Category: Satire/Politics

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The Detection Club parts 1 & 2


By Jean Harambat, coloured by Jean-Jacques Rouger translated by Allison M. Charette (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital release only

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: BA Perfect Portion of Post-Prandial Perplexity…  9/10

What’s the Holiday Season without a devilish mystery to chew on? Not nearly as much fun, I’m sure, and with that in mind here’s a brace of superb cartoon conundrums from the continent, based on an unlikely but actual historical convocation.

As seen on Wikipedia – please use often and make a large a supporting financial donation, if you can – The Detection Club was a literary society of British crime writers, founded in 1930, with the likes of G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie as early Presidents. In 1936, American émigré John Dickson Carr became the first non-Brit elected to the august body.

They did stuff, wrote stories, held events and upheld (Ronald) Knox’s Commandments which detailed the rules of mystery writing. The group is the basis of later media McGuffin’s such as Batman‘s Mystery Analysts of Gotham City.

I’m pretty sure the story here collected in two volumes by award-winning cartoonist, screenwriter, graphic novelist, historian, philosopher and journalist Jean Harambat (Les Invisibles, Ulysses, the Songs of Return, Operation Copperhead) is apocryphal, but you never know…

Originally released in 2019, our story opens in a prologue with the reciting of those commandments and the confirmation of Mr. Dixon Carr at a slap-up feed at London hostelry Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese – a pub that doesn’t seem to mind the odd celebratory gunshot…

Present are President Chesterton, Dixon Carr, Christie, Sayers, Baroness Emma Orczy, Major A.E.W. Mason and Monsignor Ronald Knox himself, and – as the repast winds down – proceedings are somewhat disturbed by the arrival of a flying, talking robotic bird bearing a strange invitation…

Eccentric man of means Mr. Roderick Ghyll wishes the company of the sagacious society at his extraordinary domicile on April 1st. Briarcliff House is situated on a private island where Ghyll wishes to celebrate the future through his latest contrivance, promising “challenges”, “enchantments” and “the renaissance of crime fiction”…

Chapter I opens with the scribes and scribblers approaching ‘An Island in Cornwall’ and still heatedly debating the motives of the mystery man. Ghyll greets them effusively before whizzing off in a bizarre electric unicycle leaving them to make their way to his palatial manse which is a gleaming tribute to sleek, tripped down modernism – if not actual futurism…

Apart from the domestic staff chef Alphonse, maid Madeline, implacable Asian manservant Fu, and stepdaughter Millicent, the only other human present is technical assistant Dr. Zumtod and Ghyll’s haughty beautiful wife Honoria. A future generation would call her a “trophy”…

The old plutocrat is a deeply unpleasant and overbearing host who boasts of one more personage that the sharp-minded, brain-testing authors must meet. With smugness and great ceremony he introduces Eric: a mechanical man with more than human insight who can outwit any mortal and easily determine the culprit in any tale they might concoct…

Although challenged with the details of a string of classic novels – which Eric easily and correctly concludes with the name of the perpetrators – the writers remain insulted and unconvinced. Dixon Carr even oversteps the bounds of polite decency by probing the automaton in search of a pre-prepped dwarf or amputee and the display is halted for dinner where Ghyll continues to advocate a world filled with his “metal friends”…

The evening wears on with the usual social distractions balanced by heated argument on many topics sparked by Eric’s existence and the magnate’s pronunciations that art and literature must make way for a machine-run world. At last, the affair breaks up with the guests retiring to their assigned rooms in a state of high dudgeon…

That all ends in esteemed literary tradition, with screams and the writers breaking into Ghyll’s savagely disarrayed bedroom to discover Eric inert in a chair and clear evidence of ‘The Billionaire Out the Window’. Far below, a dressing gown sinks beneath choppy waves and frantic searches can find no sign of their host…

Well-versed if not actually experienced in investigation, the writers set about interviewing the staff and then the residents. Soon Zumtod suggests the painfully obvious: turning Eric loose on the problem. The response is as rapid as the answer is shocking…

While waiting for the outer world to re-establish contact with the isolated isle, Agatha bonds with the presumed widow and probes the step-daughter, whilst Chesterton continues to scour the entire vicinity. He’s suspicious of everything – including whether there has been any crime at all – and soon unearths many unsuspected secrets even as each writer cleaves to their particular speciality and makes their own assessment and forms a hypothesis…

And then a body washes ashore…

The Detection Club‘s second volume begins with third chapter ‘Seven Amateur Detectives’ and an armada of late-arriving constabulary led by Inspector Widgeon to interview the drawing room sleuths. Mounting tensions, contrary theories and wounded pride quickly drive all concerned to fractious conflict even as Millicent’s banished and outcast twin Watkyn re-emerges. Has he only returned because of his despised step-father’s demise or was he actually back just before it happened?

Events seemingly come to a head when Christie expounds her latest theory and provokes a minor hostage crisis until the villain is apprehended through unlikely team work. As the police step in with the handcuffs however, new evidence emerges that sets the cogitators back on the murder-trail until straightforward ratiocination leads one author to the only possible solution…

Wry, witty, and decidedly well-plotted, with devastatingly sharp, catty dialogue (kudos to translator Allison M. Charette) and smart characterisations, this lovely lark is also charmingly limned: a superb tribute to days gone by and superb stylists who tested our wits and expanded our entertainment horizons. This is tale no  whimsically-inclined crime fan can afford to miss.

© 2020 – DARGUAD – HARAMBAT. All rights reserved.

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The Silent Invasion: Dark Matter


By Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-283-0 (TPB) eISBN 978-1-68112-284-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Sinister, Seductive, Superb… 10/10

During the vast expansion of opportunity and outpouring of innovation that graced comics during the 1980s, much of the “brain-rotting trash” or “silly kid’s stuff” stigma which had plagued the medium was finally dispelled. America started catching up to the rest of the world; acknowledging sequential narrative as an actual Capital “A” Art Form, and their doors opened wide open for foreigners to make a few waves too…

One of the era’s most critically acclaimed and inescapably intoxicating features sprang from semi-Canadian outfit Renegade Press which set up shop in the USA at the start of the black & white comics bubble in 1984. They quickly established a reputation for excellence offering a strong line of creator-based properties including some genuinely remarkable series such as Ms. Tree, Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, Flaming Carrot, Normalman, and a compulsively backwards-looking Cold War/UFO/paranoia-driven delight: The Silent Invasion.

That last was a stunningly stylish conspiracy saga, bolting 1950s domestic terrors (invasion by Reds; invasion by aliens; invasion by new ideas…) onto Film Noir chic: and employing 20-20 hindsight to produce a phenomenally fresh and enticing delight for the strangely similar Reagan era. From here and now, it’s never seemed more distressingly likely that politics, if not all history, is cursed to repeat certain cycles and strategies…

The series was eventually collected as four superbly oversized monochrome tomes, re-presenting the lead story from the first dozen issues of The Silent Invasion wherein inspired co-creators Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock designed a delightful confection combining all the coolest genre elements of classic cult sci-fi, horror, spy, conspiracy theory, crime, romance and even comedy yarns…

Now, as the world again teeters on the edge of a multiple-choice test of imminent dooms – and with America once more enduring internecine struggle amongst the citizenry, corruption, cover-ups at every level of government and the press under attack from the people and traditions it seeks to inform and safeguard – the series is remastered, revised, re-released and continued in a handy trade paperback size (or fully adjustable eBook format)…

Gripping and utterly addictive, The Silent Invasion is incomprehensibly charming and challenging. Rendered in a compelling, spectacularly expressionistic style it is an epic of perpetual twists and turns, leaving readers dazed, dazzled and always hungry for more, and its Machiavellian contortions and observations have never been more relevant than now. After all, doesn’t the news confirm every day that infiltration is complete, assimilation is near-total and utterly non-human tyrant-morons have already co-opted earthly corridors of power…

1950s America remains a hugely iconic and paradoxical time. Incomparable scientific and cultural advancements, great wealth and desperate, intoxicating optimism inexplicably arose amidst an atmosphere of immense social, cultural, racial, sexual and political repression with an increasingly paranoid populace seeing conspiracy and subversive attacks in every shadow and corner of the rest of the world.

Such an insular melting pot couldn’t help but be fertile soil for imaginative outsiders to craft incisive, evocative tales dripping with convoluted mystery and taut tension, especially when wedded to the nation’s fantastic – and then-ongoing – obsessions with rogue science, flying saucers, gangsterism and espionage…

They were also obsessed with hot babes and bust sizes, but that’s not really a mystery, is it?

What Has Gone Before: In April 1952, infamous Union City private eye Dick Mallet saw a strange light in the night sky. Next morning, cops found his empty, crashed automobile. A month later reporter Matt Sinkage was still getting grief from Frank Costello, Editor of the Union City Sentinel. Matt was frantic to expose “The Truth behind Flying Saucers” but became an ostracised laughing stock, especially since he also suspected his foreign-sounding neighbour Ivan Kalashnikov was a Russian spy….

Sinkage alienated his family and drove his fiancée Peggy Black to distraction. All he could think about was the night six months ago in Albany when he witnessed a UFO and impetuously chased after it: a crazy night everyone remembers… except him.

When Matt broke into Ivan’s apartment, he saw the foreigner and others in front of a huge, weird machine. It confirmed his suspicions that they were Atomic spies. Days later, Matt collided with Mr K’s pretty friend Gloria Amber and cunningly asked her out to lunch. Things developed and Gloria begged him to save her from what she claimed were Red agents, even though the thugs subsequently claimed to be Federal agents…

Hiding out at his brother Walter‘s place, Matt was still seeing flying saucers everywhere and couldn’t understand why everybody else thought they were just jets. In Union City, Costello was pressured by brutish FBI Agent Phil Housley: an old acquaintance who regularly forced him to suppress unwelcome or troubling news items…

This time he wanted Sinkage. What no newsman knew was that Housley also worked for a shadow agency: The Council. What Housley didn’t know was that he was only a pawn…

Back in suburbia, Walter’s wife Katie – convinced Matt and his new floozy Gloria were up to no good – reached out to the FBI. The fugitives were heading out in Walter’s car when Peggy showed up. She couldn’t understand why her man was with a flashy trollop, and wouldn’t accept that Matt only wanted the lowdown on the Reds and access to Kalashnikov’s memoirs and files. Matt knew Gloria was playing a double game, but agreed to go with to a remote town where a “contact” could protect them both. Mr K called in his own heavies to hunt them, all factions equally unaware the FBI had visited Katie and a net was closing around Sinkage and his mystery woman…

When the Council learn Sinkage was involved in the “Albany event”, near-panic ensued. Matt eventually succumbed to suspicion. Gloria kept vanishing and refused to acknowledge it and Kalashnikov’s hoods Zanini and Koldst abducted her and roughed up Matt.

Events spiralled and came to a head in sleepy distant Stubbinsville. Housley and the FBI tracked the runaways, meeting up with the Reds and what might well have been aliens in the isolated region. The net closed around them as a fantastic, terrifying light-show ignited the dark skies. By the time the G-Men reached them, Gloria had vanished and Sinkage was in a coma. Days later, he was free and all charges dropped. He was strangely content. Despite another blatant cover-up and no clue as to whom all the various parties hounding them really were, Sinkage knew what he had seen when Gloria vanished. Now he could only wait for her inevitable return…

Three years later, in September 1955, he was still waiting. He’d spent much of that time in an asylum. On release, he moved to bucolic Rockhaven and resumed his old trade as a journalist. The uncaring outsider had tentatively established himself in the small town, but his job at The Ranger paid a pittance and offered no satisfaction. Sinkage earned extra cash writing fake news for spurious tabloid The Tattler.

His life spiralled again after a proposed piece on cattle mutilations led to a quasi-religious space cult in his own backyard. At first journalistic sight, the Sirian Utopia Foundation was a long con gulling wealthy widow Gladys Tanner. She devoutly believed the world was heading for imminent Armageddon and that her new gurus were in contact with a benign cosmic council promising enlightenment and global paradise, and could reunite her with her departed husband…

Her followers included prominent Washington politicians who Sinkage connected to missing scientists. When Housley turned up, acting friendly, Matt lapsed into old suspicions and started snooping, “discovering” a fake flying saucer in the Tanner barn was a prop disguising the real thing…

The Council’s top thug Brennan resurfaced, spouting drivel about commie conspiracy at the Tanner farm but again, drastic action by the Feds ended the investigation convincing Sinkage that America and the world are in the midst of a sly alien conquest only he can expose.

Sinkage joined his nemesis as part of Housley Investigations in Union City, even though it meant moving living with Walter and despicable Katie. By May 1958, he was a phantom celebrity: a flying saucer freak regularly cited by the media, yet seldom seen. Cassandra-like, he warned of invasion, and stalked Presidential hopeful Senator Harrison T. Callahan – a candidate he believed to be a mind-controlled alien puppet.

By 1959, he was an anonymous star on TV, stridently declaring how aliens seized minds. When Senator Callahan sought to stifle Sinkage’s campaign, The Council reactivated Housley, claiming the entire alien issue a Soviet plot to destabilise America. Over Walter’s objections Katie manoeuvred to get Sinkage back into the asylum and he subsequently vanished from their lives…

In August, Callahan officially announced his candidacy and Sinkage made a desperate move, resolved to save humanity whatever the cost…

He was foiled by Housley who briefly became a minor celebrity, but by 1965 the grizzled world-weary Private Eye was old news. Nobody cared anymore how he saved the life of America’s next president in August or that he killed a crazy reporter. Housley’s life was all about making ends meet, accommodating estranged wife Vivian while still seeing his kids, and keeping secretary/girlfriend Meredith Baxter happy. Union City, meanwhile, reeled from a string of bizarre serial killings…

With life constantly kicking him hard, Phil found an unexpected upside after predatory, exceedingly generous client Sarah Finster hired him to find her husband, Howard. He was an attorney at prestigious Phelps, Finster and Phelan: a simple, uncomplicated guy who started suffering blackouts, He’d been disappearing for days at a time and reappearing with no knowledge of where he’d been or that time has passed. That truly intrigued Housley, since he’d been experiencing exactly the same problems lately…

Diligent investigation led Phil to a shrink named Jeffrey Plunck, and more than he bargained for. Apparently, Howard had been disappearing and experiencing memory problems for a year, and claimed he’d been abducted by aliens…

Officious Dr. Plunck stonewalled in a manner Phil thought only Feds could pull off, and for some reason Housley had a chilling dream about Matt Sinkage. When an envelope arrived, containing a note and recent photo of Plunck and the impossibly still-alive Sinkage, Phil sought out Nora Marsh: Howard’s girl on the side and another regular alien abductee. Abruptly ambushed, he regained consciousness to find Nora gone, leaving a list of names that led him to Howard. When he took the bewildered lawyer home, Housley was blasted by blazing light and awakened having lost more time and memories…

Revisiting all he knows about Sinkage and confronting the reporter’s former boss Frank Costello, Housley learned Nora’s list is people who have recently died or been murdered in uncanny circumstances. Walter Sinkage then added fuel to the insane alien nonsense by expounding a raft of crazy suppositions about Canada’s Flying Saucer programme – and their football exploits – which left the weary detective more baffled than ever and blithely unaware of how many different people have him under observation…

When bodies start piling up and circumstantially pointing to Phil, his increasingly troubled homelife and those oh-so-convenient memory black-outs only add fuel to a well-built fire of conspiracy, and as witnesses and potential allies vanish or die, a procedural net he was very used to holding closed around him.

Shifting into furious overdrive, Phil went on the run, determined to find answers. Raiding Plunck’s office, he stumbled upon an incredible nest of secrets, provoking a massive, deadly response which precipitated a savage clash with resurgent Council forces and the irresistible powers behind them…

The chilling campaign reaches 1970 in new volume Dark Matter, where (after ‘Previously in The Silent Invasion’ – a far more succinct précis of past events) dull and boring Walter Sinkage steps up to the paranoia plate after moving to suburban ‘Willowdale’.

Status-hungry wife Katie finally sees her life back on track, but the move proves her downfall as it causes Walter to look through brother Matt’s copious files, which have festered in the basement since before he died. It also overlaps the moment Walter experiences his first – but not last – flying saucer sighting…

Soon and inevitably, Walter is drawn into a beguiling web of intrigue and cautiously joins AAA – Alien Abductees Anonymous – run by creepily unctuous Reverend Wilson Monroe Parsons on behalf of the remarkably ubiquitous Xylotec Research Foundation. As “Steve”, Sinkage learns there are two kinds of abductee: the usual whacko attention-seekers and people like Charlene Bathgate – and himself – who have clearly been changed by something uncanny. Parsons can tell the difference and assigns Charlene to watch the new guy…

Home and work life deteriorate as Walter sinks further into obsession. Time and memories slip as the AAA crowd becomes his sole focus, and a tipping point comes when he’s introduced to gleaming and scary Pam and Sam, Missionary vanguards for the Cosmic Fellowship of Our Lady of the Spaceways temple (think Scientologists with even better teeth, and sparkles) who insist Steve has “the Gift” and give him their utmost attention. It translates into inviting themselves into Walter’s home and converting Katie into a braindead zealot. Events have meanwhile moved far beyond Walter’s control and he’s being dragged somewhere strange: seeing more lights in the sky and worse…

When he’s snatched by government-type heavies who want to take him to Stubbinsville, he’s saved by the miraculous appearance of Matt Sinkage before being drawn into the heavens for Enlightenment…

The Council return in a dominant position, executing plans that will reshape human society in ‘Camp X’ as Walter’s disappearance triggers a police missing persons investigation. For Detective Sawchuck it’s just another case, but his partner Eddy Dime is utterly overwhelmed by Walter/Matt’s files and irretrievably sucked in to the mystery. After talking to Reverend Parsons and Charlene, Dime cannot let go, especially after pressure from on high forces his boss to shelve the case…

Eddy doesn’t care. After finding Walter’s car in Stubbinsville and talking to town historian Sydney Ellsworth, he’s determined to examine a supposedly-decommissioned military base everyone knows is still active and the reason for so many UFO sightings. Ellsworth knows it’s just a lab for mind-control experiments by the Military-Industrial Complex that controls the government…

Whilst reporting to Katie Sinkage, Dime meets Pam and Sam, experiences headaches and disorientation and wakes up days later with jumbled memories. Refusing to drop the case he then realises he’s being watched by trench-coated strangers…

Enigma and intensity exponentially expand in ‘Feints and Fumbles’ as the web closes around Dime, who goes off the reservation, stashing Sinkage’s files. While Katie shills for the Cosmic Fellowship temple and predicts Walter’s imminent return, Charlene seemingly opens up to Dime: moving into his apartment to hide from the army of conspirators closing in. Soon after, Eddy sees lights in the sky and has his own inexplicable experience, and when Feds try to confiscate his findings, quits the force…

As the Council exerts its power over the police and city leaders, with many old faces like Dr. Plunck or Frank Costello in attendance, ‘Return to Stubbinsville’ finds Dime in business as a PI and finally face-to face with back-but-baffled Walter Sinkage. The abductee can’t remember much beyond probes and lights, but is convinced brother Matt was there. Hungry for answers, Dime enrols in the Cosmic Fellowship church and undergoes an orientation process that changes him forever, even as Charlene endures her own comeuppance. And then Ellsworth phones, urgently suggesting Dime come to Camp X if he wishes to achieve ‘Enlightenment’…

The truth might well be out there, but it’s not what anybody expects or is ready to accept…

Supplemented by a fascinating selection of ‘Sketches and Layouts’; riddled throughout with in-joke DC Comics creators Easter eggs, and contemporary critiques like a delicious swipe at a former President and legendary sore loser, this is another impeccable brush with mindboggling paranoia-as-entertainment you won’t be able to put down.

The Silent Invasion: Dark Matter provides an unforgettable gateway to an eerily familiar yet comfortably exotic era of innocent joy and a million “top secrets” no fan of fantastic thriller fiction should ignore – and the best is still to come…
© 2021 Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock. All rights reserved.

The Silent Invasion: Dark Matter will be released on December 16th 2021 and is available digitally and for physical copy pre-order now.

Most NBM books are also available in digital formats. For more information and other great reads see http://www.nbmpub.com/

Christmas Treat: the entire saga thus far can be yours for a bargain festive price. Just head to…
THE SILENT INVASION Bundle (Includes VOLS. 1-4)
By Michael Cherkas & Larry Hancock

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Pulling Weeds from a Cactus Garden – Life is Full of Pricks


By Nathalie Tierce (Indigo Raven)
ISBN: 978-1-73783-260-7 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-734174-4-1

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Particularly Pointed Party Favours for all those Imminent, Inescapable Get-togethers… 8/10

The marriage of image and text is a venerable, potent and astoundingly evocative discipline that can simultaneously tickle like a feather, cut like a scalpel and hit like a steam-hammer. Moreover, repeated visits to a particular piece of work can even generate different responses depending on the recipient’s mood.

If you’re a multi-talented artist like Nathalie Tierce, who’s excelled in film and stage production for everyone from the BBC to Disney and Tim Burton to Martin Scorsese; music performance design for Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Rolling Stones; gallery art; painted commissions and latterly, graphic narratives such as Fairy Tale Remnants, challenges must be a hard thing to find.

Thankfully, human-watching is frequently its own reward, resulting in books like this slim, enthrallingly revelatory paperback (or digital digest) which forensically dissects human nature: exploring modern times and unchanging human nature through a lens of Lockdown and via the immortal truths of folklore as expressed in Aesop’s Fables.

On show in this handy art boutique are stunning paintings in a range of media, but all rendered in the bizarrely baroque classical manner of Breughel or Bosch, albeit blended with the quixotic energy of cartoon satirists Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman.

Each condemnatory visual judgement is deftly wedded to moving, querulous and frankly often quite terrifying epigrams capturing contemporary crisis points of isolation, confusion, despondency and simple surrender to fate: summarised in fractured haikus and weaponised odes such as ‘Lost in a Supermarket’, ‘Domestic Bliss’, ‘Thoughts on the Outside’,‘Destiny Guides Our Fortunes’, ‘Say No Meore’, ‘The Lamb and the Wolf’, ‘Clown Adrift’, ‘Plucked Grumpy Chicken’,‘Speeding Back to the Comfort of Hell’, ‘Tragic Circus’ and more.

Blending wicked whimsy with everyday paranoia and neighbourly competitiveness, Pulling Weeds from a Cactus Garden is a mature delight for all students of human nature with a sharp eye and unforgiving temperament – and surely, isn’t that all of us?
© 2021 Indigo Raven. © 2021 Nathalie Tierce. All rights reserved.

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A Sea of Love


By Wilfrid Lupano & Grégory Panaccione (Lion Forge/The Magnetic Collection)
ISBN: 978-1-942367-45-1 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because Words Just Aren’t Enough… 10/10

The sheer breadth, variety and creative ambition of comics holds me breathless sometimes. It feels like there’s no subject or blend thereof; no tone or trope; no limits and absolutely no style or admixture that talented individuals can’t turn into heartrending, hilarious, thrilling, educational, evocative, uplifting and/or infuriating stories.

This completely silent saga from prolific French writer Wilfrid Lupano (Old Geezers; Azimut; Blanc Autour; Le Loup; Valerian spin-off Shingouzlooz Inc. and many more) and illustrator Grégory Panaccione (Someone to Talk To; Toby Mon Ami; Match; Âme perdue) somehow offers all of those in one delicious hardback or digital package.

Originally seen au continent as Un Océan d’amour in 2014, this wordless yet universally comprehensible pantomime is an unforgettable saga celebrating the timeless resilience of mature love. Here it is craftily concealed but constantly displayed in a tale of tetchy devotion between an aged diminutive fisherman and his quiet, timid, overly-flappable but formidably indomitable wife.

Every morning before the sun lights their rustic hovel, she makes him a wonderful breakfast before he heads out into the big ocean in his little boat. They have their fractious moments and he can be a trial sometimes, but their relationship is rock solid and never-ending.

This particular morning, however, the old coot finally falls foul of a changing world, when his little vessel is snagged in the nets of a vast trawler factory ship. Saving his idiot apprentice, the old git is soon swallowed up and gone…

At least, that’s what the sole survivor believes when he washes up ashore. However, the matronly fresh widow refuses to accept that and – disregarding decades of homey domestic programming – goes looking for him.

Oh, the incredible adventures she has and the people she meets…

He, meanwhile, is still very much alive. Stranded on his little tub, with nothing but tinned sardines and memories to sustain him, he is washed uncontrollably across the world. Befriended by a sardine-loving gull, he experiences first hand and close up the way we’ve befouled the seas and meets a wide variety of people he’s casually misjudged all his life, before eventually fighting his way back to his little cottage and the faithful one who’s waiting for him. At least, he complacently assumed she is…

Epic, hilarious, terrifying, shocking and sublimely satisfying, this is masterpiece of graphic narrative with so very much to say. Why not give your eyes a treat and have a good listen?
A Sea of Love © 2018 Editions Delcourt. All rights reserved.

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Methods of Dyeing


By B. Mure (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-62-2 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Mesmerising Magnum Opus Actively Unfolding Before Your Very Eyes… 8/10

Most forms of fiction depend on strong memorable characters and heaping helpings of tension, suspense and of action to hold the attention. You need to be really good and quite brave to try anything outside those often-infantile parameters. B. Mure is that good.

The Nottingham based artist and storyteller’s other notable work to date is the remarkable webcomic Boy Comics. You should check that out too.

In 2018, B. Mure pulled together threads and ideas from years of planning, dreaming and doodling, to begin building an epic fantasy saga. It started with Original Graphic Novel Ismyre, introducing a strange ancient city of song and tired wonders, unsettled by magical eco-terrorists and weaponised flora, where a sculptor’s works inspired and moved the strangest of folk. This magical city was entering a period of “interesting times”…

That was closely followed by sequel Terrible Means, which seemingly had very little to do with the protagonists of the first, but instead took readers back to a time when wizardly green rebels Niklas, Henriett and Emlyn were simply researchers whose studies divined a growing imbalance in the natural ecosystem…

The Tower in the Sea focused in on a different point in time and tale, providing a fresh approach to what is shaping up to be a vast and expansively multi-layered saga.

Contemporary Ismyre is more dictatorship than civil metropolis, and for years gifted children were spirited away from it by a clique of outlaw magicians and taken to a hidden island to be schooled in magical arts. That haven of learning was not proof against intrigue and plots, however, and before long unscholarly events upset lots of apple carts…

Now, fourth volume Methods of Dyeing returns us to the Big City, but sticks to educational themes and macabre mysteries as potential scandal rocks staid and stolid Ismyre University. Mere moments before the delivery of a much heralded lecture, visiting Professor Detlef of rival city-state Belsithan is murdered. The renowned botanist, textile expert and master dyer was discovered in bushes just outside the lecture hall…

The event manifests the usual journalistic scavengers, but both the Chief of Police and University Dean are suspiciously keen to shut down sordid speculation and all enquiries as rapidly as possible.

All hope of that outcome ends with the arrival of a forceful and enigmatic detective from Belsithan. She quickly assumes jurisdiction and begins to make herself extremely unwelcome in every stratum of college and city life. Her diligent, persistent investigations uncover plenty of secrets and suspects as well as possible motive: Detlef had accommodated the beliefs of the Eco-anarchist movement increasingly disrupting Ismyre’s economy and politics…

However, as the detective zeroes in on the truth, her own big secret is about to be exposed…

The word “tapestry” is one much overused but it really fits the gradual unpeeling of layers comprising the history of Ismyre: beautiful images coming together, small self-contained stories unfolding depending upon where you start from, yet all part of a greater whole, promising more and clearer revelations further ahead. You must read all these books but (so far) it really doesn’t matter where you start from. So, it might as well be here, right?

Sadly, this deliciously genteel, sublimely illustrated cosy murder-mystery is not available digitally yet, but that just means you can give physical copies to all your friends, suitably gift-wrapped and properly appreciated by the tactile senses as well as cerebral ones…

An anthropomorphic, luscious and compellingly realised world of wonder to savour and ponder over is waiting for you – and if you’re quick, you can exploit the publisher’s sagacious generosity by visiting the Avery Hill website and buying all four Ismyre books in one big sales bundle…
© 2021 B. Mure. All rights reserved.

Methods of Dyeing will be released on November 11th 2021 and is available for pre-order now.

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Gaia Blues


By Gud (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital release only

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because it’s never too soon and not quite too late… 8/10

Assuming you don’t live in a bubble – and maybe we’ll all be doing that soon – you know the planet is in a parlous state whilst those we put in charge are refusing to do anything meaningful to fix it.

Comics and creators have a great deal of soft power but we can’t do much to mend a planet – more’s the pity. However, we can keep banging on about the crisis, capturing hearts and minds until some sort of tipping point – or spontaneously assembled citizens’ committee of eco-assassins dedicated to primal justice – removes the political and business interests sabotaging the path to salvation. Aah, it’s good to dream…

Gaia Blues was first released in 2011, an epic journey and painful odyssey painted in comely cartoons by Italian artist, animation designer and storyteller Gud (Gentes; Heidi, Mon Amour; Timothy Top)

It details in a beguiling rollercoaster ride of images, an endless journey around our increasingly befouled and besieged world, rendered in an inviting wealth of primary colours and images bereft of text: a tragic silent movie with adorable characters pantomiming the end of the world so simplistically even the youngest of kids and most dissembling and disingenuous of world leaders will get the message. It even offers a tantalising spark of hope at the end.

You should read it while we still have time…
© 2016 TUNUÉ (Tunué S.r.l.) – Gud. All rights reserved.

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Can’t Get No


By Rick Veitch (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1059-5 (TPB)

The terrorist atrocity of September 11th, 2001 changed the world and in our own small corner, generated a number of graphic narrative responses of varying quality, not to mention deep emotional honesty. Rick Veitch’s 2006 entry Can’t Get No was as powerful and heartfelt as any, but benefited greatly from a little time and distance.

Chad Roe‘s company sold the world’s most permanent and indelible marker pen, the “Eter-No-Mark”. Everyone was flying high but then the lawsuits hit all at once. A cheap, utterly irremovable felt-pen is a godsend to street-artists and the most virulent of vandalistic weapons to property owners…

As his universe collapses on him, Chad goes on a bender, picks up two hippie-artist-chicks in a bar and wakes up a human scribble-board, covered literally from head to toe in swirling, organic, totally permanent designs.

Even then he tries so very hard to bounce back. A walking abstract artwork, he is ostracized by mockery, unable to conceal his obvious “otherness”, and neither self-help philosophies, drugs, nor alcohol can make him feel normal again. Defeated, reviled and eventually crushed in spirit, he’s trapped in a downward spiral. He meets the pen-wielding girls again and finds solace and uncomplicated joy in the artist’s world of sex, booze and dope.

Lost to “normal” society, Chad goes on a road-trip with the women, but they haven’t even left the city before they’re all arrested. It is morning on September 11th and as the girls violently resist the cops an airplane flies overhead, straight towards the centre of Manhattan…

With no-one looking at him, just another part of the shocked crowd, he watches for an eternity, and then no longer anything but another stunned mortal, Chad drives away with an Arab family in their mobile home.

And thus begins a psychedelic, introspective argosy through America’s philosophy, symbolism and meta-physicality. With this one act of terrorism forever changing the nation, Chad is forced on a journey of discovery to find an America that is newborn both inside and out. His travels take him through vistas of predictable cruelty and unexpected tolerance, through places both eerily symbolic and terrifyingly plebeian, but by the end of this modern Pilgrim’s Progress, both he and the world have adapted, accommodated and accepted.

Born in 1951, Rick Veitch is a criminally undervalued creator who has lived through post-war(s) America’s many chimeric social revolutions. He has a poet’s sensibilities and a disaffected Flower-Child’s perspectives informing a powerful creative consciousness – and conscience. Can’t Get No is a landmark experiment in both form and content which deserves careful and repeated examination.

Black and white in a landscape format, and eschewing dialogue and personal monologues for ambient text (no word balloons or descriptive captions, just the words that the characters encounter such as signs, newspapers, faxes etc.) this graphic narrative – in paperback and digital editions – screams out its great differences to usual comic strip fare, but the truly magical innovation is the “text-track”, a continual fluid, peroration of poetic statements that supply an evocative counterpoint to the visual component.

Satirical, cynical, strident: Lyricism is employed for examination and introspection, in perhaps occasionally over-florid, but nonetheless moving and heartfelt free verse and epigrams don’t make this an easy read or a simple entertainment. They do make it a piece of work every serious consumer of graphic narrative should attempt.
© 2006 Rick Veitch. All Rights Reserved.

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When Big Bears Invade


By Alexander Finbow & Nyco Rudolph with Ryan Ferrier (Renegade Arts Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-987982-549-7 (HB)

You might not know it when he/she/they put peanut butter poptarts on your vintage vinyl turntable or hide unwanted vegetables in the laptop, but kids always want to be heroes. They pick up what’s going in the world – local or global – and look for ways to fix it. Just compare the number of septuagenarians to middle schoolers who heard Greta Thunberg’s call to arms and decided now was the time to act…

There’s a wonderful tinge of all that in this hardback and digital picture book for the young and restless of all ages. Courtesy of writer/editor/publisher Alexander Finbow and illustrator Nyco Rudolph, When Big Bears Invade offers traditional rhyming couplets for humongous, cathartic painted spreads predicting what will happen when Earth finally has enough of humanity’s wasteful destructive ways and sets a legion of gigantic ursine avengers to settling scores and fixing the mess in the most effective manner possible…

Witty, pretty and deliciously satisfying, this is a full-on eco-fable for the rightly concerned of every vintage and persuasion: a perfect gift and a welcome diversion when the real world’s imminent demise drags you down…
© 2017 Alexander Finbow & Nyco Rudolph.

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Kabul Disco volume 1: How I Managed Not to be Abducted in Afghanistan


By Nicolas Wild, translated by Mark Bence & Fabrice Sapolsky (Life Drawn/Humanoids Inc.)
ISBN: 978-1-59465-868-6 (TPB)

Fiction and reality frequently blur, but stories – True, mostly True, totally True or Officially Confirmed by a Government Official and therefore Utterly Fallacious – told in comics form somehow always acquire an instant edge of veracity and patina of authenticity that is hard to dispute or refute.

Kabul Disco is a superb case-in-point: an example of sophisticated yet simple Euro-cartooning designed to inform, charm and challenge in equal amounts. I’m re-recommending this remarkable testament today because once again the people who govern us – apparently anywhere on Earth that people are governed – have a complete inability to read a room, movement, public opinion or security briefing and have once more abandoned guts, principles and common sense in the name of saving money and not making a fuss.

Assorted countries over centuries have made Afghanistan their football, only to get bored and leave it to even worse thugs. Lacking any power at all to make the callous bastards in charge everywhere pay or even feel discomfort, I’m opting to try and remind anyone who will listen that always, ALWAYS, us unimportant people suffer in the end. It’s just not right…

This seductive monochrome travel memoir was the debut episode in a sequence by French writer/artist Nicholas Wild, detailing his globe-trotting quest for employment: a worthy endeavour which took the wide-eyed political innocent to Afghanistan in 2005.

There’s always a war going on somewhere. That’s just the way it is. The enemy are always monsters and Our Side – there’s no option to refuse to take sides anymore – are always justified in what they do. Heaven forfend you slip up and start thinking of rivals or adversaries or opponents or even those who disagree with you as no more than people – with or without grievances or differing opinions…

In January 2005, Wild was in Paris; gripped by ennui and lack of inspiration and only mildly galvanised by lack of money and imminent homelessness. Responding to an online ad, he applied to a Communications Agency looking for a comics artist and was astounded to find himself accepted for a short commission. The job was overseas…

‘Part One: A Winter in Kabul’ follows the culture-shocked scribbler as he arduously transitions to a country in the throes of enforced reconstruction and modernisation, joining the somewhat sketchy and rather dubious NGO Zendagui Media as they work to bring the war-torn region into the arena of modern nations. Wild’s proposed task is to help define the fancy notion of democracy for the still-largely illiterate populace through comicbook versions of Afghanistan’s new Constitution…

The artist’s early difficulties in adjusting to the primitive conditions and superb gift for wry commentary afford the reader a brilliant example of the complex made simple as Wild succinctly unpicks Afghanistan’s convoluted history through the 20th century via a cartoon political primer that brilliantly defines how the place got to be such a corrupt mess. I certainly wish I’d had more comics like this when I studied modern history…

Days pass, and Nicholas settles in, toiling against impossible deadlines, conversely feeling locked in or anxiously exposed whenever he goes exploring; always aware that in this place foreigners go missing every day…

Although the security situation remains tense, trouble seems to only strike elsewhere and eventually Nick assimilates: befriending ordinary Afghanis, shopping, visiting Shiite mosques, eating in restaurants and even sightseeing in the stunning Bamiyan Valley…

All too soon the job is done and Wild is afraid he’s going to be let go…

‘Part Two: No Spring in Kabul’ finds him on April 1st 2005, happy to be retained, albeit on a 3-month contract as a graphic designer for Zendagui’s new project. The brief is to supply materials for a US military-sponsored push to recruit native Afghanis for the new National Army. The thought of crafting military propaganda is not a comforting or comfortable one…

Spiced with further insights about his improbable and unpredictable bosses and new eating experiences, the real kicker is meeting new recruit Laurie White: a political communications expert who worked with the 2000 Bush Election Campaign…

Trips to the University of Herat and enjoyable days amidst the villagers soon cement the visitor’s sense of belonging but that all takes a hard knock as the political situation intensifies and overconfidence leads to Wild getting lost in old Kabul…

When a fresh kidnapping results in a full lockdown for Zendagui staff, Laurie teasingly reveals the true story of Bush’s “victory” in Florida, but once the panic subsides it’s back to work. Even though Al Qaeda and the Taliban are ramping up their activities, Nick is sent to the far end of the Jalalabad Road to observe the filming of a recruitment ad just as Laurie is despatched to consult on the new voting form for a nation of more than two dozen different tribes and sects who don’t speak the same language and can’t read…

And so it goes, with fond reveries and razor-sharp observations peppering Wild’s irresistible account of an ordinary job in extraordinary times and a magical place: with idiocy and contradiction relentlessly piling up but also with progress somehow being made… until it’s time to go home again…

But is it for good?

Primarily rendered in beguiling monochrome, Kabul Disco also offers a stunning, full colour ‘Bonus Section’ comprising candid personal photographs of Wild’s stay, plus extensive examples of Yassin & Kaka Raouf: the 10-volume educational comic book he illustrated to explain the new Constitution for the newly democratised country.

Captivating, warm, funny, scarily informative and unobtrusively polemical, Kabul Disco is a wittily readable, non-discriminating reverie that informs and charms with surprising effect: the perfect response to the idiocy of war and dangers of corporate imperialism as well as a sublime tribute to the potent indomitability of human nature. I can’t comprehend how a celebration of such miraculous change and progress can be lost in the space of 16 years…
© 2018, Humanoids Inc., Los Angeles (USA). All rights reserved. First published in France as Kabul Disco Tome 1: Comment je ne me suis pas fait kidnapper en Afghanistan, © 2007 La Boîte à Bulles & Nicholas Wild. All rights reserved.

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Farewell, Brindavoine


By Tardi, translated by Jenna Allen (Fantagraphics)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-433-9 (Album HB)

Credited with creating a new style of expressionistic illustration dubbed “the New Realism”, Jacques Tardi is one of the greatest comics creators in the world, blessed with a singular vision and adamantine ideals. A strident anti-war activist, he apparently refused France’s greatest honour because he wanted to be completely free to say and create what he wants.

Tardi was born in the Commune of Valence, Drôme in August 1946 studying at École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and subsequently the prestigious Parisian École Nationale Supérieure des arts Décoratifs. He launched his comics career in 1969 at the home of modern French comics Pilote, with the series we’re looking at today first seen in 1972-1973.

From illustrating stories by Jean Giraud, Serge de Beketch and Pierre Christian, he moved on to westerns, crime tales and satirical works in magazines such as Record, Libération, Charlie Mensuel and L’Écho des Savanes all whilst graduating into adapting prose novels by Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Léo Malet.

The latter’s detective Nestor Burma was the subject of all-new albums written and drawn by Tardi once the established literary canon was exhausted, leading to the creation of Polonius in Métal Hurlant (1976) and the now-legendary Les Aventures Extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec – an epic period fantasy adventure which ran in the daily Sud-Ouest. The series numbers ten volumes thus far and inhabits the same pocket reality as the star of this tome.

The passionate creator has crafted many crushingly powerful anti-war books and stories (C’était la guerre des tranchées, Le trou d’obus, Moi René Tardi, prisonnier de guerre au Stalag IIB and other) dealing with the common soldier’s plight; written novels, created radio series, worked in movies, and co-created – with writer Jean Vautrin – Le Cri du Peuple: a quartet of albums about the Parisienne revolt of the Communards.

Far too few of this French master’s creations are available in English (barely a dozen out of more than fifty) but, thanks to NBM, iBooks and Fantagraphics, we’re catching up.

This lavish full-colour hardback (also available digitally) began life as Adieu Brindavoine, with its obscure yet complex Victoriana, shady political intrigues, dastardly plutocratic plotters and cast-iron-&-clockwork chic, leading to Tardi being proclaimed in later years the Godfather of Steampunk. His surreally-structured absurdist episodes and incidents – strung together in an almost stream-of-consciousness mode – work best on the visual perceptions with dialogue used only to ensure clarity or bemuse perception…

Following a context-supplying appreciation in Benoít Mouchart’s Preface, we begin in Neuilly-Sur-Seine in May 1914, as an aged messenger braves the cluttered and controversial home of gentleman photographer Lucien Brindavoine. Surly Basil Zarkhov has a startling – and potentially life-changing – proposition, but is gunned down by a skylight-shattering intruder before he can share it. However, thanks to his deathbed exposition, Lucien is soon heading by steamship for Istanbul, and another risky meeting…

Constantly encountering strikingly odd individuals, he is soon unwillingly partnered with effetely obnoxious intoxicated Englishman Mr. Oswald Carpleasure and hurtling across the desert towards Afghanistan in a battered motor vehicle. In their immediate future is a fantastic lost city, but the sinister gunman is in hot pursuit and wicked Olga Vogelgesang is determined to destroy them with her deadly state-of-the-military-art biplane…

After much privation and bewilderment, Lucien finally reaches the lost Iron City and is greeted by the orchestrators of many of his woes. Learning of an incredible plutocratic plot affords him little comfort, but before long the baroque devils in nominal charge fall upon each other like deranged wolves, enabling, if not compelling Brindavoine to flee in the most advanced passenger craft in the world…

Thanks to a breaking world war, he doesn’t get far…

Following the tale’s conclusion, a compelling comic epilogue from a previously unseen narrator (think Rocky Horror Show) deviously adds to the confusion by “explaining” what’s happened and Lucien’s ultimate fate before introducing a thematic follow-up.

‘Lambs to the Slaughter’ is set in November 1914 with deserters from all the armies involved holing up in a shattered church. Plagued by visions of perfect pasts and potential tomorrows, they are completely unprepared for when the mad military of today finds them…

Bizarre, visually resplendent, darkly funny, evocative and deliciously challenging, Farewell, Brindavoine is a comic tour de force on every level and a sublime example of how fashion, fantasy and futurism can work miracles when woven together by a master craftsman.
This edition of Farewell, Brindavoine © 2021 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. Adieu Brindavoine © 2011 Casterman. Translation © 2021 Jenna Allen. Preface © 2021 Benoít Mouchart. All rights reserved.

Farewell, Brindavoine is physically released on August 26th 2021 and available for pre-order. Digital editions can be purchased now.