Jack Davies, Catherine Reda, Luke Bayliss & Harry Griffin-Hayes, Sammy Borras, Lily-rose Beardshaw, Sarah Fogg

Inspired Comics

Hmm. The urge to pepper this one with hideous puns and food references is almost too much. You’ll forgive me “pepper”. I promise that will be the last of them.

Right then. Six comic strips all on the subject of food. All wrapped in a gorgeous, fun, sweet cover by Sarah Fogg. By the same comic collective, and featuring many of the same artists as Science Fiction Octuple Feature from last year.

Sadly, the cover here proves to be the high point, only really matched by Sarah’s own contribution; The Mysterious Land Of Under-Noodle. That was nearly as cutesy and sweet as the cover, a six-pager of territorial trouble between the forces of food species, all fighting over the gigantic mushroom that plunges into the broth sea…

(Sarah Fogg)

The other five strips all try really hard to do their thing, but for one reason or another they’re all a little under-par. There’s a good mix of styles and themes though, but no-one really delivers a fully formed, interesting story.

Jack Davies was one of the highlights of the last Inspired Comics anthology Sci-Fi Octuple Feature, but his Many Years Ago story here is pretty but confused, his storytelling a little all over the place, each panel looking attractive, but the relationship between panels not as good as his previous work. Again, promise, but not quite there.

Catherine Reda’a Bunnies Incorporated Into Various Food Items is simply a cute gag done too long – a single page would have been funny, but 5 pages, with 28 iterations of the same gag is really pushing it. In the Sci-Fi Octuple comic she took three pages to do a cute bunny gag that worked so much better.

The Italian Dish by Bayliss and Griffin-Hayes I simply didn’t like. Clumsy story, stilted dialogue, and no, not in a classic film-noir sense, grubby art too focused on the close-up to really give any sense of transition. Nope, didn’t like it, and that makes two for two from this team.

(Sammy Boras)

Sammy Boras’ Food Wars is a good looking strip, and tells a story of a TV cooking contest in readable fashion, but there was simply nothing that really hooked me in, it’s just lacking slightly, right on the cusp of impressing me.

Lily-rose Beardshaw is a weird one. Last time I saw her work I moaned about the reproduction and the muddy feel. But here it is again with The Butcher and the Tattoist. I’m beginning to think it’s simply her style, and I’ve got to say it does nothing to sell her work to me. There’s a talent here, most certainly, but it’s too hidden. And a story that says very little, wants to say a lot, and simply comes across as poor, badly worked out, and confusing doesn’t help.

(Lily-rose Beardshaw)

So ouch. That was a little harsh. I never like being quite so critical. But the most frustrating and annoying thing about Eat Me! is the potential that’s here. Davies, Boras, Beardshaw are all promising so much, yet just underwhelming here.

Next time? I do hope so.

You can of course see for yourself at Inspired Comics, where Eat Me is available to buy.

However, part of the fallout of the bad relationship between the two sides was that we never got to see Black Dossier as it was intended to be seen, even when DC produced an ‘Absolute Edition’ of the book. There were meant to be a number of things that came loose with the book, and which were meant to fall out when you opened it for the first time. Only one of these items actually did make it in its originally intended form – the 3D Glasses – with almost everything else being incorporated into the body of the book itself in one form or another: an eight-page Tijuana Bible, a set of eight postcards from various places around the world, and a new chapter in the life of Fanny Hill, which was meant to be presented with unopened page edges, as books used to often be published, leaving the owner to decide whether to cut them or not themselves, surely the ultimate comic fan dilemma (apparently you should use a playing card, and not a paperknife…) And one of the items never appeared at all: there was to have been a 7” 45 RPM vinyl single (if you are young, and don’t know what this means, try asking a parent. Or even, now that I look at the year we’re in, a grandparent.) However, of all those items, I want to take this opportunity to focus on just one of the items that was meant to land in your lap, just to show where Black Dossier fits in the scheme of things, and because I’ve wanted to write about this particular thing for a while now. It’s one of the postcards.

There were to be, as I said, a set of eight postcards with the Black Dossier. These were sent by Mina Murray to Allan Quatermain or Campion Bond, by Quatermain to Campion Bond, or, in one case, by Orlando to Thomas Carnacki, all to one of two location in London, date from between 1899 and 1913, and come from all sorts of places, both real and imaginary. It’s one of the very earliest of these I want to concentrate on, a card from Allan Quatermain to Campion Bond, dated the 8th of September, 1899, send from Boston in Massachusetts, but originating in the town of Arkham, some distance to the north. Here it is, front and back:

Front:

Back:

So, this is what it says:

Bond -

Coming home immediately. Met one R. Carter who took us to a ruin near Dunwich – beastly business. Mina almost abducted by something ghastly, and now very feverish. If you or Holmes had any idea this might happen, I’ll horsewhip you to within an inch of your lives.

Quatermain

There is a page of text accompanying the postcards, entitled ‘The Murray Group, Correspondence, 1899-1913,’ which includes this text [along with some explanatory notes from me]:

Perhaps becoming bored with the unending calm of Coradine [Where she had gone after the end of the events of LoEG Vol II], Murray accepted [a proposition from Bond that she and Quatermain go adventuring abroad] and in August she embarked along with Quatermain for the United States, there to investigate unsettling reports concerning the New England town of Arkham, Massachusetts. Returning during the September of that same year after some unpleasant exploits, Murray and her elderly companion next commenced investigations into the communitarian Phalanstery movement, then but recently established in the western English county Avondale.

So, what does this mean? Has any of this been mentioned in any of the previous books? Yes, actually, it has. And this is the thing about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books that really intrigues me, and makes rereading them all such an ongoing pleasure: if you read all the text pieces, you find that there are a few other stories about the League unfolding in there that you don’t get by just reading the comics pages.

The first time this incident is mentioned is in LoEG Volume I, in the serialised text story that ran in the back of the six individual comic issues, called Allan and the Sundered Veil. Which is a story set a few years before the events of the first two volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen/ In it Allan Quatermain, after taking Taduki, finds himself in a dream world, where he meets Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter and H. P. Lovecraft’s Randolph Carter, who are related to one another, with John being the granduncle of Randolph. The three of them then meet H. G. Wells’s Time Traveller, and they all find themselves on something called a chrono-crystal aleph, a sort of floating crystal whose surfaces allow them to see episodes from their lives, both past and future. In Chapter V: The Glint in Fortune’s Eye, amongst the things Quatermain sees, there’s this:

Now he saw the familiar small, determined woman [who he’d seen in another vision in the crystal, and whose identity I hope needs no further explanation] clad in nothing but a dirty blanket, shrieking, overcome by horror in what looked to Allan’s travelled eye like the interior of a dark and rural building, possibly in the Americas. Arcane symbols were inscribed in noxious, nameless fluids on the bare boards of the floor and on the walls, and there was something thrashing over in a distant corner of the room. Quatermain saw himself, screaming as loudly as the woman while engaged in combat with a tentacled and writhing shape that seemed to reach in some way through the walls of the dilapidated farm-house. To his great surprise, another man seemed to be aiding him in this horrendous conflict, whose demeanor Quatermain believed he recognized.

He glanced up from the fascinating and hypnotic vistas swirling on the surface of the gem and looked towards another of the stranded figures trapped there with him on the time jewel’s upper face, the young New England visionary Randolph Carter. Looking back at the horrific incident depicted in the gem, Quatermain shook his head in disbelief. The man assisting him against the squirming nightmare in the farmhouse was identical to the youth that crouched not far from the explorer, staring down into the crystal depths beneath him and absorbed in his own visions, with his long, underlit face transfixed by terror that was luminous. Could it be Quatermain and Carter would meet at some future point in the material world; fighting alongside one another in some as unforeseen, unfathomable combat? Was this drifting diamond atoll truly showing things that were, as yet, to come? Were the strange, flickering images that swam in its depths the genuine, predictive sparks that danced across the glittering eye of fate, of fortune and of destiny?

And, in LoEG Volume II, in The New Traveler’s Almanac’s Chapter Three: The Americas, we have this:

“September 7th, 1899. I must write it all down. Write it, or dream about it endlessly for the remainder of my life. When Allan came to visit me in Coradine and told me that the fat men had a job for us, I think that I was pleased and looking forward to adventure, with the nightmare of the men from Mars now safely in the past. Our ship put in at a bleak seaport called New Bedford, which I think that I remember Nemo’s first mate Ishmael mentioning to me once, and no sooner had we set foot on the quay than I was overcome by the most miserable foreboding and presentment of evil. We arranged a carriage that would take us to the old colonial city of Arkham, where M. had informed us that a high number of extra-normal events were centered, but our driver was a garrulous thickly-accented local of a type that I have since found to be common in the area, who regaled us with spine-chilling tales of ‘sartin mysteries, as you might say’ that were attached to the region’s many hideous locations.

[---]

Arkham, I have never known a town to be at once so frightening and so picturesque. Our driver set us down in Church Street, where we had arranged rooms in what seems to be the city’s sole hotel, a wretched, faded building where we sat and talked into the night about our mission. M. had passed on reports, mostly the testimonials of asylum inmates it would seem, which appeared to hint at a peculiar dream-territory accessible from certain (or perhaps I should say ‘sartin’) places in and around Arkham, such as the architecturally peculiar ‘Witch House’ that stood no more than a block or so down Parsonage Street from our grim and lacklustre hotel. We slept but fitfully, beset by hideous dreams that we could not recall upon awakening, and in the morning, after some discreet enquiries, were directed to the library of Arkham’s Miskatonic University where we were told could frequently be found a scholar, a young man said to have some knowledge of this world of dreams, names Randolph Carter. Allan seems perplexed, saying he recognised the name from somewhere, and when we eventually encountered the alarmingly young-looking Mr Carter, he grew more perplexed still, claiming that he’d seen his face before, though he could not think where. Carter seemed flattered by our interest and professed himself to be an Anglophile, promising he would help us all he could. Admitting to a limited familiarity with this dream-landscape, he confessed to fears that some of its more monstrous inhabitants might have ventured into our own world, citing a talking cat that had been seen on Mulberry Street in nearby Springfield, believed by Carter to hail from the dream-world town of Ulthar. He also mentioned a closer location, on the Aylesbury Pike between Arkham and nearby Dunwich, an abandoned house which he believed to be a form of gateway, and to which he agreed to take us. What followed seemed to happen with a frightening rapidity, and I have needed Allan to supply a number of the details.

Carter took us to the ruined house, which he believed had once been used by one of Massachusetts’s many diabolically-inclined and inbred families for their appalling rituals. Hearing what is best described as a much-amplified slithering sound from the adjacent woods, Allan and young Carter strode off manfully to make investigations, warning me that I should in no circumstances go into the ruin alone, although from what transpired it rather seems I must have done, although I have no memory of this. The next thing I recall, and which I hesitate to write down here, is finding myself standing in a state of undress (and, I am ashamed to say, of some arousal) staring as though drugged into what seemed be a beautiful and shimmering landscape, perhaps a painting by some ether-drinker, where a huge and lovely flower extended slender mauve-tipped petals out towards me. I was only roused from this delirium by a frightened yell from Allan, somewhere off behind me, which caused me to awaken and to comprehend the horror of my circumstances: I stood almost naked in a derelict and filthy room where, on the walls, were grotesque symbols that I almost understood, scrawled in what seemed to be long-dried ordure. Coming in some fashion through the walls towards me were transparent tentacles, about to wrap themselves around my flesh when Allan pulled me back and, cursing dreadfully, removed me from the house, where he and Mr. Carter wrapped me in their jackets. Since then, I have suffered a dire fever and shall be, for once, glad to see London. Allan, shaken by the episode, says he feels old, and thinks a holiday in Africa might be the thing for us.”

The thing is, we still don’t know what actually happened to Mina in Arkham – perhaps, when the third and final part of Century – 2009 – is published next month, we’ll get a bit more of the puzzle hidden away somewhere.

And, to conclude, this is why I sometimes think that Black Dossier is the most rewarding, the richest, of all the volumes of the League. Much like the chrono-crystal aleph that Allan Quatermain finds himself stranded on in Allan and the Sundered Veil, it allows us to see glimpses of the League’s history, intriguing insights into stories perhaps remaining to be told.

The recent Knockabout edition of the Black Dossier was also reviewed by Richard here on the blog

Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières

Cinebook

When a rogue planet threatens a new Human colony, Valerian and Laureline are sent to investigate and discover a barren, rocky surface… and a whole world beneath it! The people who live inside Zahir have never seen the stars. Divided along gender lines, torn by a senseless and bloody war, they are unaware that their planet is hurtling towards disaster. To stop it, the two agents of Galaxity will have to infiltrate both sides and force a reconciliation.

Oh dear, here we go again, Volume 3 of Valerian and Laureline, one of the greatest sci-fi epics in printed form…. except I still don’t really see it. Granted, I’m warming to it, I really am. With Volume 1, I just couldn’t see it, it all seemed a little too dated and staid:

“It reads and looks to my uncultured eyes like a badly produced late 70s cartoon series, the kind with badly drawn characters against static backgrounds who always found themselves with every plot device meticulously explained to the point of near irony and every situation the hero finds himself in has some immediately available solution.”

There was more to enjoy in Volume 2:

“… still not the classic I keep being told Valerian is, but the improvement here on the first volume is profound. I can only hope that, as so many of you have promised, this series keeps on this upward curve. Because at this rate, somewhere around volume 5 or 6 I imagine I may well be agreeing with you about it being a bit of a classic.“

This one starts with a problem and quickly ascends at least partway to the wonders I keep being promised. Problem first.

Valerian and Laureline is often hailed as something of a masterpiece in humanism, but all the way through The Land Without Stars the humanism has a distinct smack of chauvinism about it.

Take the first few pages and the repeating gag of Valerian delivering the farewell speech to the colonists of the four planets of the Ukbar system. He finds himself doing the space equivalent of nipping through to the billiard room for brandy whilst the little women chat about knitting or such-like:

And that feeling carries through the volume, as Christin splits up the pair to investigate the planet careering into the Ukbar system, plunging into a society split across gender lines. Valerian finds himself a slave warrior to the female amazons of the city of Malka, and Laureline a bride in the male dominated city of Valsennar. But there’s little subtlety, little avoidance of the worst stereotypes. And unfortunately it seems so ancient, so out of date. Am I being hopelessly reactionary? Overly sensitive? Should I simply look at it as a product of its time?

But what saves this one is that, once you look past the sexism, there’s something important here; Laureline comes into her own, isolated from Valerian, the conflict is solved through negotiation, thinking, diplomacy, the worlds are saved by adapting the political and social ideologies of the people, not through force. It relies not on force, but on the inventiveness of the protagonists, and of course, the inventiveness of the man writing these protagonists.

And even better, what really makes me think that, even though it’s not there yet, but at some point I’m going to be fully on-board with all the fans is sheer out and out epic stuff going on in the sci-fi, specifically the quite wonderful planetary geography of the planet Zahir:

Yes, okay, hollow planets are nothing new, but there’s a real sense of the “wow” in the manner in which Christin, and especially Mézières just throws us into the situation. That sort of legendary imagining is the sort of stuff that I wanted much more of.

But sadly, after that early bit of rather impressive wonder it does settle down to a somewhat pedestrian affair, although like I said, I did appreciate Christin adopting a far more thoughtful resolution than much sci-fi manages.

So, just like with Volume 2, I find myself coming to the end of another Valerian and Laureline review with a sense of “maybe I’m missing something?”, or maybe it’s simply, as I keep being told, a series that takes off in a couple of volumes time. This one was good enough, but it’s still not up there in grand epic stature yet.

Written by Daniel Bell, art by Katja Lindblom, Iain Buchanan, Daniel Bell

Yes, PT Barnum presents…. yes, the same PT Barnum who runs the circus. Except in here, it’s the Psircus he’s running, the Psircus being a way for writer (and sometime artist) Daniel Bell to shoehorn PT Barnum into his comic in a sort of weird Professor X (less wheelchair, more elephants perhaps?) fashion, the leader of a secret society of psychics, and secret saviour of the world.

Once you get over that bizarre, slightly off-putting inclusion, what we have here is 28 pages of comic, and three stories that deliver this Psi-sage really rather well. It’s by no means perfect sure, but for what it is, for what it’s trying to be, it does a fair job.

Kathy and Icarus are two girls with psi-powers, and in the three short tales we get a couple of origins of sorts, and a joint mission. What I thought was handled particularly well was Bell’s control of his storyline. He’s obviously got something bigger he’s trying to tell through this and hopefully future issues, but he understands that to tell what he want to he has to tell the smaller stories first, establish his characters, work them into the plot, and if he’s clever enough, he can combine all of that into these 28 pages.

Quick answer – yes, he’s clever enough.

(Kathy Isn’t Right by Daniel Bell and Katja Lindblom)

Kathy’s tale involves young Kathy breaking out of the mental hospital she’s been incarcerated in to deal with what they see as her paranoid schizophrenia, but actually is her massive psychic power.

She’s part of a power struggle between the afore-mentioned Barnum and some other, unseen force that calls to Kathy to escape. And this is very much her first meeting with Barnum, her introduction to the world she’s to inhabit in the future.

(Icarus by Daniel Bell and Iain Buchanan)

Icarus’ tale has something of the Leon about it; the young girl being apprenticed in the ways of the professional assassin. Or at least that’s what she thinks she’s doing.

In actual fact, she’s a powerful telekinetic, and her trainer is more concerned with the power of her brain than he is the power of the gun. I could tell you more, but that’s a sweet twist in the story that’s yours to discover.

(The Pull by Daniel Bell)

Finally, in story three – The Pull – we get to see a little of the girls in action now, what feels like a few years after their individual origin-ish stories. Now they’re working for Barnum’s Psi-operation and out on a job tracking down a particular piece of lowlife with low level psi-abilities that he puts to all too pathetic use.

Kathy and Icarus trawl the local flesh pit nightclubs, posing as more prey for this nasty little rapist, and deliver a suitable punishment after a well worked psychic conflict.

Three stories, each one well done, short, sweet, telling a tale within the story, yet also delivering something more, something of the greater saga.

If I had to criticise, it would be over bits of the art. None of the three artists are particularly bad here, but neither do any of them really stand out. Personally Bell’s story with his own art is the best of the three. Too much of Lindblom’s work seems too rough to me, with some panels really making me question just what she’s trying to show me. Buchanan’s art is suffering as it seems to be merely a black & white version of the colour work on Bell’s blog. It makes the tones artificial.

But even as I write those criticisms I feel a little too harsh. What worked best of all was the story, and each artist delivers the story as best they could, without real detriment to my enjoyment. For someone who’s always more story driven than cares about the art, that’s just fine.

There’s some interesting questions left unanswered here, although never to the detriment of the story in front of you. But who is Sunnyside? Who are the girls reporting to at the end of The Pull? It’s not Barnum. Who was Barnum up against in his fight over Kathy? How long has all this been going on? Who is Icarus’ trainer, Barnums’ partner, something else, just another team member?

Just having this many questions and still having enjoyed the comic tells me that it worked, that it’s enjoyable as a single issue, yet full of enough to make me want more. That, I think, is proof of job done for any #1 of a comic. Well done to all involved.

Now, where’s issue 2?

Written by Philippe Vandevelde (Tome), illustrated by Jean-Richard Geurts (Janry)

Cinebook

Spirou and Fantasio are hired by a doctor to escort some of his patients. Their ailment? An apparently incurable case of the hiccups. His solution: Send them on the most insane adventure ever and scare the hiccups out of them! Since he offers to pay for their expedition, the two fearless reporters agree to take the patients with them as they attempt to locate two explorers lost in 1938 near the Nepalese border… in the middle of a war!

Volume 2 – Spirou & Fantasio In New York really impressed, with the timing, the slapstick, the carefully constructed wordplay, the background visual gags all leading me to a conclusion that my eventual comparisons to classic Asterix and Tintin were warranted, not with the art necessarily, but with the same manic intensity of Asterix, and the travel and adventuring of Tintin (albeit with far more gags).

I hadn’t realised, before a quick internet search, that Tome and Janry’s take on the characters was merely the 80s version, with the title stretching back to the 40s. From a very quick overview, it seems Cinebook’s decision to reprint starting with Tome & Janry’s work is a smart one, with this version being arguably the best.

This is a good, rip-roaring adventure, just not up there with Volume 2, this convoluted tale of Spirou and Fantasio taking a group of hiccuping patients into Nepal to get their conditions cured through the shock of adventuring. Yeah, weird, but it’s simply a background to hang some impressive and funny set-pieces from, and as such it matters not one bit.

And early on, even tough the sum total of the book was a little under par, the setpieces certainly impressed, with Tome’s spirited, exuberant action sequences matched by Janry’s lovely artwork, never better represented by this page….

I do love the excitement, action, and sheer exuberance that’s delivered there, and there’s similar several times throughout, a great deal of adventuring going on, worthy of a certain boy reporter…. In fact, if you needed any more proof of the adventuring link with Herge’s creation, how about this, where Spirou and Fantasio meet their guide, one familiar it seems with a certain “young foreigner with little white dog” looking for Yetis, who even seems to have picked up a few choice expressions from a certain Captain:

Volume 3, although good, felt a little flat in comparison to the tight, very funny work of Volume 2. Much of that is down to this storyline splitting across this and the next Volume, more length means less enjoyment here, with the gags and action not coming as thick and fast perhaps, and the tight, funny storyline seems looser and consequently less funny, less complete.

So although it might not be as great as the standalone US trip of Volume 2, this certainly has the action, adventure, and laughs, just not as tightly done.

By Xavier Dorison and Fabien Nury, art by Christian Rossi

Cinebook

“1895. Members of the East Coast elite have died under mysterious circumstances. To investigate this delicate problem, Richard Clayton—against the wishes of the President—calls upon a man named Morton Chapel for his unorthodox methods and peculiar associates. As they begin to uncover strange, vanishing marks on people’s bodies, unexplained changes in behaviour and hints of widespread corruption, the team reforms around the name Ulysses S. Grant himself gave it years earlier: his SPecialists in the Odd and the OCcult—his SPOOKS.”

I was expecting rather great things from SPOOKS, or WEST, as it was originally titled, written as it is by Xavier Dorison, whose Long John Silver is a near perfect book whose next volume I eagerly await.

But sadly SPOOKS didn’t quite manage the brilliance of LJS, perhaps due to it being published in France 4 years prior to LJS, and there are moments where Dorison’s ideas and pacing fail here where they were confident, assured, and flawless in LJS.

But there’s still more than enough here to make it something worth reading, something worth enjoying for all the silliness and excitement that a genre mashup of Cowboys and Paranormal Investigations promises.

Come on, this is the Magnificent Seven meets the X-Files. Doesn’t that put a smile on your face?

The Cinebook summary blurb gives you pretty much everything you need to decipher the plot here… that sequence above features cigar chomping SPOOKS sponsor Richard Clayton getting his marching orders from the US Government and beginning the process of assembling his SPOOKS team, starting with the Englishman Morton Chapel.

The final panel with Chapel under threat is just a classic example of the over the top stuff Dorison is going for – the cut to a different panel, the cliché of the Russian roulette moment, it wont be the first familiar comic/film stereotype you see here. And you know something – it didn’t bother in the slightest. In fact, it’s all part of the fun.

So you’ll get a riotous beginning, introducing the supernatural stuff, where all those very important people start dying, all with that occult symbol that goes as soon as they do, all culminating in the chaos you see above. Again, the whole train crash out of the station isn’t new wither. And again, it matters not one whit. This is something that rather wonderfully wears all it’s influences proudly.

And after this we have the classically structured team book  - the heroes assembled in response to a threat, again wonderfully familiar, this time with the Magnificent Seven firmly in my mind.

There’s so much to enjoy here, as long as you want to, as long as you don’t go looking for too much. This is an unashamed genre mashing romp, harking back to so much that has gone before, Dorison and Nury tripping over themselves to shoehorn as many different western/paranormal moments into the plot.

It promised a lot more than it delivered to be honest, much of that possibly down to Dorison’s development as a writer since, but some of it simply down to them trying too damn hard to get so much in.

But nevertheless, if you’re looking for something interesting, light, fast, and fun…. SPOOKS may well fit the bill.

“But here’s a deal for you. If you’ll do it, so will I. 2012 will be the year I read 2000AD. 2012 will be the year YOU read 2000AD.”

It says Block War on the front of that Karl Richardson cover (don’t like it – never been a huge fan of that fully painted look),  but there’s very little of that in here. This is the desolation of the aftermath, we’re looking in on a Mega-City One on the ropes, in flames, gutted, looted, falling to pieces.

But damn, it’s looking good. But only for the reader. Dredd and co have problem after problem to deal with, and it just seems to be getting worse – the plague and the riots are decimating the city. The brief appearance of the Dark Judges last issue can’t have been all Wagner has in mind either.

Chaos Day is just around the corner now. Nearly there, nearly there. Wagner’s Dredd is something special, and Colin MacNeil’s artwork is matching it pretty much every step. So far on the 2000AD adventure I’ve seen Wilsher, Flint, and MacNeil on art duties – and to be honest I couldn’t really pick one – definitely a great time to come on board.

(Dredd – Wagner & MacNeil)

So Dredd continues to lead strongly from the front. An epic in the making, one of “those” strips we’ll be talking about in years to come.

At the other end of this issue we have a Cadet Anderson strip by Grant and Yeowell that’s the polar opposite of what’s going on up front in Dredd. This is very much the straight-forward, simple thing, never going to really set the world on fire, but for what it is, it’s very well done. Yeowell’s big panels and clean lines work really well on this sort of tale as well…

(Cadet Anderson – Grant & Yeowell)

See what I mean. Just really nice, very simple stuff. A straightforward case for the young cadet. Enjoying it for what it is.

Which I suppose you could say for The Zaucer Of Zilk by Al Ewing and Brendan McCarthy as well. Except what it is is a visual delight from Brendan McCarthy wrapped alongside what is a pretty straightforward tale, more about tones, thoughts, mood, than it is about plot really, and that’s not an issue at all. The key with 2000AD, just as with all anthologies, is the variety that it has to have, it’s the way 2000AD’s survived so far.

(Zaucer Of Zilk – Ewing & McCarthy)

And if Zilk looks and read well, then sadly Flesh just lets it all down. After initially reeling me in with almost childlike simplicity – big dinosaurs, Big Dinosaurs, BIG DINOSAURS! – It’s lost me now. Carry on Cretaceous is a little harsh perhaps, and I’m sure someone’s used the gag before, but it’s there, and it’s pretty much true at this point. But looking back over previous issues, previous reviews, I was genuinely excited with the simplicity of the concept and big dino-action of the artwork. It’s all gone now.

(Ooooh matron. No, stop it. Flesh by Mills and Mackay)

And finally….. The Tharg’s Time Twisters this issue is The Stitch by Simon Spurrier and Simon Gurr. Haven’t read much of Spurrier’s stuff so far, and can’t recall ever seeing Gurr’s artwork. But in 5 pages they deliver something very impressive, self contained, open, expansive, packed full of ideas, a time-travellers tale with a twist.

Brilliant little 5-pager, and Gurr’s art really mixes it up – multiple styles, nothing hugely overt, but it’s there in the different lines, different touches. More please.

David Ziggy Greene does them for The Stool Pigeon music paper, and also for their website, like this one from the recent (and from the sound of it rather uninspiring) Canden Crawl):

Electric Sheep Magazine does a load of them – film reviews by several familiar names.

Here’s Chris Doherty with The Plague Of The Zombies:

Or this one… Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Francesca Cassavetti:

And this one: Quatermass by Rebecca Burgess:

But you rarely see comic reviews of comics. Anyone fancy a go? Anyone know of anyone doing them?

By Craig Collins, Dave Alexander, James Corcoran, Iain Laurie, Paul McCann, Rob Miller, Nulsh, Curt Sibling, Robert Thomson and Jacek Zabawa.

Craig Collins has featured here on the blog already in 2011 with his and Iain Laurie’s Roachwell collection. That was a seemingly disconnected slightly absurdist collection of strips, one and two-pagers that managed to become something much more weird and intriguing with a surprise finale that tied everything together.

Haunted Bowels is a far simpler affair, a series of gag strips from a couple of panels to a couple of pages, definitely unconnected this time (unless Collins is really managing to hide the link!). Everything in here, as you might expect from the title and cover skews towards the unusual, the quirky, the downright gruesome, the dark and the weird.

In many ways the format of it reminds me of Evan Dorkin, loads of scattershot comics, lots of styles, lots of themes… and overall, it works. There’s a lot you might call unsettling, and a lot you might simply call silly.

It fulfils the basic funny strip requirement of making me smile, although definitely in a dark, gruesome Charles Addams, Gahan Wilson style (not a bad thing). Yep, funny and surreal, dark, gruesome fun inside with a series of wildly different art styles, some to my taste, a few not so great, but Collins’ writing carries you (mostly) through the iffy stuff.

Indeed, a quick look at the titles/themes should give you an flavour of the piece: “Tourettes Banshee“, “The Lonely Ballad Of Pistol Nipples“, “Ants in the Pants of the Pirates of Penzance” (flesh eating ants that is!), “Seamus Heaney’s Heinous Penis” … well, you probably get both the idea, and the level of the gags, but if you’re still undecided, here’s a set of 4 gags….

The Glee Van Cleef is silly, but the Zinder Kurprise strip crops up several times through Haunted Bowels, and it’s pretty much this spot on every time.

Part of a two-pager; a Scottish version of your favourite vomit encrusted, hallucinating ”booze-slinger“.

Finally, another repeat strip, Omniscient Zorgo – a perfect illustration of the comedy of despair that permeates Haunted Bowels.

That should definitely have given you a taste for the book I reckon. Light, quick, sure. But there’s enough in here to keep you smiling at the relentless misery of it all. Haunted Bowels is available from Collins’ Big Cartel Store.

Jean Van Hamme and Philippe Franq

Cinebook

Okay… here’s the blurb… The Price Of Money:

“A man shoots himself in front of Largo, live on TV. He was a guest on a financial talk show who had lost his company because of a Group W decision. Shocked by the knowledge that he is indirectly responsible, Winch becomes an object of hatred for the nation, and his two best friends abandon him. When suspicions arise that shady dealings led to unnecessary restructurings, he launches an investigation to identify the real culprits.”

…. and The Law Of The Dollar:

“Accused of murder and hated by an entire nation, Largo is hiding in Canada and feeling very much alone. But his friendships are stronger than his circumstances, and soon he’s able to counterattack against the various factions that are trying to bring him down. Greedy lawyers, crooked CEOs, murderous accountants, all pitted against the orphan turned billionaire… In the end, only the smartest and strongest will prevail—for such is the Law of the Dollar.”

Okay, now I know that two parts is the way it was originally planned and published, and Cinebook are doing it right, but I’m always pleased when I get these in pairs – start and finish all in one glorious read.

It’s wonderful watching Van Hamme and Vance get the pacing just right, building everything up, layering the business intricacies and the action until the cliffhanger, usually involving Largo in trouble up to his neck, all to be resolved in the action-packed, and plot heavy finale.

But having both books at once, it’s ever so satisfying being able to finish part 1, take a breather, and then reach out and plunge straight into part 2. And just to be clear, reading The Law Of The Dollar without first having read The Price Of Money is a really, really, really dumb idea. Don’t be silly, get them both.

Because make no mistake about it, Largo Winch is a magnificent action thriller with a difference. The difference being it’s not really an action thriller at all – in reality it’s a wonderfully thought out, ridiculously over the top, densely plotted action thriller where more often than not, Largo Winch (“anti-establishment, womanizer, wanderer, iconoclast, and fighter“, head of the W Group, worth $10 billion) spends most of his time like this….

… or like this:

And it’s the sitting around talking business, or the standing around talking business, or the walking about talking business that really is the standout here. It’s the thing I really love the series for.

Sure, Van Hamme throws the occasional car chase, scuffle, or other modicum of action in every few pages to fulfill some contractual obligation or keep Francq happy or something, but the real thrill of this brilliant thriller is watching Largo Winch work his way through a business problem, using James Bond like charm and a bit of Jason Bourne style action.

When there is action, it’s just as beautifully done, your pulse already racing thanks to the meticulous manner writer and artist have upped the ante throughout, the ongoing plots and manoeuvrings of the financial world to thoroughly stitch Largo up accelerating until having a bit of a car chase is almost a release to the thrilling tension.

And then Franc really lets loose, delivering some beautiful, beautiful stuff. Here’s page 3 of the climactic car chase in The Price Of Money, with Winch on the run from the police, trying to get to the airport where his new pilot is waiting to fly him to relative safety. It’s so well composed; the long shots to start with, the cars racing through panel, the way ahead blocked, the smashing through the fence, and into the path of his plane… ooooohh….

This one is all about stock options, so much so that there’s half a page of explanatory text on the first page of The Law Of The Dollar along with the publishing details. It’s completely unecessary, as it’s all been beautifully, clearly, and thrillingly explained in the first book with Van Hamme’s text heavy plot carried along beautifully by Franq’s sumptuous artwork. There are books where this much text would merely slow it all down too much, make it practically unreadable, but those are books written by people who dream of being able to do it as well as Van Hamme.

The only issue I had trouble with regarding Largo Winch is whether I like it slightly more or slightly less than Van Hamme’s other magnificent thriller; XIII. I think, now we’re into double figures with each, that I’m coming down (just) on the side of Largo Winch. That wonderful mix of financial machinations, thoughts being just as important as deeds, and the action stuff just wins out over XIII. But luckily, I can have both. And so can we. Life is good.