Category: Graphic Novels

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Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Volume 2


By Mike Sekowsky, Dick Giordano & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-900-0

Back for a second delicious helping of pop nostalgia and startling action is Diana Prince, erstwhile Amazon superhero, but for a brief moment a mortal woman with all the power and wit that entails – solving problems and fighting injustice with great style and incredible fashion-sense.

In 1968 superhero comics were in decline and publishers sought new ways to keep audience as tastes changed. Back then, the entire industry depended on newsstand sales, and if you weren’t popular, you died. Editor Jack Miller and Mike Sekowsky stepped up with a radical proposal and made a little bit of comic book history with the only female superhero then in the marketplace.

The superbly eccentric art of Sekowsky had been a DC mainstay for decades, and he had also scored big with fans at Gold Key with Man from Uncle and at Tower Comics’ T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and war comic Fight The Enemy! His unique take on the Justice League of America had cemented its overwhelming success, and now he was stretching himself with a number of experimental, youth-market directed projects.

Tapping into the teen zeitgeist with the Easy Rider-like drama Jason’s Quest proved ultimately unsuccessful, but with the Metal Men and the hopelessly moribund Wonder Woman he had much greater impact. He would ultimately work the same magic with Supergirl.

When the Amazons were forced to leave our dimension, they took with them all their magic – including Wonder Woman’s powers and all her weapons … Now no more or less than human she decided to stay on Earth permanently, assuming her own secret identity of Diana Prince, dedicated to fighting injustice as a mortal. Blind Buddhist monk I Ching trained her as a martial artist, and she quickly became embroiled in the schemes of would-be world-conqueror Doctor Cyber. Her one true love Steve Trevor was branded a traitor and killed…

This volume (which collects issues #185-189 of her comic book, a guest shot from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #93 plus the first of two appearances in the Batman team-up vehicle Brave and the Bold #87) shows just how bold were those changes to the Amazing Amazon’s career. With young scripter Denny O’Neil moved to other projects Sekowsky took over the writing himself, surprising everyone with his savvy ear for dialogue and a refreshingly original take on the old conventions.

With apparently nothing to lose, the switch to espionage/adventurer in the fashionable footsteps of such popular TV characters as Emma Peel, The Girl from Uncle and Honey West, not to mention our own ultimate comic strip action-heroine Modesty Blaise, seemed like desperation, but clearly struck a chord with the public. Sekowsky opens this book with ‘Them!’ – one of the most original tales of the period, with few to match it written since.

Steeped heavily in the hippie counter-culture and Mod-fashion explosion, the New Wonder Woman had opened her own boutique and into it rushes a young girl seeking to escape three women who took her in and then made her their slave. Today this sort of psychological thriller is more recognisable, but in 1969 themes of bullying and peer abuse were utterly unknown in comic books, and this groundbreaking tale is uniquely informative: exploring other solutions than simply punching bad guys – although there’s enough of that so that the regular readers aren’t completely bewildered.

This is followed by ‘Morgana the Witch’, (WW #186) a spectacular flight of whimsy tapping into the then growing interest in the supernatural wherein a trio of teenaged girls with a talking frog (who was originally the boy friend of one of them) request help after accidentally summoning a powerful (and clearly bi-polar) sorceress to the 20th century.

Next is ‘The Superman-Wonder Woman Team!’ (by Robert Kanigher and Irv Novick from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #93), a less adventurous and unreconstructed yarn where the also socially evolving girl-reporter seeks to uncover the reason the ex-Amazon is making an ill-concealed play for her man, and a superbly tense thriller by Sekowsky and Giordano from Brave and the Bold #87 entitled ‘The Widow-Maker’, wherein the son of one of Batman’s foes tries to add to his tally of murders by luring the Caped Crusader into a rigged high performance car race.

The book concludes with a gripping three-part saga revealing some of I Ching’s past  and reintroducing the deadly Dr. Cyber before seamlessly transiting into an exotic Cold War thriller. In ‘Earthquaker’ and ‘Cyber’s Revenge’ Diana’s mentor is summoned by old friends to Hong Kong where he and his astonishing pupil happen upon a plan to blackmail the island with catastrophic artificial earthquakes, before attempting to smuggle an entire village out of Communist China in the delightfully epic ‘Red for Death’. The spectacle is broken up by a wonderful extra two page strip vignette ‘Crime does not Pay’ which brilliantly demonstrates the wit and economy of the medium

Comics are an art-form dictated by markets, driven by sales and influenced by fashion. For a brief moment all these factors coalesced to produce a compelling, engaging and utterly fabulous sequence of tales that are timelessly perfect and eternally fresh. And now you can read them whenever you feel the need for better times simply by opening these pages…

© 1969, 1970, 2008 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

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John Constantine, Hellblazer: Chas – The Knowledge


By Simon Oliver & Goran Sudzuka (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-140-3

It’s tough being a sidekick – especially when your guv’ner is the sardonic, ultra-cool laughing magician and arch-trickster John Constantine, and you’re just an over-the-hill granddad who drives a black cab in a London you recognise less and less every day. Your glory days are long gone – if there ever were any – and all you can look forward too is the big match, a few jars and not too much ear-ache from the dragon you married.

Chas Chandler (not the pop star) is probably Constantine’s oldest mate, at least this side of the grave, and his stolid, sensible “hit it don’t hex it” attitude has saved the street sorcerer from disaster on more than one occasion. His brushes with the unknown are mercifully limited but always terrifying (see for example “In Another Part of Hell” in Hellblazer: Rare Cuts) and he’s more than happy to keep it that way.

For such a man loyalty is sacrosanct and family worth dying – or killing – for.

Whilst his prospective son-in-law and a friend are researching “The Knowledge” one of them is involved in an accident that releases a spiteful demonic presence last seen during the Great Plague. This hateful spirit has nasty plans for London and quickly starts to enact them.

With Constantine pathetically unavailable Chas is forced to take action himself, aided by a few plucky cabbies and an extraordinarily tempting American lady he found in the back of his cab. Luckily this bloke at the pub, last guardian of the Secret History of Licensed Hackney Carriage Drivers, is on hand to explain the true meaning of The Knowledge: the mystic origin of the 320 routes all cabbies must learn before they qualify, and how the twenty-five thousand street names, esoteric stops and countless places of interest visited by tourists have kept our great metropolis safe and secure for four centuries…

More dramatic than terrifying, this is a cracking magical mystery (originally released as a 5 issue miniseries) with pitifully human heroes giving their all for just the right reasons; a delightful treat for jaded readers who might be in need of light refreshment before plunging back into the bleak and sordid cauldron of extreme, urban horror, but a terrific tale with which to break in prospective new fans.

© 2008, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Giraffes in my Hair: a Rock ‘n’ Roll Life


By Bruce Paley & Carol Swain (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60669-162-6

Biographies are usually about interesting people and/or interesting times. Or at least famous ones. That makes this fascinating new book relating the incredible life-on-the-edge of ordinary hippie Bruce Paley an engrossing double-threat. Paley isn’t a superstar, he’s just a guy who turned 18 during the Summer of Love, bummed and scammed his way across America, saw some bands, met some girls, narrowly dodged the Draft and had a few memorable experiences along the way.

Captivatingly illustrated by Paley’s partner Carol Swain in her trademark monochrome line and textures style, we see his highs and lows: life as heroin addict, hookers and Black Panthers, getting by in crappy jobs, following the ever-changing music scene and even the rare brushes with real fame we’ve all experienced: in this case a short, intense friendship with doomed rock star Johnny Thunders.

Paley isn’t a particularly likable guy, but he and his life are real and human and worth recording – and this small saga of someone surviving some of our most turbulent times is a magical testament to creativity, durability and human adaptability. This is a captivating story and a brilliant use of our medium…

© 2009 Bruce Paley and Carol Swain. All rights Reserved.

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Cyclops: Retribution


By Bob Harras, Ron Lim, Jeff Albrecht, Carol Reim & Bruce Patterson (Marvel)
No ISBN

Do you love every TV show you watch? Do you carry on with series, soaps and serials long after they’ve started to pall? Most of us do – especially in comics. The time invested in favourite characters and scenarios is non-returnable and any relationships you’ve developed with even fictional persons and places – ones utterly unaware of your existence – are terribly hard to abandon.

And in comics there’s always the possibility that a mediocre or sub-par tale will one day be pivotal to something brilliant that you will adore and appreciate. So your continued consumption perforce becomes an investment in good times to come…

Which isn’t to say that this solo adventure (at least that’s how it starts) of quintessential X-Man Cyclops is utterly dire, but that it’s just an average mutant superhero yarn adequately produced for the dedicated consumer: a fillip for the faithful but no breakthrough phenomenon that will convert the unread masses or summon home all those wayward apostates who have stopped collecting funny-books.

Originally presented as the lead strip in the fortnightly anthology Marvel Comics Presents #17-24 (following stellar runs starring Wolverine and Colossus respectively) this tale sees the leader of X-Factor – as he then was – visiting the Scottish island where Moira MacTaggert runs a medical research facility for mutants, only to discover that the somnambulistic medic has been creating bio-weapons at the hypnotic behest of seemingly unkillable menace the Master Mold.

This amalgam of human xenophobe Scott Lang and a super-Sentinel has plans to eradicate mutantkind, but may have overplayed his hand by extracting his conscience and giving it a body of its own…

Intriguing concept, enthusiastic art and lots of action make this so close to a memorable outing that it’s only fair to err on the side of generosity: not as bad as I remembered and certainly worth a moment of any X-Fan’s time and budget…
© 1994 Marvel Entertainment Group. All rights reserved.

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Wallace & Gromit in A Grand Day Out – hardback graphic novel


By Nick Park, illustrated by David Lopez (Egmont)
ISBN: 978-1-4052-4532-6

Hard though it is to believe, Wallace and Gromit have been delighting us for twenty years and this delightful commemorative edition celebrates the fact in fine style by coming full circle. According to Nick Park’s informative Foreword the ingenious, quintessentially English cheese-loving duo were originally conceived as an art school graphic novel, before the Plasticene lure of movement and sound diverted the concept to the world of animation.

David Lopez sensitively adapts with a soft, water-coloured grace the classic tale of an ingenious man and his dog on an epic hunt for cheese that leads them to the moon and a unique confrontation with the dreamy robot that guards its edible treasures.

Lovingly rendered, perfectly timed, the skilful blend of low comedy and whimsy is just as memorable in two dimensions as four, and this book is going to make a lot of kids – of all ages – wonderfully happy.

Is it ever too soon to start recommending what to buy for Christmas? If not then consider this a “must have”…

© and ™ Aardman Animations Ltd. 2009

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JLA: the Tenth Circle – New Fully Revised Review


By John Byrne, Chris Claremont & Jerry Ordway (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-913-1

After battling all manner of contemporary and futuristic foes the World’s Greatest Superheroes found themselves pitted against an ancient malevolence from out of Earth’s oldest nightmares in this sadly lacklustre tale from three of the industry’s biggest talents that originally ran in issues #94-99 of the monthly comic-book.

When team mystic Manitou Raven divines that a great evil has come hunting he is silenced before he can warn his comrades. As Batman and Flash follow a rash of global child disappearances Superman is defeated by a pair of rather unique kids. Comparing notes with other JLA members the heroes discover a pattern of metagenic abductions: someone or something is taking super-powered children…

Meanwhile an enthralled Man of Steel has become the slave – and lunch – of the diabolical vampire lord Crucifer, whose race of undying leeches has been secretly working to conquer the world since their initial defeat by the Amazon warriors of Themyscira thousands of years ago.

And in the background a shady group of freaks and outcasts undertakes their own plan to save the day…

The X-Men team supreme reunited for this supernatural adventure, but their old magic is sorely lacking: Byrne co-writing with Claremont and pencilling for the criminally underappreciated Jerry Ordway to ink and embellish is a far better “look” than “read”.

Comic fans love these sorts of nostalgia stunts, but sadly the results seldom live up to expectations and the result here is a competent but woefully predictable heroes versus vampires yarn that suffers greatly because it’s blatantly obvious that the whole thing is a high-profile, extended gimmick designed to kick-start Byrne’s reinvention of the Doom Patrol, and not really a JLA story at all.

Although competent enough the whole extravaganza is insubstantial and vaguely unsatisfying: Not the kind of book for a casual bystander and no certainly no way to broaden the appeal or range of the comic experience.

© 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Hawkeye


By Mark Gruenwald, Brett Breeding & Danny Bulanadi (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-364-4

In advance of the Best of Hawkeye trade paperback due at year’s end I thought I’d take another look at this little gem from 1988, collecting one of Marvel’s earliest miniseries – 1983 – and one of the very best adventures of Marvel’s Ace Archer, written and drawn by the hugely underrated and much-missed Mark Gruenwald, ably assisted by inkers Brett Breeding and Danny Bulanadi.

Much like the character himself this project was seriously underestimated when it was first released: most of the industry pundits and more voluble fans expected very little from a second-string hero drawn by a professional writer. Boy, were they wrong!

Clint Barton is probably the world’s greatest archer, swift, unerringly accurate and supplemented with a fantastic selection of trick and high-tech arrows. After an early brush with the law as an Iron Man villain he reformed to join the Mighty Avengers, where he served with honour but always felt overshadowed by his more glamorous and super-powered comrades.

In the first chapter here, ‘Listen to the Mockingbird’, he is moonlighting as security chief for an electronics company when he captures a renegade SHIELD agent. She reveals that his bosses are crooks, secretly involved in some shady mind-control experiment.

After some initial doubt he teams with the svelte and sexy super-agent in ‘Point Blank’ to foil the plot, gaining a new costume and a rogues gallery of foes such as Silence, Oddball and Bombshell (part 3, ‘Beating the Odds’) in the process. As the constant hunt and struggle wears on he succumbs to but is not defeated by a physical handicap and wins a wife (not necessarily the same thing) in the concluding ‘Till Death us do Part…’ where the mastermind behind it all is finally revealed and summarily dealt with.

In those far away days both Gruenwald and Marvel Top Gun Jim Shooter always maintained that a miniseries had to deal with significant events in a character’s life, and this bright and breezy, no-nonsense, compelling and immensely enjoyable yarn certainly kicked out the deadwood and re-launched Hawkeye’s career. In short order from here the bowman went on to create and lead his own team: the West Coast Avengers, gain his own regular series in Solo Avengers and later Avengers Spotlight and consequently become one of the most vibrant and popular characters of the period.

I’m unsure how easily you can lay hands on this specific, terrific tale of old-fashioned romance, skullduggery and derring-do, but since its scheduled to be the main portion of the aforementioned collection you shouldn’t have too long to wait.

But oh, the tension, the tension…
© 1988 Marvel Entertainment Group Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Justice League Elite volume 2


By Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke & Tom Nguyen (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-632-0

Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke & Tom Nguyen continue their examination of morality and necessity in the concluding volume of Justice League Elite (collecting issues #5-12 of the controversial series) as the assemblage of undercover heroes strives to cope with the poisonous nature of their black ops missions whilst holding on to the tattered shreds of their honour and integrity in a world so dark and seemingly beyond their control.

Multi-part saga ‘The Aftermath’ looks into the past of the energy wielding Coldcast, as the heroes infiltrate his own brother’s gang: a small-time mob of ordinary thugs with unexplained connections to alien narcotics and weaponry, whilst magician Manitou Raven makes some unwise bargains as he seeks the identity of the team-member who murdered the dictator of Changsha (in volume 1). Major Disaster succumbs to the constant pressure by going on a booze-and-drugs fuelled bender and Vera endures some very disturbing, persistent nightmares before their sting-operation brings them all into conflict with the out-of-the-loop Justice Society of America.

Parts 3 and 4 see the beginning of the end, and as is so often the case, infidelity between people who should know better starts the ball rolling. When the covert team finally meets the extraterrestrial mastermind behind the off-world contraband they discover just how hostile aliens can be, how duplicitous and self-serving humans are and, as a team mate dies, just how bad things can get…

‘Poison’ sees the guilt-ridden adulterers attempt to come to terms with their betrayal and someone finally confess to the murder that aborted the experiment before it began. Meanwhile Flash is super-quickly dying from a hideous toxin, assassin Kasumi reveals her true identity and human overseer and Naif al-Sheikh calls in the JLA Proper to end their missions for good.

The three part ‘Eve of Destruction’ finds the Elite in JLA custody, but far too late as the beast that has been possessing Vera erupts in a devastating orgy of destruction, giving the miserable failures one last spectacular chance to atone for all the harm their misguided efforts have caused in a classic, stirring epic of redemption.

Whether you like your heroes dark or shiny, this exploration of the ethics and morality of superhuman endeavour will address points you’ve never considered, and since the creators never forget that all that philosophy is “added value”, it’s all wrapped up in a tremendously rousing, intoxicating epic of superb writing and wonderful illustration. Enjoyment, Elucidation and Education: how can you resist?

© 2005, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Justice League Elite volume 1


By Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke, John Byrne & Tom Nguyen and various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-191-2

Every comic-book is a product of – or at least reaction to – the times in which it was created. In the grim, authoritarian, morally ambiguous climate of post 9-11 America writer Joe Kelly wrote an issue of Action Comics (#775) that addressed the traditional ethics and practices of ultimate boy scout Superman in a world where old values were seen as a liability and using “The Enemy’s” own tactics against them was viewed with increasing favour by the public.

With art by Doug Mahnke & Tom Nguyen, ‘What’s So Funny about Truth, Justice and the American Way’ introduced super-Esper Manchester Black and his team of Elite metahumans who responded proactively and with extreme overkill to global threats and menaces in such a drastic and final manner (much like The Authority they very much resembled) that Superman was forced to take a long hard look at his core beliefs before triumphing over a team who saw absolutely no difference between villains, monsters or people who disagreed with them…

In a distressing sign of the times, the Elite proved so overwhelmingly popular that they returned in JLA #100 (‘Elitism’ by Kelly, Mahnke & Nguyen), led now by Black’s cyborg sister Vera, to oppose and eventually help the heroes save the Earth from a catastrophic ecological and metaphysical meltdown. Vera Black saw the fundamental flaws in her methodology but also the weaknesses in the JLA’s. She proposed becoming the League’s “Black Ops” division, gathering Intel, working undercover and decisively dealing with potential threats before they become global crises. Her team would get their hands dirty in a way the JLA simply could not afford to…

Over Superman’s protests, but with stringent oversight in place and using a combination of Elite and League volunteers, the plan was adopted and Justice League Elite subsequently won their own 12 issue series.

‘What’s So Funny about Truth, Justice and the American Way‘ and ‘Elitism’ form the first two chapters in this collected volume which demonstrates a chilling darker edge to the World’s Greatest Superheroes. After some Who’s Who pages from JLA Secret Files 2004 the intrigue begins in ‘Grand Experiment’ as Major Disaster, Green Arrow, Manitou Raven, Flash and mystery heroine Kasumi join Vera, energy manipulator Coldcast, human bio-weapon arsenal Menagerie and Naif al-Sheikh, a normal human spymaster who acts as Director, Adjudicator and Conscience for a unit designed to neutralise organizations and nations that threaten World Security before things ever reach a boiling point.

Their first mission is to infiltrate and dismantle the roving assassination team the Blood Brothers and retrieve mass-murdering terrorist Richard Atwa from the rogue state of Changsha. ‘Candle in a Hurricane’ is a tense two-part thriller full of twists, subterfuge and double dealing, but when the mission goes horribly wrong a prisoner is murdered by a member of the team. Has the grand experiment failed even before it has fully begun?

‘Same Coin’ mirrors a “straight” JLA mission against magician Felix Faust with the far less clear-cut capture and interrogation of a pair of witches who have attempted to bring about Hell on Earth, and this first volume concludes with ‘The Right Thing’ as the JLE looks inward to find the killer who broke protocol – and faith – to murder their captive in ‘Candle in a Hurricane’…

Deliberately distasteful, challenging and compelling these astonishingly fascinating stories are well told, with great art from Mahnke & Nguyen, plus guest illustrators Lee Bermejo, John Byrne, Wayne Faucher, Jose Marzan, Jim Royal, Dexter Vines and Wade Von Grawbadger, and ask the kind of questions of our comic heroes that we’ll be asking about our soldiers and politicians for many years to come.

A must have for every fan who likes to think about what they’re reading…

© 2002, 2004, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.