as trades till...pretty recently, I think. The most recent one (far right on the bottom pic) wasn't even published till January this year.

(Wikipedia still says on the HB main page that Jenkins' run lasted four years and was the longest one that remained uncollected. Obviously, that's no longer true, since I have most of it on my sofa now).

I don't know if Paul Jenkins fell out with DC, or if DC just thought nobody would buy them (since it's not the start or the finish of John's story, and I'd go as far as to say Jenkins is not a popular writer like Garth Ennis or Grant Morrison*). But whatever the reasoning was, while everything else got collected into trades, his stuff didn't. Me and hmpf were convinced at one point in time that they never would be. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong about something.

Anyway. I am very giddy right now.

I also now own over half of Hellblazer in trades. Now to get the other half! (Though I'm not in a rush for them. As long as they don't go out of print in the meantime).

~

I've been playing Nethack for the last couple of days. It's oddly addictive. I don't care about repeatedly dying because I'm rubbish at video games ANYWAY, and I'm used to this from my childhood because oh man no save points, no extra lives, no nothing.

I thought the ASCII graphics would annoy me, but I actually find them kind of charming, especially now I've played a bit more and got used to them.

I don't really have much to say about it. It's just a nice game to waste time on (probably to the horror of everyone who plays it "properly").

~

*YMMV, of course. I've gone off Garth Ennis as the years have gone by, and I swing back and forth on Grant Morrison all the time.