Category: Mature Reading

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The Desert Peach volume 4: Baby Games


By Donna Barr (Mu Press/Aeon Pubs)
ISBN: 1-883847-05-2

Donna Barr is one of the comic world’s most singular graphic raconteurs. She always constructs impeccable, fully realised worldscapes to house her stories and tells them with a style and voice that are definitely one-of-a-kind. Her most perfect creations are the Half-Horse Stinz Löwhard, and The Desert Peach, perfectly self-assured and eminently capable gay brother of the legendary “Desert Fox” and the scintillating star of this effervescent assemblage of sly, dry wit, raucous drollery and way out military madness.

Set in World War II Africa and effortlessly combining hilarity, absurdity, profound sensitivity and glittering spontaneity, the stories describe the daily grind of Oberst Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel; a dutiful if unwilling cog in the German War Machine.

However, although as capable as his beloved elder sibling Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the gracious and genteel Peach is a man who loathes causing harm or giving offence and thus spends his dry and dusty days with the ever-so-motley crew of the 469th Halftrack, Gravedigging & Support Unit of the Afrika Korps, trying to remain stylish, elegant and non-threatening to the men under his command and the enemy forces around him.

The only people he really dislikes are boors, bigots and card-carrying Blackshirts…

He applies the same genteel courtesies to the sundry natives inhabiting the area and the rather tiresome British – not all of whom are party to a clandestine non-aggression pact Pfirsich has agreed with his opposite numbers in the amassed Allied Forces…

The romantic fool is also passionately in love with and engaged to Rosen Kavalier: handsome Aryan warrior and wildly manly Luftwaffe Ace…

The Desert Peach ran for 32 intermittent issues via a number of publishers and was subsequently collected as eight graphic novel collections (1988-2005). A prose novel, Bread and Swans, a musical and an invitational collection by other artists entitled Ersatz Peach were also created during the strip’s heyday. A larger compendium, Seven Peaches, collects issues #1-7 and Pfirsich’s further exploits continue as part of the Modern Tales webcomics collective…

Arguably the real star of these fabulous frothy epics is the Peach’s long-suffering, unkempt, crafty, ill-mannered, bilious and lazily scrofulous orderly Udo Schmidt, a man of many secrets whose one redeeming virtue is his uncompromising loyalty and devotion to the only decent man and tolerable officer in the entire German army.

This terrifyingly scarce fourth softcover collection reprints issues #10-12, and starts the ball rolling with ‘Two-Timers’ wherein the fiercely protective Pfirsich infiltrates the British positions as history’s least believable English Officer to ferret out a spy targeting his brother Erwin.

Of course to carry off the mission somebody has to be prominently visible in the German camp as the ever-so-unmissable and wickedly froufrou Desert Peach. Ein step vorwarts, (or else…) patriotic he-man and self-appointed Nazi political officer Leutnant Kjars Winzig…

Meanwhile, as the entire 469th kvetch over the Leutnant’s unlikely and unhappy performance, Pfirsich’s impossible imposture is going inconceivably well until he confronts the undercover agent over drinks in the NAAFI. Although the bold Boche succeeds in reasoning with the master-spy, a couple of Anzac non-coms (who hate Poms as much as Krauts) are not fooled, leading to a spectacular chase and frantically thrilling conclusion…

That hilarious comedy of terrors was quickly topped by a superbly delightful and trenchantly wicked adult farce in ‘Straight and Narrow’ wherein Udo, disgusted with the mockery his effeminate boss engenders amongst other German units, determines to get his boss laid by a woman – specifically the very willing and professional ladies of local bordello “The Cedars”.

Aiding and abetting this appalling scheme is Pfirsich’s one true love, wild man Luftwaffe pilot and airborne inamorata Rosen Kavalier. Even with the more than willing demimondaine Babette in on the scheme and exerting all her professional wiles it takes a chemical “additive” to finally get the ball rolling…

Of course the entire vile scheme ends badly and the Peach, crushed, disgusted and humiliated storms off. Soon after however, Babette realises that she’s now eating for two…

The reprinted material ends here with the inevitable conclusion in ‘Menschenkind – Child of the World’ as nine months after that epic night Pfirsich – still distant with his staff and boyfriend – drives away the unrepentant Ace. Kavalier storms off and visits The Cedars again, discovering a fascinating piece of news…

Although the Peach refuses to listen to his true love, cunning Udo, in on the secret, inveigles his boss into returning to his place of shame, where after another farcical misapprehension of events the Peach is finally introduced to his newborn son…

But of course even this joy is tempered by incredible problems…

To augment and complete this fabulous triptych of torrid tales there’s a new epilogue ‘Home is Where…’ set in the Peach’s declining years, wherein Pfirsich and his adult son Mani play host to a reunion of the 469th few survivors: a bittersweet vignette which delights and fearfully foreshadows tragedies yet to come…

Referencing the same vast story potential as Sgt. Bilko, Hogan’s Heroes, Oh, What a Lovely War! and Catch 22, as well as such tangential films as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Birdcage, the Desert Peach is bawdy, raucous, clever, authentically madcap and immensely engaging. These fabulous combat fruit cocktails were some of the very best comics of the 1990s and still pack the comedic kick of an embroidered landmine, liberally leavened with situational jocularity, accent humour and lots of footnoted Deutsche cuss-words for the kids to learn. Moreover, with this volume the dark bitter edges and cold iron underlying these fabulous characters and their horrific, doomed situation become increasingly apparent.

Illustrated in Barr’s fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style, this book is a must-have for any history-loving, war-hating lover of wit, slapstick, high drama and belly-laughs. All the Desert Peach books are pretty hard to find these days but if you have a Kindle, Robot Comics have just begun to release individual comicbook issues for anybody who can get the hang of all this verfluchte technical tsuris…
© 1991-1994 Donna Barr. All rights reserved. The Desert Peach is ™ Donna Barr.

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Thoroughly Ripped with the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers …and Fat Freddy’s CAT!


By Gilbert Shelton & Dave Sheridan with Paul Mavrides (Rip Off Press, Inc.)
ISBN: 978-0-89620-088-3
(1978)

Since nobody normal, god-fearing, decent and upstanding would ever dabble with  recreational pharmaceuticals, you’re probably utterly unaware of the extensive sub-culture which has grown up around the casual abuse and dastardly trafficking of narcotics – and so, of course, am I – but it must be said: those counter-culture dudes certainly know how to craft a comic tale.

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers shambled out of the Underground Commix counter-culture wave in 1968; initially appearing in Berkeley Print Mint’s Feds ‘n’ Heads, before creator Gilbert Shelton and a few friends founded their own San Francisco based Rip Off Press in 1969. This effective collective continued to maximise the madness as the hilarious antics of the “Freaks” (a contemporary term for lazy, dirty, drug-taking hippy folks) captured the imagination of the more open-minded portions of America and the world (not to mention their kids)…

In 1971 Rip Off published the first compilation: The Collected Adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers – which has been in print all around the planet ever since – and soon assorted underground magazines and college papers were joined by the heady likes of Rip Off Comix, High Times, Playboy and numerous foreign periodicals in featuring the addictive adventures of Freewheelin’ Franklin, Phineas T. Freakears and Fat Freddy Freekowtski (and his cat): simpatico metaphorical siblings in sybaritic self-indulgence.

Always written by Shelton and, from 1974 illustrated by Dave Sheridan (until his death in 1982) after which Paul Mavrides picked up the nibs and brushes; the disjointed strips (sorry; irresistible puns are the monkey on my back) combined canny satirical cynicism, surreal situations, scatological sauciness and a terrifying grasp of human nature in staggeringly comedic episodes which cannot fail to amuse anyone with a mature sense of humour.

All the strips have been collected in various formats (in Britain by the marvellous Knockabout Comics) and have been happily absorbed by vast generations of fans – most of whom wouldn’t read any other comic.

Despite the hippy-dippy antecedents and stoner presentiments, Shelton is irrefutably a consummate professional. His ideas are always enchantingly fresh yet timeless, the dialogue is permanently spot-on and his pacing perfect. The stories, whether half-page fillers, short vignettes or full blown sagas, start strong and relentlessly build to spectacular – and often wildly outrageous, hallucinogenic yet story-appropriate – climaxes.

And they’re so very, very funny.

Freewheelin’ Franklin is the tough, street-savvy one who can pull the chicks best, Phineas T. Freakears is a wildly romantic, educated and dangerous (to himself) intellectual whilst Fat Freddy Freekowtski is us; weak-willed, greedy, not so smart, vastly put upon by an uncaring universe but oddly charming (you wish…)

One last point: despite the vast panoply of drugs imbibed, both real and invented, the Freaks don’t ever do heroin – and if that’s not a warning message I don’t know what is…

Thoroughly Ripped is a compilation first released in 1978 and revised with the 1980 edition reviewed here: a luxurious full painted-colour softcover which collects the last of Dave Sheridan’s strips and a couple of the superb early Paul Mavrides efforts in a gloriously anarchic and hilarious chronicle of cloudy-headed, anti-corporate skits and sketches.

The wit and wonderment opens with ‘Fat Freddy’s CAT in the Burning of Hollywood’ from 1978 as the sublimely smug and sanguine survivor of a million hairy moments recounts to his ever-burgeoning brood of impressionable kittens how he and his imbecilic human spectacularly flamed out in the movie biz in a classic tale written and illustrated by Shelton, after which follows a single page strip about the dangers of buying your fun from a guy in an alley…

Next up is the breakthrough “origin” saga of Phineas ‘Winter of ’59’ (produced for internationally distributed Playboy magazine in 1974) and a saucy retrospective of high times in the Fabulous Fifties and Swinging Sixties.

‘Sunday Funnies’ was a single-page spoof of super-cop Dick Tracy starring inept undercover Fed Notorious Norbert (the Nark) who returned in ‘The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and the Mysterious Visitor’ which saw the start of Dave Sheridan’s artistic endeavours in a snazzy sting operation by the dragged-up drug cop, followed by the superbly surreal ‘Ridin’ That Train’ as Fatty Freddy discovered the mixed joys of train sets and strong weed…

Much of the material consisted of untitled quickies and short strips. Freewheelin’ Franklin solos in a paranoid cautionary tale of the perils of housework, whilst Freddy and Phineas get into a bizarre battle over TV privileges after which the Fat One finally decides to get rid of the cockroach invasion blighting his life before accidentally and cataclysmically exposing corporate greed in the fire-alarm sales trade…

Preceded by a one-page tale of Phineas’ latest drug-dregs recycling invention, ‘The $29.95 SF to NYC Non-Stop Whiteline Cannonball Express’ by Shelton & Sheridan details the explosive and acerbic epic tale of the Bro’s attempt to start a trans-continental people’s vintage bus service with the usual wildly unbelievable detours and results, after which a flurry of short strips, including Freddy’s adventure in a mud wallow, Phineas’ attempt to make bees produce marijuana honey, Norbert’s latest drug scanning technology fiasco and a search for the legendary “Lost Volkswagen Cocaine Stash” leads to the lads’ latest home-growing experiment decimating their apartment block.

The Reefer Madness concludes with a yarn exposing the secret TV conspiracy to suck out our brains, how undercover cops won a Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers look-alike competition and two Mavrides one-pagers – an untitled collaboration with Sheridan detailing the wonder of “the munchies” and the disgustingly uproarious ‘Zeno’s Law’ as the Freaks attempt to legislate and police refrigerator privileges and responsibilities…

Without Shelton and the Freaks the whole sub-genre of slacker/stoner movies, from Cheech and Chong‘s assorted escapades to more modern entries such as Dude, Where’s My Car?, Supertroopers, Harold and Kumar and all the rest, good, bad or indifferent, wouldn’t exist. Whether or not that’s a good thing is up to you…

Anarchically sardonic and splendidly ludicrous, the madcap slapstick of the Freak Brothers is always an irresistible and joyously innocent tonic for the blues and these tales should be a compulsory experience for any fan of the comics medium. However, if you’re still worried about the content, which is definitely habit-forming, simply read but don’t inhale…
© 1981 Rip Off Press, Inc. Fat Freddy’s Cat © 1981 Gilbert Shelton. “Winter of ’59” © 1974 Playboy.

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Cyberpunk book 1 & 2


By Scot Rockwell, Darryl Banks & Doug Talalla (Innovation)
ASIN: B005KDE9UO & B000GG0BBQ

One of the most ambitious and intriguing cash-ins on the 1990s literary phenomenon dubbed “Cyberpunk” was this challenging and potentially excellent yarn crafted very much in the manner of William Gibson’s Neuromancer which never had the time, editorial support or fanbase to develop into what it could and should have been. The story debuted as a brace of 2-issue miniseries in 1989 before being collected in colourful but exceedingly thin tomes.

It all begins in the near future with ‘Bad Dreams’ as freelance ICEbreaker Topo AKA “the Mole” attempts to infiltrate street-gang the Plastiques before returning his addicted consciousness to the shared cyberspace arena of the “Playing Field”.

Topo despises his meat body and would spend eternity in the neural universe if possible, but when his crusading lover and occasional employer is abducted by her latest target, Roi of Quondam Mechanics the Mole needs the assistance of tech-broker Alma Matrix to balance the scales and even the odds…

Probing the Corporation’s datastore in his avatar-form proves disastrous, but Topo survives and returns to his meat-form changed on a core level into something new and with very dangerous knowledge, leading to a fantastic showdown with Roi in an apocalyptic Playing Field which is catastrophically self-destructing all around them…

Book Two ‘The Masks of Time’ opens three years later as Juno allies with a streetgang called the Hotboys to track down her missing partner Topo who has vanished into cyberspace, obsessed with exploring the farthest frontiers of the digital universe and finding at last the mythical semi-mystical “Edge” of existence.

The rescue mission is doomed from the start. The Hotboys have their own agenda, Juno is unsure of her motives and Topo, deeper than any mind has ever delved, has encountered “Cyberghosts” who reveal a whole new reality…

When Alma Matrix is attacked and forced to intervene in Topo’s extended cerebral suicide, events take a extreme turn and the Mole’s gradual apotheosis resumes; culminating in a spectacular, radical denouement which offers the best available ‘Solace’ for all the conflicted players involved…

Although plainly derivative this smart little sci fi thriller offered a classy introduction to the sub-genre for comics fans and still holds the attention better than most related works, in comics or prose. The painted art ranges from excellent to murkily average but works well within the tale’s multi-level conception and I would certainly look favourably on a “twenty-five years later” sequel should one ever be mooted…
Cyberpunk, Topo, Juno and all other prominent characters and distinctive likenesses are ™ 1989 Scott Rockwell. Story © 1989 Scott Rockwell. Art (Book 1) © 1989 Darryl Banks, (Book 2) © 1990 Doug Tallala All rights reserved.

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Heavy Metal Presents New Tales of the Arabian Nights


By Richard Corben & Jan Strnad (Heavy Metal Books/Simon & Schuster)
ISBN: 930-36844-4

Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest proponents of graphic narrative: an animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist, springing from the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in comic storytelling with his own unmistakable style and vision. He is equally renowned for his mastery of airbrush, captivatingly excessive anatomical stylisation and delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales.

Until relatively recently Corben steered clear of the Fights ‘n’ Tights comicbook mainstream. He didn’t sell out – American publishing simply caught up, finally growing mature enough to accommodate him, due in no small part to his broad and pervasive influence…

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, he graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 and found work as an animator. At that time, the neutered comicbooks of the Comics-Code Authority era were just starting to lose disaffected, malcontent older fans to the hippy-trippy, freewheeling, anything-goes publications of independent-minded creators across the continent who were increasingly making the kind of material Preachers and Mummy and her lawyers wouldn’t approve of…

Creativity honed by the resplendent and explicitly mature 1950s EC Comics, Carl Barks’ perfectly crafted Duck tales and other classy early strips, a plethora of young artists like Corben responded with a variety of small-press publications – including Grim Wit, Slow Death, Skull, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor – which featured shocking, rebellious, sexed-up, raw, brutal, psychedelically-inspired cartoons and strips blending the new wave of artists’ unconventional lifestyles with their earliest childhood influences… honestly crafting the kind of stories they would like to read.

Corben inevitably graduated to more professional – and paying – venues. As his style and skills developed he worked for Warren Publishing in Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and outrageous adult science fiction anthology 1984/1994. He famously coloured some strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s the Spirit.

Soon after he was producing stunning graphic escapades for a number of companies, making animated movies, painting film posters and producing record covers such as the multi-million-selling Meatloaf album Bat Out of Hell. He never stopped creating comics but preferred personal independent projects with collaborators such as Bruce Jones, Jan Strnad and Harlan Ellison – who provided an effusive introduction here.

In 1975 Corben approached French fantasy phenomenon M̩tal Hurlant and became a fixture of its American iteration Heavy Metal Рfrom which this stunning saga was collected.

Always garnering huge support and acclaim in Europe, he was regularly collected in luxurious albums even as he fell out of favour – and print – in his own country. This particular tome gathers a particularly impressive fantasy serial from the early days of Heavy Metal (specifically from June 1978 to August 1979) which cunningly reveals the final voyage and fate of a legendary hero…

This superb, criminally out-of-print but still readily available fable opens with a history of the charismatic storyteller Shahrazad and how she charmed her murderously strict husband, then goes on to concentrate on the tale she kept from him; and only shared with her wayward sister Dunyazad… ‘Sinbad in the Land of the Jinn’.

‘The Last Voyage of Sinbad’ begins when merchant Badr al-Bakkar recognises a Sufi sage as the legendary seaman and begs to know what turned such a worldly warrior into a penitent priest. As the broken old wanderer speaks of his secret Eighth Voyage a saga of tragedy and wonder unfolds…

Sinbad was a bored and restless husband who broke many of the Prophet’s Holy Injunctions and, whilst drunk one night, encountered a Jinn who attacked him, claiming the sot had killed his wife.

In retaliation the supernatural horror demanded the life of Sinbad’s beloved spouse Zulaykha, but could not find her…

The woman had vanished from the face of the Earth and the terrified adventurer resolved to find her and save her from the vengeance of the merciless Ifrit.

He is aided in his quest by the enigmatic Akissa, who claims to be the selfsame demon wife Sinbad supposedly murdered. She wishes to be divorced from her brutal trickster husband and offers to guide Sinbad and his crew to the magical realm of Zu’l Janahayn, the Jinni King of Kings who can grant any wish should he please. All they must do is find his floating citadel of Ketra…

And thus begins a quest of shocking terror, stupendous action, wanton debauchery and stunning duplicity, which resulted in the near-breaking of our hero, magical horrors and valiant perseverance…

The artist’s infamous signature-stylisation includes abundant nudity, excessive, balletic violence and astoundingly proportioned male and female physiques and these are all prominently displayed in this cunning and beguiling continuation of the fabulous legend of an immortal hero, which still finds room for a brilliantly contemporary twist…

Richard Corben is a unique visual stylist blessed with a love of the dark and graced with a scathingly sharp sense of humour. Combine that with our apparently insatiable hunger for monsters and mystery and this book becomes the ideal treat to while away the witching hour…
© 1978, 1979 Richard Corben and Jan Strnad. Introduction © 1979 Harlan Ellison. All rights reserved.

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William Gibson’s Neuromancer – a Marvel Graphic Novel


By Tom de Haven and Bruce Jensen (Marvel/Epic)
ISBN: 0-87135-574-4

Even during the burgeoning comics boomtimes of the 1980s when the most inane, insane or banal illustrated material seemed capable of achieving a measure of success and acclaim, occasionally books everybody “knew” would be huge hits somehow failed to score or survive.

Perhaps the most surprising of these was a high-profile graphic adaptation of William Gibson’s landmark first novel, which looked great, triumphantly rode the zeitgeist of the era (in fact it created it) and was massively anticipated by avid readers within the industry and beyond it…

At this time Marvel led the field of high-quality original graphic novels: offering Marvel Universe tales, series launches, creator-owned properties, movie adaptations and licensed assets in lavishly expansive packages (square-ish pages of 285 x 220mm rather than the customary 258 x 168mm) which felt and looked instantly superior to the gaudily standard flimsy comicbook pamphlets – irrespective of how good, bad or incomprehensible the contents proved to be…

With the Gibson-minted term “Cyberspace” (first coined in his 1982 short story ‘Burning Chrome’ – as well as the acronym “ICE”: Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics) on everyone’s mind and the suddenly legitimised literary Noir sub-genre of Cyberpunk revolutionising film and comicbooks, Marvel’s Epic imprint released the first two chapters of the multi-award winning Neuromancer in an effective and challenging 48 page adaptation by author and screenwriter Tom de Haven (It’s Superman!, Galaxy Rangers), illustrated by bookcover illustrator Bruce Jensen.

This slim introductory teaser tome comprises ‘Chiba City Blues’ and ‘The Shopping Expedition’ describing a frantic and terrifying dystopian future where life is cheap, drugs are everywhere, money is everything and human bodies are merely the basic canvas for electronic or mechanical augmentations.

Those with any imagination, hope or human potential spend all the time they can in the omni-pervasive wonder-world of cyberspace where anything is possible and escape is always tantalising close… just like death.

Burned out hacker-hustler Case is on a downward spiral. He used to be a top “Cowboy”, hired to break data security and steal for the Big Boys. His major mistake was keeping some for himself and getting caught…

Instead of killing him, his “clients” took away his talent with chemicals and surgery and then let him loose to die slowly and very publicly by inches over years…

Now his trials are almost at an end: someone in the vast under-city is hunting him and all the derelict’s remaining connections are turning their backs on him…

When he is finally cornered by the deeply disturbing augmented assassin Mollie Millions (who first debuted in Gibson’s 1981 short story Johnny Mnemonic) Case’s life changes forever – but not necessarily for the better…

Mollie’s boss Armitage needs the world’s greatest hacker to crack an impossible data store and in return he’s prepared to repair all the cyber-cripple’s neural handicaps. Of course it won’t be pleasant and the boss is going to take a few biological precautions to ensure complete loyalty…

Addictively desperate to return to Cyberspace the hobbled hacker agrees, but as he undertakes his task he increasingly finds that everyone involved has their own exclusive agenda: even Armitage’s silent partner, the mysterious Artificial Intelligence Wintermute, is playing its own deadly game…

Intriguing and engrossing, this ultimately frustrating artefact isn’t so much my recommendation (although on its own truncated terms its not a bad piece of work and you might just like on its own terms) as a heartfelt wish for a new – and complete – pictorial interpretation and an impassioned plug for the prose novel itself if you still haven’t got around to it…
Introduction © 1989 William Gibson.  © 1989 Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. Original novel Neuromancer © 1984 William Gibson. All rights reserved.

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Re-Gifters


By Mike Carey, Sonny Liew & Marc Hempel (Minx/Titan Books edition)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-579-8

In 2007 DC comics attempted a bold experiment in building new markets by creating the Minx imprint: dedicated to producing comics material for the teen/young adult audience – especially the ever-elusive girl readership – that had embraced translated manga material, momentous global comics successes such as Maus and Persepolis and those abundant and prolific fantasy serials which produced such pop phenomena as Roswell High, Twilight and even Harry Potter.

Sadly after only a dozen immensely impressive and decidedly different graphic novels Minx shut up shop in October 2008, markedly NOT citing publishing partner Random House’s failure to get the books onto the appropriate shelves of major bookstore chains as the reason.

Nevertheless the books which were published are still out there and most of them are well worth tracking down – either in the US originals or the British editions published by Titan Books.

My particular favourite is the second release: a magnificently beguiling and engaging black and white, cross-cultural romantic martial arts melange by writer Mike Carey and artists Sonny Liew & Marc Hempel.

The trio’s glorious offbeat and upbeat Vertigo miniseries My Faith in Frankie is generally regarded as a prototype for the Minx model, and that quirky quixotic brilliance is in full flower in this tale of feisty yet desperately dutiful Korean-American teen Jen “Dixie” Dik Seong who channels her suppressed aggression into hapkido and her blossoming crush on hunky Adam into daydreaming, clumsiness and humiliating imbecility…

A klutz in real life, Dixie is a demon in martial arts battle, but as her best friend and dojo-mate Avril is keenly aware, the flummoxed lass’s poor head is stuck in the clouds these days…

It’s hard enough for Dixie to juggle school, a quick-fire temper, her precious heritage and loving-but-generally clueless parents with burgeoning hormones and astoundingly annoying younger brothers; without the added distraction of infatuation with a rich, self-absorbed white boy who is also her only serious rival in the upcoming National Hapkido Tournament.

After a chance encounter with mouthy street punks and bad boy Dillinger, Dixie blows all her savings and the Tournament entrance fee which her father gave her on an ancient warrior statue for Adam; leading to a huge fight with Avril but which actually succeeds in getting the boy to notice her.

So much so, in fact, that he wants her advice in getting snooty babe Megan to go out with him…

When Dixie discovers that a business loan for her father from traditional Korean bankers depends on her performance in the tournament, the furious and lovelorn girl is forced to battle for a wild-card place in the event by joining a knockout “Street Sweep Competition” against half the kids in Los Angeles… including the dire and dangerous Dillinger…

Moreover, Adam has finally got into Megan’s good books – and other places – by re-gifting Dixie’s statue to the most popular girl in school…

Re-Gifters is a bright, witty, sublimely funny and intriguing coming of age comedy which follows all the rules of the romance genre but still manages to inject a vast amount of novelty and individual character into the mix: a perfect vehicle for attracting to the medium new and youthful readers with no abiding interest in outlandish power-fantasies or vicarious vengeance-gratification – and yes, that does mean women…

Track this down and read a genuinely different kind of comic book – but do it before some hack movie producer inevitably turns the tale into just another teen rom-com…
© 2007 Mike Carey, Sonny Liew & Marc Hempel. All rights reserved.

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Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 4


By The Hernandez Brothers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-490-0

A year goes by like twelve long months when you’re waiting for a really special treat, but if that deferred object of desire is the next annual instalment of Love and Rockets: New Stories then the wait is always worth it.

One of the transcendent, formative forces of the 1980s comics revolution, 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, enthralled and enchanted with incredible stories sampling and referencing a thousand 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 – for which last please also include alternative music, hip hop and punk.

The result was dynamite. 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 denizens of Palomar still inform and shape his latest tales both directly and as imaginative spurs for ostensibly unaffiliated stories.

Everything from life, death, adultery, magic, serial killing and especially gossip could happen in Palomar’s meta-fictional environs, as the artist mined his own post-punk influences via a devastatingly effective primitivist style which blended the highly personal mythologies of comics, music, drugs, powerful women, gangs, sex and family using a narrative format which is the graphic equivalent of Magical Realism.

Winning critical acclaim but scant financial reward the brothers eventually went their own ways but a few years ago creatively reunited to produce these annual collections of new material in their particularly peculiar shared or, rather, intermittently adjacent pen-and-ink universes.

This fourth volume commences with the third chapter of Jaime’s compelling “those were the days” graphic revival of las Locas, aptly designated ‘The Love Bunglers’; further following the tribulations of middle-aged Maggie Chascarrillo, still looking for her life’s path and true love; still an uncomprehending, unsuspecting object of desire to the men – and some of the women – who flock around her.

Here the repercussions of the shocking return of her disturbed and long missing brother has shaken her world and looks likely to escalate into inescapable tragedy…

Gilbert again plunders the movie career of captivating, complex aging B-movie queen Fritz (See High Soft Lisp, The Troublemakers and Love from the Shadows) and her teen-tyro niece Dora “Killer” Rivera – granddaughter of Palomar’s formidable Matriarch Luba and another pneumatic, no-nonsense, take-charge character determined to do everything her way and own all her own mistakes – for the trendy, torrid and trashy ‘King Vampire’: a beguiling contemporary fang-banger romance wherein a troubled teen and her geeky boy-pal are spurned by the local Goth gang but not the two true bloodsuckers who have just flapped into town…

‘The Love Bunglers part 4’ cleanses the pictorial palate nicely as Maggie continues to stumble from misapprehension to miscue, after which Jaime offers another glimpse into her formative years with ‘Return To Me’, a stunning prequel to the previous volume’s astonishing, revelatory ‘Browntown’…

Gilbert then steps away from filmic conceit to examine the actress Fritz in the seductively mesmeric and innocuously shocking ‘And Then Reality Kicks In’ as the dowager starlet frankly discusses her drinking problem and stalled career with a friend before Jaime memorably closes out this year’s model with the poignant, trenchant and amazingly upbeat conclusion to ‘The Love Bunglers’

Warm-hearted, deceptively heart-wrenching, 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.

© 2011 Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. All Rights Reserved.

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Nuts


By Gahan Wilson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-454-2

Mordant cartoonist Gahan Wilson has been tickling funnybones and twanging tense nerves with his darkly dry concoctions since the 1960s; contributing sparklingly horrific and satirically suspenseful drawings and strips to Playboy, Collier’s, The New Yorker and other magazines as well as writing science fiction, criticism, book and film reviews for Again Dangerous Visions, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Twilight Zone Magazine and Realms of Fantasy.

In his broad and long career he has worn many creative hats, even creating his own supernatural computer game, Gahan Wilson’s the Ultimate Haunted House, with Byron Preiss.

In April 1970, when National Lampoon first began its devastatingly hilarious all-out attack on the American Dream, Wilson was invited to contribute a regular strip to the comics section. Nuts began in 1972 and ran until 1981, generally a single-page complete graphic epigram “starring” a grotty little chubby homunculus dubbed The Kid. This fabulous monochrome (with occasional colour) collection gathers that complete serial for collectors and potential addicts in a perfect hardback package that readers will dip into over and over again.

Taking his lead from popular sickly-sweet strips about or starring little children and the brilliant but definitely not jejune Peanuts (which was populated, to all intents and purposes, with teeny-weeny neurotic middle-aged midgets), Wilson sought to do the exact opposite and attempt to access the fear, frustration, confusion and unalloyed joy of being a young, impressionable, powerless, curious and demanding…

…and magnificently succeeded.

Dense, claustrophobic, intense and trenchantly funny, the self-contained strips ranged from satire to slapstick to agonising irony, linking up over the years to form a fascinating catalogue of growing older in the USA: a fearfully faithful alternate view of childhood and most importantly, of how we adults choose to recall those distant days…

Each strip begins with the question “Remember how…” or “One of the…” or some equally folksy enquiry before unveiling bafflement, bewilderment, night-terrors or a deeply-scarring embarrassment which haunts us till doomsday, all wrapped in a comradely band-of-brothers, shared-coping-mechanism whimsy that is both moving and quintessentially nostalgic.

Topics include the unremitting horror of germs, sudden death, being ill, inappropriate movies, forced visits, grandparents, things adults do that they don’t want you to see, unexplained noises, the butcher’s shop, accidents and rusty nails, things in closets, doctors and needles, dying pets, Santa Claus, seasonal disappointments, summer camp, sleep, bodily functions, school and lessons (two completely different things), fungus, bikes and toys, haircuts, comicbooks, deaths of relatives, hot weather, candy, overhearing things you shouldn’t, stranger danger, hobby-kits and glue, daydreaming, babies and so many other incomprehensible daily pitfalls on the path to maturity…

Peppered also with full page, hilariously annotated diagrams of such places of enduring childhood fascination as ‘The Alley’, ‘The Kit for Camp Tall Lone Tree’, ‘Mr. Schultz’s Cigar Store’, ‘The Movie Theater Seat’, ‘Table Set Up For Making Models’, ‘The Doctor’s Waiting Room’, ‘The Closet’, ‘The Sick Bed’ and ‘The Private Drawer’, this glorious procession also covers occasions of heartbreaking poignancy and those stunning, blue moon moments of serendipity and triumph when everything is oh-so-briefly perfect…

Complete with a 3-D strip and ‘Nuts to You’, a comprehensive appreciation and history by Gary Groth, this funny, sad, chilling and sublimely true picture-passport to growing up is unmissable cartoon gold.

© Fantagraphics Books. All Nuts strips © 2011 Gahan Wilson. All rights reserved.

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Ultimate Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man


By Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley, Andy Lanning, Andrew Hennessey & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-498-0

There’s no way around this and Spoiler-Warnings are pointless so you’ll just have to bear up. It even made the papers…

The Ultimate Comics Spider-Man dies. It says so on the cover. However Writer Brian Michael Bendis and returning artist Mark Bagley end the adventures and young adventurer they began in 2000 in a spectacular, thoroughly action-packed and deeply moving manner and Marvel promises that a new hero will arise from the ashes of this tale…

Marvel’s Ultimates imprint began in 2000 with major characters and concepts re-imagined to bring them into line with the tastes of modern readers – a different market from the baby-boomers and their descendents content to stick with the delights sprung from founding talents Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee – or possibly – one unable or unwilling to deal with the five decades (seven if you include the Golden Age Timely tales retroactively co-opted into the mix) of continuity baggage conglomerated around the originals.

Eventually this darkly nihilistic alternate universe became as continuity-constricted as its predecessor and in 2008 the cleansing event “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which apparently (this is still comics, after all) killed dozens of super-humans and millions of lesser mortals.

The era-ending event was a colossal tsunami which inundated Manhattan after which a number of new compendia continued the superhero soap-opera of young Peter Parker and his fellow survivors daily readjusting to a braver, cleaner new world.

Parker is the perennial hard-luck loser kid: a secretive yet brilliant geek just trying to get by in a world where daily education is infinitely more trouble than beating monsters and villains. Between High School and slinging fast food he still finds time to fight crime although his very public heroics during the crisis made him a beloved hero of police and citizenry alike – which is the creepiest thing he has ever endured.

He lives in a big house with his Aunt May and despite his low self-esteem has stellar lovelies like Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson and others seemingly hungry for his scrawny tuchus. He even briefly dated mutant babe Kitty Pride…

Many kids were homeless after the deluge, with schools and accommodation stretched to breaking point. May Parker opened her doors to a select band of orphaned super-kids like the Human Torch, Iceman and even Gwen, all living anonymously in the relatively unaffected borough of Queens.

Oversight agency S.H.I.E.L.D and their representatives Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, were assigned to teach Parker how to be a proper hero, whilst once-nemesis Jonah Jameson became an unexpected ally. With so many fortuitous events in place it could only be a prelude to disaster for the original hard luck hero…

This volume collects the five-part conclusion to the Ultimate Spider-Man saga from 2011 with issues #156-160 of the monthly comicbook and then defuses the tragedy somewhat by ending with a reprinting of the 2002 Ultimate Spider-Man Super Special.

The main story is basic, primal and unforgettable: Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, escapes from S.H.I.E.L.D. custody whilst the Ultimates and Avengers are otherwise occupied and, freeing fellow prisoners Electro, Doctor Octopus, Kraven the Hunter, Sandman and the Vulture – all of whom know Spider-Man’s civilian identity and address – rampage their way across New York determined to slaughter Parker and everyone who knows him.

After a cataclysmic conflict with echoes of Gotterdammerung and the fall of Beowulf the young warrior sacrifices everything and goes out the way a hero should…

Tense, breathtaking, evocative and even funny in the right places, this is the way a true champion should fight his final battle…

With a gallery of alternate covers by Kaare Andrews, Ed McGuiness & Morry Hollowell, Steve McNiven, Frank Cho, Michael Kaluta and Joe Quesada this epic volume concludes with a giant collaborative and life-affirming venture both in terms of Ultimate Comics co-stars and impressive guest artists from happier, more hopeful times.

Ultimate Spider-Man Super Special was basically a travelogue of the alternate Marvel Universe held together by Spider-Man examining his motives for being a hero. If you’re not that bothered by who drew things, feel free to skip the next paragraph and jump to the summing up.

Working on a pretty ultimate jam-session, a number of creators all drew a slice of the story. In order of presentation they were Alex Maleev, Dan Brereton, John Romita Sr. & Al Milgrom, Frank Cho, Jim Mahfood, Scott Morse, Craig Thompsom, Michael Avon Oeming, Jason Pearson, Sean Phillips, Mark Bagley & Rodney Ramos, Bill Sienkiewicz, P. Craig Russell, Jacen Burrows & Walden Wong, Leonard Kirk & Terry Pallot, Dave Gibbons, Michael Gaydos, James Kochalka, David Mack, Brett Weldele, Ashly Wood and Art Thibert illustrating cameos from the other Blade the Vampire Hunter, Elektra, Daredevil, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Human Torch, the Ultimates/Avengers, Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Black Widow, S.H.I.E.L.D., X-Men, Wolverine and Punisher.

Although not the edgiest of tales or most effective in respect of story-telling, the bold creative choices make it an art connoisseur’s delight and, of course, most dyed-in-the-woollen-long-johns comics fans will love all the hitting and kicking.

Comics as a medium and superheroes as a genre are infamous for raising the dead, so if you are inconsolable about the demise of a minor legend there’s comfort to be had there, if you wish. However if you like a little closure with your drama and spectacle this is a modern epic to wallow in and thoroughly adore…

™ & © 2002 and 2011 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A., Italy. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.

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The Cabbie vol. 1


By Marti Riera with an introduction by Art Spiegelman (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-4504

After far too long out of print Fantagraphics have rescued one of the darkest and yet most grimly illuminating classics of European cartooning from relative obscurity with this augmented, remastered reissue of Marti’s The Cabbie – a stylish, nightmarish psycho-sexual noir thriller that has as much seedy kick now as it had when first translated in 1987 by Catalan Communications…

Dick Tracy is one of the most well-known strips in the world and his contributions to the art form are many and indisputable. They occurred over many decades and the medium of graphic narrative grew up with it. Imagine the effect instant exposure – almost over exposure – to such an uncompromising, bombastic, iconic property on the artists of a nation where free-expression and creative autonomy was suppressed for generations.

That’s what happened when the death of General Franco (who held Spain in a fascistic time-warp from his victory in October 1936 until his death in November 1975) instantly opened-up and liberalized all aspects of Spanish life.

As Art Spiegelman says in his introduction ‘decades of political and social repression gave way to a glorious eruption of creativity that allowed a full-fledged counterculture to come to life at just about the same time that America’s “Love Generation” gave way to what Tom Wolfe labelled the “Me Generation.”’

How odd yet fitting then that an American symbol of “the Establishment” so enchanted and captivated the young cartoonist Marti Riera that he assimilated every line and nuance to create this bleak, stripped-down and very angry homage concerning the tribulations of a seedy, desperate taxi-driver trapped in a vanished past and prey to a world at once free and dangerous, ungoverned and chaotic.

Driving the seediest part of town our hero picks up a high-rolling gambler who’s just won big, but his night goes horribly wrong when a knife-wielding thief hijacks the cab and robs his passenger. Luckily the Cabbie can handle himself and he quickly, brutally subdues the thug.

He’s a decent, hard-working man who lives with his ailing mother, humouring her talk of a mysterious inheritance, and allowing her to keep the embalmed cadaver of his father in the spare bedroom, but he’s tragically unaware that his citizen’s arrest will have terrible repercussions for them both.

When the son of the thief he captured is released from prison he immediately begins a grim campaign of retribution against the Cabbie that creates a maelstrom of tragedy, degradation and despair.

This is a harsh and uncompromising tale of escalating crime and uncaring punishments: blackly cynical, existentially scary and populated with a cast of battered, desolate characters of increasingly degenerate desperation. Even the monsters are victims. But for all that The Cabbie is an incredibly compelling drama with strong allegorical overtones and brutally mesmerizing visuals.

Any adult follower of the art form should be conversant with this superb work and with a second volume forthcoming hopefully we soon all will be…
The Cabbie (Taxista) © 2011 Marti. Introduction © 2011 Art Spiegelman. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books.