Now Read This!

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; “real and true” 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 “added value section” 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.

© 1988 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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 with…

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.

© 1979 Universal City Studios, Inc. and Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.

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 city…

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 siècle pomp and the foredoomed glitter of the Belle Époque 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.

©1984 Casterman, Paris-Tournai. All Rights Reserved. English translation ©1987 NBM.

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 trés 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 – 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 “newspaper excerpts”, with faux film-script pages in this dark tale of bloody obsession.

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 “Graphic” than “Novel” 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.

© 1986, 1992 John J Muth. All Rights Reserved.

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 Conk…

Hopefully that précis 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!

© 1987 First Comics, Inc. and Howard Chaykin Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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 believed… He also “sold his soul for fame”…

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 cliffhanger…

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.

© 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Pat McGreal, Stephen John Phillips, José Villarrubia & Rebecca Guay (Vertigo)
Hardback ISBN: 1-56389-752-0 Softcover ISBN: 978-1-56389-561-6

Although at first glance more exercise than exposition, this undemanding and potentially prurient tale of the Seductive East is a very readable exercise in genre fiction. Victorian gentlewoman Vivian Pearse-Packard was late in marrying, and her husband is a ne’er-do-well wastrel. Her father-in-law has brought them with him as he resumes his post as British Consul to a Far Eastern Sultanate.

The new and exotic land is shocking to Vivian, and husband Harry remains a possessive and loveless beast, but her life changes when a visit to the Sultan’s Seraglio leads to a friendship with one of the ruler’s Odalisques. Vivian’s need for companionship draws her into the luxurious world but she becomes subtly aware of a hidden agenda among some of the women when she is told the ancient tale of Rosalind, a white woman who was stolen from her father and given to a Sultan, only to rise to be the second most powerful position in the land.

How the fable impacts on the increasingly desperate and repressed Englishwoman, and the choices she is subsequently compelled to make in her own life, provide a predictable but enjoyable new spin on a very clichéd plot. Moreover the combination of Phillips stagy yet compelling photography, augmented by Villarrubia’s digital enhancement, imbues the tale with a static theatrical quality that verges on abstraction in places. Rebecca Guay provides classic pen-and-watercolour art for the sections involving Rosalind’s story, which imparts the strangest inversion as her contribution is warm, sensitive, deeply alive and approachable in contrast to the cold, distant and passionless fumetti.

All that aside, this is a worthy effort to escape the traditional boundaries of our medium and serves well as a bridge to the wider public.

© 2001 Pat McGreal, Stephen John Phillips & Rebecca Guay. All Rights Reserved.

By Jason Aaron & R.M. Guéra (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-840-X

The increasingly impressive writing of Jason Aaron kicks into compellingly high gear in the second collection (issues #6-11) of the dark and nasty crime series from Vertigo. It’s set on the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation, a desolate hellhole run by gangsters and housing nothing but damaged and broken people. The biggest boss is Lincoln Red Crow, an Indian Rights activist from the 1970s who runs all the rackets and is now launching his own casino. Everybody thinks they’re going to be rich.

Dashiel Bad Horse ran away when he was fifteen. He was always trouble, even as just the son of Red Crow’s fellow militant Gina, but now he’s back and working as a sheriff and leg-breaker for the big boss. Gina is the last real rebel, and Red Crow is as much an oppressor as the White Man ever was. How would she react if she knew that her son is working for both of the forces she sees as destroying her people? It’s a good thing no one knows Dash Bad Horse is an undercover FBI agent (see Scalped vol.1 Indian Country, ISBN: 1-84576-561-3). But is it still a secret?

Moving beyond gripping Noir drama with the introduction of the shaman called Catcher, the saga moves into even more convoluted plots and schemes. As Red Crow’s plans near fruition he stands to win or lose everything. Is Catcher just another booze-raddled Indian or does he really see Visions? Can Red Crow really accept the White’s way of Sex, Power and Money, or is he as tied to his roots as even the poorest, dumbest dirt-grubber on the Rez?

Complex, atmospheric and disturbingly graphic in execution, this is a thriller with a powerful social message underpinning the action and drama, and simply goes from strength to strength. This is one of the best adult comic series being produced today and one you should see for yourselves.

© 2007 Jason Aaron & Rajko Milosevich. All Rights Reserved.