Horror, Illustrated

The girlfriend hosted lunch and tea at home for us. Very nice to have these girls in town for an afternoon chat. We zipped straight to the host's bookshelves and rudely rummaged through her current titles.

Conversation somehow centred on graphic novels and an intense discussion of Neil Gaiman's works past and current. We traded tales of how we, separately, caught Amanda Palmer's gigs around the world.

I'm no expert on graphic novels. The last time I called the boys' heroes belonging to the monopoly of 'Mar-Velle', they had collective apoplexy. "Mar-VEL! Marrrrr....verrrrrrr!" Whatever. Kekekekekeke. But I do know my favorites. Like Fables. You can't deny the obvious similarities between Sandman, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns.

We spent the next 2 hours in near silence, eagerly flipping through old favorites and passing them around, Wolves In The Walls, Blueberry Girl, Crazy Hair, Odd and the Frost Giants, Instructions, The Dangerous Alphabet, Interworld, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish and The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch. Our iPads and Kindles were gleefully abandoned on the table, snug inside their jackets. When it comes down to it, nothing, absolutely nothing beats the quaint act of flipping a real, physical page.

The iPod dutifully churned out Bon Iver, Natural Milk Hotel, Gomez, The National, Ben Folds, Amanda Palmer, Lunarin, In Each Hand A Cutlass, The Observatory, Turin Brakes, Noughts & Exes, Two Door Cinema Club, Belle & Sebastian, Deathcab for Cutie, Iron and Wine, Brett Dennen.....the sorts. A perfect afternoon.

Ahhh....good times. Fairytales with a twist. Childhood friends from different schools, we've always read together as children, then teenagers, devouring horror, fantasy, thrillers and literature classics by the dozens; sharing books, homework, essay points, insights and library cards. :) Oddly, our music tastes coincide and from an era of sharing mix-tapes, we now share ummm....stuff on soundcloud and from our iTunes library. Now that we've grown, it's so comforting to still do these sessions with the girls regularly. Can't wait for the next session! We're doing Gris Grimly and Susan Pearson.