Category: Mature Reading

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Wet Moon volume 1: Feeble Wanderings


By Sophie Campbell (Oni Press)
ISBN: 978-1-93266-407-2

Wet Moon seems like one of grown-up comics’ biggest secrets. Published intermittently by Oni Press since 2004, it’s a winning blend of the literary traditions of Southern Gothic with experimental comic strip endeavours like Glenn Head’s Chicago – a Comix Memoir, Brian O’Malley’s Lost at Sea or Liz Suburbia’s Sacred Heart …

Looking like a beautifully rendered young adult soap opera filmed in monochrome, the story unfolds in the bayou-lapped Deep South, where the eponymous township of Wet Moon is the venue for an art school and home of a thriving Goth/Newest Wave/counterculture scene.

If you’re my age you could think of it as a modern corollary to Athens, Georgia when REM were attending college at U of G or the B-52s were learning to play…

The focus of our attention is pensive, introspective young student Cleo Lovedrop; a bespectacled, overweight, marginally-pierced, heavily made-up Goth-girl attending the aforementioned college. Like every teen she’s a mess of insecurities and irrepressible urges, but all she wants to do is understand both the world and herself. She also has her fair share of dark melancholic secrets…

Cleo is still finding her feet after moving into shared digs, but her mind is elsewhere; something from her past that she doesn’t even want to think won’t shut up even now that she’s here and starting fresh. Thankfully, her best friends Trilby Bernarde and Mara Zuzanny are scoping out the place with her and are proving to be the usual distraction…

Elsewhere, absent pal Audrey Richter is with Martin. They are busy avoiding Pete, the “Pringles Guy”.

He’s one of those pests who always has to show you his artwork. Whilst dodging him, Audrey hides in the public toilets and sees lots of graphitti. The only bit she remembers however, is the clearly scrawled legend “Cleo eats it” boldly adorning the stall partition…

Cleo spends a lot of time examining herself in mirrors. At first the reader is unsure exactly what she’s looking for or at and Campbell is smart enough and bold enough to let the art advance these scenes, using silence as a method of conveying both meaning and mood; letting the observer reach their own conclusions, right or wrong…

What Cleo cannot know is that the girl in the apartment next door is doing the same thing, and will soon become very important to her…

Audrey rushes off to warn Cleo and – after a deputation examines the offending libel – agrees it must be aimed at their friend: after all, Cleo is a pretty rare name…

Also at last agreed that it’s a damn lie, they go their separate ways. Still feeling sick and uncomfortable, Cleo heads home and meets another room-mate: pretty, standoffish Natalie Ringtree who seems to live in a world of her own…

Soon after, Cleo visits her older sister Penny and walks home humiliated after another one of “those” fights…

She would have caught the bus back but when she boarded “he” was there and she had to dash off and puke up her guts…

Back at the flat, she’s still throwing up when final flatmate Malady Mayapple introduces herself at Cleo’s moment of maximum embarrassment…

Audrey lusts for the girl at the Head-Butt Video, but when the delicious Myrtle Turenne surprisingly responds a certain way, the panicked Ricter bolts and flees the store. Luckily big, dependable, dumb-as-dirt Slicer is there when she stumbles right into another petty domestic crisis…

That night Trilby is rescued from a pathetic evening watching Star Trek when Cleo and Mara turn up and drag her to Goth nightclub House of Usher. It’s an eventful soiree. Cleo has a close encounter with a self-obsessed art-weirdo and Mara punches out the girl who stole her boyfriend…

Everything freezes when Fern walks in. She’s the most amazing and breathtaking vision anybody has ever seen… even with her unseeing eyes and malformed, withered hand…

That night is a revelation for so many lonely, hungry people, but all Trilby remembers is that she got really, really drunk and made a pass at Cleo…

A hangover breakfast at the local Denny’s then devolves into an over-heated debate about suicide, potential partners and worse before breaking up acrimoniously. Then as they pass the video store, Audrey tells Cleo about what till-girl Myrtle did and, curiosity piqued, Lovedrop has to see for herself. The so-casual meeting does not pan out anything like she expected…

Making her way home, Audrey finds “Cleo Eats It” fliers all over the place, and while she’s disposing of them, deep in the bayou Penny Lovedrop is at Fern’s palatial mansion applying for a job. This strange client, however, seems far more interested in her annoying half-sister Cleo…

The girl in question’s day keeps getting worse. She can’t avoid “him”. Everywhere she turns that bastard Vincent shows up: not following, just always waiting for her…

And when she reaches the apartment, she learns from Malady that the tenant she replaced vanished one night. She was there at bedtime and gone by breakfast. Nobody saw her go…

Clutching her always roiling stomach, Cleo heads to bed and just can’t rest. Even so, she oversleeps, and dashing out next morning, crashes late into her first class. When she sees “him” sitting there, she hurtles right out again, plunging down the stairs, landing on the girl who will change her life forever…

And deep in the Bayou, other people manoeuvre into position; ready to make their own dramatic entrances…

To Be Continued…

This initial, introductory book is the tantalising tip of a vast iceberg of inter-related life-stories which, like alligators in a swamp, present only the merest hint of what lurks beneath. An ongoing saga encompassing the mystery of a missing girl, lost babies, sinister plots and a malicious hidden enemy utilising the power of lies and innuendo, this engrossing ongoing epic ferociously targets the contemporary battleground of appearance, sexual orientation, acceptance and self-identification, exploring themes of isolation, friendship, trust and body dysmorphia with great wit, keen insight, clever characterisation and immense heart.

Before finding higher profile work in the mainstream with series like Glory, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Jem and the Holograms Sophie (Ross) Campbell was astounding readers with this sprawling yarn (six collected volumes thus far and at least two more planned) and this edition comes with a large selection of extras.

As well as ‘Older Wet Moon Artwork’ pages, there are developmental sketches and an abortive introductory sequence which works perfectly as a 5-page silent vignette introducing pre-college Cleo, plus an absolutely crucial ‘Who’s Who in Wet Moon’

With welcoming echoes of Gilbert Hernandez’s complex and delicious celebrations of unique, flawed yet uncompromisingly human communities in Love and Rockets as well as off-kilter televisual landmarks like Twin Peaks, Maximum Bob or American Gothic, this is a series at the fringes, but make no mistake, Wet Moon is every inch its own creature: sinisterly enticing, seductively unconventional and emotionally compelling.
™ and © 2004 (Sophie) Ross Campbell. All rights reserved.

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Criminal volume 4: Bad Night


By Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips (Image Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-63215-260-2

Do you recall the early 1950s? I wasn’t actually there, but for comics fans it was a time of astounding promise. Every conceivable genre of funnybook could be found on US newsstands (except porn, I guess): children’s fantasies, teen comedies, licensed books, war, super-heroes, horror, science fiction and especially crime stories.

Bad guys living (and dying) bad lives were everywhere, and don’t even get me started on movies. Technicolorâ„¢ was still expensive so the concerns and sensibilities of the public were most commonly realised through gritty, grainy, moody Film Noir vehicles.

This populist pulp-paperback and B-Movie movement towards cynical post-war realism grew into an art form all its own while nobody was looking…

What has this to do with the book in question? Nothing really except that when this series first came out the comics industry was enjoying a mini-revival and resurgence of straight crime thrillers. Moreover, collaborators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips were then forging a creative partnership that seemed incapable of setting a foot wrong: each stand-alone story arc building on the previous caper, getting tougher, stronger, meaner and better…

The entire series was repackaged and re-released as a uniform set of trade paperbacks in 2015 with this fourth captivating collection featuring Criminal volume 2 #4-7 (July-November 2008) – possibly the most experimental tale in the entire canon.

Jacob Kurtz has got a lot of rage to deal with. The mild-mannered sap was never an angel. In fact he used to be a pretty good counterfeiter. However, when his wife disappeared he was the cops’ prime suspect in her murder until the body finally turned up, clearly the result of an automobile accident.

In the meantime of course Jake had been targeted by remorseless, hard-line Police Detective Max Starr, who had gone totally old school on him to secure a confession the widower could not make. Those injuries healed pretty quickly but were nothing compared to what his wife’s mobster uncle Sebastian Hyde did to him…

Crippled, ostracised and a total recluse, these days Jacob spends his time and makes his living crafting the savagely ironic comic strip Frank Kafka, Private Eye, gaining petty points by making the cops – especially the funnybook version of Starr – look like utter idiots.

Still, things are tough. Kurtz is in constant pain and afflicted with crippling insomnia, and even when he does drop off for a couple of hours the idiot vigilante haunting his neighbourhood pulls some crazy stunt like torching a drug-house and another night gets shot to hell…

When all else fails, Jacob heads for the all-night Blue Fly Diner to pass the time reading and shooting the breeze with Bob and Pat…

This one Bad Night, however, even that surcease is denied him as a young punk starts beating on the girl he’s with and Jacob is drawn in. Nobody thanks him for it; not the girl and certainly not cartoon super-Dick Frank Kafka who is always beside him, annoyingly telling the pen-pusher what a real man would have done…

Driving home in the pouring rain, Jacob picks up a drenched hitchhiker and is horrified to discover it’s the girl from the diner…

And so starts a devious and convoluted saga of sexual obsession, subterfuge, big scores, torture and vengeance as she seduces Jacob into theft and murder and far, far worse. Iris is a crazy lady with lots of problems and a body to die for, but she’s working to someone else’s hidden agenda and, after all the double-dealing and bloodletting peaks, the slick conspirators learn a dreadful truth: it’s Noir; everybody’s got a secret they haven’t shared yet…

What they should have wondered from the start is where would a counterfeiter-turned-cartoonist could learn so much about violent crime… and especially how to get rid of bodies?

Filled with twists, turns and even the occasional stunning plot-somersault, this viciously effective and deceptively scary yarn is dark, brutal and fearfully compelling: a tale of the other side of society which affords an irresistible view of raw humanity. These are stories that can’t be ignored… so don’t.
© 2008, 2015 Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips. All rights reserved.

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Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland


By Harvey Pekar & Joseph Remnant (Zip Comics/Top Shelf)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-091-9

Before finding relative fame in the 21st century, Harvey Pekar occupied that ghastly niche so good at trapping the truly creative individual: lots and lots of critical acclaim, and occasional heart-breakingly close brushes with super-stardom (which everyone except him felt he truly deserved) without ever actually getting enough ahead to feel secure or appreciated.

In the 1970s whilst palling around with Robert Crumb, Pekar began crafting compelling documentary narratives of ordinary, blue-collar life – primarily his own – and over the following decades invented “literary comics”. Despite negligible commercial success, the activity fulfilled some deep inner need and he persevered in his self-publishing and soul-searching.

One of those aforementioned brushes with the Big Time came in the 1980s with the release of two compilations by mainstream publisher Doubleday of selected strips from his American Splendor comicbooks. To this day those tomes remain some of the most powerful, honest and rewarding comics ever seen.

By mercilessly haranguing, begging and even paying (out of his meagre civil service wages and occasional wheeler-deal) any artists who met his exacting intellectual standards Pekar soldiered on, inadvertently creating the comics genre of autobiographical, existentially questing, slice-of-life graphic narratives whilst eking out a mostly solitary, hand-to-mouth existence in Cleveland, Ohio.

How the irascible, opinionated, objectionable, knowledge-hungry, self-educated, music-mad working stiff came to use the admittedly (then) impoverished comicbook medium to make a fiercely vital social commentary on American life for the “ordinary Joe” is a magical journey into the plebeian far better read than read about, so go do that if you haven’t already.

Life picked up late for Harvey Pekar – mostly through an award-winning movie of his career and the publication of Our Cancer Year (a stunning documentation of his and third wife Joyce Brabner’s response to his disease). This all led to an elevated and celebrated intellectual status, allowing him to the opportunity to produce even more personal and compelling tales such as The Quitter, The Beats and Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me. Harvey Pekar died in 2010, aged 70.

For all of that time he lived in Cleveland, Ohio and the city is as much a character in all his autobiographical works as the man himself. This book was his last, published posthumously and offering in his own simple, informative, plain spoken words – beguilingly illustrated by the inspirationally diligent Joseph Remnant (Blind Spot) – the history, geography and cultural lowdown of the legend-laden conurbation alternatively dubbed the “the best location in the nation” and “the mistake by the lake”…

An irrepressible autodidact in the truest sense of the term, Pekar made it his business to learn everything about anything he was interested in… and he could be initially interested in everything.

Keeping his mercurial engaged attention, however, was a far harder task. One thing which held his attention on many levels – from first breath to last – was the city he was born in.

Cleveland is an erudite, eyes-wide-open appreciation, encompassing the shrinking metropolis’ creation, rise, fall, descent into mediocrity and position as media whipping-boy as well as the truth behind all the myths.

Walking through town pictorially and in full avuncular academician mode, Pekar shares facts, opinions and judgments with equal passion and force: detailing simultaneously both treasures and flaws like a man happily married to the same bride for seven decades. The result is magical…

There’s the expected and welcome incisive examination of socio-political changes, employment and race issues, a broad inclusion of the author’s love of sporting achievement and his obsessive collecting: startling moments of intimate revelation and, as ever, his miraculous gift of sharing his passions as he blends historical insights, family milestones and oddments of existence with deft dexterity.

Harvey Pekar was called the “poet laureate of Cleveland” and this superb paean to the home he never abandoned is a graphic delight to equal any literary travelogue commemorating Defoe’s London or Damon Runyon’s New York.

Remnant’s monochrome line-work is remarkably effective: mixing reportage with architectural acuity and wrapping it all in a fulsome vivacity reminiscent of the best of underground art. These pictures pop; whether illuminating the Cleveland Indians’ 1948 victory over the Boston Braves, city landmarks like the Terminal  Tower and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame; depicting gang fights in Woodhill Park or young Harvey’s first Chocolate Frosty Malt and first marital mismatches …

With an effusive and lyrical Introduction by Alan Moore and closing with ‘A Pal’s Goodbye’ from Harvey’s friend, associate and fellow Clevelander Jimi Izrael, this wry, witty, enchanting atlas of Middle America Then and Now is a book you must see if you love the art form of comics and magic of storytelling.
© & ™ 2012 Harvey Pekar and Joseph Remnant.

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Silent Invasion volume 2: Red Shadows


By Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock (NBM)
ISBN: 978-0-91834-850-0

During the vast expansion of opportunity and outpouring of innovation that graced comics during the 1980s, much of the “brain-rotting trash” or “silly kid’s stuff” stigma which had plagued the medium was finally dispelled. America started catching up to the rest of the world; acknowledging sequential narrative as an actual Art-Form, and their doors opened wide open for foreigners to make a few waves too…

One of the most critically acclaimed and just plain fun features of the period came from semi-Canadian outfit Renegade Press which set up shop in the USA and began publishing at the very start of the black & white comics bubble in 1984. They quickly established a reputation for excellence, with a strong line of creator-based properties and some genuinely remarkable series such as Ms. Tree, Journey: the Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, Normalman, Flaming Carrot and the compulsively backwards-looking Cold War/UFO/paranoia-driven The Silent Invasion.

That last was a stunningly stylish saga, bolting 1950s domestic terrors (invasion by Reds; invasion by aliens; invasion by new ideas…) onto Film Noir chic and employing 20-20 hindsight to produce a phenomenally fresh and enticing delight for the strangely similar Reagan era.

I firmly believe that in this business nothing good stays lost, but I’m fed up waiting for it to be rediscovered so I’m continuing to revisit my battered old copies of the original album compilations as no one has tried to revive it yet. At least they’re all still readily available if I successfully brainwash you…

This second superbly oversized monochrome tome – a whopping 298 x 2058 mm – gathers the lead story from issues #4-6, with co-creators Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock piling on the paranoiac pressure in a delightful confection combining all the coolest genre elements of classic sci-fi, horror, spy, conspiracy theory, crime, romance and even comedy yarns…

The 1950s in American were a hugely iconic and paradoxical time. Incredible scientific and cultural advancements and great wealth inexplicably arose amidst an atmosphere of immense social, racial, sexual, intellectual and political repression with an increasingly insular populace seeing avaricious plots and subversive attacks in every shadow and corner of the rest of the world.

Such a melting pot couldn’t help but be fertile soil for imaginative outsiders to craft truly incisive and evocative tales dripping with convoluted mystery and taut tension, especially when wedded to the nation’s frenzied obsessions with gangsterism, rogue science, flying saucers and espionage…

Last Time: In April 1952, famed Union City private eye Dick Mallet saw a strange light in the night sky. Next morning the cops found his empty, crashed car. A month later reporter Matt Sinkage was still getting grief from Frank Costello, his Editor on the Union City Sentinel. Matt wanted to expose “The Truth behind Flying Saucers” but was quickly becoming a laughing stock. He was also starting to think his foreign-sounding neighbour Ivan Kalashnikov was a Russian spy….

Sinkage was alienating his family and worrying his fiancée Peggy Black. All he could think about was that night six months back in Albany when he saw a UFO and impetuously chased after it: a crazy night everyone but him remembers…

Getting drunk, Matt broke into Ivan’s apartment where a quick glance revealed the foreigner and others in front of a huge, weird machine. It confirmed his suspicions that they were Atomic spies!

Days later Matt collided with Mr K’s pretty friend Gloria Amber, and asked her out to lunch. Things developed when Gloria begged him to save her from what she claimed were Red operatives. They subsequently claimed to be Federal agents…

Hiding out at his brother’s Walter‘s place, Matt was still seeing flying saucers everywhere and could not understand why everybody else thought they were just jets. Back in Union City, Frank was being pressured by FBI Agent Phil Housley: an old acquaintance who regularly forced him to suppress news items…

This time though, he wanted Sinkage. What no newsman knew was that Housley was also working for a shadowy agency calling itself the Council. What Housley didn’t know was that he was not their only operative in this matter…

Back in suburbia, Walter’s wife Katie – convinced Matt and his new floozy were up to no good – had contacted the FBI…

Fugitives Matt and Gloria were heading out in Walter’s car when Peggy showed up. She couldn’t understand why her man was with a flashy trollop even though Gloria had told Matt the Reds were after Kalashnikov’s memoirs and files. Although Matt knew Gloria was playing double game, he agreed to go with to a remote town where a “contact” could protect them both…

Mr K meanwhile had called in his own heavies to hunt the couple. All were unaware that the FBI had visited Katie and a net was closing around Sinkage and the mystery woman…

As the Council discussed their Sinkage problem and heard Housley’s reports, they learned the reporter was involved in the “Albany event” and near-panic ensued. Matt meanwhile had succumbed to suspicion. Gloria kept vanishing and refused to acknowledge it. Later, she helped Kalashnikov’s hoods Zanini and Koldst abduct her and rough up Matt. After that the FBI interviewed Walter and Katie about Matt, and let slip that they were the only Feds working the case, denying any other government officials were involved…

Katie spilled all she knew and the agents went into overdrive, marshalling all their forces and heading for sleepy Stubbinsville. Matt meanwhile had called the only guy he still trusted. Fellow researcher Dan Maloney warned him of the confusing profusion of agents all claiming to be working for the government, before sharing the same info with Costello…

As Housley’s team flew in, Matt decided to push on, hitchhiking to a rendezvous with destiny. En route he reunited with the oddly-compliant Gloria, and they battled on to Stubbinsville in a stolen car. With less than 100 miles to go she fell ill but made him promise to get her there at all costs…

As the assorted pursuers converged, she directed Matt to a lonely wilderness region. The net closed around them as a fantastic and terrifying light-show ignited the dark skies. By the time Housley reached them Gloria had vanished and Sinkage was slumped in a coma…

Days later, Matt was freed and all charges dropped. He was strangely content. Despite another blatant cover-up and no clue as to whom all the various parties hounding them really were, Sinkage knew what he had seen when Gloria vanished. Now he could only wait for her inevitable return…

Preceded by Max Allan Collins’ expansive Introduction ‘Dick Tracy, Tintin and Serious Comics’, this titanic tale resumes with ‘Chapter One: A Pink Slip for a Pink’. It’s June 1952 and Matt Sinkage is tormented by nightmares of lights in the sky, Housley hunting him and Gloria beseeching him to join her kind…

His life has gone rapidly downhill. Stories of his being a “Commie” are everywhere, the FBI shadows his every move and the oppressive tension is becoming overwhelming. When he gets a phone call from long-missing Dick Mallet, Matt arranges to meet the PI, consequently noticing sister-in-law Katie is always listening and has become very chummy with his ominously ever-present FBI surveillance detail…

First, though, Matt has to get the last of his belongings: the “Red” smear has allowed his landlord to terminate his lease. Aided by faithful fiancée Peggy and ever-friendly custodian Mr. Schneider, Sinkage collects his things and has an uncomfortable meeting with Kalashnikov. Almost in passing Matt notices that he now has a different team of Feds dogging him.

When he finally meets Mallet, the detective shows him an incredible set of photos: interior and exteriors shots of the flying saucers taken by the aliens…

At the Sentinel, Dan Maloney has made progress investigating Kalashnikov and Gloria but wants to finish his research before sharing. Sinkage has bigger problems though, his fellow workers have sent him Coventry and the paper’s owner wants the “Commie” fired. Costello is fighting back though. He suspects Housley is behind the smear tactics targeting Matt.

Staying with Walter and Katie isn’t helping his mental state. As visions of the Albany event haunt him, Matt’s life takes another plunge as he finds Mallet murdered. Housley is there but frankly admits he knows Sinkage is innocent and (probably) the patsy of a cunning contrived frame-up. That doesn’t stop him trying to pump Matt for further information – just as his Council bosses ordered him to…

When Matt is finally fired and Maloney is killed in a freak accident he knows is murder-by-aliens, Sinkage feels the walls closing in and makes a run for it…

‘Chapter Two: Identity Crisis’ opens one night in July 1952 with Matt holed up in Maloney’s old hunting shack. He’s been utterly alone for weeks but is still seeing flying saucers in the night skies. He’s also reliving past events, helplessly mixing memories of Gloria with other moments. He’s so confused that when Peggy suddenly turns up he mistakes her for his missing blonde mystery-woman…

Peggy visits him every night, offering food and company. She seems so different, warm and vivacious, but is always gone when he blearily wakes up in the morning.

Back in Union City, Housley and his secretary Meredith Monroe are going over the facts and reach a disturbing conclusion. Somebody on Phil’s team has their own agenda. He fears it’s his own boss – and Council stooge – Buzz Brennan but can’t find reasons to ignore their orders. Both his official employers and the secret ones want Sinkage found at all costs…

In the wilderness Matt is starting to crack. Anonymously buying a gun from a local store he travels back to the city for Dan’s funeral and sees Housley and Brennan clash with Costello. He then sneaks back to his old building and breaks into Kalashnikov’s apartment. He finds a cache of files and as he reads them experiences a horrifying flashback: he’s strapped into some sort of brainwashing machine in a spaceship…

Matt is roused from the memories by Ivan’s return and bolts, leaving the scattered files behind. He then visits Peggy’s house where her mother’s hostile reception confirms a suspicion that has been growing in his mind…

His intended is waiting in the truck he borrowed, and as they furtively drive out to the country Matt drops his bombshell. He believes he’s an alien consciousness improperly overlaid on a human mind and he knows Peggy is too: the same one he used to know as Gloria Amber…

‘Chapter Three: What We Really Know about Flying Saucers’ pushes the drama into overdrive as Peggy frantically tries to dissuade Matt. He is adamant and, as Peggy storms off, Matt goes to Costello. They compare notes, unaware that the Council is mobilising all its covert assets in Housley’s FBI team to get Sinkage at all costs…

It might have worked had not Matt surprised everybody by turning himself in and sharing what he saw in Kalashnikov’s files with Housley and Meredith. Sadly, as he’s being taken to a safe-house Zanini and Koldst kidnap Sinkage and drag him back to Ivan… and Peggy!

By the time Housley realises what’s occurred and rushed to the apartment, it’s too late. The files are gone, but no one can determine whether they were cleared out by the foreigners or simply lost in the fire set by the Council’s inside man…

Matt has a different story. He survived the conflagration by rushing to the roof where he saw a saucer pick up one of his abductors, coldly leaving the rest to perish. It was a story he stuck to, even after he was committed…

To Be Continued…

Potently evocative, impeccably tailored and fabulously cool, The Silent Invasion remains a unique, boldly imagined and cunningly crafted adventure. Rendered in a style then considered revolutionary and even today still spectacularly expressionistic, this is a classic epic long-overdue for a modern revival: an unforgettable gateway to an eerily familiar yet comfortably exotic era of innocent joy and a million “top secrets” which no fan of fantastic thriller fiction should ignore.
© 1988 Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock. Introduction © 1988 Max Allan Collins. All rights reserved.

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The Deliverer


By Nemanja Moravic Balkanski & various (the Publishing Eye)
ISBN: 978-0-986844-01-0

As I’ve often stated, some comics creators seduce and beguile whilst others choose to inform and affect with confrontational shock tactics. One of the most evocative and uncompromising efforts that I’ve ever seen came from Belgrade émigré Nemanja Moravic “NeMo” Balkanski. Don’t just take my word for it, track down his stunning FIB Chronicles, compiling much of his early material. …And now he’s done it again…

Balkanski was born in Belgrade in 1975 and, after indulging in and mastering a multitude of artistic disciplines from comics to graphic design, theatre arts to film-making, and poetry to performance, emigrated to Vancouver in 2007. When not working as an Art Director or storyboard artist for big and little screen productions he continues to produce thought-provoking comics.

It has all clearly been an inspirational experience and NeMo – a skilful plunderer of social tropes and cultural memes – has absorbed the meat and ephemera of his new environs to produce a stunningly confrontational allegory and state-of-the-union fairy tale with plenty of bite.

Canada, not long from now: society is on the edge of collapse and has been for as long as anyone can recall. And that’s not long: crass, shallow media has all but lobotomised the people, making them sensation-seeking celebrity-hungry drones told how to think and act and especially what to buy from the rich bastards to own everything.

King of those rats is the aged billionaire whose Watchmaker Labs and Watchmaker Studios strives tirelessly to mechanise and monetise every last iota of humanity and spirituality. They have already successfully commoditised sport and sex and are close to replacing their fragile flesh-&-blood customer base with mechanical hybrids…

A land like that expects its citizens to do nothing more than work and be consumers, so it employs a certain kind of lawkeeper: semi-cyborg sadists like Canuck, macho psychotics such as talking police dog Le Chien, lickspittles like Token Indian Winnetou and even sometimes starry-eyed do-gooders like hapless Mountie Sergeant Prickstone, but they’re just not enough to keep order in a city which – although tacitly owned by Watchmaker – still moves to its own decadent rhythms…

When uncompromising natural force Cayenne the Shark eats half of Vancouver – despite the army of gigantic robotic buildings and trucks slowly superseding humanity – a new kind of champion emerges.

The Deliverer used to bring pizza to the slavishly mass media-addicted self-medicating hoi-polloi, making money to buy time with certified sex-worker Lula, but as the end rushes closer he finds that selfishly helping himself is actually working to repair the world…

Clearly the world is made up of far more than what Watchmaker can grasp in his withered, grasping hands and as Prickstone and the Deliverer join the Vancouverite Underground to help the declining First Nation regain their stolen mystic Mojo a concatenation of unlikely circumstances look like turning them into Canadian humanity’s last hope of survival…

Abstruse, blackly humorous, shockingly explicit, complacently violent and bleakly hilarious, this disquieting parable uses the modern go-to story form of the summer Action Blockbuster to tenaciously attack media mass-produced self-image and the casual hypocrisy which runs the world and picks enough scabs off that you simply have to stop and think.

This substantial full-colour landscape-format  hardback is another strident, sardonically whimsical cartoon diagnosis of the state of our society: a uniquely entertaining read the brave and bold and reasonably old must not miss…
© 2015 The Publishing Eye.

Why not scope out the official website and trailer at http://www.thepublishingeye.com/books/the-deliverer/

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Hellboy volume 3: The Chained Coffin and Others


By Mike Mignola with James Sinclair, Matt Hollingsworth & Dave Stewart (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-091-5

Hellboy is a creature of vast depth and innate mystery; a demonic baby summoned to Earth by Nazi occultists at the end of World War II before being intercepted and subsequently reared by parapsychologist Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm. After years of devoted intervention and education, in 1952 Hellboy began destroying unnatural threats and supernatural monsters as the lead agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

This third epic collection gathers a number of shorter sagas: The Wolves of August originally serialised in Dark Horse Presents #88-91, Advance Comics/Hellboy: The Corpse and the Iron Shoes, Hellboy: Almost Colossus plus material from Dark Horse Presents 100 #2 and Hellboy: Christmas Special, communally spanning 1994-1997 and leads off with an enthusiastic appreciation from devoted fan P. Craig Russell in his Introduction. Mignola also offers directors’ notes on all the spooky stories contained herein…

The supernatural superstar was never conventional, especially in his publication schedule. Hellboy’s shorter adventures materialised in many different venues whilst his own title had the appearance of a succession of one-shots and limited series. Mignola, however, had a solid marketing plan from the start. The stories had an internal numbering system (if you’re that interested check it out on Wikipedia and leave them a donation while you’re at it) which allowed him to make stops back and forth along his proposed timeline and build years of continuity in mere months…

Thus this collection of brief, bold blockbusters opens with ‘The Corpse’ which first saw print in monochrome in Advance Comics catalog. Here an old Irish fairytale is expanded and remastered in full colour as Hellboy’s attempts to rescue a baby stolen by the Little People one night in 1959 results in the unlikely hero making a fool’s bargain.

All the graves are full but he must find a final and proper resting place for a very vocal cadaver before the sun rises…

The action-packed errand leads to confrontations with ghosts, devils and worse before our scarlet champion parks the body and gets back the bairn…

Immediately following is thematic epilogue ‘The Iron Shoes’ which rapidly relates another Celtic saga set two years later when Hellboy drags a goblin out of the holy site it’s defiling before laying it at the feet of Father Edward Kelly…

‘The Baba Yaga’ was created specially for this compilation and describes in dire detail how the legendary Russian witch lost her eye to Hellboy in their first confrontation. Thereafter, ‘A Christmas Underground’ (from 1997’s Hellboy: Christmas Special) offers eerie and ethereal miasmic horror in the best seasonal manner. England, Christmas Eve, 1989 and Hellboy is on a death-watch. Aged and ailing Mrs. Hatch talks of her long-lost baby girl Annie. Leaving her, the un-horned hero follows a trail to a graveyard and down beneath it. Soon he is attending a dark soiree to rescue the child, now the restless bride of a prince of the Pit. After a most brutal struggle Hellboy celebrates the nativity by setting two souls to rest…

In 1995 Dark Horse Presents 100 #2 debuted ‘The Chained Coffin’. Here Mignola has partially redrawn the tale and Dave Stewart has added colour to the story of Hellboy’s return to the English church where he first arrived on Earth in 1943. Fifty years of mystery have passed, but as the demon-hunter observes ghostly events replay before his eyes and learns the truth of his origins, Hellboy devoutly wishes he had never come back…

‘The Wolves of Saint August’ ran in Dark Horse Presents #88-91 during 1994 before being reworked a year later for the Hellboy one-shot of the same name. Set in 1994 it sees the red redeemer working with BPRD colleague Kate Corrigan, investigating the death of Hellboy’s old friend Father Kelly in the Balkan village of Griart. It’s not long before they realise the sleepy hamlet is a hidden den of great antiquity where a pack of mankind’s most infamous and iniquitous predators thrive…

Mignola has a sublime gift for setting mood and building tension with great economy. It always means that the inevitable confrontation between Good and Evil has plenty of room to unfold with capacious visceral intensity. This clash between unfrocked demon and alpha lycanthrope is one of the most unforgettable battle blockbusters ever seen…

The story-portion of this magnificent terror-tome concludes with the 2-part miniseries ‘Almost Colossus’ from 1997 wherein traumatised pyrokinetic BPRD agent Liz Sherman awaits test results.

During her mission to Castle Czege (Hellboy volume 2: Wake the Devil) her team uncovered a hidden alchemy lab with a stony homunculus inside. When she touched the artificial man Liz’s infernal energies rushed uncontrollably into the creature and brought it to life…

Now as her own gradually slips away, Hellboy and Corrigan are back in the legend-drenched region, watching a graveyard from which 68 bodies have been stolen…

Elsewhere the fiery homunculus is undergoing a strange experience: he has been abducted by his older “brother” who seeks through purloined flesh, blackest magic and forbidden crafts to perfect their centuries-dead creator’s techniques.

Before the curtain falls, Hellboy, aided by the ghosts of repentant monks and the younger homunculus, is forced to battle a metal giant determined to crown itself the God of Science and save the world if he can and Liz because he must…

Wrapping up the Grand Guignol show is another splendid and whimsical ‘Hellboy Gallery’, featuring stunning efforts from Kevin Nowlan, Matt Smith, Duncan Fegredo, Dave Johnson, Thierry Robin and B.C. Boyer…

Bombastic, lightning-paced, moody and astonishingly addictive, this will delight adventure and horror fans in equal amounts: an arcana of thrills and chills no comics fan should be without.
™ and © 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2003 Mike Mignola. Introduction © 1998 P. Craig Russell. Hellboy is ™ Mike Mignola. All rights reserved.

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Small Press Sunday


I started out in this game when marks on paper were considered Cutting Edge, making minicomics, collaborating on fanzines and concocting stripzines with fellow weirdoes, outcasts and comics addicts. Even today, seeing the raw stuff of creativity in hand-crafted paper pamphlets still gets me going in ways that threatens my tired old heart…
With that in mind, here’s a selection of tantalising treats that have landed in my review tray recently…
A few days before I began a major writing project with an insane deadline, I reviewed the magnificent GoodCopBadCop collections (still readily available and waiting to make your existence worthwhile…). In the same package was the first issue of the latest storyline and now that my day job’s back to normal – and with deepest apologies to Jim and the lads – here’s that promised review of the new follow-up case…

GoodCopBadCop Casebook #3.1 ‘Only Pigs and Horses’ Part 1
By Jim Alexander and Aaron Murphy, with Chris Twydell & Jim Campbell (Planet Jimbot Comics)

As well as mind-boggling graphic albums, independent publisher Planet Jimbot (Jims Alexander & Campbell with an ever-shifting pool of graphic talent) also delivers proper black-&-white comicbooks: none better than the continuing exploits of the most challenging rozzer in the history of crime.

City of Glasgow Police Inspector Brian Fisher is a worthy, weary, dedicated public servant with the oddest partner an honest copper could ever imagine – his own ruthless, rule-less crazy-man bad side…

Following directly on from the last book collection (GoodCopBadCop Casebook volume 2) this deceptively moody yarn finds Fisher about to start work again after a long period of sick leave. He’s been stood down ever since he caught catching a macabre, mutilating serial killer who left his bloody mark on the seemingly inoffensive Inspector.

Also out of sorts is his assistant Detective Sergeant Julie Spencer, who’s presently kipping on his couch. She was starting to piece together the truth about Fisher’s condition, but just stopped caring when her mother died…

Before he was a quietly effective Detective, Fisher learned his trade in the mounted police division and spent many educational hours doing community policing for the Violence Reduction Unit, visiting schools where the kids were more ruthlessly ferocious than any full-grown bad guy. Moreover, Brian’s condition is not a total secret. Certain higher-ups know that he goes off the rails but no one important has complained yet and the clean-up rate is phenomenal…

Those halcyon days on horseback come back to haunt Brian here and now as a ghastly atrocity is invoked when a new nutter hits the streets and, with astounding overkill, butchers two beat coppers.

Back in the saddle, Brain immediately makes a connection to the events at the Tannoch police stables thirteen years previously and heads to Barlinnie jail to interview an old lag who knew the original perpetrator “Peter the Horse”.

For a sordid and risky moment of quid pro quo, Michael offers Brian the full SP on the maniac – including the fact that he’s been dead for year…

He also reveals that Peter had an acolyte: another Peter the Horse in the making and one that been out in the real world for six months now…

To Be Continued…

This is another beautifully paced, chillingly unfolding mystery soaked in chilling complexity and shocking moments, tailor made to be a movie or late-night Scandi-style drama serial…

This deftly underplayed, chillingly believable and outrageously black-humoured serial is a magnificent addition to the annals of Tartan Noir: smart, compelling, compassionate and fiercely engaging. If you like your crime yarns nasty and your heroes deeply flawed, GoodCopBadCop is a series you must not miss.
GoodCopBadCop Casebook #3.1 © 2016 Jim Alexander (story) and Aaron Murphy (art.)

Planet Jimbot has a splendid online shop so why not check it out?

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The Louvre Collection: Cruising Through the Louvre


By David Prudhomme translated by Joe Johnson (NBM ComicsLit/Louvre: Musée du Louvre Éditions)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-841-3

Some years ago the Louvre Museum in Paris began an intriguing and immensely rewarding collaboration with the world of comics, and their latest beguiling translated bande dessinée is now available in English, courtesy of those fine folks at NBM.

Cruising Through the Louvre is a multimedia paean to the art of drawing; a beautiful, oversized hardback graphic art narrative which follows the artist on a bewildering tour of the galleries as he searches for his beloved Jeanne.

As he searches for her, he realises that the pictures on the walls, the statues in the halls and the mementoes of world history all form a perfect sequential narrative like his own comics works.

…And then he grasps how the art and the observers are all locked in a mirror-clear relationship feeding off and entertaining each other…

Author/artist Davis Prudhomme was born in Tours in 1969 and, after studying at the École de l’Image in Angoulême, began his cartooning career with Ninon Secrète in 1992, collaborating with Patrick Cothias. Whilst producing that series he worked on solo projects ‘La Tour des Miracles’ (adapted from George Brassens’ book), ‘L’Oisiveraie’, ‘Voyage aux Pays des Serbes’ and ‘Port Nawak’.

Amongst his most notable award-winning efforts are La Marie en plastique, Rébétiko and this fabulous graphic rumination of the creation and situation of art, which first debuted in 2012 as La Traversée du Louvre.

The book in question, which manages to be beguiling, expansive and charmingly funny by turn, is produced in close collaboration with the forward-looking authorities of the Musée du Louvre, but this is no gosh-wow “Night-at-the-Museum” thinly-concealed catalogue of contents from a stuffy edifice of public culture. Rather, here is a sedately seductive, introspectively loving examination of the power of art and history to move the masses and especially the creatively inclined…

Supplementing the voyage of narrative interaction is a fact-packed data-file section detailing the accoutrements and educational and scientific achievements of the institution (how many other art museums have their own functioning particle accelerator?), subdivided into mind-boggling details about ‘The Building’, ‘The Works’, ‘The Visitors’ and ‘The Agents’, plus all the traditional Additional Information and dedication addenda you’d expect and hope to see.

This is another astounding and marvellously magical comics experience no art lover or devotee of the visual narrative medium can afford to miss…
© Futuropolis/Musée du Louvre Éditions 2012. © NBM 2016 for the English translation.

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The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded


By Jim Ottaviani & Leland Purvis (Abrams ComicArts)
ISBN: 978-1-4197-1893-9

After decades of cruel injustice and crushing, sidelining silence, British mathematician Alan Turing – one of the greatest intellects of the 20th century – is at last becoming the household name and revered figure he deserves to be.

As well as books and films describing the amazing achievements and appalling way this brilliant, tormented man – arguably the creator of the modern world we inhabit – was treated by society, there’s now a new graphic novel delineating the factual stuff whilst trying to get beneath the skin of a most perplexing and unique individual.

It’s only fair to warn you: this is categorically not an adaptation of the 2014 film.

Spellbindingly scripted by Jim Ottaviani (who has similarly eulogised and dissected quantum physicist Feynman and primatologists Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas in Primates) and compellingly effective art by Leland Purvis (Vox, Pubo, Vulcan & Vishnu and Suspended in language: Niels Bohr’s life, discoveries, and the century he shaped – a previous collaboration with Ottoviani), this full-colour hardback biography divides Turing’s life into three broad sections, incisively and winningly reviewed as if in a documentary.

Events from his turbulent life are cleverly mixed with “interviews” and candid disclosures from those who knew him – his mother, the computing girls at Bletchley Park, fiancée Joan Clark, Professor Max Newman, engineer and lab partner Bayley and the weak, shady rent-boy who brought about Turing’s eventual downfall and death…

‘Universal Computing’ covers the difficult, solitary boy’s childhood and college years, with plenty of revelatory scenes showing how smart, obsessed and just plain different Turing was.

‘Top Secret Ultra’ focuses on the war years that made Turing’s reputation as a cryptographer and inventor at the “non-existent” base where the Enigma Code was cracked and the battle against fascism won.

The most painful and potent moments are seen in the post-war years at Manchester University, trying to beat the Americans in the race to build Thinking Machines and coming under increasing stress as his open homosexuality – accepted as fact and ignored at Bletchley – came to overtake and destroy the life of the mis-socialised simple genius whose thoughts and writings resulted in the breakthroughs everybody now knows as ‘The Imitation Game’…

Rounding out the cruelly educational experience is a poignant and challenging ‘Authors Note’ touching on the still unresolved mystery of Turing’s death, a vast ‘Bibliography and Recommended Reading’ list and a bewilderingly comprehensive ‘Notes and References’ section, covering everything from the panel structures to the mathematics involved in and comprising much of the book’s subtly beguiling make-up.

This is an astoundingly inviting way to take in a true story of incredible accomplishment, dedicated passion and terrifying naivety, ending in a horrific loss to us all and forever-unanswered sentiments of “What If?” and “If Only”…
Text © 2016 Jim Ottaviani. Illustrations © 2016 Leland Purvis. All rights reserved.

The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded will be released on March 22nd 2016.

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GoodCopBadCop

GoodCopBadCop

By Jim Alexander, Luke Cooper, Gary McLaughlin & Will Pickering with an Introduction by John Wagner (Rough Cut Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-9546726-6-9

GoodCopBadCop Casebook #2

By Jim Alexander, Luke Cooper, Will Pickering & Jim Campbell (Rough Cut Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-9546726-7-6

Seasoned old lags at getting the very best out of finite resources, fresh talent and strong ideas, Jims Alexander and Campbell with their compadres at Planet Jimbot have been crafting superbly enthralling – and in this particular case, award-winning – graphic narratives for a goodly time now.

This brace of superbly chilling crime compendia were originally crafted by the team and published by Rough Cut Comics, but since the title has now reverted to the Jimbots (the first issue of the next Casebook will star in a forthcoming Small Press Sunday) it’s long past due to give the series a lingering look…

Writer Alexander’s prodigious back catalogue includes Calhab Justice and other strips for 2000AD, Star Trek the Manga and a broad variety of comics and strips for The Dandy, DC, Marvel, Metal Hurlant, and loads of other places, and here turns his conceptual spotlight on City of Glasgow Police Inspector Brian Fisher; a worthy, weary, dedicated public servant with the oddest partner an honest copper could ever imagine…

Following an effusive and thought-proving Introduction from John Wagner, the scene is set with debut ‘Report Ident: GCBC’ (art by Gary McLaughlin, lettering Jim Campbell) wherein the traditional confrontation between thoroughly-nicked ratbag and legally-hamstrung policeman takes a very dark turn after the other guy in Brian’s head gets out and conducts the remainder of an interview with an axe-murderer in a bloodily fitting manner…

‘Mrs MacPhellimey’ then sees the other Brian leak out and act in most uncharacteristic manner when confronting a little old lady with a husband-shaped patch of dirt in her garden…

This is followed by a stylish tweak on prose short story telling, wherein Fisher’s tediously dogged hunt for legendary burglar ‘the Partick Cat’ is detailed through incident reports submitted alternately by Brian and the other Brian…

Having swiftly established the conceptual set-up, ‘Three Strikes’ returns to strip format and expands the cast with the introduction of Detective Sergeant Julie Spencer, who fruitlessly attempts to get Fisher fraternising with the other officers. The motivational engine then kicks in as Brian finds a child-abductor just a little too late…

Allowing his Other to deal with the killer is the right thing to do, but afterwards the decent copper resolves that since they have at last crossed a real line, he and himself only get two more chances between them…

The prose reports continue with the hunt for that burglar turning up a rather fishy lead, after which the comics crimebusting resumes as Under Investigation’ (illustrated by Will Pickering) offers the first hint that Brian’s condition is not a complete secret.

Despite a scrupulously honest and forthright interview with the Anti-Corruption Unit, relating recent – and excessively bloody – incidents involving a nuclear submarine and a legendary local gang-boss, Fisher is given a clean sheet and pat on the back…

The text trail of the Partick Cat concludes by way of sharp observation and a treatise on the nature of Glaswegian cuisine before the gripping drama ends as every great TV cop show should, with a tensely suspenseful cliffhanger…

‘Tiny Acts of Kindness’ (with Luke Cooper handling the art) opens as Julie gets a glimpse of the other Fisher when they confront smash-&-grab specialist Ricardo Dreyfus and his family crew. Elsewhere in Clydebank, meanwhile, a macabre and grotesque serial killer is having his special kind of fun…

After the bruised and battered Ricardo lawyers up and walks, easy-going, patient DI Fisher moves on to a missing persons case which seems to lead to a local church, but the other Brian still has his mind set on dealing with the Dreyfus clan…

To Be Continued…

Following an Introduction from author Douglas Skelton, the urban Hibernian atrocities carry on in GoodCopBadCop Casebook #2 with the grim continuation and grisly conclusion of ‘Tiny Acts of Kindness’ with Luke Cooper again illuminating Jim Alexander’s stories on our Jekyll and Hyde law enforcer.

It begins with a dismembered body in the river: apparently not that rare an occurrence in Glasgow. DS Julie Spencer is handling the recovery as Fisher is elsewhere.

When the Dreyfus boys turn over a local supermarket, Brian is waiting and happily lets the other Detective Inspector make the arrests… eventually…

Spencer is furious at his solo showboating but soon gets to the nub of the problem: why was Bruce Dreyfus floating in neat sections rather than on the raid with Ricardo and Uncle William?

A quiet chat with their Aunt Morag soon sets them on the trail of a rather odd cleric at the church and his connection to Russian orphans. Not long after, freshly severed fingers start turning up in the post…

And that’s where I’m stopping. The convoluted mystery cleverly unwinds with chilling complexity, loads of twisty-turny surprises and a succession of shocking moments, so if you don’t read these books you’ll have to wait for some media clever-clogs to turn this into a movie or preferably a BBC FOUR late-night Scandi-style drama serial…

You’ll thank me for it in the long run…

Prose Incident Reports – alternately submitted by Brian and Brian – serve to clear the palates whilst offering more thoughts on Glasgow’s gastro-culture and providing fascinating – and scarily hilarious – peeks into Fisher’s early life.

Before he was a quietly effective Detective, Brian Fisher learned his trade in the mounted police division and spent many educational hours doing community policing for the Violence Reduction Unit, visiting schools where the kids were more ruthlessly ferocious than any full-grown bad guy…

The Cops-&-Horrors show closes with a startling turning point as Julie at last sees the other Brian in full flow ‘Twisting the Knife’ (Pickering art) with a wounded suspect. When she quite naturally reports her observations to the Chief Superintendent, she is terrified and astounded by his response…

This deftly underplayed, chillingly believable and outrageously black-humoured serial is a magnificent addition to the annals of Tartan Noir: smart, compelling, compassionate and fiercely engaging. If you like your crime yarns nasty and your heroes deeply flawed, GoodCopBadCop is a series you must not miss.
All characters and distinctive names and likenesses thereof are © Planet Jimbot and used under license by Rough Cut Comics.

Planet Jimbot has a splendid online shop so why not check it out?