Books, Comics and Miles Fielder

Nicolas de Crécy - The Celestial Bibendum

Gorgeous reprint and translation of artist/writer de Crécy’s often bizarre comic

27 Apr 2012

Knockabout, the UK publisher/distributor that’s been making Transatlantic underground and alternative comics available to the turned on and tuned in since the 1980s, has more recently been in the business of translating and repackaging into oversize…

Joost Swarte: Is That All There Is?

Compendium of the Dutch cartoonist’s satirical alternative comics

3 Feb 2012

Apparently so. Or almost so. Is That All There Is? collects virtually all of the Dutch cartoonist’s alternative comics from way back in 1972 to the present day, translates them into English and assembles them, under Swarte’s own supervision, in this…

Preview of 2012 - Millennium Trilogy comics

Scottish crime author Denise Mina adapts Stieg Larsson’s bestselling classics

6 Jan 2012

There’s not a lot left to say about Stieg Larsson. The three homegrown film adaptations of the late Swedish author’s novels – The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – along with David…

Alan Moore & Jacen Burrows - Neonomicon

Moore takes some liberties with Lovecraft's stories, but as ever, does a grand job of it

5 Jan 2012

(Avatar) While we wait impatiently for the final instalment of the latest The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century (see our review of part two), we have this new graphic novella from the grand magi of comics to be going on with. Neonomicon is…

Hot 100 2011 - No. 49 to 1

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

The Hot 100 is the definitive list of Scottish creative talent. From fashion designers to performance artists, everyone who has made a sizeable splash in 2011 has a place in this countdown. It’s for people who’ve created a buzz, but it’s also about…

Metaphrog - Louis: Red Letter Day

Reissue of the Glasgow-based graphic novel duo's 2000 Louis debut

12 Dec 2011

(Metaphrog) A year after the publication of the fifth Louis book, Night Salad, the Glasgow-based writer-illustrator partnership Metaphrog celebrates a decade of their series of graphic novels for kids and adults. To mark the event, Scot John Chalmers…

The Art of Joe Kubert

Wonderful collection of comics art from one of the legends of the medium

21 Nov 2011

Edited by Bill Schelly (Fantagraphics) Alongside the ongoing and consistently groundbreaking efforts of Fantagraphics Books Inc to publish the work of new and cutting edge cartoonists (beginning with Los Bros Hernandez's Love & Rockets in the late…

Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century – 1969

Groovy, psychedelic second entry into the League's Century series

3 Aug 2011

(Top Shelf/Knockabout) Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill take their science fiction and fantasy literature homage/parody into previously uncharted realms with their most contemporaneous jaunt yet. Part two of the Century trilogy takes the heroes into…

Joe Simon: My Life in Comics

Interesting autobiography from one of the pioneers of superhero comics

21 Jul 2011

(Titan) This autobiography written by one of the founding fathers of the American comic books hits the bookshelves a fortnight ahead of the release of the latest Hollywood blockbuster adaptation of a superhero strip, Captain America, which…

Jason and Fabien Vehlmann - Isle of 100,000 Graves

Daft and deadpan humour make for hilarious read

20 Jul 2011

(Fantagraphics) Norway-born, South of France-based cartoonist Jason’s absurdist mix of daft and deadpan humour (a Nordic speciality perhaps) once again makes for hilarious reading in this tale of skulduggery in the South Seas. The discovery of a…

Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden & Ben Stenbeck - Baltimore: The Plague Ships

Disappointing supernatural horror from Hellboy creator Mike Mignola

20 Jul 2011

(Dark Horse) Hellboy creator Mike Mignola continues to expand his universe of supernatural horror inspired by 19th and 20th century pulp fictions with this his latest creation, Lord Henry Baltimore, vampire hunter. This first story arc, the first…

Joe Simon & Jack Kirby - Fighting American

Classic 50s action with satirical edge from famed writer and artist team

31 May 2011

(Titan) Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the greatest writer-artist team of the Golden Age of comics, created, among other colourful costumed crime-fighters, the star-spangled superhero Captain America. Conceived as the ultimate patriot in response to…

Mario & Gilbert Hernandez - Citizen Rex

Science fiction satire from the creators of Love & Rockets

31 May 2011

(Dark Horse) Co-creator Mario opens this hardcover collection of the six-issue comic originally published in 2009 with an amusing anecdote about meeting a geek at a science fiction convention who had the cheek to write off Los Bros Hernandez…

Eric Skillman and Jhomar Soriano - Liar's Kiss

Unpredictable crime noir graphic novel from new writer and artist team

12 May 2011

Top Shelf Comix. Featuring a real loser of a protagonist and devolving around a series of misunderstandings and bad coincidences, this stylish, noirish hard-boiled crime graphic novel recalls, among other things, certain films of the Coen brothers. In…

Winshluss - Pinocchio

3 May 2011

Winshluss, the multitalented French cartoonist, filmmaker and musician whose real name is Vincent Parronnaud, is best known for the Oscar-nominated animated feature film he made with Iranian author and illustrator Marjane Satrapi based on her memoir…

Jeff Lemire - Sweet Tooth

29 Jul 2010

(Titan/Vertigo) It’s hardly surprising that Jeff Lemire’s current ongoing series (the first five issues of which are collected here) should be a bleak, post-apocalyptic yarn that recalls, among other precedents, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Lemire…

Mike Mignola gets back to the drawing board with Abe Sapien, Hellboy and BPRD

24 Jun 2010

Miles Fielder chats to writer and artist Mike Mignola about the expanding world of his demonic offspring and literally getting back to the drawing board

Eddie Campbell

The comic artist/writer brings his life's work together

17 Sep 2009

Glasgow-born, Brisbane-based Eddie Campbell is best known for illustrating From Hell, his and writer Alan Moore’s exhaustive graphic novel investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders. It’s the Oz-based ex-pat’s autobiographical comics, however, that…

Howard Chaykin - American Flagg!

28 May 2009

With a penchant for eroticism and violence, US comics visionary Howard Chaykin is releasing another groundbreaking work. Miles Fielder chats to him.

Guy Delisle - Burma Chronicles

30 Apr 2009

TRAVELOGUE COMIC French-Canadian animator and cartoonist Guy Delisle previously documented his experiences in far-flung inaccessible countries with Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China and Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea. His third graphic travel…

Alan Moore - Lost Girls

5 Feb 2009

‘What we wanted to do with Lost Girls was to come up with a different form of pornography. We realised we had the ideas for something enormous and wonderful.’ Alan Moore, who’s widely considered to be the finest writer working in comics today and is…

Gilbert Hernandez - Speak of the Devil

8 Jan 2009

CRIME One half of Los Bros Hernandez takes time off from the long-running magic realist Mexican soap opera of Love & Rockets for this nasty little tale that mixes teen melodrama with stalk’n’slash chills. It’s a crazed cautionary tale in which a…

Various - Creepy Archives Volume 1

16 Oct 2008

HORROR Ten years after the proscriptive Comics Code Authority nailed shut the coffin on the very graphic and highly subversive 1950s EC horror comics line – Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, etc – publishing entrepreneur James Warren…

Nate Powell - Swallow Me Whole

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Although Nate Powell’s graphic novel about the growing pains of a pair of step-siblings living in small town America is in the magic realist mould, the fantastic elements here are definitely – and in no way contrarily – of the mundane variety.

Various (Ed: Paul Gravett) - The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics

18 Sep 2008

ANTHOLOGY Lead by Frank Miller’s nightmare-noir Sin City series, crime comics are enjoying a resurgence in creativity and popularity the like of which hasn’t been seen since the genre dominated the American newspaper ‘funnies’ in the 1930s. Which…