Author: NowReadThis

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Captain America and Black Widow


By Cullen Bunn, Francesco Francavilla & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-6528-6

The Star-Spangled Avenger was created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby at the end of 1940, confidently launched straight into his own title. Captain America Comics #1 was cover-dated March 1941 and made the flag-draped hero an unstoppable, overwhelming overnight success.

The absolute and undisputed star of Timely Comics’ “Big Three” (the other two being Human Torch and Sub-Mariner), Cap was also amongst the very first to fade as the Golden Age ended.

With the Korean War and Communist aggression gripping the American psyche, freedom fighting Steve Rogers was revived in 1953 – along with Torch and Subby – for another brief tour of duty before quickly sinking back into obscurity…

A resurgent Timely – now calling itself Marvel Comics – drafted him again in Avengers #4. It was March 1964 and Vietnam was just beginning to pervade the minds of the American public. This time he stuck around. Whilst perpetually bemoaning the tragic, heroic death of his young sidekick (James Buchanan Barnes AKA Bucky) during the final days of World War II, the resurrected Sentinel of Liberty stole the show; promptly graduating to his own series and title as well.

He waxed and waned through the most turbulent period of social change in US history, struggling to find an ideological niche and stable footing in a precarious and rapidly changing modern world. After decades of vacillating and being subject to increasingly frantic attempts to keep the character relevant, in the last years of the 20th century a succession of stellar writers finally established his naturally niche: America’s physical, military and ethical guardian…

In continuity terms, Cap is a rough contemporary of Natasha Romanoff (sometimes Natalia Romanova): a Soviet Russian spy who came in from the cold and stuck around to become one of Marvel’s most successful female stars.

The Black Widow started life as a svelte, sultry honey-trap during Marvel’s early “Commie-busting” days, battling against Iron Man in her debut exploit (Tales of Suspense #52, April, 1964).

She was subsequently redesigned as a torrid tights-&-tech super-villain before defecting to the USA, falling for an assortment of Yankee superheroes – including Hawkeye and Daredevil – and finally becoming an agent of SHIELD, freelance do-gooder and occasional leader of the Avengers.

Throughout her career she has always been considered ultra efficient, coldly competent, deadly dangerous and yet somehow cursed to bring doom and disaster to her paramours. As her backstory evolved, it was revealed that Natasha had undergone experimental processes which enhanced her physical capabilities and lengthened her lifespan, as well as assorted psychological procedures which had messed up her mind and memories…

Despite always being a fan-favourite, the Widow only truly hit the big time after the release of the Iron Man, Captain America and Avengers movies, but for us unregenerate comics-addicts her printed-page escapades have always offered a cool yet sinister frisson of dark delight.

This particular all-action pairing collects Captain America (… and the Black Widow) #636-640 from November 2012 to February 2013, during which time Cap’s own title had become a team-up vehicle, with previous part-time partners including Bucky/Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Iron Man and Namor.

A good deal of that period had been spent thwarting the schemes of a mysterious villain with incredible resources and astoundingly grandiose schemes. Her name was Kashmir Vennema and this book describes how she was finally brought low…

The tale opens in Central Park as the Black Widow meets a mole to secure crucial intel. Although she was apparently incarcerated by Cap weeks ago, Vennema is still murderously active and the files reveal her secret. “Kash” is a high-end broker: supplying arms, tech, information, people or whatever her elevated clientele desire. Her motto is “Infinite profit in infinite worlds” and her organisation plunders the entire multiverse for suitable wares, before selling them to the worst despots of an uncountable number of Earths.

Moreover, the reason for her success is that everyone who works for her is a Kashmir doppelganger recruited from every alternate world…

Even as the Widow absorbs the implications of these revelations, in some other place a Doctor Doom dies whilst conducting business with a Vennema: their meeting ending in bloody assassination at the hands of infallible sniper Natasha Romanoff. This implacable Black Widow is working for an unknown client who plans to end the Vennema scourge forever…

And on our Earth at maximum detention centre The Raft, Hawkeye and Captain America interview the captive Kashmir and realise she is not of this Earth…

Acting on information received the Sentinel of Liberty later interrupts another buy between a Vennema and a terrorist group. The Secret Empire are looking to buy enslaved metahumans from other Americas but are driven off by the fighting-mad super-soldier. Tragically Cap is totally unprepared for the Black Widow to show up and murder Kashmir. Only after she tries to kill him too does he realise that she’s not his Black Widow…

Things look pretty bleak until she is suddenly taken out by her own counterpart, but the ‘Superhero Horror’ only increases when Vennema Multiversal HQ realises the deal has gone sour and the supreme “Kash” orders all evidence dumped. That involves a dimensional transport trap which lands Cap, Natasha and the killer Widow in a dustbin dimension where all Vennema’s failures and embarrassments end up…

Forging an uneasy alliance with the other Natasha, Cap goes scouting and walks into a catastrophic war amidst the ruins…

‘Tripod Terror’ sees the heroes ferociously battling crazed survivors of other cover-ups, unaware that Kash has despatched her metahuman Hunt Squad – culled from numerous worlds – to ensure their destruction, but the tables are about to be turned thanks to the ‘Raging Reptiles’ of alternate Earth inmate Curt Connors.

This plane’s Lizard is also its Doctor Octopus and he has redemption in mind. He only thought to help his people after a great war but his meddling resulted in a planet of monsters…

Now as the Hunt Squad attacks, Connors buys time for Cap and the Widows to escape, plunging into uncontrolled inter-dimensional chaos and fetching up on a myriad of incredible alternates before finally finding the mystery client who ordered the hits on the assorted Kashmirs.

She has her own team of oddly familiar metahuman champions and wants to dismantle Vennema Multiversal. With Captain America and two Black Widows ‘Taking it to the House’, the hostile takeover is brief and very bloody…

But when the dust at last settles is the convoluted interconnected web of Realities actually a better, safer place?

A dazzling display of pure Fights ‘n’ Tights razzamatazz, this short, sharp and super-heroically sweet team-up tale from scripter Cullen Bunn and illustrator Francesco Francavilla captivatingly capitalises on the popularity of the filmic iterations of these particularly long-lived metahuman marvels whilst playing delicious games with the established comics continuity. The end result is a fast and furious treat all action addicts will be unable to resist.
© 2012, 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Melusine volume 5: Tales of the Full Moon


By Clarke & Gilson, coloured by Cerise; translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-212-6

Witches – especially cute, sassy and/or teenaged ones – have a splendidly long pedigree in all branches of fiction, and one of the most seductively engaging first appeared in venerable Belgian comics-magazine Spirou in 1992.

Mélusine is actually a sprightly 119-year-old neophyte sorceress diligently studying to perfect her craft at Witches’ School. To make ends meet she spends her off-duty moments days working as au pair and general dogsbody to a most shockingly disreputable family of haunts and horrors inhabiting and infesting a vast, monster-packed, ghost-afflicted chateau at some chronologically adrift, anachronistically awry time in the Middle-ish Ages…

Episodes of the long-running, much-loved feature are presented in every format from one-page gag strips to full-length comedy tales; all riffing wickedly on supernatural themes and detailing Mélusine’s rather fraught existence. Our magic maid’s life is filled with the daily indignities of skivvying, studying, catering to the appalling and outrageous domestic demands of the master and mistress of the castle and – far too occasionally – schmoozing with a large and ever-growing circle of exceedingly peculiar family and friends.

The strip was devised by writer François Gilson (Rebecca, Cactus Club, Garage Isidore) and cartoon humorist Frédéric Seron, AKA Clarke whose numerous features for all-ages Spirou and acerbic adult humour publication Fluide Glacial include Rebecca, Les Cambrioleurs, Durant les Travaux, l’Exposition Continue… and Le Miracle de la Vie.

Under the pseudonym Valda, Seron also created Les Babysitters and as “Bluttwurst” Les Enquêtes de l’Inspecteur Archibaldo Massicotti, Château Montrachet, Mister President and P.38 et Bas Nylo.

A former fashion illustrator and nephew of comics veteran Pierre Seron, Clarke is one of those insufferable guys who just draws non-stop and is unremittingly funny. He also doubles up as a creator of historical and genre pieces such as Cosa Nostra, Les Histoires de France, Luna Almaden and Nocturnes. He has obviously been cursed by some sorceress and can no longer enjoy the surcease of sleep…

Collected Mélusine editions began appearing annually or better from 1995 onwards, with the 24th published in 2015 and another due this year. Thus far five of those have shape-shifted into English translations…

Originally released in October 2002, Contes de la pleine lune was Continentally the tenth groovy grimoire of mystic mirth and is again most welcoming: primarily comprised of single and 2-page gags starring the sassy sorceress which delightfully eschew continuity for the sake of new readers’ instant approbation…

When brittle, moody, over-stressed Melusine isn’t being bullied for her inept cleaning skills by the matriarchal ghost-duchess who runs the castle, ducking cat-eating monster Winston, dodging frisky vampire The Count or avoiding the unwelcome and often hostile attentions of horny peasants and over-zealous witch-hunting priests, our saucy sorceress can usually be found practising her spells or consoling and coaching inept, un-improvable and lethally unskilled classmate Cancrelune.

Unlike Mel, this sorry enchantress-in-training is a real basket case: her transformation spells go awfully awry, she can’t remember incantations and her broomstick-riding makes her a menace to herself, any unfortunate observers and even the terrain and buildings around her…

As the translated title of this (fifth) Cinebook offering suggests, Tales of the Full Moon dwells on demolishing fairy fables and bedevilling bedtime stories but also gives a proper introduction to Mel’s best friend Krapella: a rowdy, roistering, mischievous and disruptive classmate who is the very image of what boys want in a “bad” witch…

This tantalising tome is filled with narrative nostrums featuring the usual melange of slick sight gags and pun-ishing pranks; highlighting how our legerdemainic lass finds a little heart’s ease by picturing how one day she’ll have her very own Prince Charming.

Sadly, every dream ends – usually because there’s a mess that needs cleaning up – but Melusine absolutely draws the line when Cancrelune and even her own sweetness-&-light Fairy cousin Melisande start hijacking her daydreams…

This fusillade of fanciful forays concludes with eponymously titled, extended episode Tales of the Full Moon wherein Melusine is ordered to read a bedtime story to the Count’s cousin’s son: an obnoxiously rambunctious junior vampire named Globule who insists on twisting her lovely lines about princesses and princes into something warped and Gothic… and that’s before Cancrelune starts chipping in with her own weird, wild suggestions and interjections …

Wacky, wry, sly, infinitely inventive and uproariously funny, this compendium of arcane antics is a terrific taste of European comics wonderment: a beguiling delight for all lovers of the cartoonist’s art. Read well before bedtime – or you’ll be up laughing all night …
Original edition © Dupuis, 2002 by Clarke & Gilson. All rights reserved. English translation 2014 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Wet Moon volume 1: Feeble Wanderings


By Sophie Campbell (Oni Press)
ISBN: 978-1-93266-407-2

Wet Moon seems like one of grown-up comics’ biggest secrets. Published intermittently by Oni Press since 2004, it’s a winning blend of the literary traditions of Southern Gothic with experimental comic strip endeavours like Glenn Head’s Chicago – a Comix Memoir, Brian O’Malley’s Lost at Sea or Liz Suburbia’s Sacred Heart …

Looking like a beautifully rendered young adult soap opera filmed in monochrome, the story unfolds in the bayou-lapped Deep South, where the eponymous township of Wet Moon is the venue for an art school and home of a thriving Goth/Newest Wave/counterculture scene.

If you’re my age you could think of it as a modern corollary to Athens, Georgia when REM were attending college at U of G or the B-52s were learning to play…

The focus of our attention is pensive, introspective young student Cleo Lovedrop; a bespectacled, overweight, marginally-pierced, heavily made-up Goth-girl attending the aforementioned college. Like every teen she’s a mess of insecurities and irrepressible urges, but all she wants to do is understand both the world and herself. She also has her fair share of dark melancholic secrets…

Cleo is still finding her feet after moving into shared digs, but her mind is elsewhere; something from her past that she doesn’t even want to think won’t shut up even now that she’s here and starting fresh. Thankfully, her best friends Trilby Bernarde and Mara Zuzanny are scoping out the place with her and are proving to be the usual distraction…

Elsewhere, absent pal Audrey Richter is with Martin. They are busy avoiding Pete, the “Pringles Guy”.

He’s one of those pests who always has to show you his artwork. Whilst dodging him, Audrey hides in the public toilets and sees lots of graphitti. The only bit she remembers however, is the clearly scrawled legend “Cleo eats it” boldly adorning the stall partition…

Cleo spends a lot of time examining herself in mirrors. At first the reader is unsure exactly what she’s looking for or at and Campbell is smart enough and bold enough to let the art advance these scenes, using silence as a method of conveying both meaning and mood; letting the observer reach their own conclusions, right or wrong…

What Cleo cannot know is that the girl in the apartment next door is doing the same thing, and will soon become very important to her…

Audrey rushes off to warn Cleo and – after a deputation examines the offending libel – agrees it must be aimed at their friend: after all, Cleo is a pretty rare name…

Also at last agreed that it’s a damn lie, they go their separate ways. Still feeling sick and uncomfortable, Cleo heads home and meets another room-mate: pretty, standoffish Natalie Ringtree who seems to live in a world of her own…

Soon after, Cleo visits her older sister Penny and walks home humiliated after another one of “those” fights…

She would have caught the bus back but when she boarded “he” was there and she had to dash off and puke up her guts…

Back at the flat, she’s still throwing up when final flatmate Malady Mayapple introduces herself at Cleo’s moment of maximum embarrassment…

Audrey lusts for the girl at the Head-Butt Video, but when the delicious Myrtle Turenne surprisingly responds a certain way, the panicked Ricter bolts and flees the store. Luckily big, dependable, dumb-as-dirt Slicer is there when she stumbles right into another petty domestic crisis…

That night Trilby is rescued from a pathetic evening watching Star Trek when Cleo and Mara turn up and drag her to Goth nightclub House of Usher. It’s an eventful soiree. Cleo has a close encounter with a self-obsessed art-weirdo and Mara punches out the girl who stole her boyfriend…

Everything freezes when Fern walks in. She’s the most amazing and breathtaking vision anybody has ever seen… even with her unseeing eyes and malformed, withered hand…

That night is a revelation for so many lonely, hungry people, but all Trilby remembers is that she got really, really drunk and made a pass at Cleo…

A hangover breakfast at the local Denny’s then devolves into an over-heated debate about suicide, potential partners and worse before breaking up acrimoniously. Then as they pass the video store, Audrey tells Cleo about what till-girl Myrtle did and, curiosity piqued, Lovedrop has to see for herself. The so-casual meeting does not pan out anything like she expected…

Making her way home, Audrey finds “Cleo Eats It” fliers all over the place, and while she’s disposing of them, deep in the bayou Penny Lovedrop is at Fern’s palatial mansion applying for a job. This strange client, however, seems far more interested in her annoying half-sister Cleo…

The girl in question’s day keeps getting worse. She can’t avoid “him”. Everywhere she turns that bastard Vincent shows up: not following, just always waiting for her…

And when she reaches the apartment, she learns from Malady that the tenant she replaced vanished one night. She was there at bedtime and gone by breakfast. Nobody saw her go…

Clutching her always roiling stomach, Cleo heads to bed and just can’t rest. Even so, she oversleeps, and dashing out next morning, crashes late into her first class. When she sees “him” sitting there, she hurtles right out again, plunging down the stairs, landing on the girl who will change her life forever…

And deep in the Bayou, other people manoeuvre into position; ready to make their own dramatic entrances…

To Be Continued…

This initial, introductory book is the tantalising tip of a vast iceberg of inter-related life-stories which, like alligators in a swamp, present only the merest hint of what lurks beneath. An ongoing saga encompassing the mystery of a missing girl, lost babies, sinister plots and a malicious hidden enemy utilising the power of lies and innuendo, this engrossing ongoing epic ferociously targets the contemporary battleground of appearance, sexual orientation, acceptance and self-identification, exploring themes of isolation, friendship, trust and body dysmorphia with great wit, keen insight, clever characterisation and immense heart.

Before finding higher profile work in the mainstream with series like Glory, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Jem and the Holograms Sophie (Ross) Campbell was astounding readers with this sprawling yarn (six collected volumes thus far and at least two more planned) and this edition comes with a large selection of extras.

As well as ‘Older Wet Moon Artwork’ pages, there are developmental sketches and an abortive introductory sequence which works perfectly as a 5-page silent vignette introducing pre-college Cleo, plus an absolutely crucial ‘Who’s Who in Wet Moon’

With welcoming echoes of Gilbert Hernandez’s complex and delicious celebrations of unique, flawed yet uncompromisingly human communities in Love and Rockets as well as off-kilter televisual landmarks like Twin Peaks, Maximum Bob or American Gothic, this is a series at the fringes, but make no mistake, Wet Moon is every inch its own creature: sinisterly enticing, seductively unconventional and emotionally compelling.
™ and © 2004 (Sophie) Ross Campbell. All rights reserved.

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The Cloud


By K. I. Zachopoulos & Vincenzo Balzamo (Archaia)

ISBN: 978-1-60886-725-7

Writer Kostas Zachopoulos clearly has a great grip on classic themes and tropes. His previous comics releases – Mon Alix, The Fang, Mr. Universe, Misery City – have all memorably tweaked and refreshed horror, crime and other genres but his latest offering might well take him into the reading mainstream in a masterful fantasy saga of love, loss, search and renewal.

Imagine The Never Ending Story with sharp edges and harsh consequences or – if you’re an older, better-read aficionado of the extraordinary – remember the buzz you got the first time you read one of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea stories or a Jack Vance tale of the Dying Earth…

The tone and topic of those wonderful modern legends ripple through this phenomenally enticing hardback tome, illustrated in a gloriously magnificent progression of painted pages by award-winning newcomer Vincenzo Balzamo (Immortal, Revenge: the Secret Origin of Emily Thorne), offering one more magical myth for modern questers to admire and covet.

In the far future the world has endured its final disaster and been radically changed by mankind’s sins. The entire globe is girdled in insulating, isolating, all-encompassing vapour walls which cut off the people who remain from each other and the strange new things that have evolved to roam the foggy vastnesses. The human survivors of the ancient catastrophe known as the Shine cling to high places in small communities eking out their pointless lives well aware that above the clouds roam ruthless pirates and slavers…

One day – which seemed like any other – a wild little boy exuberantly rode his giant flying wolf – named Cloud – through the roiling foggy blanket. He was on a quest and touched down at a mountain top citadel, seeking something in the skybound city. The boy was searching for a Wish in a Stone and, although the wise men claimed to know nothing of it, a beggar in the elevated street gave him sage advice. The enshrouded elder advised the carefree wanderer that to secure a wishing stone from the Great Before, he first needed to locate The Writer…

Finding the sagacious fool was not as difficult as convincing him to help, but the boy had travelled far and found a great treasure the garrulous savant was prepared to trade for the incredible Dandelion Stone…

This news caused the child’s mind to spiral back to the tragic last time he had seen his father but more advice from the babbling scribe brought him back to the present. Grasping the stone the boy took his leave only to have the precious prize snatched from his hands by a nimble thief. His pell-mell pursuit eventually resulted in the bandit’s capture, but the cornered foe was only a little girl who claimed her need for the wish was greater than his own.

The boy’s momentary confusion ended when both girl and Dandelion Stone were swept up in the nets of the constantly marauding sky-pirates and the chase was on again…

The Cloud is a superb picaresque odyssey through an incredible world of fantastic throwback kingdoms and floating islands, as our hero makes amazing new allies and mints fresh myths at every brief stopover. Most importantly as the boy gets ever closer to his heart’s desire – coincidentally liberating enslaved races and gradually unpicking the muddled history of the Before Time – he learns of the forces that have subtly manipulated him and realises there is a way to bring the tired, benighted Earth into the light, but only at a terrible price…

Epic, sweeping, enchantingly bemusing and drenched in potent tragedy, this is a sheer delight no fantasy fan should miss.
™ and © 2016 Kostas Zachopoulos & Vincenzo Balzamo. All rights reserved.

The Cloud will be released 20th July 2016.

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Yoko Tsuno: the Prey and the Ghost


By Roger Leloup translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-56-4

Sublime scientific investigator Yoko Tsuno debuted in Spirou in September 1970 and is still going strong. As detailed by Roger Leloup, the astounding, all-action, excessively accessible exploits of the slim, slight Japanese techno-adventurer are amongst the most intoxicating, absorbing and broad-ranging comics thrillers ever created.

The phenomenal magnum opus is an expansively globe-girdling, space-&-time-spanning series devised by another monumentally talented Belgian maestro. Roger Leloup began his solo career after working as a studio assistant on Herge’s Adventures of Tintin. Compellingly told, superbly imaginative and – no matter how fantastic the premise of any individual yarn – always solidly grounded in hyper-realistic settings underpinned by authentic, unshakably believable technology and scientific principles, his illustrated epics were the forefront of a wave of strips changing the face of European comics in the mid-1970s.

This gentle revolution featured the rise of competent, clever and brave female protagonists, all taking their places as heroic ideals beside the boys and elevating Continental comics in the process. Happily, most of their exploits are as timelessly engaging and potently empowering now as they ever were, and none more so than the trials and tribulations of Yoko Tsuno.

Her very first outings – Hold-up en hi-fi, La belle et la bête and Cap 351 – were brief introductory vignettes before the superbly capable engineer and her valiant but less able male comrades Pol Paris and Vic Van Steen properly hit their stride with premier full-length saga Le trio de l’étrange which began in 1971 with Spirou‘s May 13th issue…

In the original European serialisations, Yoko’s exploits alternated between explosive escapades in exotic corners of our world and sinister deep-space sagas with the secretive, disaster-prone alien colonists from Vinea but, for the majority of the English translations thus far, extraterrestrial encounters have been generally sidelined in favour of epically intriguing Earthly exploits such as this sinister, spectrally-inspired crime caper…

There have been 27 European albums to date. This tale was first serialised in 1981 (in Spirou #2244-2264) and collected the following year as 12th volume La Proie et l’ombre. Due to the quirks of publishing it reached us Brits as Yoko’s third Cinebook outing: a suspenseful modern gothic thriller challenging the barnstorming boffin’s courage, resourcefulness and fundamental beliefs…

Yoko and Pol are driving through Scotland on a Highlands road as the afternoon lengthens into evening when they are forced into a ditch by a young woman throwing herself at their car. The dishevelled creature is being pursued by a pack of hounds and gang of men, but Yoko’s horror is momentarily quelled when the leader of the pursuers explains that poor Cecilia is mad…

The deranged waif begs the strangers to save her, but when her guardian Sir William – the local Laird – arrives, further answers emerge. The poor lass believes she is visited by her dead mother…

Yoko and Pol accept an invitation to stay at the castle, but stay behind to repair their vehicle before joining the party. As they change the tyre a stranger approaches, offering another side to the strange family history. An author, scientific ghosthunter and debunker, the anonymous newcomer relates how 15 years previously Cecilia’s mother Mary chose Sir Brian over another ardent suitor. The rejected swain was a self-proclaimed sorcerer named Mac Nab who prophesied the newlyweds would both die violently and that their daughter would perish before reaching her majority…

When Brian died in a strange accident, his brother William took the seat and married the grieving widow. Mary went mad when Cecilia was five and was killed in a riding accident.

In the intervening years William has tried everything to ensure the last part of the curse would never come to pass, but now at twenty, the daughter seems to have gone the way of her tragic mother. Moreover, reports abound that the sorcerer is still alive, hiding on the estate to ensure his prediction’s completion. When Yoko and Tsuno finally reach the castle they are bristling with theories and suspicions, but steadfastly refuse to give any credence to supernatural forces…

As the household convenes for supper, the visitors are astounded to find Cecilia completely recovered: almost a completely different woman, whose only problems are a short temper and tendency to forget things…

The meal is strained and fractious and ends early. Strangely tired and oddly clumsy, Yoko retires to bed but her sleep is disturbed after a veiled woman in black lures her out into the castle halls before disappearing. All that is left of her is an empty gown.

Baffled Yoko heads back upstairs and lets herself into Cecilia’s locked room. The strange girl is now eager to see her; quitting her painting to examine the dress which she claims belonged to her mother. As they talk, the women glance out of a window and Yoko sees a ghostly figure on a far parapet. It looks exactly like the portrait of deceased, tragic Mary…

Giving chase – and carefully noting that every door seems to open for her – Yoko races across the castle grounds in rapid pursuit with Cecilia trying to keep up. The chase ends in the ruins of an abbey where the technologist passes right through the apparition and realises her suspicions have been confirmed.

Even though she is unaware that sinister eyes are watching her, Yoko is pretty convinced that she knows what’s going on now…

The next day she deftly continues her investigations and makes her preparations to expose a criminal conspiracy years in the making, but has she made the foolish mistake of underestimating her opponents and incorrectly deducing who’s actually behind the murderous scheme?

Complex, devious and subtly suspenseful, this fresh take on an old plot bristles with clever clues for the attentive reader to pick-up on and delivers a splendidly crafty conclusion, once more affirming Yoko Tsuno as top flight troubleshooter, at home in all manner of scenarios and easily able to hold her own against the likes of James Bond, Modesty Blaise, Tintin or other genre-busting super-stars: as triumphantly capable facing swindlers and murderers as aliens, mad scientists or unchecked forces of nature…

As always the most effective asset in these breathtaking tales is the astonishingly authentic and staggeringly detailed draughtsmanship and storytelling, which superbly benefits from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail.

The Prey and the Ghost is a brilliant mystery; which will appeal to any devotee of Holmes, Marple, Castle or Scooby-Doo.
Original edition © Dupuis, 1982 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2008 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Mega Robo Bros volume 1


By Neill Cameron with Lisa Murphy (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-83-4

In 2012 David Fickling Books launched a traditional anthology comic for girls and boys reviving the good old days of picture-story entertainment Intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in terms of delivery and Content. Each strip-packed issue of The Phoenix offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy. In the years since its premiere, the magazine has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who actually matter – the perpetually-engaged kids and parents who read it every week…

Just like the golden age of Beano, Dandy and other childhood treasures, The Phoenix masterfully manages the magical trick of marrying hilarious comedy with enthralling adventure serials… sometimes in the same scintillating strip such as the stars of this latest compilation: a mega-magnificent sci fi frolic packed into an extra-long full-colour lexicon of high-octane comedy-action.

Plunging straight into the enchanting immersive experience, we open in a futuristic London on a Monday morning. Alex and his younger brother Freddie have missed the airbus for school and dad has to take them. It’s a uniquely Sharma-family catastrophe…

In most ways the boys are typical: boisterous, fractious kids, always arguing, but devoted to each other and not too bothered that they’re adopted. It’s also no big deal to them that they were created by the mysterious Dr. Roboticus before he vanished and are considered by those in the know as the most powerful robots on Earth.

For now though it’s enough that Mum and Dad love them, even though the Robo Bros are a bit more of a handful than most kids. They live as normal a life as possible; going to school, making friends, putting up with bullies and hating homework: it’s all part of the ‘Mega Robo Routine’…

This week, however, things are a little different. On Wednesday the lads meet Baroness Farooq of covert agency R.A.I.D. (Robotics Analysis Intelligence and Defence) who is initially unimpressed but changes her mind after seeing what they do to her squad of Destroyer Mechs – all while between singing rude songs, reading comics and squabbling with each other.

Thursday is even better. As a treat, the entire family goes to Robo World where little Freddy rescues a trio of malfunctioning exhibits. The baby triceratops with dog-programming is ok, but the French-speaking deranged ape and gloomy existentialist penguin will be a handful…

And all because Mum was trying to explain how her sons’ sentience makes them different from all other mechanoids…

Friday wasn’t so good. Alex had another one of his nightmares, of the time before they came to live with the Sharmas…

With the scene exquisitely set, the drama kicks into overdrive with ‘Mega Robo School Trip’ as a visit to the museum gives a hidden menace watching the boys the opportunity to create chaos by hacking the exhibits and forcing the boys to use all their super-powers to set things right. It takes all of the Baroness’ astounding influence to hush up the incident. The boys are supposed to be getting as normal a childhood as possible, with friends and family aware that they’re artificial and sentient, but not that they are unstoppable weapons systems.

Now some malign force seems determined to “out” the Robo Bros for an unspecified but undoubtedly sinister purpose…

Even greater cloaking measures are necessary when the enemy causes a sky-train crash and the boys very publicly prevent a ‘Mega Robo Disaster’, but even they are starting to realise something big is up and Mum is a bit extraordinary herself.

Then Freddy overhears some disturbing news about another one of Dr. Roboticus’ other creations in ‘Mega Robo Full House’…

The crisis comes in ‘Mega Robo Royal Rumble’ after Gran takes Alex and Freddy to a Royal Street Party outside Buckingham Palace. When the hidden enemy hacks the giant robot guards and sets them loose on the Queen and her family, the wonder-bots have to save them on live TV beamed around the world. The secret is out…

Now the entire world is camped outside their quiet little house, so Mum has R.A.I.D. restore some semblance of the ‘Mega Robo Status Quo’ by building a super-secret tunnel system in the cellar. It’s a big day all around: Farooq is finally convinced that Alex is at last ready to join R.A.I.D. as a full-fledged operative… after school and on weekends, of course…

Freddy is far from happy to learn that he’s not invited. The Baroness still considers him too young and immature…

He quickly proves it when big brother Alex becomes the ‘Mega Robo Secret Agent’. Freddy at last shares with dad the real reason he’s acting up, but has the opportunity to redeem himself and save the day when the ‘Mega Robo Nemesis’ at last makes his move and Alex finds himself completely out of his depth. Then only Freddy can save the day… if anyone can…

Written and drawn by Neill Cameron (Tamsin of the Deep, How to Make Awesome Comics, Pirates of Pangea), this is an astonishingly engaging tale which rockets along, blending outrageous comedy with warmth, wit and incredible verve. Alex and Freddy are utterly authentic boys, irrespective of their artificial origins, and their exploits strike exactly the right balance of future shock, family fun and bombastic superhero action to capture readers’ hearts and minds. With the right budget and producer what a movie this would make!

Unmissable excitement for kids of all ages and vintage, this is a true “must-have” item.

Text and illustrations © Neill Cameron 2016. All rights reserved.
Mega Robo Bros will be released on June 2nd 2016 and is available for pre-order now.

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Criminal volume 4: Bad Night


By Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips (Image Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-63215-260-2

Do you recall the early 1950s? I wasn’t actually there, but for comics fans it was a time of astounding promise. Every conceivable genre of funnybook could be found on US newsstands (except porn, I guess): children’s fantasies, teen comedies, licensed books, war, super-heroes, horror, science fiction and especially crime stories.

Bad guys living (and dying) bad lives were everywhere, and don’t even get me started on movies. Technicolorâ„¢ was still expensive so the concerns and sensibilities of the public were most commonly realised through gritty, grainy, moody Film Noir vehicles.

This populist pulp-paperback and B-Movie movement towards cynical post-war realism grew into an art form all its own while nobody was looking…

What has this to do with the book in question? Nothing really except that when this series first came out the comics industry was enjoying a mini-revival and resurgence of straight crime thrillers. Moreover, collaborators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips were then forging a creative partnership that seemed incapable of setting a foot wrong: each stand-alone story arc building on the previous caper, getting tougher, stronger, meaner and better…

The entire series was repackaged and re-released as a uniform set of trade paperbacks in 2015 with this fourth captivating collection featuring Criminal volume 2 #4-7 (July-November 2008) – possibly the most experimental tale in the entire canon.

Jacob Kurtz has got a lot of rage to deal with. The mild-mannered sap was never an angel. In fact he used to be a pretty good counterfeiter. However, when his wife disappeared he was the cops’ prime suspect in her murder until the body finally turned up, clearly the result of an automobile accident.

In the meantime of course Jake had been targeted by remorseless, hard-line Police Detective Max Starr, who had gone totally old school on him to secure a confession the widower could not make. Those injuries healed pretty quickly but were nothing compared to what his wife’s mobster uncle Sebastian Hyde did to him…

Crippled, ostracised and a total recluse, these days Jacob spends his time and makes his living crafting the savagely ironic comic strip Frank Kafka, Private Eye, gaining petty points by making the cops – especially the funnybook version of Starr – look like utter idiots.

Still, things are tough. Kurtz is in constant pain and afflicted with crippling insomnia, and even when he does drop off for a couple of hours the idiot vigilante haunting his neighbourhood pulls some crazy stunt like torching a drug-house and another night gets shot to hell…

When all else fails, Jacob heads for the all-night Blue Fly Diner to pass the time reading and shooting the breeze with Bob and Pat…

This one Bad Night, however, even that surcease is denied him as a young punk starts beating on the girl he’s with and Jacob is drawn in. Nobody thanks him for it; not the girl and certainly not cartoon super-Dick Frank Kafka who is always beside him, annoyingly telling the pen-pusher what a real man would have done…

Driving home in the pouring rain, Jacob picks up a drenched hitchhiker and is horrified to discover it’s the girl from the diner…

And so starts a devious and convoluted saga of sexual obsession, subterfuge, big scores, torture and vengeance as she seduces Jacob into theft and murder and far, far worse. Iris is a crazy lady with lots of problems and a body to die for, but she’s working to someone else’s hidden agenda and, after all the double-dealing and bloodletting peaks, the slick conspirators learn a dreadful truth: it’s Noir; everybody’s got a secret they haven’t shared yet…

What they should have wondered from the start is where would a counterfeiter-turned-cartoonist could learn so much about violent crime… and especially how to get rid of bodies?

Filled with twists, turns and even the occasional stunning plot-somersault, this viciously effective and deceptively scary yarn is dark, brutal and fearfully compelling: a tale of the other side of society which affords an irresistible view of raw humanity. These are stories that can’t be ignored… so don’t.
© 2008, 2015 Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips. All rights reserved.

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Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland


By Harvey Pekar & Joseph Remnant (Zip Comics/Top Shelf)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-091-9

Before finding relative fame in the 21st century, Harvey Pekar occupied that ghastly niche so good at trapping the truly creative individual: lots and lots of critical acclaim, and occasional heart-breakingly close brushes with super-stardom (which everyone except him felt he truly deserved) without ever actually getting enough ahead to feel secure or appreciated.

In the 1970s whilst palling around with Robert Crumb, Pekar began crafting compelling documentary narratives of ordinary, blue-collar life – primarily his own – and over the following decades invented “literary comics”. Despite negligible commercial success, the activity fulfilled some deep inner need and he persevered in his self-publishing and soul-searching.

One of those aforementioned brushes with the Big Time came in the 1980s with the release of two compilations by mainstream publisher Doubleday of selected strips from his American Splendor comicbooks. To this day those tomes remain some of the most powerful, honest and rewarding comics ever seen.

By mercilessly haranguing, begging and even paying (out of his meagre civil service wages and occasional wheeler-deal) any artists who met his exacting intellectual standards Pekar soldiered on, inadvertently creating the comics genre of autobiographical, existentially questing, slice-of-life graphic narratives whilst eking out a mostly solitary, hand-to-mouth existence in Cleveland, Ohio.

How the irascible, opinionated, objectionable, knowledge-hungry, self-educated, music-mad working stiff came to use the admittedly (then) impoverished comicbook medium to make a fiercely vital social commentary on American life for the “ordinary Joe” is a magical journey into the plebeian far better read than read about, so go do that if you haven’t already.

Life picked up late for Harvey Pekar – mostly through an award-winning movie of his career and the publication of Our Cancer Year (a stunning documentation of his and third wife Joyce Brabner’s response to his disease). This all led to an elevated and celebrated intellectual status, allowing him to the opportunity to produce even more personal and compelling tales such as The Quitter, The Beats and Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me. Harvey Pekar died in 2010, aged 70.

For all of that time he lived in Cleveland, Ohio and the city is as much a character in all his autobiographical works as the man himself. This book was his last, published posthumously and offering in his own simple, informative, plain spoken words – beguilingly illustrated by the inspirationally diligent Joseph Remnant (Blind Spot) – the history, geography and cultural lowdown of the legend-laden conurbation alternatively dubbed the “the best location in the nation” and “the mistake by the lake”…

An irrepressible autodidact in the truest sense of the term, Pekar made it his business to learn everything about anything he was interested in… and he could be initially interested in everything.

Keeping his mercurial engaged attention, however, was a far harder task. One thing which held his attention on many levels – from first breath to last – was the city he was born in.

Cleveland is an erudite, eyes-wide-open appreciation, encompassing the shrinking metropolis’ creation, rise, fall, descent into mediocrity and position as media whipping-boy as well as the truth behind all the myths.

Walking through town pictorially and in full avuncular academician mode, Pekar shares facts, opinions and judgments with equal passion and force: detailing simultaneously both treasures and flaws like a man happily married to the same bride for seven decades. The result is magical…

There’s the expected and welcome incisive examination of socio-political changes, employment and race issues, a broad inclusion of the author’s love of sporting achievement and his obsessive collecting: startling moments of intimate revelation and, as ever, his miraculous gift of sharing his passions as he blends historical insights, family milestones and oddments of existence with deft dexterity.

Harvey Pekar was called the “poet laureate of Cleveland” and this superb paean to the home he never abandoned is a graphic delight to equal any literary travelogue commemorating Defoe’s London or Damon Runyon’s New York.

Remnant’s monochrome line-work is remarkably effective: mixing reportage with architectural acuity and wrapping it all in a fulsome vivacity reminiscent of the best of underground art. These pictures pop; whether illuminating the Cleveland Indians’ 1948 victory over the Boston Braves, city landmarks like the Terminal  Tower and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame; depicting gang fights in Woodhill Park or young Harvey’s first Chocolate Frosty Malt and first marital mismatches …

With an effusive and lyrical Introduction by Alan Moore and closing with ‘A Pal’s Goodbye’ from Harvey’s friend, associate and fellow Clevelander Jimi Izrael, this wry, witty, enchanting atlas of Middle America Then and Now is a book you must see if you love the art form of comics and magic of storytelling.
© & ™ 2012 Harvey Pekar and Joseph Remnant.

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Incredible Hulk: Boiling Point


By Bruce Jones, Lee Weeks, Tom Palmer & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0905-1

Bruce Banner was a military scientist accidentally caught in a gamma bomb blast of his own devising. As a result he would unexpectedly transform into a giant green monster of unstoppable strength and fury when distressed or surprised. As both occasional hero and mindless monster he rampaged across the Marvel Universe for years, finally finding his size 700 feet and a format that worked, becoming one of young Marvel’s most resilient features.

A hugely popular character both in comics and greater global media beyond the printed page, he has often undergone radical changes in scope and direction to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling…

One of the most impressive runs of was by noted thriller and horror writer Bruce Jones (see especially his impressive Hitchcock pastiche Somerset Holmes or sci fi sagas Arena and Silverheels) who injected some long-neglected suspense and a sense of building menace back into the saga, by referencing both classic 1960s cult TV series The Fugitive and the Jade Juggernaut’s own small screen hit from the 1970s…

This slim tome (re-presenting issues #40-44 of the second Incredible Hulk comicbook volume from July to October 2002) combines his moody, humanistic writing with the understatedly workmanlike yet potently effective illustration of Lee Weeks & Tom Palmer to stunning effect in this beguiling middle-sequence of a shocking extended saga of shadowy conspiracies and government malfeasance.

Previously: perpetually running from the authorities and himself, Banner had finally lost all hope in the aftermath of one of the Hulk’s bouts of mindless destruction which devastated Chicago and resulted in the death of a little boy, Ricky Myers. However, as the dejected scientist fled across America, one faltering step ahead of the authorities and his own battered conscience, he became aware of an incredible conspiracy and realised all was not as it seemed.

For one thing, a warring team of professional assassins were hunting him for an as-yet unknown client…

Both Slater and his rival/partner Sandra Verdugo had been co-opted by a cabal of Men in Black with an unspecified interest in ramping up anti-Hulk hysteria. They also wanted Banner taken alive and had gifted their agents with the power of resurrection…

Their exhausted target meanwhile had found a way to keep his rampaging Other under control and away from the world, even though his pursuers had often pushed him to the very brink…

The relentless pursuit resumes in rural Miser, Colorado where a tense hostage situation suddenly becomes a major crisis. It’s bad enough that a pink-slip has turned one overstressed wage-slave into a gun-toting nut-job holding a group of terrified citizens in the town’s only convenience store. It’s a potential problem that shell-shocked big city ex-cop and former SWAT-negotiator Sally Riker is a suicidal burnout with PTSD. It’s a terrifying prospect that one cop is down and bleeding out, with only an eerily calm drifter keeping the deranged gunman talking.

However, ‘Boiling Point’ is only reached when a taskforce of Feds inexplicably invade the town… As they brusquely take charge, in side the Ready-Mart, the strangely-placid stranger uses his pre-arranged safe-word code to tell Sally that they’re all impostors…

‘Poker Face’ opens with imposing FBI Agent Pratt briefing his shadow team to trigger Banner’s change to the Hulk, whilst “allowing” Sally to enter the store to negotiate all the captives’ release. With all his ducks in place, Pratt thinks he can end any witness problems with a Waco-style “accidental” exchange of gunfire, but has not taken into account Riker’s paranoia or Banner’s instincts…

When the Hulk at last manifests in ‘All Fall Down’, Pratt breaks out the futuristic weaponry he’s been hiding; primed to get a gamma-ray blood-sample before taking the beast captive…

With Miser razed by the Green Gargantuan and Pratt’s team killed by their murderous boss, the exultant agent then heads off to meet his mysterious masters, with a heavily tranquilised Banner in tow. The triumphant operative is confident his crimes will never be reported, but has not counted on Sally Riker’s survival skills and hunger for vengeance and answers…

Before too long she freed the Hulk and Pratt is faced with the cost of his sins as Sally, Banner and the Beast teach him the danger of unleashing ‘The Beast Within’…

These tension-packed tales focus primarily on Banner and judiciously limit the use of the Jade Juggernaut to the point that the monster almost becomes a ghost: terrifying, dreaded but largely unseen. This Hulk is an oppressive force of calculated salvation and last resort rather than mere reader-friendly graphic destruction and gratuitous gratification.

Like all great monsters he lurks in the shadows, waiting for his moment…

One of the most underrated and impressive Hulk yarns of all, this book is the middle of three self-contained volumes which utterly reinvigorated the character of both Banner and his Altered Ego, cleverly refocusing the series for the 21st century. If you’re new to the series or looking for an excuse to jump back on, this book – and its companions – are for you…
© 2002, 2003 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Eyes of the Cat


By Moebius & Jodorowsky (Humanoids)
ISBN: 978-1-59465-032-1                  978-1594650420 (Yellow Edition)

Some of the world’s greatest comics exponents are cruelly neglected these days. It’s not because they are out of vogue or forgotten, it’s simply that so much of their greatest material lies temporarily out of print. This little gem is one of the few exceptions…

Born in Tocopilla, Chile in 1929, Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky is a filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, world traveller, philosopher, spiritual guru and comics writer.

The modern polymath is most widely known for such films as Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Sante Sangre, The Rainbow Thief, The Dance of Reality and others, plus a vast and influential comics output, including Anibal 5 (created whilst living in Mexico), Le Lama blanc, Aliot, The Meta-Barons, Borgia, Madwoman of the Sacred Heart and so many more, created with some of South America and Europe’s greatest artists.

His decade-long collaboration with Moebius on the Tarot-inspired adventure The Incal (1981-1989) completely redefined and reinvented what comics could aspire to and achieve.

Most widely regarded for his violently surreal avant-garde films, loaded with highly-charged, inspired imagery – blending mysticism and what he terms “religious provocation” – and his spiritually-informed fantasy and science fiction comics tales, Jodorowsky is also fascinated by humanity’s inner realms and has devised his own doctrine of therapeutic healing: Psychomagic, Psychogenealogy and Initiatic massage.

He still remains fully engaged and active in all these creative areas to this day.

He has never stopped creating and most of his lifelong themes and obsessions are seamlessly wedded together in this glorious re-release of his first comics collaboration with the creator most inextricably associated with him.

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in the suburbs of Paris on May 8th 1938 and raised by his grandparents after his mother and father divorced in 1941.

In 1955, he attended the Institut des Arts Appliqués where he became friends with Jean-Claude Mézières who, at 17, was already selling strips and illustrations to magazines such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Spirou. Giraud apparently spent most of his college time drawing cowboy comics and left after a year.

In 1956 he travelled to Mexico, staying with his mother for eight months, before returning to France and a full-time career drawing comics, mostly westerns such as Frank et Jeremie for Far West and King of the Buffalo, A Giant with the Hurons and others for Coeurs Valliants in a style based on French comics legend Joseph Gillain AKA “Jijé”.

Giraud spent his National Service in Algeria in 1959-1960, where he worked on military service magazine 5/5 Forces Françaises and on returning to civilian life became Jijé’s assistant in 1961, working on the master’s long-running (1954-1977) Western epic Jerry Spring.

A year later, Giraud and Belgian writer Jean-Michel Charlier launched the serial Fort Navajo in Pilote #210, and soon its disreputable, anti-hero lead character Lieutenant Blueberry became one of the most popular European strips of modern times. In 1963-1964, Giraud produced a number of strips for satire periodical Hara-Kiri and, keen to distinguish and separate the material from his serious day job, first coined his pen-name “Moebius”.

He didn’t use it again until 1975 when he joined Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Philippe Druillet – all inspired science fiction fans – as the founders of a revolution in narrative graphic arts created by “Les Humanoides Associes”. Their groundbreaking adult fantasy magazine Métal Hurlant utterly enraptured the comics-buying public and Giraud again wanted to utilise a discreet creative persona for the lyrical, experimental, soul-searching material he was increasingly driven to produce: series such as The Airtight Garage, The Incal and the mystical, dreamy flights of sheer fantasy contained in Arzach…

To further separate his creative twins, Giraud worked inks with a brush whilst the futurist Moebius rendered with pens…

After a truly stellar career which saw him become a household name, both Giraud and Moebius passed away in March 2012.

As explained in Jodorowsky’s Foreword, this magnificently macabre minimalist monument to imagination came about as brief tale in a free, promotional premium “Mistral Edition” of Métal Hurlant constituted their very first collaboration – outside the creative furnace that was the pre-production phase of the aborted movie Dune where they first met (also included in that imaginative dream-team was Dan O’Bannon, Douglas Trumbull, H.R. Giger and Chris Foss) and secrets of that time are also shared here).

Les Yeux du chat was realised between 1977 and 1979: a dark fable that is sheer beauty and pure nightmare, rendered in stark monochrome and florid expansive grey-tones. Text is spartan and understated: more poetic goad than descriptive excess or expositional in-filling.

There’s a city, a boy at a window, an eagle and a cat. When their lives intersect, shock and horror are the result…

Available in a number of formats since 2011, this is a visual masterpiece no connoisseur of comics can afford to miss.
© 2013 Humanoids, Inc. All rights reserved.