Oh, and right after I finish writing this I gotta pay the store’s Quarterly Taxes.

Anyway, all that stuff has been on hold the last few days (well, I MIGHT be getting the pool table tonight but that hardly counts…) because I’ve been putting together the epic sale that I’m sure you’ve seen my tweeting and FB Statusing about.

First off, if you haven’t checked it out yet (and it’s not after 12 pm EST on Wednesday the 22nd) you should do so: http://escapepodcomics.com/products-page/mega-sale/

Back? Good. Bought some stuff? Excellent! Right, so… I just wanted to explain the logic behind this sale that may, to some, seem like a clearance of unsold books or some other negative idea. While I will admit that a few of the books I put up are ones that haven’t moved, it’s actually a very small minority of the items up.

The sale came about thusly: more than one person online has complained to me that the shop component of our website is just too sparse and, up until today, didn’t even feature any actual COMICS. I wanted to remedy this but online sales while having a physical store-front are hard. What if someone buys a copy online and someone else pulls a book off the shelf at the same moment? That being the case, maybe you should have different stock for the internet and the storefront? It’s a complex situation to say the least. Be that as it may, the people who raised the issue were right. I built this store on the internet and through Kickstarter and Twitter sales, shouldn’t I keep that sort of thing going?

So this compromise is what I reached- I spent the last 5 days putting together this EPIC SALE as a sort of experiment. If all the people who claim they want more books online respond, the items will be snatched up one by one and I will try to do something like this every few months. If, as is often the case, the folks on the interwebz are not ready to put their money where their fingers are, I have now solved their problem as all the items in the sale will  revert to their original prices and be featured in our online store, thus having more books there. I will re-populate those books every few weeks, IF I see movement on them.

Anyway, that’s why I did this and I’m really curious to see how it all plays out.

Ok, done now, I’m going to pay my taxes- you go here:

The post Pimpin’ My Store appeared first on Escape Pod Comics.

Out of that mouth comes the stench of offal and furious threats he turns into promises, dismissing his son Martin as a “sick heifer” and “starved bitch” and deriding his missus as a “fat sow” and “stupid mare”. His vegetarian son is terrified of him.

 - Stephen on Hellblazer vol 5 which contains seven issues never previously reprinted

Thief Of Thieves vol 2: Help Me (£10-99, Image) by Robert Kirkman, James Asmus & Shawn Martinbrough.

Previously in THIEF OF THIEVES VOL 1: I QUIT:

Conrad Paulson quit. On the verge of a Venice job into which old Arno had sunk millions of dollars the most accomplished, plan-ahead thief in modern history quit crime forever.

He loves his wife (but she’s had enough) and foresaw his son Augustus heading the way brother-in-law James went because his talent so spectacularly fails to match his enthusiasm. Unfortunately Augustus won’t quit, had to be rescued from the FBI for fear of incriminating Conrad, and is still in deep shit for what he owes Cristo of the Cartel. And let me tell you, Cristo is not a nice man.

Now Cristo’s kidnapped Augustus’ girlfriend Emma and is threatening to return her finger by finger unless Augustus can convince his Dad to do a job for the Cartel. His Dad’s dead against: he won’t do it; he’s quit. He does, however, agree to rescue Emma but he has a very big problem: Augustus won’t listen to a word he says. God, that boy’s a liability.

Of volume one I wrote that each smartly spliced scene in this classy crime caper has been meticulously arranged in far from chronological order for maximum gasps of “I never saw that coming!” It was insane – all the more brilliant for being so structurally insane.

No less thrilling, this is however far gentler on the cranium chronologically except… there is one massively important piece of recent activity missing. Someone has done something they haven’t told anyone and it will bring every player from volume one back into the game then change its rules forever.

If I was Andy Diggle who takes over next issue (#14) I would be cursing James Asmus for the mess he’s left everyone in, almost as bad as what Bendis left Brubaker on DAREDEVIL. But then it was Diggle who took over from Brubaker on DAREDEVIL so I guess the poor guy’s used to it. (Please note: Andy tells me he’s having a whale of a time, and I don’t doubt him for five seconds. He just says it’s going to get a great deal darker now…)

Shawn Martinbrough, meanwhile, totally owns this series and although I’m rarely wont to comment on covers, a big, big tip of the hat to Shawn for making this complement THIEF OF THIEVES VOL 1 so spectacularly in primary reds and blues. That is Conrad Paulson; this is his son. They don’t compare well, do they?

SLH

Buy Thief Of Thieves vol 2: Help Me and read the Page 45 review here

Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff (£14-99, Fantagraphics) by Peter Bagge with Alan Moore, Robert Crumb, Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Johnny Ryan, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez…

“Jesus lives in my heart, and Satan lives in my womb! …But you know who lives in my brain?”
“Who?”
“Me!”

Superb collection of rib-tickling material from the man who loves to HATE. And chums. Split into various sections, partly by characters who will be familiar to long time Bagge handlers, this work rounds up and corrals material which has previous appeared in HATE annuals, and also collaborations with various luminaries (including Alan Moore, Robert Crumb, Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Johnny Ryan, Los Bros Hernandez) which have appeared in various places before as detailed in the introduction.

In doing so you get the complete run of two of my favourite Bagge creations, “Lovey” and the Shut-Ins”. The astutely observed car crash that is Lovey really does remind me of a friend’s ex-girlfriend just a little too much for comfort (enough said), and in our ever more virtual world Chet of the “Shut-Ins” obsession with the internet is disturbingly accurate. This is Bagge at his best for me, poking fun at everyday people with excruciating finesse. The material in collaboration with others, sometimes on writing, sometimes on art duties, is a true mélange of material. Some outright gag strips, others more typical fictional comedy, but always heavy on the characters, and of course the humour. One for the completists certainly, but also something for those wishing to dip their toes into Peter’s weird world. The only negative thing about the whole collection for me is both the front and rear covers, which seem like almost an after-thought, and probably won’t actually encourage anyone who isn’t familiar with, and fond of, his work to pick it up, which is a shame.

JR

Buy Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff and read the Page 45 review here

The Playboy s/c (New Ed) (£12-99, Drawn & Quarterly) by Chester Brown.

In which fifteen-year-old Chester Brown nervously, sweatily buys his first copy of Playboy magazine… then doesn’t look back.

Actually he looks back a lot – mostly over his shoulder, for the paranoia his new porn habit induces is almost as consuming as his early lust. It’s just not enough to make him quit for more than a few hours, days, weeks or – at a stretch – months at a time. It is, however, very successfully conveyed in all its candid detail, and anyone who has ever been furtive about anything in their lives will be ticking the boxes like crazy.

And of course looking back is precisely what Chester Brown is doing here, in one of the most famous comicbook memoirs on record. It’s a dinky, pocket-sized reissue which fits snugly into the palm of your hand, recut by Brown in a final edit, then fastidiously annotated at the back. There we learn that his original inspiration for beginning THE PLAYBOY was the first of many pages which Joe Matt went on to draw about his own experience with pornography which has been infinitely more obsessive and extensive than Chet’s (see SPENT especially). You’ll also see precisely what’s been excised (and so miss nothing; it’s reprinted here), all in service to keeping the issue at hand as fluid as possible and free from digression. The digressions are in the back where Chester clarifies, for example, his sole experience of shutting his eyes and imagining he was having sex with one of this favourite Playboy pin-ups rather than his girlfriend.

No, the work itself is remarkable straightforward: Chester buys a porn mag, desperately hoping no one he knows will recognise him doing so, and smuggles it home. He then selects his favourite page, and wanks over it using a two-palmed technique I’ve never come across before (and, being gay, I may have slightly more experience in this field than most) while worrying he’ll be disturbed mid-shuffle by his younger brother, mother or father. He sequesters the magazine outside, then frets that someone will have spotted him doing that too. He returns later on either to find it still there (though slightly soiled) and panics when it isn’t. You get the picture: it’s one long hormonally induced cycle of temptation and terror, fear and self-loathing.

As time progresses, Chet builds up whole collections of magazines, ditches them in a panic, buys them back up, tears bits off, burns some, agonises over whether someone will find the charred spine and recognise it for what it is, becomes an expert in Playmates and shuns most other brands as aesthetically inferior.

The art is beautifully fragile – far more fragile even than Jeffrey Brown’s renowned fragility – with a thin, crisp line with wavers in the wind when it comes to grass and hair. Seldom are there more than two panels per page, and little is left out. It’s all very, very, very straightforward, candid and clear. Pornography: cause and effect.

SLH

Buy The Playboy s/c (New Ed)  and read the Page 45 review here

Nobrow Anthology vol 8: Hysteria (£15-00, Nobrow) by various including Luke Pearson, Philippa Rice, Jim Rugg…

Whew, fairly intense anthology of material all based on or around the subject of hysteria, coloured entirely in the exactly the same shades of red, green, blue, brown, grey and black. The roll call of creators is either side of two single pages bearing the legend TURN ME NOW in large letters at 180 degrees to each other. One side of the book is wordless and features 32 truly, truly surreal double-page spreads from different creators. It may or may not be intended as a sequential narrative, I’m still not entirely sure after three or four reads through. I can see a very loose strand running through connecting piece to piece, but I am willing to concede any such narrative could be entirely my own imagination. This could actually be what Nobrow was intending, perhaps, the reader looking over bizarre and disturbing material repeatedly until they enter into some sort of hysterical state!

The other side of the book is a more conventional collection of 14 shorts, though with the same slightly migraine-inducing colour scheme, including offerings from Luke Pearson and Philippa Rice! It’s a good eclectic mix of contemporary fiction through to the rather zany. I do enjoy reading these Nobrow anthologies, though I can’t honestly say I understand what Nobrow intend by them, other than they each seem to be objects in their own right. They’re not really promotional of the imprint to an extent, but more like collagic performance pieces, which perhaps fits nicely enough with the Nobrow ethos.

JR

Buy Hysteria: Nobrow Anthology vol 8 and read the Page 45 review here

Hellblazer vol 5: Dangerous Habits (£14-99, Vertigo) by Garth Ennis, Jamie Delano & Dave McKean, Sean Phillips, Steve Pugh, Will Simpson, more.

“Eyes on the horizon. Future ahead. Never look back. Never let memory step on your shadow.”

VITAL ALERT! This book contains twice as much material as the old DANGEROUS HABITS volume, collecting as it does (in addition to Ennis’ opening salvo) the last seven issues of Jamie Delano’s run for the first time ever, including ‘The Dead-Boy’s Heart’ charmingly illustrated by Sean Phillips in which you meet a very young, ski-slope nosed John, uprooted from Liverpool with his sister Cheryl and staying with his kindly Aunt Dolly and a lot less kindly Uncle Harry.

But if you think Uncle Harry’s abusive, you wait until you meet grotesque butcher Archibald Acland whom Steve Pugh will sear indelibly onto the back of your eyeballs, his ruddy, blubbery face looking like a flabby pig’s arse, his mouth its very anus. Out of that mouth comes the stench of offal and furious threats he turns into promises, dismissing his son Martin as a “sick heifer” and “starved bitch” and deriding his missus as a “fat sow” and “stupid mare”. His vegetarian son is terrified of him:

“He needs to piss but he can’t face the bathroom – the soapy stubble-scum; the excess Preparation H finger-smeared on the basin; the thick, dead, lingering smell of shit. The smell of his father.”

He’s right to be terrified. This is Martin’s eighteenth birthday and he’s about to be forced down a make-shift abattoir for an ordeal so horrific you will not believe what you read. This is HELLBLAZER at its best: binding occult horror to the very real nightmares of actual human suffering, and it is excruciating.

Lastly for Delano there are two of the most important chapters in Constantine’s history. In ‘The Hanged Man’ John finally discovers what’s been nagging him all this time: the identity of the Golden Boy he first saw at his mother’s graveside, so he sets a pre-natal wrong right. The repercussions are played out in ‘The Magus’ illustrated by Dave McKean. It’s a startling final flourish for Delano’s stint which began over three years earlier in HELLBLAZER VOL 1: ORIGINAL SINS.

There I wrote:

“John Constantine is a trouble magnet; the problem is that deep down he enjoys it. Brash, rash and cocky, this streetwise trickster, this Laughing Magician with his nicotine-stained fingers and trademark trenchcoat relishes the war of wits – the blag, the bluff and the quietly palmed ace up his sleeve – and his insatiable curiosity drives him to places where no soul should go. That he somehow returns to enjoy his next pint is a miracle; that his friends rarely do is inevitable.”

Case in point:

“I stop walking.
“It’s quite an effort, because walking’s one of the things I do best. Walking away without a glance over my shoulder at the misery and bloodshed I’ve left behind me.”

Whatever John Constantine’s considerable failings, a lack of self-awareness is not one of them. That and his sense of social justice are his two saving graces, fortified immeasurably with an indomitable, ruthless determination to win. Here in 1991 Garth Ennis takes the reins and immediately gives John Constantine terminal lung cancer with three months to live. Get out of that, John!

Obviously he does, but the key is that he does so not through conjuration – for that would be a complete cop-out – but manipulation and, when you discover exactly whom he manipulates and how, you will laugh your head off at the sheer gall of the guy and determine never to play him at chess.

John will have no time to gloat, however, for although Garth Ennis does introduce a surprisingly sturdy love interest in Kit, he also swiftly sets out his stall for the humanity – and political anger – which he will be bringing to the table as evidenced by his meeting with Matt, already bed-bound by the time John discovers him in hospital:

“He’d been with the desert rats at Alamein, come home to a life that could never quite equal the thrill of his army days, drunk and smoked enough to kill him – and ended up here. Dying in a country that he didn’t know anymore, because all the money was spent on getting a whore into office every four years.”

Steve Dillon will become Garth Ennis’ best known partner in grime both on HELLBLAZER and later on PREACHER, but Will Simpson brings a haggard sense of mortality to the pages which were perfect for these six issues of raw vulnerability and renewed sense of loss.

“I don’t want to hear them call time. I don’t want a nurse asking me if he was a friend, and how sorry they are, and how hard they tried.
“I’d be like evidence for the prosecution at my trial. John Constantine, you have been found guilty of first degree cold-hearted bastardy. Of being a twisted, evil frigger who sneaks and creeps his way out of trouble that those less privileged have no defence against. Of swaggering merrily away from lung cancer while a good friend’s organs split and rupture, without even a hope of the salvation you enjoy.
“Outside it’s still raining.”

There will be repercussions, yes.

SLH

Buy Hellblazer vol 5: Dangerous Habits and read the Page 45 review here

Bedlam vol 1 s/c (£7-50, Image ) by Nick Spencer & Riley Rossmo, Frazer Irving –

Image is producing some excellent stuff at the moment and this is another book which should shift many, many copies because it ticks so many boxes for so many people, myself included. Crime fans, creepy horror fans, psych-based weirdness fans, Joker/Arkham/Batman fans and “isn’t the world a truly fucked up place?” fans will all get a kick out of BEDLAM because it is *mental*.

When the book begins the final, show-stopping crime of the notorious psycho who plagues the city of Bedlam is already underway. In stunning black, white and red we watch his final hideous act before he is taken into custody… only to find that he has arranged a sting in the tail. We watch the panic unfold; the detectives try to reason with the killer, even though he is utterly beyond reason. They try to intimidate him even though fear obviously means nothing to him. And they try begging him despite the fact he clearly has not a compassionate bone in his body. In the end the plot is not thwarted but at least the psycho is dead; killed by his own mistake, a miscalculation which finally rids Bedlam of its stain. Yeah… he’s not dead, though. At least the person who is dead isn’t him. But never mind, he’s not going to be out committing crimes any time soon, or even ever again. Because someone is of a mind to fix him.

Because we are not the things we did in the past, we are the things we do today? Right?

There is so much more I want to write in this review but I also don’t want to spoil it for you. It’s not that there is any great twist that you won’t see coming, rather it’s that I loved the way the story revealed itself and I don’t want to ruin it. There are some brilliant passages; some all about the action and the violence, others about a guy in a room talking to himself. The faceless (literally!) Batman analogue is a perfect one-dimensional foil to the complex, endearing weirdo we follow through the latter part of the story and the police/detective element is a perfect mix of familiar formula and freaky sideshow.

I loved this book. I found it in turns thrilling, amusing, freaky and dark. Also, for £7-50 it’s a no-brainer. (You’ll see what I did there, tee-hee!)

DK

Thank you, my love!

Stephen here, at the behest our dear Dominique, appending my review of the very first issue. I don’t quite know why, but after working with the woman for nearly 18 years I have learned to do as I’m told. (It actually took me three days.)

“We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to let you know I have just killed… well, a lot of people. I didn’t count. I apologise. To make matters worse, most of these people were children. Which I know you’re gonna say is somewhat below the belt. But I have tried many things, and you are all… Well, you are a pretty stubborn bunch. So now that I have your attention, we should talk about what comes next.”

In which a psychopath torments his audience, captors and the wider public in general – even from behind bars – and does so with such viciousness and at such punishing length that DC would never have published this as an Arkham Asylum book.

Sorry…? Well, if this wasn’t originally intended to be a Joker book, I’d be hugely surprised, and for some reason I’ve decided that’s the equally ill-adjusted Norman Osborn administering the sedatives. Quite the crossover.

With a softer but suitably grimy colour palette to differentiate between time frames, this is mostly told in black, white and red with a cracking design for Madder Red’s Chain Chomp mask. Jonathan mentioned Ashley Wood as a comparison point, and I wouldn’t disagree.

As to what does come next… oh, it’s far from straightforward. I love a good contingency plan, and I am far from alone. From the writer of MORNING GLORIES, THIEF OF THIEVES and so much more.

“I am Madder Red, and I live to surprise you.”

SLH

Buy Bedlam vol 1 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

The Ballad Of Halo Jones brand-new edition (£13-99, Rebellion) by Alan Moore & Ian Gibson –

There are books like this that you’ve got to leave alone for a few years if you’re after the same kiddy rush that you got way back when. Just finished the second book, and I’ve still got the goosebumps. Does that make it any good? Well, Terry Jack’s ‘Seasons in the Sun’ will do the same for me but that’s no real measure of quality either way. It still feels special.

The story for those who’ve not read it before: far off into the future, Manhattan Island is dominated by the Hoop, a giant floating ring of slum housing for the terminally unemployable. And in this future that’s a lot of people. There’s dream of escape but there are precious few jobs. This is where we find Halo, an ordinary spod who, almost by accident, becomes something else, something legendary. The first chunk covers life on the Hoop, the almost military planning of a simple shopping expedition, the various forms of entertainment, racial tensions and ways of opting out. By the second book she has a waitress job on a ship heading far off into space. And her experiences change her.

“Where did she go? OUT! What did she do? EVERYTHING!” – original tagline

The three books (there were ten planned) show her losing her charm and innocence in a similar way to Evey from V FOR VENDETTA. At the end of each book she moves on to the next situation, one quite removed from the last. Such character development was a marked change in the usual 2000 AD stasis. Ian Gibson’s marvelous clutter and sharp, dark technology were perfect to delineate the shadowy corners of the plot.

It’s early Alan Moore; he probably hates it.

MAS

Buy The Ballad Of Halo Jones and read the Page 45 review here

Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness (£13-50, IDW) by Roberto Orci , Mike Johnson & David Messina –

Just like STAR TREK: COUNTDOWN was to the last Star Trek film, so COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS is a prequel to the new film, Into Darkness. Far from being a bit of tie-in tat, the last prequel was actually a good lead in to the film, helping to explain and flesh out a few points and it seems this book will do likewise.

We get a good chunk of action here: when a routine survey mission turns up some odd results Kirk toys with bending the prime directive a little, only to find that his long-thought-dead predecessor has both been there and done that in quite the dramatic fashion. A bows-and-arrows-era civil war has been turned to genocide by the interference of the Klingons who have armed one side, while April, the previous commander of the Enterprise, has weighed in to help the other side fight back. Now the local conflict threatens to turn into a proxy war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire and nobody wants that, do they? Cue the double cross, then the triple cross. Quick everyone, into the Jefferies tubes, because that always ends well…

As the story progresses we are reminded of some key hangovers from the previous film. Spock continues to battle with his human-side emotions after the destruction of Vulcan and with his relationship with Uhura. The fledgling bonds the crew formed last time out are re-introduced and we get to know Kirk a little better as we watch him come to terms with his role as leader and Captain. The likenesses to the screen actors are good as are the production values; a far cry from the “will this do” tie-in horrors of the past. There is a little stiffness in places but that is possibly unavoidable given the strictures of a film tie-in. All in all this is a good appetiser for the new film and a handy refresher on the old. It has certainly got me more excited for the film, if that is humanly possible!

Oh yes, fans of the original series, do you remember Harry Mudd? There’s a nod!

DK

Buy Star Trek: Countdown To Darkness s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Marvel Illustrated: Pride & Prejudice s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Jane Austen, adapted by Nancy Butler & Hugo Petrus.

I must confess I harboured a prejudice towards this of my own, based solely on the cover by Sonny Liu which has Elizabeth Bennet dressed as a late 20th Century American socialite complete with white power-blouse over a snug black skirt or, at best, slinky Hollywood dress. Wrong! The Regency style involved no blouses, but billowing dresses so grass-ticklingly long that, as Lizzy herself observes during the novel, they’re a bugger when walking through mud. However, since the lesson of the book is to avoid “gratifying [one's] vanity, in useless or blameable distrust” (courting prepossession and ignorance is evidently more than a passing hobby for me), I have now looked inside to find that the five Bennet sisters have been visually reduced to the sort of air-brained, over-coiffeured, sneering American rich kids who’d appear on Beauty & The Geek and pull each other’s hair out at the drop of a Tiffany tiara, whilst Mrs. Bennet, far from the fussing martyr of a mouse that I’ve always imagined, is now a buxom barmaid from Coronation Street or Black Adder III. Lord knows what Nancy’s done to the text – I’m not prepared to endure that for you – so instead here’s a slightly wayward summary of the original novel complete with SPOILER ALERT:

Laugh-out-loud comedy starring the delightfully playful sister to four other Bennet girls who takes a loving if lofty view of their crushes and gets each object of them wrong whilst failing to identify that she herself may also have fallen in love. Meanwhile her mother flusters about and her father occasionally looks up to undermine his dear wife with witheringly supercilious remarks that we really shouldn’t find funny but do. Plus: cold Mr. Darcy is totally hot, and one of the many reasons that I’m jealous of Jonathan’s middle name.

If you can’t précis Pride & Prejudice from memory then, really, what have you been reading all your life? Anyway, with due hindsight I can now confirm that Marvel’s version of EMMA is infinitely better, as is SENSE AND SENSIBILITY.

I will add with additional hindsight, however, that these are mere illustrations of the novels, rather than intelligent and affecting interpretations to comics like David Hine’s and Mark Stafford’s THE MAN WHO LAUGHS and Mazzucchelli’s CITY OF GLASS; or Rob Davis’ uproarious propagation of Cervantes’ original intent in DON QUIXOTE VOL 1 and, best of all, DON QUXOTE VOL 2. Just so we all have terms of reference.

SLH

Buy Marvel Illustrated: Pride & Prejudice s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Batman Incorporated vol 1: Demon Star h/c (£18-99, DC) by Grant Morrison & Chris Burnham…

“The signal is gone.”
“I don’t care what Bruce said… we’re going in.”
“I told you what she’d do.”
“You stay right here, Damian.”
“Pennyworth. If I don’t save the day… no one will.”

There is a death of an important member of Batman Inc. in this volume. There’s going to be another rather more painful and poignant one in the next volume too, but that’s a different matter… Anyway, moving along rapidly before I spoil anything for the one person who isn’t aware of what I’m alluding to… the biggest and best version of the Bat family is back, and now Leviathan has revealed herself as Talia Al Ghul, mother of Damian, it’s a fight to the finish. And whilst she is bent on world destruction, she’s not above wanting a little personal revenge too…

Another epic sensory-assaulting slice of Bat-mentalism from Mr. Morrison as Bruce’s legion of caped crusaders are attacked from pretty much every direction in an attempted decapitation strike by Talia and her Man-Bat-serum souped-up assassins. It’s a tactic that has Bruce and his chums well and truly reeling punch-drunk on the ropes never mind on the back foot. It’ll all end in tears, mark my words.

Devotees of the previous volume simply entitled BATMAN INCORPORATED will know exactly what to expect. People who haven’t read that, despite this particular book being entitled volume one will be mightily confused unless they do. Good old DC. And, whilst there are more fisticuffs than mindfuck this time around, it’s still infinitely more involved / convoluted than typical Bat-fare. And more prettily drawn, opening with an exquisitely beautiful appetiser from Fraser Irving before Chris Burnham gets down to the main course.

It really is going to end in tears, trust me.

JR

Buy Batman Incorporated vol 1: Demon Star h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Wolverine s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Chris Claremont & Frank Miller, Paul Smith.

Joe Rubinstein: who was the bright spark who thought he’d be a good match for Miller on inks? Instead of enhancing Miller’s edge like Klaus Janson used to so spectacularly on DAREDEVIL, he suffocates it in a stodgy mess of ill-advised moulding.

Anyway: this was the first of Wolverine’s solo outings and – if I recall correctly – the first-ever Marvel mini-series. Can you imagine the superhero industry without mini-series? It was never a thing before this.

It was also the first time Claremont wrote, “I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn’t very nice.” It was a brilliant opening gambit which he then copied and pasted every third page for the next thirty years. Diminishing returns.

It’s a Logan/Mariko affair set in Japan complete with attendant ninjas, all of which Dave Sim parodied and improved upon in CEREBUS: CHURCH & STATE VOL 1. (You will roar with laughter; and the greater your affection, the louder your laughter, I promise.)

This edition also includes UNCANNY X-MEN #172-173 pencilled by Paul Smith, which jars not one jot, such is the attention Paul paid to the pacing and panel composition of the original. In it Wolverine and Mariko finally look like tying the knot, just as Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor contemplate the same. But, oh no, do you see that ciggie and sideburns combo? Horribly familiar to all die-hard X-Men fans.

Some great comedy timing offsetting an awful tragedy complete with dramatic irony.

SLH

Buy Wolverine s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Avengers Arena vol 1: Kill Or Die s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Dennis Hopeless & Kev Walker…

“Kill, kill, kill, murder, murder, murder, ain’t nothing personal you see, it’s all about respect…”

Poor old Arcade. Laughed at by his contemporaries, not to mention all the heroes, he’s had enough. He’s decided he just can’t take any more failed attempts to win his rigged games of death and destruction and has decided to open a bar instead. Even there though, he can’t get any peace and quiet, as various villains decide they’re going to start picking on him.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to give the murder game business one last try, and like the fine upstanding paragon of morality and fair play that he is, he’s decided to pick on some kids this time… But (as C-Murder exhorts above on a track from the classic 1998 Snoop Dogg album ‘Da Game Is To Be Sold, Not To Be Told’) Arcade hasn’t got anything particularly against the powered pipsqueaks in question, he’s just after some respect, starting with a little of the self variety. And, if it has to be at the expense of some low-rent, underage underachievers of the hero community, well, that’s just too bad.

Heroes, will die in this series, oh yes. Rather a lot, if the opening flashback is to be believed. Me, having read all the issues out so far, and having seen a couple of instances already of weaselling out of apparent deaths in true 1930s’ black and white Saturday morning Flash Gordon weekly serial fashion, I am still very sceptical about what the final body count out of the sixteen initial participants will be. But I am enjoying this immensely as the pressure mounts and everything starts going all Lord Of The Flies / BATTLE ROYALE. Regular Marvel readers will probably know some of the cast including X-23, Hazmat, Darkhawk, Mettle for example, but there are a fair true Z-listers in the mix as well. Is it wrong I’m actually rooting for Arcade to take a few, errr… all, of them out?

JR

Buy Avengers Arena vol 1: Kill Or Die s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Thunderbolts vol 1: No Quarter Now s/c (£11-99, Marvel) by Daniel Way & Steve Dillon.

In which the Thunderbolts now consist of Deadpool, The Punisher, Elektra, Venom… and one other whose secret identity – and so titular joke – almost certainly formed the entire raison d’être for this latest incarnation.

And that’s fine: it did make me laugh.

Also, Steve PREACHER Dillon art is always a bonus, but if you want the very finest era, which is completely standalone, it’s Warren Ellis’ THUNDERBOLTS ULTIMATE COLLECTION, sweatily illustrated by Mike Deodato, in which the Thunderbolts, who up to now have always consisted of supervillains, are led post-CIVIL WAR by Norman Osborn.

SLH

Buy Thunderbolts vol 1: No Quarter Now s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil h/c (£16-99, Jonathan Cape) by Stephen Collins

Scott Pilgrim vol 3 h/c Colour Edition (£18-99, Other A-Z) by Bryan Lee O’Malley

Science Tales h/c (Revised Edition) (£11-99, Myriad) by Darryl Cunningham

Naming Monsters (£12-99, Myriad) by Hannah Eaton

Strange Attractors h/c (£14-99, Other A-Z) by Charles Soule & Greg Scott

Crossed: Wish You Were Here vol 2 s/c (£14-99, Avatar Press Inc) by Simon Spurrier & Fernando Melek, Jacen Burrows

Avalon Chronicles Book One: Once In A Blue Moon h/c (£14-99, Oni) by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir & Emma Vieceli

Aquaman vol 1: The Trench s/c (£10-99, DC) by Geoff Johns & Ivan Reis

Aquaman vol 2: The Others h/c (£16-99, DC) by Geoff Johns & Ivan Reis

Batman Beyond: 10000 Clowns s/c (£12-99, DC) by Adam Beechen & Norm Breyfogle

The Authority vol 1 h/c (£22-50, DC) by Warren Ellis & Bryan Hitch

Avengers Vs. X-Men Companion h/c (£75-00, Marvel) by various

Wolverine And The X-Men vol 4 s/c (£12-99, Marvel) by Jason Aaron & Jorge Molina

Indestructible Hulk vol 1: Agent Of Shield h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Mark Waid & Leinil Francis Yu

Captain Marvel vol 2: Down s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Kelly Sue DeConnick & Dexter Soy

New Avengers vol 4 s/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Will Conrad

Marvel Universe: Ultimate Spider-Man Digest vol 3 (£7-50, Marvel) by various

Black Butler vol 13 (£8-99, Other A-Z) by Yana Toboso

Bunny Drop vol 8 (£10-50, Other A-Z) by Yumi Unita
BREAKING NEWS!

ITEM! Tickets for the first-ever Lakes International Comic Art Festival in October are on sale now!

What a beautiful backdrop for a much more European enterprise – all those trees in the autumnal colours: the reflections are going to be gorgeous!

As to the special guests, obviously El Presidentes Bryan Talbot, Mary Talbot and Sean Phillips will be in attendance, as will Ed Brubaker, Duncan Fegredo, Posy Simmonds, Hannah Berry, Joe Sacco, Isabel Greenberg, Luke Pearson, David Lloyd, Al Davison, Glyn Dillon, Dougie Braithwaite, Oscar Zarate, Charlie Adlard and so many more.

Just look at The Lakes International Comics Art Festival Events Listings! Yowsa!

ITEM! LOVE AND ROCKETS’ Jaime Hernandez in conversation with Woodrow Phoenix here in the UK! Thursday 30^th May.

- Stephen

The post Reviews May 2013 week three appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

The post Reviews May 2013 week three appeared first on Escape Pod Comics.

I got here an hour early after setting most of the stuff up on Friday. At 10am there were about a dozen people waiting outside, while we worked putting the finishing touches on the place (mostly this involved putting up signs that clarified which comics were free, how much Sale items were discounted, etc) that number doubled.

From opening at 11am until 9pm at night the store was never empty for longer than 10 minutes, which is pretty amazing, I think. Now, I have never run a Free Comic Book Day before and our’s was certainly not like most of the others that took place the day before, but I think it WORKED.

Anyway, enough of my blather go look at all the pics on our Facebook Page!

I apologize for the shortness of this post, I will be adding to it another day, but I had a newspaper interview today, a meeting and usual Friday hours

The post Free Comic Book Day Summation appeared first on Escape Pod Comics.

Highlights this week include the new Tom Gauld, and Charles Burns’ BIG BABY and Paul Pope’s BATMAN: YEAR ONE HUNDRED, neither of which have we ever reviewed before. I know, right?

I rather believe the comicbook season has begun in earnest. Enjoy!

 - Stephen

Don Quixote vol 2 (£14-99, Self Made Hero) by Cervantes, Rob Davis & Rob Davis.

“Is it just me who finds bearded women attractive?”

DON QUIXOTE is the epic tale of a delusory knight and his bumbling squire as propagated by Rob Davis from an account by Cervantes of the translation by a Moor, of the true and faithful biography as recorded by one Cide Hamete Benengeli. Even though the Don, the squire, the Moor, Side Hamete Benengeli and – for all I know – Rob Davis never even existed.

It is far from a hagiography.

It is instead one massive slight of hand delivered with winks, nudges and infinite wit by both authors concerned.* It is one long fabrication about those who deceive others and those who lie to themselves. Indeed between volumes one and two of Cervantes’ original literary prank, some bastard impostor brought out his own sequel which Cervantes, with due dignity, declined to even acknowledge, let alone criticise.

“I will not waste my breath insulting this dribbling, pibbling, milk-livered, craven welp, who shall go unnamed; I will not stoop to the level of the wretched, thrasonical codpiece who sought to steal the tales of our errant knight. His idiocy can be witnessed by any who has had the misfortune to read this shitty book and his folly is in assuring that I will let nothing come between me and completing the true account of Don Quixote’s adventures that you now hold in your hands.
“Pah! What a tit – let his folly be its own punishment, and let us speak of him no more.”

He speaks of him some more.

Just later on.

Furthermore, when Don Quixote discovers that his earlier exploits have been preserved for posterity by far less pissant peasants and asks how they’ve been received, he is answered thus:

“The world smiles at your escapades and marvels at the book. No less than Señior Hunter Emerson says his wife laughed so hard when reading your adventures that her tits came right off. Meanwhile Señior Gravett in the London comedy papers says the adaptor has “a savvy awareness of what comics can really do…”
“Laughter?! A comic?! The adventures of Don Quixote are no comedy!”

At the risk of belabouring Rob’s joke: for those not in the know, neither UK comicbook comedy king Hunt Emerson nor the medium’s Man At The Crossroads Paul Gravett were around in 1604 (they would thank me for pointing that out). If the brilliance of THE MAN WHO LAUGHS was that it didn’t just illustrate the original but interpreted it, the joy here is that Davis has gone on step further and, as I say, propagated the original’s intent.

So let’s pull back.

Don Quixote is a figment of his own imagination. Well, no: he is a kindly, aging man with a gallant goatee, a matching moustache and a prodigious – nay prestigious – pair of snowy white eyebrows to boot. He’s just read waaaaaaay too much chivalrous fiction. This has inspired him to jettison all grip on reality in favour of roaming the lands and setting right wrongs, no matter what the cost to his personal safety, his public dignity or the likely outcome. R.e. the likely outcome: he’s not very good at it.

In DON QUIXOTE VOL 1 he set off with long-suffering squire Sancho on a series of meandering quests at the centre of which was always the honour of his beauteous, dear Dulcinea. I mentioned that he was delusional, right? You wait until you meet her. Now squire Sancho has become so addicted to these escapades that he enables his easily led leader by fuelling his fantasies further, then swiftly gets sucked up into the nonsense too! This is no longer the blind leading the blinded, nor the fool merely following foolish: it is two nincompoops in mutually validating, self-perpetuating buffoonery. Hurrah!

Now, their reputation having preceded them in print, the pair are embraced by a bored Duke and Duchess and truly taken in for their own private amusement. Prank after prank is played at their expense, firstly getting the Don to draw his Dulcinea then using that child-like portrait in the most elaborate, torch-lit ploy imaginable. Then there’s the flying wooden horse (it doesn’t really fly), the curse of the bearded women (they are not really bearded), and the hell-bound unrequited love. It’s not just that Quixote and Sancho are gullible; it’s much worse than that! They are now so addicted to embracing anything that will extend, embellish or facilitate their next quest that, whenever they suspect something may be awry, they fill in the plot pot-holes for them!

This is comicbook comedy gold – right up there with anything by Roger Langridge – and the very best interpretation of any prose to comics that I am aware of. And since I am aware of almost everything that exists in comicbook form, I think we can dispense of that last qualifier and simply conclude that you need this fucking book.

Davis’ cartooning throughout is a gesticulating, ebullient joy. It’s not just Quixote’s grumpy furrowed brows, his apoplectic outrage or his narrowed, eyes-to-one-side when you suspect he may finally suspect something (hilariously, he really doesn’t!). It is his mastery of insouciance, his rodeo-riding of those two runaway eyebrows, but above all Rob’s exceptional understanding of the exact degree of caricature this literary farce requires. It’s all about the mischief.

And then, just when you think you’ve had it all, you are delivered blinding visual flourishes like the full-page portrait of the Knight Of The Mirrors, which blazes like a partially stained-glass window during the brightest day on record.

However, I’d be lying if I said anything I’ve written so far were my favourite bits. No. Cervantes’ book was naughty, clever, and knowing. It was beyond contemporary for its day. How about if Rob Davis introduces a bit of comtemporary too, just at the right moment?

“Ah, look! We don’t need to seek Dulcinea’s palace, here she comes riding towards us on her horse!”
“Are you sure, my squire? I see only the scrofulous peasant riding her mule this way.”
“What?! Are your Grace’s eyes in the back of your head? Is that why you cannot see her? O Queen and Princess of Beauty, I present your knight. See, he is struck dumb by the magnificence of your presence.”

Don Quixote is quite alarmed. Buck-toothed Dulcinea is far from charmed.

“Outta the way, fat boy!”

* It transpires that Rob Davis does exist: you may have read NELSON – former Page 45 Comicbook Of Month and winner of the inaugural British Comics Awards 2012 – which Rob Davis instigated, co-created and edited. It’s pretty special.

SLH

Buy Don Quixote vol 2  and read the Page 45 review here

You’re All Just Jealous Of My Jetpack h/c (£14-99, Drawn & Quarterly) by Tom Gauld.

Quality jollity using a lot of lateral thinking and the most impeccable timing: one-page comics and cartoons which will extraordinate you!

See this street of increasingly rickety semi-detached housing from the birth of a word to its grave:

“Institute of Neologisms
Department of Everyday Language
Society for the Preservation of Antiquated Terminology
Cemetery of Forgotten Words”

Gauld gleans much of his humour from the juxtaposition of High and Low Art, confronting the historically sacred with the contemporary and crass, whilst puncturing the pomposity which would denigrate one genre or medium by emphasising its own superiority. Hence the title, a retort to those who poo-poo science fiction because they read “proper” books. (Oh, comics, how familiar we all are with that brand of prose-originated disdain!)

They’re all so pithy, too, like ‘Short Story’ and Gauld’s lament for the all-too-brief space race, or the excitable aspirations of an anthropomorphised laptop sold to a critically acclaimed author which are crushed beneath the domestic debris of most writers’ prevarication (sorry – research!) which reminded me so much of Lizz Lunney.

I loved the make-you-own-metaphorical-cartoon on the legacy of Thatcherism using a sausage, a dog and a chair; and as to ‘The Great Author Considers His Response To The Question’, the options mapped out in different areas of his brain made me grin with recognition (insult; sweeping generalization; stunning insight; unrelated anecdote; rant; bizarre metaphor; enigmatic smile; yes; no; straightforward answer). Rarely do I opt for any of the last three in day-to-day conversation. What a knob-end am I, eh?

As to the timing, there is an evening sequence involving a therapist’s chair unable to resist psychoanalysing the consulting-room couch languishing opposite. That extra beat before the chair’s final rejoinder is cleverly provided by a moonlit window absent from all previous panels except for the first. Space really does equal time in comics, and not just between panels.

All this, then, in gentle, joyful colours from the creator of GOLIATH, one of last year’s Page 45 Comicbook Of The Months, and recommended to fans of Kate Beaton’s HARK! A VAGRANT for its literary leanings.

SLH

Buy You’re All Just Jealous Of My Jetpack h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Swear Down h/c (£14-99, Blank Slate) by Oliver East…

Ah, now I do remember Oliver talking to me about this work whilst he was in the shop for the Anders Nilsen signing. I’m not sure how finally formulated it was at that point, but I do clearly recall him describing the intention of walking the line of longitude from his house in Manchester down through England, then Brittany, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana. Not sure what’s wrong with Antarctica, South Pole, Scotland and finishing the job off properly, but anyway.

Now, you might be forgiven for assuming that Oliver was intending to do this in one go, but no, and again, I think he might have mentioned this, the idea is to get so far, then go back home, then carry on another day from where he left off. And so forth, and so on. In mountaineering terms, this is very much like scaling a peak single-handed with the multiple trips up and down to various base camps lugging all your own support gear along so it’s always just one camp behind you. But if the goal is the walk itself, then what does it matter? (That’s my way of saying he doesn’t get too far from home in this particular volume, but I am sure he did say it would be a series of books…)

Walking, as TRAINS ARE MINT fans will know, is Oliver’s personal time for reflection, for thinking, both of the serious introspective and more idly day-dreaming varieties, and here he has ample opportunity for both types, the deep and err… slightly more shallow, particularly when thinking about a passing jogger, which made me smile. That is something I have always loved about his works, the moments of mirth as some amusing, unexpected juxtaposition of experience and spontaneous thought randomly occurs, and there is certainly plenty of that here, alongside his best orienteering intentions of ‘walking (and sketching what he sees along) the line’. Much of Oliver’s thoughts throughout this book though are taken up on a rather more serious subject, I’ll let him explain as he sets off from his house…

“I’m supposed to be, or at least be thinking about, writing my thoughts on my son’s birth in some scrapbook. His mum’s written down ages ago.
“I’m not one for writing unless I’m walking and I’m in no rush to relive his two month premature birth.
“Or watching my wife fall into translucent unconsciousness.
“Or circling the slowly congealing pool of blood while surgeons saved her life.
“Or certain relatives repeatedly insisting you looked like a skinned rabbit.
“I know what I’ll write anyway.
“It’ll be some dry but well paced gag.
“About how I’d wanted to watch the Ashes as the last thing on my own terms, but then you came as a complete surprise. (We thought your mum needed a poo I might write.)
“And, after a scare, a downed cocktail, and an ambulance,
“You were born as England won the urn.
“So you better like cricket! (I’ll probably write)
“Or maybe this will do…”

One of the back cover pull quotes is provided by John Porcellino, and I can certainly see why Oliver’s works would appeal to John. They both share their ability to convey the everyday, with deceptively simplistic, and completely unique, art styles. Making truly everyday autobiographical material work like this is tricky, but both Oliver and John manage it with aplomb. I do hope Oliver keeps this up, not least because I would dearly love to know what he makes of walking through Africa!

JR

Buy Swear Down h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Destination X h/c (£9-99, Nobrow Press) by John Martz…

So, Nobrow’s championing of the boutique and bijou continues with this first solo release for John Martz. He has released comics before such as his Machine Gum series, and also appeared in a previous Nobrow anthology (volume 6, I think), but it is nice to see Nobrow bringing another excellent illustrator to print. You have to admire their style actually, quite literally, because what a difference a (hard)cover makes. Much like the first two Jon McNaught books PEBBLE ISLAND and BIRCHFIELD CLOSE, which are of similar pocket-sized dimensions to this little red pocket rocket, they could easily be lost without such a lovely cover design and upscale production quality. Instead you get something that really demands to be picked up and inspected more closely. Plus, it means we can easily stock it on the counter instead of the shelves, which also helps!

This particular cover features, in John’s fine-lined, cartoonish style, which reminds me a little bit of Ivan Brunetti [my vote’s Rian Hughes – ed.], the space adventurer grandfather of our hero Sam descending from a space rocket to be greeted by an alien female, ringed moons and stars glowing and twinkling in the background. Except, it was all apparently a dream, induced from a long cryosleep during his return journey to Earth from another space-faring mission, as everyone knows aliens don’t exist.

It’s always bothered Sam that no one believed his grandfather’s story and it becomes his life’s mission to redeem his hero’s reputation, and make his own in the process. Cue a very comedic story that follows Sam’s manifold trials and tribulations to pursue what he believes is his destiny.

I really enjoyed this, it’s just great fun, illustrated with a wonderfully light touch, underpinned by some bitingly dark humour in places, a great punchline, and Sam’s bouffant quiff just made me chuckle throughout. Much as I commented on Jon McNaught after reading PEBBLE ISLAND, I am quite sure we are going to see plenty more from Mr. Martz in the future.

JR

Buy Destination X h/c and read the Page 45 review here

3 New Stories (£2-99, Fantagraphics) by Dash Shaw –

Three short stories in black and white with an underlay of colour provided by photographs beneath the ink. I’m not sure if the photos relate to the stories, add to them or are simply chosen at random. On some pages you can totally make them out, on others they are obscured too much and so tantalizingly out of reach. Is it meant to ape double exposure? Give the impression of reuse, re-purposing of old material? If so why? Poverty? Necessity? Laziness? Maybe it’s just a thing Dash Shaw does because it looks cool, I’ll enjoy reading again to see if I can decide.

The first story was probably my favourite. Sherlock Holmes is laid off as there is little demand for master-sleuthing a recession. He looks for work while his wife and family sell off their belongings one by one to survive. A problem occurs: his high school graduation has been revoked due to some bizarre clerical error. Seems like a whole bunch of people are in the same position, all forced to pay to go back to school to finish up their credits. This raises questions in the detective’s mind as it all seems rather too bizarre to be true. Lovely weird stuff.

From the creator of BODYWORLD and THE UNCLOTHED MAN IN THE 35^TH CENTURY, both of which we made Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month on publication.

DK

Buy 3 New Stories and read the Page 45 review here

The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (£12-99, Little Brown) by Charles De Lint & Charles Vess -

Not comics (I repeat, not comics!) but prose with a healthy dose of illustration from the utterly lovely Charles Vess. Good god but do I want to live in a forest drawn by Charles Vess! The shade is cool, the leaves are damp and the tree bark is rough and warm. I do wish he did more sequential stuff but if I am to get my Vess fix through beautifully crafted children’s stories like these then I really won’t complain.

The story is of a likeable, kindly, headstrong girl who lives on her Aunt’s farm and loves to explore the woods around her home. Mostly she is looking for Faeries and magic; she’s sure there must be some about but she can never seem to find it. But when an accident occurs she is drawn into that magic; a magic which has existed all around her for her entire life but which she is only now becoming aware of. So begins the journey with all the trials, lessons and lucky escapes you’d expect from a fantasy adventure such as this.

While the story is very well written, engaging and very sweet in places it is the art which really made this book stick in my head.

Back in the day I had a conversation with the late great Mark Simpson (one half of the genius behind Page 45) about the books which informed our aesthetic. Picture books from very early childhood that we were barely able to remember but which had imprinted on our brains, shaping our idea of beauty before we were even really conscious of what beauty was. He showed me a book his parents had uncovered in storage somewhere; it was full of painted pictures of animals and immediately you could see where some of the colours and shapes he preferred in his own art came from. I feel similarly when I see Charles Vess’ art: there is something about the foliage and the trees which just takes me somewhere *else*. It’s beyond dreamy, utterly gorgeous.

I would have devoured this book as a child and so I have been recommending it to parents in the shop left right and centre! But I also enjoyed it as an adult, not just for the marvellous illustrations but for the rich sense of place the writing created. A lovely, lovely book.

DK

Buy The Cats of Tanglewood Forest and read the Page 45 review here

Charles Burns Library vol 2: Big Baby (New Ptg) (£12-99, Fantagraphics Books) by Charles Burns.

“What’s the meaning of this, Tony? I suppose you think comic books are more important than learning about the human body!”
“You.. you don’t understand! This comic… it is important! It’s what’s happening right now!”

Hmmm.

From the creator of BLACK HOLE (and more recently X’ED OUT then THE HIVE) comes an album-sized reprint of comicbook one-shots BLOOD CLUB and CURSE OF THE MOLEMEN originally published by Kitchen Sink Press back when Mark and I were biding our time at Fantastic Store Nottingham, along with ‘Teen Plague’ which originally appeared in RAW.

Each focuses on the big bald baby called Tony whose knowledge of the human body is indeed so lamentably shallow that he is prone to make the most socially and sexually inappropriate observations out loud. Pity the poor baby sitter, then, who invites her boyfriend over. Happier by far to bury his head in horror comics, or decapitate plastic soldiers in aid of a story he’s spinning solo rather than engage with his father in a game of catch (interaction with adults is far from his forte; actually, interaction is far from his forte), Tony is prone to wild imaginings, transferring fantasies from behind his Ood-like eyes onto what transpires around him: his babysitter’s hickey, for example, is a clear indication that she has been taken over by the hypnotic eye and devilish tongue of the almighty Kaballa-Bonga, while the hole being dug in his neighbour’s back yard by a sweaty labourer is evidence of buried treasure.

To be fair, in that second instance the guy with the shovel does tell Tony he’s digging for treasure, and his babysitter’s boyf does have the most alien rash spreading rapidly across his chest and down his legs and it’s growing increasingly pustular. Also, on the summer camp, Tony does see the ghost of the weeping boy, hovering in the air all foetal and naked, who went missing several years ago when his creepy team leader, the self-style “Uncle” Rory was but a cub or a scout or whatever it is they have over there. Actually, almost everything happening in Charles Burns’ suburbia is far from the American wholesomeness it purports to be. Still, make-up was invented for covering those bruises, wasn’t it?

You can see how elements of these relatively early works have since made their way into Burns’ more mature fare – the sexually transmitted body-horror, for example – but thematically I don’t have a lot more to say. Big Baby likes his plastic horror toys, and so did Charles Burns.

What is already in fully fledged evidence is the total command of panel and page composition dominated by eerily lit faces and the lushest of spot-blacks. The men are square-jawed and lock-jawed into forced bonhomie; the women have spray-set ‘do’s.

I guess if there is a common cause here it’s that if the picket fence has been recently white-washed then there’s usually something unpleasant being covered up, and you’d stand a better chance of being taken seriously when you do discover something seriously amiss if you didn’t make up stupid stories all the time like some socially awkward, self-absorbed, nine-year-old. Sorry…? Well, I’m not sure but I think Tony may well be nine years old. What are you going to do?

Love it.

SLH

Buy Charles Burns Library s/c vol 2 Big Baby and read the Page 45 review here

The Dreamer new ed (£12-99. WW Norton) by Will Eisner.

More hard graft, these are the creative and publishing years that Eisner hops over in TO THE HEART OF THE STORM, having detailed them here in this earlier work. It’s more heavily disguised autobiography than TO THE HEART OF THE STORM but Denis Kitchen, formerly publisher of Kitchen Sink, is on hand to provide detailed annotations and historical corrections.

And it really was history in the making as Eisner rejects a lucrative job offer from the mafia-run distribution network to provide illegal, erotic knock-offs of established cartoon strips and instead embarks on a pioneering publishing venture to produce new material rather than reprints, and thousands of pages at $5 a pop. This he does almost single-handedly to begin with and then, as a pragmatic compromise, by developing an in-house production line akin to a studio or, erm, a sweat shop! Along the way you’ll encounter Bob Kane, a very early close friend, see Eisner reject Superman who takes off at DC (oh wait, he doesn’t mention that here, but it happened!), and watch Will lose his company $3,000 by refusing to lie at trial about a deliberate Superman rip-off called Wonder Man.

Finally his long hours are rewarded and he takes a leap of faith by selling his share in the publishing business to accept an offer to provide a syndicated, regular and original 16-page comicbook supplement to newspapers. As a reward he was allowed the unheard of privilege of retaining ownership of his character. The character? The Spirit.

SLH

Buy The Dreamer and read the Page 45 review here

Shame vol 2: Pursuit (£7-50, Renegade) by Lovern Kindzierski & John Bolton.

SHAME VOL 1: CONCEPTION was an exceptionally twisted thing with the strangest mother/daughter/mother relationship imaginable. Or was it a daughter/mother/daughter relationship? Read my review and it may become clear! The begets do beggar belief, but that’s witchcraft for you.

It was also quite dense, which this is not. It is instead the middle movement of the trilogy in which Kindzierski and Bolton explore the wider world of corruption under Shame’s bitter reign while sexy Daughter Virtue (as opposed to desiccated Mother Virtue) is trapped in her ‘mound’, enclosed in a prison forged from obsidian brambles. You can tell Shame is evil because she has black hair. She doesn’t half ramble on – to herself, her minions and the darke daemon Slur.

Oh, she shall sully all and sundry! Once she has conquered, cursed and corrupted the whole wide world, there will be no free school milk (hmm), no more bedtime stories and every Kinder Egg will come with quite the salutary surprise. Worse still, every chocolate in every box will henceforth be Turkish Delight. She will whip down One Direction’s kecks on live TV (actually, this gets my vote) and curdle your clotted cream teas. There will, in short, be suffering the likes of which has barely been endured outside of a modern British Post Office.

But wait! Do we have a vessel of vengeance, perchance? A young, simple man whose father is smitten before his eyes, now determined to follow his mother’s verbal breadcrumb trail to who knows what end?

Meanwhile Slur hovers at sybaritic Shame’s side, addressing her as “my shapely talon”, “my septic blossom”, “dear putrescence”, and “my mephitic marchpane”. (New words: “mephitic” meaning “foul-smelling” and “marchpane” meaning “marzipan”.)

Which witch will prevail?

John Bolton’s painted art you may already know from Neil Gaiman’s THE BOOKS OF MAGIC and Peter Straub’s THE GREEN WOMAN, but this is what he’s perhaps best known for: buxom babes in fantasy settings. Plus there be boobage, yes.

SLH

Buy Shame vol 2: Pursuit and read the Page 45 review here

Batman: Year One Hundred new edition (£14-99, DC) by Paul Pope with Jose Villarrubia…

“I don’t get it. By now they must have some footage of you or something. Why not just come out with it? Why not just come out with it?”

“What, and admit there’s somebody out there they can’t identify or control? …Oh, and, by the way, he’s called “Batman” and he kicked our asses? Get real.”

Okay, it’s not new Paul Pope, but it is Paul Pope doing one of the finest non-continuity Batman stories that’s ever been written or drawn for that matter, so will that do you whilst we wait for the entrance of THE BATTLING BOY? (Note: BATTLING BOY prequel one-shot THE DEATH OF HAGGARD WEST is out in July. Whilst it is not entirely clear if any or all of it will be in BATTLING BOY it is almost certainly going to go straight out of print, so fervent Papists, I would advise pre-ordering…)

The year is 2039 and the future is distinctly Orwellian with the all-seeing state, including psychic police, keeping the populace under close scrutiny and a very heavy boot heel. The powers that be aren’t exactly squeaky clean themselves, though, enjoying the excesses of their more than equal labours, wearing their sharp suits and smoking fat cigars. But in this dystopian world there are no more superheroes, not even any supervillains as we find out in one particularly dark moment, as government control has become near absolute. Except for one man who refuses to even contemplate defeat.

A figure so shadowy, so wraithlike in his ability to go undetected, even the bad guys refuse to acknowledge his existence, though that is primarily because those in charge want to deny people even the solace of the faintest hope. The total media blanket suppression, though, means that the Batman has once again become a creature of legend, a whispered urban myth with the power to frighten children and crooks alike. Which is of course not exactly undesirable for someone who wants to cause near cardiac failure in those he’s out to bring down…

Pope is undoubtedly an artist whose style one could accurately describe, I feel, as unfettered. Complex, intricate, ornate even, but also possessing a freedom you don’t see in everyone else’s work. I am quite sure it isn’t the case, but I get the distinct impression even he doesn’t know what he’s going to draw, particularly in terms of background detail, before he puts pen to paper, it just looks so, so effortless. But the same is also true of his writing, for whilst it’s very easy to be distracted by the beauty of what you’ve been presented with visually, he really knows how to spin a story, and punch out the pithy and poignant dialogue with breathtaking ease.

This is a new printing and when I re-read it, I had honestly forgotten what a brilliantly dark and dense tale he’d put together here. It is certainly in my top five Bat-books, comparable with, say, THE LONG HALLOWEEN. The other additional factor that makes this work near-perfect is the colouring. More often than not Paul’s work isn’t coloured, and frankly it doesn’t need it, but here Jose Villarrubia really does add another dimension to the artwork with an additional layer of vibrancy that demonstrates exactly how you should colour a book that has so much happening in dark shadows during nocturnal activities! Neon signs atop grim sky scrapers seem almost luminous and holographic displays showing Bat-vital information are practically standing out from the page, wonderful work.

JR

Buy Batman: Year One Hundred and read the Page 45 review here

Superman: Earth One vol 1 s/c (£9-99, DC) by J. Michael Straczynski & Shane Davis…

“I have spent the last twenty years searching for something. More accurately someone.
“My journey has taken us to a dozen worlds, but I still have not found the target.
“If he is hiding here, I will continue the attack until he is provoked into revealing himself…
“If it turns out he is not here, then I will leave your world and try elsewhere.
“But only after several million of you are dead, so that I will know that I have done everything possible to provoke a response…
“To my target, if you are listening, those are the terms. Reveal yourself and surrender. Or watch your world die around you.”

Free from the constraints of mainstream continuity J. Michael Straczynski has turned in a genuine epic with SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE. This work most definitely has the feel of a blockbuster film, in all the positive senses one can mean that, in stark contrast to the last actual Superman film, which began with a fine action set-piece and then was utterly boring drivel throughout its remainder.

Here we start with a familiar premise, Clark Kent leaving the comfort of Smallville and the bosom of Ma Kent and heading for the big smoke that is Metropolis. But then we’re presented with a rather different story to the one we’re used to, as instead of immediately assuming the persona of a mild-mannered reporter Clark investigates a number of different career options from American football to research scientist, and seems rather less reticent about using his abilities in everyday life, even in a low-key manner, than we’ve become used to. He does visit the Daily Planet, but leaves initially rather unimpressed with the bullpen and its cast of characters including the paternal Perry white, a rather abrasive Lois Lane and a somewhat more genial shutterbug Jimmy Olsen. Good to see Straczynski hasn’t changed everything! We even get the revealing information that Ma and Pa Kent always saw their adopted son as a hero that could inspire the world, even providing him with his costume, yet this Clark Kent seems very reluctant to consider, never mind embrace his eventual destiny. Or even try on his tights. So what’s going to change that then, I wonder?

Well, here again Straczynski takes a completely different route from the time-worn approach. No low-key introduction to hero-dom here for our reluctant youth, instead we’re thrown into the middle of a full-on alien invasion of Earth. It seems the invasion force is looking for a certain individual, the last survivor of Krypton, to complete their genocidal assassination contract to wipe out the entire Kryptonian race. What follows thereafter is an epic finale that would worthily grace any cinematic adaptation of old red-and-blue, as the villains get spanked and vanquished, and Clark realises that taking a considerably more low profile approach to civilian life, and a somewhat more flexible job, might be rather useful in maintaining a secret identity. Now, if only some genial editor had offered him a job as a reporter…

JR

Buy Superman: Earth One vol 1 s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Ten Grand #1 (£2-25, Image) by J. Michael Straczynski & Ben Templesmith –

I really like both the creators on this book so I am hoping for good things. Already in the first issue there are some lovely JMS ideas and nuances taking shape and the art hits some brilliant notes in places, with all that scratchy intensity and breaking through of light that Templesmith does so well.

The overall story doesn’t seem that subtle so far, I have to say: bad guy doing one last job before he gives it all up to be with the love of his life is killed, along with said love. Fair to say he isn’t destined for Heaven, however he is given one last chance: be brought back to life to do good and eventually, when the Powers That Be decide he has paid his dues, he can die again and spend eternity with his beloved. No telling how long that will take, nor how much he might have to suffer on the way, but for her he is willing to do what it takes.

So yeah, a bit cheesy on the surface but there is potential for some great occult stuff mixed with some good old hard-bitten P.I. drama. It is very pretty as well and some of the dialogue is very sharp indeed. Going to be interesting to see where this one goes.

DK

Buy Ten Grand #1 and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.

Oh wait, there’s been a Bank Holiday. Potentially means we won’t have this list until tomorrow. Sorree!

BREAKING NEWS!

ITEM! Huge, in-depth article in Publishers Weekly by Heidi MacDonald about the growth of graphic novels in libraries. Librarians (school and otherwise), here’s a big blog I wrote containing all the links you could possibly need to great graphic novels but also the show-and-tell services and discounts Page 45 gleefully offers to libraries!

ITEM! Free Comicbook Day has come and gone. We don’t do Free Comicbook Day, sorry: never been an official member, though we do carry some of those books at their nominal 22p cost. Usually I talk about that in the Page 45 Mailshot, this time it was on Bookface. Still, if you want brilliant free comics, try the entirety of FREAKANGELS by Warren Ellis, Paul Duffield and Kate Brown. Magnificent!

ITEM! We stock and promote THE PHOENIX, by far the best kids’ weekly comic I can ever recall. It is a very far cry from the illiterate rubbish you’ll find on most supermarkets’ shelves, begging to be bought because of its plastic novelties. It’s packed full of rotating, top-tier creators like Jamie Smart, Gary Northfield, Kate Brown, Neill Cameron, Paul Duffield et al, and now THE PHOENIX has a brand-new website! So many cool party packages and deals to be had!

ITEM! I owe an apology to everyone I served on Saturday. I was ill, sorry! Tried my best, said what I could, but sometimes I was well short of breath. Not what you come to expect from Page 45, and I am deeply apologetic. Why didn’t we get someone better on the day? Well, we did – we had Dominique who exceeds me in every aspect, but alas Dee also had to deal with mail order upstairs as well. I am not trusted on mail order. And if you’ve ever seen my Christmas presents wrapped, you would know why! If you have any doubts as to precisely how ill I was, I wnet straight to bed at 7pm with no booze for the first day in over 25 years.

I am much better now. Sadly, my Christmas wrapping will never improve.

 - Stephen

The post Reviews May 2013 week two appeared first on Page 45 | Comics & Graphic Novels | Independent Bookshop | Nottingham.

The post Reviews May 2013 week two appeared first on Escape Pod Comics.

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly and J.M. Ken Niimura – I bought this in graphic novel format on a whim. It looked like a cute story about a young girl who was escaping her life and the bullying in it by fighting (possibly imaginary) Giants. I expected a fun and exciting comic. Instead, I got one of the greatest comics I have ever read. This hits every note for me just perfectly. I’m not going to spoil this for you, but there are some amazing reveals and the series IS fun, but it’s also so much more emotionally heavy than I ever expected. It is pure genius and beauty in comic book form.

Mystery Society by Steve Niles and Fiona Staples – First of all, if you don’t buy this just because the amazing Fiona Staples does the art, you’re crazy. It is gorgeous but it’s also so much fun! Steve Niles is well known as a horror comic writer and he does that very well so it was a huge surprise to me that he did this sci-fi-mystery-fun title so perfectly. It starts, oddly enough, with the main character, Nick Hammond, being arrested! He uses this platform to tell the story of why he is being arrested. It’s a great ride as we discover that Nick and his lovely wife, Anastasia Collins, won the lottery and decide to make their dreams come true. To uncover and explore all the crazy conspiracy theories that exist. They then, randomly, gather a motley crew including the undead Secret Skull, the mysterious twins with massive psionic powers, and Jules Verne’s brain in a golden robot.

Vision Machine by Greg Pak and R.B. Silva- The best thing about this? It’s free. That’s right. FREE. You can get it at www.visionmachine.net for a PDF version, ask your local comic shop to get some print copies or, if you have an iOS device, it’s available as a lovely app that is basically the best motion comic I’ve ever seen. The premise is that a bunch of recently graduated film students lament how they are having trouble getting their actual ideas out there into the world and the limitations of current technology to get what is in their head on film. At that moment, serendipitously, there is the announcement for a new technology, the iEye. This is a pair of glasses that allows the user to share experiences, information, and any number of cool things with everyone. Our former film students now realize they can make their dreams a reality, but it may not be exactly what they wanted.

Welcome to Tranquility by Gail Simone and Neil Googe- printed by DC through their Wildstorm imprint, this is a glimpse at a retirement village for superheroes and supervillains. The town has a weird dichotomy as the geriatric superheroes and villains are all retired and in this one small town, Tranquility, but there are also the teen heroes the Liberty Snots (formerly Tranquili-teens) and Gen 13. Add in a young non-powered sheriff who tries everything to contain her potty mouth and keep the old timers from getting themselves and others killed. Thomasina, the sheriff in question, has a relatively stressful, but regular life until there is a murder in Tranquility and things get a little strange. There is also a follow up mini One Foot in the Grave, but you have to love and read the original 12 issue on-going before you can love that.

FreakAngels by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffied- This is available completely free as a webcomic at www.freakangels.com. The series is about 12 children all born at exactly the same moment in England, the FreakAngels. Each one seems to have amazing abilities, which they technically all share, but each one finds a way to use it differently. The series picks up a few years after a disaster hits England and causes the island to sink and lose all power. Now the FreakAngels have taken over Whitechapel and each one has taken on a role in the community, some of them are good and some are not so good. The FreakAngels use their powers to help protect people in Whitechapel and, over the course of the series, realize they need to do more than just protect the area from scavengers; they need to realize they are building a new society. Secrets are slowly revealed and the FreakAngels learn more about themselves and their place in the world. Great series and a fun read. It’s all available in print now if you’d like a pretty box set.

Time Bomb by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Paul Gulacy- I like to describe this as time traveling Inglorious Basterds. Seriously, it’s amazing. Basically, an underground bunker is discovered under Berlin. The bunker immediately shoots off a doomsday weapon that unleashes a virus that starts killing everything on the planet. A group of highly trained specialists is assembled. They will enter the Time Bomb, a time machine and go back 24 hours and stop anyone from ever discovering the bunker.  The Time Bomb is set so that after 24 hours it will automatically return. Something goes slightly wrong and the quartet is sent back to WWII where they decide the future is doomed. Might as well kill some Nazis, then! Oh, and find the bunker and stop it from ever being made. It’s really fun and it feels like a fast read even though it’s a relatively lengthy graphic novel.

So, was I right? Had you read (or heard of) these before? Have a recommendation of your own? Throw it in in the comments!

The post …and Now for Something Completely Different appeared first on Escape Pod Comics.

So, first I’m going to post a couple of pictures from our new display and you guys see if you can guess what the theme is.

Some of the books in the display:

A vase of comic book flowers (previously used in our first proto-display for Valentine’s Day)

Our Mannequin reading some Liberty Meadows whilst in her PJs:

Get it yet? Mother’s Day! That’s right, as our own Jessica Boyd will tell you, moms DO read comics. So why not highlight that fact? A comic is a better gift to give mom than a bottle of perfume, trust us.

Here are some more pictures of the display, which really has, if I may say so myself, some really clever devices in it:

More books.

Our breakfast tray. Features REAL toast crust, fake strawberries and sponge-bits pretending to be scrambled eggs left-overs.

Our great big sign.

And now the whole thing put together, I apologize for the reflections and general crappiness of the pictures, but it was taken with my phone…

The most gratifying thing, so far, has been the fact that I only put this up about an hour ago and already dozens of people (mostly middle-aged women) have slowed down, looked it over and smiled. If that’s not a win I don’t know what is.

The post It’s Time for a New Window Display! appeared first on Escape Pod Comics.

Bookface is not somewhere you should live out your misery in public. It is self-detrimental and boring to others. When done repeatedly, it erodes your friends’ empathy and serves only to validate and so consolidate your own negativity, creating then perpetuating your own downward spiral. There, you’ve been told.

 - Stephen on Hope Larson & Tintin Pantoia’s Who Is AC

The Man Who Laughs (£14-99, SelfMadeHero) by Victor Hugo, adapted by David Hine & Mark Stafford.

“My Lords, I come to warn you, your happiness is forged from the misery of mankind.”

As adaptations go, I rank this right up there with Rob Davis’ DON QUIXOTE. Victor Hugo’s original is not a story of mistaken identity so much as buried birth and hereditary powerplay, but even so it is a tale so twisted it would make Shakespeare’s own head spin. What’s more, its socio-political poignancy is powerful harnessed by David Hine and Mark Stafford throughout, and in particular during the House Of Lords climax which is as fiendishly clever as the speech is rousing as it is derided by its orator’s peers. If only it weren’t so pertinent right now.

As to the last dozen pages, six of which are silent, they are a tour de full-colour force which will leave you as breathless as Eric Drooker’s BLOOD SONG. It’s a masterclass from both creators on adapting prose to comics, the key being interpretation rather than illustration for the last six pages of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs were necessarily far from silent. Yet look what a graphic novel can do…

On the surface it would seem that Stafford’s style of cartooning is perfect for hyperactive comedy like the Talbot-penned CHERUBS, but oh how well it works on a more controlled satire, and his use of colour is a revelation for me. The sub-zero midnight blizzard curling and swirling around young Gwynplaine is absolutely freezing (and once more put me in mind of Drooker’s FLOOD and BLOOD SONG). Abandoned on the winter shore, nine-year-old Gwynplaine plucks a baby from the ice-solid teat of its dead mother, half-buried in the snow, and wraps it in his own tattered overcoat, exposing himself to the elements that rage all around. He struggles against a howling wind, carrying them on to their uncertain future. It’s quite the trajectory.

The Man Who Laughs is an impassioned attack on injustice – on the scheming, self-serving rich for whom the poor are but playthings to be milked even drier in order to feed the aristocrats’ appetite for all things opulent and excessive. They have so little to actually do that they spend their time guarding their grudges then taking them out on each other and those they grind under their suited and booted feet.

“Lord David seeks his pleasure through membership of the many aristocratic clubs of London. The Ugly Club, that worships deformity.
“The Fun Club, which exhorts its members to create mischief wherever possible. The rich break the windows of the poor.
“The Mohawks, where creating evil and injury is a matter of duty and the height of fashion is to deftly slice the nostrils of a rustic with the point of the sword.
“Thus Lord David prepares himself for public life, for it is no easy matter to become an accomplished gentleman.”

The titular man who laughs is Gwynplaine himself who is cursed with the same sort of rictus sported by The Joker in comics and Tony Blair in political cartoons. Only this grin is even more hideous, the lips stretched apart and agape, exposing every millimetre of gum in a masca ridens. Taken in by the elderly medicine man Ursus and his pet wolf Homo, the baby Gwynplaine rescued from certain death grows into a beautiful but blind woman they christen Dea, but her early trauma has left her fragile with a heart that flutters like a bird trapped in a cage: any sudden shock might kill her.

“I am only happy when you’re near me,” she tells Gwynplaine, who replies, “Then let us swear never to be apart – we’ll be happy together.”

And they would be, but as Ursus observes, “Happy, are they? Don’t they know it’s a crime? To declare your love too loudly is to invite evil.”

And evil, it certainly comes knocking in the form of Duchess Josiana, pretty sister to petty and ugly and resentful Queen Anne, and engaged by royal decree to be married to Lord David. But it’s a marriage they’d both prefer to avoid and so Lord David introduces the twisted Josiana to Gwynplaine whom he’d spied performing in a play, and her perverse desires along with the machinations of a courtier, will spell the most convoluted doom for them all.

For a bottle has been washed up on the shore, and there is a message in that bottle: a signed certificate of sin from many years ago committed by Gernadus and his travelling troupe of Comprachios, so severe that they felt compelled to confess and cast that confession into the sea in a bottle belonging to one Hardquanonne, “the greatest sinner” of them all. It was they who abandoned Gwynplaine all those years ago. What exactly had they all done so wrong?

SLH

Buy The Man Who Laughs and read the Page 45 review here

Courtney Crumrin vol 3: The Twilight Kingdom h/c (£18-99, Oni Press) by Ted Naifeh.

“He’ll be lonely without me.”
“He’ll get over it. We all do. There are worse things than loneliness.”

After months spent exploring the inexplicable at her uncle’s house, young Courtney finally revisits her old neighbourhood while her worn-out parents try unsuccessfully to sell their old home. In Courtney’s absence her former best friend Malcolm has fallen under the influence of two house-breaking idiots, because there’s really nothing else for him left. Why, I will keep schtum on, but Malcolm falls out with Courtney painfully as she tries her best to steer him away from the delinquents – again, unsuccessfully.

It’s all very tenderly done, but only the prologue to a tale which will take Courtney on a reluctant journey from the grounds of her school to the Twilight Kingdom in order to find the cure for a curse so carelessly cast on one brother by the other.

Friendship and responsibility are as ever the key themes on offer, all concealed under a gothic facade of fantasy and danger, and portrayed with the lushest of artwork now in full colour which has drawn, unsurprisingly, the admiration of Charles Vess.

It’s the third in the series and does touch upon old plot points, but can be read independently and is heartily recommended to the 150+ of you to have already purchased PORCELAIN; as is COURTNEY CRUMRIN VOL 1 with its poison-purple cover and COURTNEY CRUMRIN VOL 2, bound in library green. The production values on this new range of hardcover editions are glorious, with silver ink framing the cover and pin-up gallery, printed on thick, quality paper.

A quietly touching ending, and a very cool read.

SLH

Buy Courtney Crumrin vol 3: The Twilight Kingdom h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Who Is Ac s/c (£10-99, Other A-Z) by Hope Larson & Tintin Pantoia.

Shall I tell you what I love about this graphic novel?

It emphasises the poison of self-pity, especially when made public in blogs.

Bookface is not somewhere you should live out your misery in public. It is self-detrimental and boring to others. When done repeatedly, it erodes your friends’ empathy and serves only to validate and so consolidate your own negativity, creating then perpetuating your own downward spiral. There, you’ve been told.

This, however, is a Young Adult graphic novel: a superhero-style, countryside fable as filtered through CLAMP – it’s not WET MOON! – so instead of sinking into an alcohol-exacerbated rage against the world, horse-loving, blog-prone Mel is possessed by a black-hearted internet demon who demands she troll for more followers like Trace. Tongue-tied Trace is a bit smitten by Mel (who is still hung up on Hunter – or rather guilt-ridden, you’ll see) so already susceptible to Mel’s conversion on account of a grudge he has on AC.

Who is AC? AC is a really a young writer called Lin, new to town; a fiercely independent girl who has the gumption to serialise and self-publish her swashbuckling fantasy by taking it down to the local photocopier, stapling the results together and leaving them, sale-or-return, in the local bookshop. Bravo! I love that too: Hope Larson encouraging others to create and disseminate – to act on their aspirations and so turn them into reality.

Unfortunately Lin has been taken over too (albeit by a more benign force via her mobile phone) and transformed into a lance-wielding superheroine who leaves a snowstorm of white rose petals wherever she goes. She saves the local photocopy shop from a robbery but later, accidentally and unknowingly) blows Trace off his bike who loses his glasses as a direct result. And Trace’s parents aren’t going to fork out for a new pair.

“Just sit at the front of the class, Trace.”
“Right. With the kiss-ups.”

So: misunderstandings all round (I mentioned Hunter, didn’t I?) and Lin’s own well meaning parents are going to put their proverbial feet in it too.

Hope cleverly interjects the proceedings with young teens’ current obsessions and terminology, and if you think all will be wrapped up in a happily-ever-after for all then you very much underestimate CHIGGERS’ Hope Larson. Life doesn’t work like that, as any teen reader will tell you. Try to say otherwise and they will reject you.

I was also rather fond of the ebullient black and white artwork, splashed with purple during the battle blasts, which reminded me fondly of Tim Fish, even though I found its androgyny confusing. I couldn’t work out whether Trace, for example, was male or female for several pages and the same goes for the book-shop owner. Maybe that was intentional, sending the message that gender is unimportant whether it comes to relationships or careers (it should be entirely irrelevant), and perhaps a younger audience than myself won’t even notice nor care.

Hurrah!

SLH

Buy Who Is Ac s/c and read the Page 45 review here

A Boy and a Bear in a Boat s/c (£5-99, David Fickling Books) by Dave Shelton.

“These tides are really weird,” said the boy. “It’s not like this at Cromer.”

A young boy hops on board a boat bobbing on the water and captained by a bear. He asks to be taken to the other side.

“Right you are,” said the bear.

He’s as confident as the lad is vague, neatly setting the scene for nearly three hundred pages of magically illustrated mirth as the pair find themselves all at sea and struggling to land either a fish or themselves.

It’s a book about learning to keep friends afloat in the wake of adversity – and in the wake of absurdity too. Faith, confidence and improvisation: pulling together instead of falling out and, as a consequence, falling apart. Thinking of others instead of yourself and jollying each other along!

Shelton manages all of the above with a touch as gentle as the giant of a bear’s. With little land in sight throughout the entire book, he nails the boy’s cross-patch frustration at the bear’s evasive optimism, and then the boy’s petulance and remorse. Oh, how we find it difficult to apologise! It’s also a book written by a man whose childhood was spent a long time before videogames and other portable distractions or in-flight entertainment.

“Are we nearly there yet?” said the boy.
“We are well on our way,” said the bear.

And that’s just page fifteen. There’s so much more you will recognise from childhood, like the fun to be had on a bright summer’s day, messing about colours and the light behind closed eyelids. “He liked the greeny blue the best, but it was difficult to hold on to for long.” I myself bounced spectral amoebas up and down my eyelids all day long. Still unsure if they existed.

With limited resources our duo try their hands at fishing, first with a fly (oh, all right, a tuft of the poor bear’s fur plucked while his bottom was turned), then with live bait and then – oh, dear – they really are going to bite off more than they can chew! Here they’re down to one last sarnie, and the bear’s previous combos (sprout and honey; anchovy, banana and custard; broccoli, sherbet and gooseberry) have been eccentric at best.

The boy looked at the proffered sandwich. He noticed that the bear was holding it rather gingerly in the tips of two claws and right at the corner. Despite this, the bread did not bend at all. The boy looked up at the bear. He looked back at the sandwich. It was very difficult to tell what colour it was by moonlight, but whatever colour it was didn’t seem right.

“What’s in it?” said the boy again.
“I can’t remember,” said the bear.
“Well, open it up and take a look,” said the boy.
“I can’t,” said the bear. “It’s stuck.”
The boy looked up at the bear. The bear smiled thinly down at the boy. They both looked back at the sandwich.
“Is it…” said the boy.
“What?” said the bear.
“Is it… only a bit, but is it… glowing?”
“No,” said the bear.
They each squinted at the sandwich and leaned in (cautiously) to look more closely.
“Hardly at all,” said the bear.

We rarely stock anything other than comics at Page 45, but this prose is a wonder and I’ll be buying it for adults instead. Plus our Dave won my heart by including a comic within and reminding us how, when we were young, we would pore over them time and time again when we had so very few, savouring their strangeness even if we hadn’t a clue what was going on. But back to the future, and the bear has it all in hand.

“Bored, eh? Well, I suppose you’d better try the complimentary on-board entertainment then,” said the bear.
“On-board entertainment?” said the boy, smiling expectantly.
“Oh yes,” said the bear. “You’ll love this.”

He really doesn’t.

SLH

Buy A Boy and a Bear in a Boat s/c and read the Page 45 review here

Morning Glories s/c vol 4 Truants (£10-99, Image) by Nick Spencer & Joe Eisma.

And you think your school days were a nightmare…

It’s in, I’m sure it’s as riveting as the first three, but it’s the fourth volume and I have other things to do. I went to great lengths reviewing the first three volumes, which you can read instead:

MORNING GLORIES VOL 1
MORNING GLORIES VOL 2
MORNING GLORIES VOL 3

There you go. At the time of typing we also have copies of MORNING GLORIES #26 which follows immediately after this book at a mere 99p. Probably worth a punt, no?

Ciao.

SLH

Buy Morning Glories s/c vol 4 Truants and read the Page 45 review here

Uncanny Avengers vol 1: The Red Shadow h/c (£18-99, Marvel) by Rick Remender & John Cassady with Olivier Coipel.

Last week the Avengers truly assembled. As if to remind us of exactly how many there are now, every single AVENGERS title disgorged itself onto our shelves:

AVENGERS, AVENGERS ARENA, NEW AVENGERS, YOUNG AVENGERS, UNCANNY AVENGERS, EVER SO SLIGHTLY UNNERVING AVENGERS, AVENGERS YOU WOULD NEVER TAKE HOME TO YOUR MOM… We had all the Avengers – apart from SECRET AVENGERS, though perhaps they popped in stealthily under an up-turned cardboard box.

Yes, we were well and truly avenged, though I’m not entirely sure who done us wrong in the first place.

So what is UNCANNY AVENGERS and what sets it apart from the pack?

Well, the artwork, for one, by John Cassady whom you’ll doubtless know from the genuinely ASTONISHING X-MEN VOL 1 and indeed VOL 2, and from all four volumes of the epic science-fiction masterpiece, PLANETARY. Cassady is class. His is a neo-classical art interjected with a gloriously attractive, smooth version of classic superhero stalwarts like George Perez and John Byrne. It has a solidity, and chic sense of style in its fashion sense. Cassidy, as I say, is class.

But when the script rolled in I suspect his eyes rolled up to the heavens: “Jesus Christ! I’m used to working with Joss Whedon and Warren Ellis. What the hell is this shit?”

It’s ill-thought-through and hideously overwritten – appallingly turgid, like wading through a sewage system that’s experienced intense evaporation during a singularly soporific heat wave.

Following the events of AVENGERS VS X-MEN, Captain America comes to the realisation that the Avengers never did enough to help the mutant population in the past, even though some of its earliest members (and several since) have themselves been mutants. That much makes sense, as does his idea to redress the public’s increased alarm by forming a specific Avengers squad composed both of the trusted (Thor and the good Captain himself) and ostracised mutant population (Wolverine, Rogue, Havok and the Scarlet Witch). It will send a signal that the Avengers stand by their mutant comrades, even though they’ve torn each other apart for weeks. Let’s forget that Brian Michael Bendis just ended his Avengers run with the Avengers themselves firmly in the media-manipulated dog house. Their endorsement really shouldn’t mean shit right now. Still.

The bit that makes no sense whatsoever is that, of all people, Havok is invited to lead this team in the field. Havok. It’s not just that he’s a D-list mutant (you may never have heard of) and brother to Cyclops who’s been responsible from the recent escalation in mutant phobia (something he’s escalating to this day – see ALL-NEW X-MEN VOL 1), it’s that Havok has little experience is successful leadership and, uh, Captain America’s on the team. Also, yes, why not welcome back the Scarlet Witch after her sanity-free sabbatical by immediately popping her on the same team as the mutants whose population she decimated in HOUSE OF M? (I know the proper definition of “decimated”, but it’s the term Marvel used, so…)

“But it will make for cool conflict, Stephen!”

Potentially, yes, but it doesn’t. It makes for painfully predictable grudges and, in any case, those are my points:

1) You can hear the writer (or editorial board) thinking, “This will make for cool conflict!” when you should never hear them whisper let alone think.

2) It makes no strategic sense whatsoever. And I thought Captain America was supposed to be the ultimate strategist in the Marvel Universe.

Anyway, the Red Skull has stolen the body of Professor Charles Xavier (RIP for three seconds) and surgically removed his nice juicy brain which he can somehow pop in his own cranial cavity without extracting his own and command all and sundry, telepathically, to misbehave. Yes, they’re going to vote BNP, UKIP or Tory (one of those xenophobic, hate-mongering hoards) and bring about a right old Reich or something.

As to the overwritten, see the return of the overwrought caption boxes explaining the action you’re supposed to see happen (and do) abandoned long ago by everyone other than Dame Christopher Claremont.

“The change happens immediately… the man is gone. The killer is set loose.”

“The assassin is silent. Were it not for the Red Skull’s new-found telepathy, he would surely be killed. “

Surely. Slaughter me now, or shut up.

SLH

Buy Uncanny Avengers vol 1: The Red Shadow h/c and read the Page 45 review here

Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy

Reviews already online if they’re new formats of previous books. Otherwise the most interesting will come under the microscope next week, while the rest will remain with their Diamond previews acting in lieu of reviews.
 

Feynman s/c (£14-99, FirstSecond) by Jim Ottaviani & Leland Myrick

Shame vol 2: Pursuit (£7-50, Renegade) by Lovern Kindzierski & John Bolton

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo vol 2 h/c (£14-99, Vertigo) by Stieg Larsson, Denise Mina & Leonardo Manco, Andrea Mutti

Bedlam vol 1 s/c (£7-50, Image ) by Nick Spencer & Riley Rossmo, Frazer Irving

Peter Bagge’s  Other Stuff (£14-99, Fantagraphics) by Peter Bagge

World Of Warcraft: Dark Riders h/c (£18-99, DC) by Mike Costa & Neil Googe

Aliens: Inhuman Condition h/c (£8-50, Dark Horse) by John Layman & Sam Keith

Don Quixote vol 2 (£14-99, Self Made Hero) by Cervantes & Rob Davis

Marvel Illustrated: Pride & Prejudice s/c (£10-99, Marvel) by Jane Austen, Nancy Austen & Hugo Petrus

Destination X h/c (£9-99, Nobrow Press) by John Martz

Castle Waiting vol 2 h/c (Definitive Edition) (£22-50, Fantagraphics) by Linda Medley

All New X-Men vol 1: Here Comes Yesterday s/c (UK Ed’n) (£10-99, Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis & Stuart Immonen

Iron Man vol 1: Believe s/c (UK Ed’n) (£10-99, Marvel) by Kieron Gillen & Greg Land

Superman Action Comics vol 1: Superman And The Men Of Steel s/c (£12-99, DC) by Grant Morrison & Rags Morales, Andy Kubert

Superman: Earth One vol 1 s/c (£9-99, DC) by J. Michael Straczynski & Shane Davis

Superman Action Comics vol 2: Bulletproof h/c (£18-99, DC) by Grant Morrison & Rags Morales

Gunslinger Girl Omnibus vols 13-14 (£13-50, Seven Seas) by Yu Aida

Knights Of Sidonia vol 2 (£9-99, Vertical) by Tsutomu Nihei
BREAKING NEWS!

ITEM! Young Hellboy stars in an original graphic novel HELLBOY: THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS by Mike Mignola & Duncan Fegredo this Autumn. Early images of Duncan Fegredo’s SUPER-CUTE young Hellboy

ITEM! Preview pages for JUPITER’S LEGACY #1 by Mark Millar & Frank Quitely and now Preview pages for JUPITER’s LEGACY #2 by Mark Millar & Frank Quitely! We still have copies of #1, reviewed and linked to above! Plus you can pre-order JUPITER’S LEGACY #2 here (or, you know, add it to your standing order by phoning 0115 9508045 or emailing page45@page45.com or even tweeting me @pagefortyfive.

ITEM! PORCELAIN: If you’ve yet to pick a copy up and gasp, this beautifully animated PORCELAIN trailer should do the trick!

ITEM! More on Terry Moore’s RACEL RISING TV deal. Brilliant!

ITEM! Interview with Ed Brubaker on the future of FATALE with gorgeous new art from Sean Phillips.

ITEM! Yay!  WE’RE OUT! The new long-form comic from ST. COLIN & THE DRAGON’s Philippa Rice who created our GameCity window last year. They’re out from their 2-D confines and into the real world! I’m just out.

BITE ‘EM! Squeaking of which… Lovely gay laydeez laughing at ludicrous preconceptions and prejudices with enormous good humour and hysterical wit.

It’s been quite the week, hasn’t it?

With Jonathan in Italy, Dominique and I spent an entire eight-day stretch week and indeed our first two Saturdays in over ten years working on the shop floor together. Oh, the laughter! Until, during the military exercise that is delivery day, Jonathan sent the following text: “Eating pizza and drinking wine on an island in the Italian lakes.”

The text I shot back was considerably shorter.

 - Stephen

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