Posts

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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

Posted on

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

Posted on

Swamp Thing: Love in Vain

Swamp Thing: Love in Vain 

By Joshua Dysart, Enrique Breccia & Timothy Green II (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84576-195-2

Swamp Thing is gradually trudging back to its horrific roots as Joshua Dysart touches all the old bases of exotic Louisiana Bayous, lonely women in rotting plasterboard shacks, do-it-yourself homunculi, and the latest return of arch-enemy Anton Arcane, whose periodic escapes from Hell are a guarantee of world-threatening gore and deplorability.

Also on show is a tent-Revival Evangelist whose congregations have a habit of disappearing in a volume of tales that although strikingly illustrated by the venerable Enrique Breccia (“Love in Vain”) and Timothy Green III (“A Measure of Faith”) seem to temporarily – we hope – treading water.

All punned out. Stopping now.

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Superman: True Brit

Superman: True Brit 

Kim “Howard” Johnson & John Cleese, John Byrne & Mark Farmer
ISBN 1-4012-0022-2

I must be very hard to please. I’m always barking on about value and innovation, asking the producers of my favourite waste of time to be bold and try different things. So a Superman story using the talents of comic legend John Byrne and comedy superstar John Cleese should surely fill that bill?

Sadly, it would appear not. The premise of the alien foundling landing elsewhere than heartland America is a fundamental part of the Superman mythology now, and comedy is always a welcome break in such a messianic concept, but for Rao’s sake can’t the jokes be funny and the settings fresh? Let’s see what you get if that pesky rocket landed in a Welsh mining community or Birmingham or County Mayo rather than just cobble together a porridge of middle class suburbia, Wallace and Grommit backgrounds, Mary Poppins hand-me-downs and public school cast-offs.

This must have sounded so great around a restaurant table in a pitch meeting but the end result is just so terribly, terribly clichéd and pedestrian, merely slavishly pandering to American held myths of what the British are, do and think. I can hear editors saying “yeah, but our readers won’t get that so why don’t we…” all through this. And every time they said it the answer should have been “Nothing new there, then”.

Am I offended? Not particularly. Self deprecating humour is part and parcel of the British psyche. I just don’t like paying for old jokes and rejected shtick that was done better in the 1970’s (most notably in 2000AD‘s Kaptain Klep strip – some of Kev O’Neill’s best early work – and which you should track down).

I can understand importing major talent from outside the industry for a fresh approach. I can see the need for big names to expand the brand. What I can’t see is permitting sub-standard work. Surely they can do better than this?

And don’t call me Shirley.

© 2004 DC Comics

Posted on

Swamp Thing: Bad Seed

Swamp Thing: Bad Seed 

By Andy Diggle & Enrique Breccia (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84023-954-9

This revival of the Swamp Thing sees a return to the basics of the pre-Alan Moore version (against which all others must inevitably be measured), whilst keeping much of the extended continuity and what has become the Vertigo sensibility.

The plot ties up all the loose ends that floated about after the demise of the previous series wherein the daughter of the Bog God took over his mantle whilst he (it?) became the avatar of all the elemental configurations of Earth. Author Diggle brings back the original, re-establishes relationships with Alec Holland, Abigail, their daughter Tefé and flavour of the month John Constantine. More importantly, he and comics veteran Breccia return the sometimes overly cosmic lead character to – you should excuse the pun – his horror roots.

This one starts slow but I suspect, if following creators keep their feet firmly planted on or below the ground, we could all be in for some good reading in the seasons to come.

© 2005 DC Comics. All rights reserved.