Category: Graphic Novels

By Murray Ball (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-85286-335-7

You may or may not have heard of Footrot Flats. For one of the most successfully syndicated strips in the world, it seems to have passed from memory with staggering rapidity. Created by Murray Ball on his return to his homeland of New Zealand, it ran from 1975 to 1994 in newspapers on four continents. Thereafter books of new material were released until 2000, resulting in 27 daily strip collections, 8 volumes of Sunday pages, and 5 pocket books, plus ancillary publications. There was a stage musical, a theme park and a truly superb animated film Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail Tale.

The well travelled Murray Ball moved to England in the early 1960s, becoming a cartoonist for Punch as well as drawing strips for DC Thompson and Fleetway plus a strip in Labour Weekly. Resettling in New Zealand in 1974, Ball was busier than ever. He bought a small-holding on the North Island and farmed in his spare time (for anyone not brought up in the country that last bit was called “Sarcasm”). This inevitably led to the strip in question. Taking the adage “write what you know” to startling heights, the peripatetic artist promptly gave up sleeping altogether to craft these wickedly funny yarns about an oaf and his dog, and I for one will be eternally grateful

Wallace Footrot Cadwallader is a big, bluff farmer. He’s a regular bloke, likes his food; loves his Rugby. He owns a small sheep farm (the eponymous Footrot Flats) best described as “400 acres of swamp between Ureweras and the Sea”. With his chief – and only – hand Cooch Windgrass, and a sheepdog who calls himself “Dog” he makes a living and is his own boss. Dog is the star (and narrator) of most of the strips: a cool know-all and blowhard, he’s utterly devoted to Wal – unless there’s food about or Jess (the sheepdog bitch from down the road) is in heat again.

Dry, surreal and wonderfully self-deprecating, the humour comes from the perfectly realised characters, human and otherwise, the tough life of a bachelor farmer and especially the country itself.

The cartooning is absolutely top-rate. Ball is one of those gifted few who can actually draw funnily. When combined with his sharp, incisive writing the result is pure magic. I’m reviewing the 1990 Titan Books edition, but the same material is readily available from a number of publishers and retailers. If I’ve convinced you to give the Dog a go, your favourite search engine will be all the help you need… Go on. Fetch!

© 1990 Diogenes Designs Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

By Greg Rucka, Judd Winick, Joe Bennett & Matthew Clark (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-737-2

Set after and resulting from the events of 52, this slick, fast-paced thriller combines the UN’s superhuman monitoring force Checkmate and the Outsiders – a team of “rogue” superheroes who proactively seek out threats and ignore political boundaries.

Collecting a six part crossover (Outsiders #47-49 and Checkmate #13-15) it all starts when the super-spies capture the renegade heroes to use them for a mission too dirty for their own rule-bound agents. Not wanting to spoil your fun, I’ll simply say that if you love outrageous action, sexy heroes and truly vile bad-guys (many of them working for “our government”), this dark but fast-paced blockbuster for older readers, has great pace, superb dialogue, loads of gratuitous violence and really cool art.

Utterly Gung-Ho and pure undemanding pleasure for Guys (although I’m sure lots of girls will love it too)!

© 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Keith Giffen, Gerard Jones, Jim Owsley, M.D. Bright & Romeo Tanghal (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-93028-988-1

I tend to disparage reworkings of classic characters as a modern evil, but it’s been going on for a very long time, and often the results aren’t as bad as they might first feel, once the dust has settled and the scabs have healed. Case in point is this retrofit of DC mainstay Hal Jordan, whose career as Green Lantern to this point had spanned thirty years and two cancellations, as well as some of the most iconic moments in American comicbooks.

The updating of honest, fearless test pilot Jordan into a troubled drunk with father-issues upset many fans but this 1989 miniseries reinvigorated the character, spawning a second six-issue miniseries and a new regular title.

The story, though, was not too dissimilar from the classic origin. Dying Green Lantern Abin Sur crashes on Earth and wills his power ring to seek out a worthy individual to take his place. The tribulations of Jordan meeting his fellow law-enforcers and their haughty bosses the Guardians of the Universe, and his first glimmerings of greatness when facing the deadly entity Legion was overshadowed by a subtle character readjustment into a less stiff-necked know-it-all than readers had ever seen before, and it struck the appropriate chord for the times.

Nearly twenty years later, looking at the tale on its own merits, it still holds up. Callow, shallow Hal becomes a great man in a tale of grit and determination with sharp dialogue and rocket-paced action. The pages fly by and the result is an excellent, pure feeling of a job well-done. Definitely one for the fans and the open-minded casual browser.

© 1991 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Howard Chaykin, with Ken Bruzenak & Steve Oliff (First Comics)
ISBN: 0-915419-07-6

Do you like a challenge? Does superb art and design push your buttons? Can you fall in love with style even if the content is obscure, truncated or even possibly absent? Then you should track down Time²

Howard Chaykin has his own personal version of Wonderland. It’s usually night-time there, looks like New York circa 1955, is powered by magic and super-science and there’s Jazz music everywhere. There Gangster-Chic rubs expensively tailored shoulders with Corporate carpet-baggers. It’s always hot and so are all the characters who smoulder with Passion and Style. There’re hookers and bagmen and politicos and bible-thumpers. And then there are the Guys we’d like to be…

This is total-immersion comic-bookery. As Chaykin moved from producing his landmark American Flagg! series to explore other projects, he ended his run with a one-shot special that saw the jaded future-cop transported to another time and place just in time to celebrate a truly extraordinary Holiday. The concepts and characters of that special resurface in this unbelievably dense and intense thunderbolt of graphic bravado that is best inhaled rather than read. It is Chaykin’s ultimate personal expression of his interests to date. In an interview he called it “a magic realist-fantasy fiction of my life” although he might regret that now. It is utterly mesmerising, but it’s not an easy read.

In that up-tempo other place a serial killer is loose. He stalks the streets murdering the sex-robots known as Taxi-dancers. The human model for the pleasure-droids is that formidable Bitch Shalimar Hussy – who isn’t nearly grieving enough at the suicide of her latest husband Cosmo Jacobi, a nightclub owner with a secret stake in the super-profitable R.U.R. robotics company. Feisty reporter Pansy Matthias smells a scoop, but is startled to find missing gadabout Maxim Glory is back in town. When Cosmo was the hottest Sax-man alive, Maxim was his wing-man and her boyfriend, but now he claims he’s the executor of Jacobi’s estate with a Will no one knew existed. There’s going to be trouble…

In this super-charged world everybody and thing has an angle. Death isn’t permanent with Deja-Voodoo or Reincarnimation, and Good and Evil battle daily on the streets. Just ask the Demon Abshalimeth, currently occupying the fuselage of taxi-dancer #869, or even bog-monster homicide detective Chief Inspector Bon Ton MacHoot if you don’t believe me…

The pace is relentless with pictures and facts coming at you like bullets but beneath it all is the slick, sly skill of a cynical master story-teller at play, not work, and the result, if you’re prepared to go for it, is gratifyingly pleasing. Not the easiest of books to find; I live in hope of a collected edition (American Flagg! Special, this, and the sequel The Satisfaction of Black Mariah are less than 150 pages between them) and possibly one day, that fabled third volume. Still, if you are persistent and lucky you won’t regret seeking this out.

© 1986 First Comics, Inc. and Howard Chaykin Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Keith Champagne, John Ostrander & various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-653-5

From the pages of 52 (specifically Volume 4 – ISBN: 978-1-84576-624-5 – and exactly between weeks 49 and 50) comes this all-out action blockbuster, originally released as a four-part miniseries. Each chapter is by a different creative team and depicts a gathering of heroes as the super-powered despot Black Adam, at the very brink of finding peace and redemption, loses his beloved family and descends into all-consuming genocidal rage.

Decimating an entire country, he seems incapable of stopping himself. His grief-fuelled destructive rampages threaten the entire planet. Then the super-heroes gather to stop him, by any means necessary…

‘A Call to Arms’ is by Keith Champagne, Pat Olliffe and Drew Geraci, ‘The Valiant’ by Champagne, Andy Smith and Ray Snyder, ‘Hell is For Heroes’ is by John Ostrander, Tom Derenick and Norm Rapmund and ‘United We Stand’ comes from Ostrander, Jack Jadson and Rodney Ramos.

The miniseries fed right back into the greater 52 storyline, and Week 50 is included here to round off the tale. It is by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid, with breakdowns by Keith Giffen, pencils by Justiniano and inks by Walden Wong.

There’s very little to critique here: All the emotional build-up and investment in the characters occurs in 52 itself and that story easily stands without this aside. Regrettably though, the reverse is not true. WWIII is pretty but impenetrable without the grounding of the greater series to support it. If you’re an art or action lover, however, there are lots and lots of pretty explosions and much hitting…

© 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Mike Sekowsky, Denny O’Neil & Dick Giordano (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-776-1

It’s about bloody time!

I hope you’ll forgive me that heartfelt outburst, but at last DC Comics have collected one of the most appealing and memorable sequences in the long history of the most famous female comic character in the world, and I’m delighted!

In 1968 superhero comics were once again in decline and publishers were looking for ways to stay in business as audience tastes changed. Back then, with the entire industry dependent on newsstand sales, if you weren’t popular, you died. Handing over the title to Editor Jack Miller and Mike Sekowsky, the bosses sat back and waited for their eventual failure, and prepared to cancel the only female superhero 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 with the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and war comic Fight The Enemy! His unique take on the Justice League of America had contributed to 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 in Adventure Comics.

This first volume (which collects issues #178-184 of the comic book series) shows just how bold were those changes to the Amazing Amazon’s career. With young scripter Denny O’Neil on board for the first four tales, we see the old Amazon one last time as she clears long-time boyfriend Colonel Steve Trevor of a murder-plot before everything changes.

When the Amazons are forced to leave our dimensional plane, taking with them all their magic – including Wonder Woman’s Super Powers and all her weapons such as the Invisible Plane and Golden Lasso – she decides to stay on Earth. Effectively becoming her own secret identity of Diana Prince she resolves to fight injustice as a mortal. A meeting with the blind Buddhist monk I Ching shows her how and she begins to train as a martial artist, quickly becoming embroiled in the schemes of would-be world-conqueror Doctor Cyber. And then Steve Trevor is branded a traitor and disappears…

When Sekowsky took over the writing himself (with the fifth tale ‘A Time to Love, A Time to Die’) the adventures moved into some wildly diverse directions including high-fashion and high fantasy as Diana and Ching travel to lost dimensions to join her sister Amazons in final battle against the monster army of the God of War…

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 the series was brilliantly written and fantastically drawn. Steeped heavily in the hippie counter-culture and the Mod-fashion explosion, the New Wonder Woman quickly found a dedicated fan-base. Sales may not have rocketed but they stopped dropping and the character was one of the few re-fits of that era to avoid cancellation.

Eventually, as times changed, the magical Amazons returned and Wonder Woman once again became a super-powerful creature, but that period of cool, hip, bravely human heroism and drama on an intimate scale stands out as a self-contained high-point of quality in a largely bland career. That modern readers can at long last experience this most enjoyable reading experiences is a truly wonderful thing. It means that when you all buy and adore these fabulously with-it and deliciously addictive adventures I can shout “I told you so!”

© 1968, 1969, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Guy Colwell (Rip Off Press)
ISBN: 978-0-89620-114-9

Guy Colwell is an artist and cartoonist whose works are deeply personal and passionate. As such they have often been controversial. As an Underground Comix creator his output was graphically sexual and subtly anti-establishment, and with his three issue miniseries in 1989 he switched that critical focus to the basic drive of aesthetic attraction.

Wiley Waxman is a hyper-realist sculptor whose sexy statues are a sensation, both in the Art world and in the skin-mags of sleazy pornocrat Mal Murphy. When the ugliest man he has ever seen approaches him at an exhibition his disgust turns to fascination as Evergood Crepspok begs a favour. Hideous, malformed and covered with tumours, Crepspoks has never had sex with a beautiful woman – and sees no chance of ever doing so. He wants Waxman to construct the most perfect replica woman imaginable for his personal gratification. Initially revolted by the concept Waxman becomes obsessed with the notion. Enlisting the financial aid of Murphy he assembles his team and begins to work…

But the creative challenges are nothing compared to the human dramas when he succeeds, because his finished work is utterly irresistible. No man is able to resist the lust she/it inspires. And then Murphy decides to keep her for himself…

Sly and allegorical, this exploration of beauty and desire is compelling and sadly resigned in its assessment of male drives, but has valid points to make. With its matter-of-fact graphic sexuality it risks becoming itself just another “stroke-book”, but the disciplined adherence to the core premise means that any licentiousness is pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

This is a brave book about an issue that affects us all. After all, have you ever wondered why girl heroes most often fight crime in G-strings and spike heels?

© 1989 Guy Colwell. All Rights Reserved.