Category: Mature Reading

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Sebastian O

Sebastian O 

By Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell

(Vertigo)  ISBN 1-84023-996-4

The mini-series was one of the earliest Vertigo outings and sadly doesn’t stand so well against later work by the writer or publisher. Blending Michael Moorcock’s alternative spy Jerry Cornelius with steampunk standbys, the myth of Oscar Wilde and the author’s fascination with higher dimensions, this is the tale of effete aesthete and super assassin Sebastian O’Leary, who escapes from Bedlam to wreak vengeance on the man who betrayed him — and inadvertently save the Empire from a cyber-space invasion.

It is well scripted, if a little forced, but the pretentious need to show off one’s cleverness obscures the narrative flow, don’tcha know, and were it not for the spectacularly underplayed drawings of Steve Yeowell, one might be forced to conclude that it’s all a bit of a bore.

©1993 Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell. All Rights Reserved.
Cover and compilation © 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Fall of the Homunculus

The Fall of the Homunculus 

By Pentti Otsamo

(Drawn & Quarterly)  ISBN 1-896597-15-7

Joel and Anna are a young couple just getting by. They both have great artistic aspirations, but when Anna falls pregnant their previously harmonious partnership begins to unravel. Does Joel’s confusion and reluctance mean that they are not as compatible as he’d believed? Does Anna’s willingness to put her career on hold show her lack of dedication to her art?

This pensive Graphic Novella is a brief but telling examination of the creative urge and process that makes some interesting points about competing human drives, and the nature of creativity. Such a gentle tragedy makes no great leaps forward or claims to innovation, but the tale is honest and engaging, and the inviting and expressive black and white artwork is subversively addictive.

©1998 Pentti Otsamo. All Rights Reserved.

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Lucifer: The Wolf Beneath the Tree

Lucifer: The Wolf Beneath the Tree 

By Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, P. Craig Russell & Ted Naifeh

(DC/Vertigo)  ISBN 1-84576-164-2

This would be a terrible book for a first time reader. The eighth collection of Mike Carey’s compelling new adventures of the devil collects the stories from issues #50, 45 and 51 – 54 of the monthly mature fantasy comic, and frankly, they’re all absolute crackers.

The first of these, Lilith, is a 40 page, self-contained delight illustrated by the magnificent P. Craig Russell, revealing not only the origins of Lucifer’s charismatic supernatural assistant Mazikeen, but also the building of the Silver City of the Host (where the Angels live) and the events leading to the Angel Samael’s defection from Heaven.

Another single issue tale, Neutral Ground, follows, with art by Ted Naifeh, relating the grim and cosmically unjust end of John Sewell, a poor working stiff who has the tragic misfortune to be selected as the venue for a board meeting of disaffected demons plotting to overthrow the current rulers of Hell. Either of these would be a wonderful introduction to a great series, so it’s a real pity that the main body of the collection recounts a pivotal tale in the seventy-five episodes (plus mini-series and one-shots) that tell the adventures of Lucifer since he abdicated his position as Lord of Hell in the Sandman volume Season of Mists.

Now, after many trials and tribulations, God has abandoned the universe and his disappearance has triggered the entropic end of Creation. Lucifer, who has made his own, separate, Universe, has reached a tense accommodation with his former peers and manoeuvres to survive and/or assume control. All the characters and sub-plots have to jockey for position in an outrageous coming together of disparate story-strands stretching back to the original mini-series and even the Sandman comics this title originally spun off from, when the Norse Deity Fenris attempts to bring Creation to a premature close on his own terms.

This is gripping reading, stylishly depicted by Peter Gross and Ryan Kelly, but you absolutely have to see what comes before if you want a cat in Hell’s chance of understanding what’s going on. So, why oh why waste two little gems, tailor made as “jump-on” stories, by cramming them into the equivalent of the middle reel of Citizen Kane or the last ten minutes of Fight Club?

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Trailers

Trailers 

By Mark Kneece & Julie Collins-Rousseau

(NBM/Comics Lit)  ISBN 1-561636-445-X

Josh Clayton is a good kid, pretty much. Sure, he lives in a trailer park, and, yes, his mother’s a bit of a tramp, but Josh has never been in any kind of real trouble…

Back from school, Josh is stuck tending to his baby brother again when Ma gets into another screaming match with her drug-dealer boyfriend. This time it doesn’t play out as usual though, and she kills him. When she comes out of the bedroom and tells Josh that he’s got to get rid of the body before his other brother and sister return, his life changes forever.

It’s hard enough being a sensitive teenager in America these days, especially if you’re dirt-poor. High-school is hell and life generally sucks. If you add to that the fact that the body just won’t stay buried, it all adds up to a miserable time for Josh. So when pretty Michele makes a play for him the pressure and confusion reaches fever pitch. And still his inevitable slide into a life just like his mother’s seems to suck him further and further down. Can Josh keep his family together, get the girl, survive school and ever sleep without screaming? Can he break out of this grim, dark spiral, or is he fore-doomed and fore-damned?

The answer makes for a superb slice of modern fiction that should tickle the palate of all those ‘mature’ comic fans in need of more than just a flash of nipple and sprinkle of salty language in their reading matter. Neece and Collins-Rousseau (employed at the faculty of Sequential Art, Savannah College of Art & Design), have created a real story of realistic young people in extraordinary need. This is the kind of book fans need to show civilians who don’t “get” comics. Sit them down, put “Born to Run” on the headphones and let them see what it can be all about.

© 2005 Mark Kneece & Julie Collins-Rousseau. All Rights Reserved

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Los Tejanos

Los Tejanos

By Jack Jackson

(Fantagraphics Books)  No ISBN

Known as ‘Jaxon’ in his underground comix days, Jack Jackson’s infectious fascination with the history of Texas was seeping through into all his work even from those early days. Portions of Los Tejanos appeared as the comic books Recuerden el Alamo and Tejano Exile (published by Last Gasp) in the mid 1970s, which the author fleshed out for this early prototype of the Graphic Novel.

Drawn in a captivating, etching-like, cross-hatched style that simply screams ‘true story,’ Los Tejanos provides an absolute wealth of information, social texture and sheer entertainment. It tells the story of Juan Nepomuceno Seguin, a “Texian” of Mexican birth who sided with the rebels fighting for independence. Before becoming part of the United States of America, Texas was briefly a nation unto itself, having won its freedom from a Mexican empire that was bloated, corrupt and in decline. How Seguin turned his back on one culture, only to be eventually betrayed by the other during that period when Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon cultures battled for hegemony in continental America seems to echo even now with relevance. That battle still isn’t over.

The eventual fate of Juan N Seguin makes for powerful reading, rich in fact, well-paced as narrative, and even delivering the occasional solid horse-laugh. But the true measure of a history book, and this most wonderful tome is certainly that, is how the material impacts on the contemporary. Here it also succeeds. The issues were germane in 1840, they were just as much so in 1982, and they still are now.

Why this epic isn’t required reading for every US history or sociology course I’ll never understand.

©1982 Jack Jackson. All Rights Reserved.

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Kid Eternity

Kid Eternity

By Grant Morrison & Duncan Fegredo

(DC Comics)  ISBN 1-84576-239-8

British writer Grant Morrison’s jump to the US big time was facilitated by way of this retro-fitting of the venerable Golden-Age character first published by Quality Comics in 1942 (Hit Comics #25). In his original outing the Kid was a young boy machine-gunned by Nazis and taken to the heavenly realm of Eternity by a hapless soul collector years before his actual due date. Unable to simply return, he was given the ability to temporarily walk the Earth, along with permission to summon any person, myth or legend that has ever existed. Thus armed, and aided by the bumbling and beneficent spirit Mr. Keeper, the Kid fought crime and injustice until all the really good Golden-Age comic-books were cancelled.

Working on the tried and trusty “everything you know is wrong” principle of modern comic scripting, this revival reveals that was all a lie and sinister forces have been secretly at work all this time. Escaping from Hell, where he has been imprisoned for decades, Kid Eternity teams up with third-rate stand-up comedian Jerry Sullivan. As magical chaos and bloodletting begin to devastate the world they return to the Inferno to rescue Mr Keeper, only to discover the truth behind the Kid’s death and subsequent career, and their part in a cosmic plot to alter the nature of reality.

Full of flash and dazzle, Morrison’s own signature pantheon of multi-dimensional higher beings and visceral-magic entities and metaphysical un-realpolitik, bombast their way through this rather weak tale of revenge and deception, although the complex, full colour art of Duncan Fegredo is compelling throughout and occasionally spell-binding. This miniseries spawned a short lived revival of the character: one of the Vertigo imprint’s first forays into periodical publishing after hiving off from the regular DC Universe.

© 1991, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Comanche Moon

Comanche Moon

By Jack Jackson

(Rip Off Press Inc./Last Gasp)  ISBN 0-89620-079-5

One of the earliest Graphic Novels, Comanche Moon was originally published as the comic books White Comanche, Red Raider and Blood on the Moon during the 1970s by Last Gasp, a regular packager of work by underground cartoonists such as Jackson. This reworked and augmented edition appeared in 1979. So far as I know it’s not currently in print, although it really should be.

The book follows the astounding life of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah and the course of their lives among Texas Comanches and her own – white – people. Whilst the Parkers are eking out a living on the Southern Plains of Texas in 1836, their homestead is attacked by a Comanche raiding party and little Cynthia Ann and her younger brother are carried off. Separated from him she is raised as a squaw, eventually marrying a sub-chief and birthing a son. The folksy, matter of fact story-telling reinforces the powerful truth of this documentary of the final downfall of the Plains Indians under the relentless expansionist pressure of the new Americans.

Quanah grew to be the last chief of the Comanches and as the old ways died he was responsible for all the meagre concessions his people managed to gain from the unstoppable white men. He was a Judge, a Sheriff, a huckster for Teddy Roosevelt and died a loved and respected political figure among both the Comanches and the settlers.

My dry précis does nothing to capture the hypnotic skill of Jackson in making this history come alive. Comanche Moon reads as easily as the best type of fiction but never strays from the heartbreaking truth that underpins it. Jack Jackson’s work is powerful, charming, thoroughly authentic, astoundingly well-researched and totally captivating. If only all history books could be his good.

©1979 Jack Jackson. All Rights Reserved.

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HWY.115

HWY.115

By Matthias Lehmann

(Fantagraphics Books)  ISBN 1-56097-733-7

This stirring and deeply disturbing, psycho-thriller employs the form of a road/buddy movie as hardboiled private detective René Pluriel hits the highways of France in pursuit of the deadly “Heimlich Killer”. He hasn’t gone far when he picks up the flamboyant hitch-hiker Agatha, who reveals that she too is a detective on the trail of the notorious serial murderer.

As they wend their way through the back roads and, at times, history of France, interviewing the killer’s associates and survivors, they build a tense picture not just of the quarry but also of each other, and realise that the conclusion of the quest won’t be happy for everybody.

Lehmann’s dark voyage is gripping and often surreal, and the tension is augmented by the spectacular, moody art, stylishly etched in a powerful scraperboard style. The narrative is blistered with flashbacks, literary diversions and hallucinogenic asides that amplify the dissociative feel of this ostensibly simple tale. This is the author’s first original graphic novel and it is a bravura performance that will be very hard to top; I eagerly await the attempt.

Characters, stories & art © 2006 Actes Sud. All Rights Reserved.
This edition © 2006 Fantagraphics Books.

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Scott Pilgrim Vol 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness

Scott Pilgrim Vol 3 

By Bryan Lee O’Malley

Oni Press

O’Malley’s Manga-styled tales of an adorable boy-idol slacker, shambling his way through a contemporary, if somewhat skewed, life is a gentle stroll through a world that manages to feel warmly nostalgic no matter what age you are or where you grew up. Scott Pilgrim is young, lazy and gorgeous, shares a flat with his cool, gay best mate, plays in a band and has girlfriend hassles. He lives his life from moment to moment and manages to keep a moist grip on both angst and hormones.

The third outing for the world’s most precious slacker sees his life-challenges spiral to unbelievable heights and depths. Ramona, his new girlfriend, has revealed that before they can find eternal happiness – or at least date – Scott must defeat her seven previous boyfriends – who are all Evil and Mighty! The complications keep on abounding as Evil Boyfriend #3 is Todd, who is currently seeing Scott’s ex! To make things worse, she’s in a more famous band than Scott and is determined to make him suffer.

This extraordinary blend of pop and sub-culture, replete with ninjas, bionic chicks, teen rebellion and sheer surreal cartoonery is absolutely irresistible reading for anyone who’s got a brain and a secret desire to try being young just one more time. Funny, compelling and probably addictive, and so entertaining you could probably dance to it. This is another great comic book. Go buy it now, and don’t miss the first two either.

â„¢ & © 2006 Bryan Lee O’Malley. All Rights Reserved.

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Grimjack: Killer Instinct

Grimjack: Killer Instinct

By John Ostrander & Timothy Truman

(IDW Publishing)

Grimjack originally appeared during the American comic industry’s last great flourishing in the 1980’s. Created by Ostrander and Truman as a back-up feature, he swiftly won his own title at First Comics and almost survived the company’s demise more than a decade later. In a crowded marketplace, and almost irrespective of who was doing the drawing, this hard-boiled fantasy action strip was a watchword for quality entertainment.

John Gaunt, Grimjack, is part private eye, part ronin and all-round problem solver just scratching out a living in the fantastic pan-dimensional city of Cynosure, a huge metropolis that touches every place in the multiverse at once. A combination of dry wit, dark edged fantasy, spectacular action and a willingness to take narrative risks won him a lot of loyal fans.

In Killer Instinct, Ostrander and Truman take us back to a time immediately preceding Grimjack’s first appearance to flesh out the character for the old lags whilst introducing newcomers to a fresh, vibrant anti-hero struggling against a number of corrupt power-mongers, including insane paramilitaries and expansionist vampire cliques, whilst trying to find his own way. There is action aplenty and tremendous style for fans of genre-crossing. Let’s hope this leads someone to publish all those past classics in spiffy book compilations. I know I want them.