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Copper

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: still readily available and utterly essential because everybody needs to dream big and wild… 10/10


By Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
ISBN: 978-0-545-09893-9

Every so often a strip comes along that perfectly encapsulates the astonished joyous awe, suspenseful sadness and gleeful terror of being young, simultaneously managing to regress every adult who reads it back to those halcyon days of sheer, wide-eyed wonder. Little Nemo, Pogo, Barnaby, Akiko on the Planet Smoo, Eric Shanower’s assorted forays into the worlds of Oz and especially Calvin and Hobbes all possess that amazing facility to utterly beguile young and old alike, and I’m sure I detect the faintest echoes of all of them in this superb and far too infrequent online series from cartoonist, designer, author and editor Kazu Kibuishi which began life as a kind of personal art-therapy webcomic in 2002.

According to his introduction, Kibuishi – whose other works include the successful Amulet sequence of supernatural junior graphic novels, Explorer – the Mystery Boxes, Flight and other fine graphic marvels – turned an unused T-shirt design into a purely creative exercise during a low period in his personal life.

The monochrome and wordless ‘Rocket Pack Fantasy’ introduced a nervous but inquisitive little kid and his morose dog in a wild-riding daydream, but the real beginning was the full-colour page ‘Big Robot’ – another off-hand tribute to Winsor McCay which gave the characters voices and names in another action-packed dream – after which the boy Copper and his stalwart canine Fred met monsters and pursued an adorable little red-headed girl trapped in ‘Bubbles’.

Fred became stroppier and more surly with every instalment: ‘Waves’ found the boisterous buddies surfing Hokusai breakers whilst ‘Climbing’ found the dog and his boy pondering the pros and cons of scaling the mountains above the clouds and ‘Ruins’ saw an explorer’s enthusiasm brought low by canine pessimism, although they were in total agreement about the necessity of an epic voyage to get genuine Aunt Koko ‘Melon Bread’ – accept no substitutes…

‘Mushroom Crossing’ was the first extended exploit: an 8-page visual extravaganza which found the duo negotiating a chasm via spectacular fungoid stepping stones, before returning to single page thrills such as jogging with the ‘Racing Shrimp’…

Another unobtainable and enigmatic young lady mischievously introduced her dark-haired self in ‘Bridges’ after which Fred humiliated himself before a jury of his peers by performing ‘Somersaults’ and only perked up after a visit to the ‘Tide Pool’.

A baffling world of ‘Freestyle’ art led to a frustrating chase as Copper narrowly missed both his dream girls in ‘Ballads’, whilst a sad seasonal celebration left the oneiric adventurers ‘Blue’ leaving Fred to ponder the perils of venturing ‘Outside’.

‘Picnic’ is a silent 4-page rumination on travel by balloon which first appeared in the aforementioned themed-anthology Flight whilst ‘Fall’ examines Autumnal sensitivities and Fred’s latest bout of amour, before the ramblers return to the seas in time to get caught in a staggering ‘Storm’.

That elusive dark minx then left Fred a little present whilst Copper examined an imaginary ‘Summer House’, but the preoccupied pair missed both her and a cute blonde number in ‘Transit’, after which another seaside excursion on a surfboard offered a very deceptive ‘Lull’ in their action-packed lives…

‘Happy’ introduced a couple of effusively weird and needy characters but building a boat in ‘Sail’ soon restored our unlikely heroes’ grouchy equilibrium and visiting a beautiful ‘Waterfall’ did the same for their contemplative calm.

Outer space beckoned in ‘Mission Control’ but gambling held no fascination for them in ‘Arcade’, although dabbling with Ham Radio ‘Signals’ brought the boy frustratingly close to that little blonde girl, even as his far-from-shopping-savvy canine companion found no solace at all in his latest impulse ‘Purchase’…

‘Dive’ then uncovered the dog’s deepest secrets and the pair soon discovered that robots made great ‘Dancers’ before an 18-page epic (also from Flight) offered a delightful extended exploit as Copper built his own airplane – despite Fred’s help – and they embark upon a truly fantastic ‘Maiden Voyage’…

Even Fred’s pessimistic musings couldn’t spoil a quiet afternoon of the ‘Good Life’, though Copper’s crazy quest for adrenaline thrills – such as leaping off the ‘Jump Station’ – just might. Still, riding a giant turtle in ‘Slowrider’ was pretty restful even if scooter-riding through a bustling ‘Metropolitan’ centre was a mixed blessing…

After hurdling giant flying mushroom ‘Steps’ Fred learned a sad lesson about pet-keeping in ‘Bunny’ before the wanderers encountered the strangest ‘Signpost’ ever and the boy joined a maritime mission in the role of aquatic ‘Observer’. Ruminations on labour then stemmed from messing with ‘Clockwork’ and Fred’s shaky self-esteem got a battering in the ‘Marketplace’.

‘Angler’ proved that the dog just doesn’t get the point of fishing whilst laser-tag received a dramatic boost when the lads played ‘Shooter’.

The beguiling peregrinations in this printed compilation end with an all-original 8-page adventure when the boys go for a walk in the woods and meet a monkey who seems – at first – only interested in their ‘Lunch Pack’. Of course, they couldn’t be more wrong…

This glorious and enthralling chronicle also includes a comprehensive and extremely informative look at the process of webcomic creation in ‘Behind the Scenes’ which will certainly aid any keen would-be creators make their own comics.

Kibuishi happily shares all his work secrets in ‘The Drawing Board’, ‘Thumbnails’, ‘Panels’, ‘Pencilling’, ‘Lettering’, ‘Inking’, before offering some instruction in the scientific arts of ‘Going Digital’ and ‘Colouring’.

Sheer whimsical surreality wedded to exuberant questing creativity, beautifully illustrated with warmth and subtle invention, makes Copper an utterly captivating read for young and old alike. This is a book unafraid to use poignant yearning, loss and introspection as well as slyly gentle humour and bold action and this series – hopefully to resume with new material one day – should sit happy in every nursery and on every family’s bookshelf.
© 2010 Kazu Kibuishi. All rights reserved.

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Benny and Penny in The Big No-No!


By Geoffrey Hayes (Toon Books/Raw Junior)
ISBN: 978-0-9799238-9-0

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: the perfect present for keeping adults quiet and opening a world of adventure for young kids… 10/10

Once upon a time – and for the longest time imaginable – comics were universally denigrated as a creative and narrative ghetto cherished only by children and simpletons. For decades the producers, creators and lovers of the medium struggled to change that perception and gradually acceptance came. Now most folk accept that the word and pictures in sequential union can make stories and tell truths as valid, challenging and life-changing as any other full-blown art-form

Sadly, along the way the commercial underpinnings of the industry went too far. Where once there were a myriad of successful, self-propagating comics scrupulously generating tales and delights intended to entertain, inform and educate such specific demographics as Toddler/Kindergarten, Young and Older Juvenile, General, Boys and Girls periodical publications, nowadays Britain and America can only afford to maintain a few paltry out-industry licensed tie-ins and spin-offs for younger readerships.

The greater proportion of strip magazines are necessarily manufactured for a highly specific – and dwindling – niche market, whilst the genres that fed and nurtured comics are more effectively and expansively disseminated via TV, movies and assorted video and interactive games media.

Thankfully old-fashioned book publishers and the new graphic novel industry have a different business model and far more sensible long-term goals, so the lack has been increasingly countered and the challenge to train and bring youngsters into the medium taken up outside the mainstream – and dying – periodical markets.

I’ve banged on for years about the comics industry’s tragic loss of the beginner reading markets, but what they’ve been collectively offering young/early consumers – and their parents – has seldom jibed with what those incredibly selective people are interested in or need. Recently however the book trade has moved with the times and where numerous publishing houses have opened comic medium divisions, one in particular has gone all-out to cultivate tomorrow’s graphic narrative nation.

Toon Books/Raw Junior was established by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly as an imprint of the groundbreaking and legendary alternative comics magazine, intended and designed to provide beautiful, high-quality comics stories in premium formats that would entice pre-schoolers and beginning readers into a lifelong love affair with strips in particular and reading in general.

Their burgeoning stable of talented creators have produced a wealth of superbly superior comic tales in three educational standards (Level 1: First Comic for brand new readers, Level 2: Easy-to-Read for Emerging Readers and Level 3: Chapter Books for Advanced Beginners) and the company even supplements their publications with an on-line tool.

TOON-BOOKS.com offers follow up such as interactive audio-versions read by the authors – and in a multitude of languages – and a “cartoon maker” facility which allows readers to become writers of their own adventures about the characters they have just met in the printed editions. Most books also include a page of tips for parents and teachers on ‘How to Read Comics with Kids’…

I’m kicking off a week of Kids Stuff with the multi-award winning Benny and Penny in The Big No-No!, the second in an on-going series of complete tales starring a typical brother-and sister act of sometimes wayward suburban mice.

Author Geoffrey Hayes is a veteran of the Children’s entertainment scene, having written and/or illustrated more than 40 books (including Otto and Uncle Tooth, Bear by Himself, the Patrick Bear series and Margaret Wise Brown’s When the Wind Blew among so many others) and proudly affirms that Benny & Penny’s anthropomorphic exploits are drawn in coloured pencil.

When a new kid moves in next door bellicose, rambunctious older brother Benny is keen to sneak a peek through the garden fence, but is as usual distracted by his annoying little sister. Soon his attention wanders, but when he can’t find his pail, suspicion quickly settles on the mysterious as yet unseen newcomer…

Taking stuff is a “No-No” – something that you just don’t do, but then again so is climbing into someone else’ garden uninvited – especially if they leave such big, scary-looking footprints…

When Benny finds a pail in the dirt, he indignantly reclaims it and gets into a literal mud-slinging match with the little mole girl Melina. He even calls her a monster!

Escaping the mean new kid and running safely back to their own yard, the mice then discover Benny’s pail, just where he left it.

Because they’re good kids Benny and Penny take the stolen bucket back and apologise, but even after making amends and becoming friends with Melina – especially Penny – big, boisterous Benny just can’t avoid messing about and making trouble – or is he just being a boy?

The girls certainly think so!

Aimed at the four-and-above age-range and released as a child-sized (236x162mm), gloriously evocative, beguilingly beautiful 32 page full colour hardback, Benny and Penny in The Big No-No! is the kind of pictorial treasure that kids and their minders will be drawn back to over and over again.
© 2009 Raw Junior, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Batman: the Brave and the Bold volume 1


By Matt Wayne, J. Torres, Andy Suriano, Phil Moy, Carlo Barberi, Dan Davis & Terry Beatty (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2878-1

The Brave and the Bold began in 1955 as an anthology adventure comic featuring short complete tales about a variety of period heroes: a format which mirrored that era’s filmic fascination with historical dramas. Devised and written by Bob Kanigher, issue #1 led with Roman epic Golden Gladiator, medieval mystery-man The Silent Knight and Joe Kubert’s now legendary Viking Prince. Soon the Gladiator was increasingly alternated with Robin Hood, but the adventure theme carried the title until the end of the decade when the burgeoning costumed character revival saw B&B transform into a try-out vehicle like Showcase.

Used to premiere concepts and characters such as Task Force X: the Suicide Squad, Cave Carson, Hawkman and Strange Sports Stories and the epochal Justice League of America, the comic soldiered on until issue #50 when it provided another innovative new direction which once again truly caught the public’s imagination.

That issue paired two superheroes – Green Arrow & Martian Manhunter – in a one-off team-up, as did succeeding ones: Aquaman and Hawkman in #51, WWII Battle Stars Sgt Rock, Captain Cloud, Mme. Marie & the Haunted Tank in #52 and Atom & Flash in #53. The next team-up, Robin, Aqualad & Kid Flash, evolved into the Teen Titans and after Metal Men/the Atom and Flash/Martian Manhunter appeared a new hero; Metamorpho, the Element Man debuted in #57-58.

From then it was back to the extremely popular superhero pairings with #59, and although no one realised it at the time, this particular conjunction, Batman with Green Lantern, would be particularly significant….

After a return engagement for the Teen Titans, two issues spotlighting Earth-2 champions Starman & Black Canary and Wonder Woman with Supergirl, an indication of things to come came when Batman duelled hero/villain Eclipso in #64: an acknowledgement of the brewing TV-induced mania mere months away.

Within two issues, following Flash/Doom Patrol and Metamorpho/Metal Men, Brave and the Bold #67 saw the Caped Crusader take de facto control of the title and the lion’s share of the team-ups. With the exception of #72-73 (Spectre/the Flash and Aquaman/Atom) the comic was henceforth a place where Batman invited the rest of company’s heroic pantheon to come and play…

Decades later the Batman Animated TV series masterminded by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini in the 1990s revolutionised the Dark Knight and subsequently led to some of the absolute best comicbook adventures in his seventy-year publishing history with the creation of the spin-off print title.

With constant funnybook iterations and tie-ins to a succession of TV cartoon series, Batman has remained popular and a sublime introducer of kids to the magical world of the printed page.

The most recent incarnation was Batman: the Brave and the Bold, which gloriously teamed up the all-ages small-screen Dark Knight with a torrent and profusion of DC’s other heroic creations, and once again the show was supplemented by a cool kid’s comicbook full of fun, verve and swashbuckling dash, cunningly crafted to appeal as much to the parents and grandparents as those fresh-faced neophyte kids…

This stellar premier collection re-presents the first 6 issues in a hip and trendy, immensely entertaining package suitable for newcomers, fans and aficionados of all ages and, although not necessary to the reader’s enjoyment, a passing familiarity with the TV episodes will enhance the overall experience (and they’re pretty good too)…

Following the format of the TV show, each tale opens with a brief vignette adventure before telling a longer tale. Issue #1 has the Caped Crimebuster and Aquaman putting paid to robotic rogue Carapax. This fed into main feature ‘The Panic of the Composite Creature’ (by Matt Wayne, Andy Suriano & Dan Davis) wherein Batman and the pulchritudinous Power Girl saved London from Lex Luthor‘s latest monster-making mechanism.

Phil Moy then illustrates Superman and the Gotham Guardian mopping up the terrible Toyman before ‘The Attack of the Virtual Villains’ finds the Bat and Blue Beetle in El Paso battling evil Artificial Intellect The Thinker in a compelling computer-game world…

After an introductory battle between Wonder Woman, Dark Knight and telepathic tyrant Dr. Psycho‘s zombie villains, ‘President Batman!’ (Wayne, Suriano & Davis) sees the Great Detective substitute for the Commander-in-Chief with Green Arrow as bodyguard when body-swapping mastermind Ultra-Humanite attempts to seize control of the nation. Then, in the full-length ‘Menace of the Time Thief!’ Aquaman and his bat-eared chum prevent well-intentioned Dr. Cyber from catastrophically rewriting history, following a magical and too brief prologue wherein sorcerer Felix Faust is foiled by a baby Batman and the glorious pushy terrible toddlers Sugar and Spike…

J. Torres, Carlo Barberi & Terry Beatty stepped in for both the chilling vignette wherein the nefarious Key was caught by Batman and a Haunted Tank whilst ‘The Case of the Fractured Fairy Tale’ began when the awesome Queen of Fables started stealing children for her Enchanted Forest and the Caped Crusader needed the help of both Billy Batson and his adult alter ego Captain Marvel…

This first compilation concludes with a preliminary clash between Hourman and Batman against the crafty Calculator, after which ‘Charge of the Army Eternal!’ (Torres, Suriano & Davis) finds the villainous General Immortus at the mercy of his own army of time-lost warriors and bandits and desperately seeking the help of the Gotham Gangbuster and ghostly Guardian Kid Eternity.

Although greatly outnumbered, the Kid’s ability to summon past heroes such as The Vigilante, Shining Knight, Viking Prince and G.I. Robot proves invaluable, especially once the General inevitably betrays his rescuers…

This fabulously fun rollercoaster ride also includes informative ‘Secret Bat Files’ on Luthor, Power Girl, Thinker, Blue Beetle, Ultra-Humanite, Green Arrow, Dr. Cyber, Aquaman, Queen of Fables, Captain Marvel, General Immortus and Kid Eternity, and the package is topped off with a spiffy cover gallery courtesy of James Tucker, Scott Jeralds & Hi-Fi.

DC’s Cartoon Network imprint is arguably the last bastion of all-ages children’s comics in Americaand has produced some truly magical homespun material (such as Tiny Titans or Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam!) as well as stunning interpretations of such television landmarks as Scooby Doo, Powerpuff Girls, Ben 10, Dexter’s Laboratory and others.

The links between kids’ animated features and comicbooks are long established and, I suspect, for young consumers, indistinguishable. After all, it’s just adventure entertainment in the end…

Despite being ostensibly aimed at TV viewing kids, these mini-sagas are also wonderful, traditional comics thrillers no self-respecting fun-fan should miss: accessible, entertaining, well-rendered yarns for the broadest range of excitement-seeking readers, making this terrific tome a perfect, old fashioned delight. What more do you need to know?
© 2009 DC Comics. Compilation © 2008, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Hey you! – all the parents, uncles, aunts, childless family friends and generally-nonplussed, bemused or bewildered, child-adjacent comics fans. Do you ever wonder what to get the scary, somehow unfathomable younglings, footling ankle-biters and drooling rug-rats that implacably impinge on every Christmas, birthday (so, so many birthdays!) or extended family event?

Have you ever considered that if you catch ’em early enough you could actually turn those little devils dears into readers and even actual Comics Fans too? Then perhaps you’ll actually have something to talk about whenever you’re stuck with them… 

Here’s some more suggestions that should make gift-shopping easier this year – and why not read the books, before wrapping them up? They’re all awfully good… 

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Ultimate Spider-Man: Venom


By Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley, Art Thibert & Rodney Ramos (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2873-1

After Marvel’s financial – and indeed creative – problems in the later 1990s, the company came back swinging. A key new concept was the remodelling and modernising of their core characters for the new youth culture. The ‘Ultimate‘ imprint abandoned the monumental continuity which had always been Marvel’s greatest asset, and the company’s major characters were given a separate universe to play in, with varying degrees of radical makeover to appeal to a contemporary 21st century audience.

Peter Parker was once again a nerdy high-school geek, brilliant but bullied by his physical superiors, and there was a fresh and fashionable, more modern and scientifically feasible rationale for the spider bite which imparted impossible arachnoid abilities.

Uncle Ben still died because of his lack of responsibility. The Daily Bugle was still there as was the outrageous J. Jonah Jameson. But now in a more cynical, litigious world, well-used to cover-ups and conspiracy theories, arch-foe Norman Osborn – a corrupt, ruthless billionaire businessman – was behind everything.

Any gesture towards the faux-realism of traditional superhero fare was surrendered to a tried-and-tested soap-opera melodrama that inevitably links all characters together in invisible threads of karmic coincidence and familial consanguinity, but, to be honest, it seldom hurt the narrative. After all as long as internal logic isn’t contravened, subplots don’t have to make sense to be entertaining.

By reworking key moments of Lee & Ditko’s Spider-Man – and their myriad successors – writer Brian Michael Bendis and illustrator Mark Bagley succinctly captured the core values of the original and certainly re-cast in it terms that newer readers readily assimilated. The Ultimate Peter Parker spoke to modern teen readers in the same way the 1960s incarnation spoke to me and my peers…

Collecting issues #33-39 of Ultimate Spider-Man from 2003, this premiere hardcover edition introduces an alternative vision for the web-spinner’s most memorable foe of recent vintage, and upped the angst-quotient by revealing untold connections with Peter’s long-dead parents.

The convoluted, clotted web of coincidence and continuity which had eventually bogged down the original Spider-Man was just beginning to creep into these tales, but perhaps that’s unavoidable if you’re concocting contemporary super-heroics.

What you need to know: Parker is the perennial hard-luck loser kid, a brilliant geek just trying to get by in a world where daily education is infinitely more scary than monsters and villains. His alter ego’s already shaky reputation has been destroyed by a burglar, who impersonated Spider-Man, went on a very public crime-spree and murdered Police Captain George Stacy.

Whilst Peter was dealing with the deadly doppelganger his widowed Aunt May was inviting Stacy’s orphaned daughter Gwen to move into the Parker household. In the aftermath Pete’s girlfriend and confidante Mary Jane Watson dumped him, unable to deal with the constant stress of having an underage superhero and perpetually potential corpse for a lover…

Shell-shocked and emotionally gutted by his bad break-up, Peter broods and mopes around the house until he finds an old box of junk which contains notes and video tapes of his 5-year old self and his parents; dead for a decade in a plane crash.

The idyllic scenes show a picnic in the park, attended by geneticists Richard and Mary Parker, their research partners the Brocks, Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Although he had forgotten, Eddie Brock Jr., despite being an older kid, was young Pete’s best friend for years – almost a brother…

Eddie’s folks had also died in the crash and the boy had been forced to leave the city and live with his grandparents.

All fired up, Peter tracks down Eddie and, discovering he’s now a student at Empire State University, resolves to find his old buddy and show him the tapes. So eager is the Arachnid kid that he doesn’t even glance at the notes and files in the box: enigmatic records pertaining to an incredible, radical cancer-cure code-named the Venom Project…

Under the tutelage of Dr. Curt Connors (whom Spidey once battled when the scientist temporarily mutated into a sentient Lizard), Eddie has grown into the coolest guy imaginable: a science student carrying on their father’s work and a player with lots of great-sounding advice about girls…

At the end of a great day on Campus, Eddie takes Peter to the labs and shows his bro-besotted pal “the work” – a shared inheritance from their departed fathers which will change the world forever…

The miracle-cure is a gloopy black liquid based on Ray Parker’s DNA: designed to coat a cancer sufferer’s entire body in a living bio-suit that would boost the victim’s system and repair organic malfunctions, and as Eddie shows it off he also discloses how corporate skulduggery scuttled the bold project even before the groundbreaking technologists died in that mysterious crash…

The suspicious and embittered Brock has spent years reconstructing the project using notes and samples kept by his grandfather. Now the student is close to total, vindicating success…

Back in High School Pete wants to confront Mary Jane, but Gwen advises against it. However when college-guy Eddie shows up in flashy sports car she joins the distracted Parker in another jaunt to ESU…

Fuming for hours at the imagined cause of his parents’ death and how well Gwen is getting on with Eddie, Parker breaks into the university labs to “obtain” his own test samples of the Venom prototype and is horrified when the goo attacks and utterly envelops his body…

That night, a new Spider-Man rampages through New York, clad in deepest black. Stronger, faster, tougher, far more reckless and wild and spectacularly crushing crimes big and small. After brutally foiling a celebrity kidnapping and easily trashing super-villain the Shocker, the dark Spider tackles a petty thief who reminds him of Uncle Ben’s killer and, lost in an emotional flashback, mutates into a fanged horror which tries to eat the gun-toting thug…

Petrified and aghast, Peter comes to his senses in time and tries to escape but the suit won’t let him go until the panicked lad blunders into high tension power cables and crashes to earth in the cemetery where his parents are buried…

Eddie is far from the cool guy he seems. After trying to take advantage of Gwen the frustrated frat boy sees TV footage of the Black Spider-Man and puts the pieces together. Rushing to the lab he finds Peter with the Venom sample and demands to know everything. Peter’s desperate warnings seem to hit home and he allows Parker to destroy the potentially homicidal sludge. Returning home he finds the still-shaking Gwen who tells him what Eddie did and slowly realises that his childhood friend might not be the paragon he imagined…

Brock meanwhile has retrieved another sample in his ongoing series of Venom experiments and activated it with his own body…

Plagued by nightmares, Peter seeks out Mary Jane who again rejects him and his dangerous lifestyle, whilst at ESU Eddie’s rash act has already cost the life of the cleaning woman who tried to help the mewling ebony mess on a lab floor.

Next day at Midtown High, Peter’s Spider-Sense alerts him to incredible peril and he realises that the suit has copied his memories and passed them on. Eddie has become a ravening, shape-shifting carnivorous version of Spider-Man, fuelled by a now unsuppressed psychotic paranoia and hatred…

With Richard Parker’s video-taped fears and misgivings on the Venom Project and life in general echoing in his head, Peter confronts the exultant, mutated Eddie and is soundly thrashed. The big black beast is going wild: slaughtering cops and civilians, whilst only really craving Peter. The savage suit is madly trying to reunite with Peter’s memories and Parker DNA…

In the pointless battle that follows, the monstrous avatar is vaporised by lightning and Peter flees. Dodging cops who want to arrest him for his various impostors’ crimes, the totally traumatised kid runs straight into the formidable Nick Fury.

The Director of covert security agency S.H.I.E.L.D. is the government’s go-to guy: responsible for superhuman affairs and crises. Moreover he had previously threatened to draft Spider-Man once he turned eighteen…

Despondent and dejected, the boy surrenders and begs to be cured of the curse of Arachnid powers, but instead receives an unexpected and life-changing pep-talk… Bewildered Peter again breaks into the ESU lab and meets Dr. Connors, wearily examining the vaults from which all the remaining Venom samples have been removed…

This version of the Wondrous Wall-crawler is very close to the movie iteration – surely a welcome benefit for all converts from celluloid to paper adventuring – and this book also includes added value features ‘Venom Arc Outline’ and 8 pages of beautiful Bagley pencils for the assorted comics and collection covers.

Moody and scary, but far more-concerned with angst-ridden melodrama than Fights ‘n’ Tights action, this thriller ends on a pensive, low-key and unsatisfactorily inconclusive note, deferring the eventual, inevitable showdown with the Venom-Brock amalgam to another day and leaving tragic Peter Parker even more conflicted and confused than before…

And that’s probably the point. Frenetic and compelling, the geeky charisma of the misunderstood alienated outsider fuels and permeates this readable pot-boiler of turbulent teen-tribulation and fashionable school-daze. Light yet addictive, this glossy super-soap brings great comics entertainment to the post-literate generation.
© 2003, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvels – Eye of the Camera


By Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern, Jay Anacleto & Brian Haberlin (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1386-7

The poignant story of New York photo-journalist Philip Aaron Sheldon, whose career was inextricably intertwined with the rise of meta-humanity, continues in this long-delayed sequel by writers Kurt Busiek & Roger Stern, illustrated by Jay Anacleto and coloured by Brian Haberlin.

Before the generational saga concludes however, this chronicle – collecting the 6-issue miniseries from 2009-2010 – commences with a Stern reflection on the series in ‘Looking Through the Viewfinder’ after which the reportage returns as ‘Just One Little Thing’ finds the independent but aging photo-journalist considering a more sedentary job as photo editor for a great metropolitan newspaper – just as the first reports of the Fantastic Four leak out at the beginning of the 1960s.

In a world filled with reports of alien invasions and atomic monsters like the Hulk, people are far more scared by the prospect of mutants – aberrant evolutionary offshoots of humanity destined to replace us – superseding mankind. Phil’s daughters are plagued with nightmares. So are many adults…

Soon after the X-Men went public and Captain America returned, the world somehow became a constantly accelerating rollercoaster of incredible wonder and constant peril. Now years later, seeking some sense of perspective, Sheldon visits the site of the rocket-launch which took Reed Richards, Ben Grimm and Sue Storm and her little brother Johnny into space and returned them as cosmic-powered Marvels.

For the photo-journalist this is the key event and first page of the new chapter in history, but the visit doesn’t afford him much insight or perspective and he returns home to discover fate has a far more intimate surprise in store. A visit to the doctor reveals that Phil has lung cancer…

In ‘Making Sense of the World’ the prospect of imminent, mundane death shakes Sheldon. Determination to provide for his family galvanises the ailing journalist, and he vigorously pursues a long-delayed sequel to his book Marvels but he’s revolted by his publisher’s suggestion that he should concentrate on the darker aspects of the metahuman phenomenon – rogues, villains and monsters…

In a world peppered with flamboyant champions battling atomic crazies and even supernatural horrors like the Son of Satan, Phil can’t get past the incredible paralysing irony that his own doctors want to shoot him full of chemicals and radiation…

One scary night, after being saved from muggers by Spider-Man, Sheldon decides that this book – if it’s going to be his last – will accentuate the positive and not glorify the worst of the Marvels’ universe. His legacy will be to show the world that there’s nothing to be scared of…

He begins to think twice in ‘Making Sense of the World’ as brutally merciless vigilantes such as the Punisher, Wolverine and Ghost Rider monopolise the news and his illness slowly grinds him down. However after meeting his old assistant Marcia Hardesty working for a TV network his bounce-back begins, especially after the chemotherapy pushes his disease into remission. Prowling the streets of New York however, catching great shots of new guys like Iron Fist, Yellowjacket and a host of new Avengers, Phil can’t help but see how few exploits are clear-cut and simple.

The staggering collateral damage from superhero incidents is increasing: homes destroyed and families traumatised, and one battle involving the X-Men even devastated much of JFK airport. Many new heroes are indistinguishable from actual monsters…

In ‘Shadows Within’ whilst Phil is out carousing, with old reporter pals when Jonah Jameson is kidnapped and the veteran photo-journalist sees with his own eye Spider-Man collaborating with and apparently actively condoning the murderous tactics of wanted felon The Punisher.

Horrified and disgusted, Sheldon collapses…

The disappointment and disillusion continue in ‘Deep Wounds’. Everywhere Sheldon looks he sees his beloved, admired Marvels betraying their principles and even becoming subject to tawdry celebrity scandals. It all comes to a head when Bugle journalist Ben Urich is stabbed by enigmatic warrior Elektra and founding Avenger Henry Pym is indicted for stealing radioactive materials…

The World rolls inexorably on and Phil struggles to complete his book, but when almost every hero and many of the villains vanish for a week, their return is followed by the advent of an unbelievably powerful being called the Beyonder. Huge swathes of the Earth are transformed and the planet is mere days from utter obliteration. When the Bugle’s Now Magazine begs the retired veteran to go and take the last pictures of Armageddon, the consummate professional acquiesces and is present when the Marvels impossibly repair the damage and achieve their greatest triumph…

Inspired anew and surfing a wave of public approval, Phil returns: forging ahead with his much-delayed sequel. Things are going great, and then one day he finds the cancer is back…

In ‘A Whole Lot of Paper’ Phil faces his final deadline, with wife Doris and the girls pitching in, even looking for new material as the metahumans and mutants constantly proliferate. Impatient and dying, Phil is heartened when Marcia turns up offering her services but his determination is fading even as his body succumbs to the mundane horror eating it from within. Dictating his copy from a hospital bed, his strength is failing fast and his thoughts are inextricably drawn to the past.

He wakes to find a stranger in his room and is reunited with a now grown Maggie, the Homo Superior child the Sheldons sheltered during the worst of the early anti-mutant unrest.

As a team of X-Men very publicly sacrifice their lives to save the world in Dallas, Texas, Phil finally discovers how his bravely generous act had not only saved one life but also created a modern-day saint in a forgotten corner of the world. As Doris, Jenny and Beth are joyfully reunited with Maggie, the recorder of Marvels passes away quietly in ‘Closing the Book’, content and secure in the knowledge that his legacies will be carried forward…

Although steeped as ever in the cosy minutiae of mainstream Marvel continuity, Busiek and Stern have performed a canny magician’s trick in generalising moments of comicbook detail until new readers can absorb and accept the events as parts of a greater narrative, whilst for slavish fanboys like me, offhand remarks and references have all the added weight of a shared if distanced history, like the Kennedy Shooting, Live Aid, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Who Shot JR and so much more…

Eye of the Camera also relentlessly trades on the fact that there’s no more sentimental creature than a comics reader and this small sequel, whilst lacking the impact of the original blockbuster, offers a moving and insightful end to the most human and approachable Watcher in the Marvel Universe.

This collection also includes a copious ‘Sources’ section, detailing the assorted comics which are referenced throughout the tale, and Busiek’s extended commentary in ‘Marvels: Eye of the Camera -The Outlines’ recounting the original plot before time, distance and changing fashion evolved the story.

That development is also included in ‘Marvels: Eye of the Camera Revised – the Look Ma, no Flashbacks Edition’ and the book ends with a peek at the ‘Art Process’ from Anacleto’s layouts and full pencils to Haberlin’s finished digital paint colours.
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters. Inc. All rights reserved.

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Superman Secret Origin


By Geoff Johns, Gary Frank & Jon Sibal (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3299-3

One of the perennial dangers of comicbook longevity is the incessant – and, as you get older, apparently hyper-accelerated – revisionism afflicting origin stories. Characters with any measure of success are continually reinvented to appeal to new readers and generally appal or gradually disaffect veteran aficionados. Moreover, nowadays it seems to happen sooner and sooner into a rebooted hero’s run.

Batman and Superman in particular are cursed by this situation, as much because of their broad mass-media appeal as their perfectly simple bedrock concepts. In recent years DC has been sedulously and assiduously editing, in-filling and cross-fertilising its icons until whether through movies, animated cartoons, TV shows, video games or the comics themselves, followers of the World’s Finest heroes can be assured that the ephemera and backstory always remain consistent and reliably reconcilable.

The upside of this is that as long as we fanboys can stifle our chagrin and curb our umbrage, every so often we can enjoy a fresh but not condescending, vivacious but not fatuous re-imagining of our best-beloved childhood touchstones…

In 2009-2010 Geoff Johns and Gary Frank remastered the Man of Tomorrow with their 6-issue miniseries Superman: Secret Origin which, whilst reinstating many formerly-erased elements of the classic Silver Age mythology, also incorporated much of John Byrne’s groundbreaking 1986 reboot (as collected in the Man of Steel tpb volumes) with Mark Waid, Lenil Francis Yu & Gerry Alanguilan’s 2003 (Smallville TV-show inspired) Superman: Birthright.

Moreover the tale also legitimised and fully absorbed the Christopher Reeve Superman movies into the canon, with Frank’s supremely authentic renditions making the actor’s appearance and demeanour as both Action Ace and klutzy Clark Kent the definitive comicbook look of the Caped Kryptonian.

This particularly well-known folk-tale-retold opens with an introduction by screenwriter, producer and occasional comics scribe David S. Goyer after which ‘The Boy of Steel’ hones in on Clark Kent’s formative years as the Kansas farmboy begins to realise just how truly different he is from his friends and classmates.

Traumatised when he accidentally breaks best pal Pete Ross‘ arm playing football, Clark’s only confidante is Lana Lang – who has long known about his incredible strength and durability – but even she can offer no solace. The strange boy’s abilities are growing every day and his father is increasingly advising him to distance himself from ordinary kids.

When Lana kisses Clark, his eyes blast forth heat rays and nearly set the school on fire, prompting Jonathan and Martha Kent to reveal the truth to their troubled son. Buried under the barn is a small spaceship, and when Clark touches it a recorded hologram message from his birth-parents Jor-El and Lara shockingly discloses the orphan’s incredible origins as Kal-El, the Last Son of the dead planet Krypton…

As the stunned and traumatised youth flees into the night, in another part of Smallville an equally unique youngster discovers a glowing green meteor fragment…

In the days that follow Clark, weighed down by a new sense of responsibility and isolation, begins the life-long masquerade that will forever deflect attention from the being he really is. Meanwhile Martha, using materials from the fallen star-ship, makes her son a suit based on the garments she saw in the alien’s message and bearing the proud family crest of the House of El…

On the day of the County Fair Clark meets Lex Luthor and feels sick for the first time in his life when the arrogantly abrasive boy-genius shows him the green rock he had found in the fields. At that moment a tornado strikes the little town and Lana is swept to her doom in the skies until impossiblyClark chases after her and flies her to safety…

Issue #2 features ‘Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes’ and reveals how Smallville is seemingly protected by an invisible guardian angel who mysteriously saves people and property. Clark is lonelier than ever and, with only Lana and his folks to talk to, tries to strike up a friendship with Lex, but the aggressively disdainful and disparaging prodigy can only dream of escaping the revoltingly provincial backwater and moving to the big city of Metropolis…

Everything changes when the boy from Krypton meets a trio of super-powered strangers from the future. Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad and Cosmic Boy have travelled back to meet the youth who inspired a thousand years of heroism and show it by taking the Boy of Steel on a breathtaking vacation into the fabulous future.

…And when he eventually returns home there’s one more glorious surprise when Superboy intercepts an extraterrestrial projectile and is reunited with his long-lost Kryptonian pet…

Things are looking up for Luthor too: his despised but fully-insured father having just died, the brilliant boy and his little sister are now on their way to bigger and better things…

‘Mild-Mannered Reporter’ begins as, after years of travelling, bumbling Clark Kent begins work at the Metropolis Daily Planet; a once-great newspaper on the verge of bankruptcy in a once-great city. The venerable rag was slowly dying; suffering and expiring by degrees for the crucial mistake of trying to expose the billionaire plutocrat who owned most of the vast conurbation – the swaggering self-styled philanthropist Lex Luthor.

Even so, Editor Perry White, intern and aspiring photo-journalist Jimmy Olsen and particularly lead reporter Lois Lane were determined to go down fighting…

Every day Luthor appears on the balcony of his corporate HQ and deigns to grant the tawdry request of one of the fawning desperate rabble, but his gloating is spoiled when Lane and her new stooge Kent break through security and disrupt the demonstration of a new high-tech fighting-suit. In the melee Lois and a helicopter are knocked off the skyscraper roof and impossibly saved by a flying blue and red Adonis…

Fully revealed to the world, the mysterious Superman captures humanity’s imagination and soon exclusive reports and Olsen’s photos in the Planet turn the paper’s fortunes around. Luthor instinctively knows he has a rival for Metropolis’ attention and approbation and savagely dedicates all his vast resources to destroying his foe…

An early opportunity comes when destitute and grasping janitor Rudy Jones accepts Luthor’ daily benison and is accidentally mutated by exposure to Green Rock waste into a life-absorbing energy-leeching monster. ‘Parasites’ sees the Man of Tomorrow’s spectacular victory thrown in his face by Luthor who publicly brands the hero an alien spy and vanguard of invasion…

Tension escalates in ‘Strange Visitor’ as Lois’s estranged father General Sam Lane collaborates with Luthor to capture Superman, using the military man’s pet psycho Sgt. John Corben (a creepy stalker the elder Lane selected and groomed to marry Lois and “set her straight”) in an armoured war-suit powered by the mysterious Green Rock.

When the naïve Kryptonian hero agrees to be interviewed by the army he is ambushed by crack attack units and Corben. Valiantly fighting his way free, the Caped Crimebuster critically injures the war-suit pilot in the process and, sensing a unique opportunity, Luthor then rebuilds the broken soldier, inserting Green Rock into his heart and creating a relentless, anti-Superman cyborg weapon: Metallo…

The drama concludes in ‘Man of Steel’ as the desperate hero, hunted by Lane’s troops through the city, faces the berserk Cyborg in the streets and wins over the fickle public with his overweening nobility, instilling in the venal masses who were once Luthor’s cowering creatures a new spirit of hope, optimism and individuality…

The Adventure Begins… Again…

Inspiring and suitably mythic, this epic retelling (containing also a baker’s dozen of covers, variants and an unused extra) combines modern insights with unchanging Lore: paying lip service to the Smallville TV show and venerating the movies, whilst still managing to hew closely to many of the fan-favourite idiosyncrasies that keep old duffers like me coming back for more.

This is another sterling reinvigoration and visually intoxicating reworking that shouldn’t offend the faithful whilst providing an efficient jump-on guide for any newcomers and potential converts.
© 2009, 2010, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvels


By Kurt Busiek & Alex Ross (Graphitti Designs/Marvel)
ISBN: 0-936211-47-4

Every so often a series, miniseries or story-arc comes along in mainstream comics which irrevocably alters the landscape of the art-form, if not the business. After each such event the medium is never quite the same again…

One such work was the 4-issue Prestige Format miniseries Marvels by jobbing scripter Kurt Busiek and then just-breaking illustrative artist Alex Ross.

I’m usually quite reticent in suggesting people read stuff I know damn well they’ve probably already seen, but as I actually want to review the long, long, long-delayed sequel it’s probably best to start at square one, right?

…And just for clarity’s sake my copy is the 1994 Deluxe, Signed and Numbered Limited Hardcover edition produced under license by Graphitti Designs. It’s pretty spiffy and has, I gather, a few little extras not included in other editions, but is of course far from the only version available…

This tale is all about history and human perspective and follows the working life of photo-journalist Phil Sheldon, whose career closely paralleled the dawn of the modern heroic era; when science, magic, courage and overwhelming super-nature gave birth to an Age of Marvels…

After a lovely painted plate containing those aforementioned signatures and a heartfelt dedication to Jack Kirby, writer Kurt Busiek offers his light-hearted reminiscences and mis-rememberings on how the project came about, liberally illustrated with pictures, designs and sketches from the meticulous Alex Ross’ art files, after which the saga opens with ‘A Time of Marvels’…

In 1939 a gaggle of ambitious young newspapermen are discussing the War in Europe. Brash J. Jonah Jameson is trying to dissuade his shutterbug pal Phil Sheldon from heading overseas, claiming there’s plenty of news still inNew York…

Unconvinced, Phil heads to his next assignment: a press conference with scientific crackpot Professor Phineas T. Horton. The photographer’s head is filled with thoughts of journalistic fame and glory on distant battlefields and he almost misses the moment Horton unveils his artificial man: a creature that bursts into flame like a Human Torch…

From that moment Sheldon’s life changes forever. His love-hate fascination with the fantastic miracles which rapidly, unceasingly follow in the fiery wake of the inflammatory inhumanoid is used to trace the history of superhumanity and monstrous menace which comprises the entire canon of what we know as the Marvel Universe.

Soon the android is accepted as a bona fide hero, frequently battling with aquatic invader Sub-Mariner like elemental gods in the skies above the city whilst the seemingly-human vigilante supermen like The Angel constantly ignore the law and daily diminish Phil’s confidence and self-worth. It’s as if by their well-meaning actions these creatures are showing that mere men are obsolete and insignificant.

The photographer’s feelings of ineffectuality and inadequacy having crushed his spirit, Phil turns down the War correspondent assignment and descends into a fearful funk. He even splits up with his fiancée Doris Jaquet: after all, what kind of man brings children into a world with such inhuman horrors in it?

Nevertheless Sheldon cannot stop following the exploits of the phenomenons he’s dubbed “Marvels”…

It all changes with the arrival of patriotic icon Captain America. With theLand ofLiberty in the War at last, many once-terrifying titans have become the nation’s allies and secret weapons, turning their awesome power against the Axis foe and winning the fickle approval of a grateful public.

However, some were always less dutiful than others and when the tempestuous Sub-Mariner again battled the Torch, Prince Namor of Atlantis petulantly unleashed a tidal wave against New York and Phil was injured snapping the event.

Even after the loss of an eye, Phil’s newfound belief in the Marvels doesn’t waver and he rededicates himself to his job and Doris; happily going to Europe where his pictures of America’s superhuman Invaders crushing the Nazi threat become part of the fabric of history…

The second chapter skips to the 1960s where Sheldon, wife Doris and daughters Jenny and Beth are, like most New Yorkers, at the epicentre of another outbreak of meta-humanity – a second Age of Marvels…

Two new bands of costumed heroes are operating openly: a Fantastic Foursome comprising Reed Richards, Ben Grimm and Sue and Johnny Storm and another masked, anonymous team who hide their identities and call themselves Avengers. There are also numerous independent costumed characters streaking across the skies and hogging the headlines, which Jonah Jameson – now owner and publisher of the newspaper he once wrote for – is none too happy about. After all he has never trusted masks and is violently opposed to this new crop of masked mystery-men…

Phil is still an in-demand freelancer, but has had a novel idea and signs a deal for a book of his photos just as the first flush of popular fancy begins to wane and the increasing anxiety about humanoid mutants begins to choke and terrify the man in the street…

When the mysterious X-Men are spotted, Sheldon is caught up in a spontaneous anti-mutant race-riot and is appalled to find himself throwing bricks with the rest of the out-of control mob. He’s even close enough to hear their leader dismissively claim “They’re not worth it”…

Shocked and dazed, he goes home to his nice, normal family but the incident won’t leave him, even as he throws himself into his work and his book. He worries that his daughters seem to idolise the Marvels. “Normal” people seemed bizarrely conflicted, dazzled and besotted by the celebrity status of the likes of Reed Richards and Sue Storm as they prepared for their upcoming wedding, yet prowling the streets in vigilante packs lest some ghastly mutant show its disgusting face…

Events come to a head when Phil finds his own children harbouring a mutant in the cellar. During WWII Phil photographed the liberation of Auschwitzand looking into the huge deformed orbs of “Maggie” he sees what he saw in the eyes of those pitiful survivors. His basic humanity eventually wins out and Phil lets her stay, but he can’t help dreading what his friends and neighbours might do if they find such a creature mere yards from their own precious families…

The hysteria just keeps on growing and the showbiz glitz of the Richards/Storm wedding is almost immediately overshadowed by the catastrophic launch of anthropologist Bolivar Trask‘s Sentinels. At first the mutant-hunting robots seem like humanity’s boon but when they usurp their programming and attempt to take over Earth it is the despised and dreaded Homo Superior who save all mankind.

Of course the man in the street knows nothing of this and all Phil sees is more panicked mobs rioting and destroying their own homes…

In fear for his family he rushes back to Doris and the girls, only to find that Maggie has vanished: the unlovely little child had realised how much her presence had endangered her benefactors. They never saw her again…

Chapter 3 focuses on the global trauma of ‘Judgement Day’ as the shine truly starts coming off the apple. Even though crises come thick and fast and are as quickly dealt with, vapid, venal humanity begins to become jaded with its burgeoning costumed community and once-revered heroes are plagued by scandal after scandal. Exhausted, disappointed and dejected, Phil shelves his book project, but fate takes a hand when the skies catch fire and an incredible shiny alien on a sky-borne surfboard announces the end of life on Earth…

The planet-devouring Galactus seems unstoppable and the valiant, rapidly-responding Fantastic Four are humiliatingly defeated. Phil, along with the rest of the world, embraces the end and wearily walks home to be with his loved ones, repeatedly encountering humanity at its best and nauseating, petty, defeated worst.

However, with the last-minute assistance of the Silver Surfer, who betrays his puissant master and endures an horrific fate, Reed Richards saves the world, but within days he is accused of faking the entire episode and Sheldon, disgusted with his fellow men, explodes in moral revulsion…

Some time later Phil’s photo-book is finally released in the concluding ‘The Day She Died’. Now an avowed and passionate proponent of masked heroes, humanity’s hair-trigger ambivalence and institutionalised rushes to judgement constantly aggravate him even as he meets the public and signs countless copies of “Marvels”.

The average American’s ungrateful and ingracious attitudes rankle particularly since the mighty Avengers are currently lost in another galaxy defending Earth from collateral destruction in a war between the rival galactic empires of the Kree and the Skrulls, but the most constant bugbear is old associate Jonah Jameson’s obsessive pillorying of the mysterious Spider-Man.

Phil particularly despises a grovelling, ethically-deprived young freelance photographer named Peter Parker who constantly curries favour with the Daily Bugle’s boss by selling pictures that deliberately make the Wall-crawler look bad…

Phil’s book has brought a measure of success, and when the aging photographer hires young Marcia Hardesty as a PA/assistant whilst he works on a follow-up, he finds a passionate kindred spirit. Still, everywhere Sheldon looks costumed champions are being harried, harassed and hunted by two-faced citizens and corrupt demagogues, although even he has to admit some of the newer heroes are hard to like…

Ex-Russian spy the Black Widow is being tried for murder, protesting students are wounded by a Stark Industries super-armoured thug and in Times Square a guy with a murky past is touting himself as a Hero for Hire…

When respected Police Captain George Stacy is killed during a battle between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus, Jameson is frantic to pin the death on the Web-spinner but hero-worshipping Phil digs deeper. He interviews many witnesses, including the murderously malign, multi-limed loon himself, and consequently strikes up a friendship with Stacy’s lovely daughter Gwen, a truly sublime young lady who is inexplicably dating that unscrupulous weasel Parker…

One evening, hoping for another innocuous chat with the vivacious lass, Phil sees her being abducted by the Green Goblin and, desperately giving chase, watches as his vaunted hero Spider-Man utterly fails to save her from death. Her murder doesn’t even rate a headline; that’s saved for industrialist Norman Osborn who was found mysteriously slain that same night…

Gutted, worn out and somehow betrayed, Sheldon chucks it all in, but seeing that Marcia still has the fire in her belly and wonder in her eyes, leaves her his camera and his mission…

Immediately following is a fulsome Appendix section which reprints Ross’ preliminary origin of the Golden Age Human Torch as first seen in Marvels issue #0 and his laudatory Afterword and Acknowledgements, before a wealth of Images begins, consisting of promotional art pages and a stunning double-page pin-up of ‘X-Women’.

There are also model sheets and studies for Namor, Ben Grimm, Dr. Doom, Tony Stark and Iron Man, the Black Widow, Gwen Stacy, Black Panther and others.

Even more artistic treats include illos for a proposed Iron Man 2020 series, the Inhumans, Hobgoblin, more X-Women, the cover to Marvels #0 and a lavish painted recreation of Amazing Fantasy #15 which served as a cover for Heroes Illustrated.

Although this titanic tale traces the history of Marvel continuity, the sensitive and evocative journey of Phil Sheldon is crafted in such a way that no knowledge of the mythology is necessary to understand the plot; and would indeed be a hindrance to sharing the feelings of an ordinary man in extraordinary times.

One of Marvel’s and indeed the genre’s greatest.

But you probably already know that and if you don’t what are you waiting for…?
© 1994 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Life Through the Lens


By Kent Olson & Sabine Ten Lohuis
No ISBN:

One of the greatest things about comics is the simple, overwhelming fact that you don’t need the riches of Croesus and a cast of thousands to produce an effective and even top-rate creative outcome. As a means of delivering drama, comedy, passion, heartbreak and spectacle, nothing tops sequentially arranged words and pictures on a flat surface.

With such a plastic medium there’s literally no tale that can’t be told – and at the exact undiluted pace and intensity the authors intended, with no interference from bean counters, hucksters, Health and Safety cops or the laws of physics.

The first part of a much larger tale, Life Through the Lens is a slim but fascinating self-published work by Philosophy and Film School graduate Kent Olsen and artist Sabine Ten Lohuis created with the aid of a grant from the Kamloops, British Columbia Film Society that seeks to examine the role of the addictive power of fiction in a world of mere reality…

You’d think that money, success, public approbation, a wonderland of drugs and a string of compliant, willing women would be enough for most men, but TV movie pundits Richard Winston and Jerald Freestone are painfully hungry for more: something ineffable and unobtainable….

In Chicago as one year ends and the next begins, the great friends saturate themselves again with sex, drugs and films old and new, inarticulately wishing they were there and dreading that life and the future only holds more of the same…

That increasingly aching creative void is slowly poisoning their lives. Richard and Jerald are only enthralled and engaged when absorbed in other peoples’ fictional realities, and only come alive when furiously debating the meaning and merit of what they’re watching.

In this arena – and usually in front of adoring small screen masses – they release their true selves: Richard the academic intellectual Ego, viewing everything through layers of organisation and the heartfelt accepted wisdoms of others, whilst raw, unschooled Jerald is all Id, allowing his visceral instinctual first response full rein over his critical sensibilities.

As their miserable success inexorably leads to greater excess, their unyielding friendship draws them deeper into an inescapable, shared yet polarised passion. Tragically there’s no cue for a stabilising, moralising Super Ego on their celluloid horizons…

To Be Continued…

Teasing and tantalising, valuing subtlety over splashy booms or bangs and carefully pacing itself to create the maximum tension – even in the midst of the moving buddy-movie moments – this is an intriguing and superbly inviting walk off comics’ beaten track that will hopefully find an age-appropriate audience far above and beyond its self-admitted crossover film-fan target market.
No copyright or trademark so let’s assume Story © 2012 Kent Olsen & Illustrations © 2012 Sabine Ten Lohuis until advised otherwise. All rights reserved.

Copies of an extremely limited run are available from the marvellous High Octane Comics and Collectables in Kamloops if you’re ever in the vicinity, or direct from Kent Olsen via cheque or paypal ($8 in Canada, or $10 US, which I suspect includes shipping) with further details obtainable by contacting blankpaint@gmail.com or through Sabine’s lovely webpage at http://tenlohuis.com/

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Everything Together – Collected Stories


By Sammy Harkham (Picturebox)
ISBN: 978-0-98515-950-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: the only gift a real comics lover will need this year… 9/10

Some cartoonists, like some rock-stars, movie-makers – and indeed exponents of every art-form – make big headlines and meteorically hit the public attention early in their careers whilst others soldier on in the background, relishing the untroubled obscurity and assiduously building a body of brilliant, well-regarded work that the even the shooting stars are envious of.

Such a creator is Sammy Harkham. Born in Los Angelesin 1980, he spent his teen-age years in Australiaand developed a pathological love of the comics medium which first surfaced after he created the astounding and multi-award winning anthology Kramers Ergot in the opening moments of the 21st century.

Since the 1980s, “Underground” creators and cartoonists of adult and mature English-language comics have begun to find mainstream and popular acceptance by re-branding themselves as alternative or Avant Garde: crafting European-style personal tales rather than chasing mass-entertainment goals.

Soon self-published mini-comics and fanzines were augmented if not supplanted by groundbreaking anthologies which served to disseminate the best of the best in challenging, no-holds-barred sequential art.

Following on the groundbreaking heels of Raw and its descendants, Kramers Ergot launched as a 48-page mini-comic in 2000. Harkham nurtured the publication over 8 years, as it evolved a vari-format, anything-goes visual and intellectual banquet equal-billing talented newcomers and many of the world’s greatest pencil-pushers old and new. In 2008, the hard-working editor suspended publication with #7 – a huge-scaled (536x414mm) 96-page deluxe hardback featuring 60 of the art-form’s most beguiling stars. Harkham recently returned to his billion megawatt baby with an 8th volume in 2011.

The occasional compendium offered to artists an utterly free intellectual outlet and more nurturing creative environment and featured superb works by a multitude of graphic storymakers, but was also an outlet for Harkham’s own fabulously eclectic and enthralling comic strips. Now his many of his sublimely rendered, addictively intriguing, creatively-inspirational cartoons stories are gathered in an entrancing softcover collection no mature aficionado should be without.

Everything Together comprises superbly challenging cartoon opuses and short pieces plus some quirky, ultra-brief vignettes, and the only grudging criticism I can offer is that some of the very best of them are printed, really, really small – but even that’s not an insurmountable problem since he’s an artist’s artist, capable of stunning line-economy and clear narrative and, as a bit of an old doodler too (quite, quite venerable, in fact), I possess a magnifying lens in my battered old art box…

Always a master of understated nuance and the necessarily unsaid, with an uncanny ability to find stories in any place, Harkham’s Finest Comics originally appeared in Vice, Mome, Drawn & Quarterly Showcase, Kramers Ergot, Crickets and elsewhere, and kick off here with the quietly hilarious art-challenged world-conqueror and sup-par cartoonist ‘Napoleon!’

Next, Harkham deliciously demythologises the Biblical Jewish experience with the wry, dry ‘Elisha’ and then changes pace by packing in a bunch of those teeny-weeny tales on a single page of ‘Indicia Comics’ that includes Attack of the Frankensteins!, Cab Ride, Cartoonist, Pickton Grocery Line and more.

A longer exploration of life in South Australia in 1995 follows as bemused idle kid Iris fretfully whiles away another dull summer with cadged cigarettes, illicit booze, unwise boyfriends and basic buddy-bonding in the eerily laconic and mesmerising ‘Somersaulting’. Immediately after the uncompromising single-pager, ‘Mother Fucker’ focuses on a day-trip with Iris’s absentee dad and ‘Maximum Destruction’ offers a furiously delightful tribute to Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are…

Most of the stories are in assorted limited half-tones (black, white and another colour) but – and only when he thinks it appropriate – Harkham delves splendidly into his glorious full-spectrum palette, beginning with the idyllic ‘Knut Hamsen Dept:’ and the surreal desert crime caper ‘Give Up’ before concluding with the oddly lyrical ‘Golem Comics’.

In black and blue and white ‘Poor Sailor’ details how frustrated dreams, daily routine and dissatisfaction can destroy a perfect life, ‘Cartoonists in Cars’ provides a portmanteau of telling revelations and ‘Frank S. Santoro, Sr.’ details the non-events of a cold night in Pittsburgh.

A telling moment of domesticity and ancestral history is examined in the poor, hard-pressed Jewish Shtetl of ‘Lubavitch, Ukraine, 1876’ whilst contemporary ennui informs the creepy ‘Sitting Outside, Watching Baby’ after which ‘Free Comics’ bundles together another batch of spellbinding mini-cartoon moments such Gary Panter, I am Happy Every Moment of Every Day, Clowes + Huizenga, Pregnant Alley and this tantalising tome concludes with ‘The New Yorker Story’, a darkly enticing literary romance of diluted passion and ascendant aesthetics…

Punctuated with loads of evocative pin-ups and easily blending love, absurdity, mania, wry wit, hate, indifference, reportage, apathy, resignation, whimsy and honest hope when nothing else is left, Everything Together perfectly showcases the deep thought and carefully considered visual elucidation of a master craftsman whose renown is at last catching up with his diligence and sheer talent.
© 2012 S. Harkham. All rights reserved.
Everything Together is published in the UK on October 25th 2012