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JLA: The Nail

JLA: The Nail 

By Alan Davis & Mark Farmer (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-064-9

Here’s one that’s primarily for the dedicated fans. Produced for DC’s Elseworlds imprint, where major characters and brands are explored and exploited free of the strictures of regular continuity, Alan Davis turned the concept upon itself to create a wonderland for followers of comic minutiae.

His tale, based on the old verse, “For want of a nail the shoe was lost…” (originally penned by George Herbert in 1651 – so don’t tell me comics aren’t educational) asks what would have happened if that rocket from Krypton hadn’t been found by Jonathan and Martha Kent in Smallville.

All those super-menaces would have been defeated by all those other DC champions, but gradually the war would itself have been lost, and the dystopic world we see is nearing its ending when these heroes all come together.

I grew up with this stuff and for people like me it’s all utterly enthralling. There are clever in-jokes, sharp asides for the knowing, and vignettes that hit straight to the part of me that’s still eight years old and wide-eyed. The dialogue is sharp, the plot tension-filled and the action and art is all you could hope for.

And here’s that “but” you’ve been expecting: I tried this out on a couple of interested but non-fanboy, occasional readers. You know the type; they’ve seen Dark Knight, Sandman, Cerebus, Maus, Carl Barks and Alan Moore. Not anti-comics by any means, nor even anti super-heroes. Just not mired in “The Lore”. And they didn’t get it. It was pretty but not engaging, they said.

So I just have to give this a health warning I deeply regret. It’s brilliant and fun and great, but if you not at least passingly familiar with the continuity you might want to leave it until you’ve absorbed a few DC Archive or Showcase editions.

© 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Authority: Revolution Book 2

The Authority book 2

By Ed Brubaker, Dustin Nguyen & Richard Friend (WildStorm)
ISBN 1-84576-251-7

Three years later, the world is not a happy place and eight-year-old Jenny Quantum – the spirit of the 21st Century – realises that something is cosmically wrong. She also realises what has to be done to fix it. Using her swiftly developing powers she unravels the mystery of her missing team-mates, how the pernicious plans of the mystery villain managed to defeat both heroes and governments and just why she is the only “person” who can deal with this particular crisis

On its own terms this is quite an engrossing adventure, full of the nihilism and ironic dark sparkle that typified the earlier tales, but if you look closely you can’t fail to see that under all that realistic language and powerful, cutting edge art are all the tired old clichés of the super-hero genre that this title initially rejected and often mocked. Has the nonsensical quest to invest grittily-grim-realism into what is inescapably ultimately high fantasy finally run out of reality to work with?

© 2005, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Authority: Revolution Book 1

The Authority Book 1

By Ed Brubaker, Dustin Nguyen & Richard Friend (WildStorm)
ISBN 1-84576-177-4

This reductionist saga of real-world super-heroics reaches a worrying point in a slow but marked decline with a year long mini-series collected as two volumes here. The Authority are a team of super-beings who eschewed the traditional societal role of heroes in favour of a pre-emptive strike policy, and a no-nonsense One-World paternalism, that allowed them to tackle real problems such as hunger, pollution, genocides and corporate piracy as well as demented super-villains and alien invasions. They set themselves above the Machiavellian dances of world politics in a mission to save the entire planet, which naturally, did not endear them to the entrenched Interests of Government and Business.

Eventually, weary of the continual hindrances put in their way by the US Government, they forcibly supplanted it and as Book 1 opens are in charge of the country and thus, arguably, the world. As their reform and salvation programs begin to take effect however, a mysterious enemy is manipulating various other US superheroes to begin a popular revolt.

Stuffed with the signature intense language and violence that characterises both this series and author Brubaker’s other work, things begin to go terribly wrong, terribly quickly, and the situation worsens when Midnighter is catapulted into the future, where he sees what the eventual result of their efforts will lead to. On his return, he quits the team to save the planet, but still the situation seems to worsen. As the first volume ends, the demoralized team have all retired or disappeared and America and the world are free, although now in the hands of a corporate dictatorship.

© 2004, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Prime Cuts

Prime Cuts 

By Howard Stangroom & Stephen Lowther (Bruno Gmünder)
ISBN: 3-8618-7723-6

It’s sometimes easy to forget that comic books aren’t the only venue for comic strip material, nor are the mainstream’s mores necessarily the only motive for reading them. Many of Britain’s greatest artists and writers worked in the much more lucrative adult magazine market whenever they could. Hunt Emerson, Brian Lewis, Ron Embleton, John Bolton, Brian Bolland and a veritable host of others have produced superb work that has nothing whatever to do with who’s strongest although often the costumes could be as outlandish.

During the 1980’s and 1990’s Howard Stangroom and Stephen Lowther produced gay-themed “adults only” material initially for the US publication Gay Comix, then for UK magazines like Heartbreak Hotel, Buddies and Meatmen.

Despite, if not because of, specifically dealing with sexual content, adult strips can become pretty tedious very quickly. The merit of the material collected here by German publisher Bruno Gmünder is not only the intricate artwork of Lowther, but the writers’ concentration on humour, pastiche and parody –not to mention some plain old autobiography.

With tips of the hat to Tharg’s Future Shocks, Archie Comics and Millie the Model, blockbuster superhero movies, sci-fi super teams and even the bedrock principles of heroic fiction (you know, the hero always gets the girl…only “Real Men” can fight…) the creators greatest desire is always to entertain first and gratify after.

Also it’s always a pleasure to see Margaret Thatcher and her band of cut-throats get one more well-deserved kicking – literary or otherwise – but that’s just my personal kink…

Prime Cuts delivers a lot of comic enjoyment for the open-minded adult and it’s always a pleasure to see any book that might increase the overall comic reading population.

© 2005 Bruno Gmünder Verlag GMBH. Text © 2005 Will Morgan (“Howard Stangroom”). Art © 2005 Stephen Lowther All Rights Reserved.

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Transformers: Last Stand

Transformers: Last Stand 

By Bob Budiansky, Jose Delbo & Jim Fern (Titan Books)
IBN: 1-84576-008-5

The collection of Marvel’s highly readable Transformers franchise reprints issues 51-55 of the US comic series just in time for the giant robots’ twentieth anniversary. No longer trapped on Earth, space-faring Autobots Landmine and Cloudburst must contend not only with Decepticons Dreadwind and Darkwing but also the pernicious Mechannibals, who are intent on reducing the heroic robots to table scraps!

This volume also sees the first appearance of the Micromasters, who play such an integral role in the Dreamwave version of the saga of the Autobots. (New readers might be a little baffled here, but just wing it, the stories are easy to follow and designed to clue you in on the fly).

This is the last of the US reprints in this format and the Diamond edition features a superb pin-up gallery from some of the biggest names in comics as well as the usual behind the scenes features. It is a great package and a perfect series for luring the young and disinterested into comics.

© 2005 Hasbro. All rights reserved.

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Tom Strong Book 5

Tom Strong Book 5 

By various (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-148-0

Alan Moore relinquishes his writer’s role to a selection of top creators for an intriguing medley of tales from his own private universe with this collection.

First is the staggeringly whimsical ‘The Day Tom Strong Renegotiated the Friendly Skies’ by Mark Schultz and Pascal Ferry, wherein The Man of Science has to correct the supposedly immutable Laws of Physics governing aerodynamics as, apparently, manned flight is only possible because of a deal brokered by Strong’s own father at the turn of the century, and the sky-gods have decided not to renew the contract…

‘Jenny Panic & the Bible of Dreams’ from Steve Aylett and Shawn McManus tells of a young girl whose nightmares create and warp Realities, and Brian K. Vaughan and Peter Snejbjerg craft a fascinating spin on devotion by exploring the history of Strong’s life-long robotic companion, Pneuman in ‘A Fire in his Belly’.

The two-part ‘The Terrible True Life of Tom Strong’ from Ed Brubaker and Duncan Fegredo’ finishes the book, a pretty if uninspired old plot-boiler revisited as Strong wakes on our world and his adventurous existence is revealed as nothing but a glamorous delusion in a damaged mind. Despite its grateful nods in equal part to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Moore’s own true origin of Marvelman/Miracleman, its readable but self-indulgent questioning of its own reality and internal integrity detracts from what might have been a sharp spin on a favourite plot.

All in all this collection (reprinting issues #26-30) is a fun read, and a worthy companion to previous volumes scribed by someone who seems incapable of writing a bad comic, and obviously well able to share his toys.

© 2005 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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Stig’s Inferno

Stig's Inferno

By Klaus Schönefeld & Ty Templeton (Vortex)
ISBN: 0-921451-02-4

The late 1980’s was a time of massive and unprecedented expansion and experimentation in the American comic industry. For a while it appeared that any clown with a Rotring and a couple of hundred bucks could bang out his own publication and become an overnight sensation.

Most of this burgeoning output was pretty damn bad, some actually appalling, and a small proportion was in fact, very, very good. However, not all of the Good Stuff hit big. Very little of it even survived the inevitable implosion. Such an item was Stig’s Inferno from Vortex Comics, a publisher who seemed to specialise in high quality product that nobody bought.

Stig is a cool, laid-back kind of guy who picks up a chick named Beatrice. He takes her back to his place, which is like a cross between the Bates Motel and Poltergeist Central. Whilst giving her the fifty-cent tour he gets into an argument with the sock stealing Things that are squatters in his piano.

When he regains consciousness he is in Hell, dead and naked from the waist down. What follows is a picaresque and brilliantly funny tribute to Dante’s Inferno with the voice of Bill Murray replacing Dante Alligheri’s and a mission to proffer mirth not salvation. Every page is a verbal and visual grab-bag of gags that never seem to progress the plot, but simply get funnier for fun’s sake.

The first five issues were published by Vortex with two more coming out from Eclipse Comics. The series never originally concluded, due in great part to the tragic and untimely death of Klaus Schönefeld. With Templeton being credited with story as well as art from the third instalment onwards and as he has proven himself such an entertaining writer and artist in the intervening years, it is this reviewer’s fervent hope that one day he returns to conclude the project. Nonetheless, what is there already is still wonderful, and you’ll thank yourself for picking any of it up next time you’re trawling the back issue bins.

© 1988 William P. Marks.

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Soon I Will Be Invincible

Soon I Will Be Invincible 

By Austin Grossman, with illustrations by Bryan Hitch (Michael Joseph/Penguin)
ISBN: 0-718-15291-8

WARNING! THIS IS A NOVEL. IT HAS VERY FEW PICTURES.

It seems that the signature genre of comics – the super-hero – has finally gained some literary legitimacy. If you ignore the pulp exploits of Doc Savage and the Shadow, the novelisations and prose experiments of the bigger comic publishers with their key brands and the success of such series as the ‘Wild Cards’, costumed do-gooders and crazed masterminds have finally broken into mainstream publishing with this novel.

Told from the alternating viewpoints of arch-nemesis Doctor Impossible and neophyte super-heroine Fatale, in our terms it’s a fairly standard battle of goodies and baddies in the ‘realistic’ vein best used by the likes of Alan Moore, Warren Ellis and Kurt Busiek (Astro City, not Marvels). As such it will be pretty familiar territory to comic fans, should they choose to read all that text – and a word to the wise for the paperback edition; Bryan Hitch’s illustrations are lovely, so why not intersperse them through the text as they did with George Lowther’s 1942 Superman novel, rather than shove them at the back of the book as if you’re ashamed of them? – but I wonder if it will advance the interests of the comic aficionados and publishers as much as a blockbuster movie or TV series.

Still any literary notice and approval would be nice and the book reads well enough. How many of you are going to wait for the comic adaptation though?

© Austin Grossman, 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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Smallville, Vol 1

Smallville, Vol 1 

By Various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-826-7

I wasn’t sure where to place this one when I finished it. The whole point of Now Read This! is to review graphic novels so that people will read more comic material – either by expanding their usual habits as fans or by broadening the horizons of consumers who wouldn’t normally read stories told in pictures. I want to wholeheartedly and confidently recommend to browsers or fanboys and the wide panoply in between.

The whole point here is to assess whether a graphic novel compares to the best of written or visual arts equivalents. Bleak House (the book) or Inherit the Wind (the Spencer Tracy film) or Boys From The Black Stuff. Babylon 5, 2001, Forbidden Planet, Trancers or Neuromancer. These are signal highpoints of a form, Worthy Highbrow or Populist low cult.

Please don’t make me explain all that again.

So why is the book such a problem? It collects the one-shot Smallville: The Comic and the comic strip sections from the first four issues of the eponymous tie-in magazine published by DC, with a couple of the more interesting articles thrown in for balance and as a excuse to print some photos of the highly telegenic cast.

The stories and artwork are of the highest quality, from the likes of Mark Verheiden, Cliff Carpenter, Roy Allan Martinez, Kilian Plunkett, John Paul Leon, Renato Guedes and many others. They even bear a strong, direct relevance to the episodes of the hit TV show they’re derived from. And that, regrettably, is the problem.

Many of the tales are sidebars to actual episodes, or derive from specific events from the show, and if you’re cursed with an average memory, or didn’t watch the series, reprinting stories one or two seasons after the fact leaves a reader floundering for the full story. It’s a great looking package that could really disenchant all but the most dedicated fan of the programme. Unless, of course, you buy the DVD’s at the same time…

© 2002, 2003 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Street Angel: The Princess of Poverty

Street Angel 

By Jim Rugg & Brian Maruca (SLG)
ISBN: 1-5936-2012-8

Another spectacular Indie offering is this unbelievably readable pastiche of modern culture featuring the insane super-heroic exploits of monster crushing, ninja-hating Jesse Sanchez.

13 year old Sanchez is the eponymous Street Angel, a homeless girl who dumpster dives for food and cigarette butts, goes to school – when she has to – drinks cheap booze, and saves Angel city on a regular basis from Gods, monsters, scientists, super-villains and anything else that tries to do bad to the world. She has nothing to aid her but her phenomenal martial arts skills, skateboarding abilities and unwavering optimism.

Created by a team hopelessly seduced by, but not trapped in, a wash of popular culture iconography such as comic-books, trashy movies, skater-boy chic and the timeless beauty of excessive and cleverly staged gratuitous violence, this wickedly clever spoof is a masterpiece of cliché-busting fun illustrated with an startlingly accessible and economic verve and utility that can’t help but suck you down like a Aztec God tripping over his own time portal. I especially call your attention to CosMick O’Brannigan, the World’s First Irish Astronaut and fluent speaker of Australian – “The Friendliest Language on Earth” as a potential megastar of the future.

Smart, sassy and catchy as a “Chicken Tonight” jingle – this is a series worth hunting for.

™ & © 2004, 2005 Jim Rugg & Brian Maruca. All Rights Reserved.