“Lived and died
“And struggled and lost
“And the end was unceremonious.”

 – Perfect cadence in Mike Medaglia’s Last Days Of Nobodies (Signed & Sketched In)

Expecting To Fly #1 of 2 (£3-00, Scary Go Round Comics) by John Allison.

“I reckon computer game realism has reached its peak.”

He’s playing Doom!

But didn’t we all think that when first immersed in the video game Doom? Racing down that first, three-dimensional tunnel alone blew my newbie little mind. Then eventually oh my god it was green and red and terrifying!

Set inextricably in Britain 1996 when copper-wire theft was a thing and some VHS video machines ran on short and long play (compatibility alert!) this is John Allison’s best book yet. And that’s saying something given how much I adored the revised-for-print edition of BAD MACHINERY: THE CASE OF THE GOOD BOY. I love the Marvel-homage and Tetris-tribute cover. Tetris is very telling here:

“It’s the perfect game. The rules are clear. Organise the world into perfect, neat little rows. Watch your problems disappear. There’s a tiny, two dimensional world in there. I’m keeping it going.”

So speaks Shelley Winters, a slim and attractive redhead always smartly dressed for school. She’s quick, witty and seems very wise. But she’s having to “keep it going” against all odds in the wake of a family tragedy.

Tim Jones too appears to have a level head on his shoulders. Older and taller than Shelley and his best mate, Ryan Beckwith, he seems organised, smart, attentive, generous and reliable. Ryan, meanwhile, has much to contend with. We’re talking about Tetris again:

“My life’s more like the ‘B’ game. It’s Level 9, High 5. Big messes clogging things up, making it impossible to do well. Everything happening too fast to change.”

The difference in Tim and Ryan’s lives in is made grin-inducingly clear during their morning schedule readying themselves for school. Allison ingeniously depicts this in a large, early shot of the two adjoining halves of their semi-detached house, each window of which is a panel. Ryan calmly brushes his hair, slips on his jacket, kisses his mum good-bye and leaves the house. Ryan panics, brushes his teeth, flails manically as his mum attempts to attach a school tie and… you get the picture.

The “big messes clogging things up” actually boil down to his dad. His parents are separated and his dad has moved out but he keeps coming back and dragging Ryan out to the boozer.

“Mum told me not to let you in the front door, Pa.”
“I let myself in the window anyhow, so it’s not a problem.”

Oh yes, it is.

However. However. Ryan is actually capable and he cares. He’s not the irresponsible idiot some might suspect from afar. It’s just difficult to say no to your Pa.

Two of the elements I love most about John Allison’s art are his figure work and faces. Everyone has a different body form and body language: Ryan wide-eyed and gesticulately wildly, though all too often weighed down by pressure and hangovers; Tim tall and lithe but not lanky; and the small of Shelley’s back could not be more perfect.

John also does “drunk” very well!

So. Ryan is assigned to watch over Shelley by a teacher who suspects she is fragile. Tim is very much taken by Shelley while Ryan fancies Becka and a party at Mick Speight’s approaches.

How long do you think it will be – in Tetris terms – before, I’m afraid, it’s game over?

SLH

Buy Expecting to Fly #1 and read the Page 45 review here

The Collector h/c (£25-99, Archaia) by Sergio Toppi…

“Let’s get one thing straight: don’t mistake me for your usual collector who fills his gallery with sundry items picked for age, trade value, and intrinsic beauty. Most such folk have no trouble showing off their treasures. That’s not me.
“I only collect things of deep personal means to me, things that have ‘lived’, actors in histories I alone know, from research. Once I obtain them, I set them aside, no one else ever sees them again.”

Originally published in 1984, at long last this masterpiece has been translated into English. I believe this is pretty much the only original longer form work that Toppi did, instead preferring to concentrate on various one-shots. I have no idea why that would be, perhaps just the circumstances and fashions of the Italian and French comics scene at the times, but to our modern tastes, seasoned as they in favour of the extended narrative, I can’t help but think that is a crying shame. Because as truly wondrous as Toppi’s line-led art style is, here the writing is equally as well crafted. He clearly was able to spin a tale just as well as he could illustrate it, because in the Collector he has created a truly fascinating character.

Yes, the Collector is a man who always gets what he wants, whether it be an enchanted Native American peace pipe, or a necklace imbued with magical powers once owned by the great Lama Padmasambhava. But when an object of his desire is acquired, it will never be seen again by another living soul, for the Collector’s treasures are for his avaricious pleasures alone. For the most past he is a man of absolute honour, but he’s not above a moment of crafty chicanery, devious double-dealing, or even outright treachery to gain his prize. And for those who cross him, or worst still also lust after what he covets, well, he’s a fearsome enemy to have to face.

There’s a superb foreword from Sean PUNK ROCK JESUS / JOE THE BARBARIAN Murphy which absolutely nails the appeal of Toppi’s unique style, and for me underscores everything that is beautiful about our preferred medium of choice. There is no wrong or right way to illustrate a comic, as Sean states, “Here’s the first lesson of Toppi: you don’t even need pretty lines to create pretty artwork – even the most basic, entry level type of scribble can be turned into a masterpiece if you apply it correctly.”

Toppi found a unique methodology of drawing that allowed him to express his own inner vision to its fullest. But beyond that, he also had an incredible understanding of how to make his artwork stand out from the page. Look closely at this work and what you’ll immediately notice is whilst there is immense foreground detail poured into the characters, there are equally vast expanses of white background, ensuring the focus stays firmly on the principals of the scene. He was very figure-focused, Toppi, but even on the occasions where there are vast open vistas, the insanely detailed landscape itself is contrasted against a blank white sky. Contrast is the key word here, and it’s a tool in all its forms that many artists don’t understand how to use properly, or haven’t mastered, at least not to this degree. Not all artists have styles that demand it as much as Toppi’s, to be fair, but where you have a style as rich in textural complexity as this, it’s essential for the balance of the panel composition.

At the start of this work there are listed about 20 or so other works by Toppi, as yet untranslated. I fervently hope that Archaia will continue to publish English language versions of this material, because it so deserves the widest audience possible. A true great.

JR

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

Last Days Of Nobodies (Numbered Edition of 100 & Signed & Sketched In!) (£7-00, Avery Hill Publishing) by Mike Medaglia.

“Lived and died
“And struggled and lost
“And the end was unceremonious.”

Oh, but the cadence is perfect! I’m adding that to my top twenty sentences written in the English language.

Wreathed in religious scrolls, this quietly elegaic and unsensationalist full-colour comic is both eloquent and beautiful to behold.

Framed in bright white yet drawn on a fine-grained, calico-coloured paper, it tells of Vincent van Gogh’s final countryside walk.

As he strolls the world whorls and warps around him as it did in his paintings. The sun is blinding, then a further two pages post-gun-shot are devoted to cross-hatched silence, the second one denser like woven wool in red and green. Later still, Vincent’s fading breath floats from his eyes and mouth to frame images of the alarm raised around town, the doctor dashing to Van Gogh’s assistance.

Wow. Just wow.

It was Jonathan who discovered Avery Hill Publishing here and so far that house appears to be an impeccable hallmark of quality.

Did I mention this comic is signed and sketched in and limited to 100 copies?

SLH

Buy Last Days Of Nobodies (Numbered Edition of 100 & Signed & Sketched In!) and read the Page 45 review here

The Garden Of Words (£10-99, Vertical) by Makoto Shinkai & Midori Motohashi…

A genuinely wonderful surprise, this understated tale of romance. I nearly didn’t bother giving it a read but I’m pleased I did, as it is of equal quality in terms of storytelling and art to the much lauded (and rightly so) 5 CENTIMETRES A SECOND. And like that work, it was also first an anime. The titular garden of words refers to a beautiful space in a Tokyo park where a 15-year-old schoolboy and 27-year-old mysterious woman forge an unlikely acquaintance over the course of the early summer rainy season.

Takao aspires to be an artisan shoemaker and finds the park a peaceful place to sketch his designs, and Yukari, well, her motives for visiting the park are not something she’s willing to speak about nor something the polite and well mannered Takao is willing to pursue. As their first chance meeting draws to a conclusion Yukari says goodbye to him by quoting an enigmatic poem, leaving Takao bemused and intrigued in equal measure.

Soon enough there’s a tacit agreement that both will find the other there when it rains in the morning, and so they gradually continue to further their acquaintance. It’s clear to both there is a potential mutual attraction, though obviously their age difference means it must remain unstated. Then summer comes into full bloom and the rains just stop. For several weeks Takao wonders if he will ever see Yukari again, but when he eventually does, it’s in very different circumstances.

Ah, I’m loathe to say any more, because what I’ve really done here is take you up to what is the pivotal moment of the story. To give anything else away would completely spoil things, I think, whereas hopefully I’ve merely piqued your interest. If you like a little anguished and tortured, will-they won’t they, romance, then you will absolutely love this. There’s a real delicate touch in the art that perfectly captures the gentleness of Takao’s and fragility of Yukari’s personalities that is a delight to behold. Their peculiar friendship is perfectly plausible, and in Japan’s formal society it’s glacially slow unfolding only adds to the deep emotional undercurrents present in the story.

JR

Buy The Garden Of Words and read the Page 45 review here

Doomboy h/c (£18-99, Magnetic Press) by Tony Sandoval.

“How to say good-bye to the dead.”

ID is a kid just like any other, only more partial than most to doom metal.

“Doom metal is this extreme type of metal with a real slow tempo and crunchy guitars playing these heavy sounds you don’t hear in other kinds of metal. The music and lyrics work together to give this feeling of despair and horror and looming danger.”

He goes to see gigs with friends like Spaghetti, a hulk of a teen with a temper; and with Sepilium whose eyes like ID’s lie completely hid under a long mane of hair. He plays his guitar which Annie drew eyes on but Mina’s the minor celebrity around these coastal parts.

Then one night ID takes a shortcut home across grass and there’s a freak gust of wind curling and swirling, throwing up trash with a noise. He finds his mum sitting up in the lounge.

“Annie’s mom called… She didn’t wake up in the hospital.”

That’s when everything changes.

ID finds a great big hole in his chest. Not just in his heart, but in his chest. He has the most almighty, violent break-up with his band who ostracise him, threatening ID with violence; he buys a star for inspiration from a girl he’s never seen before, selling them far from legally on the kerbside; he reinherits the dog Elsy he once gave to Annie; and he starts seeing vast wonders up in the sky…

Then he begins playing. Under the nickname Doomboy which Annie gave him, he plays his guitar secretly on the shore with Sepilium transmitting it into the ether. And the crowd, as they say, goes wild. They just don’t know where the music’s coming from.

Tony Sandoval grew up in the Northwest deserts of Mexico but this art feels continental to me. There’s a thin, fragile line matched with ragged textures, but big round heads with tiny eyes and tiny noses – elements of Lowbrow, now that I come to think of it – and mouths that break out into great big shouty chasms. The name Sam Kieth keeps cropping up in my mind.

The colours are predominantly sandy, brown, green and blue, and as for the cloud-bursting visions… You may want to click on these, blowing them up to full size!

The book hangs not heavily with melancholy but there’s certainly a yearning throughout, along with the constant threat of danger both from his pride-pricked, vengeful ex-bandmates and from Spaghetti about whom ID discovers a startling secret. I’d love to talk about that and the spot-on way Sandoval played it, but I want you to be as gobsmacked as Sepilium and ID.

SLH

Buy Doomboy h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Ricky Rouse Has A Gun (£14-99, SelfMadeHero) by Jorg Tittel & John Aggs…

As you can see from the photo below, Jörg Tittel is a very intense man. I can testify to this personally having met him at The Lakes Comic Art Festival in Kendal recently. It took him about thirty seconds before he was interrogating me as to precisely why we weren’t stocking his book at the show. I told him that whilst I did enjoy much of it, that it did indeed have some salient points to make about the US military-industrial complex, China’s disregard for intellectual property – the titular Rickey Rouse being a blatant rip-off of Mickey Mouse – and much else besides, that I felt it all suddenly went a bit Die Hard, like some ‘80s action movie, with a completely preposterous, over-the-top ending.

Jörg then fixed me with his scary gaze and told me that was precisely what he had intended, satirising the golden age of action films whilst providing some serious political commentary. He may have been hypnotising me, actually, because the more I thought about it, the more I realised there are probably several Page 45 customers who would get a real kick out of it. So, buy this, it’s like Die Hard with an armed-to-the-teeth nutter dressed in a faux Mickey Mouse suit fighting terrorists who’ve taken over a theme park…

I should add that Jörg was an immensely entertaining bloke to chat and share a few beers with, and in addition to this work he has written and produced a play starring Richard E. Grant, plus written and produced a film ‘Testudo’ which was entered in competition at various top film festivals. He’s big into transmedia, particularly in the concept of games interacting closely with films and television. Sounds completely mad, but then having met him, I reckon if there is anyone insane enough to make it work, it’s him!

SLH

Buy Ricky Rouse Has A Gun and read the Page 45 review here

Action Philosophers h/c (£22-50, Dark Horse) by Fred Van Lente & Ryan Dunlavey…

“If a tree falls in a forest and Ryan Dunlavey isn’t there to draw it and Fred Van Lente isn’t there to script it, will it make a comic?”

Heh. There are as many word gags as visual gags in this panel-based philosophy primer, and they are multitudinous. In fact, scarcely a panel goes by without fun being poked at some great and learned thinker or their theories in some outrageously insouciant manner. Considering that intensity of humour, therefore, it is astonishing that this material is as wonderfully informative and subtly educational as it is. Weighty topics are dealt with precisely and succinctly, before yet another punchline has you sniggering again.

This tenth anniversary über edition collects what was previously four volumes featuring 40 luminaries from the ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary ages of philosophy. Slightly surprised not to see the wisest modern action sages of them all in there – Evan Dorkin’s MILK AND CHEESE – but I guess that just gives them something else to get irate about!

Anyone who enjoyed the excellent EVOLUTION: THE STORY OF LIFE ON EARTH and STUFF OF LIFE: A GRAPHIC GUIDE TO GENETICS AND DNA would definitely find this material as interesting and amusing a read. And genuinely, a really good philosophy primer.

JR

Buy Action Philosophers h/c and read the Page 45 review here

The Last Temptation (Signed Edition) h/c (£55-99, Dynamite) by Neil Gaiman & Michael Zulli, David Curiel, Dave Mckean

Signed!

Signed not just by Neil Gaiman and by Mike Zulli, artist on Neil’s THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF THE DEPARTURE OF MISS FINCH CREATURES OF THE NIGHT, but also signed by Mr Face Paint himself, Alice Cooper!

So, you know, I’d act fast.

Inevitably brief return of the elusive Gaiman story that originally saw print at Marvel, the first part of which came, I think, with the Alice Cooper album which Gaiman wrote lyrics for. Seems rather unlikely, doesn’t it? Perhaps it’s just a dream I had.

Steven, not the bravest of blokes, takes a ticket to the Showman’s Theatre of the Real on a dare, then wishes he hadn’t.

SLH

Buy The Last Temptation (Signed Edition) h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Powers vol 1: Who Killed Retro Girl? (£11-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming.

Out of print for a long, long time, so please bear in mind that what follows was written just as our records began…

Bendis is doing the Warren Ellis thing at the moment. He’s someone working in the superhero field, writing what seems like half a dozen titles, touted by everyone as the new big thing and suddenly you turn around and there’s a bunch of his books on the shelf.

POWERS focuses on the police force in charge of a superhero-filled city. Detective Christian Walker is assigned a new partner. He and Deena Pilgrim make a good team, upholding the tried and true rules of the genre: he’s not happy about the arrangement, she’s heard about him and eager to make a friend. It’s not exactly ‘Tango & Cash’ but they hover in the same area. Bendis, as detailed in FORTUNE & GLORY, has had some dealings with Hollywood and his scriptwriter’s ear for quick, snappy, overlapping dialogue and understanding of screen formula pacing makes this, along with his surprisingly enjoyable ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, a modern superhero take in a way that ASTRO CITY actually isn’t. Oeming’s art treads around the animated Batman arena, touching on Hempel’s SANDMAN work with rich, complementary colours by Pat Garrahy, bringing out the fluorescent lights and night time skies.

Retro Girl, one of the most loved figures in the city sky is dead. The media are quick to paint her as a mix of Kurt Cobain and Lady Diana. Walker and Pilgrim are on the case, rounding up the suspects and trying to find out what the graffiti at the scene (‘chaotic chic’) means.

SLH

Buy Powers vol 1: Who Killed Retro Girl? and read the Page 45 review here

Amazing Spider-Man vol 1: Parker Luck s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Dan Slott & Humberto Ramos…

“Alright it’s true. I am Spider-Man. But I’m not the Spider-Man you know. Or the Peter Parker you think you know.”
“Wait. What does that even mean?”
“Months ago a very superhero-ish thing happened to me. I got mind-swapped with a bad guy.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah. But I’m back to normal now.”
“Mind-swapped?”
“Yeah.”
“With a supervillain?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Which one?”
“Doctor Octopus.”
“For how long?”
“Before we ever met.”
“So this whole time… Doctor Octopus?”
“Yes… I know this is a lot to take in, but the person you… had a relationship with wasn’t me. That was…”
“That mad scientist. The one with the metal arms?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well he was bold and decisive…”
“Sounds like him.”
“…yet surprisingly tender.”
“I… uh… wouldn’t know about that.”
“And that does account for his unparalleled genius.”
“Well, not to brag, but I am a bit of a… Sorry.”

Ha ha, poor old Peter Parker, even now he’s back in control of his body, he’s still clearing up the various messes Otto left behind. And, as ever with Peter, it’s affairs of the heart that usually cause him the most consternation even when he’s not to blame. I think out of all the Marvel titles, ASM is the one that can rightly be most labelled as pure soap opera. And I do mean that in a positive, affectionate way. The endless rounds of fighting then making up between Peter and his friends, plus the ever-amusing pantomime villainy of one J. Jonah Jameson, fresh from his the debacle of his term as Mayor, ruined for him of course in his eyes by the wondrous web-slinger, ensure this title remains interesting, if not ground-breaking.

I did enjoy the SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN run, I must say, because when a solo character has been going for as long as Peter has, it is nigh on impossible to keep coming up with new ideas to freshen things up, but even so, I can’t help but be pleased Peter is back. There’s something mildly comforting about the fact that even someone with the proportional strength and speed of a spider has about as much luck as a fly trapped in the proverbial web. And, Dan Slott seems to still have a few more ideas up his sleeve for tormenting Peter based on this ‘first’ volume, so I shall keep reading!

JR

Buy Amazing Spider-Man vol 1: Parker Luck s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Locke & Key vol 6: Alpha & Omega s/c (£18-99, IDW) by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

Impressively cataclysmic conclusion to Joe and Gabriel’s sotto voce horror masterpiece. The school year is winding to an end, graduation looms for many of our cast, and the kids of Lovecraft are preparing for their after prom party, a rave in a cave, yes that particular cave, which you might think by now everyone would be trying really hard to avoid… though I suppose everyone thinks the villain has already been vanquished at the end of volume five. OH NO HE HASN’T! As we well know…

The dastardly miscreant in question has been secretly going about his business in the possessed body of [SPOILER] and now has almost everything he needs to execute his apocalyptic plan and bring the rest of his kind through the portal into our world. There’s just one more of the Keyhouse’s keys he needs to get his hands on, and he’s knows Kinsey Locke will be bringing that particular item to the party, which just so happens to be taking place where he needs it most… in that cave! Fortunately for the Locke family, the residents of Lovecraft and indeed the entire world, Tyler Locke has finally realised precisely what his lucky charm gifted by deceased father actually is, and more importantly, how it can be weaponised. He also has a sneaking suspicion everything isn’t over just yet. Clever boy.

Tyler won’t be the ultimate hero of the piece, though. No, that prize is reserved for someone else: someone, who after all he has been put through already in a very, very difficult life, truly deserves it, bless his cotton socks. It’s time for the pure of heart and simple of mind to take centre stage at last as Rufus and his toys undertake their final mission for the highest of stakes.

Joe Hill has created a brilliant set of characters within this work, but Rufus has easily been my favourite. He now knows exactly who the villain is and exactly what needs to be done to stop him, but when you’ve the mental capabilities of barely more than a toddler, and you’re locked up in a secure hospital several miles from where the action is going to go down, what can you do? The answer? Whatever it takes soldier! Go, Rufus!

When you’ve put so much time and effort into following a series, you obviously want it to conclude in a befitting and satisfactory manner. Happily Joe Hill achieves that with aplomb and I believe this will be a series that continues to sell for a good number of years to come. It has everything you could possibly want in a good horror yearn: creepy locations, a fabulous cast of fully realised primary and secondary characters, plus an evil menace beyond measure. Also Gabriel Rodriguez has provided stellar art throughout. My initial impression was the art style was going to be incongruous with horror writing, but it just works perfectly in conveying the more fantastical elements of the story whilst dissembling the occasional burst of shocking violence. So, when all is settled are there happy endings for everyone? Certainly not, but suffice to say, some people get the endings they certainly deserve…

JR

Buy Locke & Key vol 6: Alpha & Omega 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?

Battling Boy: The Rise Of Aurora West vol 1 (£7-50, First Second) by Paul Pope, J. T. Petty & David Rubin

In Real Life (£13-50, First Second) by Cory Doctorow & Jen Wang

The Leaning Girl s/c (£22-50, Alaxis Press) by Benoit Peeters & Francois Schuiten

Preacher Book Book 6 (£14-99, Vertigo) by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon, John McCrea

Star Wars vol 3: Rebel Girl (£12-99, Dark Horse) by Brian Wood & Stephane Crety

Stray Bullets vol 1: Innocence Of Nihilism (£14-99, Image) by David Lapham

C.O.W.L. vol 1: Principles Of Power s/c (£7-50, Image) by Kyle Higgins, Alec Siegel & Rod Reis

100 Bullets Book 1 (£18-99, Vertigo) by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso

DC Comics Year One h/c (£25-99, DC) by Scott Snyder, various & Greg Capullo, various

Green Lantern vol 4: Dark Days s/c (£12-99, DC) by Robert Venditti & Billy Tan

Marvel Masterworks: Avengers vol 6 (£18-99, Marvel) by Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich & John Buscema, Don Heck, Werner Roth

Miracleman Book vol 1: A Dream Of Flying (UK Edition) h/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Alan Moore, Mich Anglo & Gary Leach, Alan Davis, Don Lawrence, Steve Dillon, Paul Neary

Miracleman Book vol 2: The Red King Syndrome h/c (£25-99, Marvel) by Alan Moore & Alan Davis, John Ridgway, Chuck Austen, Rick Veitch

Ordinary h/c (£14-99, Titan) by Rob Williams & D’Israeli

Attack On Titan: No Regrets vol 2 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Gun Snark & Hikaru Suruga

Black Butler vol 18 (£8-99, Yen Press) by Yana Toboso

Blade Of The Immortal vol 30: Vigilance (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Hiroaki Samura

Fairy Tail vol 43 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Hiro Mashima

Monster Perfect Edition vol 2 (£14-99, Viz) by Naoki Urasawa

Naruto vol 67 (£6-99, Viz) by Masashi Kishimoto

Vampire Knight vol 19 (£6-99, Viz) by Matsuri Hino

News!

ITEM! Nottingham’s GameCity9 is a go! On now! Until the weekend! Good golly!

ITEM! Jonathan and I have bought Page 45’s building. All four floors and the cellar! It cost us hundreds of hours work and £350,000 so please pop in and spend money!

ITEM! Yay, no capricious landlord and the freedom to renovate when necessary.

WE ARE NOW IN FEROCIOUS NEGOTATIONS WITH OURSELVES ABOUT THIS OUTRAGEOUS RENT!

I WILL NOT BACK DOWN! BUT NEITHER WILL I!

THIS COULD GO ON FOR FIFTEEN YEARS!

ITEM! Page 45 review of The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2014. It is epic. But then so was the festival.

ITEM! Page 45 declares its return to The Lakes International Comic Art Festival in 2015 and promises to be there forever!

It’s the same blog. It took me ten days. I even review a comic there by local school children who are amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing!

– Stephen

“Okay, this… this looks bad. Is there a plan here, Kate?”

Oh, Kate, of course you’ve no plan. You’re as bad as Clint is!

 – Stephen on Hawkeye vol 3. There’s a new Blacksad below as well.

The Motherless Oven (£12-99, SelfMadeHero) by Rob Davis.

“Mums know more than they let on.”

Never were truer words written.

“They say it’s natural for mothers to be protective of their kids. I don’t see why. They need protecting as much as we do.”

Welcome to a graphic novel that is so wickedly new and so densely inventive that comparison points virtually elude me.

Its warped reality reminds me of Gorillaz tracks with their attendant videos. There are weather clocks issuing knife-storm warnings; instead of the goggle box there’s a Daily Wheel to watch; and teenage Scarper Lee may not know his birthday but he certainly knows his deathday: it’s in three weeks time.

I shouldn’t be surprised and I’m not: THE MOTHERLESS OVEN comes from Rob Davis, the creator of THE COMPLETE DON QUIXOTE and the instigator, director and chief writer of NELSON, another all-time classic which – like the equally original THE NAO OF BROWN – won the British Comic Awards for best graphic novel of its year, deservedly.

Everything here will sound so very familiar although almost everything here has been turned on its head. Truths are often much more enlightening when seen from a fresher perspective.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, for example, that children are created by parents – not just by procreation but by osmosis as well: nature and nurture. The behaviour of parents rubs off on their progeny. But even without the following reversal, the behaviour of children must surely, similarly, rub off on their parents? Or at least wear them down. Or buoy them up. We just haven’t given that enough consideration yet.

But what if children created their parents? We might look at things differently then, and so now we do.

“We were sat on Peter Cake’s Mum as usual. Pete’s Mum used to be a dinner lady at the school. She had a breakdown in the playground a few months back and no one has come to pick her up yet. It’s funny, Pete never used to go near her when she was working.”

It is so typical of Rob Davis’ love of language that he bestows on the word “breakdown” two different meanings with identical results.

In THE MOTHERLESS OVEN, you see, children fashion their parents as paintings or mechanical objects as if made from Meccano, and Pete’s Mum had a physical breakdown like any old car and a mental breakdown like any highly stressed, under-paid, overworked parent trying to provide with a job. Now she just lies there where she fell, inert, like so much scrap metal. They sit on her.

“Turned out today is the day they tow Pete’s Mum away. They’ll take her to the Mother Ruins, unless Pete’s Dad can get permission for a permanent residence in their front garden. He wants to turn her into an ornamental fountain.”

Another play on words: Mother’s Ruin becomes Mother Ruins and wait until you see that nurseless nursing home.

Scarper Lee isn’t a misanthrope. He actually cares. He’s just very private and prefers sitting at home. He’d rather not be bothered with people.

Then along comes Vera Pike, the most bothersome girl in the world, and Scarper Lee can’t get her out of his head. She’s direct, disruptive and completely unphased by the weather. She’ll even go out in a knife storm, carrying a thick wooden table over her head like an umbrella.

“You don’t like the laughing gales, then? You do realise the wind isn’t laughing at you, don’t you? I mean, you’re not so vain and neurotic as to think that, are you, Scarper?”
I know for a fact the wind is laughing at me…
“Having said that, if the wind is laughing at you, you might as well just laugh along, right?”

Needless to say, at school she’s immediately shunted off into the deaf unit where all the kids with “special needs” go – just like Castro, whom she calls her “new toy”. Castro has “medicated interference syndrome”, with a “brain aid” to modulate his behaviour.

“Just watch him go when I turn it all the way up! Ask him a question. Go on, Scarper, ask him anything!”
“Y’alright, mate? Your nose is bleeding! D’you need a tissue?”

I told you he cared.

Scarper cares most about his Dad, a brass, land-bound boat yacht whom he polishes meticulously every Sunday, tightening his seals. He keeps his Dad chained up in the shed for his own safety, though on Saturdays he’ll sail down the pub, as you do.

Saturdays are the best!

“Saturday is the day when I feel like I can see the horizon. It’s the day that doesn’t ask for anything and is happy with what you give it.”

That’s a fabulous page: a small-town high street on a sunny day with a thrilling, open perspective. There are shops, snap-frame A boards and Scarper himself, idling along the pavement in a striped jumper and jacket and tight, black denim jeans. You might not even notice the parents being driven down the road.

Davis’ designs on the Daily Wheels are well worth studying closely, but it’s his faces and figure work I love most: lithe forms with slim legs, and Scarper’s bushy hair, bulbous bottom lip and eyebrows as thick as big, black caterpillars frowning deep over his eyes. Ian Culbard told me Mike McMahon is a huge influence on Rob and I can see that, transformed here into something a lot less angular and cheekier so I’m sticking with my Jamie Hewlett comparison. It creates a stark contrast with the sculptures, murals and trundling mechanical objects which are everyone’s parents.

The grey, pen-brush washes are warm and soft, while the knife storms – kitchen-knife storms – are stark and sharp and I’m never going to complain about hail again.

As to the inventiveness, it’s thoroughly organic. Davis doesn’t just drop a pun and run. He rolls an idea out, rolls it around in his mind, follows it through then sits it spinning in yours, whether it’s nature, billboard newspapers, circular history, Castro’s Mum or the secret of the Motherless Oven itself. Here’s my favourite exchange, Scarper being “reassured” by his headmaster about his impending deathday:

“When I was your age, a classmate of mine faced his deathday in year eleven, just like you. And, just like yours, his deathday was on a Wednesday. I saw him on the morning of his death, stood at the bus stop. His mother was beside him, leaking everywhere. His father, it turned out, was hiding in his pocket…

“He did all his lessons that day and afterwards played for the school football team against the local girls’ school. Thirty minutes in, a big girl with an eye patch stood on his leg and snapped his shin. The poor fellow bled to death on the halfway line.
“The boy’s father remained in the lost property box for years. The mother went quite doolally, I’m sad to say.
“She had a propeller hairstyle, all the rage in those days – damn thing went into a hysterical spin cycle. Ripped her head off her shoulders. It flew around the school for weeks before the groundsman shot it down.”

So with his deathday approaching and the clock ticking inexorably on, what will Scarper Lee do with the little time left? Momentum doesn’t seem to be something he’s ever built up. He’ll probably just stay at home with his Mum and Dad.

Ah. And then that happens…

SLH

Buy The Motherless Oven and read the Page 45 review here

Blacksad: Amarillo h/c (£13-50, Dark Horse) by Juan Diaz Canales & Juanjo Guarnido.

“I’ll just try to find a nice, quiet job here, where I don’t have to dodge bullets and nobody winds up dead… for a change.

Did you know that Walt Disney’s Bambi was originally a flop? It’s hard to believe these days, but the only thing that saved the studio was the Pentagon hiring it for propaganda purposes during WWII.

I mention this because we have a long love of anthropomorphism and most unused to comics usually associate the genre with childhood pleasures like Alice Through The Looking Glass or Winnie The Pooh. But don’t be deceived: like so much anthropomorphism in comics (MAUS!), BLACKSAD is decidedly adult in nature.

All the characters are bipedal animals working, living and loving like we do and they can be equally vicious and flawed. BLACKSAD VOL 1 contained one particularly powerful story involving racism, segregation and lynching using each creature’s colour to clever effect, while its star, P.I. John Blacksad, is a big black cat… with a patch of white on his chin. What I inferred from that is here – for the first time, I think – expressly explored when a hitch-hiking John is forced to endure the charmless verbal diarrhoea of a truck-driving macaw.

Yeah, don’t worry: it has been translated – the book is in English!

BLACKSAD books are all period pieces: the Cadillac on the cover isn’t a classic yet, it’s current. One glance at the glorious, dark grey spread preceding the story itself instantly reminds one of Will Eisner works like A CONTRACT WITH GOD set fairly and squarely in a bustling, fully functioning, very specific environment.

The level of craft on Disney-trained Guarnido’s part is mesmerising. When it comes to architecture, both exterior and interior, Guarnido is on a par with animator Hayao Miyazaki for detail. His line is seductive – both sharp and smooth – making it impossible not to linger on the curves of wood, the folds in bunched drapes, the intricately patterned rugs or even the general desk clutter which you’d normally not even register.

In BLACKSAD: A SILENT HELL there was a sunlit courtyard cafe dappled in leafy shadow, a funereal street scene populated by dozens more mourners than you’d think you could fit on a page, and even a thirty-page art class in the back, Guarnido explaining his compositional decisions through preparatory sketches and paintings – enlightening for aspiring artists of any genre, not just anthropomorphism. Here there’s a sunny, open airport, a grand old railway station foyer and one hell of a motorbike for Blacksad to stand astride on.

His clothes are so slick, sleek and attractive that you could actively consider them well pressed, and the expressions on each of these creatures are exquisitely realised each and every time – animal versions of our own, exaggerated with such energy that you’ll be grinning from cover to cover.

It begins with a moment of bravado by the private swimming pool of author Chad Lowell, a lion who’s spent two years on his latest manuscript in the days when there often was only one – no back-ups. His supposed friend and fellow writer, poet Abraham Greenberg, ducks then holds Chad’s head underwater, then sets fire to his own poetry before lobbing Chad’s scroll at the pool. The red-check-shirted Bison thinks this is funny.

“No guts, no glory, Chad. Give your story a happy ending for once, and leave that roll of paper in some toilet, where people can put it to good use.”

Chad catches the script – just – but the expression under his mane, dripping with water, says it all.

John Blacksad, meanwhile, is considering a change of career when his sharp eyes and act of kindness at an airport earn him the respect and trust of a wealthy, outbound bull. He needs someone to drive his expensive yellow Cadillac back to his house in Tulsa, so hands John its keys.

“Ya seem like a straight shooter, son – the kind who stays outta trouble.”

And he does seem that but we, by now, know differently. Blacksad’s a trouble-magnet, his sense of fair play his undoing, and the raw iron filings heading his way are those loose-cannon writers. Bloody writers, eh?

SLH

Buy Blacksad: Amarillo h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Hawkeye vol 3: L.A. Woman s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Matt Fraction & Javier Pulido, Annie Wu.

“Okay, this… this looks bad. Is there a plan here, Kate?”

Oh, Kate, of course you’ve no plan. You’re as bad as Clint is!

Much of the mirth in HAWKEYE has been watching Kate Bishop, the younger, female and infinitely more clued-up Hawkeye, pick up the pieces of her mentor Clint Barton’s balls-ups. They have been manifold, and Kate has been constantly peering over her sunglasses at the archer / Avenger with a mixture of recrimination and resignation. Now it transpires that our equally impetuous Ms Bishop is equally prone to pratfalls.

I’ve described HAWKEYE as being a book about helping people starring the one guy who cannot help himself. We’ve now swapped coasts – New York for Los Angeles – as well as sharp-shooters’ perspectives, but hilariously nothing has changed except the age and gender of the dive-in-first and wonder-what-on-earth-went-wrong wrong-righter.

Okay, no, the artists have changed as well. While Aja will return along with Clint Barton in HAWKEYE VOL 4, Kate’s West Coast sabbatical is introduced by Javier Pulido who will delight Darwyn Cooke fans with a fine line in fashion coloured by Matt Hollingsworth as if L.A. was the brightest, most beautiful city with the freshest air in the world.

As Annie Wu takes the driving seat things grow much darker, though the body language – both broken and indefatigable – can rarely be beaten along with the facial ticks which reveal exactly what our Kate’s thinking long before she’s uttered a word.

Kate Bishop has set off for L.A. in a very flash car after finally losing patience with Clint as well as her cash-rich father.

“Kate, let your mother get you a little something to drink.”
“She’s not my mother.”
“Well, no, but I hope, maybe with time, you’ll begin to think of me as –“
“You’re three years older than me. We were literally in school together, Heather.”
“That was a nice time. Diazepam?”

Lovely touch with the Jack Kirby Sue Storm portrait in the background there!

Unfortunately before she even turned her ignition key Madame Masque had Kate in her revenge-seeking sights and arranged for her credit card to be bled, her stuff to be stolen and that car won’t last long, either. Broke and homeless, Kate is determined to reverse her misfortune by taking on taking on jobs as a Private Investigator. Alas, she has no knowledge of the law and absolutely no knack for investigating privately. She’s spotted within seconds. Also, swimming pools aside, L.A. isn’t all it’s cracked up to be:

“People can be so mean to each other and out here you can take bus tours to get better views of it all.”

But, as I say, this book at its heart is about helping people and, oh, it has so much heart!

There’s the tragic case of the Bryson Brothers who essentially were The Sixties to some. But the musical one, Will, became so absorbed in his masterpiece ‘Wish’ that he could never complete it to his own satisfaction so his production-orientated brother, Grey, could never release it. They’re now old, ill, and at odds in a sequestered mansion.

“It’s like if Mike Brady designed the Bates Motel. If I had to live here for 60 years I bet I’d have gone full Syd Barrett m’self…”

Fraction fills every page with these pop culture references both contemporary (which Kate mostly gets) and less so (mostly not, but please see above). It’s a completely different approach to writing a superhero comic that this isn’t one. Never has been. It’s an action-adventure comedy of manners.

Back to the heart of this book, and the first case Miss Bishop chances on involves her neighbours Marcus and Finch who, after waiting so long to be married, find their perfect day in danger of being ruined when the orchids of Marcus’ dream-vision are stolen. You won’t believe how fast that escalates and where it eventually leads to. Nor will Kate, but it all comes beautifully – yet appallingly – full circle.

Before then, however, there’s plenty of time to exasperate the L.A.P.D.’s Detective Caudle, infuriate Flynt Ward The Weed Lord (it is all legal there) and throw in a great many cat jokes while the mysterious man in the market aisle, a certain Harold H. Harold (you’ll never guess his middle name), offers words of encouragement at every wrong turn. Will our couple ever get their orchids back and their wedding on track? Regardless:

“Oh honey. You are my happily ever after.”

Awww.

SLH

Buy Hawkeye vol 3: L.A. Woman s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Jacques Tardi World War One Box Set: It Was The War Of The Trenches h/c & Goddamn This War! h/c (£29-99, Fantagraphics) by Jacques Tardi with Jean-Pierre Verney…

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI, Fantagraphics has released a two-volume boxed set of these classics.

Of volume 1 I wrote…

“Joyful, despite their grief, are those families whose blood flows for their country.”

– General Rebillot December 13th, 1914

“Bastards, bastards, miserable fucking bastards! Fuck the army! France can kiss my ass!”

– Private Jean Desbois, 3rd Company of the 115th French Infantry November 27th 1916

Very powerful collection of short stories from the trenches of WWI which certainly will appeal to aficionados of CHARLEY’S WAR. Start with the premise that no one is actually going to get out alive – well, maybe one or two but they’re certainly not intact – and you’ll understand the approach Tardi is taking here. Not that it’s overly gratuitous, far from it; it’s merely realistic. Many a story actually starts with the knowledge that the protagonist ends up dead or disfigured and then lets things unfold so we can see exactly how inescapable their fates are in the wasteland of battlefields and trenches.

Possibly my favourite story (entirely the wrong word to use, really) involves the man who somehow survives all night in a shell crater in No Man’s Land wearing his gas mask after being gut-shot in the midst of yet another suicidal, failed attack. First light sees the maskless stretcher bearers coming towards him and, thinking he’s going to be evacuated home for certain with his wounds, he takes off his gas mask. Unfortunately for him, as he immediately remembers, mustard gas is heavier than air and the shell crater he’s laid up in is in fact a pocket of the undispersed toxin which instantly decimates his lungs and eyes. Tardi always approaches the stories from the most human of perspectives, which of course makes the inevitable bleak endings even harder to bear. I think that’s probably why most of the stories do start off with the denouement revealed to us, so that we’re already steeling ourselves for what’s to come.

The neo-‘clear line’ art is classic Tardi, conveying significant details with apparent minimal effort and a certain distinctive rotundity of style that I really like. Something that suddenly hit me was the frequent lack of complexity in the structure of certain peoples’ faces throughout the book, and then you realise in fact he’s making their faces look almost skull-like as they approach their deaths. It’s powerful, shocking, and truly manages to capture the almost unbelievably hellish landscapes that were the battlefields of Western Europe in World War I.

From GODDAM THIS WAR:

This work is a fine starting point for people unfamiliar with Tardi and will almost certainly make you want to have a look at his WEST COAST BLUES about a depressive Parisian who accidentally witnesses a murder and is subsequently hunted by a pair of hit men who just happen to be lovers. It’s something which all noir fans out there really, really should be picking up and just aren’t for some reason. If you’re looking for a different creator to try, I sincerely suggest you try some Tardi.

For more, please see my GODDAMN THIS WAR! review with interior art.

JR

Buy Jacques Tardi World War One Box Set: It Was The War Of The Trenches h/c & Goddamn This War! h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Hip Hop Family Tree Box Set: 1975-1983 (£45-00, Fantagraphics) by Ed Piskor…

If it were not enough that this box set collects both volumes of Ed Piskor’s epic chronology of the music form that first shook the South Bronx then the rest of the world, in a robust and bombastically designed slipcase (and you can read my reviews of both volumes below), there is the added ‘bonus’ of the exclusive ‘Milestone, Variant, Limited, Ashcan Edition’ Hip Hop Family Tree #300 with its gold-embossed Cable-esque flashing-eyed Rob Liefeld on  the cover.

Featuring the story as Ed so aptly describes it, of an ‘unconventional pairing of David Bowie / Bing Crosby proportions’, when Spike Lee picked up-and-coming comics creator Liefeld out of 700,000 entries in 1990 to feature in the next Levis Jeans commercial. I don’t think it ever aired in the UK, I certainly don’t remember it, so for those of you that have never seen it just click on the following link and marvel that someone could actually make such an epically awful advertisement… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJhoa2SVGNA

I am particularly amused by the part where Rob is asked if he has any formal art training…

Of volume 1 of Hip Hop Family Tree I wrote…

“DJ Kool Herc is already a legend in the borough, but this doesn’t stop him from constantly practicing and experimenting to make his shows as enjoyable as possible. Using 2 copies of the same record he discovers that he can loop the instrumental breaks in his favourite music ad infinitum, if he chooses so. Tinkering in his apartment with the window open, he realises he’s on to something. Mixing one break into the break of a different song, a term he calls “merry-go-round,” becomes a part of Kool Herc’s arsenal. Adding such complexity to his performance, he makes the decision to enlist a friend to emcee and handle duties on the microphone.”

One of the most comprehensively researched examinations of the beginnings of hip hop I think I’ve ever read, and I have read a few, the prose work It’s Not About a Salary… Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles by Brian Cross being a firm favourite though that obviously only takes in a West Coast perspective, and a slightly different time period. This work looks at the true beginnings of the scene in mid-‘70s downtown New York from parties in parks and baseball courts, DJ and MC battles in dancehalls, through to the eventual wider public recognition due to radio exposure and the early vinyl releases, and the evolution of the music itself into what we would understand as the modern day rap genre.

The ability of comics to transport you to a time and place in a manner that prose works just cannot match is demonstrated here as Ed perfectly captures the nature of street life and the crazy characters at that time. I did also like the fact that in one of the after pieces, he explains how you can dissemble hip hop considerably further back, but obviously you have to say there was a definitive point in time where hip hop as we know it began, and Kool Herc discovering the concept of mixing will do nicely for me. I can well imagine it was a transcendental moment for the good DJ!

It’s all the little anecdotal facts Ed just continually slips in that blew me away though, my absolute favourite being that Afrika Bambaataa was a massive fan of Kraftwerk! It shouldn’t surprise me really that such a muso would appreciate a not entirely dissimilar branch of music, it’s I just had never thought that the leader of the hardcore Black Spades gang would be chilling out to Trans Europe Express!

Fans of hip hop need this work, everyone else just won’t be bothered probably, but that’s fine. Ed seems far more interested in taking on projects that interest him personally like this one and WHIZZYWIG, and when he is doing it so brilliantly it is clearly all about reality and not the salary for him. Sorry, couldn’t resist slipping in one lyrical gag. Must just mention the gallery of artists at the end, which other creators have contributed to too, Jeffrey Brown’s Beastie Boys looking like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. You can scarcely credit the Daily Mail tried to have them banned from ever entering the UK all those years ago, being such a threat to the morals of the nation’s youth and all…

Of volume 2 I wrote…

“Why you lookin’ at me like that, Russell?”

Ha! I do love Ed’s portrayal of Russell Simmons, and I am pleased he gets the props here – to use the street parlance – that he so richly deserves, for his huge part in the explosion of Hip-Hop and its subsequent introduction to the club-going and record buying masses. He remains a fascinating bloke to this day, actually: a staunch vegan, transcendental meditation practitioner, and long-time supporter of gay rights, inter-faith dialogue and social activism. But, back in the day, his interests were somewhat more focused on getting paid by finding new musical talent, and having a good time.

That he kept his younger brother out of the studio for so long, despite his ever more vocal protests, is all the more amusing when you know his brother is Joseph Simmons, or as he soon became far better known, Rev. Run of iconic hip-hop grandmasters Run-D.M.C. When he finally let his brother and his mate into the studio, ostensibly to shut them up, Russell quickly realised he had struck not just gold, but multi-platinum. Their first few gigs as a lyrical duo, though, were something of a trial by fire, getting ridiculed for their check jackets and flares stage outfits. Cue one typical flash of Russell Simmons’ genius later, as he spied a casually dressed, hat wearing, sneaker pimped, ghetto blaster toting Jason “Jazzy Jase” Mizell entering the studios whilst debriefing the boys, and the fresh and fly trio of Run-D.M.C. that we know and love today were born. In an era of ever more surreal and outlandish performers’ costumes, their laidback street attire was exactly what was required to appeal to the masses.

The little nugget I have just described above takes up barely a couple of pages of this magnificent second volume, which explores 1981-1983, detailing the continuing, burgeoning public acclaim of the early pioneers like Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel and Arika Bambaataa, whilst revealing the childhoods and very early days of future legends like Run-D.M.C., the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and NWA. This series of books, for I assume Ed is going to continue onwards past 1983 which is where this volume concludes, is vital reading for anyone wanting to know more about this era of music. His knowledge of his subject is truly encyclopaedic, but the piecing together of all the various insane anecdotes to produce a coherent and engaging narrative is magnificent craft, and he captures the raw charisma and sheer chutzpah that many of the performers, who had polished their skills on the mean streets the hard way, possessed in abundance. Confidence, usually, was the one area they were not lacking in. Naivety in dealing with record labels, on the other hand…

Just going back to sartorial elegance, or the lack thereof, it takes some believing these days, the outfits some of the early pioneers used to wear. There is a great little scene where someone gets extremely excited over Ice T’s first proto-single simply because he looks like he is straight out of Mad Max. And I am talking Beyond Thunderdome, not Road Warrior… In fact when you look at how Afrika Bambaataa and his acolytes dressed around this period, you can perhaps understand how it wasn’t that big a stretch to someone coming up with the Village People…

I think the connections and friendships Ed details, between various apparently very disparate elements of the wider music and arts scene, particularly in New York, are absolutely paramount to understanding the fast-moving morphology of music at a time where public exposure was also exploding exponentially through MTV, which launched in August 1981. There are some bizarre friendships, occasionally of complete convenience, which you would never expect, yet in retrospect make perfect sense, both musically and indeed fiscally. So when a certain ginger, wild-haired chancer called Malcolm McLaren starts to take an interest in how he can export Hip-Hop to the UK, he insinuates himself into the scene like the veritable social and musical chameleon we now know he was, glad-handing and appropriating everything he needed for his next sonic experiment. Whether the tracks Buffalo Gals and Double Dutch deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the canon of truly great hip-hop records isn’t for me to decide, but we can’t dispute they certainly played their dancefloor-filling part in helping to bring hip-hop to the UK.

I really do hope Ed continues with this work, not least because his still has a few years to go before hitting my own personal era of getting into rap and hip hop, circa 1988. That all began with catching the Public Enemy video for Don’t Believe The Hype on Top Of The Pops one Thursday night and simply thinking, “What on earth is this?” I did already like a bit of Chicago House at that point, probably had heard some of the Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel stuff, but one purchase of “It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back” later the following Saturday and a lifelong love with that genre had well and truly begun.

JR

Buy Hip Hop Family Tree Box Set: 1975-1983 and read the Page 45 review here

Explorer vol 3: The Hidden Doors (£8-50, Scholastic) by Kazu Kibuishi, Jason Caffoe, Jen Wang, Faith Erin Hicks, Johanne Matte, Jen Breach, Steve Hamaker, Douglas Holgate…

Another volume in the Kazu AMULET Kibuishi-curated anthology series where the seven completely different stories are only tenuously linked by the barest titular premise, in this case the hidden doors. So, the doors in the respective stories lead to: hidden parts of a patient’s mind, a giant’s kitchen, the person the opener really wants to be, a grand adventure but it requires two people to walk through together, a very unusual munitions bunker, a haunted tomb in a pyramid, where monsters are. Right, I think that last sentence just about makes grammatical sense.

As before the stories are all-ages fun, ranging from the all-out comedic through to some speculative fiction, with some great twists thrown in along the way. The key word is fun, though, and the contributors without exception all produce the goods. I think my favourite this time around is ‘Two-Person Door’ by FRIENDS WITH BOYS’ Faith Erin Hicks, due to its thought-provoking nature. I can imagine it giving a few kids some pause for thought as they think the potential ramifications through.

Definitely worth picking up if you’ve finished your copy of AMULET VOL 6 already…

JR

Buy Explorer vol 3: The Hidden Doors and read the Page 45 review here

Costume Quest: Invasion Of The Candy Snatchers h/c (£18-99, Oni Press) by Zac Gorman…

I want candy. Which, I mention for no other reason than to amuse myself reminiscing about the classic Bow Wow Wow single. Well, maybe not the only reason, for our cast of lil’ monsters, or Grubbins as they are known, want candy too. Lots of it. But there is a nationwide shortage in their home dimension of Repugia, so whatever can they do? Well, it’s fast approaching Halloween, so they hatch the crazy idea of hopping through a magical portal into the human world to gatecrash the time-honoured tradition of trick or treating. Given that they already look like they are in costume, they expect it’ll be just like stealing candy from errr… dim-witted adults.

In fact there will be more sweet-pilfering going on than in the much-missed pick n’ mix departments of Woolworths (even as honest a child as myself couldn’t stop purloining the odd fizzy cola bottle as I went to peruse the latest singles and drool over Annabella Lwin…) as Klem and his sidekicks find themselves assailed by older, sugar-hungry bullies on both sides of the portal. Then there is the ‘slight’ added danger that once the portal closes at midnight on Halloween, it won’t open again for a whole year! It’s going to take all Klem’s considerable cunning for the friends to make it back to Repugia at all, never mind with their haul of goodies intact.

I am a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to trick and treating, I must confess. I find the concept of myriad kids hammering on my door all night a total pain in the arse, to be frank, and I am dreading the day when my daughter is old enough to want to go out doing it herself. With me in tow, no doubt. Though bizarrely, last year was the first time we had got sufficiently organised to get shed loads of sweets in preparation, and there was not a single knock on our door… The wife and I kept looking out of the upstairs window wondering why on earth all these costumed kids (and adults) were avoiding us, wondering if the preceding ten years of closing the curtains and blatantly ignoring the door knocking had finally had the desired effect. But no, apparently you have to have a lantern in the window now, or some such, to indicate you are happy to be visited by junior ghouls and spooks. Which is a good thing, I guess, as it avoids the kids getting upset when people don’t answer the door, and the curmudgeons can just get on with doing whatever it is they do behind their curtains.

I seem to have digressed. I really enjoyed this work. It was funny. The art is a fizzing, colourful treat too, with the antics of the young Grubbins garishly illustrated in a manner that suggests the artist had consumed rather a lot of E numbers himself. The older bully Grubbins being just monsterly enough too, without being too scary for the youngest readers or listener / viewer in my daughter’s case. This was definitely a hit with her, and me, there being enough story and jokes to hold my marginally more demanding adult attention too.

JR

Buy Costume Quest: Invasion Of The Candy Snatchers h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Manga Dogs vol 1 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Ema Toyama…

Sometimes you can look at a manga and see precisely which recent high-selling title has ‘inspired’ it. Without a shadow of a doubt this has been conceived following BAKUMAN, an intriguing story by the creators of DEATH NOTE, following two high school students wanting to be manga masters. There were some romance elements thrown in the mix but, by and large, it was a fascinating look behind the scenes of the insane workload that goes into creating, then sustaining, a hit manga series, the whole process of getting published, initially in Shonan Jump magazine, then in book form, and if you’re particularly lucky, the anime spin-off. They also do frequently mention the well used concept of, shall we say, emulating a premise whilst transplanting it into a different genre, to try and come up with a hit…

This work is neither as serious nor remotely realistic as BAKUMAN, but it does have the same relentless energy and sense of fun to it. Kanna Tezuka is a fifteen-year-old manga prodigy. She has already achieved the near-impossible feat of getting something published in a Shoujo magazine, but is concerned enough about maintaining the popularity of her series to enrol on a new manga-drawing course at her high school. Thus neatly introducing the most ubiquitous trope in manga as the setting for our yarn. I really don’t understand the Japanese fascination with manga set at high schools, the pupils being ghosts, witches, vampires, zombies and indeed even normal children, indeed sometimes a mixture of all of those, but it clearly works as the setting for many a yarn.

What there is also in abundance in these high school works is romance, and make no mistake this is a Shōjo (sometimes spelt shoujo) manga aimed squarely at teenage girls. Which probably explains why the three other manga class members, all boys, become completely obsessed with Kanna. Once they realise who she is, they’re demanding that she becomes their manga sensei and teach them all she knows, which appears to be considerably more than the teacher. Kanna, meanwhile, somewhat unused to any male attention, let alone the close proximity of three rapt, attentive, and rather dishy males hanging on her every word, competing for her attention, and no doubt in the not too distant future, her affections as well, is unsurprisingly finding it rather difficult to even focus on drawing a straight line.

If you approach this type of work – and Yaoi as well for that matter – with the right attitude, and it is as well written as this, then it is rather difficult not to be amused by the comedy of manners and farcical humour of it all. In addition, I would even go as far as to say this title does have some genuine satirical points to make about the manga-creating industry, much like BAKUMAN does.

JR

Buy Manga Dogs vol 1 and read the Page 45 review here

Crossed vol 10 (£14-99, Avatar) by Garth Ennis & Christian Zanier…

“Look, Harry, et me walk you out. There’s something I need to talk to you about. We’re having to cut our losses for the time being. Senior government personnel and their families are being moved to installations like this one, from which… well, hopefully we’ll be able to regain some measure of control, at least in the long term. Doctor Chopra is here. If anyone has a chance of finding an answer to this, it’s her and her team. But if we can’t… this is a location, along with details how to gain access. It should be seen only as a last resort.”
“Understood.”
“Thank you. It was… sort of over before it began in a way, wasn’t it?”
“Prime Minister?”
“The way events unfolded, since they brought that poor bugger in here. It felt like we never had a chance. I mean, you think about other times the country’s been threatened… what they had to cope with… Churchill. He had all the time in the world. How does it go? We shall not flag or fail… We shall move into broad sunlit uplands… We shall go on to the end, and so bear ourselves…
“You’re actually combining two separate speeches, Prime Minister.”
“Oh?”
“This is where I leave you.”
“Well, good luck to you, Harry. Thank you for everything.”
“You too, Prime Minister.”
“It’s been an honour.”

It’s a funny old series, CROSSED. Every time I think I have had enough of it, I just think, well, I’ll read the next volume, and I get dragged back in. I thought the slow-burning spin-off series CROSSED: WISH YOU WERE HERE by Si Spurrier was exceptionally well written horror from start to finish, with some extremely gory moments, certainly, but it never overpowered the storytelling.

Whereas with this main title, passed from writer to writer, hopping from plot idea to plot idea as it does, there have been some suspenseful, gripping story arcs, and then some that were just pure gore trash. The best arcs, frankly, have all been penned by series originator Garth Ennis, though I did also very much enjoy the one by Jamie Delano, and here Ennis has returned to a previous set of characters from the ‘The Fatal Englishman’ arc in CROSSED VOL 6, to write a prequel for them co-starring none other than Gordon Brown in his time as Prime Minister.

Yes, it’s not enough that Tony Blair left him in the shit with the economy, he’s managed to swerve Armageddon as well, a fact that doesn’t escape poor old Gordon, which did make me smile. The Prime Minister as he is written actually comes out of this with a lot of credit, unlike his weaselly sidekick Alastair – wonder who that is meant to be – but it certainly makes for a great story, seeing the beginnings of the outbreak in the UK from his unique perspective, hunkered down inside a secure bunker.

Except, except, the other co-star of this tale, who may or may not be the mysterious patient zero and originator of the virus, is brought to the very same bunker for observation by the scientists on hand. Maybe not the best idea Alastair has ever had to help out the Prime Minister…

Ennis is also planning to write a sequel to ‘The Fatal Englishman’ for issue 100 of the title, which I am already intrigued about giving how that arc ended. But in the meanwhile Kieron Gillen is up next on writing duties, and is apparently going to look at previous historical outbreaks, thus neatly counterpointing Uncle Alan Moore’s tale in the forthcoming CROSSED +100, which obviously is going to look at how humanity is coping 100 years after this current outbreak started. I think Avatar have  finally got the idea that people are actually more interested in the characters and stories associated with the CROSSED, rather than the gore per se, which in my opinion is best used, as here, for ridiculous comedic relief. If so, I’ll keep reading.

JR

Buy Crossed Vol 10 and read the Page 45 review here

America‘s Got Powers s/c (£13-50, Image) by Jonathan Ross & Bryan Hitch.

A) My favourite superhero artist of all time, THE ULTIMATES’ Bryan Hitch.
B) That Jonathan Ross, much more at home than on TURF.
C) Sarah Palin lookalike (actalike too!)
D) Something to say.
E) Effectively said.
F) Funny in places to boot.

This is spectacular stuff set in San Francisco seventeen years after a giant blue stone lands there, and every pregnant mother within a five mile radius successfully gives birth. No matter how pregnant, they all give birth at exactly the same time. To children with gifts. With powers. Every single one except Tommy Watts, brother to Bobby, the boy who burned out on TV.

See, there’s a TV show called America’s Got Powers which is a bit like Gladiators but without the – no, which is exactly like Gladiators: preposterous posturing, rabid crowds and its most popular star is the biggest dick.

So anyway, Bobby Watts won all his battles but it cost him too much and he died.

Which was absolutely fantastic for ratings! Hurrah!

Reacting accordingly, the producers of the new season of America’s Got Powers have lifted all limits on the level of violence permissible: the mechanical Paladins will be bigger, operating at maximum force, and the combatants can use all the power they’ve got. That there may be more military motivation behind the rule changes, nobody has thought about yet…

There’s so much merely hinted from the start: the San Francisco Power Riots that prompted the development of these TV tournaments in order to channel the children’s attention and give them a controlled outlet for their potentially destructive gifts; the military’s beef with the project’s head scientist Professor Syell (David Tennant); and Syell’s latest discovery which does sound ominous, doesn’t it?

I can assure you it’s all going to go to hell in a helicarrier with poor Tommy Watts the pawn they’d make king. Well, dauphin, perhaps.

Some of the best bits initially, visually, are set high above the stadium (which I note is adjacent to Alcatraz); also in the cash-cow gift shops of the super-mall surrounding the arena, which may sound odd when one considers Hitch’s gift for hyper-dynamic fist-fights which are indeed stunning here, but I’ve always loved his architecture, his everyday faces and civilian clothing even more. New artists would do well to study his emphasis on storytelling in BRYAN HITCH’S ULTIMATE COMIC STUDIO.

It’s the quiet moments later on which bring the biggest heart and make the big, big moments explosive. Conversely it’s the gargantuan moments – on a scale with will make your eyes blister – that make the soft scenes so much more tender.

Jonathan Ross has relaxed and really thought this through: the chirpy commentators’ blithe blood-thirstiness as combat goes disastrously wrong is perfect and far from overplayed – the key being “blithe”, oblivious to their own crass, crowd-pleasing cretinicity and indifference to everyone’s healthy and safety including innocent bystanders.

Tommy is spontaneously iconoclastic without being a relentlessly rebellious smart-arse and – given the reputation of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury – I love that the teenagers who received their gifts from that big blue stone are called “Stoners”.

When the military powerplay escalates, dividing the kids into two blood-thirsty tribes with another caught in their middle, it is hair-tearingly tense. Also, I concede, somewhat dense with recrimination after recrimination and almost no hope for anything than a blood-bath solution. There will be nuclear missiles aimed at San Francisco by America’s own military with the threat of an equal and opposite reaction.

At this point you might consider this over-thought through, but I’d disagree. I abhor simplistic superhero series where one side is wrong from smacking people upside the head and the other is supposed right for doing exactly the same. Here it is clearly demonstrated that just as there are three sides to every coin, there are at least three sides to every argument – it’s just that the third side (a coin’s edge) is far more difficult to keep balanced and upright so why even bother when dogma is easier?

No, it’s not over until Ross and Hitch say it’s over and Senator Hindler (that Sarah Palin substitute) won’t take “No” for an answer. She’s tenacious and she’s got balls – you’ve got to give her that. She’s also as callous and egomaniacal as her original. Unfortunately for everyone, she isn’t an iota as stupid.

“What about his family?”

SLH

Buy America’s Got Powers s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Captain Marvel vol 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Kelly Sue DeConnick & David Lopez.

That’s right, Kelly Sue DeConnick, as in the gothic western PRETTY DEADLY. The cadence of that comic was perfect.

So, isn’t that a lovely cover? It’s fairly indicative of what lies within: softer than usual superheroic art for a softer than usual superheroic saga but make no mistake: Carol Danvers is a very naughty lady. You can see it the mischievous smile and the I-know-what-I’m-doing smile.

Except that Carol’s never quite known what she’s doing: not in the wider scheme of things, anyway. Once she was lost to alcoholism and became ultra-defensive to boot. Now she’s having a tryst with Rhodey, former pilot of War Machine now Iron Patriot. They seem pretty well matched.

“Tony Stark just tried to play me with the suggestion that you’re a better pilot than me.”
“I am.”
“In your dreams.”
“Let’s talk more about my dreams. I’m seeing you in a little black lace number –“
“Careful. Your heart.”
“A cocktail dress. Colonel Danvers. Who’s the one with the dirty mind here?”
“I am. I thought we established that.”

Alas, the subject which Stark was trying to play her on was the opportunity to head into space as part of a formal, rotating Avengers presence and it’s seems the perfect opportunity during which to find herself.

Fast-forward to the first page and Colonel Danvers (who in costume appears to accept demotion) has accepted and gathered a personal posse of intriguing individuals one of whom nearly crash-landed on Earth in an escape pod six weeks earlier. This is very much a space-faring saga and an appearance by the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is guaranteed!

The ever-competitive exchange between Stark and Danvers takes place while they nonchalantly deal with a couple of lowlifes, killing two narrative birds with one rolling stone and thereby keeping the whole thing popping along at a bright and breezy pace.

SLH

Buy Captain Marvel vol 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More 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?

Expecting To Fly #1 (£3-00, Scary Go Round Comics) by John Allison

Hellblazer vol 9: Critical Mass (£14-99, Vertigo) by Eddie Campbell, Paul Jenkins, Jamie Delano & Sean Phillips, Pat McEown

The Collector h/c (£25-99, Archaia) by Sergio Toppi

Action Philosophers h/c (£22-50, Dark Horse) by Fred Van Lente & Ryan Dunlavey

The Art Of Princess Mononoke h/c (£25-99, Viz) by Hayo Miyazaki

Adventure Time vol 5 (UK Edition) s/c (£8-99, Titan Books) by Ryan North & Shelli Paroline, Braden Lamb

Doomboy vol 1 h/c (£18-99, Magnetic Press) by Tony Sandoval

Kick-Ass vol 3 h/c (£22-99, Titan Books) by Mark Millar & John Romita Jr.

Locke & Key vol 6: Alpha & Omega s/c (£18-99, IDW) by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

Satellite Sam vol 2 (£10-99, Image) by Matt Fraction & Howard Chaykin

All-New Ultimates vol 1: Power For Power s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Michel Fiffe & Amilcar Pinna

Amazing Spider-Man vol 1: Parker Luck s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Dan Slott & Humberto Ramos

Daredevil vol 1: Devil At Bay s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Mark Waid & Chris Samnee, Javier Rodriguez

Deadpool: Dracula’s Gauntlet h/c (£25-99, Marvel) by Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn & Reilly Brown, Scott Koblish

Iron Man vol 5: Rings Of The Mandarin (UK Edition) s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Kieron Gillen & Luke Ross, Joe Bennet, Scott Hannah, Cliff Richards

Ms. Marvel vol 1: No Normal s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by G. Willow Wilson & Adrian Alphona

Powers vol 1: Who Killed Retro Girl? (£11-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming

Uncanny X-Men vol 4: Vs. SHIELD (UK Edition) s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Chris Bachalo, Kris Anka

Ranma 1/2 2-in-1 vols 7 & 8 (£10-99, Viz) by Rumiko Takahashi

Usagi Yojimbo Saga vol 1 (£18-99, Dark Horse) by Stan Sakai

News

ITEM! AMULET’s Kazu Kibuishi painting digitally, live. And Kazu Kibuishi’s finished painting. Wow! Cannot recommended AMULET highly enough to Young Adults, Adult Adults or even Addled Adults.

ITEM! Gary Spencer Millidge’s STRANGEHAVEN returns in the pages of MEANWHILE and debuts at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival. Some beautiful interior art there, plus the anthology also features Sally-Jane Thompson.

Page 45 will have copies, of course, on sale on October 17^th, which is a slightly special date for us…! All three previous STRANGEHAVEN volumes in stock now! Read why it’s a favourite of Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, JH Williams III and Bryan Talbot!

ITEM! Our own Jodie Paterson’s new greetings card, ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside, perfect for winter!

ITEM! Leeds Film Festival is showing a documentary on comicbook creator Seth for free! We love Seth and I write about that town constructed from cardboard in  PALOOKAVILLE #20!

ITEM! The British Comic Awards 2014 judges announced! The very long long-list of British Comics 2014 before the committee whittle it down to five in each category for the judges to judge.

ITEM! Tom Gauld’s cover to The New Yorker!

And lastly… pretty obviously…

ITEM! Page 45 Celebrates its 20^th Anniversary on 17^th October 2014 at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival.

Don’t forget our Friday night Page 45 20^th Anniversay Boozebash at Ruskins in Kendal transformed – I kid you not – into The Batcave!

All the weekend’s details in the blog linked to above.

I’m going to try to write something new for the website in time for Friday, but if not you’ll just have to wait until our 21^st Birthday Booze on Saturday 17^th October 2015 in Nottingham. There will be speeches, for sure!

Thank you for everything. It’s been the most remarkable twenty years and I’m honoured to have spent them with you!

– Stephen

Final Reminder:

Page 45 Signings Schedule in Georgian Room, Comics Clock Tower

Saturday 18 October 2014:

Main Tables

10am – 12pm   Scott McCloud
2pm – 4pm       Glyn Dillon

Table 1

10am – 2pm      Dan Berry & Kristyna Backzynski
2pm – 6pm        Lizz Lunney & Joe List

Table 2

10am – 2pm      Jack Teagle & Joe Decie
2pm – 6pm        Jade Sarson & Donya Todd

Table 3

10am – 2pm      Sarah McIntyre & Warwick Johnson – Cadwell
2pm – 6pm        Fumio Obata & Dan Berry

Sunday 19 October:

Main Tables

2pm: arrival of 24 hour comic marathon limited edition comics and all creators available

Table 1

10.30am – 2pm     Liz Lunney & Donya Todd
2.30pm – 5pm      Fumio Obata & Joe Decie

Table 2

10.30am – 2pm     Sarah McIntyre & Dan Berry
2.30pm – 5pm      Warwick Johnson Cadwell & Joe List

Table 3

10.30am – 2pm     Jack Teagle & Kristyna Backzynski
2.30pm – 5pm       Jade Sarson & Donya Todd

Please see Page 45 20^th Anniversary At The Lakes International Comic Art Festival blog for more details including our own show-and-tell times and The Art Of Selling Comics talk.

Zoey is made up of layers and layers of the things that make *actual people* tick. And she’s the lead character in a serial killer story. *And* she’s female. *AND* she’s not a white blonde girl.

Well bloody hell.

  – Dominique on A Voice In The Dark.

Southern Bastards vol 1: Here Was A Man s/c (£7-50, Image) by Jason Aaron & Jason Latour…

“Earl… where you goin’, boy?”
“You know where I’m goin’.”
“Vietnam, huh. That’s a long damn way from here. Why you wanna go fight in some war that ain’t yours?”
“It’s the right thing to do, ain’t it?”
“Son, if you gonna go half ‘round the world just to die… least be honest with yourself about why you’re doin’ it.”
“Goodbye, Daddy. Goodbye, Craw County. Good Goddamn-bye, Alambama.”

Earl Tubb never expected he’d be back in Craw County. It’s taken the death of his father to bring him home. There’s his childhood house to clear out, purely to let a realtor put it on the market, before he can leave again, and those three days he thinks it’s going to take are three more than he wants to be there. There are the ghosts of too many memories still present, that much is apparent as our story opens with Earl driving a removal truck to his daddy’s out-of-town property, leaving a message for persons as yet unknown with his mobile phone.

I enjoyed reading Jason Aaron’s foreword. He was born in Alabama, in a small town called Jasper. About an hour away from the town of Guntersville where I spent eighteen very pleasant if bizarre months, funnily enough. I fully understand his comments regarding the deep south of the good ole United States of America… “The south is more peaceful than any other place I’ve ever been. But more primal too. More timeless. But more haunted. More spiritual. More hateful. More beautiful. More scarred.”

And I equally understand why he says he’ll never move back there. I encountered some wonderfully hospitable people who treated me like family, saw places of rugged, outstanding natural beauty, but it also has a darker, other-worldly quality that takes some explaining, never mind understanding. I saw a Christian preacher handling snakes in front of an enraptured congregation. I was given a lecture on how I was going to hell for my Buddhist faith whilst playing pool with a scantily-clad stripper in a titty bar. I watched someone sink a friend’s speedboat with a gun over a disagreement about their water-skiing prowess. And was proudly told by a thoroughly upstanding member of the community that they didn’t agree with the fact that their father had been in the Ku Klu Klan, and that they had nothing whatsoever against black people, but gays, well gays were the devil’s work. All without any hint of irony. And that would be a fairly typical week.

Drugs were everywhere, coke and crystal meth, long before it was made fashionable by a certain Mr. Heisenberg, lurking just beneath the friendly facade of a world where everyone, but everyone, says hello when they pass you by in the street. To not do so is a massive social faux pas expected only of those without manners and any sense of decorum. A civilised veneer overlaying the rather more torrid goings-on.

Alabama is also one of only two places I have ever managed to get myself arrested (the other being at the Polish-German border on suspicion of terrorist offences, but that’s a story for another time). The crime? Public intoxication, for having three beers in a bar and walking one hundred metres down the street to my hotel. The police, meanwhile, were not remotely interested in the departing drinkers getting in their pickup trucks and weaving merrily back and forth across the white lines whilst they made their respective ways home. A stranger on foot though, well, no doubt bound to be up to no good, and more importantly perhaps, just likely to pay the $100 fine after a night in the drunk tank being serenaded by an orchestra of snorers without kicking up too much of a fuss.

So I fully understand the character of this world and its denizens which Jason Aaron portrays for us here. Trust me, much like SCALPED, it is not our civilised world. It is a world perhaps best avoided if you should happen to stumble upon it. For Earl Tubb, though, finally back in the town as a older, if not wiser, bull of a man heading rapidly towards his pensionable years, where his sheriff daddy used to rule the roost armed only with a very large stick both at home and on the streets, well, he just seems to have finally decided he’s not prepared to walk away anymore.

He’ll wish he had.

You certainly get a sense of Clint Eastwood in Earl Tubb. There’s bad men running the town now, controlled it would seem by the local football coach, who was one of Earl’s teammates back in the day. Earl knows he should just let it go, pack up his removal truck and head on out of town. But… the manner of his leaving perhaps means he feels he has unfinished business. There’s seemingly no one prepared to stand up to the Coach and his thugs, so, when Earl receives what he takes to be a sign from his late, if not so much lamented, father, he makes a decision. There will be consequences.

Grotesquely brutal art from Jason Latour, much like R. M. Guéra on SCALPED, which will make you feel every punch, every kick, every baseball bat to the head. Teeth go flying, fingers are smashed, limbs mangled. It’s extremely hard-hitting stuff, with a spectacularly brutal and somewhat shockingly unexpected conclusion to this first volume. Then, just when I was reeling from that, you get the final sucker punch, as you find out just who Earl was leaving that phone message for…

JR

Buy Southern Bastards vol 1: Here Was A Man s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Sugar Skull h/c (£12-99, Jonathan Cape) by Charles Burns.

“N-no!! There’s got to be a way out!”

And then you wake up.

If you’re lucky the cold light of day is much kinder.

Before Doug wakes up, his dream alter ego Johnny has infiltrated The Hive to bring his bed-ridden beloved the romance comics she craves, along with chocolates in a red, heart-shaped box. She knows she shouldn’t eat them – she is kept on a special diet to maintain her strict schedule – but Johnny insists she at least try one. When they wake up, there’s a problem.

It’s the sort of nightmare scenario, vividly and so horrifically portrayed, that could only happen in dreams.

But Johnny’s reaction is telling.

So BLACK HOLE’s Charles Burns concludes the trilogy begun in X’ED OUT then continued deep in THE HIVE in which Doug dwells on his Dad and casts his mind back on two failed relationships with Sarah then Tina, his early experiments with photography and performance art behind a Tintin-esque mask, and a deep-seated fear of flat-door intercoms. “Bzzzt!”

As with all finales it behoves me to avoid revealing much in the way of detail except perhaps the most minute details of all. There’s a scene in which Doug attempts to win a tortuously circuitous argument by shrugging off his own role in its potential resolution, knowing he’s doing so and so only looking Sarah’s way – more than a little sheepishly, to see if it’s working – once her back is turned. It’s a precisely judged expression.

A little later there’s a rare glimpse at Burns’ talent for exquisite photorealism – on the television screen at his father’s which is where Doug retreats to.

“I wanted a safe, dark place to hide.”

Hmmm…

As the conclusion kicks off, Doug’s Dad has been dead for six years but still very much on his mind. Doug’s now seeing Sally and has mended his drug- and alcohol-addled ways, having been clean for one year, seven months and fourteen days. But the past tempts him back in the form of tickets from Tina to see a punk band called Animal Byproducts formerly known as Bacon. That was the band Doug used to perform alongside and whose bandmate Nicky originally introduced him to Sarah.

Foreshadowed throughout, we finally find out precisely what went wrong between Doug and Sarah.

There, I hope you’ve been tempted to try X’ED OUT and THE HIVE. If not, both books are reviewed with far less evasion, especially the nightmare aspects which are threaded throughout the trilogy and so successfully evoke the worst of my own!

SLH

Buy Sugar Skull h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Star Cat Book 1 (£7-99, DFC) by James Turner.

Meet Captain Spaceington, deadly serious action man of no-nonsense derring-do for whom everything is one big frown!

Shake multiple hands with monocular Science Officer Plixx, she of the green, squidgey tentacles!

“She may not know the difference between a proton and a neutron, but she’s always happy to whack them both with a hammer and hope for the best.”

Bravo!

Duck as the most supercilious android of all time, Robot One, casts aspersions on our frail human inadequacies whilst covering up its own lo-tech leanings!

Then fjidbt jablyt when The Pilot sets course for it-gives-not-a-crap-where while attending to anything more interesting instead! That incluses grbatifleds, plimbragrs and blagandrars. Accuracy is irrelevant, disdain is all! Be careful where you leave your loved chocolate puddings.

These are your zero heroes on board Star Cat, the latest and most sophisticated spaceship in blistery whose Super Computer houses a mouse, a mallard and a fish. They will save the galaxy and many more chocolate bars besides from the vaguest of vampires, the worst ice-cream ever and that rage-prone rogue, the two-dimensional Dark Rectangle destined to fall flat on his back along with his paper-thin posse.

“Luckily I’m a Black Belt in Origami!”
“Ooh! Make me into a little hat!”

THE PHOENIX weekly comic for kids and its publisher DFC have become hallmarks of both literacy and lunacy, and this is no exception. LONG GONE DON, GARY’S GARDEN, BUNNY VS MONKEY, CORPSE TALK… even its art book, Neill Cameron’s HOW TO MAKE AWESOME COMICS, is hilarious while its puzzle book, VON DOOGAN, is also a thrilling interactive comicbook adventure!

Nothing escapes the ever-ready eye of Captain Spaceington. Everything escapes Science Officer Plixx.

“Red alert! Raise shields! Evasive manoeuvres! Activate repulsor fields! Pack away the board games!”
“Aye aye, sir!”

*waggle* *turn* *press* *push*

“You have no idea what those controls do, do you?”
“None at all, sir!”

The cartooning is exquisite – almost every expression guarantees grins – while the timing is immaculate. Some of my favourite jokes revolve around their space ship being a cat.

“Pilot, activate Hyper Warp, Level 5!” commands Captain Spaceington.
“Sbejtift,” replies that boss-eyed Pilot, yanking on a lever.

Cue external shot of the hybrid cat-craft, its gormless eyes staring to camera as a hatch in its head springs open. Then the final panel on the page reveals the elusive, rocket-science secret to the last-resort Hyper Warp 5: a dangling, giant, red ball of wool. The cat’s eyes spy it in a perfectly pitched moment of silent ellipsis…

… And boom!

James Turner is in absolute command of these bottom-page ellipses. There’s another in the very first episode when a space mouse in search of space cheese is considered space harmless, yet no one can work out why The Pilot is strapping itself in for dear life.

Clue: the pilot is also a cat.

As the space mouse passes outside, the Star Cat spaceship opens one eye and spots it…

SLH

Buy Star Cat Book 1 and read the Page 45 review here

Sam & Dave Dig A Hole h/c (£11-99, Walker Books) by Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen.

Yippee!

A new Young Readers’ graphic novel from the headwear-conscious creator of THIS IS NOT MY HAT and I WANT MY HAT BACK and with writer Mac Barnett on board, hats are no longer the issue.

Nothing here is missing, but an awful lot is missed.

On Monday, you see, Sam and Dave dug a hole.

“When should we stop digging?” asked Sam.
“We are on a mission,” said Dave.
“We won’t stop digging until we find something spectacular.”

And so dig they do. They dig and dig deep. They dig so deep that their heads disappear underground, and then they dig deeper still. They are, I would remind you, on a mission!

So intent are they on this Important Excavation, what they don’t seem to have noticed is that their dog has embarked on this mission too. Or they’ve forgotten. The dog happened to be standing between them when work first commenced and looked a little dubious from the start. On the cover his eyes are to camera, as if to say, “What a bunch of buffoons”.

Yes, Sam and Dave should probably take a little more notice of their dog.

But they do have a lot of digging to do…

Brilliant! As with both THIS IS NOT MY HAT and I WANT MY HAT BACK the words tell one story while the images reveal the truth! That’s what makes this comics.

What they also share is a comedic oblivion.

SLH

Buy Sam & Dave Dig A Hole h/c and read the Page 45 review here

The Hospital Suite (£16-99, Drawn & Quarterly) by John Porcellino…

Powerful, oh my…

“As the days passed by, despite my condition, things began to take on a startling clarity.
“The whole world seemed to be glowing…
“The trees, the squirrels, the grass, the curbs on the corner.

“And I realised I wasn’t afraid to die.”

I was moved to tears at several points reading this autobiographical tale of ill-health, physical and mental, and also marital breakdown from the creative genius behind KING-CAT COMICS. (Long-time Page 45 review readers will know it goes without saying, but I was on the tram at the time, of course…)

John Porcellino lays himself bare and simply takes us on his journey. You can’t help but feel such empathy for him reading this as he is put through the wringer by a long-undiagnosed medical condition.

He does a fantastic job of gradually self-diagnosing the root of his problem over time, when myriad healthcare professionals seem at a complete loss, but there is extreme punishment to endure along the way as his body and mind play havoc with him, with chronically painful episodes requiring surgical intervention and crippling, recurring bouts of OCD  that paralyse him completely. It’s testament to his ever-evolving Zen Buddhist faith that he has the indomitable will to carry on, where others would perhaps simply give in.

Yes, there are dark days, some very dark days, but once you have glimpsed the true nature of reality, touched it directly as happened to Jon during some of his physically weakest moments, as the line between life and death began to blur slightly, as he describes above, it gives you an inner strength to endure, and endure he does. There are some experiential aspects of faith it is impossible to put into words, they are by their very nature beyond words and ineffable, but John does a wonderful job of expressing the profound joy and deep serenity they bring. As a balm to the suffering, they are like no other.

Ultimately this is a work about transformation and perseverance. Positive change in one’s circumstances, of any sort, inward or indeed outward, can’t come without hard work. Also, you do need a lot of it to become one of the best autobiographical comics creators of your generation – of any generation – which John most certainly is. With a body of work stretching over decades that’s ultimately uplifting and illuminating in equal measure, he’s a genuine treasure. A triple treasure perhaps. (Sorry, a little Zen in-joke I couldn’t resist.)

I wish him continued good health and all the happiness in the world. Keep shining your light, John.

JR

Buy The Hospital Suite and read the Page 45 review here

Loverboys h/c (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Gilbert Hernandez.

“Mrs Paz! How many people live in Lágrimas?”
“Well, last time I checked, it was six hundred and seventy-seven, Daniela.”
“Of course a teacher would know the answer! Thanks!”
“Sure.”

Mrs Paz turns away from her window.

“Lágrimas… Tears…”

Whenever someone asks for recommendations we first enquire what they’re already into in this or other media, then what sort of a comic or graphic novel they’re after that particular day.

Matching the right books to the right people is crucial, and it’s very easy now there is so much quality and diversity in comics: plenty of politics, masses of memoirs, so much sci-fi, enough crime to fill the average jail cell and quite enough comedy to keep you chortling until you choke. You’ve seen our Young Adult sections, right? Plural, yes.

However, occasionally we’re asked for romance and although we fall far from short in that department too, when asked for romances to make you feel better, well… relationships do not end well in comics! Think about it: Adrian Tomine’s SHORTCOMINGS, Posy Simmonds’ TAMARA DREWE and GEMMA BOVERY (she’s dead at the start of that one!), Julie Maroh’s BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR (ditto!) Will Eisner’s THE NAME OF THE GAME and even Simone Lia’s FLUFFY can’t be counted on for that!

There is one Los Bros Hernandez graphic novel that gives one unexpected cause for optimism, but if I reveal which one then I’ve rather spoiled it for you. Then there’s quite of lot of Yaoi which is inexplicable give how fucked up most of the protagonists are, and I guess there’s Tomine’s SCENES FROM AN IMPENDING MARRIAGE. That ended well: he got married!

But I tell you, we do struggle.

In the small town of tears called Lágrimas young Daniella is suspicious of a strange building, determined to avoid school and toying with idea of blowing up the school building or even the entire town with dynamite. I’m not sure where she’d get some. Now she’s discovered that Mrs Paz will be her new school teacher come Monday and she’ll be giving them a big test immediately. She settles on the more practical solution of pinching Mrs. Paz’s cell phone and cribbing the answers off that.

Meanwhile, her old brother Rocky who looks after her in their parents’ absence is studiously fending the off the advances of his beautiful boss. He only has eyes for his former high school teacher, Mrs. Paz. She isn’t young. She has the worry lines of someone to whom life could have been kinder and a faraway look in her eyes. But with rich, dark hair and eyes to match she remains very handsome indeed.

“Will you go out to dinner with me?” asks Rocky.
“Yes.”

Once again, there is that faraway look in her eyes, the top half of her face in close-up. She hasn’t turned round.

But on the very next panel she’s seated at the restaurant with Rocky, and her face has lit up. She’s now wearing lipstick and a simple, elegant necklace.

At which point I refer you back to the beginning of my sales pitch and leave you to wonder what happens next.

This is an original A5 graphic novel completely separate from LOVE AND ROCKETS. At eighty pages it’s a relatively slight affair compare to MARBLE SEASON or JULIO’S DAY but I found it charming. Well, the first fifty pages or so. After that some people start losing their charm, others their tempers, but the first fifty pages have a certain stillness to them. Some of the eyes in particular are very quiet. Also, I notice that with one exception the men are all straight, perpendicular lines – only the women have curves.

So often there is a strong element of folklore in Beto’s books. Jaime’s as well, now I think of it. And quite often that folklore’s proved true.

Lastly, as ever, the children with their often ill-informed perspectives play not inconsiderable roles, and come out with the bluntest of questions.

“How come your name is still Mrs. Paz? Just in case Mr. Paz ever comes back?”

Ouch.

SLH

Buy Loverboys h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Bumperhead h/c (£16-50, Drawn & Quarterly) by Gilbert Hernandez…

“Oh, there’s a bump bump bumperhead here! Thumpin’ bumpin’ bumper! El Bumpo!”
“What, you’ve never seen a ten ton bumposity before? Bump thumper! Ba-ba-ba-bumpus!”
“Bump. Bump.”
“BA-BUMP!”
“WHOOSH! Bump. Bump.”
“Don’t get mad, bumpo! BUMP BUMPO BUMP!”
…
“Why, God? Why did you curse me with a bumperhead?”

His head, of course, is not that big or oddly shaped, but it is enough for Bobby to attract the unwelcome attention of his older neighbours. You never know with Gilbert what autobiographical material gets recycled into his works, by his own admission, but I will bet a pound to a penny, he knew someone who was just such an unfortunate in his childhood days.

Anyway, happily for Bobby, the Bumperhead moniker soon gets dropped and in fact he starts socialising with his tormentors, once the age difference starts to become less meaningful as they grow up and discover the holy trinity of most boys’ teenage years: music, girls and drugs.  In fact, he is a bit of a ladies’ man, our Bobby, changing his favourite highschool squeeze with a regularity even one Arthur Fonzarelli would approve of, I’m sure. He’s not quite so motivated in the schoolwork arena though, so as his peers start to go off to college and thus onwards and upwards to bigger and better things, he begins the first of many menial jobs, seeding a future social inequity between himself and others that will continue to flourish.

This lack of commitment, to relationships, to learning, to a career, is the major theme of Bobby’s existence, and it’s something that whilst he recognises is the source of much, indeed all of his suffering, he seems unable or unwilling to change his trajectory. There are glimpses of what his life might end up like, all too visible, in the shape of his own father. But again, Bobby’s either too stubborn or reluctant to see, and more importantly admit, that his own potential future is staring him right in the face. It’s like he has subconsciously accepted his fate, whilst all the while blithely assuming something is just going to come along and change everything for him.

You can see one of Gilbert’s favourite recurring themes, our formative years, explored thoroughly again here as he did so successfully in MARBLE SEASON, whilst also following the JULIO’S DAY near-cradle-to-grave story arc process of one person’s life. I think it’s great Gilbert is in such prolific form at this period of his career; he clearly has many stories left to tell, and clearly is no slacker in the application department himself.

JR

Buy Bumperhead h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Some Comics By Stephen Collins h/c (£12-99, Jonathan Cape) by Stephen Collins…

‘We were all quite surprised when the high street left us.
…RUMBLE…
It just stood up one day and said: “I’ve had enough of the empty shops and the bookies and the vomit. If I’m dying I’m bloody well doing it in style.”
So it went off travelling and after Andean trekking and skydiving in Chile, and a torrid affair with the Champs-Élysées, it finally expired during a PADI course off the coast of Mauritius. It gets a lot of visitors now…
“And to your left you can see the world’s deepest Gregg’s.”’

Do you know, I think this may be the most beautifully illustrated collection of gag strips I have ever seen. Each one is an exquisitely drawn and gorgeously coloured joy to behold.

Whereas most cartoonists have just one style, here every strip is appropriately rendered with incredible attention to detail. I think he ‘just’ does one a week for the Guardian, so obviously he doesn’t have to churn them out on a daily basis, but still, they are wonderful. I wouldn’t characterise them as laugh-out-loud funny gags, more pithy, expertly constructed tableaux that will make the corners of your mouth twitch gently into a smile. Those of you who have read his excellent graphic novel THE GIGANTIC BEARD THAT WAS EVIL will appreciate his refined sense of absurdist humour already.

With that said, one or two of the more ribald ones that are included in this collection did make me giggle, I must say, with Gwyneth Paltrow bemoaning to Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg the mysterious appearance of a massive kebab, right in the middle of the emotional bit of her ‘look back’ Facebook movie, my favourite. His jokes frequently skewer their targets from multiple directions, and you might well need to be up on the current affairs of the day and also rather less newsworthy detritus to fully get all the nuances of some of them, but overall I thought the rib-tickle hit rate was extremely high.

I can see this being an excellent stocking filler for those wishing to find something more discerningly humorous for their nearest and dearest this Christmas. I’ll certainly be buying my dad a copy, along with a new whoopee cushion.

JR

Buy Some Comics By Stephen Collins h/c and read the Page 45 review here

The Lonesome Go (£29-99. Fantagraphics) by Tim Lane…

“But my destiny lay elsewhere. So I rented a room in a flophouse on Valencia Street for fifteen bucks a night.
“There was an outdated neon sign outside my window that blinked and buzzed theatrically.
“The room was stuffy and the walls seemed to sweat. The air was dense enough to congeal in my lungs.
“I cut off my hair. I washed myself in the sink.
“In the early morning, while the junkies argued in the street, I asked God to shine his light.
“I slept in my sleeping bag rolled out on top of my bed.
“I spent my nights following the Mariachi musicians as they made their rounds from one Mexican restaurant to the next…
“… Watching as they divved up their tips in deliberate silence, tucked into shadowy alleyways between taquerias.”

Phew, Tim Lane really ups the Burroughs factor in this quasi-sequel to ABANDONED CARS. This is a considerably weightier tome at nearly three times the length. If that work proclaimed itself as the ‘Great American Mythological Drama’, this is heading way, way beyond that, deeper into the metaphorical heart of darkness. Again, it’s a narrative of sorts detailing a journey, less autobiographical this time I think, at least I hope so, interspersed with all manner of strange vignettes, bizarre adverts, short pieces of prose and even song lyrics. The overall effect is disorientating and disturbing in equal measure, clearly quite deliberately so.

Yes, Tim Lane wants you to feel disgusted and possible a little aroused by what he is showing us, I’m sure. It’s a freak show of the veritable American heartland laid bare. I came away, just like ABANDONED CARS, feeling somewhat sullied and perturbed for the experience.  The most disturbing thing of all is we know he’s really only showing us what horrors are truly out there, if we were foolish enough to go looking in the wrong places. He may have strayed into the realms of the unreal, with the more surreal elements perhaps, but not by much, perhaps not at all.

There are also some uplifting moments in here though, punctuating the tension and leavening the insanity. I was particularly touched by the ‘Pacific Ocean Or Bust!’ monologue that is pure Kerouac in its Beat faux-Zen optimism. Though I’m not entirely sure whether he is trying to offer up any hope, or merely demonstrate its futility in the face of the overwhelming chaos of existence. Maybe a bit of both, just to keep us off balance emotionally, before he moves on unabated.

But these moments are like rays of sunshine during the darkest of days, something to cling onto during the maelstrom that is this work. He’s a very talented writer Tim Lane I think, and as before, with his rawer than Charles Burns’ BLACK HOLE-esque art style, well, he knows just how to burn his dystopic visions into the very fabric of our souls. I don’t know where it will all end, I really don’t. If you’ve ever seen the 1998 film Dark City, it’ll probably be something like that…

JR

Buy The Lonesome Go and read the Page 45 review here

Doctors (£12-99, Fantagraphics) by Dash Shaw…

“I’m sorry I took the form of your daughter.
“She gave me permission… she was the only person in your mind I thought you would listen to…
“I’m sure you must be very confused.”
“I…”

Ah, Dash Shaw, a man who loves his metaphysics, philosophy, speculative thinking and just generally fucking with your head in his comics. Here he manages to not only do that with us but also his characters as, after their expiration and entry into the unknown limbo of what lies beyond, they are going to get a rather unexpected wake-up call.

For Doctor Cho has invented a device called the Charon, allowing for the temporary resuscitation of a deceased individual – though only for a finite number of day or weeks – in theory to allow loved ones to say their final goodbyes properly, and the reanimated to set their affairs in order. It’s a top secret procedure, of course, available only to those ultra-wealthy and in the know, as Doctor Cho and his assistant, his daughter Tammy, are understandably wary of what would happen if the wider world found out.

There’s just one small, weeny catchette. So far, every single patient they have brought back – by inserting them into someone’s remaining consciousness in the guise of a loved one to tell them they have passed over but can return if they so choose – has ended up going stark raving bonkers. It’s probably not going to be too long before the authorities cotton on to what’s happening…

Great fun, this, and nice to see Dash doing something fairly short form but still substantial, plot-wise. I do love his really brief minis like NEW JOBS and 3 NEW STORIES, but you don’t get enough with those to get a handle on what his writing is really like, and his very chunky longer works like BODYWORLD, THE BOTTOMLESS BELLY BUTTON, THE UNCLOTHED MAN IN THE 35^th CENTURY A.D. and NEW SCHOOL can possibly look a bit daunting for those unfamiliar with him, I suspect. This, I reckon, neatly encapsulates what he’s all about: surreal, haunting, hilarious pieces that are illustrated in his own inimitable fashion in what looks like pretty much just a black felt tip pen. He makes it look so bloody easy, but in reality, that’s just another way he’s fucking with you.

JR

Buy Doctors and read the Page 45 review here

A Voice In The Dark vol 1 (£14-99, Image Comics) by Larime Taylor –

Messed-up stories about messed-up people doing messed-up things are (judging by what we seem to like reading and watching on TV) fascinating to us. We love seeing the world from a skewed viewpoint, travelling a totally different, dangerous path and from that fascination some of our greatest stories – horror stories in particular – have come.

Messed-up stories featuring messed-up women doing messed-up stuff, however, tend to be of a very stilted ilk. A (very) few notable exceptions aside, they usually involve heavy doses of tits ‘n’ ass, voyeurism and some version of “Oooooh, I’ve been a very bad girl” along the way. They are generally devoid of plot or character development and are all about titillating the audience until the main girl finally “gets” whatever it is that is apparently “coming to her”. It’s still quite rare, especially in a horror / crime context that we get to see a complex, competent female character that isn’t defined primarily by sex or sexual vulnerability but rather by, you know, all those millions of other things that other characters (a.k.a. male ones) get to be defined by. Obsession, anger, revenge, ego, loyalty, love, passion, moral outrage – Zoey (the main character here) is made up of layers and layers of the things that make *actual people* tick. And she’s the lead character in a serial killer story. *And* she’s female. *AND* she’s not a white blonde girl. Well bloody hell.

So, yes, Zoey is the serial killer. When we meet her she has “only” killed once but clearly it’s not going to stay that way for long, because she did rather enjoy it. She feels bad about it, but she definitely did enjoy it all the same. And she’s clever enough and disciplined enough to get away with it, at least for a while, I would guess. The whole murdering thing aside, you’d have to say she’s a good person and that the lives of the people around her, (her sister, her new roommates, her Uncle who’s a Homicide Detective, ooopsie!) would be poorer without her in them. She’s a little reserved at first but once you get to know her she’s warm, clever and interesting. She’s a thinker, a realist and she only really murders people who are kind of dickheads so…

Well yes, it’s murder and clearly that’s not OK and there will have to be a reckoning at some point. But meeting Zoey and following her story through this first volume you can’t help but think that, for the moment at least, the only person who’s in a position to dictate how this all plays out is Zoey herself. She knows what she is doing in every sense of the phrase and watching her come to understand this darkness within herself is far more entertaining and fascinating than a lumbering chainsaw wielding maniac chasing an inexplicably bra-less girl through the woods could ever be. Clever, funny, dark, delicious stuff.

DK

Buy A Voice In The Dark and read the Page 45 review here

Moon Knight vol 1: From Dead s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Warren Ellis & Declan Shalvey.

“What are you supposed to be?”
“I’m the one you see coming.”

Here’s what you need to know about Marc Spector AKA Moon Knight: he’s barking mad. Or at least we thought he was.

Turns out he’s merely brain damaged, his brain colonised by an ancient consciousness with whom he communes late at night. It appears to him as a cobwebbed, skeletal humanoid in the same white suit Spector wears, it’s skull reminiscent of a Plague Doctor with a big beak. Maybe this is a reference to the Benu Bird, I don’t know. Spector believes it’s the Egyptian god Khonshu under whose statue he died before rising again from the dead with four individually functioning personalities to protect travellers in the night – dreamers included.

The storytelling is as efficient and effective as Moon Knight himself: sparse dialogue with the narration left largely to Declan Shalvey using a lot of landscape panels. There are six self-contained chapters, each with a succinct, one word title and a colour scheme of its own heralded by the covers. Green was particularly well deployed. The last is a reversal of the first and so it is inside, following the repercussions of a dismissive discussion in chapter one.

There Ellis swiftly establishes a new aesthetic and modus operandi.

Rather than descend, crescent-caped from a ‘copter, Spector sits sedately in the back of a whit, voice-controlled stretch-limousine, calmly coordinating technology to take him to the scene of a crime. He inspects the scene of that crime. He doesn’t exactly consult with the cops although he does acknowledge their presence. He analyses, deduces and decides on a unilateral plan of action.

He is, in short, a gentleman in a gentleman’s attire, and he will take matters into his own more-than-capable hands with the maximum preparation that’s possible for an impromptu operation with the minimum of fuss.

The action is swift, clipped and decisive.

There is something slightly Ditko-esque in Declan Shalvey’s side-stepping, white-suited squire and the way he descends through the city’s strata. Maybe it’s more Dean Mutter’s MISTER X – unlike Mark I never read enough of that. Regardless, I loved the way he strides to the scene, all matter-of-fact and determined, without a care in the world for how he’s perceived, gimp-mask and all. I also loved Jordie Bellaire’s complete disinclination to colour him in costume: it’s pure black and white. Spectral.

The second story starts out using panels in a similar structure to Ray Fawkes’ ONE SOUL and, more recently, THE PEOPLE INSIDE whereby the same panel every page is devoted to a single individual at the same time until each is taken out by a sniper one by one. The panel then disappears leaving a stark, empty space for Ellis to fill with narration, should he be so inclined. He is not.

SLH

Buy Moon Knight vol 1: From Dead s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Jim Henson’s The Musical Monsters Of Turkey Hollow h/c (£18-99, Archaia) by Jim Henson,  Jerry Juhl & Roger Langridge.

Ian Herring’s colours on Langridge’s line-art are a joy.

There’s not a spot of black. The closest you’ll get even at night is a purple, and that’s not as dark as it looks.

As to what he’s done when there’s music in the air, it’s like ten of the most expensive Catherine wheels going off in your living room all at once. Which is not as good an idea as it sounds.

As to the Musical Monsters, they’re an instantly recognisable Jim Henson / Dr. Seuss hybrid: strange, colourful, adorable.

However, if you take a look at the photo Jim Henson took in 1968 in the woods behind his house (reprinted on the inside front cover)… well, it’s quite a surprise. The original puppets Don Sahlin built from Jim Henson’s designs which Jim then posed with his children amongst the undergrowth (it was always going to a be show set outside) are a perfectly camouflaged dark, mossy green. Their eyes are bright and shiny, but their fur is scraggy, scruffy and matted like they’ve all jumped in a stagnant pond and haven’t yet dried off.

Now, I like that look – I love it. But I think it goes some way to explaining why the proposed TV show was never optioned.

As to actual graphic novel, I found it all a bit obvious. Eccentric, loving family – already persecuted by pitchfork-wielding, irascible neighbour Mister Sump who is determined to lay claim to their land – befriends music-loving, rock-munching, non-monstrous monsters which then provide the perfect excuse for Mister Sump to terrorise them further.

The gag that did make me laugh early on was the poor man who’s finally finished painting his huge “Welcome To Turkey Hollow” sign (Human Population 28; Turkey Population 3,687). He’s just had to change 28 to 27 and now another truck-load of caged turkeys passes by, either to be released into a farmer’s open enclosure or on their way to the Turkey Burger factory 50 yards up the road.

Take your pick: either up or down, that population just changed substantially.

SLH

Buy Jim Henson’s The Musical Monsters Of Turkey Hollow 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?

 Blacksad: Amarillo h/c (£13-50, Dark Horse) by Juan Diaz Canales & Juanjo Guarnido

The Best American Comics 2014 h/c (£18-99, HMH) by various including Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Charles Burns, Adrian Tomine, R. Crumb, Raina Telegemeier, Fanny Britt, Isabelle Arsenault, Tom Hart, Brandon Graham, Chris Ware, Ron Rege Jr, Michael DeForge, Theo Ellsworth edited by Scott McCloud

Jacques Tardi World War One Box Set: It Was The War Of The Trenches h/c & Goddamn This War! h/c (£29-99, Fantagraphics) by Jacques Tardi with Jean-Pierre Verney

The Motherless Oven (£12-99, SelfMadeHero) by Rob Davis

Costume Quest: Invasion Of The Candy Snatchers h/c (£18-99, Oni Press) by Zac Gorman

Crossed vol 10 s/c (£14-99, Avatar) by Garth Ennis & Christian Zanier

East Of West vol 3: There Is No Us (£10-99, Image) by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Dragotta

Explorer vol 3: The Hidden Doors (£8-50, Amulet) by Kazu Kibuishi, Jason Caffoe, Jen Wang, Faith Erin Hicks, Johanne Matte, Jen Breach, Steve Hamaker, Douglas Holgate

The Goon vol 13: For Want Of Whiskey And Blood (£12-99, Dark Horse) by Eric Powell

In A Glass Grotesquely (£14-99, Fantagraphics) by Richard Sala

Regular Show vol 2 s/c (£10-99, Kaboom!) by various

The Unwritten vol 10: War Stories (£10-99, Vertigo) by Mike Carey & Peter Gross, Al Davison

America’s Got Powers s/c (£13-50, Image) by Jonathan Ross & Bryan Hitch

Batman vol 5: Zero Year – Dark City h/c (£18-99, DC) by Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo

Earth 2 vol 3: Battle Cry s/c (£10-99, DC) by James Robinson, Paul Levitz & Nicola Scott, various

Green Arrow vol 5: The Outsiders War s/c (£12-99, DC) by Jeff Lemire & Andrea Sorrentino

Captain Marvel vol 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Kelly Sue DeConnick & David Lopez

Hawkeye vol 3: L.A. Woman s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Matt Fraction & Javier Pulido, Annie Wu

She-Hulk vol 1: Law And Disorder s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Charles Soule & Javier Pulido, Ronald Wimberly

Dragon Ball 3-in-1 Edition vols 16-18 (£9-99, Viz) by Akira Toriyama

Manga Dogs vol 1 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Ema Toyama

Spice & Wolf vol 9 (£9-99, Yen Press) by Isuna Hasekura & Keito Koume

Vinland Saga Book 5 h/c (£16-99, Kodansha) by Makoto Yukimura

News

ITEM! Equality versus Equity – such a clear, clever image brought to my attention by comicbook creator Kate Brown (@autojoy on Twitter).

ITEM! Jamie McKelvie (THE WICKED + THE DIVINE) posted some fan art he’d drawn 10 years ago. Super-sweet!

ITEM! FLUFFY and FLUFFY VISITS PAGE 45 and PLEASE GOD, FIND ME A HUSBAND’s Simone Lia has a revamped website including pages from BAD MOTHER for you to read.

ITEM! ELLERBISMS’ Marc Ellerby visits Page 45 for the first time ever! I was so stoked! Here is Marc Ellerby with John Allison on Page 45’s counter.

ITEM! SelfMadeHero to publish Scott McCloud’s THE SCULPTOR! There’s a link there to some beautiful blue art!

ITEM! Gorgeous roofscape by Ian McQue! Believe it or not, that is a work in progress. Compare it with this interior art from Robert M. Ball’s DARK TIMES below:

ITEM! Well impressed by Salgood Sam’s DREAM LIFE preview pages! Such a lot of work has gone into them. If you too are impressed you can buy the graphic novel in print or digitally by following this link.

ITEM! HOW TO DRAW AWESOME COMIC’s Neill Cameron continued his Comics And Literacy campaign for Young Adults throughout the whole of last week. You can read his final post there with links to the others.

ITEM! Andrew Waugh has a new website: clean, elegant, full of beautiful art.

ITEM! A lot of American Comic Conventions stopped being comic conventions a long time ago, but it’s only getting worse. Here the The Beguiling’s manager and Toronto Comic Arts Festival explains exactly what’s wrong and why these conventions are so wrong for comics.

ITEM! Thankfully The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is ALL about comics. AND IT IS ALMOST UPON US!

ITEM! Glyn Dillon (THE NAO OF BROWN) and Fumio Obata (JUST SO HAPPENS) have an exhibition of original art in The Warehouse Café in Kendal. If you’re up for The Lakes International Comic Art Festival this October, make sure you visit!

ITEM! Page 45 Celebrates its 20^th Anniversary on 17^th October 2014 at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. So much going on in our very own comicbook-creator-crammed room.

As to my own ticketed talk, The Art Of Selling Comics, it is now in the can!

Which is an odd place to give it, I grant you.

Page 45 Signings Schedule in Georgian Room, Comics Clock Tower

Saturday 18 October 2014:

Main Tables

10am – 12pm   Scott McCloud
2pm – 4pm       Glyn Dillon

Table 1

10am – 2pm      Dan Berry & Kristyna Backzynski
2pm – 6pm        Lizz Lunney & Joe List

Table 2

10am – 2pm      Jack Teagle & Joe Decie
2pm – 6pm        Jade Sarson & Donya Todd

Table 3

10am – 2pm      Sarah McIntyre & Warwick Johnson – Cadwell
2pm – 6pm        Fumio Obata & Dan Berry

Sunday 19 October:

Main Tables

2pm: arrival of 24 hour comic marathon limited edition comics and all creators available

Table 1

10.30am – 2pm     Liz Lunney & Donya Todd
2.30pm – 5pm      Fumio Obata & Joe Decie

Table 2

10.30am – 2pm     Sarah McIntyre & Dan Berry
2.30pm – 5pm      Warwick Johnson Cadwell & Joe List

Table 3

10.30am – 2pm     Jack Teagle & Kristyna Backzynski
2.30pm – 5pm       Jade Sarson & Donya Todd

Please see Page 45 20^th Anniversary At The Lakes International Comic Art Festival blog for more details including my own show-and-tells, The Art Of Selling Comics talk, and the Page 45 Booze Bash on Friday 17^th October!

– Stephen

P.S. Click on this cover for the coolest comic in town!

Poblin himself is the most manic and crush-worthy creation in town! Fall for his lop-sided lunacy, gawp at his gormless grin and then hug him to death for his wide-eyed naivety and the most tactile, svelte pelt in history!

 – Stephen on Destination: Kendal by Jonathan Edwards, Felt Mistress, Sean Phillips

Fatale vol 5 Curse The Demon s/c (£10-99, Image) by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips.

The FATALE finale!

Now this is what I call a cover!

Thematically, it hones in on everything this book is about: passion and horror and the latest in a long line of men in thrall to a woman who cannot help herself, knowing he is in thrall yet willingly, ecstatically abandoning himself to her. Their soft bodies yield to each other, Josephine’s on top. All the while the world is being watched for any and all signs of their activity – of Josephine’s in particular – and those awful, burning eyes are staring directly into yours!

The colours are far from obvious, their thrillingly unnatural hues glowing all the stronger for being framed in a crisp, pure white. Combined with the logo, it is a design masterpiece and – haha! – how fortunate are we that Page 45’s shelves are black!

I promise you are in for a Sean Phillips surprise.

Oh, the majority of this volume is executed with the same shadow-intense, deeply troubling twilight you have come to expect, and the same rigorous discipline when it comes to the strict, tiered storytelling. But its climax is exactly that: an orgy of colour and composition as the barriers are broken, the walls between them collapse and all secrets are finally surrendered.

And it is at this precise moment that the most profound tragedy of Josephine’s curse is revealed. Her curse is that almost all men spending any length of time in her company will lose their hearts to Josephine and become emotionally and erotically obsessed. It’s a tragedy I never saw coming.

There’s even more to look forward to: architectural flourishes like San Francisco, 1906, and Otto’s library.

It is, however, the final two pages after such a long journey that are the belters. That face and that mouth and the far-away look in those eyes…

For far, far more on FATALE – on Ed Brubaker’s craft as well as Sean Phillips’ – please see our extensive reviews of the preceding volumes including the FATALE VOL 1 DELUXE H/C where I adapted my original review of its constituent softcovers to better reflect my seemingly spontaneous shop-floor show-and-tells.

Mesmerising.

SLH

Buy Fatale vol 5 Curse The Demon s/c and read the Page 45 review here

The Fade Out #1 – second print, first review (£2-75, Image) by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips.

“This was just how it was here… something in the air made it easier to believe the lies.”

Los Angeles, 1948.

Hollywoodland, to be precise, where the art of selling lies is its business.

Acting itself is a form of lying – creating the semblance of someone else – but there are also the myths spun to make actors more attractive to their idolatrous fans. Take the profile of dreamboat actor Tyler Graves, concocted by bright publicity girl Dotty Quinn, playing up his years as a ranch hand in Texas.

“Dotty, you’re a riot… I’ve never ridden a horse in my life.”
“I know, I still prefer the first one we came up with…”
“Oh right. I was a mechanic Selznick discovered when he broke down in Palm Springs.”
“It was your own little Cinderella story.”

But there’s a telling line in Posy Simmond’s British classic TAMARA DREWE from the horse’s mouth of successful crime novelist, Nicholas Hardiman:

“I think the real secret of being a writer is learning to be a convincing liar… I mean, that’s what we are: story tellers… liars…”

He should know: he’s a serial philanderer.

Screenwriter Charlie Parish is already lying. He’s a good man at heart, though he does like to party, by which I mean he drinks much more than he should. He’s prone to blackouts: not just passing out in the bath – which he did, last night – but to alcohol-induced memory blackouts. He’s not as bad as Gil Mason, the former writer now blacklisted for supposed Communist sympathies. That man is a full-time drunk, a bar-room bore, badgering Bob Hope before being thrown out on the street. Charlie and Gil used to be friends before Charlie shopped him. Now it’s common knowledge that they hate each others guts.

That’s a lie for a start – a dissemblance. For a very good reason.

But this morning Charlie has woken up in one of those little bungalows set up in Studio City to keep people close to the set. The night before is a mystery to him, but there’s a lipstick kiss on the bathroom mirror that reminds him of a smile, the smile leads to a face, and that face belongs to the woman lying dead on the living room floor.

It’s Valeria Sommers, young starlet of the film Charlie’s working on. She’s been strangled while Charlie was sleeping. Slowly, assiduously, Charlie begins to remove all trace of his and anyone else’s presence. But that’s nothing compared to the cover-up the studio’s about to embark on, and it’s going to make Charlie sick to the stomach…

Anyone who’s read CRIMINAL knows of Brubaker’s unparalleled ability to immerse readers in the minds of others and make those minds utterly compelling. Anyone who’s read CRIMINAL VOL 6 knows he’s so good at it that he can make your root for a prospective murderer. You’re certainly going to want Charlie to get away with his role – however circumstantial it may be – in Valeria’s death and his complicity in the subsequent cover-up, even though the studio is going to smear the poor girl’s name.

“He felt sick. Because he knew exactly what they were doing.
“Studios had been covering up murder and rape and everything in between since at least the Roaring Twenties. That’s what men like Brodsky were there for… to prevent scandals.
“And he’d helped them this time. He’d helped them.”

Charlie is yet another man trapped by his own act of fear, plagued by his guilt and about to do something else he knows he really, really shouldn’t…

Oh, and if readers think they will miss the horror of this team’s FATALE, wait until you see what Phillips pulls off for the nightmare.

It’s a period piece, the period being rife with tight-knit nepotism, closed-doors studios and overtly voiced bigotry. Wisely Brubaker has refrained from redacting that. Some people are shits – they just are – and there is such a thing as the non-authorial voice.

It’s very claustrophobic.

And I do believe that THE FADE OUT #2 is released today.

SLH

Buy The Fade Out #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Destination: Kendal! (£1-50, Lakes International Comic Art Festival) by Jonathan Edwards, Felt Mistress, Sean Phillips.

There is nothing I love more than mischief.

And when it comes cloth-covered in kindness, I love it even more!

I love it when writers and artists – or indeed anyone else – understand and trust each other to the point where they relish having fun poked at them!

Me and our Dee are constantly teasing each other on the shop floor. We’ve worked with each other for nearly twenty years now, mocking our own mannerisms, our failings and foibles whilst poking each other in the metaphorical ribs all day long. It makes me so happy.

This too makes me very happy indeed!

Produced to promote The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2014 and on sale there all weekend, this laugh-until-you-cry comic stars its Poblin’s Gang of hyperactive, completely deluded yet infectiously exuberant red, furry mascots.

Designed by POP! A COMPLETE HISTORY’s Jonathan Edwards, brought to lush, three-dimensional life by CREATURE COUTURE’s Felt Mistress and then photographed here by FATALE’s Sean Phillips, the Poblins are each as individual as the Banana Splits and are en masse an insane force of nature to be reckoned with. Now they are coming to town!

The town is Kendal, home to The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2014 in this, its second year, and the town doesn’t quite know what’s hit it.

These gleeful nutters have made studious notes on which comicbook creators will be appearing where and when (Scott McCloud, Becky Cloonan, Jeff Smith, Mary and Bryan Talbot, Glyn Dillon, Lizz Lunney, Dan Berry, Eddie Campbell, Junko Mizuno et al) but seem singularly fixated on artist and patron, Sean Phillips.

“We really hit it off when I visited his studio,” claims Poblin. “When I climbed up his drainpipe to wave at him through his studio window he screamed with delight that I was back again!”

Poor Sean! As for Poblin’s unauthorised helping hand to TRAINS ARE MINT’s Oliver East and his painstakingly painted, black and white murals, it was at that point that tears of laughter ran down my face right there on the bus back home.

This too, from queen of the zines, Zinny:

“My first was called “Zinny’s Zine” then I teamed up with my friend Dan on “Zinny’s Zine With Dan”, then I thought it would be funny to do a zine about Zinedine Zidane with Dan called “Zinny’s Zinedine Zidane With Dan”. Then I got writer’s cramp.”

Poblin himself is the most manic and crush-worthy creation in town! Fall for his lop-sided lunacy, gawp at his gormless grin and then hug him to death for his wide-eyed naivety and the most tactile, svelte pelt in history!

Photographed by Sean Phillips against Kendal’s green grass and then framed on the reddest paper in history, our comic-crash casualties come truly alive! Those colours are to die for.

I so, so want to meet them. I wonder if they’ll wander into Page 45’s Georgian Room in Kendal’s Clock Tower where we will have over £12,000 worth of the most diverse and individualistic comics and graphic novels on sale and where we are playing host to so many of those creators noted earlier?

If so, I pray they will allow themselves to be photographed with us and by us – unless poor Sean has recovered enough from Poblin’s last apparition to stop by himself. I want this so much. I don’t normally fall for the hirsute but if Poblin ever exhibits any, you know, “tendencies”, then I’ve begged the magnificent Felt Mistress to let me know.

I’d send Poblin flowers, but he’d probably eat them.

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2014 takes place from 17th to 19th October. This is the Lakesfest website! This is the Lakesfest 2014 programme!

All proceeds from our sales go directly to the Lakesfest: we’re not taking a penny. We’re doing this because we believe in this festival with all our hearts plus its director and curator, Julie Tait, is a complete and utter star.

There: I’ve said it.

Big hugs also to the Lakesfest’s Jenny, Sandra and Sharon without whose organisational acumen – equal only to Julie’s – exhibitors would be dazed and confused. You are all so loved and thank you.

SLH

Buy Destination: Kendal and read the Page 45 review here

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

This is a great little comic: a coming out story, a growing up story and a “some people can be absolutely awful, but others can be really quite great” story. Although told mostly in retrospect the key points, the ones on which the story hinge, hit you as very current, like the whole horrible thing is unfolding on you right now.

School-days drama is captured really well – boozy parties going a bit wrong, best mates transformed into bullies overnight and previously joyous things like favourite lessons and lunchtime hang-outs turned into desperate 45-minute sessions of hiding away in a corner. Even lovely parents, previously seen as protectors and champions suddenly just don’t seem to get it. Thankfully there are the little points of light too – the teacher who just “gets” it, the parents who *do* see what needs to be done and the friends who actually *are* friends, for real.

The art is nice with a blue and purple colour scheme that fits the story very well. There are a couple of truly great “what you look like in your mind’s eye” moments too which are both a bit funny and totally tragic, which is a pretty clever thing to pull off. A really touching, spirited and honest story, well told.

DK

Buy Like A Shark In A Swimming Pool and read the Page 45 review here

Rover Red Charlie (£14-99, Avatar) by Garth Ennis & Michael Dipascale.

“I’m a dog! I’m a dog! I’m a dog!”
“I’m a dog! I’m a dog! I’m a dog!”
“I’m a dog! I’m a dog!”
“I’m a dog! I’m a dog! I’m a dog!!”
“I’m a dog!”

There’s a little more going on in a dog’s brain than that: more they’re communicating to each other, to other animals and to ourselves although we are far too stupid to comprehend what that might be! But when they bark for the sole purpose of barking – of meeting and greeting and delighting in each other’s new-found company or warding off predators or prey – they are expressing this and this only:

“I’m a dog! I’m a dog! I’m a dog!”

Communication at its purest.

From the writer of PREACHER, THE BOYS, CROSSED and HELLBLAZER vols 5 to 8, I have to confess that Ennis has been starting so many so-so series of late only to relinquish them to others, that I had no expectations of this.

I was wrong.

Like Morrison and Quitely’s WE3 it is in part a work which doesn’t reflect well on the way some human beings treat their household pets – that the humans are soon absent from the story altogether, having immolated themselves or each other, makes no difference for their shadow looms long. The dogs may now be free to roam the world untethered and without constantly being pulled back on their leads with a “No!”, but it is very much a world made by human beings for human beings and if you’ve spent your entire life on Manhattan Island being provided for by those whom dogs call “feeders”, you’re going to find much of the wider world a bit of an eye-opener, other elements incomprehensible.

Also in common with WE3, the animals here have not been anthropomorphised. They’re quadrupeds without opposable thumbs and though they communicate, they do so very much from an animal’s perspective, where instinct plays a prominent part. There’s some great use of language: night to a dog is “sun-lie-down”, cats are “hisspots” and all that a chicken thinks is “shit!” A military dog later on has been programmed – sorry, trained – to perform very specific functions and that too is reflected in its priorities and the way it expressed them.

Alan Moore, who in VOICE OF THE FIRE achieved something similar with language and perspective in early man, provides a glowing and informative introduction, including a passage about how difficult such a project is to pull off.

“Most evidently, there’s the risk of cloying sentiment bringing a diabetic sweetness to the work, especially considering the likelihood that anyone attempting such an enterprise is either an admirer or, potentially, an owner of the animal in question. Even were we to presume a high degree of self-control in our imagined wordsmith there are other, far more serious obstacles, foremost among these being Ludwig Wittgenstein’s astute and perhaps insurmountable conclusion that if lions could talk, presumably in our own language, we would nonetheless still be incapable of understanding them. That is to say that the mind of a different species, predicated on a different range of sensory impressions and prerogatives, would be completely alien to our own.”

I’d say Garth Ennis has made a bloody good stab at it! And although there is even more of a risk to the artist than the writer of cute-ifying this to a saccharine extreme, Dipascale doesn’t. There is some slack-jawed lolloping because that’s what dogs do, but there’s also some extraordinary body language in defeat, some deeply upsetting canine carcasses, half-eaten or otherwise.

However, please don’t presume that this is all gloom, doom and Alsatians being bludgeoned to death on car bonnets. There is that: this is, after all a post-apocalyptic scenario similar in more ways than one to CROSSED except that in our madness we have at least had the good grace to rid this poor planet of our toxic, execrable existence. But in spite of this being very much a top-shelf series (please, please do not let your children near it because there will be nightmares and a lot of awkward explaining to do), there are moments of utter hilarity like trying to explain to a Red Setter – the stupidest creature in Christendom, which is why I love them the most – the importance of being smart.

“Eh?”

Nope, nothing going on upstairs whatsoever, just a tongue lolling out.

Charlie’s the bright one, a Border Collie guide-dog for the blind, trained to help humans and so better equipped for this sort of survivalism. But Red is the bravest, instinctively doing what Charlie is trained to, repeatedly saving their skins with his speed and his jaws continually clenched around one thing or another and, when thanked, mumbling with his mouth full, “Azzogay!” (“That’s okay”.)

It’s a comedic refrain which will lead to the single most moving moment in the book.

SLH

Buy Rover Red Charlie and read the Page 45 review here

Ex Machina Book 3 (£14-99, Vertigo) by Brian K. Vaughan & Tony Harris, John Paul Leon.

From the writer of SAGA.

EX MACHINA is a political comedy thriller, highly successful in all three aspects: it’s funny, it’s politically realistic rather than a big wet dream for pinko lefties like me, and it’s tense as hell.

Mitchell Hundred is mayor of New York City, but for some he will always be remembered as The Great Machine, a man who saved one of the Twin Towers from destruction using his ability to communicate with mechanisms. Until now we haven’t known exactly how he managed that; hell, until now we haven’t known where the powers exactly came from. All that changes at this half-way stage, and the signs are ominous.

As Mayor Hundred and his team gear up to tackle New York City’s drug laws – with internal debates as sophisticated as any of those you’ll have seen in that particularly cathartic episode of The West Wing – a woman sitting calmly on City Hall’s steps douses herself in kerosene and sets herself on fire. Is there a connection between that, Hundred’s recent admission to having smoked marijuana* and his earlier failure to get his priorities straight as a jet-packed crime fighter? Meanwhile his power to interact with machines appears to be overloading, and he’s having strange dreams with talking animals in them…

“These plants. They’re marijuana.”
“It’s not about the pot, 100. It’s about the black kettle.”

Threaded throughout is the search for a black male dressed in what looks like an authentic, department-issue fire fighter’s gear, using it to smash his way into apartments, assault and steal, with repercussions as brutal as The Shield’s. And that’s where Hundred’s liberal crusade to marry Wylie’s brother to his boyfriend so publicly comes back to haunt him, because Wiley’s brother is a fire fighter… and black.

“Actually, Mr. Major, I’ve got a pretty tight alibi. I was, uh… I was at a hotel. With another man.”
“When you say “another man,” please tell me you’re talking about your husband. Your lawfully wedded husband.”
“Sir, Bill and I have an… agreement. As long as it’s only physical, and as long as we’re safe and discreet, we trust each other enough to –”
“Jesus Christ, do you think that will mean anything to Middle America after some homophobic asshole in the NYPD leaks this to Limbaugh? You two had a responsibility! You represent fidelity and.. and commitment to millions of people who think that’s something your kind is totally incapable of!”
“”Your kind?””

See, that’s what I love about this: even its chief protagonist is complex and flawed, and the issues – including the drug ones – will not be easily resolved, however good the intentions.

Now a man in what looks like a sophisticated deep-sea diving suit materialises by the harbour; the city is plunged into darkness as the electricity go out; the machines stop talking to Hundred.

The stranger is here with a warning, but where’s he from? Another planet? Another time? And what does he want with Kremlin, Mitchell’s old friend currently conspiring to sabotage his administration from within?

SLH

Buy Ex Machina Book 3 and read the Page 45 review here

Words For Pictures: The Art And Business Of Writing Comics And Graphic Novels (£16-99, Watson Guptill) by Brian Michael Bendis with friends.

“Inform, Inspire, And Entertain”

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, all education should be entertainment.

I’ve seen so many didactic and dry books on this subject, bludgeoning you with words while forgetting that this – the end product for which you are learning to write – is a visual medium and its audience are comics readers. This is not one of them. This is a highly personalised, engaged and engaging joy.

So much is given over to what the comics pages which have been written by Bendis (and guests Fraction and Brubaker) come to look like and the visual processes they go through in getting there, because it is vital that any writer understands those processes. You are writing for a comics-reading audience, for sure, but your script is a letter to your artist and – if you have one – editor.

“Inform, inspire, and entertain,” Bendis urges. “If your script is clear, precise, and a pleasure to read, you make your collaborator’s lives everything they ever hoped for. If your script is ill-conceived, clumsy, or naïve to the art of the comic book page, then you make artists’ lives a living hell.”

Here Bendis will help you understand the art of the comic book page – and understand your artist – the art of the pitch, the art of the story outline and the art of the full script while emphasising that unlike film scripts, there are no set rules: there is room for flexibility and personality and different working relationships. You will be privy to many, many examples of all three.

Crucially, his business manager – who like Terry Moore’s and Jeff Smith’s happens to be his wife – will also help cure your naivety when it comes to the business side of writing for comics. Because regardless of whether you are writing scripts as work-for-hire for giant corporations like Marvel Entertainment or whether you are self-publishing solo or as a team with an artist, you are also running a business: your writing is your business. And as Brian and Alisa agree, Brian was utterly hopeless at running his writing career as a business.

Fortunately Alisa Bendis has a masters in education and a degree in business and has worked successfully in this specific business for as long as Brian has. I’d take note even if you are working with friends. Mark was my friend: we had a partnership agreement. Jonathan is my friend: we have a partnership agreement. Memories are fallible; contracts are vital. “The trouble starts when the money comes in; so be prepared.”

Joe Quesada’s foreword is full of sage advice, reiterated later by Bendis. It’s not just your talent but your tenacity which will make you a successful comicbook creator. It is the way you deport yourself and your thirst for knowledge. Showing your portfolio isn’t just about trying to secure a gig: the best creators want to learn from the experience in order to improve that portfolio in order to better secure a gig which is potentially a long way down a crowded line. Use your failures to reduce your failures!

As mentioned earlier, the artist’s perspective on a script is vitally important – they’re the ones who are going to be drawing it – so the likes of Bill Sienkiewicz, Sara Pichelli, Klaus Janson, Skottie Young, Mark Bagley, Walt Simonson and Mike Deodato Jr offer their thoughts on the collaborative process: their likes and dislikes. There’s a lengthy conversation been Mack and Maleev, another with Michael Avon Oeming, an Editors’ Roundtable forewarning you about early mistakes and encouraging you on more positive ways to attract attention. Hint: take advice. Hey, seek advice! And, once you’ve got a gig, don’t disappear! Diana Schutz – a phenomenal writer in her own right but also the editor I would want giving me stick while watching my back – gives her invaluable Writer’s Guide To Editors.

Fraction is fascinating on lettering, on trimming the script after Aja’s turned in the art on HAWKEYE (whose individual issues were in any case written in a completely different order to the one they were published in), and there are revelations from Bendis too. Aunt May in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN? That’s Bendis’ mum!

Finally, Brian’s introduction is an infectious account of his early quest for knowledge during a time when there were no books like these nor seminars nor Tumblr FAQ’s from creators easily accessible online. Some questions kept popping up again by aspiring writers hungry for knowledge, and those are reprinted here – with answers, obviously. We too are asked on a regular basis, “How do I get into comics?” Which is a bit like asking a music store assistant, how do I get a recording contract, except it isn’t. One of the best things about comics is their D.I.Y. aspect: you can create your own with a printer and some staples.

“How do I get into comics?” Make comics! If it’s work at one of the bigger companies you seek, “They will be your calling cards to editors.
“Inform, Inspire, And Entertain”

That’s what Bendis exhorts you to do; that is what he’s done here himself. If I wanted to write for comics, having read this I would no longer be sitting terrified in front of a keyboard, paralysed by what I didn’t know. I’d have a big, broad grin on my face, a twinkle in my eyes, and I would start typing and typing until the writing I saw started to match the ideas in my head.

P.S. “How do I make comics?” See MAKING COMICS by Scott McCloud.

SLH

Buy Words For Pictures: The Art And Business Of Writing Comics And Graphic Novels and read the Page 45 review here

Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor vol 5 (£18-99, Marvel) by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby.

“How monstrous! That unspeakable creature… is he… a troll?”
“Do not avert thine eyes, beloved! Thou must become accustomed to such sights!”

Or you could block him and move on.

I’ve been on Twitter for four years now and only blocked once. That’s how lovely our sympathisers are. Sorry…? @PageFortyFive, since you ask. Come join the good ship Drunk As Fuck as we sail the stormy seas of look-at-me online onanism. I’m as desperate for affirmation as the next narcissist.

Speaking of love, there comes a time in any relationship which looks like it’s getting serious; when you have to meet the in-laws.

Such is the stuff of comedy for it is a fact, universally acknowledged, that every kind and compassionate soul mate is in possession of parents who are a minefield of hidden neuroses, overt prejudice, or just plain rude. And if you thought Robert DeNiro was difficult, you should meet Odin, Thor’s old man and Asgard’s All-Father. At least, that’s what Thor suggests to his beloved Jane Foster.

“Hey, foxstress, come and meet Pops, he’s an absolute sweetie! He’s only down the road. Well, over the bridge – the Rainbow Bridge that leads to Hallowed Asgard. It’s beyond mortal ken, ye ken.”

It’s also beyond his poor mortal lovely. For within seconds of being led into Odin’s Beardedly Beloved Presence – before a single cup of tea or mug of mead has been poured – The Almighty One lands plain Jane with the gift of “unlimited flight”. Off she shoots o’er rooftops, scared witless.

She’s not given a moment to recover before her prospective All-Father-In-Law sends a minion to summon the dreaded Unknown, a being so terrifying that the Asgardian serf (who’s done little more than bang on a giant tuning fork) needs medical attention for a complete mental breakdown. So what does Odin do? He shoves the frail nurse into a locked room with the stygian soul. And Thor lets him do it!

It’s a test, you see. A bit like DeNiro and the lie detector, only with added instant death. You can imagine the arguments when those two get home!

“Forsooth, Jane Foster, my beloved and betrothed, thou art a scaredy cat indeed!”
“Forsooth my arse, you pig! You wait until I tell my mother!”

Anyway, that’s just one of the godly get-downs on offer for just under two tenners. Also popping their heads over this pantheon’s parapet: globe-guzzling Galactus, The Growing Man (guess what his special power is?), The Destroyer (no clues) and Ego, The Living Planet! It’s a semi-sentient shit-stirrer about the size of a planet, with an ego to match.

Which is where we came in, I believe.

SLH

Buy Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor vol 5 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?

Sam & Dave Dig A Hole h/c (£11-99, Walker Books) by Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen

Doctors (£12-99, Fantagraphics) by Dash Shaw

Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales Of Death And Dementia h/c (£18-99, Dark Horse) by Edgar Allen Poe & Richard Corben

Fairest vol 4: Of Men And Mice s/c (£10-99, Vertigo) by Marc Andreyko & Shawn McManus

Hip Hop Family Tree Box Set: 1975-1983 (£45-00, Fantagraphics) by Ed Piskor

Jim Henson’s The Musical Monsters Of Turkey Hollow h/c (£18-99, Archaia) by Jim Henson & Roger Langridge

Loverboys h/c (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Gilbert Hernandez

Mobile Suit Gundam Origin vol 7: Battle Of Loum (£22-50, Random House / Vertical) by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

Some Comics By Stephen Collins h/c (£12-99, Jonathan Cape) by Stephen Collins

Southern Bastards vol 1: Here Was A Man s/c (£7-50, Image) by Jason Aaron & Jason Latour

Star Cat Book 1 (£7-99, DFC) by James Turner

Sugar Skull h/c (£12-99, Jonathan Cape) by Charles Burns

The Hospital Suite (£16-99, Drawn & Quarterly) by John Porcellino

The Lonesome Go (£29-99, Fantagraphics) by Tim Lane

Batman vol 4: Zero Year – Secret City s/c (£12-99, DC) by Scott Snyder, James Tynioniv & Greg Capullo, Danny Miki, Rafael Albuqu

Injustice Year Two vol 1 h/c (£16-99, DC) by Tom Taylor & Bruno Redondo, various

Wonder Woman vol 4: War s/c (£10-99, DC) by Brian Azzarello & Cliff Chiang, Goran Sudzuka, Tony Akins, Dan Green

Wonder Woman vol 5: Flesh h/c (£18-99, DC) by Brian Azzarello & Cliff Chiang, Goran Sudzuka, Aco

Kick-Ass 3 h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Mark Millar & John Romita Jr.

Moon Knight vol 1: From Dead s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Warren Ellis & Declan Shalvey

One Piece vol 72 (£6-99, Viz) by Eiichiro Oda

Seraph Of The End, Vampire Reign vol 2 (£6-99, Viz) by Takaya Kagami & Yamato Yamamoto

News

ITEM! Neill Cameron is on a kids’ comics crusade. And I love it! Comics And Literacy Part One and Comics And Literacy Part Two. More to follow! Oh yes! Simply click on this for Neill Cameron’s latest blogs

ITEM! We are similarly passionate about young readers’ literacy. Please see Page 45’s Graphic Novels For Schools And Libraries 2014!

ITEM! THE BAD DOCTOR is shooting out here. Everything and anything to do with mental and medical illness is. Haven’t comics come of age! Here THE BAD DOCTOR’s Ian Williams discusses how comics can bridge the language gap between fine art and medicine.

ITEM! Man receives jail sentence for Twitter rape threats. Brilliant! More jail sentences for all rape threats, please!

ITEM! This is not a comic about eating a cat. But you never know with Dakota McFadzean, do you?

ITEM! Finally! Hurrah! CEREBUS full-colour covers bound in a book full of beauty! We really need your pre-orders, please!

It’s not on our website, so please send your pre-orders in via phone (0115 9508045) or email (page45@page45.com).

And if you have no idea what the fuss is about, we have reviewed every single edition of Dave Sim and Gerhard’s CEREBUS, currently on the verge of new printings. Not only is it one of the most powerful works in comics, it is the most substantial: 300 issues beginning, middle and end.

Also, without Dave Sim and Gerhard, there would be no Page 45. Scroll down, do!

– Stephen