With the recent re-release of Pistolwhip, the conclusion to
Mind MGMT and the pending release for the re-collected 2 Sisters, Jimmy
demanded that the next All Star Legend be Matt Kindt's Super Spy.
Set in the same world as 2 Sisters, Super Spy reads like a
collection of short stories about the everyday life of spies during World War 2,
jumping backwards and forwards between the different characters, willing or not
to play their part.
As you go from story to story characters return and weave
their way around and through each other in unexpected ways. You’ll often find
yourself flipping backwards and forwards to see where and how a characters
impact will take effect.
Matt Kindt's art fits his story telling and setting
perfectly. He goes above and beyond crafting each story, changing the layout of
the story as needed, be it through a telescope lens, a childrens book,
geographical maps or newspaper strips, each adds an extra depth to the
character being followed. The same can be said about the intermittent use of
water colours.
His art is often used to draw your eye
towards and away from the hidden codes and interactions as necessary, adding
extra depth to the mysteries in side. Alongside this, Kindt often uses
‘x-rayed’ sections to show the hidden codes and tools of the spies in the
stories, as well as cross-sections of physical replicas of equipment, which you can view HERE.
As per Mind MGMT, very little of this book is wasted, even
the front and back covers tell a spies story and motivations, as well as the
dossier numbers associated to each chapter providing the reader with a second
way to read the story. You are definitely getting your money’s worth with this
months Legend pick!
As always the ALL STAR LEGEND will be
available to 30 days (or until stock sells out) at the discounted price. As this
will be limited stock promotion there is strictly “no holds” on the legend. The
early bird catches the comic. No further discount applies to the book as there
is a big chance the comic will already be cheaper than the US cover price! The
discount also only applies to the volumes listed, not the entire set of trades.
If you have any questions, you know where to ask them. You can buy the legend from this Wednesday 9th of September.
All Star Legends. The legendary titles of the highest recommendation.
I drank a bottle of wine
with Becky Cloonan last Friday, the moral of which is this -- KIDS: You CAN
achieve your life’s goals with perseverance, discipline and faith. Seriously
though, how amazing was she? She blew into town and left with the key to the
city and all of our hearts. Come back soon, Ms Cloonan…
By the looks of this
Kate Beaton calendar, I will likely be well on my way to Japan by the time you read
this. “Say it ain’t so, Cam!” I hear you
scream at me through your screens. Never fear, I am putting the finishing
touches on the next two weeks’ columns and I shall be bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed and ready to ramble on about my visit to Tacho-che(!!) when I get back. Puro-Resu fans also take note when
watching NJPW Road to Destruction, September 11th from the mighty
Korakuen Hall, for this skinny, pasty gaijin shall be there, five rows deep,
hoping Katsuyori Shibata doesn’t mistake me for the emaciated, reanimated zombie
corpse of Bruiser Brody
and kick me in my beardy face.
But enough violence.
This week’s comic is all about love!
COMIC OF THE WEEK : FEDOR
By Patt Kelley
Published By Hic & Hoc Publications
“I want to be the water
in the tub. The smoke in her lungs. The ink on her skin.”
So lovely…
The unlikeliest of feel
good romance comics, Fedor is Patt
Kelley’s remarkable re-imagining of the lives of star-crossed circus freak
lovers, Jojo The Dog-Faced Boy and Helena The Tattooed Lady. Spanning over
twenty chopped up and re-assembled years, Fedor is a touching, adorable and
occasionally truly poetic look at how powerful true love can be as it spans
time, distance and physical abnormality.
Jojo (real name Fedor
Jeftichew) was not only a real man, but also one of the more famous circus
freaks of all time. Dubbed “The Dog-Faced Boy” by none other than legendary
circus promoter PT Barnum himself, the photo Kelley includes on the inside back
cover of Jojo reveals the closet thing to a human Chewbacca imaginable. I don’t
say this to be mean, but it’s seriously the closest, most obvious reference at
hand. However, the picture also reveals a pair of dark, soulful eyes and,
perhaps I’m romanticising here, but a kind of quiet dignity and an inner peace that
myself and I suspect many of you struggle to keep.
I also suspect that Kelley
noted this as well as he presents Fedor as a smart, sweet and articulate suitor
for young Helena, a girl who somehow won the genetic roll of the dice despite
the fact her father is The Reptile Man and her mother The Bearded Lady (and
what a “normal” and loving family unit they are). Fedor and Helena’s interactions are sweet and
tender from the start, their connection and increasingly romantic attachment to
one another deftly communicated by Kelley.
The book opens in
Paris, 1904. Fedor has shaved his face down, allowing him to pass through
crowds essentially unnoticed. He has come to meet Helena, from whom we quickly
learn, he is frequently estranged as the two travel in different circus
circles.
“You look funny,”
Helena says, seeing her lover’s face for the very first time, her uncertainty
only alleviated once they retreat to a hotel and she can unbutton his shirt,
bury her face in the fur of his chest, and say, “There you are.” It’s an odd
moment, but a perfectly tender and believable slice of honest interaction
between two long-separated lovers.
From here, Kelley
bounces through the years, from 1884 where the lovers first meet in London at a
show, all the way back to 1904. We see their romance bloom, repeatedly halt and
falter along the way, and the changes that the years bring upon personality and
physicality. Kelley’s blobby, scrawled
cartooning captures the sweetness and sadness of his tale perfectly. His pages
created with water colour and digital ink and the olde timey feel of his light
tan pages have the essence of faded daguerreotype about them, adding further
atmosphere to the retro sailor tattoos, corsets, suspenders and top hats he
costumes his characters in.
One can only hope that
the real Fedor had as much love in his life as Kelley allows him in this
comic. At any rate, I’ll take this
fiction over the truth any day of the week, for Fedor has the ring of hope about it, not just for its characters,
but anyone struggling with the tyranny of distance and the cruelty of time
apart.
Have at this one with
gusto, hopeless romantics.
WEBCOMIC OF THE WEEK : THE SHEETS WERE ALL BE-BLED
WITH THE BLOOD
By Julia Gfrorer
I hope your heart has
room yet to swell, because love conquers all again in this week’s webcomic by
the returning Julia Gfrorer.
Adapted from a 12th century poem, Lancelot, The Knight of the Cartby
Cretien De Troyes, Grfroer, 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.”
But enough embracing
and kissing and junk. Bug-eyed goblin creatures with potbellies and droopy
breasts claw at a mace-wielding, goggles-wearing, punk rock, half-man,
half-tiger! Yes, it could only be the cover to Heavy Metal’s October 1977 issue by Jean-Michel Nicollet.
If that’s not enough,
you can also “Drive the sound that drives your parents wild,” according to an
ad for Panasonic car stereo systems, which appear to have had the approximate
weight of your average passenger.
As always, I can’t pass
up an opportunity to drool over the editorials.
This issue, the mystery wordsmith says that the 16 Moebius pages within,
“…should remind us that reality is for people who can’t face drugs.” Who are you, oh-unnamed editorial writer? The
world of periodicals is poorer for your silence…
What’s that? Comics?
Yes, here there be comics. Not only comics but also a short story from Theodore
Sturgeon (More Than Human), proving
once again that this magazine rubbed shoulders proudly alongside the greatest
fiction periodicals of not only that day, but any. “Mesmer-Eyes,” begins
Sturgeon’s “The Singsong of Cecily Snow,”making it immediately the most Heavy Metal thing ever in just its first
word.
This luminously-prosed
story stars master seducer Bulbul Byo, whose “score so far was sixty-six
successful satisfactory seductions, thirty-seven shattered lives, six suicides
and fourteen thousand nights of bitter tears,” as he tries it on yet again,
this time with the ravishing Cecily Snow. Sturgeon’s prose is alliterative and
mesmerising, conjuring a near-trance state of words roughly equivalent to
staring at some of Richard Corben’s skylines from “Den” for far too long.
Sturgeon’s absorption and regurgitation of the HM aesthetic in prose-form is
remarkable and this issue should be sought out for this story alone.
The legendary “Airtight
Garage” by Moebius begins this issue, but as the waffle is strong with me this
week (sorry), so we’ll save it for next time where it continues onward, as it’s
not only fascinating as a text, but has quite the creative backstory.
But, holy shit, here’s
Angus McKie with his slick, airbrush-sheen pages appearing in HM for the first
time. “Jetman” is the short little story of a fighter pilot who is forced to
eject from his jet with such ferocity, McKie makes it look like a mighty
ejaculation.
“Turod” by Iso Kahn and
Phil Rosilio is notable for the fact that it may possibly be one of the first
attempts at westernising the manga aesthetic. Rosilio’s androgynous characters
have huge, shoujo style eyes and
sleek, waifish bodies. The story’s
lovers journey to a place where “time and space are united in permanence.”
Tezuka-ish angels descend from an ornate skylight as the two lovers become one
and the beams of light that emanate from their now singular form become portals
to a utopian, matriarchal realm where our nubile angels travel to live forever,
to swim, sunbathe and strum lutes…pretty much in the nude.
I swear I’m not making
that up.
In true magnificent
“Den” style, Richard Corben gets his character imprisoned and laid, before he
flees, only to tumble yet again into calamity (a waterfall spill this issue).
The seams of Corben’s formula are so well worn at this point they are really
ready to rip, but here I am, clutching to the stitching and begging it to hold.
“Operation Omega” by
Leblanc and Lire is Alex Raymond’s Flash
Gordon with as much muff as sleek Mongo-designed rocketship, so I give it a
hearty thumbs-up and hope for more saucy retro-ness from these creators in
future issues.
Finally for this week, “Polonius”
gets deliberately gross, with revolting orgies and leprous slaves abounding,
with our hero, penniless and crushed by the city’s corruption, selling himself
into prostitution. It’s an increasingly dark and heady brew, this strip by
Tardi and Picaret, and one might find themselves needing a couple of these at
its end:
COMICS VIDEO OF THE WEEK : 2000AD TIMELINE 35 YEARS
Rejoice Earthlets! The Judge Dredd Mega Collection has hit down under! Released in fortnightly hardcover graphic novels, the spines of which will form a massive character line-up, the collection will take in every classic moment from not only the titular character’s near forty year history, but also include every great other moment from the Dreddverse (so no Zenith, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, etc) – Judge Anderson, Devlin Waugh, Missionary Man and many more – it really is the collection and the format I’ve been praying for. Rush to your newsagent just like teenage Cam did many, many moons ago to get your dose of Mega City Madness.
In honour of this moment, here’s a super cool video featuring every cover of the comic’s first thirty-five years, also including assorted spin-offs, merchandise and more, as chronologically released. A mighty, supremely glorious nerd effort, this video…
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.
In a number of ways, it has been a massive year for us, we
moved stores which in turn gave us the extra space we needed to deliver on the
potential we wanted to deliver on from the very start of All Star. This included making our in
store events even bigger and that was capped off nicely this weekend with a
couple of great in store events with artist extraordinaire Becky Cloonan.
Unfortunately, with all the good that we’ve had this year,
there is also the not so good. It may not be news to anyone who likes to do a
bit of online shopping or is planning a trip to the US, but for those who don’t
keep their eye on the financial markets, the Australian Dollar continues to
drop against the US dollar. As a store that imports over 95% of its stock from
that country, we’re been feeling the effects for awhile now. So, the decision that we’ve
been hoping we wouldn’t have to make had to be made and we've had to raise
prices.
We’ve always been in this for our customers, without you, we
wouldn’t have been able to move to a bigger store and we certainly wouldn’t
have been nominated for an Eisner. This is never an easy decision for us but we prefer to be as honest and open with you about it, so it doesn't come as to much of a surprise the next time you are in. Of course we’ll be keeping everything crossed in the
hope that the Aussie Dollar will regain some strength and if it does we'll be sure to adjust our prices accordingly. In the meantime, we’ll
continue doing our best in trying to deliver to you the best in-store
experience we can and work behind the scenes in making the store everything we
hope it can be.
The new pricing will come into effect for comics and trades from the shipment expected on the 9th of September onwards. Comics and trades that are currently aside in store and in orders will be marked at the older prices. To help avoid confusion it would be greatly appreciated if anyone with outstanding orders can try to pick their orders up at their earliest convenience.
We are totally understanding that comic collecting is a luxury and that people will need to make changes to their orders to work within their comic budget. If you need any help reassessing your current Standing Order by making a few cuts here and there, please let us know and we'll help any way we can.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the new
prices or want to adjust your standing order, feel free to ask any of us the
next time you’re in the store or give us a call.
Calming down after last weekend's excellent guest visit by superstar, Becky Cloonan, we return to your regular Monday viewing of this week's books.
JOURNEY STAR WARS FORCE AWAKENS SHATTERED EMPIRE (FASE) #1 will be the book everyone will be looking for once that new movie comes out. Filling the gap between Jedi and Force Awakens, written by Greg Rucka, grab it now while you can! High adventure sci-fi action returns with ATOMIC ROBO & THE RING OF FIRE #1 now from IDW. Never read Atomic Robo before? IDW's got your back there too with the original tales retooled for the new ATOMIC ROBO GN EVERYTHING EXPLODES COLLECTION. Keeping on that adventure theme but now with airships, what is in store for the title character in DIESEL #1. Conan beware, there is a bigger, badder barbarian carving up monsters all along the ancient countyside in the jumbo first issue ofHEAD LOPPER #1. What happens when dude-bro's are tasked with being the first people to time travel? Check Mark Millar and Sean Murphy's CHRONONAUTS TP VOL 01 to find out. D4VE TP VOL 01 the story of a robot war hero that now has a life behind a desk working 9 to 5, is well worth a look at. Even more robot themed titles with Lemire and Nguyen, journey of a little robot boy trying to find safety in a universe where artificial life is outlawed with DESCENDER TP VOL 01 TIN STARS. The second half of Tom Taylor's take on Tony Stark is finally out in SUPERIOR IRON MAN PREM HC VOL 02 STARK CONTRAST. Who could forget the biggest Hulk fan you've ever met, Larry Boxshall making his Marvel comic debut in the soon to be classic, PLANET HULK #5...we might even have Larry on hand for a signing. Still keeping it local, Dean Rankine's next installment of his epic series, ITTY BITTY BUNNIES BONG GENIE #1 is in. Oh, there is this little release of the latest collection you might be keen on, SAGA TP VOL 05. Then in the end we somehow we manage to bring it all back around to Becky Cloonan, with the softcover release of PIXU MARK OF EVIL TP featuring a rather frightening short story from B. Cloons.
All this and a new ALL STAR LEGEND Pick, it's looking like a good old week of comics. Anything else you need, all you need to do is ask.
MARVEL
1602 WITCH HUNTER ANGELA #3 SWA
A-FORCE #4 SWA
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN RENEW YOUR VOWS #5 SWA
CIVIL WAR #4 SWA
DARTH VADER #9
GIANT SIZE LITTLE MARVEL AVX #4 SWA
JOURNEY STAR WARS FASE #1 (OF 4)
KORVAC SAGA #4 SWA
MARVEL UNIVERSE AVENGERS ASSEMBLE SEASON TWO #11
MRS DEADPOOL AND HOWLING COMMANDOS #4 SWA
MS MARVEL #18 SWA
PLANET HULK #5 SWA
QUAKE SHIELD 50TH ANNIVERSARY #1
RED SKULL #3 (OF 3) SWA
SECRET WARS 2099 #5 (OF 5) SWA
SIEGE #3 SWA
DC COMICS
ACTION COMICS #44 GREEN LANTERN 75 VAR ED
ALL STAR SECTION 8 #4 (OF 6)
ARROW SEASON 2.5 #12
BATMAN #44 GREEN LANTERN 75 VAR ED
BATMAN SUPERMAN #24 GREEN LANTERN 75 VAR ED
CATWOMAN #44 GREEN LANTERN 75 VAR ED
EARTH 2 SOCIETY #4
GOTHAM ACADEMY #10
HARLEY QUINN ROAD TRIP SPECIAL #1
JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED #13
NEW SUICIDE SQUAD #12 GREEN LANTERN 75 VAR ED
RED HOOD ARSENAL #4
STARFIRE #4 GREEN LANTERN 75 VAR ED
VERTIGO
FABLES THE WOLF AMONG US #9
SUICIDERS #6
BOOM
AMERICATOWN #2
BRAVEST WARRIORS #36
LANTERN CITY #5 (OF 12)
SLEEPY HOLLOW PROVIDENCE #2 (OF 4)
DIESEL #1 (OF 4)
DARK HORSE
ABE SAPIEN #26
HARROW COUNTY #5
KING TIGER #2
MIRRORS EDGE EXORDIUM #1
REBELS #6
DYNAMITE
ALICE COOPER VS CHAOS #1 (OF 5)
KING MANDRAKE MAGICIAN #4 (OF 4)
RED SONJA CONAN #2 (OF 4)
SWORDS OF SORROW #5 (OF 6)
SWORDS OF SORROW SONJA JUNGLE #2 (OF 3)
VAMPIRELLA ARMY OF DARKNESS #3 (OF 4) CVR A SEELEY
IDW
ATOMIC ROBO & THE RING OF FIRE #1 (OF 5)
BOY-1 #2 (OF 4)
INSUFFERABLE #5
LONG DISTANCE #4 (OF 4)
MAXX MAXXIMIZED #23
MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDS FOREVER #20
ONYX #2 (OF 4)
RAGNAROK #6
SHERLOCK HOLMES 7 PER-CENT SOLUTION #2 (OF 5)
STAR TREK GREEN LANTERN #3 (OF 6)
STAR TREK NEW VISIONS SURVIVAL EQUATION
TET #1 (OF 4)
WALT DISNEY COMICS & STORIES #723
X-FILES SEASON 11 #2
IMAGE
ASTRONAUTS IN TROUBLE #4
BITCH PLANET #5
BLOODSTRIKE #2
DEADLY CLASS #16
FASTER THAN LIGHT #1
FUSE #14
HEAD LOPPER #1
INJECTION #5
LEGACY OF LUTHER STRODE #3
MICE TEMPLAR V NIGHTS END #5 (OF 5)
OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #12
PHONOGRAM THE IMMATERIAL GIRL #2 (OF 6)
SAVIOR #6
STARVE #4
WALKING DEAD #146
WICKED & DIVINE #14
MISC
BROKEN MOON #1 (OF 4)
BUNKER #14
CROSSED PLUS 100 #8
DOCTOR WHO 12TH #11
HOME #3 (OF 4)
ITTY BITTY BUNNIES BONG GENIE #1
LETTER 44 #20
MERCURY HEAT #3
NINJAK #7
SIXTH GUN VALLEY OF DEATH #3 (OF 3)
SPONGEBOB COMICS #48
UNITY #22
TRADES
ATOMIC ROBO GN EVERYTHING EXPLODES COLLECTION
ATTACK ON TITAN GN VOL 16
AVENGERS TIME RUNS OUT TP VOL 01
BATMAN BEYOND 2.0 TP VOL 03 MARK OF THE PHANTASM
BITTEN FULL MOON HC
BLOODSHOT REBORN TP VOL 01 COLORADO
BTVS SEASON 10 TP VOL 03 LOVE DARES YOU
CHRONONAUTS TP VOL 01
CROSSED PLUS 100 TP VOL 01
D4VE TP VOL 01
DARK TOWER DRAWING OF THREE HOUSE OF CARDS TP
DESCENDER TP VOL 01 TIN STARS
DHARMA PUNKS GN
GREEN LANTERN NEW GODS GODHEAD HC
HALO ESCALATION TP VOL 03
JUDGE DREDD CLASSICS DARK JUDGES HC
JUDGE DREDD COMP CASE FILES TP VOL 25
LITTLE ROBOT GN
LUKE CAGE TP VOL 01 SECOND CHANCES
MY LITTLE PONY OMNIBUS TP VOL 02
NEIL GAIMAN GRAVEYARD BOOK GN VOL 01 (OF 2)
NEIL GAIMAN GRAVEYARD BOOK GN VOL 02 (OF 2)
NEW LONE WOLF AND CUB TP VOL 06
ONE PUNCH MAN GN VOL 02
PIXU MARK OF EVIL TP
ROGUES TP VOL 01 CURSE OF THE CHICKEN AND OTHER ST
SAGA TP VOL 05
SHERLOCK HOLMES VS HARRY HOUDINI TP
SKULLKICKERS TP VOL 06 INFINITE ICONS O/T ENDLESS
STAR TREK ONGOING TP VOL 10
SUPERIOR IRON MAN PREM HC VOL 02 STARK CONTRAST
TRANSFORMERS SPOTLIGHT OMNIBUS TP VOL 02
UNCLE SCROOGE TP VOL 01 PURE VIEWING SATISFACTION
UPSIDE DOWN A VAMPIRE TALE GN
VIRGIL TP
ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS TP VOL 01
MERCH
DC UNIVERSE SUPERMAN CLASSIC COSTUME ARTFX+ STATUE
It’s right there in both her twitter bio and at
her website, ripped from a Metallica
song, all you need to know about Becky Cloonan. Born in Italy, she’s rested her head for most
of her life in parts of the US and Canada but she’s constantly on the move,
firing muskets with 2000AD’s Mike Molcher in England one week, hanging out with
beardy metallers in the Netherlands the next, and most recently, spotting
platypi in Queensland. Clearly, this wanderlust
is a vital part of her life. More than that, however, it could also sum up her
approach to her work, her art and her craft.
Hauling her backpack from Gotham’s private schools, to the wilds of the Hyborian Age, to the achingly real lives of the super-powered down and out, to Castle Dracula, to a flooded future New York filled with punk rock pirates, to 12th century Iceland, to way, wayout there in the cosmos aboard haunted space vessels, to creaky old apartment buildings afflicted with supernatural terror, to Gothic fantasy realms filled with desperate, broken-hearted lovers, Cloonan’s “Where I’ve Been” genre-map is marked with so many pins you’ll barely see any terrain beneath them. There is literally no type of story that she won’t curl up in and make her own, staying there until some new idea-constellation draws her attention away and off she sails once more.
She roams many worlds, this Becky Cloonan, so let’s visit
a few of her destinations. While by no means comprehensive, I’ve tried to cover
as much ground as possible. If I’ve omitted your favourite Cloonan comic (and
there are a number) my apologies, but at least I’ve saved something for when
she returns…
COMICS OF THE WEEK : BY CHANCE OR PROVIDENCE, CONAN THE BARBARIAN,
DEMO, DRACULA, EAST COAST RISING, GOTHAM ACADEMY, NORTHLANDERS: THE GIRL IN THE
ICE, PIXU, SOUTHERN CROSS
By Becky Cloonan & Friends
Published By a bunch of folks
The first twelve-issue run of Demo began back in 2003, marking it in many ways as the prototype
of a style of comic so very popular now in 2015. An exploration of diverse super-powered
youth, stripped of costumes, archenemies and mega-crossovers, Demo went low-fi (as its title suggests)
with its super-theatrics, containing its stories and all of its characters into
single issues where, more often than not, powers were completely incidental to
plot. Demo is about outsiders, their
lives, their loves, their ordinariness and lays all this out on its black and
white pages in downbeat, dramatic fashion – the gloominess, but heartfelt truth
of teen angst stripped bare.
Although lacking the refinement of her later work,
Demo clearly marked Cloonan as one to
watch and watch closely. Cloonan, bravely for such a relatively new artist at
the time, shows serious artistic dexterity, altering her artwork from story to
story, sometimes subtly, sometimes radically, from shoujo-esque big-eyed manga characters, to Paul Pope-like urban
waifs of thick lines and flowing hair, to characters so inky and reduced in
feature they almost look like they are printed from woodcuts.
Her gift with facial expression is already on
display here. Look at the below. Has there ever been a more perfect depiction
of honesty in a character’s face rendered with so few lines?
Vertigo re-published the series in 2008 and it
would only be a few years later that a second, six issue volume appeared from
the publisher. 2011’s Demo Volume Two
doesn’t skip a beat yet is, overall, far more optimistic in its story
resolutions and is fuelled by much less teen angst in general tone. Cloonan
again mixes it up from issue to issue and shows the refinement that the
intervening years of hard work and craft provided. Now both volumes are available in a single collection
from Dark Horse, making for well over 400 pages of this highly influential gem from
a period where indie and mainstream comics really began to bleed together
significantly.
East Coast
Rising, written and drawn by Cloonan, came and went in 2006 as a single
volume from Tokyopop. It garnered an Eisner nomination for best new series and yet
somehow never returned to bookshelves ever again thanks to Tokyopop cancelling
the series and leaving its creator with ¾
of its second volume actually completed yet never to be printed. Fuck you
very much, Tokyopop…
For my money, East
Coast Rising shines as a rare, true example of westernised shonen manga done right. There is no
artifice to …Rising, with Cloonan
giving her natural early inclinations towards manga and Paul Pope a freer
reign, yet never losing sight of her individuality in the process. It’s
ridiculously fast paced, with the manga format allowing for long, expansive
action sequences and multiple double-page spreads. The tones by Vasilis Lolos
are superb, adding depth to the art and that extra dab of manganess complimenting Cloonan’s thick, inky lines perfectly.
Set in a future, flooded New York, …Rising is focused on a young boy named Archer
who survives the destruction of his original vessel by pirates aboard the feared
ship Hoboken. Rescued from the depths by the crew of the La Revancha, Archer
reveals that the crew of the Hoboken also stole his map –
a map leading to a legendary cache of treasure formerly belonging to a
long-dead mayor. With its punk-rock pirates, snapping turtle kaiju, skull-faced death kraken, ship
battles and lost treasure, …Rising
rollicks along, with perhaps its only flaw being that so many characters are
introduced they have a tendency to get lost in the shuffle during its
sprawling, lengthy, multi-person chases and battles.
Ending on a major cliffhanger, it’s a true shame
the series was never continued, as its bouncy energy, streak of adventure,
gorgeous vessel design and overall sense of fun are quite contagious. My own
copy is beaten and exposure-yellowed from frequent flip throughs and
readings. Cloonan would soon get pretty serious with her writing, for the most
part ditching the fun YA shonen
aesthetic permeating …Rising. It
would return, however, nearly a decade later and prove not only critically
welcomed, but commercially viable.
In 2008, Cloonan, Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba, Raphael
Grampa and Vasilis Lolos won the Eisner award for Best Anthology with their
self-published comic, 5. I’ve sadly never
so much as even glimpsed a copy of 5 and
as such am halfway convinced it never existed in the first place, so let’s move
on to the next effort by this group (sans Grampa, unfortunately), Pixu, a grey-toned horror graphic novel
published by Dark Horse in 2009.
One of the more successful efforts at creating
supernatural dread on the comics page, Pixu
updates the old weird fiction trope of old houses and institutions as supernatural
hotspots. Rather than conjuring strangeness and horror through “alien”
creatures/gods of interdimensional origin, as in the work of Lovecraft and Hope
Hodgson for example, in Pixu the horror is still supernatural and rooted on
site but instead manifests itself in very human ways – obsessions with
cleanliness, compulsive behaviours, fraying relationships, buried secrets and
the hidden perversities of its cast.
Set in an old, dank mansion converted into
apartments, each creator features his/her own character(s) for the most part of
the story, breaking down their characters’ sanity slowly as the exterior evil,
shown in inky, splotchy tendrils creeping into panel, and blotches of mould on
ceilings, tries to burrow its way not just into the house, but into their souls.
Character arcs begin to intertwine as the creepiness ramps up, with death,
mutilation and immolation awaiting all.
A wonder of multi-person co-creation, Pixu is surprisingly subtle despite the
grisliness of its last third. It becomes something of a Pinhead puzzlebox of a
comic, asking readers to bring the dark parts of their own imaginations to the
table to help open it up and construct narrative meaning and sense. Multiple
explanations and motivations are there for the taking, all depending on just
how dark you’re willing to go.
Cloonan’s character, Claire, vomiting on her
boyfriend Omar right before she serves him up a bowl of soup filled with shards
of her own bloodied fingernails, is just a sliver of the unnerving oddness
within this black and white triumph of atmospherics over exposition.
“The Girl In The Ice,” (2011) a Cloonan-drawn, two
part story from issues 35 and 36 of Brian Wood’s brilliant, much missed Viking
anthology series, Northlanders, is
the gloomy, downbeat tale of an old hermit whose land is caught in a turf war
between warring clans. When he finds a dead girl’s body frozen in the ice
beneath him, his curiosity about her demise and his genuine concern for her
fate has him hacking her corpse from its frozen grave. Bringing the girl’s body
home, he plays armchair coroner and quickly suspects foul play -- “a crime of
empowered men in a lawless land.” When he receives news that soldiers are to be
posted at his home, however, he must return the girl to the ice before they arrive,
or face the inevitable accusations of his role in her death.
Cloonan’s art showcases both Iceland’s snow-capped
mountains rolling ever onward in panoramic blue-tinged panels and the lines of
weariness carved into our old man’s face, the marks of a life hard-lived, with
equal skill and care. It’s her gift with expression that bonds us to this poor
fellow so quickly, the sadness in his heavy-lidded eyes, alternating with fury
at the girl’s circumstance and the soldiers’ arrogance. Becky humanises him
beautifully and as the story of this “old man who only wanted to know the
truth” heads towards its inevitable end, Cloonan’s art deftly, poetically
reminds us that the harshness of this land is equally matched by the harshness
of ourinner character.
While not comics, I’d be remiss not to mention the
illustrations Cloonan provided for a 2012 Harper Collins release of Bram Stoker’s
Dracula as it shows off the artist’s
work at its most lavish and design-orientated. Full-page colour illustrations
and spot illustrations running horizontally down the page accompany the complete
text to Stoker’s classic. Cloonan’s Count is as handsome as you’d expect with
her giving him life, even as his eyes are rimmed red and his white shirt
blood-spattered. The sensuousness of Stoker’s story and his characters’
seductive abilities are on full display, without the cheesiness inherent to
many such attempts at sexing up the story visually. I mean, just look at this:
It’s really the only version of Dracula you’ll ever need to own.
In 2012, Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan were tasked
with relaunching Conan The Barbarian
for Dark Horse, putting this former indie team, now bona fide mainstream stars,
back together one more time. It was an inspired choice, with Wood busting out
his pulp chops and Cloonan bringing the swoon to everyone’s favourite
Cimmerian. With Dave Stewart’s moody colours perfectly suited to what, in my
opinion, is Cloonan’s finest sequential art to date in issues 1-3, the team made
quite the splash with The Queen of the
Black Coast, which introduced to the Dark Horse run of Conan one of the
most enduring characters of Hyborean mythos – Belit.
However, as celebrated as the book was when it
launched, there were also numerous and vocal criticisms plaguing it. The vision
that many a mouth-breathing Robert E. Howard obsessive had of their favourite loincloth
wearing barbarian with his hyper masculine, musclebound physique, simply did not
gel with Cloonan’s youthful, handsome, more realistically proportioned and sinewy warrior.
It was bizarre. I love John Buscema’s Conan
probably more than a straight guy should, but Cloonan’s Conan, with his smiles,
eye-glints and the enthusiasm of a man with the thrill of travel and adventure
in his blood, is a complete breath of fresh air. He is very much alive, Cloonan’s
Conan, and I could haggle with Howard purists all day about the “authenticity”
of her depiction, but really, this Conan feels like flesh and blood to me
(which is the problem for many), a man whose passion for both adventure and
Belit feels real.
And it’s with Belit that things get really interesting,
for Cloonan’s Belit is near spectral in appearance. She’s the myth here, not
Conan, virtually translucent in skin tone, raven-haired, lithe, strong and
possessed of intelligence demonstrated not only through her words but through a
mere look. It all feels far more believable
to me. Conan, this titan of a young man, needs to fall for someone more
striking than himself, a figure more mythical, more beautiful, someone almost
post-human in physicality and femininity. Behold!
Collecting her three efforts self-published
between 2011-2013, the tales in By Chance
or Providence bring the seriousness to Cloonan’s writing, a real sense that
sleeves were rolled up with the itch to prove something, most
likely to herself rather than her readers.
“The Mire” won her an Eisner in 2012, but all
three of these efforts are superb and wonderfully varied in their
atmospherics. All three stories are
essentially fantastical, brooding love stories with dashes of uncensored Grimm,
The Romantics, ancient myth and Shakespearean tragedy dosed into their
sumptuous grey-toned pages. My personal favourite, by a hair, would be 2013’s “Demeter.”
Named after the Greek Goddess of the Harvest,
“Demeter” follows Anna who toils long and hard on the land but loses her lover
to the sea. The lengths that Anna will
go to in order to save her doomed romance forms the emotional core of the tale,
even as she dares to “rise to meet” the waves should they intrude on her
land-bound life. Wonderful stuff.
“Wolves” (2011) is the most overtly horror of the
trio with it’s tale of a hunter paid to kill a werewolf who is in fact his
lover. It’s all shadow and moonlight, monster and sword and the obviousness of
its plot does nothing at all to diminish the power of its ultimate reveal and
the subsequent transformation of the hunter into a lone wolf of the forest,
naked, carrying naught but the knowledge that the coming full moon will bring
not transformation but something far worse – memory and guilt and the pain of
lost love.
The Eisner-winning “The Mire” is mostly set in murk
and on haunted ground, with its young squire protagonist bearing a letter that
unknowingly contains the details of his own origins through a stretch of
swampy, supernatural land called The Withering which is haunted by a
territorial, skull-faced spirit.
Cloonan’s command of short-form comics is on full
display in this trio of stories. All three feel expansive and fully realised
despite the relative shortness of their page count. Her pacing is on point
throughout them all and, point proved, Eisner collected, she moved on yet
again.
It really should not have taken this long to get a
book like Gotham Academy out. It
seems like such a no-brainer and there’s a part of me that’s actually a little
surprised the title isn’t 100 issues old yet. However, 2014 was the year this ongoing
book finally appeared, featuring a cast of multi-cultural teens and their day-to-day
lives at Gotham’s premier private school. This being Gotham however, the notion
of “day to day” is hardly normal.
Co-written by Cloonan and Brendan Fletcher and
beautifully illustrated by Karl Kerschl, the team’s bubbly characters – Olive,
Maps, Kyle, Colton and co. -bounce their way through class and after-school
adventure with a manga-esque fluidity and such richness of colour that the
panels actually resemble clipped animation cells pasted onto the page. These
quirky characters, juxtaposed with the austere, traditional school buildings
and grounds, breathe a big burst of fun back into the Batverse, something
that’s been generally missing since the New 52 initiative started.
Tonally, it’s the return to East Coast Rising that I mentioned earlier with unfolding mystery
in place of lengthy widescreen action sequences. There’s so much to love here –
The Cobblepot family as both History Class material and engine of the mystery,
an unnamed student yawning during Bruce Wayne’s speech, Aunt Harriet (!) and the
academy’s never-ending secret passageways and tunnels. The comparison to Harry
Potter is perhaps inevitable and somewhat apt (provided even by Cloonan herself),
but with its old cemeteries, rumours of ghosts, Lovecraftian incantations and
secret maps, I find it more Mystery Machine than Hogwarts. Fittingly spooky
mysteries rooted in Gotham’s history, characters and mythology propel the book
forward and cause its charming, “meddling” teenage detectives to frequently
allow their curiosity and adventurous streaks to get the best of their common
sense.
In a Bat-era where a villain like Mr Freeze has
had his complexity and the tragedy of his origin stripped from him, making him
just another psycho for Batman to punch, Gotham
Academy even has the balls to cast Killer Croc in a sympathetic light and
Batman in the role of antagonist. Packed full of Easter eggs for Batman
trainspotters, the creative team do not forget that their title also needs to
function as a teen drama. The creators slowly, patiently reveal more and more
about their cast, their histories and their intertwined relationships, and in
the process create perhaps pound for pound the single best book DC currently
publishes.
Sadly, we now conclude our journey into the
creative worlds of Becky Cloonan by joining Alex Braith on her five-day trip on
the Southern Cross, a huge spaceship bound for the moon of Titan. Alex searches
for answers to the mysterious death of her sister Amber, who worked for a shady
corporation drilling for oil on Titan. Written by Cloonan and drawn by Andy Belanger,
Southern Cross is four issues old as
I write this, a weird-fiction tinged, deep space mystery, a fantastically
oddball slice of comics SF from Image Comics. The Southern Cross itself resembles
theYamato from Star Blazers gone haunted and
industrial, its staff and passengers look like refugees from the grungy Euro SF
pages of Jean-Marc Rochette’s Snowpiercer.
It looks tremendous.
Belanger’s clearly having a blast here, with the
design of the ship itself and its interiors, as well as the especially starry cosmos
swirling about it, beautifully realised. His cross-sections of tube-filled
hallways and various levels add extra claustrophobia to this story – a nice
little cherry of anxiety on top of this narrative mound of paranoia and
building insanity. Lee Loughridge’s colours deserve a mention here too,
enhancing the artificiality of the ship’s light through his use of neon pinks,
yellows, greens and Blade Runner
blues.
Cloonan’s well-plotted mystery ticks along, eager
but in no great hurry, as all good mysteries should behave. Her cliffhangers
are weird, horrific, compelling and increasingly psychedelic and Belanger’s
layouts become more broken and fractal to match them.
Another mysterious death aboard the Southern Cross
is revealed and Alex’s supernatural encounters increase. All the while, the mysterious gravity drive
ominously WHUMS like something lost from Kirby’s Fourth World due to
malfunction, possession or omniscience…
“That’ll be fifty GCPs,” says a dodgy drug-dealer
who doses Alex’s eyes with a psychedelic drug of truly cosmic, dimension-bursting
properties.
“Keep it,” Alex says, handing over a stack of
bills. “Where I’m going I won’t need it.”
And here we end. At a cliffhanger. With a promise
that in less than thirty days, Becky Cloonan is going somewhere else. The good
news is, as with most of her trips, she’s going to be taking us with her.
WEBCOMIC OF THE WEEK : COMIC ATTACK-BECKY CLOONAN
Hopefully one day, Comic Attack, Becky Cloonan’s semi-autobio…errr…kinda-autobi…errr…well
her comic strips featuring herself, are put in their own dedicated spot so we
can just click on over and enjoy her adventures baking zucchini bread, running
from dinosaurs, forming dance posses and being romanced by Putin one after the
other until the end of time. Until then, click on over to her Deviant Art page
and enjoy.
COMICS VIDEO OF THE WEEK: ORBITAL COMICS PRESENTS: GOTHAM ACADEMY DIRECTOR’S
COMMENTARY WITH BECKY CLOONAN
Another one for process nerds! Thanks to Orbital
Comics London, here’s Becky Cloonan, in front of a charmed audience, pulling Gotham Academy #1 apart to reveal its mechanics
and its super-sweet centre. A wonderful look at the collaborative spirit behind
the title, this hour long video might ease the pain of those unable to attend
either this Friday or Saturday when Becky holds court at All Star.
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.
