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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…
18 Sep 2008
COLLECTION There is a lightness of touch and simplicity that is both brave and endearing in the work of Adrian Tomine. He created Optic Nerve, an outlet for his stories and art from his university dorm in the mid 90s and was picked up by underground…
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…
2 Oct 2008
SCI-FI ADVENTURE Following cold on the heels of Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ controversial, and some might say ugly, early 90s update of Britain’s noblest comics hero, this seven-part revival from Richard Branson’s comics line, now repackaged in…
BIOGRAPHY Subtitled ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@*!’, this was the first collected book of comic art which the Jewish-American Spiegelman had published. Created between 1972 and 1977, the volume is reissued with an illustrated 20-page…
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…
CARTOON SATIRE It’s obvious right away that pseudonymous Scots comic creator Curt Sibling is taking the mickey, but the way in which he does it really has to be spot-on in its execution to succeed. This self-published, black and white anthology takes…
23 Apr 2007
SUPERHERO Some may call it cynical marketing that Spider-Man is ‘back in black’ just as the new film hits the screens, but hey he looks cool as hell so we’ll forgive Marvel. Spider-Man Family is the latest monthly to hit the shelves, an anthology…
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…
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…
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…
4 Sep 2008
Judge Dredd is surely the greatest British comic character. He's graced the pages of 2000AD since in 1977, and in 2008 his maxim 'I Am the Law' still rings true. The ultimate judge, jury and executioner. It's a distopian future where the radioactive…
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…
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…
14 Feb 2008
DVD (12) 74min (Lionsgate) This is the latest instalment in Marvel’s series of animated features. One of Marvel’s more out-there characters with more than a hint of 60s psychedelia about him, Doctor Strange is the world’s master of the occult and…
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…
9 Aug 2007
PSYCHIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY Mind invasion from strange voices; spooks that go bump in the night; Zulu warrior spirit mates: it’s all a day in the life for Sharon Neill, and, whether you believe in it or not, her autobiography makes for fascinating reading.
26 Mar 2007
CRIME Fellow Argentineans Carlos Trillo and Eduardo Risso’s fourth collaboration, originally published in Italy and France, is a New York City-set crime comic featuring a pointedly unconventional protagonist: a short, fat, ugly Mexican female…
DRAMA Comics of course can tackle any subject matter – it’s a medium not a genre after all (despite the predominance of superhero titles), and Vertigo at DC has been pushing leftfield stories into the mainstream since its inception in 1993. Set…
One of the distinct classes amongst the Judges is the 'PSI Division' a group who use their psychic abilities (mind reading, precognition, telekinesis, etc) to uphold Mega City One's draconian laws, and blonde bombshell Judge Anderson is the most gifted…
14 Aug 2008
COMIC (DC/Titan) Frank Miller and Jim Lee tackle the world’s greatest detective and the boy wonder in this sister title to Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly’s All Star Superman. The first nine issues of the ongoing series are collected here, and like…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
INDEPENDENT (CBG Comics) San Francisco-based comics creator Brian Andersen has hit upon a winning conceit for his self-published title So Super Duper, the first three issues of which are available through his website www.sosuperduper.com. Neatly…
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…
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…
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…
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…
FANTASY The presence of Neil Gaiman’s name is going to have an army of vaguely gothic comic geeks turning out in their droves to buy it. Even if his writing doesn’t actually appear therein. This is an adapted version of Sandman scribe Gaiman’s…
14 Mar 2007
SUPERHERO It may have stemmed from a slightly cynical, ‘lets see if we can cash in on the British market with a thinly disguised take on Captain America’ but Chris Claremont may well be one of the greatest comics story tellers of his time (admittedly…
SUPERHERO Comics are often repackaged and reprinted, sometimes seemingly ad infinitum, but when it’s as gorgeous a package as 1994’s Marvels it’s hard to argue with another opportunity for new readers to discover such a wonderfully rounded work of…
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.
Every hero needs an arch-nemesis. For Dredd that nemesis is Judge Death. In many ways he's taken Dredd's morality to the ultimate extreme with the idea that all crime is caused by the living, so life itself should be a crime. Unfortunately there has…
7 Aug 2008
FUTURISTIC TALE (Rebellion) Set in a time after a mythical future Russian revolution, adventurer and rogue Nikolai Dante is one of the most feared men in the land, and that’s just by all the women he inevitably ends up charming into bed. On the way…
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…
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…
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…
FANTASY (Fantagraphics) American cartoonist Jordan Crane’s all-ages graphic novella first published in 2005 makes its paperback debut complete with five previously unseen pages. It’s actually a follow-up to the self-published and now out-of-print The…
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.
DVD (PG) 111min (Metrodome) Howard the Duck originally appeared in an issue of a 1973 Marvel comic entitled Adventure Into Fear, and perhaps his greatest moment came when thousands of American citizens actually voted for him in the 1976 US…
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…
4 Jan 2008
TEEN (Minx) Minx is a DC imprint, created as a way to entice teenage girls into graphic-novel reading, and while this may at first seem a little patronising, the genre is unfortunately still viewed by most as the preserve of speccy adolescent males.
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…
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…
SUPERHERO Jump cut to the latest collection from Marvel UK of exactly the same title (Amazing Spider-Man, now running at issues 515-518 in this compendium). Now married to Mary-Jane, this is more the world of Spidey we know and love. Dipping back to…
12 Mar 2007
EPIC Re-reading Frank Miller’s graphic novella in its landscape format hardcover edition (it was originally serialised as a five-issue comic book in 1998/99), it’s clear just how perfectly suited 300 is for the Hollywood blockbuster film…
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…
10 Oct 2006
AUTOBIOGRAPHY/COLLECTION Containing some of the same material as previous Sacco collection Notes from a Defeatist, this new selection is a more focused attempt to archive and give order to the reams of material he amassed as a music mad young man who…
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…
The other outlet for Dredd's continuing adventures in near-future totalitarianism alongside 2000AD is the Megazine, relaunched this issue, including a free mini-graphic novel collecting Dredd stories illustrated by Jock. Regular writer John Wagner is…
More Mega City mayhem, this time showcasing the art of Henry Flint. Written by John Wagner and Robbie Morrison, some are great, some average and one is a waste of space, but they all help flesh out Dredd's world. But this is mainly about the art.
BIOG (Abrams) As befits a book about the man who reinvented comics with the most dynamic artwork the medium had ever seen, friend and colleague Mark Evanier’s biography/critical commentary is a large format coffee table hardback full of big and…
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…
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…
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…
TRAGEDY/NOIR (Faber) First serialised in Seattle’s alternative newspaper The Stranger back in 1993, and anthologised in the US in 2003, Lutes’ remarkable graphic novel is long overdue a decent European release. Jar of Fools tells the story of…
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…
DVD (12) 80 mins (Lionsgate) The new big budget feature isn’t the first Iron Man movie as this 2007 animated feature from Marvel proves. The film revisits Iron Man’s first showdown with the Mandarin. The animation is fine but overall the film…
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…
SOCIAL DRAMA (Fantagraphics) This 24th collection of the three decades – and counting – run of Los Bros Hernandez’s seminal comic book series Love & Rockets, archives in handsome hardback 15 short stories focusing on the supporting and peripheral…
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…
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…
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…
TEEN (Titan) I really wanted to hate this. I was hoping for a cheesy, corporate celebrity tie-in scamming money out of a willing fanbase. Sadly, it’s a stunningly-drawn, intelligent, jet-black study of adolescent isolation. Dammit. Hana is a…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
2 Jul 2007
SUPERHERO Any follower of Marvel’s output over the last year might have found themselves growing tired of the almost relentless, ashen-faced politicking of Mark Millar’s ubiquitous Civil War crossover. In which case, this return to the company’s…
SUPERHERO Spider-Man is Marvel’s mascot, one of the most recognisable superheroes of all time. With the latest huge blockbuster on the horizon there’s bound to be a lot of interest in everyone’s favourite webslinger. Created back in 1962 by comics…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
SCI-FI This is just what Warren Ellis revels in, dark sci-fi with a nasty twist. And while Desolation Jones isn’t up to the standards of the blackly comic Transmetropolitan, it starts with a bang and is far bleaker than most of Ellis’ output. Used as…
11 Nov 2006
SUPERHERO Finally we get to the meat in the seemingly endless build up to DC’s earth shattering Infinite Crisis mega crossover. Comic fans will know that every now and then (usually once a summer) some huge calamity will threaten the universe our…
SUPERHERO Yet another chapter in DC’s gargantuan Infinite Crisis, this one at least lends a little character work to the usual monolithic superhero dust-ups that usually infest such crossovers. We start off with Superman undergoing a crisis of…
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…
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…
SCI-FI Given the epic scale of the Star Wars universe, George Lucas has afforded comic book writers an almost endless stream of possibilities for potential spin off publications. The downside to this is, to remain faithful and true to the films, and…
SUPERHERO The second in Paul Jenkins’ irregular Mythos series, which retells key events in the history of Marvel’s greatest creations. Here The Hulk gets the revamp treatment, going back to that initial gamma explosion that turned Bruce Banner into…
1 Sep 2006
FANTASY There was a time when artist Mike Mignola wasn’t very sure of his own writing skills. In the early days of Hellboy he handed John Byrne a plot to be fleshed out fully by the far more established writer. Now Mignola feels confident enough to…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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