Books and Comics

Cecil Castellucci & Jim Rugg - The Plain Janes

4 Jan 2008

DRAMA (Minx) The latest entry in the new Minx range captures almost every chick lit cliché. High school setting? Check. Geeky girls save the day? Check. And, of course, there’s a moody pretty boy for those raging hormones. And yet it’s not terrible…

Bryan Lee O’Malley - Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together

29 Nov 2007

MANGA ROM-COM Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together (Oni Press) Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old slacker with no money, no job and no hope of getting either. Luckily, in the tradition of classic gen X wastrels he is totally irresistible, which is why the…

Simon Spurrier & Tan Eng Huat - Silver Surfer: In Thy Name No 1

29 Nov 2007

SUPERHERO SCI-FI Silver Surfer: In Thy Name No 1 (Marvel) With extensive work for 2000AD, various licensed and original novels, and his recent Gutsville series for Image already behind him, Simon Spurrier is the hottest young British writer in…

Jason - I Killed Adolf Hitler

29 Nov 2007

IDIOSYNCRATIC SCI-FI I Killed Adolf Hitler (Fantagraphics) Having re-imagined heavyweight modernist writing icons Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound as criminals involved in a heist in The Left Bank Gang, and plundered George Romeo’s zombie…

Justin Gray, Jimmy Paliotti & Adam Archer - Friday the 13th

29 Nov 2007

HORROR Friday the 13th (Wildstorm) Movie spin-offs are often pretty ropey affairs, desperately trying to wheedle a few bucks from fans clamouring for more product while the hype is still clouding their judgement. Which is why Wildstorm’s tribute…

Charles M Schulz - Small world

15 Nov 2007

It’s the little things that make the difference. In the case of the Charles M Schulz cartoon strips, that could mean the smallest of pen strokes for a raised eyebrow, an extra crease on a forehead, the downward bend on the ends of a mouth. Schulz…

Mike Mignola

15 Nov 2007

HORROR Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others (Dark Horse) Those lamenting the scaling back of Mike Mignola’s terrifically idiosyncratic illustrations (presumably so he can focus on comic scriptwriting, film development and other business affairs) will…

John Wagner, Alan Grant & Jose Ortiz

15 Nov 2007

HORROR The Thirteenth Floor (Hibernia) The 80s British comic boom is best-remembered these days as the glory days of 2000AD, when such creators as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison came to prominence. Yet, other contemporary comics from the same…

Various

15 Nov 2007

SUPERHERO Marvel Europa (Marvel UK) Last fortnight we had a collection of the UK’s best writers and artists. This issue we look at Europa a collection bringing together a selection of European creators as they tackle Marvel’s roster of superheroes.

Jeff Lemire

15 Nov 2007

DRAMA Essex County Vol 2: Ghost Stories (Top Shelf) The second volume of an interconnected trilogy of graphic novels set in a fictionalised version of Essex County, Ontario is almost unbearably poignant. Ghost Stories follows the lives of brothers…

Ian Rankin interviews Aidan Moffat about comics

1 Nov 2007

Rankin When did you start reading comics? Were you a DC Thomson lad (Bimbo, Dandy, Beano, Victor, Hotspur)? Moffat I was definitely a Beano boy because it always seemed more edgy than the Dandy, but I insisted I got the Dandy as a sort of light…

Denise Mina & Leonardo Manco - review

Horror

1 Nov 2007

While Ian Rankin is writing his own Hellblazer story, due in 2008, the current scribe bringing occult anti-hero John Constantine to life is fellow Scots crime author Denise Mina. In this direct sequel to her Empathy is the Enemy collection, the Empathy…

Steve Niles & Scott Hampton - review

Horror

1 Nov 2007

Steve Niles is probably the biggest name in horror comics at the moment. The man who brought us the gothic vampires of 30 Days of Night (now a big budget horror flick) is now launching his first big monthly title with DC, Simon Dark, starring ‘Gotham…

Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith

30 Days of Night (IDW)

18 Oct 2007

Once upon a time uptight Americans thought gruesome moral tales of things that crept and slithered through the world of comics might bring down society. EC Comics and their Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror and Haunt of Fear titles caused a moral…

Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith

30 Days of Night: Dark Days (IDW)

18 Oct 2007

After reading 30 Days of Night it’s hard to think where Niles could take the characters he’d created next. Here he moves the action from Alaska to LA, where one of the survivors of the initial assault continues her war on the vampires and her campaign…

Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith

30 Days of Night: Return to Barrow (IDW)

18 Oct 2007

We’re back in Alaska for this outing, as a new sheriff takes over the unenviable task of keeping law in Barrow, three years after the events of the first book. As soon as we touch down in Barrow the claustrophobic edge reappears as the month of darkness…

Steve Niles & Various

30 Days of Night: Bloodsucker Tales (IDW)

18 Oct 2007

Here Niles extends his own mythology with more tales of vampires, this time with the loosest connections to the original trilogy. Kody Chamberlain handles the art for ‘Dead Billy Dead’, while in the second story, ‘Juarez’, Templesmith returns on art…

Nicolas de Crecy - Glacial Period

Graphic novel

4 Oct 2007

Being branded an enfant terrible is too often faint praise for some artists but it poses no problems for Nicolas De Crécy who goes to great pains not to conform to stereotypical comic boy clichés and in doing so has produced a distinct body of work that…

Heath Robinson - Heath Robinson’s Helpful Solutions

Humour

4 Oct 2007

Given the relative dearth of books about the brilliant English humour cartoonist Heath Robinson, it’s heartening to see London’s Cartoon Museum publishing a heavily illustrated catalogue (with an informative essay by Simon Heneage, founder of the…

Fuyomi Kuono - Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

Historical manga

4 Oct 2007

Set ten years after the US dropped the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb on Hiroshima, decimating the city, these two stories follow the lives of the Hibakusha (‘explosion-affected people’). ‘The first story, ‘Town of Evening Calm’, details the descent into…

Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson - The Boys

Superhero

4 Oct 2007

Garth Ennis, the bad boy British writer responsible for the controversial series’ Preacher and Transmetropolitan, puts the boot into the iconoclastic superhero strip sub-genre. The first six issues, collected here, introduce the titular CIA-backed…

Captain America: The Chosen No 1

David Morrell & Mitch Breitweiser

20 Sep 2007

In the current Marvel universe, Captain America is dead. Still, that doesn’t stop him being reincarnated when David Morrell – the novelist who created Rambo – comes calling for a scripting job. The majority of this first issue of six is about as…

Spent

Joe Matt

20 Sep 2007

The confessions of a self-justified jerk-off continue in this follow-up to The Poor Bastard, which collects the next four issues of Matt’s ongoing comic Peepshow. If anything, Spent (as in ejaculated and knackered) is an even more brazenly confessional…

Dan Dare Rogue Planet

Frank Hampson & Don Harley

20 Sep 2007

Purists might be shocked by the news that Dan Dare is to return in a new series written by Preacher’s iconoclastic author Garth Ennis, yet no update could surely go further than Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ Dare, which saw our despairing hero…

The Saga of the Blood Benders

Rick Geary

20 Sep 2007

Rick Geary has produced stories and art for everyone from Heavy Metal and National Lampoon to Disney. However, recently he’s been focusing on his ‘Treasury of Victorian Murder’, which has covered Jack the Ripper through to The Murder of Abraham Lincoln…