Archive for July, 2014

Reviews July 2014 week five

Wednesday, July 30th, 2014

ALERT! ALERT! Bryan Lee O’Malley’s SECONDS is to be rush-released early in the UK, and should be with us today or tomorrow!

Reminder: Bryan Lee O’Malley signing at Page 45 18th August 2014

Tuki #1 (£2-99, Cartoon Books) by Jeff Smith.

“Actually, the reason I came here, was because you said you had food.”
Quiet! We must concentrate! Do you think it is easy to commune with the spirits?”
“So… no food, then.”

No food.

From the creator of BONE, another kids’ classic in-the-making which adults will adore: sweeping savannah landscapes, sunshine colouring and visual gags worthy of Kyle Baker himself.

This is the Stone-Age story of the first human to leave Africa. But his immediate – his only – priorities are to forage for food and to survive whatever else is doing the same. Communing with so-called spirits isn’t anywhere on his agenda. Of course, that doesn’t mean they won’t be communing with Tuki

Tom Gaadt, one of the colourists on Jeff Smith’s RASL, keeps it all open and clean. From the early morning, blue-misted mountains with dawn peering promisingly over the horizon through sunrise itself – a hint of pink giving way to a yellow which complement’s Tuki’s green-leaved, mobile hide – to the full bright blue of a midday African sky over a golden grassland stretching as far as the eye can see. A certain sabre-toothed predator prowls there for prey, cutting a tell-tale furrow. It’s time for Tuki to make with that better side of valour and beat a retreat to the canopies above.

 

 

 

It’s there that Tuki encounters another hominid, a member of Homo Habilis who, whilst upright, is squatter and so hairy you could consider it fur. It is he who warns Tuki of the Little Ones – the Ancient Ones – following him, and he foresees a frightened little boy. At all costs Tuki must not seek the Ends of the Earth beyond the three waterfalls. Clearly the man is insane.

Thrilling! Magical! Educational, with a time-line map in the back.

Jeff Smith’s command of expression, body language and interaction was part of what made BONE so special right from the very first chapter. Here Tuki twitches left, right and centre, forever alert for the first signs of danger. Even so it can sometimes startle him, particularly in the long grass and Smith manages that difficult match of comedy and catastrophe at the very same time. Moreover, you can see the intelligence behind Tuki’s eyes and almost read his mind.

As to whether the hirsute Habilis should be heeded, everything comes together on the final-page spread.

It’s going to be quite the journey!

SLH

Buy Tuki #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Murder Me Dead s/c (£14-99, Image) by David Lapham.

From the creator of STRAY BULLETS – right up there with Brubaker and Phillips’ CRIMINAL as the finest comicbook crime of all time – comes a white-knuckle ride through mid-twentieth-century noir.

There’s a cracking opening shot from within the ceiling, staring down at the police, forensic photographer and a decidedly impassive Steven Russell as he gazes up at his wife, hung by her neck from the fan.

One of Eve’s high-healed shoes has fallen off. She’s quite dead.

Apart from Barbara (Steven’s sister-in-law with whom he is having an affair), most believe Eve was driven to suicide by Steven’s serial philandering and late-night drinking in the restaurant he has now inherited which Eve ran front-of-house and where Steven just played piano.

Eve’s wealthy, resentful and pursed-mouthed mother believes Steven actually killed her, and is determined to bring him down by hook or by crook.

Did he? The extensive, hand-written suicide note is explicitly damning of his neglect, but maybe that’s a bluff. He’s certainly far from cut up about it. Now there’s a very nasty private investigator on his tail and the press on his back, exposing his multiple affairs. It’s probably not the best time to initiate another, but that’s exactly what Steven does.

The press blitz has brought an irritating loudmouth called Tony out of the woodwork after a fifteen-year absence. With Steven unwelcome at his own bar, they hit the town to recall High-School times when they were happier, when Steven had the most almighty crush on Tara Torres. Too timid back then, what he didn’t know until now is that it was reciprocated. Unable to get Tara out of his head he begins stalking her until she appears at his car window with a shotgun.

It’s an odd way to start a love affair, I grant you, but once Tara realises who Steven is the flames are rekindled immediately. Odder still, when Tony finds out that they’re sleeping together he warns Steven off Tara: after her husband died of cancer she became addicted to the morphine sulphate he was treated with and is now heavily in debt to a bad man called Johnny The Pill. But when Steven pays off Johnny a neurotically on-edge Tara, attacked in her home, warns Steven off Tony.

What is it with Tony? What is it with Tara? What was she doing with that shotgun? What’s with the second suicide note in Steven’s typewriter?!

This is a very different beast to STRAY BULLETS. For a start there are no children; the fuck-ups here are all adults with plenty of baggage bogging them down. The four-tier storytelling is denser until the final flashback when it blooms beautifully into two-panel pages and all is finally revealed. Until then it’s also a linear timeline following these damaged goods, doomed by their nature, to their inevitable, terrible conclusions. With ten full chapters the travelling is twisted and they take plenty of time getting there.

Lapham strikes me as a fearless artist. There is nothing he cannot draw with equal dexterity, whether it’s sun-kissed pool sides, late-night car crashes, densely populated piano bars or the most vicious, protracted, hand-to-hand, hair-pulling scraps. There’s the same physicality which Jeff Smith would employ later in RASL including some similar body-forms. He’s particularly fine at all-out terror, madness and wide-eyed, tearful, screaming rage.

There’s plenty of that here.

“It’s you an’ me, baby,
“Always an’ forever…
“Till death do us part!”

Trust no one.

SLH

Buy Murder Me Dead s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Couch Tag h/c (£19-99, Fantagraphics) by Jesse Reklaw…

“I liked your comic, even though you made up all those lies about me.” – The author’s father.

Great pull quote that, heh heh. I do admire people who write memoirs showing childhoods that were less than ideal so dispassionately. Whilst on the one hand, it obviously gives them a veritable wealth of material to utilise, it can’t be easy going over somewhat emotionally uneven ground once again. In the case of Jesse Reklaw, it would be fair to say his father probably was at the centre of much of the upheaval in his family’s lives.

Being a piss-head and also a pot-head are probably not the best aids to your parenting skills, but it would seem Jesse’s dad was determined to live his life exactly how he wanted to. It’s surprising his wife put up with it as long as she did, but then you get the impression there was an element of fear always bubbling under the surface in the Reklaw household, as everyone was anticipating his father’s next mood swing. Actually – and the thought just occurs – given Jesse makes no secret of the fact that he suffers from bipolar mood disorder (though there is relatively little mention of it in this memoir), I do wonder whether his father may well also have been an undiagnosed sufferer, perhaps.

Anyway, the book is effectively split into five parts, the themes of which all serve as the backdrop for an exploration of the current state of the Reklaw’s chaotic household, Jesse’s emotional development and the various goings-on at the time. The first two chapters, ‘thirteen cats of my childhood’, and ‘toys I loved’, help us to understand the somewhat volatile nature of Jesse’s upbringing. Seeing his dad asking which was his current favourite toy, then destroying it in front of a distraught Jesse simultaneously made me want to laugh and cry. I can’t honestly get my head around how someone could do that to their child, depriving them of their most precious belonging on an apparent whim.

Then follows my favourite chapter ‘the fred robinson story’ in which a poor, unfortunate, random individual becomes the unwitting, sustained focus of Jesse and his friends’ teenage creative outpourings, from Fred Robinson comics, mix-tapes of Fred Robinson-based songs, friendly letters written to Fred Robinson from Norway (always mailing a copy of everything they produced to the Fred Robinson), to even Fred Robinson-ising road signs in the vicinity of his house, all over a period of years and without ever meeting or indeed seeing the man in question. I would love to know what the real Fred Robinson made of it all, but we never find out. Perturbed to start with, then mildly flattered perhaps? I can well imagine him feeling slightly sad when the flow of material simply ceased one day without explanation.

The fourth chapter, ‘the stacked deck’, focuses on a favourite pastime of the extended Reklaw clan, that of playing cards together, and so we get a look at the other wider family members who were part of Jesse’s formative years. Some, frankly, made his dad look positively normal and well balanced…

The art style for the first four chapters is black and white with grey tones, a relaxed pencilling style, which combined with the slightly yellow paper, do have a gently nostalgic feel. It’s nicely thought out.

The final chapter, ‘lessoned’, in which Jesse sums up his childhood in an A to Z of topics, one per page, deploys an entirely different art style with an extremely vivid use of colour, deliberately slightly erratically penned. I was instantly reminded of some of Peter Kuper’s more full-on art. It’s a somewhat jarring contrast, but as an epilogue, in comparison to the almost mellifluous style which has come before it, it does work well. You can really feel the emotion present in it. It would be way too much to illustrate whole stories in it I think, but used in a burst like this, it’s very expressive.

Fans of autobiographical material will most definitely enjoy.

JR

Buy Couch Tag h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Diary Comics Number Four (£7-50, Koyama Press) by Dustin Harbin…

“My name is Dustin Harbin and I’m not a journalist. But I am American, which also means I’m not Canadian.”

Ha, what Dustin also is, is an excellent comics diarist. His preoccupation with his nationality is entirely due to attending the Doug Wright Awards, which are part of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. His explanation of the cultural value and worthiness of the Wright Awards, whilst simultaneously faux-bristling at the fact that as a non-Canadian he’ll never be entitled to win one, is a wonderfully amusing opening chapter to this surprisingly dense mini-comic. It might be £7-50, but it is certainly great value for money at 80 plus pages, as Dustin name-drops his way through his wealth of comics acquaintances (Seth, Chester Brown, Marc Bell, Pascal Girard etc. etc.), whilst deprecating himself further at every possible turn.

 

 

It’s piercingly insightful stuff at times actually, and although you could certainly draw comparisons with works like Gabriel Bell’s SAN DIEGO DIARY, it’s actually more knockabout farce than melancholic musings. His art style is wonderfully detailed too, and minded me of both Guy Delisle and Kevin Huizenga, and I love the fact he has stuck religiously to a four panel per page format throughout. From a diaristic perspective, it really aids the sense of continuity in the work as Dustin moves seamlessly from event to event, often whilst simultaneously hopping back and forth across various topics narrating to us, the readers, through the fourth wall. Clever stuff, and a perfect example to anyone thinking of trying to do a self-published diary comic of just how sophisticated and polished they can be.

JR

Buy Diary Comics Number Four and read the Page 45 review here

Legends Of The Tour (£14-99, Head Of Zeus) by Jan Cleijne…

‘After an unchallenged solo ride, Buysse was the first to cross the finish line. He’d been on his bike for seventeen hours. The others even longer…

“Are you Desgrange? You owe me money!”
“What for, my good man?”
“I gave four cyclists a lift. You should go take a look. It’s a real mess back there!”

It was perhaps the toughest tour stage ever. Riders were finishing in the dark, frozen and numb. Many, washed off the road or taking refuge in wayside inns, didn’t even reach the finish line. While Buysse, who went on to win the Tour that year, was tucked up in bed after a hot bath, Desgrange was out in the night rescuing stranded cyclists, one by one.’

Sportsmen… Some may feel they are a cosseted, pampered overpaid lot these days, who don’t have to do a great deal for their vast piles of money that it would probably take the rest of us a lifetime to earn, and that may be true, in part. But if I had to pick one sport where the level of training and dedication required, plus the pure pain you have to endure every single time you compete, is frankly well into the realms of masochism, it would be road cycling. In my opinion they deserve every penny they get for the punishment they willingly put themselves through. And, right at the peak of that sport, there stands the ultimate test of body and mind that is the Tour De France, or simply Le Tour.

This work provides a brief look at those who have achieved the status of true legends (plus a few villains) for their performances in what is arguably the world’s single toughest sporting challenge. As a cycling fan, I was absolutely fascinated by the chapters on the very early days of the Tour, before it became the well oiled, ultra-organised, corporate sponsored juggernaut it is now. Whilst today’s riders are undoubtedly fitter and would have destroyed the competitors of yesteryear hands-down, I would love to see them try and ride for three weeks using the original bikes, and indeed some of the original routes. I think the fabled “broom wagon” transit van which today sweeps up those unable to keep up with the peloton would probably need to be considerably up-sized to a bus at least.

Very difficult to see this appealing to anyone other than cycling fans, but certainly an excellent gift for people who don’t normally read graphic novels, but do like cycling. My dad loved it.

JR

Buy Legends Of The Tour and read the Page 45 review here

Supreme: Blue Rose #1 (£2-25, Image) by Warren Ellis & Tula Lotay.

Diana Dane, meet Darius Dax. You’ll find him in equal parts lucrative and infuriating.

“You seem to know a lot of people, who want others to know they know you, but who don’t want anyone to know about you. So I was curious enough to take the meeting.”
“That is as it should be. I imagine it was quite frustrating for you, though, important investigative reporter and all.”
“I don’t know if I’d agree with “important”.”
“I was being polite. I meant “unemployed”.”

Diana Dane is indeed unemployed. She won an award and was laid off the week after.

“That’s the universe telling you something.”

Now Darius Dax is telling her something: that it wasn’t a plane that came down on Littlehaven a few months ago. It was something altogether more unusual and included the vast arch of gold now suspended above Dax’s desk declaring wherever it came from “Supreme”.

This is of interest to Dax for Dax too is an acquirer of knowledge, which few will ever have access to. He specialises in Blue Rose cases – “Blue roses do not occur in nature” – “rare truths” he sells on to very wealthy entities, and he will pay Diana Dane $300,000 to start gathering information on whoever might have connections to the artefact and $700,000 if she succeeds in bringing him something concrete.

Elsewhere and elsewhen someone else was telling her many things – about reality and revision – which she doesn’t remember yet. But above all they told her this:

“Don’t trust Darius Dax.”

Warren Ellis is back on top linguistic form and has found an artist to match the daydream, other-dimensional aspect of the book. There is a quiet and soft vulnerability to Tula Lotay’s forms and colours over which pale blue lines swirl like a chilly wind, giving them a sense of the ethereal; as if who and what you’re looking at might not even be there. Or you might not even be there.

As if you’re looking at it all remotely, through a window, a viewscreen or a tank of liquid, especially in Darius Dax’s National Praxinoscope Company where there are additional, geometrical overlays.

The art is something new for something both borrowed and blue, but you won’t have to have read any of Alan Moore’s own revisionist treatment and indeed can’t right now.

“Have an adventure, Di. Let these idiots pay for it. Come back, take two years off, write the Great American Novel and get drunk every night.
“I’m 27. I’ve had at least eight great adventures, while you trained and wrote. And here you are.
“It’s time for yours, now.”

Bonus design section in the back.

SLH

Buy Supreme: Blue Rose #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Walking Dead vol 21: All Out War Part 2 (£10-99, Image) by Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard…

“We’re going to do this with all our weapons. We’re going to gunk them. We’re going to have space-aged zombie bacteria weapons at our disposal.
“And we’re going to kill every fucking last fucking one of these ungrateful fucks.
“Load ’em up and let’s hit the fucking road.”

Ah Negan, he does know how to marshal his troops! So, this is it then, the culmination of the epic conflict between our good guys led as ever by former sheriff Rick Grimes, and the army of self-titled Survivors led by the man we all love to hate, Negan. Both sides think they are going to win, neither side can contemplate what it would mean to lose. Negan, with his latest sneaky biological warfare trick, thinks he’s got all the angles covered, but Rick, well, Rick certainly has a plan, but is it going to be enough? Who will triumph? Or indeed, could it even be a score draw…? One thing is for sure, a whole lot of people are going to die… then rise again as zombies obviously. Rare to see a title still going so strong after nearly ten years. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.

JR

Buy Walking Dead vol 21: All Out War Part 2 and read the Page 45 review here

George Romero’s Empire Of Dead Act One s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by George A. Romero & Alex Maleev.

An original zombie comic by George A. Romero himself!

As in, he really did write this and did so for comics. I’ve no idea if it contains original ideas: outside of the successfully satirical NEW DEADWARDIANS, I’ve never read a zombie comic before, not even WALKING DEAD – which is shocking behaviour, I know! But since Dominique and Jonathan lap the series up, as did Mark and Tom before them, I don’t have to. I can’t read everything, let alone review it all, otherwise I’d have no time for prose!

I rather liked this, though, not least because of SCARLET’s Alex Maleev. It’s perpetually twilight or at least a deep-red sunset here, even mid-afternoon. His shadow-strewn cityscapes and downright dirty textures are perfect for a New York infested with blood-caked shamblers, where even rat meat is a black-marketeer’s pay packet. Picnics in Central Park are a thing of the past, although the rich do enjoy their private booths at the Circus Maximus Arena where they glory in zombies biting several shades of shit out of each other. Look, there’s the Mayor now along with his son who’s more intent on seducing a society belle. Zombies aren’t the only predators: we’ve always been pretty good at that ourselves.

 

Interestingly the lumbering ones with appalling dental hygiene aren’t forever on the prowl for fresh flesh. Some are municipally minded:

“This stinker is smarter than average.”
“Because he’s sweeping the sidewalk? Remembered behaviour. Now if he was playing chess…”
“Zombies can’t play chess.”
“There might be one out there who can. That’s the one I’m looking for.”

That’s Dr. Penny Jones from Columbia University being escorted round the city by Paul Barnum, himself under the protection of an off-duty SWAT team assigned to him by the Mayor. The Mayor, as I say, likes his own private performances at the Arena, and Barnum supplies the combatants. A couple of weeks ago Barnum lost an officer – a woman called Frances Xavier – bitten by a stinker and presumed dead. She’s not. She’s not playing chess, either, but nor is she entirely brain-dead…

The tension is terrific, not least because Jones and Barnum spend the first quarter of the comic observing the stinkers’ surprisingly passive behaviour mostly from afar, Romero wisely leaving the sudden surges until later, while Maleev shows the SWAT team continually looking over their shoulders left, right and even upwards in case they’re assaulted from above.

Unwisely, I suspect, Dr. Jones finds later herself on the Mayor’s radar after spying on his private box at the Arena through binoculars. She singles his son out for his curious dress sense but all will become a great deal clearer down in the subway. And Maleev’s subway is absolutely terrific, although his knock-out number is the double-page spread of what’s become of Central Park.

Meanwhile back at Battery Park, Dr. Jones gets a taste of what she’s searching for.

“You said they couldn’t do that.”
“I said they couldn’t play chess. That’s only checkers.”

SLH

Buy George Romero’s Empire Of Dead Act One s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Wolverine: Origin II h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Kieron Gillen & Adam Kubert.

“This is a tory of wolves and bears. And animals…”

It really is. You won’t meet a single human being during the first chapter other than Logan himself, now entirely feral following the events in WOLVERINE: ORIGIN.

Instead, in a breath of fresh mountain air, the initial cast consists of a wolf pack which has adopted Wolverine, its new litter holed up in a den on the snow-swept Canadian Rockies, a prowling lone wolf, and a gigantic polar bear which has strayed far from its natural habitat, so finding itself at a predatorial disadvantage.

“It seemed to believe that covering its nose would disguise it from prey. It didn’t grasp fishing in the rivers, waiting for prey to emerge and being disappointed when it didn’t…”

Fish, unlike seals, don’t need to come up for air. Yes, it’s a long way from home. A very long way. Don’t you find that curious?

Image-driven, that first chapter was magnificent: sweeping landscapes, ferocious battles and some monumental, full-page flourishes all coloured to delicious perfection by… hold on – that isn’t Isanove?! I can assure you that colour artist Frank Martin is every bit as good.

 

What follows marks Logan’s first contact with the world he and we will come to know well: one in which man uses and abuses man, cages him and tortures him in the name of personal pleasure, medical research and military power – even if here it’s a private army. That polar bear itself was an experiment, the sinister Dr. Essex releasing a new alpha predator into the Canadian Rockies and in doing so snagging an even bigger one – Logan – who in turn attracts yet another: a lupine wildlife hunter called Creed who jealously guards his beautiful but disfigured companion Clara.

Memory plays an important part, Kubert’s silent snap-shots flashing through Logan’s mind like blood-stained daggers; but the more he experiences, the more he will want to forget and, as we all know, ultimately he does so.

One of the most pleasurable elements of the original ORIGIN was Paul Jenkins’ slight of hand, leading you up the (secret) garden path when it came to Logan’s true identity. Wickedly, Gillen has reflected this in his own game of powerplay and presumption, leaving it right until the epilogue to pull the rug from under you, but it all makes perfect sense, I promise.

Hahahahaha!

SLH

Buy Wolverine: Origin II h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Chu‘s First Day At School h/c (£10-99, Bloomsbury) by Neil Gaiman & Adam Rex…

“There was a thing that Chu could do.”

The pollen-plagued panda returns for another outing as it’s time for him to start school!

As before, the running joke revolves entirely around the fact that when he finally sneezes, it’s going to be like a tornado has hit town, but first there is the anticipation of the build up. This time, it’s a show and tell of precisely what each of his new classmates can do. You know Chu wants to go last, and when he finally gets his turn, it’s just as well… A visual feast from artist Adam Rex; as with CHU’S DAY half the fun is spotting all the animal-based shenanigans that are going on in the background. Another much requested bedtime story winner at our house.

JR

Buy Chu’s First Day At School h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy!

Reviews already up if they’re new formats of previous graphic novels. The best of the rest will be reviewed next week while others will retain their Diamond previews as reviews. Neat, huh?

 

Adventure Time Sugary Shorts vol 1 s/c (£8-99, Titan) by various including Paul Pope, Shannon Wheeler, Lucy Knisley, Jim Rugg and many more

Charley’s War Omnibus vol 1 s/c (£18-99, Random House / Vertical) by Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun

Doctor Grordbort Presents Onslaught h/c (£15-99, Titan) by Greg Broadmore

Gast s/c (£16-99, Fantagraphics) by Carol Swain

Goodnight Darth Vader (£9-99, Chronicle) by Jeffrey Brown

Lazarus vol 2: Lift s/c (£10-99, Image) by Greg Rucka & Michael Lark

League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol 3: Century (Complete Edition) h/c (£19-99, Top Shelf) by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill

Metal Gear Solid Deluxe Edition h/c (£55-99, IDW) by Kris Oprisko, Matt Fraction, Alex Garner & Ashley Wood, Rufus Dayglo

Murder Mysteries h/c (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Neil Gaiman & P. Craig Russell

Reel Love Act One (£3-99, Do Gooder Comics) by Owen Johnson

Street Angel h/c (£14-99, Adhouse Books) by Brian Maruca & Jim Rugg

Third Testament vol 1: The Lion Awakes h/c (£8-99, Titan) by Xavier Dorison & Alex Alice

Batman: The Dark Knight vol 4 – Clay h/c (£18-99, DC) by Gregg Hurwitz & Alex Maleev

All New Invaders vol 1: Gods And Soldiers s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by James Robinson & Steve Pugh

Avengers vol 5: Adapt Or Die (UK Edition) s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Jonathan Hickman & Salvador Larroca

Avengers World vol 1: A.I.M.PIRE (UK Edition) s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Jonathan Hickman, Nick Spencer & Stefano Caselli, John Cassaday

Marvel Masterworks: Spider-Man vol 8 (£18-99, Marvel) by Stan Lee & John Romita, John Buscema

Mighty Avengers vol 2: Family Bonding s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Al Ewing & Valerio Schiti, Greg Land

Runaways: Complete Collection vol 1 s/c (£25-99, Marvel) by Brian K. Vaughan & Adrian Alphona, Takeshi Miyagawa

The Superior Foes Of Spider-Man vol 2: The Crime Of The Century s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Nick Spencer & Steve Lieber

X-Men: Magneto – Testament s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Greg Pak & Carmine Di Giandomenico

Vinland Saga Book 4 h/c (£14-99, Kodansha) by Makoto Yukimura

News!

ITEM! MOOSE KID COMICS free online for delinquent parents and their Young Adults.

ITEM! WHUBBLE by Jamie Smart, free online. Makes me laugh! He of BUNNY VS. MONKEY VS and FISH HEAD STEVE, yes!

ITEM! The Eisner Awards Winners 2014! Some well deserved winners this year, the judges were evidently being less in thrall to the big corporations. Stick ‘em in our search engine or ask at the counter if curious.

ITEM! Update on THE SCULPTOR by UNDESRTANDING COMICS’ Scott McCloud due early 2015!

ITEM! Heather L Sheppard’s Patreon in support of SUNRISE etc. What’s a Patreon…? Old-school patronage with personal perks for YOU!

ITEM! By the time you read this HAWKEYE #19 will have finally gone on sale! Yay! HAWKEYE 19 preview by David Aja

ITEM! Totally off-topic! Every wonder where a big chunk of my wayward vocabulary comes from? Swoonaway, foxstress etc were all neologisms created by Smash Hits music magazine for the pop-oriented post-punk teenager which won the wars being witty. Behold, the Smash Hits Archive!

ITEM! Back on topic, here’s Damien Walter on writing and the way your brain may be wired. Especially relevant given that comics is a visual medium.

ITEM! Colleen Doran reveals some colour tests for a graphic novel she’s working on with Neil Gaiman.

ITEM! Liz Prince galvanises readers to pre-order TOMBOY! And, do you know what? It worked: I tweeted that and we got pre-orders. Pre-orders help us gauge demand and help guarantee you getting what you already know you want. Here’s our preview product page for TOMBOY and our review of Liz Prince’s ALONE FOREVER. Funny!

ITEM! Speaking of pre-orders, our own version of Diamond’s PREVIEWS catalogue goes up every month, online for free, at the beginning of each month, detailing all the comic and graphic novel releases for two months later. You then have until the middle of the month to add those titles to your standing order here or simply order online and you are guaranteed to receive whatever you order no matter how obscure. Look: http://www.page45.com/store/page-45-previews.html

PLEASE NOTE: When pre-ordering here you only ever pay on arrival! That’s right, not when you pre-order, but upon arrival.

Cheers,

– Stephen

Reviews July 2014 week four

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014

“Whatever your childhood, it seems the norm whilst you’re living it. Obviously that’s not always a good thing.”

 – Stephen on P. Craig Russell’s adapation of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.

Pictures That Tick: Short Narrative Book Two – Exhibition (£22-50, Dark Horse) by Dave McKean.

“There has to be a reason. God knows there’s no bloody reason in life; there has to be one in art.”

True, true and true. I cannot be doing with artistic onanism.

Thankfully Dave McKean has plenty to say and multiple skill sets with which to say it.

I cannot think of anyone else in comics with such high command of so many different media from sculpture to pen line and brush, through painting and photography and a great deal of computerised jiggery-pokery, often in the very same story. You could spend hours staring at the cover alone trying to decipher its many means of composition, but the comics themselves demand you move on which is exactly as it should be.

“I had wanted to create a narrative exhibition for a while. I was essentially dissatisfied with the gallery experience – a large white room of random bits and bobs, allegedly thematically linked. I remain completely committed to story as a way of engaging an audience,” he writes in his introduction to ‘The Coast Road’.

McKean’s been equally determined to wrench the medium out of the comic-shop ghetto (which I concede that it can be in America and Britain – although we’re doing our damnedest to rectify that) and into the wider world of a gallery-going public who might not encounter comics otherwise. Hence the title, for many tales told within were originally installations for the likes of the Rye Art Gallery and there are some seriously striking photographs recording these wittily choreographed experiences incorporated into this album-sized book. For his third narrative exhibition, ‘Blue Tree’, Dave snuck out at 5am and “crept around Rye planting blue branches with little baubles containing wise words”.

Can you imagine the magic for Rye residents waking up to discover their town had been blessed with such beautiful and brilliant art terrorism? And, having seen the result complete with blue-branch tendrils snaking across a pristine white ceiling, I am kicking myself for not visiting in person.

This is a whopping tome with so much to discover within: musical whimsy, creation myths, autobiographical musings, real-life reportage on political corruption and a series of magnificent, wild Scottish landscapes captured on camera and married to the immediate impressions inspired by them. There lie mountains as big as your mind (much bigger than mine), mist-shrouded and crowned with exquisite rock formations. Lakes and rivers and waterfalls too.

So many of these pieces are journeys.

The longest one is ‘The Coast Road’ whose opening salvo is utterly arresting, all the more so for it having been immediately preceded by ‘40 Years’ in which Dave reflects during a landmark birthday, asking questions and demanding answers while on the jury for a short-film festival he won in 2003; like why there are so many “men going potty films” and this:

“I have friends who, after ten, fifteen years of shared life and children and laughs, suddenly realise that they don’t want to be with each other any more, that they are somebody else actually. I mean, what’s that?”

In ‘The Coast Road’ a woman called Susan writes a series of letters she cannot possibly send to her husband Peter after returning home to find one from him.

“I read it three times, and realised I had actually never been really confused before. Or angry.
“And there was quiet and the mass ticking of clocks.
“And there were telephone calls, to Simon, and my mother, and to Grant at the bookshop.
“And to the police.”

She’s actually writing to herself, two years on, trying to make some semblance of sense of what to her is incomprehensible. In one letter she does so by boiling down her journeys to and from the bookshop to hard statistics, like the percentage probability of seeing a cat and how likely it is she’ll see two. There are a lot of cats in Dave McKean comics.

“Today, for the third time since records began, I decided that if someone smiled at me as I walked to the bookshop then, and only then, would I not kill myself.
“Yours, with all my love,
“Susan.”

So what did Peter’s own note contain? Susan’s second letter starts thus:

“My Dear Peter,
“Did you buy the masking tape?
“I have spent a lot of time recently wondering about that question. I mean, to mention in a letter that you will not be home, and that I should please forget you, my husband of eleven years, and that, by the way, you also need some masking tape, well, it’s an unusual combination of thoughts in a letter.”

Evidently Peter has had some sort of mid-life crisis if not a full-on mental breakdown, and one cannot shake the feeling that it’s catalysed one in Susan too, for when she is given a postcard of a painting – ‘The King of Birds’ by Evan Somerset – she is convinced the model was Peter and sets off in pursuit, attempting to track him down via supposed sightings in various visual art projects! I mean, what are the chances?

The kicker comes when she receives a letter from author Iain Sinclair:

“Dear Susan,
“My name is Iain Sinclair. I am a writer.
“Ness Esterhazy told me about your journey along the coast, and about your husband’s disappearance.
“He may have walked through the novel I am working on…”

So many of McKean’s talents are deployed along this snaking journey that there’s always a surprise around the corner. There’s also a moment of absolute joy when the prologue set in the Rye Art Gallery is reprised and its meaning finally revealed.

‘Black Holes’ is a shorter exhibition story written by a Chinese journalist about the silence surrounding the siphoning off of funds supposed to treat villagers who’ve contracted AIDS, the overwhelming majority after donating blood as encouraged by their very own government. Satirically adorned or destroyed syringes are mounted uselessly underneath each square panel. It will have you seething with anger and vicarious frustration.

‘Blue Tree’ comes with the line “When the tree was invited for breakfast, it didn’t know where to start” which made me smile and will give you much food for thought.

“We understand everything by metaphor,” it posits at one point, which brings me beautifully to ‘The Weight Of Words’ in which bad news is offloaded from one friend to another and its visual interpretation spoke volumes about something I’ve always firmly believed in: the importance of sharing said weight around.

I leave you, then, with the first creation myth involving a giant turtle seen from below in a sea of beautiful blue, told to a cat we first spy staring down on the world from a pillar of sky. It ends with the sort of playfulness you’ll find typical throughout.

“The more holes you pick in a story, the more likely you are to fall into one of them.”
“That’s deep.”
“It certainly could be.”

SLH

Buy Pictures That Tick: Short Narrative Book Two – Exhibition and read the Page 45 review here

Graveyard Book Graphic Novel vol 1 s/c (£12-99, Bloomsbury) by Neil Gaiman & P. Craig Russell, Jill Thompson, Kevin Nowlan, Scott Hampton, Tony Harris, Stephen B. Scott, Galen Showman.

“The dead should have charity.”

The thing about childhood is this: only an adult will look back on it thinking, “That’s odd!”

“My parents stayed together yet all of my friends’ were divorced. Apparently not everyone has beetroot for breakfast. Growing up in an igloo’s unusual…?!” Whatever your childhood, it seems the norm whilst you’re living it. Obviously that’s not always a good thing.

Nobody grew up in a graveyard. He really did. And it seemed perfectly normal to him.

Nobody Owens was his adoptive name but everyone called him Bod. His birth parents were murdered one night by a very bad man with a very sharp knife and a mission. Bod was no more than a toddler with a precocious and somewhat worrisome propensity for straying but that night it saved his young life. He’d heard a crash downstairs, woke up and wandered through his home’s open front door, up the hill under moonlight to the simple, padlocked, wrought iron gates of the graveyard and squeezed through.

The bad man with a knife whose business was not yet complete followed the infant’s milky scent and clambered over the thick, stone walls in pursuit. But there he was met by a tall, gaunt man with the palest of skin, jet-black hair and an equally obsidian cloak. He looked vaguely aristocratic and his manner was utterly compelling. No child could or would be found here: more likely in the town down below.

So it was that Bod was taken in by the graveyard folk – the ghosts of those long since passed – and raised as one of their own. With centuries of knowledge between them Bod’s education is eclectic if somewhat arcane, but it will stand him good stead for what his fiercely inquisitive nature will lead him to encounter both inside the graveyard and when he strays oh so dangerously out. Fortunately he has a quiet yet determined guardian in Silas, the very tall man with the very pale skin and the very dark hair. Silas is no ghost as you have probably gathered; nor is he still amongst the living.

If I didn’t know better I would swear this was autobiographical: you can imagine Neil Gaiman growing up in a graveyard, can’t you? He knows almost too much about Mist-Folk, Ghoul-Gates and Night-Gaunts: which to avoid and how to cry out for help in their languages.

This is the first half of P. Craig Russell’s adaptation of Gaiman’s prose novel and he draws the second chapter himself. He’s brought along some friends for each of the others: MAGIC TRIXIE and SCARY GODMOTHER’s Jill Thompson, Kevin Nowlan, Scott Hampton, Tony Harris, Stephen B. Scott and Galen Showman whom you could not tell apart from P. Craig Russell himself, such are the crisply cut leaves, their shadows and the stones. Some have adapted their styles more than others; it’s a perfectly congruous whole.

 

Each chapter moves on a couple of years with elements reprised, Bod’s nightgown seemingly growing with him as the young man learns his lessons through making mistakes: breaking rules, testing boundaries and learning to care for others no matter what other people think. As always with Gaiman there are a couple of moments of such pure kindness that you cannot help but emit a little choke. He understands childhood as readers of THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE will know, and Silas’ role as guardian is particularly poignant. I worry for him.

“But you’ll always be here, Silas, won’t you? And I won’t even have to leave, if I don’t want to?”
“Everything in its season.”

SLH

Buy Graveyard Book Graphic Novel vol 1 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Grindhouse Doors Open At Midnight: Bee Vixens From Mars / Prison Ship Antares (£13-50, Dark Horse) by Alex De Campi & Simon Fraser, Chris Peterson.

Hot, sticky and delicious!

“Midsummer. The Red Planet hangs in the thick night air like a drop of blood in oil.
“Everything is bursting.
“Everything is whispering.
“Now. Now. Now.”

Beautifully played opening on ‘Bee Vixens From Mars’ both by writer Alex De Campi (ASHES / SMOKE), artist Chris Peterson and indeed colour artist Nolan Woodard. The page is ripe, dripping with honey and sexual juices as cats copulate and a woman pleasures herself in what might be the back of a car. Bees buzz round red rose flowers and an empty beer can strewn on the ground.

‘Prison Shop Antares’ boasts a great deal of sex of the sort that only a woman could get away with. Male writers would have been condemned especially on the web as “salacious” at best, “misogynistic” at worst with “exploitative” nuzzled inbetween. Yet Alex De Campi dives deep and fearlessly into the long tradition of exploitation and brings it spluttering to the surface, resuscitated as empowerment instead.

For my money it works for the women win out, and there are some cripplingly funny shower-scene exchanges. Also, hurrah for inclusivity aboard a spaceship full of female prisoners. Love Simon Fraser’s Sharyce whose world-weary, wised-up eyes have no need of an arched eyebrow to proclaim their attitude:

“Ended up in solitary ‘cuz I was born with a dick. It was a mistake. I fixed it. The dick, not the solitary.”
“They gave you life for being trans? Shiiiit.”
“Nah. Got life for shankin’ a guard in the jugular after he called me “sir” one too many times.”

She raises her firsts: four fingers on each hand tattooed just below the knuckles with the letters “It’s” and “maam”.

 

Back to ‘Bee Vixens From Mars’ and there is something very wrong on Cemetery Hill. There are too many bees, and some are so big that when one bursts on a windscreen the splatter drives the sheriff off the road. Those bees are producing an awful lot of honey and it is being harvested. It may be an aphrodisiac. A man is discovered on Cemetery Hill in a car, lipstick smeared on his collar and jeans. There are bits of him missing. Like his head and, umm… “bits”. A thick flood of blood leads into a thicket of roses, their thorns as big as their heads are red. Don’t go into the thicket, sheriff. Don’t go home, either. You really don’t want to go home…

Bees are beautiful, but not so much here. There is one particular stand-out Chris Petersen page whose layout is immaculately composed for maximum suffocation, partly involving a letter box. As to the punchline, it is perfect: not the solution I ever saw coming but, yes, that is one way to successfully scupper a bee, no matter how big it is. And this one is big.

SLH

Buy Grindhouse Doors Open At Midnight: Bee Vixens From Mars / Prison Ship Antares and read the Page 45 review here

Raygun Roads (£4-99, Changeling Studios) by Owen Johnson & Indio.

Have you ever seen a Jack Kirby saxophone? I have now!

Reading this double-sided single is like standing at the front of a stage with your ears to the speakers. A punk rock rage against cultural mediocrity fronted by Raygun Roads, “Saviour of the Hopeless! Pin-Up of the Jobless!”, it screams to be heard. Her band includes Asteroid Anne-Phetamine, the commentator’s Dan Lazyleech and…

“To explain how fucked we are with dull graphs, here’s Exclamation Mark!”

Someone’s read a toxic, viral dose of THE BEST OF MILLIGAN & MCCARTHY and actually understood it. How’s the gig going?

“Twenty seconds into that acapella apocalypse saw the hospitalization of two Hell’s Angels at the hands of a topless nun, a city-wide blackout and an immaculate conception. Beneath the merchandise stand.”

It’s got a good beat: that afterthought’s important. It’s also exhausting – I will concede that – and if the individual colours aren’t legitimately day-glo then the combination is.

A round of applause if not a standing ovation for the relative lack of genitals. I’ve seen this sort of thing done so, so badly and gigantic erections are its staple stand-in for actual content. When one willy finally does appear here, it is at least flaccid.

I started on the opposite side to the cover above and recommend that you do too, for you’re eased in gently with language like this:

“It is there that wonder cruises depart not on the hour, but once fascination threshold is optimal. Tickets to Alpha Centauri cost a flourish of optimism.”

SLH

Buy Raygun Roads and read the Page 45 review here

Black Widow vol 1: Finely Woven Thread s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Nathan Edmondson & Phil Noto.

“This is what I am now. And you’ll never know who I was before.”

The light here is fabulous. Phil Noto is on full art duties from pencils to inks where present and colours which come with lovely tonal and fade effects. His forms are suitably lithe and action fans will see Natasha – the titular former Russian spy, now Avenger and agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. – perform some serious gymnastics and not just on the parallel bars. Freefalling from a helicopter into crocodile-infested waters isn’t an internationally recognised Olympic sport as yet, but Ms Romanov was never one for convention or rules.

The Black Widow has her own set of rules and here strives to follow them. Between S.H.I.E.L.D. assignments, and to atone for her past, she’s hired a lawyer to find her private contracts to fund certain trusts, but she’s very choosy about whom she’s prepared to help or hinder (euphemism). If she discovers halfway through a gig that the person she’s protecting is guilty of more than she knew she’s likely to drop them halfway through, even that means forgoing her fee.

 

Heavy on action, light on words, I have to concede there is not a lot of spying or infiltration involved at all. You certainly won’t enjoy all the covert qualities of Brubaker and Epting’s VELVET which I recommend with all my well hidden heart.

Also, waaaaay too many allusions to webs and threads. One may look clever, two like lapsed memory, but come three, four and five then the symbol becomes a cymbal bashing your bloody ear in.

Collects BLACK WIDOW (2014) #1-6 and material from ALL-NEW MARVEL NOW! POINT ONE #1.

SLH

Buy Black Widow vol 1: Finely Woven Thread s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy!

Reviews already up if they’re new formats of previous graphic novels. The best of the rest will be reviewed next week while others will retain their Diamond previews as reviews. Neat, huh?

The Art of Neil Gaiman h/c (£25-00, Ilex) by Hayley Campbell

The Sakai Project: Artists Celebrate 30 Years Of Usagi Yojimbo h/c (£22-50, Dark Horse) by a vertitable who’s who of over 250 comic book artists

Black Orchid s/c (£12-99, Vertigo) by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean

Final Incal Deluxe Edition h/c (£75-00, Humanoids) by Alejandro Jodorowsky & Moebius, Jose Ladronn

Murder Me Dead s/c (£14-99, Image) by David Lapham

Rat Queens vol 1: Sass & Sorcery (£7-50, Image) by Kurtis J. Wiebe & Roc Upchurch

The Unwritten vol 9: The Unwritten Fables (£10-99, Vertigo) by Mike Carey, Bill Willingham & Peter Gross, Mark Buckingha0.27m

Walking Dead vol 21: All Out War Part 2 (£10-99, Image) by Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard

Superman Action Comics vol 3: At The End Of Days s/c (£12-99, DC) by Grant Morrison, Sholly Fisch & Rags Morales, others

Avengers vol 5: Adapt Or Die h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Jonathan Hickman & Salvador Larroca

Deadpool vol 5: The Wedding Of Deadpool s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by various

George Romero’s Empire Of Dead Act One s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by George A. Romero & Alex Maleev

Guardians Of The Galaxy: Abnett & Lanning Collection vol 1 s/c (£25-99, Marvel) by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning & Paul Pelletier, Brad Walker, Wes Craig

War Of Kings s/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning & Paul Pelletier, Bong Dazo

Wolverine vol 1: Mortal s/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Paul Cornell & Ryan Stegman

Wolverine: Origin II h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Kieron Gillen & Adam Kubert

Battle Angel Alita Last Order Omnibus vol 4 (£14-99, Kodansha) by Yukito Kishiro

Blue Sheep Reverie vol 5 (£9-99, June) by Makoto Tateno

My Little Monster vol 2 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Robico

My Little Monster vol 3 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Robico

News!

ITEM! Revealing interview with Bryan Lee O’Malley about the creation of SECONDS, its delay and some startling revelations about SCOTT PILGRIM.

ITEM! Inkstuds podcast with Bryan Lee O’Malley and indeed Brandon Graham.

ITEM! Fabulous illustrated blog by Bryony Turner on using Page 45’s ‘Want A Recommendation’ service on our website. Includes mini-reviews of Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie’s THE WICKED + THE DIVINE and all three Becky Cloonan self-published comics which our Jodie Paterson recommended and sent Bryony by post. Seems they went down very well indeed!

ITEM! Oh dear, what on earth has happened to the Harvey Awards? So much dross in the nominations including multiple Valiant titles. I call shenanigans.

ITEM! A school has produced its own comic and I would kill for a copy of this. Look!

ITEM! Article on Woodrow Phoenix’s SHE LIVES comic artefact at the British Museum. No plans to print it for now.

ITEM! Hurrah! THE PHOENIX weekly comic for kids makes it into The Grauniad with a fabulous splash of Tamsin And The Deep written by Neill Cameron and drawn by who the hell cares, apparently. IT WAS DRAWN BY KATE BROWN, YOU UNPROFESSIONAL MORONS!

In solidarity with Kate, we reprint the following review from yonks ago, now with interior art. Hurrah!

Fish + Chocolate h/c (£14-99, SelfMadeHero) Kate Brown.

A sublime confluence of words and pictures with the palette of Paul Duffield and Josh Middleton; if you love the art on FREAKANGELS or SKY BETWEEN BRANCHES you will adore these three stories, each of which is in its way is about parenthood.

The first two feature single mothers: the first with two boys, the second with a young girl perfectly content to play round their countryside cottage and its gently sloping Garden of new Earthly Delights. There she finds a cherry tree laden with fruit. She picks one. Her mother composes on the piano upstairs.

The boys miss their father whom they haven’t seen in months, and the oldest wants a television in his room. Their mother argues with her editor but meets up with a friend. It’s a perfectly lovely day and they have much to discuss. There’s an odd-looking man with barely any eyebrows sitting on his lawn by the path. He whistles through a split blade of grass. The boys are curious.

 

 

The tunes may not come easily especially when distracted and the man is a little unnerving, but everything on the surface seems pretty much serene. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find skeletons buried and sudden trauma in store, as the tranquillity of sleepy suburbia and that bucolic beauty are shredded by shrieks of wholly unexpected violence. I’m not even going to touch on the third tale (although sneakily I have) but the cover’s stark warning of “explicit content” is far from alarmist.

Oh, but this artist can write! Nothing here is predictable or simplistic, and it’s a joy to discover a brand new voice unlike any I’ve encountered before, yet the art will sell itself to you all on its own. There’s one particular sequence involving a violin string and a music score which is a visual triumph: a fusion then cascade so clever it is breathtaking. Moreover we have another contender for best rain ever in comics as the sky bursts open, the water cascades and the downpour drowns the cherry tree in a curtain of spray.

SLH

Buy Fish + Chocolate and read the Page 45 review here

– Stephen

Reviews July 2014 week three

Wednesday, July 16th, 2014

Bryan Lee O’Malley will be signing SECONDS at Page 45 on Monday August 18th!

Seconds h/c (£15-99, SelfMadeHero) by Bryan Lee O’Malley.

Out in the UK on Thursday August 14th

Katie had never liked cause and effect anyway.
“It’s a flawed system.”
Still, she had to admit that toying with the universe was a little unsettling.
“She did not. Katie admitted nothing of the sort.”

That will prove part of the problem.

Fresh from the creator of SCOTT PILGRIM and LOST AT SEA comes a big, bold, full-colour graphic novel, completely self-contained and weighing in at a whopping three-hundred pages.

If you enjoyed the authorial mischief of SCOTT PILGRIM then you will love chef Katie’s recalcitrant attitude towards this new, hands-on narrator and her wayward relationship with reality.

Katie used to run Seconds, a highly acclaimed restaurant just out in the country on top of a hill. Four years on and its imaginative menu and impeccable cooking makes it as popular as ever but Katie’s mentally moved on.

She has her heart set on starting a brand new restaurant in a very old building in town. Although empty for ages and dilapidated as hell, Lucky’s old stone building oozes character and Katie can picture exactly how it will look with a grand wooden staircase, an ornate central chandelier and an open kitchen run by bright, energetic and respectful staff serving the very best cuisine to an adoring public. Reality check: its condition is causing her grief.

It’s way behind schedule and gobbling up money but at least she is fortunate in her business partner Arthur’s practical optimism and seemingly limitless support. Even when she decides she wants to call it “Katie’s”.

“She’d fought for the location:
“Wrong side of the river. Tucked away under the bridge. It was an up-and-coming spot, she swore.
“She drove back and forth sometimes four, five times a day. As if one of these times she’d cross that little bridge and find a finished restaurant.
“The waiting was hell. Seconds had become her purgatory. At least purgatory had its perks.”

It does. Still its executive chef, Katie’s name remains on the menu and she basks in the adulation of diners; the waiters are lucky if they can get a word in edgeways. In addition, to save money, she’s still allowed to rent the restaurant’s top-floor apartment. She doesn’t know how good she’s got it.

But tonight two things go wrong: Katie’s ex, Max, comes out to eat in and although he smiles kindly Katie blows him off and stomps downstairs to argue with Andrew, the new head-chef with whom she’s having an affair; they make out in the store room and in Andrew’s absence there is a accident in the kitchen leaving waitress Hazel’s arms dripping in scalding hot fat.

Having left hospital late at night, Katie despairs. Then she remembers a dream she had about a strange, glowing girl with wide, haunting eyes hunched on top of her dresser. In that dresser she discover a little box which hadn’t been there before and in that box she finds a notebook titled “My Mistakes”, a single red-capped mushroom and a card printed as follows:

A SECOND CHANCE AWAITS.
1. Write your mistake
2. Ingest one mushroom
3. Go to sleep
4. Wake anew
EVENTS MUST OCCUR ON THESE PREMISES

She follows the instructions and awakes to find reality rewritten.

Katie never canoodled with Andrew so the accident never took place and quiet young Hazel is right as rain. Everything’s been corrected, everything is better. Lucky, lucky Katie. Time to move on.

Well. What follows is a cautionary tale about pushing your luck.

It’s one thing to hoard multiple saves in a video game; to go back and restart from more favourable junctures (though you could, you know, just move on?). It’s one thing to plan conversations ahead, steering them in different directions to see how they go most in your favour (I do). But although we might wish on occasion to reset the reality button, the ability to do so increases the temptation and that temptation comes with consequences. If you can reset reality as often as you like then why concentrate on what is important the first time?

This book is masterfully constructed with impeccable control under what must have been mind-frazzling circumstances. You’ll see what I mean as everything unravels, increasingly, over and over again.

Egotism becomes egomania and, unlike so many protagonists, Katie’s self-awareness doesn’t grow gradually over each page. Instead – after what was essentially a compassionate, altruistic revision to save Hazel’s skin – Katie loses sight of priorities, her sense of perspective, her sense of responsibility and her comprehension of cause and effect: of ripples and repercussion.

The strange glowing girl returns time and again with increasingly incandescent eyes that had me howling out loud. I’m glad I can’t see my dresser from bed. Her hair is spectacular. Nathan Faibarn’s colours are so warm that I cannot imagine this in black and white.

As well as the broad strokes and fine fashion of the characters you’ve come to expect from O’Malley (the designs are exquisite, Yana’s eyes shining a pale, milky blue like semi-opaque fishbowls), there’s a lot more intricate detail on the architecture. Rickety 22 Lucknow Street, the site of Katie’s second prospective restaurant, is a star in its own right. Its brown brick and beige stone climb precariously towards a fourth-storey, castellated tower. The aerial views of the town itself – rising on either side of the river before opening up to fields and foliage and Seconds sitting under its trademark tree in the distance – are breathtaking and again coloured beautifully in greens, browns and antler grey under a late-afternoon winter sky.

The panel composition is much tighter with strict, straight-ruled borders – gone altogether are the bleeds – with some parts of the page unused altogether during moments of disorientation, waiting or “what’s happened now?”

There are some startlingly dark pages unlike anything you’ve seen from O’Malley, but SECONDS is also, as you’d expect, very, very funny in places even as things fall apart, and I like our new narrator enormously.

“I don’t like it back here anymore. The walk-in… you don’t feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“I don’t know. Never mind.”
But she did feel it. The shadow. She knew it was real.
“I don’t feel anything.”
Um, yeah, she did actually.

SLH

Pre-order Seconds h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Dark Times (£6-99, self-published) by Robert M Ball.

“In the end it was quick at least.
“He’d not been right for weeks.
“Another ‘accident’.”

That happens as you grow older.

“Some young men took him away for tests.
“He put a brave face on it but I could tell he was scared.
“They kept him in for the night.
“And I came back to a stranger’s home.”

Sometimes you notice what’s missing more than you notice what’s there. A gap in your familiar landscape can prove haunting.

I once had a cat that would race to the door. I was worried that whenever I opened it he would rush onto the road. I used to open the door gingerly, carefully, cautiously; and for weeks after I had Felix put down I would open that door in exactly the same tentative manner, expecting a cat to dash past. He didn’t.

Composed of six shorts, four of them silent, this is one of the cleverest comics of the year. I’m not even going to tell you the title of that one for fear of giving its game away, yet here is a clue: what you have read up above is but prose. Read the same sequence as a comic and you will realise what Rob has done. Read the same sequence as a comic and it is, as they say, a very different story!

‘Dump’ is its reversal, in which some unusually accommodating bin men take care of some no-longer-desired, discarded property and boasts two terrifying panels whose power lies in the implication of what will happen off-stage. A chisel is involved.

From the creator of WINTER’S KNIGHT, then, comes an assortment of mysteries – yes, that’s what they are – for you to decipher and devour. All of them are surprising and each is composed in a markedly different style, one of which unexpectedly as a tribute to Frank Miller’s SIN CITY. But then Frank’s SIN CITY was all about the shapes, just like Robert’s main output.

In ‘Jack’ our modern, spotty teenager in a tracksuit acquires some magic beans. From a supermarket. As per tradition, Mum is unimpressed and lobs those bobbins beans out of her council estate’s high-rise window. Jack will find treasure all the same.

‘Nest’ boasts two of the most blinding pages of all here: a double-page landscape of urban buildings stacked up a very steep hill, looking just like the back end of Nottingham’s Lace Market seen from the London Road roundabout. Their sloped roofs gleam brighter the closer they climb towards the full moon. In it a husband declares that “We can’t go on like this”. Why? His wife has an over-acquisitive nature, her objects of desire even curiouser than her means of obtaining them.

DARK TIMES opens with ‘Animal’.

“He’s here again” is the uh-oh signifier, coupled with the Indian waiter peering anxiously through a narrow, horizontal window at their recurrent, difficult diner whose take on their menu is perhaps wilfully misconstrued. He has… unusual appetites.

The wit there lies upon wordplay but even without that I would relish Robert’s art. It’s all about the shapes and the colours. In terms of shapes, the waiter’s face appears between a snapped-in-two poppadom, as crisply delineated as those thick wooden segments were sawn from then slotted into our Early Learning jigsaw puzzles. In terms of colour, the waiter is all greens and browns just like the curries he serves, while the diner is composed of cold, cold blues with top teeth protruding predatorily through saggy-jowls and a wan, worn, elongated face which screams “take this social-skills loser away”.

I’m thinking Norman Tebbit. It’s enough to make you queasy.

Signed: all our copies are signed.

SLH

Buy Dark Times and read the Page 45 review here

R L #1 (£3-00, Sequential Artists Workshop) by Tom Hart.

Parental Warning: a warning to parents for parents.

And I suppose this comic is, in a way, but that’s not what I meant.

Much admired by Eddie Campbell and Scott McCloud, Tom Hart was one of Mark’s favourite cartoonists as well. Alas, all we have left of Tom’s output prior to Rosalie Lightning is NEW HAT STORIES.

I wouldn’t have recognised this as Tom’s work in a million years, so much have the events in this comic transformed him. Maybe the first image of Rosalie throwing her arms up in the air with joy and in emulation of Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ and its acorn growing through sapling “to a beautiful strong tree.”

Tom and Leela lost Rosalie Lightning before she grew to be two. There have been other depictions of bereavement in comics – Anders Nilsen’s DON’T GO WHERE I CAN’T FOLLOW and THE END, Aidan Koch’s THE WHALE, and Nicola Streeten’s BILLY, ME & YOU – but this is the most effective and affecting I’ve read about losing your child and so much of your future.

“You best memories are your biggest torments.”

Imagine that. The cruelty of that.

“You remember anything and your heart races – you can’t believe – “

 

Painfully, Tom recalls some of those best memories along with what may or may not have been tell-tale signs either of Rosalie being ill or her being aware that she wasn’t long for this world.

I infer from elsewhere that there is a larger work being constructed – I could be wrong – but this is succinct and it did me in which isn’t its aim, I know.

SLH

Buy R L #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Out Of Hollow Water (£8-50, 2D Cloud) by Anna Bonngiovanni.

“And that’s what scared me the most. I never want to be that still again.”

If you think the cover bodes ill, you should see its extension on the back.

Told in three chapters – each followed by silent sequences, the central one like a constellation of mutating baby-body forms – this is grim stuff, deeply disturbing to read.

“It smells like dirt and self-pity. It reeks of regret.”

It’s a book of fear, helplessness and revulsion. Of things that cannot be undone. Of things you would like to bury, metaphorically and otherwise, but which cannot be got rid of so easily.

It’s all implication and the implications are terrifying.

‘Monster’ begins with a terrible shadow with black, rat-like claws looming a woman whose eyes gaze mournfully into the past while profoundly upset by her present. It follows wherever she goes.

“You made me an alien in my own body. A stranger. An unwelcome guest.”

Then there’s a tree hollow, a well and a bundle of something which certainly isn’t joy.

The single-panel pages have been scratched on so hard and thick with graphite that they are smudged and sullied and uncomfortable to touch.

Powerful stuff.

SLH

Buy Out Of Hollow Water and read the Page 45 review here

Freddy Stories (£7-50, self-published) by Melissa Mendes.

Freddy is a very young girl occasionally mistaken for a boy.

She lives with her Mum, next door to Uncle Sully and downstairs from kindly Mrs. Medeiros who lost her husband in the war. There’s a photograph of him on the dresser.

Occasionally her Dad comes to collect Freddy, but she doesn’t want to go. It’s not her house, it doesn’t have her things. They eat on the settee. Later she sleeps there with a sodium street light streaming through the window.

In summer she stays with Aunt Maria for two weeks, but she doesn’t want to go. Freddy hates Aunt Maria (she doesn’t) and Freddy hates the countryside (she doesn’t). Her friends aren’t there, but at least her dog Frank is.

Without saying a word on the subject, Mendes evokes the unsettling prospect of staying with relative strangers: different smells, different routines, different television shows, different meals eaten in different places and different sleeping arrangements.

Also, kids at play. It’s a very quiet, understated little book and BERLIN’s Jason Lutes is a big fan.

SLH

Buy Freddy Stories and read the Page 45 review here

In The Sounds And Seas (£9-99, Monkey-Rope Press) by Marnie Galloway.

Silent and surreal and open to interpretation.

Which means I haven’t a clue what this is about..

But I love a lot of its patterns: tree leaves at night, lit like chunky dragon scales; the birds and the bunnies and the fan-tailed goldfish filling three singers’ stomachs or lungs as they sit round a campfire and release these creatures in twisting torrents which swirl round each other and up into the sky and – oh, look, someone’s dived in (I missed that first time round; it’s reprised later on) – eventually form a still ocean.

I absolutely adore the whale and the ship’s skeleton which I have always associated with each other.

I’ve failed to mention the magpie. I think it’s a magpie.

 

Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer’s The Odyssey is quoted at the front. That never impressed me: too much effort expended in rhyming and cleverness at the expense of clarity. It might have helped me understand what this is about, but I couldn’t be arsed to disentangle its convolutions.

Seriously: that whale. Amazing.

SLH

Buy In The Sounds And Seas and read the Page 45 review here

Sunday In The Park With Boys (£7-50, Koyama Press) by Jane Mai.

Right in the middle there is an excellent self-portrait with one bandaged eye and centipedes crawling out the other eye and mouth.

Other than that, awful.

Autobiographical onanism with nothing to say annoys me intensely.

Jane Mai has absolutely nothing to say yet expects everyone to listen.

She’s depressed, she’s lonely and she knows – oh how she knows – that she’s wasted so much time! Well, she didn’t have to waste mine.

“Coming home during a thunderstorm is kind of nice.
“It’s good for thinking maybe you’ll wash away and become something new.
“If you walk really slowly you are reflecting on life and it is very serious.
“If you run then you are doing something drastic and crazy!”

Thank you, Miss fucking Confucius.

Please do everyone a favour and read Eddie Campbell’s ALEC OMNIBUS. Thank you.

SLH

Buy Sunday In The Park With Boys and read the Page 45 review here

Death Sentence h/c (£16-99, Titan) by Montynero & Mike Dowling.

Bang, bang, bang: dazzling, wit-ridden debut from Montynero IF YOU ARE OVER 15! If you’re under 16 then please move along, nothing to see here, it was rubbish.

Three young, disparate individuals have just contract the G-Plus virus: Verity, Weasel and Monty.

There is currently no cure for the G-Plus virus and within six months they will all inevitably die. If there’s a silver lining to their situation it’s that, give or take extreme mood swings, the symptoms are a lot kinder than any other virus known to man: they will begin to experience increased energy, physical fitness and a variety of metahuman abilities. On the negative side, this makes them a target for the British Intelligence and military.

Verity’s the most vulnerable because her readings are off the scale and nobody knows who she is. Oh, she’s a graphic designer – or she was (see mood swings; they’re terribly funny and her abusive boss gets the brunt of it) – but Monty is a smug-as-fuck media personality who knows how to play the game while Weasel is a talentless and so successful musician. Plus his PR people really know how to milk his wretched, risibly unproductive ass:

“How much is this sonic diarrhoea costing us?”
“Erm… £6000 a day.”
“Pull the plug.”
“OK… what do we do instead?”
“Well… we’ve done the supermodel… the blood stunts… prison… collaborations… a covers album… and reforming the old band. So the only fresh angle is the G+ virus.”
“He has developed some skills… though nothing reliable or useful yet.”
“Who cares! Just spin his ‘G+ Hell’ to the tabloids. How’s demand for the Valedictory Tour?”
“Strong. There’s an army of numpties buying into the ‘Misunderstood Genius’ crap who’d basically pay to watch him take a dump on the stage.”
“They have, actually.”

 

Mike Dowling lets rip with wild gesticulations like a young Duncan Fegredo. I love how Weasel instinctively protects his face with his arms as he plummets towards unyielding asphalt from way up above, as though that’s going to do him any good. But you would, though, wouldn’t you, instinctively? Turns out that the tarmac does yield – to someone intangible. Although sex proves problematic when he loses his concentration.

I also love all the design work that’s gone into the mid-chapter music paper interviews, newspaper posts and online medical health websites. The only thing I didn’t like were the covers, unrepresentative of the art inside or the story’s contents, but then I have an extreme aversion to that sort of glossy, 3-D modelling that Richard Corben used on DEN etc before ditching it in favour of texture. Good move.

Meanwhile, Montynero packs every page with immaculately thought-through ramifications, far from gratuitous profanity but the most blasphemous use of a crucifix I can conceive of. The scenes are short, sharp and slickly edited and the joke-per-page rate is astonishingly high. But then this is essentially a highly successful satire: on sex, sexism, sexual attraction, sexual action, politics, the comedy circuit, celebrity culture and the music industry. Weasel’s chart-topping band was called The Whatevers.

“Bono rang again. The Royal Charity gig.”
“Jeezus!! What’s the cause, his credibility?”

Most impressive initially was the trajectory of libertine wastrel Weasel and his outrageous self-indulgence: boozing, reckless sex and – it transpires – some very dodgy connections. He is, however, deliciously undaunted even in the wake of extreme adversity.

One stop, look and listen to egomaniacal Monty and there’s no mistaking which overrated and over-inflated vainglorious “Voting’s a waste of time” bell-end he’s supposed to be. (I could be projecting.)

I would just note that two-thirds of the way through the tone takes a turn for the unexpectedly dark as the book heads into MIRACLEMAN BOOK 3 territory and it becomes a superhero series. Oh there were always powers, but there were no heroes and villains, just many arched eyebrows and a great deal of sexual shenanigans. That will of course prove a plus point for many but it wasn’t what I saw coming.

Additionally I promise you one panel of pure political catharsis.

Montynero is a very naughty boy. I don’t think we’ve a hope of rehabilitating him, and that makes me very pleased indeed.

More!

SLH

Buy Death Sentence h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy!

Reviews already up if they’re new formats of previous graphic novels. The best of the rest will be reviewed next week while others will retain their Diamond previews as reviews. Neat, huh?

 

Pictures That Tick: Short Narrative Book Two – Exhibition (£22-50, Dark Horse) by Dave McKean

Graveyard Book vol 1 s/c (£12-99, Bloomsbury) by Neil Gaiman & P. Craig Russell, Kevin Nowlan, many more

Crossed vol 9 s/c (£14-99, Avatar) by Daniel Way, Simon Spurrier & Emiliano Urdinola, Gabriel Andrade

Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception – The Graphic Novel (£9-99, Hyperion) by Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin & Giovanni Rigiano

Grindhouse Doors Open At Midnight: Bee Vixens From Mars / Prison Ship Antares (£13-50, Dark Horse) by Alex De Campi & Chris Peterson

White Lama h/c (£22-99, Humanoids) by Alexandro Jodorowsky & Georges Bess

Cape Horn h/c (£22-99, Humanoids) by Christian Perrissin & Enea Riboldi

Lust s/c (£14-99, IDW) by Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith, Menton3

Deadly Class vol 1 Reagan Youth s/c (£7-50, Image) by Rick Remender & Wesley Craig, Lee Loughridge

Like A Shark In A Swimming Pool (£6-00, Other A-Z) by Verity Hall

Black Widow vol 1: Finely Woven Thread s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Nathan Edmondson & Phil Noto

Teen Titans vol 4: Light And Dark s/c (£10-99, DC) by Scott Lobdell, Tony Bedard & Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira, many more

Damian Son Of Batman h/c (£18-99, DC) by Andy Kubert

Adventure Time Candy Capers vol 1 s/c (£9-99, Titan) by Ananth Panagariya, Yuko Ota & Ian Mcginty

Guardians Of The Galaxy: Cosmic Team-Up (£7-50, Marvel) by Dan Abnett, Brian Michael Bendis, many more & Josh Fine, Sal Buscema, many more

Soul Eater vol 21 (£8-99, Yen Press) by Atsushi Ohkubo

Fairy Tail vol 40 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Hiro Mashima

Naruto vol 66 (£6-99, Viz) by Masashi Kishimoto

News!

ITEM! Oh my days, this by Ian McQue is one of the most beautiful images I have ever beheld. Eerie x 7,372

ITEM! Kickstarter for Vera Greantea’s new comic has some gorgeous art. It’s already exceeded its goal so it is going to happen!

ITEM! Extraordinary composition by David Aja. Don’t get it? Now see same image with Golden Spiral.

Umm, that’s it this week. I’ve run out of time!

– Stephen

Reviews July 2014 week two

Wednesday, July 9th, 2014

“It’s the not-quite-right taking a turn for the oh-my-god-no!”

 – Stephen on Through The Woods

Through The Woods h/c (£12-99, Faber & Faber) by Emily Carroll.

Emily Carroll has a thing for teeth. I wish she didn’t. It’s very upsetting.

And I don’t mean just jagged teeth, but teeth where there ought not to be, doing things which they shouldn’t. Wobbling teeth are most worrisome of all: imagine what lies behind.

Also present and most incorrect: woods, caves, families and intruders – infesting your house, inhabiting your body and eating away at your soul.

It’s the not-quite-right taking a turn for the oh-my-god-no!

Eerie and chilling, this Victorian brand of horror owes less to the likes of RACHEL RISING or FATALE and much, much more both in tone and style to THE HIDDEN’s Richard Sala and especially MEATCAKE’s Dame Darcy. The protagonists are called Janna, Yvonne, Mary and Mabel, and they all have pert, pointy noses and long, slender fingers. There is the same sense that anything can happen on the page: the countryside may suddenly loom at a tilted angle, the path snaking through it becoming representational (of both space and the time taken to travel it); colouring may bleed outside its boundaries; the wail of a tortured soul may curl across the glossy paper forming the very gutter between its pitch-black panels haunted by past deeds in bright white and electric blue. As with Dame Darcy, lettering plays an integral part in the art and storytelling.

In ‘A Lady’s Hands Are Cold’ the not-quite-right is signalled early on by the intense flush on a young girl’s face as she sits in nervous trepidation at the other end of a vast, opulently laid dining table to the man her father has told her to marry. He, we never see but for the back of his head and a mouth into which he slides slabs of rare, juice-dribbling meat he has stabbed and cut with a two-pronged fork and carving knife. The oh-my-god-no is not far behind.

Another features a brother taking credit where far from due. Jealousy often goes unnoticed.

Then there are three sisters left to fend for themselves when their father goes hunting. In the woods, of course, but for what is uncertain. He says he’ll be gone for three days but warns them to leave the house and seek their neighbour’s if he fails to return on schedule. He fails to return on schedule. Things fall apart.

A Victorian parlour prank becomes more successful than anyone ever wanted it to. Two life-long friends find themselves at odds, and one starts seeing the most terrifying spectre I have ever laid eyes on because of what I laid eyes on. This one’s not as transparent as most.

A stylish soon-to-be-sister-in-law plays host to… No, there we will not go.

Nor will we go through the woods now that we are safely back home.

“Oh, but you must travel through those woods again and again,” said a shadow at the window.
“And you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time…
“But the wolf… the wolf only needs enough luck to find you once.

SLH

Buy Through The Woods h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Shackleton – Antarctic Odyssey s/c (£11-99, FirstSecond) by Nick Bertozzi.

South Pole, 1912.

“Success. The South Pole. Break out the meatballs!”
“We couldn’t have done it without the dogs.”
“Yes. They were tasty.”

Did you know previous expeditions use ponies? Poor ponies!

The above is Bertozzi’s fabulous, three-panel summary of the Amundsen Expedition, the first to reach the South Pole. It’s indicative of wit that’s been deployed throughout, making this a light, bright entertainment as well as an education.

On the other hand, I’m afraid he’s not joking: dogs don’t do well in the Antarctic. Poor dogs!

It kicks off with a quick geography lesson informing us that the Antarctic’s down south (well past the Thames) and there is a line of latitude past which the sun disappears during winter for an entire twenty-four hours.

Now, I’m all for exploration and have done a fair amount myself: the Brecon Beacons in summer and the Berwyn Mountains in winter. I can light a gasless, hexamine-fuel-block army camping stove with three sheets of toilet paper and a match, and have on one successfully cooked a gourmet, three-course meal for my Junior Instructors, although I do concede that if a melted Rolo and skimmed milk drink is not your idea of pudding then “gourmet” might be stretching it.

However, it seems to me that the remoter regions of the Antarctic are an ocean too far, and no amount of homemade damson gin is going to take the nip out of the air. It is very, very cold as Bertozzi’s central subject matter – 1914’s ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition – makes abundantly clear. That the crew manage to stay in such dignified high spirits and deport themselves with jovial optimism during the most severe deprivations and weather conditions is astonishing. They’re stranded on the aptly titled Endurance for the full first year, trapped in the ice. For a year! Not a great start.

The fate of The Endurance is pretty ill too, after which it becomes less of an expedition to the South Pole and more a struggle for survival out on the ice whilst inching themselves back towards the nearest semblance of civilisation, a Whaling Port hundreds of miles and several islands away on South Georgia. To get there will mean braving ridiculously rough seas in tiny rowing boats after they’re already starved and exhausted. It is… circuitous. Do you honestly think they all make it back alive?

The best laid 10-point plan of these mighty men involving two sailing ships and medals for all is laid out in all its reasonable detail right at the beginning of the book. It goes well astray within pages. It’s worth noting that the timing of the expedition turned out to be far from fortuitous: August 1914 was mere months from the outbreak of WWI so, with no hope of further funding from the throne (all monies, they knew, would be diverting to the war efforts), Shackleton saw no other option but to crack on when normally he would have turned back before he’d begun.

I learned so much that would never have occurred to me, particularly about the geology – the pressure of the ice packs, feeling sea waves under your feet which are standing on ice – and I had no idea these expeditions took two years. Obviously the humour factor starts failing when with their prospects of survival start waning, and there is one toe-curling moment I challenge you to resist reacting physically to, but one way or another Bertozzi keeps it riveting from start to finish.

His line is fine which, combined with a perfectly judged balance of grey tone, keeps the pages spacious and full of just the right light to convey times of day, temperature and weather conditions. It’s all about the temperature and weather conditions, an expedition like this, and what you will witness over these 120-odd pages is a tribute to human stoicism and dogged determination in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Still, poor dogs.

SLH

Buy Shackleton – Antarctic Odyssey s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Gold Star (£3-99, Retrofit Comics) by John Martz.

Delightful little smile-inducing mini-comic in the vein of Lewis Trondheim. Being a rounded human being Trondheim has many veins, so consider this his anthropomorphic funny face.

Alternating between the past recounted as single cartoons and present in the form of four-panel comic strips, a bespectacled bunny has been nominated for an award.

In the present the award is announced, the nerve-ridden rabbit proves victorious, and he is called to the podium to make his acceptance speech.

In the past he arrives at his hotel on the previous day and makes precisely the wrong friend at its evening’s reception.

There is an immensely satisfying moment when the past becomes immediately reflected in the present’s acceptance-speech fluster but the punchline – when the fluster is fully accounted for – is a howler.

Immaculate timing.

SLH

Buy Gold Star and read the Page 45 review here

Love And Rockets vol 10: Luba And Her Family (£13-99, Fantagraphics) by Gilbert Hernandez.

I’m all reviewed-out on Los Bros Hernandez at the moment, sorry. I’ve not read a single duff page by either Gilbert of Jaime – and I’ve read thousands – so you are hereby entreated to buy the lot.

MARBLE SEASON by Gilbert was such an incredible evocation of childhood we made it Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month.

Jaime’s THE LOVE BUNGLERS also featured childhood prominently and contains one sequence so shocking and a single panel so utterly arresting I took days to recover from both.

JULIO’S DAY was an exquisite, generational affair about a man who wastes his entire life.

MARIA M. I called “Crime and punishment executed with rapid-fire, bullet-point precision”.

THE CHILDREN OF PALOMAR was a haunting, community-based number.

LOVE AND ROCKETS: ESPERANZA is a fab introduction.

HIGH SOFT LISP contains the lines “She wept when I asked her to marry me. I wept when she asked for a pre-nuptial agreement!”

THE TROUBLE MAKERS and LOVE FROM THE SHADOWS were brilliantly bonkers and, yes, every one of those books is reviewed by us.

Possibly the most skeletal review I’ve ever written.

SLH

Buy Love And Rockets vol 10: Luba And Her Family and read the Page 45 review here

King-Cat Comics & Stories #74 (£2-99, King Cat) by John Porcellino.

What a cute cover!

John’s girlfriend, Stephanie, finds a bat in the attic. It’s too cold to pop the poor mite outside so they put it to bed in a ventilated shoebox while Stephanie scours the internet in search of local experts. They find one. They meet. The bat finds a loving new home. I didn’t know there were bat cages. They’re domes made of wire.

Thank God for Stephanie: I’m afraid she’s pretty much the only good news this issue. Even the letter column is tinged with melancholy. Zak Sally says “I’m tired of it” though I don’t know what “it” is. I like that John still copies them out by hand.

Comics’ chief map-maker Oliver East will love the portraits and descriptions of ‘The Bridges Of South Beloit’. At first I thought “Wow, so many!” I could only think of four in Nottingham and I had to remind myself of two of them. Then I realised I was just thinking of the River Trent and forgotten the canal, railway and tram bridges. There are loads.

My favourite episode this time out is ‘B.O.’ Unless I’m hiking up a hill on a very hot day I don’t tend to sweat so have never worn deodorant. John did use deodorant sticks until dating a punk rock girl in 1994 when she told them it causes Alzheimer’s, so he stopped for nineteen years. This is the story of why he stopped stopping: a day of disasters and cumulative stress causing him to sweat profusely then stress about sweating, and the cycle continues until he stinks to high heaven at a public event he cannot walk away from. Nightmare!

I love Porcellino’s storytelling. It’s the ultimate in clarity. There’s no fuss, no clutter. Come to think of it there are no images at all in ‘Dead Porcupine Blues’ although the layout might represent a flag. I don’t think so, but then I don’t understand the references in it. It might be poetry, after a fashion. ‘Tennessee’ is, to me. Maybe there’s a ray of sunshine in that one, after all the rain.

SLH

Buy King-Cat Comics & Stories #74 and read the Page 45 review here

House Party (£9-99, Great Beast) by Rachael Smith.

“Has there ever been a better symbol of two completely different worlds colliding… than a tagged baking tray.”

Vandalism!

You can judge this book by its cover. “Do not throw house parties!” it warns. “They will end in detritus and disaster.” To which I would add:

Definitely don’t invite people you don’t know or, if you know them, don’t like.

Michelle, Neil and Siobhan live together. They used to happy; they used to be the life and soul of their own house parties. But Michelle’s not the writer she aspired to be, Siobhan’s not the artist she’d hoped, and it’s two years since Neil had a paying gig as a comedian.

In a desperate bid to reconnect with their youth and popularity Neil decides it’s time to recreate the past and throw another house party. Michelle and Siobhan have doubts. Those doubts prove all too well founded.

The production on the book’s lovely: matt paper, bold colour, spot-varnish title in white. The set-up borrows from Bryan Lee O’Malley, the style from Marc Ellerby, the relationships from John Allison. A little too much from all three, actually, but Smith is growing increasingly confident as evidenced by the big, big panels and abundance of double-page spreads. With that comes one word of warning: this isn’t as long as you might imagine.

“Neil, I thought this was going to be fun… This looks considerably not fun.”

House parties: don’t do it.

All of our copies come with big, bold and perfectly placed original sketches in them. Thank you, Rachael!

SLH

Buy House Party and read the Page 45 review here

The Man That Dances In The Meadow (£3-99, Space Face Books) by Sam Alden.

Sounds such a sweet little number, doesn’t it?

To escape her office’s daily grind and toxic personal politics a young woman ventures into a meadow for her packed lunch. It is straddled by electricity pylons which loom over her like the wire frames of gigantic robots. One hot day she falls asleep only to be woken (perhaps) by an airplane flying overhead. She discovers a man with his back to her dancing deliriously, his movements a blur of multiple exposures.

Desperate to see him again, she becomes distracted both at work and at home with her girlfriend. They’re supposed to be planning their big move from the city to a town where her girlfriend’s earned a place at college, but the woman who saw the man that dances in the meadow is growing increasingly and irrationally anxious.

Gradually she loses her grip – on everything.

Congratulations, mini-comic, you successfully raised my blood pressure. Simple line, dot tone of different densities and a great deal of sweating, plus one knock-out page in the meadow at night, the pylons all stark and spectral in white.

SLH

Buy The Man That Dances In The Meadow and read the Page 45 review here

The Whale(£7-50, Gaze Books) by Aidan Koch –

A beautiful book, the most moving and compelling articulation of grief I have ever read. Brought me to tears.

[Editor’s note: Dominique is astute and concise.

Purely to make room for the cover on our blog, then, I would only add that Anders Nilsen’s DON’T GO WHERE I CAN’T FOLLOW and, later, THE END did the same thing for me.

Anyway, I’ll butt out now, and hope these blatantly artificial extra paragraphs have done their job.]

DK

Buy The Whale and read the Page 45 review here

Curio Cabinet (£10-99, Secret Acres) by John Brodowski.

One hundred and thirty-eight pages of densely shaded pencil preceded by a sort of magic trick in which the word “abracadabra” is given the illusion of having magical properties. It doesn’t, but I had to think about it.

These are short, silent and surreal stories interspersed by episodes of ‘Cus Mommy Said So’ in which a man in a hockey mask makes waves and throws things. Mommy turns out to be lacking in both maternal instinct and patience.

In ‘Hunter’ fauna take flight as a cathedral organ erupts and the Grim Reaper roars down the aisle on a motorbike. Oh wait, they’re not taking flight at all – they’re congregating.

‘Kindred Spirits’ also features squirrels and a man’s overenthusiastic affinity for them. There is a picnic in which a bird doesn’t wait to be fed. And a hatchet bent on suicide buries itself.

There are miners, dinosaurs, warriors, grotesques galore and Iron Maiden’s mascot puts in an appearance. I believe the creator is partial to a little heavy metal.

It occurs to me that there are a lot of deaths and broken windows in this book.

Sammy Harkham calls it “laugh out loud”. Sammy Harkham is weird.

SLH

Buy Curio Cabinet and read the Page 45 review here

I Will Bite You! And Other Stories (£10-50, Secret Acres) by Joseph Lambert ~

Utterly beautiful, this.

Like Lucy Knisley, Joseph is a graduate from the Centre for Cartoon Studies and this, his debut book is largely a collection of his work leading up to and including his work at that esteemed academy. A rare mixed-bag with no duff flavours, Joseph’s style is loose. At times I’m reminded me of Al Columbia; others of Joann Sfar. But if those names mean zilch to you, that’s okay, what counts are the comics here, and the comics here count.

There’s a very fine common theme of duality throughout these stories, perhaps intentionally – I don’t know – but seemingly pointed as two of the stories deal with pairs of siblings. The eponymous opener is an abstract tale about a frustrated man-child biting everything and growling in thick, black scribbles; constantly overhead are the mocking presence of the Sun and the Moon, side by side, amused by the biter’s angst until he retaliates with fatal repercussions.

The tale feels old, even tribal. An urban Aboriginal tale of how the day and night find themselves as they are.

The first tale also has the moon play a part, when two hyperactive brothers distress an older sibling with their rambunctious escapades and bring the moon pressing against their house, bending it at a right angle. The second story, ‘Too Far’, turns a minor spat between too brothers into a dimensional incident wherein the older eats everything, and in his now-metaphysical body his family, and indeed the whole of creation, forge on.

But by far my favourite is his assignment from CSS to retell the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. ‘Turtle, Keep It Steady!’ has the animals as drummers competing for the beat, the turtle playing a straight, no-nonsense steady beat, while the hare plays Keith Moon/Mick Fleetwood-style with a bottle and a bunny occupying his paws, leaving his ears free to freestyle with predictable results.

This is some fine comics.

TR

Buy and read the Page 45 review here

Occupy Comics: Art + Stories Inspired By Occupy Wall Street s/c (£11-99, Black Mask) by Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, Ales Kot, Si Spurrier, many more & David Mack, Charlie Adlard, David Lloyd, many more –

Of the first issue Dominique wrote:

Anthologies for a charitable cause are often hit-and-miss affairs in terms of the material you get and this one is no different. But really the point is the cause more than the comics so it’s probably best to take the rough with the smooth; if you are interested in the Occupy Movement or the general furore surrounding it then you will find some interesting little nuggets here.

In terms of the strips three really stood out for me.  CITIZEN JOURNALIST by Ales Kot (ZERO, WILD CHILDREN, CHANGE) Tyler Crook (BPRD) and Jeromy Cox (many superhero titles) is a snapshot of what it takes to get footage from a scene where the regular media have been “asked” by the police not to film. As you can imagine, what it takes is a mix of ingenuity and courage plus the ability to take a punch or two. Well put together with lovely art. CLEVER by Ben Templesmith is a two page spread explaining briefly how we are all being shafted, complete with zombie/skeletal men in suits. CHANNEL 1% by Matt Pizzolo and Ayhan Hayrula gives a succinct overview of how the events leading up to and including the Occupy movement have been spun.

You also get a bunch of other stuff including a chunk of prose by Alan Moore [the cartoon’s pedigree as a fiercely iconoclastic medium (Gillray) and comics’ too (Hogarth)] and an illustration by Molly Crabapple whose arrest at the one year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street protest is well worth an internet search.  Interesting stuff.

DK

Buy Occupy Comics and read the Page 45 review here

Rocket Raccoon #1 (£2-99, Marvel) by Skottie Young.

“Ok, well, it looks like you’re wanted for murder.”
“What? That’s crazy!”
“Is it really? Are you murdering someone right now?”
“What? Maybe. That’s not the point!”

*GURGLE!*

Quick-fire stupidity and hyperactivity done well.

Rocket Racoon is the anthropomorphic ladies’-man member of Marvel’s GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, although let us not forget Groot, its walking, talking tree-trunk. Groot indeed guest-stars in a wrestling match to which Rocket Racoon has taken his this-minute’s lady-love on a date. He so romantic!

The epitome of the thoughtless, self-centred male about whom so many of my lady-friends used to complain until they wised up and found someone infinitely more sensitive and so suitable instead (ah, youth! ah, maturity!), our resident raccoon even attempts to secure future dates while on a date in front of his date. Brilliant!

He’s also in trouble. One gleaming, fang-faced smile into one too many cameras and his status as a wanted man is flagged planet-wide. Now who could possibly want him?

Everything I’ve typed up so far links up by the punchline and makes perfect sense. Also, the sub-plot about a second sentient raccoon (when Rocket supposes he’s the last of his race) is reignited. Ooooh!

The cartooning is gleeful with big, broad grins with flashing canines, showing the show-off to maximum advantage whilst keeping you all screaming “Yay!”

Yay!

SLH

Buy Rocket Raccoon and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy!

Reviews already up if they’re new formats of previous graphic novels. The best of the rest will be reviewed next week while others will retain their Diamond previews as reviews. Neat, huh?

 

Judge vol 4 (£9-99, Yen Press) by Yoshiki Tonogai

Nightwing vol 4: Second City s/c (£10-99, DC) by Kyle Higgins & Brett Booth

Justice League Of America vol 1: Worlds Most Dangerous s/c (£12-99, DC) by Geoff Johns, Matt Kindt, Jeff LeMire & David Finch, many more

Battle Royale: Angels Border (£8-99, Viz) by Koushun Takami & Mioko Ohnishi, Youhei Oguma

Blue Sheep Reverie vol 6 (£9-99, June) by Makota Tateno

Avatar Last Airbender vol 8: Rift Part 2 (£8-50, Dark Horse) by Gene Luen Yang & Gurihiru

The Seven Deadly Sins vol 3 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Nakaba Suzuki

UQ Holder vol 2 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Ken Akamatsu

Raygun Roads (£4-99, Changeling Studios) by Owen Johnson & Indio

Death Sentence h/c (£16-99, Titan) by Montynero & Mike Dowling

Legends Of The Tour (£14-99, Head Of Zeus) by Jan Cleijne

 

ITEM! Staggering graph on the gargantuan spike in interest in UMBRAL the second it was declared Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month. I’ve always been humbled by the trust members put in our club, but it is mind-melting to see how wide that influence evidently is. Hurrah for analysts like Antony Johnston! Bloody good writer, to boot.

ITEM! Beautiful! Preview of HOW TO BE HAPPY by Eleanor Davis. You can pre-order HOW TO BE HAPPY from Page 45 here.

ITEM! New Hope Larson comics: SOLO!

ITEM! Different to last week’s link, time-lapse photography of Joe Sacco’s THE GREAT WAR going up in the Paris Metro.

ITEM! Interview with Ed Brubaker about VELVET in which he tells of a TV station which was interesting in optioning the series… while proving they had missed the whole point. It’s a real “D’Oh!” moment.

ITEM! Joe Decie, he’s so funny. “Where do you get your ideas from?” Comic.

ITEM! Not as off-topic as I would like. Almost every week some professional woman or another – in comics, games, animation, journalism – is targeted online by a vicious mob of menchildren desperate to suppress any woman’s voice, influence and authority. “Sexism” doesn’t come close to describing these vile, cowardly attacks which often include rape threats. Now acclaimed author and journalist Leigh Alexander has written some typically sage advice on how supporters can help women under online attack without exacerbating the situation.

ITEM! BIG QUESTIONS’ Anders Nilsen takes on Amazon. I’ve read that comic in its entirety and it is deliciously witty. We’ll be stocking the two as a complete package – already ordered!

ITEM! A sobering comic about a refugee fleeing conflict by Karrie Fransman. Its perfect punchline echoes the sentiments of Shaun Tan’s THE ARRIVAL.

I think we’ll leave it there.

– Stephen

Reviews July 2014 week one

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2014

What these differences in style neatly attest, though, is that the mind of a schizophrenic is an extremely rich, complex, yet fluid and volatile place to inhabit.

 – Jonathan on Hoax: Psychosis Blues

Velvet vol 1: Before The Living End (£7-50, Image) by Ed Brubaker & Steve Epting with Elizabeth Breitweiser.

“And that’s the last thing that gets me in trouble. I was so worried about Frank being framed… so angry about X-14’s murder… that it doesn’t even occur to me that Frank isn’t the only one being framed.”

Oh, Velvet Templeton, if only you knew…

There are some beautiful books on the market but few more so than this. Set in Paris, Monaco, London and Belgrade in the 1970s before pulling back even further to the Bahamas et al, it is lush with 20th Century fashion from the sleekest sports cars to the slinkiest stealth suits, and wait until Velvet hits the Carnival of Fools, a masque full of masks in Monaco.

By “masks” I mean spies, few more disguised than Velvet.

There is, you see, an espionage agency called ARC-7 so secret that most other ops don’t even know it exists. Within that service there are field agents who are numbers not names, and at its heart lies the Director. The Director has a secretary with long, sable hair now distinguished with a thick, white streak of maturity. She is his eyes, she is his ears but for so many years she was something else: one of ARC-7s most effective field operatives. So deep was her cover that even ARC’s agents aren’t aware of her former activities. And that may prove the undoing of whichever infiltrator has just set her up for treachery, treason and murder.

The tension’s so tight it’s like a cobra that’s been coiled for years, for as Velvet Templeton backtracks on X-14’s movements – and that one missing day – she discovers that this not the first time she has been manipulated. There is one particular moment of intimate horror dating back to 1956 when she realises that the look on one agent’s face as she executes her order must have been that which he saw on her own.

Brubaker you will almost certainly know from CRIMINAL and FATALE and his gripping run on CAPTAIN AMERICA (used for the recent Winter Soldier film) on which he worked with VELVET’s Steve Epting. I cannot imagine the physical or metaphorical map he must have drawn to link all these dates and destinations so intricately, but his CRIMINAL is exactly the same. Here as there he provides a gripping internal monologue as we keep pace with Velvet’s frantic plight trying to keep one desperate step ahead of those who’ve evidently planned her undoing for ages.

“The suit’s synthetic microfibres stopped my ribs from breaking… that’ll have to be good enough. I’ll just box the rest away. But then, I’m good at compartmentalising. It’s one of the first things you have to master in this field. And not just storing away pain or secrets. It becomes a new way of thinking. A way of surviving. Your mind always running down four or five tracks at the same time. Even now, as I scramble to get away… a quieter part of me is planning an escape route.”

At which point Epting inserts a mental map of her potential escape route over the nocturnal ducking and diving which he has choreographed immaculately over the dozen panels accompanying that voice-over. It’s positively balletic throughout.

Moreover, Steve has steeped this series in its period time and place with capital-city car chases past vast, monumental, white-stone, classical facades and balustrades, quay-side contretemps and brief breaths for cruelly cut-short air on a Bahaman beach in 1956. That bathing costume with its visual cues to Velvet’s future hair exemplifies the attention to detail that both Steve and Elizabeth Breitweiser have put into every page and panel. Or it’s a happy coincidence and I will look like a loon.

Coming back to those Regency facades, there are a couple of pages I use most often to sell this on the shop floor (other than the glass shards Breitweiser electrifies on the preceding cliffhanger) in which the heavens have opened on a comparatively calm London town outside an elitist gentleman’s club, the street lights are reflected on the rain-rippled pavement and thin streams of water pour with just the right weight from an umbrella as a cigarette is lit and then *pfuff*…

 

I have no idea how much time two pages like that must take to colour, but it is all very much appreciated and acknowledged.

Lastly – and I mention this only as a love song to Steve Epting for I will not be giving the game away – the final chapter includes a reveal which is visual-only and takes the most extraordinary and subtle command of human anatomy to convey. In retrospect Brubaker slipped in one single clue earlier on, trusting Steve Epting to have laid all the groundwork then pull off the punchline to sweet, ambiguous perfection.

It worked.

SLH

Buy Velvet vol 1: Before The Living End and read the Page 45 review here

Hoax Psychosis Blues h/c (£19-99, Ziggy’s Wish) by Ravi Thornton & Hannah Berry, Karrie Fransman, Leonardo M. Giron, Julian Hanshaw, Rozi Hathaway, Rian Hughes, Rhiana Jade, Ian Jones, Mark Stafford, Bryan Talbot…

Limited edition with exclusive Page 45 bookplate (30 copies only) signed by Ravi Thornton & Rozi Hathaway.

This is a work which will affect or appeal to people in entirely different ways. That’s apt indeed, for from a subjective standpoint, everyone is unique, including those people who are unfortunate enough to suffer with mental illness. Some people reading this graphic novel will simply admire the truly beautiful artwork from the ten diverse and extremely talented artists which Ravi has managed to assemble. Some will be mesmerised and entranced by the sensate stream of consciousness poetry that provides some measure of insight into the fractured inner world of Ravi’s brother Rob. Others, having experience of what mental illness can do to a family member or loved one – perhaps resulting, as in Rob’s case, in the sad decision to take their own life – will certainly find this work deeply, personally affecting.

However, with all that said, whilst we as human beings like to think we are so very good at putting ourselves in someone else’s place, seeing the world through their eyes, for those individuals whose waking moments can flutter between the highs of near transcendence to the depths of utter purgatory in the mere time it takes for a butterfly to spread its wings, we simply cannot truly know what it is to be like them: to feel, at times, as cruelly and painfully isolated as they do from the rest of us. Because, make no mistake, from a relative standpoint nothing and no one is separate. To have the perception, however, that this is the case, can be the cause of such mental turmoil and suffering, that I personally can understand why someone would choose to end it, even at the expense of their own existence.

Taken as a whole, this work provides a window into both Ravi and Rob’s experience of his struggles with his schizophrenia. The ‘Year’ chapters, in the traditional sequential art comics form, illustrated by Leonardo M. Giron, reveal the story from Ravi’s perspective, showing us moments of joy, despair, hope and resignation, as she tries to support her brother as best she can. These are separated with sequences containing poetry inspired by the extensive body of work Rob left behind, and they vary considerably stylistically in art terms, from what we would again consider traditional comics through to what could probably be accurately described as illustrated prose, though I would contend these sequences are also still very much comics as the artwork does significantly inform the intended narrative in conjunction with the prose in a sequential manner. What these differences in style neatly attest, though, is that the mind of a schizophrenic is an extremely rich, complex, yet fluid and volatile place to inhabit.

I think in terms of portraying Rob’s story, Ravi succeeds admirably. I was moved to tears in several places, by certain incidents or nuances that created a deep, emotional resonance within me, much like I experienced with Nicola Streeten’s BILLY, ME & YOU. I did quite deliberately not read this work on the tram this time though, suspecting I might need my hankie at close hand. It’s just so damn hard to see someone’s suffering brought to life so eloquently through their own words, and so poignantly and illuminatingly illustrated, knowing as you do that ultimately there is no happy ending, well, not at least in the traditional sense. With some people who take their own lives, you can tell there may well have been a palpable element of fear and desperation involved, with others, merely the knowledge that peace would finally prevail. I certainly gained some sense of the latter with Rob.

Art-wise, this work is truly an absolute visual smörgåsbord. Firstly, the ‘Year’ chapters by Leonardo M. Giron are magnificently understated, with a deliberately subdued, almost pastel palette and a slightly chalky feel to the colouring. There is one slight exception to this involving a very special butterfly in the final chapter of which I shall say no more. The art accompanying the poetry is mostly, in contrast, extremely rich and vibrant, with a real eclectic mix of styles. There are a couple of obvious, almost monochromatic exceptions, but they are entirely in keeping with the mood of the moment. It’s hard to pick a favourite, but I can honestly say, as a man who isn’t massively into poetry, they all really beautifully capture the essence of Rob’s words and thus help convey the not-so merry-go-round of his ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic emotional states. Another impressive addition to the recent canon of works dealing frankly with mental illness, alongside the likes of PSYCHIATRIC TALES, DEPRESSO, MARBLES, LIGHTER THAN MY SHADOW.

JR

Buy Hoax Psychosis Blues h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Dead Boy Detectives vol 1: Schoolboy Terrors s/c (£7-50, Vertigo) by Toby Litt & Mark Buckingham.

“You never really know with Tragic Mick. Sure, he always treats us like royalty, it’s just sometimes it’s the red carpet and sometimes it’s the guillotine.”

Oh, I adore Gary Erskine’s inks over Mark Buckingham’s pencils here! He’s basically channelling Jack Kirby and it gives the already unusual an otherworldly feel. It’s the proportions in the panels and the way the shadows fall, whether on hair or the animals (love the locust head/helmet!) and look at the hospital bed, Crystal Palace’s cosplay outfit and her open-plan home with its futuristic furnishings: it could be a floor in the Baxter Building! The whole endeavour is a pleasure to the eye.

Additionally, before the main event, Buckingham and Santos deliver a long-limbed, wall-crawling headmaster straight out of Gerald Scarfe’s illustrations for Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

So, there are three things you need know about Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland: they are boys, they are detectives, they are dead. Almost a century apart they were both murdered at St. Hilarion’s, a private boarding school whose bullying practices and policy during the intervening years had changed not one jot: the former was endemic, the latter non-existent – and, as a public schoolboy myself, I can fucking well vouch for that.

They were created by Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner in SANDMAN: SEASON OF MISTS (it’s a generic review for the series as a whole, but as generic reviews go I’m inordinately proud of that one) and they have been used on and off by the likes of Bryan Talbot since within series like THE DREAMING. Charles thinks he’s a hardboiled P.I.; Edwin aspires to be Sherlock Holmes – you can tell by their diaries.

There are advantages to being a dead detective as detailed in The Seven Rules And Seven Buts Of Being A Ghost. Eating gets a bit messy. In any event, they seem to be drawn to cats. In addition they are now drawn to Crystal Palace named after the world’s biggest greenhouse which sadly burned to the ground. So that doesn’t augur well. Crystal is the daughter of modern artist Maddy Surname and nonchalant rockstar Seth von Hovercraft. Are you giggling already? I am. During a publicity stunt which goes wrong in every conceivable way they save Crystal’s life, barely, from an errant grenade. Awakening in hospital she resolves to thank them by tracking them down at St. Hilarion’s, the very last place either of the boys want to return to but now have to.

It hasn’t mended its ways.

That’s all you’re getting but I hope I’ve intrigued. In place of the traditional “Next Issue” box at the end of each chapter you are given a jigsaw piece. If you cut them up you will find they fit together very neatly indeed. It’s irrelevant but inventive little touches like that which I love.

SLH

Buy Dead Boy Detectives vol 1: Schoolboy Terrors s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Big Damn Sin City h/c (£75-00, Dark Horse) by Frank Miller.

Listening suggestion: Tom Waits.

This is a leviathan: roughly half the price of the softcovers yet twice their size!

The original SIN CITY was a glorious essay of light on form. Sometimes the form is eroded, sometimes it’s enhanced, blocked out against black or white. The rain slashing across the pages towards the end, as gnarled Marv crosses the streets in his billowing trenchcoat is a sight to behold. For Marv, think Clint Eastwood on steroids. In some ways it’s a very old-fashioned series about “dames” and guys who fall for them. It’s about guns and crime and gun crime; bars and dancers and booze and cars, and it’s ages since I’ve read one.

I have, however, exhumed part of my introduction to the Sin City film delivered many moons ago during thirty minutes of pants-wetting terror at Nottingham’s Broadway Cinema where I described the series thus:

By day it’s all sunshine and palm trees and glamorous women. By night it’s a dark and dangerous hellhole, populated by prostitutes, ruled with corruption and stoked by violence.

It’s always night.

“The thing people get wrong about film noir,” wrote Miller, “is that they think it just looks spooky, missing the fact that the spookiness of the look is a reflection of what’s going on behind the eyes of the people. If there is some real emotional darkness, it doesn’t matter how dark the film is, with shadows and blinds behind them; all these other things are metaphors for the torment, or the self hatred, or the despair the character’s going through.”

Miller always wanted to do crime comics.

He began his career by pencilling a fairly standard and failing superhero comic called DAREDEVIL because at that point there were very few other entry points into the industry. But as soon as he took over its writing he turned it into a crime comic. Yes, it retained some of the trappings of superheroes, like the costumes, but most of the action took place down darkened alleys in deprived Hell’s Kitchen and it wasn’t long before one of Millar’s other interests was introduced: martial arts in the form of ninjas, throwing stars and big, pointy swords.  From the get-go the fight scenes were choreographed as gracefully as ballet movements and Miller displayed an unusual inventiveness and a mastery of what the panels on the page could do with time and space… and indeed what the medium lacked, like movement, and how to compensate for that.

His solution in that instance was to litter the pages with pieces of floating paper, giving the impression of wind. And if you look at the cars in SIN CITY, if in motion they are rarely anchored to the road because if you draw a car realistically on the asphalt it’ll just look like it’s parked. So they fly above it instead.

If you compare Miller’s earlier work to his latest, you’ll notice two trends: they’re increasingly socio-political in content and increasingly expressionistic in execution.

As Miller has noted, when drawing an establishing shot, say in an office, most comicbook artists will be taught to draw everything in as much detail as possible. But comics is a medium whose panels work best if you don’t linger on them.

Unlike film, during which one frame simply replaces another in front of us, in comics time is represented by space with consecutive panels sitting next to each other. The artist is taking a thing in motion and selecting specific images from that motion, which the reader subconsciously joins up as his or her eyes flow across the pages. Too many details impede the speed of that process and slow down the story, so realism isn’t necessarily as useful as expressionism. Often a single object can tell you more about a room, its atmosphere or indeed its occupants than a fully mapped-out shot, because the impression it makes on your mind, without all the distractions, can be stronger.

With SIN CITY Miller really started putting that to the test. He became more interested in shapes than in lines, and you can see that on almost every page with silhouettes and framing features everywhere. The series is an essay in black and white, a masterclass on the emphasis of form and the erosion of form by light.

Indeed it’s changed the way Frank works. He’ll write the script, then he’ll pencil the entire book out before he even begins to touch the pen and brush. Nor does he pencil too tightly otherwise, for him, the inking would be simply mechanical rather than an involving, imaginative process. Then he reverses the usual process by going in and mapping out the big spaces – the blacks, the whites, the shapes. Only after that does he go back in with a finer line if – and only if – more detail is required.

I then went on to wibble about newspaper columns versus 300’s landscape format before talking about the film-making process which in this instance was particularly fascinating even if some sequences ended up looking like an ‘80s pop video along the lines of Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love.

Here, have a sense of scale:

SLH

Buy Big Damn Sin City h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Disenchanted vol 1 s/c (£14-99, Avatar) by Simon Spurrier & German Erramouspe…

“Us with our… old old ways. Our idiot rituals. Why sour milk? Why flick dew on cobwebs, eh?
“Why learn to tangle hair, Noro? We never stop to ask!
“Well I’ve asked. I’ve tested the bloody rules, and you know what?
“There’s no reason. Not when all it does is… is fill us up with smugness and hate.
“Don’t you see that?”

I started off wondering if this was going to be merely a darker version of FABLES, but it fact it has far more in common with the considerably more engaging and visceral HINTERKIND. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised given it is an Avatar title and written by Si Spurrier who pens the brilliantly wicked ongoing CROSSED: WISH YOU WERE HERE spin-off .And I think this title might have the potential to be as good as that one, actually, if not quite so horrific as this is definitely more in the crime genre, though it does have its wince-worthy moments.

The basic premise is the Little People of folklore such the pixies, fey, leprechauns, boggarts et al have long forsaken their traditions and expansive homelands of the countryside, and decamped to the filthy, drug-ridden city, specifically an abandoned tube station which has been colonised by goblins, and thus effectively all sold themselves into indentured wage slavery to the greedy greenies.

Yes, the goblins rule the roost in Vermintown and they’re not about to let any of the other races out from under their boot. Our heroes, a family of the fey, torn across generations between the old ways and the tempting sleaze of the new, are struggling to maintain their cohesion as a family unit as well as any sense of identity or indeed semblance of filial piety.

So part-crime, plenty grime, I really enjoyed this first volume, simply because it’s nice to read something where all the characters are quite frankly utterly flawed, and to some extent or another, quite deserving of their lot, yet still they all strive under the misapprehension they deserve something better. Not if the goblins have anything to do with it! Expect foul language, sex, violence and drug abuse, because this title certainly contains it in abundance.

JR

Buy Disenchanted vol 1and read the Page 45 review here

Outcast #1 (£2-25, Image) Robert Kirkman & Paul Azaceta with Elizabeth Breitweiser…

“Joshua… what are you eating?! It’s almost bedtime.”
“So… hungry…”

And thus begins what Robert Kirkman promises will be a proper horror comic, bar a great bit of witty opening repartee which softens you up nicely for the initial shocker accompanying the above quotation. From the chap who pens arguably the most famous horror comic of all time, THE WALKING DEAD, that’s a chilling statement. In fact what he really means, as he explains in his afterword, is that whilst the possibility of a zombie apocalypse ever occurring is precisely zero, and let’s be honest, we all hope he’s got it right on that score, there are other terrors which are all the more horrifying because they actually exist. Yes, demonic possession is on the very cusp of fact versus fiction as he readily acknowledges, and he certainly doesn’t want to get into any sort of religious debate about it, either. Ultimately he just wants to write an entertaining horror comic, disturbingly credible, with a genuinely creepy undertone to it, and this is the subject matter he has chosen.

I was initially sceptical that this premise could be spun into something with the same long-term potential as THE WALKING DEAD, but having read this first issue, one can see already Kirkman’s got something epic in mind for us. The main character Kyle, a man who as a boy saw his mother, and then years later his wife, succumb to demonic possession, well he’s clearly a man with some story to tell. Shunned by his now-ex-wife, and pretty much everyone else he previously knew with the exception of his sister (for reasons which are all too painfully clear by the end of this first issue), he’s become a complete recluse. When the local Reverend, intimately aware of his past, tries to enlist Kyle’s help with an exorcism, he initially refuses. But… when you’ve seen the things he’s seen, suffered in the manner he has suffered, well, he knows he can’t in all good conscience refuse to help another soul in torment. And that is why his problems are going to start all over again. And it’s the why he has really got the problem with, the question that has bothered him all this time. Why him? Why is he the outcast?

Spectacularly spooky and action packed art from Paul Azaceta, who has previously done some decent stuff on SPIDER-MAN: ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES and bits of the extended SPIDER-MAN: GAUNTLET arc, some of the Brubaker DAREDEVIL run, BPRD vol 9 – 1946, CONAN with Brian Wood immediately after the Becky Cloonan run, but this, this is going to take him to another level of stardom entirely I think. And rightly so.

JR

Buy Outcast #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Dog Butts And Love. And Stuff Like That. And Cats. (£9-99, NBM) by Jim Benton.

Jim Benton is a cheeky chappy as evidenced immediately by the title selling itself on the mass-appeal market while ripping the piss out of it at the same time.

In truth there are very few dogs or cats on offer, while the cartoons themselves are less observational than CAT PERSON or Jeffrey Brown’s CATS ARE WEIRD and more intellectual along the lines of Tom Gauld’s YOU’RE ALL JUST JEALOUS OF MY JETPACK genius but with a slightly lower hit rate for me. Having said that, this is a keenly observed belter:

“Why do I have to learn all this stupid math stuff?”
“Because you’ll need it for college.”

Ten years later:

“Okay, if I pay tuition and ½ the rent, I can buy enough rice to last 3/5 of the month… if I use my student discount and the 15% off coupon…”

Enormous sympathy to students everywhere.

 

Laziness, stupidity, evolution, over-complicating things, over-thinking things, no cranial activity whatsoever. There’s a silent strip about a sculptor getting a fatal thumbs-down that made me guffaw like Trondheim’s MISTER I. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”’s visual punchline made me grin and, oh, how familiar is this…?

“For part of your life, you worry about your future.
“Eventually, you stop doing this, and you spend your time regretting your past.
“There is a point, somewhere in-between, when you engage in neither behaviour.
“This may last up to four minutes, so try not to miss it.”

Avengers Assembled’s Samuel L. Fury makes an unexpected, eye-popping appearance and a rattlesnake complains that its food’s been poisoned.

SLH

Buy Dog Butts And Love. And Stuff Like That. And Cats. and read the Page 45 review here

Attack On Titan: No Regrets vol 1 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Gun Snark & Hikaru Suruga…

“Frankly, it’s a disgrace. We all had to go through the same training yet you’re asking us to accept criminals into our ranks?!”
“Your complaint is only natural.”
“Their presence could even put our lives in danger! What should I tell my subordinates?”
“Squadron Leader Flagon. You’re right. These people had no training. They did not earn wings from us. They grew their own, out of necessity. And I believe those wings will play a part in revolutionising this organisation.”
“You speak of revolution? I just pray that venturing outside the walls doesn’t become… the greatest of their crimes.”

Yes, it’s a tough life in the elite cadre of Page 45 mail order minions. So… yet another spin-off of what is apparently Japan’s answer to the WALKING DEAD. So the adverts say, though I’m not totally sure I see that comparison, it seems a little lazy to me. It’s not quite as insanely dangerous a world as CROSSED, but it’s a considerable step up in imminent peril level from the WALKING DEAD, that’s for sure. Give me run of the mill zombies over fifty-foot-high ones every day of the week. It is definitely as big a phenomenon in Japan though, and pretty popular everywhere else too, including at Page 45.

Anyway, much like ATTACK ON TITAN: BEFORE THE FALL, this is effectively prequel material, and as with that title, I would say it is required reading, as we begin to explore the origin stories of Erwin and Levi, two of the main title’s central characters. Fleshing out the world of the Capital city as much as it does our cast, revealing the presence of the Underworld, where an underclass of society barely manage to survive, it adds further depth to what is already an impressively elaborate milieu.

JR

Buy Attack On Titan: No Regrets vol 1 and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy!

Reviews already up if they’re new formats of previous graphic novels. The best of the rest will be reviewed next week while others will retain their Diamond previews as reviews. Neat, huh

 

King-Cat Comics & Stories #74 (£2-99, King Cat) by John Porcellino

Listen (£2-99, Flat Mountain Press) by Trevor Grabill

Sunday In The Park With Boys (£7-50, Koyama Press) by Jane Mai

The Boy In Question (£4-99, Space Face Books) by Michael DeForge

Diary Comics Number Four (£7-50, Koyama Press) by Dustin Harbin

You Don’t Get There From Here #26 (£1-99, ) by Carrie McNinch

S! (Baltic Comics Magazine) #11 (£7-50, Biedriba Grafiske ) by Various

S! (Baltic Comics Magazine) #12 (£7-50, Biedriba Grafiske ) by Various

Mini-Kus! #10 (£3-99, Biedriba Grafiske ) by Mari Ahokoivu

Mini-Kus! #5 (£3-99, Biedriba Grafiske ) by Leo Kivro

Mini-Kus! #6 (£3-99, Biedriba Grafiske ) by Box Brown

In The Sounds And Seas (£9-99, Monkey-Rope Press) by Marnie Galloway

Songs Of The Abyss (£12-99, Secret Acres) by Eamon Espey

Blobby Boys (£7-50, Koyama Press) by Alex Schubert

Freddy Stories (£7-50, ) by Melissa Mendes

I Will Bite You (£10-50, Secret Acres) by Joseph Lambert

Jammers (£4-50, Hic  & Hoc) by Lizz Hickey

Post York (£6-99, Uncivilized Books) by James Romberger

I Want Everything To Be OK (£7-50, Tugboat Press) by Carrie McNinch

R L #1 (£3-00, Sequential Artists Workshop) by Tom Hart

Curio Cabinet (£10-99, Secret Acres) by John Brodowski

Life Zone (£8-99, Space Face Books) by Simon Hanselmann

Gold Star (£3-99, Retrofit Comics) by John Martz

The Man That Dances In The Meadow (£3-99, Space Face Books) by Sam Alden

Out Of Hollow Water (£8-50, 2D Cloud) by Anna Bonngiovanni

The Whale (£7-50, Gaze Books) by Aidan Koch

Dark Times (£6-99, ) by Robert M Ball

A.B.C. Warriors: The Volgan War vol 4 s/c (£12-99, Rebellion) by Pat Mills & Clint Langley

Chu’s First Day At School h/c (£10-99, Bloomsbury) by Neil Gaiman & Adam Rex

Couch Tag h/c (£19-99, Fantagraphics) by Jesse Reklaw

House Party (£9-99, Great Beast) by Rachael Smith

Love And Rockets vol 10: Luba And Her Family (£13-99, Fantagraphics) by Gilbert Hernandez

Occupy Comics: Art + Stories Inspired By Occupy Wall Street s/c (£11-99, Black Mask) by Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, Ales Kot, Si Spurrier, many more & David Mack, Charlie Adlard, David Lloyd, many more

Shackleton – Antarctic Odyssey s/c (£11-99, FirstSecond) by Nick Bertozzi

Through The Woods h/c (£14-99, Faber & Faber) by Emily Carroll

Green Lantern – New Guardians vol 3: Love & Death s/c (£12-99, DC) by Tony Bedard & Aaron Kuder, various

Injustice vol 2 h/c (£14-99, DC) by Tom Taylor & Mike S. Miller, Tom Derenick, Bruno Redondo

Guardians Of Galaxy Movie Prelude s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by various

Indestructible Hulk vol 4: Humanity Bomb (UK Edition) s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Mark Waid & Mamhud Asrar, Jheremy Raapack, Clay Mann, Seth Mann

Uncanny X-Men vol 2: Broken s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Frazer Irving, Chris Bachalo

Deadman Wonderland vol 3 (£6-99, Viz) by Jinsei Kataoka & Kazuma Kondou

Dragon Ball 3-in-1 Edition vols 13-15 (£9-99, Viz) by Akira Toriyama

Dragon Ball Full Colour Saiyan Arc vol 3 (£14-99, Viz) by Akira Toriyama

Lone Wolf And Cub Omnibus vol 5 (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima

One Piece vol 71 (£6-99, Viz) by Eiichiro Oda

Seraph Of The End, Vampire Reign vol 1 (£7-50, Viz) by Takaya Kagami & Yamato Yamamoto

Usagi Yojimbo vol 28: Red Scorpion (£13-50, Dark Horse) by Stan Sakai

 

ITEM! Joe Sacco’s Battle Of The Somme plastered over the Paris Metro!

ITEM! Gorgeous Bill Sienkiewicz painted covers for LONEWOLF AND CUB

ITEM! Illuminating article on colour with fun eye exercises explaining that although magenta is not a spectral colour it obviously “exists” as much as any colour exists because colour exists only in our brains. It’s all just wavelengths.

ITEM! Scott McCloud’s cover to THE SCULPTOR unveiled!

ITEM! Nottingham Festival of Words 2014, October 13-19

ITEM! Jiro Taniguchi to attend Angoulême with big exhibition to boot!

ITEM! Fight censorship: Comic Book Legal Defense Fund ‘Banned Books Week Handbook’ available in print or as a download.

ITEM! More beautiful (and free!) BLAKE SINCLAIR by Sarah Burgess. Sarah’s THE SUMMER OF BLAKE SINCLAIR in stock at Page 45 now!

ITEM! DAWN OF THE UNREAD assesses and addressed low levels of Young Adult literacy with interactive graphic novel by the likes of Michael Eaton & Eddie Campbell (Charlie Peace) and Nicola Monaghan (The Killing Jar)

ITEM! Finally, congratulations to Heidi MacDonald on The Beat’s 10th Anniversary! What a fabulously entertaining overview of the last ten years in comics that is!

– Stephen