Page 45 Comic & Graphic Novel Reviews July 2015 week three

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Bacchus Volume One Omnibus Edition s/c (£29-99, Top Shelf) by Eddie Campbell.

“Hey, deadface!”
“Are you talking to me?”
“Yeh, you, old man. What are you in for?”
“Drunk and disorderly.”
“Ha ha. You look old enough to know better.”
“Is 4000 years old enough?”

In the very first panel on the very first page “Are you talking to me?” is seen from behind bars.

I’m loving the cover over which someone’s spilled a great big bottle of burgundy. “Cheers!” salutes the sozzled old storyteller.

Fifteen years ago I wrote: “A mature, full-bodied comic with a musky, oaken flavour, which is heart-warming in the winter, but equally refreshing on a summer’s day picnic.”

“Full-bodied”?! This first half comes in at a whopping 550-pages! It’s almost as hefty as Eddie’s 640-page autobiographical ALEC OMNIBUS which I’ve long declared the single finest body of work in comics anywhere in the world to date. Fiercely literate and a phenomenally astute philosopher, he’s comics’ finest raconteur both in person and in print. He had us all howling with laughter when he performed the secret history of THE FATE OF THE ARTIST using customer Vis Pather’s young son as an impromptu prop.

 

As Neil Gaiman puts it:

“Eddie Campbell is the unsung King of comic books. The man’s a genius and that’s an end to it.”

Last year saw the release of Gaiman and Campbell’s THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS as a book after being performed live by Gaiman at the Sydney Opera House with projections painted by Campbell. When Neil signed at Page 45 the first thing he did was ask for the latest instalment of BACCHUS which was being serialised for the second time as a monthly. That’s Gaiman’s idea of a rider, so he’s not making that up for the back cover.

Campbell has been recounting tales of his weather-worn demigod for decades now. Sub-titled “Immortality Isn’t Forever”, it finds the Greek god of revelry washed up 4,000 years later on strangely sympathetic modern shores in far from fine physical fettle but with his spirits still riding high. He boasts a lot of lived-in laughter lines and his turns of phrase seem to tumble effortless out of his mouth:

“I’m Bacchus. I’m a god. I’m living testimony to the fact that it’s a dying profession…
“I’m the god of wine. Once I was the bouquet promising great things. Now I’m the gritty bits at the bottom on the glass.”

And it’s as much about the stories Bacchus has to tell – of his and other gods’ escapades – as it is about Bacchus himself, who now wanders across the globe from bar to bar or beach to beach in a battered old coat and a fisherman’s cap which hides his wizened brow and his twin, stubby horns.  Wherever he roams he finds ancient friends and quite ridiculous foes, along with new devotees eager to imbibe his wisdom.

In ‘Doing The Islands With Bacchus” he encounters three naturists on holiday, corrects them on the earliest means of modesty (they weren’t fig leaves for the most part but vine leaves, of course) then embarks on a discourse about the history of fashion.

“Now the Spartans were a great mob. They were the first to appear naked at the Olympic Games…. The willy was regarded with awe.”

Two of them point to the other’s little willy.

“Awww.”
“Awww.”

Half the hilarity comes from the juxtaposition of the modern and mythological, Bacchus using contemporary vernacular like “natty dressers” and “the big cheese”. For example, while Bacchus and his acolytes are down a dockside “taverna” overlooked by an industrial crane, glugging down jugs of wine and scoffing wild mushrooms (“Amanita muscaria… that sacred mushroom: ambrosia nectar… food of the gods!”),  Joe Theseus is opening a can of coke and a packaged sandwich in an airport. Joe Theseus! Just sticking “Joe” in front of Theseus makes me laugh.

To begin with it has all those trappings of a comedy crime caper, then lobs in the most ludicrous fight scenes involving The Eyeball Kid, overly endowed with ten pairs of eyes perched on top of one another. If ever you were in doubt about the relationship between ancient gods and modern superheroes, this thrusts it right in your face. There’s even an early full-page take-down with a much burlier Bacchus than you’d suspect once the coat comes off launching himself at his assailant which could be – and was almost certainly directly inspired by – Jack Kirby inked by Vince Colletta on THOR.

 

“I wanted to mock the improbability of a big sprawling adventure while still having one,” writes Campbell in the introduction. It’s something he’d return to much later on in THE AMAZING REMARKABLE MONSIEUR LEOTARD.

Another early flourish finds Bacchus striding through sheets of rain at night. As the grizzled god looks up into the downpour in close-up it’s impossible not to flash forward in time to similar scenes in Frank Miller’s SIN CITY VOLUME 1, only this is much less clinical and infinitely wetter. Which is what rain should be, really.

Basically, this: if you think you know all there is to know about Eddie Campbell as an artist from the ALEC OMNIBUS, FROM HELL, THE FROM HELL COMPANION, THE FATE OF THE ARTIST, THE LOVELY HORRIBLE STUFF, THE PLAYWRIGHT etc., you’re in for some startling surprises. Yes, you’ll recognise his fine line and particular style of portraiture but here you’ll find a far, far wider range of renderings, organic textures and experimental special effects than in any other of his works even – given how big this book is – on a whittled-down page-per-page ratio.

This is the material with which Mark first introduced me to Campbell’s craft twenty-five years ago (admittedly there wasn’t much more to choose from back then other than early ALEC and In The Days Of The Ace Rock’n’Roll Club) because I shared the same passion for wine, Greek mythology and have been obsessed by Bacchus, Pan et al since the age of fourteen. I fell head over heels in love immediately with this mind-bogglingly novel approach which manages the neat trick of being both wholly irreverent and completely faithful. Its greatest fidelity, perhaps, is to the Greeks’ art of storytelling and their reverence of it.

Collects Immortality Isn’t Forever, The Gods of Business, Doing The Islands With Bacchus, The Eyeball Kid: One Man Show and Earth, Water, Air & Fire, with new introductions to each. Additional writing by Wes Kublick, substantial art contribution by Ed Hillyer, with bits by Pete Mullins and – haha! – I thought I saw SWAMP THING’s Steve Bissette in some of those roots and monsters. Page 325 was my biggest clue when you get there. If I’m wrong then the yolk’s on me.

SLH

Buy Bacchus Volume One Omnibus Edition s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Moose (£12-99, Conundrum International) by Max De Radigues…

“Why are you doing this?”
“I think you know.”
“But nobody’s even watching.”
“Well… I started to get a kick out of it, with or without an audience…”

We eventually find out the real reason why Joe is getting mercilessly and remorselessly bullied by Jason. He has two mothers, which in such a small parochial town is obviously sufficiently outré as to be different enough from the supposed ‘norm’ to get picked on. Jason is clearly getting sadistic thrills out of his treatment of Joe, possibly even sexually so, given a certain turn of events towards the end of the book. So you suspect that if it hadn’t been Joe’s atypical family setup, then there would have some other equally inconsequential reason found for Jason’s victimisation of him.

It’s the sheer relentless, inescapability of the bullying which will break your heart, no matter how Joe tries to avoid his tormentor by wandering through waist-deep snow-filled fields and woods, for example, which is where we learn of his affinity for nature and we also see the titular moose. All this so as to avoid catching the schoolbus, Jason having ‘reserved’ the seat directly in front of him for Joe, to allow the maximum torture potential…

Joe’s trapped, of course, by the code of silence, that unspoken childhood rule that you shouldn’t tell the teachers on someone, not even if they’re kicking you up the arse with a compass (the pointy circle drawing kind, not the directional aid). His only ally is the school nurse, a young girl who knows exactly what is going on and is thus the only adult-ish individual Joe can confide in. And so you begin to wonder if, when, Joe will snap.

After all, people can only take so much, even those with the strongest of wills. But when people snap it can go two ways, depending on just how scared of their bully they are. They can lash out in desperation, or look to hurt themselves in despair. I was getting fearful for Joe, I really was, wondering which way he’d go when he finally cracked and then… the story takes an altogether unexpected turn, and Joe is presented with a very tough moral dilemma indeed…

Wonderful storytelling from Max De Radigues, who is definitely a talented artist too. You’ll be minded of several different creators, I think. I could see the likes of Kevin Huizenga, Liz Prince, Sammy Harkham, Ethan Reilly, even a bit of Jeffrey Brown actually. His characters have a real sensitivity to them, he portrays their emotions very well, even the odious Jason whom, when he revealed one particularly snide smile, I was absolutely willing Joe to batter. Very Gandhi-esque of me, I know! I will definitely be looking for more from Max in the future. He is Belgian and apparently has produced a few other works, so hopefully if this is successful enough then they will get translated.

JR

Buy Moose and read the Page 45 review here

Cakes In Space (£6-99, Oxford) by Philip Reeve & Sarah McIntyre.

In zero gravity, no one can hear you butter-cream scream.

Ah, the perils of being peckish!

This stars the most ferocious fruit cakes you could ever imagine. The most belligerent and bellicose Battenbergs ever! There’s a green Fondant Fancy which I really don’t fancy and that cupcake’s a killer for sure! Hundreds & Thousands should be the icing on your cake, not the number of them desperate to do you dietary damage. Abandon ship!

From the creators of UKLA Award-winning OLIVER AND THE SEAWIGS, one of the most thrilling and funny illustrated prose books I’ve ever read (I rate it right up there with Dave Shelton’s exquisitely well observed and equally award-winning A BOY AND A BEAR IN A BOAT), comes a tale so tall it’s told way up there in outer space.

Imagine this: one hundred and ninety-nine years until your next breakfast!

Astra’s family is all set to travel to Nova Mundi, such a faraway planet that it will take yonks to get there.

“Yonks” is a specific, space-science unit precisely calibrating time taken between planets. I thought you already knew that.

Mum, Dad and Astra will all settle down in cryogenic suspension pods and so go to sleep for the duration. But Astra’s not quite sure what the duration really means. One hundred and ninety-nine years sounds a long time to go before her next breaker so she asks the all-knowing Nom-O-Tron for a quick snack which won’t ruin her appetite between meals. Guess what? It ruins her appetite between meals!

“Please state the exact type of cake you require,” said the Nom-O-Tron.

She is a bit vague. And a bit too specific.

“Oh, just make me the most amazing, super-fantastic cake ever!” she said. “I want something brilliant! I want something so delicious it’s scary! I want the ultimate cake!”

At which point Astra is whisked away by her parents and settled down to sleep. And, while she sleeps, Nom-O-Tron clicks and ticks away, working on her instructions, interpreting them as accurately as it can – “brilliant”, “delicious”, “ultimate”… I’m sure there was another adjective there – until the results cause a systems-wide wibble which wakes Astra up when the spaceship’s journey is only halfway complete!

No one else wakes up, only Astra. So tentatively, ever so tentatively, she explores the corridors to discover that Nom-O-Tron has delivered the goods and come up with the confectionary: it’s made the ultimate cake. It’s made a bazillion if not squillion of them. They may well be so delicious it’s scary but – with big, bulging eyes and the most fearsome of fangs – it is they are who are scary and Astra who seems quite delicious. And she’s out there, all alone, in the night…

Well, until the googly-eyed Poglites pop up to plunder the spaceship’s spoons. These aliens have developed warp-drive, hyper-drive and even parking-when-permitted-at-night. But they have never managed to master spoon technology! It’s too advanced. They threaten to zap Astra with their Arkle-splifflicator.

“The first alien’s suit might not have been able to find a translation for ‘Arkle-Splifflicator’, but Astra still felt pretty sure that she didn’t want her arkles splifflicated: the last thing she needed right now, she felt, were splifflicated arkles.”

Yep, there’s that same love of language I found in OLIVER AND THE SEAWIGS: “the spilled-salt glitter of the stars” and a clinical, dark dining area “where clean white surfaces shone coldly in the dim light, like icebergs on an Arctic night.” Cake has been turned into a verb and this definitely one book in which you do not want to be “caked”!

The prose once more has been fully integrated into the illustrations, or is that vice-versa? Either way, it is as one. I adored the far from obvious coronas of McIntyre’s stars, representing their radiating luminosity. Which sounds awfully highbrow so let me add that I also loved her maniacal, man-eating mega-sponges which are worthy of Jim Henderson, bibbling with bobbly cream. Astra is wide-eyed with wonder throughout – check every single page! – while the Poglites could not look more loopy and gormless.

So who will win out, do you think, between the mutant meringues and the dim-witted Poglites, tentacled to the teeth with stolen spoons?

“So you’ve escaped, have you?” growled the Poglite captain. “You still think you can scare us with your cakes? We are Poglites! We eat cakes for breakfast! Well, not really for breakfast – that would be weird – but we eat them for afternoon tea…”

SLH

Buy Cakes In Space and read the Page 45 review here

ODY-C vol 1: Off To Far Ithicaa s/c (£7-50, Image) by Matt Fraction & Christian Ward…

“It’s vulgar, Mother-Father, finding bloodsport in torturing great women like Odyssia, warrior or not.”
“And yet the little apes are so very good at it.”
“There will be more. There will be blood yet to come.”
“There should be recompense. There should come thunderous punishment from we Olympians for their insolence and hubris.”

The finest rip-up-the-rule-book reinterpretation of Homer’s Odyssey since the classic animation Ulysses 31! That merely updated the Greek mythological epic to the 31st Century. ODY-C takes that same future science-fiction starting point and then throws in a gender flip too, reversing the sex of most of the characters.

Story-wise Fraction takes what is classic material, in all senses, and refashions it, scintillatingly relevant and exciting for even our over-indulged, battle-weary modern tastes.

It helps, obviously, that the original plot is brilliantly captivating, a ten-year struggle against impossible odds and overwhelming obstacles simply to get back home to loved ones and the throne. The gender flip freshens the material up further, allowing Fraction to put significantly different emphases and affectations on both the characters and plot. It’s a conceit which in a lesser writer’s hands could have turned into a right old chariot crash, but definitely makes this unique version of the Odyssey well worth reading.

 

However, what really turns this into a shining triumph is Christian Ward’s psychedelic art and colouring. I don’t know if he used every single hue and tint of his virtual palette, but I rather suspect he didn’t leave very many out. Rich and vibrant are oft-used terms but this is as expansive use of a truly vast array of colours, successfully I should add, as you are ever likely to see in a comic.

Fans of Ward’s work on Nick Spencer’s equally mind-bending INFINITE VACATION will already know of his ability to combine said colouring with surprisingly fine and intricate line work. He has a particular stylistic element to his line work, employing innumerate, endless flowing curves and waves going in all directions, with barely a straight line in sight that I absolutely love. The overall effect is one of such depth and complexity, he’s undoubtedly the perfect artist for this futuristic space opera.

About the only negative comment I can make about this first volume is that it doesn’t include the ultra-widescreen, multiple-page fold out splash-entrance that the first issue commenced with! They’ve included all the pages, and it does still work because they are beautiful, but they don’t have that same incredibly dramatic impact.

JR

Buy ODY-C vol 1: Off To Far Ithicaa s/c and read the Page 45 review here

They’re Not Like Us vol 1: Black Holes For The Young s/c (£7-50, Image) by Eric Stephenson & Simon Gane.

“I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“None of us did, but here we are. And I know you don’t trust me, but I promise you, when you know the whole story, you will feel better about being here.”

She won’t.

Hurrah, my leap of faith has been vindicated!

I love Simon Gane.

Since ALL FLEE I’ve been smitten, his landscape sketchbooks are amongst the most thrilling I’ve seen and his contribution to ABOVE THE DREAMLESS DEAD: WORLD WAR I IN POETRY AND COMICS was for me its star turn: all those ivy-strewn statues setting the tone in stone and reinforcing the poem’s haunting sentiments.

From the very first page he does not disappoint, the leaves on the trees as special and semi-detached as ever, enhanced by colour artist Jordie Bellaire’s paler echoes behind and beyond. Gane’s clothes have all the requisite wrinkles depending on where they’re stretched by the flesh beneath – the sort of detail Art Adams excelled at – while his faces are angular yet soft, and where Simon excels is at eye contact. So much of this is about eye contact: about trust and distrust, truth and lies. Which will be which, do you suppose?

Atop the Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, San Francisco, a young woman called Syd balances perilously close to the rooftop’s edge, her arms outstretched, tears streaming down her eyes.

“I live to fall asleep.
“It’s the only way I can get some relief from it all.
“The worrying.
“The planning.
“The lying.
“It’s the only way to escape from the complete lack of silence, the complete lack of peace. All I have to do is close my eyes and I’ll be at rest forever.”

Now, I was curious as to exactly why “the worrying” was set against an old woman, face buried in her hands; why “the planning” showed a handsome young man, smiling as he stood at a tram stop; and “the lying” seemed to refer to a middle-aged businessman dressing after sex with a woman who clearly wasn’t the one about to jump off life’s cliff.

You’ll have to wait a few pages while a dapper young man in a suit and tie – who clearly loves himself dearly – tries to talk Syd down and fails. Syd’s been dragged in and out of that hospital by her parents for years. She’s been plagued by voices, so many voices; a cacophony that has driven her to distraction while building a barrier between her and her parents who have never believed her. But she’s been telling the truth: she’s a telepath, and it’s only now that The Voice has found her that she has a seemingly sympathetic soul able to explain her condition and ease her mind. By controlling it.

Now there is silence and sanctuary in a gabled, gated mansion thick with Simon Gane foliage. I’d like all my foliage to be Simon Gane foliage. I wonder if he’d come and draw my garden for me? It’s in a bit of a state.

Under Gane and Bellaire the mansion becomes a character and star in its own right. The bedspreads, picture frames, carpets, chairs and stairs are so opulent!

It was, however, at this point that I originally ran into difficulties, but suspected that the big reveal was almost a distraction from a very important sentence which – combined with an extreme sense of entitlement expressed by The Voice – did not bode well for any of them. The big reveal came in the form of ten other occupants who were not all straightforward telepaths but an empath, a clairvoyant, an illusionist, a pyrokinetic, a –

Are you getting whiffs of Charles Xavier’s School For The Self-Sequestrated?

“But I don’t think there will be any big battles except between egos and control-freaks within,” I wrote. “I don’t think everyone’s showing their true colours.”

Sure enough it becomes increasingly clear to Syd that this group of young men and women squatting in a house which is not theirs, preying on whomever they fancy and taking whatever they please has been persuaded that this is their right. That because they’ve been mistreated because they are different, they are entitled to do the same. Because The Voice says so. Syd’s essentially fallen in with a cult, and a very dangerous one at that.

Stephenson balances the indoctrination brilliantly. It’s impossible to feel sorry for at least one of their targets when out on the streets and the self-justification comes thick and fast. But such extreme misfits living in such close proximity, almost under house arrest for so much of the time is going to cause increasingly worrying behaviour, you mark my words…

SLH

Buy They’re Not Like Us vol 1: Black Holes For The Young s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Supreme: Blue Rose s/c (£10-99, Image) by Warren Ellis & Tula Lotay.

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

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

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

“That’s the universe telling you something.”

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

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

Elsewhere and elsewhen, outside of time and space, someone else was telling her many things – about reality and revision; about how the universe occasionally reboots itself. But above she was told this:

“Don’t trust Darius Dax.”

Warren Ellis seemed back on top linguistic form to begin with, and certainly found an artist to match the daydream, elusive, other-dimensional aspect of the book. There is a quiet and soft vulnerability to Lotay’s forms and colours over which pale blue lines swirl like a chilly wind, giving them a sense of the ethereal; as if who and what you’re looking at might not even be there. Or you might not even be there. As if you’re looking at it all remotely, through a window, a viewscreen or a tank of liquid, especially in Darius Dax’s National Praxinoscope Company where there are additional, geometrical overlays.

There are sonic cathedrals and ghostly gazelles radiating light and colour like noboby’s business and when they cross the bridge which “is, of course, a quarter of a million miles long” they pass under monumental, neoclassical, triumphal arches of white stone held aloft by twin Supreme statues after gliding by what appears to be a curved, seaside scene of boarding houses basking in a Northern-Lights green.

As a colourist alone, Tula Lotay excels: she is inspired, dazzling, delirious. I promise you these pages are like nothing you’ve ever seen, though there’s something of the Michael Allred in the faces.

The art is something new for something both borrowed and blue, for this yet another remix of a funny old brand called SUPREME. And I’m afraid to say it, but this is akin one of those noodling 12-inch ‘80s vinyls which is so full of filler and goes nowhere. Like Darius Dax, it is deliberately obtuse and infuriating, full of long, clever words where much simpler ones would do. It really is this simple:

Twenty years ago a former Marvel artist called Rob Liefeld created a superhero called Supreme for what was then an illiterate brand relying solely on what was perceived to be the strength of its Image. Supreme was a dumb rip-off of the most obvious aspects of Superman. Then along came Alan Moore who rebooted the character and, with a winking glint in his eye, used the very nature of its rip-off to have enormously clever fun with all the more interesting and really very silly but endearing aspects of Superman in its own multiple, multiversal incarnations.

So now here we have Warren Ellis doing a new reboot in which the reboot’s gone wrong and former aspects of its previous versions have filtered through into the new. It’s all very meta but not rocket science, yet it’s been cloaked in terminology which makes it seem so. What am I missing?

Very, very, very beautiful.

Try Ellis’ INJECTION. It’s deliciously British, taking in legend and lore, reminiscent of Jamie Delano’s early HELLBLAZER and has the most swoonaway sweeps of leaves by Declan Shalvey.

SLH

Buy Supreme: Blue Rose s/c and read the Page 45 review here

The Amazing World Of Gumball vol 1 (£10-99, Kaboom) by Frank Gibson & Tyson Hesse…

“WHAT THE WHAT?”

I discovered The Amazing World Of Gumball TV show last year. We had gone on the annual Rigby summer jaunt to bella Italia. The country, that is, not the dreadful chain restaurant that has about as much in common with Italian cuisine as a McCain’s oven pizza.

Actually, digressive and non-digestible true story, there used to be an Italian restaurant called [REDACTED] very near where I live and the food was absolutely appalling. Just the worst, and it was so renowned for it that the wife and I actually felt compelled to try it, believing it couldn’t possibly be that bad.

So, the one and only time I ate there I ordered a pizza and the wife a lasagne. We then watched the ‘chef’ wander out the door to the Spar convenience store next door and shuffle back in not particularly surreptitiously with a frozen pizza and lasagne in his hands. I wondered out loud whether he seriously could have got those for us, surely not, but yes indeed, he shortly proudly brought out the obviously microwaved, offending articles. Unsurprisingly he closed not too long after that, though not before turning into a fish and chip shop for two whole weeks…

Anyway… back to bella Italia… the Whackjob (my 4-year-old daughter) and I had worked our way through every episode of ADVENTURE TIME, BRAVEST WARRIORS and REGULAR SHOW in the preceding months and I was conscious that it would be useful to find something else to entertain her whilst the wife and I attempted to enjoy our long, prosecco-soaked lunches without having pasta and pizza twirled round our ears. Someone recommended Gumball so I acquired the first season. Much like ADVENTURE TIME, BRAVEST WARRIORS and REGULAR SHOW, I quickly realised I was going to enjoy it just as much myself as Whackers! (This year’s luncheon lifesaver, by the way, was the first season of Steven Universe!)

It’s quite impossible to describe exactly what Gumball is all about, mind you. Basically loveable idiot Gumball and his eclectic multi-coloured bunch of friends and enemies – which include fish, dinosaurs, giants, flying eyes, monkeys, ghosts, even a talking balloon – have the most absurd adventures, often simply revolving around their street or school, but frequently involving danger levels of cosmic, world-shattering proportions. It is all utter nonsense, I can’t honestly ever recall what any episode was about ten minutes after I have watched it, but it’s relentlessly entertaining without pausing for breath as every good cartoon should be.

The animation is a mixture of standard illustration and overlaid photo inserts of some of the characters, like the T-Rex, which only adds to the fast-paced surrealism of it all. Gumball does only seem to have one volume and pitch of talking though, shouting in a monotone basically, which can get a little wearisome if you have to watch, or indeed by serenaded by, ten-plus episodes in a row whilst you’re mentally willing the waiter to hurry up with your tiramisu before the littlest tourist gets too restless in the restaurant…

Anyway, as I have commented on before, I do think that is extremely difficult for comics to achieve the same level of engrossment as truly brilliant cartoons, and much like longer form television dramas, I do think we are in a new golden age of cartoons also. But, if you are a fan of Gumball, you will get great enjoyment from this comic adaptation, as it is wittily written, perfectly capturing the hurricane-strength blow-you-along wind tunnel appeal of the show, plus they’ve done an excellent job of emulating the style of illustration.

JR

Buy The Amazing World Of Gumball vol 1 and read the Page 45 review here

The Cat With A Really Big Head h/c (£13-99, Titan) by Roman Dirge.

Oh dear, Titan miss a trick as the original title for the £2-20 pamphlet was its best joke:

‘The Cat With A Really Big Head (And One Other Story That Isn’t As Good)’.

Channelling Tim Burton (THE MELANCHOLY DEATH OF OYSTER BOY AND OTHER STORIES – you can consider employing far less flattering verbs if you like), it’s now been turned into a colour picture book full of blood and bones.

The story revolves around a cat with a really big head, so it’s far from false advertising. The fun is in watching the poor little mite trying to do all the things normal cats do – imagine it negotiating the cat flap, if you will – if that’s your idea of fun.

Please be warned that it’s a very quick read and, this being Roman LENORE Dirge, we don’t see a lot of sympathy for the moggy.

If you laugh at things like Vasquez’s FILLER BUNNY, you’ll like this one.

I’ve done my duty.

SLH

Buy The Cat With A Really Big Head and read the Page 45 review here

Civil War #1 (£3-99, Marvel) by Charles Soule & Leinil Francis Yu.

Genuinely bleak and nasty, this is another of those satellite series to Marvel’s current SECRET WARS. But, unlike the few others I’ve dipped into, it doesn’t appear to reference that series at all – for the moment, anyway.

I rate the original CIVIL WAR by Mark Millar & Steve McNiven very highly. It had something genuinely interesting to say about privacy and power, and it speaks volumes about our distrust of recent governments – with what they do with our information, how they glean it and what they are most likely to do with superior military might – that everyone I know instinctively sided with Captain America’s refusal to register with the American authorities and submit to their potential deployment (even though he’s a former soldier used to obeying the chain of command) rather than Iron Man who recognised that those with superpowers are potentially lethal loose cannons, as witnessed when a bunch of relatively inexperienced, attention-seeking teens took on a bunch of supervillains they were woefully ill-equipped to handle, resulting in the death of six hundred souls. It’s interesting because those same individuals who sided with Captain America, like almost everyone else in Britain, are adamantly in favour of American gun control which is what Iron Man was effectively advocating.

In case you’re intrigued enough to take a punt on the collected edition, I won’t tell you how it ended except that it was abrupt, unexpected and yet entirely in keeping with character.

In this alternative scenario – by the writer of DEATH OF WOLVERINE and the artist on Mark Millar’s NEMESIS – hostilities between the two sides of superheroes didn’t cease. They escalated. They escalated because things went horrifically wrong while the two factions were locked in battle in Iron Man’s prison hidden in a pocket dimension.

The Black Panther hacks into its security systems which sets off a fail-safe self-destruct sequence he attributes to Iron Man. I am choosing my words carefully, yes. Iron Man is informed by Commander Maria Hill of S.H.I.E.L.D. that the Black Panther set off the self-destruct sequence deliberately under direct orders from Captain America. I am still choosing my words very carefully. Both sides are incredulous about the other’s callousness. Then the bomb goes off. The bomb goes off just as Cloak is teleporting as many as possible from both warring parties, en masse, back to New York City. Some make it out, some don’t. What does make it out, is the blast.

The bomb-blast destroys New York and takes fifteen million people with it.

Whose side are you on now?

I ask that because in spite of my original analysis and the ante that’s now been upped I still instinctively sided with Captain America, and what follows, six years on, only goes on to entrench that alignment… because both scenarios are very carefully written.

Six years on and — haha, no! You wouldn’t thank me. You’ll want to read this comic for yourselves.

I’m a big fan of Yu who is solid, sure and exciting, and studies expressions well. They change only incrementally between panels as our own do between seconds unless something does actually take us by surprise. If every character reacts to everything and every word with melodrama as happens woefully often in superhero comics (and the sugar-buzz mainline of manga) then how do you discern the mellow from the genuinely dramatic? Inked by Gerry Alanguilan and coloured by Sunny Gho, there is a light, bright modelling going on.

But by “carefully written” I mean who do you think is backing whom? Which of Marvel Comics’ most cherished couples finds itself on opposing sides of the argument, in different camps which are not speaking to each other and so cannot meet in an America which has quite literally, geographically and geologically been divided in two? Can you spell “chasm”? There is one, right in the heart of the dessert.

Peace talks are proposed and, against all odds, a single woman persuades Captain America and Iron Man to meet in a building in the middle of the bridge which straddles that cavern.

Even before it goes horribly wrong it is patently obvious that they are both so set in their ways, so locked in their mindsets, so trapped in their past and so bitter about what they believe the other has done that recriminations are all they can offer each other.

Then it goes horribly wrong, and there is no hope to speak of.

SLH

Buy Civil War #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy!

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

Poetry Is Useless h/c (£22-50, Drawn & Quarterly) by Anders Nilsen

An Entity Observes All Things (£8-99, Retrofit) by Box Brown

Baddawi (£14-99, Just World Books) by Leila Abdelrazaq

Four Eyes vol 1: Forged In Flames s/c (£7-50, Image) by Joe Kelly & Max Fiumara

Moomin And The Martians (£6-99, Enfant) by Tove Jansson

Moomin Complete Lars Jansson Comic Strip vol 10 h/c (£14-99, Drawn & Quarterly) by Lars Jansson

Adventure Time: Banana Guard Academy s/c (£9-99, Titan) by Kent Osborne, Dylan Haggerty & Madeline Rupert

Adventure Time: Graybles Schmaybles s/c (£7-99, Titan) by Danielle Corsetto & Bridget Underwood

Predator: Fire & Stone s/c (£10-99, Dark Horse) by Joshua Williamson & Chris Mooneyham, John Lucas, Lucas Graciano

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles / Ghostbusters (£13-50, IDW) by Erik Burnham, Tom Waltz & Dan Schoening

Batman: Arkham Knight vol 1 h/c (£14-99, DC) by Peter J. Tomasi & Viktor Bogdanovic, various

Batman: Harley Quinn s/c (£14-99, DC) by Paul Dini, various & various

New Suicide Squad vol 1: Pure Insanity s/c (£12-99, DC) by Sean Ryan & Jeremy Roberts, Tom Derenick, various

Sinestro vol 2: Sacrifice s/c (£12-99, DC) by Cullen Bunn & Dale Eaglesham, various

The New 52: Futures End vol 2 s/c (£22-50, DC) by Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens, Keith Giffen & Georges Jeanty, Patrick Zircher, various

Miracleman Book vol 3: Olympus (UK Edition) h/c (£19-99, Marvel) by Alan Moore, Grant Morrsson, Peter Milligan & John Totleben, Joe Quesada, Mike Allred

Spider-Man 2099 vol 2: Spider-Verse s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Peter David & Will Sliney

Thor God Of Thunder vol 4: The Last Days Of Midgard s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Jason Aaron & Esad Ribic, R.M. Guera, Simon Bisley

Dogs – Bullets & Carnage vol 10 (£9-99, Viz) by Shirow Miwa

News!


ITEM! Page 45 is proud to promote The British Comics Awards! Yes, Page 45 is the BCA’s official Executive Sponsor! Scroll down to read all about it then please get your nominations in! Voting is open to all!

It seemed such a natural partnership to us. The winners of the @BritComicAwards best graphic novels – NELSON then THE NAO OF BROWN and THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EARLY EARTH – were my favourite books each successive year, and it’s by far the best award institution British Comics has ever known. I may have to blog about it later.

ITEM! Time-lapse vimeo of Jonathan Edwards painting a waterfall – three minutes of your life in exchange for hours of awe and adoration as you daydream about it forever. You can buy Jonathan Edwards’ prints here!

ITEM! STAR CAT’s James Turner’s hilarious comic on the perils of procrastination. Creators may well relate!

ITEM! New interview with Asaf Hanuka and Tomer Hanuka about THE DIVINE.

ITEM! Brilliant blog by Sarah McIntyre, the co-creator of, JAMPIRESOLIVER AND THE SEAWIGS (which just won the UK Literacy Assocation Award for 7- to-11-year-olds), and CAKES IN SPACE which I reviewed above:

“Pictures Mean Business: Why Do So Many People Keep Forgetting To Credit Illustrators?”

Why indeed! It’s absolutely crazy as every comic lover knows, but this carelessness is prevalent amongst publishers of illustrated prose and picture books. Take a gander, it’s great, and if tweeting about it, please use the hashtag #picturesmeanbusiness.

 – Stephen

Page 45 Reviews written by Stephen & Jonathan then edited by an elephant that’s as blind as a bat.

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