Graphic Novels – Page 227

January 11, 2008January 11, 2008

Stingray… Stand By for Action

(Stingray comic album volume 2)

Stingrayâ€¦ Stand By for Action
By Ron Embleton, with Steve Kite, written, edited and compiled by Alan Fennel (Ravette Books/Egmont)
ISBN: 1-85304-457-1

This album from the early 1990s (when Gerry Anderson’s unforgettable creations enjoyed a popular revival on TV and in comics publishing) reprints three unforgettable strip thrillers from the legendary weekly comic TV21. Launching in late January 1965, TV Century 21 (its full title – the unwieldy â€œCenturyâ€ was eventually dropped) captured the hearts and minds of millions of children in the 1960s.

Filled with high quality art and features, printed in glossy photogravure, TV21 featured such strips as Fireball XL5, Lady Penelope (Frank Bellamy’s Thunderbirds did not begin until the second year of publication), Supercar and Stingray. Anderson’s epic submarine series featured a crack team of aquanauts pitted against a bizarre and malevolent plethora of beings who lived beneath the waves. The BBC were represented by a full-colour strip starring The Daleks.

Although the reproduction leaves something to be desired, ‘The Monster Jellyfish’, ‘Curse of the Crustavons’ and ‘the Atlanta Kidnap Affair’ – all written by Alan Fennell – are cracking fantasy rollercoaster rides full of action and drama and illustrated with captivating majesty by the incredible Ron Embleton.

He supplemented his lush colour palette and uncanny facility for capturing likenesses with photographic stills from the TV shows, and whether for expediency or artistic reasons the effect on impressionable young minds was electric. This made the strips â€œmore realâ€ then and the effect has not diminished with time. This is a superb treat for fans of all ages, and this series is also long overdue for a deluxe collected edition.

January 10, 2008January 10, 2008

Green Arrow: Quiver

By Kevin Smith, Phil Hester & Ande Parks (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-509-8

Green Arrow has been a fixture in the DC Universe since the early 1940s and was one of the few costumed heroes to survive the end of the Golden Age. He carried on adventuring in the back of other heroes’ comic books, joined the Justice League and became the spokes-hero of the anti-establishment during the 1960’s Relevancy period in comics publishing, courtesy of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. Under Mike Grell’s stewardship he became a headliner, an urban hunter who dealt with corporate thugs and serial killers rather than costumed goof-balls. And then he was killed.

This revival, from the unconventional Kevin Smith (yes, Silent Bob!) and the wonderful art-team of Phil Hester and Ande Parks, brings him back from Heaven in the most refreshing manner I’ve seen in nearly five decades of comic reading. Collecting issues #1-10 of the monthly series this gloriously enjoyable refining of Green Arrow embraces the fundamental daftness of superhero comics to revitalise them. Replete with guest-stars, jam-packed with action and intrigue and wallowing in fun thanks to the sly, snappy dialogue of Smith, this is a costume-drama in a thousand and I’m certainly not going to spoil your fun by giving away any details.

Buy it, read it, love it!

January 9, 2008January 9, 2008

House of Clay

By Naomi Nowak (NBM)
ISBN13: 978-1-56163-511-5

Painter and illustrator Naomi Nowak paints a dreamy exploration of the uses and abuse of love in her tale of a young girl who turns her back on her wealthy family and identity. Calling herself Josephine she travels to the coast and takes a dreadful job in a sweatshop, sewing clothes for unpleasant bosses amongst broken women and girls.

Her off-duty wanderings bring her to an obnoxious old fortune teller and her fantasies lead her to some life changing conclusions in this stylish tale of emancipation and empowerment that manages to stay firmly grounded in the unreal.

Colourful, lyrical, sometimes bordering on the pretentious, but eminently readable and beautiful to look at, this different sort of graphic narrative has a great deal to offer the reader looking for more than fistfights or funny stuff.

January 9, 2008January 14, 2009

Batman: Rules of Engagement

By Andy Diggle & Whilce Portacio (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-619-1

Collecting the first six-part story-arc from the monthly comic book Batman Confidential, this impressive if perhaps overly-glossy high-tech adventure pits an inexperienced Batman against Superman’s arch-nemesis Lex Luthor.

During the first year of the Caped Crusader’s career, a prostitute is murdered in front of her baby, catapulting Batman into a hazy web of corruption and murder involving the US military and the shady world of corporate bidding for government contracts. Somehow at the bottom of it all is the financial monolith of Lexcorp. Can all the subterfuge, death and destruction simply be about money or has the wily billionaire another agenda?

Fast-paced, frenetic and concentrating more on gadgets and technology than mood or mystery, this sharp and shiny thriller from Andy Diggle and Whilce Portacio will perhaps delight the fans of the cinematic more than comic-book Dark Knight, but is an engrossing read for all that.

January 8, 2008January 8, 2008

Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone

Bugsy Malone

Illustrated by Graham Thompson (Armada)
ISBN: 0-00-0691247-8

Here’s a contender for â€œoddest albumâ€ from 1976 that’s not impossible to find or too expensive to own should I pique your curiosity enough. I don’t know an awful lot about artist Graham Thompson, except that he’s also worked on the Muppets and Monty Python properties, although if pushed I’d wager he’s an advertising artist first and foremost. His work here is a blend of Jack Davis and Mort Drucker with wash and marker colour, and most importantly it’s brilliantly effective and very good indeed.

There’s not a lot you can say about a gangster musical performed entirely by children that doesn’t verge on the unsettling, not to say downright creepy, these days, but this early graphic novel adaptation which accompanied the film release (sans music, naturally) makes for a really entertaining read, exuberant, charmingly silly and visually magical.

I wish we could see more of Thompson’s work, though. Anyone out there know anymore about him?

January 7, 2008January 7, 2008

Elric: Sailor on the Seas of Fate

By Roy Thomas, Michael T. Gilbert & George Freeman (First Comics)
ISBN: 0-915419-24-6

Michael Moorcock’s irresistible blend of brooding Faustian tragedy and all-out action is best seen in his stories of Elric, last Emperor of the pre-human civilisation of MelnibonÃ©, and the adaptations scripted by Roy Thomas in the 1980s were a high watermark in the annals of illustrated fantasy.

This volume, collecting the miniseries which so impressively captured the otherworldly nature of Michael Moorcock’s ‘Eternal Champion’ concept, sees the weary doom-laden albino leave his beloved Cymoril and the Dreaming City of Imrryr to go questing for an unattainable peace of mind, only to take ship on a transdimensional galleon collecting heroes for an impossible mission. Aboard the eerie vessel he meets a motley band of warriors gathered from numerous alternate Earths in a desperate attempt to save the multiverse.

Risking the very nature of reality Elric has taken ship with three other aspects of the ‘Eternal Champion’; Corum, ErekosÃ« and Dorian Hawkmoon. Together they must defeat Agak and Gagak, siblings from beyond the multiverse who intend to devour all of reality.

This mission and the long quest to return to MelnibonÃ© comprise the second novel in the Elric cycle (although Moorcock actually wrote most of the tales â€œout of chronological orderâ€) but only purists need to concern themselves with that. The rest of us can simply revel in an unparalleled phantasmagoria of carnage and cosmic concepts, spectacularly brought to life by some of the most innovative workers in comics.

January 6, 2008January 6, 2008

Ex Machina, Volume 6: Power Down

By Brian K. Vaughn, Tony Harris, Jim Clark & JD Mettler (WildStorm)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-622-1

In this latest collection of superpower politics (collecting issues #26-29 of the regular comic plus ancillary miniseries Ex Machina: Inside the Machine) New York City Mayor Mitchell Hundred has to deal with a strangely familiar being who might just be a â€œStrange visitor from another Worldâ€. Not only does he (it?) arrive knowing far too many of the super-hero-turned civic leader’s darkest secrets, but he (probably not ‘it?’) precipitates a power-cut that blacks out most of Eastern North America – and that includes Canada!

Edgy, savvy, unpredictable and addictive, the ongoing exploits of the ‘Best Politician America Never Had’ are a continuing source of delight for we jaded comic fans and Ex Machina remains the smartest funny-book series being published today. If this can’t make the casual reader of comics into a slavering fan-boy then they deserve to stay dull, uninformed and disenfranchised.

January 6, 2008January 6, 2008

Star Raiders

Deriving from the computer game license that produced Atari Force (another wonderful comic romp criminally overdue for collection and re-release), Star Raiders is a vibrant and exuberant science fiction swashbuckler that tears along, with valiant and diverse heroes saving the universe from overwhelming tyranny and having loads of fun in the process.

When the genocidal insectoid Zylons conquered the galaxy their mysterious Hive-Mother did not realise how sentient beings chafe without Freedom. So when the flamboyant and cantankerous pilot Captain Jedediah Poole and his fiery female navigator Tomorrow Hardtack meet the somewhat immortal librarian Ezekial Vicker, their uneasy alliance, bolstered by the old man’s lost knowledge and technology, soon wins them a dedicated band of heroic disciples ready and willing to die for Libertyâ€¦

Sharp and witty, breathlessly exciting and stunningly beautiful due to the magnificent painted artwork of JosÃ© Luis Garcia Lopez, who handles hardware, refreshingly exotic aliens and the human form with equal brilliance, this is an adventure for readers of all ages, that is crying out to be re-issued.

This is the kind of magic that turns readers into fanatics – and rightly so.

January 5, 2008January 14, 2009

Batman: Nine Lives

By Dean Motter, Michael Lark and Matt Hollingsworth (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-979-5

The depictions and narrative signatures of the post-war genre â€œFilm Noirâ€ are powerful and evocative, celebrating a certain weary worldliness as much as stark lighting and visual moodiness. As such this murky world would seem a natural milieu for Batman tales, but there are precious few that make the effort, and so very few of those successfully carry it off.

This superb alternative adventure published under DC’s Elseworlds imprint (wherein the company’s key characters are translated out-of-continuity for adventures that don’t really count) is a magnificent exception, combining the hard-boiled detective yarn with the icons of gangster movies.

1946: Selina Kyle was a woman everybody wanted, and who exploited that fact fully. When The Batman finds her ravaged corpse in the sewers, there’s no shortage of suspects. Was she murdered by a high society big-shot like Oliver Queen, Harvey Dent or Bruce Wayne, desperate to keep her quiet or was one of her more sinister consorts to blame?

Gangsters like jilted embezzler Eddie Nigma, mob-boss ‘Clayface’ Hagen, The Poker Joker, ‘The Penguin’ or even the stone-cold hit-man ‘Mr Freeze’ would have snuffed her in a instant if expedient, and seedy gumshoe Dick Grayson knows that he’d be just as expendable if he digs too deep into the private affairs of the Highest and Lowest denizens of Gotham. But somehow he just can’t let goâ€¦

Reconfiguring key figures of the Batman mythos as such recognisable archetypes, although perhaps obvious, is still a wonderfully effective way to revitalize them. The plot is as engrossing as any movie masterpiece and the human analogues of the bizarre and baroque Batman cast are just as menacing even without outlandish powers and costumes. And through it all lurks a vigilante dressed as a bat, once again the mad element of chaos that he can no longer be in his regular comic outingsâ€¦

Although a pastiche of many things, Nine Lives is nonetheless a brilliant and engrossing read, blending mystery, crime-caper and sophisticated suspense thriller with moody visuals and a cynical tone that will show any naysayer that comics have as much to offer as any other creative medium. Hunt this down and make it yours!

January 4, 2008January 4, 2008

A Treasury of Victorian Murder

By Rick Geary (NBM/Comics Lit)
ISBN13: 978-1-56163-309-8

This stylish and bookshelf-friendly reissue was first released in 1987 as a broad, slim volume and led to the eccentric ongoing series of books (nine so far) that have captivated so many people around the globe. Geary’s fascination with his subject is irresistibly infectious and his unique cartooning style is a perfect medium to convey the starkly factual narrative in a memorable and undeniably enjoyable manner.

The basic premise is simple. The age of Queen Victoria is ingrained in the psyche of the contemporary world, and this first outpost of modern society invested Murder with a whole new style and morbid popular appeal. Each of the cases the author adapts was big news at the time and still generates familiar stirrings in readers of a later century.

This volume recounts the unsolved case known as ‘The Ryan Mystery’, wherein a brother and sister were brutally slain in New York in 1873, before outlining the fraudulent career and just deserts of a very nasty physician in ‘The Crimes of Dr. E.W. Pritchard’, and concludes with that now-common miscreant, the child-killer (and more besides) in the tale of ‘The Abominable Mrs. Pearcy’.

With the inclusion of highly informative pictorial essays for background this very readable successor to the ‘Penny-Dreadfuls’ is a startling yet accessible read that will engross the fan of graphic narrative and entice the follower of ‘True-Crime’ thrillers.

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