Category: International Comics

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Gash


By Søren G. Mosdal (Slab-O-Concrete)
ISBN: 978-1-89986-639-7 (TPB)

Not all comics are nice. Not all stories are cosy and comforting. This slim volume collects some short strips by Danish cartoonist Søren Glosimodt Mosdal; powerful, surreal to the point of absurdism, starkly, bleakly, casually violent yet unbelievably compelling vignettes of modern disassociation and spiritual isolation in an urban landscape of staggering indifference.

A seasoned cartoonist and newspaper illustrator born in Nairobi, Mosdal studied and now lives in Copenhagen: a member of their Fort Knox Studios and part of Finland’s Kuti Kuti comics association. Regular clients include Fahrenheit magazine (since 1994), and literary periodical Zoe, whilst his collected comic books include Feuerwerk, Madeleine, une femme libre (with scriptwriters Rudy Ortiz & Pierre Colin-Thibert), and Eric Le Rouge: roi de l’hiver. Beginning this century, Mosdal has increasingly concentrated on music-related works and themes, such as a comic biography of Elvis Presley and Lost Highway, about Hank Williams.

However, in this glorious lost gem from 2001 – and reprinting a Danish collection of two years’ prior – Mosdal’s intense, exaggerated drawing bristles with ill-suppressed animosity as he tells of ordinary life: getting drunk, getting stoned, getting laid and ultimately getting nowhere. Whether relating what I pray are not autobiographical everyday interludes or delivering candid depictions of the deeply distressing adventures of Hans Drone – “The Greatest Writer of our Time!” – or any of the other misfits gathered herein, Mosdal’s fevered works are unsettling yet unforgivably intoxicating. If you’re old enough and strong enough, and have patience and time to go looking, these beautiful, ugly stories are ready in wait for you and absolutely worthy of your attention.

If only some smart, wide-eyed English-language publisher would run that risk…

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They Shot the Piano Player – A Graphic Novel


By Fernando Trueba & Javier Mariscal, translated by Mediasaur (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-424-9 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Look, Listen and Learn …8/10

Comics are serious business in South and Central America, but not as much as Music is. Add to that the fact that all of us hate evil and love a mystery and the result is a captivating read. It’s also a captivating film but that’s not my point today…

As much a treatment on the power of obsession and curiosity as a (fictionalised) account of one creator’s fascination with another, They Shot the Piano Player is a lovely, tortured beast: an account of how a multi-award-winning writer, director, producer and documentarian became obsessed with the forgotten fate of a “disappeared” musician Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Júnior and went looking for answers – albeit at one remove and using a made-up “journo” as his literary bloodhound.

The story is true. Tenório lived, loved and died through the most appalling of times, for the most stupid and venal of reasons and the world moved on. At least, until one man heard some old Bossa Nova records and decided to know more about the incredibly talented man who made them…

Delivered in a parade of vivid and captivating styles by major mainstream artist/designer Javier Mariscal, the dry obsession blossoms into a captivating murder mystery with clues unpicked and suspects followed until an awful truth about governments and power is exposed. There’s no restorative justice to be found here, just an acknowledgement of unpunished wickedness and sombre warnings that it can still happen again…

Devious, relentless and compelling, the multimedia masterwork concludes with a copious section on the how the book/film came to be. ‘Searching for Tenório’ combines Trueba’s research notes, visits and interviews across Central and South America and through generations with photos and Mariscal’s amazing art and sketches. These are subdivided into ‘The Characters’, ‘The Family’, ‘The Buenos Aires Group’, ‘Musicians’, ‘Argentina’, ‘Guest Artists’, and ‘The Tragedy’, and precede a glorious gallery of ancillary art studies from the book itself.

Reading like no other graphic biography you’ve ever seen but subtly gripping like the most potent crime fiction or UN report on war crimes, They Shot the Piano Player is a ferociously addictive read you will never forget.
© 2023, Fernando Trueba. © 2023, Javier Mariscal. Originally published as DISPARARON AL PIANISTA © 2023, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial S.A.U. Travessera de Gracia, 08021 Barcelona

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Red Moon


By Carlos Trillo & Eduardo Risso, translated by Zeljko Medic (Dark Horse/SAF Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-447-7(HC)  eISBN: 978-1-62115-916-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Marvel’s Most Magical… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

If you like a whiff of tongue in cheek whimsy with your fantastic fairytales you might want to take a look at this superb treat from prolific and much-missed Argentinean journalist and comics writer Carlos Trillo (Topo Gigio, Alvar Mayor, El Loco Chávez, Peter Kampf, Cyber Six, Point de rupture) and terrifyingly versatile illustrator Eduardo Risso (Batman, 100 Bullets, Jonny Double, Parque Chas, Simon, Boy Vampire), starring an affable boy acrobat and a tempestuous little princess.

Los misterios de la Luna roja was originally released as a quartet of comics between 1997 and 1998 by Ervin Rustemagi?’s Balkan publishing powerhouse Strip Art Features and appears here as compiled in a stunning translated tome thanks to Dark Horse Comics. Kicking off with scene-setting epic ‘Bran the Invisible’, the supremely wry, deftly comedic action opens as junior tumbler Antolin and his showbiz mentors Crocker & Theo fetch up their travelling show in the extremely depressed and downhearted land of Burien.

Unable to raise a single smile or any sign approbation, the lad soon learns that the kingdom is in mourning. Burien’s Lord and defender has been stricken with grief since his wife Tyl died. Moreover, their daughter Moon is both bonkers and prone to violence. She also talks to (shouts at and fights with) an invisible friend…

However, after encountering the red-haired daughter of the despondent widower, Antolin is quickly forced to conclude that she’s not crazy at all. His first clue is that unseen Bran apparently predicted the acrobat’s arrival and how the orphan boy would help “Red Moon” save the land. The clincher, though, is that something undetectable keeps hitting him…

There’s no time to waste since the marauding armies of the cruel yet cowardly Lord of Leona are already making their uncontested way over the now-undefended borders…

And thus begins an epic confection with crucial quests, astounding odysseys, barbarically vile villains, fairy queens, witches, dragons and monsters all in attendance as the valiant children – and Bran – flee the invasion, uncover the incredible truth of Tyl’s fate and seek to amass a meagre but prophesied army of incredible individuals to rescue Burien and restore Moon’s father to his previous competence and glory…

The saga concludes as Antolin and Red Moon return to the troubled land of Burien resolutely accompanied by their implausibly unbeatable ‘Attack Circus’ – and a few useful Fairy trinkets – resolved to repel the vile invasion and deliver to the sadistic Leona his just deserts. Controversially, that inevitable prospect provides no Happy Ever After for Antolin, who learns in the throes of triumph for Burian that his beloved mentors Theo & Crocker were sent to certain doom by the invaders…

Thus he sets off again, following their trail into ‘The Never Kingdom’ and is soon delighted to see Moon – and (not see) Bran – following the former partner-in-peril. Braving icy wastes, horrific beasts and a population of magically-mutated monsters, the kids challenge the power of wicked crone Panta and consequently discover that the malevolent sorceress and cannibal might perhaps be the long-lost mother of foundling Antolin…

Family feeling doesn’t count for much in Panta’s world, so there are few regrets after Moon discovers the secret of reversing the witch’s transformation spells and starts putting the Never Kingdom to rights…

The fabulously engaging, deliciously trenchant frolics then wrap up with the introduction of insalubrious junior jester Patapaf – and his ventriloquistic stick Pitipif – who play a critical role in the search for ‘The Book of All Dreams’.

With peace and joy restored to his subjects, the widowed Lord of Burian remarries but his new bride is almost immediately abducted by invulnerable ogre Lamermor de Granf to ensure that her husband will duel him for the right to rule Burien. Outraged Moon can do nothing until she enjoys a fairy-sent dream and learns the smug giant has a hidden weakness. Setting off with Patapaf to find wandering showman Antolin and talking cat Blas Pascual de la Galera the little warriors invade Witch Queen Yaga’s fortress – and subconscious – to ferret out a long-occluded means to destroy Lamermor, accidentally acquiring an unlikely ally who will ensure their victory and a Happy Ending at last…

Fast, funny and filled with family-friendly action and thrills, Red Moon is a delirious double-edged delight, with knowing sophistication for adult readers working side-by-side with gloriously inventive takes on traditional tale-telling, adeptly realised by Risso’s magnificently surreal illustration.

Ideal bedtime reading for anybody and any time.
Red Moon™ & © 2005, 2006, 2014 SAF Comics. All rights reserved.

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Snow


By Benjamin Rivers (Benjamin Rivers Inc.)
ISBN: 978-0-9813495-8-9 (TPB)

Life isn’t drama. Life is ordinary: dull, repetitive, anxiety-provoking, tedious, unsatisfactory and just a bit less good than everybody else’s.

Until it isn’t…

Then we make it a story. In a story, you can mould reality into a shape you like and polish it to your own satisfaction. Then again, there are some stories which like to bend their own rules and aspire to being life-like…

If you’re a fan of high-tension thrillers or blockbuster epics, there doesn’t appear to be much going on in Snow: a miniseries-turned-graphic compilation detailing overlapping and intersecting ordinary people living and/or working on Queen Street West, Toronto. However, that either means you have a very glamorous lifestyle or that you spend too much time submerged in fiction and not enough looking and listening to what’s going on around you…

Crafted by illustrator and games developer Benjamin Rivers (who somewhat shoots my argument in the foot by having turned this comics collation into both an Indy movie and computer game), Snow falls into stark, monochrome simplicity, centring on Dana, a rather nervous young woman who works in a bookstore.

Economically, times are tough and she’s fixating on the number of shops and businesses closing in the locality. Dana doesn’t like change and she doesn’t like confrontation. Moreover, these days there’s an aura of tension everywhere – even in her former comfort zone at the store. Her co-workers are mostly okay, but old Mr. Abberline isn’t looking well and Dana can’t shift the suspicion that soon they’ll all be looking for new jobs. Even best friend Julia doesn’t get it though: it seems so easy for her to shut out such concerns and just party…

As she trudges along snowbound Queen Street to work and back, to the bar or Laundromat, Dana can’t escape an oppressive sense of impending doom. Things come to a head abruptly after overhearing an argument in a closing-down, already shuttered CD store. She could just about ignore that and go home, but after hearing the gunshot, Dana, in her unrushed, gradual manner, abandons the instincts of a lifetime and goes to investigate…

What she finds on entering the shop is the trigger to remaking her entire life, but change is so hard and comes so painfully slowly…

Appearing cautious and careful, this deceptively simple and elegant saga offers a supremely understated exploration of how folk like you and me react to shocking events and their aftermath: treating the extraordinary with the dismay and respect it deserves when it impinges on real lives. Most importantly, just like life, although there are always questions asked, we seldom get all the answers we want or need before, in the end, life just goes on…

Amongst the Bonus Material included here is the movie poster for the film adaptation, annotated creator’s notes and sketches, concept-&-character designs, an examination of the drawing process which resulted in the book’s signature visual style and the author’s reminiscent Afterword: Is It Still Snowing?, as well as a handy street guide and map of the ‘The World of Snow’.

Just like life, Snow is better experienced than fed to you second-hand or reprocessed, so please track down absorb this graphic novel if you’re looking for something a little different from what comics think of as normal…
© 2014 Benjamin Rivers. All rights reserved.

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Ultraman: The Official Novel of the Series


By Pat Cadigan (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-80336-245-8 (prose PB) eISBN: 978-1-80336-301-1

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Endless Rebirth and Renewal… 8/10

In Asia the Ultraman phenomenon was akin to the boom created by Superman in 1939. Devised by Eiji Tsuburaya, it began in 1966 with Ultra Q – a series of television adventures featuring humans fighting a different monster every week. Before the first season completed it was joined by follow-up TV show Ultraman which added a superheroic component. It began when a human pilot merged with a benevolent alien to battle a nonstop wave of kaiju and alien invasions. The idea was so successful and audience reaction so strong it birthed a whole new genre – Kyodai (giant) Hero – and rapidly expanded into all media arenas to become a multi-billion-dollar franchise.

By the 1980s Ultraman was the world’s third top-selling licensed character and a cultural touchstone for Japan and all points east. The character is ubiquitously popular in more than 100 countries. Constantly reinvented by Tsuburaya and his heirs ever since 1966, Ultraman was followed by 31 more TV series and spin-off heroes, plus 44 movies, 33 specials and as many miniseries. The number and variety of characters under the Ultra umbrella are truly mindboggling…

Eventually, ownership issues created a schism with a whole separate mythology/iconography growing up around a breakaway company faction of projects (more than 38 different ones) made in Thailand under the banner of Chaiyo Productions.

Oddly, despite a couple of mountains worth of merchandise and licensed product, Ultraman didn’t get into manga until 2011, but has sold millions of copies since then.

There has been a constant and sustained effort to crack western markets on the same scale. There’s aYouTube channel, and currently Netflix has an animated series whilst Marvel licensed the core concept for comic books.

Here we’re looking at a new prose interpretation – in English – of classic 1960s show material adapted and diligently updated by multi-award winning science fiction author Pat Cadigan (Mindplayers, The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi, Alita: Battle Angel). She has also written forthcoming companion title Ultraman: UltraSeven.

It all begins in deep space as a Being of Light pursues uncontrolled malign entity Bemular. The chase ends on a primitive world teeming with usable, harvestable energy and results in the benevolent creature merging with a native to save its life…

Agent Shin Hayata of the Science Special Search Party – AKA the Science Patrol – couldn’t believe his first encounter with a UFO but had no choice but to accept when he fatally crashed into a second one and was resurrected by it at the cost of the visitor’s own existence. As well as getting his life back, Shin also gained the power to turn into a colossal star warrior – albeit only for brief minutes at a time – which coincided with Earth (and usually Japan) becoming a most desirable location for monsters, extraterrestrial invaders and a host of other unlikely perils…

A decent do-gooder now plagued with all the usual superhero secret identity troubles, Shin works with his close-knit team of fellow Science Patrol operatives as the world endures first a mosrously mutated Bemular and in close order thereafter, invasion by illusion-casting Baltans, a trip to Tatara/Monster Island ruled by the ruthless Red King, primordial threat Gomorasaurus (which includes a boy sidekick in waiting) miracle-making alien Mefilas who was looking for a human who would sign over ownership of Earth and the far more prosaic but murderous Zetton…

Ultimately, however, the biggest threat of all is when another Ultra Being manifests with a solution to all Shin’s problems…

The many worlds and dimensions of Ultraman are exotic, beguiling, infinitely fascinating and constantly renewing. Whether you fancy a quick dip into decades of mystery or intend to make the fantasy a lifetime project, you can’t do better than to start right here…
© 2023 Tsuburaya Productions. All Rights Reserved.

Ultraman: The Official Novelization will be released on December 12th 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

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Snow


By Benjamin Rivers (Benjamin Rivers Inc.)
ISBN: 978-0-9813495-8-9

Life isn’t drama. Life is ordinary: dull, repetitive, anxiety-provoking, tedious, unsatisfactory and just a bit less good than everybody else’s.

Until it isn’t…

And then we make it a story. In a story you can mould reality into a shape you like and polish it to your own satisfaction. Then again, there are some stories which like to bend their own rules and aspire to being life-like…

If you’re a fan of high-tension thrillers or blockbuster epics, there doesn’t appear to be much going on in Snow: a miniseries-turned-graphic compilation detailing the overlapping and intersection of ordinary people living and/or working on Queen Street West, Toronto.

However, that either means you have a very glamorous lifestyle or you spend too much time submerged in fiction and not enough looking and listening to what’s going on around you…

Crafted by illustrator and games developer Benjamin Rivers (who somewhat shoots my argument in the foot by having turned this comics collation into both an Indy movie and computer game), Snow is delivered in stark, monochrome simplicity, centring on Dana, a rather nervous young woman who works in a bookstore.

Economically, times are tough and she’s fixating on the number of shops and businesses that are closing in the locality.

Dana doesn’t like change and she doesn’t like confrontation.

However, these days there’s an aura of tension everywhere – even in her former comfort zone at the store. Her co-workers are mostly ok, but old Mr. Abberline isn’t looking well and Dana can’t shift the suspicion that soon they’ll all be looking for new jobs. Even best friend Julia doesn’t get it though: it seems so easy for her to shut out such concerns and just party…

As she trudges along snowbound Queen Street to work and back, to the bar or the Laundromat, Dana can’t shift an oppressive sense of impending doom. Things come to a head abruptly when she overhears an argument in a closing-down, already shuttered CD store.

She can just about ignore that and go home, but after hearing a gunshot, Dana, in her unrushed, gradual manner, abandons the instincts of a lifetime and goes to investigate…

What she finds on entering the shop is the trigger to remaking her entire life, but change is so hard and so comes so painfully slowly…

Appearing cautious and careful, this deceptively simple and elegant saga offers a supremely understated exploration of how folk like you and me react to a shocking event and its aftermath: treating the extraordinary with the dismay and respect it deserves when it impinges on real lives.

Most importantly, just like life, although there are always questions asked, we seldom get all the answers we want or need before, in the end, life goes on…

Amongst the Bonus Material included here is the movie poster for the film adaptation, annotated creator’s notes and sketches, concept-&-character designs, an examination of the drawing process which resulted in the book’s signature visual style and the author’s reminiscent Afterword: Is It Still Snowing?, as well as a handy street guide and map of the ‘The World of Snow’.

Just like life, Snow is better experienced than fed to you second-hand or reprocessed, so please read this graphic novel if you’re looking for something a little different from what comics think of as normal…
© 2014 Benjamin Rivers. All rights reserved.

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Growing Up in Public


By Ezequiel García (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-936-3

With the acceptance of graphic novels as a valid and worthy form of entertainment and mature expression has come a welcome flowering of personal stories and authorial voices blending unique – and literal – visions with perspectives far removed from our cosy own.

After all, potent and evocative as they might be, the graphic observations and conclusions of a Harvey Pekar or Eddie Campbell still resonate with shared concerns, experiences and ideologies for most English-speaking, western-reared readers from Britain, the USA, Canada, New Zealand or Australia.

Such a view just can’t be taken when absorbing the pictorial ruminations of equally brilliant and driven artisans from countries with differing historical, socio-cultural, linguistic and even artistic world views.

That kind of revelatory exotic intimacy can be found in Growing up in Public, the latest cartoon epistle from Argentinean artist and cartoonist Ezequiel García as he contemplates his achievements, total lack of success or celebrity and place in the world following his thirtieth birthday…

Born in 1975, García studied under Argentinean comics legend Alberto Breccia whilst co-editing several comics anthologies and trying his hands at other forms of artistic expression. Growing up in troubled times in a country that has always taken culture, heritage and the arts seriously, he has had short works appear in comics magazines in Europe and South America.

He won the comics award at Brazil’s Salon del Humor de Piracicaba in 2000, and his first graphic novel Turning 30 was released in Argentina in 2007. In recent years, Garcia has served as a comics teacher, art gallery curator, and co-organizer of the Festival Increible de Historietas, Fanzines y Afines whilst labouring on this eclectic, far-ranging, intimate, polemical and engaging reminiscence.

In a free-wheeling, affectingly immersive, starkly black-&-white outpouring, Ezequiel introduces us to his world at a certain point in his life. A struggling artist, the author derives much of his inspiration from the history, music and architectural heritage of Buenos Aires. Here, however, as he struggles to find a publisher for his comics, galleries to exhibit his other art, women to sleep with and someone special to love, his attentions are increasingly distracted by the ongoing destruction of all he cherishes as big banks and foreign businesses take over, rebuild and desecrate the magnificent dance palaces, film theatres and civic buildings which were the landmarks and milestones of his childhood…

In truth the entire city is under threat of losing its identity as money and encroaching corporate globalisation seeps in, buying off officials and easily circumventing the legal protections supposedly safeguarding these edifices for the nation…

Most galling of all is Ezequiel’s quest for creative acceptance. He’s getting some traction, but as he and his friends visit show after show, he’s starting to feel that the art world only wants to reward shallow charlatans regurgitating old or devalued concepts and no longer has room or respect for toil, craftsmanship and honest searches for truth…

He feels equally powerless to change his personal situation. Ezequiel has no trouble meeting women, but really wants a girlfriend and just can’t decide on which one to get serious with…

The most potent temptation of autobiographical comics is the total autonomy the exercise grants. In the midst of his collation of linked episodes and hope-filled introspections highlighting the aggravating, mundane or personally significant, García takes the opportunity to radically depart from his prescribed path to interweave a psychedelic, emotionally overcharged diversion.

As he is drawn into a late-night church meeting after reading Moby Dick, he is transported to mind-boggling flights of fancy as the firebrand cleric ranting conflates Melville’s tale with the biblical example of Jonah; resulting in a stunning visual tornado of iconic idolatrous revelation…

And then reality returns and he goes back to his catalogue of disaffection. As he endures more and more of the same the increasingly uncomfortable thirty-someone reaches a crisis in his romantic stalemates and decides it’s time to make decisions and changes in his life…

As previously stated, music plays a great part in the author’s life, and song lyrics – in Spanish – are woven into almost every page of García’s fiercely expressionistic art like street art or a graffiti Greek Chorus. Don’t fret however, as a full compliment of ‘Song Translations’ featuring all those mood-enhancing lines is included in the Bonus Section, which also includes a page of the artists ‘Inspiration’ sources as well as ‘Notes’ offering context and commentary on the story.

Powerful, uncompromising, mesmerising and unforgettable, this is a superb peek at life’s unchanging verities through fresh and expressive eyes and one all lovers of comics as art should seek out.
© 2016 Ezequiel García. Design © 2016 Fantagraphics. Translation © 2016 Ezequiel García. All rights reserved.