ALL
STAR RECOMMENDS:
2021
COMIC BOOK FORECAST EDITION
Cameron
Ashley
Hello! Welcome to 2021.
We’ve had a
bit of it now, just a little taste, and I don’t know about you but for whatever
reason this particular writer is having a hard time shaking a kind of New Year’s
malaise.
Whether you are like me right now or flying high with the arrival of
the new year, either way I’ve got some good news:
There are some great, *great* comics
on the way.
Here are a bunch them, alphabetically
as always.
Release dates are fluid things so be sure to contact the store
before you start swooning over goodies below. As a guy who has read comics for
four decades now, a lifer if you will, I can honestly say that the art form
brought me great comfort over the last year as I’m sure it did you. I can only
imagine how difficult it must have been for comics publishers (particularly the smaller ones) to look at
their publishing slates, make adjustments and work like hell to get them out
despite, well, everything. Here’s to them this year, the publishers. Let’s
support them and cherish the fact that despite everything going on in the world
right now we have the below, and many many other, comics to look forward to
this year thanks to their efforts and the efforts of those working in shops not
unlike the lovely store that runs this blog.
Onward.
BOYS RUN THE RIOT
Keto Gaku
Vertical
Due August
If anything has All Star Comics
Sleeper Hit of 2021 written all over it, it’s Keto Gato’s Boys Run The Riot.
Gato’s manga about a transgender teen named Ryuu will be compiled, in its
entirety, over two large 400 page volumes beginning in August.
Vertical says: “High schooler Ryuu
knows he’s
transgender. But he doesn’t
have anyone to confide in about the confusion he feels. He can’t
tell his best friend, who he’s
secretly got a crush on, and he can’t
tell his mom, who’s
constantly asking why Ryuu is always “dressing like a boy.” He certainly can’t
tell Jin, the new transfer student who looks like just another bully. The only
time Ryuu feels at ease is when he’s
wearing his favorite clothes. Then, and only then, the world melts away, and he
can be his true self. One day, while out shopping, Ryuu sees an unexpected
sight: Jin. The kid who looked so tough in class is shopping for the same
clothes that Ryuu loves. And Jin offers Ryuu a proposal: to start their own
brand and create apparel to help everyone feel comfortable in their skin. At
last, Ryuu has someone he can open up to–and the journey ahead might finally
give him a way to express himself to everyone else.”
It’s fascinating to see this kind of
manga, so different from the the speed lines, tough guys and monsters of the
shonen fare that dominates the shelves, beginning to pop up more and more
frequently and it’s always a treat to see the traditionally less open aspects
of Japanese society explored through manga. For the curious, Gaku is a
transgender man who lives in Japan and Boys Run The Riot, his debut work, is an
award-winner. Kudos for Vertical for bringing Boys Run The Riot to print in
English and in such a terrific, digestible format. I expect some buzz here
closer to launch time, similar to that of Gengoroh Tegame’s My Brother’s
Husband a few years back. I mean, who doesn’t want to read a transgender
updating of fashion model comics, a genre that’s been around since the 1940s?
THE CITY OF BELGIUM
Brecht Evens
D+Q
Due June
The first of our super-latecomers is
Brecht Evens’ The City Of Belgium which was originally scheduled for release in
(2019!). As is customary with the late arrivals, here’s what I wrote in the
2019 Forecast:
Three young strangers converge on a
popular restaurant, unaware the night will devolve into a “series of
adventures that reveal them to be teetering on the edge between lucid dream and
tooth-grinding nightmare.” It almost sounds like the premise for a Gaspar Noe
film and I’m
probably not that far off the mark, particularly considering Evans’ dizzying
skills with watercolour, near constant re-shaping of the conventions of the
comics page and gift for awkward, uncomfortable encounters. Evens (Panther, The
Wrong Place, The Making Of) is as singular a voice as you’ll find in comics, capable of
stunning, off-kilter work. This, his largest project so far, is an arrival to
be celebrated.
CRASHPAD/JIMBO
Gary Panter
Fantagraphics/NYRC
Due February/March
It’s a double-dose of the legendary
Gary Panter this February and March and I hope your brains and consciousnesses
are ready to take the trip. First, Fantagraphics unleashes the oversized
Crashpad in February. Described as a “fine art monograph/faux underground comic
facsimile” that functions as “a psychedelic trip through the hippie movement,” Crashpad
is the evolution of an art installation Panter created back in 2017 called “Hippie
Trip,” now turned into a comic book that immerses its readers in not just the
early days of psychedelia and counter culture but also “riffs” on the early
Underground Comics movement and its practitioners. This massive hardcover
edition features not only high quality reproductions of Panter’s pages on heavy
stock but also the comic printed on newsprint in a kind of faux underground
edition which fits perfectly in a special sleeve. Probably the year’s coolest
comic-as-Art-Object, the early word is that Crashpad is a stunner, with Panter’s
scratchy but ultra-detailed pages bursting off the pages of both editions
included to melt those eyeballs out of your head.
If that’s not enough, NYRC is
re-releasing Panter’s classic Jimbo: Adventures In Paradise in March. First
appearing in Punk zine, Slash in the ‘70s, Panter’s “punk everyman” moved over
to the pages of Raw. Originally published back in 1988, Jimbo In Paradise
collects Jimbo’s adventures to that point and has thankfully been brought out
of OOP purgatory by the fine folk at NYRC who say, “Amid a jumbled cityscape of
rundown New York City streets and futuristic Los Angeles freeways, Jimbo
crowd-surfs at a riot, makes amends with Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, and rescues his pal Smoggo’s
sister from giant cockroaches, all while the world teeters between extravagance
and apocalypse.” The new NYRC edition looks tremendous (as always with this
publisher), with re-coloured sections (Panter-approved - he seems thrilled with
the edition) and essays also included.
A must have.
CRISIS ZONE
Simon Hanselmann
Fantagraphics
Due August
If there’s one good thing that came
out of 2020, it was Simon Hanselmann’s Instagram webcomic, Crisis Zone. Running
almost daily from March through to December, Hanselmann dove into his “real
time” comic, dropping his regular cast of characters, Megg, Mogg, Owl, Werewolf
Jones and friends right into the middle of the pandemic we were/are all living
through. According to the author, it was only going to last a month but
Hanselmann became “addicted” to producing it, uploading 10 or so panels day
after day after day. It made numerous Top 10 of the year lists (I only make
lists for physical books, otherwise it would’ve made mine) and exhausted its
creator.
Easily the most hilarious art ever
produced during a global pandemic, Crisis Zone became ever more ridiculous by
the daily, spiralling out of control as characters live, characters die,
characters get Netflix deals. David Choe even appears and part of the joy (for
me anyway) of the reading experience was seeing Choe comment on his own
exploits day after day in a weird piece of internet intertextuality.
The print version of Crisis Zone is
due in August and contains an extra 500-plus panels originally culled from
Hanselmann’s daily posting. Relive the horrible year that was and pretty much
still is! Who would have thought that reflecting back on 2020 could be so much
fun?
DISCIPLINE
Dash Shaw
NYRC
Due late 2021
It’s always a treat to see new work by
the ever-versatile Dash Shaw and 2021 brings his latest, Discipline from the
fab publishers NYRC. Clocking in at 300 pages, Discipline is six years in the
making, according to NYRCs Instagram announcement, and is “the story of Charles
Cox, a young Quaker who joins up with the Union in the Civil War, while his
sister Fanny tries to hold their family together on the home front.”
Shaw has posted some
glimpses of Discipline online and he’s working
in his clean and loose style, eschewing panel borders for open pages that
readers eyes flow organically across. It’s striking work and it can’t come soon
enough.
THE FIST OF THE NORTH STAR
Buronson and Testuo Hara
Viz
Due June
Out of print since I must have been….brrrrrrrrrrmmm…..fifteen?,
Fist Of The North Star returns in big ol’ hardcover editions in 2021. A kind of
gonzo martial arts Mad Max manga originally running from 1983-1988, Fist Of The
North Star sees martial arts master, Kenshiro (who brutally kills opponents by
striking secret vital spots) wandering a post-apocalyptic planet helping the
little people in their struggles with all manner of nasty bad guys. Grimy,
VIOLENT, gory and hilarious (come on, it really is), Fist Of The North Star
returns to fulfil all your grindhouse/outlaw comics needs. It’s kind of bizarre
that this was ever out of print. If anything, it feels like one of those
perennial titles comic shops have too many copies of. I’m rambling now. I’ll
shh. Here’s Kenshiro:
LET’S NOT TALK ANYMORE
Weng Pixin
D+Q
June
The lives of five generations of women
from are explored in Weng Pixin’s ambitious Let’s Not Talk Anymore. The
Singaporean artist paints the tales of her great grandmother, her grandmother,
her mother, herself and her future possible daughter all at the age of fifteen
over 200 pages spanning a century’s worth of women in her family.
Drawn and Quarterly says, “As each
story develops, generational traumas are revealed and fraught relationships
passed on from mother to daughter. Creative impulses are stifled or nurtured.
They struggle with poverty and neglect. And at some point each woman begins to
separate herself from her situation and understand the woman she will become.”
Pixin’s pages are bright and lively.
Colourful tape acting as as panel borders is visible, as are brush strokes,
heightening the intimacy of the work and imbuing a kind of textural closeness.
Let’s Not Talk Anymore sounds like the kind of
quiet, personal epic perfect for a peaceful day’s reading - something we all
most certainly deserve.
LOVESICKNESS/SENSOR
Junji Ito
Viz
Due April/August
The master of modern horror manga
might not quite be firing on all cylinders anymore, but Junji Ito is still
producing some of the most horrific and certainly bizarre comics around. Sensor
is the latest Ito epic to come to English thanks to publisher Viz and looks to
continue a vein of distinctly cosmic horror that the creator frequently taps,
one that he is quite accomplished at.
Viz says, “A woman walks alone at the
foot of Mount Sengoku. A man appears, saying he’s been waiting for her, and invites
her to a nearby village. Surprisingly, the village is covered in hairlike
volcanic glass fibers, and all of it shines a bright gold. At night, when the
villagers perform their custom of gazing up at the starry sky, countless
unidentified flying objects come raining down on them, the opening act for the
terror about to occur.”
What kind of cosmic horror weirdness
does Ito have in store for us this time? Tune in August to find out!
Want more Ito and want it before
August? No problem! Viz unleashes the latest Junji Ito Story Collection,
Lovesickness, in April which includes “strikingly bloody” titular story, “The
Strange Hikizuri Siblings” and “The Rib Woman.” Viz promises “peak form” Ito
which should thrill any long time readers.
MONSTERS
Barry Windsor-Smith
Fantagraphics
Due April
It’s actually real. In the works for
over 35 years. It was a 22 page story that was supposed to be about The Hulk
and Bruce Banner’s abusive childhood. It didn’t work out. The story grew and
was reworked. It went to Dark Horse. That didn’t work out. Apparently it was
then going to DC. That didn’t work out. It grew and grew and gained extra
layers of complexity. Monsters is now finished. Fantagraphics is publishing it
this April.
In a world where the term “Event
Comics” has become a catch-all for any and all crossover regardless of quality,
the release of Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters is a true event, the absolute
Event Comic of 2021 no matter what Previews might try and tell you. A 360 book
by a temperamental master of comics is coming very, very soon and it looks
gorgeous.
From Fantagraphics: “The year is 1964.
Bobby Bailey doesn't realize he is about to fulfill his tragic destiny when he
walks into a US Army recruitment office to join up. Close-mouthed, damaged,
innocent, trying to forget a past and looking for a future, it turns out that
Bailey is the perfect candidate for a secret U.S. government experimental
program, an unholy continuation of a genetics program that was discovered in
Nazi Germany nearly 20 years earlier in the waning days of World War II.
Bailey's only ally and protector, Sergeant McFarland, intervenes, which sets
off a chain of cascading events that spin out of everyone's control. As the
titular monsters of the title multiply, becoming real and metaphorical, literal
and ironic, the story reaches its emotional and moral reckoning.”
Consider this essential.
MY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS VOLUME 2
Emil Ferris
Fantagraphics
Due September
Can it really be true? Are we finally,
actually getting the second and concluding part of Emil Ferris’ jaw-dropping My
Favourite Thing Is Monsters this year?
As noted in previous years’ forecast columns, I am not complaining about
any delays. This is not a project to be rushed: the second volume of Ferris’ saga
could well cement My Favorite Thing Is Monsters legacy as an all-time great
comic book. In my opinion, the first volume alone was not only the comic of
2016, but also the decade.
A spoiler-free synopsis for the
newbie:
It's Chicago, 1968. A young misfit of
a girl named Karen Reyes loves art, but her absolute favourite thing is
monsters. Karen identifies with monsters on a deep level, she's able to
distinguish between the good monsters and the bad, and the freak-loser-misfit
tag she's saddled with socially gives her a degree of empathy for beings such
as the Frankenstein Monster that others her age likely do not possess. She
desperately wants to be turned into a literal monster, making her outsider
status complete and giving her the power and strength she struggles to find
day-to-day. She scribbles away in her notebooks, copying the covers to monster
magazines of the period, and is taught to draw by her elder brother, Diego
"Deeze" Reyes. Deeze is himself something of an outcast with his
heavily tattooed skin and constant drinking, yet he easily maintains his status
as the local heartthrob. He's an incessant womaniser, stringing along a parade
of local women with his handsome features and "bad guy" rebel
attitude. The Reyes siblings are raised by a single parent, a mother who is
superstitious to the point of obsession, heavily religious, but also deeply
loving. They are a weird but obviously tight-knit little family but there is
secret, hidden family tragedy waiting to fracture their closeness.
Karen is not shown much kindness in
her life outside of her little family. Her best friend (who she deeply loves)
has turned her back on her in a quest for popularity and peer acceptance and
her bullying is near constant. What little kindness there is comes in the form
of her upstairs neighbour, the eccentric Anka Silverberg, a Jewish WWII
survivor who nurtures Karen's artistic streak and gives her odd gifts such as
balled up pieces of bread. When Anka is brutally murdered, Karen is determined
to solve the mystery. She begins keeping the company of Anka's stern, elderly
husband, Sam. Drunk and grief-stricken, Sam Silverberg pulls out a cassette
tape on which Anka reveals her incredible life story, in which clues to her
gruesome death abound.
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is told
in the form of Karen's scribbled notebooks. The vast majority of it is drawn in
biro, and pretty much the rest of it in fineliner, with the odd excursion into
brush, wash and (possibly) colour pencil. Every page looks as though it's come
from an A4 lined notepad, complete with red margin line running vertically down
the page, evenly spaced blue lines horizontally and even faux hole punch marks
and a spiral binding. There's urgency on the pages, but Ferris maintains deep
control of her images throughout. Ferris is fond of cross-hatching a fine
lattice of multi-coloured biro lines on her characters, creating soft yet
striking contours and textures and depths. Karen herself is drawn almost
totally throughout as a little werewolf girl, almost like something from
Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are gone mystery-solver, her diminished,
devolved image of herself near total even as she wears her
"monstrous" outsider status as something of a badge of pride. Anka's
story is engrossing, cutting across decades, and it's a testament to Ferris'
writing skills just how easily her story flips between coming of age drama to
mystery to horror and back again so seamlessly, never losing sight of her
characters' humanity and keeping her story firmly on the tracks. My
Favorite Thing Is Monsters is an absolute, top-of-the-list must-read. I can't
really say any more about this masterpiece than that.
NO. 5
Taiyo Matsumoto
Viz
Due 2021
Well, well. Out of print in English
since the early 2000s, here comes No. 5 by the incomparable Taiyo
Matsumoto. Originally running in japan
from 2000-2005, No. 5 sees Matsumoto in full-blown SF mode, a fairly
tantalising prospect, I’m sure, for readers familiar with his fairly grounded
works Ping Pong, Sunny and Go Go Monster. I’m convinced there’s nothing
Matsumoto can’t do and having stared at lots of artwork from No. 5 over the
years I’m not going to be proven wrong here either.
Only two volumes of No. 5 made it to
print in English back in the early days of the century and it’s heartening to
see Viz’s confidence in bringing it back as well as now there’s an audience for
Matsumoto’s singular work to support the new editions. Also, it seems like a safe sales bet.
Visually, No. 5 is Matsumoto’s Moebius comic, for lack of a more appropriate
yardstick. Take a look at the last panel below:
No. 5 is an arthouse, clean-line,
fashionable yarn about lovers on the run, full of deserts and forests and
cityscapes and afros and crazy headgear and other clothing pulled from all
sorts of cultural corners. Plot: there are 9 members of a Global Security
group. Number 5 has done a runner. Number 1 has ordered the others to bring him
back, dead or alive. No word on how many volumes this will end up being, but I
wager Viz chunk them up like last year’s Ping Pong editions, so I’m guessing
four. Stuff them into your eyeballs!
PARKER: THE MARTINI EDITION: LAST CALL
Darwyn Cooke
IDW
Due May
Originally scheduled for a late 2020
release was the second and concluding prestige collection of the late, great
Darwyn Cooke’s adaptations of Richard Stark’s Parker novels. If you’re familiar
with Cooke’s Parker comics you likely have the original Martini Edition which
collected the first half of his Parker work. If you are not familiar, Cooke’s
Parker adaptations stand as arguably the most stylish crime comics of all time.
The Martini Edition: Last Call collects the previously published The Score and
Slayground along with 100 unpublished pages of Cooke’s Parker art, a roundtable
discussion and, tantalisingly, a new 17-page comic by the beloved team of Ed
Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Oversized, slipcased and printed on beautifully
thick paper, the original Martini Edition is an essential tome for crime comics
fans and this second and final companion volume not only completes the set but
is perhaps the final word on Cooke’s lovingly crafted work on one of crime’s
most legendary and mysterious tough guys. Classic comics given the ultimate
treatment. A fitting tribute to Cooke and his timeless work.
SECRET LIFE
Theo Ellsworth (adapting Jeff
VanderMeer)
D+Q
Due Late 2021
Theo Ellsworth is bringing some
scratchy, organic lines to Award-Winning writer Jeff VanderMeer’s (Annihilation) short story, Secret Life and
the results are wonderfully weird. I’ve not read the short story, but I’ve read
much of VanderMeer’s work and the dispassionate narrative voices and growing
unease of his writing is sure to translate seamlessly to comics.
D+Q says, “ To the west: trees. To the
east: a mall. North: fast food. South: darkness. And at the centre is The
Building, an office building wherein several factions vie for dominance.
Inside, the walls are infiltrated with vines, a mischief of mice learn to speak
English, and something eerie happens once a month on the fifth floor. In Secret
Life, the Nebula and Shirley Jackson award-winning author Jeff VanderMeer’s
ecological speculations overlap with Theo Ellsworth’s deep-layered style to create a
mind-bending narrative that defamiliarizes the mundanity of office work and
makes the arcane rituals of The Building home.
With deft insight, Secret Life observes
the sinister individualism of bureaucratic settings in contrast with an
unconcerned natural world. As the narrative progresses you may begin to suspect
that the world Ellsworth has brought to life with hypnotic visuals is not so
secret after all; in fact, it’s
uncannily similar to our own.”
It’s been too long since we’ve had a
great, unsettling read about how horrible work can be (the extraordinary
Through The Habitrails by Jeff Nicholson is the last I can recall off the top
of my head and that was 1994!) and Ellsworth has clearly thrown himself into
the work; certain pages previewed look almost like woodcuts. Striking and
strange, Secret Life could well be the most quietly enrapturing comic of the
year.
STONE FRUIT
Lee Lai
Fantagraphics
Due May
Enormous congratulations to the
enormously talented and Melbourne-born Lee Lai, whose debut work, Stone Fruit
arrives this May from the greatest publisher of comics in the world,
Fantagraphics. Hell of a way to make your arrival, particularly when the work
is touted as “one of the most sophisticated graphic novel debuts in recent
memory” by Fantagraphics.
Fantagraphics also says: “Bron and Ray
are a queer couple who enjoy their role as the fun weirdo aunties for Ray’s
niece Nessie. Their bi-weekly playdates are little oases of wildness, joy, and
ease in daily lives that ping-pong between familial tensions and isolation. As
their emotional intimacy erodes, Ray and Bron turn to repair their broken
family ties. Taking a leap of faith, each opens up to their respective sisters
and learns that they have more in common with their siblings than they ever
knew. In time, the emptiness they feel after their break-up is supplanted with
a deep sisterly love and understanding.”
Featuring some lovely, muted
watercolours and Lai’s gorgeous clean lines, Stone Fruit seems poised to make a
big splash for its young creator. Easily one of the great LITERARY arrivals by
an Australian in the coming year, Stone Fruit hopefully not only cements Lai as
a talent to watch but also, and perhaps even more importantly, pushes the
increasing depth in Australian cartooning further into the general
consciousness locally.
TROTS AND BONNIE
Shary Flennikan
NYRC
Due May
My only previous exposure to Shary
Flennikan’s Trots and Bonnie came via a handful of pages drawn the late 1970s
and early 1980s and found in 2019s Kramer Ergot volume 10. I was pretty blown
away. I went into it expecting the cutesy adventures of a young girl named
Bonnie and her adorable dog Trots. What I found was a total subversion of the
Sunday comics page format, comics about shoe size equating to penis size,
perverted therapists trying to initiate Bonnie into “womanhood,” and Bonnie’s
mum giving her daughter the Sex Talk. It might all sound too outrageous and
silly, but Flennikan’s comics are somehow, improbably, charming and her punch
lines always land - it’s this contradiction that makes the strips more
dizzyingly effective.
For the first time ever, NYRC is
collecting the best Trots and Bonnie strips, compiled by Shary Flennikan
herself. The publisher says, “Bonnie stumbles through the mysteries of
adulthood, as Flennikan—one of the few female contributors to National Lampoon—dissects the harsh
realities of American life. Dating, sex, politics, and violence are all
confronted with fearlessness and outrageous humor, rendered in Flennikan’s
timeless, gorgeous artwork. After all these years, they have lost none of their
power to shock and amuse.”
Just when you thought you’ve seen it
all and read it all, Shary Flennikan is about to prove you wrong this May. A
really exciting collection that, presumably, will continue NYRCs run of
impeccably designed and presented comics.
