Painter and illustrator Naomi Nowak paints a dreamy exploration of the uses and abuse of love in her tale of a young girl who turns her back on her wealthy family and identity. Calling herself Josephine she travels to the coast and takes a dreadful job in a sweatshop, sewing clothes for unpleasant bosses amongst broken women and girls.
Her off-duty wanderings bring her to an obnoxious old fortune teller and her fantasies lead her to some life changing conclusions in this stylish tale of emancipation and empowerment that manages to stay firmly grounded in the unreal.
Colourful, lyrical, sometimes bordering on the pretentious, but eminently readable and beautiful to look at, this different sort of graphic narrative has a great deal to offer the reader looking for more than fistfights or funny stuff.
By Andy Diggle & Whilce Portacio (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-619-1
Collecting the first six-part story-arc from the monthly comic book Batman Confidential, this impressive if perhaps overly-glossy high-tech adventure pits an inexperienced Batman against Superman’s arch-nemesis Lex Luthor.
During the first year of the Caped Crusader’s career, a prostitute is murdered in front of her baby, catapulting Batman into a hazy web of corruption and murder involving the US military and the shady world of corporate bidding for government contracts. Somehow at the bottom of it all is the financial monolith of Lexcorp. Can all the subterfuge, death and destruction simply be about money or has the wily billionaire another agenda?
Fast-paced, frenetic and concentrating more on gadgets and technology than mood or mystery, this sharp and shiny thriller from Andy Diggle and Whilce Portacio will perhaps delight the fans of the cinematic more than comic-book Dark Knight, but is an engrossing read for all that.
Illustrated by Graham Thompson (Armada)
ISBN: 0-00-0691247-8
Here’s a contender for “oddest album†from 1976 that’s not impossible to find or too expensive to own should I pique your curiosity enough. I don’t know an awful lot about artist Graham Thompson, except that he’s also worked on the Muppets and Monty Python properties, although if pushed I’d wager he’s an advertising artist first and foremost. His work here is a blend of Jack Davis and Mort Drucker with wash and marker colour, and most importantly it’s brilliantly effective and very good indeed.
There’s not a lot you can say about a gangster musical performed entirely by children that doesn’t verge on the unsettling, not to say downright creepy, these days, but this early graphic novel adaptation which accompanied the film release (sans music, naturally) makes for a really entertaining read, exuberant, charmingly silly and visually magical.
I wish we could see more of Thompson’s work, though. Anyone out there know anymore about him?
By Ronald Searle (Souvenir Press)
ISBN: 0-285-62865-8
Although perhaps a bit of a one-trick pony – and despite being twenty years old – this sharp and immaculately depicted slice of satirical buffoonery still affords a chuckle or two, but the truly magical aspect of this book is the unforgettable collection of black and white cartoons delivered with stunning absurdist candour and the peculiarly tragic warmth that only Searle can instil with his wild yet considered line-work.
By transposing such terms as “Semen†with “Sewomen†or “Hymn†with “Herm†he can still make us pause and ponder, but the total immersion that his bridled insanity delivers in his illustrations reaches much deeper and lasts so much longer. You will laugh, (it’s impossible not to) but you will also grieve and yearn and burn in empathised frustration at the marvels in this lost ordinance in the Battle of the Sexes.
This volume, collecting the miniseries which so impressively captured the otherworldly nature of Michael Moorcock’s ‘Eternal Champion’ concept, sees the weary doom-laden albino leave his beloved Cymoril and the Dreaming City of Imrryr to go questing for an unattainable peace of mind, only to take ship on a transdimensional galleon collecting heroes for an impossible mission. Aboard the eerie vessel he meets a motley band of warriors gathered from numerous alternate Earths in a desperate attempt to save the multiverse.
Risking the very nature of reality Elric has taken ship with three other aspects of the ‘Eternal Champion’; Corum, Erekosë and Dorian Hawkmoon. Together they must defeat Agak and Gagak, siblings from beyond the multiverse who intend to devour all of reality.
Cartoonist Simon Bond has been messing with people’s heads for decades, most notably with his suggestions of how to most usefully utilise deceased felines, but his truly skewed sensibilities also stretch into the realms of delusion and pure surreality. This nifty little book captures some of his weirdest – and of course, funniest – hallucinations and puts them where you can easily get at them when the humdrum world once more drags you down to its level.
Dry, gentle, incisive and peculiar in the Grand British Manner, this is one of Bond’s best collections and a guaranteed pick-me-up for those in need of a laugh with a question mark in it.
By Brian K. Vaughn, Tony Harris, Jim Clark & JD Mettler (WildStorm)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-622-1
In this latest collection of superpower politics (collecting issues #26-29 of the regular comic plus ancillary miniseries Ex Machina: Inside the Machine) New York City Mayor Mitchell Hundred has to deal with a strangely familiar being who might just be a “Strange visitor from another Worldâ€. Not only does he (it?) arrive knowing far too many of the super-hero-turned civic leader’s darkest secrets, but he (probably not ‘it?’) precipitates a power-cut that blacks out most of Eastern North America – and that includes Canada!
Edgy, savvy, unpredictable and addictive, the ongoing exploits of the ‘Best Politician America Never Had’ are a continuing source of delight for we jaded comic fans and Ex Machina remains the smartest funny-book series being published today. If this can’t make the casual reader of comics into a slavering fan-boy then they deserve to stay dull, uninformed and disenfranchised.
Deriving from the computer game license that produced Atari Force (another wonderful comic romp criminally overdue for collection and re-release), Star Raiders is a vibrant and exuberant science fiction swashbuckler that tears along, with valiant and diverse heroes saving the universe from overwhelming tyranny and having loads of fun in the process.
When the genocidal insectoid Zylons conquered the galaxy their mysterious Hive-Mother did not realise how sentient beings chafe without Freedom. So when the flamboyant and cantankerous pilot Captain Jedediah Poole and his fiery female navigator Tomorrow Hardtack meet the somewhat immortal librarian Ezekial Vicker, their uneasy alliance, bolstered by the old man’s lost knowledge and technology, soon wins them a dedicated band of heroic disciples ready and willing to die for Liberty…
Al Foster is a glamorous and successful private eye, whose life turns completely over the day a large crate mysteriously turns up in his office. Inside is young Rai Spencer, who wants to hire the detective as a bodyguard, although what a boisterous, boy millionaire with psychic superpowers needs guarding from all his skills can’t discover…
And so begins an easy-going and engaging comedy thriller series as Foster becomes increasingly embroiled with the unconventional Spencer family, even becoming romantically involved with Rai’s incredibly high-maintenance sister Rei.
This easy-going, jolly and thrilling series combines action, traditional manga comedy-romance and even super-psionic adventure with the detective genre and comes up with a gentle brew that has lots to recommend it. Neither challenging or life-changing, but tremendously unprepossessing fun for ten year olds and above.
This book is printed in the ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.
By Dean Motter, Michael Lark and Matt Hollingsworth (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-979-5
The depictions and narrative signatures of the post-war genre “Film Noir†are powerful and evocative, celebrating a certain weary worldliness as much as stark lighting and visual moodiness. As such this murky world would seem a natural milieu for Batman tales, but there are precious few that make the effort, and so very few of those successfully carry it off.
This superb alternative adventure published under DC’s Elseworlds imprint (wherein the company’s key characters are translated out-of-continuity for adventures that don’t really count) is a magnificent exception, combining the hard-boiled detective yarn with the icons of gangster movies.
1946: Selina Kyle was a woman everybody wanted, and who exploited that fact fully. When The Batman finds her ravaged corpse in the sewers, there’s no shortage of suspects. Was she murdered by a high society big-shot like Oliver Queen, Harvey Dent or Bruce Wayne, desperate to keep her quiet or was one of her more sinister consorts to blame?
Gangsters like jilted embezzler Eddie Nigma, mob-boss ‘Clayface’ Hagen, The Poker Joker, ‘The Penguin’ or even the stone-cold hit-man ‘Mr Freeze’ would have snuffed her in a instant if expedient, and seedy gumshoe Dick Grayson knows that he’d be just as expendable if he digs too deep into the private affairs of the Highest and Lowest denizens of Gotham. But somehow he just can’t let go…
Reconfiguring key figures of the Batman mythos as such recognisable archetypes, although perhaps obvious, is still a wonderfully effective way to revitalize them. The plot is as engrossing as any movie masterpiece and the human analogues of the bizarre and baroque Batman cast are just as menacing even without outlandish powers and costumes. And through it all lurks a vigilante dressed as a bat, once again the mad element of chaos that he can no longer be in his regular comic outings…
Although a pastiche of many things, Nine Lives is nonetheless a brilliant and engrossing read, blending mystery, crime-caper and sophisticated suspense thriller with moody visuals and a cynical tone that will show any naysayer that comics have as much to offer as any other creative medium. Hunt this down and make it yours!
