Category: Mature Reading

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Lulu Anew


By Étienne Davodeau, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM/Comics Lit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-972-4

In 2010 Bande Dessinée artist, writer and designer Étienne Davodeau completed a two-volume tale he’d started in 2008. Already popular, award-winning and extremely well-regarded for his reality-based and reportage style comics work, Lulu femme nue was something that was special even for him. Within a year the story had been made into a much lauded and celebrated film by Solveig Anspach.

Davodeau was born in 1965 and, whilst studying art at the University of Rennes, founded Psurde Studios with fellow comics creators Jean-Luc Simon and Marc “Joub” Le Grand. His first album – L’Homme qui aimait pas les arbres (The Man Who Did Not Like Trees) – was released in 1992.

He followed up with a string of thoughtful, passionate and beautifully rendered books such as The Initiates, Les Amis de Saltiel, Un monde si tranquille, Anticyclone, Les Mauvaises Gens: une histoire de militants.and Le Chien Qui Louches. Consequently he is now regarded as an integral part of the modern graphic auteur movement in French and Belgian comics.

NBM have translated and collected both volumes of the dreamily moody mystery into one stunning hardback edition and Lulu Anew is definitely going to be regarded as one of the very best graphic novels of the year – if not decade…

It all starts with a sort of wake as a number of friends gather to learn the answers to a small, personal but immensely upsetting event which has blighted their lives of late.

Xavier is the first to speak and relates what they all already know. Lulu, a frumpy 40-something with three kids and a very difficult husband, has been missing for weeks. She went off for yet another distressing job interview and never came back.

It wasn’t some ghastly crime or horrible abduction. Something simply happened when she was in the city and she called to say she wasn’t coming home for a while…

The sun goes down. The attendees calmly imbibe wine and eat snacks whilst a number of her friends and family share their independently gleaned snippets of the story of Lulu’s aberration: a moment of madness where she put everything aside – just for a little while – and what happened next…

Bizarre unsettling phone calls to the raucous family home precede a quiet revolution as Lulu, without any means of support, inexplicably goes walkabout along the magnificent French Coast, living hand-to-mouth and meeting the sorts of people she never had time to notice before. Through interactions with strangers she learns about herself and at last becomes a creature of decisions and choices rather than shapeless flotsam moved by the tides of events around her…

Related with seductive grace in captivating line-&-watercolours, the gently bewitching examination of Lulu’s life, her possible futures and the tragic consequences of the mad moment when she rejects them all unfolds with uncanny, compulsive visual magnetic force.

Told through and as seen by the people who think they know her, this isn’t some cosmic epic of grand events, it’s a small story writ large with every bump in the road an inescapable yet fascinating hazard. None of the so-very-human characters are one-sided or non-sympathetic – even alcoholic, often abusive husband Tanguy has his story and is given room to show it – and Lulu’s eventual hard-earned resolution is as natural and emotionally rewarding as the seemingly incomprehensible mid-life deviation which prompted it.

Slow, rapturous and addictively compelling, Lulu Anew is a paragon of subtlety and a glowing example of the forcefully deceptive potent power of comics storytelling.

Every so often a book jumps comics’ self-imposed ghetto walls of adolescent fantasies and rampaging melodrama to make a mark on the wider world, and this elegiac petit-epic will make that sort of splash. Why not dive in now before the rush starts?
© Futuropolis 2008, 2010. © NBM 2015 for the English translation.

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A Town Called Dragon


By Judd Winick & Geoff Shaw, with Jamie Grant (Legendary Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-93727-840-3

Legendary Comics (a print adjunct of Legendary Pictures – responsible for the latest Batman/Dark Knight movies as well as The Hangover, Man of Steel and 300) is an outfit that seems to specialise in graphic narratives tailored for big screen film franchises, and this latest trade paperback release feels like their best potential blockbuster offering yet…

Gathering a 5-issue miniseries (from September 2014 to January 2015) this no-nonsense thriller-romp is written by Judd Winick, illustrated by Geoff Shaw and coloured by Jamie Grant, and opens just before the end with a valiant band of outsiders facing the most terrifying creature in history…

Flashing back to Norway a thousand years ago a bit of backstory reveals that at that time an army of Norse heroes slew the last dragon in the world… but not before an egg was laid.

The vile wyrms were the greatest threat to mankind ever known, fast, deadly and voracious. Only after uncounted deaths over centuries did the Northmen finally devise a way to kill the monsters, and then only when they had matured. Newborn dragons hatch out fast, starving and utterly invulnerable…

The deadly seed also proved to be immune to all efforts at destruction, but the wise men had learned that intense cold kept them from hatching. Thus, wary King Olaf Truggvason, after exhausting every effort to destroy the ominous ovoid, bade intrepid explorer Leif Erickson to take the damned egg to the other side of the world and leave it there in the coldest place he could find…

Discovering a new continent after an epic voyage, Leif and his dedicated followers carried the lethal load halfway across the country, climbed a snow-capped mountain, sealed themselves in a cave and lay down to die…

In 2014 Dragon, Colorado is just another small town in the skiing belt trying to attract the tourist dollar, but not every citizen is on board with the Mayor’s schlocky schemes to capitalise on the name by turning every store and public building into a simulated saurian playground.

Failed football star and Olympic javelin hopeful Cooper Runyon is happy with his diner as is, big city outsider and very bad waitress Kelly is more interested in making sculptures and farmer Pete just wants to sell produce, not gussy-up his cows into some kind of tacky petting zoo…

Sheriff Castro‘s kids Sam and Eric are having too much fun blowing up stuff to even get into drugs and other normal crap let alone dragons, solitary old man Garvey gives off a spooky CIA vibe and wants to be left alone and PhD. Malcolm just wants to study his ancient languages.

…And then there’s poor troubled, bi-polar Mickey who spends all his time scaling mountains like Devil’s Peak looking for a purpose to his life and perhaps a good way to die…

It’s whilst on one of those rash escapades that the climber discovers a bunch of German scientists secretly excavating a cave and, after alerting the disbelieving township, heads straight back up to the summit in time to see the egg hatch and all hell break bloodily loose…

Back home his crazy warnings aren’t disbelieved for long. Soon after he gets to town livestock starts disappearing, a strange lizard-skin is found in a tree and of course there’s the twenty-foot dragon ripping up Main Street and torching citizens just as a blizzard cuts off the rural paradise from all outside contact…

Trapped, terrified, vengeful but far from helpless, an unlikely team of heroes thrown together by a rather heavy-handed Fate are soon following instructions left by a thousand-years-dead Viking and attacking the greatest threat to modern humanity ever seen… but even after their astoundingly improbably triumph there’s a terrifying further threat in store…

Also incorporating a beautiful gallery of covers – in both pencilled and fully coloured final versions – this fast-paced, razor-sharp, witty and astoundingly action-packed monster mash rattles along with vivid characters and smart set-pieces in the manner of Tremors, Critters, Them! or perhaps even Bubba Ho-Tep: a satisfying scary rollercoaster romp tailor-made for transferral to the silver screen.

More please!
© 2015 Legendary Comics LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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Angry Youth Comics


By Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-867-1

This book is full of rude and vulgar words, nasty sex and terrible pictures. There’s also lots of disgusting violence but that’s generally acceptable to most people.

So, if such adult-oriented material offends you, don’t read this review or the book.

You will however have to find something else to get angry and complain about…

Graphic narrative and cartooning, despite our regular protestations of comprising a comparatively small pond, cover a vast range of genres, formats, disciplines and tastes. From Tintin or Raymond Brigg’s Snowman through the various escapist mainstreams to the edgy, unpredictable and even the downright shocking.

Johnny Ryan is a comedian who uses comics as his medium of expression. Whether in his Prison Pit series, or his many commissions for such varied clients as Nickelodeon, Hustler, Vice, Arthur, National Geographic Kids and elsewhere, his job and passion is to make laughter. Depending on your point of view he is either a filth-obsessed pervert smut-monger or a social iconoclast using the same tactics as Hogarth, Gillray and Cruikshank or more recently Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks or Frankie Boyle to challenge the worst aspects of our society.

Ryan’s loose cartoon drawing style is deceptively engrossing and engagingly excessive whilst his seeming pictorial Tourette’s Syndrome of strips and gags – involving such signature characters as Boobs Pooter (world’s most disgusting stand-up comedian), Loady McGee & Sinus O’Gynus, Sherlock McRape and the incredible Blecky Yuckeralla (originally seen weekly from 2003 in The Portland Mercury and Vice Magazine before switching to Ryan’s own on-line site) – will, frankly, appal and baffle many readers, but as with most questions of censorship in a Free Society, the naysayers are completely at liberty to neither buy nor read the stuff.

Ryan dubbed his stinging graphic assaults on American Culture and Political Correctness “misanthropic comics” after first coming to public attention through his occasional comicbook series Angry Youth Comix.

Originally produced as self-published minicomics from 1994-1999, the strips were brought then to the attention of Fantagraphics by Peter Bagge and the company promptly commissioned a second volume.

Now this spectacular and colossal (424 pages, 273 x 184mm) monochrome hardback tome gathers all fourteen of those staggering assaults on “taste and decency” (first issued between 2001 to 2008) in one monolithic compendium of raucous, riotous baroque hilarity…

Ryan is a cartoonist with an uncompromising vision and an insatiable desire to shock and revolt whenever he wants to. In his ongoing Prison Pit series he perpetually pushes the graphic narrative envelope and the outer limits of taste with a brutal, primitive cascade of casual violence and there’s plenty of senseless carnage and casual slaughter on show here too, but deftly woven into a never-ending barrage of grossly outrageous confrontations and a barrage of bracing, despicable filth. Or you could just see the funny side of it…

In this non-stop welter of exceedingly excessive force, vile excrescences, constant cultural clashes, scatological salvoes and sheer unadulterated graphic carnage can be seen a never-ending Darwinian struggle of witty license and disgraceful debauchery.

The only truly gratuitous thing however would be a complete listing of strips and gags contained herein, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t especially recommend ‘Loady McGee & Sinus O’Gynus in the Whorehouse of Dr. Moreau’, ‘Marshmallow & Snowflake in It’s the… Ku Klux Kuties’, ‘My Dad Went to a Concentration Camp and it Was Okay’, ‘1976’, ‘Sherlock McRape in Who Hit Nelly in the Belly With Jelly?’ or ‘Boobs Pooter’s Joke-Pocalypse’ …every one an unforgettably disgusting laugh-riot…

Also included in a special full colour section are the 28 brilliantly imaginative front & back covers as well as all the contentious and wonderful letters pages from the magazine’s run to complete your shock-jock flavoured enjoyment…

This is a brutally macabre yet beguiling, loathsomely intriguing miracle of cartoon exuberance; appalling, dismaying, cathartic and horridly, blackly humorous – always forcing the reader to think and challenge their own preconceptions.

Resplendent, triumphant juvenilia and selfish self-interest have been adroitly catapulted beyond all ethical limits into the darkest depths of absurdist comedy. This is a non-stop rollercoaster of brain-blistering profound profanity; pictorial purgatory at its most gorge-rising and compelling.

Not for kids, the faint-hearted or weak-stomached, here is extreme cartooning at its most visceral and pure. Gross, vulgar, shocking strips and panel gags about sex, defecation, bodily functions (particularly the many types of farting), feminine hygiene – and men’s lack of same – comics, toys, knob-gags and even the ultimate modern taboos of religion, politics, race and child abuse are all here and waiting to get you…

And now that we’ve placated the intellectual/moral imperative inside us all, I’ll also affirm that this titanic tome is another, all-out, over the top, indisputably hilarious hoot. Buy it and see if you’re broad-minded, fundamentally honest and purely in need of ultra-adult silliness. If you aren’t any of those things but could stand a good, hearty laugh that might also make you think, then this is also the dirty cartoon joke-book for you.
All contents © 2015 Johnny Ryan (except where it isn’t). This edition © 2015 Fantagraphics Books Inc.

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Johnny Nemo


By Brett Ewins, Peter Milligan and friends (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-070-2

In the mid 1980s a creative explosion in British comics saw many groundbreaking new titles and a darkly cynical cultural flowering and renaissance in established titles. Many emergent writers and artists achieved prominence and a goodly few were promptly poached by America, forming what was called a “British Invasion”.

One team that crossed the pond in 1985 was Pete Milligan & Brett Ewins – already firm favourites with 2000AD readers – and for Eclipse Comics they created a darkly nihilistic post-punk private eye in alternative anthology Strange Days.

A year later the stylishly murderous maniac returned in Johnny Nemo Magazine for further far-future mayhem. He then dropped out of sight until Ewins co-opted the P.I.’s caseload and added some original exploits for the first year of indie British start-up Deadline Magazine – a seminal publishing landmark combining comics, pop culture, style, music and fashion he had created with fellow artist Steve Dillon.

Gloriously free of specious character development, Johnny Nemo remained who he always was: a murderous, devious, occasionally self-loathing London lad making a living from his only gifts.

He’s an over-sexed, avaricious, nosy, introverted, philosophical, existentialist thug. He’s also a problem-solver for hire and he lives in the future, which is not so different from now…

Following a fondly reminiscent ‘Introduction by Peter Milligan’ and ‘You’re Bastards. All of You. You’re All Bastards.’ – a heartfelt missive from the moody merc himself as seen in the 2002 collection Johnny Nemo: Existentialist Hitman of the Future – this sturdily resplendent hardcover compilation commences with ‘The Good, the Bad and the Nemo’ wherein the toughest ‘tec in 2991’s New London town is commissioned to investigate Father Burgess’ Orphanage.

The old institution – which once had the displeasure of young Johnny’s company after his parents’ last nervous breakdowns – is run by nuns and they’ve started exploding for no good reason. A seasoned riddle-solver, Johnny knows just who to smack around and soon discovers the incredible reason for the campaign of carnage before smoking out the habitual assassin…

Having made a lot of enemies, Nemo is always prepared for assassination attempts but nothing like the TeleInfo mind-mine which implants thousands of years of rational meanderings and philosophical cant in his usually indecision-free bonce. The measures taken to free-up his brain long enough to terminate his insidious attacker in ‘Cogito, Ergo Buggered’ are both shocking and shockingly effective…

Punishing puns and hyper-absurdism inform the strange case of ‘The White Quiffs of Dover’ after Nemo is hired to ferry a box containing the left testicle of Bing Crosby to an occultist. The potent eldritch artefact is also highly prized by a cult of albino Teddy Boys who will stop at nothing to obtain the treasured totem and unleash the uncanny crooner’s diabolical transmutative force.

However neither they nor the satanic singer pent inside the box have reckoned on Johnny’s innate ability to fight dirty…

Chronologically adrift, the 3 chapters of ‘The Orb of Harmony’ were first seen in the aforementioned Strange Days (from November 1984 to April 1985) and introduced Nemo and his robot secretary/sex-toy/therapist Kalina in a time-twisting tale which saw the enquiry agent hired by the government to recover an alien artefact before its loss sparked an interplanetary incident and intergalactic war.

It wasn’t hard to find the culprits in the jingoistically xenophobic League of Adam, but as they had already disposed of the Orb, the solution and return to status quo (involving the conquest of Earth, an invasion by Sirian slugmen and vast amounts of bloody violence) took a lot of planning and quite a bit of time…

From 1988 ‘The Immaculate Misconception’ is still a marvellously outrageous and controversial yarn as notoriously shag-happy Nemo is hired to protect the virginity of haughty alien hottie Princess Dania.

The demure deb is getting married in the morning and needs to be virgo intacta – something she is determined to avoid at all costs. Set on one last party she is nonetheless stuck with Johnny but calmly convinced that her looks and otherworldly pheromone arsenal will result in some serious, wedding-ending deflowering: if not from Nemo then one of his friends or enemies…

Of course Princess Da has neglected to mention the inescapable biological consequences of a night of illicit bliss with her…

Steve Dillon illustrated the clever case of murder-for-hire which saw media mogul Merdock Ridley contract Johnny to end his mega-rich life. Instantly suspicious, the lethally likely lad did some checking and discovered the job was a ploy on the gazillionaire’s part to cheat his trophy wife Fatima.

However since the trick involved freezing the assets along with the stiff (both to be revived at some time in the future) Nemo and ‘Lady Lucre’ put their heads – and sundry other body parts – together and came up with another option…

Whilst most of this book is in stark black-&-white, the three tales from Johnny Nemo Magazine are re-presented in strident full colour and ‘New London Pride’ (issue #3, February 1986 by Milligan, Ewins & Dillon) sees the hardboiled gumshoe troubled by uncharacteristic bad dreams. To gain a firm grip on himself he decides to go walkabout in the very dangerous gutters of miles-high New London City and vent some spleen against the vile and arrogant skinheads who infest the depths…

‘The Spice of Death’ – an all-Ewins art-fest – was a 2-part tale from Johnny Nemo Magazine #1 and 2 (September and November 1985) which detailed an old-fashioned tale of revenge as grieving Liza Creeture hired the man and his guns to find the killers of her brother.

The trail led to a bunch of rich-kids who hunted the poor for sport, desert metropolis Cairo and a gang of death-junkies who got high on extracted psychic auras of people who died in agony…

As the case proceeded and the bodies piled up, even Nemo began to smell a rat and suspect a cunning trap was in play…

Moving back into monochrome ‘The Hand of God’ then sees the independent trader blackmailed by bent coppers Flask and Stuff into taking out the returned messiah Jesus Christ, leading to the strangest confrontation in future history. However the Son of God is a wily sod and has a trick or two up his sleeve…

This turbulent, irreverent tome terminates with a stunning jam session as ‘New Tales of New London’ offers strip sessions by Rufus Dayglo, Ewins, Jock and Ashley Wood illustrating a sordid shift as Johnny – deflated by recent election results – indulges in introspection and tries out a few alternate personalities in ‘The Make Over’.

Still and all, whether a frou-frou interior designer, a sports hooligan, a laid-back loafer or a depressed down-and out, Johnny Nemo is still a man you don’t want to tick off…

Raucous, vulgar, excessively violent, politically incorrect and powerfully socially conscious, this superbly entertaining catalogue of chronal contretemps and spatial sorties is as potent and powerful as ever and today’s generation of toadies and Brit-fops should make certain they read, absorb and react accordingly…
Johnny Nemo is ™ and © 2014 Peter Milligan & Brett Ewins. All rights reserved.

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Solid State Tank Girl


By Alan Martin & Warwick Johnson-Cadwell (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-003-0

Comics have grown up since I was a kid. On one hand they’ve bloomed, adopting and encompassing serious attitudes whilst challenging social issues to become a literary arena as potent and valid as any other art form. And then there are those that boldly celebrate irrepressible vulgarity, inspirational rudeness, intoxicating visual bravura, incorrigible invention and sheer raucous daft fun, sort of like TISWAS for the Soul…

I’m going to say a few things about Solid State Tank Girl and let you guess which kind this book is…

Once upon a time upstarty art-students Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin (and, tangentially, Phillip Bond) prowled the convention circuit impressing the hell out of everybody with their photocopied fanzine Atomtan. At the back of issue #1 was a pin-up/ad for a dubious looking young lady with a big, Big, BIG gun and her own armoured transport. Things happened. Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon commissioned a redeveloped version for their forthcoming publishing venture Deadline (a pop-culture magazine with loads of cool comics strips): the absurdist tales of a feisty, thoroughly well-armed bad-ass chick roaming the wilds of a futuristic Australia with her Kangaroo boy-friend Booga which caught the imagination of a large portion of the public and the zeitgeist of the times. Tank Girl got massive. There was even a movie…

Collecting the miniseries from 2013, this gloriously surreal full-colour hardback is one of the books spotlighted in Titan Comics’ Best of British Month and another explosively unforgettable annal in the chequered history of a true icon of Empire and decidedly dubious darling of the comics Commonwealth…

Expressively scripted by Alan C. Martin and astoundingly illustrated by the amazing Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, the story starts with the gun-gal and her marsupial man popping into an on-its-uppers radio shop in search of advice and trinkets for Booga’s Ham Radio kit and walking into a trap unlike any other…

Before long kangaroo-boy is in a coma and Tank Girl, Jet Girl and Barney are taking a Fantastic Voyage (with all the inherent and leftover pop culture mod cons) around his (extremely) nervous system, intent on destroying the brain clot slowly killing the clot in question.

It all goes tragically wrong though and soon instead of charting the cerebellum the trio of chaotic cussing kanganauts are helplessly ‘Circumnavigating Booga’s Left Bollock’…

What they find there is a microscopic but rapidly gestating little infant whom they quite naturally pluck from its ghastly environment and return to the relative safety of the good ship and sausage-shaped submersible Significant Triode…

Once aboard the vessel the pretty pink foetus proves far from normal as ‘Three Ladies, a Kangaroo & a Little Baby’ quickly descends from charming comedy pastiche into a hairy horror story as the rush to fix Booga’s brain blockage introduces the team to deadly ghosts, involves them in a mad dash to get out of the patient before they all regain their normal sizes and inculcates a worthy yet impossible resolution not to swear in front of the nipper…

Mission improbably accomplished, the girls and more-confused-than-ever Booga can only watch in shock and terror as their wee newcomer swiftly mutates into an unstoppable, super-powered evil antithesis… an Anti-Tank Girl…

The Big Pink She-Beast’s initial attack in ‘Awesome Wells’ almost ends our unsavoury heroine’s life and only Booga’s natural tendency to react with excessive violence and extraordinary ordinance drives the still-growing invader off.

As her friends fall back to a secret fortress and try to revive her, Tank Girl’s consciousness is visiting a very strange and hippie place, gleaning impenetrable clues on how to end the evil nemesis crisis…

She returns to the physical world just in time for a showdown with Anti-Tank Girl and a hastily gathered if rather sub-par gang consisting of Anti-Barney, Anti Booga and Auntie Jet Girl…

Soon cataclysmic final battle is joined in ‘Flippin’ ‘Eck Benny’ but even after the good guys somehow triumph there’s still the little matter of dealing with the sad little anonymous evil genius who crafted the whole plot. Luckily Tank Girl’s brief sojourn in La-La Land has pointed her subconscious in the right direction…

Bizarre, manically hilarious and crammed with captivating cartoon-violence, Solid State is an unashamedly riotous romp which comes with a brace of mini extras, beginning with a typically restrained exercise in bludgeoning ballistic ballet entitled ‘Make Them All Die’, after which a quiet moment spring-cleaning the tank goes messily awry in ‘The Girl That Cleansed Our Souls’.

Also included are a half-dozen motivational poem/poster pics, a cover gallery, sketch/artwork pages and an Afterword from the Anti-Alan…

Wild, weird, endlessly re-inventive and spectacularly silly, this an ever-so-cool rollercoaster thrill-ride and lifestyle touchstone for life’s incurable rebels and undying Rude Britannians, so if you’ve never seen the anarchic, surreal and culturally soused peculiarity that is Tank Girl, bastard love child of 2000 AD and Love and Rockets, you’ve missed a truly unique experience… and remember, she doesn’t care if you like her, just so long as you notice her…
Tank Girl and all related characters are ™ & © 2013 Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. All rights reserved.

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The Chronicles of Legion volume 3: Blood Brothers


By Fabien Nury, Mario Alberti, Zhang Xiaoyu & Tirso translated by Virgine Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-095-5

The epic war between immortal sanguinite siblings rumbles on in the third translated volume of Fabien (Once Upon a Time in France, I Am Legion) Nury’s inspired reinvigoration of the Dracula legend, with Mario Alberti, Zhang Xiaoyu and Tirso Cons each illustrating a discrete epoch in the centuries-spanning and intertwined vendetta.

The accursed clash of wills began in 2011 as Les Chroniques de Legion: a generational saga which put a new spin on the monster-myth, and Blood Brothers further unravels a triptych of mysteries…

What You Need to Know: Vlad Tepes Dracula and his brother Radu possess the power to extend their lives beyond apparent death. Their consciousnesses are carried in their blood and by transferring the gory gruel to other creatures – human or not – they can possess and dominate any number of victims infinitely, carrying their minds and their motivations forever onward into infinity.

Both have lived for centuries and for all those interminable years they have despised each other…

In this tensely suspenseful third volume some hint of what caused their enhanced states of being and eternal enmity is at last revealed as their story continues to unfold across three very varied theatres of war and through very different aspects of their inhumanity…

The tale resumes in 1812 where Transylvanian snows conceal the many creatures which are Radu as they collectively await the next move of the Napoleonic deserters lured to this frozen wasteland by dreams of finding Dracula’s lost treasure.

The teller of those tales was Captain Armand Malachi who led his battle-hardened comrades Kholya, Stern, Hartmann and Feraud to the Wallachian Mountains before dying in battle against a band of Cossacks.

At least that’s the way they all saw it. Vlad, riding Malachi, found it expedient to fall down when “killed” but now, with his host form actually ceasing to function in the crippling cold, the eternal warrior is forced to transfer his accommodations to something more welcoming.

When he catches up to his former friends, however, their understandable reaction leads to more violence and in the end only poor Kholya remains of any real use…

Half a world away and back in 1521, Gabriella, Doña Del La Fuente, bearing a scarlet sigil which marks all the blood-possessed, stoically endures the vigorous dynastic intentions of future husband Hernan Torres. She had travelled to the New World to be his socially acceptable, church-sanctioned brood-mare but has become far more interested in the Conquistador’s mulatto bastard Martin.

Gabriella’s empire-building is not only imperilled by her treacherous body’s needs but also by the impossibly powerful and indefatigably hostile natives who all carry the taint and preternatural vitality of brother Radu…

When the Indians at last mount a full attack on the half-constructed Torres compound, the Europeans barely repel the assault and then only at the cost of the Doña’s faithful, steadfast and mystically augmented bodyguard Carlos whom she impetuously sacrifices to preserve Martin…

In the gory aftermath the bastard son realises what she is and what she’s done, but when they foolishly consummate their overwhelming passion, the constantly spying priests of the Inquisition make their own move. They are of course, no match for the powers of a Dracula…

Soon Hernan is gone too and Gabriella turns her attentions to making the New World her own. All that remains to bar her progress is the firmly embedded Radu…

In 1887 London is the centre of the world and formerly impoverished scoundrel Victor Douglas Thorpe relishes his return to it even as the latest embodiment of Dracula. The new Lord Cavendish soon takes his place amongst the aristocracy of the Athenaeum Club but cannot escape their haughty disapproval and even outright hostility.

No one knows why the immensely wealthy old oligarch settled his title and the largest fortune in the Empire upon such a blatant parvenu blackguard, but they all have their suspicions…

When Chief Superintendent Warren of Scotland Yard and solicitor Mr. Morris Webster attempt to extort the new Lord with a fabrication of supposition and innuendo they are unaware that they are challenging a sadistic absolute monarch carrying centuries of experience in removing threats to his security, but his summary treatment of them is as nothing to the way the next chancer is dealt with…

Soon afterwards the holder of Thorpe’s old gambling debts attempts to reassert his old hold on the former addict and foolishly uses Esther Harrington as leverage.

When he was human Thorpe had left her pregnant and penniless without a second thought but the new Lord Cavendish is more concerned about making a statement than any sum of money and before long the grimy streets of Whitechapel first run red with his all-encompassing vengeance and then explosively burn in a furious storm of purging flame.

Afterwards Cavendish cannot really explain why he let Esther live or why he set her up with a fortune and a new life in India…

And in the cold snows of a dark night gypsies gather around a campfire where an old man tells the story of two brothers who were held hostage by the Ottoman Sultan to keep their lordly father compliant.

The boys dealt with enforced captivity in different ways. Tough, rebellious Vlad bided his time and nursed his hatred whilst his softer, weaker sibling Radu quickly capitulated, becoming a favourite plaything of the Sultan.

One day an aged pilgrim came to court carrying a box with two scorpions in it and Vlad discovered the means to fulfil all his dreams, but at such an incredible, eternal cost…

To Be Concluded…

Bleak, thrilling and sumptuously sinister, this latest instalment is couched, as ever, in a luxurious oversized (211 x 282 mm) full-colour hardback: offering a superbly illustrated and beguiling told, intoxicating mosaic of macabre menace which is a stunning and ambitious treat for all fans of fang and fear…

Les Chroniques de Legion and all contents © Éditions Glénat 2012. Translated edition © Titan Comics, 2015

The Chronicles of Legion volume 3: Blood Brothers will be released on May 5th 2015 and is available for pre-order now.

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Ultimate Comics Spider-Man by Brian Bendis volume 4


By Brian Michael Bendis, Sara Pichelli, David Marquez, Justin Ponsor & various (Marvel) ISBN: 978-0-7851-6503-3

When the Ultimate Spider-Man died, writer Brian Michael Bendis and Marvel promised that a new hero would arise from the ashes…

Marvel’s Ultimates imprint began in 2000 with a post-modern take on major characters and concepts to bring them into line with the tastes of 21st century readers – apparently a wholly different demographic from us baby-boomers and our descendents content to stick with the precepts sprung from founding talents Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee… or perhaps just those unable or unwilling to deal with five decades (seven if you include Golden Age Timely tales retroactively co-opted into the mix) of continuity baggage which saturated the originals.

Of course the darkly nihilistic new universe soon became as continuity-constricted as its ancestor and in 2008 cleansing exercise “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which killed dozens of super-humans and millions of mere mortals in a devastating tsunami that inundated Manhattan courtesy of mutant menace Magneto.

In the months that followed, plucky Peter Parker and his fellow meta-human survivors struggled to restore order to a dangerous new world, but just as Spider-Man finally gained a measure of acceptance and was hailed a hero by the masses, he took a bullet for Captain America and very publicly met his end during a catastrophic super-villain showdown …

In the aftermath, child prodigy Miles Morales gained suspiciously similar powers (super-strong and fast and able to walk up walls, plus invisibility and a crippling “venom-charge”) and started out on the same deadly learning curve: coping with astounding new physical abilities, painfully discovering the daily costs of living a life of lies and realising how a crippling sense of responsibility is the most seductive method of self-harm and worst of all of possible gifts.

He was helped and hindered in equal amounts by his uncle Aaron: a career super-criminal dubbed The Prowler. Things started to go spiral out of control the night Aaron Davis died in battle with the new arachnid hero in town, but now – months later – the repercussions of the televised event have finally caught up with the boy who would be Spider-Man…

Written throughout by Bendis, this luxurious hardcover collection (re-presenting Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #16.1 and #19-25, from December 2012 to June 2013) finds the juvenile wall-crawler recovering in the aftermath of a second War Between the States.

That internecine conflict almost destroyed the Republic but has left the traumatised public in no mood to tolerate mysteries or put up with unexplained and potentially dangerous characters and vigilantes.

The action opens with jump-on tale ‘Point One’ (illustrated by David Marquez

from Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #16.1) wherein unscrupulous reporter Betty Brant uses her considerable investigative skills to establish a link between The Prowler, the second Spider-Man, the genetic experiments of Norman Osborn and a guy named Morales.

As she digs deeper and follows the brief career of the new hero, Betty not only uncovers the remains of the genegineered spider which transformed Miles, but also learns far more than she should have from disgraced Oscorp biochemist Dr. Conrad Marcus, as well as engendering the unwelcome interest of scientific monolith Roxxon Industries and a brutal, relentless monstrosity…

The main event is 4-part epic ‘Venom War’ (art by Sara Pichelli) which opens in the days following the civil war. Child prodigy Miles and best-bud/superhero trainer Ganke are back at Brooklyn Visions Academy Boarding School. Miles spends only weekends at home, and now he and his confidante are eagerly attempting to master Peter Parker‘s web-fluid formula and wrist-shooters which the inexperienced hero has recently inherited.

As a mysterious monster raids and wrecks Roxxon’s HQ, in Manhattan homicide cop and ex-SHIELD agent Mariah Hill is investigating the bloody murder of a journalist. Her interviews at the Daily Bugle all lead her to the Davis/Morales home in Brooklyn.

Marcus’ dad Jefferson Davis has become an involuntary and extremely camera-shy celebrity because of his stand against the secessionist organisation Hydra. When a film crew bursts into the family home he understandably goes ballistic and kicks them to the kerb, but his fury is futile in the face of the towering, metamorphic horror known as Venom, which chooses that moment to attack the person it accuses of being Spider-Man…

The next chapter opens seconds later as the beast lunges, and in the family home Miles suits up and springs into battle…

The clash is savage and terrifying. As the TV parasites carry on filming, Jefferson joins the severely overmatched Spider-Man only to be smashed and broken like a bug…

The Arachnid kid goes crazy but his best efforts – and the fusillade of shots from the just- arrived cops – are useless. Only after the shattered lad employs his devastating venom blasts does he succeed in driving off the amorphous atrocity…

The shocking struggle has been broadcast all over the world. Elsewhere in Brooklyn two girls cherished by the original web-spinner immediately drop what they’re doing and rush to the scene of the battle…

Many months previously, as part of the crowd of grateful strangers attending Peter Parker’s memorial, Miles and Ganke had talked to another mourner, a girl who was intimate with the murdered hero. Gwen Stacy offered quiet insights to the boy child who had just acquired his powers and then altered the course of his life forever by sharing a simple mantra: “with great power comes great responsibility”…

Now she and Mary Jane Watson arrive at the crime scene ready to share their experience in keeping secrets just as attending detective Mariah Hill reaches the conclusion that the shell-shocked boy crying on the stairs is Spider-Man…

His mother Rio Morales is in the ambulance taking Jefferson to hospital and Miles is in no state to fend off questions from an experienced SHIELD interrogator or even speak to his equally traumatised buddy Ganke, but Gwen and Mary Jane certainly are and quickly shut down the situation and terminate the interview.

As they explain all the ghastly secrets of the Venom monster and its connection to the Parker family, speculation leads the youngsters to the idea that maybe the genetic quirk which made Peter Spider-Man might be repeated in the Morales family…

Deep below their feet the shapeshifting symbiote is reconstituting. Soon it breaks out of the sewers to again consume human hosts. The consciousness in charge of the marauding terror hasn’t given up its search for Spider-Man and is all too quickly bursting into the hospital where Rio is waiting for word on her husband…

The shocking conclusion begins with news of the assault reaching Miles. Hill, convinced she is right, gives Miles crucial advice for the battle she knows his coming. By the time Spider-Man reaches the medical centre Venom is carving a bloody swathe through the patients and doctors and the consequent clash is terrifying to behold.

With bodies falling everywhere Miles eventually finds a grotesque and dreadful way to stop the beast and expose the villain within, but in the aftermath realises that the awful cost has been another person he loves…

As the ruthless boss of Roxxon now makes Spider-Man his only priority, in Brooklyn Miles wakes from a deep sleep and realises his life has changed forever. At last he understands the horror and tragedy which underpins the legend of Spider-Man. This time though, the response to a death in the family is not guilty defiance and an urge to make things right, but a crushing, total surrender…

To Be Continued…

With covers by Sara Pichelli, this is a tense, breathtaking action-packed, thriller full of the humour and drama which blessed the original Lee/Ditko tales: a controversial but worthy way to continue and advance the legend that Fights ‘n’ Tights addicts will admire and adore… © 2012, 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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World War X book 1: Helius


By Jerry Frissen, Peter Snejbjerg & Delphine Rieu, translated by Edward Gauvin (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-112-9

European comics have long been a bastion of big concept, high octane science fiction comics and in recent years have also taken on many of the faster-paced, viscerally emotional spectacles typifying modern movie blockbusters. A splendid new example of that marriage of thought and action can be seen in the English-language translation of World War X: Helius.

Belgian born Jerry/Thierry Frissen generally hangs out in Los Angeles writing comicbooks for Europe (Meurtres, Tequila, Les Tikitis, Luuna) and America (Luche Libre, The Zombies That Ate the World) or designing cool toys, whilst Danish illustrator Peter Snejbjerg (Tarzan, Hypernauten, Den Skjulte Protokol) is now a bona fide star of the US comicbook industry with impressive stints on a broad variety of classics like Abe Sapien, The Mighty, Starman, The Light Brigade, Books of Magic and many more.

Here they mash-up a number of genre styles to relate an astounding secret history of the world – and usher in its likely end – in a fast and vast tale which reassuringly mines familiar plot territory and fantasy memes to craft an engaging and addictive Armageddon thriller.

It dawns on the moon on February 17th 2017 where a team of scientists from Ralph Milne Farley Lunar Base are cautiously retrieving an oddly inscribed box. It looks like a coffin and when an accident causes it to fall open death is indeed inside…

The release of the thing inside awakens a most unique individual in Oregon, whilst a covert military archaeological dig in Papua, New Guinea goes into overdrive at news of the moon colony suddenly going off air.

Adesh Khan has no time to worry; he’s still working on the box uncovered at the bottom of a deep pit in these fetid jungles. Translator Antoine has made a breakthrough and thinks the hieroglyphics covering the Sarcophagi are warnings. He strenuously advises that every box be buried again and forgotten…

The remarkable individual in Oregon calls himself Helius and, as his team of heavily-armed and well-equipped enforcers efficiently ferry him by jet to another black site in Florida, they brief him on things you and I would consider common knowledge…

Adesh is arguing with the American President but PotUS isn’t listening. Project IX promises inexhaustible energy for the planet and he’s thinking about his legacy…

In Portugal, on November 1st 1755 the city of Lisbon was devastated and thousands of lives lost in what history records as a monumental earthquake. It wasn’t, but the hideous travesty that actually destroyed the metropolis looks awfully like the thing that came out of the box on the moon…

In the Everglades Tara Austin receives a frantic message from her colleague and ex-husband Adesh to stop working and get out of the state immediately. He can’t say much more because that’s when he’s arrested.

As Tara realises the Sarcophagus her team’s been working on is opening and rocking the entire area, in nearby Jackson, Helius and his minders are being quizzed by a pushy reporter who asks the strangest questions. Dodging her, the squad head to the Everglades but the base there seems totally devoid of life…

Deep within Columbus Airforce Base, Mississippi Adesh is being interrogated. He is still being cagy about what he now thinks the scattered Sarcophagi might be and responds badly when Lt. Erica McLyman lets slip that all contact has been lost with the Everglades due to a huge earthquake…

It’s not long before Adesh busts out of his cell, sneaks off base and heads for Florida…

In France in the Year of Our Lord 1248, a terrible upheaval shattered Mont Granier, releasing a monstrous devil which slaughtered peasants and a troop of knights. One of the noble survivors was severely maimed. He looked a lot like Helius…

In Greenville, Florida a reporter named Jen bums a ride with Adesh as he closes in on the Everglades site. They’re a rather conspicuous couple. Everybody else is headed in the opposite direction, spurred on by terror and enforced evacuation by the army. His destination is a raging battlefield, but a news blackout prevents anybody from learning who the army are fighting…

On the periphery of the furious struggle Helius and his unit are slowly closing in…

Adesh is a prisoner again. Jen has him chained to a steering wheel as he cautiously negotiates the road to the battle. She’s also pumping him at gunpoint for information on Project IX and doesn’t seem surprised by anything he reveals about the collection of 4-billion-year-old boxes his team had found deposited deep in the Earth.

At that antediluvian time all nine oddly-inscribed high-energy artefacts were placed equidistantly, but passing eons, geological upheaval and continental drift gradually shifted them. The troubles only really began after he convinced international authorities to move them back into their original positions…

At Everglades Ground Zero the army are losing the war against a legion of zombies. Helius explains their true enemy is the horror called Kharis, not his meat puppets, and advises his loyal squad on how best to deal with the myriad assaults of the thing.

Not far away Jen hears its call and changes her mind about killing Adesh. She does, however, reveal just how far from human she actually is…

As they observe Helius metamorphically confront Kharis, Adesh wonders if he might be the only normal creature left in Florida. That idle thought resonates as Jen suddenly joins the fight, every inch as terrifying, warped and inhuman as the original combatants…

And on February 11th 2017, in Mont Granier, Lisbon, the Azores, New Guinea and Greenland the world shakes. Horrendous beasts awake, causing incalculable death and destruction, heralding the end of the world…

To be Continued…

Snappy, fast paced and planting plenty of plot seeds for future spectacle and revelation, World War X: Helius promises to be a rousing rollercoaster ride of thrills, chill and spills. Get this and stick around for the main event. It promises to be a blast…
World War X and all contents are © Snejbjerg/Frissen/Éditions du Lombard (Dargaud-Lombard S.A.) 2013.

World War X: Helius will be released on April 14th 2015 and is available for pre-order now.

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Shame: Conception, Shame: Pursuit, Shame: Redemption


By Lovern Kindzierski, John Bolton & Todd Klein (Renegade Arts Entertainment)
ISBNs: 978-1-908217-01-1, 978-0-986200-5-2 and 978-0-99215-088-4

It’s an unshakable adage that comics are a visual medium and that’s never been more clearly proved than in this enticing allegorical adult fairytale from writer Lovern Kindzierski, painter John Bolton and letterer Todd Klein.

The blithely inviting trilogy began in 2011 for then-new multinational Indie publisher Renegade Arts Entertainment (generally Alexander Finbow, Doug Bradley, Alan Grant, John Finbow, Luisa Harkins, Nick Wilson and Jennifer Taylor: a loose coalition originating comics, audio books, movies, animation, prose and graphic novels, merchandise and games) and after much too long a wait concludes here…

Always remember, appearances can be deceiving.

Once upon a time in Shame: Conception a rather lumpen and unlovely witch named Mother Virtue spent all her days doing grand good deeds for the unfortunate, and for these kind actions she was beloved by all.

She lived her life well growing old and content but one day a selfish thought passed idly through her mind: she longed for a daughter and wished for but a moment that she was a mother in fact as well as name…

It was all the opening malign Shadow of Ignorance Slur needed. With dark magic he instantly impregnated the champion of Good with a dark and evil seed and in gloating triumph bragged to the witch that her diabolical daughter would be named Shame…

Repenting that selfish thought and dreading the horrors to come, Mother Virtue turned her cottage into a floral prison dubbed Cradle; designed and repurposed to isolate and contain the thing growing in her belly.

The miserable mother-to-be also assembled an army of Dryads to care for and guard the baby. After Virtue finally bore Shame, she quickly abandoned the devil’s burden to be reared in the mystic compound, where it grew cruel but so very beautiful…

Eventually, however, minions of Shame’s sire breached the green walls and began schooling the child in vile necromancy and her dire inheritance. Slowly Shame remoulded her guardians into something more pliable and appropriately monstrous…

As she physically ripened, Slur himself came and through him Shame learned the power of sex. With the aid of a demonic incubus which had stolen seed from many men, she quickened a child in her own belly and birthed a baby girl.

Into the infant Slur poured Mother Virtue’s soul, gorily ripped from her aging carcase at that moment. Even the nunnery she had locked herself within was not proof against the marauding Shadow of Ignorance…

With her despised mother now her own child securely bound within the selfsame floral penitentiary, Shame went out into the world to make her mark…

Shame: Pursuit was released in 2013 and took up the story sixteen years later. The Virtue baby had grown up strong and beautiful, despite every effort of the malformed and mystically mutated Dryads and Shame’s diabolical sorcery who had made every day of her young life a test of survival.

This made Shame, now queen of a mortal kingdom, furious beyond belief. When not burning witches and wise women who might threaten her absolute domination or having her unconquerable armies ravage the neighbouring realms, the hell-spawn spied upon her mother/child with infernal devices.

Elsewhere a valiant knight lay dying and bade his simple, ugly son Merritt farewell. Even with his last breaths, the father dreaded how his foolish and naive boy would fare in a world ruled by the Queen who had killed him…

The hopeless dreamer was stubborn if nothing else, and when Merritt discovered the vegetable hell-mound of Cradle, stories his mother told him as a child and a strange inexplicable yearning compelled him to overcome appalling odds to break in and liberate the beautiful prisoner… although she did most of the work…

Once free of the mound, all Virtue’s mystic powers returned and far away Shame’s world reeled. Mocking Slur cared little for his daughter but much for his plans and thus revealed Merritt was Destiny’s wild card: a Sword of Fate who could reshape the future of humanity. Of course it all depended whose side he was on…

As the heroes neared the capital they were ambushed and, after a tremendous mystic upheaval, Merritt awoke in a palace with a dark-haired angel ministering to his every need and desire. Far below in a rank, eldritch dungeon Virtue languished and remade her plans…

The epic concludes in classic fashion with Shame: Redemption as Merritt falls deeper under the sultry sway of the dark queen. As he slowly becomes her tool of human subjugation, in a fetid subterranean stinkhole, Virtue weaves her magic with the paltry materials at hand under the very noses of her tormentors…

Even in the Queen’s bed Merritt is still a child of his mother’s stories and when Virtue contacts him he readily sneaks down to her cell, dreams of nobility and good deeds filling his slow and addled head…

Now the scene is set for a final fraught confrontation between mother and daughter, but first Virtue sends Merritt straight to Hell on a vital quest to recover the hope of the world…

The narrative core of all fairytales is unchanging and ever powerful, so tone and treatment make all the difference between tired rehash and something bold, fresh and unforgettable.

Moreover, the photo-based hyper-real expressionism of John Bolton’s lush painting transforms the familiar and potentially mundane settings of fantasy standards into something truly bleak and bizarre to match the grim, earthily seedy meta-reality of Kindzierski’s script.

Dark, nasty and packed with sumptuous seductions of every stripe, the sage of Shame is every adult fantasists’ desire made real…

Shame: Conception, Shame: Pursuit, Shame: Redemption the story, characters, world and designs are © Lovern Kindzierski, John Bolton and Renegade Arts Canmore Ltd.

 

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Michael Moorcock’s Elric volume 2: Stormbringer


By Julien Blondel, Jean-Luc Cano, Julien Telo, Robin Recht & Didier Poli, translated by Edward Gauvin (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978 -1-78276-125-9

Michael Moorcock began his career as a comics creator aged 15; writing and editing classic strips like Dogfight Dixon, Jet Ace Logan, Captain Condor, Olac the Gladiator, Tarzan and many, many other British favourites. As the swinging Sixties began he made the leap to prose fiction where he single-handedly revitalised a genre in 1961 with the creation of Elric and the high-concept notion of the Eternal Champion.

Elric is a landmark of the Sword and Sorcery genre: fore-doomed last ruler of the pre-human civilisation of Melniboné, a race of cruel, nigh-demonic sorcerers. These arrogant, dissolute creatures are in a slow, decadent decline after millennia of dominance over the Earth.

An albino, Elric is physically weak, buoyed up by drugs, blood and dark magic, and of a brooding, philosophical temperament. He cares for little save his beautiful cousin Cymoril, who will die one day whilst he battles her loathsome usurping brother Prince Yyrkoon in service to a manipulative god of Chaos.

The White Wolf doesn’t even really want to rule, but it is his duty, and he is the only one of his debased race to see the (comparatively) freshly evolved race of Man as a threat to the Empire.

As this volume opens he is yet to be owned by the terrible black sword: one of a matched pair of sorcerous weapons which steal the souls of their victims and feed that stolen life and vitality to the wielder…

Elric is a tragic incarnation of the restless Eternal Champion, reincarnated in every time, place and alternate dimension. His life is violence, blood and unending tragedy, exacerbated by dependence on that soul-drinking ebony blade and his sworn – if somewhat compelled and thus reluctant – allegiance to the chimerical Lords of Chaos.

Everybody knows all that, right?

In 2013, however, the creator of the iconic wanderer – and arguably a whole sub-genre of fantasy fiction – has allowed his premiere paladin to undergo a visceral, spectacular and enchanting make-over under the auspices of a team of premiere French graphic arts prodigies.

Tasking themselves to re-adapt, augment and expand Moorcock’s tales and novels (with his willing and eager permission and supervision), writers Julien Blondel and Jean-Luc Cano, illustrators Julien Telo, Robin Recht & Didier Poli, with colour-artists Recht, Jean Bastide & Scarlett Smulkowski, resume the reinvigoration in Stormbringer.

This second chapter in the doom-drenched saga is preceded by a powerful introduction and affirmation of Elric’s impact in Alan Moore’s ‘Reflections in a Pink Eye’ and this sumptuous oversized (284x212mm) colour hardback album also includes – at the back – another look at the creative process in ‘Genesis’; via pages of design sketches (Elric and Stormbringer and the Dragon Caves) and a exploration of the working process of the ‘New Talents’ who recently joined the large storytelling team…

What Has Gone Before: usurper Yyrkoon has escaped his punishment through sorcery and taken Cymoril with him. Despite pledging himself to Arioch, Duke of Swords, weeks pass and all Elric’s arcane might is unable to glean where the fugitive has taken her.

The pallid, impotent Emperor has become a raging fury of frustration…

The dark, brooding epic continues as the albino brutally chastises Melnibonéan subjects and elemental agents tasked with finding Yyrkoon and Cymoril. The streets of Imrryr run red with sacrificial blood and the gory scraps of ghastly auguries, but no answer can be found.

At last the dejected sovereign calls again upon Arioch and this time the puissant hell-lord offers a shred of useful information…

Impatient and incandescent with rage Elric then exploits his ancestral relationship with majestic sea god Straasha, who once more honours his ancient pact with the rulers of Melniboné but again indicates times are changing and such services are soon to end…

In the Dragon Caves below the city, faithful Tyvim Tvar inducts his sons into the arts of commanding The Great Winged Ones, fearing that his latest endeavour with Elric will end badly…

On a quiet morning Staasha’s proffered aid hoves into magnificent view: an astounding vessel unlike any other. The Ship Which Sails over Land and Sea was built in eons past to seal a truce between Straasha and his brother Grome, Lord of the Earth Elementals who had warred for half the age of the world. Soon the incredible thought-guided vessel is soon hurtling towards the Young Kingdoms.

Elric anticipates satisfaction but enjoys no peace. His dreams are plagued with scenes of his consort-cousin Cymoril expiring in blood and fire…

Nearing their hidden quarry a grievous setback halts the chameleonic craft in its tumultuous course as mountainous Grome manifests, demanding the return of his ship. Nothing will sway him and, with his soldiers valiantly perishing, their enraged commander capitulates…

Undaunted, Elric leads his surviving warriors on foot across the foreboding terrain, infested with the upstart monkey people who would challenge their betters. He accepts terrified hospitality from peasants and rewards the humans in ways that delight his rattled and despondent, casually sadistic Melnibonéan warriors…

Eventually the weary task force arrives at the antediluvian and horrific city of Dhoz-Kam – site of a terrible battle between the Lords of Law and Chaos – and immediately readies himself for battle with Yyrkoon. His vile cousin is a great magical adept and is certain to have taken precautions.

The Emperor couldn’t be more right and an indescribably protean thing decimates his troops. Elric does not care and pushes on, finding Yyrkoon just as the madman butchers Cymoril…

Screaming out to Arioch, Elric pleads for her life and the whimsical god answers… after a fashion. Having made similar deals with both cousins, he suggests they fight using the demonic weapons he has been safeguarding: huge, deadly sisters of shining black metal, calling eagerly for someone to hold them…

With Elric wielding Stormbringer and Yyrkoon its demonic twin Mournblade, all the hate and fury the cousins bear each other comes out in mind-bending combat. However as the duel escalates the albino realises his sword is communicating with him, urging him on to ever-greater excess and demanding a price paid in blood and souls…

Much as he wants Yyrkoon dead he won’t be any being’s puppet and refuses to administer a killing blow. Still furious however he realises Arioch has his own agenda and needs him. Defiantly arrogant, the Emperor dictates new terms for their relationship…

None the less, Stormbringer must be fed and, after ministering to the resurrected Cymoril and setting course for the Dreaming City, Elric finds a way to give the blade its appalling reward…

Back in Imrryr at last, the emperor begins his service to Arioch with an astounding announcement. He is abdicating and names the traitor Yyrkoon as his successor…

To Be Continued…

Elric is a primal character whose sheer imaginative force has inspired a host of superb graphic interpretations – and probably daunted many eager movie producers – with the astonishing complexity and emotional power of his dying, dawning world. This latest tremendously dark and deeply engaging graphic extravaganza again raises the creative bar and proves why he is the leading light of fantasy fiction.

Elric: Stormbringer and all contents are © 2014 Éditions Glénat. This Translated Edition © 2014 Titan Comics. Adapted from the works of Michael Moorcock related to the character of Elric of Melniboné © 2013, Michael & Linda Moorcock. Introduction © 2015, Alan Moore.
Michael Moorcock’s Elric volume 2: Stormbringer will be released on March 31st 2015 and is available for pre-order now.