You know for big, dumb apes, don’t we do some amazing things sometimes – this is an image of Europa rising over Jupiter’s clouds taken by New Horizons – what a picture! This was brought to my attention by Warren Ellis’s blog)

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_907.html

And since we’re talking about Mr Ellis I’d just like to take this moment to praise his recently published short graphic novel Crécy as a piece of work that pretty much everyone should pick up. It’s a shockingly foul-mouthed and violent retelling of the story of the British victory (English and, though Ellis is clearly loath to admit it, Welsh) over the French at the eponymous battle. It’s a pretty good history lesson, but far more important and relevant than that it’s an enormous amount of fun.

How much fun?

Well, I’m Irish, I grew up in Northern Ireland during the worst of the troubles – and Ellis even manages to get me cheering for the English army.

The book is every bit as rude and bloody as outstanding cover by Felipe Massafera and the excellent writing is backed up by brilliantly detailed black and white interior art from Raulo Caceres – who both also deserve boundless praise.

You can sit down and read Crécy in a single sitting, but you can go back to it again and again, partly because of the quality of the artwork but mostly because Ellis, on form, is just about the sharpest, funniest, nastiest writer ever to put words in bubbles.