Skip to main content

Friedrich lives!

I have to come clean straight away. I was already a huge fan of Friedrich when he first appeared online - and I still am in book form.

To simply consider the plot of Lucy Pepper's frankly bonkers story of a wronged mouse who takes to Quentin Tarantino levels of violence to extract his revenge (this is not a cartoon for pre-teens) is to find something entertaining, but nothing special. (I ought to say for any biologists that Friedrich has a rat grandmother, hence the tail.) However, Friedrich is so much more. 

The reason for this is artist Pepper's bewitching use of a whole range of different styles and techniques that sees characters in the cartoon sometimes drawn in pen, sometimes colour washed, sometimes 3D. Arguably Friedrich is a stunning serial doodle where Pepper uses whatever comes to hand to continue the increasingly gripping story. (At one point this features a plaster cast in a hospital, and at another an unexpected outdoor scene.) The outcome is totally unique. 
It is really difficult to describe this visual treat with its mix of time travel, German-style beer Kellers and evil hench-animals. But all I can really say is that I love it.

If I have one criticism it's that these miniature works of art deserve to be bigger - I'd have liked a square format with one image per page, but I appreciate that would probably have made the cost of the paper version astronomical.

Friedrich is available as a Kindle book from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com, but despite being significantly more expensive, I would recommend going for the paper version to get the full impact of the images. (Definitely don't go for Kindle unless you have a proper colour graphics reader, such as a Kindle Fire or iPad - it would be pointless on an e-ink reader.) You can find the paper version at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you  
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...
118 comments
Read more

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...
25 comments
Read more