Category: Humour

Posted on

DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk volume 1: Dragon Down


By Simon Furman, Iwan Nazif & Bambos Georgiou (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-076-4

These days, young kids are far more likely to find their formative strip narrative experiences online or between the card-covers of specially tailored graphic novels rather than the comics and periodicals of my long-dead youth.

In times past the commercial comics industry thrived by producing copious amounts of gaudy, flimsy pamphlets subdivided into a range of successful, self-propagating, seamlessly self-perpetuating age-specific publications. Such eye-catching items generated innumerable tales and delights intended to entertain, inform and educate such well-defined target demographics as Toddler/Kindergarten, Younger and Older Juvenile, General, Girls, Boys and even Young Teens, but today the English-speaking world can only afford to maintain a few paltry out-industry, licensed tie-ins and spin-offs for a dwindling younger readership.

Where once cheap and prolific, strip magazines in the 21st century are extremely cost-intensive and manufactured for a highly specific – and dying – niche market, whilst the beguiling and bombastic genres that originally fed and nurtured comics are more immediately disseminated via TV, movies and assorted interactive media.

Happily, in this country old-school prose publishers and the newborn graphic novel industry have a different business model and far more sustainable long-term goals, so the magazine makers’ surrender has been turned into a burgeoning victory, as solid and reassuringly sturdy Comics-in-Books increasingly buck the pamphlet/papers downward spiral.

Moreover, many of those old comics enjoyed a successful affiliation and almost symbiotic relationship with television (and before that, Films and radio shows), and these days when even the ubiquitous goggle-box business is paralysed and endangered by on-demand streaming, too many channels and far too much choice, those connections have been taken up by the graphic novel trade too.

The links between animated features and comicbooks are long established and I suspect, for young consumers, indistinguishable. After all, in the end it’s all just entertaining pictures…

One of the most popular TV cartoons – and certainly the most gripping and entertaining – of recent years is DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk (and its follow-up Defenders of Berk). It’s based on the wonderful movie How to Train Your Dragon – which was itself loosely adapted from Cressida Cowell’s glorious and charming sequence of children’s books.

The show has internationally wowed audiences young and old alike and, in this first full-colour Titan Comics digest-sized collection by Simon Furman, Iwan Nazif & BambosGeorgiou, those amazing adventures continue as brilliant but introverted boy-hero Hiccup and his compatriots of the Dragon Rider Academy gleefully roam the skies with their devoted scaly friends.

When not fighting each other the trusty teens attempt to keep the peace between the rambunctious multiplicity of saurians and the island of Berk’s irascible Viking settlers: protecting the humans’ village from the constant attacks of nastier folk such as Alvin the Treacherous and his fleet of piratical Outcasts or new and unknown monsters…

Following a brace of handy information pages introducing Hiccup and his devoted Night Fury Toothless, as well as tom-boyish Astrid on Deadly Nader Stormfly, obnoxious jock Snotlout and Monstrous Nightmare Hookfang, portly scholar Fishlegs on ponderous Gronckle Meatlug and the terribly dim but merrily violent twins Tuffnut and Ruffnut on double-headed Zippleback Belch & Barf, this initial saga opens as the riders go through their spectacular aerial combat paces over the waters around Berk.

Trouble is never far away where Dragons are concerned, and when Hookfang begins shedding incandescent scales, they soon have half the village putting out the resultant flash-fires…

For the safety of the town and the ailing Wyrm, Hiccup’s father Chief Stoick has no choice but to quarantine Hookfang off-island and ground the rest of the flight. However, when the Monstrous Nightmare goes missing the kids decide to ignore orders and go looking for the poor beast…

Chapter two opens during a massive squall with the Dragon Riders being bawled out by Stoick. Snotlout is heartbroken – but won’t show it – and guilty Hiccup furtively sneaks off to continue the search alone with Toothless.

Hookfang is in real trouble. He’s been cornered by Alvin the Treacherous, who wants to make dragons his war weapons. Now he has bait and only needs a skilled trainer to enslave… and he knows that one will be along soon to rescue the still-shedding Monstrous Nightmare he has trapped in a cave…

The evil scheme works almost perfectly. Hiccup is easily captured by the hulking Outcast warriors, but manages to convince the sleek, speedy Night Fury to abandon him and fetch help…

Valiantly making his way back to Berk, the loyal Toothless rouses the Riders and Stoick’s men who speed to the rescue. Meanwhile, ingenious Hiccup has already engineered his own escape. It would have worked, too, if the islet they were on hadn’t been a not-quite dormant volcano with explosively shedding Hookfang inadvertently stoking the geological fires…

The saga concludes in an astounding sea battle as Stoick’s fleet engages Alvin’s pirates whilst Astrid and Stormfly spring Hiccup. Reunited with Toothless, the leader of the Dragon Riders then shows the Outcasts the dangers of messing with the boys and girls of Berk before deducing a (rather perilous) way to reunite Snotlout and Hookfang before the islet melts down or goes up in flames…

Despite being ostensibly aimed at excitable juniors and TV kids, this sublimely sharp yarn is a smart and engaging fantasy romp no self-indulging fun-fan of any vintage should miss: accessible, entertaining, and wickedly habit-forming.
DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk © 2014 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C.

Posted on

Iznogoud and the Magic Computer


By Goscinny & Tabary, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge(Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-79-3

During his too-short lifetime (1926-1977) René Goscinny was one of the most prolific, most read writers of comic strips the world has ever seen.

He still is.

Among his most popular comic collaborations are Lucky Luke, Le Petit Nicolas and, of course Asterix the Gaul, but there were so many others.

Scant years after the Suez crisis, the French returned to the deserts when Goscinny teamed with the sublimely gifted Swede Jean Tabary (1930-2011 and numbering Richard et Charlie, Grabadu et Gabaliouchtou, Totoche, Corinne et Jeannot and Valentin le Vagabond amongst his other hit strips) to produce imbecilic Arabian (im)potentate Haroun el-Poussah. However it was the strip’s villainous foil, power-hungry vizier Iznogoud, who stole the show – possibly the conniving little devil’s only successful scheme.

Les Aventures du Calife Haroun el Poussah was created for Record, with the first instalment appearing in the January 15th issue in1962. A minor hit, it jumped ship to Pilote – a magazine created and edited by Goscinny – where it was refashioned into a starring vehicle for the devious little rat-bag who had increasingly hogged all the laughs and limelight.

Like all the best storytelling, Iznogoud works on two levels: as a comedic romp with sneaky baddies coming a cropper for younger readers, and as a pun-filled, witty satire for older, wiser heads, much like its more famous cousin Asterix – and also translated here by the master translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge who made the indomitable little Gaul so very palatable to the English tongue. Moreover the deliciously malicious whimsy is always heavily laden with manic absurdity and brilliantly applied creative anachronism to keep the plots bizarrely fresh and inventive.

Our insidious anti-hero is Grand Vizier to affable, easy-going Haroun Al Plassid, Caliph of Ancient Baghdad, but the sneaky little toad has loftier ambitions, or as he is always shouting “I want to be Caliph instead of the Caliph!”

The revamped series launched in Pilote in 1968, quickly becoming a huge European hit, with 29 albums so far (carried on by Tabary’s children Stéphane, Muriel and Nicolas), his own solo comic, a TV cartoon show and even a live action movie.

When Goscinny died in 1977 Tabary assumed the scripting as well as the superbly stylish illustration from the 13th album, moving to book-length complete tales, rather than the compilations of short punchy stories that typified their collaborations.

This fourth Cinebook album was actually the sixth French album (released in 1970 as L’ordinateur magique) and features a clenched and grasping fistful of short, sharp salutary tales beginning, after a handy catch-up profile page, with ‘A Calculated Risk’, wherein the cunning conniver, desperate to forestall a pact between the Caliph and mighty military neighbour Sultan Pullmankar, hires forward-thinking I-Bee’Em and his ponderous problem-solving “computer” to stop the signing of the treaty.

The big grey box might be brilliant, but it’s agonisingly slow in reaching its infallible conclusions…

Things then get hilariously surreal when Iznogoud and his long-suffering, bumbling assistant Wa’at Alahf discover a mystic crossroads that can lead the unwary traveller onto an unending, pointless journey from which they can neither escape nor return.

Dashing back to lure the Caliph onto ‘The Road to Nowhere’ our wicked wayfarers eventually realise that they’ve been stuck on it all along…

Back in Baghdad and itching to take over, the Vile Vizier then seeks to employ the tragic gifts of lonely hermit Ghoudas Gho’ld, a direct descendent of legendary King Midas, in ‘The Golden Handshake’. All he has to do to remove the Caliph is get the accursed involuntary metal-maker back to the palace without him touching anything…

There’s more direct skulduggery afoot in ‘The Caliph’s Sceptre’ when Iznogoud hires a master thief to sneak him into the high-security vault where the Staff of Office is cached. If he takes it and keeps the Caliph from presenting it to the people in the annual reaffirmation of worthiness to rule ceremony, the Vizier can legally assume control of the country. Of course, it doesn’t quite play out that way…

This fine kettle of funny fish concludes with ‘The Mysterious Ointment’ as fabled explorer Notsobad the Sailor returns to the port of Basrah and, having forgotten to bring the undetectable Occidental poisons he promised the Vizier, palms him off with a tube of “Schpouk toothpaste’.

Assured the container holds a lethal and undetectable toxin, poor Iznogoud embarks on an eccentrically convoluted campaign to convince the Caliph and the court that cleaning one’s choppers is the latest and most beneficial of scientific advancements. Care to guess how well that goes?

Snappy, fast-paced hi-jinks and gloriously agonising pun-ishing (see what I did there?) abound in this mirthfully infectious series which is a household name in France where “Iznogoud” is common parlance for a certain type of politician: over-ambitious, unscrupulous – and often of diminutive stature.

When first released here in the 1970s, these tales made little impression, but hopefully this snappy, wonderfully affable strips can finally find an appreciative audience among today’s more internationally aware, politically jaded comics-and-cartoon savvy Kids Of All Ages…
© 1970 Dargaud Editeur Paris by Goscinny & Tabary. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Buddy Buys a Dump: the Complete Buddy Bradley Stories from “Hate” volume III


By Peter Bagge with Joanne Bagge (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-745-1

Peter Bagge is best regarded these days as a fiery, cauldron-mouthed, superbly acerbic and well-established award-winning cartoonist, animator and musician, responsible for incredibly addictive, sharply satirical strips examining contemporary American life, through a small but memorable cast of sharply defined characters compellingly reflecting his views.

Born in Peekskill, Westchester County, New York in December 1957, he was one of four kids in a ferociously Catholic military family. Like esteemed colleague Robert Crumb a generation earlier, Bagge escaped that emotionally toxic, fight-filled environment as soon as possible, moving to New York City in the mid-1970s to study at the celebrated School of Visual Arts.

He soon dropped out and began working in the vibrant alternative publishing field, producing strips and panels for Punk Magazine, Screw, High Times, East Village Eye, World War Three and others.

Meeting like-minded artists he began self- and co-publishing comics, and when Crumb saw copies of Comical Funnies (produced with new chum John Holstrom in 1981 and the birthplace of the unsavoury star of this collection), Bagge was offered space in and eventually the Editorship of the seminal commix magazine Weirdo in 1983.

He augmented his 3-year tenure there with various paying gigs at Screw, Swank, Video X, Video Games Magazine, The Rocket, Bad News and elsewhere.

In 1984 Bagge relocated to Seattle, Washington State and began his association with alternative/Independent publisher Fantagraphics. The following year his spectacularly idiosyncratic cartoon magazine Neat Stuff launched as a thrice-yearly vehicle of outrageous personal expression and societal observation.

His stark, manic, topically surreal strips, starring old creations like Studs Kirby, Junior, Girly Girl and quintessential ineffectual rebel Buddy Bradley swiftly turned the cartoonist into a darling of the emerging West Coast Grunge scene, and before too long Neat Stuff and its successor Hate made Bagge a household name… at least in more progressive households…

As the 90’s became the next century, Bagge’s quasi-autobiographical Buddy starred in a succession of titles and strips (collected in Buddy Does Seattle and Buddy Does New Jersey); the cartoon character’s excitable existence mirroring typical life in that chaotic lost decade. In 2001 the author began releasing Hate Annuals wherein, amongst other strident graphic treats, middle-aging Buddy was seen having fully transitioned from angry teen slacker to working dad with a family to support…

This deliciously hilarious and painfully uncompromising full-colour collection gathers those traumatic middle years of Harold “Buddy” William Bradley Jr.– originally seen in Hate Annual #1-9, 2001-2011 – and opens with ‘Are You Nuts?’ as the irascible everyman is almost beguiled by crazy friend and occasional co-worker Jay Spano into buying a dilapidated aquabus and going into the guided-tour business in scenic New Jersey.

Naturally, his certifiably crazy wife Lisa has a few opinions on the matter…

A year later ‘A-Rod Goes to the Moon’ featured the catastrophic day when the Bradley women go for a “Ladies weekend” and leave Buddy in charge of not only his own baby boy, but sister Bab’s maladjusted brood. Soon however with half the kids in the neighbourhood tagging along, Buddy realises the depths of his folly and opts for a tried and true solution to his unwanted responsibilities…

‘The Domestication of Lisa Leavenworth-Bradley’ focuses on the little woman’s obsession with homemaking and search for a way to occupy her dull, dire days which translates to Buddy having to look for a better place for them to dwell, whilst in ‘Buddy Bradley gets a “Real” Job’ the old collectibles shop gets so stale that our hero takes gainful employment as a UPS delivery man.

However the shocking scams and appalling attitudes of his fellow honest workers soon drive him back to the relatively honourable profession of trading in junk, nostalgia and dreams…

‘Fuddy Duddy Buddy’ saw a drastic change in the visual aspect of the family man as, after a medical scare, he shaved his head, began sporting an eye-patch and took to wearing a naval captain’s cap. He also made a move to the nastier part of Jersey to fulfil his lifelong dream of running a rubbish dump…

With Lisa and toddler Harold safely if reluctantly ensconced in the big house attached to the tip, ‘Skeletons in the Closet’ then focuses on Buddy and Jay’s shift into the surprisingly lucrative scrap metal business, and the resurfacing of the most unsavoury of Buddy’s siblings and their childhood hoodlum friends. It seems folks are asking unwelcome questions about old Stinky Brown (a pal of Buddy’s who disappeared years ago), prompting gun-nut brother Butch Bradley and his cronies to move the body… but only finding that someone had already taken it…

‘The Future’s in Scrap!’ surprisingly finds Buddy and Jay prosperous if shabby partners in an exponentially expanding business, whilst ‘Lisa Leavenworth-Bradley Discovers her Creative Outlet’ details how the bored mother seeks out a fresh hobby and new friends only to finds herself embarrassingly embroiled in an all-girl band with strip club ambitions…

With things looking pretty sweet and stable in ‘Heaven’, the abrasive, raucous comedy takes a darkly observational turn in ‘Hell’ when Lisa drags the family back to Seattle to meet her ferociously religious mom and obnoxious dad.

It transpires that the parents she despises are both in dire health and legal straits and, after meeting her creepy fundamentalist foster brother and sex offender cousin, Buddy realises why his wife became the neurotic mess she is.

When Buddy and Harold return to the East Coast Lisa isn’t with them…

Everything wraps up without really ending in ‘Fuck it’ as, whilst Lisa struggles to cope with her folks’ decline in Seattle, back in the Garden State the man and his boy make big dramatic and definitely felonious changes to their lives…

Just like the eponymous star character, the hopefully still unfolding story of Buddy Bradley has slowly matured from razor-edged, broadly baroque, comedically clamorous observations and youthful rants into sublimely evocatively enticing treatises on getting by and getting older, although the deliciously fluid drawings and captivating cartoon storytelling remains as fresh and innovative as ever.

Bagge has always been about skewering stupidity, spotlighting pomposity and generally exposing the day-to-day aggravations and institutionalized insanities of modern life, but the strips in Buddy Buys a Dump also offer a beguiling view of passion becoming, if not wisdom, certainly shrewd appreciation of the unchanging verities of life: a treat no cartoon-coveting, laughter-loving rebel should miss…
© 2013 Peter Bagge. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Dirty Pair: Biohazards


By Toren Smith & Adam Warren (Eclipse Books)
ISBN: 1-56060-008-X (softcover), 1-56060-007-1 (hb), 1-900097-04-4 (UK edition)

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a genuine international collaboration that merged the best of Japanese and American sensibilities to create something genuinely appealing and tremendously fun.

In a fast and furious future of 2141AD, intergalactic proliferation of human civilisation has led to a monumental bureaucracy, greater corruption and more deadly criminals preying upon the citizens of the United Galactica.

Thus the constant need for extra-special Trouble Consultants: pan-planetary private paramilitary police employed by the 3WA (or Worlds Welfare Work Association) to maintain order in hotspots across the sort-of civilised universe…

Kei and Yuri are team #234, officially designated “The Lovely Angels” after their sleek and efficient starship. They are lethal, capable and infallible. Whenever they are deployed, they strike fast and hard and never fail…

…Although the collateral damage they propagate is completely unimaginable and usually causes client worlds to regret ever asking for their aid in the first place….

Much to the crisis agents’ disgust and chagrin, the universe knows them best as The Dirty Pair and planetary authorities have to be in the most appalling straits to let them help…

The concept was conceived for light novels by Japanese author Haruka Takachiho (Crusher Joe) in 1985 and quickly made the jump to TV, movie and OVA anime, but there was no comics/manga iteration (until over a decade later), inspiring Adam Warren and Toren Smith of Manga translation company Studio Proteus to approach independent publisher Eclipse Comics with an idea for a comicbook miniseries…

The result was Biohazards; 4 issues (December 1988 to April 1989)of licensed light-hearted, manic murder and monstrous mayhem which was then swiftly collected in a brash and breezy graphic album. The many reprintings from the franchise’s successors Dark Horse in the USA and Manga Books in the UK heralded a blistering run of wry and raucous adventures that still read as well today as they did when the Japanese comics experience was seen as a rare, quaint and exotic oddity…

In ‘Biohazard’ the deadly babes are going about their lawful but excessively violent business – subsequently and of course unintentionally devastating a colossal space station and killing fifty civilians – when a call comes from Alex Goldin, Security Director of corporate paradise Pacifica.

He has a thorny problem to manage: a brutally efficient theft of personality-preserving bio-construct Brainchips and tissues samples, plus the loss of a full-grown clone, is only the latest skirmish between rival bioengineering industrialists Kelvin O’Donnell and Abraham Streib.

The escalating battle between magnates too powerful to censure compels the obsequious and duplicitous Goldin to tread softly. Both men are massive wealth-creators: master-makers of bio-weapons, body augmentations and innovative medicines, but he still doesn’t want anything incurable or unkillable loose on his streets if their economic struggle continues.

The organo-industrialists are both experts in skirting what rules and regulations exist and officially test their wares on their private manufacturing moons but you never know…

The situation is particularly tenuous at present because O’Donnell, thanks to the unfortunate lab accident, is a space-chipmunk.

…Or rather the brainchip encoding his personality currently resides in a Whelan’s Pseudo-Fuzzy in the possession by Streib. When cyborg chief enforcer M97 destroyed O’Donnell’s almost matured Adonis-like new body in the raid, the triumphant genegineer couldn’t resist an opportunity to gloat. After all, with no spare chips, no proper body to put them in and O’Donnell on a leash, surely Streib has finally won…

Triumphant Streib is actually no better off. After similar bioagent “misfortunes” over the years of their rivalry, his organic head is now stuck on a robot body whilst his organics are so messed up he can’t be cloned or brainchipped.

Tracking O’Donnell’s chip to Streib’s private estate, Goldin has called on 3WA and is now stuck with Kei and Yuri. In the final assessment he needs someone from outside the system to rescue O’Donnell’s brainchip and genetic material from Streib without starting a horrific WMD war that will end life on Pacifica…

What could possibly go wrong?

With their enigmatic, electronics-warping alien super-cat Mughi the girls easily infiltrate the vast compound just in time to find Streib employing horrific techno-organic warbeasts to hunt O’Donnell.

Employing the catastrophic violence they are renowned for, the Dirty Pair easily lay waste to the human soldiers and rapacious mechanoids, but rather than turn the little Fuzzy over to Goldin they are cajoled and are convinced by the little cutie to take him to his own lab where he has himself transferred into one of his own trademarked warbeasts.

And up until then the case had been practically catastrophe-free…

‘Complications’ occur when Kei sees the body O’Donnell will eventually return to and gets all girly-fluttery and romantically entangled; allowing herself to be convinced that they should take Streib down for good.

It’s not hard to get Yuri to agree and soon Lovely Angels and wrathful warbeast are breaking into Streib’s main lab citadel.

As the girls convincingly crush all resistance O’Donnell discovers a deliciously illegal bioagent weapon which will prove his rival’s downfall – even in Pacifica’s courts – and asks Yuri to hold onto it as they escape, but in the resultant firefight the canister is breached and she is doused in something very nasty…

Luckily, rather than a disease or toxin it’s “only” a chemical to enhance aggression and violence and ‘Outbreak’ finds Yuri descending into a berserker mode even more dangerous than her regular state; ruthlessly efficient and wildly careless of consequences. Manically outfighting the army and air force despatched to stop them, she and the astounded Kei and O’Donnell soon completely destroy a major population centre before escaping M97 and his fanatically pursuing cohorts…

With Yuri fully recovered from the combat craziness, the Angels decide to take the battle to the arrogantly gloating and seemingly unimpeachable Streib, infiltrating his industrial moon Telek and ultimately reducing it to slag and space dust and free-floating bio-bombs in their own inimitable style.

However there are two more surprises in store: a rather predictable last stab from the stylishly indefatigable M97 and a more personal heartbreak bombshell for Kei once Goldin gets his hands on O’Donnell…

Both incredibly information-dense and astonishingly action-packed, this cool, light-hearted cyber-punk space opera romp is a solidly satisfying slice of Sci Fi magic that will delight all fans of tech-heavy blockbusters, and the book comes with an afterword by co-author Toren Smith – heavily illustrated with Adam Warren sketches – detailing the love of hard science and social extrapolation which flavoured and textured the creators’ trans-Pacific interpretation of Haruka Takachiho’s concept.

The digest-sized (210 x 150mm) UK edition has the tag line “in the tradition of Red Dwarf” and that assessment is not a million miles from the truth, as long as you factor in sexy death-dealing ingénues, wry socio-political commentary, very skimpy costumes and oodles of cartoon carnage.

Fun and frolics future-style: you know you want it…

The Dirty Pair © 1989, 1994 Haruka Takachiho. English language version © 1989, 1994 Adam Warren and Studio Proteus. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Hilarious Consequences


By Babak Ganjei (Records Records Records Books)
ISBN: 978-0-9566330-0-2

When I was kid comics weren’t cool and were all a bit the same. You couldn’t find them in most shops and once you got a bit older, you read them from the camouflaging concealment of a large book – or possibly a smutty magazine – so your mates wouldn’t laugh at you.

Now there are strips and graphic novels everywhere, nobody under 90 bats an eye at adults scoping out picture stories and – most importantly – the range, variety and sheer quality of material available today is absolutely staggering.

A wonderful Case In Point is this delightfully enthralling slice of whimsical urban documentary by Babak Ganjei, published by Records Records Records Books.

Hilarious Consequences lovingly details in joyously crushing detail the sad sack saga of an agonisingly self-excoriating, self-effacing, self-proclaimed middle-aging loser who just can’t seem to get his life together…

Babak is a not-at-all successful musician in London. He has a kid, no career, no money and his hair is falling out – which seems to be the most worrisome of his many woes and worries. Still, what can you do, huh?

With nothing better in his future he decides to make a comic strip of his life and that’s also part of the story and another eventual hassle…

We pick up the threads of a fraying life in ‘The Chinese Herbalist’ as the shaggy shambler opts to try alternative medicine to solve his depreciating barnet problem. He feels uncomfortable doing it, unsure it’s working and is unable to pay, but is no match for the pushy purveyors who offer him reasonable-sounding advice and hire purchase terms. He trundles off with assorted unsavoury teas and soups that make his next few days a toxic misery…

His angst levels increase when he reluctantly agrees to go to ‘The Fancy Dress Party’, but just can’t get as invested as his girlfriend Ellie. The booze helps but when he sees a pig-masked person chatting her up, his head – still fiercely shedding follicles – goes to a bad place…

‘Another Morning’ and in the shower there are fresh horrors associated with getting old, exacerbated later when Babak is cajoled into performing at a local acoustic night by Dog, an ambitious kid with a gleaming transcendent mop of healthy hair. There’s no pay but Dog promises really excellent pizza…

Always strapped for cash Babak attends ‘The Interview’ and somehow gets a part-time job at a pub. It’s okay, but the other bar staff think he’s so very old.

He’s thirty…

Shorter moments reveal the more gloomy aspects of ‘The Creative Process’, ‘Drinks’, ‘The Call’ and a ‘Grim Notion’ before Ellie and his son accidentally create ‘Glitter Slugs’ whilst making card presents, leading to a surreal ‘Lynchian Insert’ before a return to the pub proves ‘Tough Work’ can be ameliorated by the right drugs…

After a diversion to ponder ‘Animal Work’, ‘Bad News and Thinkings’ finds our zero compelled to somehow scrape together £300 a week and regretting his childhood educational choices after which a ‘Kaufman-Esque’ confrontation leads to quite understandable ‘Panic’…

Then, after a relatively calming ‘Family Hour’ it’s off to the pub and an epic ‘Work Party’ which reveals the problems ineffectual blokes blessed with bushy beards can encounter when trying to snort lines of coke, before things get strange ‘Conversing’ with a homeless guy. And then the slugs return in ‘New Beginnings’…

A ‘Near Death Experience’ leads to a half-hearted ‘Work Out’ attempt, but jogging and newspaper headlines result in parental ‘Sadness’ and more self-doubt which even a gallery-hopping ‘Art Trip’ can’t fix.

Conceptual walls start to crack as cartooning diarist Babak suffers ‘Writers Block’ which might be why the slugs slurp back in ‘Them Again’ after which Ellie and the boy come home in ‘They’re Back’…

That promised acoustic set is looming in ‘Please’ whilst an unsavoury encounter with the still unpaid Herbalist prompts some uncomfortable ‘Advice’ even as the little lad shows off his ‘Interests’ just before the artist expresses his ‘Issues’ with ‘The Big Show’.

Things go badly for the slugs in ‘Blackout’ but when the pizza arrives at least Babak feels a modicum of satisfaction ‘And Then Happiness’…

There’s a comic aside to wrap thing up with an ‘Epilogue’…

Episodic but utterly appealing, these dire and dolorous everyday antics of a (very) humble contemporary Eeyore offer a gentle, meandering and endearingly self-deprecating ramble through modern life. There’s even a free soundtrack CD that comes with this extremely readable fun feast, featuring: Dignan Porch, Singing Adams, The Bronsteins, Macks Faulkron, Wonderswan, Round Ron Virgin, Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards, Cheatahs, Big Deal, Wet Paint, and Matthew C.H. Tong to sweeten the deal and further facilitate knowing acquiescence…

Hilarious Consequences is the sort of book that becomes a cult hit TV series and certainly doesn’t fail to beguile and bemuse as a cartoon history.

Track it down and feel part of something too big to cope with…
© 2010 Babak Ganjei. © & ℗ Records Records Records Books.

Posted on

My Little Monster volume 1


By Robico translated by Joshua Weeks (Kodansha Comics USA)
ISBN: 978-1-61262-597-3

Solidly appealing to lovers of traditional  Shōjo (“girls’ comics”) comes a grand and sassy tale of Right Girl, Right Time, Wrong Boy from enigmatic mangaka Robico, dealing with the thorny topic of wasteful distractions at school…

Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun or ‘The Monster Sitting Beside Me’ debuted in Dessert Magazine in 2008 with the first volume of a dozen collections appearing a year later. The serial ran until June 2013 and spawned a highly successful anime adaptation.

Shizuku Mizutani is a schoolgirl determined to succeed. Only one person has ever gotten higher grades than her throughout her entire scholastic career – and she’s still burned up about it – but otherwise she’s solidly – comfortably – set her sights on exceptional achievement and a great job and nothing’s going to force her off her well-planned, carefully projected course.

Her teen travails begin in ‘My Classmate Yoshida-kun’ as she explains how she’s never seen the boy who sits next to her. He got into a fight on his first day and hasn’t come to school since. That was three years ago.

Now for some incomprehensible reason the ideal student is stuck delivering printouts to the epic absconder as a “favour” (bribe) to teacher Saeko-Sensei. She finds him in the skeevy games arcade where he hangs out. Shizuku wasn’t expecting much, but Haru Yoshida fails to live up to even those low expectations.

He’s a veritable wild boy: manic, ill-mannered, actively extremely rude and his associates are little better than thugs and gangsters.

He even attacks her, accusing her of spying on him.

All the school rumours must be true; how he hospitalised three upperclassmen and was suspended…

The ice broken, Saeko then pushes her star student to lure the boy back to school (his suspension being long expired) but when he starts regularly attending tongues start wagging. He then arbitrarily decides they’re friends and begins to follow Shizuku everywhere…

She’s never been more angry or frustrated. He’s always there, distracting her, getting in the way of her future. She can’t stop thinking about him…

Following a brace of humorous of mini-strips ‘I was Running as Fast as I Could!’ and ‘Spot-Billed Duck’ the School Daze resume with ‘I Don’t Hate You’ as the apparently imprinted malcontent begins appearing everywhere she goes and captivatingly showing his softer, fragile side.

Unfortunately he’s painfully gullible and falls for many embarrassing pranks from his classmates which he responds to with devastating violence. Soon he has gained an irresistibly dangerous reputation…

He also seems to start noticing other girls, but why should Shizuku care about that? She’s far more upset to learn that he was the student who beat her test scores and that even after three years of skipping education he’s probably still smarter than her…

And now for some reason she’s finding it impossible to bear down and study, the only thing she used to be good at…

And then Haru kisses her… but decides they can still be friends anyway…

After micro strips ‘Because She’s a Lady’ and ‘It’s Hard Not to Say It’, the main event starts again with ‘Weird’, wherein the wild boy starts displaying the attention span of a mayfly.

Adopting and then palming off a chicken on his newfound friends and tutoring vacuous Asako Natsune so she can avoid going to Afterschool Classes instead of partying are bad enough, but most significantly he utterly ignores the change in their own relationship, or even that they have one…

Two small interludes with ‘Natsume and Haru’ then lead into the final chapter as Shizuku is forced to admit to herself how much Haru has changed her life. However when she finally confesses just how much she likes the annoying, confusing oaf, all he can say in response is that she’s not a ‘Nuisance’…

To Be Continued…

Wrapping things up are two final cartoon vignettes ‘Just as Short’ and ‘That Guy’, plus a Comment from the author and a section of handy Translation notes.

Sweet, cruel and silly by turns, this is a delightful coming of age comedy, brimming with those crucial, critical moments that stay with you for decades after high school ends, but cleverly leavened with light charming characters and situations all superbly illustrated by a master of the genre.

Not everybody’s cup of tea but sheer poetry for those of us who remember love can – and should – be fun.
© 2009 Robico. English translation © 2014 Robico. All rights reserved.

This book is printed in ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.

Posted on

Zombre – a Borderline Press Undead Anthology


By various, edited by Will Vigar (Borderline Press)
ISBN: 978-0-9926972-2-8

Yes I know what you’re thinking: not more bloody zombies. Well, yes, but you’re right and you’re wrong…

In recent years the theme of voracious, flesh-eating undead horrors unceasingly shambling after the world’s remaining breathers has been transcendent in most areas of the entertainment arts (I don’t recall seeing an opera yet, but surely there’s one happening somewhere?) but as with every all-encompassing trope, there’s always room – and a sheer necessity – for a fresh take if you’ve got imagination, ingenuity and the stomach for it…

First in a proposed line of themed anthologies from new British publisher Borderline Press, Zombre offers just such a welcome reappraisal of the formula courtesy of a truly international gathering of quirkily independent creators.

In his introduction ‘Undead Letter Office’ Editor Will Vigar gives you fair warning of what’s in store after which the E.P. Rodway eases your passage into another world with ‘Lurch (A Poem)’ before the comicbook carnivores commence their danse macabre in a sweet succession of (mostly) monochrome misadventures…

Mal Earl strikes first with a wry and crafty dig at the modern world – and isn’t all horror fiction social commentary? – with ‘Battenburg’ wherein a highly motivated media lawyer tracks down the world’s first Zombie and offers him a deal…

Richard Worth & James Firkins then slip in reams of real world horror to their medical report on ‘The Importance of Correctly Identifying the Undead’, and ‘Imaginary Kingdom’ by Jay Eales & Krzysztof Ostrowski offers a savvy suggestion of how we’ll fight back once the Zombie Apocalypse occurs.

Kel Winser examines the dangers of the salacious, hedonistic club scene and reveals the gruesome consequences of contracting ‘Hepatitis Z’, after which Joanna Sanecka & Dennis Wojda steal the show with their smart and surreal paean to the restorative power of Jazz and especially ‘Charlie Parker’, and Nick O’Gorman concentrates on guilt and PTSD affecting former brain munchers after they are treated and become ‘The Cured’…

‘Post’ displays Nathan Castle’s visual dexterity in a wordless exercise in survival after Armageddon, whilst David Metcalfe-Carr offers a poignant vision of true love derailed and the solace of religion in ‘Old Bill’ after which madness reigns in the indescribably bizarre and delightfully surreal cartoon saga ‘Seth & Ghost Versus The Zombeasts’ by Jamie Lewis.

‘Live and Let Live’ by Matthew Smyth superbly describes a bad night for the living and unborn in Belfast before we head 60 odd million miles due up and deep into metaphysical country for a mindbending battle between a band of immortal space monks and ‘Nazi Zombies on Mars’ (Gord Drynan & Adam Steel), whilst ‘Long Overdue’ by Phil Buckenham, treads more plebeian paths in the sordid tale of a grasping landlord who pushed a romantic young man too far…

‘Lunchtime’ by Peter Clack hilariously details how the teachers at St. Gove’s Academy deal with new kid Otto (who’s a bit of a biter), whilst forlorn, hopeless tragedy tinges Baden James Mellonie & Richard Whitaker’s tale of a survivor who’s forced to stop being a ‘Family Man’, after which hilarious and outrageous satire (you might call it blasphemy) informs Nigel Lowry’s ‘So, This One Day in Judea’ as a resurrected messiah suggests to his disciples that he’s now a cool zombie…

Milõs Kûntz examines existential enigmas through combative stickmen zombies in ‘Zennui’, Mitz reveals the dangers of undead dinosaurs and the delights of the nattily nubile ‘Nursapocalypse’ and Andrew Cheverton beguilingly challenges the destructive allure of nostalgia and the meaning of Punch & Judy in ‘The End of the Pier Show’.

Si Spencer & Ash Fielder savagely serve up a dose of urban dissent when a bunch of ‘Zeddlers’ confront prejudice and media intolerance against them by holding a demo exposing “preferential treatment for the living”, Paul B. Rainey mixes genres to tell a knob joke about rebuilt homunculus ‘Dick Stein’ and Kim Winter expansively brings things to a close with a world-weary, sadly wistful argument for the monsters in ‘Belonging’…

With covers by Tom Box, Frontispieces by Sarah Hardy, pin-ups by Ramzi Musa, Kelvin Green & Buckenham and a copious biographical catalogue of creators, Zombre breathes new life into a wilting sub-genre, thanks largely to its inspirational use of small press, Indie and European stalwarts.

Smart, scary, sad, funny, thought-proving and sometimes just plain strange, this is a book that will amaze and delight casual horror fans and comics cognoscenti alike

Zombre © 2014 Borderline Press. All rights reserved. All individual stories and material © their respective creators.
Borderline Press Books are available from selected retail outlets or direct from http://borderline-press.com/Shop

Posted on

The Complete Accident Man


By Pat Mills, Tony Skinner, Martin Emond, Duke Mighten & John Erasmus (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-055-9

We have our share of true blue heroes in Britain, but what we really do best are rakish rogues and cast-iron bastards – both in dull old fact and the much safer realm of fiction.

A fair few of the comics kind have stemmed from the febrile mind of Pat Mills, a man whose singular vision has scarred many an impressionable reader’s psyche…

Now one of his most stylish and far-ranging creations – co-crafted with writing partner Tony Skinner – has been awarded some-long delayed and much-deserved star treatment in the form of a lavish oversized colour hardback compilation from Titan Comics.

In many ways Michael Fallon is a product of his times (the 1990s): a ruthless, flashy, grasping Yuppie who thinks he cares about nothing but his job, instant gratification and the gaudy in-your-face trappings of his success.

That’s unpleasant enough if the antagonist is a Banker, a Broker or Hedge Fund Manager, but Mike is a dedicated proud artisan. He makes human impediments go away – and always makes it look like mischance, not murder…

Accident Man debuted in short-lived, creator-owned British independent comic Toxic! (which ran for 31 full-colour issues between March and October 1991). Easily the most popular feature, he also starred in a reprint special – Apocalypse Presents: Accident Man – and in 1993 crossed The Pond for an all-new 3-part monochrome miniseries from American publisher Dark Horse Comics.

This chilling compendium commences with Mills’ Introduction ‘Rhubarb! Rhubarb! Rhubarb!’ describing the convoluted history of the character and teasingly discussing the still-not-made movie, before the cartoon carnage calamitously starts to unfold in the Martin Emond illustrated introductory saga (from Toxic! #1-6) wherein hubristic hitman Fallon explains and simultaneously demonstrates his particular skill-set whilst evoking the golden rules of the job “Never Get Angry. Never Get Involved. Never Get Caught”…

A successful – for which read undetectable – intervention usually fills him with PMT (Post Murder Tension) most successfully expunged through lavish spending and extreme gratuitous physical violence, but these days something’s not right.

The shallow Fashionista didn’t really care when his wife Jill left him to shack up with another woman and join those loony save-the-planet eco nuts in Women Against the Rape of the Planet, but for some strange reason he can’t stop thinking about her now that she’s been killed in a burglary…

He carries on arranging fatal improbabilities but the joie de vivre has gone, and when he finally works out that Jill’s break-in is the M.O. of fellow assassins Chris and Jim it sets him on a bizarre course that leads to an alliance with Hilary – the “Other Woman” – to take profitless vengeance on the corporate scum really responsible…

More or less his old self again Fallon returned in ‘Death Touch’ (Toxic! #10-16, illustrated by Duke Mighten), drowning in natty threads and conspicuous consumption whilst pursuing his craft and studying with a martial arts master who had promised to teach him the legendary art of killing with a time-delayed kung fu punch…

After scooping his fourth consecutive gong for Most Hits in a Year at the annual Golden Coffin Awards, he begins his next commission – a particularly nasty drug dealer with no respect for animals but a sick, devoted and unforgiving family- utterly unaware that his Sensei Sifu Lo has discovered his profession and deemed him unworthy…

John Erasmus took over the art for ‘The Messiah Sting’ (from Toxic! #17-24) as the woman who seduced Jill away cons the Accident Man into doing worse than murder to David Dake – the Junior Minister for the Environment… and for free!

Hilary is a fanatic in the service of WARP and has a baroque plan to punish the ostensibly “Green” Tory politician who actually protects animal torturers and destroys the countryside he’s supposed to be fighting for, but when Mike gets involved it soon devolves into an explosive confrontation with obnoxious American agents, hookers, rival hitmen, a burgeoning criminal turf war, kung fu killers, drug dealers and the destruction of scenic downtown Amsterdam.

And there’s even a sneaky glimpse at out antihero’s early days…

Iconoclastic Howard Chaykin created the risqué and raucous colour covers for the aforementioned Dark Horse miniseries and they seditiously precede the final saga in this magnificent murder file as Mike Fallon takes his particular brand of Olde Worlde charm across the pond – via Concorde, of course – for a job commissioned by a clandestine Government agency: the Special Assassinations Bureau (limned in stark monochrome by Mighten)…

In the Accident Man’s line of business it’s best to be adaptable and always assume everybody is a liar. After an unexpected and exotic liaison with CIA insider Mirror Morgan, Mike hits the Big Apple’s most outrageous sex club and learns his target is a corrupt Senator…

Arranging the improbable with his usual élan, Mike is only seconds away from unknowingly eradicating the chief of the CIA when he spots Mirror with his soon to be tragically deceased mark, and is forced to spectacularly avert his programmed mishap.

CIA boss John Archer is perfectly reasonable and understanding. He knows how easy it is to be duped in the murky world of espionage and international crime. He’s also happy to let Mike go… but only after the misfortune magnate works his magic on the untouchable Capo di Tutti Capo of the Mafia…

And naturally it’s another bloody freebie…

The glitzy sex and shocking violence mounts exponentially as Fallon infiltrates the Mob, winning more enemies than friends along the grisly way, and even after that job’s sorted he still has a bone to pick with the far-from-fair Broker from SAB…

Overwhelmingly violent, manically inventive and ridiculously addictive, this is a lost gem of anarchic, swingeing satire from Mills and Co, and well worthy of this splendid definitive collection. Also included here is a copious Accident Man Sketchbook section featuring cover roughs, page layouts and character designs as well as the now obligatory lowdown on the creative Usual Suspects.

Highly sexed, infallibly capable and ruthless style obsessed, the flashily fashionable assassin is James Bond on the wrong side – his own – and delivers action, intrigue and bold, black humour in astounding amounts…

Don’t leave anything to chance: check him out…
Accident Man is ™ & © 2014 Pat Mills and Tony Skinner. Accident Man Book One © 2014 Pat Mills, Tony Skinner & Martin Emond. Accident Man Death Touch © 2014 Pat Mills, Tony Skinner & Duke Mighten. Accident Man Book Three © 2014 Pat Mills, Tony Skinner & John Erasmus. Accident Man (Dark Horse) Pat Mills, Tony Skinner & Duke Mighten.

Posted on

Zombies Can’t Swim


By Kim Herbst (Borderline Press)
ISBN: 978-0-99269-726-6

It’s pretty certain now that we can’t escape the oncoming Zombie Apocalypse, since dealing with the shambling horrors has even been added to the “What Would You Do…?” topic list of idle pub chatter and polite dinner party conversation, right below “… if you had a million dollars?” and “…if you had a month to live” but still above “…if you were irresistible to the opposite sex?”…

Now British publishing house Borderline Press has taken those idle musings and given them concrete form in a deliciously wry and whimsical horror fantasy that is sublimely enchanting and gloriously engaging.

Kim Herbst was born in Taipei and taught to toddle in Tokyo before learning how to slaughter the Undead growing up tough in New Jersey.

After graduating the Illustration course at the Maryland Institute College of Art she moved to San Francisco and pursued a commercial art career, with various illustrations in children’s educational books, magazines like GamesTM and Rhode Island Monthly and covers for Boom! Studios, all whilst pursuing the day-job drawing for mobile games company Juicebox Games.

Her first full comics extravaganza, Zombies Can’t Swim developed out of a casual conversation with her fiancé whilst sitting on a hill in idyllic rural Japan, and that’s where this mordantly gripping, breakneck-paced visualisation of that idle chat begins as big hulking him and cute little her are compelled to continue their debate on the run.

That’s because assorted apparitions and rampaging reanimated revenants are trying to make the couple the next appetiser in an orgy of unending consumption…

In a country where guns are scarce, motor cars can be stolen on every street corner and fantastically lethal exotic medieval weaponry can be found in any museum, the fantasy within a fantasy follows our philosophical debaters in a gruesomely gory two-player re-enactment of every Walking Dead flick you seen in the last decade as the famished Dead keep Walking towards them and the young romantics make their way towards some sort of safe haven.

Amidst frantic combat, abortive rescues, crashed copters and incipient immolation the frantic morsels make a decision. Japan is an island so if they head for the harbour and steal a boat they’ll be safe.

After all everybody knows Zombies Can’t Swim…

This wild and witty two colour tome is a brief and vivid vignette all horror fans will adore: captivating cathartic, violently vicarious fun against a foe everybody knows it’s okay to kill (kill again? Put an end to? Render finally harmless?) but sharp enough to blur the lines between fearful frenzy and frantic frolic.

© Kim Herbst 2014.
Borderline Press Books are available from selected retail outlets or direct from http://borderline-press.com/Shop

Posted on

Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers volumes 1 & 2


By Maree & J.A.H.N.
ISBNs: 978-1-4947-1244-0 & 978-1-4947-2240-1

In Britain we have a glorious tradition of Gentlemanly Amateur Excellence. In the Good Old Days we decried crass commercial professionalism in favour of gifted tryers: Scientists, Inventors, Sportsmen – even colonialists and missionaries – all those who in their time eschewed tawdry lucre, hefty development budgets and “Practicing Beforehand” (“…which ruins the fun”) in favour of just getting on with it and pluckily “Having-a-Bash”.

And a surprising number of those local heroes soared, like Charles Darwin, Robert Boyle or Henry Fox Talbot, and the tradition continues to this day like Trevor Baylis (inventor of the clockwork radio) and has spread to other areas of endeavour such as Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards or our many self-publishing stars like Eddie Campbell or John Maybury.

With such antecedents it especially generates a manly pang of pride in me when that “Can-Do Spirit” results in good comics…

So despite both creative participants here having non-resident status I’m doing them the honour of according them Notional Nationality status for the duration of this review – or as long as they can handle it…

Candidly drawing on Britain’s the venerable tradition of appalling bad-taste, surreal zaniness and shameless, protracted double entendres, Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers takes the topical taste for Zombie Apocalypse fiction and convincingly tweaks, twists and tortures (not to mention folds, spindles and mutilates) the genre and zeitgeist with wit, remorseless, sarcastic invention and cynical, surreal socio-political shots to the ‘nads.

The physical editions (the tomes are as available as Kindle editions and in other formats) are big black-&-white paperback tomes (280 x 207mm) stuffed with sly, wry innuendo and, whilst artist J.A.H.N. might have benefited from better reference material and more drawing time in places, author Maree’s trenchant pacing and remorseless parody riffs carry the tale along with frantic, furious, madcap pace…

The end of everything begins in volume 1: The Thin Goo Line where, in a faraway dimension, the world has collapsed into disaster. On this parallel Earth, vain and foolish geneticists meddled with male mating urges and accidentally spawned a virus which turned men into unthinking, out-of-control anally-fixated undead rapists. Of course, it killed them first…

In the wink of an eye civilisation fell, but one scientist built a trans-dimensional portal, intending to escape, only to fall foul of the rectal Armageddon at the very last minute and on landing transformed in another London as a fully-fledged trousers-down crusty carrier…

In the essentially Third World London Borough of Sutton, the brain-dead and preternaturally horny Apocalypse-beast arrives and immediately assaults an unwary Irishman outside a local hostelry.

Instantly infected, the traumatised Son of Erin is comforted by Basil, Rupert and Mandingo (an out-&-proud Gay Black Police Detective); passing homosexual partygoers who take pity on the stunned and shell-shocked (and dying/mutating) Kerryman. Feeling very out of sorts he goes with them for a medicinal drink or ten at their favourite night-spot…

The taint he carries works with terrifying rapidity and within hours the first victim has himself infected hundreds of eager and willing fun-seekers at the wild and woolly club…

Meanwhile his trans-dimensional transgressor has continued its own mindless rampage, only to be arrested by unbelieving coppers who catch him/it having his way with a doubled-over store mannequin. The green and mouldy incoherent invader is thrown into a cell and largely forgotten as reports rapidly come in concerning a rash of unwholesome acts in the streets…

At Sutton police station “old school copper” (for which read brutal, bigoted, bullying undiagnosed psychopath) Inspector Jake hears of the plague of Sodomy and sends his boys out to crush it, but his Manor is not a happy, rich, fashionable borough like utopian paradisiacal neighbour Croydon and he expects terrific resistance from the surly, unruly multi-cultural hoi-polloi who dwell there…

People like class-traitor Julie, a blue-blooded lass and latter-day chav, married to staunch socialist-liberal ex-aristocrat Dale, wine critic for the Workers Revolution newspaper.

She has unspecified connections to the highest in the land but prefers to slum it with her commie-pinko chums, or ultra-extreme Politically Correct roving reporter Bunting Bell of the BBC.

Jake almost prefers the deranged, greedy fundamentalist cant of Pox News journo P. Chariti, eagerly spreading panic around the globe by perpetually broadcasting scenes of what she is sure is the biblical End of Days.

Julie’s first clash with the Priapic perambulators forces her to reveal her deadly proficiency in ninja fighting arts and, barely escaping the shamblers, she dashes home to save her man from another clutch of zombies even as Inspector Jake’s attempts to reclaim his streets goes very badly wrong and his diminished force of rozzers retreats back behind the firmly clenched doors of the police station.…

With the crisis growing and an exponentially growing wave of bumbies roaming the streets, Mayor Hussein broadcasts a call for all uninfected residents – whatever their gender, race or orientation – to take refuge at the huge and sturdy Grand Mosque on Winnie Street and Jake and his men make a desperate dash to comply.

A couple of social classes away at 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister David Cameroon, Chancellor Assbourn and Homely Secretary Terry Pays are aroused from their posh-boy (and girl) games and appraised of the growing disaster somewhere in one of the poor bits of town…

As the situation worsens the triumvirate of Toffs endure a bollocking in Parliament, and wishy-washy Cameroon decides that they need to be seen doing something. However their publicity-junket to the front lines goes horrifically wrong when their helicopter goes down in hostile territory.

Trapped in Sutton and surrounded by insatiable undead rear-enders, Pays is beginning to regret her obsessive purge of police numbers when the political poltroons are surprisingly saved by turban-wearing, sword-wielding worshippers from the Mosque.

Temporarily secure behind its stout walls, they are soon joined by infamous police-hating lawyers Micky Manksfield and Inman Khant who have rushed to Sutton to make sure the rampaging monsters are not brutalised and framed by the cops…

With the country’s governors lost, Parliament is in uproar and ripe for takeover. The blow comes when Britain’s real masters brutally emerge from their shadows and cow the pewling Parliamentarians at the point of their guns.

The scraggy, reanimated remains of Dorris Stokes, Mary Whitehouse, Claire Rayner and Fanny Craddock are scary enough, but when their squad leader exposes herself as the terrifying Maggie T, the Mother of all Parliaments rocks with horror, shock and – from the simpering mummies-boys of the Tory back-benches – fawning adoration and relief…

At the Winnie Street Mosque, the deflated, unsuspectingly ousted government’s very worst enemy has just fought his way through the anarchy-riven borough to join the unsullied survivors, but Radical Scots Islamist Georgy Goaway and his Unregulated Mini Scab Taliban are not there to save their scalps: quite the opposite in fact…

And back in Proper London, Maggie is back to steer the country through its greatest crisis, but as dawn breaks over Sutton nobody is aware that the Ironed Lady is herself in the clutches of a far darker mistress…

The lewd lunacy escalates into even crazier political capital and horrific hoots in the concluding volume – Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers 2: In Sutton, No-One Can Hear You Cream – with Jake deploying the nauseating Police Community Support Officers whilst Maggie activates the Metropolitan Police’s long-hidden, obscenely secret doomsday weapon (the last working member of the notorious Special Patrol Group, or Bob as likes to be called) before, in the dead zone, Julie reveals her own clandestine links to Britain’s real rulers and the zombie bottom-feeders try to break out of Sutton and spread their atrocious acts into Croydon and other, lesser realms…

Appallingly bad-taste, brutally non-PC, simultaneously fancifully macabre and punishingly politically astute, this extremely funny story takes on a far more powerful significance if you actually live in or around London.

Although drenched in local colour gone wild and geographical in-jokery of a highly refined kind, this is a tale totally unfettered by the strictures of good taste: sardonically blessed with chapter headings such as ‘Play Fisty For Me’, ‘The Evil Head’ and ‘The Porking Dead’ (apparently some of these are under revision so I’ve spitefully chosen not to share them you: get your own copies) whilst always carefully balancing political pokes with blisteringly vulgar sallies at the insanity of modern life.

Shamefully, laugh-out-loud, spit-take, blasting-coffee-from-your-nose funny and happily reminiscent of Robert Rankin’s wonderful Brentford Triangle novels (but with pictures and many, many more bottoms) and as addictively addled as Whoops Apocalypse (Andrew Marshall & David Renwick’s sublime satirical TV show, not the bowdlerised movie adaptation), Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers is the kind of story only certain people will want – or be able – to read, so I hope you’re one of us and not one of them…

It doesn’t say so but I’m going to assume © 2013 Maree & J.A.H.N. or maybe © 2013 Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers. All rights reserved in either case.