Diary Of A Mosquito Abatement Man (Ł8-99, La Mano) by John Porcellino - For ten years, from 1989 to 1999, John worked as a mosquito abatement man. Sometimes it would be driving very slowly to spray low-level insecticide into the night sky, sometimes going out to the ditches to find the eggs and bombarding the site with nasty stuff. It must have seemed like an endless task and it makes me think of a Laurel & Hardy short where Stan's trying to put out a raging fire by throwing a tincup of water over it. There'll always be more. Don't insects outnumber us by thousands to one? This collects all the relevant stories from King Cat Comics & Stories and includes thirty pages of new material and a five-page introduction and there's so much good stuff it's difficult to pick out my favourite piece. '24 Hours' from 1990 has John, driving and spraying, looking in through the windows of the houses as he goes by. There's a girl doing homework, their eyes meet and there's a brief connection. It's the little details that he notices, like in the dense pipework on the chemical plant he sees someone in a chem-suit riding by on a bicycle. An eerie sight amidst the quiet, floodlit night. At the end of that piece the panels fill up with pipes and his van disappears, eaten up by the construction.

King Cat, to be fair, is one of my favourite reads. Some things will be put to one side for when I've got the time, but KC has to be read as soon as I get it. His compositions are near-perfect, the lines simple and clean. Hopefully this collaboration with La Mano will bring many more collections of his work.

Eventually, his convictions force him to leave the job. He can't face the poisoning and the destruction. The first and last chapters are perfectly placed. It starts with John attacked by the elements, scratched and muddied in the rain. The ending is pure Porcellino magic. Down a dark, country lane an owl flies low over the bonnet of the truck, keeping pace with him before swooping up to the branch of a tree.

Miniature Sulk (Ł5-50, Topshelf) by Jeffrey Brown - We all know that cats (kittens especially) should be drawn cute. It's one of the rules, go look it up. Jeff doesn't do that. Or at least not in a conventional way. His are almost demonic, albeit in a sweet way. The eyes are too low down and too black. The claws stick out like chicken feet. The ones that attacked in I AM GOING TO BE SMALL were almost terrifying. In a sweet way. There's a story here about a young Jeff adopting a kitten and being freaked out by the "growling" and "clawing". His mom explains that this is purring, Jeff goes away smiling, happy to know that the kitten is happy. My favourite strip ("Recess") has Jeff fancying the new girl at school. Independently, two friends come over and tell him that they like her & he's not to tell the other friend. This leaves him knowing that he can't tell either of them about his desire either! The look on his little face, unsure of what to do next, unable to even move forward, held down by the knowledge that he's to to carry around with him. Classic. Lots more in this pocket-sized book.

Cages h/c (Ł32-99, Comics Lit) by Dave McKean. Okay, first off, Alexandra Willsher's going to have a heart attack because she just bought our last copy at Ł50-00 back at Christmas. Alex, we'll sort you out with a present to make up the difference. So what's happened here? Simply, Titan's stranglehold on the book has been prised open, leaving us free to stock the original US version. If there remains anyone out there who doesn't despise the company, Titan charged Ł50-00 for a $50-00 book, thereby cutting its sales stone dead. I could tell you what they did to Al Davison, creator of SPIRAL CAGE, and that would really get your blood pumping, but let's stick to the book at hand and suggest that if you've ever been intending to buy it, now would be a good time. It's seventeen quid cheaper than it's been for years, and yeah, I'm sorry, but it'll cost mail order customers a fiver postage, but everything you order on top of that will be postage-free. It's ten years since I've read CAGES, but it's a haunting, poetic tale of creativity, relationships and, well, metaphorical cages. Plus there's a batty old woman whose dialogue could have come from the pen of Alan Bennett. Largely employing a stripped-down ink style, it flows far more smoothly than most of McKean's work, with some glorious slate blue to go with the black, and lots of jaggedy angles. Terry Gilliam describes it as "mesmerising".

24 Hour Comic All-Stars (Ł8-50, About Comics) by various - Scott McCloud's 'A Day's Work' starts it all off at a furious pace. A businessman races through the day, donning a mask and beating the living crap out of a few people before returning to his house, his wife and his bed. At the other end of the book is Dave Sim with 'Bigger, Blacker Kiss'. Maybe I'm confusing this with his proposed submission for TABOO (the horror anthology, not the drink, the boardgame, the magazine or the West End musical) but I'm sure that he said that it was going to be pure horror, or at least something to scare the pants off Steve Bissette. Maybe the two projects were one and the same. This is a Sim version of horror in the same way that he called Joe Chiappetta's (excellent) SILLY DADDY chilling. Waiting at a singles bar, a woman goes through recent relationships and her expectations. Nice stuff. Strange to see his work without Gerhard's backgrounds.

Scalawag (Ł8-50, Topshelf) by Steve Lafler - Third volume of the jazz-playing bugs and their battles with bug juice. Lafler's love of be-bop and storytelling come forth in this unusual but engaging book.

Siglo: Freedom (Ł9-99, Mango) by various. A Filipino anthology of comics on the theme of freedom, a subject dear to the people of the Philippines, for obvious reasons. It's the sort of thing I instinctively want to applaud. Straight fiction, new points of view, something to say. And the first story, "Jolo, 1913" (each title has a date, which together span the last century), definitely boasts both those two characteristics. It's told by a boy as he moves through the alphabet in the top two-thirds of each page, being taught English. Along the bottom, he begins to talk about the school where he's learning this new language. "None of the Muslim children went to my school. Maybe they attended a different one or learned directly from their parents. At that time I didn't understand why. I considered them lucky." But then other things happen that he doesn't understand, things he's not told, as smoke begins to rise in the Muslim districts. Soldiers are said to be arriving in great numbers. "At the end of that long week, my father told us it was all over. Things went back to normal and once again I went to school. Whatever happened suddenly seemed so distant. The Americans looked very happy. Everyone else tried to look happy." This one worked for me, worked very well. You're never told what happened, but you don't need to be, and the juxtaposition of the underlying story with the humiliating English lesson above makes its point succinctly. The art... is what lets almost every other story here down. It's either too unaccomplished to be able to follow properly (I'm thinking of the end to "San Dig, 1944", set during the Japanese occupation, and "Negros Occidental, 1978" when a forest fire suddenly erupts), too manga-twee, or too unattractive in other ways. And some of it's just a little obvious (see "San Dig, 1944 again", whereas "Negros Occidental, 1978" is actually quite a hard-hitting tale of a childhood friendship, fight and the fight's fatal repercussion). Still, by their own account, it's early days for comics in the Philippines - too much outside influence. Which is where we came in, with the first story.

Supreme Power h/c vol 1 (Ł19-99, Marvel Max) by J. Michael Straczynski & Gary Frank. If I've not persuaded you onto this, the most brutal superhero series outside of WATCHMEN, MIRACLE MAN vol 3 or BRATPACK, I'm not going to persuade you in a thirty-seventh review. If you're new and you don't have out 10th Anniversary Booklist, and you want some of my previous reviews, please ask. For others, sufficient to say that this collects the same content as books one and two of the softcover series for just one more penny, and you get bigger art and bonus extras like concept sketches. And an introduction by Straczynski in which he focuses on the same defining element as I have: the ominous nature of the storytelling, as the central Superman-In-Real-World character, Mark Milton, is brought up in isolation by intelligence agents posing as his parents in order to indoctrinate him, keeps his thoughts to himself. The example he uses is when Mark tells his terrified "father", "I love you... just as much as you love me," and you don't know whether that's an innocent statement generated by ignorance of the truth, or a precisely worded threat from someone who's found out. Gorgeous, gorgeous art, with note-perfect expressions adding another layer of skill to the implications of what is unsaid. And now, it goes onto my bookcase.

Planetary vol 3 s/c: Leaving The 20th Century (Ł9-99, Wildstorm/DC) by Warren Ellis & John Cassady. Speaking of gorgeous art, those currently swooning over ASTONISHING X-MEN should come on over to PLANETARY for something rather more ambitious - visually, as well, for Ellis' imagination demands that Cassady utilise his own far more effectively. Just look at the space and light in that jungle landscape, where technology is far more advanced that that possessed by our own civilised society. Watch in awe as an antique-looking, grey spherical craft, launched one hundred and fifty years ago, loses its orbit and comes crashing down over the remote, watery marshland. And discover the nothingness left behind on a world destroyed just to house an armoury. This is the very finest comicbook science fiction I have read, full stop. What have we done on this planet over the last couple of centuries? What have we done that we've told no one? What appalling experiments have we conducted, scientific breakthroughs have we accomplished or technologies have we unearthed? And who's been stealing them all? It's up to Elijah Snow - much of his memory finally restored - and his two colleagues to find out, before it's too late. Nods and winks all round to previous fiction - comicbook or otherwise - but this stands alone as a gripping voyage of discovery and fight for what's right.

Bite Club (Ł6-50, Vertigo/DC) by Chaykin, Tischman & David Hahn. If they reprint the witty covers by Frank Quitely it'll be a bonus, I wrote in the preview, and they have! It's a colour digest package, and the clean and simple, no-nonsense (or, I suppose, no-frills or even thrills) art suits the miniaturisation fine. What else did I write? This is the most imaginative use of vampires I've come across in a while. It's actually a crime comic, no horror involved - it just so happens that the Miami crime cartel, dominating the lives of corporations and ordinary citizens alike, whilst seemingly immune to police investigation, are vampires. They migrated from South America in their thousands many years ago, and have since integrated themselves into all strata of the social landscape. It's no secret they exist, but they're good at keeping secrets from each other, particularly within the Del Toro Family. Following the death of Eduardo Sr., they fight themselves at each others throats, vying for control of the wealth and power. There's nymphomaniac Risa, who enjoys her Father's keen business sense and the sexual favours of anyone she fancies; Eduardo Jr. whose son Danny is a spoilt and vicious little prick; Leto, a priest, now estranged from his family; and the widowed mother seeking sexual solace with their older cousin Victor. Only of them is going to inherit the Business, and it's going to be the one left standing. The art is no-nonsense crime art, but the story is, you are warned, explicit, including brother-sister incest and use of the "c" word. Which apparently even I am reluctant to print. The first issue's called "Suck Off And Die." I seem to remember the others are quite amusing too.

Queen & Country vol 7 - Operation: Saddlebags (Ł9-99, Oni) by Greg Rucka & Mike Norton, Steve Rolston. Secret Service action-adventure espionage. The sort of thing that plays big in the cinema. Only in comics, where Greg finds more space to develop individual characters.

El Nińo (Ł11-99, Humanoids/DC) by Christian Perrison & Boro Pavlovic. El Nińo, of course, is the name for the massive warming of coastal waters around South America, resulting in freakish storms, shifts in currents, raisins in jam and huge piles of pasta all over the floor. Well, it does if you're on board a boat in one of those storms. Guess where Vera is? On board a boat in one of those storms. Returning to Paris from a gruelling Red Cross mission, Vera, a self-confessed Gadjo (non-Gypsy), visits her father's grave in Pčre-Lachaise to find some of her old folk there, eating brunch. When she visits them later in a flooded suburb, they reluctantly tell her about Kolya, her supposed Siamese-twin brother, who joined the merchant navy before disappearing, never to be heard from again. The last thing they received was a letter from one Jean René Isnard in Polynesia, who claims Kolya's safe and on his way back home. Confused by the medical knowledge that Siamese twins can't be of different sexes, and restless to leave Paris in any case, Vera flies out to Polynesia to discover that Jean René is dead, and his son, now a captain of a vessel himself, isn't best pleased to see her. Now obsessed, Vera tries to intercept the boat in Bora Bora, which brings us to the storm. Prime European drama (he says, sweepingly), with exotic landscapes perfectly evoked, and the customary gratuitous nuddie scene. I'm a third of the way through and I can't put it down.

Megalex vol 1: The Anomaly (Ł9-99, DC Humanoids) by Jodorowski & Beltran. "Megalex is Death! Megalex is Death!" screams the flock of white parrots is it dive-bombs the military base. And it's hard to disagree with them. It certainly isn't "Life". Almost all of that has been consigned to history and buried under the planetary-wide city that is Megalex. Mountains have been levelled to form one homogenous sphere of dull grey, metal complexes - think The Death Star, only larger - and the final elements of resistance from the Dead Ocean and Chem Forest are brutally repelled. Governed from the Gubernatorial Palace, built out of unbreakable glass, by Queen Mother Marea and Princess Kavatah and the mummified remains of King Yod ("who has lost none of his wisdom"), the military machine is served by thousands upon thousands of identical clones with 400-day life-spans (to avoid a potential contamination of dissent), after which they are slaughtered in vast meat plants and ground up like offal so that their constituent parts may be reused. The process - explicitly depicted in all its revolting "glory" - is overseen by drugged up supervisors, so that there are no anomalies. But on a chance distraction during another attack, one anomaly, a much larger humanoid, escapes their attention, and finds unexpected help on hand to facilitate his escape. The art is generation on computer (there's an insight into the process in the back), but doesn't suffer from the same clinical forms and/or gaudy colours. It's actually very impressive. And, in the process mentioned earlier, quite revolting. More nudity - it's European.

Sharknife vol 1 (Ł6-50, Oni) by Corey Lewis. Sold my review copy before I'd read past page twenty, whoops. There'll be restocks later this week, because this looks like it may well satisfy the cravings for the much-delayed-but-apparently-with-us-in-May SCOTT PILGRIM vol 2, kicking off as it does in the same fashion as SCOTT vol 1 ended in, with a super-Nintendo-style brawl of dizzying proportions, all on the floor of a Chinese restaurant. Corey's opening love letter to comics was very sweet, and Tom or myself will probably be quoting it in the review-proper next month. Lee O'Malley's a fan. You can see why.

Spider-Man/Dr. Octopus: Year One (Ł8-99, Marvel) by Zeb Wells & Kaare Andrews. Just how did the tentacled terrorist grow from podgy little runt in glasses obsessed with radiation, into porky old minger in glasses obsessed with killing Spider-Man? Writer and artist deliver a tale as well crafted as any of the Loeb & Sale efforts (SPIDER-MAN: BLUE, DAREDEVIL: YELLOW etc.), with Octavius' exaggeratedly huge, blank glasses keeping the world at a distance, trapping his thoughts behind them. Increasingly intense, internalised and removed from reality, they swim round and round, fermenting into a sour brew of bitterness. His father is a physical man, with little patience for learning or victims, and whilst he's not exactly Norman Bates, Otto's relationship with his seemingly prim mother is also less than healthy. Emotional and physical abuse are nothing new as the ingredients for future dysfunction, but it's all played so well, with sinister portents of what is to come hinted in snippets of monologue addressing no one but himself.

Bullseye: Greatest Hits (Ł8-99, Marvel) by Daniel Way & Steve Dillon. You'd read anything drawn by Dillon, wouldn't you? Well, I would. I don't care if it's pages and pages of talking heads - that Garth Ennis HELLBLAZER special set in Ireland was basically that - he's so effortlessly attractive, solid and engaging without employing any of the flashier techniques of his peers. So I don't know if it's just Dillon's presence here, but I found this a great read, and recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Garth and Steve's initial PUNISHER. Not least because there's an unexpected appearance by Frank Castle, timed for maximum comedy. Bullseye's locked up in an underground maximum security cell, but before they caught him, he'd stolen some slightly dangerous nuclear material. Two agents, one cerebral, one certifiable, are given the task of interrogating the assassin in order to discover its location. So Bullseye tells them a story - the story of his life. And they believe him, the idiots.

Ultimate Spider-Man vol 12 (Ł8-50, Marvel) by Bendis & Bagley. It's time for a few guest stars: Wolverine, the Human Torch and Dr. Strange. The first, in which poor Peter finds himself in Logan's body - and, more worryingly, discovers that Logan's making use of his own - is very, very funny, with a thoroughly naughty punchline. The second, in which Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, finds himself at Peter's school, allows Bendis to explore relationships between young adults and relationships between superheroes and the public (the Fantastic Four haven't gone public yet). The third is pretty damn nasty and ends with a complete downer. A good downer, but a tremendous downer, in terms of romantic disappointment. Oh, hello, I've just figured out what the theme here is: relationships. Hmmm, but then so is the series. There really is so much heart. It's not about fighting at all. It's about people. Here, see what I mean, because it's time for the obligatory dialogue quotation (you think this is an easy option? These take ages to type accurately), as Liz, Mary Jane's friend, calls her over after spotting handsome young Johnny:

Superman: For Tomorrow vol 1 h/c (Ł16-99, DC) by Brain Azzarello & Jim Lee. Why is this Ł16-99? It's a six-issue h/c. DC have recently managed other six-issue hardcovers for Ł12-99. Marvel manage all thirteen issues of ULTIMATES vol 1 in a single hardcover, on much bigger paper, for Ł19-99. So why is this Ł16-99? Without the benefit of a reasonable answer from DC (and please, do feel free to offer one, Bob), I would suggest to you it's because they assume they can - that Jim Lee's name will sell it. When BATMAN: HUSH came out, also by Lee, I was initially underwhelmed by the straightforward superheroic plottage by Jeff Loeb, then relented and declared it a perfectly fine thing by two totally fine people. When Lee was joined by Brain Azzarello, whose stunning 100 BULLETS crime-conspiracy series I seldom shut up about, I was anticipating something a little more challenging. Be careful what you ask for. This is more challenging, but not, I'm afraid, in a good way. It challenges you to stay awake. Volume two will challenge you to work out what on earth's going on. And when you work it out, you're going to be challenged to care. Plus - and I'm willing to be declared obtuse here - but isn't the dialogue overly abstruse? I'm all for implication, I'm all for carefully nuanced verbal sabres, but I swear to God, I was often left wondering what point Superman was making during each tęte-ŕ-tęte with the priest. And when I worked most of them out, I just thought, "Okay, clever - but too clever. And too often to make for an enjoyable or realistic read." There's been a Vanishing. Lots of people have disappeared off the face of the planet, including Lois. Superman blames himself because he was away at the time. Turns out in volume two that it's not his only culpability. Meanwhile, he fights people and battles monsters and finds the device what did it, but can't work out the how or the why. Then the JLA turn up to ask some pertinent questions of him. You wait, I'll end up pronouncing this a perfectly fine thing by two totally fine people as well. Just not tonight.

Superman vs the Flash (Ł12-99, DC) by various. From 1967 to 2002 come a series of whacky races. One panel caught my eye on page nine, when Superman's reminded of some of the good deeds he's done on behalf of the United Nations: "When you built that series of damns in Asia, Superman, you took time out from your regular duties..." And bless the boy scout, there he is, tossing huge stone bricks on top of each other (no cement, mind), whilst the grateful peasants sit gratefully by, pronouncing their gratitude thus: "The new damn will save our village from the monsoon flood!" Yours, yeah! Fuck the tens of thousands of villagers on the other side of that damn, as their crops, houses and grandmothers are drowned under the swelling waters and their goats start swimming away, bleating plaintively, "Superman, you utter bastard. You're giving the Chinese Communist Party nasty ideas for the early 21st century..." I don't suppose the western construction firms were much pleased, either, when they heard that their year's backhanders had gone the way of the goats.

Batman Chronicles vol 1 (Ł9-99, DC) by Bill Finger, Gardner Fox & Bob Kane. Batman from the beginning (DETECTIVE COMICS #27), and in chorological order, which means BATMAN #1 is included, after DETECTIVE COMICS #38. I can't really comment on the contents. To me they require a sense of context, and no, even I wasn't around back in 1939 to provide it.

Batman: Year One h/c (Ł12-99, DC) by Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli. Like Miller, Mazzucchelli first rose to prominence as the artist on DAREDEVIL (BORN AGAIN, written by Frank and pencilled by David still available and in stock). After this he packed in superhero work for good and really started stretching his capabilities with his own RUBBER BLANKETS, which alas lasted only three issues before we lost him completely until the adaptation of Paul Auster's CITY OF GLASS from his New York Trilogy (also back in print and in stock - I've just read the three prose pieces and I'm about to go back and see how the acclaimed graphic novellisation - or whatever you want to call it! - compares). Here the two bring an urban crime feel to Batman, and with it a more central role for the burglar known as Catwoman. Dozens of previously unseen sketchwork here are accompanied by new intros and outros by writer and artist. Also: a bizarre, diagonal dustjacket which would be torn to pieces the second we removed the cellophane.

Strontium Dog: The Early Cases (Ł11-99, Rebellion) by John Wagner, Alan Grant & Carlos Ezquerra >> Strontium Dog is another of the 2000AD characters who seems only to appeal to those raised on 2000AD. This is a shame, because there's far more substance to him than to Judge Dredd or Rogue Trooper. On a post-nuclear Earth mutants are a despised underclass; among the few jobs open to them is that of the Search/Destroy agent, or Strontium Dog. Johnny Alpha is one such bounty hunter, and along with partner Wulf (a Viking. Don't ask) they engage in various adventures. Indeed, sometimes the adventures are even humorous enough to qualify as romps. It all gets much darker later on, but these stories are the sort of funny-yet-never-flippant SF action at which 2000AD has always excelled.

Slaine: Warrior's Dawn (Ł10-99, Rebellion) by Pat Mills, Angie Kincaid & Kincaid, Massimo Belardinelli, Mike McMahon >> Slaine may look a bit like 2000AD's house Conan rip-off, but that's not the whole story. Where Robert E Howard's barbarian was a celebration of masculine energy and aggression which sometimes had unpleasantly fascist overtones, Pat Mills' creation has a strongly feminist and environmentally-conscious edge. That makes it sound preachy, which is seldom the case, or at least not in these early adventures; there's axe-wielding mayhem aplenty in here, but it's axe-wielding mayhem with a conscience of sorts. If you only read one Slaine story then the later epic The Horned God is probably the one you want, but if entertainingly gory sword&sorcery reworkings of Celtic myth are your thing, this volume's a good bet too.

Nikolai Dante: The Great Game (Ł13-99, Rebellion) by Robbie Morrison & Simon Fraser, Charlie Adlard, Andy Clark >> More swashbuckling with the Russian rogue, this volume collects several of the shorter Dante stories. The last piece here, The Hunting Party, has art by Andy Clarke, who's definitely a name to watch; he's got a talent for expressive, differentiated human faces akin to Steve Dillon's.

Freakshow h/c (Ł9-99, Image) by Bruce Jones & Bernie Wrightson. A fire-charred show wagon pulls into town on a dark and stormy night, and as the townsfolk gather the cloaked figure in broad-rimmed black hat begins to tell a story of a man who travelled the country taking in those whom society shunned - the malformed and misunderstood, those on the verge of suicide. Eventually a beautiful woman, fleeing a personal tragedy, joins them, and falls pregnant. That's the happy bit. Wrightson is, of course, Mr. Horror himself, a reputation built on early SWAMP THING and his glorious FRANKENSTEIN plates built up of line upon line and as magnificent as anything by Gustav Doré. By necessity, I suppose, not as much work has one into this - the FRANKENSTEIN pieces were illustrations rather than full-on sequential art. Nevertheless he's the man for the job, and the lighting seldom rises above twilight. The middle section of this work is gripping, but ultimately it's deflated by a dénouement too limp to carry the whole, and which Bruce Jones feels the need to explain it in distracting text boxes. The double-page spread isn't Wrightson's finest hour either.

Twisted Toyfare Theatre vol 5 (Ł8-50, Wizard). Normally a rollickingly funny, if totally childish, series of Marvel and sci-fi spoofs using toy figures. I have the first four, and laugh a lot. This one really isn't that funny. Apart from the bit where The Lizard, stuck in toilet that's just flushed him round and around, coughs up a cat. Oh, and the illegal cock fight in Dr. Doom's basement.

This going to be another of those exceptions. Cinemato-- Cinematographic-- Cinem-- This is going to look neat. And this is one beautiful book, packed full of visual insights, as panels of the comic are set aside animatics and final screen shots for comparison, and even more fascinatingly animatics are set aside animatics, where Rodriguez has used, for example, a high-contrasting grout on a tiled wall to more accurately mirror Miller's original art. Rodriguez is basically recreating the comics (specifically the three graphic novels, back in stock @ Ł12-99, Ł14-99 and Ł12-99 respectively: THE HARD GOOD-BYE, THAT YELLOW BASTARD and THE BIG FAT KILL; the other two, A DAME TO KILL FOR @ Ł12-99 and FAMILY VALUES @ Ł9-99, have also reappeared in their new Chip Kidd livery). He categorically states that he's not adapting the comic to the cinema, but bringing the comic to life. It doesn't need adapting. "These are the best shot, written, directed, lit and edited movies that people have never seen, just on paper." But he did have to go to extraordinarily lengths to persuade Frank of this, to convince a reluctant Miller to let him film SIN CITY at all: "And I understood that, because like if someone goes and makes a bad movie out there it's ruined. You can't go back." (Not strictly true. THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN remains exemplary comics, but I do have to begin almost every shop floor flourish on the books with "This is nothing like the film, trust me, this is a satire on Victorian fiction and the patriarchal, imperialist British society that spawned it," just to eradicate all traces of the movie in potential readers' minds.) These included filming a short three-page story, to which they added the credits - basically their wish list of actors to play the roles - which they then used to sell the project to those actors. And got them. Yep, this is the sort of stuff you'll learn in the book. It was filmed in colour for a start, with a lot of the backgrounds shot or created separately. The attention paid to detail and fidelity included importing a Mongolian bow made to specification, and then making a version of that which inexperienced actors could use without their arms dropping off from fatigue. There are also props on display here which were never used, like the gorgeous scarlet and sterling silver three-blade throwing star. If you're a fan of the SIN CITY series and you're really looking forward to the film - and I'm going to be making one of those rare trips to the non-smoking cinema myself - this book is going to make the experience even more fascinating, informed experience.

The Library Of Graphic Novelists: Joe Sacco (Ł15-99, Rosen Publishing) by Monica Marshall. Also in this series: Spiegelman and Gaiman - the latter, if you remember, I tore to pieces just a couple of months ago. That there needs to be more written not only about Joe Sacco (PALESTINE, SAFE AREA GORAZDE etc.), but also his ground-breaking collections (yes, "ground-breaking" - what else can you call the first substantial body of comicbook journalism?) is in no doubt. His skill and techniques cry out for critical analysis. Unfortunately this isn't a book on Joe, or his craft. It's a history lesson. The majority of the pages are a history lesson, and I don't even know if it's an accurate one at that - I certainly wouldn't put money on it given some of the sentences employed here. For example, about the work Monica writes, "The effect is a stunning achievement that broke the traditional comics superhero mold". In what way, Monica? Are you stating that it changed superhero comics? Because it didn't. Are you claiming that it was the first comic to come out that wasn't about superheroes? It patently wasn't! Are you implying that it was the first comic to be taken seriously enough for people to stop thinking that comics are all superheroes? Because most - in the UK and US - still do and those that don't already knew that. And where was that qualifier, "US/UK", in your sentence anyway? Such sloppy, inaccurate drivel in the very introduction does little to instil confidence. There are a few pages on Sacco's background, and journey through the industry and out to Palestine and Bosnia, and I spotted a couple of sentences analysing his craft (just a couple, mind), but for the most part this (thin, overpriced) hardcover does little more than provide some background to the places he visited, and said background, as I said, may itself be of questionable merit. I'm versed in history, but no academic in that field. Yet even I can spot the flaw in the revelation offered, for example, that the title "More Women, More Children, More Quickly" - tales his mother told him of being bombed whilst living in the Allied island of Malta during World War II (currently available in NOTES FROM A DEFEATIST) - was taken from the following quote attributed to British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin: "I think it is well for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed... The bomber will always get through. The only defence is offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves." Harsh indeed. So where's the flaw? Firstly, any Sacco reader would already know the source of the title, because it's printed at the top of the opening page, but more importantly Sacco, unlike Marshall, is careful to put it in context by including Baldwin's next sentence: "I just mention that... so that people may realise what is waiting for them when the next war comes," and then he dates the quotation as 1932. Without those two elements one might infer that Baldwin was confessing military strategy enacted at that time rather than (it seems to me), warning of the dangers of another World War! Once again it appears that the subject of this series has had no involvement with it at all - the few pronouncements offered are taken from other sources - and I must warn any academic institution away from using this in class. For just a little bit more you can buy any number of informative works, like COMICS, COMIX AND GRAPHIC NOVELS or COMIX: THE UNDERGROUND REVOLUTION, both coming in at something like 40 times the length of this measly little offering, or, hell, read the books themselves.

Comics Journal Special Edition 2005: Seduction (Ł16-99, Fantagraphics) edited by Gary Groth - Big focus on manga in this issue. Translated manga, popular manga, manga noones' ever head of and more. Saseo Ono is one of the forgotten originators of manga and there's a big, colour section of his work here. Ypshoharu Tsuge started in 1954. His 'Electroplate Factory' was translated and reprinted in RAW at the beginning of the 90s. Suehiro Marou's grotesque, transgressive comics of pain and distress are still something that I can't bring myself to read (his ULTRA-GASH INFERNO remains unread). But somehow I can read Hideshi Hino. Maybe it's because his artwork is simpler, his themes broader. Hino caries on the tradition of the HAUNT OF FEAR/TALES FROM THE CRYPT or Hammer House of Horror but ups the ante. After the interview there's a great review/look at THE RED SNAKE called 'The Night Freud Vomited Blood'. I wish I'd thought up that review. Then, because we must, because there's no escaping it, there's a piece on Tezuka. The whole thing is laid out with eye catching illustrations. Also you get three pieces on Vaughn Bode and new comics by the usual Fantagraphics bunch.

Dogs And Water (Ł6-50, Drawn & Quarterly) by Anders Nilsen - BACK IN STOCK!

A boy walks down a road. We'll say he's 16 and the landscape around him is barren. From the cover the sky looks still yet angry, I'm sure the air doesn't taste too good. On his back is a bag, tied to the bag is a teddy bear, possibly a water-bottle cover by the look of it. He's been walking for weeks and he talks to the bear - it was their idea to make this journey although we don't know where they're going. People told them that they were crazy to even try it, although the idea that there were ever other people or a town miles and miles behind them seems unlikely. When you get to the middle of nowhere, even the outskirts of nowhere, civilisation, shops, schools, a nice warm bed can feel like a dream you've been jolted out of. And while we're talking about dreams, the boy has dreams of a great sea, a boat that sometimes has a motor and sinking down into the deep. Doesn't water represent change? Are these his fears about the journey he's on? I can't unlock all of this story but it held me tight. He talks to the stuffed toy but it doesn't reply. He's alone, we don't know where he's going or where he's come from. The boy shows such little fear, maybe it's the innocence of youth, that you fear for him. Quite chilling.

This is the first of Drawn & Quarterly's petit livres series and a damn fine way to start a line of books. Nilsen has produced six issues of BIG QUESTIONS and provided the opening and closing strips in the fabled KRAMERS ERGOT FOUR.

Blue (Ł10-99, Fanfare/Potent Mon) by Kiriko Nananan. Exquisitely, delicately drawn sigh of melancholy as one young, Japanese schoolgirl develops an early crush on another. The pages are full of light, the lines fine, the haircuts all feathery and ebony on the page. And the two girls at the centre both look like Asian, teenage Natassja Kinskis - which you would have thought was no bad thing! But this is the first of the book's two flaws - on page after page you can't tell them apart. Because of this and the placement of unassigned dialogue, on page after page it is - to me - completely unclear who is talking to whom. However, at its heart this has everything right. It's full of inconsequential conversation breezing over all the stuff underneath that goes unsaid, even when it becomes clear to Kayako's closest friend that Kayako's pash for Endô is causing her to drift away, and she's basically losing her. I say "pash", but this has all the hallmarks of a first true love. Unfortunately it's unrequited. Kayako becomes close, even intimate in a non-physical way, with Endô, but begins to realise that she's jealous of Endô's other life outside of their friendship, that Endô doesn't "need" her as she needs Endô. What struck me as painfully accurate is the heartache that comes when you realise that you are not the absolute centre of the world for the person permanently at the centre of yours. But that's another of my heart on my sleeve, here's Kayako's. It's a little confused, as is the storytelling, but it's pure and pretty and those eyes will melt your soul.

Chrono Crusade vol.1 (Ł6-50, ADV Manga) by Daisuke Moriyama ~ High octane supernatural steampunk romp, set in 1920s' New York. Sister Rosette is a gun-totin' Nun with the Magdalan Order. Together with her partner Chrono, a seemingly harmless boy, actually a powerful demon, they dispatch holy ballistic exorcisms on all sorts of icky supernatural types. Chrono and Rosette long ago struck a deal. He gets her soul if she, and the Order, can wield his powers. Now under her control through the use of a pocket watch which limits his ability, as well as housing her life force. Each time Chrono releases his devastating powers, the hands on the watch wind backwards. Draining the soul of Rosette and shortening her life. Great little premise for a story which otherwise would have been just more Nuns'n'Guns (practically its own genre, honestly), besides, Antarctic Press are responsible for enough of that crap. Of course it helps that the demons are just the right mix of Go Nagai's Devil Man and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Couple that with stories drawn from actual occult mysteries and you have something fans of Devil Man and Hellsing would be foolhardy to pass over.

RG VEDA vol.1 (Ł6-99, Tokyopop) by CLAMP ~ Not only one of CLAMP's earliest works but (disputably) their finest. Back in the days of high adventure when men had big square chests, women had big round ones and everyone could wield great big sharp pointy things with skill (except the peasants). Lord Yasha played his part in the bloodshed and genocide under the rule of the Warlord Taishakuten. But now his own tribe is under threat of elimination after Yasha finds and takes in Ashura. The last surviving member of the long extinct Ashura tribe. Together they must find the "Six Stars" who will be "the schism that splits the Heavens" in order to restore peace to the land. Even if the boy is destined to kill him. There's quite a lot of back story here. And at the beginning you get the feeling CLAMP tried to cram as much in the initial short story as possible. Unsure maybe how long their tenure would last. After about fifty pages of rampant thou thee art thou talk it seems they exhale. Relax. And the whole thing starts to evolve into the fluid mix of action drama and wit. Carried along with that, never satisfied/always satisfying, gorgeous style we know them for today.

Di Gi Charat Theatre: Dejiko's Adventure vol.1 (Ł6-50, Broccoli Books) by Yuki Kiriga ~ Di Gi Charat, or Dejiko for short, is a cat-eared ten-year-old princess from planet Di Gi Charat who came to earth to wow us by becoming an international superstar. Obviously the first rung on that long ladder is working at the anime and games store GAMERS (she was initially created as a mascot for the real GAMERS chain in Japan) . Of course the whole endeavour would be so easy, if she wasn't such a self-centred, evil little minx. Or if she wasn't terrible at her job. Or if she hadn't inadvertently demolished the store with her laser eye beam attack. Now Mishter Manager (a finger with a face painted on it) is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and little Dejiko must find "The Secret Treasure Of Prosperity" to put the shop back in business. She's joined on her crusade by Puchiko, a surly young cat girl, and Rabi~en~Rose, a cos-player in competition with Dejiko for the #1 clerk position. Unfortunatly being the age they are they're distracted from the mission about every three panels or so. How will Mishter Manager cope! If you haven't gathered by now this is mental! I had to have two chocolate bars and a milk shake in order to even touch it. And their use of language makes the Timmy Mallet sound like Jeremy Paxman. But that's just part of the whole package. It's for kids, loud and fun.

Little Star #2 (Ł2-25, Oni) by Andi Watson. And this is why I do this job. A beautiful comic about individuals you're familiar with, doing things you or your friends do, making decisions you or your friends are faced with. Specifically, here, parenthood - and not just the sweet stuff, either. Sure, there are the crayons, there's the bubble bath, there's the being woken up at an ungodly hour by your lovely son or daughter, who, if you're Daddy demands to see Mummy, or, if you're Mummy, demands to see Daddy. Ah, little people! Aren't they smashing. On top of that though, there are serious considerations. Do you leave work to look after your child or children? Can you afford to? And if you don't, do you feel guilty about leaving them in Pre-School? If you do, does that fulfil you? What happens to you and your life as an individual, when you become a mother or father - when the majority of your time and attention is consumed with looking after the needs of someone who depends on you completely and constantly demands your attention? How does everyone else cope? And if they cope better, are you jealous? Coming back to practicalities, do you need more bedrooms now? Or do you need a big garden? Because you probably can't have both if you want to move to the catchment area of a school you like... Andi Watson's fiction has always been top of my list - you know the people he writes about - but this is even better than BREAKFAST AFTER NOON. It's more complex, more compelling and more moving. Although it's good to see Rob and Louise again (see BREAKFAST AFTER NOON). Watson's economy of line remains intact for maximum sympathy, his one-line eyebrows now joined by equally expressive, permanent bags under the couple's eyes. It's my favourite comic at the moment, and I'm not even a parent. If you are, may I suggest this will almost certainly speak to you? I hope there's a book in time for Christmas, because that's at least ten presents sorted.

Or Else #2 (Ł3-99, Drawn & Quarterly) by Kevin Huizenga - One of the problems facing comic artists is what should be left in and what should be left out? Jeffrey Brown, in his forthcoming, AEIOU, shows us a relationship but leaves out important facts in the same way that his character was not told the whole story. There's a track by Love where words are left off the end of lines but it's obvious from the rhyming pattern as to what's left out and it brings more attention to them. In KILL BILL, the main character's name is bleeped out, again forcing our attention to what's missing. Some comics give you a single page and you'd swear that you'd read ten. The opposite side of this is that we're never given the whole truth of a moment. If you want to truly understand any moment in time you'd have to have all the facts presented to you. The central story of this issue ("The Sunset") gives 20 pages over to a split second of Glenn Ganges looking out of a library window, seeing a feather fall and catching the full blast of the rays of the setting sun. One line, "earlier I was at the library and the sun was setting..." is chopped up and repeated throughout, pulling us back and forth throughout the moment. We see different views, people in the library, birds outside and the images left on his optic nerve as the light pours in. It's a dizzying experience and quite a trick to pull off. It that was the only section of the book it would have still made my 'best of 2002' list when it originally came out. Even the way he segues into the final chapter ("The Moon Rose") calm after the storm is wonderful.

The first part has Glenn & Wendy unpacking the groceries. Wendy is pregnant and their minds drift to the future, when the baby is a year or so old. Both end up worrying that something bad will happen but realise that there's a way out of it.

"Come here

She's kicking.

There

Did you feel it?"

"No."

"...

Then?"

"Nope."

"You don't feel that?"

"Uhh...

Nope"

"Here... wait a second."

Then we cut away and then back to find that it's Glenn carrying the baby before we're onto the next panel where they're both sitting down at the dinner table, talking about relations. Then the phone rings and it's just Glenn unpacking the groceries & he's been daydreaming about him and his wife daydreaming about the baby. By now we're all disorientated and possibly in the right frame of mind for "The Sunset". Viewing this book in isolation we're not sure if Wendy is pregnant or if Glenn is actually married. It's Wendy that's phoned him, so she's real enough. Outside of this book, in "28th Street" (from DRAWN & QUARTERLY SHOWCASE VOL 2) they're still trying to conceive and in OR ELSE #1 they appear to have had a miscarriage or lost the child in infancy.

This is a grand book and I'm glad that it's been reprinted. Huizenga is definitely one to watch.

Fluffy # 3 of 4 (Ł6-00, I Love Bunnies Ltd) by Simone Lia. Okay, LITTLE STAR is my second-favourite comic.

Michael and Fluffy arrive safely in Sicily to stay with Fluffy's Nanna and Nannu. Nanna serves steak, even though Fluffy's a bunny and shouldn't eat steak, but Fluffy won't admit she's a bunny so that doesn't matter now, does it?

[chluk tchl bup]

[tlut chup]

[tlut]

"Fluffy, did you take my steak?"

"Sorry Daddy [tlut] I love you Daddy."

Angry Youth Comix #8 (Ł2-60, Fantagraphics) by Johnny Ryan - "Everybody here is afraid of fun" - LCD Soundsystem, 2002

Short, snappy, offensive two-page strips that amuse as they educate. Nope, that's wrong, I don't mean 'educate'. Oh, what's the word? 'Disgust'. That's it. Amuse as they disgust. Humour comics sell badly here. The occasional book like MR O or something by Kyle Baker will go very well but single-issue laff-athons die on their feet. With this issue, Ryan has shot up there with Sam Henderson as a god of humour. 'The Insulterator' and 'Dog Shit Golf' sort of speak for themselves but 'The Lengthening' with its vomit, three-way sex and racial stereotypes has to seen to be believed.

[Err, by those old enough - ed.] Well, duh.

Otherworld #1 of 12 (Ł2-25, Vertigo/DC) by Phil Jimenez. Quite the feat number one: Jiminez introduces you to a sprawling cast of complicatedly related and attractively flawed young men and women living in a culturally thriving American city, rounds them all out enough for you to really get a handle on who they are, how their minds work, what they want and what they're prepared to do to get it (sleep around, shoplift, send flowers or chat up bar staff) all in the space of the first issue, before the world goes freaky on them. Quite the feat number two: marry this to a fantastical realm in another dimension where a large-scale war is occurring on a magical basis - and let me say at this point, the visuals are the richest I've seen in any comicbook fantasy outside perhaps of Charles Vess' painting, and they're going to make you go "oooh!" - and which evidently necessitates the intervention at the end, plucking the individuals grounded convincingly in our everyday reality from the music gig they're attending and... well, I don't know what's going to happen next. Quite the feat number three: making me care. I hate magical fantasies. Now a whole load of you love high fantasy, otherwise those novels wouldn't sell so well, nor would those art books. Just open the cover and look at the detail, the colours, the special effects. That should do the trick. Its success for me lies all in the contemporary, the gossip and that grounding. For others it may be the fantasy itself. Let's see what happens when the two meet.

Bigfoot #1, 2 (Ł2-99, IDW) by Steve Niles, Rob Zombie & Richard Corben. The last time Steve and Rob got together, the result was THE NAIL. Less than impressive. This time, with Richard Corben on board (CAGE etc.), they've raised their game considerably and produced a grisly slab of horror which is both brutal and surprisingly affecting. In fact, I'd say Corben's raised his game as well. When I tell you that thirty years ago a family holiday leaves an boy orphaned and traumatised for life, it sounds decidedly so-so. But if you actually read that sequence, its violence is so visceral, you'll feel what I mean. Gorgeous panel layout, superb lighting, and limbs all over the place. The second issue takes up the story in 2004, and it warms my heart to hear a sixty-year-old sing, "Dig through the ditches! Burn through the witches! I slam in the back of my..." He only just gets to finish that line before a double-page comedy moment renders his car incapable of passing its next MOT.

The Atheist #1 (Ł2-60, Image) by Phil Hester & John McCrea. The Atheist is a man so charismatic he's compelling - as in, he can compel others to do stuff they probably wouldn't of their own accord. Of course, for that to work, the writer has to make him compelling and here, much to my surprise, Hester does as good a job as Ellis might. How does the Atheist do this? I don't yet know, but it may have something to do with the fact that he can read people, really get inside them, by just by listening, observing their body language. It's certainly not through mumbo-jumbo, because The Atheist doesn't believe in that shit. Every time Washington has called him in for something too obscure for them to solve, something seemingly supernatural, he's found a perfectly logical explanation for it. "I appreciate the challenges, Mr. Olber, I really do. But to date, all your otherworldly menaces have had decidedly mundane origins. We humans, we delicate, beautiful snowflakes of ingenuity, we're perfectly capable of generating the boundless evil in the world. No supernatural outsourcing necessary." See, told you it sounded like Ellis. Anyway, they've just called him in again, because there's been a sudden surge in teenagers running away from home, and a concurrent rise in accidental deaths and suicide amongst the young.

"A new drug."

"No indication. The runaways and deaths have no common indicators beside their relative youth. Rich kids, poor kids, smart, dumb, white, black, Asian, whatever. No discernible commonality in their history. What they do after they run away, however, is inexplicably similar."

"What's that?"

"They run away to Winnipeg."

And a third of them die within a week of arrival - of overdoses, fights, suicides and... well, exhaustion. Oh, one more thing: each survivor claims to be someone else, someone who died. And each time the name and date of death checks out. One of them is sitting in an interrogation room right now. Once The Atheist has observed him tell his own story, he'll surely be able to read him to rights, and find the perfectly logical explanation he always does. Won't he...?

What I like most about this first issue is that Hester spends every page setting the series up, and then on the last one, with the punchline, he turns everything on its head. I don't normally dig McCrea, I've always considered him crude - which has its appeal, just not for me - but this black and white art (the opening shot aside) marks a departure into something more detailed and down-to-earth. It's also quite unsettling at times.

In the back, an even more unsettling short story written and drawn by Phil Hester (though not his own normal style, either) called "Circumcision - A Beginner's Manual". Not exactly what it sounds like from the title.

Countdown to Infinite Crisis (90 pence, DC) by Mssrs Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, Judd Winnick & Morales, Benes, Saiz, Reis, Jimenez. We have ignition. 80-page prologue to five forthcoming mini-series said to set the DC world on fire, linked by a single investigation by the Blue Beetle into the disappearance of his cash and assets. Virtually ignored or at least let down by his higher profile comrades in the JLA, he unearths far more than is good for him, and everyone's going to feel pretty lousy down the line that most of them weren't there for him - and not just because they'd have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had been. I'm not in the business of giving too much away, but this is an unusually successful melding of creative minds, and only once, in a brief piece of needless exposition which stands out like a thumb with a splinter just under its nail can you tell that Greg Rucka definitely wasn't writing that panel. The basic idea is that a lot goes down at once, leaving attentions distracted. DAY OF VENGEANCE, and THE RANN/THANAGAR war kick off (well, are shown to have kicked off), whilst a group of supervillains brood about the revenge they'll have in VILLAINS UNITED. The real thrust, however, is into THE OMAC PROJECT, written by Greg Rucka, which I singled out a couple of months ago as the classier piece (although I have a correction to make: the advance pages I saw which I thought were part of THE OMAC PROJECT come from this one-shot instead). The OMAC project is a monitoring system set up by Batman to watch over not only his enemies, but his allies. It's how he knows the big secret revealed in IDENTITY CRISIS. Unfortunately it's been tapped into by... someone he's familiar with, and not unknown to the Blue Beetle, either. Now, this is where I take a step back and remind you that whilst this is a perfectly intriguing, value-for-money and really rather vital one-shot if you're going to be reading any of those four series, or indeed the climax (coming up in the autumn: INFINITE CRISIS by Geoff Johns & Phil Jiminez, to be released on the 20th Anniversary of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS), it is no IDENTITY CRISIS. There Brad Meltzer pulled off the nearly impossible task of not only making it completely accessible to readers unfamiliar with the DC Universe without the aid of glaring exposition, but he made newcomers care about the characters well before the shit hit the proverbial fan. Plus the whole thing had a coherent thematic heart, using considered language and some decent lateral thinking. None of this happens here, and unless you are familiar with the person in question, you'll be left a little nonplussed by who's at the heart of this new threat. Of course if you are a regular DC reader over the last fifteen years or so, your jaw may - no, will - hit the floor. Now, onto something related to all this that I left out in part A...

JLA #115-119 (Ł1-70, DC) by Geoff Johns & Chris Batista. Not in yet! Due in June! Quick recap: IDENTITY CRISIS (for God's sake DC, let's have a collected edition, already) showed that some of the DC heroes had, in the past, been prepared to go to extreme lengths to protect themselves and their family and friends. Some of them - some of the core members of the JLA, and the most senior. I still can't tell you what this was, or what sparked it off, because I want those who haven't read the series and don't go careering all over the internet in search of spoilers to enjoy the shocks for themselves, but if it was the only practical solution short of execution, it was, debatably, deeply unethical. The only problem was, they had a loose end to take care of: Batman. And they did take care of him. Now they're about to regret it. This is a stand-alone five-parter which might interest those who've read IDENTITY CRISIS. It's not written by Brad Meltzer, it's written by Geoff Johns, and honesty dictates that I confess that I don't rate him. Many, many readers of standard superhero material do, and that's great - I certainly having nothing against the man. To me, however, he's no Brad Meltzer, he's no Brian Michael Bendis, Warren Ellis, Ed Brubaker, Mark Millar nor, whilst we're here, Greg Rucka. There, I've said it. Feel free to request these five issues on their own. We'll certainly be catering for what will certainly be demand.

Seven Soldiers: Guardian #1 of 4 (Ł2-25, DC) by Grant Morrison & Cameron Stewart. If it looks like D-rate superheroics and reads like B-rate superheroics, by the laws of average it probably is C-rate superheroics. But with Morrison's name attached you can't be quite sure, can you? I mean, you could be missing something that'll make you look stupid later on. Maybe it'll appear in the second issue. Or maybe Grant's being intentionally corny from start to finish. "This is the magic one, this is the Arthurian sci-fi, and this is the corny superhero one. It's all part of the scheme." So: a chap who left the police force after killing an innocent boy (or maybe wounding or crippling him slightly), is shown an advert to become a newspaper's superhero. After a "test" he's given a golden pudding bowl to put on his head. Armed with that, and a bike he borrows from a kid, his first mission is to stop some homeless subway pirates, who have managed to capture - out of everyone who could possibly be using the underground at midday - his wife and father-in-law. Yeah, he's deliberately being corny, but there doesn't appear to be any of the subtleties evident in TOM STRONG. Maybe they'll be there in the second issue. Or maybe I've missed something that'll make me look stupid later on.

Spellbinders #1 (Ł2-25, Marvel) by Mikes Carey & Perkins. Marvel agree to try something a little different again, and although I remain unconvinced by Carey's dialogue (he doesn't have the same ear as Bendis, so when he tries to reproduce naturalistic broken sentences they just feel jerky and artificial), the book as a whole is a whiplash affair, especially for poor Kim who's just moved schools, and whose first day at John Hathorne High leaves her feeling there's rather a lot going on that she doesn't understand. She doesn't even get what they're talking about half the time. She's been assaulted by an air elemental, branded a witch through association, and endured a supernatural "hands-on" experience in her garage. Oh wait, did I say "endured"? Because that goes some way to implying she survives it. Uh-uh. If the dialogue is unconvincing, her confusion isn't, and there's a neat colouring effect on the last page and a cliffhanger bound to retain its readers for another issue. If there are any readers - past experience suggests that those who read Marvel want only costumes.

GLA #1 of 4 (Ł2-25, Marvel) by Dan Slott & Paul Pelletier. The first and last pages aside, this as much of a successfully dark and quirky work and Slott's SHE-HULK is a bright and quirky one. The title (standing for Great Lakes Avengers, a deliberately Z-list superhero group as cooked up by Byrne in his WEST COAST AVENGERS tenure), is, obviously, a play on DC's JLA, and the first issue concentrates on their ludicrous formation and the early years of their leader, Mr. Immortal, who simply cannot die. He finds out because as a child he was constantly tempted by Death Urge (whom his parents thought an imaginary friend) into increasingly reckless acts of self-endangerment, which his less robust house and father fail to survive. It's silly enough that the darker moments hit quite hard. I'd rather read Kyle Baker or Simone Lia for comedy, but if you like your superheroes silly, it's not as naff as it sounds. All right, it is, but Dan intended it that way.

Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #13 (Ł2-25, Marvel) by Reginald Hudlin & I really can't remember. The Millar & Dodson party's over. In its place, a different beast which doesn't feel remotely like a mini-series or maxi-series, but which instead takes the place of PETER PARKER or SPECTACULAR or whatever it was the other week as a regular, endless series. I've just finished reading BLACK PANTHER #3, also by Reggie, which is swiftly climbing to the top of my Marvel favourites, being as it is full of the most accessible and seemingly uninterfered-with politics, dry wit and caustic dialogue. As of writing we still have a few copies of #s 1 and 2. However, I can't believe this is the same man writing. Whereas BLACK PANTHER constantly eschews the obvious, even in its choice of protagonists (a new Black Knight, for example, is now the crusading champion of a corrupt Vatican), this, whilst not exactly crass, is comparatively pedestrian, web-slinging fodder, with little time or trouble taken on set-up before Peter finds himself a new home and job. Well, new home (Avengers Tower) and old job (Daily Bugle). It's just too abrupt from start to finish. Hudlin's PANTHER is obviously a labour of love, and the thought that goes into it suggests he might have had the title in mind as a personal goal for a while. This feels like he took it because he was offered it, and close to the last minute. Maybe he'll calm down after a few issues.

The Expatriate #1 (Ł2-20, Image) by B. Clay Moore & Jason Latour. Jack's on the run, holed out in some banana republic, but American agents are mere minutes behind him. We don't know why, and if I remember the solicitation copy, neither does he. So far most of this is fairly standard fare with no real wit employed: Jack sees woman being hit by her brother, steps in, and it turns out her husband has aspirations to replace the current criminal as the next President of wherever we are. Much guns and shootage ensue, leading the agents even closer. Here's the thing, though: Jason has complete control of the lighting, and together with Josh Richardson on colours (I'm assuming he's on colours - they insist on crediting him with the "flats", and I'm reasonably sure he wasn't just sorting out accommodation) he's created page after page which positively sweats "tropical evening". It's by no means your average colouring - in its ways it stands out as much as Paul Pope's choice of palette - for the ripe oranges, purples and reds are so rich they're tasty, and combined with panels that consist on average of 50% black (handy since the faces in full view are somewhat ugly), you can almost here the cicadas scritchy away in the twilight. Good move to use so much, umm, Mexican or spanish or what-have-you. Bad move to use such a comparatively limp cover. The next one's better: they've added lime.

The New West #1of 2 (Ł3-50, Black Bull) by Jimmy Palmiotti & Phil Noto. The New West is Los Angeles, after a pulse bomb has been detonated by Korean terrorists enraged by the Americanisation of their culture. Isn't that what the letter pages of the newspapers are for? Mysteriously, the effect has lasted a good year, so cars still don't work and horses are a premium. I can't see how such a long duration is scientifically possible (isn't a pulse a pulse? why would there be a fall-out?), but it's not the last of the improbabilities: when a kidnapper has both his hands lobbed off there's little shown in the way of blood or pain, and I'm fairly sure you'd go into shock, not stand around making conversation. On the plus side the characters are more engaging than in THE EXPATRIATE, although even here it's pretty much cut-and-paste from crime films and series, so we're no nearer to 100 BULLETS quality. The art is clean with barely a black in sight, and in its own ghastly way the pastel palette does convey a convincing atmosphere, with no lighting at night (electricity's down), and the figure work is as faultless as the backgrounds. Anyway, an ex-cop unreasonably blamed for a kidnapping ransom rescue going wrong (a plane crashed onto the freeway - not his fault!) tries again for the same family now that the father's been abducted, taking with him his trusty katana bequeathed to him by his dead ex-partner.