Horror Stories – Page 45

July 10, 2011July 7, 2011

Sandman Presents The Furies

By Mike Carey & John Bolton (Vertigo)
ISBN: hardback 978-1-5638-9935-5, softcoverÂ 1-4012-0093-1

Even though the enchanting worlds of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman extravaganza have been generally hived off into their own authorial pocket universe these days, many of the elements and characters were drawn from pre-existing series and a number of them survived it to return to the greater DC universe.

Here one of the most poorly used women in comics got a chance to be the star in her own story for a change in a dark and moody semi-sequel to the events of Sandman: The Kindly Ones and Sandman: the Wake (which I must get around to reviewing one dayâ€¦).

Lyta Hall has one of the most convoluted histories in comics continuity: pre- Crisis on Infinite Earths she was originally the daughter of Earth-2’s Wonder Woman, before being retro-fitted as the child of WWII heroine Helena Kosmatos AKA Fury: a Greek heroine possessed and empowered by The Eumenides: those fearsome implacable Furies of Grecian myth tasked with punishing all who spill the blood of kinâ€¦

Once the myriad Earths were blended into one in 1986 Lyta retroactively became the child of a Greek WWII heroine. Following in Mama’s footsteps she became a member of teen superteam Infinity Inc., where she loved and was impregnated by the son of Hawkman. He died and was subsumed into the Realm of Dreams as the red-and-gold 1970s Sandman created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon (for which check out The Sandman), after which Lyta married his ghost and moved into the dream-world. Missing for years she finally gave birth to a son Daniel, who was subsequently abducted by Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming.

In maternal madness and frustrated revenge Lyta set in motion the events which finally culminated in the Dream Master’s death and the installation of her lost baby as the new Master of Dreams.

The oneiric Daniel returned his mother to Earth under a spell of protection to ward off revenge from the supernatural forces she had exploited or offended; but Lyta was far from healed or even sane – nor was she safeâ€¦

There’s even more to her career set after this story but that’s for another time and place.

Three years after the climactic cosmic drama Lyta is a woman on the edge: under psychiatric observation, given to mood-swings, self-destructive acts, fits of violent rage and sweeping depressions. She is moments away from being dumped and forgotten in an institution; off the rails and obsessed with a missing child the physical universe knows never existedâ€¦

As a last resort her analyst convinces Lyta to join a theatrical troupe, indulge in some hopefully cathartic art-therapy and make a few friends she won’t sleep with or punch out, whilst in the Sublime Realms beyond reality a terrifying ancient foe of gods and men has freed himself from eternal torment and begun hunting the beings who betrayed and imprisoned himâ€¦

Events are shaped and the Goatsong Theatre Group is inexplicably offered the chance to perform in Athens, wellspring of Greek tragedy. How lucky for them then, that new recruit Lyta Hall is fluent in the language, history and customs? Capitalising on the mystical perturbations following Morpheus’ passing, the monstrous Cronus is closing in on Hermes and laying traps in the mortal world, ensnaring those pitiful, disposable wretches slowly warming to the troubled once-super-heroine. The cosmic patricide and unwilling father of gods is uncaring of the fact that his quest will bring him into conflict with the fearsome Furies who have hungered for his punishment since the dawn of timeâ€¦

Cronus has a cunning planâ€¦

Despite its convoluted antecedents this eerie, mythological horror story from Mike Carey is a compelling and inventive adult fable with a powerful kick and a disturbing message about love, friendship, duty and family, whilst artist John Bolton, who used this tale to shift his creative style from lush and mannered painterly illustration to a stronger, more photo-based expressionist form, excels in capturing mundane fantasy and inconceivable reality as diametrically opposed worlds collide.

Stylish, quirky and immensely impressive this nominal epilogue to Gaiman’s Sandman saga was released as an original hardcover graphic novel and is still generally available in a softcover edition.
Â© 2002 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

June 26, 2011June 23, 2011

Grimjack: Demon Knight

By John Ostrander & Flint Henry with an introduction by Roger Zelazny (First Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-91541-970-8

Grimjack originally appeared during the American comic industry’s last great flourishing in the 1980’s. Created by playwright John Ostrander and Young Turk Tim Truman as a back-up feature for Mike Grell’s Starslayer, the series ran in issues #10-18 before graduating to its own title at First Comics. It almost survived the company’s demise more than a decade later. In a crowded marketplace, and almost irrespective of who was doing the drawing, this hard-boiled-detective/fantasy action strip was a watchword for quality entertainment.

The ’80s were a fantastic time for comics creators and consumers. It was like an entire new industry opening up within the original, moribund mainstream; the proliferation of the Direct Sales market and dedicated specialist retail outlets allowed new companies to start experimenting with format and content, whilst punters had a bit of spare cash to play with. Moreover much of the â€œkid’s stuffâ€ stigma had finally dissipated – the country was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be an actual art-formâ€¦

Consequently many new companies began competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown accustomed – or resigned – to getting their four-colour kicks from DC, Marvel Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material had been slowly creeping in but by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Capital, Now, Comico, Dark Horse and First among others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads into traditional markets.

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. Chicago-based First Comics was an early frontrunner, with Frank Brunner’s Warp, Starslayer and Jon Sable from Mike Grell and Howard Chaykin’s iconic American Flagg!, as well as an impressive line of comicbooks targeting a more sophisticated audience.

In 1984 they followed Marvel and DC’s lead with a line of impressive, European-styled over-sized graphic albums featuring new, out-of-the-ordinary comics sagas (see Time2, Time Beavers, Mazinger or Beowulf to see just how bold, broad and innovative the material could be)â€¦

John Gaunt is a perpetually reincarnating warrior-mercenary calling himself Grimjack: a combination private eye, Ronin and problem-solver-of-last-resort, just scratching out a living in the fantastic pan-dimensional city of Cynosure. This incalculably vast metropolis intersects with every place in the multiverse at one time or another and the strangest of the strange inhabit its core regions.

All manner of beings constantly rub shoulders (if they have them) with gods, monsters, robots and things less quantifiable in a cruelly capitalistic commercial wonderland where the laws of physics can change from house to house but the law of supply and demand is utterly inviolableâ€¦

In his long lives Gaunt has been many things, but first and foremost he is a hero of the Demon Wars â€“ a period in Cynosure’s history when the city overlapped the assorted regions of Hell and unspeakably vile devils from a host of infernos ran amok in the metropolis until the valiant Demon Knights drove them off forever.

Now, in this all-new tale, Gaunt is hired by the Office of the Chronost-Marshall to find who has interfered with the city’s chronology, unleashing a devastating time-storm. Surly, rebellious and unpleasant, Gaunt is still the only operative tough and crazy enough to brave the fourth dimensional vortex and shut down the maelstrom. Unfortunately, he never reckoned on stumbling into his own tragic past and meeting again his one true loveâ€¦

As the Demon Wars reached their crescendo long ago a sorely wounded John Gaunt stumbled into a paradise dimension named Pdwyr and found brief bliss with the glorious, pacifist princess Rhian, before his companion Major Lash betrayed the entire race to the infernal hordes and watched their paradise become a last bastion of Hellâ€¦

Now Gaunt has arrived in Pdwyr once more – just after his earlier self departed – and faces the ultimate temptation: changing history to save the only woman he ever loved and the only place he ever felt at peace, or letting events unfold again in all their horrific predestined brutalityâ€¦

Whatever he decides will be wrongâ€¦

The combination of cynical dry wit, mordant, bitter-edged fantasy and spectacularly imaginative action made Grimjack one of the best series of the era and the ghastly human tragedy of this epic aside is a treat no comics fan should miss. Moreover, this graphic narrative, beautifully illustrated by Flint Henry and colourist Martin Thomas, is designed with new readers in mind so there’s no reason for anyone to avoid a brutally magical encounter with a genuine original of the genre(s)â€¦
Â© 1989 First Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

June 15, 2011June 11, 2011

Showcase Presents The House of Secrets volume 1

By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-054-3

American comicbooks started slowly until the creation of superheroes unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and invented a new genre. Implacably vested in the Second World War, the Overman swept all before him (and very occasional her or it) until the troops came home and the more traditional genres resurfaced and eventually supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Although new kids kept up the buying, much of the previous generation also retained their four-colour habit but increasingly sought older themes in the reading matter. The war years altered the psychological landscape of the world and as a more world-weary, cynical young public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything, their chosen forms of entertainment (film and prose as well as comics) reflected this. As well as Western, War and Crime comics, celebrity tie-ins, madcap escapist comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, but gradually another of the cyclical revivals of spiritualism and public fascination with the arcane led to a wave of increasingly impressive, evocative and shocking horror comics.

There had been grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in mystery-man garb and trappings (the Spectre, Mr. Justice, Sgt. Spook, Frankenstein, The Heap, Sargon the Sorcerer, Zatara, Zambini the Miracle Man, Kardak the Mystic, Dr. Fate and dozens of others), but these had been victims of circumstance: the Unknown as a power source for super-heroics. Now the focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped on the increasingly popular bandwagon, with B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launching the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948, although Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon who had released an impressive single issue entitled Eerie in January 1947 before launching a regular series in 1951, by which time Classics Illustrated had already long milked the literary end of the medium with adaptations of the Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

If we’re keeping score this was also the period in which Joe Simon and Jack Kirby identified another â€œmature marketâ€ gap and invented the Romance comic (Young Romance #1, September 1947) but they too saw the sales potential for spooky material, resulting in the seminal Black Magic (launched in 1950) and boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams (1952).

The company that would become DC Comics bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

When the hysterical censorship scandal which led to witch-hunting hearings (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April- June 1954 into your search engine at any timeâ€¦ You can do that because it’s apparently a free country now) was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self regulatory rules. Horror titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised and anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore but the appetite for suspense was still high and in 1956 National introduced the sister title House of Secrets which debuted with a November-December cover-date.

Stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, rationalistic, fantasy-adventure vehicles which dominated the market until the 1960s when super-heroes (which had started to creep back after Julius Schwartz began the Silver Age of comics by reintroducing the Flash in Showcase #4, 1956) finally overtook them. Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and a slew of other costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked mavens which even forced the dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books with Martian Manhunter and Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery and Mark Merlin -later Prince Ra-Man – sharing space with Eclipso (see Showcase Presents Eclipso) in House of Secrets.

When the caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, Secrets was one of the first casualties and the title folded with #80, the September-October 1966 issue.

However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and at the end of the 1960s the Silver Age superhero boom was over, with many titles gone and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain tooâ€¦

This real-world Crisis led to the surviving publishers of the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles but as the liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Worlds Beyond, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious â€œno-brainer.â€ Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle Chillersâ€¦

Thus with absolutely no fanfare at all House of Secrets was resurrected with issue #81, cover-dated August-September 1969 – just as big sister The House of Mystery had done a year earlier.

Under a spooky bold banner declaiming â€œThere’s No Escape Fromâ€¦ The House of Secretsâ€ writer Mike Friedrich, Jerry Grandenetti & George Roussos introduced a ramshackle, sentient old pile in ‘Don’t Move It!’ after which Bill Draut illustrated the introduction of caretaker Abel (with a guest-shot by his murderous older brother Cain from HoM) in ‘House of Secrets’, after which the portly porter kicked off his storytelling career with the Gerry Conway & Jack Sparling yarn ‘Aaron Philip’s Photo Finish!’, and the inaugural issue was put to bed with a Draut limned ‘Epilogue’â€¦

There are no scripter credits for most of HoS #82 but Draut drew both ‘Welcome to the House of Secrets‘ and the ‘Epilogue’, whilst cinema shocker ‘Realer Than Real’ was illustrated by Werner Roth & Vince Colletta. ‘Sudden Madness’ was a short sci fi saga from the brush of Dick Giordano, ‘The Little Old Winemaker’ (Sparling art) a salutary tale of murder and revenge and ‘The One and Only, Fully-Guaranteed, Super-Permanent, 100%’ – written by Marv Wolfman and realised by Dick Dillin & Neal Adams – a darkly comedic tale of domestic bliss and how to get itâ€¦

After Draut & Giordano’s ‘Welcome to the House of Secrets‘ piece superstar Alex Toth made his modern HoS debut with the Wolfman written fantasy ‘The Stuff That Dreams are Made Of’, Mikes Royer & Peppe visualised the sinister love-story of ‘Bigger Than a Breadbox’ and Conway & Draut revived time-honoured gothic menace for a chilling fable ‘The House of Endless Years’.

Conway & Draut maintained the light-hearted bracketing of the stories as #84 began with ‘If I Had but World Enough and Time’ (Wein, Dillin & Peppe), a cautionary tale about too much television, after which the tension grew with Wolfman & Sid Greene’s warning against wagering in ‘Double or Nothing!’ and an utterly manic parable of greed ‘The Unbelievable! The Unexplained!’ (by Steve Skeates, Sparling & Jack Abel), before Wein & Sparling messed with our dreams in ‘If I Should Die before I Wakeâ€¦‘

Cain and Abel acrimoniously opened HoS #85 after which Wein & Don Heck disclosed what happens to some ‘People Who Live in Glass Housesâ€¦’ whilst art-legend Ralph Reese illustrated Wein’s daftly ironic ‘Reggie Rabbit, Heathcliffe Hog, Archibald Aardvark, J. Benson Babboon and Bertram the Dancing Frog’â€¦

John Costanza contributed a comedy page entitled ‘House of Wacks’ and Conway, Gil Kane & Neal Adams heralded the upcoming age of slick and seductive barbarian fantasy with the gloriously vivid and vital ‘Second Chance’. Issue #86 featured the eerily seductive ‘Strain’ with art by George Tuska, a powerful prose puzzler ‘The Golden Tower of the Sun’ written by Conway with illustrations from Gray Morrow, after which the writer and Bill Draut tugged heartstrings and stunned senses in the moving, moody madness of ‘The Ballad of Little Joe’â€¦

The issue ends with an episode of the peripatetic, post-apocalyptic, ironic occasional series ‘The Day after Doomsday’ courtesy of Wein and Sparling.

The chatty introductions and interludes with Abel were gradually diminishing to make way for longer stories and experimental episodes such as #87’s ‘And in the Darknessâ€¦ Light’, sub-divided into ‘Death Has Marble Lips!’, a sculptural shocker from Robert Kanigher, Dillin & Giordano; sinister sci fi scenario ‘The Man’ from Wolfman, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito and the excellent weird pulp pastiche ‘The Coming of Ghaglan’ by veteran Raymond Marais & talented newcomer Michael Wm. Kaluta. Much the same was #88’s dread duo ‘The Morning Ghost’ by Wolfman, Dillin & Frank Giacoia and ‘Eyesore!’ by Conway & Draut.

Most of the covers were the magnificent work of Neal Adams but HoS #89 sports a rare and surprisingly effective tonal image by Irv Novick (although attributed here to Gray Morrow): a gothic romance special with period thrillers ‘Where Dead Men Walk!’ which is drawn by Morrow and ‘A Taste of Dark Fire!’ from Conway & Heck. This latter tale debuted Victorian devil-busting duo Father John Christian and Rabbi Samuel Shulman who appeared far too infrequently in succeeding years (see also Showcase Presents the Phantom Stranger volume 2).

Tuska illustrated the uncredited futuristic thriller ‘The Distant Dome’ in #90, whilst Wolfman, Rich Buckler & Adams described the short, sharp lives of ‘The Symbionts’, after which Mike Friedrich & Morrow ended this S-F extravaganza with the perplexing tale of ‘Jedediah!’

There are no writer’s credits for #91 but South American revolutionary rollercoaster ‘The Eagle’s Talon!’ was drawn by Wally Wood; Jack Sparling illustrated the faux-factual feature ‘Realm of the Mystics’, Sam Glanzman produced a potent parable of alienation in ‘Please, Don’t Cry Johnny!’ and Murphy Anderson wrapped up the wonderment with a deadly doppelganger drama ‘There are Two of Meâ€¦ and One Must Die!’

Issue #92 was one of those rare moments in comics when all the factors are in perfect alignment for a major breakthrough. The twelfth anthology issue of House of Secrets cemented the genre into place as the industry leader. In it writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson produced a throwaway thriller set at the turn of the 19th century, wherein gentleman scientist Alex Olsen is murdered by his best friend and his body dumped in a swamp. Years later his beloved bride, now the unsuspecting wife of the murderer, is stalked by a shambling, disgusting beast that seems to be composed of mud and muckâ€¦

‘Swamp Thing’ was cover-featured and eerily illustrated by Wrightson for HoS #92 (June-July 1971) striking an instant and sustained chord with the buying public. It was the bestselling DC comic of that month and reader response was fervent and persistent. By all accounts the only reason there wasn’t an immediate sequel or spin-off was that the creative team didn’t want to produce one.

Eventually however, bowing to interminable pressure, and with the sensible idea of transplanting the concept to contemporary America, the first issue of Swamp Thing (see Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis) appeared on newsstands in the Spring of 1972. It was an instant hit and an immortal classic.

The remaining pages in that groundbreaking issue aren’t bad either, with Jack Kirby & Mark Evanier scripting the psychodrama ‘After I Die’ for old Prize/Crestwood Comics stable-mate Bill Draut to illustrate, whilst ‘It’s Better to Giveâ€¦’ by Virgil North provided an early chance for Al Weiss & Tony DeZuniga to strut their superbly engaging artistic stuff. The issue ends with a sudden shocker by Dick Dillin (possibly via Grandenetti?) entitled ‘Trick or Treat’

House of Secrets #93 (August/September 1971) saw the comicbook expand from 32 to 52 pages – as did all DC’s titles for the next couple of years, opening the doors for a magnificent period of new material married to the best of the company’s prodigious archives for an appreciative, impressionable audience.

Jim Aparo made his HoS debut here in the Skeates scripted spook-fest ‘Lonely in Death’ and so did macabre cartoonist Sergio AragonÃ©s in ‘Abel’s Fables’, after which the reprint bonanza began with ‘The Curse of the Cat’s Cradle’ (originally from My Greatest Adventure #85) stupendously depicted by Alex Toth. Jack Abel’s ‘Nightmare’ was followed by golden oldie ‘The Beast From the Box’; courtesy of Nick Cardy and House of Mystery #24, after which Lore (Shoberg) contributed another page of ‘Abel’s Fables’ before the entertainment ended with the chilling ‘Never Kill a Witch’s Son!’ by John Albano & DeZuniga, rounding out the fearsome fun in period styleâ€¦

Issue #94 began by revealing ‘The Man with My Face’ (art by Sparling) and ‘Hydeâ€¦ and Go Seek!’ by Wein & DeZuniga, whilst ‘The Day Nobody Died’ (George Roussos, Tales of the Unexpected #9) and ‘Track of the Invisible Beast!’ (Toth from House of Mystery #109) provided vintage voltage before another AragonÃ©s ‘Abel’s Fables’ and ‘A Bottle of Incenseâ€¦ a Whiff of the Past!’ by Francis Bushmaster, Weiss & Wrightson closed proceedings in devilishly high styleâ€¦

Albano & Heck showed domesticity wasn’t pretty in ‘Creatureâ€¦‘, everybody got a nasty case of chills in ‘And Thing That Go Bump in the Night!’ (credited to Sparling but probably Tuska & Win Mortimer) before ‘The Last Sorcerer’ (Bernard Baily from House of Mystery #69) and ‘The Phantom of the Flames!’ – a rare DC illustration job for the great Joe Maneely from HoM #71. The dark dramas closed with Jack Oleck and Nestor Redondo’s ‘The Bride of Death’. Issue #95 also included a couple of Lore’s ‘Abel’s Fables’, a Sparling ‘Realm of the Mystics’ and a Wein & Sparling ‘Day after Doomsday’.

‘World for a Witch’ by Oleck & Draut opened the next peril-packed issue, followed by a high-tension, high-tech Toth reprint ‘The Great Dimensional Brain Swap’ (from House of Secrets #48) and Wein, Dillin & Jack Abel’s ‘Be it Ever So Humbleâ€¦’ whilst Oleck & Wood’s ‘The Monster’ described a different kind of horror before ‘The Indestructible Man’ (by unsung master-draughtsman Bill Ely, and originally seen in Tales of the Unexpected #12) closed the show. Also lurking within this issue was another agonisingly funny AragonÃ©s ‘Abel’s Fables’ contributionâ€¦

The penultimate issue in this sparkling collection led with classical creep-show ‘The Curse of Morby Castle’ by Sparling. Skeates & Aparo returned to ‘Divide and Murder’ and AragonÃ©s struck again in ‘Abel’s Fables’. Blasts from the past ‘The Tomb of Ramfis’ (House of Mystery #59, by the fabulous John Prentice) and ‘Dead Man’s Diary’ (drawn by Ralph Mayo for House of Mystery #46) were demarcated by another trenchant Wein & Sparling ‘Day after Doomsday’, before Jose Delbo delineated a manic monster-fest entitled ‘Domain of the Damned’.

The last issue in this first compendium opened with a glorious intro page from Mark Hanerfeld and Kaluta, after which the artist entrancingly illustrated Albano’s tough-as-nails-thriller ‘Born Losers’ and Toth illuminated the ‘Secret Hero of Center City’ (originally seen in House of Mystery #120). After one more AragonÃ©s ‘Abel’s Fables’ Wein, Mikes Roy & Peppe revealed why ‘The Night Train Doesn’t Stop Here anymore!’ and another John Prentice treat was served up in ‘The Fatal Superstition’ (House of Mystery #35) before the great Adolfo Buylla celebrated the end of the affair in grisly fashion with ‘Happy Birthday, Herman!’

These terror-tales captivated the reading public and critics alike when they first appeared and it’s no stretch to posit that they probably saved the company during one of the toughest downturns in comics publishing history. Now their blend of sinister mirth, classic horror scenarios and suspense set-pieces can most familiarly be seen in such children’s series as Goosebumps, Horrible Histories and their many imitators.

If you crave beautifully realised, tastefully splatter-free sagas of tension and imagination, not to mention a huge supply of bad-taste, kid-friendly cartoon chills, book your stay at the House of Secrets as soon as you possibly canâ€¦

June 5, 2011June 4, 2011

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Adapted by Roy Thomas, Mike Mignola & John Nyberg (Topps/Titan Books edition)
ISBN: 978-1-85286-474-3

Vampires have never been more popular and the undisputed icon of the cult-fiction genre is indisputably Dracula. One of the best looking graphic novels ever to feature the immortal undead Count came from Topps Comics in 1992 when they produced a four part adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola’s flawed film masterpiece.

Whatever your opinions of the movie, the brutally dark story of love, reincarnation and second chances did generate an exceptionally impressive comics interpretation by master adapter Roy Thomas and moody Meisters-of-the-Macabre Mike Mignola & John Nybergâ€¦

This stripped-down UK edition released by Titan Books opens with the prologue wherein Christian knight Vlad Dracula returns to his castle after a magnificent victory against the invading Turks in 1462, to discover that his beloved wife Elisabeta is dead. The tragic beauty committed suicide when she received a malicious message stating that her husband had been killedâ€¦

Grief-stricken, the bloody warrior Vlad turns his back on God and Manâ€¦

May 1897 and Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania following the loss of his colleague R.M. RenfieldÂ to facilitate the voyage of aged wealthy Count Dracula to the thriving modern Metropolis of London. He stumbles into a scene of unbridled terrorâ€¦

Meanwhile in the heart of the Empire his fiancÃ©e Mina Murray indulges her wildly wanton friend Lucy Westenra as the famous beauty strings along three ideal suitors, Dr. Jack Seward, Texan Quincy P. Morris and Arthur Holmwood, the future Lord Godalming.

Mina is a perfect double for the long dead Elisabeta and when Dracula, freshly arrived in England and already causing chaos and disaster, sees her he begins to seduce her. He is less gentle with Lucy and his bestial, bloodletting assaults prompt her three beaus to summon the famed doctor and teacher Abraham Van Helsing to save her life and cure her increasing mania.

Harker has survived his Transylvanian ordeal and hurriedly marries Mina in Romania. Enraged, Dracula renews his assaults and Lucy dies to be reborn as a predatory monster. After dispatching her to eternal rest, Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward and Quincy Morris, joined by the recently returned and much altered Harker and his new bride, determine to destroy the ancient evil in their midstâ€¦

Dracula however, has incredible power and centuries of experience on his side and taints Mina with his blood-drinking curse, before fleeing back to his ancestral lands. Now the mortal champions must follow and excise his awful power before Mina – now aware of her previous existence as Dracula’s wife Elisabeta – succumbs forever to his unholy influenceâ€¦

Dark, moody, visually stunning and compulsively frenetic, this interpretation is a memorable and intensely fulfilling iteration on a modern myth and one that no fan can ignore.

The Titan version of this lost gem is probably the most readily available but the two Topps editions are still around if you’re persistent. The first printing also contains in its 112 pages an introduction from Coppola and an afterword by the film’s writer James V. Hart (whose other credits include screenplays for Contact, Tuck Everlasting, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Hook and Muppet Treasure Island amongst others, whilst the 120 page Previews Exclusive Edition tops that (sorry, my will was suborned by irresistible malign forces) by including a poster, behind-the-scenes glimpses at the film’s creation and cards from the spin-off Dracula Collectible Card set.
Â© 1993 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

June 2, 2011June 7, 2011

The Sky Over the Louvre

By Bernar Yslaire & Jean-Claude CarriÃ¨re, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM ComicsLit/Louvre: MusÃ©e du Louvre Ã‰ditions)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-602-0

A few years ago the prestigious Louvre gallery in Paris began an intriguing and extremely rewarding collaboration with the world of comics, and their latest beguiling translated bande dessinÃ©e is now available in English courtesy of those fine folks at NBM.

The Sky Over the Louvre is a lush and beautiful, oversized hardback graphic novel which explores the very origins and philosophical underpinnings of France’s national art collection whilst peeling back the motivations and ambitions of the twisted visionaries who steered – or perhaps simply rode – the human wave of Chaos deemed â€œthe Terrorâ€ of the French Revolutionâ€¦ catalyst for the gallery’s very existence.

As always, these tales are produced in close collaboration with the forward-looking authorities of the MusÃ©e du Louvre, but this is no gosh-wow, â€œNight-at-the-Museumâ€, thinly-concealed catalogue of contents from a stuffy edifice of public culture. Rather, here is a gripping, intense, informative and insightful glimpse into the price of art as engine of change and agent of obsession.

Jean-Claude CarriÃ¨re was born in 1931, studied at the Ã‰cole normale supÃ©rieure de Saint-Cloud and wrote a novel before becoming an actor and one of France’s greatest screenwriters. He worked with Luis BuÃ±uel for 19 years, scripting such classics as Diary of a Chambermaid, Belle de Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, That Obscure Object of Desire and many more.

Other notable credits include working with directors such as Milos Forman, Louis Malle, Andrzej Wajda, Nagisa Oshima and others on iconic films like The Tin Drum, Danton, The Return of Martin Guerre, Max, Mon Amour and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, although three generations of British television viewers will probably revere him most for his adaptation of the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (starring Robert Hoffmann and featuring that iconic theme-tune) which ran on BBC1 at tea time from 1965 to about twenty minutes agoâ€¦.

Belgian artist Bernar Yslaire (Bernard Hislaire) began his career in 1978 drawing kiddie’s strip ‘Bidouille et Violette’ for Spirou before creating the historical epic ‘Sambre’ in 1986 (still going strong) and was one of the first creators to fully embrace the potential of the internet with his online strip ‘Memories of the XX^th Sky’. In 2006 he produced the moving doomed romance ‘Sky over Brussells’.

The Sky Over the Louvre compellingly blends history and drama by focussing on the revolutionary artist Jacques-Louis David and close associate Maximilien de Robespierre (who called himself â€œThe Incorruptibleâ€) as they planned how to replace religion, monarchy and the Old Art with something unique and truly worthy of their revolution. David and his School (Drouais, Greueze, Girodet and students Serangeli and GÃ©rard) have taken residence in the old Louvre Palace where past kings left their grandiose aggregation of treasures when they vacated Paris for Versailles. Here the Revolutionary council aspires to create a new aesthetic and new thought for their New Societyâ€¦

Jules Stern is a 13-year old wanderer from the Black Sea, roaming the dangerous streets of Paris seeking his mother and claiming to have an appointment with David. On the 15^th Fructidor, Year 1 (8^th August 1793 for those of us not wedded to the Republic’s new calendar) the angelic lad confronts the artist whilst he inaugurates the Louvre as the first Museum of the Nation, dedicated to public ownership of art and the notion of beauty as a revolutionary ideal. Later they meet again and Robespierre forms a hostile opinion of the child, although David is clearly fascinated by the headstrong, beautiful boyâ€¦

As the high-minded idealism of the Revolution’s early days dissolves into factional in-fighting Robespierre and David become increasingly concerned with the spiritual and aesthetic, determined to excise and replace every vestige of the old regime and society. They seek images and concepts to embody their cause and plan a festival to the concept of Reason but across France backsliding and foreign invasion threaten their progress. In September 1793 the Convention (ruling body and parliament of the Republic) decrees â€œTerror to be the order of the Dayâ€â€¦

Blood, betrayal and horror rule the streets as David, from his apartments in the Louvre, begins work on a brace of pivotal works: The Supreme Being and The Death of Joseph Bara. It is difficult to assess which caused him the most grief and triggered his ultimate downfallâ€¦

The Incorruptible is becoming more arrogant and ruthless, desperate for revolutionary images that will fire and inspire the masses. He presses David to produce the ultimate physical representation of the conceptual spirit of the New France – a Supreme Being – but as time goes by and no image emerges, one too many people are whispering that what Robespierre actually requires is a portrait of himselfâ€¦

Far less troublesome should be The Death of Joseph Bara; a boy who became the first martyr of the Revolution and one scheduled to become the nation’s uniting icon. However, David’s obsession with Jules Stern brings more trouble when Robespierre objects to the boy being selected as the model for Bara the Myth…

Nobody baulks The Incorruptible for long, but the obsessive nature of the creative impulse is insurmountable and eventually Robespierre can only achieve his ends by sending Jules to the guillotine. Incredibly, not even death separated the artist from his modelâ€¦

Set solidly in the very heart of a moment of epochal historical importance, this is a stunning and utterly compulsive tale of humanity at its wildest extremes when grand ideals wedded themselves to the basest on bestial impulses, yet from that Yslaire and CarriÃ¨re have crafted a magnificently realised tale laced with staggering detail and addictive emotion.

With extra features including biographies and a listing of the actual artwork woven seamlessly into the narrative, this is a truly magical book that no aficionado of the medium can afford to missâ€¦

May 17, 2011May 16, 2011

Alien: The Illustrated Story

By Archie Goodwin & Walter Simonson from a screenplay by Dan O’Bannon and a story by Dan O’Bannon & Ronald Shusett (Heavy Metal/Futura)
ISBN: 0-7088-1559-6

Alien was released in 1979 and utterly refreshed the science fiction cinema genre. Creeping in on the back of the jolly adventuring romps of the Star Wars phenomenon and its shiny, happy rip-offs, Dan O’Bannon’s dark tale and Ridley Scott’s grimly meticulous vision reintroduced the vital element of apocalyptic terror that had been absent from the medium since the headiest, most paranoiac days of the 1950s B-Movies.

You know the plot: a bunch of interstellar miners are diverted by their untrustworthy bosses to a lost planet where they find an extraterrestrial shipwreck. One of the humans is infected and brings aboard a horror that grows and picks off the crew one by one and cannot be stopped, escaped from or killedâ€¦

Lots of films have had comics adaptations: good bad or indifferent. Very few have ever come as close to capturing the stunning, senses-overloading feel – rather than the plot or look or detail – of the source material, although all of those too are well-catered for in this slim but superb graphic extravaganza from the award-winning creative team of Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson (see Manhunter: the Special Edition for perhaps their ultimate moment of comics collaboration).

Spectacular, engrossing, visually innovative (in both storytelling and lettering/calligraphic effects) and absolutely absorbing, this hard-to-find gem (either in the original US edition from Heavy Metal Productions or the mass-market UK edition from Futura) is a true lost landmark of comics, long overdue for a new release – but only in the original large, square European Album format pleaseâ€¦

May 11, 2011May 9, 2011

Werewolf

By Richard Corben & friends (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 0-87416-007-3Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Del Rey edition ISBN: 978-0-34548-311-9

Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest living proponents of comic strip storytelling: an animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist springing, as so many have, from the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in sequential narrative with an unmistakable style and vision. He is equally renowned for his mastery of the airbrush, captivatingly excessive anatomical stylisation and his delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales.

Until relatively recently Corben steered clear of the Fights ‘n’ Tights comicbook mainstream. He hasn’t sold out – it’s simply that American funnybooks have grown mature enough to accommodate him, due in no small part to his pervasive influenceâ€¦

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, he graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 and found work as an animator. At that time, the neutered comicbooks of the Comics-Code Authority era were just starting to lose disaffected, malcontented older fans to the hippy-trippy, freewheeling, anything-goes publications of independent-minded creators across the continent who were increasingly making the kind of material Mummy and her lawyers wouldn’t approve ofâ€¦

Creative impulses honed by ultra-graphic and explicitly mature 1950s EC Comics, Carl Barks’ perfectly crafted Duck tales and other classy early strips, a plethora of young artists like Corben all responded with a variety of small-press publications – including Grim Wit, Slow Death, Skull, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor – that featured shocking, rebellious, sexed-up, raw, brutal, psychedelically-inspired and enhanced cartoons and strips that mixed the new wave of artists’ unconventional lifestyles with their earliest childhood influencesâ€¦ making the kind of stories that they would like to readâ€¦

Corben’s work began to appear in more professionally produced venues. As his style and skills developed he worked for Warren Publishing’s Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and graphically outrageous adult science fiction anthology 1984/1994. He also famously coloured some strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s the Spirit.

In 1975 Corben approached French fantasy phenomenon MÃ©tal Hurlant and became a fixture of its American iteration Heavy Metal. Soon he was producing stunning graphic escapades for a number of companies, making animated movies, painting film posters and producing record covers such as the multi-million-selling Meatloaf album Bat Out of Hell. He never stopped making comics but preferred his own independent projects with collaborators such as Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jones and Jan Strnad.

Always garnering huge support and acclaim in Europe his short pieces were regularly collected in albums such as this moody and manic midnight melange that gathered his assorted dabblings with the iconic global curse of lycanthropy into one masterful edition, before selling it back to the Yanksâ€¦

I’m reviewing my beloved and spiffy Catalan Communications hardback edition, complete with affectionate introductory tribute from fellow artistic superstar Gaetano Liberatore, but if you can’t find that or the subsequent softcover, as they are both regrettably out-of-print and tricky to find, there was a soft-cover re-release from Del Rey in 2005 that is a bit more accessible and just as good.

Corben regularly revisited old works, adding colour to black and white tales or refining rough edges, but this collection opens with an early strip that is deliciously raw and edgy in blocky monochromeâ€¦

‘Dead Hill’ is a dark and punchy taster to set the ball rolling: a saga of vulpine cross-and-double-cross, before the airbrush colour of ‘The Beast of Wolfton’ regales us with the hilariously sardonic and nihilistic tale of a beast that haunts a medieval manor seeking vengeance for the extermination of his kind and the deeply put-upon Lady who finds little to differentiate between the hairy slavering brute and her husband who hunts it with such passionâ€¦

Corben returned to that milieu for the nominal sequel ‘Spirit of the Beast’ as the tortured spawn of the werewolf sought penance and forgiveness for his family’s curse, but reckoned without the seductive power of true Evilâ€¦

Corben’s infamous signature-stylisation includes acres of male and female nudity, excessive, balletic violence and nigh-grotesquely proportioned male and female physiques, and these are all readily in your face in a full-frontal, chilling and clever interpretation of Red Riding Hood re-imagined here as ‘Roda and the Wolf’.

A brace of wolf-manly sagas first crafted in 1973 for Warren’s horror anthology Creepy follows; beginning with the severed-tongue-in-cheek shocker ‘Lycanklutz’ after which Doug Moench stumps up a Halloween teaser in ‘Changeâ€¦ into Something Comfortable’ and the whole hirsute Hall of Horrors concludes with the John Pocsik scripted Puritan immorality play ‘Fur Trade’.

Richard Corben is a unique visual stylist blessed with a love of the dark and graced with a scathingly sharp sense of humour. Combine that with the World’s apparently insatiable hunger for hairy monsters and this book is just the aperitif any fan needs to start the night rightâ€¦
Â© 1979-1984 Richard V. Corben. Â© 1984 Doug Moench for â€œChange into Something Comfortableâ€. Â© 1984 John Pocsik for â€œFur Tradeâ€. Introduction Â© 1984 Gaetano Liberatore. All rights reserved.

May 10, 2011May 10, 2011

Showcase Presents Warlord volume 1

By Mike Grell, with Vince Colletta & various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-4012-2473-8

During the troubled 1970s the American comics industry suffered one of the worst of its periodic downturns and publishers desperately cast about for other genres to bolster the flagging sales of superhero comics.

By revising their self-imposed industry code of practice (administered by the Comics Code Authority) to allow supernatural and horror comics, the publishers tapped into the global revival of interest in spiritualism and the supernatural, and as a by-product opened their doors to Sword-and-Sorcery as a viable genre, with Roy Thomas and Barry Smith’s adaptation of R. E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian an early exemplar.

DC launched a host of titles into that budding market but although individually interesting nothing seemed to catch the public’s eye until number #8 of the company’s latest try-out title First Issue Special.

In that issue popular new Legion of Super-Heroes artist Mike Grell launched his pastiche, homage and tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s works (particularly Pellucidar – At the Earth’s Core) which, after a rather shaky start (like Conan, the series was cancelled early in the run but rapidly reinstated) went on to become for a time DC’s most popular title.

Blending swords, sorcery and super-science with spectacular, visceral derring-do, the lost land of Skartaris was a venue expertly designed for adventure: stuffed with warriors, mythical creatures, dinosaurs and scantily-clad hotties. How could it possibly fail?

This first stupendous black and white compendium, gathers 1^st Issue Special #8 (from November 1975) and Warlord #1-28 (January-February 1976 – December 1979) and delivers wild wonder and breathtaking thrills from the outset.

The magic commences with ‘Land of Fear!’ as in 1969, U2 spy-pilot Colonel Travis Morgan is shot down whilst filming a secret Soviet base. The embattled aviator manages to fly his plane over the North Pole before ditching, expecting to land on frozen Tundra or pack-ice the right side of the Iron Curtain.

Instead he finds himself inside the Earth, marooned in a vast, tropical jungle where the sun never sets. The incredible land is populated by creatures from every era of history and many that never made it into the science books. There are also cavemen, savages, lost races, mythical beasts, barbaric kingdoms and fabulous warrior-women.

Plunging head-on into the madness the baffled airman saves an embattled princess from a hungry saurian before both are captured by soldiers. Taken to the city of Thera, Morgan is taught the language by his fellow captive Tara and makes an implacable enemy of the court wizard Deimos. After surviving an assassination attempt the pair escape into the eternal noon of the land beneath the Earth.

Within months Morgan had his own-bimonthly title written, pencilled and inked by Grell. ‘This Savage World’ saw the lost airman and the Princess of Shamballah fall deeply in love, only to be separated by slavers who leave Morgan to die in #2’s ‘Arena of Death.’ After a stint as a galley slave, Morgan, with Nubian warrior Machiste, led an insurrection of Gladiators which became a full-scale revolution, earning him the title of The Warlord in the process.

However, after this issue the series vanished for months until October-November 1976.

Morgan returned in all his gory glory in #3’s ‘War Gods of Skartaris’, leading his army of liberation and hunting for Tara until he stumbled across his downed aircraft – worshipped as a god by lizard-men and stuffed with lots of twentieth century ordnanceâ€¦ Moreover it had crashed into a temple that gave the first clues to the incredible secret of the lost landâ€¦

‘Duel of the Titans’ saw the Warlord’s army lay siege to Thera, where Deimos had seized power and held Tara hostage. The mage’s sorcery was no match for high explosives and inevitably he lost his life to Morgan’s flashing blade.

Warlord #5 saw the reunited lovers heading for Tara’s home city Shamballah, discovering en route ‘The Secret of Skartaris!’ in a lost temple that held millennia-old computer records revealing the entire land to be a lost colony of Atlantis, with much of the magic of the timeless region nothing more than advanced technology. When one such dormant device rocketed Morgan away Tara thought her man was gone foreverâ€¦

‘Home is a Four-Letter Word!’ saw the displaced aviator returned to the surface-world with eight years gone by since his crash; emerging from a lost outpost in the Andes where a multi-national excavation was being conducted in the Incan ruins of Machu Pichu.

However the scientists used Morgan’s dog-tags to contact his CIA superiors and the suspicious spooks assumed he had defected all these years ago: especially since one of the archaeologists was comely soviet researcher Mariah Romanovaâ€¦ When the intransigent spymasters roused a demonic watchdog Morgan’s only chance was to head back to Skartaris with Mariah in towâ€¦

Back in the temple again, the day he spent on Earth had somehow translated into an interminable time within it. Tara was long gone and Morgan elected to follow her to Shamballah. Stopping in the city of Kiro Morgan and Mariah saved the Warlord’s old comrade Machiste from the insidious horror of ‘The Iron Devil’, after which the trio voyaged together: attacked by cyborg vampires from ‘The City in the Sky’ and braving ‘The Lair of the Snowbeast’, wherein Morgan discovered a unique benefactor and a tragically brief kind of loveâ€¦

Warlord #10 saw the opening sally in a long-running saga as the ‘Tower of Fear’ found the trio aiding a maiden in distress and inadvertently restoring the underland’s greatest monster to life. ‘Trilogy’ in #11 features a triptych of vignettes to display conflicting aspects of the Warlord’s complex character, after which ‘The Hunter’ pitted the wandering warriors against a manic, vengeful CIA agent who had followed Morgan to Skartaris and ‘All Men Are Mine’ saw the gravely wounded Warlord battle the very personification of death.

Issue #15 ‘Holocaust’ (inked by Joe Rubinstein) marked the series’ advancement to a monthly schedule and finally reunited Morgan and Tara in Shamballah. The obtuse warrior was stunned to see Mariah heartbroken by the couple’s joy, resulting in hers and Machiste’s incensed departure. The biggest shock, though, was Morgan’s introduction to his son, Joshua. However he didn’t have much time to dwell as the city began to explosively self-destruct. As Morgan and Tara tackled the major crisis Deimos struck, abducting the babyâ€¦

Vince Colletta came aboard as regular inker with the beginning of ‘The Quest’ as Morgan and Tara hunted down the undead sorcerer starting with ‘Visions in a Crimson Eye’, battling Deimos’ minions and rival magicians, encountering the desert-locked ‘Citadel of Death’ (which revealed some intriguing Skartaran history from the Age of the Wizard Kings) before being briefly distracted by alien invaders in ‘Bloodmoon’.

Scouring Skartaris, Tara and Morgan were reunited with Mariah and Machiste in ‘Wolves of the Steppes’ after which the quartet braved Deimos’ fortress in ‘Battlecry’ as the unliving savant began experimenting on little Joshua, marrying Atlantean science with sinister sorceriesâ€¦

The epic concluded in Warlord #21 as Morgan was compelled to battle an adult enslaved version of Joshua in ‘Terminator’. When he killed his own son, the Warlord’s heart broke and his love abandoned himâ€¦ but as ever nothing was as it quite seemedâ€¦

Shell-shocked, Morgan lost himself in drink and bloodletting, battling werewolves and worse in ‘The Beast in the Tower’, subterraneans and cannibals in ‘The Children of Ba’al’ and tragically trysting with a love that could not last in ‘Song of Ligia’ before becoming a mercenary in ‘This Sword For Hire’, making a new friend in unscrupulous but flamboyant thief Ashir.

Together they accept ‘The Challenge’ of winning ultimate knowledge and as Deimos begins his next deadly assault Morgan relives all his past lives (which include Lancelot, Jim Bowie and Crazy Horse) whilst experiencing first hand the true story of ‘Atlantis Dying’â€¦

The last issue in this compilation comprises two linked tales. In the first Morgan crushes alien horrors in ‘The Curse of the Cobra Queen’ whilst the long absent Tara, Mariah and Machiste are drawn into a time-warping encounter with the lost masters of ‘Wizard World’ – the opening salvo in another extended epic that you’ll have to wait for the second volume to enjoyâ€¦

The tricky concept of relativistic time and how it does or doesn’t seem to function in this Savage Paradise increasingly grated with many readers but as Grell’s stated goal was to produce a perfect environment for yarn-spinning, not a science project, the picky pedant would be best advised to suck it up or stay away.

For we simple, thrill-seeking fantasy lovers, however, these are pure escapist tales of action and adventure, light on plot and angst but aggressively and enthusiastically jam-packed with fun and wonder. These are timeless tales that will enthral, beguile and enchant. As the man himself constantly says â€œin Skartaris, always expect the unexpectedâ€â€¦

May 7, 2011May 8, 2011

X-Men: Curse of the Mutants

By Victor Gischler, Paco Medina & Juan Vlasco (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-480-5

With a property as valuable as the X-Men change is a necessarily good thing, even if you sometimes need a scorecard to keep up. This thoroughly entertaining read (collecting X-Men volume 2 #1-6 and text features from Marvel Spotlight: X-Men: Curse of the Mutants #1) keeps the baggage to a sustainable minimum for non-addicts and concentrates on delivering a tense and fast-paced rollercoaster thriller heavy on action and light on extended sub-plots.

Most of the World’s mutants now live on an island dubbed â€œUtopiaâ€ in San Francisco Bay, welcomed by the easygoing human population and with X-Men team-leader Cyclops running the show. In other news: the planet’s assorted vampire clans have been united after centuries of internecine struggle by Xarus, the son of Dracula who destroyed his own father to succeed to the position of Lord of Vampiresâ€¦

When a nosferatu suicide-bomber explodes himself in a crowded plaza his re-engineered blood infects many shocked and helpless bystanders with a manufactured virus that inevitably infects and overwhelms any mortal exposed to it. The united night-hunters have declared all-out war on their food-supply, bolstering their ranks without risking being huntedâ€¦ and one of the first infected is veteran X-warrior Jubileeâ€¦

Wolverine leads a scouting mission into the increasingly overrun city and discovers that the campaign is meticulously organised and extremely far advanced. Moreover the new vampire lord has planned ambitiously: a key tactic is to â€œturnâ€ every mutant on Utopia, providing the would-be conqueror with a compliant army of super-powered blood-sucking storm-troopers. Jubilee has already joined themâ€¦

Always genned-up on undead affairs, Blade joins the party and brings the embattled mutants up to speed, but facing impossible odds. With new vampires springing up everywhere Cyclops makes the seemingly insane decision to revive Dracula, despite the Vampire Hunter’s strenuous objections.

And then Wolverine finally succumbs to the manufactured virus and switches sidesâ€¦

When the Children of the Night make their final assault against the assembled mutant heroes all seems lostâ€¦ but Cyclops has a cunning planâ€¦

Laced with a profusion of variant covers by such artistic stalwarts as Olivier Coipel, Marko Djurdjevic, Mike Mayhew and John Romita Jr. this is an exhilarating romp that pushes all the right buttons, engagingly written by Victor Gischler and entrancingly illustrated by Paco Medina & Juan Vlasco. If you want fast, furious and fulfilling Fights ‘n’ Tights magic this is a perfect one-shop stop for your edification and delectation.

April 26, 2011April 27, 2011

R.I.P. Best of 1984-2004

By Thomas Ott and friends (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 987-1-60699-417-7

Being an old geezer but unreconstructed punk at heart I can firmly attest and confirm that the teen-years urge to shock and addiction to loud, fast, shouty-boy music never goes away. The same holds true for in-your-face comic stripsâ€¦

Thomas Ott is a Swiss cartoonist, musician, satirist and film-maker (born in Berne in June 1966) who has, since the mid-1980s, been producing stunning strips and pastiches for commercial publications such as Ahai, Okay Erotik Magazin, Strapazin, SÃ¼ddeutsche Zeitung, El Vibora, LibÃ©ration, L’Echo des Savanes and a host of others whilst pursuing his own uniquely meticulous trash-culture visions in self-published monochrome anthological albums such as Tales of Error, Dead End, and Greetings from Hellville.

Now this retrospective compendium from Fantagraphics presents 19 of the very best (seven never before seen) spanning two decades of shocking horror, crime noir, mordant, nihilistic love, juicy revenge, surreal justice and bleak, black irony all delivered in Ott’s signature and obsessively meticulous scratchboard style, with gleaming white narrative emerging from ebon pages, sans dialogue but occasionally boasting impressive and imaginative typography.

Beginning with raw and raucous EC comics homages ‘The Hero’, ‘Clean Up!’, ‘A Wrinkled Tragedy’ and ‘Headbanger’; gradually building up to longer – and far shorter – pieces such as ’10 Ways to Kill Your Husband’, ‘Massacre Melodies Presents Buddy Butcher in â€œBuddy Goes Bloodyâ€’, ‘G.O.D.’, ‘Goodbye!’, ‘The Job’,Â ’10’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

Hardbitten mystery and sardonic imagination begin to predominate with ‘Breakdown’, ‘The Millionairs’ and ‘Washing Day’ but there’s still room for a laugh in ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘The Clown’ or a disturbing chill in ‘La FiancÃ©e du Lapin’ (written by David B) and sheer exuberance in ‘Recuerdos de Mexico’ before ending in classic droll darkness with ‘The Hook’.

Ott’s psychobilly sensibilities litter his narrative world with pimps, thugs and geeks; desperate chancers, deadly beloveds and down and outs on the edge of reality as well as society, so if jaded comics fans might feel they’ve been here before, the wider world are still only curious first-timers into a dismal dimension of vice, spice and bad adviceâ€¦

Graphic, violent funny and unforgettable this is a special treat for thrill-starved adults in search of something a little beyond the normâ€¦

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