Month: October 2007

Posted on

Johnny Ryan’s XXX Scumbag Party

Volume II of the collected Angry Youth Comix

 Johnny Ryan's XXX Scumbag Party

By Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-867-1

Graphic narrative and cartooning, despite our sometimes protestations of comprising a comparatively small pond, cover a vast range of genres, formats, disciplines and tastes. From Tintin or Raymond Brigg’s Snowman through the various escapist mainstreams to the edgy, unpredictable and even the downright shocking.

Johnny Ryan is a comedian who uses comics as his medium of expression. Whether in his own ‘Angry Youth Comix’, or the many commissions for such varied clients as Nickelodeon, Hustler, Vice, Arthur, National Geographic Kids and elsewhere, his job and mission is to make laughter. Depending on your point of view he is either a filth-obsessed pervert smut-monger or a social iconoclast using the same tactics as Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks to assault the worst aspects of our society.

His wild, loose cartoon drawing style is deceptively engrossing, and his seeming pictorial Tourette’s Syndrome of strips and gags involving such grotesque signature characters as Boobs Pooter (world’s most disgusting stand-up comedian), Blecky Yuckerella, Loady McGee and Sinus O’Gynus will, frankly, appal many readers, but as with most questions of censorship in a Free Society, they are completely at liberty neither to buy nor read the stuff.

Gross, vulgar, shocking strips and panel gags about sex, defecation, farting, bodily functions, feminine hygiene, and even the ultimate modern taboos of religion, politics, race and child-abuse are the sole content of this volume collecting Angry Youth #6-10, plus material from Hotwire Comix & Capers Vol.1 and VICE Magazine. If you’re prudish, sensitive or concerned about moral standards – don’t buy and don’t read it.

If you aren’t any of those things and could stand a good, hearty laugh that might also make you think, then this is the dirty cartoon joke-book for you.

© 2007 Johnny Ryan. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Death: At Death’s Door

Death

By Jill Thompson (Vertigo/Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84023-695-7

Jill Thompson crafts a canny alternative look to the overwhelmingly successful Sandman by giving him the manga treatment in this reinterpretation of some pivotal events from the landmark fantasy series.

During Sandman: Season of Mists (ISBN: 978-1-85286-447-7) Morpheus tries to liberate his old lover from Hell, whence he banished her ten thousand years previously. His confrontation with Lucifer takes an unexpected turn when the Lord of the Damned abdicates, and shuts Hell. Freeing all the demons and souls in bondage, Lucifer gives the place and the responsibility to the Sandman.

The repercussions of these events resounded for years through the Vertigo corner of the DC Universe, and Thompson’s sharp, light tale details background events that happened “off-camera” during those tumultuous times. As Morpheus entertains embassies from gods and devils all eager to obtain the supernatural lebensraum of the Underworld, his sister Death has a couple of problems of her own.

Primarily, deprived of an abode, the damned dead souls from Hell are all turning up on her doorstep, but almost as troubling is the fact that her untrustworthy sisters Desire and Delirium have decided to turn the whole mess into an excuse for the wildest party in the Universe.

Cutesy comedy hi-jinks coupled with chilling suspense and fantasy make for an uncomfortable mix but Thompson makes it work, although the end result might not be to every fan’s taste.

© 2003 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Hellblazer: Good Intentions

Hellblazer: Good Intentions

By Brian Azzarello & Marcelo Frusin (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84023-433-4

In this volume Brian Azzarello continues to explore human monstrosity, dredging the darkest depths of life. Freed from prison (see Hellblazer: Hard Time -ISBN: 1-84023-255-2 for the grim details) the magical, morally ambivalent Trickster-Magician has headed deep into America’s rural Southlands. Constantine has a half-baked idea of explaining the true circumstances of his incarceration to the family of the man he’s supposed to have murdered. It doesn’t help that the bereaved wife is actually one of his old girlfriends, from the days when he was a punk rock singer, and a mere dabbler in the dark world of the supernatural.

Doglick, West Virginia is a sleazy, broken hole in the ground. Dirt-poor, with no jobs for anybody the dumb, redneck yokels that abide there are every hillbilly hick cliché you could imagine. Constantine and the Fermin boys go back a ways, and his old girl friend married Richard. They used to call him ‘Lucky’, but that was before he killed himself and framed Constantine for the murder.

Inured to the horrors of the Outer Dark and the vile lust for power that infects human and Unhuman alike, the Magician is totally unprepared for the different kind of horrors that infests the poverty-stricken hell-hole he finds himself trapped in.

Azzarello & Marcelo Frusin have challenged John Constantine with a truly different kind of horror. Cloying, oppressive and inexorable, this visceral and truly disturbing wilderness tale is a powerful testament to the versatility of the character. Constantine has been many things: Con-man, hero, villain, thief and even monster. Here he is also pitifully human…

Compelling storytelling – even if only for those who can handle it.

© 2000, 2001 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Death’s Head, Vol 2

UK EDITION

Death's Head, Vol 2

By Simon Furman & various (Panini Publishing UK)
ISBN 1-905239-69-6

This collection completes the gathering of material featuring the robotic Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (never, ever call him a bounty hunter!) who rampaged through the British corners of the Marvel Universe – and indeed the Americas, as this volume riotously reveals – before he was upgraded into a multiple-personalitied super-killer in the Death’s Head II miniseries.

‘Time Bomb’ (originally printed in Death’s Head #8) is written and inked by Steve Parkhouse and illustrated by Art Wetherell. Our far-future protagonist is hired to “Remove” the Doctor (that would be Doctor Who to the uninitiated) before he can thwart the plans of Josiah W. Dogbolter – who sees Time as a precious commodity, and therefore wants to corner the market in it.

Utilising the “Dogbolter Temporal Rocket” Death’s Head is dispatched through the Chronal Ether to eliminate the Time Lord (the Sylvester McCoy version, if you’re keeping count) only to discover that he’s been set up by the scurrilous plutocrat. He also finds that the Doctor has left him on top of the Fantastic Four’s headquarters…

Simon Furman and Geoff Senior return for the next tale. ‘Clobberin’ Time’ is a good old fashioned fist-fest as the Fantastic Four first fight, then befriend, the robotic Fixer. Unfortunately, their attempts to return him to his own era go awry and he lands in the corporate dystopia of 2020AD, geting into a big bust-up with the Iron Man of that time. Bryan Hitch illustrates Furman’s ‘The Cast Iron Contract’, which ended the 10 issue run of Death’s Head. But the Freelance Peacekeeper was too popular to stay in limbo for long…

Furman and Senior returned to the character in ‘The Body in Question’, a lavish original graphic novel that explored his origin as well as tying up some loose ends with the villain Big Shot who had been built up over a number of stories only to lose his chance when the comic book was cancelled.

From there Death’s Head became a guest-star in other comics – the traditional route to regaining a comic series of one’s own. Furman and Hitch, plus inker John Beatty created ‘Priceless’ in She-Hulk #24, and Walt Simonson included him in his extended time-travel saga during his run as writer/artist on Fantastic Four (‘Kangs for the Memories’ in FF #338). He also had a solo adventure, ‘The Deadliest Game,‘ in the fortnightly anthology Marvel Comics Presents (#76 by Furman and Hitch again).

He returned to his roots in Doctor Who Monthly #173, as Writer Gary Russell, and artists Mike Collins and Steve Pini invited him to a TV fans delight in the cameo-crazy bash entitled ‘Party Animals’.

Post-Death’s Head II, Furman and Senior got one last crack at the big guy in a rather good alternative history tale from volume 2, #54 of What If…? Death’s Head II is a super-android called Minion which killed and absorbed the abilities and personalities of more than 100 of the universe’s most powerful beings, including our robotic star. In this tit-for-tat switch we see what might have happened to the Marvel Universe in ‘What If Minion had not Killed Death’s Head?’

Fast-paced and fantastic, brimming with action and guest-stars, and reeking of the cynical irreverence and black humour that typifies British comics, this is a rare gem of high quality from a generally poor period in Marvel’s history. So if you like sardonic asides with your science fiction and can see the funny side of excessive violence, this book (and its predecessor Death’s Head Vol. 1 ISBN 1-905239-34-3) is for you.

© 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

A Wish For Wings That Work

A Wish For Wings That Work

By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co.)
ISBN: 0-316-10758-1

For most of the 1980s and early 1990s Berké Breathed dominated the American newspaper comic strip scene with his astoundingly funny surreal political fantasy strip Bloom County and latterly Outland (mercifully still available – so don’t wait for my reviews, just order them now!). At the top of his game he retired from strip cartooning and began to create a series of lavish children’s picture books that rank among the best America has ever produced.

A Wish for Wings That Work is a Christmas parable featuring Breathed’s signature character, and his most charmingly human. Opus is a talking penguin, educated but emotionally vulnerable, insecure yet unfalteringly optimistic. His most fervent dream is that one day he might fly like a “real” bird.

As Christmas approaches his desperation and desolation grow, but he remains dolorously earthbound. But then on Christmas Eve Santa Claus has an accident…

Breathed’s first children’s book is still in many ways his most poignant and joyous. It’s an old fashioned Christmas miracle tale, beautifully painted, stuffed with wit and belly-laughs that will melt the hardest heart and it belongs on the bookshelf of every parent. When the family have almost ruined the holiday, this is what you want to restore your spirits. Kids might like it too…

© 1991 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told

Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told

By Various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-84576-038-7

If you buy into the myth, then there are actually many, many great Batman stories. Over the decades lots of very talented creators excelled themselves with the various toys and icons of Gotham City. That’s not to say that there haven’t been some real turkeys along the way, but on the whole people seem to extend themselves for Batman. Often the real problem is one of context, since many stories worry reprint editors in terms of “Sell-By Date”; as if nearly eight decades of creativity can avoid looking dated to some modern consumers.

Guys, who cares? These are the ones who want to colourise Citizen Kane and Arsenic and Old Lace, add cell-phones to Shakespeare and never read any book written before 1989. If they can’t get Wuthering Heights unless Angelina’s in it, their money’s no good anyway.

At least this selection contains a few general rarities from the canon, although the origin from Detective Comics #33 (1939) has been seen so often that most fans can draw it from memory – and many parody artists have. ‘The Case of the Honest Crook’ comes from Batman #5 (1941) and ‘The Secret Life of the Catwoman’ is from #62 (1951). ‘Robin Dies at Dawn’ (Batman #156, 1963) is one of the last classic-look tales before Julie Schwartz, John Broome and Gardner Fox projected Batman into the Silver Age of Comics with their “New Look”, a period strangely unrepresented here.

‘The Batman Nobody Knows’ comes from Batman #250, an attempt by Frank Robbins and Dick Giordano to rationalize the then newly-restored aura of mystery to the character, whilst ‘The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge’ (Batman #251, 1973) is a genuine classic from Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams that totally redefined the Joker for our age. For many people this is The Definitive Batman/Joker story.

Steve Englehart is fondly remembered for his collaboration with Marshall Rogers, but ‘Night of the Stalker’ (Detective #439, 1974), illustrated by Vin and Sal Amendola, with Giordano inks is one of his most powerful and emotive successes, but Rogers’s accompanying illustrations for O’Neil’s lacklustre prose vignette ‘Death Comes at Midnight and Three’ displays little of his design skill. It originally ran in DC Special Series #15 (1978). Number 21 of that magazine (1980) gave us Frank Miller’s first Bat story when he illustrated O’Neil’s ‘Wanted: Santa Claus – Dead or Alive’.

In 1987 legendary and beloved artist Dick Sprang was coaxed out of retirement to produce a double page spread for Detective #572, which here precedes the introspective ‘…My Beginning… and My Probable End’ (Detective #574), by Mike W Barr, Alan Davis and Paul Neary. Bringing us out of the nineties is ‘Favourite Things’ by Mark Millar and Steve Yeowell (Legends of the Dark Knight #79, 1996) and the twenty-first century is represented by ’24/7′ by Devin Grayson and Roger Robinson from Gotham Knights #32 (2002).

In an industry that’s constantly seeking to reinvent and revitalize itself, it’s oddly reassuring to see that entertainment can have a timeless quality, even in a supposedly “throw-away” medium like the comic strip.

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

The Cartoonist’s Workshop

Wondering, WHAT SHALL I GET HIM FOR CHRISTMAS?

The Cartoonist's Workshop

By Steve Marchant (Collins & Brown)
ISBN10: 1-84340-146-0 ISBN13: 978-1-84340-146-9

There’s a huge proportion of the comic buying audience that nurtures the dream of working in the field, either for pay in the majors or for their own satisfaction. There are also a vast number of publications offering varying degrees of tips, hints, advice and training. The Comics Creators Guild itself publishes a number of such, and I sincerely wish we published this book too.

Author Marchant, as well as being the very talented cartoonist responsible for the criminally infrequent Stupidface comics and stories, has been teaching students of all ages the fundamentals of strip production since the late 1980s, and brings all that knowledge to the readers here in a logical, simple progression that acts as the perfect foundation course into the various necessary skills and techniques.

From the first chapter on Tools, Equipment, Basic Techniques and even Computers, through Face & Figure, Places & Objects, Composition & Storytelling, to Presentation & Publication, the facts and necessities are laid out in a manner that creates anticipation rather than trepidation and are entertainingly illustrated. Each section includes a series of projects for the student to complete. Also included is a gallery from a number of professionals to illustrate certain points and styles.

This is probably the best book on the subject since Will Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art and won the CCG Award for “Best Comic Related Product”. If your kids want to get into comics or you harbour the desire yourself, this is where to start from.

© Collins & Brown Limited 2004.
Winner: CCG BEST COMIC RELATED PRODUCT 2004

Posted on

The Adventures of Jo, Zette & Jocko

DESTINATION NEW YORK
Part 2 of THE STRATOSHIP H.22

The Adventures of Jo, Zette & Jocko 2

By Hergé, translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner (Egmont UK)
ISBN 13: 978-1-4052-1243-4

This volume concludes the saga of ‘The Stratoship H.22’, starring the capable Legrand children and their pet monkey Jocko, who saved their father’s revolutionary high-speed plane from a bombing raid by flying it away only to emergency-land it on a tiny desolate island where they are marooned without food or fuel…

The islet is a desolate French Possession, and they discover from its only inhabitant that the next boat isn’t due for five months, but after a terrific storm, fuel drums wash ashore. Scant weeks remain before the one-year deadline expires on John Archibald Pump’s $10,000,000 death-bed challenge to break the non-stop flying record between Paris and New York. Refuelling swiftly, Jo and Zette decide to return to France, even though they aren’t quite sure where it is…

Tragically the plucky youngsters overshoot and after a fearsome voyage, crash in the frozen Arctic where they are taken in by a tribe of Eskimos. Jocko becomes separated from them and is rescued from an ice-floe by a passing ocean liner. Recognising the famous pet, the ship sends a message and the children are found. A rescue plane is dispatched with spare parts and the super-plane, once again piloted by the children, is returned to France.

With days remaining to make the attempt, the saboteurs step up their efforts to foil the French effort, but as ever childish ingenuity stymies their every dirty trick. With one day remaining Jacques Legrand is finally ready to fly his brainchild into the history books. But when Jo and Zette come to see him off they find him and his crew all drugged into comas. With the deadline upon them, who can possibly fly the ship now..?

These beautiful graphic adventures are powerful and evocative fantasies for children, full of daring and accomplishment, and confirming the eternal truth that good kids will always defeat bad adults. If only the real world was as rewarding as these thrilling romps for the young-at-heart of all ages.

© 1951, 1979, 2007 Editions Casterman, Paris& Tournai. All Rights Reserved.
English text © 1987, 2007 Egmont UK Limited. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Phantom, Vol 1

Phantom, Vol 1

By Ki-Hoon Lee & Seung-Yup Cho (TOKYOPOP)
ISBN: 978-1-59816-770-2

Sometimes you just feel the need to say “F**k Art, Let’s Dance”.

Phantom has no overweening redeeming social agenda, no subtle interplay or illuminating subtext. It is, though, an old-fashioned, heavy metal-manga shoot-’em-up, executed with superb aplomb.

Neo Seoul, after the Age of Nations has passed. After the “Meteo Rain” devastated the world, corporations took over society, wielding absolute executive power in a high tech world built by the lowest bidder. It is efficient, oppressive and dystopic. But the human spirit is never content to be suppressed.

‘K’ is a cop, a hot-shot mecha-pilot, who drives a robot battle-suit for The City. But when his day-to-day skirmishes with “terrorists” open his eyes to the true nature of bosses, he is primed for a moral epiphany. But we’ll never know how he might have reacted, because his superiors chose to cut their losses by “firing” him, though not before torturing him and his girlfriend Yura.

Rescued by the Freedom Fighters, Yura is caught in crossfire and terminally injured. After massive surgery, she lives only due to technology. But the life-support tech is expensive and freedom isn’t free.

K might have turned into an idealist and rebel. He’s piloting an AI mecha for the opposition now. But as they’re charging him for Yura’s care, he’s billing them for every mission…

This is a splendid slice of all-out, high-tech action hokum. It is a cynical, sardonic, high-octane thriller: fast and furious, lightning-paced and wonderfully well drawn. Load up, strap in and gun your fun-throttles. Weak-kneed sissies need not apply. Yeee-Hahh!

© 2004 Ki-Hoon Lee, Seung-Yup Cho, and DAIWON C.I. Inc.
English text © 2007 TOKYOPOP Inc.

Posted on

Walt Kelly’s Our Gang, Vol 1

Walt Kelly's <i>Our Gang</i>, Vol 1

By Walt Kelly (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN 1-56097-753-1

The Our Gang (later to be known as the Li’l Rascals) movie shorts were one of the most popular series in American Film history. Beginning in 1922 they featured the fun and folksy humour of a bunch of “typical kids” (atypically though, there was full racial equality and mingling – but the little girls were still always smarter than the boys) having idealised adventures in a time both safer and more simple. The rotating cast of characters and slapstick shenanigans were the brainchild of film genius Hal Roach (he directed and worked with Harold Lloyd, Charley Chase and Laurel and Hardy amongst many others) and these brief cinematic paeans to a mythic childhood entered the “household name” category of popular Americana in amazingly swift order.

As times and tastes changed Roach was forced to sell up to the celluloid butcher’s shop of MGM in 1938, and the features suffered the same interference and loss of control that marred the later careers of Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton.

In 1942 Dell released an Our Gang comic book that was written and drawn by Walt Kelly, who, consummate craftsman that he was, restored the wit, verve and charm of the glory days with a progression of short-comic stories that elevated the lower-class American childhood to the mythic peaks of Dorothy in Oz, or Huckleberry Finn.

Over the course of the first eight issues so lovingly reproduced in this glorious collection Kelly moved beyond the films – good and otherwise – to craft an idyllic story-scape of games and dares, excursions, adventures, get-rich-quick-schemes, battles with rival gangs and especially plucky victories over adults, mean, condescending, criminal or psychotic. Given much leeway, Kelly eventually settled on his own cast but aficionados and purists can still thrill here with the classic cast of Mickey, Buckwheat, Happy/Spanky, Janet and Froggy.

Today’s comics have nothing like this to offer to a contemporary audience. Many readers might not even be able to appreciate the skill, narrative charm and lost innocence of this style of children’s tale. If so I genuinely pity them, because this is work with heart and soul, drawn by one of the greatest exponents of graphic narrative America has ever produced. I hope their loss is not yours.

© 2006 Fantagraphics Books. All Rights Reserved.