Supernatural: Origins & Supernatural: The Dogs of Edinburgh


Supernatural: Origins
By Peter Johnson, Geoff Johns, Matthew Don Smith & various (DC/WildStorm)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1701-3 (TPB/Digital edition) 978-1-84576-754-7 (TPB Titan Books edition)

Supernatural: The Dogs of Edinburgh
By Brian Wood, Grant Bond, Matthew Don Smith & various (DC Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3506-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

Comics have always enjoyed a long, successful affiliation and nigh-symbiotic relationship with television, but in these days when even the ubiquitous goggle-box business is paralysed and endangered by on-demand streaming, too many channels and far too much choice, the numbers and types of program that migrate to funnybooks is increasingly limited.

Excluding kids’ animation shows, cult fantasy adventure series now predominate in this dwindling arena and one of the best to make that transition to the printed page was the epic monster-fighting saga of two brothers literally on the road to Hell as they tracked down unnatural horrors, mystical malignancies and all the unexplainable things that treat humanity as fair game and delicious delicacies…

Over 15 seasons of 327 episodes and spanning from September 13th 2005 to November 19th, 2020, TV series Supernatural followed Sam and Dean Winchester whose lives were forever changed when a yellow-eyed demon killed their mother. The horrific event drove distraught John Winchester into a life of eternal wandering: stalking and killing impossible beasts and horrors he now knew lurked in every shadow.

Years later, rumours still abound that the show will return… soon!

After growing up from a baby on the road to hell, Sam got out of the life and tried to live a normal existence before being dragged back when his surly, alienated brother called to say that their dad had gone missing. It happened right about the time Sam’s girlfriend was killed by a fiery demon…

If you’re looking for a spooky, rowdy, funny binge watch, go no further. Moreover, as we do comics here and the series was rapidly picked up for a spinoff funnybook series, you could also enjoy some printed scary stories…

Supernatural: Origins is an impressive official prequel to the epic show, following the dysfunctional Winchester family in the days, months and years after the boys’ mother floated up into the air and spontaneously combusted. It left their father with unanswerable questions, a hunger for vengeance and two rather unnatural kids to raise…

After Mary’s death, John packs toddler Dean and baby Sam into his car and goes into a spin of booze and bar-fights, until he meets palm-reader Missouri Mosley. The prognosticator offers veiled answers and a glimpse into a world of mumbo-jumbo which is proven to be savagely real when an unseen thing kills Mary’s best friend Julie. She was babysitting the traumatised boys at the time of her demise, and lodged in her ghastly remains was a huge, rune-carved fang from no creature ever born on Earth…

Armed only with hints into the true nature of the world, the former marine begins a quest for the tooth’s owner and in Tempe, Arizona meets prickly, reclusive scholar Fletcher Gable. He identifies it as belonging to a Black Shuck… a Hellhound…

Sending the senior Winchester on to a reported sighting of such in California, the savant offers a further gift: a blank journal to record the notes, photos, clippings, drawings, thoughts and experiences that will inevitably occur and need reporting now that father and sons are irrevocably set on their particular road to Perdition…

The wise man and his latest student are both painfully unaware that Winchester is himself being hunted…

When Mary’s formidable brother Jacob comes looking for the boys and fearing the worst (although he has no idea of what the can worst actually be), he too is embroiled in the quest – to his eternal regret – and only the arrival of the mysterious shadower saves John from becoming the latest casualty of the hellhound…

Hunter’ – more job description than name – helps Winchester clear up the mess and cover up the evidence before introducing the now-doubly bereaved and shell-shocked single parent to the full horror of the hidden world of the Supernatural. It’s 1983 and all Hell’s breaking loose…

Winchester becomes part of an amorphous hidden association of loners known as Hunters: mortals who’ve lost loved ones, seen the truth and had the guts to look for payback. Partnered with his brusque and enigmatic mentor, John Winchester is still looking for a golden eyed demon and a hellhound with a missing fang as he tackles his first monster – a leaping carnivore known as a “Heeler” with Hunter and another clean-up man named Ichi.

Sadly, by the time the trio return to the grimly unique bar called Harvell’s Roadhouse – where Sam & Dean have been waiting under the lethally efficient care of waitress Ellen – John is a full-blooded monster killer. Good thing too, as Ichi isn’t friendly or human anymore…

Thus begins a perilous pattern: John and Hunter dumping the kids on someone oblivious or horribly in on the secret for a few days as they take care of business. That journal rapidly fills up with accounts of incredible horror…

Winchester learns fast and, after meeting a resurrected priest who grants him a few precious, tainted moments with Mary’s spirit, he and his extremely hands-on senior partner revisit Fletcher Gable with useful intel on the rune-carved fang. Before long they’re headed to one of the spookiest locations in America and an appalling gauntlet of terrors, a confrontation with the hellhound and its master, inevitable betrayal and an explanation for all that the bereaved father and his sons have endured…

Dotted with moving, telling “flashbacks” – like the moment in 1991 when independent, lethally dangerous Dean has enough and tries to run away, abandoning dad and little brother to an interminable legion of monsters – this initial chronicle also includes a short tale of the boys by Geoff Johns, Phil Hester & colourist JD Mettler.

‘Speak No Evil’ harks back to a day in 1989 when taciturn Sam asked his big brother just how their mother died. He might even have received an answer if a demon hadn’t smashed through the motel window just then, locked in a death grip with their father…

This rip-snorting, tense and moody thriller lives up to the demands of the dedicated TV following and still fulfils all that’s demanded of a horror comic for readers who haven’t tracked the torturous trail of the Winchesters, and this chilling compendium even offers in-process views of covers by Tim Sale, plus pin-ups, working drawings and sketches by series illustrator Matthew Dow Smith.

 

Supernatural: The Dogs of Edinburgh compiles volume 4 #1-6 from 2011, and was written by Brian Wood (DMZ, X-Men, Northlanders, Moon Knight), with art from Grant Bond (Revere, The Clockwork Girl) & Matthew Don Smith. It examines a different piece of the past and sees Sam returning to Scotland after years away.

Back then, he was no killer of killers but a student on a research grant from Stamford University. His journey of discovery to Edinburgh University was initially educational, but immensely brightened by meeting mysterious lass Emma – “of the Isles” – who seemed interested in exactly the same arcane nonsense he was. She was also really pretty…

It turned out that Emma was a Breaker – the Scottish equivalent of Hunters – and as they grew closer she showed him the mystic highlights of the ancient city. He found himself falling, but was also increasingly aware that Emma wasn’t like other girls…

Meeting ghosts and battling an immortal who ran with feral city demon-dogs and controlled numerous crime rackets, they got too close, ended a monster menace together and inevitably parted…

As opening arc ‘The Dogs of Edinburgh’ gives way to present-day sequel ‘Emma of the Isles’, Sam examines a stash of notes, photos and a plane ticket. After all this time Emma has sent them to him and now he’s heading back to Scotland…

The mystery trek leads him to a remote village on the coast and a reserved room at the Clachan Inn. There he reads decades of clippings about drowned girls, but finds no sign of Emma. By the time she finally makes contact, the Hunter has deduced what’s behind the countless deaths, if not why, and the ghastly dreams he’s been experiencing are starting to form a pattern..

A charming legend becomes ghastly truth after he is attacked by nocturnal predators and saved by Emma, who gradually shares the truth of her origins but not her plan to end an eternal cycle of death and procreation. All they have to do is survive a determined assault by an entire tribe of “Selkies”…

This time, however, Sam is no unseasoned kid. He’s a trained hunter, with a lethally-skilled brother who will drop everything and cross an ocean to save his family. All Sam has to do is stay alive and hope to divine what Emma really is and what she really wants…

With covers by Dustin Nguyen and a tranche of concept art by Grant Bond, this twisted romance is a powerful seasonal mystery yarn to delight fright fans and another example of the eerie adventures that made Supernatural such an undying delight.

Punchy, powerful and spookily addictive… get them before they get you…
© 2008 Warner Bros Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Supernatural and all characters, distinctive likenesses and related elements are © Warner Bros Entertainment, Inc.
© 2012 Warner Bros. Television Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Supernatural and all characters, distinctive likenesses and related elements are © 2011, 2012 Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

xxxHolic Omnibus volume 1


By Clamp, translated & adapted by William Flanagan and lettered by Dana Hayward (Kodansha Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61262-591-1

After beginning as an eleven-strong  dojinshi (self publishing or amateur) group in the late-1980s, Kuranpu – AKA CLAMP – eventually stabilised as primarily writer ÅŒkawa Nanase and artists Igarashi Satsuki, Nekoi Tsubaki &  Mokona (Apapa), whose seamless collaborations on such series as Tokyo Babylon, Clamp Detective School, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, X, Legal Drug, Chobits and many more revolutionised Japanese comics in the 1990s.

Beginning solidly in the shōjo marketplace, the collective quickly began challenging the established forms and eventually produced material for far more mature and demanding readerships. The sales of their 26 different titles to date in collected tankōbon volumes far exceeds 100 million copies.

This monolithic 560 page monochrome magnum opus re-presents the first three volumes of one of their most memorable mystic sienen (made for male readers) masterpieces; one that broke boundaries in Japan by interacting and crossing over a number of the collective’s other ongoing series: specifically Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle which we know as Cardcaptor Sakura.

xxxHolic ran from 2003 to 2011, at first sporadically serialised in Kodansha’s Young Magazine before finding a regular home (from June 2010 to its conclusion in February 2011) in Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine.

The epic 19 volume saga has been seen previously in English translation – in America from Del Rey Manga and Tanoshimi in the UK – and naturally there are a wealth of film and TV anime, OVAs, games, light novels and all the other connected media spin-offs available starring the lead characters.

And in case you were wondering the xxx doesn’t stand for sex: in Japanese culture the triple cross merely denotes “fill in the blank”…

The madcap mystery begins when excitable student Kimihiro Watanuki is driven into the wards surrounding a strange shop. He has always had a slight problem he doesn’t like sharing: Watanuki sees spirits. Not just ghosts but all types of supernatural manifestation. In fact something inexplicable and nasty actually chased him into the mystic fence around YÅ«ko Ichihara‘s eccentric little emporium where he is confronted by two creepy little children Moro and Maru…

The eccentric proprietrix then smugly claims it was “hitsuzen” – a naturally fore-ordained event – that brought him and before he can stop her proceeds to read his fortune. Her shop offers divination and stocks curios but her game is granting wishes and the slickly manipulative YÅ«ko swiftly and easily tricks the harassed lad into expressing his desire to be rid of his gift.

In her world services cost and although she instantly grants his wish Yūko explains it will only occur after he had paid for it… with an unspecified amount of lowly indentured servitude…

Thus he becomes an unpaid skivvy, cook and cleaner at the little shop of wonders, sorting the assorted artefacts (many of which are portentous icons in other CLAMP tales) and being lectured by the sublimely arrogant witch. Moreover she keeps adding lessons, losses, breakages and other stuff to his account…

He soon gets an inkling of a deeper game when a customer comes in with a wish and tries to play false with the witch. Despite repeated warnings the client continues to lie and Watanuki eventually sees with his spirit vision the ghastly consequence of being untrue to oneself and Yūko …

His onerous service is punctuated with days at the Cross Private School, but one day after he talks to cute Himawari Kunogi and instantly falls in love, Yūko warns of bad tidings ahead…

The lad still doesn’t trust his new boss – with good reason – but after a forthright lecture on the effects and responsibilities of predestination and of all kinds of divination, she takes him on a magical shopping trip and enigmatic errand to meet another potential customer.

A troubled housewife is addicted to social media and wants to be cured of her computer compulsion, but didn’t know how to proceed. When the exotic woman and her goofy servant turn up unannounced on her doorstep she is willing to do whatever YÅ«ko prescribes but utterly unprepared for the consequences…

One rainy day Watanuki’s culinary and other gifts are particularly tested when the hard-drinking sorceress entertains guests from another dimension – (Syoaran and Sakura from the aforementioned CardCaptor series) in desperate need of sanctuary and something only her constantly moaning apprentice can retrieve from the shop’s capacious and sinister back rooms…

The pair of deceptively cute, animated artefacts he finds are then split up, with one accompanying the guests back to their own realm whilst Yūko retains its twin “Mokona” for future emergencies…

One day a delightful picnic with Himawari is too soon ended because Watanuki has to go back to Yūko, who needs him to have his fortune told by a true expert. However, always working to her own agenda, the witch first treats him to the indulgences of a slick and lovely charlatan before introducing him to the innocuous real thing…

Watanuki’s chances with Himawari take another beating when classmate Shizuka Dōmeki falls under YÅ«ko’s influence. He is tall, clever, good-looking and a star of the archery club, but the witch is more interested in his hidden spiritual powers – and the fact that he makes Watanuki feel furious and inadequate at the same time.

She invites all three of them to a mid-summer ghost-story party at a certain troubled house…

The spooky soiree goes exactly as the sorceress intended and turns terrifyingly real when malignant forces only Watanuki can detect attack. However Dōmeki – who can see nothing amiss – is able to destroy them with his own gift – a hereditary psychic exorcism power- if his rival tells him where to fire his imaginary arrows…

With Himawari now part of YÅ«ko’s circle, Watanuki is constantly furious at both his mistress and the suave, couldn’t-care-less archer-rival, but as summer turns to autumn he slowly learns to make peace with and even grudgingly accept the archer’s presence.

After another encounter with the Sakura heroes the schoolboys are inadvertently drawn into an even scarier team-up when Yūko despatches them to investigate a school where female students meddled with “Angel-San” prophecy magic (like western Ouija board games) and called up something uncontrollable…

The Witch doesn’t bother to accompany them but does insist Watanuki wear a pair of magic animal ears so she can talk to him from the comfort of he couch. It also makes him look like a complete idiot…

The entire school is a deadly trap for the unprepared lads but their valiant efforts call forth an unsuspected protective spirit to cleanse the building. Tragically the archer is slightly wounded saving Watanuki…

Now Himawari is certain to pick him…

As things get back to abnormal another client turns up to have her wish fulfilled but is too arrogant to listen to the seller’s advice. Before long the kids are just too late to prevent a ghastly chain of tragedy caused by her cocky misuse of a genuine mummified Monkey’s Paw…

This monumental compilation concludes with a delightful seasonal short as the still loudly complaining but slowly acclimatising Watanuki finally sees the miraculous side of his gift when he meets and befriends a Kitsune (fox spirit) street food vendor and his delightful cub…

Expansive, enthralling and wickedly funny, xxxHolic is a glorious romp combining whimsy and horror that will delight lovers of fantasy in all forms.

This Omnibus edition is punctuated throughout with text features including ‘Honorifics Explained’, ‘Artifacts and Miscellany’ ‘Translation Notes’, background commentary on crossover guest stars and other CLAMP classics in ‘Past Works’, cultural notes on ‘Ghost Stories in the Summer’, ‘Protective Spirits and Ancestor Worship’ and much more.

xxxHolic Omnibus volume 1 © 2003-2004 CLAMP. Shigatsu Tsuitachi CO., LTD./Kodansha. English translation © 2014 CLAMP. Shigatsu Tsuitachi CO., LTD./Kodansha. All rights reserved.
This book is printed in the traditional ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.

Shrine of the Morning Mist volume 1


By Hiroki Ugawa, translated and adapted by Jeremiah Bourque & Hope Donovan(TokyoPop)
ISBN: 978-1-59816-343-4

Most manga can be characterised by a fast, raucous and even occasionally choppy style and manner of delivery but the first volume of Hiroki Ugawa’s atmospheric supernatural thriller and moody saga of young love takes its time to get all the elements in play rather than simply steaming in all guns blazing.

Set in the city of Miyoshi in Hiroshima Prefecture (noted for its shrines and beautiful mist-draped landscapes) Asagiri no Miko or Shrine of the Morning Mist first appeared as a serial in the monthly periodical Young King Ours, running eventually to five volumes of eerie mystery, romance comedy and demonic action.

The saga opens here in traditional portentous manner and carefully unfolds the story of young Yuzu Hieda, one of three sisters who are hereditary Miko (a combination of shamans, mediums and priestesses attached to Shinto shrines and temples) attending to the local places of worship.

The sisters are especially gifted with special powers to combat the supernatural threats that menace the locality.

Little more than a teenager herself, schoolgirl Yuzu is troubled by the return of her childhood sweetheart and cousin Tadahiro Amatsu who, after five years away, has come home only to be targeted by evil forces. Despite being teased by sisters Tama and Kurako Yuzu accompanies them to the railway station just in time to save the lad from a sinister, sorcerous old man obsessed with the boy’s blood.

Invited to stay in the Miko’s home the withdrawn boy is disquieted by the teasing and references to his past relationship with Yuzu, but the father of the house proves to be a far-more unforgiving prospect…

Mystic forces are gathering round the introspective, solitary boy – with repercussions felt as far away as Tokyo – and over their dad’s objections Tadahiro is pressured into staying at the Hieda home where he can be properly protected. However next morning when the girls are at school a monolithic, cyclopean demon attacks the house. The assault is instantly perceived by Yuzu who dashes back to save him only to find her long-absent mother already there, having driven off the dark “kami”.

Well, one of them, at least…

Typically even Mother Miyuki thinks Tadahiro and Yuzu are a perfect, predestined couple…

With questions swirling about him, such as “why is everybody so interested in his blood” and “whatever happened to his own parents” the shell-shocked Tadahiro is blissfully unaware that the Miko are forming a protective Council around him, but even he knows something is up when the dark newcomer Koma introduces herself and reveals that she intimately knew his long-departed father…

To be continued…

This uncharacteristically slow-paced, contemplative and almost elegiac tale mystery was partially inspired by a classical tale recorded on the Inō Mononoke scroll and Hiroki Ugawa’s beautiful illustration perfectly captures a sense of brooding ancient powers at war, even during the most juvenile set-piece moments of awkward young romance and generational embarrassment comedy.

A slightly off-beat but intriguing tale for older readers, this black and white volume is printed in the Japanese right-to-left, back to front format.
© 2001 Hiroki Ugawa. All rights reserved. English text © 2006 TokyoPop inc.

Boneyard in Color, Volume 2

Boneyard in Color 

By Richard Moore

(NBM)  ISBN 1-56163-487-5

Richard Paris is pretty average. Or at least he was until he inherited that cemetery. You know the one: out by Raven Falls — where that sexy vampire chick and those monsters and ghosts and demons all hang out. Yeah that’s the one. And now that he’s living with all those weirdos, strange stuff just keeps on happening to him. No sooner has he sent Belzebub packing back to the inferno than the Internal Revenue Service has come after him. And they won’t be content with blood, souls or eternal damnation. They want half a million dollars! How can Richard and his peculiar cast of reprobates get out of this crisis?

There’s a great tradition of combining horror and comedy, and Richard Moore has shown that there is still much fun to be had in this vein. Combining traditional cartoon drawing with a wicked sense of slapstick and screwball humour, filtered through a modern lens of cynical modernism, this is an absolute joy of a funnybook.

This edition is printed in colour for all those fools who wouldn’t buy it when it was first released in the original black and white. Still damned funny though.

© 2002 Richard Moore. All Rights Reserved.

Kid Eternity

Kid Eternity

By Grant Morrison & Duncan Fegredo

(DC Comics)  ISBN 1-84576-239-8

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

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

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

© 1991, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Swamp Thing: Infernal Triangles

Swamp Thing: Infernal Triangles

By Rick Veitch, Jamie Delano, Stephen Bissette, Alfredo Alcala & Tom Mandrake

(Vertigo)  ISBN 1-84576-395-5

The reprinting of classic Swamp Thing continues as a coterie of guest creators detail the increasingly cosmic adventures of the planet’s Earth Elemental. From issue #77 Jamie Delano scripts and Tom Mandrake and Alfredo Alcala illustrate Infernal Triangles, a reconciliation of sorts with the street wizard John Constantine, used as a semi-witting sperm donor in the creation of the plant creature and his human wife’s baby.

The next issue To Sow One’s Seed in the Wind, written by Steve Bissette, details Abby’s and Swampy’s preparations for that impending happy event, and Veitch returns to write and draw the tale (Waiting for God [Oh!] from # 79) of Superman’s attempts to stop the Bog God’s revenge attempt against Lex Luthor, who almost destroyed him back when Alan Moore was writing the series.

From here things might get a touch confusing, so bear with me.

The Longest Day, from Swamp Thing #80, is a prequel to the Invasion cross-over event that ran through all the DC comics that year. For our purposes suffice it to say a coalition of alien races decide to wipe out humanity, and, as one of them uses plant-based technology, they decide to remove Swamp Thing in a pre-emptive strike. Warned by the Parliament of Trees, our soggy hero nonetheless vanishes from the planet and is presumed dead. Veitch and Alcala handle the creative chores for this and the next part, Widowsweed (issue #81). A frantic and desperate Abby has to deal with an alien bounty-hunter trying to destroy her nigh omnipotent – and missing — husband. The continued tale breaks off at the end of this moving and engrossing chapter as, for no logical reason, the previous year’s Swamp Thing Annual is wedged in to fill up the volume, utterly destroying the mood and the tension that should have carried over to the next volume. These aren’t periodicals, guys! They’re books! Give some thought to narrative flow when you compile these things, or you’ll never expand into the “real” world audience.

That story by the way, Distant Cousins which could have fitted in anywhere before The Longest Day, is a grimly whimsical and dark tribute to DC’s publishing obsession with monkeys and apes over the years and features such luminaries as Angel and the Ape, Monsieur Mallah, Gorilla Boss Dyke, Titano, Janu the Jungle Boy, Gorilla Grodd, Bwana Beast, Roy Raymond, Congo Bill and Congorilla in one attempt to correct evolution’s biggest mistake. Veitch scripts and is joined by a coterie of fun-loving nostalgists including Shawn McManus, Jim Fern, Stan Woch and Tom Yeates on the art.

These are fine stories, provocative and memorable, and deserve to be read – preferably in some semblance of dramatic order

© 1987, 1988, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Grimjack: Killer Instinct

Grimjack: Killer Instinct

By John Ostrander & Timothy Truman

(IDW Publishing)

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

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

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