The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Today’s Best of the Year guest is a very well known face on the Brit indy comics scene and no stranger to the blog, Jason Cobley. Jason warns us that “I never seem to be very good at remembering whether things came out this year, last year, or whether I’m still catching up with 1974, but here goes anyway…”:

FPI: Can you pick three comics/webcomics/graphic novels which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

Jason: My favourites of 2009 are quite straightforward. I loved Accent UK’s Whatever Happened to the World’s Fastest Man? Writer Dave West has grown through the small press to be a publisher, along with Colin Mathieson, in his own right, producing some excellent anthologies, and this is his best piece of writing yet. A graphic novella really, it’s concerned with a man who is able to stop time around him and thereby move around, do things unnoticed and, almost inadvertently, save lives.

He’s a reluctant hero, a regular man stuck in an irregular situation when he knows a bomb is about to go off. He can stop time and go in and move people out of the danger area. But he’s subject to the laws of physics so to make a wheel turn, for instance, he has to unfreeze time. That doesn’t help when there are hundreds of people to move out of the blast radius. The other problem is that, whilst time is frozen for everyone else, he continues to age. So it becomes his life’s work. It’s a melancholy story in the way that it plays out, but also very funny, well-paced and has a great, if clearly telegraphed, ending. Special mention goes to Marleen Lowe for her breathtaking artwork on this: a real talent who, if there’s any justice, will pick up other comics work on the back of this.

The DFC was the best children’s comic of the year, and not just because I was involved. It’s such a pity that it folded, but already plans are afoot for a revival, including book collections of some of the strips. The best thing in The DFC was my old mucker Neill Cameron’s Mo Bot High. Watch him. He’s, er, one to watch.

This is turning into a love-fest to my friends I know, but I was genuinely thrilled to see Garen Ewing’s The Rainbow Orchid published by Egmont this year. I’d followed the development of this almost from the beginning, and this 1920s-set derring-do adventure does transcend its Tintin comparisons. Garen has a very mannered yet expressive style all his own, full of rich period detail. It’s also action-packed, funny and appeals to kids as well as comic geeks. What more could anybody want from a comic? Volume 2 is out next year and I can’t wait.

FPI: Can you pick three TV shows and/or movies which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

Jason: 2009 saw the conclusion to Battlestar Galactica, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t join the chorus of approval for the ending. It pulled everything together satisfyingly, with emotional closure, but leaving tantalising questions that, actually, are better off with answers that are felt rather than stated. Brilliant writing no matter the genre.

On Channel 4, The Red Riding Trilogy was also amazing writing: emotionally cathartic and damned scary. My Dad (retired now) used to be a police officer, and some aspects of this series resonated with things that I’d heard spoken about years ago. Corruption, murder and lies in the sordid, seedy 70s and 80s in a Yorkshire of rain, fags, pigeons and nylon flares. It terrified me – and that’s good telly.

As for cinema, what was better this year than Moon? Just listen to the voices just before the end credits – that’s where the real twist is, not in the big ‘reveal’ that we get much earlier on. This was a film not afraid to give the audience room to think, and felt very much like Space 1999 with a brain. And a heart. A big brainy heart.

FPI: Can you pick three books which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

Jason:  For the first time this year, I took the plunge into audiobooks, and downloaded the free serialised audiobook of Transition by Iain Banks, and it was a successful experiment, I think. It’s certainly piqued my interest to investigate the novel itself. I’ve read most of his mainstream fiction, and this yarn about parallel worlds echoed Luther Arkwright and Quantum Leap, believe it or not, melding the mainstream Iain Banks with the sci-fi Iain M Banks to clever, witty and sometimes violent, effect.

I tend to mix up my reading with older fiction. In 2009, I just caught up with things like the 2007 Booker shortlisted The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, which was gripping if contrived, and Kurt Vonnegut’s back catalogue. He’s my favourite author, and this year I finally read Palm Sunday.

One of my other favourite authors, Magnus Mills, brought out The Maintenance of Headway, about pointless bureaucracy on buses. This was a slight work from the great bus driving satirist, but it made me laugh out loud with the bitter laugh of the downtrodden cog in a relentless machine.

FPI: How did 2009 go for you as a creator? Are you happy with the way you got your work out this year?

Simon: Well, my strip with Andrew Wildman for The DFC kicked off 2009 nicely. Frontier: The Weird Wild West, the story of Mitch and Daisy, youngsters searching for the killer of their respective families in an Old West infested with werewolves, demons and ghosts, ran for 11 episodes in The DFC. We completed one story arc. Another is plotted out, but time will tell whether or not we get the chance to tell it. I was really, really proud of it but now a little frustrated that we’re not all wearing “I ain’t no flower!” slogan t-shirts or reading what happens to Mitch and Daisy in Frontier Book Two: The Infernal Express. Yet.

I don’t know what to think about the state of comics these days. I’m pretty much tangential to it. I don’t get to go anywhere near a comic shop – my nearest one is 60 miles away – and I’m more interested in the work of smaller publishers that tend to give us stories with a real ending rather than continuing characters (although I’ve been really into The Death of Captain America stuff and the sadly-demised Captain Britain and MI:13). Educational comics seem to have an upsurge: my Frankenstein book for Classical Comics is their second biggest seller, and their Shakespeare titles sell well to schools as well as the general reader. Kids want to read comics such as The DFC – they just don’t want to pay a lot (or anything) for it. And there’s the dilemma that faces all publishing at the moment.

FPI:  What can we look forward to from you in 2010?

Simon: In 2010, my graphic novel adaptation of Dracula, with amazing art by Staz Johnson, is coming out from Classical Comics, with An Inspector Calls to also follow from them either later in the year or early 2011. Both look absolutely beautiful at the moment. In some form or another, the adventures of Keiko Panda will be continuing, this time with artist Mitzi producing some fab colour work for what we’re calling The Tao of Keiko Panda. I’m hopeful that something more will happen with Frontier, but in the meantime I’m working on a graphic novel project with Paul Harrison Davies. Other than that, with the day job going on as well I try not to commit to more than one project at a time, so we’ll see. I’m always open to offers.

FPI:  And one final, special question – since its not only the end of the  year approaching but also the end of the decade, is there any comics work you’d especially pick out as one of the best you’ve read this decade?

Simon: Well, I’m afraid I’m one of those pedants who insist that we’ve got another year to go until the end of the decade, but I’ll humour you. My favourite comic thing from the past decade: Palestine by Joe Sacco.