Yippee! Page 45 announces Window Competition Winners and artists permanently featured in our window!

  – Stephen in all the news and previews at the bottom of blog. Warning: there are also a photo down below of the goon at Alton Towers, screaming like a big boy’s blouse.

The Shadow Out of Time: A Graphic Novel (£14-99, Self Made Hero) by H.P. Lovecraft & I.N.J. Culbard…

“Oh dear God, no!”
PLINK
“NO, NO, NO! Remember, for God’s sake, remember.”

Yes, yes, yes! Another gloriously sanity-shaking adaptation from Mr. Culbard to tip us even further into a state of irreparable discombobulation. I really do marvel at his ability to produce such cogent works from such… steeped… source material. The original novella is probably one of my favourite Lovecraft works, simply because so much is revealed of the various Elder races and the prehistory of Earth before humanity became the dominant lifeform. It isn’t that straightforward a read, though, and I think Ian has done an exceptional job portraying what is revealed to the main protagonist, Professor Nathaniel Peaslee of Miskatonic University, as his mind is snatched from his body and replaced by that of another.

There is some speculation amongst Lovecraft biographers that certain elements of this character are auto-biographical or perhaps inspired by Lovecraft’s father, or that the idea for this story came from repeatedly watching a 1933 science fiction film called Berkley Square. In any case, what he wrote is one of the most chilling pieces of speculative horror fiction I have ever read. One of Lovecraft’s great talents lay in his unparalleled ability to make the reader feel truly insignificant, a veritable speck in a total alien and unfathomable universe, which in turn induces a genuine sense of trepidation in the reader. It’s horrific because of its very subtlety to infiltrate your mind, engendering a sense of unease.

Ian has captured that perfectly here as poor old Peaslee is well and truly put through the wringer both physically and mentally. The PLINK sound effect above, for example, is the sound of a torch going out leaving the poor chap very old in the dark, in somewhere he really, really doesn’t want to linger. Then, the sequences during which we learn precisely where Peaslee’s mind was during the period his body was occupied by… the other… are truly stygian in their alienness. It’s a quite literally mind-blowing reveal and you really get the grandiose sense of scale involved from the artwork, which is a real feat. I keep thinking Ian can’t raise the bar even further with Lovecraft material, but he keeps on managing it.

I am therefore delighted to report Ian has already agreed to do at least one more Lovecraft adapation for Self Made Hero, though I was unable to prise from him precisely which work it will be. I am planning on bodysnatching him, though, with a mind-swap device I keep in my laboratory on the fourth floor of the shop, so rest assured, dear readers, I will let you know more soon enough <fiendish cackles repeated with mild reverb tapering off in a most disturbing fashion>…

JR

www.page45.com/store/The-Shadow-Out-of-Time-A-Graphic-Novel.html

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

New revised edition including an extended chapter on fracking, which for those not familiar with the term is slang for a relatively new gas and oil extraction technique, which has revitalised the fossil fuel industry in recent years. It’s clear this is a topic Darryl is especially passionate about exploring as he goes into great detail eloquently explaining the technique for the lay person, weighing up the technical pros and cons, before getting into his real concerns on the matter. The fact that, despite the genuine possibilities of us now being able to extract vast natural resources which were previously unviable in financial terms, there are some very serious safety concerns, with the potential for causing huge irreparable damage to the heath of a huge section of the population. That these concerns are being blithely swept under the carpet and ignored, indeed actively suppressed.

And precisely who is doing this, both in the UK and US, which are of course leading the way in fracking? Well, the titans of the gas and oil industry whose very deep pockets have, through campaign donations, other lobbying mechanisms and general old-school-tie chumminess, managed to ensure their chosen politicians of every stripe are steering the debate and more importantly legislation, in their desired direction.

For example, did you know that Lord Howell, an energy adviser at the Foreign Office is also president of the British Institute of Energy Economics, which is sponsored by Shell and BP? He’s also George Osborne’s father-in-law, a man who in 2012 cut wind energy subsidies by 10% whilst giving a 500 million pound a year tax break to offshore drilling. Perhaps more shocking is the case of Lord John Browne, 30% owner of the UK fracking company Cuadrilla, who is an unelected member of the Cabinet Office, with powers to appoint non-executive directors to government departments, including the Treasury and the Departments of Energy and Climate Change plus the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as he sees fit. Conflict of interest, or just business as usual, you decide.

It’s an exposé which, whilst not remotely surprising to me, does sicken me even further that despite the appearance of us living in a democracy where we have control over the executive who make decisions on our behalf, supposedly for our benefit, it is a sham that ensures the same old snouts stay in the trough and damn the consequences. And let’s not fool ourselves into thinking there are any political alternatives available to us under the current voting system which would make a difference, because there are not. The mainstream political parties are all in bed with big business to a degree which is beyond disturbing, but until we start seriously dealing with the culture of corruption that pervades Westminster, that will never change.

So, are we all going to have to deal with the possible consequences to our health and the environment that Darryl outlines, which the fat cats keep lining their pockets? Probably, but as Darryl points out, the truth does eventually out, as the tobacco industry, another group that was extremely adept at manipulating the political landscape, eventually found out to their cost. Hopefully it’ll be somewhat quicker this time. And on a personal note, equally hopefully, Nuclear Fusion projects like the ITER test reactor, scheduled to be complete sometime around 2020, which will produce around 500 megawatts of output power for 50 megawatts of input power, i.e. ten times the amount of energy, will finally ensure the true clean energy boom begins in earnest, and fossil fuels can at last be consigned to history. Here’s hoping.

What follows below is my review of the previous edition without the fracking chapter.

This time around we find Darryl in full-on debunking mode, as he takes on the scientific lies, hoaxes and scams that annoy him the most, those being: electroconvulsive therapy, homeopathy, the moon landing, climate change, evolution, chiropractic, the MMR jab debacle and the general denial of irrefutable scientific evidence. I personally would have included shampoo adverts with their pseudo-science, made up chemical names and definitive surveys based on massive sample groups of errr…100 people, but that’s my own personal bugbear!

It’s well researched by Darryl as in each case he goes to great length to not only show how preposterous the various claims are, but also how just unreliable the particular people making those assertions are themselves, and in the case of climate change the infinitely more sinister aspect of just who it is that’s funding the idiots. But this is no diatribe, instead it’s a meticulous picking apart of the ridiculous web of half-baked facts and fiction that’s often woven around one or two grains of truth, usually completely taken and distorted totally out of context, to prove his case. Anyone who enjoyed Darryl’s previous work, PSYCHIATRIC TALES, which was a Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month, will definitely enjoy this. Darryl also employs the same understated clinical yet also slightly comical art style this time around, once again inserting himself as a talking head from time to time for additional narrational emphasis.

JR

Buy Science Tales h/c (Revised Edition) and read the Page 45 review here

John K Presents Spumco Comic Book h/c (£25-99, IDW) by John Kricfalusi and friends.

“Ah… the Lord loves an idiot.”

The return of the creator of Ren And Stimpy, this reprints the two outrageous, oversized issues much beloved by Mark and originally published by Marvel (good grief!) and Dark Horse some twenty years ago. The latter makes a lot more sense: Dark Horse published Dave Cooper, after all (COMPLETELY PIP & NORTON). There’s extra material in the back which, at an educated guess, probably began life as a third, subsequently aborted edition.

To be clear: this may look as if it’s for kids but it’s almost as foul as PETEY & PUSSY for although the salacious shenanigans are really no saucier than a seaside postcard, there is a great love of turd on display. There, I have said it – or at least I have typed it. I’ve dropped the big one, and so will a dog before having it forced back up his bum, and then so will Jimmy who adopts it as his baby. Actually, now that I’ve typed all that, I’m not sure that it is unsuitable for kids, but on your parental heads be it.

It’s eye-watering, scatalogical slapstick featuring stoopid people, and so evidently the work of an animator: you can almost hear the sound effects as eyes pop out of heads or characters explode into their component colours leaving an empty outline in their wake.

Mark would have written a far more informed review peppered with behind-the-scenes secrets but, on the whole, I think I’ve at least accurately indicated what you’re in for: action-packed bufffonery; Tom & Jerry with turds.

SLH

Buy John K Presents Spumco Comic Book h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Age Of Bronze vol 3A: Betrayal s/c (£13-50, Image) by Eric Shanower.

The finest modern version of The Trojan War I’ve come across in any medium, AGE OF BRONZE truly is a labour of love. The detail, both visual and narrative, is meticulous without ever sacrificing clarity or vitality. Indeed his panel composition couldn’t be easier on the eye, and his pen line, increasingly beautiful, is a successful mix of Perez/Jimenez for backgrounds and P. Craig Russell on the figures and faces.

That the third book had me engrossed all Sunday morning when it consists overwhelmingly of negotiations, recriminations, lamentations and strategic planning (this is the third of seven volumes; war may be imminent but has yet to break out) is a testament to Shanower’ s narrative judgement, his skill with words and the seductive beauty of the finished page. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the source material is crammed full of intrigue – seduction, rejection, superstition, betrayal – and revolves around the three most potent human emotions: love, anger and grief.

The interconnected threads are numerous, but the central story spins out of the actions of Paris, brother of Hektor and son of King Priam of Troy. Whilst a guest of one of the Achaean kings, Menelaus of Lakedaemon, he stole Menelaus’ wife, son and household treasure and returned with them to Troy. That wife was Helen, genuinely in love with Paris, yet still concerned for the wellbeing of her husband whom she knows to be a good man. In retaliation for Menelaus’ loss, an army of Achaean soldiers and royalty, led by High King Agamemnon – and including Odysseus, Palamedes and Achilles – has assembled and, after numerous set-backs, is finally poised on the nearby island of Tenedos to sail across the Aegean Sea. But with prophecy on both sides predicting so much loss and suffering from this seemingly inevitable conflict, the Achaeans embark upon a last-ditch attempt at obtaining restitution peacefully, while King Priam merely plays for time as his own allies assemble…

Shanower’s considerable skill with rhetoric does his source material and its characters full justice. That final confrontation by the Achaean embassy of King Priam on his throne, flanked by his sons, is electric. Any chance of reconciliation is scuppered by a goading Paris, gloating in Menelaus’ face and pushing his buttons to breaking point by dragging down Helen, his children and Menelaus’ own son who’s frightened by the father he no longer recognises.

The art of oratory is far from dead. Next: the art of war.

SLH

Buy Age Of Bronze vol 3A: Betrayal s/c and read the Page 45 review here

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

“Oh by the way, I forgot to tell you, Tommy invited us for dinner to meet an old bore.”
“An old bore? Who would… Waitaminnit – did he say an old bore, or meet the old Bohr?*”
“What difference does it make?”
“Well the spelling is different for one thing!”

Ah, whilst Stephen Hawking might arguably lay claim to be the most famous scientist of the second half of the 20th century, and despite the vocoding one busting many a phat rhyme expounding about being down with entropy and dissing the creationists in his hip-hop guise of MC Hawking, the coolest scientist of them all in my eyes at least was Richard Feynman. Most of you will probably never have heard of him, yet he was a key member of the Manhattan project during WW2 helping the US military invent the atomic bomb, and then developed a whole new branch of science called QED, Quantum Electrodynamics. Why is QED important? Well, as Feynman himself was fond of pointing out, with QED you can explain absolutely everything we ordinarily experience on a day to day basis, except gravity and radioactivity, so it’s pretty important.

I suppose Feynman first came to my attention as a kid in the aftermath of the Challenger shuttle disaster. Such was the high regard he was held in within political, military and obviously scientific circles that he was asked to be on the select committee investigating the cause of the disaster. When it became apparent that the usual spin was going to be applied to play down the causes of the disaster he threatened to release his own report, unless his conclusions were included in the official report verbatim. The powers that be reluctantly agreed, including them in their entirety, but as a separate appendix. It was widely observed that most people merely skipped the rest of the report and read Feynman’s unvarnished, and accurate, conclusions.

What I marvelled at most about Feynman, was here was someone who absolutely defied the common perception of the archetypal drab boring scientist. He played bongos, he cracked safes for a hobby, he worked on research papers whilst drinking soda every night in his favourite strip club… which his wife was actually happy to let him do. When he fancied a new challenge, he’d just up and find himself one, learning to play weird instruments, but not just being satisfied to master the basics, he’d have to become good enough to play in a band at the Rio Carnival for example! He taught himself to draw to an incredibly high standard too, and even had a crack at learning Chinese, though he did admit to finding that pretty tough.

When he won his Nobel Prize for physics, it’s pretty revealing that when anyone asked him about it and all the attendant hoopla and ceremony, his anecdote was always the snappy one-liner delivered to him by a New York cabbie, which he freely admitted he wished he’d thought of himself. The cabbie told him that when he saw Feynman being interviewed on television by reporters and asked to explain exactly why he’d won the prize, he didn’t understand a single word that Feynman had said, and that if he’d been in Feynman’s position he’d simply have stated to the assembled journalists, “If I could explain it in three minutes, it wouldn’t be worth the Nobel Prize!”

It’s a testament to the creators of this work that they manage to capture all these myriad, fascinating facets of Feynman’s life, not just his immense contributions to science, but the vigour with which he approached every single thing he did, including his romantic and professional relationships. This is an absolute must for anyone who enjoyed LOGICOMIX, in fact I would go so far as to say this is actually a superior work, which is high praise indeed given how highly I rate that particular book. And indeed this is also easily my favourite biographical work of this year too hands down. So whilst Hawking might manage to pull his nurse, and get the guest appearances on Star Trek playing poker with Picard, Feynman for me will always be the dude.

* refers, of course, to Niels Bohr, Danish Nobel prize winning physicist and another Manhattan Project member.

JR

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

Saturn Apartments vol 7 (£9-99, Viz) by Hisae Iwaoka…

Awww, I’m sad to say goodbye to another excellent Viz Signature Imprint series that’s charmed and beguiled me with its gentle character interplay and human stories. Will Mitsu make it down to Earth from the Ring, the orbiting space station that’s been humanity home since the Earth was abandoned to allow it to recover? I wouldn’t honestly have expected anything other than a happy ending to this series that has delighted me throughout, but it’s a close run thing as the tension builds up during the run up to the launch. If you are yet to give this series a try but have enjoyed manga like 20^TH CENTURY BOYS, CROSS GAME and CHILDREN OF THE SEA, then give it a go, it could be for you.

JR

Buy Saturn Apartments vol 7 and read the Page 45 review here

Kick-Ass vol 3 #1 (£2-25, Icn/Marvel) by Mark Millar & John Romita Jr.

“This is me brooding at the graves of my beloved parents. My Mom only dies of a cerebral haemorrhage, but my dad genuinely was murdered by a costumed super-villain.

“I can’t believe I toyed with giving all this up. Standing here and staring at their graves I realise that it’s my destiny to wear the mask on Mondays, Thursdays and every other Sunday.”

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

With fuck-all power comes enormous irresponsibility, and Dave is back in the saddle, suiting up to take on the seedy underworld once more, even if he can’t quite pluck up the courage to bust Hit Girl out of clink. Those penitentiary walls look really tall!

Not everyone’s as conscientious, though. There’s always one freeloading dick-head, and the self-styled Juicer has moved himself in to Hit Girl’s secret HQ, strewn his dirty laundry all over the floor and spends the entire day playing computer games while raiding petty cash to buy Marvel superhero DVDs.

John Romita Jr captures his goggle-eyes to perfection and, if you look closely, you’ll see how the characters have aged over the series, the kids’ faces having elongated. Also: spot the sly reversal in the tribute to a classic AMAZING SPIDER-MAN cover!

This is the final outing in the series – Mark Millar has laid down some pretty heavy hints as to why – but you can catch up any time you like with the books and our reviews of the KICK-ASS VOL 1, KICK-ASS VOL 2 and HIT-GIRL collections.

SLH

Buy Kick-Ass vol 3 #1  and read the Page 45 review here

Walking Dead vol 18: What Comes After (£10-99, Image) by Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard…

“Can I say something? I don’t quite understand the hostility in that look. No fucking sir.
“I’m a special kind of person. I don’t fucking rattle.
“You even made me drop Lucille. You have any fucking clue how much she hates being on the ground? She’s like an American flag that way. You just don’t let it happen… it’s disrespectful.
“Still… here I am, friendly as a fuckless fuck on free fuck day.”

In which everyone’s least favourite pinch-hitter Negan continues his reign of terror, enforced only by his sheer force of will, and of course dear old Lucille, his barbed-wire-decorated baseball bat. Scarcely have I ever wanted a fictional villain to get it so, so badly!! The last time was probably The Governor actually, which all goes to show Kirkman’s horror epic doesn’t show any signs of running out of steam any time soon. What next? A man with a tiger for a pet? Enter King Ezekiel… a man who really has got a tiger for a pet… and who might just be Rick’s best chance at taking out Negan. Somehow though, I can’t quite imagine it’s going to be as simple and straightforward as that. Also, I wish I could get rock and roll god Little Richard screaming Lucille out of my head every time she gets mentioned. I really have no idea what that is all about…

JR

Buy Walking Dead vol 18: What Comes After and read the Page 45 review here

The Crow: Skinning The Wolves s/c (£13-50, IDW) by James O’Barr & Jim Terry.

Twenty years ago James O’Barr’s THE CROW, powerful, poignant and packed full of post-punk references, cast its doom-laden pall over the collective comicbook psyche and, to this day, I am still recommending the removal of all razor blades from any household before reading it. There’s a new edition out, and you’ll find it reviewed on our website with interior art.

This… is not that.

Sporadic references to Wagner’s Ring Cycle aside, it is light on script and bereft of anything resembling a reason for existence. It could easily be Wolverine dishing out death in this WWII concentration camp. And if that’s your thang, then I highly recommend the infinitely superior single issue dedicated to the late, great Will Eisner which you’ll find in the back of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr’s WOLVERINE: ENEMY OF THE STATE.

This is mere melodrama, written and illustrated without subtlety, in which a concentration camp is cleansed of Nazis by a vengeful chess player resurrected from his mass grave after… well, you’ll see. Or you won’t.

SLH

Buy The Crow: Skinning The Wolves 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.

Romantic Bison (£2-00, self-published) by Lizz Lunney

Romantic Bison 2 (£2-00, self-published) by Lizz Lunney

Pick A Unicorn Notebook (£2-00, self-published) by Lizz Lunney

Cat Orgy Notebook (£2-00, self-published) by Lizz Lunney

Falling Cats Notebook (£2-00, self-published) by Lizz Lunney

Wood: Machine Sabbath h/c (£13-50, IDW) by Ashley Wood

Star Wars Omnibus Wild Space s/c vol 1 (£18-99, Dark Horse) by Mike W. Barr & Adolfo Buylla

Doctor Who: Prisoners Of Time vol 1 (£13-50, IDW) by Scott Tipton, David Tipton & various

Preacher Book 1 (£14-99, DC ) by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon, Glenn Fabry

Wake Up Percy Gloom h/c (£18-99, Fantagraphics) by Cathy Malkasian

The North End Of The World h/c (£37-99, Other A-Z) by Dave Hunsaker  & Christopher Shy

Ferals vol 2 s/c (£14-99, Avatar Press Inc) by David Lapham & Gabriel Andrade

Manara Library vol 5 h/c (£45-00, Dark Horse) by Milo Manara

The End h/c (£14-99, Fantagraphics) by Anders Nilsen

A User’s Guide To Neglectful Parenting s/c (£9-99, Drawn & Quarterly) by Guy Delisle

Catwoman vol 2: No Easy Way Down s/c (£18-99, DC ) by Ed Brubaker & Cameron Stewart

Stormwatch vol 1 s/c (£14-99, DC ) by Warren Ellis & Tom Raney, Jim Lee

Captain America vol 1: Castaway Dimension Z Book 1 h/c (£18-99, Marvel ) by Rick Remender & John Romita

Deadpool Killustrated s/c (£10-99, Marvel ) by Cullen Bunn & Matteo Lolli, Mike Del Mundo

Avengers vol 1: Avengers World s/c (UK Ed’n) (£12-99, Marvel ) by Jonathan Hickman & Jerome Opena, Adam Kubert

07 Ghost vol 4 (£7-50, Viz) by Yuki Amemiya

Neon Genesis Evangelion Omnibus vols 7-9 (£14-99, Viz) by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

GTO: 14 Days In Shonan vol 9 (£8-50, Random House) by Tohru Fujisawa

Knights Of Sidonia vol 3 (£9-99, Random House) by Tsutomu Nihei

Loveless vol 11 (£6-99, Viz) by Yun Kouga

The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya vol 2 (£8-50, Yen) by Nagaru Tanigawa & Gaku Tsugano

The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya vol 3 (£8-50, Yen) by Nagaru Tanigawa & Gaku Tsugano

Fairy Tail vol 25 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Hiro Mashima

Fairy Tail vol 26 (£8-50, Kodansha) by Hiro Mashima

Stormwatch vol 2 h/c (£22-50, DC) by Warren Ellis & Tom Raney, Bryan Hitch

Thor God Of Thunder vol 1: God Butcher s/c (UK Ed’n) (£10-99, Marvel) by Jason Aaron & Easd Ribic

ITEM! Emma Vieceli (see AVALON CHRONICLES reviewed above) is on Make It Then Tell Everybody. It’s a very funny podcast including a game of old-job one-upmanship:

“We should have stopped at bum wipes.”

ITEM! It’s not just the tune someone’s murdered. Cover to FATALE #19 and so much more at Sean Phillips’ website.

ITEM! For those bored with photo-realistic testosterone carnage, I present this beautiful 2012 Trial gameplay to the The Unfinished Swan. Please, please wait until the ink-splodge, black and white gameplay kicks in and please, please wait until you make it outdoors. After that you may want to switch off, buy the game and just play it through yourself. Comes with the highest recommendation from comicbook creators Kate Brown, Emma Vieceli and Duncan Fegredo.

ITEM! Page 45 announces Window Competition Winners and artists permanently featured in our window! Took me a while, sorry!

ITEM! Preview of Gerard Way & Becky Cloonan’s THE TRUE LIVES OF THE FABULOUS KILLJOYS #1, out today!

ITEM! From the publisher of PORCELAIN, a preview of Improper Books’ KNIGHT & DRAGON (Feel free to pre-order!).

ITEM! Preview of Andy Diggle’s THE UNCANNY #1.

ITEM! Caught on camera! Me at Alton Towers, screaming like a big boy’s blouse.

The thing about Oblivion is that it seems so scenic at first. You gently trundle to the top of the ride, several hundred feet above the park and oh, how pretty the tops of the trees look in their fresh Spring livery!

THEN THEY UP-END YOU BY 90 DEGRESS SO YOU ARE STARING DOWN INTO THE OBSIDIAN ABYSS AND THEY KEEP YOU HANGING THERE FOR A FULL FIVE SECONDS so you have time to contemplate precisely how foolish you’ve been embarking on the ride in the first place then…. AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!

- Stephen

The post Reviews June 2013 week two appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

And children being children, it never occurs to them that the very idea they could fill those gaps themselves, with their own creations, ought to be a) totally impossible and b) a very, very bad idea. 

 - Jonathan on Mouse, Bird, Snake, Wolf 

Sunny (£16-99, Viz) by Taiyo Matsumoto -

The Sunny of the title is a car, an old yellow Datsun Sunny which sits outside the orphanage. It doesn’t run anymore but it still has an important role: it’s the only place where no adults are allowed. The people who take care of the children are very nice but everyone needs their own space; to play or imagine or smoke or just hang out.  So when they want to do that the kids go to the Sunny and “drive” it to wherever they want to go (the desert, the moon, their old houses) or sometimes just sit and chat and argue about the who fancies who and what they are going to be when they grow up. 

From such a simple concept comes an utterly beautiful, luminous book about childhood, love, abandonment and yearning. There are tinges of otherness around the edges of this story, reminiscent of his earlier book TEKKON KINKREET, however for the most part these seem like fairly regular kids dealing with their slightly irregular situation. Because what I didn’t realise until I read this book (and then took to the internet for further explanation) is that many Japanese orphans have at least one living parent or guardian who has, for whatever reason, chosen to leave them in the care of the state. So most of the kids here are in limbo: they can’t legally be adopted, their parents still have ultimate control over their lives but they know in all likelihood that no-one will ever come to take them back home. Some parents visit their kids; bring them presents or take them for days out. Others live nearby meaning that their children can pop round to see them but ultimately go back to the orphanage in the evening to eat and sleep. No wonder then that the Sunny is a sacred space where kids rule and adults have no say. 

The cast of children and young adults are skilfully written, each character developed with care as we get to know them through glimpses of their lives. Some moments are utterly heartbreaking; we see the kids wrestle with questions, perfectly reasonable questions given the circumstances, and we worry that their young minds might settle on answers that will set the on the “wrong” path. On the other hand we watch them troop on together, looking after each other, accepting each other, playing, laughing and building bonds which transcend the rejection the adult world has presented them with. They have their own universe with their own rules; they are smart beyond their years. 

The art is absolutely gorgeous. Matsumoto has added an inky wash shading to his black and white art which gives warmth and depth to the detail. The painted colour sections are lovely, as are the opaque covers, front and back, and the chapter breaks. The book is a beautiful thing to hold in your hand. Sometimes scratchy and intense, sometimes sweeping and clean, Matsumoto seems to know just how much ink to put on the page to get the feeling of the scene across. Each child is unique, each set of eyes holds something back or lets something out at a key moment. My favourite book of the year so far, I can’t wait for the next volume. 

DK 

Buy Sunny vol 1 h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Mouse, Bird, Snake, Wolf h/c (£9-99, Walker Books) by David Almond & Dave McKean…

“This is a very peculiar world!” He looked up at the clouds.
“Why are there so many gaps and spaces in it?” he yelled. The Gods took no notice.
“It needs more things in it!” he said. Still no notice.
Little Ben sighed. “Have you ever looked into an empty space?” he asked his friends.
“Of course we have,” they said.
“Sometimes,” Little Ben continued, “when you look into an empty space, you can kind of see something in it.
“Something in an empty space?” said Harry.
“Yes,” said Ben. “You can sort of see what’s missing from it.”
“Like what?” asked Harry.
“Like… a mouse.”
“A mouse?” said Harry. “What on earth is a mouse?”
“I don’t quite know,” said Ben. He wrinkled his nose and scratched his head. “It’s a mousey kind of thing, I suppose.”

Harry, Sue and little Ben live in a blissful world, full of amazing vistas and wonderful animals, created by the Gods above. Gods who, having produced such beautiful creations, understandably felt a bit hungry. So, they decided they ought to have some cake, but then, feeling rather full and weary they thought they should probably have a little nap too. After a few days of such relaxing, and much self-congratulation about having created a near-paradise, they duly forgot all about the fact that it wasn’t quite finished… In fact, there were rather a few empty spaces to be found once you started to look around for them – as inquisitive children are prone to doing. And children being children, it never occurs to them that the very idea they could fill those gaps themselves, with their own creations, ought to be a) totally impossible and b) a very, very bad idea. Obviously, point a) turns out to be surprisingly easy, while point b)… well, let’s just say that the title of the book gives a very good indication of the escalating dangers the children are about to put themselves through… 

This is a most engaging and very enchanting modern fairytale of the dangers of biting off more than you can chew, and indeed the dangers of creating something that can bite off far more of you than you would ever want chewed. I enjoyed David’s story immensely, with his lazy, glib Gods and boisterous, unabashed kids, but as with their previous collaborations THE SAVAGE and SLOG’S DAD, it is Dave’s art which brings the witty narrative into vivid, lustrous, breath-taking life. There is a great pull quote from Neil Gaiman on the back cover which sums Dave and the art in this work very nicely indeed, “I don’t think there is anything Dave McKean cannot do as artist.”

So, I decided to put this work the ultimate test and read it to my two-year-old nutjob at bedtime. Being the demanding jumping bean she is, she has a high quality threshold for nocturnal recitals, and indeed I have had a couple of books forcibly closed on my fingers as not suitably entertaining enough. This, though, was a resounding success, as I suspected it might be, given the high animal content which is always a winner with my daughter à la CHU’S DAY and I WANT MY HAT BACK. Indeed, a rare immediate encore was requested, duly granted, though a second curtain call had to be refused on the grounds that Daddy needed to finally put a certain someone to bed. Tears ensued, but were quickly stemmed on the promise of future performances. I think we can state therefore this was an undoubted hit given how much I liked it too! 

JR

Buy Mouse, Bird, Snake, Wolf h/c and read the Page 45 review here

The Wake #1 of 10 (£2-25, Vertigo) by Scott Snyder & Sean Murphy.

“No… It can’t… We’re so close…”

Sub-aquatic, ice-cold horror from the writer of AMERICAN VAMPIRE, SEVERED, BATMAN: BLACK MIRROR, and the current run on BATMAN (BATMAN: COURT OF OWLS etc) and the glorious, gawp-worthy artist of PUNK ROCK JESUS, JOE THE BARBARIAN and HELLBLAZER: CITY OF DEMONS.

In twenty years time: a wetsuited woman glides over the narrow waterways between skyscrapers, one of which is leaning precariously. A dolphin harnessed with scientific survey equipment surfaces from the water lapping gently against a brownstone’s roof. And then… another tidal wave.

Now: marine biologist Lee Archer, sacked from NOAA and on the Department of Homeland Security’s shit list, is contacted by Agent Cruz and coerced into flying to Alaska’s South Slope to analyze an eerie, underwater call. Base camp is thousands of feet below sea level:

“Jesus, what is that?”
“It’s called a Ghost Rig. It’s a prototype. Yes, it’s a secret. No, it’s not legal. But, it has the potential to extract nearly two hundred barrels a day, so there it is.”

There Lee discovers she is not alone: Dr. Marin, professor of folklore and mythology has been summoned to study an artefact; the enigmatic Meeks to study tissue samples. And where do you think these sounds and tissue samples are coming from? Oh dear, that’s never a good idea…

It’s classic Doctor Who, actually: illegal, environmentally disastrous strip-mining of natural resources invading the territory of an ancient and previously undiscovered species. Exacerbate situation by [redacted] and then belatedly bring in the experts before all hell breaks loose in a half-lit, confined environment.

Exceptional opening sequence.

SLH

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

Lone Wolf & Cub Omnibus vol 1 (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Kazuo Koike &  Goseki Kojima.

“Happiness Is Freedom, and Freedom Is Courage”
- Pericles, Funeral Oration

For centuries the Tokugawa Shogunate ruled the lords of Japan’s feudal domains with an iron fist, dispatching samurai to subdue and control the population through intimidation and ruthless brutality. This they performed with relish, taking the opportunity to increase their own hegemony in the process. In 1655, however, the Ogami clan vanished completely; in 1681 so did the Yagyu clan. This, then, is a possible explanation for these events, a classic Japanese tale of loyalty, power, corruption, betrayal and revenge. 

Unlike more romanticised fantasies, the samurai here – other than Lonewolf himself – are exposed as nothing more laudable than the highly skilled bullies and puppets they were. Nor is there a great deal of honour to be found amongst them (Lonewolf notes more common courtesy amongst the Yakuza he meets than amongst samurai), and when it’s invoked it tends to mask mere pride or self-interest at its heart. On one occasion early on a promise of immunity is granted only to be shamefully ignored, as is the honourable option of a one-on-one duel in favour of a mounted ambush, the supposedly brave and mighty warriors seeking safety in numbers and trickery.

As you might suppose from his name, Lonewolf no longer considers that Happiness Is Belonging*, having fallen victim to the power struggles at the top of this corrupt and treacherous hierarchy (the story is partially revealed at the end of the first volume). Instead he finds the courage and determination to face the world alone, relying on his own skill and intuition, trusting no one and nothing other than his own judgement and conscience.  Travelling with his infant son, he offers his services as an assassin, only to discover, as often as not, that those same agents who hire him seek his destruction. The work is filled with Lonewolf’s iconoclastic pronouncements and selfless actions, standing up to authority, deflating humbug and exposing hypocrisy, dishonour and deceit. If it wasn’t such dodgey territory I’d assert that, just like Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (a satire of society where form and manners take priority of genuine goodwill), there’s something of the New Testament about all this.

So what of the form itself? Each chapter is self-contained and, unlike the dog’s dinner of a film (Shogun Assassin, now available in its original, more coherent trilogy), there is more than enough room for the quiet, even tender moments here. This is where Koike and Kojima’s storytelling skills come to the fore, in the pacing and evocation of mood through landscape, whilst Kojima’s sense of movement is both acute and intelligently communicated. The tranquillity of a forest walk with gently falling leaves, for example, may suddenly explode into a fluid frenzy of speedlines and blurred limbs as an attack is instigated and parried; you’ll find yourselves turning over a whole succession of pages without necessarily having seen anything – just the impression of movement – perfect for conveying the preternatural reflexes of the matchless Ronin. And then, as I said, there’s the delicate handling of atmosphere where solitude is emphasised, subtly, by the use of single trees or potted plants, the retreat in ‘Waiting For The Rains’ being a prime example, and internal thoughts are given expression by a change in the weather.

This is a new 3-in-one edition in a taller, broader format.

* A notion being taught to this day in self-styled ‘Bushido’ cults disguised as self-defence classes as an insidious means of recruiting then maintaining power over intitiates. Ironically enough this work – and indeed the legend as a whole – remains immensely popular with this same flock of sheep who appear to miss the point. Wherein, sadly, lies another New Testament parallel.

SLH

Buy Lone Wolf & Cub Omnibus vol 1 and read the Page 45 review here

Age Of Bronze volume 2: Sacrifice (£12-99, Image) by Eric Shanower.

Projected to run for seven volumes, this epic, in-depth and dramatic retelling of the Trojan War has garnered Eisner Awards as well as praise from outside our industry from the likes of The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly. Booklist said that it “unfolds with heartbreaking determination,” and they’ve pinpointed one of its chief strengths.

If you’re not that well schooled in the classics, this will prove startling and compelling; if you are, then so much of the power lies in the inevitable, for you know just who is doomed, how and why – but it won’t stop you desperately hoping that they somehow avoid their destiny. Speaking of destiny, this is a time where the population believed in Fate, believed in prophecy and portent and, unfortunately, sacrifice. It’s amazing what your beliefs will make you do, but that doesn’t make you any less courageous. For some, it will prove the ultimate test: betray your army, or sacrifice your daughter? It’s not so cut-and-dried as it sounds. You have responsibility not just to your kingdom but to thousands of lives under your command. And if it does sound like a no-brainer then Shanower will convince you otherwise, for this is huge enough that everyone is rounded out, given a depth and an individual perspective.

There are some superb visual devices as well, from the mists that rise to isolate Helen and Paris atop Troy’s tallest tower (“It’s as if we’re the only people left in the entire world.”), to the pages of constant wind, denoted by “SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHS” between each tier of panels until Agamemnon’s daughter leaves her tent for the final time. It’s a very clear panel structure as well, like Talbot’s THE TALE OF ONE BAD RAT or Gary Spencer Millidge’s STRANGEHAVEN, making it effortlessly readable by those unused to comics.

Also there’s a map, for the names have all changed (along with the territorial boundaries), a couple of family trees, and a great big glossary of names including how to pronounce them.

For far, far more, please see my new review of AGE OF BRONZE VOL 1: A THOUSAND SHIPS.

SLH

Buy Age Of Bronze vol 2: Sacrifice s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Mere s/c (£14-99, Picturebox) by  C.F.

“Welcome.”
“Welcome Back.”
“Go To Hell.”

From the creator of POWR MASTRS (two volumes reviewed with great approbation) comes a collection of zines, one of which purports to be a “suicide prevention comic”. I really couldn’t tell, but on the subject of suicide I wholeheartedly recommend THE NEXT DAY by John Porcellino & co.

It’s not all comics. Under a gorgeous, blue-striped, burgundy cover framed in a black and white chain of spot varnish there are also random photographs, rudimentary sketches, eye-pleasing patterns and… hmmm. Why don’t I let Nicole Rudick describe her reaction? From the introduction:

““Huh?” or a similar expression of total confusion, accompanied my first reading of C.F.’s zines – and I think I’m not alone in that.”

Confirmed!

“The comics are narratively perplexing, and though the elements one expects to find in a zine are there – artwork, graphics, stories, notes from the author – their meaning and significance are largely enigmatic.”

Confirmed

“But C.F.’s work is disarming; it elicits, as Ruscha says, “a kind of ‘Huh’,” meaning bafflement but also surprise, an inability to stop thinking about it after putting it down.”

I wouldn’t go that far.

Next!

SLH

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

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz s/c new format (£10-99, Marvel) by Eric Shanower & Skottie Young.

Whilst remembering A) that this is based on the original prose not the film and B) it has sold by the shedload in its two prior formats, this is what I knee-jerked some several years ago about its first chapter.

I don’t know if this is new Oz material from Eric (AGE OF BRONZE) Shanower or some of his old work. Nor do I care because I hate The Wizard Of fucking Oz film with a passion. It’s everything I loathe: twee morality, camp acting, gaudy colours, bloody fucking pigtails on prissy little girls, tiny little munchkin people (that might even be what they’re called – how would I know? I’ve never been able to stomach more than seven-second snatches of it), and worst of all, songs!

Whoever first invented the musical should be disinterred, brought back to life, not healed in any goddamn way, shape or form and then subjected to an eternal loop of The Village People’s videos at full blast for ever and ever or at least until America elects Sarah Palin and the whole world goes up in a ball of flames. A ball of pro-life flames, mind – no contradictions there.

However, Skottie Young makes this look better than it has any right to whilst still calling itself The Wizard Of Oz, so I could not possible scowl at you for ordering this. If, however, you do so whilst telling me how sorry you feel for Judy “tragic” Garland then I will lock you our cellar and let the snakes there have their say.*

*Emily was horrified last weekend to hear me tell a customer’s young son that if he touched the figures in our cabinet one more time then a trap door would open and he’d fall into our pit of snakes. On reflection – you know, when the tears started streaming down the poor kid’s face – it was a mite harsh, but I tell you: those tiny little hands never so much as wandered in the vicinity of that cabinet again.

SLH

Buy The Wonderful Wizard of Oz s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Tales Of The Buddha Before He Was Enlightened s/c (£10-99, Renegade Arts Entertainment) by Alan Grant & Jon Haward…

“That’s some willpower you got, Jesus.”
“Yeah. Have to admit I was wavering over the babes.”
“So how’d you manage?”
“Gotta thank my dad. The bastard watches everything I do.”

Think Alan Grant attempting to channel the spirit of Gilbert FURRY FREAK BROTHERS Shelton, with a dash of more simplistic, ribald Viz (the irreverent British publication, not the Japanese publisher) humour thrown in for good measure, and you’ve pretty much got it nailed. I will say it is rather a one trick pony in terms of the jokes, as Buddha wanders the Earth smoking bubonic chronic and nailing pretty much every available piece of skirt. Some will no doubt find it hilarious, others be left yawning. Me? I’ll simply leave you with some ancient Buddhist wisdom I have often found appropriate in many a situation. With the ideal comes the actual…

JR

Buy Tales Of The Buddha Before He Was Enlightened s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Lucifer vol 1 combined edition (£22-50, DC) by Mike Carey & Scott Hampton.

Reviews of previous volumes one and two which comprise this tome are reproduced below.

Volume one…

The devil is walking the earth for, in the SANDMAN series, Lucifer quit his day job in hell for a piano bar in Los Angeles. Now he’s received an assignment from The Creator Himself, and if Lucifer agrees to do Heaven’s dirty work he can name his own price. It’s a journey that will require harsh sacrifices, but then it won’t be Lucifer making them!

Reprints #1-4 of the main series plus the preceding three-issue mini that featured Scott Hampton’s painted art and some very fine dialogue.

Volume two…

I’ve been avoiding the Gaiman strip-mining experience for some time now, and although I can’t remember what it was that made me think twice and actually read this cover to cover, I’m grateful for it. The problem is that you look at these things, at the pages in front of you, and you just think “Oh god, where is the joy, where is the passion, the slightest flicker of flair?” Because Ormston aside, the art here is just so thin, so flat, so unimaginative, so lacking in fire, and when you’ve been given such exotic locations, such an epic scale, and such a considered sense of repressed melodrama and timing, it seems so ungrateful to deliver such uninspired, asexual bloodlessness.

All credit to Carey then for persevering when presented with the art, for not only are the plots – the intrigues and manipulations – clever, and the revelations perfectly placed, but the pace is jaunty as we shift scenes at an almost metronomic pace which, far from being monotonous, lends the storytelling a clipped vibrancy and momentum, keeping up with the constantly twisting plights of the various players. Above all, it’s Lucifer’s dialogue, which is played with an economical, dry wit, a self-assurance without triumphalism. I’m not really going to bother with the plot here; I tried but did the book a total disservice. Though I have to advise that this isn’t Gaiman so I was expecting total tedium, which may account for the extent of my praise.

SLH

Buy Lucifer vol 1 and read the Page 45 review here

Clone vol 1: First Generation s/c (£9-99, Image) by David Schulner & Juan Jose Ryp.

Dr. Luke Taylor is going to be a dad.

A man of medicine, he is, however, utterly confounded by the practicalities of assembling a flat-packed crib. Eight left-over screws is not a good sign, as well we all know. He’s also ill-prepared for his new role in life given that his own father abandoned him, and now he’s having dreams of being hunted down and shot in the chest.

So imagine Luke’s shock when he hears a crash downstairs, follows a thick trail of blood to the kitchen, and discovers an identical twin collapsed under the draining board with a gaping hole in the guts.

“Well,” observes the twin, “this is awkward.”

Amelia Taylor is having a sonogram. It doesn’t go as smoothly as she hoped: the baby’s growth is unusually accelerated. But before tests can be conducted, Luke appears and strong-arms her out of the surgery. But if that’s her husband, who is calling her cell phone?

Vice President Mike Charles is voting in favour of a ban on embryonic stem cell research, even though his daughter suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. No matter, he has his eye firmly on the Presidential top spot and for that he needs conservative voters with their myopic votes. Embryonic stem cell research is a sin against God… which they’ve been merrily committing for thirty-odd years.

What follows is a thoroughly frantic page-turner with an ever-increasing if superficially identical cast. Just bear in mind that the nurture of nature is going to produce very different results when conducted in far from laboratory conditions.

Carnage comes courtesy of the artist on Warren Ellis’ BLACK SUMMER and NO HERO .

SLH

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

Superior Spider-Man vol 1: My Own Worst Enemy s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Dan Slott & Ryan Stegman, Giuseppe Camuncoli.

“Ahhh! I can’t take this anymore! It’s – It’s crazy-town banana-pants!”

First thing you should know: this isn’t a sideshow spin-off. This is the main Spider-title replacing AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, however temporarily, and we don’t know how temporary Peter’s current condition is yet.

In SPIDER-MAN: DYING WISH the mop-topped minger known as Doctor Octopus side-stepped certain death by swapping minds with Peter Parker as his own sorry, saggy old carcass expired. Now he inhabits Peter Parker’s youthful body and pretty face whilst inheriting Peter’s memories, his relatives and acquaintances, including a confused Mary Jane Watson. This has catalysed a reformation of sorts, for Otto Octavius is now determined to fight crime as Spider-Man but with his own, warped set of priorities and a new, more methodical approach which somehow eluded our Peter. Doctor Octavius has a very different modus operandi

And this is the delight: some of Otto’s innovations are genuinely clever and infinitely more practical; some of his strategies risk ruining Spider-Man’s reputation for good; some of his quick thinking has paid dividends which poor Peter never saw; but some of his costume modifications are dangerously diabolical. Meanwhile some of the much older man’s moves on Peter’s young loved ones are positively icky.

And all Peter Parker can do is float there and watch…

Oh, he is far from gone, I can assure you! There is enormous comedy potential to be had here and Dan Slott has seized it, revelling in the dramatic irony that is everyone’s ignorance except Carlie Cooper’s.

Moreover, the longer this goes on, the more it makes sense that it was Dr. Octopus who finally seized control of Peter Parker’s life, for they share so much in scientific background and acumen. Otto can take full advantage of Peter’s position at Horizon Labs, he’s just less likely to share. He can be convincingly savvy in all of these spheres and, in addition, his arrogance comes across to those not in the know merely as renewed self-confidence: the diffident ditherer is gone, and some women find that attractive…

Pretty much impressed by the art as well which comes across as Eric Larsen inked by Howard Chaykin on Ryan Stegman’s part, then with Giuseppe Camuncoli it becomes something more akin to mid-John Romita Jr inked by Eric Larsen.

Above all, this is far from assembly-line fisticuffs. It is very well thought-through. What could so easily have been a gimmick merely treated as such by 1990s writers has instead been seized as an opportunity to surprise.

It is bananas, for sure, but it is far from pants. It is instead, crazy-town banana-pants.

And I think that is where we came in.

SLH

Buy Superior Spider-Man vol 1: My Own Worst Enemy s/c and read the Page 45 review here

All New X-Men vol 2: Here To Stay h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & David Marquez, Stuart Immonen.

“Here’s the pitch. I don’t care about mutants. I don’t care about the good mutants and I don’t care about the bad mutants. I used to. Sometimes I cared a lot.
“But you know what? Charles Xavier is dead. And so is his dream.”

Previously in ALL-NEW X-MEN VOL 1: the Beast has brought the original X-Men forward through time in order to shock Scott Summers AKA Cyclops out of declaring a mutant revolution and so risk a civil war and its potential, genocidal backlash. The first confrontation between Uncanny teams old and new was explosive and the time-rush has triggered Jean Grey’s latent telepathic powers way too early. She’s discovered how they lived and how she died. She has determined that they will stay, and she is not above using her new-found, mind-bending abilities to ensure that this happens.

Meanwhile they live at the new school for gifted mutants run by Wolverine and Kitty Pryde, and Kitty is attempting to train each of the volatile youngsters to survive the present.

“Now you listen, lady, I’ve been an X-Man for –“
“What? About three weeks?”
“I fought Magneto!”
“You threw snowballs at him.”
“Oh yeah? You know Unus The Untouchable? I totally touched him! (That sounded wrong.)”

Dear Bobby Drake. I love the way Immonen draws his early-teen ice form: all soft snow and shiny coal eyes.

Now Angel meets his future self who evades explaining when has happened to his wings; Captain America discovers what the Beast has done; the younger Cyclops steals Wolverine’s bike and comes face to face with a world he cannot comprehend along with a certain shape-shifting, blue-skinned spinner of half-truths with plans of her own which drag in S.H.I.E.L.D. Finally, the current, renegade Cyclops teleports into town with an offer:

“To me, my X-Men!”

Marvel’s insistence on releasing as many titles as possible twice a month has inevitably led to lapses in quality, and the Angel episode is both out of character and excruciating in its lack of lustre. Plus – whether or not directed by Bendis – David Marquez’s panel composition is virtually unreadable in places. Enough with the unnecessarily confusing layouts, especially across double-page spreads! I’ve been reading comics for 40+ years and took several wrong turns.

That aside, it’s all ramping up beautifully and, having read ahead in the serialised floppies, I can promise you much meat ahead. The cliffhanger will have you wriggling in your seats and the ramifications will be severe.

SLH

Buy All New X-Men vol 2: Here To Stay 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.

Misty Circus h/c (£10-99, Dark Horse) by Victoria Frances

John K presents Comic Book h/c (£25-99, IDW) by various

Walking Dead vol 18: What Comes After (£10-99, Image) by Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard

The Eye Of The World: The Graphic Novel vol 1 s/c (£11-99, Tor) by Robert Jordan, Chuck Dixon & Chase Conley

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Classics vol 5 (£14-99, IDW) by various

The Crow: Skinning The Wolves s/c (£13-50, IDW) by James O’Barr & Jim Terry

Batman And Robin vol 1: Born To Kill s/c (£12-99, DC) by Peter J. Tomasi & Patrick Gleason

Batman And Robin vol 2: Pearl h/c (£18-99, DC) by Peter J. Tomasi & Patrick Gleason

Harley Quinn: Night And Day s/c (£12-99, DC) by Karl Kesel & Terry Dodson, Pete Woods

Marvel Masterworks: Fantastic Four vol 9 (£18-99, Marvel) by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

Spider-Man: Danger Zone s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Dan Slott, Christos Gage, Zeb Wells & Humberto Ramos, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Steve Dillon

Blood-C vol 2 (£9-99, Dark Horse) by Ranmaru Kotone

ITEM! Fascinating comic on drug addiction research by Stuart McMillen sent to me by my old mate Nigel Brunsden (@Mannaz) whom I worked with at Fantastic Store Birmingham. He introduced Antony Johnston to CEREBUS. #truefact

ITEM! Worldess, tactile comic for the blind sent to me by Richard Hanks (@FolkyDokey). I’d love to get my hands on a copy.

ITEM! Oh dear GOD! School capitulates to mass fear of fundamentalists by banning even-handed (equal opportunity?) cartoon satire which just this once happens to have the temerity to take on Islam after addressing other, equally repressive organised religions. Thereby proving the point of my final sub-clause. Via @CBLDF (Comicbook Legal Defence Fund), obv.

ITEM! Comic on courage, vulnerability and surviving sexual abuse by psychologist Nina Burrowes (@NinaBurrowes). Please watch the video at that link – this is so important. Nina Burrowes calls out for artists to help create that comic here.

ITEM! Brilliant new Billy Bragg single on DIY-fail – video features a wealth of UK comic talent (err, as in comedians)

 - Stephen

The post Reviews June 2013 week one appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

If it were designed to suck out your soul then deposit it, quivering, down a bleak back-alley in slightly soiled bed linen to subsist on meths for the rest of your life, then I would consider it the most remarkable success.

Fuck it, I’m going home. In fact, I’m going to the dentist to have all my teeth pulled out as a palliative pick-me-up.

 - Stephen on Gabba Gabba Hey: The Story Of The Ramones

Also:

TILL MONKEY TELLS ALL!

In which I give my first-ever 45-minute live interview – with Make It Then Tell Everybody – and grow increasingly “animated”. There are swears!

Make It Then Tell Everybody Interviews Page 45’s Stephen L. Holland

We Can Fix It s/c (£10-99, Top Shelf) by Jess Fink -

If you or I had a time machine we might go back and, say, kill Hitler. (Or perhaps prevent Diego Maradona from scoring a blatant handball in the ’86 World Cup.) However, if you or I were Jess Fink (CHESTER 5000 XYV) we would use said machine to go back, set ourselves up with hotties, engineer sexy situations and make out with our younger selves because Jess Fink is naughty! College, high school, the workplace – nowhere is safe from Finks finagling. But what starts as a gentle prod in the right direction soon becomes an exercise in micro-management.

After all, we all know better now than we did 10 years ago, or even five minutes ago right? Seems only sensible, then, that Jess should apply her worldly wisdom to help her former selves make better decisions. Don’t date that boy, he turns out to be an arse. Wear something nicer to that party, you’re gonna hook up. And no, that is not how you give a good blowjob! *Tut!* For some reason though, Jess’ former selves aren’t particularly grateful for her advice. Reactions range from “who the hell are you?! You’re scaring me” to “OMG butt the hell out of our/my/your life!” But the more she is rebuffed the more future/now Jess is determined to Make Things Better. And the more she tries, the more she fails. And the more she fails the more she is convinced that she has to go back further to fix the problem at its source. Which is probably birth because, let’s face it, that’s where all of our problems really began.

But of course there isn’t really a problem: there is just a young Jess going about her life, making the decisions and mistakes that will shape her, writing her own history and becoming her own person. Who cares if the fashion choices we made at 14 weren’t the best; if our hair was wince-worthy and our home-made comicbooks were just blatant rip-offs of our favourite artist of the day? Yes, perhaps that time moping in our room agonising over the fact no-one understood us might have been better spent, but so what? Dating people we shouldn’t, quitting jobs we should have stuck with, that ill-advised perm, are all part of what made us “Us”. And then there are the fun times, so often forgotten when we look back with a critical eye. Laughing until your sides hurt, that first kiss, that first love, even that first pay packet. All the things, good and bad, that brought us to this moment on this day as *exactly* the people we are now.  Deep.

I think Fink has pulled off a really difficult thing here, making a book that is very funny and enjoyable but also personal and meaningful. There are chuckles and facepalms on every page but at the same time the observations come thick and fast and are revealing and brave. The story feels honest and self-effacing but never navel-gazey or maudlin. It’s a romp, in the best possible sense – no-holds-barred, silly, passionate, forgiving and smart. Fantastic!

DK

Buy We Can Fix It s/c and read the Page 45 review here

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

“And with change came fear.
“And with fear, came blame.
“Soon everyone had their very own name for the dread.
“And ultimately, what is the act of naming, but a special kind of tidying away?”

Well indeed, we do love to compartmentalise – see Shaun Tan’s THE LOST THING. In fact, fans of Shaun Tan, please see and read Stephen Collins’ THE GIGANTIC BEARD THAT WAS EVIL. It’s right up your suburb!

Such is the structure here – with its dialogue and sound effects integrated within the third-person narrative – that I have, however, missed out the nature of the naming:

“It’s a punishment from God.”
“It’s nature’s revenge.”
“It’s just pure EVIL.”

It’s just a little bit of history repeating itself.

Oh, the sheep mentality – those so easily lead to dread all and sundry! Stephen Collins has much to say about our reaction to the new or unknown, and those who would fan the flames of that fear. And he has slotted it all into this whopping piece of whimsy told in softest graphite on thick, cream paper about a man who’s been bald from birth save for a teeny-tiny hair under his nose which will neither grow nor be snipped away. It is a constant, and constants are very reassuring, aren’t they?

Dave lives Here. More precisely, Dave lives on a street on the outer edge of Here which is entirely surrounded by sea. On the outer edges of the sea lies There. No one wants to go There. No one wants to go to sea, and those few who do have not come back. It’s so unsettling that the houses which line the cliff tops are all for sale. None of them have windows on the sea-side: it’s best not to look. Instead they face inwards, looking on to the impeccably maintained, identical streets whose trees are conscientiously clipped into uniform shapes. It’s all very neat and all very tidy – just like its residents.

Dave is comforted by this so sits at his window, alone at night, sketching the suburb without scratching its surface while listening to The Bangles’ ‘Eternal Flame’ on repeat. It blots out the sound of the sea.

By day, Dave ventures into the city, right in the heart of Here and as far away from There as you can get, where he works as a data analyst. He’s not entirely sure where the data comes from or what it is for, but it’s there, every morning, in his ‘Inbox’, ready to be ordered into graphs and pie charts and flow charts and Venn Diagrams. Tidied away, it all makes sense if something without purpose could be said to make sense. Until, one day, it doesn’t, and this sudden, alarming eruption of chaos catalyses a psychosomatic eruption of its own – that of Dave’s beard!

It’s such a dreamy read whose gentle narrative drifts across the pages, in and out of the panels, never assuming or consuming much time, leaving the images to live and breath; leaving the reader time to chuckle at everyone’s absurdity and space to gawp at the sheer majesty of the biggest beard you will ever see in your life!

However will the government cope? Who will be conscripted to whip those whiskers into shape as they sprawl ever onwards, outwards and upwards? Whoever it is, there will be knock-on effects throughout the land and (although I won’t spoil the biggest surprises) I cannot resist The Here Mail headline after a squad of riot coppers kettling the beast fall prey to its fulsome fecundity:

“POLICE CAUGHT BY THE FUZZ”

Oh, The Here Mail: you will wince with recognition. Not least at its opinion column entitled…

“Why I’m So Angry About All Of This.”

SLH

Buy The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil h/c and read the Page 45 review here

The Terrible Tales Of The Teenytinysaurs! (£8-99, Walker Books) by Gary Northfield.

“ARRGH! This is so undignified!”

Exuberant, ebullient and stoopid to boot, this has stampeded to the top of my Babel of books to be recommended to all young and impressionable minds, for it is they who understand so keenly that dinosaur dung is the very height of sophisticated comedy. Especially when plopped on your head from a megasaur arse.*

Gary Northfield is the demented jester behind the PHOENIX COMIC’s Gary’s Garden as well as The Beano’s DEREK THE SHEEP. Truly does this man comprehend the subtle humour of dramatic irony, the Chaucerian slight-of-hand and refined Greek rhetoric. He just ignores them completely in favour of ridiculous buffoonery which is what the kids want!

So meet buck-toothed Reggie, the moron Pteradon who is as lovely as lovely can be; Natasha the smasher, a fearless Triceratops who will not be bossed by the boys; Stegosaur Ronnie, forever chasing dreams… and butterflies… and Natasha; delinquent Dave, the gang’s only member with thumbs (mentally non-opposable); and finally Thomas. Thomas is one of those herbivorous giants with long wriggly necks who we all know were blue, except that Thomas isn’t really that gigantic yet, unlike his big brother Colin who will get roped into all sorts of nonsense like snorting the prehistoric posse off to the moon (fruity, fizzy tastes like Haribo Tangfastics** – but you knew that already, right?).

Together they galumph about their prehistoric domain in increasingly far-fetched escapades, lolloping wildly like a bunch of loopy, slack-jawed Red Setters. The cartooning is exquisite. I live for the panels in which someone’s nose gets bitten and the character’s eyes pop out of their heads, for Gary is the absolute king of wide-eyed, off-the-scale shrieking/agony/outrage. Also, the colouring is delicious and when you get to the undersea episode you are truly in for a treat – and for a startling surprise.

In addition, one adventure turns into a diabolical board game while another gives you not one, two, but three opportunities to help our dino-delinquents rescue Natasha’s new necklace in double-page spreads reminiscent of Jamie Smart’s FIND CHAFFY or Thomas Flintham’s SUPER-FANTASTIC PUZZLES. Finally, ‘Journey to The Centre Of My Brother’ breaks off for a cross-section of Colin’s intestines which has been rigorously researched from the very latest palaeontology evidence, so that you know this is educationally sound.

Caveat: youngsters and adults alike, please refrain from shaking this book before reading. It’s so effervescent you may find yourself covered in dinosaur snot. There’s an awful lot of it inside, as our Cretaceous children will so stickily discover when they discover the true origin of the word “bogeyman”.

* Please apply ointment.

** Product placement! Send a big box to Page 45, 9 Market Street, Nottingham NG1 6HY. For the attention of Stephen, please, NOT Dominique. Leave an open packet of Tangfastics anywhere near Dominique and it’s like being visited by Doctor Who’s Nashta Verada. That woman is voracious.

SLH

Buy The Terrible Tales Of The Teenytinysaurs! and read the Page 45 review here

Age Of Bronze vol 1: A Thousand Ships s/c new edition (£14-99, Image) by Eric Shanower.

“I saw a ship sailing far out on the water – too far to turn back. It caries a man – a boy, really – who burns with a flame that will consume all he touches. A woman rides with him. She is proud and beautiful… but where she treads, death follows.”

First of seven award-winning volumes interpreting the story of Troy most famously propagated by Greek poet Homer. They are bursting with passion, epic in scope and astonishingly rich in detail.

Visual detail comes in the form of beautifully delineated bodies clothed in meticulously researched period clothing and gently nuanced expressions, all of which I’d compare to P. Craig Russell (SANDMAN: DREAM HUNTERS, FAIRY TALES OF OSCAR WILDE etc.) as inked by Art Adams. i.e. Thin, crisp lines but with a far softer touch. There is, however, no clutter at all, the panels composed in a joyous variety of forms all of which are thoroughly accessible to newcomers. There is nothing too tricksy and, in spite of the scope, nothing extraneous nor laborious. It is what they call “a real-page turner”.

It opens in the pastoral calm of the verdant cow-grazing pastures not far from the city of Troy. There young Paris awakes from a dream, about which we will learn only later, to find messengers demanding the family’s highly prized bull for King Priam of Troy’s next Festival Games. Determined to be the one to sacrifice the bull to the gods, Paris persuades his father to take him to the Games but discovers, after victory in a race, that his real father is King Priam himself. Priam embraces his long-lost son and Paris’ new brothers, formally hostile during the competition, all rally round.

Alas, aging King Priam is still smarting from Herakles’ sacking of Troy when he was but a child. It was then that his older sister Hesione was taken and given to the King of Salamis. Now that Troy has been rebuilt, Priam sends envoys demanding her return and although Hesione claims to be perfectly happy where she is, Priam suspects against all evidence to the contrary that she may have said so under duress. His sons suggest war, but they are too young to know war’s terrible cost and wisely King Priam rebuffs them. But when Paris suggests a stealthy raid instead, Priam likes the idea and dispatches Paris along with Aeneas to call on King Menelaus of Sparta first, in order to gain his support and so test recent treaties.

And this is where. It goes horribly. Wrong.

Although brother Hektor attempts to impress upon the inexperienced Paris (but four months at court) the complexity of the current geographical and so commercial context of this already dodgy endeavour, Paris’ eyes already blaze with a much greater ambition than the task he’s been given. So it is that when Paris lands and spies King Menelaus’ wife Helen of Sparta, he determines to make her his Helen of Troy.

The seduction sequence is breath-taking. Told in retrospect, Shanower repeats a single panel of Menelaus’ warning “Do you know what he’s here for?” over and over again, even though, ironically, Menelaus hasn’t the first fucking clue.

Dramatic irony abounds throughout, even for a modern reader. For although today we may not take oracles or horoscopes seriously, we know well enough to trust their eventual unfolding in Greek literature. As to the ancient Greeks – both the cast and the story’s original readership – they believed fervently. They believed so fervently that Menelaus’ older brother Agamemnon, leading the multinational retaliation for Helen’s abduction, risks his army’s starvation in order to wait for Achilles to show his girl-disguised face because only with Achilles on board, it is foretold, will Troy be left burning in ruins. Shame no one listens to the women, then, (same as it ever was) in this case both Kassandra and Helenus. They’re pretty prescient and very, very specific.

As to the prophecies surrounding Achilles, they open up a whole new can of calamari…

Every library should have one. Or two. Or three. School libraries should be a little cautious when it comes to younger readers because this isn’t some simplistic white-wash and there are scenes both of a sexual nature and of child-birth.

It’s one of the very best treatments of Homer I’ve read (although please do see Gareth Hinds’ THE ODYSSEY – especially schools, you’re on safer ground there) and far more than a mere adaptation but an integration of so many different sources – often conflicting – as Shanower details in the extensive resources in the back. It is, in short, the version Shanower wants to tell, in considerable depth and with exceptionally keen judgement.

It’s also a lot more fun than my old classics lessons aged 12 when I was forced to translate and study the original. The original is fab, but translating passages aged 12 before reading them outloud in front of your class and a very ‘volatile’ headmaster was far from fun.

Still, I did learn the origin of words like “euphemism”.

SLH

Buy Age Of Bronze vol 1: A Thousand Ships s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Godzilla: Half Century War s/c (£14-99, IDW) by James Stokoe.

“I had arrogantly begun to think of Godzilla as an anomaly, a one-off. An animal of the Atomic Age too stubborn to die. Once the A.M.F. figured out how to deal with him, that would be it. We could all go home knowing that we had done some good.
“Then the others showed up and humbled the lot of us…”

Ah yes, the others…

Not since I glued together my very first Aurora model kit, at the tender age of eight, have I been so in love with Godzilla. And yes, I used every piece of glow-in-the-dark plastic they offered, including that magnificent, jagged spine.

Here too the crystalline spine glows, as does the billowing smoke on page after page thanks to some monumentally lambent colouring by, I infer, James Stokoe himself, assisted by Heather Breckel. So much attention has been paid to each cloudy puff’s highlights. From the very first page I can promise you carnage on a gargantuan scale – we’re talking Geoff Darrow on Frank Miller’s HARD BOILED – whenceforth it only multiplies.

Along with rookie soldier Ota Murakami, we first encounter Godzilla in 1954; in Japan, of course, where they first dropped the bomb. It’s pretty tough luck for the Japanese, having to reap what we sowed in the form of this rampaging mutation. The soldiers cannot contain the beast; they can only survive it thanks to some shit-hot tank driving. In the wake of such wreckage the Anti Megalosaurus Force is formed, Murakami being its key recruit. But it’s in Vietnam in 1967 that they realise Godzilla is far from alone and, worse still, its trajectory is far from random. After that it’s Africa, Bombay, then the whole bloody world as those ridiculous creatures swarm: Megalon, Rodan, Ebirrah, Hedorah, Mothra… Battra! As the stakes escalate, so do the A.M.F.’s counter-measures, but just when you think the odds can’t get any worse, the fight is joined by those from beyond and oh dear lord my eyes are on fire!

Inevitably there’s some manga in the mix this time out, and I love the puffing, sweaty faces. Most of all, however, I love the way the transport subtly reflects each era, especially in 1975 where the crack team’s more of a whack team, crashing about in a VW Campervan presumably pimped in Haight-Ashbury.

SLH

Buy Godzilla: Half Century War s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Blood Blokes #3 (£2-99, Great Beast) by Adam Cadwell.

… At which point Vince woke up in a dress. And an apron.

What…? Oh come on, we’ve all been on more than one of those benders – particularly on New Year’s Eve. Vincent went out on the town but got bit by a bat and ended up on a slab. The good news is that lanky Mike and deadpan Doug then abducted him and brought him back to the semi which they share with Ariana. Which is where we came in and where we do go from here.

“Did you spike my drink, huh? Did you roofie me?”

Also:

“Um… you all have fangs.”
“So do you.”
“Fuck.”

How will our student react to being undead? In a Manchester suburb, and a city-centre pub with a nightly lock-in exclusively for vamps? There’s no going back to his old life now, with his flat, his Mum and Dad and ex-girlfriend Jane…

Oi, Vince! I said there’s no going back to your old life now! Oh, hell…

Clean, lush art which swings between Paul Grist and Jamie Hernandez in places, with crazy dancing, ripped jeans, Batman boxer shorts and comfy sweaters. For more, please see BLOOD BLOKES #1 and BLOOD BLOKES #2.

“Sorry about the mess. There’s only one wardrobe in the house and you’re sleeping in it.”

Flat sharing, eh?

SLH

Buy Blood Blokes #3 and read the Page 45 review here

Occupy Comics #1 (£2-75, Black Mask) by Various

Anthologies for a charitable cause are often hit-and-miss affairs in terms of the material you get and this one is no different. But really the point is the cause more than the comics so it’s probably best to take the rough with the smooth; if you are interested in the Occupy Movement or the general furore surrounding it then you will find some interesting little nuggets here.

In terms of the strips three really stood out for me.  CITIZEN JOURNALIST by Ales Kot (WILD CHILDREN, CHANGE) Tyler Crook (BPRD) and Jeromy Cox (many superhero titles) is a snapshot of what it takes to get footage from a scene where the regular media have been “asked” by the police not to film. As you can imagine, what it takes is a mix of ingenuity and courage plus the ability to take a punch or two. Well put together with lovely art. CLEVER by Ben Templesmith is a two page spread explaining briefly how we are all being shafted, complete with zombie/skeletal men in suits. CHANNEL 1% by Matt Pizzolo and Ayhan Hayrula gives a succinct overview of how the events leading up to and including the Occupy movement have been spun.

You also get a bunch of other stuff including a chunk of prose by Alan Moore [the cartoon’s pedigree as a fiercely iconoclastic medium (Gillray) and comics’ too (Hogarth)] and an illustration by Molly Crabapple whose arrest at the one year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street protest is well worth an internet search.  Interesting stuff.

DK

Buy Occupy Comics #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Gabba Gabba Hey: The Story Of The Ramones (£14-99, Omnibus Press) by Jim McCarthy & Brian Williamson.

“I am sooooo fucken’ sick of this bullshit man. I wanna go home.”

There’s either a comma or a hyphen missing after “bullshit”, I can’t quite decide, but I echo the sentiments wholeheartedly. Comics should be an entertainment, not an endurance test and – in the spirit of full disclosure – I should probably confess that this was such an irritating, infuriating chore that I gave up quite quickly in.

Thankfully not before relishing the introduction by Everett True, stellar music critic from my misspent yoof, whose eloquent recollection and evocation of the band, its individual “brothers” and natural habitat, sent me crashing back in time to Rock City. And let me tell you, resurrecting memories of Rock City from my booze-addled brain is no mean feat. To his eternal credit, Everett makes no mention of the graphic novel whatsoever, but instead enthuses about the band’s cartoon aspects and it all makes perfect sense. It makes so much sense that I would have relished seeing a Ramones biography drawn by either Marc Ellerby (creator of ELLERBISMS and, of course, that issue of CBGB written by Kieron Gillen) or Adam Cadwell of BLOOD BLOKES.

Just not this one. I wouldn’t wish this script on either of those guys.

Unlike CBGB, it has no narrative hook whatsoever. Instead it launches straight in to the most godawful, clunky exposition as Phil Spector introduces himself to the Ramones halfway through their recording process, yonks after they’ve actually met.

“Y’know, I worked with everyone, the biggest of all time! The Beatles, John Lennon, George Harrison and my own great stuff with Ike and Tina Turner. You name ‘em, I recorded ‘em!! I changed the face of rock’n’roll forever. You get me!? I make it happen! I hope you got all that…”

Yes, Jim, the readers got all that.

“Everyone recorded here, but I invented the fucking Wall of Sound. Brian Wilson might think he’s a fucking genius, but I, Phil Spector…”

Who are you again…?

“… I, Phil Spector…”

Ah, that’s what I thought.

“… I, Phil Spector, am the all-time numero uno!”

Seriously, who on earth introduces themselves to anyone they’ve been talking to for over an hour, let alone a day, a week, a month or a year? Picture the Page 45 shop floor, where Jonathan and Dominique have been waiting patiently for me to turn up on time for once and I stumble in, three hours late with mismatching shoes, and pronounce….

“Y’know, I created Page 45 with Mark Simpson. I, Stephen L. Holland! Everyone has signed here!! You name ‘em, they’ve signed! Eddie Campbell, Roberta Gregory, Neil Gaiman, Posy Simmonds, Terry Moore, Bryan Talbot, Peter Bagge, Hope Larson, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Sean Phillips, Duncan Fegredo, Marc Laming, David Hine, Nabiel Kanan, Jeremy Dennis, Donna Barr, Paul Gravett, Paul Grist, Anders Nilsen, Jeffrey Brown, Ed Ilya, Dave Sim, Los Bros Sleaze Castle, that chap called Gerhard, that bloke called Millidge, that girl called –“

“I know!” bellows Dominique, braining me with a LOST GIRLS hardcover. “I organised most of those bloody events!”

Now let me tell you about the art: it is far from cartoon. It is the exact antithesis of the band’s infectious, geniusly-done dumb. It is instead the most morose, photo-realistic, post-apocalyptic, joyless photo-collage of backgrounds mis-married to the portraits (although those are immaculately recognisable) that you can possibly imagine. If it were designed to suck out your soul then deposit it, quivering, down a bleak back-alley in slightly soiled bed linen to subsist on meths for the rest of your life, then I would consider it the most remarkable success.

I’ll take a punt and suggest that this wasn’t the object of the exercise.

Anyway, fuck it, I’m going home. In fact, I’m going to the dentist to have all my teeth pulled out as a palliative pick-me-up.

Since I haven’t even done this graphic novel the common courtesy of finishing it, I leave you with this, from the publisher’s hype-monkey:

“The Ramones were the archetypal American punk band and this is their story, from their beginnings in Queens in 1974, through the burgeoning punk scene at CBGB’s, the excitement of their first album, their brush with the unhinged genius of Phil Spector and the endless touring that saw them perform 2,263 concerts over a 22 year period. Set against a backdrop of New York facing bankruptcy and terrorised by Son of Sam, The Ramones tale takes in endless inter-band fighting and finally the tragic deaths of three of the founding members: Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee.”

There is nothing punk rock about this whatsofuckingever.

SLH

Buy Gabba Gabba Hey: The Story Of The Ramones and read the Page 45 review here

Dragon Resurrection s/c (£13-50, Dark Horse) by Mark Byers & Erfan Fajar.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Was Dark Horse’s actual, official and (presumably) qualified commissioning editor away on the day?

This is no FOUR EYES, which is a very fine dragon book indeed. This is dreadful. It’s not even pretty like RAVINE (also dragons; also awful, but at least it was pretty).

Instead it’s a woefully stodgy mess of all-too coincidental contrivances in which a father of two determined to find palaeontological evidence of dragons co-existing with men (as opposed to dinosaurs who lived long before) finally hits paydirt and unearths – or at least threatens to defrost – one of two such long-lost legends. A terrorist, working in cahoots with both the US military and some eastern Cabal, blows it to kingdom come but not before the scientist’s daughter Jesse has taken a DNA sample which she sends to her crippled brother Jack.

Her brother, you see, is a genetic scientist desperately working on a hybrid-related cure for his paraplegia following his sister showing off during a backstreet kung-fu altercation with some drug-runners. One of which turns out to be the leader of this rising Cabal. Errrr… Remarkable!

But the dragon DNA won’t work for him, only for his sister who injects it after her brother is abducted by the — shoot me NOW!

The art is so lacklustre it manages to obfuscate a sudden and potentially dramatic space-ship lift-off, its sequential art so staccato you can only conclude that both the writer and artist had hiccups.

Furthermore, the script is so ridiculous that a permanent carbon nanotube linking Earth to its space-station destination is supposedly left undiscovered by any and all nations with satellite radar, plus Jack manages to sneak out and then in again from/to a heavily guarded, alarm-ridden, instant-reaction, technologically impervious research centre whilst trundling along at 0.2mph in the spine-supporting equivalent of a goddam fucking wheelchair.

This doesn’t just insult your intelligence, it shouts “Yo Mama!” jokes at you on every single page.

SLH

Buy Dragon Resurrection s/ 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.

Mouse, Bird, Snake, Wolf h/c (£9-99, Walker Books) by David Almond & Dave McKean

Tales Of The Buddha Before He Was Enlightened s/c (£10-99, Renegade Arts Entertainment) by Alan Grant & Jon Haward

Age Of Bronze vol 3 s/c (£13-50, Image) by Eric Shanower

Clone vol 1 s/c (£9-99, Image) by David Schulner & Juan Jose Ryp, Felix Serrano

Lucifer vol 1 new edition (£22-50, DC) by Mike Carey & Scott Hampton

Uncanny X-Men vol 4 s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Kieron Gillen & Various

All New X-Men vol 2: Here To Stay h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & David Marquez, Stuart Immonen

Superior Spider-Man vol 1: My Own Worst Enemy s/c (£13-50, Marvel) by Dan Slott & Ryan Stegman, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Ryan Stegman

Thor God Of Thunder vol 1: God Butcher h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Jason Aaron & Esad Ribic

Deadpool vol 1: Dead Presidents s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn & Tony Moore, Geof Darrow

Ultimate X-Men vol 1 s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Brian Wood, Nathan Edmondson & Paco Medina, Dave Johnson

Punisher: Enter War Zone s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Greg Rucka & Marco Checchetto, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Marco Checchetto

Uncanny Avengers vol 1: Red Shadow s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Rick Remender & John Cassaday, Oliver Coipel

Indestructible Hulk vol 1: Agent Of SHIELD vol 1 s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Mark Waid & Leinil Francis Yu

Mere s/c (£14-99, Picturebox) by  C.F.

Limit vol 5 (£8-50, Random House) by Keiko Suenobu

Lone Wolf & Cub Omnibus vol 1 (£14-99, Dark Horse) by Kazuo Koike &  Goseki Kojima

Durarara!! Saika vol 2 (£8-99, Hachette Book Group Usa) by Narita Ryohgo  & Satorigi Akiyo

Soul Eater vol 14 (£8-99, Hachette Book Group Usa) by Atsushi Ohkubo

Star Trek: Countdown s/c (US Edition) (£13-50, IDW) by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman & Mike Johnson, Tim Jones

Star Trek: Countdown To Darkness s/c (UK Edition) (£9-99, Titan) by Roberto Orci & David Messina

ITEM! TAMARA DREWE’s Posy Simmonds takes Guardian readers through her sketchbook – some fascinating insights into her cultural sources and creative decisions.

ITEM! Dylan Horrocks has reformatted SAM ZABEL AND THE MAGIC PEN in colour. Free comic – yay!

ITEM! Just in: “This year the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the largest literary festival of its kind in the world, is doing things a little differently. A brand new strand of events will focus exclusively on comics and graphic novels. Over forty events (talks, discussions, exhibitions, workshops and even a mini comic fair) featuring near a hundred creators and industry legends make up the fantastic programme.”

Everything launches on June 20^th, at which point everything of explodes except, I am hoping, my cat. Watch this space for blogs dedicated to the comics side of things, and follow them specifically at @StrippedFest.

ITEM! Four-panel comic. This is me at Page 45 on a daily basis. It’s a constant source of surprise: one lost soul swimming in a fish bowl by Joe Sayers.

ITEM! TILL MONKEY TELLS ALL SHOCK!

In which I give my first-ever 45-minute live interview – with Make It Then Tell Everybody – and grow increasingly “animated”. There are swears! Listen to HEY YOU!’s Dan Berry pressing all my buttons mere moments in. He knows precisely what he is doing!

Make It Then Tell Everybody Interviews Page 45’s Stephen L. Holland

 - Stephen El Holland

The post Reviews May 2013 week five appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

I remember picking up a cue, quite determined that it must finally be my turn, failing completely in my three or four attempts to make contact with even the white ball, before realising I had in fact intruded on someone else’s game on an adjoining table.

 - Jonathan on Ferals. (Classy guy, our Jonathan)

Please see way down below, as always, for an even bigger explosion of news than usual!

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

“This is the greatest discovery of my life!”

There! Over again in this truly great graphic novel Gilbert Hernandez nails the experience of childhood – its actuality and expression – but he does it best there.

We have no sense of perspective when young, nor should we – how could we?

Instead there are the immediately uttered explosions of over-excited ebullience and awe-struck wonder when lucky; the silent, destitute chasms of confusion or desolation when disillusionment comes knocking on our door. When we are disappointed by others, or disappointed in ourselves.

Here, for example, our Huey has expanded his own comic collection after relatively new friend Chauncy invites him over to play. Chauncy has quite the stash, and when he pops out for five seconds Huey can’t help himself from helping himself, slipping an issue under his t-shirt before stealing it home, flushed with fear lest he get caught. He doesn’t, but he’s startled to find Chauncy standing in the street and staring into space the next morning.

“Chauncy!”
“You could see a rainbow earlier this morning.”
“Oh, uh… I was inside all this morning.”
“You can keep that comic book you borrowed.”
“W – wha…? I mean…”

He didn’t borrow it, of course, but I don’t think the ethereal Chauncy even suspects the foul play involved: it is his instinct not to imagine the worst, but to assume automatically the best in everyone around him. Huey is shamed by Chauncy’s good will and sets about rescuing the situation, but events back home have since moved on and so, I’m afraid, has the comic.

I don’t know how popular a pronouncement this will be – given Gilbert Hernandez’s enormous body of work, so complex, accomplished and critically acclaimed (oh, see the entire LOVE AND ROCKETS canon) – but this for me is his finest work to date, although last month’s JULIO’S DAY was pretty darn special too. It is certainly the best evocation of childhood in comics bar none, so many of its truths, we are told, garnered from his own early experiences.

I don’t mean that it is bleached into the lowest common denominators we can all immediately recognise in our own lives (although yes, I remember bubblegum cards and I remember hesitantly learning to jimmy a few freebies from their packs’ free-standing receptacles without the legitimate exchange of coins – sorree!), for this is full of surprises. It will teach you about your own experiences and maybe exhume a few memories long since buried and misunderstood until now.

Huey is the middle of three brothers. Chavo is too young to even speak, but Huey loves him dearly, constantly interacting with Chavo as if he understood Huey’s every wild imagining. And Huey has quite the imagination, acting out stories he makes up as he goes along, either alone in the street with his GI Joe action figure or with friends he’s corralled to perform a Captain America Vs The Red Skull play or similar scenarios of extemporised adventure. When they threaten to disband through boredom or disbelief, it is Huey’s older brother Junior who keeps them on board.

Indeed, throughout, Junior is Huey’s guardian angel. There’s a refreshing and heart-warming lack of competitiveness in that family and it is, all of it, firmly seen from the children’s perspective. Just like the Tom & Jerry cartoons where humans are heard but not seen, Huey’s mother appears not once in person, only through second-hand pronouncements.

“Hey, Mom said that she doesn’t want you to have a play in our backyard, Huey. Everybody has to go home.”

There is some exquisite cartooning going on here. There’s the opening scene in which Huey saunters down his safe street alone, dwarfed by the not-too-wide world around him, absorbed in his the contents of his new comic. When Junior casually questions the appropriateness of a prop in Huey’s play, Huey shoots back a wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression so genuinely aghast at his brother’s rare lapse in the cardinal rule of play that it’s actually very moving:

“PRETEND!”

It’s the ultimate answer and a moment reprised, one page on, after they’ve transformed together a plain public Frisbee into Captain America’s shield with a lick of paint and some wire… then Huey slips the shield over his forearm. In that shining moment, costume or no costume, mask or no mask, Huey is Captain America.

The power of pretend!

The relationships between the various young neighbours are endearingly complex. There are the bullies, as you’d expect, and those slightly older who see themselves therefore as infinitely wiser, but also moments of honour and generosity, far from rare. And this is what I mean by complex:

Huey is the local marbles expert: he expects to win. So when Patty asks to play, he agrees and instructs her “Don’t fudge!” But Patty’s a very quick learner and wins.

“I won’t take your marbles. Let’s keep playing.”
“Naw, you won.”
“Can’t we keep on playing?”
“No, I’m going inside and watch Superman.”
“My favourite show is Bozo The Clown.”
“Bozo? Jimmy Olsen is funnier than Bozo! Superman is boss and Bozo’s for dumb little kids, Patty!”

The expression on Huey’s face there is like a venomous toad. He has turned in a split second on the quite innocent Patty who so evidently ‘likes’ Huey, lashing out in a deliberate attempt to devastate her with a killing verbal blow. But when older, baseball-bat wielding tomboy Lana backs Patty up by declaring Bozo new and Superman mere “old reruns”, Patty instead sticks up for the visibly stricken Huey with an emphatic “Mind your own business!”

It’s sweet, and the scene plays itself out until Lana’s alone in the alley.

“Children!”

Several are the transformations which will occur over the course of the next new months, some more subtle than others. Huey, for example, grows from shorts into long trousers. There’s a brief burst of disruption as two delinquents move in, provoking fights and threatening to lead some astray. Although, again, it’s far from the black and white this is printed on: energy is an attractive attribute in childhood. There’s Elvin the footballer (or will he be chef?) whose body language gives much away; and club-leader Dave who, his brother implies, shouldn’t be playing with children. There are also the crises of confidence, and my hastily scribbled notes make much of even more recognition boxes I ticked: comics without covers (none of the comics in my Gran’s hairdresser’s had covers) and the kid whom none of us really knew declaring the public path by his house completely off-limits.

Truth be told, either this or JULIO’S DAY would make prime Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month material. They are both flawless graphic novels and although Los Bros Hernandez are already famed within my generation of right-minded comicbook lovers, they’re not attracting the level of attention they deserve in newcomers. Plus this is an original graphic novel: none of it appeared in LOVE AND ROCKETS.

So at the time of typing it is May 22^nd 2013, with just over a week before we declare our hand, and I have yet to consult Jonathan or Dominique so we shall see. I’d buy it now and be done with it. Oh wait, I already have.

SLH

Buy Marble Season h/c and read the Page 45 review here

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

“We are The Authority. Behave.”

THE AUTHORITY was one of the first superhero series I ever endorsed, back in 1999. It hit the tarmac running and punched you in the socio-political face.

With its clipped, military precision, it reset the standard once monopolised by WATCHMEN. It consciously or subconsciously inspired Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s four ULTIMATES books, and I’m here to tell you that it withstands the test of time. If you want testosterone, it will give you testosterone, but with a great deal more cranial activity to boot.

Guess who’s got the most of both? Jenny Sparks, pragmatic blonde Brit and the sharpest female lead in superhero comics. Naturally she doesn’t wear spandex, she wears an exquisitely tailored, loose cotton suit over a Union Jack t-shirt, but she has more attitude than her entire team together, even if she doesn’t once throw a physical punch.

That job goes to Jack Hawksmoor, at one with Earth’s cities, and boyfriends Apollo and The Midnighter who – contrary to the despicable gay cliché – are neither maladjusted nor lightweights. Neither in the closet nor in your face, no one gives a shit, thank fuck. “Get a room, you two,” is about as much signposting as you’re going to get under Ellis. Apollo smiles with a boyish optimism and he shines as bright as the sun. The Midnighter does not:

“I’ve already planned this fight in my head, a million times, from each and every angle. You think your Kaizen Gamorra’s pretty damn good, I know. But my talents were built in by Henry Bendix, the biggest bastard on Earth, and trained by five years living rough and fighting on the streets of America.
“I won this fight before you even turned up.”

So where does the cranial come in? For a start, from The Carrier. Fifty miles long and thirty-five miles high, powered by a caged baby universe, it tacks into The Bleed between alternate universes, “sailing the outer oceans of ideaspace during the spawning season, keeping pace with a school of Obsession Fish”.

Also the new recruits: The Engineer and the Doctor. I can’t tell you how they solve problems, it’ll spoil all the surprises, but the Doctor’s final solution for an alternate-Earth Italy was … imaginative.

Also it’s the quiet moments, most harmoniously explored in the third chapter of this complete Ellis and Hitch run, as when Angie The Engineer marvels at being in outer space with her view of the moon and laments man’s all too-brief encounter with our lunar sister or relishes her view of The Bleed.

All of which – the quiet wonder and sheer, visceral thrill of seeing spinal chords ripped from their fleshy housing – would be far less effective and affecting were it not for Bryan Hitch, the neo-classical artist behind ULTIMATES and the rejuvenated, resigned Doctor Who TV series some seven years ago. Damn, that man can do scale!

Pity his poor final-inks artist Paul Neary each and every time Bryan Hitch sent him a city-scape or double-page spread of The Carrier so vast and detailed that any normal human being would have simply cried then gone back to bed. There is another double-page spread of a sadistic shoal of cloned, superhuman, black-clothed assassins speeding towards you out of a point of perspective which will fry your fevered brain. All lit, I might add, to sunrise perfection by colour artist, Laura DePuy. There’s also plenty in the backgrounds to amuse if you look closely enough: the multiple pizza-deliveries discarded in Angie’s New York flat or the pantheon of prior shamen who called themselves The Doctor.

So. Under Jenny Sparks, The Authority intend to make the world a better place, whether you like it or not. They will not tolerate an extra-terrestrial invasion, a despotic Eastern assault or a trans-dimensional incursion by a Sliding Albion hell-bent on turning the entire planet into one giant rape-camp.

“Bad things happened when I run teams. And bad things happen when I don’t run teams. This is a hellish gamble for me, Apollo.
“But there had to be someone left to save the world.
“And someone left to change it.”

Jenny Sparks stopped aging at twenty but has protected this planet for nearly one hundred years, for she is the spirit of the 20^th Century.

It is now 1999. I repeat, it is now 1999.

“Game on.”

SLH

Buy The Authority vol 1 h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Scott Pilgrim vol 3 h/c Colour Edition (£18-99, Oni Press) by Bryan Lee O’Malley.

Includes… colour. Look, the title says so!

“It’s really for the best that he didn’t get a drink…”
“Oh, does he get up to go pee halfway through the movie?”
“Halfway? Try six times.”
“THAT’S A RECORD, NOT AN AVERAGE!”

Also extra for this edition: 50 pages that weren’t in the softcover including the Kim Pine story originally published in COMICS FESTIVAL 2007 which fills in a minor plot gap between vols 3 and 4. Also, also: advertisements; an unused, double-page cover concept; hilarious character map; lots and lots and lots of annotated character sketches; three excised story pages never seen before… but, best of all, the 17-page Free Comicbook Day story from 2006 in which Wallace secures free tickets to a gay cowboy film for himself, Ramona and Scott, and Scott totally fails to select a soft drink in time.

Then Scott’s attacked by eight identical, sixteen-year-old ninja girls (“I don’t like hitting them! They’re… soft.”) while Wallace and Ramona ignore his squeals in favour of this telling exchange:

“If one of your seven evil ex-boyfriends a ninja?”
“One or more of my exes might be a ninja, yeah…”

They probably don’t make that film. 45 minutes later:

“Oh dude, this one has +4 to speed! Ha ha ha ha sweet!”
“I hate you so much, Scott Pilgrim. I hate him so much, Ramona.”
“I know you do, sweetie. Scott, why do you ruin everything? Did you really need eight completely different drinks?”
“Yes, and they all have to have complimentary* power-ups! And not be grape. And I can’t go over my daily limit on anything, that’s bad for you. I also like to try and match the colours while I’m at it. You can call me obsessive-compulsive if you want, but I just think it’s better, you know? It’s also good if they all go in alphabetical order, and there can’t be any repeats. And blah blah blah blah blah blah blah!”

*NB: Scott can’t spell.

Cue customary overview!

Scott is a clot. He really is. He’s a total dumpling, and in terms of a Chinese take-away, dim doesn’t even begin to sum the lad up.

He is kinda cute, though, and as the series kicks off Scott is living with gay housemate Wallace for whom sly, dry mockery is a default setting. They’re so poor they even share the same bed. But Scott sleeps soundly until this girl called Ramona comes skating through his dreams – she’s a delivery girl and as you well know the quickest way from A to B is to skate through someone else’s dreams, right? Then Scott meets Ramona in his waking life, falls head over heals in whatever the hell that thing is (he may figure it out eventually) but is casually informed that if he wants her as a girlfriend he’ll have to defeat her seven evil exes in combat!

Truly a unique series with a heart of gold, and a wit and a Nintendo logic all of its own. There is not a single comic reader who could fail to fall in love with Scott, Wallace, Ramona or Bryan himself. O’Malley isn’t even close to running out of innovative ideas: his visual gags keep tumbling onto the page, and so convinced are we that this book is for everyone that if you try the first SCOTT PILGRIM black and white softcover at least and aren’t immediately hooked, we’ll give you your money back and even pay return postage.

You will, on the other hand, have totally failed to earn The Power Of Love, so no power-up of a flaming sword for you!

SLH

Buy Scott Pilgrim vol 3 h/c Colour Edition and read the Page 45 review here

Ferals vol 1 s/c (£14-99, Avatar) by David Lapham & Gabriel Andrade…

“Yours are the striped ones, Dale. You may want to move your bottle so you can see them.”
“Theresh no state of drunk inna entire world that’d make me lose to you, Ralph.”

I had an odd flashback reading that sequence, to the last time I drank tequila, which was New Year’s Eve 2001. After consuming about two bottles, err… mostly to myself, whilst we were preparing to go out to The Elbow Room pool bar in Leeds city centre for the night… quite literally the only thing I can clearly subsequently recall about the whole evening is a brief attempt to play pool. I remember picking up a cue, quite determined that it must finally be my turn, failing completely in my three or four attempts to make contact with even the white ball, before realising I had in fact intruded on someone else’s game on an adjoining table. I didn’t actually remember that either for a few weeks…

What actually happened was we were sat in my friend’s lounge, when I remarked when were we actually going to go out? It was then not-so-gently broken to me by my chortling chums it was 4am, that we had already been out, and indeed seen the New Year in a manner best described as roaringly Krakenous. It was at that point I realised there are in fact states of drunk not conducive to being victorious at pool, or indeed preventing brain damage. Aside from an ill-advised reprise with multiple flaming zambucca expressoes on my stag do (for which my stomach has never quite forgiven me), I have subsequently managed to avoid spirits ever since…

Still, Dale’s world is about to turn as shitty as I felt on New Year’s Day 2002. Already reeling from the loss of his best friend to what appeared to be some extreme animal attack, though Dale has suspicions that some sort of foul play might be involved, he’s about to lose his fuck buddy – his best friend’s ex-wife (classy guy, our Dale) – and also the blonde slapper he’s about to pick up post-pool game and shag in the toilets (very classy guy, our Dale) to the very same fate that evening. And then get the blame for it and have to go on the run from the cops and FBI. Oh dear. Plus, were that not bad enough, it appears he might also have picked up a rather extreme STD, of the lycanthropic variety, for his troubles.

So, some trepidation on reading this, penned as it is by David Lapham, but rest assured for those who are relatively faint of heart, it’s just extreme, relentless, gore-filled horror in the vein of CALIGULA, whilst not descending to the tasteless (personal opinion) depths of CROSSED VOLUME 2 and CROSSED VOLUME 3. I can certainly see this appealing to those who are enjoying most of the more horrific end of Avatar’s output. It’s certainly not going to redefine the genre, but it’s well written enough and also competently illustrated, in what seems to almost becoming an Avatar house (of) horror style by Gabriel Andrade.

JR

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

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

“Sudden and vivid epiphany.
“I am living a horror film and I’m the swarmy one. Aren’t I? I’m the post-modern self-referencing c*** in the group, the one who irritates everyone, the not-a-joker, the tosspot, the loser with a crush on the heroine but no hope.
“He dies, diary. That guy. He always dies first or second. Third, maximum.
“I am an away-team extra in a red fucking shirt, and when I awake from this awful awful dream I will travel to America and take an enormoshit on William Shatner’s face.
“Believe I may be going mad. Something needs to change.”

Ha ha. I do love the character of frustrating writer Shaky. He’s such a two-faced weasely back-stabbing bastard. And yet, and yet, he’s showing all the characteristics needed to survive in the world of the Crossed. Look out for number one and screw everybody else…

After manipulating events in CROSSED: WISH YOU WERE HERE VOL 1 to get himself onto the supplies run to the mainland, he’s up to his usual tricks, putting his unwilling band of comrades / cannon fodder into the firing line to save his own neck, wherever and whenever possible. Along the way we will get the rest of his pre-island life back story, as dictated to his confessional diary, involving the gamekeeper and the nun (which will prove very significant in future issues, trust me). And we also encounter some new characters who Shaky is putting through his very own private reality show to decide which two get to come back to the (comparative) safety of their windswept isle. They’re a ragtag bunch, but they do of course include at least one genuine headcase. As I suspected, I’m now enjoying this even more than the original series, due to its ongoing nature.

JR

Buy Crossed: Wish You Were Here vol 2 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Metabarons Ultimate Collected Edition (£45-00, Humanoids Inc) by Alejandro Jodorowsky & Juan Gimenez >

Gorgeous hardcover repacking the otherwise flimsy softcover component parts that just lolled around on your shelves like flaccid fish caught in a far from jovial net. Or something. I hand you over instead to Professor David Hart, ex of Oxford with a BA Hons in English Literature, and 1^st, as it happens:

Castration, mutilation, military prosthetics, whore-priestesses, vast space battles and barely suppressed Oedipal relationships: it’s fair to say that the defining motif for THE METABARONS is ‘excess’. Starting with former pirate Othon Von Salza, THE METABARONS tells the story of a line of technologically supercharged and murderous fucks with relationship problems, each page super-pumped full of more ideas than most comics use in a year, the hysteria dial well and truly turned up to eleven.

Any attempt to summarize the plot is going to make it sound bonkers; which it is, but that’s not the point. While the future medieval setting is as familiar as the space opera genre, what sets this apart is that the opera is very much of the Wagnerian variety. The sets, the gestures, the plots, the characters, all strain their sinews towards the epic. This is opera where the high notes shatter glass and where the fat lady is a psychic ninja cyborg who turns out to be a reincarnation of your mum.

Giminez’ painted art, meanwhile, is a superb match for Jodorowsky’s grandiose vision, grounding even the most outré of events in a human reality. He combines draughtsmanship with a dynamic sense of scale and storytelling, able to move in a flicker from Olympian-scale space battles to the smirk on a father’s face as he pulps his son’s feet in a macabre initiation ceremony.  Ignore the two robots who narrate the book and whose sub-C3P0 witterings litter the text (“What happens next! Do tell before I burst another diode!” Blah and, indeed, blegh). Instead sit back and watch the speed and variety of invention, as bigger and bigger ideas flash across the stage. This first volume ends with Othon and his freshly mutilated son setting off for a new land; it’s worth noting that it’s after this that things start to get really weird…

DH

Buy Metabarons Ultimate Collected Edition and read the Page 45 review here

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

“Good morning, doctors. A pleasure. I am Dr. Bruce Banner, 21-time Nobel Prize loser. And your task is to help me break that streak. I’m sure you have questions?”

KINGDOM COME by Mark Waid and Alex Ross was stunning. It’s one of those OMG moments which you never saw coming but which will last blasted into your superhero psyche forever. Mark Waid is an ever-reliable veteran of superhero comics who can carry the corporate torch without sweat but who, like Busiek on ASTRO CITY, really comes into his own when the books are creator-owned. We’re talking IRREDEEMABLE. Go look at the latter: I compared the two.

Yet this is by far the most unexpectedly intelligent that the HULK has been since Peter David twenty years ago and – I’ll wager – is destined to surpass even that. Waid has thought outside the box. Or rather, the man has gone rummaging in the sandbox of past history and potential and found much that has been left to go mouldy there.

Don’t get me wrong: with Leinil Yu of SUPERIOR, SUPERCROOKS and ULTIMATE WOLVERINE VERSUS HULK fame, you are in for some wide-angled carnage on a teeth-grittingly, visceral level that will make your eyes pop out at the sheer weight of the collateral damage doled out here.

But listen, Bruce Banner is a phenomenally intelligent scientist, yet all the plaudits have gone to Reed Richards, Tony Stark and even Hank ‘Smack-My-Bitch-Up’ ‘Who-Even-Am-I-Today?’ Pym.

“Meanwhile, I – I who, forgive me, have just as much to contribute – will be lucky if my tombstone doesn’t simply say, “Hulk Smash!””

Ever since his first catastrophic self-sacrifice transmuting him into the uncontrollable, cyclonic force of nature that is the easily antagonised Hulk, Bruce Banner has been hounded so incessantly that he has only had time to react to each and every onslaught. The perpetual victim, he has never been afforded the opportunity to take stock. Even during brief respites he has his own system perpetually pumping against him as a ticking time bomb which could go off during even the most minor, mundane malfeasance. Like a bump in the queue for spaghetti.

So it is today that Maria Hill, head of SHIELD and on covert surveillance in a common-or-garden diner for another mission she should be attending to more rigorously, is obsessively on the man’s case yet again and against all professional advice.

“It’s not as if he’s going to find us,” she texts.
“Hi,” he says, sitting down.

Well that had me won. But there’s more, far more, for Bruce has a plan both pragmatic and proactive.

“First, resolved: being the Hulk is a chronic condition, like diabetes or cancer or M.S. The secret to living with it isn’t obsessing over a cure. It’s in managing what exists. Being vigilant. Like, say, making contact lenses that monitor my vital warning statistics as an early warning system.
“Second: use Banner Time more productively. Invent things. Fix things. Improve things. The Hulk has caused immeasurable damage and heartache over the years. It’s past time that I started balancing the scales by doing as much good as possible.”

He presents Maria Hill with a single canister.

“This? This is a purification unit that, if put into mass production, can eliminate all waterborne disease in the next five years, saving millions of lives.”
“That’s… Wow. Do you have a name for it?”
“Yes. Tuesday.”

SLH

Buy Indestructible Hulk vol 1: Agent Of Shield 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.

 
Blood Blokes #3 (£2-99, Great Beast) by Adam Cadwell

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

Gabba Gabba Hey: The Story Of The Ramones (£14-99, Omnibus Press) by Jim McCarthy & Brian Williamson

Dragon Resurrection s/c (£13-50, Dark Horse) by Mark Byers & Erfan Fajar

Sonic Universe vol 5: The Tails Adventure (£8-99, Archie Comic Publications) by various

Borderlands Origins s/c (£13-50, IDW) by Mike Neumann & Agustin Padilla

Godzilla: Half Century War s/c (£14-99, IDW) by James Stokoe

Age Of Bronze vol 1: A Thousand Ships s/c (£14-99, Image) by Eric Shanower

Age Of Bronze vol 2: Sacrifice s/c (£14-99, Image) by Eric Shanower

Drowntown Book One h/c (£14-99, Jonathan Cape) by Robbie Morrison & Jim Murray

Demon Knights vol 2: The Avalon Trap s/c (£10-99, DC) by Paul Cornell & Bernard Chang

FF vol 4 s/c (£14-99, Marvel) by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Dragotta

Journey Into Mystery (featuring Lady Sif) vol 1: Stronger Than Monsters s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Kathryn Immonen & Valerio Schiti

Bakuman vol 19 (£6-99, Viz) by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata

Saturn Apartments vol 7 (£9-99, Viz) by Hisae Iwaoka

Sunny vol 1 h/c (£16-99, Viz) by Taiyo Matsumoto

X 3-in-1 Ed vol 5 (£14-99, Viz) by Clamp
BREAKING NEWS!

ITEM! Beautiful six-page comic called BOTTLING IT by John Cei Douglas. *swoons* John you might know from my favourite pages of SOLIPSISTIC POP 4 (and there were an awful lot of glorious pages to compete with there!) Also, BUFFALO ROOTS (quantities of both very limited now).

ITEM! Interior pages from AMERICAN VAMPIRE: THE LONG ROAD TO HELL one-shot due 12^th June. You can order AMERICAN VAMPIRE: THE LONG ROAD TO HELL here while you can read the Page 45 reviews of AMERICAN VAMPIRE by clicking here.

ITEM! Extraordinary evocation of depression in words and pictures by Allie Brosh sent to me by Pam McIlroy (@pamreader). Never suffered from depression myself, so it’s helped me get a firmer grip on what a lot of people I know are going through. Important.

ITEM! Oh My God! Yes, a total OMG moment as Art from Kate Brown, Emma Vieceli and Paul Duffield goes on public display around the Tower Of London! Three of my favourite comicbook creators in one massive, history-orientated swoop. So fucking cool, I am swearing. Sorree!

ITEM! Gorgeous colours and character designs in this Kickstarter, HONEYDEW AND MAGIC by Nikki Stu, creator of HERALD OWLETT. And it’s doing so well!

ITEM! Lovely feature on Page 45 by Nottingham Live was posted on Monday, very kind indeed! I swear to God that you cannot see the sorry state of our ceiling tiles when you’re inside the shop. You simply won’t notice. But they’re all part of our major plans for 2015.

ITEM! Bestest of all, however, PAGE 45 MAKES GUEST-APPEARANCE IN MY CARDBOARD LIFE!

Yowsa! This is SUCH an honour! Some amazing photography there as Pauline and Cardboard Colin hop through the letter box at home and trundle through town via the Arboretum Graveyard. Picnics! Yay!

For more Pauline and Colin, see our stock of ST. COLIN AND THE DRAGON, RECYCLOST and MY CARDBOARD LIFE itself, all signed and sketched in by Philippa Rice for free.

 - Stephen

The post Reviews May 2013 week four appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

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

The post Reviews May 2013 week three appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

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

The post Reviews May 2013 week two appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

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

The post Reviews May 2013 week one appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

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

The post Reviews April 2013 week four appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

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

The post Reviews April 2013 week three appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

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

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