Works well. Harry's trademark laconic one-liners fit neatly into comic panels. Also interesting to see the props from the book illustrated: the TV series was all very well, but a hockey stick is no blasting rod. Looks a lot creepier than in the novels where everything is seen through Harry's matter-of-fact eyes: even ordinary exposition from Bob the glowing-eyed skull looks a bit weird.

The storyline takes place shortly before the book series began. Harry seems strangely underpowered at first: no Soulfire, no Hellfire, no Little Chicago, no demon in the head, the old puny shield, and just one kinetic ring, but it's nice to get back to basics. Explains everything from the start: you wouldn't need to have read any of the books to make sense of it.

Artwork (by some newcomer called Ardian Siaf) seems decent enough. Compositions not particularly exceptional, some of the panel layouts look a bit odd, like when there are three small consecutive panels showing a face with the same expression. Liked the character designs though: Murphy in particular has just the right cute/tough look. No gratuitous T&A here though: I think the urban fantasy genre has a fair proportion of female readers.

Overall, worth a look if you're desperate for a Dresden Files fix. Would probably be fairly entertaining for anyone else, but not mindblowingly brilliant.

What I'm Watching
Saw Woody Allen movie Hannah and Her Sisters on DVD. Had seen it before, more recently than I thought. Pretty good, got a bit bored by the relationship against, but some of the characters are sharply drawn, especially the more annoying ones, and there are some very funny lines buried in the dialogue.

It's frightening how old 1986 looks now: it really seems like a period piece with phones and grimy old pre-Giuliani NYC.

Museums
Dropped in at the National Portrait Gallery, mostly be accident as I got some times wrong. Saw the Annie Leibovitz exhibition. I'm not much of a judge of photography, but wasn't too impressed by it. The celebrity stuff seems like standard cheesecake, lots of pouting and flexing muscles; while the personal stuff pretty much looks like anyone else's snapshots.

However, it's pretty big, and they've got some rooms practically papered with small pictures, some postcard size, so you're certainly not shortchanged in quantity. Pretty steep at £11 to get in though.

Also wandered quickly through the Photographic Portrait Prize: that was free, but very crowded. A few interesting things their like the Swedish fighter (stupid Flash assortment).

They also had a collection of pictures of top athletes, but I found that strangely uninvolving. They just don't look sufficiently like human beings, more like machines made of muscle and sinew.

Web
Biography of a New York taxicab.

Video. Flight of the Bumblebee on Marimba.

Alaska study says higher alcohol prices save lives.

Obama should learn from Eisenhower and Nixon.

Tory lead down from 19% to 5%