But Here is a Video of my Kitten to Compensate…

The point is, I will definitely be doing something about this early next year, I promise. In the mean time, here’s a ridiculously stupid but funny cat video featuring my kitten, Noomi. Clearly she thinks she’s either a jack-in-the-box or is auditioning for some B-movie zombie horror.

But it’s been a pretty good year for music. I made a few new discoveries and a few artists far exceeded my expectations with their latest offerings.

So here’s a rundown of my top 10 albums of 2010. Agree? Disagree? Stuff I haven’t mentioned that you think is worth a listen? Let me know.

10. The Drums – The Drums

Breezy, indie guitars meets Cure-like beats and melodies with more than a passing nod to the Beach Boys. The surf-pop sound is underpinned by some (slightly) dark lyrics, but the whole thing is like sunshine to the ears. Very cool, very listenable. The kind of band that will probably blow up like Vampire Weekend once the big festivals come around next summer. They’ve already attracted a loyal following and listening to this album it’s hardly surprising.

Top tracks: Let’s Go Surfing, Forever and Ever Amen, Me and the Moon

9. Kate Nash – My Best Friend Is You

Kate Nash. Jubilant, triumphant, Kate Nash. I know, that doesn’t really sound like her, does it? Everyone says she sounds like she works on the tills at Tescos. I liked Foundations and Nicest Thing off her first album, but found the rest pretty weak. But this offering is the total opposite. She’s really come on in her songwriting and the whole shebang opens with the fantastically uplifting Paris which, oddly, sounds like it could be on a Sigur Ros album given its drums, bells and general jangle.

There’s enough diversity to keep it interesting too, Doo-Wah-Doo is retro girl-group all over, while I’ve Got a Secret is the sort of hispter pop that wouldn’t be out of place on a Le Tigre album. Okay, so maybe the subject matter is a bit samey, relationships not going well etc, but loud pianos dwindling to quiet guitars and some really tight melodies serve it well. It’s a massive improvement on her first album, ironically given that was the one with all the hype and this one has been a bit of a sleeper. Still, give it a go and prepare to be surprised.

Top Tracks: Later On, Paris, Doo-Wah-Do

8. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

I’m not sure why it came as such a surprise that Kanye’s latest is so brilliant. I know everyone made a big deal about the fact he lost his mind and interrupted some chick’s speech at the MTV awards and then had all his teeth replaced with diamonds or whatever. But he’s always been nuts and that’s never effected his output before.

Dark Twisted Fantasy isn’t on a par with The College Dropout, but then pretty much nothing is in my eyes, so…

He’s still got that amazing ability to create beats and rhymes that are instantly accessible even if he’s telling us all how utterly brilliant he is for the hundredth time that day. Only slight criticism is that most tracks clock in at way over 5 minutes when we’ve pretty much got the idea after 4. Still, he’s not short of things to say, so I can live with it.

Top tracks: Power, All of the Lights, Runaway

7. Skunk Anansie – Wanderlustre

When I was about 14 I adored Skunk Anansie. They were rock with massive catchy hooks and a transcendent female vocalist. And then they suddenly just stopped making music.

I’m still not entirely sure how this album managed to come out without me hearing about it, but there you go, I guess everyone was making a comeback this year. And in some ways it sounds like they’ve never been away, powering into the opener God Loves Only You with their usual unapologetic energy.

But there’s something a little more refined about Wanderlustre than previous albums. Maybe it’s the 11 year gap since Post Orgasmic Chill that’s given them a bit more perspective and focus. Because this album knows exactly what it’s doing and where it’s going from start to finish. Skin’s voice never fails, pomposity and gimmicks never threaten to appear. There’s only soulful vocals, blissful melodies and some out and out rock. I cannot believe that a band from the 90s can still sound every bit as fresh today without making any compromises. I could be getting sentimental, but I felt every bit as excited hearing this for the first time as I did back in 1995 when Paranoid & Sunburnt came out.

Top tracks: You’re Too Expensive For Me, Over the Love, Feeling the Itch

6. Tinie Tempah – Disc-Overy

I kind of wish that Dizzee had evolved into making music like this, rather than opting so much for whatever mainstream dance-pop anthem he’s churning out at the moment.

Anyway, 2010 seemed to usher in a new wave of homegrown grime-that-isn’t-grime-anymore, hip-hop-that-isn’t-actually-hip-hop-so-we’ll-just-call-it-urban-like-that-actually-is-a-genre musketeers that took over the charts with names that sounded like cartoon characters.

Tinie Tempah is by far the best in terms of tunes. And he rhymes Scunthorpe with concorde, what’s not to love? The album’s chock full of chart success but some of the non-singles like Snap have the best flow to them. He even got that one from Destiny’s Child that isn’t Beyonce to guest on a track. World domination beckons.

Top tracks: Pass Out, Snap, Written in the Stars

5. Marina and the Diamonds – The Family Jewels

I think this could be the most underrated pop album of the year. As even though critics got behind the quirkiness, it hardly set the chart alight.

But I found the whole thing instantly enjoyable from start to finish with witty, engaging, and occasionally ironic lyrics that instantly lift it above all the fluff that pads out the chart at the moment.

It’s not that Marina has an outstanding voice, although it’s very good. Or that she’s saying anything staggeringly different (she’s not a robot, she wants to be successful, remember her name, damnit!) but the winks and nudges are sly rather than annoying, and the synth and pianos work well together.

There’s not a dud out of the 13 tracks, it’s an amazingly consistent and intelligent debut that deserves to be heard by a far wider audience. A nice alternative to Florence and Paloma and Lily and all the other female singer-songwriters out there. Marina clearly wants to be mainstream, just on her own terms.

Top tracks: Shampain, Hollywood, Oh No!

4. Rihanna – Loud

Loud is definitely my favourite Rihanna album. I found Good Girl Gone Bad to be a solid effort, while last year’s Rated R was the opposite, patchy and, dare I say it, boring. But then she was trying to be all mature and stuff.

Thankfully, Loud’s gone back just to being about catchy tunes and is much more fun. Drake (this guy is everywhere this year, but he’ll always be Jimmy from Degrassi to me) features on possibly my favourite song of the year, What’s My Name? While Cheers (drink to that) manages to sample Avril Lavigne (?) of all people, making her sound cooler than ever before.

And when an album is confident enough to close with the amazing and haunting Love The Way You Lie (part II) you know it’s packing an impressive track-listing to fill the space in between. The only weak track is probably the meh opener S&M. The rest is unskippable

Top tracks: What’s My Name, Skin, Love The Way You Lie

3. Mark Ronson & the Business Intl – Record Collection

I don’t know if it’s because it’s our way to knock anyone that gets too successful, but there’s a weird backlash against Mark Ronson that seems to bear no relation to the quality of his output. There were murmurs of it when he won the best male gong at the Brits having put out an album of covers (shock, horror!) that he hadn’t even bloody sung on (gasp!)

Anyway, the point is, Ronson is damn talented, with or without a big brassy horn section, which apparently has become his trademark. Or perhaps that too is just lazy journalistic shorthand for describing his production. Cos there’s way more hip-hop and 80s pop in Record Collection than trumpets and stuff.

It’s a varied bag in terms of sound, with loads and loads of famous people guesting all over the vocals and writing. But instead of sounding like a frenetic mis-match, the whole thing hangs together sublimely. And it has the best opening four minutes on any record I’ve heard this year, so bonus points for that.

Top tracks: Bang Bang Bang, Somebody To Love Me, The Bike Song

2. Nicki Minaj – Pink Friday

Rihanna and Kanye return the favour and feature on Nicki’s debut -although she’s actually been kicking around for a couple of years now with mix tapes and whatnot. At times her voice has that helium tinged cartoonish tone that could almost be annoying. Almost. But then she unleashes on something like Roman’s Revenge and you’ve got a brutal battle up against Eminem at his most aggressive.

Drake’s on this too in the awesome Moment 4 Life, as is Will.i.Am, although I haven’t decided if Check It Out is kitsch genius or just cheap and annoying yet. Depends on my mood.

She’s got a decent set of pipes on her when she wants to be softer, like in Save Me and Right Thru Me, and the beats are impeccable throughout the whole 13 tracks. Even when Kanye’s practically phoning it in on Blazin’, the mix is addictive.

She’s probably not going to be everyone’s cup of tea as the chart stuff is counterbalanced by some pretty ballsy bravado that hip-hop usually only accepts coming from blokes. But I love marmite and I love this. Perfect production, no filler.

Top tracks: Save Me, Roman’s Revenge, Blazin’

1. Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan – Hawk

I’ve decided that this is my favourite album of the year and I can’t even really describe why. Isobel Campbell is the cellist from Belle & Sebastian and Mark Lanegan has sung with Queens of the Stone Age and Screaming Trees. So basically it’s like chalk and cheese, her all soft high whispered vocals and him American smoky-bar gruffness.

But this album, while not being about chart tunes and standout singles, is a cohesive and beautiful journey from start to finish. There’s melancholy in their gentle duet on opener We Die and See Beauty Reign. Then we move into some bluesy guitar as Mark declares “You won’t let me down again” while Isobel breathily harmonises in the background.

It’s an album of gems with a strong alt-folk come blues streak running through it. In the middle lies Come Undone, tender, yearning and unashamedly ballad-esque.

Hawk is a classy and wholly understated affair that deserves to be listened to in its entirety, which I can’t help but do every time I put it on. So I suppose that’s a good enough reason to make it my favourite album of the year. Simply, it’s the one I have listened to the most and enjoyed every second of, every time.

Top tracks: No Place To Fall, Come Undone, Lately

The Nearly But Not Quites – Honourable mentions to those that didn’t quite make the cut:
MIA- /\/\/\Y/\
Deftones – Diamond Eyes
Hurts – Hurts
Bombay Bicycle Club – Flaws
The xx- The xx
My Chemical Romance – Danger Days
Robyn- Body Talk pt1 and 2
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
Katy Perry – Teenage Dream

So, in no particular order…

1. Locas – Jaime Hernandez

I can’t remember when exactly I first heard about Los bros Hernandez, but I have to say that Love & Rockets, the ongoing comic book the three brothers write and draw is pretty much my all-time favourite.

Locas is a collection of the work of Jaime Hernandez centering around his antiheroes Maggie and Hopey. Set in the largely Hispanic Californian barrio of Hoppers, part sci-fi, part slice-of-life – it’s a mighty tome following the crazy, sometimes bordering on surreal life of Maggie, an American Mexican with a talent for mechanics and hooking up with her occasional love interest Hopey.

The two are friends first and lovers second, but the complexity of their relationship weaves in and out of this 700 pager, spanning an entire decade of misadventures, with the changing punk rock scene a constant backdrop.

Added to that the gorgeously clean black and white artwork of Jaime Hernandez, who can add depth and feeling to each character in a single line stroke and you’ve got something really special.

Once you’ve finished the first book, you’ll undoubtedly be wanting to read the follow-up: Locas II: Maggie, Hopey & Ray. It’s not quite as physically epic as its predecessor, being some 300 pages shorter, but you’ll be just as invested as we learn what happens to Maggie, Hopey and the eternally short-changed Ray as they head into a new decade of dilemmas. I cannot get enough of the characterisations throughout this series. You’ll truly care about not only the leads, but the massive supporting cast of friends, enemies and co-conspirators by the end of it. And if you don’t, well, you obviously have no soul.

2. How Loathsome – Ted Naifeh and Tristan Crane

Hope, desperation, desolation and the underlying seediness of the city – that’s more or less what you get in spades with How Loathsome. The bulk of the story is told from the perspective of Catherine, a user, a lesbian and in love with a transsexual who’d rather get off with her lowlife drug dealing friend Nick.

The artwork is like the story, angular and sometimes stark, with beautiful fade-outs as oblivion sets in. It’s a bleak tale, beautifully rendered and a nice change of pace, highlighting a community and subculture beyond the plotting of action adventure fare and slice of life stories.

3. Half A Life – Greg Rucka and Michael Lark

This title is part of the Gotham Central series, but works as a standalone graphic novel just fine. And you read that right, Gotham, as in Batman.

But this 2004 Eisner Award winner is far from superhero spandex and the like. It’s dark, gritty and, despite an appearance by the requisite insane baddie, startlingly humanistic.

The Gotham Central series was a run focusing on the Gotham police force, told as a crime procedural. The cops speak like we’re used to hearing on TV shows like The Wire and NYPD Blue, the artwork’s dark and moody, like Gotham itself.

And the story? Renee Montoya, kickass detective gets outed to her colleagues and family. Then gets framed for murder.

Montoya is such a well-realised character, thanks in no small part to writer Greg Rucka, that you’re feeling her exasperation and desperation every step of the way, as she has to deal with her family’s disgust, her colleagues homophobia and all the while try to keep from being sent down.

Even if you’re not a fan of DC, Half a Life is so immensely well penned that you’ll be totally immersed within the lives of Montoya and co that you’ll forget you’re actually reading a comic as opposed to witnessing high quality crime drama evolving before your eyes. Seriously, it’s that good.

4. Batwoman: Elegy – Greg Rucka and J.H Williams

I was never one for superhero comics growing up. I fell into 2000AD for a while as a teenager, but that felt different, a violent alternative to the ubiquitous factory formula of Marvel and DC.

So I wasn’t expecting to become quite so enamoured by the –totally revised- resurgence of yet another high-heeled heroine. Except that, this incarnation of Batwoman is a bit different from the old school. For starters, Kate Kane (the double identity thing still stands, obviously) doesn’t do heels. And that’s not just because she’s a lesbian.

DC has stated that they made a conscious effort to do something a bit different with Batwoman. They wanted a leading gay superhero and wanted it done well. So enter Greg Rucka for yet another fine turn penning an involved and moving story of how Kate came to be the Batwoman, what happened to turn the military girl to a free-wheeling rockabilly and then on to the hardened ass-kicking crime fighter she appears as in the first pages of Elegy.

The book itself is the collection of a six-issue arc in Detective Comics, which opens with Batowman grappling with the likes of a crazed cult leader and through flashback lets us in behind the mask.

I bought the deluxe hardcover edition and the quality is simply superb, from silky smooth pages to the sumptuously realised visions of J.H Williams. Cleverly he mixes up the style for the early parts of Kate’s life, which we get told in muted retro tones which contrast nicely against the slick black and red of Batwoman’s present day existence.

And if this story couldn’t get even better, Gotham’s own Renee Montoya makes several appearances just to queer up the landscape further.

It’s a stunningly realised resurrection of the Batwoman, packaged in a book worth treasuring.

5. Fun Home – Alison Bechdel

The subheading to Fun Home reads “A Family Tragicomic” and that’s essentially what you’re getting with Alison Bechdel’s memoir about growing up in a funeral home with a closeted gay father.

I’ve never been a fan of Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For series. The humour was pretty much average comic strip humour that happened to feature lesbians. The pictures were just cartoony scrawls, the kind of figures you doodle while you’re on the phone.

I guess Fun Home is different because there’s so much meat to the story, it’s personal, autobiographical, amusing and at times very poignant. And given the space of a whole novel to fill, even the artwork has room to breathe and move along the story at a decent but involving pace. And it’s quite a story too, all the more so because it’s based on the author’s real-life family, opening with her father’s suspected suicide before tracing back the roots of their funeral home upbringing, the revelation that her father cheated on her mother with numerous young men and her own subsequent coming out tale.

But at the heart of Fun Home is an intimate and considered study on the relationship between a father and daughter that is highly relatable and surprisingly moving.

6. Rent Girl – Michelle Tea and Lauren McCubbin

Rent Girl is a different kind of graphic novel. Told in a sequence of vignettes it chronicles the real life experiences of Michelle Tea as a sex-worker. The frankness and pure wit that she injects into the writing is addictive, with a matter of fact approach to her encounters with clients, crabs and deranged girlfriends.

It’s a graphic novel in the literal meaning of the term, as rather than speech bubbles each page is illustrated with the stunningly sparse black, grey and red artwork of Lauren McCubbins. Pictures that manage to be provocative but never pornographic, serving only to underscore the prose on the page.

Michelle Tea has been referred to as a modern day Beat and I can see why. She’s caustic and funny yet devastatingly straightforward about what she does with her body both at work and away from it. Fantastic writing backed up with some wonderful artwork.

7. Juicy Mother – Jennifer Camper (ed)

Juicy Mother is an anthology of queer sequential art by some of the big names (and others I’ve never heard of) in the gay comics world. Actually, I’m not sure there is a “Gay Comics World” but if there was I’d picture it’d be like Disney World but with less mouse ears and more sarcasm.

The point is, Juicy Mother has the likes of Alison Bechdel, Jennifer Camper, Howard Cruse and Ariel Schragg all under one roof. That in itself makes it a nice little primer into the world of “gay comics”. I’m not sure why I keep putting this into quotation marks but it seems like that’s sort of the point of Juicy Mother – celebrating our differences and all that. The back cover tellingly reads: Comix for Discerning Homosexuals, Uppity Ladies, Fierce People of Colour and all their friends. No doubt a line like that could be enough to alienate as many readers as interest them, but there’s nothing especially outrageous to be had in Juicy Mother. In fact, it’s your usual mixed bag as comic collectives that divert from the mainstream tend to be.

Still, there’s a few gems like Jennifer Campner’s piece about what it means to be a lesbian Muslim growing up in post 9/11 America. But the overall tone is fun and frivolous, which more or less sums up my opinion of this one.

8. Shortcomings – Adrian Tomine

First of all, I love Adrian Tomine. And I will happily admit that the only reason I chose this particular title of his for my list is because there’s a prominent lesbian character in it. Thus – amazing lesbian graphic novel. But scratch the lesbian from this and I could have easily selected any of his other books.

Adrian Tomine writes about the lonely, the disaffected, the outcasts. Mainly, he writes about losers. He writes them so pitifully and with such precise black and white illustrations that I’m blown away by how something that looks so simple can be so detailed and have so much depth.

Shortcomings is about an Asian American called Ben who is actually incredibly annoying, but somehow has a really nice girlfriend whom he is debating whether to follow to New York. While he debates this, he’s also wondering about his racial identity and where he fits in amongst his friends, while simultaneously cracking on to girls he works with and meets via his lesbian best friend Alice.

The sarcasm, self-deprecation and ultimately the loneliness is all standard Tomine territory through and through. Buy it and then buy everything else he has ever done.

9. Skim – Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Adolescence is really hard. That’s the overriding message in Skim – the tale of a high school student who may be a sort of Wicca, but probably isn’t, who may be gay and probably is, who might be about to embark on some sort of illicit relationship with her teacher and whom is almost certainly depressed even though she isn’t showing it in quite the same way as her well-adjusted showy classmates, mourning the death of the popular girl’s boyfriend.

Skim is a really beautiful book, achingly accurate in its depictions of teenage hierarchy and peer pressure. It’s raw, the language is real and the character at the centre of it all too familiar. Coupled with that, the stylised ink and pencil drawings make this a wonderful, if painful reminder of what it feels like to be on the cusp of growing up.

10. Strangers in Paradise – Terry Moore

I might be biased when it comes to Terry Moore. I’d just finished issue three of Sea of Something and finally felt like the story was getting somewhere. Problem was, with printing costs being what they were and my marketing know-how extending so far as emailing all my friends to buy the damn thing, the realisation was finally dawning on me that I was putting in a lot of blood, sweat and pricey Indian ink on something that very few people were reading.

So I sat around and felt disheartened for a while and then decided to write to my comic heroes for some inspiration / motivation. I sent them all nice detailed letters about the exact reasons I thought they were so utterly brilliant and included a copy of each of my three issues in a do not bend carded envelope with the required overseas postage and a return address.

I knew that fanboys and fangirls were in abundance on the comics’ scene and these guys were big-hitters whom I’d never hear from. But just the hope that they’d bother to read my letter was enough to spur me back into action. It wasn’t long after this that I turned Sea of Something into a webcomic.

Anyway, the point of this longwinded anecdote is that Terry Moore actually bothered to reply. It was a fairly short but very sweet and personal email and my stats verified that he wasn’t lying when he said he’d visited my site. And he added that “The world of Annie is a nice place to be.”

So this only made me love him more, that the creator of the hugely popular and long-running Strangers In Paradise series actually bothered with me. The story people read about the lives and love of Katchoo and Francine and assume Terry is a woman because duh! No man could write a relationship like that. Write women like that. Well, obviously everyone is surprised when they find out that, actually, not only does he do the whole shebang himself, but he’s pretty much the king of what he does.

Strangers in Paradise starts off with a somewhat pedestrian storyline about a lesbian’s attraction towards her very straight friend. And then all this other stuff happens. Seriously, you’ll just have to read them all. It’s epic and impossible to encapsulate even in this ramshackle summary. Suffice to say the timeline skips forward several years, bounces back to high school and snaps back to present day more than once, there are secret agents and guns and exes galore, and… just read it. Because Terry Moore wrote back to me and is awesome.

However, I thought I’d share some of my opinions and motivations with you, the people of the internet, because you have been kind enough to come here and read my webcomic and some of you have even taken the time and trouble to leave a lovely comment or two.

So you see, this is not another outlet for shameless self-promotion, but an opportunity for me to ~give something back. Plus it’s good SEO, natch.

So we’re up and away with Issue Five and for the first time ever I was forced to come up with an issue cover before I’d finished drawing the issue (which is a whole other conundrum I’m working on).

This is not to say I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I always feel like a front cover idea is similar to a title, best left until the end, when you actually have it all worked out and know the best bit to sum up the whole shebang with.

But as I have somehow barely started not quite finished drawing issue five, this was not possible.

While I was mulling over possibilities, I came across an Edward Hopper picture in my garage that I’d bought ages ago. I really love Hopper and how evocative his work is. He tended to paint quite desolate landscapes or women in a semi-state of undress staring sadly out a window. But his use of light was amazing, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary with carefully placed sunbeams, artificial hues and sinister shadows.

So I was having a look at this dusty old Hopper, Gas (1940), wondering if I dared attempt to extend my DIY skills to hanging it over my bed – with some picture hooks that basically told me under no circumstances should they be used in my wall to hang anything heavier than a paperclip – when the idea came to me.

So there’s this scene in issue five that you’re probably not going to see for a few weeks yet, but basically Eisha and Stephanie are in a coffee shop. Or the coffee shop if you’ve read issue one. And it’s quite an important scene and, well, blah blah blah, Nighthawks (1942) pastiche, this:

I know it’s been done a gazillion times before because this is Hopper’s most famous piece of work and pretty much one of the most aped pieces of contemporary art full-stop, but it works and I love it.

And just to complete our little art history appreciation blog I give you the following:

If that’s whetted your appetite, you can find plenty more parodies of Hopper’s masterpiece at Nighthawks Forever