Category: European Classics

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Requiem Vampire Knight Tome 2: Dracula and The Vampires Ball


By Pat Mills & Ledroit (Panini Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-438-6

The second double compilation of Pat Mills and Olivier Ledroit’s darkly spectacular masterpiece of nihilistic anti-heroism intensifies the decadent horrors with the next two translated volumes that created such a storm when first released in France. Dracula and The Vampire Ball resumes the tale of Heinrich Augsburg, a Nazi soldier doomed to unlive his life as a vampire warrior in a macabre inverse world of evil, which began in Requiem Vampire Knight Tome 1: Resurrection and Danse Macabre.

Resurrection is a brooding, blood-drenched world of eternal strife and warfare: a grim, fantastic mirror of Earth with the seas and land-masses reversed, where time runs backwards, populated by all the worst sinners of Earth reincarnated as monsters of myth – a realm where the ranked dead expiate or exacerbate the sins of their former lives.

This tome further explores the deeds that brought Heinrich (now called Requiem) to the very apex of the hell-world’s hierarchy as a full knight at the court of Dracula, trapped in a spiral of bloodletting, debauchery and intrigue. His position is not secure. Not only has he earned the enmity of the treacherous faction of elite Nosferatu led by Lady Claudia Demona, Lord Mortis and Baron Samedi, but it appears that he may be a returned soul…

Long before Augsberg died on a frozen battlefield, killed by a Russian he was trying to rape, the Templar Heinrich Barbarossa had committed such atrocities in the name of Christianity that he was guaranteed a place in Dracula’s inner circle when he inevitably reached Resurrection. But soon this new Vampire Knight Thurim committed an unpardonable crime and was excised from the court and Resurrection itself.

But now Requiem, already plagued by memories of his doomed affair with the Jewess Rebecca, is the subject of dangerous talk. Far too many vampires are remarking how similar to the disgraced Thurim the newcomer seems…

And what’s worse for him is that as the interminable battles (incredibly realised by the epic mastery of Ledroit) with such foes as the Gods of Limbo, the arcane order of Archaeologists, Lamias, Werewolves, Ghouls and others, Requiem discovers that Rebecca too is on Resurrection and the only way she can find peace is to “expire” the one responsible for her being there…

Blending decadent, opulent, Machiavellian dalliance with the wildest dreams – and grim, black wit – of a new De Sade, the tensions of the palace even outstrip the constant eye-popping action on myriad battlefields, so this book ends far too quickly on yet another cliffhanger when Rebecca is first captured by the Vampires only to escape with the still besotted and now wildly off-reservation Requiem. And their headlong flight has catapulted the doomed ex-lovers straight into the mouth of a cosmic dragon storm…

Supplemented by a gallery of the artist’s series paintings this astonishing, captivating work for the Goth within is an adult fantasy fan’s darkest dream come true. More please and soon…

© 2000, 2001, 2009 Nickel, Mills, Ledroit. All rights Reserved.

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Stories of the West Book 1: Three Women at the Frontier


By Paulo Eleuteri-Serpieri, translated by Alfred Blomgren & Tony Raiola (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-932629-03-2

Paulo Eleuteri-Serpieri was born in Venice on February 29th 1944, and studied painting and architecture at the Fine Art Academy in Rome, graduating in 1966. He became an acclaimed painter before turning to comics in 1975 with historical dramas of the American West, scripted by Raffaele Ambrosio, which were published in Lancio Story and Skorpio as well as illustrating biblical tales in Découvrir la Bible.

From 1980 he turned to science fiction material for L’Eternauta, Il Fumetto and Orient-Express, before creating his landmark signature character Druuna, whose Junoesque proportions and fantastic adventures have captivated readers all over the world in such classics of pulchritudinous fantasy as Morbus Gravis, Creatura, Carnivora, Mandragora, Aphrodisia, Obsession, Druuna X and Croquis.

In Europe, where such superlatives are cherished, Serpieri’s astonishing ability to capture the female form in line and in colour has won him the title (although who else would want it is moot) of “Master of the Ass”, and this rare American translation of some of those early Western sagas certainly has a few beautiful nudes within its pages, but these two stories are worth looking at for more than that.

The eponymous ‘Three Women at the Frontier’ details the journey of a group of women literally exported to edge of American Civilisation at the close of the 19th century and how they wrested control of their lives and destinies from the callous, patronising men who thought they knew best, whilst ‘John and Mary, Mary and John’ details the unique meeting and budding relationship of a grizzled old mountain man and a wild woman hermit, once a squaw and slave; certainly one of the most intriguing and refreshing romances I’ve ever read.

Quirky, compelling and superbly underplayed, with some of the best drawing you’ll ever see, this is a fabulous lost treasure, only slightly marred by its appalling reproduction and too-casual proofreading. These wonderful tales of the west (and all those others untranslated as yet) are desperately in need of a high quality English language edition, but until then this will have to suffice…
© 1985 Paulo Eleuteri-Serpieri. All rights reserved.

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Requiem Vampire Knight Tome 1: Resurrection and Danse Macabre


By Pat Mills & Ledroit (Panini Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-437-9

As is so often the case Europe is the last and most beneficial arena for the arts and untrammelled creativity, and none more so than comics and sequential narrative. For some reason the Continent cherishes the best of the world’s past as well as nurturing the fresh and new, without too much concern for historical bugbears of political correctness, gaffes and contemporary censoriousness – which is why so many British and American strip creators produce their best work there.

Perhaps it’s simply because they revere not revile popular arts as much as classical ones….

Requiem Vampire Knight is an impressive example of self-publishing done right, and happily with commensurate rewards. For years writer Pat Mills wanted to break into the European market and in 2000 he did so by setting up Nickel Editions with publisher Jacques Collin (whose Zenda Editions produced some of the nicest looking albums of the 1980s) and artist Olivier Ledroit who illustrated the first four books of the incredibly popular Chroniques de la Lune Noire (Black Moon Chronicles) for Zenda before the series transferred to Dargaud. Mills and Ledroit were already old comrades having previously worked on the impressive Sha.

Mills is well known to readers of this blog (see for example Marshal Law: Fear and Loathing and his incontestable masterpiece Charley’s War) but perhaps Ledroit is not so familiar. After studying Applied Arts he began his career as an illustrator for games magazines and broke into Bandes Dessinee (that’s comics to thee and me) in 1989 with the aforementioned Black Moon Chronicles, written by François Marcela Froideval.

Specialising in fantasy art Ledroit drew Thomas Mosdi’s Xoco (1994) before teaming with Pat Mills on the acerbic, futurist thriller Sha, set in an ultra-religious fascistic USA (1996-1999). His lush painterly style was adapted to fairytales in 2003 with L’Univers Féerique d’Olivier Ledroit, and he is credited as one of the founding fathers of the darkly baroque fantasy sub-genre BD Gothique.

From a financially shaky start Requiem Vampire Knight quickly proved that quality will always find an audience, and Nickel swiftly expanded whilst continuing the excessively adult adventures of deceased warrior Heinrich Augsburg. The series is released as annual albums, and has been serialized in Germany as Requiem Der Vampirritter, and in Heavy Metal in America (beginning in Volume 27 #1, March 2003).

Now Panini have brought this evocative series to Britain in superb oversized, A4 format, double-editions presenting two albums per volume beginning with Resurrection and Danse Macabre.

Heinrich is a German officer killed on the Eastern Front in 1944. As he died all he could think of was his guilt over a doomed affair with the Jewess Rebecca whom he chose not to save when the Gestapo came for her…

He awakens confused, with few memories intact, on the incredible blood-drenched world of Resurrection: a grim, fantastic mirror of Earth with the seas and land-masses reversed, populated by all the monsters of myth and where time runs backwards. In this Hell of constant warfare the sins committed on Earth determine your rank and form. Since Heinrich has been reborn as a Vampire, top of the slaughterers’ heap, his Earthly transgressions must have been truly unforgivable…

Soon he is sent for training and orientation, joining the Vampires Court of Dracula, where all the worst monsters of history rule, becoming embroiled in the eternal warfare and perpetual intrigues. But as time passes and he gets younger, he remembers more of his Earthly life and realises that he has been on Resurrection before… Moreover he has earned the particular enmity of a faction of utterly decadent elite Nosferatu ruled by the sadistic Lady Claudia Demona, Lord Mortis and Baron Samedi…

For any fan of Mills’ work there nothing truly new here to be shocked by, but the liberating license to explore his favourite themes guided only by his own conscience and creative integrity has resulted in a complex, intensely compelling mystery of revenge and regret on the most uncompromising of worlds where there is literally no justice and no good deed ever goes unpunished. Blending cosmic warfare with cynically sardonic deadpan humour, wrapped in the ludicrously OTT trappings of sadomasochistic fetishism, this is a truly epic saga of Gothic hopelessness perfect for the post-punk, post-revisionary, lavishly anti-reductionist fantasy fan. But it’s probably best if you don’t show your gran or the vicar…

The art is utterly astonishing. In places delightfully reminiscent of Philippe Druillet’s startlingly visual and deceptively vast panel-scapes from such lost masterpieces as Yragael: Urm (and there’s another one to chuck on the “must review soon” pile) as well the paradoxically nihilistic energy of such decadent Michael Moorcock civilisations as Granbretan or Melniboné, Ledroit has captured a truly unique scenario with his vibrant palette . Never has the horrific outer darkness been so colourfully captured and the sheer scope of the numerous monsters and spectacular battles is utterly eye-popping.

A grim and witty dream, this is a fabulously realized adult fantasy of blood and thunder that is enthralling and captivating: (Im)Pure Graphic Wonderment!

© 2000, 2001, 2009 Nickel, Mills, Ledroit. All rights Reserved.

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Kelly Green volume 4: The Blood Tapes


By Stan Drake & Leonard Starr (Dargaud International Publishing)
ISBN: 2-205-06956-X

With her cop husband murdered by his own superiors (Kelly Green: The Go-Between), grieving, furious Kelly Green has began a risky new career in the twilight world between the law-abiding and the criminal aided by three of her husband’s reformed “cases”: con-man Spats Cavendish, thief Jimmy Delocke and pugnacious leg-breaker “Meathooks.”

Acting as a fair and impartial broker between antagonistic parties had kept Kelly in groceries for awhile now – and got her into some pretty nasty scrapes – but she had never encountered such unprincipled and dangerous characters as those that populate the Los Angeles music scene. When Rock Legend Alec Blood completed his comeback album he didn’t realise he was signing his death warrant…

When the star was gunned down in the studio parking lot the master tapes were stolen, and with millions of dollars hanging in the balance Kelly was contracted to buy back Blood’s last recordings. But she is horrified to discover that the money is being provided by Tom Ragan, the most dangerous mobster in Las Vegas, and he personally asked for her…

Before she can even begin she has to ascertain if thief and murderer are one and the same, but everywhere she turns the infamous Ragan is dogging her steps. Can he possibly be as murderous as he is good-looking? Is he as good a liar as he is a lover? And can the spiritualist Madame Elsa really convince the murdered Alec Blood to reveal who killed him…?

As usual nothing is what it seems in this superb thriller which blends a classic “whodunit” with the brutal, sexy world of The Mob, where Kelly and her faithful team find themselves punching far beyond their weight, but still doing the best they can in a world crushingly short of White Knights…

The passage of time has made this plot all too familiar but as is so often the case the first is still the best and the tale still has plenty of surprises in store for thriller aficionados and comics fans alike.

Intense and uncompromising, these character-driven yarns are as compelling now as they ever were, and the sheer quality of Stan Drake and Leonard Starr’s narrative creativity, unconstrained by the need to please a family audience – and the editors afraid of offending them – is a master-class in how comics should be made.
© 1983 Dargaud Editeur. All Right Reserved.

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Skin Deep


By Charles Burns (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-167-1

Charles Burns is a creative force with his roots firmly placed in 1950s kids culture (B-movies, cartoons, EC comics: especially Mad Magazine,) and fingers in many areas of the creative media. As an illustrator, graphic designer, photographer, film-maker and especially cartoonist, his slick, precise methodology tells stories and evokes responses from a place that is dark, skewed, beautiful and overwhelmingly nostalgic.

His comics work blends horror, true romance and Film Noir sensibilities with a sensationalistic fascination with the grotesque and absurdist; all delivered in a tight, meticulous, heavy line style reminiscent of woodcut prints, with huge swathes of solid black like darkness and light suspended and perfectly balanced in a Cold War on every page.

This gigantic softcover (297mm high x 224mm wide) is the third in a series collecting all the artist’s work prior to the landmark publication of the incredible Black Hole (soon to be a Major Motion Picture! – I love typing that!) and the three interlinked – or rather perhaps, overlapping – stories here all originate from between 1988 to1992, having been slightly revised since appearing in the Big Baby weekly strip and in the case of A Marriage Made in Hell, the legendary Raw Magazine. All in their own manner examine the theme of love in the modern world.

Leading off is Dog-Boy, the simple tale of a young man who has a cut-rate heart transplant and finds himself increasingly taking on the characteristics of the canine who his provided his new ticker. Just because he acts a little differently, does this mean that there is no girl out there for him? This tale formed the basis of a 1991 MTV serial for the Liquid Television TV programme (seen here on BBC2, I think).

This leads to the outrageously funny and deeply unsettling Burn Again wherein reformed televangelist Bliss Blister once more falls under the influence of his huckster father, as well as his own wife, who use him to con the religiously gullible. Unfortunately what only Bliss knows is that God – in the form of a hideous, diabolical extraterrestrial Cyclops, is coming to end mankind’s self-inflicted woes…

The book ends with the aforementioned and intensely disturbing story-within-a-story A Marriage Made in Hell. When horny new bride Lydia finally marries her war-hero husband she regretfully discovers that he won’t consummate their union. Just what is the fantastic secret of battle-scarred veteran John Dough, and how does Lydia cope with the incredible situation she finds herself trapped in?

As well as these staggeringly dry, wry and funny tales there is also a selection from the Burns sketchbook, a look at some of those altered story-pages and a brief commentary from the artist himself.

This volume is also available as hardback edition and was previously released as a Penguin book in 1992.
© 1988-1992 Charles Burns. All Rights Reserved.

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Chimera


By Mattotti (Fantagraphics Books and Coconino Press)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56097-763-6

The sixth release (I hesitate to call it a volume, as the format, though bold and wonderful, is far more than a magazine but not quite a book) from the eclectic European publications imprint designated the Ignatz Collection features an uncharacteristic and unforgettable look at the monochrome work of one of the world’s most talented colour artists.

Lorenzo Mattotti was born in Brescia, Italy and studied at the Faculty for Architecture in Venice before beginning a career as a comics storyteller in 1975 in the French magazine Circus. Whether alone or with long-time collaborator Fabrizio Ostani (AKA Jerry Kramsky – they often used the single pen-name “Kleidebistro”) Mattotti’s incredible, nigh-abstract designs and pictorial narratives have won him a huge following, with work appearing in Métal Hurlant, L’Écho des Savanes (France), Rumbo Sur (Spain), Frigidaire, Secondamano and Alter Alter (Italy), Raw (USA) and The Face (UK) among many others.

In 2002 Mattotti and Kramsky produced Docteur Jekyll & Mister Hyde (based on the Robert Louis Stevenson classic) for Casterman, and the English translation won Mattotti an Eisner Award the following year. As an illustrator, Mattotti has worked for Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Le Monde, and has produced a number of startling and beautiful children’s books. His absolute masterpiece thus far is – to my mind at least – Fires (and I think I’ll just add that to my “review real soon” pile).

Behind a deeply unsettling gate-fold wraparound cover, but printed throughout on reassuringly solid cream-coloured card-stock, lurks a startling journey from idyllic cloud-gazing through vaguely erotic musings on gods and giants to the depths of a terrifying and oppressive forested hell. Rendered in a bravura line-and-dry-brush style that ranges from seductive and cajoling, through airy tumult to raw, fierce, bestial rage and horror, Mattotti uses the reader’s eyes to pull the viewer on a chaotic descent reminiscent of Mussorgsky’s “A Night on Bald Mountain” from Walt Disney’s Fantasia, with just a hint of Watership Down thrown in.

Comics aficionados might also recognize a touch of the panning-in technique used by the great André Barbe where small pictorial changes lead to a total transformation, not only to the graphic representations but also to the mental or spiritual state of the object and observer. But where Barbe wanted to languidly surprise and seduce you, Mattotti is here to make you squirm…

Even if the “how” isn’t your major concern, the whole pictorial experience of Chimera is one headlong rush, and a supreme lesson in the power and virtuosity of dark lines against the light. This is probably the only white knuckle ride you can put on a bookshelf… so why don’t you?

Story and art © 2005 Lorenzo Mattotti. Book edition © 2005 Fantagraphics Books and Coconino Press.

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Kelly Green volume 3: The Million Dollar Hit


By Stan Drake & Leonard Starr (Dargaud International Publishing)
ISBN: 2-205-06576-9

After the murder of her cop husband by his own superiors (Kelly Green: The Go-Between) Dan Green’s grieving and furious widow began a dubious new career in the twilight world between the law-abiding and the criminal aided by three of her husband’s reformed “cases”: con-man Spats Cavendish, thief Jimmy Delocke and pugnacious leg-breaker “Meathooks.”

With her life slowly getting back on track – although still not without moments of exotic glamour and extreme tension – the widow Green agrees to courier a large sum of cash to a conman who has already absconded with five million dollars of an oil company’s money. So why does OkalCo want Kelly to bring him more?

This sharp, wry thriller has plenty of surprises in store. The gorgeous go-between is dispatched to Alaska to deliver a hush-money payment and to bring back the secret method by which Cyrus Worthing – AKA Gus Arakian – managed to siphon away all that loot without anybody noticing. In the wilds of Big Snow country, can she even find him let alone prevent the conman selling his million-buck grift to others?

Further complicating matters is an unwise, unwelcome yet seemingly unstoppable fling with a US senator hiding some dark secrets of his own, a pair of hit-men with their own agenda dogging her heels and the small matter of a plane crash during the worst blizzard in recent memory…

These spectacular thrillers are intensely powerful, uncompromising stories, strictly for adults and not just because of the casual nudity; there’s a touch of chilling violence here that’s all the more distressing because it’s so skilfully underplayed. This series still works so well because it falls into a too rare category of crime-story where character not plot drives the narrative and it’s delivered with all the skill and artistry that two of the best storytellers comics have ever produced can command. The crash scenes in the mountains are alone worth every penny you might pay for this book.

For over three decades Stan Drake and Leonard Starr worked individually on some of the most successful family strips in the world. After years of critical and commercial rewards the pair teamed with French publisher Dargaud to flex their creativity unrestrained, producing a no-holds-barred contemporary crime-thriller that remains to this day one of the most exciting, vibrant and powerful in all strip history.

Copies of all volumes are still readily available (if a little pricey), but true quality has no upper limit and there are still rumours of a full revival of the character soon. Perhaps you could wait, but I wouldn’t…
© 1983 Dargaud Editeur. All Right Reserved.

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Kelly Green volume 2: One, Two, Three… Die!


By Stan Drake & Leonard Starr (Dargaud International Publishing)
ISBN: 2-205-06952-7

The decades of creative expertise that marked the careers of strip veterans Stan Drake and Leonard Starr were rewarded by the one thing they had never achieved when they began their seminal crime-thriller for the European comics market: creative control. And blessed with that elusive prize they produced one of the most memorable women in comics: the frail, divinely human yet determinedly adamantine Kelly Green.

After the murder of her cop husband by his own superiors (Kelly Green: The Go-Between) the grieving and furious widow began a dubious career in the no-man’s land separating the law-abiding and felonious, aided by three of her husband’s reformed “cases”: con-man Spats Cavendish, thief Jimmy Delocke and colossal leg-breaker “Meathooks.”

In this tale however the job intersects disastrously with her private life as a new friend inadvertently draws her into a world of ruthless super-rich dynasties, blackmail, infidelity, exploitation and even serial murder. As this is a gripping mystery yarn of the “fair-play” variety I’ll avoid specifics so you can have a fair crack at deducing the killer, but I will offer this warning: you know those movies where a million people can die bloodily but your favourite actor and his dog will always escape unscathed? This isn’t one of those stories…

This spectacular thriller is powerful and uncompromising stuff, strictly for adults (and not just because of the casual nudity), falling into a rare category of crime-story in that it is unflinchingly character–, not plot-driven, and delivered with all the skill and artistry that these two veteran storytellers can command.

Copies of all volumes are still readily available (if a little pricey), but true quality has no upper limit and there are still rumours of a full revival of the character soon. Perhaps you could wait…

But can you?
© 1983 Dargaud Editeur. All Right Reserved.

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Rork 3: the Graveyard of Cathedrals/Starlight


By Andreas (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-150-6

To me a great comic strip begins with the simple line. The greatest drawing is always about the power of black against white. Colour enhances but it seldom creates. For my money, one of the best line artists in the business is the modern fantasist Andreas.

Andreas Martens is an incredibly versatile artist born in East Germany (from a time when that meant another country not a different location), trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf and the Saint-Luc Institute in Brussels. His work has appeared in Le 9e Rêve, and Tintin where in conjunction with his teacher Eddie Paape he created the seminal Udolfo.

Andreas has adapted the works of Francois Rivière (collected as Révélations Posthumes in 1980) and produced a graphic edition of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre for Je Bouquine. Among his many original efforts are Raffington Detective, Cyrrus, Arq and a host of others. All his works are steeped in classical style, draped in period glamour and drenched in visual tension. Many are thematically linked. But before all these he created one of the most stylish and memorable “challengers of The Unknown” in horror fiction with the introduction and continuing adventures of the enigmatic psychic savant Rork.

His pale and moody hero, (who debuted in Pilote in 1978) draws on the tone and sometimes content of dark-fantasists August Derleth, H. P. Lovecraft and especially the Carnacki stories of William Hope Hodgson; traveling the world and the great beyond unraveling great mysteries and discovering startling wonders not for fame or glory but because he must…

In the early 1990s Dark Horse Comics serialized his adventures in their superb anthology of European comics Cheval Noir, and those translations formed the basis of a little seen or remarked upon series of albums from NBM. This volume is a particular favourite of mine (even if the spine and binding are less than robust), featuring two tales in a continuing story arc as the ethereal knowledge-seeker is returned to Earth from a Transcendent Realm to intervene in the inevitably grisly fate of a scientific expedition in the wilds of Central America.

Douglas Holbein was obsessed with the story of The Chavesians, an order of architectural mystics declared heretical by the Spanish Inquisition and banished to the New World by Queen Isabella. The centuries-old sect, which built the great churches of Christendom, did not die in the harsh jungles, but continued the craft, erecting monolithic buildings in the lush wilderness, ever-seeking to learn the secrets of God through their vast stone Faith Machines.

Now Holbein’s team have found the site of the ‘Graveyard of Cathedrals’ they accidentally disrupt a centuries-old truce between the sect’s last adherents with potentially catastrophic consequences and only the reality-shocked Rork can save them…

Following his harrowing return Rork is summoned to the deserts of Mexico by mysterious means to aid an old friend atoning for her past sins in an isolated and ancient pueblo. Increasingly endangered by a jealous Medicine Man, the woman called Low Valley cares for the Indians of the settlement as she awaits a certain lunar conjunction. The swift-approaching night when ‘Starlight’ again rains down on the people promises – or perhaps warns of – radical transformation when the heavens flare again. But the impoverished and desperate people must be made to remember that not all change is good…

Exotic, chilling and lyrically beguiling, the classical mysticism and otherwordly dread of these tales is a continuously heady and captivating brew, especially with the intense, linear illustration and stark design of Andreas to mesmerize and shock your widened eyes. This series should be at the top of the publisher’s list of books to re-release…

© 1996 Le Lombard. English translation © 1992 Dark Horse.

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[Low Moon]

lowmoon
By Jason, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-268-4

John Arne Saeterrøy, who works under the pen-name Jason, was born in Molde, Norway in 1965, and exploded onto the international cartoonists scene at age 30 with his first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) which won that year’s Sproing Award (Norway’s biggest comics prize). He followed with the series Mjau Mjau (winning another Sproing in 2001) and in 2002 turned almost exclusively to producing graphic novels. He has now achieved international fame and critical status, winning seven major awards as far afield as France, Slovakia and the USA and all areas in-between.

His stories utilise a small cast of anthropomorphic animal characters (and occasional movie and pop culture monsters), delivered in highly formal page layouts telling dark, wry and sardonically bleak tales – often pastiches, if not outright parodies – in a coldly austere and Spartan manner. This seemingly oppressive format somehow allows a simply vast range of emotionally telling tales on a wide spectrum of themes and genres to hit home like rockets whether the author’s intention was to make the reader smile or cry like a baby.

Drawing in a minimalist evolution of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style, Jason’s work bores right into the reader’s core, and this movie-based collection of short tales is possibly his best work yet.

Redolent of quintessential Film Noir and especially the writing of Jim Thompson, the poignant tale of vengeance ‘Emily Says Hello’ precedes what is billed as the World’s “first and only Chess Western”. The eponymous ‘Low Moon’ was originally serialized in The New York Times Sunday Magazine in 2008, a surreal spoof of Fred Zinnemann’s 1952 classic High Noon as an old menace returns to terrorise the town until the Sheriff capitulates to his incessant demands for one final return match…

‘&’ is a tragic anecdote of love, loss and marital persistence related in the terms and stylings of a Hal Roach silent comedy and ‘Proto Film Noir’ owes an inspirational tip of the thermally insulated hat to Tay Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (the 1946 version with John Garfield and Lana Turner) by way of the Flintstones and Groundhog Day, whilst the concluding tale of love, family and abandonment assumes science-fictional trappings to relate the soap-opera, generational tale of a mother kidnapped by aliens and the effects it inflicts on the husband and son she left behind. ‘You Are Here’ is bemusing, evocative and moving yet manages never to fall off the tightrope into mawkishness or buffoonery.

Jason’s comic tales are strictly for adults but allow us all to look at the world through wide-open childish eyes. He is a taste instantly acquired and a creator any true fan of the medium should move to the top of the “Must-Have” list. This superb little hardback could be your entry into a brave, old world, so get it while you can because stuff this good never lasts long…

© 2009 Jason. All right reserved.