Graphic Novels – Page 240

October 24, 2007October 24, 2007

Chronicles of Conan vol 2: Rogues in the House

By Roy Thomas & Barry Windsor-Smith (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 1-84023-785-6

The second Dark Horse collection of Marvel’s 1970’s Conan epics covers a period when the character had taken the comics world by storm, and features two creators riding the crest of a creative wave. Reprinting issues #9-13 and #16 of the monthly comic-book this volume opens with ‘Garden of Fear’, adapted by Thomas and Smith, with inks by Sal Buscema from the short story by Robert E. Howard, a battle with an antediluvian survivor in a lost valley.

Returning to the big city, our hero must ‘Beware the Wrath of Anu!’, another Howard tale, as is the eponymous ‘Rogues in the House’, an early masterpiece of action and intrigue. ‘Dweller in the Dark’ is an all original yarn of monsters and maidens, notable because artist Barry Smith inked his own pencils, and indications of his detailed fine-line illustrative style can be seen for the first time. Fantasy author John Jakes plotted ‘Web of the Spider-God’, a sardonic tale of the desert scripted by Thomas and inked by Buscema.

Chronologically, a two part team-up guest-starring Michael Moorcock’s Elric of MelnibonÃ© should follow but that’s held in abeyance and this book concludes with ‘The Frost Giant’s Daughter’, a haunting, racy tale written by Howard and originally adapted in black and white for Savage Tales #1.

This was an early attempt to enter the more adult magazine market, and when the story was reprinted in Conan #16, Smith’s art had to be censored to obscure some female body parts that youngsters might be corrupted by. Even so it’s still a beautiful pencil and ink job by Smith. It was also supposedly his last as he quit the series with that issue.

These re-mastered issues are a superb way to enjoy some of American comics’ most influential – and enjoyable moments. They should have a place on your bookshelf.

October 24, 2007October 24, 2007

Captain Marvel: First Contact

By Peter David, ChrissCross & various (Marvel Comics)
ISBN 0-7851-0791-6

This character has one of the most convoluted back stories in comics so if you are unfamiliar with him this might be a tad confusing for a first exposure, but light, fun super-hero comics are rare, so it is worth considering.

Captain Marvel was a soldier for a pan-galactic civilisation called the Kree. He was dispatched to Earth on a reconnaissance mission after the Fantastic Four destroyed a robotic Kree Sentinel left on Earth thousands of years previously. Adopting an Earth identity he spied on mankind but became increasingly disenchanted by Kree Imperialism and â€œwent nativeâ€, becoming one of Earth’s greatest heroes.

Due to a cosmic accident his atoms were merged with professional sidekick Rick Jones. Only one of them could occupy space in our universe at a time, whilst the other was suspended in the anti-matter dimension called the Negative Zone. By striking together the â€œNegaâ€ wristbands they each wore one could trade atoms with the other and live part of a single existence. Eventually they escaped their fate and separated. After saving the world and the universe a few times Captain Marvel died.

After his death his lover used his genetic material to create a son, named Genis (or sometimes Legacy) and he ultimately acquired the Negabands and inherited the title. He also found himself bonded to the cosmically unlucky Jones in the same situation his father had to endure – switching atoms and leading half a life. This incarnation devolves directly out of Avengers Forever (ISBN: 0-7851-0756-8) and reprints issues #0 and 1-6 of the third volume of the monthly comic â€“ I said it was confusing, right? Now read onâ€¦

Bonded together, Jones and Genis are currently back on Earth and trying to reach an accommodation but the â€œCosmically-Awareâ€ hero is battling menaces and monsters that no-one can see, and the resultant collateral destruction is making the wrong sort of headlines. Either that or Genis is delusional and a menace himselfâ€¦

There are guest appearances by The Hulk, Moondragon, Drax the Destroyer, and the Micronauts in a light-hearted and very funny string of adventures from Peter David, ChrissCross, Ron Lim, James Fry, Walden Wong, Mark McKenna and Nelson Decastro, and although this really is a treat for long-time fans with a good grounding in Marvel Minutiae, the determined neophyte might be rewarded with a hearty laugh and some angst-free thrills.

This volume includes a brief recap-cum-scorecard section so newbies might feel it’s worth a shotâ€¦

October 23, 2007October 23, 2007

Tom Strong Book 3

By various (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-148-0

A light touch is something sadly scarce in super-hero comics these days, so the third compilation of Science’s Ultimate Hero (collecting issues # 15-19 of the monthly comic-book) is a welcome distraction as it features a few old friends and foes â€“ and plots. ‘Ring of Fire’ by Moore and Sprouse with inking by Karl Story sees the living volcano-man Val Var Garm entice the strong Family into his under-Earth city before joining them on a more formal basis as Tesla’s live-in boyfriend (see Tom Strong Book 2 for more information and thrills).

A three eyed galactic drifter then turns up just ahead of a three part Alien Invasion in a tale first hinted at in ‘Lost Mesa’ (Book 2 again). Summoning all the help they can the heroes head for interplanetary space to destroy an armada of giant ants in ‘Some Call Him the Space Cowboy’ and ‘The Weird Rider: Gone to Croatoan’, ‘Ant Fugue’ and ‘The Last Round-up’ all by Moore, Sprouse and Story.

The follow-up was another short-stories issue with Howard Chaykin illustrating Moore’s adventure of Sexual Impolitics in ‘Electric Ladyland!’, Leah Moore, Shawn McManus and Steve Mitchell reviewed the last moments of arch-villain Paul Saveen in ‘Bad to the Bone’ and Alan, Chris and Karl close the book with surreal fourth-wall-ery as Tom and Tesla become trapped inside a comic-book in ‘The Hero-Hoard of Horatio Hogg!’

With an extended section of pin-ups, this knowing, clever pastiche of a simpler time in comics is a fine way to reminisce with some thing new.

October 23, 2007October 23, 2007

Simpsons Comics A Go-Go

By Various (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84023-151-3

Here’s another knowing laugh-fest culled from the pages of the Simpsons comic book (featuring material originally printed in issues# 10 and #32-35). ‘Rhymes and Misdemeanours’ (by Jeff Rosenthal, Tim Bavington, Stephanie Gladden, Phil Ortiz, Bill Morrison, Jeannine Black and Nathan Kane) is a sly and sarcastic pastiche of Beat Poets and Young Love as Lisa and portly intellectual Martin Prince are gripped in a savage war of sonnets and odes when poetry becomes a spectator sport at McBeans Coffee House.

Scott M. Gimple scripts the wonderful alternate unreality tale ‘The Great Springfield Frink-Out’ as the outlandish Professor Frink screws up the multiverse in a tale drawn, inked, lettered and coloured by Ortiz, Bavington, Black and Kane. ‘Burnsie on Board’ by Rob Hammersley, Gladden, Eric Tran, Tim Harkins, Black and Kane reveals how the parsimonious Mr. Burns develops some sporting spirit when he buys the Winter Olympics, and ‘To Live and Diaper in Springfield’ is the saga of how the monumental â€œKrusty’s Kids DayKareâ€ monopoly was challenged by Mrs. Simpson’s homely little â€œMarge’s Chargesâ€. The reckless baby-endangerment gags are courtesy of Billy Rubenstein, Ortiz, Bavington, Black and Kane.

The last long story is a tasteless tale of smuggling, tax-evasion and cheap gratification as Homer and family â€œwinâ€ a holiday from Mr. Burns. ‘Fan-Tasty Island’ is by Rosenthal, Luis Escobar, Bavington, Morrison, Robert Kramer, David Mowry, Richard Starkings Comicraft, Nathan Kane and Electric Crayon. Also included are the short features ‘Principal Skinner’s Bottom 40’, ‘Tiger-Teen’ (a magazine feature on those Barbershop heavyweights the Be Sharps) and the ‘Simpsons Supporters’ Suggestion Spin Cycle’ with Ian Boothby, Dan Studley, Jim Lincoln and Chris Ungar accompanying previous culprits in the creative mayhem. As ever Matt Groening takes the final blame for all the hilarity and offence in this sharp, funny and thoroughly enjoyable spin-off book.

October 23, 2007October 26, 2007

Ultimate Spider-Man, Vol 2: Learning Curve

By Brian M. Bendis, Mark Bagley & Art Thibert (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-7851-0820-3

After Marvel’s problems of the mid 1990s, the company came back swinging, and one new concept was the remodelling and modernising of their core characters for the new youth culture. The ‘Ultimate’ imprint abandoned the monumental continuity that had been Marvel’s greatest asset and the company’s major characters were given a separate universe to play in and makeovers to appeal to a contemporary, 21st century audience.

Puberty is hard enough for anybody, but if you’re the high school science geek, every bully’s target of choice, suddenly the man-of-the-house and soon-to-be-breadwinner, life is horrible. Compound that with the suspicion that the Most Beautiful Girl in the World might have the hots for you â€“ or might not â€“ and that you’re a superhero driven by overwhelming guilt to risk your life fighting monsters and super-villains every chance you get, and what you have is the second collection of the other, newer Peter Parker: Spider-Man.

Highlights in this highly readable tome include Peter getting a job at the Daily Bugle, Aunt May’s attempt at the â€œBirds and Beesâ€ talk with her hapless nephew, Mary Jane’s reaction to learning one of Peter’s secrets and of course the Die Hard-inspired assault on the overlord of crime’s skyscraper fortress as Spiderman tries to destroy the Kingpin of Crime.

The early incorporation of old Spidey foes such as The Enforcers and Kingpin into the new mythos was a canny move. Neither is as outlandish as many old villains and at the start establishing the hero as the most uncanny element was important. Even the inclusion of Electro was low key, and his costuming restrained. Using Crime rather than World Conquest kept the fantasy realism intact. But soon enough the baroque nature of superheroes will be straining at sensibilities and credibilities againâ€¦

This is a sharp, credible effort to make a teen icon relevant again and a funny, thrilling read for the old and jaundiced.

October 22, 2007October 22, 2007

Somerset Holmes

By Bruce Jones, April Campbell & Brent Anderson (Eclipse)
ISBN: 0-913035-10-6 (softcover) ISBN: 0-913035-11-4 (hardcover)

During the intense period of creativity in the latter 1980s a lot of old and new formats and genres jostled alongside the superhero and licensed property comic-books. One of the best despite its chequered publishing history was Somerset Holmes. A six part miniseries, this stylish mystery thriller was commissioned by Pacific Comics who went bankrupt after the fourth issue. Eclipse picked up the option and completed the series, but it was as a graphic compilation (Eclipse is one strong competitor for originator of the Graphic Novel with the release of Sabre in 1978) that the tale garnered most attention.

Written in the manner of a Hitchcock film, Brent Anderson’s humanistic drawing was augmented by a starkly cinematic layout and pacing that perfectly suited the subject matter.

On a dark country road a lovely woman is struck by a speeding car. Waking, she has no memory, and staggers to a lonely house where she collapses into the arms of an old gentleman. By chance he’s the local doctor, and he ushers her into his surgery. When he doesn’t come back she searches and finds him with a knife in his back. Dying, he gasps out a cryptic single word â€œNickelsâ€.

Horrified, realising that there is someone hiding behind the drapes, she dives through the window and starts runningâ€¦

Fast paced, this is a classic whodunit, a why-dunnit and a desperate search for identity, both in terms of facts and in a deeper sense of moral and ethical standpoint. The plot has lots of twists and turns and great action sequences, rendered all the more effective as they never leave the realm of the possible for the dubious heights of super-nature. You are never left in doubt that this is just a person and one in a huge amount of trouble.

At time of printing the story had been optioned as a movie, although I suspect it’s still in development hell, but the graphic novel itself is well worth your attention. Hopefully someone will re-release it. If they do, let’s hope they fix the colouring which is mediocre in the softcover and frankly appalling in the high-priced hardback. Back issue hunters take noteâ€¦

October 22, 2007

Scalped, Vol 1: Indian Country

By Jason Aaron & R.M. GuÃ©ra (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84576-561-3

Not so long ago â€œgrim and grittyâ€ comics meant good guys in tights savagely killing really bad guys instead of arresting them. But now the grime of realism is back where it belongs – in crime comics â€“ and this new series from Jason Aaron combines the familiar and exotic in a dark, vicious and heady brew.

The Native American has had a pretty hard time since the white man came. In recent years lip-service and guilt have been turned into some concessions to the most disadvantaged ethnicity in the USA, and the contemporary Federal mandates that allow gambling on Indian territories have meant a cash bonanza for the various tribes on reservations throughout the country. The Indians are getting rich. Well, some of them areâ€¦

Son of a 1970s Native American activist, Dashiell Bad Horse ran away from the desolate squalor of the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation when he turned fifteen. Now he’s back and although there’s a glitzty new casino the Rez is still a hell-hole and a demilitarized Zone. Reluctantly he takes a sheriff’s job, but he knows he’s really just another leg-breaker for the Tribal Leader and crime boss Lincoln Red Crow. Whilst wiping out rival drug and booze gangs Bad Horse is getting closer to the all powerful Indian Godfather, who was once his mother’s closest ally in the freedom Movement. And that’s good. After all, that’s why the FBI planted him there in the first placeâ€¦

Seedy, violent, overtly sexual, this dark brutal Crime Noir is an uncompromising thriller that hits hard, hits often and hit home. The oddly familiar yet foreign locale and painfully unchanging foibles of people on the edge make this tale an instant classic. Hold on to your hat and jump right in.

October 21, 2007October 21, 2007

Playing the Game

By Doris Lessing & Charlie Adlard (HarperCollins Publications 1995)
ISBN 10: 0-58621-689-8 ISBN 13: 978-58621-689-7

Nobel Laureate and literary big gun Doris Lessing has been doing the unexpected for her entire career, writing about what’s personally important and effectively damning her critics by ignoring them. Her ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’ series was a major blow to literary snobs who sneered at science fiction as anything other than a degraded form, and she was just as insensible to hidebound criticism when she wrote the slim graphic novella Playing the Game.

With art by Charlie Adlard, this simple, harsh yet lyrical tale describes the rise – and the philosophy – of Spacer Joe Magnifico, whose mighty self-confidence and risk-everything nature takes him out of the desperate slums of a dystopic future city-slum to within spitting distances of the vault of Heaven, whether it be seen as freedom, wealth, security or fantastic love.

Does he flee or free himself from the true, dirty, real world and the physically limited carnality of Bella-Rose, to join with the sublime Francesca Bird? Can he keep what his determination has won him? Which is stronger: Will or Chance?

Undoubtedly a major boost in credibility for graphic narrative, this is a work largely ignored by the comics community itself. We desperately want the big world to take us seriously, but the instances we cite still tend to be couched in terms of the movies our best stuff spawns rather than in the magic of word and pictures on paper, and that in itself limits us. I haven’t yet seen a big-budget blockbuster of Spiegelman’s Maus or James Joyce’s Ulyssesâ€¦

The scope of content needn’t overwhelm the depth of intent and this is a parable with as much unsaid and un-drawn as shown and told. This is not a case of less than meets the eyeâ€¦ as you will find if you try it.

October 21, 2007November 9, 2007

High Command

The stories of Sir Winston Churchill and General Montgomery

By Frank Bellamy, scripts by Clifford Makins (Dragon’s Dream)
ISBN: 90-6332-901-6

Another shamefully neglected classic of British Comic Strip art is this wonderful biographical series that ran in Eagle from October 4th 1957 until September1958. Originally titled ‘The Happy Warrior,’ the prestigious full-page back cover feature was Bellamy’s first full colour strip. He followed with ‘Montgomery of Alamein’, delivering twice the punch and more revelatory design in two-page colour-spreads.

Churchill himself approved the early strips and was rumoured to have been consulted before the artist began the experimental layouts that transformed him from being merely a highly skilled representational draughtsman into the trailblazing innovator who revolutionized the comic page. He also began the explorations of the use of local and expressionistic colour palettes that would result in the extraordinary ‘Fraser of Africa’ (Eagle Classics: Fraser of Africa ISBN: 0-948248-32-7), ‘Heros the Spartan’ and the legendary ‘Thunderbirds’ strips.

The Churchill story, scripted by Clifford Makins, follows the great man from his early days at Eton through military service in Cuba as a war correspondent, and into politics. Although a large proportion deals with World War II â€“ and in a spectacular, tense and thrilling manner, the subtler skill Bellamy displays in depicting the transition of dynamic, handsome man of action into burly political heavyweight over the weeks is impressive and astonishing. It should be mentioned, though, that this collection doesn’t reproduce the climactic, triumphal last page, a portrait that is half-pin-up, half summation.

Bernard Law Montgomery’s graphic biography benefited from Bellamy’s newfound expertise in two ways. Firstly the page count was doubled, and the artist capitalized on this by producing groundbreaking double page spreads that worked across gutters (the white spaces that divide the pictures) and allowed him to craft even more startling page and panel designs. Secondly, Bellamy had now become extremely proficient in both staging the script and creating mood with colour. This strip is pictorial poetry in motion.

Makins doesn’t hang about either. Taking only three episodes to get from school days in Hammersmith, army service in India and promotion to Brigade Major by the end of the Great War, Monty’s WWII achievements are given full play, allowing Bellamy to create an awesome display of action-packed war comics over the remaining fifteen double paged episodes. There really hasn’t been anything to match this level of quality and sophistication in combat comics before or since.

If you strain you might detect a tinge of post-war triumphalism in the scripts, but these accounts are historically accurate and phenomenally stirring to look at. If you love comic art you should hunt these down, or at least pray that somebody, somewhere has the sense to reprint this work.

October 21, 2007

Batman: The Sunday Classics 1943-1946

Batmanf: The Sunday Classics

By various (Sterling)
ISBN 10: 1-4027-4718-7 ISBN 13: 978-1-1402-4718-2

For nearly seventy years the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail that cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country and the planet, with millions of readers and accepted (in most places) as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books, it also paid better. And the Holiest of Holies was the full-colour Sunday page.

So it was always something of a poisoned chalice when a comic-book character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint the strips in cheap accessible form?) and became a syndicated serial strip. Both Superman and Wonder Woman made the jump in the 1940s and many features have done so since. But one of the best regarded, highest quality examples, both in the Daily and Sunday format was ‘Batman and Robin’.

Although a highpoint in strip cartooning, both the Daily and Sunday Batman features were cursed by ill-timing at a period in newspaper publishing that was afflicted by rationing, shortages and a changing marketplace. These strips never achieved the circulation they deserved, but at least the Sundays were given a new lease of life when DC began reprinting vintage stories in the 1960s in their 80 page Giants and Annuals. The superior quality adventures were ideal short stories and added an extra cachet of exoticism for young readers already captivated by seeing tales of their heroes that were positively ancient and redolent of History with a capital â€œHâ€.

The stories themselves are broken down into complete single page instalments building into short tales averaging between four to six pages per adventure. The esoteric foes include such regulars as the Penguin (twice), Joker, Catwoman and Two-Face, original villains such as The Gopher, The Sparrow and Falstaff, but the bulk of the yarns have more prosaic criminals, if indeed there is any antagonist at all.

A benefit of work produced for an audience deemed â€œmore matureâ€ is the freedom to explore human interest stories such as exonerating wrongly convicted men, fighting forest fires and discovering the identity of an amnesia victim. There is even a jolly seasonal yarn that bracketed Christmas week, 1945.

The writers of the strip included Don Cameron, Bill Finger, Joe Samachson, Alvin Schwartz with art by Bob Kane, Jack Burnley and Fred Ray, inking by Win Mortimer and Charles Paris with lettering by Ira Schnapp. The strips were all coloured by Raymond Perry.

This lovely oversized (12 x 9.3x 1 inch) full colour book, first published by DC Comics/Kitchen Sink Press in 1991, also contains a wealth of extra features such as biographical notes, a history of the strip, promotional artefacts, behind-the-scenes artwork and sketches, promotional features and much more. It’s about time it was back in print, as it’s a must for both Bat-fans and lovers of the artform.

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