Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Thrills and white poppies

    Thrills and white poppies

    It’s subtly positioned and easy to miss, but beneath the volume number, and below Rebellion’s logo on the spine, on each volume of this beautifully re-issued Charley’s War omnibus, is a white poppy. Nobody reading this could possibly miss Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun’s intentions, but the old Titan Books editions had the traditional red Read more

  • Realistically surreal

    Realistically surreal

    Is the reality we construct for ourselves from our sensory inputs an orderly one in which every phenomenon is readily explicable, and chains of causation are visible, like the universe described by science? Or is it a confusing one in which things happen for mysterious reasons, and odd symbolic resonances seem to determine actions and Read more

  • Fear of the unknown

    Fear of the unknown

    I only ever read H.P. Lovecraft’s work in a haphazard manner, and my familiarity with his oeuvre has owed as much to Sandy Petersen’s 1980s role-playing game Call of Cthulhu as it has to the few stories I read before diving into this mammoth volume. His imaginary milieu, the so-called ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ is a peculiarly Read more

  • A videogame: how sad

    A videogame: how sad

    I’ve always run a bit behind the times with video games, although I’ve been a fan since the early 80s, so it’s very unusual for me to have played through a state of the art game less than six months after release. As I’ve also just recently emerged from the Mac gaming ghetto, I haven’t Read more

  • Generous manoeuvres in the cosmic dark

    Generous manoeuvres in the cosmic dark

    Juice Aleem has an inclusive attitude to his cosmic voyage. There seems very little reason for anyone seeking to revalue the markers of difference by which they have been excluded to invite white people along for the ride, but Juice Aleem makes very clear that they, along with a list that includes more or less Read more

  • Unofficial beauty

    Unofficial beauty

    Pingu, a TV series I enjoyed entirely as an adult, has a special place in my heart similar to that reserved for the cultural artifacts of my childhood. For one thing it was on TV when the spawn was small; for another it has a brilliantly infectious, funky theme tune (that loops in about five Read more