Books and Miles Fielder

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…

Let the Right One In

16 Jul 2007

HORROR DRAMA JOHN AJVIDE LINDQVIST Let the Right One In (Quercus) Swedish magician turned stand-up comedian turned novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist’s first book features numerous sleight-of-hand tricks and sly jokes. In the opening chapter…

Jason Starr - The Follower

2 Jul 2007

A story about a stalker is hardly a novel idea, and Brooklyn-born and bred Jason Starr’s unimaginative treatment of the phenomenon brings absolutely nothing new to it. Set in a Manhattan populated with jocular and bimbotic college graduates, The…

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…

Essex County Vol 1: Tales from the Farm

Comics

21 May 2007

FANTASY Superman and flying saucers feature figuratively in Canadian cartoonist Jeff Lemire’s lovely low-key coming-of-age graphic novel. Set in a fictionalised version of the Ontario agricultural community in which the author grew up (here…

American Literature

Born fighting

24 Apr 2007

At the exact moment Chuck Palahniuk greets me with a hushed ‘Hello?’ his home in south-western Washington State is being invaded by a group of unfamiliar men who are chanting in unison at the author: ‘His name is Robert Paulson!’

Bryan Talbot

The Pilgrim’s Progress

26 Mar 2007

North of England born and bred comics creator Bryan Talbot is credited with writing and illustrating the very first British graphic novel. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright is a science fantasy epic initially serialised in 1978 and first collected in…

Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso

100 Bullets: Decayed (Vertigo/Titan)

12 Feb 2007

CRIME Now possibly three-quarters of the way into this cracking crime drama (this tenth volume collects issues 68 through 75 of what’s perhaps going to be a double dead-eye 100), it’s clear just what an enormously impressive feat of writing 100…

Chris Ware - comic review

Chris Ware

29 Jan 2007

WARPED HUMOUR The 17th volume of Chris Ware’s now self-published irregular comic continues the sad tale of Rusty Brown, a pre-pubescent dork who lives in a snowbound small town in America’s mid-west, where he stubbornly clings to his best friend, a…

Jason - comic review

Jason

9 Jan 2007

HORROR France-based Norwegian cartoonist Jason’s last graphic novella, The Left Bank Gang, was a witty, wacky crime caper featuring zoomorphic versions of modernist literature masters, canine Ezra Pound, James Joyce, etc. His new novella is an…

Garon Tsuchiya & Nobuaki Minegishi - comic review

Garon Tsuchiya & Nobuaki Minegishi

19 Dec 2006

MANGA/CRIME This is the crime manga that inspired South Korean director Chan-wook Park’s acclaimed Cannes Grand Jury prize-winning film of the same name. Translated into English for the first time since it was published in 1997, Dark Horse have…

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…

Comic - Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi

22 Nov 2006

BIOGRAPHY Having recounted the story of her own life in Persepolis, Iranian cartoonist Marjane Satrapi here tells the tale of the strange death of her great uncle, Nasser Ali Khan. By all accounts Khan was a world-class musician, and by Satrapi’s he…

Tim Moore

Nul Points (Jonathan Cape)

11 Nov 2006

COMIC TRAVELOGUE Tim Moore usurped Bill Bryson’s humorous travel writing crown by putting himself through dreadful physical hardship ?" cycling the route of the Tour de France, dragging a braying donkey along the pilgrim trail to Santiago de…

Nabiel Kanan

The Drowners (Image)

26 Oct 2006

CRIME The US has the crime comic market sewn up with titles such as Stray Bullets and 100 Bullets. But this London-set, noir-styled murder mystery draws fine comparison with its Transatlantic cousins. UK writer-artist Nabiel Kanan’s fourth graphic…

David Lloyd

Kickback (Darkhorse)

10 Oct 2006

CRIME NOIR Well-established comic book artists usually get around to writing their own material at some point in their careers. Veteran British artist David Lloyd, who remains best known for his collaboration with Alan Moore on the virtuoso V for…

Nabiel Kanan

The Drowners (Image)

10 Oct 2006

CRIME The US has the crime comic market sewn up with titles such as Stray Bullets and 100 Bullets. But this London-set, noir-styled murder mystery draws fine comparison with its Transatlantic cousins. UK writer-artist Nabiel Kanan’s fourth graphic…

Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba

De: TALES (Dark Horse)

2 Oct 2006

URBAN MYSTICISM Moon and Bá are Brazil’s answer to Los Bros Hernadnez. Like the Mexican creators of Love & Rockets this pair of young writer-artists are siblings (twins in fact), and like Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez’s comics, Moon and Bá’s strips mix…

Jamie Delano & David Lloyd

The Territory (Dark Horse)

28 Sep 2006

DARK SCI-FI Repackaged as a hardback on the back of V for Vendetta and the forthcoming Kickback, this flight of fantasy (originally published as a four-part series in 1999) was artist David Lloyd’s first collaboration with writer Jamie Delano since…

David Lindsay - A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

One of the greatest flights of fantasy in all of fantastic fiction, David Lindsay's debut is not only a metaphorical flight; it's also a quite literal one. Beginning with a séance in Hampstead and a journey to an observatory in north-east Scotland…