Category: Mature Reading

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Ordinary Victories Complete Set


By Manu Larcenet, colours by Patrice Larcenet, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM/ComicsLit)
Complete Set ISBN: 978-1-56163-600-6.  Vol. 1 ISBN: 978-1-56163-423-1 Vol. 2 ISBN: 978-1-56163-

One of the very best European comics series of recent times is now available as a complete bargain-priced banded set.

Ordinary Victories examines the introspective and incidental life of neurotic, left-leaning, change-dreading Marco Louis in the years before the conservative/centrist Sarkozy government came to power. In mesmerising, eulogistic and winningly comedic narrative and alternating modes of illustration ranging from brashly big-foot to sensitively realistic, the soul-searching isolationist examines himself, his past, his art and his family and consequently finds a future he can at least settle for…

The four albums released in France translate to two solidly satisfying tomes here and opens with Marco, who has been subject to devastating panic attacks for years, not getting through to his therapist before giving up visiting his happy, married and well-adjusted brother to get high, chill out and reminisce.

Marco is just the kind of guy who lets life get to him. Visiting his over-protective mum and frail dad only heightens his general tension, but he does get a hint of parts of his father’s life he never before knew.

Returning to his isolated rural cottage and Adolf, his maniacal cat, Marco tries to get back to his photo-journalism job, but the despair and hatred he feels for the whole rat-race won’t go away. Wracked by anxiety and nightmares Marco takes his cat for walks in the woods where he encounters an abusive, trespass-obsessed farmer and a wise old gentleman.

When Adolf is savaged by a dog Marco meets a charming vet who inexplicably likes him, but life compensates for the nice event by getting Marco fired…

Unemployed but obsessed with his art, Marco still resists change: Emily is making noises about moving in together but the potential commitment terrifies him. He certainly can’t handle her outright demands for a baby…

The country seems to be heading for outright fascism too, his neighbour is a maniac and when he visits the old gentleman Marco discovers an unsettling connection to his dad’s mysterious war service. His paranoia goes into overdrive when he finds out what kind of a soldier old man Mesrin was and with his world spinning the angst-wracked artist is compelled to change or die…

The second part of volume 1 is ‘Negligible Amounts’ and sees the now officially-paired couple Emily and Marco visiting his parents where the son learns some unpleasant truths about his father’s health. The once vigorous and sharp-witted ship-worker is fading…

Marco’s shots of the dying Shipyard win him a Paris gallery show, but meeting his artistic and creative heroes proves a painful experience. Still the promise of a book might boost his reputation and save his dad’s old work comrades from redundancy, even if some of them are already talking of closures, unemployment and even changing their political allegiances…

With Right-wing radicalism in the streets and racism in the air Marco and his brother are pretty glum and soon after pretty drunk. When another panic attack hits hard the photographer only narrowly avoids an extended stay in a psychiatric unit… and then he gets the phone call about his father…

Volume 2 of Ordinary Victories opens with the eponymous ‘What is Precious’ as Marco slowly adjusts to his father’s death, getting even closer to Emily… at least when her incessant demands for a baby aren’t freaking him out.

With a book deal and a new analyst, things seem to be progressing but the contents of his dad’s diary provides fresh material for passive hysteria, as does his previously indomitable mother’s new attitude. Unable to stand the strain any longer, Marco confronts Mesrin and demands to know just what ghastly atrocities the old man and the deceased ship-builder actually committed…

The final chapter ‘Hammering Nails’ opens with new mum Emily and their delightful daughter Maude providing new and different anxieties for Marco, especially since he finally agreed to move the family into a bigger house…

The Shipyard is in its final days and as Marco photographs the resigned but striking workers his thoughts are more confused than ever. Everybody else either accepts or fights life’s vicissitudes: why can’t he do either?

There’s yet another election coming and everybody thinks a great change is coming – but for Marco that’s never been a comforting notion…

This is a subtle, funny and deeply contemplative tale, deftly understated and compellingly seductive. A commonplace guy handles nothing we blokes haven’t all faced and reacts pretty much as any guy would: astonished to make it safely through another day, always astonished that our partner seems to love us, claims to know us and yet stays anyway. Ordinary Victories is about frustration, loss, disappointment, and yes, occasional triumphs. These books are wonderful, sublime, magical comics and you really should read them…

© Dargaud 2005, 2007, 2008 by Larcenet. Translation © 2005, 2008 NBM.

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Dungeon Quest Book 2


By Joe Daly (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-436-8

Cartoonist and animator Joe Daly has come a long way and won a lot of friends with his eccentric, eclectic comics narratives since he broke into the American market with the beguiling and memorable Scrublands in 2006. British born and raised in South Africa, Daly quirkily blends elements as diverse as drug-culture, dead-pan comedy, penetrating soul-searching, the irrepressible ebullience of youth, and wry social commentary in a dreamy primitivist manner reminiscent of the truly great Underground Commix (and, for me at least, captivating touches of Bryan Talbot in his Brainstorm Comics days) and absurdist art and music.

His latest, award-winning, on-going project Dungeon Quest is a delightful combination of nerdy discipline and pharmaceutical excess wherein a group of stoner Dungeons and Dragons disciples actually undertake a fantasy voyage to realms fantastical, dangerous and excessively violent.

Now with volume 2, the prime mystical quest to find and reassemble the incredible Atlantean Resonator Guitar takes Millennium Boy (the smart one), Steven (the capable one), Lash Penis (the steroid-fuelled warrior) and Nerdgirl (who doesn’t talk much) through the spider-haunted Fireburg forest to a hidden Masonic temple filled with fresh weapons, cosmic mysteries and even a few rewards and answers – at least to their secondary sub-quest: finding the gender ambiguous prophet-poet Bromedes and returning his magnificent penis-sheath…

Overcoming hunger, privation, a lack of latrines, ancient puzzles, river trolls, a sea of vegetable detritus and a giant leaf monster whilst taking every possible opportunity to get brain-bustingly wasted, the post-modern Argonauts make great strides in their mission and eventually achieve their secondary goal. Nevertheless, there are still miles to go and much to see, snort or kill before they quest is over…

Happily marrying the sensibilities of post-grunge, teenaged waste-lads as typified by Jay and Silent Bob, Harold and Kumar or the assorted boy loons in films like Without a Paddle or even Dude, Where’s My Car? with the meticulous and finicky obsessions of role-playing gamers and the raw thrill of primal myths, this captivating and wittily indulgent yarn is enchantingly rendered in solid, blocky friendly black and white and garnished with lashings of smart-ass attitude.

Strength: vulgar. Intelligence: witty. Dexterity: compelling. Mana: absolutely. Status: unmissable.

© 2011 Joe Daly. All rights reserved.

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R.I.P. Best of 1984-2004


By Thomas Ott and friends (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 987-1-60699-417-7

Being an old geezer but unreconstructed punk at heart I can firmly attest and confirm that the teen-years urge to shock and addiction to loud, fast, shouty-boy music never goes away. The same holds true for in-your-face comic strips…

Thomas Ott is a Swiss cartoonist, musician, satirist and film-maker (born in Berne in June 1966) who has, since the mid-1980s, been producing stunning strips and pastiches for commercial publications such as Ahai, Okay Erotik Magazin, Strapazin, Süddeutsche Zeitung, El Vibora, Libération, L’Echo des Savanes and a host of others whilst pursuing his own uniquely meticulous trash-culture visions in self-published monochrome anthological albums such as Tales of Error, Dead End, and Greetings from Hellville.

Now this retrospective compendium from Fantagraphics presents 19 of the very best (seven never before seen) spanning two decades of shocking horror, crime noir, mordant, nihilistic love, juicy revenge, surreal justice and bleak, black irony all delivered in Ott’s signature and obsessively meticulous scratchboard style, with gleaming white narrative emerging from ebon pages, sans dialogue but occasionally boasting impressive and imaginative typography.

Beginning with raw and raucous EC comics homages ‘The Hero’, ‘Clean Up!’, ‘A Wrinkled Tragedy’ and ‘Headbanger’; gradually building up to longer – and far shorter – pieces such as ’10 Ways to Kill Your Husband’, ‘Massacre Melodies Presents Buddy Butcher in “Buddy Goes Bloody”’, ‘G.O.D.’, ‘Goodbye!’, ‘The Job’,  ’10’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

Hardbitten mystery and sardonic imagination begin to predominate with ‘Breakdown’, ‘The Millionairs’ and ‘Washing Day’ but there’s still room for a laugh in ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘The Clown’ or a disturbing chill in ‘La Fiancée du Lapin’ (written by David B) and sheer exuberance in ‘Recuerdos de Mexico’ before ending in classic droll darkness with ‘The Hook’.

Ott’s psychobilly sensibilities litter his narrative world with pimps, thugs and geeks; desperate chancers, deadly beloveds and down and outs on the edge of reality as well as society, so if jaded comics fans might feel they’ve been here before, the wider world are still only curious first-timers into a dismal dimension of vice, spice and bad advice…

Graphic, violent funny and unforgettable this is a special treat for thrill-starved adults in search of something a little beyond the norm…

© 2010 Verlag bbb Edition Moderne AG Switzerland except “La Fiancée du Lapin” © 1996 David B and Thomas Ott. All rights reserved.

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The Agents


By Ben Dunn & Kevin Gunstone (AP Pocket Manga)
ISBN: 1-932453-64-4

After decades of homegrown comics product America finally began to grow aware of other country’s graphic treasures through of all things television, when in the late 1960s imported cartoons from Japan first began appearing as part of Saturday morning programming. With shows like Astroboy, Marine Boy, Speed Racer and others reshaping a nation’s most malleable minds, it wasn’t too long before Western anime lovers also branched out into the scrupulously stylised world of manga too…

By the 1980s translated works were increasingly dominating the US and world markets and devotees also found a burgeoning and impressive subgenre market of cross-cultural, fan-turned-pro material we now know as OEL (“Original English Language”) or Amerimanga.

Probably the most adept and successful of these new creators is Ben Dunn, who was born in Taiwan in 1964, where he was exposed early and often to the fabulous alternatives of the East, before returning to Kentucky and Texas. He founded his own publishing house Antarctic Press in 1984 during the first days of the black and white comics boom, and with both timing and raw talent on his side created a series of wonderful trans-Pacific series which combined the best of American and Japanese art style and storytelling philosophy.

Among his best known creations are Ninja High School and Warrior Nun Areala and Marvel tapped his expertise when they launched their own “Mangeverse” sub-imprint in 2000.

A man of diverse interests, Dunn also cites the fabulous Film and TV fantasy adventures of the Swinging Sixties as a major interest and influence, as can be seen in this pocket collection of a six-issue miniseries he produced with writer Kevin Gunstone for Image in 2004.

The Agents is set in an alternative future: a glorious and outrageous homage to Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet, The Prisoner, Green Hornet, and such superspy stalwarts as Derek Flint, James Bond, John Steed & Emma Peel and Lady Penelope Creighton–Ward as well a dozens of lesser lights from that unforgettable age of heroes…

The action opens in ‘You Only Live Once’ as thirty years from now veteran agent Nigel Cord is called back to active service when the only super-villain to have ever outwitted him makes the world an incredible offer.

Three decades ago criminal mastermind Professor Daedalus nuked Washington DC and Moscow and took over Paraguay in the aftermath. With both global Super Powers reeling Great Britain stepped in to assume the role of World Policeman and civilisation has been in a spiral of escalating scientific terrorism ever since. Now the dying megalomaniac is offering his technological marvels in return for one last confrontation with his arch nemesis…

Meanwhile irreplaceable Boy Savant Mike 70 has gone missing and masked sidekick Haiku, without the fortifying influence of his mentor the Red Wasp is losing his edge in the unceasing battle to reclaim the streets of New York from gangsters and anarchists whilst spymaster Lady Pippa seems intent only on drinking herself to death and bedding the new recruits ‘On His Majesty’s Secret Agency’…

There are other factors in play such as the deadly C.A.B.A.L. assassin Kristal Veil and her increasingly erratic paymasters, whilst secretive crisis-management organisation the Tomahawks use advanced technology to fight disasters but do nothing to fix the political inconsistencies which cause them.

‘The Spy Who Saved Me’ finds Cord and Veil as guests of the dying Daedalus whilst the C.A.B.A.L. war among themselves and ‘Her Majesty’s Secret Agent’ reveals that the New World Order is riddled with moles and traitors…

With global Armageddon minutes away the action and intrigue accelerates to a fatal climax in ‘Thundercrack’ before ‘Our Man Cord’ finally saves the day – if not the status quo…

With all such nostalgic pastiches of bygone glories there’s an overwhelming temptation to tweak the source material for modern consumption – or perhaps just to show how clever we all are these days – but The Agents generally resists that urge, preferring to present a full-on, exuberant and magically honest appreciation of great times gone by.

Drawn in monochrome manga style but still genuinely Vista-Visioned and happily Super-Marionated, this lost delight might just be the best paean to lost days any wistful, thrill-starved baby-boomer could desire… and it’s even available as an ebook.

Story © Kevin Gunstone. Art © Ben Dunn. All rights reserved.

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Richard Corben Complete Works volume 3: Rowlf/Underground


By Richard Corben and various (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-031-6

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

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, malcontented 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 Mummy and her lawyers wouldn’t approve of…

Shocking, rebellious, pharmacologically-enhanced sensibilities and unconventional lifestyles, acting on creative impulses honed by 1950s EC Comics, Carl Barks’ Duck tales and other classy early strips called out to young artists like Corben, who responded in kind, in a variety of small-press publications including Grim Wit, Slow Death, Skull, Fever Dreams and his own mag, Fantagor.

Often signing with his sardonic pseudonym “Gore”, Corben’s work increasingly began to appear in more professionally produced venues. As his style and skills developed he worked for Warren Publishing’s Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and graphically outrageous adult science fiction anthology 1984/1994. He also famously re-coloured a number of reprinted strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s the Spirit.

In 1975 Corben approached French fantasy phenomenon Métal Hurlant and became a fixture of its American iteration Heavy Metal. Soon 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 making comics but preferred his own independent projects with collaborators such as Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jones and Jan Strnad.

This regrettably out-of-print collection is the last of three collecting his early efforts and includes his longest and most ambitious tale of those learning years, but before that the appetite is whetted by the surreal black and white parable ‘When Dreams Collide’ (1970) wherein a repressed priest and a free-spirited flower-child share a bus ride and a daydream and ‘Bug’, a far nastier science fiction fantasy with a hidden message for anybody tempted to play house outside their species…

‘Rowlf’ was first crafted in 1971 and reworked in 1979 into the full-colour saga presented here. Ambitious and more emotionally multilayered, it follows the troubled life of Princess Maryara, whose only friend is her dog. Father wants to marry her off to a pompous royal jackass and to that end she is dragged off to the local wizard who has a fine line in transformation spells for reluctant things and people…

When technological demons invade and kidnap Maryara, faithful Rowlf defends her as best he can but is no match for their guns and tanks. However when the dog stumbles into one of the wizard’s spells the bizarre human/canine hybrid that results is a far more formidable proposition. One thing hasn’t changed though – Rowlf’s unfailing devotion to the lost princess. He will find her and face any threat to rescue her…

This impressive and touching 32 page yarn is followed by ‘Mangle, Robot Mangler’, a sexy, seditious monochrome parody of the classic comicbook hero, followed by an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s eerie suspense thriller ‘The Rats in the Walls’: a grisly psychological terror-tale of fallen castles and inherited horrors.

This volume closes with a splendidly dark and seductive pastiche of the genre in ‘A Gothic Tale’, produced in collaboration with Tom Veitch, stuffed with nuns, covens, family secrets and shocking twists…

Violent, cathartically graphic and often blackly hilarious, Corben’s infamous signature-stylisation always includes oodles of nudity, extreme violence and impossibly proportioned male and female physiques – and there’s plenty of all that in here. However this volume also shows hints of the narrative maturity which helped reshape our art-form so the fact that so much of his canon is currently unavailable in English is an unbearable calamity. Not only are these early works long overdue for a definitive re-issue but all his rude, riotous, raucously ribald revels need to be re-released now…
© 1970-1987 Richard Corben. Collection © 1987 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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Y – The Last Man: volume 9 Motherland


By Brian K Vaughan, Pia Guerra Goran Sudžuka & José Marzán Jr. (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-358-9

When an apparent plague killed every male on Earth, only student Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand survived in a world instantly utterly all-girl. Even with a government super-agent and a geneticist escorting him across the unmanned American continent to a Californian bio-lab, all the boy could think of was re-uniting with his girlfriend Beth, trapped in Australia when the disaster struck.

With his rather reluctant companions secret agent 355 and Dr. Allison Mann – who were trying to solve the mystery of his continued existence – the romantically determined oaf trekked overland from Washington DC to California, getting ever closer to his fiancée… or so he thought. Each of his minders harboured dark secrets: Dr. Mann feared she might have actually caused the plague by giving birth to the world’s first parthenogenetic human clone and the lethally competent 355 had allegiances to organisations far-more far-reaching than the American government….

Also out to stake their claim and add to the general tension were renegade Israeli General Alter Tse’Elon and post-disaster cult called “Daughters of the Amazon” who wanted to make sure that there really were no more men left to mess up the planet. Other complications included Yorick’s occasionally insane sister, Hero, stalking him across the ultra-feminised, ravaged and now utterly dis-United States and the boy’s own desirability to the numerous frustrated and desperate women he encountered en route to Oz…

After four years and some incredible adventures Yorick (a so-so scholar but a proficient amateur magician and escapologist) and crew reached Australia only to discover Beth had already taken off on her own odyssey to Paris. During the hunt Dr. Mann discovered the truth: Yorick was alive because his pet Ampersand was immune and had insulated his owner via his habit of “sharing” his waste products if Yorick didn’t duck fast enough…

As this book, reprinting issues #49-54 of the award-winning comics series, opens with the eponymous four-chapter ‘Motherland’ (illustrated by Pia Guerra & José Marzán Jr.) Yorick and his guardians are following a trail to the true architect of the plague in Hong Kong, only to be captured by the cause of all the world’s woes – a deranged biologist cursed with genius, insanity and a deadly dose of maniacal misogynistic hubris.

Just before a breathtaking denouement wherein Yorick and Allison learn the incredible reasons for the plague, and Agent 355 and turncoat Australian spy Rose clash for the final time with the ninja who has been stalking them for years, the scene switches to France where Yorick’s sister Hero has successfully escorted the baby boys born in a hidden Space Sciences lab to relative safety… although General Tse’Elon is not a pursuer easily avoided or thwarted…

Even after the plague is demystified, the villain fully come-uppanced and the world on the verge of coming back from the brink of extinction there’s still stories to be told as seen in ‘The Obituarist’ (with art from Goran Sudžuka& José Marzán Jr.) wherein the murder of Yorick’s mother by Tse’Elon takes centre-stage in a divertissement which hints that the planet is already fixing itself and this penultimate volume concludes with ‘Tragicomic’ (Sudžuka& Marzán Jr. again) as the lunatic land of Hollywood begins its own comeback: making trash movies, spawning bad comicbooks and splintering into a host of territorial gang-wars…

The end was in sight and even with the series’ overarching plot engine seemingly exhausted there was still one last string of intrigue, suspense and surprise in store from writer Brian K. Vaughn. The last of Y the Last Man will prove to be the best yet but that’s an unmissable tale for another time…

© 2006, 2007 Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra. All Rights Reserved.

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Jack of Fables volume 3: The Bad Prince


By Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Tony Akins, Andrew Pepoy, Russ Braun & Andrew Robinson (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-913-0

In case you didn’t know, Fables are refugee fairytale, storybook and mythical characters hidden on our mundane Earth since their various legend-drenched realms fell to a mysterious and unbeatable Adversary. Arriving hundreds of years ago (and still coming) the immortal immigrants disguised their true natures from humanity whilst creating enclaves where their longevity, magic and sheer strangeness (such as all the talking animals safely sequestered on a remote farm in upstate New York) would not endanger the life of uneasy luxury they have built for themselves. Many of these elusive eternals wander the human world, but always under injunction never to draw any attention.

In Fables: Homelands the utterly self-absorbed and absolutely amoral Jack of the Tales (basis for such legends as Beanstalk, Giant-killer, Frost, Be Nimble and many more) did just that by stealing Fabletown funds to become a movie producer; creating the three most popular fantasy films of all time, based on (his version) of his life and consequently drawing physical power from the billions who inadvertently “believed” in him.  The avaricious toe-rag also coined vast amounts of filthy lucre in the process.

A key tenet of the series is that the more “mundies” (that’s mere mortals like you and me… well, me anyway) think about a fable character, the stronger that actual character becomes. Books, TV, songs: all feed their vitality.

In Jack of Fables: The (Nearly) Great Escape our irreverent faux-hero was brought low by the publicity-shy Fables Police, banished from Hollywood and ordered to disappear, with only a suitcase full of cash to tide him over.

Promptly captured by The Golden Bough, a clandestine organisation which had been “vanishing” Fables for centuries, Jack escaped during a mass break-out of forgotten, abridged Fables, all fleeing from a particularly horrific fate – metaphysical and contextual neutering.

He is presently on the run from those selfsame forces (in the distractingly vivacious shape of the Page Sisters, dedicated hunters of everything Fabulous and Uncanny) as this third volume – collecting issues #12-16 of the monthly Vertigo comic- commences with ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ the first chapter of the four part eponymous Bad Prince saga …

Written by Bill Willingham & Matthew Sturges and illustrated by Tony Akins & Andrew Pepoy, the adventure opens with Jack and the metaphysical, engagingly peculiar but trouble-attracting sad-sack Gary, the Pathetic Fallacy desecrating the Grand Canyon and arguing – which allows the aforementioned Page girls to recapture them. Bundled in the back of their van is Wicked John, another escapee from the Golden Bough internment camp. Still feisty, Jack picks another fight and as the recaptured Fables bicker their spat causes the van to plunge into the Canyon…

Of course, nobody dies but there are some unfortunate consequences. They’re stranded at the bottom, Priscilla Page has a broken wrist and as they all dry out after their a dip in the Colorado River a wandering tramp shoves a six-foot sword through Jack’s chest…

‘I Forget’ (with additional pencils by Russ Braun) resumes the tale with the irate but otherwise unharmed Jack bitching and whining about how the sword – by all accounts the legendary Excalibur – won’t come out, whilst unbeknownst to all in New York an old and formidable metafictional menace is stirring…

Back in the Canyon, Gary has reached some unfortunate conclusions about Jack and discovered the downside of being the Most Popular Fable in the World. The Golden Bough is also making another move as Hilary Page pressgangs a few defanged inmates and sets off on a mission of her own. Chapter three reveals some startling secrets and the unsuspected, humiliating connection between Jack and ‘The Legend of Wicked John’ before the tale diverts into a re-examination of that dratted “Beanstalk/Giant-killer” debacle. And as the cast kvetches, another mysterious pursuer closes in on the stranded story-folk…

If you were confused before, the concluding ‘(Enchanted) Blade Runner’ (with supplementary inking by Bill Reinhold) might clear things up for you (or not – it all depends on how much attention you’re paying) as Jack finagles himself out of his human-scabbard situation and the sinister Mr. Revise opens up his unconventional family album for closer inspection: a sinister yet sardonic foretaste of odd events to come…

There’s one last eccentric endeavour in store however as ‘Jack O’ Lantern’, illustrated by Andrew Robinson, once more delves into our obnoxious hero’s chequered past and describes some of the unsavoury and hilarious events that stemmed from his various dealings and disputes with the devil…

This series just gets better and better. An imaginative and breathtakingly bold rollercoaster ride of flamboyant fantasy and snappy-patter street-smarts, these yarns are always beautifully drawn and continually push the boundaries of traditional storytelling.

Saucy, self-referential, darkly, mordantly funny, Jack of Fables is a deliciously whimsical fairytale for adults concocted with much more broad, adult, cynical humour and sex than your average comicbook – so mothers and matrons be warned! Every enchanting volume should be compulsory reading for jaded fantasists everywhere.

© 2007, 2008 Bill Willingham and DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Heartburst – A Marvel Graphic Novel


By Rick Veitch (Marvel/King Hell Press)
ISBN: 0- 939766-82-5  King Hell edition ISBN: 978-0-98002-060-1

Once upon a time Marvel led the publishing pack in the development of high quality original graphic novels: mixing creator-owned properties, licensed assets like Conan, special in-continuity Marvel Universe tales and even new series launches in extravagant over-sized packages (a standard 285 x 220mm rather than the now customary 258 x 168mm based on the globally accepted European album format) which felt and looked instantly superior to the standard flimsy US comicbook no matter how good, bad or controversial the contents might be.

This terrifically appetising tale, developed under the company’s creator-owned Epic imprint in 1984, was one of the most experimental of those heady early days: a bold and impressive allegory of and attack on the assorted bigotries still too proudly cherished and even boasted of by so many in those distant days… in the 21st century we’re far less concerned with what you buy, pray to, look like or sleep with, aren’t we?

The drama begins with ‘Heartbeat’ as on a far-distant Earth colony circling Epsilon Bootis the theocratic authorities are in a state of constant crisis. In the centuries since humans first landed they have polarised into a closed, dogmatic and militaristic society, devoted to the worship of gods who regularly and actively communicate with them.

They have no truck with heretical Earth scientists like Miss Rimbaud whose explanation that the Holy Sponsor’s electronic teachings are merely old TV broadcasts. They don’t want to hear that those 1950s attitudes are discredited now. They absolutely won’t tolerate any hint of ending their campaign to sterilise and eradicate the native Ploo…

The indigenous natives are in dire distress: beautiful, friendly bright green beings, sexually and genetically compatible with humans and permanently emitting an aphrodisiac musk Terrans cannot resist. If the race is to be kept pure the Ploo simply cannot be allowed to survive…

Young Sunoco Firestone (most humans have good scriptural names like Pepsi, Schlitz or Bilko) is present when his uncle Inquisitor Xerox interrogates Rimbaud. Her story strikes a disturbing chord in the lad, already pushed to breaking point by recurring dreams of a magical well and a cosmic voice calling to him… When he sees a forbidden Ploo exotic dancer in a banned sector of town Sunoco is irresistibly drawn to her and the biologically inevitable happens…

Obsessed with his alien soul-mate Maia, shaken by his delirious fall into miscegenation and terrified because the Sacred Broadcasts have suddenly stopped, Sunoco snaps and abandons his life, joining Maia as a traveling entertainer, experiencing daily delight as the world rapidly goes to hell and beyond. But even though free, happy and proud; with Maia pregnant the dream voice won’t leave him alone, hinting at some incredible celestial destiny whilst the eternally vigilant gene-police are stepping up their pogroms and getting closer to the desperate fugitives…

With ‘Heartrhythm’ the forces of oppression close in and the lovers are separated as Sunoco is captured and the planet descends into outright civil war with the faithful eradicating the last Ploo and their turncoat human lovers. Broken and desperate Firestone agrees to become a spy for the human army, but when he meets the enigmatic Rimbaud he changes sides once more and finally discovers the secret of the voice and a fantastic universal power that will shape the destiny of two worlds in ‘Heartburst’…

Rick Veitch is a criminally undervalued creator, with a poet’s sensibilities and a disaffected Flower-Child’s perspectives informing a powerful social and creative consciousness and conscience. This spectacularly mind-bending romp synthesizes the total late 20th century American experience from the bland triumph of cultural imperialism to the spiritual disenfranchisement of Vietnam whilst telling an uplifting story of love and hope – a really neat trick if you can do it…

This sly, dry, funny, impressively adult and breathtakingly reflective full painted yarn proves that he can and Heartburst should be on the must read list of any serious fan…

In 2008 Veitch released a remastered, slightly smaller-dimensioned edition under his own King Hell Press imprint. Heartburst and Other Pleasures also includes three short graphic collaborations with those other outré  masters of unconventional love Alan Moore and Steve Bissette: including ‘Mirror of Love’, ‘Underpass’, ‘Try to Remember’ as well as unseen art-pages. This too is well worth  tracking down or you could simply order direct from the man himself by typing www.rickveitch.com into your favourite search-engine, remembering always to keep a credit card handy – preferably your own…
© 1984, 2008 Rick Veitch. All Rights Reserved.

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Richard Corben Complete Works volume 2: Underground


By Richard Corben and various (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-026-X

Although never a regular contributor to the comicbook mainstream, animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest living proponents of sequential narrative: an astoundingly accomplished artist and unique, uncompromising auteur with an unmistakable style and vision.

Corben flowered in the independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a globally revered, multi-award winning creator. He is most renowned for his mastery of the airbrush and his delight in sardonic, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales.

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, he graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 from the Kansas City Art Institute and began working as an animator. At that time, the Underground movement was just stating to revolutionise, reinvigorate and liberate the medium of comics as a motley crew of independent-minded creators across the continent began making and publishing stories that appealed to their rebellious, pharmacologically-enhanced sensibilities and unconventional lifestyles.

Most of them had been reared on and hugely influenced by 1950s EC Comics or Carl Barks’ Duck tales – and usually both.

Corben started the same way, producing the kind of stories that he would like to read, in as variety of small-press publications including Grim Wit, Slow Death, Skull, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor often signed with his affectionate pseudonym “Gore”. As his style matured and his skills developed Corben’s work increasingly began to appear in more professionally produced venues. He began working for Warren Publishing in 1970 with tales in Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and latterly, the aggressively audacious adult science fiction anthology 1984. He also famously re-coloured a number of reprinted Spirit strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s the Spirit magazine.

In 1975 Corben submitted work to the French fantasy phenomenon Métal Hurlant and subsequently became a fixture in the magazine’s American iteration Heavy Metal after which his career really took off. Soon 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 making comics but preferred his own independent projects with collaborators such as Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jones and Jan Strnad.

This regrettably out-of-print collection is the second of three collecting his early strip efforts, mostly taken from Fantagor, offering a unique insight into his burgeoning mastery and displaying more powerful, wickedly whimsical and sardonic suspense tales in the EC vein. The first few are in black and white beginning with ‘Inna Pit’ a post apocalyptic comi-tragedy followed by an anti-capitalist eco-fable entitled ‘Dumb Story’

‘Razar the Unhero’ (written by “Starr Armitage” in 1970) is a dark and sexily violent spoof of Sword and Sorcery epics with a deprecating edge whilst Herb Arnold signed his real name to his script for ‘Chard’: a far more straightforward barbarian adventure saga. ‘The Story of Otog’, based on an ancient Japanese folk tale and adapted by Corben and Harvey Sea, is an impressive and moving early taste of more ambitious things to come…

Obnoxious, smug Razar was far too enjoyable a character to abandon and he returned in all his mendacious glory in ‘Necromancer’, a far less jolly romp and the last monochrome tale contained here whereas the Jan Strnad penned ‘To Spear a Fair Maiden’ returned to outrageous tomfoolery, bloody violence and Frat-Boy crassness as the itinerant warrior was hired by a desperate father to save the world by deflowering his daughter before a wizard can turn her valuable virginity into a deadly spell. Of course things do not go as planned…

‘The Secret of Zokma’ is a truly grim and horrific tale of exploration and contamination balanced by the grotesque and hilarious parable of backwoods infidelity ‘Lame Lem’s Love’ and this volume concludes with ‘The Temple’ – a whimsical and vituperative reinterpretation of the Garden of Eden myth with a sting in the tail…

Corben’s infamous signature-stylisation always includes oodles of nudity, extreme and graphic violence and impossibly proportioned male and female physiques, and there’s plenty of all included here. His groundbreaking work reshaped our art-form and the fact that so much of his canon is currently unavailable in English is a crime. Not only are these early works long overdue for a definitive re-issue but all his rude, riotous, raucously ribald revels need to be re-released now…
© 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1986 Richard Corben. © 1986 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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Teen Angst: A Treasury of ’50’s Romance


By Everett Raymond Kinstler, Matt Baker & various, compiled and edited by Tom Mason (Malibu Graphics)
ISBN: 0-944735-35-5

Ever felt in the mood for a really trashy read? These tacky tales of love from another age are a delicious forbidden and oh, so guilty pleasure

There’s no real artistic or literary justification for today’s featured item, and I’m not even particularly inclined to defend some of material within on historical grounds either. Not that there isn’t an undeniable and direct link between these enchantingly engaging assignations and affairs and today’s comic book market of age-and-maturity-sensitive cartoons and, when taken on their own terms, the stories do have a certain naively beguiling quality.

The story of how Max Gaines turned freebie pamphlets containing reprinted newspaper strips into a discrete and saleable commodity thereby launching an entire industry, if not art-form, has been told far better elsewhere, but I suspect that without a ready public acceptance of serialised sequential narrative via occasional book collections of the most lauded strips and these saucy little interludes in the all-pervasive but predominantly prose pulps, the fledgling comic-book companies might never have found their rabid customer-base quite so readily.

This cheap and cheerful black and white compilation, coyly contained behind a cracking Madman cover, opens with a couple of fascinating and informative essays from Tom Mason whose ‘Bad Girls Need Love Too’ provides historical context whilst and Jim Korkis covers the highpoints of the genre in ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’ and provides background for some but sadly not all of mostly uncredited star turns revived here.

Creative credit for most of these torrid tales is sadly lacking but the unmistakable fine line feathering of Everett Raymond Kinstler definitely starts the ball rolling here with a selection of his exotic frontispieces from Realistic Romances #2 and Romantic Love #7 (both from September-October 1951) and Realistic Romances #4, February 1952 before segueing into the equally stirring saga ‘Our Love was Battle-Scarred!’ (Realistic Romances #8, November 1952) – a tear-jerking tale of ardour amidst the air-raids whilst ‘Jinx Girl’ from Realistic Romances #7, (August 1952 and possibly drawn by John Rosenberger) follows an unlucky lassie’s traumatic tribulations until her man makes her complete and happy…

From that same issue comes ‘Triumphant Kisses’ a cautionary tale of a small town spitfire who would do (almost) anything to get into showbiz and ‘Dangerous Woman!’ (Romantic Love #7) – a parable of greed and desire from the great Matt Baker.

That gem-stuffed issue also provided the scandalous ‘I Craved Excitement!’ whilst Realistic Romances #6 (June 1952) revealed the shocking truth about the ‘Girl on Parole’ by Kinstler. There’s a lighter tone to ‘Kissless Honeymoon’ (Realistic Romances #2) whilst Baker excels again with the youth oriented sagas ‘I Was a Love Gypsy’ and ‘Fast Company’ from Teen-Age Romances #20, February 1952 and Teen-Age Temptations #9, July 1953 respectively.

Somebody signing themselves “Astarita” drew the brooding ‘Fatal Romance!’(Realistic Romances #2) and the war reared its opportunistic head again in ‘Lovelife of an Army Nurse’ (Baker art from Wartime Romances #1 July 1952), whilst ‘Make-Believe Marriage’ from the same issue examined the aftermath on the home-front.

‘Thrill Hungry’ (Realistic Romances #6) showed it was never too late to change, ‘His Heart on My Sleeve’ (Teen-Age Temptations #5) displayed the value of forgiveness and ‘Deadly Triangle’ (Realistic Romances #2) warned of the danger of falling for the wrong guy…

‘Notorious Woman’ (Teen-Age Temptations #5) continued the cautionary tone whilst ‘Borrowed Love’ (Realistic Romances #2) and ‘Confessions of a Farm Girl’ (Teen-Age Romances #20) end the graphic revelations in fine style and with happy endings all around.

These old titles were packed with entertainment so as well as a plethora of “mature” ads from the period the book also contains a selection of typical prose novelettes, ‘I Had to be Tamed’, ‘Reckless Pasttime’ and ‘The Love I Couldn’t Hide’ which originally graced Teen-Age Romances #20 and 22.

Hard to find, difficult to justify and perhaps hard to accept from our sexually complacent viewpoint here and now, these stories and their hugely successful ilk were inarguably a vital stepping stone to our modern industry. There is a serious lesson here about acknowledging the ability of comics to appeal to older readers from a time when all the experts would have the public believe that comics were made by conmen and shysters for kiddies, morons and slackers.

Certainly there are also a lot of cheap laughs and guilty gratification to be found in these undeniably effective little tales. This book and the era it came from are worthy of far greater coverage than has been previously experienced and no true devotee can readily ignore this stuff.
© 1990 Malibu Graphics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.