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Small Press Sunday


I started out in this game when marks on paper were considered Cutting Edge, making minicomics, collaborating on fanzines and concocting stripzines with fellow weirdoes, outcasts and comics addicts. Even today, seeing the raw stuff of creativity in hand-crafted paper pamphlets still gets me going in ways that threatens my tired old heart…
With that in mind, here’s a selection of tantalising treats that have landed in my review tray recently…
A few days before I began a major writing project with an insane deadline, I reviewed the magnificent GoodCopBadCop collections (still readily available and waiting to make your existence worthwhile…). In the same package was the first issue of the latest storyline and now that my day job’s back to normal – and with deepest apologies to Jim and the lads – here’s that promised review of the new follow-up case…

GoodCopBadCop Casebook #3.1 ‘Only Pigs and Horses’ Part 1
By Jim Alexander and Aaron Murphy, with Chris Twydell & Jim Campbell (Planet Jimbot Comics)

As well as mind-boggling graphic albums, independent publisher Planet Jimbot (Jims Alexander & Campbell with an ever-shifting pool of graphic talent) also delivers proper black-&-white comicbooks: none better than the continuing exploits of the most challenging rozzer in the history of crime.

City of Glasgow Police Inspector Brian Fisher is a worthy, weary, dedicated public servant with the oddest partner an honest copper could ever imagine – his own ruthless, rule-less crazy-man bad side…

Following directly on from the last book collection (GoodCopBadCop Casebook volume 2) this deceptively moody yarn finds Fisher about to start work again after a long period of sick leave. He’s been stood down ever since he caught catching a macabre, mutilating serial killer who left his bloody mark on the seemingly inoffensive Inspector.

Also out of sorts is his assistant Detective Sergeant Julie Spencer, who’s presently kipping on his couch. She was starting to piece together the truth about Fisher’s condition, but just stopped caring when her mother died…

Before he was a quietly effective Detective, Fisher learned his trade in the mounted police division and spent many educational hours doing community policing for the Violence Reduction Unit, visiting schools where the kids were more ruthlessly ferocious than any full-grown bad guy. Moreover, Brian’s condition is not a total secret. Certain higher-ups know that he goes off the rails but no one important has complained yet and the clean-up rate is phenomenal…

Those halcyon days on horseback come back to haunt Brian here and now as a ghastly atrocity is invoked when a new nutter hits the streets and, with astounding overkill, butchers two beat coppers.

Back in the saddle, Brain immediately makes a connection to the events at the Tannoch police stables thirteen years previously and heads to Barlinnie jail to interview an old lag who knew the original perpetrator “Peter the Horse”.

For a sordid and risky moment of quid pro quo, Michael offers Brian the full SP on the maniac – including the fact that he’s been dead for year…

He also reveals that Peter had an acolyte: another Peter the Horse in the making and one that been out in the real world for six months now…

To Be Continued…

This is another beautifully paced, chillingly unfolding mystery soaked in chilling complexity and shocking moments, tailor made to be a movie or late-night Scandi-style drama serial…

This deftly underplayed, chillingly believable and outrageously black-humoured serial is a magnificent addition to the annals of Tartan Noir: smart, compelling, compassionate and fiercely engaging. If you like your crime yarns nasty and your heroes deeply flawed, GoodCopBadCop is a series you must not miss.
GoodCopBadCop Casebook #3.1 © 2016 Jim Alexander (story) and Aaron Murphy (art.)

Planet Jimbot has a splendid online shop so why not check it out?

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The Louvre Collection: Cruising Through the Louvre


By David Prudhomme translated by Joe Johnson (NBM ComicsLit/Louvre: Musée du Louvre Éditions)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-841-3

Some years ago the Louvre Museum in Paris began an intriguing and immensely rewarding collaboration with the world of comics, and their latest beguiling translated bande dessinée is now available in English, courtesy of those fine folks at NBM.

Cruising Through the Louvre is a multimedia paean to the art of drawing; a beautiful, oversized hardback graphic art narrative which follows the artist on a bewildering tour of the galleries as he searches for his beloved Jeanne.

As he searches for her, he realises that the pictures on the walls, the statues in the halls and the mementoes of world history all form a perfect sequential narrative like his own comics works.

…And then he grasps how the art and the observers are all locked in a mirror-clear relationship feeding off and entertaining each other…

Author/artist Davis Prudhomme was born in Tours in 1969 and, after studying at the École de l’Image in Angoulême, began his cartooning career with Ninon Secrète in 1992, collaborating with Patrick Cothias. Whilst producing that series he worked on solo projects ‘La Tour des Miracles’ (adapted from George Brassens’ book), ‘L’Oisiveraie’, ‘Voyage aux Pays des Serbes’ and ‘Port Nawak’.

Amongst his most notable award-winning efforts are La Marie en plastique, Rébétiko and this fabulous graphic rumination of the creation and situation of art, which first debuted in 2012 as La Traversée du Louvre.

The book in question, which manages to be beguiling, expansive and charmingly funny by turn, is produced in close collaboration with the forward-looking authorities of the Musée du Louvre, but this is no gosh-wow “Night-at-the-Museum” thinly-concealed catalogue of contents from a stuffy edifice of public culture. Rather, here is a sedately seductive, introspectively loving examination of the power of art and history to move the masses and especially the creatively inclined…

Supplementing the voyage of narrative interaction is a fact-packed data-file section detailing the accoutrements and educational and scientific achievements of the institution (how many other art museums have their own functioning particle accelerator?), subdivided into mind-boggling details about ‘The Building’, ‘The Works’, ‘The Visitors’ and ‘The Agents’, plus all the traditional Additional Information and dedication addenda you’d expect and hope to see.

This is another astounding and marvellously magical comics experience no art lover or devotee of the visual narrative medium can afford to miss…
© Futuropolis/Musée du Louvre Éditions 2012. © NBM 2016 for the English translation.

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Dreamworks Dragons – Riders of Berk volume 3: The Ice Castle


By Simon Furman, Jack Lawrence, Stephen Downey & various (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-078-8

DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk and its follow-up Defenders of Berk are part of one of the most popular cartoon franchises around. Loosely adapted from Cressida Cowell’s gloriously charming children’s books, the show is based upon and set between the How to Train Your Dragon movies. Of course if you have children you are almost certainly already aware of that already.

Having wowed young and old alike across the globe, the series has also spawned a series of comic albums and this third digest-sized collection features two stellar incendiary serpentine sagas scripted as ever by the ever-enthralling Simon Furman.

In case you’re not absolutely au fait with the exhilarating word of winged reptiles: brilliant but introverted boy-hero Hiccup saved his island people from being overrun by hostile dragons by befriending them. Now he and his unruly kid compatriots of the Dragon Rider Academy gleefully roam the skies with their devoted scaly friends, getting into trouble and generally saving the day.

When not squabbling with each other, the trusty teens strive to keep the peace between the vast variety of wondrous Wyrms and isolated Berk island’s bombastic Viking homesteaders.

These days, now that the dragons have all been more-or-less domesticated, those duties generally involve finding, taming and cataloguing new species or protecting the village and farms from constant attacks by far nastier folk such as Alvin the Treacherous and his fleet of piratical Outcasts and, occasionally, fresh unknown horrors…

As usual, before the action takes wing there’s a brace of handy information pages reintroducing Hiccup and his devoted Night Fury Toothless, as well as tom-boyish Astrid on Deadly Nadder Stormfly, obnoxious jock Snotlout and Monstrous Nightmare Hookfang, portly dragon-scholar Fishlegs on ponderous Gronckle Meatlug and the terribly dim yet jovially violent twins Tuffnut and Ruffnut on double-headed Zippleback Belch & Barf…

The eponymous epic of ‘The Ice Palace’ (illustrated by Jack Lawrence with the colouring wizardry of Digikore and lettering from Jim Campbell) sees the Berk islanders dealing with another deep-snow winter whilst welcoming unsavoury fur-trader Arngrim Dammen to show his wares. The skins he brings are warm, varied and fabulous, but Astrid is not impressed – until she feels the quality of the merchandise. Her earlier suspicions quickly return, though, once the trader starts asking too many questions about her dragon.

Arngrim blusters on into the small hours, drinking and telling tales to the village men, but there’s something in his manner which also makes smith and armourer Gobber anxious…

Next morning those feelings are proven right when Astrid finds Stormfly has been stolen. The village is in turmoil and the council of war fraught. The seas are vast and the number of islands the thief could head for countless. However, Gobber recalls one detail of the plunderer’s interminable tall-tales and guesses where the scoundel is headed…

As two ships full of angry warriors and Dragon Riders close on their quarry, Hiccup and Astrid take to the skies on Toothless and see a huge number of vessels all on the same heading…

Their destination is clearly Balder Bay, but the Berk longboats can’t sail straight in amongst all those clearly hostile ships. They need to sneak up somehow. Then Gobber directs them to around the island to a terrifying natural feature: a massive wall of lethal jagged icicles known as the Ice Needles…

As Hiccup’s father Chief Stoick leads the men of Berk in the daunting task of scaling the Needles, the Dragon Riders head out on a reconnaissance mission and discover an incredible castle of ice in a vast crater, with Arngrim inside preparing to make the sale of a lifetime. Unfortunately some of that stolen booty is deadly dragon eggs and they’re ready to hatch…

Ending in a fast and furious fight scene of epic proportions, this rip-roaring yarn is a tense and suspenseful action-packed delight.

Cleansing the palate after all that drama is a humour-drenched episode starring brash, testosterone-soaked Snotlout who is forced by Gobber to be a ‘Litter Sitter’ for a day.

With art by Stephen Downey, colours from John Charles and letters by Campbell, the trials of the burly brute as he watches over a rambunctious brood of baby Monstrous Nightmares is a splendid blend of slapstick and sloppy, sticky sentiment…

Despite being ostensibly aimed at excitable juniors and TV kids, this sublimely sharp tome is the kind of smart and engaging fantasy romp no self-indulging fun-fan of any vintage should miss: accessible, entertaining, and wickedly habit-forming.
© 2015 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C.

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Von Doogan and the Great Air Race


By Lorenzo Etherington (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-910200-82-7

These days, young kids are far more likely to find their formative strip narrative experiences online or between the card-covers of specially tailored graphic novels rather than the comics and periodicals of my long-dead youth.

Once upon a time, however, the comics industry was a commercial colossus which thrived by producing copious amounts of gaudy, flimsy pamphlets covering a multitude of themes, subjects and sub-genres, all further subdivided into a range of successful, self-propagating, seamlessly self-perpetuating age-specific publications.

Such eye-catching items once generated innumerable tales, delights (and cherished memories) intended to entertain, inform and educate such well-defined target demographics as Toddler/Pre-school, Younger and Older Juvenile, General, Girls, Boys and even Young Teens. Today, sadly, Britain seems only capable of maintain a few paltry out-industry, licensed tie-ins and spin-offs for a dwindling younger readership.

Where once cheap and prolific, strip magazines in the 21st century are extremely cost-intensive and manufactured for a highly specific – and dying – niche market, whilst the beguiling and bombastic genres that originally fed and nurtured comics are more immediately disseminated via TV, movies and assorted interactive media.

There are one or two venerable, long-lived holdouts such as The Beano and 2000AD but overall the trend has been downwards for decades.

That maxim was happily turned on its head back in January 2012 when Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched The Phoenix: a traditional-seeming anthology comic weekly aimed at girls and boys between 6 and 12 which revelled in reviving the good old days of picture-story entertainment Intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in style and Content.

Still going strong, each issue offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy. In the years since its premiere, The Phoenix has gone from strength to strength, winning praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only ones who really count – the astoundingly engaged kids and parents who read it…

The Phoenix was voted No. 2 in Time Magazine‘s global list of Top Comics and Graphic Novels and is the only strip publication started in the UK in the last forty years to have reached issue #100. It is now rapidly approaching its double-century. The magazine celebrated its first anniversary by developing a digital edition available globally as a tablet app and is continually expanding its horizons.

It is, most importantly, big and bold and tremendous fun.

On the other hand, whilst comics companies all seem to have given up the ghost, in this country at least, old-school prose publishers and the newborn graphic novel industry have evolved to fill their vacated niche. With a less volatile business model and far more sustainable long-term goals, book sellers have prospered from magazine makers’ surrender, and there have never been so many and varied cartoon and comics chronicles, compilations and tomes for readers to enjoy.

Naturally The Phoenix is part of that growing market, with a superb line of graphic albums repackaging and re-presenting their Greatest Bits.

The one we’re looking at today is The Phoenix Presents… Von Doogan and the Great Air Race: a dazzling display of cartoon virtuosity and mind-mangling comic challenges composed by Lorenzo Etherington, originally seen as captivating, addictively challenging weekly instalments of The Dangerous Adventures of Von Doogan.

The serial combined captivating cartoon narrative with observational tests, logic puzzles and other kids’ favourite brain-teasers, craftily taking readers and participants on a magnificently constructed progressive voyage of adventure and discovery in 37 clue, game, maze and mystery-packed episodes.

Our hero is a brilliant and intrepid young explorer with a keen sense of justice and an insatiable thirst for action. Here, following his previous exploit, Von Doogan is in the World Adventurers’ Club with the profits of the Golden Monkey caper burning a hole in pocket. Realising he is incredibly bored, he seeks out a fresh a challenge and is soon off and away…

Recovering, decoding and accepting an invitation to a global Great Air Race, our hero sets out in a hurry, gathering on the way supplies, a plane and a pilot in the form of very bad waitress Abby “Ace” Poontoon.

Then it’s a mad dash to decipher routes, maps and clues en route from one clandestine destination to the next; perpetually tackling – with your help – all manner of conundra (each with a daunting icon reckoning its “impossibility level”) as our heroes zero in on the goal.

As if puzzles such as ‘Secret Sandwich’, ‘The Big Choke’, ‘Cockpit Lockout’ and ‘Blazing Maze’ aren’t enough to challenge the keenest intellectual daredevil, there’s also the knotty problem of a saboteur amongst the intrepid contestants slowing and winnowing out the competition at every stage…

‘Doogan’s Discovery’ …

Naturally we aren’t all as smart as Von Doogan or a six-year old so this spectacular colourful cornucopia comes with a page explaining ‘How the Book Works’, an expansive ‘Equipment Checklist’ and a fulsome secret section offering extra help with ‘The Clues’ and – thankfully – it all wraps up with graphically glitzy explanations in ‘The Solutions’.

There’s even a free printable download page providing your own handy dandy copy of ‘Doogan’s Danger Kit’ to stop you cutting up the one in this mesmerising manuscript of mystery.

Story! Games! Action! … and all there in the irresistible form of entertaining narrative pictures. How much cooler can a book get?
Text and illustrations © Lorenzo Etherington 2016. All rights reserved.

To find out more about The Phoenix or subscribe, visit: www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk
Von Doogan and the Great Air Race will be released on April 7th 2016.

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Yakari: the Island Prisoners


By Derib & Job translated by Erica Jeffrey (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-010-8

Children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes was founded in 1964 by Swiss journalist André Jobin who then wrote for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later he hired fellow French-Swiss artist Claude de Ribaupierre who chose the working name “Derib”. He had begun his own career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs), working on Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Spirou. Together they created the splendid Adventures of the Owl Pythagore before striking pure comics gold a couple of years later with their next collaboration.

Premiering in 1969, Yakari detailed the life of a little Sioux boy on the Great Plains; sometime between the Conquistadors’ introduction of horses and the coming of modern White Men.

Stuffed with bucolic whimsy, the beguiling series celebrates the generally simple and joyous existence of noble nomads in tune with nature and free from strife. The daily toil is occasionally punctuated with the odd crisis but these are usually resolved without fame or fanfare – usually by a little lad who is smart, compassionate and valiant.

He can also converse with all animals…

Derib – equally excellent in both enticing, comically dynamic “Marcinelle” cartoon style yarns and with devastatingly compelling meta-realistic action illustrated action epics – went on to become one of the Continent’s most prolific and revered creators. It’s incomprehensible to me that such groundbreaking strips as Celui-qui-est-né-deux-fois, Jo (the first comic on AIDS ever published), Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne) haven’t been translated into English yet.

Many of his stunning works over the fruitful decades featured his beloved Western themes, built on magnificent geographical backdrops and epic landscapes, with Yakari considered by fans and critics alike as the feature which primed the gun.

Released in 1983, Les Prisonniers de I’Ile was the ninth European album (and, in 2008, Cinebook’s seventh British Yakari release): as always, a splendidly stand-alone mini-epic devoid of convoluted continuity. These heart-warming adventures work perfectly read in isolation: easily accessible for young kids and/or their adult minders meeting the bold little Brave for the first time…

The suspenseful saga begins with the boy marvel, his wonder horse Little Thunder and their friend Rainbow joyously playing on a beautiful promontory cutting into a lake. When a sudden storm erupts they take refuge in a cave and are stuck there for two terrifying days.

When the lightning and rain finally subside they emerge to find the spit of land is now and island. They – and many other animals – are trapped…

As the resourceful humans gather wood to make a signal fire they discover two elk with a big problem. Their calf is stuck under a fallen tree, but the Indians and their pony horse soon devise a way to free little Birch Shoot. Then the real problems start…

After the boy and girl splint the yearling’s broken leg and construct a branch bivouac to shelter him, searchers from the tribe come looking for them in a canoe. Yakari and Rainbow opt to hide, however, determined to stay and nurse the calf back to health…

That night Yakari’s totem Great Eagle visits for a chat and warns that the boy’s instincts were good, but further conversation is curtailed when worried father Proud Antlers realises that a hungry wolverine is on the island with them. He has past experience of how the wily hunters pick off the weak or wounded members of a herd…

Yakari has never heard of or seen such a creature and the elk’s tales are truly terrifying. Nevertheless, the little Brave appoints himself the family’s bodyguard, following them everywhere

His eager vigilance almost leads to catastrophe when he accidentally crowns old beaver pal Double-Tooth after the mighty swimmer ambles onto the islet in search of rare woods to carve. Soon however with his carpentry aid they have built a stout stockade around Birch-Shoot’s shelter.

Sadly, they have all severely underestimated the predator’s cunning and the wolverine simply proceeds to build devilish traps of his own. All he needs is the right moment to strike and feast…

Gripping with just the right amount of tension, this is a compelling yarn with a deliciously apt yet unforced denouement, one that will keep everybody sweet yet still delivers a satisfying kick for happy ending addicts…

This is one of Yakari’s most rewarding exploits, showing his warm benevolence, staunch determination and total commitment to his friends of variable leg-counts; a broad, bold romp no kid of any age could resist…

The evergreen exploits of the valiant little voyager who speaks with animals and enjoys a unique place in an exotic environment is an unmissable celebration of marvellously moving and enticingly entertaining adventure, honouring and eulogising an iconic culture with grace, wit, wonder and especially warmth. These gentle sagas are true landmarks of comics literature and Yakari is a strip no fan of graphic entertainment should ignore.
Original edition © LE LOMBARD (Dargaud- Lombard s.a.) 1983, by Derib + Job. English translation 2009 © Cinebook Ltd.

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The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded


By Jim Ottaviani & Leland Purvis (Abrams ComicArts)
ISBN: 978-1-4197-1893-9

After decades of cruel injustice and crushing, sidelining silence, British mathematician Alan Turing – one of the greatest intellects of the 20th century – is at last becoming the household name and revered figure he deserves to be.

As well as books and films describing the amazing achievements and appalling way this brilliant, tormented man – arguably the creator of the modern world we inhabit – was treated by society, there’s now a new graphic novel delineating the factual stuff whilst trying to get beneath the skin of a most perplexing and unique individual.

It’s only fair to warn you: this is categorically not an adaptation of the 2014 film.

Spellbindingly scripted by Jim Ottaviani (who has similarly eulogised and dissected quantum physicist Feynman and primatologists Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas in Primates) and compellingly effective art by Leland Purvis (Vox, Pubo, Vulcan & Vishnu and Suspended in language: Niels Bohr’s life, discoveries, and the century he shaped – a previous collaboration with Ottoviani), this full-colour hardback biography divides Turing’s life into three broad sections, incisively and winningly reviewed as if in a documentary.

Events from his turbulent life are cleverly mixed with “interviews” and candid disclosures from those who knew him – his mother, the computing girls at Bletchley Park, fiancée Joan Clark, Professor Max Newman, engineer and lab partner Bayley and the weak, shady rent-boy who brought about Turing’s eventual downfall and death…

‘Universal Computing’ covers the difficult, solitary boy’s childhood and college years, with plenty of revelatory scenes showing how smart, obsessed and just plain different Turing was.

‘Top Secret Ultra’ focuses on the war years that made Turing’s reputation as a cryptographer and inventor at the “non-existent” base where the Enigma Code was cracked and the battle against fascism won.

The most painful and potent moments are seen in the post-war years at Manchester University, trying to beat the Americans in the race to build Thinking Machines and coming under increasing stress as his open homosexuality – accepted as fact and ignored at Bletchley – came to overtake and destroy the life of the mis-socialised simple genius whose thoughts and writings resulted in the breakthroughs everybody now knows as ‘The Imitation Game’…

Rounding out the cruelly educational experience is a poignant and challenging ‘Authors Note’ touching on the still unresolved mystery of Turing’s death, a vast ‘Bibliography and Recommended Reading’ list and a bewilderingly comprehensive ‘Notes and References’ section, covering everything from the panel structures to the mathematics involved in and comprising much of the book’s subtly beguiling make-up.

This is an astoundingly inviting way to take in a true story of incredible accomplishment, dedicated passion and terrifying naivety, ending in a horrific loss to us all and forever-unanswered sentiments of “What If?” and “If Only”…
Text © 2016 Jim Ottaviani. Illustrations © 2016 Leland Purvis. All rights reserved.

The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded will be released on March 22nd 2016.

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The Rugger Boys volume 2: A Snootful of Style and a Ton of Class!


By Béka & Poupard with colour work by Magali Poli Rivière, translated by Luke Spear (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-44-1

Human beings – and apparently a huge variety of our pets and animal housemates – seem obsessed with and revel in chasing balls about. So much so that we/they even apply a range of complex rules to the sheer exhilaration of the process, just to make things more difficult and artificially extend proceedings.

We call it sport and when it’s not hugely thrilling and deadly serious it can be hilariously funny…

Comics over the decades and throughout the world have often mined our obsession with assorted games for secondary entertainment value and this Cinebook compilation proffers more stunning strips starring a dedicated amateur team of French gladiators all painfully enamoured of the manly (and British-originated, let’s not forget) oddball-based pastime called Rugby…

Les Rugbymen was created in 2005 by writing partnership Bertrand Escaich & Caroline Roque under their collaborative nom de plume Béka (Studio Danse, Les Fonctionnaires) in conjunction with self-taught illustrator Alexandre Mermin, who generally labours under the pseudonym Poupard (Chez Gaspard, Les Brumes du Miroboland).

The resulting flurry of short sharp gags and extra-time yarns have filled an even dozen albums thus far. There’s even a junior league spin-off which began in 2010 entitled Les Petits Rugbymen…

On va gagner avec le lard et la manière was the fifth Continental encounter but the second (and, thus far, last) translated by Cinebook – probably because it features brief sporting excursions to Scotland and New Zealand – and perfectly recapitulates the passion, toil and sheer testosterone-fuelled idiocy which can warp normally rational folk.

The titular stars are some few dedicated souls faithfully enjoying the trials of club rugby (Union rules, right?) as played by the stalwarts of fictional south-western French side Paillar Athletic Club, affectionately known to their frankly obsessive fans as The PAC…

As seen on the introductory page, our bloody but unbowed stars manifest as intellectually compromised Hooker Lightbulb, Herculean Prop Fatneck, precocious ¾ Centre Hugo “The Engineer” Cap, 2nd Row star Freddy “The Anaesthetist” Bones, dashing sex-crazed Back Romeo and Scrumhalf/Captain The Grumpster, all regularly adored and vilified by Bernard Farmer – The Coach – who never lets his barrrrbarous accent get in the way of a good insult or pithy instruction to the dozy slackerrrs…

All you need to know is that these guys are bold, sturdy and love to eat and drink as much as they do trampling each other into the mud every weekend…

The exploits are generally delivered as single page sequences, lavishly, lovingly and outrageously illustrated and jam-packed with snippets of off-kilter slapstick to supplement the main gag and the material. Content is almost everything you’d expect from such a fixture: big beefy blokes in very small towels, lots of booze-fuelled gaffes, eating eccentricities, knob jokes and the mutual sportsmanlike skulduggery which permeates all games Real Men compete in…

This time however equality reigns and there’s a succinct glimpse of the Paillar Athletic Ladies Team too, and you can share the lads’ first turbulent TV appearance too.

Mostly, however, on display is a profusion of smartly-planned running gags and compact comedic gems such as the well-meaning meatheads’ ongoing efforts to help Lightbulb find “love”, Romeo’s constant comeuppances from husbands, boyfriends and employers unhappy with his off-pitch Tries, the woebegone touchline medic’s miserable life and Coach’s eternal battle to whip his band of idiots into a team he can be proud of…

This particular collection kicks off with an extended origin story revealing how the playful imps they once were turned a boring school lesson into a life-changing indoor match and formed sporting bonds that lasted a lifetime…

As previously mentioned, this fixture also includes a brief tour of Scotland, offering a broad belt of new experiences from braw brews to fine foods and bonnie lassies to life-changing injuries, and concludes with a bombastic whistle-stop tour of the Antipodes as The Pac are generously invited to visit the mighty New Zealand All-Blacks at home after the Rugby World Cup concludes…

Mostly though it’s always about mud, mauling, getting stuffed and getting smashed – in every sense of the term…

Fast, furiously funny and splendidly boisterous, these are the kind of cartoon antics that might even inspire dedicated couch-potatoes to get out of the house – unless they order books and dinner online…
© BAMBOO EDITION, 2007 by Béka & Poupard. All rights reserved. English translation © 2007 Cinebook Ltd.

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Rivers of London: Body Work


By Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel, Lee Sullivan & Luis Guerrero (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-187-7

Ben Aaronovitch has been delighting fantasy fans for years, mostly through his television work on others people’s creations (Dr. Who: Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield, Jupiter Moon, Casualty and numerous licensed novels and audio-books), but really came into his own in 2011 when the Rivers of London (Midnight Riot in the USA) novel was released.

A supernatural police procedural saga with its sixth volume eagerly anticipated any moment now, it features the adventures of Peter Grant; the first Metropolitan Police officer in 70 years to transfer to the Special Assessment Unit, more commonly known as “Falcon” or the “weird shit” department. This well-known secret squad deals with all the magic and spooky stuff no sensible copper will admit occurs…

Grant’s boss there is the exceptionally dapper and imperturbable Inspector Nightingale who is far older than he looks and knows an awful lot about magic. As previously stated, Grant is his first Wizard’s Apprentice in decades…

The stories authentically resonate within the actual environs and legends of the big city, and amongst the pantheon of paranormal characters most prominent are the living spirits of the rivers which run through, beneath and between the boroughs of the macabre metropolis and the Thames Valley it lurks in…

This all-new yet canonical sequentially-illustrated tale sits between the fourth and fifth prose novels; written by Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel, with art by the splendid Lee Sullivan and colourist Luis Guerrero.

The eponymous ‘Body Work’ started life as a 4-part monthly miniseries in July 2015 and opens, as so many police stories do, with an attention-grabbing death. What looks like a simple drowning gets dead scary dead quick when Peter Grant ambles into the SOCO clean-up, his indefinable instincts calling him to a situation which, although still unclear, is clearly unnatural…

Soon he’s on the trail of a haunted car which should have been destroyed but has instead been broken up for parts, scattering a lethal compulsion amongst an assortment of owners all now unwitting receptacles for a pitiless centuries-old force craving death and somehow connected to water.

Before long Grant and Nightingale (with his inimitable hound familiar Toby) are tracking down leads and the eldritch elder soon uncovers links to his own greatest failure and dereliction of duty…

Fast paced, funny-&-thrilling by turn and packed with intriguing, individualistic supporting characters, Body Work is above all a solid mystery which both curious neophytes and dedicated devotees of the prose iteration will delight in solving along with our quirky cast.

Cheekily augmenting the main case are a series of blackly comedic and often surreal vignettes starring the supporting cast beginning with Tales from the Thames starring Beverley Brook in ‘Off their Trolley’ with the cheeky Naiad teaching some drunken upper-class sods a lesson about dumping trash, whilst sinister serving wench Molly stars in ‘Red Mist’ – a gory Tale from The Folly – followed by another seeing astounding canine wonder Toby triumphing over a zombie apocalypse on the ‘Night of the Living Dog’.

Aaronovitch, Cartmel, Alan Quah & Guerrero then offer a chilling and silent extended Halloween diversion in ‘Sleep No More’ and the extra duties close with a final brace of Tales from The Folly as Toby submits to his sodden fate in ‘Pursuit’ before Nightingale gets the gang together for a festive emergency in ‘Urgent Summons’.

Including a large covers and variants gallery and whimsical page of Creator Biographies, this is a splendid genre-blending yarn for lovers of cops-&-wizards fans who also love playing Dungeons and Dragnets.
Rivers of London ™ and © 2016 Ben Aaronovitch. All rights reserved.

Rivers of London: Body Work will be released on March 18th 2016

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Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?


By Alan Moore, Curt Swan, Dave Gibbons, Rick Veitch, George Pérez, Kurt Schaffenberger, Al Williamson & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2731-9

Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1, sometime in April 1938 (the cover said June but that was, by custom, the date by which unsold copies had to be returned – and hard it is to imagine that there were any!). An instant sensation, the Man of Steel promptly spawned a veritable infinitude of imitators, and gave birth to a genre, if not an industry.

The Original outlived them all; growing and adapting, creating a pantheon and a mythology, delighting millions of readers over the generations.

Alan Moore is one of the most lauded names in comic history, and much of his most memorable work has appeared – one way or another – under the banner of DC Comics’ various imprints. Here, then, finally collected into one volume are all the stories he produced starring the most important icon of the funnybook industry, gathering a trio of much reprinted yarns into one unmissable trade paperback edition.

This book reprints Superman #423, Action Comics #583 from September 1986, DC Comics Presents #85 (September 1985) and the epochal and influential Superman Annual #11 for 1985, and includes a Dave Gibbons pin-up and leads off with an incisive Introduction ‘The Time has Come!’ by Paul Kupperberg.

Two-part crossover ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?’ ended the initial run of Superman and Action Comics prior to the hero’s groundbreaking post-Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot in 1986.

In the 50th anniversary year of DC Comics, the Powers-that-Be decided that modern readers had moved beyond the old style and continuity, and consequently re-imagined the DC universe and everything in it. Crisis on Infinite Earths unmade the continuity and remade the greatest heroes in it. The editors have spent the intervening years since trying to change it all back again in some manner or other.

None of which is particularly relevant, except that in the lead-up to the big change, departing Editor Julius Schwartz turned his last issues (Superman #423 and Action Comics #583) into a blessed gift of closure for the devoted fans who had followed Superman for all their lives – if not his.

With these amazing tales all concerned said goodbye to a certain kind of hero and a particular type of story. They made way for a tougher, harder universe with less time for charm or fun.

‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?’ is a glorious ending to an era and a sensibility, lovingly written by Alan Moore – who cunningly managed to instil a sense of doom and tragedy into the mix – with gloriously evocative pencil art from Curt Swan and loving, lavish inks from George Perez & the hugely underrated Kurt Schaffenberger, respectively.

Here, Moore parades for one last time the characters and concepts that made Superman special and shows the reader just how much will be lost once the World turns. It deftly blends modern narrative values into the most comfortably traditional scenarios, making the tale work in contemporary terms whilst keeping all the charm, whimsy and inherent decency of the characters. It is a magical feat, a genuine Gotterdammerung; full of tragedy, nobility and heroism but with a happy ending nonetheless. I’m not going to tell you the plot, other than to say it details the last days of the World’s Greatest Superhero. Be prepared to cry when you read it.

This is a story every comic fan, let alone DC reader, should know, and even works as an introduction as well as a grand farewell.

Following that is a team-up of Superman with Moore’s signature character Swamp Thing. ‘The Jungle Line’ comes from DC Comics Presents #85, illustrated by Rick Veitch and Al Williamson, and finds Superman slowly succumbing to a fatal disease contracted from a Kryptonian spore. Plagued by intermittent powerlessness, oncoming madness and inevitable death, the hero deserts his loved ones and drives slowly south to die in isolation. Mercifully in the dank, dark emerald wetlands he is found by a monster: Earth’s singularly benevolent plant elemental and envoy of The Green…

Moore & Dave Gibbons produced one of the last truly great Superman stories before the cosmic upheaval of Crisis on Infinite Earths. ‘For the Man Who Has Everything’ (Superman Annual #11) has alien despot Mongul invading the Fortress of Solitude and attacking the Action Ace with the most insidious of weapons. The valiant last-minute intervention of Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman are barely enough to turn the tide…

A spectacular battle-romp, this one also shows a dystopian Krypton for the first time: a view that the fabulous lost world might not have been a super-scientific paradise after all and one that has become a given of all later interpretations…

This is an incomprehensibly enchanting collection of Fights ‘n’ Tights wonderment: a pure package of superhero magnificence: fun-filled, action-packed, absolutely addictive and utterly unmissable.
© 1985, 1986, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Skydoll: Decade


By Barbara Canepa & Alessandro Barbucci (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-736-7

Astoundingly barbed political and anti-consumerist satirical allegory Skydoll has been appearing sporadically since 2000. It’s the other work of frequent collaborators Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa (whose usual offerings include more family-oriented fare such as W.I.T.C.H. and Monster Allergy) and – although rendered in the subtly seductive anthropomorphic style developed and signifying decades of wholesome Disney cartooning – is a superbly strident attack on corporate consumerism, the media’s mesmerism of the masses, political expediency, religion and the power of the Catholic church, all wrapped up in the raunchy, beguiling trappings of super-sexy science fiction shenanigans…

Now most of the components thus far generated have been beautifully bound up in a gloriously oversized (284 x 212mm) full-colour hardback edition.

The subversive odyssey begins with the prose ‘Preface: ten years of Skydoll’: a bold declaration of intent by The Authors before we speed straight into the fantastic fantasy with ‘Volume 1: The Yellow City’ which introduces fetching, wind-up automaton Noa, asking God for a little fair treatment whilst working at the insalubrious Heaven Spaceshipwash. She’s not like the other beautiful dolls working there. Although she still needs to be wound-up every 33 hours by her owner, this alluring automaton seems to have a memory that doesn’t erase itself after a couple of days. This means she keeps thinking of difficult fresh questions to ask…

Furiously shoved back to work, Noa ignores the fabulously bland and vapid blatherings of TV talk show monolith Frida Decibel blasting out from every home and public broadcast screen, telling the populace of Papathea how good everything is now that they only have one Popessa in the buxom form of the divine Ludovica.

Once upon a time there were two True Vicars of God: Agape who embodied spiritual love and Ludovica who personified its physical expression. When Agape mysteriously vanished her corporeal partner became sole arbiter of the galactic empire the church controls, commencing a campaign of craftily concocted public miracles to pacify the increasingly irate and disillusioned populace.

It’s not really working though, and a rising tide of rebellion and resentment is just beginning to pop…

Our story really begins when two of Ludovica’s “Diplomatic Agents” stop at Heaven to get their starcraft properly shined before heading out on their top-secret mission. Old Jahu is especially keen on the diversion: everybody knows lusting after or even indulging in pleasure with a Doll doesn’t count as sin. The Popessa said so…

However, whilst lathering up the ship of some fervent fundamentalists at the head of the queue, Noa accidentally kicks off a small riot, even as across the city Ludovica’s latest manufactured miracle kicks into high-gear with mesmerising effect…

By the time the barrage of supernal glitz and gaudy glitter subsides, Jahu and young idealistic Roy are well on their way. They have no idea there’s a dazed and surprised stowaway aboard, with her crucial, life-sustaining key still negligently left in her back…

And on the rapidly dwindling planet behind them, Ludovica fumes. Despite getting rid of her rival, the sole Popessa’s grasp of power is still uncertain. The people still hunger for vanished Agape and there are rumours of rebellion. The anxious, power-mad pontiff has no idea how close to home the sedition reaches…

Aboard ship Roy has made a startling discovery. Unable to help himself, he turns the key in the inert innocent’s back and restores temporary autonomy to a vivacious creature he can’t help but like…

Doctrinaire Jahu is less sanguine but the mission is too important to delay. They can always dump the doll on the way home…

Noa is eternally curious, asking questions about everything. She is inexplicably especially moved by an illicit image of Agape the voyagers encounter in a space restaurant. It somehow triggers strange and terrifying visions and Roy has to physically restrain Noa. What happens next is regarded by the astounded onlookers as a miracle…

The story resumes with ‘Volume 2: Aqua’ as hints begin about Noa’s destiny and the unseen sponsors who seem to be guiding her destiny. The Popessa’s missionary ambassadors meanwhile land on the world without males: one successfully propounding a third spiritual way…

Governed by planetary Guru Gaia, the women of Aqua are steadily gaining support across the universe, supported and funded by their range of wellness centres and luxury goods which everyone wants to try. Roy is there to build diplomatic bridges between the Popessa and the completely antithetical Aquans in the cause of peace. He has no idea that Jahu’s orders are a little different. He always knew the only way to deal with heretics…

Noa inveigles her way into the official conference: she’s hopeful these strange women will have some insight into her own rapidly-expanding consciousness. She is stunned by what they do know and their connection to missing Agape.

And as Jahu goes about his bloody work, back on Papathea, bloody revolution breaks out…

The intrigue expands in ‘Volume 3: The White City’ when Roy, Jahu and the constantly-growing Noa return as triumphant heroes. When officially interviewed by the ubiquitous Frida Decibel the web of intrigue and damnation expands to encompass some very unexpected personalities, even as the empire stands poised on the edge of Armageddon and real miracles start happening in the most unlikely places…

A broad, vast, clever and frustrating unfinished epic, Skydoll is still unfolding at its own tantalising pace. There has however been plenty of sidebar and ancillary material released such as ‘Volume 0: Doll’s Factory’ which offers a sequence of prequel events to flesh out the main characters in another stunningly captivating art package.

Here a strange woman visits a factory and places something miraculous inside a doll in its final stages of manufacture, whilst ‘Heaven’s Dolls’ rewards the reader with information on the world and empire of the Popessa, affording insights into other Dolls such as Lovely Lou, Juicy Lee, Sandy Blue and God himself – proving just why he needed killing…

There’s also a hilarious Sky Doll ‘Psycho-grapho Test’ to further reveal how life and society really work…

This immaculate confection culminates in a huge collection of ‘Homages’: a breathtaking gallery of tribute images of Sky Doll and her chums by a staggeringly talented cast of fellow artists comprising Claire Wendling, Karla Diaz, Benjamin, Marguerite Sauvage, Mijin Shatje, Cyrille Bertin, Tony Infante, Bengal, Claudio Acciari, Tony Sandoval, Amélie Fléchais, Giovanni Rigano, Sefora Pons, Gradimir Smudja, Aurore, Augustin Rolland, Nenent, Guezav, Pierre-Mony Chan, Lucy Mazel, Véronique Meignaud, Matteo De Longis, Xavier Collette, Anne Cresci, Lilidoll, Jérémie Almanza, Lostfish and more.

Completing and concluding religious experience is a comprehensive feature ‘About the Authors’ and a page packed with ‘Acknowledgements & Credits’.

A phenomenal work-in-progress, Sky Doll is a superbly engaging exploration of erotica, iconology and idolatry: one no fun-loving, deep-thinking lover of comic iconoclasm should miss.
Sky Doll and all contents are © Editions Soleil/Barbucci/Canepa. This translated edition © 2016 Titan Comics.

Sky Doll: Decade will be in UK store from March 15th 2016.