Monthly Archives: March 2013

Back to Brooklyn (2009)

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“It wasn’t Saetta, oh no, but it was part of the shitstorm he’s stirred up. Part of the fucking walking warzone the son of a bitch just is.”


This book collects the five issue series from Image Comics. The story was by Jimmy Palmiotti and Garth Ennis and was written by Garth Ennis with art by Mihailo Vukelic. Hopefully Ennis requires no introduction from me as he is one of my favourite writers and I have written about him and some of his books on this blog. Jimmy Palmiotti is a writer and inker who often collaborates with Justin Gray and had a five year run on Jonah Hex. This series marked the comic book debut of Mihailo Vukelic.

Bob Saetta is a gangster who has turned himself over to the police and federal agents to testify against his crime lord brother, Paul, and bring down his criminal empire. However, Paul is holding Bob’s wife and child and so Bob arranges with the lead investigators that he be released long enough so that he can free his family. They agree and so begins a bitter battle waged on the streets of Brooklyn between the brothers.

This is a pretty straight forward hard-boiled crime story from Garth Ennis. Whether it is under the influence of Palmiotti or not, the violence portrayed in the book is grim and brutal but without the underlying black humour that we expect from Ennis’ own work. The reason for Bob’s turning against his brother seems like a typical Ennis shocker but there are moments of the blackest humour when Bob visits his mother to talk about what Paul has been up to. The art from Vukelic is very nice but somewhat unusual too. The colouring leaves the book looking like a sepia toned document of the past and the colour palette is muted throughout. All in all a good read but I do miss the all out craziness of one of Ennis’ own scripts.

The Private Eye #1 (2013)

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“Look, once upon a time people stored all their deepest, darkest secrets in something called ‘The Cloud’, remember? Well one day the cloud burst.”

This is a new venture from Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin that is creator owned and only available online at a price that you choose. Vaughan is a writer known for series such as Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina and current hit series Saga. Martin is a Spanish artist who has worked with Vaughan before on Doctor Strange: The Oath and Gotham City Secret Files.

The story is set in a future where people guard every aspect of their private life including their true face from each other. In this society, the Paparazzi are private investigators who are hired to find out the personal details on subjects and the Press seem to act as the regulating force attempting to apprehend these illegal investigators.

The story has an intriguing premise in the current climate of the increasing blurring of private and public personas via social media and cloud services. The first issue, of a projected 10 issue series, rattles along and grips nicely. The art by Martin is very nice and the crowd scenes, with everyone in disguises of one kind or another, remind me of Geof Darrow.

I liked the comic very much and I hope that the creators get enough support for them to finish off the story. It will be interesting to see if this sort of venture can stand up against commercial enterprises such as Comixology Submit. The first issue is available now from the Panel Syndicate web site.

Swamp Thing #38-40

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“Hey! You broke your glass! Y’got blood all over your hands …”

“I shouldn’t worry yourself about it, Frank. I’m sure it won’t be the last.”

 
Issues 38 and 39 see Swamp Thing head out of Louisiana following Constantine’s directions to meet him in Rosewood, Illinois. This town was completely submerged by the actions of Swamp Thing to destroy creatures overwhelming the town. Unfortunately not all the creatures were destroyed and now a race of aquatic vampires are preying on visitors to the site and planning the evolution of their species at the expense of humanity.

The confidence of Constantine is brought to the fore as he stands toe-to-toe with Swamp Thing gambling that his supposed knowledge and Swamp Thing’s curiosity to learn more of his abilities will outweigh SwampThing’s desire to put a fist through his face. By the end of the story line Swamp Thing has learned that he can move across the country through the green, regenerate within minutes and can extend his influence beyond his normal frame to include the surrounding landscape.

All of these are learned despite Constantine rather because of him and so issue 40 sees Swamp Thing and Abby discussing Constantine and how much they distrust him. However Swamp Thing still goes off to the next appointed meeting place in Kennescook, Maine. Here he finds a werewolf running wild in the town and attempts to save her and prevent her injuring the people around her. Constantine does not turn up until the drama has played itself out and finds Swamp Thing in a belligerent mood refusing to follow Constantine’s directions and return home only to find that the trickster was ready for him all along.

These issues contain some great writing from Moore and an imaginative use of some of horror’s well used characters and tying them into small town American life and history. The tension between Constantine and Swamp Thing is well played with Constantine managing to stay one step ahead of Swamp Thing at all times.

Hit-Girl (2013)

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“Okay, if you’re going to be a little pussy about it I guess we can start on the baby floor. Jesus, Dave! It’s like training the Tiny Titans sometimes.”

Kick-Ass is back with a vengeance in this prelude story, to both the movie and the comic Kick-Ass 2, featuring Hit-Girl. The book collects the the five issue series and was created by the usual creative team of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.

After the death of her father in the first Kick-Ass series, pint-sized vigilante Mindy McCready finds herself back living with her nervous mother and police detective step-father. This proves to be to be a fly in the ointment for Mindy who , as Hit-Girl, wants to destroy the Genovese family and their associates as revenge for her father. She also takes Kick-Ass under her wing supervising his superhero training but her most difficult task is fitting in as a 12 year old girl at school.

I loved this book. It full of humour taking a long hard look at the actions of comic book superheroes when fighting crime, who Mindy places a lot of emphasis on when training Kick-Ass, but also in a great series of sequences featuring Red Mist as he takes the Batman route and learns Eastern techniques from Himalayan monks and mystics. The ultraviolence is present too as Hit-Girl destroys the Genovese crime empire piece by piece and closer to home as her actions bring the mob to her door threatening her new found family. If you are already a fan of the Kick-Ass series then you will probably be picking this up anyway without any recommendation from me but if you haven’t read them and are a fan of Garth Ennis then you should give the books a try – start with Kick-Ass followed by this one and then Kick-Ass 2.

I have to mention that the series cover gallery also features this fabulous variant cover to issue 5 by Bill Sienkiewicz after Sienkiewicz:

Brilliant!

Fairest #8-13 (2012-13)

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“I wish they’d let me join them in death. I would have been a great ghost. Maybe I didn’t have the right hat.”

Fairest #8 cover

This spin-off series from Fables enters its second major story line, and its first without creator Bill Willingham who remains as a consultant, with South African author Lauren Beukes taking on the writing duties. The art is handled by Inaki Miranda who has previously had some one issue credits on the main Fables title. The covers were all by Adam Hughes.

The focus of this story is Rapunzel and it is set back in 2002 before the start of the escalation of the war with the Adversary and Mister Dark – so we see them in their original residence, have Snow White in power, in all but name, and some old characters that have since passed on such as Boy Blue and Jack  who has a fairly prominent role in the story. The story itself sees Rapunzel travel to Japan on the hunt for the children that she believes where stolen from her but instead she runs into an old lover from the Hidden Kingdom, a feudal Japanese Fables homeland where Rapunzel lived for a while after the loss of her children. The actions of the past  catch up with her as her lover, now a Yakuza style gang lord, seeks revenge for the role she believes that Rapunzel played in the destruction of the Hidden Kingdom.

I read the first novel from Lauren Beukes, Moxyland, a while ago and I wasn’t terribly impressed. For me there were no sympathetic characters for me to have an emotional connection with and so in the end I didn’t really care what happened to anyone in the book. And the same problem affects this story line to a certain degree. In the end the story itself was fine and the broadening of the back story of Rapunzel was good – with enough left unresolved so that it could be revisited in the future – but the emotional connection was not there for me. Part of the problem may have been setting it in the past and so it doesn’t connect with much that has happened in the main series but mainly there was no threat as we know the fate of a lot of the main Fables that appeared and so the drama was lessened. The artby Inaki Miranda was clean and cute for the most part but horrific and brutal when it needed to be. It remains to be seen if there is to be any impact of this story on the main series or upcoming story lines in Fairest but at the moment it feels like a throw away, standalone tale with no real weight as it was not written by the series creator.

Lost Review: The Oxford Murders

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Beginning in December 2005 with my history of apes in film essay “Gorilla of Your Dreams” (the substantially update and revised version appears in The Apes of Wrath), I regularly contributed to Moving Pictures Magazine. First in the print incarnation and then for primarily the website. I contributed reviews and essays for the last three years of the publications existence. Following the June 2011 demise of both the print and website editions, all of the digital work for MPM disappeared into the ether. In the coming months (years?), I plan on reposting many of my reviews and article.

This time I’m dusting off my review of The Oxford Murders, a fairly obscure mathematical murder mystery, based on the book Crímenes imperceptibles by Guillermo Martínez. It is available for streaming via Netflix. Continue reading →

Library Journal reviews THE APES OF WRATH & other news

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Middle size Apes cover

The esteemed Library Journal reviewed The Apes of Wrath in their March 15 issue.

The Apes of Wrath. Tachyon. Mar. 2013. 384p.
ed. by Richard Klaw. ISBN 9781616960858. pap. $15.95. FANTASY

Bringing together such classic writers such as Gustav Flaubert (“Quidquid Volueris”), Edgar Allan Poe (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”), Edgar Rice Burroughs (“Tarzan’s First Love”), Franz Kafka (“A Report to an Academy”), and Robert E. Howard (“Red Shadows”) with modern fantasy and horror authors, editor Klaw, co-owner of Mojo Press, a noted publisher of graphic novels and themed anthologies, has assembled a collection of 13 stories revolving around the great apes and playing upon their similarities to and differences from humans. Including James P. Blaylock’s steampunk comedy of errors (“The Ape-Box Affair”) featuring a space-traveling ape, several bumbling Londoners, and a mysterious silver box or two, and Philip Jose Farmer’s continuation of a classic ape story (“After King Kong Fell”), this volume attests to literature and film’s fascination with our primate cousins. The foreward by Rupert Wyatt, director of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and a pair of essays by Jess Nevins (“Apes in Literature”) and Rick Klaw (“Gorilla of Your Dreams: A Brief History of Simian Cinema”) make this more than just a curious short-story collection. VERDICT Aficionados of apes in literature and film should enjoy this gathering of new and old stories.

Overall a good review. But why do people have some much trouble spelling “foreword?” Continue reading →

Erstwhile

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Before I begin, I owe you all an apology. Yes, I know I’ve been gone since November, and I have a perfectly good reason for that.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of real-life problems over the past few months. I’ve been under a lot of stress. I’ve been working on an internship (and I still am). My sister got engaged and has moved out, so we have to save money over the next year while we make wedding preparations. My family has also had to deal with health problems that I’d rather not get into. It’s been a stressful few months, and thankfully, the worst of it is out of our way, and I feel confident enough to be updating this blog again.

Anyway, there has been a recent trend in Hollywood movies to adapt popular fairy tales for the big screen. So why not review a webcomic that does that as well?

Title: Erstwhile
Author: Gina Biggs, Louisa Roy, Elle Skinner (artists), Brothers Grimm (writers)
Start Date: 2011
Genre: Fantasy
Update Schedule: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays
Website: http://www.erstwhiletales.com

Synopsis:

Erstwhile isn’t bound to just one story, but several. This webcomic adapts the lesser-known tales from the classic German folk lore writers, the Brothers Grimm. Each of the three artists takes their turn adapting and interpreting one story at a time. (Note: Although Gina Biggs is credited with “adapting the story” on nearly all of them, the illustrators are left to their own devices.)

Recommended Age Group: All ages.

Strengths:

Each comic is stunningly gorgeous to look at. Even though this comic is drawn and colored by three different people, their art styles complement each other nicely. It’s also fun to watch how each interpretation plays out, depending on their ranges of narration and visual flair. It also helps that they’re specifically adapting the more obscure titles from the Grimms and none of the popular ones. You won’t see anything that was already covered by Disney in this series.

Weaknesses:

Unlike adaptations which like to modernize a classic fairy tale or play it for parody, the artists adapt the Grimms’ tales completely straight, as they were originally written. If you’ve read these stories before, you will be spoiled on how the tales end.

Verdict:

I give this comic a wholehearted recommendation. Children and adults alike would love this. They would be great in school courses for exposure and critique. This comic is a fantastic gateway to explore the often overlooked tales by these classic authors.

Swamp Thing #37

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“I said I’d tell the people your missus works for about her sleeping arrangement. I’m a nasty piece of work, chief. Ask anybody.”

And with those words John Constantine introduces himself to Swamp Thing. While that was the  introduction of Constantine to Swamp Thing, he had actually been introduced to readers 12 pages earlier in issue 37.

Our first sight of John paints him as a rather dapper figure with his familiar trench coat draped over his shoulders and wearing a pair of white gloves with the trademark cigarette in hand. A far cry from the rumpled mage of later years.

He is seen visiting various mystics and magic practitioners of his acquaintance trying to get to the bottom of rumours of a returning destructive force but each person he speaks to has a different vision of what that force might be.

In issue 37, Constantine enlists the help of Swamp Thing by promising to tell him more about his nature. Swamp Thing is undergoing his first painfully slow regeneration and it is John that tells him how his power is greater than he imagines and how he could abandon a body in one location and travel to another location and grow a new body there.

Abby is immediately skeptical of this new influence in the Swamp Thing’s life, probably due to still recovering from her first meeting with him when he appears in the back of her car, and sees to his heart saying, “Let him go, Alec. He’s trying to lead you on …” but John has him intrigued and by the end of the issue Swamp Thing is obviously planning to rendezvous with John in Chicago.

In this comic we have seen many of the defining characteristics of John Constantine that would be played on endlessly by writers – his air of mystery, moving in mysterious circles, his manipulative nature, his bravado. In a single issue, Alan Moore created an intriguing character whose appeal would continue for a further 28 years and counting.

Stuff received 3/11/13

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Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.

Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories

Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories

by Ben Katchor

Promo copy:

WITH BEAUTIFUL FULL-COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUT

From one of the most original and imaginative American cartoonists at work today comes a collection of graphic narratives on the subjects of urban planning, product design, and architecture—a surrealist handbook for the rebuilding of society in the twenty-first century.

Ben Katchor, a master at twisting mundane commodities into surreal objects of social significance, now takes on the many ways our property influences and reflects cultural values. Here are window-ledge pillows designed expressly for people-watching and a forest of artificial trees for sufferers of hay fever. The Brotherhood of Immaculate Consumption deals with the matter of products that outlive their owners; a school of dance is based upon the choreographic motion of paying with cash; high-visibility construction vests are marketed to lonely people as a method of getting noticed. With cutting wit Katchor reveals a world similar to our own—lives are defined by possessions, consumerism is a kind of spirituality—but also slightly, fabulously askew. Frequently and brilliantly bizarre, and always mesmerizing, Hand-Drying in America ensures that you will never look at a building, a bar of soap, or an ATM the same way. Continue reading →