Author: NowReadThis

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Marvel Adventures Avengers: Thor and Captain America


By Paul Tobin, Scott Gray, Todd Dezago, Ronan Cliquet, Ron Lim, Lou Kang & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5584-3

Since its earliest days Marvel has always courted young comicbook consumers. In 2003 the company instituted the Marvel Age imprint to update and reframe classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others for a fresh-faced 21st century readership.

The experiment was tweaked in 2005, becoming Marvel Adventures. The tone was very much that of the company’s burgeoning TV cartoon franchises, in execution if not name. Titles bearing the Marvel Adventures brand included Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Super Heroes, The Avengers and Hulk. These iterations ran until 2010 when they were cancelled and replaced by new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man.

Almost all of those yarns have been collected in digest-sized compilations such as this one which gathers a selection of fantastic feats starring the God of Thunder or Sentinel of Liberty and their friends, comprising four all-ages tales from the second volume of Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #13-16 (spanning June-September 2011).

The action opens with a mythological masterpiece by Paul Tobin, Ronan Cliquet & Amilton Santos wherein plucky novice hero Nova is invited by Avenging comrades Thor and Valkyrie to accompany them on an annual errand for Odin the All-Father.

In the distant past when Asgardians warred with Trolls, a godling messenger named Glane failed in his mission and was banished to the ghastly Fields of the Fallen to pay penance by continually battling the Golden Realm’s vilest enemies.

Periodically Thor has been sent to add new tasks to the sinning failure’s heavy burden, and this year as the Thunderer and Valkyrie ready themselves for the trip, they invite the starstruck Nova to tag along.

However, as the trio battle their way through horrific monsters and overwhelming odds, Nova finds himself increasingly uncomfortable with the sentence meted out to Glane and even begins to doubt the motives of his immortal mentors. All that changes once he meets and battles beside the convicted penitent…

Originating in MASH #14, ‘Out of Time!’ is by Todd Dezago, Ron Lim & Scott Koblish (inspired by Gerry Conway & Ross Andru’s tale from the original Marvel Team-Up #7) and sees the Lord of Storm intercepting Spider-Man after the wall-crawler is blasted high into the sky whilst battling raving maniac the Looter.

That happy coincidence occurs just a bizarre force freezes time around them. When the heroes discover that only they have escaped a devastating weapon deployed by Trollish tyrant Kryllk the Conqueror to paralyze and overwhelm both Asgard and the mortal plane, they must divide their strength to simultaneously smash the conqueror in both Manhattan and Asgard if they are to set time running free again…

Captain America takes the spotlight in #15 as ‘Back in Time’ (Tobin, Cliquet & Santos) finds the Star-Spangled Avenger battling Neanderthals with ray-guns in a National Forest after tracking down rogue geneticists who have stolen a huge amount of plutonium.

A mere mile away, Peter Parker‘s girlfriend Sophia Sanduval is getting back to nature and chilling with her furry, scaly and feathered friends. As Chat, the mutant teen’s power to communicate with animals makes her a crucial component of the mystery-solving Blonde Phantom Detective Agency, but even she has never seen anything like the wave of extinct creatures which appear after Cap begins battling the tooled-up cavemen.

Soon she has been briefed on the deadly experiments of rogue technologist Jerrick Brogg – whose ambition is to build an army out of revived extinct creatures – and swears to help Cap put the maniac away and save all the beasts he has recreated from short painful lives of terror and brutal exploitation…

Wrapping up the action comes ‘Stars, Stripes and Spiders!’ by Dezago, Lou Kang & Pat Davidson (based on Len Wein & Gil Kane’s tale from Marvel Team-Up #13).

When a certain wall-crawling high-school student and occasional masked hero stumbles into Captain America tackling an AIM cadre stealing super-soldier serum, the nervous lad learns a few things about the hero game from the legendary guy who wrote the book. Sadly, not making that lesson any easier is petrifying super-villain Grey Gargoyle, whose deadly touch almost ends Spidey’s homework worries – and continued existence – forever…

Never the success the company hoped, the Marvel Adventures project was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to those Disney XD television shows designated as “Marvel Universe cartoons”, but these collected stories are still an intriguing, amazingly entertaining and superbly accessible means of introducing characters and concepts to kids born sometimes three generations or more away from the originating events.

Fast, furious, funny and enthralling, these riotous mini-epics are extremely enjoyable yarns, although parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the level of violence might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages Super Hero Action”…
© 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Shadow volume 2: Revolution


By Victor Gischler, Jack Herbert, Aaron Campbell, Giovanni Timpano & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-361-2

In the early 1930s, The Shadow gave thrill-starved readers their measured doses of extraordinary excitement via cheaply produced pulp periodical novels, and over the mood-drenched airwaves, through his own radio show.

“Pulps” were published in every style and genre in their hundreds every month, ranging from the truly excellent to the pitifully dire, but for exotic or esoteric adventure-lovers there were two star who outshone all others. The Superman of his day was Doc Savage, whilst the premier dark, relentless creature of the night dispensing terrifying grim justice was the putative hero under discussion here.

Radio series Detective Story Hour – based on stand-alone yarns from the Street & Smith publication Detective Story Magazine – used a spooky voiced narrator (variously Orson Welles, James LaCurto or Frank Readick Jr.) to introduce each tale. He was dubbed “the Shadow” and from the very start on July 31st 1930, he was more popular than the stories he highlighted.

The Shadow evolved into a proactive hero solving instead of narrating mysteries and, on April 1st 1931, began starring in his own printed pulp series, written by the incredibly prolific Walter Gibson under the house pseudonym Maxwell Grant. On September 26th 1937 the radio show officially became The Shadow with the eerie motto “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Men? The Shadow knows!” ringing out unforgettably over the nation’s airwaves.

Over the next eighteen years 325 novels were published, usually at the rate of two a month. The uncanny crusader spawned comicbooks, seven movies, a newspaper strip and all the merchandising paraphernalia you’d expect of a superstar brand.

The pulp series officially ended in 1949 although Gibson and others added to the canon during the 1960s when a pulp/fantasy revival gripped America, generating reprinted classic stories and a run of new adventures as paperback novels.

In graphic terms The Shadow was a major player. His national newspaper strip – by Vernon Greene – launched on June 17th 1940 and when comicbooks really took off the Man of Mystery had his own four-colour title; running from March 1940 to September 1949.

Archie Comics published a controversial contemporary comicbook in 1964-1965 under their Radio/Mighty Comics imprint, by Robert Bernstein, Jerry Siegel, John Rosenberger and latterly Paul Reinman; and in 1973 DC acquired the rights to produce a captivating, brief and definitive series of classic comic adventures unlike any other superhero title then on the stands.

DC periodically revived the venerable vigilante. After the runaway success of Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman, Howard Chaykin was allowed to utterly overhaul the vintage feature. This led to further, adult-oriented iterations (and even one cracking outing from Marvel) before Dark Horse assumed the license of the quintessential grim avenger for the latter half of the 1990s and beyond.

Dynamite Entertainment picked up the option in 2011 and, whilst republishing many of those other publisher’s earlier efforts, began a series of new monthly Shadow comics.

Set in the turbulent 1930s and war years that followed, these were crafted by some of the top writers in the industry, each taking their shot at the immortal legend, and all winningly depicted by a succession of extremely gifted illustrators.

This second volume – collecting #7-12 of the monthly comicbook from 2013 – comes courtesy of Victor Gischler (Gun Monkeys, Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth, Kiss Me Satan), again throwing a spotlight on the increasing deadly geopolitics of a civilisation sliding inexorably into another World War….

His scripts were variously realised by Jack Herbert, Aaron Campbell, Giovanni Timpano, Ivan Nunes & Carlos Lopez, and the action opens with a self-contained prelude that begins with the Master of the Macabre suffering from uncharacteristic bad dreams…

Very few people know that the black-cloaked fist of final retribution known as The Shadow masquerades by day as abrasive, indolent playboy Lamont Cranston. Most are agents in his employ and they are all aware of his semi-mystical abilities to detect thoughts and cloud the minds of men, but not that in the past few days those abilities have seemingly waned and led to the death of an innocent…

Engaging veteran Great War pilot Miles Crofton, Cranston embarks on a journey to the Himalayan region where he long ago studied under august adepts of the arcane. However, his voyage is interrupted in Nepal when he encounters a brutal bandit leader dubbed Red Raja. This thuggish crimelord seems to have powers and abilities similar and equal to his own…

Eschewing immediate confrontation, Cranston delves deep into the past and eventually learns the Raja also studied with the esoteric “Masters”. Tragically, when his innate evil nature forced them to expel him, the student returned with men and guns; wiping out the entire enclave of puissant accumulated knowledge…

Armed with information and fuelled by righteous fury, The Shadow then assaults Red Raja’s fortress, single-handedly eradicating his army of rogues before enacting final judgement…

Weeks later, vacationing in Paris whilst Miles has their plane repaired, the restless Shadow passes his time hunting down human predators and becomes emotionally embroiled in a missing persons case.

The trail leads to a grand soiree at the Spanish Embassy where Cranston makes a particular splash with the assorted dignitaries and persons of wealth and high station, particularly after loudly declaring that he is an arms dealer with product to sell.

It is 1937 and the civil war in Spain has all but stalled, with both sides afflicted by attrition and exhaustion…

Horrified Ambassador Ramirez is only too happy to fob off the tiresome Cranston on his military attaché. As soon as he sees the devastating Major Esmeralda Aguilar, the Shadow knows she is no ordinary woman…

The swaggering millionaire is only too eager to ditch the stuffy party with the exotic spy, but their intimate drive through the City of Lights is almost ended by a machine gun attack. Then Cranston discovers just how dangerous his companion truly is…

The next day Miles resurfaces with news on a freighter full of munitions headed for Spain and the final clue to the disappearances the Shadow has been investigating. Even with mental faculties and powers diminished and compromised, the Dark Avenger is clear on where his next destination lies…

Intercepting the gunrunners as they seek to offload their illicit cargo at a Spanish port, the Shadow dispenses his brand of justice before vanishing, and twelve hours later Lamont Cranston arrives in Barcelona, unsure of what trick of fate or his own subconscious has brought him there.

His mystically-attuned senses go into overdrive once he meets an inoffensive British volunteer in the Socialist Brigade calling himself “George Orwell”…

After befriending the oddly magnetic militiaman, Cranston excuses himself and resumes his trail of guns whilst Orwell returns to his unit in Aragon. Diligent hunting takes the Shadow to a warehouse where a gang led by a masked woman named Black Sparrow are attempting to sell the munitions to representatives of the underworld.

When the crooks try a double-cross they are savagely wiped out by the Sparrow as her men stand idly by, and from his hidden vantage point the Shadow realises just how extraordinary Major Aguilar truly is…

Soon the Avenger is risking spectacular airborne death; chasing her back to an ancient castle in the Aragon Region where he uncovers a bold scheme by an international cabal to place a third ruler on the throne of Spain. Of course, when he blazes in to end the conspiracy, Cranston finds more than he bargained for.

“El Rey” is far from the dominating despot he appears, and the true mastermind behind the plot is far more of a match for the Shadow than the grim guardian could possibly have anticipated.

And that’s when fate reveals the potential value of a certain nondescript British soldier of ideology and fortune…

This historically-flavoured jaunt then concludes with one last hurrah as Miles and Cranston belatedly return to New York just in time for the Shadow to fixate on a gang of ruthless bank robbers terrorising the city with their bold and lethal raids.

Broaching his contacts on the police force and rampaging through the ranks of the underworld, the Shadow turns the city upside down until at last a grudging tip takes him to a certain Chinatown whorehouse where a most exotic creature provides all the details he need to exact his vengeance on the guilty.

Now all that remains is to trigger the bloody end…

Dynamite publish periodicals with a vast array of cover variants and here a vast gallery features dozens of iconic alternate visions from Alex Ross, John Cassaday, Darwyn Cooke, Francesco Francavilla, Tim Bradstreet, Mike Mayhew, Michael Golden, Jack Herbert and Sean Chen to delight any art lover’s eyes and heart.

Sardonic, uncompromising and packed with subtle nuance, Revolution is a superb addition to the annals of the quintessential Dark Knight, and one no one addicted to action and mystery should be without.
The Shadow ® & © 2013 Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. d/b/a Conde Nast. All Rights Reserved.

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Growing Up in Public


By Ezequiel García (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-936-3

With the acceptance of graphic novels as a valid and worthy form of entertainment and mature expression has come a welcome flowering of personal stories and authorial voices blending unique – and literal – visions with perspectives far removed from our cosy own.

After all, potent and evocative as they might be, the graphic observations and conclusions of a Harvey Pekar or Eddie Campbell still resonate with shared concerns, experiences and ideologies for most English-speaking, western-reared readers from Britain, the USA, Canada, New Zealand or Australia.

Such a view just can’t be taken when absorbing the pictorial ruminations of equally brilliant and driven artisans from countries with differing historical, socio-cultural, linguistic and even artistic world views.

That kind of revelatory exotic intimacy can be found in Growing up in Public, the latest cartoon epistle from Argentinean artist and cartoonist Ezequiel García as he contemplates his achievements, total lack of success or celebrity and place in the world following his thirtieth birthday…

Born in 1975, García studied under Argentinean comics legend Alberto Breccia whilst co-editing several comics anthologies and trying his hands at other forms of artistic expression. Growing up in troubled times in a country that has always taken culture, heritage and the arts seriously, he has had short works appear in comics magazines in Europe and South America.

He won the comics award at Brazil’s Salon del Humor de Piracicaba in 2000, and his first graphic novel Turning 30 was released in Argentina in 2007. In recent years, Garcia has served as a comics teacher, art gallery curator, and co-organizer of the Festival Increible de Historietas, Fanzines y Afines whilst labouring on this eclectic, far-ranging, intimate, polemical and engaging reminiscence.

In a free-wheeling, affectingly immersive, starkly black-&-white outpouring, Ezequiel introduces us to his world at a certain point in his life. A struggling artist, the author derives much of his inspiration from the history, music and architectural heritage of Buenos Aires. Here, however, as he struggles to find a publisher for his comics, galleries to exhibit his other art, women to sleep with and someone special to love, his attentions are increasingly distracted by the ongoing destruction of all he cherishes as big banks and foreign businesses take over, rebuild and desecrate the magnificent dance palaces, film theatres and civic buildings which were the landmarks and milestones of his childhood…

In truth the entire city is under threat of losing its identity as money and encroaching corporate globalisation seeps in, buying off officials and easily circumventing the legal protections supposedly safeguarding these edifices for the nation…

Most galling of all is Ezequiel’s quest for creative acceptance. He’s getting some traction, but as he and his friends visit show after show, he’s starting to feel that the art world only wants to reward shallow charlatans regurgitating old or devalued concepts and no longer has room or respect for toil, craftsmanship and honest searches for truth…

He feels equally powerless to change his personal situation. Ezequiel has no trouble meeting women, but really wants a girlfriend and just can’t decide on which one to get serious with…

The most potent temptation of autobiographical comics is the total autonomy the exercise grants. In the midst of his collation of linked episodes and hope-filled introspections highlighting the aggravating, mundane or personally significant, García takes the opportunity to radically depart from his prescribed path to interweave a psychedelic, emotionally overcharged diversion.

As he is drawn into a late-night church meeting after reading Moby Dick, he is transported to mind-boggling flights of fancy as the firebrand cleric ranting conflates Melville’s tale with the biblical example of Jonah; resulting in a stunning visual tornado of iconic idolatrous revelation…

And then reality returns and he goes back to his catalogue of disaffection. As he endures more and more of the same the increasingly uncomfortable thirty-someone reaches a crisis in his romantic stalemates and decides it’s time to make decisions and changes in his life…

As previously stated, music plays a great part in the author’s life, and song lyrics – in Spanish – are woven into almost every page of García’s fiercely expressionistic art like street art or a graffiti Greek Chorus. Don’t fret however, as a full compliment of ‘Song Translations’ featuring all those mood-enhancing lines is included in the Bonus Section, which also includes a page of the artists ‘Inspiration’ sources as well as ‘Notes’ offering context and commentary on the story.

Powerful, uncompromising, mesmerising and unforgettable, this is a superb peek at life’s unchanging verities through fresh and expressive eyes and one all lovers of comics as art should seek out.
© 2016 Ezequiel García. Design © 2016 Fantagraphics. Translation © 2016 Ezequiel García. All rights reserved.

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August Moon


By Diana Thung (Top Shelf)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-069-8

Diana Thung was born in Jakarta, and grew up in Singapore before eventually settling in Australia. She is a natural storyteller, cartoonist and comics creator of sublime wit and imagination who seems to have a direct hotline to the limitless thought-scapes of childhood. Every single thing populating her astonishingly unique worlds is honed to razor sharpness and pinpoint logical clarity, no matter how weird or whimsical it might initially seem.

The sentiment is pure and unrefined, the scenarios are perfectly constructed and effectively, authentically realised. …And when things get tense and scary they are excessively tense and really, really scary…

After a few tentative dabblings, Thung catapulted to (relative) fame in 2012 following the release of her first graphic novel: a superb blending of eastern and western comics influences that remixed a few standard elements of fantasy into a superbly fresh conjunction for young and old alike.

Rendered in stunning, organically enticing black and white, the scene opens in the Asian township of Callico: an isolated little metropolis in the midst of lush jungle verdure and a place with a few strange secrets…

Reachable only by one solitary bridge, generally cut off from the wider world by dense surrounding forests and innate unchanging dullness, the town moves at its own pace. Life is slow, existence is bucolic and the biggest deal for the people is the perennial debate over whether the strange dancing lights seen in the trees at night are actually Soul Fire – dead ancestors watching over the town – or just some unexplained scientific phenomenon…

Answers start coming for a select few folk after ugly, business-suited strangers begin buying up empty shops for a company named Mon & Key. Some of the older street vendors are understandably anxious but only Grandma and her peculiar little associate Jaden know the appalling threat the interlopers pose…

Events start to spiral out of control when the newcomers murder a hitherto unknown “animal” and news of the bizarre beast’s corpse leaks out into the wider world. The amazing discovery brings college biologist Dr. Gan back to the town his dead wife grew up in for the first time in years, dragging teenaged daughter Fiona with him.

Reluctant to be there, Fi keeps to herself; spending time snapping photos with her instamatic camera. The dull old backwater suddenly becomes more intriguing after she captures a candid shot of a boy leaping like a grasshopper over the rooftops…

When she finally meets the incomprehensibly enigmatic Jaden, Fi is quickly drawn into his bizarre struggle against the ape-like invaders. After meeting the clandestine forest creatures who are the true source of Soul Fire, she makes their struggle her own…

The cruel and cunning interlopers of Mon & Key worship commerce and progress. Their agenda involves destroying the forests to build factories. Ruthless and multi-resourced, they retaliate by killing all objectors in the know, whilst attempting to dissuade and eventually assassinate Fi’s father.

However, with the aid of Callico’s street children – and a few clued-in, sympathetic adults like her Uncle Simon – Fi and super-powered, magic moon-boy Jaden lead a spirited secret war to destroy the rapacious deforestation machines of Mon & Key.

As the holiday season nears its end and the town prepares for its annual Soul Fire Festival and parade, Mon & Key’s forces assemble for one final deforesting assault, but they have totally underestimated Jaden’s resolve, Fi’s ingenuity and Callico’s desire to remain unchanged and unchanging…

A funny, scary, magical and thrilling modern fable, August Moon seamlessly blends ecological themes with beguiling myth to tell a captivating tale of child empowerment and rebellious wonder. This is a truly enticing young reader’s epic every lover of comics and storytelling should take to their hearts.
© 2011 Diana Thung.

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Black River


By Josh Simmons (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-833-5

After far too long way, cartoonist Josh Simmons (House, Jessica Farm, The Furry Trap) returns with another masterfully monochrome comics epic: a poetically potent, visually enthralling, ferociously challenging tale some might reasonably call a horror story.

However, despite its post-apocalyptic setting and milieu and constantly rising death-toll, Black River has more in common with the arduous privations and torturous trials of endurance and personal choice typical of a Jack London adventure novel than a slasher flick, serial killer slaughter or even last ditch stand against the zombie horde du jour.

Sacrificing plot to concentrate on character and experience, the story details how a band of people roam the wastes of Earth after the world ends.

Incessantly moving forward, the motley mixed-up band of strangers hunt for scarce supplies in wrecked cities and outpost; staying one step ahead of whatever destroyed civilisation. Of course, even as they wearily trudge the length of the continent, scavenging for necessities – and even occasional, instantly abused luxuries like booze and drugs – they cannot stop madness finding them or death from picking them off one by one.

Their years-long nomadic perambulation takes an even darker turn after they are all captured by a marauding band led by a charismatic sociopath called Benji. These brutes have reverted to little more than true beasts, but solitary, traumatised Shauna endures the worst atrocities they can commit before lethally turning the tables on them and leading the now solely female group back out into the wilds again.

Years pass, battles are fought and the group thins as life winnows them down to nothing…

Simmons doesn’t offer answers or explanations: this epic trek of unrelieved toil and raw survivalism is truly all about the journey and what happens next as the ever-shifting cast of desperately determined humans take life one day at a time, one step after another until the inescapable end comes…

Black River is bleak, unrelenting and morbid, but Simmons is a fantastically perceptive creator and realises that even in such an existence, there must be moments of rude hilarity or short-lived contentment and even unexpected joy to balance the constant fight for one more day…

A saga of grim attrition in a world without hope, Black River perfectly displays the best and worst of human nature and is a tale which, once read, will never be forgotten…
© 2015 Josh Simmons. This edition © 2015 Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

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Mystery Girl volume 1


By Paul Tobin, Alberto J. Albuquerque, Marissa Louise & Marshall Dillon (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-959-5

There’s a fabulous wave of smart, entertaining stand-alone comics on the market these days, offering readers a single uncomplicated hit of graphic entertainment without the grief of buying into massive back-history or infinite cross-continuity.

One of the best I’ve seen recently is the compilation of a fierce, frenetic and funny debut 4-issue miniseries from 2015, starring the most infallible detective of all time.

As crafted by Paul Tobin (Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, Plants vs. Zombies, Bandette, Colder) and Alberto J. Albuquerque (Letter 44) – with colours by Marissa Louise and letters from Marshall Dillon – this slim, sleek, slick yarn seems certain to lead to more enigmas excitingly unravelled in our immediate future…

Like any ancient city, London has its fair share of unique characters and unsolved mysteries, but that’s never the case whenever Trine Dorothy Hampstead sets up her “office” on the pavements and begins chatting…

The effusive, ebullient young woman has an incredible gift. She knows the answer to any question she’s asked. Instantly and infallibly. “Where are my keys?” “Did Dad leave a will?” “Where is my son’s body?”

All inquiries get an instant response and every answer is correct…

Trine is a local celebrity in her community, not only for the fact that she’s never judgemental or exploits her gift, but also because everyone knows there’s only one mystery the poor lass can’t solve: how she got her uncanny power…

Trine has an immense taste for life at full throttle and abiding desire to help those in need: regularly consulting with local private eye Alfie and aiding her perpetually sceptical boyfriend – and Metropolitan police constable – Ken Bloke in his work, even though he refuses to believe in her gift…

Her already extraordinary life takes a big step into the unknown when ancient DNA specialist Jovie Ghislain comes to Trine with a fascinating query. The biologist has been researching a 1930’s expedition to the wild Sakha region of Siberia. In the notes of the fabled Weimar-Steinberg trek, the explorers detail how they uncovered a frozen mammoth carcass so perfectly preserved that the meat was still fresh and edible.

The records are tragically incomplete and Ghislain – desperate to secure viable DNA from the deceased giant – wants to know where the rest of the body is now…

The answer is not immediately forthcoming. In fact Trine refuses to say anything unless she can join Jovie’s excursion and personally show the scientists where it is.

Trine thrives on new experiences and this time her gift has paid a huge dividend. As preparations are made, she shrugs off all questions from friends and acquaintances but does confide in her pet budgie Candide. The reason that mammoth meat was so fresh is obvious. It hadn’t been dead long. Now she’s off to see its kin in the only place on earth where the mighty beasts still live…

Sadly, the original expedition and its journals are also the subject of a search by wealthy and far less friendly folk. However, when a mystery billionaire commissions a psychopathic hitman to find all the original journals and stop the new expedition, even the deadly Linford is taken with Trine. Foregoing his usual callous efficiency, the murdering mercenary takes his time, insinuating himself into the life of all her friends. It’s all working out fine until the Mystery Girl is asked about her pal’s latest boyfriend and suddenly she knows all about the new beau, including his real profession…

Hampstead’s plan to deal with him is shockingly effective, but doesn’t go nearly far enough…

Believing the coast clear, Trine and Jovie head for the Arctic Circle, blissfully unaware that their trail is being dogged by Linford’s sinister paymaster and that the killer himself is down but not out. Instead he has devised a cunning method to turn his opponent’s gift against her…

Yet again, however, the obsessive hitman has underestimated Trine’s power, ingenuity and ruthless resolve but when finesse fails at least he can always fall back on overwhelming firepower and direct action…

With the explorers nearing their frozen El Dorado, the bad guys make their move, revealing what’s actually behind all the death and destruction. Now it no longer matters if Trine is asked the right question or not…

As the ghastly true story of the Weimar-Steinberg expedition is exposed, their heirs and inheritors will prove willing to commit mass murder to keep the bloody secret covered up, but Trine asks herself a different question and a life-saving solution pops into her head…

Fast-paced, spectacularly action-packed, witty and superbly balanced as hero and villain play cat-&-mouse around the world, Mystery Girl is a funny, imaginative, brutally uncompromising introduction to a potent and engaging new female character who seems destined for greatness.

Also included are fascinating bonus features including a copious and heavily annotated Sketchbook section with commentary from Tobin and Albuquerque, concept to finished art examples, cover roughs and designs and unused cover art, revealing the masses of effort that went into making this one of the best character debuts of the year.

Don’t ask why you weren’t in at the beginning of her climb to stardom: get Mystery Girl and become someone with (some of) the answers…
Mystery Girl™ & © 2015, 2016 Paul Tobin and Alberto J. Albuquerque. Mystery Girl™ and all prominently featured characters are trademarks of Paul Tobin and Alberto J. Albuquerque.

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Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man Worlds Unite Book 1: Deadly Fusion


By Ian Flynn, Joel Enos, Dan Schoening, Tracy Yardley, Terry Austin, Luis Antonio Delgado, Matt Herms, Ben Bates, Jack Morelli & various (Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-62738-998-3

From the earliest days of comicbooks, the periodical pamphlets have been a cheap and effective way to augment brands and franchises: offering stopgap and interim “extra” adventures and experiences for stars like John Wayne, Roy Rogers or Alan Ladd, TV, movie and kids cartoon dynasties such as Star Trek, Tom & Jerry or Bugs Bunny and an almost infinite number of games, toys and even sugar-packed edibles.

It’s solid business sense and mutually advantageous: publishers get to sell comics, maintain space on shop shelves and cross-sell to new audiences whilst licensees get a relatively inexpensive method of keeping their properties active in at least part of the public consciousness in the long periods between blockbuster releases or off-season doldrums.

Since its 1991 release, Sega’s video game Sonic the Hedgehog has become a fully entrenched global phenomenon. Soon after the initial game release the speedy beast and his crime-busting animal associates became comicbook stars in Britain, America and all over the world.

In the USA, family friendly Archie Comics won the rights to publish an ever-expanding cast of characters beginning with a brace of miniseries in 1992 and 1993. Sonic the Hedgehog volume 3 debuted in July 1993 and has continued continuously ever since, becoming the longest-running game/toy based comicbook in American history at 283 issues and counting. With demand remaining high, the Hedgehog quickly generated a raft of spin-off titles such as Knuckles the Echidna and Sonic X to fill out a whole boutique universe of similarly-themed titles.

Decades later Capcom also picked Archie as publisher for their own complex, complicated and heavily cross-marketed video game franchise Rockman. You probably know it as Mega Man. An expanding line of comics started in April 2011 as the time-bending, dimension-hopping sci fi exploits of the plucky robot warrior and his worthy allies became another genuine funnybook phenomenon.

Last year the world – especially the corporate fantasy-scape shared by kids and game-playing adults – grew closer and overlapped when these two separate but intellectual properties clashed in a spectacular, monolithically successful team-up called Worlds Collide wherein the universes of Sonic and Mega Man were explosively thrown together, creating fresh worlds, a new kind of excitement and better villains to battle…

Nothing screams “sequel” like record-breaking sales and a legion of strident, thrill-starved fans, so that breakthrough meeting was swiftly revisited in an even more ambitious follow-up. The Worlds Unite event reunites the heroes and villains, encompassing all the disparate titles of both pantheons and will eventually fill three graphic novel compilations.

Deadly Fusions – gathering material from Sonic Universe #76, Sonic Boom #8, Sonic the Hedgehog #273, Mega Man #50, Sonic the Hedgehog: Worlds Unite Battles #1 and Mega Man: Worlds Unite Battles #1 – sets the ball rolling; filled with a frankly bewildering array of heroes and villains in constant (family-friendly) conflict, but that’s merely a tantalising, appetite-whetting prelude to cataclysmic and universe altering events yet to come…

Cooperatively crafted by scripters Ian Flynn & Joel Enos with art by Dan Schoening, Ben Bates, Tracy Yardley, Terry Austin, Luis Antonio Delgado, Matt Herms, Ben Bates, Jack Morelli & Rachel Deering, the drama begins when über-menace Sigma comes back from a furious future in the realm of Mega Man X to ally with contemporary master-menace Zavok and crazed terrorist Xander Payne. In his spare time Sigma also kidnaps Mega Man and Sonic’s respective arch-nemeses Dr. Wily and Dr. Eggman to create a legion of baddies dubbed the Deadly Six of Lost Hex…

From his pocket dimension he then declares war on Mega Man’s world and that of Sonic and his animal allies. Sigma seems unstoppable after both heroes are defeated and “disappeared”, even though their friends the Robot Masters and Freedom Fighters valiantly take up the struggle.

However, as the tomorrow tyrant’s schemes inexorably near fruition, he is unaware that his captive scientific renegades are scurrilously working their own agendas: preparing to each become sole survivor and singular conqueror of all the varied realms of creation…

To Be Continued…

A non-stop, manic fight-fest to delight youngsters – and everybody with bulging thumbs who steadfastly hone their competitive natures on a console every chance they get – Deadly Fusion is an uncomplicated and relentless avalanche of non-stop rollercoaster action, packed with visually potent extras.

These include a handy prequel recap feature, a brace of ‘Bonus Battles’ vignettes, a series of gag-strips (by Bill Freiberger, Jonathan H. Gray, Lamar Wells, Rick Bryant & Aleah Baker), a copious sketch and design section detailing the development of the new characters and a truly vast gallery of covers and variants by Patrick “SPAZ” Spaziante, Rafa Knight, Ben Bates, Evan Stanley, Jamal Peppers, Phyllis Novin, Ben Hunzeker, Ryan Jampole, Gary Martin, Steve Downer, T. Rex, Roger & Idalia Robinson, Ed Huang, Irvin Rodriguez and Patrick Thomas Parnell.

Breathtaking and compulsive game-based fun –all that’s missing is the electronic beeping and explosion sounds, and I’m sure someone will be happy to provide those as the pages oh-so-swiftly turn…
© Sega. All rights reserved. CAPCOM, Mega Man and all related characters © CAPCOM. Published by Archie Comics Publications, Ltd under license.

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Time Clock


By Leslie Stein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-930-1

Help Wanted: Girl cartoonist seeks meaning of contemporary existence and like-minded individuals to share bewilderment and revelations with.

Interests/Hobbies include: drinking, counting sand, growing stuff, antiquing for pop culture “trash”, drinking, meaningful conversations with musical instruments, playing board games with same, recreational herbal intoxicants, reminiscing about wild-times with gal-pals and old cronies, drinking, visiting difficult relatives.

Employment: unwanted but regrettably necessary. Although not native to the Big City, is extremely adaptable and will do anything – unless it’s hard, boring or she sucks at it…

After graduating from the New York School of Visual Arts, Leslie Stein began producing astonishingly addictive cartoon strips in the self-published Yeah, It Is. Winning a Xeric Grant for her efforts, she then started an even better comicbook entitled Eye of the Majestic Creature: blending autobiographical self-discovery, surreal free-association, philosophical ruminations, nostalgic reminiscences and devastatingly dry wit to describe modern life as filtered through her seductive meta-fictional interior landscape. She is a creator who sees things as they really aren’t, but makes them authentic and even desirable to anyone willing to pay attention…

This long-awaited third volume resumes Stein’s airy, eccentric and engaging pictorial mood-music as her mythologized autobiography continues to reveal the history and ambitions (for want of a better term) of Larrybear – a girl deliberately and determinedly on her own, trying to establish her uniquely singular way of getting by.

Eschewing chronological narrative for an easy, breezy raconteur’s epigrammatic delivery, illustrated in loose, free-flowing line-work, detailed stippling, hypnotic pattern-building or even honest-to-gosh representational line-drawing, Stein operates under the credo of “whatever works, works” – and she’s not wrong…

Larrybear makes friends easily: bums, winos, weirdoes, dropouts, misfits, non-English-speaking co-workers and especially inanimate objects. Her bestest buddy is her talking guitar/flatmate Marshmallow, one of the many odd fellow travellers who all aggregate around her, briefly sharing her outré interests and latest dreams.

However Larrybear doesn’t want an average life, just more experiences, less hassle and affable companions to share it all with.

This latest graphic dinner party starts with another Friday at work. After scrupulously completing her wage-slave tasks, she heads off to show her latest creation at the long-awaited Sand Counters Convention.

The guy at the next table next is annoying but okay, and she’s touched when venerable old Sand Counter Henry Peet admires her work but, after seeing über-stylist Tim Heerling swanking and lapping up the adulation of the audience, she is mysteriously moved and decides that now she has a new nemesis…

And in the meantime, stay-at-home stringed instrument Marshmallow – feeling unfulfilled – takes up baking to shorten the incessant loneliness…

A second untitled segment then finds Larrybear hanging out with old pal Boris, sharing stories and intoxicants, but still blithely unaware of how he feels about her…

After months of prevaricating, and whilst still enduring dreams about that Heerling guy, our aimless star finally relocates to the countryside where she, Marshmallow and the rest of her animated instrument collection enjoy a life of bucolic fulfilment and idle contemplation until they can’t stand it any more…

This superbly quirky diversion then concludes with ‘Boy’ as Larrybear learns that living miles from the nearest bar and being unable to drive is severely impacting her drinking time, whilst having competition-quality sand delivered is a huge mistake…

All too soon however, she’s back in her natural environment, dealing booze to drunks and sharing their buzz, just as the biggest storm in living memory threatens to close up the city…

All delivered in a mesmerising, oversized (292 x 204 mm) monochrome package, these incisive, absurdist, whimsically charming and visually intoxicating invitations into a singularly creative mind and fabulous alternative reality offer truly memorable walks on the wild side. For a gloriously rewarding and exceptionally enticing cartoon experience – one no serious fan of fun and narrative art can afford to miss – you simply must spend a few hours with a Time Clock.
© 2016 Leslie Stein. All rights reserved.

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Worry Doll


By Matt Coyle (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80616-7

In the comics biz it’s not too often that something truly different, graphically outstanding and able to subvert or redirect the medium’s established forms comes along.

Sadly, when it does we usually ignore it whilst whining that there’s nothing fresh or new in view.

That’s pretty much what happened with Matt Coyle’s astounding Worry Doll when, after six years of work on the dark epic, it was published by Mam Tor in 2007 and sank from the collective audience’s sight after causing but the barest of ripples.

To be fair, British-born, Australia-based Coyle (see also, if you can, his mordant, socio-political satire Registry of Death) did win the 2007 Rue Morgue award for Best Comic Book Artist for his incredible photo-realistic line-art on Worry Doll, but the innovative delivery of one of the creepiest tales in comics history never garnered the acclaim it deserved in our superhero-saturated toy, TV and film license-loaded entertainment arena.

Now, thanks once again to Dover Books’ Comics & Graphic Novels division, another lost classic of the art form has a second chance to shine, so let’s show some proper respect and make this edition the popular success it should be…

A soft-cover monochrome landscape affair; enigmatic observations and conversations are delivered in the oldest format of pictorial narrative, with blocks of text on one page balanced by an illustrated panel or sequence of images on the facing folio, as a most distressing story unfolds…

A happy home becomes a charnel scene of slaughter and in the aftermath, amidst the bloody remains of a recently-despatched family, a trio of beloved mannequins intended to assuage anxiety take on ghastly animation and leave in search of answers – or is it actually just different questions?

Making their way across familiarly picturesque and simultaneously terrifying country, the dolls increasingly depend on the kindness of strangers, until their nightmare road-trip is eventually subsumed in someone’s story. As our perspective shifts, we get clues that other hands are working these puppets and the story is not as it seems nor quite done yet…  

Spooky and subversive, blending classic noir mood and tone with storybook quests and psychologically daunting introspection, Worry Doll operates on multiple layers of revelation, both in the staggeringly detailed illustration and the prose accompaniment; constantly offering hints and forebodings if not answers…

With a new Foreword from comics author and filmmaker Shaun Tan (The Lost Thing, The Red Tree, The Arrival) who sagely deconstructs the journey and Coyle’s virtuosity with line and form, this is a complex, engaging and ominously beautiful masterwork no true lover of comics or addict of sinister suspense can afford to miss.
© 2007 by Matthew Coyle. Foreword © 2016 by Shaun Tan. All rights reserved.

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Dream Gang


By Brendan McCarthy & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-000-7

London-born Brendan McCarthy came to funnybook prominence in 2000AD before finding international comics stardom whilst pursuing a parallel career in film, television, music videos and design.

Forward-looking, iconoclastic yet simultaneously deeply reverential of comics’ great innovators, his most notable graphic works include Strange Days and Paradax, Judge Dredd, Zenith, Sooner or Later, Skin, Rogan Gosh, Spider-Man: Fever and innumerable stunning covers. His moving-media credits are equally singular and impressive, having produced scripts and/or design work for The Storyteller, Highlander, Lost in Space, pioneering CGI animation series Reboot, Mad Max 4: Fury Road and so much more.

Originally seen as scintillating segments of a occluded whole in Dark Horse Presents volume 3 #1-4, #7-10 and #14-17 in 2014-2015, McCarthy’s latest magnum opus has been completely remastered here: a digitally-psychedelic, intoxicatingly intriguing yarn (with lettering from Nate Piekos of Blambot® and additional colouring from Len O’Grady) which begins with a tedious worn-down wage slave enduring his greyly monochrome mind-numbing existence.

Everything changes – but not necessarily for the better – when his head hits the pillow and he is transported to an incredible, overwhelming wonderworld where dreams are made manifest and the id and subconscious roam free and wild…

However the dreamscape is in the midst of a terrifying civil war with a marauding entity dubbed Zeirio ripping apart the fantastical strata and recondite regions of the Dreamscape in his lust to acquire a hidden ultimate weapon and break out into the real world.

Instantly attacked by a passing Hate-Wraith, our reluctant wanderer is only saved by the swift intervention of quirkily charismatic Sheriff Chumhartley who then presses him into service by activating his Dream Avatar…

Now submerged within the masked super-heroic frame of the Dream Voyager, the baffled, bemused and partially amnesiac real-worlder is subjected to a parade of mind-blasting sights as he reluctantly joins the imaginary brotherhood of the Dream Gang in a last-ditch pursuit of Zeirio.

However, with his new allies losing ground – and, too often, their lives – the imported champion is further baulked and distracted by the appearance of a beloved and long-lost friend from his past, who distracts his dream-fuelled attention and might well be their adversary’s greatest and cruellest counter-weapon…

An astounding visual voyage of discovery to a region of tantalisingly phantasmagorical, thought-bending phenomena to endure Horatian struggles against insurmountable odds, this is a moody, moving and creepily compelling psychological escapade to delight all lovers of the life fantastic.

Devotees of McCarthy’s unique artistic visions will be further rewarded by a copious bonus section which includes an informative Afterword and a large gallery of art pieces: sketches, production notes, concept development and character designs from the decades in which this story moved from enchanting idea to finished ethereal epic.
Dream Gang™ © 2014, 2015, 2016 Brendan McCarthy. All rights reserved.