Not adding to the stockpile of puns on the word “canon”

A few weeks ago, Chris Mautner started an attempt to define what might constitute a canon of comics. Timothy Callahan followed up with a longer list. Chris returned to the subject here, and there have been further comments from Heidi MacDonald and John Holbo.

My first reaction on looking at Chris’s and Tim’s lists (somewhat unfairly, as Timothy at least is explicit that he is attempting to set out a canon of American comics) was something along the lines of, “Gad, Sir! How can there be a comics canon that includes nothing by Hergé, Leo Baxendale or Osamu Tezuka?”

Further reflection on my reaction, and the comics I’d be tempted to canonise, leads me to suggest the following definition:

“Comics canon Those comics which the commentator drawing up the canon has read and been influenced by, minus a few that he or she finds too embarrassing to mention, plus a few that he or she would like people to think that the commentator had read and appreciated.”

At least, that’s how I’d go about it. I suppose that a canon should really arise from debate leading to some sort of consensus, but I don’t think that F R Leavis paid much attention to anyone else’s opinion, do you?

Picture
“Canon Fodder” from 2000AD, art by Chris Weston, pinched from 2000AD Online. Oh, damn, it’s a pun!

Next, the Electronux

The Guardian reports that police in England and Wales are to be issued with helmets equipped with digital cameras, so that they can record the incidents they are called to.

Just like Johnny Alpha, then.


Reports that Gordon Brown has offered an advisory post at the Home Office to Nelson Bunker Kreelman are as yet unconfirmed.

Panels
Strontium Dog “Death’s Head” part 2, by John Wagner and Alan Grant (writers), Carlos Ezquerra (artist) and Steve Potter (letterer), 2000AD prog 179, c1980, reprinted in Strontium Dog: The Early Cases, Rebellion, 2005

MACH 2, Meet MACH 3

In an interview in the new edition of Comics International (issue 202, May 2007), Pat Mills confirms what I suspected when I wrote my review of last week’s 2000AD, that new series Greysuit is a reworking of 1970s 2000AD strip MACH 1.


Mills notes that one thing he has changed is that Greysuit John Blake, unlike MACH Man John Probe, does not receive guidance from an implanted computer.

Which is probably a good thing, as he would be sharing comic pages with another 2000AD character who has conversations with his cybernetic enhancements.


This issue of Comics International also features another comic strip spy, with a well-illustrated article about adaptations of Patrick McGoohan’s TV series Danger Man (also known as Secret Agent in the USA).


It’s worth buying for that alone, if you are interested in comic-strip adaptations of old British television programmes. That’s handy, as production delays mean the news content that makes up the majority of the magazine is a tad out of date. This series has already covered Doctor Who and The Avengers; next issue is The Prisoner, with at least the next three issues after that covering Gerry Anderson shows.

(Special note to fussy Squaxx dex Thargo: yes, I know that the name MACH 2 has already been used, for a robot which threatened John Probe with obsolescence. But “MACH 3, meet MACH 4” just didn’t sound right.)


Panels

Greysuit “Project Monarch” Part 2 by Pat Mills (script), John Higgins (art and colours), S J Hurst (colours) and Ellie de Ville (letters), 2000AD Prog 1541, 13 June 2007

Nikolai Dante “The Romanov Dynasty” Part 2 by Robbie Morrison (script), Simon Fraser (art), Alison Kirkpatrick (colours) and Ellie de Ville (letters), 2000AD Prog 1043, reprinted in Nikolai Dante: The Romanov Dynasty, Rebellion, 2004

Danger Man, art by Jesús Blasco, Lion and Champion, 1966, reprinted in Comics International issue 202, Cosmic Publications, May 2007,

Reviews: Atom, Detective Comics, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, 2000AD

The All-New Atom issue 12 “Hunt for Ray Palmer” Part One “Never Too Small To Hit The Big Time” by Gail Simone (writer), Mike Norton (penciller), Dan Green (inker), Alex Breyaert, Travis Lanham and Mike Carlin (editor), cover by Ladrönn, DC Comics, August 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

Ryan Choi returns to Ivy Town from Hong Kong, to find traffic problems, a welcome home party, and an ambush.

Now, this is how superhero comics should be: revelling in the absurdity of the DC universe, Gail Simone throws in shapeshifting dummy taxidrivers, a disembodied alien head playing the sort of techno that only miniature invaders that live on the backs of dogs know how to do well, half-naked maths groupies, and a six-page demolition of the old Atom’s rogues gallery. There’s what appears to be real optical science applied to an impossible situation. The whole thing is punctuated by pages from the Ivy Town Chamber of Commerce’s “Welcome to Ivy Town!” (sample quotation: “Newly lowered radiation levels mean it’s probably okay to reproduce again!”), in a gambit reminiscent of Simone’s storytelling from Welcome to Tranquility.

Norton and Green produce some smoothly flowing and competent art (which sounds like a poor complement, but is a major improvement over some past episodes).


Only two debit points: it’s a shame that Simone has reversed her earlier stance that Dr Choi should not be a martial artist just because he’s Asian; and it’s worrying that next issue is a Countdown tie-in. If this comic turns all grim and driven by botched continuity, I shall not be happy.

Oh, and this panel is an obvious cry for attention from Chris Sims, which he has cruelly spurned.



Detective Comics issue 833 “Trust” by Paul Dini (writer), Don Kramer (penciller), Wayne Faucher (inker), Travis Lanham (letterer), John Kalisz (colourist) and Peter Tomasi (editor), cover by Simone Bianchi, DC Comics, August 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

A magician’s assistant, murdered on stage, turns out to be an old friend of Zatanna, so Batman calls her in as he tracks down the killer. (Of course, that’s “old friend” in the Murder, She Wrote sense of the term: someone we’ve never heard of before, and never will again.)

The previous issue of Detective by Dini and Kramer that I looked at seemed distinctly ordinary. But there was good reason to expect that this issue might have a bit more spark, given that Dini is himself married to a top-hatted magician, Misty Lee. (The image below is taken from her web-site.)


But this is still meat-and-potatoes stuff. Pacing, dialogue and art are all competent enough, but a bit stolid. There’s a badly staged sequence in which Batman stands right next to the killer and does nothing to stop him as he pulls a gun from the back of his waistband and shoots someone; and I disliked on principle the flashback sequence of Zatanna and Bruce Wayne meeting as children. So Zatanna is the same age as Bruce Wayne is the same age as Clark Kent is the same age as Lex Luthor … it has a flattening effect on the richness and texture of the world they inhabit.


On the other hand, Dini scores credit for an interesting murder method, and for a genuinely unexpected last-page twist – though if you look back over the previous few pages, he and the art team have led up to it with a nice precision.


Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane issue 19 “The Thoughtful Thing” by Sean McKeever (writer), David Hahn (art), Christina Strain (colours), Dave Sharpe (letters) and Mark Paniccia (editor), plus The Mini Marvels “Hulk Date” by Chris Giarrusso, cover by Miyazawa and Strain, Marvel Comics, August 2007, 26 pages of strip, US$2.99

I had heard lots of good things about this comic, so I decided to sample an issue while there were still separate issues to sample. Sean McKeever leaves after number 20, and Marvel has yet to solicit orders for any later issues.

The story: Flash Thompson is secretly working in a diner because his father is out of work. Mary Jane persuades his friends to support him in non-intrusive ways. Spider-Man asks Mary Jane’s advice about whether to agree to his girlfriend, Firestar’s, suggestion that they share secret identities. And yes, that is a metaphor.


Story and art alike are gently paced to the point of placidity, and avoid melodrama. The characters are nicely set out, and – with the obvious exception that one of them has super-powers – plausible. It’s likeable rather than fun – characters do not have the preternatural wit that we are used to in teen movies like Heathers, Clueless or Mean Girls. Generally, it would seem like a nice change of style from the over-emphatic bombast of superhero comics, except that there’s a superhero in it. Spider-Man fits into the high school relationship drama well in some ways. It was an important part of the character’s conception. But so too was an energetic physicality that is wholly missing here, as Spidey spends several pages sitting still and talking. The full-face mask also makes him unsuited to the nuances of facial expression Hahn is able to use to good effect elsewhere.

“Hulk Date” is cute and funny. Perhaps not so cute and funny that it needed to appear in at least three different Marvel Comics this week, but we’ll let that ride.



2000AD Prog 1540, cover by Jock, published by Rebellion, 6 June 2007, 29 pages of strip, £1.75
Features: Greysuit “Project Monarch” part 1 by Pat Mills (script), John Higgins (art and colours), S J Hurst (colours) and Ellie De Ville (letters)
Nikolai Dante “Thieves’ World” part 3 by Robbie Morrison (script), Simon Fraser (art), Gary Caldwell (colours) and Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Judge Dredd “Tartan Terrors” by Gordon Rennie (script), Jock (art), Chris Blythe (colours) and Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Detonator X part 7 by Ian Edginton (script), Steve Yeowell (art), Chris Blythe (colours) and Simon Bowland (letters)
Defoe “1666” part 1 by Pat Mills (script), Leigh Gallagher (art) and Ellie de Ville (letters)

This Prog launches two new series, both written by 2000AD’s creator, Pat Mills. I am always in two minds about Mills’s writing. On the one hand, it is hugely energetic – something 2000AD desperately needs right now – and Mills has the ability to create instantly iconic concepts and characters. On the other hand, he is wedded to repetitively hard-boiled hard men heroes, and writes with a sledgehammer lack of subtlety. There is none of the ambiguity that his old colleague John Wagner uses to leaven his scripts. Especially when touching on modern politics, Mills tends to be overbearingly preachy rather than slyly funny.

Of the two new series, Greysuit seems most likely to fall foul of this, as it deals with a super-powered British agent involved in Middle East politics (as the story opens, he is selling tanks to the Iranian government), but who is recovering his conscience, much to the alarm of his bosses. But it’s a well structured opening episode, and John Higgins is an ideal choice for the artwork, lending everything a convincing solidity. The fight scene is remarkably brutal.


Long-term 2000AD fans will recall that one of the series with which Mills began the comic was MACH 1, about a super-powered British agent. At first, it was a straightforward rip-off of The Six Million Dollar Man, but in time it became focused on the way in which its hero was manipulated and abused by his cynical secret service bosses. Greysuit seems to be leaping to that point from the start.

Defoe is about a zombie hunter in a version of seventeenth-century England where the Great Plague of 1666 created an infestation of the undead. In his brief appearance, our hero, Titus Defoe (presumably named after Daniel Defoe, author of The Journal of the Great Plague Year) comes across as a seventeenth century Judge Dredd – appropriately enough, as Mills originally had that name earmarked for a witch-hunter in the same period, before Wagner borrowed it for his futuristic lawman. Alhough I’m not sure that the world needs another zombie story, this is again an efficient scene setter, with a lot of violence.

Leigh Gallagher’s art spills hatching and ink splatters over solid compositions to create a highly energetic effect that makes good use of the decision to run this strip in black and white.


Elsewhere, Nikolai Dante and Detonator X continue as usual. Judge Dredd has a stand-alone encounter with a festival full of Cal-Hab residents – the Dredd version of Scotsmen, all ginger-haired, mean, drunken, kilted and fed on deep-fried food. It’s done with bounce, and both Rennie and Jock are Scots themselves, but I can’t help but wonder whether an equivalent US comic portraying African-Americans as eye-rolling cowards singing spirituals and eating watermelon might not raise an eyebrow or two, even if produced by, say, Dwayne McDuffie and Trevor Von Eeden. Oh, hold on, wasn’t that a Spike Lee movie?

British Comics: A Quick Guide for Visitors, Part One

Sean Kleefeld recently asked what comics he should look out for when visiting Britain this August. I started jotting down some thoughts, but it quickly became clear that there was too much for a simple comment, so here it all is as a blog entry, you lucky people.

A quick disclaimer: I make no claims to expertise, nor to be a definitive arbiter of taste. I would welcome additions and alternative viewpoints. But I hope this post will be of use to anyone taking a holiday here.

Background
If you want to swot up before arrival, there is nothing better than Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury’s book Great British Comics: Celebrating a Century of Ripping Yarns and Wizard Wheezes. As the title suggests, this is a big, lavishly illustrated history of British comics , actually stretching as far back as the creation of the first continuing comic strip character, Ally Sloper, in 1867, and beyond.


If you are globe-trotting this summer, you might prefer The Essential Guide to World Comics by Tim Pilcher and Brad Brooks, which has a good chapter on British comics, and other chapters on US, Japanese, South East Asian, Franco-Belgian, European, South and Central American, Scandinavian, and Australasian comics, plus one on a miscellany of other countries (it’s quite an eye opener, particularly revealing how comics sales are falling everywhere, even in Japan and Mexico).


For history on the web, start with Comics UK.

For the current British Comics scene, John Freeman’s Down the Tubes is indispensable. Among other things, it features a news section and listings of all current professional comics periodicals and books. The Forbidden Planet International Blog is also well worth checking. For British small press comics, try Bugpowder.

The magazine Comics International used to be highly valuable, not least for the directory of comics shops in Britain in the back. Unfortunately, since changing publisher a year ago, only one issue has appeared. Perhaps it should change its title to All-Star Comics International?

Periodicals
If you read all that history, you’ll get the impression that the dominant form of comic in Britain is the weekly anthology. Once, this was true, but no longer.

The twin giants of the children’s humour weekly comics still stand: The Beano and The Dandy, published by D C Thompson. Each contains a mix of 1 to 3 page-long stand-alone strips featuring continuing characters. The target audience is under-10s. The Beano has recently spawned a spin-off monthly, BeanoMax, aimed at 8-12 year olds, and containing a mix of strips and magazine features.


D C Thompson also publishes small-format digests featuring Beano and Dandy characters, and Classics from the Comics, a monthly reprint magazine mostly containing material from the 1950s through to the 1970s: I reviewed an edition here.

Of the boys’ weekly adventure anthologies, only 2000AD remains, though it might now more accurately be described as a nostalgic men’s weekly adventure anthology. I reviewed some recent editions here and here.


2000AD also has a monthly counterpart, the Judge Dredd Megazine, which mixes strips with articles (though in this case the articles are all about comics, and not just those from the 2000AD stable), and a reprint magazine, 2000AD Extreme Editions, which generally gathers together serialised weekly strips into a single lump.

The other great remaining anthology is the monthly Viz comic, the Geordie masterpiece of scabrous humour and topical satire, which mixes the classic children’s comic style of humour strip with outright filth and mock-articles in the style of the British tabloid newspapers. I reviewed an issue here, but be careful – it is marked “not for sale to children” for good reason.


The other long-standing comics format, the boys’ adventure comics digest, containing a complete self-contained story told in one or two panels per page, is now represented only by Commando (sometimes referred to as Commando Picture Library), which specialises in war stories – mostly, but not exclusively – about the Second World War.


Specialised girls’ comics have vanished, so far as I know, replaced by magazines.

So are British comics dying out? Not at all, but they have mutated. What you will find by the dozen in the Down the Tubes listings are children’s magazines based on a single franchise – anything from Tellytubbies to Thunderbirds, from Lazy Town to Shaun the Sheep - which mix a minority of comic-strip pages with puzzles, articles, posters and readers’ drawings. I have reviewed a couple that I rather like - Wallace and Gromit and Doctor Who Adventures – and one that I don’t - Action Man ATOM.

There is also the occasional children's magazine featuring a minority of comics pages but which is not tied to a particular franchise, such as Toxic.


Those seeking variant additions of US comic-books will also find a number of super-hero comics on the shelves, generally reprinting the contents of two US comics in each.

A couple of other periodicals are worth mentioning.

Private Eye is a magazine that mixes investigative journalism, political muckracking, and topical humour. It contains a lot of cartoons, including some in strip form. Two of its current political strips draw their inspiration from old British comics, satirising the Conservative Party in the style of Lord Snooty and His Pals, a long-running Beano series, and Prime-Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown and his faction within the Labour Party in the style of Scottish classic comic-strip The Broons.


Spaceship Away is a semi-professional publication that started as a Dan Dare fanzine. It is notable for containing a brand new Dan Dare comic strip drawn by Don Harley, the long-term assistant to original series artist and creator Frank Hampson. It is also reprinting other 1950s SF strips, such as the adaptation of the radio series Journey into Space shown here.



You will also find comic strips elsewhere - for example, Fortean Times, a magazine about unexplained phenomena, ghosts, UFOs and all that jazz, features a one-page strip every month by the magnificent cartoonist Hunt Emerson. He might also still be drawing Firkin the Cat for the soft porno magazine Penthouse, but I wouldn't know about that ...


Buying periodicals
You won’t find many of these titles in comics shops in Britain – for the most part, those concentrate on American comics, graphic novels, and translations of manga. You might find 2000AD, the various Doctor Who titles and, if you are lucky, Spaceship Away and possibly some locally produced small-press titles.

For the rest, your best bet is the newsagents, particularly the big branches of W H Smith on the high streets of town and city centres. I recently counted about 90 comics titles on the shelves of the central Newcastle branch.

Most will be grouped in a section of children’s comics, which will be immediately recognisable because it is so untidy. Most British comics these days come with some cheap toy or novelty sellotaped, gummed or polybagged to the front, which makes shelving them difficult (and restricts browsing).

But look around the shop too. The three different Doctor Who titles might be in different places - Doctor Who Adventures with the children’s comics, Doctor Who Magazine with film and TV magazines (where you will sometimes find 2000AD and its spin-offs too), Doctor Who Battles in Time with partworks.

Private Eye will normally be shelved with current affairs magazines, and Viz either there or with men’s magazines like Maxim or Loaded.

Update, 6 June: added request for other views, expanded material on Private Eye, added mentions of US comic book reprints and Hunt Emerson.
Update, 7 June: added reference to Toxic.

Next – Part Two: Books (graphic novels, reprint collections, annuals and children’s albums)

Pictures and panels
Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury Great British Comics: Celebrating a Century of Ripping Yarns and Wizard Wheezes, Aurum Press, 2006; cover shows Korky the Cat by Charles Grigg

Tim Pilcher and Brad Brooks The Essential Guide to World Comics, Collins & Brown/Chrysalis Books, cover by Roger Langridge, 2005

The Beano issue 3383, 2 June 2007, published by D C Thompson. Cover shows Dennis the Menace and Gnasher; interior panel from Minnie the Minx, both drawn by Tom Paterson

The Dandy issue 3417, 2 June 2007, published by D C Thompson, interior panels from Ollie Fliptrick, art by Dixon

2000AD prog 1539, 30 May 2007, published by Rebellion, interior panels from Nikolai Dante “Thieves’ World” part 2 by Robbie Morrison (script), Simon Fraser (art), Gary Caldwell (colours) and Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Viz issue 165, May 2007, published by Dennis Publishing, interior panels from Sting and the Riddle of the Horse’s Arse (uncredited)

Commando issue 4007, May 2007, published by D C Thompson, “Wolf Patrol” (uncredited, reprinted from 1993)

Toxic issue 94, 6 June-19 June 2007, published by Egmont Magazines, interior panels from Team Toxic "Getting to the Bottom of It", art by Lew Stringer

Private Eye issue 1186, 8 June-21 June 2007, Pressdram Limited; strip The Broon-ites drawn by Henry Davies

Spaceship Away issue 7, Autumn 2005, published by Rod Barzilay; interior panels from Journey Into Space episode 1 “Planet of Fear”, written by Charles Chilton, art by Ferdinando Tacconi, reprinted from Express Weekly, 1956

Reviews: The Ride- Die Valkyrie, 2000AD

The Ride: Die Valkyrie issue 1 “Act 1: Dogs of War” by Doug Wagner (writer and editor) and Brian Stelfreeze (writer and artist), cover by Jason Pearson, Image Comics, June 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

I wonder how a writer called Wagner feels about putting his name to a story called “Die Valkyrie”? Anyway, in this thriller, three girls, Becca, Cleo and Ting, who call themseves “valkyries”, take a car from Becca’s father’s workshop to track down Cleo’s cheating boyfriend. But the car belongs to some nasty men in suits with guns, who want it back in a hurry. In a parallel thread, Laci, the teenage assassin from the previous series of The Ride is travelling with a group of nuns and running into trouble.

The word that springs to mind is “efficient”. Wagner and Stelfreeze get their plot lines off to a quick start and build up the tension. Stelfreeze’s makes fluid art from clear, straight lines. The opening of the story involves the girls rejecting a Mercedes in favour of a 1968 Camaro, but, really, the comic resembles the Merc more closely.


One question-mark over the whole project is the character of Laci, who remains a gift for the one-handed reader with a taste for jailbait. Here she scares off a couple of thugs who are molesting the nuns by simultaneously flashing her boobs and a gun. Yet the three girls who are clearly intended to be the reader’s identification figures are not presented in an exploitative way at all.


2000AD prog 1539, Rebellion, 30 May 2007, 27 pages of strip, £1.75
Features: Judge Dredd “Shaggy’s Big Shoot” by Robbie Morrison (script), Mick McMahon (art) and Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Terror Tales! “Bad Blood” by Arthur Wyatt (script), Lee Carter (art) and Ellie De Ville (letters)
Detonator X Part 6 by Ian Edginton (script), Steve Yeowell (art), Chris Blythe (colours) and Simon Bowland (letters)
Sinister Dexter “Normal Service” by Dan Abnett (script), Anthony Williams (art) and Ellie De Ville (letters)
Nikolai Dante “Thieves’ World” Part 2 by Robbie Morrison (script), Simon Fraser (art), Gary Caldwell (colours) and Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Cover by Richard Elson

The big news with this Prog is the return of Mick McMahon to Judge Dredd, the strip whose look he defined in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His current style – full of figures made of rubbersised tubes, spilling from panel to panel – flatters Robbie Morrison’s thin story of a drug-addicted paparazzo who gets a photo of Dredd’s unmasked face, making it seem both more interesting and funnier than it perhaps deserves.


Elsewhere, almost nothing happens in Sinister Dexter: our heroes pick up their car and that’s all. There’s not much dialogue, either. The Nikolai Dante episode is mostly set-up, as the Tsar sends Dante to clean up the New Moscow mafia. But at least it is a set-up that provides scope for Dante in “romp” rather than “war is hell” mode. The one-off Terror Tale is a dull little vampire story; and whatever fun there might have been in Detonator X’s premise – giant mecha versus primordial monsters – is dissipated by the choice of Steve Yeowell as artist. It’s a very odd assignment, his sketchy, minimalist drawing being as inappropriate as Eddie Campbell would be on Devil Dinosaur.

Loving the Alien: Massimo Belardinelli, d. 2007

On Down The Tubes, John Freeman has reported the death of long-serving 2000AD artist Massimo Belardinelli.

As John writes, Belardinelli will probably be best remembered for his work on Ace Trucking Company, which was created specifically for him. But I liked his work on Dan Dare most.



In those days, 2000AD had yet to start running “credit cards” giving writer, artist and letterer details, but there was an “Artist: Belardinelli” credit on Dan Dare, so he was the first 2000AD artist whose distinctive syle I could put a name to.

The revived Dan Dare strip was the lead feature in the first months of 2000AD. The character and setting were completely revamped by editor Pat Mills and writers Kelvin Gosnell and Steve Moore, and as a result this version of Dan Dare has been widely disliked for its lack of fidelity to Frank Hampson’s original. But judged in its own right, it was a lot of fun, largely due to the grotesque inventiveness and energy of Belardinelli’s art. I will remember his work fondly.



Panels from:
Dan Dare, Space Hyper-Hero “Saga 2” part 1, art by Massimo Belardinelli, 2000AD Programme 12, IPC Magazines, 14 May 1977

Dan Dare, Space Hyper-Hero “Saga 2” part 5, art by Massimo Belardinelli, 2000AD Prog 16, IPC Magazines, 11 June 1977

Addendum (10:10 PM)
Steve Holland has more details of Belardinelli's life and work outside of 2000AD at his Bear Alley blog.

Further addendum (10:30 PM)
Coincidentally, issue 21 of 2000AD Extreme Edition, currently on sale, reprints 49 pages of Belardinelli artwork, making up the complete story The Dead, written by Peter Milligan.

Reviews: Buffy, Detective Comics, 2000AD

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 issue 2: “The Long Way Home” Part 2 by Joss Whedon (script), Georges Jeanty (pencils), Andy Owens (inks), Dave Stewart (colours), Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Jimmy (letters), cover by Jo Chen, Dark Horse Comics, April 2007, 24 pages of strip, US$2.99

I’ll do a proper review of this opening story once it concludes. For the time being, I’ll note that this is another entertaining issue, with a clever introduction to a dream sequence, but also with a baffling willingness of mortal enemies to stand around and chat.

Georges Jeanty and Andy Owens’s art continues to impress. They don’t manage a good likeness of Andrew, but otherwise handle everything Whedon throws at them, from mass battle scenes to the nicely-captured expressions on the faces of these two new Slayers. Note, too, the way that the extended final panel makes the reader look down, just as the characters do.




Detective Comics issue 831: Batman “Kind of Like Family” by Paul Dini (writer), Don Kramer (pencils), Wayne Faucher (inker), John Kalisz (colourist), Jared K Fletcher (letterer), Peter Tomasi (editor), cover by Simone Bianchi, DC Comics, June 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

With the first trade paperback collection out, this seemed like a good time to sample an issue from Paul Dini’s run on Detective Comics, which I had previously neglected. It turns out to be an OK, basic superhero story, in which Scarface busts Harley Quinn out of Arkham Asylum, and various double-crosses occur. There is none of the zing I had expected from the co-creator of the animated Batman.

Similarly, the artwork is pedestrian, even stodgy, though this panel had a bit of zip.



So it looks like that Batman: Detective trade paperback will stay at the shop.



2000AD prog 1531, Rebellion, 4 April 2007, 28 pages of strip, £1.75
Features: Judge Dredd “Origins, part 19: Army of the Damned” by John Wagner (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Savage, Book Three “Double Yellow” part 6 by Pat Mills (script), Charlie Adlard (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Robo-Hunter “Casino Royal” part 5 by Alan Grant (script), Ian Gibson (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Sinister Dexter “The Last Thing I Do” part 4 by Dan Abnett (script), Simon Davis (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Nikolai Dante “Hellfire” part 6 by Robbie Morrison (script), Simon Fraser (art), Gary Caldwell (colours), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

This is a tired, backward-looking issue, featuring the same old characters by the same old creators. Not that the veterans can’t do great work: but, this time, all inspiration seems long since dried up.

Dredd is an inevitability, of course. Unfortunately, the strip is currently bogged down in a long would-be epic, rather than firing off the short, sharp satirical squibs the format and character do best. This panel did manage to raise just about my only smile of the issue.



The rest of the recurring series could do with being rested or dropped, to give the writers and artists invigorating new challenges. Fresh series, and some fiery, cocksure new creators, are desperately needed.