Books, Comics

Preview of the year 2007

2007 is about the future. And about the past. It’

3 Jan 2007

THE FUTURE Cyberspace invaders We may not be flying around in hover cars or wearing spangly all-silver outfits, but thanks to the internet the future has truly arrived. And the revolution will continue apace in 2007, argues Suzanne Black. A…

Bat's Life - Dark Knight

17 Jul 2008

Leigh Rafferty traces the highs and lows of the caped crusader’s cultural career

No more heroes - graphic novels

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

The Book Festival is once again acknowledging the rapid expansion in graphic novels. Henry Northmore chats to a number of comic book guys (and girl) to ask what the future may hold for the superhero While graphic novels may be still be a minority…

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…

Alan Moore & Brian Bolland - Batman: The Killing Joke

17 Jul 2008

SUPER VILLAIN (DC) New blockbuster Dark Knight is all about the Joker. At first glance he’s almost a comedy character, but in the right hands he can be genuinely terrifying. As a character, The Joker represents insanity at it’s worst; a gibbering…

Junko Mizuno - comic review

Junko Mizuno

19 Dec 2006

MANGA/SCI-FI This is the debut graphic novel from Japanese illustrator Junko Mizuno, best known for her garish hyper cute art with twisted dark edges, as wide-eyed, sexy Japanese girls are wrapped in the trappings of fetishism, drugs and death (the…

Stranger in a strange land

17 Jul 2008

Amazingly, Strange & Stranger is the first critical retrospective of the life and work of legendary American comic book artist Steve Ditko. The shy son of Eastern European immigrants who was born in Pennsylvania in 1927 may have languished in relative…

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…

Oor Wullie Annual 2007

(DC Thompson)

11 Dec 2006

COMIC ANNUAL ‘Wullie and his pals still look nifty, They still live in 1950’ As a nation, we Scots take great pride in the technological achievements of our forebears: John Logie Baird, inventor of the TV, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of…

Batman: Gotham Knights

17 Jul 2008

Intended to fill the gaps between Batman Begins and Dark Knight, Gotham Knights offers us six animated shorts, much in the same way as The Animatrix did for The Matrix. Each story is self-contained and created by a different writer (including Greg…

Comic - Jim Krueger, Alex Ross & Doug Braithwaite

Justice (DC/Titan)

22 Nov 2006

SUPERHERO The creators of Earth, Universe and Paradise X reunite (with Braithwaite providing pencil base for Ross’ glorious painted panels) for another heavily religious, wholly apocalyptic adventure involving DC’s greatest heroes and villains. This…

Bill Griffith - Zippy: Walk A Mile in My Muu-Muu

13 Mar 2008

CULT STRIP (Fantagraphics) Having made his first appearance in Real Pulp Comix in 1971 Zippy is getting old. For the uninitiated Zippy is a polymath, free associating pinhead who wanders the consumerist besieged wastelands of the US. Griffith’s…

Beano Annual 2007

(DC Thompson)

11 Dec 2006

COMIC ANNUAL It’s pretty much business as usual in Beano-land, you’ll be glad to hear: we open at the ‘Softies Fashion and Fabric Show’ where Walter and a couple of equally flamboyant chums vie for the lead in The Naked Civil Servant. Inside…

Broons 1939 Annual, The

The Broons 1939 Annual

11 Dec 2006

COMIC ANNUAL Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without a Broons Annual under the tree and this reproduction of the very first annual from 1939 finds Dundee’s favourite family getting caught in the same situations they have been re-living over and…

Steve Niles & Kelly Jones - Batman: Gotham After Midnight No 1

19 Jun 2008

SUPERHERO (DC) In the arena of American superhero comics, Batman and the X-Men’s Wolverine are probably the most over-saturated characters. It can be a minefield trying to guess which titles featuring either character on the cover are actually…

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…

Ghost Rider

As the new movie roars onto the big screen,

26 Feb 2007

COMICS IIt’s 1972. Evel Knievel was the most famous man in America; films like Blacula, Deep Throat and Deliverance were topping the box-office; events like Watergate and Vietnam meant there was a darker edge in the air. Marvel were running stories…

Winsor McCay

Editorial Works (Checker BPG)

12 Feb 2007

NEWS/REPORTAGE Better known for his groundbreaking 1930s animated film Gertie the Dinosaur (a film so exquisitely animated that it upped the game for Disney at the time), and comic strips Little Nemo in Slumberland and Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend…

Dan Slott & Juan Bobillo - She-Hulk: Single Green Female

5 Jun 2008

SUPERHERO (Marvel) Finally how could we ignore She-Hulk? After receiving an irradiated blood transfusion from her cousin, Bruce Banner, Jennifer Walters inherited some of his powers and strength. However, she’s in control of her emotions and isn’t…

Alan Grant, Jamie Grant & Various - Wasted No.1

22 May 2008

ANTHOLOGY (Bad Press) Devised by sometime 2000AD writer Alan Grant, and the artists at Glasgow’s Hope Street Studios (which includes the All-Star Superman team of Jamie Grant – no relation to Alan – and cover artist Frank Quitely), Wasted is the…

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.

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…

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…

Pat Mills, Kevin O'Neil, Jesus Redondo & Bryan Talbot

The Complete Nemesis the Warlock Book 1 (Rebellion

12 Feb 2007

SCI-FI Rebellion continues its gorgeous repackaging of classic 2000AD stories. And Nemesis the Warlock is perhaps one of the greatest stories to ever grace the pages of the erstwhile sci-fi compendium, being a biting satire of racial intolerance and…

Fountain, The - Darren Aronofsky feature

Waves of mutilation

12 Jan 2007

Speaking to the website Comic Book Resources in May 2005, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky said: ‘I knew it was a hard film to make, and I said if Hollywood fucks me over at least I’ll make a comic book out of it.’ They did, and so he did.

Michael Green & Denys Cowan - Batman: Lovers and Madmen

17 Jul 2008

SUPER VILLAIN ( DC ) The main problem with Lovers and Madmen is that in many ways it is contradictory to the events in The Killing Joke (which have become accepted as the origin story to the Joker over the years). It depicts the Joker as far…

Bob Levin - Most Outrageous

3 Jul 2008

NON-FICTION/BIOG (Fantagraphics) Looking for a suitable subject for the follow-up to his book The Pirates and the Mouse – a wickedly funny account of a gang of comic book creators who satirised themselves into court with the Disney Corporation, Bob…

Steven Deighan & Terry Cooper - Feels Like Stephen King

19 Jun 2008

HORROR (Steven Deighan Publications) Small press printing of young Edinburgh horror author Steven Deighan's short story adapted to comic format. Telling a morbid tale of the publishing industry as a young writer is approached by a jaded publisher with…

Bruce Jones & John Romita Jr - The Incredible Hulk: Return of the Monster

5 Jun 2008

SUPERHERO (Marvel) This year’s blockbuster roster is jam packed with comic adaptations, and Marvel’s second big hitter of the year, The Incredible Hulk (after the considerable success of Iron Man) smashes it’s way onto the big screen this…

Various - The Definitive Iron Man

22 May 2008

SUPERHERO (Marvel UK) With Iron Man proving to be the first genuine blockbuster of the summer season (and a fantastic adaptation of the source material) Marvel UK presents the ultimate introduction to ol’ Shellhead. The collection offers slices of…

Iron Man: Extremis

Warren Ellis & Adi Granov

24 Apr 2008

SUPERHERO (Marvel) This is perhaps the classic modern Iron Man tale. Warren Ellis gets his grubby hands on Tony Stark and changes him forever. Here the Golden Avenger takes on bio-chemically altered terrorists, who possess more power than even his…

Frank Miller & John Romita Jr - Daredevil: The Man Without Fear

27 Mar 2008

SUPERHERO CLASSIC (Marvel) There are plenty of classic titles in John Romita Jr’s back catalogue but nothing beats this 1993 collaboration with Frank Miller. In fact, The Man Without Fear is up there with the best comics of all time. Retelling…

John Romita Jr & Various - Marvel Masterworks: John Romita Jr

27 Mar 2008

SUPERHERO ANTHOLOGY (Marvel UK) With the release of World War Hulk, Kick-Ass and this retrospective it’s a great time to look back at the career of one of comics’ best-loved artists. Nepotism may be an ugly word but in the case of the great John…

Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy - Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

13 Mar 2008

LITERARY ADAPTATION (Waverley) The second One Book – One Edinburgh graphic novel adaptation was never going to be a straightforward reprise of last year’s successful Kidnapped campaign, even based around a source novel by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Alan Grant

17 Jan 2008

We’ve passed several science fiction milestones in the last 25 years with George Orwell’s 1984, Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 and the speculative 1997 proposed in Predator 2. And, while the exact facts within these fictions may not have come to pass, there are…

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…

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…

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…

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…

David Kendall

(Robinson)

23 Aug 2007

This really is a weighty tome with over 500 pages of war comics culled from across the world and through the ages (from 1965–2006). Keiji Nakazawa sets the mood with his personal account of the bombing of Hiroshima in I Saw It, a poignant tale that…

Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy - comic review

Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy

29 Jan 2007

LITERARY ADAPTATION Robert Louis Stevenson’s celebrated historical adventure doesn’t need pictures to enhance its power. But this graphic novel adaptation, produced as part of the One Book ?" One Edinburgh reading campaign, successfully captures the…

Gail Simone, Dale Eaglesham & Val Semeiks

Villains United (DC)

11 Nov 2006

SUPERHERO Seemingly an excuse to reel out every other car boot sale bad guy that the archives of DC forgot. A bunch of vaguely uninspiring villains are banded together as the Secret Six by a mysterious power to challenge Lex Luthor’s Society, an army…

Various - Superman: Emperor Joker

17 Jul 2008

SUPER VILLAIN (DC) Despite an impressive writing team – including Jeph Loeb, JM DeMatteis and Ed McGuinness – Emperor Joker is a mess. This time, Superman takes on the harlequin of hate in a reality-warping tale as the Joker takes on God-like…

John Whalen & Mike Hawthorne - The Un-Men: Get Your Freak On

3 Jul 2008

MURDER MYSTERY (DC/Vertigo) The Un-Men were deformed approximations of man brewed up with a mix of science and sorcery by Swamp Thing’s arch-nemesis Anton Arcane back in 1972. They’ve cropped up several times through the years, and now launch their…

Leah Hayes - Funeral of the Heart

19 Jun 2008

SHORT STORIES (Fantagraphics) Welcome to the weird world of Leah Hayes. Where an elderly couple digs mysterious tunnels at night. Where a young male kitchen hand becomes a duck-slaughtering expert when his girlfriend develops an unusual illness. Or…

Greg Pak, Carlo Pagulayan & Aaron Lopresti - Planet Hulk

5 Jun 2008

SUPERHERO (Marvel) We reviewed World War Hulk in issue 599 ( ••• ) but let’s go back to the story that launched Hulk on his revenge fuelled tirade against planet earth. The Illuminati (a secretive cabal of superheroes that includes Iron Man, Mr…

Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale - Hulk: Gray

5 Jun 2008

SUPERHERO (Marvel) He’s probably as famous for his tough green hide as his anger-management problems but the Hulk has spent several years as a grey goliath (in fact he was grey in his first ever appearance in 1962). Some creative teams work…

The Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1980s

22 May 2008

Forget Teddy Sheringham or Craig Brewster. Each would have to play on for almost another 20 years to match the footballing career of Roy Race, who turned out for and then player-managed the famous Melchester Rovers from 1954 to 1993 (with a brief…

Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle

David Michelinie, Bob Layton & John Romita Jr

24 Apr 2008

SUPERHERO (Marvel) In the world of comics Iron Man is one of the main players in the Marvel Universe. As provisional leader of the Avengers for many, many years, he’s helped shape the fictional world more than most. However Iron Man hasn’t crossed…

John Wagner & Colin MacNeil - Judge Dredd: America

10 Apr 2008

DYSTOPIAN SCI-FI (Rebellion) Neither a part of the Hollywood-friendly American comic book market nor as established in the British psyche as he was during the 80s heyday, it’s an oft neglected fact that Judge Dredd has become the focus of one of the…

Malcy Duff - It’s Just Ketchup

28 Feb 2008

INDEPENDENT (Missing Twin Publishing) The modestly home-made comics of Edinburgh cartoonist Malcy Duff are abstract almost to the point of alienation, but there’s something about their cinematic grace and unashamed abstraction which sits comfortably…

Various - 52 (Books 1-4)

DC

31 Jan 2008

The most complex and ambitious project in comics gets the graphic novel treatment printed across four books. Taking its cue from the real-time adventures of television thriller 24, each issue of 52, which was printed weekly for a full year, covered one…

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…

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 & 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 & 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…

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…

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…

Car boot sale Broons book expected to fetch thousands

20 Sep 2007

A signed Broons annual is expected to fetch thousands of pounds when it goes under the hammer in St Andrews. The rare book from 1959 was given as a birthday present by Dudley D. Watkins, with a personal message in the front sleeve. Auctioneer…

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…

Adrian Tomine

6 Sep 2007

GRAPHIC NOVEL The fine lines that comprise Adrian Tomine’s expressive monochrome frames may seem spindly, but they hold a weight of meaning. It is the spaces between the action and dialogue that make Tomine’s stories so effective – the pregnant…

Joe Matt

6 Sep 2007

AUTOBIOGRAPHY Joe Matt’s painful but hilarious autobiographical strips bring confessional cartooning a la dirty old sod Robert Crumb and grouchy elderly codger Harvey Pekar to a new and entertaining low. A generation younger than Crumb and Pekar, the…

Brad Meltzer & Ed Benes

(DC/Titan)

23 Aug 2007

Novelist Brad Meltzer proved he has a knack for comics with the gripping Identity Crisis, perfecting a style of weaving human feelings into tales of world shattering superpowers. This is no mean feat given that it’s often near impossible to anchor the…

Silverfish

David Lapham

16 Aug 2007

CRIME DRAMA Comics can be amazingly astute when it comes to capturing the teen experience. Charles Burns’ sublime Black Hole (surely one of the greatest comics of all time) and last year’s Sloth by Gilbert Hernandez offered strange and distorted…

The Other Side

Jason Aaron & Cameron Stewart

16 Aug 2007

WAR Traditionally, comics that deal in war have been of the GI Joe/Commando camp, revelling in the glory of battle and the heroics of the average man on the frontline. The Other Side, on the other hand, deals with the Vietnam War and the moral…

Batman Black & White Volume 3

(DC/Titan)

9 Aug 2007

Usually at home as a simple back-up slot in the monthly Batman: Gotham Knights, Batman Black & White has taken on a life of its own and has quickly become a jewel in the crown of DC’s myriad caped crusader titles. A creative playground for various…

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Comics

21 May 2007

FANTASY Given that this is by far the best work Mike Mignola did before creating Hellboy, it’s a wonder it’s taken Dark Horse this long (17 years) to collect his marvellous adaptations, scripted by Howard Chaykin, of Fritz Leiber’s terrific sword and…

Ed Brubaker & Trevor Hairsine - comic review

Ed Brubaker & Trevor Hairsine

9 Jan 2007

SUPERHERO Comics have embraced and pioneered the ret-con more that any other artistic medium. For the less geeky amongst us, a ret-con is ‘retro continuity’, the art of going back and retelling the past so it vaguely makes sense with what’s gone…

Mark Millar & JG Jones - Wanted

3 Jul 2008

THRILLER/SUPER VILLIAN (Top Cow/Titan) As yet another comics-based blockbuster hits the big screen, Titan brings us this timely repackaged re-release. Wanted was written by one of the comics world’s leading lights, Scotland’s own Mark Millar, a…

Various - Fantasy Classics: Graphic Classics Volume 15

19 Jun 2008

HORROR (Eureka Productions) Graphic novel adaptations of classic works of literature are becoming more popular these days, and American series Graphic Classics pack in more updating for your buck with an anthology format. They’re not quite in the…

Matt Groening & Various - Big Brilliant Book of Bart Simpson

22 May 2008

COMEDY (Titan Books) The boast that The Simpsons is now the longest running animated TV series of all time is a bit of a double-edged sword. For as it rolls out episode after episode, into the multiplexes and beyond, the permutations for new plot…

Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson - The Boys II

8 May 2008

SUPERHERO SATIRE (Titan) Some 20 years ago Alan Moore asked the question: ‘Who watches The Watchmen?’ Garth Ennis answers the question with this anarchic superhero satire about a gang of super-powered, CIA-backed thugs who police – with extreme…

Richard Cowdry & Various - The Bedsit Journal No 2

8 May 2008

COMPILATION (Bedsit Journal) Marshalled together by the artist and writer Richard Cowdry whose previous comic seed bombs include Kartoon Cuts and Knucklehead, this funny, bitter and vulgar collection of new comic book talent proves what can be done…

Brian K Vaughan & Various - Batman: False Faces

10 Apr 2008

SUPERHERO (DC/Titan) Now better known for his Y: The Last Man, Pride of Baghdad and Ex-Machina titles as well as being one of the keys writers on TV’s Lost, Brian K Vaughan started off as a jobbing writer. With his star now well and truly established…

Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis

10 Apr 2008

AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Vintage) In advance of the Persepolis feature-length animation to be released at cinemas at the end of this month (25 April if you want to note it in your diary) comes this welcome two-in-one paperback edition of Satrapi’s seminal…

Mark Millar & John Romita Jr - Kick-Ass No 1

27 Mar 2008

MODERN DAY SUPERHERO (Marvel) It’s certainly not all about the past with Romita Jr as this new collaboration with Mark Millar proves. The two artists’ styles complemented each other so well on Wolverine: Enemy of the State that it’s not surprising…

Reginald Hudlin, Larry Stroman & Ken Lashley - Black Panther: Black to the Future

13 Mar 2008

SUPERHERO (Marvel) Marvel celebrates Black History Month with this double-sized one shot focusing on two of the highest profile black characters in comics: The Black Panther and his wife Storm (of X-Men fame). The tale is set in the fictional African…

Chris Ware - The ACME Novelty Library Number 18

28 Feb 2008

INDEPENDENT (Chris Ware) It doesn’t get much more independent than self-publishing, and that’s what Chris Ware is now doing with his occasional title that was originally published by Fantagraphics and which initially introduced the Guardian First Book…

Various - Blab! Volume 18

28 Feb 2008

INDEPENDENT (Fantagraphics) After an undoubtedly substantial 17 volumes, Blab! returns once more. The editor, designer and general sweetheart of the illustration circuit, Monte Beauchamp’s annual conception will be welcomed with open arms by high-brow…

Mark Millar

14 Feb 2008

Despite being one of the most successful writers of comics ever, Mark Millar still resides in Coatbridge. Like most UK writers he earned his stripes on 2000AD. ‘The older guys like Grant Morrison, Pete Milligan, Alan Grant and John Wagner had all…

Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer

14 Feb 2008

DVD (PG) 88min (20th Century Fox) There are tons of big budget comics-based movies (most notably Iron Man, Wanted and The Dark Knight) on the horizon this year so it’s worth reminding ourselves of the last superhero blockbuster to hit the screens. Or…

Witchblade Volume 1

14 Feb 2008

DVD (15) 100min (MVM Entertainment) The Witchblade is a mysterious ancient artefact, a weapon of immense destructive power that binds itself to the flesh of a living female host. Here the Top Cow comics series is given the anime treatment as the…

Mark Millar & Steve McNiven - Civil War

31 Jan 2008

Having dealt with DC’s ambitious crossover we have to mention Marvel’s equivalent, Civil War, a far more user-friendly prospect for the casual comics fan. The outbreak of unrest within a people is rarely less than tumultuous, and bloodshed is a tragic…

Jeff Smith - Shazam!: Monster Society of Evil

17 Jan 2008

SUPER HERO (DC) Jeff Smith will forever be known for his wonderful, self-published, multi-award-winning Bone series, a whimsical fantasy tale that got the balance of childish wonder and compelling storytelling just right. Here he takes on Captain…

Rick Veitch & Gary Erskine - Army@Love: The Hot Zone Club

17 Jan 2008

WAR/SATIRE (DC/Titan) Given the irreverent nature, speedy production and counterculture placement of the medium, it’s unsurprising that comics should come in under the radar with a satirical first strike at the bogus war in the Middle East. American…

Warren Ellis, Cary Nord & Dave Stewart - Ultimate Human No.1

17 Jan 2008

SUPERHERO (Marvel) Marvel’s Ultimate line was intended to reinvent the company’s main characters for the 21st century, to drag them out of the hands of continuity-obsessed fanboys for a while and show off how well superhero stories could function as a…

Jodi Picoult, Terry Dodson & Rachel Dodson - Wonder Woman: Love and Murder

4 Jan 2008

SUPERHERO (DC) Novellist Jodi Picoult (who gave us bestseller My Sister’s Keeper) makes her first foray into graphic fiction and surprisingly she’s the first female writer to take on the monthly Wonder Woman title. This gripping work follows Diana…

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…

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…

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…

Alan Moore & Various

6 Sep 2007

SUPERHEROES A lot is made of the genius of Alan Moore, and we can never discredit the man who gave us The Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or took Swamp Thing to new celestial heights. But that doesn't mean his every utterance is…

Renée French

6 Sep 2007

DRAMA California-based cartoonist Renée French’s tale of a troubled childhood is a surreal gem. It concerns a boy named Edison Steelhead, whose birth cost the lad his mother’s life and whose disfigured face is inherited from his bereaved father. In a…

Yet more comic adaps

23 Aug 2007

The latest comic to get the big screen treatment is set to be Frank Miller’s The Spirit and Eva Mendes has already signed on to appear. Despite popping up in the less than acclaimed Ghost Rider, Mendes is apparently undaunted enough to pitch up as the…

Legal bid to ban ‘racist’ Tintin comic

8 Aug 2007

A Congolese student has launched legal action in Belgium to have a controversial comic book declared racist and banned from book stores. Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu, who lives in Brussels, claims Tintin in the Congo portrays Africans as stereotypical black…

Hitlist - The best books, comics & events

16 Jul 2007

• Harry Potter Week Regardless of whether you love or loathe JK Rowling’s teenage wizard and his fearsome chums, the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and the culmination of the most successful children’s book franchise ever, is cause…

Harvey Pekar

Ego and Hubris (Ballantine Books)

12 Feb 2007

BIOGRAPHY/LIFE STORY Meet Michael Malice - childhood immigrant, dreamer, short-ass and egotist. In some ways he’s just another mildly schizophrenic man, raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, but to Pekar (the graphic novel’s greatest navel gazer) he is…

2000AD 30-year anniversary

Thrill seeker

29 Jan 2007

Those of us at a certain age might remember the tooth-gnashing wait every Wednesday morning for 2000AD to drop through the letter box. The boys’ adventure comic was first published in February 1977, and the particular pool of creative genius and…

Denise Mina & Leonardo Manco - comic review

Denise Mina & Leonardo Manco

29 Jan 2007

HORROR Bitter mage John Constantine makes his way to Scotland, as crime writer Denise Mina (Field of Blood/The Dead Hour) makes her first foray into comics, bringing Constantine onto her home territory, Glasgow, the setting for most of her mystery…

Warren Ellis & Mike Deodato Jr - comic review

Warren Ellis & Mike Deodato Jr

29 Jan 2007

SUPERHERO Having run for the past few years as a fanboy-friendly graveyard for all of Marvel’s most colourful and perhaps least inspiring villains, this first issue of Warren Ellis’ tour of duty as writer promises to make it a title worth…