Good day you, fine reader. I hope you’re escaping from the
cold by snuggling up with loved ones and reading a few funny books. There were
a number of truly excellent comics published last week, so there’s really no
excuse.
Did you know there’s a launch on in-store this week? Well
there is! Comicsmas in July is this Saturday, July 25th with Frank Candiloro,
Ashley Ronning, David Blumenstein and Alisha Jade all launching new books. With
Frank and Ashley both having appeared in this column before, you bet I’ll be
there at some point. Should be fun.
COMIC OF THE WEEK : THE DIVINE
By Asuf Hanuka, Tomer Hanuka and Boaz Lavie
Published by First Second
Although inspired by the true story of Johnny and Luther
Htoo, twin boys who led a collective of refugees named God’s Army, The Divine
is far from a real world slice of war-torn drama. Instead this 150 page book is
a surreal slice of the fantastic that grows ever more nightmarish as its pages
turn, morphing into something like Akira meets Apocalypse Now. It’s a strange
but compelling beast, with simply gorgeous artwork bursting out from its
white-bordered pages.
Created by illustrators and comics artists Asuf and Tomer
Hanuka and writer Boaz Lavie, The Divine is set in the fictional Southeast
Asian country of Quanlom. Exploited by the West for its rich mining potential,
the land is being torn apart and its peoples displaced. Explosives expert Mark
is freshly-married, has a baby on the way and is denied a big promotion. When
an old friend, a military contractor named Jason, comes calling with a big,
quick, high-paying job “lava tube denuding” (or “blowing up mountains” as Mark
puts it), he reluctantly agrees, not knowing that both the spirts of this
ancient land and a particularly brave, young
and violent section of its people will stand in his way.
It’s The Divine’s slow descent into weirdness, darkness and
the supernatural that, narratively, makes this thing work. There’s some great
foreshadowing in the form of a simple shaving nick that signals the ominousness
ahead and some wonderfully oddball dreams, normally a real peeve of mine, are
included and are just too well realised to dismiss as simple filler.
It’s not perfect, unfortunately. Jason is far too obvious and one-note as the
Ugly American, spouting lines like, “Maybe you didn’t notice but the job is
done. We’re not getting paid to babysit locals.” However once The Divine,
gifted sibling child soldiers who lead the resistance against the destruction,
deforestation and displacement happening in their country, enters the picture
you’ll forget all about this caricature of a villain.
And the art. Oh, the art. From its sweaty nightmare-born
techno-womb to the mountainous Quanlom terrain, to its boy soldiers, to its
dragons (yes, dragons), to its frozen moments of explosive violence, The Divine
is simply a gorgeous piece of work. Again I wish First Second would reconsider
their formatting as Tomer and Asuf Hanuka’s work is screaming out for a larger
presentation. It’s a testament to just how good the Hanukas are that I was able
to get lost in their sumptuously coloured pages given how reduced they are in
finished presentation.
WEBCOMIC OF THE WEEK : STRANGE TRIP: A BOOMER ODYSSEY
By Paul Kirchner
How timely! Heavy Metal vet, sober psychedelic artist and
advertising industry survivor, Paul Kirchner takes us through his entire life
and artistic career in just four pages in Strange Trip: A Boomer Odyssey for
The Boston Globe.
A reminder that it’s not just in the current comics economic
market that talented creators struggle, Kirchner’s resignation to a career in
advertising to make ends meet even after giving the world the Kafkaesque
commuter journeys of The Bus for Heavy Metal and Dope Rider for High Times is
sad indeed. Fret not though, for art wins in the end. As it always should.
Strange Trip is a brisk, witty and compact read, perfectly
paced and full of nice little period details as Kirchner rips through the
decades to arrive right back where he started, drawing his two most famous
creations once more. Vintage episodes of
The Bus are also linked to in the Globe article and come highly recommended
also. The Bus is superbly dreamy and may make you feel slightly better about
your own journeys across the slowly-choking PT system of wherever it is you
actually are. Check it out.
COUNTDOWN TO MOZ METAL : HEAVY METAL, APRIL 1977
“From the people who bring you National Lampoon,” says the
top left corner of the cover to Heavy Metal’s debut issue from April of 1977, a
publishing arrangement which would not last anywhere near as long as the
brand’s influence or legacy. The cover of this first issue of “the adult
illustrated fantasy magazine” featured a painting by Jean-Michel Nicolette in
which an enraged, big-boobed, stiletto wearing robot of death beats an asexual
droid into scrap metal with a gigantic wrench.
A fine summation of this periodical’s glory days indeed.
In the editorial, the good folk from National Lampoon say of
France’s Metal Hurlant, or Screaming Metal, the source material for much of
their product: “The magazine appears to be the work of an alien intelligence, as
indeed it is. It is French.”
Um. Okay, then.
Still as strange as that is you can’t fault the early US
editors of the magazine for their taste. They recognised the potency of the
European material they had on their hands and also the opportunity cut the
product with liberal doses of comics by off-kilter American creators, diluting
the Euro-madness somewhat and adding perhaps a slightly more comprehensible,
palatable strain of American fantasy to their pages.
It’s a heady brew, this debut issue, chock full of
now-legendary creators and profoundly influential comics. There’s literally too
much good, eclectic stuff for me to cover in this space – including an excerpt
from Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara and the incredibly strange collaging
at play in Age of Ages by Norman Rubington, but special mention must be made of
two features.
Den by Richard Corben, a psychedelic examination of male
power fantasies and sexy riff on John Carter, opens the proceedings, as the
titular character, giant and nude, makes his way across a strangely alien
desert landscape and encounters a crocodile beast and a typically stacked
Corben bombshell of a woman who has the power to stir “phantasmic forces” in
his head and “erotic ones” in his body. Corben’s colours are acid-soaked; lurid
pinks clashing against greens and yellows, and it’s frankly astonishing to me
that the artist remains as prolific and sharp almost forty years later.
Arzach by Moebius also makes its English-language
publication debut here, not that language is an issue as the comic itself is
silent. Arzach the warrior soundlessly
sails through the landscape of the subconscious on a giant albino
pterodactyl-type creature and, in the process, blew more comic book reading
minds than likely anything preceding him. Profoundly important and influential,
Arzach is still glorious.
There’s so much more to love here, Conquering Armies, Space
Punks and even Sunpot by Vaughn Bode (whose work I’m forever ambivalent about,
to be honest) raise the underground comix cred considerably. An all-time classic debut.
COMICS VIDEO OF THE WEEK : THE ART OF HEAVY METAL MAGAZINE
Yep, to celebrate me insanely writing about as many issues
of Heavy Metal as possible until the Grant Morrison era begins, here’s a cool
little video sampling what you’re in for.
Man, I hope Morrison gets Corben back. That would blow my puny little
mind.
See you next week. Love your comics.
Cameron Ashley spends a lot of time writing comics and other things you’ll likely never read. He’s the chief editor and co-publisher of Crime Factory (www.thecrimefactory.com). You can reach him @cjamesashley on Twitter.
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