Comics

May

2013

Twelve Reasons to Die – Ghostface Killah

If you’ve read many of my reviews, you might have noticed that I have a particular fondness for multi-media stories and thematic pieces of art – so it’s no wonder really that I would enjoy Ghostface Killah’s new comic book Twelve Reasons to Die, a collaboration with Adrian Younge designed as an accompaniment to his newest album of the same name. With both the album and the comic executive produced by RZA and produced by Adrian Younge, GFK manages to pull together pieces of crime fiction, horror, soul and the supernatural to create the story of a vengeful spirit taking down the twelve mob bosses of Italy. The first ever release from Black Mask Studios, created by the man who has been described as a “compulsive storyteller”, Twelve Reasons to Die is an ambitious project, only for mature readers who are not easily offended. You have been warned.

The first issue actually contains four stories which are woven together, with the largest portion of the book dedicated to the story of how the 12 Delucas formed out of a mutual interest in increasing the quality of crime in Italy. In a series of Polaroid-style flash-backs, Mussolini’s influence on the crime families of Italy is spread out before us in scenes of violence, rape and war, but out of this come the twelve men who act with honour. The irregularity of the panels takes us smoothly through the evolution of the crime syndicates, with each mob boss driven by different motivating factors. Bodies dripping with blood are subtly placed in the trunk of cars as civilians walk by, no one paying any attention to the horror and with a seeming smile on everyone’s face. A ten-panel double page spread spells out the highs and lows of power that crime brings, and how easy it is to abuse that power; it’s obvious that things are far too easy for these men who are not as honourable as they think.

In a night club, a mysterious woman reports to an unknown companion that the twelve members have arrived and it’s obvious that the men are about to be in some trouble. In walks this new gangster – who bears a striking resemblance to GFK himself – and with only the words “Evening fellas” promptly destroys the 12 Delucas in some incredibly brutal ways. The narration reveals that they never had a chance, that they were only soldiers but Anthony Starks was a weapon. Fans of Ghostface Killah will most likely know that he has previously adopted the monikers Tony Starks and Ironman (with vital spelling differences), therefore it’s perhaps unsurprising that he appears as his comic book alter-ego.

The other stories, which are flashbacks and connected to the story in various ways, deal with terrifying sheep, a haunted record collection and an incident of death by bees. This first issue is a really interesting mixed bag and feels like a huge teaser for the rest of the run, setting up some interesting plot devices in this supernatural giallo work. Written by Matthew Rosenberg and Patrick Kindlon, the idea to bring in a rotating team of some twenty artists (from the little-known to the well-loved) is an inspired idea which echoes the collaborative ethos of Wu-Tang Clan and ensures that the comic is not defined by just one artist’s style. Dave Murdoch’s transition splash page which shows the vengeful entity Ghostface Killah is a beautiful piece of work and while it took me a moment to adjust to the rapid shifting of artistic style it should be really effective over the series. The colouring from Jean-Paul Csuka varies from blood-drenched reds, to pastel auction-houses, to soul-inspired pink and blue pop-art – the abrupt changes add to the frenzy of this comic, and a shout-out has to go to the smooth lettering of Frank Barbiere.

The album Twelve Reasons to Die is available on CD, vinyl and cassette as well as digital, and subscriptions for the comic book can be found in the Black Mask store. The movie-style advertisements show the influence of European B-movies and 70s psychedelic soul on the story.

May

2013

An Interview with Scott C

The charming Scott C, writer and artist of comic books, children’s books and art director of video games, was kind enough to talk to me about his influences, happiness, and what’s coming next.

Who were your biggest drawing influences?

Early on, artists like Richard Scarry, Maurice Sendak, Norman Rockwell, and Heronimous Bosch. Later on, Lane Smith, J. Otto Seibold, Shag, and Jim Flora. But through the years my influences change as i am exposed to new art and new friends! My friend Paul Allan had probably the biggest influence on my style after college.

What are your favourite themes to draw?

i enjoy good vibes. happy characters. having a good time with one another. so my paintings often include happy things. but i do also enjoy uncomfortable moments and pensive moments. this could come in the form of a mummy contemplating alone on a rock or a knight lying on top of his freshly slayed dragon wondering why he must always do battle and slay things.

If you could illustrate for any author, living or dead, who would you pick?

Ray Bradbury. I would just love to work with that guy so much. His stories are my favorite and he seems like a pretty happy and inspired dude. we’d probably create some nice things together.

You transitioned from games to comic books – was that very different?

Well, i’ve been doing comics alongside my game career, so it has been a sort of compliment to the games. As the video games became more gruesome, as they did in Brutal Legend, my paintings and comics became cuter. Working on a game for 5 years, one often needs a break and creating comics was a welcome change of pace. The Double Fine Action Comics were done as a warm up each morning before getting to work on Psychonauts, our first game. Really comics are a quicker fix than video games, but creating stories and characters can be equally as satisfying.

How much control did you have in games like Psychonauts and Brutal Legend?

It isn’t so much about control when you’ve got so many talented people working together with like minds. i was art director on Psychonauts and worked very hard on that game establishing the style and maintaining it throughout, but Tim Schafer had the final say. and luckily he has amazing taste! He is the best. I loved working with him. Brutal Legend, i oversaw the preproduction phase which was the inspiration stage, getting everyone excited to create this new world. Lee Petty was at the helm of the production. But it was a very collaborative process. everyone had amazing ideas and sometimes i was there to make a decision if one needed to be made, but mostly i was just into getting everyone pumped.

Do you have any advice for artists to break into video games or comic books?

i would say, keep making things on your own! i got my start in comics by just making mini comics with my friends and going to comic shows. Later i began posting comics online and tumblr. The online community is an exciting thing to be a part of. Video games have changed quite a lot since i started in the 90′s. i would say get versatile in what you can do and try interning first or getting a job at a very small company where you can get real experience. or just make you own little games with your friends! that is the best proof that you can do it.

From your book Great Showdowns, which is your favourite Showdown?

Ghost. I always say Ghost. Because it is just so silly. Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze versus the little clay pot dude on the pottery wheel. Such a happy and sexy moment.

What’s coming up for you?

Well, ONI Press is releasing the second volume and reprint of the first volume of the Double Fine Action Comics. Should be any day now, unless it is already in stores. And my third children’s picture book comes out in the Fall called If Dogs Run Free, a story by Bob Dylan, the songwriter that we are all familiar with. The second collection of the Great Showdowns comes out in the Fall as well. And i am currently working on writing and illustrating my first picture book all on my own! It is about Hugs.

Let’s talk pipe dreams. If you could do ANYTHING with your career now, what would you do?

Probably make some movies. I like movies.

Apr

2013

Jupiter’s Legacy #1

The first collaboration in ten years of the writer and artist behind The Authority, Jupiter’s Legacy has been promoted by Mark Millar as the big superhero hit of 2013, and a love letter to America. It’s easy to make comparisons between Jupiter’s Legacy and other post-modern superhero comics such as Watchmen and Millar’s own Kick-Ass; like Watchmen, Jupiter’s Legacy tells the story of Depression-era superheroes who have fought the best of the fights, and led their children into a completely different world, in a career they never asked for. It’s a story we’ve heard before but not for some time, and the present-day setting is completely in the now; like celebrities of today, the superheroes’ children thrive on apathy and stardom.

The story starts out in 1932 with a crew of young and hopeful individuals following a Clark Kent-looking hero and his dream of an island that will save America. Sheldon lost everything in the Wall Street crash but was more upset by the people who were less fortunate than him and driven to breadlines and soup kitchens. The dream of the island so held him that his fiancee left him, and he travelled across the world with a trusted group of colleagues including his brother. The background is done succinctly and the character design by Quitely (All-Star Superman) is exquisite, each character given their own personality, eye shape, even the specific ways they are stood or sat belie elements of their personalities. Sheldon’s brother Walter hangs toward the back while the beautiful, delicate-featured Grace stands firmly behind Sheldon. They find the island of course, just as he saw it, and have never talked about what happened – we aren’t let in on that either yet. All we know is that they returned to the USA with costumes and superpowers and made the world a better place. The faded grey and brown wash fades out and bursts back into the bright lights of 2013, and the resulting children of those original heroes.

Drenched in red, white and blue, Chloe is wearing what might liberally be described as skimpy sportswear, a baby pink ensemble with hot-pants so small her pants show from underneath and heeled boots up to her thighs. The childish nature of her outfit, looking like an overtly-sexualised ideal of youth and beauty, seems like a deliberate comment about the ever-younger celebrities which are exposed and fetishised in contemporary culture. Her brother makes a stark contrast in all black with a carefully unkempt look to match his offensively dismissive attitude as he mocks his sister and abuses the superhero groupies who throw themselves at him. This guy clearly has never wanted for anything, and can get away with whatever he wants; he seems like a real jerk. But he makes a point about how there are no great super-villains to fight any more, that his parents lived in the Golden Age of superheroes and that things are not the same any more.

In Vermont, of course an epic fight is underway. The hill landscape hosts a discussion between two of the younger heroes who are unwilling to get into a scrap with villain with an anti-matter battery in his chest when the fight crashes down right next to them. Sheldon’s outfit is very similar to Superman’s, featuring blue and a red cape, although the distinctive symbol on many of their costumes shows an eagle with a halo, which is as yet unexplained. As all the superheroes crowd in and the villain Blackstar strikes back, Walter uses his mind powers to take Blackstar’s mind away from his body. It’s an incredibly interesting series of images, as Walter claims that he has recreated a holiday from his childhood but the landscape and colour tones of the dream world echo those of the real world in which Blackstar is being battered to death. It’s a tranquil dream, Walter hovering about and sharing cake while Blackstar adjusts to knowledge that he’s being killed and there is nothing he can do about it. It’s difficult to tell if Walter is being kind or sadistic in describing the detail of Blackstar’s death, but the job works, and while the heroes have defeated a dangerous villain, it has been most unheroic and they plunge straight into arguing about their mission and the constant failure of their children to follow in their footsteps.

The responsibility of power is a classic superhero concept, and in this scene Sheldon and Walter argue about what they should be doing to make the world a better place; while Walter feels that the system is broken and they are the ones with the ability to fix it, Sheldon feels that they should serve the elected officials in charge, despite the trouble they have gotten the country in. Walter can see patterns in society he saw in 1929 and is scared for the future, but Sheldon will not give in to his dissent.

At 4am in Los Angeles, a familiar baby-pink bum walks into a glorious living room, complaining that her mother wants her to fight despite being a Buddhist and a vegetarian. Her unsympathetic friends in lurid costumes look like cyberpunk fashionistas play their tiny violins and offer her some space blow to take away her troubles. It’s clear from Chloe’s ranting that she has some serious body and drug issues, even comparing her feet in a negative light to her mother’s. Being brought up by a couple who are so happy they never argue sets a high bar for a girl to grow up to, and Chloe doesn’t think she can do it. It’s sad, and an interesting statement on both celebrity status and the state of modern superhero comics compared to old; the old age of superheroes has gone, taking the last of the villains with them, and their children are left with powers and nothing to fight. Instead they turn their lives to stardom; at least Chloe uses her profile for charity work, even if it is superficial and calculated, as her brother thinks. But what obviously consumes Brandon and Chloe is a jealousy of their parents who did great things with their lives but don’t understand that t the world has changed. It’s not enough to be good at what you do anymore, there is a certain requirement to be sexy and young and interesting.

The comic ends with Chloe collapsing into the living room table, lying spread-eagled among the glass like a broken puppet. Quitely’s artwork, and the subtle colouring by Peter Doherty show this vulnerable girl prone on the floor, helpless and dressed in childish clothes, which can be quite hard to see. The artwork in Jupiter’s Legacy is one of its biggest draws for me; each person comes with a distinct personality that we can see in the way they move and the subtle face-changes they make. This issue has received some negativity, saying that it rehashes old ideas, but while Millar obviously has specific themes he enjoys addressing, he attacks them all in completely individual ways, and while the modern-day superhero element might seem like something from Kick-Ass, there is much less of Millar’s anger and barbed language and seems much more grown-up overall in approach. This could be really interesting; there are some good ideas here, and I definitely want to know more. Hopefully future issues will address what happened on the island, and the huge time period between the original crew getting their superpowers and now. We shall have to keep an eye out.

Originally posted on the Travelling Man blog here!

Apr

2013

The Massive – Black Pacific

Following up from East of West in the post-apocalyptic theme, this week I read The Massive, Brian Wood’s newest end of the world saga. Nothing about this is religious however; The Massive is concerned by the environmental damage we are putting on the earth and seeks to explore the world in which we let this happen. I’ve always felt that what makes a story scarier is to know that it has elements of truth in it, and Wood has skilfully woven in real events, such as the mass-death of birds and the volcanic eruption in Iceland with natural disasters which just as likely to happen. The Massive is the story of what happens when you have set out to save the world, and failed. What next?

Callum Israel, founder of the Ninth Wave Direct Action Force, is at sea at the end of the world on board the Kapital with his crew of peaceful conservationists, and one ex-mercenary. These are the people on the front line of helping with marine disasters, but in the wake of the Crash have had to re-assess their mission and work out exactly what they are fighting for. The Massive fits in a very fine groove between two genres: the end-of-the-world scenario, and the post-apocaylptic period. The Massive isn’t about saving the world, because the world has already ended here; instead it is about persevering in the face of ultimate failure. Wood also plays with the ideas of identity and history, and how those come to change when the world as we know it has ended.

On the marine conservation ship The Kapital, Callum Israel and his crew are searching for their partner ship, The Massive, when they have to defend themselves from Siberian pirates. Already we can see the moral issues that come into play, especially in terms of violence and killing. While Israel is entirely a pacifist and is determined to keep his crew that way, the ex-mercenary Mag wants access to weapons, and the mysterious Mary is willing to kill to protect The Kapital, if necessary. As in most end-of-the-world scenarios, it is the other humans that are of the biggest threat, and it seems doubtful that a stance of non-violence would be effective in a new, changed world. Throughout the storyline are flashbacks to The Crash and its events; mass-suicide of fish, geographic alterations, terrorist attacks, and billions of tons of ice breaking from an Antarctic iceberg. Most of these things are unavoidable, and could devastate any single city or country.

Seeing the cities in The Massive feels nothing like the world we know. The first they approach is Hong Kong, which has sunk a hundred feet underwater, and a new city is emerging above the water line made of billboards, crates, and the still-remaining sections of skyscrapers. In other countries, clean water has become incredibly scarce with its source fuelling wars, and entire sections of ocean have been rendered unusable. Most of the crew members onboard the Kapital are volunteers who now have no home to go to, but no clear idea of how the mission will progress – and no say in it. This fear and insecurity spins out and factions of the group are formed with different agendas but what is especially interesting is the conflicted history of Callum Israel which is shown through flashback when he meets fellow ex-Blackbell member, Arkady, whose corrupt nature was the reason for Israel’s departure from the mercenary team.

In Coats Land, Antarctica, Mary has taken a young American volunteer to salvage fresh water from an abandoned research centre when they are attacked and faced with death. In spite of it all, Mary is strong and determined, believing completely that the ocean has a use for her and their team. She is incredibly mysterious and seemingly invulnerable as she saves lives like it’s no big deal. Her origins are unknown as of yet, but she says she is Hutu. The graphic novel of the first volume includes short back stories of Callum and Mag and a short present story of Mary in which she shares some words of wisdom with Callum – that “as much death as we bring to the ocean, we should just feel fortunate and humbled when it gives us life in return.”

The Massive is being written by Brian Wood as the second phase of his career, along with Mara and Anthem, and is pre-occupied by the environmental state of the world as it is right now. Wood has talked about his fear that his children will grow up to inherit an earth which does not enjoy the luxuries – or necessities – of our life now. The Massive is action-driven environmentalism combining the man-against-the-world character of Northlanders with the political world-building of DMZ, and Wood has promised a huge twist in the ending which no one will see coming – perhaps an answer to what truly caused The Crash. Kristian Donaldson’s artwork in the first half Landfall and in the three short stories is exquisite, building up a re-modelled world through an industrial landscape. The design of the ship, The Kapital, is precise and almost architecturally drawn, and while Gary Brown’s artwork is a little less detailed but instead presents a gritty world full of dark expressions which works wonderfully with the tone of the book.

This is an incredibly interesting book which marks the next phase in Wood’s career, with artwork by two different but tonally appropriate artists, colours by Dave Stewart and lettering by Jared K. Fletcher which sit well together within the book to create a well-rounded new world which we are adjusting to at the same time as the characters. I can’t wait to see where this one goes, and what Brian Wood has in store for the Kapital.

Originally posted on the Travelling Man blog

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Apr

2013

East of West #1

This is the world. It’s not the one we were supposed to have, but it’s the one we made.

We did this. We did it with open eyes and willing hands. We broke it, and there is no putting it back together.

East of West is not an easy comic to pin into any one genre – visually a Space Western, tonally a spiritual end-of-days scenario, and a politically-charged alternate history of the United States. Although the storyline takes place in 2064, it is in a world where events differ from the 1860s onwards. The Seven Nations of Americas are united in the hatred that they have for each other, living in an endless Civil War, against which the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse try to track down the President, living in The White Tower, a huge complex. Something has separated the Four though – three have been reborn as pre-pubescent children, each embodying their own traits in both appearance and attitude. Famine is a skeletal, sickly yellow young girl, Conquest a stocky boy who constantly refers to humans as “parasites” and “cattle”, and War, a skinny brooding boy coloured red. Death has failed to come back with them.

The back-story of how the world has come to be this way is succinct, but occasionally a little hard to follow. A combination of prophecy and divine intervention lead us to now, when a completely pale man walks into The Atlas with his Native American back-up who are stylistically monochromatic so as to put them at visual odds with the Union in gritty uniforms. When his tall friend Wolf is threatened, a bloodbath ensues, most of it only seen in the horror of the bartender’s eyes as he watches his friends being mutilated while the white man stands and calmly drinks. The technological equipment employed in the Western setting reminded me of Akira, and other cyberpunk texts.

2064 is the first year of the apocalypse, and the Three Horsemen are preparing. Shifting piles of corpses and taunting survivors in ways that reveal the effect living in a young body has had on them, they laugh about how funny it is when humans try to hug them only to pull back nubs. It’s revealed that the children are piling the corpses into the giant pyramid symbol which is reflected in much of the iconography of the book, especially in terms of the united prophecies. The end of the world is coming, and it has something to do with the events of the Civil War.

At the White Tower, the White Man approaches the President in his office. One of the beautiful things about this comic is the detail in the backgrounds: beside his desk we can see an altered version of the Stars and Stripes flag featuring thirteen stars in a circle. The White Man reveals that the President took something from him, and did something worse to him than dying, and in a fantastic set of panels he takes on the appearance of Otis from House of 1000 Corpses, wildly shouting with long white hair flying out behind him, a merciless look on his face.

Hickman is clearly playing a long game with the story, so nothing is too clear right now. Thematically, this story is concerned with our current obsession with end-of-days scenarios, whether through financial collapse, the destruction of the environment, scientific advances and spiritual retribution. From the Y2K virus scare, we have lived through the 6/6/6, the Mayan calender ending, economic crises, and the use of the Large Hadron Collider. But this comic isn’t as bleak as it might seem right now – according to Hickman there will be hope, and love, in the middle of all this destruction and anger. He also deals with the corruption of government, and makes it so natural for the President and the most important people in the Seven Nations to be evil liars.

The artwork by Dragotta is something special, who is so skilled at the subtlest details (like The Crow’s habit of taking eyes). The backgrounds often have cartoonish blood and ink spatters and the characters feel very distinctive already at the end of this issue, and I really want to see how the children grow up – although for now very much enjoying their Children of the Corn feel. Hickman has promised that a love story will develop, as well as the deepening revenge tale, all with a core concept – that the things that divide us are stronger than the things that unite us. From the Fantastic Four duo Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta, after selling out almost instantly, issue one will receive a second release on the same day as the second issue, April 24^th, from Image Comics.

Originally posted on the Travelling Man blog

Mar

2013

Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon

Back in September, I reviewed the second issue of Fraction and Aja’s run on Hawkeye. Despite never being particularly into The Avengers, and knowing nothing about the character Hawkeye (Clint Barton) but what is in the The Avengers Assemble, the minimalistic, mod-style artwork drew me in; when I read it, I was so glad that I had. This run has managed to capture the attention of those who would never normally pick up Hawkeye and brought many of us to love this version of our hero, Clint.

The background is this: Clint Barton has become the leader of the Secret Avengers, and Kate Bishop of the Young Avengers has taken his mantle. This series isn’t about the Avengers though, just about Clint and Kate in their spare time, being heroes on an everyday scale; from saving a dog’s life and the homes of his neighbours in the first issue, to a high-speed car chase complete with trick arrows. But what all the issues have in common is that they portray Clint as a funny, easy-going good guy who just can’t help but get himself into scrapes.

The first issue is a simple story of a newly rich Clint Barton trying to save the homes of his neighbours by buying their apartment block. Of course money isn’t an issue for him any more, and he brings a bag of money to meet the Russian who owns the building but ends up in an all-out brawl in the streets, during which he kicks a dog out into traffic. Clint Barton, loveable hero, takes the dog to the vet’s to be patched up, and ends up going wild when faced with the man who hurt “Arrow” (who he renames Lucky).

The second, the one I reviewed last September, is a great single story of Clint and Kate infiltrating a circus show during which the criminal circus steals from the wealthiest scumbags in Manhattan. Not necessarily important enough for the Avengers to deal with, but Clint recognises the handiwork of the ringmaster as a student of the Swordsman, the man who taught Clint how to be a human weapon (hence, My Life As A Weapon). Clint and Kate’s relationship is beautiful; of course, with Clint, there is always the hint of sexual tension, but for once he is being sensible, and it only adds to the barbs of their loving insults.

The third issue is full of sex, car chases and trick arrows, which are fantastic. From the bola arrow to the putty arrow to the explosive-tip arrow…they are all great and fun to see in this high-paced, raunchy stand-alone issue. The fact that Clint wears purple boxers, and the countdown of his nine bad ideas of the day, are great examples of the humour of the comic, but easily the best visual gag of the issue is when Clint is found in an indecent situation and leaps across the bed naked with just a retro Hawkeye mask face covering his privates. It’s absolutely perfect.

Javier Pullido took over on the artwork in issues four and five, which go directly together and deal with some of the issues of the Avengers, as Kate and Clint try to get their hands on a video tape of Hawkeye committing a political assassination. The artwork is more traditional than Aja’s but that thread of purple colouring runs consistently throughout as Clint continues trying to charm his way out of incredibly awkward situations. Madame Masque is a rather interesting villain and Clint and Kate are a tight team as always. Some of the panels really stand out, such as those drenched in red and with Chris Eliopoulos’s hand-lettering. It’s another fun story which reinforces the idea that Clint really is a good, honest man – the best kind of superhero.

Perhaps an odd addition to the collection, the last issue is a Young Avengers Presents illustrated by Alan Davis, and the artwork is wildly different with much more vivid colours and almost fantasy-esque costumes. It mostly deals with Kate’s love-life, and the first time she and Clint meet and their friendship is formed. He puts a lot of trust in her, and it’s interesting to see how the relationship has developed throughout Aja’s run.

Hawkeye is a comic book for people who enjoy funny, loveable superheroes who aren’t too serious. The humour is typical of the humour of Deadpool and Spider-Man, where not only the heroes are goofy but also the book itself – just one great example is that when someone speaks in a language Clint doesn’t understand, it is translated to a rough approximation of what he thinks it means, and insults are replaced with “(Derogatory patriarchal epithet)”. Every issue begins with the line “Okay, this looks bad”, and it usually really is; poor Clint. Aja’s mod artwork is both retro and refreshing, Fraction’s writing ensures Clint’s humour is unrelenting, and Matt Hollingsworth’s colouring is exquisitely subtle. Easily one of the funniest superhero comic books you’re likely to pick up this year.

Originally posted on the Travelling Man blog

Mar

2013

A Word With Bryan Talbot

Bryan Talbot, author and writer of Grandville, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and Alice in Sunderland among many more was kind enough to talk to me about his career and influences, and the future of the comic book industry.

– When did your interest in fantasy begin, and what draws you to it?

When I was 6 I saw the first TV showing of “Quatermass and the Pit” and my mum took me to the cinema to see Ray Harryhausen’s “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad”. Both gave me nightmares – and both got me hooked! Between the ages of 12 and about 30, I pigged out on fantasy, horror and SF novels. Since then I only dip in now and again.

– Your degree is in graphic design – what did you want to do at that time? How did things change?

It was actually a college diploma. I didn’t know what I wanted to do back then. By the end of the course, I knew I didn’t want to work in advertising. After graduating, I was unemployed for a while and took the time to finish drawing an underground comic I’d started working on at college. That became the first issue of Brainstorm Comics and the start of my career as a comic writer/artist.

– You received an honourary doctorate of arts in Sunderland, the first time a comic book artist has ever received one. Do you think this helps to legitimise comic books in the art world?

I think anything like that helps. Since then, I heard that Pat Mills has been made a visiting Professor of Liverpool University and Mark Millar has also been awarded a doctorate. I was actually awarded an honorary doctorate of letters last year by Northumbria University.

– Some of your work has been political, such as The Cannabis Conspiracy and your anti-homophobic legislation comic From Homogenous to Honey with Neil Gaiman. Would you hope to change someone’s mind with these? Do you think comic books can be used as levers for social change?

My work is usually political in some way. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright has an anti-fascist theme, produced, as it was during the Thatcher government and the rise of the far right in the shape of the National Front. I did some illustrations for the Anti-Nazi League. Heart of Empire is an anti-imperialist fable. Grandville reflects the way the UK and American governments lied to their populations about Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and Grandville Mon Amour is about the human effects of terrorism and the dehumanising of the perpetrators. Grandville Bête Noire is anti-capitalist. I think it’s perfectly possible to tell an exciting adventure story and not be entirely escapist. I hope that readers are influenced by the books in some small way.

– Do you think you would, or do, still write political commentary?

No, I’m a storyteller, not an essayist.

– How do you find working closely with your wife?

Very natural and easy. Both Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes and her current book, Sally Heatcote: Suffragette, have been extremely close collaborations with ideas flowing either way.

– If you could work with any artist or writer, living or dead, who would it be?

I would have loved to have written for Moebius. Or Arthur Rackham! Imagine a comic drawn by Rackham!

– You are somewhat of a comic book legend. How do you see the future of the industry, and the future for your own work?

That’s very kind of you to say but, really, I’m relatively little-known in terms of the comic industry. I think things will progress as they have been doing, with the continued rise of the graphic novel and the slow demise of the monthly comicbook. As for my own work, I’m currently doing the page layouts and panel compositions for Sally Heathcote (with finished artwork by Kate Charlesworth, who’s doing a brilliant job),drawing Grandville Nöel and have scripted the 5th, which I hope to do immediately afterwards. That takes up the next 2 or 3 years at least.

Originally posted on the Travelling Man blog

Mar

2013

The Black Beetle in “No Way Out”

“In the world of horror pulp there is nobody doing better work than Francesco Francavilla.” – Steve Niles, author of 30 Days of Night and Transfusion, sums up Francavilla’s skill in this new pulp hero adventure starring The Black Beetle as the masked good fighting against the crimes of the city. In celebration of the fifth anniversary of Francavilla’s Pulp Sunday blog, in which he illustrated images from radio pulp serials, The Black Beetle brings a modern feel to the pulp and noir serials of the ’30s and ’40s with an original character who somehow feels like he’s been around forever.

The “quintessential pulp hero” Black Beetle protects the streets of Colt City, a huge crime city not unlike Gotham which was built from scratch by Francavilla around the character of Black Beetle, as well as the entire universe in which he lives. First appearing in Dark Horse Presents 2011, our confident protagonist is quiet, non-lethal and speaks in the style of an old detective narrative, right down to the interruption of thoughts by the words of others. It’s a simple set up; two crime families, the Galazzos and the Fierros, are meeting on neutral ground to discuss the future of Colt City’s criminal empire. A double page spread shows us the research and planning the Beetle has done, including photos and news clippings next to surveillance shots. When we see through the eyes of the hero, the world is drenched in an orange tint and the insect-shaped goggles feel like binocular lenses. Purple, blue and orange are the dominant colours throughout this book and are mostly used in very subtle block colourings.

The guards get are down with PCP darts, and as the Beetle prepares to swing in and deal with the major players once and for all, the building explodes and he falls down eighteen floors with flaming building remnants around him and survives thanks to a pile of rubbish – a result of the poor sanitation in Colt City. Like many heroes, Beetle is not the type to linger over his wounds, and patches up his broken ribs quickly before getting back to work tracking down the only surviving member of the Galazzos to a maximum-security prison. The colours shift toward neutrals and greys but the Beetle’s too late and although he finally gets a glimpse of the villain responsible for the lethal take-out of Colt City’s criminal world, the man gets away, framing him in the process. Little is known about him yet but his costume is entirely yellow with maze-like symbols over him and he goes by the enigmatic name Labyrinto – more will be revealed in the next issue.

Although Issue 2 is out already, Issue 1 is currently available in shops as a reprint thanks to the amazing success of the first run. So early into 2013, The Black Beetle is already being seen as one of the big hits of the year and although that is mostly the skilful artwork and narrative style it is also the love of the detective genre which is poured into every page, including the covers and advertising which are all inspired by 30s and 40s detective fiction films. “Written and directed” by Francesco Francavilla, this gritty romp into super noir is stirring things up this year and hopefully soon we will learn more about this newest detective hero and his world.

Originally posted on the Travelling Man blog here

Mar

2013

Porcelain – A Gothic Fairytale

Porcelain is the gothic tale of a young urchin’s longing for a father, and the morality of magic and science, set in a world comparable to our own but buried under years of snow. When Uncle opens his home to Child, the street urchin, he lets humanity into his life for the first time since the death of his wife Cassandra, but Child’s curiosity may be too much for him. Released by Improper Books, an independent UK publisher, Porcelain is the result of a collaboration between like-minded individuals with a love for fairy tales, magic and horror.

When Child is forced by the older street children to scale the walls of the “wizard’s” estate and steal as much as she could, she narrowly avoids a beating from the police, although she doesn’t know it yet. On the other side she encounters Gog and Magog, a pair of porcelain beasts with hints of polar bears, tigers and dogs, who are called off attack by a large, angry man; the owner of the estate. Child does the only thing she can think to do and lies: it’s utterly unconvincing but Uncle is charmed by the girl’s audacity and takes pity on her, inviting her into the house. Upon finding out she has no home to go to, he offers to take her on as his ward and shows her the secret behind his porcelain inventions. It feels like a classic horror story in the tradition of Frankenstein; a morality tale in which an isolated genius of science and magic tries to replicate humanity and save his love by creating porcelain life from the bone ash of hanged criminals.

Uncle creates a beautiful garden for Child, the only area of greenery she has ever seen, a magical garden of summer where she can play and dance and read, but the porcelain birds which sing around the garden are not what they seem, and Uncle’s use of corpses comes back to haunt him; no more so than when Child breaks her one rule of not entering the workroom and finds Cassandra. Like many horror classics, the question of life is explored, and the cold Dickensian backdrop adds the feel of an old-fashioned morality tale, and the poetry is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s work. The artwork is stunningly detailed in the characters’ expressions and it’s obvious that a lot of love went into showing the blossoming friendship between Uncle and Child. The porcelain creatures are fantastically creepy, no more so than when Uncle engineers some friends for Child that can only talk as dolls.

The back of the graphic novel is filled with conceptual designs for the characters and settings which provide a detailed insight into the process of developing characters and their facial expressions, as well as the thought processes behind the porcelain creatures such as the dog which echoes Child’s youth and enthusiasm. In his personal blog, Chris Wildgoose also talks about incorporating his brother’s expertise with Google Sketch Up to create 3D models of certain pieces of architechture or transport, which can be found on Tim Wildgoose’s website. As is becoming more and more usual in graphic novels, the back of the book includes several pieces of artwork inspired by the story, from the likes of PJ Holden and Alison Sampson which offer some alternative views of the world Chris Wildgoose and Benjamin Read have created.

I was lucky enough to catch a free preview of Porcelain at Thought Bubble 2012 and it is free to read online in many places, but the graphic novel itself is currently only available to buy online and in a limited number of independent comic book retailers, including Travelling Man stores. A heart-warming fairytale with just enough horror and magic to leave you with a lasting chill, Porcelain is full of beautiful and tragic moments brought together with the purest of storytelling.

Originally posted on the Travelling Man blog.

Feb

2013

Monocyte – the graphic novel

It will be no surprise to those who have read my review of Menton3’s Transfusion that I am a huge fan of this particular artist, so it’s possible that I may be bias in my review. Although almost nothing can be found about the writer of> Monocyte, Kasra Ghanbari, he is apparently a student of the philosophy of religion and biology and has built a biotech company – not necessarily vocations that would leave into the writing of graphic novels, but his writing is stilted, poetic and jarring in a very precise, existential way. The pair lived in the world that they created for months at a time, working side by side in a studio so as to have constant feedback and debate.

The idea of the graphic novel began with a love of superheroes and the need to create something new. Menton3 listed all of the traits he would choose in a superhero and, oddly enough, that person turned out as Monocyte, an immortal necromancer. He says that he felt that Monocyte had been inside him for years and now he was finally real, which is how his creativity works; taking dream material and turning it into stories. The world of the graphic novel is so deep and detailed that the events of Monocyte are just a period in time, and thousands of years before and after exist in the minds of its creators – it just so happens that this is a pivotal crux in time.

So, how did we get to this point?

Monocyte is the story of an endless battle between two immortal races. The Olignostics have come about through a convergence of political power and technology, thriving on the technological boom and spiritual collapse at the beginning of the 21st century. After attaining and harnessing absolute zero, they created a conduit which would continually recycle energy and keep them alive indefinitely. Humans became complacent, ignoring the signs of their power structures being destroyed. The world was split into members of the Oligarchy, who alone were connected to the conduit, and the human slaves that they owned; the power of each individual was dependent on the amount of human slaves they own, displayed as a number on their shoulder.

The Antedeluvians are much older than the Olignostics, a secret collective of creatures obeying an ancient code who are primarily seekers of knowledge. Their leader Al-Khidr was the first of these immortals which drew psychic energy from unknowing humans; when the Olignostics rose to power, the Antedeluvians gathered together and went underground, taking humans with them to feed off psychically – these humans were much better off than many others. For countless years the two races warred using weaponless human slaves which would just be brought back, no lives lost and no victory on either side. In a world without death, Azrael (Death himself) has found himself useless and summons Monocyte, whose search for death has lead him to an eternal sleep, and promises him true death if he can destroy the immortality power sources.

Before the rising of the Olignostics, Monocyte was a human named Augustus who was searching for his missing twin brother when he came across the Lapis, a spirit of the dark side at opposites to flesh. The flesh absorbed the spirit, and the immortal was born. Beatrice fell in love with Augustus but lost him to entropy before joining with the Antedeluvians, who she could always see as a child. A twisted superhero action tale, combined with philosophical and Shakespearean prose and a love story between two immortals finding each other at a crucial point in time, it’s not your usual comic book. An essential part of the direction of the story is the idea that the world is what we as humans make it. The collapse of humanity as the dominant power came about through apathy and complacency; “Anyone may look around and see the problems in this world. Anyone can follow the easy path of complacency, watching the wrongs take flight, but to have the courage to back you convictions and ask the question…How would you have it be?”

But we don’t only have this pivotal moment in time to read. Each of the four issues comes with two or three extra stories by guest artists representing the human side of the struggle. Some of these are quite abstract, some more detailed but all of them add a little piece to the puzzle. Kirk’s piece is an odd historical text about archers, and the origin of the raised two fingers as a defiant symbol; Riley Rossmo’s electropunk, frantic artwork shows the influence of the technological upon the biological in the rise of the Olignostics, and David Stoupakis deals with the origin of Beatrice, a child haunted by the ability to see the Antedeluvians and banished to a mental institution. Other contributors include Ben Templesmith, Chris Newman and Alan Hubbard, but this still isn’t it – the back of this beautiful and huge graphic novel contains poems by Steve Niles (writer of Transfusion), galleries of oil cover art and guest covers, a Menton3 gallery and a guest artists gallery including photographs of some very impressive Monocyte helmet designs.

The artwork is unbelievable; you could enjoy the book thoroughly without reading a word. Menton3 is an Artist in the truest sense of the word, someone who compulsively creates and brings to life his internal dreamscape, with Monocyte combining high art with the tradition of sequential storytelling. His interest in symbols, iconography and alchemy all give his world a very distinctive style – grey, apocalyptic, fruitless – and the heavy use of oil paint as well as ink and digital artwork make you feel that every page must have taken weeks to work. The creators fought to have a comic with no concessions and no adverts, pure content and it’s worth it; the result is a piece of work they should be utterly proud of, described as “like Deadwood being sodomized by HR Giger in a cathedral, as narrated by Tom Waits” – and if that sounds as awesome to you as it does to me, make sure you check it out.

The Monocyte graphic novel comes as a 9×13.5 inch hardcover with 224 pages of detailed content, and is now available in a limited edition Red Label, signed by the co-creators with a limited edition cloth cover and a limited edition slipcover, as well as artist-focussed limited edition Black Label editions with incredible bonus art, all published by IDW.

Jan

2013

Butcher Baker, The Righteous Maker

Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker is not the kind of graphic novel that might immediately hold your attention from the shelf. In its plain blue covering and red marker scrawlings of the title it looks like a homemade piece at first, but when you open the cover the pages explode into a chaotic, colourful story in front of your eyes.

Butcher Baker‘s style is nearly schizophrenic in its appearance – no consistent panel patterns and drastic contrasts between black and white newspaper-print style artwork, trippy brightly-coloured panels and old school comic strip styles. The story itself is a fantastic piece of superhero pulp with just the right amount of sex, drugs and violence to make it an utter thrill to read. It goes as follows; ex-superhero Butcher Baker, the Righteous Maker is pulled out of his hedonistic retirement to finish off his old villains contained at the Bertrand Institute for Meta-Criminal Containment (colloquially known as The Crazy Keep). He’s given the weaponry and information to blow up the facility while sparing the employees, nice and clean. Reared by the government, given an engine heart with spectacular horsepower and handed a red, white and blue uniform, Butcher Baker is the American Dream incarnate; it’s the classic American Superhero story gone wrong, much like Watchmen‘s Comedian.

Things all seem fairly straightforward now – Butcher’s tearing down the highway in the Liberty Belle, his patriotic truck, ready to blow up The Crazy Keep. He knows he should be incognito but can’t resist messing with the cop who tries to trail him for speeding, and a macho rivalry between Butcher and officer Arnie B. Willard begins which will last the length of the book. Knocking him off the road, our moustached protagonist finally makes it to The Crazy Keep where he follows his orders to the letter and destroys the building and its inhabitants. The story should be over now, right? Well, wrong. A number of villains have described; the Alan Moore-looking Jihad Jones, a BDSM style brute called AngerHead, the hulking sumo El Sushi, The Abominable Snowman, the sexy White Lightning and the utterly strange Absolutely, a floating hermaphroditic entity which speaks in riddles and abstract metaphors.

The villains want revenge, clean and simple, for all the times that Butcher Baker has gleefully and sadistically beaten them down, and an unlikely team forms between Absolutely and the perplexed Arnie who is still chasing down the Liberty Belle, little knowing the nature of its driver. Most of the villains are dealt with fairly quickly but Jihad Jones has a much more personal stake in the matter, having lost his sidekick/lover Rocket Boy to Butcher Baker years ago. Still, he is beaten by Butcher Baker, shot by Arnie and crushed into the side of a rock by the Liberty Belle. Just the Absolutely remains and it’s obvious that this isn’t an enemy he can beat with physical strength; instead he plays on its emotional instability, painting an origin story of terrible tragedy which breaks the thing’s reality and it ceases to exist.

An awesome comic featuring the President of Reality, a paradise for retired superheroes and a frozen woman being snapped into pieces. The drawing style reminds me of the animation of Mickey in Natural Born Killers – that inky, hulking beast smashing through corridors, aiming to go out in a hail of bullets is really invoked in the last panel in which Butcher is drenched in the red of sniper lasers. This is most definitely not a graphic novel for anyone who has problems with swearing, sex, violence and other taboo subjects, but if you’re not easily phased and enjoy a bit of mind-bending superhero pulp, make sure you pick up Butcher Baker, The Righteous Maker for a thoroughly fun read.

P.S. The back part of the book is filled with writings and rantings from the author on all manners of subjects; the history of comic books, the process of creating one and a charming interview with himself in which no questions are really answered. Also showing some of the script, individual comic covers, the logo design process and a previous collaboration between Mike Huddleston and Joe Casey, it’s not required reading for the comic but it’s a great extra and gives this graphic novel much more read time for one of its size.

Originally posted on TravellingMan.wordpress.com

Nov

2012

Charlie Adlard Interview

At my Thought Bubble weekend, I was lucky enough to meet the charming Charlie Adlard, Eisner award nominated artist most popular for his work on The Walking Dead series. We talked about his inspiration and past, the future of The Walking Dead and the European comic book industry. Here is that talk!

You started work on 2000AD, a lot of British writes and artists have. Do you think it’s a good platform?

Well, you know, it does act as a good training ground for artists. When I started working, I actually started on the Judge Dredd magazine first, on Armitage and when I first started it was amazing – looking back at my artwork, I’m amazed I actually got employed and if I was an editor I don’t think I would have employed me! So I was really lucky and obviously somebody saw a spark somewhere in what I was doing. I don’t think I’ve been particularly good until a couple of years ago, so it’s taken a while to get to being okay. But it sounds like you’re always dissing 2000AD, saying it’s a gateway through to other “bigger” publishers, but I’ve got to admit I kind of saw it as that and as much as I loved 2000AD I think it’s pretty positive that I came back to it. I was kind of proving to myself that I didn’t just see it as using it to go work for Marvel or DC.

You have a lot of freedom with the Walking Dead – how much artistic freedom do you get with it, are you told what to draw with the script?

We pretty much get total artistic freedom. I mean, I respect Robert for what he does, which is the writing; I very rarely comment on the writing and likewise with the artwork, it’s very rare that he’ll comment on the artwork. Any time he does comment on it is if I’ve made an obvious mistake, like giving Rick two hands or something like that [laughs]. The only time we might have a difference of opinion is in covers, just because I suppose it’s more important in a lot of ways as the front image and we’ve occasionally had, shall we say, differences of opinions on things like that. But generally it’s a very smooth run.

Since Walking Dead has gotten so famous, and with the TV series coming out, have you had to change anything in the creation of it?

No, not at all. They’re totally different beasts anyway, so I’ve never ever looked at the TV show and thought I should perhaps draw such-and-such a character a bit more like that. All the characters remain as I originally conceived them and that’s how it’ll always be. You’ve always got to remember that the TV show grew out of the comic, it’s not the other way around; we are the originators, where the TV show gets its inspiration.

Did you have any direct input on the series or did they just draw inspiration from your work? Did they talk to you?

No, they never asked me but I never asked to be involved, so it’s kind of a two-way thing. I never said to Robert or any of the production staff, can I do some design work? Primarily because…it would have taken me off the comic, and it’s hard enough getting a monthly issue out let alone having a TV show to design for and, for me, it would feel like I was going over old ground. And if I had spare time, to be honest, as much as I love drawing The Walking Dead the last thing I want to be doing in my spare time is more zombies and more Walking Dead, I’d actually rather do something completely different.

How would you describe your style? Is it different on The Walking Dead to your other work?

The Walking Dead I suppose it’s my default style but with other projects I’ll tend to change around the equipment more than the style, and of course the equipment will dictate how the style is. The Walking Dead is very pen-orientated, primarily because I draw it quite small; it’s almost the same size as the comic, just a tiny bit bigger. So pens work better when you’re drawing that kind of size, whereas the normal comic size is that A3, so if I change up and I’m doing another project – which nowadays is a rarity – I’ll tend to use brushes and things which changes the style somewhat. The meat and potatoes of what I do is still the heavy blacks, there’s still that look of a lot of line work that I use in those sort of things, but the underlying style stays the same.

Do you have any favourite artists, any that inspired you?

There’s plenty. The first artist I ever got into when I was young was Michael Golden – he was the first guy I remember noticing and thinking to pick up more stuff by and that was when he was drawing the Micronauts and he was just appearing as a back-up strip in one of the Marvel UK titles at the time, cause that’s what I used to buy when I was ten, eleven, twelve; black and white reprints and that sort of stuff. So I’ve always been a big fan of his. Nowadays I tend to buy a lot of artists that, for arguments sake, are more illustrative than kind of comic-booky (it’s awkward phrasing). So I really like Sean Phillip’s work for instance, I love people like Tommy Lee Edwards and John Paul Leon and I adore Sean Murphy’s work, he’s one of the best artists to emerge in the last five or six years, I think he’s an absolute genius. But I like a lot of classic American illustrators from the sixties and seventies, I really get off on the design of it – and a lot of European stuff as well, which I’m big on. I’ve been lucky to go to Angoulême quite a few times, and with the French publisher that publishes The Walking Dead, they’re probably my favourite publisher of all time in terms of working with them. They drag me out to Paris and various other festivals often, so a lot of opportunities to get a lot of French books. The industry over there is eye-wateringly good – it puts our industry to shame. Their average artwork is like the best artwork in the UK or American industry, it’s on another level.

Is there anything you’re working on now, or would like to work on?

People ask who I’d like to draw, but you know I just want to draw my own stuff now. Like I said in the panel, all I want to do now is my own stuff, I’m not interested in somebody else’s character. Everyone expects an answer like, ‘I’d really like to draw Daredevil’ or something, and yeah it’d kinda be fun, and certain other peoples’ characters, but you know if I never draw another superhero again it isn’t going to upset me. There’s a couple of things I am talking to publishers about – Robert and I are actually working on a European-styled book at the moment called “The Passenger”. He announced it last San Diego but this year has been so crazy with the Walking Dead, especially with issue one hundred and then my own hundredth issue and things like that that I’ve just done one page of it and that’s it. And it is the sort of book that I need to set aside a week or so to work on to get into the feel of it, cause it’s a lot more detailed it takes a lot longer to do the pages. There’s that, and I’m talking to a couple of European publishers about books after that, but we are literally talking years away it’s so hard to get this stuff done outside of The Walking Dead, which obviously has to take priority.

Do you see an end point for the Walking Dead?

We’re keeping it going as long as it feels natural. There is an ending that we could implement twenty issues in or in two hundred issues; we can take the characters on to this point and then do the ending. There’s no plan obviously but it’s handy to have, shall we say, a get-out clause, just in case. The last thing any of us would like for The Walking Dead is for it to just peter out, for people to lose interest in it and then we do issue 156 or something and the characters are just doing stuff and then we never do issue 157, and no one notices. That would be the worst ending to it possible. But I think if we ever got a sniff of that, or we got disillusioned and just wanted to finish it, or the readers got disinterested in it, that’s when you implement the ending and still go out with a bit of a bang rather than a whimper.

You talked in the Independence in the UK panel about not having to worry about killing off characters – could you ever see The Walking Dead without Rick?

You know, I actually could see The Walking Dead without Rick – and that’s no plot spoiler saying that we’re gonna kill him, but I think the strength of The Walking Dead as a book is that we actually could kill off the main character and it could still keep going. I think there are plenty of as-strong characters in The Walking Dead that it could quite easily survive without Rick to be honest, as much as he’s a great character and he certainly is the heart and soul of the book…but they did it in Blake Seven, why can’t we do it in The Walking Dead? It’s not even called Rick’s Twelve or something [laughs].

You could even have the kid growing up to replace his father.

Yeah, well a lot of people think that’s what we might do, but we actually have no plans yet because The Walking Dead is set in real time. So the idea of Carl being twenty or something like that is not very realistic, it would mean I’d be something like eighty years old when I’ll be drawing Carl at twenty. So, who knows? The plan is to keep it as this real-time book, we’ve done it so far for a hundred plus issues so there’s no need to do something so drastic – at the moment anyway.

Nov

2012

Batman #13 – Death of the Family

Like many other Batman fans, I have eagerly awaited the beginning of the Death of the Family story arc from Scott Snyder. The Joker has always been a writers favourite character – who could resist trying to get under the skin of the most unpredictable villain in Batman’s gallery? The Joker veers between being humorously threatening and genuinely disturbing in his history, and it’s clear that Snyder is leading him down the darker path – the Joker’s confession that he has hidden beneath Gordon’s bed at night is disturbing on a level rarely seen before, even if it isn’t true (and it’s hard to tell when it comes to the Joker).

The Joker’s current attitude is built on Shakespeare’s concept of the relationship between the jester and his king – the jester is the only one who can reveal the truth to his king who is blinded by emotions and the accolades of his subjects (or family, in Batman’s case). The Joker feels that the Bat-family have made his king weak and it looks like his mission is to tear them apart. The Batman and Joker’s relationship has always been an intense one but this seems different – the Joker isn’t after the Family to hurt Batman this time, but after them to “save” him. He’s killed and crippled Batman’s sidekicks before but never has he had so many at one time, and never before has the Joker had this much time to prepare.

The Joker has often managed to toe the line between evil genius and magician and the idea that he is responsible for the bad omens in Gotham is an interesting one. Rains, floods and a two-headed lion cub are stirring up the tabloids and Commissioner Gordon is struggling to find a place to sneak a cigarette without his detective-in-training daughter finding out. Downstairs, a flower van pulls up outside the GCPD labelled “Forget Me Not” and a familiar too-short trouser leg steps out. He’s come back to reclaim his severed face and takes the lives of most of the GCPD, with the express purpose of terrorising Gordon. This is when he mentions hiding beneath his bed, where his last cigarette hiding place lies, the one that even Babs couldn’t find; he has been watching her too which is a terrifying thought for the father whose daughter he put in a wheelchair.

As Batman tries to form a plan for handling the Joker, various members of his Family pitch in – Damian, being the usual brat he is, isn’t concerned, still believing his dad to be unbeatable. Nightwing and Red Robin both want to know what’s going on, but it’s Batgirl’s call he’s most worried about after Gordon’s plea that he not tell her. But instead of being scared for herself, she’s more concerned for her father’s well-being. Just at that moment, a Joker broadcast comes through on the television and it becomes clear that he’s following the patterns of his old crimes. Like a child’s puppet trick, Joker is using a man to talk through – all you can see of him are his eyes and teeth hidden in the shadows and his arms through the man’s jacket, gesticulating wildly. The prop-man is identified by Batman as John Claridge, the son of Joker’s very first victim in Gotham, and he uses Claridge to announce the death of Mayor Hady at midnight that night. The GCPD and Batman are on the case, all protecting the Mayor as the time counts down, but Joker’s plans have a twist to them; instead of killing the Mayor his true target turns out to be the entire police force. In another twist, the traditional Joker toxin has been modified, causing rigor mortis frowns instead of his usual trademark smiles.

Batman tracks the Joker down to the ACE Chemical Plant, the scene of his original transformation. Finding the figure of the Red Hood dressed theatrically and playing word games, Batman begins to approach but, like old lovers reunited, he can see straight away that it isn’t the Joker but another one of his tricks. A recorded voice tells Batman that the Joker plans to take his allies, the ones who have made him weak. Batman becomes trapped diving from a giant swinging mallet and the Red Hood mask comes off to reveal a tear-stained Harley underneath. “He’s not the same, Bats. He’s not Mr J anymore” she sobs, another truly terrifying moment – Harley has never questioned Joker before now and the idea that he’s gone too far for her is a very bad sign. Meanwhile at home, Alfred walks into the hallway to find the previously mentioned two-headed lion cub in his house; he whips around to see the Joker stood in front of him, the mask of his face stretched across his skull as he wields a hammer over his head.

Although this seems like the end of the issue, there is still a flashback to Joker’s earlier conversation with Harley Quinn. She misses him of course, and is still entirely devoted to him, even willing to strip down to nothing at his command. Capullo’s artwork makes Harley look like a vulnerable young girl, trying to cover herself as he advances with a blade. Her bids her dress up like him in his padded tuxedo, with platforms to make her his height and tells her that he owns her – “I pulled the pieces of you from my ribcage and stitched you back together with beautiful lies”. She looks with abject fear, not sure she that she loves him enough to have her face mutilated; she asks if he would still think she was attractive but he insists he never said that he did. It’s such a tender moment for Harley – while her Mr J has always strung her along and used her affections, he usually stays away from hurting her so directly. He definitely seems to have had a break – it reminds me of Grant Morrison’s discussion about the Joker having a kind of super-sanity as opposed to pure insanity. He seems smarter, more cunning and more ruthless than ever. He’s often allowed Batman to catch him, preferring to play the game than to win, but this time he isn’t giving Bats the choice.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this story pans out. Going after the Bat-Family isn’t original but it seems different this time – he’s had much more time to plan and it seems he knows something that Batman has kept from the others. It seems possible that instead of death he just has destruction planned, a way to turn them all against each other, even against Batman. The fact that this story arc is appearing in all the characters’ own comics suggests that his attacks will be much more personal than before, perhaps attacking the families of Gordon, Drake, Todd and Grayson if his hint that he knows their true identities is to be believed. It’s scary to see where this is going to go, and how Batman is going to deal with it. The crusader has always had a self-destructive streak, has always seemed willing to die in battle but he isn’t prepared to lose the people who depend on him. How far will he go to stop the Joker this time? I can’t wait to find out.

Originally posted at https://travellingman.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/batman-death-of-the-family/

Nov

2012

Thought Bubble Anthology 2012

In preparation for Thought Bubble this weekend, I’ve been reading the Comic Art Anthology for 2012 with some of the best short pieces I’ve seen in a long time. This edition features six winners from the 2011 Northern Sequential Art Competition as well as industry legends such as Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant) and Tony Harris (Ex Machina). The winners of this year’s competition will be announced on Sunday in Savilles Hall and will be featured in the 2013 edition of the Anthology.

A lot of these comics deal with love of the medium. “A Significant Portraiture” is an adorable Victorian-style comic by Gail Simone showing a charming young girl falling in love with comics like “Lady Wonder” and “X-Chaps” – personally I would love to read the adventures of “Bat Gentleman”! Although it isn’t said explicitly, the heavy hint is that a normal little girl shouldn’t like comic books. Tula Lotay’s artwork is beautiful and Bove’s colouring is exquisite on the ladies dresses, not to mention the final line which left me giggling – “And that little girl grew up to be Queen of Finland!”

Kristina Baczynski’s “Due Returns” is a sweet web-comic style story which follows a young woman’s love of learning and eagerness to read. “I’m Through” by Ivan Brandon tells the tale of a boy who receives a comic for Christmas, flips through the book disinterestedly but finds himself sucked in to this new, magical world that captivates and holds him. “The Clicking Machine”, while focussed on film instead of comics, shows an obsession with the medium that drives a man to madness

“Soon” is a beautiful, abstract piece of work showing the beauty in technology and hope, down to the details in every atom. The subdued colours work wonderfully and give the feel that this is a philosophical, humanity-loving tale. “Dad’s Ear” is a funny tale of the psychological warfare parents are able to commit upon their children to make them behave. But my favourite of the collection is Kate Beaton’s “Dude Watching’ With the Brontës”, a brilliant satire of Charlotte and Emily’s habits of writing romantic leads as alcoholic brutes while the significantly less popular Anne chides them.

There are many more stories, but it would be a shame to ruin them. Most of the contributors will be at the convention, so bring along your copy (or get one there!) and get it signed by your favourite artists and writers from the collection. See you there!

Nov

2012

Transfusion #1

One of the most interesting comics on the shelves this year has been Transfuion – Vampires vs Robots, a beautiful piece of work from Steve Niles, author of 30 Days of Night, and Menton3 (Menton John Matthews III, if you please) the incredibly talented artist of oil paint and watercolour, as well as a multi-instrumentalist who brought us the stunning artwork of Silent Hill: Past Life.

The back story is summed up succinctly on the first page, in the form of an ominous foretelling – “In the future, robots will run on human blood…and they will destroy the Earth, drinking deep the end of life.” The pages are cold and empty, showing the wasteland that Earth has become with its barren trees; a family are trying to survive by finding small patches of crops to harvest, but are forced to wear gas masks at all times. The mother holds a baby in her arms and cries when they find some food, thankful she can eat and feed her children tonight – until a huge “CLINK” bursts across the page and fills both the characters and reader with horror.

The robots are huge and towering and fill a two-page spread as they move across the scratched woods, the humans looking insignificant and weak in comparison. The neutral colours are suddenly ripped apart with the bright red of human blood as the robots eviscerate the family and steal whoever is left alive, including the baby. As one last character emerges from the crops, he is stopped by the near-dead father of the family whose eyes have sunken into small points and accuses the stranger of letting them die; the stranger responds by taking his weapon and killing the man with it. More details of how the world came to this point are shown through his story – how the world was growing more exciting with technological advancements but instead of the promised future of jetpacks they got robots, which turned on humanity within five years and now need their blood to survive.

The following four pages are speech-less, showing only the battle between the only consistent character we have seen so far and a roving robot which appears to have the skull of the human (which is incredibly haunting, and reminiscent of some of Dave McKean’s creepier work). The skull is eventually torn from the robot and blood splashes out across the page and just as he finishes destroying the beast he looks up to see the vampire clan joining him. A nude, bald woman with pinpoints of light for eyes and a child of just a few years with its lips sewn together make a striking image surrounded by the scratched eyes and mouths of their clan hiding in the darkness. It’s clear that the vampires are scavengers as much as the humans and are determined to find blood of their own.

The plot may seem a little odd at first, but it’s such a small part of what is wonderful about this comic. The shifting voices of the humans and vampires makes the emotional story much more complex and even the lettering of the narrative is beautifully, done as though Niles were writing the horror story in front of us. Like many great horror stories, the writing is simple but powerful, leaving enough to the imagination so that we may fill in our own gaps. The artwork is some of the most impressive I’ve seen and is oddly calm and dreamlike, making it not only impressive under analysis but a genuine pleasure to read.

Niles and Menton3 are working on another piece right now called “Nosferatu Wars” which follows two vampires in their time together and apart, meeting again as two tribes of vampires come to battle. Meanwhile there are two issues to come of Transfusion!

Oct

2012

Stumptown Vol 2 #1

Greg Rucka brings us back into the world of Dex Parios, female detective and gambling addict living in Portland, Oregon in volume two of his detective series, Stumptown.

In the first volume which started in 2009, Dex was tracking down the granddaughter of a Casino owner in order to cover her own gambling debt. As promised by Rucka, the new issue begins with a new case and a new start – the first page with a full-page montage of the band Tailhook playing to a huge audience in the Crystal Ballroom. Lyrics circle the pictures and an acid-trip explosion comes out from the stage and drenches the images of each band member’s face being picked up by camera phones. It looks impressive, grungy, and leads well into the band exiting the stage – the punk singer refusing to talk to anyone, while the guitarist and drummer head down to the green room to relax. The colours are toned down, but the purple of Mim – the guitarist’s – hair and red of her guitar are vibrant as they let off steam.

On the fourth/fifth page spread, Southworth establishes the setting of Dex’s office as she is settling in. When a man shows up with a job for her, she is charming and businesslike , but turns down the job upon hearing the name of the construction company she would be working as it is owned by Hector Marenco – someone from her past who she refuses to work for out of principle. She is polite about turning the man down, simply saying “I don’t do work for Hector Marenco.” It’s not entirely clear to new readers who this man is, and why she hates him so much, but it serves to show that Dex is a woman of honour; as she rips up the contract she had started to fill in she recites Falstaff’s lament of honour from Shakespeare’s Henry IV. The purple-haired guitarist chimes in with the next line, instantly recognisable to Dex as the guitarist of Tailhook, and at the page’s end a close-up of her face shows her saying dramatically “Someone stole my baby.”

One of the incredible ways this comic is so similar to a detective TV show are in transitions like these – it feels like there should be an advert break after that dramatic line, and when the show comes back we get a double-page spread showing pictures of the bright red guitar we saw in the green room. Mim talks about her love for guitars as art which makes art, for the expensive and beautiful ones she owns, but this particular guitar is her Baby. That’s why it isn’t disappointing anti-climatic to find that the baby is a guitar – instead of feeling like she was exaggerating, Rucka’s writing really hammers in the intense love a musician feels for that one instrument that has always been there for them. It’s because of this, and the fractured art style which really give the feel of an indie comic in style, while still being firmly a detective story. Dex is obviously smart, asking pertinent questions and setting things up quickly to get about her job. A Detective Tracy Hoffman is mentioned a few times, a character from his world who apparently Mim does not get along with. The case has been established, and just to add an extra element of drama to the proceedings, we see outside that the pair are being surveilled by two people in a car. One of them picks Dex to follow, the other going after Mim.

When Dex shows up at the house of Fabrizio, Mim’s guitar tech and the last person to see Baby, he and his wife are under attack by some monstrous-looking skinheads wielding Stanley knives who are also after the instrument. Dex shows her ability to stay calm in threatening situations, inviting the attackers to stab her if they don’t believe her claim that the police will be arriving any second. They fall for her bluff and run away, threatening revenge and it seems that things might be on their way up until the blonde woman who had been watching Mim shows up and points a gun at Dex’s head. The issue ends here, but I get the distinctive sense that this Cathy Chase of the Drug Enforcement Agency will be character as tough as Dex herself. Rucka’s inspiration for Dex was that of the lone cowboy in the Old West – perhaps Cathy will prove to be the sheriff. I look forward to seeing where the story goes, and the progression of the lone ranger/private investigator tone; this seems like a great comic to immerse yourself in the world of Greg Rucka’s creator-own stories, in which he famously writes rounded, in-depth female characters, lead in by Southworth’s ability to create solid locations with personalities of their own. Definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of detective fiction.

Oct

2012

Batwoman #0

A Batwoman zero issue is a difficult thing to do so soon after her reinvention. It was in 2006 that the character Batwoman was reintroduced to us, as a completely different person to the heterosexual Kathy Kane who had been invented in the fifties as Batman’s beard and removed as non-essential ten years later. The new Kate Kane is a Jewish lesbian heiress from a military family and Greg Rucka did an incredible job in Batwoman: Elegy of giving off the impression of a strong, determined young woman who is also brutally human in her flaws. On her twelfth birthday she was kidnapped with her mother and identical twin sister, neither of which made it out, and was expelled from the military under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy as a result of being unwilling to lie to cover her homosexuality. After years of drinking and struggling, she was inspired by a fortuitous encounter with the Caped Crusader and decided to adopt the sign of the Bat herself. Since then she has battled with monsters, been stabbed in the heart, and found that the sister she thought had died was alive, and mad, before losing her again.

When the issue begins, Kane is one the plane again, holding the villain to stop her falling to her death when she finds out that this is, in fact, her sister. The same words and same striking visual images from Elegy are framed by red voice-over boxes as Kane talks to her father in form of a message in the form of a good-bye message. She admits to recording them every time she went out as Batwoman to thank her father and tell him that she loved him. Every time, until she lost her sister Beth again; “The night I started hating you.” This is a really emotional first page that brings you right into the story – we know that Kate’s relationship with her father was the only stable one she had in her life after her twelfth birthday, and the idea that she would hate him is tragic.

The flashbacks to Kate’s childhood are rendered in a simplified style, reminiscent of Bunty comics and showing the intensely close relationship she had with Beth, who was always there to control her when she couldn’t control herself. She remembers with love the way her father had been patient and kind with her after the funeral and became strong for her when she was so angry and afraid. The repetition of the six-panelled pages veers between brief glimpses of her life (sleeping with various women, getting tattooed, meeting Renee Montoya) and slighter longer pieces of Kate confessing her love of being drunk and helpless – because he would be there to take care of her.

On the next page, the old-fashioned block artwork collides with the textured inking that we saw in Batwoman: Elegy as the dark Batman stands over the simpler Kate as he stops her from beating a mugger to death. The full-page spread is beautiful, and if you are a Batman fan you are bound to appreciate the inspiration and awesomeness of the image of the powerful man – but Kate knows instantly that anyone could be under the mask, even herself. So she begins her crusade and soon her father finds out and sends her on a two year training course to make sure that if she wants to do this, she knows what she is prepared for. In Elegy it was mentioned that she had been away training for years, but never explained where it was she had gone; we find out now, and it is brutal to watch her push herself to terrifying limits, both physically and psychologically. She was offered a chance to put her energies somewhere better – to helping sick children in Africa – but turns it down. Her final mission, back again in a the simplified art style, involved rescuing a family from Russian extremists, dealing directly with her own past and fears. When she breaks into the building to find their throats cut, the number of panels increases so we see flashes through her rage – blood dripping from the knife, her face full of rage, the smiling mask on the man who committed the atrocity, and she goes mad attacking him, only just stopping short of killing him. When she asks why, he removes the mask and reveals himself to be her father ensuring that she would not kill even in the most emotionally blinding situations.

J.H. Williams beautiful artwork really kicks in now, with the fantastically iconic image of Batwoman smirking beneath her mask as the monsters of her new life assemble below. She explains that rather than seeing it as leaving Gotham as Kate Kane and returning as Batwoman, she left as his “lost little girl” and came back knowing who she was. She was strong and confident and self-assured, until she found out that her sister hadn’t died. She claims that the moment she became Batwoman was on the plane, when she lost Beth again and realised that her father had deceived her, kept this secret and that she had no one to trust but herself. She signs off by telling her dad she loves him; she doesn’t forgive him, but realises that it is necessary for her to be alone. Becoming Batwoman required picking herself up from rock bottom.

The central story of this is Kate’s relationship with her father, but that relationship is so wrapped up in her traumatic experience as a child and how she learnt to cope afterwards that it’s a vital part of her transformation. The style of writing, as a confession letter to someone she knows will never hear it, reminded me of Batman stories in which he talks to his parents’ graves. In Elegy, Rucka did an amazing job of giving a voice to Batwoman, but in this zero issue Haden makes us really understand Kate Kane in a touching and exhilerating way. Williams’ artwork is always incredibly beautiful and detailed and the lay-out of the pages is easy to read without being boring in the slightest. I’m not sure if it would still have the same amount of emotional pull if I hadn’t already been in love with Kate Kane and Batwoman, but this comic should be a good starting point for a crash-course in the new heroine’s troubled backstory.

Oct

2012

Batman #0

Batman #0 is an issue of two stories, the first being “Bright New Yesterday” set six years previously, before Bruce Wayne had donned the cape of The Batman. A trained and eager Wayne is working to take down the Red Hood Gang, a group of murderous criminals run by one man, the Red Hood. The opening panel shows a knife slicing through the old Gotham Bank and a slice pulled away – a cake to celebrate the opening of the new and improved bank. Just as they start to eat, they are met by a knock-knock joke. Hmm, this seems familiar. The Red Hood reminds the bankers that the traditional way to deal with a robbery is to stay quiet and still, to avoid death – when the manager steps in, he is dealt with brutality, although not enough. Immediately suspicious that one of his men would miss an opportunity to kill a man, he unmasks the man who is definitely not Red Hood Five and gives him the choice of shooting himself or being tortured by them. The gun is in the man’s mouth as the Red Hood reveals that the cake was poisoned yesterday – all the employees are already dead, and an early Bruce Wayne has failed them. He makes it out alive, of course, cursing himself for not being patient and doing more research on the Red Hood Gang and runs into the police, narrowly escaping them also. He pulls off the latex face he has been wearing for disguise, hops on an early Batpod and makes it back to the Batcave.

Similar to the underground facility owned by Batman in The Dark Knight, it is huge, clean and serious – no giant coin here. Scattered around are various prototypes of gadgets we have come to know as part of Batman – the night-vision goggles, the Batplane, the grappling hook; even early versions of his costume which at this point seem somewhere between a Knight’s armour and ninja clothing. The facility is based underneath a house on Crime Alley, the street where his parents were murdered – Bruce is sure that this where his war on crime should come from. He is at a thoroughly interesting phase in his development, not having taken the Bat as a symbol yet but knowing that he can not be just Bruce Wayne any more. Alfred tries to warn him that suspicions will be aroused if he is never seen around the city as himself, but Bruce’s solution? The Batarang. Oh yes, a very early version, shaped much more like a boomerang but with a timed return – something completely untraceable. As he throws a “Batarang” timed for four minutes, a very young Lieutenant Gordon comes to the roof for a talk and a cigarette. The timer is counting down as Gordon talks about Wayne Enterprises’ new boss, Philip Kane, cousin to Bruce Wayne on his mother’s side. Nothing much is done, and Bruce seems safe until Gordon brings up his second issue – the vigilante in the area. Gordon isn’t stupid, he knows Bruce is a likely suspect, especially due to his being able to afford the incredibly advanced technology the vigilante has been using. The two dance around each other, both half-accusing, and as they leave Gordon lets out a pearl of wisdom; “I’ve heard crusaders in Gotham, they end up pretty damn lonely.” The Batarang hits the lift doors as they go inside.

Outside the Red Hood Gang sit in a car, discussing blowing up Bruce Wayne’s “nest” in Crime Alley. The Red Hood tosses his carnation out of the window, grinning. There is obviously a lot of talk about the leader – it was established in The Killing Joke that the Joker was the Red Hood for a short amount of time before his swim in chemicals. The knock-knock jokes, the trademark lapel flower and the utter disregard for human life are all indicators that yes, that is this same man, and his origin story is expected to be created again in 2013 with Scott Snyder. Of course there never has been, and never will be, a canon story of how the Joker came to be, and it is much better that way, but different versions add more to the mythology of Batman’s most famous villain.

The eight-page mini story “Tomorrow” at the back is set a year after the events of “Bright New Yesterday” and it would seem that Bruce has adopted the Bat as his sigil. Gordon stands with his daughter Barbara on the roof of what I would assume to be Gotham City Police Department as she begs him not to turn the entire justice system upside down by reaching out to a vigilante but Gordon is sending a signal, “to let the heroes of tomorrow know that they aren’t alone.” We cut to Tim Drake in Graystone Academy – not only is he the highest achieving student in the school but he has found evidence that his head teacher has been embezzling money from the school. He clearly already has a clear-cut sense of right and wrong, and of justice. Jason Todd is robbing a store with a friend, but when he tries to comfort a scared bystander she is shot – he runs after the shooter, his supposed friend, and beats him until he is dragged off by a policeman. Dick Grayson is practising outside the circus when he sees a woman’s bag being stolen and apprehends the criminal with a cheesy joke, telling the girl that this weekend he will be performing for the famous Bruce Wayne before looking up to the sky to see the Bat signal. All three boys look up, inspired by the signal in the sky, and finally Barbara stands on the rooftop, her father gone downstairs, hesitant to leave the sign of the Bat.

This collection, while interesting and a great nod to the Batman fans who will get what others don’t (for example, the implication that the Red Hood in question is The Joker) causes some major issues for continuity – namely that Batman had to have had four Robins in a five year period. The “Bright New Yesterday” storyline seems like an excellent ramp up to a new re-telling of the Joker origin but unfortunately we will have to wait until next year for the continuation. Meanwhile this issue serves as a great insight into some parts of the Batman mythology that have often been skipped over – we all know the story of how Bruce adopted the Bat, but rarely seen is just before that, when he was still experimenting with exactly how to conduct his war on crime. Written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Greg Capullo, it is not necessarily to be taken as an addition to the canon but works wonderfully as a mood-setter and a hint to why we Batman fans feel so strongly for its hero.

Oct

2012

Punk Rock Jesus #3

Sean Murphy of Batman/Scarecrow: Year One has been given his own six-issue run with a fascinating idea – that DNA extracted from the Shroud of Turin has been used to create a clone of Jesus Christ. An American Idol-style show searched for the Virgin who would give birth to him and found Gwen, an 18-year-old girl who gives birth to the new messiah on national TV on Christmas Day; the introduction panel is touching, to see a young woman full of joy at the sight of her newborn baby despite the cameras and press surrounding her. The child, Chris, is now the main character of a reality TV show called J2, endorsed by a silent Catholic Church and run by the terribly sleazy Rich Slate. Gwen and Chris are protected by an ex-IRA ex-punk bodyguard named Thomas who is on a personal mission of religious redemption by protecting the new Jesus, and a giant friendly polar bear named Cola – I’m not sure how or why but it was almost certainly created by the same biologist who successfully engineered the clone, Dr Sarah Epstein, who has a young girl of her own. The reality show has divided people – some Christians support the show, eager to accept the second coming of Jesus but the New American Christians find it blasphemous and have waged a war on the island where the mother and child are kept. Politicians are worried that Chris may run for President – who could compete with Jesus himself? At the beginning of issue three, Chris is just about to turn five and Thomas is rescuing Gwen from the hoards of fans she encounters anywhere in the outside world.

The first notable thing is the artwork – it’s black and white, which is especially rare in comic books these days, with a dark, heavy edge incredibly reminiscent of old gritty underground comics and the harsh lines of punk – maybe most comparable to Jamie Hewlett’s Tank Girl. The pair escape from manic fans and the NAC on Thomas’ motorbike, all the time being watched by a surveillance helicopter feeding an image straight back to the hideous Jack Slate whose face is always grim and full of lines. A double page header of Gwen and Thomas soaring past on the bike has real manga influences – the background is inky and textured, but in more complex sequences, as when Gwen and Thomas fly off the bike together, the sky is completely clear, only a crescent moon hovering in the plain white. We go straight from the action to Slate lecturing Thomas and Tim, the tech guy, for busting Gwen out of captivity, and it’s easy to hate him already. He’s the kind of guy who pretends to be reasonable and understanding, but is really a snake – he claims that this most recent stunt has made him realise that Gwen cannot leave the Island and that she is now a prisoner. He takes over control of the security and technology sectors and he kisses a terrified-looking Gwen on the head as he reminds her, “Welcome home, Gwen.”

The almost-full page image of the idyllic Island looks amazing – a waterfall crashing over the rocks, a cross as large and iconic as the Rio de Janeiro Jesus figure hovering over the setting sun and extensive wildlife. Gwen and Chris live in a monolithic building looking over it all and they sit high in a window as Gwen reads Chris stories from the Bible and wishes for an angel to save them. Running alongside the stories which Chris already knows are about him, is a TV interview with Nick Slate which gets the reader up to date on the current situation. There is an incredible visual montage of Gwen’s escape attempts as the interviewer lists them and reveals that she has been tagged with a homing device and pumped full of antidepressants. The next thing we’re shown are holographic classrooms designed to teach Chris about the Bible – at first a cutesy images of Jesus standing on water while the villagers cheer him, but then a terrifying apocalyptic image of God’s wrath bent upon the world in the Genesis flood. Dr Epstein removes her daughter Rebekah from the class, but cannot take Chris – separating the children seems incredibly painful for both of them. The interviewer then makes the touchy point that Gwen is slowly fading away from her son. She sits in her room and cries, watched even then by a camera, as Epstein tells the children about her plans to stop global warming – poor Chris is terrified, thinking that the oceans are rising because God has sent another flood. The image of his huge, scared eyes on the inky black background gives such an impression of this scared young boy who is only just learning what it means to be a saviour.

Unfortunately, the conflict of religion and science in Chris’ world leads him to believe he’s capable of walking on water. He isn’t. When Gwen finds out about her son’s brush with death, she storms into Slate’s office screaming. In the background we can see feeds of many news shows already discussing the failed miracle attempt and as Slate threatens Gwen she opens the door to the cameras and stabs herself through the hand with a letter opener. This act of violence is so sudden, and he catches her as she loses consciousness, holding her swoon in an almost romantic way as he promises to let Chris go to public school, in return for her good behaviour.

Exactly half way through the issue, we flash again to a news room. Nine years have passed and Chris has struggled to make friends in public school with his bodyguard always by his side. One fantastic panel shows Chris using a urinal behind Thomas, the other boys too scared to go near. The NAC have been training their members for a “Jesus army” and have an armed patrol outside Chris’ school. A racial controversy has been sparked by rumours that Chris had asked an African-American girl to their prom, and Slate had paid her father to keep her from going, buying the caucasian head cheerleader instead for a date. Chris is pressured to lie and protect Slate, which drives Gwen wild – when they return from the studio she makes another escape attempt with her son, shooting Slate in the process, but instead she is thrown out and separated from her son. Chris is full of rage and it’s here we see the first glimpses of the punk king he’s going to become; smashing windows, spray painting “I’m a hostage” on the side of the building, screaming at the cameras. The last section of the issue shows Gwen stepping out onto the balcony of the Behavioural Health Centre she’s living in, shutting her eyes and letting herself fall from the building to her death. As she falls she is caught by a huge, cybernetic angle who pins her down, screaming at her for her poor parenting. She wakes up, looks in the mirror and sees strange markings on her body. The whole final sequence is full of manga influences from Gwen’s huge, scared eyes to the incredibly striking cyberpunk angel.

The religious elements of the series are incredibly interesting, perhaps most notably in the naming of the characters – all of them have specific meanings and religious connotations. For example, Gwen means to be white, fair or pure – perfect for a virgin mother; Richard (as in Rick Slate) means a powerful leader. Chris is not only similar in sound to Christ, but also means “the one who bears Christ in his soul” and Sarah and Rebekah both have Biblical names; Sarah was the barren wife of Abraham who was given the miracle of a child (appropriate as previous to her having Rebekah, Sarah Epstein was considered infertile) and Rebekah was her daughter-in-law. But the series inverts religion – one of the themes which seems to be evolving is the idea of the second Jesus becoming an atheist. Sean Murphy himself was raised Christian, and when he began the series five years ago he would have described himself as a “militant atheist” – he has calmed over the years and has begun to take a more balanced view of religion, but the elements of questioning God are prevalent throughout. The choice of the punk medium is an excellent way for Murphy to show Chris’ anger at the society which gave him life just to control him – his progression into a mohawked adult is something I can’t wait to see.

The story is incredibly interesting, especially if you have a penchant for Christian and/or punk iconography. The way the characters interact is understandable and so so human; none are perfect but are all struggling to remain sane in the middle of what is not just a religious matter but also one of scientific progression and the moral minefield of cloning human beings. The artwork is beautiful, heavy, adorable and startlingly violent throughout, with whimsical comic book sound effects – my favourite is “Catch!” as Gwen falls into Thomas’ arms. Some readers may be put off by the lack of colour, but Murphy simply doesn’t need it; the expressions on their faces are so emotive and his use of shading and texture creates striking effects on the characters and scenery.

Issue #4 will deal with Chris researching the world he has been kept from, and beginning to effectively rebel with inspiration from Thomas’ old punk collection – not long now till we see the Punk Rock Jesus in full form. Out in December, this is a must-read for fans of underground comics, punk culture and religious imagery.

Written by Jenny Mugridge, lover of all the above.

Oct

2012

Hawkeye #2

Clint Barton aka Hawkeye of Avengers fame recently took up the mantle of leader of the Secret Avengers. His stories have always been interwoven with those of the crime-fighting team – but here he gets his own story, the story of Clint Barton. Joined by Kate Bishop, the replacement Hawkeye while Clint was temporarily dead, this run could more accurately be called “Hawkeyes” – the pair of expert archers take on the underbelly of crime that the Avengers don’t have time to tackle. Written by Eisner Award-winning Matt Fraction (The Invincible Iron Man) with art by David Aja of Daredevil fame.

I started on the second issue of the series, which has a beautifully crisp and clean cover, depicting Clint holding his bow in the style of an instruction manual. The purple accents on the cover repeat themselves throughout the pages, giving a toned-down feel to the artwork. Aja was going for a look which was more ironic and cartoony than usual, giving more of an impression of facial expression than technical detail in faces. We start in the middle of the story as our protagonists dive into a pool, chased by bullets; “Okay – this looks bad” is all Clint can think, and this snippet of thought brings us immediately into the feel of a postmodern and humorous story. After the first page we flash back – a newspaper lying on a cluttered table reads “EVERYTHING AWFUL. Oh God Somebody Do Something” as Kate quotes memes and lets loose a tirade of jokes at Clint’s expense. The cinematic style of freezing Kate into a stencilled image as Clint describes her works wonderfully, and on the next page we see the same theme used as Kate remarks “Well that’s cool”, drawn out letter by letter as Clint raises his bow, breathes and finally lets loose the arrows – three of them, striking the neck, chest and groin of his man-shaped target.

The first six issues of this series are designed to be read-alone and accessible with their own, contained storylines. #2 deals with an elaborate circus scam, designed by criminals to steal money from other criminals. This is not the kind of problem that the Avengers would deal with, but Clint and Kate are prepared – Kate especially turns out to be a woman familiar with the upper classes of crime families and fits perfectly into her disguise as high-society woman, often having to correct the clearly out of place Clint, who mutters the word “casual” over and over to himself. Despite Kate’s obviously wealthy up-bringing, she is not out of touch with the world – she says of the criminals “There’s kind of a global recession on right now. Only people that make money in a recession are scumbags.” The dialogue that goes on between Kate and Clint is wonderfully written – the reader gets a definite sense of the way they are talking and exchanging jibes.

The circus theme of the story does serve to make the reader get an immediate feel for Clint as a person – as someone with incredibly limited knowledge, the purple-drenched pages of the circus and Clint’s sensory memories of his youth really helped me to understand Clint as well as briefly explaining his back story. So far in the issue, Kate has seemed the most adept, but here Clint’s knowledge comes into use as he explains his professional ability to spot another professional at work – he knows immediately that the knife-thrower is another student of his late mentor, the Swordsman, and that the Ringmaster’s French is completely inauthentic, just part of the show. Kate does an incredible job disguising herself as a performer with an outfit taken straight from Pris in Blade Runner and, using the arrows imbedded in her stolen wig, she takes out a few of Clint’s captors (he was not as stealthy as Kate) before breaking his handcuffs with a shot. Clint’s thoughts are quite accurate – she is perfect. They dive through a window and we are brought crashing back to the beginning and, once again, it looks bad. Until, that is, Kate pulls off the hardest shot of the issue and nails the villains in the eyes with five arrows shot simultaneously, echoing the same breathe and release ritual Clint uses earlier. They leave their foes blind and paralysed, but alive.

The strip ends with the criminals planning their retaliation, and Clint asking a mysterious favour of Kate. There is an element of sexual tension between the two, but given the number of relationships he has embarked on with team-mates, he knows that it would be a bad idea, telling Kate that he doesn’t want to “screw up” by sleeping with her – I am inclined to agree, as are many other readers who would hate to see their fantastic repartee tainted. This is a clever and funny piece of work with an oddly disjointed art style which on occasion has strikingly framed panels, as the one in which Kate and Clint move through a ballroom which shows the progression of their movements through a stationary panel.

One last wonderful thing about this series of comics is David Aja’s recommended listening which features under the fan mail – this month’s being Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden (part 1)”, and if this isn’t enough for you Aja has set Spotify playlists of music to accompany each comic. These can be found under the Spotify username “greyrabbit” or on http://blog.davidaja.com. I seriously recommend checking it out – a truly interesting listening experience to go with your beautiful comic.

As an extra, here are some of my favourite lines of the book.

Clint: Kate. Kate? The bad guys are robbing the bad guys. I figured it all out.

Clint: I’m great at boats!

Kate: Hey. Jerk du Soleil.

Comics

Twelve Reasons to Die – Ghostface Killah

An Interview with Scott C

Jupiter’s Legacy #1

The Massive – Black Pacific

East of West #1

Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon

A Word With Bryan Talbot

The Black Beetle in “No Way Out”

Porcelain – A Gothic Fairytale

Monocyte – the graphic novel

Butcher Baker, The Righteous Maker

Charlie Adlard Interview

Batman #13 – Death of the Family

Thought Bubble Anthology 2012

Transfusion #1

Stumptown Vol 2 #1

Batwoman #0

Batman #0

Punk Rock Jesus #3

Hawkeye #2

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