Michelle, The Book Critic

List your favorite graphic novels or comics from when you were a child and talk about how you see them as an adult. As a kid I started off reading Sonic The Comic , I think it was a title only on sale in Ireland and the UK. I loved it and I still credit Richard Elson’s Sonic Design as the best Sonic’s ever looked and for teaching me how to draw hands. To look back at it now, I can see it was kind of Sonic meets Judge Dredd and it kind of served as a gateway into 2000AD comics. After some dabbling with them I then discovered Astonishing Spider-man and Wolverine Unleashed . I haven’t thought about Wolverine Unleashed for a while but now that I’m looking back on it, that berserker mode that Wolverine can tap into feels very Zanzi-esque to me. List your favorite graphic novels from last year and why you like them. There was a lot of great books out last year, I’m still trying to catch up on them. One that I’m currently catching up on is Human Target by Tom King and Greg Smallwood and I...

What are some of your favorites (and why): Ha! I could be here all day with this, here’s some,  Movies (Classic or Current) Predator is always a big fav of mine, it’s a monster movie done right.  The secret of Nimh – it’s a such a beautiful film, it’s one fo those kids films that has some really scary sequences in it, it feels like a monster move at times. I can’t watch this enough. The Thing – This is another master class in horror. Devils Backbone – A Del Toro film that I feel should be talked about more. Ninja Scroll – Blew my mind when I first saw this, I didn’t know animation did films like this TMNT – I‘m huge TMNT fan, the 1990 film is one of my all time favs The Hunt –  More Betty Gilpin action movies please Books Andrej Sapowski’s Witcher series – I can’t get enough of fantasy monster hunter stories, this series is one of the very best. Scott Lynch’s The lies of Locke Lamora – “ If he had a bloody gash across his throat and a physiker was trying to sew it up, L...

What movies/television/books/video games inspired GODFELL? A lot of all of the above would be my answer. I sourced out some material for specific reasons but for the most part I have just consumed so much horror, sci-fi and fantasy over the years it’s become part of my mental reference library by osmosis.  As our book is set inside the body of a giant corpse, that was something that I had to set out and find some reference for as what the inside of a body looks like isn’t something that I’m entirely familiar with. I always try to reference from life first and foremost, so I looked up a lot of surgeries and anatomy references for artists. Having done that and pretty much figured out the route I was going to go with the different environments in our book, I looked at games like Gears of War and God of War. They were great reference as they have parts of the game located inside a giant beast of some kind. Scott Wills work on Samurai Jack was a really great source for reference too. T...

It’s impossible to pick my favorite books of all time. I am far too eclectic of a reader (and writer) and hesitant to call any one book my FAVORITE OF ALL TIME™. Instead, I’ve cobbled together a more cohesive list—books that impacted the writing of my contemporary YA debut, Strong Like You. Strong Like You follows 15-year-old linebacker Walker Lauderdale on a desperate search across the Ozarks for his missing father. Along the way, Walker has to unlearn lessons he’s learned about bein’ tough from a man with mixed-up ideas about strength. It’s a take down of toxic masculinity draped over a crime story, draped over a football story. It is, I think, an important lesson for young men. Vulnerability is strength.  WINTER’S BONE, by DANIEL WOODRELL Woodrell is a master of the southern voice. Winter’s Bone’s DNA is all through Strong Like You. Truth be told, I saw the movie before I read the book. And even in its film form, I thought it was one of the most accurate depictions of the Ozar...