Continuing our traditional series of daily guest Best of the Year posts this month, today it’s the turn of Andrew Tunney, creator of (among other works), the brilliant Girl & Boy which we raved about (see here for review); you can follow the previous guest BoY posts here:
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?
Andrew: Prince Of Cats – Ron Wimberly. I’ve been waiting for this book for a bunch of time. It was coming out, then it disappeared, then I forgot about it, then it was going to be a hardcover, then it wasn’t… whatever. Ron is the guy to beat right now.
Prince Of Cats is Romeo And Juliet told via Tybalt (aka The Prince Of Cats) set in a Wildstyle-era, late 70s New York with kids obsessed with graf and samurai duels. It’s bawdy and tragic and has broad comedy and violence almost from the start and it honestly is the most stylish book I’ve seen in a minute. Oh, and he wrote it in iambic pentameter too. If that doesn’t interest you there’s a gully bit with a boxcutter in someone’s eye. There, now you’re on board.
One Piece – Eiichiro Oda. Mark Penman got me reading this series this year. There’s nothing else like it on Earth right now. European pirate adventures distilled through a Japanese point of view as an all-ages-but-still-with-hardcore-fight-action series. There is so much to like about this series. It has an honesty and sincerity that I just don’t see in western comics at all anymore, it’s funny, it’s heart-breaking, it has some of the best fight scenes ever and has real genuine consequences.
There’s no Naruto/X-men “everyone’s dead, oh now they’re all alive again whatever” nonsense. Oda is a man with a plan and a story to tell and you desperately just want to be involved. Also, it sells more than all Marvel and DC combined. Seriously, it makes them look like they’re printing zines.
Daredevil: Born Again, Artist’s Edition. Have you seen this book? Yeah, exactly.
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: I don’t really watch TV anymore and I don’t get to the cinema as much as I would like to, so mostly this is “The Best Films Andrew Saw Accidentally”.
I did see Dredd which was sick. It was like seeing an unreleased John Carpenter film from his prime. The scene where Dredd and Anderson open up on the crims in the stair-well had a coldness you just don’t see outside of Lee Marvin films. At no point did I wish I lived in Megacity One, which I think is a huge achievement. I can’t watch 3D though, it hurts my face.
Hunger Games; so, I saw this on a plane. I went in to it with my Battle Royale snob hat on having never read the books. I say “went in” but it was on a plane, I just sat there and opened my eyes. Anyway it turned out to be much deeper and a more thoughtful look into war and the bad things we do to each other than I expected. Jennifer Lawrence was stunning and the designers all deserve raises. Plus that bit with Katniss firing an arrow in slow-mo and she’s all sweaty and the bow string is on her lip. Yeah. She could take me to Nando’s any day.
On the same flight I also saw Justin Timberlake and Anna Seyfried in In Time. This was one of the most interesting premises for a sci-film I’d seen in a while; time is now a currency, you work all day to fill up your personal life-clock, if it runs out then you die. So kinda like Logan’s Run except only the rich get to play all day with Michael York and Jennifer Seymour. Apparently it was the director’s first turn at bat for a feature film and I feel like if it had been his third this would have been a great film instead of a pretty good one.
I also managed to see Underworld: Awakening on opening night at the cinema which I thought was haha oh my god no I didn’t GTFO.
FPI: How did 2012 go for you as a creator? Are you happy with the way you got your work out this year?
Andrew: In 2012 I worked as a colourist for Mark Penman’s Peabody & D’Gorath from SLG, had work commissioned to appear in DaDa Fest at the Bluecoat in Liverpool, partied with Adult Swim on a battleship and released Girl & Boy my first self-published work which was then nominated for Best New Comic in the first ever British Comic Awards. So, it’s all down hill from here.
FPI: What can we look forward to from you in 2013?
Andrew: It’s no fun if I just tell you.
FPI: Anyone you think is a name we should be watching out for next year?
Andrew: Mark Penman. I’m biased because I work with him on Peabody & D’Gorath but we share a Dropbox folder so I get to see all his pages before you do. There’s a lot of pages and they all get better.
Thu, Dec 6, 2012
Best of the Year 2012, Comics and cartoons