Mature Reading – Page 78

July 8, 2011July 10, 2011

Wandering Son Book 1

By Shimura Takako, translated by Matt Thorn (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-416-0

Huge fan though I am of the ubiquitous digest-sized monochrome format that makes up the greatest part of translated manga volumes, there’s a subtle enhanced superiority to these hearty and satisfyingly substantial oversized hardback editions from Fantagraphics’ new manga line (see also Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories) that just adds extra zest to any work of pictorial narrative. Especially effective is this second intriguing offering which follows two youngsters experiencing the most difficult times of their livesâ€¦

Shuichi Nitori is a boy freshly transferred into a new school. He’s starting Fifth Grade and on the cusp of puberty. He’s also in a bit of a quandary. Slim, androgynous and, let us be frank, rather pretty, he is constantly thinking about wearing girls clothesâ€¦

On his first day he is befriended by Yoshino Takatsuki; a tall, burly tomboy who harbours similar secret yearnings. Her instinctive friendliness towards Shuichi is shared by pretty Saori Chiba, who is happy with her own gender but troubled in almost everything else. Always over-eager to please, she is a ball of inexplicable guilty feelings and even at her young age is considering becoming a Christianâ€¦

From the start both girls encourage Shuichi to submit to his urges. Yoshino’s clueless mother keeps buying dresses which the despairing daughter gives to her confused new pal, whilst Saori, also acutely aware of the Nitori boy’s underlying otherness, actively encourages him to cross-dress, even buying him an extravagant frock for his birthday, which almost kills their budding friendship stone-dead.

It is Saori who successfully suggests that the unsuspecting class perform The Rose of Versailles as their end-of-term play with all the girls playing the male roles – and vice versaâ€¦

(The Rose of Versailles is a monumentally popular ShÅjo manga tale and later, movie and musical, by Riyoko Ikeda which tells the story of Lady Oscar: a girl raised as a man by her soldier father who eventually became a dashing Palace Guard and the darling of Marie Antoinette’s Court.)

Both Shuichi and Yoshino are hard-pressed to deny their overwhelming mutual need: boy wants to be girl and girl, boy. Inevitably the need proves too great and both succumb. Yoshino has her hair cut and goes out in her brother’s school uniform only to be chatted up by an older woman in a burger bar. Shuichi’s periodic capitulations are less public, but increasingly important to his happiness and wellbeing – and to be honest – he does make an astonishingly pretty little girl, more even than Roger Taylor in that Queen Video – but utterly pure, innocent and raunch-freeâ€¦

Nevertheless, no matter how much Shiuchi and Yoshino wish they could exchange gender, time and biology inexorably march on and the changes of puberty are causing their treacherous bodies to horrifyingly betray themâ€¦

From any other culture this type of story would be crammed with angst and agony: gratuitously filled with cruel moments and shame-filled subtext, but Takao Shimura’s genteel and winningly underplayed first volume in this enchanting school saga (which began in Comic Beam monthly in December 2002, has been collected in eleven volumes and is still going strong) is resplendent with refined contentment, presenting the history in an open-minded spirit of childlike inquiry and accepting optimism that turns this book into a genuine feel-good experience.

But of course there is more to come in the distressingly-difficult futures of Shuichi and Yoshinoâ€¦

This moving and gently enticing volume also includes a helpful watercolour character chart, a pronunciation guide for Japanese speech and ‘Snips and Snails, Sugar and Spice’, a fantastically useful guide to Japanese honorifics as used in Wandering Son, by translator Matt Thorn which explains the social, gender and age ranking and positions so ingrained in the nation’s being. Trust me, in as hide-bound and stratified a culture as Japan’s, this background piece is a complete necessityâ€¦

The comics portion of this volume is printed in the traditional back-to-front, right-to-left format.

June 30, 2011July 2, 2011

Isle of 100,000 Graves

By Fabien Vehlmann & Jason, coloured by Hubert and translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-442-9

Multi-award winning French comics author Fabien Vehlman was born in 1972, began his comics career in 1996 and has been likened to the legendary RenÃ© Goscinny. He’s best known for the wonderful Green Manor series (illustrated by Denis Bodart), Seven Psychopaths with Sean Phillips, the as-yet-untranslated Seuls (drawn by Bruno Gazzotti) and Wondertown with Benoit Feroumont. In 2011 Vehlmann assumed the writing reins on legendary series Spirou.

Jason is secretly John Arne SaeterrÃ¸y: born in Molde, Norway in 1965 and an overnight international cartoon superstar since 1995 when his first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won that year’s Sproing Award (Norway’s biggest comics prize). He won another Sproing in 2001 for the series Mjau Mjau and in 2002 turned almost exclusively to producing graphic novels. He is a global star among the cognoscenti and has won many major awards from all over the planet.

Now in his first collaboration with a writer, Jason adds his uniquely laconic anthropomorphic art-stylings to a surprisingly edgy, deliciously dark and blackly comedic tale of sundered families, sinister secrets and bombastic buccaneers.

Holding his signature surreality in check, Jason perfectly captures the odd tale of homely little girl Gwenny who leaves her appalling mother to search for her long-lost father: gone for many a year in search of pirate treasure.

The self-assured and devious lass tricks her way onto a pirate vessel, outwits the murderous corsairs long enough to reach the eponymous Isle of 100,000 Graves (even tricking one of the scurrilous brotherhood into becoming her unwilling protector) and then abandons them to a horrendous fate as the uncanny denizens of the lost land attackâ€¦

The island is home to a cult of torturers and killers called the Hangman’s Academy: an institution dedicated to preserving the traditions and teaching the myriad skills necessary to becoming a top-flight inquisitor and officially-sanctioned executioner. Moreover, the scary school has recently run out of live specimens for maiming and murderingâ€¦

As Gwenny single-mindedly searches for signs of her missing dad, she meets Tobias, a killer-in-training sadly out of place amongst his fellow students. With his aid she survives incalculable horrors before freeing the surviving pirates as a callous distraction. When they escape a colossal battle with the hooded executioner ensuesâ€¦

Gwenny, however, is not distracted: she’s found the answer to her questionsâ€¦

Mordantly hilarious, this superbly cynical fable rattles along in captivating fashion: a perfect romp for older kids and a huge treat for fans looking for something a little bit differentâ€¦

Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, using his beastly repertory company to gently pose eternal questions about basic human needs in a soft but relentless quest for answers. That you don’t ever notice the deep stuff because of the clever gags and safe, familiar â€œfunny-animalâ€ characters should indicate just how good a cartoonist he is. His collaboration here with the sly and sardonic Vehlmann has produced a genuine classic that we’ll all be talking about for years to come…

June 28, 2011July 2, 2011

Ultimate Comics Captain America

By Jason Aaron & Ron Garney (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-489-8

In 2000, when Marvel hived off portions of their established continuity into a separate, darker, grittier universe more relevant to the video game-playing, movie-watching 21^st century readers than the 1960s Lee/Kirby/Ditko ongoing monolith, they started with the most popular characters – Spider-Man and the X-Men – only gradually adding analogues for the remaining characters and trademarks.

Even when the Mighty Avengers finally appeared, renamed the Ultimates in 2002, readers were only sparingly brought up to speed on the assorted back-stories of the alternative heroes and villains – including a remarkably familiar yet staggeringly different â€œLiving Legend of World War IIâ€.

Frail Steve Rogers still underwent radical experimentation to become America’s first super-soldier and after a brief stellar career as the living symbol of his war-beleaguered nation, disappeared in a blazing explosion. He was resurrected from a block of ice in modern times and re-assumed his place at the forefront of masked heroes. However, this Sentinel of Liberty was no costumed boy-scout, but rather a deadly and remorseless warrior: a master strategist and supremely skilled street-fighter always ready to apply the ultimate sanction. In short: a conscienceless killer.

In Ultimate Comics Captain America the eternal soldier is on the trail of rogue states seeking to duplicate the super-soldier serum which created him at the behest of his new government masters, when he is captured and subjected to horrendous torture and indoctrination by a living ghostâ€¦

Whilst Steve Rogers slept in the ice, America continued its march to global dominance and when the Vietnam conflict escalated the Military sought to recreate Captain America by transforming starry-eyed patriotic kid Frank Simpson into a living embodiment of the American war machineâ€¦

Tragically Vietnam was a different kind of war and Simpson (an iteration of the deeply troubled villain Nuke created by Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli in Daredevil: Born Again) broke under the weight of the dirty jobs and corrupt missions he was assigned to carry out. One day he walked into the jungle and was never seen againâ€¦

Now Simpson is back and has clearly discovered how to duplicate the serum that empowers him; selling it to North Korea, Iran and anybody else dedicated to the downfall of the â€œthe Land of the Freeâ€â€¦

Ignoring official orders to stand down, Steve Rogers hunts his successor – who has already thoroughly defeated him once – only to stumble on the USA’s greatest nightmare. Overmatched, outfought and easily captured by Simpson, Rogers is subjected to a terrifying re-education program that opens his eyes to what his country became whilst he slept and the kind of nation Captain America now stands forâ€¦

The stark, savage and nihilistically modern Ultimates Comic universe is well-stocked with dark-and-gritty doppelgangers of the gleaming pantheon crafted by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, but since its inception at the turn of the century, the imprint has resolved into something which can easily stand on its own merits, as seen in this wonderful tale (originally published as Ultimate Comics Captain America #1-4).

With the impending imminent release of the latest Captain America movie, a large number of graphic novel collections starring the Sentinel of Liberty have been commissioned and this brutal, beautiful fable of frustrated idealism and corrupted patriotism is one of the very best of recent vintage, in this, that or any other universe.

Written by Jason (Scalped) Aaron, revisiting the source material of his Vertigo classic The Other Side and stunningly illustrated by Ron Garney, whose art on the mainstream hero (see Captain America: Operation Rebirth) returned the Star-Spangled Avenger to dizzying heights of popularity after decades in the doldrums, Ultimate Comics Captain America is a breathtaking, thought-provoking examination of duty and honour and a fabulously entertaining rollercoaster ride of action and adventure for older readers. It’s also a gloriously accessible tale for anybody approaching the character for the very first timeâ€¦

Tense, compelling, morally challenging and explosively cathartic, this saga of conjoined yet eternally antagonistic ideologies in savage confrontation is absolute comics gold of the very highest quality: challenging, compelling and wildly satisfying.

June 27, 2011July 2, 2011

Congress of the Animals

By Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-437-5

As with every true art form, some practitioners in the world of comics simply defy easy categorisation and their works are beyond most reviewers and critics’ skills (mine certainly). Some are just so pedestrian or so mind-numbingly bad that one simply can’t face writing about them. Others are so emphatically wonderful that no collection of praise and analysis can do them justice.

At the pinnacle of the funnybook pyramid is Jim Woodring, in a position he has maintained for years and clearly appears capable of holding for years to come. Woodring’s work is challenging, spiritual, philosophical, funny, beautiful and extremely scary. Moreover, even after reading that sentence you will have absolutely no idea of what awaits you the first time you read any of it, or indeed – even if you’re a long term devotee – when opening a new silent masterpiece novel such as Congress of the Animals. Cartoonist, Fine Artist, toy-maker and artistic Renaissance Man Jim Woodring’s eccentric career has delighted far too small an audience since his first mini-comics in 1980. No matter that you may have avidly adored his groundbreaking Fantagraphics magazine series Jim (1986); its nominal spin-off Frank (of which the latest volume Weathercraft won The Stranger 2010 Genius Award for Literature), Tantalizing Stories, Seeing Things or the more mainstream features such as his Star Wars and Aliens tales for Dark Horse, you will still have no idea how you will respond to his next work.

Woodring grows rather than constructs surreal, abstract, wild, rational, primal cartooning: a clean-lined, solidly ethereal, mannered blend of woodblock prints, Robert Crumb, Dreamscapes, religious art and monstrous phantasmagoria. His stories are a logical, progressional narrative – usually a non-stop chase from one invention to the next – clouded with multiple layers of meaning but totally devoid of speech or words, supremely dependent on the intense involvement of the reader as fully active participant.

Congress of the Animals is another vertiginous vehicle following dog-faced Frank and his regular crew of irregular types in a manic fable of dangerous arrogance, casual self-deceit and painful reparations, insane exploration of dire and dreadful alternate dimensions and even the first inklings of what might one day be True Love and always without a single word of dialogue or description. Here, the drawn image is always kingâ€¦

Clearly Woodring’s work is not to everyone’s taste or sensibilities – otherwise why would you need me to plug his work – and as always, his drawings have the perilous propensity of repeating like cucumber and making one jump long after you’ve put the book down, but he is an undisputed master of graphic narrative and an innovator always making new art to challenge us and himself. And, of course, he makes us love it and leaves us hungry for moreâ€¦

All art-forms need such creators and this glorious hardback monochrome tome could well change your reading habits for life.

Go on, aren’t you tempted, tantalized or terrified yet? What about curious, thenâ€¦?

June 26, 2011June 23, 2011

Grimjack: Demon Knight

By John Ostrander & Flint Henry with an introduction by Roger Zelazny (First Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-91541-970-8

Grimjack originally appeared during the American comic industry’s last great flourishing in the 1980’s. Created by playwright John Ostrander and Young Turk Tim Truman as a back-up feature for Mike Grell’s Starslayer, the series ran in issues #10-18 before graduating to its own title at First Comics. It almost survived the company’s demise more than a decade later. In a crowded marketplace, and almost irrespective of who was doing the drawing, this hard-boiled-detective/fantasy action strip was a watchword for quality entertainment.

The ’80s were a fantastic time for comics creators and consumers. It was like an entire new industry opening up within the original, moribund mainstream; the proliferation of the Direct Sales market and dedicated specialist retail outlets allowed new companies to start experimenting with format and content, whilst punters had a bit of spare cash to play with. Moreover much of the â€œkid’s stuffâ€ stigma had finally dissipated – the country was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be an actual art-formâ€¦

Consequently many new companies began competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown accustomed – or resigned – to getting their four-colour kicks from DC, Marvel Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material had been slowly creeping in but by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Capital, Now, Comico, Dark Horse and First among others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads into traditional markets.

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. Chicago-based First Comics was an early frontrunner, with Frank Brunner’s Warp, Starslayer and Jon Sable from Mike Grell and Howard Chaykin’s iconic American Flagg!, as well as an impressive line of comicbooks targeting a more sophisticated audience.

In 1984 they followed Marvel and DC’s lead with a line of impressive, European-styled over-sized graphic albums featuring new, out-of-the-ordinary comics sagas (see Time2, Time Beavers, Mazinger or Beowulf to see just how bold, broad and innovative the material could be)â€¦

John Gaunt is a perpetually reincarnating warrior-mercenary calling himself Grimjack: a combination private eye, Ronin and problem-solver-of-last-resort, just scratching out a living in the fantastic pan-dimensional city of Cynosure. This incalculably vast metropolis intersects with every place in the multiverse at one time or another and the strangest of the strange inhabit its core regions.

All manner of beings constantly rub shoulders (if they have them) with gods, monsters, robots and things less quantifiable in a cruelly capitalistic commercial wonderland where the laws of physics can change from house to house but the law of supply and demand is utterly inviolableâ€¦

In his long lives Gaunt has been many things, but first and foremost he is a hero of the Demon Wars â€“ a period in Cynosure’s history when the city overlapped the assorted regions of Hell and unspeakably vile devils from a host of infernos ran amok in the metropolis until the valiant Demon Knights drove them off forever.

Now, in this all-new tale, Gaunt is hired by the Office of the Chronost-Marshall to find who has interfered with the city’s chronology, unleashing a devastating time-storm. Surly, rebellious and unpleasant, Gaunt is still the only operative tough and crazy enough to brave the fourth dimensional vortex and shut down the maelstrom. Unfortunately, he never reckoned on stumbling into his own tragic past and meeting again his one true loveâ€¦

As the Demon Wars reached their crescendo long ago a sorely wounded John Gaunt stumbled into a paradise dimension named Pdwyr and found brief bliss with the glorious, pacifist princess Rhian, before his companion Major Lash betrayed the entire race to the infernal hordes and watched their paradise become a last bastion of Hellâ€¦

Now Gaunt has arrived in Pdwyr once more – just after his earlier self departed – and faces the ultimate temptation: changing history to save the only woman he ever loved and the only place he ever felt at peace, or letting events unfold again in all their horrific predestined brutalityâ€¦

Whatever he decides will be wrongâ€¦

The combination of cynical dry wit, mordant, bitter-edged fantasy and spectacularly imaginative action made Grimjack one of the best series of the era and the ghastly human tragedy of this epic aside is a treat no comics fan should miss. Moreover, this graphic narrative, beautifully illustrated by Flint Henry and colourist Martin Thomas, is designed with new readers in mind so there’s no reason for anyone to avoid a brutally magical encounter with a genuine original of the genre(s)â€¦
Â© 1989 First Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

June 17, 2011June 18, 2011

Y: the Last Man volume 10: Whys and Wherefores

By Brian K Vaughan, Pia Guerra & JosÃ© MarzÃ¡n Jr. (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-903-1

Some sense of disappointment is probably unavoidable when an acclaimed and beloved serial finally ends, but at least there’s a sense of accomplishment to savour and if you’re lucky perhaps a hint of more to be said and an avenue for further wondermentâ€¦

When every male creature on Earth suddenly dropped dead, only student Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand survived in a world instantly utterly all-girl. Unexpectedly a crucial natural resource, the wilful lad was escorted across the unmanned American continent to a Californian bio-lab by a government super-spy and a prominent geneticist, but all he could think of was re-uniting with his girlfriend Beth, trapped in Australia when the disaster struck.

With his reluctant companions Agent 355 and Dr. Allison Mann – who were trying to solve the mystery of his continued existence – the romantically determined oaf trekked from Washington DC to California, getting ever closer to his fiancÃ©eâ€¦ or so he thoughtâ€¦

Each of his minders harboured dark secrets: Dr. Mann was crucially connected to the plague and the lethally competent 355 had hidden allegiances to organisations far-more far-reaching than the First Ladies of the remaining American governmentâ€¦.

Also out to stake a claim and add to the general tension were renegade Israeli General Alter Tse’Elon and a post-disaster cult called â€œDaughters of the Amazonâ€ who wanted to make sure that there really were no more men left to mess up the planet. Further complications included Yorick’s sister Hero, who stalked him across the ultra-feminised, ravaged and completely dis-United States and the boy’s own desirability to numerous frustrated and desperate women he encountered en route to Ozâ€¦

After four years and incredible adventures Yorick (a so-so scholar but a proficient amateur magician and escapologist) reached Australia only to discover Beth had embarked on her own odyssey to Paris. During the trek Dr. Mann discovered the inconvenient truth: Yorick was only alive because his pet Ampersand (an escaped lab-specimen) was immune and had inoculated his owner via his disgusting habit of chucking crap which Yorick didn’t always avoid. He didn’t keep his mouth closed enough eitherâ€¦

With this book, reprinting issues #55-60 of the award-winning series, comes to a final full-stop in ‘Whys and Wherefores’ wherein the various cast members all rendezvous in Paris. As well as Yorick and 355, his sisterÂ Hero is there, having successfully escorted baby boys born in a hidden Space sciences lab to the City of Lights as well as Yorick’s baby daughter and the determined would-be mother who raped him to conceive herâ€¦

Also on scene and hungry for blood is General Tse’Elon with a dwindling squad of Israeli commandoes: rapidly diminishing because of their leader’s increasing instability and her habit of killing anybody who crosses her.

At long last the Last Man is reunited with his long lost true love, only to find that she wasn’tâ€¦

Tragically though his actual one-and-only is forever lost to him when Tse’Elon captures him and the babies, leading to a shocking final confrontationâ€¦

For the last chapter ‘Alas’ the action switches to Paris sixty years later. Thanks to cloning and gene manipulation the human race is secure and other species are returning too. Men are still rarer than hen’s teeth though, as the women seem to prefer girl babiesâ€¦

The geriatric Yorick is saviour of humanity, but since he keeps trying to kill himself he has to be locked up and constantly guarded. In a desperate attempt to cure his seeming madness the leaders of the matriarchal new world – which suffers just as much from most of the problems and stupidities of the old – have brought in the best of the Last Man’s seventeen viable clones to talk him round and find out what’s bugging him. However the intervention doesn’t go as planned and the old escapologist has one last trick up his straitjacketed sleeveâ€¦

Illustrated by Pia Guerra & JosÃ© MarzÃ¡n Jr. these concluding adventures are packed with revelation, closures and disclosures plus some moments of genuine painful tragedy, so keep tissues handy if you’re easily moved.

The last of Y the Last Man is as controversial and challenging as ever it was: perfectly providing an ending to everything; lifting you up, breaking your heart and still leaving the reader hungry for more. And that’ just the way it ought to beâ€¦

June 11, 2011June 10, 2011

Jack of Fables volume 4: Americana

By Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Russ Braun, Tony Akins, Andrew Pepoy, & Steve Leialoha (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-050-5

Just so you know, Fables are fairytale, storybook and mythical beings hidden on our mundane Earth since their various magical realms fell to a sinister monstrous Adversary. Arriving hundreds of years ago (and still coming) the fantastic refugees hid their true natures from humanity and built isolated enclaves where their immortality and utter strangeness could not endanger the life of uneasy luxury they buried themselves within. Many of these elusive eternals wander the human world, but always under strict and draconian mandate to never get noticed.

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) broke all the rules â€“ because that’s his nature – by stealing Fabletown cash and moving to Hollywood. Once there he set up as a movie producer, created the most popular fantasy film triptych of all time.

A key tenet of the series is that the more â€œmundiesâ€ (that’s mortals like you and me) think about a fable character, the stronger that actual character becomes. Books, TV, songs, all feed their vitality. So when the movies based on Jack’s life ultra-charged him they also brought him much unwelcome attention. The avaricious rat-bag coined vast amounts of filthy lucre in the process, but it all led the Fabletown authorities straight to him.

In Jack of Fables: The (Nearly) Great Escape our irreverent faux-hero was brought to task by the Fables Police, exiled from Hollywood and ordered to disappear, with only a suitcase full of cash to tide him over. He was also banished from all Fable properties and domains. Alone and unprotected he was soon captured by The Golden Bough, a clandestine organisation that had been hunting Fables for centuries.

Jack escaped during a mass break-out of forgotten, adulterated and 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 Fable-ulous) and constantly seeking to restore his cash-flow as this fourth volume – collecting issues #17-21 of the monthly Vertigo comic – commences with first chapter of the eponymous ‘Americana’ as Jack reviews his simple life goals – to be the richest, most powerful and best-looking Fable in the universe – and have lots of really hot sexâ€¦

‘On Eggshells’ opens with Jack, Gary, the Pathetic Fallacy and cynical sidekick Native American Raven hiding out in a cheap motel as Hillary Page, with diminished giant Paul Bunyan and Babe (a blue ox with a remarkable imagination), zeroes in on the fugitives.

Things pick up however when Jack reassembles the shell-shocked Humpty Dumpty who has the location of a monolithic treasure drawn on fractured exterior. Such a shame a few fragments are missing, or the daring band of brothers could go directly to the mythic Fable-realm of Americana and plunder the Lost City of Cibolaâ€¦

As it is, the treasure-seekers have to hop a freight-train in time-honoured legendary manner, but ghostly iron horses are few and far between, so it’s no real surprise that they catch the same one as Hillary and Companyâ€¦

‘Mind the Zombies’ follows the uneasy allies’ circuitous route via steamboat to the perfectly average, undead-infested picture-perfect little town of Idyll where they meet the utterly sinister Librarian of Americana. His name is Burner, but he considers it more of a job-descriptionâ€¦

Narrowly escaping with their legendary, literary lives Jack, Hillary and the rest resume their peripatetic journey to Cibola, unaware that Burner has set the indefatigable Leatherstocking Nathaniel â€œNattyâ€ Bumppo (that’s Hawkeye to you folks) on their rapidly scampering tailsâ€¦

‘On the Road’ details the inevitable clash with literature’s greatest tracker and subsequent narrow escape into more trouble amidst the Ganglands of hard-boiled crime fiction. From their it’s an epic trek to the Great White North, mythical New York City and Broadway, Witch-haunted Puritan New England, the Antebellum South and the â€œInjunâ€ infested Wild West, before finally reaching their ultimate goal in ‘Goldrush’ wherein Jack achieves all his ambitions, fiscal and carnalâ€¦

It’s not long before the boom is once more lowered on the obnoxious sap and Americana concludes on a chilling cliffhanger as the Bookburner vacates the United States of Fiction, intending to eradicate all the Fables still interned at the Golden Boughâ€¦

However there’s yet one more treat for fans as the metaphysical, engagingly peculiar and trouble-attracting Pathetic Fallacy takes centre-stage for ‘Gary Does Denmark’ wherein the affable, nigh-omnipotent sad-sack recounts his history with Shakespeare’s greatest work, ably hampered by our regular cast and with Jack’s evil prototype Wicked John standing in for the named star of our showâ€¦

Written by Bill Willingham & Matthew Sturges, illustrated by Russ Braun, Tony Akins, Andrew Pepoy & Steve Leialoha this tome sees the series develop into a uniquely whimsical and absurdist meta-fictional delight that no fan of reading, high art or low comedy can afford to missâ€¦

This imaginative and breathtakingly bold rollercoaster ride of flamboyant fantasy and snappy street-smarts is a supremely saucy, self-referential, darkly, funny fairytale for adults concocted with much more sly cynical humour and sex than your average funnybook – so po-faced moralistas and societal stickybeaks be warned!

Every enchanting volume should be compulsory reading for jaded imagineers everywhere – and in some as yet unreachable realm they actually are…

June 8, 2011June 9, 2011

Eye of the Majestic Creature

By Leslie Stein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-413-9

Help Wanted: Girl cartoonist seeks meaning of contemporary existence and like minded individuals to share bewilderment and revelations with.

Interests/Hobbies include: drinking, counting sand, growing stuff, antiquing for pop culture â€œtrashâ€, drinking, meaningful conversations with musical instruments, playing board games with same, recreational herbal intoxicants, reminiscing about wild-times with gal-pals and old cronies, drinking, visiting difficult relativesâ€¦

After graduating from the New York School of Visual Arts Leslie Stein began producing unbelievably addictive cartoon strips in the self-published Yeah, It Is. Winning a Xeric Grant for her efforts, she started the even better comicbook Eye of the Majestic Creature, blending autobiographical self-discovery, surreal free-association, philosophical ruminations, nostalgic reminiscences and devastatingly dry wit to describe life filtered through a seductive meta-fictional interior landscape. This lady laconically tans under vastly different suns and the results are enchanting and entrancing.

This volume collects the first four issues in a dreamy, beautifully realised manner of visual mood-music – loose, flowing line-work, detailed stippling, hypnotic pattern-building and honest-to-gosh, representational line-drawing, each at the most appropriate juncture – eschewing chronological narrative for a easy, breezy epigrammatic mode of delivery.

As seen in the opening vignettes ‘The Country is Calling!’, ‘Seashell Arrives’ and ‘Someone is Yelling At Me over the Phone: You Are Disgusting!’ Larrybear is a girl deliberately and determinedly on her own, trying to establish her uniquely singular way of getting by. She has friends (most especially her talking guitar Marshmallow) interests and ambitions of a sort, but just isn’t looking for an average life, just more companions to share with â€¦

In ‘Fun Time with â€œI Eat Peanut Butter Between Napsâ€’ the cast expands as Larrybear goes walkabout, beginning with house-sitting for some very individualistic friendsâ€¦

Encountering ‘Insanity at Every Turn’ she travels across America to visit her difficult family in Chicago and very-welcome old school friends, taking in San Francisco too before settling for New York in ‘Back For More’â€¦

Delivered in mesmerising, oversized (7Â½ x 11″/192 x 280mm) black & white, these incisive, absurdist, whimsically charming and pictorially intoxicating invitations into a singularly creative mind and fabulous alternative reality are a glorious rewarding cartoon experience and one no serious fan of fun can afford to miss.

June 2, 2011June 7, 2011

The Sky Over the Louvre

By Bernar Yslaire & Jean-Claude CarriÃ¨re, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM ComicsLit/Louvre: MusÃ©e du Louvre Ã‰ditions)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-602-0

A few years ago the prestigious Louvre gallery in Paris began an intriguing and extremely rewarding collaboration with the world of comics, and their latest beguiling translated bande dessinÃ©e is now available in English courtesy of those fine folks at NBM.

The Sky Over the Louvre is a lush and beautiful, oversized hardback graphic novel which explores the very origins and philosophical underpinnings of France’s national art collection whilst peeling back the motivations and ambitions of the twisted visionaries who steered – or perhaps simply rode – the human wave of Chaos deemed â€œthe Terrorâ€ of the French Revolutionâ€¦ catalyst for the gallery’s very existence.

As always, these tales are produced in close collaboration with the forward-looking authorities of the MusÃ©e du Louvre, but this is no gosh-wow, â€œNight-at-the-Museumâ€, thinly-concealed catalogue of contents from a stuffy edifice of public culture. Rather, here is a gripping, intense, informative and insightful glimpse into the price of art as engine of change and agent of obsession.

Jean-Claude CarriÃ¨re was born in 1931, studied at the Ã‰cole normale supÃ©rieure de Saint-Cloud and wrote a novel before becoming an actor and one of France’s greatest screenwriters. He worked with Luis BuÃ±uel for 19 years, scripting such classics as Diary of a Chambermaid, Belle de Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, That Obscure Object of Desire and many more.

Other notable credits include working with directors such as Milos Forman, Louis Malle, Andrzej Wajda, Nagisa Oshima and others on iconic films like The Tin Drum, Danton, The Return of Martin Guerre, Max, Mon Amour and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, although three generations of British television viewers will probably revere him most for his adaptation of the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (starring Robert Hoffmann and featuring that iconic theme-tune) which ran on BBC1 at tea time from 1965 to about twenty minutes agoâ€¦.

Belgian artist Bernar Yslaire (Bernard Hislaire) began his career in 1978 drawing kiddie’s strip ‘Bidouille et Violette’ for Spirou before creating the historical epic ‘Sambre’ in 1986 (still going strong) and was one of the first creators to fully embrace the potential of the internet with his online strip ‘Memories of the XX^th Sky’. In 2006 he produced the moving doomed romance ‘Sky over Brussells’.

The Sky Over the Louvre compellingly blends history and drama by focussing on the revolutionary artist Jacques-Louis David and close associate Maximilien de Robespierre (who called himself â€œThe Incorruptibleâ€) as they planned how to replace religion, monarchy and the Old Art with something unique and truly worthy of their revolution. David and his School (Drouais, Greueze, Girodet and students Serangeli and GÃ©rard) have taken residence in the old Louvre Palace where past kings left their grandiose aggregation of treasures when they vacated Paris for Versailles. Here the Revolutionary council aspires to create a new aesthetic and new thought for their New Societyâ€¦

Jules Stern is a 13-year old wanderer from the Black Sea, roaming the dangerous streets of Paris seeking his mother and claiming to have an appointment with David. On the 15^th Fructidor, Year 1 (8^th August 1793 for those of us not wedded to the Republic’s new calendar) the angelic lad confronts the artist whilst he inaugurates the Louvre as the first Museum of the Nation, dedicated to public ownership of art and the notion of beauty as a revolutionary ideal. Later they meet again and Robespierre forms a hostile opinion of the child, although David is clearly fascinated by the headstrong, beautiful boyâ€¦

As the high-minded idealism of the Revolution’s early days dissolves into factional in-fighting Robespierre and David become increasingly concerned with the spiritual and aesthetic, determined to excise and replace every vestige of the old regime and society. They seek images and concepts to embody their cause and plan a festival to the concept of Reason but across France backsliding and foreign invasion threaten their progress. In September 1793 the Convention (ruling body and parliament of the Republic) decrees â€œTerror to be the order of the Dayâ€â€¦

Blood, betrayal and horror rule the streets as David, from his apartments in the Louvre, begins work on a brace of pivotal works: The Supreme Being and The Death of Joseph Bara. It is difficult to assess which caused him the most grief and triggered his ultimate downfallâ€¦

The Incorruptible is becoming more arrogant and ruthless, desperate for revolutionary images that will fire and inspire the masses. He presses David to produce the ultimate physical representation of the conceptual spirit of the New France – a Supreme Being – but as time goes by and no image emerges, one too many people are whispering that what Robespierre actually requires is a portrait of himselfâ€¦

Far less troublesome should be The Death of Joseph Bara; a boy who became the first martyr of the Revolution and one scheduled to become the nation’s uniting icon. However, David’s obsession with Jules Stern brings more trouble when Robespierre objects to the boy being selected as the model for Bara the Myth…

Nobody baulks The Incorruptible for long, but the obsessive nature of the creative impulse is insurmountable and eventually Robespierre can only achieve his ends by sending Jules to the guillotine. Incredibly, not even death separated the artist from his modelâ€¦

Set solidly in the very heart of a moment of epochal historical importance, this is a stunning and utterly compulsive tale of humanity at its wildest extremes when grand ideals wedded themselves to the basest on bestial impulses, yet from that Yslaire and CarriÃ¨re have crafted a magnificently realised tale laced with staggering detail and addictive emotion.

With extra features including biographies and a listing of the actual artwork woven seamlessly into the narrative, this is a truly magical book that no aficionado of the medium can afford to missâ€¦

May 31, 2011May 30, 2011

Axa volumes 5 and 6

By Donne Avenell & Enrique Badia Romero (Ken Pierce Books)
Vol. 5 ISBN: 0-912277-21-1Â Â Vol. 6 no ISBN: 0-912277-22-X

Although the â€œSwinging Sixtiesâ€ is thought of as the moment when we all lost our prudish innocence, the real era of sexual liberation was the early 1970s. In that period of swiftly shifting social and cultural morÃ©s and rapidly evolving attitudes to adult behaviour British newspapers radically altered much of their traditional style and content in response to the seemingly inexorable wave of female social emancipation and reputed sexual equality.

All the same, this still allowed newspaper editors plenty of leeway to squeeze in oodles of undraped women, who finally escaped from the perfectly rendered comics strips and onto the regular pages (usually the third one), the centre-spreads, pop pages and fashion featuresâ€¦

However the only place where truly affirmative female role-models appeared to be taken seriously were the aforementioned cartoon sections, but even there the likes of Modesty Blaise, Danielle, Scarth, Amanda and all the other capable ladies who walked all over the oppressor gender, both humorously and in straight adventure scenarios, lost clothes and shed undies repeatedly, continuously, frivolously and in the manner they always hadâ€¦

Nobody complained (no one important or who was ever taken seriously): it was just tradition and the idiom of the mediumâ€¦ and besides, most artists have always liked to draw bare-naked ladies as much as blokes liked to see them and it was even educational for the kiddies – who could buy any newspaper in any shop without interference even if they couldn’t get into cinemas to view Flashdance, Trading Places or Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone without an accompanying adultâ€¦

Sales kept soaringâ€¦

Take-charge chicks were practically commonplace when the Star Wars phenomenon reinvigorated public interest in science fiction and the old standby of scantily-clad, curvy amazons and post-apocalyptic wonderlands regained their sales-appeal. Thus The Sun hired Enrique Badia Romero and Donne Avenell to produce just such an attention-getter for their already well-stacked cartoon section.

Romero had begun his career in Spain in 1953, producing everything from westerns, sports, war stories and trading cards, often in conjunction with his brother Jorge BadÃa Romero. He even formed his own publishing house. â€œEnricâ€ began working for the higher-paying UK market in the 1960s on strips such as ‘Cathy and Wendy’, ‘Isometrics’ and ‘Cassius Clay’ before successfully assuming the drawing duties on the high-profile Modesty Blaise strip in 1970 (see Modesty Blaise: The Hell Makers and Modesty Blaise: The Green Eyed Monster), only leaving when this enticing new prospect appeared.

In 1986 political and editorial intrigue saw Axa cancelled in the middle of a story and Romero returned to the bodacious Blaise until creator/writer Peter O’Donnell retired in 2001. Since then he has produced Modesty material for Scandinavia and a number of projects such as Durham Red for 2000AD.

Axa ran in The Sun Monday to Saturday from 1978 to her abrupt disappearance in 1986 and, other than these slim volumes from strip historian Ken Pierce, has never been graced with a definitive collection. It should be noted also that at the time of these books the strip was still being published to great acclaim.

In ‘Axa the Eager’ opens with the winsome wanderer and her current paramour Dirk drifting along barren coastlines until they encounter a bird-like man-creature and are drawn inescapably into a clash of ideologies between two factions of tree-dwelling humanoids.

One, led by the boisterous dreamer Zeph, wishes to remain in the safety of the canopies until they evolve into true fliers whilst his brother Galen wishes to return the Sky People to the Earth and the ways of technological progress. The division also splits Dirk and Axa and to complicate matters further the solid ground they’re all squawking about is surrounded by deadly mutated toad monstersâ€¦

Powerful and impressively philosophical, this tale of family discord could only end in tragedyâ€¦

‘Axa the Carefree’ finds the chastened explorers travelling inland to a new and desolate landscape concealing a sedate well-hidden village. Impossibly it seems to have escaped unscathed the horrors of the Great Contamination and investigating further Axa and Dirk discover a population of simple peasants blithely thriving, unaware of the horrors of the last hundred years. However, as always, things are not as they seem and the farmers are only a satellite branch of specialist technological guilds collectively dubbed â€œThe Artisansâ€.

Ever curious the nubile nomad sneaks into the mountain citadel of the Artisans to find a virtual paradise where her wild beauty captivates one too many of the masters of the Craft Guilds that run the place. She is also reunited with her lost companion Mark 10, a robotic servant she won and lost in Axa volume 3.

Tensions are already rising when the bored and enamoured Galen stumbles onto the scene and, as her very presence incites the normally-stable creative types into a kind of madness, there looks to be a revolution in the Artisans’ immediate future unless Axa can broker a return to productive rationalityâ€¦

Axa 6 dispenses with tedious text and dashes straight into the graphic action of ‘Axa the Dwarfed’ with the glorious gladiatrix and Mark 10 abandoning the Artisans to trek across a bleak wasteland until they stumble into an old government research facility where the flora and insect life has grown to immense proportions. Moreover, truly advanced and properly civilised scientists appear to be running the whole showâ€¦

Typically however, even this technological Garden of Eden has a serpent in the form of one boffin with a little too much ambition, so it’s a lucky thing old flame Matt has been tracking Axa for months and finally reunites with her just as the unscrupulous mastermind makes his moveâ€¦

‘Axa the Untamed’ finds the fiery fury dragging Matt and Mark 10 into a different kind of danger when the trio encounter a tribe of Gipsies who have proliferated into a modern horde of nomadic Mongol plainsmen, trading horses and other valuable commodities in a mad, macho wonderland of testosterone and arrogance.

Even Axa’s freedom-fuelled head is turned by the attentions of Gipsy Prince Django, much to Matt’s dismay, but it isn’t too long before the glamour fades and the worth of women in Django’s world leads her to reassess its value. It’s a lot harder to cure her love affair with his magnificent horses thoughâ€¦

These tales are superb examples of the uniquely British newspaper strip style: lavishly drawn, subversively written, expansive in scope and utterly enchanting in their basic simplicity – with lots of flashed flesh, emphatic action and sly, knowing humour. Eminently readable and re-readable (and there’s still that dwindling promise of a major motion picture) Axa is long overdue for a definitive collection. Here’s hoping there’s a bold publisher out there looking for the next big thingâ€¦
Â© 1984 Express Newspapers, Ltd.

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