Category: Mature Reading

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John Constantine, Hellblazer volume 1: Original Sins


By Jamie Delano, Rick Veitch, John Ridgway, Alfredo Alcala, Tom Mandrake, Brett Ewins, Jim McCarthy & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3006-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Originally created by Alan Moore during his groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing, mercurial modern wizard John Constantine is a dissolute chancer who plays with magic like an addict but on his own terms for his own ends. He is not a hero. He is not a nice person. Sometimes though, he’s all there is between us and the void…

Given his own series by popular demand, Constantine premiered at the height of Thatcherite Barbarism in Britain, during the dying days of Reaganite Atrocity in the US, to become a founding father of DC’s adult-oriented Vertigo imprint. Hard to imagine back then that we’d one day be looking back with any sense of fond nostalgia, but there you go…

This collection collects John Constantine, Hellblazer #1-9 plus crossover chapters from Swamp Thing #76-77; cumulatively spanning January – October 1988 at what was the beginning of a renaissance in comic book horror that continues to this day.

Back in 1987 Creative Arts and Liberal Sentiments were dirty words in many quarters and the readership of Vertigo was pretty easy to profile. British scripter Jamie Delano began the series with a relatively safe horror-comic plot about an escaped hunger demon, introducing us to Constantine’s unpleasant nature and odd acquaintances – such as Papa Midnite – in a tale of infernal possession and modern voodoo, but even then, discriminating fans were aware of a welcome anti-establishment political line and metaphorical underpinnings.

‘Hunger’ and ‘A Feast of Friends’ also established another vital fact. Anyone who got too close to John Constantine tended to end very badly, very quickly…

‘Going for It’ successfully equated Conservative Britain with Hell (no change there either, obviously), with demons trading souls on their own stock market and Yuppies getting ahead in the rat race by selling short. Set on Election Day 1987, this potent pastiche never loses sight of its goal to entertain, whilst making telling points about humanity, individuality and society.

Constantine’s cousin Gemma and tantalising splinters of his Liverpool childhood are revealed in ‘Waiting for the Man’: a tale of abduction and ghosts introducing disturbing Christian fundamentalists The Resurrection Crusade, and a mysterious woman known only as Zed.

America is once again the focus of terror in ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ as the Vietnam war breaks out again in rural Iowa, before we pop back to Blighty for ‘Extreme Prejudice’.

Skinheads, racism demons and more abound as Delano cannily joins up lots of previously unconnected dots to reveal a giant storyline in the making. The Damnation Army are up to something, but nobody knows who they are. Now everything’s going bad and somehow Zed and the Resurrection Crusade are at the heart of it all…

Brett Ewins & Jim McCarthy briefly replaced magnificent regular illustrator John Ridgway for the first 3 pages of ‘Ghost in the Machine’, before the beautifully restrained, poignantly humanistic stylism returns with Constantine further unravelling the Damnation plot by catching up with the Coming Thing: the cutting edge mysticism dubbed cyber-shamanism.

In Delano’s world the edges between science and magic aren’t blurred – they simply don’t exist…

Alfredo Alcala signs on as inker with ‘Intensive Care’ and the drama ramps up to a full gallop as the plans of both Crusade and Army are revealed, with the value and purpose of Zed finally exposed. All Constantine can do in response is make the first of many bad bargains with Hell…

We then take a stranger turn due to the nature of periodical publishing. The storyline in Hellblazer #1-8 ran contiguously, before converging with Swamp Thing wherein the wizard reluctantly lends his physical body to the planetary plant elemental so that the monster can impregnate its human girlfriend Abigail Arcane. Thus, in the ninth issue, there’s a kind of dissolute holding pattern in play as the weary wizard confronts ghosts of all the people he’s gotten killed to allow all the pieces to be suitably arranged. ‘Shot to Hell’ (Delano, Ridgway & Alcala) then neatly segues into Swamp Thing #76-77 for the conception of a new messiah. Sort of.

Immediately post-Alan Moore, Swamp Thing comics were sidelined by many fans. However they soon realised successor (writer-artist) Rick Veitch – aided by moody inker Alcala – was producing a stunning sequence of mini-classics well worthy of serious scrutiny. The issues built on Moore’s cerebral, visceral writing as the world’s plant elemental became increasingly involved with ecological matters.

Having decided to “retire”, Swamp Thing (an anthropomorphic plant imprinted with the personality and mind of murdered biologist Alec Holland) was charged by his ephemeral overlords in “The Green” with facilitating the creation of his/its successor. However, the ancient and agonising process was contaminated by consecutive failures and false starts, leading to a horrendous series of abortive creatures and a potentially catastrophic Synchronicity Maelstrom.

Alec, “wife” Abigail and chillingly charismatic Constantine are eventually compelled to combine forces – and some body-fluids – in ‘L’Adoration de la Terre’ (ST #76, by Veitch & Alcala) – to conceive a solution before the resultant chaos-storm destroys the Earth.

The process is not with risk – or embarrassment – but the affair is brought to a successful conclusion in ‘Infernal Tringles’ (Swamp Thing #77, Tom Mandrake pencilling) and with terrestrial order restored, the participants go their separate ways… but events have affected them all in ways that will have terrible repercussions in months and years to come…

Rounding out this so-sophisticated spook-fest is an original covers gallery by Dave McKean and John Totleben, plus an in-world exposé of Constantine in ‘Faces on the Street’ by faux journalist Satchmo Hawkins. Also included are other relics of the antihero’s sordid past such as the lyrics from Venus of the hardsell – a single from John’s aberrant punk band mucous membrane – and extracts from the magician’s medical file whilst he was held in Ravenscar Secure Psychiatric Facility…

Delivered by creators capable and satiric, but still wedded to the basic tenets of their craft, these superb examples of horror fiction – inextricably linking politics, religion, human nature and sheer bloody-mindedness as the root cause of all ills – are still powerfully engaging. Lovingly constructed, they make a truly abominable character seem an admirable force for our survival. The art is clear, understated and subtly subversive while the slyly witty, innovative stories jangle at the subconscious with scratchy edginess.

This is a book no fear-fan should be without.
© 1987, 1988, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Last Gender: When We Are Nameless volume 1 (of 3)


By Rei Taki translated by Rose Padgett (Vertical/Kodansha)
ISBN: 978-1-6472191-4 (Vertical tank?bon PB) Digital edition 978-1-68491-721-1

A woman goes into a bar.

That’s usually shocking enough for Japanese fiction, but in Rei (Tada Ooki na Neko ni Naritai, Love-Kyo: Kateikyoushi ga xx Sugite Benkyou Dokoro ja Nai) Taki’s deft exploration of sexual diversity, it’s merely the start of a well-intentioned, honest appraisal of what infinite variety in human experience and being actually means. The tale is especially extraordinary as it comes from a country and culture currently involved in a (very polite and restrained) war of past and future and tradition vs. change, where gender and gender roles have always been cast in stone and a hot button topic…

After a short stand-alone try-out tale was reworked and developed (which is included at the end of this edition), Last Gender: Nani Mono demo nai Watashi-tachi debuted in 2022. Its brief interlocking vignettes eventually filled three volumes, employing a picaresque format – in many ways thematically similar to US sitcom Cheers – to peruse those people who generally inhabit the margins of society… either through choice or more often than not due to fear and shame.

In such a strictly formalised society those judgements are most likely to be self-inflicted and imagined, and painfully concrete and condemnatory, as we will see…

Chapter 1 opens with one person’s candid ruminations on what is gender before ‘Welcome to BAR California’ finds nasty, preachy gossip and media scandalmongering hanging in the air as assistant manager Yo prepares to open up for the evening. Checking bottles are full, glasses clean, rooms ready and restocked and all lube, fresh underwear and condom dispensers are full, they are soon distracted by a nervous and curious young woman. She has come in to the venue where “all are welcome” carrying her husband’s membership card and very much wanting to know what it exactly entitles her spouse to…

An explanation of facilities, by-laws, responsibilities, duties and potential rewards – further clarified by a new friend – results in Manami addressing her prior pre- and mis-conceptions, and signing up to discover lots more she didn’t know about herself…

With frequent subtle reminders, asides and dissertations on what staff and patrons consider constitutes gender, sexualities statuses, consent and suitable behaviour, the vignettes continue with ‘An Orchid Blooming in the Fog’. Transgender bisexual Ran shares with Yo early unhappy encounters (incidentally providing us with mindboggling factual detail on insurance cover and finance for gender affirmation surgery in Japan), and happy-go-lucky, persistently pally pansexual Mao adds his own unique perspective and past moments. Ultimately his benign attentions and upbeat manner manifest more revelations of his own unsettled life and its pressures…

The forces of expectation and tradition shaping Mao are more closely monitored in ‘Family of Mannequins’ even as stolid salaryman Sawada Masanori and college girl Amiru debut with their own individual flavours of difference. It’s a risky road to travel but bigender Sawada will only really be content once his wife and child can understand how and why he is also Marie and that will only happen if they can affirm their ‘True Love’, whilst the student still struggles to accept that any boundaries exist…

Amiru steps into the spotlight for closing episode ‘Aromantic Fairy Tale’ delving deeper into her innate belief that sex and love have nothing to do with each other and explaining how all the stories society train us with need to be re-examined if not revoked. Of course, nothing has worked yet to stop her yearning for “the one”, and some of the test candidates have been a bit extreme to say the least. Just look at Yukihiro, with his odd provisos and props… and just what is the secret he shares with only Yo?

To Be Continued…

Filling up this initial tome are ‘Translation Notes’, house ads, a featurette on sex bars and how the clientele adopts aliases in ‘BAR California’s Back Yard #1’ as well as an afterword from Rei Taki, prior to that aforementioned ‘Prototype Story: A Self For All Seasons’ showing how the initial explorations of spousal abuse and similar reasons for such sex bar venues was dialled down for a more subtle and forensic investigation of the people who need them…

There are – even by manga standards – fairly explicit and frequent sex scenes amidst all the character interplay, and the occasionally blunt yet potent evaluations, clarifications and reiterations of gender issues, minorities and status through the lens of Japanese frankness can be a bit breathtaking if we westerners aren’t braced. Nonetheless, Last Gender: When We Are Nameless is a compelling and intriguing foray into gender & sexual diversity, pansexuality, propensities, individuality and autonomy that needs to be seen by anyone still breathing and still dating. Over to you then…
© 2021 Rei Taki. English translation © 2022 Rei Taki. All rights reserved.

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Grosz


By Lars Fiske (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-041-6 (HB/digital edition)

As we in Britain and France enter the final stretch of our elections and seeming agreement to abandon consensual truth and classical democracy, lets revisit a born dissident, repeat immigrant and visual vigilante who lived through painfully similar times and trials as our own. His generation’s party chic, desperate searches and minimal resistance led to some pretty bad outcomes. I for one can’t wait to see how this “year of elections” treats us…

Although I bang incessantly on and on about the communicative power of word and pictures acting in unison, I will never deny the sheer efficacy and raw potency of the drawn image. Therefore, whenever an author makes the extra effort to create a narrative that stands or falls on vision alone, I’m ready to applaud mightily and shout “oi, look at this!”…

Today that means taking a little lesson in art history and social awareness via a truly radical pictorial biography of Dadaist anti-fascist, caricaturist, artist and commentator Georg Ehrenfried Groß AKA George Grosz.

He was a complex and amazing man, risking his life for his beliefs but also deeply, dangerously flawed at the same time, and this cartoon confection really captures the feel of him and his tempestuous, self-annihilating life…

Devoid of verbal narrative, an edgy and uncompromising picture play adds reams of emotional kick to the history of a radical non-conformist who grew up in Imperial Germany, found his true calling during the Great War and fought a seditious and dangerously lonely struggle against the growing National Socialist (Nazi) party in the post-war Weimar Republic, all while embracing the heady sexual decadence of that pre-apocalyptic era…

In brief visual sallies supported by brief quotes from his writing – such as ‘Pandemonium: “I am up to my neck in visions”’, ‘Amerikanismus: – day by day my hate for Germany gains, new, blazing nourishment…’, ‘America: New York: The City!!!”’ and ‘Nationalsocialismus: “The Devil alone knows how things will turn out”’ – Lars Fiske traces the one-sided conflict and follows the artist as he relocates to his long-loved-from-afar USA. He then reveals what happened next in notional comic strip excursions that conclude with return to Berlin at the height of the Cold War as wryly seen in ‘Kaputt: Ugh! I have spoken’…

Just like life and our current predicament, with this book there’s no half-measures. Oddly, I suspect the reader will be best served if you know a lot about Grosz or nothing at all, but if he’s an artist you vaguely recall, there may be many rapid consultations of Wikipedia before you come away awed and amused…

The same seems to apply to the voting conundrum. Apparently the only wrong thing to do is nothing at all…
© 2017 Lars Fiske, by arrangement with No Comprendo Press.

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Century’s End – The Black Order Brigade & The Hunting Party


By Enki Bilal & Pierre Christin translated by Edward Gauvin (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-681-0 (HB/Digital edition)

With the world hard set for imminent and dramatic political upheaval and with old scores shaping up to be settled one way or another in the months to come, here’s a portentous and captivating double bill of comics realpolitik from two of our art form’s grandmasters which have lost none of their bite but only become more relevant with the advantage of historical hindsight…

Born in Belgrade in 1951 Enes “Enki” Bilal broke into French comics in 1972 with Le Bal Maudit for Pilote. Over the decade he grew in skill and fame, achieving English-language celebrity once his work began appearing in Heavy Metal magazine. Although best known and most lauded for self-scripted fantasy The Nikopol Trilogy (comprising Gods in Chaos, The Woman Trap & Cold Equator) and his Hatzfeld Tetralogy (The Dormant Beast, December 32, Rendezvous in Paris & Four?) he has spread his creative net far and wide.

A multi-award winning megastar, Bilal has crafted gripping thrillers and academic tales like Phantoms of the Louvre beside his signature bleakly beguiling, ferociously contemplative fantasy tales like Exterminator 17, Magma, Julia & Roem and many, many more. However, throughout his career, Bilal has incessantly explored the history and political themes of his lifetime – especially with frequent collaborator Pierre Christin.

To my mind and despite the impact of their initial trilogy Légendes d’Aujord’hui/Legends of Today (The Cruise of Lost Souls, Ship of Stone, The Town That Didn’t Exist) the duo hit a particular high with their Fins de Siècle sequence which has been comfortably curated here by Titan Comics into single volume Century’s End.

As if writing one of the most successful and significant comics series in the world – Valerian and Laureline – was not enough, full-time academician Pierre Christin still found time over the years to script science-fiction novels, screenplays and a wide selection of comics, starting in 1966 with Le Rhum du Punch with Valérian co-creator Jean-Claude Mézières.

Born in 1938 and a graduate of the Sorbonne before becoming a political science and French literature lecturer, Christin (The Hardy Agency, A Magic Circle,  Le Long Voyage De Léna) has produced many stellar graphic sagas with such artistic luminaries as Jacques Tardi, Raymond Poïvet, Annie Goetzinger, Françoise Boucq, Jijé and more, but whenever he worked with Bilal (beginning in 1975 with the exotic and surreal The Cruise of Lost Souls, the results have never been less than stunning and always make for compulsive reading.

The Black Order Brigade

First released in 1979, Les Phalanges de l’orde noir details in piquant detail and with knowing irony the last hurrah of a group of aging survivors: the defeated remnants of a leftist volunteer battalion of the International Brigade, who fought fascism together during the Spanish civil war. When their murderous opposite number – the titular “Black Order Brigade” – come out of the shadows to unite modern neo-fascist terror groups by sparking a wave of assassinations, bombings, kidnappings and bloody atrocities, British newspaper editor Pritchard starts phoning all the survivors of his unit.

Resolved to finally avenge their fallen comrades and complete their sworn duties, the oldsters – ranging from priests and judges to retired gangsters – drop everything and go undercover: crisscrossing Europe to hunt down and exterminate the old foe and the new generation of monsters they seek to inspire.

Of course, time has not spared either side and the hunt quickly assumes the weight of crushing nostalgia, taint of frustrated dreams and ultimately a stink of farce, all seasoned by occasional bursts of merciless bloodshed as their counterparts undertake a campaign of terror calling the police of dozen nations down on all their balding grey heads…

The extended months-long season of hiding and frustrated assaults takes a heavy toll on the vengeful nemeses and when the final confrontation comes the chance of any survivors coming home is scant indeed…

A captivating travelogue of Europe still recovering from festering old wounds, the story unfolds slowly and with mesmerising detail, exhibiting a balance of tension and Dad’s Army surreal black comedy that beguiles but never forces a full suspension of belief…

The Hunting Party was published in 1983 as Partie de chasse, with the setting and locale stemming from Bilal’s desire to do something set in his eastern European birthlands. Playing out at the height of Cold War tension, when the Soviet old guard was falling to age, infirmity and the ambition of their subordinates, it is for many their best collaboration, exploring idealism, guilt, regret and human nature, all of which have never been more coldly and clearly depicted…

As the Soviet system begins to crack, ten old men of the Party gather at an exclusive Polish estate for an extended winter holiday of reminiscing and shooting. Stars and survivors in their own Warsaw Pact countries, these guests are all linked in deed and indebted to one charismatic man who still stands red and proud amidst the icy landscapes…

He is legendary figure and hard-line apparatchik Vassili Alexandrovich Chevchenko, who has given his long life to the pursuit of the Communist ideal, but is now a doomed man: partially paralysed and rendered mute by a stroke, he is being slowly sidelined by the Politburo which is again repurposing itself, as it has so many times during Chevchenko’s life.

The aged politician’s serried career has been one of surrendering self and sacrificing personal desire to serve the State, and now he has gathered his closest colleagues about him for one last diverting weekend of vodka, chess, hunting and history…

As festivities proceed the silent grandee is plagued with red-handed recollections of things he has done and the love he chose to sacrifice for the sake of the Dream. His internal colloquy is balanced by the naïve questions and attitudes of the young and anonymous French Communist hired to translate for the other interloper among the old Comrades – reforming go-getter Sergei Shavanidze, who has been appointed Chevchenko’s successor and can’t wait to start pruning dead wood and outmoded beliefs…

The entire history of the Movement is examined via the personal reminiscences of these creaking remnants of the system recalling past glories, old horrors and narrow escapes, but the bemused and bewildered Frenchman has no inkling as he absorbs the secrets of their socialist past of the part he will unwittingly play in its future…

This mesmerising, beguiling and utterly chilling thriller methodically skins the hide from an idealistic dream and spills the dark hot guts of guilt, arrogance and the pursuit of power in a sublime example of graphic narrative’s unique facility to tell a story on a number of levels.

The diptych of political Götterdämmerungs is supplanted by a forthright, extensive and highly informative ‘Interview with Enki Bilal and Pierre Christin’ conducted by Benoît Peeters, adding clarity and a light close to these ponderous but exceptional slices of cartoon reality that no serious student of the medium or lover of human drama can afford to miss.
Century’s End and all contents ™ & © Casterman.

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Barking (New Edition)


By Lucy Sullivan (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-76-9 (HB/Digital edition) 978-1783528806 (2020 Unbound HB)

You might not think it, but there’s a lot of guts and inner fortitude demanded of making your inner worlds real – especially in autobiographical comics. In 2020 animator Lucy Sullivan released her first graphic novel: “an exorcism” detailing a deepening depression and personal mental health crisis and the concomitant failings of our overstretched, cash-starved health services in one of the most potent, powerful and damning explorations ever seen of the plight of in-need individuals in a “money-first-& foremost” health system.

Barking set new critical standards for a growing subgenre of candid and intimate experiential biographies and after being lost in the global commercial convulsions of Covid-19, returns here in a new edition that will hopefully find the major audiences the book always deserved.

Rendered in staggeringly expressive stark monochrome artwork capturing a spiky mood of mania and madness and pitched as a chilling horror story, it’s set between a life-altering period of days (October 25th to November 5th, if you’re wondering) and begins with ‘Hounded’ as a terrified young woman flees from a monstrous black dog.

Desperate and defeated, she finds a bridge and seeks surcease in suicide, but as reality and her inner world converge and congeal, she is picked up by indifferent cops who apparently have far more important things to do, and dumped on a standard 72-hour hold under the Mental Health Act in ‘Commit to Me’. The dog is with her all the way, as is a gang of scary men and a cacophony of voices that never let her rest. Never mind, there are plenty of readily doled out drugs for that in the ‘Rot Box’…

Alix might be in isolation but she’s not alone. Her passengers are delighted to keep telling her how bad and weak and useless she is. ‘Prone to Trouble’, she hears again how nobody wants her and why she lost her only friend. As treatment and assessments – dispassionate yet still somehow judgemental – continue, Alix enters the enforced society of fellow inmates/guests/ patients in ‘Just a (Rumination) Phase’, learning some harsh lessons pitched as vague threats and religious paternalism, all before being left to make her own recovery as best she can.

Between flashbacks, hallucinations and potentially lethal ward-companions her slipping back to ‘Unembodied Diamonic’ visions is inevitable. Fears that drive her regain their power and medical indifference, casually “phoned-in” care, too many drugs and economically driven treatments like group therapy and enforced isolation don’t deal with the personal demons. Nor do suggested cure-alls offered by her fellow inmates, but only war with Alix’s ever-present visions and in-situ inner tormentors in ‘Prognostication’, ‘Call of the Void’ and ‘Bruising the Fool’ before a gradual breakthrough and notional resumption of “normal service” augurs a return to stability and equilibrium during ‘Life Under Saturn’…

A Foreword by comics doyen Nick Abadzis details how the project first materialised – and his involvement in it – precedes the tale itself and is mirrored by the author’s revelatory Afterword at the back. This describes how Sullivan’s allegorical extrapolation of a very low point also seeks to address greater issues surrounding this country’s growing mental health problems and our literally insane simultaneous starvation of funding required to fix the rot. It’s supplemented by a wonderfully uplifting, self-deprecating Postscript for this new edition describing the understandably shaky course of a creative project about fear, isolation and incarceration that was published during a global lockdown…

Also crucially germane here is a copious Acknowledgements section, underscoring how vital human contact and collaborative input is: not just in story-making but in all aspects of living in the modern world…

A visually disturbing and emotionally shocking exploration of how grief and depression self-destructively feed on each other and how the fix for spiralling mental chaos is not getting a grip but getting help, Barking is not just a worthy and necessary read, but one that will stay with you forever.

© Lucy Sullivan, 2020. All rights reserved.

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Spain: Rock, Roll, Rumbles, Rebels & Revolution

Version 1.0.0

By Manuel “Spain” Rodriguez (Burchfield Penney Art Center/Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-782-2 (TPB)

Manuel Rodriguez was one of the most bombastic and well-known pioneering lights of America’s transformative Underground Commix movement: a mainstay of the counterculture which subversively reshaped the nation’s psyche in the 1960s and 1970s. However, although always a left-leaning radical, infamous for his raucously hyper-violent, audaciously sexual urban vigilante Trashman, Spain was also a quietly dedicated craftsman, historian, educationalist and graphic biographer.

Born in Buffalo, New York state in 1940, the Hispanic kid spent a lot of time with notorious biker gang The Road Vultures and these experiences, as much as his political upbringing and formal education at the Silvermine Guild Art School in New Canaan, Connecticut (1957-1960), moulded and informed his entire creative career.

In the 1960s he became a regular contributor to landmark alternative magazine the East Village Other, which not only utilised his burgeoning talents as illustrator and designer but also commissioned, in 1968, his groundbreaking tabloid comic book Zodiac Mindwarp. That insert proved so successful that EVO subsequently sponsored a regular anthology publication. Gothic Blimp Works was a turning point and clarion call in the evolution of underground publishing.

However, the excessive exploits of Trashman – “Agent of the 6th International” – against a repressive dystopian American super-state were only the tip of the creative iceberg. Ardent left-winger Spain founded the trade organisation the United Cartoon Workers of America whilst contributing to many of the independent comics and magazines which exploded out of the burgeoning counterculture movement across the world. Manuel Rodriguez was also an erudite and questioning writer/artist with a lifelong interest in history – especially political struggle and major battlefield clashes, and much of his other work revealed a stunning ability to bring these subjects to vibrant life.

The breadth, depth and sheer variety of Spain’s work – from gritty urban autobiography (American Splendor, Cruisin’ with the Hound: the Life and Times of Fred Toote) to psycho-sexual sci fi (Zap Comix, Skull, Mean Bitch Thrills) is a testament to his incredible talent but the restless artist also found time to produce a wealth of other cartooning classics.

Amongst his dauntingly broad canon of comics are literary adaptations (Edgar Allen Poe, Sherlock Holmes’ Strangest Cases), historical treatises (War: The Human Cost) and biographies (Ché [Guevara]:a Graphic Biography, Devil Dog: the Amazing True Story of the Man who Saved America [Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler]) as well as educational and design works such as You Are a Spiritual Being Having a Human Experience and Nothing in This Book Is True, But It’s Exactly How Things Are (both with Bob Frissell).

He also produced the ongoing comics serial The Dark Hotel for American current affairs, politics and media news aggregation website Salon.

In 2012 Spain finally lost a six-year battle against cancer and this superb book – actually the Exhibition catalogue for a career retrospective at the prestigious Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College – celebrates his tumultuous life and spectacular contribution to the art form of graphic narrative with a compelling series of essays as well as a superb selection of the great man’s best pieces including some little known lost treasures.

The appreciation begins with ‘Stand Up’ by Anthony Bannon (Executive Director, BPAC), before the biographical ‘Grease, Grit and Graphic Truth’ by Edmund Cardoni (Executive Director, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center) explores Spain’s past, whilst ‘Keep the Flames of Buffalo Burning’ by Don Metz examines his lasting effect on comics and society.

However, the true value of this chronicle is in the 60+ covers, designs, story-pages, roughs, panel excerpts and strips both vintage and recent, monochrome and full-colour which demonstrate the sheer talent and drive to communicate that fuelled Spain for his entire life.

The Partial Spain Bibliography 1969-2012 and Selected Spain Exhibitions only hint at the incredible depth and lasting legacy of his career and I’m praying that some enlightened publisher like Fantagraphics or Last Gasp is already toiling on a comprehensive series of “Complete Works of…” volumes…

Stark, shocking and always relevant, the communicative power of Spain is something no true lover of comics can afford to miss….
© 2012 Burchfield Penney Art Center. All rights reserved.

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A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities


By Mady G & J.R. Zuckerberg (Limerance Press/Oni Press)
ISBN: 978-1-62010-586-3 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-62010-587-0

Here’s a handy rule of thumb for getting along. People get to decide what to call themselves. You get to accept and agree with them, as long as no one is being actually harmed or just mind your own business. That assessment is to be made by Law, not personal belief or some higher calling. If you can’t accept their definitions of themselves, you have the right to leave people alone and never interact with them. Okay?

We are the Naming Primate. If we encounter something unknown and/or scary, we give it a description, definition and title and accept it into our ever-expanding understanding of Reality. It’s what enabled us to take over this world. Naming things is generally a good thing and allows us to navigate the universe. Some people, however, use the power of naming to isolate, ostracise and wound. They are not doing it right. People like us have plenty of really fitting names for people like them when they abuse our gift.

In reality though, it seems like every time we make a move towards greater inclusivity, some faction of retrograde, regressive backwards-looking churl or biological luddite manufactures a reason (usually cribbing the lexicon of science to mask opinionated complete tosh) to prove why we can’t all get along. Dudes: take a look in a mirror…

I personally favour retaliation, but the only way to truly counter them is with understanding, so here’s a book that offers plenty of names and definitions we should all be adding to our own lexicons.

I’ve frequently/perpetually argued comic strips are a matchless tool for education: rendering the most complex topics easily accessible and displaying a potent and lasting facility to inform, affect and alter behaviour. Here’s a timely revisit and splendid example of the art form using its great powers for good…

The Quick & Easy Guide series has an admirable record of addressing uncomfortable issues with taste, sensitivity and breezy forthrightness, offering solutions as well as awareness or solidarity. Here, coast-to-coast cartoonists Mady G. & J. R. Zuckerberg collaborate on a bright and breezy primer covering the irrefutable basics on establishing one’s own sexual and gender identity (including the difference between those terms), safely navigating all manner of relationship and exploring the spectrum of experiences available to consenting adults.

A major aspect of us People Primates is that we spend a lot of our lives trying to work out who we are. It takes varying amounts of time and emotional effort for every individual… and lots of honesty.

It’s like most work. It can be unwelcome, laborious, painful and even dangerous and nobody should attempt it too soon or alone. Moreover, all too often, assistance and advice offered can be unwelcome and stemming from somebody else’s agenda. In my own limited experience for example, any sexual guidance offered by anybody with a religious background is immediately suspect and a waste of breath. Perhaps your experience is different. That’s pretty much the point here. In the end, you have make up your own mind and be your own judge…

Unlike me, A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities takes no sides and offers no bias as it runs through the fundamentals, but only after a Foreword from cartoonist and author Roz Chast and an Intro by Mady lay out the rules of engagement on the attaching and utilisation of the labels and roles gradually becoming common modern parlance…

Micro lectures are set during a wilderness trek where an agglomeration of troubled humans have a group teaching encounter under the supervision of a “Queer Educator” endeavouring to define for them the nature of ‘Queerness’. The useful commentary, educational asides and plentiful laughs are generated by a colony of snails avidly observing proceedings like a raucous, bonerless and bewildered Greek Chorus. Such gastropods, as I’m sure you recall from school, are either male, female, hermaphroditic or something else entirely, depending on what time it is. Now that’s perspective…

Subjects covered with forthright verve, clarity and – crucially – wry wit begin with ‘What is Queer?’, proffering terms for defining Sexuality and Gender subdivided into Bisexuality, Asexuality, Pansexuality amongst many other permutations. These and later lessons are illustrated with examples starring primarily neutral vegetable critters dubbed The Sproutlings who are conveniently pliable and malleable…

‘What is Gender Identity?’ digs deeper, discussing Gender vs Sex via a little biology tutorial before ‘Now… What’s Gender Expression?’ expands the debate, determining modern manners and ways of signalling the wider world what one has decided is a person’s (current, but not necessarily permanent) status. The chat comes with carefully curated real-world examples…

This is all fine in an ideal world, but contentious, often life changing problems that can occur are tackled head-on in ‘What Does Dysphoria Mean?’: detailing examples of traumas accompanying the realisation of not being how you believe you ought to be. Divided into Physical, Social and Non-Binary Dysphoria, the examination includes ways of combatting the problems and more case histories courtesy of the human wilderness students…

In swift succession ‘So, what is Asexuality?’ and ‘What does it mean to Come Out?’ offer further practical thoughts and prospective coping tactics before vital life lessons are covered in ‘Here are some Relationship Basics’.

Also included here are an “Outro” by Zuckerberg and a section of activities including ‘Design a Pair of Friendship Jackets’, ‘Create Your Own Sprout-sona!’ and ‘How to make a Mini Zine!!’ as well as information on ‘More Resources!’ and Creator Biographies.

I hail from a fabulous far-distant era where we happily ravaged the planet without a qualm but believed emotional understanding led to universal acceptance. We’re apparently smarter about the planet now, and it’s wonderful (if a bit disappointing) to see the quest to destroy intolerance and ignorance still continues. This witty, welcoming treatise offers superb strategies for fixing a pernicious issue which really should have been done and dusted decades ago.

Hopefully, when we all share appropriate, non-evocative, un-charged terms for discussing human sexuality and gender – such as seen here – we can all make decisions and assessments to build a fairer, gentler world for everybody…
A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities™ & © 2019 Mady G & J.R. Zuckerberg. All rights reserved.

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George Sand: True Genius, True Woman


By Séverine Vidal & Kim Consigny, translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-20-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s a sad but inescapable fact that throughout history men have constantly belittled, gaslit, constrained, oppressed, repressed and sabotaged women, presumably in some misguided, malign and apparently pointlessly dick-fuelled campaign to keep them in their place and at our beck and call. It’s also a wonderful truism that over and again, despite personal danger and inevitable pain of consequences endured, many remarkable women have found ways to escape the trap.

Quite a few have done it by guile: simply pretending to one of the guys…

One such was Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil (1st July 1804 – 8th June 1876) who defied, dodged and practically avoided almost all the arbitrary constraints of being a rich, propertied heiress in a strictly codified society where women (just like minors, criminals and imbeciles) had no rights.

Employing her brains, innate diplomatic acumen and passion for storytelling, Aurore made her own way all her life: writing books, plays, articles, literary criticism, and memoires whilst employing her growing influence and ever-expanding net of contacts to fight for social equality – and generally scandalise Europe – as “George Sand”.

She was also bold a pioneer in Gender Expression, defiantly smoking in public and drinking, dressing and acting as a man – an actual legal offense from 1800 onwards, albeit one typically ignored by the Parisian intelligentsia. This wilful civil disobedience won Sand access to many venues expressly barring women, as she also flouted the nation’s ethical foundations with “libertine” behaviour: exploring true sexual liberation and parity through a reputed “host” of male and female partners…

Daughter of a flighty Bohemian, raised by her autocratic paternal grandmother and married off to an appallingly typical rich husband (Baron Casimir Dudevant), Aurore rebelled and lived her own way. She became a staunch proponent of radical ideas, especially women’s rights to full equality under law, and freedom to love as they chose. She even claimed everyone had a right to self-declare a preferred gender and railed against Church-sanctioned strictures of marriage and over tumultuous decades, publicly risked everything to champion social freedoms. She battled bourgeois reactionary governments and sought to elevate the lower classes during the most politically volatile time in France’s history.

Internationally revered and reviled, but – partially – insulated by wealth and position, Sand only wanted to tell stories and live free, but – because that right was universal – became a powerful social commentator, agitator, noteworthy journalistic gadfly. An effective player of power politics at a time when women were relegated to a decorative but always submissive role (generally a means of transferring property and wealth from one man to another) Sand was a tireless reformer who at heart just wanted to live an unshackled life.

Aurore ceaselessly challenged the system: using as example the way she lived; employing rabble-rousing tactics and direct action; instigating subtle intrigue and debate amongst her intellectual peers, and in any other way that came to her – all whilst living a s guilt-free, hedonistic existence. Meanwhile, a steady stream of groundbreaking books and plays confronted these issues and made converts one reader at a time…

First released in Europe as George Sand, fille du siècle in 2019 and as closely detailed and diligently depicted by author Séverine Vidal (A Tale Off the Top of My Head, Le Manteau, J’ai une maison) and illustrated by frequent collaborator Kim Consigny (Forte, À l’orée du monde, L’été de mes 17 ans), this compelling and charming monochrome biography reads far more like a sprawling generational dramatic saga in the manner of Wuthering Heights, Vanity Fair or Le Colonel Chabert rather than a dusty historical tract. Interleaved with excerpts from her own “tell-all” book Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand, her books and other scholarly sources such as The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters, the epic chronologically traces her torrid life, agonising mistakes, family struggles, literary and political successes: a riches to rags to riches story arc peppered with a tantalising smattering of enemies made at a time when France struggled against cultural annihilation and civil chaos.

Along the way George Sand wrote 70 novels, 13 plays, and 50 volumes worth of collected writings and speeches that are more relevant today than ever…

What’s most significant here is just how contemporaneous and readable modern audiences will find this true story. The subject and narrative are a treat for fans of racy modern bodice ripper dramas like Bridgerton or Succession – with a healthy helping of Les Misérables seasoning the mix. Incidentally, Victor Hugo numbered amongst her many intellectual – if not amatory – conquests. Other “close friends” and/or foes guest starring in these pages include Chopin, Liszt, Delacroix, Balzac, Baudelaire, the Emperor Louis Napoleon, Jules Sandeau, Prosper Mérimée, Marie Dorval, Flaubert and more. However, amidst trauma and tragedy are many moments of lasting true love and rewarding contentment – such as George’s idyllic 15-year relationship with adored partner “Mancel” – which counter any notion of this being a moralistic warning tale.

Although Sand’s astounding life was filled with enough drama, setbacks, family feuding, skulduggery, glamour, global travel and sheer celebrity cachet to make her a proper modern icon, with the added allure of being absolutely true and shaped by iniquity, inequality, triumph and heartbreak, this is ultimately the history of a winner beating the system and whose uncompromising life was lived triumphantly on her own terms: confirming that life doesn’t have to be endured on any terms but your own…
© Editions Delcourt 2019. All rights reserved.

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Temperance


By Cathy Malkasian (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-323-1 (HB/Digital edition)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a charismatic leader drags an entire nation into unnecessary war to save a political skin: manipulating facts, twisting good people’s lives, destroying their innocence and fomenting an atmosphere of sustained paranoia and unthinking patriotism – if not literal jingoistic madness. If we’re lucky he/she/they shuffle out of the picture and let their – generally incompetent but equally fervent – successors deal with the mess they’ve created: those remnants divided equally into well-meaning but clueless ditherers and now-fanatical disciples who think only they can run the show…

The land is in turmoil. Pa is raising a ruckus trying to get his monstrous ark built before ruthless invaders begin their final attack. Eldest girl Peggy and little Minerva follow as he carves a wake of destructive energy through the landscape. Pa has galvanised local villagers and they await his command to enter the fortress-city within the monolithic edifice, dubbed “Blessedbowl”. When Pa begins once more to assault his oldest lass, only hapless Minerva and the trees are witness to the unleashed savagery. Suddenly, a young man rushes to Peg’s rescue, captivating forever the cowering Min. His name is Lester, but despite a terrific struggle the rescuer is no match for Pa’s maniacal vigour. The young man is left brain-damaged and maimed.

Pa bids Min see to Lester. The Doomsayer is lost in his preparations again. The Crisis has arrived…

Three decades pass. Min has married Lester and a thriving community now exists within Blessedbowl, a permanent subsistence/siege economy built on paranoia, isolated and united by a common foe that has never been seen and is therefore utterly terrifying. Moses-like, Pa had remained behind when the ark was sealed, to fight a rearguard action. Min is now his regent, efficiently running the closed ecology and economy, bolstered by the devoted attention of Lester, the amnesiac war-hero who lost so much when the invisible enemy launched their final assault…

Min controls the community through reports from the distant front and Lester guards the city inside Blessedbowl’s hull. But now his befuddled memory is clearing, and Min, hopelessly in love with him, faces the threat that all that has been so slowly built may come crashing swiftly down…

And this is just the tip of the iceberg in a vast story that – despite being almost 15-years old – could well be the best thing you’ll read this year. Crafted by cartoonist and animator Cathy Malkasian (Percy Gloom, Eartha, NoBody Likes You Greta Grump, Curious George, The Wild Thornberrys, Rugrats,) during America’s longest-running war, this multi-layered, incisive parable examines how families and countries can be twisted by love, fear and the craziest lies leaders can concoct and get away with…

As much mystical generational fantasy as veiled allegory, Temperance will open your eyes on so many levels. As events spiral beyond all control the astounding outcome, whilst utterly inevitable, will also be a complete surprise – and just wait until you discover the identity of the eponymous narrator…

Mythical, mystical, metaphorical, lyrical, even poetic, here is a modern, timeless tuned-in epic blending Shakespearean passions with soft Orwellian terrors. King Lear and 1984 are grandparents to this subtly striking tale of freedom and honour – personal and communal – foolishly but willingly surrendered to a comfortable, expedient slavery. Combining trenchant and timeless social commentary with spiritually uplifting observation, illustrated in the softest pencil tones – reminiscent of English WWII cartoons (particularly Pont and Bateman, but also the animations of Halas & Batchelor) – this is joy to read, a delight to view and a privilege to own.
© 2010 Cathy Malkasian. All right reserved. This edition © 2010 Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

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Wolverine: Weapon X Gallery Edition


By Barry Windsor-Smith, with Chris Claremont, Frank Tieri, Avalon’s Raymund Lee, Jim Novak, Tom Orzechowski & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3395-1 (HB/Digital edition) TPB

Wolverine is all things to most people and in his long life has worn many hats: Comrade, Ally, Avenger, Teacher, Protector, Punisher. He first saw print in a tantalising teaser-glimpse at the end of The Incredible Hulk #180 (cover-dated October 1974 and Happy 50th, Eyy?): prior to indulging in a full-on scrap with the Green Goliath – and accursed cannibal critter The Wendigo – in the next issue. The Canadian super-agent was just one more throwaway foe for one of Marvel’s mightiest stars, and vanished until All-New, All Different X-Men launched.

The semi-feral Canadian mutant with fearsome claws and killer attitude rode – or perhaps fuelled – the meteoric rise of those rebooted outcast heroes. He inevitably won a miniseries try-out and his own series: two in fact, in fortnightly anthology Marvel Comics Presents and an eponymous monthly book (of which more later and elsewhere).

In guest shots across the MU plus cartoons and movies he carved out a unique slice of super-star status and screen immortality. He hasn’t looked back since, and over those years many untold tales of the aged agent (eventually revealed to have been born in the 19th century) explored his erased exploits in ever-increasing intensity and detail. Over decades, his many secret origins and a stream of revelatory disclosures regarding his extended, self-obscured life slowly seeped out. Cursed with recurring periodic bouts of amnesia, mind-wiped ad nauseum by sinister or even well-meaning friends and foes, the Chaotic Canucklehead packed a lot of adventurous living into decades of existence – but mostly didn’t remember much of it. This permanently unploughed field conveniently resulted in a crop of dramatically mysterious, undisclosed back-histories, the absolute best of which is re-presented here.

Spanning March to September of 1991 in 8-page instalments, Marvel Comics Presents # 72-84 hosted a much-demanded semi-origin for the mystery mutant, revealing how he was internally enrobed with wonder-metal adamantium. The tale delivered a ‘Prologue’, 12 highly visual revelatory chapters and a concluding ‘Interlude & Escape’. In 1993, when the tale was collected into a graphic novel, Larry Hama wrote a prose ‘Epilogue’ to dot all the “I”s and cross all the “T”s, and that’s included here, plus thematic continuations to the saga that shook the Marvel firmament. Those include an excerpt from Wolverine #166 and the contents of the Smith co-crafted X-Men #205.

A visual tour de force with truly visceral imagery – almost medical torture porn – the story of how a burned-out spy walks into a bar and eventually regains his senses sometime later, changed beyond all recognition, is told in overlapping, interwoven flashbacks within flashbacks.

The abduction, who did to what to “Logan” under the illicit auspices of “Experiment X” – and why – is all here to experience in gorge-rising detail, but the easy answers you want won’t be easy to see. The monstrous tale of forced transmutation, fight for survival and autonomy and the dichotomy of what separates Man from Animal reveals facts yet leaves truths to later stories. What you have here is how a victim of atrocity overcomes his tormentors and lives free by not dying… and it is truly spectacular.

Written, illustrated, coloured and lettered by Barry Windsor-Smith, Weapon X is short and pretty to look upon, a masterpiece of visual storytelling that must be seen to be believed. It’s also a superb shock-horror tribute to Frankenstein, exposing the true nature of the tortured soul underneath the imposed layers unknown enemies have smothered Logan in for so very long and the first step towards his ultimate emancipation.

Following the Hama conclusion, an extract from Wolverine #166 (September 2001) sees Windsor-Smith return to his opus in a flashback sequence scripted by Frank Tieri: focusing on one of the nameless army grunts (and rare survivor) who faced the berserk escaping Experiment X. Accompanied by Windsor-Smith’s cover for #167 and mirrored by his cover for Uncanny X-Men # 205 (May 1986), they precede his collaboration with Chris Claremont on ‘Wounded Wolf’; another boldly visual triumph as Wolverine faces vengeance-crazed, adamantium augmented cyborg Lady Deathstrike in a compelling fable of obsession guest-starring little Katie Power from pre-teen titans Power Pack.

Although there are many versions of this collection available, this Gallery Edition is a dream for fans of Windsor-Smith art, closing with 17 pages of original art and a selection of X-related covers, images and pin-ups by the author. These are culled from the back of Wolverine #4, Marvel Comics Presents # 72-84, and assorted X-collections including Weapon X Hardcover (1993), Weapon X Trade Paperback (2001), Wolverine: Weapon X Marvel Premiere Classic Hardcover,  X-Men: Lifedeath Marvel Premiere Classic Hardcover, There are also house ads, promo posters, and variant covers for Uncanny X-Men #395, New X-Men #115,and Deadpool #57-60.

Short, fierce, relentless and unmissable.
© 2022 MARVEL.