Great Scots! / Saving the Universe with Lux and Alby

Largely because of the recent Latitude launch, I found myself trying to list my favorite Scottish bands and writers yesterday -- the Top 5 of each. It was easy to come up with the bands: The Blue Nile, Teenage Fanclub, Primal Scream, Aztec Camera and the Cocteau Twins. Coming up with writers was a little more difficult. Kenneth Grahame has to be on that list, and A.A. Milne, and yes, Grant Morrison (though aside from a short story in an anthology and the posts on his website, I admit to having read precious little of his prose, and base his inclusion entirely on his brilliant comics). Arthur Conan Doyle too. I was stuck for a fifth.

Until I remembered Martin Millar. Not comics writer Mark Millar, who can be very good but who can also be very tiresome, but Martin Millar, author of Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation, which I was fortunate enough to find on one of my Book Sale jaunts, back in the 90s. According to The Daily Mail, "It throbs with street-cred, crazed comedy and flick-knife sharp jibes at 20th-century urban life."

Martin Millar is no stranger to comics either, as you can see. (You can read the first two issues of the series at the site.) I've forgotten where I bought the two or three copies of "Lux and Alby Sign On And Save The Universe" that I own; probably in one of those comics shops that are no longer around, like Platinum (I used to have a Platinum membership card! It had a picture of Spawn on it.) As the blurb says, Lux and Alby is "a fantastic (and upsetting) adventure, featuring beautiful Goddesses, unhappy plants, sad rocks, a lot of kissing, and a full scale assault on Nirvana."