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April 15, 2008April 14, 2008

Oh My Goddess! Vol 6

By Kosuke Fujishima (Titan Books)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-509-5

When geeky engineering student Keiichi Morisato dialled a wrong number one night and connected to the Goddess Technical Help Line his life changed forever. A gorgeous, powerful goddess named Belldandy materialised in his room, and offered him one wish. He jokingly asked that she would never leave him…

Trapped on Earth and unable even to move too far from his physical proximity Belldandy became part of his life. Unfortunately her life increasingly became part of his, too. All Keiichi wants is to pass his exams and live a quiet life but as more and more of Belldandy’s powerful and weird family turn up and move in, life keeps on getting more wild – and dangerous!

In this volume mischievous sister Goddess Urd has been possessed by the Lord of Terror and has activated the celestial Ultimate Destruction Program. The Great Fenrir Wolf is free and the World is about to end unless our hapless goof does something about it!

Although the trademark humour is still in evidence, this is a more action-oriented adventure, with moments of genuine suspense and the mandatory massive destruction one expects from manga thrillers. All of which shows just how adaptable this series can be, and the book even has room for a delightful and poignant change-of-pace tale to close. ‘Urd’s Fantastic Adventure’ is a bittersweet tale wherein the depowered and diminutive Urd reverts to a child’s body and experiences a doomed first love with a lonely young boy.

In a structured society like Japan there’s plenty of scope for comedy with fantasy and gender role-reversal. It’s a sign of Kosuke Fujishima’s great story-telling ability that this comic take on Bewitched travels so well in our less strictured world, and remains one of the most readable and engaging of manga properties. It’s great but you will need to read them all.

This book is printed in the ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.

April 14, 2008April 12, 2008

Crooked Smiles: Punch on Villains

By various (Grafton Books)
ISBN: 978-0-24613-242-0

Punch began in 1841; a magazine dedicated to satire and humour, and swiftly became a national – and international – institution. It ran more or less non-stop until 2002 before finally closing its jolly doors, featuring sharp, witty writers such as W. M. Thackeray, P.G. Wodehouse, P.J. O’Rourke and Alan Coren among so very many others. Many of these writers’ efforts were illustrated by brilliant draughtsmen and artists. It was a social force, an astute historian and its contents could even influence governments.

Punch probably invented, and certainly perfected, the gag and strip cartoon. The list of brilliant cartoonists who graced its pages is something I couldn’t live long enough to relate. Name a cartoonist; if he or she were any good they will have been published in Punch.

With such a wealth of material, it’s truly surprising how very few collections have been generated from its pages. The one under the glass here is from 1987, selected by Editor William Hewison and features mostly British gag-men doing their bit in the War on Crime. The cartoons range from the comfortably familiar to the just plain weird, and if humour is in the eye of the beholder, the wealth of ability and talent is certainly less open to debate.

This book isn’t really what I’m recommending here, it’s the type of book. These gags and many like them by the likes of such luminaries as David Langdon, Heath, Brockbank, Graham, Honeysett, Bill Tidy, Stark, Thelwell, Larry, ffolkes, Sally Artz, Mahood, McLachlan, Raymond Lowry and all the wonderful rest are sitting idle when they could be filling bookshelves and making us all a little happierâ€¦

April 13, 2008April 12, 2008

History of the DC Universe

By Marv Wolfman, George Perez, Karl Kesel & various (DC Comics/Graphitti Designs)
ISBN: 0-930289-26-9

It’s not often that I review a specific package. After all, as long as they’re not bowdlerised or mucked about with, comics are all about the story and art, and graphic novels and collections even more so. This is one of the rare exceptions however.

History of the DC Universe is a fan’s book. The material it contains was originally a two-part prestige format miniseries designed to compliment the landmark Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. In it the Monitor’s assistant Harbinger sets down the new chronicle of events after the history and reality-altering events of the Crisis have finally settled. It was a way of telling the fans just what was and wasn’t canonical; â€œreal and trueâ€ if you like, in the DC Universe.

It was ambitious, concise, informative, very pretty and creators being what they are, pretty much redundant almost before the ink had dried. As a tool it was useless, but as a tale it still looks and reads very well. So why review it?

This Graphitti Designs hardcover has a few extras that dedicated fans would love and browsers might find of interest too. In what we’d now call the â€œadded value sectionâ€ are a number of essays and testimonials from Wolfman, Neal Adams, Julius Schwartz, Jerry Siegel, Bob Kane, Joe Kubert, Roy Thomas, Paul Levitz, Len Wein, Jack Kirby, Ramona Fradon, George Perez and Frank Miller.

Each has illustrations of the creators’ signature characters with lavish illustrations from Neal Adams, Joe Shuster, Dick Sprang, Joe and Adam Kubert, Kurt Schaffenberger, Steve Lightle, Steve Bissette & John Totleben, Jack Kirby & Steve Rude, Fradon, Perez and Miller, whilst the Julius Schwartz piece is studded with a dozen pictures by DC’s finest artists.

The real prize though is a four page gate-fold fold-out poster crafted by 56 separate artists and featuring 53 of the company’s greatest characters from the first five decades, nestled behind new illustrations of Sugar and Spike by Sheldon Mayer and Cryll by Art Adams. And if that’s not tantalising enough the Watchmen aficionados and completists should be aware that the poster contains the only DCU appearance of Rorschach by Dave Gibbons! Cor! Blimey!

Seriously though, as so much of comics’ magic is physical and visceral, the feel-good factor from this little gem is difficult to quantify, but impossible to deny. If you get the chance you really should experience it yourself.

April 12, 2008

Amazing Spider-Man: Hooky

A MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVEL

Amazing Spider-Man: Hooky

By Susan K Putney & Berni Wrightson (Marvel)
ISBN: 0- 87135-154-4

Marvel’s experiment with graphic novel publishing in the 1980s produced some classy results that the company has seldom come close to repeating since. Both original concepts and their own properties were represented in that initial run and many of the stories still stand out today â€“ or would if they were still in print.

One such is this charming fantasy fable written by Susan K. Putney and painted by comic-book legend Berni Wrightson. Marandi SjÃ¶rokker is not the twelve year girl she appears to be. For a start she’s been twelve for over two hundred years, and when she introduces herself by calling Spider-Man â€œPeteyâ€ she reveals how she knew him when he was a toddler and she delivered his Uncle Ben’s newspapers.

And so begins a wild and gently charming other-dimensional romp, full of action and spectacle, as the web-slinger takes a break from his grim and grimy reality to help the permanently adolescent sorceress against the demonic and unstoppable TordenKakerlakk (which I’m reliably informed is Norwegian for Thunder Cockroach). Moreover, this witty, whimsical coming-of-age tale is beautifully and imaginatively illustrated by a master craftsman.Â A wonderful change-of-pace tale that perfectly displays the versatility of everybody’s favourite wall-crawler –Â and one long overdue for re-release.

April 10, 2008April 9, 2008

1941 – The Illustrated Story

1941 - The Illustrated Story

By Stephen Bissette, Rick Veitch & Allan Asherman (Heavy Metal/Arrow Books)
ISBN: 0- 09922-720-7

It’s not often that I get to review a graphic adaptation that surpasses the source material, but this odd little item certainly does that. I’ll leave it to your personal tastes to determine if that’s because of the comic creators or simply because the movie under fire here wasn’t all that great to begin withâ€¦

Written by Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale and John Milius, 1941 was a big budget screwball comedy starring some of the greatest comedy talents of the day and Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster follow-up to Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It did not receive the same accolades and approbation.

The plot, adapted by Allan Asherman, concerns one night in December of that year when Hollywood was panicked by sightings of Japanese planes and submarines. One week after the devastation of Pearl Harbor, much of America, and particularly the West Coast, was terrified of an invasion by the Imperial Forces of Emperor Hirohito.

In this tale one lone sub, borrowed from the Nazis, actually fetches up on the balmy shores of La-La land, but is largely ignored by the populace. The panic actually starts when gormless Zoot-Suiters Wally and Denny use an air-raid siren to distract store patrons and staff so that they can shop-lift new outfits, and peaks later when the feckless wastrels start a fist-fight at a USO (United Services Organisation) Dance. From there chaos and commotion carry this tale to its conclusion.

For the film that isn’t too successful, burdened as it is by leaden direction and a dire lack of spontaneity, but the frenetic energy and mania that was absent on screen is present in overwhelming abundance in the comic art of Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch. Taking their cue from the classic Mad Magazine work of the 1950s, they produced a riot of colour pages for the tie-in album reminiscent of Underground Comix and brimming with extra sight-gags, dripping bad-taste and irony, and combining raw, exciting painted art with collage and found imagery.

It’s not often that I say the story isn’t important in a graphic package, but this is one of those times. 1941 – The Illustrated Story is a visual treat and a fine example of two major creators’ earlier – and certainly more experimental – days. If you get the chance, it’s a wild ride you should take.

April 9, 2008April 8, 2008

The Great Walls of Samaris

By Benoit Peeters & Francois Schuiten (NBM)
ISBN: 0-918348-36-6 (1987) ISBN: 978-0-918348-36-4 (2001)

The European manner of graphic storytelling places great emphasis on mood and style, with a much larger range of interests and themes than the English language mainstream. It is also, perforce, staggeringly accomplished in its artistic visions.

This brief (48 pages) album, the first in an occasional series entitled Cities of the Fantastic, tells the bleak, fantastic tale of Franz, a young civic official of the city state Xhystos, who accepts a mission to assess the condition of sister city Samaris.

Located far, far away, there has been no communication with the walled metropolis for a decade and all agents dispatched there have vanished with trace. The grim, arduous journey, however, is as nothing compared to the beguiling mystery Franz uncovers when he finally reaches the incredible and seductive cityâ€¦

Eerie and paranoid, with architecture and design the most important characters in the tale, The Great Walls of Samaris presents a wholly believable world of familiarity and alienation, underscored with an almost Kafkaesque perversity. The aura of menace is palpable, but with only the merest hint of danger. Minds and souls are at risk here, not mere flesh and blood.

The astonishing artwork of Schuiten is entrancing, perfectly capturing – if not actually inventing – the creative anachronism of Steam-punk, but with the glistening veneer of fin de siÃ¨cle pomp and the foredoomed glitter of the Belle Ã‰poque concealing the bitter content with a sheen of fragile beauty.

This is an incredibly stylish, unforgettable visual experience and a damned fine classical horror story, too. Don’t miss out on this glorious delicacy.

April 8, 2008April 7, 2008

Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight and Nightmares

Dracula: A Symphony (Marvel)

By John J Muth (NBM)
ISBN: 1-56163-059-4 (also Marvel Graphic Novel #25; ISBN: 0-87135-171-4)

As part of an adventurous foray into the budding world of graphic albums, the Marvel Graphic Novel line combined experimental projects and storytelling alongside glorified giant comic-books. This trÃ©s arty package from illustrator Muth purloins elements of Bram Stoker’s classic novel and reweaves them as framework for a painting tour-de-force of gothic set-pieces and moving, intimate images.

Familiarity with the original’s plot is not essential â€“ if not ill-advised – as mood rather than narrative is favoured here, and the pictures are paramount. Inexplicably, Muth’s narrative mixes first hand accounts from protagonists Lucy Seward and her father, prose and â€œnewspaper excerptsâ€, with faux film-script pages in this dark tale of bloody obsession.

Dracula: A Symphony (NBM)

For all these problems, it was picked up by Nantier Beall Minoustchine in 1992 and re-issued as a gloriously large and upscale hardcover album (and eventually a paperback edition) which particularly enhanced the extended sections where Muth’s paintings were allowed to carry the story without the distraction of text.

Although this is so much more â€œGraphicâ€ than â€œNovelâ€ and not as clever as it seems – all beautiful surface with no depth at all – it is staggeringly pretty, and a delight for any fan with an appreciation of the visual arts.

April 7, 2008April 6, 2008

Time²: The Satisfaction of Black Mariah

Time2: The Satisfaction of Black Mariah

By Howard Chaykin, with Ken Bruzenak, John Moore, Richard Ory & Steve Oliffe (First Comics)
ISBN: 0-915419-23-8

The final foray into the fantastic night world of Howard Chaykin’s pan-fascinational universe (OK, I made that term up, but what would you call a place to tell stories in, constructed from an author’s interests, hobbies, artistic influences and bug-bears?) is an even more frenetic riot of Fashion, Jazz, robots, magic, heroism, cynicism and debauchery, delivered with astounding panache in a riot of literally Graphic Bravura.

Time² is an impossibly engaging concept with a cast of archetypal Chaykin characters, which is welcome enough, but the deceptively easy marriage of style, design and especially Ken Bruzenak’s typography, into classically de-structured stories of a decidedly Noir-ish nature, with layer upon layer of visual information bombarding the viewer is a delight that I cannot imagine any other medium capable of. This is unique and perfect Comic Art.

The Square is a nebulous mystical, nightside place with magic and super-science equally prevalent, populated with narrative icons like gangsters, monsters, robots, zombies, feisty girl-reporters and smooth heroes, plus all the other vital extras and bit-players who populate the most memorable fiction. It is the ultimate arena for adult story-telling, and this particular one concerns the effects of a demon-possessed prostitute, a nymphomaniac police-car that’s assaulting citizens, and a deadly secret kept by corporate powerhouse Rossum’s Universal Robots that threatens to destabilise everything.

Even Bog-Monster Cop Bon Ton MacHoot is laid low leaving reluctant good-guy and oh-so-cool wise-ass Maxim Glory to sort out the mystery of the Oversoul and the Big Conkâ€¦

Hopefully that prÃ©cis has left you baffled and hungry because this is another of those too-rare pieces that you should actually read and not read about. Chaykin has stated that he’s not the same person as the one who produced this and its predecessor Time²: The Epiphany (ISBN: 0-915419-07-6) so the chance of the fabled third volume ever appearing are agonisingly slim, but at least we have these and the prequel (American Flagg! Special) to admire and revel in. Have I mentioned that the entire output would fit perfectly into one average-sized modern trade paperback? Surely some publisher out there can see the commercial sense in that proposition?

Time²: The Satisfaction of Black Mariah; hunt it down and adore it!

April 6, 2008

Augustus and His Faithful Hound

By Graham (Mirror Books)
ISBN: 0-85939-120-5

Cartoons and gag-panels are a universal medium but we purveyors of sequential narrative have an unhappy tendency to become protective and parochial about our own particular specialism within the medium. How many times have I heard an artist or writer working on a hot new comic-book property, revelling in sales of sixty-to-seventy thousand monthly copies, disparage a strip such as Hagar the Horrible or Garfield whose daily readership can be numbered in millions, if not billions? Let’s all just try to remember that tastes differ, and that we all make lines on a surface here, and most especially that TV and Computer Games are the real enemy of our industry, shall we?

Rant over.

Mainstream cartooning is a huge joy to a vast readership whose needs are quite different from those of hard-core, dedicated comic fans, or even that growing base of intrigued browsers dipping their toes in the sequential narrative pool. Even those stuck-up stickybeaks who have pointedly â€œnever read a comicâ€ have seen and enjoyed cartoon strips or panels, and in this arena Britain has produced more than its share of classics.

Alex Graham, best known for the charming and reassuringly middle-class Fred Bassett strip, was a jobbing cartoonist for nearly fifty years and in that time produced a vast range of work that delighted readers on a wide range of subjects. He died in 1991, and Bassett was continued by his daughter Arran and artist Michael Martin. I’ll save the details for upcoming Fred Bassett reviews.

Augustus and his Faithful Hound is a less well-known strip that appeared in the late 1970’s in The Woman’s Journal, a home-maker’s magazine with a highly specialised demographic. The strip is a perfect fit: the gently amusing and reassuring exploits of a timid young lad and his equally timid, if boisterous, dog. The drawing is highly polished, captivating and charming; the gags undemanding and very reassuring â€“ and that’s just what they’re supposed to be. This was not a venue for sarcasm, slapstick, surrealism or brisk, salacious vulgarity. These were cartoons to make your mum laugh, and as such they are perfect.

I’m sure there’s not much chance of this collection ever being reprinted, but if you chance across a copy, try it before dismissing it. The craft and skill is just as hard-learned as any superhero, fantasy or horror artist’s, the results fitted the brief perfectly and the audience was so very happy with the result. Other than a bigger cheque and global celebrity, what more could a creator possibly want from his labours?

April 5, 2008April 2, 2008

Shadowpact: Cursed

By Bill Willingham & various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-738-9

Bill Willingham shows his facility with the fight ‘n’ tights comicbook mainstream in this second collection of DC’s Supernatural Superteam reprinting tales from issues #4 and 9-13 of the monthly magazine. It all starts with ‘Blue Devil: A Night in the Life’, illustrated by Steve Scott and Wayne Faucher which focuses on the private life of the team’s demonic strongman. The action portion is provided by a couple of demons who have been dispatched to bring the hero to an audience in Hell. This tale was originally published as the fourth issue, so any ominous foreshadowing it provided is somewhat lessened, but it certainly makes more narrative sense as a prelude to the next tale.

‘The Demon Triptych’ (issues #9-11, and pencilled by Tom Derenick) finds guest host the Phantom Stranger presiding over a tale as the team goes public and begins to notice some odd behaviour from Blue Devil. In case you’re wondering, as movie stuntman Dan Cassidy he was mystically bonded into an animatronic suit he was wearing. The magic turned him into an actual devil; or so he always believedâ€¦ He also â€œsold his soul for fameâ€â€¦

Wayward Etrigan, however, is the real McCoy, and frankly the ranks of Hell are fed up with him. When they see a chance to replace him with Cassidy they take it, forcing his team-mates to invade the Infernal Realm to get him back. In the course of the mission tactical leader Nightmaster is impaled with his own magic blade, and the next tale ‘Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword’ (# 12, with art by Derenick and Faucher) is a highly enjoyable deathbed review of his origin and career.

The book concludes with ‘Bad Tidings & Evil Deeds’, illustrated by Scott Hampton, wherein ex-Justice Leaguer and actual Angel Zauriel is ordered by his celestial superiors to destroy Cassidy, but that confrontation is left for the next volume in this stylish appetite-whetter, which is just a nicer way of saying this volume ends on a bit of a cliffhangerâ€¦

Enjoyable, light-hearted and highly addictive, just like its predecessor (Shadowpact: The Pentacle Plot – ISBN: 1-84576-533-8) this is a very accessible book for newcomers and the balance of humour, drama and action is superb. Great as a gift and one you’ll be tempted to keep for yourself.

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