Now Read This!

August 11, 2012August 9, 2012

Arzach

By Moebius (Les Humanoides Associes)
No ISBN:

I’m breaking my own self-imposed rules today to present something just a little bit different and celebrate the talents of France’s most famous master of the comic arts.

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in the suburbs of Paris on May 8^th 1938 and raised by his grandparents after his mother and father divorced in 1941.

In 1955 he attended the Institut des Arts AppliquÃ©s where he became friends with Jean-Claude MÃ©ziÃ¨res who, at 17 was already selling strips and illustrations to magazines such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Spirou. Giraud apparently spent most of his time drawing cowboy comics and left after a year.

In 1956 he travelled to Mexico, staying with his mother for eight months, before returning to France and a full-time career drawing comics, mostly westerns such as Frank et Jeremie for Far West and King of the Buffalo, A Giant with the Hurons and others for Coeurs Valliants in a style based on French comics legend Joseph â€œJijÃ©â€ Gillain.

Giraud spent his National Service in Algeria in 1959-1960, where he worked on military service magazine 5/5 Forces FranÃ§aises and on returning to civilian life became JijÃ©’s assistant in 1961, working on the master’s long-running (1954-1977) Western epic Jerry Spring.

A year later, Giraud and Belgian writer Jean-Michel Charlier launched the serial ‘Fort Navajo’ in Pilote #210, and soon its disreputable, anti-hero lead character Lieutenant Blueberry became one of the most popular European strips of modern times. In 1963-1964, Giraud produced a number of strips for satire periodical Hara-Kiri and, keen to distinguish and separate the material from his serious day job, first coined his pen-name â€œMoebiusâ€.

He didn’t use it again until 1975 when he joined Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Philippe Druillet – all inspired science fiction fans – to become the founders of a revolution in narrative graphic arts as â€œLes Humanoides Associesâ€. Their groundbreaking adult fantasy magazine MÃ©tal Hurlant utterly enraptured the comics-buying public and Giraud again wanted to utilise a discreet creative persona for the lyrical, experimental, soul-searching material he was increasingly driven to produce: series such as The Airtight Garage, The Incal and the mystical, dreamy flights of sheer fantasy contained in Arzach…

To further separate his creative twins, Giraud worked inks with a brush whilst the futurist Moebius rendered with pensâ€¦

Generally I review material produced or translated into English and indeed Arzach did make it into the language of Shakespeare, Keats, Byron and Alan Moore in the 1987 Epic Comics/Titan Books Moebius volume 2 – Arzach & Other Fantasy Stories, but to really appreciate the magics and majesty you should try and get hold of the 1976 hardback album or any other early iteration where the tales can be appreciated and enjoyed in splendid isolation and consideration.

Produced utterly without words, the four episodes depict the lonely contemplative flights of a solitary explorer – some say warrior – observing an incredible world and its inhabitants from the lofty perch of a flying lizard.

The first strip ‘Arzach’ finds the silent skyglider passing between the spires of an incredible city, peeking into enticing windows until an angry citizen confronts him. Dealing summarily with his enraged antagonist, the voyeur returns for his seductive reward and gets a big surpriseâ€¦

In ‘Harzak’ the explorer mysteriously gains and swiftly loses a pack-pterodactyl to carnivorous plants. Woefully short on rations, he then encounters a colossal ape-like monster which reluctantly provides diversion, entertainment and eventually distraction for the cloud-voyager whilst in ‘Arzak’ a fusty old world technician motors across a blistering desert to a fantastic temple. Inside listless creatures mope dejectedly. Enduring physical assault, the sparks enters a bunker and sets about fixing things as, on a screen, the wind-rider paces in frustration, with his ungainly, featherless steed prone and unmoving. With the twist of a wrist a handy screwdriver sets the world to rightsâ€¦

‘Harzakc’ opens with the lizard rider again spying on a beautiful undraped woman before flying off into a succession of increasingly bewildering and astoundingly spectacular alien scenes ofâ€¦

Well, that’s for you to decide.

This work more than any other led to an outpouring of fanciful, lavish and enchanting fantasy creations from all over the world, inspiring movie, makers, writers and even comics creators as disparate and far-ranging as Stan Lee and Hayao Miyazaki. These apparently simplistic peregrinations are magnificent visual panoplies open to many interpretations, tapping into oneiric realms of the subconscious and woven with wry humour, but they are not stories in any traditional sense.

Think of them perhaps as staggeringly detailed goads to the imagination of the readerâ€¦

Moebius famously created these strips in reaction to his perceived predominance of American superhero comics and consciously stove to reinvigorate the genres and scenarios of the entire comics industry – with terrific results.

A sheer unadulterated dose of primal imaginary power and superlative skill and craft, Arzach is a tome that belongs on the bookshelf of every fan of the art of comics.

Jean Giraud and Moebius passed away on March 10^th 2012.
Edition Â© Les Humanoides Associes 1976. Arzach Â© 2012 the estate of Jean Giraud. All rights reserved.

August 10, 2012August 9, 2012

The Moon Looked Down and Laughed – a Holy Cross graphic novel

By Malachy Coney & Paul J. Holden (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-263-7

The Irish have always rightly prided themselves on their ability to tell a tale and comics especially have long-benefited from that blessed gift. One writer especially gifted and yet inexplicably not world famous yet is Malachy Coney, who first started turning heads in Fleetway’s socially informed Crisis in 1989 when he was invited by Pat Mills to co-write a sequence of the controversial serial Third World War set in Ireland.

Coney was raised in the Ardoyne area of Belfast during the time of â€œThe Troublesâ€ and much of his work deals with the politics of the era and issues of gender and gay rights.

In 1993 he scripted the miniseries Holy Cross for Fantagraphics: three separate tales all linked by history, geography and incidental characters Jimmy and Davy – a local gay couple – illustrated respectively by Davy Francis, Chris Hogg and P. J. Holden. That lost delight happily led to the lovely book under discussion today.

Since then Coney, who is also a cartoonist and publisher, has written a number of Gay-themed superhero tales (Major Power and Spunky, The Dandy Lion, The Simply Incredible Hunk), socially aware material such as The Good Father and Catholic Lad, and worked with Garth Ennis on Top Cow’s The Darkness and Steven Grant on Vampirella.

Active in the arts in Northern Ireland, he has contributed to DNASwamp, Small Axe and Fortnight, produced material for the internet and self-publishes his own Good Craic Comics.

Paul Jason Holden is also from Belfast and, as well as working closely with Coney on the Holy Cross stories, The Dandy Lion and The Simply Incredible Hunk, has illustrated Mike Carey’s ‘Suicide Kings’ and worked for Warhammer Monthly, 2000AD, Judge Dredd Megazine, Image Comics, Garth Ennis’ Battlefields and Strip Magazine. He is also active in developing web- and app-based comicsâ€¦

Rendered in stark and seductive black and white, The Moon Looked Down and Laughed is again set in the Holy Cross district of Belfast and is narrated by hopeful writer Tommy Doherty, a decent and sentimental young man just starting to learn the way of the world.

He’s always got time to listen to his old dad’s stories about the bad days past, especially the one when he was a young man doing odd jobs for a mean, rich old sod named Burke. That privileged, demented swine used to work him like a slave every day and then set the dog on him if he stayed on his land one second after quitting-time. Sometimes Burke even deliberately kept him late just to see him runâ€¦

That all changed on the fateful day Pa Doherty’s watch stopped and the vicious landowner gloatingly watched as the manic canine brought him downâ€¦

Of course that was the day sheer terror made the worm turn and a scared lad learned another use for the hated shovel in his handsâ€¦

From that he learned a hard but necessary lesson: there are mad dogs everywhere and usually the shovel is the only way of dealing with themâ€¦

With thoughts of wildlife documentaries, carnivores and prey in his head, Tommy heads for the pub and a drink with his outrageous pals Jimmy and Davy and obliquely encounters the district’s apex predator when Francie O’Neill‘s gang of thugs and troublemakers harass him for hanging out with â€œfaggotsâ€â€¦

It had only been weeks since the pack of jackals had beaten up Jimmy and Davy in one more gay-bashing incident. O’Neill had been a bully since they were all at school but always managed to come off like some roguish golden boy. Nobody could understand why the loveliest girl in class had married him, especially Tommy, for whom Annie would always be â€œthe oneâ€, ever since that incident when they played â€œspin-the-bottleâ€ as nippersâ€¦

Now she was shackled to a possessive, brutal thug, permanently pregnant and with all the life leaching out of her.

Staggering away at closing time, Tommy and the boys spot Francie stalking the streets, looking for a fight to start and, not for the first time, the writer ponders the worth of pens against swords and why people like that are allowed to get away with so muchâ€¦

Pa Doherty’s pride and joy is his allotment garden and on the way there next day, father and son see an ambulance rushing away. It seems poor fat Big Junior has had a breakdown and harmed himself. The lad wasn’t the same since his ma died and the constant bullying and sadistic harassment by certain people has pushed him over the edgeâ€¦

As they watch Annie O’Neill and her two oldest pass by, Pa invites them to spend time in his garden. The kids have the best day of their life just playing and, with a bit of peace at last, Annie idly chats about the old days with Tommyâ€¦

The next day the writer answers a desperate call: his father is in a bad way. It seems someone has destroyed his precious beloved garden; razed it to rubble and ruinsâ€¦

Consoling the heartbroken and despondent elder, Tommy sees Francie’s unmistakable signature to the despicable act. Soon after, finding the psychotic lout terrorising his own wife and children, the frustrated scribe realises he has found his own mad dogâ€¦

Disposing of the body on the nearby railway tracks, the shell-shocked and traumatised writer is unaware that Jimmy and Davy have been witnesses to the whole thingâ€¦

And that’s just the start of Tommy Doherty’s road from boy to man in this superbly told tale, blending wry humour and bucolic Celtic charm with shatteringly personal conflicts that test the miraculous bonds of childhood loyalty and friendship, revealing not only the horrific acts good men can be pushed to but how deeds shape character and how little the universe caseâ€¦

Long overdue for re-issue preferably in a bumper edition collecting the three-issue Holy Cross miniseries and the fabled unpublished fourth issue as well, this is a wonderfully beguiling and incisive story of human life at its most vibrant and compellingâ€¦
Â© 1997 Malachy Coney & Paul J. Holden. This edition Â© 1997 Fantagraphic Books. All rights reserved.

August 9, 2012August 8, 2012

The Adventures of Blake and Mortimer: The Secret of the Swordfish volume 1 – Ruthless Pursuit

By Edgar P. Jacobs translated by Clarence E. Holland (Blake and Mortimer Editions)
ISBN: 978-9-06737-002-8

Belgian Edgard FÃ©lix Pierre Jacobs (March 30^th 1904 – February 20^th 1987) is considered one of the founding fathers of the Continental comics industry. Although his output is relatively meagre compared to some of his contemporaries, the iconic series he worked on practically formed the backbone of the art-form in Europe, and his splendidly adroit yet roguish and thoroughly British adventurers Blake and Mortimer, created for the very first issue of Le Journal de Tintin in 1946, swiftly became an unmissable staple of post-war European kids’ life the way Dan Dare would in Britain in the 1950s.

Edgar P. Jacobs was born in Brussels, a precocious child who began feverishly drawing from an early age but was even more obsessed with music and the performing arts – especially opera.

He attended a commercial school but, determined never to work in an office, pursued art and drama following graduation in 1919. A succession of odd jobs at opera-houses – scene-painting, set decoration, working as an acting and singing extra – supplanted his private performance studies, and in 1929 Jacobs won an award from the Government for classical singing.

His proposed career as an opera singer was thwarted by the Great Depression, however, as the arts took a nosedive following the global stock market crash.

Picking up whatever dramatic work was going, including singing and performing, Jacobs switched to commercial illustration in 1940. Regular work came from the magazine Bravo; as well as illustrating short stories and novels he famously took over the syndicated Flash Gordon strip, after the occupying German authorities banned Alex Raymond’s quintessentially All-American Hero and the publishers desperately sought someone to satisfactorily complete the saga.

Jacob’s ‘Stormer Gordon’ lasted less than a month before being similarly embargoed by the Nazis, after which the man of many talents created his own epic science-fantasy feature in the legendary Le Rayon U, a milestone in both Belgian comics and science fiction adventure.

‘The U Ray‘ was a huge hit in 1943 and scored big all over again a generation later when Jacobs reformatted the original â€œtext-block and pictureâ€ material to incorporate speech balloons and ran the series again in the periodical Tintin with subsequent release as a trio of graphic albums in 1974.

I’ve read differing accounts of how Jacobs and Tintin creator HergÃ© got together – and why they parted ways professionally, if not socially – but as to the whys and wherefores of the split I frankly I don’t care. What is known is this: whilst creating the weekly U Ray, one of Jacob’s other jobs was scene-painting, and during the staging of a theatrical version of Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh HergÃ© and Jacobs met and became friends. If the comics maestro was unaware of Jacob’s comic work before then he was certainly made aware of it soon after.

Thereafter, Jacobs began working on Tintin, colouring the original black and white strips of The Shooting Star from the newspaper Le Soir for an upcoming album collection. By 1944 he was performing a similar role for Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America, King Ottokar’s Sceptre and The Blue Lotus. By now he was also contributing to the drawing too, working on the extended epic The Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun.

Jacob’s love of opera made it into the feature as HergÃ© – who loathed the stuff – teasingly created the bombastic Bianca Castafiore as a comedy foil and based a number of bit players (such as Jacobini in The Calculus Affair) on his long-suffering assistant.

After the war and liberation publisher Raymond Leblanc convinced HergÃ©, Jacobs and a number of other comics creatives to work for his new venture. Launching publishing house Le Lombard, he also commissioned Le Journal de Tintin, an anthology comic with editions in Belgium, France and Holland edited by Herge, starring the intrepid boy reporter and a host of newer heroes.

Beside HergÃ©, Jacobs and writer Jacques van Melkebeke, the comic featured Paul Cuvelier’s ‘Corentin’ and Jacques Laudy’s ‘The Legend of the Four Aymon Brothers’. Laudy had been a friend of Jacobs’ since they worked together on Bravo and the first instalment of the epic thriller serial ‘Le secret de l’Espadon’ starred a bluff, gruff British scientist and an English Military Intelligence officer (who was closely modelled on Laudy): Professor Philip Mortimer and Captain Francis Blakeâ€¦

The initial storyline ran from issue #1 – 26^th September 1946-8^th September 1949 – and cemented Jacobs’ status as a star in his own right. In 1950, with the first 18 pages slightly redrawn, The Secret of the Swordfish became Le Lombard’s first album release with the concluding part published three years later. These volumes were reprinted nine more times between 1955 and 1982 with an additional single complete edition released in 1964.

In 1984 the story was reformatted and repackaged as three volumes with additional material – mostly covers from the weekly Tintin – added to the story as splash pages, and the first of these forms the basis for the English language book under discussion today.

HergÃ© and Jacobs purportedly suffered a split in 1947 when the former refused to grant the latter a by-line on new Tintin material, but since the two remained friends for life and Jacob’s continued to produce Blake and Mortimer for the weekly comic, I think it’s fair to say that if such was the case it was a pretty minor spat. I rather suspect that The Secret of the Swordfish was simply taking up more and more of the brilliant, diligent artist’s time and attentionâ€¦

The U Ray also provided early visual inspiration for Blake, Mortimer and implacable nemesis Colonel Olrik, who bear a more than passing resemblance to the heroic Lord Calder, Norlandian boffin Marduk and viperous villain Dagon from that still lauded masterworkâ€¦

Although all the subsequent sagas have been wonderfully retranslated and published by CineBook in recent years, this initial epic introductory adventure and its concluding two volumes remain frustratingly in the back-issue twilight zone, probably due to its embracing of the prevailing prejudices of the time.

By having the overarching enemies of mankind be a secret Asiatic â€œYellow Perilâ€ empire of evil, there’s some potential for offence – unless one actually reads the text and finds that the assumed racism is countered throughout by an equal amount of â€œgoodâ€ ethnic people and â€œevilâ€ white folk, so with no other version available I’m happily using the huge (312 x 232mm) 1986 iteration for this review.

All the subsequent tales by Jacobs and his successors have been successfully released by Cinebook and, although I’ll be reviewing them in due course, don’t wait for me but go out and get them all now!

Here and now, however, the incredible journey begins with ‘Ruthless Pursuit’ as a secret army in the Himalayas prepares to launch a global Blitzkrieg on a world only slowly recovering from its second planetary war. The wicked Basam-Damdu, Emperor of Tibet, has assembled an arsenal of technological super-weapons and the world’s worst rogues such as the insidious Colonel Olrik in a bid to seize control of the entire Earth.

However a bold British-Asian spy has infiltrated the hidden fortress and surrenders his life to get off a warning messageâ€¦

In England, physicist and engineer Philip Mortimer and MI5 Captain Francis Blake discuss the worsening situation at an industrial installation where the boffin’s radical new aircraft engine is being constructed. When the warning comes that the war begins that night, the old friends swing into immediate actionâ€¦

As the super-bombers rain destruction down on all the world’s cities, Mortimer’s dedicated team prepares his own prototype, the Golden Rocket, for immediate launch, taking off just as Olrik’s bombers appear over the desolate complex. Despite heavy fire the Rocket easily outdistances the rapacious Empire forces, leaving ruined homes behind them as they fly into a hostile world now brutally controlled by Basam-Damduâ€¦

Whilst seeking to join British Middle East resistance forces who have another prototype super-plane, teething troubles and combat damage create tense moments in the fugitives’ flight. When the Rocket is attacked by a flight of jets the test ship’s superior firepower enables it to fight free but only at the cost of more structural deterioration. Failing now, the Rocket goes down in the rocky wilds between Iran and of Afghanistan. Parachuting free of the doomed Rocket, Blake, Mortimer and the crew are machined gunned by pursuing Empire jets and only three men make it to the ground safelyâ€¦

After days of struggle Blake, Mortimer and the indomitable Jim are cornered by Iranian troops who have joined Olrik’s forces. Sensing disaster, the Britons hide the plans to Mortimer’s super plane but one of the Iranians sees the furtive act. When no one is looking – even his superiors – Lieutenant Ismail hurriedly scoops up the document but misses oneâ€¦

Under lock and key and awaiting Olrik’s arrival, the prisoners are accosted by Ismail, who sees an opportunity for personal advancement which the Englishmen turn to their own advantage. Denouncing him to his superiors, Blake instigates a savage fight between Ismail and his Captain. During the brief struggle Jim sacrifices himself, allowing Blake and Mortimer to escape with the recovered plans. Stealing a lorry, the desperate duo drive out into the dark desert nightâ€¦

Followed by tanks into the mountain passes, the ingenious pair trap their pursuers in a ravine just as hill partisans attack. The Empire collaborators are wiped out and, after exchanging information with the freedom fighters, the Englishmen take one of the captured vehicles and head to a distant rendezvous with the second Rocket, but lack of fuel forces them to stop at a supply dump where they are quickly discovered.

By setting the dump ablaze the heroes escape again, but in the desert Olrik has arrived and found the sheet of notes left behind by Ismail. The cunning villain is instantly aware of what it meansâ€¦

Fighting off aerial assaults from Empire jets and streaking for the mountains, Blake and Mortimer abandon their tank and are forced to travel on foot until they reach the meeting point where a British-trained native Sergeant Ahmed Nasir is waiting for them. The loyal Indian served with Blake during the last war and is delighted to see him again, but as the trio make their way to the target site they become aware that Olrik has already found it and captured their last hopeâ€¦

Only temporarily disheartened, the trio use commando tactics to infiltrate Olrik’s camp, stealing not the heavily guarded prototype but the villainous Colonel’s own Red-Wing super-jet. Back on course to the British resistance forces, the seemingly-cursed trio are promptly shot down by friendly fire: rebels perceiving the stolen plane as just another enemy targetâ€¦

Surviving this crash too, the trio are ferried in relative safety by the apologetic tribesmen to the enemy-occupied town of Turbat, but whilst there a spy of the Empire-appointed Wazir recognises Blake and Mortimer. When Nasir realises they are in trouble he dashes to the rescue but is too late to prevent Mortimer from being drugged.

Sending the loyal Sergeant on ahead, Blake tries frantically to revive his comrade as a platoon of Empire soldiers rapidly mount the stairs to their exposed upper roomâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Gripping and fantastic in the best tradition of pulp sci-fi and Boy’s Own Adventures, Blake and Mortimer are the very epitome of True Brit grit and determination, always delivering grand old-fashioned Blood and Thunder thrills and spills in timeless fashion and with staggering visual verve and dash. Despite the high body count and dated milieu, any kid able to suspend modern mores and cultural disbelief (call it an alternative earth history if you want) will experience the adventure of their livesâ€¦ and so will their children.
Â© 1986 Editions Blake & Mortimer. All rights reserved.

August 8, 2012August 7, 2012

Joe’s Bar

By JosÃ© MuÃ±oz & Carlos Sampayo, translated by Jeff Lisle (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-85286035-6

Argentinian JosÃ© Antonio MuÃ±oz was born on July 10^th 1942 in Buenos Aires and studied at the prestigious Escuela Panamericana de Arte de Buenos Aires under comics geniuses Hugo Pratt and Alberto Breccia before joining the prolific Francisco Solano Lopez studio at the age of 18. Soon his work was appearing in Hora Cero and Frontera Extra and he was ghosting episodes of the legendary serial Ernie Pike for his old tutor Pratt.

Through the Argentine-based Solano Lopez outfit, he began working on material for British publishing giant Amalgamated Press/IPC, but had no real feeling for the material he was producing. Moreover, like so many others, he was increasingly uncomfortable in his homeland and was compelled to leave Argentina in December 1972 as the military junta tightened its totalitarian grip on the country and increasingly clamped down on free expression and the arts, as well as all forms of overt or covert dissent.

Moving to England, Spain and later Italy, MuÃ±oz met again fellow Ã©migrÃ© and creative soul-mate Carlos Sampayo in Barcelona in 1974 and convinced the poet, music critic, copywriter and author to try his hand at comics. The result was the stunning noir Private Eye expressionistic masterpiece of loss and regret Alack Sinnerâ€¦

The poet Sampayo, born in 1943, grew up with all the same formative experiences as his artistic comrade and, after a similar dispiriting start (he had tried writing and being a literary editor before resigning himself to work in advertising), had moved to Spain in 1972.

The pair had first briefly met in 1971 when mutual friend Oscar Zarate (who wrote one of the two introductions in this collection) left Argentina in the forefront of the creative exodus sparked by the rise of â€œthe Colonelsâ€â€¦

Urged by old mentor Hugo Pratt to â€œdo something of your ownâ€ the pair began producing the adventures of an ex-New York cop turned Shamus, haunting the shadows of the world’s greatest, darkest city, encountering the bleak underbelly of the metropolis and all the outcasts, exiles and scum thrown together at its margins. The series debuted in experimental Italian anthology Alter Linus, then was picked up by Belgian giant Casterman for (A Suivre) and compiled in a number of albums.

Inexplicably there have been no English-language collections of the stunningly superb saga since a proposed 12-issue series from Fantagraphics was curtailed and cancelled after 5 volumes in the late 1980s, although a couple of short stories also appeared in anthology magazines Prime Cuts and Raw.

All that necessary preamble at last leads us to Joe’s Bar – which appeared as a dingy watering hole in the very first Alack Sinner story ‘The Webster Case’ – and soon began running as a parallel, occasional series featuring and indeed often debuting characters who would spring into stories and series of their own. In 1988 Titan Books released a British edition of Catalan Communications’ single volume of short stories from the place where nobody wants to know your name, and it remains one of the very best noir graphic novels ever released in Englishâ€¦ and is similarly absent from modern publishing schedules.

The bar is situated in a multi-ethnic melting pot that covers the worst part of the city and acts as a crossroads and crucible for a vast cast of lost, lonely and desperate characters just trying to get by one night at a time and, following that aforementioned ‘MuÃ±oz & Sampayo: a Profile’ by Zarate and an introduction from British comics historian Paul Gravett, the horror and heartache begins with a taciturn young man who earns his living cooking and cleaning in the greasy dive.

‘Pepe, the Architect’ is an illegal immigrant caught in the Green Card trap – no work without the card, no card without a job. Only Joe knows his secret, even the desperate lad’s girlfriend has no idea of his shameful status, but when the assassination of a foreign ambassador uptown sends hordes of cops into the teeming Diaspora district, Pepe sees himself inevitably exposed, captured and deported to the land where torturers eagerly await himâ€¦

Imagining hunters at every corner, the lad is picked up by a woman hungry for any kind of warmth but Pepe’s paranoia overwhelms his lust and he attacks her, leaving her for dead before heading back to the Bar. Unable to work, swiftly getting far too drunk, the fugitive architect shares his story with an old black man who’s seen far too much misery, unaware that the night holds more grief in storeâ€¦

‘Rusty Stories’ opens as broken-down, punch-drunk old fighter Moses Man shambles through the grimy the streets, until he’s recognised by current wrestling champ Tigran Pacha. The latest hotshot offers the shattered legend a big purse for an â€œexhibition matchâ€ – grappler versus boxer – simultaneously wondering how such a legend could fall so low. With Man cleaning up for his big comeback, the memories return and, with visions of gamblers and gangsters, mad hubris and the wrong kind of woman boiling in his battered brain, when he finally gets back in the ring he ignores the fix and things get far too seriousâ€¦

MuÃ±oz & Sampayo brilliantly rewrote the rules that make comics work with their stark, vivid, ugly pictures describing deep, often elliptical personal journeys of complex characters with no beginning and often no appreciable end. Moreover individual tales frequently intersected and overlapped, as with the meat of the next piece.

‘Ella’ is a photographer. She’s often taken candid shots of that P.I. Sinner, Pepe the dishwasher, the bum Moses Man and all the other hopeless characters at the Bar, but now she’s the one in the depths. Convinced she is dying, she constantly re-examines her brief passionate affair with that mysterious black guy and wonders if race really does matter. Why did he leave her that way? What was going on? And then, on the bustling street she sees him and everything becomes clearâ€¦

The drama ends with the tragic ‘Fifth Story’ wherein a guy in prison shares his story with a cellmateâ€¦

Everything was going okay for young Mike Weiss. The store was doing fine and he’d finally blundered into asking that Feldman girl out – over ice cream and in the bar, yet. Of course she eventually had to take the initiative but that was fine too. Then his beloved old man got the cancer and started wasting way. As his father shrivelled Mike retreated into food, gorging himself into a stupor as his father dwindled into a dry husk filled with pain.

Even Rosa couldn’t reach him then. All he wanted was bad food and release from his father’s ghastly, continual pleas. Anyway, what kind of parent begs a loving son to kill him?

When life couldn’t get any worse, Mike was jumped by thugs in the street who dealt him another shattering blow which galvanised the poor schmuck into finally ending his dad’s pain. But even in jail poor Mike’s woes hadn’t quite endedâ€¦

Whilst the plots are deliberately generic, pimping starting points from a hundred pulp stories and noirish B-movies, the choice, fresh meat of the stories comes from the spotlight shining on those grotesque, useless inconsequential strangers and bystanders left behind once the flawed, noble heroes and glittering sultry sirens have moved on, especially once MuÃ±oz casts his highly stylised, excoriatingly expressionistic vision upon them and their harsh, uncompromising, inescapable world.

Concentrating on the peripheral shadows and unturned corners of that grim shared universe where Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Jim Thompson, James M. Cain and the rest ply their trade, MuÃ±oz & Sampayo have created a fierce and unforgettable environment that is truly and uniquely pure comics.

Dark, bleak, sordid and tawdry, the lives coinciding and congealing at Joe’s Bar offer a truly astonishing view of the other side of the world, one that no lover of truly mature fiction could bear to tear appalled yet fascinated eyes away from.
Â© 1987 Carlos Sampayo & JosÃ© MuÃ±oz. Introductions Â© Oscar Zarate, Paul Gravett & Art Spiegelman.

August 7, 2012August 6, 2012

Japan Inc. – an introduction to Japanese Economics

By ShÅtarÅ Ishinomori, translated by Betsey Scheiner (University of California Press)
ISBN: 978-0-52006-289-4

It’s often been said, but bears repeating here: â€œComics are an integral part of Japanese lifeâ€. There’s no appreciable difference to Eastern eyes between sequential pictures and prose, so it makes sense that such a medium should be used to educate and elucidate as well as entertain. After all the US military reached the same conclusion after WWII when they commissioned comics legend Will Eisner to design instruction manuals in strip form, and produce similar instructive material for Services magazines like P*S, the Preventative Maintenance Monthly, which even the least schooled G.I. could understandâ€¦

In late 1986 Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan’s analogue of the Wall Street Journal, commissioned manga star ShÅtarÅ Ishinomori to adapt a serious economic text – Zeminaru Nihon keizai nyÅ«mon published by the newspaper – into a mass market comicbook. Manga Nihon keizai nyÅ«mon sold more than half a million copies in its first yearâ€¦

Soon after, Securities and Investment companies were using strip brochures to explain the complexities of their latest stock market products and by the mid 1980s benkyÅ and jitsumu manga (â€œstudy comicâ€ and â€œpractical comicâ€) were an integral part of school and college libraries. Naturally, there were sequels to Manga Nihon keizai nyÅ«monâ€¦

ShÅtarÅ Ishinomori (nee Onodera and Ishimori; January 25^th 1938 – January 28^th 1998) is officially the World’s most prolific comics artist. After his death the Guinness Book of Records posthumously recorded his 128,000+ pages – often generated at the rate of 200-300 pages a month! – the most ever produced by a single creator.

In 1955, when the boy was simply keen fan of Manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka, the God of Comics took the lad on as his assistant and apprentice, beginning with the iconic Tetsuwan Atomu – or Astro Boy to you and meâ€¦

Thereafter, until his death Ishinomori worked ceaselessly in Manga, Anime, Games and Tokusatsu (live action superhero shows such as Kamen Rider – a genre he practically invented) developing groundbreaking series such as Super Sentai, Cyborg 009, Sabu to Ichi Torimono Hikae, Ganbare!! Robokon and countless others.

There is a museum dedicated to his career in Ishinomaki, Miyagi and trains to and from the site are decorated throughout with his myriad cartoon creations.

Following a comprehensive and informative account on the development and growth of comics in Japan by Stanford University’s Peter Duus, this oddly engaging English-language edition reveals the way the Japanese perceived their own economy’s function and global position through the fictionalised lives of a small group of workers at the mythic conglomerate Toyosan Automobile Corporation and its affiliate the Mitsutomo Company.

The cast are idealised concepts of the nation’s business life: Kudo is a good and kind-hearted executive, always seeking to put profit in a social framework that benefits everybody, whilst his colleague and rival Tsugawa is a ruthless, go-getter to whom people are expendable and only the Bottom Line matters. Above them is wise manager Akiyama, with the women’s role exemplified by shy yet passionate Miss Amamiya, whilst young office junior Ueda portrays the verve, exuberance and inexperience of the next generation of Japan’s workersâ€¦

The elucidating episodes begin with ‘Trade Friction’ as in 1980 American car workers begin attacking imported Japanese cars. Ever hungry for a fast buck, the US motor industry lays off staff and attempts to force Washington into curtailing Japanese importsâ€¦

If the exporting nation is to maintain its growth, it may have to shift production to the USA and leave its own workers and subcontractors out in the cold. Soon there’s panic at Toyosan’s factory and the union is up in arms, but whilst Tsugawa has no problem with that, the ingenious Kudo is working on a plan to diversify and provide new jobs for the ordinary Japanese suffering under the outrageous US tacticsâ€¦

‘Countering the Rise of the Yen’ sees the disparity in international exchange rates threaten Imahama City as their crucial export trade crumbles. When Tsugawa seizes the opportunity to buy the place cheap and turn it into a Mitsutomo amusement park, once more Kudo interferes, seeking a way to keep all the citizens of the district fully employed whilst delivering a sound lesson on the way to balance family life and duty to the companyâ€¦

Geo-political affiliations and the ever-shifting balance of power in rogue states comes under scrutiny in ‘Industrial Structure’ when a Middle-Eastern country seeks to revive a secret industrial process and past alliance with Mitsutomo. The shady deals that were struck in the pursuit of guaranteed resources offer huge potential profit but a concomitant risk of disastrous political and financial fall-out if the scheme is exposed. Of course Tsugawa and Kudo and their respective mentors Toda and Akiyama are in the thick of things in a chapter dramatically illustrating how changes in international political climate reshape Japan’s industrial structureâ€¦

The nation’s welfare system is tested in ‘Deficit Finance’ as Ueda’s aged grandmother comes to visit and Japan’s social services are scrutinised by Tsugawa and Kudo, who learn the advantages and drawbacks of government-led initiatives whilst both learning some hard-hitting historical lessons about the last (in their case 1965) Recessionâ€¦

‘A Monetary Revolution’ describes the inexorable global banking de-regulation of the 1970s and 1980s as Tsugawa visits London following the â€œsuicideâ€ of an Italian banker and falls into a hornet’s nest of trouble by involving Mitsutomo in a â€œFi-Techâ€ scheme (covert financial speculation between banks, usually achieved by mutually monkeying with the proposed profit margin) that involves the Vatican’s Mafia-run Financial Houseâ€¦ Anybody else positively dizzy with dÃ©jÃ vuâ€¦?

When it all comes bubbling to a head it’s only Kudo’s swift thinking and sharp dealing that turns an unmitigated catastrophe into a business triumph, after which the ‘Epilogue’ neatly sums up the subtly effective lessons learned throughout the book and depicts our cast as the look forward to what might lie ahead

Using a stylish soap-opera and captivatingly effective scenario to put a personal face on history – or indeed Global Finance in this case – is a technique the modern film industry has used for decades, with fictionalised accounts of historical figures and events as far-ranging as The King’s Speech to Flight 93 to Shakespeare in Love leading a vital veracity to even the most fanciful proceeding, and it works magnificently here whilst the subplots (sex, political intrigue, bribery, espionage, blackmail, sacrificing family life for the job and, of course, the war between prosperity and personal honour) all work perfectly to put a human frame to what might seem dry and dusty lecturing

Whilst not to everyone’s taste, this book certainly shows how emphatic and powerful a tool comics can be, whilst to my mind it has a far more lasting dramatic appeal than many of its contemporary money-worshipping entertainments such as Dallas, Dynasty or Wall Streetâ€¦

One interesting point about this book is the perceptible subtext and open undercurrent describing a general mistrust of all politicians – shadings that most British scholarly texts are keen and careful to disguise at all costs. US President Ronald Reagan is constantly depicted as either a buffoon or a conniving demon but he gets off lightly compared to Japanese officialdom, from the lowliest local administrator or union rep all the way to the highest statesmen in the landâ€¦

Here the words and pictures don’t prevaricate: Business Good, Politicians Badâ€¦

And on that I couldn’t possibly commentâ€¦

August 6, 2012August 5, 2012

Bell’s Theorem volumes 1-3

By Matthias Schultheiss, translated by Tom Leighton & Bernd Metz (Catalan Communications)
ISBNs: 0-87416-037-5, 0-87416-062-6 and 0-87416-074-X

Although German, supreme sequential stylist Matthias Schultheiss, like so many other international comics creators, found widespread fame and success in France’s monumental bandes dessinÃ©es publishing culture.

Born in Nuremberg in 1946 the award-winning author and artist began his working life as an apprentice cabinet maker, before studying illustration at Hamburg’s Academy of Fine Arts. After graduation he freelanced in the commercial art field until 1981 when his graphic novel The Trucker began in the magazine Comics umgesetzt (the Comic Reader). After illustrating Charles Bukowski’s The Long Job, and Broken in the City, after which, in 1984, the artist self-penned the controversial Kalter Krieg (Cold War), which was â€œforbiddenâ€ by West Germany’s Federal Review Board and listed as a â€œharmful publicationâ€ due to perceived problems with its despondent political tone.

With The Trucker syndicating in Denmark, Schultheiss met with French publisher Albin Michel in 1985, producing shorts for the prestigious L’Ã‰cho des savanes. That same year he began the groundbreaking metaphysical thriller and philosophical tour de force Die Wahrheit Ã¼ber Shelby (The Truth about Shelby) under discussion here.

Three spectacular, challenging and uncompromising volumes LebenslÃ¤nglich, Die Verbindung and Der Kontakt (Lifetime, The Compound and The Contact) appeared between 1996-1988, to great international acclaim, and since then Schultheiss has produced a number of challenging, epic works for increasingly broader markets, including the triptych The Sharks of Lagos, The Track, Night Taxi, Talk Dirty amongst others.

In 1993 he produced the strikingly surreal superhero Propeller Man for Dark Horse Comics – to decidedly mixed American reception – after which he more or less abandoned comics for television writing, only returning in 2002 with The Puddle.

Since then he has produced Woman on the River for manga giant Kodansha, Travels with Bill, and Daddy, a controversial and pithy exploration of the Second Coming of Jesusâ€¦

Translated and released by Catalan Communications in the late 1980s, The Truth about Shelby became Bell’s Theorem and the three volumes were redubbed Lifer, The Connection and Contact, introducing a vicious, hard-as-nails career thug rechristened â€œShalbyâ€ and following his inevitable path to destruction after he’s picked out by an incomprehensible universe to endure the cosmic vagaries of quantum mechanics in irresistible motionâ€¦

Just in case you were wondering: the new title comes from John Stewart Bell’s 1964 paper â€œOn the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradoxâ€, in which the renowned Irish physicist addressed the objections cited by science giants Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen who didn’t fully accept the plausibility of a Theory of Quantum Mechanics.

Summed up in the statement â€œNo physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of Quantum Mechanicsâ€, Bell introduced the concept of Hidden Variable Theories to show how the old guard’s stipulations that the effects of Locality and Realism negated the possibility of quantum physics.

I’m sure I’ve got that all wrong, but suffice to say for the sake of the comic tale here, it means that all events are connected in ways we can’t necessarily perceive or understandâ€¦

Lifer introduces Shalby, a vicious criminal not long for this world. The other convicts are determined to kill him, but after the latest savage attack the callous thug finally accedes to the warden’s insistent offers and signs up for an experimental program in another jail. He doesn’t even care that much if the promised pardon for surviving the tests is real or notâ€¦

Deep in a desert complex under burning skies, Shalby is injected with drugs and strapped to a ghastly hi-tech torture chair. The first session reduces him to a bloody, leaking wreck and whilst recovering in the infirmary he is visited by another test-subject, sneaking in through an air-ductâ€¦

Even with half his face missing Frank seems to know what’s going on. The place is part of a top secret military project and the other prisoners have no chance of survival, but if Shalby can escape before he becomes too weak he can blow the whistle on the whole sordid messâ€¦

With Frank’s aid Shalby kills one of doctors and makes his break; hopping a freight train and hitching rides to anywhere else. However the drugs in his system are still working: he’s feeling shaky and can’t stop bleeding. Luckily Frank gave him some pills and hypos to counteract the effects of the scientists’ experimentsâ€¦

With cops hard on his tail, Shalby collapses and is rescued by a young doctor who hides him and tends to his many wounds. After two weeks the fugitive is fighting fit again and his saviour has also provided him with a car and money. Immune to gratitude, Shalby rapes her when she refuses to sleep with him before heading off into the nightâ€¦

Determined to escape at all costs, Shalby heads north and buys passage to Canada on a smuggling plane, landing on a desolate stretch of seashore in Labrador, miles from anywhereâ€¦

The beach is strewn with maritime wrecks, debris and the skeletons of whales. Constantly far out to sea, Shalby’s only companions are more of the vast cetaceans, sporting in the cold uninviting waves.

However, his search for shelter only offers mystery as the brute discovers bizarre machines everywhere: peculiar contraptions of string and bone, sticks and scraps of metalâ€¦

When he falls into a pit he finds a mummified corpse wearing more of the impossible devices and headphones made from discarded tin-cans. The place is a bunker of sorts with science texts and esoteric notes scattered everywhere, but beggars can’t be choosers and Shalby repairs the roof and moves in.

The notes belong to Mark Amselstein, a physicist from Hamburg, who also left cash and a passport. The photo shows that Amselstein was a dead ringer for Shalby and his jottings describe an incredible experiment into insane connections in time and space. Moreover, whenever the whales appear, those tin headphones crackle with eerie, haunting soundsâ€¦

In all this time alone, Shalby has been unaware that there are hunters on his trail, but when he spots a plane circling above his beach the fugitive acts instantly, snatching up Amselstein’s papers, passport and whatever else he can carry, setting off inland just as winter hits the great wilderness.

Weeks later a weary, shaggy trapper walks into snowbound Montreal, rents a hotel room and emerges as Mark Amselstein, Ph. D. Buying as ticket to Hamburg and idly attempting to pick up a woman in the airport bar, the dapper doctor is abruptly accosted by two mysterious menâ€¦

Shalby, with the aid of an unsuspecting innocent bystander, savagely deals with the enigmatic agents and hurriedly boards his flight, but soon realises that he is experiencing horrifying, unimaginable hallucinationsâ€¦

The Connection opens with Shalby recoiling from a dusty decaying spectre in a parka and goggles, who quickly resolves into a pretty fellow passenger. Shaken, he subsides into pensive speculation and when the plane lands quickly debarks and heads for Amselstein’s old address. Meanwhile in a sanatorium, the normally quiescent Paul begins to strain against his straitjacket. The attendants don’t understand why he keeps screaming â€œhe’s hereâ€â€¦

Amselstein’s apartment is an empty hovel by the docks, deep in the infamous Red Light district of the Reeperbahn. However a clever clue leads the escaped convict to the missing physicist’s true base, an abandoned dredger deep in the ice-bound industrial wasteland of the Harbour.

His arrival has not gone unnoticed. One streetwalker in particular is keen to observe him, as are a number of furtive men haunting the area but utterly uninterested in the flesh on sale and for rentâ€¦

As Shalby investigates the old scow he finds more of the esoteric scrap-and-string constructions amidst the shambolic cabins but no immediate threat and, exhausted, dozes off.

Elsewhere his dogged followers are revealed as American spies, desperate to recover the missing scientist who was a vital part of their Star Wars Defence Initiative. At the highest level the decision is made: get Amselstein back, willing or otherwiseâ€¦

Further exploring the deserted hulk, Shalby finds fresh food and more of the dead boffin’s notes. Baffled by concepts which impossibly stipulate that the universe is constantly created by the beings in it and that all times and places are one, the bewildered thug experiences all-consuming, full-sensory flashbacks and finds himself returned to the beach, playing underwater with cetaceans and on the dredger’s bridge all at once.

As the Americans search Amselstein’s deserted flat, far away the deranged Paul also experiences uncanny forces and as the spies find pointers to a harbour hideaway, the windows suddenly explode, killing one of them.

Bizarre things keep happening to Shalby. For a few terrifying moments the dredger is transported from its moorings to a shattering storm far out at sea, but more disturbingly the convict’s studies are making sense of a science that should be beyond him. The key passage seems to indicate that Amselstein had proved that he personally existed â€œon several levels without having any conscious knowledge of itâ€ â€¦

On a purely mundane level however, another mystery is solved when a skateboarding hooker comes aboard. She had been Amselstein’s girlfriend and has kept the galley stocked for his eventual return.

Ignoring his doubt and confusion and knowing the scientist intimately, she has no doubts as to his identityâ€¦

As Paul begins building his own string and stick machines, the Americans are closing in on Amselstein. When they finally corner their target they are utterly unprepared for the violent response of the supposedly sedentary scientistâ€¦

On the run again, Shalby cannot stop delving into Amselstein’s preposterous notes, even though his horrifying visions are occurring with greater frequency. Flashing back and forth across the world, swimming with whales, shifting in time, the episodes all leave him shocked and drained, giving the spies and their hired cronies an opportunity to corner him once more. Yet again however, his insatiable drive to be free saves Shalby and after seeking brief comfort with the still nameless prostitute, the rattled fugitive makes a crucial connection with an ever-present tramp who knows far more than he shouldâ€¦

With unexplained events such as uncontrolled levitation adding to his problems, Shalby is directed to visit the institutionalised Paul and learns how Amselstein’s attempts to pierce the curtain shrouding the walls of perception have done something to the myriad levels of Realityâ€¦

With illusions both men can see battering at the walls of the asylum, Paul warns Shalby that Amselstein is waiting for him in the bowels of the Earthâ€¦

The manic quest concludes in Contact as Paul unsurprisingly claims that Shalby is Amselstein and advises him that all the answers can be found on â€œthe Black Tugâ€, but the baffled convict is more concerned by the Americans who are relentlessly pursuing him. Still, in every quiet moment Shalby is forced to dwell on the incredible, unbelievable things that keep happening. Could the ravings and rantings of madmen, bad men and dead men possibly be true?

Events are closing in and during a moment of chill resignation after his faithful, enigmatic hooker abandons him too, the distraught fugitive follows her to the Reeperbahn and, during a violent confrontation, kills her pimp. With vengeful whores, low-grade criminals, cops and the ever-present CIA operatives hot on their trail, Shalby and the girl flee back to the ice-locked harbour, dodging American snipers and police boats and even a helicopter.

The frantic scene is a recipe for blockbusting disaster and when Americans shoot the pilot, the German copter crashes into the convict’s vessel. Pushed beyond all endurance, the fugitive snatches up an axe and lets the old, primal Shalby loose on the aghast US spiesâ€¦

Far away in the asylum, Paul passes away peacefully as Shalby finds his long-forgotten liberator Frank dying in the copter wreckage and at last accepts whatever is to come with stoic resignation.

Grabbing a bag of Amselstein’s things, the Quantum captive walks aimlessly across the icy scene of destruction and finds a colossal derelict submarine from the last war. Almost unthinking he climbs into the depths of the Black Tug and walks into an inconceivable, inescapable conclusion his entire life has been steering him towardsâ€¦

Intense, complex, lyrical, contemplative yet still excessively violent and scarily sexually charged, this gripping, mind-bending fantasy keeps the tension honed from beginning to end while constantly pushing the conceptual envelope. It’s also astonishingly lovely to look at and long overdue for reissue – preferably in one extra-long, adults-only single servingâ€¦
Â© 1987-1989 Albin Michel, Paris. English language editionsÂ© 1987-1989 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

August 5, 2012August 2, 2012

Let’s Be Perverts Book 1-4

By Youjung Lee (NetComics)
ISBNs: 978-1-60009-124-7, 978-1-60009-125-4, 978-1-60009-126-1,978-1-60009-127-8

If you look closely there are definite tonal and thematic differences in South Korean and Japanese comics (known as manhwa and manga respectively) – at least in the relatively few series that get translated into English.

Take for instance this bizarrely intriguing twisted love story from Youjung Lee: one aimed at a slightly older and more questioning and discerning audience.

What kind of parents name their son â€œPervertoâ€?

Although we never really learn the answer to that question, this peculiarly coy sex-comedy does introduce a very naÃ¯ve, horny and troubled lad saddled with that disastrous moniker and a huge dose of adolescent misfortune as wellâ€¦

Inescapably dubbed â€œpervertâ€ by his classmates, the poor 17-year old virgin is forced to transfer to a new school after his catastrophically public first romance ended in utter, shameful disaster.

Unfortunately on his very first day another transfer student – a pretty, strong and fiercely independent tomboy named Hongdan – is groped on the subway and poor Perverto is framed for the assault, even though what he actually did was try to stop the real culprit.

Unknown to Hongdan the assailant was the new maths teacher Mr. Pi – and the obsessed and cunning deviant is planning on continuing his creepy campaign against the girl at every opportunityâ€¦

Perverto knows the truth, but can prove nothing to the girl. Moreover he begins to develop a major crush on her but cannot act upon his feelings.

Despite their poor start, Perverto and Hongdan grow close. In fact the dopey, bewildered sap is completely smitten with her until she makes an unexpected effort to intensify their friendly relationship, and the confused boy, mindful of his last painful and humiliating experience with a girl, violently rebuffs her. He still loves her thoughâ€¦

Hongdan has her own secrets too. Her glorious young body is frequently marred by unexplained bruises and, most shockingly, she has an possessive ex-girlfriend, Gaheul, who just won’t accept that her inamorata has moved on and certainly won’t let a boy named Pervert have herâ€¦

Strangest of all, although Mr. Pi is lurking in the background, still targeting her for clandestine attacks in public places, she doesn’t seem that bothered by the constant assaultsâ€¦

Perverto and Hongdan are not the only frustrated time-bombs at the school – which like all places where adolescents congregate, is a seething hotbed of boiling hormones. One sadistic teacher is far too keen on beating students, a host of girls seem to be coming to school with no pants on and a classmate of Perverto’s is planning on raping a girl who rejected himâ€¦

Perhaps the dejected lad is fooling himself and he really is a pervert after allâ€¦?

Things are coming to a head (don’t: it’s beneath you and me) and the devious Mr. Pi is beginning to crack under the pressure of his increasingly insistent compulsion to assault Hongdan and Perverto’s knowledge of his shamefully irresistible afflictionâ€¦

Driven to distraction the corrupted educator confronts Hongdan and finds her strangely complacent – even actively willing. Getting into his car she hears Pi’s disturbing history and considers his startling offerâ€¦

Meanwhile, since he might as well be a sleaze-hound, Perverto joins two equally frustrated classmates in a binge of illicit pornography and, after desperately egging each other on, the sex-starved virgins proposition girls in an online chat-room, offering money for sex.

To their horror one of them, â€œtomboyâ€, accepts and sets up an assignationâ€¦

Embarrassed and terrified, the trio keep the appointment but, when his friends bottle out and lock themselves in the bathroom at the last moment, the apoplectic Perverto is left alone and shaking to open the door to a girl from his own school classâ€¦

As the story concludes with a whimper and not a bang, the lives of Perverto and Hongdan have changed forever, but in ways neither of them ever expected or wantedâ€¦

Targeting sophisticated older kids, this tale is beautifully illustrated but might contain a little too much soft-focus, genteel nudity for some readers, even though its extremely moral theme is an examination of temptation and perception.

Clever, thought-proving, complicated, always surprising and just a little bit scary, this is a compelling fantasy of love, desire and obsession, viewed through the lens of a truly different culture and social code; both extremely engaging and terrifically appealing. Even if you aren’t a fan of manga or the far edgier Korean manhwa equivalent, this enticing adult romance series might just open your jaded old eyesâ€¦
Â© 1996, 1997 Youjung Lee. All Rights Reserved. English text Â© 2006, 2007 NetComics.

August 4, 2012August 2, 2012

The Gods from Outer Space: Descent in the Andes

Inspired by the works of Erich von DÃ¤niken and freely interpreted by Alfred GÃ³rny, Arnold Mostowicz & RosiÅ„skiego BogusÅ‚aw Polch and translated from the German edition by Michael Heron (Methuen)
ISBNs: 0-416 87-150-X

In the West, Poland isn’t known for generating graphic novels or albums, although there has always been a thriving comics culture and many Polish creators have found fame in far-off lands.

As far as I can glean, this pithy, quirky science fiction speculation is the first of only four volumes to make a break across the borders and only then because of the notorious celebrity name attached to the projectâ€¦

Once upon a time the ludicrous theories of Swiss author, convicted conman and fraudster Erich Anton Paul von DÃ¤niken captured the public imagination with his postulate that aliens had visited Earth in human prehistory and reshaped the destiny of our ancient ancestors.

Although mostly discredited these days, that tantalising kernel of an idea still persists in many places; and how different life might be if the imaginative and inventive writer had simply done what he should have with such a great notion and just made a cracking science fiction epic out of his â€œresearchesâ€â€¦

Happily others have done just that and the result is a quirky yet enticing intergalactic generational saga that resulted in a mini-phenomenon in Poland which spread, despite it being the height of the Cold War, through Germany and thus on to a number of other nations in at least a dozen different languages.

In 1977, Alfred GÃ³rny, a publisher in the People’s Republic of Poland specialising in sports and tourism, contacted his counterparts at West German non-fiction outfit Econ Verlag with a proposition for creating a new and mutually profitable cartoon album series.

GÃ³rny wanted to produce the series in Poland and had lined up the superb Grzegorz RosiÅ„ski to draw it. Unfortunately the artist quit before the job began, instead accepting the job of illustrating sci fi barbarian series Thorgal for Jean Van Hamme in the prestigious French comic Tintin, after which the nation’s most prolific and popular comics artist, Jerzy WrÃ³blewski (producer of over sixty albums and series including ‘Risk’, ‘Underground Front’ and ‘Captain Zbik’ between 1959 and his death in 1991: sadly there’s little chance of any of us seeing those state-sponsored Cold War classics these days, though) stepped in before dropping out.

GÃ³rny and scripter Arnold Mostowicz then settled on newcomer RosiÅ„skiego BogusÅ‚aw Polch – who later won a measure of international renown for sci fi/political/private eye thriller Funky Koval – to delineate their epic, if meandering, saga of alien civil war, primeval strife and the birth and destruction of a primordial lost civilisation as well as most of our world’s myths, legends and religions.

When finances and resources in the Warsaw Pact nation began to evaporate, Econ Verlag took on the international syndication responsibilities and the infamous strip took on a life of its own.

The result was eight original albums. ‘LÄ…dowanie w Andach’ (Landing in the Andes), ‘Ludzie i potwory’ (Men and Monsters), ‘Walka o planetÄ™’ (The struggle for the planet), ‘Bunt OlbrzymÃ³w’ (Giants’ Mutiny); ‘ZagÅ‚ada Wielkiej Wyspy’ (Great Island’s Doom), ‘Planeta pod kontrolÄ…’ (The Planet Under Control), ‘Tajemnica Piramidy’ (The Mystery of the Pyramid) and ‘Ostatni Rozkaz’ (the Last Command). The series was even rebound in two huge compilation volumes for Polish consumption: true collector’s items these daysâ€¦

In 1978 British publisher Methuen Children’s Books (who also published Herge’s Tintin at the time) picked up the English language rights for the first four books and released them – complete with spurious fringe-science trimmings – to a largely unimpressed public.

Now, with time having stripped away the ludicrous faux facts and messianic furore underpinning the tales, I want to examine what is actually a pretty impressive and entertaining piece of speculative fiction dressed in a workmanlike and rather enthralling no-nonsense art style that will delight fans of illustrated storytellingâ€¦

The adventure begins millennia ago with Descent in the Andes, as a colossal flying saucer carrying hundreds of scientists from Delos in the Sagittarius Nebula establishes orbit above Earth.

The crewmen are all amnesiac, having had their memories wiped to better survive the rigours of a nine-year hibernation. Greeted by mission leader Ais and her subordinates Chat and Roub – an â€œAcademy of Wise Rulersâ€ – the space voyagers are swiftly re-educated; re-learning that the Great Brain of Delos has dispatched them all to find a new world, since their home planet is on the verge of annihilation. Moreover, although the voyagers have slept for nearly a decade, on Delos a thousand years have passedâ€¦

After a heated but fruitless debate about the possibilities of returning home, the men resolve to carry out their mission and colonise the blue planet below, using their incredible science to create a sub-species of themselves able to thrive on the alien world and propagate the culture and civilisation of Delos.

Once that is achieved the great ship will move on, finding more suitable worlds and repeating the procedureâ€¦

The Earth is a wilderness with abundant flora and fauna, teeming with potentially hostile micro-organisms, but the first explorers to make planet-fall discover that the true threat comes from lethal apex predators. Moreover, one of the apelike indigenous species has begun to make and master stone toolsâ€¦

Tensions are high on the orbiting ship and Chat and Roub are increasingly at odds. Soon after a first land-base is established, the latter foments mutiny and forcibly attempts to make Ais his bed-mate. Not for the first time, the commander ponders the Great Brain’s wisdom in placing only one woman on the shipâ€¦

The colonists decide to create a labour force by domesticating the smart apes and chief scientist Zan discovers that they possess a close affinity to Delosian biology. With a little tinkering perhaps the primitives will be able to continue the legacy of Delosâ€¦

The mission begins to further unravel when the lonely, over-worked crewmen discover the primitives’ skill in fermenting alcohol and lapse into undisciplined fighting and cross-species fraternisationâ€¦

When Ais steps down hard on the drunken malcontents, Roub, who advocates scrubbing the mission and moving permanently to the welcoming world below, sees his chance to further undermine her. A crisis breaks when the fuel for the aerosondes – planetary transport shuttles – mysteriously runs critically low. Chat discovers and kills a saboteur at work and denounces Roub, but before they can come to blows a startling message announces the arrival of a second ship from Delosâ€¦

Meanwhile Zan’s experiments on the native females have concluded and his findings indicate that for the mission to succeed he will have to directly reconfigure the ape-beings’ genetic make-up, a step Ais is reluctant to considerâ€¦

As she and Chat supervise the construction of a vast landing field and base in a desolate mountainous region, complete with huge landing symbols carved directly into the terrain, Roub, determined to stay and control the new world, foments open rebellion. Intent on destroying the orbiting ship and forcing his people to settle on Earth, Roub rockets into space, with the determined Ais in hot pursuit. An horrific duel ensues and, driving him off the vessel, she follows the traitor back to Earth where Chat tracks him to his final fate in the deadly beast-filled junglesâ€¦

The colonists’ troubles are not over. The second expedition, under the command of Beroub, had set up operations on a far-distant continent, but when he unexpectedly arrives at the Nazca base, the leader of the back-up colony is dying from some unknown contagion. As Ais and Zan prepare to investigate, the master scientist notices that the natives are terrified, fleeing from some unseen, unsuspected phenomenon.

Hypothesising the worst, the troubled technologist swiftly tricks Chat into returning to the orbiting saucer in the last working aerosonde, as Ais and Zan take wing in a jet-powered aeroglider piloted by Beraud’s pilot Eness, just as the ground erupts in a devastating volcanic eruptionâ€¦

The entire colony is wiped out, Chat is trapped in space and Zan and Ais have no choice but to head for unknown peril on the distant continent dubbed Atlantisâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

There’s a bucket-load of plot and plenty of action packed into this colourful, oversized (292x219mm) 52 page tome, and the comfortingly clunky but exceedingly effective art by Polch is beguilingly seductive and something no traditional science fiction connoisseur could resist. Maybe it’s time to revive this lost series and even go looking for a few more of those embargoed comics classics from the Land of the White Eagleâ€¦
Â© 1978 Econ Verlag GmbH, Dusseldorf. English translation Â© 1978 Methuen Children’s Books, Ltd.

August 3, 2012August 1, 2012

Suburban Nightmares: the Science Experiment

By Larry Hancock, Michael Cherkas, John van Bruggen & various (NBM)
ISBN: 978-0-91834-880-7

The huge outpouring of new comics which derived from the birth of American comicbooks’ Direct Sales revolution produced a plethora of innovative titles and creators – and, let’s be fair here – a host of appalling, derivative, knocked-off, banged-out plain and simple tat too.

Happily it’s my party and I choose to focus on the good and even great stuffâ€¦

The 1980s were an immensely fertile time for English-language comics-creators. In America an entire new industry had started with the birth of dedicated comics shops and, as innovation-geared specialist retail outlets sprung up all over the country, operated by fans for fans, new publishers began to experiment with format and content, whilst eager readers celebrated the happy coincidence that everybody seemed to have a bit of extra cash to play with.

Consequently those new publishers were soon aggressively competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown resigned to getting their on-going picture stories from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material began creeping in and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Capital, Now, Comico, Dark Horse, First and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads.

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. Even smaller companies and foreign outfits had a fair shot at the big time and a lot of great material came â€“ and, almost universally, as quickly went – without getting the attention or success they warranted.

Most importantly, by avoiding the traditional family sales points such as newsstands, more mature material could be produced: not just increasingly violent and with nudity but also far more political and intellectually challenging too.

Moreover, much of the â€œkid’s stuffâ€ stigma had finally dissipated and America was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be a for-real actual art-form, so the door was wide open for gosh-darned foreigners to make a few waves tooâ€¦

One of the most critically acclaimed and just plain fun features came from semi-Canadian outfit Renegade Press which, spun out by a torturous and litigious process from Dave Sim’s Canadian Aardvark-Vanaheim publishing outfit, set up shop in the USA and began publishing at the very start of the black and white comics bubble in 1984, picking up a surprisingly strong line of creator-based properties and some genuinely remarkable and impressive new series such as Ms. Tree, Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, Normalman, Flaming Carrot, the first iteration of Al Davison’s stunning Spiral Cage and the compulsive, stylish Cold War, flying-saucer paranoia-driven series The Silent Invasion amongst many others.

This stunningly stylish saga – which I simply must get around to soon â€“ welded 1950s homeland terrors (invasion by Reds, invasion by aliens, invasion by new ideasâ€¦) with film noir and 20-20 hindsight and was a truly fresh and enticing concept in the Reagan-era Eighties, but of equal if not greater interest was the inclusion of ancillary back-up tales utilising the same milieu and themes which proved popular enough to springboard into their own short-lived titleâ€¦

This first superbly oversized monochrome tome – a whopping 280 x 205mm – gathers that stand-alone material from The Silent Invasion and Suburban Nightmares with the three creators Larry Hancock, Michael Cherkas, John van Bruggen, and a few invited guests, playfully swapping jobs and pilfering/homaging other stylisations and forms to produce a delightful wealth of twisted tales and shocking stories that will, even now, astound fans of many classic genres such as sci-fi, horror, conspiracy theory, crime, romance and even comedyâ€¦

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

Such an insular melting pot couldn’t help but be fertile soil for imaginative outsiders to craft truly incisive and evocative tales, especially when wedded to the nation’s fantastic â€“and ongoing – obsessions with rogue science, flying saucers, gangsterism and espionageâ€¦

In 1983 the temptation was clearly too much for the USA’s less panicky northern neighbours, and Hancock, Cherkas & Van Bruggen brilliantly mined the era for these stunning, stylish and clever yarns, subsequently pulling off the impossible trick of re-capturing a fleeting zeitgeistâ€¦

The macabre, mirth, mood and menace commences with the eponymous 4-part thriller ‘The Science Experiment’ (script by Hancock, pencils Van Bruggen, inks and letters from Cherkas) set in the early boom years of the 1950s, wherein an idyllic new town built on the edge of an operational government atomic bomb testing site slowly reveals its terrible dark secretâ€¦

In ‘Welcome to Green Valley’ the latest ultra-modern planned community in Nevada accepts new school science teacher Sam Donaldson and his wife Ruth with open arms. They’re the perfect nuclear family with son Rusty already making friends at Hoover High and another baby on the way. Soon they’re all getting on famously with everybody – or at least the adults are…

However, soon after flirtatious neighbour Theresa Morrow confides to Ruth that she’s also expecting, the poor thing has a minor fall. When the concerned Donaldsons warn the doctor, they receive the tragic but impossible news that Theresa has inexplicably died, but was â€œnever pregnantâ€â€¦

In the shadow of a fresh mushroom cloud, ‘An Ill Wind blows in Green Valley’ sees bereft Barry Morrow turning to drink whilst Sam meets Hospital administrator Dr. Stewart Carver; a keen fan and follower of the regular nuclear spectacle occurring fifty miles outside his office windowâ€¦

Still unsettled, Sam checks out a few books about radiation from the local library, unaware that by doing so he’s made it onto a very special and secret listâ€¦

His concern increases when he inadvertently learns that his predecessor at Hoover High consulted the same tomes before mysteriously quitting and disappearing, but it’s Principal Daniels who panics when Donaldson finds that some of old Charlie Simmer‘s notes and school journals are languishing in a box at school secretary Madge‘s houseâ€¦

Too busy and wrapped up to help his son Rusty with his science project, Sam goes to Madge’s house only to find she’s been burgled. Although the place has been ransacked the only thing missing is Simmer’s journals, but before he can process it all, Barry attacks Sam, accusing Donaldson of having had an affair with Theresaâ€¦

‘Dark Secrets of Green Valley’ finds Sam barracked by Principal Daniels, another atomic apologist who can’t contemplate any thought that radioactive fallout might be harmful. Whilst Ruth is having an ante-natal check-up, Carver confronts Sam and accuses him of scaremongering, confiding also that the hospital has been running a government-sponsored survey into radiation for years and that the atomic tests are categorically harmlessâ€¦

Sam is unconvinced, especially as he has noticed how few young children live in the bustling town. Dwelling on the fact that the Hospital’s huge maternity unit has only one baby in it, he leaves with Ruth but all such thoughts are driven from him when Barry tries to run them down in the parking lotâ€¦

Horrific answers are forthcoming in the shocking conclusion when the now rational and repentant Barry meets the Sam and discloses his own part in a shocking conspiracy to cover-up what radiation does to foetuses and the outrageous and draconian steps taken by a panicking government desperate not to lose faceâ€¦especially after spending so much money building the perfect City of Tomorrowâ€¦

The mysteriously low conception rate is explained at last but when Sam points out how Barry is still deluding himself and underestimating the lengths Carver has gone to, ‘The Fate of Green Valley’ inevitably culminates in a welter of blood and deathâ€¦

After the compelling tension and trauma of the title tale, ‘Be Home Before it gets Dark!’ (scripted by Hancock and printed from Van Bruggen’s unlinked pencils) switches tone if not time-period as a little lad desperate to prove his bravery stays out late with the big kids and learns that sometimes there really are monsters in the night, after which ‘Buster Takes a Nap’ describes the problems that occur when a provident, prudent and friendly family promise too many friends and neighbours a place in their brand new bomb shelter. Of course they’ll never really have to honour those pledges, will theyâ€¦?

‘The Inheritance’, with Cherkas tackling all the art chores, recounts a little boy’s tale about the scary man next door. We all know about those grouches; shouting, cursing, destroying kid’s toys and digging the gardens in the middle of the night, but this one was really mean. Perhaps that’s why so many kids ran away from home and were never seen againâ€¦

Stanley Morrison was ‘Just another Joe’ (script by Hancock, pencils Van Bruggen, inks Cherkas); a decent, loyal American in suburban Apple Hill who sold insurance and spent his spare time denouncing colleagues and neighbours to the FBI for un-American activities. It was mere coincidence that they all just happened to be more successful or popular than him. Of course, a guy like that is really hard to live with, but his long-suffering wife was a decent, loyal American tooâ€¦

Veteran inker Bob Smith joined Van Bruggen & Hancock for the paranoid tribute to the earth-shattering advent of Rock ‘n’ Roll as Mrs. Ellen Nelson ruminates on why her son is acting so weird. What makes him hide in his room for hours at a time? It might be Martian abduction, atomic mutation, government meddling, commie mind-manipulation or something even worse ‘For all we Know’â€¦

Bob Nevin always took the 7:13 train to his job in the city but his tidy, happy life began to instantly and inexplicably unravel the day he caught ‘The Seven-Thirty-Three’ in a surreal and chilling homage to the Twilight Zone pencilled by Cherkas and inked by Van Bruggen, whilst the edgily sardonic ‘Suburban Blight’ saw the illustrators trade places to recount the all-out war between a man and the dandelions that desecrated his otherwise perfect lawn before this splendid initial collection concludes with the Hancock & Cherkas fantasy ‘June 1953’ wherein diligent and hard-working Larry Hillman doesn’t come home one nightâ€¦

When he turns up the next day Larry is a changed man. Now happy, calm and friendly, he quits his job, ignores all his responsibilities and begs his family to come with him when the aliens who abducted him return in a month to take them all to the perfect world of Alpha Centauriâ€¦

Crafted in a boldly adventurous range of visual styles and long-overdue for a modern revival, these beguiling and enthralling Suburban Nightmares are an unforgettable gateway to a eerily familiar yet comfortably exotic era and one no fan of thriller fiction can afford to ignore.
Suburban Nightmares: the Science Experiment Â©1990 Michael Cherkas, Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen. Other stories Â© 1986, 1987, 1988 Michael Cherkas, Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen. All rights reserved. NBM Publishing

August 2, 2012July 31, 2012

Video Clips

By Liberatore & various (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-015-4
(1985) ISBN-10: 0874160154 Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.2 x 11 inches

Italian arts superstar Gaetano â€œTaninoâ€ Liberatore was born in 1953 in Quadri in the province of Chieti. He went to school in Pescara and studied architecture at the University of Rome before moving into the world of work as an advertising illustrator in 1975.

He first met iconoclastic writer, artist and publisher Stefano Tamburini in 1978 and with strident activist cartoonist Andrea Pazienza, they created ‘Rankxerox’ for the magazine Cannibale. The character evolved and moved to Il Male and eventually Frigidaire, fully realised now as the RanXerox we know today.

Liberatore was rapidly developing as both artist and writer, with strips ‘Bordello’ and ‘Client’ appearing in Il Male, but when the new, Tamburini-scripted syndicated RanXerox became a star of French magazine L’Ã‰cho des Savanes in 1981, Tanino moved to Paris and began working simultaneously on short complete tales for the more prestigious Gallic market in such magazines as Tranfert, MÃ©tal Hurlant, Ã€ Suivre and Chic. A shocking hit in the US Heavy Metal magazine, RanXerox then led to Liberatore jumping the pond and producing material for Twisted Tales and men’s magazine Hustler.

Some of those aforementioned short fiction pieces comprise the contents of this bleakly disturbing, ultra-violent yet oddly philosophical exploration of the consuming effects of media and fashion.

When his great collaborator Tamburini died in 1986, Liberatore quit comics for nearly a decade. Returning to straight commercial illustration, he worked in movies and designed book and record covers. Eventually, comics captured his attention again, and he produced two new RanXerox tales in 1993 and 1996 (with Jean-Luc Fromental and Alain Chabat), and a piece in Batman Black and White, assorted covers, and illustrated Pierre Pelot and Yves Coppens’s mass-market paperback ‘Le RÃªve de Lucy’. As the Nineties closed, he finally came storming back in stunning style with the brilliant, award-winning Lucy L’Espoir in 2007, in which he and writer Patrick Norbert freely adapted a life-story for the famous prehistoric humanoid Australopithecus Afarensis remains found by anthropologists Coppens, Donald Johanson and Maurice Taieb.

Still available but desperately in need of a modern re-release, Video Clips gathers seven short, sweet and sour, vitriolic, challenging thrillers by the stylishly abrasive young Liberatore beginning with the self-authored ‘Real Vision’ in which a young celebrity-fuelled punk commits atrocious acts of violence on a mother and child simply to commit â€œsuicide by televisionâ€ after which the Tamburini-penned ‘Earth versus Saturn’ turns a wickedly sardonic eye on movie mania as a scout party for invading aliens picks the wrong bar to begin their fact finding mission. Of course, it would have helped if they hadn’t used thirties movies stars as templates for their temporary Earth-bodiesâ€¦

He also scripted ‘E.M.P.S.: Erotic Management for People’s Socialism’ – an outrageous spoof of psychology, political correctness and sexual repression in a hilarious and shocking science fiction setting, whilst the deeply disturbing ‘Shut-In’ by Bruce Jones might be familiar to older American readers as it first appeared in Twisted Tales #7, detailing the saucy, savage hidden hi-jinks of a babysitter and her abusive jock boyfriend as they mischievously tend to a stroke-paralysed senior citizen one night – and of course there’s a superb sting in this taleâ€¦

‘Bololy Folly’ is another Tamburini psycho-thriller as the latest technology to tame â€œwild chromosomesâ€ and bad behaviour cataclysmically comes a-cropper on live television whilst ‘Watch Out for Hot Flashes’ – scripted by the enigmatic G. Setbon – offers a more traditional tale as the world’s greatest fashion model offers an exclusive chance to the photographers who made her famous. Sadly she’s the one doing the shooting but her murderous motives simply defy all logicâ€¦

This powerfully compelling collection ends with another Tamburini tale as ‘Tiamotti’ describes the trials of three bomb-making anarchists as they try to defeat a security system which can read their minds and deliver a fusillade of withering gunfire in the blink of an eyeâ€¦

Crafted in a range of palettes from tension-wracked monochrome line-art to tantalising tonal washes, and even including three lush full-colour paint jobs, this sexy, severe and staggeringly violent tome is a superb introduction to the graphic genius and brutal worlds of Liberatore: places no adult fan of sequential narrative can see without being changed foreverâ€¦
Art Â© 1985 Gaetano Liberatore. All stories Â© 1985 their respective authors. English language edition Â© 1985 Catalan Communications, All rights reserved.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: