Now Read This!

VOLUME 1: THE FIRST THREE STORIES

By Christopher Hastings & Kent Archer
No ISBN

It’s nice to give a heads-up on something that isn’t a lost gem but actually on-going and improving, and stands a good chance of becoming a bit of a sensation in the months and years ahead, so I’m devoting a little space and time to the first printed collection of a web-comic that’s turning a few heads around the place. The strip is Dr McNinja by Chris Hastings, aided and abetted by Kent Archer, and the first three adventures are now available in a handy trade paperback

Despite having a few — well okay, a lot — of rough edges, this tongue-in-cheek, frenetic and contagiously enthusiastic action-comedy features a medical practitioner who comes from a long line of Irish Ninjas but really wants to succeed in his chosen profession. The plots are fast-paced, the situations surreal and absurd whilst the dialogue is captivatingly, laugh-out-loud funny, (I’m delightfully reminded of the very earliest Cerebus issues from Dave Sim) as the conflicted healer deals with his “difficult” receptionist (a stroppy gorilla named Judy), rare ailments like Paul Bunyan’s Disease (which cause sufferers to turn into giant bearded lumberjacks), an ancestral feud with pirates, deadly cartoon Mexicans and his own unhealthy obsession with The Batman. Of course there’s an origin…

The art still lets the story down on occasion but the storytelling on these first adventures improves with every page and the sheer silly, manic exhilaration of high-potential creators having fun while learning their craft makes this a great read, warts and all.

You can obtain copies of the book and check out the latest episodes on the website, and if you like to Guffaw, chortle or just plain laugh, you really should.

© 2003-2007 Christopher Hastings. All Rights Reserved.
For further tales and ordering information please go to www.drmcninja.com

By Allan Heinberg, Terry Dodson & Rachel Dodson (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-557-6

When Wonder Woman was relaunched in the wake of Infinite Crisis and 52 with art stars Terry and Rachel Dodson illustrating the scripts of TV big gun Allan Heinberg (Grey’s Anatomy, The O.C. and Sex and the City among others) there was much well-deserved attention, but the comic was plagued by missed deadlines and most of the series’ momentum was lost. After the fourth issue the tale was abandoned unfinished and a new writer stepped in with very impressive work (although that’s a tale for another time and, I hope and trust, a separate review). The creators regrouped and the initial story-arc was concluded in Wonder Woman Annual volume 2, #1.

Now that all the dust has settled the completed adventure has been collected in this impressive if slim hardback and we can finally judge the story on its actual merit.

Following the reality realignment of Infinite Crisis there was a hiatus of a year when Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman vanished. Sort of…

The story opens with an Amazing Amazon battling some of her most fantastic villains and menaces, but she’s not Princess Diana of Themyscira. Rather Donna Troy, the first Wonder Girl, has taken the role and coped well, but said bunch of Wonder Woman’s oldest enemies have joined forces under the aegis of a mysterious mastermind and captured the replacement – and the new Wonder Girl as well.

Enter Sarge Steel, super spy Nemesis and the latest recruit to the Department of Metahuman Affairs, field agent Diana Prince! (Just in case you’re a complete newcomer to Amazon continuity – that’s supposed to be a big, bewildering shock because Diana is secretly the original Wonder Woman herself.)

What follows is an enjoyable romp with glamorous ‘big visuals’ art from the Dodsons as Diana resumes her place in DC’s Trinity of megastars but also assumes a valid “ordinary” human life to complement the superwoman persona – although that’s a relative term when the life consists of a day-job as a super-spy.

This big, bold extravaganza repositions Wonder Woman at the heart of DC continuity and attempts to rationalise the disparate, if not clashing, elements that have kept the various versions of the character at the forefront of debate for decades. Most fans ask not Who is Wonder Woman but rather, Which version is best?

My vote is a straight tie between the first three Nazi-busting years of the 1940s by William Moulton Marston and the unique Harry G. Peter, and the superb powerless adventurer of Mike Sekowsky, Denny O’Neil and Dick Giordano (for which see Diana Prince: Wonder Woman volume 1 ISBN: 978-1-84576-776-1). Still, in cases of such vigorous debate maybe it’s safest simply to get them all…

© 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

RAW ONE-SHOT #4

 

By Gary Panter (Raw Books)
ISBN: 978-0-915043-01-9

Gary Panter has been an iconic force in comics and the visual arts since the late 1970s, and his unique distillation of American popular culture through the frenetic lens of his savage design style (alternatively termed “ratty line” or “punk”) has been seen in as varied fields as set design (winning 3 Emmy awards for the sets of TV’s Pee-Wee’s Playhouse), interior design, TV and computer animation to record covers (for Frank Zappa, Red Hot Chili Peppers and many others).

His expressionistic, beautifully ugly, primitivist, high energy art has influenced a generation of cartoonists and illustrators including Matt Groening, whose Simpsons design style owes much to Panter’s innovations in the 1970’s hardcore punk-zine Slash and his contributions to Art Spiegelman’s legendary art comic Raw.

Born in Durant, Oklahoma (December 1st 1950, if you’re interested) he became a part of the US New Wave movement (not the British effete, big hair, big shirts and too much make-up electro-pop scene of a decade later) and worked for Time, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and The New Yorker as well creating his own comics and graphic novels such as Jimbo, Adventures in Paradise, Jimbo’s Inferno, Facetasm, Jimbo in Purgatory, Dal Tokyo and Cola Madnes (created especially for the Japanese market). With Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb and Chris Ware his work was part of the traveling art exhibition Masters of American Comics which toured the country from 2005-2007.

Long considered a dominant force in punk and alternative comics, he is the leading figure of a second generation of “Underground Cartoonists”, doing much to legitimise the movement and elevating this challenging sector of graphic narrative to a position of High Art that the comics mainstream has never been able to achieve.

This slim tome, first released in 1884 and still readily available, evokes rather than tells a powerful, blackly comedic adventure in a synthesis of 1950s Americana and mass-cultural milestones. When a rural town is assaulted by a plague of dead Elvis Presleys, what is the Sheriff to do? Surreal, almost dada-ist in delivery, this is a challenging read but shows just how far the medium of comics can push its own envelope.

This volume was also simultaneously released in a Spanish language edition with the title “Invasion de los Elvis Zombies” and both editions come with a vinyl flexi-disc called ‘Precambrian Bath’ written and performed by the artist – who is also quite a polished musician.

If you’re looking for something a little stronger and less pre-digested, this is a great introduction to the works of an absolute maestro.

© 1984 Gary Panter and Raw Books. All Rights Reserved.