blues in the dark

keep on burning

2011-09-16T14:36:00.003+01:00

A funny thing happened today, I discovered how little I care for the contents of the average comic shop. My son was with one of his grandmothers and I'd gone into town to pay in a cheque at the bank, I had some hard cash burning a hole in my pocket and the opportunity to browse around a comic shop. 20 years ago I could have walked into such a shop with £30 in my pocket and blown it in style, Sandman, Hellblazer, Valiant comics, Cerebus phone books, bone, Drawn and Quarterly, Fantagraphics, Concrete and various other marvelous books. Today, after an hour browsing I came up with "Alec, the years have pants" and a Gottfredson Mickey Mouse collection, neither of which I was prepared to pay the asking price for. Scanning the actual comics on the wall I saw nothing, a plethora of tv based titles for shows I didn't care about and an amorphous mass of Fear Itself tie ins that had no personality of their own. I looked at the DC relaunch and was left wondering why with most of the titles. (Batman related titles must make nearly 50% of DC's output), if it wasn't for the fact that the latest volume Paul Grist's Jack Staff had arrived from Amazon the day before and I'd also had a chance to read the excellent X-Men first class earlier that week I'd think comics today were a lost cause. So that left me wondering, where are all the comics that meet my criteria of good and what are my criteria? So that's where we're headed next, deep into criterialand. And in the meantime, that money continues to burn a hole in my pocket.

Birthday

2011-09-05T13:10:00.001+01:00

It's five days until my 47th Birthday. Over the last two years I've been playing with a free website provider and I've come to one conclusion, blogger is vastly superior to very free provider I've looked at. So, it's bye bye website and hello more blogger. I do get slightly anal about stuff at times so the keep everything neat I will be running 5 blogs. Bangs Twitches will be bird and nature drawings and eventually a shop, sketching urbanely will be where I post urban sketches done while wearing a smoking jacket and calling everyone dahling, Inclined to Ramble will be thoughts and ramblings on life and the Universe, September Roads will be any drawings and comics I feel inclined to post and finally, Blues in the Dark will be reviews and thoughts on the fictional worlds, inspired by the excellent "To busy thinking about my comics". I'll include links back and forth as and when they're of any use.

The DFC , the first 10 weeks

2008-08-01T13:24:00.003+01:00

The DFC is an interesting animal, partly a nostalgic trip for publisher? David Fickling and his key author Phillip Pullman to relive the pleasures of their childhood by producing a high quality, full colour British anthology comic, and part, I think, a tryout farm for graphic novels for Random house, the parent publisher.

The quality of the comics between the covers is undeniable. In the first 10 issues only one strip fell flat for me and that was Jim Medway's New at The Zoo. The rest ranged between very good and outstanding.

The first strip in the initial six issues was Pullman's "Adventures of John Blake". I think reading it that it took Pullman a while to get the hang of pacing a six page weekly strip. The first four issues were set up that a more experienced comic writer could have folded into a single episode, John Blake is on a sailing ship that passes through time via a strange fog, he becomes involved with a young girl who he and his ship mates save from the sea. There's other business going on, someone investigating Blake's ship, the parents of the rescued girl squabbling but esswentially the first four issues are someone learning how to tell a comic strip story. The last two episodes of Blake's story finally get moving with some real action and then the story goes on hiatus. Character is where Pullman is at his best in thiscomic as each member of the crew, Serena's bickering parents and even the mystery characters are all very clearly individuals. The art, by John Aggs is superb wearing a mixture of apparent influences, both manga and european/British and not a hint os superhero comics styling in sight. Aggs panel to panel storytelling is excellent with more well used camera angles then I've seen anywhere except Eisner's Spirit. Aggs builds tension exceptionally well, a superb example being when the crew are exploring a rotting hulk of a cargo vessel and in one page Aggs shows a character's reliance on his rifle for courage, his isolation on the massive vessel and his extreme nervousness, all in a clever melding of European clearline with manga speedlines.

The next story is Super Animal Adventure Squad, a one pager by James Turner, would have sat as comfortably in WHizzer and Chips as John Blake would have in the Eagle. It is a superb humour strip combining knockabout humour with a light but biting parody of what tends to pass as adventure TV for kids, think Power Rangers specifically. The art is light and open with minimal backgrounds and works perfectly.

The standout strip for me is "The Boss" by Mother and son team, John and Patrice Aggs. John's writing on "The Boss" brought to mind one of the best Children's drama's ever "Press Gang". To my mind the writing is that good. Aggs takes what is essentially an Enid Blyton Famous Five plot, plucky kids foil robbers through their own intelligence and the fact adults always underestimate kids, and imbued it with enough character, humour and believable action to transcend anypossible influences. Aggs' characters are believable school kids capable of fighting and supporting each other at the same time and were recognisbale among kids I know. Patrice Aggs' art is what would make or break a story like this and in Patrice we have the perfect artist for the tale. Patrice has a style reminiscient of Warren Pleece and Nick Abadzis but much cleaner. Her kids are fluid, relaxed and all slightly crumpled looking, her teachers looklike people you'd see working in schools, grey and weary but dedicated and occasionaly enjoying the power a little too much. The story also plays with the natural heirarchy that comes into play among groups of kids showing their almost animal like pack instinct to follow an alpha male.

My other personal favourite is Vern and Lettuce, a gentle, dreamlike mix of rabbits, moles and a sheep groundskeeper. The story, such as it is, is flimsy but works on an emotional level to give you a warm fuzzy feeling,

The DFC, like most good comics anthologies, is fluid. If you don't like a strip chances are it'll be gone in a few weeks and the strips you do like will undoubtedly appear in collected form sooner or later. I was looking for something to share with my seven year old daughter and The DFC has proved to be perfect. We each have our favourite strips and as she gets older she'll enjoy some others better.

Glamorpuss #1

2008-05-27T21:05:00.004+01:00

The problem that is Dave Sim. Dave Sim is one of the most individual and talented cartoonists to come out of the North American continent in the last 30 years. Cerebus the Ardvaark was always innovative, beautifully rendered, well written (even when what he was writing about was offending so many people) and uniquely lettered. The problem was his subject matter. Cerebus after Jaka's Story saw Sim being written off as more and more mysoginistic and then he found God (but in his own strange way) and would have been better thought of if he'd had leprosy. His opinions made him a moral leper. Yet he is still a unique talent.

There's a side of me feels I can't like Glamorpuss because it's author is a mysoginistic bigot and as a right on, pc, modern man I must shun him. But another, winning, side of me looks at the talent instead of the man and enjoys Glamorpuss.

Glamorpuss is Dave Sim trying to study the photorealistic style of Alex Raymond and John Prentice and Al Williamson, looking at why they did what they did, artistically, and trying to figure out their artistic choices. You also get some historical tidbits about the lousy treatment their work received from the syndicates. This part works wonderfully and I found it totally engrossing. There's also a middle section "The self-education of N'Atashae" and this is where it becomes more difficult. The section is a study of female shallowness wrapped up in gorgeous art. It's beautifully written also but you feel bad for liking it. It's hard to judge seriously at the moment, from this first episode it could dengenerate into a Dave Sim screed against women or it could becomse something far more interesting. I hope that's the case and I'll give it a couple more issues before I decide whether to keep reading or drop it like a hot potato.

The Story of an Idea

2008-05-18T09:42:00.005+01:00

Finance has been tight this month so purchases have been minimal, no Final Crisis, no DC Universe 0, no Skrull invasions. I don't feel any the less for it as I haven't bought a Marvel comic that didn't come out of a bargain bin for a very long time and the recent grim and gritty turn at DC, 20 years to late, has soured me on their books too. I miss the days of story first, continuity second and heroes who were heroes. The books are unreadable to me and probably unpenetrable to anybody with less than a Masters Degree in DC or Marvel history. Maybe Morrison will be the saviour of the Universe. I like the symmetry of Barry Allen returning in a Final Crisis after dying in the first.

Anyway, for a comics fix that's left me with anything I can get for free. Not being a gamer, a techie or a furry 70% of webcomics I looked at sailed through the outer atmosphere and over my head. I read a manga on line (Mushi Shi) which was absolutely superb and I want to purchase it asap, but I won't bit torrent stuff so little worth reading was left to me on that front.

So I started fishing around for free, downloadable pdf comics. Amid a whole load of rubbish I found something truly outstanding, "The Story of an Idea". A twelve page comic by Moebius, yes that Moebius, about the foundation of the Red Cross and it's history and work. It's available as a free download and more impressively, they'll mail you a free European album size copy from Switzerland, for nothing.

Moebius does a superb job breaking down nearly a hundred and fifty years across 8 pages of comics. He starts with Henry Dunant, founder of what would become the International Comitteee of The Read Cross, on a battlefield in Solferino, Northern Italy, in 1859, follows Dunant's efforts with very carefully chosen moments and moves up to present day with a brief overview of the work and growth of the Red Cross/Red Crescent.

It's a compelling story and gives Moebius the opportunity to work in most of the styles we've seem from him. He effortlessly melds Alex Raymond like photorealism with his grainy Blueberry style and brief glimpses of the clearline cartoon style that appears sometimes in his SF work.

This is so good at doing it's job that I'd recommend getting the print version even if you had to pay for it. You can link to the order page here

47

2008-05-06T21:44:00.002+01:00

Mostly this has been about comics but today something different.

Walter Mosley wrote a children's book, what is now called a YA (young adult?) novel. I've read much of Mosley's work and been impressed by it all, his Easy Rawlins novels are some of the finest examples of crime fiction on the market and books like The man in THe Basement" make him stand out even more as a writer. Mosley gives me, a middle-aged white man, a brief glimpse of what it would be like to have been black in the 50's and 60's in the Southern USA, a look at the fear and the racism and the bigoted attitudes on both sides of the fence and it ain't pretty. But at the very foundations of Mosley's writing is a tiny nugget of hope for humanity. Most critics reviewing Mosley's work pick up on his understanding of the sheer bleakness of black life and ignore the fact that the man's writing show him to be an optimist, battered and bruised but still an optimist.

47 is perhaps his bleakest and most optimistic work. It's a tale of slavery in 1830's USA and it doesn't pull punches for being a YA novel. The tales of beatings, brandings, cotton picking and the general life of slaves has an honesty to it that makes you feel embarrassed to be white. It makes it very clear that the only difference between slaves and dogs is dogs were better treated and better fed. As the book goes on it moves from being a terse historical drama and moves into the realms of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It makes the move gracefully though, the language changes little and the concepts tall John, a visiting alien who looks black, brings with him of interstellar travel and the end of the Universe sit with unexpected comfort in the cotton fields and slaves graveyard. In the hands of a lesser writer this would have been an historical tome the size of a house brick and a fantasy trilogy three times as large again. In Walter Mosley's hands the book becomes about bigger themes. It's about how people treat each other, how mistreatment can beget mistreatment but can also bring out strength in another. Mostly though it's about freedom and what it means to be free, the responsibility that comes with it. Time and again 47, the books "hero"gives up some chance or semblance of freedom from external forces because of an understanding of what freedom means spiritually. He finds it's no use being free if those he knows and loves are still slaves.

This is a heartfelt book with, apparently, links to a "slave" legend of a saviour called Long John who would resuce the slaves and return them to the bosom of mother Africa. Mosley has taken what was originally a fireside tale meant to momentarily cheer a lost people far from home and given it a resonance that speaks to more than blacks in this day and age. For all it's bleakness it's a book of hope and I look forward to the day when my daughter is old enough to read it herself.

essential X-Men vol 1

2008-04-05T15:56:00.002+01:00

This is not something I would normally buy, I have to be honest. However, finding the first four essetial volumes in a charity shop for £2.50 each and a recent overpowering sense of nostalgia made them a bargain I couldn't resist. I have fond memories of reading these books in my mid teens and I was interested to see how they'd hold up today.

The first thing that comes to mind is if these had been published today the X-men would have been cancelled within the first year. Despite Dave Cockrum's stirling art, which looks incredible in black and white, The first year was at best mediocre and at worst awful. Giant Size X-Men #1 was well written by Len Wein and a good origin story, sketching out the characters and abilities of the leads. Chris Claremont arrived with issue 94, the frst New X-Men issue picking up from the old numbering, and the quality dipped rapidly. The villain, Count Nefaria is unimpressive, his animal henchmen are 3rd rate and it's only Thunderbird's death at the end of the two part story in issue #95 that has raised it to iconic level. The following issues featured a a dull mix of fantasy with stories about leprachauns, science fiction promises with the alien princess Lilandra's trip to Earth and her psychic intercourse with Charles Xavier and horror. Only the science fiction elements offered any real hint of what was to come. Any modern book taking this long to find it's feet would have been cancelled within it's first year but thankfully that didn't happen and Claremont was able to go on to produce some of the finest superhero comics available (at least until Alan Moore came along and rewrote the rulebook).

It wasn't until issue 107 that things started to really come together with the introduction of Corsair and his starjammers and the Imperial Guard, Dave Cockrum's answer to DC's Legion of Superheroes. At their best the X-Men are either epic tales or very small stories and this was the real start of their greatest epic, the Dark Phoenix saga. Issue #108 was John Byrne's first issue on the book that would make his name and gave us our first real glimpse of the Phoenix to come. Claremont by this time was hitting his stride and really getting to know his characters. He wasn't yet as wordy as he would become towards the end of his original run on the book and his partnership with John Byrne was bringing out the best in him as far as storytelling goes. People involved in the book at the time have defined Claremont and Byrne's relationship as fiery and perhaps that is what made the books so brimming with energy.

Strangely Byrne's artwork is the biggest disappointment. Although his backgrounds are lush and full his figure drawing is stiff and blocky, people looking like they've been cut by cookie cutters and dropped onto backgrounds they have no interaction with. Compared to Cockrum's fluid figurework and very individual character design Byrne comes off poorly.

At the end of the day though this is about the entire package, story and art, and the second half of this book features the start of one of the seminal runs on comics of the 70's and 80's.

Kampung Boy

2008-03-30T19:46:00.003+01:00

I bought Kampung Boy, pretty much on spec, about six months ago and have wanted to review it since starting this site. Trouble is I can't find anything to add to the superlatives others have written about the book. Lat's writing is honest and affecting. His artwork is totally perfect for the material, tales of his boyhood, growing up in a tiny village in 50's Malaysia. Each page is one picture with text in a style somewhat similar to the British cartoonist Giles with a line quality like Charles Shulz and an energy to his work that brought to mind Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbs. Of course Lat's strength is that he is none of these people, he may bring them to mind as our brains reach for comparisons to put Lat in a compartment, but he is his own man, his own artist.

The story works like all good autobiography, picking key moments from a life and illustrating them honestly but lovingly. There's little else you can say about it except to recommend it whole heartedly.

The book is published by First Second, one of the best graphic novel publishers out there. They have a wonderful backlist of what can best be described as "literary" comics with people like Joan Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Eddie Campbell and Derek Kirk Kim. Lat sits comfortably with this group as an equal in skill and ability, if not yet in terms of "fame" in the western comics world.

Just buy the book, it will cost you the price of four or five Marvel or DC books and will stay with you a helluva lot longer.

Echo # 1

2008-03-23T22:11:00.002Z

Terry Moore. Along with Dave Sim and Jeff Smith, Moore is one of the holy trinity of self publishers from the 80's and 90's. There were other self publishers, but these three were the big stars and have all returned to the fray within months of each other. I enjoyed Rasl, I'm looking forward to Judenhasse and Glamourpuss. Echo though I was unsure about. Moore, more than any of the others, has been an artist I've had problems with. His Strangers in Paradise was a mishmash of genre fictions that never really gelled for me, it always seemed put together on the hoof with a minimal amount of preplanning.

Echo looks beautiful. Behind an awkward and badly posed cover is some of the most stylish black and white artwork to grace modern comics in a very long time. The nearest analogy would have to be Paul Chadwick's art on Concrete. Moore obviously holds a passel of illustrators among his influences although you'd be hard pushed to specify names based on his work.

The story is a different animal. Based on the first issue I expect to lose interest fairly quickly. The story so far is this; a woman wearing a scientific supersuit, a comicbook cliche, is blown out of the sky and disintegrated over a desert. The suit, now globules of cool, soft metal rains down on another woman, a photgrapher working in the desert. The suit, apparently, is some sort of bio-metal and clings to, then spreads over, the woman. The photographer is in the middle of a messy divorce, a fact explained by an answerphone message.

The writing is adequate but unexceptional and the story uncomfortably cliche ridden. Moore's supporters will probably tell you his writing will take his characters beyond these cliched beginnings (most fans of Strangers in Paradise will say it was the characters that were key to their enjoyment of that book more than the plot). Based on the first issue I can't see Moore gaining any new fans from this.

Rasl # 1

2008-03-16T11:56:00.003Z

Jeff Smith's Bone was one of the seminal American comics of the 90's and 00's. With it's complex but accessible giant storyline Bone followed the Cerebus business model of keeping issues in print as long as possible and then moving into permanently available trade paperbacks and had tremendous success. Bone now exists in comic size trade paperbacks and hardbacks, single issues, a mammoth Complete Bone single volume and in paperback and hardback as the cornerstone of Scholastic's graphic novel range. Alongside Terry Moore of "Strangers in Paradise" and, of course, Dave Sim of Cerebus fame, Smith stands as part of the Holy Trinity of that period of self publishing. Interestingly all three are starting new projects, within months of each other, and are sticking with the same publishing model,more or less. As other creators abandon the pamphlet in favour of the web to trade paperback model these three push ahead old school style.

Smith is presumably secure in the knowledge that there is a sufficient fanbase out there who will read anything he does, as are Moore and Sim, that presumably the new pamphlets won't be too much of a loss maker. (Each is also fortunate enough to have a large body of work behind them that continues to create some reasonable level of cash flow.) Only time will show if they were right to make this assumption.

Rasl, Smith's new book, is a brave step in many ways in that it is a world away from the all ages goodness of Bone. The book steps away from the traditional fantasy settings that made Bone immediately accessible to comics readers and non readers alike and from the strong moral compass of the lead characters that made them instantly likable and into a morally grey future/present of alternative universes with a thief for a main protagonist. The story too is immediately more complex. Gone is the linear storytelling of Bone. Instead we are dropped straight into the story with our "hero" wandering parched through a desert under a blistering sun and from there into a, presumed, flashback which explains the character's modus operandi as a thief stealing from other universes who appears to be about to be caught in the act by someone who knows what he's up to. One imagines this is leading up to how he came to be wandering in the desert.

Smith does a nice job with the story setting up just the right balance of answers and new questions to keep the reader interested without confusing them. Smith treats his readers like adults and doesn't feel obliged to give them a full and detailed explanation of everything that's happening. Reading through you know the hero is a thief, has been one for some time, has come into "ownership" of a way to travel between alternative worlds (thieving from them instead) and someone,possibly the original owners of the Universe hopping abilities, is after him. To my mind that's good writing because it enables you to put together the clues to what is happening. The lead is instantly likable without having to condone what he does, like Michael Caine's "Alfie" or the protagonists in "Ocean's Eleven" and the artwork is superb, black and white and rarely puts a foot wrong. My only concern, and it's a minor one, is that it was hard to tell if the lead was sweating or bleeding in the desert scenes. That aside you have wonderful art and a complex story that's more than enough to keep me coming back every six weeks for more. (and probably buying the collections as well)

The Spirit 14

2008-03-04T22:01:00.002Z

There's an old saying about being careful what you wish for, and it's true. I absolutely loved the first 13 issues of but found myself occasionally wishing they were more Eisnerish, more adventurous in their page design, basically I was wishing the were by Will Eisner.

Issue 14 showed me what I would get if my wish was answered and I was sorely disappointed. Behind a wonderful Jordi Bernet cover there lies a very disappointing Eisner pastiche. Darwyn Cooke took the character, brought him bang up to date and left the essence untouched. Evanier, Aragones and Ploog create what could have been a lesser ghosted story from when Eisner was in the army. Ploog,I believe, worked for Eisner at one point during Eisner's PS days and Eisner was clearly a big influence on him. That in a nut shell is the problem with the art, Ploog is apparently trying to recreate Eisner and is hindered by the fact that there was only one Will Eisner. Ploog is a great artist and has lost none of his ability to draw sequential art in the last 35 years. However he's too similar to Eisner to have any hope of pulling this off without looking like a weak copy and worse, he's saddled with a very unsuitable inker in Mark Farmer. Farmer's inks work well with a high gloss artist like Alan Davis but Ploog needs someone looser and more textural to bring out the best in his work if he can't ink himself and the book needs someone stylistically distant from Will Eisner to work artistically. Dave Gibbons, Guy Davis or Richard Corben would have been ideal.

The cliched story of accidental murder and blackmail doesn't even bear description. Both Aragones and Evanier are capable of so much more. Evanier's wonderful Crossfire is everything this book should have been and Aragones work on Batlash is superb. This though is a travesty. They have been so respectful of the source material that all they've achieved is a poor copy. To say I'm disappointed doesn't even begin to say it.

As a character and a legacy The Spirit deserves the best and most subversive creators available and then it went the way of most such characters. It was handed off to people who emulated the surface gloss of the character and ignored it's essential core.

I doubt I'll be back unless the creators change.

Prince of Heroes

2008-02-08T19:02:00.000Z

I like Rod Espinosa, or more accurately his work. As a writer artist he is almost one of a kind. He tends to write big sweeping fairytale/scifi romances (In the old fashion sense of the word) that for all their size retain a very human core. I know nothing about him, his art and choice of story would suggest he came out of a furry/manga background without picking up the excesses of either group. The Courageous Princess and Neotopia are among the best all ages material on my bookshelves and I look forward to introducing my daughter to them both in the not to distant future.

Prince of Heroes is Espinosa's new book from his regular publisher, Antarctic Press, and looks to be another winner. The tale so far involves one young lad, Ronen, leaving the planet his family appear to rule to return to Ogol, another planet further inside the empire's borders. On returning to Ogol Ronen encounters some old friends and has a fight with a ill mannered acquaintence called Ermont.

There actually is very little story beyond some basic scene setting, but Espinosa is such an assured storyteller that this seems to be pretty unimportant. The first issue is about texture and feeling. Espinosa uses a great dealof computer generated texture in his art but it's mostly unobtrusive. It mostly becomes a problem in the two page spread in the centre of the book, where it looks like an artistic shortcut that didn't work. The spread is a panorama of a small town atop a great wall in a desert, the wallappears to be made of cogs. There is very little line work used on the landscape,mostly it's made up of two juxtapositioned textures. The lack of line work deprives the image of any real definition and make it look like a brown paper collage, which puts it at odds with the rest of the book. The look may have been intentional but I found it jarring and it took me, briefly, out of the story. The crowd scene on the next double page spread is far better. The use of texture on the street scene is much more natural and there's enough linework to give the image a sense of depth and immediacy. Closer inspection shows that Espinosa has been very clever and built the crowded street scene up by using multiple versions of the same figures,sometimes flipped and rescaled. This works suprisingly well and was only noticed under close scrutiny. Another very successful scene is at the beginning of the book Where Ronen rides a carriage into town flanked by hyena like soldiers riding some sort of tapir/zebra cross breed. Espinosa ignores speed lines and sound effects and instead conveys the sense of motion by use of "widescreen" panels, carefully chosen frozen moments, showing the riders caught in mid movement and a faint and low dust trail. It's a very "epic" feeling moment and lets you appreciate the scope of the story immediately.

Ronen's fight with Ermont is very well orchestrated, it has the grace and humour of one of Jackie Chan's better fights. Also, because Ronen is fighting for the villagers against a bully, it immediately emphasises his role as hero without a great deal of posturing and exposition.

This is a good book and probably my biggest qualm is that it will read better as a collected work.

Yotsuba&!

2008-01-24T20:35:00.000Z

I have a confession. I downloaded scanlations of Yotsuba&!. I didn't want to, I tried to buy the books legally, honest guv, but when I couldn't get them, well the the need was too great. I found a guy who'd done scanlations. I'll just read the first story I told myself, just to see if it's worth buying. So I printed the first story and read it on the bus. It should come with a health warning, I didn't know it was addictive. Next day I was back for more and before I knew it I had printouts of the whole first volume. My conscience got the better of me and I managed to track down a copy of volume 4 in my local comic shop. I had to have it but now I've read that too. Now I'm desperate, I don't want to get more off a scanlator, but......

Truth to tell Yotsuba&! is so good it does get you feeling like you're addicted. These simple stories of a child with boundless enthusiasm, encountering everything from swings to airconditioning for the first time are told so engagingly that you just want more. Yotsuba, the heroine of these stories, shouldn't work. A story about a 4/5 year old discovering how a swing works, going fishing for the first time or locking herself in the toilet really shouldn't be this entertaining, yet it is. Creator Kiyohiko Azuma embues what should be a blank slate character with so much character and enthusiasm, without wandering into the realms of cloying sentimentality that you can'thelp but be engaged by her. Without Azuma's deft handling this would be a manga equivalent of Robin Williams movie "Bicentennial Man". Yotsuba's family and neighbours make up the rest of the cast. Her father seems to be the only one who actually understands her enthusiasm although even he finds it tiring and perhaps even tiresome at times. The others, particularly the neighbours largely accept her for what she is and seem to get swept up in her adventures. Reading Yotsuba&! makes me think Azuma is either a parent, indulgent uncle or has worked as a pre-school teacher becuse, though exaggerated, his depiction of this very young girl is incredibly true to life.

Azuma's artwork is a pleasant break from the extreme "big eye" artwork of many books on the stand. It has more in common with the likes of Ken Amahatsu (Love Hina) and Katsuhiro Otomo than the work of artists such as Clamp and and Rumiko Takahashi and it's subdued realism, particularly in the beautifully rendered backgrounds stops the book from turning into a slapstick comedy.

This is a touching, funny and enjoyable book and we need more manga like this on bookshleves everywhere.

Fell #9

2008-01-21T21:54:00.000Z

I have to say up front that I don't care for much of Warren Ellis's writing. Ellis's characters often lack any kind of likable characteristics. They are not people you would want to spend time with and, in any concerted way, they are not people you would want to read about unless you yourself were sour and nihilistic. Ellis's Ministry of Space was a deeply believable working of how Britain could have achieved a space programme, and to a certain extent, how America achieved theirs. That said, it was an unpalatable read for me and I guess I'm one of those who prefer the fairytale world of Dan Dare.

Fell though, Fell is different. Different to anything else Ellis has done, different to any other comic out there. Perhaps it is the presence of an artistic collaborator of the quality of Ben Templesmith. Many of the artists Ellis has worked with, Wolfer, Ryp, Robertson and others hold no appeal to me which in turn makes it harder to appreciate Ellis's work. Templesmith however I "get". He seems more like a collaborator and less like a tool, like Cassidy on Planetary.

Richard Fell as a character is unusual for my experience of Ellis' writing. He seems genuinely concerned with retaining his own humanity in the face of humanity's less than glowing behaviour, with doing what is morally right. Unlike many of Ellis's characters he doesn't seem to be morally ambiguous. In this story he encounters a young war veteran whose parents have died due to bureaucratic ineptitude while he was serving away. Fell sympathises with the soldier and aids him in making a symbolic gesture against the bureaucrat who caused his parents death. The gesture involves the bureaucrat receiving an off panel beating from the soldier, but the gesture remains symbolic and you feel genuine sympathy for the soldier and for Fell because this is all he can do to make the situation right.

Templesmith makes some excellent artistic choices in the book. At one point, when Fell is talking to the soldier from the other side of a door, Templesmith indicates the soldier's presence by drawing a booted stick figure over the top of the door to indicate what Fell can make out of the soldier's presence. This nicely dehumanises the soldier in what we are first lead to believe is a hostage situation. The soldier only gains a face and personality when we eventually enter the apartment and find he is simply trying to make sense of finding his parents' dessicated corpses. This was initially Ellis' idea, demonstrating nicely how he is able to think visually, but it is Templesmith's execution that makes it work.

It is issues like this that make you wish Fell was enough of a money making project that it came out with greater frequency.

Dan Dare #1 and 2

2008-01-19T15:56:00.001Z

The return of Dan Dare should be a bigger event in the real world but it seems to have happened fairly quietly. Two issues of the book are out now with little press attention. I guess it's because many of the pop culture aware journalists today are two young to remember the sheer scale and popularity of the original.

Dan Dare was massive in this country when the Eagle, the character's original home, was launched in 1950. It had all the hoopla and merchandising tie-ins you'd see for Star Wars 25 years later. After the comic's demise in 1970 there were attempts to revive the character. There was the travesty that appeared in 2000ad as they jettisoned everything except Dan himself, although even he had a new body, and attempted to remake the character into another gun toting testosterone hero. Something which met with limited success. The 80's saw the Eagle relaunch where a beautifully illustrated Dan Dare flew once more alongside all the old spacefleet stalwarts. The stories though were very much in the mold of Frank Hampson's stories from the 1950's and struggled to find a following in the Thatcher decade. Next up was the depressing Morrison and Hughes story which played a retired and disillusioned Dare against a Thatcherite government. The book looked beautiful, Rian Hughes captured Dares world perfectly without slavish and nostalgic reproductions and Grant Morrison's story was, to my mind, true to the character and the disillusionment felt by old soldiers who find the world they fought for isn't the world they hoped for.

Then there was this.

Dan Dare from Virgin comics.

Fronted by two excellent British creators, Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine and produced by Dan Dare fan Richard Branson's comic company. First and foremost the book retains a distinct Britishness about it. It builds on the original book's conceit of Britain as a world power by making Britain "The World Power" following a disastrous war between the USA and China, which has destroyed the US and seemingly other countries as well. Dare is retired and living an illusory life on an asteroid surrounded by images and artifacts of the past. Only Digby and Jocelyn Peabody appear from the old supporting cast so far, Digby now sporting a beard and a lot more dignity than he used to and Jocelyn having risen high in a Blairite government. Dare is drawn back into the fold to combat a Treen attack fleet lead by The Mekon intent on apparently obliterating the Earth.

Ennis is an interesting writer, a writer with two very distinct sides. There is the excess for the sake of excess Ennis who gave us books such as Preacher, Hitman and The Boys and then there is the respectful Ennis, playing with toys he clearly loves, who gave us Battler Briton, War Stories and now Dan Dare. Garth Ennis is respectful enough to give us a recognisable Dan Dare and co but is not afraid to move things on in a way that works. Mixing in a little political comment, The Prime Minister seems to be an amalgam of Tony Blair and George W Bush but without being a caricature, and some basic political extrapolation, a war between China and the USA isn't completely unimaginable, with some familiar characters in difficult situations Ennis comes up with a story that plays to the strengths of an old fashioned character. The appeal of a character like Dan Dare is he isn't morally ambiguous. He does what he believes to be right and then deals with the consequences.

It's also nice to see Digby treated as something more than a sidekick and comic relief. Being away from Dan has given him a maturity and gravitas he lacked in the original stories.

The art by Gary Erskine is also impressive. I seem to remember Erskine's work on Knights of Pendragon and The Lords of Misrule as being much more textural than this, like John Severin's work. His work here is slicker, glossier but still recognisably his. His story telling is fine and functional, nothing to flash or fancy but it is his design that stands out. His Space Fleet has a functional, military look to it, more Battlestar Galactica than Star Trek, with vehicles that have grown out of the original Hampson designs but have a look all their own. The books are both worth reading and should please an old time fan while being equally accessible to a new reader.

Some new kind of slaughter

2008-01-15T21:52:00.000Z

I never read A David Lewis' "Lone and level sands" but based on his new book, "some new kind of slaughter", I'd be inclined towards tracking it down. The book is focused on "Flood" myths from around the world, interweaving them with a modern flood story.

The artwork is lose and cartoony, essaying a slightly different style for each story. The stories have a ring of academic accuracy to them while retaining an earthy liveliness as well that make them eminently readable, except, unfortunately, for the modern set story, which reads like a mediocre Hollywood disaster movie script. Lone scientist cries out against global warming and impending disaster but is ignored. disaster arrives and she worries for lost child and ex husband/boyfriend. Seen it far too many times to be entertained by it. However, this is only the first issue and the story may lead off in unexpected directions since it looks to be using the myths as parallels.

Definitely worth a look and I'll be back for issue two.

Batlash # 1

2008-01-12T21:11:00.000Z

Unlike Jonah Hex, Batlash makes no pretense towards reality, instead it's a lively and entertaining western melodrama. The hero is blonde and handsome, an underdog by birth, the heroine also blonde and beautiful and, though feisty, inclined to find her self under threat from the villain and the villain, of course is dressed in black with a moustache made for twirling.

This however is Batlash with a flower in his hat and a book of poetry in his hand and a woman pressed close to his lips. Sergio Aragones, the character's original creator, ensures the character stays true while western writer Peter Brandvold presumably brings his "greater" knowledge of the old west to play. The true star of the book though is John Severin, unbelievably 86 years of age, and still drawing up a storm. WHile many artists attempting to draw Native Americans would draw a stock figure and dress him in a reasonably appropriate costume, Severins Commanches are clearly Indians, not white men in body paint. Likewise his horses, he doesn't draw one horse which is coloured differently to show there are a number of different animals, his horses are individuals. The commanche pony looks very different, physically, to Miss Wilder's Morgan. John Severin is a man who learned to draw and chose to draw comics, not a man who learned to draw comics and nothing else.

The story itself, based on the first issue, seems like it could turn out to be fairly predictable, hopefully it won't but even if it does the Old West drawn by John Severin is enough to get me back for the next issue.

Jonah Hex # 26

2008-01-09T20:54:00.000Z

Jonah Hex # 26 is, and I put this as politely as possible, a mean spirited, nasty piece of trash.

Writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti are men too deeply immersed in the darker corners of our pop culture, much of their writing reflects that culture rather than a deeper realm of reference built on experience and broader literary tastes. Their writing has rarely been less than adequate and generally is's been entertaining at the very least, but this piece of slasher/exploitation movie inspired crap is just embarrassing.

Jonah encounters two sisters who have been luring and torturing and dismembering evilmen. He allows the men, tongeless, armless, legless to attacke, mutilate and kill the two women as some sort of justice before taking in the men to claim the bounty on their brutalised bodies.

Jonah is not a good man as such. He carries a great deal of rage and will often stand outside the law he earns his living from. Neither though is he a bad man. He has a moral code, however loose, and allowing two women to be bitten to death by a handful of deranged multiple amputees seems,to me, to be very out of character, even by the standards of this current interpretation of his character.

This abberent behaviour is the least of this book's problems compared to the story itself. If the women had lured criminals and killed them and shown a reason for their action then although unsavoury still the story weould have been palatable. Instead we have this vile concoction, a comic book version of the torture/slasher horror movies that have acheived a bizarre popularity at the moment.

If the book can be said to have a redeeming value it's the artworkof Guiseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Landini as seem in the quieter moments of the story. Their rendition of Hex is excellent as is their appreciation of the western mileu.

Jonah Hex walks the unsavoury corners of The West but this was enough to make me contemplate briefly cancelling the book from my Standing Order. In the end I chose not too because it's the only place I can lay my hands on new Jordi Bernet artwork on a semi regular basis. Fortunately it seems to have been a blip and the book seems to be back on track with issue 27 but another issue like this and the idea of re reading the original run, one issue a month, becomes much more enticing.

showcase presents "Sgt Rock"

2008-01-08T20:34:00.000Z

I first encountered Rock towards the end of his life when the quality was waining. Every soldier had a nickname and the book read like the war story equivalent of a superhero book, which considering that was about everything else on the spinner rack at the time does make a kind of sense.

Showcase presents feature the earliest stories of Rock and Easy Co and they are in a very different league. They have more in common with the first Die Hard movie in terms of how they treat the characters, they almost literally put them through hell and beat the living daylights out of them. There is no glamourising war, no gung-ho "Take that you Dirty Bosch" stereotyping. The Germans mostly look as beaten and desperate as the men of Easy. There's the occasional Nazi stereotype but it's a rare thing in to be found in over 500 pages.

Artistically the book is a triumph. Joe Kubert draws most of the stories and is at the height of his power, his art is dark and almost Ditkoesque at points with a degree of realism that was unexpected. Every character looks tired, exhausted and believable with battered and weary faces and uniforms. The biggest find however was Gerry Grandenetti. His covers have a simplicity and power that you never see these days. Throw in a little Irv Novick and some Russ Heath and you have a book that, artistically is probably the strongest Showcase to date.

The writing was a major surprise though. Having previously read the volumes on "The Haunted Tank, The Unknown Soldier and The Challengers of the Unknown I was expecting to be entertained but I didn't expect to be so engaged on an emotional level. Robert Kanigher was born in 1915 and saw service during WWII and began writing when he was about 14, which explains the superb balance between realism and dramatic story telling. The stories have a believability that was lacking in the recent Kubert "Sgt Rock" mini series.

The short version of this review is "It's good, buy it!"

Rededication

2008-01-06T20:30:00.000Z

Trying to post daily on here became a major problem when our IT dept decided to block Blogger shortly after I started posting here. "Inclined to Ramble" has been easier to keep up to date but this site has fallen rapidly by the wayside. The other thing is that, although I have drawn something virtually everyday, a great deal of it's been crap done because I feel I have to do something and that's not what I want to achieve. So I'll continue to occassionally post artwork on "Inclined to Ramble" but "Blues in The Dark" is going to be my review site where, at least once a week,I'll post a review from that week's purchases of books and comics. It'll be mostly graphical, mostly comics and mostly short pieces, longer book reviews will appear on Ramble as usual.

Another new year

2008-01-06T11:20:00.000Z

Well like many people I started the year by taking stock and reviewing various parts of my life and considering resolutions. Last year was not a bad year all in all. It had it's low points, some of which were very low, but artistically particularly it was a pretty good year.

Sensibly this year I kept my resolutions simple. Last year I drew more than I have in probably the last five, this year I intend to draw more. I'm not setting myself goals such as drawing daily as they seem to suck the pleasure out of drawing. My other resolution is a little more difficult. It's to follow a creative idea through to the end, not give up. Somewhere along the line I forgot that for most of us who have the creative desire it's 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration and while it's fun it's also requires work to create something.

I have aims for the year though, ideas I want to follow through,

There's a western, "2000 miles", which is currently a story outline waiting to happen. Probably in comic form and 16 pages."A horde of winter gods" is a supernatural love story, there's an idea for a kids book that I've been batting around in my head for several years now and finally there are a couple of pictures (paintings) living in my head at the moment that need to come out. There may be a story to go with them, I'm not entirely sure.

Of course I hit a first bump within days of the new year starting. Climbing into the loft to put the Christmas Decorations away I managed to slice open the little finger on my drawing hand almost down to the first joint. So everytime I try to do something I'm more worried about banging my finger and the accompanying pain and when I forget to worry I inevitably hit it and end up with my eyes watering from the pain. It's still hard to believe something so stupid could hurt so much.

HMS Cricket

2007-09-18T16:17:00.001+01:00

One of the ruins of the temporary wartime Naval base called, I think, HMS Cricket.

Seagull

2007-09-18T16:15:00.001+01:00

A seagull sketched very quickly at the Royal Victoria Country Park.

character designs

2007-09-11T20:32:00.000+01:00

These are character studies for a new story I'm working on. It's an adaptation of an Australian folktale/myth.

Birthday elephants

2007-09-10T11:13:00.000+01:00

Two whole days before I missed a post. Must be some kind of record. My excuse? It was my birthday yesterday and I spent much of the day either too drunk or too far from a computer to post. Therefore two today.

Elephants, and probably they should be pink. First one is a sketch of people queuing to feed an elephant at Australia Zoo.

The second is a portrait of the above elephant.

Mini me and colleauges

2007-09-08T20:06:00.001+01:00

This was a picture I did of myself and two colleagues during a high stress period at work to show our different ways of coping.

Dinosaur bones

2007-09-07T11:55:00.000+01:00

With my probably doomed plan to post something here everyday, I thought I'd start simple with this sketch of a dinosaur display in the Natural History Museum in London. The sketch is pencil in a Molskine sketch pad that I habitually carry with me. Still don't sketch in it daily but at least I've got the habit of carrying it with me.