British Comics: A Quick Guide for Visitors, Part Two

See also Part One: Background and Periodicals

The simplest way to run through the various reprints, trade paperbacks, manga, annuals and other books of comics available in the UK is to take you through an imaginary bookshop. So, imagine that you have just entered a large branch of a major chain like Waterstone’s.

As before, I’d welcome corrections, expansions, and different opinions.

Manga
A big comics section may be given over to manga. Almost without exception, these will simply be the US editions from Viz Media, Tokyopop and Dark Horse, whether the originators are from Japan, the US or Germany (though a few US translations are licensed to British publishers like Gollancz and Harper-Collins).

The “almost” allows room for The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, a 540 page anthology of mostly new (or previously only web-published) material from a large number of creators, mostly, but not exclusively, based in the UK. A volume came out in 2006, edited by Ilya, who I remember as a small-press cartoonist back in the 1980s, and was published by Robinson, who are responsible for a stable of Mammoth Books of Best New prose stories (eg one for SF, one for horror) which are published annually. The hope seems to be that the manga volume will be too.

Incidentally, the term “manga” is being used here very loosely: some of these cartoonists have only microscopic traces of Japanese influence in their bloodstreams.



Graphic Novels
This will probably have a section of a similar size to that for manga, and will contain a mixed bag of material.

There will be a range of US titles from DC, Vertigo, Image and Marvel. But in addition to the US Marvel trade paperbacks, there will also be titles by Panini, who handle Marvel’s European business. These include some unique editions of US material (paperback editions of the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man run in colour, Runaways in full-sized paperbacks), as well as reprints of material originated by Panini and its predecessor Marvel UK.

The latter include Death’s Head, the original Chris Claremont/Herb Trimpe version of Captain Britain from the 1970s, and lots of Doctor Who. My pick of the Doctor Who series would be Dragon’s Claw, featuring Tom Baker’s Doctor. This not only contains page after page of prime Dave Gibbons artwork, but also Mick McMahon’s splendidly quirky “Junkyard Demon”.


US art comics will often be well-represented in this section, sometimes in UK editions by respected mainstream book publisher Jonathan Cape. For example, we got a paperback edition of Alison Bechdel’s Fun House last year (but never did get a hardback edition, that I saw). Cape also publishes work by UK literary comics authors like Bryan Talbot (such as Alice in Sunderland) and Posy Simmonds, as well as Ethel & Ernest, a moving memoir of his parents by Raymond Briggs, best known for his nuclear tragedy When the Wind Blows and his albums for children, such as Fungus the Bogeyman.


But on the whole, the literary or consciously artistic approach is a field in which British comics are lacking, possibly because of the absence of any UK equivalent of Fantagraphics, Top Shelf or Drawn and Quarterly.

If you are lucky, you might also find some of the humorous literary adaptations and collected comics of Hunt Emerson, published by Knockabout Books, on these shelves too. See here for my views on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.


There is also likely to be a fair selection of Rebellion’s 2000AD books. These are either slim albums of recent material, such as Ian Edginton and D’Israeli’s seaborne horror strip Leviathan, or big fat volumes of classic series from the 1970s and 1980s, including Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog and the peerless satire on religious and racial bigotry, Nemesis the Warlock.


Possibly even fatter are the volumes from Carlton Books reprinting war stories from Commando Picture Library.


Titan Books’ various reprint series are available wherever Diamond distributors spreads its tentacles, but are also to be found in bookshops. A highlight is Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun’s heavily researched and moving series about the Great War, Charley’s War. The best-looking are the reprints of the 1950s SF series Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future. Other reprints from boys’ comics have stalled after one volume each of The Spider (retitled King of Crooks to avoid infringing the copyright of the US pulp character) and The Steel Claw. But an anthology volume called Albion Origins is apparently in the works.


Titan is also compiling two classic newspaper strip adventure series, the adaptations of the James Bond novels, and Peter O’Donnell’s great female adventurer, Modesty Blaise. The latter is now well into Enric Badia Romero’s run as artist, but see if you can track down some of the earlier volumes featuring the strikingly stylish artwork of Jim Holdaway.



Humour
The humour section of the bookshop will be where you can find reprints of British newspaper strips as, apart from one or two series based around football (soccer, if you must), they now all embody both meanings of the word “comic”. Humour is too individual for me to lay down the law, so you are best off browsing, but two I’d recommend you take a look at are Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor’s Alex about an amoral, selfish merchant banker, and, above all, Steve Bell’s biting political strip If…,with its brutal, powerful artwork.


The humour section seems also to be where bookshop staff shelve things they don’t know where else to place. Over the last year, I have noticed here a big reprint volume selected from the 1950s girls’ comic Girl (imaginative title, eh?) and a set of imaginary biographies of characters from boys’ sports comic strips.



Children’s books
This is where you will probably find the English language editions of the great Franco-Belgian comics series Asterix and Tintin. These are the only European comics you are likely to find in a British bookshop, unless the graphic novels section has some NBM or First Second translations for the American market. Cinebook has been translating some other classic European comic albums, including the Lucky Luke and Blake and Mortimer series, but I have yet to see these in an ordinary bookshop.

In the autumn, the annuals will start to appear. Most of these are hard-back, extra-long editions of the regular comic periodicals, though there will also be editions devoted solely to popular characters (such as The Bash Street Kids from The Beano), and annuals devoted to currently popular films and TV series that do not necessarily have their own regular comics. Some comics – including 2000AD - do not have associated annuals any more. Look before you buy: not all of these have much, if anything, by way of comic strip content these days. Annuals are aimed at the Christmas market; after Christmas, they can generally be found for a couple of months at greatly reduced prices, and are then taken off sale.


This year, I have noticed for the first time some large format paperbacks labelled as “summer annuals”, but these all seem to be activity books with no comics content.

I’m guessing, but the children’s section may be where the Bumper Book of Look and Learn will turn up. See Steve Holland’s post about it. Look and Learn was a children’s educational magazine, but for our purposes it was also the home of The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, a magnificent planetary romance painted by Don Lawrence. The one or two collections published years ago now go for a bomb on eBay, and the only current editions are lavish Dutch ones that require a second mortgage to buy. Apparently, the Bumper Book will include a complete Trigan Empire story.


There will also be a wide range of illustrated children’s books, some with comic strip content. Take a look at Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories series, discussed here. Beyond that, I’m not well informed about children’s books. It might be worth having a browse through the “picture books” section, if your preferred definition of “comics” is broad enough.


Art
Finally, don’t leave the bookshop before looking in the art section. You never know what will be shelved there. I’ve seen Robert Crumb and Little Nemo in Slumberland here recently. And you can always buy a book about Hogarth and wallow in his sequential print series.



Comics shops
Comics shop may have some or all of the above, though they tend to be light on children’s books and rarely stock annuals.


Update, 8 June: added a mention of Raymond Briggs and Ethel & Ernest.

Pictures and panels
The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, edited by Ilya, cover by Neill Cameron, published by Robinson Books, 2006; interior panels from Bulldog: Empire by Jason Cobley and Neill Cameron, and Princess at Midnight by Andi Watson

Doctor Who: Dragon’s Claw, cover by Dave Gibbons, published by Panini Books, 2004; interior panels from Doctor Who “Junkyard Demon” by Steve Parkhouse (writer and letterer), Mike McMahon (pencils), Adolfo Buylla (inks) and Alan McKenzie (editor)

Ethel & Ernest: A True Story by Raymond Briggs, published by Jonathan Cape, 1998 (paperback 2002)

Aliens Ate My Trousers! by Hunt Emerson, published by Knockabout Books, 1998

Leviathan by Ian Edginton (script), D'Israeli (art) and Tom Frame (letters), published by Rebellion, 2006

The Complete Nemesis the Warlock volume 1, cover by Kevin O’Neill, published by Rebellion; interior panels from Nemesis the Warlock Book Three by Pat Mills (writer), Kevin O’Neill (artist) and Steve Potter (letters)

Commando: True Brit, published by Carlton Books, 2006. Cover image downloaded from Carlton Books

Charley's War by Pat Mills (writer) and Joe Colquhoun (artist), published by Titan Books. Cover image downloaded from Titan Books

Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future: The Man from Nowhere, cover and interior panels by Frank Hampson, published by Titan Books, 2007. Cover image downloaded from Titan Books

The Steel Claw: The Vanishing Man, cover by Brian Bolland, published by Titan Books, 2005; interior panels by Ken Bulmer (writer) and Jesús Blasco (artist). Cover image downloaded from Titan Books

Modesty Blaise: The Black Pearl, cover by Jim Holdaway, published by Titan Books, 2004; interior panels from Modesty Blaise “The Killing Ground” by Peter O’Donnell (writer) and Jim Holdaway (artist)Cover image downloaded from Titan Books

If … Marches On by Steve Bell published by Methuen, 2006

The Best of Girl, published by Prion Books, 2006; interior panels from Wendy and Jinx “The New Headmistress”, written by Stephen James, drawn by Peter Kay, and Vicky and the Vengeance of the Incas, written by Betty Roland and drawn by Dudley Pout. Cover image downloaded from Carlton Books

Doctor Who: The Official Annual 2007, published by BBC Books, 2006

The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, art by Don Lawrence, scanned from The Trigan Empire, published by Hamlyn Books, 1978. This panel is probably not from the story to be featured in the Bumper Book of Look and Learn

A Harlot’s Progress plate 2, by William Hogarth, 1732, scanned from Mark Hallett Hogarth, published by Phaidon Books, 2000

Outdated Sooner Than A Naff Olympic Logo

Kevin Church has moved his comics blog search engine already. It now answers to Ask Cerebra.

I’ve made another update to part one of my “quick” (to read, but evidently not to write) guide to British comics. Part two will go up as soon as I’ve finished the scans.

Post Delayed

Delivery tomorrow. Sorry, but it’s been a heavy day at work.

In the meantime, have a read of this essay by Brigid Alverson about British girls’ comics, in the unlikely environs of Blog@Newsarama.

Or why not have a play with the shiny new Comics Blog Search Engine kindly set up by Kevin Church? Ideal for finding that post you just know you read last week.

I have also made some additions to yesterday’s post.


Panel
Cropped from The Wallace & Gromit Comic issue 21, “Going Postal” by Andrew James (script), Steve Bright (pencils and inks), Samantha Emms (colours) and Jimmy Betancourt/Comicraft (letters), Titan Magazines, May 2007

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.

Reviews: Action Comics, Gutsville, Spider-Man Fairy Tales

Action Comics issue 850 “Superman: Family” by Kurt Busiek, Fabian Nicieza and Geoff Johns (writers), Renato Guedes (pencils and colours), José Wilson Magalhães (inks), Rob Leigh (letters) and Matt Idelson (editor), cover by Renato Guedes, DC Comics, Late July 2007, 38 pages of strip, US$3.99

This is a disjointed story, as Brainiac 5 helps Supergirl, still trapped in the 31st century, use a gizmo to peer into the past, specifically picking up key moments in Superman’s life (after a few attempts showing other versions of Superman throughout the multiverse), including some previews of forthcoming attractions in the Superman comics, in the manner of issue 1 of the latest run of Justice Society of America. These fragments are used unsubtly to hammer home how lonely Superman has been until he learns that he has an actual living relative. The story doesn’t really hang together well, and the dialogue is clunky and full of forced exposition.

But that’s not the selling point here. What makes this comic worth looking at is Renato Guedes’ artwork, which combines a figurative approach as realistic as any you’ll find in comics with an almost ligne claire approach to linework and an abstinence from black shading. The unusual distribution of work on the art, with Guedes handling colour as well as pencils (but not inks), is crucial, as all the weight of the pictures comes from the colour modelling.


Guedes is taking over as the regular artist on Supergirl later this year. Numerous bloggers have already praised his advance sketches for showing a Supergirl who looks like a real person in real (if odd) clothes rather than the half-naked distended sex object who has populated the title’s pages since its revival. This issue of Action Comics suggests that there are more reasons than that to keep an eye on his work.


Gutsville issue 1 “Part One: Ingestion” by Simon Spurrier (story) and Frazer Irving (art and letters), plus appendices “A List of Oddities and Curiosities” by Ray Fawkes (text) and Fiona Staples (illustrations), “Gutsville Map” by Simon Spurrier, “The Butler and the Bolt: A Gutsville Mystery” by Simon Spurrier (story) and Simon Gurr (illustrations), Image Comics, May 2007, 22 pages of strip plus 9 pages of appendices, US$2.99

Gutsville tells the story of a community living in the belly of a colossal sea creature, which swallowed their ship 157 years earlier (or so the prologue tells us: the clothes worn by the characters mix influences from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth). There is class conflict and a killer on the loose.

Spurrier sets up his story nicely, limning in the main characters neatly, and creating convincing details of how his community would talk and act after generations in the belly of a beast. Irving’s art is clear and precise yet dark and foreboding, with one brief interlude making good use of his psychedelic style from Storming Heaven. An occasional experiment, such as using semi-transparent word balloons to indicate whispering, fails to come off, and it is still a puzzle how an isolated ship-load of people manage to obtain enough food, let alone clothing and furniture and even art materials, but on the whole this is a confident and well-realised comic.


However, I think it would have come across better if I had not recently read the collected edition of Leviathan, a 2000AD series by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli, the story of a community living on a giant ocean liner that was possessed by a demon twenty years earlier, where there is class conflict and a killer on the loose; and also Seven Soldiers: Klarion the Witchboy by Grant Morrison and Frazer Irving, in part the story of a community living underground, having been dragged there hundreds of years earlier by the fairy-like Sheeda, and whose inhabitants could wander around Gutsville without anyone remarking on the oddity of their clothes. The prologue to Gutsville even concludes with the phrase “Gutsville endures”, a clear echo of the chant “Croatoan abides” which peals through Klarion.

Still, there’s enough that’s good about this opening for me to hope that future issues escape from what at the moment seems like a high concept pitch of “Leviathan meets Klarion”, and tell a story of their own.


Spider-Man Fairy Tales issue 1 “Off the Beaten Path” by C B Cebulski (writer), Ricardo Tercio (artist), Artmonkeys Studios (letters) and Molly Lazer (editor), Marvel Comics, July 2007, 23 pages of strip, US$2.99

This is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, with a version of Mary-Jane Watson as the heroine, a Peter Parker as the Woodcutter, and an Aunt May as a substitute for Grandmother. J Jonah Jameson also appears as a grumpy and distrustful village elder. But really, the Spider-Man elements here are at best irrelevant and at worst a distraction. The setting is classic mitteleuropan forest, not New York, and no superheroics occur. Spider-Man is used only as an external heroic ideal, which the heroine must replace with her own courage and initiative and that of her fiancé.

There are two variations from the classic story. Mary-Jane plays as active a part in killing the wolf as Peter (fair enough, though the way it is done is not terribly plausible), and Aunt May is not eaten, which I am sure would have disappointed me terribly as a bloodthirsty toddler. Still, at least Peter doesn’t have to put on his black woodcutter costume and become all vengeful. (And Mary-Jane doesn’t do any laundry in this story, either.)

The style of writing is clearly pitched at children, which is refreshing, though it makes it hard for this middle-aged man to judge its success. The art is bright and exuberantly cartoony, with computer colours allowing Tercio to miss out black lines altogether for anything other than black objects, creating a Matisse-styled cut-out effect.

Another Pop Culture Anniversary Celebrated With Marginally-Related Comics Images

It’s quite unsettling to consider that Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is only 10 years older than Star Wars. Those 10 years seem to cover so much more time than the next 30. Memory has a parallax effect all of its own.

It’s not the best Beatles album, but it was the most pregnant with possibilities, marking that moment when vivid primary colours burst out of the constraining Mondrian grid of mod, but before they all mixed and faded and turned into the dung-brown of the 1970s.

Of course that metaphor is excessively visual. This is a blog about comics, so what else can you expect?



Pictures and panels

The Beatles: Yellow Submarine Playing Cards, Carta Mundi, 2004

Batman issue 222, cover by Neal Adams, DC Comics, June 1970, scan pinched from Mile High Comics

“The Pepperguard” by Alex Ross, from Kingdom Come: Revelations, DC Comics/Graphitti Designs, 1997

Wisdom issue 6 “The Rudiments of Wisdom”, part 6 “Look Out, Here Comes Tomorrow” by Paul Cornell (writer), Manuel Garcia (penciller), Mark Farmer (inker), Guru-eFX (colours), Joseph Caramanga (letterer) and Nick Lowe (editor) Marvel Comics/Max, July 2007

Doctor Human

So, last week and this, the Doctor is a human being. That’s providing for some interesting drama. Unfortunately, he has turned himself into a human as a disguise because, confronted with an alien threat, he has decided to run and hide and leave others in danger rather than face his enemies. Several innocent people have died already. That seems a poor take on the character to me, but there you are.

Mind you, there is one version of the Doctor who has every excuse for being human, because he has never been anything else: Doctor Who, the Eagle comic fan, who knocked together his amazing machine TARDIS in the back garden, and travelled in it with his granddaughters Barbara and Susie and his niece Louise.

Doctor Who, played by Peter Cushing, was the lead character in the 1960s movies Dr Who and the Daleks and Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 AD.


He first appeared in comics in America, surprisingly enough, when Dell published Dr Who and the Daleks as a “Movie Classic” in 1966, a year after the film came out. I don’t know who adapted the script, but the art was by Dick Giordano and Sal Trapani. Don’t go expecting something of the standard of “There is No Hope in Crime Alley”. This is crude and rushed stuff.




It is little surprise that there was no comics adaptation of Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 AD. That film also underperformed at the box office, so producer Milton Subotsky never took up his option for a third film. That’s a shame, as the third Dalek serial on TV, now commonly known as “The Chase”, had the Doctor and the Daleks meet robot versions of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. Cushing would have been right at home.

So far as I know, this version of Doctor Who has only appeared in comics once more, if we set aside his brief role in Mad Magazine’s Doctor Ooh spoof.


Yes, do let’s set that aside, shall we?

Cushing’s Doctor Who reappeared in the 1995 Doctor Who Spring Special, which was mostly given over to articles about the movies. The comic strip, “Daleks versus the Martians”, by Alan Barnes and Lee Sullivan, is up to the standards of the regular Doctor Who strip of the time. But it has its own disappointments.



Grey aliens? The Face on Mars (at the time still awaiting its thorough debunking) really a Japanese-style giant stompy robot? Surely this is the wrong Mars. I wanted hoverbouts versus tripods, exterminator guns versus heat rays, mushy blobs with tentacles versus … erm, mushy blobs with tentacles. But, of course, the works of H G Wells were still in copyright (and remain so, in the EU, until 2016).

In the end, the Daleks did conquer Mars. But that’s another story. From The Dalek Book, to be precise. More about that next week.




Pictures and panels
Photograph of Peter Cushing as Dr Who scanned from DVD pack for The Dr Who Movie Collection, Studio Canal+, 2002

Movie Classic issue 12-190-612, “Dr Who and the Daleks”, art by Dick Giordano (pencils) and Sal Trapani (inks), edited by Don Arneson, Dell Publishing, December 1966. Cover scan taken from the Grand Comics Database, interior reprinted in Doctor Who Classic Comics issue 9, Marvel Comics UK, 21 July 1993

Doctor Ooh by Geoff Rowley (writer) and Steve Parkhouse (artist), Mad British Edition issue 161, General Book Distributors Ltd, 1975

Doctor Who “Daleks versus the Martians” by Alan Barnes (writer), Lee Sullivan (art), Elitta Fell (letters), Gary Gillatt and Scott Gray (editors), Doctor Who Magazine Spring Special, Marvel Comics/Panini UK, 1995

The Daleks “Invasion of the Daleks” by David Whitaker (story) and Richard Jennings (art), The Dalek Book, Panther Books/Souvenir Press, 1964

Update: Very Welcome to Tranquility

Despite my fears that there might not be a collected edition of the first Welcome to Tranquility story (see my review here), DC has listed a trade paperback for December. The Beat has the full list of DC collected books for the month, which contains too many hardbacks for my taste – or, more accurately, for my wallet.

Panel
Welcome to Tranquility issue 2, “Snake in the Grass” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, March 2007