Category: LGBTQIA+

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Biscuits Assorted


By Jenny Robins (Myriad Editions)
ISBN: 978-1-91240-82-90 (TPB)

There’s a 1944 Powell & Pressburger film called A Canterbury Tale, wherein a group of disparate, loosely ordinary associated characters weave in and out of each other’s lives for a defined period, gradually proceeding towards a shared denouement. It’s about far more than that and is really good. You should see it.

Biscuits Assorted is a bit like that, but also completely different. You should read it. It’s really, REALLY good.

Artist, teacher, Small Press artisan and author Jenny Robins is clearly a keen observer and gifted raconteur deftly attuned to nuance and ambiance and quite possibly hopelessly in love with London. Her award-winning debut graphic novel is a paean to modern living in the city, recounted through overlapping snapshots of many women’s lives in the months of ‘June’, ‘July’ and ‘August’ of a recent year (and don’t worry about which one).

If you need the metaphor explained, there are different varieties and, occasionally, they don’t do quite what it says on the tin…

Seriously though, here in captivating and compelling monochrome linework are a plethora of distinct, well-rounded individuals of differing ages and backgrounds working, playing, living, dying, risking, winning, failing and constantly interacting with each other to a greater or lesser extent. They are all united by place, circles of friends, shared acquaintances and enjoying – for once – full access to their own unexpurgated voices.

Strangers or seasoned intimates, life-long or Mayfly-momentary, this addictively engaging collection of incidents and characters share locations and similar pressures as they go about their lives, but the way in which they each impact upon one another is utterly mesmerising. I’m a bluff old British codger and I’ve been meeting these very women and girls all my life, except for those who are completely new to my white male privileged experience. Now, however, I know what they’re like and what they’ve been thinking all this time…

Moreover, it’s outrageously funny and terrifying elucidating, rude in all the right ways and places, and absolutely able to break your heart and jangle the nerves with a turn of a page.

Biscuits Assorted is a brilliant and revelatory picaresque voyage impossible to put down and deserves to become a classic of graphic literature. It’s also the most fun you can have with your brain fully engaged.
© Jenny Robins 2020. All rights reserved.

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Shaft volume 2: Imitation of Life


By David F. Walker, Dietrich Smith & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-52410-260-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

For most of modern history black consumers of popular entertainments in what used to be called the “Free West” have found far too few fictive role models. In the English-speaking world that began changing in the turbulent 1960s as America’s Civil Rights Movement gained traction and truly took hold during the decade that followed. Many characters stemming from those days come from a commercially-led cultural phenomenon called Blaxploitation.

Although criticised for seedy antecedents, stereotypical situations and extreme violence, the films, books, music and art were the first mass-market examples of minority characters in charge and in leading roles, rather than as fodder, flunkies or flamboyant villains. One of the earliest movie icons of the genre was the man called Shaft. His filmic debut in 1971 was scripted by journalist and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman (The French Connection; High Plains Drifter; A Force of One) adapting his own 1970 novel. Tidyman authored six more between 1972 and 1975, with his urbane urban warrior simultaneously starring in numerous films and a (far, far tamer) TV series. He even had in his own retro-themed, adults-only comic book.

An eighth prose novel – Shaft’s Revenge – was released in 2016, written by David F. Walker. Amongst his many talents – you should hunt down his online culture-crunching ’zine BadAzzMoFo and you won’t be sorry – Walker numbers writing intriguing, hard-edged comics (Occupy Avengers, Cyborg, Red Sonja, Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes and many more), so in 2014 it was probably inevitable he be invited to write that long-overdue comics iteration…

Blockbusting premier miniseries Shaft: A Complicated Man – relating the lone wolf’s origins – led to this sequel, illustrated by Dietrich Smith and coloured by Alex Guimarães, with Walker himself lettering the series. Whereas that comic book took its look, settings and tone from the novels more than the Richard Roundtree (whom we tragically lost in October last year) films, this one carefully refocuses and aims for a satisfactory blending of prose and film iterations.

Originally released as a 4-issue miniseries, Imitation of Life finds the detective ‘Before and After’, regretting his life choices, successes and recent notoriety as the highly publicised rescue of an abducted girl suddenly make him a famous – if not actually notorious – man. It’s nothing he wanted: Shaft was literally forced to take the job by a major mobster no one in their right mind ever refuses, and now, after sorting the problem in his inimitably pitiless manner, the gumshoe is slowly drinking himself to death on the huge fee he also couldn’t safely turn down…

Eventually guilt and boredom compel him to get back in the game and, free of money worries, he can pick and choose from a big list of inquiries. That said, Shaft can’t explain just why he takes on the pointless problems of the Prossers: a hick white couple desperate to find their son. Mike is 18; a good-looking homosexual kid (we say “gay” today, apparently) swallowed up by the sleaze-peddlers of 1970s Times Square. The kid’s legal and not even a real missing person, but there’s something Shaft can’t get out of his head about this particular runaway…

Convinced it’s all pointless, Big John hits appropriate bars and clubs but no one knows anything: they never do. And then a kid named Tito recognizes him and just like that, the violence starts coming.

Surviving a homophobic attack – and teaching a few bigots the cost of intolerance – Shaft finds his case abruptly stalled just as shady wannabe filmmakers seeks to hire him to consult on their new (blaxsploitation) flick “The Black Dick”. It promises to be an easy gig, but they never are…

Before long, Shaft is writhing in discomfort as the script ludicrously bastardises his career and reputation, but when Tito turns up and bamboozles the detective into facing off with a Mafia pornographer just as the secret moneyman behind his own filmic fiasco starts demanding an early return on his investment, it all stops being a laugh and becomes deadly serious again. Once more, he remembers there’s no such thing as ‘Easy Money’…

As fictional and real worlds increasingly intersect, Vice cops contact Shaft and he sees that somehow all his irons seem to be stacked in the same fire. When the ludicrous leading man is abducted and troublemaking Tito pops up again with some very perilous photographs from his own incessant snooping, Shaft discovers in penultimate chapter ‘Love & Loss’ just what happened to Mike Prosser before tooling up to rescue one bad actor while invading a film set where pornos and snuff films are the preferred hot product…

The strands all pull together in a typically cathartic climax as ‘All the World’s a Stage’ sees order restored, bad guys righteously dealt with and even sets up a delicious funny ending to usher us out…

Revisiting a legendarily foetid cesspool of civic corruption, warring mobsters and get-rich-quick chancers, this tour of a mythic milieu is another wry and intoxicating crime thriller no fan of the genre should miss.
Shaft is ™ & © 2016 Ernest Tidyman. All rights reserved.

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Sennen


By Shanti Rai (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-71-4 (PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Family Feast for Modern Mindsets… 9/10

In the valley, all people toil faithfully to sustain themselves and venerate the gods. That worship comes in the form of crops that uncanny messengers of the divine actually come and collect. Everyone is content in their pastoral idyl, working gratefully in harmony and devotion. No one questions… except Sennen.

Restless, dissatisfied and increasingly rebellious, she is at an age where things no longer seem certain or right. Her growing dissent against doctrine and just the way how life is has resulted in pushing her few friends away: even loyal co-conspirator Margate now considers her a “Bad Influence”.

Sennen, however, dreams of one day going over the all-enclosing mountains and learning what lies beyond… maybe even meeting different people…?

When her acting out forces her biological father Baba Gwent and the man he lives with (Pelynt, whom she calls “Dad”) to reveal the true circumstances of Sennen’s birth and her mother’s death, it leads to Gwent being taken away and offered up as sacrifice to the Gods. Furious, Sennen secretly follows, stowing away in an incredible machine and taken up above where she discovers a horrific truth about the Supreme Beings who rule her people. She also finds allies of her own age and apostate disposition willing to help her share the shocking truth… and even destroy the status quo.

… And that’s when an even more appalling truth manifests…

Born in South London and therefore knowing all about “salt of the Earth types” and layers of disbelief, Shanti Rai has constructed a beguiling politico-religious Coming of Age tale with heavy notes of “adults always lie” to flavour the broth: a properly thoughtful thriller that askes eternal but always important questions.

Powerful, beguiling, comfortingly apocalyptic and harbouring the promise of a sequel (soon please!) Sennen is a mini-masterpiece worthy of your attention – especially in this season of spiritual revelation…
© Shanti Rai, 2022. All rights reserved.

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Doctor Who Graphic Novel #21: The Eye of Torment


By Scott Gray, Mike Collins, Jacqueline Rayner, Martin Geraghty, David A. Roach & various (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-673-1 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Timely Seasonal Treat… 8/10

Today is the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Here’s another Timey-Wimey treat to celebrate a unique TV and comics institution in a periodical manner …

We Brits love comic strips, adore “characters” and are addicted to celebrity. The history of our comics includes an astounding number of comedians, Variety stars and television actors: such disparate legends as Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Askey, Charlie Drake and so many more I’ve long forgotten and you’ve likely never heard of.

As much adored and adapted were actual shows like Ace of Wands, Timeslip, Supercar, The Clangers and countless more. If we watched or listened, an enterprising publisher made printed spectacles of them. Hugely popular anthology comics like Radio/Film Fun/TV Fun, Look-In, TV Comic, TV Tornado, and Countdown would translate light entertainment favourites into pictorial joy. It was a pretty poor star or show that couldn’t parley the day job into a licensed strip property…

Doctor Who debuted on black-&-white televisions across Britain on November 23rd 1963 with episode 1 of ‘An Unearthly Child’. Months later in 1964, TV Comic began a decades-long association, as issue #674 began ‘The Klepton Parasites’ – by an unknown author with the art attributed to illustrator Neville Main.

On 11th October 1979, Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. Turning monthly in September 1980 (#44) it’s been with us – via various iterations – ever since: proving the Time Lord is a comic star of impressive pedigree, not to be trifled with.

Panini’s UK division ensured his comics immortality by collecting all strips of every Time Lord Regeneration in a series of graphic albums – although we’re still waiting for digital versions. Each time tome focused on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer, with this one gathering almost a year’s worth of stories plucked from the annals of history and the Terran cover dates August 2014 to August 2015. These yarns all feature The Twelfth Doctor as played by Peter Capaldi in a collection of full-colour episodes all given hues from James Offredi and letters by Roger Langridge.

It all kicks off with eponymous shocker ‘The Eye of Torment’ (Doctor Who Magazine #477-480, October-December 2014). Written by Scott Gray and drawn by Martin Geraghty – with inks from infallibly rewarding David A. Roach – it finds a newly-minted incarnation of the Time Lord and capable companion Clara Oswald fetch up inside a spaceship traversing the surface of the sun.

With inescapable flavours of Armando Iannucci’s 2020 comedy sci fi vehicleAvenue 5, the good ship Pollyanna is manned solely by women working for gigajazillionaire Rudy Zoom: a rich, over-achieving narcissist in love with his own legend. Surprisingly, he’s not the actual problem: that would a semi-sentient predatory alien infection imprisoned eons ago by Sol’s gravity. “The Umbra” mimic humanoid form: magnifying and feeding on despair. Once the horror broaches Pollyanna’s invulnerable hull, it/they start picking off the crew until the newcomers find a way to stop it/them and escape…

The epic yarn leads directly into the ‘The Instruments of War’ (DWM #481-483, January-March 2015) wherein writer/artist Mike Collins, ably assisted by Roach) deposit the time travellers in Earth’s Sahara just as German General Erwin Rommel is preparing to finish the Afrika campaign. Sadly, that’s when an agent of the Rutan Horde finally disinters a world-reshaping weapon long lost by their eternal arch-enemies The Sontarans…

Forced to ally with a few of the Sontaran clone-warriors, assorted Germans of various philosophies, righteously rebellious Tuaregs and the living enigma of an honourable warrior fighting for the wrong side, The Doctor and Clara are initially separated but soldier on to save everyone with a degree of success…

Skipping #484, we next arrive as south as we can get for some ‘Blood and Ice’ served up by Jacqueline Rayner, Geraghty & Roach, with actual schoolmarm Clara and the tall, rude one claiming to be Ofsted inspectors giving a college at the bottom of the world a cautious once-over. It’s 2048, the Antarctic Treaty protecting the polar continent from resource exploitation is about to expire and something strange is happening at Snowcap University: something Dr. Patricia Audley is very unhappy to acknowledge and a situation she is working very hard to remedy. However, even with fatal accidents, mutants appearing and students vanishing, both our heroes are a bit off their game. Fans will recall that on TV, Clara had been splintered into a million alternate versions scattered throughout the timestream and finding one of herself at Snowcap has truly unsettled her. The Doctor also has qualms: last time he was here it was a military base filled with cybermen and resulted in the death of his first generation (First Doctor William Hartnell, keep up, keep up!) and first re-generation…

The disorientation doesn’t stop them solving the riddle of the place, but not before a lot of people are dead or worse…

The dramas conclude in fine style and traditional form as a holding pattern allowing the TV Doctor’s debut to catch up with his print incarnation allows DWM #475-476 to deliver a Gallifreyan-adjacent sidebar saga from Gray, Collins, Roach, Offredi & Langridge. Set during London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 ‘The Crystal Throne’ is an untold adventure of “The Paternoster Gang” (Silurian Madame Vastra, her human wife Jenny Flint and their butler Sontaran Strax) who – with assorted associates – oppose weird terror, scurrilous sedition and deranged genetic meddler Lady Cornelia Basildon-Stone for rule of the British Empire. The battle at “The Crystal Palace” is made harder by their ruthless foe, who remakes men into insectoid monsters; employing stolen Silurian technology…

Supplemented with fascinating insights from all the creatives involved in each tale and augmented by tons of sketches and other pre-publishing artwork in the Commentary section, this is a splendid book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for dedicated fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our particular art-form to anyone minded to give comics another go…
All Doctor Who material © BBCtv 2015. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. All other material © 2017 its individual creators and owners. Published 2015 by Panini. All rights reserved.

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Alone in Space – A Collection


By Tillie Walden (Avery Hill Press)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-58-5 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Time of Wonders to Be Reseen… 10/10

Transitions are important. In fact, they are life changing. But so can be looking to where we just came from. In this superb compilation you can see some of how the amazing Tillie Walden got to where she is now.

We usually attribute wisdom and maturity in the creative arts to having lived a bit of life and getting some emotional grit in our wheels and sand in our faces, but – at least in terms of age – that’s not the case for the Texas-raised pictorial raconteur, whose beguiling string of releases include On a Sunbeam, Clementine, Spinning and Are You Listening?

Walden is still a relative newcomer – albeit a prolific one – who has garnered heaps of awards and acclaim. Whether through fiction or autobiographical works (frequently both at once), she can engender feelings of absolute wonder, combined with a fresh incisive view and measured, compelling delivery in terms of both story and character. Her artwork is sheer poetry.

Following an erudite and recapitulating Introduction by Warren Bernard the comics begin with a breakthrough moment. The remarkably adept neophyte auteur began her rise with Ignatz Award-winning debut graphic novel The End of Summer. Compelling and poignant, it is a family drama fantasy, chillingly reminiscent of Nordic literary classicists like Henrik Ibsen, Astrid Lindgren or Tove Jansson, thematically toned like Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia novels whilst visually citing Dave Sim’s Cerebus collections High Society & Church & State.

Most impressive is the fact that The End of Summer was crafted in 2015 as a side-project whilst Walden was finishing her First-Year major assignment at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. There are further treats from that time at the back of this epic collection, which also include this story’s prequel ‘Lars and Nemo’.

Like everything Walden creates, this is a story I hesitate to describe because it’s a beguiling immersive experience that doesn’t need me spoiling it for you. Get it, read it, tell a friend.

What I will say is this: in distant place servants and staff rush to seal a colossal, cathedral-like palace. Winter is coming and the palatial bunker will be closed off for three years…

In that oppressive atmosphere, frail prince Lars and his twin sister Maja become increasingly aware of the tensions and quirks afflicting their large family.

Lars’ failing physicality has made him a quiet, introspective and fatalistic observer, whilst his dependence on Nemo – a gigantic housecat acting as companion and living, loving wheelchair – mark him as a marginalised target for siblings Olle, Per, Nikolaus and Hedda. As time passes and the children seek ways to amuse themselves, increasingly unstable Per seems to find the oppressive isolation and vast scale of the palace as well as the disinterest and suppressed tensions of the adults incomprehensibly claustrophobic.

Before long, the dooms and disasters Lars is obsessed with start to manifest, leading to tragedy and terror…

Beautifully illustrated in monochrome tones, with Brobdingnagian perspectives shaping every panel, this saga of an opulent yet cold House of Secrets, shielding a broken family from the elements but not themselves and each other, is a superb examination of humanity at its best and worst.

Walden followed up on her Ignatz Award-winning debut with this fluffy yet barbed coming-of-age tale. Part Sweet but not Calorific, I Love This Part deliciously pictorializes life-changing happy, introspective, contemplative and aspirational moments between two schoolgirls who have found each other. Shared dreams, idle conversations, disputes and landmark first steps, even fights and break-ups are seen and weathered.

Novelty, timidity, apprehension, societal pressure and even some unnecessary shame come into it, but generally it’s just how young people learn to love and what that that can entail…

Apart from the astoundingly graceful and inviting honesty of the tale, the most engaging factor is the author’s brilliant dismissal of visual reality. These interactions are backdropped by wild changes in dimension and perspective, abrupt shifts in location and landscape and shots of empty spaces, all adding a sense of distance and whimsy to very familiar proceedings.

Walden is a great admirer of Little Nemo so fellow afficionados will feel at home even if some might experience the odd sensation of disorientation and trepidation. Like being in love, I suppose…

A City Inside is another seamlessly constructed marriage of imagination and experience to unflinching self-exploration, constructing a perfect blend of autobiography and fantasy into a vehicle both youthfully exuberant and literary timeless.

Opening in a therapy session, the story delves intimately into a woman’s past, from isolated southern days to bold moments of escape – or is that simply drifting away? – in search of peace and a place to settle. We all leave home and then grow up, and here that transition is seen through a tentative alliance with an idealised first love. It fumbles and fails thanks to the dull oppression of the Happy Ever After part that no fairy tale ever warns you about…

Eventually life builds you into the being you are – hence the symbolism of a vast internal metropolis – and life goes on, or back, or away, or just somewhere else. That’s pretty much the point…

Supremely engaging, enticingly disturbing and ultimately utterly uplifting, this shared solo voyage to another county is a visual delight no lover of comics can possibly resist. Apart from the graceful honesty on show, the most engaging factor is the author’s inspired rearrangement of visual reality. These dictate mood and tone in a way a million words can’t, supplying a sense of grace and wistful whimsy to the affair.

You’d have to be bereft of vision and afflicted with a heart of stone to reject these comic masterpieces, but for many even more rewarding is a glimpse at how that narrative acumen developed.

Rounding out this epic tome is a wealth of Comics by Tillie Walden Aged 16-20 Years Old: all accompanied by author’s commentary to foster understanding or highlight points of interest. From 2013, ‘Glare’ details a childhood spat before 2014’s ‘My Name Is…’ acts as an introduction to a new student whilst the same year sees the artist dabble with colour on a visit to ‘Slumberland’…

Scale and compression inform visual experimentation in 2014’s ‘Cramped’, ‘Journal Entry’ and ‘The Graduate’ after which 2015’s growth opens with longer works and a tribute to major influence ‘Ghibli’ followed by evocative breakthroughs ‘Lost Trees’ and ‘Dreaming’. That same year looking back to childhood spawned oppressive fancy ‘Sun in My Eyes’ and graduation piece ‘In the Palm of Your Hand’…

In 2016 rapid fire soliloquy ‘The Weather Woman’ led to aforementioned prequel ‘Lars and Nemo’ (don’t read it first, okay?) and Walden’s first trip to space in ‘Alive’ ending with a reflective slice of visual verity in ‘What it’s Like to be Gay in an All Girls Middle School’.

Rounding out the candid review is course project delight ‘Q & A’ and fantasy moment ‘The Fader’ (2018) segueing into a stunning Gallery section of promotional prints, posters, variant book covers, and bookplates.

Superbly engaging, shockingly nuanced and movingly beautiful, these works are pure comics magic no lover of the artform should miss.
© Tillie Walden 2021. All rights reserved.

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Bad Magic – A Skullduggery Pleasant Graphic Novel


By Derek Landy, PJ Holden, Matt Soffe, Rob Jones & Pye Parr (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
ISBN: 978-000-858-5785 (TPB/Digital edition)

Have you heard of Skulduggery Pleasant? What about his biographer Derek Landy?

The latter is an occasional comics writer (All-Out Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America) who moonlights as a best-selling Irish author, thanks mostly to the addictive exploits of the former. Since 2007, Landy has detailed the training of mystic troubleshooter Valkyrie Cain by a veteran spook chooser/animated skeleton calling himself… Skulduggery Pleasant…

Other than my heartfelt recommendation, what more do you need to go get some of that? By my count there’s 15 novels thus far, with another due early next year. Technically, it was all supposed to end after three trilogies, but the only thing that can’t die or be killed is soaring success…

With snippets, novellas, sidebar stories and the like popping up when least expected (surely the best time?) it was inevitable that the haunt-hunters would migrate to comics too, and it’s fair to say that the result is a real cracker…

Scripted by Landy, limned by P.J. Holden (Rogue Trooper, Judge Dredd, Warhammer Monthly, The Moon Looked Down and Laughed, coloured by Matt Soffe and lettered by Rob Jones, the story opens in rural Termoncara, a rustic outpost that just happens to be the unsung murder capital of Ireland. Somehow, though, nobody outside seems to notice…

Inside the idyllic enclave of ordinary folk, all is not happy – especially for young Jamie, who truly regrets saying to Ethan what he did. Now Jamie’s despised: kept out of school and accused of killing his best friend. Moreover, he’s become the focus of enough hate, spite, hostility and intolerance to move mountains…

One month later, two flashy strangers arrogantly breeze into town, ruffling feathers, poking under stones and asking questions that better… beings… have died for. Soon, Valkyrie and Skulduggery are baiting and beating up a succession of racist, homophobic louts of all ages. Refusing to learn, these decent folk regularly confront them, but it’s just useful for misdirection as the strangers continue the actual task of finding out what kind of monster has turned a sleepy hamlet into the mystic equivalent of the Somme…

The root cause of all the grief is a deep mystery going back twenty years, and as the eerie investigators probe deeper and dodge multiple mundane and magical murder attempts, it becomes clear that it might be more than even Pleasant can handle…

Sadly, when they do unearth toxic, mystic agent provocateur Mr Friendly and his thuggish thaumaturgic pals, that proves all too true, but this kind of buried trauma can generate unlikely friends as well as appalling foes and in the end it’s all up to Jaimie to make a life- and reality-changing choice…

Fun, thrilling, smartly scripted and powerfully making a stand for diversity and inclusion in the face of intimidation and ignorance, even if this is your first encounter with the worlds of Skulduggery Pleasant, it one you will adore and never forget…
Text © Derek Landy 2023. Art © P.J. Holden 2023. Skulduggery Pleasant™ Derek Landy. Skulduggery Pleasant logo™ HarperCollinsPublishers. All rights reserved.

Bad Magic will be published 28th September 2023 and is available for pre-order now. If you’re of a sociable bent, there is a series of nine meet-&-greet events – such as a signing at Forbidden Planet Megastore London on 28th September and Henley Literary Festival on October 1st – so why not check out www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk for precise details, hmm?

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Middle Distance – A Graphic Memoir


By Mylo Choy (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-15-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

There are many ways to find yourself. Too often the main roadblock is other people… or maybe a lack of a pathfinder.

In Middle Distance, mixed race, non-binary Mylo Choy shares their road to understanding one’s self via curated extracts of a life filled with coping mechanisms such as running, drawing, reading or sharing stories: all solid sound ways of trying to address that feeling of not being who you might be or where you should be.

No overblown drama to titillate here, just a rational seeker recalling obstacles faced and hurdles cleared in a marathon push towards acceptance of a pragmatic middle way. It begins with growing up in Wisconsin, as ‘The Race’ sees the 6th grader run a first revelatory race and discover a feeling and undertaking to totally consume them and view a world of total isolation and security: the mile run…

Soon running daily with Dad before again graduating or reduced to a single person passion – to the point of slowing down and pretending to stroll if someone sees you – always the goal is no specified goal. Well, maybe making those who matter say the accomplishment is more than just “pretty good”…

‘Speedwork’ finds solo traveller joining the track team in sophomore year, learning from more experienced friends and uncaringly accepting a coach’s assessment to be a middle distance runner, yet feeling only glee and pride inside on being told 800 metres is the most painful distance to go…

Gaining technique but never losing the primal exuberance of putting one foot in front of another – and how that influences other passions like drawing – growth continues. Does the placebo puzzle of confidence, concentration and meditation contribute to landing impostor-like on the 4 x 800 relay team beside incomparable admirable Maggie?

Why read so many stories about “tomboys”? And why can’t an iron will hold back puberty?

Years pass and the now adult outsider works with kids in Brooklyn and upstate New York as an outdoor educator. Life catches up and starts inflicting years of mystery aches and severe pains, so running buddy Jeff suggests the only answer is the New York Marathon…

By re-examining Buddhist family roots ‘Rest’ traces years of sporadic and often-interrupted progress towards that great dream, before a series of small intense inner revelations point to ‘The Long Run’ and what comes next…

Subtly, almost accidentally allegorical, this testament to understanding through internal addiction and evolution by determination is beguiling, enticing and strangely cleansing: a welcome step into unknown territory for most of us and a journey well worth taking..

It’s a little bit strange to write about running which mostly consists of clearing the mind and just going. That’s especially true of this pretty and memorable book. You should just do it…

© 2023 Mylo Choy. Written and drawn by Mylo Choy. All rights reserved.
Middle Distance will be published in the UK on 14th September 2023. An American edition will be released 31st October 2023.

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Evil Emperor Penguin: The World Will Be Mine!


By Laura Ellen Anderson, with Kate Brown (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-299-1 (Digest PB)

A lifetime ago in 2012 Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched an “old school” weekly comics anthology aimed at girls and boys between 6 and 12. It revelled in reviving the grand old days of British picture-story entertainment intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in its style and content. This comprised comic strips, humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles, educational material and activity pages in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy.

In the years since, the periodical has gone from strength to strength, its pantheon of superbly engaging strips generating lines of superbly engaging graphic novel compilations, the latest of which is this riotous romp starring a gloriously malign and inept arch-wizard of scientific wickedness who delights readers with a profound sense of mischief and unbridled imagination…

Conceived and created by illustrator and author Laura Ellen Anderson (Kittens, Snow Babies, My Brother is a Superhero, Amelia Fang!, Rainbow Grey, I Don’t Want…), these are the revived, remastered and extended exploits of Evil Emperor Penguin!

The bad bird lives in a colossal fortress beneath the Antarctic, working ceaselessly towards total world domination, assisted by his stylish and erudite many-tentacled administrative lackey Number 8 and cutely fuzzy, passionately loyal Eugene. The latter is an endlessly inventive little abominable snowman clone. EEP had whipped up a batch of 250, but none of the others are quite like Eugene…

The penguin potentate appointed the hairy, bizarrely inspired tyke Top Minion, but somehow never managed to instil him with the requisite degree of evilness. Still, he is a dab-hand with spaghetti hoops, so it’s not a total loss.

Following an crucially informative  pin-up of ‘the Gang’ and some recurring rivals and foes with an info-packed double-page map of the Evil Underground Headquarters (disclosing all you’ll need to know) another assortment of vile vignettes begins with ‘Quantum EEP’ as a mishap with time travelling commodes send the penguin and his tentacular deputy back in time to meet their younger hippie selves – and make them evil if they want to get home and conquer the world. If only their earlier selves weren’t so seductively content…

Back in the present, Eugene and his substandard substitute assistant Neill are trying to fix the glitch but it’s tricky with chunks of reality fading away as you reach for them.

Ultimately, the wrong real is put right and EEP resumes his plans, leading to exploiting a radical new power source in ‘Pomme de Terror’ – which then evolves into a marauding horror made even worse by arch World Domination rival Evil Cat popping in for a spot of smug mockery…

Eugene’s secret passion for footwear inspires the Bad Bird’s next plan for global enslavement in ‘Shoe-Gene’ and results in the good servant being captured by the moustachioed, top-hatted, perfidious puss whose ‘Big Fat Doom-Button’ seems certain to eradicate the top minion’s benevolent guardian jolly unicorn Keith and all his wondrous kin.

Even an unprecedented team-up of EEP and the horned horsey isn’t enough to quell the crisis and it needs the last-minute intervention of valiant narwhal Norman and his finny chums to end the cat’s plans, but at least the rescue has laid the groundwork for a future romance…

Fully restored and ready for more evil, ‘Marshminion Surprise’ sees EEP attempting to turn humanity into gooey taste treats, but instead transforming Eugene after Evil Cat interferes again. No sooner is abnormality restored than reality television inspires even greater horror when the penguin produces hyper-judgemental talent show ‘The Yay Factor’ before Eugene’s love of a Farmer’s Market leads to EEP’s invention of brain-shrinking fruit in ‘An Epple a Day’. Naturally, nothing goes right and Antarctica soon is imperilled by a giant hairy head…

‘A Penguin’s Christmas Carol’ sees the villain forced to examine his own past present and future in the traditional spoofish yet moving manner before a new year welcomes fresh terror as EEP unleashes carnivorous wheelie-bins in ‘Time to Take Out the Trash’, prior to the debut of the politest murderous minion ever as ‘Flegburt’ introduces himself and Evil Cat’s scheme to destroy the penguin’s beloved Invention Room of Evil. Of course, even good manners can’t compensate for Eugene’s unique charm…

A critical postal cock up triggers ‘The Great Chase’ across the icy continent – consequently disrupting Keith and Norman’s first date – before the status quo between potential world tyrants is restored and EEP attempts to subjugate elected world leaders with genetically modified ‘Flower Power’.

The threat level then drops as the penguin suffers a dearth of inspiration in ‘Evil Block’ and takes out his frustrations on everybody until he builds a relaxation machine and really goes off the deep end. Drenched in chaos and worse, EEP must join with Evil Cat and unknown rival Evil Rat enduing countless terrors and discovering the awful truth about pigeons…

With Flegburt having turned turncoat and now minioning for the Evil Penguin, ‘Plan Poover’ finds young unicorn Colin doing his work experience placement with Number 8, thanks to a recommendation from his uncle Keith. It soon looks like he’ll never get that precious Sparkle Scouts Career Badge after designing the Super Epic Human Rainbow Vacuum…

More upset occurs after the unwary penguin plugs in the ‘Evil Printer’ and reality starts rebelling, even as the discovery of ‘Flegburt’s True Calling’ triggers fashion, shopping and a major career change after which brainwash chemical ‘Shampoogene’ is unleashed. It’s meant to clean humanity’s heads… and brains!… but there’s a little unwelcome side effect…

Eugene’s love of blowing bubbles sparks ‘The Unpoppable Plan’ and almost ends everyone until Keith and Norman intercede, before – with “bubblegeddon” averted – master and servants settle back for ‘A Christmas to Remember’ when the bird decides to steal Santa’s job and position…

Rocket-paced, hilariously inventive, wickedly arch and utterly determined to be silly at all costs, this tome of terror also has educational merit as it offers lessons on ‘How to Draw EEP’.

Evil Emperor Penguin: The World Will Be Mine! is a captivating cascade of smart, witty funny adventure, which will delight readers of all ages.
Text and illustrations © Laura Ellen Anderson 2023. All rights reserved.

Evil Emperor Penguin The World Will Be Mine! will be released (but not for good behaviour) on September 7th 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

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Blue Beetle Graduation Day


By Josh Trujillo & Adrián Gutiérrez, with Wil Quintana, Lucas Gattoni & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-2324-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

As the most recent incarnation of the vintage and venerable Blue Beetle brand at last makes the jump from comic book limbo and kids’ animation into live action movie madness, the event sparked a new comics miniseries bridging the teen hero’s old life and new comic book series. Here that is…

The Blue Beetle first appeared in Mystery Men Comics #1, published by Fox Comics and cover-dated August 1939. The eponymous lead character was created by Charles Nicholas (AKA Charles Wojtkowski) as a pulp-styled mystery man and born nomad. Over years and crafted by a Who’s Who of extremely talented creators, the Beetle was also inexplicably popular and hard to kill: surviving the collapse of numerous publishers before ending up as a Charlton Comics property in the mid-1950s.

After a few issues sporadically published, the company shelved him until the superhero revival of the early 1960s when Joe Gill, Roy Thomas, Bill Fraccio & Tony Tallarico revised and revived the character in a 10-issue run (June 1964, February 1966). Cop-turned-adventurer Dan Garrett was reinvented an archaeologist, educator and scientist who gained super-powers whenever he activated a magic scarab with the trigger phrase “Khaji Da!”

Some months later, Steve Ditko (with scripter Gary Friedrich) utterly reimagined the Blue Beetle. Ted Kord was an earnest and brilliant young researcher who had been a student and friend of Professor Garrett and when his mentor seemingly died in action, Kord trained himself to replace him: a purely human inventor/combat acrobat, bolstered by ingenious technology. This latter version joined DC’s pantheon during Crisis on Infinite Earths, earning a solo series and quirky immortality partnered with Booster Gold in Justice League International and beyond…

When Kord was murdered in the run up to Infinite Crisis, it led to all-out war across realities and at the height of the linked catastrophes El Paso high-schooler Jaime Reyes found a weird blue jewel shaped like a bug. That night, as he slept, it invaded him and turned him into a bizarre insectoid warrior. suddenly gifted with great powers, and revealed how some heroes are remade, not born – especially when a sentient scarab jewel affixes itself to your spine and transforms you into an armoured bio-weapon. Almost instantly, he was swept up in the chaos, joining Batman and other heroes in a climactic space battle.

Inexplicably returned home, Jaime revealed his secret to his family and tried to do some good in his hometown but had to rapidly adjust to huge changes. Best bud Paco had joined a gang of super-powered freaks, he learned the local crime mastermind was the foster-mom of his other best bud Brenda, and scary military dude named Christopher Smith (The Peacemaker) started hanging around. He claimed the thing in Jaime was malfunctioning alien tech, not life-affirming Egyptian magic that he also had an unwelcome and involuntary connection to…

That led to a secret war against an alien collective of conquerors called the Reach whose shady dealings and defeat have been covered in Blue Beetle: Jaime Reyes volumes One & Two. You should get those also.

Gathering Blue Beetle: Graduation Day #1-6 (cover-dated January to June 2022), and including an excerpt from the new Blue Beetle series it leads into, this collection is also quite rightly available in a Spanish language edition.

In an effort to maximise your fun and save time let’s briefly hit the high notes here.

Crafted by scripter Josh Trujillo (Adventure Time, Captain America, Rick & Morty), illustrator Adrián Gutiérrez (Batman, The Flash), colourist Wil Quintana and letterer Lucas Gattoni, ‘Graduation Day’ is set following recent DC megaevent Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths with our neophyte champion at long last getting a handle on his other life. He’s even become pals with his sentient passenger bug Khaji Da, allowing them to seamlessly work together.

With school days practically done, as the story opens Jaime is currently wrecking downtown El Paso battling magical thief Fadeaway and worrying about his non-superhero future. After almost missing his own graduation ceremony, Reyes suddenly finds it all going wrong again when he receives a terrifying vision of The Reach and loses control, uncontrollably shifting to his blue battle form…

His family share his secret, but aren’t happy about it and when he returns to his own party hours later, the festivities are long over and his furious mother wants to know what he’s doing with his life. So does Superman, who “just” popped by to see if the alien conquerors had regained control of their greatest weapon…

Intel confirms that The Reach are coming back and the (adult) superhero community feels it might be prudent if Jaime doesn’t use his powers for the foreseeable future…

Benched, grounded, jobless and not destined for college any time soon, the frustrated lad is summarily packed off to toil in his aunts’ diner in Palmera City, but fate has other plans. Repeatedly targeted by extremely Reach-like and savage Beetle-morphs Dynastes and Nitida, BB is forced to fight back until the Justice League shut him down again…

Some salvation comes when mentor Ted and his terrifying older smarter sister Victoria Kord offer him an (unpaid!) internship at Kord Industries. Ted is laid back and cool but Jaime can’t stop thinking how Victoria has the largest collection of alien tech on Earth and keeps looking at him funny…

As Beetle catastrophes keep coming, Reyes and still-on-the-fritz Khaji Da encounter a splinter faction of The Reach. Unable to trust The Horizon, they instead put themselves in the hands of Teen Titans Starfire, Cyborg and their allies. At least they can keep Batman and his private superhero goon squad off their collective shiny blue buggy back. Or Not…

And that’s when Paco and Brenda show up, begging Jaime to help their new best buddy Fadeaway. That does not go well…

With imminent doom encroaching and everybody telling him what” they” should do, Jaime and Khaji Da finally unlock the root problem that’s been jamming them up, consequently evolving into whole new Blue Beetle able and ready to fix their own problems…

And that’s when the aliens all come screaming into Earth’s atmosphere…

An enticing extra offers an extract and sneak peek from the new Blue Beetle #1 (‘Scarab War!’) due for release in September 2023, before a gallery of covers and variants by Cully Hamner, Rafael Albuquerque, David Marquez & Alejandro Sánchez, Ramon Villalobos, Gutiérrez & Quintana, Joe Quinones, Chokoo!, Danny Miki & Ivan Plascencia, Serg Acuña, Ricardo López Ortiz, Baldemar Rivas, Daniel Sampere & Alejandro Sánchez, Bruno Redondo, Jorge Corona & Sarah Stern segue into an extensive and expansive sketch gallery from Gutiérrez.

Here’s another smart, fast and joyous fun ride to delight fans of comics and other, lesser, media forms. So few series combine action and adventure with all-out fun and genuine wit, or can evoke shattering tragedy and poignant loss on command. Now read this even before you wallow in film fun…
© 2022, 2023 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Kurt Cobain & Mozart Are Both Dead – A Leonard & Larry Collection


By Tim Barela (Palliard Press)
ISBN: 978-1-88456-804-6 (Album PB)

We live in an era where Pride events are world-wide and commonplace: where acceptance of LGBTQIA+ citizens is a given… at least in all the civilised countries where dog-whistle politicians, populist “hard men” totalitarian dictators (I’m laughing at a private dirty joke right now) and sundry organised religions are kept in their generally law-abiding places by their hunger for profitable acceptance and desperation to stay tax-exempt, scandal-free, rich and powerful.

There’s still too many places where it’s not so good to be Gay but at least Queer themes and scenes are no longer universally illegal and can be ubiquitously seen in entertainment media of all types and age ranges and even on the streets of most cities. For all the injustices and oppressions, we’ve still come a long, long way and it’s and simply No Big Deal anymore. Let’s affirm that victory and all work harder to keep it that way…

Such was not always the case and, to be honest, the other team (with religions proudly egging them on and backing them up) are fighting hard and dirty to reclaim all the intolerant high ground they’ve lost thus far.

Incredibly, all that change and counteraction has happened within the span of living memory (mine, in this case). For English-language comics, the shift from simple illicit pornography to homosexual inclusion in all drama, comedy, adventure and other genres started as late as the 1970s and matured in the 1980s – despite resistance from most western governments – thanks to the efforts of editors like Robert Triptow and Andy Mangels and cartoonists like Howard Cruse, Vaughn Bod?, Gerard P. Donelan, Roberta Gregory, Touko Valio Laaksonen/“Tom of Finland” and Tim Barela.

A native of Los Angeles, Barela was born in 1954, and became a fundamentalist Christian in High School. He loved motorbikes and had dreams of becoming a cartoonist. He was also a gay kid struggling to come to terms with what was still judged illegal, wilfully mind-altering psychosis and perversion – if not actual genetic deviancy – and an appalling sin by his theological peers and close family…

In 1976, Barela began an untitled comic strip about working in a bike shop for Cycle News. Some characters then reappeared in later efforts Just Puttin (Biker, 1977-1978); Short Strokes (Cycle World, 1977-1979); Hard Tale (Choppers, 1978-1979) plus The Adventures of Rickie Racer, and cooking strip (!) The Puttin Gourmet… America’s Favorite Low-Life Epicurean in Biker Lifestyle and FTW News.

In 1980, the cartoonist unsuccessfully pitched a domestic (or “family”) strip called Ozone to LGBT news periodical The Advocate. Among its proposed quotidian cast were literal and metaphorical straight man Rodger and openly gay Leonard Goldman… who had a “roommate” named Larry Evans…

Gay Comix was an irregularly published anthology, edited at that time by Underground star Robert Triptow (Strip AIDs U.S.A.; Class Photo). He advised Barela to ditch the restrictive newspaper strip format in favour of longer complete episodes, and printed the first of these in Gay Comix #5 in 1984. The remodelled new feature was a huge success, included in many successive issues and became the solo star of Gay Comix Special #1 in 1992.

Leonard & Larry also showed up in prestigious benefit comic Strip AIDs U.S.A. before triumphantly relocating to The Advocate in 1988, and – from 1990 – to its rival publication Frontiers. The lads even moved into live drama in 1994: adapted by Theatre Rhinoceros of San Francisco as part of stage show Out of the Inkwell.

In the 1990s their episodic exploits were gathered in a quartet of wonderfully oversized (220 x 280 mm) monochrome albums which gained a modicum of international stardom and glittering prizes. This compendium was the second compiled by Palliard Press between 1993 and 2003, following Domesticity Isn’t Pretty and paving the way for Excerpts from the Ring Cycle in Royal Albert Hall and How Real Men Do It.

Triptow provides sly and witty Foreword ‘Discovering the World of Leonard & Larry’ before a copious, detailed and lengthy Introduction reintroduces the huge byzantinely interwoven cast in tasty bite-sized Gordian knots (sorry, the classical and literary allusions peppering the comics are eerily infectious…).

‘The Cast of Characters – So Far’ re-briefs us on star couple Leonard Goldman and Larry Evans, ‘Larry’s Relatives’, ‘Leonard Relatives’, ‘The In-Laws’ and ‘Friends and Acquaintances’ which prominently features the dream manifestations – or is it the actual ghosts? – of composers Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and his bitter frenemy Johannes Brahms…

This family saga is primarily a comedic comedy of manners, played out against social prejudices and grudging popular gradual acceptances, but it also has shocking moments of drama and tension and whole bunches of heartwarming sentiment set in and around West Hollywood.

The extensive and extended Leonard & Larry clan comprise the former’s formidable unaccepting mother Esther – who still ambushes him with blind dates and nice Jewish girls – and the latter’s ex-wife Sharon and their sons Richard and David.

Teenaged Richard recently knocked up and wed equally school-aged Debbie, and promptly made Leonard & Larry unwilling grandparents years (decades even!) before they were ready. The oldsters adore baby Lauren – who is two when this book starts – but will soon relive all that aging trauma when Debbie announces the kid will soon be an older sister…

Maternal grandparents Phil and Barbra Dunbarton are ultra conservative and stridently Christian, and spend a lot of time fretting over Debbie and Lauren’s souls and social standing. They’re particularly concerned over role models and what horrors she’s being exposed to whenever the gay grandpas babysit…

David Evans is as Queer as his dad, and works in Larry’s leather/fetish boutique store on Melrose Avenue. That iconic venue provides plenty of quick, easy laughs and even some edgy moments thanks to local developer/predatory expansionist Lillian Lynch who wants the store at any cost. It’s also the starting point for the many other couples in Leonard & Larry’s eccentric orbit.

Their friends and clients enjoy even larger roles this time around whilst cunningly presenting other perspectives on LA life and the ever-evolving scene. Flamboyant former aerospace engineer Frank Freeman lives with acclaimed concert pianist Bob Mendez and has an obsessive yen for uniforms, which comes in handy when Bob is targeted by a sex-crazed celebrity stalker. It’s no use at all though, when she kidnaps them at gunpoint and demands Bob satisfies her every desire…

Larry’s other employee is Jim Buchanan, whose alarming dating history suddenly picks up when he meets a genuine cowboy at one of L & L’s parties. Merle Oberon is a newly “out” Texan trucker who adds romance and stability to Jim’s lonely life. Sadly, that’s only until Merle is discovered by Hollywood and pressured by agents, manager and co-star to go right back “in” again if he really wants to be a movie megastar…

Jim, by the way, is the original and main focus of the overly-critical dead composers’ puckish visits…

Among the highlights this time are the cast’s participation on the “March on Washington” in April 1993 in support of Gay Rights, Larry’s jury duty and the introduction of a draconian Judge who is also a major purchaser of the Melrose’ stores most imaginative BDSM under-apparel, jury service, and Jim and Merle’s fraught but fun foray to Texas to get the blessing of the cowboy’s fundamentalist parents…

The opposing sides/families in the “lifestyle vs sin” debate meet often and outrageously and there’s even a couple of ceremonies (this is long before same sex weddings were legal) to confirm that the heart wants what the heart wants.

Terrifyingly there’s also a second episode of “queer-bashing” (David being the first in the previous volume) that results in Larry’s death.

Thankfully his trip to heaven is pleasant and his prompt return to the mortal coil proves “God Loves Gays” and provides sublimely satisfying satirical laughs whilst scoring major points… When he revives it’s to meet his new – and so very, very ugly – grandson… and thus life goes on…

As well as featuring a multi-generational cast, Leonard & Larry is a strip that progresses in real time, with characters all aging and developing accordingly. The strips are not and never have been about sex – except in that the subject is a constant generator of hilarious jokes and outrageously embarrassing situations. Deftly skewering hypocrisy and rebuking ignorance with dry wit and great drawing, episodes cover various couples’ home and work lives, constant parties, physical deterioration, social gaffes, rows, family revelations, holidays and even events like earthquakes and fanciful prognostications. Tchaikovsky and Brahms are also regular visitants and serve to keep the proceedings wry, sarcastic and surreal…

Leonard & Larry is a traditionally domestic marital sitcom/soap opera with Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz – or more aptly, Dick Van Dyke & Mary Tyler Moore – replaced by a hulking bearded “bear” with biker, cowboy and leather fetishes and a stylishly moustachioed, no-nonsense fashion photographer. Taken in total, it’s a love story about growing old together, but not gracefully or with any dignity…

Populated by adorable, appetising fully fleshed out characters, Leonard & Larry is about finding and then being yourself: an irresistible slice of gentle whimsy to nourish the spirit and beguile the jaded.

If you feel like taking a Walk on the Mild Side now this tome is still at large through internet vendors. So why don’t you?
Kurt Cobain & Mozart Are Both Dead © 1993 Palliard Press. All artwork and strips © 1996 Tim Barela. Introduction © 1996 Robert Triptow. All rights reserved.

After decades of waiting, the entire ensemble is available again courtesy of Rattling Good Yarns Press. Sublimely hefty hardback uber-compilation Finally! The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection was released in 2021, reprinting the entire saga – including rare as hens’ teats last book How Real Men Do It (978-1955826051). It’s a little smaller in page dimensions (216 x280mm) and far harder to lift, but it’s Out there if you want it…