The Forbidden Planet International Blog

Another week, another poor soul washes up on the shoreline of one a string of isolated tiny desert islands somewhere in the Pacific. Misery, isolation, loneliness, and a constant struggle against the elements await them. But on the plus side, they do get their eight favourite comics to while away the hours with.

This time round we have writer Lee Robson, whose most recent project; Babble was described by Zainab thus:

 ”Babble is an intriguing book, one that benefits from Robson’s decision not to drown the text in swathes of characters and plot lines, making for a clear, streamlined tale. The choice of subject raises some thoughts over which to ponder: if language is a cornerstone of civilisation, are we not better for the diversity and richness of various tongues or is the fuel for knowledge and the need for instant blanket communication paramount? Robson and Cole have created a great comic here, with an ending that you’ll have to read to appreciate. Pick it up.”

Robson’s based in the North East and has contributed to various UK publications and anthologies over the years; FutureQuake, Something Wicked and the Accent UK series of anthologies (Robots, Western, Predators, Zombies 2 and the forthcoming Victoriana). Babble was published in 2013 by Com.X to lots of reviews very similar to Zainabs. He has more more work set to appear in upcoming issues of Zarjaz and FutureQuake.

And in a timely co-incidence, his artistic collaborator on Babble, Bryan Coyle, has just been nominated for a prestigious Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award.

Desert Island Comics – Episode 60 – Lee Robson

Asterix & Cleopatra by Goscinny and Uderzo

I’ve owned a hardback copy of this since I was a kid. I can’t remember where I got it or who gave it to me, but I do remember being completely drawn into it in a way that a lot of comics like The Dandy and The Beano et al never had. Uderzo’s art was – and still is – amazing; it’s packed with so much detail, and, even now, I find myself marvelling at it and finding things I’d never noticed. Combined with Goscinny’s script (albeit the English translation from Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge), and all the jokes and silly character names, it’s a book I literally can’t imagine not having in my life.

Transformers UK: Time Wars by Simon Furman and Andrew Wildman

I make no excuses for my love of Transformers UK. The original strips produced for it by Simon Furman, Barry Kitson, Will Simpson, Lee Sullivan, Andrew Wildman and Geoff Senior amongst many, many others, quickly outstripped the US reprints in terms of quality. There’s a lot of great collections available, and, I’ll admit, I was torn between this one and Dinobot Hunt, but Time Wars just pips it. It was the culmination of a lot of UK storylines and had some brilliant moments that kept me on the edge of my seat (I mean, Optimus Prime vs Galvatron as the universe begins to tear itself apart!). This book – in fact, make that the whole series – still stands up as a great example of what can be done with licensed comics when the creators are let loose.

The complete Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle Detective Comics run

Slight cheat this one, I’ll admit, but, hey if I’m going to be stuck on that island, I can damn well take what I want, and I want to take this run.

This was, for me, the definitive Batman run. The characters presented here encapsulated the whole mythos so perfectly. We had a Batman who was lithe, menacing and almost demonic; a hardboiled and tough as nails Commissioner Gordon, a prim and proper, but deeply caring Alfred and, frankly, some of the best character work on Tim Drake that’s ever been done. It also introduced some brilliant new villains and painted the characters – both good guys and bad guys – with a lot of moral grey areas. It’s a shame DC have never collected any of these issues, though.

Dragon’s Claws by Simon Furman and Geoff Senior

Dragon’s Claws is, basically, awesome. Razor sharp scripting by Simon Furman and hyper kinetic art from Geoff Senior made the whole series read like everything was happening in fast forward. I remember that the Claws’ main rivals in the The Game (an atypical violent future sport), The Evil Dead, were introduced in the second issue and then killed off before it ended and it struck me that this was a comic where literally anything could happen – which was proved when Death’s Head turned up in issue five after being dumped in that timeline by The Doctor (yes, that The Doctor). It was a brilliant series that deserved to run a lot longer than its 10 issues.

Flex Mentallo by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

If I’m asked, nine times out of ten, I’ll say that Flex Mentallo is my favourite comic series ever. I remember picking up the original comics on a whim for around 50p each from a back issue bin (this was back when no one cared about the series). I knew very little about it, other than something I’d read saying how brilliant it was, so I bought them and read them. And I was completely blown away. I literally had no idea where Grant Morrison was taking the story, but the final page of #3 just made my brain melt and had me clambering for the final issue to see how it was all going to end. For all of Morrison’s trademark weirdness, it was surprising and heartening to see that the story had a sense of hope and magic at its centre – something that seemed absent from a lot of the stuff I was reading at the time.

The Ultimates v1: Super Human & v2: Homeland Security by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch

Confession time: I’ve never been a big fan of The Avengers. The revolving door take on the membership, the endless parade of d-list characters and the mountains of continuity surrounding the team history just turned me off completely. However, Millar and Hitch’s The Ultimates was, to me, everything The Avengers wasn’t: it had new takes on the big name characters, no baggage and some beautiful cinematic storytelling. More importantly, though, it was a damn fun read, and, the two volumes contain a complete story, so I wouldn’t be left wandering around the island trying to second guess what happened next. And I can also forget the horrible Ultimates 3.

Judge Dredd Case Files by John Wagner, Alan Grant, Carlos Ezquerra et al

Again, this is a cheat, I know, but I’d like to take the full series of the Dredd Case Files that have been printed so far (and then see if I can get the new ones dropped in as they go to print). I’ve had a pretty rocky relationship with 2000AD down the years, I’ll admit. There’s been times where I’ve been unable to get enough of it, but also times when I’ve barely been able to muster the enthusiasm to pick it up, but Dredd has been the one constant through it all, the one thing that’s kept me coming back. There’s just so many great storylines and iconic moments from down the years, it’s virtually impossible to list them all, but I’ll be damned if I ever get tired of reading them.

Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen

I mean, really, what more can be said about Warren Ellis and Stuart Immomen’s Nextwave? Pure genius/insanity from start to finish and, unfortunately, a type of comic that Marvel will probably never allow out of their stable again.

Luxury: For this, I’d have to take a TV and DVD player (and some sort of generator) along with the every series of Mad Men and a rack of sharp suits. If I’m going to be alone on that island, then no one can stop me living out my fantasies of being Don Draper…

Cave Shrine, the new webcomic from Nick Edwards, he behind the 8bit computer gamery meets Indiana Jones Dinopopolous:

James Lloyd, artist on Futurama, has a 12-page strip up on his blog, entitled Notes On Prometheus, it’s actually a meditation on the importance of Archie Goodwin, and a damn fine one as well. It’s a great read, go look. But here’s a little of what Lloyd had to say, and the first couple of pages after that.

(Oh, and thanks to Jez Higgins for the link)

This deserves a bit of a preface: The following was by no means meant to be a polished piece of comics reportage– it sprung from my desire to avoid posting one more opinion on one more comment thread about what quickly became a played out topic at the top of last summer. I decide to draw what I had to say instead as a fun little exercise. Both the comic I’m paid to draw, Futurama, and the personal strip I’m collaborating on require mannered, formal cartooning: the test was to see if I could overcome this laboured style of creating comics and simply get my ideas down on paper as quickly and directly as possible.

Convention season, and Faith Erin Hicks details all the highs and lows over at TCJ:

There’s more at the Comics Journal site.

And Hicks’ new book Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, written by Prudence Shen, is out in June. You can catch up with it online, but something this good… get the book.

You wouldn’t expect Nate and Charlie to be friends. Charlie’s the laid-back captain of the basketball team, and Nate is the neurotic, scheming president of the robotics club. But they are friends, however unlikely — until Nate declares war on the cheerleaders. At stake is funding that will either cover a robotics competition or new cheerleading uniforms — but not both. 

After both parties are stripped of their funding on grounds of abominable misbehavior, Nate enrolls the club’s robot in a battlebot competition in a desperate bid for prize money. Bad sportsmanship? Sure. Chainsaws? Why not. Running away from home on Thanksgiving to illicitly enter a televised robot death match? Of course! Written by Prudence Shen, with artwork and a cover by Faith Erin Hicks.

Our regular weekly flick through the pages of my favourite comic for kids….

Cover by Dan Boultwood. His Haggis and Quail lead the issue off, and it’s a nice, not great start.

You can’t help but think Jamie Smart has some weird plan sort of thing going on, now that we’ve introduced the humans, and there was that whole mysterious thing with Skunky. Or then again, maybe he just had a good idea that stringing a load of gags together with a couple of humans in a cabin would deliver another week’s quality Bunny Vs Monkey. And if that’s the case… spot on…

Meanwhile, Gary’s Garden takes one of its regular sojourns into the plain surreal… stick club:

Silly, silly, silly, but really well done silly. Gary Northfield really manages to put weird and cute together so well.

Corpse Talk shines once more, with Adam Murphy picking some unusual and intriguing guest corpses to chat to. This issue features Mexican modern artist Frida Kahlo. I like the idea of Murphy having done this so long that he’s effectively done all the trad historical figures, and we’re going into the realms of the lesser known, even more interesting folks.

Robert Deas’ Troy Trailblazer returns, this time the adventurer is about to get mixed up with a princess on the run. It’s a straight on action adventure strip, an 80s style cartoon brought to the comic page, although this time round his art has a scaled back feel, less big digital effects, and the simplicity works to focus the eye on the action. Nice start. Other new strip, sort of, is the return of Simon Swift. This is a mere prelude to act 2, a character guide and a two-page “previously” bit. The fantasy saga continues next issue.

I’m definitely veering towards a few old favourites in the Phoenix each week, as frankly there’s rarely a bad strip come out from Mssrs. Smart and Northfield yet. But Murphy’s Corpse Talk is right up there in my affections as well. The comedy and stranger stuff wins over the straight adventure strips right now, but maybe that’s just me at my age. Something like Deas’ Troy Trailblazer would have been great for 7 year old me, Simon Swift for 10 year old me. And that’s where the Phoenix feels like it’s got the mix right.

You can pick up copies of The Phoenix comic each week from a host of great comic shops, including our own, from Waitrose, from a number of other outlets (see here on the Phoenix site) and through subscription.

As seen on Kate Brown’s Tumblr: Tanglefoot by Adoradora. It’s frustratingly short on info about who’s making it, whether at Adoradora’s Tanglefoot Tumblr or Deviant Art pages, but putting various bits of info together, all this art is the precursor to an eventual webcomic.

And what a webcomic it could be based on this little description and all that beautiful artwork:

“Tanglefoot takes place in a city called Hesperillo, which does have an actual geographic location of sorts, but I’ll keep that under my hat for now. Hesperillo has some superficial resemblance to 30s/40s Manhattan, but with plenty of surreal, phantasmagorical touches. The main character, the sullen gentleman with the silver nose, is one Isidore ‘Izzy’ Perizene. He’s a former carnival barker, former dime-a-dance man, former wrestling promoter, former nightclub owner, and currently trying to turn a buck as a small-time talent manager. He is a chronically luckless little nebbish. Early on in the story, he lands a mysterious new client. Events unfold from there, and get progressively weirder and sillier.”

“I guess what I’m aiming for is, I dunno, Kafka as written by a two-bit 1940s radio playwright in the grip of the DTs. Or maybe ‘Invisible Cities’ as written by Raymond Chandler if Raymond Chandler was a trained chimpanzee. Or Ray Bradbury’s short fiction run through a mangle and then acted out by a bunch of Al Hirschfeld characters with a penchant for slapstick humor. Something along those lines. Only worse. Much, much worse. Infinitely worse. Keep in mind that I haven’t written anything since I was seventeen, and that everything I know about dialogue I learned from listening to ‘The Adventures of Sam Spade.’ I also know nothing about pacing, zip about lettering, nada about panelling, and drawing backgrounds makes me weep softly into my ink.”

“Those caveats aside, I am SO determined to make this ridiculous comic. I don’t care if it turns into a big, ink-spattered trainwreck (it will). I am utterly paralyzed by self-doubt 80% of the time, but during the 20% that remains I intend to write and draw the hell out of this thing.”

Oh, the number of great artists who don’t do these lovely things because of that paralysing self-doubt. Go and encourage, because Tanglewood certainly looks like something I’d like to see happen sooner rather than later.

Even more art under the cut

(more…)

The Earthbound God
Anthea West

There is a level of sophistication about this comic, a graphic novel encompassing a whole story, that is indicative of what is happening in the Republic of Ireland. In the last ten years, writers and artists have come up through various routes, but quite a few from the small press, and broken into the international comic scene.

British Comics and American have seen, not so much an invasion, as the discovery of some fantastic talent.

Yet comics, as we know from developments over the years, is a medium not exclusively the (reign) of superheroes, or action characters, and The Earthbound God is the type of intelligent and gentle comic, that has a different type of story to tell. The Independent, non superhero comic is a vital facet to the comic oeuvre, and here, is a fine story, beautifully told, and for me, a sign that small press has moved from an amateur to very professional stance, while remaining true to the desire to tell unique and in many ways, more oblique stories.

It is winter, and Eusha, a skilled Inuit spear hunter, is with her friend, Yaeya, spotting, as they hunt deer.

They are from the Ocean and the Beach, and they are on a quest, to find a great deer, that is also a God for an elder. This quest sees them meeting other people, of the Mountains to hear their stories.

They continue up the mountains into a hard winter in the pursuit of this fantastical creature who is not just a spirit. Their adventure has a serious side to it, both the elements and the creature are to be feared, and in their pursuit, Eusha is faced with trauma. Soon it is a question of life or death, desperation and survival.

The artwork is a clean and nice black and white style, simple yet facially expressive and gentle enough to provide a real feeling for the landscape. The characters are distinctive, the movement of hunting and of the animals is superb. The deer are especially accurate, and capture a real sense of energy.

To illustrate a past story the style changes, and this is nice, while the language used, is not so much simplistic as slightly different to what one would expect, allowing a sense of identity for these people, and also marking cultural differences.

It is really quite lovely. There is a manga influence, anyone who likes the fantastical settings of Studio Ghibli will appreciate this, but it is distinctly original. A huge amount of research has gone into the work, and there are a selection of notes, sketches, preliminaries at the back, that demonstrate how much care and attention has done into the story, and it shows.

Overall, I was very impressed and when one considers that this is the work of an individual from cradle to grave, more so. Irish publishers are missing something here.

It can be bought from the Dublin branch of Forbidden Planet International and online from Anthea West’s website.

More from IDW’s very welcome large hardback series of classic Judge Dredd collections -  a second helping of Dredd from the artist who originally visualised him, the mighty Carlos Ezquerra (this volume includes the epic Apocalypse War, oh yes, warm up your Stub Guns!), coming late this summer. Available to pre-order now!

Don Smith posted up a long interview with writer Erica Schultz, mostly talking about her Indy series with artist Vicente Alcazar, M3, following a reluctant female assassin:

Conversation with Erica Schultz from Don Smith on Vimeo.

West – Autumn Dusk

By Andrew Cheverton and Tim Keable

Autumn Dusk is the final comic in West Volume II. It is, as everything Cheverton and Keable have created with Jerusalem West, a quite stunning thing.

But final parts of a volume are troublesome things to talk about. Because I’ve talked plenty of Jerusalem West and his weird adventures before, and given that there’s essential, shocking stuff in here that I really can’t tell you about this could probably best be summed up thus:

1. Go read the reviews, in order:Justice, Distance #1, Distance #2, Stray Bullets – a West Anthology,Confederate Dead, Points West

2. They sound great yes? Well this is every bit as great, and there’s an ending that will simply leave you agog.

Thus far the furthest we’ve ventured into the life of Jerusalem West is 1896, the autumn of West’s years, where he was looking forward to settling down, no more fighting, no more weirdness.

It never works out that way.

Last time, in Points West, it was West’s past come to haunt him, killers riding into town. This time we’re even further into the autumn of his years, it’s 1901, and both West and zombie killing pal from the Confederate Dead Wil Frohickie look to be settling peacefully into old age. But the lure of an easy case draws them into the big city…

Yeah, how much trouble can it be?

You just know how this is going to turn out don’t you?

Well, actually, I reckon you don’t. I certainly didn’t. Sure, it’s obvious the turn of the page is going to plunge West and Wil into weird west trouble, and since we’ve done werewolves and zombies, this wasn’t the surprise either…

Oh, yes. Undead bloodsuckers, just the latest in a long line of weird stuff West has had to deal with.

But you still have no idea how it’s all going to turn out. Because Cheverton’s done it again, managed to completely surprise, using the non-linear retelling of the West saga to deliver a great, and completely unexpected finale to Volume II. This is brilliantly told work, complex, inventive, playing with multiple genres to create a true saga. The non-linearity provides the unusual structure, throwing you off kilter slightly and making you piece it all together. There’s much to enjoy here, and even more to be gleaned from multiple readings.

Keable’s art is so strong, obviously drawing something he enjoys, his characters look the part, authentically old, character delivered in body language and subtle lines, clarity of storytelling to the fore, yet still full of great, great images.

You can (and dammit, should) buy copies of West from the Angry Candy store (print) or from Comicsy (digital).