Dan Dare: Voyage to Venus 2

Dan Dare: Voyage to Venus 2 

By Frank Hampson (Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84023-841-0

Earth is starving! The only hope is for the expeditionary force on Venus to find food! But Dan Dare and his team have not been heard from in weeks!

Colonel Dare has his own problems. Venus is inhabited by two advanced races trapped in a Cold War for that has lasted for millennia, but it turned pretty hot once the Earthmen got involved. As the Therons battle the ruthless Treens, the malevolent Mekon launches an invasion of our planet, too!

Breakneck pace, truly astonishing high concepts leavened with wholesome music hall larks and some of the most beautiful and powerful art ever to grace a comic page makes the concluding volume of Frank Hampson’s first Dan Dare adventure as much a magical experience now as it was in 1951. These stories captured and still hold the minds of a generation, and you’d be crazy not to see why for yourselves.

This volume also includes a fascinating and lavishly illustrated interview with the creator and a nominal ‘prequel’ in the form of a strip (from an annual) set on Mars eight years before that fateful trip to Venus.

This Titan Books series is glorious tribute to the unforgettable heroes of a forgotten future. They deserve and demand your attention. It makes one proud to be an Earthling.

© 2004 Dan Dare Corporation. All rights Reserved.

Et Cetera

Et Cetera 

By Tow Nakazaki (Tokyopop)
ISBN: 1-59532-130-6

This irreverent, genre-bending western pastiche is a delightful romp if you don’t worry too much about history or logic, which sees young girl Mingchao leave her mountaintop shack and wild-west roots for an entertainment career in Hollywood. With her she takes the fantastic Eto Gun built by her grandfather that fires the spirits of the (Japanese) Zodiac. These fantastic bullets manifest in the form of animate animal ghosts.

Naturally it takes a while to discover how it works – by dipping the gun in the “essence” of the totem animal, such as food or clothing made from them or more often as not their droppings – and often the trouble she inevitably finds herself in is best dealt with by her innate feistiness and ingenuity. Along the way she has been befriended by a mysterious, young and good-looking “Preacher-Man” named Baskerville.

As they make their way to California they encounter many of the icons of the untamed bad-lands such as cowed townsfolk, villainous outlaws, evil cattle-barons, cows, ornery ol’ coots, cow-punchers, distressed widow-wimmin’, cows…

This light-hearted meander through the iconography of a million cowboy movies is fast paced, occasionally saucy and often laugh-out-loud funny, and has the added benefit of the freshness afforded by seeing these old clichés through fresher, oriental, eyes. This volume also includes a number of themed puzzle pages for anyone wanting to take a deeper dip into the legend.

© 1998, 2005 Tow Nakazaki. All Rights Reserved.
English script © 2005 Tokyopop Inc.

Catwoman: The Movie & Other Cat Tales

Catwoman: The Movie & Other Cat Tales 

By Various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-991-3

If you’re one of the six people who saw the truly abysmal Catwoman film: Sorry, no refunds.

If you bought the movie adaptation comic, here it is again, and even the tremendously gifted Chuck Austen can’t make sense of the silly, silly tale of corporate dogsbody Patience Philips, murdered by her cosmetician boss and revivified by the Cat Goddess to seek revenge. Artists Tom Derenick and Adam DeKraker are competent too, and worth looking at, anywhere but here.

I really enjoyed the other volume designed to cash in on this film (Catwoman: Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale ISBN 1-84023-833-X) but I cannot understand the thinking behind this volume. It also includes one of the many origins of the Selina Kyle incarnation (from Catwoman #0 1994) and two of her later revamps from her current comic series (issues #11 and #25).

Three such disparate and recent inclusions must surely be confusing to the movie-going purchaser who doesn’t know or care about two different Catwomen and this filler must already be known to or ignored by the comic reading audience. Surely they’re not just here as padding, like the sketches by comic superstar Jim Lee who was invited to draw Halle Berry on the set of the film? Nor to justify such a high price tag for a book reprint of a magazine still gathering dust on most comic store’s new comics racks?

Nah!

© 1992, 2002, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Blade of Heaven

Blade of Heaven 

By Yong-su Hwang & Kyung-il Yang (Tokyopop)
ISBN: 1-59532-329-5

This fast-paced and uproariously irreverent fantasy tells the tale of an unlikely alliance between Heaven, Earth and Hell in the face of a conspiracy that threatens to destroy the natural order of the universe.

Soma is an uncouth and vulgar human warrior who is captured whilst breaking into Paradise and accused of stealing the legendary Blade of Heaven. He is “befriended” by the beautiful and seemingly ingenuous Princess Aroomee (who is desperate to escape the cloying dullness of the Heavenly Court) and they are sent back to Earth to recover the missing sword, which is vital to the security of the sky-realm. The King of Heaven, being a dutiful parent, also sends the ancient and powerful elemental General Winter with them as a chaperone.

On Earth, the mysterious demon fighter Makumrang is pursued by his father’s vassals and harried by monsters when Soma and his crew meet him. They form an uneasy compact of mutual defence as a monstrous plot by the Demon-Lord Barurugo is revealed that will topple the hierarchy of the cosmos.

Although it might not sound like it, this light-hearted blend of slapstick and action makes mock of traditional fantasy themes but is nonetheless an engaging romp that will satisfy any fan of the genre.

© 2002 Yong-su Hwang & Kyung-il Yang, Daiwon C.I. Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum 

By Grant Morrison and Dave McKean (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-022-0

This is, by all accounts, “the best-selling original graphic novel in… comics history”, which, obviously does not mean it is the best written or drawn. It is, however, pretty damned good. A brooding, moody script was treated as a bravura exercise in multimedia experimental illustration, literally changing the way artists and consumers thought about the pictures in comics. The attendant media play also spread throughout society, and as with Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns generated one of those infrequently recurring periods when Comics become Cool. All those big budget super-hero movies you’ve enjoyed or suffered through might not have happened without these media zeitgeist moments.

On the most basic level, however, it’s still a fine tale of the hero having to overcome terrible foes, terrific odds and traumatic trials to vanquish evil as the Caped Crusader fights his way through the freed lunatics that have taken over their asylum to save a hostage from the ravages of the Joker.

This 15th Anniversary edition also includes Morrison’s original script and page breakdowns, offering those of you intrigued by the mechanics of comic creation a hard lesson in production and inspiration.

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

American Splendor: Another Day

American Splendor: Another Day 

By Harvey Pekar & various (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84576-452-8

Hopefully the brilliant Harvey Pekar will finally get some much deserved acclaim from the comics crowd now that his writings have appeared in ‘proper, mainstream’ comics. Or at least under the Vertigo imprint, which is nearly as good.

Kidding aside however, this collection of the four issues of new material published by DC Comics’ mature sub-division, and of course the excellent The Quitter graphic novel, should surely, at last, win him some fans amongst those dedicated consumers that have shunned him for decades.

Pekar has written another series of vignettes, asides, tales, observations and pictorial cathartics that are compelling and mundane, enthralling and ordinary, and made that quantum leap we all aspire to seem easy. He’s made comic strips something that civilians would want to read.

His collaborators this time around are Ho Che Anderson, Zachary Baldus, Hilary Barta, Greg Budgett & Gary Dumm, Eddie Campbell, Richard Corben, Hunt Emerson, Bob Fingerman, Rick Geary, Dean Haspiel, Gilbert Hernandez, Leonardo Manco, Josh Neufeld, Chris Samnee, Ty Templeton, Steve Vance, Chris Weston and Chandler Wood.

This book with all the shades, tones, textures and variety possible with black and white comics, is an absolute delight, but if you’re a colour junkie there is a section at the back with a solitary strip plus the captivating covers to ease you into the powerful world of monochrome. Buy this book!

© 2006, 2007 Harvey Pekar & DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Wolverine: Xisle

Wolverine Legends: Xisle

By Bruce Jones & Jorge Lucas (Marvel)
ISBN 0-7851-1221-9

Woefully disappointing psychobabble time-wasting from the usually exceptional Bruce Jones as the semi-feral mutant slash-meister finds himself trapped on a mysterious desert island. Somehow his mutant healing abilities no longer work. There’s a monster that keeps killing him. And most annoying of all, when he goes to the pub, everybody there ignores him as if he doesn’t exist.

Wolverine has come a long way from his babbling beserker days (he even has an adopted daughter in tow) but he was never stupid, but that’s the only possible answer for why it takes him five issues rather than eight pages to arrive at the solution to the puzzle that keeps him trapped in this lackadaisical plot.

Sadly not even the beautiful artwork of Jorge Lucas can save this slice of puff-pastry from the “ignore” pile. If you’re a returning reader or you’ve come direct from the numerous animated series or blockbuster movies , this is definitely not the Wolverine book for you to start with.

© 2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse in Color

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in Color 

By various and produced by Another Rainbow Publishing Inc. (Pantheon Books 1988)
ISBN 0-394-52519-9

Carl Barks is one of the greatest exponents of comic art that the world has ever seen, and he did almost all his work with Walt Disney characters. His work reached and affected untold millions of readers and he all too belatedly won far-reaching recognition.

One of his most talented associates, potentially even more influential and certainly much less lauded, is Floyd Gottfredson. Another strip artist who started out in the Walt Disney animation studios during the Depression of the 1930s, Gottfredson was asked by Disney himself to take over the fledgling Mickey Mouse newspaper strip. He would plot, occasionally write, but mostly draw the strip for forty-five-and-a-half years.

He took a wild and anarchic rodent from slap-stick beginnings, via some of the earliest adventure continuities in comics history as detective, explorer, aviator and even cowboy, through to the gentle suburban sitcom gags of a newly middle-class America that syndicate policy eventually forced upon him. Along the way he produced some of the most amazing strip adventures the industry has ever seen.

Mickey Mouse in Color is a lavish volume reprinting the best of the early strips with fascinating text and feature articles including interviews with the man himself, but the real gold is the cartoons themselves.

A mix of Sunday page yarns comprising ‘Rumplewatt the Giant (1934)’, ‘Dr. Oofgay’s Secret Serum (1934)’, the magnificent ‘Case of the Vanishing Coats (1935)’ and the whimsical ‘Robin Hood Adventure (1936)’ although superlative, are mere appetisers. The best stories and biggest laughs come with the rollickin’ comedy thrill-ride serials ‘Blaggard Castle (1932)’, ‘Pluto and the Dogcatcher (1933)’, ‘The Mail Pilot (1933)’ and the gloriously entertaining and legendary ‘Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot (1939)’.

Consistency is as rare as longevity in today’s comic market-place, and the sheer volume of quality work produced by Gottfredson that has remained unseen and unsung is a genuine scandal. Books like this should be welcomed, cherished, and most importantly, kept permanently in print.

© 1988 The Walt Disney Company. All Rights Reserved.

Swamp Thing: Spontaneous Generation

Swamp Thing: Spontaneous Generation 

By Rick Veitch & Alfredo Alcala (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84576-260-6

The post-Alan Moore Swamp Thing comics have long been overlooked, and DC’s inevitable collecting of these tales is a genuine treat for fans of the muck monster and horror-fans in general. Writer-artist Rick Veitch, aided by veteran inker Alfredo Alcala, produced a run of mini-classics with these stories from Swamp Thing issues # 71-76 that built on Moore’s cerebral, visceral writing as the world’s planet elemental became increasingly involved with ecological matters.

Having decided to “retire”, Swamp Thing (an anthropomorphic plant with the personality and mind of murdered biologist Alec Holland) is charged with facilitating the creation of his/its successor, but the process has become contaminated by consecutive failures and false starts, leading to a horrendous series of abortive creatures and a potentially catastrophic Synchronicity Maelstrom.

Alec, his “wife” Abigail and the chillingly charismatic magician John Constantine have to combine forces – and indeed some body-fluids – to create a solution before the resultant chaos-storm destroys the Earth. ((see Hellblazer: Original Sins ISBN 1-84576-465-X and Swamp Thing: Regenesis ISBN 1-84023-994-8)

More than a decade and a half after the initial run, and with some necessary distance from grossly unfair comparisons to his predecessor, Veitch’s Swamp Thing stories can be seen as innovative, sly and witty, by a creator capable and satiric, but still wedded to the basic tenets of his craft, “keep them surprised, keep them wondering, keep them spooked”. You can do all this to yourself just by buying this book.

© 1988, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved

Swamp Thing: Regenesis

Swamp Thing: Regenesis 

By Rick Veitch, Alfredo Alcala & Brett Ewins (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84023-994-8

With renewed interest in the big green guy due to his return to the DC Universe it seemed inevitable that all those issues not written by Alan Moore should eventually find their way between the glossy, stiffened covers of compilation albums.

This batch (Issue’s 65 – 70 of the second series) follows the plant elemental’s return to Earth and his lover Abby, and their complicated plan to have a child together. This they can only accomplish, with the grudging assistance of modern mage John Constantine (see Hellblazer: Original Sins ISBN 1-84576-465-X).

Also encountered along the way are DC stalwarts Batman, Jason Woodrue, Solomon Grundy and even 1950s hero Roy Raymond, TV Detective, as well as Moore’s eccentric cast of supporting characters. At time of publishing these tales were handily and unfairly dismissed, but they hold up very well and it’s good to see them aired when they can be assessed on their own merits. Trippy, but eminently enjoyable.

© 2005 DC Comics