Category: Mature Reading

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Breaking The 10 volume 1


By Seán Michael Wilson & Michiru Morikawa (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-021-8

Scottish émigré and citizen of the world Seán Michael Wilson has a splendid and well-earned reputation for “Deep” comics that tackle real issues (Iraq: Operation Corporate Takeover {with War on Want}, Goodbye God? – an Illustrated Examination of Science Vs Religion with Hunt Emerson) but is equally adept at more straightforward and hugely entertaining strip material (The Story of Lee, AX: Alternative Manga).

Here, those seeming opposites collide and combine in a superbly engaging and wickedly barbed tale of lost love, disillusionment and grief-filled reaction that is both hilariously acerbic and potently thought-provoking.

Aiding and abetting a great deal of impious soul-searching is award-winning manga illustrator and poster artist Michiru Morikawa – who worked with Wilson on Yakuza Moon, Demon’s Sermon, Musashi and The Faceless Ghost – and lends a fine gloss to the proceedings which begin with a robbery…

Devout Christian David is still reeling from the death of his wife and child when he decides to confront God and force him to explain his actions and motivations. With no other recourse the aggrieved sinner starts methodically breaking the Ten Commandments – beginning with ‘Thou shalt not steal’ – but is utterly unaware that two antithetical gentlemen are watching him…

Before long they are at his door, introducing themselves as Mr. Black and Mr. White; offering counsel and unwelcome advice the bereaved David doesn’t want to hear. Nor does he believe they are the supernatural advocates they seem to be as, whilst they bicker over him, it becomes clear to the apostate that they don’t yet know what his game plan actually is…

As David continues his celestial attention-getting campaign in ‘Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s… (house; thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is neighbor’s)’ through a spot of coldly calculating seduction, White maintains his surveillance whilst Black slacks off and disappears.

Everything is not as it appears: White may well be the agent of an Interventionist creator, but his opposite number claims to be a simple disciple of a modern humanist rationalism rather than an operative of the Infernal Antagonist…

David doesn’t really care: his first two assaults upon scripture have won him nothing but fleeting physical pleasure so he ups the ante by robbing and desecrating a church before ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy’ finds him contemplating how best to offend all the Abrahamic religions when there’s already seven-day shopping and the entire world has pretty much abandoned the concept of holy days…

The subversive private war takes on a far more public aspect when the bereft zealot creates an obscene statue and posts pictures on the internet, inviting the world to worship Graven Daven, the Indecent Idol in ‘Thou shalt not make for yourself a graven image’…

As fanatics of every stripe converge on his house, David ignores his constant prating gadflies and tells all in a candid TV interview, and, with the entire world caught up, subsequently moves on to the darker fringes of his scheme.

Firstly he destroys the gullible couple next door by shattering the edict ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbors’ before – with God still a no-show and with no hint of an apology or explanation forthcoming – planning his end-game.

It starts during a quiet little chat with the gobsmacked Mr. Black about the big one… the one about killing…

To Be Concluded…

Thought-provoking and deceptively low-key, this repurposing of an age-old question is unlike earlier graphic novels addressing this timeless theme (Eisner’s A Contract with God or Truth Faith by Garth Ennis & Warren Pleece come immediately to mind) as the focus and driver is more about human pain rather than indignation or betrayal. Moreover, by introducing a third philosophical force to counter both God and the Devil, Breaking the 10 moves the debate into fresh territory regarding what makes human beings moral.

Fresh, challenging and superbly enthralling, this is a book no saint or sinner should miss.
© 2016 Seán Michael Wilson & Michiru Morikawa.

Breaking the 10 volume 1 will be in selected retail outlets from June 29th and released on July 21st 2016. It can be pre-ordered now and is also available in all e-book formats.

For more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

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Wandering Star


By Teri S. Wood (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80162-9

The 1980s were an immensely fertile time for English-language comics and creators. In America a whole new industry grew around the development of specialist shops as dedicated retail outlets sprung up all over the country. Operated by fans for fans, they encouraged a host of new publishers to experiment with format, genre and content, whilst eager readers celebrated the happy coincidence that for the first time in a long time they seemed to have a bit of extra cash to play with.

Consequently the comics-creating newcomers were soon aggressively competing for the attention and cash of consumers who no longer had to get their sequential art fix from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material started creeping in and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Capital, Now, Comico, Dark Horse, First and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads.

Most importantly, by avoiding the traditional family-focussed sales points such as newsstands, more grown-up material could be produced: not just increasingly violent or sexually explicit but also more politically and intellectually challenging and even – just occasionally – addressing classic genres with a simple maturity comicbooks had not been allowed to express since the Comics Code shut down EC Comics.

New talent, established stars and different thematic takes on old forms all converged and found a thriving forum hungry for something a little different. Even smaller companies and foreign outfits had a fair shot at the big time and a lot of great publications came – but, almost universally, as quickly went – without getting the attention or success they warranted.

The boom encouraged many would-be creators to take their shot and although the surge led to a spectacular implosive bust, a few truly impressive series weathered the storm and left their mark.

One such was Wandering Star by Teri S. Wood and now the entire epic 21 issue odyssey has been collected in a monumental hardback complete edition, which will hopefully – if belatedly – transform the tale from beloved cult classic to the pioneering trail blazer of comics science fiction it richly deserves to be…

Resa Challender started out as most cartoon aspirants did back then; selling strips to fan press publications (Amazing Heroes), progressing to a regular series gig at one of the smaller companies (Rhudiprrt: Prince of Fur for MU Press) all the while looking for a signature concept to cement inevitable stardom.

For Teri/Resa that was proudly self-professed space opera Wandering Star, which she originally self-published in 1988 without appreciably troubling the comics-buying masses…

That original exuberant, raw-edged first episode is included in the copious Bonus Material section at the back of this book, along with an Afterword from Carla Speed McNeil (and I really must get around to covering her fabulous Finder series sometime soon…), plus a 30-page full-colour section displaying a vibrant gallery of covers and promotional prints created during the series’ original run from 1993-1997.

Nearly 500 pages earlier Maggie Thompson starts the ball rolling with her reminiscence-rich Foreword, recalling the author’s early days and connection to Comics Buyers Guide which Wood expands upon in her own fact-filled Introduction.

When she was ready, Teri S. Wood returned to her 30-page draft of Wandering Star and severely retooled it. The result then launched through her own Pen and Ink Comics for eleven issues of a loudly touted 12 issue maxi-series, before being picked up Sirius Press who took away all the administrative hassles and let her get on with writing and drawing it until its actual conclusion with #21.

I called this a space opera, and it qualifies in the truest sense of the term. The story of an Earthling stuck at a hostile pan-species university who overcomes alien prejudice and with a small group of allies is instrumental in stopping a vast intergalactic war is the very essence of that particular genre, but Wandering Star was different then and still delights today because it avoids all the easy pit-stops and pitfalls of the meme.

There is an overwhelming threat to universal peace, there is a monstrous and dreadful cosmic personal antagonist in the brutal Commander Narz and there is a doughty trusty crew of allies – blind psionic powerhouse Madison, energy being Elli, wise old veteran Graikor, hateful bully turned staunch comrade Mekon Dzn Appogand plus (latterly) fellow human Joey – all frantically hurtling across the cosmos as the embattled heroes try to keep the fugitive vessel Wandering Star out of the clutches of an invading army willing and able to rip the Galactic Alliance to shreds…

From the start Wood opted for emotional involvement rather than over-used action and spectacle to engage her readership; deftly utilising the serial medium to build the characters of her cast and show scary, painful, funny and ultimately intimately revelatory moments.

Stooping to an obvious if rather unfair comparison, it’s something the Star Wars movies could never accomplish and why those characters are so wooden and two-dimensional, whereas TV series like Star Trek, Farscape, Firefly and Killjoys excel at making their players authentic and believable. They use the screen time for interaction not extra action…

That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of cataclysmic cosmic conflict and ominous, last-ditch battles in store, only that Wood knew from the get-go that people – no matter what shape, colour or construction – are infinitely more interesting than one more exploding planet or deadly astral dreadnought, Most importantly, she knew how to use them and when to expend them for maximum impact…

It all begins on peaceful planet Machavia as history student Aldar tracks down celebrated recluse Casandra Andrews and convinces the aged Earther to share the true story of how thirty years ago a bunch of raw kids on the legendary Wandering Star saved the Galactic Alliance from the seemingly invincible, duplicitous and rapacious Bono Kiro Empire…

Potent, powerful, uplifting and painfully realistic, this is a war story that deals with consequences rather than as simple victories and defeats.

Wandering Star is a true example of sequential narrative as Art. Wood produced it practically as a labour of love; for precious little financial reward or public acclaim. She improved and gained confidence with every page and every issue and she did it because she had a story that wouldn’t let her go until she told it…

And once you read it, it won’t loose its hold on you either…
© 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 2016 Teri S. Wood. Foreword © 2016 Maggie Thompson. Afterword © 2016 Carla S. McNeil. All rights reserved.

Wandering Star will be published on June 20th 2016 and is available for pre-order now.

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Clumsy


By Jeffrey Brown (Top Shelf Productions)
ISBN: 978-0-97135-976-5

If you’re a fan of Jeffrey Brown’s cartoon exploits you might understandably admit to a small degree of confusion. In 2012 he scored his first global best-seller with a hilarious spin on the soft and nurturing side of the Jedi experience in Darth Vader and Son, following up with equally charming and hilarious sequels Vader’s Little Princess, Star Wars: Jedi Academy and others.

Before that another Jeffrey Brown was the sparkling wit who had crafted slyly satirical all-ages funny stuff for The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror, Marvel’s Strange Tales and Incredible Change-Bots and similar visual venues.

There is yet another Jeffrey Brown: instigator and frequent star and stooge of such quirkily irresistible autobiographical Indy comics classics as Bighead, Little Things, Funny, Misshapen Body, Undeleted Scenes and the four volume “Girlfriend Trilogy”, comprising Clumsy, Unlikely, AEIOU and Every Girl is the End of the World For Me…

Whichever Brown’s your preferred choice he’s a cartoonist of rare insight and unflinching revelation… who still makes you laugh out loud when not prompting you to offer a big consoling hug…

Brown was raised in Michigan; relocating to Chicago in 2000 to attend the School of the Arts Institute and study painting. Before graduating he had switched to drawing comics and in 2002 Clumsy was released, quickly becoming a surprise hit with fans and critics alike.

The material is both delicious and agonising in its forthright simplicity: a sequence of non-chronological pictorial snippets and vignettes detailing in no particular order how a meek, frumpy, horny, inoffensively charming art-student meets a girl and tries to carry out a long-distance relationship. Every kid who’s gone to college, got a job or joined the services has been through this, and for every romance that makes it, there a million that don’t.

Drawn in a deceptively Primitivist style with masterful staging, a sublime economy of phrase plus a breathtaking gift for generating in equal amounts belly-laughs and those poignant lump-in-throat moments we’ve all experienced and forever-after regretted, this is a skilful succession of stolen moments which establish one awful truth.

We’ve all been there, done that and then hoarded those damned photos we can’t even look at any more…

With titles like ‘My Last Night with Kristyn’, ‘Don’t Touch Me’, ‘I Draw her Naked’, ‘I Farted’, ‘But I Want to Make Love’ and ‘You Can Ask Me’, a mosaic of universal joy and despair forms as we watch Jeff and Theresa meet, blossom, exult, dream, plan and part…

Packed with hearty joyous wonder and brimming with hilarious examples of that continual and seemingly tireless teen-lust us oldsters can barely remember now let alone understand, Clumsy is a magical delight for anybody safely out of their Romeo & Juliet years and a lovely examination of what makes us human, hopeful and perhaps wistfully incorrigible…
© 2002 Jeffrey Brown.

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The Shadow: Blood and Judgement


By Howard Chaykin with Ken Bruzenak & Alex Wald (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-327-8

I’ve been a fan of The Shadow ever since I picked up a couple of paperbacks as a kid in my local Woolworth’s in the 1960s. Over many decades I’ve followed the various comic and movie interpretations with mixed feelings and general acceptance. However, when Howard Chaykin had a crack at the venerable crime-crusher at the height of the turbulent game-changing 1980’s, I nearly blew a gasket. I was appalled.

And that was the point.

Chaykin has for his entire career lovingly cultivated a reputation as an iconoclast and bombast over many years and the four issue miniseries collected here certainly ruffled a few feathers – those of severe traditionalist me included.

As originally disseminated in the days before comic-books, The Shadow gave thrill-hungry readers their measured doses of extraordinary excitement via cheaply produced periodical novels dubbed “pulps” (because of the low-grade paper they were printed on) and over the mood-drenched airwaves through his own radio show.

Pulps were published in their hundreds every month, ranging from the truly excellent to the pitifully dire, in every style and genre, but for exotic adventure lovers there were two star characters that outshone all others. The Superman of his day was Doc Savage, Man of Bronze, whilst the premiere dark, relentless creature of the night dispensing terrifying grim justice was our mysterious slouch-hatted hero.

Originally the radio series Detective Story Hour – based on stand-alone yarns from the Street & Smith publication Detective Story Magazine – used a spooky voiced narrator (most famously Orson Welles, although he was preceded by James LaCurto and Frank Readick Jr.) to introduce each tale. He was dubbed “the Shadow”, and from the start on July 31st 1930, he was more popular than the stories he introduced.

The Shadow evolved into a proactive hero solving mysteries and, on April 1st 1931, debuted in his own pulp series written by the incredibly prolific Walter Gibson under the house pseudonym Maxwell Grant. On September 26th 1937 the radio show officially became The Shadow with the eerie tag-line “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Men? The Shadow knows!”

From June 17th 1940 he starred in a newspaper strip by Vernon Greene and when comic books took off he had his own four-colour title which ran for 101 issues (March 1940 – September 1949). Years later Archie Comics published a controversial contemporary version in 1964-5 under their Radio/Mighty Comics imprint, written by Robert Bernstein and Jerry Siegel, illustrated by John Rosenberger and latterly Paul Reinman.

In 1973 DC acquired the comic rights and produced a captivating if brief series of classic tales unlike any other superhero title then on the stands.

Grant wrote 282 of 325 novels over the next two decades, which were published twice a month. The series spawned comic books, seven movies, a newspaper strip and all the merchandising paraphernalia you’d expect of a superstar brand. The pulp series also ended in 1949, although many novels have been written (both by Gibson and others) since 1963 when a pulp and fantasy revival gripped America generating reprinted classic stories and a run of new adventures as paperback novels.

Then he was gone again but the mesmerising master of menace always seemed to be lurking in the background…

DC periodically revived their comicbook iterations of the venerable vigilante and in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman tasked one of the comics industry’s most controversial creators with reviving the pre-eminent mystery men of all time…

Fresh from an awe-inspiring, inspirational and transformative run on his creation American Flagg, Howard Chaykin returned to DC to shake up everything with an interpretation which offended fans, purists (still including me) and franchise-owners Conde Nast but which ultimately proved to be just the medicine the property needed to become relevant again.

That crucial year 1949 is the embarkation point for this flashy, savage, witty and completely captivating updating. This is not a reboot. Chaykin was extremely careful to accept and utilise the decades of established canon; deftly accommodating old material whilst infilling information gaps by scrutinising world history and tacitly accepting that a do-gooder who exploited and expended his own agents whilst kidnapping, brainwashing and slaughtering the bad guys wasn’t what most people would consider a hero…

Devised and delivered as a glittering, frenetic avalanche of graphic and text material – spectacularly made comprehensible by the calligraphic skill of lettering wizard Ken Bruzenak and the understated colour-palette of Alex Wald – the story opens with a series of increasingly brutal murders. It doesn’t take long to connect the victims: old people from all walks of life rumoured to have worked with an old urban legend known as The Shadow…

That mystery manhunter vanished in 1949, abandoning his grim crusade to destroy criminals and now (for which read 1986) some hidden mastermind is eliminating every surviving member of his organization. Before long a figure comes out of the closeted east: easily slipping past China’s Bamboo Curtain and returning to blighted, benighted America…

Suddenly amidst a broiling sea of perversion, sex and violent death, The Shadow is back and dealing bloody justice to petty thugs. In a desperate race against time, the impossibly young and still vital Lamont Cranston reunites with his elderly surviving agents to track down his oldest enemy and thwart a deadly plan to bring about nuclear annihilation.

However, as arrogant and officious as ever, the master manipulator is probably in more danger from the colleagues he abandoned than the gun-toting punks and maniacs dogging his smartly-shod heels…

Chaykin even had the chutzpah to provide the eternal Man of Mystery with a Real Origin, something he never really had before…

Bonus features include a cover gallery, Marc Guggenheim’s Foreword ‘Looking Back on the Shadow’ plus ‘The Light Behind The Shadow’: an interview with Chaykin and Joe Orlando which first appeared in the 1987 trade paperback collection.

I don’t know why I used to dislike this book so much: Although I still feel the proper milieu for the character is the iconic era of mobsters, militarists and madmen (by which I mean the 1930s and 1940s) I can see what Chaykin’s getting at. Those threats and motivations were common enough in the Eighties and even more so nowadays.

Perhaps the author’s trademark trick of confronting misogyny, racism and suppressed sexuality by seemingly advocating them just wore a bit thin when applied to such a treasured old friend. There’s certainly a disquieting amount of adult themes, kinky sex and graphic violence on offer…

With sufficient distance however I now find this tale a terrific thrill-ride; stylish and compelling – if a little “in your face” and “on the nose”. Somebody must have liked it back then: Blood and Judgment spawned a fascinating follow-up series (by Andy Helfer, Bill Sienkiewicz, Kyle Baker and others) before DC reverted to The Shadow Strikes: a series safely restored to its natural pre-war time period.

Out of print since 1991 until Dynamite picked up the option in 2011, this is a vital and vigorous read which inspired some of today’s very best creators, and acts as a perfect introduction to the character. You could even complement the experience by tracking down DC’s first experiment with the character – partially collected as The Private Files of the Shadow – and Dynamite’s new edition of The Shadow: Hitler’s Astrologer, before moving on to the new tales currently being published.

After all, a crime fighter this durable has to have something to him…
The Shadow ® & © 2012 Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. d/b/a Conde Nast. All Rights Reserved.

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Wolf Country volume One


Jim Alexander, Luke Cooper, Will Pickering & various (Planet Jimbot)
No ISBN:

Jim Alexander has been around and done a lot. His other comic stories have been published by Marvel, DC, 2000AD and so many more bastions of graphic narrative success and distinction. He writes with sharp sophistication, an inherent understanding that comics are primarily pictorial and the certain knowledge that the majority of his audience are not morons.

His scripts always have a great sensitivity to place and a strong sense of directed motion, with sparse, spartan self-control that lets his smartly seditious ideas percolate. (Despite what the much-missed Alan Rickman may have said, “Subtlety is everything”).

With a few good men and women he is quietly creating a little wave of interest through the business through self-publishing enterprise Planet Jimbot (officially with work-partner Jim Campbell, and a number of splendidly effective artists): generating addictive, well-considered tweaks on established genre models such as superhero yarns, police procedurals (GoodCopBadCop), Samurai revenge sagas and a captivating distillation of westerns, horror movies and dystopian sci fi entitled Wolf Country.

As rumours percolate of a screen option for this last series, the first four issues and two vignettes from anthology Amongst the Stars have been enticingly reconfigured into a stunning graphic novel collection, perfect for introducing a larger audience to the otherworld religio-political saga with seductive echoes of Unforgiven, The Searchers and the Underworld franchise (although thankfully devoid of the silly fang-&-claw fights and skin-tight leather bodysuits…)

Somewhere far from here and now a land exists where blood-drinkers have built a nation. In The Kingdom, however, the people are moving from a religion-based culture to a modern meritocracy where science increasingly dominates: run by a progress-minded government and bureaucracy methodically ditching the old ways in favour of a soulless, ruthless, rationalist super-state whilst offering pious lip-service to dissenters and bribing the citizenry with a gory menu of bread and circuses…

Their brave new world is surrounded by ancestral enemies: humans who transform into beasts when the moon is full, whose toxic vital fluids mean instant death to the faithful and apostates alike.

The beasts control the wild lands beyond the city-state, but an uncompromising sect of devout vampires, adhering to the tenets of their faith, inhabit a fort in the desolate badlands, challenging the monsters and hostiles of Wolf Country. By the Grace of God – and largesse of the Kingdom – the fundamentalists struggle daily for survival in their frontier outpost following the doctrines of Holy Scriptures and confronting their eternal enemies in the traditional ways.

The drama opens as Alexander and illustrator Luke Cooper take us into the dreams and nightmares of the leader of that isolated, endangered enclave. From their beds Halfpenny and his wife Natasha foresee the next attack on their embattled fort and know that without the supplies grudgingly air-dropped to them by the increasingly hard-line secular government they cannot survive.

When the moon-maddened assault comes, the Faithful fight valiantly but are almost overwhelmed by the time crates of fresh plasma and silver bullets blossom in the night skies…

The scene switches to the city three years earlier, where a young man finds himself the unwilling star of a long-awaited, prophesied future. The destiny stalking ‘Luke’ catches him when a gigantic wolf-thing goes rogue in the metropolis yet is somehow miraculously destroyed by the inconsequential waif.

Now, the celebrated “Boy Who Killed Wolf” has freshly relocated to The Settlement. Following a close encounter with the hirsute savages, young Luke explains what actually happened that night to his companion, mentor and chief scout Carmichael…

His impossible feat made Luke a sensation and a symbol of prophecy proved; but the adulation and agendas of others disgusted him and upon reaching his majority and -despite being an unbeliever – he fled to The Settlement to live his own life and find his own answers. When disaster strikes Luke goes native, remaining alone in the wilderness after he and Carmichael narrowly escape a wolf attack…

Will Pickering takes over the illustration for ‘Kingdom Come’ as Halfpenny reluctantly transports a captured werewolf back to the decadent, science-loving Kingdom. It’s not his idea. As the helicopter ferries the sacrificial beast for the populace’s next bloodletting spectacle, Halfpenny is ordered to go with it whilst a squad of arrogant, impious, heavily-armed troops billet themselves in his spartan home.

The High Executor wants to interview the leader of the quaint religious freaks since there has been fallout over The Settlement’s loss of the legendary, beloved “Boy Who Killed Wolf”…

Later, whilst atheist Sergeant Urquhart attempts to intimidate and dominate the Settlers, in faraway City Chambers Halfpenny learns the real reason he has been summoned…

‘Wax and Wane’ then sees Urquhart forcing the deluded religious throwbacks in joining his sortie against the lupine tribes just as the moon enters its most dangerous phase.

Meanwhile in the Kingdom, Halfpenny is dragooned into being a stalking horse for the draconian Department of Purity, interviewing radical spokesman Fabian in his bloodily bohemian stronghold of wrong-thinkers and backwards-lookers…

Back in the Badlands, natural enemies Carmichael and Urquhart warily test each other out and quite forget who their real enemies are, whilst a universe away Halfpenny’s interview with Fabian goes disastrously awry. The rebel has honeyed words and access to sacred writings which shake the devout outsider to his core, but before he can properly form a response the Executor’s troops move in and the slaughter begins…

At the Settlement, with the soldiers and able-bodied men still deep in-country, the massed wolf tribes attack the fort with an incredible monster…

The brooding tension explodes into horrifying action as the stockade walls are breached before the ‘Cavalry’ arrive, whilst in the Kingdom a full-blown riot ensues, forcing Halfpenny to reveal the uncanny abilities which underpin his ferocious reverence to Scripture…

And in the bloody aftermath at the fort, an unchecked, out-of-control Urquhart turns his sadistic attention on the settlers – and particularly Carmichael – in his quest for the truth about Luke’s whereabouts and in pursuit of the other hidden directives he’s been given by his scheming rationalist masters…

To Be Continued…

Complex, multi-layered and instantly engaging, Wolf Country takes a chilling proposition and dares the reader to pick sides in a burgeoning conflict between Church and State, science and mysticism, the sacred and the profane and every station in between. Moreover, despite the death, deviancy and destruction on show there is clear evidence that there is something deeper going on, so jump aboard and stick around: the best is certainly yet to come…
© 2016 Jim Alexander (story), Luke Cooper (art © Wolf Country intro, #1) Will Pickering (art #2-4).

Wolf Country volume One is available direct from the Planet Jimbot shop so go to:Wolf Country TPB volume 1

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XIII volume 3: All the Tears of Hell


By William Vance & Jean Van Hamme, coloured by Petra (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-051-1

One of the most consistently entertaining and popular adventure serials on the European scene, XIII was created by author Jean Van Hamme (Wayne Shelton, Blake and Mortimer, Lady S.) and illustrator William Vance (Bruce J. Hawker, Marshal Blueberry, Ramiro).

Van Hamme was born in Brussels in 1939 and is one of the most prolific writers in comics. After pursuing business studies he moved into journalism and marketing before selling his first graphic tale in 1968. Immediately clicking with the public, by 1976 he had also branched out into prose novels and screenwriting. His big break was monumentally successful mixed-genre fantasy series Thorgal for Tintin magazine but he truly cemented his reputation with mass-market bestsellers Largo Winch and XIII as well as more cerebral fare such as Chninkel and Les maîtres de l’orge. In 2010 Van Hamme was listed as the second-best selling comics author in France, ranked between the seemingly unassailable Hergé and Uderzo.

William Vance is the bande dessinée nom de plume of William van Cutsem. He was born in 1935 in Anderlecht and, after military service in 1955-1956, studied art at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He became an illustrator of biographic features for Tintin in 1962. His persuasive illustrative style is a classical blend of meticulous realism, scrupulous detail and spectacular yet understated action.

In 1964 he began maritime adventure serial Howard Flynn (written by Yves Duval) before graduating to more popular genre work with western Ray Ringo and espionage thriller Bruno Brazil (scripted by “Greg”). Further success followed when he replaced Gérald Forton on science fiction classic Bob Morane in Femmes d’Aujourd’hui and latterly Pilote and Tintin.

Although working broadly and constantly on serials and stand-alone stories, Vance’s signature achievement is his lengthy collaboration with fellow Belgian Van Hamme on this contemporary thriller loosely based on Robert Ludlum’s novel The Bourne Identity…

XIII premiered in 1984, originally running in Spirou to great acclaim. A triad of albums were rushed out – simultaneously printed in French and Dutch editions – before the first year of serialisation ended.

The series was a monumental hit in Europe but has fared less well in its many attempts to make the translation jump to English, with Catalan Communications, Alias Comics and even Marvel all failing to find an audience for the epic mystery thriller.

The grand conspiracy saga of unrelenting mood, mystery and mayhem opened in The Day of the Black Sun when an old beachcomber found a body. The human flotsam had been shot in the head and was near death when old Abe‘s wife examined the near-corpse. She discovered a key sewn into his clothes and the Roman numerals for thirteen tattooed on the victim’s neck. Their remote hideaway offered little in the way of emergency services, but their alcoholic, struck-off surgeon friend was able to save the stranger…

As he recuperated a complication became apparent. The patient – a splendid physical specimen clearly no stranger to action or violence – had suffered massive irreversible brain trauma and although increasingly sound in body had completely lost his mind.

Language skills, muscle memories, even social and reflexive conditioning all remained, but every detail of his life-history was gone…

Abe and Sally named him “Alan” after their own dead son – but hints of the intruder’s lost past explosively intruded when hitmen invaded the beach house with guns blazing. Alan lethally retaliated with terrifying skill, but too late…

In the aftermath he found a photo of himself and a young woman on the killers and traced it to nearby Eastown. Desperate for answers and certain more killers were coming, the human question mark headed off to confront unimaginable danger and hopefully find the answers he craved.

The picture led to a local newspaper and a crooked cop who recognised the amnesiac but said nothing…

The woman in the photo was Kim Rowland, a local widow recently gone missing. Alan’s key opened the door of her house. The place had been ransacked but a thorough search utilising his mysterious talents turned up another key and a note warning someone named Jake that “The Mongoose” had found her…

He was then ambushed by the cop and newspaper editor Wayne. Calling him “Shelton” they demanded the return of a large amount of missing money…

Alan/Jake/Shelton reasoned the new key fitted a safe-deposit box and bluffed the thugs into taking him to the biggest bank in town. The staff there also knew him as Shelton, but when his captors examined the briefcase in Shelton’s box a booby trap went off. Instantly acting, the mystery man expertly escaped and eluded capture, holing up in a shabby hotel room, pondering again what kind of man he used to be…

As he prepared to leave he stumbled into a mob of armed killers. In a blur of lethal action he escaped and ran into another gang led by a Colonel Amos. This chilling executive referred to his captive as “Thirteen”, claiming to have dealt with his predecessors XI and XII in regard to the “Black Sun” case…

Amos very much wanted to know who Alan was, and offered some shocking titbits in return. The most sensational was film of the recent assassination of the American President, clearly showing the lone gunman was XIII…

Despite the amnesiac’s heartfelt conviction that he was no assassin, Amos accused him of working for a criminal mastermind, and wanted that big boss but failed to take Alan’s instinctive abilities into account and was astounded when his prisoner leapt out of a fourth floor window…

The fugitive headed back to the beach where he was found but more murderers awaited; led by a mild-seeming man Alan inexplicably knew was The Mongoose. The mastermind expressed surprise and admiration: he thought he’d killed Thirteen months ago…

Following an explosion of hyper-fast violence which left the henchmen dead and Mongoose vanished but vengeful, the mystery man regretfully hopped a freight train west towards the next stage in his quest for truth…

His journey of discovery took him to the army base where Kim Rowland’s husband was stationed. His enquiries provoked an unexpected and violent response resulting in his interrogation by General Ben Carrington and his sexily capable aide Lieutenant Jones.

They’re from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, know an awful lot about black ops units and have proof that their memory-challenged prisoner is in fact their agent: believed-deceased Captain Steve Rowland…

After testing the amnesiac’s abilities Carrington then drops him off in Rowland’s home town of Southberg to pursue his search for his missing wife, but the prodigal’s return to his rat’s nest of a family rekindles long-simmering passions and jealousies. The entire town seems to want Rowland’s blood and before long he’s been made the target of an assassination attempt and victim of a diabolical murder-plot…

Despite Carrington and Jones’ last-minute intervention Alan/Steve is framed for murdering his father and grabbed by a furious posse…

This third gripping instalment (originally seen in Europe as Toutes Les larmes de l’enfer in 1986) opens with Steve Rowland undergoing the worst kind of psychiatric care at the Plain Rock Penitentiary for the Criminally Insane. Despite drugs and shock treatments, his progress at the Maximum Security Facility is negligible. Young Dr. Ralph Berger seems amenable enough but all elderly martinet Dr. Johansson‘s claims to be seeking a cure for his patient’s amnesia are clearly no more than a proselytising, judgemental sadist’s justifications for inflicting pain…

Meanwhile in Washington DC, Carrington and Jones have met with Colonel Amos who has a strange request and troubling new information. His investigations have revealed that the amnesiac in the desert hell of Plain Rock has undergone plastic surgery and his army records have been altered. Steve Rowland is definitely not Steve Rowland…

Moreover, Amos has information proving that the plotters who had the President killed are still active and their amnesiac assassin is the only link and hope of finding them. Acting on her own initiative, Jones decides it’s time she took a hands-on approach to the problem…

Meanwhile, anxious and isolated Not-Rowland has a visitor who galvanises him out of his electro-chemically induced fugue-state as the Mongoose gloatingly pops in to inform the prisoner that his days are numbered…

Deep within the corridors of power, Colonel Amos informs Carrington that his further investigations have resulted in a name. He has solved the mystery of XIII and the man they are actually dealing with is former soldier and intelligence operative Ross Tanner.

Probably…

Knowing his time is limited, Rowland/Tanner opts for escape and decides to take along the kid who shares his cell. It’s as if he’s forgotten they’re in a maximum security facility for criminal maniacs, but he’s painfully reminded of the fact when sweet little Billy starts killing again as soon as they’re clear of the detention wing…

Recaptured and restricted to the medical section, XIII is helpless when the Mongoose’s inside man makes his move. Luckily Jones has also inserted herself in a position where she can do the most good…

Spectacularly busting out of the prison, “Rowland” and the mystery-woman then race into the desert, somehow avoiding a massive manhunt before vanishing without trace. Some time later Amos and Carrington confer over the disappearance, but one of them knows exactly where the fugitive is.

Now, with another new name, the warrior without a past and his new powerful allies lay plans to take the fight to their secret enemy…

To Be Continued…

XIII is one most compelling and convoluted mystery adventures ever conceived, with subsequent instalments constantly taking the questing human enigma two steps forward, one step back, stumbling through a world of pain and peril whilst cutting through an interminable web of past lives he seemingly led…

Fast-paced, clever and immensely inventive, XIII is a series no devotee of mystery and murder will want to miss.
Original edition © Dargaud Benelux (Dargaud-Lombard SA), 1986 by Van Hamme, Vance & Petra. All rights reserved. This edition published 2010 by Cinebook Ltd.

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Garth Ennis’ Complete Battlefields volume 1


By Garth Ennis, Russ Braun, Peter Snejbjerg, Carlos Ezquerra, Hector Ezquerra & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-255-4

Garth Ennis is the best writer of war comics in America today. In fact, if you disregard the marvellous Commando Picture Library series published by DC Thomson (which you shouldn’t – but no one admits to reading them in my circle), he may well be the only creator regularly contributing to the genre in the entire English language.

After crafting an occasional sequence of superb War Stories with the industry’s top illustrative talent for DC’s mature reader Vertigo imprint, he then moved on to craft more of the same for Dynamite Entertainment through themed-anthology series Battlefields, which began publication in November 2008.

Here he continued to blend his unique viewpoint with his love of the British comics combat strips he read as a lad. This first Complete Edition (available in both hardback and softcover editions as well as a digital release) gathers the first nine issues – comprising three separate triptychs set in World War II – which all delve below the standardised Hollywood glitz of a conflict we all think we have a passing familiarity with to reveal the grimy guts of combat in self-contained arenas most of us never knew existed…

Illustrated by Russell Braun, the first offering is a tale told from two opposing viewpoints, with both inexorably destined to ultimately and finally clash. Kurt Graf is a young German soldier on the Eastern Front; clinging to life and increasingly appalled by the behaviour of his comrades as they strive to crush the dogged resistance of the Soviets defending their homeland.

Elsewhere, the Russians are about to unleash their latest counter-weapon… women pilots…

Despite being despised by their male counterparts and generally saddled with the worst equipment, these dedicated warriors – especially the night-bomber squadron to which diminutive Lieutenant Anna Kharkova belongs – quickly begin to take a toll on the war-weary invaders, earning the name Nachthexen… ‘The Night Witches’…

As the months pass we follow both narrators deeper into hell, where all passions are temporary but overwhelmingly ferocious. And then, as the continually mounting toll of atrocities seems more than any could possibly bear, the protagonists at last meet under the most inauspicious conditions and the inevitable happens…

The pulse-quickening pitched cinematic battles of the Russian Front are replaced with more sedate but no less sinister and horrifying scenes in ‘Dear Billy’ – limned by Peter Snejbjerg – which beguilingly examines other repercussions of love in wartime. Carrie Sutton is a British nurse who barely survived the wanton slaughter and worse which the Japanese inflicted following their conquering Singapore.

After a frankly miraculous escape Carrie is taken to hospital in Calcutta where, after her body has recuperated, she is pressed into service on the wards. Here, even if she cannot forget what was done to her, she can strike back by helping heal the soldiers, sailors and airmen who will eradicate the inhuman enemy.

Her dreary half-life changes after meeting pilot William Wedgewood. Despite the appalling injuries inflicted upon him by the oriental devils he remains upbeat, and upon recovery is eager to get back in the air and punish the enemy. Meanwhile, Carrie too has found an occasional yet deeply personal way to get back at the foe…

The torrid relationship lasts the length of the war; with each prosecuting the conflict in their own way, but when Hiroshima and Nagasaki end hostilities and it’s time to put away weapons and make friends again, one traumatised soul realises the vengeance-taking can never end…

Spectacularly uproarious and doused with Ennis’s signature coal-black humour, ‘The Tankies’ is drawn by venerable old collaborator Carlos Ezquerra and inked by his son Hector. Set in the days immediately after the Normandy Landings in June 1944, the saga follows the crew of a British Churchill Tank after their upper class commander is killed in a most grotesque manner.

The work-shy, callow Londoners are at a bit of an impasse until taken in hand by a battle-hardened tank-man Non-Com who has fought his way from Africa all the way up into Italy and now intends to kill a few more foes here.

If only he wasn’t a bloody Geordie, babbling his bizarre northern jibber-jabber wot no normal bloke could understand…

Still, with Corporal Stiles in charge, the unlikely lads are soon rumbling forward to support the rapidly-diminishing ranks of British and Canadian infantry. Everything will be fine just as long as they don’t meet any Panzers or Tiger Tanks…

Emphatically highlighting with gory attention to detail the idiocy of command and incredible bravery of the under-trained allied soldiers inexorably forcing back the entrenched German veterans, this is prime Ennis: ghastly, hilarious and unforgettable…

Also included are a fascinating and informative Afterword from the author, recommended further reading, covers and variants by John Cassaday & Garry Leach, plus extensive sketchbook sections featuring character designs, layouts, pencils and finished art from Braun, Snejbjerg and the Ezquerras.

These are not stories for children. Due to Ennis’s immense skill as a scripter and his innate understanding of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, the carefully constructed moments of tension, terror and relief strike home and strike hard; whether he is aiming for gallows humour, lambasting the Powers That Be always ready to send fodder to slaughter or, as seen most frequently here, examining in excoriating detail how the acts of war makes mortals into monsters.

These hyper-authentic yarns reek of grim veracity and are a tribute to the spirit of people at their very best and worst. This is war as I fear it actually is, and it makes bloody good reading.
© 2009, 2011 Spitfire Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Lone Wolf and Cub volume 1: The Assassins Road


By Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima, translated by Dana Lewis (Dark Horse Manga)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-502-4

Whichever English transliteration you prefer – Wolf and Baby Carriage is what I was first introduced to – the grandiose, thought-provoking hell-bent Samurai tragedy created by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima is without doubt one of those all too rare breakthrough global classics of comics literature.

The epic Kozure Okami began as a serial in Weekly Manga Action, running from September 1970 to April 1976, and was immediately followed by a direct sequel (Shin Lone Wolf & Cub) as well as science fiction offshoot Lone Wolf 2100. The story has broken out into other media, spawning six movies, four plays, two TV series, games and merchandise. The property is notoriously still in pre-production as a big Hollywood blockbuster.

The 7000 thousand pages of staggeringly beautiful black and white narrative art produced by these gifted creators eventually filled 28 tankobon volumes, gripping and captivating generations of readers around the world. More importantly, the sensitively nihilistic saga, with its timeless themes and iconic visuals, has influenced hordes of other creators.

The many manga, comics and movies the stories have inspired are impossible to count. Frank Miller, who illustrated the cover of this particular edition, has referenced the series in his science fiction saga Ronin, The Dark Knight Returns, and Sin City. Max Allan Collin’s Road to Perdition is an unashamed tribute to this Japanese masterpiece. Even children’s cartoons such as Samurai Jack can be seen as direct descendants of this astounding achievement in graphic literature.

We in the West first saw the series as 45 Prestige Format editions from First Comics beginning in 1987. The company foundered before getting even a third of the way through the canon. Then, from September 2000 to December 2002, Dark Horse Comics assumed the rights, systematically reprinting and translating the entire epic into 28 tankobon-style editions (petite 153 x 109 mm monochrome trade paperbacks, about 300-ish pages per), before recently putting the entire sequence online through its Dark Horse Digital project.

This initial lean, mean, martial edition offers a Glossary providing detailed context on the term used in the stories, plus profiles of author Koike Kazuo and illustrator Kojima Goseki and the first instalment of ‘The Ronin Report’: an occasional series of articles offering potted history essays on the period of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Of course the true meat is the captivating, grimly compelling combination of revenge fable and action-adventure which opens here with intriguing episodes of stripped-down mystery, gripping intensity and galvanic bloodletting as the first tale introduces a scruffy indigent pushing a homemade bamboo pram with a 3-year-old boy in it.

A banner on the contraption proclaims ‘Son for Hire, Sword for Hire’ and as the man stoically ignores mockery and derision from louts on the road, his advert soon attracts the attention of four deadly men who have been warned of an assassin carrying his baby boy with him…

A certain formula informs all the early episodes: the acceptance of a commission to kill an impossible target, a cunning plan and inevitable success, all underscored with bleak philosophical musings alternately informed by Buddhist teachings in conjunction with or in opposition to the unflinching personal honour code of Bushido. The protagonist is also possibly the most dangerous swordsman in the world…

You won’t learn it until the end of this tome, but the fore-doomed killer-wanderer was once the Shogun’s official executioner, capable of cleaving a man in half with one stroke. An eminent individual of esteemed imperial standing, elevated social position and impeccable honour, ÅŒgami Ittō lost it all and now roams feudal Japan as a doomed soul hellbent for the dire, demon-haunted underworld of Meifumado.

When the nomad’s wife was murdered and his clan dishonoured due to the machinations of the treacherous and politically ambitious Yagyu Clan, the Emperor ordered ÅŒgami to commit suicide. Instead, he rebelled, choosing to become a despised Ronin (masterless samurai) and assassin, pledging to revenge himself on the Yagyus until they were all dead or Hell claimed him. His son, the toddler Daigoro, also chose the way of the sword and together they roamed the grim and evocative landscapes of feudal Japan, one step ahead of doom and with death behind and before them.

Frequently the infallible assassin’s best ploy is to allow himself to be captured, endure unimaginable torture and then fight his way out having slaughtered his target…

The tactic is again employed in ‘A Father Knows His Child’s Heart, as Only a Child Can Know His Father’s’ as the wolf sends willing Daigoro to penetrate the unyielding defences of Takai Han so that Papa can kill a dishonourable usurper…

Another aspect of ÅŒgami’s methodology emerges in ‘From North to South, From West to East’. The assassin insists on a personal interview with all his clients and demands not only who is to die, but why. Perhaps the cautious killer only wants to know the extent of what he’s getting into, but we know he’s judging: seeing whether the target deserves death… or if the client does…

The legend of the Lone Wolf and Cub quickly spreads and when faithful guards briefly hire Daigoro to help their beloved mistress, it is with full knowledge of what the boy’s father is. In ‘Baby Cart on the River Styx’ that knowledge is crucial to ÅŒgami’s plan for quashing a gang turf-war before it begins even whilst bringing down a corrupt yet untouchable lord…

Shocking to us is the accepted conceit that the father is fully prepared to sacrifice his son to achieve his mission and fulfil his promises. In ‘Suio School Zanbato’ little Daigoro willingly becomes a hostage to fortune so that his dad can lure a swords-master – and all his honourless students – into an officially sanctioned duel, and kill with no legal ramifications or repercussions…

A lyrical twist on the theme of star-crossed lovers, ‘Waiting for the Rains’ then sees the little boy befriending a dying woman even as his father waits to carry out his next commission – expunging the man she so patiently awaits…

These stories are deeply metaphorical and work on a number of levels most of us westerners just won’t grasp on first reading – even with the contextual help provided by the bonus features. That only makes them more exotic and fascinating. Also, a little unsettling is the even-handed treatment of women in the tales. Within the confines of the incredibly stratified culture being depicted, females – from servants to courtesans, prostitutes to highborn ladies – are all fully-rounded characters, with their own motivations and drives. His female allies are valiant and dependable, and his foes, whether ultimate targets or mere enemy combatants in his path, are treated with professional respect by ÅŒgami. He kills them just as if they were men…

In ‘Eight Gates of Deceit’ the indomitable killer is ambushed by an octet of female assassins hired by the wolf’s latest client who foolishly chooses to discount the professional honour of his hireling in favour of clearing up loose ends. That’s his last mistake…

‘Wings to the Birds, Fangs to the Beast’ finds the tireless wanderer stumbling into a hot-spa village recently taken over by bandits. To their eternal cost, and despite the newcomer’s every forbearing effort, the human animals refuse to believe the man with the baby-carriage wants no trouble…

This first stunning collection ends with some of the answers the reader has been looking for as the scene shifts to the recent past and Shogun’s palace in Edo for an origin. There, thanks to the political manoeuvrings of ambitious Lord Yagyu, the Shogun’s Executioner ÅŒgami Ittō has been ousted and his clan disgraced. With wife Asami dead, the austere warrior outfoxes his opponent – who thought an honourable suicide the only option he’d left his enemy – by opting to travel ‘The Assassin’s Road’ with his baby son momentously choosing to follow him to Meifumado or victory…

A breathtaking tour de force, these are comics classics you must not miss.
© 1995, 2000 Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima. All other material © 2000 Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Cover art © 2000 Frank Miller. All rights reserved.

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Murder by Remote Control


By Janwillem van de Wetering & Paul Kirchner (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80560-3

“Graphic novels” are utterly ubiquitous these days, even though a huge part of the population can’t or won’t differentiate between the big books we insiders mean and the flimsy, pamphlet periodicals comprising the bulk of items on sale.

Can I at least muddy the waters a little more?

Yes I Can.

Something that gathers a selection of previously-published material – strips, comicbook issues, selected stories on a theme – used to be an Album, Collection, or even, God help us, an Omnibus or Trade Paperback. These included any re-presentation of superhero sagas like Archives or Essentials, themed conglomerations like Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told or Marvel Visionaries or even the groundbreaking Cerebus “phone-book” editions.

Anything serialised in periodicals, but intended from conception to be eventually gathered into one unified form, was a graphic novel (Maus, Watchmen, Persepolis or Cerebus – confusing ain’t it?)

Any long-form tale utilising sequential narrative (A Contract with God, Sabre, Pride of Baghdad) released in one big bite is a true Graphic Novel. That’s what Will Eisner, Jim Steranko and Neal Adams were getting at when they started using the term in the late 1970s and it’s what we should mean when lobbing these terms about willy-nilly.

For every person who agrees with those categorisations, there are a dozen who violently disagree and can cite at least one package which correctly refutes and defies the definition. And because I’m a wilfully contrary pixie, I’ll just remind you that Charles Dickens published his greatest books as periodical magazine part-works before some bright spark stitched them all together in single complete editions called novels…

I don’t care: just remember all modern comics publishers crave the cachet of the term graphic novel attached to their product but it is one that has been adopted and most ardently championed by retailers and distributors who – from the moment big books of drawn stories started appearing – needed some way to pigeon-hole and differentiate them from cookbooks, coffee-table tomes, kids story-books and other releases packed with pictures.

Murder by Remote Control is a true Graphic Novel – arguably one of the very first planned and premeditated examples of the form – and after decades in obscurity you have the chance to see it in all its intended glory…

In the 1980s American comics got a huge creative boost with the advent of high quality magazines such as Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated which showcased adult-oriented material with high quality graphics and formats such as had taken Europe by storm a decade earlier.

Previous US experience of such work had been limited to the Underground Comix scene – in terms of content if not production values, at least – and the occasional independent, out-market experiment of such maverick luminaries as Wally Wood, Steve Ditko and Steranko.

When Heavy Metal premiered in April 1977 – looking very much like its French conceptual “parent” Métal Hurlant – there was precious little original American material to supplement the sumptuous continental work therein. One of the first US creators to join the magazine was Paul Kirchner (The Bus, Realms, Dope Rider), who had worked as an assistant to Wood in the early 1970s, contributing to such projects as Big Apple Comics.

Born in 1952, Kirchner was in his third year at Cooper Union School of Art in New York when Neal Adams and Larry Hama introduced him to the horror editors at DC, whose anthology titles always needed fresh blood. He thereafter assisted Tex Blaisdell on Little Orphan Annie and in 1973 joined Ralph Reese at Wood’s studio.

A young man in tune with many of the spiritual and conceptual tropes prevalent during those culturally cosmopolitan times, there was a thoughtful, underplayed intensity in his meticulously-crafted work, but Kirchner was hampered by his slow working-speed, at a time when quick turnaround always trumped artistic merit and quality. He eventually drifted out of comics to find far better-paying work in the advertising, animation and design trades.

Part of the reason for the transition is explained in his Introduction, which describes his meeting with Dutch expatriate author Janwillem Lincoln van de Wetering (The Empty Mirror, Grijpstra and de Gier crime novels, Hugh Pine (the Porcupine), Judge Dee Plays His Lute); a global-traveller and Zen Buddhist scholar who eventually settled in Maine. Under circumstances best enjoyed first hand by reading the actual Intro, the exuberant writer and jaded cartoonist met in 1981 and decided to work together on a dream project: a crime mystery in comics form…

The project took Kirchner a few years to complete but when ready for publication the real hard work began. Most publishers prefer to work in 20-20 hindsight: happy to jump on a successful bandwagon but preferring to chew off their own arms rather that risk money on being first with something new that can’t be easily categorised…

The completed work was schlepped around for two years until in 1986 Ballantine bought it. This was the period in which Maus, The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman all simultaneously slapped the world in the face and the public went ga-ga for graphic narratives.

Ballantine – who had decades earlier introduced America to comicstrip paperbacks with its digest-sized collections of Mad reprints – was willing to take a chance on a mass-market edition, albeit in a diminished size and format, even though as Moord Op Afstand the tale had been a success in Holland and elsewhere as a lavish, full-sized hardback album. Despite favourable coverage from Gahan Wilson in The New York Times Book Review, the bowdlerised Murder by Remote Control sank without trace and the creators reluctantly moved on to other things.

Now, after far too long, I can retire my battered old copy since Dover have added the sublime metaphorical masterpiece in monochrome to their crucial list of rescued comics treasures, restored to its intended page size (278 x 218 mm) and with the original cover replacing the sliced-&-sampled multiple-panel mock-up of the 1986 edition…

The story itself would have been groundbreaking if it had been released in 1983 and remains decidedly off-key and devilishly off-beat. Resonances of Agent Dale Cooper, Blue Velvet and later cult entertainment icons eerily abound here…

After obnoxious property speculator Mr. Jones starts buying up sections of idyllic Maine coastline, he suddenly turns up dead in his little fishing dingy. The death occurs in full view of four residents who each might have a strong motive to remove the interloper, but the County Sheriff is extremely keen on ruling the case an accidental death.

However, his report results in the unwelcome arrival of agonisingly restrained and refined – almost emotionless – Detective Jim Brady from the Augusta Office. Cool and preternaturally calm, the self-effacing little man has a way of seeing deep into the hearts and minds of everybody, and he quickly rules it a homicide by most arcane means.

Now he’s going to stick around, probing the characters and backgrounds of the uniquely baroque quartet of suspects and undoubtedly sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong…

Informed by Zen principles, the story unfolds as Brady flamboyantly deconstructs each potential suspect, consequently uncovering far more secrets than any little rural enclave could possibly contain before reaching his conclusions.

However, even with the case closed his actions remain at odds with your run-of-the-mill Copper, and there’s one last twist still in store…

Cool, surreal and challengingly psychedelic, the plot is realised with sleek and understated panache; mixing the welcoming warmth and idiosyncratic style of Ditko’s figure-work and facial expressions with the glossy sleek glamour and factual solidity of Wally Wood. This book is a delicious treat for the eyes and a therapeutic exercise for the mind…

Supplemented by Stephen R. Bissette’s incisive and expansive Afterword ‘A Man, A Boat, A Bay, A Bite, A Beer Can…’ offering historical context and artistic commentary, this is a magnificent lost gem, rightly restored to its place in the history of our art form, but it’s also a beautifully-crafted, intellectually challenging Bloody Good Read.

Go get it.
© 1986, 2016 by The Wetering Family Trust and Paul Kirchner. Afterword © 2016 by Stephen R. Bissette. All rights reserved.

Murder by Remote Control will be published on 24th June 2016 and is available for pre-order now. Or if you still wander actual streets it might already be on the shelves of your local comic shop…

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The Story of My Tits


By Jennifer Hayden (Top Shelf Productions)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-054-4

Here’s a short sharp review for an exceedingly weighty and fabulously entertaining tome. If the word “Tits” offends you in any way – GOOD! – that’s partly the point and besides, now that you’ve been sufficiently outraged you might as well read on before dashing off and buying the book…

This huge monochrome tome (198 x 203 x 28 x mm) is an agonisingly hilarious cartoon autobiography by an astonishingly funny, amazingly forthright and relentlessly brave woman dealing with far more than her fair share of misfortune. As her tale captivatingly depicts, Jennifer Hayden (Underwire, Rushes, S’crapbook) came to cartooning late after years muddling through as a commercial writer and children’s book illustrator. Her artistic epiphany came when she was dealing with a ghastly medical diagnosis and stumbled upon a fellow sufferer’s own cancer-narrative graphic journal…

Comprising a breathtaking assemblage of key moments, this quirky quilt of rib-ticklers and gut-punches opens with the author’s early days with ‘No Tits’ describing a life “flat as a board” until biology finally works its inevitable magic. It also introduces her uniquely human and utterly irresistible family…

The amiable amble towards adulthood continues in ‘Still No Tits!’ before ‘What, Tits?’ sees little Jenny’s dreams start to come true after a big change that strangely coincides with an increased awareness of Boys…

As is so often the case, life should come with a warning to be careful what you wish for as ‘What Tits!’ concentrates on college days and boyfriends, eventually introducing musician Jim who will play a major role in the decades to come. More important, however, is his wonderful mother and boisterous brothers…

Real life thunders in with ‘Sick Tits’ when Jennifer’s mum gets a devastating diagnosis and has a mastectomy. Her reaction is far from what her excitable daughter expects or understands…

With the family in turmoil ‘Tits in Philly’ sees Jenny upping stakes to get away; living with Jim until ‘Tits in Jersey’ sees them both move in with his mother. Life goes on and the lovers make a pretty good go of being just like grown-ups. Then once again cancer hits someone they both can’t do without…

‘Tits Al Fresco’ pithily observes the modern trauma of dealing with divorce and the unwholesome fallout of having to handle three “mothers”…

The long-dreaded inevitable finally happens in ‘Tender Tits’ but after the birth of their first child (hah, gotcha!) life gets even more convoluted for Jennifer and Jim with ‘Tits at Dawn’. With the extended family gradually dying away, it’s only after Jennifer’s second child and her development of ‘Mom Tits’ that years of ordinary living narrow down to the moment of her own breast-cancer diagnosis thanks to mammography and ‘Tits on Film’.

Jennifer Hayden was 43 when she made the bold decision which changed and probably saved her, and these scenes and snapshots of her life as it changed to accommodate breast cancer are some of the bravest, most poignant and blackly funniest in this journal. Her world becomes increasingly filled with doctors, counsellors, well-wishers, survivors and fellow patients. Through it all though, that big, big family is there… even if her closest acquaintances aren’t…

‘No More Tits’ shares the days of surgery and beyond, leading to an oddly circular regression to her earliest days whilst coping strategies and mundane daily adjustments vie for attention in ‘Goddess Tits’ before the contemporary world catches up and the tale moves away from us in ‘The End: UnTITled’… (although there is a heart-warming Epilogue sent from idyllic sunny ‘Titaly’…

Potent, honest, passionately matter-of-fact and phenomenally entertaining, this is a marvel of philosophical resolve and practical defiance that nobody can read without laughing, crying, getting scared and feeling lucky.
© & ™ 2015 Jennifer Hayden.