Dark Entries by Ian Rankin and Werther Dell'Edera.

John Constantine faces the demons of reality TV in this tight graphic noir from Vertigo Crime.


It’s pretty much accepted that, as a society, we’re all kind of ashamed of reality TV. Whether you guilty pleasure is keeping up with pretty wild real housewives or extreme top project makeover challenges, you’re watching. Maybe you claim to you watch it ironically, maybe you have to watch it to have something to talk about at work, or maybe your significant other “forces” you. Whatever your reasons, you’re still watching.

John Constantine might be the one man in the universe who actually doesn’t watch reality TV. His vices run more towards women, cigarettes and liquor. But when a reality TV producer breaks into his flat and offers him a fat wad of cash to investigate supernatural shenanigans on the set of a scripted reality show, he takes it, even though all of his instincts say not to. The show Dark Entries is part scavenger hunt and part-psychological experiment. The telegenic twenty something contestants are prepared for being scared while scouring a mysterious house for an unspecified prize. However, something else is terrorizing the kids, something not under the producer’s control. Posing as a contestant, it’s up to Constantine to figure out what is happening.

Stuff I Love: Sandman

So, I’m a comic book geek.

I probably read two graphic novels for every prose book.  Part of this is professional; for a long time, I was the only librarian in my system who knew anything about comics, and who would buy them.  The other part is personal – I just really like comics.

This is not surprising; a lot of librarians are comic book geeks.  We’re a geeky tribe after all, and the 9^th art nerds have to represent.  But my journey into comics is a little bit different.

Or, as I tell my husband, blame Sandman.

I didn’t read comics as a kid.  As a child of the 80’s, I’m not sure there were a lot of comics to read.  Also, I was “gifted” and read high above my grade level.  My mom, on the advice of innumerable teachers, kept me on a steady diet of Newbery winners and children’s classics.    I didn’t really discover comics until I was an adult. 

One of the first I picked up was Sandman by Neil Gaiman.  I knew Gaiman’s name, kind of.  As a fan of BBC science fiction, it was sort of familiar to me.  Looking at comics as a field, his name came up a lot.  I knew that Sandman was a horror/fantasy hybrid.   I wasn’t expecting much, going into it.  I was buying books for a library collection, and just had to get a feeling for it. 

The first Sandman collection Prelude and Noctunes, gave me the kind of visceral response that I think people look for in a horror comic.  I think I would have stopped reading there, if it hadn’t been for the last story in the volume. If the horror story “24 Hours” was a punch in the stomach, “The Sound of Her Wings” was a kiss on the forehead, one of the most beautiful and moving stories that I had ever read – in prose or comics. 

I had to keep reading.  An author who could do that, who could make me tear up over feeding pigeons, needed more attention.