Farel Dalrymple interview

Hmmm, yes they were good. THREE DAYS IN EUROPE would have made it here, had the trade made it here last year. Still, you can look forward to a review in January part B, because at long last we have it. In no particular order then (except the first, the review of which you've only just read, so get scrolling now!):

The Drowners #1 (£2-20) by Nabiel Kanan. EXIT. LOST GIRL. BIRTHDAY RIOTS. Three of our biggest selling titles of all time, and three of our best. Pure British fiction from a single British creator: Nabiel Kanan. Funny, moving, insightful - all delineated with the keenest beauty. I've been bracing myself for Kanan to disappoint me, because you can't be this good all the time. Or at least that's what I thought... ;) Sneaking in right at the end of the year, this is officially my favourite comic of 2003 by a very wide margin. The first three pages alone (the Thames at night, a haunted doctor staring over the inky surface at the corporate tower of Quinn Industries) boast a total command of form, light and timing. Why is the man haunted? Who is he haunted by? And what's the connection with Quinn Industries? The tangled threads will begin to unravel themselves through Hayley, who turns up burnt out at her sister's house in the middle of the night. She's in trouble and she's freaking. Meanwhile it appears she's expected elsewhere and it doesn't look as if she has what she needs. And then there's Kate Quinn, ice-cold bitch, waiting for her husband to come home from work on their wedding anniversary. Not going to happen. By turns brutal, hilarious, sexy and mysterious, this marks the most immediately noticeable change of pace for Nabiel in his decade-long career, and by far his most gripping work to date. You need this comic. The tones are perfect, the paper quality is outrageous for the price, and it's self-published, so don't rely on there being a trade paperback.

Stray Bullets vol 7 (£10-50) by David Lapham. The difference between this and 100 BULLETS, is that this is personal. And the individuals, the victims in this series, are young. If you think Amy's been through enough already, it's about to get a whole lot worse. And her gullibility will ensure that she drags young Bobby into a very real hell as well. You'll start to worry ten pages in (it's always the quiet ones to watch out for). But as soon as that photograph is surreptitiously slipped into the pile Leaf is showing the boy, you'll begin sweating. Child abduction and abuse are not subjects to be treated lightly or sensationally. Lapham does neither; you'll soon wish he had. Volume 7 represents a genuine, clean jumping-on point, and because Lapham moves his story forwards and backwards in time anyway, going back to volume one afterwards will seem entirely natural. If you've enjoyed any SIN CITY, 100 BULLETS, STRANGERS IN PARADISE... any one of those, I am begging you to give this book a try. And I only do that twice a year. I think.

Persepolis: The Story Of A Childhood h/c (£12-99) by Marjane Satrapi.

Just as I hit my teens, a classmate told me his mother and father had just fled Iran. Neither History nor Geography were high on my school's agenda (11/2 hours of History, 1/2 hour of Geography versus 8 hours of Latin and 4 hours of Greek - so yeah, I did know what I was typing for that LONEWOLF review, but I'm buggered if I know where Luxembourg is). All I knew at that point was that the Shah - I guessed he was some Persian form of king - was about to be deposed, and life for westerners - and in particular my friend and his parents - would have become very dangerous there. I knew nothing about the country's previous history, I knew nothing of its religion or politics, and, safe in the snowglobe of my private education, it never occurred to me to think about the indigenous population's plight. A popular revolution must at least be to their benefit, surely? Marjane was nine years old at the time. After years of living as Marxists under the original Shah's reign, ushered back in by the west after his son nationalised the oil industry, her family also thought the revolution was going to liberate the country.

They were wrong.

Comparisons to Spiegelman's MAUS have inevitably gathered swiftly around PERSEPOLIS, nor are they unjustified. The visual style is simple and figurative for maximum empathy with a young Satrapi's perspective, the absence of tone leaves the black to enhance mood, or, in the clothing, a muted individuality before the Islamic revolution, and the imposition of stricter conformity afterwards. And, as with MAUS, what might initially seem a bleak or unengaging subject is made compelling by the reader's learning curve being shared by the author - in this case a particularly endearing and affectionate one. For precocious as she may be, Marjane here is still a child - exuberant, vulnerable and antagonistic - and the shades of grey, not instinctively seen, need to be shown to her by her parents. Indeed the power of this book comes from the overwhelming sense of family - hers and her friends' - under the crushing pressure of two successively ruthless political states, then a devastating war with Iraq.

That this is autobiography is the key to the book's success, to its accessibility and vitality. Overwhelmingly episodical in nature, Satrapi leads you through a daily reality full of public repression (with patrolling groups or troops of both sexes, of whom Marjane nearly funs afoul whilst wearing a pair of forbidden trainers - and we've seen the potential consequences), private acts of rebellion (while the borders are still briefly open, her parents journey to Turkey, determined to bring Marjane back a poster of Kim Wilde and Iron Maiden; her mother sews it into her Father's coat lining to get it past the authorities - he looks comically stiff, but they just get away with it!), very real risk (when they are almost caught with alcohol in the house, saved at the last moment by her grandmother's quick thinking), and, unbelievably, moments of pride, love and joy.

This is an education. It is, as Sacco concludes, ultimately "shattering." Really, how could it be otherwise? And it is also an "important" work, but it is neither difficult nor didactic nor dull. It is a testament to this book that I left it full of love and admiration for Satrapi's stoical, passionate and beautiful parents, with a very real sense of all their personalities, and with a desperate thirst to know what happened next. And it's about time I understood exactly why my childhood friend's family left when they did, and what happened to those left behind.

Promethea by Alan Moore & J.H. Williams III with Mick Gray & Jeremy Cox. This year: vol 3 s/c (£10-99) vol 4 h/c (£18-99)

From volume 3: Both inker and colourist get a rare mention here, bringing as they do so much to table during this first half of Promethea's long journey through the realms of the higher spirit. Seeing is believing, just take a look at Tiphereth in all its golden glory, then hold your breath for when they hit the final sphere next volume. This is the one with the Möbius Strip I keep going on about, a prime example of storytelling neither prose nor the cinema could achieve. Try to film the 17 Barbara and Sophies strolling round the infinite road, so that they overhear each other and you'd never hear a word yourself. It's all on a double-page spread. Cleverly Alan bookends each chapter with just a slither of action/comic relief to sugar the pill which is a lot of metaphysical chit-chat. So while Babs and Sophie are off doing their soul searching, the other Prometheas have made a miscalculation in being persuaded to allow Grace to bond with the sapphic Stacy (Sophie's belligerent best friend) and "look after" the earthly plane below: "Just between us, I've a teensy bit of a temper." Uh-oh. I've said it before and I'll say it again: genius.

Daredevil by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev. Urban crime/courtroom drama. The following books form one complete story: Underboss (£10-50) Out (£13-99) Lowlife (£9-99) Hardcore (£9-99). From the third in the series:

So, here's where we are with our blind, beleaguered lawyer and nocturnal vigilante Matt Murdock: a criminal who crippled the Kingpin from within has used his knowledge that Murdock is Daredevil to bargain with the FBI. The FBI wanted to sit on the news, but one of their own sold it out to a paper. Now Matt's denying the story for fear of being done for perjury, and suing the paper that's outed him in a cornered act of bravado which - let's remember - landed Oscar Wilde in prison. His alter ego's activities on the rooftops are constantly being scrutinised by the press, one of his two bodyguards, Luke Cage, is so disgusted that Murdock is lying in his legal battle, that's he's up and given notice, a blind girl whose life he's saved knows for certain who he is, the Owl's entourage have rigged the criminal's lair in an attempt to catch the man out, and the publisher who's striving to prove his paper was right on the nail all along has just been murdered in his swimming pool. Who's the prime suspect? That'd be Murdock, naturally.

Next volume: things get worse.

Alias vol 3 (£11-99) by Bendis & Gaydos. Of all the Bendis stuff, however, this is the one you should definitely be reading, as long as your parents will let you. Because, you know, there's sex and stuff all over the place, and people get to say "fuck" and everything. It's a P.I. series, set in the periphery of the Marvel Universe, starring a self-destructive woman whose vulnerability is defended by a petulant tongue, and encased in enough emotional armour to keep the hordes of Attila the Hun at bay. It's about accepting your limitations, looking forward not back, and the risk of letting people in. This is Jessica, staying at (new boyfriend and the second person to be known as Ant-Man) Scott's house after a bizarre break-in at her own. It's late at night, she can't sleep, so she's left Scott in bed. She's trying to do a search on the internet, about the girl who broke into her flat, but it's not bearing fruit. She has a mobile in her hand:

(Quartermain.)

"Don't do it."

(He's going to be an asshole about it.)

RINGRING BOOP CLICKCLICKCLICK

<"Jackpot records?">

"Jackpot wh -- ? Uh, -- Is Agent Quartermain there?"

<"Our hours are noon till ten every day but Tuesday. Please leave a message after the beep.">

"I dialed right, right?"

CLICKCLICKCLICK BEEP

"Damn it..."

BEEDOOBEEE BEDOOBEDO

"Shit, hello?"

<"Jessica?">

"Clay? What the fuck?"

<"What?">

"A record store?"

<"We do things the way we do things. Are you at Scott Lang's house?">

"How do you --"

<"We do things the way we do things.">

"Off my cell phone you can tell that?"

<"You'd be surprised what we could do off your cell phone now. Are you shtupping Ant-Man?">

"Shut up!"

<"Did you call me at four in the morning to tell me you're shtupping --">

"No, God! What's wrong with you? Why're you being such a prick?"

<"Well, you only call me when you need something, but, usually, at least you wait till midday to --">

"God, sorry I called."

<"What do you need?">

"For you not to be an asshole! I called because something really fucking weird happened."

<"What?">

"I came home from shopping and there was this teenager in my house -- this girl in a Spider-Man costume."

<"I'll call you back.">

"I --"

BEEDOOBEE BEDOOOBEDOO

"Hello?"

<"Her name's Mattie Franklin.">

"Why the fuck did you hang up on me?"

<"That was a secure line.">

"Jesus."

<"Mattie Franklin -- she did a short run as Spider-Woman.">

"Spider-Woman... oh, I -- I ran Spider-Girl."

<"Spider-Woman. The third one -- for those counting at home.">

"Why the fuck was she in my house?"

<"How should I know? Check your e-mail. I am sending you the two files I have on her. Nothing much. Check now because the e-mail won't be there in forty-four minutes.">

"Where will it be?"

<"Sorry I gave you crap before. I just --">

"It's okay."

<"I mean, Ant-Man?">

"He's -- for your information -- he's a nice guy."

<"He's been in prison.">

"I know all about it. If I promise to call you when I don't need something will you stop giving me this shit?"

<"Okay, but you won't.">

"Thanks for your help, Clay, seriously."

<"Okay.">

CLICK

"Fucking S.H.I.E.L.D.! Fucking secret agents! Fucking Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate! Fuckers!"

BEEDOOBEE BEDOOBEDOO

"Hello?"

<"Jessica, we can hear you. Don't do that.">

Maria's Wedding (£7-99) by Christina Weir, Nunzio De Filippis & Jose Garibaldi. Weddings, eh? One of my best friends, Ryz, recently eloped to Las Vegas with her boyfriend Gus to enjoy their wedding in private. In secret. Without all the hassle that comes with a family wedding. And you know what I mean: barely communicating branches of two seperate families forced together to celebrate the union of someone they barely know to someone they've never approved of; the endless procession of arrangements and an itinerary so tight that a nanosecond's glitch's going to throw the whole thing into chaos; the politics of the day's unusual hierarchy; the unfortunate ad-lib in a drunken best man's speech; and the cretinous lowest common denominator which is the obligatory disco. No, Gus and Ryz just dashed off to the US, roamed around the Grand Canyon, sauntered in to breakfast one morning, and thought: "Hmm, shall we get married today?" and a few hours later they were. Honeymoon on tap too.

This... this is not that. This is the former. And it's superbly done.

Maria Pirelli comes from a huge Italian family. So vast that only half of it is listed in the handy family tree provided after the prologue. And today she's going to marry a rather feckless young man, who's lost that mental memory chip that allows him to consider others carefully. But the Pirelli family don't all get along. There's a genuinely touching history which will out by the end and cast a different light on the proceedings, but the most recent schism occurred last year and forms the neat, one-page prologue: the wedding of Jospeh Pirelli, Maria's cousin and Frankie and Jack's brother, to his boyfriend Matthew. Maria Pirelli, their grandmother, the family's matriarch, was there. She has a wall of wedding photographs devoted to her children and grandchildren, opposite her own. The only one she hung next to hers, in a quiet act of solidarity, is Joseph and Matthew's. But her eldest daughter, Giulia disapproved and stayed away. Worse still, she discouraged others from attending, including Uncle Al, Maria's Father, who has videoed each wedding except this one. Uncle Al stayed in the car during the service. Now the success of Maria's day is thrown into uncertainty following a promise hot-headed Frankie made during that first service last year: he promised to rebuke the half of the family who let Joseph down at the first opportunity. This, unfortunately, is it.

The three creators between them have created the first modern Will Eisner. It's about family, across the generations, and its theme is very much SENSE AND SENSIBILITY - when to stand up and speak up for what's right, and when to acknowledge that others are due equal consideration. It's a learning curve for all concerned, especially Frankie, because this is his book. In an extraordinary feat of juggling, Christina and Nunzio manage to flesh out each and every individual here (hats off to Jose for the ease of their distinction), and their relationships with each other (I've barely scratched the cast list), in a book that is bright, fresh and hugely rewarding, more substantial than it looks, yet breezier than the premise might lead you to suppose, on a day that everyone can identify with.

100 Bullets vol 6: Six Feet Under The Gun (£9-75) by Azzarello & Risso. "There's a war coming." Now we've been introduced to all the major players, they start moving each other into position. Last minute adjustments, a few surprises, lots of hard looks, harsh words and a dash of tough luck. Includes the superbly choreographed "Ambition's Audition" starring Benito, Shepherd, Mr. Medici and a game of dominoes. Crime so hardboiled you could wrap it in plastic and sell it by the pound.

Yukiko's Spinach (£8-99) by Frédéric Boilet. Some months there are a good dozen titles fighting for top spot, and this is one of them. As I suspected, it's French Arthouse all the way for this sumptuously romantic reminiscence, in which the author, fictional or non-fictional, dwells on the magical moments of a brief liaison with a beautiful Japanese girl, who's waiting for a mutual friend to respond to her own advances. The graceful lines are filled with grey washes that sheen across the page as the author muses on the details, scenes repeated with a different slant, of Yukiko's playfulness, her strange pronouncements, and above all, her body. When the two make love, they do make love. It's sensual and intimate - serene rather than erotic - and quite, quite beautiful to behold. He sketches her, and throws her into his comic - this very comic - which gives him another excuse to play the same scene once more in his head. Unlike MARIA'S WEDDING, you'll be through it in no time, but if you're like Tom or myself, you'll pick it straight up again, and then you'll be replaying their affair. If the title confuses you, all will become apparent, and much is made of the French tendency not to pronounce their 'h's.

Yossel h/c (£16-99) by Joe Kubert. Subtitled "April 19, 1943," I started reading this late in the evening after it arrived (26/11/03), and, although utterly exhausted I could not and would not put this down until Joe had finished. At which point I wasn't sure I wanted to read anything else for quite some time. Not, you understand, because it had put me off reading, but because that there seemed little else so worth hearing, absorbing, and thinking about.

How many books, films, documentaries have there been on The Holocaust? How many have you read and seen? Myself, probably fewer than many, but enough to make me wonder what more there is to say, until I see or read another one. Some things bear repeating, because some things do not bear repeating.

Joe Kubert moved to America with his Jewish parents and sister when the boy was only a couple of months old. They'd tried earlier when his mother was pregnant, and in spite of being rebuffed then, they persisted. As soon as he was able to hold anything, he began to draw, and during the events of April 1943 he was a teenager making more money than his father, through his obsessively honed craft. You're most likely to know him from his thirty-year stint on SGT. ROCK, or through two of his five children, Adam and Andy. It could all have been so different.

In YOSSEL Joe puts himself in the place of a boy the same age as he would have been during the Nazi invasion of Poland, but one who never managed to leave his country. His parents are the same, he has a sister too, and he spends every spare moment drawing out his fantasies imported from America: giant dinosaurs, barbarian warriors, girls in space. Even whilst studying for his Bar Mitzvah, he couldn't resist a cartoon of the Rebbe, who smacked him for his sins. It's a close and loving family, which Kubert makes real with the odd anecdotal quirk: "Mama was always in the kitchen, unless she was helping Papa in the store. If he was alone and an attractive woman customer came in the store, she would join papa. He would look sideways at Mama, in mock anger. He loved it that Mama felt he was attractive." News of Germany begins to filter through, of Kristallnacht and Hitler's wider policies towards Jews - preventing them from attending school, owning shops, shipping them out of Europe. But the adult world is not a preoccupation for a young, imaginative boy, and in any case, noone could believe the stories were true.

This is a concept one now finds difficult to grasp, because we know - however unthinkable - that what was about to happen to millions of individuals could happen because it did happen. Before it did, who could believe it? Not Yossel nor his parents, and this is something Joe returns to over again, when, although things have grown desperate beyond my personal imagination in the Warsaw Ghetto, they hear of worse from the labour camps. And it is not credible.

But begin it does, first with a knock on the door, and orders to leave. Whole towns and villages moved to a walled, dilapidated city. The Germans attempt to seem reasonable during the unreasonable. Starvation, deprivation - of comforts, communication, heating or clothes - a freezing endurance test without either hope of respite. And then it gets worse.

I could fill this e-shot with this single review, and it's difficult to know which praises to sing.

The pictures, I suppose, because the entire book is drawn by Yossel, on whatever scraps of paper come to hand, and to evoke the immediacy, the roughness, the rawness of the experience Kubert has refrained from any inking. The sketches aren't even fully realised in places, but lord can the man draw. If you want nothing more than a masterclass in pencils, you won't see finer than here. Similarly the paper is off-white and thick, like the cartridge paper we used during life classes at school, and Kubert cleverly helps the lettering to sit well with the graphite by demarking the borders in lead.

It seems silly to pick out just one instance where Kubert has got it so right when there isn't a wrong move in the book, but he manages to convey the humanity - if such is the right word - of the German soldiers whilst engaged in the very definition of inhumanity, with their unique affection for Yossel as a draughtsman. In spite of the remorseless cruelty they inflict upon an entire people, the security police watch, fascinated as Yossel sketches supermen for them, swastikas branded on their muscular arms. They praise him, "spoil" him, give him food and free pass - then send his family off to die.

This book begins at the end, as the resistance makes a brave but futile stand during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings. It ends moments after the beginning, with two final pages which are both thematically brilliant and completely harrowing.

New X-Men vol 4: Riot At Xavier's (£8-50) by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely with Keron Grant.

Emma Frost: "Hypercortisone D. They call it "Kick," God bless the little dears. It makes them feel like movie stars, being directed by God, on location in Heaven... We found this dispenser outside the Common Room window. I've tried it, of course... in the interests of science. I felt angelic and violently insane for five hours. I foresee trouble if this becomes widespread."

Quentin Quire: "You're always encouraging us to dream... I just wondered what would happen if one of us had a dream you didn't like?"

Charles Xavier: "These clothes, the angry slogans, are just the outward signs... he's developing a small cult following. With a dangerous anti-human undercurrent. If any of our students were found to be involved in these latest killings... I've always feared something like this - trouble from within."

When Jumbo Carnation, flamboyant clothes designer and mutant cause célèbre, becomes the latest victim of anti-mutant hatred, it's one last nail in the coffin of tolerance for some of the younger students at Professor Xavier's school. They've seen 16,000 mutants massacred in Genosha with human technology, their self-proclaimed mentor has been trying to win the battle for integration and peaceful co-existence for years, and to Quentin Quire, a bitter teenage with all the dopamine that comes with those years, the goal is no nearer to being accomplished than it was when Xavier began. All it takes is one profound emotional trauma and a blast of Kick, and it's going to grow nastier than any of the students or teachers can imagine.

Morrison's brilliance throughout this series has been to refine the spectacle, mechanics and melodrama of the superpowered mutant as outsider, and marry them to historical and contemporary social issues, popular youth trends, and throw in a lot of style while he's at it. For the Genoshan genocide, read Holocaust; for the assault on Jumbo, read queer bashing (ugly phrase, ugly experience); and then there's always been that logic-defying racism within the football and music camp, when key players in both are quite patently black. All this and so much more - from reclaiming the language and imagery of bigotry, to recreational drugs, globalisation and modern evolutionary theory - has been tailored to fit this mutant soap opera, and turned it into something refreshingly relevant and deliciously witty. And the icing on the cake, if you'll excuse the pun, has to be the sybaritic Emma Frost, perpetually detached, self-important and superficial, whose complacent calm in the heart of the bloody storm is rendered by Quitely with total panache:

"It looks like you were right about Master Quire and his band of bad haircuts. This is quite appalling!"

"We told you, Miss Frost! We knew he'd ruin our Open Day! He wants to make a mess of everything."

"I'm sure it's just another petulant cry for help, girls. I don't know what it is with young people these days, but I do miss the imagination and verve of the little zealots I used to teach. There was a wild, romantic light in their eyes and they threw themselves into the fray at every turn. Now it's all bored stares, vague demands and a few broken windows. Hardly the stuff of mutant legend."

"But weren't they all killed, Miss Frost? The students you used to teach?"

"There were one or two fatalities, yes.. but for heaven's sake, Esme. Let's try not to dwell on the down side."

Imagination, flair, and a keen fashion sense - when they're on top form Quitely and Morrison have made reading the X-Men a chic thrill for grown-ups, rather than a guilty addiction for the undemanding. You can come out now.