Category: Mature Reading

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Snowpiercer volume 2: The Explorers


By Benjamin Legrand & Jean-Marc Rochette, translated by Virginie Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978 -1-78276-136-5

Like the times that produced it, the Franco-Belgian comics classic Le Transperceneige was a troubled and ill-starred beast. The tale was originally conceived by prolific veteran scripter and occasional cartoonist Jacques Lob to be illustrated by his Superdupont collaborator Alexis (Dominique Vallet) but the artist’s untimely death on 7th September 1977 stalled the project until 1982 when painter, comics artist and book illustrator Jean-Marc Rochette (Pinocchio, Le petit poucet, Le chat botté, Candide, Le Dépoteur de Chrysanthèmes, Edmond le Cochon, Requiem Blanc) came aboard.

The delayed apocalyptic epic then ran in À Suivre in 1982 and 1983, with a collected edition published in 1984.

Although popular the sequel was not forthcoming until long after Lob died in 1990, whereafter Benjamin Legrand took up the concept with Rochette, producing two more epic tales of the Last Train to Nowhere…

No stranger to comics, Legrand (Lone Sloane, White Requiem, Gold & Spirit) is also a major mainstream prose author and French-language translator of such luminaries as Milton Caniff, R. Crumb, Robert Ludlum, Tom Wolfe, John Grisham and Nelson DeMille amongst many others. This varied background brought an edgy thriller-writing sensibility to the austere high concept of the original dystopian tomorrow mix…

With the imminent UK release of the movie Snowpiercer, Titan Comics (whose other translated offerings include The Hunting Party, Blueberry and other assorted classics by Enki Bilal, Moebius and others) have brought the entire three album masterpiece to our parochial Anglo-centric attention in two lavishly luxurious monochrome hardbacks. Both of Legrand & Rochette’s cool collaborations are here combined into a stunning collection of bleak and chilling End of the World turmoil: in one stunning, sturdy volume, as a companion to Snowpiercer book 1: The Escape.

In that original tale a new Ice Age had instantaneously descended over Earth and a microcosm of humanity rushed onto a vast vacation super-train repurposed as an ever-running ark of survival. As that monolithic futuristic engine began a never-ending circumambulation on tracks originally designed to offer the idle rich the ultimate pleasure cruise, the people rich, lucky or ruthless enough to secure a place quickly settled into their old pre-disaster niches and original divisive social stratifications.

Life continued for decades in this manner until a bold outcast named Proloff escaped from the sealed nether-end carriages, travelling the length of the 1001 cars pulled by the mysterious miracle of modern engineering. He acquired a romantic companion, clashed with the Military and Elite’s hierarchies, inadvertently sowing deadly discord until he reached the Engine herself and discovered the uncanny secret of the machine called “Olga”…

The drama now resumes in Snowpiercer book 2: The Explorers (originally serialised as Le Transperceneige: L’arpenteur in 1999) with a stunning revelation.

Soon after that train first sealed itself from the world and departed, a second, better equipped life-preserving cortège took off after it. Perpetually trailing the original, the denizens of the second Snowpiercer have also devolved into a far-from-homogeneous society: one also crippled by the overwhelming fear that they will inevitably smash into their forerunner one day…

Snowpiercer 2 has many modifications missing from the original. Designed as an icebreaker, the train also boasts radar detection systems, one-man short-hop flying modules and is able to brake and stop, allowing the hardiest individuals to debark and briefly scavenge amongst the frozen ruins of the world that’s gone…

There’s also a far more savvy autocracy in charge; scrupulously managing the disparate elements of the rolling society. Carefully constructed hologram adventures and TV shows placate passengers of all classes, an oligarchic Council manages every aspect of existence, a religion has been created to dole out hope, passive acceptance and guilt as required and the rulers run a gambling racket which provides a safe outlet for the lowest of the low…

Explorers have a short life expectancy and are highly expendable, but generally bring back far more flashy trinkets for the wealthy than salvaged food, drugs or technology for the masses.

The constant fear of collision has produced malcontents, cynics, terrorists, a huge need for anti-depressants and increasing incidents of a deranged group psychosis in many carriage dwellers. “Cosmosians” are gripped by a sure and certain belief that the entire vehicle is actually a spaceship hurtling through hard vacuum, rather than a wheeled entourage braving mere minus-130 degree wind and snow.

The terrifying panic which resulted from the first test-braking 15 years previously still scars most psyches but life on the rails is generally improving. Council head Kennel is delighted to learn that surface temperatures outside are slowly rising again (-121 in some places!), the birth rate is still successfully and voluntarily restricted whilst recycling, meat and agriculture output are at record levels.

Moreover his own daughter Val is constantly coming up with new and exciting Virtual Environment programs for the winners of the ubiquitous gambling contests to enjoy: histories, fantasies and adventures all enthral the Proles and keep them slavishly betting in hope of winning new and stimulating diversions…

Her latest idea is a bit of a shocker though: she wants to reproduce what the Explorers experience when they leave the train…

Despite her father refusing the request Val decides to go ahead anyway and sneaks back to the carriages where Reverend Dicksen is administering the blessing of Saint Loco upon the suicidal scavengers in preparation for their next foray.

As she spies on them she is accosted by the increasingly unstable Metronome – spiritual leader of the breakaway Cosmosian sect – but ignores his warnings, set on learning more about the anonymous stalwarts who risk their lives for medicines for the masses.

Explorer Puig Vallès is not an idealist. As the third-class grunt fatalistically trudges back from a deep-frozen museum, he is one of only four survivors of yet another art raid, stealing useless treasures for the coffers of the elite “Fronters”. His surly rebelliousness and smart mouth soon get him into hot water and he is arrested…

Uncaring of the trouble he’s in or the cheap price of lower class life, Puig is intercepted by Val, whose status and family connections allow her to do almost anything she desires – even interviewing a disgraced Explorer.

Fate seems to be against her, though, as Puig is promptly announced as a winner in the Lucky Lady lottery. His prize is not a virtual vacation, but the “honour” of piloting one of the deteriorating fliers on an exploratory (AKA suicide) mission to see if Snowpiercer 1 is stalled on the tracks up ahead…

And in a dark and gloomy carriage, Metronome and his acolytes finish a bomb that will divert the hurtling spacecraft from its present course and towards the “promised planet”…

Puig knows he’s been set up to die and breaks free, stealing a gun and running for he knows not where, but is captured after a ferocious fire-fight. Val, meanwhile, has discovered that the train’s archives and historical records have been doctored: there’s evidence of anti-fertility drugs being added to the water, and that momentous day 15 years ago when she personally witnessed the death of Puig’s parents has been somehow deleted…

Near the front, the eternally vigilant “Radarists” have spotted a crisis which needs confirmation. A vast bridge pings back as damaged, but on-site inspection is vital to avoid disaster. Val clandestinely confers with Puig, just before the disgraced Explorer is subjected to a kangaroo court and charged with causing the deaths of the other Explorers in his team.

His guilt a foregone conclusion, he is sentenced to Community Service and ordered to fly a flimsy, malfunctioning scout plane to inspect the failing span ahead of the train.

His terrifying sortie confirms the radar data, and the train frantically brakes to avoid disaster. However, by the time Puig turns the plane back, the Icebreaker has switched to full reverse and is speeding away. Determined not to die, he gives chase in the dying flier, and miraculously travels through a brief burst of sunlight.

Shocked and galvanised he nurses the plane onward, even avoiding anti-aircraft fire from the train and discovers that his rolling home has a super engine at each end…

He threatens to crash the plane into the retreating cars and, as the Council deliberate the potential harm he might cause, Val – listening in on tapped lines – broadcasts the conversation to the entire populace.

Consummate politician Councillor Kennel does the only thing possible: regaining public support by proclaiming Puig a hero and taking him fully into the elite’s confidence by sharing all the Train Elite’s secrets with him.

As a Councillor, the rebel anarchist has no choice but to become a co-conspirator and in a horrifying moment of revelation meets an elderly Explorer who describes how the first “braking” was actually the collision everyone has dreaded for years. The original Snowpiercer is now the rear end of their own vastly snaking train. Every moment of fear and anticipation since than has been manufactured to control the people…

The chilling triptych concludes in the immediately-following Snowpiercer Book 3: The Crossing (serialised in 2000 as Le Transperceneige: La traversée) as Puig chafes under a burden of secrets and his new role as Councillor, but one with far less power than the established members.

At least he no longer fears a collision that can never happen, but his sense of threat has not diminished, but rather widened…

When Metronome’s fanatics finally detonate their bomb at the North End of Upper Second-Class, the explosion wrecks the train braking system. Naturally Puig leads a reconnaissance expedition, allowing adversarial Councillors Reverend Dicksen and fellow hardliner The General opportunity to assassinate the Explorer upstart whilst he is occupied cutting free the destroyed cars, effectively chopping the train – and humanity – in half.

As frantic evacuation procedures take effect, the Reverend dispatches fanatical cold-resistant children he’s been training to dispatch the despised enemy, but even clinging to roof of a rocketing carriage in lethal freezing winds Puig is far harder to kill than anybody realised…

With an Engine at either end, the two halves of the train are quickly separated by frozen miles whilst Puig covertly rejoins wife Val and leads a coup. With Dicksen and the General incarcerated and resources impossibly scant for the people crammed into their half of the train, Kennel then reveals one last piece of potentially life-changing news.

The Radarists have for some time been receiving radio transmissions from across the frozen sea. Perhaps somewhere other pockets of human civilisation exist…

Even if the rails hold firm and bridges are still passable, eventually the truncated train will collide head on with its severed other half if the passengers don’t starve, freeze or kill each other first.

With Councillor Kennel on-side and determined to preserve some vestige of the human race, the Explorer, tantalised by an impossible hope, decides to employ the train’s never-tested Snow Chain technology to leave the tracks completely and take everybody out across the ice-locked, frozen ocean in search of the originators of that beguiling transmission…

Unfortunately the bold strike into the unknown is far less dangerous than the fanatics still riding within, and even the despondent, electronic phantom of Proloff, psychically bonded to the original Snowpiercer engine as a cerebral ghost within the machine, can’t help against the bloody religious uprising fomented by Dicksen, Metronome and the General…

And there are even more deadly revelations and surprises awaiting them in the cold, dark unknown across the sea…

This harsh exploration of society in crisis is a gripping tale depicting different kinds of survival values no reader of fantasy fiction could possibly resist, and one long overdue for major public recognition.

And by reading this volume, you’ll see far more than the movie adaptation could possibly cover…
Transperceneige/Snowpiercer and all contents are ™ and © 2013 Casterman.
Snowpiercer volume 2: The Explorers is scheduled for release on February 25th 2014

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Snowpiercer volume 1: The Escape


By Jacques Lob & Jean-Marc Rochette translated by Virginie Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978- 1-78276-133-4

All science fiction is social commentary and, no matter when, where or how set, holds up a mirror to the concerns of the time of its creation. Many stories – in whatever medium – can go on to reshape the culture that spawned them.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, War of the Worlds, Metropolis, Brave New World, 1984, Dan Dare, Day of the Triffids, Star Trek, Thunderbirds, Dune, Star Wars, Stranger in a Strange Land, Solaris, Alien, Neuromancer and so many others escaped the ghetto of their genre to change the cognitive landscape of the world, and hundreds more such groundbreaking and worthy efforts would do the same if we could get enough people to read or see them.

There’s a reason why the Soviets proscribed many types of popular writing but actively encouraged (certain flavours of) Science Fiction…

And most importantly, when done well and with honesty, all such stories are also incredibly entertaining.

All over the world comics have always looked to the stars and voyaged to the future. Europe especially has long been producing spectacularly gripping and enthralling “Worlds of If…” and Franco-Belgian graphic storytelling in particular abounds with undiscovered treasures.

For every Blake & Mortimer, (Tintin’s) Destination Moon or Barbarella, Valérian & Laureline, The Airtight Garage, Jeremiah, Lone Sloane or Gods in Chaos there is an impossible hidden wealth of others, all perched tantalisingly out of reach for everybody unable or unwilling to read nothing but English.

Now however, with the imminent UK release of the movie Snowpiercer, Titan Comics (whose previous translated offerings include Storm, Towers of Bois-Maury, The Magician’s Wife and assorted classics by Enki Bilal and Moebius amongst others) have brought another long-overlooked masterpiece to our parochial Anglo-centric attention.

The original comics series – a stunning example of bleak Cold War paranoid fantasy – is released in a superb two-volume monochrome hardback set, the first of which is available now.

The original tale was serialised in 1982 in À Suivre and collected two years later as Le Transperceneige, written by Jacques Lob (Ténébrax, Submerman, Superdupont, Blanche Épiphanie, Roger Fringan and more) and rendered by painter/illustrator Jean-Marc Rochette (Le Dépoteur de Chrysanthèmes, Edmond le Cochon, Requiem Blanc, Carla, Les Aventures Psychotiques de Napoléon et Bonaparte, etc.) and the driving central conceit is brilliant and awesome.

In the near future life is harsh, oppressive and ferociously claustrophobic. As eternal winter almost instantaneously descended upon the Earth, fugitive remnants of humanity boarded a vast vacation super-train and began an eternal circumambulation of the iceball planet on railway tracks originally designed to offer the idle rich the ultimate pleasure cruise.

Due to lax security as the locomotive started its unceasing circuit of the globe, rogue elements of the poor managed to board the vehicle, but were forced by the military contingent aboard to inhabit the last of 1001 cars pulled by the miracle of engineering.

Now decades later the self-contained and self-sustaining Engine hurtles through unending polar gloom in a perpetual loop, carrying within a raw, fragmented and declining microcosm of the society that was lost to the new ice age…

All contact with the Tail-enders of the “Third Class” has been suspended ever since they tried to break through to better conditions of the middle and front carriages. Their frantic “Wild Rush” was repelled by armed guards and the survivors – who know that event as “the Massacre” – were kicked back to their rolling slums and sealed in to die…

The story proper begins as Lieutenant Zayim is called to an incident in a toilet. Somehow an individual has survived the minus 30 degree chill, climbed along the outside of the train and broken in to the centre carriages. The desperate refugee should be killed and ejected but the stunned officer receives instruction from his Colonel that the indigent – named Proloff – is to be interviewed by the leaders up in First Class.

Before that, however, the invader must be quarantined as the carriage doctor has no idea what contagions must proliferate in the squalor of the rear. But whilst Proloff is isolated, young idealistic activist Adeline Belleau forces her way into the car.

She is with a humanitarian Aid Group agitating to integrate the abandoned Tail-enders with the rest of the train, but is unceremoniously confined with the Tail-Rat and suffers the same appalling indignities as her unfortunate client…

After a “night” in custody Proloff and Adeline are cautiously escorted by Sergeant Briscard and his men through the strange and terrifying semi-autonomous carriages: each a disparate region of the ever-rolling city, contributing something to the survival of all. Travelling through each car during their slow walk, Proloff sees how humanity has uniquely adapted to the journey to nowhere, but that each little kingdom is filled with people scared, damaged and increasingly dangerous.

In one car they are even attacked by bandits…

He also begins to pick up things: a religion that worships the unlimited life-bestowing power of Saint Loco, rumours that the train is slowing down, reports that a plague has begun in the carriage he broke into. Even Adeline has picked up a cold from somewhere…

As they slowly approach the front, Proloff and Adeline grow closer, uniting against the antipathy of the incrementally better off passengers who all want the Powers-That-Be to jettison the dragging carriages packed with filthy Tail-enders…

When they at last reach the luxurious “Golden Cars” the outcasts are interviewed by military Top Brass and the President himself.

He confirms that the train is indeed slowing down and that the furthest carriages will be ditched, but wants Proloff to act as an emissary, facilitating the dispersal of the human dregs throughout the rest of the train.

Billeted with Al, the timidly innocuous Train Archivist, Historian and Librarian, Proloff quickly confirms his suspicion that he is being played. Whilst deftly avoiding the grilling regarding conditions at the train’s tail, he swaps some theories about how the ice age really began and just how coincidentally lucky it was that this prototype vacation super-train was set up, ready and waiting to save the rich and powerful… and only accidental selections of the rest of humanity…

Stoically taking in the decadent debauchery of the First Class cars, Proloff is ready to die before going back, and when word of plague and revolution provokes an attack by the paranoid autocrats, he and Adeline decide to go even further forward, to see the mighty Engine before they die.

What they find there changes everything for everyone, forever…

This incisive exploration of a delicately balanced ostensibly stable society in crisis is a sparkling allegory and punishing metaphor, playing Hell and poverty at the bottom against wealth in Heaven at the top, all seen through the eyes of a rebel who rejects both options in favour of a personal destiny and is long overdue for the kind of recognition bestowed on that hallowed list of SF greats cited above.

At least with this volume, even if the movie adaptation doesn’t do it, you’ll still have the comics source material to marvel at and adore…
Transperceneige/Snowpiercer and all contents are ™ and © 2013 Casterman.

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Wolfsmund volume 3


By Mitsuhisa Kuji, translated by Ko Ransom (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1935654-96-4

Pseudonymous woman of mystery Mitsuhisa Kuji steps up the pace in this third volume (originally seen in Japanese publication Fellows! from 2009 as Ookami no Kuchi: Wolfsmund and a tankobon edition in 2011) of her gripping and chillingly fatalistic historical drama reinterpreting the legend of William Tell.

Set in 14th century Switzerland, the serial details the struggle of three conquered alpine cantons – Uri, Unterwalden and Schwyz – for freedom and independence from the cruel, oppressive and savagely rapacious Habsburg proto-Empire.

At first this interpretation centred around the monolithic fortress Wolfsmund, situated in the Sankt Gotthard Pass: an impenetrable Keep, barrier and waystation between dangerous mountain passes which dictated and controlled the population’s ability to move – or flee, find allies, gather intelligence or stockpile war materiel.

The triple-castle complex is a crucial trade bottleneck between Germany and Italy, housing a garrison of hard-hearted soldiers commanded by a human devil with an angel’s face.

Wolfram the Bailiff is a sadistic sentinel with an infallible eye for spotting resistance: slaughtering freedom fighters and crushing the people’s hopes with baroque and monstrous flair and ingenuity.

Until now no one has survived falling under his excoriating gaze, but the lust for liberty has grown strong in the hearts of a people pushed too far for too long…

The horrific murderously medieval passion play resumes with ‘Albert and Barbara Part One’ and a spectacular display of martial arts illustration as a brother and sister, creatively maimed on Wolfram’s orders, complete their training of a very special student. Elsewhere in Lugano, on the Italian side of the mountains, the rebel force of “the Eternal Alliance” lay their final plans for taking back their land. Everything depends upon a suicide mission to take the barrier fortress and Walter, the forbidding and guilt-wracked son of the fallen liberator Wilhelm Tell…

The resistance leaders have devised a scheme for the young avenger to climb across the unforgiving mountain peaks whilst his combat-teachers sacrifice themselves as living decoys. Albert and Barbara are keenly resigned to their fate, ignoring Walter’s crushing “Survivor’s Guilt”. He has to get through to coordinate the uprising within the cantons and their lives are just a fair price for victory…

The darkly uplifting parable concludes in ‘Albert and Barbara Part Two’ as the siblings boldly introduce themselves at the gates of Wolfsmund and, by sheer bravado and indomitable courage, invade the castle, chasing Wolfram deep into the bowels of his lair.

Their audacious attack leaves them dead, surrounded by a vast harvest of fallen enemies, and their greatest triumph is that the grinning bailiff’s confident poise is shaken as, in a rush of fury, he realises too late that the true blow against him has been struck elsewhere…

In ‘Walter and the Comrades in Fate’ that realisation is revealed after flashbacks disclose the siblings’ pep talks with the valiant Tell. The scene then switches to show in harrowing detail the mountaineer’s epic re-crossing of the treacherous peaks – an act of unsurpassed heroism balanced by Wolfram’s shrewd assessment that his hidden foe can only be the legendary Wilhelm… or perhaps his missing son…

The closing chapters of this excessively graphic and visually uncompromising saga at last relate a turning of the tide as ‘Hedwig and Wilhelm’ opens with a particularly shocking sequence wherein the sadistic bailiff personally tortures Walter’s mother and younger brother seeking confirmation of his mysterious foe’s identity. The interview proves fruitless and Wolfram feels his master’s growing wrath and impatience when he is summoned to report to the Emperor Leopold…

With rebellion brewing in distant Bavaria the supreme overlord is reluctantly forced to leave the Canton situation in Wolfram’s hands… but he is far from content…

Meanwhile Walter makes his way to the rebel rendezvous where he is informed of his family’s plight. Clandestinely joining the crowds rounded up to observe the macabre and grisly executions, the doom-laden wretch can only watch helplessly as the last of his family are put to death by the grinning monster. He might however draw some shred of solace if he knew the dread which secretly grips the bailiff’s heart…

This volume concludes with the climactic ‘Hilde and the Young Cowhands’ as the long-awaited uprising begins and the populace storms and destroys the barrier station’s Southern fortress. With the castle burning the surviving soldiers flee for Wolfram’s Central Keep, unaware that on the German frontier the Northern Fort is now under attack.

Whilst an enraged mob engages the defenders with a frontal assault, Walter leads another suicidal commando raid, bolstered by the jibes of a wanton woman prepared to sacrifice everything for vengeance…

Hilde is the widow of the leader of a local trades Guild. When her husband fell victim to Wolfram’s games she dedicated herself to avenging him, and with the last of his faithful retainers began a reign of horrific reprisals which earned her the nickname “the Ripper of Schwyz”. Now she and the last two cowhands, infiltrated through the roof of the North Castle by Walter’s climbing skills, grimly make their way down to the ground floor, unstoppable engines of destruction…

When the castle falls, the last Tell understands that he not alone in his guilt, but that some things are greater than human life. And now, with both wings fallen, only Wolfram’s force remains, isolated and trapped in the central keep of Wolfsmund…

To Be Continued…

Never a tale for the faint-hearted, with this volume the saga explodes into stunning savagery, forensically examining the costs of liberty in brutally uncompromising character vignettes and breathtakingly intimate portrayals of death at close quarters.

Harsh, seductively cruel and inspirationally ferocious, this unhappy saga is probably most comfortably enjoyed by older readers and those who already know that not everybody lives happy ever after…

Wolfsmund is printed in the ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.
© 2011 Mitsuhisa Kuji. All rights reserved.

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Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers volumes 1 & 2


By Maree & J.A.H.N.
ISBNs: 978-1-4947-1244-0 & 978-1-4947-2240-1

In Britain we have a glorious tradition of Gentlemanly Amateur Excellence. In the Good Old Days we decried crass commercial professionalism in favour of gifted tryers: Scientists, Inventors, Sportsmen – even colonialists and missionaries – all those who in their time eschewed tawdry lucre, hefty development budgets and “Practicing Beforehand” (“…which ruins the fun”) in favour of just getting on with it and pluckily “Having-a-Bash”.

And a surprising number of those local heroes soared, like Charles Darwin, Robert Boyle or Henry Fox Talbot, and the tradition continues to this day like Trevor Baylis (inventor of the clockwork radio) and has spread to other areas of endeavour such as Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards or our many self-publishing stars like Eddie Campbell or John Maybury.

With such antecedents it especially generates a manly pang of pride in me when that “Can-Do Spirit” results in good comics…

So despite both creative participants here having non-resident status I’m doing them the honour of according them Notional Nationality status for the duration of this review – or as long as they can handle it…

Candidly drawing on Britain’s the venerable tradition of appalling bad-taste, surreal zaniness and shameless, protracted double entendres, Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers takes the topical taste for Zombie Apocalypse fiction and convincingly tweaks, twists and tortures (not to mention folds, spindles and mutilates) the genre and zeitgeist with wit, remorseless, sarcastic invention and cynical, surreal socio-political shots to the ‘nads.

The physical editions (the tomes are as available as Kindle editions and in other formats) are big black-&-white paperback tomes (280 x 207mm) stuffed with sly, wry innuendo and, whilst artist J.A.H.N. might have benefited from better reference material and more drawing time in places, author Maree’s trenchant pacing and remorseless parody riffs carry the tale along with frantic, furious, madcap pace…

The end of everything begins in volume 1: The Thin Goo Line where, in a faraway dimension, the world has collapsed into disaster. On this parallel Earth, vain and foolish geneticists meddled with male mating urges and accidentally spawned a virus which turned men into unthinking, out-of-control anally-fixated undead rapists. Of course, it killed them first…

In the wink of an eye civilisation fell, but one scientist built a trans-dimensional portal, intending to escape, only to fall foul of the rectal Armageddon at the very last minute and on landing transformed in another London as a fully-fledged trousers-down crusty carrier…

In the essentially Third World London Borough of Sutton, the brain-dead and preternaturally horny Apocalypse-beast arrives and immediately assaults an unwary Irishman outside a local hostelry.

Instantly infected, the traumatised Son of Erin is comforted by Basil, Rupert and Mandingo (an out-&-proud Gay Black Police Detective); passing homosexual partygoers who take pity on the stunned and shell-shocked (and dying/mutating) Kerryman. Feeling very out of sorts he goes with them for a medicinal drink or ten at their favourite night-spot…

The taint he carries works with terrifying rapidity and within hours the first victim has himself infected hundreds of eager and willing fun-seekers at the wild and woolly club…

Meanwhile his trans-dimensional transgressor has continued its own mindless rampage, only to be arrested by unbelieving coppers who catch him/it having his way with a doubled-over store mannequin. The green and mouldy incoherent invader is thrown into a cell and largely forgotten as reports rapidly come in concerning a rash of unwholesome acts in the streets…

At Sutton police station “old school copper” (for which read brutal, bigoted, bullying undiagnosed psychopath) Inspector Jake hears of the plague of Sodomy and sends his boys out to crush it, but his Manor is not a happy, rich, fashionable borough like utopian paradisiacal neighbour Croydon and he expects terrific resistance from the surly, unruly multi-cultural hoi-polloi who dwell there…

People like class-traitor Julie, a blue-blooded lass and latter-day chav, married to staunch socialist-liberal ex-aristocrat Dale, wine critic for the Workers Revolution newspaper.

She has unspecified connections to the highest in the land but prefers to slum it with her commie-pinko chums, or ultra-extreme Politically Correct roving reporter Bunting Bell of the BBC.

Jake almost prefers the deranged, greedy fundamentalist cant of Pox News journo P. Chariti, eagerly spreading panic around the globe by perpetually broadcasting scenes of what she is sure is the biblical End of Days.

Julie’s first clash with the Priapic perambulators forces her to reveal her deadly proficiency in ninja fighting arts and, barely escaping the shamblers, she dashes home to save her man from another clutch of zombies even as Inspector Jake’s attempts to reclaim his streets goes very badly wrong and his diminished force of rozzers retreats back behind the firmly clenched doors of the police station.…

With the crisis growing and an exponentially growing wave of bumbies roaming the streets, Mayor Hussein broadcasts a call for all uninfected residents – whatever their gender, race or orientation – to take refuge at the huge and sturdy Grand Mosque on Winnie Street and Jake and his men make a desperate dash to comply.

A couple of social classes away at 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister David Cameroon, Chancellor Assbourn and Homely Secretary Terry Pays are aroused from their posh-boy (and girl) games and appraised of the growing disaster somewhere in one of the poor bits of town…

As the situation worsens the triumvirate of Toffs endure a bollocking in Parliament, and wishy-washy Cameroon decides that they need to be seen doing something. However their publicity-junket to the front lines goes horrifically wrong when their helicopter goes down in hostile territory.

Trapped in Sutton and surrounded by insatiable undead rear-enders, Pays is beginning to regret her obsessive purge of police numbers when the political poltroons are surprisingly saved by turban-wearing, sword-wielding worshippers from the Mosque.

Temporarily secure behind its stout walls, they are soon joined by infamous police-hating lawyers Micky Manksfield and Inman Khant who have rushed to Sutton to make sure the rampaging monsters are not brutalised and framed by the cops…

With the country’s governors lost, Parliament is in uproar and ripe for takeover. The blow comes when Britain’s real masters brutally emerge from their shadows and cow the pewling Parliamentarians at the point of their guns.

The scraggy, reanimated remains of Dorris Stokes, Mary Whitehouse, Claire Rayner and Fanny Craddock are scary enough, but when their squad leader exposes herself as the terrifying Maggie T, the Mother of all Parliaments rocks with horror, shock and – from the simpering mummies-boys of the Tory back-benches – fawning adoration and relief…

At the Winnie Street Mosque, the deflated, unsuspectingly ousted government’s very worst enemy has just fought his way through the anarchy-riven borough to join the unsullied survivors, but Radical Scots Islamist Georgy Goaway and his Unregulated Mini Scab Taliban are not there to save their scalps: quite the opposite in fact…

And back in Proper London, Maggie is back to steer the country through its greatest crisis, but as dawn breaks over Sutton nobody is aware that the Ironed Lady is herself in the clutches of a far darker mistress…

The lewd lunacy escalates into even crazier political capital and horrific hoots in the concluding volume – Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers 2: In Sutton, No-One Can Hear You Cream – with Jake deploying the nauseating Police Community Support Officers whilst Maggie activates the Metropolitan Police’s long-hidden, obscenely secret doomsday weapon (the last working member of the notorious Special Patrol Group, or Bob as likes to be called) before, in the dead zone, Julie reveals her own clandestine links to Britain’s real rulers and the zombie bottom-feeders try to break out of Sutton and spread their atrocious acts into Croydon and other, lesser realms…

Appallingly bad-taste, brutally non-PC, simultaneously fancifully macabre and punishingly politically astute, this extremely funny story takes on a far more powerful significance if you actually live in or around London.

Although drenched in local colour gone wild and geographical in-jokery of a highly refined kind, this is a tale totally unfettered by the strictures of good taste: sardonically blessed with chapter headings such as ‘Play Fisty For Me’, ‘The Evil Head’ and ‘The Porking Dead’ (apparently some of these are under revision so I’ve spitefully chosen not to share them you: get your own copies) whilst always carefully balancing political pokes with blisteringly vulgar sallies at the insanity of modern life.

Shamefully, laugh-out-loud, spit-take, blasting-coffee-from-your-nose funny and happily reminiscent of Robert Rankin’s wonderful Brentford Triangle novels (but with pictures and many, many more bottoms) and as addictively addled as Whoops Apocalypse (Andrew Marshall & David Renwick’s sublime satirical TV show, not the bowdlerised movie adaptation), Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers is the kind of story only certain people will want – or be able – to read, so I hope you’re one of us and not one of them…

It doesn’t say so but I’m going to assume © 2013 Maree & J.A.H.N. or maybe © 2013 Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers. All rights reserved in either case.

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QU33R


By various and edited by Rob Kirby (Northwest Press)
ISBN: 978-1-9387203-6-9

It’s long been an aphorism – if not cliché – that Gay (or the more contemporary term LGBTQ) comics have long been the only place in the graphic narrative business to portray real romance.

It’s still true: an artefact, I suppose, of a society which seems determined to demarcate and separate sex and love as two utterly different – and possibly even opposite – things. I prefer to think that here in the 21st century – in most places – we’ve outgrown the juvenile, judgemental, bad old days and can simply appreciate powerful, moving and funny comics about people of all sorts without any kind of preconception, but that battle’s still not completely won yet. Hopefully, compendia such as this will aid the fight…

Nevertheless, at least in this superb anthology with contributions from 33 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and/or Queer (or Questioning their sexual identity) craftspeople and creators, love stories are not all that’s on offer. The authors and artists cajoled and shepherded by Rob Kirby (Curbside Boys, The Books of Boy Trouble) have produced revelatory ponderings, satires, comics-reportage, pastiches, comedies, thrillers, horror stories and superhero adventures, plus many superb pictorial narrative diaries and autobiographical pieces to complement the wild, heady romances inescapably on offer.

Oh, and there’s sex and swearing: rather a lot and sometimes a bit graphic, so if you’re the kind of person liable to be upset by words and pictures of an adult nature (such as joyous, loving fornication between two people separated by age, wealth, social position and race who happily possess and constantly employ the same type of naughty bits on each other) then go away and read something else.

In fact, just go away.

Following a Foreword by Justin Hall (No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics, Glamazonia, True Travel Tales, Hard to Swallow) recapitulating just how far the industry and society have come since Mary Wings self-published Come Out Comix in 1973, opening the doors for thousands of other non-hetero creators, Editor Rob Kirby’s Introduction places this contemporary compendium of excellence by a broad contingent of cartoonists and writers self-identifying as proponents of “Alt/Queer comics” in its contextual place leaving nothing for us to do except enjoy the cartoons and comics…

It all begins with ‘Porno’ by Eric Orner, wherein the artist beguilingly relates key moments and situations from his past whilst ruminating upon his relationship with his dad, after which ‘Mother’s Sisters’ by Annie Murphy offers similar family insights by searching through the pages of a faux-photo-album.

MariNaomi then beautifully explains how, if not why, ‘Three’s a Crowd’ for a date-shy lass, whilst Ed Luce’s dance hall days in a Death-Metal mosh pit are hilariously described in ‘Wuvable Oaf presents Kindness of Strangers’.

‘The Transformers – a True Story’ (by Dylan Edwards) is a moving and memorable account of growing up “different”; an oft-repeated experience recapitulated in Diane DiMassa’s girlish tale of young love ‘Born Qu33r’.

Always compelling and challenging, Justin Hall hits home hard here with ‘Seductive Summer’ and the doomed affair of two young men with very different causes for their feelings of attraction, isolation, alienation despair and doom, after which ‘Just Another Night in Carbon City’ (Jennifer Camper) tells a grimly witty noir crime tale with not a Tough Guy in sight.

‘Sissy That Walk’ by Eric Kostiuk Williams incisively relates the fan reaction to RuPaul’s Drag Race show before a meaningful conversation occurs between two old friends in Kris Dresen’s ‘Chop Suey’ and Tyler Cohen presents us with one enigmatic possible tomorrow in ‘Flux’…

‘So Young, So Talented, So What?!’ is an engaging and often scary comic jam by Jennifer Camper & Michael Fahy, couched in the cautionary tale of a young artistic boy lost even before he reached the Big City, and is followed by a triptych of Fahy’s narrative gallery images and strips entitled ‘Found’, ‘O’Hara Song’ and ‘Hazily Remembered Drag Queens’.

Edie Fake then plays coy and arch at the ‘Sex Club’, whilst José-Luis Olivares indulges in ‘Online Fantasy’ and Steve MacIsaac lets his mind wander back into thoughts of unpleasant school days in ‘Vacant Lots’ before wishful thinking and wistful hope poignantly meet in ‘For Fletch and Ruski, Spooner, and Calico’ by Rick Worley.

‘Life’s But a Walking Shadow’ (Christine Smith) silently scours the college scene with a couple of kids who haven’t found their way yet whilst ‘Political Will’ by Carlo Quispe reveals the inescapable highs and lows of the party scene

Do you remember Private Manning? The young soldier was an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and leaked thousands of classified documents to the horrified world. The records were leaked via a hacker named Lamo and the then transgender Bradley was communicating via electronic media. Here Andy Hartzell imaginatively and mesmerising illustrates those game-changing chat logs in ‘Manning/Lamo Project’ to create possibly the most engrossing piece in this wonderful book.

‘Toot Toot Heyyyyyyy Beep Beep’ by Carrie McNinch describes a first emotional connection and the fall of Skylab before Rob Kirby recounts his own dating dilemma in ‘Music for No Boyfriends’ and local London lad Sina Sparrow proves there’s no such thing as carefree love in ‘If You Want Me To I Will Be The One Who Is Always Good’…

Superheroes and wry humour inform Ivan Velez, Jr.’s  ‘Oso Oro – the night I got my hero card…’ with the protagonist falling foul of the masked community’s precarious pecking order after which ‘Coming Out With the Bunksteads’ (by Arch-Bishop of Gay Comics Howard Cruse) hilariously turns venerable family strip Blondie on its head with a little coming-out confession, whilst author and “Officially Out” professional wrestler Terrance Griep relates ‘The Second Most Asked Question’ about his grappling career with Rob Kirby supplying the excruciating visual details…

A different type of “tension and differences in the band” are disclosed in Craig Bostick’s ‘Guitar  Bass  Drums’ before ‘Burger Meister: a Story of Love and Loss’ by Amanda Verwey focuses on a tragic miscommunication and Comedy of desperate-dating Errors, and Nichole J. Georges describes just another date in the whimsically wonderful ‘Grief’.

David Kelly helpfully shares a few very sensible ‘Tips to a Teen-Age Me’ whilst Marian Runk offers some captivating memories and suggestions of her own in ‘This Winter, I Practiced Being Alone’…

‘Miss Sasha Velour’ (by Sasha Steinberg) then shows that you don’t need to be armed to be Fabulous and Jon Macy graphically examines his relationship with his heroes in a powerful and self-searching untitled graphic musing on Oscar Wilde, Frankenstein’s Monster, Djuna Barnes, Raymond Chandler and Charles Mingus before ‘Confession’ by L. Nichols rounds off the comics cavalcade with a light-hearted affirmation about finding yourself…

Situated between pin-up Drag in 1969 (Sasha Steinberg), and untitled pieces from MariNaomi and L. Nichols – plus one last strip starring ‘School Girls’ by Camper – About the Creators then briefs you on the talented story-makers and where else to find their work whilst a copious Special Thanks section gratefully name-checks the contributors and the investors on KickStarter who paid to make the project happen, ending this glorious rainbow-hued book of bright ideas and colourful yarns on an exceedingly positive and life-affirming note.

QU33R is a superb example of comics celebrating determination and difference: sensitive, evocative, romantic and humorously engaging “people stories” which any open-minded fan can’t help but adore. There’s not much fighting but plenty of punch, and in an ideal world this book would be readily available in every school and library for any confused kid in need of inspiration, comfort, understanding, encouragement and hope.
QU33R, the collection is © 2014 Rob Kirby. The individual art and writing contributions are © 2014 the original artists and writers. All rights reserved.

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The Fang


By K.I Zachopoulos & Christos Martinis (Markosia)
ISBN: 978-1-909276-10-9

These cold, damp, excessively dark post-Christmas days and tempestuous nights just naturally lend themselves to spooky stories and here’s one of the most impressive from the tail end of last year, published by up-and-coming international publisher Markosia; courtesy of creative fear-meister Kostas Zachopoulos (Mon Alix, Mr. Universe, Misery City) and illustrated by gifted newcomer Christos Martinis.

Executed in stark and lavish painted colours reminiscent of Jon J. Muth, The Fang offers a fascinating possible postscript to the end of Bram Stoker’s epochal novel Dracula, wherein the weary but triumphant survivors of the battle against ultimate evil realise that their job is far from over…

The doom-drenched drama begins in ‘The story of Dracula’ aboard a battered sailing ship carrying gunpowder to America. The vessel is fatally cursed with a monstrous stowaway systematically slaughtering crewmen as she shudders through storm-wracked seas towards ‘A New World?’…

Back in England, Abraham Van Helsing, Quincey Morris and Jonathan Harker grudgingly accept that their battle against Dracula is not done. Now the long cold trail of the monster leads to New York.

However, by the time they reach the glittering “city of tomorrow” the ancient beast is firmly entrenched and feeding off a naive people, too smug and forward-looking to acknowledge the possibility of demons from ancient European history…

They’re all far too busy enjoying the tawdry delights of passing fancies such as the enigmatic Man-Devil in the travelling Freak Show, or the commercial war between those rival peddlers of electric light Tesla and Edison…

As the vampire hunters arrive, the newspapers are full of lurid tales concerning “the New York Ripper”, but as the determined trio stalk their supernal foe, the eagerly anticipating Nosferatu is keenly watching them…

The end, when it inevitably comes, in ‘Old Enemies are Forever’ is fierce, ferocious and catastrophically brutal… but is it truly final?

Blending moody lyricism with shocking bloodletting and brooding tension, this stark and striking short shocker offers all the chills lovers of classic horror demand and the striking imagery comics fans crave…
The Fang ™ & © 2013 Kostas Zachopoulos, Christos Martinis and Markosia Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Numbercruncher


By Simon Spurrier & P.J. Holden with Jordie Bellaire (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-004-7

I’ve made a resolution to be more terse and concise in my reviews. Let’s see how long that lasts…

Sometimes a story just cries out to be told – especially if your tastes run to the sentimentally cynical, soppily savage or wide-eyed and jaded. If that’s you, Numbercruncher is just what you need to confirm all your suspicions about life whilst having a really good time.

The tale – by Simon Spurrier (Judge Dredd, X-Men: Legacy, Six-Gun Gorilla and others) & P.J. Holden (that man Dredd again, Rogue Trooper, Battlefields, Terminator/Robocop and more) – began as a creator-owned project in Judge Dredd Megazine before being expanded into a 4-issue miniseries from Titan Comics. Now it’s available as a splendid hardback packed with clever, controversial notions that will delight and astound lovers of metaphysical whimsy, romantic fantasy and unnecessarily extreme violence.

Like The Wizard of Oz and especially A Matter of Life and Death, this story is told on two separate levels of existence and differentiated by full-colour earthly sections and black-&-white views of the Afterlife. Unlike them, it’s a nasty and wittily vicious piece of work; just like handy geezer Bastard Zane, operative #494 employed by The Divine Calculator to enforce the Karmic Accountancy and keep souls circulating through the great cosmic all.

The Universe is just numbers and God is a mean, pedantic bean-counter, only concerned with the smooth running of his Grand Algorithm. Unfortunately, it all starts to fall apart when Zane is tasked by the weaselly Big Boss with stopping an in-love and dying young mathematician from gaming the system.

Genius Richard Thyme, in his final seconds of mortal life, has a Eureka moment and divines the true and exact nature of everything – and how to manipulate it…

Armed with such inspirational knowledge, Thyme’s soul arrives before the Writer in the Grand Ledger and wheedles another spin on the Karmic Wheel – Reincarnation.

Brilliant Richard had been utterly in love with a dippy hippy chick named Jessica Reed, and bargains for another chance at a life with her, and mean, petty-minded Divine Calculator gleefully accepts the proposition.

Thyme will be reborn, with all memories intact, but when this second life ends his soul will be employed by the Karmic Accountancy Agency as a collector just like Zane. The standard term of employment is for eternity – unless he can convince somebody to take his place. The indentured operatives call it “Recirculation”…

There is only one get-out: a “Zero-clause” which means that if Thyme can live a life completely and totally without sin, his contract is null and void. But who could possibly live a mortal life without the slightest transgression…?

Of course, The Accountant doesn’t play fair: stacking the deck so that reborn Richard is unable to even get near his lost love until it’s too late. However when Zane finally shows up in 2035AD, eagerly expecting to close the case-file and retire with Thyme taking his long-suffering place in The Register, the frustrated, cheated genius plays his own trump card.

He’d always expected to be short-changed and made his own Karmic deal. By selling his contract to another Accountancy operative, he had bought another life. And as the psychotically furious Bastard Zane soon sees, Thyme has pulled the trick over and over again. No matter how often Richard dies, he’s already being born again somewhere else…

With the mathematician’s sold-and-resold soul promised to practically every agent in the Afterlife, Zane’s only hope of retirement rests in killing the kid’s each and every reincarnation whilst simultaneously slaughtering all the Karmic operatives who have been suckered into a deal with the lovesick little sod…

And on Earth, despite perpetual setbacks, each brief existence inches Richard slowly closer to Jess. That should make his eventual capture inevitable – but even here the genius has an incredible Plan B in operation which even the Supreme Architect of the Cosmos didn’t see coming… one which could well undo the Algorithm underpinning Everything That Is…

Poignant, funny, outrageously gory, gloriously rude and wickedly clever, this is a ferociously upbeat and hilariously dark black comedy no insufferable incurable romantic could possibly resist.

Moreover, for all us dyed-in-the-wool comics freaks, there’s a host of background features included,

Interspersed between a gallery of covers and variants – plus unused iterations – and loads of original art, roughs and sketches, the ‘Author’s Note’ takes us behind the genesis of the tale, which is further expanded upon in ‘A Comic for Talking to God – an interview with Brian Truitt of USA Today’.

A discussion and explanation of Jordie Bellaire’s colouring process is the focus of ‘Working Flat-Out’ and ‘Birth Placement’ details the procedure for creating a cover, before the usual Creator’s Biographies ends things on a knowledgeable note.

Love, Death, Sex, more Death, Rebirth, lots of Death and Numbers: there’s your Meaning of Life right there…
™ & © 2013 Simon Spurrier & P.J. Holden. All rights reserved.

Numbercruncher is scheduled for release in January 2014.

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X-Men Noir: the Mark of Cain


By Fred Van Lente & Dennis Calero (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4437-3

When fictional heroes and villains become really popular – to the point where fans celebrate their births and deaths and dress up like them at the slightest opportunity or provocation – eventually a tendency develops to explore other potential character facets that the regular, cash-cow continuity might normally prohibit.

DC invented a whole company sub-strand of “Imaginary Stories” and Marvel asked “What If…?” sharing glimpses of alternate realities. Even television series got into the act with shows like Star Trek, Roswell and Stargate SG-1 offering coolly jarring, different takes on their established stars and scenarios.

The little dark gem of alternate continuity on offer today comes from an intriguing experiment in 2009 wherein Marvel took many of their biggest stars and reconfigured them for a universe drenched in the tone, lore and ephemera of pulp fiction and Film Noir: a dark land where shiny gleaming super-powered heroes were replaced by bleakly paranoid, deeply flawed and self-serving individuals just trying to get by as best they could…

X-Men Noir: the Mark of Cain is actually a sequel to the initial foray and benefits from not having to explain or differentiate the so-similar seeming stars from the bastions of the regular continuity. It ran as a 4-issue miniseries from February-May 2010 offering a moody glimpse of a world with no heroes, only shades of villainy. Nevertheless it still provides a satisfying slice of suspenseful entertainment for Fights ‘n’ Tights fans in search of something genuinely edgier than their regular fare. After all, the big draw for the jaded is that these folks might actually die and stay that way…

What You Need to Know: situated in the 1930s, these X-Men are not mutants with incredible, science-defying powers but rather a gang of mentally disturbed juvenile delinquents. They had been lab rats for rogue psychiatrist Charles Xavier in his School for Gifted Youngsters, where he strove to exacerbate rather than cure their various anti-social behaviours.

The batty boffin believed that sociopathy was the next stage in human behavioural development and spent his days training and refining the criminal talents and tendencies of his disturbed charges – until he was exposed and thrown in jail on Riker’s Island Prison.

The truth came out after the body of one of his “students” was washed up on the shore, covered in odd, three bladed knife slashes…

There is one costumed mystery man on the scene during these parlous times. Nosy, troublesome reporter Tom Halloway is not-so-secretly also a violent vigilante dubbed The Angel and the hunt for him preoccupied many familiarly different characters such as corrupt Chief of Detectives Eric “Magnus” Magnisky, his troubled children Peter and Wanda, casino owner Remy LeBeau, mobster Unus the Untouchable and drug runner Sean Cassidy…

This sequel volume opens with a public scandal as the government’s secret prison camp at Genosha Bay is exposed. Charges of torture and Applied Eugenics are levelled against the operators but despite rising protests the prison still carries on its inhumane treatments on the legion of sociopaths held there without Due Process or Representation.

In other news: due to lack of evidence, “Professor of Crime” Xavier is freed from Riker’s, arrogantly swearing to track down the killer of his recently assassinate “friend” Magnus…

A continent and ocean away, some of his former successes are cutting their way through the jungles of Madripoor and hordes of berserk headhunters as they try to find the lost temple of Cyttorak and retrieve a fabulous gem.

Sharpshooter Scott “Cyclops” Summers and unpredictable seagoing brawler Captain Logan are temporarily with the Angel, following a map provided by bootlegger and mercenary Cain Marko. They don’t give much credence to the native legends of vengeance inflicted on transgressors by Cyttorak’s “Juggernaut” but that soon changes when Marko is found in the no-man’s land around GenoshaBay, crushed to pulp. Of the enormous jewel there is no trace…

Peppered with evocative flashbacks, the story and trail leads Angel – who learned most of his nasty bag of tricks from Cain – to the USA’s extraterritorial prison and the shocking revelation that Xavier is secretly in charge…

Despite being captured and subjected to the Professor X’s methods of persuasion – administered by the warped woman Warden Frost – Halloway soon breaks free and begins pursuing the how and the who of Marko’s murder.

Fighting his way past the Professor of Crime’s newest protégés, a big burly Russian and an exotic black woman with a white Mohawk haircut, he is recaptured before he can reach Logan’s boat and sometime allies Cyclops and Eugene “Puck” Judd.

Undergoing more of Xavier’s “treatments”, the Angel is then confronted with the scientist’s secret weapon: his own thoroughly crazy – sociopathic – twin brother Robert Halloway…

The period drama and sinister suspense kick into compelling overdrive as the various parties hunting the Gem clash when the action shifts from noir detective to pulp sci-fi and the Professor’s true plan emerges. With the government’s covert connections exposed, and all surviving participants trapped aboard a huge flying battleship, the real value of the Gem of Cyttorak is revealed and, amidst flying fists, double- and triple-crosses abound.

As the agendas of all interested parties crash together thousands of feet above Manhattan, only antisocial violence works and at last a kind of justice is won…

Bleak, cynical and trenchantly effective, this excellent thriller by scripter Fred Van Lente and illustrator Dennis Calero provides a huge helping of thrills and chills that would work equally well even if you had never heard of Marvel’s mighty mutants.

This pocketbook sized collection also includes a covers and variants gallery by Calero as well as a dozen original art pages shot prior to the digital colouring stage.
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 6


By The Hernandez Brothers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-679-9

It’s nearly Christmas again so it must be year since the last annual instalment of Love and Rockets: New Stories. Yep, there it is and about time too…

With this volume the most iconic, transcendent and formative force of the American independent comics movement enters its 40th year of publication. Love and Rockets was an anthology magazine featuring the slick, intriguing, sci-fi-tinged hi-jinx of punky young things Maggie and Hopey – las Locas – and heart-warming, gut-wrenching soap-opera epics set in a rural Central American paradise called Palomar.

The Hernandez Boys (three guys from Oxnard, California: Jaime, Gilberto and Mario), gifted synthesists all, captivated the comics cognoscenti with incredible stories sampling and referencing a host of influences – everything from Comics, TV cartoons, masked wrestlers and the exotica of American Hispanic pop culture to German Expressionism.

There was also a perpetual backdrop displaying the holy trinity of youth: Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll – also alternative music, hip hop and punk.

The result was dynamite then and the guys have only got better with the passing years. Mario only officially contributed on rare occasions, but Jaime’s slick, enticing visual forays explored friendship and modern love by destroying stereotypes of feminine attraction through his fetching coterie of Gals Gone Wild, whilst Gilberto created a hyper-real landscape and playground of wit and passion created for his extended generational saga Heartbreak Soup: a quicksilver chimera of breadline Latin-American village life with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast.

The shadows cast by Palomar still define and inform his latest tales both directly and as imaginative spurs for ostensibly unaffiliated stories.

This masterful anthology of wonders simultaneously runs a string of contiguous story strands, opening with Jaime’s evocative ‘Fuck Summer’ wherein young Tonta Agajanian is losing her battle with boredom. The older, cooler kids don’t want to hang with her or her charming associate Gomez, and for some reason Coach Rivera is chasing her all over town, cutting into her precious vacation time and pushing her to join the swim team…

With no other resort they head to the swimming hole where wild girl Gretchen keeps finding “presents” from a forest spirit.

Gilbert then offers ‘Song of Our Sad Girl’ as Doralis “Killer” Rivera apparently quits her cinema career before heading back to Palomar to visit her distanced family. With flashbacks inter-cutting to the grandmother she’s playing in her new movie Maria M, the story primarily focuses on the starlet’s latest crisis.

She’s fleeing rumours that she’s pregnant and just wants some peace and a normal life. At least that’s what she’s telling herself…

‘Wrench World’ (Jaime again) finds Tonta the recipient of some shocking news: her step-father has been shot and her far-from-normal mother is the prime suspect. Even her older brothers and sisters believe the old bitch did it…

Killer’s star shines in ‘Willow, Weep No More’ (by Beto) as her quest for understanding the family – and especially her grandmother – turns up an old tape of shocking content…

Jaime then begins a series of revelatory vignettes filling in detail and character on Tonta’s extended, unconventional family of half-siblings in ‘Crimen Uno’ before the surly girl and BFF Gomez stalk Coach Rivera to some quirkily engaging ‘Tarzana Adventures’.

Thereafter Tonta’s little sisters need some surly-styled comforting in ‘Urchins’ whilst ‘Crimen Dos’ covers the elders’ discussion of their mother’s other (alleged) victims.

Gilbert’s firm grasp of the Hollywood rumour mill is shown in ‘…Killer’s Dad – Grampa Hector?’ and ‘Killer in the Mix’ sees the busty phenomenon head back to the USA in time for the release of the Directors Cut of Maria M, garnering grief from her friends about keeping the (alleged) baby she may or may not be carrying…

‘Crimen Tres’ continues with Tonta’s family simultaneously reminiscing and planning to get rid of their embarrassing surviving parent, whilst in ‘Pack Mules’ our girl and Gomez steal a car and head off to finally uncover Coach’s big secret…

It’s a doozy – seen in ‘Crestfallen Angel’ – but does break the ice, and, after ‘Crimen Cuatro’, Tonta at last begins to change her opinions…

An incongruous and lewdly fantastic untitled monster yarn from Gilberto segues into Jaime’s ‘Familylimaf’ wherein Tonta’s older sisters invade gym class and expose an unsuspected – an immensely humiliating – connection to Rivera after which ‘Crimen Cinco’ delivers one more shock to the girl and her constantly expanding family, before a reconciliation of sorts materialises in ‘Dogs Follow Dogs’…

There are further familial secrets disclosed and generational ties uncovered for Killer in ‘Willow, Weep No More 2’ and ‘Willow, Weep No More 3’ after which Jaime hits the home stretch with ‘Crimen Seis’ – wherein the progeny get a good telling off – and Tonta gives in and joins the swimming squad in ‘Go! Go! Go!’ before ‘Crimen Final’ resolves the courtroom dilemma.

Gilbert ends his stint with a ghostly visitation in ‘And Palomar Again’ and Jaime takes us back to the beginning as Tonta heads back, back, back  to the swimming hole for more telling glimpses of her compelling family life in ‘Rrrregresamos’…

Warm-hearted, deceptively heart-wrenching, subtly shocking, challenging, charming and irresistibly addictive, Love and Rockets: New Stories is a grown up comics fan’s dream come true and remains as valid and groundbreaking as its earlier incarnations – the diamond point of the cutting edge of American graphic narrative.
© 2013 Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Couch Tag


By Jesse Reklaw (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-676-8

In recent years there’s been an utterly irresistible upsurge of graphic novels which combine autobiography with a touch of therapy as they recount the lives of their authors. Such “tragicomics” are both immensely appealing and frequently painfully unforgettable

One of the most moving and impressive comes from veteran Indie cartoonist and mini comics self-publisher Jessie Reklaw: an artist who’s been generating thought-provoking and unmissable strips and stories since 1995 when he was working towards his doctorate in Artificial Intelligence.

Born in Berkley, California in 1971, he grew up in Sacramento before attending

UC Santa Cruz and Yale, and his earliest publications – just like most of his modern output – delved into the phenomena and imagery of dreams. The experimental Concave Up led to syndicated weekly strip dream-diary Slow Wave, which uses readers’ contributions as the basis of the episodes. It has run continuously since 1995 in both printed periodicals and as a webcomic.

His long-awaited graphic autobiography is just as beguiling: a life reduced to brief vignettes serially grouped into five innocuous-seeming chapters which, through cleverly layered and carefully tailored reminiscences, describe Jess Recklaw’s strangely unconventional (if not actually dysfunctional) family and struggle for stability.

Primarily crafted in monochrome wash, the history sessions begin with ‘Thirteen Cats of My Childhood‘ – which some readers will recognises from Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics 2006, where it was previously published – wherein succinct and ferociously functional recollections of a succession of ill-starred family pets serves as a splendid and powerfully effective narrative conceit to introduce the far from ordinary Walker clan.

Following the brief lives of ‘Black Star’, ‘Frosty’, ‘The Triplets’, ‘Mischief’, ‘Figgy Pudding’, ‘Gene’, ‘Survivor’, ‘Tiger’, ‘Boots’ and ‘Harry’ shows us a family of decidedly alternative outlook and also describes the rules of the furniture-based children’s game which gives this book its title.

There follows ‘A Note About Names Part One’ which reveals more about the sensibilities of the author’s parents, after which ‘Toys I Loved’ continues the amazingly instructive anecdotes about formative influences with games and playthings acting as keys to memory in increasingly unsettling, discordant and disturbing tales beginning in infancy with cuddly toy ‘Ruff-Ruff’ and skipping through a childhood dotted with sibling rivalries and sporadic best friendships.

Jess, Sis, Mom and “Daddy Bill” are all defined courtesy of ‘The Mask’, ‘Me’s’, ‘Blankie’, ‘Sprinkler’, ‘Play-Doh’, ‘Stretch Armstrong’, ‘Six-Million-Dollar Man’, ‘The Hulk’, ‘Firecrackers’, ‘Green Cup’, ‘Diecast Robots’, ‘Drawers’, ‘Comic Books’, ‘Action Figures’, ‘Dirt Pile’, ‘Doll House’ and ‘Barbies’ before the life-changing advent of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’…

‘The Fred Robinson Story’ details the potentially obsessive nature of teenage pranks when Jess and like-minded buddy Brendan over a number of years bombarded a complete stranger with a barrage of creative celebration; turning a random name in a phone book into the recipient of odd gifts and star of music and handmade comicbooks in ‘The Box’.

The lads developed their musical tendencies in ‘Los Angeles’ and penchant for creative vandalism in ‘Batsigns’ before returning to their lengthy cartooning crusade in ‘Fred Robinson X-ing’: detailing how the prank publishing campaign mushroomed and how Brendan’s girlfriend Kristin changed the status quo, after which Jess got a ‘Letter from Norway’ and ‘Better Fred’ revealed how things eventually ended…

‘The Stacked Deck’ recounts the educational episodes and memorable moments resulting from the entire extended family’s passion for card games and compulsive behaviour, as seen in ‘War’, ‘Go Fish’, ‘Spades’, ‘Pinochle’, ‘Crazy Eights’, ‘Speed’, ‘Poker’, ’31’, ‘Rummy’, ‘Solitaire’, ‘Spite & Malice’ and ‘Ascension’, after which the final chapter ‘Lessoned’ is delivered in a succession of distressed colour-segments: raw and disturbing pages of evocative collage and experimental narrative dealing out a unique tarot set of A to Z insights and revelations beginning with ‘Adults , ‘Birth’ and ‘the Crash’.

Ranging between early days and contemporary times, the alphabetical summary and keen self-diagnosis continues with ‘Disease’, ‘Earache’, ‘Family’, ‘Gifted’, ‘Humor’ and ‘Invulnerability’, turning a corner towards understanding with ‘Joint’, ‘Kiersey Test’, ‘Legal Guardian’, ‘Melancholic’, ‘Number’ and ‘Obsession’.

After cleverly addressing the revelations of the author’s bipolar mood disorder and explosive determination to take control of his life by rejecting sickness and weakness, ‘Phlegmatic’, ‘Question’, ‘Role-Playing’, ‘Sanguine’, ‘Tests’ and ‘Unconscious’ carry the tale to a new normal with ‘the Vandal’, ‘Walker’, ‘X-Mas’, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Zero’.

Bleak and uplifting, nostalgic and distressing, harsh and blackly funny, Couch Tag is a devastatingly moving account of coping with adverse heredity, sexual deviancy, social nonconformity and familial discord which could only be told in comics.

This is not a book everyone will like, but it’s definitely a story that will resonate with anyone who has felt alone or odd or different.

And surely that’s all of us at some time…
© 2013 Jesse Reklaw. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All rights reserved.