The Wilderness Collection


By Claire Scully (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-74-5- (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Know Your Place… 9/10

The most wondrous thing about comics is their sheer versality. In terms of narrative, exposition, mood-setting and information dissemination, nothing comes close, and the range of visualisations span near-abstract construction to hyper-realism. If the end-consumer is particularly receptive, the author can even dial back on narrative or plot or characterisation and let a succession of carefully-applied images make a story unique to each reader. It’s like jazz for your head and before your very eyes…

In all the most telling ways, we’re still monkeys clinging to rocks: we can’t help but respond viscerally to our environment: cowed or elated by stony heights, drawn to and pacified by pools and gardens, inexplicably moved to fear or joy by forests. It’s in our blood and bones: nobody stands on a mountaintop or looks down into the Grand Canyon and says “meh”…

Wherever we are, the landscapes in our heads still unfold before or curl back on us. We may have left the caves and trees and sunlit shores, but we now mimic those ancient sanctuary havens in our dwellings. We climb high and burrow deep and our architecture has visceral, compulsive, instinctive power over us.

Walk by a Victorian school, across a Roman viaduct or study the oppressive, aggressive triumphalism of Nazi-built buildings or battle emplacements – we’re all still part of the wild with Nature in our veins and bones. Just don’t stand too long near towering desert mile-spires or vertical palaces based on knickknacks or vegetables or sex-toys…

When someone really talented and truly invested channels such primal responses, the fires of creativity can push right into the hindbrain to our inner primitive. The Wilderness Collection does that. A timely amalgamation of three earlier rambles through realities – Internal Wilderness, Desolation Wilderness and Outer Wilderness – the sequenced images comprise a hardback handbook of purely and sublimely visual triggers: experiences enhanced by the rough tactile textures of the card they are printed on. This is the culmination of a project examining the relationship between Landscape and Memory.

The first steps come in nocturnal shades of blue as Internal Wilderness presents “a journal of a sequence of events occurring over a period of time and location in space” before the ceaseless peregrination reaches the warm reds, oranges, browns and fading greens of the Desolation Wilderness which depicts “a sequence of events occurring over a period of time in the search for a location in space”.

Careful now, you are nearing a stopping point if not an end, as Outer Wilderness explores the wildest places on the route: “a sequence of events occurring over an unimaginable period of time in the vastness of space” – melding animal, mineral and vegetable in a manner reminiscent of Basil Wolverton in his visionary, inspirational element….

Creator Claire Scully has inscribed and sequenced compelling scenes of rocks and trees and waters and skies and other things less definable, across different seasons and times of day in such a fashion that you must look and pause and ponder.

This is a graphic missile targeting recollection and imagination; one that hits with serenely devastating impact.

If you are still human or at least a primate looking for challenge, this will make you think: you won’t be able to help yourself…
© 2019 Claire Scully. All rights reserved.

Middle Distance – A Graphic Memoir


By Mylo Choy (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-15-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

There are many ways to find yourself. Too often the main roadblock is other people… or maybe a lack of a pathfinder.

In Middle Distance, mixed race, non-binary Mylo Choy shares their road to understanding one’s self via curated extracts of a life filled with coping mechanisms such as running, drawing, reading or sharing stories: all solid sound ways of trying to address that feeling of not being who you might be or where you should be.

No overblown drama to titillate here, just a rational seeker recalling obstacles faced and hurdles cleared in a marathon push towards acceptance of a pragmatic middle way. It begins with growing up in Wisconsin, as ‘The Race’ sees the 6th grader run a first revelatory race and discover a feeling and undertaking to totally consume them and view a world of total isolation and security: the mile run…

Soon running daily with Dad before again graduating or reduced to a single person passion – to the point of slowing down and pretending to stroll if someone sees you – always the goal is no specified goal. Well, maybe making those who matter say the accomplishment is more than just “pretty good”…

‘Speedwork’ finds solo traveller joining the track team in sophomore year, learning from more experienced friends and uncaringly accepting a coach’s assessment to be a middle distance runner, yet feeling only glee and pride inside on being told 800 metres is the most painful distance to go…

Gaining technique but never losing the primal exuberance of putting one foot in front of another – and how that influences other passions like drawing – growth continues. Does the placebo puzzle of confidence, concentration and meditation contribute to landing impostor-like on the 4 x 800 relay team beside incomparable admirable Maggie?

Why read so many stories about “tomboys”? And why can’t an iron will hold back puberty?

Years pass and the now adult outsider works with kids in Brooklyn and upstate New York as an outdoor educator. Life catches up and starts inflicting years of mystery aches and severe pains, so running buddy Jeff suggests the only answer is the New York Marathon…

By re-examining Buddhist family roots ‘Rest’ traces years of sporadic and often-interrupted progress towards that great dream, before a series of small intense inner revelations point to ‘The Long Run’ and what comes next…

Subtly, almost accidentally allegorical, this testament to understanding through internal addiction and evolution by determination is beguiling, enticing and strangely cleansing: a welcome step into unknown territory for most of us and a journey well worth taking..

It’s a little bit strange to write about running which mostly consists of clearing the mind and just going. That’s especially true of this pretty and memorable book. You should just do it…

© 2023 Mylo Choy. Written and drawn by Mylo Choy. All rights reserved.
Middle Distance will be published in the UK on 14th September 2023. An American edition will be released 31st October 2023.

Sophie’s World – A Graphic Novel About the History of Philosophy: Volume 1: From Socrates to Galileo


By Jostein Gaarder, adapted by Vincent Zabus & Nicoby, colours by Philippe Ory with Bruno Tatti; translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: ?978-1-91422-411-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

It has long been a truism of the creative arts that the most effective, efficient and economical method of instruction and informational training is the comic strip. If you simply consider the medium’s value as a historical recording and narrative system, the process encompasses cave paintings, hieroglyphs, pictograms, oriental prints, Stations of the Cross, the Bayeux Tapestry and so much more: and pretty succinctly covers the history of humanity…

For well over a century and a half, advertising mavens exploited the easy impact of words wedded to evocative pictures, whilst public information materials frequently used sequential narrative to get hard messages over quickly and simply. In a surprisingly short time, the internet and social media restored and enhanced the full universal might of image narratives to transcend language. Who doesn’t “speak” emoji?

Since World War II, carefully crafted strips have been used as training materials for every aspect of adult life from school careers advice to various disciplines of military service – utilising the talents of comics giants as varied as Milton Caniff, Will Eisner (who spent decades producing reams of comic manuals for the US army and other government departments), Kurt Schaffenberger and Neil Adams. The educational value and merit of comics is a given.

The magnificent Larry Gonick in particular uses the strip medium to stuff learning and entertainment in equal amounts into weary brains of jaded students with his webcomic Raw Materials and such seasoned tomes as The Cartoon History of the Universe, The Cartoon History of the United States and The Cartoon Guide to… series (Genetics, Sex, The Environment et al). That’s not even including his crusading satirical strip Commoners for Common Ground, and educational features Science Classics, Kokopelli & Company and pioneering cartoon work with the National Science Foundation…

For decades Japan has employed manga textbooks in schools and universities and has even released government reports and business prospectuses as comic books to get around the public’s apathy towards reading large dreary volumes of public information. So do we and everybody else. I’ve even produced the occasional multi-panel teaching-tract myself. The method has also been frequently used to sublimely and elegantly tackle the greatest and most all-consuming preoccupation and creation of the mind of Man…

Like organised religion, the conceptual discipline dubbed Philosophy has had a tough time relating to modern folk and – just like innumerable vicars in pulpits everywhere – its proponents and followers have sought fresh ways to make eternal questions and subjective verities understandable and palatable to us hoi-polloi and average simpletons.

In 1991 Norwegian teacher Jostein Gaarder found one that became a global sensation. Oslo-born in 1952, he taught Philosophy and the History of Ideas in Bergen until he retired to write a modern prose masterpiece of allegory and symbolism in the guise of a fantastic mystery and quest saga.

In an assortment of languages, Sofies verden became an award-winning bestseller in Europe, before being translated into English in 1994 and – as Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy – metamorphosed into the top-selling book on Earth a year later.

Translated into 59 languages with sales far in excess of forty million copies, it enjoys regular anniversary rereleases, and has been adapted to the large and small screen in many countries, as well as PC and board games, and all the usual merchandising instances of a global sensation…

In 2022, playwright/comics scribe Vincent Zabus (Le Journal de Spirou, Les Ombres, Incroyable!) and prolific, wide-ranging Bande Dessinée illustrator Nicolas Bidet AKA “Nicoby” and “Korkydü” (Ouessantines, Le Manuel de la Jungle, Belle-Île en père, Sang de Sein, Tête de gondola, Poète à Djibouti, C’est la guerre – journal d’une famille confine) joined forces to translate the philosophical phenomenon into words and pictures: deftly embracing the magically realist underpinnings of the tale by fully exploring and exploiting the self-imposed fourth wall (and floors and ceilings) of the “ninth art”…

Big, bold and embracing wonderment head-on, Sophie’s World – A Graphic Novel About the History of Philosophy: Volume 1: From Socrates to Galileo seductively adapts the first half of Gaarder’s masterpiece as 14-year-old Sophie Amundsen and her best friend Colleen anticipate their first protest event. They are fired up about the planet’s imminent demise and ready to fight for its life, but Sophie’s scattershot passions are suddenly derailed and her curiosity enflamed after receiving an anonymous package asking the somehow compulsively significant question ‘Who Are You?’

The Who and Why of this enigmatic pen pal transaction completely obsess her after the unseen arrival of follow-up question “Where does the world come from”, and as she ponders, she is lured into the first of some frankly weird if not supernatural proceedings…

As Sophie determinedly seeks answers on a range of conceptual levels, further inquiring despatches literally take her on a journey through all of human development, guided at first remotely, but eventually in the shadow and company of a seemingly benign tutor with an agenda all his own.

…And at every moment and juncture – no matter how wild, impossible or magical – the girl learns and grows…

This initial comics session encompasses cunningly targeted and curated visits, affording up-close-&-personal experiences, via the entirety of the evolution of Western history and culture…

However, as bewildering engagements (or at least gripping, interactive syntheses thereof) unfold in ‘Myths and Natural Philosophers’, ‘Atom and Fate’, ‘Athens and Socrates’, ‘Plato’, ‘Aristotle’, ‘Hellenism’, ‘Two Cultures’, ‘St. Augustine, Averroes, St. Thomas’, ‘The Renaissance’, there’s a turning point in ‘The Baroque’ that unlocks and expands Sophie’s understanding whilst addressing a secret tragedy that unconsciously drives her.

Ultimately, the avid teen discovers other forces in play and unknown actors participating in her lessons, as glimpsed in ‘The Dream of Hilde’ and rebellious phase/phrase ‘A Woman is a Man’s Equal’, and before long the seeker is ready to chart her own course…

Completing the educational brief, this opening discourse includes ‘Author Biographies’ of ‘Nicoby’, ‘Vincent Zabus’ and ‘Jostein Gaarder’ and is absolutely To Be Continued…

Rendered in bright, cheerfully inviting colours in the welcoming manner of a children’s book, this vibrant voyage of discovery is mesmerising in its gently mischievous intensity: an outrageously joyous, entertaining rundown of humanity’s evolution and fundamental principles of thought, cunningly disguised as a superb conundrum to rival any detective yarn. Moreover, the seeds have all been laid for a monumental “Big Reveal” in the next volume…
© 2022 Albin Michel. Based on & © Jostein Gaarder’s novel Sophie’s World. English translation © 2022 SelfMadeHero. All rights reserved.

Desolation Wilderness


By Claire Scully (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-45-5 (PB)

The most magical thing about comics is the sheer versality of potential results. In terms of narrative, exposition, mood-setting and information dissemination, nothing can come close, and the range of visualisation spans near-abstract construction to hyper-realism. If the end-consumer is particularly receptive, the author can even dial back on the narrative and let a succession of carefully-applied images make a story unique to each reader. It’s like jazz for your eyes…

In a way, we’re all still monkeys clinging to rocks: we cannot help but respond viscerally to our environments: cowed or elated by stony heights, drawn to and pacified by pools and gardens, inexplicably moved to fear or joy by forests. It’s in our blood and bones: Nobody stands on a mountaintop or looks down into the Grand Canyon and says “meh”…

We may have left the caves and trees but we now mimic those ancient sanctuary havens in our dwellings. We climb high and burrow deep and our architecture has visceral, compulsive, instinctive power over us – just walk by a Victorian school, across a Roman viaduct or study the oppressive triumphalism of Nazi-built buildings or battle emplacements – we’re all still part of the wild and nature is in our bones too.

When someone really talented and truly invested channels those primal responses, the fires of creativity can push right into the hindbrain to our inner primitive. Desolation Wilderness does that.

Described as “a sequence of events occurring over a period of time in the search for a location in space” this tiny paperback handbook is a purely visual experience enhanced by the rough tactile textures of the card it’s printed on: part of an on-going project examining the relationship of Landscape and Memory.

Creator Claire Scully has inscribed and sequenced compelling scenes of rocks and trees and waters through different seasons and times of day in such a fashion that you must look and pause and ponder. It is a graphic missile targeting recollection and imagination; one that hits with serenely devastating impact.

If you are still human it will make you think: you won’t be able to help yourself…

© 2019 Claire Scully. All rights reserved.
Desolation Wilderness is scheduled for publication on June 3rd 2019 and is available for pre-order now.

Portraits of Violence – An Illustrated History of Radical Thinking


By Brad Evans, Sean Michael Wilson, Inko, Carl Thompson, Robert Brown, Chris Mackenzie, Michiru Morikawa & Yen Quach (New Internationalist)
ISBN: 978-1-78026-318-2                  eISBN: 978-1-78026-319-9

Our particular branch of the arts depends rather heavily on the loving depiction of violence in all its forms, but it’s unlikely that most of us ever give it much rational and cohesive thought. How wonderful then than somebody actually has and kindly put it all together in a series of irresistible comic essay dialectics.

At least in terms of entertainment, there seems to be an unquenchable – almost compulsive – need to see conflicts resolved through force and problems solved by the imposition of will upon dissenters. Justifications for these acts can always be found if one looks hard enough…

Violence isn’t just a perfectly choreographed punch in the jaw or a sublimely balletic spin-kick, it’s also oppression, subtracting choices, dismissing someone’s opinions, denying them education or agency and so many other things we allow our leaders or even our friends and associates to do to – and “for” – us on a daily and incremental basis. The effects, however, are cumulative, vast and lasting…

Here a number of thinkers, theoreticians, activists and educators have their works and key achievements précised and propounded via a series of short strips seeking to highlight different ways to address our species’ second most primal drive.

Adapted and scripted throughout by Dr. Brad Evans and Sean Michael Wilson, the thought-provocations begin with ‘Brad Evans: Thinking Against Violence’. Illustrated by Inko, they collaboratively restate a conversation between the political philosopher/critical theorist and a journalist as he sought to explain his thesis that the media feeds and is dependent on violence for its own survival.

Chris Mackenzie then limns a visual discourse on how observation of the trial of Adolf Eichmann led to a new theory on human nature, the power of delegated authority and impact of surrendered autonomy in ‘Hannah Arendt: The Banality of Evil’, after which ‘Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth’ (with art by Carl Thompson) describes how the psychologist re-examined the effects of colonialism on both masters and subjects.

A landmark shift in critical thinking and educational doctrine is scrutinised in the Inko-illustrated ‘Paulo Freire: The Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ before a theoretical icon is revisited and the unshakable link between liberals and State violence is revealed in ‘Michel Foucault: Society Must Be Defended’ (illustrated by Robert Brown).

A Humanist examination of the cultural biases that colour and inform the West’s view of Eastern cultures is disclosed in ‘Edward Said: Orientalism’; with Thompson’s art working to explain the knottier points of history and entrenched racism. Then Inko makes her final artistic contribution in ‘Susan Sontag: Regarding the Pain of Others’ as the theoretician deconstructs and adjudicates on the misleading truths and overwhelming potency of carefully selected, deliberately disseminated images utilised by media and governing authorities…

‘Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent’ (Thompson again) explores the misnomer of a “Free Press” and reveals how a commercial media system can only act as a propaganda tool of whoever’s in charge, whilst Michiru Morikawa portrays ‘Judith Butler: Precarious Lives’; explaining how knee-jerk responses to atrocity fail through her theories on Normative Violence, Subversion and Liveable Life, after which Yen Quach depicts the arguments of Italian philosopher ‘Giorgio Agamben: Sovereign Power/Bare Life’ which posit that the job of democratic politics is to prevent the development of conditions which lead to hatred, terror and destruction, not merely to respond to and control them after they’ve occurred…

I’m not smart enough to do much more than parrot the phrases of these brilliant concerned individuals but I strongly urge you to read this collection – especially Henry A Giroux’s Foreword ‘How do we educate about Violence?’ which offers terms of reference, context and chilling insight into the state of play between Us and Them…

Supplemented by ‘Biographical Notes for the Writers and the Artists’ this is a compelling and challenging collection that needs to seen by everybody in power or comfortably submitting to it…
© Brad Evans and Sean Michael Wilson.