by David Hughes

Tabella Publishing

Back in March 2009 I reviewed Thomas Wogan Is Dead as a self published comic (right here in fact). This Tabella version is effectively just a very nice re-packaging of the small press self published comic with a few extra pages and a general neatening up. So everything I said there applies here including this:

Thomas Wogan has had a  rather miserable and empty life. He’s a lonely soul whose days seem to consist of working a nothing job at Perriman Plastics in Chudley, perfecting his favourite meal of beans on toast (the perfect combination of sensation and nutrition, butter and Marmite, follow with fruit cocktail, tea and Baywatch before bed) and obsessively editing Delia Smith’s wikipedia entry. It’s not much of a life but it’s the only one he knows.

He finds himself sharing a waiting room with a cuckoo, a toad, an egg, a sea urchin, a bat, a fish and an LCD display with an incredibly large number that’s gradually counting up to the number on the ticket in Thomas’ hand. And since the book’s called Thomas Wogan Is Dead, we can assume that we know the answer to Thomas’ questions. But the far more interesting question, the one they all spend the rest of this the only question they all want to know is: what happened to you to get you here?

In the pages that follow every animal has their moment to reveal the manner of their demise ….. And in between it all, we get to find out a little more about Thomas’ life and the manner of his death. Just as pointless, tragic and faintly ridiculous as the rest of the creatures in the waiting room.

(The pertinant question and two nice examples of the art & snazzy new commercial font from Thomas Wogan Is Dead by David Hughes, Tabella Publishing)

This Tabella Publishing edition is a step up for Thomas Wogan – a spine and commercial lettering add a nice professional touch to the book. The art sits well in a more professional format, with all the grotesques of the original still there, and all of the sad, lonely existence of Thomas’ life portrayed just as well. The extra pages flesh out a little more of his life, and add to the sense of poignancy of the tale.

Thomas Wogan is still dead, but this new edition shows that there’s life in the comic still. I like it just as much as I did the first time around, except now, this better dressed, better presented Thomas Wogan is something I can sit on the shelf where it belongs.

Richard Bruton.

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by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett

Abrams Image

Boilerplate is a fascinating concept – a mockumentary coffee table book dealing with the heroic exploits of Boilerplate – a Victorian Era mechanical man. He crops up everywhere from his creation in 1893 until his disappearance in 1918; possibly making it to the South Pole way before Amundsen, meeting Lawrence of Arabia, serving in WWI and much, much more. Indeed you may well be wondering after a little while why you’ve never heard of Boilerplate before.

Well, the reason is simple; Boilerplate never actually existed. He’s not actually an invention of one Professor Archibald Campion, but the creation of Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, the husband and wife team most often remembered for their work on Heartbreakers. And with Boilerplate, they’ve created a very unusual book indeed.

(Professor Archibald Balthazar Campion (1862-1938) and his greatest invention: Boilerplate. Chicago, November 1893. From Boilerplate by Guinan and Bennett. Abrams Images.)

The idea of inserting a completely fictional character into key moments in history is in no way new – indeed Woody Allen, with Take The Money And Run and Zelig is credited with inventing the “mockumentary” idea, but it’s been done in literature countless times before then. So Boilerplate is by no means the first book to play with this idea of fictionalised reality. But that really doesn’t matter. What really counts is how well this book reads – and personally I thought it was very good indeed.

We follow the life and times of Boilerplate here from his creation through to his disappearance, taking in much of the major historical events of the times. And in fact, the book is so packed with historical reference that lesser scholars than myself will find themselves scurrying to wikipedia within a few pages. (Okay. I admit, that was me scurrying to wikipedia. My history has never been that good. I blame the teachers). But within Boilerplate you do actually get a nice little history lesson, full of colourful characters, from Teddy Roosevelt to Nicolas Tesla and more, all seamlessly worked into the Boilerplate legend without having to alter the actual facts all that much.

Obviously, as you’d expect now the digital manipulation of the images to put Boilerplate in these situations is perfect, seamless stuff. That’s not the clever bit though – the clever bit is in the writing; Guinan does such a convincing job of mooring Boilerplate in the reality of historical fact that it feels very likely that Boilerplate really existed, and it’s necessary to remind yourself throughout that the robot is a complete fiction – and that, to my mind, is a definite proof that the book does exactly what it’s authors wanted it to.

(A double page spread from Boilerplate to give you an idea of the great design sense at work throughout the book. From Boilerplate by Guinan and Bennett. Abrams Images.)

It’s a beautifully presented Steampunk artbook, every page packed with details in both text and illustrations, and with a nice design sense running throughout. Full of details, illustrations, manipulated photo reference, maps, posters, cartoons, maps and more, all designed to create a completely immersive experience. It really does feel like a historical coffee table book and it’s an engrossing, absorbing, ridiculous read of a book. Full of marvellous history, full of ridiculous invention and a very enjoyable bit of nonsense.

For more information, the Boilerplate website is a great place to start.

Richard Bruton.

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by Kieron Gillen, art by Steven Sanders (backup strip by Jamie McKelvie)

Marvel Comics

It’s not that I dislike superheroes, more the fact that I really haven’t got the time to decipher the vast, inter-connected-ness of the modern Marvel or DC Universes. So these days I tend to only dip into the Marvel Universe when I’m confident that I don’t need a Marvel encyclopedia at my side just to figure out the first 4 pages. Hence, this is one of the first Marvel books since Captain Britain and MI-13 and the first Ellis Astonishing X-Men I’ve picked up, purely because the whole Civil War, Secret Invasion thing just turned me off – life really is too short.

But having Kieron Gillen write a space opera featuring characters and situations following on from Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run seemed a nice idea to me. After all, this is the same Kieron Gillen who writes the oh-so lovely Phonogram. All the pre-release press worked for me as well, with Gillen saying all the right things about S.W.O.R.D. – memorably describing it as:

“My Spacegirl Friday. Fury Nick and Green-haired Nora. Joss Whedon writes Deep Space 9. West Wing in orbit (plus zap-guns). 24 with the neo-con-agenda swapped for gags. The fastest-paced comic Marvel puts out, I think. We move at escape-velocity. IN SPACE NO-ONE HAS TIME TO BREATHE.”
(Kieron Gillen on S.W.O.R.D. in this Newsarama interview)

(Two people who really don’t want to work together; Agent Brand and Agent Gyrich, co-commanders of S.W.O.R.D. From issue 1, by Kieron Gillen, art by Steven Sanders. Marvel Comics.)

In this first issue we get a fastpaced intro to everyone, a lot of character stuff, crackling dialogue and a host of subplots all juggled nicely. The green haired lady on the cover is Agent Abigail Brand; half human, half alien head of Sentient World Observation and Response Department (S.W.O.R.D.) that protects Earth from alien threats. She’s currently dating The Beast; supersmart, blue, furry mutant X-Man (who, for reasons unknown is drawn on John Cassady’s cover as the cat headed version from Astonishing X-Men and inside as some equine/goat faced thingy. That really needs sorting out).

Brand, following the events of Secret Invasion, has to share chairmanship of S.W.O.R.D. with Henry Peter Gyrich, the old Avengers National Security Advisor who seemingly exists in the Marvel Universe to annoy people and be an asshole. Gyrich is up to his usual tricks and is manipulating S.W.O.R.D. against Brand with the aim of ridding Earth of every alien he can, including Brand. So while Brand micro-manages every little problem and jets off into space chasing the old Marvel UK bounty hunter Death’s Head who’s nicked off with her half-brother, Gyrich puts his grand plan into action.

(Beast and Brand’s relationship at work – all based around muffins. Maybe the rejection explains the long face? From S.W.O.R.D. issue 1, by Kieron Gillen, art by Steven Sanders. Marvel Comics.)

We also get reacquainted with Lockheed the dragon, who is far smarter and dangerous than people give him credit for, but is currently pining (and drinking) for his companion of many years – Kitty Pryde, last seen phasing her way out of the solar system inside a moon sized bullet. The whole Kitty/Lockheed thing features more in the Jamie McKelvie illustrated backup story, with Brand filling Lockheed in on the things they’re doing to rescue Kitty and Lockheed secretly visiting UNIT, the super smart, alien robot thing kept locked up in the max security brig and used by Brand as an intelligence source. UNIT is obviously very bad news and will feature again somewhere down the line.

As hopefully will Jamie McKelvie, since his artwork is just lovely. Not that Steven Sanders’ art isn’t good, but, just like his work in Five Fists Of Science (review) it comes across as overly simplistic in places and a bit rushed in others. He’s very good with the sci-fi stuff, but his character art lets him down more often than not. Thankfully there’s enough good in the art to make the comic readable, and with a fun, fast-paced script like this, that’s enough to make it work.

S.W.O.R.D. begins very well indeed – fast, witty, silly, big sci-fi stuff with the characteristic scattershot dialogue of the Ellis, Whedon school of superhero sci-fi writing. If that’s your sort of thing, you’ll be along for the ride. I certainly shall.

S.W.O.R.D. issue 1 is out right now, issue 2 is due mid December.

Richard Bruton.

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Plot, story, script – Roger Gibson. Plot, art – Vincent Danks

Ariel Press.

And here we are again, another issue of Harker, another review (for the others try here). By now you can probably write these for yourself. But for those who haven’t been paying attention this is my standard description of Harker:

“Harker’s a great detective thriller with intriguing story, wonderful art, cracking dialogue and moments of laugh out loud comedy … an absolute triumph of a comic”

This issue is the third part of the second volume. You don’t need to read the first volume to enjoy this (although I’d obviously recommend it), likewise you don’t really need to read issues 7 & 8 before this one – but why deny yourself that pleasure? All you really need to know is on the inside front cover:

“Detective Chief Inspector Harker and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Critchley, specialise in cases of multiple homicide. Harker’s seaside holiday in Whitby is ruined by the brutal stabbing of mystery author Agatha Fletcher, who was at the hotel with her assistant Jasmine Burns to host a murder mystery evening.

Reluctant to deal with the murder case on his vacation, Harker calls in Critchley and Griffin, leaving them to deal with the investigation whilst he spends much of the day on the dodgems. Finally discovered by Critchley, Harker suggests that the case should be left to the local police – as it isn’t a multiple homicide, he feels it’s not a case they should be handling. Critchley agrees and decides to hand the investigation over to the local constabulary in the morning. But as our detectives stroll back to the hotel, a second corpse washes up by the bridge….“

The only other thing you really need to know is that Griffin is Harker’s favourite pathologist, although she has a healthy cynical and sarcastic attitude towards “Starsky and Hutch” as she’s taken to calling them.

This issue is another dialogue heavy issue – and we all know that that means lots of good opportunities for some great sarcastic, funny stuff from the cast:

(From Harker issue 9 by Gibson and Danks. Harker’s pathologist Griffin gets off on the wrong foot with the local DI. Not to worry, Harker will be along to put him in his place any moment.
Oh, hold on – here he is now……….)

(Master of the sharp put-down, but also a man very protective of his own team is our DCI Harker. From Harker issue 9 by Gibson and Danks.)

It’s a hugely enjoyable issue, although so far we’re halfway through the volume and we’ve had just two murders and very little actual policing. But I have a feeling that Harker, Critchley and Griffin will come through in the end. They’re busy this issue making connections and identifying suspects – in between the sarcastic one-liners of course.

But the thing we have discovered this time around, especially with Harker’s desperate dash away from the murder last issue and his unwillingness to let the nastiness of his work intrude upon his Whitby retreat, is a little more of the characters of our leads. Harker’s character is becoming far more than a hard-nosed, gruff John Thaw mix of Regan and Morse. And the relationship between Harker and Critchley is slowly coming through as well. Take Harker’s protective attitude to his sergeant in the page above, or Critchley’s reciprocal determination to protect and support his boss in this scene:

(“So, yes, he’s off to have a think”. Critchley looks out for his boss, who’s off to decipher the clues to the double murder. From Harker issue 9 by Gibson and Danks.)

The art by Danks is, in all honesty, getting better and better. He’s refining his line as he goes along with Harker, stripping it all down to minimal lines and it works beautifully yet again. He’s also become rather sparing with his wonderful backgrounds – content sometimes to allow his figures to operate against a completely white backdrop when it’s necessary and then, when the story calls for it, back into lush, detailed, wonderfully busy backgrounds once again. Harker’s definitely not just a great story – it’s artistically great as well.

So, no surprise, I’m still going to be shouting, as loud  as I can, for you all to be buying and reading Harker. Nine issues in and it’s still one of the books I enjoy most each month. Harker is available from the FPI store, selected comic shops (the good ones) and from Gibson and Danks directly. Support them, enjoy the book. I know I am.

Richard Bruton.

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by Paul Collicutt

Templar Publishing

“Welcome to Robot City — the metal metropolis that never rusts! Here, highly developed robots are part of everyday life, living and working in harmony with humankind. The city that never rusts . . . is rusting! The well-loved robotic dance troupe, the Automettes, has been struck down by rust, and who else would they call on but Robot City Confidential Investigations — the city’s premier private detective agency? Detectives Rod and Mike smell a rat. Can they track down the villain and find a cure before rust panic spreads? This thrillpacked graphic novel will grip readers with its action, adventure, and humor.”

Hmmmm. That’s what I thought after finishing this one. Sure, I may not be able to put myself squarely in the “perfect for boy readers of 8 plus” demographic that the press release talks about, but then again, based on the content, the dialogue and the gags, neither can Paul Collicutt either. I didn’t find it thrillpacked, and I really don’t think there’s enough here to grab an average 8+ boy either. It never really took off on the fun filled adventure I felt it really wanted to be. The Robot and human private detective angle is nice enough, allowing for some flashes of funny dialogue, but the whole film noir gumshoe voiceover style of the dialogue may well be referencing something the average 8-10 year old boy just doesn’t recognise. Nice for me perhaps, but not for the younger audience.

In many ways this just smacks of a publisher doing the old favourite of “quick, graphic novels are popular, didn’t we get a submission for a graphic novel series a while back?” method of publishing. Because I could give a long list of comic creators in the UK more worthy of publishing than Collicutt’s Robot City Adventures.

(There’s some nice retro-futuristic touches in Collicut’s art, and a nice gag here and there, but not enough to excite either me or the 8+ year old boy I tried to be as I read it. From Rust Attack, Templar Publishing)

But I really don’t like being quite so negative, so here are a few nice things about Robot City Adventures.. the art shows occasional signs of some nice touches. Reminiscent of Dean Motter or Michael Lark in parts, with it’s sparse layouts and figure work, and with the Robot City architecture. And there are some nice bits of comedy dialogue, which may well fly right over the heads of it’s intended age range, but had me smiling at least.

But all in all, it just left me feeling very hmmmm. There’s very little here to justify it being given a nice book publisher release, especially not when there’s much better work around. Of course, I could be completely missing the appeal here, as like I said, I’m far from the 8 year plus boy target market, but when I was a lad I doubt this would have had me crying out for more.

Richard Bruton.

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by Joe Garden, Anita Serwacki, Janet Ginsburg, Chris Pauls, and Scott Sherman

Square Peg

A sure sign that Christmas is coming – novelty adult stocking filler books begin to dominate the shelves of your local book megastore. Which explains the existence of The New Vampire’s Handbook. It’s one of those books that come just in time for Christmas; mildly diverting, topical and marketed for whatever trend has been identified as hot this year.

This is just the sort of book that you’ll think about getting for that difficult to buy for uncle who you happen to know rather likes all that vampire stuff. Unwrapped on Christmas morning, it will lie on the coffee table for days alongside this years QI book and something by Ricky Gervais until, rooted to the sofa by too much turkey/alcohol/chocolate, they will pick it up, half-heartedly read it and then shelve it, never to be read again. Expect to see it populating charity shop shelves from January.

From the press blurb:

In today’s world of vampire-obsessed pop culture, misinformation abounds. A newly turned vampire who looks to movies and novels for answers to everlasting life’s questions will inevitably be reduced to a smoldering pile of dust. So whom can you, a neophyte immortal, trust to provide reliable information and proven strategies for leading your best and bloodiest existence? The Vampire Miles Proctor, editor of The New Vampire’s Handbook. In this definitive guide, the newly turned will find:

• a head-to-toe look at your vampiric body: how to harness your new powers to dispatch mortal enemies, maintain your fangs, and embrace your vampirosexuality
• methods for luring prey, faking your way through meals, approaching other vampires, and creating a four-hundred-year financial plan
• tips on acting your “age,” behaving appropriately if you see a human you knew decades ago, and dealing with epic vampire feuds
• essential advice for blending in with the masses, from finding a coven to avoiding the media (and mirrors) to staying on top of the latest fashion trends
• the joy of scrapbooking

Cheap, exploitative cash-in? Of course. But what else is Christmas about if it isn’t about spending ridiculous amounts of money of presents for people that they’ll never really bother with and certainly don’t need?

Anyway, The New Vampire’s Handbook is just the sort of book you expect it to be, seeing as it’s written by some of the folks behind the Onion and The Daily Show. A tongue in cheek look at what it is to be a vampire, the new day to day (or night to night even) problems you will face as one of the vampiric undead.

Except it’s perhaps not as funny as you may have expected. Which rather surprised me. I was hoping it would at least make me laugh and smile a fair few times but there were whole sections at the start where, if I didn’t know from the press release and the authors backgrounds, Id be struggling to think of this as anything more than a semi-serious Twilight cash-in. I know that they’re obviously trying to go for a deadpan sense of humour thing here, reflecting and satirising the super-seriousness of Vampire culture, but deadpan humour still needs some humour in there to make it work. And there didn’t seem too much of it in the early chapters.

It does get better as you get further into the book, perhaps the writers were settling into character, perhaps I was just a little less picky, perhaps both of us had consumed more alcohol by this point, who knows. There were smiles, there was even the occasional giggle. But it’s still no more than a moderately funny stocking filler for the Twilight / True Blood / (insert generic vampire based pop culture reference here) generation.

Richard Bruton nails up wild garlic to his front door every night before retiring (and Wolfsbane on full moons)

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by Cauvin and Laudec

Cinebook

Cedric is an eight-year-old boy who is desperately in love with Chen but too shy to let her know. Between school, rowdy friends, nosy parents and an insufferable cousin, little Cedric has a lot to deal with. Thankfully, his grandpa is always there to help, no matter how much mischief Cedric makes…

The second in the series – I reviewed Volume 1 here. Molly thought it was great, I thought it was good. Here’s my wrap up from that review:

I might enjoy the soppy, silly stuff more than the out and out silly. But Molly loved the lot. And she is the book’s audience after all. And she’s looking forward to getting hold of Volume 2

And I can tell you she enjoyed this one just as much as she did Volume 1. It had everything she enjoyed – all the slapstick, all the silly stuff, all the daft puppy love of the first. I have to say that I got a little bored at times with the sameness of the stories – the book is made up of stories between 1 and 5 pages in length -but I’d take Molly’s reaction to it as a better judgement on the book – she is, after all, the target audience for this one.

There are some lovely gags in here, all revolving around young Cedric and his relationship with the adult world, his friends, his life and loves and the really daft situations he finds himself in. Just as with Volume 1 I found myself really enjoying those strips where Cedric puts his heart on the line, whether it’s his teacher or his classmate Chen but there’s also a sentimental streak running through the book with Cedric’s relationship with his grandfather, who’s always there for some, often dubious, usually funny, advice:

So just on the basis of Molly’s enjoyment, I can recommend this one for any child you have that shows any passing interest in comics. Give them Cedric and take great delight in the enjoyment they get from it. It’s not complex, it’s perhaps not the best, perhaps not the funniest, but it’s good and it’s something perfectly suited for children – and that’s never a bad thing.

Richard Bruton.

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by Øivind Hovland

Tabella Publishing

I was tempted into this one by that really striking cover; sparse, minimalist, the simple font, the sudden splash of colour. Lovely. But the minimalism doesn’t really carry on inside, Hovland prefers instead to splash large sweeping black, white and red lines across his pages. It’s nice, just not as nice as I was hoping – but there are moments where the art catches some of the thrill of that cover, especially where Hovland is detailing structural features – buildings, underground maps, regular and repeating lines that become more important the further into the story you find yourself.

(“06:00, Alfred gets up”. And in the harsh black, white and red lines you can already see the repeating patterns of Alfred’s life and his obsessions forming on the floor. From A Day In The Life Of Alfred by Øivind Hovland.)

A Day In The Life Of Alfred is more illustrated book than comic, art on the left, minimal text on the right. It’s not a problem, just another example of an increasing number of books sitting right on the boundary of comics and illustrated fiction. And it reads like an illustrated story as well, or maybe a prose poem; short, rhythmical and lyrical, as we follow Alfred through his day – alienated, alone, obsessive in his routines and fighting against himself to break out of the cycle of isolation that started with a moment of everyday children’s cruelty:

“Dreaming about his childhood.
That horrible time of rejection and alienation.
They all laughed because he couldn’t do the hopscotch.”

And that’s it, book over, reader left questioning. Did I miss things? Was there more there than I’d seen? I can’t work out whether that feeling means it hasn’t quite worked or it definitely has – is it bad to feel like I’ve missed something, is it good that getting to the end made me go back and study the book’s pages with a more questioning eye?

(“Alfred’s route to work”. More of those patterns, more examples of Alfred’s obsessional, repetitious behaviour. From A Day In The Life Of Alfred by Øivind Hovland)

I’m coming down on the side of good. When I went back I was looking for the patterns, looking for the details I’d missed, looking at the art to spot the connections, the triggers to Alfred’s troubles. And as I read it again, and again, and again (it’s only 50 pages and maybe 500 ish words after all) it got better each time.

There are more preview pages available on Google books here.

Richard Bruton.

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by Dave West and Marleen Lowe

Accent UK

Behind a lovely (if slightly confusing to the newcomer perhaps?) cover is the best thing to come out of Accent UK so far that I’ve seen. Whatever Happened To The World’s Fastest Man starts with an intriguing concept and then proceeds to not only do the concept justice but gives us a great little story in the bargain.

The concept?

There’s a huge bomb in London and it’s going to go off in just under an hour. Normally the authorities would deal with this, but not this time. This time something’s gone wrong and the bomb is going to go off, there’s nothing anyone can do, London’s in a state of panic and in less than 1 hour a 2 mile radius of the city will simply cease to exist and thousands will die. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. Except…….

(Bobby Doyle can stop time. A very large bomb is going to destroy a very large area of London. What should Bobby do ? From Whatever Happened To The World’s Fastest Man? by Dave West and Marleen Lowe. Accent UK)

“With a sigh he put his half-empty pint glass on it’s beer mat …. and stopped time”

Yep, that’s it. Bobby Doyle can stop time. He’s the mysterious “World’s Fastest Man” that all of the papers have been talking about ever since he carried all of those people from that train crash. But he’s not fast, not in the way they think. He just has this strange power where he can stop time for the world and carry on with his life inside his own time-zone. Bobby’s no hero, not in the way people think of them. He’s just an average 25 year old bloke who wants a normal life. But that’s not his fate. He may have saved people before, may have been the hero before, but never on this scale. And he knows what’s coming, he knows the end result. That’s why he looks so resigned to his fate in the artwork above.

So Bobby sets off to the future ground zero – Prometheus Tower in London, where the bomb proves to be just as big, just as deadly and just as impossible to turn off as he feared. Which means he knows for certain now – he has 59 minutes to rescue everyone he can, 59 minutes to get as many people to safety as he can.

But he knows how his powers work – everything’s frozen when he stops time – so no transport works, doors remain shut unless he temporarily unfreezes time and opens them and the only way he can get people to safety outside the 2 mile blast radius is by the slow, physical, back-breaking way – he has to carry them. And he knows that even though time may be stopped for them, for him it carries on as normal, saving all of these people, carrying them all to safety will be no more than a blink of an eye for them, but for him it will take 50+ years of his life – possibly even all of his life – it’s the ultimate sacrifice and what makes him a true hero – no gaudy spandex, no incredible powers of flight and adulation, his is a special power that no one will ever know about.

(The moment when he realises that saving them all could be his life’s work. From Whatever Happened To The World’s Fastest Man? by Dave West and Marleen Lowe. Accent UK)

“It wasn’t so much the 58 minutes and 23 seconds that troubled Bobby. It was the estimated 50 years or so that he had left to live. You see as Bobby moved around inside his own personal time zone, time moved for him at a normal rate. ……. he got older”

Essentially Whatever Happened To The World’s Fastest Man is a 50 page 2000AD Future Shock, but it’s one of the best I’ve ever read. Sure, if you really want to you can pick a few small logic holes in the story, but that’s not the point. The concept is great and the execution is near perfect, certainly good enough to allow that disbelief to be suspended.

As Dave West writes it, Bobby’s story is the story of the last man in the world – his world. He’s going to spend 50 years – a lifetime – saving everyone he can. And he’s going to do it knowing that he’s unlikely to survive, unlikely to hear another voice, he’s never going to fall in love again, never going to be held, never going to hear another voice. So it’s no wonder that there are times he fears he’s going mad. And it’s no wonder that the whole story has a terribly melancholic, fatalistic feel to it. But Dave West handles the writing so well that this story of the last man in his world is a riveting read. From the first page to the last I was engrossed and I hope you will be as well.

The art by relative newcomer Marleen Lowe is good, very god. The most important thing she gets right is a way of distinguishing between real time and Bobby time. Since a comic panel is essentially a static image implying movement there had to be a good way of conveying the sense of a paused world. Lowe does this by always drawing Bobby and real time events in sharp focus inked linework whilst delineating the stopped world with a pencilled and shaded effect, blurred, just like it must seem for poor Bobby. It’s possibly the most important art effect in the book – if it were to fail then the book may well have failed. But Lowe’s technique works particularly well and with that simple, critical artistic success the entire concept is easily conveyed and the book goes from strength to strength.

Like I said to begin with, this is the strongest work I’ve seen from Accent UK so far. On one hand it’s nothing more than an extended Future Shock tale, but that damns it with such faint praise. This is 50 pages of spectacular yet very low key fantasy. It’s a melancholy look at what sacrifices, what price a real superpower may demand. West and Lowe deliver a very, very good slice of what if here. Definitely one you need to look for.

Richard Bruton.

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by Edgar P. Jacobs

Cinebook

Euro-comics admission time – I’ve never read any Blake & Mortimer before this. <gasp> I know, I know, almost sacrilegious and a massive gap in my comic knowledge, but there really were very few opportunities to get hold of Euro comics translated into English up until now and I completely missed out on previous Blake & Mortimer reprints.  But, thanks to Cinebook, all that has changed and I’m now really enjoying the incredible breadth of material they’re sending my way….

Blake & Mortimer is a classic of Euro-comics, with Edgar P. Jacobs a much lauded exponent of the ligne claire style. Mortimer is a nuclear physicist, Blake the ever so suave head of MI5, who find themselves time and again pitting their not inconsiderable wits against all many of science villains and bizarre threats. They’re very much the products of the incredibly fertile science fiction becomes fact post-war years, where nuclear energy was an untainted wonder, where science filled the world with new wonders everyday and where authors such as Jacobs were eager to play with the new technology.

In S.O.S. Meteor; Mortimer has been called in by the French government to investigate the increasingly strange and dangerous freak weather conditions that are plaguing the country. Mortimer, convinced that these so called natural phenomena are nothing of the sort becomes embroiled in the investigation, falls foul of a villain well known to B&M readers, finds himself implicated in tricky missing persons case and on the run from the French authorities. Luckily for him, Blake is also in France, investigating an espionage case that will neatly dovetail with Mortimer’s case by the end of the book. The whole thing progresses as two separate but parallel investigations with our two heroes only coming across each others path on the final page of the tale. Along the way we get a diabolical plan, a lot of futuristic science threats and an awful lot of explanation:

(Mortimer and Professor Labrousse discuss the weather – at length. From S.O.S. Meteors by Edgar P. Jacobs)

So, Blake & Mortimer. Talked about in hushed, reverential tones – “you might think Tintin and Herge are great, but have you seen Jacobs’ work?” – that sort of thing. Which is why writing a review where I go “hmmmm” is going to get me so slagged off. But that’s what I thought. More often than not here it just doesn’t work for me – there’s too many times when it drowns in it’s own dialogue, stalls when it should be action packed and just had me slogging through it rather than enjoying it. I’m sorry, I know it’s a classic – but it’s not for me. I can see why people adore it, can see why it’s spoken of in such reverential tones, but there’s a difference between seeing how something is technically good and actually enjoying it.

(The things I loved about Blake and Mortimer – part 1 – gorgeous artwork. From S.O.S. Meteors by Edgar P. Jacobs)

And even though I didn’t enjoy it for the most part, didn’t get it overall, there are certainly moments where I thought it was rather magnificent: Take the art as a whole and it’s ligne claire / clear line style and you can lose yourself for hours looking at Blake & Mortimer. And when Jacobs gets it right it’s rather thrilling in a good, old fashioned way – such as the 10 page chase by foot, car, postal van and train by Blake midway through the story – that was wonderful.

(The things I loved about Blake and Mortimer – part 2 – some fantastic set pieces – this one with Blake evading capture for ten pages was particularly wonderful. From S.O.S. Meteors by Edgar P. Jacobs)

But for every moment of enjoyment there were too many where I found myself rather (say it quietly and maybe they wont notice) bored by it all. It’s good, certainly from a purely technical viewpoint it’s quite marvellous work. I can see why it’s beloved, but it just doesn’t do it for me.

And there’s part of me that feels let down by this and there’s a big part of me that wonders what is wrong with me that I can’t enjoy this masterpiece. That part of me wondered whether to even put this up, that part of me still questions whether I should. But I have to be honest and tell you all what I think, hoping you’ll understand that this is just my opinion, nothing more. I’m beginning to feel that I’m just not that well suited  to looking at more traditional works, first the classic Bond strips and now this – maybe I should stick to slightly more modern or less traditional fare from now on?

Blake and Mortimer, despite me really wanting to enjoy it, despite me knowing and acknowledging how technically great it is, just didn’t work for me. For you, perhaps it will.

Richard Bruton.

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