DC have (finally) scheduled the Marshal Law Omnibus Edition collecting every solo Marshal Law appearance as written by Pat Mills and drawn by Kevin O’Neill for Spring 2013.

Well, it’s always nice to have some time to plan your purchases isn’t it?

So far Mills and O’Neill’s superhero hunter killer has found a home at Marvel’s Epic imprint, Dark Horse, Image, Cool Beenz, and Apocalypse since the first appearance back in 1987. It was originally meant to be finally, completely, definitively collected together by Top Shelf, but that deal was dead a while back, then DC announced they’d taken it on… and for a long time nothing else.

Now it’s definitely on the schedules, and fills a hole in many people’s “if only” lists of things they always wanted reprinting.

Here, have a few covers to whet your whistle….

Pat Mills points us to a podcast recording of the talk he had with Grant Rogers at the Comics & Conflicts events last summer in the Imperial War Museum, organised by Alex Fitch, Paul Gravett and Ariel Khan, now online so those of us who couldn’t be there can get a listen.

Not every war tale involves derring-do of single-handed charges against the enemy, spitting bullets for King and Country, some performed heroism through the dangerous act of carrying their wounded fellows from the battle. Many became casualties themselves saving their comrades. An old soldier, returning to the fields of farms that were once, many decades ago fields of war, remembers a young stretcher bearer who carried him. The iconic Charley’s War by the unbeatable team of Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun, published by Titan.

I’ve mentioned on here before how unusual Charley’s War was, especially for its time, when war comics for boys were mostly concerned with the Second World War and generally portrayed ‘our lads’ heroically giving ‘Fritz’ what-for. To get one set in the trenches of the Great War was unusual, to get one which didn’t show it all as a Boy’s Own Adventure was extremely unusual. And in this sequence Pat and Joe again doing something most boy’s war tales didn’t show back then – the old soldiers, the men who could be our grandfathers. Ordinary, elderly men, the sort you see off to the bowling club. When you are very young it is hard to imagine that the old person you see was ever young once. Strips like this reminded us of what those old men had once been, what they had done in their youth, on our behalf. And the memories of their friends that they still carried forever, remembering those “who shall not grow old”. It’s a very touching scene, honouring those who served and those who never came home but avoiding any patriotic, jingoistic nonsense about the  ‘glory’ of war. I think this scene from the page above deserves to be seen larger, on it’s own:

The old warriors stand by the Menin Gate in Belgium, inscribed with over 50, 000 names of the fallen. And those are just the names of men whose bodies were never found, not the entire casualty list for Ypres. Even then the monument wasn’t large enough for all of the names. The old man stands there as the Last Post is played (as it is by the Belgians every single day to remember the fallen) and his friend looks at him:
“Will you check the records and see if Charley is alive today?” he asks.

“No, Chalky, I want to remember him the way he was… A young lad … Not grown old like us,” he replies.

It’s a lovely twist on Laurence Binyon’s poem For the Fallen, the second verse of which I am sure most of us know by heart because we speak those lines at every memorial in the country on the Eleventh:

“They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them. ”

But Pat and Joe, in this scene, remind us that these aren’t just words to put to distant, historic memories, in that little panel they bring out the human, personal, emotional element, in a sad but incredibly moving scene. And it also serves as a remind to all of us to remember that history was made by individuals like us, who loved and laughed and felt, and we should remember them.

With two new stories in this issue, I decided to pick up the Meg again and see how it was, and to be honest it felt like the excitement that I knew, with two stories starting off in this issue.

American Reaper is written by Pat Mills, a genius of comics having worked on so many of my favourites, from Misty and Charlie’s War to Strontium Dog. American Reaper is a new story, but it’s told in a full colour, widescreen panoramic style that I have never seen before. It’s like a comic as a movie, or a movie as a comic; it’s quite stunning (indeed Pat himself told us recently that it has already been optioned for a possible film version – Joe). The story is a full 32 pages long, and opens with 3 double page spreads, introducing us to a wonderful vision of New York in 2062.

Clint Langley has perfected a style of art that seems to meld computer imagery, photography and image manipulation, but you know, I thought it would be crap too, and it is anything but that. He somehow seems to have seamlessly added these element together to create a stunning comic. Now, images of fans dressed up as Torquemada or Nemesis spring to mind when anyone mentions photography and comics, but this is not that.

This is, for me at least, a newer style of storytelling. The story itself centres on a ‘Reaper’, an investigator from the Bureau of Identity Theft, who can scan a person for their identity, for identity theft in the middle of the 21st century means a very different thing, as the techno medical sciences have advanced and you can now have your consciousness moved to a different body, a younger one in most cases.

The reaper in question has his own horror story background, which is nicely horrific and unpleasant and gives him a pretty sizeable chip on his shoulder, while the adherence to certain rules and norms mean the story does not totally leave the realm of the possible.

The portrayal of New York is very science fictional, but then there has been a war some twenty years previous, and even the Statue of Liberty has been hammered.

What astounded me the most was the excellent sequence of action as the reaper finds the consciousness of a dead person in the body of a teenager. I had expect the story to falter or slow down, but with the use of double page wide panels and a perfect sequence the action comes across really well, and I am left wondering if this is a movie that I have just seen stills from like some flick book.

The Dredd story, with art by 2000 AD stalwart John Higgins, is also at its starting point, and is by Irish writer Michael Carroll. The ten pages of this first part allow enough time and space for a cracking tale to begin. We find a couple of rescued slaves, deceiving the Judges when they are rescued, and turning from victim to vigilante as they seek out a variety of nefarious characters who have been involved in the trading of people.

It’s classic Dredd by a decent team who are comfortable with the character enough to allow the extras take the lead in this issue and allow a story to develop. There are some nice scenes in the story and some clever ideas, and a lovely twist in the tale to upset the vigilantes’ plan.

Finally we have some more classic stuff, in the shape of a Cursed Earth Koburn story, with the local man working with Judge Dredd in pursuit of a rogue Citi-Def group, while also relating to a story of a previous Judge who went missing, in unusual circumstances, and there is some strange cultist magic going on as well. It’s great art from Carlos Ezquerra and solid story from Gordon Rennie.

Overall this is a very fine issue, and I am wondering what Matt Smith is doing. It has a great mix of new and classic and is very vibrant and sates both my desire for excellently told Dredd and new science fictional content.

Pat Mills kindly drops us a line to alert us to a new series he’s kicking off soon with frequent collaborator, the excellent Clint Langley: American Reaper. From Pat’s description: “It’s a  dark science fiction thriller about future cops – known as Reapers – hunting down criminals  who carry out illegal identity transplants.  With the  digitisation of consciousness, the old, the sick and the rich are able to occupy the bodies of healthy teenagers and enjoy a new lease of life.  There are even controversial plans to legalise ID transplants, with young prisoners on Death Row paying their debt to society by “donating” their bodies to the great and the good.”

Which all sounds pretty interesting and looks like Pat will do what he often does so well and weave in contemporary social and moral concerns into an exciting science fiction scenario, with even more contemporary relevance following a leading medical figure recently proclaiming that people should legally be allowed to sell organs (with all the ramifications for the rich literally living off the poor that entails). American Reaper has already been optioned for a possible film adaptation by Xingu Films (who were involved in the superb Moon) and will also feature some cool extras in the form of “advert extras by Fay Dalton featuring the Reapers’ sinister Stop & Scan laws and the mysteries of hologram download dresses that are the height of teenage fashion in 2062” (see below). The new series begins in the Judge Dredd Megazine from Rebellion on October 12th.

(Pat Mills on the left and Rodge Glass on the right signing after their talk at the Edinburgh International Book Festival at the weekend; all pics from my Flickr, click for the larger versions)

The Edinburgh International Book Festival for 2011 came to an end last night and over the final weekend I was lucky enough to catch not one but two final comics-related talks, both of them double headers, with Rodge Glass, author of Dougie’s War, talking with Brit comics godfather Pat Mills about the portrayal of conflict in comics and the aftermath of various effects on the men and women who have to engage in real warfare. This was followed later on Sunday evening with two of Jonathan Cape’s latest alumni, Nick Hayes and William Goldsmith discussing their recently published works.

My Sunday at a soggy but still happily buzzing Book Festival started with the Rodge Glass and Pat Mills event, where the focus was on the depiction not only of warfare in comics but the effects the events and stresses of combat have on real life soldiers, especially after the conflict is over and they find themselves on their own, away from the support network of the comrades in their unit and the infrastructure of the armed forces and back to ‘normal’ on civvy street. Rodge wrote the recent Dougie’s War, the title itself a nod to the influence of Pat’s earlier work (and one of the great classics of British comics) Charley’s War. Where Charley’s War shoved us into the brutality of the mud and blood of trench warfare in the First World War Dougie’s War deals with a contemporary conflict as our protagonist has to deal with his return to everyday life back home after fighting in the dust of Afghanistan, with an admirable focus on having to cope (or failing to cope) with the emotional and mental after-effects from the intense strain of combat situations, seeing and being involved in violence and death.

And as we know men in general are rather poor at seeking medical help at the best of times, with a proud former soldier, meant to be self reliant and tought, it can be even harder to ask for that help (if it is available) but if they don’t the effects can spiral – it’s a very sad thought that quite a number of veterans in the UK, USA and elsewhere will end up with a broken family, homeless or with a criminal record all from the effects of what they called Shell Shock in the war Pat and Joe Colquhoun so clearly documented and what by the time of Rodge’s book would be known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, soliders who have performed often heroic acts at great peril, unable to reconcile themselves back to normal life afterwards. The pictures on the AV display flicked between the earlier and later comics works and some documentary photographs, from the bizarre electrical and optical devices scientists cobbled together to try and treat Shell Shock in the Great War to modern psychologists who mean the best but usually can’t totally relate to the soldiers they try to help because, simply, they weren’t there… Both Charley’s War and Dougie’s War both took pains not to varnish the truth or to make warfare look glamorous and both have been well received by actual veterans as well as readers and critics.

In the evening I was at the Jonathan Cape double-header with William Goldsmith and Nick Hayes, both of whom had some very interesting debut works out from Cape this spring, William with the visually unique and fascinating Vignettes of Ystov (there’s also a sample of his style to be found in the Karrie Fransman-inspired Imaginary Cities anthology from the London Print Studio) and Nick with the massive Rime of the Modern Mariner (you can read a Director’s Commentary with Nick talking us though Mariner here on the blog).

William’s Vignettes of Ystov is a series of interlinked short stories, each only two pages, set in a fictional city with a central/Eastern European feel to it, each story standing on its own but also, as you progress through the work, building connections, weaving up a tapestry until, like the acclaimed Raymond Carver in Short Cuts, the stories of various seemingly unconnected individuals in a big city come together to show the connections we all, often unknowingly, share in a large urban environment, all with a very distinctive, loose art style (William said he experimented with different styles at art school but the final, loose art came to him when he realised he only had a few weeks to his project deadline!) that is, visually, one of the more unusual and unique (not to mention interesting) looking comics works in the UK this year, with the mutliple short stories set in the same city allowing us to take in a large cast of quirky, eccentric and sometimes wonderfully absurd characters (which may be why he said the short story form appealed to him so much, despite the fact that it demands a real economy of storytelling on the part of the creator). I’m happy to report that he is planning further Vignettes in the future.

Nick explained some of how he approached Rime of the Modern Mariner, which, inspired by Colerdige’s original verse, uses clever rhymes with the comics frames to deliver a contemporary take on the classic poem which takes a much more environmental bent. In fact Nick explained that he was originally inspired by reading about some of the horrific messes humans have made of our planet, such as the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex where many worldwide ocean currents converge, which also means it has become a focal point for the garbage we’ve dumped into our seas, mostly especially plastic that refuses to biodegrade but does, as Nick explained, photo degrade, slowly shrinking until small particles of it float in this large mass of plastic and are consumed by marine creatures… and then later in the food chain by those who consume those marine creatures, including humans. It isn’t all doom and gloom, thankfully – Nick takes his repentant mariner on a voyage both literally and metaphorically, which eventually opens his eyes and mind and soul to the natural world, and showcases some fabulous imagery, not least a beautiful depiction of a blue whale. Published in a format similar to a hardback prose novel it is a huge but very satisfying work.

The event went very well, I’m pleased to say and there was, despite it being late in the evening and rather cool and wet (ah, the joys of the late Scottish summer! But rain is no stranger to Book Fest veterans and doesn’t stop us!) and both writers/artists being fairly new to the scene, with a good line of readers eager to get their books signed (I had to kick myself for leaving home with my books, carefully left on the table near the door so I would remember them, left behind… bugger…) and those readers all having a good chat with the Cape boys. Great night and both books much commended for your reading delight.

And so ends another year of the world’s biggest book bash, just under 800 authors have graced the graceful Georgian environs of Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square and thousands of book lovers, with folks from the comics community playing their part in the diverse make up of the festival, from talks to comics workshops (in fact I bumped into Metaphrog’s Sandra and John during the Pat Mills signing as they were on their way to run a comics workshop for kids, still obviously delighted at their earlier chairing of a masterclass event with Shaun Tan at the Festival). Again it is great to see such a major literary event embracing the medium so happily, backed up with a good display of graphic novels in the on-site bookstore as well. Many thanks to the organisers and especially to the lovely folks in the press office for sneaking me into the events. You can read reports with photos from the Grant Morrison and the Neil Gaiman talks at the Book Fest earlier on the blog.

“BBB: Can you pinpoint what it is that makes a comic written exclusively for girls different from one for boys? Do you write differently for girls?

The gap in the market is actually a chasm!“

Pat Mills has put up some thoughts over on a Facebook notes page about Frank Miller’s Holy Terror, and the current right-wing perspective on our world….. the whole thing is well worth reading. As he quite rightly says, with Charley’s War (“a blatant and full-on attack on establishment heroes and values with large doses of the dreaded polemics”) Mills created something that found an audience and continues to do so. But he’s quite right about the current right wing perspective….

“Just watched a small sample of Holy Terror – Frank Miller’s latest. Looks fantastic – as long as i don’t put my Marshal Law hat on (which is difficult). I gather its perspective is the right-wing war on terror. If so, presumably it will patriotically ignore the well-documented and proven terror that the USA (and the British) military is inflicting on the world. If so, Frank’s huge talent is that he gives right-wing heroes a really cool image – I always find them really compelling – whereas Tom Clancy-style heroes – especially in game form – are usually so transparently “John Wayne for the 21st century”, that their pernicious effect must be limited. Living in a military town, I have a little knowledge of the human cost of producing such super soldiers – and it’s a high price and far from glamorous.”

“I got a lot across in Marshal Law and continue to do so in Savage and occasionally in Requiem, but the current right-wing perspective is so loathsome it needs challenging head-on. There’s so much story material to draw on, it just needs the right window dressing/disguise to make it acceptable, popular and entertaining to a mainstream audience . I guess that’s my speciality; certainly in the past I was inspired by Frank’s dramatic techniques to create alternative heroes with a very different world view to his, notably Marshal Law, which was generally a full-on attack on US militarism. Somehow that seemed appropriate. But the fact I haven’t found an outlet recently is really bugging me.”

“For anyone who identifies with me here, I promise I’ll do my best to find it. The current establishment world view is just too disturbing, too all-pervading and too dishonest to go unchallenged.”

As for that Holy Terror …..

(Alternative You Tube link)

This from a recent Guardian piece:

Miller said The Fixer was “very much an adventurer who’s been essentially searching for a mission”. He told the LA Times that he was “very different than Batman in that he’s not a tortured soul”. Instead, “he’s a much more well-adjusted creature even though he happens to shoot 100 people in the course of the story”.

“He’s been trained as special ops and when his city is attacked all of a sudden all the pieces fall into place and all this training comes into play. He’s been out there fighting crime without really having his heart in it – he does it to keep in shape,” said Miller. “It began as my reaction to 9/11 and it was an extremely angry piece of work and as the years have passed by I’ve done movies and I’ve done other things and time has provided some good distance, so it becomes more of a cohesive story as it progresses. The Fixer has also become his own character in a way I’ve really enjoyed. No one will read this and think, ‘Where’s Batman?’ … My guy carries a couple of guns and is up against an existential threat. He’s not just up against a goofy villain. Ignoring an enemy that’s committed to our annihilation is kind of silly. It just seems that chasing the Riddler around seems silly compared to what’s going on out there. I’ve taken Batman as far as he can go.”

Oh dear God. I think I’m with Pat Mills on this. I may be completely wrong, but so far, everything I’ve seen, heard or read of Miller’s Holy Terror indicates it’s simply a violent tirade against a stereotype that masquerades as a very modern version of patriotism.

Panel Borders: Infamous games and comics, tonight at 5pm on Resonance FM, podcast afterwards on Panel Borders

Continuing our month of shows about the crossover between games and comics, Alex Fitch talks to writer Pat Mills about the series of seven online comic strips he’s written to accompany the release of the new PlayStation game inFAMOUS 2 (see here). In the comic strips, riffing on the idea of fame and infamy, Pat and editor Howard Marks are satirising modern celebrities and also giving them and their companions the kind of powers you might find in the game. Alex and Pat talk about writing these strips, his previous experiences in writing interactive comics in the form of 2000AD spin off title The Dice Man and his thoughts on web comics and strips available for ebook readers.

Laydeez do podcasts: Comics off the printed page, online on Wednesday 27th

In three talks recorded at Laydeez do comics, as University of Bournemouth lecturer Jo Tyler talks about adapting comic books for the radio, interviewer and journalist Alex Fitch talks about his experience of talking to comic book creators for broadcast and podcast and Lebanese cartoonist Joumana Medlej talks about her comic book Malaak: Angel of peace, which is available online and for a variety of devices which allow the reader to explore the language of the comic further than a simple translation.

Recent podcasts:

Panel Borders: Level Up – the work of Gene Luen

Continuing our month of shows about the crossover between comics and video games, Alex Fitch talks to American cartoonist Gene Luen Yang about his recent comics about games – his graphic novel Level Up and web strip Legends of the Joystick, both illustrated in watercolours by Thien Pham. Alex and Gene also talk about the use of autobiography in his comics, the elegant simplicity of older video games, and the occurrences of magical realism in his work from American Born Chinese to his forthcoming graphic novels about the Boxer Rebellion.

Reality Check: Of ships and men – Atlantis Down and Nydenion

In a pair of on stage interviews recorded at this year’s Sci-Fi London festival, Alex Fitch talks to a couple of film makers about their recent takes on the apocalypse in film; Dekker Dreyer whose film The Arcadian stars Lance Henriksen and Brian Thompson, and mixes the iconography of shamanism with elements of the road movie in a post-apocalyptic setting and Maxì Dejoie whose film The Gerber Syndrome is an Italian take on 28 Days Later…, using a pseudo-documentary style to follow a member of a biohazard clean-up crew who is scouring the streets looking for the contagious and is the first overtly political zombie film in a long time. Alex and Maxi are also joined by Gerber producers Claudio Bronzo and Lorenzo Lotti (in Italian and English).