Guest Post by Steve McHugh, author of Crimes Against Magic

I would like to welcome Steve McHugh. Thank you for posting and I look forward to more of your work.

L E White

********************************************************************************

This is actually my first ever guest blog post, so I was umming and ahing about what in the world to talk about for ages before actually putting pen to paper.

And then inspiration (or more likely one of my daughter’s toys) hit me, and I had an idea. You see, whenever I’ve ever read an interview with a writer, one question always seems to come up—what books influenced you?

Now, for the most part, these take the form of the classics: John Steinbeck, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen King, Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, et al—basically the great writers. But most interviews leave off one very important group of books, Comics. So, I thought I’d correct that and go through which comics have influenced my writing over the years. Books I can’t recommend enough to anyone with even a passing interest in the medium.

Preacher (Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon) – The first will probably be the most well-known of everyone on this list. Preacher is about Jesse Custer, a Preacher who is merged with Genesis (the product of merging an angel and a demon) that gives him the power of the Word of God, which makes people obey him. It’s incredible, funny, moving and utterly insane.  It should also be required reading for anything even thinking about writing. But it’s not for the easily offended.

Y: The Last Man (Brian K.Vaughan and Pia Guerra) – Yorick and his monkey Ampersand are the last only male mammals on earth to survive an unknown plague. The story is not only about why the survived, but how they can reverse the plague. It’s an excellent series.

Usagi Yojimbo (Stan Sakai) – This one about a Samurai Rabbit. Yes, you read that right. All of the characters are anthropomorphic animals, which replace humans in a 17^th century Japan setting. It’s a fantastic book with artwork that really is quite beautiful and captures both the action scenes and the quiet moments with a clarity that a lot of comics can’t manage.

The Authority (Grant Morrison and Bryan Hitch) – The Authority gained a lot notice for both its incredible artwork as well as the violence it showed. It’s about a team of superheroes that consider themselves a sort of protectors of humanity, but they went about protecting it by killing everyone who crossed them. It’s a very dark, funny and at times touching book. The Millar/Quietly era that took over afterwards is also excellent, but nowhere near as good as the original.

Spider-Man (Dan Slott and various) – The first well-known superhero comic on the list is Spider-man. Dan Slott writes the best spider-man for the last twenty years. Everything he does is incredible. There’s a lot of graphics of his work out there, but Spider-Island is probably a high-point for me. When everyone in New York is given the powers of spider-man. And it all goes very wrong from there. Long may Dan’s reign continue.

Batman (Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo) – Batman is another Superhero that everyone’s heard of. Scott Snyder’s take is considerably darker than most, and combines the use of horror to make a book that leaves you breathless with every issue. I wrote about this on my blog a few months ago and I think the sentiments I had then still stand:

“This is a mainstream superhero comic which genuinely does something compelling. The writing and art have formed a perfect match, and that’s a rare thing these days.”

So that’s it from me. Let me just thank Leonard for stealing his blog for a post. It was a pleasure to be here.

Steve McHugh can be found at https://stevejmchugh.wordpress.com and his first book Crimes Against Magic, an Urban Fantasy set in modern-day London with Historical flashbacks to early fifteenth century France, can be downloaded from Amazon now.

Advertisement