Category: Graphic Novels

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Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set-Up

Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set-Up 

By Peter O’Donnell and Jim Holdaway (Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84023-658-2

Titan Books has re-released new editions of some classic British newspaper strips over the last few years. Amongst these masterpieces are the collected and chronological adventures of Modesty Blaise. The legendary femme fatale crimefighter first appeared in the Evening Standard on May 13th, 1963 and starred in some of the world’s most memorable crime fiction, and all in three panels a day.

This initial volume introduces Modesty and her right hand man Willie Garvin, retired super-criminals who got too rich too young and are now bored out of their brains. Enter Sir Gerald Tarrant, head of a nebulous British spy organization who recruits her by offering her excitement and a chance to get some real evil sods. From that tenuous beginning in ‘La Machine’, the pair begin a helter-skelter thrill ride in the ‘The Long Lever’ and the eponymous ‘Gabriel Set-up’. Also included is ‘In the Beginning’, which was produced in 1966 as an origin and introduction to bring newly subscribing newspapers up to speed on the characters.

Peter O’Donnell and Jim Holdaway (who had previously collaborated on Romeo Jones – a light-hearted adventure strip from the 1950’s and itself well overdue for collection) produced story after story until Holdaway’s tragic early death in 1970. The tales are stylish and engaging spy/crime/thriller fare in the vein of Ian Fleming’s Bond stories (the comic version of which Titan also reprints) and art fans especially should absorb Holdaway’s beautiful crisp line work, with each panel being something of a masterclass in pacing, composition and plain good, old-fashioned drawing.

In an industry where comic themes seem more and more limited and the readership dwindles to a slavish fan base that only wants more and shinier versions of what it’s already had, the beauty of a strip such as Modesty Blaise is not simply the timeless excellence of the stories and the captivating wonder of the illustration, but that material such as this can’t fail to attract a broader readership to the medium. Its content could hold its own against the best offerings of television and film. Sydney Bristow beware – Modesty’s back and she takes no prisoners.

© 2004 Associated Newspapers/Atlantic Syndication.

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JLA: The Greatest Stories Ever Told

JLA: The Greatest Stories Ever Told 

By various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-305-X

With all the interest generated by DC’s mass crossover event Infinite Crisis, not to mention the continuing popularity of the Justice League Unlimited animated series, it was inevitable that yet another compilation of classic tales would be forthcoming from the burgeoning archives of the “World’s Greatest Superheroes”. Many will quibble with the title of the collection. The tales presented here are without doubt, not the very best examples from the title’s chequered, 46 year history – most of those have already been reprinted – but nonetheless this selection does illustrate why the series has such faithful fans.

The mandatory origin is from 1982, when the first volume of the comic book series reached its 200th issue, with fan favourite artist George Pérez illustrating Gerry Conway’s subtle updating of the legend. Then, “The Super-Exiles of Earth” (Justice League of America #19, 1963) by Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky and Bernard Sachs is a standard high-quality adventure with the heroes forced to leave Earth only to sneak back in their civilian identities – unknown even to each other at this time – and thwart the dastardly Dr Destiny. At tale’s end the Leaguers operate on their own minds to expunge the knowledge of those secret identities.

This twin theme of mind control and secret identity, so pivotal to the Identity Crisis/Infinite Crisis scenarios is again revisited with “Snapper Carr – Super Traitor” (Justice League of America #77, 1969) as Denny O’Neil and Dick Dillin/Joe Giella reflect those troubled flower-power days in a tale of deceit, betrayal and revelation. Civil liberties just didn’t seem to apply to the inside of heads back then.

Justice League of America #122, 1975 provides another adventure of memory manipulation with “The Great Identity Crisis” as scripter Marty Pasko reveals how a master plan of the villainous Dr Light was the reason the heroes finally trusted each other with their civilian secrets. Dillin once again illustrates, with Frank McLaughlin providing the inking. “The League That Defeated Itself” (Justice League of America #166-168, 1979) is a rather mediocre body-swapping yarn featuring the Secret Society of Super Villains, by Conway, Dillin and McLaughlin, but has become the pivotal plot maguffin of the current high-tension JLA continuity. It just shows how a skilful re-interpretation of past tales can be a more effective tool than simply destroying the universe and starting over – and over – and over.

Next up is the first issue of Justice League, an immensely successful re-launch from 1987 that balanced the meta-human thrills with deprecating humour and zingy one-liners to great effect. “Born Again” comes courtesy of Keith Giffin, J M DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire and Terry Austin, who recently revived the whole concept with the series Formerly Known as the Justice League (also available as a graphic novel).

“Star-seed” from JLA Secret Files #1 (1997) was the reincarnation of the last but one team (as of this writing a new regular – 4th? – series is back again). Grant Morrison and Mark Millar reinvigorated the team-concept and Howard Porter and John Dell supplied the art-gloss demanded by modern fans. The plot involves a reinterpretation of the very first adventure wherein a starfish from outer space tries to conquer the world. The last story comes from JLA #61 (2002), courtesy of Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke and Tom Nguyen. In “Two-Minute Warning” we see a snapshot of each member over a crucial, if routine, moment of their lives.

Without this team, this concept, we would arguably not be here now. Stan Lee cites the initial success of the series as the impetus for Marvel’s Fantastic Four. It certainly played a part in cementing superheroes and the comic-book inextricably together in the public consciousness. These yarns are certainly worth reading, and if you’re a newcomer or late returnee drawn in by the current media attention, despite not being the absolute “greatest stories”, they are at least entertaining and thematically relevant. And surely that’s not such a bad thing?

Compilation © 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Fifteen Strings of Cash

Fifteen Strings of Cash 

Adapted by Kuang Rong illustrated by Wang Hongli (Foreign Languages Press Beijing)
No ISBN

Here’s another beautiful example of the traditional Orient’s take on graphic narrative in the form of a classical tale of love and justice. When the dipsomaniac Butcher and widower You Hulu borrows fifteen strings of cash from his sister-in-law, he jokingly tells his daughter that he has sold her when she asks where the money came from. As young girls have no discernable sense of humour, she goes to bed weeping, before deciding to run to her aunt for sanctuary. As she leaves her father, passed out on the bed, she does not realise that a neighbour will soon murder the old drunk and accuse her of theft and patricide.

How the demure Su Xujan and the kind young man, Xiong Youlan, who befriended her on the road are arrested, tried, and condemned to death for a crime that they had no idea even happened, and how eventually one conscientious court official, the Prefect Kuang, risks his career and his life to exonerate them and catch the real killer, is a whirlwind of delight that combines romance, comedy, detective yarn and political thriller, illustrated in a truly rhapsodic dry brush and fine-line pen and ink style that almost renders the text (in Mandarin, I think, and English) unnecessary. The format is the tried-and-true single frame and text block per page that comprises most traditional Chinese publications of this type.

Fifteen Strings of Cash is an absolute delight for readers of all ages, and proves that if great stories are universal, how much more so are great picture stories. The current printings should be available at any good Chinatown book or art materials supplier.

Presumably© 1982 Foreign Languages Press Beijing – my computer can’t reproduce the Mandarin symbols, I’m sure they know who they are. If anyone knows better we’ll happy correct this oversight. All Rights Reserved, I suspect.

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Y: The Last Man Vol 3: One Small Step

Y: The Last Man Vol 3: One Small Step

Brian K Vaughan, Pia Guerra & José Marzán with Paul Chadwick (DC/ Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84023-805-4

When a plague killed every male on Earth, only Yorick Brown and his pet monkey survived in a world utterly female. With a government agent and a geneticist escorting across the devastated American continent to a Californian bio-lab all the young man can think of is re-uniting with his girlfriend, trapped in Australia when the disaster struck.

Volume 3, collecting issues #11-17 of the monthly comic, begins a meandering progression of shorter tales as the trio make their way across a devastated America and picks up from the previous volume with the eagerly anticipated arrival of astronauts who have avoided plague contamination by the simple expedient of being in space when it struck. Moreover, two of them are hulking great healthy men!

Naturally it is all doomed to go wrong. Filling out the book is a two part story illustrated by Concrete creator Paul Chadwick, which examines the roles of Art and Mass Entertainment on the media (and especially TV) deprived women in a post plague world. It is, perhaps, in such smaller scale stories that Y shows the most potential, so let’s hope it’s a foretaste of things to come.

Ultimately, taken on its merits, Y is a somewhat glib contemporary reworking of a much-explored theme that is perhaps best realised by Philip Wylie in his novel The Disappearance, but it’s readable enough, very well drawn — and it does it all without resorting to coyness or exploitation.

© 2003, 2004 Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra. All Rights Reserved.

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Y: The Last Man Vol 2: Cycles

Y: The Last Man Vol 2: Cycles 

Brian K Vaughan, Pia Guerra & José Marzán (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84023-728-7

When a plague killed every male on Earth, only Yorick Brown and his pet monkey survived in a world utterly female. With a government agent and a geneticist escorting across the devastated American continent to a Californian bio-lab all the young man can think of is re-uniting with his girlfriend, trapped in Australia when the disaster struck.

The second volume picks up as the trio end up in a curiously stable community in the Midwest where the sight of a male hardly seems to ruffle the assembled feathers, and consequently presents Yorick with his first instance of genuine sexual temptation. Sadly, the idyll is short lived as the Amazons catch up to the wanderers there, with tragic results.

The ongoing soap-opera tone burgeons in this comparatively ill-paced and sluggish volume and a faint “cliff-hanger” air starts to descend over everything. Israeli commandos are hunting for the last sperm-donor on Earth. There’s lots of lip service paid to the type of society the world would be without most of its pilots, entrepreneurs, mechanics, labourers and violent felons but there’s precious little story progression.

The volume even ends with a classic shock cliff-hanger. That might be acceptable for a periodical (these stories first saw print in issues #6-10 of the monthly comic) but is quite unsatisfactory for a collected volume and somewhat defeats the purpose of using these collections to lure non-collectors back to the fold and create a new readership.

 © 2003 Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra. All Rights Reserved.

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Y: The Last Man Vol 1: Unmanned

Y: The Last Man Vol 1: Unmanned 

Brian K Vaughan, Pia Guerra & José Marzán (DC/ Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84023-708-2

An old, old science fiction concept gets a new and pithy updating in the Vertigo comic Y: The Last Man, as a mystery plague destroys every male mammal on Earth including all the sperm and the foetuses. If it had a Y chromosome it died, except, somehow, for amateur escapologist and slacker goof-ball Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand. One night the guy goes to bed pining for his absent girlfriend (who’s an anthropology grad on a gig in Australia) and the next day he’s the last man alive.

His mother, part of the new – for which read Female-and-Still-Standing after a failed power-grab by the widows of Republican Congressmen – Presidential cabinet, is by default a Leader of the Free World until The New President can get to Washington and take office. Once Yorick makes his way to her through a devastated urban landscape – the plague hit during rush-hour on the East Coast and we all know that chicks just go to pieces in a crisis – he escapes from her half-hearted attempt to lock him a bunker and immediately announces he’s off Down Under.

Mum and Madam President then allow the world’s only known source of the next generation to undertake a cross-country trek rather than subjecting him to some more rational project… such as milking him for IVF resources. Off Yorick goes with a lethal and ambiguous secret agent known only as 355 to the secret West Coast laboratory of Dr Allison Mann. The good doctor is a geneticist who thinks she might be the cause of all the trouble, but even so… come on. His mom is a US politician, for Pete’s sake! Surely he would at least have a platoon of armed guards for the trip!

Also out to stake their claim and add to the tension are a crack squad of Israeli commandos with a hidden agenda and mysterious sponsor, plus post disaster cult The Daughters of the Amazon who want to make sure that there really are no more men. Throughout all this Yorick remains a contrary cuss. Defying every whim and Guy stereotype all he wants is to be reunited with his girl trapped in Oz.

Although this is mostly set-up the main are characters are engaging and work well to dispel the inevitable aura of familiarity and cliché this series can’t help but struggle against. This volume collects issues #1-5 of the monthly comic series for adults.

© 2002 Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra. All Rights Reserved

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Superman: Wrath of Gog

Superman: Wrath of Gog

By Chuck Austen, Ivan Reis & Marc Campos
ISBN 1-84576-066-2

Over the course of too many years I’ve followed the Man of Steel’s adventures, and realised that as well as being the absolute progenitor of the superhero industry, he’s probably the most re-worked character in it. I’ve seen a champion of the poor become a social redeemer, a boy scout, an interstellar policeman and even a grim ‘n’ gritty caped Rambo. Surely to keep following him through all those changes I must be some kind of fan, right?

Then why does the current incarnation leave me so cold?

Even when produced by – as was ever the case – some of the best contemporary creators around, the recent stories just seem to be lacking a certain something. This particular excursion, Wrath of Gog (reprinting Action Comics issues #812-819), rattles along and it’s competently illustrated, but it’s a superficial, slick kind of modern pick and mix of fight scenes.

After a brief, violent interlude with Darkseid and Co, Gog, yet another time-travelling villain (springing this time from the pages of Kingdom Come), attacks Smallville and not even the Teen Titans can stop him. When Superman appears, he is seriously wounded, leading to a mass attack by glory-hungry super-villains, and only Wonder Woman can protect him, until he recovers and wipes the floor with everybody.

To his credit, Austen does try to inject some depth with the return of extended sub-plots and these stories weren’t originally designed as a cohesive epic, but simply periodical publishing. The last tale, a Memento-esque parable, contrasts the relationship of husband and wife criminals trying to kill the Man of Tomorrow with the looming romantic triangle of Clark Kent, his wife Lois and the newly divorced Lana Lang. Although forced, it does have something more than a big, arrogant charmless ruffian hitting everything all the time, and the competing flashback technique does keep the attention.

Wait, perhaps that’s it? Maybe today’s superheroes don’t get to have charm anymore. The glorious sense of wonder, once present even in the darkest Superman tales, just isn’t there anymore. Is it all about tights, boots and hitting now?

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman: Unconventional Warfare

Superman: Unconventional Warfare 

By Greg Rucka & Various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-026-3

I have some difficulty with the superficiality of many modern takes on classic comic characters. It’s probably because I’m old but it often feels that rather than write something new, creators simply get told to put a modern spin on the old stuff and keep it circling in a holding pattern until the current audience have grown up and moved away. I’d love to see some sales figures on retention of new readers as compared to people my age who keep buying out of love and inertia. I don’t care how much red paint you slap on a Fiesta, it won’t never be no Porsche.

But I digress. The latest Superman collection tells of yet another conspiracy to destroy the Man of Steel produced against the real world backdrop of America preparing to invade a Middle Eastern nation – in this case the oddly reminiscent “terrorist state of Umec”. Clark Kent is in the doghouse with his bosses and is trying to rebuild his career, so Lois Lane – or is it Kent, or Lane-Kent – is covering the story on her own. So what with job worries and a new super villain showing up every twenty pages, Superman is not there when his wife is shot by a sniper.

Normally I try to avoid spoiling the story, but no-one in their right mind believes a major character is going to stay dead at a company that has enough resurrected people in its stable to form their own football league. The point here is that writer Rucka has been able to rise above these woeful predictabilities and engage the reader by sheer quality of writing. Here is an instance of how it happens actually superseding what’s happening. Here is a classic character being treated with a little thought and a lot of respect.

It’s very well drawn too. You should read it yourself.

© 2005 DC Comics

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Superman: For Tomorrow Vols 1 & 2

 Superman: For Tomorrow Vol 1

By Brian Azzarello, Jim Lee & Scott Williams (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-4012-0351-5 hardcover 1-84576-145-6 softcover Volume 1
ISBN 1-4012-0715-4 hardcover 1-4012-0448-1 softcover Volume 2

A major part of modern comic publishing is publicity-seeking and — hopefully — sales enhancing “events”. These are either braided mega-crossovers that involve a large number of individual titles in one big story (Gotta get ’em all!) or extended storylines by celebrity creators. Occasionally you get both at once. Occasionally you strike gold.

Hot from his success with Batman in Hush, Jim Lee teamed with writer Brian Azzarello for just such an event with For Tomorrow which ran in Superman issues #204-215 in 2004 and 2005. For one year these star creators got to play with DC’s biggest gun.

Set notionally apart from the rest of the company’s continuity, although still packed with enough guest stars to sink a battleship, this story sees a Superman at odds with himself and looking for all kinds of answers as he consults a priest following the world wide catastrophe dubbed ‘The Vanishing’. Whilst the Man of Steel is away on a space mission a wave of energy washes over the Earth causing the evaporation of one million souls. As if that’s not tragedy enough, one of them was his beloved wife Lois.

Increasingly isolated, guilty and fixated, he becomes involved in a civil war, and by disarming the combatants causes an escalation to genocide. His quest becoming ever more desperate, he alienates his Justice League colleagues and discovers that governmental super-spooks are behind some if not all of his problems. Everywhere he turns there’s someone – or thing – itching for a fight. By the end of volume 1 he is aloof, stressed, almost monomaniacal in his determination to solve the riddle. But he does now possess the mysterious device that caused the Vanishing…

Superman: For Tomorrow Vol 2

Ramping up the action, the second book sees Superman find the missing humans by ‘vanishing’ himself. This only deepens the mystery, and his struggle to regain perspective and return the victims to Earth leads to a catastrophic battle with a dreaded foe and the destruction of a virtual paradise. Meanwhile in Metropolis, the unlucky priest has fallen to technological temptation courtesy of those super-spooks and he must pay a heavy price before he can find his own peace.

This is not a terrible Superman story and it is always good to see creators try something ambitious, but as is often the case with these event spectaculars, the result just can’t live up to the intent or the hype. And there are so many unanswered questions.

Why didn’t the entire planet go bonkers when a million citizens vanished in an eye-blink? Surely Superman isn’t the only one to notice or care? Wouldn’t even American media still be talking about it one year later? Wouldn’t some Governments mobilise, or at least form a committee?

Our hero is by turns smug and hapless, and his aggression towards his friends can’t be rationalised by his loss. Why would he turn to a priest when he has access to so many different sorts of spiritual and indeed supernatural guides? Where are his parents in all this? And why even bother with the clichéd war of liberation/government interventionists if you’re not going to deal with them coherently? Plot foibles aside, there’s also too much dependence on the well drawn and ubiquitous fight scenes to carry the narrative, but if you can swallow all that and simply want a gratuitous –if perhaps flawed – rollercoaster ride, these two books are a solid bronze read.

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Star Wars: Visionaries

Star Wars: Visionaries

By Various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN 1-84576-110-3

In most creative endeavours, there’s a bittersweet edge that comes from what’s been made but which is left out of the finished piece, whether it’s a comics script or a motion picture. The fascinating premise here is that a group of talents involved with the pre-production of the Star Wars films have been asked to turn those inevitable runners-up concepts into comic strips.

Ranging from the magnificent to the just plain weird, Visionaries is a pictorial treat for fans of the franchise and simple science fiction followers also. Twelve creators from the Lucasfilm art department and from Industrial Light and Magic make a seamless transition to the sphere of graphic narrative in nine stories and two visual essays, based on the events of the Star Wars universe, concentrating particularly on the time between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

By far the most memorable are Aaron McBride’s “Old Wounds”, “Entrenched” by Alex Jaeger and M. Zachary Sherman and the balletic, wordless, splendidly dark exercise in the nature of evil “Sithisis” by Derek Thompson.

As much a coffee-table art book as graphic novel, there’s plenty for all readers to digest here.

 © 2004 Lucasfilm Ltd & ™. All Rights Reserved.