Month: August 2007

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Star Trek: To Boldly Go

Star Trek: To Boldly Go 

By various (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84576-084-0

As the live action segment of the monolithic fantasy brand ended once again, the ancillary merchandising machine swung inexorably into action to provide succour to all the stunned and hungry aficionados as they gathered, organised and restarted the campaign for its inevitable return.

For comic fans this is not such a bad thing since the show has spawned a number of comic-book tie-ins over the decades, and many of these are really rather good. Case in point being DC Comics’ early 1980s tandem series featuring not only the then new and risky venture Star Trek: The Next Generation, but also the much more canny proposition of a comic-book series featuring the original characters in adventures set in the aftermath of the film The Wrath of Khan.

To Boldly Go collects the first six issues of that series and starts off in rattling fashion with the destruction of a Federation Starship at the hands of those villainous Klingons, necessitating the dispatch of the Enterprise to thwart whatever new secret weapon the rogues have this time. With nary a breath to spare it escalates the Galactic Cold War into an interplanetary conflict involving the Excalbians and Organians. You probably don’t know who they are and don’t need to. The fans do and casual readers are kept fully in the loop by the accessible and capable scripting of Mike W. Barr.

This romp is swiftly followed by the more traditional tale of a Star Fleet officer who goes native and breaks the Prime Directive, and the volume ends with an intriguing thriller featuring a diplomatic mission and a metamorphic assassin. Solid entertaining stuff, capably and seamlessly illustrated by the brilliant and much missed Tom Sutton, with inking from Ricardo Villagran and Sal Amendola, the only fly in the ointment is a fearsomely coarse printer’s dot-screen that makes some pages look as if they’re being viewed from inside a stocking mask – and no, I’m not telling you how I know that. Use your imagination.

I’m always banging on about getting more people into reading comics, and this sort of material is one of the easiest and most efficient methods. Quality material that needs waste no space on back-story is our most valuable commodity, and one we should be happy to support and extol.

® & © 2005 Paramount Pictures All Rights Reserved.

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Sleepwalk and Other Stories

Sleepwalk and Other Stories 

By Adrian Tomine (Drawn & Quarterly Publications 1998)
ISBN: 1-896597-12-2

We often talk of comics and graphic narrative as if it’s one homogenous lump, and as well as doing the medium a tremendous disservice it’s also incredibly misleading. Those people that haughtily declaim “Oh, We Never Watch Television”, usually mean they deplore whatever it is you’ve just mentioned but that their own viewing habits somehow don’t count. And in a way they’re absolutely correct. For them the term is a group pejorative. But Big Brother is not Eastenders is not The Sky at Night is not Mastermind is not News 24 is not Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The medium is now a conveyance, the content is a product you can select or decline. Now try that phrase with the concept of comics.

Adrian Tomine tells short stories. They are about “Now”, and “I feel that…” and “How does…” His Spartan monochromatic drawing style works as an ideal camera for his elegiac documentaries. In an art form that too often relies on hyperbole and melodrama not just for content but for narrative technique, he eschews bravura for insight, telling little tales about the commonplace and the ordinary, showing just how extraordinary and poetic a “realer” life can be.

Originally released as issues 1-4 of Optic Nerve, Sleepwalk presents sixteen vignettes of broken hearts and trampled dreams, of uncompromising self-recriminations and day-to-day reminiscences that make us all shrug and think “well, there’s always tomorrow…”

If you read Maus for the scale of Man’s capacity for evil or Stuck Rubber Baby for his ability to change and overcome, then Sleepwalk should access your capacity to empathise and endure. Few comics comment on the Human Condition without taking a strident position. Here’s one that asks you to choose your own, and choose it every single time. Find it. Buy it. Read it.

Think about it.

© 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 Adrian Tomine. All Rights Reserved.

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Scott Pilgrim Vol 2: vs the World

Scott Pilgrim Vol 2: vs the World 

By Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni Press)
ISBN: 1-9326-6412-2

A second volume of Scott Pilgrim so soon? Ultra-cool. For those of you not in the know, Scott is just this guy who is eking out a generally stress-free existence in modern Toronto, not working, hanging out, sleeping late, and dating two girls. He’s in a band, but they pretty much suck.

Did I say stress-free? Not so much this time as his gay room-mate orders him to sort himself out and dump the under-age girlfriend, Asian-American teen-ninja, Knives Chau, and concentrate on just Ramona Flowers. This latter chick Scott truly loves, and anyway, he’s already sworn to fight all her evil ex-boyfriends, the aptly titled “League of Ramona’s Evil Ex-Boyfriends”.

Of course, love and two-timing is never simple, as Knives decides that she’s not quite ready to be dumped, so she gets a new look and decides to use her ninja powers to battle Ramona. We’re treated to a more vulnerable Scott Pilgrim here as he writes Ramona a thrash love song, is nearly defeated by her second E.E-B. – skate-boarding movie star Lucas Lee – has to cook a meal and even make some decisions!

Tip in a brief look at his awesome origin, and you have a wonderful slice of sheer captivating entertainment, that is by turn, warm, funny, surreal and un-putdownable.

There are an abundance of teen oriented comic books on the stands at the moment, but this is the only one that has managed to co-opt the pulp science-fiction aspiration of instilling a Sense of Wonder into every moment, and this whimsical approach is the perfect antidote to all that angst, testosterone and fashionista marketing.

You really should treat yourself to one of the first classics comic books of the 21st century. Go buy it now.

â„¢ & © 2005 Bryan Lee O’Malley. All Rights Reserved.

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Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life 

By Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni Press)
ISBN: 1-9326-6408-4

Is it just me, or is all the really cool, really fun and really fresh comic stuff coming out of the alternative/Small Press/creator owned/ self-published sector of the comic industry? Like so many others my age I grew up in a time with very few strip publishers, and though I love ’em dearly still, I’m acutely aware of just how limited a range those mainstream creators were allowed to work within.

I’m simply appalled that in an era of specialist retailers, comic conventions and all the computer age paraphernalia that should keep editors and publishers totally clued in to the appetites of their customer base, the same old stuff is perpetually retooled and recycled whilst everybody and his aunt bemoans the unstoppable decline in comics sales and the inevitable death of the medium.

I have some maxims that might solve this conundrum. Produce work for your audience, not yourselves. Variety is the spice of life. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Think about the work first, and the Subsidiary Merchandising Rights last. This is an entertainment medium: Your goal should be to make entertainment.

Having got that off my voluminous chest, I can whole-heartedly recommend the work of Bryan Lee O’Malley. His Manga-esque tales of an adorable boy-idol slacker, shambling his way through a contemporary, if somewhat surreal, life is a gentle stroll through a world that manages to feel warmly nostalgic no matter what age you are or where you grew up. Scott Pilgrim is young, lazy and gorgeous, shares a flat with his cool, gay best mate, plays in a band and has girlfriend hassles. He lives his life from moment to moment and manages to keep a firm grip on both angst and hormones.

Although ostensibly targeting the modern counter-culture of the troubled teen, skate-boarding, new punk generation, there is a wonderfully accessible universality to his problematic existence and his perpetually stop-gap solutions. In terms of content alone this should be considered a mass-market item. And should enough people see this work to make Scott Pilgrim a “bankable” commodity pray that the author keeps some form of creative control, because this is that rarest of comic books. The stories and characters are unbelievably good but the sometimes crude and often over-exuberant drawing is absolutely perfect for this material. Nothing and nobody else could possibly do it justice – and that includes any dream cast any Hollywood producer could possibly drool over.

This is a great comic book. Go buy it now.

â„¢ & © 2004 Bryan Lee O’Malley. All Rights Reserved.

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Scooby Doo & The Mummy Mystery

Scooby Doo & The Mummy Mystery 

By Various (Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84023-977-8

Another excellent paperback sized compilation reprinting tales of the legendary Scooby Gang culled from the pages of their long-running DC/Kids WB (Warner Brothers) comic. This third collection from Titan Books (The Haunted House and The Creepy Cruise are still available too) has eight reassuringly familiar tales suitably similar to the long running TV cartoons and movies, this time concocted by writers Dan Abnett, John Rozum, Frank Strom and Terrence Griep Jr., with pencil art by Joe Staton and Anthony Williams. As usual the stories are tightly paced and eminently readable. These are wonderful entry-level comic packages for kids of all ages.

© 2004 Hanna Barbera.

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Scooby-Doo & The Creepy Cruise

Scooby-Doo & The Creepy Cruise

By Various (Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84023-884-4

An excellent paperback sized compilation reprinting tales of the legendary Scooby Gang culled from the pages of their long-running DC/Kids WB (Warner Brothers) comic. Just like the TV cartoons/movies, the plots and characterisations are cast in unbreakable concrete but the seven adventures rollick along at a gripping clip and the dialogue and artwork is of a very high standard. Older fans might get an illicit thrill seeing the latest work from veteran artists Joe Staton and Don Perlin or the scripting of Indie favourite Bob Fingerman. Buy it to get your kids reading comics, then confiscate for yourself.

© 2004 Hanna-Barbera.

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Batman: War Games, Act Three: Endgame

Batman: War Games, Act Three: Endgame 

By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-84576-122-7

Spoiler Ahead! Have you reviewed the other volumes of this storyline?

Rather than put you to the trouble of looking up the review of the previous volumes, please allow me to quote and paraphrase: Batman has training scenarios in place for every eventuality. One of them, in which he posits a takeover of all criminals in Gotham by his own undercover agent, has been activated by his current assistant Spoiler/Robin the Girl Wonder, leading to a gang war and general bloodbath. As the chaos ensues, sadistic mastermind Black Mask hijacks both the plan and Spoiler, whom he tortures near to death. He also kills Batman’s agent Orpheus and takes his place. All of Gotham is under fire and when the Dark Knight tries to take control of the police force. No longer an “Urban Myth”, Batman is now the focus of both police anger and public attention…

This volume of War Games serves to clear up and set the scene for another restart of the Batman Family, and I’m not going to reveal too much in case you want to read it yourself, but I will say that any new audiences that this kind of event garners – at least in Graphic Novel terms – must be supremely indifferent to many of the big thematic revisions touted in the periodical origins of the eight related series that make up this book. So nobody believed in the Bat and his buddies before this? The criminals certainly did. So he works outside the law now? Didn’t he always, at least, since the last time he didn’t? So some of his cast don’t survive? Nobody major – and who stays dead in comics?

I so wanted to be upbeat here. Individually many chapters from the forty or so assorted comics professionals working here are very good. It’s the marketing policy that falls down. The shouting of “milestones” and “turning points” and “major changes” never amount to anything and the illusion of change is just that, when looked at with the perspective of a little time and distance.

Wouldn’t it be better to get all these wonderfully talented creators to concentrate on simply producing good stories as they do in the course of their regular assignments and quit this relentless chasing of the cross-over cash cow? There could still be compilations and collections, but they’d have entertainment as their main concern, not traffic and continuity management. Don’t all these great characters and jaded readers deserve that at least?

© 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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JSA: Black Vengeance

JSA: Black Vengeance 

By Geoff Johns, Don Kramer & Keith Champagne (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-256-8

The super-hero soap opera (originally published as issues #66-75 of the monthly magazine) steps into high gear as the younger stalwarts have to travel back in time to thwart a plot to prevent the Justice Society from ever coming out of retirement, after the House un-American Activities Commission and Senator Joe McCarthy forced them to disappear in the early 1950s.

This unassuming time-paradox romp serves to clear up a few long running plot-lines, as does the eponymous Black Vengeance sequence that follows when Atom Smasher and Black Adam debate the kind of heroics necessary in the modern world whilst the nigh-omnipotent Spectre attempts to destroy all magic (as seen in such Infinite Crisis series as Day of Vengeance) whilst asking a few questions about US imperialism as seen from the perspective of the citizens of fictional middle-Eastern nation Kahndaq, who are mere collateral damage statistics whenever super-powers come into play.

Despite the seemingly political overtones, this is still primarily a simple hero-fest for fans of that genre, and will deliver high quality escapism for the faithful, although the uninitiated might find the implied back-story a little hard to grasp.

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Dan Dare: Red Moon Mystery

Dan Dare: Red Moon Mystery 

By Frank Hampson (Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84023-666-3

Dan Dare, his faithful crew and the Eagle were a part of British life almost from the outset and the secret is the sheer quality of the artwork and stories. Frank Hampson and his team brought joy and glamour into the lives of a weary nation and the gloriously lavish Titan books editions magically recapture it all!

The first two volumes saw our heroes broach the mysteries of Venus, meet and defeat the Mekon and his deadly Treens and literally save the world. Attempting to top that for sheer spectacle the creative team of Hampson and his associates (co-scripter George Beardmore and fellow artists Eric Eden, Don Harley, Harold Johns, Greta Tomlinson and others) craft a splendid blend of tension and action as a deadly wandering moon threatens to shatter the Earth! Gripping, beautifully illustrated and progressing at a breakneck pace this is a superb piece of end-of-the-World drama that matches the best of the post-war doomsmiths such as John Wyndham or J. G. Ballard. It’s got a happy – portentous – ending too!

Solid, clean wholesome entertainment that is timeless and produced to the highest standards, these books also contain a wealth of extra features that can’t fail to make the casual reader into a blithering fanatic like me. Get ’em for your dad, get ’em for the kids, and while we’re you’re at it, have some yourself!

© 2004 Dan Dare Corporation. All rights Reserved.

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Batman: War Games, Act Two: Tides

Batman: War Games, Act Two: Tides 

By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-84576-070-0

The middle Act of the 2004 Batman braided crossover, Tides focuses much more heavily on the personal costs that each hero must pay whilst attempting to stem the rivers of blood generated as the dwindling criminal factions consolidate into new power-bases. Gotham City is bathed in blood as a mysterious master-planner has engineered a scheme to tackle the crime situation by having the various factions destroy each other. Obviously the collateral damage is not a consideration for this ruthless mastermind- whoever he or she is. The volume ends with losses to the ranks of heroes – these things always do – in a set-up for the final book which will concentrate on the kicking of butts and taking of names.

I’m wanting desperately to be fair here. Individually many chapters from the forty or so assorted comics professionals working here are very good. It’s just as a product of a flawed and outmoded marketing policy that this story, like so many others that this tactic has spawned, falls down. The niggles that merely jar in the blur of weekly comic delivery stand out tall, proud and glaring when collected together in great big books.

Perhaps the final volume will pull it all together and produce sense out of nonsense…

© 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.