Mature Reading – Page 81

June 23, 2010June 26, 2010

On the Odd Hours

By Eric Liberge translated by Joe Johnson (NBM ComicsLit/Louvre: MusÃ©e du Louvre Ã‰ditions)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-577-1

This is the first time I’ve encountered this series of translated graphic novels so this review is off the cuff and without any previous prejudice and preconception. That sounded pretty poncey and imposing but all it means is: even with all the high tech info systems in the world, occasionally something rather cool can slip by the most avid fan or collector.

In this case it’s the first two books in a patently fascinating collaboration between one of the greatest museums in the world and the, until so recently, scurrilous world of comics. So I’m diving right in with immediate reactions to the third in a series of superior translated bande dessinÃ©e courtesy of those fine fellows and folks at NBM.

These tales are produced in close collaboration with the forward-looking authorities of the 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 startling, beautiful, gloriously compelling adult horror thriller that cleverly incorporates the history, geography, icons and artifacts of the Louvre into the plot and makes the historic building and its contents a vital character in the supernatural drama.

Amongst the history and information pieces at the back of the book is an article on the services for the deaf such as signed tours, and the hearing-impaired guides and lecturers who are part of the staff. This is done to complement the tale of Bastien, an angry young deaf man who turns up at the museum to begin an internship, but somehow becomes a Night Guard, with special responsibilities for The Odd Hours of the clock: those moments when the 200 year old museum slips the shackles of reality and the exhibits escape their bounds, coming to terrifying, chaotic lifeâ€¦

The art is stunning in this extremely adult tome, and the creeping obsessions of Bastien as he struggles to keep his daylight life alive whilst striving to resolve the mystery of the exhibits is both poignant and enthralling.

Why was he selected for the position? Why are the animated beauties and horrors of the museum so much more enticing that his increasingly strident and difficult girlfriend? Most importantly, how can animated artworks be so much more communicative than the flesh and blood inhabitants of his â€œnormalâ€ life?

On the Odd Hours is utterly engrossing and darkly lovely, and despite being the third in the series reads easily as a stand-alone tale. I’m definitely going to track down the preceding volumes and I strongly recommend that you all do likewise.

June 21, 2010June 26, 2010

The Search for Smilin’ Ed!

By Kim Deitch (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-324-8

Kim Deitch has been one of the leading lights of America’s Comix Underground since its earliest days, although as with Harvey Pekar and American Splendor, it is only in recent years that he has won wider acclaim: in his case with 2002’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams. For the past two decades Deitch has been producing occasional short stories about a down-at-heel carnival the shabby, eccentric no-hopers that have populated it through-out the 150 years, the eerie aliens who have preserved its posterity and of course, the immortal Waldo the Cat, star of the graphic novel under review here.

In The Search for Smilin’ Ed! we have a formalised, recognisable Kim Deitch Universe – gloriously captured for your delight and delectation in a fabulous full-colour fold-out bonus feature within this comfortingly eccentric and incredibly accessible chronicle – as the author returns, albeit tangentially, to the outrÃ© characters of his fabulous Shadowland collection, expanding his ever-growing cast and still tellingly concerned with an absurdist examination of American popular culture scenarios.

With this surreal historiography of the hunt for a childhood landmark of misspent youth, the author once more shares the intoxicating joys of living in the past and dwelling in shared memories. This reassuringly weighty, mostly black and white tome leads with a terrific potted history and incisive essay, ‘Auguries of Brilliance: The Kim Deitch Universe’ by Comics scholar and educator Bill Kartapoulos, followed by the aforementioned universal crib-sheet fold-out, before the narrative wonderment unfolds in a progression of serialised episodes culled from the hallowed pages of famed alternative comics anthology Zero Zero.

One of Deitch’s most enduring characters is the irascible animated cartoon cat Waldo, who here returns to converse with the author himself as they reminisce, revel and ultimately reveal the hidden history of Smilin’ Ed, a pioneer of children’s television who mysteriously disappeared from public gaze in 1954, and was found dead on his yacht. But was heâ€¦?

Deitch’s stories are about stories – and particularly storytellers. As his authorial counterpart and the devilish Waldo converse, a cascade of mysteries are revealed when the monochrome moggy unburdens himself of his role in the vanishment, which in turn leads to a convoluted saga of fame, kidnapped boys, murdered children, fortune, a frog and demons, extraterrestrial cultural anthropologists – or voyeurs (?) – immortal pygmies and a social call to the Drawing Rooms of Hellâ€¦

Combining the utterly irresistible power of nostalgia and insatiable curiosity with science-fiction, conspiracy theory, urban history, fact and legend, show-biz razzmatazz, supernatural horror, Film Noir and a highly developed sense of the meta-real, Deitch once more weaves an irresistible spell that charms, thrills and disturbs whilst his meticulous drawing holds the reader in a deceptively fluffy, yet inescapable grip.

This volume further breaks down the thin walls of perceived reality by adding a lithograph ‘Ignacio the Bullfighter’ which was part of the narrative to the extra-textual content and also contains an all-new sequel and 21^st century update, ‘Consider the Beaver’, which brings us up to date on the world of Waldo whilst delineating the forced evolution of Mankind’s potential successor. As always fact and fiction are seamlessly blended together until only a hyper-cranked search engine could discern truth from fableâ€¦

Follow the saga of the World According to Deitch in this wonderful compendium and you too could join the unfolding cartoon parade of the â€œAmericana Wayâ€. In Fact – or Fiction – you might already be there, but you’ll never know unless you lookâ€¦

June 12, 2010June 16, 2010

Black Jack volume 10

By Osamu Tezuka (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-934287-74-3

In a creative career that produced over 700 hundred different series and more than 150,000 pages (many of them only now finally becoming available to people who can’t read Japanese), Osamu Tezuka captivated generations of readers across the world with tales of history, fantasy, romance and startling adventure. Perhaps his most intriguing creation is Black Jack, an underground surgeon who overcame horrendous childhood injuries and, despite carrying many scars within and without, roams the globe, curing anybody who can pay his deliberately daunting, exorbitant prices – usually cash, but sometimes in more exotic or metaphysical coin.

He is the ultimate loner, except for Pinoko, a little girl he literally built from the organic scraps of an early case. Unlicensed by any medical board on Earth, he holds himself to the highest ethical standards possibleâ€¦ his own. All the troubles and wonders of this world can be found in medical dramas, and here elements of rationalism, science-fiction, kitchen sink drama, spiritualism, criminality, crushing sentimentality and shining human frailty are woven into an epic of Magical Realism to rival the works of Fuentes and Gabriel GarcÃa MÃ¡rquez.

Black Jack is at once a lone wolf hero, troubled genius, passionate outsider and amoral humanitarian combining the indomitable will of Doc Savage with the intellect of Sherlock Holmes and ambivalent, intuitive drive of Dr. Gregory House. Hideously scarred, viciously spurning all human comfort, the unlicensed mercenary medic endures public condemnation and professional scorn, as he continually confronts the cutting edges of medicine and reality.

His esteemed creator Osamu Tezuka was born in Qsaka Prefecture on 3rd November 1928, and as a child suffered from a severe illness. The doctor who cured him inspired him to study medicine, and although the cartoonist began his professional drawing career while at university, he persevered with his studies and qualified as a doctor too.

Facing a career crossroads, Tezuka’s mother advised him to do the thing that made him happiest. He never practiced medicine but the world was gifted with such classic cartoon masterpieces as Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro-boy), Kimba the White Lion, Buddha, Adolf and literally hundreds of other graphic narratives. Along the way Tezuka incidentally pioneered, if not actually invented, the Japanese anime industry.

Equally able to speak to the hearts and minds of children and adults, Osamu Tezuka’s work ranges from the charming to the disturbing, even terrifying. In 1973 he turned his storyteller’s eye to his past college studies and created Burakku Jakku, a lone-wolf doctor living beyond society’s boundaries and rules:Â a heartless mercenary miracle-worker for the right price yet still a deeply human if wounded soul who works his surgical wizardry from behind icy walls of cool indifference and casual hostilityâ€¦

This tenth volume begins with ‘Avina’s Isle’ a fantastic doomed romance as a pearl diving South Sea native risks everything to marry his princess, utterly unaware of the sinister forces arrayed against him. There are some injuries no scalpel or suture can remedyâ€¦

‘The Mask Chosen’ is a revelatory tale of vengeance that cuts to the heart of Black Jack’s frightful past as the surgeon’s missing father emerges after decades with an outrageous request, whilst ‘Revenge is My Life’ shows a different side to Man’s basest instinct in a passionate, convoluted story which sees the Surgical Samurai go to superhuman lengths to repair a shattered woman with every reason to hate him.

Possibly the most moving Black Jack story yet translated, ‘Unfinished House’ reveals why a man with all the cash that the rogue doctor has earned still lives in a ramshackle hovel, a powerful tale of debts honoured and obligations met. ‘Strangers at Sea’ is a tense nautical crime drama mystically transformed by the expansive, all-encompassing, uncompromising love Dolphins display for mankind. Bring tissues: many tissues.

‘Pinoko Returns’ stars the doctor’s big-hearted little assistant who adopts a thieving conman, only to suddenly disappear without trace. Black Jack, the man with no emotions, must weigh his heart’s greatest desire against the slimmest chance of finding his pestiferous creationâ€¦

Years before drug mules became a common storytelling Maguffin ‘The Man Who Threw Up Capsules’ used the phenomenon to weave a complex tale of corrupt family practitioners and the price paid for social prestige, whilst ‘Flesh And Blood’ returns Black Jack to his dying father’s side and introduces a sister he never knew he had. Of course it cannot end wellâ€¦

‘Burglary’ shows the power and weakness of utter devotion as the Super Surgeon is asked to reconstruct the unique prosthetic limbs of a total amputee. But who would steal such intensely personal items and why does Lady Jane not want her arms and legs back? ‘Ashes and Diamonds’ is a much less disturbing story: a cool, cynical caper starring a young, idealistic doctor hired by a rich old man to check the infamous medical maverick’s work. It seems the billionaire paid Black Jack a fortune to implant billions in gems inside his failing body, and now he needs to know if the notoriously greedy mercenary medic did so or just kept the loot for himselfâ€¦

In Hawaii Black Jack survives a ‘Hot Night’ when an unlovable Vietnam veteran requests his expertise after he nearly killed for the third time, ‘Ransom’ sees an incomprehensible relationship blossom between a vicious kidnapper and his victim whilst ‘Mannequin and Officer’ is a story that could only happen in Japan, as a cop develops a peculiar affection for a traffic dummy. Luckily Black Jack owes him a favourâ€¦

‘Playing Doctor’ ends this volume on a high and happy note as a school bully and his favourite victim join forces to cure a little girl. Bu then, she has never met the real Black Jackâ€¦

One thing should always be remembered when reading these stories: despite all the scientific detail, all the frighteningly accurate terminology and trappings, Black Jack isn’t medical fiction; it’s an exploration of ethics and morality with medicine raised to the level of magicâ€¦ or perhaps duelling. This is an epic of personal combats, a lone gunfighter battling hugely oppressive counter-forces (the Law, the System, casual human cruelty, himself) to win just one more victory: medicine as mythology, won by a Ronin with a fast car and a Gladstone bag.

Thrilling, charming, bitterly insightful and overwhelmingly moving, these addictive magical stories of a medical wizard in a cruel, corrupt and ultimately unknowable universe will shake all your preconceptions of what storytelling can beâ€¦

This book is printed in the Japanese right to left, back to front format, and also contains an excerpt from the forthcoming new edition of Osamu Tezuka’s landmark graphic biography Buddha.

June 9, 2010June 10, 2010

Weathercraft: A Frank Comic

By Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-340-8

Some creators in the world of comics just defy description and their graphic novels and collections are beyond the reviewer’s 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.

And then there is Jim Woodring.

Woodring’s work is challenging, spiritual, philosophical, funny, beautiful and extremely scary. And, even after reading that sentence you will have absolutely no idea of what you will be seeing the first time you read any of it.

Moreover, even if you have scrupulously followed cartoonist, Fine Artist, toy-maker and artistic Renaissance Man Jim Woodring’s eccentric career since his first mini-comics in 1980, or his groundbreaking Fantagraphics magazine series such as Jim (1986), the nominal spin-off Frank (of which Weathercraft is the latest fabulist, fabulous instalment), Tantalizing Stories, 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 newest work.

Woodring delivers surreal, abstract, wild, rational, primal cartooning: his clean-mannered art a blend of woodblock prints, Robert Crumb, Dreamscape, religious art and monstrous phantasmagoria. His stories are a logical, progressional narrative clouded with multiple layers of meaning but totally void of speech or words, magnificently dependent on the intense involvement of the reader as fully active participant.

Weathercraft, for those of you who have seen his previous publications, has all the Frank regulars: the eponymous Krazy Kat-like ingÃ©nue, Pupshaw and Pushpaw, the fiercely loyal, god-like household appliances, the mysterious, omnipotent, moon-faced devil Whim and all the rest; vulture-things, frog-things, plant-things and Thing-things, that inhabit the insanely logical traumic universe of the Unifactor.

However, the action here generally follows the gross and venal Manhog (â€œan unholy hybrid of human ambivalence and porcine appetiteâ€) as he/it undergoes a frantic transformative journey that marries Pilgrim’s Progress to Dr Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, and Hesse & Appelbaum’s Siddhartha with H.P. Lovecraft by way of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.

And as the journey ends – we stop watching it – has Manhog been truly been transformed? If so, for how long, and what does it matter anyway?

Woodring is not to everyone’s taste or sensibilities – for starters, his drawings have a distressing habit of creeping back long after you’ve put the book down and scaring the bejeezus out of you – but he is an undisputed master of the form and an innovator always distending the creative envelope. All art-forms need such creators and this evocative tome could well change your reading habits for life.

So, are you tempted, tantalized or terrifiedâ€¦?

June 7, 2010January 8, 2011

100 Bullets: A Foregone Tomorrow

By Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-466-0

From being one of the best crime-comics in decades 100 Bullets gradually, cunningly transformed into a startlingly imaginative conspiracy thriller, with this fourth volume (collecting issues #20-30 of the much missed adult comic book) finally seeing a disparate range of previously seen strangers revealed as vital components in a vast and intriguing cast.

The tension begins with ‘The Mimic’, a captivating multi-layered allegorical vignette which features a conversation on a park bench between the mysterious Mr. Shepherd and young Benito Medici disclose some pertinent facts and intriguing conjectures about the enigmatic Agent Graves and his old associates â€œthe Minutemenâ€, all whilst the life or death drama of a street corner gangsta’s life plays out to a lethal inevitable conclusion around them.

In the two-part ‘Sell Fish & Out to Sea’ â€œHighâ€ Jack Daw, sometime bouncer, doped-out addict and one more lost soul is offered a way to change his life with the now inescapable consequences. When he is handed a gun and those eponymous bullets he revisits all the family and friends he had left; looking for the reason he’d fallen so low. Only when he finally ascertained who was really responsible for his fall did he start using that untraceable weapon and ammunitionâ€¦

East Coast gaming capitol Atlantic City is the venue for ‘Red Prince Blues’ and sees the return of super-bitch Megan Dietrich (see 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call) and ice-cold Benito, both scions of the mysterious Trust, but busily conspiring for their own unscrupulous futures as inveterate gambler Hank tries to win one last potâ€¦

With a dying wife the last thing he needed was to get into a poker game with young Medici, but everything goes into a terminal spin when Graves, Cole Burns and Dizzy Cordova hit town. This three part saga provides more useful clues about the thirteen families that rule America, and when the head of one of those Trust clans dies after a parley with Graves the stakes are raised to a level that no one can affordâ€¦

‘Mr. Branch & the Family Tree’ returns us to Paris and Dizzy’s old instructor who unwisely reveals the secret history of The Trust and The Minutemen in a saucily novel manner; a classy yarn that sees guest artists Paul Pope, Joe Jusko, Mark Chiarello, Jim Lee, Lee Bermejo, Dave Gibbons, Tim Bradstreet, Jordi Bernet, Frank Miller and J.G. Jones supplement the always superb Eduardo Risso with a series of narrative pin-ups identifying the major players in this increasingly convoluted, compelling chronicle.

Next comes possibly the best single tale of the entire run as Agent Graves encounters a geriatric baseball star whilst delivering another briefcase. This is no mere fading star however, but a man who once wed the most glamorous movie star of her generation, a tragic woman who had an affair with a President and – apparently – took her own life. The still grieving widower is also someone a younger but just as resolute Graves left a briefcase with in early 1963â€¦

‘Idol Chatter’ is a conspiracy nut’s dream, blending legend, myth and history into a clever, witty and punishingly poignant tale, even though the mordant black humour is never too far awayâ€¦

This edgy epistle ends with the three part ‘Â¡Contrabandolero!’ as lowlife El Paso gas-station attendant Wylie Times meets Dizzy and Mr. Shepard before getting sucked into a crazy criminal scam to smuggle contraband from Mexico into the USA. Unfortunately things quickly go south in JuÃ¡rez when the â€œexporterâ€ insists that the illicit entrepreneurs also provide an over-sexed, under-age girl with a ride back to the Land of the Freeâ€¦

Wylie just might be another Minuteman waiting to be reactivated, but you wouldn’t know it from this calamitous comedy of errors and terrorsâ€¦

Bleak drama gradually gave way to dark gallows humour and the major characters were slowly showing softer sides but this high-octane thriller had lost of its verve with this volume. The unfolding saga remains an astoundingly accessible and readable thriller as the mystery of the Trust is revealed and Agent Graves begins the final stage of a plan decades in the making: 100 Bullets promises that the best is already here, but even better is waitingâ€¦

Entertainment starved story fans – grown-up, paid-up, immune to harsh language and unshocked by rude, very violent behaviour – should make their way to their favourite purveyor of fine fiction immediately and get these graphic novels at all costs.

June 3, 2010June 2, 2010

Comic Tales

By Angus McKie and others (Northern Lights Press/Titan Books)
ISBN: 0-946394-00-8

Here’s an intriguing piece of British comics history that also highlights the talents of one of our most gifted illustrators – although you’ll possibly know him as the air-brush guy who worked with Dave Gibbons on such projects as The Dome: Ground Zero, or from his work in 2000AD and the Megazine.

Angus McKie came out of the same Northern do-it-yourself-publishing and underground scene that gave us Bryan Talbot, Hunt Emerson, Alan Craddock and many others (in Britain, the North now starts just the other side of Hemel Hempstead and Watford is simply Greater Londonâ€¦).Â He is an extremely adept and adventurous colour artist with a predilection for science fiction.

He studied graphic design at Newcastle College of Art in the 1970s before eventually working for a London agency, painting bookcovers and illustrations whilst producing intriguing strip work for various experimental comics publications such as Psst!

His most notable success was the selling of his seminal fantasy saga ‘So Beautiful, So Dangerous’ to the American adult fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, although he had previously contributed many tales to the original French parent publication Metal Hurlant.Â ‘So Beautiful, So Dangerous’ became one of the strips adapted into the 1981 animated Heavy Metal movie.

In recent years he has worked extensively in the video games field.

This slim, full-colour and exceptionally readable tome is still readily available for discerning adults and features a spiffy selection of gloriously tongue-in cheek yarns. Beginning the spectacle is a political fable concocted with the assistance of Dave Huxley and Alan Craddock. ‘Wurtham View 2000’ is a creepy â€œbig scienceâ€ tale that examines the possible ramifications of a workable time-scanning television camera, and is followed by the sequel ‘Face of the Past’ which reveals its most probable uses, human nature being what it isâ€¦

More broadly comedic are the stylish gag strips ‘Tales of the Zen Masters: Nothing Exists’ and ‘Tales of the Sufi Masters’ whilst McKie displays his flair for the dramatic by working with William Shakespeare on ‘The King and I’ (that would be Lear, in case you’re wonderingâ€¦). ‘The Appointment’ is an effective reinterpretation of the W. Somerset Maugham work Appointment in Samarra, and Craddock again assists on the sci fi gladiatorial spoof ‘Superhero.’

‘The Spirit of 67’ is a barbed and whacky reminiscence of past times that leads to a time travel tribulation whilst the sorry fate of two second-rate wannabe rock stars is scathingly described in ‘The Legend of the Magic Tone Box’ (written by Mike Feeney). The book ends with an extended satirical story of a misguided gang of radical anarchists with a big idea but not much of a clue in ‘Power to the People.’

McKie’s career path has taken him far from his comics roots but these little gems show an admirable disrespect for authority coupled to a highly accessible style of graphic narrative. While we’re all waiting for his next masterpiece why not track down this little gem and do a bit of time travelling of your very own?
Â© 1988 Junior Print Outfit.

May 26, 2010May 21, 2010

The World of Ginger Fox

By Mike Baron and Mitch O’Connell (Comico)
ISBN: 0-938965-02-6

Let’s all pop back to the ever-so-now 1980s with this stylish and radically different kind of graphic novel that pretty much typified and encapsulated the dichotomies of the age of Big Hair and Brash Money.

Peppertree Studios used to be one of the biggest players in Hollywood, until the somber 1970s saw ill-conceived, big, worthy movies almost bankrupt the company. Now the dissolute boys-club of greedy old men who own the company are so desperate that they hire a woman to save or kill the studio. After all, they have nothing to loseâ€¦

Amidst a welter of rumour, innuendo and open hostility, Ginger Fox blows into town and into a storm of trouble as she drags the company kicking and screaming back towards profits and safety. Along the way she encounters psychotic, crazed art-house directors, rowdy martial-arts prima donnas, drugs and thugs and sabotage from within by two-faced back-stabbers who don’t like taking orders from a pretty young woman and especially not a single-mom, Hollywood outsiderâ€¦

The tale takes a swift side-step into the weird – and lavishly violent – when a Martial Arts secret society threatens to kill anybody connected with the new movie that inadvertently reveals their sacred Negative Kung Fu technique to anybody and everybody with the price of a movie ticket.

Despite warnings from cops and Hong Kong action-star Jason Wu, Ginger refuses to worry – at least until the â€œaccidentsâ€ start to happen and the bodies start to pile up. Meanwhile, one of her own directors is trying to oust her and Peppertree’s biggest remaining star is spiraling out of control on addictive bingesâ€¦

This mÃ©lange of glamour, fashion, excess and sheer over-the-top style is an unbelievably heady and enticing brew, especially thanks to the sleek, beautiful, high-end art and design of O’Connell; a canny cultural scavenger whose slick blend of caricature, pop iconography and surreal whimsy elevate this tale to unprecedented heights of verve and dash.

Sexy, cinematically violent and wickedly tongue-in-cheek, this adult comics caper is markedly different from almost anything you’ve ever seen and thoroughly deserves another bite of the graphic novel cherry. If they’re bringing back the ’80s, you’re going to need this to remind you that it wasn’t all dreadfulâ€¦
Story Â© 1986 Mike Baron. Artwork Â© 1986 Mitch O’Connell. All rights reserved.

May 25, 2010May 29, 2010

The Witching Hour

By Jeph Loeb, Chris Bachalo & Art Thibert (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-251-6

I gather a new edition of this dark little treat is imminent so here’s a quick graphic novel review to whet your appetites and prime your bank accountsâ€¦

The original title the Witching Hour was a quirky, highly readable anthology comic from DC’s 1970s horror/mystery stable, with the early issues particularly memorable due to some extremely tasty contributions from arch-stylist Alex Toth. The pithy, spooky, mordantly ironic yarns were recounted by three iconic hosts representing the Wiccan concept of maiden, mother and crone and nominally based on the Weird sisters from Macbeth: namely Cynthia, Mildred and Mordred. The series ran from 1969 to 1978.

In 1999, with the company’s Vertigo imprint successfully reinventing the horror comic month by month, a number of old properties were given the proverbial fresh spin and Jeph Loeb and Chris Bachalo produced a delightfully dark, character-driven mystery yarn as a three issue prestige-format miniseries, promptly collected in a volume that unjustly vanished with nary a ripple of comment. Hopefully this time out it will garner some better press and attentionâ€¦

In Manhattan, vivacious, exotic Amanda Collins visits a disparate, desperate selection of characters, daring them to trade-in their pasts and seize new futures. Dispensing blank business-cards and new realities to the lost, lonely and dangerous with but a wish, she seems the epitome of wild chance and missed opportunities, but Amanda too is a prisoner of the past, with a sorcerous heritage reaching back to 1660 and a romantic clash between Christian propriety and pagan license.

As other mysterious mystics also enfold fate-touched mortals in some enigmatic grand scheme – are they Amanda’s coven comrades or opponents in some grand game? – a centuries old debt is assessedâ€¦ and perhaps repaidâ€¦

Vague as that sounds, it is all you need for this complex, intriguing, savage, seductive, sexy and addictively arcane experiment in sequential story-telling. The connections linking Amanda to her own past, her witchly companions and all the apparent innocents who accept her highly suspicious offer are deliberately obscure; thus the tale unfolds on a multitude of levels and the reader actually has to engage the brain to divine the hidden secrets of the Witching Hour.

Bachalo’s art is magic of the purely pictorial kind: as light and airy as clouds and deeply, densely, information-packed like a favourite grimoire. The section collecting his design sketches are sleek and pretty, everything an art-lover could want to see.

This is a book that washes over you like a wave, all mood and moment, and will offer a rare challenge for adult readers tired of being spoon-fed their fiction-fix.

May 23, 2010May 29, 2010

The Question volume 5: Riddles

By Dennis O’Neil, Denys Cowan, Bill Wray & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-513-5

This is a saga about dysfunction and a search for answers: Social, societal, political, emotional, familial and even methodological. The normal masked avenger tactics don’t work in a â€œrealâ€-er world, and some solutions require better Questionsâ€¦

Challenging Western dystopia with Eastern thought and martial arts action is not a new concept but O’Neil’s focus on cultural and social problems rather than histrionic super-heroics make this series a truly philosophical work, and Cowan’s raw, edgy art imbues this darkly adult, powerfully sophisticated thriller with a maturity that is simply breathtaking.

This fifth collection (reprinting issues #25-30) picks up from the shock ending of The Question: Welcome to Oz with ‘Skells’ illustrated by Cowan & Malcolm Jones III. New Mayor Myra Fermin-Connelly has been gunned down by her drunken, brain-addled husband and lies in a coma. Due to a quirk of Hub City law, with both current candidates unable to take office, the incumbent – despite being wanted for attempted murder – is technically next-in-line, and therefore de facto Mayorâ€¦

The tornado that struck the city on Election Day has finished the job begun by years of corruption and the gang warfare of the campaign. Hub City is a billion-dollar disaster zone. All essential services have ceased, the surviving populace are either rioting, looting or hiding. Food and water are running out.

State authorities are unwilling to step in and the urban hell-hole is poised to become a purely Darwinian jungle (this storyline probably inspired Batman’s ‘No Man’s Land’ publishing event) but all the Question wants to do is hunt down Myra’s addled husband/killer…

‘Riddles’ is a strange and melancholy Christmas divertissement, from fill-in penciller Bill Wray and Jones III which sees the Riddler, fresh out of jail and in a slump, catch a bus to Hub City and a new start. Sadly he picks the wrong girl to chat up and the result is the bloodiest and most senseless night of his life. It’s a genuine Christmas miracle that Vic Sage and Professor Rodor are on the same road that nightâ€¦

With the city in turmoil, Myra in a coma, and no foe he can hit, The Question is helpless, but when the Prof reveals that his long-lost brother was a comic book artist in the 1940s it leads them all on a quasi-mystic quest which just might provide the mauled metropolis with its first glimmer of hope and recovery. ‘Captain Stars & Sergeant Stripes’ is illustrated by Cowan and Jones III, with Golden Age pastiche pages from Rick Stasi & Terry Beatty.

The last three tales here, also limned by Cowan and Jones, form an extended epic as the lethal Lady Shiva (see The Question: Zen and Violence) returns. Myra has emerged from her coma and taken charge, but with no resources and open warfare on the streets she is forced to take some extraordinary measures to restore order. In ‘A Place for the Arts’ Shiva, drawn to the chaos and ever-hungry to test her martial arts skills, offers her murderous services to one of the gangs trying to take over what’s left of Hub City, only to have her potential employers snatched from her as the new Lady Mayor convinces the warring thugs to become her new police forceâ€¦

Incredibly disaster seems to have been averted until in ‘The Slaying’ one of the rival gang-lords is stabbed at a peace-conference and the Faceless Inquisitor has a murder to solve before the last remnants of hope are swallowed by renewed bloodshed. ‘Whodunit’ reveals all, but as is always the case in this superb series the answers are far from neat, tidy or satisfactory, and as always a moral and philosophical pall clouds the issues. And like a ghost Shiva stalks the city, ambivalent, ambiguous, unfathomable in her private purposesâ€¦

Like life, The Question never produces easy answersâ€¦

Bleak, brutal, confrontational and mordantly action-packed these tales come from one of DC’s very best series, and they form a perfect snapshot in comics history of a hugely creative and historically significant time. These graphic novels demonstrate just how evocative sequential narrative can be and no fan of serious fun literature or mature, sensitive escapism can afford to miss them.

May 21, 2010May 29, 2010

Abandoned Cars

By Tim Lane (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-341-5

Tim Lane is a post-war American. His inner landscape is populated with B-Movies, Rock and Roll, junk-memorabilia, big cars with fins, old television shows, Jack Kerouac, the seven ages of Marlon Brando, pulp fictions, young Elvis, distilled Depression-era experiences (all of them from â€œThe Greatâ€ to the latest), black and white images on TV, a loss of faith in old values, Mad Avenue propaganda, compromised ideals and frustrated dreams. He calls that oh, so plunderable societal gestalt and psychic landscape â€œThe Great American Mythological Dramaâ€, and in this first collection of his stark, intriguing comic strips he dips deep and concocts his own striking contributions to the Great Double Martini of Lifeâ€¦

Many modern Americans are using that shared popular culture to create new paintings and sculptures (see any of the numerous â€œlowbrowâ€ or â€œpop surrealistâ€ tomes by Schorr, Ryden, Ledbetter et al that we’ve reviewed here over the last few months) but Lane has eschewed the gallery art arena for his explorations, opting instead for the only true American medium of expression, the story, and toils bombastically in its ugly bastard offspring – Comics.

He draws in stunning black and white: hard-edged, uncompromising and enticingly moody, and these short stories, vignettes, observations and sequential investigations are far from the usual stock of funnies.

The contents here are culled from a number of sources such as Legal Action Comics, Hotwire, Typhon, Riverfront Times and his self-published magazine Happy Hour in America from 2003 to 2008, and range from tales of dark, eccentric whimsy (‘American Cut-Out Collectibles’, ‘The Manic-Depressive from Another Planet’ and ‘The Aries Cow’) to philosophically charged musings (‘Ghost Road’, ‘To Be Happy’ and ‘The Drive Home’), Pop cultural pastiches (‘Outing’ and ‘Doo-Wop and Planet Earth’ ) fascinating autobiography and reportage (‘Spirit’ parts 1-3, ‘In My Dream’ and ‘You Are Here: the Story of Stagger Lee’) to just plain old-fashioned noir-tinted thrillers like ‘Cleveland’ andÂ ‘Sanctuary’.

The book also contains numerous untitled, enigmatic and addictive short pieces, and for my money the most evocative and powerful piece herein is an all but wordless, two-page rumination on age and loss: ‘Those Were Good Years’. You’d have to be made of stone to be unmovedâ€¦

Crafting comics is clearly not a job or hobby for Lane. Serious artists have always struggled to discover greater truths through their creative response to the world, and he has obviously found his instrument in black line on white and his muse in the shabby, avuncular, boisterous, scary detritus of our everyday, blue-collar communal past. The result is stunning and highly intoxicating.

Questing, introspective, insightful and as desperately inquiring as the young Bob Dylan, with as many questions, even fewer answers and just as much lasting, life-altering entertainment to be derivedâ€¦

Why haven’t you got this book yet?

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