Today’s guest Best of the Year comes hotter than a rattler on roller skates from that towering lawman of the old West, a man who always Walks Tall, Andrew Cheverton:
FPI: Can you pick three comics/webcomics/graphic novels which you especiallyenjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?
Andrew: Meta4 by Ted McKeever (Image) was a visual treat, more so in that the art seemed to form more than the normal part of what was a very allegorical tale. It’s always been massively inspiring to me, to see McKeever finesse and reinvent his art style over the years. I can’t say I understood Meta4, but I loved the hell out of it, and I’m looking forward to reading it again.
Image put out a beautiful collection of Sonny Liew’s Malinky Robot comics, which are a delightful fusion of manga and European comics set in a steampunk near-future. The original comics are lovely, but the speech balloons (like the art) were pencils only, so it was nice to reread the stories with better lettering. Imagine the cast of Peanuts living in a video game. Malinky Robot is a bit like that, but so much more.
The new IDW Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I doubt I’d have picked up if not for co-creator Kevin Eastman’s involvement – although finding the Non-Distributed in the U.K. issues has been a laugh, not to mention more expensive. The story is a revamp, and it’s fun to see a more genetically-modified approach to the origin. Dan Duncan’s art and Ronda Pattison’s colours are both good, though I’d really like to see Duncan go all out in black-and-white and Ziptone, which seems to me to be a better fit for his style. But then I’m an old TMNT fan from the ‘80s, so I would say that, I suppose.
FPI: Can you pick three books which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?
Andrew: The Windup Girl (Orbit) is Paolo Bacigalupi’s debut novel, something I’ve been greatly looking forward to for years, having enjoyed his various short stories (currently collected in Pump Six, which is also worth a few quid of anybody’s money). Bacigalupi is a near-future SF writer, and his primary attention is taken with environmental and ecological issues. The reality and depth of detail in his fiction has convinced me we’ll be using his work as How-To manuals for living in the future. The Windup Girl is a staggering debut, following a small cast of characters (both real and artificial) in a future Thailand where fruit and vegetables are sold ‘as is’, seedless and good only for consumption, and where calories are currency traded between corporate nations who have unleashed genetic plagues to destroy each others’ crop holdings. Bizarre and yet somehow depressingly believable stuff.
11.22.63 (Hodder & Stoughton) is Stephen King’s latest and, for me, by far his best since maybe Misery, and I’ve been reading King books on the day of release since Christine. It’s a hoary old time travel tale – here concerned with saving JFK from assassination – but the primary force of the book is a nostalgic love story. Many critics have howled over how long it takes the protagonist to reach Oswald (the time travel wormhole only goes to 1958, so he has to physically wait for the five years until Kennedy’s date with destiny), but that’s to miss King’s overriding ability to evoke time and place and character, and he does that in spades in 11.22.63.
There are a few mis-steps (the scenes set in IT-era Derry may play better (or only) to fans of that novel, and the inclusion of ‘time guardians’ adds nothing to the tale other than a Get Out of Jail Free card for King to wangle out of explaining the actual science between time travel and parallel worlds) but 11.22.63 is otherwise a strong and fast love story, filled with solid characters and period detail, and it all builds up to an emotional and heartfelt climax (apparently suggested by King’s son, the writer Joe Hill, and I think you can tell when the book veers from a mawkish ending to the one Hill suggested).
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?
Andrew: Game of Thrones had the unenviable task of adapting a mammoth novel (itself only the first in a series) into television, and did a sterling job of it. Well cast, and acted superbly, set in realistic environments with excellent costume design, Game of Thrones only betrayed its budget in off-screen battles, most of which were very cleverly worked around. They have their work cut out for them in season 2 (at least one huge battle that can’t not be shown), but on this evidence the story is in good hands.
American Horror Story hasn’t finished its season yet, but it’s already a favourite of mine. It’s scary, ludicrous, unpredictable and sexy – not necessarily in that order, and often all at the same time – and it’s gleeful attitude to throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks is working brilliantly so far. Not sure about its longevity beyond one season, but it’s early days yet.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold is a show that I can’t quite believe I watched, much less… well, adored. Another animated series featuring Batman, but this time done in the style of those wacky ‘50s adventures. The breakout character was a marvellously vainglorious version of Aquaman, though Plastic Man, Blue Beetle and even Bat-Mite (ingeniously, voiced by Pee-Wee Herman!) get plenty of screen time. I thought it was hilarious, charming and a great flipside to the current Dark Knight movies.
Black Swan is another excellent film from the somewhat underrated Darren Aronofsky (though, perversely, I find his most highly rated film The Wrestler, despite an excellent cast, quite negligible). Black Swan is carried by Natalie Portman’s superbly fragile performance in a ballet drama that becomes a psychological drama, then a psychological thriller, then a horror movie. It sort of dips in and out of Powell’s The Red Shoes and Argento’s Suspiria with a grainy bravura that’s hard not to admire.
True Grit was the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of the Charles Portis novel, and very obviously not a remake of the John Wayne movie. This version was beautifully shot and assembled and peopled with the best acting of the year. The dialogue faithfully recreated the characters from the novel, and was a fully satisfying experience. I try not to watch too many westerns (for obvious reasons!) but this one was unmissable.
FPI: How did 2011 go for you as a creator? Are you happy with the way you got your work out this year?
Andrew: The main thing I wanted to manage this year was to compile Stray Bullets, the guest artist issue of West (and what guest artists!), to give regular artist Tim Keable some breathing room, not only for the next double-sized issue, but also so that he’s not running to a deadline all the time. So far we’re still ahead of schedule, so the momentum is working for us (see here for Richard’s review).
I finally managed to finish off my Pictures Made of Light comic, which took me a dog’s age to produce, and I finally dragged myself to a position where I was able to start work on writing some other series with artists, some of whom approached me and some I finally got up the nerve to approach myself.
FPI: What can we look forward to from you in 2012?
Andrew: Obviously, there’ll be more West with Tim Keable – Tim’s drawing the afore-mentioned double-sized Points West now, which is due for the spring; I’m writing Autumn Dusk which is out for the autumn. We’ll have enough material for the second hardback volume at some point in 2012, though the actual comic order may change for that, as I think the book reading experience is quite different from the comic reading experience.
As I mentioned, I’m also writing three mini-series for other artists at the moment – The Whale House for Chris Doherty, The End for FH Navarro, and Month of Sundays for David Frankum – all of which should have first issues debuting some time next year.
I’ve also been invited to write one of the segments of Accent UK’s collaborative graphic novel Who on Earth Was Thaddeus Mist, and the final draft of that has been accepted by editor Owen Johnson and is being offered to an artist. I think that may be the best thing I wrote this year – working to an editor’s brief with pre-conceived characters was a great challenge and I’m immensely proud of that one. I’m looking forward to seeing how it comes out.
And I plan on contributing more art to Rol Hirst’s Too Much Sex & Violence – I’m drawing the Gary Gore section of issue 3 now. If I get some spare time after all that, I’m probably going to adapt something of Lovecraft’s into a one-off comic, just so that I can keep drawing without too much worry about the schedule. There are two series on the back burner I’m keeping to write and draw for myself, but I want to raise my art up a little before I commit myself to anything too long form; and drawing takes so much time, I have to prioritise and make sure the proper artists get their scripts in a timely fashion!
FPI: Anyone you think is a name we should be watching out for next year?
Andrew: I presume at least one person will have already mentioned Warwick Johnson Cadwell, so I’m going with Will Kirkby, whose Tuk Tuk (reviewed here)was a thing of beauty – a very British sort of steampunk adventure, very bright and colourful, and intricate and invigorating to read.
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