Out of that mouth comes the stench of offal and furious threats he turns into promises, dismissing his son Martin as a “sick heifer” and “starved bitch” and deriding his missus as a “fat sow” and “stupid mare”. His vegetarian son is terrified of him.

 - Stephen on Hellblazer vol 5 which contains seven issues never previously reprinted

Thief Of Thieves vol 2: Help Me (£10-99, Image) by Robert Kirkman, James Asmus & Shawn Martinbrough.

Previously in THIEF OF THIEVES VOL 1: I QUIT:

Conrad Paulson quit. On the verge of a Venice job into which old Arno had sunk millions of dollars the most accomplished, plan-ahead thief in modern history quit crime forever.

He loves his wife (but she’s had enough) and foresaw his son Augustus heading the way brother-in-law James went because his talent so spectacularly fails to match his enthusiasm. Unfortunately Augustus won’t quit, had to be rescued from the FBI for fear of incriminating Conrad, and is still in deep shit for what he owes Cristo of the Cartel. And let me tell you, Cristo is not a nice man.

Now Cristo’s kidnapped Augustus’ girlfriend Emma and is threatening to return her finger by finger unless Augustus can convince his Dad to do a job for the Cartel. His Dad’s dead against: he won’t do it; he’s quit. He does, however, agree to rescue Emma but he has a very big problem: Augustus won’t listen to a word he says. God, that boy’s a liability.

Of volume one I wrote that each smartly spliced scene in this classy crime caper has been meticulously arranged in far from chronological order for maximum gasps of “I never saw that coming!” It was insane – all the more brilliant for being so structurally insane.

No less thrilling, this is however far gentler on the cranium chronologically except… there is one massively important piece of recent activity missing. Someone has done something they haven’t told anyone and it will bring every player from volume one back into the game then change its rules forever.

If I was Andy Diggle who takes over next issue (#14) I would be cursing James Asmus for the mess he’s left everyone in, almost as bad as what Bendis left Brubaker on DAREDEVIL. But then it was Diggle who took over from Brubaker on DAREDEVIL so I guess the poor guy’s used to it. (Please note: Andy tells me he’s having a whale of a time, and I don’t doubt him for five seconds. He just says it’s going to get a great deal darker now…)

Shawn Martinbrough, meanwhile, totally owns this series and although I’m rarely wont to comment on covers, a big, big tip of the hat to Shawn for making this complement THIEF OF THIEVES VOL 1 so spectacularly in primary reds and blues. That is Conrad Paulson; this is his son. They don’t compare well, do they?

SLH

Buy Thief Of Thieves vol 2: Help Me and read the Page 45 review here

Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff (£14-99, Fantagraphics) by Peter Bagge with Alan Moore, Robert Crumb, Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Johnny Ryan, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez…

“Jesus lives in my heart, and Satan lives in my womb! …But you know who lives in my brain?”
“Who?”
“Me!”

Superb collection of rib-tickling material from the man who loves to HATE. And chums. Split into various sections, partly by characters who will be familiar to long time Bagge handlers, this work rounds up and corrals material which has previous appeared in HATE annuals, and also collaborations with various luminaries (including Alan Moore, Robert Crumb, Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Johnny Ryan, Los Bros Hernandez) which have appeared in various places before as detailed in the introduction.

In doing so you get the complete run of two of my favourite Bagge creations, “Lovey” and the Shut-Ins”. The astutely observed car crash that is Lovey really does remind me of a friend’s ex-girlfriend just a little too much for comfort (enough said), and in our ever more virtual world Chet of the “Shut-Ins” obsession with the internet is disturbingly accurate. This is Bagge at his best for me, poking fun at everyday people with excruciating finesse. The material in collaboration with others, sometimes on writing, sometimes on art duties, is a true mélange of material. Some outright gag strips, others more typical fictional comedy, but always heavy on the characters, and of course the humour. One for the completists certainly, but also something for those wishing to dip their toes into Peter’s weird world. The only negative thing about the whole collection for me is both the front and rear covers, which seem like almost an after-thought, and probably won’t actually encourage anyone who isn’t familiar with, and fond of, his work to pick it up, which is a shame.

JR

Buy Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff and read the Page 45 review here

The Playboy s/c (New Ed) (£12-99, Drawn & Quarterly) by Chester Brown.

In which fifteen-year-old Chester Brown nervously, sweatily buys his first copy of Playboy magazine… then doesn’t look back.

Actually he looks back a lot – mostly over his shoulder, for the paranoia his new porn habit induces is almost as consuming as his early lust. It’s just not enough to make him quit for more than a few hours, days, weeks or – at a stretch – months at a time. It is, however, very successfully conveyed in all its candid detail, and anyone who has ever been furtive about anything in their lives will be ticking the boxes like crazy.

And of course looking back is precisely what Chester Brown is doing here, in one of the most famous comicbook memoirs on record. It’s a dinky, pocket-sized reissue which fits snugly into the palm of your hand, recut by Brown in a final edit, then fastidiously annotated at the back. There we learn that his original inspiration for beginning THE PLAYBOY was the first of many pages which Joe Matt went on to draw about his own experience with pornography which has been infinitely more obsessive and extensive than Chet’s (see SPENT especially). You’ll also see precisely what’s been excised (and so miss nothing; it’s reprinted here), all in service to keeping the issue at hand as fluid as possible and free from digression. The digressions are in the back where Chester clarifies, for example, his sole experience of shutting his eyes and imagining he was having sex with one of this favourite Playboy pin-ups rather than his girlfriend.

No, the work itself is remarkable straightforward: Chester buys a porn mag, desperately hoping no one he knows will recognise him doing so, and smuggles it home. He then selects his favourite page, and wanks over it using a two-palmed technique I’ve never come across before (and, being gay, I may have slightly more experience in this field than most) while worrying he’ll be disturbed mid-shuffle by his younger brother, mother or father. He sequesters the magazine outside, then frets that someone will have spotted him doing that too. He returns later on either to find it still there (though slightly soiled) and panics when it isn’t. You get the picture: it’s one long hormonally induced cycle of temptation and terror, fear and self-loathing.

As time progresses, Chet builds up whole collections of magazines, ditches them in a panic, buys them back up, tears bits off, burns some, agonises over whether someone will find the charred spine and recognise it for what it is, becomes an expert in Playmates and shuns most other brands as aesthetically inferior.

The art is beautifully fragile – far more fragile even than Jeffrey Brown’s renowned fragility – with a thin, crisp line with wavers in the wind when it comes to grass and hair. Seldom are there more than two panels per page, and little is left out. It’s all very, very, very straightforward, candid and clear. Pornography: cause and effect.

SLH

Buy The Playboy s/c (New Ed)  and read the Page 45 review here

Nobrow Anthology vol 8: Hysteria (£15-00, Nobrow) by various including Luke Pearson, Philippa Rice, Jim Rugg…

Whew, fairly intense anthology of material all based on or around the subject of hysteria, coloured entirely in the exactly the same shades of red, green, blue, brown, grey and black. The roll call of creators is either side of two single pages bearing the legend TURN ME NOW in large letters at 180 degrees to each other. One side of the book is wordless and features 32 truly, truly surreal double-page spreads from different creators. It may or may not be intended as a sequential narrative, I’m still not entirely sure after three or four reads through. I can see a very loose strand running through connecting piece to piece, but I am willing to concede any such narrative could be entirely my own imagination. This could actually be what Nobrow was intending, perhaps, the reader looking over bizarre and disturbing material repeatedly until they enter into some sort of hysterical state!

The other side of the book is a more conventional collection of 14 shorts, though with the same slightly migraine-inducing colour scheme, including offerings from Luke Pearson and Philippa Rice! It’s a good eclectic mix of contemporary fiction through to the rather zany. I do enjoy reading these Nobrow anthologies, though I can’t honestly say I understand what Nobrow intend by them, other than they each seem to be objects in their own right. They’re not really promotional of the imprint to an extent, but more like collagic performance pieces, which perhaps fits nicely enough with the Nobrow ethos.

JR

Buy Hysteria: Nobrow Anthology vol 8 and read the Page 45 review here

Hellblazer vol 5: Dangerous Habits (£14-99, Vertigo) by Garth Ennis, Jamie Delano & Dave McKean, Sean Phillips, Steve Pugh, Will Simpson, more.

“Eyes on the horizon. Future ahead. Never look back. Never let memory step on your shadow.”

VITAL ALERT! This book contains twice as much material as the old DANGEROUS HABITS volume, collecting as it does (in addition to Ennis’ opening salvo) the last seven issues of Jamie Delano’s run for the first time ever, including ‘The Dead-Boy’s Heart’ charmingly illustrated by Sean Phillips in which you meet a very young, ski-slope nosed John, uprooted from Liverpool with his sister Cheryl and staying with his kindly Aunt Dolly and a lot less kindly Uncle Harry.

But if you think Uncle Harry’s abusive, you wait until you meet grotesque butcher Archibald Acland whom Steve Pugh will sear indelibly onto the back of your eyeballs, his ruddy, blubbery face looking like a flabby pig’s arse, his mouth its very anus. Out of that mouth comes the stench of offal and furious threats he turns into promises, dismissing his son Martin as a “sick heifer” and “starved bitch” and deriding his missus as a “fat sow” and “stupid mare”. His vegetarian son is terrified of him:

“He needs to piss but he can’t face the bathroom – the soapy stubble-scum; the excess Preparation H finger-smeared on the basin; the thick, dead, lingering smell of shit. The smell of his father.”

He’s right to be terrified. This is Martin’s eighteenth birthday and he’s about to be forced down a make-shift abattoir for an ordeal so horrific you will not believe what you read. This is HELLBLAZER at its best: binding occult horror to the very real nightmares of actual human suffering, and it is excruciating.

Lastly for Delano there are two of the most important chapters in Constantine’s history. In ‘The Hanged Man’ John finally discovers what’s been nagging him all this time: the identity of the Golden Boy he first saw at his mother’s graveside, so he sets a pre-natal wrong right. The repercussions are played out in ‘The Magus’ illustrated by Dave McKean. It’s a startling final flourish for Delano’s stint which began over three years earlier in HELLBLAZER VOL 1: ORIGINAL SINS.

There I wrote:

“John Constantine is a trouble magnet; the problem is that deep down he enjoys it. Brash, rash and cocky, this streetwise trickster, this Laughing Magician with his nicotine-stained fingers and trademark trenchcoat relishes the war of wits – the blag, the bluff and the quietly palmed ace up his sleeve – and his insatiable curiosity drives him to places where no soul should go. That he somehow returns to enjoy his next pint is a miracle; that his friends rarely do is inevitable.”

Case in point:

“I stop walking.
“It’s quite an effort, because walking’s one of the things I do best. Walking away without a glance over my shoulder at the misery and bloodshed I’ve left behind me.”

Whatever John Constantine’s considerable failings, a lack of self-awareness is not one of them. That and his sense of social justice are his two saving graces, fortified immeasurably with an indomitable, ruthless determination to win. Here in 1991 Garth Ennis takes the reins and immediately gives John Constantine terminal lung cancer with three months to live. Get out of that, John!

Obviously he does, but the key is that he does so not through conjuration – for that would be a complete cop-out – but manipulation and, when you discover exactly whom he manipulates and how, you will laugh your head off at the sheer gall of the guy and determine never to play him at chess.

John will have no time to gloat, however, for although Garth Ennis does introduce a surprisingly sturdy love interest in Kit, he also swiftly sets out his stall for the humanity – and political anger – which he will be bringing to the table as evidenced by his meeting with Matt, already bed-bound by the time John discovers him in hospital:

“He’d been with the desert rats at Alamein, come home to a life that could never quite equal the thrill of his army days, drunk and smoked enough to kill him – and ended up here. Dying in a country that he didn’t know anymore, because all the money was spent on getting a whore into office every four years.”

Steve Dillon will become Garth Ennis’ best known partner in grime both on HELLBLAZER and later on PREACHER, but Will Simpson brings a haggard sense of mortality to the pages which were perfect for these six issues of raw vulnerability and renewed sense of loss.

“I don’t want to hear them call time. I don’t want a nurse asking me if he was a friend, and how sorry they are, and how hard they tried.
“I’d be like evidence for the prosecution at my trial. John Constantine, you have been found guilty of first degree cold-hearted bastardy. Of being a twisted, evil frigger who sneaks and creeps his way out of trouble that those less privileged have no defence against. Of swaggering merrily away from lung cancer while a good friend’s organs split and rupture, without even a hope of the salvation you enjoy.
“Outside it’s still raining.”

There will be repercussions, yes.

SLH

Buy Hellblazer vol 5: Dangerous Habits and read the Page 45 review here

Bedlam vol 1 s/c (£7-50, Image ) by Nick Spencer & Riley Rossmo, Frazer Irving –

Image is producing some excellent stuff at the moment and this is another book which should shift many, many copies because it ticks so many boxes for so many people, myself included. Crime fans, creepy horror fans, psych-based weirdness fans, Joker/Arkham/Batman fans and “isn’t the world a truly fucked up place?” fans will all get a kick out of BEDLAM because it is *mental*.

When the book begins the final, show-stopping crime of the notorious psycho who plagues the city of Bedlam is already underway. In stunning black, white and red we watch his final hideous act before he is taken into custody… only to find that he has arranged a sting in the tail. We watch the panic unfold; the detectives try to reason with the killer, even though he is utterly beyond reason. They try to intimidate him even though fear obviously means nothing to him. And they try begging him despite the fact he clearly has not a compassionate bone in his body. In the end the plot is not thwarted but at least the psycho is dead; killed by his own mistake, a miscalculation which finally rids Bedlam of its stain. Yeah… he’s not dead, though. At least the person who is dead isn’t him. But never mind, he’s not going to be out committing crimes any time soon, or even ever again. Because someone is of a mind to fix him.

Because we are not the things we did in the past, we are the things we do today? Right?

There is so much more I want to write in this review but I also don’t want to spoil it for you. It’s not that there is any great twist that you won’t see coming, rather it’s that I loved the way the story revealed itself and I don’t want to ruin it. There are some brilliant passages; some all about the action and the violence, others about a guy in a room talking to himself. The faceless (literally!) Batman analogue is a perfect one-dimensional foil to the complex, endearing weirdo we follow through the latter part of the story and the police/detective element is a perfect mix of familiar formula and freaky sideshow.

I loved this book. I found it in turns thrilling, amusing, freaky and dark. Also, for £7-50 it’s a no-brainer. (You’ll see what I did there, tee-hee!)

DK

Thank you, my love!

Stephen here, at the behest our dear Dominique, appending my review of the very first issue. I don’t quite know why, but after working with the woman for nearly 18 years I have learned to do as I’m told. (It actually took me three days.)

“We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to let you know I have just killed… well, a lot of people. I didn’t count. I apologise. To make matters worse, most of these people were children. Which I know you’re gonna say is somewhat below the belt. But I have tried many things, and you are all… Well, you are a pretty stubborn bunch. So now that I have your attention, we should talk about what comes next.”

In which a psychopath torments his audience, captors and the wider public in general – even from behind bars – and does so with such viciousness and at such punishing length that DC would never have published this as an Arkham Asylum book.

Sorry…? Well, if this wasn’t originally intended to be a Joker book, I’d be hugely surprised, and for some reason I’ve decided that’s the equally ill-adjusted Norman Osborn administering the sedatives. Quite the crossover.

With a softer but suitably grimy colour palette to differentiate between time frames, this is mostly told in black, white and red with a cracking design for Madder Red’s Chain Chomp mask. Jonathan mentioned Ashley Wood as a comparison point, and I wouldn’t disagree.

As to what does come next… oh, it’s far from straightforward. I love a good contingency plan, and I am far from alone. From the writer of MORNING GLORIES, THIEF OF THIEVES and so much more.

“I am Madder Red, and I live to surprise you.”

SLH

Buy Bedlam vol 1 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

The Ballad Of Halo Jones brand-new edition (£13-99, Rebellion) by Alan Moore & Ian Gibson –

There are books like this that you’ve got to leave alone for a few years if you’re after the same kiddy rush that you got way back when. Just finished the second book, and I’ve still got the goosebumps. Does that make it any good? Well, Terry Jack’s ‘Seasons in the Sun’ will do the same for me but that’s no real measure of quality either way. It still feels special.

The story for those who’ve not read it before: far off into the future, Manhattan Island is dominated by the Hoop, a giant floating ring of slum housing for the terminally unemployable. And in this future that’s a lot of people. There’s dream of escape but there are precious few jobs. This is where we find Halo, an ordinary spod who, almost by accident, becomes something else, something legendary. The first chunk covers life on the Hoop, the almost military planning of a simple shopping expedition, the various forms of entertainment, racial tensions and ways of opting out. By the second book she has a waitress job on a ship heading far off into space. And her experiences change her.

“Where did she go? OUT! What did she do? EVERYTHING!” – original tagline

The three books (there were ten planned) show her losing her charm and innocence in a similar way to Evey from V FOR VENDETTA. At the end of each book she moves on to the next situation, one quite removed from the last. Such character development was a marked change in the usual 2000 AD stasis. Ian Gibson’s marvelous clutter and sharp, dark technology were perfect to delineate the shadowy corners of the plot.

It’s early Alan Moore; he probably hates it.

MAS

Buy The Ballad Of Halo Jones and read the Page 45 review here

Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness (£13-50, IDW) by Roberto Orci , Mike Johnson & David Messina –

Just like STAR TREK: COUNTDOWN was to the last Star Trek film, so COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS is a prequel to the new film, Into Darkness. Far from being a bit of tie-in tat, the last prequel was actually a good lead in to the film, helping to explain and flesh out a few points and it seems this book will do likewise.

We get a good chunk of action here: when a routine survey mission turns up some odd results Kirk toys with bending the prime directive a little, only to find that his long-thought-dead predecessor has both been there and done that in quite the dramatic fashion. A bows-and-arrows-era civil war has been turned to genocide by the interference of the Klingons who have armed one side, while April, the previous commander of the Enterprise, has weighed in to help the other side fight back. Now the local conflict threatens to turn into a proxy war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire and nobody wants that, do they? Cue the double cross, then the triple cross. Quick everyone, into the Jefferies tubes, because that always ends well…

As the story progresses we are reminded of some key hangovers from the previous film. Spock continues to battle with his human-side emotions after the destruction of Vulcan and with his relationship with Uhura. The fledgling bonds the crew formed last time out are re-introduced and we get to know Kirk a little better as we watch him come to terms with his role as leader and Captain. The likenesses to the screen actors are good as are the production values; a far cry from the “will this do” tie-in horrors of the past. There is a little stiffness in places but that is possibly unavoidable given the strictures of a film tie-in. All in all this is a good appetiser for the new film and a handy refresher on the old. It has certainly got me more excited for the film, if that is humanly possible!

Oh yes, fans of the original series, do you remember Harry Mudd? There’s a nod!

DK

Buy Star Trek: Countdown To Darkness s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Marvel Illustrated: Pride & Prejudice s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Jane Austen, adapted by Nancy Butler & Hugo Petrus.

I must confess I harboured a prejudice towards this of my own, based solely on the cover by Sonny Liu which has Elizabeth Bennet dressed as a late 20th Century American socialite complete with white power-blouse over a snug black skirt or, at best, slinky Hollywood dress. Wrong! The Regency style involved no blouses, but billowing dresses so grass-ticklingly long that, as Lizzy herself observes during the novel, they’re a bugger when walking through mud. However, since the lesson of the book is to avoid “gratifying [one's] vanity, in useless or blameable distrust” (courting prepossession and ignorance is evidently more than a passing hobby for me), I have now looked inside to find that the five Bennet sisters have been visually reduced to the sort of air-brained, over-coiffeured, sneering American rich kids who’d appear on Beauty & The Geek and pull each other’s hair out at the drop of a Tiffany tiara, whilst Mrs. Bennet, far from the fussing martyr of a mouse that I’ve always imagined, is now a buxom barmaid from Coronation Street or Black Adder III. Lord knows what Nancy’s done to the text – I’m not prepared to endure that for you – so instead here’s a slightly wayward summary of the original novel complete with SPOILER ALERT:

Laugh-out-loud comedy starring the delightfully playful sister to four other Bennet girls who takes a loving if lofty view of their crushes and gets each object of them wrong whilst failing to identify that she herself may also have fallen in love. Meanwhile her mother flusters about and her father occasionally looks up to undermine his dear wife with witheringly supercilious remarks that we really shouldn’t find funny but do. Plus: cold Mr. Darcy is totally hot, and one of the many reasons that I’m jealous of Jonathan’s middle name.

If you can’t précis Pride & Prejudice from memory then, really, what have you been reading all your life? Anyway, with due hindsight I can now confirm that Marvel’s version of EMMA is infinitely better, as is SENSE AND SENSIBILITY.

I will add with additional hindsight, however, that these are mere illustrations of the novels, rather than intelligent and affecting interpretations to comics like David Hine’s and Mark Stafford’s THE MAN WHO LAUGHS and Mazzucchelli’s CITY OF GLASS; or Rob Davis’ uproarious propagation of Cervantes’ original intent in DON QUIXOTE VOL 1 and, best of all, DON QUXOTE VOL 2. Just so we all have terms of reference.

SLH

Buy Marvel Illustrated: Pride & Prejudice s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Batman Incorporated vol 1: Demon Star h/c (£18-99, DC) by Grant Morrison & Chris Burnham…

“The signal is gone.”
“I don’t care what Bruce said… we’re going in.”
“I told you what she’d do.”
“You stay right here, Damian.”
“Pennyworth. If I don’t save the day… no one will.”

There is a death of an important member of Batman Inc. in this volume. There’s going to be another rather more painful and poignant one in the next volume too, but that’s a different matter… Anyway, moving along rapidly before I spoil anything for the one person who isn’t aware of what I’m alluding to… the biggest and best version of the Bat family is back, and now Leviathan has revealed herself as Talia Al Ghul, mother of Damian, it’s a fight to the finish. And whilst she is bent on world destruction, she’s not above wanting a little personal revenge too…

Another epic sensory-assaulting slice of Bat-mentalism from Mr. Morrison as Bruce’s legion of caped crusaders are attacked from pretty much every direction in an attempted decapitation strike by Talia and her Man-Bat-serum souped-up assassins. It’s a tactic that has Bruce and his chums well and truly reeling punch-drunk on the ropes never mind on the back foot. It’ll all end in tears, mark my words.

Devotees of the previous volume simply entitled BATMAN INCORPORATED will know exactly what to expect. People who haven’t read that, despite this particular book being entitled volume one will be mightily confused unless they do. Good old DC. And, whilst there are more fisticuffs than mindfuck this time around, it’s still infinitely more involved / convoluted than typical Bat-fare. And more prettily drawn, opening with an exquisitely beautiful appetiser from Fraser Irving before Chris Burnham gets down to the main course.

It really is going to end in tears, trust me.

JR

Buy Batman Incorporated vol 1: Demon Star h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Wolverine s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Chris Claremont & Frank Miller, Paul Smith.

Joe Rubinstein: who was the bright spark who thought he’d be a good match for Miller on inks? Instead of enhancing Miller’s edge like Klaus Janson used to so spectacularly on DAREDEVIL, he suffocates it in a stodgy mess of ill-advised moulding.

Anyway: this was the first of Wolverine’s solo outings and – if I recall correctly – the first-ever Marvel mini-series. Can you imagine the superhero industry without mini-series? It was never a thing before this.

It was also the first time Claremont wrote, “I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn’t very nice.” It was a brilliant opening gambit which he then copied and pasted every third page for the next thirty years. Diminishing returns.

It’s a Logan/Mariko affair set in Japan complete with attendant ninjas, all of which Dave Sim parodied and improved upon in CEREBUS: CHURCH & STATE VOL 1. (You will roar with laughter; and the greater your affection, the louder your laughter, I promise.)

This edition also includes UNCANNY X-MEN #172-173 pencilled by Paul Smith, which jars not one jot, such is the attention Paul paid to the pacing and panel composition of the original. In it Wolverine and Mariko finally look like tying the knot, just as Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor contemplate the same. But, oh no, do you see that ciggie and sideburns combo? Horribly familiar to all die-hard X-Men fans.

Some great comedy timing offsetting an awful tragedy complete with dramatic irony.

SLH

Buy Wolverine s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Avengers Arena vol 1: Kill Or Die s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Dennis Hopeless & Kev Walker…

“Kill, kill, kill, murder, murder, murder, ain’t nothing personal you see, it’s all about respect…”

Poor old Arcade. Laughed at by his contemporaries, not to mention all the heroes, he’s had enough. He’s decided he just can’t take any more failed attempts to win his rigged games of death and destruction and has decided to open a bar instead. Even there though, he can’t get any peace and quiet, as various villains decide they’re going to start picking on him.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to give the murder game business one last try, and like the fine upstanding paragon of morality and fair play that he is, he’s decided to pick on some kids this time… But (as C-Murder exhorts above on a track from the classic 1998 Snoop Dogg album ‘Da Game Is To Be Sold, Not To Be Told’) Arcade hasn’t got anything particularly against the powered pipsqueaks in question, he’s just after some respect, starting with a little of the self variety. And, if it has to be at the expense of some low-rent, underage underachievers of the hero community, well, that’s just too bad.

Heroes, will die in this series, oh yes. Rather a lot, if the opening flashback is to be believed. Me, having read all the issues out so far, and having seen a couple of instances already of weaselling out of apparent deaths in true 1930s’ black and white Saturday morning Flash Gordon weekly serial fashion, I am still very sceptical about what the final body count out of the sixteen initial participants will be. But I am enjoying this immensely as the pressure mounts and everything starts going all Lord Of The Flies / BATTLE ROYALE. Regular Marvel readers will probably know some of the cast including X-23, Hazmat, Darkhawk, Mettle for example, but there are a fair true Z-listers in the mix as well. Is it wrong I’m actually rooting for Arcade to take a few, errr… all, of them out?

JR

Buy Avengers Arena vol 1: Kill Or Die s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Thunderbolts vol 1: No Quarter Now s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Daniel Way & Steve Dillon.

In which the Thunderbolts now consist of Deadpool, The Punisher, Elektra, Venom… and one other whose secret identity – and so titular joke – almost certainly formed the entire raison d’être for this latest incarnation.

And that’s fine: it did make me laugh.

Also, Steve PREACHER Dillon art is always a bonus, but if you want the very finest era, which is completely standalone, it’s Warren Ellis’ THUNDERBOLTS ULTIMATE COLLECTION, sweatily illustrated by Mike Deodato, in which the Thunderbolts, who up to now have always consisted of supervillains, are led post-CIVIL WAR by Norman Osborn.

SLH

Buy Thunderbolts vol 1: No Quarter Now s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil h/c (£16-99, Jonathan Cape) by Stephen Collins

Scott Pilgrim vol 3 h/c Colour Edition (£18-99, Other A-Z) by Bryan Lee O’Malley

Science Tales h/c (Revised Edition) (£11-99, Myriad) by Darryl Cunningham

Naming Monsters (£12-99, Myriad) by Hannah Eaton

Strange Attractors h/c (£14-99, Other A-Z) by Charles Soule & Greg Scott

Crossed: Wish You Were Here vol 2 s/c (£14-99, Avatar Press Inc) by Simon Spurrier & Fernando Melek, Jacen Burrows

Avalon Chronicles Book One: Once In A Blue Moon h/c (£14-99, Oni) by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir & Emma Vieceli

Aquaman vol 1: The Trench s/c (£10-99, DC) by Geoff Johns & Ivan Reis

Aquaman vol 2: The Others h/c (£16-99, DC) by Geoff Johns & Ivan Reis

Batman Beyond: 10000 Clowns s/c (£12-99, DC) by Adam Beechen & Norm Breyfogle

The Authority vol 1 h/c (£22-50, DC) by Warren Ellis & Bryan Hitch

Avengers Vs. X-Men Companion h/c (£75-00, Marvel) by various

Wolverine And The X-Men vol 4 s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Jason Aaron & Jorge Molina

Indestructible Hulk vol 1: Agent Of Shield h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Mark Waid & Leinil Francis Yu

Captain Marvel vol 2: Down s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Kelly Sue DeConnick & Dexter Soy

New Avengers vol 4 s/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Will Conrad

Marvel Universe: Ultimate Spider-Man Digest vol 3 (£7-50, Marvel) by various

Black Butler vol 13 (£8-99, Other A-Z) by Yana Toboso

Bunny Drop vol 8 (£10-50, Other A-Z) by Yumi Unita
BREAKING NEWS!

ITEM! Tickets for the first-ever Lakes International Comic Art Festival in October are on sale now!

What a beautiful backdrop for a much more European enterprise – all those trees in the autumnal colours: the reflections are going to be gorgeous!

As to the special guests, obviously El Presidentes Bryan Talbot, Mary Talbot and Sean Phillips will be in attendance, as will Ed Brubaker, Duncan Fegredo, Posy Simmonds, Hannah Berry, Joe Sacco, Isabel Greenberg, Luke Pearson, David Lloyd, Al Davison, Glyn Dillon, Dougie Braithwaite, Oscar Zarate, Charlie Adlard and so many more.

Just look at The Lakes International Comics Art Festival Events Listings! Yowsa!

ITEM! LOVE AND ROCKETS’ Jaime Hernandez in conversation with Woodrow Phoenix here in the UK! Thursday 30^th May.

- Stephen

Highlights this week include the new Tom Gauld, and Charles Burns’ BIG BABY and Paul Pope’s BATMAN: YEAR ONE HUNDRED, neither of which have we ever reviewed before. I know, right?

I rather believe the comicbook season has begun in earnest. Enjoy!

 - Stephen

Don Quixote vol 2 (£14-99, Self Made Hero) by Cervantes, Rob Davis & Rob Davis.

“Is it just me who finds bearded women attractive?”

DON QUIXOTE is the epic tale of a delusory knight and his bumbling squire as propagated by Rob Davis from an account by Cervantes of the translation by a Moor, of the true and faithful biography as recorded by one Cide Hamete Benengeli. Even though the Don, the squire, the Moor, Side Hamete Benengeli and – for all I know – Rob Davis never even existed.

It is far from a hagiography.

It is instead one massive slight of hand delivered with winks, nudges and infinite wit by both authors concerned.* It is one long fabrication about those who deceive others and those who lie to themselves. Indeed between volumes one and two of Cervantes’ original literary prank, some bastard impostor brought out his own sequel which Cervantes, with due dignity, declined to even acknowledge, let alone criticise.

“I will not waste my breath insulting this dribbling, pibbling, milk-livered, craven welp, who shall go unnamed; I will not stoop to the level of the wretched, thrasonical codpiece who sought to steal the tales of our errant knight. His idiocy can be witnessed by any who has had the misfortune to read this shitty book and his folly is in assuring that I will let nothing come between me and completing the true account of Don Quixote’s adventures that you now hold in your hands.
“Pah! What a tit – let his folly be its own punishment, and let us speak of him no more.”

He speaks of him some more.

Just later on.

Furthermore, when Don Quixote discovers that his earlier exploits have been preserved for posterity by far less pissant peasants and asks how they’ve been received, he is answered thus:

“The world smiles at your escapades and marvels at the book. No less than Señior Hunter Emerson says his wife laughed so hard when reading your adventures that her tits came right off. Meanwhile Señior Gravett in the London comedy papers says the adaptor has “a savvy awareness of what comics can really do…”
“Laughter?! A comic?! The adventures of Don Quixote are no comedy!”

At the risk of belabouring Rob’s joke: for those not in the know, neither UK comicbook comedy king Hunt Emerson nor the medium’s Man At The Crossroads Paul Gravett were around in 1604 (they would thank me for pointing that out). If the brilliance of THE MAN WHO LAUGHS was that it didn’t just illustrate the original but interpreted it, the joy here is that Davis has gone on step further and, as I say, propagated the original’s intent.

So let’s pull back.

Don Quixote is a figment of his own imagination. Well, no: he is a kindly, aging man with a gallant goatee, a matching moustache and a prodigious – nay prestigious – pair of snowy white eyebrows to boot. He’s just read waaaaaaay too much chivalrous fiction. This has inspired him to jettison all grip on reality in favour of roaming the lands and setting right wrongs, no matter what the cost to his personal safety, his public dignity or the likely outcome. R.e. the likely outcome: he’s not very good at it.

In DON QUIXOTE VOL 1 he set off with long-suffering squire Sancho on a series of meandering quests at the centre of which was always the honour of his beauteous, dear Dulcinea. I mentioned that he was delusional, right? You wait until you meet her. Now squire Sancho has become so addicted to these escapades that he enables his easily led leader by fuelling his fantasies further, then swiftly gets sucked up into the nonsense too! This is no longer the blind leading the blinded, nor the fool merely following foolish: it is two nincompoops in mutually validating, self-perpetuating buffoonery. Hurrah!

Now, their reputation having preceded them in print, the pair are embraced by a bored Duke and Duchess and truly taken in for their own private amusement. Prank after prank is played at their expense, firstly getting the Don to draw his Dulcinea then using that child-like portrait in the most elaborate, torch-lit ploy imaginable. Then there’s the flying wooden horse (it doesn’t really fly), the curse of the bearded women (they are not really bearded), and the hell-bound unrequited love. It’s not just that Quixote and Sancho are gullible; it’s much worse than that! They are now so addicted to embracing anything that will extend, embellish or facilitate their next quest that, whenever they suspect something may be awry, they fill in the plot pot-holes for them!

This is comicbook comedy gold – right up there with anything by Roger Langridge – and the very best interpretation of any prose to comics that I am aware of. And since I am aware of almost everything that exists in comicbook form, I think we can dispense of that last qualifier and simply conclude that you need this fucking book.

Davis’ cartooning throughout is a gesticulating, ebullient joy. It’s not just Quixote’s grumpy furrowed brows, his apoplectic outrage or his narrowed, eyes-to-one-side when you suspect he may finally suspect something (hilariously, he really doesn’t!). It is his mastery of insouciance, his rodeo-riding of those two runaway eyebrows, but above all Rob’s exceptional understanding of the exact degree of caricature this literary farce requires. It’s all about the mischief.

And then, just when you think you’ve had it all, you are delivered blinding visual flourishes like the full-page portrait of the Knight Of The Mirrors, which blazes like a partially stained-glass window during the brightest day on record.

However, I’d be lying if I said anything I’ve written so far were my favourite bits. No. Cervantes’ book was naughty, clever, and knowing. It was beyond contemporary for its day. How about if Rob Davis introduces a bit of comtemporary too, just at the right moment?

“Ah, look! We don’t need to seek Dulcinea’s palace, here she comes riding towards us on her horse!”
“Are you sure, my squire? I see only the scrofulous peasant riding her mule this way.”
“What?! Are your Grace’s eyes in the back of your head? Is that why you cannot see her? O Queen and Princess of Beauty, I present your knight. See, he is struck dumb by the magnificence of your presence.”

Don Quixote is quite alarmed. Buck-toothed Dulcinea is far from charmed.

“Outta the way, fat boy!”

* It transpires that Rob Davis does exist: you may have read NELSON – former Page 45 Comicbook Of Month and winner of the inaugural British Comics Awards 2012 – which Rob Davis instigated, co-created and edited. It’s pretty special.

SLH

Buy Don Quixote vol 2  and read the Page 45 review here

You’re All Just Jealous Of My Jetpack h/c (£14-99, Drawn & Quarterly) by Tom Gauld.

Quality jollity using a lot of lateral thinking and the most impeccable timing: one-page comics and cartoons which will extraordinate you!

See this street of increasingly rickety semi-detached housing from the birth of a word to its grave:

“Institute of Neologisms
Department of Everyday Language
Society for the Preservation of Antiquated Terminology
Cemetery of Forgotten Words”

Gauld gleans much of his humour from the juxtaposition of High and Low Art, confronting the historically sacred with the contemporary and crass, whilst puncturing the pomposity which would denigrate one genre or medium by emphasising its own superiority. Hence the title, a retort to those who poo-poo science fiction because they read “proper” books. (Oh, comics, how familiar we all are with that brand of prose-originated disdain!)

They’re all so pithy, too, like ‘Short Story’ and Gauld’s lament for the all-too-brief space race, or the excitable aspirations of an anthropomorphised laptop sold to a critically acclaimed author which are crushed beneath the domestic debris of most writers’ prevarication (sorry – research!) which reminded me so much of Lizz Lunney.

I loved the make-you-own-metaphorical-cartoon on the legacy of Thatcherism using a sausage, a dog and a chair; and as to ‘The Great Author Considers His Response To The Question’, the options mapped out in different areas of his brain made me grin with recognition (insult; sweeping generalization; stunning insight; unrelated anecdote; rant; bizarre metaphor; enigmatic smile; yes; no; straightforward answer). Rarely do I opt for any of the last three in day-to-day conversation. What a knob-end am I, eh?

As to the timing, there is an evening sequence involving a therapist’s chair unable to resist psychoanalysing the consulting-room couch languishing opposite. That extra beat before the chair’s final rejoinder is cleverly provided by a moonlit window absent from all previous panels except for the first. Space really does equal time in comics, and not just between panels.

All this, then, in gentle, joyful colours from the creator of GOLIATH, one of last year’s Page 45 Comicbook Of The Months, and recommended to fans of Kate Beaton’s HARK! A VAGRANT for its literary leanings.

SLH

Buy You’re All Just Jealous Of My Jetpack h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Swear Down h/c (£14-99, Blank Slate) by Oliver East…

Ah, now I do remember Oliver talking to me about this work whilst he was in the shop for the Anders Nilsen signing. I’m not sure how finally formulated it was at that point, but I do clearly recall him describing the intention of walking the line of longitude from his house in Manchester down through England, then Brittany, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana. Not sure what’s wrong with Antarctica, South Pole, Scotland and finishing the job off properly, but anyway.

Now, you might be forgiven for assuming that Oliver was intending to do this in one go, but no, and again, I think he might have mentioned this, the idea is to get so far, then go back home, then carry on another day from where he left off. And so forth, and so on. In mountaineering terms, this is very much like scaling a peak single-handed with the multiple trips up and down to various base camps lugging all your own support gear along so it’s always just one camp behind you. But if the goal is the walk itself, then what does it matter? (That’s my way of saying he doesn’t get too far from home in this particular volume, but I am sure he did say it would be a series of books…)

Walking, as TRAINS ARE MINT fans will know, is Oliver’s personal time for reflection, for thinking, both of the serious introspective and more idly day-dreaming varieties, and here he has ample opportunity for both types, the deep and err… slightly more shallow, particularly when thinking about a passing jogger, which made me smile. That is something I have always loved about his works, the moments of mirth as some amusing, unexpected juxtaposition of experience and spontaneous thought randomly occurs, and there is certainly plenty of that here, alongside his best orienteering intentions of ‘walking (and sketching what he sees along) the line’. Much of Oliver’s thoughts throughout this book though are taken up on a rather more serious subject, I’ll let him explain as he sets off from his house…

“I’m supposed to be, or at least be thinking about, writing my thoughts on my son’s birth in some scrapbook. His mum’s written down ages ago.
“I’m not one for writing unless I’m walking and I’m in no rush to relive his two month premature birth.
“Or watching my wife fall into translucent unconsciousness.
“Or circling the slowly congealing pool of blood while surgeons saved her life.
“Or certain relatives repeatedly insisting you looked like a skinned rabbit.
“I know what I’ll write anyway.
“It’ll be some dry but well paced gag.
“About how I’d wanted to watch the Ashes as the last thing on my own terms, but then you came as a complete surprise. (We thought your mum needed a poo I might write.)
“And, after a scare, a downed cocktail, and an ambulance,
“You were born as England won the urn.
“So you better like cricket! (I’ll probably write)
“Or maybe this will do…”

One of the back cover pull quotes is provided by John Porcellino, and I can certainly see why Oliver’s works would appeal to John. They both share their ability to convey the everyday, with deceptively simplistic, and completely unique, art styles. Making truly everyday autobiographical material work like this is tricky, but both Oliver and John manage it with aplomb. I do hope Oliver keeps this up, not least because I would dearly love to know what he makes of walking through Africa!

JR

Buy Swear Down h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Destination X h/c (£9-99, Nobrow Press) by John Martz…

So, Nobrow’s championing of the boutique and bijou continues with this first solo release for John Martz. He has released comics before such as his Machine Gum series, and also appeared in a previous Nobrow anthology (volume 6, I think), but it is nice to see Nobrow bringing another excellent illustrator to print. You have to admire their style actually, quite literally, because what a difference a (hard)cover makes. Much like the first two Jon McNaught books PEBBLE ISLAND and BIRCHFIELD CLOSE, which are of similar pocket-sized dimensions to this little red pocket rocket, they could easily be lost without such a lovely cover design and upscale production quality. Instead you get something that really demands to be picked up and inspected more closely. Plus, it means we can easily stock it on the counter instead of the shelves, which also helps!

This particular cover features, in John’s fine-lined, cartoonish style, which reminds me a little bit of Ivan Brunetti [my vote’s Rian Hughes – ed.], the space adventurer grandfather of our hero Sam descending from a space rocket to be greeted by an alien female, ringed moons and stars glowing and twinkling in the background. Except, it was all apparently a dream, induced from a long cryosleep during his return journey to Earth from another space-faring mission, as everyone knows aliens don’t exist.

It’s always bothered Sam that no one believed his grandfather’s story and it becomes his life’s mission to redeem his hero’s reputation, and make his own in the process. Cue a very comedic story that follows Sam’s manifold trials and tribulations to pursue what he believes is his destiny.

I really enjoyed this, it’s just great fun, illustrated with a wonderfully light touch, underpinned by some bitingly dark humour in places, a great punchline, and Sam’s bouffant quiff just made me chuckle throughout. Much as I commented on Jon McNaught after reading PEBBLE ISLAND, I am quite sure we are going to see plenty more from Mr. Martz in the future.

JR

Buy Destination X h/c and read the Page 45 review here

3 New Stories (£2-99, Fantagraphics) by Dash Shaw –

Three short stories in black and white with an underlay of colour provided by photographs beneath the ink. I’m not sure if the photos relate to the stories, add to them or are simply chosen at random. On some pages you can totally make them out, on others they are obscured too much and so tantalizingly out of reach. Is it meant to ape double exposure? Give the impression of reuse, re-purposing of old material? If so why? Poverty? Necessity? Laziness? Maybe it’s just a thing Dash Shaw does because it looks cool, I’ll enjoy reading again to see if I can decide.

The first story was probably my favourite. Sherlock Holmes is laid off as there is little demand for master-sleuthing a recession. He looks for work while his wife and family sell off their belongings one by one to survive. A problem occurs: his high school graduation has been revoked due to some bizarre clerical error. Seems like a whole bunch of people are in the same position, all forced to pay to go back to school to finish up their credits. This raises questions in the detective’s mind as it all seems rather too bizarre to be true. Lovely weird stuff.

From the creator of BODYWORLD and THE UNCLOTHED MAN IN THE 35^TH CENTURY, both of which we made Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month on publication.

DK

Buy 3 New Stories and read the Page 45 review here

The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (£12-99, Little Brown) by Charles De Lint & Charles Vess -

Not comics (I repeat, not comics!) but prose with a healthy dose of illustration from the utterly lovely Charles Vess. Good god but do I want to live in a forest drawn by Charles Vess! The shade is cool, the leaves are damp and the tree bark is rough and warm. I do wish he did more sequential stuff but if I am to get my Vess fix through beautifully crafted children’s stories like these then I really won’t complain.

The story is of a likeable, kindly, headstrong girl who lives on her Aunt’s farm and loves to explore the woods around her home. Mostly she is looking for Faeries and magic; she’s sure there must be some about but she can never seem to find it. But when an accident occurs she is drawn into that magic; a magic which has existed all around her for her entire life but which she is only now becoming aware of. So begins the journey with all the trials, lessons and lucky escapes you’d expect from a fantasy adventure such as this.

While the story is very well written, engaging and very sweet in places it is the art which really made this book stick in my head.

Back in the day I had a conversation with the late great Mark Simpson (one half of the genius behind Page 45) about the books which informed our aesthetic. Picture books from very early childhood that we were barely able to remember but which had imprinted on our brains, shaping our idea of beauty before we were even really conscious of what beauty was. He showed me a book his parents had uncovered in storage somewhere; it was full of painted pictures of animals and immediately you could see where some of the colours and shapes he preferred in his own art came from. I feel similarly when I see Charles Vess’ art: there is something about the foliage and the trees which just takes me somewhere *else*. It’s beyond dreamy, utterly gorgeous.

I would have devoured this book as a child and so I have been recommending it to parents in the shop left right and centre! But I also enjoyed it as an adult, not just for the marvellous illustrations but for the rich sense of place the writing created. A lovely, lovely book.

DK

Buy The Cats of Tanglewood Forest and read the Page 45 review here

Charles Burns Library vol 2: Big Baby (New Ptg) (£12-99, Fantagraphics Books) by Charles Burns.

“What’s the meaning of this, Tony? I suppose you think comic books are more important than learning about the human body!”
“You.. you don’t understand! This comic… it is important! It’s what’s happening right now!”

Hmmm.

From the creator of BLACK HOLE (and more recently X’ED OUT then THE HIVE) comes an album-sized reprint of comicbook one-shots BLOOD CLUB and CURSE OF THE MOLEMEN originally published by Kitchen Sink Press back when Mark and I were biding our time at Fantastic Store Nottingham, along with ‘Teen Plague’ which originally appeared in RAW.

Each focuses on the big bald baby called Tony whose knowledge of the human body is indeed so lamentably shallow that he is prone to make the most socially and sexually inappropriate observations out loud. Pity the poor baby sitter, then, who invites her boyfriend over. Happier by far to bury his head in horror comics, or decapitate plastic soldiers in aid of a story he’s spinning solo rather than engage with his father in a game of catch (interaction with adults is far from his forte; actually, interaction is far from his forte), Tony is prone to wild imaginings, transferring fantasies from behind his Ood-like eyes onto what transpires around him: his babysitter’s hickey, for example, is a clear indication that she has been taken over by the hypnotic eye and devilish tongue of the almighty Kaballa-Bonga, while the hole being dug in his neighbour’s back yard by a sweaty labourer is evidence of buried treasure.

To be fair, in that second instance the guy with the shovel does tell Tony he’s digging for treasure, and his babysitter’s boyf does have the most alien rash spreading rapidly across his chest and down his legs and it’s growing increasingly pustular. Also, on the summer camp, Tony does see the ghost of the weeping boy, hovering in the air all foetal and naked, who went missing several years ago when his creepy team leader, the self-style “Uncle” Rory was but a cub or a scout or whatever it is they have over there. Actually, almost everything happening in Charles Burns’ suburbia is far from the American wholesomeness it purports to be. Still, make-up was invented for covering those bruises, wasn’t it?

You can see how elements of these relatively early works have since made their way into Burns’ more mature fare – the sexually transmitted body-horror, for example – but thematically I don’t have a lot more to say. Big Baby likes his plastic horror toys, and so did Charles Burns.

What is already in fully fledged evidence is the total command of panel and page composition dominated by eerily lit faces and the lushest of spot-blacks. The men are square-jawed and lock-jawed into forced bonhomie; the women have spray-set ‘do’s.

I guess if there is a common cause here it’s that if the picket fence has been recently white-washed then there’s usually something unpleasant being covered up, and you’d stand a better chance of being taken seriously when you do discover something seriously amiss if you didn’t make up stupid stories all the time like some socially awkward, self-absorbed, nine-year-old. Sorry…? Well, I’m not sure but I think Tony may well be nine years old. What are you going to do?

Love it.

SLH

Buy Charles Burns Library s/c vol 2 Big Baby and read the Page 45 review here

The Dreamer new ed (£12-99. WW Norton) by Will Eisner.

More hard graft, these are the creative and publishing years that Eisner hops over in TO THE HEART OF THE STORM, having detailed them here in this earlier work. It’s more heavily disguised autobiography than TO THE HEART OF THE STORM but Denis Kitchen, formerly publisher of Kitchen Sink, is on hand to provide detailed annotations and historical corrections.

And it really was history in the making as Eisner rejects a lucrative job offer from the mafia-run distribution network to provide illegal, erotic knock-offs of established cartoon strips and instead embarks on a pioneering publishing venture to produce new material rather than reprints, and thousands of pages at $5 a pop. This he does almost single-handedly to begin with and then, as a pragmatic compromise, by developing an in-house production line akin to a studio or, erm, a sweat shop! Along the way you’ll encounter Bob Kane, a very early close friend, see Eisner reject Superman who takes off at DC (oh wait, he doesn’t mention that here, but it happened!), and watch Will lose his company $3,000 by refusing to lie at trial about a deliberate Superman rip-off called Wonder Man.

Finally his long hours are rewarded and he takes a leap of faith by selling his share in the publishing business to accept an offer to provide a syndicated, regular and original 16-page comicbook supplement to newspapers. As a reward he was allowed the unheard of privilege of retaining ownership of his character. The character? The Spirit.

SLH

Buy The Dreamer and read the Page 45 review here

Shame vol 2: Pursuit (£7-50, Renegade) by Lovern Kindzierski & John Bolton.

SHAME VOL 1: CONCEPTION was an exceptionally twisted thing with the strangest mother/daughter/mother relationship imaginable. Or was it a daughter/mother/daughter relationship? Read my review and it may become clear! The begets do beggar belief, but that’s witchcraft for you.

It was also quite dense, which this is not. It is instead the middle movement of the trilogy in which Kindzierski and Bolton explore the wider world of corruption under Shame’s bitter reign while sexy Daughter Virtue (as opposed to desiccated Mother Virtue) is trapped in her ‘mound’, enclosed in a prison forged from obsidian brambles. You can tell Shame is evil because she has black hair. She doesn’t half ramble on – to herself, her minions and the darke daemon Slur.

Oh, she shall sully all and sundry! Once she has conquered, cursed and corrupted the whole wide world, there will be no free school milk (hmm), no more bedtime stories and every Kinder Egg will come with quite the salutary surprise. Worse still, every chocolate in every box will henceforth be Turkish Delight. She will whip down One Direction’s kecks on live TV (actually, this gets my vote) and curdle your clotted cream teas. There will, in short, be suffering the likes of which has barely been endured outside of a modern British Post Office.

But wait! Do we have a vessel of vengeance, perchance? A young, simple man whose father is smitten before his eyes, now determined to follow his mother’s verbal breadcrumb trail to who knows what end?

Meanwhile Slur hovers at sybaritic Shame’s side, addressing her as “my shapely talon”, “my septic blossom”, “dear putrescence”, and “my mephitic marchpane”. (New words: “mephitic” meaning “foul-smelling” and “marchpane” meaning “marzipan”.)

Which witch will prevail?

John Bolton’s painted art you may already know from Neil Gaiman’s THE BOOKS OF MAGIC and Peter Straub’s THE GREEN WOMAN, but this is what he’s perhaps best known for: buxom babes in fantasy settings. Plus there be boobage, yes.

SLH

Buy Shame vol 2: Pursuit and read the Page 45 review here

Batman: Year One Hundred new edition (£14-99, DC) by Paul Pope with Jose Villarrubia…

“I don’t get it. By now they must have some footage of you or something. Why not just come out with it? Why not just come out with it?”

“What, and admit there’s somebody out there they can’t identify or control? …Oh, and, by the way, he’s called “Batman” and he kicked our asses? Get real.”

Okay, it’s not new Paul Pope, but it is Paul Pope doing one of the finest non-continuity Batman stories that’s ever been written or drawn for that matter, so will that do you whilst we wait for the entrance of THE BATTLING BOY? (Note: BATTLING BOY prequel one-shot THE DEATH OF HAGGARD WEST is out in July. Whilst it is not entirely clear if any or all of it will be in BATTLING BOY it is almost certainly going to go straight out of print, so fervent Papists, I would advise pre-ordering…)

The year is 2039 and the future is distinctly Orwellian with the all-seeing state, including psychic police, keeping the populace under close scrutiny and a very heavy boot heel. The powers that be aren’t exactly squeaky clean themselves, though, enjoying the excesses of their more than equal labours, wearing their sharp suits and smoking fat cigars. But in this dystopian world there are no more superheroes, not even any supervillains as we find out in one particularly dark moment, as government control has become near absolute. Except for one man who refuses to even contemplate defeat.

A figure so shadowy, so wraithlike in his ability to go undetected, even the bad guys refuse to acknowledge his existence, though that is primarily because those in charge want to deny people even the solace of the faintest hope. The total media blanket suppression, though, means that the Batman has once again become a creature of legend, a whispered urban myth with the power to frighten children and crooks alike. Which is of course not exactly undesirable for someone who wants to cause near cardiac failure in those he’s out to bring down…

Pope is undoubtedly an artist whose style one could accurately describe, I feel, as unfettered. Complex, intricate, ornate even, but also possessing a freedom you don’t see in everyone else’s work. I am quite sure it isn’t the case, but I get the distinct impression even he doesn’t know what he’s going to draw, particularly in terms of background detail, before he puts pen to paper, it just looks so, so effortless. But the same is also true of his writing, for whilst it’s very easy to be distracted by the beauty of what you’ve been presented with visually, he really knows how to spin a story, and punch out the pithy and poignant dialogue with breathtaking ease.

This is a new printing and when I re-read it, I had honestly forgotten what a brilliantly dark and dense tale he’d put together here. It is certainly in my top five Bat-books, comparable with, say, THE LONG HALLOWEEN. The other additional factor that makes this work near-perfect is the colouring. More often than not Paul’s work isn’t coloured, and frankly it doesn’t need it, but here Jose Villarrubia really does add another dimension to the artwork with an additional layer of vibrancy that demonstrates exactly how you should colour a book that has so much happening in dark shadows during nocturnal activities! Neon signs atop grim sky scrapers seem almost luminous and holographic displays showing Bat-vital information are practically standing out from the page, wonderful work.

JR

Buy Batman: Year One Hundred and read the Page 45 review here

Superman: Earth One vol 1 s/c (£9-99, DC) by J. Michael Straczynski & Shane Davis…

“I have spent the last twenty years searching for something. More accurately someone.
“My journey has taken us to a dozen worlds, but I still have not found the target.
“If he is hiding here, I will continue the attack until he is provoked into revealing himself…
“If it turns out he is not here, then I will leave your world and try elsewhere.
“But only after several million of you are dead, so that I will know that I have done everything possible to provoke a response…
“To my target, if you are listening, those are the terms. Reveal yourself and surrender. Or watch your world die around you.”

Free from the constraints of mainstream continuity J. Michael Straczynski has turned in a genuine epic with SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE. This work most definitely has the feel of a blockbuster film, in all the positive senses one can mean that, in stark contrast to the last actual Superman film, which began with a fine action set-piece and then was utterly boring drivel throughout its remainder.

Here we start with a familiar premise, Clark Kent leaving the comfort of Smallville and the bosom of Ma Kent and heading for the big smoke that is Metropolis. But then we’re presented with a rather different story to the one we’re used to, as instead of immediately assuming the persona of a mild-mannered reporter Clark investigates a number of different career options from American football to research scientist, and seems rather less reticent about using his abilities in everyday life, even in a low-key manner, than we’ve become used to. He does visit the Daily Planet, but leaves initially rather unimpressed with the bullpen and its cast of characters including the paternal Perry white, a rather abrasive Lois Lane and a somewhat more genial shutterbug Jimmy Olsen. Good to see Straczynski hasn’t changed everything! We even get the revealing information that Ma and Pa Kent always saw their adopted son as a hero that could inspire the world, even providing him with his costume, yet this Clark Kent seems very reluctant to consider, never mind embrace his eventual destiny. Or even try on his tights. So what’s going to change that then, I wonder?

Well, here again Straczynski takes a completely different route from the time-worn approach. No low-key introduction to hero-dom here for our reluctant youth, instead we’re thrown into the middle of a full-on alien invasion of Earth. It seems the invasion force is looking for a certain individual, the last survivor of Krypton, to complete their genocidal assassination contract to wipe out the entire Kryptonian race. What follows thereafter is an epic finale that would worthily grace any cinematic adaptation of old red-and-blue, as the villains get spanked and vanquished, and Clark realises that taking a considerably more low profile approach to civilian life, and a somewhat more flexible job, might be rather useful in maintaining a secret identity. Now, if only some genial editor had offered him a job as a reporter…

JR

Buy Superman: Earth One vol 1 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Ten Grand #1 (£2-25, Image) by J. Michael Straczynski & Ben Templesmith –

I really like both the creators on this book so I am hoping for good things. Already in the first issue there are some lovely JMS ideas and nuances taking shape and the art hits some brilliant notes in places, with all that scratchy intensity and breaking through of light that Templesmith does so well.

The overall story doesn’t seem that subtle so far, I have to say: bad guy doing one last job before he gives it all up to be with the love of his life is killed, along with said love. Fair to say he isn’t destined for Heaven, however he is given one last chance: be brought back to life to do good and eventually, when the Powers That Be decide he has paid his dues, he can die again and spend eternity with his beloved. No telling how long that will take, nor how much he might have to suffer on the way, but for her he is willing to do what it takes.

So yeah, a bit cheesy on the surface but there is potential for some great occult stuff mixed with some good old hard-bitten P.I. drama. It is very pretty as well and some of the dialogue is very sharp indeed. Going to be interesting to see where this one goes.

DK

Buy Ten Grand #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

Oh wait, there’s been a Bank Holiday. Potentially means we won’t have this list until tomorrow. Sorree!

BREAKING NEWS!

ITEM! Huge, in-depth article in Publishers Weekly by Heidi MacDonald about the growth of graphic novels in libraries. Librarians (school and otherwise), here’s a big blog I wrote containing all the links you could possibly need to great graphic novels but also the show-and-tell services and discounts Page 45 gleefully offers to libraries!

ITEM! Free Comicbook Day has come and gone. We don’t do Free Comicbook Day, sorry: never been an official member, though we do carry some of those books at their nominal 22p cost. Usually I talk about that in the Page 45 Mailshot, this time it was on Bookface. Still, if you want brilliant free comics, try the entirety of FREAKANGELS by Warren Ellis, Paul Duffield and Kate Brown. Magnificent!

ITEM! We stock and promote THE PHOENIX, by far the best kids’ weekly comic I can ever recall. It is a very far cry from the illiterate rubbish you’ll find on most supermarkets’ shelves, begging to be bought because of its plastic novelties. It’s packed full of rotating, top-tier creators like Jamie Smart, Gary Northfield, Kate Brown, Neill Cameron, Paul Duffield et al, and now THE PHOENIX has a brand-new website! So many cool party packages and deals to be had!

ITEM! I owe an apology to everyone I served on Saturday. I was ill, sorry! Tried my best, said what I could, but sometimes I was well short of breath. Not what you come to expect from Page 45, and I am deeply apologetic. Why didn’t we get someone better on the day? Well, we did – we had Dominique who exceeds me in every aspect, but alas Dee also had to deal with mail order upstairs as well. I am not trusted on mail order. And if you’ve ever seen my Christmas presents wrapped, you would know why! If you have any doubts as to precisely how ill I was, I wnet straight to bed at 7pm with no booze for the first day in over 25 years.

I am much better now. Sadly, my Christmas wrapping will never improve.

 

 - Stephen

Bookface is not somewhere you should live out your misery in public. It is self-detrimental and boring to others. When done repeatedly, it erodes your friends’ empathy and serves only to validate and so consolidate your own negativity, creating then perpetuating your own downward spiral. There, you’ve been told.

 - Stephen on Hope Larson & Tintin Pantoia’s Who Is AC

The Man Who Laughs (£14-99, SelfMadeHero) by Victor Hugo, adapted by David Hine & Mark Stafford.

“My Lords, I come to warn you, your happiness is forged from the misery of mankind.”

As adaptations go, I rank this right up there with Rob Davis’ DON QUIXOTE. Victor Hugo’s original is not a story of mistaken identity so much as buried birth and hereditary powerplay, but even so it is a tale so twisted it would make Shakespeare’s own head spin. What’s more, its socio-political poignancy is powerful harnessed by David Hine and Mark Stafford throughout, and in particular during the House Of Lords climax which is as fiendishly clever as the speech is rousing as it is derided by its orator’s peers. If only it weren’t so pertinent right now.

As to the last dozen pages, six of which are silent, they are a tour de full-colour force which will leave you as breathless as Eric Drooker’s BLOOD SONG. It’s a masterclass from both creators on adapting prose to comics, the key being interpretation rather than illustration for the last six pages of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs were necessarily far from silent. Yet look what a graphic novel can do…

 

On the surface it would seem that Stafford’s style of cartooning is perfect for hyperactive comedy like the Talbot-penned CHERUBS, but oh how well it works on a more controlled satire, and his use of colour is a revelation for me. The sub-zero midnight blizzard curling and swirling around young Gwynplaine is absolutely freezing (and once more put me in mind of Drooker’s FLOOD and BLOOD SONG). Abandoned on the winter shore, nine-year-old Gwynplaine plucks a baby from the ice-solid teat of its dead mother, half-buried in the snow, and wraps it in his own tattered overcoat, exposing himself to the elements that rage all around. He struggles against a howling wind, carrying them on to their uncertain future. It’s quite the trajectory.

The Man Who Laughs is an impassioned attack on injustice – on the scheming, self-serving rich for whom the poor are but playthings to be milked even drier in order to feed the aristocrats’ appetite for all things opulent and excessive. They have so little to actually do that they spend their time guarding their grudges then taking them out on each other and those they grind under their suited and booted feet.

“Lord David seeks his pleasure through membership of the many aristocratic clubs of London. The Ugly Club, that worships deformity.
“The Fun Club, which exhorts its members to create mischief wherever possible. The rich break the windows of the poor.
“The Mohawks, where creating evil and injury is a matter of duty and the height of fashion is to deftly slice the nostrils of a rustic with the point of the sword.
“Thus Lord David prepares himself for public life, for it is no easy matter to become an accomplished gentleman.”

The titular man who laughs is Gwynplaine himself who is cursed with the same sort of rictus sported by The Joker in comics and Tony Blair in political cartoons. Only this grin is even more hideous, the lips stretched apart and agape, exposing every millimetre of gum in a masca ridens. Taken in by the elderly medicine man Ursus and his pet wolf Homo, the baby Gwynplaine rescued from certain death grows into a beautiful but blind woman they christen Dea, but her early trauma has left her fragile with a heart that flutters like a bird trapped in a cage: any sudden shock might kill her.

“I am only happy when you’re near me,” she tells Gwynplaine, who replies, “Then let us swear never to be apart – we’ll be happy together.”

And they would be, but as Ursus observes, “Happy, are they? Don’t they know it’s a crime? To declare your love too loudly is to invite evil.”

And evil, it certainly comes knocking in the form of Duchess Josiana, pretty sister to petty and ugly and resentful Queen Anne, and engaged by royal decree to be married to Lord David. But it’s a marriage they’d both prefer to avoid and so Lord David introduces the twisted Josiana to Gwynplaine whom he’d spied performing in a play, and her perverse desires along with the machinations of a courtier, will spell the most convoluted doom for them all.

For a bottle has been washed up on the shore, and there is a message in that bottle: a signed certificate of sin from many years ago committed by Gernadus and his travelling troupe of Comprachios, so severe that they felt compelled to confess and cast that confession into the sea in a bottle belonging to one Hardquanonne, “the greatest sinner” of them all. It was they who abandoned Gwynplaine all those years ago. What exactly had they all done so wrong?

SLH

Buy The Man Who Laughs and read the Page 45 review here

Courtney Crumrin vol 3: The Twilight Kingdom h/c (£18-99, Oni Press) by Ted Naifeh.

“He’ll be lonely without me.”
“He’ll get over it. We all do. There are worse things than loneliness.”

After months spent exploring the inexplicable at her uncle’s house, young Courtney finally revisits her old neighbourhood while her worn-out parents try unsuccessfully to sell their old home. In Courtney’s absence her former best friend Malcolm has fallen under the influence of two house-breaking idiots, because there’s really nothing else for him left. Why, I will keep schtum on, but Malcolm falls out with Courtney painfully as she tries her best to steer him away from the delinquents – again, unsuccessfully.

It’s all very tenderly done, but only the prologue to a tale which will take Courtney on a reluctant journey from the grounds of her school to the Twilight Kingdom in order to find the cure for a curse so carelessly cast on one brother by the other.

Friendship and responsibility are as ever the key themes on offer, all concealed under a gothic facade of fantasy and danger, and portrayed with the lushest of artwork now in full colour which has drawn, unsurprisingly, the admiration of Charles Vess.

It’s the third in the series and does touch upon old plot points, but can be read independently and is heartily recommended to the 150+ of you to have already purchased PORCELAIN; as is COURTNEY CRUMRIN VOL 1 with its poison-purple cover and COURTNEY CRUMRIN VOL 2, bound in library green. The production values on this new range of hardcover editions are glorious, with silver ink framing the cover and pin-up gallery, printed on thick, quality paper.

A quietly touching ending, and a very cool read.

SLH

Buy Courtney Crumrin vol 3: The Twilight Kingdom h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Who Is Ac s/c (£10-99, Other A-Z) by Hope Larson & Tintin Pantoia.

Shall I tell you what I love about this graphic novel?

It emphasises the poison of self-pity, especially when made public in blogs.

Bookface is not somewhere you should live out your misery in public. It is self-detrimental and boring to others. When done repeatedly, it erodes your friends’ empathy and serves only to validate and so consolidate your own negativity, creating then perpetuating your own downward spiral. There, you’ve been told.

This, however, is a Young Adult graphic novel: a superhero-style, countryside fable as filtered through CLAMP – it’s not WET MOON! – so instead of sinking into an alcohol-exacerbated rage against the world, horse-loving, blog-prone Mel is possessed by a black-hearted internet demon who demands she troll for more followers like Trace. Tongue-tied Trace is a bit smitten by Mel (who is still hung up on Hunter – or rather guilt-ridden, you’ll see) so already susceptible to Mel’s conversion on account of a grudge he has on AC.

Who is AC? AC is a really a young writer called Lin, new to town; a fiercely independent girl who has the gumption to serialise and self-publish her swashbuckling fantasy by taking it down to the local photocopier, stapling the results together and leaving them, sale-or-return, in the local bookshop. Bravo! I love that too: Hope Larson encouraging others to create and disseminate – to act on their aspirations and so turn them into reality.

Unfortunately Lin has been taken over too (albeit by a more benign force via her mobile phone) and transformed into a lance-wielding superheroine who leaves a snowstorm of white rose petals wherever she goes. She saves the local photocopy shop from a robbery but later, accidentally and unknowingly) blows Trace off his bike who loses his glasses as a direct result. And Trace’s parents aren’t going to fork out for a new pair.

“Just sit at the front of the class, Trace.”
“Right. With the kiss-ups.”

So: misunderstandings all round (I mentioned Hunter, didn’t I?) and Lin’s own well meaning parents are going to put their proverbial feet in it too.

Hope cleverly interjects the proceedings with young teens’ current obsessions and terminology, and if you think all will be wrapped up in a happily-ever-after for all then you very much underestimate CHIGGERS’ Hope Larson. Life doesn’t work like that, as any teen reader will tell you. Try to say otherwise and they will reject you.

I was also rather fond of the ebullient black and white artwork, splashed with purple during the battle blasts, which reminded me fondly of Tim Fish, even though I found its androgyny confusing. I couldn’t work out whether Trace, for example, was male or female for several pages and the same goes for the book-shop owner. Maybe that was intentional, sending the message that gender is unimportant whether it comes to relationships or careers (it should be entirely irrelevant), and perhaps a younger audience than myself won’t even notice nor care.

Hurrah!

SLH

Buy Who Is Ac s/c and read the Page 45 review here

A Boy and a Bear in a Boat s/c (£5-99, David Fickling Books) by Dave Shelton.

“These tides are really weird,” said the boy. “It’s not like this at Cromer.”

A young boy hops on board a boat bobbing on the water and captained by a bear. He asks to be taken to the other side.

“Right you are,” said the bear.

He’s as confident as the lad is vague, neatly setting the scene for nearly three hundred pages of magically illustrated mirth as the pair find themselves all at sea and struggling to land either a fish or themselves.

It’s a book about learning to keep friends afloat in the wake of adversity – and in the wake of absurdity too. Faith, confidence and improvisation: pulling together instead of falling out and, as a consequence, falling apart. Thinking of others instead of yourself and jollying each other along!

Shelton manages all of the above with a touch as gentle as the giant of a bear’s. With little land in sight throughout the entire book, he nails the boy’s cross-patch frustration at the bear’s evasive optimism, and then the boy’s petulance and remorse. Oh, how we find it difficult to apologise! It’s also a book written by a man whose childhood was spent a long time before videogames and other portable distractions or in-flight entertainment.

“Are we nearly there yet?” said the boy.
“We are well on our way,” said the bear.

And that’s just page fifteen. There’s so much more you will recognise from childhood, like the fun to be had on a bright summer’s day, messing about colours and the light behind closed eyelids. “He liked the greeny blue the best, but it was difficult to hold on to for long.” I myself bounced spectral amoebas up and down my eyelids all day long. Still unsure if they existed.

With limited resources our duo try their hands at fishing, first with a fly (oh, all right, a tuft of the poor bear’s fur plucked while his bottom was turned), then with live bait and then – oh, dear – they really are going to bite off more than they can chew! Here they’re down to one last sarnie, and the bear’s previous combos (sprout and honey; anchovy, banana and custard; broccoli, sherbet and gooseberry) have been eccentric at best.

The boy looked at the proffered sandwich. He noticed that the bear was holding it rather gingerly in the tips of two claws and right at the corner. Despite this, the bread did not bend at all. The boy looked up at the bear. He looked back at the sandwich. It was very difficult to tell what colour it was by moonlight, but whatever colour it was didn’t seem right.

“What’s in it?” said the boy again.
“I can’t remember,” said the bear.
“Well, open it up and take a look,” said the boy.
“I can’t,” said the bear. “It’s stuck.”
The boy looked up at the bear. The bear smiled thinly down at the boy. They both looked back at the sandwich.
“Is it…” said the boy.
“What?” said the bear.
“Is it… only a bit, but is it… glowing?”
“No,” said the bear.
They each squinted at the sandwich and leaned in (cautiously) to look more closely.
“Hardly at all,” said the bear.

We rarely stock anything other than comics at Page 45, but this prose is a wonder and I’ll be buying it for adults instead. Plus our Dave won my heart by including a comic within and reminding us how, when we were young, we would pore over them time and time again when we had so very few, savouring their strangeness even if we hadn’t a clue what was going on. But back to the future, and the bear has it all in hand.

“Bored, eh? Well, I suppose you’d better try the complimentary on-board entertainment then,” said the bear.
“On-board entertainment?” said the boy, smiling expectantly.
“Oh yes,” said the bear. “You’ll love this.”

He really doesn’t.

SLH

Buy A Boy and a Bear in a Boat s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Morning Glories s/c vol 4 Truants (£10-99, Image) by Nick Spencer & Joe Eisma.

And you think your school days were a nightmare…

It’s in, I’m sure it’s as riveting as the first three, but it’s the fourth volume and I have other things to do. I went to great lengths reviewing the first three volumes, which you can read instead:

MORNING GLORIES VOL 1
MORNING GLORIES VOL 2
MORNING GLORIES VOL 3

There you go. At the time of typing we also have copies of MORNING GLORIES #26 which follows immediately after this book at a mere 99p. Probably worth a punt, no?

Ciao.

SLH

Buy Morning Glories s/c vol 4 Truants and read the Page 45 review here

Uncanny Avengers vol 1: The Red Shadow h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Rick Remender & John Cassady with Olivier Coipel.

Last week the Avengers truly assembled. As if to remind us of exactly how many there are now, every single AVENGERS title disgorged itself onto our shelves:

AVENGERS, AVENGERS ARENA, NEW AVENGERS, YOUNG AVENGERS, UNCANNY AVENGERS, EVER SO SLIGHTLY UNNERVING AVENGERS, AVENGERS YOU WOULD NEVER TAKE HOME TO YOUR MOM… We had all the Avengers – apart from SECRET AVENGERS, though perhaps they popped in stealthily under an up-turned cardboard box.

Yes, we were well and truly avenged, though I’m not entirely sure who done us wrong in the first place.

So what is UNCANNY AVENGERS and what sets it apart from the pack?

Well, the artwork, for one, by John Cassady whom you’ll doubtless know from the genuinely ASTONISHING X-MEN VOL 1 and indeed VOL 2, and from all four volumes of the epic science-fiction masterpiece, PLANETARY. Cassady is class. His is a neo-classical art interjected with a gloriously attractive, smooth version of classic superhero stalwarts like George Perez and John Byrne. It has a solidity, and chic sense of style in its fashion sense. Cassidy, as I say, is class.

But when the script rolled in I suspect his eyes rolled up to the heavens: “Jesus Christ! I’m used to working with Joss Whedon and Warren Ellis. What the hell is this shit?”

It’s ill-thought-through and hideously overwritten – appallingly turgid, like wading through a sewage system that’s experienced intense evaporation during a singularly soporific heat wave.

Following the events of AVENGERS VS X-MEN, Captain America comes to the realisation that the Avengers never did enough to help the mutant population in the past, even though some of its earliest members (and several since) have themselves been mutants. That much makes sense, as does his idea to redress the public’s increased alarm by forming a specific Avengers squad composed both of the trusted (Thor and the good Captain himself) and ostracised mutant population (Wolverine, Rogue, Havok and the Scarlet Witch). It will send a signal that the Avengers stand by their mutant comrades, even though they’ve torn each other apart for weeks. Let’s forget that Brian Michael Bendis just ended his Avengers run with the Avengers themselves firmly in the media-manipulated dog house. Their endorsement really shouldn’t mean shit right now. Still.

The bit that makes no sense whatsoever is that, of all people, Havok is invited to lead this team in the field. Havok. It’s not just that he’s a D-list mutant (you may never have heard of) and brother to Cyclops who’s been responsible from the recent escalation in mutant phobia (something he’s escalating to this day – see ALL-NEW X-MEN VOL 1), it’s that Havok has little experience is successful leadership and, uh, Captain America’s on the team. Also, yes, why not welcome back the Scarlet Witch after her sanity-free sabbatical by immediately popping her on the same team as the mutants whose population she decimated in HOUSE OF M? (I know the proper definition of “decimated”, but it’s the term Marvel used, so…)

“But it will make for cool conflict, Stephen!”

Potentially, yes, but it doesn’t. It makes for painfully predictable grudges and, in any case, those are my points:

1) You can hear the writer (or editorial board) thinking, “This will make for cool conflict!” when you should never hear them whisper let alone think.

2) It makes no strategic sense whatsoever. And I thought Captain America was supposed to be the ultimate strategist in the Marvel Universe.

Anyway, the Red Skull has stolen the body of Professor Charles Xavier (RIP for three seconds) and surgically removed his nice juicy brain which he can somehow pop in his own cranial cavity without extracting his own and command all and sundry, telepathically, to misbehave. Yes, they’re going to vote BNP, UKIP or Tory (one of those xenophobic, hate-mongering hoards) and bring about a right old Reich or something.

As to the overwritten, see the return of the overwrought caption boxes explaining the action you’re supposed to see happen (and do) abandoned long ago by everyone other than Dame Christopher Claremont.

“The change happens immediately… the man is gone. The killer is set loose.”

“The assassin is silent. Were it not for the Red Skull’s new-found telepathy, he would surely be killed. “

Surely. Slaughter me now, or shut up.

SLH

Buy Uncanny Avengers vol 1: The Red Shadow h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.
 

Feynman s/c (£14-99, FirstSecond) by Jim Ottaviani & Leland Myrick

Shame vol 2: Pursuit (£7-50, Renegade) by Lovern Kindzierski & John Bolton

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo vol 2 h/c (£14-99, Vertigo) by Stieg Larsson, Denise Mina & Leonardo Manco, Andrea Mutti

Bedlam vol 1 s/c (£7-50, Image ) by Nick Spencer & Riley Rossmo, Frazer Irving

Peter Bagge’s  Other Stuff (£14-99, Fantagraphics) by Peter Bagge

World Of Warcraft: Dark Riders h/c (£18-99, DC) by Mike Costa & Neil Googe

Aliens: Inhuman Condition h/c (£8-50, Dark Horse) by John Layman & Sam Keith

Don Quixote vol 2 (£14-99, Self Made Hero) by Cervantes & Rob Davis

Marvel Illustrated: Pride & Prejudice s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Jane Austen, Nancy Austen & Hugo Petrus

Destination X h/c (£9-99, Nobrow Press) by John Martz

Castle Waiting vol 2 h/c (Definitive Edition) (£22-50, Fantagraphics) by Linda Medley

All New X-Men vol 1: Here Comes Yesterday s/c (UK Ed’n) (£10-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Stuart Immonen

Iron Man vol 1: Believe s/c (UK Ed’n) (£10-99, Marvel) by Kieron Gillen & Greg Land

Superman Action Comics vol 1: Superman And The Men Of Steel s/c (£12-99, DC) by Grant Morrison & Rags Morales, Andy Kubert

Superman: Earth One vol 1 s/c (£9-99, DC) by J. Michael Straczynski & Shane Davis

Superman Action Comics vol 2: Bulletproof h/c (£18-99, DC) by Grant Morrison & Rags Morales

Gunslinger Girl Omnibus vols 13-14 (£13-50, Seven Seas) by Yu Aida

Knights Of Sidonia vol 2 (£9-99, Vertical) by Tsutomu Nihei
BREAKING NEWS!

ITEM! Young Hellboy stars in an original graphic novel HELLBOY: THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS by Mike Mignola & Duncan Fegredo this Autumn. Early images of Duncan Fegredo’s SUPER-CUTE young Hellboy

ITEM! Preview pages for JUPITER’S LEGACY #1 by Mark Millar & Frank Quitely and now Preview pages for JUPITER’s LEGACY #2 by Mark Millar & Frank Quitely! We still have copies of #1, reviewed and linked to above! Plus you can pre-order JUPITER’S LEGACY #2 here (or, you know, add it to your standing order by phoning 0115 9508045 or emailing page45@page45.com or even tweeting me @pagefortyfive.

ITEM! PORCELAIN: If you’ve yet to pick a copy up and gasp, this beautifully animated PORCELAIN trailer should do the trick!

ITEM! More on Terry Moore’s RACEL RISING TV deal. Brilliant!

ITEM! Interview with Ed Brubaker on the future of FATALE with gorgeous new art from Sean Phillips.

ITEM! Yay!  WE’RE OUT! The new long-form comic from ST. COLIN & THE DRAGON’s Philippa Rice who created our GameCity window last year. They’re out from their 2-D confines and into the real world! I’m just out.

BITE ‘EM! Squeaking of which… Lovely gay laydeez laughing at ludicrous preconceptions and prejudices with enormous good humour and hysterical wit.

It’s been quite the week, hasn’t it?

With Jonathan in Italy, Dominique and I spent an entire eight-day stretch week and indeed our first two Saturdays in over ten years working on the shop floor together. Oh, the laughter! Until, during the military exercise that is delivery day, Jonathan sent the following text: “Eating pizza and drinking wine on an island in the Italian lakes.”

The text I shot back was considerably shorter.

 - Stephen

Profanity, hot bullets and blue Brony action!

 - Stephen on Grant Morrison & Darick Robertson’s Happy.

Montague Terrace (£14-99, Jonathan Cape) by Gary Pleece & Warren Pleece.

The silk-finish cover makes Montague Terrace look a most attractive prospect for potential residents. Shame it was built over what was once a verdant, urban square – and you wait until you meet its architect!

You’ll have to, for it’s the building’s current occupants you’re introduced to first, and if they’re at all representative then you probably wouldn’t sign a lease yourself. Apart from old Mrs. Greene – a WWII spy once interrogated by the Nazis in much the same threatening, dissembling fashion as the tyrannical council do now – they are each of them broken and, now that I think of it, all of them including the octogenarian are haunted, either by prior failure, success or indeed war. It’s driven its fair share of them mad.

Paul Gregory was once touted by the likes of Melody Maker as the next Scott Walker. He wasn’t. He was a feckless and faithless husband and now he sits in his flat, half-naked and playing his own single to death. T.C.P. DeBoyne was hailed as the modern D.J. Salinger, but his difficult second novel proves too much for the easily distracted, pleasure-seeking wastrel who resorts to disparaging others on the equivalent of the Late Show simply to replenish what little’s left of his advance after this girlfriend’s gone shoe-shopping with all the self-restraint of Imelda Marcos. If I was his publisher, I’d punch him. Then there’s the scientist whose ecological innovations were sabotaged by the government, corporations and an ever-collusive media when detrimental to the “interests of enterprise”. Oh, and the charisma-free conjurer expelled from the Magic Circle who resorts to turning tricks at parties for spoiled, middle-class brats, one of whom gets his come-uppance thanks to a giant, rabid rabbit. Instant catharsis!

The Pleece Brothers have plenty to say, much of it eminently worth saying, and the opening sequence of the modern flat’s erection gave me hope that this might prove a modern equivalent of Will Eisner’s monumental DROPSIE AVENUE or at least THE BUILDING. I loved Mrs. Greene’s reply to any and all neighbourly enquiries as to her health (“I’m not dead yet!”) which resonates all the more affectingly when you come to comprehend its origin; I positively grinned at the tagline for Trendé magazine: “tasteful, high brow trash for the twittering masses”; and the well-meaning interference of the teacher in the domestic well-being of two Iraqi school children was harrowing.

However – although you may love, love, love it – I hated the dénouement, the reveal which to me seemed like something which Vertigo or Warrior Magazine might have editorially insisted on twenty or thirty years ago. The only unifying factor required was the terrace itself, as evidenced by both Eisner books above. Also, on reflection, the format itself is a retrograde step: an A4 softcover albeit with infinitely better production values than those we endured two decades ago. I can’t think of any other books which have recently opted for that format abandoned even by LOVE AND ROCKETS a ways back, and Jonathan Cape have bounded their previous A4 offerings in something much sturdier. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the format; it’s just that the US and UK market have proved resistant to it over the years. Perhaps Cape weren’t aware of that.

Anyway, I can’t bear to conclude as a Debbie Downer where the Pleece Brothers are concerned because a) The Pleece Brothers, b) the black and white art is even more refined than ever with an atmosphere which both anchors you consistently in the day-to-day doings of the tenants, whilst terrifying the reader during the more surrealist nightmare sequences, and c) if the destination didn’t do it for me, the journey itself more than made up for it. I therefore commend to you also Warren Pleece’s exceptional work on Mat Johnson’s INCOGNEGRO.

SLH

Buy Montague Terrace and read the Page 45 review here

Happy s/c (£9-99, Image) by Grant Morrison & Darick Robertson.

Profanity, hot bullets and blue Brony action!

Many sarcastic thanks to whichever of my sympathisers on Twitter explained the term ‘Brony’ to me some months ago following a flock of five fellows, in a single swoop, signing up to the MY LITTLE PONY #1 COMPLETE BOXED SET at £18-99 each. I cannot unlearn what I now know to be true, so may never fully recover. What I learned was this:

There has been a surge what could loosely be called of man-love for that saccharine pink pony, and those guilty of such a wayward cultural misalignment are called Bronies. Now, I’m hardly the butchest boy in the box and obviously Page 45 is an all-inclusive, non-judgemental love-in for all manner of diverse penchants and pleasures… but there are fucking limits.

By which I mean: “That’ll be £18-99, please. Thank you!”

Anyway, Happy here is a feathered blue pony with big, bulbous, bright shiny eyes, a purple unicorn horn and accentuated, goofy front teeth. Knowing Grant Morrison you may seriously doubt this, but potentially he’s the product of a delirious imagination as ex-Detective Nick Sax is sped across town in an ambulance after receiving several gunshot wounds in part-exchange for having murdered the four Fratelli brothers. They thought they were on a mission to axe our Sax, but it was no-nonsense Nick who hired them in the first place. The police are swift to the scene but that’s good news for no one except the Fratellis’ Uncle Stefano who’s determined to keep it all in the family – “it” being the Fratelli fortune. Unfortunately no one bothered to tell him the password and the only person still alive who knows that now is Nick.

Corruption is the order of the day on the snowy streets of God Only Knows and torture/interrogation will follow, all kindly overseen and endorsed by New Jersey’s Finest in the form of Maireadh McCarthy who’s firmly in Uncle Stefano’s pockets. Time to send in arch-information extractor Mr. Smoothie.

“I feel like the ghost of a hard-on that will not die.”

Along the way we meet a drunken paedophile dressed up as Santa (you’ll meet again – and after Nick knows where, you’ll know when), while Sax quite casually and coincidentally dispatches a serial murderer in a prawn costume smoking a spliff from a back end of a hammer which was five seconds away from coming down on the head of a prostitute blowing him to blissful oblivion. Did I mention it’s Christmas?

From the writer of WE3, JOE THE BARBARIAN and BATMAN INCORPORATED etc. comes something akin to THE FILTH only without the giant, flying spermatozoa. Profanity abounds and he’s set out to sully the holiday season whilst lobbing in the incongruity of bright-eyed chirpy-pants Happy The Horse who claims to be Hailey’s imaginary friend sent to Sax to rescue her from the plastered paedo.

TRANSMETROPOLITAN’s Darick Robertson is on his best form ever with masterfully slick choreography, the sturdiest of figure work and eye-popping street scenes all beautifully lit and then coloured to perfection by Richard P. Clark.

SLH

Buy Happy s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Vader’s Little Princess h/c (£9-99, Chronicle) by Jeffrey Brown.

“You are not going out dressed like that!”

From the creator of the fragile, autobiographal comics CLUMSY, UNLIKELY, FUNNY MISSHAPEN BODY etc, the two INCREDIBLE CHANGE-BOTS books and so much more, comes a sister title to DARTH VADER AND SON with Luke replaced by pretzel-haired Princess Leia.

Having played out most of the infant jokes (with considerable aplomb, though there are a few more here which only a daughter could deliver), Jeff swiftly moves to those difficult teenage years when being a single Dad proves problematic – especially with a daughter in danger of dating. Alas, most of the gags are image-specific so quotation is difficult, however…

“Nothing is wrong,” she tells Hans Solo, arms tightly folded and looking away. “I just…”

Hans, arms outstretched to hug her, looks back at his prospective father-in-law enquiringly as if to ask, “What does she mean? Is this what she wants?” Darth simply shrugs, as clueless as the rest of us.

Then there’s the age-old chestnut of getting kids to tidy their rooms. In my case it was miniature cars I used to imagine playing out my private Whacky Races: perfect for a parental pratfall. In this case it’s a clothes-strewn carpet. Also: clothes-strewn bookshelves, clothes-strewn bedside cabinet and clothes-strewn lampshades…

“AND NOW, YOUR HIGHNESS, WE WILL DISCUSS THE LOCATION OF YOUR HIDDEN LAUNDRY BASKET.”

Once more half the humour resides in our cold, calculating, rasping and ruthless, obsidian-orientated, empire-eliminating egomaniac being reduced to a helpless parent, totally in thrall to the whims and wishes of his titular little princess who blithely interrupts his latest death-decree by hugging him at the hip (and so putting him off his sadistic stride) or, conversely, taking paternal interrogation twenty-two steps too far.

The second half of the equation is the familiarity: of Darth, for example, being as behind the times and out of date as all Dads.

“THIS CONCERT YOU WANT TO GO TO… ‘MAX REBO’? WHAT KIND OF MUSIC IS IT, EVEN?”
“It’s good, Dad, you’d like it.”

He’d hate it. And so do you.

However, my favourite cartoon this time round (it’s a book of cartoons, not comics – did I mention that?) is one which I think we can all empathise with and dearly wish we had a Dad like Darth to dish out the well deserved punitive measures on our infuriated behalf.

“I think it’s telemarketers calling…”
“LEAVE THEM TO ME, I WILL DEAL WITH THIS MYSELF.”

Let it be lethal.

SLH

Buy Vader’s Little Princess h/c and read the Page 45 review here

The Manhattan Projects vol s/c (£10-99, Image) by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Pitarra…

“Grave news… we’re going to have to postpone the orgy.
“Seems those fiends in Los Alamos have decided they no longer need to recognise the authority of the government.
“How’s a President supposed to perform sexually under that kind of pressure?”

Utterly insane! Now the question is, am I referring to pretty much all of the cast of characters, or the plot? Errr… well both, actually. It takes real talent to produce something as completely bonkers yet seamlessly coherent as this title is. And crackers fun, in huge megaton payloads-full!

Following on from the events of MANHATTAN PROJECTS VOL 1, where our eclectic bunch of super-genii defeated an entire alien race intent on world domination / destruction, it is perhaps no great surprise they’ve decided they don’t really need the dubious benefits of <ahem> executive oversight from the President and his chums anymore. It’s not that they’ve come out and said so, you understand; it’s just they don’t feel they need to ask permission. After all, when you’ve developed your own nuclear devices and have acquired teleportation technology so you can drop them exactly where you want, Washington DC for example, who is likely to quibble with you? Stupid politicians of course! Cue the smackdown!

In the meanwhile, given the boys from Los Alamos have decided to concentrate on… bigger things…  their first step is to reach out to their Russian scientific brethren ensconced in their own technological complex at Star City to see if they’d like to join in the fun, which gives Jonathan Hickman chance to introduce another wonderful set of oddballs and maniacs! Not that he’s neglecting the megalomania of several of our original cast as the Einstein from another dimension, having covertly replaced the original, continues to hatch his own dastardly scheme, and Joseph Oppenheimer, whom everyone presumes is Robert after he murdered and ate him many years previously, is about to get a rather unpleasant psychic surprise courtesy of his subsumed sibling. Like I said, completely utterly insane all round!

JR

Buy Manhattan Projects vol 2 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Point Of Impact (£10-99, Image) by Jay Faerber & Koray Kuranel.

Brace yourself.

1. A young couple in a car is saying goodnight, and arranging a dinner for Saturday. Something smashes onto the roof with such ferocity they’re almost killed in the crash. It’s the body of a beautiful blonde woman, smartly dressed, and she is quite, quite dead.

2. Journalist Mitchell Rafferty is working late, putting a piece to bed. Thankfully his wife, Nicole, has made plans with her sister because he knows she can’t cook to save her life. When he finally gets home, he is knackered. Unfortunately his wife’s not there, but someone else is, rifling furiously through his draws. It’s someone in a mask with a military tattoo. It gets very violent very quickly until there’s a knock on the door. It’s detective Abby Warren with very bad news: his wife is dead. The intruder escapes with a laptop.

3. Simon from technical calls Abby Warren: they were working on Nicole Rafferty’s cell phone when a call came in. They traced it. The caller was one Patrick Boone, ex-army with a record and – yes – that very same tattoo.

Oh, you think it’s that obvious? Now read the comic itself: specifically the bits I missed out like, oh, I don’t know… that voicemail.

Full marks to the artist for the very first panel showing the crime scene under investigation. Immediately I jotted down a note: “How can someone falling from a rooftop land on a car parked that far away from the building?” She’d have had to have taken a running jump, which is a wee bit difficult in stilettos. It certainly wasn’t suicide. You get exactly the same sense of improbability when Abby’s looking down from above.

Full marks also for the art itself, reminiscent in places of Klaus Janson – especially the faces – and Frank Miller’s SIN CITY style when it came to the bed linen. Clean, crisp architecture too. As to the cover… that’s an instant seller and, unusually, an additional clue to the story.

So. That is what I wrote of the first of four chapters, at least. In addition I had always intended to mention that there was a hint of HULK artist Herb Trimpe to the visual proceedings, as inked perhaps by Terry ‘clean line’ Austin.

Alas, although our journalist does look suitable frazzled throughout, I have to come clean and confess that, having now read the whole shebang, it turns out to be way too transparent. I could even see the keyboard being tapped in my mind’s eye as the script slots everything together way too easily and the protagonists reach the requisite revelations or make all their mistakes bang on cue.

It’s still a great cover but, for prime crime, please read THIEF OF THIEVES or CRIMINAL instead.

SLH

Buy Point Of Impact and read the Page 45 review here

Avengers vol 1: Avengers World h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Jonathan Hickman & Adam Kubert, Jerome Opena.

“We have to get bigger.
“We have held for so long, but there is something looming just past the horizon. We can’t see it, but it’s coming. It’s going to be too much, and too soon – and we have to get ready now.
“We’ll keep this quiet until they’re needed – you and I will do most of the recruiting. Specific people for specific needs. But they’ll be out there. Ready… Waiting…
“And then, when that day comes, all you have to do is say the words… Wake The World.”

Oh, it’s coming all right: I can assure you it all pays off next volume. Well, at the end of this one once they decrypt the Builder Machine Code. How good’s your Warren Ellis?

Speaking of Ellis, I know Tony Stark is sounding all Miranda Zero, but don’t expect their new operatives’ deployment to be quite as select as within GLOBAL FREQUENCY: it’s more like banging a global gong, inviting everyone and their mother to dinner.

Hickman’s written a very different AVENGERS book here: it’s no longer a tightly knit family affair, but a military assault reacting to worldwide catastrophe as a group of god-like gardeners plant themselves firmly on Mars and set about weeding out the weaklings on Earth by introducing their own strains – like anyone with green fingers does when they move into a house and discover that their new back garden is blighted by dozens of hideous hydrangeas. What…? Horrible flower, the hydrangea.

Anyway, that’s one bloody big battle, but what they’re left with is an enigmatic being whose language they can’t comprehend – one who appears to have a very important message for mankind if only the Avengers can interpret it in time…

As with all things Jonathan ‘NIGHTLY NEWS’ Hickman, there is some seriously stylish design going on in each chapter break – he does like his symbols, does Hickman, and has a penchant for blue too – including the Builder Machine Code supplied right at the end. Personally I’d read the whole thing without it first time round, thereby walking a mile in the Avengers’ mystified shoes. After that, by all means get your pen and paper out, decrypt like crazy and keep for posterity.

Please note: if you’re wondering why Spider-Man is so hilariously rude right now – I don’t mean cheeky as he’s always been; I mean downright supercilious – you may wish to catch up on events in his own title, SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN. Clue: that isn’t exactly Peter Parker under that mask. It may look like him, but someone’s rented a room in his noggin’ and eviction is proving problematic.

SLH

Buy Avengers vol 1: Avenger’s World h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Marshal Law: The Deluxe Edition h/c (£37-99, DC) by Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill.

“I’m a hero hunter. I hunt heroes. Haven’t found any yet.”

450 pages of smear and loathing, designed to make your mouth curl at the very same time you’re chortling your toes off. You’ll be gurning and groaning, like the Elephantman being given a blowjob.

Before Veitch delivered pretty much the last word worth saying on the pervy nature of superheroes in BRATPACK (although we’ve since been treated to Garth Ennis’ sustained sexual assault in THE BOYS), Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill voiced their own distaste in their ultra-violent, iconoclastic, joke-in-every-corner MARSHAL LAW books. All things establishment and status quo get a jack-booted kick to the crotch, from Reagan and the Church to the Justice League of America and theme parks. It’s kind of like MAD on crack (I did not just type “it’s kind of like” – you never read that), though I don’t mean Kurtzman-esque, for you won’t find too much social dissection going on. That was left, as previous mentioned, to Rick Veitch.

What you will witness is a gross-out ejaculation of repressed sexuality; of sadism, masochism and self-loathing. Maximum punnage is the order of the day and they keep it coming, thick and fast, spawning now-familiar slogans like “Nuke Me Gently.”

It’s not quite as slick as I recall – the voice-overs don’t half interrupt the flow – but it’s still the work of two men having the grimmest of laughs while firing on all cylinders.

This whopping volume, heavy enough to cave in the cranium of anyone in a kinky costume or cape, reprints MARSHAL LAW #1-6, MARSHAL LAW: FEAR AND LOATHING, MARSHAL LAW TAKES MANHATTAN, MARSHAL LAW: KINGDOM OF THE BLIND and MARSHAL LAW: THE HATEFUL DEAD, MARSHAL LAW: SUPER BABYLON and MARSHAL LAW: SECRET TRIBUNAL #1-2. Gallery section, and an introduction by Jonathan Ross.

SLH

Buy Marshal Law: The Deluxe Edition h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

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

Courtney Crumrin Spec Ed h/c vol 3 (£18-99, Oni Press) by Naifeh, Ted & Naifeh, Ted

Morning Glories s/c vol 4 Truants (£10-99, Image) by Spencer, Nick & Eisma, Joe

A Boy and a Bear in a Boat s/c (£5-99, David Fickling Books) by Dave Shelton

Charles Burns Library s/c vol 2 Big Baby (New Ptg) (£12-99, Fantagraphics Books) by Charles Burns

Dark Tower Gunslinger s/c Battle Of Tull (£14-99, Marvel) by David, Peter & Lark, Michael

Who Is Ac s/c (£10-99, Other A-Z) by Larson, Hope & Pantoia, Tintin

Flowers Of Evil vol 5 (£8-50, Random House / Vertical) by Oshimi, Shuzo & Oshimi, Shuzo

Batman Illustrated By Neal Adams s/c vol 2 (£18-99, DC) by Haney, Bob & Adams, Neal

Uncanny Avengers Prem h/c vol 1 Red Shadow Now (£18-99, Marvel) by Remender, Rick & Cassaday, John

MMW Incredible Hulk h/c vol 7 (£52-99, Marvel) by Various, Herb Trimpe

Fairy Tail vol 23 (£8-50, Kodansha Comics) by Hiro Mashima

Fairy Tail vol 24 (£8-50, Kodansha Comics) by Hiro Mashima

I am Here vol 1 (£12-99, Del Ray) by Ema Toyama

Doctor Who vol 1 The Hypothetical Gentleman (£13-50, IDW) by Andy Diggle, Brandon Seifert & Mark Buckingham, Philip Bond, Ilias Kyriazis

Ningens Nightmares s/c (£9-99, Dark Horse) by Kalonji, J. P. & Kalonji, J. P.

Gantz s/c vol 27 (£10-50, Dark Horse) by Oku, Hiroya & Oku, Hiroya

Excel Saga s/c vol 25 (£7-50, Viz) by Koshi, Rikdo & Koshi, Rikdo
Terry Moore’s RACHEL RISING has been snapped up for TV! Yay!

Also: The Eisner Nominations 2013. I think there may actually be progress in this traditionally mediocre institution (the British Comic Awards 2012 showed everyone how it should be done) but where the hell is the best book of the year? THE NAO OF BROWN is not mentioned once!

Bizarre.

 - Stephen

Thus we learn about her family history as glimpsed through the prism of mixing bowl and wine glass.

  – Jonathan on Lucy Knisley’s Relish.

Punk Rock Jesus (£12-99, Vertigo) by Sean Murphy.

“What kinds of things will he be learning?”
“Math, English, American History, Creationism, Faith Healing.”
“Creationism and Faith Healing? You’re kidding me.”
“Many of our viewers are fundamentalist and would be uncomfortable with their saviour learning about science and evolution.”
“That’s ridiculous! The benefit of a billion-dollar learning centre, and all you teach is dogma?”
“It’s the American way.”

It begins with a prayer swiftly answered by violence. God knows where it will all end.

Ophis Entertainment has announced a new reality show starring the first human clone in history: it’s Jesus Christ himself.

Whether or not the revolution will be televised, the countdown to the Second Coming will! Season one will commence with conception and climax at birth. After that both nature and nurture will be on camera 24/7. Audience figures for the J2 Project will reach 3 billion daily and, in order to achieve those ratings, smarmy Dick Slate will do anything – absolutely anything. The insidiousness begins on day one, and the levels it reaches will stagger you.

First it requires a scientist: Dr. Sarah Epstein, geneticist in service to saving the environment. In 2013 she cloned polar bears in an attempt to stave off their extinction, then developed a hyper plant which fed off carbon dioxide faster than anything else. She even tried to pollinate the Brazilian rainforest before being stung by lawsuits from six fast-food chains. Now she’s determined to engineer new strains of algae to halt global warming but to do that she needs funds.

“And if I have to resurrect Jesus Christ to do it, then I will.”

Next the Immaculate Conception requires a self-sacrificial virgin in the form of naïve 18-year-old Gwen Fairling (presented to the world after some swift cosmetic surgery – teeth, nose, breasts), then some of our saviour’s DNA. And, you know, whatever happens next, this exchange on live television should certainly be born in mind:

“There’s never been any evidence that the [Turin] Shroud is as old as Christians would like to believe. And carbon dating has proven that. Most important here is no one outside of Ophis has been allowed to verify the validity of the DNA.”
“Blasphemy. Carbon dating is flawed – the Shroud is real and that proves Jesus was, too!”
“Is what Father Sterlins says true?”
“There’s no disputing carbon data. And there’s never been any empirical evidence that a person named Jesus Christ ever existed.”
“How dare you! Scientists are not to be trusted! Their arrogance has given us atomic bombs and nuclear waste. They tell us that we all come from monkeys, and insist on telling that to our children.”
“Evolution through natural selections is a fact. Fossil records prove it.”
“Evolution is just a theory!”
“So is gravity.”

Some of the Christian contingent are all for it – it combines their favourite pastimes to perfection – while others like the New American Christians protest vociferously outside Ophis’ island HQ. They’d far rather protest inside the high-tech laboratory turned TV studio, of course, which is where our Irish head of security comes in, born of sectarian violence. Yes, Murphy’s brought Northern Ireland into this already flammable mix: Thomas is a former member of the IRA!

I think it was HELLBLAZER’s Andy Diggle who first said to Sean, “And Vertigo gave this the green light?!?” You’ve got to admire the guy’s guts, for this is as packed as the pulp paper it’s printed on with plot and sub-plottery destined to offend all and sundry. Or delight them. I am totally delighted.

Don’t think this is but a convenient peg on which to hang Thomas’ heart or explain his efficacy, either. The book begins twenty years earlier with his parents’ slaughter right before his impressionable eyes, leaving young Thomas vulnerable to his uncle’s indoctrination. The Irish troubles are addressed and indeed redressed later on – if not in full then certainly in terms of Thomas’ history – and it’s all very far from random.

Indeed every element of this socio-political masterpiece is commendably complex and thought right the way through. For what follows is everything you suspected of Reality TV, taken to the extremes deemed necessary when your star is supposedly the saviour: media manipulation, emotional blackmail and indeed outright abuse, all in service to the ratings.

Gwen’s trajectory is particularly tragic, trapped as she is in this fishbowl for her own personal safety and stuck on a white-knuckle ride she could never conceive of. When she turns to drink (supplied by Slate to “cheer her up”) and mistakenly fills her baby’s bottle up with wine rather than juice, it’s spun as a biblical miracle while Gwen herself sinks even further into self-loathing. As to Jesus “Chris” Christ, fed lies all his life, well, you know what happens when you hit your teens: you take your education into your own hands and it generally begins with vinyl. All his life he’s been shown how to grab the public’s attention, so over the years he’s learned a thing or two and when the worm turns, the tables do too.

As to the art, you’ve already swooned over Sean Murphy on JOE THE BARBARIAN and HELLBLAZER: CITY OF DEMONS and this is every bit as thrilling in its post-Bachalo, black-and-white beauty – a comparison which holds true right down to the o’er-shaded nose tips. It is so ridiculously rich in detail, from the Irish pub walls to the stadium-sized concerts, that you can only gasp at the sheer graft which Sean has put in. The action sequences are spectacular, for Murphy doesn’t half love his motorbikes and the NAC will seize any opportunity to sabotage the show. Also, when the Flak Jackets strike their opening crash-chords the pages sound as loud as Paul Peart-Smith’s in NELSON. Dear lord, but the energy released is intense.

So has Project J2 really played God with God and cloned the Second Coming into existence? And, if so, will he fare any better than his progenitor at the hands of those who worshipped his deity-Dad? What really happened to that other little miracle, his genetically impossible twin sister snuck in by Sarah Epstein then drowned at birth? And what, ultimately, does Chris himself believe?

“I don’t care whose DNA I come from. The way I see it, I’m the bastard child of America’s runaway entertainment complex.”

Preach it.

SLH

Buy Punk Rock Jesus and read the Page 45 review here

Relish – My Life In The Kitchen s/c (£13-50, FirstSecond) by Lucy Knisley…

For some people, food is part of their heritage. For Lucy, born to parents in the business of cooking, her palette was always going to be stimulated from a very young age. Thus we learn about her family history as glimpsed through the prism of mixing bowl and wine glass. I love it when people tackle an autobiographical work from a completely different perspective such as this: it shows imagination and awareness of how to present a tasty morsel for the reader’s delectation. If you have read one of Lucy’s earlier works, FRENCH MILK, you’ll know exactly what you’re going to be served; otherwise, have a seat and don’t forget to put a napkin on in case you start drooling!

Knisley vividly conveys the impression of a family whose lives frequently revolved around the kitchen and the dining room table. Family friends and members are introduced, not just by their names, but their involvement with food, usually on a professional basis. It’s a work of genuine bonhomie, as Lucy never really delves particularly deeply into relationships or highly charged emotional content (she doesn’t explain why her parents split up, for example), instead preferring to tickle us with amusing anecdotes, such as a trip to Mexico with her mum, Aunt and cousin. Mum and Auntie fall ill, leaving the two kids to roam around and get up to mischief, whilst sampling local food, of course.

Similarly, there’s no proselytising about gastronomy either. One of the sequences I loved most was of her taking a trip to Rome with her father and driving him mad by purchasing a McDonalds burger and fries for breakfast one morning. Even though they were divorced by this point, it prompts a conversation of near total disbelief between her parents.

Her art has come on too since her earlier works, and here she often manages to pack in a huge amount of detail with her relatively sparse style, using an incredibly vibrant palate, without it ever seeming crowded. It’s quite the trick actually, because if you study some panels, many of them, it’s difficult to conclude whether there’s a lot going on or virtually nothing at all. I like her style, it all seems very effortless, yet that clearly isn’t the case.

At the conclusion of each tale or chapter, we are also presented with a family recipe, some of Lucy’s own creation, and I must say, I am very tempted to give the rancheros huevos a go, as it looked delicious, not to mention the multiple versions of chocolate-chip cookies. I hope I haven’t understated my pleasure in reading this work. Despite being a gentle, frothy affair, it’s certainly well seasoned and rich, not remotely lacking in flavour, and leaves a pleasant after-taste upon finishing. And if that’s more than enough food analogies for you, let get the waiter to bring you your coat…

JR

Buy Relish – My Life In The Kitchen s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Unico s/c (£25-99, DMP) by Osamu Tezuka –

This is the story of Unico, a cute little blue Unicorn who befriends a mortal maiden named Psyche. It’s a full-colour Disneyesque book with a fairytale quality which is certainly aimed at kids but which also had me giggling in places and sniffling a bit in others.

Unicorns (apparently) have the power to do anything and everything for the ones they love, including flying, shape-shifting and conjuring fish for dinner. Pretty Cool! However, their power fades if the friendship weakens: they’re all about the love, are Unicorns. Unsurprisingly, given their cool powers, super-cuteness and capacity for limitless affection, being beloved of a Unicorn will bring a mortal a lifetime of guaranteed happiness. And as Unicorns don’t give their love to just anybody, you can be sure that a mortal with a pet Unicorn is a very lovely person indeed.

Psyche is just such a person: gentle, kind and, despite her legendary beauty and many, many suitors, modest. Jealous of all the attention Psyche is getting, the goddess Venus decides to spirit Unico away, leaving his beautiful owner to wither in endless sadness. And so our poor, cute little hero is cast away through time and space to ever more distant lands with no memory of who he is or where he came from. Each adventure has elements of familiar tales; from the Native Americans vs. the White Man to the struggles of an unwanted cat to battles over fairytale kingdoms. Because he is such a little darling Unico always makes a friend wherever he lands up and tries to make their life better. This angers Venus further and so every time you think he might be winning he is whisked away again, ever further from his true home. Will he ever make it back to poor Psyche?

The blurb on the back of the book informs us that this is the “perfect first manga to read with the little ones” and it’s hard to argue with that, although, as with many fairytales we encounter sadness as well as joy and adventure. There is something there for adults too; silly humour and slapstick abound and, if you are a bit of a softie like me, there are some borderline tearful moments as well. Not the most sophisticated thing I will read all year I’m sure but quite lovely nonetheless!

DK

Buy Unico s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Swamp Thing vol 2: Family Tree s/c (£10-99, DC) by Scott Snyder & Yanick Paquette….

Okay, I now understand why DC released this volume a few months after ANIMAL MAN VOL 2. It does tie up time-wise, but then that now leaves me wondering if people reading the issues of both these titles as they were coming out month by month were slightly bemused. Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, for anyone reading merely one or neither of these titles – either in issues or trades – and wondering what on earth I am rambling on about, we are still being told two sides or strands of the same story, revealing the latest see-saw in the ongoing three-way balancing acts between the forces of The Green, The Red and The Rot, fought through their various forces, including their avatars.

The current avatars of The Green and The Red are of course better known to us as Alec Holland and Buddy Baker respectively. The avatar of The Rot, when finally revealed, is probably no great surprise to Swamp-heads, but I won’t spoil that here. I enjoyed this volume considerably more as a trade than in the issues, which I actually gave up on. In part because it is one long (still) ongoing story arc, but also because it’s trying to gradually build other things along the way, which I was losing track of in the issues. Here it felt a much more fluid read.

As I commented in my review of ANIMAL MAN VOL 2, SWAMP THING is also trying to simultaneously be a Vertigo(-lite)-style title and, of course, a New 52 ‘superhero’ one. It’s a commendable approach, actually, which I think is working for both, without, yet at least (and perhaps inevitably), hitting the heady heads of either the Grant Morrison or Alan Moore runs. Neither title is esoteric enough for me personally in their story-telling with the characters, but the writers are probably pushing it as far as their remits allow, plus getting in the undoubted quota of mandated fight scenes. I will keep reading both, I am enjoying them, it’s just a touch frustrating when you know what could be done with the characters, a sentiment Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire doubtless share, I suspect…

JR

Buy Swamp Thing vol 2: Family Tree s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Superman: Secret Identity (£14-99, DC) by Kurt Busiek & Stuart Immonen.

Until Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely produced the note-perfect ALL-STAR SUPERMAN four years later, I wrote that if you were ever going to buy any Superman book, this should be it. Even though (or perhaps because) it’s not about Superman at all.

It’s about a boy called Clark Kent who grows up in Kansas and whose parents really weren’t thinking when they christened him. All his life he’s had to endure jibes about his name and birthday/Christmas presents focussing almost exclusively on the Superman theme just because he shares the comicbook character’s name. It’s not as if he has super-strength; he can’t hear whispers several miles away; he can’t even fly. Or at least he couldn’t. Then one night, much to Clark’s teenage surprise, he finds that he can.

So what you have here is a clean slate with someone whose powers echo Superman’s, but who then has to navigate his way through a real-world context of education, careers and relationships, and a real-world context of the CIA and American military who you just know would do anything to lay their hands on someone they would consider either an asset or a direct threat to their national and geopolitical interests. Either/or. “There ain’t no neutral ground”. They cannot just leave him alone, they’re constantly trying to track and trick him, but Clark doesn’t want to end up their pawn and cannot afford to endanger his family, and you really do spend most of the series anxious about the consequences.

There are some writers who really don’t fare well in standard superhero comics but who shine on their own pet projects, and Kurt is one of them. This harbours all the affection and thought that he pours into ASTRO CITY, and I think much of that has to do with the fact that if there’s no continuity, no context other than that of his own choosing, and he’s particularly interested in the perspective of ordinary human beings when confronted with the extraordinary, which is where this succeeds.

What do you tell your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife? And at what stage of the relationship? What, if anything, do you ever tell your family? How would any of these people react? And what would you do with your gifts? What would it actually be like, to suddenly discover you could fly?

I think Immonen gives you a pretty fine description, visually, with some awesome midnight scenes above the Kansas countryside, and this is leagues above anything I’ve seen him submit before. He’s on colouring duty as well, and uses that to soften the forms, retaining as much pencil as possible.

SLH

Buy Superman: Secret Identity and read the Page 45 review here

Judge Dredd vol 1 (£14-99, IDW) by Duane Swierczynski & Nelson Daniel…

Sheesh. If the penalty for jimping – impersonating a Judge to you citizens who aren’t down with Mega-City slang – is twenty years in a cube, then I shudder to think what the punishment for impersonating a Judge Dredd writer is. Life in a kook cube perhaps. I fear Duane Swierczynski may well find out though. I had such high hopes for this title, I really did. What I wanted was something action-packed, yet totally completely deadly serious. Hard-boiled future fiction crime. What I didn’t need was yet more naff comedy capers. Surely, surely that is what 2000AD is for? Even though in 2000AD they have tackled relatively serious storylines before, in fact they’ve been some of the very best ones, such as the classic ‘America’ which is part of the wider ‘Democracy’ story, it’s relatively rare they tried to tell an ongoing story with real depth, which is partly due to the short length weekly format of the strip. When they do it’s great, but they can’t do that week in, week out.

Thus when I heard Swierczynski, a published crime writer, and whose runs on MOON KNIGHT and THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST I really enjoyed was going to be the scribe on this new monthly I got excited. But if this is really as good as it’s going to get, I simply shouldn’t have bothered. Why oh why they didn’t decide to play it as straight crime with a sci-fi twist, plus with the politics and intrigue of a Judge’s sector house thrown in for good measure I just do not know. This series as it is will tank so badly, particularly with our American chums. So it’s probably going to be another opportunity to make this character truly globally massive missed yet again. Shame.

Note: Judge Dredd: Year One, also by IDW, was exactly the Dredd title I had been waiting for!

JR

Buy Judge Dredd vol 1 and read the Page 45 review here

Hot Girls, Cold Feet restocks (£8-99, Abstract) by Terry Moore.

Wistful, loving, naughty and nice. Impish, anarchic, even angry. Above all, however, funny!

Terry Moore’s love of women wells up from the heart and there is nothing remotely voyeuristic about the pleasure of basking in his pencil and ink sketches, most of which have never before been seen. Doesn’t stop them being sexy, though!

Mischief ahoy from the creator of STRANGERS IN PARADISE, ECHO and most recently RACHEL RISING!

You might also want to check out Terry’s HOW TO DRAW to see how he drew ‘em. It’s not just a practical manual, either; it’s a philosophical treatise as entertaining as anything he’s ever written.

SLH

Buy Hot Girls, Cold Feet and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

 
Montague Terrace (£14-99, Jonathan Cape) by Gary Pleece & Warren Pleece

Happy s/c (£9-99, Image) by Grant Morrison & Darick Robertson

Manhattan Projects vol 2 s/c (£10-99, Image) by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Pitarra

Angel & Faith vol 3: Family Reunion (£13-50, Dark Horse) by Christos Gage & Rebekah Isaacs

Marshal Law: The Deluxe Edition h/c (£37-99, DC) by Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill

Avengers vol 1: Avenger’s World h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Jonathan Hickman & Jerome Opena

Venom: Devil’s Pack s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Cullen Bunn & Thony Silas

Dial H vol 1: Into You s/c (£10-99, DC) by China Mieville & Mateus Santolouco

Bokurano Ours vol 8 (£9-99, Viz) by Mohiro Kitoh

Dorohedoro vol 9 (£9-99, Viz) by Q. Hayashida

Durarara!! Saika vol 1 (£8-99, Other A-Z) by Narita Ryohgo & Akiyo Satorigi
There’s been a bit of a funeral today. But, as someone tweeted, it’s hardly a day of national mourning if you need the British Army to contain the mass of protesters. TAMARA DREWE creator Posy Simmonds honours the day with a Grantham fairytale on the Guardian website. Meanwhile the ever-inspired comedian Stewart Lee demonstrates that ‘hagiography’ has acquired a dual meaning in the media’s coverage of Thatcher’s death.

Moving on to SAGA #12: we have loads on our shelves (you can buy online by clicking on that link) – there was not, nor is there, a problem with the printed versions.

However, there remains confusion on the part of customers as to what exactly was up with the whole Apple/ComiXology debacle in not carrying the book. Who declined to do what and why? Was it, as initially suggested, the two teeny-tiny stamp-sized images of gay sex? Was it the subsequent ejaculate? I held my issue in all day until some of the truth began to emerge.

Here’s an interesting summary tweeted by Evan Dorkin, which answers some questions and poses a few more. 4^th Letter on SAGA #12. Here’s Image’s Eric Stephenson’s account of SAGA #12’s release.

Hmmm.

I have updated the Page 45 FAQs. Same goes for About Page 45 and Website Credits. There’s some comedy content there too.

Finally, this was sent to me by our Foxstress of Facebook, Ryz Glover: an original, unedited sequence from Doctor Who ‘Blink’. Funny!

My Mr. Bob-san can’t even spell ‘stealth’.

 - Stephen

Jake and Finn mess with Princess Bubblegum’s time machine. Do you know what that is? It is mmmmmuuuUUUNNNNACEPTABLE! 

 - Dominique on Adventure Time vol 2 

Julio’s Day h/c (£14-99, Fantagraphics) by Gilbert Hernandez.

Long have I loved Beto, but this blew my brains out. On page after page after page, this is arresting.

“People who have secrets go to Hell.” 

This is the story of Julio Reyes, from the moment he’s born screaming until the day he dies gasping for air. It begins and ends with a gaping black mouth. There: I’ve given it all away. 

Actually, I have told you nothing, and I intend to keep it that way.

It is not the story of Julio who is but a witness to his family’s travails, for he emphatically does nothing at all. He keeps everything bottled up, right to the bitter end. He wastes his entire life. Instead he witnesses others going off to war and falling in love; dying, lying and crying. Some will cry over him but Julio is resolutely impassive. Or missing something – an emotional chip, maybe. I’ve known people like that.

So it is instead the story of several generations of his family – of his sister and her daughter and her daughter’s son and grandson – who do quite wonderful things and quite shocking things. There are a good five buzz words that would send you scurrying to this book, but I cannot deploy them or you would not then be shocked. Trust me: you will be shocked. And pleasantly surprised.

It is a book about love, about lust, about helping others and taking advantage of them. It is a book about family. It is a book about 99 pages long and about £15 unless you have a student card, a UB40 or an Old Age Pensioners’ bus pass.

The landscapes are astounding: great big rock formations and mudslides and torrential rain. The skies at night are the stuff of the Northern Lights.

There’s a certain formality to it, as there is to Julio and indeed this review. It begins in 1900 and ends in the year 2000.

“No secrets in the house!”

Don’t you believe it.

SLH

Buy Julio’s Day h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Hey You! (And Other Stories) (£6-00, self-published) by Dan Berry.

PAGE 45 COPIES ALL SIGNED AND SKETCHED IN!

My favourite book yet from the creator of AFTER WE SHOT THE GRIZZLY and CAT ISLAND – and that’s no easy feat.

Bound as ever in a quality card-stock cover here in white and lime greens, this beautiful short-story collection is a observational gem full of delicate pen-and-ink drawings, some with soft washes, others warm and bold, one midnight cold.

That would belong to belong to the titular ‘Hey You!’, an ode to insomnia about the people and paranoia which can keep us awake in hotel bedrooms until the early hours of the morning. Perfect punchline!

Equally eerie is the second of our spooks, the ghastly Grey Man – as invented by Joe List in LAND LUBBER. This elusive agent of malaise lurks and lingers, leaving disconcerting evidence of his cold and clammy touch, or simply dampening your day with his mild malignancy.

The second of these has been completely recoloured since its online incarnation seen here, offsetting the drabness of the Grey Man himself with the warmest of mayonnaise yellows and blood-clot burgundies (it really is the colour of a scab), and is a masterpiece of single-page composition, the punchline not being “You get no change” but the Grey Man’s defiant, impenitent, territorial “HSSSSSSS!”. You’re not going to get any change.

‘Men Who Climb’ is absolutely true. I have witnessed precisely this scenario underneath Trent Bridge with a man feeling up the chunky stone masonry with an almost fetishistic lust for many minutes, before proceeding to climb, if only two feet off the ground, and stay there, his entire body pressed against his beloved wall.

The longest piece is a record of Dan’s trip to Algiers where he gave lectures and workshops in comics. Oh, the heat and the hiccups! Transportational, mainly. Thankfully Dan’s mobile phone has a torch. Cell phones have torches?!

I found this piece particularly interesting, culturally, as Dan embarks on his storytelling workshop:

“I used the premise I normally use when I do these things – a man wants to steal a book from a book shop. Starting from there, we talk about what the story requires, how best to approach it and how to show the character’s motivations. When I’ve done these sessions in the UK, the character’s motivations have always emerged as selfish, but in Algeria, the character that we developed acted nobly. I ended up daring three panels of the character getting rejected at a cash machine as final artwork to show more of my process.”

I should also make mention of the vast sense of space in ‘Algiers’, the white between each spot-illustration reflecting the wash slapped all over the North African masonry to keep cool the homes which would otherwise bake in the desiccating heat. This is enhanced in no small part by lettering which is exquisitely neat but far from clinical. The landscapes are glorious, while poor Dan’s sun-induced suffering could not be conveyed with more sweaty success. If sunstroke were contagious, I’d have caught it.

SLH

Buy Hey You! (And Other Stories) and read the Page 45 review here

Uber #0 (£2-99, Avatar) by Kieron Gillen & Canaan White…

It does amuse me greatly that our very own resident grammar-Nazi, Stephen L. Holland, quite firmly insists that no accents or umlauts must be used in titles or creator names on the Page 45 website. He’s right of course, because no one with an Anglicised keyboard ever bothers typing them into search engines thus causing a perilous lack of results if they are used, but I am quite sure it must be distressing his leather-clad interior editor to see deliberately mis-spelt words. Is it wrong therefore that I derive more than a little schadenfreude from this situation heh heh?

I am actually going to suggest anyone reading this starts at the back. Not with the ending obviously, but Kieron’s mini-essay explaining, almost apologetically, precisely why he’s written this work. It’s amusingly self-deprecating and is a roundabout way of politely pointing out that whilst yes, it’s a no-holds-barred gore-fest of a comic about super-Nazis, he is actually trying to make a few points about what WW2 and all its intrinsic horrors says about us as a species.

So… It is the very dying moments of the war, the Russians are already ploughing through the suburbs of Berlin and Adolf is just waiting for the knock on his door to see if he wants to come out and play. Any German soldiers with any common sense whatsoever are doing their very best to look busy whilst shuffling subtly westwards in the hope of surrendering to the Allies rather than the Reds. Except, a certain research division might just have come up with something that, whilst it might be too late to completely turn the tide, could at least ensure the Allies’ victory is a pyrrhic one at best. Cue the super-Nazis! Who really do make Captain America look like a boy scout, as they not only have increased strength but other insanely destructive capabilities like energy manipulation powers. Game on!

There is a substantial cast of characters introduced in this first issue, on all sides, including some whose allegiance might not be quite as it seems, which is as it should be, because espionage was an extremely important part of the war effort on all sides.

I really enjoyed this opener, I must say. I have a huge interest in WW2 and I enjoyed Kieron’s attention to detail: he clearly has done his research as he alludes to in his afterword. And from this issue we can clearly see he is, as promised, not shying away from displaying the very disturbing underbelly of the conflict and its toll upon the civilian populace.

Note: this issue #0 is already out of print. Now Avatar are doing a very limited reprint (7500 copies) of a £4-99 version of it, with lots of extra non-story material included. It is the only reprint there will be before the trade comes out. Which, personally, I think if daft, but anyway if you want one, please let us know quickly. We have ordered some of the reprint, but how many we will receive I don’t know.

JR

Buy Uber #0 and read the Page 45 review here

Naoki Urasawa’s 21st Century Boys vol 2 (£8-99, Viz) by Naoki Urusawa…

“Did you hear that song, just now?!”
“I’m the one that put it on.”
“Starting from tomorrow… I… I was never going to do anything with anybody, ever again… Will you be my friend?”
“Sure, but… you don’t become friends with somebody just by saying you will.”
“Hey. You’re…”

Haha, don’t panic, for those of who have been reading Naoki Urasawa’s 20^TH CENTURY BOYS for the last eight years, I am not about to spoil the grand reveal of the identity of the Friend which we’ve all waited so long and so patiently to learn, suffering the myriad misdirections Mr. Urasawa has beguiled us with along the way! All good things must come to an end, even in the world of incredibly long manga series, and this is no exception. It seems somehow fitting therefore that the reveal is provided by something as innocuous as a conversation between our young hero Kenji and the Friend himself.

A conversation that’s taking place in virtual reality… witnessed by the adult (and real) Kenji, whilst he searches for clues to the location of the remote control for the Friend’s ultimate doomsday weapon. It’s rather amusingly obvious in retrospect where it was going to be, but I certainly didn’t guess! Of all of the excellent titles on Viz’s more intelligent and thought-provoking Signature Ikki line (PLUTO, IKIGAMI, HOUSE OF FIVE LEAVES, SATURN APARTMENTS, CHILDREN OF THE SEA, BOKURANO OURS, BIOMEGA, I’LL GIVE IT MY ALL TOMORROW… to name some of my personal favourites) this is by far the longest at 24 volumes: 22 volumes of 20^TH CENTURY BOYS and the 2 concluding boos entitled 21^st CENTURY BOYS, as mostly they run to a maximum of 8 or so. But Urasawa is a master at producing an extended storyline, as he proved with the frustratingly out-of-print MONSTER (I believe there is some dispute temporarily preventing reprints). He knows exactly how to tantalise and tease, inserting twists and turns that prolong the reading experience, without ever feeling like it’s just for the sake of selling a few more volumes! If you like light-hearted speculative fiction, do give it a try, especially as now it is complete, so you won’t have to wait a full eight years to read it all, unlike us!

Finally, the one thing I can tell you without spoiling anything, just in case you were wondering is the identity of the song referred to above. It is of course, 20^th Century Boy by T. Rex!

JR

Buy Naoki Urasawa’s 21st Century Boys vol 2 and read the Page 45 review here

Adventure Time vol 2 (£10-99, Kaboom) by Ryan North & Shelli Paroline, Braden Lamb, Mike Holmes, Lisa Moore –

Jake and Finn mess with Princess Bubblegum’s time machine. Do you know what that is? It is mmmmmuuuUUUNNNNACEPTABLE!

The entire timeline of Ooo gets messed up, everyone is a bit wrong, Finn looks sort of like Susan Strong but with a cyborg arm and Bmo is being very weird. Obviously our bros must fix it so that o gets back to normal, and fix it they do in their inimitable ADVENTURE TIMEy style.

They’ve done an excellent job with this comic because bringing the insane awesomeness of the cartoon onto the printed page can’t have been easy. It really is like reading an episode; it looks and feels like the Ooo we all know and love and secretly want to live in. My favourite touches are the tiny, almost illegible footnotes at the bottom of the pages; little fourth-wall-breaking bits of nonsense that add another layer to the comic and make it less like “just” a silent version of the cartoon.

Apart from that it’s all very straight forward: grab your friends and go to very distant lands! The art style is pretty much faithful to the cartoon, very pretty, bright and cute. You’ll be able to spot your favourite characters (snow golem!!) in the background even if they are not in the main story and just generally marvel at how people come up with all this insane stuff. There is a cover gallery in the back too, reproducing the variant covers from issues 5 to 9, if that’s your sort of thing. Lovely, jolly stuff perfect for fans of ADVENTURE TIME, young relatives who have birthdays coming up or just anyone who could do with cheering up really!

Also, apparently there is an Acoustics Princess. Who knew?

DK

Buy Adventure Time vol 2 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Husbands h/c (£10-99, Dark Horse) by Jane Espenson, Brad Bell, Ron Chan & Rob Chan, Natalie Nourigat, M.S. Corley, Ben Dewey, Tania del Rio –

“Surprise is my best weapon. Well, my flesh-eating battle vomit is my best weapon, but surprise is part of that, too.”

If you are not sure what HUSBANDS is, it is the collection of the digital comics of the TV series wherein two high-profile gay guys do a Ross & Rachel and get accidentally married in Vegas. Fearing that a “quickie” divorce will harm the campaign for marriage equality they decide to give it a go, producing, in TV parlance, hilarious results. The comics are not part of the series; they stand alone as a set of very silly short stories which start when the cast are drawn into the pages of an enchanted comicbook filled with one-off adventures, each (possibly) more zany than the last. A quote on the cover proclaims the book to be a “…romp through genre.” And at this point you are possibly poised to do a facepalm because it sounds like a classic TV/Cinema abuse of the medium, right?

No! Luckily it is 2013 and people are finally waking up to the fact that comics are a medium not a genre and that they can be used to, you know, tell stories and have fun and stuff. The quote I mentioned above is from Neil Gaiman (woot!) and the “genre” he mentions is, of course, not comics: it’s all the different genres of fiction, cinema, TV, comics and fairy tale through which the writers gleefully “romp”. So what you get here is six very silly short stories told in deliberately over-the-top fashion, each one a pastiche. As our newlyweds battle through scenarios in (among other places) space, Riverdale High and some kind of James Bond / Indiana Jones / Miami Vice world, we wonder, will they learn about one another or will they be doomed to drift forever, Dungeons & Dragons cartoon stylee?

Jane Espenson wrote some of my favourite episodes of BUFFY and I think you can see her touch quite clearly here, yay! The art is cool too, there are a few different styles for the different stories, none of which would look out of place in a regular comic series; an absolute world away from the “will this do?” output of TV side-projects gone by. The humour isn’t always spot-on but I did chuckle out loud in quite a few places. So it’s not a book which will change your life but it will give you a laugh; a perfectly silly, gigglesome book to cheer you up on the bus to work. Plus boy-on-boy kisses!!

DK

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

Iron Man vol 1: Believe h/c (£18-99, Marvel) byKieronGillen & GregLand. 

“Have you ever believed in something? I’ve always had trouble.
“When my parents tried to tell me about Santa Claus, I just thought ‘Gee – that guy’s business model has got to be unsustainable.’
“And God? Oh, me and gods. I mean, I’ve met a few and I still don’t believe in them.
“Side-stepping precise definition of belief: tedious evidence, empiricism, pedantry and so on and so boring… There’s only two things I ever managed to believe in. Firstly, myself. And even then only about 50% of the time. Secondly, they future. That there would be one, and we’d make it.
“By default, optimists make the world, because pessimists never even try. I’ve believed that for as long as I’ve been me. No matter what.
“And in my life, there’s been a lot of ‘what’.” 

Cue a lot of ‘what’.

Note-perfect prelude, there, to this brand-new series of high-tech hit, hit harder and runs, in which Gillen immediately returns to Warren Ellis’ definitive IRON MAN: EXTREMIS as Tony Stark discovers the enhancile-enabling technology has fallen into the wrong hands. Many wrong hands. For one, it appears to have fallen into a somewhat rejuvenated Warren Ellis’, for there the future is space exploration, and the aspiration proves inspirational.

Falling back a bit, not every hand it falls into is out-and-out evil (I would never call Ellis evil, though he’s delighted when you do); for what you have to remember is that Extremis rewrites the body’s operating system and not all bodies operate equally. That’s how people die.

So much thought has gone into even the most miniscule moments here, and Gillen has furnished Tony Stark’s interior monologue / voice-over with all the charm, wit, intelligence and determination with which such a successful entrepreneur and promiscuous reprobate must so self-evidently be blessed.

Brilliantly, he has also played to artist Greg Land’s notorious reputation – scurrilously propagated – for using soft-porn as photo-reference material, by including all manner of flirtatious encounters with women who, in Greg Land’s hands, are indeed drop-dead gorgeous, then undercutting the expectations of the blonde-joke brigade by giving the girls more intelligence than most credit them for.

Meanwhile, of course, Pepper Potts, long-suffering-secretary-turned-CEO (and Tony Stark’s oft-ignored Jiminy Cricket) fumes. But she does so with the same empowering arched eyebrow which used to belong to Mrs Arbogast and equally pithy, observational bons mots:

“Tony… Your sober is drunker than most people’s drunk.”

Hello, my name’s Stephen and I am… the exception.

SLH

Buy Iron Man vol 1: Believe h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Iron Man: Extremis s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Warren Ellis & Adi Granov.

Absolutely first-rate – so well written that it bored the pants off a lot of Marvel readers as a series. They didn’t like what they saw as its verbosity, but which I enjoyed as a fierce intelligence really bearing down on its subject matter: technology, its funding, its application, and the future. And isn’t that what a book starring a guy in the most advanced technology on the planet should be about? Technology! What took them so long?!

Tony Stark has built for himself one of the richest and most successful technology corporations in the world, but in order to do so – in order to kick-start the company and finance future ideas with medical applications and mass-market commercial uses – he developed military weapons. During a critical interview (with John Pilger – it’s definitely the real-life John Pilger!), we flash back to see Stark critically wounded out in Afghanistan by one of his own landmines. With less than a week to live – with shrapnel digging further and further into his heart – he is forced by his captors to develop arms for them, but instead desperately sets about constructing an armour which can serve the dual purpose of saving his life and killing his captors.

Ellis makes the Iron Man armour the very centre of Tony’s inner struggle, as well as the wider debate about technology and its deployment for military and medical purposes. It’s a debate which continues right into the action when the Extremis Project is stolen by a small cell of anti-establishment militiamen heading to Washington DC to cause as much damage as possible. What is the Extremis Project…?

“It’s a bio-electronic package, fitted into a few billion graphic nanotubes and suspended in a carrier fluid. A magic bullet, like the original Super-Soldier Serum — all in a single injection. It hacks the body’s repair centre — the part of the brain that keeps a complete blueprint of the human body. When we’re injured, we refer to that area of the brain in order to heal properly. Extremis rewrites the repair centre. In the first stage, the body essentially becomes an open wound. The normal human blueprint is being replaced with the Extremis blueprint, you see? The brain is being told that the body is wrong. Extremis Protocol dictates that the subject be put on life support and intravenously fed nutrients at this point. For the next two or three days, the subject remains unconscious within a cocoon of scabs. It’s pretty gross, as you can imagine. Extremis uses the nutrients and body mass to build new organs. Better ones. We loaded in everything we could think of. The hypothetical we were given was to build a three-man team would could take Fallujah on their own.” 

And now it’s been injected into a domestic terrorist who has murder in mind, and the body with which to commit it. Can Stark’s exterior armour keep up with this madman’s inbuilt capabilities, or is it time for the ultimate upgrade?

This is overwhelmingly a boy’s book. I don’t mean it’s a book for children (please, no, there are exploding heads!), and I don’t mean that no women will necessarily enjoy it – that’d be enormously sexist of me. But it really is a book for boys who like toys – new tech gadgets like ipods and cell phones and PS3s and shiny, flying armour that can rip a car in two (oh, god, how I want some! 

The art is shiny too. I still can’t find a better comparison than TRIGAN EMPIRE, and it’ll take very good care of you in the all-out action sequences, most of which are full-page or horizontal, slipped in cleverly between the vertical conversation pieces.

SLH

Buy Iron Man: Extremis s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Fantastic Four vol 1: New Departure, New Arrivals s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Matt Fraction & Mark Bagley, Michael Allred.

Communication is hardly this family’s strong suit, is it? Someone’s always failing to speak up, failing to listen and – frankly – failing to tell the truth.

Also, Reed and Sue: worst parents ever! So far for Franklin they’ve hired a nanny whom they knew was a witch, replaced her with a fleet of steel automatons and even lobotomised the poor boy. By the looks of this opening salvo they are about to do something else incredibly stupid… after failing to listen to Franklin’s fears, failing to speak up about them (Sue) and failing to tell the truth! Here’s Reed:

“Journal entry. Timestamp. Nth encryption on closing, please.
“There’s something very wrong with me. The unstable molecules that have created my elastic physiognomy seem to have reached some point of cellular entropy. They’re breaking apart – I’m breaking apart. At a molecular level. My concern is that the others are affected too – or will be very soon. My powers are dying, and they’re taking me with them.”

Six pages later: “Susan. I’m fine. Trust me.”

Instead Reed has declared a year-long, transdimensional family field trip, ostensibly as education. In truth he is secretly attempting to find a cure for his disease – without actually telling anyone.

It’s funny, though. Not that bit, but Johnny Storm surpassing his own stupendous record for vacuous egomania. Here he is with girlfriend Darla, making up for his errant ways with a private candlelit dinner in the Negative Zone (while war rages all around them) and talking at her about cars and bikes and fame and… oh, Johnny!

“Baby, this is me now. Johnny Storm, not the Human Torch or the – Darla, I brought you all the way out here to the Negative Zone tonight so I could tell you that I… see, Darla, I don’t just like you, I…”

He slips out a tiny jewellery box, the size of a ring…

“Ohhh….”

… and opens it.

“Oh.”

It’s his mobile phone number. *sigh*

However, in an unexpected move, Marvel has packaged this new series of FANTASTIC FOUR #1-3 together with its sister title FF #1-3. Equally unexpectedly, it works – and does so seamlessly. Here the game gets goofier still.

“Our compass is curiosity. Our destination is the infinite.” 

Goodness, that sounds profound. And it is! This is the Future Foundation we’re talking about, set up by Reed Richards to educate and galvanise the next fledgling generation of precocious science prodigies regardless of race, gender, species, and so set course for the future.

But, oh, how the children steal the show! The very first page is a scream, young Valeria Richards eloquently extolling the lofty ideals and far-sighted goals of the Future Foundation to their novice leader while older brother Franklin pulls all manner of faces behind her back like the sugar-buzz delinquent he is. No one but Allred could have done that full justice. Long have I loved him but that, for me, is his best comic page yet! In fact, all of his pages are full of mad, Ditko-esque postures and ginormous Jack Kirby machines.

Speaking of children and delinquents, there is another classic Johnny Storm sequence during which – after each other member of the family has gone about dutifully, solemnly and responsibly attempting to recruit replacements while the family takes leave – he wakes up in bed with his girlfriend, cannot even remember what is expected of him and so consults his mobile-phone reminders:

“Oh. ‘Ask somebody about the thing.’ That’s no help.”

That’s the thing on your to-do list, Johnny. The thing you’re supposed to ask – oh, why do I even bother?

“Um. Do you like The Thing? Y’know – Ben Grim? Big, dumb orange rock guy, talks like an old-timey movie?”
“Yeah, sure, he’s alright I guess.”
“But not as much as the Human Torch, right?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“Cool. I have asked somebody about The Thing. Now let’s get breakfas

Absolutely delightful, and “delightful” isn’t a word you regularly associate with a superhero comic. You’d type “spectacular” or “gut-wrenching” or “jaw-dropping” or even “same old corporate crap” if you had a mind to. This is genuinely delightful in the same way you’d talk about Simone Lia’s FLUFFY.

So here are the new Fantastic Four: Ant-Man, Darla, She-Hulk and the magisterial Medusa, Queen of The Inhumans, who’s perplexed that nobody’s bowing. Also, while everyone else scoffs breakfast downstairs, she’s still sprawled in bed in her nightie, ringing for room service with a hand-held bell.

“Erm. Hello…?”

SLH

Buy Fantastic Four vol 1: New Departure, New Arrivals s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Thanos Rising #1 (of 5) (£2-99, Marvel) by Jason Aaron & Simone Bianchi…

Surely not spoiling anything by now to mention that Thanos is going to be the villain in the next Avengers film, hence yet another series about him. This time, we have his origin story told right from his birth. He wasn’t a bad chap growing up, quite a mild-mannered individual in fact, before a certain malign influence began to exert itself over him.

Hmm, I don’t know whether this series is really necessary, frankly. Thanos is one of the classic Marvel villains precisely because he is a one-dimensional grade ‘A’ mentalist capable of the most vile and cunning deeds. He is just quite simply evil incarnate, serving his mistress Death, when he’s not trying to turn the tables on her à la INFINITY GAUNTLET.

To learn, therefore, he was a bit of a bookworm milksop is, well, a bit disappointing. Without igniting a nature versus nurture debate, surely some supervillains are just born / created / winked into existence bad? Nutjob is as nutjob does.* So I just couldn’t get myself particularly bothered by the story, so far at least, though I am mildly intrigued to learn who it is that is trying to send him round the behavioural bend. I am presuming it is Death, or an avatar thereof, but maybe not. Confusingly it looks like a young Gamora, though I am pretty sure it is not. Stridently different art from Simone Bianchi, who illustrated Warren Ellis’ brilliant ASTONISHING X-MEN: GHOST BOX, of which rather surprisingly we have, at the time of typing, an unplundered hardcover left in our half-price sale. Follow the link and grab the swag!

JR

*Editor’s note: “Nutjob” is precisely how Jonathan refers to his two-year-old daughter. Also: he recently taught her to say “No way!” Oh, the evil which will ensue… 

Buy Thanos Rising #1 and read the Page 45 review here

DC Universe By Alan Moore (£18-99, DC) by Alan Moore & various.

Alert! A new edition with a slight change in title, this no longer includes KILLING JOKE (now available as a gloriously recoloured hardcover) but does still contain SUPERMAN: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW. Space has been filled instead with some Wildstorm gubbins from WILD WORLDS written while Alan’s brain was on vacation.

Here’s our Mark on the rest of the original edition:

“A baker’s dozen of stories from ’85 to ’87. Only a short period but it feels like a ‘best of…’ of someone else’s work. About half of this I’ve never seen before as they came out when Moore was still rising up through the ranks and once you’d heard about them, they were pretty unobtainable. His GREEN LANTERN CORPS were always fun. Even now, if you give him the possibility of an alien race, he’ll come up with an idea so obvious that you wonder why it took so long to be voiced. As with all of his writing, connections are shown. So, a new Green Lantern is needed in a far flung sector and a missionary is sent out. The problem starts when she realises that it’s a light-free planet and all the inhabitants are blind. How do you explain what a lantern is? One of the other GLC stories has Kevin O’Neill art and got into trouble with the Comics Code Authority because of the foul, dripping artwork which makes you realise how lucky we were to have him on [2000 AD’s] NEMESIS in the UK. As a nostalgic superhero fix, it’s the tops. You get Batman, Superman, Swamp Thing and some very nice Dave Gibbons artwork.”

Includes: ACTION COMICS #583, BATMAN ANNUAL #11, DC COMICS PRESENTS #85, DETECTIVE COMICS #549-550, GREEN LANTERN #188, THE OMEGA MEN #26-27, SECRET ORIGINS #10, SUPERMAN #423, TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS ANNUAL #2 & 3, SUPERMAN ANNUAL #11, VIGILANTE #17-18, VOODOO #1-4 and DEATHBLOW: BY BLOWS #1-3!

MAS

Buy DC Universe By Alan Moore and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

Punk Rock Jesus (£12-99, Vertigo) by Sean Murphy

Batman: Detective Comics vol 2: Scare Tactics h/c (£22-50, DC) by Tony S. Daniel

Judge Dredd vol 1 (£14-99, IDW) by Duane Swierczynski & Nelson Daniel

Point Of Impact (£10-99, Image) by Jay Faerber & Koray Kuranel

Relish – My Life In The Kitchen s/c (£13-50, FirstSecond) by Lucy Knisley

Swamp Thing vol 2: Family Tree s/c (£10-99, DC) by Scott Snyder & Yanick Paquette

World’s Finest vol 1: Lost Daughters s/c (£10-99, DC) by Paul Levitz & George Perez

Marvel Universe: Iron Man Digest (£7-50, Marvel) by Various

Essential Iron Man vol 5 (£14-99, Marvel) by Various

Oz: Road To Oz h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Eric Shanower & Skottie Young

Captain America vol 3 s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Ed Brubaker & Patrick Zircher

Uncanny X-Force vol 6: Final Execution Book 1 s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Rick Remender & Mike Mckone

X-Men: Reckless Abandonment s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Brian Wood, Seth Peck & David Lopez, others

Wolverine: Covenant s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Cullen Bunn & Paul Pelletier

Unico s/c (£25-99, DMP) by Osamu Tezuka

Hot Girls, Cold Feet (£8-99, Abstract) by Terry Moore

Slaine vol 8: The Grail War (£17-99, Rebellion) by Pat Mills & Steve Tappin, Nick Percival, Massimo Belardinelli

 

Surprise Announcement!

We were certainly taken by surprise!

After ten years working with Tom, Tuesday proved to be his last day here. I’d have given you all a big one-month drum roll, but we only found out on Saturday!

Tom, as you probably know, is training to become a chef and it was clear from week one that he would excel. Now he’s been headhunted full time for a new restaurant in Beeston starting on Saturday, so how could he turn them down?

 Tom was single-handedly responsible for Page 45’s manga sales success, steering our selections in the direction of quality rather than the unsellable dross that began to flood the market when Tokyopop’s arrogance persuaded them that any old dross would do. It didn’t do, and it killed them, whereas Tom knew exactly what he was doing.

 Tom was also responsible for a couple of killer window pieces and the man who made sure – along with Dominique – that you’d need Semtex to open your damage-proof packages through the mail.

Here’s an interview from 2009 with myself, Tom and Jonathan in which Tom tells how he joined Page 45 and mocks me mercilessly.

There will be news of our recalibration shortly.

In the meantime, THIS. THIS! THIS! THIS!

Genius one-page comic with beautiful colouring, cleverly using the mechanics of the medium to turn adversity to advantage. “Believe In Yourself” by David Jumble.

 - Stephen

John writes his stories with such apparent carefree glee and obviously really understands the inner workings of the juvenile mind because, over and above the chortling fruitloopy storylines, it’s the interaction between all the kids that make this such a total hoot.

 - Jonathan on Bad Machinery.

Bad Machinery vol 1: The Case Of The Team Spirit s/c (£14-99, Oni Press Inc.) by John Allison…

“Well now, you have a good day at school.”
“Aw Mum, don’t cry.”
“Snif, I can’t help it, sorry love.”
“Bye then.”
“Aren’t you going to give your mummy a kiss?”
“But…”
“Do those boys not have mothers too? Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, my little baby boy!”

“Linton, you really ought to catch the kisses your mum is blowing. They’re for you, it’s only right.”

Yes! Finally John Allison’s web-comic magnum opus is seeing print, in a gloriously over-sized, floppy landscape fashion. Not ideal for our, or indeed your shelves, frankly, but who cares when something looks as gloriously technicolour-widescreen-amazing as this! If I had to name one person in comics whose art style is the very definition of illustration, I personally would immediately say John. To see his work laid out like this, really is like watching an exquisitely produced animation, his linework is so consistent and the colours so eye-strainingly vibrant.

It’s also clear John really does have a love for sleuthery, mysteries and general all around weirdness, as seen in his SCARY GO ROUND material, and his shorts featuring the slightly ditzy children’s author and part-time detective Shelley Winters, THAT! and MURDER SHE WRITES. Fans of that last work will be delighted to learn, if they didn’t know already, that Charlotte the tween sleuth is one of the six young stars of the show here, as the boys and girls of Tackleford form their very own Blyton-esque numerical investigative unit to find out who or what is behind the apparent curse on the mega-rich owner of local football club Tackleford FC. Results haven’t been going well recently and the one boy who is actually bothered about football is concerned that their benevolent oligarch will up sticks and leave. I needn’t add that all is not as it seems I’m sure! It did amuse me greatly too that I didn’t guess who the ultimate culprit was! I also suspect Surreal may well be John’s middle name, as along with his brilliant art, this type of off the wall humorous fiction really has become his trademark.

John writes his stories with such apparent carefree glee and obviously really understands the inner workings of the juvenile mind because, over and above the chortling fruitloopy storylines, it’s the interaction between all the kids that make this such a total hoot. It really does take me back to the more inane aspects of schoolyard humour, and the dashes of ribald cruelty too, which I had mostly forgotten about. For me John’s star has been steadily rising, and I do hope, and think, this could be the work that really breaks him through to a considerably wider audience. Well worth building a tidily landscaped extension onto your shelves for!

JR

Buy Bad Machinery vol 1: The Case Of The Team Spirit s/c and read the Page 45 review here

East Of West #1 (£2-75, Image) by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Dragotta…

“He should be here.”
“And you are sure that..?.”
“Yes! He was dead on his feet. Something must have gone wrong… more wrong.”
“So we roll, and find out the truth.”
“The eye… the feather… the bullet… the bone… No mistaking those. He’s really left us. We were four, but now it’s just us three.”
“Well… that settles it then. We kill him.”

And so EAST OF WEST opens, with some children whom we soon learn are apparently three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, performing a divination ritual using animal bones, to see what has happened to their headlining colleague, Death. Their location? A huge stone circle in the desert, right in the centre of what we know as the United States of America. In this world, however, it’s also the site of a huge comet strike, a seismic event that perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, marked the end of the American Civil War, and also the war with the native Indians, resulting in the formation of the Seven Nations of America, with an armistice signed at the site.

The comet strike and resulting armistice also may or may not have caused the Prophet Elijah Longstreet, a former soldier, to write the Second Book of Revelations, whilst at exactly the same moment Red Cloud, leader of the Endless Indian Nation, was having a waking vision which he recounted to his council of elders. Upon the conclusion of these two apparently unconnected events, both men promptly collapsed and died. Except it seems these two events were connected, as their respective words were in fact interlocking apocrypha, forming what would become known as The Message, a mystery that remained unsolved for another half century. Until the missing third portion of The Message was inadvertently (I think) provided by a very surprising person indeed, Mao Zedong.

Fast forward back to the current day, well 2064 actually, and the location of the errant Death (if indeed that is what he is) and it seems he’s out for revenge, cowboy style pilgrim. Dressed as an albino gunslinger, so presumably he has been drinking his milk as the real Mr. Wayne suggested, and also an adult rather than a child, I note, which upon reflection makes the tiniest bit of, I suspect, very significant sense and, oh, he’s looking for those who did him wrong. Precisely how and what they did, we don’t know at this point, but there are some very well known names on the list, very well known and politically connected, right to the very, very top of the establishment. Death would have those luminaries on his shit list believe the End Times are a coming and I can’t honestly say at this point he’s not telling the truth. Eek!

What a set up! And I really have only untangled a few of the miasma of strands Hickman has thrown out for us to ponder in this first issue. I think, upon reflection, he’s given absolutely nothing away at this point either, at what is really going on. This could easily prove to be his most comprehensive piece of speculative fiction yet. This first issue reads very, very much like the opening chapter to a prose novel, it is that rich with detailed promise of what is yet to come, and also to be revealed, of what precisely has transpired in the distant past to bring us to such an… unusual… time and place.

The closest comparisons to previous Hickman works so far would be PAX ROMANA for the intriguing premise, but also S.H.I.E.L.D.: ARCHITECTS OF FOREVER for the beautifully bizarre cast of characters and insane, pacy action. Excellent art from sometime FF compadre Nick Dragotta too, though no Hickman-penned work is really complete without a cheeky page or panel designed and illustrated by the man himself, in this case a map of north America simply entitled “The World As It Is” laying out the various territories of the seven nations.

[Please note: any restocks we receive are unlikely to be first prints. If you really don’t care which printing you receive, please add note saying so when ordering. A) You are infinitely more likely to receive a copy and B) we will understand you to be a balanced human being – ed.]

JR

Buy East Of West #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Time Warp one-shot (£5-99, Vertigo) by Dan Abnett, Damon Lindelof, Tom King, Simon Spurrier, more & Ian Culbard, Jeff Lemire, Tom Fowler, Michael Dowling, more.

I thought I’d start at the end because, well, Dan Abnett and I.N.G. Culbard, basically. In ‘The Principle’ the creators of THE NEW DEADWARDIANS offer us the almost inevitable result of commercially affordable time travel: a pretty fractured time stream in dire need of Elastoplasts in order to preserve the present from interfering amateurs. And we all know exactly which eras would be most eagerly subject to change – one is the most bandied-about hypothetical ever.

‘It’s Full Of Demons’ shows what could happen if that principle was flaunted, but from a completely unexpected angle. In 1901 a girl witnesses her brother being shot through the head by someone dressed in an umbilically attached space suit who promptly disappears through the crackling portal he or she opened. To our young protagonist it can only be a demon. She is disbelieved by her father and thrashed for it. As the century moves on her plight proves increasingly dire while history as we know it unravels.

‘R.I.P.’ resurrects time traveller Rip Hunter for one final transtemporal outing. No, make that two. Or actually three. Wait – it would have to be four. With multiple time spheres and a very hungry dinosaur. Clever!

My favourite, however, is ‘The Grudge’. It takes the form of a lecture delivered by Dr. Zachary Penge on the history of his one-upmanship with a fellow scientist, each striving to embarrass the other in public using puerile sexual slurs delivered via ridiculously high-tech science. That driving necessity is their mother of invention. Written by Si Spurrier, you will be unsurprised to learn that it is the filthiest thing ever published by DC by a factor of fifty.

SLH

Buy Time Warp and read the Page 45 review here

All New X-Men vol 1: Yesterday’s X-Men h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Stuart Immonen.

“Let us hope that one of us is as smart as the other one thinks he is.”

“This isn’t the future. This is Planet Backwards!”

“We played with fire and got burnt.”

Dr Henry McCoy was the first of his species to undergo a secondary mutation, years before his peers. It turned him blue and furry. Regrettably, it was self-inflicted: he tinkered with his own genetic code. His actual next-generation mutation brought with it no problems, but now his early meddling is coming back to bite him, for with yet another mutation hitting him hard, it’s as much as his body can handle. He’s dying.

Meanwhile, in AVENGERS VS X-MEN, original X-Man Cyclops succumbed to the temptation which the Phoenix Force brings with it, the temptation of virtually limitless power. The first time it killed his beloved Jean Grey; this time it killed their mentor, Professor Charles Xavier. Or rather, Cyclops did.

Now he’s gone underground, setting up a rival school for gifted youngsters in the Weapon X base where Wolverine was tortured and – with Magneto, Emma Frost and Illyana – he’s begun a Mutant Revolution. There are new mutants popping up all over the place and, to Storm and Kitty Pryde’s alarm, Cyclops is beating their own to team to tag them, rescuing them from potential harm at the hands of humans but doing so with violence and on camera. He’s destroying all their hard work for peaceful coexistence, threatening a mutant civil war and running the risk of provoking mutant genocide.

The Cyclops they grew up with would be appalled – of that Ice-Man Bobby Drake is certain. And that gives Dr. Henry McCoy an idea, a last, desperate attempt to set things right before he dies. He’s going to go back in time and bring the original X-Men back with him to the present: to confront Cyclops face to face with his younger, peace-focussed self; to shock and shame him into retreating. And then there’s the matter of the young Jean Grey…

Well, this is brave and quite brilliant. Nor is it going to be brief. The X-Men of the past discovering the most alarming changes both in themselves and the world around them is the very premise not just of this volume but of the title itself. Although, typically, Booby Drake (oh, sic, why not?) is more interested in the size of modern television screens. His are the funniest lines by far. Young Hank McCoy is the clear-headed and capable one, young Scott Summers/Cyclops is like a deer caught in the headlights, The Angel is increasingly disturbed that no one will tell him what’s become of him now, while Jean Grey… She’s going to be ruthless. She didn’t learn to read minds until later, but bringing her to the present has catalysed that latent talent early. Perhaps too early, and there’s no Charles Xavier to train and gently nurture that talent. You wait until she finds out what happened to her.

Equally, there’s plenty going on in the other camp. You think it’s all forgive and forget? Think again, as Cyclops and Magneto rescue Emma Frost from internment.

“Damn it! Why’d you even bother?”
“All things considered, it’s the least we could do.”
“All things considered? Does that include the fact that everything we built together – everything we were working towards is over? Does that include the fact that you ruined my life by leaving me in the hands of the humans after stealing my Phoenix Force?”
“It wasn’t me, Emma.”
“It wasn’t you?”
“You know that wasn’t me. You know the Phoenix was making us crazy.”
“So it wasn’t you who betrayed me and left me for dead? It wasn’t you that murdered Charles Xavier in front of all of us?!”
“It wasn’t me.”

Yeah, it was you, mate. As for Magneto, he’s far from equanimous, either.

“You stripped me of my God-given power.”

God-given. God loves, man kills.

Anyway, apart from Illyana who feels quantifiably better, their powers are fucked. You should see Cyclops’ optic rays now: Marte Gracia has done a mean job colouring those to spectacular effect, while Stuart Immonen has brought all sorts of tricks to the table. The first confrontation between the two Scott Summers is blistering, while you can actually see young Henry McCoy in the older one and vice-versa for the first time I can recall. It’s not just in the eyes, but the musculature of the face. I love the Art Nouveau panel corners during the sequence in which the older (if not wiser) Henry and Jean are in telepathic communion (let us remember his time-travel reservations in Ellis’ SECRET AVENGERS VOL 3, the best time-travel episode anywhere in comics).

Bonuses in the back include Bendis’ original proposal for the series written long before the decision was made to kill Professor X (there are some sneaky redactions, but hey) and a gallery of alternative covers plus a few process pages (seeing the artist at work, thinking through their creative decisions).

SLH

Buy All New X-Men vol 1: Yesterday’s X-Men h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Kick-Ass 2 Prelude: Hit-Girl h/c (£16-99, Titan) by Mark Millar & John Romita Jr….

“OMG. Look at her revolting hair! I mean, I know her mom isn’t used to dressing kids, but seriously! Those bangs make her look like a drag queen.”
“You’re terrible, Debbie Forman.”

“Daddy, you taught me how to blind a man with my thumbs, build a bomb with the contents of a kitchen cabinet, and skin a wolf with my bare hands. I’ve shot people, choked people, even drowned a motherfucker… why can’t I handle these bitches?”

All Mindy ever wanted was not to be normal. Since the passing of her vigilante father, Big Daddy, who taught her everything she knew about fighting crime, and her subsequent promise to her adoptive dad, Marcus, to give all that up, she’s been finding it rather hard to fit in. When you know a thousand ways to disable someone, it’s kind of difficult to suck it up when the mean girls at school are giving you grief.

So, when you need advice on how to be to be the very epitome of normal, to know what clothes to wear, what TV shows kids are watching, what bands to listen to, who can she turn to? Why Kick-Ass of course! And in return, Mindy is going to officially swear him in as her sidekick and teach him to be a proper crimefighter instead of a fancy-dress-wearing liability! Now she’s realised she just needs to treat being Mindy as her secret identity, to make sure no one ever suspects her of being Hit-Girl so her family is protected; well, it’s just another essential crime fighting skill to learn. Except… those bitches really do deserve some sort of covert payback, right?

I howled with laughter in several places throughout this! Anyone who doubts Millar is a great writer should read it, they really should. His dialogue throughout is utterly hilarious, and serves to compliment the beautifully ludicrous and preposterous plot. Clearly the whole concept of KICK-ASS is a just one-trick pony joke, but when the ride is so enjoyable, what does it matter? Romita Jr. provides suitably gruesome, quite literally eye-popping, art. And, rest assured, Debbie Forman is well and truly going to get hers…

JR

Buy Kick-Ass 2 Prelude: Hit-Girl h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Superior s/c (£10-99, Titan) by Mark Millar & Leinil Yu.

“Oh, baby. I know it’s embarrassing. But the hospital said we need to get used to it. You can’t just have baths when your dad’s around.”

The Mark Millar project I was most worried about turns out to be one of his finest. Like MARVEL 1985 it has so much heart, and Millar has a knack for writing young boys: how they perceive the real world around them. It’s also dazzlingly drawn in breath-taking detail, whether it be a quiet afternoon secluded under the fiery canopy of the woods in autumn or during the epic scenes of colossal devastation. Yu can be tender and intimate as during the mother-and-son bath scene above, yet impressively bold. Some of his forms and compositions reminded me of Travis Charest.

Set in a world where superheroes are mere fiction, the province of comics and films, twelve-year-old Simon Pooni and his best pal Chris have just been to see Tad Scott star in the latest Superior movie. The special effects are stunning, but in all honesty the franchise is tired. And now they’ve been ambushed by the all-too-familiar school bullies who always kick hardest when someone is down.

“Hey, homos. You have a nice time making out in the back row?”
“Just ignore him, Chris. I hear the basketball team’s really missing you these days, Pooni. Still, the way these guys play, they might as well have a cripple up front.”
“You’re an asshole, Sharpie, and you’ve always been an asshole. If I wasn’t in this chair, I’d kick your ass all over the mall.”
“Yeah, well. I got news for you, Simon… you kinda are in that chair.”

Yeah, Simon kinda is in that chair.

Multiple Sclerosis snuck on him with particular aggression; he’s even lost the sight of one eye and on bad days he can barely talk. There are days of remission, weeks even, but nothing permanent. Once a basketball player of promise, sometimes Simon’s on sticks but mostly confined to a wheel chair so his muscles have gradually atrophied through lack of use. It’s unlikely to get any better. Until, late one night…

“Simon? Wake up, Simon. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Huh?
“I’m here to make a serious proposition.”
“HOLY SHIT! Mom! Dad! There’s a monkey in the room!”

There really is a monkey in his room; a monkey in a spacesuit who has selected Simon as the “most appropriate” out of six billion candidates to be turned into the adult, post-human powerhouse Superior: the fictional character as played by Tad Scott. Now that would take some explaining to his mother.

 

Now, I don’t really want to tell you what happens next, I just want to reassure you that it is far from obvious, right up to the end. My one worry was that this, Millar’s riff on Superman/Shazam, ran the risk of insulting the plight of those who can’t call “Kimota!” and transform into perfect superhuman specimens but have indeed lost the use of one side of their body or their peripheral vision, rendering them unable to scan more than one word at a time. (Parenthetically, comics – with few words per line – are far more accessible to those without peripheral vision. I’m told by dyslexics that they’re a much easier read too.) My best friend had Multiple Sclerosis and – by far the finest dancer I’ve ever had the pleasure of filling the floor with – that’s exactly what happened to her.

I would have been livid, but Millar doesn’t fall into that trap for this is far less straightforward than it initially appears, being more a Faustian pact with some serious twists, some serious bait, and some seriously hard decisions ahead. Not just for Simon, either, but for the Lois Lane counterpart. And that really is where we have to leave it with just one observational note that a talking monkey at the bottom of your bed is hardly conducive to an easy night’s sleep.

“You gonna tell [your Mom] about the space monkey?”
“Sure. Especially now I’ve figured out who he really is.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I prayed every night that my Multiple Sclerosis would go away and Mom was always praying that America would get fixed again too. So what if that magic wish was the answer to both our prayers? What if Ormon was an angel? Did he turn me into a superhero because America really needed one right now?”
“I dunno, man. I’m twelve years old. I struggle with friggin’ long division.”

The scene pulls back to a rooftop opposite where Ormon, the cute little spacemonkey sits, wide-eyed, staring at them from a distance.

“An angel? That’s hilarious.”

The monkey bears his teeth: two rows of sharp enamel spikes like a dental mantrap.

“I’m afraid I’m actually quite the opposite.”

SLH

Buy Superior s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Dave Sim: Conversations h/c (£29-99, UPM) by Dave Sim, Eric Hoffman, Dominick Grace.

Interviews from 1982-2006 with Dave Sim – Gerhard occasionally present – along with a convention panel during the CEREBUS UK TOUR ‘93. One of ‘em is conducted by Stephen R. Bissette, another by Tom Spurgeon and – at a glance – it seems thankfully CEREBUS-centric rather than veering of at <ahem> Tangents. I mean, really getting to the meat of the matter, its creation and though processes behind it.

The first question Jonathan asked on its arrival was, “Are you in it?” I am not. And, so far as I know, no one other than Mark ever heard the interview I conducted with Dave and Ger, all four of us stoned and drunk, even though a C90 cassette tape of that debacle does exist. Please note: no one makes a fool of themselves in that interview except me, and I emphatically do. One day we may release it as a podcast – maybe to raise money for Children In Need – I certainly come away with red cheeks if not a red nose, and I seem to recall Sim beginning to say, “You’re losing points, Stephen…”

The risotto portofino I cooked was fucking amazing, though.

SLH

Buy Dave Sim: Conversations h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Darth Vader And Son 30 Postcards (£7-99, Chronicle Books) by Jeffrey Brown.

“Dad, why is it called a ‘Death Star’?”
“Er…”

Haha, excellent.

Spinning out of the mirth-making DARTH VADER AND SON from Jeffrey Brown, the creator of CLUMSY, FUNNY MISSHAPEN BODY, the two INCREDIBLE CHANGE-BOTS books, CATS ARE WEIRD…,  CAT GETTING OUT OF A BAG and so much more, this reprints so many of those cartoons in postal-ready form that I thought I could get away with reprinting the old review verbatim, but it seems the-powers-that-be have chosen mostly different images to the ones I referenced.

It’s full colour comedy in which our Jeff captures the contrariness of childhood to perfection, along with its nagging and needs, while Darth dotes on his darling boy like any other proud father. It’s the humour of incongruity, the joke being that the dastardly Darth isn’t really renowned for his kindness and compassion.

The recognition factor will keep you chuckling throughout: Darth with a dead arm, cradling a slumbering son he doesn’t want to disturb; puddle-splashing, tittle-tattle and, oh, why do they always do this…?

“Luke, do you need to go potty?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re kind of doing a little dance.”
“I don’t have to go.”

He really has to go!

Also: some highly unorthodox uses for the Force, but you just know that you would if you could. You need know nothing about Star Wars to yuk it up here – I don’t. Still, it does make you wonder about nature and nurture.

“LUKE, PICK UP YOUR TOYS RIGHT THIS INSTANT.
LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER.
DO YOU WANT A TIME OUT?”

Such a rebellious child.

SLH

Buy Darth Vader And Son 30 Postcards and read the Page 45 review here

Darth Vader And Son Journal (£7-99, Chronicle Books) by Jeffrey Brown.

Cashing in on / spinning out of the chortle-inducing DARTH VADER AND SON book of cartoons by autobio darling Jeffrey Brown (CLUMSY, FUNNY MISSHAPEN BODY etc.), this is a journal of blank pages decorated with small images of the troublesome tyke and doting dad.

Little more needs to be said, but I’ve somehow got to type enough words so that the cover image fits on the blog without bleeding into the next book.

Oh, I know, I’ll pop this at the bottom of the reviews then it won’t even matter. Although maybe I’ve written enough now.

Imminent, I promise: VADER’S LITTLE PRINCESS.

SLH

Buy Darth Vader And Son Journal and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

 

Hey You! (And Other Stories) (£6-00, ) by Dan Berry

Brody’s Ghost vol 4 (£4-99, Dark Horse) by Mark Crilley

Julio’s Day h/c (£14-99, Fantagraphics) by Gilbert Hernandez

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Classics vol 4 (£14-99, IDW) by various

The Savage Sword Of Conan vol 13 (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Charles Dixon, Larry Yakata, Don Kraar & Gary Kwapisz, Ernie Chan, Dave Simons, Andy Kubert

DC Universe by Alan Moore (£18-99, DC) by Alan Moore & various

Batman: Detective Comics vol 1: Faces Of Death s/c (£12-99, DC) by Tony S. Daniel & various

Iron Man vol 1: Believe h/c (£18-99, Marvel) byKieronGillen & GregLand

Iron Man: Extremis s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Warren Ellis & Adi Granov

Fantastic Four vol 1: New Departure, New Arrivals s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Matt Fraction & Mark Bagley, Michael Allred

Kick-Ass 2 s/c (£14-99, Titan) by Mark Millar & John Romita Jr.

Umineko vol 2: Legend Of The Golden Witch vol 2 (£13-99, Yen) by Ryukishi07 & Kei Natsumi

Limit vol 4 (£8-50, Vertical) by Keiko Suenobu

GTO: 14 Days In Shonan vol 8 (£8-50, Vertical) by Tohru Fujisawa

Mobile Suit Gundam Origin vol 1: Activation (£22-50, Vertical) by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, Hajime Yatate

Blue Exorcist vol 9 (£6-99, Viz) by Kazue Kato

Bleach vol 56 (£6-99, Viz) by Tite Kubo

Until Death Do Us Part vol 3 (£13-99, Yen) by Hiroshi Takashige & Double-S

Naoki Urasawa’s 21st Century Boys vol 2 (£8-99, Viz) by Naoki Urusawa

 

Alas, as promised, PUNK ROCK JESUS is not amongst them, but when it does arrive, there will be extra, previously unpublished story pages within. Oh yes! Have a PUNK ROCK JESUS double-page spread preview.

 - Stephen

Urgent!

STRANGERS IN PARADISE OMNIBUS SLIPCASED EDITION by Terry Moore due in June will be £75-00 plus £4-99 shipping within the UK.

We desperately need your pre-orders now, so I wrote a blog, linked to above, explaining why, how you can do it online, with links to Terry Moore’s own coverage and how to order direct from Terry in the US.

STRANGERS IN PARADISE is very, very important to me and this new edition, with pages restored to their uncensored form for the first time ever needs your support not later but now, please. Any dissemination would be gratefully received.

 - Stephen

The Massive vol 1: Black Pacific s/c (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Brian Wood & Gary Brown, Kristian Donaldson, Dave Stewart

The Kapital is crewed by normal people. Some of them are perhaps not the kind of people you would meet in everyday life (ex-mercenaries, freedom fighters) but they are still just people, human beings. And many of them are exactly the sort of people you do meet every day: idealists, students, environmentalists, people who volunteer to build houses or dig wells in Africa. They don’t have a massive arsenal of guns, they’re not mega-geniuses, they are simply a group of people who feared for the way the world was headed and decided to attempt to do something about it.

And then the world really did go to hell in a handbag. The icecaps have disintegrated, the earth’s magnetic field has collapsed, sea levels have risen, sea chemistry has fundamentally changed, tectonic plates are on the move and cities are swamped beneath tsunamis. Land becomes sea, farmland becomes desert, inland becomes port. It could be the work of some outside force, a coordinated act, or perhaps a rebellion of nature herself. Or it could just be what happens when you ignore the facts and carry on burning carbon. Either way, the world is still here but not in the way it once was. Money is becoming an artifact of the past. What matters now is fuel, food, clean water and staying out of trouble.

So what are the crew of the Kapital to do? What’s the role of a “Direct Action Conservationist Ship” when there are no more governments or corporations to oppose? When the whaling ships have nothing left to hunt and the drilling platforms are in flames? When the indigenous fishermen they used to fight for are now heavily armed pirates? Is it now just about survival; roaming the seas and staying alive? Or does their self-appointed mission still stand; to protect the environment which, now more than ever, is endangered by an increasingly desperate and lawless human race? After years of futile protest from the outside they have a chance to take control and reshape society; will they take it? And where is their sister ship, The Massive? Presumably she is crewed by a similar bunch facing a similar dilemma. We don’t know yet because so far we haven’t managed to locate her. Save for a few tantalizing Radar contacts she is lost somewhere out there and the Kapital is desperate to find her.

So once again we have a work of speculative fiction from Brian Wood which is moored very firmly in reality. The things depicted in the book could happen or indeed have happened already. He shows us a world in the grip of a slow apocalypse; not a deadly nuclear war or alien invasion with a do-or-die winner-takes-all climax, but a steady cascade of failures, gathering pace, becoming inexorable before our eyes. From man-made systems like government and finance to real world systems like weather and sea currents, everything shifts and leaves the human race off balance. But of course, being a Brian Wood book, this isn’t a grim, depressing diatribe, it’s an exhilarating, eye-opening first volume to a story which, hopefully, will run to many books. The depictions of the disasters and their wake are vivid and fascinating and the characters (along with their varied and interesting back-stories) are intriguing. From the ruined nuclear power plant at Fukushima to the abandoned science stations of the Antarctic we are given a little glimpse of the world to come and all the perils and opportunities it holds for people brave enough to explore it. The old world is abandoned, ghostly, left for salvage as the new world is taking shape.

So what will the crew of the Kapital do? I don’t know; I don’t even know what I think they should do! I certainly don’t know what I would do in the same situation. I absolutely cannot wait to see where this goes.

Please note: this book contains #1-6 plus the three eight-page stories from DARK HORSE PRESENTS.

DK

Buy Massive vol 1: Black Pacific s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Joe The Barbarian s/c (£14-99, DC) by Grant Morrison & Sean Murphy.

“You heard all that, right? Make sure you eat your candy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wish me luck. And say hi to your father for me. If it wasn’t for him, none of this would be happening.”

In the Veteran’s Cemetery, where his father lies buried:

“Hey, Dad. You suck.”

Joe’s Mum is on her way to see if they can somehow keep the house. Joe is drawing in his sketchbook. The Veteran’s Cemetery is the location of the school field trip, and the double-page spread from Sean Murphy – with its senescent, desiccated leaves swept across the stormy sky, over the regimented rows of simple white crosses between the white Palladian monuments – will have you tucking your scarf back in. I love what he does in several scenic panels with the autumn trees themselves, the leaves all jagged and crinkled and brittle.

Sean Murphy (HELLBLAZER: CITY OF DEMONS) was a revelation. I’ve compared him to Chris Bachalo circa mid-SHADE or DEATH: THE HIGH COST OF LIVING, but here he proves to be entirely his own man when Morrison grants him as much space as he could want to delineate in uncluttered detail Joe’s well-appointed attic bedroom reached through a rope ladder, then the deluge outside, and those tell-tale beads of sweat on the sleepy boy who emphatically didn’t eat his candy. What follows is a delirium which anyone who’s woken to a disconcerting semi-consciousness will be able to relate to; when you’re not sure how much you dreamed is your current condition. Is Jack shifting between reality and a dimension populated by his toys made animate? Or is it just his hypoglycaemia kicking in?

Sean Murphy switches effortlessly between young Joe’s flight from danger in his fevered imagination, and his real plight alone at home as he stumbles from his attic bedroom in order to find the fridge, to find something, anything with glucose in it. It’s deliberately, excruciatingly slow: by the end of the second chapter he’s only made it as far as the bathroom. On his back is the white mouse he let out of its cage; in his less lucid moments it’s a battle-clad, anthropomorphic warrior he’s freed from his dangling prison and who’s engaged in a war between Joe’s toys made animate. Anyway, he’s running his head under a bath tap. The bath is filling up, and it’s having a knock-on effect on the battle within…

Dave Stewart brings bright dashes of colour to Murphy’s beautiful silver birches. The fantasy landscapes are dotted with the white crosses from the real-world cemetery, and if you look closely at the buildings, they’re made out of Lego bricks! Also, half the fun is spotting exactly which toys are being referenced and I did laugh when he received a Star Trek phaser (possibly a centimetre in real-life length) for protection. The final few pages are beltingly well orchestrated, the worlds merging on the page for one final moment of pure serendipity.

There are scripts in the back, sketchpad ideas, character designs, and Sean Murphy takes you on a guided tour of the house, what he designed, how he drew it and why. For me, the architecture itself was the star of the show and well worth the price of admission; for any aspiring artist those notes are golden.

SLH

Buy Joe The Barbarian s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Barry’s Best Buddy h/c (£9-99, Random House) by Renée French.

“Barry, wake up! It’s me, Polardog! I have a surprise for you!”
“Polardog! I was having a lovely nap!”
“Your house puts me to sleep! What colour is it? Snooze?”
“It’s grey.”
“Bor-ring!”

Brilliant, and there translated into English from American. America: when will you learn to spell?!

Barry is a bird with no time for fun. With his perpetually sceptical, half-awake, hooded eyes, he is like The Herb Garden’s Sage The Owl. He doesn’t like hats, he doesn’t like chats, he doesn’t like anything much. Barry is your proverbial stick-in-the-mud. Boy, but you have to put the effort in!

Fortunately that is just what Barry’s best friend is about to do, distracting the obdurately frivole-free bird [new word: frivole] with hats and iced lollies. But, oh! did you see Barry licking his lips? No, Barry hates iced lollies! Grump, grump grump! Meanwhile a small army of ants crossing the bottom of each page have been charged with giving Barry’s house a makeover with all the self-restraint of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. There’s even a random flag featuring a steaming pile of poo. (That will make the kids cackle!)

And, wouldn’t you know it? Barry loves it! He’ll still pass on the hat, mind.

Hmm. How much of a problem actually is American spelling for Early Learning books in the UK? I’ve been thinking about that with all the manga we supply to schools.

SLH

Buy Barry’s Best Buddy h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Severed s/c (£10-99, Image) by Scott Snyder & Attila Futaki.

Nasty, nasty, nasty.

A crafty placement of raised spot-varnish creates quite the chilling 3-D effect as a gnarled hand, dripping with blood, tears through the cover and its unsuspecting city of Chicago to reveal a set of eyes staring right at you that definitely don’t have your best interests at heart.

In BATMAN: THE BLACK MIRROR (softcover out now), American Vampire’s Scott Snyder proved he could successfully mess with our minds, playing upon our expectations to keep us guessing as to the protagonist’s much maligned innocence or psychopathic guilt. Here, along with co-writer Scott Tuft, he plays upon our fears, our worst nightmares of being lost and alone a long way from home, helpless and hopelessly trapped. Then there’s the matter of trust, and the sinking, hollow horror of finding it most misplaced.

One year ago young, aspiring musician Jack Garron stumbled upon evidenced that he was adopted, ever since when he’s been gripped by the secret hope of finding his father. Instead of confiding in his loving, adoptive mother he managed to make contact, and the last letter he received mentioned a fiddle-playing gig in the city of Chicago. That’s where Jack’s heading now, having run away from home to stow away on a freight train. But the freight train’s occupants are far from friendly, while what’s waiting for him in Chicago is even worse. What follows is a cruel breadcrumb trail that will take Jack further from home still; what’s so damnably clever is how that trail was laid.

Unlike BATMAN: THE BLACK MIRROR this isn’t an “Is he or isn’t he?” – we know right for the beginning that there’s a murderous, cannibalistic monster waiting in the wings, adopting a succession of seemingly beneficent guises and preying on the young and vulnerable, so when Jack strays too close for comfort the dramatic irony racks up a tension so taut it’s not true. As to his new friend Sam(antha), found on the freight train, just… don’t go there.

Attila Futaki’s art has a fine period feel while the colours are suitably dowdy, for this is all told in retrospect. Even the countryside is low-lit and earthy. It’s a far from comfortable read set in series of uncomfortable, bleak or outright hostile environments: bedsits and bars, hotels and motels and shacks in the middle of nowhere.

SLH

Buy Severed s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Batman vol 2: The City Of Owls h/c (JUST £12-99, DC) by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo & Various, Greg Capullo…

“…To all allies of the Bat presently in Gotham… I send this with the greatest urgency.
“Tonight, the Court Of Owls has sent their assassins to kill nearly forty people across the city.
“The Court’s targets are all Gotham leaders, people who shape this city.
“I have uploaded a list of the targets’ names, here.
“The Court’s assassin, The Talons, are already en route to their targets.
“They are highly trained killers… with extraordinary regenerative abilities. For many of their targets, I fear it may already be too late to…”
*BANG!* *BANG!*

Misdirection. Yes, there’s been plenty of that about in Gotham City ever since its inception, as the Court Of Owls has managed to hide its sinister controlling presence virtually undetected for several hundred years, maintaining the illusion it was nothing more than a whimsical reference in a child’s nursery rhyme. Not any more, as following the events of BATMAN: THE NIGHT OF THE OWLS (some of which you’ll see reproduced here – see editorial note below) the Court’s full flock of Talon assassins are abroad at dusk to feed, wrecking deadly havoc amongst the luminaries of Gotham. Can the Bat-family save them? Some of them, yes. All of them, no. Read BATMAN: THE NIGHT OF THE OWLS for the full scorecard.

This volume, however, focuses entirely on Bruce and his own issues with the Court, both in terms of his immediate physical wellbeing as he too comes under attack in the Batcave by not one but several Talons, necessitating an immediate and seriously heavyweight suit upgrade to a rather less breathable number; and also those unresolved issues of a rather more personal nature as he finally begins the unravel the Owls’ involvement in not just his parents, but also his younger brother’s, demise.

I will say no more on that particular sibling-related matter to protect those of you who have yet to read any of Scott Snyder’s run, as the adjuncts and revelations he has made to the established Bat-canon during his tenure have been nothing short of genius. If Grant Morrison Bat-magic is all smoke and mirrors which gets you clapping and cheering, then Snyder is subtle, jaw dropping, sleight of hand to leave one astonished. No less amazing, perhaps more so. I also love the fact that whilst we are made privy to certain crucial moments, Bruce is not, ensuring that whilst we are left with an extremely satisfactory ending to this ornithological extravaganza, it is most assuredly not a conclusion…

[Editor’s note: Because DC released BATMAN: NIGHT OF OWLS first, containing BATMAN #8, 9, ANNUAL #1 as well as the rest of the crossover, a lot of readers thought it *was* BATMAN VOL 2 and bought it in good faith. Now those readers will need to buy BATMAN VOL 2 too if they want the rest of the story, effectively paying for 3 issues twice. I won't *have* Page 45's customers ripped off, so we've reduced the cost of BATMAN VOL 2 from £18-99 to £12-99. Ethical retail: it's not just possible and desirable, it is vital for generating goodwill and loyalty. We'll happily take this hit.]

JR

Buy Batman vol 2: The City Of Owls h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Judge Dredd Year One #1 (£2-99) by Matthew J. Smith & Simon Coleby…

Dredd had been on the streets close to a year. The academy had prepared him as best it could, but it was here where he’d learn what the city would throw at him, in all its strange varieties.

“Quite a haul, and it’s not even nine o’clock.”
“I’m an early riser.”
“Convenient. You can be in a cube by midday. Two years.”

Yes, this much more like it. After my disappointment at the rather tepid other recent IDW Judge Dredd title, it seems I am going to get what I wanted after all. A no-nonsense, not remotely played for laughs, sci-fi/crime mash up with a young Joe taking names and busting heads. I say not played for laughs, but as ever Dredd’s laid back, Jack Dee deadpan delivery of his lines always makes me chuckle. Instantly I am gripped like I’ve been sprayed with a can of Boing by the story Matt Smith has opened with, of normal juves suddenly exhibiting telekinetic powers, some of whom then deciding to take advantage of their new found abilities for the sort of behaviour you just don’t expect from fine upstanding citizens of the big Meg! Good job we’ve got a fresh, well marginally less granite faced, Dredd, only just out of the academy determined to take down any and all perps as hard as humanely possible.

As he starts to investigate in conjunction with the newly formed Psi Division, it becomes clear there’s something most strange indeed going on, and despite his intense distrust of anything outside his comfort zone, i.e. punching distance or Lawgiver range, he’ll grudgingly admit the Psi Judges’ unusual methods are going to be very necessary in his burgeoning crusade to clean up the streets.

This title, if it stays like this, is going to appeal to Dredd purists and sci-fi / crime buffs alike. I would have liked to see an even more lean, sinewy Dredd, as I remember from the very early days of 2000AD, but at least Simon Coleby hasn’t gone for the steroid abuser look you so often see Dredd portrayed as these days. He looks like he means business though, and when that business is cracking heads with your daystick, you certainly do need to look tough! An excellent first issue, no need to dispatch a Rigelian hotshot to IDW just yet…

JR

Buy Judge Dredd Year One #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Constantine #1 (£2-25, DC) by Jeff Lemire, Ray Fawkes & Renato Guedes.

I came to praise CONSTANTINE, not to bury him.

Alas, I am left with no alternative. The very first paragraph is a raging non-sequitur:

“This is how the world is supposed to work: you give and you take. Cause and effect.”

No, you can give and you can take; you can give or you can take. But neither action affects the other. They may amount to some nebulous equilibrium if sagely balanced, but there is no cause and effect at work what-so-fucking-ever.

Sloppy. John Constantine (rhymes with wine; emphatically not Constan-teen) would know better. And we have only just begun.

Against all American odds, I was dearly hoping that my beloved creators of ONE SOUL, MERCY, ESSEX COUNTY, THE NOBODY, Sweet Tooth, LOST DOGS, ANIMAL MAN and THE UNDERWATER WELDER might know, perchance, what they were bloody doing. They do not. This is so peculiar – so singular – for Ray Fawkes and Jeff Lemire that I am going to blame editorial interference.

This isn’t just a bad HELLBLAZER book, it’s a bad comic.

As far as a John Constantine chronicle is concerned, it is awful: gone are the socio-political commentaries, the dry, wry mockery, the ingenuity, the wit and the spirit of place. There is almost always a spirit of place. In their stead: superpowers! Yay! Just look at the cover: John can now zap you with a blue-tinged pentangle or some sort of shit. There is also a godalmighty cleavage cock-up here: I may be queer but I know a woman’s breasts (quite intimately, thank you) and they do not look like that, six pages from the end, bottom panel.

Also pathetic: the climax after which John walks away as cockily as he used to BUT SHE CAN BLOW UP TAXIS! How is John getting away?!

HELLBLAZER played by some rules, even when John busied himself bending them. That was what the book was about: guile. But without rules, you have no boundaries. Without boundaries, you have no tension. Without tension you have no reason to invest in a comic emotionally.

I have stopped caring, yes.

SLH

Buy Constantine #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Winter Soldier vol 3: Black Widow Hunt s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Ed Brubaker & Butch Guice.

“I like the rain… The way it sounds on the umbrella… The way the air feels.”

With which Ed Brubaker’s triumphant, epic stint on the world of CAPTAIN AMERICA which began with CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER comes to a devastating end. There are things worse than death, you know, and this is one of worst I can imagine. It is not what you think, no.

If for some reason you have failed to follow through on WINTER SOLDIER VOL 1 and WINTER SOLDIER VOL 2, you are hereby exhorted to do so. Butch Guice has been on blistering form with the mood-esque atmosphere enhanced no end by colour artist Bettie Breiweiser who made some very brave choices in volume one which paid off to perfection. Here they are better than ever, with rain than will soak you to your tear-stained skin and, boy, there are some neat Gene Colan riffs! Perfectly apposite as you will see, but I will not tell you why.

I have to be very careful what I type here so as not to spoil those books – particularly the second one – however…

“Here’s the thing about being under mind-control, the part nobody talks about… That you’re still in there… Some small piece‘a you is awake… watching. Like bein’ a passenger in your own body. You struggle to break free… but you lose… Over and over again… you lose… And it makes whatever you’re forced to do that much worse…”

The Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s loyal partner from WWII who went missing in action towards its close, presumed dead. He wasn’t. He was whisked away by the Soviet Union and brainwashed into becoming their deadliest covert assassin during the Cold War. Rescued from their clutches, he was finally de-conditioned, since when he filled in as Captain America when Rogers was lost in time, but was prosecuted for treason and convicted.

Then extradited to Russia for good measure.

Steve Rogers never lost faith. Nor did Bucky’s lover, the deadly Black Widow, who managed to extract him from the Russian Gulag. The Black Widow is Natasha Romanov, herself a former Soviet spy since turned Avenger, and former lover of both Hawkeye then Daredevil. The woman is lethal, possibly the finest hand-to-hand-combat fighter the world has ever seen. And now she has been kidnapped, brainwashed yet again, and sent on one final mission.

Oh dear.

SLH

Buy Winter Soldier vol 3: Black Widow Hunt s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Guardians Of The Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers vol 2 s/c (£29-99, Marvel) by Various.

It’s basically AVENGERS: THE KORVAC SAGA with the additional hangover that was Henry Gyrich kicking the Guardians out of Avengers Mansion along with most of the Avengers themselves.

Collects THOR ANNUAL #6; AVENGERS #167-168, #170-177 and #181; MS. MARVEL #23; MARVEL TEAM-UP #86; and MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #61-63 and #69.

Do you think there’s a film on its way?

Buy Guardians Of Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers vol 2 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

 
Bad Machinery vol 1: The Case Of The Team Spirit s/c (£14-99, Oni Press Inc.) by John Allison

Dave Sim: Conversations h/c (£29-99, UPM) by Dave Sim, Eric Hoffman, Dominick Grace

Darth Vader And Son Journal (£7-99, Chronicle Books) by Jeffrey Brown

Darth Vader And Son 30 Postcards (£7-99, Chronicle Books) by Jeffrey Brown

All New X-Men vol 1: Yesterday’s X-Men h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Stuart Immonen

American Vampire vol 5 h/c (£22-50, DC) by Scott Snyder & Rafael Albuquerque, Dustin Nguyen

Angelic Layer Book vol 2 (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Clamp

Higurashi vol 21: Massacre vol 3 (£14-99, Yen Press) by Ryukishio7 & Hinase Momoyama

Husbands h/c (£10-99, Dark Horse) by Jane Espenson, Brad Bell, Ron Chan & Various, Ron Chan

Mighty Thor vol 3 s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Matt Fraction & Barry Kitson

Soul Eater vol 13 (£8-99, Yen Press) by Atsushi Ohkubo

Spider-Man: Lizard – No Turning Back s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Dan Slott & Giuseppe Camuncoli

The Unwritten vol 7: The Wound (£10-99, DC) by Mike Carey & Peter Gross

Wolverine And The X-Men vol 3 s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Jason Aaron & Chris Bachalo

Kick-Ass 2 Prelude: Hit-Girl h/c (£16-99, Titan) by Mark Millar & John Romita Jr.

Superior s/c (£10-99, Titan) by Mark Millar & Leinil Yu

Is This A Zombie? vol 2 (£8-99, Yen Press) by Sacchi
Look! Children’s Comics Festival in Oxford Saturday 4^th May! Photographs galore featuring some of your favourite comicbook creators like Philippa Rice, Lizz Lunney, John Allison and Sarah herself in this ebullient blog by the amazing Sarah McIntyre (VERN & LETTUCE).

Interview with Eddie Campbell about the forthcoming FROM HELL COMPANION. You can pre-order the FROM HELL COMPANION here!

Kieron Gillen is interviewed about his new historical series THREE drawn by Ryan Kelly.

BATTLING BOY by Paul Pope – 12-page interview AND preview. Make sure you click on the blue page numbers!

Warren Ellis has written an original AVENGERS graphic novel – which is unexpected.

Doctor Who returns on Saturday. Here is the prologue. Not a preview, an actual Doctor Who prologue!

One of the key ingredients Matt Smith brings to Doctor Who is glee! Even when sad, he is full of glee. And enthusiasm is a wonderful thing. It keeps us young. I once saw an octogenerian couple ascend a set of stairs, discussing a book they both loved. Their eyes lit up.

Forever Young by Madness. Go on, crank up the speakers! You’ll thank yourself.

 - Stephen

Loads of news and links below the new books this week, right at the bottom of the blog.

Pure coincidence (you could say synchronicity) but this week’s reviews seem to be a chorus of social satire. Oscar Wilde, Andi Watson, the manga… even MOOMIN is in on the act. Still, let’s launch with a laff. I bloody love this book.

 - Stephen

Hawkeye – My Life As Weapon vol 1 s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Matt Fraction & David Aja with Javier Pulido, Alan Davis.

“Okay… This looks bad. Really… really bad. But believe it or not, it’s only the third most-terrible idea I’ve had today and today I have had exactly nine terrible ideas.”

Oh, Clint. Every idea you have is terrible.

Comedy crime with an eye for design so sharp that this is the first superhero book we have ever allowed in our window. Partly because it’s not even a superhero book, but mostly it’s Aja’s design.

There’s a charming use of flesh and purple tones, and a thrilling deployment of stark black and white with plenty of wide-open space. In one instance a newspaper clipping smuggles in the creator credits; in another the only mask in this entire series so far (apart from a certain gold-plated façade) makes for a belly-laugh moment you may have heard whisper of. I’m not going to steal the fun from you. Here’s a Daily Bugle headline instead:

EVERYTHING AWFUL

Oh God Somebody Do Something

Fraction’s timing is immaculate. At least three of these stories kick off in the middle, at the height of yet another monumental disaster, the one quoted above then proceeding to count down through each of Clint’s nine increasingly idiotic ideas. Thank goodness for Kate Bishop, then – the younger, female Hawkeye – who’s smarter, sassier and infinitely more savvy, so often left to pull Clint’s fat (and occasionally naked) ass out of the fryer.

“Tell you what, if I die, you can have the case. It’s good for travel.”
“Think I have quite enough of your baggage already, thanks.”

Here’s some of what I wrote of the first issue before the spying, the lying and the videotapes arrived. Before Clint’s sex-drive got him into the coolest comic car chase I can recall, complete with some old trick arrows he really should have found time to label before dipping his wick. Bring on the tracksuit Draculas, bro!

By his own admission Clint Barton can be more than a little juvenile. The man with the hair-trigger temper and mouth to match has a long history of knee-jerk reactions. But for all his sins, this totally blonde bowman and relative outsider has a heart of gold and a social conscience to boot. So when those who have taken him in – the neighbours he shares communal barbeques with on hot summer nights on the roof of their tenement building – fall under threat of mass eviction, Clint can’t help but act on impulse, and you just know it’s going to go horribly, horribly wrong.

It’s a first-person narrative with a grin-inducing degree of critical, objective detachment. It dashes frantically, nay recklessly, backwards and forwards in time with little-to-no hand-holding, as Clint watches yet another badly laid plan precipitate a cycle of ill-aimed, flailing thuggery. At its centre lies the plight of a battered mongrel which Barton fed pizza to in order to win the dog over. But now it’s in trouble.

“What kinda man throws a dog into traffic – seriously, I ask you – traffic right now – rain – cabs – nobody watching out for sideways demon pizza mutts – c’mon, Clint – c’mon – nobody – nobody watching out – Can’t watch oh God…”

Now, there is a natural affinity if ever I read one.

SLH

Buy Hawkeye – My Life As Weapon vol 1 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Gum Girl: Countdown To Destruction (£6-99, Walker Books) by Andi Watson.

Fabulous third instalment of Andi Watson’s pageant of pundemonium, in which Grace Gibson attempts a week’s Work Experience at Page 45…

“It’s not about politics or a popularity contest, Grace. It’s about learning to be a team player.”
“I can be a team player. Just not on a team of idiots.”
“Sulking doesn’t change anyone’s mind. Try persuasion, flattery or charm.”

Fancy having your headmaster as Dad! He doesn’t half bring his homilies home with him.

Still, he’s much worse at school. Here they have finally extracted the space probe which crashed through Calamity Primary’s roof long before Andi’s comicbook records began, and it turns the pupils into a bunch of space cadets, fuelling and programming a relaunch. Young Neil Aldrin, perpetually in a space suit (they don’t seem to enforce school uniform), has always wanted to walk on the moon but gets car-sick, sea-sick and space-sick. So he’s rigged the satellite to help him manage the nearest equivalent. He just hasn’t understood the gravity of the situation. Pigs might actually fly. A stray cow as well. It’s a good job that Gum Girl has her feet firmly on the ground – thanks to sticking power of her superpower.

Anyway, back to the headmaster’s speech. He’s your motivational conference’s worst nightmare:

Oh, this is so much fun: so much fun to read and so much fun to look at! The cartooning is exquisite and seemingly effortless with forms and compositions to frazzle and bedazzle along with the colouring. But it takes a ridiculous amount of behind-the-scenes skill to render such blistering bombast without cluttering the page or cloying the eye. Its colours are as bright as you like, and coordinated to evoke your favourite sweet chews, but have you noticed how much white Andi employs? Not just white, either, but dotted-tone zones where others wouldn’t even dream of employing them. It lets everything breathe, a bit like throwing your duvet over in the morning, and the result is as fresh as a mountain spring. As to the production values, there’s interior spot-varnish for all the outlines. Interior spot-varnish – I ask you!

There are also sneaky little homages to prior super-powered pugilism, like Gum Girl sticking to the ceiling when her Dad pokes his nose round her bedroom door. Note the cobweb and spider beside her: that’s what Spider-Man used to do!

Also this outing: a roller derby dereliction debacle in which a certain someone takes Paris-envy to extremes and attempts to give the town of Catastrophe a monumental make-over so that everything can be skated over, under and round-about; and Doctor Tick Tock whose crime is to steal time from school. Typically he nicks it from breaks and lunches – never the bloody boredom of maths or French.

SLH

Buy Gum Girl: Countdown To Destruction and read the Page 45 review here

The Fairy Tales Of Oscar Wilde vol 4: The Devoted Friend, The Nightingale And The Rose s/c (£5-99, NBM) by Oscar Wilde & P. Craig Russell.

My Mum’s favourite graphic novel of all time is P. Craig Russell’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s THE HAPPY PRINCE, so beautifully does it evoke unconditional love, self-sacrifice and caring for others. So impressed was she by its beauty, its dignity and its poignancy that she asked for the rest in the series. This, at the time of typing, is all that remains in print.

It’s heartbreaking. Both tales once more involve self-sacrifice, but in the first one struggling young man’s generosity is abused horrifically and in the second a bird’s goes unacknowledged. Worse still, the pain that is endured to help a love-struck student secure a dance is excruciating as a nightingale seeks a single red rose and alights upon a bush whose veins have been chilled by winter and whose buds have been nipped by frost. There will be no blooms this year, unless…

“If you want a red rose you must build it out of music by moon light, and stain it with your own heart’s blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins and become mine.”
“Death is a great price to pay for a read rose and life is very dear to all,” considers the nightingale. “Yet love is better than life… and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?”

What follows is absolutely shattering – the student’s dismissive oblivion, the nightingale’s excruciating trial and the fate of the rose itself – all the more so on account of Russell’s fine judgement over what to depict and how.

As to ‘The Devoted Friend’, it is the story of a poor but industrious gardener called Hans whose rich, idle, self-regarding neighbour preaches high-mindedly about the duties of friendship whilst practising all the altruism of a common thief. The miller’s sermons are full of self-justification in denying Hans hospitality or credit for flour, while emotionally blackmailing young Hans to give more of himself than he can possibly afford. Most affectingly of all, Hans would do anything to please and couldn’t bear to be thought of falling short in friendship. No, it’s not that: he couldn’t bear to fall short in friendship, regardless of what others might think.

“It is certainly a great privilege to hear you talk. But I am afraid I shall never have such beautiful ideas as you have.”
“Oh! They will come to you. At present you have only the practice of friendship. Some day you will have the theory also.”

Oscar Wilde: utterly charming whilst effortlessly scathing.

SLH

Buy The Fairy Tales Of Oscar Wilde vol 4: The Devoted Friend, The Nightingale And The Rose s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Moomin Builds A House (£7-50, Drawn & Quarterly) by Tove Jansson.

“Pappa? There is some villain outside!”
“How exciting!”

That’s no villain, that’s Mymble’s mother and her seventeen new brothers and sisters! Oh wait, it is a villain because she’s invited herself to stay with no warning at all and no plans to leave until Midsummer. Also, she’s oblivious to the wretched monsters’ chaos and destruction.

“Don’t they fight each other?”
“Of course. But I don’t like to keep scolding them. I just… pour some water over them… or lemonade.”

Little My is the worst, rousing the rabble into abducting Mrs. Fillyjonk’s offspring and tying them to totem poles. She’s relentless and remorseless in terrorising the Moomin household, while her mother takes a positive pride in what she sees as skills. Poor Moomins: always the victims of their own goodwill and hospitality! In the end, they can only persuade Little My to behave by abiding by her harsh ultimatum: she wants Moomintroll’s bedroom all to herself.

And that’s why he has to build a house for himself and Snorkmaiden. He’s… not very good at it.

Another full-colour slice from the MOOMIN black and white albums, presenting the ultimate in poor parenting and the dangers of D.I.Y.. Which is why I don’t do any. Parenting or D.I.Y.. See also: dusting, vacuuming, washing up… We could be here all day.

SLH

Buy Moomin Builds A House and read the Page 45 review here

Tokyo Babylon vol 1 (£14-99, Dark Horse) by CLAMP.

“Ghost and monsters? They’re no match for human selfishness. Nothing is.”

Well now, this was a surprise. My first-ever CLAMP and it turns out to be a searing indictment of human greed, selfishness, anger, hypocrisy, superficiality, resentment and the abuse of power in the form of rapists, brainwashing senseis and celebrity child molesters. Pertinent, much?

Ingeniously it is wrapped in the more pleasurable and so palatable cloth of both a dark occult thriller and a light as a feather boa ‘will-the-won’t-they?’ rom-com. It’s also a vehicle for the CLAMP collective to show off their love of outlandish haute couture with ditzy match-maker Hokuto wearing a succession of improbable outfits from what looks like a giant hosta to butterfly wings, gauze and a custom-crumpled, velveteen top hat.

Indeed the very first episode is played almost entirely for satirical laughs, as young Subaru is summoned to exorcise a fashion victim whose Chanel suit has become possessed by the grudges of those who eyed it enviously in the shop window then the rival customer the woman physically fought with for it on the department store floor. All of which inspires Subaru’s sister Hokuto-chan to deliver a deliriously vapid self-defence for refusing to boycott freon-formed cosmetics. You leave her hair mousse alone!

Hokuto is at her best when teasing her brother about his relationship with smouldering Seishiro, twenty-five-year old devotee of dapper suits and, as it happens, heir to the Sakurazukamori clan of assassins. He seems far too adorable for that – he’s a vet. Teenage Subaru, meanwhile, is the master of the 13th generation of the Sumeragi clan. They are both onmyoji, hence Subaru being called in to exorcise the likes of Tokyo Tower. There a failed actress who committed suicide is haunting the special observation deck. After years of struggling, alone and hungry in Tokyo, she finally landed a small speaking part in a major film but the diva lead, after weeks of stropping, pulled out at the last minute thereby causing its cancellation. This they are discussing as casual as you like on the window sill, and Subaru is sympathetic but Seishiro is adamant: the actress’s suicide also caused pain to those she left behind.

That’s one of the things I love about this series: you’ll get your omens and casting of spells, but at its heart it’s about how we treat each other, just as you’ll discover in the next chapter with the coma patient.

The other thing played to perfection is the love affair between unflappable Seishiro and easily embarrassed Subaru. For the most part Seishiro is respectfully hands-off but then with perfect comedic timing he breaks into mischievous mode to casually enquire whether Subaru finds him “Hot or not hot?” Right on queue, every time, Subaru is so flustered he faints.

However, everything changes when the subplot kicks in, catalysed by a vision in which Subaru encounters an enigmatic young man beneath a cherry tree, his eyes obscured by a flop of dark hair. And he tells Subaru that beneath every cherry tree is a corpse, which is why every year they bloom so beautifully.

“You see, once the blossoms of the tree were white. Pure white… like snow. So… how do you think that cherry blossoms turned that pale crimson? It’s because they drank the blood from the corpse underneath the tree.”

Now seemingly spurious elements take on new weight, like Sieishiro’s heritage. Also, Hokuto joked that Subaru had to wear gloves so she coordinated his flamboyant wardrobe around them! But it turns out that this was an edict, not a wilful fashion statement, issued by his grandmother, master of the preceding generation of the Sumeragi clan who had trained him in the occult arts since infancy. Subaru must never take off his gloves, even in his sister’s presence.

Towards the end of this first omnibus edition, Subaru’s grandmother travels all the way to Tokyo to speak to him.

“On the ninth day of every month, we perform a fire augury to predict the future. And I did a reading on you, Subaru.”
“What? On me…? Was it… bad…?”
“The Sakura… It said that the cherry blossoms are planning to steal you away, Subaru.”
“…”
“You haven’t taken off your gloves, have you?”

SLH

Buy Tokyo Babylon vol 1 and read the Page 45 review here

Crossed vol 5 s/c (£18-99, Avatar) by David Lapham, David Hine & Jacen Burrows, Georges Duarte…

I’ll freely admit I picked up this volume of CROSSED with some trepidation, noting that Lapham was back on the writing duties for an arc, after the unremitting, and frankly plain unenjoyable, incest and torture porn storylines that formed his two previous CROSSED volumes, being VOL 2 and VOL 3 respectively. Happily though he seems to have noted such an extreme scenario as the world of the Crossed does actually require some levity to make the extreme horror palatable.

Set in the early days of the outbreak this tale features a cowardly character named Edmund, always the butt of pretty much any high school prank due to his craven ways. Yet, ironically enough, it’s his hard-wired flight or flight-faster mechanism that’s managed to ensure he’s kept one step ahead of the nightmare. So far, at least! What we have here is actually a very entertaining story as Edmund careens from one horrific scenario to other, always escaping by the very skin of his teeth, usually at someone else’s expense, whilst fainting in total terror at what is going on around him. Yes, those not-so-chummy school chums don’t seem to be having the last laugh now! Well, actually they are because they’re all hysterical, flesh-eating, corpse-shagging maniacs, but you get what I mean. Nice cameo from the torture-porn titular psychopath star of volume 3 too, which goes to show Lapham can get this type of story absolutely bang on, surprising no one.

The other arc, penned by David (BULLETPROOF COFFIN and STRANGE EMBRACE) Hine is an equally amusing and of course gruesome number. Set at a writers’ retreat, hosted by a rather odd character who seemingly wants his guests so fully immersed in their deviant roles he’s given them that they might as well be in an end of the world scenario. Which indeed they are, they just don’t know it yet! Equally as enjoyable as CROSSED VOL 4, penned by Ennis and Delano, and the Si Spurrier penned CROSSED: WISH YOU WERE HERE ongoing title, I think we can now pretty confidently state this franchise is back on track.

JR

Buy Crossed vol 5 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Earth 2: The Gathering h/c (£16-99, DC) by James Robinson & Nicola Scott…

It did seem slightly superfluous of DC, post-FINAL CRISIS, post-FLASHPOINT, with the all new versions of the various main characters inhabiting Earth 0 or New Earth as I believe we are now supposed to refer to it as (plus not forgetting the SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE and BATMAN: EARTH ONE stories), to even bother with an Earth 2 series. (I do remember reading somewhere that Morrison was supposed to be doing a series which was going to feature a story from all the different Earths (52 in total), but I’m not sure whether that’s been canned, put on the shelf or what.)

Anyway, DC has decided to do it, and I have to say, it’s reasonably good so far. The basic original premise of Earth 2 was to allow the Golden Age version of the characters to keep existing alongside the Silver Age ones, whereas this reboot has taken a different more modern approach. All set in the current day, this Universe’s Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman died fighting the invasion from Apokolips, which I think is meant to be roughly analogous to the events of JUSTICE LEAGUE VOL 1.

Consequently other heroes need to step up in absence of the big three, but these characters, primarily Flash (Jay Garrick), Hawkgirl, and Green Lantern (Alan Scott), are not the versions we are familiar with. (Also, expect the appearance of Earth 0 Mister Terrific before too long apparently. and not forgetting Earth 2 characters Power Girl and Huntress have their own series set on Earth 0, WORLD’S FINEST.) Anyway, this first volume is pretty much what you’d expect, exploring the new origins a little, having the requisite punch up amongst themselves, before settling down to have their first adventure together. I’m being slightly blasé about it all, but it is well put together by James Robinson whose run on STARMAN I enjoyed immensely. Basically, think of it as the current Justice Society of America title in all but name, and you get the idea.

I’m not sure if it’s even worth mentioning the brief bit of publicity DC, possibly a touch shamelessly, generated by rumouring they were going to out a truly major character as gay, then making it Alan Scott, the Earth 2 Green Lantern. I can’t decide whether that’s a touch cynical on their part, slightly gutless by not making it a really big mainstream character (listen, if you’re rebooting your entire set of Universes, plural note, clearly anything is possible) or just a wise decision, as actually James Robinson has just handled it in the most perfect manner, by not making a fuss about it. It feels perfectly natural, which is exactly as it should be, rather than being a tokenist stunt. Now we’re just left wondering who else is left in the very crowded capes and tights closet.

In summary, I am going to keep reading this title myself, as along with JUSTICE LEAGUE and the new JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, it seems as though DC have got the approach to their big name team books spot on for the moment.

JR

Buy Earth 2: The Gathering h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

 
Barry’s Best Buddy h/c (£9-99, Random House) by Renée French

Massive vol 1: Black Pacific s/c (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Brian Wood & Kristian Donaldson, Garry Brown

Eagle Strike: The Graphic Novel (£9-99, Walker Books) by Anthony Horowitz, Anthony Johnston & Kanako

Batman vol 2: The City Of Owls h/c (£12-99, DC) by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo & Various, Greg Capullo

Batman vol 1: The Court Of Owls s/c (£12-99, DC) by Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo

Daredevil vol 3 s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Mark Waid & Khoi Pham

Gambit vol 1: Once A Thief s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by James Asmus & Clay Mann, various

Invincible Iron Man vol 10: Long Way Down s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Matt Fraction & Salvador Larroca

Winter Soldier vol 3: Black Widow Hunt s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Ed Brubaker & Butch Guice

Avatar, The Last Airbender vol 4: The Search Part 1 (£8-50, Dark Horse) by Gene Luen Yang & Gurihiru

Vampire Knight vol 16 (£7-50, Viz) by Matsuri Hino

Bakuman vol 18 (£7-50, Viz) by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata

Pandora Hearts vol 13 (£8-99, Yen) by Jun Mochizuki

Negima! Omnibus 2: vols 4-6 (£14-99, Kodansha) by Ken Akamatsu

Tenjo Tenge 2-in-1 Edition vol 9 (£10-99, Viz) by Oh!Great

Tenjo Tenge 2-in-1 Edition vol 10 (£10-99, Viz) by Oh!Great
Breaking news!

More rounds fired off in a 100 BULLETS reprise: 8-issue BROTHER LONO mini-series!

Drawn & Quarterly’s Autumn Catalogue includes RAGE OF POSEIDON from Anders Nilsen.

Dan Berry interviews Ian Culbard on another Make It Then Tell Everybody. Dan Berry has the best interviewing voice and technique in the world. Ian Culbard drew our current Comicbook Of The Month, THE NEW DEADWARDIANS amongst so much more. Stick him in our search engine! Just… leave the doors open, please – he has deadlines to meet.

THE PRIVATE EYE, a new digital comic from Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin, absolutely free (but please donate)!

And finally, this! Video of Lizz Lunney at work. Brilliant!

Could someone – anyone – just tweet me that they read this stuff at the bottom, please , or I’ll stop?

Cheers,

 - Stephen

“Warily investigating, he affiliates himself in 1992 to a magical order, the Illuminates of Thanateros, temple of a New Cross recording studio. Chaos magic, though the name seems harsh. Bit of a mess at worst, more teen goth’s bedroom that inchoate pre-creational abyss.”

 - Alan Moore on Stuart Moore in Unearthing. Link to that new Alan Moore interview at the bottom of the blog, along with ancient film footage of Alan Moore talking about Swamp Thing.

Fanny & Romeo (£14-99, Conundrum Press) by Yves Pelletier & Pascal Girard –

This is a rather sweet and lovely book about couples and how relationships work or, in some cases, don’t. With its fresh and jaunty watercolours, each page has a brightness which prevents the ups and downs of the story from ever becoming cloying or oppressive.

When we meet Fanny and Fabien you can see that they love one another but the cracks in their relationship are easy to spot. Fabien uses work and money to deflect from his fear of lifetime commitment and in turn Fanny uses that as an excuse to ignore her own faults and shove all the blame onto him. We get little glimpses into their thoughts and we can see that, really, they both want the same things; they just don’t quite know how to get there yet.

Enter Romeo: not a man but a cat! A cat in need of a home, it seems. Broody Fanny is immediately smitten and Romeo seems utterly content to fill the role of surrogate baby. The only slight problem is that Fabien is ever so slightly, extremely, deathly allergic to cats… After a night of sneezing and wheezing he finds himself asking the fairly reasonable question; why one earth would you inflict that on someone you love?! And so the cracks begin to widen and we wonder if Fanny and Fabien are going to make it after all.

What I really liked about this book is that it is full of light and humour. We watch the characters wrestle with their feelings and although yes, love is a serious business, we also get to reflect in how ridiculous we can be and how daft many of our fears are when push comes to shove. In particular Fanny’s descent into overbearing cat-mother and Fabien’s parallel regression to porn-watching, man-cave dwelling, take-away guzzling slob are amusing to watch because we can tell that it’s just “a phase” and that eventually one (or both) of them will come to their senses and rejoin the real world.

Having said that, though, it is not at all obvious how everything will turn out and there is a real will-they won’t-they tension to the story. That tension is made all the stronger by the fact that these are really quite nice people and we’d rather like them to end up happy! Also, the cat is really very cute. Always a bonus!

DK

Buy Fanny & Romeo and read the Page 45 review here

Muse h/c (£25-99, Humanoids) by Denis Pierre Filippi & Terry Dodson.

A masterpiece in line, light, form and colour, this for me is the highlight of Terry Dodson’s already prestigious career to date.

He shares the colour-artist credits with Rebecca Rendon and I don’t know who’s responsible for which individual pages or the elements within, but I stared at a single panel of the water-lily lake for ages. With the clever application of flat colours for the floating pads and graded hues for the water-surface reflections, they’ve created the equivalent effect of spot-varnish 3-D!

There is so much attention to bucolic detail with dancing sunlight and dappled greens that you can almost believe yourself out in the countryside, breathing in its fresh air as the clouds roll swiftly on their way in the distance. The sense of space is astounding, tall poplars rising vertically from the gently sloping, horizontal plains in front of the cloudline beyond, and casting their shadows at right angles over the cream-coloured paths.

Not only that, but Dodson’s lines are infinitely softer and more slender here than those rendered in the likes of Mark Millar’s spectacular SPIDER-MAN (definitive) with the most elaborate dresses and tresses and, yes, beautiful bosoms, for this is marketed as something slightly “titillating”. And it is, but in a much more innocent and celebratory way than the nigh-ubiquitous Euro-titty trash. Not that I am calling Manara trash – I really am not as my many reviews will make clear – but I find this infinitely preferable for dear, sweet Coraline here is never once bested by men. Every attempt at tickle is met with a successful, salutary slap.

It’s a wake-up call. It actually is, and you’ll see what I mean when you get there.

An elegant young lady in a refined white ensemble, grey gloves and a demure, floral hat is driven by stagecoach through a rolling valley to the gates of a countryside estate, where she waits on her case to be collected. And it’s quite a rum, steam-driven contraption that eventually pulls up along with the jolly Mr. Ekborn, grounds-man and butler to boot. Judging by their journey there are a lot of grounds to attend: they seem the size of a British county. As to the mansion which sits at their centre, it is a wonder both outside and in, with the grandest of libraries I’ve seen outside of Latveria accessed via a glasshouse the size of an Eden Project bio-dome.

Coraline is greeted at the entrance by housekeeper Guérande, and is finally informed of her duties: she is to be the new governess for Master Vernère, a handsome young man, causally but fashionably dressed, perhaps in his early teens. He is, however, surprisingly austere for his years. Precocious too. having invented a series of increasingly elaborate steampunk contraptions for all manner of travel and surprisingly specific maintenance purposes. He’s prone to lock himself in his workshop or library for days on end, so education is now what Coraline’s been hired for. She’s been hired ostensibly to help him have fun again, and she’s certainly got her work cut out for her. Even when it looks like she’s won him over with the idea of building a treehouse, he returns with a contraption to do it all for them.

“Thank you, Ekborn,” he concludes. “It’s perfect.”
“May too perfect. Well, since it is already finished, all we have to do is go play inside it.”
“More trivialities! I’m too old for that child’s play, my dear.”
“No you’re not,” she sighs as he darts off for more mad invention. “That’s the whole point.”

So what went so terribly wrong, and why is Coraline really here? She’s certainly having the strangest of post-prandial dreams, each beginning with two tailors munching peaches in her wardrobe then measuring her up for period costumes. Then she finds herself assaulted by pirates or cast away on a dessert island only to be tied to a pole and carried away by the natives.

“But I’m telling you, I can walk just fine” was so well timed, before the party’s youngest makes a lunge for her boobies.

“Hey!”
“I’ve told you a thousand times!” scolds his mother. “It’s not polite to play with your food!”
“Excuse me?!…”

Just as things look like coming to the boil – and by things I mean the pot that she’s popped in – Coraline is rescued by a ridiculously beautiful, dark skinned young man, as lithe as you like, who declares, “Me Iday! Iday!”  The choreography as Coraline investigates their tree-top dwelling, crawling round its twisting branches on all fours (and now wearing no more than a tiger-skin loin cloth) with Iday reaching out in “hot” pursuit, is hilarious. His blue eyes positively sparkle as he administers some apricot oils to soften her stinging skin, while his smile when he’s told to turn his back as she finishes the job off herself, is a perfect mixture of innocence and lust rather than out-and-out lechery. Then he makes a grab for her boobies.

*slap* Another wake-up call.

Throughout these sequences (they are many and varied on different nights, but oh yes, a pattern emergences) there is thankfully no real sense of danger of either being eaten or molested and no more is revealed than breast or two. Coraline displays an indomitable resolve and an almost detached sense of humour, safe in the knowledge that she is in a dream. It’s more a case of “Here we go again!” and quite a lot of this is played for comedy.

Dodson’s compositions, figure drawing, body language and expressions are positively delicious from start to finish, and the whole book is suffused with a sense of joy.

Moreover, there is a point to all this. The dreams are so far from random that I’ve deliberately left a few elements out. Oh, and I think I just got the title. Yes.

SLH

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

Unearthing s/c (£19-99, Knockabout) by Alan Moore & Mitch Jenkins.

“To some degree I suppose with Unearthing what we were saying was that you can’t separate people and landscape. That you have to consider them together. If you’re doing a work of psychogeography it will probably always end up as a work of psychobiography and vice versa. That you start to investigate somebody like Steve Moore, you cannot consider him separately from the place that he emerged from. The human and the human’s habitat are inextricably part of the same thing.”

 - Alan Moore on UNEARTHING.

Told in a blend of prose and photography, this is a passionate, eloquent but above all witty evocation of Alan’s mentor Stuart Moore and the suburb of Shooter Hill where he has lived, in the very same house, for all but three months of his life. That has to be pretty rare.

Alan’s no stranger to this sort of excavation. In VOICE OF THE FIRE he took the geographical location which became Northampton and charted six millennia of its legend and lore – its memory, if you like – through the eyes of its inhabitants, so unearthing its temporal strata. And, just like Northampton, it transpires that Shooter Hill is more significant in the grand scheme of things than it initially appears. It’s surprising what you’ll find once you start digging around.

The language, as you’d anticipate, is rich and imaginatively deployed.

“In 1969 I meet him for the first time, marvelling at his lunar lack of mental gravity, the slow and lazy arc of his creative leaps, the silver dustplumes boiling up around his shoes, one small step for a man.”

By this time Stuart has already had his imagination fired by American comicbooks, begun his own fanzines, worked with Barry Windsor-Smith, Steve Parkhouse and Ian Gibson on ‘Orpheus’, hung out at Dark They Were And Golden Eyed, co-organised the first UK comic convention and was amassing a substantial I Ching scholarship. Oh yes, and I forgot he scripted Tom Baker Doctor Who comics illustrated by Dave Gibbons for Marvel UK.

Anyway, it’s not long before a ritual involving a sword strung from Chinese coins leaves him with the sort of dream you’d ordinarily blame on cheese and the single word “Endymion” whispered in his slumbering ear. Turns out that was a shepherd boy who fell in love with Selene, goddess of the moon and so queen of the night and dreams.

Later he is led into magic and lures Alan along for the ride. This made me laugh:

“Warily investigating, he affiliates himself in 1992 to a magical order, the Illuminates of Thanateros, temple of a New Cross recording studio. Chaos magic, though the name seems harsh. Bit of a mess at worst, more teen goth’s bedroom that inchoate pre-creational abyss.”

Okay, so that was a dead end. Their moment of actual satori they would experience together, in private, without the need of black robes and chanting. Probably a great big spliff, but then that’s Alan’s equilibrium. The revelation is pretty well documented already, but never better evoked than here.

It’s a beautifully produced piece of theatre (with a secret double-gatefold spread – okay not so secret now, but finding it will be fun) full of exquisite and elaborately fashioned photography, whose cast includes Alan Moore as himself and Robert Goodman as Steve Moore. Steve only appears in a credit photo, dousing his impersonator with a watering can. The theatre never ends.

Nowhere in the fine print does it tell you about the tiny type, however. Some of you may find yourselves in need of a magnifying glass or, may I temptingly suggest, the UNEARTHING LTD ED H/C, also out this week which at a whopping A3 is twice the size of this softcover!

Sorry…? I have to file my horns down daily.

SLH

Buy Unearthing s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Unearthing Ltd Ed h/c (£49-99, Knockabout) by Alan Moore & Mitch Jenkins.

Massive, A3, limited edition hardcover of the UNEARTHING S/C which is, I grant you, a mere £19-99, but you should see its teeny, tiny, type. No, this is a more manly edition, if you’re a man; a more womanly edition, if you’re a woman; or much more to chew on, if you’re a goat.

SLH

Buy Unearthing Ltd Ed h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Moomin Falls In Love (£7-50, Drawn & Quarterly) by Tove Jansson.

“Why sulk? We are safe! Do you know the difference between the first love and the last? It’s this: you always think the first love is the last and the last the first…”
“Oh, shut up.”

I love it when young Moomintroll’s cross. His brow cuts right down into his big, black eyes in a glacial glare. La Goona’s horse is quite right when you think about it, though (it is she who is speaking first): that’s quite a shrewd observation.

One of my all-time favourite episodes taken from the black and white MOOMIN VOL 3 hardcover, and rendered here as a full-colour, floppy landscape edition.

Here we have a flood of positively Biblical proportions engulfing Moominvalley to the extent that only the scant few tallest trees and the attic of the Moomins’ household bob above the water. Which is odd because it stopped raining hours ago. Emotions are running as high as the tide – it is to wonder which caused which – and there are troubles of the heart in store for Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden when a beautiful but vain leading lady, Miss La Goona, is washed their way and takes up residence, much to Snorkmaiden’s dismay. Moomintroll can’t do enough for her, diving down to the kitchen through a hole in the floorboards for coffee, which mysteriously surfaces undiluted, and Snorkmaiden pouts with jealousy.

“Can’t you sleep?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you spreading a blanket over La Goona.”
“But she was cold.”
“That I am cold of course doesn’t matter.”
“Darling, you can have my whole quilt.”
“Take it away! It’s stifling here!”

“Women…” thinks Moomin as poor Snorkmaiden rolls over and away, sobbing her heart out.

What followers is infinitely more endearing than an Eastenders sub-plot, but bearing all of its hallmarks as everyone tries to second-guess each other’s dissemblance by dissembling themselves and poor Moomintroll is utterly baffled, completely unsure of how to conduct himself without causing offence or discarding his innate chivalry.

Meanwhile Snorkmaiden packs her bags (“I’ll go far away”), pops out of the window (“He doesn’t love me any longer”) and rows across the waters (“He will never see me again”) to the top of a moonlit tree.

“I wonder how long it will be before he comes to get me…”

Women!

SLH

Buy Moomin Falls In Love and read the Page 45 review here

How To Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting To Kill You (£9-99, Andrews McMeel) by The Oatmeal.

From the creator of the rip-roaringly funny 5 VERY GOOD REASONS TO PUNCH A DOLPHIN IN THE MOUTH, this does contain comics so I don’t feel like I’m selling out in quite the same blatant fashion. Even when that crime does spring to mind I remember we’ve made over a grand from those petulantly punched porpoise cousins, so who bloody cares?

Does your cat care, do you think? About you? Not really, they’re a species so self-centred they make my raging monomania look like benevolent altruism. It’s all me, me, me, now, now, now. Join up the dots for yourselves.

The best pages are when Matthew is thinking laterally rather than literally, like ‘If We Treated Our Cats Like They Treat Us’, the entire ‘Bobcats’ as office workers sequence and  “Cats love reflecting surfaces: nature’s vending machine” whose punchline is purely visual. Guess you’ll just have to buy the book for that one.

A lot of this observational humour like cat-on-a-keyboard is spot-on accurate, but in the age in which we daily dispense such witty tit-bits from our household, cat-coveted computers, a lot of this has already been done to death (some of it by me, sorry), and ‘Cat Vs Internet’ is here sadly spread out into so much space-filler. Also, although there are some cracking moments of ellipsis (the humour resides on what happens next, implied but unshown), our Oatmeal orator ain’t no Jamie Smart. That’s what he’s aiming for (and why would you not?), but he’s simply not that good a cartoonist or consistent a wit. Plus, of course, he narrowed his potential subject matter down by its very title.

Well, no, he didn’t. 5 VERY GOOD REASONS TO PUNCH A DOLPHIN IN THE MOUTH wasn’t just about famously benevolent water-based mammals. Many a T-Rex took it on the nose too. Then up the nose as well. ’7 Reasons To Keep Your Tyrannosaur off Crack Cocaine’ was as genius as it was numerically redundant. Why would you need more than one reason safe-guarding your saurus from speed?

Our author could have expended a little more lateral investigating the tell-tale signs of other household pets’ predisposure to biting the hand that feeds, in addition. I imagine a goldfish, trapped in five spherical inches of transparent bowl would feel thoroughly psychopathic towards its briefly enraptured captors. Seriously: when you scooped a goldfish at a funfair (probably banned now), you were hooked for all of five seconds. Then you’d display all the memory and attention span of that which you’d won. If a goldfish could physically grow teeth it would turn into a fucking piranha.

On the plus side, there is enough here that made me actually guffaw. It includes, for example, the only fart jokes I’ve ever laughed at. Plus there are graphs for laughs and a cautionary diagram about ‘How Your Cat Sees You’. The fun there is that you will recognise its truths immediately.

SLH

Buy How To Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting To Kill You and read the Page 45 review here

The Art Of Osamu Tezuka: God Of Manga s/c (£19-99, Ilex) by Helen McCarthy ~

To put it plainly this is the big fat Tezuka art book/encyclopaedia/autobiography you have been waiting for.

This is a huge book encompassing all aspects of Osamu’s creative life beginning with his highly detailed and beautiful illustrations of insects and illustrated quiz books which, as a boy, he self-published, then his dangerous excursions into anti-war satire working in a factory during World War Two.

It wasn’t until the circumstances aligned in the post-war landscape that his prolific and imaginative sci-fi and fantasy works, created whilst at medical school, took shape. Often these stories were not even in the form of comics as he was also active in amateur theatre productions, feeling out his early stories in the form of plays and manga. All this relentless creativity before he even became commercially successful with ASTRO BOY!

This extensive tome leads us down through the history of Tezuka’s life using his creations rather than dates as the chronological measure, seemingly ballooning his life during his most successful periods, which were frequent and often revolutionary in their fields.

It quickly becomes apparent that in the West we have merely seen the tip of the iceberg concerning Tezuka’s 40-year career in comics. We have also have missed out on some amazing animation, which he funded off the back of the comics. Think about that for a minute, because it’s more than a rare occurrence in the West that a comic artist could be successful enough to open an animation studio (in his back garden, no less) off the success of his comic; it’s positively alien. There are low points too: the accompanying DVD shows an artist in the autumn of his life having to change his style as he can no longer draw circles, the very basis of all his early characters. Although it turned off some early fans, this change in style pushed Tezuka to create some of the best work of his career: PHOENIX, BUDDHA, Black Jack and MW to name a few of the translated works. He kept himself equally busy in the ‘80s creating more amazing-looking comics, animation and even sculpture, and leaving behind scores of unfinished projects in the wake of his death due to illness in 1989. But the book doesn’t end on such a sombre note, and continues right up to present day, displaying his legacy in the from of comic and animation projects based on his work and a whole section on the magnificent Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum in his home town of Takarazuka and the smaller Tezuka Osamu World in Kyoto’s railway station.

TR

Buy The Art Of Osamu Tezuka: God Of Manga s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Sleeper Omnibus h/c (£55-99, DC) by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips.

A great big brute of a book containing not only both softcover seasons of Sleeper, but also POINT BLANK and indeed COUP D’ETAT: SLEEPER #1 and COUP D’ETAT: AFTERWARD #1 which I don’t believe are collected elsewhere. On top of that are some swoonaway Sean Phillips extras: page layouts, cover inks etc. I love a little process material!

Hair-tearingly tense undercover espionage thriller deftly conducted by the creators of CRIMINAL and FATALE, which doesn’t just avoid the pothole cop-outs of most superhero tales when it comes to crime and consequence, it pole-vaults over them and plunges the protagonist into a world where there’s no soothing alternative to ruthless expediency.

Holden Carver went deep undercover just as his boss went deep into a coma. Unfortunately a) the cover in question is hired thuggery for a ruthless powerbroker with a brain sharper than a meat slicer, b) his old boss at the agency was the only one who knew so c) there’s no one around to extract him. With no light at the end of the tunnel (that doesn’t turn out to be a train) Carver’s just got to carry out the missions for the slime he now works for without completely killing his conscience or the friends who think he’s defected. Not a lot of options there. How many innocents can Holden kill before the total begins to chime with his moral concept of “too many”? And how long can he keep this up before his new boss discovers the truth, Carver gives up completely or – worse still – throws in with the other side?

Brubaker excels where lesser writers would leave us with more monochromatic characters: Holden Carver, undercover amongst the world’s most dangerous criminals, actually makes friends with some of them. He can’t help himself. They spend time at the bar together, they watch each others’ backs in the firing line and, hell, the man has a sex drive. What’s he going to do about it, other than sleep with the enemy? Now, there was an accident several years ago that left Carver incapable of feeling pain. Instead he stores it up to inflict it on others. Miss Misery, on the other hand, discovered some time back that, for her, happiness is a life-threatening disease: if she doesn’t inflict pain she will fall ill and die. Before each mission she charges up by dishing it out but she cannot allow herself to fall in love or, if she does, it’s a matter of practical survival to cause pain to the object of her affection by being unfaithful. And that’s the sort of pain Holden can feel. Isn’t that fucked up?

This is less about superpowers than about espionage, cunning and deceit, but every so often Ed provides little origins – parodies of standard superhero fare – to lighten the predominantly pitch-black tone, as characters reveal their past to their mates over drinks. Here’s Claudia talking about herself in the third person singular:

“All right, so where was I?”
“In High School.”
“Right, okay, so… in High School, Claudia was the girl all the gay boys came out to. (“– And no one knows, not my mom. No way about my dad, he’d kill me.”) She wasn’t gay herself, but she had always enjoyed the company of fags, the queenie-er the better, really. (“I was all snap! get out of my face, bitch, and he was all –”) They were funnier than most of the girls she knew, didn’t want to have sex with her, and rarely got jealous when she made out with some guy at a party. And so her early High School nickname was Faghag. Now one of her friends, one of the less queenie ones, was also a bit of a science geek, and one day she attended a demonstration with him. This kid was the most picked-on guy ever. Not only was he a nerd, but he was also openly gay, in a day where that really wasn’t accepted at school. So, at the demonstration, some jocks started pushing him, and accidentally shoved him right into the beam of this interspatial particle accelerator, and everything went crazy. Her poor friend was irradiated or something. She never understood exactly what happened. But in his dying moment, as he flailed for life, his teeth ripped right into her neck.”
“Wait. You were bitten by a radioactive homo –?”
“Can I please tell the story my way?”
“Oh, you go, girl…”

You’ll just have to pick up the book to find out the second half of that origin!

The art is shrouded throughout in a dangerous twilight, where neither you nor Carver can be sure who’s lurking round the corner, so you constantly fear for Holden’s safety. Phillips’ pages are full of atmosphere, a brooding intensity and a palpable sense of foreboding, where anything can come out of the shadows and no one’s sure what the other guy’s really thinking. Best of all, his stuff flows, yet he’s also as solid as anyone else. Check out the stormy midnight car scenes coloured to perfection, I might add, by Tony Avina.

SLH

Buy Sleeper Omnibus h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Age Of Ultron #1 of 10 (£2-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Bryan Hitch.

It’s over. They lost. We lost everything.

Civilisation as we know it is effectively over; New York one massive, mangled wreckage, its once vainglorious skyscrapers crumbling into the yawning crevasses of its underground system where the streets and pavements used to be. As lightning crackles rather than flashes overhead, something unimaginably massive hovers above the ruins – an awful, futuristic construction of unknown intent. Nothing and no one is moving. It’s dead.

Move out from under its apocalyptic epicentre, however, and although the suburbs look like a war zone, some of the tenements still stand, barely, and there are pockets of life like this hooker on the street, making a midnight house call. The thugs that answer the door are heavily armed, one with the makings of an exoskeleton. Still, open the door they did – and that’s all he needs. That’s what Hawkeye’s been waiting for…

This is off-the-scale epic, and I haven’t been so knocked out or excited about a Marvel or DC event in years. We’re talking the opening two seasons of Ultimates by Millar and Hitch. We’re talking KINGDOM COME which opens after things have already gone wrong and it’s about to grow infinitely worse. Only here, it’s already happened. Here it couldn’t really get any worse. Here it’s more up close and personal.

What’s left of Marvel’s Avengers, Fantastic Four and X-Men are all but cowering in seclusion, holed up in a makeshift, appropriated bunker, for venturing out means almost instant detection. Leave and you don’t come back. Leave and you won’t be let back – you could be tracked or tagged.

It seems that only one of them is prepared to take that risk, break the rules and sneak out into the night – even for one of their own. Somewhere in a basement of that tenement is one of their friends and colleagues, tied to a chair and almost beaten to death by a small army of humans armed to the teeth and two former crimelords you’ll know. They have an arrangement with Ultron. Hawkeye doesn’t give a shit.

Every single page will knock you sideways – the action is monumental and the atmosphere of desperation, almost defeatism, is sustained throughout. You know, apart from Hawkeye and the mate he’s come to rescue. I have deliberately kept this SPOILER-free for in any future scenario like this, half the awe is discovering for yourself what has become of your favourites. Hint: it’s not good.

I would emphasise that you need to read nothing ahead of this. You can just launch right in. On the other hand, it does have its origins in AVENGERS VOL 1 then right at the end of AVENGERS VOL 2.

Please note: this is weekly – AGE OF ULTRON #2 (not actual cover) is out now!

SLH

Buy Age Of Ultron #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Spider-Man: Dying Wish h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Dan Slott & Humberto Ramos, various.

Oooooh, the final few issues of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN* leading up and including #700!

What’s left of mop-topped minger Doc Ock has been knocking on death’s door for quite a few years now. Looks like it’s about to open up and swallow him whole, tentacles and all. Yes, Doctor Octopus has mere hours to live but determined to have the last laugh over the quipping, thwipping pain in the arse who’s been beating his backside forever.

And that’s when he discovers Spider-Man is Peter Parker, nephew of that sweet old woman he once had the hots for and to whom he was briefly engaged! Boy, that’s got to rankle.

Ah, but the man has a plan, and it is a cunning one. He’s going to swap bodies with Spider-Man and leave Peter Parker in his old, ravaged shell to face the funereal music instead.

All sorts of ironies abound in this final tussle, and although I was emotionally ejected from the proceedings by Ramos’ plinky plonky artwork, the surprise ending was certainly very different from what anyone could have expected, and set the stage a very new, very different SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #1 (which is still in stock – original printing, too).

Ta-da!

*The final few issues, that is, until Marvel inevitably relaunches with a fresh AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 next year, before reinstating the old issue numbers as soon as they approach 750. You mark my words.

SLH

Buy Spider-Man: Dying Wish h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Sex #1 (£2-25, Image) by Joe Casey & Piotr Kowalski.

First off, Kowalski’s giant semi-futuristic cityscape is impressive: lots of ridiculously tall skyscrapers squeezed onto Saturn City’s central island radiating bridges like the sun, and then blotting out every square inch of it for miles and miles beyond. The inking effect is like Terry Austin with bits missing.

I didn’t find his sex scenes sexy – they were way too explicit for me; cold and clinical too – but then nor did I find them offensive. I found two of his so-far peripheral gay characters too fey and affected, but then I find a lot of gay men too fey and affected so I didn’t take offence to that, either. (There’s nothing with being fey – it just does nothing for me – but I cannot abide affectation. Get me!)

The storytelling didn’t strike me as particularly gripping, but then it’s a bit early to tell where it’s going. Basically a certain Mr. Cooke of Cooke Industries is returning to the fold after a sabbatical, but doesn’t seem that interested in doing anything beyond exercising. He doesn’t seem interested in taking strategy meetings, photo ops, or even masturbating like all the other punters do when visiting a brothel as voyeur. The one thing he is definitely not interested in doing is resuming his role as some sort of superhero (details sketchy for now) because I think something went tits-up and certainly somebody died at some point or another because there’s a grave on the very first page. Meanwhile, his current lack of vigilance in that department encourages playas to contemplate playing.

What I find very, very unlikely is that sex will prove remotely relevant to the proceedings: i.e. any thematic core or even central plot development thereby meriting the comic’s title. My entirely uninformed guess was it was chosen for publicity purposes so that dozens of predictably inane retailers would tweet:

“We have SEX!”
“Come to us for SEX!”
“Pay us for SEX!”

And indeed they have done so.

I don’t mind puerility any more than I mind fey, but I have nothing but contempt for the fucking obvious.

SLH

Buy Sex #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

Although clearly this week some of these are merely books that have fallen off the system. I mean, Roberta Gregory’s WINGING IT is over 20 years old! But you won’t find many copies elsewhere, though!
 

Hawkeye – My Life As Weapon vol 1 s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Matt Fraction & David Aja

Adventure Time vol 2 s/c (£10-99, Kaboom) by Ryan North & Shelli Paroline

Batman: Brave And Bold – Small Miracles s/c (£9-99, DC) by Sholly Fisch & Robert Pope

Avengers Vs X-Men: Avengers Academy s/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Christos N Gage & Tom Grummett

07-Ghost vol 3 (£7-50, Viz) by Yoshiki Nakamura

Blade Of The Immortal vol 26: Blizzard (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Hiroaki Samura

Chronicles Of Conan vol 23: Well Of Souls (£13-99, Dark Horse) by Jim Owlsey, John Buscema & Various, George Roussos, Steve Mellor

Essential Captain Marvel vol 2 (£14-99, Marvel) by Various

Guardians Of Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers vol 2 s/c (£29-99, Marvel) by Various

Paradise Kiss vol 3 (£12-99, Random House) by Ai Yazawa

Penny Arcade vol 9: Passions Howl (£10-99, Oni Press Inc.) by Jerry Holkins, Mike Krahulik

Tokyo Babylon vol 1 (£14-99, Dark Horse) by CLAMP

Earth 2: The Gathering h/c (£16-99, DC) by James Robinson & Nicola Scott

The Amory Wars: The Second Stage Turbine Blade Ultimate Edition h/c (£22-50, Boom!) by Claudio Sanchez & various

The Fairy Tales Of Oscar Wilde vol 4: The Devoted Friend, The Nightingale And The Rose s/c (£5-99, NBM) by Oscar Wilde & P. Craig Russell

One Piece vol 66 (£6-99, Viz) by Eiichiro Oda

Rosario + Vampire Season II vol 11 (£6-99, Viz) by Akihisa Ikeda

Winging It Part 1 (£7-99, Solo) by Roberta Gergory
“To some degree I suppose with Unearthing what we were saying was that you can’t separate people and landscape. That you have to consider them together. If you’re doing a work of psychogeography it will probably always end up as a work of psychobiography and vice versa. That you start to investigate somebody like Steve Moore, you cannot consider him separately from the place that he emerged from. The human and the human’s habitat are inextricably part of the same thing.”

 - Alan Moore on UNEARTHING. Read or listen to the entire Alan Moore interview here.

While we’re here, ancient video footage of Alan Moore talking about Swamp Thing 28 years ago.

A mischievous little piece published online about a certain Stephen L. Holland’s favourite spots in Nottingham – I swear to God that grave stone exists! Do you think I’d be so shameless as to plug Page 45 in there? Ahahahahaha! Yes. (P.S. They took out half my jokes! Probably for the best.)

COURTNEY CRUMRIN interview with Ted Naifeh about the series’ conclusion. Love what he says about the different between a story and a portrait. Perfect.

Watch this jawing-dropping artist in action, creating an entire tableau from scratch as he goes along. Sent to me by stellar comicbook artist Marc Laming.

And finally here’s the video for Dead Can Dance’s sublime Children Of The Sun, as storyboarded by KABUKI’s David Mack.

 - Stephen