Paul Madonna, John Allison, Noah Van Sciver, Asaf Hanuka, Ben Passmore, Alex De Campi, Tony Parker, Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso, Jason reprints.
The Realist: Plug And Play h/c (£18-99, Archaia) by Asaf Hanuka.
In which, following
the success of THE REALIST and THE DIVINE, Asaf travels to receive awards in Japan.
There he experiences the tradition of bowing, business card presentation offered and received with both hands, the cleanliness of public toilets, and violence-free order even on the most crowded of pedestrian streets.
“I was wondering if all the cute characters were a reaction to the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wish collective traumas were translated into something huggable in Israel.”
He also learns why formal photographs avoid showing fingers and buggers that up completely, thereby experiencing another Japanese tradition, that of the lowest point a man can reach: public embarrassment.
But for all this travel you may have already noticed that Hanuka’s thoughts rarely stray far from home and – given that his home is Tel Aviv in Israel – terrorism is at the forefront throughout, not just pervading his conscious but intruding physically into his life in the form of armed police, military manoeuvres and the sorts of threats which make you think twice: airborne missile strikes. At one point his family have to take refuge in an air raid shelter.
Typically during this atypical six-page instalment (the standard is a single-page splash or nine-panel grid), he manages to weave in a thread about “nothing”, the nature of which is on his son’s mind:
“What is nothing made of?”
“Well, it’s made of… umm… It’s made of nothing.”
“So it’s not really nothing, right?”
“What do you mean?” asks Asaf, struggling with a Rubik’s Cube.
“If it’s made of something, how can it be nothing?”
At which point his younger daughter, little more than a toddler, drops a TINTIN rocket on her toes.
Good old Dad does manage to come up with a wise and coherent answer eventually, but then his own dad calls to check that the family are okay following the explosion and flames we see through the window just a couple of blocks from their home, and the retaliatory strike we see through military-jet crosshairs on Gaza.
“It was nothing.”
The very first page, ‘Je Suis Charlie’ shows the artist at work, fretting about his contribution to the wide-ranging acts of solidarity in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, and the enormous responsibility of getting his own response right. So many discarded failures lie crumpled on the floor below as he sweats over a new page, staring directly down the length of his pen… and down the barrel of a gun.
It’s a phenomenal composition.
Elsewhere the gleaming floor of a Parisian airport reflects Hanuka’s preoccupations but again, however bad we have it here with what to most of us are unfathomable atrocities, try living in Israel. In fact, try living in Israel during the kitchen-knife stabbing-Intifada if you look like Asaf. He strives to shave more often, for a start.
“I can spot suspicious looks when people notice me on the street. I can’t blame them – if I’d seen myself I would probably be worried too.
“Everyone is afraid and everyone is a suspect. Arabs in particular, or those who look Middle-Eastern. Arab-Jews, like myself, and Arab-Muslims look exactly the same.”
He sinks up to his nose into a sea of blood, casting his eyes anxiously around.
“Fear, paranoia, hysteria, an angry mob, and misidentification. That’s all you need for someone innocent to be lynched in a central bus station in Israel these days.
“I’m a walking target, twice. As a Jew I’m a target for terrorists and as an Arab I’m a target for those who look for suspects to neutralise.”
Identity is an issue that permeates both books (and the masks and peeled faces are back), Hanukah constantly considering himself “stuck in the vacuum between camps” as he explains in ‘Costumes’ on the subject of Jews from Kurdistan and Iraq. Then, of course, there’s his marriage – mixed, between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi – which wouldn’t have been allowed had they been Religious Zionists or Orthodox Jews.
I promise, however, that there is much mischief too, with titles like ‘Emojinal’ and ‘The In-House Designer’, the latter being a catalogue of clothing purchases from Paris, New York and home, sweet home, personalised / ruined by the creative endeavours of his daughter.
Along with the thrilling compositions, there’s a glorious physicality to Hanukah’s forms, both impressively displayed in ‘Double Dad’ as his son squelches him into a photocopier and gaily replicates him multiple times, the sheaves of flat paper falling to the lime-green floor. These reproduce the back of Asaf’s shiny head and shoulders, but then his arms emerge, hands heaving against the paper as he pulls himself up and out into the three-dimensional world.
Shame about the copy that got crinkled in the blockage…
‘Secrets From The Kitchen’ offers an alternative recipe for pancakes that the one you might be used to, and is a far more relaxed culinary escapade than ‘Chill’ in which husband Hanukah is left to cope solo with the domestic routines including a fry-up when his wife’s back gives out.
“Come eat! The food is ready. Where’s the girl?”
Clue: “Hottt…”
And yes, just like last time, the family sits, skips and trips centre-stage with movement-cartooning worthy of the great Kyle Baker as the household ups sticks and drips its way to holiday heaven.
For more, including the origins of this series, please see our review of THE REALIST in which I talk about the ingenious ways in which the creator utilises the nine-panel grid, often making structural use either of the tiers or the columns in linking the various threads weaved into a single work of wonder.
I leave you instead with the end of an anecdote from boyhood during which, as an eight-year-old, the artist was chased on the way back from school by a wild horse, here a fearful black shadow. Running as fast as he could, he falls as the horse still catches up, and resigns himself to its hooves.
“But instead of trampling me, the horse skipped over me and continued to gallop wildly to someplace else.
“When I got home I told my mother everything. She said I should try and draw what happened. That it would help me relax.
“I began to draw, slowly feeling that paralysing fear transform into inspiration.
“Now, whenever disaster approaches, I pull out my markers and draw calmly. I know by now the chances are, it’s on its way to someplace else.”
SLH
Buy The Realist: Plug And Play h/c and read the Page 45 review here
Fante Bukowski Two (£13-99, Fantagraphics Books) by Noah Van Sciver…
“The lettering, the title,
the cover… this is the best zine. Good thing I printed twenty thousand of these puppies! That ought to be enough for now!”
The literary legend – in his own boozy endless lunchtime, that is – returns to titillate us with his latest set of trials and tribulations in attempting to write the ‘Great American Novel’ and find stellar fame and Croesus-like wealth into the bargain. Moving on from the scene of his previous spectacular failure, as chronicled in FANTE BUKOWSKI, this time he’s mooching around that well known literary hotbed of Columbus, Ohio, where all the greats have seemingly spent time, or indeed, currently live!
Columbus, Ohio, being where a certain Noah Van Sciver happens to reside… I’ve been there oddly enough and let me tell you, not a lot happens… Still, it’s an amusing conceit, but one that’s promptly and brutally bettered in the rib-tickles department by said Noah Van Sciver, replete with the now sadly shaved off, sarcastically self-proclaimed 4th best moustache in comics, appearing in this volume as a larger-than-life and I’m sure, entirely more odious version of himself as the romantic makeweight for Fante’s former flame, Audrey. Who just so happens to be on that very self-same meteoric rise to stardom that Fante so desperately craves. Audrey, for some strange unknown reason, as she freely acknowledges to herself, despite Fante abandoning her in volume one, still harbours some fond affection for him.
Fante, meanwhile, is living in a cockroach-infested hotel with some delightful boutique features such as a profusion of voyeurs’ peepholes and a kleptomaniac junkie manager. The Ritz it is not. Still, it’s all grist to the metaphorical mill for a future Pulitzer Prize winner… In fact, were it not for Fante’s steadfast, unshakeable belief that his own prodigious, innate talent will eventually be enough that the whole world will recognise his genius and thus provide him with his very own happy ending, he might consider giving it all up. Oh, and so long as his parents don’t cancel his credit card that they pay off each month… Hmm… now, I wonder what they’ll do when they see a streetwalker’s personal services on the next bill?
As before, there’s so much additional chortle-worthy nonsense packed in on every single page such as excerpts of Fante’s own poetry, of which there are several suitably dreadful examples scattered throughout. Mainly reflecting upon just how tortured his chosen life is, musing on the likes of facing the insurmountable existential crisis of running out of beer and having to brave the sarcastically dismissive cashier at the corner store.
Another little conceit I loved, was the occasional artistic nod to a comics’ creator or a classic panel. If you know your stuff you might spot as diverse references as Robert Crumb and the final page of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #50! There are also some other choice real-world comics cameos, besides Noah himself, that only add to the fun. In fact one of which proves hilariously crucial to the farcical denouement.
If any creator ever wanted an example of how not to waste a single bit of space, they should look at this work. Even the inside cover has a brilliant little visual gag, which I won’t spoil, that completely initially fooled me. There was also supposed to be an additional visual gag on the rear cover, involving a fake label but hilariously it was mis-printed requiring Fantagraphics to then actually print a genuine additional ISBN label to stick over it!
Plus, as with volume one, there’s innumerate pearls of wisdom from the great and good dispensed like self-motivational medication for poor old Fante with disturbing frequency as page headers. Not that he’s paying the slightest bit of attention being entirely wrapped up in his epic travails… In fact, I’ll leave the last word to Fante. It’s about himself of course…
“How can the world have so little faith in me? It’s like nobody wants me to be the famous writer I’m meant to be…”
JR
Buy Fante Bukowski Two and read the Page 45 review here
Your Black Friend (£4-50, Silver Sprocket) by Ben Passmore.
A densely 
worded eleven-page opportunity to listen to a fresh perspective we’d all do well to see the world from, lest we assume that we all experience it the same way.
Your titular black friend has much on his mind from his extensive experience of being your black friend. He has plenty to say about that experience and he does so with commendable clarity, directness and level-headed balance; but he’s not about to waste what little space he has by mincing his words, either.
He’s going to say what he means and mean what he says.
The comic is bookended by your black friend “sitting in a coffee shop, your favourite coffee shop”, eating a sandwich he’s bought elsewhere “hoping that white guilt will keep the barista from confrontin’ him about.”
Let’s see if that will work in his favour. Let’s see if anything does, frankly.
“Your black friend listens to a conversation between a nicely dressed white woman and the barista.”
The nicely dressed white woman is boasting about her speed in calling the cops after seeing a “sketchy guy” coming out of a backyard with a bike. The barista asks the nicely dressed white woman to describe the man.
“I dunno… black, tall, dreads, the bike was a 98 Gary Fisher w/ a big marlin on it, drop bars, disc breaks, a broken spoke and one of those Brookes racing saddles instead of the factory seat.”
The nicely dressed white woman is curiously well informed, but no matter.
“Was that house on France Street? Did he have a big nose ring?”
“Yeah…”
“That sounds like Darren, he comes here all the time. That’s his house. That’s his bike.”
The barista, beautifully drawn to be of a certain age yet far from behind the times, is shown to be more than a little alarmed. You could add exclamation marks to her protests.
However, this is what I mean by the calm clarity and level-headedness which runs like a vein or hallmark right through Passmore’s many cultural and social observations exemplified by his own interactions:
“This is an important moment, your black friend has seen this many times: a white person unaware of their racism, blunders into a moment in which it is undeniable. He knows that this woman still will not see it, she is both afraid of black people and the realization of that fear. It will take the barista, seeming race savvy and familiar to the rich lady, to clarify what has just happened. But, your black friend knows the barista will say nothing. What white ppl fear most is “making things awkward”.”
It gets better.
“Your black friend would like to say something but doesn’t want to appear “angry”. He knows this type of person expects that from him and he will lose before he begins. This’ why he has white friends, he thinks. White ppl are allowed to be “angry” when he is expected to be calm and reasonable. He wishes he could make you understand this, and many other things…
“For example: your black friend wishes you understood why he hates it when the barista calls him “baby” like she is his “auntie”, or any other black woman over the age of 50.”
He has a damn good go at providing illumination during the nine packed pages that follow, in which he recounts numerous examples of feeling uncomfortable on both sides of the racial divide, even managing to fall through the cracks of fitting in when that division is narrowed. I liked this:
“Your black friend’s black friends tell him that black-owned businesses will end racism but your black friend is sceptical that scented afro picks can be utilized as a political apparatus.”
So will our black friend speak up in the coffee shop, do you think?
This comes with an exceptionally well timed ending, every element of which is set up right at the beginning.
SLH
Buy Your Black Friend and read the Page 45 review here
On To The Next Dream h/c (£11-99, City Lights) by Paul Madonna.
“Back home
I found my front door plastered with nine more eviction notices. Did my landlord think I couldn’t read?”
Illustrated prose from the creator of swoonaway, San Francisco art albums ALL OVER COFFEE and EVERYTHING IS ITS OWN REWARD, each containing predominantly sepia-tinted landscapes, some illustrated by short stories to form snap-shots, vignettes, which you could almost consider comics (I do).
And that’s a turn-up for the books: art illustrated by prose.
Here’s another: the gentrification of San Francisco with its attendant, sky-rocketing price-hikes in rent demands and property values – already so extortionate as to be exclusive when I visited a decade or so ago – has turned into such a runaway engine that it has steam-rolled over long-standing residents and resulted in thousands of no-fault evictions in order to gouge new, prospective occupants even more. Amongst them was San Francisco Chronicle’s highly successful and highly regarded Paul Madonna, ejected from his rented accommodation in the Mission District.
There’s a flat, open park in the Mission District I visited before breakfast on a Saturday or Sunday morning while staying in the Castro. This was ten years ago, remember, but even then I found the park populated by dozens of affluent ladies walking their dogs while picking their way between what I estimate to have been some two hundred homeless individuals waking up under blankets.
So that was a thing.
Paul Madonna’s reaction to this experience has been, well, to move, for one; but also to create this short, surreal and scathingly satirical farce that isn’t a million miles from early Evelyn Waugh, Madonna casting himself as the central naïf in its first-person narrative, buffeted by the cut-throat market forces in this already overheated closed system.
“It’s a bubble,” the woman said. “One small and ridiculous microcosm inside the already small and ridiculous bubble that is San Francisco.”
And he really is buffeted: bashed off the pavement into the path of cars flashing past at high speed, or bundled into others, and caught constantly off balance, disorientated by the ever-shifting dream-like sequences, in one of which there really is a bubble surrounding a much sought-after shoe-box of a flat.
Another residence on offer is an actual cardboard box in a corner.
“Asking price is one million,” I heard the real estate agent call out. She was standing on the kitchen table, strapped into a square-shouldered business suit, scanning the crowd with eyes like an airport x-ray machine.
“But of course it will go for hundreds of thousands more,” a man said, pushing me aside with a baby stroller.”
“Obviously,” said the agent. “A million is just how much it takes for me to treat you like you actually exist.”
Have you noticed there’s furniture everywhere?
A recurring couple rudely intrude into his nightmare, at first attempting to grab each new apartment themselves by anticipating which attributes its landlady or landlord might favour most in its tenants and so attending their impromptu, on-site auctions suitably disguised. And bungling it. Actually, this is ever so very Evelyn Waugh!
Our protagonist, this mock-Madonna, attempts to articulate how wronged he feels by these forces which, being forces, take no heed of success or repute, and reward only those making money by already having money – the parasitic landlords:
The guy smiled tightly. He put a hand to his heart.”I hear you,” he said. “You’re an artist –“
“And a writer,” I said. But for some reason he was still unable to hear that part.
“ – And you’re able to make a living in San Francisco? That’s amazing.”
“Right – “
“But – “ he pointed out with his thumb to his friend “ – her family has owned real estate here for generations.”
To which the woman responded by waving her hand through me as if I wasn’t there.
Each of the fifteen chapters plus prologue opens with a brand-new Madonna cityscape.
They are, of course, gorgeous.
I’ll leave you to discover where the cover comes in, with its bright white blemish, as if were a hole burned in celluloid.
The book opens with an invitation to imagine yourself on a passenger plane, on a long haul flight to somewhere you love dearly, only to be thrown out of your seat by the stewardess to make room for someone else. The nightmare scenario grows a great deal worse and proves the perfect metaphor for what follows.
But yes, Paul Madonna, long revered mostly for his drawing, most definitely earns his wings as a writer here. Exhibit E:
“Inside, the flat felt different. I was suddenly hyper-aware of all my things. Of how I would have to touch every object, then decide what to keep and what to toss. The thought was overwhelming. Because the truth was, I owned way too much. Ten years had turned my place into a stuff hotel; items checked in, but they didn’t check out.”
SLH
Buy On To The Next Dream h/c and read the Page 45 review here
Bad Machinery vol 7: The Case Of The Forked Road (£13-99, Oni) by John Allison.
“FLIP! 
Ole Knotty’s coming!”
“Get in there! Quick!”
“Oof, move up!”
“HEY!”
“Which one of you touched my bum?”
“SHUT UP MAN”
“I NEVER”
The bad boys have hidden in the science lab’s fume cupboard. There’s something very strange about that fume cupboard, and it will lead to a forked road – but a forked road to where?!?
Jonathan and I have both written extensively and in depth about all things John Allison (GIANT DAYS etc) so if you want a more detailed analysis of Allison’s comedy craft try BAD MACH 6 or the BOBBINS one-shot, Page 45’s biggest-selling comic of 2016.
It’s all very British and ever so brilliant and BAD MACHINERY itself is all-ages.
However, kids do grow up, and speaking of fumes one of my favourite albeit brief sequences this time involves Sonny’s bedroom.
“So, Mildred… did you get much out of him?”
“No.”
“Sorry. He’s a bit… you know.”
“That’s all right, Uncle Tom. I opened a window.”
Sonny lurches out, shoulders hulked high, in nothing but his boxers and vest, a blonde, teenage, monosyllabic Neanderthal, to spray deodorant under his armpits in the bathroom then return, equally unresponsive, to sit cross-legged, frowning at a screen.
“Just going to play video games in your pants, then, son? I’ll shut the door.”
In fact, not to disrespect the central mystery – which is ingenious and comes with quite the sly epilogue involving The Beetles (sic) – but most of my favourite sequences involve the three lads, Linton, Jack and Sonny, who sit most of this session out while they hit or “catch” puberty, experiencing its own mysteries in hilarious single-panel growth spurts, beautifully drawn, before coming out of their hormonal chrysalises as three different varieties of a classic subculture. In this, as in everything, Allison actually thinks to maintain their distinct individuality where other, lesser creators would have dressed them all up the same. And it all works so well: of course Linton, Jack and Sonny – specifically they – would emerge into young adulthood as modern iterations of that particular British subculture!
Now, you may think puberty an unsuitable topic for what has been so far an all-ages comic but a) I don’t think so (there was way too much misinformation in my day filling the void that is British reserve, reticence and outright embarrassment), but also b) the references are both fleeting and innocent, plus 3) the youngest most people start in on BAD MACHINERY is aged 12, and even if you begin aged 10, most kids will be 12 by the time they reach volume 7. See also a) and b) if they can’t really wait.
It’s very much like Jeff Smith’s BONE in that what starts off as a light-hearted comedy comic which children as young as 6 adore grows ever darker as it gets older, but its readers grow with it too.
As to the girls, Charlotte, Shauna and Mildred, of course they handle things better – with books and the like – but then they’ve got their mystery-orientated minds focussed elsewhere. Haven’t they?
“Mildred. I… are you all right?”
“I saw something strange yesterday evening. But I need to ask my dad about it.”
“What? Mildred, what?”
“Was it a daddy cow on top of a mummy cow in a field? Because you don’t need to ask your dad. I will lay it on the line for you.”
“No, Lottie.”
“S-R-S-L-Y. Strickly scientific.”
Again, see BAD MACH 6 for what I love about Lottie’s language (it amuses me to refer to this series as BAD MACH – it sounds like a blunt and so defunct razor, or a hypersonic speed completely out of control), but here we are treated to “Britane”, “Laaa!”, “MENTILE!” and “the BECHAMEL test”.
“Right, so if you make a film with two ladies in it, and all they do is talk about MEN… it fails the BECHAMEL test.”
“… the bechamel test!”
“Yeah. It means your film is bland and cheesy.”
“Lottie, you are ruddy treasure trove of culture.” *
Hmmm….!
Meanwhile there are as ever strange “doings” to discern, cogitate upon and pursue to their logical conclusions, like why a young boy has appeared at Griswalds Grammar School in Tackleford wearing a school cap and shorts when nobody wears shorts and even Shauna wears full-length trousers rather than a skirt.
Did you spot that she wears trousers? Details! John Allison’s characters are all individuals, and he is all about the details. Pay attention to Occam’s Razor early on too!
“Why is this case 80% CROSS COUNTRY RUNNING? We were so close to CAKE!”
* It’s the Bechdel test. As in comics’ Alison Bechdel of FUN HOME etc.
SLH
Buy Bad Machinery vol 7: The Case Of The Forked Road and read the Page 45 review here
Moonshine vol 1 s/c (£8-99, Image) by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso…
“Speaking from
experience…
“A lot of experience…
“It ain’t easy to describe the feeling of waking up in the unknown.
“Being in a spot you have no idea how you got to.
“It’s disorienting, a hole in the memory.
“And while the most immediate bit is to get your legs under you, it’s what’s missing that’s overwhelming. The hole…
“Did I dig it myself?”
Like ‘Boardwalk Empire’ meets ‘An American Werewolf In London’.
Do I really need to add anything else?
It’s brought to you by the same team that produced the mesmeric, convoluted crime epic 100 BULLETS.
At this point if you’re not reaching for your wallets, what is wrong with you?!
Yes, Messrs. Azzarello and Risso return with a mash-up so exquisitely flavoured, I suspect they’ve been supping direct from the mash tub! It’s such a simple concept too. New York gangsters, desperate to get their hands on the good stuff get a line on some top-notch moonshine being distilled by a clan of Hillbillies out in the sticks up in the Appalachian mountains. One slight problem: werewolves… Yep. Well, actually, there’s a whole load of other problems too, but the werewolves are kind of the major one. In terms of staying alive, that is, unless you have a few moves, and I’m not talking of the dancefloor variety…
Azzarello sends the slick and entirely dispensable hoodlum Lou Pirlo, who certainly fancies himself as a John Travolta-style ladies man the way he struts his stuff and coiffeurs his hair, out into the wilds to cut a deal for the hooch on the orders of real life Mafia boss Joe Masseria, a man so feared his nickname was simply “The Boss”. Enough said. Unfortunately for Lou, who is under, shall we say, a certain degree of pressure from Joe to deliver the goods, the family Holt don’t want to sell. Not clan head old man Holt, anyway. The younger generation, with more of an eye for business, some of them might have different ideas…
And thus begins the double-crossing, triple-crossing and… hold on a minute… everyone knows crosses don’t work against werewolves, you need silver bullets! Unlike the very deliberately slow paced 100 BULLETS, however, this wastes no time whatsoever in pitching Lou right in at the metaphorical deep end of the whiskey jar, so before too long, as one of the more polite members of the Holt clan sweetly points out to him, “You’re drowning in blood.” Indeed, it becomes apparent rather quickly that Lou is going to struggle getting hold of enough hooch, well any at all, to keep Joe Masseria happy. Good job he’s such a reasonable boss to work for! That enforced abstinence, however, will soon prove to be the least of Lou’s issues.
Expect high proof liquor and an even higher body count. Between the sore heads and the decapitated ones, I expect this title to keep the sozzled horror factor higher than a Saturday night out in Yates’ Wine Lodge in the old Market Square…
JR
Buy Moonshine vol 1 s/c and read the Page 45 review here
Mayday s/c (£13-99, Image) by Alex De Campi & Tony Parker…
“Jesus, man, 
put that away. You perforate my Commie and I will put you six feet under a preacher with my bare hands.
“Our game has two rules, cowboy. One, wives and kids are off limits. Two, we don’t shoot at each other’s operatives. Because once we let that devil out of the bottle, we’ll never get him back in.
“Where does a man who speaks no English go, in the middle of the night, with no clothes, a bag of state secrets, and a bottle of vodka?”
“Um… a really good party?
“Wherever he is, whoever has him, they won’t get far if they cracked open that vodka. No sirree Bob.
“It’s laced with my own special recipe. Sodium pentothal and L.S.D.
“Ol’ Pete Stomparelli is smarter than the average bear, yes he is.”
Hmm… what Pete Stomparelli, local FBI field agent, is, in fact, is a complete dickhead.
He is also a contender for my favourite comics villain of the year! Utterly loathsome and spectacularly incompetent in equal measure, yet so cocksure of his own overblown abilities, he’s the veritable dictionary definition of a loose cannon, indeed, that proverbial car hurtling around a blind bend on the wrong side of the road at high speed just waiting for that inevitable, multiple pile-up car crash to happen. It will, trust me.
Good Ol’ Pete Stomparelli has been entrusted by the C.I.A. with keeping a Russian, codename CKGROUPER, spying for the Americans in Hong Kong, safe and sound upon his hasty arrival in L.A. He’s attempting to stay out of the clutches of the Russian authorities who’ve decided to recall him to Moscow for a friendly little chat…
Just overnight, mind, that’s all Pete needs to do, until the C.I.A. operatives tasked with bringing Codename CKGROUPER in – along with his handy list of every Soviet undercover agent in the East including those who’ve infiltrated the U.S. forces in Vietnam – get there as fast as they possibly can to take charge. Not least because they have precisely zero confidence in the Bureau.
It’s fortunate then that our man Pete is bang up to the task. Ah…
A dynamic duo of Russian agents have been dispatched to re-acquire the defector then whisk him – figuratively not literally, that would be all a bit ‘Ello ‘Ello – and his list, back to the Motherland. They are decidedly more competent than Pete and promptly extract him from the not-so-safe house with ease. But not so much more competent that they proceed directly to the K.G.B. Residenz in San Francisco, instead deciding to have a rather saucy party with some dirty hippies out in the desert first to see what American ‘freedom’ really feels like. It’s a bring-your-own-bottle sort of affair, so good job they brought along the special vodka that Pete kindly left…
From there it only gets hazier, indeed rather spaced out, as the situation spirals more and more out of control for everyone concerned. A tight-run operation along the lines of THE COLDEST WINTER this is not, and therein lies all the fun! Will the Ruskies somehow manage to get their man and / or the list to the ‘safety’ of the Residenz, or can Pete Stomparelli and his by now incandescent C.I.A. chums finally manage to do something right and head them off in time?
This is a great bit of fun writing from Alex GRINDHOUSE De Campi that minded me of the TV show ‘The Americans’ but set in the early seventies when the sixties dream had well and truly died and one certain Richard Milhous Nixon was settling into the White House, rather than the frosty Reagan years of the cold war proper. Actually, I think Nixon might well be Pete Stomparelli’s idol: he has more than a touch of the oily huckster about him.
Very fine lined art from Tony Parker, admirably kinetic in the action sequences, and neatly coloured by the mysteriously named Blond. I have no idea whether that’s Mr. or Mrs. Blond and whether they prefer their inks shaken but not stirred, but between them, they’ve created some very vibrant art here. The full-on psychedelic freak-out experience amongst the sand dunes is particularly spectacular, I must say. A final mention for the lettering, which is a little bit different from the norm and done by Alex herself as she usually does (there’s a gag in there somewhere about wanting to have the last word but I think the pun is over at this point…) and just adds that little extra unusual period feel twist to the whole badly aimed shooting match. On the various protagonists parts that is, not Alex, as once again, she’s right on the mark.
JR
Buy Mayday s/c and read the Page 45 review here
New Editions / Old Reviews, Tweaked
The Left Bank Gang (£11-99, Fantagraphics) by Jason.
Scott Fitzgerald, 
Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Ezra Pound struggle to make ends meet in the Latin Quarter of 1920s Paris, and wonder if the comics game is really for them.
That’s right: comics. Jason has reinvented these 20th century literary figures as anthropomorphic comicbook creators doing pretty much all the same things they struggled with in reality, and which actual cartoonists today always seem to be troubled by: integrity, money, ideas, critics, the size of their manhood and money again.
In the Shakespeare And Company comic shop:
“Anything come in this week?”
“Not much there’s a new edition of ‘War And Peace’.”
“Oh? He’s a decent cartoonist but all his characters look alike. They all have the same face, and all those Russian names… I can never manage to keep track of who’s who.”
As Hemingway, the most downtrodden of the bunch, suggests a small heist to make ends meet, it all becomes slightly absurd in the way that only Jason can get away with, as we see the robbery from seven different perspectives.
Guest-stars Jean-Paul Sartre.
Beautifully written.
TR & SLH
Buy The Left Bank Gang and read the Page 45 review here
Why Are You Doing This? (£11-99, Fantagraphics) by Jason –
“How 
many stories do you have to tell?
“Stories? What do you mean?”
“How many amusing or exciting anecdotes have you lived that you’d be able to relate during an evening with friends?”
Over the next few pages, Alex gets an anecdote or two to tell at dinner parties and the like. His best friend is murdered and the blame is pinned on him.
On the run from the police, he strays into Geraldine’s pet shop and, after searching his eyes to see if he did it or not, she takes him in. There is, as there usually is, a web of intrigue behind the murder and Alex does his best to stay on top of it. He and Geraldine grow close, he gets on with her daughter but he’s still a wanted man.
Jason’s simple storytelling and dog / bird-faced characters are used well here.
A stunning thriller and an ending that just floored me.
MAS
Buy Why Are You Doing This? and read the Page 45 review here
We used to be a lot more succinct, didn’t we?
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 information we receive displayed as ‘Publisher Blurb’.
Secret Path 
(£23-99, Simon And Schuster) by Gord Downie & Jeff Lemire
Lazarus vol 5: Cull s/c (£13-99, Image) by Greg Rucka & Michael Lark
On The Camino (£21-99, Fantagraphics) by Jason
I Killed Adolf Hitler (£14-99, Fantagraphics) by Jason
One More Year (£21-99, Fantagraphics) by Simon Hanselmann
Boundless (£16-99, Drawn & Quarterley) by Jillian Tamaki
Lennon The New York Years h/c (£17-99, IDW) by David Foenkinos, Eric Corbeyran & Horne
Bitch Planet vol 2: President Bitch s/c (£13-99, Image) by Kelly Sue Deconnick & Valentine De Landro, Taki Soma, Kelly Fitzpatrick
Doom Patrol vol 1: Brick By Brick s/c (£14-99, DC) by Gerard Way & Nick Derington, Tom Fowler, Tamara Bonvillain
Hawkeye vol 1: Kate Bishop s/c (£15-99, Marvel) by Kelly Thompson & Leonardo Romero, Michael Walsh
Wolverine: Old Man Logan vol 4: Old Monsters s/c (£14-50, Marvel) by Jeff Lemire & Filipe Andrade, Andrea Sorrentino
Infamous Iron Man vol 1: Infamous s/c (£15-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev
Young Avengers The Childrens Crusade s/c (£31-99, Marvel) by Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung
Deadpool The Duck s/c (£14-50, Marvel) by Stuart Moore & Jacopo Camagni
Hal Jordan & The Green Lantern Corps vol 2: Bottled Light s/c (£14-99, DC) by Robert Venditti & Ethan Van Sciver, Rafa Sandoval, various
Harley Quinn vol 6: Black, White and Red All Over s/c (£14-99, DC) by Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti & John Timms, various
Fairy Tail vol 60 (£9-99, Kodansha) by Hiro Mashima
News!
ITEM: ANNOUNCING for October 2017:
Yes, a whole month before publication!!!
All the details are there, on our updated LICAF Page including links to LICAF and Bryan’s own website.
Come to LICAF!
You won’t be able to buy the book for another month elsewhere!
ITEM! LIAR LIAR by Captain SKA reaches Number 1 in the Download Charts.
Hooray! Tune of the year – and certainly of the General Election.
Let’s hope it now reaches Number 10!
– Stephen
