by Warren Ellis and Raulo Caceres

Avatar Press

“This is a secret history. Everything I tell you is true.
Ionic air propulsion. Electrostatic levitation. Electrogravitics. The Biefield-Brown Effect and electro-fluid-dynamics. Nothing here is invented. It simply appears to be uchronic, counterfactual, sitting in the break of a time out of joint.
Everything I tell you is true. It is everyone else who’s been lying to you. I am Captain Swing.”

Here we go again, another Warren Ellis comic that sounds like an absolute blast, full of the sort of manic, extreme, sharply dialogued stuff I enjoy from Ellis on themes both he and I find continually and repeatedly interesting; experimental science, crime, law and strange history viewed through a steampunk lens.

But I’m not going to be fooled this time. I think Ignition City taught me something, finally, about Ellis comics; never be taken in by a first issue full of inventive ideas, sparse on plot and dialogue but full of potential. So I’m going to hold off on fully appraising Captain Swing until the inevitable collection comes out – only then will I be able to tell if that early promise was fulfilled in a satisfying story.

(Captain Swing? Possibly. Electrical? Certainly. Whoever it is, he’s way ahead of both types of policemen here. From Captain Swing And The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island by Ellis and Caceres, published by Avatar)

Captain Swing certainly starts out as extremely promising, the title comes from Captain Swing, the imaginary leader of agricultural riots of the 1830s but Ellis spins this idea and his Captain Swing appears to be an electrically charged character who the locals mistake for Spring Heeled Jack – another bit of 19th Century English folklore. Throw in the competing law enforcement of the time between the amateur, underfunded and incompetent Metropolitan Police Peelers and the far more professional, armed, dangerous and corrupt Bow Street Runners controlled by the Magistrates and we get an intriguing setup.

(Oh, those text pages just scream Ellis don’t they? From Captain Swing And The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island by Ellis and Caceres, published by Avatar)

Then add in all the allusions to secret histories, electricity, scientific concepts way ahead of their times and a “galvanic cell that fell into the sands of Baghdad in 250BC” introduced on the text pages that litter the comic and Captain Swing comes across as a mysterious and interesting, if short, read.

It’s an immediately gripping first issue, supplemented by Avatar standard colour art by Raulo Caceres – which is not bad, doing everything it needs to do with a little style and the occasional iffy panel or figure.

Captain Swing And The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island – style over content, certainly, but it’s Ellis’ style and I’m a fan. Whether the series lives up to this early promise….. this time I shall wait and see. And if nothing else, the series does have that great title and a beautiful cover.

Captain Swing #2 is due later this month.

Written by Fehed Said; Illustrated by Sonia Leong, Nana Li, Wing Yun Man, Chloe Citrine and Faye Yong.

Sweatdrop Studios

This is a collection of short Manga all written by Fehed Said, whose last book The Clarence Principle was thoroughly enjoyed by Katherine back here. Talking To Strangers is themed around some concept of connections with strangers, and they all sit beneath a simply gorgeous cover by Nani Li, with it’s modern conceit of the raised headphone a perfect metaphor for truly opening up to engage with the world.

Inside the book we have six stories, all of decent length (the shortest is the bonus story with just 8 pages – but that’s the exception, most are 30+ pages), something I’m increasingly convinced is necessary in any anthology, and especially Manga, where the storytelling structure and the relatively faster pace of the artwork demands a bigger page count to tell even the simplest of stories. The art is all Manga styled in some way but within that each tale manages to have it’s own, very distinct style; we have very traditional Manga, very Westernised Manga (think Bryan Lee O’Malley for that one), pure cute “bighead” style and much more besides. A veritable visual feast.

(What does an agoraphobic do when his TV breaks? Makes his own TV through his window. Slightly creepy voyeuristic romance from Static by Fehed Said, Wing Yun Man and Faye Yong in Talking To Strangers from Sweatdrop Studios)

I’ll start and end with the best in the book, stories and art working perfectly together and resulting in two fantastic shorts and the first of these is Static, with art by Wing Yun Man and Faye Yong. It tells us the hope filled tale of an agoraphobic, trapped in his littered apartment, newspaper taped to the windows to keep out the world, with television his only friend. But when the TV breaks and his life turns to static, he notices the light coming in through the window where the newspaper has peeled away. Suddenly he has a different view on the outside world, one that’s better than TV, one with a view of the park and two possible lovers. Totally engrossed in their story, just as I was in his, he is eventually challenged to leave his prison to effect a possible reconciliation. It’s a wonderful little story, visually inventive, playful, surreal and great fun, yet still just that little bit strange, just the pleasant side of voyeuristic creepiness.

(A terrifying nightmare – boxed in, trapped, but where? Why? The answers are far more than you’d expect. From Box by Fehed Said and Nana Li in Talking To Strangers from Sweatdrop Studios)

The first tale in Talking To Strangers is the creepiest story of the lot; Box, illustrated by Nana Li in traditional style full of expression and quite a lot of chilling images. I’m loath to spoil the ending as it’s definitely not what you think it will be, but suffice it to say that it’s a bizarre, slightly nasty tale of two strangers who find themselves trapped in something worryingly like coffins; are they alone, are there more strangers out there in similar circumstance, and what connection does it all have to the grieving families in a hospital? Mysterious, slightly ghoulish and a great start to the book.

Malignant, with art from Chloe Citrine is more emo-esque fairy tale than out and out horror. A good enough tale, but too heavy handed, starting with “There once was a boy carrying the weight of the world on his shoulder” on a page with a boy pulling a large rock, chain attached to his neck, up a hill. The hill gets steeper, the rock gets bigger, he meets others along the way all tethered to the earth by their own chains. He’s planning to throw the stone off the bridge and rid himself of it. But what if the stone is too big, what will he do then when the weight of the world gets too much? Well, he is on a bridge with a chain attached to his neck…… like I said, heavy handed. Nice enough, a pleasant read, but it was always struggling to get past that concept that (ahem) weighed it down.

Hero with art by Sonia Leong is another very dark tale, of an abused boy putting up with his father’s beatings and finding a strange ally and potential saviour in the hooded figure who lives opposite. It’s a horrible subject and handled as such by Said. But there’s just something about it which fails to connect, the story seems too fragmented, the mystery too forced. Again, good but not great.

The final story; the 8 page The Old Man with art by Faye Yong is the weakest of the book, with a story that’s just too trite and simplistic – oldest man on earth has press conference to talk about how he got to live to 150, ends up spinning a parable about living for others  and being a citizen of the world. It takes just 8 pages because there’s not really that much to say.

(From Flowers by Fehed Said and Faye Yong in Talking To Strangers from Sweatdrop Studios)

And I’ll end with the best thing in Talking To Strangers, a story that’s just packed with imagination and wonderful storytelling, and as the couple of panels above should tell you – a lot of perfectly timed comedy as well; Flowers, done in fantastic “chibi” style by Faye Yong. A brother and sister, Simon and Elowena discover an abandoned square, fenced off from the world and containing two little flowers. Poor Elowena takes one home, innocently telling it “I’ll put you back after show and tell on Friday“. It ends badly for the flower the following morning.

From there this tiny slice of life tale becomes something far more sci-fi, as we discover we’re in a future where flowers have been extinct for 200 years and Elowena has stumbled across two (now just one) of the last specimens in the world. Her increasingly desperate attempts to look after this last flower, through summer, autumn rains and the eventual, devastating winter (for both flower and girl) are equal parts funny and heartbreaking. And at times it’s very funny, with the set piece of Elowena’s puffer jacket being so restrictive it forces her to walk along as if she’s trying to fly a highlight early on. Smiles and laughter. Brilliantly paced, perfect timing.

Elowena realises that she was too selfish with her treasure and, after the flower dies in the winter she just wishes she could have the chance to share the magic with her friends. And so do we. It’s staggeringly simple, beautifully good, full of simple, evocative emotion, and quite wonderful.

Talking To Strangers is a strong anthology, with at least two stories (Static and Flowers, maybe three in Boxes) that are absolutely top notch examples of great storytelling. But like any anthology of worth, my favourites may not be yours, in which case, please, please, seek this out and discover it for yourselves. It’s available from the Sweatdrop Studios website for just £6 – and considering my favourite stories have 100 pages between them that’s excellent value.

Richard Bruton.

(The first and last issues of S.W.O.R.D. by Gillen and Saunders)

This week saw the final issue of Kieron Gillen’s Marvel series S.W.O.R.D. ship to comic stores. I’ve only read issue one since every time I popped into a comic shop I couldn’t find any issues available. But issue 1 was a blast.

That it’s finished isn’t too much of a surprise; a space based minor X-Men spin-off was always going to be a hard sell. But the difficulty of generating enough sales for series like S.W.O.R.D. is something that, at least to my mind, highlights the problems of the modern superhero comic industry.

Innovation is difficult and different needs time to develop, but it appears that there’s just no time available – sales have to be there from the start and we’re stuck in a cycle of big event series, superhero comics just chasing their own tail, repeating formulas, recycling ideas and failing to innovate or develop. Sure, there are exceptions but there appears to be a complacency in modern superhero comics that worries me.

(The two collected volumes of Phonogram – and that may be all you get)

Another Kieron Gillen comic at an end was highlighted this week in a very frank and illuminating interview over at Comics Alliance in which Gillen talks about the economic factors that essentially mean that the only way we’re going to see a third series of Phonogram illustrated by Jamie McKelvie is posthumously:

“Best plan I have is just writing series 3 and then writing into my will that assuming I die young and Jamie’s still around, lob him whatever’s in my bank account to draw it. Which is assuming he’d even be willing to do it then. It’s not that we’re bitter about it — well, not just because we’re bitter about it — but that it’s been emotionally exhausting.”

“There’s a difference between making only a little money and starving. We’re very much in the latter. Jamie’s lucky to get a couple of hundred dollars from an issue. While he didn’t tell me about this until after it was all done, there were three occasions when Jamie was seriously considering throwing in the towel. The problem is that Image’s deal is a back-end one. Will we make some money off the trade? Maybe. And that’s a big maybe. But that means Jamie not earning any money for the six months it would take to draw it, which is the main reason why we took over a year to do 7 issues. As in, every time Jamie ran out of money, he had to stop and do something else. A couple of hundred dollars doesn’t cover rent or pay for his fashionable haircuts. And doing this bitty work f–ks up the production anyway, because you can’t concentrate or plan. You just spend your entire life in low-level money panic.”

That something as universally acclaimed as Phonogram couldn’t generate enough sales to keep it’s creators in food and hair products is a terrible admission and evidence, if any were really needed, that this comic industry of ours is still resolutely set up to sell stories of super people to an ever diminishing and ageing audience.

Seems to me that we’re seeing the medium increasingly polarised between the high profile literary graphic novels receiving great acclaim and sales and the insular, repetitious world of straight superheroes continuing their perennial recycling of concepts and ideas into huge event driven series that dominate the comic shop shelves.

And somewhere in-between critically acclaimed books like Phonogram, books that potentially have a huge appeal to a real mainstream audience of general book readers seem to be suffering from this polarisation and being lost in the middle.

Phonogram is available in two collections: Rue Brittania and the soon to be published Singles Club. S.W.O.R.D. will no doubt be collected sometime later in the year.

And, while it may be the end of Brickman, Lew intends to publish a collected Brickman Returns later in the year:

“I’ve revived Brickman several times over the past three decades but perhaps now it’s time to finally conclude the strip. After 30 years, I have no plans to produce any more new Brickman stories but my intention is to collect all 20 pages of the Brickman strips from Elephantmen into a comic I hope to self-publish sometime this year. Stay tuned for more info on the one-shot compilation comic Brickman Returns in the months to come. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in the earlier adventures of Brickman, copies of the 152 page digest softback Brickman Begins can be bought from my website.“

Now that’s just scary. Found on the Threadless T-shirt site by Robot 6.

Made me smile. How many do you recognise?

(via Buzz Feed)

(Paul Harrison-Davies)

(Rob Davis)

(via Super Comics Adventure Squad)

The next Alternative Press Hour from those good folks at Alternative Press (naturally) will be broadcast on Resonance FM Thursday 18th March at 8pm. This week is part two of their adventures in Angouleme and features Stripburger from Slovenia, Chilli con Carne from Portugal and Robert Crumb.

As always, the show will be available to listen to after broadcast at www.alternativepress.org.uk along with the last two shows.

Lorenzo writes to tell us (and you) about his new solo exhibition of work that he’s calling One Man Army. It takes place on Friday 26th March at the Weapon Of Choice gallery in Bristol (here) and he wants you all to pop along and say hello and view his brand new paintings and exclusive (one of one exclusive) prints.

Lorenzo is, of course, one half of the Etherington Brothers, creators of many strips, but right now, they’re waiting for the publication of Monkey Nuts The Diamond Egg Of Wonders which is being released in September 2010 from the DFC Library.

Matthew Badham, features writer at Judge Dredd Megazine, and contributor to this blog, has been in touch regarding a project that he needs some help with, particularly those readers who also make their own comics. Over to Matthew:

“I’m writing a 4000 word piece about the British indie/small press comics scene. I’m going to be using my contacts book to gather primary research material in the form of quotes from indie comics peeps. However, any indie/small press comics types who want to be proactive and get in touch with me via mattbadham(at)hotmail.com to chat about the scene are more than welcome to do so.

I can’t promise that I’ll have space to mention every comic creator I speak to, but I will try and mention as many as I can (and hopefully get them some publicity). “