Featuring Philip Reeve & Sarah McIntyre, Luke Pearson, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Elizabeth Breitweiser, Ben Haggarty and Adam Brockbank.
Hilda And The Stone Forest h/c (£12-95, Flying Eye Books) by Luke Pearson.
Gorgeous composition of a cover for the fifth HILDA outing, and you may have already spotted a clue to one of this all-ages book’s many marked departures!
We’ve no time to talk of that yet, for Hilda’s hurried home to a less than impressed mother.
“Hey, I’m sorry I’m late!
“I totally lost track of time. I think my watch is broken.
“And I forgot to take it out with me, so that didn’t help, either.
“And then Twig wouldn’t stop chasing this dog…”
That’s a cracking last panel with poor Twig looking round in the background, alarmed at Hilda’s barefaced lie. With the raised brows and exclamation mark, he looks like George Herriman’s Krazy Kat after being hit by a brick thrown by Ignatz.
But if you think Hilda’s excuses are exhausting (they did go on…!), then the pages preceding them will leave you completely out of breath. For our adventure opens immediately with Hilda and Twig giving chase to a long-legged clump of semi-sentient turf which a family of tiny Hidden People from HILDA AND THE MIDNIGHT GIANT has unknowingly built their house on.
Off it gallops across a double-page spread of long, landscape panels accentuating the speed and distance travelled, as Hilda hurtles through a hole in the fence, over the top of a steep, sandy bank and tumbles downhill into a steam-train terminus. Instantly then they’re off again, leaping across country in pursuit of the agile and unexpectedly mobile home.
Ooof! Only when they’ve finally caught up with the critter do they realise how far from the city they’ve strayed, deep into Stone Troll territory. Now, Stone Trolls are sedentary during daylight so that’s reassuring, but overnight the local farmer’s fields have been plundered, his fields ransacked of their juicy crops and his goat stolen too. So that’s new. As are all the fires on the mountain late at night – they haven’t been seen for many years. It seems the Stone Trolls are growing increasingly active…
Now to the nub of the matter: this isn’t the first time Hilda’s been late or gone AWOL. There’s a glorious, extended montage of past adventures – some of which we haven’t been privy to yet – climaxing in some seriously sorry excuses for the states she comes back in, hilariously contradicted by the action-packed snapshots above them.
“It’s these dusty streets. It just seems to stick to me.”
You’re going to get covered in mud if you’re chased by wild onions underground.
“The puddles around here are outrageous.”
So was that porkie-pie, Miss Bedraggled and Be-drenched!
“Whatever you’re thinking it’s not that.”
Actually true: I doubt her Mum would have imagined a giant white rose splurting her daughter with bright-yellow gloop.
“Yeah, the library was fine.”
It wasn’t.
Now, Hilda’s Mum is no control freak (she gives her a lot of leeway) but she worries about her daughter’s safety because that’s what Mums do, and she just wants to spend a little quality time with her on a picnic or playing games. And they do have a lovely picnic (after a certain degree of misjudged spot-picking) but I’m afraid things come to a head when Mum denies her one night away and Hilda goes mental. Complete temper-tantrum meltdown, and she says some terrible, terrible things that made me vicariously ashamed.
But even through Hilda’s mother finally puts her foot down, Hilda’s never been good with temptation and the lure of a good old curiosity-quest, and it’s a tug of war which has radical ramifications for both Hilda and her Mum, who will be far from reassured by what follows…
On that, I shall attempt to say as little as possible, but you saw that cover, didn’t you?
There’s so much to relish here, not least the perils of a countryside picnic. Our Jonathan remarked, with great amusement, on how well Luke had observed all the stroppiness and backchat of a right young madam or little man in full flow.
There are brand-new creatures with fascinating and potentially useful diets to discover, and wait until you get a load of the eerie Stone Forest itself, coloured ever so exotically! There will be “Oooh!”s And there will be “Aaaah!”s when the central cavern is revealed, as vast as the vastest cathedral you’ve never seen.
I will say one thing: the stakes will be raised when it comes to the level of danger, but it will serve to prove that Hilda and her Mum are very much cut from the same cloth in their resilience, resourcefulness and their indefatigability.
Anyone who spoils the ending for you, in any way shape or form, should be sent to bed early and grounded for a fortnight or more.
SLH
Buy Hilda And The Stone Forest h/c and read the Page 45 review here
Jinks & O’Hare Funfair Repair (£8-99, Oxford Press) by Philip Reeve & Sarah McIntyre.
“Rampaging foodstuffs are a bit of a recurring theme in our books…” – Philip Reeve
He’s not wrong!
If you thought you’d already had your fill from CAKES IN SPACE, prepare to get stuffed once again, this time by a Candyfloss Colossus who’s gotten all grumpy: a sore-headed, sentient sugar mountain – sweet!
There will be screams, there will be squeals; there will be giggles galore and dodgem-car dashes in this all-ages outrage, full of the fun of the fair: a mad, moon-based fair, accessible by interplanetary spaceship only. Sequester your sandwiches and hold onto your hats – you’re in for the ride of your life!
Wouldn’t you just love to live on Funfair Moon? An entire moon dedicated to the best rides ever: the curliest roller coasters, the swirliest helter-skelters and the scariest haunted house ever because it’s actually haunted – by ghosts! Well, Emily does live there, above the Lost Property Office.
In a way, she’s a little bit of Lost Property herself, having hatched from a pale-blue egg laid accidentally by an over-excited occupant of the Switchback of Doom. You might well lay an egg yourself if you’re ever brave enough to embark! It was found the next morning by Jinks and O’Hare, the funfair repair men, and for nearly ten years Emily has been looked after by Mrs Mimms.
“Mrs Mimms, who ran the Lost Property Office, wasn’t exactly like a mum. In fact, she was more like a sort of giant alien octopus.”
That’s because she was one! The Lost Property office was right next to Jinks and O’Hare’s workshop.
“Emily often peeked in to see what they were fixing, and sometimes O’Hare would let her help with small jobs such as unclogging mega-thunk pistons or replacing worn-out thunderspin sprockets.”
On alternate days, however, Emily went to school. Now, I hope you didn’t yell “Bor-ing!” because this was a most forward-looking school created by the famous scientist, Floomish Spoob. It was all-about looking, basically, on account of being a Learny-Go-Round.
“Professor Spoob had discovered that people always learn more when they are on the move (that is why travel broadens the mind, but nobody learns much while they are asleep).”
Brilliant! You’ve got to adore Reeve’s lateral thinking as well his deep love of language. I mean, “mega-thunk pistons” and “thunderspin sprockets”! It gets better:
“So on the Learny-Go-Round the pupils sat at desks which whirled around and around the central podium where the teacher stood. During the more difficult lessons they also went up and down, like the painted horses on a carousel.
“That meant that some people got quite travel sick during double maths.”
I’ve just put my hand up in admission.
It was an idyllic existence because everyone who worked all the rides also lived there, and they were all sorts of shapes, sizes and facial arrangements – not to mention all the visitors from planets far and wide. Thanks to Jinks and O’Hare the Funfair Moon had the best Health and Safety record in existence; a spotless record renowned throughout the galaxy, the Milky Way and even the Mars Bar (non-alcoholic juice-drinks only).
Until today.
Because something black and spiny has arrived in a hatbox which Mrs Mimms popped onto her shelves, and now it’s scuttling and rustling about unnoticed all over and under the fair and rides are beginning to go substantially skew-whiff. What a day for Mr Moonbottom from the Galactic Council (Leisure and Entertainment Sub-Committee) to touch down with his assistant Miss Weebly, in their thoroughly dull but very heavy spaceship, squashing an I-Speak-Your-Weight-Machine!
“You weigh 7,224 tonnes, argh zzxxzx . . . “
Bang out of order. And it is, now that they’ve crushed it!
That’s one black mark against the fair already, and it’s only going to get worse. Jinks and O’Hare are going to have their hands full dealing with the disasters while our Emily frantically races round, trying to get to the bottom of all the breakdowns while keeping Mr Moonbottom from the Galactic Council (Leisure and Entertainment Sub-Committee) and Miss Weebly in the dark.
Where have all the ghouls in the ghost-train gone? Why is something vast, pink and sticky striding around town and tearing up the Terror Mountain in a rage? What has happened to Mrs Mimms’ Lost Property Office?
“Someone comes in asking for a lost bobble hat and I check my list and see Bobble Hat – Number 79 – but when I fetch Number 79, it isn’t a bobble hat, it’s a pair of skis or a cement mixer.”
The well of Reeve and McIntyre’s co-creative inventiveness and quite frankly insane imaginations appears to be bottomless and never runs dry. O’Hare communicating through smiles, shrugs and cheeky eyebrow-wriggling only! Synchronised swimming followed by synchronised strimming! And of course there’s a park-and-ride on a nearby asteroid if the entire moon is dedicated to the funfair! Why would there not be?
The art is equally rich with little background jokes thrown in for the sharp-eyed and attentive: a pair of three-lens sunglasses dangling from one of Mrs Mimms’ many tentacles; a spider dangling from one of Miss Weebly’s hair-buns on the ghost train; the back-page of a newspaper in the mermaid lagoon featuring a photo of Iris, the short-sighted mermaid from OLIVER AND THE SEAWIGS. Oh, there are cameos of critters from all your favourite McIntyre and Reeve ridiculousnesses, if you look close enough, including PUGS OF THE FROZEN NORTH and even The Dartmoor Pegasus!
I’ve always admired how integrated the text and illustrations are – that must take an awful lot of juggling – so that, when they’re not, it’s for deliberate, striking effect, as when we get out first glimpse of the black and spiky thing peering ominously out of its hatbox, like a Tove Jansson creation from MOOMIN. Sat at the bottom of the page, the white space above suggests mystery, an ellipsis and an almost certain imminent exit…
Jinks and O’Hare are delightful designs – this time on Philip’s part, for he illustrated the original comic which Sarah wrote for The Phoenix Weekly Comic. O’Hare, drawn in pencil, is one big bundle of fluff with a further fluff of moustache. Jinks’ eyes stand out on stalks and make for great comedy on the rollercoaster ride. But my favourite here is Lord Krull (oh, there’s a lot more for Emily and co. to contend with than I’ve made out) who is ever so imposing!
“SILENCE!” roared the stranger, “I am Lord Krull, Commander of the Black Fleet, Conqueror of Worlds, Supreme Ruler of the Darkvoids of Quorn. Star systems tremble at my very name. But my wife’s gone to her sister’s for the weekend and she left me in charge of our little boy. So I thought I’d bring him to your Funfair Moon. I’m told children enjoy this thing you call ‘fun’.”
“Yes, we do,” said Emily.
“SILENCE!” bellowed Lord Krull. “Unfortunately I got rather dizzy on the Learny-Go-Round.”
“But the Learny-Go-Round isn’t a ride,” said Emily. “It’s our school…”
“I was told it would be educational,” said Lord Krull. “But it went a bit faster than I was expecting.”
SLH
Buy Jinks & O’Hare Funfair Repair and read the Page 45 review here
Mezolith vol 2: Stone Age Dreams And Nightmares h/c (£22-99, Archaia) by Ben Haggarty & Adam Brockbank.
Poika
and Sisu sit side-by-side under the shelter of two lichen-rich boulders which lean against each other in mutual support. As the rain pours from the grey heavens above, eroding visibility of the lush foliage further downstream, they watch ripples on the river expand right in front of them.
“I like this place.
“I come here when I want to be quiet. Watching the water settles my thoughts.
“Tutta told me you could talk… Can you, Sisu?
“Can you?”
And if she could, what would she say?
Sisu has been welcomed by Poika’s people after being rescued from a tribe already at odds with the Kansa, but which has since been driven self-destructively mad by their vicious leader’s obsession with a mirror-stone. During her time in captivity something occurred which so traumatised Sisu that she hasn’t spoken since. Unfortunately not all of the Kansa are as kind as Poika, and her presence will cause ramifications because – just as the sound of rain on water still soothes the soul – in so many ways we haven’t changed at all in 10,000 years.
Set in the unspoiled wilds on the eastern shores of Stone Age Britain, MEZOLITH VOL 1 was a book of beauty that made my eyes glow and heart sing as a boy called Poika took his first tentative steps towards becoming a man.
I wrote:
“It’s an unforgiving life where wounds are deep, infection rife, the winters harsh and tribal territories fiercely enforced; but it’s also one rich in folklore, and although the lad’s courage far outstrips the experience his elders will need to teach him – about hunting, survival and the balance of things – his affinity for nature, tenacity and curiosity will undoubtedly prove the making of him.”
And so it did. I also remarked that Poika grew visibly and physically during the course of the book, but here it is even more evident, particularly in panels during which he’s being courted by Kiva, casually to begin with but then more directly. It unsettles, even embarrasses Poika who doesn’t consider himself ready yet but his arms and abdomen say otherwise.
Now is the time that pairing will come into play, and that will be reflected in one particularly instructive tale to young women being prepared ceremonially for their first dance.
“Some of you might find a husband.
“You giggle, but you might – though he cannot be an Owl man. They’ve broken their bonds with all of us. They and their kind are not welcome here.
“Taking the hands of a man is for companionship and helping each other – understand how the left hand works with the right hand.
“This paint and prettiness is all very well, but in truth, how you get on with a man depends on a meeting of spirits and how you can help each other as mates…”
The story she spins is of two sisters who learned nothing of use to themselves or their tribe, relying instead on their good looks while disdaining others’, dismissing and demeaning potential mates whom they nick-name according to what they considered physical defects. Well, they’ve a fantastical journey ahead and hard lessons to learn. Physical differences will be much in evidence in MEZOLITH VOLUME 2. Haggarty’s ability to link certain strands and sustain specific themes is as impressive as his storytelling skills for which he is legendary, live.
It’s the oral tradition of passing down stories from one generation to the next which lies at the heart of both books. Since knowledge came so often at a terrible cost and survival depended upon it, preserving as much as possible in the form of fables was essential.
It should be noted that they are Young Adult books but largely bought by adults for adults. Brockbank is very much an artist’s artist and since his film credits range from Harry Potter to Maleficent you’ll be unsurprised to learn that his luminous artwork is a joy. In the first book there were the five ebony-eyed sisters with their snow-white swan feathers draped over their silk-smooth, cream-coloured bodies, an early, expertly choreographed hunt for fresh meat which went awry, and woodland climbs in the heat of the day.
Here there’s a bear and oh so many bees, and a spectacular fishing or rather fish-driving sequence using judiciously placed mesh tunnels crafted from flexible but durable inner bark. You’ll yearn for such clean waters and fresh, unspoiled landscapes lit by the sun but seen from the dappled shade as smoke from the camp fires drifts up in front of canopies which themselves rise towards of a misted mountain and the birds up above.
Brockbank is equally adept at the otherworldly – glistening ebony eyes being a favourite of his – and there’s no small element of horror in both volumes.
As well as traditions, MEZOLITH is also a book about family – the generations these practices are passed down through. Now, even as Poika is beginning to take an increasingly active role within the tribe, so his father Isa must reluctantly leave his hunting days behind. He’s already been shown by much older Konkari that age does not necessarily bring with it frailty or being unable to contribute (as we have seen, being useful to others is of paramount importance to this society) and Isa has already had to apologise once! But there’s a particularly moving scene – beautifully written and artfully depicted in semi-silhouette against the glare of a late afternoon sun as if seen through honeycomb – during which Isa is visited by his dead wife in a dream call, reassuring him that he has done well, that his story is far from over, and that he is strong and handsome and very much loved.
SLH
Buy Mezolith vol 2: Stone Age Dreams And Nightmares h/c and read the Page 45 review here
Criminal vol 7: Wrong Place, Wrong Time s/c (£13-99, Image) by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips with Elizabeth Breitweiser on colour art.
“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 there – whilst en route to collect what would have been some considerable cold cash from an armoured-car stick-up – over a simple 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 eliminate a councilman who’s blocking a construction contract which 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, fluid, accessible and addictive as Sean: monologue or dialogue across the top, with the image below. Also, there’s an immediate sense of time and place: I love Teeg’s hair.
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’d get them back home. 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 hadn’t finished reading that, you fat fuck…
So we come to the second instalment – the 10th Anniversary Special – and a reminder that CRIMINAL is the best crime in comics, along with the same team’s THE FADE OUT and David Lapham’s STRAY BULLETS. I have, without fail, reviewed every single edition of all of those, and relished doing so.
How was your childhood?
“It’s easier to be a fictional character.
“How sad is that?”
Not as sad as the ending, as an almost unheard of act of kindness in twelve-year-old Tracy Lawless’ bleak young life is flushed down the pan, along with all its potential. Out of fear.
Looked at from another angle, however, it is perhaps the one ray of hope that young Tracy might turn out okay against all nature-and-nurture odds, because it’s not for himself that he fears. It’s for a local girl who’s befriended him on the streets of a small town where, as a stranger, he sticks out like a sore thumb even whilst under an alias.
“I’m not supposed to be doing this. ‘Mike Johnson’ isn’t supposed to have fun.
“And he doesn’t get to make friends. Friends get remembered.”
Oh dear. We’ve already discovered what happens to those might remember Tracy. Brubaker deliberately sets this up on the very first pages so that it informs everything else that follows, throwing a terrible pall over anyone who comes near the boy.
This includes Lana, one of the individuals that Tracy’s Dad is out searching for. Because of this looming threat one fears, rightly or wrongly, that Tracy may have doomed the smiling shop assistant simply by identifying her. Tracy himself recognises this almost immediately afterwards. It’s not exactly a Judas moment, but it’s certainly made all the more poignant by their mutual, momentary affection which elicits the other act of kindness and their eyes light up. So it might as well have been a kiss.
Mike Johnson, by the way, is that fictional identity Tracy is forced to adopt whenever he’s travelling on the run with his career-criminal dad. He shouldn’t have been roaming the streets, he should have stayed safely shut away in the motel reading the comic which his father Teeg stole for him (which is nice), but Teeg hadn’t come back in the evening nor in the morning, and that’s pretty much par for the course. The boy’s got to eat.
What follows is a rough scrap of a friendship scraped from the car crash of Tracy’s neglected childhood before he witnesses that which a twelve-year-old son never should.
There’s a telling line early on from Tracy, referring to himself being taught to drive his dad’s getaway car last year as “just a kid” as if he considers himself an adult now. But he’s neither one thing nor the other: he’s not his father’s adult accomplice because he’s not been let in on what the mission is; yet if he’s still a child what on earth is he doing behind the wheel and changing number plates? What is he doing – worst of all – understanding his father’s fucked up priorities?
Sean draws the boy all droopy-mouthed and saggy-shouldered – weighted and weary beyond his years, far from care-free and truly troll-like. His eyes would be scathing if they could summon the energy but they are instead so heavy, so sceptical, expecting nothing. Which is just as well. It’s what makes the brief burst of reignited hope and rekindled vivacity in the shop with Lana so unexpected and arresting. The boy can actually smile – he can beam! – if engaged with at all.
But that’s as nothing to the central panel in a single page which is one of the finest I’ve seen in comics.
It is the epitome of wide-eyed, awe-struck enchantment as Tracy’s face comes electrically alive, spellbound by the DEADLY HANDS OF comic which straddles the same worlds he does between adult and child.
“This comic is weird…
“It kind of reminds me of the ones my dad gets some times…
“But those have naked ladies and stuff in them.
“And this one, you just feel like it’s about to have naked ladies all the time.
“Like it’s a comic for kids pretending to be a comic for grown-ups.”
Of course it is. It’s a mischievous tribute to a Marvel Comics combo of SHANG-CHI, MASTER OF KUNG-FU and WEREWOLF BY NIGHT (very seventies indeed, Daddio!), pages of which are paraded in front of you in all their tanned, aged-paper glory by Sean Phillips in immaculate impressions of expressionist Paul Gulacy the for sub-lunar werewolf sequences and of the far more conservative Sal Buscema inked by the likes of Mike Esposito when the angst-ridden protagonist reverts to puny Peter-Parker-like form. It’s all in the eyebrows.
I like what Breitweiser’s done with both the daytime and evening colours here: it’s something completely different to FATALE or THE FADE OUT for this is set is in such a small town that it’s virtually deserted after dark. There are no fancy-schmancy multicoloured neon bar signs projecting onto the street: in the evening the only monochromatic glow comes from the few sickly sodium lights and they don’t light anything up properly. In the daytime the colours may be muted and mundane but they do at least look relatively healthy and safe by contrast.
I don’t know whether Brubaker of Phillips decided which comics would be racked in the grocery store’s spinners but whichever it was we evidently shared similar summer holiday experiences.
Speaking of similar summer holiday experiences, hats off to both for the kids’ visit to the second-hand bookshop – the only place you’d find old comics back then. Phillips has almost beaten Bernie Wrightson at his own game for internal clutter. I could feel the binding of every single book on those shelves, but of course Tracy’s not interested.
“I’m just looking for comics.”
We’re all just looking for comics.
SLH
Buy Criminal vol 7: Wrong Place, Wrong Time 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.
Audubon – On The Wings Of The World (£15-99, Nobrow) by Fabien Grolleau & Jeremie Royer
Carrot To The Stars (£6-00, Lakes International Comics Art Festival) by Regis Lejonc, Thierry Murat & Riff Reb’s
Libby’s Dad (£6-00, Retrofit / Big Planet) by Eleanor Davis
Mirror vol 1: The Mountain s/c (£13-99, Image) by Emma Rios & Hwei Lim
Cat Rackham h/c (£17-99, Koyama Press) by Steve Wolfhard
The Fix vol 1: Where Beagles Dare s/c (£8-99, Image) by Nick Spencer & Steve Lieber
Ghosts (£9-99, Scholastic) by Raina Telgemeier
Harrow County vol 3: Snake Doctor s/c (£13-99, Dark Horse) by Cullen Bunn & Carla Speed McNeil, Jenn Manley Lee, Tyler Crook
Our Mother (£7-00, Retrofit / Big Planet) by Luke Howard
Walking Dead vol 26: Call To Arms (£13-99, Image) by Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard
The Wormgler (£2-00, self-published) by David Frankum
Harley Quinn vol 4: A Call To Arms s/c (£14-99, DC) by Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti & Chad Hardin, John Timms, various
Superman: The Return Of Superman s/c (£26-99, DC) by various
Titans Hunt s/c (£15-99, DC) by Dan Abnett & Paulo Siqueira, various
Wonder Woman vol 8: Twist Of Fate s/c (£14-99, DC) by Meredith Finch & David Finch, various
Daredevil: Back In Black vol 2: Supersonic s/c (£14-50, Marvel) by Charles Soule & various
Punisher: War Journal s/c (£35-99, Marvel) by Carl Potts, Mike Baron & Jim Lee, various
Uncanny Avengers: Unity vol 2 – Man Who Fell To Earth s/c (£15-99, Marvel) by Gerry Duggan & Ryan Stegman, Pepe Larraz
X-Men Origins: Gambit s/c (£17-99, Marvel) by various
Attack On Titan: Lost Girls vol 1 (£8-99, Kodansha) by Hiroshi Seko & Ryosuke Fuji
Avatar, The Last Airbender vol 13: North And South Part 1 (£9-99, Dark Horse) by Gene Yuen Lang & Gurihiru
Fruits Basket Collector’s Edition vol 4 (£14-99, Yen Press) by Natsuki Takaya
Limit vol 6 (£9-99, Vertical) by Keiko Suenobu
Log Horizon – The West Wind Brigade vol 1 (£9-99, Yen Press) by Mamare Touno & Koyuki
News!
ITEM! A slideshow of The New Yorker’s 9/11 covers.
These are my two favourites, which have a certain ghostly symmetry.
Above: “9/11/2001,” by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly, September 24, 2001.
Below: “Reflections,” by Ana Juan, September 12, 2011.
ITEM! Brilliant page from John Allison’s imminent Bobbins.Horse book which may be pre-order only. We’ve already stuck our oar in to grab some, but remember: when they arrive, they may be your only chance so please don’t dilly-dally.
Which may be one of my favourite phrases ever along with skew-whiff and wonky-woo.
ITEM! Another interview with HILDA’s Luke Pearson, this one a little more whimsical.
ITEM! A much longer interview with Alan Moore about Jerusalem, the working class, Donald Trump, Brexit and Athenian Democracy.
JINKS & O’HARE FUNFAIR REPAIR bonus, before the addition of text, top left.
– Stephen
