GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEWS: MORE DC NEW 52s

Resurrected with a vengeance, a 5* Amazon review.

The original run of this title was one of my favourite series of the 90's and now it's back with its original writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning so there's no way I was never going to buy this one and I haven't been disappointed.

Unlike some of DC's New 52, it doesn't seem to have squashed the original continuity or some semblance thereof, such as Batman, into the previous five-year pre-publication appearance. No, this is a brand newish Resurrection Man. Our hero Mitch Shelley is pretty much the same person but he has a new and rather unpleasant origin; he appears to have a compulsion to go to particular places where he's needed; Heaven and Hell want him dead and they are both decidely scary. Those loveable sociopathic female hit women Bonnie and Carmen aka The Body Doubles are back but also with a new origin, a teleportation device, and super powers -ouch!

In this seven issue collection we find Mitch fighting a scary angel on a crashing passenger jet, visiting an old people's home, Arkham Asylum, Metropolis, and more. The action never stops, Bonnie and Carmen never give up, the revelations keep coming, and the pace never lets up. This is enhanced by the dynamic detailed artwork of Fernando Dagnino which is just terrific.

How good is this book? I wanted to read it again as soon as I'd finished. That's how good this book is.

(Aside: I've been reviewing a lot of these New 52 titles and my ratings are a comparison of like to like. A 5* rating means it's as good as the best of current DC/Marvel superhero titles. It doesn't mean it's as good as, say, Watchmen or Love & Rockets. Just wanted to make that clear.) 

They aren't kid sidekicks. An Amazon 4* review

Unlike the TT's of previous incarnations in the old continuity, only Red Robin (Tim Drake) has any direct link to established superheroes. There's also a good idea as to why, in this first volume which is an origin story, these kids get together.

A lot of teen meta-humans have been appearing all over the world and causing a lot of trouble for the authorities. A sinister organisation called NOWHERE (it's an acronym but I'm too lazy to insert the dots) is kidnapping these kids for purposes unknown, but you can bet they aren't good ones. Red Robin has been investigating NOWHERE and blogging about the teenage meta problem. After escape an attempt by them on his life, he tracks down Cassie ("Don't call me Wonder Girl!") Sandsmark just as they attack her. Shortly after following up a lead, he encounters the insectile Skitter. By one of those curious coincidences that only happen in comics, Miguel Jose Barragan (the gay Mexican meta who calls himself Bunker) illegally hops aboard a freight train where he meets a disguised Red Robin with a cocooned Skitter and... And so on.

Amnesiac Kid Flash with a female meta called Solstice (count the number of times her name is misspelled by the letterer), who've escaped from NOWHERE, meet up with the other three and go to the rescue of Cassie ("Don't call...") who is under attack by Superboy.

All in all this is a very promising start to the series. The new characters, technically they're all new, have a lot of potential. The set up is a good one. Writer Scott Lobdell balances action, character beats, humour, and background information all very well so that you can't stop reading because you want to find out what happens next. Brett Booth's art manages to balance an attractive detailed style with just the right hint of cartoon to suggest the original Young Justice. The three letterers need to check their spelling which is a little sloppy at times.

Yet another success for the continuity revamp that is DC's New 52 which is providing the best mainstream superhero stories for years. 

There's nothing fishy about this Aquaman. An Amazon 4* review.

This series is among the most highly praised of DC's New 52 revamps and you aren't going to get any argument about that from me.

We meet an Aquaman in his prime and there are a number of mysteries about his previous life of which only some are revealed or hinted at. He's married to Mera, a mature no-nonsense woman who has less tolerance for fools than her husband, and they live in a lighthouse. Aquaman is a bit of a joke to people who very much underrate him except for those who see him (and Mera) go up against a race of hominid fish with the appetite of piranhas who attack a nearby coastal village.

The writer/artist team of Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis -two of the top people in their fields working in mainstream comics today- hit the mark every time. But don't take my word for it. Buy this book now and find out for yourself. I doubt very much if you'll regret it. 

PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS THAT WE'LL NEVER SOLVE

http://io9.com/5945801/8-philosophical-questions-that-well-never-solve

No, I'm not writing it but directing you to the location above which is a collection of very short mini-essays which are very accessible and contain some of the most interesting material I've ever read on the Net. Honestly, absolutely fascinating because they deal directly with the nature of reality.

SOCIETY/TV: ALL-STAR MR & MRS

So I was reading a book in the living room while Susan was watching TV. Coronation Street, which caused me to look up occasionally,  had finished and this programme started. "Anything else you want to watch?" I asked Susan. "No," she replied. I turned back to my book.

Look, I never claimed to have elitist taste or anything like that. Low-brow, if anything. But it's good low-brow, it's cult off the wall stuff -just check out the list of stuff in the sidebar. This sort of fluff just isn't me. I mean, it's got its place, and I'm sure it has decent ratings, especially following Corrie and with nothing outstanding on BBC1 to compete with it; it just isn't me.

Then the first couple came out and I looked up in surprise.

The star guest (left) was Anthony Cotton, a long-standing and popular member of the Corrie cast who played an affected gay man and who, in real life is a less-affected gay man, with his normally limelight-avoiding partner Peter.

Wow, I thought, times have changed. There was no hint of irony or daring or nudge-nudge in their appearance; they were treated exactly like the other two couples on the show which of course is as it should be.

Actually what really shocked me was the famous footballer (no, I don't remember his name) who had never made a cup of tea or coffee in his life, didn't know where the washing machine was, and couldn't work the microwave. He lived at home until he married his childhood sweetheart who took over where his mother left off. He did share something with the other celebrity couple, Rachel Stevens and husband, who were seen on a video clip aged 13 at a bar-mitzvah, he full of (probably fake) cocky bravado making sure his friend saw him eyeing up a dancing Miss Stevens. Sweet, really.

Getting back to what this post is about, as I watched I reflected that in previous decades when the subject of a This Is Your Life show was gay, that aspect of their life was never mentioned and their partner would never appear.

Then a few days later it occurred to me to ask myself: why am I making a deal about this? It wouldn't be an issue of any kind to my twenty-somethings niece and nephew who grew up in an era where a person's sexuality isn't an issue.

If you read the top of the page where I state my views, making it clear that I am against homophobia, sexism, racism, etc, you can see where I stand. But it wasn't always such.

I grew in the 50's and 60's when they were ingrained, institutionalised attitudes in society. They were part of every day life. They were attitudes which kids who grew up then absorbed like osmosis. I'm not saying I was racist, even though the n-word was used quite casually. Hell, I was reading James Baldwin at fourteen. I have never thought a person was of a different status to me because of the colour of their skin, but in an area where people from an ethnic or cultural minority, other than Jews, were few and far between, they were different. When Chinese restaurants first started opening in Sunderland they caused quite a stir and jokes about Kit-e-Kat were common -I had my first in Stockton aged around 15 and it was great. Until my twenties, pizza was something I'd only seen in Mad Magazine.

I lived in a parochial world and it was only when, at 18 in 1966 I went away to college, coincidentally as the 60's really got hopping and the old order began to change that I underwent a change, including a spiritual quest for belief that concluded after several years with my confirmation as an atheist.

Time moves on and by the time I reached my thirties my views on society had pretty much coalesced into what they are today; bar the gradual leftward drift of my political views. But the thing is that whenever subjects like racism, homophobia, and sexism come up, I'm always conscious that I'm measuring my own response to confirm that I'm not homophobic, racist or sexist. This is something I shouldn't have to do because I know that I'm profoundly none of these things. Yet I'm still aware of them or of them not being there.

And now I know why. Unlike my young niece and nephew, I grew up in a narrow, grey era when these attitudes prevailed and, as a child and young teenager, I accepted them. What I had to do was to unlearn them.

For some reason this understanding, late as it is, seems important to me though I don't know why.

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: SWAMP THING VOL.1 RAISE THEM BONES

First published as an Amazon 3* review

Listen, Swamp Thing, it's not you, it's me.

I mean, you're everything that should be. Your roots remain with Len Wein and Berni Wrightson, and with Alan Moore which is as it should be. But you've grown and changed into something uniquely yourself in the New 52. Alec Holland is suddenly alive, years after being burned to death in a fire in the swamp, with memories of being the Swamp Thing he never was. But then we learn that he should have been all along and that he is the only chance the planet has against the monstrous evil that is The Rot (which also features in Animal Man). You're well drawn by Yanick Paquette and well written by hot writer Scott Snyder.

But I still can't love you. I know everyone else does though. You see, that's what I mean, it's not you, it's me. Plus the fact that I find The Rot a completely irritating and uninteresting villain and you haven't begun to develop an interesting supporting cast. I loved you before when you were with Len and Berni and then with Alan. But now..

I'm sorry. 

Post Script: a few more brief thoughts.

I dunno, I really wanted to like this title but with the introduction of a villain, a force really, that is so powerful it becomes too familiar that I just don't find it interesting at all. I think I hoping for something more low key, more subtly disturbing than the over the top grotesqueries which are portrayed here. The Rot is introduced with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the groin. When Alan Moore took over the title back in the early 80's he created the most original, thought provoking and often genuinely disturbing mainstream comic of the time. This new version just isn't remotely near that. 

Scott Snyder, you, sir, are no Alan Moore.

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEWS: A QUARTET OF OMNIBUSES

All four arrived within the last week providing me with around just over 2,000 pages of comics to read and a very mixed bunch they are. Except that as two of them are Marvel Science Fiction comics from the mid-70's, half of them aren't mixed. One of them is a funny animal collection of strips from 1949/1950 and the other is a compilation (the first in a series of four) from one of the American independent publishers (i.e. they aren't Marvel or DC). Let's see the covers.

 

The two Essential volumes are massive b/w collections of two of my favourite Marvel comics from the 70's. Both, despite a superficial similarity in their covers, are very different in content. Killraven is a slightly enhanced human in the future world of 2019 when Earth is a mutated wasteland ruled by Martians. Warlock is a space opera action philosophical adventure in which our powerful hero battles against a corrupt future version of himself and then against the equally powerful Thanos who, as the name suggests, is in love with death.

Creatively, there's something else they have in common: you can ignore large chunks of the early issues and start reading when the writer/artists team of Don McGregor & P. Craig Russell (Killraven, actual title War of the Worlds) and writer/artist Jim Starlin (Warlock) take over. Both raised the quality of their titles immeasurably in comparison to previous issues and the Marvel output of the period in general. 

Actually, to be fair that isn't completely true. War of the Worlds starts out with art by the legendary Neil Adams and a pre-legendary Howard Chaykin. Warlock begins with decent writer Roy Thomas and equally legendary Gil Kane but then they're replaced by Gerry Conway and Herb Trimpe, as ugly a combo as you could get in comics at the time.

They appear on cheap newsprint and at a price to match making them quite affordable. Warlock, the better of the two, doesn't suffer significantly from being in black and white as lots of it takes place in space, Killraven more so.

Grendel by Matt Wagner is a bit of an oddity. The initial story, Devil By The Deed, is a graphic novella revised from its original appearance as a backup piece is another series by Wagner. It's also a somewhat experimental piece consisting of typed text inserted into full page illustrations, ostensibly being extracts from a biography of Hunter Rose aka the criminal genius Grendel. The rest of the book fills in details of the story of Hunter Rose as collections of two series of short stories all written by Wagner but mostly illustrated by a diverse bunch of artists in varying formats from text heavy to nearly wordless and with varying degrees of success, culminating in Behold The Devil, a more conventional graphic novel written and illustrated by Wagner. Wagner's a better writer than artist but he does have an interesting and attractive style.

The format is a dense 600 page paperback slightly smaller than the original comics and re-coloured so as to be in black white and red. There are to be three more similarly sized volumes, featuring later incarnations of Grendel, to be published by Dark Horse over the next 16 months which means there's a very good chance I'll be alive to read them all.

Unlike the volumes in the next collection.

The paragraph which follows is from the opening to the Wikipaedia entry for Pogo which sums things up more concisely and accurately than I can; so if you can't do something better, steal it. (Incidentally the links work if you right click on them.)

Pogo is the title and central character of a long-running daily American comic strip, created by cartoonist Walt Kelly (1913–1973) and distributed by the Post-Hall Syndicate. Set in the Okefenokee Swamp of the southeastern United States, the strip often engages in social and political satire through the adventures of its anthropomorphic funny animal characters.

Pogo combined both sophisticated wit and slapstick physical comedy in a heady mix of allegory, Irish poetry, literary whimsy, puns and wordplay, lushly detailed artwork and broad burlesque humor. The same series of strips can be enjoyed on different levels both by young children and savvy adults. The strip earned Kelly a Reuben Award in 1951.

I'm not sure I need to say anything else but I will. 

This first volume covers the first couple of years of the strip and includes the Sunday colour strips. There are eleven more volumes to come, which brings me to my opening sentence.   Fantagraphics Books are a prestigious publisher which believes that comics are art, just not all comics, and is openly elitist and mostly scornful of mainstream (predominantly super-hero) comics of Marvel & DC. They publish non-genre graphic novels (best exemplified by the Hernandez Brothers whom I'm sure I've written about in this blog) and collections of the best of American newspaper strips (hence, Pogo). They are also, however, notorious late when it comes to publication deadlines. I have two collections of the work of Basil Wolverton on order which were due out earlier this year but are now scheduled for April 2013. I'm 64 and not at all certain I'll live to see the publication of all 12 volumes of Pogo. Vol.2 is scheduled to be out by November this year. I'll believe it when I see it.

The book itself is a beautifully produced stitch bound hardback about 290pps long. There's an excellent introduction, detailed footnotes, and an article about the Sunday colour strips. This is nothing less than the strip deserves. It's charmingly drawn and contains warm humour, wit and wonderful wordplay. The satire doesn't come in for a couple of years and I'm especially looking forward to the (very) thinly disguised extended appearance of Senator Joe McCarthy, that vile witch-hunter of commies ('dirty reds'), in vol 3.

Meanwhile I'm enjoying what I've got.

TWO NEW ARRIVALS & OTHERS

When I called round at Carole's yesterday to do a tip run (for those new to this blog, I fill the van up with sacks of used cat litter and soiled bedding and take it to the council tip), I found two young neutered ginger cats. They are brother and sister and seem to get on very well with each other and so we'd like them re-homed together. They're also both very friendly. When I sat down on a settee where the female was sitting on the top, she came down and snuggled up against me.

Here are a few photos. The boy is immediately below.

If you sit down at Carole's it usually isn't long before you get jumped on by a cat or climbed on by a kitten. I first picked up a tiny little tortoiseshell who happens to be my favourite. She loves being picked up and stroked and will quite happily stay me with as long as I let her.

This time some kittens came to my attention as well as the usual suspects who always demand attention like a lovely black kitten called Leona who won't be a kitten for much longer. The first one I picked up was a tabby about three months old. The usual stuff: stroke kitten, kitten purrs, rubs against your face, snuggles in. The big surprise was that he'd been feral when he arrived, all hiss and spit and don't touch me. Now he's just a sweetie.

The second was also a tabby; a relative newcomer who tried to assert himself as Top Kitten by going around mugging all the others. Now he'd become another little softie.

The third was a tiny black and white kitten curled up on the settee next to me hoping I hadn't noticed him. But I had and picked him up. He didn't like this as he tried to get away but, as gently as I could, I held onto him and it didn't take long before he relaxed and snuggled in just like the others had done.

Here they are.

Somebody give them a bloody home please.

There's no black kitten because I couldn't get a good shot of him.  Here are some other photos.

Post Script.

Sorry about that, this was intended for my cat rescuing blog and it ended up here by mistake. I'll re-post it in the proper one later, but you're still stuck with it.

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEWS: DEMON KNIGHTS vol.1 SEVEN AGAINST THE DARK

It's the Dark Ages and King Arthur's Camelot has long since fallen. Seven very special wanderers find themselves by sheer plot device/necessity in the same pub in small village which just happens to be in the path of Morgan le Fey and her sorcerer Mordru's army. Fortunately (or not as the case may be), these wanderers include Jason Blood (who has a habit of turning into the demon Etrigan -see above), their girlfriend Madam Xanadu, the trannie  Sir Ystin the Shining Knight with his/her flying horse, an Amazon, the immortal Vandal Savage (here portrayed as a likeable but still ruthless rogue), an Arab scientist, and the mysterious Horsewoman.

And what you get as a result is a 7-issue action-packed mass of carnage, magic, and monsters, along with the team origin story, lots of character beats, surprises, humour, and yet more bloody violence all woven together by not quite a comic superstar but getting there British writer Paul Cornell.

Appropriate gruesomely lurid art is supplied by the really quite good Diogenes Neves which when combined with the writing skills of Cornell results in another winner in DC's New 52.

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: BATMAN & ROBIN vol.1 BORN TO KILL

This is possibly the most narrowly focussed of DC's New 52 collected editions (of those that I've read which is well over half those released), with a single story spanning the 8 issues collected here. The question raised is this: Is Damien Wayne more influenced by his upbringing to be an assassin or by his new father who refuses to kill under any circumstances?

For those of you unfamiliar with the background, Damien is the fourth Robin, son of Bruce Wayne following a liaison with Talia al Gul daughter of R'as al Gul leader of the League of Assassins, who has been trained from the age of 3 till 10 to be a brutal killer. Bruce/Batman is not only trying to raise a son he'd never met but perhaps more importantly turn him away from the Dark Side (sorry).

In this graphic novel (and given its length and focus it is a graphic novel and not a collection of comics), right up front is the relationship between the two characters. It starts in one place and ends up in another. There are effectively only three characters in the story (discounting Alfred and bit-players), the other being an old enemy of Batman's (whom we've never met before but we do get flashbacks from Bruce's past) who wants Robin to become a vigilante killer like himself and who also may be Batman's equal in fighting skill. 

The art, while quite effective, is a little too smooth and rounded. I find Batman works better with a more rough-edged approach.

Still this is another more than solid addition to DC's New 52 continuity revamp.