nixsight

It’s difficult to be objective about the “West” series, because I know these guys pretty well, and was there when they started discussing this series in the first place.

With that said, I picked up the two most recent books at the Bristol Expo, along with a lovely triple-pack of “Synchrony” with a hand-drawn sketch attached.
Angry Candy, the imprint that prints these books, lives here: angrycandy.co.uk

West #4 – Texas Drama & #5 The Last Bounty
by Andy Cheverton and Tim Keable

These two books are connected – We see how West came to be in Texas at the end of The Last Bounty.

I love Tim’s art, and I love Andy’s writing, and the two of them know West pretty much backwards by now. I happen to know that Andy has a fairly good idea of where all of this is going, so it’s a credit to him that he’s still managing to keep these situations and this character fresh and apparently spontaneous – speaking from experience, any story that you sit with for more then a few months can start to get less flexible, but West still rocks.

If anything, I think the two chaps are doing a better job of these yarns each time. Which is a good thing.

If you don’t have them already, you should definitely make an effort to read West.

Synchrony 1-3
by Andy Cheverton and Various

Synchrony is even more difficult for me to talk about then West, because I feel like I know these stories even better – many of them I saw in first draft a century ago, or at least in the last century.

Course, since then, Andy has met a few fairly awesome artists, and he’s become a fairly bloody good artist in his own right, often evoking Ted Mckeever or Mick McMahon, but bringing his own smoothness and cleanness of line to the mix.

Presented here, then, are three issues of a variety of short stories, some drawn by Mr Cheverton himself, like the one above, and others drawn by award winners and artists extraordinaire, such as Douglas Noble, Jenika Iofredda, Justine Shaw and Oli Smith.

There are text stories here as well. Andy has mentioned that he feels that these pages of text have put off browsing potential buyers in the past, and I think he may be right, but these stories are damn good, and one of them is also hella good. Which is one stage up from “damn”. Young people have told me so.

This book needs to sell out soon, otherwise we might never get more of these lovely little chunks of anthology goodness. Go to the Angry Candy store, linked from the main Angry Candy page, and buy them yesterday.