Category: Mature Reading

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Fuc_ __u, _ss__le: Blecky Yuckerella volume 4


By Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-415-3

Johnny Ryan is a comedian who uses comics as his medium of expression. Whether in his own Angry Youth Comix, or the many commissions for such varied clients as Nickelodeon, Hustler, Mad, LA Weekly and elsewhere, his job and mission is to make laughter. Depending on your point of view he is either a filth-obsessed pervert smut-monger or a social iconoclast using the same tactics as Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks to assault the worst and/or most hidebound aspects of society.

His wild, loose cartoon drawing style is deceptively engrossing, and his seeming pictorial Tourette’s Syndrome of strips and gags involving such grotesque signature characters as Boobs Pooter (world’s most disgusting stand-up comedian), Loady McGee and Sinus O’Gynus will, frankly, appal many readers, but as with most questions of censorship in a Free Society, they are completely at liberty neither to buy nor read the stuff.

Ryan dubs his stinging graphic assaults on American culture ‘misanthropic comics’ and one of the most effective has been Blecky Yuckeralla. Originally running weekly in The Portland Mercury and Vice Magazine from 2003 before switching to Ryan’s own on-line site the strip was based on traditional, anodyne comics features and referenced many other popular art forms. This fourth bi-annual collection collects the last 99 four-panel pages up to and including the final episode which ran on www.johnnyryan.com on 30th July 2010.

Blecky is an ugly, unsavoury, unsanitary and very stupid girl: a cunning reinterpretation of Ernie Bushmiller’s beloved Nancy strip, with plenty of comics, movies and media pastiches thrown in too. There’s Bucksley – a ghastly, grotesque Richie Rich-clone, nerdy “boyfriend” Wedgie, guardian Aunt Jiggles and a host of guest-victims for the shocking puns and fouls antics of the little girl from hell …or maybe it’s New Jersey.

Here you’ll find gross, vulgar and shocking gags about sex, defecation, farting, bodily functions, feminine hygiene, and even the ultimate modern whited sepulchers, TV, money, religion, politics, race and sexual abuse. There are no safe areas or taboo subjects. Blecky and Co are equally free with cute animals, presidents, film stars, assorted Holy Books and even 9-11…

Depending on who you are and your social outlook this final collection is as brilliant or as appalling as the previous three so if you’re prudish, sensitive or concerned about moral standards – don’t buy this book. There’s plenty of us who will…

© 2010 Johnny Ryan. All Rights Reserved.

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King of the Flies Volume 2: The Origin of the World


By Mezzo & Pirrus, translated by Helge Dascher with Dag Dascher & Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-390-3

Scary stories are everywhere, even in the most ordinary of suburban paradises: when DC Comics started calling Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing stories “Sophisticated Suspense” in the 1980s, to differentiate them from the formulaic “Set ’em up and then go Boo!” traditions of the horror comics medium, this kind of subtle, disorienting, creeping disturbia is exactly what they were aspiring to. Cleverly constructed, laconically laid out in the classic nine-panel-grid picture structure and rendered in comfortingly mundane style a la Charles Burns, King of the Flies is a landmark in metafictional mystery tales.

In volume 1, noted crime comics creators Pascal (Mezzo) Mesenburg and Michel Pirus introduced readers to the community of Hallorave and the eponymous Eric, a very troubled young man with a predilection for donning a gigantic Fly mask. A budding sociopath, the lad is into drugs, sex (consenting and otherwise), booze, introspection and instant gratification… but in that he’s not much different from the other residents of this little slice of Heaven. He also sees dead people occasionally – and again, he’s not the only one.

The book unfolded in seemingly unconnected vignettes narrated in the first person by a broad cast of unhappy campers and this second volume of three continues the tradition, but with the disparate threads increasingly overlapping and interlocking: the inevitable denouement seemingly inescapable and darkly bloody…

‘The Origin of the Species’ opens with Eric idly daydreaming of killing his mom’s new man Francis before heading out for Marie’s place. She isn’t Eric’s girlfriend really but she is sweet and easy and despises her parents too. Things kick off when gangster reprobate Ringo shows up and tells them to look after a bag he’s carrying.

Eric is cool but Marie takes a peek, finding bundles of cash and a bowling pin inside. Later that day Eric saves an old guy from drowning because he fancied the geezers young girlfriend Karine: once again his uncontrolled desires are screwing up his life…

‘Departures/Arrivals’ follows Karine, showing her dysfunctional relationship with her bitch of a mother and how her aged lover Becker dies of a heart attack in an airport. Karine is pregnant and Eric sees opportunity…

In ‘Come Back’ we see that Damien has no luck. Not only is he killed by a genuinely remorseful drunk driver, but his last mortal sight is the three thugs who chased him to his demise and his girl screwing his best friend Eric. He’s far more mellow as a ghost though, pitying his killer and hanging out with Becker, just as dead but far less sanguine about Eric, who’s now moved on to Karine… Damien’s ex-girl Sal was always wild and she too is making use of Eric’s hound-dog ways…

‘Flesh Safari’ returns the spotlight to Eric. His stepdad is wise to him but Marie’s father still trusts him to look after his little girl. When the youngsters go to a rich kid’s party at Coralie’s place, Fly boy is set up and humiliated, but does meet a new friend in the outcast intellectual David, before spitefully punishing Marie by sleeping with his host’s mother…

‘Maternal Damage’ shows the turmoil afflicting Marie’s mother and just how close to the breaking point she is, whilst ‘Superhero’ follows Eric as Sal leads him into trouble and somebody administers a particularly efficient punishment beating. Moreover, even though Eric has done with Marie he can’t bear her seeing a new guy and inflicts some rough injustice of his own.

We learn some intriguing and unsavoury insights about David in ‘Robin Redux’ before the focus switches to Ringo: a full-throttle psychopath who isn’t happy at all when he asks for his bag back and Eric discovers somebody’s taken it…

Ringo sees ghosts too, but they are no help when his Boss Ramos gets heavy. Eric and Marie are in deep trouble until somebody intercedes from ambush and there’s one more phantom in the cast…

‘Crazy Horse’ finds Eric still haunting Karine until he has a strange and disturbing encounter with Marie’s dad and this intermediate book ends on a foreboding spiritual high note with ‘2,969 Light Years From Earth’ as Damien takes steps to protect his loved ones from an angry spirit and each other. Meanwhile, the bag thief is revealed and the repercussions of all the messed up crap the residents have been inflicting on each other is coming to a head. The doorbell rings…

…And readers will have to wait for the concluding book to discover how this stunning, mesmerising amalgam of Twin Peaks, Desert Palms, Peyton Place, The Omen and Blue Velvet plays out. A stylish and magical portmanteau saga of a community cursed with an excess of human frailty – lust, rage, greed, despair and especially shallow selfishness – this is a story that will surprise, compel, distress and haunt anybody with even half an imagination.

Darkly addictive, casually violent and graphically sexual, King of the Flies is “adults only” and well worth waiting until you’re 18 for…
© 2005 Glenat Editions/Drugstore. This edition © 2010 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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John Constantine, Hellblazer: Reasons to be Cheerful


By Mike Carey, Leonardo Manco, Giuseppe Camuncoli & Lorenzo Ruggiero (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-450-0

You’ve either heard of John Constantine by now or you haven’t, so I’ll be as brief as I can. Originally created by Alan Moore during his groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing, he is a mercurial modern wizard, a hell-addicted chancer who plays with magic on his own terms for his own ends. He is not a hero. He is not a nice person. He is nothing like Keanu Reeves. Sometimes though, he’s all there is between us and the void… the magician that is, not the actor…

That’s the only slice of levity you’ll get here, as with Reasons to be Cheerful writer Mike Carey took the world-weary warlock through some of the most infernal horrors he’s ever encountered as another of the Trickster’s infernal and impromptu devil’s bargains came roaring back to bite him on the arse…

Following on and expanding the traumas seen in Hellblazer: Stations of the Cross this volume collects issues #201-206 of the magnificent Vertigo comicbook, but before the main course ensues, opens with a terrifying palate-clearing one-off thriller.

In ‘Event Horizon’ (illustrated with dark passion by Leonardo Manco) the now-retired urban mage is dragged back into the mire of supernatural horror when a greedy low-life gangster-wannabe hires some street thugs to burgle Constantine’s lock-up and steal all those “valuable antiques” he has squirreled away. Of course the assorted ne’er-do-wells soon realise to their everlasting regret that some things just aren’t up for grabs…

Throughout this creepy morality play on “don’t take what isn’t yours” the aging mage is one step behind the action and clearly off his game, so when the four-part ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ begins he is utterly unable to even comprehend the danger he’s stepped into…

At the climax of the previous graphic novel the magician “married” a she-demon, and trapped in a nightmarish suburban family hallucination fathered three devil-babies. Now those Hell-brats have come to visit and, full of childish glee, have begun torturing and murdering his every surviving friend and associate – a very small club indeed…

Constantine only becomes aware when his oldest enemy comes to his aid, just in time for some last-minute heroics to save life-long pal Chas Chandler and one of his two remaining blood-kin…

Dragged back into the life he’d thought and prayed he had finally escaped, Constantine prepares to return to Hell and save that last, lost soul… but that’s the meat of the next collection as the final tale in this book digresses to follow the freshly exorcised Chas.

In ‘Cross Purpose’ (illustrated by Giuseppe Camuncoli & Lorenzo Ruggiero), still twisted, tainted and shell-shocked by the demon who recently rode his soul, Chas goes on a rampage of uncharacteristically bad behaviour before trying to pick up the pieces of a life seemingly shattered forever.

But some things just can’t be forgiven…

This relentlessly dark British series is always drenched with savage tensions, bloody confrontations and the perfect blend of supernal terror and contemporary angst. Hellblazer is the perfect horror-comic and one no mature modern fan can afford to miss.

© 2004, 2005, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Y: The Last Man: vol. 7 Paper Dolls


By Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Sudžuka & José Marzán Jr. (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-84576-241-4

A venerable old science fiction concept got a new, pithy and wry updating in the Vertigo series Y: The Last Man when a mystery plague destroyed every male mammal on Earth and even all the sperm and foetuses.

If it had a Y chromosome it croaked, except, somehow, for college-boy slacker and amateur escapologist Yorick Brown – and his pet monkey Ampersand. One night the guy goes to bed pining for his absent girlfriend Beth DeVille (an anthropology grad on a dig in Australia) and the next day Ampersand is the only male animal on Earth and he’s the last man alive…

Yorick’s mum, part of the new (for which read Still-Standing after a failed power-grab by the assembled widows of Republican Congressmen) Presidential Cabinet, is by default a Leader of the Free World until the New President can get to Washington to take office.

Yorick made his way to her through a devastated urban landscape (the plague hit during rush-hour on the East Coast and we all know that chicks can’t even parallel park let alone wrestle the controls from the hands of a dead bus driver, subway steersman or airline pilot…) but had to escape from her half-hearted attempt to lock him a bunker. Forthwith the lad immediately set off for the Land Down Under and his one true love.

Over the course of three years he made his peril-packed way from the East Coast overland to California, getting ever closer to his fiancée, who he assumed had been stranded in Oz since civilisation ended. Accompanying him on his trek westward was secret agent/bodyguard 355 and geneticist Dr. Allison Mann, who has been trying to solve his mysteriously continued existence and who believes she might have caused the plague by giving birth to the world’s first parthenogenetic human clone.

Also out to stake their claim and add to the general tension were a crack squad of Israeli commandos led by the steely-willed General Tse’Elon, equipped with the latest high-powered weapons and a hidden agenda, plus post-disaster cult Daughters of the Amazon who wanted to make sure that there really were no more men left to mess up the planet.

To further complicate matters, for much of that journey Yorick’s occasionally insane sister, Hero, was stalking them across the ultra-feminised, ravaged and now generally dis-United States.

When they finally arrived in San Francisco, Agent 355 and Dr. Mann actually discovered the secret of Yorick’s immunity but before they could capitalise on it Ampersand was snatched by a ninja. Apparently, all along the monkey had held the secret to the plague which killed all us mouth-breathing, unsanitary louts…

After a violently revelatory time and lots of aggravation (see Y: the Last Man: Girl on Girl) this seventh volume (collecting issues # 37-42 of the award-winning Vertigo comicbook) at last finds our hero in the place he’s been aiming for, but Australia has undergone a few changes…

The eponymous ‘Paper Dolls’ (illustrated by Pia Guerra, Goran Sudžuka & José Marzán Jr.) introduces hard-bitten reporter Paloma West, haunting the Sydney docks and trying to verify rumours that a living man has been sighted. Whilst 355 and Mann are insistent that they travel on to Japan where Ampersand has been spotted, all Yorick can think of is that after years of struggle he’s finally where he needs to be…

Technically under arrest themselves, the well-intentioned but determined ladies bow to Yorick’s whining and give him 24 hours to find his long lost Beth. It’s not much of a chance but love will find a way… Nobody however, took Paloma West seriously and that was a big mistake…

With his existence about to be made globally public Yorick learns a few tantalising secrets about the mysterious Agent 355 before they confront West. The bodyguard wants her dead but the reporter claims to know where Yorick’s beloved Beth is now…

Time up, the man and his minders have to follow Ampersand to Japan and the secret of the plague, even though Beth has left on an epic trek to Paris – the French one…

Meanwhile in Washington, Yorick’s mother and Tse’Elon have a deadly confrontation before the scene shifts to the Midwest for ‘The Hour of Our Death’ as Hero meets one of her brother’s past indiscretions and realises she’s about to become an aunt just as a band of Vatican-sent nuns arrive to grab what might be the last child ever born. Seems they’re in the market for a new Madonna and Child…

‘Buttons’ (with art from Sudžuka & Marzán Jr.) focuses on the tragic story of 355 and how she became an agent of the insidious Culper Ring all whilst the unhappy voyagers flee from savages in New Guinea and this volume concludes by shifting scenes to follow that darn monkey in ‘1,000 Typewriters’ (Sudžuka & Marzán Jr. again), finally revealing exactly how this male-extinction mess came about, just as the cast reach Japan and the dramatic last act is set to begin…

By stocking this hoary old premise with carefully crafted, credible characters and situations Vaughan built an intellectually seductive soap-opera fantasy of distinctive power with the narrative thread consistently advancing to the point that this less than avid original reader was eventually fearfully avid to see where and how it would all end.

Marvelously well-paced, dryly ironic, moving and clever Y: the Last Man makes an old idea new and compulsively relevant: This delightful pot-boiler of a tale best is consumed in large chunks, however, so be prepared to invest in the entire run of volumes. Trust me, it’s well worth it.

© 2006 Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra. All Rights Reserved.

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100 Bullets: The Hard Way

New Extended review

By Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-041-0

When as perfect a story-hook as “what if you were given an untraceable gun, one hundred bullets and a damned good reason” is in the creative hands of talents like Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso you know the resultant drama is going to start big and end spectacularly but even after fifty issues the breakneck pace and heart-stopping tension of this series never faltered and indeed intensified…

With this eighth volume The Hard Way (collecting issues #50-58 of the 100 Bullets monthly comic) comes a ramping-up of suspense as a lot of questions are (partially) answered and the myriad players take their positions for the apocalyptic finale – still half a c-note away…

The key piece here is the full, complete and true history of the United States of America and the origins of the Trust: illicit brotherhood of hereditary crime-kings who have controlled the nation since before it even was a country.

In ‘Prey for Reign’ a guy walks into a bar…

So many stories start that way, but when the guy is reactivated Minuteman Victor Ray (100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call) and the beer-and-buddies yarn he spins concerns the secret history of America, you’d better listen…

Not long after Columbus stumbled upon America, thirteen European crime-families migrated to his New World and clandestinely carved up the continent between them. When the new nation was born the Trust embedded itself in every aspect of it.

To prevent their own greed and ambition screwing up the sweetest deal in history the Families created an extraordinary taskforce to mediate and police any Trust member or faction acting against the best interests of the whole. Dubbed the Minutemen they were always led by the kind of peacekeeper needed to keep them honest and actively cooperating – a man uniquely honest, dedicated, smart and remorseless.

A few years ago Trust leaders decided they no longer needed overseers and acted with characteristic ruthlessness to remove them. Betrayed Minutemen leader Agent Graves didn’t take his dismissal lying down and has been manipulating events and people to rectify that injustice.

For years he has been appearing to various betrayed and defeated people as a “Court of Last Resort” offering answers, secrets, an untraceable handgun and 100 Bullets… Now Victor sits in bar spilling secrets, knowing that since all the listeners are murderous thieves awaiting a payoff that will never come, there’s little chance of this history lesson going public…

The Trust is under attack. House leaders have been killed, and as the surviving members convene to utterly rewrite their 400 year old accord, scattered members of Grave’s old team circle in the wings. Wylie Times (100 Bullets: A Foregone Tomorrow) resurfaces in New Orleans on another mysterious mission and takes up temporary residence in a jazz bar whilst waiting to make his move…

‘Wylie Runs the Voodoo Down’ finds him confronting Trust facilitator/fixer Mr. Shepherd and newest Minuteman Dizzy Cordova (also 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call) whilst stumbling onto a particularly grisly murder. Hunted by the brutal killers and torn by guilt over his lost love Rose, Wylie becomes too involved in the tragic lives of (relatively) ordinary folks until the grim reality of his past painfully, horrifyingly reminds him that his old masters have a long reach and their dirty fingers in every pie…

For someone like Wylie however, the safest escape plan is to remove all possible threats and the cataclysmic conclusion of this compulsive seven-chapter saga sees more than one major player taken off the board…

The book ends with ‘Coda smoke’ as dishonoured Minuteman Lono and cellmate Loop Hughes (100 Bullets: Samurai) get a shocking phone call and rush to Shepherd’s aid. It appears the man with all the answers was betrayed by his most trusted agent. How bad must it be if an ex-con and a sociopath with impulse-control issues are the first number on your speed-dial…?

Beginning as one of the best crime-comics in decades, 100 Bullets imperceptibly grew into a terrifyingly imaginative conspiracy thriller of vast scope and dazzling, intricate detail. Azzarello and Risso have never been accused of underestimating their audience’s intelligence – or appetite for blood, sex, intrigue and action.

If there are still any shock-starved story fans – grown-up, paid-up, immured to harsh language and unshaken by rude, nude and very violent behaviour – who aren’t addicted to this astounding epic crime-thriller yet, get out there and grab every one of these graphic novels at all costs! You need them all and the very best is yet to come…

© 2004, 2005 Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso & DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Steven Brust’s Jhereg – A Marvel Graphic Novel


By Steven Brust, adapted by Alan Zelenetz & John Pierard (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-8713-5674-1

In the early 1980s Marvel led the field in the development of high quality original graphic novels: mixing out-of-the-ordinary Marvel Universe tales, new series launches, creator-owned properties, movie adaptations and even the occasional licensed asset, such as the adaptation of the fantasy fiction favourite under review here.

Released in lavishly expansive packages (a squarer page of 285 x 220mm rather than the now customary elongated 258 x 168mm) which felt and looked instantly superior to the standard flimsy comicbook no matter how good, bad or incomprehensible the contents might be.

Jhereg, by Steven Brust was first published in 1983, the first of three novels (Jhereg, Yendi and Teckla, later collected as The Book of Jhereg omnibus) starring Vlad Taltos, an assassin-for-hire on the magic-drenched world Dragaera. The setting was faux-feudal with castes, guilds, brotherhoods and covens all rubbing silk-draped shoulders with fantastic creatures and incredible alien forces.

Unlike the other Families and Noble Clans, the House of Jhereg is a brotherhood of unaffiliated individuals elevated to Noble status due solely to ability not merit or bloodline. The house does scut-work and unseemly tasks – originally for the Emperors but now also for selected clientele. They take their name from the predatory jhereg: a venomous dragon-like flying lizard with near-human intellect, telepathic abilities and the power of teleportation.

The graphic adaptation, published under Marvel’s Epic imprint in collaboration with groundbreaking graphics packager Byron Preiss Visual Publications, opens with the grimly efficient Vlad Taltos plying his trade with the help of his jhereg familiar and best friend Loiosh.

When a Jhereg potentate of the ruling Organization Council offers him the biggest commission of his life Vlad’s greed and caution are tweaked in equal amounts.

A member of the inner circle has embezzled millions in funds and although they would like the money back, what the overlords really want is a very public example made. Moreover, in a society where immortality is commonplace and resurrection just a matter of who you know, the council need the Lord Leareth permanently deceased with absolutely no chance of revivification…

Taking the gig, Vlad sets his resources – human, alien and mystical – into locating the thieving absconder and soon finds him holed up in the worst possible place: as an honored guest of powerful Dragonlord Morrolan in his floating castle, cynically using the nobility’s Code of Hospitality to stay safe and unmolested.

Not every member of the clan is happy with the situation and the assassin has a powerful ally in young Aliera, Morrolan’s cousin, and a puissant sorceress in her own right.

Time is running out but Vlad and Loiosh have hatched a cunning plan…

The high fantasy trappings and milieu will delight fans of the genre but the real delight of this colourful, imaginative romp is the plain and simple fact that even with all the witchcraft and weirdness on display, at its heart this is a classy, hard-boiled, private eye thriller dressed up in fantastic fancy-dress: sly, dry, funny, impressively adult and breathtakingly fast-paced… and there’s never been an ethnic-buddy/sidekick like that smart-aleck flying iguana…

Zelentz’s adaptation rockets along, perfectly blending de rigueur tough-guy inner monologue with the land-of-miracles setting and John Pierard’s full-colour artwork is especially appealing – lush, bold, bright and satisfyingly reminiscent of Howard Chaykin’s painted narratives.

An enticing, appetising change of pace for the usual comics crowd, this sorcerous saga might well win a few fans amongst the dedicated Fights ‘n’ Tights fraternity too.
© 1990 Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. Introduction © 1990 Steven Brust. Original novel Jhereg © 1983 Steven Brust. All Rights Reserved.

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Stormwatch: Lightning Strikes


By Warren Ellis, Tom Raney, Jim Lee & various (DC/WildStorm)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-617-0

StormWatch was a paramilitary Special Crisis Intervention unit tasked with managing global threats and superhuman menaces with international ramifications; operating under the oversight of a UN committee. From their “Skywatch” satellite in geosynchronous orbit above Earth they observed, waiting until a member nation called for help…

The multinational taskforce comprised surveillance and intelligence specialists, tech support units, historians, researchers, detention facilities, combat analysts, divisions of uniquely trained troops, a squadron of state-of-the-art out-atmosphere fighter planes and a band of dedicated superheroes for front-line situations beyond the scope of mere mortals. In the pilot’s seat was incorruptible overseer Henry Bendix – “The Weatherman”.

StormWatch was born during the comics revolution which saw celebrated young creators abandon major “work-for-hire” publishers to set up their own companies and titles – with all the benefits and drawbacks that entailed. As with most of those glossy, formulaic, style-over-content, almost actionably derivative titles, it started with an honest hectic enthusiasm but soon bogged down for lack of ideas.

Warren Ellis took over the ponderous feature with issue #37 (see the previous collection StormWatch: Force of Nature) and immediately began beating life into the title. Soon “just another high-priced team-book” became an edgy, unmissable treatise on practical heroism and the uses and abuses of power. Making the book unquestionably his plaything Ellis slowly evolved StormWatch out of existence, to be reborn as the no-rules-unbroken landmark The Authority.

StormWatch: Lightning Strikes collects issues #43-47 of the comicbook, taking short, hard looks at individual cast members and also features a spectacular gallery of covers and variant-covers by Tom Raney & Randy Elliot, Mark Irwin, Gil Kane and Jim Lee.

The incisive explorations begin with ‘Jack Hawksmoor’, a human subjected to decades of surgical manipulation by aliens to become the avatar of cities. Drawn to the scene of a serial killer’s grotesque excesses Jack uncovers a festering government cover-up which reaches deep into the soul of America’s most revered idols and threatens to rip the country apart if exposed.

But the apparently untouchable murderer will never cease his slaughter-campaign unless someone stops him…

‘Jenny Sparks’ follows the cynical Englishwoman whose electrical powers were an expression of her metaphysical status as incarnate “Spirit of the Twentieth Century”: a captivating pastiche of fantasy through the last hundred years as the jaded hero recounts her life story (see also Jenny Sparks: The Secret History of the Authority) in a dazzling series of pastiches referencing Siegel & Shuster, Frank Hampson’s Dan Dare, Kirby, Crumb and the horrors of Thatcherite Britain in a gripping tale of betrayal, whilst the terse thriller ‘Battalion’ sees StormWatch’s normally non-operational, behind-the-scenes trainer fall into a supremacist terror-plot whilst on leave in Alabama and forced to call on skills and abilities he never thought he’d need again…

‘Rose Tattoo’ was a mute and mysterious sexy super psycho-killer recruited by Bendix as a walking ultimate sanction. When her super-powered team-mates go on a hilarious alcoholic bonding exercise she finally shows her true nature in a tale which foreshadows an upcoming crisis for the entire team… and planet.

Following Raney & Randy Elliot’s sterling run of the previous four tales Jim Lee & Richard Bennett illustrate the concluding ‘Assembly’ as Bendix sends his core-team into the very pits of Hell in a bombastic action-packed shocker that acts as a “jumping-on point” for new readers and a reminder of what StormWatch is and does… preparatory to Ellis kicking the props out from under the readership in the next volume…

One again skilfully mixing the traditional with the outrageous these episodes offered a fresh take on the costumed catastrophe genre that energised once-jaded readers and paved the way for the graphic phenomenon of the Authority. Darkly anarchic, funny and frightening these tales celebrate the best of what has gone before whilst kicking in the doors to a bleaker more compelling tomorrow.

© 1996, 1997, 2000 WildStorm Productions, an imprint of DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Original Adventures of Cholly and Flytrap – A Marvel Graphic Novel


By Arthur Suydam (Marvel)
ISBN: 0- 87135-734-8

Scantily clad hot chicks swinging swords have been a staple of fantasy comics from their very inception, but there are none of those on view in this beautifully realised collection from illustrator, designer, screenwriter and musician Arthur Suydam, whose anarchically humorous, offbeat confections and magical renderings have graced such disparate products as magazines Heavy Metal, National Lampoon, Penthouse Comix and Epic Illustrated (where these brutally madcap little graphic novellas first appeared – specifically issues #8, 10, 13, 14 and 34), comicbooks like Tarzan, Conan, Batman, House of Mystery and Marvel Zombies and movie spin-offs Aliens and Predator.

He has also well as produced covers for novels including Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane’s collaborative Dead Street and Game box-art for Touch the Dead. Periodically Suydam returns to his own uniquely creative projects such as Mudwogs and the military muck-ups of Cholly and Flytrap, teasingly releasing another snippet every so often…

This then is the other sort of fantasy: lavishly grotesque, manically arch and surreptitiously satirically subversive; a lavish blend of dryly witty pastiches combining elements of Moebius’ Arzach, the imaginative  sci-fi earthiness of Vaughn Bode and a surreal anti-war temperament that imbues the blackly comic ultra-violence with a hauntingly tragic undertone.

Long ago the space-barge Exodus II crashed on an uncharted world. After untold ages the survivors have bred but never prospered, locked as they are in the constant struggle for survival. It’s not that the planet is particularly inhospitable… it’s just that the denizens -indigenous and not – adore war-making and love killing…

Apparently Cholly began life as a bat-riding warrior: an image for the poster advertising the animated Heavy Metal movie, but he was mysteriously transformed into a hot chick on a pterodactyl after acceptance (this sort of inexplicable conceptual metamorphosis happens a lot in film-land) leaving Suydam with a cool-looking visual and a lot of ideas…

Time passed, Marvel started a creator-owned, rights-friendly fantasy periodical in response to the success of Heavy Metal and a reinvented bat-riding, goggles-wearing icon of conflict began appearing. Of course, he had evolved slightly and the chiropteran had become a colossal, naked, bald fat man. Cholly still rode him like a seasoned veteran though…

The collected insanity begins with ‘A Little Love, a Little Hate!’ from 1981, a frenetic chase/duel between a foul-mouthed, flying jacketed war-hawk and his slug-like arch-enemy, which showed Cholly’s streetwise cunning in spectacular, over-the-top fashion.

‘Flightus Interuptus’ followed, an airborne tussle (possibly started before the previous tale?) wherein the high-flying Cholly, sans Flytrap, battled a massive mammary zeppelin-bomber in nothing more that a primitive tri-plane pulled by a brace of the planet’s levitating anti-gravity breasts (no, really). Tragically shot down in the throes of victory, the adaptable aviator found a giant bat to ride (remember kids, recycling even of ideas and art is good for any planet). Sadly the noble beast didn’t last long…

Soldier and human(ish) steed were reunited for the longer saga ‘The Rites of Spring‘ as Suydam expanded his cast and extemporized on the concept of mortals as organic war machines in a Horatian tale of Thermopylan courage with Cholly and faithful, mute Flytrap holding back a veritable horde of slug-troopers and big-ass war-wagons – a smart and lusciously graphic feast of visual violence and sassy back-chat.

‘The End’ begins with the war-lover tooling around the sky on some more of those flying hooters until he encountered a monolithic monster having a furious argument with his own outrageously outspoken boy-bits. Passions aroused and tempers flaring, Cholly was witness to an ending you simply don’t see every day…

The short, sweet, one-trick gags grew into something more complex (a portent of the substantial tales that followed far too infrequently over the next twenty years) in the hilarious concluding Epic entry ‘The Adventures of Cholly and Flytrap’ (plotted by Peter Koch) as the peripatetic pair hauled up at their favourite restaurant for a feed. Impatience, hunger, foreign food and honking big guns never make for a sedate evening…

Topped off with a glorious portfolio of monochrome sketches and working drawings plus the magnificent cover of Epic Illustrated‘s last issue this sumptuous, gratuitous and entrancingly daft eye-candy, released in the extravagantly expansive European Album format (a square-ish, high-gloss page of 285 x 220mm rather than today’s elongated 258 x 168mm) is a mature readers delight and yet another classy piece of work to add to the “why is this out of print?” list.
© 1981, 1982, 1986, 1991 Arthur Suydam. All Rights Reserved.

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Arena – A Marvel Graphic Novel


By Bruce Jones (Marvel)
ISBN: 0- 87135-557-6

In  the early 1980s Marvel led the publishing pack in the development of high quality original graphic novels: mixing out-of-the-ordinary Marvel Universe tales, new in-continuity series launches, creator-owned properties, licensed assets, movie adaptations and even the occasional creator-owned property in extravagantly expansive packages (a square-ish standard page of 285 x 220mm rather than the now customary elongated 258 x 168mm) that felt and looked instantly superior to the average comicbook no matter how good, bad or incomprehensible (my way of saying outside your average Marvel Zombie’s comfort zone) the contents might be.

By 1990 Marvel’s ambitious line of outré all-area epics had begun to stall and some less-than-stellar tales were squeaking into the line-up. Moreover, the company was increasingly relying on hastily turned out cinema adaptations with built-in fan appeal and safe in-continuity stories offering established and company copyrighted characters rather than creator-owned properties and original concepts. The once-unmissable line began to have the appearance of an over-sized, over-priced clearing house for leftover stories.

So this stunning suspense saga counts as one of the last – and very best – indie/mainstream fiction experiments from before the rot set in; a creepy, clever, sexy thriller from EC fan and artistic everyman Bruce Jones which sets up shop in Stephen King and Ray Bradbury territory to deliver an overwhelmingly impressive rollercoaster of shocks and twists.

Sharon and her 12 year old daughter Lisa are driving through the majestic rural backwoods of America. It’s a pretty acrimonious journey and when the opportunity presents itself Mom takes a break and goes for a refreshing dip in a mountain pool whilst daughter stays in the car sulkily playing with her toy planes.

Sharon’s idyllic moment is shattered when she sees a jet crash scant yards away. However she can’t find any wreckage or even the slightest sign of it. Lisa saw and heard nothing and neither did the sinister voyeur who had been spying on them…

Rushing back to his shack simpleminded Lem tells his demented Granny about the strange woman. The old crone smells opportunity: if they can capture her and if she’s fertile they can sell her babies in the Big City… and even if she’s not big brother Rut will have a new plaything for awhile…

Lost in the deep woods Lt. Roberts, USAF crawls out of her crashed plane and hears voices. Sharon and the downed pilot start talking and realise that although they can’t see each other they are standing side by side. They’re invisible because they’re separated by two decades…

Somehow the mountain and forest are one huge time-warp… and increasingly, various eras are overlapping. Even though Sharon can only talk to Roberts, dinosaurs and cavemen are chaotically roaming over the hills, endangering both women in their own time-zones…

At that moment Lem and Rut strike, snatching Sharon. locking her up ready to make some money-spinning young ‘uns. From the car little Lisa sees her mother taken and twenty years in the future pilot Lisa Roberts suddenly remembers the horrifying moment her mother was killed by Hillbilly rapist psychopaths…

The time-shifts briefly stabilise and the two Lisas meet…

With beasts and worse roaming the woods the elder girl realises she has a chance to unmake the worst day of her life, but there are complications she could never have imagined in store for her and the girl she used to be…

Sultry, sinister and devilishly cunning this chronal conundrum is beautifully illustrated by Jones and his corkscrew plot is packed full of genuine surprises. Don’t think you’ve guessed the ending because you most likely haven’t…

A perfect sci fi movie-in-waiting, this terse and evocative yarn follows all the rules for a great screen shocker without ever having to “dumb-down” the temporal mechanics in deference to the Great Un-read in the popcorn seats.

Smart, seductive storytelling for sharp-witted punters, this is a time-lost gem you should track down however long it takes…
© 1989 Bruce Jones. All Rights Reserved.

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Stormwatch: Force of Nature


By Warren Ellis, Tom Raney& Randy Elliot (DC/WildStorm)
ISBN: 978-1-48023-611-8

StormWatch evolved out of the creative revolution which saw big name creators abandon the major “work-for-hire” publishers and set up their own companies and titles – with all the benefits and drawbacks that entailed. As with most of those glossy, formulaic, style-over-content, almost actionably derivative titles the series started with a certain verve and flair but soon bogged down for a lack of ideas and outside help was called in to save the sinking ships.

Dedicated Iconoclast Warren Ellis took over the cumbersome series with issue #37 and immediately began brutalizing the title into something not only worth reading but within an unfeasibly brief time produced a dark, edgy and genuinely thought-provoking examination of heroism, free will, the use and abuse of power and ultimate personal responsibility. Making the book uniquely his, StormWatch became unmissable reading as the series slowly evolved itself out of existence, to be reborn as the eye-popping, mind-boggling anti-hero phenomenon The Authority.

StormWatch was a vast United Nations-sponsored Special Crisis Intervention unit tasked with managing superhuman menaces with national or international ramifications and global threats, operating under the oversight of a UN committee. They were housed in “Skywatch” a futuristic space station in geosynchronous orbit above the planet and could only act upon specific request of a member nation.

The multinational taskforce comprised surveillance and intelligence specialists, technical support units, historians and researchers, detention technicians, combat analysts, divisions of uniquely trained troops, a squadron of state-of-the-art out-atmosphere fighter planes and a band of deputised superheroes for front-line situations beyond the scope of mere mortals. The whole affair was controlled by incorruptible overseer Henry Bendix – “The Weatherman”.

Referencing a host of fantasy classics ranging from T.HU.N.D.E.R. Agents and Justice League of America to Captain Scarlet and Star Trek: the Next Generation, StormWatch: Force of Nature collects issues #37-42 of the comicbook series and describes how the death of a team-member forces Bendix to re-evaluate his mission and find more effective ways to police the growing paranormal population and the national governments that seek to exterminate or exploit them…

The restructuring begins in ‘New World Order’ as, following the funeral of a fallen comrade, Bendix fires a large number of the superhuman contingent and recruits a trio of new “posthuman” heroes: electric warrior Jenny Sparks, extraterrestrially augmented detective Jack Hawksmoor and psycho-killer Rose Tattoo.

Weatherman’s own chain-of-command has altered too: his new superiors of the UN Special Security Council are all anonymous now and, with the world in constant peril, they have given Bendix carte blanche. He will succeed or fail all on his own…

The super-agents are further restructured: StormWatch Prime is the name of the regular, public-facing metahuman team, whilst Black is the code for a new covert insertion unit. StormWatch Red comprises the most powerful and deadly agents: they will handle “deterrent display and retaliation” – preventing crises by scaring the bejeezus out of potential hostiles…

Meanwhile, as all the admin gets signed off, in Germany a madman has unleashed a weaponized superhuman maniac to spreading death, destruction and disease. Whilst new Prime Unit deals with it Bendix shows the monster’s creator just how far he is prepared to go to preserve order on the planet below…

‘Reprisal’ is a murder investigation. No sooner had one of the redundant ex-StormWatch operatives arrived home than he was assassinated and Jack Hawksmoor, Irish ex-cop Hellstrike and pyrokine Fahrenheit’s subsequent investigation reveals the kill was officially instigated by a friendly government and StormWatch member-state…

Hawksmoor, Jenny Sparks and aerial avenger Swift are dispatched to an ordinary American town with a big secret in ‘Black’ as Amnesty International reports reveal that some US police forces are engaging in systematic human rights abuse. In Lincoln City they’re also building their own metahuman soldiers and testing them on ethnic minorities…

‘Mutagen’ sees the Prime team in action in Britain when terrorists release an airborne pathogen to waft its monstrous way across the Home Counties, turning humans into ghastly freaks for whom death is a quick and welcome mercy. As Skywatch’s Hammerstrike Squadron performs a sterilising bombing run over outraged Albion StormWatch Red arrives in the villains’ homeland to teach them the error of their ways…

In this continuum most superhumans are the result of exposure to a comet which narrowly missed the Earth, irradiating a significant proportion of humanity with power-potential. These “Seedlings’” abilities usually lie dormant until an event triggers them.

StormWatch believed they had a monopoly on posthumans who could trigger others in the form of special agent Christine Trelane, but when she investigates a new potential meta, she discovers proof of another ‘Activator.’

Coming closer to solving a long-running mystery regarding where the American Government is getting its new human weapons, Trelane first has to deal with the worst kind of seedling… a bad one…

This first collection of the Ellis Experiment concludes with the spectacular ‘KodÇ’.’ Japan shudders and reels under the telekinetic assault of cruelly conjoined artificial mutants bred by a backward-looking doomsday-cult messiah so the Prime team is dispatched to save lives and hunt down the instigators in a good old-fashioned, get-the-bad-guys romp which gives the team’s multi-faceted Japanese hero Fuji a chance to shine winningly…

Artfully blending the comfortably traditional with the radically daring these transitional tales offered a new view of the Fights ‘n’ Tights scene that tantalised jaded readers and led the way to the groundbreaking phenomenon of the Authority.

Tom Raney & Randy Elliott’s art is competent but mercifully underplayed – a real treat considering some of the excessive visual flourishes of the Image Era – but the real focus of attention is always the brusque “sod you” True Brit writing which trashes all the treasured ideoliths of superhero comics to such devastating effect.

This is superb action-based comics drama: cynical, darkly satirical, anarchic, alternately rip-roaringly funny and chilling in its examination of Real Politik but never forgetting that deep down we all really want to see the baddies get a good solid smack in the mouth…
© 1996, 1999 WildStorm Productions, an imprint of DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.