SOUNDTRACK: WALLER NOT WELLER blog.
WallerNotWeller found me when I reviewed Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All. I went to his site and I adore it! He writes some great reviews of concerts, CDs and singles. His current project is the best singles and discs of 1983. But while he’s working on that, he’ also reviewing a bunch of concerts that he’s been to recently.
What I love best about this site is his amazing breadth of appreciation for music. There’s been a flurry of activity as he is completing the Top 50 list. And, since I subscribed by email, I love that my Inbox has been inundated with reviews of this diverse collection: AGNETHA FALTSKOG (She of Abba fame), ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN, MINUTEMEN, MISFITS, The B-52’S, DAVID BOWIE, DANIEL JOHNSTON, THE CARPENTERS, JOHNY CASH & AC/DC. Now that’s breadth!
His reviews are a bit more comprehensive than mine (which I think means he points out a number of negatives that I don’t), but he and I see eye to eye on a lot of these discs. It’s quite a treat. And, he’s British, so his viewpoint is slightly different than mine…it’s a good eye-opener!
[READ: May 23, 2010] Wet Moon 4
With each new volume of this series, Campbell changes the appearance of his characters more and more. Most of the characters now have softer features and big round eyes. I find it more and more disconcerting, especially since the thing I loved about the book was the utter realism of his characters.
Fortunately the bodily features of the characters haven’t changed: they’re still believably shaped and realistically drawn, it’s just the faces are so weird (Trilby is so soft-looking now, oh and Cleo has a mohawk!). But at least the look is consistent throughout the volume.
So Wet Moon, the town, continues to thrive with this strangely intense goth subculture. Yet this volume seems to introduce an “outsude” world too. There’s a woman who recoils at two gay men sitting in her booth at a coffee shop. There’s even talk of homophobes attacking gays in the area. And here I thought that Wet Moon was an idyllic place where all kinds of subculture thrives happily.
In volume 4, the big news is that Meiko returns (although we have no idea where she was or what happened to her). As far as other continuing story lines, Malady is seen with a whole host of “Cleo eats it” fliers, yet it is unclear if she is making them or just “using” them. And we havea couple more instances of Myrtle being, well, more violent than not.
In other news, Cleo, Trilby (and her man) and Mara head down to Comic Con. Myrtle desperately wanted to go but she was unable to accompany them (while Cleo didn’t want to go at all, but went as a favor to Trilby). And there the unexpected happens: Mara kisses Cleo! How will this impact the Myrtle thing and the friendship thing?
Meanwhile, Audrey gets a gig babysitting. The kids turn out to be cousins of Fall (a peripheral character that we’re seeing more and more of). Fall takes off, the cousins get into the beer and Audrey has a shit time of things.
This volume is given over a lot to journals: Cleo’s handwritten one, Mara’s livejournal and Audrey’s own blog. And as such, this volume explores emotion in greater depth than previous ones.
This doesn’t detract from the art (or the action) though. As the volume nears the end, we meet Unknown, Wet Moon’s own vigilante! She is masked, she kicks ass, and she saves Cleo from a mugger. (There’s also a ghost and a wild boar roaming about, but they take a back seat to Unknown).
I don’t know how long this series is meant to run, but there’s no way it will be tidied up in the next volume. So no doubt I’m in the position of reading 5 volumes very quickly and then having to wait wait wait until Volume 6 comes out. But I’ll be there, waiting.
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