Mature Reading – Page 84

October 31, 2010October 30, 2010

Walking Dead volume 1: Days Gone Bye

By Robert Kirkman & Tony Moore (Image)
ISBN: 978-1-58240-672-5

In advance of the television debut and sarcastically smug in the knowledge that at least one American University is now offering Zombie Studies as part of its curriculum, I think it’s about time that I turned my winnowing gaze on the most critically successful comicbook on the subject of the restless and infinitely hungry horrors that have recently captivated the global imagination.

The Walking Dead began in 2003 as an unassuming black and white monthly from Image Comics, once a cooperative of comics media darlings that has since evolved into a welcome clearing house of good ideas and different concepts that bigger publishers are too commercially timid to risk releasing. Writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore took the tried and trusted format pioneered by George A. Romero in his 1968 satirical shocker Night of the Living Dead, and stripped it of its sensationalistic brutality and anti-war sub-text, producing a very human and scarily passionate exploration of human nature under extreme and sustained duress.

In that light if zombie invasions are a metaphor for Life During Wartime then Walking Dead is more about civilians than soldiers and explores the Spirit of the Blitz rather than the last ditch heroics of Dunkirk or the Alamo.

The series has won many awards and, since 2004, been collected into numerous editions including 13 trade paperbacks each containing six issues, six deluxe hardbacks with a dozen issues each and bonus material, three omnibus editions with two years of material in each and even a Compendium volume containing the first 48 issues. There’s even a book of covers planned but I don’t know if that’s out yetâ€¦ Being an old purist with weak wrists, I’m plumping for the very first trade edition for this graphic novel review.

Rural Kentucky cop Rick Grimes is shot whilst apprehending a rampaging felon with his friend and deputy Shane. He awakes from a coma in a deserted hospital littered with dead bodies and, whilst weakly making his way outside, discovers that not all the corpses are staying dead.

Chased by aggressively hungry but slow-moving zombies in various stages of decomposition Rick flees town and makes his way to the family home. His wife and son are missing but before he can search he is overwhelmed by Morgan Jones and his little boy Duane, fugitives from the undead plague which has overwhelmed the entire planet.

They bring Rick – and us – up to speed on the situation, explaining how to kill the monsters and relating all the news on the creatures that was broadcast before the media outlets were overrun. Most importantly, they reveal that uninfected humans have been advised to relocate to major cities. Knowing his wife had family in Atlanta, Rick tools up with weapons and supplies from the police station and sets off after his missing loved ones – even though Morgan clearly prefers to take his chances out in the wildsâ€¦

Experiencing all manner of sedate horrors Rick eventually reaches the big city but the scene is one of desolate carnage. The zombies are everywhere and when he is surrounded his own death looks certain until he is rescued by Glenn, a young man scavenging supplies for a small band of survivors hidden outside the city.

Shocks come thick and fast when the Rick finds wife Lori, son Carl and former deputy Shane are all part of the disparate group. They have been roughing it in a camp formed of assorted motor vehicles, living off the land, and waiting to be rescued or killed.

Also, something significant has happened between Shane and Loriâ€¦

Tensions amongst the survivors build as cold weather encroaches, resources diminish and the erratically wandering zombies gradually close in on the camp. Moreover, the unspoken friction between Rick, Lori and Shane is inexorably building and after an unusually heavy assault that kills two of their number results in a bitterly tragic climaxâ€¦

Despite the trappings of dark, bloody horror, this is a series about humanity: its foibles, frailnesses, fallibilities and formidable resilience. Ancient anxieties such as ravenous unreasoning monsters rub alongside more modern bogeymen such as fear of the disease, and all the sins of humanity still plague the dwindling humans in this supremely underplayed gem, especially in Tony Moore’s deceptively comforting clean lined art; subversively enhancing the ghastly situation with quiet power and smooth grey-tone embellishments.

Whatever format you prefer this distinctly different horror show is one that will take your breath away and leave you so very hungry foe moreâ€¦

October 29, 2010October 30, 2010

Showcase Presents House of Mystery volume 1

By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0786-1

American comicbooks started slowly until the creation of superheroes unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and invented a new genre. Implacably vested in the Second World War, the Overman swept all before him (and the very occasional her) until the troops came home and older genres supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Although new kids kept up the buying, much of the previous generation also retained their four-colour habit but increasingly sought older themes in the reading matter. The war years altered the psychology of the world, and as a more world-weary, cynical young public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything their chosen forms of entertainment (film and prose as well as comics) reflected this. As well as Western, War and Crime comics, madcap escapist comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, but gradually another periodic revival of spiritualism and interest in the supernatural led to a wave of increasingly impressive, evocative and even shocking horror comics.

There had been grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in mystery-man garb and trappings (the Spectre, Mr. Justice, Sgt. Spook, Frankenstein, The Heap, Sargon the Sorcerer, Zatara, Dr. Fate and dozens of others), but these had been victims of circumstance: the unknown as a power source for super-heroics. Now the focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering, the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped on the increasingly popular bandwagon, with B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launching the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948, although Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon who had released an impressive single issue entitled Eerie in January 1947 before launching a regular series in 1951, by which time Classics Illustrated had already long milked the literary end of the medium with adaptations of the Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

If we’re keeping score this was also the period in which Joe Simon and Jack Kirby identified another â€œmature marketâ€ gap and invented the Romance comic (Young Romance #1, September 1947) but they too saw the sales potential for spooky material, resulting in the seminal Black Magic (launched in 1950) and boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams (1952).

The company that would become DC Comics bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery. When the hysterical censorship scandal which led to witch-hunting hearings (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April- June 1954 into your search engine at any timeâ€¦ You can do that because it’s ostensibly a free country now) was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self regulatory rules HoM and its sister title House of Secrets were dialled back into rationalistic, fantasy adventure vehicles, and even became super-hero tinged split-books (With Martian Manhunter and Dial H for Hero in HoM, and Eclipso sharing space with Mark Merlin and later Prince Ra-Man in HoS).

However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and at the end of the 1960s the Silver Age superhero boom stalled and crashed, leading to the surviving publishers of the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles but as the liberalisation coincided with another bump in global interest in all aspects of the Worlds Beyond, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious â€œno-brainer.â€ Even the ultra wholesome Archie comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle thrillersâ€¦

Thus with absolutely no fanfare at all issue #174, cover dated May-June 1968 presented a bold banner demanding â€œDo You Dare Enter The House of Mystery?â€ and reprinted a bunch of admittedly excellent short fantastic thrillers originally seen in House of Secrets from the heady days when it was okay to scare kids. Staring off was ‘The Wondrous Witch’s Cauldron’ (HoS #58) by an unknown writer and compellingly illustrated by the great Lee Elias, another uncredited script ‘The Man Who Hated Good Luck!’ limned by Doug Wildey and the only new feature of the issue – one which would set the tone for decades to come.

Page 13 was a trenchantly comedic feature page scripted by Editor and EC veteran Joe Orlando and cartooned by manic Hispanic genius Sergio AragonÃ©s. It stated quite clearly that whilst the intent was to thrill, enthral and even appal it was all in the spirit of sinister fun, and gallows humour was the order of the day. The comic then concluded with a Bernard Baily tale of the unexpected ‘The Museum of Worthless Inventions’ (from #13) and concluded with the Jack Miller, Carmine Infantino & Mort Meskin fantasy fable ‘The Court of Creatures’ (a Mark Merlin masterpiece from HoS #43).

The next issue can probably be counted as the true start of this latter day revenant renaissance, as Orlando revived the EC tradition of slyly sardonic narrators by creating the Machiavellian Cain, â€œcaretaker of the House of Mysteryâ€ and raconteur par excellence. Behind the first of a spectacular series of creepy covers from Neal Adams lurked another reprint ‘The Gift of Doom’ (from HoM #137, illustrated by George Roussos) followed by ‘All Alone’, an original, uncredited prose chiller.

After another Page 13 side-splitter, AragonÃ©s launched his long-running gag page ‘Cain’s Game Room’ and the issue closed with an all-new new comic thriller ‘The House of Gargoyles!’ by veteran scaremongers Bob Haney and Jack Sparling.

With format firmly established and commercially successful the fear-fest was off and running. Stunning Adams covers, painfully punny introductory segments and interspersed gag pages (originally just AragonÃ©s but eventually supplemented by other cartoonists such as John Albano, Lore Shoberg and John Costanza. This feature eventually grew popular enough to be spun off into bizarrely outrageous comicbook called Plop! – but that’s a subject for another dayâ€¦) supplied an element of continuity to an increasingly superior range of self-contained supernatural thrillers. Moreover, if ever deadline distress loomed there was always a wealth of superb old material to fill in with.

HoM #176 led with spectral thriller ‘The House of No Return!’ by an unknown writer and the great Sid Greene and young Marv Wolfman (one of an absolute Who’s Who of budding writers who went on to bigger things) teamed with Sparling on the paranoiac mad science shocker ‘The Root of Evil!’

Another reprinted masterpiece of form from Mort Meskin (see From Shadow to Light for more about this unsung genius of the art-form) led off #177, ‘The Son of the Monstross Monster’ having previously appeared in House of Mystery #130. and 1950’s fearsome fact page was recycled into ‘Odds and Ends from Cain’s Cellar’ before Charles King and Orlando’s illustrated prose piece ‘Last Meal’ and dream team Howie (Anthro) Post and Bill Draut produced a ghoulish period parable in ‘The Curse of the Cat.’

Neal Adams debuted as an interior illustrator – and writer – with a mind-boggling virtuoso performance as a little boy survived ‘The Game’, after which Jim Mooney’s spooky credentials were recalled with ‘The Man Who Haunted a Ghost’ (first seen in HoM #35) and E. Nelson Bridwell, Win Mortimer & George Roussos delineated an eternal dream with ‘What’s the Youth?’ and ‘Cain’s True Case Files: Ghostly Miners’ closed the issue.

Bridwell contributed the claustrophobic ‘Sour Note’ in issue #179 rendered by the uniquely visionary Jerry Grandenetti and Roussos and the next generation of comics genius begun with the first Bernie Wrightson creepy contribution. ‘Cain’s True Case Files: The Man Who Murdered Himself’ was scripted by Marv Wolfman and is still a stunning example of gothic perfection in the artist’s Graham Ingels inspired lush, fine-line style.

This exceptional artists issue also contains the moody supernatural romance ‘The Widow’s Walk’ by Post. Adams & Orlando – a subtle shift from schlocky black humour to moody supernatural tragedy that would undoubtedly appeal to the increasingly expanding female readership. The issue ends with another fact feature ‘Cain’s True Case Files: The Dead Tell Tales’.

Going from strength to strength House of Mystery was increasingly drawing on DC’s major artistic resources. ‘Comes a Warrior’ which opened #180, was a chilling faux Sword & Sorcery masterpiece written and drawn by the da Vinci of Dynamism Gil Kane, inked by the incomparable Wally Wood, and the same art team also illustrated Mike Friedrich’s fourth-wall demolishing ‘His Name is Cain Kane!’ Cliff Rhodes and Orlando contributed the text-terror ‘Oscar Horns In!’ and Wolfman & Wrightson returned with the prophetic vignette ‘Scared to Life’ An uncredited forensic history lesson from ‘Cain’s True Case Files’ closed the proceedings for that month.

‘Sir Greeley’s Revenge!’ by Otto Binder and drawn by the quirkily capable Sparling was a heart-warmingly genteel spook story, but Wrightson’s first long story – a fantastic reincarnation saga entitled ‘The Circle of Satan’, scripted by Bob Kanigher, ended #181 on a eerily unsettling note and #182 opened with one of the most impressive tales of the entire run. Jack Oleck’s take on the old cursed mirror plot was elevated to high art as his script ‘The Devil’s Doorway’ was illustrated by the incredible Alex Toth. Wolfman and Wayne Howard then followed with ‘Cain’s True Case Files: Grave Results!’ an Orlando limned house promotion and the nightmarish revenge tale ‘The Hound of Night!’

Oleck and Grandenetti opened #183 with ‘The Haunting!’, ‘Odds and Ends from Cain’s Cellar’ returned with ‘Curse of the Blankenship’s and ‘Superstitions About Spiders’ and Wolfman & Wrightson contributed ‘Cain’s True Case Files: The Dead Can Kill!’ before the canny teaming of Kanigher with Grandenetti and Wally Wood resulted in the truly bizarre ‘Secret of the Whale’s Vengeance.’ The next issue saw the triumphant return of Oleck & Toth for the captivating Egyptian tomb raider epic ‘Turner’s Treasure’ and Bridwell, Kane & Wood for a barbarian blockbuster ‘The Eyes of the Basilisk!’

House of Mystery #185 saw caretaker Cain take a more active role in the all-Grandenetti yarn ‘Boom!’, Wayne Howard illustrated the sinister ‘Voice From the Dead!’ and veteran Charlton scribe Joe Gill debuted with ‘The Beautiful Beast’: a lost world romance perfectly pictured by EC alumnus Al Williamson. Next issue topped even that as Wrightson illustrated Kanigher’s spectacular bestiary tale ‘The Secret of the Egyptian Cat’ and Neal Adams produced some his best art ever for Oleck’s poignant tale of imagination and childhood lost ‘Nightmare’. Nobody who ever adored Mr. Tumnus could read this little gem without choking upâ€¦ and as for the rest of you, I just despairâ€¦

Kanigher & Toth produced another brilliantly disquieting drama in ‘Mask of the Red Fox’ to open #187, and Wayne Howard was at his workmanlike best on ‘Cain’s True Case Files: Appointment Beyond the Grave!’ before John Celardo & Mike Peppe apparently illustrated the anonymous script for the period peril ‘An Aura of Death!’ (although to my jaded old eyes the penciller looks more like Win Mortimerâ€¦)

Another revolutionary moment began with the first story in #188, cover dated September-October 1970. Gerry Conway got an early boost scripting ‘Dark City of Doom’, a chilling reincarnation mystery set in both contemporary times and Mayan South America as the trailblazer for a magnificent tidal wave of Filipino artists debuted. The stunning art of Tony DeZuniga opened the door for many of his talented countrymen to enter and reshape both Marvel and DC’s graphic landscape and this black and white compendium is the perfect vehicle to see their mastery of line and textureâ€¦

Wrightson was responsible for the time-lost thriller ‘House of Madness!’ which closed that issue whilst AragonÃ©s opened the proceedings for #189, closely followed by Kanigher, Grandenetti & Wood’s ‘Eyes of the Cat’ and a 1953 reprint drawn by Leonard Starr, ‘The Deadly Game of G-H-O-S-T‘ (from HoM #11) before another Charlton mystery superstar premiered as Tom Sutton illustrated Oleck’s ‘The Thing in the Chair’.

Kanigher and Toth teamed for another impeccable graphic masterwork in ‘Fright!’, Albano filled Cain’s Game Room and AragonÃ©s debuted another long-running gag page with ‘Cain’s Gargoyles’ and this issue ended with a Salem-based shocker ‘A Witch Must Die!’ (by Jack Miller, Ric Estrada & Frank Giacoia). Issue #191 saw the official debut of Len Wein who wrote the terrifying puppet-show tragedy ‘No Strings Attached!’ for Bill Draut and DeZuniga returned to draw Oleck’s cautionary tale ‘The Hanging Tree!’ before Wein closed the show paired with Wrightson on ‘Night-Prowler!’ a seasonal instant-classic that has been reprinted many times since.

John Albano wrote ‘The Garden of Eden!’, a sinister surgical stunner, made utterly believably by Jim Aparo’s polished art, and Gray Morrow illustrated Kanigher’s modern psycho-drama ‘Image of Darkness’ and superhero veteran Don Heck returned to his suspenseful roots drawing Virgil North’s monstrously whimsical ‘Nobody Loves a Lizard!’

Wrightson contributed the first of many magnificent covers for #193, depicting the graveyard terrors of Alan Riefe & DeZuniga’s ‘Voodoo Vengeance!’, whilst Bill Draut skilfully delineated the screaming tension of Francis X. Bushmaster’s ‘Dark Knight, Dark Dreams!’

For #194, which saw House of Mystery expand from 32 to 52 pages – as did all DC’s titles for the next couple of years, opening the doors for a superb period of new material and the best of the company’s prodigious archives to an appreciative, impressionable audience – the magic began with another bravura Toth contribution in Oleck’s ‘Born Loser’ swiftly followed by the Russ Heath illustrated monster thriller ‘The Human Wave’ (from House of Secrets #31), a Jack Kirby monster-work ‘The Negative Man’ (House of Mystery #84) before Oleck and the simply stunning Nestor Redondo (see also The Bible: DC Limited Collectors Edition C-36) closed the issue and this first volume with the metamorphic horror ‘The King is Dead’.

These terror-tales captivated the reading public and comics critics alike when they first appeared and it’s no exaggeration to posit that they may well have saved the company during the dire downward sales spiral of the 1970. Now their blend of sinister mirth and classical suspense situations can most usually be seen in such series as Goosebumps, Horrible Histories and their many imitators. If you crave beautifully realised, tastefully, splatter-free sagas of tension and imagination, not to mention a huge supply of bad-taste, kid-friendly creepy cartooning The House of Mystery is the place for youâ€¦

October 22, 2010October 24, 2010

Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 3

By The Hernandez Brothers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-379-8

A year goes by like 365 days when you’re waiting for something really special and very often the anticipation is far headier than the eventual pay-off. Mercifully in the case of Love and Rockets: New Stories such in not the case, as the third annual volume proves to be the best yet, combining eccentric drama, bright fantasy, captivating whimsy and appalling human frailty into a package of stunning graphic intensity.

In the 1980s a qualitative revolution forever destroyed the clichÃ©d, stereotypical ways different genres of comic strips were produced and marketed. Most prominent in destroying the comfy pigeonholes we’d built for ourselves were three guys from Oxnard, California; Jaime, Mario (occasionally) and Gilberto Hernandez.

Love and Rockets was an anthology magazine featuring slick, intriguing, sci-fi tinted hi-jinx of punky young things Maggie and Hopey – las Locas – and heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasies from the rural Central American paradise of Palomar. The Hernandez Boys, gifted synthesists all, enthralled and enchanted with incredible stories that sampled a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from Comics, TV cartoons, masked wrestlers and the exotica of American Hispanic pop culture to German Expressionism. There was also a perpetual backdrop displaying the holy trinity of youth: Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll – for which please hear alternative music and punk rock.

The result was dynamite. Mario only officially contributed on rare occasions but the slick and enticing visual forays by Jaime explored friendship and modern love whilst destroying stereotypes of feminine attraction through his fetching coterie of Gals Gone Wild and Gilberto created the hyper-real landscape of Palomar: a playground of wit and passion created for the extended serial Heartbreak Soup, in the quicksilver form of a poor Latin-American village with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast. The denizens of Palomar still inform and shape the latest tales from Beto both directly and as imaginative spurs for unassociated stories.

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

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

This third volume commences with Gilbert’s ‘Scarlet by Starlight’ a multi-perspective narrative that appears at first to be a science fictional fable before evolving into something far more disturbing. On a distant world, a team of three earthling explorers are becoming far too intimate with the primitive yet buxom anthropoids that populate the planet and as the human relationships break down, unwise new bonds are formed with unpleasant and even harrowing resultsâ€¦

Savage and sexually explicit, this exploration of drives and desires takes a further step into forbidden territory when the explorers return homeâ€¦

Maggie Chascarrillo – star of las Locas – takes centre stage in Jaime’s ‘The Love Bunglers Part One’, a lonely middle-aged lady, still looking for her life’s path and still an unsuspecting object of desire to the men who flock around her. But who is that particularly dangerous-looking bum stalking her?

The central portion again features Gilbert’s newest fascination: the young, rebellious and dangerously pneumatic underage Latina spitfire dubbed â€œKillerâ€ – actually the juvenile character Dora Rivera – granddaughter of Palomar’s formidable Matriarch Luba (see Luba and Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 2) grown to a far more dangerous age.

As seen in the previous volume, Killer, who is slowly making her way into the exotic B-movie arena that fascinated and overwhelmed her Aunt Fritz (See also High Soft Lisp and The Troublemakers) is a highly strung creature on the verge of losing all her remaining innocence and in ‘Killer*Sad Girl*Star’ is considering remaking one of her aunt’s strangest movies whilst becoming involved in a senseless tragic crimeâ€¦ or is she?

Maggie’s turbulent childhood is revealed in Jaime’s startling and truly disturbing ‘Browntown’ as the Chascarrillo family move to a new city where both parents and all four kids undergo differing ordeals which reshape them forever. A note of warning: There are some heart-rending situations of child-abuse here that, although artistically valid and even necessary, are also genuinely upsetting, so please remember that this is a book strictly for mature readers.

The harrowing revelations of ‘Browntown’ lead directly into ‘The Love Bunglers Part Two’ as many of the mysteries set up in the first chapter are thrown into stark relief by the events from Maggie’s past, leading to a surprisingly warm-hearted conclusion to this deceptively hard-hitting book.

Stark, challenging, charming and irresistibly seductive, Love and Rockets: New Stories is a grown up comics fan’s dream come true and remains as valid and groundbreaking as its earlier incarnations – the cutting edge of American graphic narrative.

October 14, 2010October 16, 2010

Wanted: Undead or Alive: Vampire Hunters and other Kick-Ass Enemies of Evil

By Jonathan Maberry & Janice Gable Bashman (Citadel Press)
ISBN: 978-0-8065-2821-2

Although out of my usual comfort zone and possibly beyond my usual purview, when this fascinating item thunked onto my doormat I confess I was intrigued enough to stretch a point and review it here – especially with Halloween looming large on the horizon.

Written in a wonderfully accessible style this series of essays, liberally illustrated with both colour and monochrome images, examines the concept of evil monsters and how to fight them in fact and fiction; real life and all the myriad media forms that comprise our global entertainment landscape: books, films, television and comics.

Jonathan Maberry is an award-winning factual and fiction writer with a few comicbook credits to his name and Janice Gable Bashman is a successful thriller author, and together they examine the nature of Darkness as a theoretical and philosophical concept in their introduction ‘That Whole â€œGood and Evilâ€ Thing’ before moving on to recount ‘The Roots of Good vs. Evil’ and listing the prerequisites for survival in ‘Heroes and Villains’.

Vampires, how they’re interwoven into all the world’s cultures and, of course, how to combat them comes to the fore in ‘It Didn’t Start With Van Helsing’ whilst ‘Hunting the Fang Gang’ provides a comprehensive list of traditional and fictional Nosferatu-killers ranging from Bataks and Dhampyrs to Bram Stoker’s seminal crew and Buffy’s far-ranging friends and descendentsâ€¦

‘Fangs vs. Fangs’ delineates the monsters who fight for Good – or at least against Greater Evils – and ‘Legendary Heroes’ recounts the brave and the bold of myth, history and fiction who have battled demons, devils and beasts, as well as far more intangible horrors. Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Rocky Balboa, Jack (â€œ24â€) Bauer, Emmeline Pankhurst and Mother Theresa are among the many examples that define this pinnacle of human-ness and the chapter also lists the worst monsters ever recorded.

‘Did You Use Protection?’ covers weapons, charms, talismans and practices that assist and arm the devil-slayers, ‘A Priest and a Rabbi Walk into a Crypt’ examines the role of various religions and belief systems and ‘Who You Gonna Call?’ takes a peek at the role of ghosts in history and entertainment.

‘Pulp Friction’ relates the growth of popular entertainment forms and how they have handled heroes and monsters(human, supernatural and even super-scientific) and the comicbook superhero phenomenon gets the same treatment in ‘Spandex to the Rescue’.

The effects of these concepts on discrete sections of the public goes under the microscope in ‘Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things’; examining conventions, fan groups, games, tattoos and skin art, Role Playing (both RPGs and LARPs) and Cosplay before the really scary section tackles ‘Real Evil’ with a comprehensive listing of Serial Killers which makes all the preceding fictional Psychos and Mass Murderers look tame and insipid by comparisonâ€¦

Topped off with the Online Film Critics Society Top 100 Villains of All Time, a list of Spirit Superstitions and the Top 10 Vampire, Werewolf, Demon and Ghost Movies of all time, this superb compendium is a sublime delight for fans and thrill-seekers to dip into over and again.

Stuffed with interviews and commentary from across the spectrum of popular media including Stan Lee, John Carpenter and a host of artists, creators and designers this is a delight no fantasy fan should dare to miss.

October 8, 2010October 5, 2010

Spicy Tales Collection

By various, compiled and edited by Tom Mason (Malibu Graphics)
ISBN: 0-944735-32-0

Before the birth of the American comic-book industry the most popular mass-market home-entertainment was reading and a vast market of cheap, readily accessible pulp magazines provided escapist literature on every subject for every genre imaginable.

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.Â Not that there isn’t an undeniable and direct link between these enchantingly tawdry vignettes 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. Moreover the rather seedy little strips gathered here are an early turning point for the American branch of our industry for the plain and simple reason that they singled out and were aimed at grown-up readers of picture strips at a key moment before comic book even existed.

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.

There were pulps for every possible genre and topic including racier â€œmen’s adventuresâ€; two-fisted exotic action-thrillers heavy on mildly fetishistic sadism and bondage themes, with rugged American men coming to the rescue of white women in peril from thugs and foreigners and especially saving them (the white women, of course) from â€œfates worse than deathâ€, but only just in time and never before they had lost most of their clothes (the girls – well actually the Rugged American too, in many casesâ€¦). How much better than words then would a pictorial adventure seem?

One publisher in particular specialised in this niche market, producing a range of saucy genre thrillers all graced with a defining appellative: Spicy Detective, Spicy Western, Spicy Mystery and Spicy Adventure Stories. This was printer-turned-publisher Harry Donenfeld, who assumed control of some companies who couldn’t pay their print bills in 1934 and knowing pretty well what readers liked, created a Men’s Mag mini Empire under the twin banners of Culture and Trojan Publications. Of course, that’s also how he assumed control of the companies that became DC Comics less than a decade later, but the flak that eventually accrued to Trojan and Culture dictated a diametrically opposing editorial policy in 1940â€¦

In 1943 the pressure exerted by various censorious elements in America became too much and the Trojan/Culture company changed tack and â€œSpicyâ€ overnight evolved into â€œSpeed Detectiveâ€, â€œSpeed Westernâ€ and so forthâ€¦

This cheap and cheerful black and white compilation, neatly packaged behind a delightful Bruce Timm cover, features a couple of fascinating and informative assays from Tom Mason and John Wooley who provides background for each of the star turns revived here. The art for all of these strips was supervised if not provided by Adolphe Barreaux, through his own Majestic Studios Art â€œShopâ€ and these strips were first re-surfaced in Malibu’s Eternity Comics imprint Spicy Tales in 1989.

The major portion of this book features 24 tales of Sally the Sleuth, feisty special agent who debuted in the torrid two page yarn ‘A Narrow Escape’ wherein she lost all her clothes, but not her dignity, and with vagabond boy wonder sidekick Peanuts saved the day against vile gangsters.

Format firmly established they went on to tackle burlesque-murderers, white-slavers, fashion-poisoners, trial-tamperers, mad scientists, foreign devils and assorted criminal scum in such startling visual vignettes as ‘The Dart of Death’, ‘Crimson Menace’, ‘The Torso Murder’, ‘Maid to Order’, ‘The Spider’ and ‘Toy of Fate’. The stories are slick and minimalist, playing heavily on prevalent racial and sexual stereotypes of the era but well constructed and devilishly moreish, spanning November 1934 to October 1940.

Sally even graduated to proper comic-books for a while in the 1950s anthology Crime Smashers, drawn as ever by Barreaux.

The adroit and prolific artist also illustrated Dan Turner – Hollywood Detective, who began life as a prose gumshoe in Spicy Detective, becoming so popular that he graduated to his own title, winning himself a comic strip feature into the bargain. He even became the star of his own Tinseltown movie â€œBlackmailâ€ in 1947.

The novellas and strip were written by the stunningly prolific pulp-writer Robert Leslie Bellem and the decadent glamour of Turner’s profession and location afforded the movie-land mystery-solver a longevity denied to his generally underdressed co-stars here. I don’t recall him ever having to get his kit off eitherâ€¦

Turner also got substantially more room to solve his pictorial puzzles – usually 6-8 pages per episodeÂ – and is represented here 5 early cases: ‘The Murdered Mummy’, ‘Murder With Music’, ‘Zoot Suit Killers’, ‘Killer’s Foil’ and ‘Sinister Santa Claus’ all culled from Spicy Detective between January 1943 and October 1944.

One of the most intriguing and disturbing strips came from Spicy Western Stories, and launched relatively late – November 1936. Polly of the Plains was a decent girl called from the civilised East into the Wildest of Wests to manage a homestead in trouble. Once there she undergoes kidnap by Mexican bandit Pancho, is whipped, chained, tortured and generally abused for a year by all the bad things cowboy fiction contains, until the feature was abruptly dropped mid-cliffhanger in December 1937.

The first two strips were drawn by the ever-so-young Bill Everett (who would find immortality creating Amazing Man and Sub-Mariner) a few years later, then taken over by Joseph Sokoli who eschewed Everett’s mild but pretty innuendo for a far more raw, racy and graphic (mis)treatment of the harassed heroine. The strips reprinted here cover the first half of the run.

The final distressed damsel on show is Diana Daw whose fantastic exploits debuted in Spicy Adventure Stories in November 1934; the tale of a far less innocent, more competent African explorer who stumbled into a lost world of barbarian natives, hidden kingdoms, knock-off Tarzans and a forgotten colony of Crusaders. Diana gets stripped and tied up an awful lot but is by no means a frail female – she revels in her naked savagery and kills as many attackers – be they Ape, Arab or Aborigine – as any of her brawny he-men admirersâ€¦

The seven 2-page serial instalments reproduced here show a woman far more in keeping with post-millennium attitudes, most probably crafted by writer Robert Maxwell (who wrote for the Superman Radio and TV shows as well as scripting the 1951 movie Superman and the Mole Men) and illustrator Max Plaisted, collaborating under the pen-name Clayton Maxwell. The episodes here run from the introductory chapter until June of 1935.

Hard to find, difficult to justify but inarguably a vital stepping stone to our modern industry there is a rough, 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.
Â© 1989 Malibu Graphics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

October 7, 2010October 9, 2010

Lucky in Love Book 1: A Poor Man’s History

By George Chieffet & Stephen DeStefano (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-354-5

The medium of comics has a number of inbuilt advantages: it is quick, it is personal, the only limits are imagination and ability and – most importantly for this magical work – it is both magically modern and potently, subversively nostalgic. A book with pictures in it is one of our oldest and most effective technological creations, but it is also astoundingly instant and immediate.

In stunning black ink on gloriously evocative sepia pages (that startling shade which so terrifies comicbook collectors, presaging the imminent crumbling to dust of their beloved artifacts) comes a light-hearted, heavy-hitting barbed-edged faux autobiography that is a moving testament to the life of the average Joe.

Teacher, poet, author and playwright George Chieffet combines with the supremely talented cartoonist and animator Stephen DeStefano (when, oh when will DC release a ‘Mazing Man compilation volumeâ€¦ and while were at it where’s the Hero Hotline book too?) to delineate discrete episodes in the ordinary epic of a little American with the gift of the gab, growing up Italian in Hoboken, New Jersey – just a dreaming glance away from the neon allure of New York City.

After a sparkling dream-sequence prologue which introduces us to the modern â€œLuckyâ€ Testaduda, the book opens with the first of three chapter-plays starring our diminutive narrator recollecting the key moments of his long life. ‘Lucky Fifteen’ finds the horny kid on the cusp of manhood in 1943, dreaming of girls and flying and getting into the war; spending his days at the movies, shooting the breeze with his pals and trying to get laidâ€¦ but always the spectre of something bigger, better and far more dangerous than â€œthe neighborhoodâ€ is loomingâ€¦

‘Lucky at War’ sees the kid a lowly mechanic rather than glamorous pilot of his dreams, still hungry for sex but as always preferring to â€œtalk the good fightâ€ rather than get down and dirty. Mentoring. for which read â€œshowing offâ€ to even callower youths than he, a trip to the off-base cat-house as the war in the Pacific draws to a close goes uncomfortably awry. Moreover when a distant acquaintance is lost in a bomber Lucky worked on, his care-free life takes a melancholy turnâ€¦

Returning home in 1946 ‘Lucky Triumphant’ finds the young veteran having trouble readjusting. For the folks in Hoboken it’s a boom-time with sons returned and the promise of peace and prosperity, but the only work the de-mobbed mechanic can get is through shamefully exploiting the memory of a dead comrade he didn’t even really knowâ€¦

In lots of ways Lucky’s world hasn’t changed at all since he was that eager, horny kid, but when a genuinely honest, victorious moment is soured because of unwanted familial nepotism Lucky begins to realise that just maybe he has…

Drawn in a wild and captivating pastiche of Zoot-Suit era animated styles and frenetically Jitterbugging teen movies; marrying Milt Gross’ ‘He Done Her Wrong’ and ‘Count Screwloose’ to Milton Knight’s ‘Hugo’ and ‘Midnight the Rebel Skunk’ the bold, broadly Bigfoot cartooning style used imparts a seductive gaiety to the folksy monologue and completely disguises the subtle landmines this tale conceals in the narrative.

It looks fun and funny – and indeed it is – but the content delves far deeper than mere jolly japes of yesteryear. Lucky’s journey is full of heartbreak and injustice masked by the character’s innate bravado and self-delusion, thus the festive interpretation of fantasy and reality hits you below the conscious level like a blackjack in a velvet pillowcase.

Lucky in Love is utterly absorbing, purely cartoon entertainment, strictly for adults and immensely enjoyable. The concluding volume is scheduled for release in 2013 and it can’t come a second too soon for meâ€¦

October 6, 2010October 9, 2010

Deadworld

By Vincent Locke & Stuart Kerr (Caliber Press)
Original edition No ISBNÂ re-released edition ISBN: 978-1-60010-817-4

Zombies are taking over the world. Or so it seems with all the restless dead rambling about on television, in cinemas and even in children’s books (check out the intriguing Charley Higson kid’s novels The Enemy and The Dead), but this is only a relatively recent resurrection. Arguably the unliving onslaught really kicked back into high gear during the mid-1980s explosion of self-published titles that came – and mostly went – in the wake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic phenomenon.

Ambitious newcomer Arrow Comics launched with a number of impressive fantasy, adventure and horror titles in 1985, including Tales From the Aniverse, System 7, Nightstreets, Oz, The Realm and Deadworld, but the subsequent glut and implosion of the marketplace caught the good with the very, very bad and the newborn company foundered. Head honchos Ralph Griffith and Stuart Kerr closed down in 1989, with the latter three titles transferring to Gary Reed’s Caliber Comics, which had successfully weathered the storm.

Kerr and Griffith were not just entrepreneurs. They created Deadworld, easily the most popular – and controversial – of their stable, bringing in eager and talented Vince Locke to illustrate over Kerr’s scripts. When the series moved they sold Locke the rights.

This edition was released in 1989 and collected the first seven episodes, with a gallery that included both the â€œgraphicâ€ (for which read gory) and â€œtameâ€ covers created for each issue.

So, what’s it all about?

In all honesty if you’re not a big fan of the genre, you’ve seen it all before: a mysterious event kills and resurrects the greater part of humanity as zombies and a disparate, dwindling band of human survivors struggle to survive and escape the toxically infectious, ravenous hordesâ€¦

However if you count yourself a devotee of the walking dead you’ve seen it all before too: a plucky band of heroes battle increasingly intense odds and their own human natures whilst trying to escape from appalling, overwhelming horrorâ€¦

The story begins with the impressive ‘Eye of the Zombie’ as a school-bus full of weary youngsters – horny teenagers and a frankly terrifying ten-year old called Spud – make plans to escape the Louisiana bayou where they’ve been hiding from a horde of terrifying monsters – mindless, shambling ravenous. At least the things are slow and stupid and can be stopped by destroying their brainsâ€¦

Nobody knows how the world ended or why they have been spared so far, but as the kids ready for a dash to California dead eyes are watching. Unfortunately, these are something new: King Zombie might be Dead but he’s still Quick – also vengeful, calculating and super-smartâ€¦

After a spectacular battle the kids are off, trailed by the Thinking Dead in ‘Born to Be Wild’, having gut-wrenching, splattery narrow escapes as they head west. Hints begin as to how humanity was lost and in ‘Mississippi Queen’ the survivors trade the bus for a riverboat, thinking this will provide greater security.

The supernatural horror responsible or killing the world is revealed, as is the one mortal he cannot afford to kill. King Zombie and his shambling hordes invade the riverboat and ‘Funeral For A Friend’ sees the first winnowing of the castâ€¦

Reduced to four now the haunted survivors encounter demons as well as the ever-present zombies in ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’, meeting the sorcerer’s apprentice who caused the zombie plague to invade our dimension and discovering another enclave of survivors hours before their undead pursuers doâ€¦

‘One of These Days’ sees King Zombie and the hell-spawn decimate the refuge, slowly torturing his captured prey until a mysterious stranger comes to their rescue – an unsuspected and dangerously traumatised survivor of the riverboat massacre. An all-out final battle breaks out before ‘Bad Moon Rising’ ends events on a cliffhanging high as the resurgent US military streak in to rescue the embattled humans.

What happens next hasn’t been collected yet but with a re-issued edition of this superbly exuberant horror classic released in 2009 and an unholy appetite for the walking dead zipping up the zeitgeist charts that must surely be only a matter of timeâ€¦

Charmingly character-driven, gloriously gory, superbly enthusiastic and wickedly comedic this is a series by fans for fans, and what polish might be lacking is more than compensated for by sheer pace and raw talent. Kerr handles the ensemble cast well and Locke’s nasty, scratchy, atmospheric illustration blends Wrightson with Windsor-Smith to great effect. Moreover he wasn’t afraid to experiment and wasn’t shy about filling a page with terror, slapstick or both.

Merry mordant fun and well worth stalkingâ€¦

October 5, 2010October 3, 2010

David Boring

By Daniel Clowes (Jonathan Cape)
ISBN: 978-10-22406-323-4

One of the greatest assets of the comics medium is the ostensibly straightforward nature of its storytelling. With pictures wedded to text what you see is so clearly what you get. So whenever a master creator deliberately subverts that implicit convention the result might be occasionally obscure or confusing, but always utterly engrossing.

At the forefront of comics storytelling for nearly three decades Daniel Clowes is, for many, an acquired taste but once he’s in your brain there’s certainly no shaking the things he can do with pen and ink, motive, character and the special kind of situational magic that inhabits the world of pictures and word on paper.

Born in Chicago in 1961 he began his career as a cartoonist with humour magazine Cracked before creating uniquely skewed short comic tales for Fantagraphics. His first piece debuted in Love and Rockets # 13 (September 1985), an introductory prelude to his retro-chic detective magazine Lloyd Llewellyn which launched soon after, running in various incarnations for three years.

In 1989 he created the anthology vehicle Eightball and began producing a variety of tales – short and serial-lengths – ranging from social satire, nostalgic absurdist anthropomorphic yarns to surreal, penetrating human dramas, all viewed through the lens of iconic popular cultures and social motifs. All that material has since been collected into graphic novels and two of these, Ghost World and Art School Confidential, have been adapted into critically acclaimed feature films.

His experiences in Hollywood combined with deep-seated childhood influences of noir movies and comics books combined and resulted in ‘David Boring’ which originally ran in Eightball #19-21, before being collected by Pantheon Books in America and this British edition.

David Boring is the narrator of his own story, living a life of unsatisfactory gratification, harassed by his mother and obsessed by his absentee father, a second rate cartoonist and comic book artist who disappeared decades previously. He spends his days with his only real friend, a lesbian named Dot he has known since High School. David is listlessly indulging in his life’s work by searching for his perfect woman when an old friend suddenly shows up and triggers a series of bizarre events that should make his life a living action movie, but instead it all just steers him into increasingly unpalatable and mundane tragedies and horrorsâ€¦

Set against a backdrop of impending catastrophes, ranging from murder to the end of the world, David’s progress is trenchantly plebeian and low-key: an odyssey rendered drama-free by the protagonist’s relentless lack of – or rather resistance to – passion and unwillingness to fully engage in the events occurring around him. His world is full of sexual encounters, assaults, murders, chases and even global holocausts but he passively accepts and adapts to it all.

Clowes has stated that he crafted this stunningly engaging and challenging tale as an exercise in writing an un-filmable comic. He has, but it’s still been optioned by Hollywoodâ€¦

This is another of those too-rare productions that shouldn’t really be reviewed, just read, with themes of adolescence, maturity, the quest for self and the impending end of life delivered via a landscape of comics, film noir, mock-heroics and the irreducible knowledge that families make individuals combining to make a truly personal experience for every reader.

But be warned: the most telling narrative device used here is uncertainty. A tremendous amount of the story is left unstated: this is a saga littered with the reader’s conclusions not the characters’ actions. Events are set in motion, consequences are noted but the course of intervening actions if not experienced by David can only be surmised or extrapolated: David is a protagonist with few of the overt trope/meme drives of a standard narrative vehicle hero and his story is one that can’t happen to any one of usâ€¦

Brilliant, compelling and utterly wonderful? That’s up to youâ€¦

October 4, 2010October 3, 2010

Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories

By Moto Hagio, translated by Matt Thorn (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-377-4

It’s Great Big Gift Giving Season: Win’s Christmas Recommendation: 10/10

Girls’ comics have always taken a secondary role in publishing – at least in most countries. In Japan this was the case until a new wave of female artists and writers stormed the male bastions in the 1970s transforming a very much distaff niche into a viable, autonomous marketplace, consequently reshaping the entire manga landscape in the process. At the forefront and regarded as part of a holy trinity of astoundingly gifted and groundbreaking creators is Moto Hagio. The other two, if you’re in the mood to Go Googling (and of course, other search engines are available) are Keiko Takamiya and Yumiko Oshimaâ€¦)

This lovely hardback collection presents ten of her best short stories gleaned from a career than spans more than forty years, over which time she and her revolutionary compatriots created whole genres, advanced the status of fantasy, horror and science fiction tales, reinvented and perfected the shÅjo (â€œgirl’s storyâ€) form, and introduced a degree of literacy, symbology, authority and emotional depth to the medium that has gone on to transform comics in Japan and globally.

Editor, translator and cultural ambassador Matt Thorn has contributed an informative historical treatise on Japan’s comic world and those revolutionary comics creators (thoroughly annotated) as well as providing a far-reaching, moving and engrossing interview with the artist and academic herself.

Although her most popular works are generally science fictional (another arena where she broke new ground in such sagas as ‘They Were Eleven!’, ‘Marginal’ and ‘Otherworld Barbara’), socially probing human dramas like ‘Mesh’ and ‘A Savage God Reigns’ explored previously forbidden realms of psycho-sexual and abusive family relationships with such deft sensitivity that they served to elevate manga from the realm of cheap escapism to literature and even Great Art – a struggle we’re still waging in the Westâ€¦

This volume traces her beginnings through more traditional themes of romance, but with growing success came the confidence to probe into far darker and more personal subjects, so whereas my usual warnings are about pictorial nudity and sexual situations, here I’m compelled to say that if your kids are smart enough the contextual matter in these tales might be a tad distressing. It is all, however, rendered with stunning sensitivity, brilliantly visual metaphors and in truly beautiful graceful tones and lines.

The comics section (which is re-presented in the traditional front-to-back, â€œfloppedâ€ manner) begins with ‘Bianca’ from 1971: a wistful reminiscence and disguised disquisition on creativity wrapped in the tragic story of a childhood companion whose parents separated, whilst ‘Girl on Porch with Puppy’ (1971) is a disquieting cautionary tale about disobedient little girls who don’t try to fit in and ‘Autumn Journey’ from the same year is a complex mystery concerning a young man trying to meet his favourite author – as well as a painful exploration of families growing up apart.

‘MariÃ©, Ten Years Late’ from 1977 is a heartbreaking example of a â€œSophie’s Choiceâ€ as a lonely, frustrated artist discovers the truth behind the breakup of a perfect friendship which twisted three lives whilst the eponymous science fictional ‘A Drunken Dream’ (1980) describes a doomed reincarnating romance which has spanned centuries and light-years. This is the only full colour story in a generally monochrome volume.

Moto Hagio is one of a select band of creators credited with creating the â€œboy’s loveâ€ sub-genres of shÅnen–ai and Yaio: sensitively homoerotic romances, generally created by women for women and now more popularly described as BL (as opposed to Bara – gay manga created by men for men) and this lyrical, star-crossed fantasy is a splendid example of the form.

‘Hanshin: Half-God’ (1984) is a disturbing, introspective psychological exploration of Hagio’s favoured themes of familial pressure and intolerance, described through the lives of anther girls’ comic favourite; twin sisters. The siblings here however are conjoined: Yucy is a beautiful angelic waif whilst her monovular other Yudy is an ugly withered homunculus.

The story is told by ugly Yudy whose life is changed forever by an operation to separate them. This incredibly moving tale adds barbed edges and ground glass to the ugly ducking fairytale and cannot fail to shock and move the readerâ€¦

From the same year comes the longer romantic tale ‘Angel Mimic’ as a failed suicide eventually evolves into a slim chance of ideal love, which poesy leads into the harrowing tale of rejection that is ‘Iguana Girl’.

Although couched in fantasy terms this tale of contemporary Japanese family life follows the life of Rika, an ordinary girl whose mother thinks she is a monster, and how that view warps how the child perceives the world throughout her life.

‘The Child Who Comes Home’ (1998) again examines rejection but uses the memory of a dead son and brother to pick open the hidden scabs of home and hearth – or perhaps it’s just a sad ghost story to clear the palate before this superb commemoration ends with the elegiac and almost silent, solitary pantomime of 2007’s ‘The Willow Tree’ which shows yet another side of family loveâ€¦

Abuse of faith and trust. Love lost or withheld. Isolation, rejection, loss of purpose: all these issues are woven into a sensuously evocative tapestry of insightful inquiry and beautiful reportage. These tales are just the merest tip of a cataclysmic iceberg that invaded the stagnant waters of Girls’ comics and shattered their cosy world forever. The stories grew up as the readers did; offering challenging questions and options not pat answers and stifling pipedreams.

Until the day our own comics industries catch up at least we have these stories – and hopefully many more from the same source. Sequels please, ASAP!

October 1, 2010October 3, 2010

Lifelike

By Dara Naraghi & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-60010-122-9

We do it for fame, we do it for fortune (or at least to pay bills), we do it for fun and the very best of us make comics because we absolutely have to. Every story we hear, every event we see provokes the reaction â€œhow would I break that down into panels? How many on the page?â€ All data – from shopping lists to bad TV – is taken in, screened through an internal grid and then we worry about how we’ll draw the damn thing one dayâ€¦

All creative people are a little bit chained to their art-form, and Dara Naraghi apparently more so than most. As well as his own celebrated BigCityBlues comic he keeps busy adapting licensed properties such as Robert Patterson’s Witch & Wizard novels, Terminator: Salvation, It! The Terror From Beyond Space and Ghostbusters into comics form, writing for DC, Image and IDW and running his own publishing house Ferret Press. He also scripts (and occasionally draws) utterly wonderful tales covering every aspect of the human experience from wild fantasy to chilling slice-of-life in a splendid series of webcomic features.

Wonderfully expansive in narrative scope and illustrated by an astounding gathering of talented graphic artisans, an exemplary bunch of these brief delights has been compiled into a fabulous hardcover compilation. All the stories in this anthology come from that webcomic site and are written (and lettered) by Naraghi, complete with commentary and context on the illustrators interpreting each piece.

The wonderment begins with ‘The Long Journey’ illustrated by Irapuan Luiz, which follows the dramatic escape of a disillusioned Iranian soldier determined to leave the Iran-Iraq War behind him forever. Naraghi is Iranian (born in Tehran in 1971) and no doubt his own journey to the west would make pretty interesting reading, although probably without the telling sting in the tale embedded hereâ€¦

‘Imaginarians’ winningly crafted by award winning artist Tom Williams, takes a barbed look at how the media deals with artists on the promo circuit whilst equally lauded Marvin Mann’s atmospheric ‘Double Cross at the Double Down’ proves that even if crime doesn’t pay, stories about it definitely do.

‘Art/Life’ rendered by Neil Errar is a feel-good fable about a comics creator we all concur with, Jerry Lange’s moody, misty paint-and-Paintbox (showing my digital age there) treatment examines the exquisite pain of unconditional love lost with ‘Remembrance’ whilst Stephen Spenser Ledford opts for monochrome ink washes to recount a particularly trenchant tale of crime and ‘Punishment.’

Sex and booze and rock ‘n’ roll form the basis of the cheeky dating vignette ‘Intermission’, illustrated by Andy Bennett, whilst Jerry Lange’s watercolour expertise displays a different arena for the relationship dance in ‘Crush’ and ‘Comeback’ by Tim McClurg describes a the meteoric fall from stardom for a has-been actor.

Marvin Mann displays his artistic versatility in ‘Smoke Break’, a heartwarming look at modern life and ‘The Routine’ by Steve Black touchingly reminds us that even small victories count in our work-a-day world, whereas the stunning drawing of Adrian Barbu’s gritty thriller ‘Rooftop Philosophy’ adds acres of edge to a dark tale of criminal Darwinism. Tom Williams astounds again with ‘Skin Deep’ a charming semi-autobiographical shaggy-dog story and pictorial programme ends on a heartwarming high note with ‘Repair’ as Shom Bhuiya treats us to a view of the common man at his very bestâ€¦

The 14 tales collected in Lifelike demonstrate the sheer breadth that material comics could and should be covering rather than the narrow band of easily defined genres usually seen. This book opens up all of human experience and imagination to the cartoonist’s particular skills and insights. Now it’s up to the rest of us to respond and reactâ€¦

Read Dara’s free webcomic, Lifelike under the Stan Lee’s Sunday Comics banner @ Komikwerks.com.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: