Category: Humour

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The Phoenix Presents… Bunny vs. Monkey Book Two


By Jamie Smart (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-47-6

In January 2012 Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched a weekly comics anthology for girls and boys which revelled in reviving the grand old days of British picture-story entertainment intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in style and content.

Each issue offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material: a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy. Since its premiere, The Phoenix has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who really count – the totally engaged kids and parents who read it…

Inevitably the publishers have branched out into a wonderful line of superbly engaging graphic novel compilations, the latest of which is a second engagement in the dread conflict gripping a once-chummy woodland waif and interloping, grandeur-obsessive simian…

Concocted with gleefully gentle mania by Jamie Smart (Fish Head Steve!), Bunny vs. Monkey has been a fixture in The Phoenix from the first issue: a madcap duel of animal arch-enemies set amidst an idyllic arcadia which is a more-or-less ordinary English Wood.

With precious little unnecessary build-up The Phoenix Presents… Bunny vs. Monkey volume 2 continues where its predecessor left off, detailing the ongoing war of wits and wonder-weapons spread over a year in the country. The obnoxious anthropoid intruder was originally the subject of a disastrous space shot. Having crash-landed in Crinkle Woods – a scant few miles from his lift-off site – he now believes himself the rightful owner of a strange new world, whereas sensible, genteel, contemplative Bunny considers the idiot ape a obnoxious, noise-loving, chaos-creating troublemaker…

With battle reports spanning July to December hostilities recommence as Monkey and his devious ally Skunky (a brilliant inventor with a bombastic line in animal-inspired atrocity weapons and a secret agenda of his own) fail to make proper use of ‘The Wish Cannon!’ The reality-warping gun could change the world but also makes really good cakes…

A much better terror-tool is colossally ravening robot ‘Octo-blivion!’ which ruins Bunny’s boating afternoon, but sadly the tentacled doom-toy becomes an irresistible object of amorous intent for irrepressible cyber crocodile Metal Steve before it can complete its nefarious machinations…

A hot day inspires Monkey to demand bonkers boffin Skunky whip up some volcanoes but their ‘Journey to the Centre of the Eurg-th!’ only uncovers chilly regions and crazily cool creatures before the scene shifts to those not-so-smart but astonishingly innocent bystanders Pig and Weenie Squirrel.

When their afternoon playing with crayons results in a lovely drawing of a crown, soon everybody is bowing down and obeying ‘King Pig’ after which surly radical environmentalist and possessor of a big, bushy tail and French accent ‘Fantastique Le Fox!’ finds time to share his incredible origin stories with the dumbfounded woodland denizens. Yes that’s right: stories, Plural…

Hyperkinetic carnage is the order of the day when a cute little dickens turns up in spiffy running-toy ‘Hamsterball 3000!’, providing Skunky with the perfect power source for his latest devastating mechanical marauder: the horrendous Hamster Mobile…

Puns, peril and a stinging hidden moral inform proceedings when all the animals celebrate ‘Bee-Day!’ whilst a happily brain-battered, bewildered former stuntman turns into a tormented super-genius when he accidentally falls under the influence of Skunky’s Smarty Helmet in ‘Action Beever2‘. Happily for everyone, before it wears off the increased cognition – in conjunction with a handy lemon puff – demolish an unleashed Doomsday Device which might just have ended everything…

From September onwards the stories drop to two pages a pop and ‘Gone with the Wind!’ finds Pig and Weenie making trouble with their windsurfing cart after which ‘I, Robot Crocodile!’ sees Metal Steve on a destructive rampage until Bunny and Monkey team up to show the steel berserker the simple joys of dance…

‘There’s a Moose Loose!’ has Skunky back on bad form and trying to fool his enemies with a vast Trojan Elk before Monkey spoils everyone’s September by going big after being introduced to a sweet childhood game in ‘Conkers Bonkers!’ and – with the Beaver bedridden – the perfidious pair of animal evildoers employ the rather dim ‘Action Pig!’ to test pilot their devilish Dragonfly 5000. Such a bad idea…

Tidy-minded Bunny has no hope of sweeping up all autumn’s golden detritus in ‘Leaf it Alone!’ once friends and enemies start helping and an extended sub-plot opens in ‘Duck Race!’ as impetuous Monkey pries into Skunky’s most deadly and diabolical secret behind a locked door. In a frantic attempt to deflect attention, the smelly scientist then unleashes the colossal Lord Quack-Quack!

The saga sequels in a surprisingly downbeat follow-up as Bunny, Pig and Weenie dare the fiend’s lair to check out ‘Door B’ before scheduled insanity resumes as ‘Hypno-Monkey!’ finds the hirsute horror misusing a memory ray and briefly assuming godlike power…

Who doesn’t like igniting marshmallows and telling scary stories around a campfire? Not Bunny, Pig and Weenie after hearing the tale of ‘Monster Pants!’ after which the local idiots decide to join Monkey’s gang in ‘Bad Influence!’

The monkey is no role model – except perhaps for painful ineptitude – as seen in ‘Lost in the Snow!’ but the winter fun expands to encompass everyone when Skunky’s ‘Chemical X!’ unleashes a cold tidal wave of blancmange leading to seasonal silliness as ‘The Small Matter of the End of the World!’ reveals time-travelling madness as the true story of the demise of the Doomsday Device is finally exposed in an extra-length yarn.

Everything changes when ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Monkey!’ sees peace and goodwill grip the woods – or perhaps it’s just that the simian seditionist has gone missing? When the innocent inhabitants go looking for Monkey they find him far beyond the forest associating with strange two-legged beings, singing carols and swiping mince pies, but nobody realises just how dangerous the ‘Hyooomanz!’ can be as the year ends with plans found proclaiming the demolition of Crinkle Wood and the coming of a new motorway…

To Be Continued…

Endlessly inventive, sublimely funny and outrageously addictive, Bunny vs. Monkey is the kind of comic parents beg kids to read to them. Don’t miss out on the next big thing.
Text and illustrations © Jamie Smart 2015. All rights reserved.

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Snakepit Gets Old: Daily Diary Comics 2010-2012


By Ben Snakepit (Microcosm Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-62106-596-8

If you’ve ever made your own comics or art or music you probably know how addictive that act of creation can become. Pity then poor Ben Snakepit; a bass-playing DIY punk living in Austin, Texas…

He attended Virginia Commonwealth University as a graphic arts major and in 2000 after living his life for a bit began documenting his day. He has done so ever since, three panels per diem, rain or shine, in sickness or in health; immortalising his dire, dreary day-jobs, the bands he’s in and out of (Ghost Knife, Modok, Shit Creek, Shanghai River, J-Church, The Sword), his romantic life, meals, the war against expanding waistlines, sundry friendships, an apparent addiction to computer games, various Star Trek iterations and so many movies and comics. The irresistible making and selling and reading of funnybooks…

The journal cartoons are all delivered in a raw yet deliciously engaging, self-deprecating manner that is impossible to resist, and at the start of this collection he explains why, even though he swore to only draw the strip for ten years (beginning in the summer of 2000), he just can’t stop, before going on to delineate some of the most important moments of his life so far in a non-stop parade of funny, sad, sweet, pitiable and enviable inky snapshots…

Constantly decrying his ability to draw the simplest or most familiar things, he has shared his life in the strips (previously progressively gathered as The Snakepit Book, My Life in a Jugular Vein, Snakepit 2007, Snakepit 2008, Snakepit 2009 and the tome under review here).

As this sublimely readable tome proves, there are actually no unremarkable lives and Snakepit Gets Old is an experience celebrating simple happiness and everyday contentment which you won’t soon forget by a very special author who doesn’t know how to quit…

You can’t see it, but this volume includes a second invisible cover overprinted on the first and only to be seen by holding the book up to the light in a skewed manner. Cool…
He hasn’t said it but I’m guessing © 2015 Ben Snakepit.

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Green Manor volume 2: The Inconvenience of Being Dead


By Bodart & Vehlmann, translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook Expresso)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-64-9

The French are generally considered more passionate than us Brits and always eager to dole out grandiose appellations and epithets about creators, but they’re very seldom wrong in their acclamations. Writer Fabien Vehlmann was only born in 1972 yet his prodigious canon of work (from 1998 to the present) has earned him the soubriquet of “the Goscinny of the 21st Century”.

Vehlmann entered the world in Mont-de-Marsan and grew up in Savoie, studying business management before taking a job with a theatre group. In 1996, after entering a writing contest in Spirou, he caught the comics bug ands two years later published – with illustrative collaborator Denis Bodart – a quirky, mordantly dark and sophisticated portmanteau period crime comedy entitled Green Manor.

The blackly funny pastiche of Victoriana’s seamy underside appeared sporadically until 2005 (and was revived in 2011), whilst the author spread his wings with a swathe of other features such as Wondertown (with Benoît Feroumont) and hugely popular children’s thriller Seuls (with artist Bruno Gazzotti) before undertaking a high-profile stint on prestigious all-ages adventure strip Spirou et Fantasio.

Vehlmann continues to craft enticing, engaging tales for kids (Samedi et Dimanche) but is equally at home with more mature fare like Sept psychopathes (with Sean Phillips). For a while he even drew his own strip Bob le Cowboy…

Partner-in-perfidy on Green Manor Denis Bodart studied at the Saint Luc academy in Brussels before taking up teaching. He too soon descended into a life in comics, debuting in 1985 with Saint-Germaine des Morts (scripted by Streng) for publisher Bédéscope.

Three years later he co-created – with writer Yann (Yannick Le Pennetier) – Célestin Speculoos for Circus and Nicotine Goudron for l’Écho des Savanes whilst earning a crust as a jobbing freelance comics artist with work regularly appearing in Spirou and elsewhere.

Following his highly acclaimed turn here he moved on to succeed Jean-Maire Beuriot as artist of Casterman’s prestigious Amours Fragiles.

This double-length compact Cinebook edition compiles the final pair of original volumes – De l’inconvénient d’être mort and Fantaisies meurtrières – which saw Green Manor’s continual catalogue of high society crime, calumny and depravity lead to its inevitable sorry conclusion…

The premise is deliciously simple and wickedly palatable. As seen in the first collection, prominent alienist Dr. Thorne has become obsessed with an inmate known as Thomas Below currently incarcerated in the infamous Bethlehem Psychiatric Hospital.

That poor unfortunate had served as a discreet domestic in a private Gentleman’s Club for his entire life and became violently delusional mere days before retirement. Thorne questions the madman and realises the sorry soul before him believes he is Green Manor incarnate. He has certainly been privy to all that strange place’s secrets, surprises and hushed-up scandals, but can the horrific and bizarre tales he shares possibly be true in whole or in part?

The Inconvenience of Being Dead resumes the unconventional interviews in 1899 as Thorne is dragged from his bed to attend Below once again, but this time the need is most urgent. The old retainer has escaped, broken into a house and taken a family hostage.

Hesitantly the healer makes his approach and engages the affable maniac in conversation and all too readily Below begins telling more tales of rich, powerful and ostensibly honourable men at their most excessive and unbearable…

The macabre menu of skits and sketches begins with ‘Child’s Play’ from March 1871 wherein cruel Lord Virgil observes and is incensed by a passive, gentle servant with the patience of Job instantly resolving to turn the saint into a murdering thing of evil.

Admitting to possessing a foolproof, infallible and much proven method of killing-by-proxy to a roomful of The Great and the Good gathered around, Virgil determines to drive good-natured George into eternally debasing and damning himself by using the process to save himself from torment.

Sadly one man’s torment is another man’s test of faith and the good George is far from predictable…

In 1885 dilettante supernaturalist Joseph Sharp returned from Prague after a fruitless shopping trip for magical spells and objects to find his best friend Mark Abbott languishing under the force of a family curse. However, detailed investigation of ‘The mark of the beast’ and a ghastly family secret in a crypt only proved once again that the unknown has very little force or impact when measured against a mother’s hate, the infinite patience of the tormented and a victim’s fevered imagination…

One night in 1876 Lord Justice Sherman realised he had condemned an innocent man to death, even though not a shred of evidence existed to confirm his opinion. With one night remaining to save his man, the elderly jurist took to the streets of London to find the true culprit and succeeded, utterly unaware that the malefactor involved had already taken vengeance for the judge’s noble act in advance of its completion and Sherman’s ‘Last Wishes’…

In 1897 bombastic, belligerent General Miller gloated at the Club that he had at last come into possession of the fabled Spear of Longinus. The military martinet had no fear of the legends and many deaths laid upon the artefact or ‘The Centurion’s Shadow’, but was beguiled by its repute as a tool to make great men all-conquering.

Nevertheless he was soon one more corpse attributed to the talisman – and not the last – until a pair of the Club’s armchair investigators applied learning and logic, exposing a deadly trap constructed by one of history’s greatest thinkers…but just a little too late…

With the hostage crisis coming to end Below tells his most shocking epigram as ‘Voodoo Night’ finds the gathered gentlemen casually dissecting a juicy murder one night in December 1870 over cigars and brandy.

With irreconcilable facts and impossible assumptions heatedly flying about, soon only absurdity or the supernatural are left as answers to the mystery of the slaying of boorish lout Lord Killian, but in another room the genteel conversation of the closeted Ladies married to the assemblage of tobacco-smoking idiots soon reveals a so-simple truth…

The last legends of the Club are gathered in Murderous Fancies as the increasingly obsessed Thorne receives word that Below has passed away. Briefly thinking himself free at last, it is with mixed feeling that the doctor takes custody of the illegible scrawls of the troubled retainer and wearily, warily begins to decipher them…

‘Endgame’ relates an incident from June 1871 when the Club was driven to distraction by the will of recently paralysed Lord Wyatt. It was in the form of a nonsense riddle and the first to solve it would win all Wyatt’s prodigious wealth…

At the same time the executor secretly consults with dementia expert Dr. Sheffer over the mental state of his master. The aristocrat claims his parlous condition is the result of a murder attempt and this riddle might well be a trap to catch the assailant. Sheffer knows better but soon has every reason to regret his rash conclusions…

‘A Small Crime Serenade’ finds an aged and innocuous gentleman in garrulous mood one night in 1867, sharing with a dutiful Club servant his great gift and passion: a life-long ability to get away with murder. Sadly his boast of capping his career with one final killing is derailed by a most unanticipated event…

In 1827 talk at Green Manor was of only one matter: the recent demise of a radical libertarian poet. Especially fervent was young devotee Dr. Daniel Ballantyne who promptly fell for a cruel prank when the Club grandees purportedly offered him a chance to autopsy the body and look ‘In the Head of William Blake’. They had arranged that what he saw would be like nothing he had ever experienced…

Ballantyne disappeared that night and in the cold light of day an inexorable campaign of terror began as the japesters were slowly driven mad by notes threatening vengeance from the “Tygers of Wrath”…

In lighter vein, ‘Fight to the Finish’ related how two bored big game hunters invented an imaginative game in May 1859. Their aim was to determine who exactly was the absolute best. The prey was to be each other but, although the rules of the competition were strict and fair, as the days progressed it seemed that neither Lord Bennett nor Lord Turner were as able or as gentlemanly as they claimed…

The dead man’s tales ended with a chilling homily from 1872 wherein the cream of society discussed the strange case of Lord Sanders who had blighted his own financial empire and destroyed his greedy heirs by cruelly and carefully tying the purse-strings of their inheritances.

The dominating oligarch had left a vast list of tasks for his four children to fulfil in ‘The Testament’; far too many for any person or persons to complete before getting their undeserving hands on his ill-gotten gains.

Of course even he could not predict how and where greed and frustration could take a desperate man…

And with that final story shared, Below no longer plagued the good doctor’s days, but his influence remained long after he was gone…

Wry, witty, wickedly funny and sublimely entertaining, The Inconvenience of Being Dead offers a supremely damning glimpse at High Society’s low morals which will delight and astound lovers of sly crime fiction, rich black comedy and classy comics confabulations.
Original edition © Dupuis 2005 by Vehlmann & Bodart. All rights reserved. English translation 2008 by Cinebook Ltd.

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Canardo, Private Eye: A Shabby Dog Story


By Benoít Sokal (Xpresso Books/Fleetway)
ISBN: 978-1-85386-260-6

Artist, writer and games designer Benoít Sokal (Sanguine, Syberia, Amerzone, Kraa) was born in Brussels in 1954. He studied at the École Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc De Bruxells, the prestigious art school where legendary creator Claude Renard (Belles Histoires de l’Oncle Paul, Aux Médianes de Cymbiola, Le Rail, Ivan Casablanca) taught and nurtured many students who would become Belgium’s modern masters of comics.

Sokal joined that select band of professionals in 1978, selling humorous strips and characters to À Suivre and striking gold early. He had been producing short, blackly comedic tales featuring anthropomorphic animals living in a world of contemporary humanity. Amongst the vast cast was a tawdry, unscrupulous, hard-drinking private detective named Inspector Canardo. Although never a true protagonist in those days, the dour duck was always around when events inevitably spiralled out of control…

The occasional series struck a chord with European audiences and soon Canardo was headlining his own series of albums. The first, in 1979, gathered those early shorts into an “Album #0” entitled Premières enquêtes and was followed by 22 more to date: the latest, Le vieux canard et la mer was released in 2013.

Dividing his time between his mallard megastar and more realistic dramas such as police thriller Silence, on Tue! (with François Rivière) and Le Vieil homme qui n’écrivait plus, by the close of the 1990s Sokal made the sideways jump from comics to the burgeoning videogames market, bringing in artist Pascal Regnauld to handle much of the illustration for his foul-feathered fowl.

Although a huge hit on the continent, Canardo struggled to find a place amongst English-speaking audiences. Sporadically released in translation between 1989 and 1991 by Rijperman and NBM for the American continent and through Fleetway’s Xpresso books in the UK, Sokal’s patently adults-only, philosophically nihilistic and bleakly moody homage to film noir came and went largely unnoticed, and I think it’s time some savvy publisher took another shot…

Volume #1 – Le Chien debout (1981 and more accurately translated as The Standing Dog) became initial British release A Shabby Dog Story as Xpresso – the experimental division of publishing monolith Fleetway – when the home of Judge Dredd, Buster and Roy of the Rovers sought to catch a pan-Atlantic wave of interest in comics for grown-ups.

The series readily toys with the internal consistency of storytelling: Canardo and other cast regulars have died several times, timescales are largely irrelevant, early tales have humans, anthropomorphic animals and regular critters cautiously coexisting side by side, science and magic happily co-mingle with the seedily traditional elements of sex, violence, depression and existential isolation and some of the players occasionally refer to themselves inhabiting a comics story.

As previously mentioned, in the earliest escapades the dowdy duck dick is little more than a disinterested spectator; an Éminence grise perfectly capable of shaping events and preventing tragedies but always unwilling to get involved unless there’s a direct benefit for him.

Here the focus is on shady nomad Ferdinand, a hooch-loving hobo pooch whose addiction to garbage brought him low and whose years of aimless peregrination have now brought him back to his hometown. Once an infamous bigwig and ruler of the roost amongst the skeevy bestial characters on the wrong side of the tracks, he’s now unrecognisable to the surviving patrons of Freddo’s Bar, but that’s okay.

All the down-and-out really cares about is seeing his adored Gilberte once more, but after he makes himself known in his traditional manner and hears she’s dead, Ferdinand regains some of his old fire and resolves to find out who killed her…

His anxious successor is Kartler, a blustering hound with a big bark but little bite, although he does have dangerous friends…

When thugs corner him our traumatised shabby dog is soon overwhelmed and left to die horribly, with Kartler’s accusation that Ferdinand was Gilberte’s killer ringing in his floppy, flea-bitten ears. Only as the dog is dying does former cop Inspector Canardo intervene, and only then because of the promise of scoring a stash of drugs…

The duck does offer a little info for nothing, revealing Gilberte had latterly lived with a human doctor named Calhoun after she stopped being Kartler’s main squeeze. Calhoun has a unique and unenviable reputation: a sadistic maniac operating on animals – especially dogs – turning them into mindless zombies for Kartler’s ever expanding army…

When desperate Ferdinand breaks into the surgeon’s compound he quickly discovers that’s the very least of the doctor’s many atrocities…

And back at the bar, against his better judgement a duck with an unslakable thirst breaks all his own rules and decides to get involved. After all, Canardo has known from the very start exactly how Gilberte died…

Stark, wry, bleak, outrageously amusing and almost Brechtian in its tone and execution of a demi-monde society, the saga of Carnardo is a powerful antidote to traditional adventure paladins and a supreme example of the antihero taken to its ultimate extreme. It’s also beguilingly lovely to look upon in a grim traffic accident, bunny-in-the-headlights manner.

Let’s hope some publisher with a little vision agrees…
Le Chien debout © 1981 Casterman. Translation © 1989 Cha Cha Comics. UK edition © 1991 Xpresso Books. All rights reserved.

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The Monsterjunkies Graphic Novel #1


By Eric Daniel Shein & Theresa A. Gates, illustrated by Jay Fotos Studios (ArkWatch)
ISBN: 978-0-9963872-0-0

It’s tough being an outsider and doubly so if you’re a teenager with weird interests and strange parents.

Just think how much worse it can be if you’re notionally foreign, have no friends and your family has a long tradition of keeping secrets…

Introduced in prose Young Adult novels The Monsterjunkies: An American Family Odyssey and its sequel Sanctuary, impressionable Cromwell and his far more sociably adaptable older sister Indigo negotiated the tricky path through high school, slowly finding friends and companionship, gradually sharing their clandestine clan’s big secret with the ordinary folk of Foggy Point, Maine.

Now that first gently inclusive tale of integration and assimilation has been adapted into a beguiling graphic novel by original authors Eric Daniel Shein & Theresa A. Gates and opens at the daunting gates of 1313 Road to Nowhere. Within the vast wilderness compound lurk an assortment of oddities who have found safety, anonymity and peace of mind under the custodianship of glamorous cryptozoologist Dr. Talon Monsterjunkie and his eldritch, ethereal wife Pandora.

The dedicated preservationists of everything outré have turned their secluded estate into a haven for the world’s rarest and most endangered lifeforms, and although young Cromwell (he prefers “Crow”) may lack for strictly human companionship he is beloved by the creatures resident on the expansive Eden-like grounds.

Amongst his closet confidantes are Chico the chupacabra, poetry-writing sasquatch Beauregard, pituitary giants Frances and Betty, Periwinkle Pterodactyl, Fan – who runs the family mailbox – and sea serpent Sybil joyously sporting in the waters off scenic Bizarre Beach.

A loner at school, Crow’s life is made even worse by spoiled rich kid and practised bully Rutherford Grimes, but things start to radically change for the better after local lads Larry, Todd and Edgar sneak beyond the forbidding walls on a dare.

Shocked and awed by what they find, the kids are “rescued” by the aloof Goth kid from a succession of terrifying but ultimately friendly beasts and monsters and are soon the best of buddies. They even form a gang of their own to stand up to the predatory “popular kids” at school…

Soon the centuries-long family policy is being gradually tweaked and before long select individuals are being invited to share the hidden treasures of the estate. Ruth Grimes, however, isn’t happy at all and after Crow creates a unique way for school kids to stand up to him the closet psychopath subsequently tricks his boorish, millionaire dad into instigating a malicious whispering campaign to drive the weird foreigners out…

Then comes the worst news of all: daredevil dad Talon has been lost on an expedition to Bolivia…

Comparisons to the filmic Addams Family are unavoidable, but there is a superficial similarity at best. The dark humour of unsettling fear and voluntary isolation which underpins the movies has been replaced here with a cast of warm, accommodating outriders heroically performing great works, eagerly accepting newcomers into their circle and prepared to change and enter the wider world that encroaches upon them…

Wild, imaginative, compassionate and packing a potent and welcome moral message, this is a wonderful interface between modern supernatural thrillers for teens and grand old-fashioned family romps like Willard Price’s “Adventures” series.

And there are more to come…
© 2015 Arkwatch Holdings LLC. All Rights Reserved.

For more information check out http://www.themonsterjunkieuniverse.com/ and www.redanvilcomics.com

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Valerian and Laureline book 9: Châtelet Station Destination Cassiopeia


By Méziéres & Christin, with colours by E. Tranlé; translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-244-7

Valérian and Laureline is the most influential science fiction comics series ever created; witty, passionate, wry and jam-packed with stunning and disturbing ideas rendered in a hypnotic, addictive, truer-than-life art style that is impossible to resist.

Valérian: Spatio-Temporal Agent debuted in Pilote #420 (November 9th 1967) and was an instant hit. It gradually evolved into Valerian and Laureline as his rowdy red-headed female sidekick developed into an equal partner – and eventually scene-stealing star – in an intoxicating succession of light-hearted, fantastically imaginative, visually stunning, time-travelling, space-warping socially aware epics.

The so-sophisticated series always had room to propound a satirical, humanist ideology and agenda, launching telling fusillades of political commentary and social satire to underpin an astounding cascade of visionary space operas.

At first tough, bluff, taciturn, affably capable, unimaginative, by-the-book space cop Valerian just did his job: tasked with protecting official universal chronology (at least as per Terran Empire standards), he countered any paradoxes precipitated by incautious time-travellers.

When he fetched up in 11th century France during debut tale ‘Les Mauvais Rêves (‘Bad Dreams’, and infuriatingly still not translated into English), he was saved from inevitable doom by a capable young woman named Laureline. In gratitude he brought her back to the 28th century super-citadel and administrative capital, Galaxity, where the feisty firebrand took a crash course in spatiotemporal ops before accompanying him on his cases.

The opening shot in the series’ first truly extended saga, Châtelet Station Destination Cassiopeia, was originally serialised in the monthly Pilote (issues #M47 to M50, 21st March to June 27th 1978) before being collected later that year as eighth album Métro Châtelet Direction Cassiopée. The story concluded in follow-up album Brooklyn Line Terminus Cosmos – which I’ll get to, once it’s published at the end of summer…

It all begins with the partners far apart in time and space. Laureline pensively voyages to the fabulous Cassiopeia system, for once enjoying the many wonders of space as she travels at sub-light speed through the phenomenally populous yet cosmically fragile region.

Her journey to Solum is broken up by many stopovers as she gradually gathers snippets of gossip which cohere to reveal an unsettling trend: subtly voiced concerns that some merchants are pushing strange and dangerous technologies on buyers extremely unsuited to possess them…

Although separated by centuries and light-years, Laureline and Valerian are enjoying impossibly intimate contact. Thanks to Terran ingenuity – and recent neurosurgeries – the partners are telepathically linked and sharing information on the mission.

His mission is playing out in Paris in 1980 where he idly observes the variety of human types frequenting the café he impatiently haunts; constantly reminded how little he knows or understands the people and history of his birthworld.

Things aren’t helped by the volubly affable, infuriatingly unrushed and always tardy Mr. Albert. Galaxity’s man in the moment is a sort of human X-Files: investigating, sifting and collating incalculable amounts of data on everything fringe, strange or whacky which occurs in the 20th century he has adopted as a home-away-from-home.

Breaking contact with Laureline, Valerian learns from the verbose nerd that appalling, monstrous manifestations have been terrorising the world and now this city’s subway system. Sensing action at last, the impulsive hero rushes to the site of the latest occurrence, abandoning Albert to follow up on something which has piqued his scholarly curiosity. Both are blithely unaware that a suspect band of not-so-ordinary Parisians with similar interests are mere metres ahead of them.

What Valerian confronts is a horrific thing out of the inferno, but even it is not immune to the futuristic weaponry he’s carrying in kit form. All he has to do is assemble it before being eaten…

In the aftermath Albert acts quickly to extract the wounded hero from hospital before doctors and cops start asking too many of the right questions. Later, over a luxurious dinner, the epicurean investigator shares a sheaf of files and clippings of monster and UFO sightings which only hint at why Valerian is stuck in a temporal backwater whilst his partner is covering the colossal Cassiopeia system alone…

Synching up again later despite constant headaches, Valerian hears her tell of the incredible inhabitants of Solum and her candid interview with the living memory of the race as well as sundry other wonders before contact is explosively ended by a phone call from Albert warning him that he is being watched…

After deftly dodging his tail Valerian receives a most distressing communication from Laureline. Her pleasant chat with the memory of Solum has uncovered news of a planet which long ago endured a similar plague of mysterious manifestations. It doesn’t exist anymore…

Therefore she’s off to incomprehensibly vile universal garbage dump Zomuk in pursuit of another promising lead, but before Val can warn her to stay away from the junk world, mind-contact is lost…

At that 20th century moment he and Mr. Albert are embarking on a bus ride to rural wetland idyll Doëre-la Rivière in search of marsh-monsters and dragons, only to surprisingly discover no accommodation available in the usually dead-in-the-off-season resort.

All rooms have been taken by scientists working for W.A.A.M (World American Advanced Machines): a mega-corporation in contention with the ubiquitous multinational Bellson & Gambler.

Both companies keep cropping up in Albert’s files of the weird and unexplained…

Soon the mismatched spatio-temporal operatives are trudging through acres of misty mire, encountering young Jean-René who offers to lead them to the infamous monster everybody is searching for.

When they find the Brobdingnagian beast, only Valerian’s disintegrator saves their lives. They quickly return to Albert’s paper-&-scrap-packed Paris flat, where the quirky researcher decides it’s time his impatient young colleague meets his secret source: a bizarre modern mystic and seer named Chatelard who cannily points out the affinities between the manifestations met so far and the classical ancient concept of The Four Elements…

He also points out that one could call highly ranked corporate businessmen the “hidden high priests of today’s world”, whilst mentioning that a pretty blonde woman from abroad recently offered him a lot of money for the same insights…

Later, as Albert sifts through the precious papers, reviewing all he has on Bellson & Gambler, frantic Valerian finally re-establishes contact with Laureline, just as she concludes an epic struggle against ghastly odds and enters a hidden shrine to gaze upon fantastic representations of Four Elemental Forces which underpin the universe…

Once again contact is broken and in a petulant rage the astral adventurer storms out into the Parisian night. Utterly oblivious to the fact that he is being followed by enigmatic figures in an expensive automobile, he accepts a lift from a pretty girl in a sports-car…

To Be Concluded…

Bold, mind-boggling and moodily mysterious, this splendid change of pace accentuates the deadly dangers which underscore this astonishingly imaginative series; eschewing the usual concentration on witty japery and politico-philosophical trendiness in favour of mounting suspense, bubbling paranoia and stark suspense with mesmerising effect.

However, no matter how trenchant, barbed, culturally aware or ethically crusading, these tales never allow message to overshadow fun or entertainment and as ever Méziéres & Christin leave their avid readers hungry for more …

© Dargaud Paris, 1980 Christin, Méziéres & Tran-Lệ. All rights reserved. English translation © 2015 Cinebook Ltd.

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Yakari and the Grizzly


By Derib & Job, translated by Erica Jeffrey (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-16-8

In 1964, journalist André Jobin founded children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes and began writing stories for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later he hired fellow French-Swiss artist Claude de Ribaupierre, who had begun his career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs), working on Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Spirou.

Together they created the well-received Adventures of the Owl Pythagore and two years later struck pure gold with their next collaboration.

Launching in 1969, Yakari detailed the life of a young Sioux boy on the Great Plains; sometime after the introduction of horses by the Conquistadores and before the coming of the modern WhiteMan.

Filled with gentle whimsy, the strip celebrates a generally bucolic existence in tune with nature and free of strife, punctuated with the odd crisis generally resolved without fame or fanfare by a little lad who is smart, compassionate, brave… and can converse with all animals…

As “Derib”, de Ribaupierre – equally fluent and brilliant in both the enticing, comically dynamic “Marcinelle” cartoon style and a devastatingly compelling meta-realistic action illustration form – went on to become one of the Continent’s most prolific, celebrated and beloved creators through such groundbreaking strips as Celui-qui-est-né-deux-fois, Jo (the first comic on AIDS ever published), Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne).

A large and significant proportion of his stunning works over the decades reverberate with his beloved Western themes, magnificent geographical backdrops and epic landscapes, and Yakari is considered by many to be the feature which catapulted him to mega-stardom.

First published in 1979 as the strip cemented its prominence and popularity, Yakari et le grizzly was the fifth collected European album. The previous year the feature had begun running in Tintin, and would go on to spawn two animated TV series (1983 and 2005), a wide range of merchandising and spin-offs and achieve monumental global sales of the 38 albums (in 17 languages) to date.

Released in English translation in 2006, Yakari and the Grizzly opens one late autumn night as aged beaver Wooden Dam and young raccoon Black Mask sneak into the Sioux encampment in search of Yakari. The worried pair have an odd story to tell: healthy adult animal are disappearing and the younglings need the wonderful human problem-solver to find them…

Riding out on faithful pony and confidante Little Thunder, the brave boy encounters a nervous vixen and her cubs and a female otter whose mate has also vanished. The day passes in fruitless searching and that night, after hearing a terrifyingly loud roar, a kind old owl offers some friendly advice to the searchers: stay out of the hills, something strange is happening there…

Next morning, grateful, worried but determined, Yakari and Little Thunder nevertheless turn towards the gentle rise and soon find missing pal Thousand-Mouths frantically gathering berries. The beaver is desperately scared and warns the pair to flee before it’s too late…

Resolved to help whatever the risk, our heroes press onwards and upwards and discover many missing animals – even bears – all working as petrified slaves for a huge and bellicose grizzly. Afraid of nothing Yakari scolds the greedy beast and almost dies as the big bully swipes at him with huge claws…

Barely escaping the gloating monster, Yakari and his pony are again warned off by Thousand-Mouths who reveals that no one will resist or run away because the big bear has threatened their families. Temporarily stumped, the little brave is relieved when his wise totem animal Great Eagle arrives and councils that a little patience will provide an answer to their problem…

Seeing the startling truth of the statement, Yakari advises his furry chums on a long term plan which consists of actually working even harder, providing the unreasonable brute with all the food he can eat. All too soon the snows start and the fattened grizzly feels the call of his den and long months of welcome hibernation. Now the second part of Yakari’s plan can begin…

The visually spectacular, seductively smart and splendidly subtle solution to the bully bear’s disgraceful behaviour is a masterpiece of diplomacy and highlights the charming, compassionate and redemptive nature of this superb all-ages series…

The exploits of the valiant little voyager who speaks to animals and enjoys a unique place in an exotic world is a decades-long celebration of joyously gentle, marvellously moving and enticingly entertaining adventure, honouring and eulogising an iconic culture with grace, wit, wonder and especially humour.

These gentle sagas are true landmarks of comics literature and Yakari is a strip no fan of graphic entertainment should ignore.
Original edition © 1978 Le Lombard/Dargaud by Derib & Job. English translation 2006 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Ordinary


By Rob Williams & D’Israeli (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-009-2

Admit it. We’ve all pondered – and both comics and movies have explored in various tones and styles – a particularly thorny contemporary question: what happens when everybody wakes up with superpowers?

Collecting a rather witty riff on that quandary, this wickedly charming little fable from Rob Williams & Matt “D’Israeli” Brooker – first seen in Judge Dredd Megazine #340-345 at the end of 2013, then as a Titan Comics miniseries and now gathered into one scintillating colour hardback tome – takes the big question a step further by positing that on that day of astounding ascension everybody becomes a modern Prometheus but you…

After an effusive Introduction from Warren Ellis the strange tale of off-the-books plumber and inept gambler Michael Fisher begins one typical morning as he wakes up in Queens, NYC. He’s late for another call-out and stumbling almost unthinkingly straight into a great big bunch of complete insanity.

Narrowly escaping a thorough thumping from the Samoans he owes cash to, the harried divorcee arrives at his latest job just in time to see the elderly client rapidly de-age to squelchy nothingness and short-tempered boss Brian turn into a talking bear.

The metamorphic madness is everywhere. Giants, flaming men and snotty dragons are popping up every second but all Michael can think of is calling his ex Sarah to see if their son Josh is okay.

As the freaked-out military rapidly fail to control the situation, the truth slowly dawns. Not just New Yorkers but all of humanity have, in the space of an instant, become a race of shapeshifters, superhumans and worse.

Everyone, apparently, except Michael…

As madness and panic grip the world Mike naturally heads for a bar and after Brian joins him they watch the President’s emergency news conference. It would have gone much better if someone had been able to tell PotUS that his new power was broadcasting his actual thoughts in little cartoon thought balloons above his head…

When TV news reveals his son Josh’s school is on fire Brian urges Michael to get across the river and find his boy but the now-empowered Samoans almost catch him and it takes low cunning, a Midas touch and a cosmically aware cabbie to save the day…

As chaos and carnage grip the nation, deep in the Pentagon the President is visibly (to all and sundry) losing it as his fundamentalist Vice-President stridently argues that the power proliferation is a Heaven-sent blessing intended to help the Land of the Free smite all the world’s unbelievers.

Scottish Genomics Professor and resident scientific expert Dr. Tara McDonald has a more reasoned argument. The situation is a literal plague and uncontrolled super-abilities will destroy mankind unless they find a cure quickly. Already America’s enemies are gathering and nations all over Earth are marshalling their burgeoning meta-resources to settle age-old scores and eradicate contemporary rivals.

However before McDonald can even postulate a remedy they have to find someone who is immune to the catastrophic contagion…

Against incredible odds – which comprise both transformees and the increasingly hard-pressed, savagely dictatorial remnants of the civil authorities – and all his normal instincts Michael has made his way into Manhattan even as in Washington McDonald’s best efforts have yielded pitiful results.

Things really go south after a nuke detonates in Afghanistan and the Veep seizes command. The rabid Christian doesn’t want a cure and when the only man in existence without uncanny abilities becomes a minor media celebrity after rescuing his son from a New York school, the acting Commander-in-Chief’s zealots are only one of a number of ruthless factions instantly targeting the unfortunate Mr. Fisher…

Now it’s a race against time as deadly opponents from warring and friendly nations alike contend to control the unluckiest, most useless man in the world with the fate of humanity in the balance. Fate and science however have teamed up to deliver a big surprise for everybody…

Also included in this thought-provoking package is a gallery of guest pinups from Edmund Bagwell, Ben Oliver, Laurence Campbell, Brian Ching & Michael Atiyeh, Brendan McCarthy, Neil Googe, Dom Reardon, Henry Flint, Alison Sampson & Ruth Redmond, James Harren, Ale Aragon and Mark Buckingham & D’Israeli, plus a little learned discourse – stuffed with the illustrator’s behind-the-scenes sketches and working drawings – on ‘Ordinary Science’ from Evolutionary Biologist and comics fan JV Chamary (PhD)…

Devilishly clever, cruelly passionate, potently humane and devastatingly funny, this sharp treatise on the true meaning of power politics offers a uniquely British spin on the eternal fantastic flight of idle fantasy and will delight all lovers of he genre with a world-weary eye to the way life really works…
Ordinary is ™ and © 2014 Rob Williams and Matt Brooker. All rights reserved.

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Troy Trailblazer and the Horde Queen


By Robert Deas (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-46-9

In January 2012 Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched a traditional anthology comics weekly aimed at girls and boys between 6 and 12 which revelled in reviving the good old days of British picture-story entertainment intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in style and content.

Each issue offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy. In the years since its premiere, The Phoenix has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who really count – the totally engaged kids and parents who read it…

The magazine inevitably led to a line of superbly engaging graphic novel compilations, the latest of which is a rollicking space opera romp that will delight readers with a profound sense of fun and unchecked imaginations.

From that fabulous first year and created by Robert Deas (November, Manga Shakespeare: Macbeth, Pride & Prejudice, Medikidz) comes impetuous stellar sentinel Troy Trailblazer – who originally appeared in The Phoenix #10, 18 and 27-32 – in a riotous complete adventure which mixes light-hearted sidereal shenanigans with just a touch of dark and dreadful doom…

Thanks to the double-page pin-up ‘Meet Team Troy’ you’ll quickly become familiar with the valiant lad, his advanced tactical droid Blip, animalistic alien associate Barrus and super-cool former bounty hunter Jess Jetrider.

Moreover the schematics for ‘The Pathfinder’ will provide all you need to know about the freelance heroes’ astounding starship, so there’s no need to pause before racing into ‘Chapter 1: Mistakes of the Past’ which finds the questing quartet bombastically retrieving the Infinity Jewel with a maximum of collateral damage from the Royal Palace on planet Thagus…

Congratulating themselves on a job well done the astral adventurers celebrate by setting course for the sunny beaches on Solus, but before too long battle-hardened Jessica is roused from hyper-sleep by a disturbing dream and acknowledges a distress call from ice-world Siberas…

On awakening, the baffled lads are far from happy to be wading across glaciers in beachwear and when the arctic conditions wreck the Pathfinder’s engines they lose all sense of proportion. It’s quickly regained, however, when a gigantic snow-beast starts chasing them and hurt feelings turn to pure terror when a clutch of horrific bug-like parasites easily bring the shaggy carnivore down…

Pushing on rapidly through the snows the cosmic champions soon find the mining colony which issued the distress call, only to discover the workers possessed by more of the creepy bugs. Most disturbing is the fact that Jess is seemingly hearing voices and acting weirdly distracted…

Things come to a grisly head when they recover a holo-message from security chief Alan Ripley which describes how deep excavations disinterred a monstrous hive-creature from an entombed starship. His warning is cut off mid-sentence and almost instantly our heroes are running for their lives from the bug-wearing, mind-locked miners who tirelessly hunt their would-be rescuers…

Somewhere amidst all the chaos Jess gets separated from her companions and, apparently answering a mental siren call, wanders off into the deepest part of the pit…

There’s a brief tension-break for ‘Blip’s Autopsy Report’ – wherein the robotic science wizard dissects and provides dissertation on the diabolical parasites – before the shocking suspense resumes with the Pathfinder crew following Jess but ultimately failing to stop her being taken over by the Horde Queen and becoming the malevolent monster’s perfect weapon of complete conquest…

After a frantic panic and race to escape the story resumes fifteen years later in ‘Chapter 2: The Fate of the Future’…

Over that dark period the Horde Queen’s spawn have erupted into space and devastated planet after planet. On Troy’s homeworld of Nova 2, the older, wiser and battle-weary Trailblazer is now leader of the hard-pressed Horde Resistance, fighting a losing battle against the ghastly melding of his best friend and the parasite-mother.

The determined freedom-fighters have lost every battle but thanks to brilliant Blip have devised a last chance solution which might win the war. Unfortunately, just as they activate the cobbled-together time-machine and head back to Siberas to stop Jess ever falling under the Queen’s spell, the triumphant horror bursts in and follows Troy and Barrus back to the beginning…

What happens next is both astoundingly heroic and bitterly tragic and reveals what happy endings actually cost.

Fast-paced, fun and not afraid to be really scary when it counts, this is a superb interstellar saga, excitingly told in a broadly manga manner which will delight space freaks and thrill seekers of all ages.

Text and illustrations © Robert Deas 2015. All rights reserved.

Troy Trailblazer and the Horde Queen will be released on June 4th 2015 and is available for pre-order now.

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Flawed Dogs – The Year-End Leftovers at the Piddleton “Last-Chance” Dog Pound


By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co.)
ISBN: 978-0-316-71359-7

After an all-too-brief and glittering career as a syndicated strip cartoonist and socio-political commentator (so often the very same hallowed function) Berkeley Breathed retired his deadline-crushing Bloom County and Outland strips to become a writer and illustrator of children’s books.

He lost none of his perception, wit or imagination, and actually got better as a sequential artist. He never completely abandoned his entrancing cast of characters and always maintained the gently excoriating, crusading passion and inherent bittersweet invective which underscored those earlier narratives.

An adventurous – if accident-prone – man with a big heart and love of animals, in 2003 Breathed crafted a stunningly moving, achingly heartbreaking and darkly hilarious painted hardback picture-book which presented itself as a brochure of no-hope pooches (and their former owners) being offered one final chance to escape the needle at a Podunk animal shelter deep in the wilds of Vermont…

The Piddleton “Last-Chance” Dog Pound is the place other institutions send all the dogs who have failed to find homes anywhere else, but even it has space limitations. The tireless organiser of the annual push to re-home all these one-of-a-kind, misunderstood mutts is Miss Heidy Strüdleberg; a former President of the American Kennel Club and prominent dog show judge who had a close encounter with a three-legged Dachshund that changed her life forever.

Rejecting that unforgiving and artificially idealised society, she resolved to strike a blow against a world that shuns the flawed and only has time for perfection. And here you can see in all their homely glory a host of uniquely lovable last-chancers like Bipsie, Noodles, Titus and Sam the Lion, all accompanied by pictorial examples of how they achieved their current sorry states with pungently potent verses of doggerel describing their meagre blandishments…

The success of this book led to notional sequel/prequel Flawed Dogs: The Shocking Raid on Westminster and Heidy’s tale will be seen as a forthcoming major motion picture…

Less a story than a crushingly captivating cartoon catechism for canine deliverance, delivered in sharp and lyrical rhyme, this is a book to trigger consciences and promote (considered) dog adoption which will make a grown man howl and children sit up and beg. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll think hard before going online and adopting a pet that needs a home…
© 2003 Berkeley Breathed. All rights reserved.