Set in a teaching hospital, St Timothy’s, we open with a pretty visceral and disturbing scene – without spoiling it for you, let’s just say it’s an unlikely scenario in real life in a hospital but one we’ve probably all thought about at some point. This opening scene quickly establishes the combination of the every day and familiar (large, modern hospital, the usual procedures and routines) with a distinct sense of unease, of something else going on, behind the drawn curtains of the examination rooms. We are introduced to a group of trainee doctors, out from college and learning the hard way. Hannah Carter is one of the doctors-to-be, only just returned to the hospital after a year off following the death of her mother from an unspecified form of cancer in the same hospital. Understandably still fragile and emotional she nevertheless returns to her studies and tries to face her fears by dealing with cancer patients.

(Hannah – Claire Foy – begins to think that all is not normal in the operating theatre in Pulse, (c) BBC)

Perhaps because of her heightened emotional state Hannah, played by Claire Foy (soon also  to be seen in the adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal), seems to be the only one in her group who picks up on that vibe of unease and a sense that something else is going on in St Timothy’s, something hidden, something secret. Or almost the only one – another trainee, who has an older brother who is already qualified at the hospital, admits that ‘things’ happen around here but advises Hannah that she should simply not get involved and get on with her coursework. But Hannah is seeing things – a person who can’t possibly be there, symptoms in one patient, Charlie, who she befriends, which don’t make sense and then seemingly vanish, treatments that may be being administered in secret (or is her emotional state making her paranoid?). Complicating this is the fact much of it centres around cocky and sexually aggressive star surgeon Nick (Stephen Campbell Moore), who just happens to be Hannah’s ex and now having a fling with another of her fellow trainee doctors.

I really can’t go into any more details without risking potential spoilers, but suffice to say I found it to be a gripping 60-minute drama, a cracking combination of medical thriller and conspiracy theory genre suffused with a nice touch of mature science fiction. Drawing on the vein of classic medical-SF like Coma this pilot did a great job of introducing the main characters and sketching an outline of a story which is simply begging to be expanded into its full arc. It does actually have some sense of closure at the end, answering some questions, but cleverly also uses those answers to open up further potential story arcs should it get greenlit for an actual series. As you’d expect from the pen of Paul Cornell the characters are as well developed as the story – some SF occasionally falls down in that respect, but Paul’s always been good at the emotional and dramatic core of characters, be it in his novels, comics or scripts, while Pulse fairly crackles with a disturbingly mixed, shades of grey morality.

The Nuge on the Geek Syndicate has also seen Pulse and he compared it (favourably) to Ultraviolet and Being Human and, like those two, the morality isn’t at all simple – if there is a conspiracy going on here is it for sinister reasons or is it being executed for the best of intentions? There are hints here of larger plotlines to develop should a series rise from the pilot episode and as with a lot of the exceptional crop of mature telefantasy we’ve had in recent years – Torchwood, Galactica, Being Human – that muddied sense of morality, of what’s right and what’s wrong and if good can come of bad acts is going to be a serious driving force behind the narrative. As with Being Human BBC3 will be airing Pulse and based on audience reaction to it, considering if it should get the go ahead of a full series. Based on what I’ve seen I’m eager to see more and I think you will be too. I don’t have the exact air date yet – it will be some time in June, Paul tells me – but of course we’ll flag it up for you when we know and then if you enjoy it as much as I did we can all show our support as we did with Being Human and hopefully the Beeb in it’s wisdom will commission a series.

by J. Homersham

Self-published.

There’s really not that much I can say about Musetopia. Not because it isn’t good, merely because it’s a very simple, very visual 14 page mini comic. And when those 14 pages have just one panel gags on each page there just isn’t that much to be said (unless you really want to get ridiculously silly and start really over-analysing something that’s just meant to be simple fun).

Each page has a pun.
Each pun involves inanimate objects or fish.
Each pun, when you think about it, seems to involves some intimacy or relationship issues.
And each pun, every single damn one of them will make you smile.

Nicely drawn and funny. Now see for yourself:

Musetopia is available from here.

Richard Bruton.

by Gregory S. Baldwin

Com X

A bunny and an elephant get thrown together and struggle from one nightmareish situation to another, always seeming to find some bigger and nastier monster waiting for them. That’s Path in a few lines. Think of it as a bizarre buddy movie or maybe, to use a film I just had the dubious pleasure of being dragged to; like the Scrat thing in Ice Age chasing after his acorn.

The bunny gets cornered by a ferocious pack of Crocidogs at the bottom of a cliff. The elephant falls from the sky, kills the nasties and a strange relationship is formed. It seems the elephant’s getting on a bit, can’t see so good any more, can’t work out how to climb up the cliff without falling. But why does he want to, need to, get up the cliff?

Yep, the big elephant isn’t planning on getting back and has a calling to get to where he’s going. Can you see where this is going to end? Well, you’d be right, but ever so slightly wrong as well. And that’s what made Path work for me. Right at the end, Baldwin twists the traditional elephant’s graveyard tale in a sufficiently  sweet, interesting way to make me finish the book far more satisfied than I thought I would at the half way stage.

Sure, it’s effectively just one big chase scene. But that’s not a problem. Because it’s one big enjoyable chase scene. Or at least it is when you get to the end of the book. Halfway through I wasn’t so sure. There’s a big problem with Path and it’s all in the artwork. Firstly it’s done in that rather popular way of the moment with ultra clean computerised art that just somehow fails to engage my eye properly. Something about it means I tend to skate over panels whereas with other art I’ll be drawn in. And skating over the panels doesn’t work because there are a fair few moments throughout Path where Baldwin just loses his way visually and suddenly it’s a confusing mess of too many limbs, tentacles, rocks or who knows what else. It’s not a terrible flaw though, a turn of the page and you can quickly get back with the chase, but it spoils some of the fun.

(Tentacles, teeth, rabbits and elephants in peril. Path.)

And a lot of the fun is in the chase. And specifically in the way that each turn of a corner, each escape by the skin of their teeth/tusks only leads them into more trouble, usually larger, with even more teeth / tentacles / nasty pointy things than before. Onwards and onwards, each time doggedly getting through more by luck than judgement; after all, no matter how unlucky the rabbit thinks he is – two rabbit’s feet may be the thing that sees the elephant through to his final destination and that ending I’ve already mentioned that manages to make most of the minor art niggles and confusing scenes fade away.

In such a fast paced, madcap graphic novel to have us pull up violently in the last 10 pages or so and end with something very low key, rather sad and very sentimental could have fallen completely flat. But in Path it works and makes the whole book work that little bit better. Not bad, not bad at all.

More details and info: ComX Comics, Gregory S. Baldwin’s website, the Path blog.

Richard Bruton.

by oh so many fine folks…

Banal Pig Publication.

(Steve Tillotson’s take on Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow – the wraparound cover to the Banal Pig Landscape Anthology.)

Banal Pig is Steven Tillotson and Gareth Brookes and they’ve been publishing under the pig label for a few years now. I’ve looked at some of Garteth’s work before but this is the first banal Pig anthology I’ve seen. First impressions: it’s an incredibly professional looking piece of comics. The sort of thing that really makes a mockery of the term small press for describing this kind of thing. It’s 39 pages of full colour comics and looks completely professional.

And inside it’s full of very polished works. And this is one anthology that has a rather high hit to miss ratio. There’s a theme of landscapes in some of the strips but by no means all.

Quickly running through the highlights we’ll start with Stephen Collins‘ Landscapes where he makes good use of the landscape format to tell a tiny tale of one man’s dismal pickup attempts and the relationship to his father’s kids dinosaur cartoon series:

Then there’s Gareth Brookes doing what he does best; very downbeat text over a four page landscape painting detailing his decamping to the countryside for an attempt to get back in touch with his creative side:

Pat Kelley‘s The Amazon River Basin is great fun, likewise Steven Tillotson’s (Untitled) Cat meets John Duende and the Spiderbear is a genuinely funny little strip.

Jim Medway has a gorgeous one pager simply entitled “Baby Animals falling over” which does exactly what it says it does in Jim’s gorgeously simple style. And Oli East of Trains Are … Mint gives us a wordless one page love letter to Ardwick station in his unique style:

And even on the final page you get a big stupid laugh from Mark Pearce and his Where’s Wally strip that raises a chuckle every time I see it:

The Banal Pig Landscape Anthology is one of the best anthology comics I’ve seen in a long time. There’s only a couple of strips here that don’t really work for me and overall it’s absolutely cracking stuff, varied, inventive and interesting. It does the great thing of showing me some nice stuff by people I know and pointing out some folks I had never heard of before – exactly what I want from this sort of thing. Bloody good stuff.

The Banal Pig Landscape anthology is available from the Banal Pig webstore here.

Richard Bruton.

by Sylvain Runberg & Serge Pelle

Cinebook

I said in the review of Volume 1 that Orbital, consisting as it does of just 2 slim 60 page Volumes, could really have benefited from collecting together as one self contained story. And reading Volume 2 I’m more convinced than ever of that.

At the end of Orbital Volume 1 the rather entertaining political sci-fi thriller suddenly switched and became a distinctly Aliens-esque bug hunt movie. And Aliens is an apposite reference. Because those oh so nasty Stilvulls that seemed so indestructible and deadly in those last few pages of Volume 1 suddenly turn into the same fall down dead with the odd laser rifle blast or harsh word type of Aliens from the second movie.

And worse than that, the 2 Volume structure of Orbital rather messes up the flow of the thing. Like I said, coming into this second volume I was expecting it to concentrate more of the Stilvull alien menace after they were thrown into the story with just a  few pages to go at the end of Volume 1. But it takes just six and a half pages of Volume 2 to dispatch these suddenly oh so easy to kill beasties. And then we’re back to the political sci-fi thriller that composed 90% of Volume 1.

(Nasty alien menaces, incredibly dangerous, totally deadly, no possible escape. Unless the plot demands it, in which case they’re suddenly very easy to kill. A proble solved in Orbital Volume 2.)

This return to the political sci-fi thriller is, of course, a good thing, because Orbital is a rather entertaining example of good, huge sci-fi that European comics seem to do so well. And it almost, nearly, just about pulls it off. And then we get a particularly clunky deux ex machina ending that almost completely ruins the whole thing.

As we race to the finale all the various factions are out in the open, there’s a possibility of all-out war and the heroes really don’t seem to have much chance of stopping it. And then the problem is simply and immediately solved and along the way we realise why a couple of pages of seemingly pointless and inconsequential exposition was rather clumsily slotted into Volume 1. It’s like the classic Aliens moment (sorry – but it does fit so well) except this time they really do get the chance to just nuke the place from orbit. Maybe not so extreme, but very similar result. And an ending done this way always has the same sense of underwhelmed disappointment. It doesn’t completely spoil the Orbital experience, it’s still a fun sci-fi story, but the ending does somewhat deaden the enjoyment. Shame.

Richard Bruton.

by Craig Yoe

Abram’s ComicArts

Anyone with more than a passing interest in comics knows the sad and shameful tale of Joe Shuster, co-creator of one of the most iconic and enduring of all superheroes. He drew that big read S, made comic history and never received anything amounting to even a tiny percentage of the financial rewards his character should have given him. He died in 1992, the recipient of a modest salary and health benefits from a DC Comics publicly embarrassed at last into doing something barely recognisable as the right thing.

The sad tale of Joe Shuster and his life post Superman is fairly well known. But Craig Yoe’s new book takes this sad tale and somehow makes it worse. Because Yoe has uncovered the obscure fetish art Shuster produced in the 50s after unsuccessfully suing DC Comics for the rights to his character. Produced for an obscure series of badly designed, poorly reproduced fetish magazines called Nights Of Horror, these illustrations are obviously Shuster, worthy of documenting but also may be perhaps the worst indictment of DC Comics you could produce, as they say so much about Joe Shuster’s frankly desperate and rather pathetic life post Superman. This is not how such an important figure in comics should have found himself.

And that’s the problem. Do we really want to know how bad it got for Joe Shuster? Do we really want to know what a really terrible mess he was in that led him to make the S&M erotic horror stuff in Secret Identity? My answer would probably be no. Yours? I have no idea.

(The artwork we’d probably all prefer to remember Joe Shuster by. A Superman piece by Shuster circa 1939 and the man himself circa 1941. Both images from Secret Identity)

However, despite the dubious subject matter and the sense of desecrating the memory and legacy of a comics pioneer, Craig Yoe’s book is certainly exhaustive, well researched and with a good sense of design. It’s well put together indeed. It starts with a long and detailed introduction to the topic from Yoe, giving us a potted history of both Shuster and the comic industry of the 30s, 40s and 50s. It looks at Shuster’s childhood, the incredible success of Superman and onto the leaner, desperate times that the book illustrates so well. By 1954, Shuster had lost it all. Superman was no longer his, DC declared him (and Siegel) persona non gratae, his name was removed from the character and Shuster found himself competing against newer artists in a medium where Shuster’s clean, simple style was considered passée and uncomercial. From here Shuster took any job he could, which is where the fetish art comes in. Along the way we touch on the dark times of US Supreme Court bans, Dr Frederic Wertham and the murderous neo-nazi Brooklyn Thrill Killers gang who claimed that much of their motivation came from comics generally and this sort of work in particular.

(Unmistakably Joe Shuster artwork from Nights Of Horror Volume 1. And those figures on the receiving end look awfully familiar as well; throughout the book, there are recognisable images of Superman, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor and Jimmy Olsen, albeit in very unfamiliar poses.)

Like Yoe states in the text; his work is still recognisably Shuster and may well rank as some of his best: “The art was technically some of Joe’s best. It was pure Shuster work, without assistants or ghosts. It employed fine pen-and-ink work embellished by a favourite tool of the artist’s, lithographic pencil”. But technically good or not, it’s still a sad sight to see Shuster’s lines illustrating some really badly put together fetish magazines.

After Yoe’s lengthy introduction the remaining 120+ pages exist to reprint Shuster’s fetish art of the time, mostly from the notorious Nights Of Horror series. And Yoe presents the imagery simply, with little embellishment or comment beyond a small text piece at the start of each new issue and minimal commentary in the captions for each of Shuster’s pictures.

(More Shuster art from Nights Of Horror, images from Craig Yoe’s Secret Identity.)

There’s no doubting that Shuster’s work is technically good here, no matter what the subject. But throughout it all the art evokes feelings of pity and sadness in me, with the thought that Shuster must have hated what he was doing; from the pure and all-American tales of the world’s finest hero to the sordid and nasty little illustrations on show here is a horrible fall from grace.

In the end, it’s not really a book for me. It seems a little too much like raking over the private pain of a great pioneer of comics. It’s well designed, the text is well written, well researched and informative certainly, but in the end it’s just not really something I wanted to know.

Richard Bruton.

by Mawil

Blank Slate

This is the second book from Mawil to be released by Blank Slate (the first; his very impressive look at young life and relationships; We Can Still Be Friends was reviewed here). But Sparky O’Hare is a completely different book; a cute, charming and ever so funny series of 4 panel strips featuring the adventures of the world’s most incompetent electrician, who just happens to be a rabbit.

Sparky O’Hare is a tiny wee book. Much smaller than I was expecting. Just a few inches each way. Maybe it’s aiming to hit the market as a “the little book of comedy genius”? Because that’s what it is. I haven’t found a funny book to be this funny in a long, long time.

Reviewing a comedy strip like Sparky O’Hare that relies on a very simple set-up and repetition for it’s gags is always a problem, because essentially it can be covered very simply with one line:

Is it funny?

Well the answer here is a resounding yes. Oh yes. Absolutely yes.

Mawil uses a very small cast for this brilliant little comedy, relying at first on the comedy coming from just five characters; the incompetent electrician rabbit who can cause chaos to anything electrical or mechanical just by walking past it, the bumbling boss who genuinely believes his electrician to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and the three secretaries who quickly realise just how terrible Sparky is and that they can find a use for his devastating ways.

(Sparky’s boss – so wonderfully blind to his favourite electrician’s failings. From Mawil’s Sparky O’Hare.)

On the simplest read through it’s just a bloody funny strip, beautifully drawn and full of wonderfully timed gags. But even though that would still be enough to make it worth picking up, there’s a little more to it than that. The gags keep coming thick and fast and once Mawil’s milked everything out of the office situation he cleverly expands the scope of Sparky with a variety of different situations, most memorably sending Sparky and a secretary off to a conference in the Far East – possibly not the best thing to do really, an electrician who’s a complete disaster to every piece of electrical equipment on a plane:

The whole book is packed with a fantastic kinetic comedy and Mawil’s timing is just exquisite. And whilst he always comes back to Sparky’s chaotic effect on any machinery that happens to serve the gag best; photocopiers, computers, aeroplanes, pacemakers, speed cameras and much more, Mawil is very, very clever in the way he approaches each gag. Quite often he actually delivers the punchline slightly early in the strip and uses the final panel to let the gag sink in. It’s simply brilliantly funny, very clever stuff.

I could now go on and on about it but suffice it to say it’s just one of those books that comes with at least a wry smile on each page and usually much more, up to and including uncontrollable ribcage hurting guffaws. And that’s the best recommendation I think I can possibly give.

Just in case you happen to doubt me, there are more samples here on the FPI blog. But we’ve just got time for one more here showing a little bit of the naughty side to Mawil’s Bunny (but never that naughty – just in case you had it earmarked as a nice present for a younger reader the most you get is a little suggestion and a few panels of topless sunbathing in the Majorca strips – so maybe a PG13):

The only problem you might have with this book is actually finding it – such small dimensions means it can easily be lost amongst the crowd on a shelf. If you’re very lucky you’ll be in a shop which has ordered enough to get one of the lovely counter displays. But if not, order in from the FPI webstore here. And then order some more for presents – perfect stuff.

Richard Bruton is convinced the people who fixed his roof are relations of Sparky…

by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant

DC Comics.

I’ve already reviewed both the first issue and the first volume (issues 1-6) of this story and it’s not going to come as a surprise to anyone that everything I wrote then still holds good:

Morrison has taken Superman; a dull, tired character (after all, how many great stories can you honestly get out of God – the Superhero?) and just simply breathes new, vibrant, incredible, original life into him. But he’s done this not by ditching all the complex continuity and all the bizarre ideas that other writers have tried to ignore or simply write out of history, but by embracing it all. All the Super-Pets, the multi-coloured Kryptonite, the strange villains, the complex and convoluted time travellers, the Fortress of Solitude and it’s half million ton key, time telescopes to contact once and future Supermen, Baby sun eaters fed by miniature suns created on cosmic anvils, Lois Lane as Superwoman, Jimmy Olsen the boy reporter and his signal watch – it’s all here in Morrison’s Superman and all fits into the mythos perfectly well, so great is Morrison’s skill at integrating classic and much loved yet slightly silly elements into a modern, relevant comic.

He’s taken everything iconic about the character and distilled it into his version, perfectly integrating decades of history, continuity and myth into a perfect reading experience.

And here in the second volume, the final six issues of the series, Morrison, Quitely and Grant wrap up the greatest Superman tale in a suitably epic and fitting manner. We join Superman following his fatal over-exposure to solar radiation engineered by Lex Luthor. He knows he’s dying and sets about continuing the prophesised 12 tasks to complete before his death, whilst setting his affairs in order. Along the way we see many of the keystones of the Superman mythos and watch as Morrison writes them better than anyone before him; Bizarro planet with poetry, beauty and loss; an elegant final solution for the Bottle City of Kandor; Clark Kent writing his ultimate Superman story; a heartfelt farewell to Lois Lane and an ending to it all. A real ending. A perfect ending.

(Frank Quitely’s iconic pencils, Jamie Grant’s meticulous inks and sumptuous colours to illustrate Morrison’s perfect Superman story. It really doesn’t get any better than this. You can put all the other Superman books away now.)

There are so many wonderful moments in these pages that it’s easy to miss some, which is why repeated readings of All Star Superman are a must. Everything in these twelve issues is so perfectly pitched that there’s almost no point even carrying on with the character after this. At the very least DC should just rest the Superman brand for a few years, because post All Star Superman every Superman tale for many years will seem but a pale reflection of the perfect rendition of the character seen in these two volumes. It’s rare to find the perfect superhero story and even rarer to find one using characters so drenched in continuity and history. But Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and jamie Grant have done it with All Star Superman.

Richard Bruton.

by Paul Rainey

Self Published

The latest comic in Paul Rainey’s rather excellent study of a group of friends, time travel and the process of ageing is rather a strange thing to review as a single issue. I talked about the problem of the comic back in the review of the first 8 issues (here) – it’s just too big and complex a tale to simply pick up one issue and have it make sense in the satisfying way that reading the complete story will.

We’re deep into the lives of the main characters now, looking at them all in their old age, and like I said last time, Rainey gets the characterisation of these older folks absolutely right. There are echoes, lots of echoes in this issue. Indeed, at one point early on I had such a sense of deja vu about some of the pages, some of the story elements that I was sure I’d read the issue before. But it’s no mistake, Rainey’s detailing the minutiae of elderly life; the routine, the order, the repetition of simple tasks that become increasingly the focus of life. The men are picked up and driven to their day-care centre, they talk of getting old and what life was like, they obsess over their passions and involve themselves in the gossip of the day.

But here in issue 9 things start to go wrong for them. One of their little gang dies this issue, a normal everyday death and something these old men have come to expect. The moment of shock is brief and then the practicalities of the event become the main focus of the day:

(The aftermath of a death, taken in their stride. From There’s No Time Like The Present #9 by Paul Rainey.)

And before the end of the story there’s more tragedy to cope with, as Cliff collapses in his home. The fragile nature of old age, the fear of being judged incapable and carted off to a home where your life as you know it is taken away is all here, captured and recorded by Rainey in the simple and effective lines of his art. It’s so rare in comics to see such issues dealt with, we’re far too concerned with the wonder of youth to really concern ourselves with the end of lives. But it’s something Rainey does very well, with a complexity and realism that never allows us to see these characters as an old stereotype.

(From There’s No Time Like The Present #9; two scenes that tell us so much about the helplessness of growing old, knowing there’s so little that can be done, trying to hold on to your independence and your way of life.)

And then, just when you think the issue has finished with it’s surprises, we get a big one. It’s easy when reading There’s No Time Like the Present to get involved in the slice of life aspect of the comic and forget that there’s a definite sci-fi edge running throughout it all with time travel and other worlds of the future coexisting with these very ordinary lives. And all it takes is the revelation in the final pages about their dead friend to bring that sci-fi element right back.

There’s No Time Like The Present is leading into the finale now, Rainey’s said it’s going to be beween 11 and 14 issues in total and I plan to be around to see where he takes us by then. It’s a story that, although good in serial form, will be an excellent, multi-layered read in collection. But until that collection comes out, and it’s a long way off yet, you can thankfully pick up all 9 issues so far in comic form, something I wholeheartedly recommend you do.

Paul’s work is available from the FPI online store and direct from Paul’s online shop.

Richard Bruton.

Written by Rol Hirst.

Issue 1 art by Tony McGee, Andrew Cheverton and Kelvin Green.
Issue 2 art by Davey Metcalfe.

Self Published

People Just Aint No Good. That’s the title and the message behind Rol Hirst’s comic PJANG. I’ve read two issues of it and it certainly lives up to it’s billing; Hirst fills his comics with unsavoury characters, making us look at their motivations and actions but never letting us off with quick assumptions or simple cliches.

Issue 1 has three separate tales, all three looking at the nastier side of life, the side that makes it all interesting, whether it’s a writer getting a taste of his own personal hell, a tired old ad man taking the words of the late, great Bill Hicks far too much to heart or the sad story of a girl just too messed up by her own insecurities and self perceived failings to do anything but screw her life up. Each one works in it’s own way, with the first tale of the messed up wife punishing herself and screwing around to fulfil her own low expectations of the way her life should be that hits hardest. It’s unrelentingly, fascinatingly, miserable. And that’s not a criticism, since Hirst’s story drags you in, voyeuristic enjoyment satisfied as she finally completes her own tragic circle on the last page. The second tale is simpler, dark comedy rather than tragedy, with an old ad man changing his life and deciding to act on Bill Hicks’ famous idea of the only good ad man is a dead one. As serial killer ideas go it’s funny and original enough till the very end. The last story is the weakest of the three, possibly because Hirst almost gives it the upbeat ending you don’t want it to have after the setup of a dead writer’s introduction to the afterlife, in what he assumes is his own private hell.

(Andrew Cheverton’s art from Rol Hirst’s story of an ad man deciding to rid the world of people like hinself; the “creatives” of the advertising world.)

The art for the three tales couldn’t be less complimentary, each strip having it’s own, very different style. But all three artists handle the jobs and the stories well, with Andrew Cheverton’s scratchy style reminding me a little of Ted McKeever, no bad thing and probably the reason I preferred it over the others.

Issue 2 has just one tale; 24 Minutes, but written by Hirst using the framing device of a train station to allow him to tell three separate tales again. There’s the couple meeting up, trapped in that emotional dead zone between lifelong commitment and impending breakup. There’s the three businessmen back from training, passing time, talking shit and waiting to hear who gets their bosses job. And there’s the cleaner in the background, giving a voiceover to the story. The cleaner’s only really there since they took out all the litter bins to stop folks dropping bombs in them, but who stops the pissed off cleaner bringing a bomb in his own bin?

It’s illustrated  by Davey Metcalfe using some very strong lines and lots of black that gives the comic a dark, menacing look straight away. The story itself, jumping between the three stories works really well, with the tension building until the end where all three stories get their eventual payoff, you might guess what the payoffs are, but it’s sure fun to get there. Enjoyable stuff, cleverly done and ably illustrated by Metcalfe.

Pjang is available from Rol Hirst’s website and issue 3 should be available soon.

Richard Bruton.