This and this from Dave Sim’s Glamourpuss #2 (2008)

Said it before, will say it again, one of the finest artists out there, even when, as here, deconstructing and copying someone else’s style for his own purpose.

On the one hand:

Variant covers are a stupid, ridiculous, destructive thing, responsible for no end of torment and financial troubles in the comics industry through the years (oh, alright, they may not have been the ONLY reason).

Marvel’s obsession with variant covers is now past even a sickness, we’re into obsessive compulsive behaviour here. The idea of putting variant covers onto comics seemingly at random, regardless of who is on the cover or inside the comic – that’s just sheer, absolute insanity. In the old days, DC used to do these sort of things as gallery comics, most often as I recall with the Vertigo stuff, in particular Gaiman’s Sandman. Marvel meanwhile just went straight for their readerships pubescent crotch with a swimsuit special. Now Marvel just slap them randomly on any comic they can find, regardless of any connection.

On the other:

These are VERY pretty. There are more, of course there are more – see Heidi for those,  But these are my favourites):

(Charles Paul Wilson III, after E.H. Shepard.)

(Steffi Schutzee, in the style of Al Hirschfeld)

(John Tyler Christopher – after Erté, I think, but can’t get the exact piece – anyone help out?)

(Michael Kaluta in the style of Winsor McCay)

Eclipse Comics promotional ad featuring Tales of the Beanworld by Larry Marder,Cynicalman by Matt Feazell, and Floyd Farland by Chris Ware, 1987:

Promotional image for The Jam by Bernie Mireault, 1989.

Promotional ad for Stray Bullets #1 by David Lapham, 1995.

Promotional ad for Baker Street #5 by Guy Davis, 1990.

But it’s certainly not all ads and promo pieces. There’s some lovely rare stuff as well:

Rare art of the day: Cartoon diary jam page by Joe Matt and Bernie Mireault, 1988. Not reprinted in Peepshow collection.

Much more at The Adventures Of Mr. Phil – bookmark it now!

“Trese is a supernatural series starring a female investigator who steps in to protect the streets of Manilla when the police can’t deal with the supernatural weirdness that appears. Produced by Budjette Tan andKajo Baldisimo, this Filipino book does so much right it’s practically scandalous we haven’t heard more about it here in the UK.”

Looking at Budjette’s Trese blog, I spotted these pieces by Kajo, illustrating a couple of slightly unlikely team-ups for Manilla’s finest:

“A year or so ago, I asked Kajo if he was ever going to make a new portfolio to show to DC and Marvel editors. He said he wanted to do a story where Trese teams-up with Batman and Wolverine and all the action will happen in Manila. So, in one of my notebooks is an outline for that very short story, but we got busy with our dayjobs and finishing Book4, and I forgot all about it. Today, Kajo sent me these sketches based on a story he’s never read and yet he drew one of the scenes that was in my head. (But, as usual, Kajo comes up with an even better idea and he dressed up Wolverine in a barong tagalog!)”

(art meet life, life meet art: Moore with some of the Occupy protestors outside St Paul’s London)

“At the start of the 1980s when the ideas that would coalesce into V for Vendetta were springing up from a summer of anti-Thatcher riots across the UK coupled with a worrying surge from the far-right National Front, Guy Fawkes’ status as a potential revolutionary hero seemed to be oddly confirmed by circumstances surrounding the comic strip’s creation: it was the strip’s artist, David Lloyd, who had initially suggested using the Guy Fawkes mask as an emblem for our one-man-against-a-fascist-state lead character.

When this notion was enthusiastically received, he decided to buy one of the commonplace cardboard Guy Fawkes masks that were always readily available from mid-autumn, just to use as convenient reference.

To our great surprise, it turned out that this was the year (perhaps understandably after such an incendiary summer) when the Guy Fawkes mask was to be phased out in favour of green plastic Frankenstein monsters geared to the incoming celebration of an American Halloween.

It was also the year in which the term “Guy Fawkes Night” seemingly disappeared from common usage, to be replaced by the less provocative ‘bonfire night’.

At the time, we both remarked upon how interesting it was that we should have taken up the image right at the point where it was apparently being purged from the annals of English iconography. It seemed that you couldn’t keep a good symbol down. ”

(members of the Polish parliament don V masks recently in protest at economic, repressive copyright & web intrusion laws and other measures. V is no longer just for the street activist)

By Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo

Visprint

Foul play. Magic spells. Supernatural criminals. When crime takes a turn for the weird, the police call Alexandra Trese.

We covered Volumes 1-3 of Trese back in January 2011. And what I said there goes just as well for Volume 4:

“Trese is a supernatural series starring a female investigator who steps in to protect the streets of Manilla when the police can’t deal with the supernatural weirdness that appears. Produced by Budjette Tan andKajo Baldisimo, this Filipino book does so much right it’s practically scandalous we haven’t heard more about it here in the UK.

Whenever she’s needed, Trese arrives, often called in by Captain Guerrero, the Comissioner Gordon to Trese’s unconventional Batman, a man who seems singularly predisposed to lean on her knowledge and specific skills. Supported by two mysterious and obviously magical creatures of uncertain powers – the always stylish Kambal twins, she’s always there to protect Manilla from supernatural threat.”

(Meet Alexandra Trese, supernatural protector of Manilla, from Cadena De Amor in Trese Volume 4 by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo)

Here in Volume 4, we’re on familiar ground, taking four short stories from the casebook of Alexandra Trese, each one delivering some interesting aspect of Trese’s world, providing a sharp jolt of the supernaturtural adventures that I’d enjoyed so much in the first three volumes. Again it’s something very familiar to anyone who’s grown up with the Ellis’ and Delanos of US comic books, and Trese and her world have that very familiar Vertigo feel. Seriously, any fans of Hellblazer should absolutely pick this one up.

(Spinning a very eastern twist on the familiar supernatural horror – Trese introduces us to some very Singapore specific monsters. From Wanted: Bedspacer in Trese Volume 4 by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo)

But just as before, the unique setting, and the inclusion of so much native Singapore and Eastern folklore puts it into new, interesting, and unfamiliar territory. It has an exotic and original atmosphere about it, that gives it that extra edge.

Perhaps the only thing missing this time around in this volume was uncovering some more of Trese’s history, her family lineage that was slowly revealed previously. Here we’re back to a simple case file structure, a mystery to solve and move on to the next. But there’s still a lot of great storytelling packed into the four stories here, backed up with Kajo’s stark and frankly rather beautiful artwork.

Standout story is Fight Of The Year, which closes the volume in some style, telling a tale of the country’s greatest boxer taking part in the annual fight for his soul. But we soon discover this interesting spin on the sell your soul tale has a far more significant part to play in the supernatural life of Manilla

(The final tale in Trese Volume 4, Fight Of The Year is the best, really showing off Trese’s position of responsibility, as she acts as a guide to the supernatural realms of Manilla)

And it was with this story that it clicked for me. It was mentioned in the introduction, but I never read those until finishing the books, for fear of spoilers. All the comparisons to Hellblazer and Vertigo were supplanted in this story with a familiar feel – this has the glorious scale and import of Ellis and Cassaday’s Planetary, with Trese functioning as the spiritual and supernatural protector of Manilla, delivering her world safe and sound, no matter what it takes, whilst we get to investigate alongside, all the weird and wonderful her mystical existence has to offer.

Trese Volumes 1-4 really should be on your reading list. Budjette and Kajo are taking very familiar genre stories and spinning them off in interesting and original ways, creating something with a unique sense of place, and doing so with great style. Very highly recommended.

Sarah McIntyre, along with Emma Vieceli, headed off last weekend to France for the Paris Manga and Sci-Fi Show – naturally Vern and Lettuce had to go along with them (and thankfully French chefs didn’t see them as ingredients for dinner!). As well as more of the cool Vern and Lettuce special strip about the gig (the first panels of which I shamelessly borrowed to post above) Sarah has posted up a neat report on the gig, with plenty more art and photos as she usually does. Emma was there with the the shiny new – or should I say nouveau? – French language edition of her lovely Dragon Heir Reborn, part of a series which we’ve told you a number of times you should be reading. There’s a new Indy French publisher called Aaltaïr, and Guillaume Bresch and Patrick Chaduc are the men behind it and the French version of Em’s book.

Guillame also told Sarah something about why he started a new independent publisher and it is refreshing to hear that he not only loves books but he believes they have been around thousands of years and will be around for a long time to come – nice to hear when many worry about what will happen to books and reading in an ever changing publishing and media world. He’s got a couple of imprints for comics and for manga (which leads to a sidebar discussion on the difference between comics and manga – as Emma points out, manga really just means comics, not a specific form of big-eyed talking magical panda comics), he’s considering children’s illustrated books (I’m sure talking to Sarah would help persuade him to that idea! And our own Richard has reviewed several younger readers works that blur the line between comics and traditional picture books, looks like an area ripe to expand for young readers) and he has already done a chapter book version of Peter Pan with illustrations by Charles Vess (and yes, he is open to submission ideas). There’s a bunch more pics comparing the French cosplayers with some of the London event ones and loads more art, go and have a look, may be a new event to add to your comic calendar, even if it isn’t in the nicest part of the city.

Drunk Batman and Robin Animated Short 1- Smart Phone from Spencer Scott Holmes on Vimeo.

Drunk Batman and Robin Animated Short 2- Why Robin Can’t Wear Pants from Spencer Scott Holmes on Vimeo.

By Karrie Fransman

Square Peg

The House That Groaned is the debut graphic novel from Karrie Fransman, and she’s certainly not frightened of really going for it. No thin little volume is this, no lightweight simplistic story. No, this is heavyweight, thick, literary stuff. Deliberately so perhaps, and definitely appealing to that literary set.

Before we start, a reminder that we’ve already had the pleasure of listening to Fransman have a schizophrenic conversation with herself in a director’s commentary article on the blog. And I’d certainly recommend reading that, marvelling at some of the behind the scenes stuff, and then visiting the frankly brilliantly done website for the book.

Now, on the book itself……

The beautifully designed double cover – a cut out house with its windows full of the characters you’ll find inside, reminiscent of a doll’s house of old, really catches the eye, a better piece of book design I don’t think you’ll see all year.

So welcome to 141 Rottin Park Road, an old, decrepit house, full of fairly rotton and decrepit people. The residents are all damaged in so many ways, ways we explore throughout the book, journeying through the house’s rooms, throught the inhabitants lives, their foibles and obsessions, their pasts and what little futures they all have.

(Barbara meets Janet, holding herself together, just barely, but aren’t they all? Aren’t we all? From Karrie Fransman’s The House That Groaned)

It’s Barbara that ties the book and the residents together, a make-up artist (only temporarily of course – she’s got plans) just moved into the building, our eyes on the various goings-on around her.

She’ll meet and greet everyone in the house in turn; Janet, the dietician whose weight loss only came about through need and remains through obsession and despair. Matt who works with the beautiful people, but only through the photographs he obsessively retouches for others, and he just can’t bring himself to take off his gloves. Brian is the immediately disgusting one, a “diseaseophile” whose desires bring a procession of ill, broken, disfigured women into the house and maybe, one day, into his bed. And then there’s old Mrs Durbach, a nonentity who genuinely blends into the background of her flat, and is glad to do so.

And opposite her is Marion, the opposite of so many of the residents in the house; decadant, hedonistic, fetishistic, the extravagant to Mrs Durbach’s invisible, the gluttonous to Janet’s calorie counting obsessive, the dedicated pleasure seeker to Matt’s touch averse nature.

(Brian retreats to his work, safe, alone, sealed off from the world)

And all of the strange, isolated characters will come together in one way or another, brought together quite slowly at first by a house that is crumbling, leaking, dripping, breaking, hissing, creaking and groaning towards entropy seemingly in sympathy with those inside.

Along the way we’ll look back, observing those moments that set each one on their path, ending up lost, isolated, alone, damaged in a rotten house on Rottin Road.

(You could almost imagine it’s the house talking about itself in that sequence above, and if that’s the case, it’s speaking for itself and everyone inside.)

The House That Groaned is all about looking at how past events, often disturbing and long buried in our psyches, can twist characters, setting them on paths to a disturbed, dark future, full of contemporary lifestyle commentary, where everyone seems to be dealing (badly) with isolation, body image and obsessions, that affect everything they do, define who they are, and ultimately will lead somewhere dark and disastrous.

(PoorBrian, trapped in his desires, incapable of escaping a house of damaged people)

You want a strange image that came to mind during this? Imagine Rising Damp done now, with a Lynchian sense of body shock. That pretty much covers just how dark and disturbed the territory The House That Groaned covers in its pages.

Fransman’s style is nicely (not perhaps the right word, given the people she’s dealing with) cartoonish, simplistic yet expressive. And the book reads exceptionally well, Fransman’s storytelling is really solid and good. Her characters are exaggerated stereotypes, her situation veers towards the surreal.

My big problem comes not from the execution but the characters surrounding the concept. The assortment of freaks are simply too stereotyped, which wouldn’t be a problem as a starting point, but none of them really move that far away from the starting point to make them truly interesting and engaging. The one original character is Brian, with his diseasophile’s sexual attraction to the ill and diseased, but even he really doesn’t develop past something reminiscent of Fight Club’s obsession with the emotional crutch of various dependency groups.

So that lack of originality, the inability for the characters to really develop much beyond the starting stereotypes and the lack of engagement with the characters because of it puts me distinctly at odds with many far more famous names. Nicholas Roeg is a vocal fan of the book – and although I freely admit it’s hugely impressive for a debut graphic novel, I’m certainly not convinced, as Roeg is, that it “breaks all the rules of storytelling accumulated over the past thousands of years”. It’s good yes, but it’s not that good Nic.

So all in all it’s a damn fine book; hugely, spectacularly impressive for a debut. But the flaws in it make it more a technical and storytelling success than a really great, engaging, intriguing, fascinating thng. The real disappointment in many ways is that everything is in place to make this truly, utterly wonderful. It fails and it falters slightly, but still rather great.