Category: Mature Reading

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Steak Night volume 3: Jobs


By various, edited by Babak Ganjei (Records Records Records books)
ISBN: 978-0-9566330-5-7

Some old fuddy-duddies like me still read prose as well as comics, and being a veteran consumer I can honestly say that what I miss most is the time when short stories – everything from epigrams to vignettes to novellas – were a thriving, vibrant pillar of storytelling.

Modern book publishing doesn’t like short stories and most magazines (with the possible exception of DC Thomson’s The People’s Friend) no longer regularly carry engaging snippets of fiction or indeed even value the creative discipline necessary to telling a tale succinctly.

The same was true of comics for years but with the recent surge of independent and small press creators that market is changing. There are now a few regular anthology titles, offering a variety of experiences rather than the far more commercially sensible multi-part epics mainstream print-houses always push.

Every book or comic is somebody’s first but how can you possibly build a solid readership with stories that can be twenty or forty or even more parts long? Life’s just too short.

So let’s all shout “well done” for books such as Steak Night which always offers an eclectic mix of strips, gags, art pages and brief prose pieces in an inviting hardback book format, produced with style, honesty, integrity and a broad range of views.

This third volume contains a selection of works dedicated to the theme of Jobs, and after a stirring pep-talk from the editorial team commences with a penetrating dose of reminiscing and self-flagellation in the text tantaliser ‘Keyser Söze’ by Victoria Manifold. Then multi-talented Tom Hall Colonial illustrates Henry Clark’s truly disturbing recollections of his early days as an undertaker and the charming on-the-job training he received at the hands of ‘The Butcher’ …

A strange and stridently silent cartoon ‘Jobs’ short about a career in extreme pest-control (also by Hall?) leads into another painful memory as Babak Ganjei illustrates Tom Oldham’s graphic explanation for why he turned down the chance to be a ‘Bigshot’ in the sex trade, after which ‘A Guide to Achieving Your Career Goals’ by Amelia Phillips definitively describes her self-perceived failure in clawing her way to the middle of the publishing biz before becoming a happily desperate freelancer…

Another ferocious fantasy comics page of sci-fi hi-tech ‘Jobs’ creation segues sweetly into an keenly observed if doggedly obscure ‘Office Romance’ by Florian Lunaire & Eleanor Summers, whilst Julia Scheele delightfully describes the dilemma all women face on ‘Sundays at the Comic Shop’ (actually it’s more a 24/7 thing) before Melissa Trender examines the role of women in a resolutely post-feminist society with the heartfelt and disturbing ‘Daughters’.

The industrious giant-bug bashing ‘Jobs’ interludes then end with mankind notionally still on top, whilst ‘Small Hours Dept’ by Peter Cline lovingly and lyrically examines the whimsical moments that quiet times can offer from an elevated position, after which Wallis Eates’ prose-&-picture fable ‘Where Are you Going?/Ground Please’ appealingly compares childhood memories with the solitary insights of a hospital cleaner, before former Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong winningly describes his succession of dead-end jobs in Bournemouth (trust me: don’t eat the pizza) in a prose paean to the failings of school careers guidance information entitled ‘The Worst Bad Egg’.

The portmanteau of pictorial pleasures concludes with Harriet Gibsone’s hilariously dark and edgy advice on handling the ‘Big Interview’ and a manic glimpse at what it’s all about in ‘Going to Work’ by Grace Wilson…

Complete with a full contact-&-biography Contributors section, this is another superb sampling of contemporary cartoon culture that no lover of the art of storytelling should miss.
And kids remember, it’s a vocation, not a career, yeah?

© Records Records Records 2013.

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Hilarious Consequences


By Babak Ganjei (Records Records Records Books)
ISBN: 978-0-9566330-0-2

When I was kid comics weren’t cool and were all a bit the same. You couldn’t find them in most shops and once you got a bit older, you read them from the camouflaging concealment of a large book – or possibly a smutty magazine – so your mates wouldn’t laugh at you.

Now there are strips and graphic novels everywhere, nobody under 90 bats an eye at adults scoping out picture stories and – most importantly – the range, variety and sheer quality of material available today is absolutely staggering.

A wonderful Case In Point is this delightfully enthralling slice of whimsical urban documentary by Babak Ganjei, published by Records Records Records Books.

Hilarious Consequences lovingly details in joyously crushing detail the sad sack saga of an agonisingly self-excoriating, self-effacing, self-proclaimed middle-aging loser who just can’t seem to get his life together…

Babak is a not-at-all successful musician in London. He has a kid, no career, no money and his hair is falling out – which seems to be the most worrisome of his many woes and worries. Still, what can you do, huh?

With nothing better in his future he decides to make a comic strip of his life and that’s also part of the story and another eventual hassle…

We pick up the threads of a fraying life in ‘The Chinese Herbalist’ as the shaggy shambler opts to try alternative medicine to solve his depreciating barnet problem. He feels uncomfortable doing it, unsure it’s working and is unable to pay, but is no match for the pushy purveyors who offer him reasonable-sounding advice and hire purchase terms. He trundles off with assorted unsavoury teas and soups that make his next few days a toxic misery…

His angst levels increase when he reluctantly agrees to go to ‘The Fancy Dress Party’, but just can’t get as invested as his girlfriend Ellie. The booze helps but when he sees a pig-masked person chatting her up, his head – still fiercely shedding follicles – goes to a bad place…

‘Another Morning’ and in the shower there are fresh horrors associated with getting old, exacerbated later when Babak is cajoled into performing at a local acoustic night by Dog, an ambitious kid with a gleaming transcendent mop of healthy hair. There’s no pay but Dog promises really excellent pizza…

Always strapped for cash Babak attends ‘The Interview’ and somehow gets a part-time job at a pub. It’s okay, but the other bar staff think he’s so very old.

He’s thirty…

Shorter moments reveal the more gloomy aspects of ‘The Creative Process’, ‘Drinks’, ‘The Call’ and a ‘Grim Notion’ before Ellie and his son accidentally create ‘Glitter Slugs’ whilst making card presents, leading to a surreal ‘Lynchian Insert’ before a return to the pub proves ‘Tough Work’ can be ameliorated by the right drugs…

After a diversion to ponder ‘Animal Work’, ‘Bad News and Thinkings’ finds our zero compelled to somehow scrape together £300 a week and regretting his childhood educational choices after which a ‘Kaufman-Esque’ confrontation leads to quite understandable ‘Panic’…

Then, after a relatively calming ‘Family Hour’ it’s off to the pub and an epic ‘Work Party’ which reveals the problems ineffectual blokes blessed with bushy beards can encounter when trying to snort lines of coke, before things get strange ‘Conversing’ with a homeless guy. And then the slugs return in ‘New Beginnings’…

A ‘Near Death Experience’ leads to a half-hearted ‘Work Out’ attempt, but jogging and newspaper headlines result in parental ‘Sadness’ and more self-doubt which even a gallery-hopping ‘Art Trip’ can’t fix.

Conceptual walls start to crack as cartooning diarist Babak suffers ‘Writers Block’ which might be why the slugs slurp back in ‘Them Again’ after which Ellie and the boy come home in ‘They’re Back’…

That promised acoustic set is looming in ‘Please’ whilst an unsavoury encounter with the still unpaid Herbalist prompts some uncomfortable ‘Advice’ even as the little lad shows off his ‘Interests’ just before the artist expresses his ‘Issues’ with ‘The Big Show’.

Things go badly for the slugs in ‘Blackout’ but when the pizza arrives at least Babak feels a modicum of satisfaction ‘And Then Happiness’…

There’s a comic aside to wrap thing up with an ‘Epilogue’…

Episodic but utterly appealing, these dire and dolorous everyday antics of a (very) humble contemporary Eeyore offer a gentle, meandering and endearingly self-deprecating ramble through modern life. There’s even a free soundtrack CD that comes with this extremely readable fun feast, featuring: Dignan Porch, Singing Adams, The Bronsteins, Macks Faulkron, Wonderswan, Round Ron Virgin, Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards, Cheatahs, Big Deal, Wet Paint, and Matthew C.H. Tong to sweeten the deal and further facilitate knowing acquiescence…

Hilarious Consequences is the sort of book that becomes a cult hit TV series and certainly doesn’t fail to beguile and bemuse as a cartoon history.

Track it down and feel part of something too big to cope with…
© 2010 Babak Ganjei. © & ℗ Records Records Records Books.

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Kiddo


By Antoine Cossé (Records Records Records Books)
ISBN: 978-0-9566330-1-9

Since Britain grew up and joined the rest of the world in accepting comics as a valid and viable art form, the shelves of Albion have been positively groaning with a wealth of superbly fascinating graphic narratives of all types; especially since a number of bold new publishers have either picked up and translated Asian and European material or confidently released new stuff from creators around the world.

Antoine Cossé is a French graphic storyteller living in London. He left Paris to study at Camberwell College of Arts and graduated in 2006 with a degree in illustration. He then began a seemingly non-stop barrage of moody, funny and evocative strips catering to his own need to explore the absurd, the fanciful and the unexpected lurking behind the humdrum passage of everyday lives and kindly invited a growing fan-base to join him in his explorations.

Following a number of short strips, features and collaborations, in 2012 he produced his debut graphic novel РKiddo Рfor British outfit Records Records Records Books: an enigmatic, helter-skelter cartoon progression practically devoid of words which combines elements of epic dystopian science fiction with unceasing kinetic forward motion redolent in tone Рif not style and content Рto the ceaselessly energetic strip works of Andr̩ Barbe.

Lavishly packaged as a black and white hardback (comfortingly reminiscent of those classily sturdy children’s books of my youth) the stark events unfold as a solitary man plunges through jungles and wastelands, seeking who knows what in a scary big world.

Encountering beasts, a woman, hardship, hunger, booze, a giant monster dog, war, strange phenomena and the encroaching remnants – or perhaps discards – of civilisation, he moves ever onward to a chaotic closing conundrum…

Deeply sly, beguiling reductive and intoxicatingly Primitivist, Kiddo is an irresistible  surge of purely visual drama and a mystery for its own sake which will delight all aficionados of the medium who value comics for their own sake and don’t need answers spoon-fed to them.
© 2012 Antoine Cossé. © & ℗ Records Records Records Books.

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Stranger Than Life – Cartoons and Comics 1970 – 2013


By M.K. Brown (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-708-6

Sometimes there’s no need to babble on for ages. Sometimes a book just sells itself. However I’m far too vain a reviewer to let things lie without interjecting a few facts and opinions. You guess which is which…

Mary K. Brown was usually my favourite cartoonist in National Lampoon where her uniquely personal, bizarrely surreal, evocatively awry cartoon observations and visions graced the wildly eclectic Funny Pages section for decades.

Her other regular gigs included stints in Playboy, Wimmin’s Commix, Mother Jones, Twisted Sisters, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and elsewhere. She was one of a rarefied group of creators tapped by Art Spiegelman for his prestigious The Narrative Corpse project and one of her most intense cartoons was transformed into the other animation segment of the Tracy Ullman Show. (the one you know became The Simpsons).

She keeps her private life to herself but her astounding facility as a painter – particularly watercolours – has won her a second career as a gallery artist.

Now after far too long a time, she’s back as Fantagraphics adds her to its growing list of all-star cartoonist retrospectives; celebrated here with an astonishingly wide-ranging collection and treasury of her gags, drawings and strips.

It’s tempting to say that Brown’s work is no-nonsense, but in fact it’s all Nonsense: of the highest, weirdest, wildest, wackiest and most elevated pedigree. It’s human, humane, off-beat and off-kilter: beautifully designed and rendered – whether in line or colour – and ranges from the most audaciously cringeworthy visual puns (‘Overwrought Iron’) to manically absurdist almost stream-of-consciousness narratives, satirising suburban banality and angst or almost genteelly walloping Post Modern self absorption, consumerism and decadent ennui…

Moreover, this vast and comprehensive compendium (250 pages at 280 x 216mm) understands the value of pictures over words, so Bill Griffith’s Foreword ‘Here’s My Checklist for Everything I want in a Cartoonist’ is brief and punchy as is Brown’s own Introduction, leaving all the more room for her stunning pictorial confections – although she does interject with valuable commentary and background information whenever she feels like it.

And why not? It’s her book…

The works are divided into themed sections beginning with ‘Housepeople’, starring faddy folks from the nouveau riche punk to the domestic goddess in poems, gags and strips like the eponymous ‘Stranger Than Life’, ‘How to Make a Pair of Pants in 20 Minutes’ ‘Snakes in the Bathroom’, ‘Free Glue Sample’, ‘White Girl Dreams’ and much more…

Her astonishing gift for observation was never better seen than in pieces set ‘In the Workplace’: with outré panels augmenting manic features such as ‘Revenge and Forgiveness (A Dental Fantasy)’, ‘Russ de la Rocca – Worm Trainer of the Americas’, ‘Transference’, ‘The Fly Brothers in Hollywood’ or ‘Coping with Chain Saw Massacres’, whilst ‘Science and Technology’ encompasses ‘Fear of the Known’, grasshoppers and their ‘Inroads into Science’ and the ever-thorny conundrum ‘Women: What do They Want?’…

‘A Seedy Part of Town’ concentrates on domestic investigation and features more searching questions from the appallingly plebeian White Girl and ‘Earl D. Porker – Social Worker’ after which ‘Romance and Social Studies’ reveals how ‘Love Makes the World Go ‘Round’, offers a unique ‘Love Story’ and exposes secrets of the ‘Singles Bar’. Also featured is Brown’s faux bodice ripper ‘A Promise to Remember’, and the packed-to-bursting chapter climaxes with ‘Party Time Paper Dolls’ and the many small adventures of ‘Mercury, Messenger of God’.

The wonders of the world are examined in ‘Travel and Nature’ with particular attention paid to ‘Highlights of Guatemala’, ‘Loud Ties in Nature’, ‘Camel Racing in the Desert’, and sundry bestial broadsides. This chapter also reprints ‘Another True-Life Pretty Face in the Field of Medicine’ (which was adapted as the aforementioned animated adventures of Dr. N!Godatu on the Ullman show), as well as the mad Mountie serial ‘Saga of the Frozen North’, and is as ever surrounded by many more panel gags and mini strips.

The cartoon carnival concludes with ‘Way Out West’: a selection of equestrian and cowboy pieces accompanied by the really true secret reason Brown produced so many of the crazy things.

Included are ‘Custer’s Last Night Stand’, ‘Hillbilly Song Jubilee Roundup Time’, a triptych of ‘Beans Morocco’ sagebrush yarns, a series of strangely sensational gun illustrations and all five chapters of that dern peculiar soap opera ‘Western Romance’…

After a steadfastly odd comicstrip ‘Self Portrait’ by the ever-entertaining Brown, cartoonist Roz Chast adds her own observations to an appreciative Afterword to end this beguiling parade of literary legerdemain and graphic incomprehension…

Clever, challenging and utterly addictive humour that is once seen, never forgotten. And that is a fact.

Stranger Than Life: Cartoons and Comics 1970 -2013 © 2014 Fantagraphics Books. All comics and text by M.K. Brown are © 2014 M.K. Brown. All other material © 2014 the respective creators. All rights reserved.

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The Blighted Eye – Original Comic Art from the Glenn Bray Collection


By many and various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-695-9

When I talk about the field and art form of comics the intent is generally to celebrate and advertise the triumphs and talents of writers and artists – or maybe colourists, letterers or even publishers – but almost never about consumers.

However there are people who just read comics and there are those whose passion for the medium goes even deeper. These individuals have as much – or maybe even more – to do with shaping and promoting our medium than all the rest…

Paramount amongst those is Glenn Bray, whose fascination for illustrated narrative encompasses comics, collector cards, film and wrestling ephemera, music, outsider art and in fact most aspects of popular culture.

He is a driven champion of modern creativity and amongst his greatest passions is an undiagnosed compulsion to collect original art.

Bray was in on the start of the Underground Commix revolution, smuggling comics to stores back when they were still illegal. He’s the guy who first brought Carl Barks out of retirement and bought his very first Duck painting, showed us young kids the astounding art of Basil Wolverton and won belated fame for retired sculptor, draughtsman and philosopher Stanislav Szukalski.

The inveterate fan’s been quietly amassing mementos and knowledge from his California home since 1965 and has subsequently become the premiere cultural archivist, educator, publisher and patron of some of the most influential artists in graphics and sequential art. He also cherishes the works of creators we’ve forgotten and those who should be famous but just aren’t.

Yet.

Moreover, by befriending, interviewing, recording and always freely sharing his collection and studies of the people he’s admired – and often supported – Bray established the basis for most of today’s scholastic and journalistic resources and records, used by practically all of us expounding and propounding the joys of comics and illustrative narrative.

This astounding monolithic hardback (410 gleaming, glossy 302 x 268mm pages with some eye-popping 6-stage fold-outs) is teeming with photos of people, places and things that have captivated the preserver of everything our bigoted teachers, pontificating, bastions of the Old Guard and smug Social Betters always told us had no worth, merit or value…

Most importantly of course (for us here at least) are his hundreds of examples of art – all shot here from the originals in Bray’s frankly unbelievable collection – a veritable museum (and feeling as heavy as one) of genius in your hands: a pantheon of comics achievement, each and every one gathered and preserved for only one reason: because Glenn liked it…

Illustration superstar Robert Williams’ historical biography ‘The Archive of Lost Souls’ starts the show, after which author and publisher Todd Hignite offers an informative commentary in ‘Who Enters Here Leaves Hope Behind’, but the true nature and devotion of the collector really comes through in ‘The Glenn Bray Interview’ by Doug Harvey (artist and Art Critic for the LA Times and Art Issues) before the true wonder unfolds in the exotic, eclectic, picture-packed pages which follow.

This is an imposing and shockingly beautiful compendium no lover of the medium could possibly ignore, and it’s not all Bray has in terms of Art, artefacts, funny books or ephemera. Perhaps there’s a sequel or companion compendium to come…

That’s how I usually wrap up one of these reviews and it should be enough to convince you to get The Blighted Eye immediately if not sooner, but I’d kick myself if I didn’t list the artists whose works appear here.

So, whether a single page and/or panel or many different pieces, each of these masters and journeymen deserve a mention and you can read on or stop here.

Charles Addams, Rick Altergott, Bob Armstrong, Boris Artzybasheff, Carl Barks (so wonderfully many), Art Bartsch, H.M. Bateman Hand Bellmer, Mark Beyer, Jack Bilbo, Gene Bilbrew, Mahlon Blaine, Al Bryant, R.O. Blechman and Charles Burns.

Ernesto Cabral, E.H. Caldwell Studio, Al Capp, Serge Clerc, Dan Clowes, Ron Cobb, Jack Cole (another host of stunning volume and variety), Astley David Montague Cooper, Robert Crumb, Xavier Cugat, Jack Davis, Gene, Kim and Simon Deitch.

Bray was instrumental in popularising the European Krampus tradition and ‘Devil Cards’ features a sub-exhibition of examples of the Christmas Devil by Kim Deitch, Coop, Bob Armstrong, Spain, Mark Beyer, Carol Lay, Charles Burns, Drew Friedman, Rick Griffin, Hunt Emerson, Jan Ross, Gary Leib, Robert Williams, Bill Ward, J.D. King, Evert Geradts, XNO, S. Clay Wilson, Crumb, Ever Meulen, Peter Pontiac, Savage Pencil, Norman Pettingill, Byron Werner & Karl Wills.

The greater precession resumes with Gustave Doré, Pascal Doury, Albert Durbout, Bill Elder, Vince Fago, John Fawcett, Al Feldstein, Virgil Finlay, Kelly Freas, lots more Drew Friedman, Ernst Fuchs, a wealth of Evert Geradts, Eugenie Goldschmeding  Chester Gould and Vernon Grant.

Underground icon Justin Green is followed by a quartet of stylish noir book covers by Gerald Gregg and many pieces by boon companion Rick Griffin plus pieces by Bill Griffith, Milt Gross, George Grosz, Olaf Gulbrannson, V.T. Hamlin, Harman Ising Productions, Yoshifumi Hayashi, Geoffrey Hayes and tragic underground pioneer Rory Hayes.

There’s Russ Heath, Jaime Hernandez, George Herriman, Ryan Heshka, Al Hirshfeld, Alfred Hitchcock (yes really! Him!). Then see some Bill (Smokey Stover) Holman, Lawrence Hubbard, Graham Ingels, Cameron Jamie, Russ Johnson, Daniel Johnston, Andrew Jones, Kaz, Ota Keiti, Hank Ketchum, Frank King, Marian Konarski, Bernie Krigstein and the inimitable Harvey Kurtzman.

Stanley Link, Lippert Pictures, Bobby London, Travis Louie, Jay Lynch, Don Martin, Jefferson Machamer, Donald McGill, Otto Mesmer, Ever Meulen, Zach Mosely, Willard Mullin, Alan Odle, Jim Osborne and much, much Gary Panter.

A stunning selection of vintage Virgil Partch is followed by Mervyn Peake, Savage Pencil and Norman Pettingill. Dutch master Peter Pontiac follows, as does Richard Powers, George Price, Roger Price and Jacques Pyon as well as Gardner Rea, Bruno Richard, W. Heath Robinson and Charles Rodrigues.

See also Jan Ross, Big Daddy Roth, Antonio Rubino, Jenny Ryan and the iconoclastic Johnny Ryan. Bud Sagendorf, F. San Millan, Charles Schneider, Charles Schulz, Jim Shaw, Gilbert Shelton, Marc Smeets, Clark Ashton Smith, Otto Soglow, “Spain” Rodriguez, Irving Spector, Cliff Sterrett, G.E. Studdy, Joost Swarte, Stanislav Szukalski, Richard Taylor, Roy Tomkins, Jill Tipping, Tomi Ungerer and Irving Tripp & John Stanley.

Next follows another fascinating sub-section devoted to ‘Unknown Artists’ listed by a single nom-de-plume – just their work or no name – which includes Bubba ’69, Heilman, J. Ford, D.C. Lucchesi, J. Kennedy, Jaro, Kringo, Mr. Harrell Lee Littrel, P.J. McGivern, David Moore, Panchi, Dennis Rushton, R.H.L., Smith, E.A. Sojay and Weird Wanda (Doreen Ross).

Our voyage of discovery recommences with stuff from Jeffrey Vallance, Hans Van Bentem, Bob Van Den Born, Vica (Vincent Krazousky), George William Wakefield, Ray Walters, Bill Ward, Chris Ware, Byron Werner, a sublime spread of Ogden Whitney ‘Herbie’ pages, Gluyas Williams, Robert Williams, Skip Williamson, Karl Wills, Gahan Wilson, S. Clay Wilson, an apocalyptic selection of Basil Wolverton masterworks, Lawson Wood, Wallace Wood, Jim Woodring, XNO, cartoon colossus Art Young and Bob Zoell.

Surely after reading all that you need some great pictures to look at? So go buy the book and ease your Blighted Eye…

The Blighted Eye © 2014 Fantagraphics Books. All images © 2014 their respective creators or Estates where appropriate. All rights reserved.

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Uber


By Kieron Gillen, Canaan White & Keith Williams (Avatar Press)
ISBN: 978-1-59291-218-6

There’s something of an immediately post-WWII zeitgeist in effect in Britain at the moment: exhibitions, documentaries, a few exceedingly good TV dramas (Bletchley Circle, Murder on the Home Front, Foyle’s War) and even some comics.

Being British, writer Kieron Gillen grew up reading war comics like Battle and so has our peculiarly manic and trenchant viewpoint – engendered by the works of Pat Mills, John Wagner, Tom Tully, Alan Hebden and Gerry Finley-Day – to augment his own uniquely dark and sardonic imagination, previously displayed in strips and comics as varied as Phonogram, Save Point, Dark Avengers: Ares, Thor, Uncanny X-Men, Iron Man and many more.

Now he has applied the implausible metahuman trappings of the American superhero comicbook to the bleak, gritty, apocalyptically human scaled drama of “the Last Good War” to produce a vicious, nasty and utterly enthralling sci-fi-tinged epic of staggering scope and power.

This first full-colour trade paperback compilation, illustrated with stark, gory verve by Canaan White & Keith Williams, collects issues #0-5, and posits a much debated “What If…?” as Germany’s Götterdämmerung is averted at the very last moment by a very nasty miracle…

Blending scrupulous historical research with a canny take on human nature, the story begins with the triumphant Russians barbarously overrunning Berlin on the night of April 24th 1945, even as arch-patriot General Sankt delivers at long last a handful of incomprehensible human weapons to General Heinz Guderian, just as that demoralised, defeated Reichsmann readies himself for the end.

Five days later in a secret base near the Swiss border, a trusted scientist for Projekt U murders her former colleagues and sabotages the outpost before dashing towards the advancing American forces, carrying an incredible secret…

With Hitler putting a gun into his mouth word comes of an impossible turnaround. The human “Battleships” Siegmund, Siegfried and Seiglinde, supplemented by lesser supermen and wonder women, have ravaged and repulsed the despised subhuman Soviets…

The Generals realise even these Wunderwaffen (the result of years of ruthless research) cannot reverse Germany’s fate, but by their ghastly actions and uncanny efforts the nation may be able to negotiate a favourable armistice that won’t leave the country broken forever.

Der Fuhrer, however, totally demented and wantonly vengeful, wants Grand Opera outcomes: Wagnerian Cataclysm and the world made into a rubble heap that would make Berlin seem merely scratched…

The madman appals his closest cronies when he orders Seigfried to execute a million Russian prisoners of war before despatching his ghastly Hell-kinder to destroy Paris and resume his holy war on Russia.

Meanwhile British spy Stephanie has made it back to England – having en route despatched two of the Ãœbermensch she helped create – and convinced Winston Churchill to fast-track the Allies’ own Human Tank project.

To facilitate this, she had brought stolen samples of the transformative crystalline chemical Woden’s Blood and copies of artefacts and documents used by Nazi scientist Professor Metzger.

The ancient – possibly extraterrestrial – inscriptions and records the biochemist was working from go to BletchleyPark where brilliant cryptologist Alan Turing lets his new Electronic Brain loose on deciphering the still untranslated majority of the writings…

Woden’s Blood only upgrades 1 in every 5000 humans, and needs repeated, gradual applications, but even so the harried Allies still find enough volunteers to get the ball rolling, and as weeks pass they slowly become a plausible answer to the now limited and stalled German superhuman project.

In the intervening time, Battleship Sieglinde has led her less-developed and incomplete Mark 2 comrades in the march upon so-recently liberated Paris to carry out Hitler’s demands for punishment. Now as the fanatical Ãœber Soldaten prepare to raze the city they are ambushed by a hastily prepared Expeditionary Force of Anglo American Human Tanks.

They are not enough…

To Be Continued…

Savage, brutal and visually shocking, this stunning, doom-drenched drama crackles with tension, drips with mystery and suspense and comes with a chilling 20+ page gallery of covers, variants and ancillary artwork, and will appeal to lovers of fantasy fiction and unreal war stories alike…

© 2013 Avatar Press Inc. Uber and all related properties ™ & © 2013 Avatar Press Inc.
Uber will be released on April 1st 2014

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566 Frames


By Dennis Wojda (Borderline Press)
ISBN: 978-0-99269-720-4

Every now and then – but typically, not nearly often enough – the global comics scene throws out a project with the potential to redefine the industry.

Tintin, A Contract with God, Ghost World, Fun Home, Watchmen, Love and Rockets, Lone Wolf and Cub, From Hell, Fax from Sarajevo, Persepolis, Maus and some few others reached vast non comics-reading audiences in their time, serving to justify and legitimise a narrative discipline that had claimed since its creation to be an actual Art Form.

By all accounts author Dennis Wojda – already an established star of the Polish comics establishment – one day decided to do something to creatively stretch himself and opted to turn snippets of his family history into a daily cartoon on his web-page, scheduled to run for the classically significant “a year and a day”.

It proved immensely popular, so much so that publishers expressed interest in a book, but 366 panels weren’t really enough.

No problem: families always have plenty more history…

As you’ll see when you read the book, Wojda was actually born in Stockholm on March 13th 1973, before returning to Poland to become a writer, designer and graphic artist.

He’s appeared in Gazeta Wyborcza, AktiviÅ›cie, Exklusiv, Bravo, Skate, Ha! Arcie, Arena Comics and Jabber, winning plenty of praise and a few awards for such series as Mikropolis (with artist Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz: collected in two volumes as The Tourist Guide and Mohair Dreams), Chair in Hell, The Supernaturals: Miss Hofmokl’s Shoe (with Krzysztof Ostrowski), A European on the Road (written by J. Sanecka) and Ghost Kids: the Ribbon (illustrated by Sebastian Skrobol) amongst others.

At the end of 2013 British publisher Borderline Press sagely added the now expanded 566 Frames to its burgeoning stable of titles, giving English readers the opportunity to see one of the most beguiling and lyrical examples of comics autobiography ever produced…

Mixing time frames and viewpoints – including many wise pronouncements and predictions from his own time as a foetus in the womb – the tale begins and ends with the birth of the author.

In between then Dennis smoothly skips up and down the family tree, describing his pregnant mother’s drive to Sweden so that he could be born with his absent-and-working-abroad father (who was hedonistically trapped being a wandering, semi- failed pop star in Swinging Scandinavia), and the sort-of psychic grandmother who knew how, when and where to meet her…

There are memories – his and his ancestors’ – of little moments and huge crises, parties and pogroms and many, many conquests – both romantic and geopolitical – as an odd assortment of branches and buds thrive and survive under a variety of invaders and overlords from Tsarist Russians to Hitler’s Nazis to Soviet Russians: always finding that whatever may happen, the music of life plays on…

Don’t be fooled, however. This is no idle panegyric about the good old days. There’s a formidable amount of sex, death, struggle, fear, privation, terror, envy and heartbreak to season the surreal whimsy, diverted daydreams, folksy philosophy and chatty monologue…

And music: everything from Polkas to Jazz to Jimi Hendrix…

With only 566 Frames Wojda has worked his own brand of visual Magic Realism (as previously best expressed in English language comics by Gilbert Hernandez) and this wondrous, mesmerising, intoxicating invitation to share a slice of other lives and times is a book no lover of the medium or citizen of the world should miss.
© Dennis Wojda. All rights reserved.

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The Complete Accident Man


By Pat Mills, Tony Skinner, Martin Emond, Duke Mighten & John Erasmus (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-055-9

We have our share of true blue heroes in Britain, but what we really do best are rakish rogues and cast-iron bastards – both in dull old fact and the much safer realm of fiction.

A fair few of the comics kind have stemmed from the febrile mind of Pat Mills, a man whose singular vision has scarred many an impressionable reader’s psyche…

Now one of his most stylish and far-ranging creations – co-crafted with writing partner Tony Skinner – has been awarded some-long delayed and much-deserved star treatment in the form of a lavish oversized colour hardback compilation from Titan Comics.

In many ways Michael Fallon is a product of his times (the 1990s): a ruthless, flashy, grasping Yuppie who thinks he cares about nothing but his job, instant gratification and the gaudy in-your-face trappings of his success.

That’s unpleasant enough if the antagonist is a Banker, a Broker or Hedge Fund Manager, but Mike is a dedicated proud artisan. He makes human impediments go away – and always makes it look like mischance, not murder…

Accident Man debuted in short-lived, creator-owned British independent comic Toxic! (which ran for 31 full-colour issues between March and October 1991). Easily the most popular feature, he also starred in a reprint special – Apocalypse Presents: Accident Man – and in 1993 crossed The Pond for an all-new 3-part monochrome miniseries from American publisher Dark Horse Comics.

This chilling compendium commences with Mills’ Introduction ‘Rhubarb! Rhubarb! Rhubarb!’ describing the convoluted history of the character and teasingly discussing the still-not-made movie, before the cartoon carnage calamitously starts to unfold in the Martin Emond illustrated introductory saga (from Toxic! #1-6) wherein hubristic hitman Fallon explains and simultaneously demonstrates his particular skill-set whilst evoking the golden rules of the job “Never Get Angry. Never Get Involved. Never Get Caught”…

A successful – for which read undetectable – intervention usually fills him with PMT (Post Murder Tension) most successfully expunged through lavish spending and extreme gratuitous physical violence, but these days something’s not right.

The shallow Fashionista didn’t really care when his wife Jill left him to shack up with another woman and join those loony save-the-planet eco nuts in Women Against the Rape of the Planet, but for some strange reason he can’t stop thinking about her now that she’s been killed in a burglary…

He carries on arranging fatal improbabilities but the joie de vivre has gone, and when he finally works out that Jill’s break-in is the M.O. of fellow assassins Chris and Jim it sets him on a bizarre course that leads to an alliance with Hilary – the “Other Woman” – to take profitless vengeance on the corporate scum really responsible…

More or less his old self again Fallon returned in ‘Death Touch’ (Toxic! #10-16, illustrated by Duke Mighten), drowning in natty threads and conspicuous consumption whilst pursuing his craft and studying with a martial arts master who had promised to teach him the legendary art of killing with a time-delayed kung fu punch…

After scooping his fourth consecutive gong for Most Hits in a Year at the annual Golden Coffin Awards, he begins his next commission – a particularly nasty drug dealer with no respect for animals but a sick, devoted and unforgiving family- utterly unaware that his Sensei Sifu Lo has discovered his profession and deemed him unworthy…

John Erasmus took over the art for ‘The Messiah Sting’ (from Toxic! #17-24) as the woman who seduced Jill away cons the Accident Man into doing worse than murder to David Dake – the Junior Minister for the Environment… and for free!

Hilary is a fanatic in the service of WARP and has a baroque plan to punish the ostensibly “Green” Tory politician who actually protects animal torturers and destroys the countryside he’s supposed to be fighting for, but when Mike gets involved it soon devolves into an explosive confrontation with obnoxious American agents, hookers, rival hitmen, a burgeoning criminal turf war, kung fu killers, drug dealers and the destruction of scenic downtown Amsterdam.

And there’s even a sneaky glimpse at out antihero’s early days…

Iconoclastic Howard Chaykin created the risqué and raucous colour covers for the aforementioned Dark Horse miniseries and they seditiously precede the final saga in this magnificent murder file as Mike Fallon takes his particular brand of Olde Worlde charm across the pond – via Concorde, of course – for a job commissioned by a clandestine Government agency: the Special Assassinations Bureau (limned in stark monochrome by Mighten)…

In the Accident Man’s line of business it’s best to be adaptable and always assume everybody is a liar. After an unexpected and exotic liaison with CIA insider Mirror Morgan, Mike hits the Big Apple’s most outrageous sex club and learns his target is a corrupt Senator…

Arranging the improbable with his usual élan, Mike is only seconds away from unknowingly eradicating the chief of the CIA when he spots Mirror with his soon to be tragically deceased mark, and is forced to spectacularly avert his programmed mishap.

CIA boss John Archer is perfectly reasonable and understanding. He knows how easy it is to be duped in the murky world of espionage and international crime. He’s also happy to let Mike go… but only after the misfortune magnate works his magic on the untouchable Capo di Tutti Capo of the Mafia…

And naturally it’s another bloody freebie…

The glitzy sex and shocking violence mounts exponentially as Fallon infiltrates the Mob, winning more enemies than friends along the grisly way, and even after that job’s sorted he still has a bone to pick with the far-from-fair Broker from SAB…

Overwhelmingly violent, manically inventive and ridiculously addictive, this is a lost gem of anarchic, swingeing satire from Mills and Co, and well worthy of this splendid definitive collection. Also included here is a copious Accident Man Sketchbook section featuring cover roughs, page layouts and character designs as well as the now obligatory lowdown on the creative Usual Suspects.

Highly sexed, infallibly capable and ruthless style obsessed, the flashily fashionable assassin is James Bond on the wrong side – his own – and delivers action, intrigue and bold, black humour in astounding amounts…

Don’t leave anything to chance: check him out…
Accident Man is ™ & © 2014 Pat Mills and Tony Skinner. Accident Man Book One © 2014 Pat Mills, Tony Skinner & Martin Emond. Accident Man Death Touch © 2014 Pat Mills, Tony Skinner & Duke Mighten. Accident Man Book Three © 2014 Pat Mills, Tony Skinner & John Erasmus. Accident Man (Dark Horse) Pat Mills, Tony Skinner & Duke Mighten.

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Starling


By Sage Stossel (Penguin/InkLit)
ISBN: 978-0-42526-631-1

Once upon a time only little boys (of any age from 3 to 90) liked superheroes.

That’s all different now.

Just like always, girls eventually steal boy’s stuff and break it or point out how stupid it is and ruin it or decorate and fancy it up so that it makes proper sense and is generally better, but it was still ours first though…

Let’s start again.

Sage Stossel is a children’s book author (On the Loose in Boston, On the Loose in Washington DC, We’re Off to Harvard Square), editorial cartoonist (Sage, Ink.) and Editor at The Atlantic, whose smart, wry, ostensibly innocuous efforts have also appeared in The Boston Globe, CNN Headline News, New York Times Week in Review and scads of other extremely prominent and worthily impressive places.

A native Bostonian, she majored in English and American Literature and Languages at Harvard where she permanently succumbed to the cartooning bug, producing student-life strip Jody for The Harvard Crimson. She was instrumental in creating The Atlantic‘s online iteration.

Starling is her first graphic novel and superbly takes a knowing sideswipe at the world’s newest fiction archetype, cleverly delving deep into the psyche of the kind of person who might actually fight crime if they had superpowers and how such a “career” might actually impact upon a sensible person.

Stossel also manages to tell a winning story about overcoming adversity, finding oneself and even having a shot at achieving true love, all lovingly ladled out in a savvy, self-deprecating, droll, artfully humorous manner…

Amy Sturgess has a secret. Up until now she’s only shared it all with her therapist, but balancing her job in the back-stabbing world of Marketing with the constant demands of the Vigilante Justice Association (who perpetually text her about occurring crimes she’s expected to foil immediately, no matter what she’s doing) is taking its toll.

At the Agency, a conniving male co-worker is actively stealing her work and sabotaging her career. Her cat-hoarder mom lives in a world of her own. Her brother Noah is a druggie lowlife – but at least he’s trying to get his life together, whilst her own (especially as regards dating) is a stalled and floundering disaster…

No wonder she relies so heavily on prescription meds and is plagued by bouts of crippling procrastination…

Things take a tortured upturn when her college sweetheart resurfaces. Russell is married to a wonderful woman (who actually becomes one of Amy’s best friends) but is clearly trying to rekindle those heady student passions with Amy and the situation soon begins to affect both sides of Amy’s work.

B-list costumed crusader Starling even begins to let certain offenders go: robbers stealing from banks who repossessed their homes, a homeless man trying to free his dog from the Animal Control impound…

A crisis point is reached when rival gangs begin a turf war and a modern Artwork is stolen. It doesn’t take much investigation to link Noah to both crimes, but when he disappears and Starling frantically hunts for him, she is incessantly stymied and interrupted by the hunky rogue and illicit gambling organiser Matt McRae.

The enigmatic hustler seems to have connected Amy to Starling and says he only wants to help, but he’s a crook.

A really, really good-looking, apparently unattached crook…

Amy isn’t Wonder Woman or Ms. Marvel. She’s just a well-intentioned young woman who found she was different and got pushed into a second (full time, secret and unpaid) career when she couldn’t even decide on how to make her first one work.

Now she has a really serious crime to solve, a brother to save, a romantic triangle to square and an unsuitable suitor to sort out…

Moe RomCom than Summer Blockbuster, Starling is a slow-paced, lovingly crafted, laconic, ironic and purely humorous tonic for lovers of the medium reared on adolescent wish-fulfilling, juvenile male power-fantasies who now yearn for something a little different, and even deliciously points out all the reasons why superheroes are dumb before wittily showing how that’s not necessarily bad and showing one way of making them better…
© 2013 Sage Stossel.

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Mitch O’Connell: World’s Best Artist

Mitch O'Connell ft
By Mitch O’Connell (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-773-0

Some artists can be said to epitomise an era, their works forever evoking the time and style and flavour of a discreet age, whilst others have the equally impressive gift of being able to recapitulate and reinvent uniquely iconic times in a way that makes them new and fresh again.

Mitch O’Connell is the very best of the latter: a commercial illustrator and canny cultural scavenger whose slick blend of caricature, pop iconography and surreal whimsy samples the Rock & Roll’s 1950s, sexily Swinging Sixties, surreal Seventies, Expressive, obsessive Eighties and anything beyond or between with amazing panache and witty self-absorption.

His slick, inviting style elevates all his works – whether commissioned graphics, narrative expression or “Capital A” art – into unmissable events, and proves that he’s a creator who can readily navigate between unfailing paintslinger-for-hire and hoity-toity, fancy-shmancy gallery godling.

He has been called the “Prince of Pop Art”…

All his works are characterised by unprecedented heights of verve and dash, saucy opportunism, mordant grim wit and acres of cruelly wry, good-natured humour.

He has created stylish comics and graphic novels, compelling illustration, package design, RPG boxes, album, book and magazine covers, posters, tattoo art and even highly personal pieces for gallery shows – and now a superb selection of his 30-plus year career has been herded into an attractive, peculiarly idiosyncratic and extremely funny biography and retrospective art book (so funny, in fact that the publishers thought it wise to cover the book in what feels disturbingly like a wash-&-wear polymer prophylactic, presumably  in case of any spit-take incidents…).

Simply bulging with astounding photos, drawings and full-colour paintings of monsters, sexy devils, naked men and women, cute kitties, famous stars, comics and mercilessly spoofed licensed properties from the Flintstones to Batman, Atom Ant to Elvis, the hysterical historical hagiography opens with ‘Born This Way – On the Right Track Baby’ and a selective glimpse at Li’l Mitchell’s early days of drawing dinosaurs and superheroes…

Some semblance of discipline descends in ‘Draw “Winky” – Art Instruction School’, a trawl through academia including a telling catalogue of grateful acknowledgments listed as ‘You’re the Inspiration’ (an eclectic assemblage which comprises Bernie Wrightson, J.C. Leyendecker, Ivan Albright and Franz Fruzyna amongst others) before venturing out into the harsh and competitive arena of freelance commercial art…

‘Hey!! Kids – Comics’ follows the path from fanzine-maker to participant in the Eighties independent comics publishing boom, depicting his stunning painted covers for such titles as Johnny Dynamite, The Terminator, Speed Racer, The World of Ginger Fox and so many more, plus selected interior pages from Heavy Metal and his own later self-penned works plus early self-advertising successes and his numerous clip art contributions, whilst ‘Fit to Print – Publications’ catalogues a host of glorious efforts for magazines as varied as The Village Voice, Playboy, Chicago Tribune, The Quill, Saturday Evening Post, Seventeen, Rolling Stone and Newsweek as well as a selection of clever contributions to the adult magazine market.

O’Connell has created hundreds of unforgettable posters and album/single covers for musical acts and ‘Rock Icons – Music’ reprints many of the very best from bands like Less Than Jake, Supersuckers, The Ramones and more, after which more bedroom wall-covering wonderment is revealed in ‘Hang-Ups – Posters’ and ‘As Seen on TV – Advertising’ which charts his vast canon of stylish product art: everything from holiday brochures for Las Vegas to fascinating and shocking re-branding exercises for beloved Hanna Barbera and Warner Brothers cartoon icons…

In a surprisingly candid manner, O’Connell relates the familial crisis which overtook him and altered the tone and context of his long and varied career as a Gallery artist in ‘Exhibitionist – Wall Accessories’ whilst ‘Skin Deep – “Flash” Tattoo Art’ delineates his forays into skin-as-canvas before everything wraps up with a beguiling peek at the creator’s home and studio in ‘Magical Mystery Tour – Home Sweet Home’: a wonderland of toys, found objects, old magazines and the world’s largest collection of really scary shop dummies and mannequins…

Beautiful, shocking, funny and engagingly intimate, this huge compendium of glossy, sparkling painting and storytelling is a truly inspirational glimpse at a true creative wunderkind and no lover of pop, kitsch, nostalgia and/or graphic excellence should be deprived of it.
All text and illustrations © 2012 Mitch O’Connell except where otherwise noted. All rights reserved.