Thanks to those wonderful cinema loving folks from Cinemaniacs and their newly announced screening line up for 2017, we are giving you the chance to win a Yearly Double Pass for you and a friend to attend every single one of these cult hit films! Just look below for the Cinemaniacs 2017 Line Up.
To go into the draw for your chance to win all you need to do is comment "I'm a Cinemaniac just like you, " and tag the person you'd most like to take along with you for a year filled with classic cult hits. .
Terms and Conditions:
Only entries made on the Facebook Page will be included in the draw, then entries will go into the All Star Barrel and winners will be drawn at random.
Entries close 6pm Monday 5th of December and winners will be announced Tuesday the 6th.
The winner will be notified by Facebook as to how to collect their prize.
Winners must produce photo ID upon pick up.
Prizes MUST be picked up no later than a week after the draw.
Any remaining prize after this date will be given away at our discretion to make sure they don't go to waste.
A huge thanks again to Cinemaniacs and their newly announced screening line up for 2017.
I have a bed-ridden wife demanding lemony drinks, so let's
skip the preamble. Political thrills await.
COMIC OF THE WEEK : CENTURY'S END
By Enki Bilal & Pierre Christin
Translated by Edward Gauvin
Published By Titan
Thank you Titan Comics, thank you, thank you, thank you. Not
only does the astounding imagination of Philippe Druillet have a home with the
English publisher but so does that of another artistic titan of the BD scene -
Enki Bilal. This year alone has seen the release of Bilal's iconic solo work,
The Nikopol Trilogy, and mere weeks ago two classic tales by Bilal and writer
Pierre Christin were bundled together and released as Century's End. Before we
go any further, praise must be heaped on the publisher and editor Lizzie Kaye
for not just bringing these projects back into English, but also for just how
they have been presented. Both The Nikopol Trilogy and Century's End (and
Druillet's Lone Sloane books) have been given what Titan is dubbing the
Masterpiece format. Essentially the original French album size, these are
generously proportioned books with heavy, thick hardcovers, showcasing the
artwork as it was truly meant to be seen. Big thumbs up.
Century's End compiles both The Black Order Brigade and The
Hunting Party, two dense political thrillers that highlight the dangers of
utopian beliefs and severe ideological leanings whilst remaining exceedingly
handsome artistic projects in the process. Bilal is naturally the draw for
readers, but Christin also proves a formidable talent, providing scripts that
are tense, expansive and clever enough not to hammer the reader over the head
with the morals of his stories. The Black Order Brigade and The Hunting Party
are also incredibly different reading experiences structurally. The sprawling,
non-stop, continual motion of The Black Order Brigade (which feels a lot like
Spielberg's excellent Munich but with a bunch of geezers in the lead) and the
contained nature of The Hunting Party, which arguably could be staged as a play
if a director were clever enough and only expands beyond the bounds of its main
locale of a mansion and surrounding woodland in an opening expositional
sequence set on a train and some frequent, wonderfully phantasmagorical
flashback sequences.
In genre terms, The Black Order Brigade is something of a
"geezer noir," a subgenre of crime fiction that places elderly
protagonists in the lead role, carrying out the action to its inevitably grim
and violent end. In Spain, an entire village is wiped out by a group of old,
right wing terrorists who last saw action during the Spanish Civil War
committing atrocities in Franco's name. In London, a balding, pipe smoking
reporter names Prichard gets word of the massacre and finds some familiar names
amongst those said to be responsible. Prichard, it turns out, was part of a rag
tag group of left wing soldiers in the International Brigade who "fought
for weeks and weeks against every last bastard" who has resurfaced.
Frustrated at having his hands tied journalistically, Prichard reaches for the
phone and begins dialling old comrades from across the globe, making an
impassioned plea to pick up their firearms once more and, forty years after
they last battled, take out The Black Order Brigade once and for all.
From the moment the group assembles, the story does not stop
until the final pages, ripping through Europe as fast as these old codgers can
manage. The initial romanticism begins to dwindle as the plot progresses, with
the script cleverly highlighting the group's physical limitations in numerous
sequences as well as seeding in doubt as to the righteousness of their actions
and what, if any, meaning can be found in the death and destruction left in the
wake of this essentially secret war.
I'm struggling to be even remotely objective about The Black
Order Brigade. It simply ticks to many of my own personal favourite story
elements - geezer noir, moral ambiguity, espionage, failure, paranoia,
unexpected and quiet death, loud and violent death, car chases with tiny
European cars -- it's all here and it all climaxes in a nihilistic and epic gun
battle that would make Sam Peckinpah proud. There's even a few droll laughs
packed in for good measure. Underneath all this pulpy gloss, however, is a real
message about the dangers of fervent ideology (on both sides) and a real stab
at heroes and martyrs which, as Cristin notes in an interview included at the
rear of the book, "seem linked in a way that is as distressing as it is
inexplicable." It's an incredible comic.
The Hunting Party slows things down, trading the romp across
Europe for a contained tale of quietly building suspense. A group of Communist
leaders meet at a remote mansion to do some hunting in the surrounding forest.
It's the dead of winter and Bilal's cold, snowy landscapes match the icy
expressions on his aging, stone-faced characters. Much of The Hunting Party is
set up, introducing our hunters one by one and through flashback and
nightmarishly strange imagery (allowing Bilal an escape from the rigidity of
the story's structure and the similarity of the environment) we see the group
in their youth, mingling with Lenin and fighting in the numerous conflicts that
spanned the century. Cristin is quick to remind readers that he's once again
not interested in black and white, listing the heroic accomplishments of the
most prominent amongst the assembled, Vassili Alexandrovich Tchvtchenko, right
before all the death and displacement he was responsible for a military figure.
There's no real clue as to what's happening for much of the
story, even as tension slowly builds, there is a conflict coming, the reader
can feel it during the hints dropped by characters and the bloody deaths of all
sorts of animals they stumble upon in the woods. A bloody political manoeuvre
is in the planning and it's clear that someone is on their last hunting trip.
The final, unexpected punch provided by the creators is superb and the artistic
discipline Bilal shows in bringing Cristin's dense tale of intrigue to life is
admirable, tracking decades worth of war on his pages, alongside winter-dead
trees and the stately but emotionally cold exterior of the mansion.
Hopefully, Titan isn’t done yet and we get more Bilal and
Cristin in the coming year. Their Legends of Today trilogy, which precedes work
found in Century's End, awaits Titan's Masterpiece format and hopefully there's
enough interest to bring it into English. The Black Order Brigade and The
Hunting Party are smart, sophisticated and beautifully created comics by a pair
of creators who worked intensely, each challenged by the prodigious talents of
the other to push for better and better work. Century's End is yet another
reprint highlight in a year stuffed full of them and a reminder that there's
quite possibly never been a better time to be reading comics. We are utterly
spoiled for top shelf material.
WEBCOMIC OF THE WEEK : UNTITLED PAINTING BY ENKI BILAL
There's something about this painting by Enki Bilal, coming
to us once again via The Bristol Board, that perfectly encapsulates his
pessimistic, grimy, post-industrial looking futures. Maybe it's the
ordinariness of a soccer match, the crows circling overhead and the grey
concrete of the backdrop that brings to mind the colour-stripped years of West
Berlin juxtaposed with the garishly dressed players in their nationalistic
uniforms, the main figure heading the ball into the net for England. Whatever it
is, it's terrific and, seeing as I could not find a Bilal comic online, a
fitting inclusion for this here space.
COMICS VIDEO OF THE WEEK : ENKI BILAL: THE DORMANT BEAST
Playing out almost like an avant-garde film is this brief
look at the masterful Enki Bilal using practically anything he can his hands on
to smear his visions onto the page. Schizophrenic and jarring editing lend this
little film an air of unreality, perfect really for watching this craftsman at
work amidst his piles of paints, brushes, pens and pastels. Pretentious? Sure,
but essential viewing particularly for artists.
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.
Only two weeks away, Saturday/Sunday 10th/11th of December, the All Star Women's Comic Book Club proudly presents the WOMEN IN COMICS FESTIVAL! Have you heard about this?! A huge 2 day festival celebrating women involved in the comic book industry through market tables, signings, talks and other activities hosted here at All Star Comics and all events and activities over the weekend are completely FREE! One of the first of it's kind here in Melbourne, we invite everyone to join us for what will definitely be another fantastic comic event.
Before then though...COMICS!
Whoah! Algebraic! See what all your favourite characters from the land Ooo like to cook as Finn and Jake quest to complete a disintegrated cookbook they found, cook along with them in ADVENTURE TIME OFFICIAL COOKBOOK HC.
The masters of your favourite superheroes have stepped aside to let new talent from DC's Talent Development Workshop in NEW TALENT SHOWCASE #1. Find out what they've learnt from legends Scott Snyder, Jim Lee and Klaus Janson in this issue!
Want to get up to speed on Jennifer Walter's before she becomes the lead in the new HULK title? Why not take a look back at some of her more light stories from the past as She-Hulk even takes on the writer John Byrne in SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK BY JOHN BYRNE TP RETURN.
See where it all began for the Young Avengers in this collection by acclaimed TV writer Allan Heinberg (the OC, Gilmore Girls). A refreshing Teen focused super hero book in YOUNG AVENGERS BY HEINBERG AND CHEUNG COMPLETE COLL TP.
Superman is abducted by mysterious aliens and taken deep into space as he's forced to take part in "the Games", will he survive? Find out in SUPERMAN ANNUAL #1.
Ripped out of the pages of IDW's big event Revolution, one of your favourite 80's toy franchise gets its own title in MASK MOBILE ARMORED STRIKE KOMMAND #1.
MOON KNIGHT TP VOL 01 LUNATICsees Jeff Lemire take over the many personalities of Marc Spector and Moon Knight in a tale of discovery and self doubt.
A roster of great Batman writers come together to give us an icy tale as snow falls on a quiet night in Gotham, but it never truly is as Batman and allies are stalked by there many foes in BATMAN ANNUAL #1.
Tensions finally amass between Mutants and the Inhumans after discovering that the Terrigan mists are poisonous to all Mutant kind, can Hank find a cure and what is Emma hiding from everyone, find out in IVX #0 (OF 6).
Erin, Mac and Tiffiany battle the unknown as they find themselves flung into distant future of 2016, in the second instalment of Brian K Vaughan and Cliff Chiang's 80s nostalgia fest PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 02.
Need more Luke Cage on Netflix? Can't wait for Iron Fist? Marvel has got you covered with LUKE CAGE IRON FIST AND HEROES FOR HIRE TP VOL 01, the popular 90s series following the exploits of the famous gang of misfits.
Robbie Reyes is back! A mysterious UFO crash in his neighbourhood lands him face to face with a Totally Awesome Hulk, and a brand new villain in the new ongoing GHOST RIDER #1 NOW.
After surviving a tour of duty in Iraq, veteran Hannah Gregory finds herself in a very different kind of danger; a cult hellbent on genocide in Black Mask's newest offering, NO ANGEL #1 .
Ed Luce continues to celebrate all things metal, wrestling and queer in WUVABLE OAF HC BLOOD & METAL , the newest collection of Oaf stories, NOW IN COLOUR!
DC continues to release new additions to its extensive action figure lines with Babs Tarr's hugely popular Batgirl of Burnside design making its action figure debut with theDC ICONS BATGIRL OF BURNSIDE DLX AF, as well as the BATMAN ANIMATED SER CHRISTMAS W THE JOKER AF arrives just in time for Christmas!
The latest installment of Michel Fiffe's violent indie, COPRA TP ROUND FOURexplodes on the shelves as one of the best hero books around.
So much to keep you excited before the Women In Comics Festival launches. If there is something you are after, just let us know before Wednesday morning and we'll do our best to get it sorted for you.
MARVEL
BLACK WIDOW #8
DEADPOOL BACK IN BLACK #4 (OF 5)
EXTRAORDINARY X-MEN #16
GHOST RIDER #1 NOW
GREAT LAKES AVENGERS #2
GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #14
IVX #0 (OF 6)
MS MARVEL #13
NEW AVENGERS #18
OLD MAN LOGAN #14
STAR WARS ANNUAL #2
THUNDERBOLTS #7 NOW
TOTALLY AWESOME HULK #12 CW2
UNCANNY INHUMANS #16
DC COMICS
BATMAN ANNUAL #1
INJUSTICE GODS AMONG US YEAR FIVE ANNUAL #1
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #10
NEW TALENT SHOWCASE #1
SUICIDE SQUAD #7 VAR ED
SUPERMAN ANNUAL #1
WACKY RACELAND #6 (OF 6) VAR ED
BOOM
LUCAS STAND #6
MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS #9
MUNCHKIN #23
OVER GARDEN WALL ONGOING #8
DARK HORSE
CONAN THE SLAYER #5
CRYPTOCRACY #6
SERENITY NO POWER IN THE VERSE #2 (OF 6)
TARZAN ON THE PLANET OF THE APES #3 (OF 5)
WITCHFINDER CITY OF THE DEAD #4
DYNAMITE
WOLFCOP #2
IDW
GHOSTBUSTERS INTERNATIONAL #11
MASK MOBILE ARMORED STRIKE KOMMAND #1
REVOLUTION #5 (OF 5)
TMNT UNIVERSE #4
X-FILES (2016) #8
IMAGE
DEADLY CLASS #24
MONSTRESS #8
ROMULUS #2
SAGA #40
SEVEN TO ETERNITY #3
SEX #33
SHUTTER #24
SURGEON X #3
ONI
BRIK #5 (OF 6)
EXODUS LIFE AFTER #9
VALIANT
GENERATION ZERO #4
SAVAGE #1
MISC
BROKEN MOON LEGENDS O/T DEEP #2 (OF 6)
DISNEY FROZEN #3
DOCTOR WHO 3RD #3 (OF 5)
HARD CASE CRIME PEEPLAND #2 (OF 5)
JUGHEAD #11
NO ANGEL #1
REVISIONIST #6
STARGATE ATLANTIS GATEWAYS #1
TANK GIRL GOLD #2 (OF 4)
THE SKEPTICS #2
TORCHWOOD #3
VIKINGS UPRISING #3 (OF 4)
MAGAZINES
DIRECT CURRENTS #1
IMAGE PLUS #8 (WALKING DEAD HERES NEGAN PT 8)
MARVEL PREVIEWS #17 DECEMBER 2016 EXTRAS
PREVIEWS #339 DECEMBER 2016
TRADES
ADVENTURE TIME OFFICIAL COOKBOOK HC
AQUAMAN HC VOL 08 OUT OF DARKNESS
ASTRID TP VOL 01 CULT OF VOLCANIC MOON
BATMAN DETECTIVE COMICS HC VOL 09 GORDON AT WAR
BATMAN DETECTIVE COMICS TP VOL 08 BLOOD OF HEROES
COPRA TP ROUND FOUR
CYBORG TP VOL 02 ENEMY OF THE STATE
DEAN KOONTZ FRANKENSTEIN STORM SURGE HC
GODKILLER WALK AMONG US COMPLETE COLLECTION TP
GODZILLA RAGE ACROSS TIME TP
LAKE JEHOVAH GN
LUKE CAGE IRON FIST AND HEROES FOR HIRE TP VOL 01
MICKEY & DONALD HC SEARCH FOR ZODIAC STONE
MICKEY CRAZIEST ADVENTURES HC
MIGHTY THOR PREM HC VOL 02 LORDS OF MIDGARD
MOON KNIGHT TP VOL 01 LUNATIC
PALACE OF CHAMPIONS GN
PANDORAS EYES HC (NEW PTG)
PAPER GIRLS TP VOL 02
REGULAR SHOW TP VOL 07
RICK & MORTY HC BOOK 01
RIVERS OF LONDON NIGHT WITCH TP
ROBIN TP VOL 03 SOLO
ROBYN HOOD TP VOL 04
ROGER ZELAZNY HERE THERE BE DRAGONS BODE ILLUS HC
ROGER ZELAZNY WAY UP HIGH BODE ILLUS HC
ROOK TP VOL 02 DESPERATE TIMES
ROWANS RUIN TP
SCIENCE COMICS VOLCANOES SC GN
SECRET HISTORY OF TWIN PEAKS HC NOVEL
SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK BY JOHN BYRNE TP RETURN
SINESTRO TP VOL 04 THE FALL OF SINESTRO
SKYDOLL SPACESHIP GN
STAR WARS EPISODE III HC REVENGE OF SITH
SUPERMAN THE GOLDEN AGE TP VOL 02
THEORY OF THE GRAIN OF SAND TP
VENOM SPACE KNIGHT TP VOL 02 ENEMIES AND ALLIES
VISION TP VOL 02 LITTLE BETTER THAN BEAST
WUVABLE OAF HC BLOOD & METAL
X-23 COMPLETE COLLECTION TP VOL 02
X-MEN ALPHA FLIGHT TP
YOUNG AVENGERS BY HEINBERG AND CHEUNG COMPLETE COLL TP
Don't look now but Christmas is coming! Do your part to give loved ones the chance to pick you a present you are really after this year!
ALL STAR CHRISTMAS WISH LIST GIFT REGISTRY
Like year's gone by we want to do our best to ensure that smile on your face when you open your gifts this holiday season is well and truly legit.
To make this dream a reality you simply need to fill out one of our
ALL STAR CHRISTMAS WISH LIST GIFT REGISTRY cards.
Fill the list with items in the store you'd like to find yourself unwrapping this festive season, leave the Wish List with us and then whenever anyone asks
"What would you like for Christmas?" the answer is simple,
"Head to All Star Comics and pick something from my Christmas Wish List!"
*REMEMBER*
This full proof system only works if you mention to people that you have a Wish List with us.
As good as an idea as this might sound, it can be hard to remember to fill a Wish List out. So like last year we thought we'd give you an extra Yuletide incentive.
THEALL STAR 25 DAYS OF X-MAS!
Just by filling out an All Star Wish List, your name will be entered in a draw for the chance to pick a mystery gift from under All Star Christmas Tree as of the 1st of December! A different person will be drawn each day in the lead up to the 25th, picking a mystery gift from the gifts left under the tree. Come Xmas day, all entries (including previous winners) will be in the drawn to win the Big All Star Gift!
So there it is! Just for giving you the chance of getting something you really want this Holiday Season, you could score a mystery comic gift! The rest is up to you, come in, fill out the Wish List, tell folks where they need to go to get you what you want. It's that easy.
Truly this is a Christmas Miracle!
TERMS AND CONDITIONS:
-This is a instore promotion only.
-Ask for the Wish List at the counter.
-Each mystery gift will be drawn at close of each day and the winners name will be announced on Facebook the next day.
-Winners names will be removed from the rest on the draw until the 25th, where all entries will be re-entered for the chance to win the Big All Star Gift.
-The winner of the Big All Star Gift will be announced on Boxing Day.
A simple and fun way to increase the chances of getting that gift you really wanted this Christmas, with the possibility of getting a gift from us for your troubles! MUCH HOLIDAY CHEER!
COMIC OF THE WEEK : BLACK IS THE COLOR &LAID WASTE
By Julia Gfrörer
Published By Fantagraphics
In stores last week was the second printing of Julia Gfrörer's debut longform comic, Black Is The Color (out of print since 2014) reissued to accompany her latest work, Laid Waste. The timing of these striking companion volumes seems fortuitous. Call it the zeitgeist, call it a hopefully passing collective mood, but things feel grim. Like Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel said, "It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none...none more black."
Both of Gfrörer's books are sleek, beautiful little things, ethereal and gothic in content, bleak but heart-achingly tender. Their plots are as slender as their page counts and if you make it to this week's video, you'll see that Gfrörer is unsurprisingly not one for artists holding the hands of their readers -- as in all true art, the evocation of emotion through vision, character and setting trumps exposition at all times.
Black Is The Color focuses on Warren and Xavier, the two newest faces aboard an ill-fated ship with dwindling supplies who are cruelly chosen by ship’s Captain to be cast adrift. Days bleed into nights and back into days as the pair face nothing but endless ocean and their fraying sanity. When two are reduced to one, the sole survivor begins receiving visits from a mermaid, fascinated by this frail handsome creature and is afforded some much needed tenderness as he spits up blood turning black and the end approaches.
Laid Waste is set in a village decimated by plague. Agnes is losing everyone around her and clings on to a semblance of routine existence even as the bodies of her family and neighbours are fed to large fires or taken to mass graves. Agnes is somehow physically unaffected by plague symptoms and a brief prologue hints at a supernatural gift that she may in fact possess. Begging for death as loses everything around her, Agnes finds some measure of comfort and relief from grief in the arms of her neighbour, Giles. Right away, the common themes should already be apparent: suffering, pain, loss, and most importantly, the absolute necessity of human contact and compassion.
One of the problems I have with the Gothic is that the humanity does have a tendency to get somewhat lost amidst all the phantasmagoria and spiralling insanity (Exhibit A: Poe's "The Fall of The House of Usher," which I do utterly love, by the way). Not so with Gfrörer's work, which always puts the humanity of its characters front and centre. The fragile emotional states and often matching delicate physicality of her creations is explored not just through dialogue, but through their gentle contact with one another that can play out for as roughly as long as a fight scene in a superhero comic. Her characters hold hands with spidery fingers desperately entangled, they embrace, they make love, always with the need for contact and consolation.
There's sensitivity at work in Gfrörer's work, a high level empathy, operating at a level other creators do not or cannot touch. There is warmth amongst the quiet horrors and personal apocalypses of Gfrörer's worlds, a desperate need for kindness as things are ripped from those that populate them, or as they wait to slip away into whichever worlds come next. Ironic for a creator who boasts that her heart is "black as jet" and reminds readers that her name "rhymes with 'despair.'" There's a fragility to Gfrörer's art with her lines frequently as delicate as her characters. She's also fond of holding her shots over the course of a page or more - In Laid Waste, a close-up Agnes' a tear-streaked face runs eight panels over two pages, altered only by the character's movements as she writhes in despair within the limits of the fixed panels, begging to be taken by the plague next. Gfrörer wrings the emotion from her characters in these sequences or - alternatively - mines moments of stillness for as many beats as possible to highlight time's crawl. In Black Is The Color, the horror of Warren's predicament, cast out to the seemingly unending ocean, is highlighted by pages of him huddled in his lifeboat, alone and slowly dying as night becomes day, day becomes night and sharks ominously circle. These sequences evoke a sense of personal haunting for those inhabiting them - Warren by turns waiting for his mermaid lover and for death, Agnes losing all of those around her to cruel and merciless disease. The stillness is punishing.
As fond as she is of these lingering single-shot sequences, Gfrörer is as adept with her dialogue, showcased particularly in Laid Waste, which contains some utter poetry. Giles tells Agnes, "There's nothing holy about suffering. The stories of the martyrs illustrate their faith because in spite of what they endured they did not suffer. A saint always dies smiling."
"And will you die smiling, Giles?" Agnes asks.
"I'm not a saint," comes the reply.
It's strange to call such grim material beautiful, but here's the rub: it absolutely is. There is real loveliness amongst these quiet apocalypses and the moments of connection between characters made all the more real and potent by the inevitability of their upcoming end, the despair found in their surroundings. And this, finally, is what we are left with as readers, as humans -- connections found, connections lost, hands held, love made, things not to be taken for granted, the specialness of the moment, no matter how simple, how mundane and everyday each encounter, each action may be. Treasure everything. Ultimately there is nothing more real, or perhaps even uplifting, than that.
WEBCOMIC OF THE WEEK : THE SHEETS WERE ALL BE-BLED WITH THE BLOOD
By Julia Gfrörer
Eagle-eyed readers may well recognise this as a repeat, from the September 8 2015 column to be precise, but who cares, we all need to do more re-reading and I'm declaring this Go Read Gfrörer Week.
Adapted from a 12th century poem, Lancelot, The Knight of the Cartby Cretien De Troyes, Grocer, in just two gorgeous, scratchy pages, illustrates the lengths the Sir Lancelot went in order to rescue Queen Guinevere from abduction in "The Sheets Were All Be-Bled With The Blood." It’s Lancelot’s love for this Queen, and hers for him, that enables the Knight to burst through her barred window. “…if you refused,” he says from his knees, staring into her eyes, “the way would have been impossible for me.”
COMICS VIDEO OF THE WEEK : JULIA GRFORER & TUCKER STONE DISCUSS BLACK IS THE COLOR
Back to The Strand bookstore, which we last visited in this particular column for Dash Shaw's excellent discussion about his Cosplayers book. Today, we travel back a couple of years to see Julia Gfrörer and journalist/critic Tucker Stone sitting in those same leather armchairs, to chat about Gfrörer's career in comics, up to and including Black is the Color. I enjoy a good peek inside the mind of various creators, and quite a few dots gets joined here for me concerning Gfrörer work. From her love of writing prose to her fine art background and the distaste she feels for the production of much commercial illustration, this is a candid and revealing discussion, really worth your time.
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.
Last Saturday we celebrated our first Local Comic Store Day in the best way we know how; with a monster Back Issue and Toy Sale and Artist Assembly! An outstanding day all round and thank you to all the terrific stall holders and incredible artists we hosted that helped make for such a great event!
And with no sign of slowing down before the end of the year, the next All Star Women's Comic Book Club Meet Up for November is this weekend, Saturday the 26th from 5pm-6:30pm, this meet up will be covering MONSTRESS VOL 1 along with crafts, comics and chats, hopefully we'll see you there.
And THEN...only a couple of weeks later, Saturday/Sunday 10th/11th of December, the All Star Women's Comic Book Club proudly presents the WOMEN IN COMICS FESTIVAL! An incredible 2 day festival celebrating women involved in the comic book industry through market tables, signings, talks and other activities hosted here at All Star Comics! One of the first of it's kind here in Melbourne, we invite everyone to join us for what will definitely be a fantastic event.
Until then however, COMICS!
A few weeks before the next Star Wars installment, Rogue One, hits theatres, you can get your Star Wars fix with the epic finale of Vader's journey in STAR WARS DARTH VADER TP VOL 04 END OF GAMES
The DC Bombshells juggernaut continues with theART OF DC COMICS BOMBSHELLS HC , celebrating Ant Lucia's masterful designs, and packed with never-before-seen artwork.
The massive existential new mini series from Image by Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire launches with AD AFTER DEATH BOOK 01 (OF 3).
The ridiculous minds behind D4VE are back with the trade paperback of their latest series, HOT DAMN TP, after a life of debauchery, party-guy Teddy ends up in hell, and finds out its not quite how the Good Book describes it.
The sold-out story that set the rebirth of a universe in motion is collected in DC UNIVERSE REBIRTH DELUXE EDITION HC, with plenty of behind the scenes extras and bonus sketches.
The Justice League team up to find a missing Batman inSUPER POWERS #1 (OF 6), the latest outrageous all-ages adventure by the team behind Tiny Titans. Coupled with the softcover collection of HILDA & BIRD PARADE GN, it's a great time to be a fan of excellent All Age reads.
See the Image hit series out in style with the final issue of CHEW #60.
Azzarello is let off the editorial leash with the collection of his take on a modern Frankenstein tale about small town crime and revenge in AMERICAN MONSTER TP VOL 01.
The next instalment in the blockbuster franchise, Underworld: Blood Wars follows Vampire death dealer, Selene (Kate Beckinsale) as she fends off brutal attacks from both the Lycan clan and the Vampire faction that betrayed her.
With her only allies, David (Theo James) and his father Thomas (Charles Dance), she must stop the eternal war between Lycans and Vampires, even if it means she has to make the ultimate sacrifice. Only at the movies! December 1
Thanks to those fantastic fanged folks at Sony Pictures and UNDERWORLD BLOOD WARS in cinemas December 1st, we have 10 Double Passes to a Special Preview Screening at Hoyts Melbourne Central on Monday 28th November at 6.30pm to give away!
To go into the draw for your chance to win all you need to do is comment "I can't wait to sink my teeth into Underworld Blood Wars" and you'll be entered in the draw.
SPECIAL NOTE: As this prize is for a specific time and date, please only enter if you can attend the screening.
Terms and Conditions:
-Only entries made via the comments on the Facebook post will be included in the draw.
-Entries will be "liked" by All Star to notify the comment have been entered in the draw,
-All entries will go into the All Star Barrel and winners will be drawn at random.
-Entries close 6pm Monday the 21st of November and winners will be announced Tuesday the 22nd and notified soon after as to how to collect their tickets.
A huge thanks again to Sony Pictures and UNDERWORLD BLOOD WARS in cinemas December 1st
Do you remember how ridiculous and unbelievable it seemed when Marvel made Norman Osborn the US President? Yeah, doesn't seem so silly now does it...? Dark Reign indeed.
COMIC OF THE WEEK : HAPPINESS VOLUME ONE
By Shuzo Oshimi, translated by Kevin Gifford
Published By Kodansha Comics
Ah, adolescence. Pretty sure it was Tori Amos who called it the cruelest place on Earth. It's a time of confusion, hormonal surges, bodily changes and shifting peer allegiances. High School in particular is a social minefield that the comics medium loves to exploit, with its hotbed of teen angst, heartbreak, secrets, deceptions and liaisons, from the X-Men to Deadly Class to a veritable mountain of manga, comics set in and around high schools will be with us as long as there are teens attending them.
Creator Shuzo Oshimi has made a career out creatively exploiting the angst of adolescence, and a successful one at that. His previous work, The Flowers of Evil, is set in a Japanese middle school and cantered around the fallout from its protagonist stealing the gym clothes of the girl he's crushing on. The Flowers of Evil ran from 2009 and 2014 and it did not take long for Oshimi to follow up as Happiness debuted in 2015, with it's arrival in English coming just a few weeks back via Kodansha USA.
Like The Flowers of Evil, Happiness is set in a Japanese High School. However this time, Oshimi takes readers on a decidedly supernatural path. Happiness is essentially about a socially awkward teenager who just so happens to be a vampire. There's some obvious metaphors at work here, vampirism as a kind of unique sexual experience/awakening paralleling the horniness of teen years being the most overt.
Our protagonist, Makoto Okazaki, is a first year high school student. He jerks off, tries to glimpse the underwear of short-skirted girls as they ascend staircases and generally is a fleshy bag of raging hormones. He's also a bespectacled, diminutive, shy kid who's forced to do things by the "cool kids" like buy their lunches and generally act as their errand boy. Things begin to change once Okazaki's preyed upon a beautiful and mysterious vampire who chooses to let him live. After recovering in hospital, Okazaki finds himself blessed/cursed with the vampiric condition - the blood lust, the weakness to sunlight -- but is also transformed into something powerful, able to fight back against his bullies and able to force himself into acts of near-heroism.
If that sounds kind of familiar, it should. Makoto Okazaki is basically a Japanese Peter Parker, the "wallflower" bitten by a vampire instead of a radioactive spider. There are plenty of echoes from Amazing Fantasy #15 to be found in Volume 1 of Happiness, furthering the cross-pollination of ideas going on in modern manga as it borrows Stan Lee-style superhero origins and transforms them in distinctly Japanese ways. Last December, I noted that Hiroya Oku's Inuyashiki feels very much like a warped Lee-Kirby story filtered through the Japanese experience and Happiness is comparable, if clearly aiming for a more horrific endgame. Okazaki crushes on girls above his social standing, has abilities he can't talk about, struggles to make friends and has a primary bully figure (his Flash Thompson is a kid named Yuuki) that he may well end up befriending. He's one family tragedy away from being Parker reincarnated as a Japanese boy.
Once bitten, Okazaki first notices the changes in his physiology when being overwhelmed by not just sunlight but also the scent of menstrual blood emanating from girls in his class (cleverly linked visually to earlier sequences of panty-glimpsing) and struck by urges he doesn't understand, harkening back to that idea of vampirism as sexual awakening. He suffers vertiginous spells of delirium, experiences surges of strength and also guilt at the actions his "powers" enable him to do. It's all classic teen hero stuff really, with some rosy-cheeked, sheepish expressions of horniness thrown in for good measure and some literal "off-camera" wanking in place of "organic webs" spraying all over the place.
Happiness ostensibly being a horror book, however, you'll likely get the foreboding sense that things will darken as the narrative moves forward through future volumes and Okazaki is forced to come to terms with what he is now and what he must do in order to survive.This is quite possibly not the redemption story that Spider-Man so clearly was early on. The classic "with great power comes great responsibility" will very well be tempered by the addict's need to gorge on blood. "This...this isn't me," Okazaki says to himself at one point, a clear signal as to what the source of inner conflict will be moving forward and indicating that the series' title is brutally ironic.
Artistically, Oshimi's not likely to win the top honours on your favourite artist lists, but he's skilled at producing incredibly, compulsively readable pages, with excellent shot choices. The work is clean and stripped back, anything that could possibly get in the way of reader momentum removed. I've mentioned this before, but manga is read *fast* in Japan, too fast for my liking, readers plough through phone book-sized anthologies as though panels are animation cells ripping by onscreen. Oshimi's work seems perfectly geared toward this particular reading method and you'll likely feel the pull to move forward ever faster as the story continues as well.
Interestingly, the scratchier and stranger Oshimi gets, the more I dig his work. Real visual highlights from the book come when he busts out his near obsessive cross-hatching and, particularly, the hallucinatory sequences where poor Okazaki is overwhelmed with a bloodlust he can't understand. Perspective and anatomy warp and the fairly generic look of his pages is utterly transformed during these sequences, and alt-manga influences creep in and take over.
Don't just take my word for it if you're on the fence here, as both Cazz and Sean at All Star are big boosters of the book. Just ask them. For me though, Happiness functions brilliantly as a fresh coat of paint on the vampire mythos and as another superb example of just how much mileage one can get out of simple, but perfectly executed, origin stories. I'm keen to see what Oshimi has planned.
WEBCOMIC OF THE WEEK : HE TELLS IT LIKE IT IS
By Paul North
Political cartoons so rarely make an appearance in this space that I almost felt obligated to include one this week, particularly given the Orange Goblin's rise to power. Here's my fave from the wide pool of cartoons focussed on the election result, Paul North's "He Tells It Like It Is" from The New Yorker.
COMICS VIDEO OF THE WEEK : FRANQUIN, MORRIS, PEYO & ROBA -- TAC AU TAC (6-9-71)
Ahhhh, Tac au Tac. Been a while since I linked to one of these. If you've never seen Tac au Tac before, basically a group of cartoonists come together and tag in and out on completing large murals, usually drawn with giant markers. The confidence of the artists is always off the charts - there is no room for error - and it's always pretty amazing to see the completed pictures come together.
This particular instalment from 1971 is perhaps the jolliest I've ever seen and arguably the most talent-stacked. The four gentlemen involved giggle their way though a series of improvised drawings with a tremendous sense of fun and spontaneity and some of the seemingly spur of the moment humorous artistic decisions are simply inspired. Andre Franquin (Spiro et Fantasio), Morris (Lucky Luke), Peyo (The Smurfs) and Jean Roba (Boule et Bill) are the assembled crew and, such is the ridiculous level of talent and stature brought together, it's odds on there's no way I'll type those four names in a sentence together ever again. Amazing stuff.
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.
