NowReadThis

October 7, 2010October 9, 2010

Lucky in Love Book 1: A Poor Man’s History

By George Chieffet & Stephen DeStefano (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-354-5

The medium of comics has a number of inbuilt advantages: it is quick, it is personal, the only limits are imagination and ability and – most importantly for this magical work – it is both magically modern and potently, subversively nostalgic. A book with pictures in it is one of our oldest and most effective technological creations, but it is also astoundingly instant and immediate.

In stunning black ink on gloriously evocative sepia pages (that startling shade which so terrifies comicbook collectors, presaging the imminent crumbling to dust of their beloved artifacts) comes a light-hearted, heavy-hitting barbed-edged faux autobiography that is a moving testament to the life of the average Joe.

Teacher, poet, author and playwright George Chieffet combines with the supremely talented cartoonist and animator Stephen DeStefano (when, oh when will DC release a ‘Mazing Man compilation volumeâ€¦ and while were at it where’s the Hero Hotline book too?) to delineate discrete episodes in the ordinary epic of a little American with the gift of the gab, growing up Italian in Hoboken, New Jersey – just a dreaming glance away from the neon allure of New York City.

After a sparkling dream-sequence prologue which introduces us to the modern â€œLuckyâ€ Testaduda, the book opens with the first of three chapter-plays starring our diminutive narrator recollecting the key moments of his long life. ‘Lucky Fifteen’ finds the horny kid on the cusp of manhood in 1943, dreaming of girls and flying and getting into the war; spending his days at the movies, shooting the breeze with his pals and trying to get laidâ€¦ but always the spectre of something bigger, better and far more dangerous than â€œthe neighborhoodâ€ is loomingâ€¦

‘Lucky at War’ sees the kid a lowly mechanic rather than glamorous pilot of his dreams, still hungry for sex but as always preferring to â€œtalk the good fightâ€ rather than get down and dirty. Mentoring. for which read â€œshowing offâ€ to even callower youths than he, a trip to the off-base cat-house as the war in the Pacific draws to a close goes uncomfortably awry. Moreover when a distant acquaintance is lost in a bomber Lucky worked on, his care-free life takes a melancholy turnâ€¦

Returning home in 1946 ‘Lucky Triumphant’ finds the young veteran having trouble readjusting. For the folks in Hoboken it’s a boom-time with sons returned and the promise of peace and prosperity, but the only work the de-mobbed mechanic can get is through shamefully exploiting the memory of a dead comrade he didn’t even really knowâ€¦

In lots of ways Lucky’s world hasn’t changed at all since he was that eager, horny kid, but when a genuinely honest, victorious moment is soured because of unwanted familial nepotism Lucky begins to realise that just maybe he has…

Drawn in a wild and captivating pastiche of Zoot-Suit era animated styles and frenetically Jitterbugging teen movies; marrying Milt Gross’ ‘He Done Her Wrong’ and ‘Count Screwloose’ to Milton Knight’s ‘Hugo’ and ‘Midnight the Rebel Skunk’ the bold, broadly Bigfoot cartooning style used imparts a seductive gaiety to the folksy monologue and completely disguises the subtle landmines this tale conceals in the narrative.

It looks fun and funny – and indeed it is – but the content delves far deeper than mere jolly japes of yesteryear. Lucky’s journey is full of heartbreak and injustice masked by the character’s innate bravado and self-delusion, thus the festive interpretation of fantasy and reality hits you below the conscious level like a blackjack in a velvet pillowcase.

Lucky in Love is utterly absorbing, purely cartoon entertainment, strictly for adults and immensely enjoyable. The concluding volume is scheduled for release in 2013 and it can’t come a second too soon for meâ€¦

October 6, 2010October 9, 2010

Deadworld

By Vincent Locke & Stuart Kerr (Caliber Press)
Original edition No ISBNÂ re-released edition ISBN: 978-1-60010-817-4

Zombies are taking over the world. Or so it seems with all the restless dead rambling about on television, in cinemas and even in children’s books (check out the intriguing Charley Higson kid’s novels The Enemy and The Dead), but this is only a relatively recent resurrection. Arguably the unliving onslaught really kicked back into high gear during the mid-1980s explosion of self-published titles that came – and mostly went – in the wake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic phenomenon.

Ambitious newcomer Arrow Comics launched with a number of impressive fantasy, adventure and horror titles in 1985, including Tales From the Aniverse, System 7, Nightstreets, Oz, The Realm and Deadworld, but the subsequent glut and implosion of the marketplace caught the good with the very, very bad and the newborn company foundered. Head honchos Ralph Griffith and Stuart Kerr closed down in 1989, with the latter three titles transferring to Gary Reed’s Caliber Comics, which had successfully weathered the storm.

Kerr and Griffith were not just entrepreneurs. They created Deadworld, easily the most popular – and controversial – of their stable, bringing in eager and talented Vince Locke to illustrate over Kerr’s scripts. When the series moved they sold Locke the rights.

This edition was released in 1989 and collected the first seven episodes, with a gallery that included both the â€œgraphicâ€ (for which read gory) and â€œtameâ€ covers created for each issue.

So, what’s it all about?

In all honesty if you’re not a big fan of the genre, you’ve seen it all before: a mysterious event kills and resurrects the greater part of humanity as zombies and a disparate, dwindling band of human survivors struggle to survive and escape the toxically infectious, ravenous hordesâ€¦

However if you count yourself a devotee of the walking dead you’ve seen it all before too: a plucky band of heroes battle increasingly intense odds and their own human natures whilst trying to escape from appalling, overwhelming horrorâ€¦

The story begins with the impressive ‘Eye of the Zombie’ as a school-bus full of weary youngsters – horny teenagers and a frankly terrifying ten-year old called Spud – make plans to escape the Louisiana bayou where they’ve been hiding from a horde of terrifying monsters – mindless, shambling ravenous. At least the things are slow and stupid and can be stopped by destroying their brainsâ€¦

Nobody knows how the world ended or why they have been spared so far, but as the kids ready for a dash to California dead eyes are watching. Unfortunately, these are something new: King Zombie might be Dead but he’s still Quick – also vengeful, calculating and super-smartâ€¦

After a spectacular battle the kids are off, trailed by the Thinking Dead in ‘Born to Be Wild’, having gut-wrenching, splattery narrow escapes as they head west. Hints begin as to how humanity was lost and in ‘Mississippi Queen’ the survivors trade the bus for a riverboat, thinking this will provide greater security.

The supernatural horror responsible or killing the world is revealed, as is the one mortal he cannot afford to kill. King Zombie and his shambling hordes invade the riverboat and ‘Funeral For A Friend’ sees the first winnowing of the castâ€¦

Reduced to four now the haunted survivors encounter demons as well as the ever-present zombies in ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’, meeting the sorcerer’s apprentice who caused the zombie plague to invade our dimension and discovering another enclave of survivors hours before their undead pursuers doâ€¦

‘One of These Days’ sees King Zombie and the hell-spawn decimate the refuge, slowly torturing his captured prey until a mysterious stranger comes to their rescue – an unsuspected and dangerously traumatised survivor of the riverboat massacre. An all-out final battle breaks out before ‘Bad Moon Rising’ ends events on a cliffhanging high as the resurgent US military streak in to rescue the embattled humans.

What happens next hasn’t been collected yet but with a re-issued edition of this superbly exuberant horror classic released in 2009 and an unholy appetite for the walking dead zipping up the zeitgeist charts that must surely be only a matter of timeâ€¦

Charmingly character-driven, gloriously gory, superbly enthusiastic and wickedly comedic this is a series by fans for fans, and what polish might be lacking is more than compensated for by sheer pace and raw talent. Kerr handles the ensemble cast well and Locke’s nasty, scratchy, atmospheric illustration blends Wrightson with Windsor-Smith to great effect. Moreover he wasn’t afraid to experiment and wasn’t shy about filling a page with terror, slapstick or both.

Merry mordant fun and well worth stalkingâ€¦

October 5, 2010October 3, 2010

David Boring

By Daniel Clowes (Jonathan Cape)
ISBN: 978-10-22406-323-4

One of the greatest assets of the comics medium is the ostensibly straightforward nature of its storytelling. With pictures wedded to text what you see is so clearly what you get. So whenever a master creator deliberately subverts that implicit convention the result might be occasionally obscure or confusing, but always utterly engrossing.

At the forefront of comics storytelling for nearly three decades Daniel Clowes is, for many, an acquired taste but once he’s in your brain there’s certainly no shaking the things he can do with pen and ink, motive, character and the special kind of situational magic that inhabits the world of pictures and word on paper.

Born in Chicago in 1961 he began his career as a cartoonist with humour magazine Cracked before creating uniquely skewed short comic tales for Fantagraphics. His first piece debuted in Love and Rockets # 13 (September 1985), an introductory prelude to his retro-chic detective magazine Lloyd Llewellyn which launched soon after, running in various incarnations for three years.

In 1989 he created the anthology vehicle Eightball and began producing a variety of tales – short and serial-lengths – ranging from social satire, nostalgic absurdist anthropomorphic yarns to surreal, penetrating human dramas, all viewed through the lens of iconic popular cultures and social motifs. All that material has since been collected into graphic novels and two of these, Ghost World and Art School Confidential, have been adapted into critically acclaimed feature films.

His experiences in Hollywood combined with deep-seated childhood influences of noir movies and comics books combined and resulted in ‘David Boring’ which originally ran in Eightball #19-21, before being collected by Pantheon Books in America and this British edition.

David Boring is the narrator of his own story, living a life of unsatisfactory gratification, harassed by his mother and obsessed by his absentee father, a second rate cartoonist and comic book artist who disappeared decades previously. He spends his days with his only real friend, a lesbian named Dot he has known since High School. David is listlessly indulging in his life’s work by searching for his perfect woman when an old friend suddenly shows up and triggers a series of bizarre events that should make his life a living action movie, but instead it all just steers him into increasingly unpalatable and mundane tragedies and horrorsâ€¦

Set against a backdrop of impending catastrophes, ranging from murder to the end of the world, David’s progress is trenchantly plebeian and low-key: an odyssey rendered drama-free by the protagonist’s relentless lack of – or rather resistance to – passion and unwillingness to fully engage in the events occurring around him. His world is full of sexual encounters, assaults, murders, chases and even global holocausts but he passively accepts and adapts to it all.

Clowes has stated that he crafted this stunningly engaging and challenging tale as an exercise in writing an un-filmable comic. He has, but it’s still been optioned by Hollywoodâ€¦

This is another of those too-rare productions that shouldn’t really be reviewed, just read, with themes of adolescence, maturity, the quest for self and the impending end of life delivered via a landscape of comics, film noir, mock-heroics and the irreducible knowledge that families make individuals combining to make a truly personal experience for every reader.

But be warned: the most telling narrative device used here is uncertainty. A tremendous amount of the story is left unstated: this is a saga littered with the reader’s conclusions not the characters’ actions. Events are set in motion, consequences are noted but the course of intervening actions if not experienced by David can only be surmised or extrapolated: David is a protagonist with few of the overt trope/meme drives of a standard narrative vehicle hero and his story is one that can’t happen to any one of usâ€¦

Brilliant, compelling and utterly wonderful? That’s up to youâ€¦

October 4, 2010October 3, 2010

Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories

By Moto Hagio, translated by Matt Thorn (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-377-4

It’s Great Big Gift Giving Season: Win’s Christmas Recommendation: 10/10

Girls’ comics have always taken a secondary role in publishing – at least in most countries. In Japan this was the case until a new wave of female artists and writers stormed the male bastions in the 1970s transforming a very much distaff niche into a viable, autonomous marketplace, consequently reshaping the entire manga landscape in the process. At the forefront and regarded as part of a holy trinity of astoundingly gifted and groundbreaking creators is Moto Hagio. The other two, if you’re in the mood to Go Googling (and of course, other search engines are available) are Keiko Takamiya and Yumiko Oshimaâ€¦)

This lovely hardback collection presents ten of her best short stories gleaned from a career than spans more than forty years, over which time she and her revolutionary compatriots created whole genres, advanced the status of fantasy, horror and science fiction tales, reinvented and perfected the shÅjo (â€œgirl’s storyâ€) form, and introduced a degree of literacy, symbology, authority and emotional depth to the medium that has gone on to transform comics in Japan and globally.

Editor, translator and cultural ambassador Matt Thorn has contributed an informative historical treatise on Japan’s comic world and those revolutionary comics creators (thoroughly annotated) as well as providing a far-reaching, moving and engrossing interview with the artist and academic herself.

Although her most popular works are generally science fictional (another arena where she broke new ground in such sagas as ‘They Were Eleven!’, ‘Marginal’ and ‘Otherworld Barbara’), socially probing human dramas like ‘Mesh’ and ‘A Savage God Reigns’ explored previously forbidden realms of psycho-sexual and abusive family relationships with such deft sensitivity that they served to elevate manga from the realm of cheap escapism to literature and even Great Art – a struggle we’re still waging in the Westâ€¦

This volume traces her beginnings through more traditional themes of romance, but with growing success came the confidence to probe into far darker and more personal subjects, so whereas my usual warnings are about pictorial nudity and sexual situations, here I’m compelled to say that if your kids are smart enough the contextual matter in these tales might be a tad distressing. It is all, however, rendered with stunning sensitivity, brilliantly visual metaphors and in truly beautiful graceful tones and lines.

The comics section (which is re-presented in the traditional front-to-back, â€œfloppedâ€ manner) begins with ‘Bianca’ from 1971: a wistful reminiscence and disguised disquisition on creativity wrapped in the tragic story of a childhood companion whose parents separated, whilst ‘Girl on Porch with Puppy’ (1971) is a disquieting cautionary tale about disobedient little girls who don’t try to fit in and ‘Autumn Journey’ from the same year is a complex mystery concerning a young man trying to meet his favourite author – as well as a painful exploration of families growing up apart.

‘MariÃ©, Ten Years Late’ from 1977 is a heartbreaking example of a â€œSophie’s Choiceâ€ as a lonely, frustrated artist discovers the truth behind the breakup of a perfect friendship which twisted three lives whilst the eponymous science fictional ‘A Drunken Dream’ (1980) describes a doomed reincarnating romance which has spanned centuries and light-years. This is the only full colour story in a generally monochrome volume.

Moto Hagio is one of a select band of creators credited with creating the â€œboy’s loveâ€ sub-genres of shÅnen–ai and Yaio: sensitively homoerotic romances, generally created by women for women and now more popularly described as BL (as opposed to Bara – gay manga created by men for men) and this lyrical, star-crossed fantasy is a splendid example of the form.

‘Hanshin: Half-God’ (1984) is a disturbing, introspective psychological exploration of Hagio’s favoured themes of familial pressure and intolerance, described through the lives of anther girls’ comic favourite; twin sisters. The siblings here however are conjoined: Yucy is a beautiful angelic waif whilst her monovular other Yudy is an ugly withered homunculus.

The story is told by ugly Yudy whose life is changed forever by an operation to separate them. This incredibly moving tale adds barbed edges and ground glass to the ugly ducking fairytale and cannot fail to shock and move the readerâ€¦

From the same year comes the longer romantic tale ‘Angel Mimic’ as a failed suicide eventually evolves into a slim chance of ideal love, which poesy leads into the harrowing tale of rejection that is ‘Iguana Girl’.

Although couched in fantasy terms this tale of contemporary Japanese family life follows the life of Rika, an ordinary girl whose mother thinks she is a monster, and how that view warps how the child perceives the world throughout her life.

‘The Child Who Comes Home’ (1998) again examines rejection but uses the memory of a dead son and brother to pick open the hidden scabs of home and hearth – or perhaps it’s just a sad ghost story to clear the palate before this superb commemoration ends with the elegiac and almost silent, solitary pantomime of 2007’s ‘The Willow Tree’ which shows yet another side of family loveâ€¦

Abuse of faith and trust. Love lost or withheld. Isolation, rejection, loss of purpose: all these issues are woven into a sensuously evocative tapestry of insightful inquiry and beautiful reportage. These tales are just the merest tip of a cataclysmic iceberg that invaded the stagnant waters of Girls’ comics and shattered their cosy world forever. The stories grew up as the readers did; offering challenging questions and options not pat answers and stifling pipedreams.

Until the day our own comics industries catch up at least we have these stories – and hopefully many more from the same source. Sequels please, ASAP!

October 3, 2010October 3, 2010

Teen Titans: Titans of Tomorrow

By Sean McKeever, Geoff Johns, George PÃ©rez & others (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-899-7

This slim volume of frantic Fights ‘n’ Tights teen angst follows on from an earlier saga when the constantly changing team of junior heroes arrived a decade into their own future and were aghast to find that their adult selves had conquered America in the name of peace and security. Forearmed with the knowledge of this dystopian tomorrow the kids came back to now (see Teen Titans: The Future is Now) and resolved to counter those eventsâ€¦

Superhero lives are fairly chaotic and in the interim a number of Crises occurred which seemed to guarantee that Tomorrow would never come true. This volume, collecting issues #50-54, opens with a memorial for Superboy and Kid Flash (both recently deceased) as Robin, Wonder Girl, Ravager, Kid Devil, Miss Martian and Supergirl share their grief and memories with previous members.

‘Passage’ (team written by Sean McKeever, Geoff Johns, Marv Wolfman & Todd Dezago and illustrated by Randy Green, Mike McKone, George PÃ©rez, Todd Nauck, Andy Lanning, Sandra Hope, Marlo Alquiza & Larry Stucker) finds the survivors reminiscing in ‘Friday Night Lights’ and ‘Dear Barryâ€¦’ whilst including a neat, entertaining digression that provides the other side of a team-up with the new Blue Beetle against Biker-Berserker Lobo (the main part of that saga is collected in the superb Blue Beetle: Reach For the Stars).

Meanwhile a mysterious gang are systematically defeating the Justice League and replacing themâ€¦

The four-part epic ‘The Titans of Tomorrowâ€¦ Today!’ begins with ‘Futures of the Past’ (McKeever, AlÃ© Garza, Derek Fridolfs, Rob Hunter & Marlo Alquiza) as the future Titans – including versions of the dead Superboy and Kid Flash – arrive in contemporary times to ensure their own existence by forcing their younger selves to comply with their draconian counterparts continually re-editing memories.

Simple, no? Perhaps not, as wild card Blue Beetle has inexplicably re-entered the mixâ€¦

Selecting a key moment when the alien invader Starro nearly conquered Earth, the future Titans substitute themselves for the JLA and attempt to seduce, demoralise and even thrash their teen incarnations into becoming the fascist monsters they are, but youth is always rebellious and plans go very wrong indeed in ‘Beat Yourself Up’ (art by Jamal Igle, Alquiza, Jesse Delperdang & Hunter) as Robin finds a uniquely dramatic way to stymie his tomorrow tormentor and Blue Beetle leads a counterattackâ€¦

The temporally fluid situation shifts again as the future Luthor materializes with a battalion of tomorrow’s corrupted superheroes in ‘Combine and Conquer’ (illustrated by Eddy Barrows & Rob Hunter) to finish the battle and save his own timeline, but his Titan’s Army has overlooked the mind-controlling power of Starro who (which?) simply takes them all over.

The action spectacularly concludes in ‘Fight the Future’ (Barrows, Joe Prado, Greg Tocchini, Hunter, Julio Ferreira & Oclair Albert) as allegiances shift and the future dies forever in an explosive battle and simple resignationâ€¦

Fast, furious, this extremely twisty-turny, time-travel extravaganza is better than most of its ilk, and on the whole this is a genuinely fun-filled action romp; but once again I can only remark that for the less well-informed reader or DC newcomer, the bits without hitting and explosions might be very confusing. As always, the choice is yours. The future is not immutableâ€¦

October 2, 2010October 3, 2010

Bone volume 1: Out of Boneville

By Jeff Smith (Cartoon Books)
ISBN: 978-0-96366-094-7

Jeff Smith burst out of relative obscurity in 1991 and changed the comics-reading landscape with his enchanting all-ages comic-book Bone. The compelling black and white saga captivated the market and prospered at a time when an endless procession of angst-ridden, steroid-breathed super-vigilantes and implausibly clad â€œBad-Grrlsâ€ came and went with machine-gun rapidity.

Born in Pennsylvania and raised in Ohio, Smith absorbed the works of Carl Barks, Charles Schultz and especially Walt Kelly from an early age, and purportedly first began producing the adventures of his Boneville creations at age ten. Whilst at Ohio State University he crated a strip for the College newspaper: ‘Thorn’ was another early incarnation of his personal universe and a proving ground for many characters that would appear in Bone. A high school classmate became a Disney animator and Smith subsequently worked in the industry before striking on his own, mastering the graceful slapstick timing and high finish that typifies his art style.

He founded Cartoon Books to self-publish 55 delightful black and white issues (to be accurate ten of them were put out under the Image Comics imprimatur, but reverted to Smith’s company with #29): a fantasy quest yarn that owed as much to Tex Avery as J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as his holy trinity, Barks Schultz & Kelly. The bold thrilling and fantastically funny saga progressed at its own unique pace between 1991 and 2004. Since then it has been collected into nine volumes from Cartoon Books (with two further collections of prequels and side tales), reissued in colour by Scholastic Books and even reprinted in Disney Adventures magazine.

At series’ end Smith issued a monumental one volume compilation (more than 1300 black and white pages) which Time magazine dubbed â€œthe best all-ages graphic novel yet publishedâ€ and one of the â€œTop Ten Graphic Novels of All Time.â€

Smith has won many awards including 11 Harveys and 10 Eisners. In 2003 he turned his magic loose again and revived the World’s Mightiest Mortal for DC with Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil. The project took three years but was worth every momentâ€¦

His latest work is the science fiction tale RASL.

As you can see there are plenty of versions to opt for but purist that I am I’ve plumped for the original Cartoon Books collection where the action commences in Out of Boneville, which re-presents the first six episodes.

Fone Bone is a strange, amorphous, yet decent little bald guy, a thematic blend of Mickey Mouse and Asterix who has been run out of the town of Boneville along with his tall and not-so-bright cousin Smiley Bone. Well to be exact they haven’t, but their dastardly, swindling cousin Phoncible P. â€œPhoneyâ€ Bone has, due to the kind of irregularities, misdemeanours and malfeasances that bring down presidents – and he running for Mayor at the timeâ€¦

Crossing a deadly desert and near death the trio are separated by a storm of locusts and Fone finds himself in a lost valley: an oasis of pastoral beauty hidden from the rest of the world. Along the way he is adopted by a dragon he doesn’t believe in, stalked by ghastly rat monsters and befriended by a talking leaf-insect (like a stick insect but flat, not long – and very talkativeâ€¦)

The little refugee is forced to spend a harsh winter living wild in the deep forest where he befriends many of the small creatures who live there, but as the thaw approaches he meets the beauteous and oddly compelling human girl Thorn. It is Crush-at-First-Sightâ€¦

She invites him to stay with her and her grandmother Rose until he can find his lost cousins, but soon regrets it when Phoney turns up: rude, duplicitous, greedy as ever and determined to be a real painâ€¦

Phoney’s insatiable drive to steal, cheat and fake a buck makes life pretty uncomfortable for the besotted Fone Bone, but trouble is brewing in the deep woods. An ancient evil has stirred, driving the rat creatures into a frenzy. An old, cold war is heating up again and for the humans of nearby village Barrelhaven the stakes are really high. The dark creatures have only been waiting for the arrival of their prophesied one – a small bald creature with a star on its chest remarkably similar to the one on Phoney’s shirtâ€¦

The assembled horror-hordes attack Thorn’s cottage but their chosen one is long gone. Phoney has scented money and gone to Barrelhaven in search of easy marks. Gran’ma fights a desperate holding action as Thorn and Fone flee through the forest to warn the villagers. After a nightmarish retreat the pair are rescued by the dragon – sworn foe of the rat things and their master. They return to the cottage to find that Gran’ma has survived: moreover she and the Dragon are old acquaintancesâ€¦

As the Dragon returns to the deep woods the humans (and Bone) relocate to Barrelhaven, where Fone discovers that Smiley has been there all along, working as a bartender in the local tavern. Phoney is there too – working off a tremendous bar-tabâ€¦

This volume ends on a happy note as the cousins are finally reunited, but malevolent forces are gathering all around them and there are dark days aheadâ€¦

I’ve talked a lot about the influences that informed this wonderful series and there’s one more that cannot be ignored: if you squint your eyes just right you can hear the dulcet deceptions of Bill Watterson’s Calvin (see The Essential Calvin and Hobbes. Just Do. It’s wonderful and so are all the other collections) leaking in to flavour this equally marvelous, child-friendly extravaganzaâ€¦

Bone is a truly perfect comic tale and one that appeals to kids and adults equally. Already it is in the rarefied rank starring Tintin, Pogo, Rupert Bear, Little Nemo and the works of Carl Barks. It is only a matter of time before it breaks out of the comic club completely and becomes kin to the likes of Wind in the Willows, the Moomins and the Oz books.

If you have kids or can still think and behave like one you must have these booksâ€¦

October 1, 2010October 3, 2010

Lifelike

By Dara Naraghi & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-60010-122-9

We do it for fame, we do it for fortune (or at least to pay bills), we do it for fun and the very best of us make comics because we absolutely have to. Every story we hear, every event we see provokes the reaction â€œhow would I break that down into panels? How many on the page?â€ All data – from shopping lists to bad TV – is taken in, screened through an internal grid and then we worry about how we’ll draw the damn thing one dayâ€¦

All creative people are a little bit chained to their art-form, and Dara Naraghi apparently more so than most. As well as his own celebrated BigCityBlues comic he keeps busy adapting licensed properties such as Robert Patterson’s Witch & Wizard novels, Terminator: Salvation, It! The Terror From Beyond Space and Ghostbusters into comics form, writing for DC, Image and IDW and running his own publishing house Ferret Press. He also scripts (and occasionally draws) utterly wonderful tales covering every aspect of the human experience from wild fantasy to chilling slice-of-life in a splendid series of webcomic features.

Wonderfully expansive in narrative scope and illustrated by an astounding gathering of talented graphic artisans, an exemplary bunch of these brief delights has been compiled into a fabulous hardcover compilation. All the stories in this anthology come from that webcomic site and are written (and lettered) by Naraghi, complete with commentary and context on the illustrators interpreting each piece.

The wonderment begins with ‘The Long Journey’ illustrated by Irapuan Luiz, which follows the dramatic escape of a disillusioned Iranian soldier determined to leave the Iran-Iraq War behind him forever. Naraghi is Iranian (born in Tehran in 1971) and no doubt his own journey to the west would make pretty interesting reading, although probably without the telling sting in the tale embedded hereâ€¦

‘Imaginarians’ winningly crafted by award winning artist Tom Williams, takes a barbed look at how the media deals with artists on the promo circuit whilst equally lauded Marvin Mann’s atmospheric ‘Double Cross at the Double Down’ proves that even if crime doesn’t pay, stories about it definitely do.

‘Art/Life’ rendered by Neil Errar is a feel-good fable about a comics creator we all concur with, Jerry Lange’s moody, misty paint-and-Paintbox (showing my digital age there) treatment examines the exquisite pain of unconditional love lost with ‘Remembrance’ whilst Stephen Spenser Ledford opts for monochrome ink washes to recount a particularly trenchant tale of crime and ‘Punishment.’

Sex and booze and rock ‘n’ roll form the basis of the cheeky dating vignette ‘Intermission’, illustrated by Andy Bennett, whilst Jerry Lange’s watercolour expertise displays a different arena for the relationship dance in ‘Crush’ and ‘Comeback’ by Tim McClurg describes a the meteoric fall from stardom for a has-been actor.

Marvin Mann displays his artistic versatility in ‘Smoke Break’, a heartwarming look at modern life and ‘The Routine’ by Steve Black touchingly reminds us that even small victories count in our work-a-day world, whereas the stunning drawing of Adrian Barbu’s gritty thriller ‘Rooftop Philosophy’ adds acres of edge to a dark tale of criminal Darwinism. Tom Williams astounds again with ‘Skin Deep’ a charming semi-autobiographical shaggy-dog story and pictorial programme ends on a heartwarming high note with ‘Repair’ as Shom Bhuiya treats us to a view of the common man at his very bestâ€¦

The 14 tales collected in Lifelike demonstrate the sheer breadth that material comics could and should be covering rather than the narrow band of easily defined genres usually seen. This book opens up all of human experience and imagination to the cartoonist’s particular skills and insights. Now it’s up to the rest of us to respond and reactâ€¦

Read Dara’s free webcomic, Lifelike under the Stan Lee’s Sunday Comics banner @ Komikwerks.com.

September 30, 2010October 3, 2010

New Avengers: The Reunion

By Jim McCann, David LÃ³pez & Alvaro LÃ³pez (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3855-6

The Marvel publishing event Secret Invasion revoked a number of hasty decisions made by writers and editors in the day-to-day, hand-to-mouth hurly-burly of periodical publication, among them a couple of â€œdeathsâ€. The Skrulls, shape-shifting aliens, had been infiltrating all corners of the Marvel Universe for years, even abducting and replacing certain heroes. Thus when Bobbi Morse-Barton, Mockingbird, ex-super-spy, West Coast Avenger and wife of Hawkeye was killed, it wasn’t herâ€¦

Freed and returned to Earth Mockingbird is having trouble readjusting. The world is a far darker place, and terrorists have overtaken super-villains as the greatest threat, Hawkeye is now the enigmatic warrior Ronin – and wants to pick up where they left off. When Bobbi â€œdiedâ€ the couple were going through a divorce, but he has since convinced himself that that was the Skrull impostor playing mind-gamesâ€¦

This is a rare thing for a Marvel graphic novel; a love story/Romcom with genuine sentiment and quite a few laughs riding shotgun on the traditional moody adventure the company generally specialises in. Collecting pertinent portions of Dark Reign: New Nation and the miniseries New Avengers: The Reunion #1-4, the saga opens with ‘Supicion’ as Clint Barton violently forces himself back into Mockingbird’s life and realises that his one-and-only is still carrying a secret trauma from her time as a Skrull prisoner. She wants nothing to do with him and has her own cure for what’s ailing herâ€¦

‘The Lady Vanishes’ finds the persistent Ace Archer making a pest of himself until she lets him join her new endeavour. Not prepared to rejoin the Avengers Mockingbird has returned to her old profession and working with a group of other returned Skrull captives has created her own spy network. The World has gone to hell in a hand-basket and if the superheroes can’t fix it her World Counterterrorism Agency will – by whatever means necessary.

Against her better judgement Bobbi allows her once-hubby to come along on a mission and ‘Double Indemnity’ finds them matching wits with the terrifying Monica Rappaccini, new leader of evil think-tank Advanced Idea Mechanics and the world’s most ruthlessly ambitious poisons specialistâ€¦

How the odd couple reconnect, save the world and come to terms with the horrors Bobbi experienced on Skrullworld makes for a rollicking, complications-free action-romp that is bright, breezy and just the tonic for romantic fans of modern lovers.

Saving civilisation, punching each other out and gradually redefining the term â€œTrue Loveâ€ this snappy little package is everything Mr. & Mrs. Smith should have been and writer Jim McCann and artists David LÃ³pez & Alvaro LÃ³pez have my fervent support for a sequel any time they’re in the moodâ€¦

September 29, 2010October 3, 2010

Girls Bravo volumes 1-3

By Mario Kaneda, translated & adapted by Asuka Yoshizu & Steve Bunche (TokyoPop)
ISBNs: 978-1-59816-040-6, 978-1-59816-041-3 & 978-1-59816-042-0

Here’s another large slice of manga magic that took the world by storm when it inevitably transferred to the anime screen, and another of those uncomfortably inappropriate teen-sex comedies that so delight the Japanese and generally bewilder we less socially ossified westerners. Aimed at older teens this type of tale fully acknowledges and draws seemingly endless amusement from the fact that boys and girls of a certain age are hormone-crazed muskrats desperate to catch furtive snatches of each other’s proscribed bits and only conscience and social pressure keeps them from being even more intolerable than they are.

If only it got any easier with advanced ageâ€¦

These tales first appeared in the Japanese magazine ShÅnen Ace from 2000 to 2005 and were eventually collected in ten volumes of frantic, frenetic slapstick, excruciating comedy-of-manners gaffes, gusset glimpses, shower-scenes, fantasy fun and burgeoning young love.

‘GÄrusu BurabÅ’ is the story of a hapless high school student named Yukinari Sasaki, a short, dim nebbish who is so put upon, teased and bullied by girls – and even his female teachers – that he has developed a condition which brings him out in hives every time anything with no Y chromosomes touches him. His condition is further compounded by the fact that the neighbours’ daughter Kirie, a girl he has known since childhood, and a girl he can at least talk to, has recently changed.

Her shy and awkward nature has developed into a crush he is oblivious to, but unfortunately said crush has devolved into a series of violent assaults every time she gets flustered, and with Sasaki, she gets flustered a lotâ€¦ At some time when nobody was paying attention she blossomed into an astonishingly well-endowed young woman – something else that embarrasses her greatly and often leads to red-faced punches and kicksâ€¦

After a particularly trying day Yukinari returns home and stumbles into Kirie using his shower. He’s flustered, she’s naked and while he’s being pummelled by the blushing, panicked girl he falls into the bathâ€¦ and emerges into another world and another naked girl’s bathâ€¦

But this is a completely different kind of girl. She is genuinely concerned, solicitous, even shorter than him and most importantly not screaming or hitting. Moreover Miharu can touch him without setting off his allergic reaction. All she cares about is his welfare and what earth food is like.

The world of Siren is a revelation; a magical place where women outnumber men 9-1. When her older sister Maharu spots the unattached male she makes a violent play for Yukinari, chasing him into the streets where every female in range tries to capture the fleeing boy-toy.

Miharu rescues him and they double back to her bathroom, but the pursuers are too close and the fugitives fall into the bath – and arrive back in Yukinari’s shower, still occupied by the perplexed, naked and fuming Kirie.

Miharu is apparently stuck on Earth: the perfect companion for the gynophobic lad. She never attacks him, doesn’t cause hives, has magic powers and only cares about food. Unfortunately she’s as naive as a newborn hamster and bewitchingly beautiful, so the hoi-polloi at school trail after her like dogs after biscuits, especially wealthy school stud Fukuyama, a glorious young god of manliness who hides a secret of his own: he is so male-phobic that he has an attack of hives every time a male touches him. He is driven crazy by Miharu’s indifference to himâ€¦

Meanwhile hopeless Yukinari is still being teased and bullied by all girls and regularly happening into situations where Kirie is undressed and volatileâ€¦

This first volume covers the set-up of the formulae, with lots of stories about simplistic Miharu’s desire to eat anything not nailed down, platonically care for Yukinari and tendency to be duped into wearing revealing or fetishistic clothing by the lecherous Fukuyama. Despite being always hungry and able to consume practically anything Miharu is a brilliant cook, unlike Kirie whose recipes are only really appreciated by terrorists looking for new bio-weapons. Yukinari increasingly has to spend his time protecting the gullible alien’s non-existent modestyâ€¦

Gradually the series takes a more supernatural turn as the unhappy mÃ©nage-a-trouble encounter an undressed ghost girl and Fukuyama’s sister Risa: a young sorceress convinced that beleaguered Yukinari is her predestined husband and willing to use all her wiles and witchcraft to make him hers – if it means destroying or even befriending Miharu and Kirieâ€¦

The first volume ends with a light-hearted and hottie-filled adaptation of traditional Japanese folk-tale Momotaro (the Peach Boy).

Volume 2 continues Risa’s campaign. She casts spells on Yukinari, tries to convince Miharu that her attentions are preventing the diminutive lad from forming normal relationships or shaking his allergic phobia and things get completely crazy when the Siren girl drinks alcohol and begins to replicate herself uncontrollablyâ€¦

Yukinari still keeps getting accidental, unwelcome and concomitantly painful glimpses of girls whilst growing increasingly fond of Miharu, even battling the hulking alpha male Fukuyama to protect her, but when amnesiac Koyomi appears thing get very strange indeed. For one thing she is the only other girl able to resist the school stud’s dubious charms, she doesn’t give Yukinari hives and when flustered or scared giant pits open in the floor under herâ€¦She is in fact an agent from Siren sent to recover the missing Miharu, and when her memory returns she transports her quarry home before Yukinari’s tear-filled eyesâ€¦

Of course she does return, and this second volume concludes with another side story; a day in the life of sexy super-stud Fukuyama – or at least in his fevered, fetid mindâ€¦

Volume 3 opens with the cast being coerced by the ghastly Lothario into a game of strip Mah-Jong where the returned Konomi (on a secret mission for Miharu’s sister) is Fukuyama’s latest lewd target. Sadly for him she suffers from the same condition as he does – she too is androphobic and repelled by the touch of menâ€¦

Konomi’s mission is revealed and she begins searching for a perfect husband for Miharu’s strident, overbearing sister; inevitably leading to some very uncomfortable situations, as do the girls’ communal attempts to earn some extra money, before everything goes really crazy when Kirie falls through Risa’s mirror into a world where all her friends have reversed personalitiesâ€¦

Sweet-natured Miharu’s attempts to buy all her friends New Year’s Gifts goes painfully awry before all ends well, and her celebration of the Setsubun festival (where bad luck is symbolically removed by throwing Soya beans out of the house) also falls flat – but only because Risa summoned real evil spirits to the partyâ€¦ The volume ends on a heartbreakingly beguiling tale of a little girl abandoned in the snow – a story so moving it’s worth buying all three volumes just to read this sparkling gem in perfect contextâ€¦

Irrepressibly juvenile but great fun and beautifully drawn, this is a series as likely to titillate as offend, but it’s all good clean smut really, harmless and charming and bound to delight girl watchers and anyone enduring puberty or recalling it with any degree of honestyâ€¦

September 28, 2010October 2, 2010

Mome 19: Summer 2010

By various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-152-7

Mome is a quarterly compendium of sequential narratives; a magazine that looks like a book, featuring strips, articles, graphic artworks and occasionally interviews from and about a variety of talented, dedicated creators ranging from the internationally renowned to the soon-will-be. It is where the smart kids with the sharpest pencils, shiniest pens, biggest brushes and best software go to play before they blow your minds in great big award-winning graphic novels. It is intense, sometimes hard to read and crafted to the highest production standards. Considered by most to be the successor to Art Spiegelman’s Raw, it doesn’t come out nearly often enough.

Once in awhile, as with this issue, it pushes the envelope of conventional taste and morality so if you are liable to be offended by the depiction of sex acts and adult themes stay away from this volume: The rest of us will just be grown ups without youâ€¦

This volume is perfect for newcomers to jump aboard as four continuing features (Fuzz & Pluck, Almost Sound, Nothing Eve and Devil Doll) all take a break. The Summer magic begins here with a glorious and challenging fantasy from The Partridge in the Pear Tree (Shaun Partridge on his tax return) & Josh Simmons (don’t miss his superb graphic novel House) as a troubled woman lands in a baffling Never-land of institutionalised racism and joins a disquieting pixie child in a hunt for ‘The White Rhino’â€¦

Animator and cartoonist Olivier Schrauwen returns with another panchromatic hard-centred extravaganza in ‘The Imaginist’ and comics super-star Gilbert Hernandez opens the black and white section with ‘Roy in â€œWho Are Your Heroes; What Are Your Heroes?â€’ a boldly excessive progression that examines the cultural landscape which shaped the jolly reprobate from Love and Rockets.

‘Evelyn Dalton Holt’ by D.J. Bryant is based on the Steve Ditko story â€œDriven to Destructionâ€ and delivers a witheringly painful, sexually explicit neo-noir psycho-thriller that will delight all fans of hard-edged fiction, whilst Tim Lane’s ‘Hitchhiker’ offers a far gentler surprise behind its tense edgy monochrome faÃ§ade.

‘Vote Lily at the Dog Show’ by Conor O’Keefe is simply stunning: classic watercolour fantasy with a modern sensibility as a talking wren goes searching for his lost mate at a county fair aided by the gamin Deidre, a worthy successor to Little Nemo himself: surreal, nostalgic, winningly compulsiveâ€¦

The black and white history lesson ‘The Spiritual Crisis’ of Carl Jung’ by animator Robert Goodin is a surprisingly tasty confection, dry and sharp and this edition ends with another multi-media delight from T. Edward Bak, who continues his graphic fascination with historic Russia and 18th century German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, with part 3 of ‘Wild Man Chapter 2: A Bavarian Botanist in St. Petersburg, part’ and as ever the tome is graced with a selection of incidental drawings by Kaela Graham

Whether you’re new to comics, currently searching beyond the mainstream or just want something fresh; these strips and this publication will always offer a decidedly different read. You may not like all of it but Mome will always have something you can’t help but respond to. Why haven’t you tried it yet?

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: