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Dramacon

Dramacon 

By Svetlana Chmakova (Tokyopop)
ISBN 1598161296

Lots of people have been to fantasy collector shows and events. Some have even been spotted at that utter zenith of localised naffness and insanity that is the comic-convention. Seldom have the bizarre passions and obsessively tunnel-visioned peccadilloes of such a very peculiar band of people been better captured than in this oddly charming tale from Canada-based Russian émigré Svetlana Chmakova.

With a deceptively light touch and a killer reservoir of sharp one-liners and come-backs, she tells the tale of Christie, a young girl at her first anime/comic convention with her boyfriend, and the manga comic they have created together. Take it from an old lag at these things, the combination of wonder, fascination, disappointment and vertiginous bewilderment portrayed here is spot on – if a trifle toned down. No one who has never actually attended a con would believe what can really happen.

Among the personal heroes, old friends and total weirdoes running wild like a self-contained goblin-horde let loose for a whole weekend in a localised Halloween, is a young man who Christie thinks is obnoxious, brash, rude, cool, good-looking and an increasingly better-seeming prospect than the boyfriend she brought with her, whose feet of clay are becoming more obvious as the hours and minutes unfold. Christie’s dilemmas compound as she meets her all-time manga hero and has to face some unpleasant facets of her own character.

Can this week-end change her life? Should she compromise long-time relationships for people that will be thousands of miles away again in mere hours, or should she put it all on the line and let the cards fall where they may? Whatever happens, it’s a whole year until the next convention, but since this a charmingly addictive slice of fun, I’m hoping the next volume will be available a good deal sooner than that.

© 2005 Svetlana Chmakova and Tokyopop Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Doing Time

Doing Time 

By Kazuichi Hanawa (Fanfare/ Ponent Mon)
ISBN 8493340901

Something of an obscure recommendation, this, but I wanted to add some different Manga, as I’m a little burned out with big eyes, big explosions, and big hair at the moment.

Doing Time doesn’t fall into any perceived Western understanding of Japanese comics. For a start it’s an autobiography/documentary. The creator served three years in prison for owning replica guns, which seems pretty stern to me but Mr. Hanawa clearly feels he deserved every moment of it. It’s a journal along the lines of Samuel Pepys with disquietingly intimate revelations calmly rolled out at every available juncture. It’s a shining insight into the psychology of the Japanese culture and mind set.

The thoughts here portrayed couldn’t come from any other nationality. Mr. Hanawa constantly and genuinely bemoans the quality and quantity of the food. It’s too good for the likes of him.

“Is it right for us to live so well in spite of having perpetrated such misdeeds?” he asks. The attention to detail almost makes this a cookbook. The narrative structure is so fluid that all one comes away with is a fine pattern of detail and no big picture.

I have to admit that I was bewildered and captivated in equal measure with this collection of strips drawn with astounding veracity and authenticity (Japanese prisons apparently allow no records of any sort – even drawings – to be kept by inmates and all the work was produced from memory) but if you’re of an adventurous mien this may brighten your jaded day.

© 2000, 2004 Kaziuchi Hanawa & Ponent Mon

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Civil War

Civil War 

By Mark Millar & Steve McNiven (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN 978-1-905239-60-3

The Patriot Act changed America as much as the destruction of the World Trade Towers. I’m not offering any comment on either event. It is simply that popular arts grow from the social climate as much as the target audience. In a post-9-11 America the creators and the consumers now think different thoughts in different ways. Thus the company that first challenged the middle-class suburban status quo of the comic industry in the late 1960s makes Homeland Security the theme of a major publishing event.

After a reality show starring superheroes goes hideously wrong, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of children, popular opinion turns massively against masked heroes. A scheme to licence, train and regulate all superdoers is mandated by the Federal government. A terrified and indignant populace quivers as a proportion of superheroes, led by the ultimate icon of Liberty, Captain America, refuse to surrender their autonomy and in many cases, anonymity.

The Avengers and the Fantastic Four, bedrock teams of the Marvel Universe fragment in scenes reminiscent of the American Civil War, with ‘brother’ pitted against ‘brother’. As the conflict escalates it becomes clear to all involved that they are fighting for souls as much as lives. Both sides fight for the love of their country and Constitution and both sides are right. Only a moral sacrifice seems able to counteract the heritage of atrocity that seems inevitable as battle after inconclusive battle divides and destroys heroes of the World.

Lavishly illustrated, action packed and yet more cerebral and philosophical than you’d imagine, this tale sadly just falls just short of total success. Mark Millar, though not American, ably illuminates the points of view of all concerned, but somehow, the reasons for the conflict just don’t seem enough to convince me that such comrades could so readily abandon their principles and their friendships. Nor do I buy that such tremendous collateral damage could be countenanced by such scrupulous defenders for so long.

Maybe it’s just me though, since the original miniseries was certainly successful enough. Perhaps you should simply pick up the book and decide for yourselves.

© 2006, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman: Under the Hood

Batman: Under the Hood 

By Judd Winick & various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-199-5

This tale (from Batman #635 – 641) introduces a brand new force to the streets of Gotham City. The Red Hood, originally a prototype criminal alias for the man who would become the Joker, is back and making a name for himself among the criminal hierarchies. Is he just another super-thug or does he have a more sinister agenda? How does he know so much about the secrets and methods of the Batman?

I’m not going to tell you. This fast-paced puff piece is fairly predictable if you accept the twin principles of modern comic books that nobody stays dead and that all writers think they can double-bluff their readers. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of action and pathos as the new playing order in Gotham sorts itself out prior to the major events all DC editors would like us to start our anticipatory salivations over. Stay tuned, Bat-Fans!

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Catwoman: Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale

Catwoman: Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale 

By Various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-833-X

It feels odd to plug a book that is so obviously a quick and cheap cash-cow tie-in to a movie (and a bad movie, at that), but the Catwoman volume has a great deal to recommend it. For a start it is quaintly cheap’n’cheerful. The references to the film are kept to an absolute minimum. The selection of reprints, purporting to signify nine distinct takes on the near seventy year old character, are well considered in terms of what the reader hasn’t seen as opposed to what they have. There are also some rare and stunning art pieces selected as chapter heads, too, from the likes of George Perez, Dave Stevens, Alan Davis and Bruce Timm.

The stories themselves obviously vary in quality by modern standards, but serve as an intriguing indicator of taste in the manner of a time capsule. From her first appearance as a mysterious thief (Batman #1 1940), through ‘The Crimes of the Catwoman’ (Detective #203 1954), the wonderfully absurdist ‘The Catwoman’s Black Magic’ (Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #70-71 1966), to the cringingly painful ‘Catwoman Sets Her Claws For Batman’ (Batman #197 1967) one can trace a gradual decline from sexy object of pursuit to imbecilic Twinkie.

In the nonsensical ‘The Case of the Purr-Loined Pearl’ (Batman #210 1969), Frank Robbins slowly (and oh, so terribly gradually) begins her return to major villain status, ‘A Town on the Night’ (Batman #392 1986), shows one of her innumerable romantic excursions onto the right side of the law before ‘Object Relations’ (Catwoman #54 1998), shows us the ghastly Bad-girl version of the glamorous thief.

Mercifully, we then get to the absolutely enthralling ‘Claws’ (Batman: Gotham Adventures #4 1998), produced in the tie-in comic based on the television cartoon but probably the best piece of pure comic book escapism in the whole package. The volume closes with the new, current origin ‘The Many Lives of Selina Kyle’ (Catwoman Secret Files #1 2002), by Ed Brubaker and Michael Avon Oeming and Mike Manley.

Catwoman is possibly one of the few female comic characters that the real world has actually heard of, so it’s great that the whole deal is such a light, frothy outing, as well as having some rarity appeal for the dedicated fan. Go get her, Tiger!

©1940-1955, 1956-2002, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved

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Year One: Batman/Ra’s al Ghul

Year One: Batman/Ra's al Ghul 

By Devin Grayson, Paul Gulacy & Jimmy Palmiotti (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-254-1

Produced to cash in on the movie Batman Begins this run of the mill adventure is set after the death of the immortal Eco-warrior and criminal mastermind. Batman is sent on a quest to restore a dubiously ‘New Age-y’ balance to the Earth, which he inadvertently disrupted when he destroyed all of Ras al Ghul’s life-restoring ‘Lazarus Pits’, mystical chemical baths which would now appear to be the planet’s way of voiding detrimental energies.

Galvanised into action by a posthumous letter from al Ghul, and the distressing fact that all over the planet dead things and people are coming back to a ghastly semblance of life, Batman goes on a very pretty, monotonously action-packed but terribly silly rampage of action before he restores the natural order. Why haven’t all the mystical busybodies that guard the planet noticed before now? Where are Superman and the Justice League?

Rushed and ill-considered, and with plot holes you could drive a fleet of hearses through, this disappointing jumble from the usually excellent Devin Grayson will hopefully be soon forgotten. Surely this is one graphic novel that only the most non-discriminating Bat-fan could love.

© 2005, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman: Death and the Maidens

Batman: Death and the Maidens 

By Greg Rucka and Klaus Janson (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-951-4

One of the biggest problems with the truly iconic characters is that once their periodical adventures are over there’s the inevitable rush to collect the tale as a book. Sadly, a lot of these tales just aren’t that good.

Death and the Maidens deals with the destruction of possibly the last great Bat villain – Ra’s Al Ghul – due to the machinations of his daughters Nyssa and Talia. The latter has been yet another villainess/love interest for Batman since the 1970’s but Nyssa is new and as the tale progresses through a series of flashbacks the reader discovers the hell that the immortal mastermind has subjected her to over the centuries, and how she has responded.

The conveniently dying villain appears to Batman and offers to put him in touch with his dead parents through an (al)chemical solution in return for a cessation of the hero’s campaign of destruction on the sources of Al Ghul’s immortality. How logical is that?

I don’t care how screwed up he is by their death. No one as calculating as Batman stops a ten year all-out war with a monster who intends to destroy the human race – particularly one with a history of using chemical and bacteriological weapons – on the promise of a pharmaceutical séance, especially when he’s on the verge of winning.

More importantly it serves no purpose in advancing the narrative, but seems there solely as a way injecting some heroic angst into the mix. Long story short, after loads of trauma and action the girls succeed and Nyssa replaces her father as head of his organization, and therefore as Batman’s implacable foe. Any bets on how long he stays dead? Creators Rucka and Janson can do so much better.

© 2003, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Bolland Strips!


By Brian Bolland (Knockabout – Palmano Bennett)
ISBN 0861661508

Brian Bolland is probably one of the best artists in the comics biz, with a precise, almost super-real, photographic style that has won him many fans and probably just as many imitators. His work is meticulous and time-consuming, and indicative of a high degree of self-control. The man himself is gentle, quiet and self-effacing. If you’ve ever met him you probably came away thinking, “Wow! What a Nice, Quiet Guy,” and never for a moment thought that those are the sort of words most neighbours of serial killers use when rabid News-crews shove microphones under their noses during an interview scrum.

With this collection of strip work – not even blackmail or threat of physical force seems able to convince him to draw whole cartoon stories on a regular basis any more – we get a glimpse of the fevered mind locked behind all those ultra-fine lines and rock-solid visualisations. And what a mind it is.

Gathered together from such disparate sources as Escape, A1 and Vertigo comic anthologies, these strips are sly, clever and just plain witty inner explorations that have as much to do with Samuel Beckett, Alan Whicker, Viv Stanshall (for Mr Bolland too knows the sublime mystery of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (“Look over Walls! Wrestle Poodles… and Win!”) and Freud as it does with x-ray vision, spandex, gloved fists and winged boots.

Fans will be delighted to know that there are plenty of knockout naked women on hand, although you will be asked in a positively Crumb-like manner why you want them, as the lavishly rendered tales of The Actress and the Bishop give way to the introspective, therapeutic yet oddly engaging Mr Mamoulian, a loose, experimental and quintessentially English series of short picture essays that explore inner myths, and creativity, rendered directly into ink in a free-form manner and oddly reminiscent of John Ryan’s wonderful Harris Tweed strips for the Eagle.

Mr Bolland’s dark brand of whimsy can be experienced in the latter portion of the book with reprints from Vertigo’s Heart Throbs and Strange Adventures, where even the chore of taking the readership – Americans at that! – into consideration doesn’t fully quell the idiosyncratic nature of his writing. This is a jolly good book of comics.

Beautiful pictures that make you think. What a splendid idea!

© 2004 Brian Bolland except The Princes & the Frog/The Prince and the Witch, The Kapas 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Ark Angels

Ark Angels 

By Sang-Sun Park (Tokyopop)
ISBN 1-84576-452-8

This is the tale of Shem, Hamu and Japheth, three magical sisters from another dimension who have a mission to save the Earth. With their individual spirit totems they must rescue the last surviving members of endangered or nigh-extinct animal species and remove them to a wondrous and improbable Ark. The matter is complicated by the fact that they can communicate with the souls of all animals, and quite frankly, they’re often as screwed up and obnoxious as human beings.

Their omnipotent Lord has charged them with this mission, as each saved species will contribute to the overall salvation of the planet and the universe. To further this divine plan he has placed the sisters in an average Earth school so that they can better understand the world. Naturally this leads to lots of joy and embarrassment of the sort beloved by school-aged manga fans everywhere, but there is also an ever present danger from an unknown enemy, and the sisters’ mundane travails are compounded by sinister counter-agents from their home dimension intent on letting – or helping – Earth die!

This Shojo manga – or story for girls – is a breezy wheeze that is a blend of Powerpuff Girls and Charmed with lots of beautiful creatures, humanoid and otherwise, being clever and dramatic by turns. Although probably not to everyone’s taste the combination of slapstick and schooldays humour, plus the uplifting sentiment and ecological message of this magical romance is quite likely to carry the most cynical reader along for the ride.

© 2005 Sang-Sun Park and Tokyopop K.K. All Rights Reserved.

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Villains United

Villains United

By Gail Simone, Dale Eaglesham & Val Semeiks (DC Comics/Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84576-232-0

One of the interlinked miniseries that form the protracted prologue to the Infinite Crisis publishing event, this book deals with a select band of super-criminals and their mysterious, anonymous leader who resist the mobilisation of the DC villains into an unstoppable organization.

Said Super-Mob, calling itself “The Society” determines to wipe out these independents and the result is an exceptionally cool caper tale where, since the Good Guys are Bad Guys, the best lines don’t get scooped up by the antagonists, and for once you can start your read genuinely not knowing who’s going to be breathing come the final curtain.

Gail Simone’s script is full of canny plot-twists and strong, credible characterisation, the art is smooth and dynamic, and the situation is refreshingly believable. Also invaluable are the “previously on” and “scorecard” sections that bring edited highlights and identifying cameos from other sources to the mix so that non-fanboys can keep the ninety or so characters in mind without suffering a debilitating embolism.

This is a great little book, and shows how modern, superhero comics can and should be done.

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.