Category: Pocket-paperback collections & prose novels

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An Android Awakes


By Mike French & Karl Brown (Elsewhen Press)
ISBN: 978-1-908168-63-4

It’s been a while since we looked at anything experimental so here’s an intriguing blend of illustrated book and graphic narrative which has a lot to recommend it.

In the world that’s coming, human beings are in decline and androids on the ascendant. Sadly our synthetic successors are prey to all the emotional foibles and insecurities we were. They’re very much like us except they can eat rivets and get really hammered on oil…

They especially have an overwhelming desire to experience fiction, even if the powers-that-be are as sleazy, quixotic, unpredictable, small-minded, corporate and blinkered as any meat-and-bone based publisher ever was…

Android Writer PD121928 is part of the Android Publishing Program. The state provides for his needs (drugs, whores, deep-frozen pets and the removal of his wife so that he can achieve the proper frame of artistic angst and squalor) and in return he conceives increasingly outré and wild adventure tales. It’s the same deal for every creative automaton in the system: Filmmakers, photographers, artists, whatever…

He hasn’t sold one yet which is becoming a bit of a problem since Android Writers are only allowed 42 submissions. If they can’t land a publishing contract before getting 42 rejection slips, they’re scrapped and another musing mechanoid gets his shot in the Program…

With the ignominious return of The Eating of Citizen Kane, PD121928 is down to his last 14 lives (a situation not unlike that of the succession of cats periodically thawed out to keep him company. It’s a shame they keep dying or going missing…) and the tension sends him into a paroxysm of creativity with us carried along on the surprisingly brief and exotic adventures of the pantheon of character-creations that have become so very real to the stressed creator…

Through the carefully crafted and impossibly interconnected stories of Finn, The Locust Wife, Abel Ford, Angel UK, Cai Lun, Richard Steinberger, The Great Explorer Umberto Amunsden, Commander Oleg, Aedus Cricklewood, JiéyÇ” The Detective and Mark, via recurrent motifs of mockingbirds and angel fish, the Android Writer pours out and repeatedly risks his life – even entering into unwise liaisons with a human prostitute on the Endangered List – as he struggles to survive and simultaneously wonders why he bothers…

Mike French’s beguiling, fantasy-vignette studded account of a creator-in-crisis is augmented by and combined with a wealth of raw and jarring monochrome illustrations from Karl Brown, but unlike most illustrated tomes these pictures are fully integrated into the text and often supplant the narrative entirely, detailing key moments of specific submissions such as ‘The Amazing Arctic Sinking Man‘, ‘OAP Extraction’, ‘The Antiquity of Zero’, ‘The Great Sea in the Sky’, or ‘The Sacrament of Abel Ford’ with extended sections of mute sequential art just like the heydays of European sci fi comics or classic 2000AD.

And then it’s time for Submission 42 and the desperately spiralling writer has a really different idea…

Overtones of Barrington J. Bayley, Christopher Priest and especially Michael Moorcock (when he was writing Breakfast in the Ruins) give this portmanteau of tales within tales a splendidly refined and timeless feel as a litany of cool ideas and stand-out characters weep out in the truncated (1000 words per…) yet expansively polished format of tomorrow’s word-counted entertainments…

Smart, challenging and well worth any jaded fantasist’s rapt attention.
Text © Mike French 2015. Artwork © Karl Brown 2015. All rights reserved.
An Android Awakes is also available as an eBook (ISBN: 978-1-908168-73-3)

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Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier & the Vampire


By Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-803-1

As well as being involved with some of the very best superhero yarns of the late 20th century, Legendary fantasist and comics-creator Mike Mignola has carved himself a splendid and memorable niche in the industry’s history by revitalising the sub-genre of horror-heroes via such macabre mayhem-mavens as Hellboy, B.P.R.D. and Lobster Johnson, creating his own very special dark place where thrill-starved fans can wallow in all things dire and dreadful…

Clearly he has far more ideas than he can successfully manage in one lifetime. As well all those sequential art endeavours he has expressed a deep and abiding love for the classical supernatural-thriller medium through illustrated prose novels such as Joe Golem and the Drowning City (co-crafted with long-time writing associate Christopher Golden) and this potent tribute to the writings of pioneers of the dread and uncanny H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith, with perhaps just a touch of Jack London…

Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier & the Vampire was first released as a luxurious Random House hardback 2007 and the captivatingly dark, doom-drenched blend of martial steampunk and classic vampire horror-yarn subsequently led to Mignola & Golden sporadically concocting further exploits of the titular hero in comics form from 2010 onwards, beginning with 5-issue miniseries Baltimore: The Plague Ships, illustrated by Ben Stenbeck.

This sturdy oversized paperback edition from Dark Horse re-presents that initial textual sortie into the outer reaches of imagination whilst also offering a brace of chilling comicstrip shockers by Mignola, Golden and Stenbeck culled from the 2013 one-shot Baltimore: The Widow and the Tank.

With constant and effective allusion to Hans Christian Andersen’s heartbreaking fairytale The Steadfast Tin Soldier, the eerie epic relates the transformative tale of dutiful if unimaginative Scion of Albion Lord Henry Baltimore who answered England’s call to arms in 1914 only to be severely wounded during the battles in Ardennes.

When he fell history took a horrific turn which began when the terrified officer awoke amongst a crater full of dead men being fed on by ghastly bat-like vampires who had for centuries abandoned their predator roles for the safer niche of clandestine carrion-feeders. When the appalled aristocrat lashed out, taking an eye from the leech prematurely consuming his life’s blood, it roused the creature and its disgusting brethren to a fury of vengeance-taking which cost Baltimore his entire family, unleashed a plague which decimated all humanity and roused a demonic force intent on reclaiming the Earth after contentedly quiescent millennia…

The one thing the obsessed Nosferatu’s sustained campaign of cruelty did not do was break Baltimore. Instead it honed the once-effete and ineffectual product of civilisation into an unstoppable hammer to smash the reawakened vampiric forces wherever they could be found – although not before the world was reduced to a pitiful, disjointed and primitive killing field on the edge of utter obliteration…

For most of the novel Baltimore is an enigmatic, unknown force far from the spotlight, given shape and form by three strangers who meet in a befouled hostelry in broken city at the behest of a man they have all benefited from knowing…

As the day passes, former Army Surgeon Dr. Lemuel Rose, merchant seaman Demetrius Aischros and Baltimore’s childhood companion Thomas Childress Jr. compare notes on the currently missing monster-hunter and share their own horrendous intimate brushes with various agencies of diabolism that have left all three maimed, wary but resolutely prepared for the worst the magical realms can throw at them. Or so they think…

Constructed like a portmanteau novel as a series of linked short stories and told in the manner of Victorian after-dinner raconteurs, the drama and tension build slowly but inexorably towards the inevitable appearance of the transformed and unwavering vampire-killer and a confrontation years in the making and steeped in the blood of millions…

Ponderous, inexorable, moodily despondent and completely captivating, this aggregation of singular horrors experienced alone and perpetual perils shared is complemented by two short comics vignettes illustrated with cool understatement by Ben Stenbeck.

‘The Widow’ harks back to the days after the plague brought The Great War to a unofficial halt when Baltimore returned to England in search of a new breed of gore-drinker hiding amidst the mortal populace, whilst the second episode sees the implacable hunter ally temporarily with a bloodsucker to escape even worse paranormal predators lurking around ‘The Tank’.

Moreover the scintillating saga contained within this supremely satisfyingly tome is graced with 146 grittily monochrome full, half, third and quarter-page illustrations by Mignola to complete a joyous homage to the necromantic good old days.

Miss it at your peril, fright fans…
© 2007, 2015 Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. All rights reserved.

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Where the Bird Sings Best


By Alejandro Jodorowsky, translated Alfred MacAdam (Restless Books)
ISBN: 978-1-63206-028-0

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky is a filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, comics writer, world traveller, philosopher and spiritual guru who was born in Tocopilla, Chile in 1929.

How his immediate ancestors got there from pogrom-afflicted Russia at the beginning of the 20th century is only the faintest shadow of the body of this astounding, marvellously mythologized and mesmerisingly “Magic Realism” filtered family history…

The amazing modern polymath is most widely known for such films as Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Sante Sangre, The Rainbow Thief, The Dance of Reality and others, as well as his vast comics output, including Anibal 5 (created whilst living in Mexico), Le Lama blanc, Aliot, The Meta-Barons, Borgia, Madwoman of the Sacred Heart and so many more, co-created with some of South America and Europe’s greatest artists.

His decade-long collaboration with Moebius on the Tarot-inspired adventure The Incal (1981-1989) completely redefined and reinvented what comics could aspire to and achieve.

Best regarded for his violently surreal avant-garde films, loaded with highly-charged, inspired imagery – blending mysticism and what he terms “religious provocation” – and his spiritually-informed fantasy and science fiction comics tales, Jodorowsky is also fascinated by humanity’s inner realms and has devised his own doctrine of therapeutic healing: Psychomagic, Psychogenealogy and Initiatic massage. He still remains fully engaged and active in all these creative areas to this day.

He is also a raconteur of spellbinding imagination and truly devilish wit, all fully exercised and demonstrated in this stunning, outrageous re-imagining of the history of his antecedents, which was first published in 1992 as Donde mejor canta un Pájaro.

An astounding prose poem – intoxicatingly translated from the Spanish for this first English-language hardback edition by Professor of Latin American Literature Alfred MacAdam – this is an addictively enjoyable rollercoaster of arcane and obscene episodes seamlessly sewn together as Jodorowsky bounces across time and space, weaving stories of apostate Jewish grandmothers sharing their hatred for God, unworldly yet adaptable husbands, incestuous relations and relatives, all with a knack for finding disasters, wars, inquisitions, exploiters, monstrous suppressions, wanton violence and casual brutality…

The mythologized epic of immigration and Diaspora is filled with unforgettable and improbable sexual situations, fortunes Рusually in gold or diamonds Рfound and lost in the blink of an eye, animal encounters of the most outr̩ kinds, earthquake-surfing and the kind of bizarre wisdom and ad hoc solutions only folk in perpetual crisis resort and adhere to.

The saga is engagingly peopled with utterly unique characters such as an assortment of plebeian and domestic visionary-seers, sheep-abusing Tsar/hermits, dwarves, prophets, prostitutes, sorcerers and demagogues, transsexual ballerinas, unlikely libertines, holistic bee-keeping pioneers, Kabbalists and victims of every stripe, shysters and gentle conmen, fully-immersive lion-tamers and knife-throwers and the ghost of a Rabbi whose path for successive generations of the family involves regular last-minute salvations but not necessarily happiness, safety or security…

With the history slyly couched in terms of entertainment performances and themes of ballet and the circus, the mystic and miraculous generational saga explosively unfolds, reveals and even chronologically doubles back upon itself to share the experiences of a most accursed and blessed clan during the most difficult and dangerous period in human history, and even finds a moment to reveal the true origins and history of the Tarot…

An absolute crescendo of beguiling ideas, breathtakingly shocking, surreal scenarios, unholy grotesques, outspoken opinions and wickedly blasphemous visions, this is a wonder to read and utterly pointless to attempt reviewing.

It’s brilliant, read it now or regret it forever.

Not for the innocent, unimaginative or faint-hearted – although those souls are the ones who would benefit most from seeing it – Where the Bird Sings Best is that rarest of literary curios: a book not to be merely read but fully experienced.
© 2014 Alejandro Jodorowsky. Translation © 2014 Alfred Macadam.

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Nightmare Carnival


By various, edited by Ellen Datlow (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-6165-5427-9

Here’s a somewhat rushed review because the reading copy arrived late but I’m still determined to get it out in time for Halloween.

Apologies to all involved for my uncharacteristic brevity…

Dark Horse are best known for their comics and graphic novel efforts but they occasionally slip into old-school legitimate book publishing as with the astounding 2009 release Lovecraft Unbound.

The creative force behind that cosmically unsettling chronicle was Ellen Datlow, the prestigious, multi award-winning editor whose past endeavours include being fiction-editor at Omni, compiling The Best Horror of the Year series, books such as Lovecraft’s Monsters, Darkness: Two Decades of Horror and many more. She spends her quiet moments sourcing short fiction for Tor.Com.

Here she has assembled a chilling coterie of prose parables set in the fertile literary field of unearthly travelling shows as previously exploited by such luminaries as Ray Bradbury in Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dean Koontz in Twilight Eyes or Katherine Dunn in Geek Love.

This last luminary contributes an atmospheric Introduction to this selection of shockers set in and around circus life, atmospherically restating why the Wandering Show biz is such a bastion of terror tales, whilst Datlow’s Preface offers a more personal view of the Three Ring Experience.

The cavalcade commences with ‘Scapegoats’ by N. Lee Wood, which makes us look at elephants in a whole new way, after which Priya Sharma’s ‘The Firebrand’ balances passion, murder and revenge on the tip of a burning tongue and ‘Work, Hook, Shoot, Rip’ from Nick Mamatas describes an aging wrestler’s ultimate battle against a weird new freak…

A.C. Wise recounts an ex-cop’s problems with a missing family case in ‘And the Carnival Leaves Town’, before Terry Dowling describes in ‘Corpse Rose’ how, when Jeremy Scott Renton was , a bizarre circus ran away to join him and (sadly recently deceased) Joel Lane offers a disturbing insight to the nasty, shabby-chic British experience via a paean to lost love in ‘Last of the Fair’…

A brush with eccentric academics and hidebound college customs draws an unwary new tutor into ‘A Small Part in the Pantomime’ (Glen Hirshberg) and the near-loss of everything she was, whilst ‘Hibbler’s Minions’ (Jeffrey Ford) harks back to the Dustbowl depression of 1933 and a twitchy time with a circus of astoundingly well-trained fleas, after which Dennis Danvers’ ‘Swan Song and Then Some’ explores the amazing resilience and bitter wishes of a songstress who just won’t stay dead.

‘The Lion Cage’ by Genevieve Valentine focuses on the welcome fate of a animal trainer more bestial than his benighted living props, whereas the fun-loving kids in Stephen Graham Jones’ ‘The Darkest Part’ only want to fulfil their hearts desires – to kill as many clowns as humanly possible – whilst Robert Shearman (yeah, the Dalek writer from Doctor Who) takes a lonely insignificant balloon-animal maker on an incredible trip to ‘The Popping Fields’…

According to Nathan Ballingrud, monsters and ghouls have their own festive places of fun and in ‘Skullpocket’ he invites our participation in a most inventive game and spectacle, after which Livia Llewellyn dictates the terms of unnatural desires and weird shopping in ‘The Mysteries’ before Laird Barron carries us to the big finale in ‘Screaming Elk, MT’ with his compulsive trouble-magnet Jessica Mace falling with eyes wide open into some gruesome difficulties at the more-than-it-seems Gallows Brothers Carnival. Naturally, as soon as she settles in the bodies start piling up…

Harsh, seductive, shocking, spooky, funny and winningly suspenseful, Nightmare Carnival is a bombastic program of perilous passages and macabre moments to amaze and amuse the most jaded fear fiend.
All contents © 2014 their individual originators and owners. All rights reserved.

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Sock Monkey: Into the Deep Woods


By Tony Millionaire & Matt Danner (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-746-8

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: a new classic to add to the “Every Kid Must Read” list… 10/10

Tony Millionaire’s Sock Monkey first appeared as a Dark Horse comicbook in 1998. Since then the cast of characters within have achieved a bizarre notoriety as adored favourites of gentle lovers of whimsy and the degenerate darlings of clued-in cynical post-moderns.

Confused? Then by all means read on…

The original tales (recently repackaged in a sumptuous 336 page hardback) featured a lovable handmade simian puppet, a toy crow with button eyes and a much repaired doll in multiple award-winning, all-ages adventures published as occasional miniseries between 1998 and 2007 as well a couple of hardcover storybooks Millionaire created in 2002 and 2004. He later recycled and repurposed the durably distinct stars for an adult-oriented (by which I mean surreal and clever, not tawdry and titillating) newspaper strip…

Tony Millionaire comes from a dynasty of exemplary artists, loves to draw and does it very, very well; referencing classical art, the acme of children’s book illustration and an eclectic mix of pioneering comic strip draughtsmen like George McManus, Rudolph Dirks, Cliff Sterrett, Frank Willard, Harold Gray, Elzie Segar and George Herriman.

His own creative endeavours – words and pictures – seamlessly blend their styles and sensibilities with European engravings masters from the “legitimate” side of the pictorial storytelling racket.

Born Scott Richardson, he especially cites Johnny (Raggedy Ann and Andy) Gruelle and English illustrator Ernest H. Shepard (The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh) as definitive formative influences. That is particularly obvious from the range of stunning pictures in this latest work starring his inimitable plushy paragons in a winning and memorable collaboration with animator, screen writer and director Matt Danner (whose past credits include Ren & Stimpy, Loony Toons, Monster High and The Drinky Crow Show).

With a variety of graphical strings to his bow such as various animation shows, his own clutch of books for children – particularly the superbly stirring Billy Hazelnuts series – and the brilliant if disturbing weekly strip Maakies (which details the aforementioned, riotously vulgar, absurdly surreal adventures of an nautically-inclined Irish monkey called Uncle Gabby and fellow über-alcoholic and nautical adventurer Drinky Crow: grown-up world iterations and mirror universe equivalents of the sweet and simple stars herein), every Millionaire project seems to be a guarantee of endless excitement and quality.

This one certainly is and may well push the featured creatures into the rarefied atmosphere previously inhabited solely by such esteemed and established children’s favourites as the Moomins, Wonderland, The Velveteen Rabbit and the assorted chronicles of Oz…

A prose tale scripted primarily by Danner with ideas, contributions and 46 stunning monochrome illustrations (in a variety of media from soft pencil tones to crisp stark pen & ink) from Millionaire, the sublime saga details how one day in a Victorian House by the sea, an old Sock Monkey named Gabby and his constant companions Crow and dilapidated, oft-repaired doll Inches discover that their beloved guardian Ann-Louise is missing and presumed taken by the recently discovered monstrous beast dubbed the Amarok…

Determined to save her, the ill-prepared trio plunge into the terrifying Deep Woods, armed only with maps and a compass from the library of Ann-Louise’s grandfather Professor Rimperton. Braving all manner of terrors – and with the occasional assistance of strange creatures such as the wood-elf Trumbernick, a partly digested sea captain and an undersized bear carpenter – the toybox heroes defeat, or more usually narrowly escape, such threats as Venomous, Triple-Spiked, Hog-Faced Caterpillars, stormy seas, a Sea Serpent, horrid Harpies and the unpleasantly ursine Eastern Mountain Guards of Bear Town, until they find her.

However even after the dauntless searchers have finished dodging pursuers, roaming the wilds and soaring the skies to be reunited with Ann-Louise, there is still one final trial as the remorseless Amarok tracks them to the beloved little girl they would lay down their lives for…

Like the very best children’s classics, this is a book that isn’t afraid to confront dark matters and actively embraces fear and sadness amidst the wonders in an effort to craft a better story.

Compelling, beguiling and visually intoxicating, this latest Sock Monkey yarn judiciously leavens discovery with anxiety, heartbreak with gleeful imaginative innocence and terror with bold triumph.

Millionaire has described his works as intended for “adults who love children’s stories” but this collaboration with Matt Danner may just have turned that around by concocting a tall tale of adult intent which is one of the greatest kids’ books of modern times.
Sock Monkey: Into the Deep Woods © 2014 Tony Millionaire & Matt Danner. This edition © 2014 Fantagraphics Books.

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The Penny Dreadful Collection: Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula


Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: What Every Home Should Have… 10/10

Generally I’m wittering on about a specific story or book but today I’m recommending a combined artefact which should reinvigorate some of the greatest, most mythic modern fantasy tales for a new generation – and which communally comprise an ideal gift for Halloween or Christmas for anyone of a literary bent or who just loves books and stories.

We’re in the midst of a minor Gothic revival at the moment, and in April of this year Showtime and Sky Atlantic began broadcasting Penny Dreadful: a dark mash up of Victorian fantasy icons which seemed to push all the right buttons for a substantial portion of the global audience.

In conjunction with that small screen event Titan Books reissued the original prose masterpieces which between them pretty much invented the genre of scary stories.

On TV the protagonist of each groundbreaking classic has been craftily re-imagined for the jaded and sophisticated tastes of contemporary viewers but to my mind there’s nothing better than the originals, and these are books everybody should have read…

I’m not going to waste my time, or insult your intelligenced with detail précis of these landmark tomes, but I will assure you that each complete and unabridged, substantial and luxurious prestige hardback is a joy to read and possess.

Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus
By Mary Shelley with 8 original illustrations by Louie de Martinis (Titan Books)
ISBNs: 978-1-78329-363-6

Written by the precious and formidably bright Mary Shelley when she was 18, the prototype horror novel was originally published anonymously in 1818.

The result of a traumatic dream, it details the life and follies of an obsessed scientist who succeeds in his dream of creating life and learns over hard, painful years to repent his folly.

Utterly gripping, it lays claim to being both the first true horror and science fiction novel…

The Picture of Dorian Gray
By Oscar Wilde with 6 original illustrations by Ian Bass (Titan Books)
ISBNs: 978-1-78329-365-0

Oscar Wilde’s only novel began life as a serial in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1891 where it scandalised London Society despite being savagely censored before publication.

Undaunted, Wilde revised and expanded his Faustian tale of art and philosophy into a scathing social critique as it described the cautionary tale of a decadent young man whose outer beauty remained unchanged whilst a prefect portrait gradually recorded and showed every punishing mark of his debauched life.

Dracula
By Bram Stoker with 6 original illustrations by Martin Stiff (Titan Books)
ISBNs: 978-1-78329-364-3

Released in 1897, this pivotal novel of mystery and terror found few fans during the author’s lifetime, but achieved global acclaim during the early days of cinema.

This epistolary tale of an undying, debased and demonic noble from the feudal Balkans who attempts to create a new kingdom at the heart of the British Empire, opposed by a Man of Knowledge a girl of fierce determination and band of heroic stalwarts reshaped popular literature and remains unsurpassed in terms of influence to this day.

Text design throughout © 2014 Titan Books. All Rights Reserved. Illustrations ™ and © 2014 Showtime Networks Inc. All Rights reserved.

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Attack on Titan: Before the Fall (Light Novel)


By Ryo Suzukaze & Thores Shibamoto, translated by Ko Ransom (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-939130-86-0

Hajime Isayama’s Shingeki no Kyojin or “Advancing Giants” began life as a manga serial in Kodansha’s Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine in September 2009. As Attack on Titan the phenomenally successful saga has since filled 14 tankōbon collections – with sales in excess of 40 billion copies – and spawned equally popular spin-offs: two manga serials, a “Light Novel” series, an anime TV show, several video games and a forthcoming big-budget live action cinema release.

The core premise of the manga epic concerns an Earth where gigantic monsters have for more than a century predated on humanity, reducing mankind to the population of a small country cowering behind concentric rings of colossal walls…

This initial Light Novel – Before the Fall – pitches the drama back to the earliest days after the conclusion of the initial catastrophic conflict when defeated, nigh-extinct mankind has retreated behind sturdy stone stockades. Inexplicably, the cowering strategy worked and remnant humanity has been left alone for more than a generation.

Described as “prequel of prequels” this fascinating tale describes a time when the monstrous Titans have not been seen for years by the majority of the human race and thus much of complacent humanity has begun to doubt their existence. This attitude has advanced to the point where the common folk mock and deride the dedicated Garrison and Survey Corps which staunchly continue in their duties to protect them whilst conservative elements in the closeted government circles are actively trying to disband the warrior divisions as a means of cutting costs.

Since the retreat a highly strictured society has evolved with plutocratic rulers and fat-cats safely ensconced within the innermost city walls, bureaucracy and military brass inhabiting the second, and the least important members of mankind packed into the outer district of Shiganshina where inventive young armourer and metalsmith Angel Aaltonen lives, devoutly and passionately devising new weapons to end the monsters’ threat – monsters he has never seen but instinctively dreads…

As a Master Inventor of the Workshop District he is always devising fresh ways to improve the striking power of the heroic Survey Corps who regularly voyage outside the monolithic Gate, but Angel feels frustratingly hampered because he knows absolutely nothing about the horrors… except that they are regarded as unkillable.

One other thing he knows. Even though the city dwellers say the Titans don’t exist, something out there kills and maims the rapidly-depleting ranks of the defensive Corps which his best friends and fellow orphans Solm and Maria have dedicated their lives to…

Everything changes however when a deranged cult of Titan-worshippers force open the great Gate as a Survey scouting mission returns, allowing a handily placed horror to rampage through the outer town.

With close observation of the atrocity and the handy discovery of two new natural resources, Angel conceives a device which will forever alter the balance of power between scurrying mortals and the voracious, no-longer-immortal monsters…

What follows is an engaging rite-of passage yarn as Angel grows from idealistic savant to unlikely warrior and potential saviour of humanity, forged in tragedy and tempered by the pressure of a society determined to bury its collective head in the sand…

Moody and engaging, this gripping fantasy tale is augmented by eight stunning full page illustrations in monochrome and colour by Thores Shibamoto that will delight lovers of fantasy fiction and manga masterworks.

© 2014 Hajime Isayama, Ryo Suzukaze. All rights reserved.

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Paul Robeson for Beginners


By Paul Von Blum, illustrated by Elizabeth Von Notias & Ramsess (For Beginners)
ISBN: 978-1-934389-81-2

The For Beginners series of books are heavily illustrated text primers: accessible graphic non-fiction foundation courses in a vast variety of subjects from art to philosophy, politics to history and much more, all tackled in an accessible yet readily respectful manner. This particular volume was written by Paul Von Blum, author and Senior Lecturer in African American Studies and Communication Studies at UCLA with a wealth of strips and illustrations by graphic design specialist Elizabeth Von Notias and self-taught multi-media creator Ramsess.

If remembered at all, Paul Robeson (April 9th 1898 – January 23rd 1976) is thought of by most people as that African American singer/actor with an incredible bass voice. Maybe some will recall that he was a left wing political activist who fell foul of Joe McCarthy during America’s infamous “Red-baiting” witch-hunting period.

That’s true enough, but he was also one of the most accomplished and gifted individuals in the nation’s history: a true Renaissance man who was cheated of his ultimate potential simply because his skin was the wrong colour…

The Introduction lists Robeson’s astonishing accomplishments – all the more amazing when you realise the lack of opportunities if not outright repression facing negroes in a segregated America at the time of his birth and not truly tackled until the Civil Rights movement began gaining traction in the late 1950s.

As told in more telling detail – both in word and pictures in ‘The Early Days’, ‘Paul Robeson the Athlete’, ‘Paul Robeson the Stage Actor’, ‘Paul Robeson the Screen Actor’ and ‘Paul Robeson the Singer’ – he was born in Princeton, New Jersey; the son of a preacher.

He was the last of five children in a time and place rigidly defined by class and race divisions.

A brilliant student, he graduated Somerville High School in 1915 and won a four-year scholarship to Rutgers University where, despite initial hostility and actual physical assaults – he became the star of the Football, Baseball, Basketball and athletics squads, twice designated “All-American”.

From there he attended New YorkUniversityLawSchool, before transferring to ColumbiaUniversityLawSchool.

Talented and seemingly tireless, he turned an interest in the dramatic arts into a part-time stage career and became a professional Football player in 1920. He got married, acted, sang, played Pro ball and kept on studying, graduating Columbia in 1923 and worked as a lawyer at a prestigious law firm until the bigotry he experienced from his own subordinates became too much.

In 1924 he switched from stage acting to movies but still carried on a glittering international career: starring as Othello in London and playing in many hit plays and musicals such as Showboat, Emperor Jones, Stevedore and All God’s Chillun’s Got Wings…

Always politically active, he visited the Soviet Union in 1934, spoke out against Fascism during the Spanish Civil War, co-founded the anti-colonial Council on African Affairs and used his name and fame to agitate for social and legal changes in such contentious areas as Southern lynch law and trade union legislation.

Such activities made him a prime target in the USA and in 1941 J. Edgar Hoover ordered the FBI to open a file on him…

In 1950 the US government took away his passport because he refused to recant his pro-Soviet, pro-socialist stance and he became an exile in his own country. He was unable to leave America for eight years, until a Supreme Court ruling decreed the State Department had no right to revoke passports due to an individual’s political beliefs.

Robeson’s life was filled with such landmarks. Once free to travel again, he became an international political celebrity and social commentator, using his concerts and stage appearances in places as disparate as Wales, Australia, Russia, East Germany and elsewhere to promote a dream of World “Freedom, Peace and Brotherhood”…

His beliefs, struggles achievements and failures are then examined in ‘Paul Robeson the International Activist’, ‘Paul Robeson the Domestic Political Activist’ before a thorough appreciation in ‘The Final Years and His Lasting Legacy’…

Augmented by a ‘Bibliography’, ‘Selected Chronology’ and creator biographies, this absorbing documentary proves again the astounding power of visual narrative when wedded to the life story of a truly unique individual.
© 2013 Paul Von Blum. Illustrations © 2013 Elizabeth Von Notias & Ramsess. All rights reserved. A For Beginners Documentary Comic Book © 2013.

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Vicious


By V.E. Schwab (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78329-021-5

Once upon a time the meat and metier of comicbooks – fantastic beings with incredible abilities – was ghettoised: disregarded by the wider world as nonsense for kids and sad juveniles who’d grown older but not “up”.

How times change. These days those notions of men like gods – or more likely, monsters – are the bread-&-butter of movies and television: the public has accepted the core concepts of superhero sagas in the same way my generation gradually accepted hand-held communicators, teleportation, time-travel and parallel worlds (thank Star Trek for most of that).

Naturally then, with such fantastic concepts now common parlance amongst society’s hoi-polloi, prose fiction was bound to get in on the act (leaving aside the rare dabblings on the fringes of science fiction such as Wild Cards or Soon I Will Be Invincible) as the “new” genre won general acceptance and gained fictive credence. And eventually, something really fresh and new in the nascent medium of Superhero Novels was bound to emerge…

Vicious is a brilliantly plotted revenge drama dressed up in the supernature pyrotechnics of comicbooks, which wisely leaves aside the more flamboyant aspects of the strips to recount a story of wrongs redressed and vengeance hard-won in the classical manner of the Count of Monte Cristo – or more accurately Alfred Bester’s re-invention of it in The Stars my Destination.

Ten years ago two very special young men met in college: unique geniuses who had much in common. They became friends (in the way Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom or Clark Kent and Lex Luthor did) and together researched the urban myth of EOs – ExtraOrdinary individuals.

Barely believing the tabloid joke, they nevertheless soon discovered such people with their impossibly improbable powers could exist – and how to make them…

As the project began to obsess them, rivalry developed. They both underwent their transformative process and a girl they both wanted died.

Lines were drawn: moody pariah Victor Vale went to prison and charismatic Golden Boy Eli Cardale went free, buoyed up by his new, divinely-inspired mission. But now Victor is out and, with his small gang of similarly empowered EOs, hunting Eli.

His prey is the secret weapon of the Merit City Police Department and a key component in a decade-long case. Someone has been tracking EOs; acting as judge, jury and executioner of these ungodly abominations…

And now, Victor will have his vengeance, no matter the cost…

Comicbook veterans should find enough here to draw them in, but will be stunned as the tale steadfastly refuses to follow the accepted memes of “their” genre or utilise the artefacts (masks, costumes, code-names) that used to set it apart. Film and TV fans might note similarities to films like Scanners or Jumper or shows such as Heroes or Alphas, but the fast-paced, brutal and obsessive tale told here is actually most akin to a western: High Noon…

Antecedents aside, Vicious is a supremely clever, cruelly addictive thriller easily cloaked in the trappings of genre fiction whilst telling a stunningly powerful, wonderfully absorbing horror story of timeless archetypical passions whilst exploring the nature of heroism, villainy, friendship and family.

A magnificent treat for all lovers of the dark fantastic…
© 2013, 2014 V.E. Schwab. All rights reserved.

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Brahma Dreaming


By John Jackson, illustrated by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzina (JJBooks)
ISBN: 978-0-9569212-8-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Lavish, luxurious and utterly special – a book the entire family will adore … 10/10

I love books. I always have. I also had tremendously understanding parents.

When I was kid each birthday and every Christmas brought fantastic volumes that assaulted all the senses my podgy young body was prey to. The 1960s were a golden age for fabulous books for kids or adults…

The feel of shiny, sturdy card-covers and solidly reliable paper pages, the reassuring weight of a tome, the smell of printers ink and faint crack of a thick, solid spine opening for the very first time always overwhelmed me with each fresh acquisition. (I quickly got over licking my books – it made the pages soggy and smoosh together…)

Most important of course were the contents: words and pictures which could transport a reader to worlds ancient, modern or even futuristic, comfortably familiar and fantastically alien.

Like most of my compatriots I consumed everything, but I always harboured a particular affinity for stories about mythical Heroes, Gods and Monsters…

Now decades later, after a seeming eternity of books getting gradually smaller, duller, flimsier – but certainly not cheaper – the good old days seem to be returning. It’s obviously the time and season for books that look and feel like something special…

Case in point is this magnificent construction – a colossal 304 x 216mm, 248 page monochrome prose-&-illustration hardback from advocate, barrister, businessman, campaigner and writer-turned-publisher John Jackson.

Between nostalgically welcoming substantial card covers rests a captivatingly retelling of tales from the Hindu Holy Trinity the Trimurti, augmented and embellished with 50 spectacular full and double-page ink illustrations by Italian artist Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzina (A Little Piece of England, Animals Marco Polo Saw, Tales for Great Grandchildren: Folk Tales from India and Nepal and others).

Her stark, lush style is reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley, Sidney Sime, Edmund Dulac and other past masters of elegant fantasy and will instantly transport you to places long away and far ago…

The captivating recapitulations begin in Tales of Creation: dealing with the earliest days of the universe when the grand cosmic sound Aum echoed in the void and brought forth the Lords of Creation Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer.

In ‘The Beginning’, we learn how, after dreaming, Brahma brought forth Seven Wise Men and their wives. From these came the races of Gods and Demons. After this Brahma dreamed again and the First World was created, populated with animals and mankind.

When Wise Man Durvasas brought his haughty nephew Indra, King of the Gods a gift it was unappreciated and resulted in ‘The Curse’ which tipped the balance in the eternal war between Gods and Demons. The deities beseeched Brahma to intercede, and the Lord of Creation delegated the task to Vishnu who revealed all could be made well if the Gods found a way to churn ‘The Milk Ocean’…

‘The Lie’ tells of Kadru, the Mother of all Snakes and her sister Vinata, revealing the dangers of excessive pride and arrogance, whilst in ‘The Sons of King Sagara’ a king with no heirs consults the Wise Man Bhrigu with spectacular results.

Indeed Sagara and his wives Kerini and Somati then begat so many sons that, as an army, they could conquer the Earth and challenge Indra himself…

As everyone knows, the First World ended in a mighty flood with only the healer Manu warned in time to preserve the Seven Wise Men and all the seeds of life and knowledge in a great boat. To ensure the Second World after the deluge Brahma became ‘The Fish’ which guided them all to safety on Mount Himavan…

Tales of Destruction deals with the harsh existence of Shiva the Destroyer, beginning with the lonely, unlovable bachelor’s search for a wife in ‘Sati’. That brief happy union was destroyed by the callous pranks of Wise Man Narada whose meddling tongue led to the bride’s death of ‘Burning Love’ – and the fiery vengeance of Shiva…

It also resulted in more celestial war, but the overwhelming campaign of the demon warlord ‘Taraka’ produced in turn a rebirth of the Destroyer’s wife in the young goddess ‘Uma’…

The Destroyer was, however, unable to create a child even though it was prophesied that such a paradoxical progeny was the only being who could win the Demon War and kill Taraka. It took the inspired intercession of Fire God Agni to finally quicken the saviour child who would be ‘Kartikeya’ God of War…

The fallout of this impossible conception was fury on behalf of Shiva’s second wife. The betrayed goddess showed hidden strength by losing her temper and, in a special dance, revealing her terrifying submerged aspect as Kalee, Destroyer of Time before finding proper stability in ‘How Uma Became Parvati’…

The grisly origins and acts of ‘Ganesha’ the Elephant-headed god then lead us into an astounding story of passion and devotion in ‘Yama and the Love Girl’. Then the convoluted tale of how prankster sky-maiden Anjana was turned into a monkey before she and Wind God Vayu conceived the mighty ‘Hanuman’ takes us full circle when easily-slighted Ganesha takes vengeance on the cruelly teasing Moon God in ‘Chandra’s Shame’…

This staggering and enthralling compendium concludes with some exploits of Vishnu in Tales of Preservation, beginning with the story of his manifested earthly aspect Krishna – ‘The Blue Boy’…

The boy’s aunt was blessed – or cursed – with a complex divinely-orchestrated fate and ‘The Loves of Queen Pritha’ details how the poor woman bore five children by different gods and became the root cause of a tragic and appalling war between families.

The epic search that reunited ‘Rama and Sita’ also includes the last great exploit of Hanuman, after which ‘The City of Dwaraka’ reveals how Krishna grew into a mighty hero and demon killer, although even he struggled to quell the all-encompassing strife between Pritha’s warring offspring the Kauravas and Pandavas…

Retired in Dwaraka, Krishna had many children. When one of them, Samba, annoyed a Yogi with his mischief the wayward boy was repaid in brutal kind by “giving birth” to ‘The Iron Rod’ which ended his father’s life…

The fable of ‘Little Gopala’ ends our mythological voyage, relating how a small and very ordinary boy became blessed of a ghostly brother with skin the colour of the sky, and the wheel turns full circle with The End describing how works of The Lords of Creation are with us still…

Epic, engaging and astonishingly enthralling, this is the kind of book entire families read; and yours should be one of them…
© 2013 John Jackson. All rights reserved.