Archive for March, 2015

Page 45 Comic & Graphic Novel Reviews March 2015 week four

Wednesday, March 25th, 2015

All my reviews are sales pitches for series’ first volumes even if I’m reviewing book three. No spoilers, but a new angle which I hope will intrigue. For  current comics I rate LAZARUS by Greg Rucka & Michael Lark right up there with SAGA, VELVET and THE FADE OUT. LAZARUS VOL 3 below!

The Tea Collection (£12-99) by Andy J. Poyiadgi.

Such colours, such craft and such a surprise!

This demure yet decorous package Page 45 has popped together from Andy Poyiadgi’s two fold-out stories ‘Teapot Therapy’ and ‘On Reflection’ plus all three of his ‘Teabag Theory’ minis. Each of those – I kid you not – will need to be prised from a teabag threaded with string.

You see? You’re smiling already! I’m an absolute sucker for packaging.

You won’t need to tear them, just tease open at the top betwixt the twine then lift the mini-comic message out with two fingers! Or tweezers. Or chopsticks. Sugar tongs would be deliriously apposite but who even owns sugar tongs any longer outside of those serving Cornish Cream Teas? Actually one of my Aunts does. I think they’re silver, just like that spoon I was born with.

‘Teabag Theory #2: The Primordial Brew’ discusses Charles Darwin’s famous proclamation in 1871 that the ideal conditions for the origin of life were those of a “warm little pond” or – as Andy would have it – a slowly stewing pot of tea. You’ve got your receptacle and your geothermal juices then “Infuse with a combination of local minerals and organic compounds” is the tea leaves’ role. I hate to spoil a good punchline but “Allow to cool before evolving into millions of unique, self-sustaining organisms” takes the true bravado biscuit.

The other two I’ll leave you to discover yourselves but before we move on we’ve also added on of Andy’s various postcards to each pack, like ‘The Fine Art Of Facial Acting’. I’d be inclined to kill the director.

And so to ‘Teapot Therapy’, the largest component standing tall at just under A4 and folding out twice into what would make a smashing framed print on your wall. With its subdued farmhouse colours and plenty of pristine white space surrounding diversely clustered panels, it’s far from cluttered and not a million miles for Chris Ware in the classy department.

In it kindly Mrs Peartree, perhaps a little past middle-age, relishes the opportunity to share her love of tea time and all its traditions and trimmings – including her homemade cake, biscuits and more biscuits – with the man who’s come to fix her boiler. Of course that’s not all that’s happening because traditions have to come from somewhere, don’t they, and this is pure Alan Bennett ‘Talking Heads’ material.

‘On Reflection’, however, was cleverest of all. Folding out accordion-style it is a little like Paul Auster’s CITY OF GLASS (adapted by David Mazzucchelli for comics) in that it’s about the loss of self. A young man moves into an unfurnished apartment and buys an antique, full-length mirror. And a bed, table and two chairs, but that seems about it. His life appears to be very spartan. It is only gradually and subtly that Poyiadgi introduces the oddities.

“One day, I thought I saw my reflection fall asleep.”

Andy could have chosen any discrepancy of movement yet chose the one thing you cannot ordinarily do in front of a mirror.

The next is a faint “?OLLEH” coming from the mirror although Andy has reversed the shape of the lettering as well as its order into a true reflection. Fortunately for the longer pronouncements I can read backwards. (And I can recite the alphabet backwards within 3 seconds, but I digress.) Unlike the protagonist who is so drained that he’s pretty much lost the will to live, his reflection – now afforded the opportunity to make himself heard, does so. Because think on this: you can choose to stare at your reflection in the mirror any time you want; or you can choose to stop doing that any time you like and look at an infinite number of other things in books, in comics, on TV, out of the window, down your street, in the city, in the countryside between our cities, across the seas which separate our countries or up and down those foreign countries instead. Your reflection can’t.

All your reflection has to stare at is your ugly mug.

Very few mirrors face a window because, you know, lighting, so your reflection has probably never even glimpsed the outside world behind you.

So what do you imagine your reflection wants most?

SLH

Buy The Tea Collection and read the Page 45 review here

Pablo (£16-99, SelfMadeHero) by Julie Birmant & Clément Oubrerie.

“I need a goddess for 10:30.”

You won’t get a line like that in most prose biographies!

You’ll get hardly any of this delirious dialogue.

Drawn with infectious animation by AYA: LIFE IN YOP CITY’s and LOVE IN YOP CITY’s Clément Oubrerie then coloured in predominantly sombre, sandy hues, unlike the other recent entertainment VINCENT (Van Gogh), this cover is the only visual element imitating Picasso’s own.

It’s also rather misleading in that the period covered here stretches from Picasso’s arrival in Paris from Spain in 1900, through his Blue Period, Rose Period then finally his African-influenced Period which ended in 1909.

The completion of ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ (1907) is a key moment kicking off that African-influenced period but otherwise you’re rarely given a glimpse of what Picasso’s painting, Cubism barely gets a mention bar a staggered Picasso receiving news that Georges Braque had invented it, and the cover’s much later Surrealist style of the late 1930s is obviously nowhere in sight.

Still, that’s marketing for you.

The climax / culmination is in fact Le Banquet Rousseau with Picasso threw with much mirth and excitement in 1908 for the elderly Henri Rousseau whose brilliance he recognised even those Rousseau had been the laughing stock of the Salon des Indépendants for two decades.

Still, that’s the art establishment for you. Picasso wouldn’t exhibit there, even though his friends did.

And that’s what this graphic novel is actually about: Picasso’s life, love and friendships. It boasts quite the stellar cast! Henri Matisse, much lauded as The Master, is the most establishment figure, André Derain pops by long enough to tantalise Pablo with an African mask, but other than that it’s the more boisterous or non-conformist likes of Gertrude Stein (so entertainingly scripted here!), Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob who apparently had the most almighty crush on Picasso and with whom Picasso moved in briefly. The apartment was so small that they even shared a bed, just not at the same time of day.

No, unlike the rest of the cast who seem to have been promiscuous bed-hoppers, Pablo had eyes only for artists’ model Fernande Olivier otherwise known as Madame De la Baume, née Amélie Lang. And it is an elderly, long-forgotten Fernande who is the narrator.

That Fernande ever escaped to Paris from her loveless marriage to a seedy, abusive reprobate who’d even steal away with her shoes to keep her at home is a minor miracle. Meanwhile Picasso’s wealthier, pretty-boy childhood friend Carlos Casagemar whose family funded their move to Paris falls too far in love with a woman with whom he has a tempestuous relationship exacerbated by drink and, after being rejected, attempts to shoot her before putting a bullet in his own brain at a public dinner.

This is a key moment in Picasso’s life and development as an artist because (I know I said he was relatively monogamous) he cheats on his own girlfriend with dead Carlos’ femme fatale and one big bust-up and a bucket of booze later one guilt catalyses an earlier, more deep-seated one also rooted in death. Et voila: the Blue Period which rendered him a commercial leper.

The other main character (!) and focal point of the narrative is the legendary dingy, dank and dirty Bateau-Lavoir mini-mansion in Montmatre where Pablo and Fernande spent most of their lives living during this period along with fifteen other tenants. There are moments of bed-bug-ridden squalor but Clément Oubrerie pulls out all the colourful stops when Picasso finally succeeds in courting a reluctant Fernande and first introduces her to his studio there.

Oubrerie’s occasional half-page interiors and Parisian exteriors are a space-filled marvel.

Same goes for the Catalan landscapes which provide a thrilling contrast to the city they spend most of their time in.

I learned loads and enjoyed myself thoroughly while doing so: I had no idea that they’d briefly (so briefly!) adopted a young girl.

It is, however, not what I was expecting so, to avoid the possibility of disappointment, I would remind you that this doesn’t do what it says on the tin – or in this case the cover. It does, however, leave you desperate for more as Max Jacob – in his role as part-time astrologer and tarot-card reader (an invention?) – warns Fernande of what lies ahead for them all post-1908.

SLH

Buy Pablo and read the Page 45 review here

Lazarus vol 3: Conclave s/c (£10-99, Image) by Greg Rucka & Michael Lark with Tyler Boss.

“The weather’s turning. It looks like a storm.”
“Is that why you’re nervous?”
“There’s talk that your Family will go back to Hock.”
“It will not happen.”
“…”
“I would very much like to kiss you. Would you permit me to kiss you, Forever?”
“Please.”

A rare moment of tenderness, that, for the Carlyle family’s youngest daughter, its military commander and pre-eminent soldier, assassin and bodyguard. That’s what being a Lazarus entails.

If Forever is formal it is because however effective she is in the field, her duties have deprived her of any emotional experience she might call her own. If she is nervous it is because she is finally allowing herself to have the first tentative steps of one with Joacquim Morray, Lazarus of the Morray family which may currently be allied to the Family Carlyle but which looks very likely to switch sides to the Carlyles’ most manipulative and bitter competition, Jakob Hock.

Then it won’t matter how respectful Joacquim is or how much Forever’s heart hurts: if their Families demand they fight, they will do so, if necessary to the death. That hasn’t happened yet but something so similar between others does, and it is heartbreaking.

It wouldn’t be half so affecting if GOTHAM CENTRAL’s Michael Lark couldn’t convey intimate and vulnerable affection as well as he commands the fluid balletics of hand-to-hand combat.

Lark is equally adept at an actual dance, the other rare moment of tenderness preceding this scene which Jakob Hock – with his flair for the dramatic, the cruel and humiliating – interrupts to devastating effect.

Oh, and the environment: Lark is one of my favourite landscape artists. His rain I rate up there with Eisner.

LAZARUS is set in the not-too-far future when the world has gone feudal again. Democracies have imploded, politicians no longer exist and the globe has been carved up between the sixteen wealthiest Families because money buys people, money buys technology and money buys guns. Money, technology and guns buy power and control.

The strategy Greg Rucka has employed to introduce this grave new world to its readers has been impeccable: LAZARUS VOL 1 showed us the focal-point Family Carlyle and two sharp-toothed vipers in its nest; LAZARUS VOL 2 broadened its scope to societal structure – the bottom-heavy pyramid of Family at the top, its wafer-thin secondary layer of privileged serfs useful to Family prosperity, then the vast majority deemed and so dismissed as “waste” underneath. This third volume widens its outlook to the geopolitical set-up as decrepit old Jakob Hock takes advantage of a schism within Family Carlyle by ransoming its one errant member while attempting to steal from his body the Longevity Code which has granted Family Carlyle and some of its serfs a vastly extended lifespan. See? Technology does buy power. You’d surely shift your allegiances for such a boon.

And that’s what this instalment’s about: loyalty and allegiances. During a Conclave hosted by the British Family Armitage on a luxury rig in the North Sea you’ll get to meet twelve of the sixteen Families – or at least their representatives – and by golly their current conflicts form a complex Cat’s Cradle!

But what I relished above all in this chapter was seeing the Lazari interact with each other in their downtime before, during and after a poker game while their heads of Family debate without their feared presence behind closed doors. For if this is a reversion to a feudal society, so the notion of Chivalry has returned too: specifically the etiquette of safe passage and the respect of knights for each other and conduct towards each other regardless of their masters’ aggravations.

This is evidently something that needs to be learned for there is a new Lazarus in their midst, one Captain Cristof Mueller who is arrogant and Aryan in a Teutonic way and he doesn’t care much for Li Jaolong, Lazarus of the Chinese Family Li, whose skills as a bodyguard he deems slim given that Li is – much like Professor Stephen Hawking – confined to a wheelchair and communicating via a speech synthesizer. Bristling from having been successfully played at poker, Mueller doesn’t mince his words which may include “genetic mistake”.

Yeah. Perhaps he should have considered that Jaolong wouldn’t have been selected as a Lazarus if he didn’t have certain compensatory skills. Cristof’s comeuppance is cathartic, I promise you!

Loyalties, then: Forever’s is to her family above and beyond all. LAZARUS VOL 2 ensured we understood both how and why. But is that loyalty reciprocated?

While we find out I return you to our opening feature and kiss:

“I hope… I hope that was all right.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid…. I was afraid I would take of metal and oil.”
“That is not how you taste. Did I do it right?”
“Oh, yes. Very well indeed.
“You’re my first kiss.”
“And second. May I be your third?”
“Joacquim. I may not want to stop.”
“I may not want you to.”

SLH

Buy Lazarus vol 3: Conclave and read the Page 45 review here

Giant Days #1 (£2-99, Boom!) by John Allison & Lissa Treiman…

“Do you think, if we hadn’t been given rooms next to each other, that we’d have ended up being friends?”
“Yes!”
“No.”
“Oh.”

That most incongruous trio of university chums Daisy Wooton, Esther De Groot and Susan Ptolemy return in this six-issue series! Just not quite as you remember them from their first three outings (all reviewed: GIANT DAYS, GIANT DAYS 2 and GIANT DAYS 3) simply because John has concentrated on the writing duties this time around and handed the pencils over to the talented Lissa Treiman.

I was, probably like a few people will be, puzzled by this passing of the artistic torch, so promptly went in search of answers. What I found was an excellent interview with John Allison that explains all: basically he wanted to cut down on his workload, and also the revelatory fact that John is 38!!?! Now I do think I’m looking reasonably well preserved for my beginnings-of-hoary old age of 42, but for those of you who have never seen John in the flesh, let me assure you that he does not look his years whatsoever. I met him for the first time late last year and I just assumed he was a whippersnapper in his mid-twenties, such was his fresh-faced demeanour. Granted, if I had thought about it, I would have realised that meant he started his comics career when we was about 5, but still, it does make me wonder if whilst researching the rum and uncanny antics that frequently beset the residents of Tackleford in his excellent BAD MACHINERY series, he hasn’t discovered the secret of eternal youth.

Anyway… I can’t imagine it was an easy decision to let someone else bring his creations to life, but John made a very wise selection in Lissa Triesman, for whilst she does have a decidedly different style to John’s – and that particular thought did arise a few times during the course of this first issue simply because I loved the his first three GIANT DAYS so much – she imbues the characters with just the same sense of madcap joy and energy, and crazy hair. It’s not an exact comparison, but I can see a distinct similarity in style between Lissa and Adrian Alphona, who has been doing such an excellent job pencilling MS. MARVEL. Actually, if John is going to continue his writing-and-not-illustrating career, now that is a title I would love to see him have a go at!

So, for those utterly unfamiliar with GIANT DAYS, who are Daisy Wooton, Esther De Groot and Susan Ptolemy? They are three students thrown together in the glorious chaos of Fresher’s Week who have already…

“…helped Esther fight off the head girls of four snooty private schools. Then we helped Esther get over a painful break-up and crushed the gross lad ruining her good name all over town. Then there was the whole incident where Esther joined Black Metal Society and accidentally got a weird mystical tattoo and…”

Yes, Esther De Groot is prone to the odd bit of drama. As Susan Ptolemy remarks, Esther radiates a ‘drama field’, which seemingly has sufficient gravitational mass to suck in all those around her. Not that Susan and Daisy haven’t got their own intriguing foibles and indeed… secrets, but there is no doubt who is their resident drama queen, despite her protestations to the contrary. In this opener, though, it’s a mysterious moustachioed and smouldering stranger called McGraw from Susan Ptolemy’s closely guarded past which reluctantly forces her centre-stage.

There’s a story there for sure, not that Susan’s sharing yet. And for those long-term GIANT DAYS readers wondering on the whereabouts of Esther De Groot’s doe-eyed devotee and most wishy-washy man on campus, Ed Gemmell, rest assured, he’s here. He’s just had the misfortune to be made roommates with McGraw…

Anyone who read the first three GIANT DAYS should definitely keep reading for this is a fantastic continuation, but I also suspect this six-issue series is going to win John legions of new fans, which is great news for him, because repeat prescriptions for the elixir of youth can’t be cheap.

JR

[Editor’s note: GIANT DAYS #1 has gone to second print after just one week on sale. But we have 20 copies left which you may avail yourselves of like so…]

Buy Giant Days #1 and read the Page 45 review here

United States Of Murder Inc. vol 1: Truth h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming.

I don’t know about you but few things terrify me more than the mafia or its equivalents: the IRA and even the CIA etc. I don’t want to get sucked into worlds which leave me impotent and exposed yet from which there is no hope of escape. People with power who are way beyond accountability who can use you and abuse you and demand your submission.

From the creative team who brought you POWERS comes something equally dark but completely free from capes. In a power struggle between some very dangerous men it is so, so tense. I highly recommend it to readers of CRIMINAL.

Here the mafia were never subdued in America. Instead a considerable portion of the country was conceded to them to rule semi-surreptitiously and with impunity as long as they left the rest of the politicians alone.

Handsome young Valentine is sworn in as a Made Man long before his few years of service would generally merit it. But his father – and his father’s father before him – was of such stock that he was effectively fast-tracked. And Valentine is equally committed to the family.

His first duty is to deliver a message to a Senator in Washington DC. The message was in the form of a briefcase and that, however cryptic to others, would speak for itself. Valentine asked for his cousin to accompany him and reluctantly that was agreed. He didn’t ask for hitwoman Jagger Rose to accompany him but she was persuasive, effective, so reluctantly he agreed.

The message was seemingly delivered but another was sent in its place: the detonation of a bomb, blowing up said Senator. Nobody knows what it means. Or at least, no one will admit to knowing or to being its messenger.

The hunt for the truth behind the bomb blast is on and it’s a race against time because Valentine and Jagger Rose – although caught in its path – are the most obvious prime suspects. They’re wanted more dead than alive by the government, the families in general and their very own family in particular who claim to their faces that Valentine and Jagger have betrayed them.

Whom do they trust? Whom do you trust? Who has set whom up and why?

Oeming and Soma have delivered something dark, stark, brooding and sweaty: claustrophobic and unsettlingly lit. The colours are far from naturalistic and occasionally venomous – I’m thinking the intrusion of Valentine’s Ma on her son and Jagger Rose – while the first page’s flashback in chapter two was a wee bit Hernandez. Lots and lots of silhouettes. Quite a lot of crimson.

It’s jagged and nasty and grotesque. The faces are like masks when you can see them at all. So often all you get are the eyes, burning with bitterness or hatred. So much of this is instinctively delivered, expressionistic, like lines of reverse silhouettes or tiny side-panels offering background chatter, the rolling of dice and the cocking or firing of guns.

I haven’t told you everything. Valentine has been set up, I can assure you of that. But was it by his own don, another family, Rose herself or another party? Because in the very first chapter immediately after being sworn in to the mafia family and its innermost circle whom Valentine has been raised to love with all his heart, he is called to one side by his mother.

And she tells him a secret.

I’ve never known a series with so many reversals so early on then repeated throughout right to the very last page. I rate POWERS. I rate it very highly. I am big fan of Bendis to a degree that is almost unseemly. Pop him in our search engine and see for yourself!

But this is on another level completely.

SLH

Buy United States Of Murder Inc. vol 1: Truth h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Ms. Marvel vol 2: Generation Why s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by G. Willow Wilson & Jake Wyatt, Adrian Alphona…

“I see. Well, if you’re not very good at it… helping people that is… perhaps you need a teacher.”
“A teacher? Wait… you’re not going to tell me to be a good girl, focus on my studies, and do istaghfar or something?”
“If I told you that, you’d ignore me. I know how headstrong you are. So instead I will tell you to do what you are doing with as much honour and skill as you can.”
“I can’t believe it. I thought you were going to warn me about Satan and boys.”
“I’ve been giving youth lectures at this mosque for ten years. If I still have to warn you about Satan and boys, I should lose my job. I am asking you for something more difficult. If you insist on pursuing this thing you will not tell me about, do it with the qualities befitting an upright young woman: courage, strength, honesty, compassion and self-respect. Do we have a deal?”

Ha, I am pretty sure that the sort of teacher the Imam had in mind wasn’t Wolverine or, indeed, Lockjaw. Yes, the Inhuman dog. But, those are exactly the first two teachers who appear to Karmala in her hour of superheroing need.

Also, despite the Imam’s words of wisdom, there’s no way of avoiding all the hard learning in Superhero 101 that needs to be done on the job, taking it quite literally on the chin. Much like real life, really. Still, having someone who’s the ‘best at what he does’ pro-offering a few tips can’t be too unhelpful, I suppose. And after their little team-up Logan obviously felt Karmala needed a watchful eye on an ongoing basis, so he dropped a hint to Captain America, who in turn then had a quiet word with Medusa, resulting in Karmala getting her very own teleporting watchdog!

Great to see this title sustaining the effortless sense of nonsensical fun that should be everyone’s teenage years which began in MS MARVEL VOL 1.

Meanwhile, battling the bad guys is only marginally less troublesome to Karmala than staying one secret-identity-in-perpetual-peril step ahead of her well meaning family, her strict, traditional dad in particular. He means well, but he’s clearly no idea what it’s like to be a teenage Muslim girl growing up in modern day America, much less a superhero. Karmala is in many ways a Peter Parker for her generation, an outsider looked down upon by the so-called cool kids.

It’s still very early days for this title obviously, but it’s perhaps not understating the quality of the writing to say it feels as wittily relevant to our time as the original puny Peter Parker, high school version, was back in the day. G. Willow Wilson certainly captures the whole “With great power comes inordinate personal danger and perpetual destruction of social standing” schtick perfectly.

JR

Buy Ms. Marvel vol 2: Generation Why s/c and read the Page 45 review here

I Kill Giants (£14-99, Image) by Joe Kelly & JM Ken Nimura.

Visually it’s Sam Kieth inked by Tim Sale.

There’s a little Sam Kieth in the script too as a feisty geek of a girl who insists on wearing bunny ears at home, in class and round at her friends’ house equally insists that she kills giants. Nor will she back down in the principal’s office. She thinks her kind, older sister patronises her, she hates her peers’ obsession with Britney Spears…

She’s an outsider, basically, hopelessly deluded and living in a fantasy world of her own.

Or is she?

SLH

Buy I Kill Giants and read the Page 45 review here

Oink: Heaven’s Butcher s/c (£13-50, Dark Horse) by John Mueller.

“Things are put in holes to be forgotten… The deeper the hole, the darker the truth… Until one day they realise the hole be not deep enough.”

I wish I could have found you that particular hellish hole online. Shot with such an acute perspective that it’s vertigo-inducing, a thick iron chain draws your eye down storey after storey of square, rusted-metal walkways into what seems like a bottomless industrial pit.

Thankfully I did light upon the vast and equally formidable exterior to Public Slaughterhouse 628 which used to be a school, it seems, complete with all the battlement barbed wire I remember so well from my own.

In case you haven’t gathered yet, you’re not here to have fun.

I can only assume that John “meat is murder” Mueller is a vegetarian. Originally published twenty years ago when we were still talking about factory farming, animals’ cramped conditions and the sheer horror of the slaughterhouse, this grotesque anthropomorphic horror story stars two distinct breeds of pig: those that have been bred to eat, so stuffed that their legs can no longer support their weight and so stuck in a truss on a trolley, and the slave race cross-bred with humans to breed those pigs which they’re then served up as dinner.

The consequent mad pig disease comes in the form of insubordination: questioning authority and the temerity of asking for answers. The punishment young Oink is dished out with in retribution is repulsive.

As the story opens he’s no longer young but locked in a cell about to confess his “sins”. The rest is all axe-flashing flashbacks.

Fleshed out with a great many extra story pages, pin-ups and process pieces (I’m not even trying to pun this one out), it is immediately evident how much hard work and painterly skill has been sunk into this. Admittedly you’re going to need to love the Simon Bisley school of painting (thick, muscular and positively oozing testosterone), but it’s as accomplished as any I’ve seen. Obviously the overall message I’d also agree with: can we not treat people like animals, please, and can we not treat animals the way we treat animals, either?

It is, however, somewhat blunt.

Also: I’m the first one to throw stones at organised religion’s mind-control and hate-mongering but I’m not quite sure how it’s a viable target in this instance!

I don’t think anyone really relishing horror will be disappointed, though. Includes mouths and eyes sewn shut.

SLH

Buy Oink: Heaven’s Butcher and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy!

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

The Swords Of Glass h/c (£25-99, Humanoids) by Sylviane Corgiat & Laura Zuccheri

Criminal vol 3: The Dead And The Dying s/c (£10-99, Image) by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips

Lost Property (£6-50, Nobrow) by Andy Poyiadgi

Low vol 1: The Delirium Of Hope (£7-50, Image) by Rick Remender & Greg Tocchini

BPRD Plague Of Frogs vol 3 s/c (£18-99, Dark Horse) by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi & Guy Davis

Reflections s/c (£18-99, Dark Horse) by David Mack

Big Hard Sex Criminals h/c (£29-99, Image) by Matt Fraction & Ziggy Chooch

Morning Glories vol 8 (£9-99, Image) by Nick Spencer & Joe Eisma

Wayward vol 1: String Theory (£7-50, Image) by Jim Zub & Steven Cummings

Superman Wonder Woman vol 1: Power Couple s/c (£12-99, DC) by Charles Soule & Tony S. Daniel

Inhuman vol 2: Axis s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Charles Soule & Pepe Larraz, Ryan Stegman

Runaways: Complete Collection vol 3 s/c (£29-99, Marvel) by Brian K. Vaughan, others & Stefano Caselli, Mike Norton, Michael Ryan, Adrian Alphona, Takeshi Miyazawa

She-Hulk vol 2: Disorderly Conduct s/c (£9-99, Marvel) by Charles Soule & Javier Pulido

Wolverine: Origin II s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Kieron Gillen & Adam Kubert

Neon Genesis Evangelion vol 14 (£6-99, Viz) by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

The Heroic Legend Of Arslan vol 2 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Yoshiki Tanaka & Hiromu Arakawa

UQ Holder vol 4 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Ken Akamatsu

News!

ITEM! Colour in Comics: LIGHTEN UP by Ronald Wimberly – such a wittily rendered and cleverly constructed comic on colour. As in those of the spectrum and as pertaining to race. You’ll see, you’ll see!

ITEM! Sean Phillips curates ‘Comics Go Pop!’ – A Lakes International Comic Art Festival exhibition in October of music sleeve art created by comicbook artists.

ITEM! Funny! Artist Steve Pugh on getting so carried away with drawing that you forget what you’re drawing

ITEM! “When your lover may be dead, how long can you hold on to what remains? To whatever is left of you? A plane crash, a package, her dog, her voice. A notebook, his writer’s block, and heat-distorted summer memories of a search for Jumbo the Elephant and an absent father.”

That’s the synopsis for Kathryn & Stuart Immomen’s RUSSIAN OLIVE TO RED KING arriving in May. Please click on that link to pre-order. Because this also intrigued me: RUSSIAN OLIVE TO RED KING previewed. Then I saw this beautiful Border Collie and extraordinary quality of light…

–       Stephen

Page 45 Comic & Graphic Novel Reviews March 2015 week three

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS by Raymond Briggs, new Dylan Horrocks plus Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky, Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon, Becky Cloonan & Andy Belanger, Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill, Ales Kot & Langdon Foss, Warren Ellis & Colton Worley, Mark Millar & John Romita, Peter Milligan & Jordan Crain.

Sam Zabel And The Magic Pen (£14-99, Knockabout) by Dylan Horrocks…

“One day he hears a word that sticks… “Anhedonia.”
The absence of pleasure, of joy.
He tries to remember the last time he really enjoyed something…
After all, what’s to enjoy?
Comics feel like work.
Novels feel pretentious and contrived.
Movies are all the same.
Food tastes stale.
Music palls.
As for writing and drawing…
That’s where I live now (thinks Sam)…
ANHEDONIA.”

Given that HICKSVILLE was published back in 1998 (can it really be that long ago?) and the main character in this work, Sam Zabel, is credited with having published a comic called Pickle (in which Dylan first serialised HICKSVILLE), I wonder to what degree the aspect of this work pertaining to writer’s block is auto-biographical? Possibly not at all, but I am intrigued nonetheless. I mean, HICKSVILLE in part was a karmic missive on the perils and pitfalls of someone enriching themselves through plagiarism and I’m not aware it’s something Dylan has ever suffered from, or indeed indulged in!

Indulgence. Now there’s a word that wouldn’t immediately spring to mind when thinking of the fraught emotional mindset of Sam Zabel, either, but in one sense that’s precisely why he’s in the fragile state he is. Having taken the cushy number of the regular corporate paycheck to write and illustrate the adventures of Lady Night for a large publisher, he’s gradually lost his creative spark, even the will to work on his own projects. Indeed he’s reached the stage where he doesn’t even feel he’s honouring the spirit of the original classic Lady Night comics from 1954 drawn by Lou Goldman, which were existential, metaphysical musings by a character with genuine emotional depth, as opposed to the repetitive beatdowns by a buxom babe in a skimpy outfit Sam’s now peddling. It’s a situation which has caused Sam to drift into a spiralling self-defeating loop of guilt and ennui.

Dealing with the topic of writer’s block alone would be sufficient material enough to make an extremely compelling graphic novel, but Horrocks takes it considerably further with the titular conceit of the magic pen, in essence a wish-fulfilment device which enables the holder to draw comics that become realities it is then possible for people to enter, and indeed characters to switch between.

Now comics, being comics, are occasionally written with, perhaps putting it unkindly, a certain audience in mind, thus Sam, having begun an epic odyssey to locate the pen, and solve his particular problem, finds himself experiencing the fantasy realms of other people’s minds. Some of the characters of certain realms, are, shall we say, somewhat predisposed to removing their already skimpy clothes and indulging in carnal acts.

I have to say, bravo to Dylan for tackling such a thorny issue within our beloved medium. I was actually slightly uncomfortable reading it when the story started to go in a certain direction, which is probably exactly the sort of response he wanted to engender in his readers. It makes perfect sense in the context of the story, and it neatly foreshadows a rather dark turn in the plot later on, highlighting a particularly unwholesome sub-genre of manga, which gives the topic a certain sense of gravity, and indeed perspective. But you can’t tackle wish fulfilment in comics without heading into the murky world of sexual gratification, which at the thinnest edge of the wedge rears its head in the typically insalubrious form of the female superhero costume…

Thus bringing us neatly back to Lady Night, for the original was penned by Lou Goldman using the magic pen, allowing Sam to meet the character who ought to be his muse. It’s a pivotal, touching scene, which ultimately allows Sam to reconnect with himself, and in turn what’s most important to him, his family and his art. It also provides a comment on what comics, even superhero comics, can be at their finest. Food for thought, even nourishment for the soul. Not that they need to be, not all of them, obviously. Not even the majority. It’s perfectly fine for them to be merely entertaining too, even purely about wish fulfillment perhaps, provided they fall within what’s morally acceptable.

I’m not making the call about what is and what isn’t morally acceptable, by the way, and ultimately that isn’t what this story is about, but it is extremely clever to weave that discussion into the fabric of your graphic novel in a manner that’s both intelligent and humorous. This is definitely one of those works that stays with you for a little while after you put it down, pondering a few things, having a reflection pop into your head about it unexpectedly.

Art-wise, you can see Dylan has moved on since HICKSVILLE. It is very interesting flicking back through it now, how relatively raw that work looks in comparison. I don’t make that observation pejoratively, but this is certainly the work of a far more accomplished, experienced professional. Yes, you can tell it is the same basic style, but he’s clearly put a few hours in drawing over the years, real or fictional writer’s block or not! He’s certainly learnt a few compositional tricks too, and obviously this work is coloured, very nicely as it happens, which is I think is a pre-requisite for selling the somewhat considerable suspension of disbelief conceit that is required for us to accept that a magic pen is taking a grown man on an adventure through the pages of various comics.

I am delighted to say it was well worth the long wait for this, and I am quite sure SAM ZABEL AND THE MAGIC PEN is a work that would even get included in the legendary Hicksville town library for posterity!

JR

Buy Sam Zabel And The Magic Pen and read the Page 45 review here

When The Wind Blows (£8-99, Penguin) by Raymond Briggs.

“Do you have to dig a hole, like the old Andersons in the war?”
“Oh no, dear. That’s all old-fashioned. With modern scientific methods you just use doors with cushions and books on top.”

Jim and Hilda have just heard the Prime Minister warn of an imminent nuclear attack on the radio. Fortunately Jim’s found some leaflets from the Council on how to make ready. There’ll be perfectly safe, then – it’ll be just like The Blitz.

Did you ever watch The War Game by Peter Watkins? Originally scheduled to be screened on BBC1 in 1965 on the anniversary of Hiroshima, the chilling pseudo-documentary depicted the derisible domestic preparations for – then the horrific repercussions of – a nuclear strike on Britain. It was brutal, and I don’t just mean people at the epicentre being vaporised or the slower necrosis of those further out: I mean socially. It was banned for 20 years. Self-censorship, press pressure or a government which knew it would cause a countrywide mental meltdown?

I saw it in 1985, two decades on from the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I still wet myself.

All of which means that this graphic novel, published in 1982, hit the public first.

A scathing diatribe on “govern-mental” advice on how to prepare for a nuclear attack disguised as a tender comedy, this was the first time that the British Mainstream Press had been confronted by a comic they weren’t sure was for kids. Okay, which they were pretty damned sure wasn’t for kids. MAUS wouldn’t be collected and then hit some headlines for many years to come and in any case, you could simply ignore that if you fancied. But the British Press could not ignore this because Raymond Briggs was a household name and I defy you to think of another British comicbook creator to whom that applies. Not even Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman are household names, nor Posy Simmonds. To make things more problematic for them Raymond Briggs was a childhood favourite (FUNGUS THE BOGEYMAN, THE SNOWMAN, GENTLEMAN JIM) and it would be many years before he released something so obviously adult-orientated as the biography of his parents, ETHEL & ERNEST.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the British Press reacted spectacularly well from the Guardian and Sunday Telegraph right now to the Daily Mail. And I’ll bet you being a childhood – and so sacrosanct – favourite made all the difference.

It begins with a relatively large landscape panel with elderly Jim being dropped off on a quiet country lane in the heart of the British Countryside with rolling, green-grass hills and big fluffy cumulus clouds. The sun is out, the sky is blue, nature is in full, colourful bloom. Colours are very important here.

He’s greeted by his wife Hilda in a clean white apron and headscarf tied in a knot.

“You do seem a bit down, dear.”
“Yes, well – been reading the papers in the Public Library all the morning.”
“Oh those things! Full of rubbish. I never look at them. Except The Stars.”

Now, I want to make one thing clear before we go any further: what is not being poked fun at is Jim and Hilda’s class; it is their age and their particular generation, increasingly bewildered by the world shifting so fast around them. You’ll see exactly the same thing throughout Briggs’ ETHEL & ERNEST. As you’ll discover they simply don’t get the scale of an atomic detonation. Nor is it that Hilda’s a woman; because Jim for all his reading hasn’t quite understood what he’s read and what he has understand he’s got the wrong words for. Here he is building his bomb shelter in the living room:

“It says here “The-Inner-Core-or-Refuge-should-be-place-at-an-angle-of-60º-for-maximum-strength.”
“I should place it up against the wall if I were you, dear.”
“Yes, but which are the degrees? We haven’t got any angles… unless it means in the corner… I think we did it at school… with degrees in… only I can’t remember properly… I’ll ring our Ron. He’ll know.”

He rings their son.

“Yes, Ron says I need a protactor. He says I can get one at Willis’s. He was killing himself laughing. I can’t understand it. I think it’s nerves. He’s gone a bit hysteriacal.”

To me it reads like Alan Bennett.

Jim’s optimism – his complete and unfaltering faith no matter what in Doing The Correct Thing as directed by The Powers That Be in order to achieve The Best Results – is as touching as it is painful. And I do love the A.A. Milne use of Capital Letters. Jim goes through lists and lists of emergency items they’re supposed to stock up on but nobody has any and so they make do. They improvise. If any exchange demonstrates the conspicuously wretched inadequacy of the UK government’s official instructions released purely to placate – to fool the populace from comprehending the futility of it all – it’s when Jim starts painting the glass in the windows white:

“It’s for the Radiation, I think. Like you do greenhouses to keep out the sun. It’s the correct thing.”
“It won’t be that hot, surely?”
“Well, I don’t know – they say the one at Hiroshima was equal to one thousands suns. So it is quite hot…”

As Jim busies himself being the motivator and practical man-about-house, Hilda is all about propriety and the paintwork. We don’t want that getting scratched in all the kerfuffle of an atomic bomb!

The panels are dense with dialogue and the pages are dense with panels: seven tiers of them with up to four panels per tier. And yes, there is the sense of them being boxed in and unable to escape what’s coming, but also Jim and Hilda are just little people going about their insignificant little lives in their tiny little panels and doing so ineffectually for every few pages there are, in the starkest of contrasts, giant double-page spreads in bleakest blue and murkiest brown:

“Meanwhile, on a distant plain….”

“Meanwhile, in the distant sky….”

“Meanwhile, in a distant ocean….”

And then, unexpectedly, halfway down a page as Jim and Hilda discuss which shirts would be best to wear (“You’re not going to wear that nice new one I gave you for Christmas! I don’t want that spoiled. You can wear your old clothes for The Bomb and save your best for afterwards.”) the consistently, reliably, small and orderly, densely packed panels cease being so orderly or densely packed.

As I read this again for the first time in thirty years I was as sure as I was confident the first time round that half the humour was going to be how unnecessary Jim’s preparations had been. That he had made his missus go through the rigmarole of it all only for it to be yet another false alarm! A closer shave than most, to be sure, but kind old Uncle Briggs would not make you care for such a loving if dotty couple then actually put them through a nuclear strike, would he?

Remember what I said about colour.

SLH

Buy When The Wind Blows and read the Page 45 review here

The Surface #1 (£2-75, Image) by Ales Kot & Langdon Foss, Jordie Bellaire…

The children turned off their lifelogs.

“…our war against the hackers and digital pirates… the true heirs to the damaged brand of terrorism perpetrated by the likes of Al Qaeda and ISIS… has reached its final stage..”

People don’t usually do that these days. Turn off the lifelogs, I mean.

“… it is true that most of their leaders are locked up… but new, even more cunning, cold-blooded worshipers of terror stand in their place…”

The popularity of lifelogging exploded fast. Wear a few tiny unobtrusive camera chips and microphones at all time. Log your life.

“… as we know, most of these hacker terrorists are… known spies…”

The ‘share’ buttons became the ‘no-share’ buttons. Privacy as an opt-in. Sharing as default.

“…I refuse to give them but an inch of our civilisation… our land, our data, our capital…”

Embrace interconnectivity. Have a memory you can access any time, a complete account of your life, and more than that.

 

Best bit of cyberpunk I’ve read for a while, this, combining as it does cutting-edge technology and a chaotic society either on the brink of dystopian collapse, or evolving apace in ever more unpredictable ways, depending on how you look at it. And all the while the great and good try and cling on to their power and wealth through whatever nefarious quasi-legal means are at their disposal.

I think we can agree that the premise of lifelogging is almost certainly going to come to pass en masse in some form or other in the not-too-distant future. It’s not that far a remove from how some people seem to use Facebook right now, frankly. In THE SURFACE, the people in charge would have you believe it’s only a boon, after all, how you can you ever be accused of a crime you didn’t commit if your entire life is documented for all to see? Or looking at the flipside, how can you ever get away with doing anything at all they don’t like? Particularly something that might upset the status quo.

Which is where our main characters Gomez, Nasa and Mark come in.

Mark, by the way, is the disowned son of the President of the Three State Union, that chap who was spinning bile about hackers and pirates above on television, whilst Mark provided the counterpoint narrative. Mark has some rather interesting ideas about the nature of reality itself – dangerous ideas, some like his dad might argue – and he’s decided it’s time to test his theory. Believing that the universe is a holographic  projection which we inhabit, he’s posited a VERY BIG question. If that theory is correct, then precisely where is it projected from?

Which is where the title of this comic and the quote on the rear cover of this issue… “A surface separates inside from out and belongs no less to one than the other.”… comes in presumably. That’s from Don Delillo by the way, an American author who has himself been referred to as the ‘chief shaman of the paranoid school of American fiction’. But as Delillo also said, not quoted here… ‘Writers must oppose systems. It’s important to write against power, corporations, the state, and the whole system of consumption and of debilitating entertainments… I think writers, by nature, must oppose things, oppose whatever power tries to impose on us’. He’s got a point. I think it’s a school of thought Ales subscribes to.

I am intrigued by where this opener is going to go. Much like Ales’ previous works (WILD CHILDREN, CHANGE, ZERO) it’s chock full of current scientific theories and ideas, designed to make you stop and think. Plus there’s a lot going on in this first issue even on top of the incredibly rich plot itself, from the infovercial on the interior cover (love the three seditious lines in tiny yellow type right at the bottom of the page), the mysterious prologue, fake adverts, the odd page of scientific concept presented in essay form, and a three-part interview with the ‘elusive writer’ which may or may not be a real interview with Ales himself.

Whilst this is no way the same sort of story as TRANSMETROPOLITAN, it does have the archetypical idiotic corrupt politicians, which combined with the technological shenanigans did bring it to mind. Also, there is great a little nod to Spider Jerusalem in the background of a panel which made me chuckle. I can well imagine fans of that title might get a kick of this.

Where is it going? I have no idea. None at all. I do like that about Ales’ writing. To whatever or wherever ‘the surface’ is I would hazard a guess. But precisely what Mark and his friends will find when they get there, well, your guess is as good as mine at this stage, it really is.

Nice art from Langdon Foss, which reminds me of Brandon Graham, particularly KING CITY (and I think it is probably the speculative fiction context driving that connection), which combined with the lurid colours employed by Jordie Bellaire (whom Ales has worked with before to great effect on ZERO) serve to create a real sense of a future permeated with data feeds and flows, bursting to capacity, headed somewhere, probably not the right direction, at breakneck speed.

[Editor’s note: not actual cover. Another reason variants suck.]

JR

Buy The Surface #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Sex Criminals vol 2: Two Worlds, One Cop (£10-99, Image) by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky…

“So we ran like hell and didn’t look back.
“We stopped having sex and robbing banks.
“We stopped worrying about the Sex Police after a while.”

Hmm… almost certainly a bad idea, that.

SEX CRIMINALS VOL 1 is still available if this is your first time.

Volume two opens up with Suzie and Jon having just got away from Kegelface and the Sex Police. Given they’ve worked out they’re not the only ones who can manipulate time through the power of orgasm, you might think they’d be a little more paranoid about their criminally charitable funding of the local library, ensuring a stay of execution on its foreclosure through the cash they appropriated from financial institutions. Once Jon has a not-so-chance encounter in real time with Kegelface however, which he keeps to himself, his paranoia kicks in with a vengeance, rapidly turning in him into a dribbling mess, necessitating some serious medication which in turn doesn’t do much for his libido. Oh dear.

Suzie on the other hand is just feeling relieved that they’ve seemingly got away with it, and reconnecting with best friend Rachel. She’s clearly concerned for Jon and what he’s going through but perhaps also a touch relieved to get away from the madness their lives had become. Jon meanwhile in his deranged state decides it would be a good idea to indulge in a little breaking and entering of Kegelface’s house. Given Kegelface’s response is to arrange the demolition of the library they’d worked so hard to save, it’s not surprising Suzie is a teensy-weensie bit upset. So, as you do, they decide to enlist the help of a former porn star turned professor who also shares their peculiar ability, to try and take the fight to the enemy. I’m not entirely sure if they could get away with it, but I am half expecting volume three to be subtitled Fuck The Sex Police.

That brief synopsis barely scratches the surface of the contents of this second volume, by the way. Every issue is just non-stop conversations and inner monologues recounting the most bizarre scenarios, frequently sexual, of a hilarious nature from our various characters to drive the plot along. It is just so, so much fun to read. For a title based on such a ridiculous single premise it’s amazing what comedy gold Fraction is managing to craft. For example, the sequence where Ana (the porn professor) is recounting her first time-stopping orgasm just so happens to be on the set of a porn shoot… a WICKED + THE DIVINE-themed porn shoot… Really.

 

Chip Zdarsky, meanwhile, continues to draw, colour and letter this title to climax-inducing perfection. Beautiful panel and page composition, tremendous design work, amazing delicate and detailed lines, brilliant colouring. This title is actually my current monthly favourite both in terms of storytelling and the artwork at the moment. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for Zdarsky to visualise and render such an unusual story. He really does contribute just as much as Fraction to the success of this unique title. Indeed as Matt comments in his heartfelt and touching dedication…

“To Chip’s mom and dad
Thank you for fucking
And making my Chipper
He is my everything.”

JR

Buy Sex Criminals vol 2: Two Worlds, One Cop and read the Page 45 review here

Pride Of Baghdad: The Deluxe Edition h/c (£18-99, Vertigo) by Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon.

On the surface this looks like a full-colour crowd-pleaser about a pride of lions set in the war-torn wreckage of modern Baghdad. Awwww, they so cute!

And to a certain extent it is – apart from the “cute” because if the blood on the cover didn’t give the game away then the bolted, industrial iron should have. Much of this actually happened. As Brian K. Vaughan (SAGA, EX MACHINA, Y- THE LAST MAN) wrote in his original proposal for Vertigo (reprinted in this new deluxe edition along with later, fleshed-out additions and dozens of original thumbnails by Henrichon including over 30 designs for the cover):

“In April of 2003, a pride of starving lions escaped the Baghdad Zoo during the American bombing of Iraq… only to be shot and killed by U.S. soldiers.
“Surprisingly, this dramatic true story was hardly covered by the American media.
“Then again, few Iraqi casualties were.”

So yes, on one level it is about the pride’s sorry fate.

But beyond that and man’s ill-treatment of animals, this book is about all innocents caught in a conflict not of their making, and – more specifically – this is about the people of Iraq who were catapulted into civil war following the vacuum left when we broke Iraq’s back then failed to fix it fast enough. It’s about the individual factions who may well have cooperated if they had created their own freedom but, having it had it thrust upon them by outside forces, used it instead to settle old scores or fight for control for themselves.

Here Noor, the mother of the lion pride – strong and passionate and burning for freedom – tries to engage with a Cantaloupe long before the sky fills with noise and bombs up above them:

“You, me, the camels, the mountain goats, all of us… we’ve spent too long bickering with each other when we only have one real enemy — the keepers. If we work together, I think we can take them.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Here me out. The keepers know that if they ever set foot in our pit, my group would slaughter them. But the humans are foolish enough to lower their defences around your kind. It would be a simple matter for one of you to gore a keeper, take his keys –”
“And do what with them? Assuming we’d be willing to risk our lives for something so insane, what would we do with the keys?”
“That’s where the monkeys come in.”
“Monkeys? You’ve been sitting in the sun too long, Noor.”
“They’re already on board! They’ve even promised to open both our cages first.”
“And why do I get the feeling that the first thing you’d open would be my jugular?”

The Cantaloupe’s proven wrong about Noor, but she is right about the monkeys who break their promise the second they’re free and steal Noor’s cub.

The parallels are so poignant it’s painful, and if you think this is going to be cloyingly sweet or twee your first rude awakening will be the giraffes’ necks exploding in a bloody spray of pulped flesh and shredded bone.

Maybe it’ll be the second, actually, for the lions each have a different perspective on all this. Old Safa, for example, remembers her life before the zoo when she was raped in the wild, and Vaughan manages not so much a balanced perspective on “before and after Saddam” but instead a catalogue of “before and after and after that” horrors (wait until you discover what lies within the palace), whilst in order to keep your attention firmly on the animals’ perspective, you don’t encounter any living humans until right at the gut-wrenching end.

As to Niko, his creatures are fierce, lithe and muscular with the anthropomorphism kept to a minimum. When they reach the deserted, inhospitable city centre the air fills with a lung-choking, deep orange dust. But around the leafier outskirts across the Tigris a bright sandy light is cast by the far from obvious choice of hazy sea-green sky and it dapples the path, lions and turtle’s backs to the extent that you can almost feel the difference in temperature when padding from full shade into sunlight, however patchy.

Also, he draws the most frightening tanks I’ve seen, erupting over a listing horizon and splintering the tree trunks in their path.

I think this is going to surprise you; it certainly surprised me, and it’ll upset any young children no end so please do be warned. It has all the power and beauty of an early piece of feature-length Disney animation, but none of its sentimentality – just its heartbreak and suffering.

SLH

Buy Pride Of Baghdad: The Deluxe Edition h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Nemo: River Of Ghosts h/c (£9-99, Knockabout) by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill…

“Mr. Coghlan, do you think you could assist me in seating myself? This pile of slain enemies will suffice.”

Thus completes the Nemo Jr. trilogy, with a high body count of buxom blonde robotic Nazis and the satisfaction of scores finally settled. After the events of volume two set in Berlin, Nemo is chasing Nazis, and the apparently dead Ayesha, to that traditional holiday hidey-hole of Swastika-abusing idiots, South America.

Much like the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: CENTURY material I have personally found this run a bit up and down. Or more precisely yet again I’ve loved two volumes out of the three and been considerably less fussed about one. This volume I thought was great fun, with Alan once again working in various parodies of classic 20th century literary characters, which has always been a key facet of the appeal of this material.

 

This storyline of this particular volume just felt much stronger than the previous one, but taken as a whole I do concede the two together do form one excellent story. Wonderful art from Kevin O’Neill as always, crammed full of lovely conceits, such as Nemo’s octopus-sucker-styled armour. Overall I have enjoyed this trilogy, but I think if Alan decides to return to the League again, I would prefer him to do another team-based romp: I have missed the relentless verbal jousting and interplay between a wider cast of characters that raised the original two books (now compiled in this OMNIBUS) to its considerable heights.

JR

Buy Nemo: River Of Ghosts h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Southern Cross #1 (£2-25, Image) by Becky Cloonan & Andy Belanger.

Congratulations to artist Andy Belanger: he made me stare into Alex’s eyes on pages one and two for a good 15 minutes, trying to find the precise right words to describe the look of not-love she is giving the officious pen-pusher at customs.

Combined with an arched eyebrow which puts even my ceiling-scraper’s to shame, it’s this: contempt, cool-steel rage, come-on-then-if-you-think-you’re-hard-enough and you’ll-never-know.

He’s stopped her before boarding the Southern Cross tanker flight 73 to Titan currently docked at a space ring. That’s space ring’s scale is pretty impressive but you wait for the Herb Trimpe space-tanker in hyperdrive just before the staples!

Oh yeah, Belanger has got to be the most enormous Herb Trimpe fan (and there aren’t that many about these days): look at those faces – the hair and the eyes from afar!

Megacorporation Zemi’s bought a lot of billboard advertising around that space ring. Zemi’s also bought some ships, like the one Alex is about to travel on. If you’re not sure why that’s worrying then let me explain…

Titan is the Saturn’s largest moon, second only to Jupiter’s Ganymede in the entire solar system. It’s the only one to have an atmosphere though it isn’t quite comparable to ours. It does, however, have a whole lot of ice. And oil – that’s what Zemi’s interested in, although drilling for it is dangerous.

Alex’s sister Amber used to work for Zemi but Amber’s now dead which is why Alex is flying to Titan: to collect her sister’s effects. She’d also like some answers because the thing is, however dangerous the job drilling for oil, that’s not how Amber died. Amber worked in admin.

I was as immediately suspicious as Alex of almost everyone I met here. I wouldn’t let my guard down, not even for affable Doctor Lon Wells or over-accommodating Captain Mori Tetsuya. He has a fulsome beard and that Herb Trimpe look in his eyes, but still I don’t know. First mate St Martin I can at least empathise with because she’s bloody busy and doesn’t have time for this.

The interesting one is the cabin mate Alex has been lumbered with. Fractious Alex is not a people person at the best of times but I think Erin McKenna’s 2013 successful revival of the ‘80s asymmetrical haircut is getting on Alex’s wick because she’s gone for the bouffant-flopping-over-headband look and that was always wrong! I don’t think it has anything to do with discovering that Erin’s in ***** of the ******* into *****’* *****.

I have idea what the panel above’s all about!

SLH

Buy Southern Cross #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Blackcross #1 of 6 (£2-99, Dynamite Entertainment) by Warren Ellis & Colton Worley.

“Please. I don’t want to do this.”

It’s very early evening as the clear blue of the sky behind tall, craggy mountains becomes tinged with a pale yellow. A young, unshaven man drives to the silent shore of Lake Nedor. There’s not a soul in sight to see him strip naked, soak himself in gasoline then take a flare from his bag.

“Please,” he repeats.
“Do it.”

Some great textures over the next three pages as the man soundlessly erupts like a human torch before sleepwalking slowly into the water aflame.

 

 

Cut to a crime scene in a forest where the few leaves still clinging to the trees appear to have been transmuted into fragile, ultra-thin slithers of something crystalline, brittle. The body of a man lies in the centre of a scorched-earth circle, his shirt torn open, a representation of the Stars & Stripes carved into the flesh of his chest. He’s not the first.

They called the killer The American Spirit. “Do we always have to give these bastards names?”

A fraudulent medium is drinking alone, at least when her old man will let her. Three nights she’s been at it, this self-styled Lady Satan, knocking back the booze and staring into the mirror. This evening the mirror stares back. First it’s a woman, then something else.

“I am you and you are me. And this is how we escape.”

Supernatural crime-capes, the cover suggests. I really don’t fancy any of the remaining cast’s chances.

Speaking of covers, there were Q of them for this. Q!

That’s 17 if I’ve countered my fingers correctly (some more than once, I’ll have you know). What sort of series needs 17 covers and what sort of publisher prints them?

SLH

Buy Blackcross #1 and read the Page 45 review here

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

“There’s a prisoner in the east wing goes by the name of Schutz. I understand he’s been dealing heroin to some of the other inmates when I explicitly forbade all forms of drug abuse in my prison.”
“Your prison?”
“Tell him he’s new and that buys him one warning. But if he makes another sale I’m going to slice his junk off. I run a nice, clean joint since taking over the gangs. Drug abuse, like molestation, is now a capital offence.”

That’s Hit-Girl talking from her maximum security prison cell to her state-appointed psychiatrist. She’s, like, fourteen or something.

This is the fourth and final volume of KICK-ASS (don’t forget the KICK-ASS 2 PREQUEL, HIT-GIRL) in which everything by now should be thoroughly predictable. It couldn’t be much less predictable had it been published as a liquid and guest-starred the colourful cast of MY LITTLE PONY.

 

Previously in KICK-ASS (and I’m going to do this without any spoilers, I promise you): a school boy called Dave Lizewski decided it would be cool to emulate his favourite comicbook heroes, dress up in a green gimp suit and fight crime on the streets with two truncheons, no powers and zero hours of training. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to suggest that if you attempted that in real life things would not go well for you.

Then he met Hit-Girl who was even smaller but had been trained by her somewhat driven Dad in almost every combat discipline known to man, the use of every weapon in every imaginable environment etcetera. She would have been turned down by the SAS as overqualified. The contrast between this dispassionate, foul-mouthed, ruthless and relentlessly efficient underage weapon and meticulously polite, compassionate and considerate Dave (even when trying to intimidate gangstas) was part of the comedy, as was the whole tender age / extreme violence marriage.

Still things did not go well. I mean, Hit-Girl is being marched into prison on the opening page in the pouring rain and in serious need of some surgery; and although Dave has access to all her resources the bravado of his fellow crime fighters is as fragile as a freshly boiled egg. Essentially they’re all cosplayers, living out their idols’ stories as close as they can, even if that includes the emotional indulgence of taking photos at a parent’s graveside like a recently heartbroken teen playing their favourite power ballad.

“It’s so much cooler when you’re brooding in a big, black coat. I tried this in my jeans last week, but it all just looked so inappropriately casual.”

Specifically:

“I want to try some shots of me kneeling down with my head bowed like a Batman cover. Does this look good?”
“Dude, you look spectacular.”

Anyway, with Hit-Girl in prison and the police in his pocket, mafia boss Rocco Genovese returns from Sicily to take command not only of his own family but everyone else’s and merge every gang from Maine to Florida.

Nothing about that scenario will play out as you predict, not even the police on the take, and Rocco Genovese’s particular predilection will only dawn on you slowly, at which point his remarks to a young, unfamiliar policeman will prove even more chilling. Millar seems to have found a new angle for almost everything. When was the last time you saw things from the perspective of a supervillain’s mother? Here’s Angela, mother of the last book’s brutal little bastard being stopped in the street by a woman:

“My brother was one of the people your son murdered last year when he and his friends shot up our neighbourhood. Now my sister-in-law doesn’t have a husband and my two little nephews don’t have a father… all because you shat out the Antichrist.”

That’s perfectly played by Romita: Chris’ mum has a very lived-in face from having had to move house over and again after her photo was published in the papers. She looks genuinely appalled for the woman, then broken when spat on. Ideally she’d like to move much further away, but feels she cannot while Chris is in prison. She is, after all, a mother.

And if you think at least that part will prove predictable… wrong!

As to John Romita Jr, while looking for interior art for my BLACK PANTHER review the other day I did wonder what it must be like to have drawn so many spectacularly beautiful pages of comics – ten thousand or more – and know that they wouldn’t have existed without you. Because no one does John Romita Jr: it’s the representation of physical mass and weight rather than the photorealistic depiction of it. Not everyone could have pulled off the tender age / extreme violence marriage like Romita. Others would have audiences baulking and I think the representational short-hand of his style is key: when I caught 30 minutes of the film on TV I winced because, umm, it doesn’t get more photorealistic than photography!

Having Dave’s blonde hair flop out from under his mask was a defining, amateur-hour touch: imagine it without and it’s oh so generic and not at all what this book’s about.

So yes, this is it, it’s emphatically the end but you’ll have to discover why for yourselves. But at least before then Dave is afforded some genuine happiness for once in the form of his first-ever girlfriend, Valerie.

“I take it all the fantasy busts are yours?”
“Yeah, my guilty secret. I started out reading Harry Potter and then graduated onto anything with elves or vampires. You know, all those big, global franchises the internet hates because it makes female writers rich?”

SLH

Buy Kick-Ass 3 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Hawkeye Vs. Deadpool s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Gerry Duggan & Matteo Lolli, Jacopo Camagni.

There was quite a funny joke in here but it took three issues to set up, all from the improbable notion that someone requiring a hearing aid wouldn’t put it in when they had plenty of opportunity to do so. I don’t wander round the shop with my glasses off when I’ve no contract lenses in!

In between there were approximately 100 other attempts at humour which failed.

So let’s nail our colours to the mast!

We adore the current series of HAWKEYE (three books so far, one on its way) to the improbable extent that it’s the only superhero series we have ever let in our window. The other week’s ALL-NEW HAWKEYE #1 was equally chic and contemporary with some watercolour flashbacks which merged with the present panes at the climax. So that was clever.

And we are enormous fans of the sales of DEADPOOL. We are so grateful and if you’re having a riot we’ll be the last to bring water cannons.

But it’s a title that has seemed to suffer during each of its incarnations from some sort of editor’s edict commanding that Deadpool himself crack a joke or issue a rejoinder in every single panel. What are the chances of them all being funny unless your name is Evan MILK & CHEESE Dorkin? In fact what are the chances of any of the jokes being funny if you’re commanded to be funny at such a rapid rate of knots?

Oh wait, I’ve just realised: this is Jim Carrey’s The Mask done badly.

SLH

Buy Hawkeye Vs. Deadpool s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Venom Vs. Carnage s/c (£7-50, Marvel) by Peter Milligan & Clayton Crain.

Paternal instincts aren’t all they should be when you’re an alien symbiote.

If I’ve got this right then Carnage (white-eyed, crimson monstrosity with very sharp teeth who looks like he’s made up of multiple, prehensile entrails) is the offspring of Venom (white-eyed, blue-black monstrosity with very sharp teeth who used to be bonded to Spider-Man), and Carnage is currently pregnant. He cannot abort or stop its gestation, but is determined to kill his child the second it’s born. First he needs to find it a host then kill the host, so he pops it into a policeman whose wife is pregnant and then tries to off said policeman.

I’m not sure I understand this at all; it wasn’t covered in Biology A Level.

Milligan (HUMAN TARGET, ENIGMA) fills the dialogue with punning reversals (“Carnage, I’ve loathed you like a son.”), Crain fills the pages with the slick-as-you like, computer generation protagonists (humans look wonky, but the creatures look cool), and together they cash-fill our till. Hurrah!

Not what Mr. Milligan was born for, though.

SLH

Buy Venom Vs. Carnage 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?

Lazarus vol 3: Conclave s/c (£10-99, Image) by Greg Rucka & Michael Lark, Tyler Boss

Criminal Special Edition #1 Magazine Sized (£4-99, Image) by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips

The Tea Collection (£12-99, ) by A. J. Poyiadgi

Ant Colony h/c (£14-99, Drawn & Quarterly) by Michael DeForge

Baltimore vol 5: The Apostle And The Witch Of Harju h/c (£18-99, Dark Horse) by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden & Peter Bergting, Ben Stenbeck

BPRD Hell On Earth vol 10 –  The Devil’s Wings s/c (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi & Laurence Campbell, Joe Querio, Tyler Crook

Courtney Crumrin vol 7: Tales Of A Warlock h/c (£18-99, Oni) by Ted Naifeh

Deadly Class vol 2: Kids Of The Black Hole s/c (£10-99, Image) by Rick Remender & Wesley Craig

Fables: The Complete Covers h/c (£37-99, Vertigo) by James Jean

Oink: Heaven’s Butcher s/c (£13-50, Dark Horse) by John Mueller

Pablo (£16-99, SelfMadeHero) by J. Birmant & C. Oubrerie

Prophet vol 4: Joining (£13-50, Image) by Brandon Graham, Simon Roy, Ron Wimberly & various

United States Of Murder Inc. vol 1: Truth h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming

Usagi Yojimbo Saga vol 2 (£18-99, Dark Horse) by Stan Sakai

Justice League Of America vol 2: Survivors Of Evil s/c (£12-99, DC) by Matt Kindt & Doug Mahnke, various, Ken Lashley

Deadpool’s Art Of War s/c (£9-99, Marvel) by Peter David & Scott Koblish

Guardians Of The Galaxy vol 4: Original Sin h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Ed McGuinness, Valerio Schiti, David Lopez

Ms. Marvel vol 2: Generation Why s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by G. Willow Wilson & Jake Wyatt, Adrian Alphona

Attack On Titan vol 15 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Hajime Isayama

News!

ITEM! Preview of Mark Millar & Sean Murphy’s CHRONONAUTS #1 on Page 45’s shelves! Also on our website: CHRONONAUTS #1. There’s an optical illusion embedded in the CHRONONAUTS cover – Sean Murphy explains.

ITEM! The Lakes International Comic Art Festival announces new Canadian Guests for October 2015! Includes Kate Beaton (HARK! A VAGRANT), Seth (PALOOKAVILLE, WIMBELDON GREEN, GEORGE SPROTT, THE GREAT NORTHERN BROTHERHOOD OF CANADIAN CARTOONISTS – that’s emphatically fiction!) and Stuart Immonen (SECRET IDENTITY, ALL-NEW X-MEN, NEXTWAVE etc) and more! Also, some Brits there are off to TCAF and I am not remotely jealous. *cries*

ITEM! The ART SCHOOLED graphic novel has gone down so well here! OFFLIFE interviews ART SCHOOLED’s Jamie Coe about that and future plans.

ITEM! New Page 45 interview about the British Comics Industry conducted by Sophie studying at Lincoln University. She’d certainly done her research and makes me sound far more eloquent than I am!

ITEM! Colourful Kickstarter for BEAST WAGON by Owen Michael Johnson & John Pearson. Black comicbook comedy set it a zoo. Love the performance of it all! Owen Michael Johnson wrote RAYGUN ROADS which was a sort of Grant Morrison, Brendan McCarthy TANK GIRL car crash.

– Stephen

Page 45 Comic & Graphic Novel Reviews March 2015 week two

Wednesday, March 11th, 2015

Comics! Graphic Novels! Chester Brown interviews, James Jean postcards! What other buzzwords shall I play with? Oooooh, Young Adult Literature and we have two first issues! SCOTT MCCLOUD SIGNING PHOTOS underneath!

The Shaolin Cowboy: Shemp Buffet h/c (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Geof Darrow.

There is something so moving about seeing a comicbook legend long-lost and lamented return at the very top of their game. That’s what happened in the original SHAOLIN COWBOY book which no one seems overly keen on distributing now.

Geof (one ‘f’) Darrow was the artist on Frank Miller’s HARD BOILED, a series so ancient, pre-Page 45, that it was never reviewed. His clean line and detail rivals even that of the great George Pérez, but with far, far, far more gore and a much wider sense of space. I used one of the panels from HARD BOILED in the Page 45 15th Anniversary Booze Bash quiz, so high is my admiration for the man and so long has his art endured in my memory.

So what is this?

This is the comicbook equivalent of one those enormously enjoyable and equally improbable kung-fu flicks starring the likes of Jackie Chan, and that ingenious acrobat is referenced here. I, however, would contend that any cinematic version of this virtually silent, stop-and-gawp slice-and-dice-athon is more likely to star the dour Beat Takeshi. It’s that left-field.

Forget the insane, two-page prose introduction (funny, though), and ignore the fact that a frog – being an amphibian and therefore inherently quite partial to water – is highly unlikely to be sitting on a menhir in the middle of an oh-so-arid desert! Relish instead the resurrection of the Shaolin Cowboy who has clawed his way back through the earth from Hell, bringing with him hundreds if not thousands of persistently single-minded zombies.

Good job he has a bamboo pole handily enhanced with a chainsaw at each end! Shame there’s a car full of carelessly bigoted wastrels heading in his direction. Or is it? *smirks*

What follows is some of the finest choreography ever in comics, and a concrete lesson warning you against using the word “gay” as a lazy pejorative. Seriously: don’t do it. The Shaolin Cowboy will show you why.

Can I just interrupt myself for a moment to mention Dave Stewart? Dave Stewart is the colour artist. When something’s this detailed it takes a lot of keen thought and just-so judgement to create clearly defined clean space from clutter. Keeping the sky lambent is a great start both during shots looking up as our hero descends and also throughout the whole of Act 2 which is a) landscape b) viewed from just above knee-height, meaning there is sky to be seen between limbs for a colourist clever enough to pick it out properly. Foreground depths (plural) are equally important, answering the sky’s blue hues with appropriate and increasingly dark shades of brown which is a tradition going back to Claude Lorrain if not further.

It’s a book in four acts with a certain degree of symmetry. Acts two and three are quite specific in their corpse-culling procedures but equally, hilariously relentless. The only equivalent I can think of is sonic: Wiseblood’s ‘Motorslug’ extended remix. But those last six minutes repeat precisely the same bludgeoning refrain whereas here Geof nimbly and fluidly fashions variation after variation of meat-cleaving mutilation in what I can only describe as the ultimate chainsaw massacre before the juice runs dry and our Cowboy quick-foots it across his quarry instead, deftly dispatching the beetle-bearing shamblers on the stepping-stone hoof. You’ll see what I mean.

The fourth and final act is a rip-roaring, wear-tearing, jaw-flooring finale before “Praise be to Buddha” and BLAM! You won’t see that coming.

But Darrow throughout is having a laugh and the last laugh follows “The End”. You just know to whom it will belong.

SLH

Buy The Shaolin Cowboy: Shemp Buffet h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Julius Zebra – Rumble With The Romans h/c (£8-99, Walker Books) by Gary Northfield.

Oh my good god, Captain Stoopid had expelled himself!

La la-la la-la….

Oh wait — excelled himself!

*considers carefully* Eh, the jury’s still out.

Emperor Hadrian is very much in. He’s in his amphitheatre and judging the mood of the Roman Colosseum’s blood-craving crowd.

“Zebra! Zebra! Zebra! Zebra!”

Uh oh. I don’t think they’re vegetarians.

How did it even come to this?!?!

Julius Zebra (do not call him Debra!) had been striding the African plains with his mother and brother Brutus, head held high but nose held by hoof because, boy, those waterholes stank! I cannot think why.

So Julius defied his mother and all common sense and struck out on his own, only to fall into the trap of a Roman expeditionary force along with a long-winded warthog named Cornelius with an encyclopaedic knowledge (which was more than mildly irritating) and a lion called Miles WHICH WAS FRANKLY TERRIFYING!

A sea-change in fortune and geographical location later and our brain-dead bewildered beast finds himself in Rome, on death-row and about to go into four-legged combat against gladiators with a grudge because he’d called them “juggling monkeys”! It’s time for our zebra to seriously earn his stripes!

More bog-eyed bananas from the comicbook creator of GARY’S GARDEN, TERRIBLE TALES OF THE TEENYTINYSAURS and contributor to that bonkers TINY PENCIL package, this is isn’t strictly comics nor is it illustrated prose; instead it’s a skilfully integrated hybrid with comic panels bursting bombastically out of the prose and furthering its narrative before sinking seamlessly back in. I’ve never encountered anything quite like it!

Think of Gary Northfield as a delinquent Posy Simmonds and JULIUS ZEBRA as TAMARA DREWE with every dog in town let out.

There’s at least one illustration or elaboration per page, some breath-taking double-page landscapes (on the preceding page the port of Leptis Magna is heralded by a bleary-eyed Julius as “the most amazing sight he’s ever seen…” before Gary lets rip with one of the most amazing sights you will ever have seen!) and for educational purposes Professor Northfield also offers up some perfectly objective lessons in comparative anatomy. Clearly a zebra is not just a stripy horse!

I love the way the zebras’ stripes throughout are scribbled and scratched across their flanks in a flurry and frenzy: Gary could have made these distinctive markings as bold as Mother Nature intended but Mother Nature can’t half take her time getting things done (humans, for example, took millions of years) AND WE ARE IN A HURRY HERE!!!

It’s over CCLXXV pages long but with lots of short chapters for the attention-span challenged like me, plus there’s a logic-lesson in Roman Numerals (neat!) and a handy four-page glossary which is every bit as entertaining as the main event.

“Jupiter: One of the favourite Roman gods; the god of thunderbolts. You would usually call out to him when you stubbed your toe or sat on a pin or something.”

“Palus: A big wooden pole stuck into the ground and used for sword training in the Roman army. The poles were supposed to represent your enemy, which would have been even more useful if the enemy were trees.”

“Poena Cullei: A bizarre punishment where the condemned were sewn up in a leather bag with a snake, a dog, a cockerel and a monkey, then chucked into a river to drown. No doubt Jupiter got a few name calls along the way too.”

Is it just me or is the river sort of superfluous there?

“Show Me The Monkeys!”

Oh, do!

SLH

Buy Julius Zebra – Rumble With The Romans h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Descender #1 (£2-25, Image) by Jeff Lemire & Dustin Nguyen.

Such beautiful, bright light and vast sense of space that I’m immediately reminded of Jon J. Muth’s MOONSHADOW.

The opening shot looking out and over one of the nine Embassy Cities of the planet Niyrata – the technological and cultural hub of the nine Core Planets – and its fume-free traffic criss-crossing on multiple tiers is an almost electrical thrill, while the “cars” themselves are the sleekest and juiciest that Matchbox never made.

And then there’s Dr. Quon’s grand, clean and-oh-so chic bedroom with glass floors, glass doors, glass open-air balcony and big glass tanks full of bright little flecks that are fish! Love the cherry blossom floating in from outside.

I’m imagine Dr. Quon is held in very high esteem. After all, he practically invented modern robotics in The United Galactic Council.

It all seems pretty idyllic and I can quite clearly see how culture could thrive even if not everyone is relaxed.  There’s one director or delegate striding through a crowd bellowing about her right to exploit resources in spite of the Gnishians’ complaints. Her baby’s begun crying in spite of its android-nanny’s best efforts but big business comes first, does it not?

And then it appears in the heavens above them… and everything changes forever.

It appears to be a celestial machine, humanoid in shape and roughly the same size as Niyrata itself. There is one above each of the eight other planets and when their blank eyes flare red it looks as though they are about to communicate…

10 years later and young Tim-21 wakes up on the mining, moon colony of Dirishu-6. No more than 10, maybe 12, he’s puzzled to find himself alone, although “current population: 1” suggests that he is. Bodies litter the sealed lunar walkway and the gangways below that. He can’t find Andy and he can’t find his Mum but he does find the Communications Hub and manages to access its database. Looks like rather a lot’s happened in the last ten long years…

 

There’s a lovely moment when Tim finds his robot “dog” whose bark has gone wonky and backwards.

“You must have been so lonely. It’s okay… I’m here now.”

So what’s the connection between Tim, the monumental Harvesters as they came to be called, that which their “communications” caused across each planet they spoke to… and Dr. Quon no longer looking quite so young or half so handsome, but unshaven, paunchy and consigned to a bunk bed… on a Niyrata looking a lot less cultural or technologically hub-like?

I’d be a rotten reviewer if I told you, though I have left clues.

In the back there’s a brief breakdown of each of the nine planets so you can perhaps hazard a guess as to the identity of Tim-21’s guests, what each species has been up to over the last game-changing decade and what they may be planning now. Jeff’s left you plenty to puzzle on, and if his name rings a bell then SWEET TOOTH, ESSEX COUNTY and TRILLIUM etc.

I’m in!

SLH

Buy Descender #1 and read the Page 45 review here

All New Hawkeye #1 (£2-99, Marvel) by Jeff Lemire and Ramon Pérez…

“We’re really sorry, sir. It was my idea.”
“I don’t care whose damn it was! I want the damn grass cut!”
“Then why don’t you cut it yourself you lazy #$%#…”

<WHAP>

“That the best you can do, old man?”
“You mouthy little #%$!”

<WHAP>

“Get your bike!”
“Wha…?!”
“We gotta go now, Clint!”
“Where we gonna go, Barn?”
“I don’t know. Just keep biking.”

Well now, this was an unexpected delight. I mean, I probably shouldn’t have been remotely surprised given how highly I rate Jeff Lemire, but let me tell you, if you were perhaps also worried this title was going to take a dip following the departure of Messrs. Fraction and Aja (and let us also not forget Pulido and Wu on VOL 3 art duties) I can most emphatically assure you that will not be the case based on the evidence of this first issue.

On the other hand I do think that Marvel’s current penchant for renumbering back to #1 at even the  change of a creator’s underpants, is possibly going to have precisely the opposite effect that it is supposed to have in this particular instance, as people may see it as an ideal opportunity to exit a title at a presumed peak, rather than transitioning seamlessly onto a new creative team. Indeed, those people may well turn out to be completely wrong about that – this title hitting its peak with the Fraction / Aja run, that is – but I do realise that is a very bold statement to make at this point.

Okay, so what’s different and what’s the same? Well, we still have some elements of the dual narrative structure, but not just through the eyes of current-day Clint and Kate, wise-cracking and one-upping back and forth whilst bulls-eyeing bad guys, but also a young Clint as the issue switches between a typical high-octane all-not-exactly-going-to-plan Hawkeye-Hawkeye team-up taking down a Hydra cell, and what is possibly the beginnings of a retelling of Clint’s origin story. Also, I may just have broken my own record for most hyphens in a sentence there.

The two time periods are rendered with dramatically different art styles, but by the same artist, Ramon Perez. In fact for the modern Hawkeye Sr.&  Jr. double-act he’s gone for a style not entirely dissimilar to David Aja’s, so much so in fact that I had to check it wasn’t him! I can only presume this is to (subliminally) part-reassure readers that whilst much will be different about this title going forward, the panel-by-panel fun and frolics element is going to remain largely unchanged, visually at least. I think this is an entirely wise decision on Lemire’s and Perez’s parts, given Lemire’s own comments in his afterword about the humongous size of the scarlet booties they are filling.

What is radically different, though, are the dreamy sequences featuring a young Clint and brother Barney finding themselves unwelcome at yet another foster home, largely due to their own inability to conform, behave and obey like good little boys, it must be said. Well, perhaps also Barney smashing their new foster father over the head with a baseball bat this time… These are produced in a water colour style, with a palette entirely composed of myriad hues of purple, minus any panels or gutters whatsoever, giving the effect of recalling long forgotten memories of a misspent youth.

I suspect it’s this era’s portrayal which is going to provide the real heart and emotional depth of Lemire’s run, given how much poignancy he manages to encapsulate in barely more than half an issue here. But I also doubt – especially as how the two time period’s stories and art styles begin to intercut and interact and eventually collide towards the end of this issue, before culminating in two emotionally polar opposite but equally dramatic finales which share the final page – that events in the modern era are going to be mere spurious fun, either. No, I don’t think they are going to be light and frothy throwaway frippery at all…

An intriguing, beautiful opening which only serves to prove that Lemire is a brilliant writer and this title may finally give him the right outlet on which to showcase his undoubted storytelling skills in the superhero genre, and that Ramon Perez is an excellent choice of artistic foil to assist him in this endeavour. I suggest therefore that you either remain on board, or indeed, jump on. A change of underwear with a big glossy purple #1 on, though, is entirely compulsory…

JR

Buy All New Hawkeye #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Menu – 100 Postcards Box Set (£16-99, Scholastic) by James Jean.

So tasty I tried licking one.

Sadly the experience was like chowing down on a cherry-flavoured Chapstick: disappointment followed by revulsion.

Try doing what God intended with these postal poppets (scribbling sweet sentiments on their backs then sending them with a stamp – that’s where the licking really ought to come in), and you’re in for a much more rewarding experience, as are your friends.

And let’s face it: 17 pence per postcard is probably the cheapest you’ll find anywhere in the country.

Of the James Jean REBUS art book I wrote:

“Strange fruit hatching, butterfly-brilliant petals, mythological beasts, quizzical encounters, children at play with hammers and scissors and staves (there’s some pretty macabre shit going down), and one boy chewing a wax crayon as his head buzzes open in a frenzy of sexual imagery scribbled in that very same medium. The whole book is bursting with desire. Huge Chinese influences too.”

 

And that seemed to sell a few dozen copies so I thought it was worth trying it again.

James Jean rarely draws comics but he did have a sequence in FABLES: I001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL which I found surprisingly tolerable.

SLH

Buy Menu – 100 Postcards Box Set and read the Page 45 review here

Chester Brown: Conversations (£22-50, University Press Of Mississippi) by Dominick Grace, Eric Hoffman.

Given that Canadian comicbook creator Chester Brown was heavily into porn in his younger days (see THE PLAYBOY) and has more recently explored his relationships with prostitutes in print (see PAYING FOR IT), you can expect sex to be quite high on the conversational agenda.

Fortunately Chester is very good as discussing sex and sexual relationships along with the Christian Church and wider society’s counter-productive shame-game in a mature, even-handed and exceptionally well considered manner, at times doing his interviewer’s job for them when they kind of miss the point.

Here he talks about a panel from THE PLAYBOY in which he confessed that, with one particular girlfriend, he had to imagine having sex with a Playboy Playmate in order to keep it up:

“That panel was flawed because I didn’t give the reader enough information to understand what was going on in it. I had made the mistake of going out with a girl that I wasn’t sexually attracted to. I was attracted to her for other reasons – she was very intelligent and enormously talented. She was – probably still is – an artist. She was good-looking but “not my type”. But I thought I should be above base physicality and that I should be willing to disregard the fact that she wasn’t my sexual type.”

Bravo! Doesn’t that sound noble? It really does! One slight snafu:

“In hindsight I can see that if you’re getting sexually involved with someone, it might be a good idea to be attracted sexually to them.”

The arguments and counter-arguments which he then proffers without prompting to different attitudes towards different sorts of relationships, sex and sexual relationships are as thoughtful, detailed and eloquently expressed as any I’ve read.

I promise Chester does talk about comics as well. This is the creator of THE PLAYBOY, THE LITTLE MAN, ED THE HAPPY CLOWN, LOUIS RIEL, PAYING FOR IT and I NEVER LIKED YOU, and these interviews took place at different points in his career, some long before he had a graphic novel on any shelves and had only just found a publisher for his periodical YUMMY FUR after years of printing and distributing his own mini-comics via local shops and mail order in multiple print runs.

Those practicalities are all covered along with the lead-up to their production including a childhood love of superhero comics (which so many share – what he has to do with his childhood comics will make you weep) and (improbable, I know, if you know Chester) a fervent and dedicated desire to get his foot into that specific part of the industry’s door to the extent of taking his portfolio right to Marvel’s and DC’s doors and getting first-hand, in-person critiques from both Vince Colletta and Jim Shooter… just like Scott McCloud did this Sunday for a young lady who came to our signing.

SLH

Buy Chester Brown: Conversations and read the Page 45 review here

Tales Of Telguuth: A Tribute To Steve Moore (£18-99, Rebellion) by Steve Moore & Simon Davis, Clint Langley, various.

Steve Moore you may have heard of from Alan Moore’s UNEARTHING s/c or indeed the whopping great UNEARTHING h/c, both of which blend prose and photography into a passionate, eloquent but above all witty evocation of Alan’s mentor Steve Moore and the suburb of Shooter Hill where he has lived, in the very same house, for all but three months of his life.

And it is Alan who provides the extensive introduction to this 2000AD collection of full-colour short stories, some painstakingly painted in vein-popping, muscular Bisleyvision. Each is set on or even in the planet of Telguuth, “a planet of perverse wonders, lost amid the whirling suns of the galactic hub”.

Steve had nailed that descriptive distillation pretty much from the word go and used it as an introduction almost verbatim throughout the tales’ intermittent appearances.

Here we are sword-sheathed and sandled firmly within the realms of fantastical horror; each salutary salvo warning its readers about the importance of rules, the danger of deceit and the direction you’ll be heading in if you insist – against all advice and your very best instincts – on laying some good intentions upon the road you travel. Be careful what you wish for and knowledge is a dangerous thing etc. Cruelty seems Telguuth’s default setting and its demons are manifold.

There’s a real love of language on display, not restricted to the elaborate, gutturally named gods, seers and cities which are visited, although you will find the collection infused with at 3,000% more ‘k’s, ‘g’s and ‘z’s than most contemporary fictions.

The swapping of a tiny preposition can shift a sentence significantly.

“Come closer, boy. Closer… So I can get my hands in you.”

SLH

Buy Tales Of Telguuth: A Tribute To Steve Moore and read the Page 45 review here

Y – The Last Man Book 2 (£14-99, Vertigo) by Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra, Paul Chadwick, Goran Parlov.

From the writer or SAGA, EX MACHINA and PRIDE OF BAGHDAD, this is another Vertigo title receiving the chunky treatment, reprinting the slimmer volumes 3 and 4 exactly.

In Y – THE LAST MAN BOOK 1 all the men on the planet dropped dead apart from escape artist Yorick. It happened in an instant and because we remain such a patriarchal society the effects were devastating. The long-term forecast is far from friendly, either, for what transpires suggests that a world populated and run exclusively by women might be just as fucked up as the one we currently live in.

We don’t know what happened to wipe mankind off the metaphorical map, but the doctor Yorick’s travelling with believes she may have been responsible through a scientific act against God and/or nature.

Of course, not all men were on the planet when it happened: two were in orbit. Now they’re coming down in a rickety Soyuz capsule. If they survive that experience – and it’s by no means guaranteed that they will – then they’re going to find themselves in the middle of a ruthless international power struggle for what is now the most valuable commodity on earth: male human beings.

Relatively plain art makes this a strangely accessible read to the Real Mainstream. And whilst the dialogue takes a few books to hit the quality we’ve all come to love in his EX MACHINA, Vaughan does manage to keep everyone on their toes, successfully sneaking in surprise twists and turns, most of them decidedly unpleasant.

For example, when Agent 335 leaves Yorrick in the protective custody of a fellow member of the Culper Ring, instead of protecting him, she strips him naked, straps him to a bed and pumps him full of chemicals. Whose side is she really on? What is she up to? And what secret complexes does Yorick harbour?

SLH

Buy Y – The Last Man Book 2 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?

Pride Of Baghdad: The Deluxe Edition h/c (£18-99, Vertigo) by Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon

I Kill Giants (£14-99, Image) by Joe Kelly & JM Ken Nimura

Lenore vol 6: Pink Bellies h/c Color Edition (£12-99, Titan) by Roman Dirge

Astro City: Victory s/c (£12-99, DC) by Kurt Busiek & Brent Eric Anderson

Batman Beyond 2.0 vol 2: Justice Lords Beyond s/c (£12-99, DC) by Kyle Higgins, Christos N. Gage & Thony Silas, Dexter Soy

Justice League vol 5: Forever Heroes s/c (£10-99, DC) by Geoff Johns & Ivan Reis, various

Avengers & X-Men: Axis (UK Edition) s/c (£15-99, Marvel) by Rick Remender & Adam Kubert, Leinil Francis Yu, Terry Dodson, Jim Cheung

Avengers: Time Runs Out vol 2 (UK Edition) s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Jonathan Hickman & Stefano Caselli, Mike Deodato, Kev Walker, Szymon Kudranski

Deadpool vol 7: Axis s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Brian Posehn, Gerry Duggan & Mike Hawthorne, Mirko Colak

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

Venom Vs. Carnage s/c (£7-50, Marvel) by Peter Milligan & Clayton Crain

Bleach vol 63 (£6-99, Viz) by Tite Kubo

News!

ITEM! Here’s a cool Kickstarter with some gorgeous images which I was introduced to via Andi Watson: “Eekeemoo – Black Sun Rising” by Will & Liz Morris-Julien. Scroll down!

ITEM! Have a YouTube trailer for Gary Northfield’s JULIUS ZEBRA, reviewed above!

ITEM! 17 Sex Scenes In (very) Graphic Novels!

ITEM! Kickstarter for second comicbook creator photo album. Also, excerpts from the first. See which comicbook creator has the hairiest chest in the world!

ITEM! “I was designed to save the world. People would look to the sky and see hope. I’ll take that from them first.” Avengers: Age Of Ultron film trailer. Slick!

ITEM! Preview of Alex De Campi & Carla Speed McNeil’s NO MERCY #1

ITEM! Paul Gravett on the death – and life and work – of Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Pop him in our search engine: we not only have but have also reviewed almost everything published in English.

ITEM! While Scott McCloud was over signing copies of THE SCULPTOR (we have signed copies for sale, yes!), he mentioned Banksy’s intro to The Simpsons which I’d never seen. Bloody hell, it’s dark. Wait until after the couch…!

Scott McCloud signing at Page 45!

Would you like to see some photographs? These are by that demon D’Israeli:

 

 

 

 

“Quick! Everyone grab a book from SelfMadeHero!”

Left to right: the legendary Nabiel Kanan (responsible for all our website illustrations), till monkey me, D’Israeli, Ivy, Scott, J-Lo and Sam from SelfMadeHero. Isn’t Sam a hottie?! He really is!

I even remembered to take some photos myself. Impromptu half-hour Q&A (crowd to right, facing Scott, honest!):

 

Richard Chaney asks Scott to sign page 45 of UNDERSTANDING COMICS whence we derived our name.

BEYOND meta!

I challenge comicbook creators Luke Pearson and Nabiel Kanan to a Shy-Off!

Scott, Ivy and Sam at the station. I like the light.

It was very cold. Sam was very hot. I was very sad.

Thanks to everyone who came to our Scott McCloud signing.

Especially Scott McCloud.

That was a relief, I can tell you.

– Stephen

Page 45 Comic & Graphic Novel Reviews March 2015 week one

Wednesday, March 4th, 2015

Wildlife painted by Federico Bertolucci; brand-new CRIMINAL plus THE FADE OUT by Brubaker & Phillips; lost SERAPHIM manga from anime’s Satoshi Kon; Meredith McClaren’s doe-eyed, dreamy HINGES and far, far more. Remember, there’s news underneath!

Love vol 1: The Tiger h/c (£13-50, Magnetic Press) by Frédéric Brrémaud & Federico Bertolucci.

Beautiful, beautiful, album-sized book following a day in the life of a tiger.

And you know how David Attenborough can get all rip, tear, gouge, growl and predatorial on your Sunday evening ass…? (I don’t mean David personally, I mean his wildlife documentaries and the blood-thirsty cycle of life they portray.) This will too because a tiger does not spend its day perched on your window sill, idly gazing at your neighbours heaving heavy furniture into the removal van, furiously following a leaf buffeted by the breeze or hissing at next door’s cat.

No.

A tiger wakes, stretches and yawns (which is perfectly good manners if alone in the jungle and not listening to yet another of your lame holiday anecdotes), then immediately sets off in search of a snack. And, once again, that doesn’t mean pit-pattering down your carpeted stairs to the kitchen-floor cat bowl which you have filled to the brim with prime kitty nom-noms.

No, it does not.

It means tearing the throat out of whatever poor poppet is closest, assuming it can catch it first.

It then means defending that kill from other top predators and I’m just trying to warn you that this will pull at your heart strings just as the carnivores within will be pulling at tendons, muscles, fat, cartilage and sinew. Tigers aren’t invulnerable, either.

I have but one problem with this silent scenario in that there is – just occasionally and in this specific context – a wee bit too much anthropomorphism for my taste. As in, any at all: in this context there should be none. GON is burlesque so that’s perfectly fine. Here it shatters the illusion and kills the mood but the effects are mercifully brief.

 

Instead the rain, it will pour down. Lightning will strike, flamingos will fly and an owl will stir. There will be snail sex as well. Mmmm!

I don’t even need animals; the landscapes alone are to die for.

 

This is as lithe as lithe can be then – OMG! – sketch pages, folks! Just one look at the jaws and the haunches will show you that Bertolucci knows how these beasts are put together.

It is ridiculous that there aren’t more graphic novels which offer themselves up to the nature-loving rather than obsessing about the human condition (which is worth exploring) or hitting each other in the face with guns (not).

I will leave you with a reminder that THE RIVER exists.

SLH

Buy Love vol 1: The Tiger h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Criminal Special Edition (£3-99, Image) by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips.

“I wasn’t done reading that yet, you fat fuck…”

If you don’t want to sneeze tea all over your keyboard then either remove the keyboard to a safe distance before reading that page or try going dry for ten minutes.

A perfectly representative, accessible and self-contained introduction to the twilight world of CRIMINAL in which we finally get to meet Teeg Lawless, the often referred-to father of Tracy.

He’s not the smartest con in the can having landed himself there – en route to collect what would have been some considerable cold cash from an armoured-car stick-up – over failure to appear in traffic court. He stopped off for a beer then beat up a biker who didn’t press charges but, yeah, Teeg got sent down instead for a failure to appear in traffic court.

So he’s stuck on the inside instead of keeping his commitment to Sebastian Hyde – whom you do not want to piss off – to take down a councilman blocking a construction contract Hyde’s set his heart on. And Teeg’s trying to keep his head down, he surely is, by reading the latest instalment of ZANGAR, THE SAVAGE but he doesn’t half get interrupted every five fucking seconds.

“You Lawless?”

Which is a funny thing to ask a criminal.

Seems there’s a price on Teeg’s head and Hyde swears it ain’t him but he won’t offer protection, neither. Almost immediately they’re coming at Lawless from all directions – in the canteen, the laundry room and showers – and  Teeg is trapped in there with them. It’s relentless. So what, as they say, is actually up?

 

I wish every comicbook artist would make reading as easy, as fluid, as accessible and addictive as Sean: monologue or dialogue across the top. Also, there’s an immediate time and place: I love Teeg’s hair.

For long-term readers there’s the not inconsiderable satisfaction of seeing Tracy from Teeg’s point of view, especially after Tracy’s reminiscence about the car pedals in CRIMINAL VOL 2 and it’s at this point I should point out to readers of the collected editions that this is almost certainly the only format you’ll be able to read this in for some time to come given that FATALE‘s Brubaker and Phillips are currently working on the long-form FADE OUT. We’re talking years!

As ever Brubaker has something to say about human behaviour – not rash generalisations but specific tendencies or patterns within individuals. With Teeg it’s that this sort of structure in the slammer or army actually serves him quite well. Too much freedom gives him too many choices and too many opportunities to choose wrong. He really is Mr Bad Decision.

As to ZANGAR, THE SAVAGE, Phillips provides a dozen or so pages emulating the magazine-sized black and white barbarian adventures printed on paper so low-grade that they’d yellow and brown before you got them back home, and I can only imagine how much easier it has been to apply computer-generated zip-a-tone than it used to be using a scalpel.

I warn you right now that Phillips has pulled no punches and that the art is as battered and brutal as the inmates themselves and you will find within the dreaded Injury To Eye And Almost Everything Else Motif over and over again.

Still, he wasn’t done reading that yet, you fat fuck…

SLH

Buy Criminal Special Edition #1 and read the Page 45 review here

The Fade Out vol 1 (£7-50, 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 hugely successful 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 and a bar-room bore, badgering all and sundry before being thrown out on the street:

“Can you get up, Gil?”
“Not just this second… I threw my back out trying to deck Bob Hope.”

Charlie and Gil used to be friends before Charlie shopped him. Now it’s common knowledge that they hate each other’s guts.

That’s a lie for a start – a dissemblance to cover a mutually beneficial arrangement.

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 troubled minds utterly compelling. Anyone who’s read CRIMINAL VOL 6 knows he’s so good at it that he can make you 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. So much here is tied to the Congressional Hearings just before McCarthyism really hit its stride including a role for Ronald Reagan.

Thankfully Sean Phillips is a dab hand at likenesses for Reagan is joined in this fiction by the likes of Clark Gable. There are also a few neat new tricks from Sean like the ethereal memories of Val’s replacement Maya Silver which again reminded me of Posy Simmonds, this time specifically the Janice Brady sequences in MRS WEBER’S OMNIBUS. Makes sense when you think about the subject matter.

As for colour artist Bettie Breitweisser she leaves it until the open-air daylight hours of poor Valeria’s funeral in chapter two, but on that very first page – wham! – she’s invented yet another colouring technique which is in its own way both impressionist and expressionist concerning the colour and quality of light not as it actually falls or what it falls on but as it might dance on the brain. It’s rendered in free-form, fuck-you panes of light and slabs of colour with scant regard for the line on the page and every regard for your eye.

Anyway, back to the acting, the lying and back to the slight-of-hand rigmarole involved in marketing commodities (actors and actresses) to their adoring, lap-it-up public. We’re not necessarily quite talking beards here, but Tyler’s manliness needs boost-merchandising and Maya proves the perfect accessory. Plus she needs to be introduced to her soon-to-be-adoring public.

“So good old Dottie found a way to kill two birds with one photo op. After dinner, Tyler and Maya dodged the press just badly enough to be followed to Ciro’s… where a drunk in the crowd got too friendly with Maya… [Hey!”] … and Ty knocked his block off.”

Oh. In the process of typing this, I think I may have solved a substantial part of the puzzle.

SLH

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

Seraphim 266613336 Wings (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Mamoru Oshii & Satoshi Kon.

A global pandemic of bubonic proportions has wiped out the world as we know it. Whole countries have succumbed to the plague itself or the mass migration of refugees that followed.

Certainly Japan’s air force failed them, while China has ruptured under the stress and scant resources, the World Health Organisation having thrown a protective Cordon Sanitaire around what’s left. A Cordon Sanitaire, yes, keeping the plague contained through military means, for infection rates range from 60% to 80% and WHO has acquired combat-ready status, armed as it is to the teeth right now with weapons from multiple states. It was also been infected with a religious fervour turning its leadership into a cowled cabal of those who call themselves Magi.

But perhaps this is understandable given the nature of the plague.

Early stages show twin shoulder blade growth, bone pushing itself to the surface. As to the terminal stage of Seraphim, it is a hideously emaciated, ossified corpse with sunken cheeks, protruding hip bone and wings like an angel’s – except scruffy and scrawny with far too few feathers.

It bears a harrowing resemblance to the Jewish prisoners in WWII concentration camps.

The comparison doesn’t stop there for there are both ad hoc ghettos of victims and medical facilities sanctioned to use eugenics in search of an explanation or cure. You should see the cages of the Angel Hunters, hounds of the Holy Inquisition who rule a lightless and otherwise lawless Shanghai.

Cages feature heavily here: there’s another designed to keep humans protected from the birds outside, which is a turn-up for the books.

It is at this key stage that The Magi dispatch Three Wise Men into the Cordon Sanitaire with a silent young girl called Sera. The first is Professor Erasmus, rechristened Balthazar, a former Magi who resigned; the second called Melchior was originally named Yacob and known as the Killer of Countries; the third is a basset hound called Caspar.

As to Sera, only Professor Erasmus knows who the legendary Silent Girl is and why she is known also as Time Stopped. Only Professor Erasmus knows their true mission to unstop time. And only Yacob knows why he is injecting himself.

This is strong stuff. Fans of AKIRA will be disappointed neither by the politics nor the art by OPUS and TROPIC OF THE SEA’s Satoshi Kon who was heavily influenced by Otomo, and worked with him on the ‘Memories’ anime film. While not as far down the photo-realistic road as Ikegami, his characters are as sturdy as Otomo’s and Taniguchi’s while his skyscrapers and gigantic, walled fortress compounds are as detailed and precise as an architect’s projections.

It is also quite grim stuff as you’d expect from totalitarianism, eugenics and the cauterisation of entire populations to purify and conserve resources.

I’ve already alluded to the terminal stage of Seraphim itself which Satoshi Kon presents starkly with the same sort of thin-lined hatch which Moebius used in THE EYES OF THE CAT, but if you thought it comical that the third of the three was men was a basset hound, you wait until you see it gets its teeth stuck in.

Satoshi is best known for his anime, of course, like Perfect Blue, just as Mamoru Oshii is better known for his. Indeed he was adapting Shirow’s GHOST IN THE SHELL and injecting its cutesy heroine with a little more grit at the same time as writing this. It was originally serialised in Animage Magazine until, abruptly it wasn’t. Yes, like Satoshi Kon’s OPUS, this was never finished and there is much speculation in the (substantial!) afterward as to why. I’m actually all for the cover treatment element but also the increasing strain of two such formidably creative minds attempting to keep a mutually cooperative peace without busting out into fisticuffs, verbal or otherwise. A similar schism occurred between Claremont and Byrne resulting in the material collected in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST being the last they ever worked on together. (I am emphatically not ranking them up there with Kon and Oshii but that X-MEN run was a tremendous run and it was immediately clear how much Byrne contributed to its direction the very second he left.)

I swear to goodness, however, that even without a conclusion (I’d say they were halfway in at the most) the journey in this instance is as rewarding as any destination could prove and in some cases conclusions really do fail to live up to their promise, don’t they?

Oh yes, the title: divide 266613336 by the number of wings worn (2, traditionally) and you have a very specific group of angels.

SLH

Buy Seraphim 266613336 Wings and read the Page 45 review here

Hinges Book 1: Clockwork City (£11-99, Image) by Meredith McClaren.

When I first clapped eyes on this ethereal beauty I was immediately transported back to Joshua Middleton’s SKY BETWEEN BRANCHES prelude. Sadly, that came to nothing, but here, have this instead.

The colours are cool, calm and as easy on the eye as Optrex: far from primary, there are never too many at one. Image-driven, the pages are predominantly silent because so is our heroine throughout. One’s not entirely sure to begin with how much of what’s going on around her she fully comprehends. She needs to… acclimatise.

We first find her kneeling on the bare-boarded floor of a town hall with the most gigantic clock up above her. There will be another laid into the stone square outside. And then there’s her pocket watch which will attract some her attention, inscribed with what assumes is her name, Orio.

She’s also found by Senior Orderly Margo who wears a nurse’s uniform, is held up by strings and makes the same assumption. She speaks in white boxes which appear worn or overexposed like very old film strips. To me this suggests ancient radio / recording crackling as in the video game Bioshock.

 

She sends Orio downstairs to select her Odd. There are shelves and shelves of odds: animals plushes and figurines. The one that stands out – because it helped her choose a jacket upstairs and now saunters across the floor with a sorry-I’m-late shrug – is Bauble.

Bauble is beautifully designed: the sort of thing LENORE’s Roman Dirge might come up with if working in porcelain. It’s a smooth, bipedal, cat-like creature with a satin sheen and an extra carapace segment forming its forehead, nose and upper jaw so that it appears to have little, fanged mandibles. Its eyes are the most enormous orbs except when its cross when they narrow under the weight of a furrowed brow, and the inky spots around each eye morph according to mood.

When it skritches and scratches at a door it leaves little ghost-outlines of itself behind. I’m telling you, the art throughout is exquisite.

Bauble appears to come with a reputation for trouble which precedes her / him / it. I’m afraid it turns out to be very well earned.

Out on the Eastern European country-town street Orio and Bauble are met by Alluet and Bristle, Bristle being a blue bird made out of felt – Alluet’s Odd.

“As your adjustment liaison I’ll be your tour guide, temporary roommate, friend, confidante, career advisor, cook, counsellor, and all around handler until we’ve settle you here in Cobble.
“Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?
“It does, doesn’t it?”

It does.

“So then. Shall we go?”

It’s only then, when Alluet offers out her hand, that you finally notice her hinged wrists.

I like that there is no info on the back cover. None whatsoever. You’ll need to discover this for yourself, just like Orio. It depends on how much time you’re prepared to put in, whether you’ll spot things like the big fluffy beast curled up by the bread oven, basking in its heat. It has a centre seam running up its back.

Everyone Orio’s introduced to seems friendly enough – until Bauble grows bored and buggers things up over and over again. And this first act is, as much as anything else, about Bauble learning to trust and appreciate Orio rather than make things messy for her, lead her on a goose chase or into danger.

 

Because late at night something in Cobble is stirring. There are CRICKS and there are CRACKS and there are shadows on the move. There is a silhouette of a feral skull in profile with the most enormous jaws and thick, thick fangs. Then it moves out of the shadows and into the daylight between deserted market stalls. I’d probably run.

SLH

Buy Hinges Book vol 1: Clockwork City and read the Page 45 review here

Suiciders #1 (£2-99, Vertigo/DC) by Lee Bermejo.

Okay, you know the drill:

1. Natural or Nuclear Disaster (check!)
2. Government cuts city loose (check!)
3. City builds a quarantine wall (check!)
4. Everything’s a bit paramilitary (check!)
5. Wives are all cheaters ‘n’ liars (check!)

It’s at this point that some ultra-violent variation on an already brutal entertainment like boxing or roller derby or Come Dine With Me is televised to a TV-crack-craving audience (check!) while someone attempts to break in or out of the quarantined zone (check checkity-check!).

I could not find a single original element or angle within, although the city wall was indeed Chinese in scale.

From the artist on Brian Azzarello’s THE JOKER, then, I give you muscles on muscles, a combatant with an uncanny resemblance to The Midnighter, and arena whose deathraps are so lo-fi they resemble those last seen on clunky combat boff-o-thon Robot Wars, though sadly not used on Craig Charles.

SLH

Buy Suiciders #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Black Panther: Who Is The Black Panther? s/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Reginald Hudlin & John Romita Jr.

Very different from Christopher Priest’s socio-political approach, this is more geo-political but just as sassy and sharp.

Quality art from John Romita Jr. depicts one specific instance from the history of Wakanda – the African nation ruled by the Black Panther – oh so elegantly illustrating why it was the only such country that has never been invaded by another.

As Reginald Hudlin has written elsewhere, it has been firmly established that African humans were far more advanced far earlier than their European counterparts, so it stands to reason that if one nation had continued to develop unimpeded then they would have the technology to defend themselves against European imperialism without even breaking a sweat.

There’s an immensely satisfying sequence in which one such arrogant, nineteenth-century would-be conqueror, devoid of any humanity whatsoever, is humiliated then dispatched. The Wakandan chief is the epitome of fearlessness and strength: a warrior of few words which, when delivered, are no idle threats.

Cut to the present and Wakanda has reacted to America’s current, Iraq-invading neo-imperialism by declaring a no-fly zone over their country.

So, how do you like them apples?

“There is no way a bunch of waffle-makers are going to play us out of position in Wakanda! We need to send in support troops to aid our Wakandan allies right away!”
“And where are those troops coming from? Our troops are spread too thin already. We just don’t have enough bodies.”
“Oh, that’s the one thing we have plenty of.”

Ouch!

“We’ve got more than enough bodies to inva — I mean, assist Wakanda!”

Standing in front of row upon row of coffins, each laid out under the Stars & Stripes flag on a U.S. Aircraft Carrier off the African Coast:

“I think it’s time you found out what kind of special cargo we’ve got on this ship. These brave men and women died for their country. All that training and manpower wasted. The military hates waste.”

The dead rise, cybernetically enhanced.

“We’ve found a solution to our manpower problem. They’re tougher, stronger, fearless, take orders exactly and don’t write sad letters back home.”

This contains the first story arc of the last politically pointed series before it all went unnecessarily tits-up during a crowbarred in crossover with The X-Men and readers fled faster than stoats from a boat that’s been set on fire.

Boats are infested with stoats. It’s a modern epidemic.

SLH

Buy Black Panther: Who Is The Black Panther? s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Rocket Raccoon vol 1: A Chasing Tale (UK Edition) s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Skottie Young & Scottie Young, Jake Wyatt.

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

*GURGLE!*

Quick-fire stupidity and hyperactivity done well. To begin with.

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

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

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

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

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

Obviously some episodes are more successful than others. The chapter book-ended round a cub-scout camp fire at story time sees Rocket Racoon refusing to tell them The One With The Map. You’ll see why if you buy this book, for Groot has no such reservations. Unfortunately the root of Groot’s humour lies in the running joke that, regardless of what key information he seeks to impart, all he comes out with is “I am Groot!” It’s not easy to keep that gag going successfully, though Bendis has done improbably well so far.

Here, however, the entire story, whilst told visually, is punctuated over and over and over again with “I am Groot!” no matter who is saying what because of course it is Groot telling the story. A whimsical idea on the surface but, oh my god, talk about a point belaboured…

Never mind, all is forgiven for a prison cell scene opening with:

“Nope.”
“I’m good.”
“I’ll pass.”

Very wise.

SLH

Buy Rocket Raccoon vol 1: A Chasing Tale (UK Edition) s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Scooby Doo Team-Up vol 1 s/c (£9-99, DC) by Sholly Fisch & Dario Brizuela.

Aimed at younger readers with its animation-style Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman and Teen Titans, this teams those evergreen meddling kids with DC superheroes to decloak monks, defrock vicars and pull the masks of phantoms and werewolves alike.*

There’s one scream of a scene here where they go through the traditional process of pulling off masks only for more masks to be revealed underneath. And then more, like Russian nesting dolls. When there are superheroes involved that really works.

It was a cause of constant disappointment to me that Shaggy, Scooby, Velma, Daphne and whatever that bland blonde jock was called never discovered anything supernatural: that everything was explained by trap-doors and lever mechanics. I don’t know why that was important to me, but it was.

Also, I blame American obesity on the not-so-subliminal Scooby Snack craving. Learned behaviour!

* Please note: actual scenarios may vary but thou gettest the picture.

SLH

Buy Scooby Doo Team-Up vol 1 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?

Chester Brown: Conversations (£22-50, University Press Of Mississippi) by Dominick Grace, Eric Hoffman

George Romero’s Empire Of The Dead Act Two s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by George A. Romero & Dalibor Talajic

Julius Zebra – Rumble With The Romans h/c (£8-99, Walker Books) by Gary Northfield

Menu – 100 Postcards Box Set (£16-99, Scholastic) by James Jean

Nemo: River Of Ghosts h/c (£9-99, Knockabout) by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill

Shame vol 3: Redemption (£7-50, Renegade) by Lovern Kindzierski & John Bolton

The Shaolin Cowboy: Shemp Buffet h/c (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Geof Darrow

Tales Of Telguuth: A Tribute To Steve Moore (£18-99, Rebellion) by Steve Moore & Simon Davis, Clint Langley, various

Through The Woods s/c (£11-99, McElderry Books) by Emily Carroll

Y – The Last Man Book vol 2 (£14-99, Vertigo) by Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra, Paul Chadwick, Goran Parlov

Assassination Classroom vol 2 (£6-99, Viz) by Yusei Matsui

Hawkeye Vs. Deadpool s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Gerry Duggan & Matteo Lolli, Jacopo Camagni

Gantz vol 34 (£10-50, Dark Horse) by Hiroya Oku

New Lone Wolf And Cub vol 4 (£10-50, Dark Horse) by Kazuo Koike & Hideki Mori

Whispered Words vol 3 (£12-99, One Peace Books) by Takashi Ikeda

News!

ITEM! WICKED + THE DIVINE T-SHIRTS available to pre-order in multiple bodyforms! Yes, we cater to shape-shifters, and dispatch internationally! Here’s THE WICKED + THE DIVINE VOL 1 reviewed.

ITEM! Kieron Gillen talks WATCHMEN. And he’s filmed doing so!

ITEM! Income tax. Illustrated by cats. Off topic, but I chortled until I choked.

ITEM! More guests announced for The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2015 October 16th-18th.

ITEM! Transcript of actor Michael’s speech at St David’s Day march to celebrate the NHS and its founder, Aneurin Bevan, on Sunday March 1st. The last paragraph is a belter.

ITEM! Both funny and literary, here’s Andi Watson interviewed following the release of PRINCESS DECOMPOSIA AND COUNT SPATULA.

ITEM! Final reminder that Scott McCloud will be signing at Page 45 on Sunday 8th March 2015 from 2pm to 4pm. Details there including a link to my review of Scott’s THE SCULPTOR which was in any case just linked to there! If you can’t make it but still want a copy signed then details are also at that first link.

Cheers,

– Stephen