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New Gen Graphic Novels & The Supremacy of ‘Big Nate’

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New Gen Graphic Novels & The Supremacy of ‘Big Nate’ When I was younger, me and my friends grew up in a time where what I’ll call “new-gen graphic novels” were becoming a phenomenon in the kids’ literature world, where the writing style of children’s books was combined with the in-your-face graphics and humorous presentation of comics. Of course, as far as children’s books in general went, Rhold Dahl would always be the frontrunner, but there were a fair few new kids on the block, with serious appeal in this new style. You got precursors to the trend with things like Jacqueline Wilson’s ‘Tracy Beaker’ books in the early 1990s, but arguably the trend really hit the ground running with the arrival of Dav Pilkey’s ‘Captain Underpants’ in 1997.  Speaking from experience, if you were a 7/8/9 year old kid in juniour school reading these, we thought it was the funniest shit imaginable. After all, it was fat, stupid, mean teachers being made to run around in their underwear by two ten year

Where Have the Articles Gone?

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Where Have the Articles Gone? Hello people. For the few people that read this, which I appreciate of course, you might be wondering where I've been since March, especially because I've not given any updates on what I've been doing. Well, this is that update. I'd loved writing stuff on here, because it allowed me to pretty much just do whatever interested me with no pressure as to any rules or restrictions aside from legality. Resultantly, I've been able to write whatever I wanted to write exactly how I wanted to write it. Anyhow, by March last year, I was gearing up to do two weeks of work with the UK-based online music magazine Soundsphere. I was naturally really excited about it, as it was really my first experience in a professional journalistic environment. So, as the start day neared, I realised I had three or four articles I was prepping to put on here, but I wondered if they'd take them for me to put on Soundsphere. I asked my contact, editor Dom Smith, a

Musical Comebacks: The Good, The Bad, and The (Very) Ugly

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Musical Comebacks: The Good, The Bad, and The (Very) Ugly Reunion albums are often quite a divisive concept it seems. Sure, on paper it sounds great: a band you loved, perhaps from your childhood, have risen back from the dead, with the promise of brand new, original material. Hooray! What’s not to love? Well, the only snag is that in a lot of cases, these albums come from incredibly well established groups, who, upon putting new stuff out into the world, perhaps don’t realise that, no matter how hard they try, the new material will undoubtedly be scrutinised in comparison to their often legendary back catalogues, and fairly often, seem to come up short. Prime recent example would perhaps be The Beatles’ ‘Now and Then’, which, while being about as hyped up as the second coming, and seeming to be generally well received by the public, certainly doesn’t land very high in critical circles at all, with NME putting it at #153 of all 188 existing Beatles songs. That said, some of their other