Book Review | The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins

The job of the skin is to keep things in…

On the buttoned-down island of Here, all is well. By which we mean: orderly, neat, contained and, moreover, beardless.

Or at least it is until one famous day, when Dave, bald but for a single hair, finds himself assailed by a terrifying, unstoppable… monster! Meaning: a gigantic, evil beard!

Where did it come from? How should the islanders deal with it? And what, most importantly, are they going to do with Dave?

***

Beneath the skin of everything is something nobody can know. The job of the skin is to keep it all in and never let anything show.

So begins The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil, award-winning cartoonist Stephen Collins' first graphic novel proper, and it is as dark and charming a parable as the poetry of its first panels portends.

The eventual originator of the evil beard is a drone called Dave. Not literally a drone, however his behaviours are practically mechanical. In that, Dave is not dissimilar to the other strangely hairless inhabitants of Here; like them, he lives in almost constant fear of There.

Happily, his job at A&C Industries occupies his thoughts during the day, and in his downtime, Dave draws. He draws the pedestrians that pass his house; he pencil sketches pets and post boxes; but by and large his subject is the street. "It was just so neat," you see. "So... complete."

Not such a remarkable fact, that, for "Here, every tree was perfect. Every street was perfect. Even the very shape of Here was perfect." Tellingly, the island bears a certain resemblance to an immense egg—and a delicate thing it is, protected by a shell only so strong.

It wouldn't take much to break it, basically, and the imagined mayhem of There is no more than a stone's throw from the coast:

The houses [Here] were rock-bottom cheap and showed windowless walls to the great dark deep for a very good reason. Because Here, the sea was a thing to fear. The sea led to There. There was disorder. There was chaos. There was evil.

Or so They say. Though "nobody had ever even been," really. "No one alive, anyway. The stories were enough for most people, including Dave." Like the one about the fisherman's son who stole a boat on a boast. "They said There took his tidiness away. Swallowed his boundaries whole. Mixed his [...] befores with his nows with his nexts." Thus the state of perpetual terror Dave and the other people who live Here exist in.

The Scotsman Abroad | The Great Geeky Debates

Maybe you'll have spotted it, maybe not... but guess what? I was in this morning's Mind Meld!

In case you weren't aware, the Mind Meld is a regular feature on the Hugo award-winning SF Signal which asks a bunch of genre fiction's best and brightest to put their heads together to answer a certain question. 

Truth be told I don't know what the Irregulars were doing, inviting yours truly to participate, but I wasn't going to miss it. Didn't hurt that the question was such a fun one. Let me hand it over to James Aquilone:

What was the first or most memorable geeky pop-culture debate you ever had? Or what’s that one thing you can’t stop ranting about? What was the outcome? Are you still on speaking terms with your opponent? Why are you so passionate about this?

In response, I wrote about "the years a friend and I spent butting heads over a couple of comic books. He was a Marvel man; me, a DC devotee. He read The X-Men; I was an unabashed Batman fan. Matter of fact, I still am, and I’d bet my last penny he’s still got the hots for Emma Frost."

Be warned, though, that my piece, at least, takes a turn for the serious... because this friend is firmly former, unfortunately, and our different interests—up to and including the arguments we had about whether Batman and his entourage would be a match for Marvel’s supermutants—had a part to play in that:

As kids we were great mates, he and me. As adults, our friendship fell apart. So whether it’s Star Trek versus Star Wars or the merits of manga as opposed to anime, take heed, dear reader: at the end of the day these debates can be about the people as much as the particular properties.

Click on through, as you do, to read the rest of the Mind Meld in question, which also features Mur Lafferty, Maurice Broaddus, David Lomax and a whole load of other awesome authors. 

(I'm aware that I'm the only contributor without a short story or novel to my name, but I have no shame.)

Coming Attractions | A Taste of Trillium

I may have taken my sweet time reading it, but at this late stage, I'm happy to come out and say that Sweet Tooth is without a doubt one of the very best Vertigo series there's ever been. If the imprint is indeed on the way out, as recent rumours suggest — though more recent statements have refuted these rumours — then Sweet Tooth is perfectly positioned to do double-duty as a swan song.

And what a song it sung.

But it's finished, now. The final trade paperback, namely Wild Game, was published last month. And much as I approve of actual endings, and I do — especially in the comics form, where stories either take lifetimes to tell, or are cruelly cancelled — I very much miss my monthly Jeff Lemire fix.

Luckily, there's more to look forward to from the award-winning singer/songwriter. Beginning with Trillium: an eight-issue limited series which "combines rich historical adventure and mind-bending science fiction into a sprawling, unconventional love story."

Courtesy Comic Book Resources, I give you the plot, and two pages from the comic proper. If there ever was a time to click to embiggen, incidentally, this is it!

It’s the year 3797, and botanist Nika Temsmith is researching a strange species on a remote science station near the outermost rim of colonized space. It’s the year 1921, and renowned English explorer William Pike leads an expedition into the dense jungles of Peru in search of the fabled “Lost Temple of the Incas,” an elusive sanctuary said to have strange healing properties. Two disparate souls separated by thousands of years and hundreds of millions of miles. Yet they will fall in love and, as a result, bring about the end of the universe. Even though reality is unraveling all around them, nothing can pull them apart. This isn’t just a love story; It’s the LAST love story ever told.

The first issue of Trillium will be released in early August.

If you have a heart, you'll buy it.

News | Not the End of Alabaster

Never mind for a moment the surprise bashing I got on her blog for being glib about Blood Oranges whilst trying to raise readers' awareness of it in some small way: Caitlin R. Kiernan has been a font of fantastic fiction my entire adult life, and I admire her work immensely.

Silk was a formative reading experience for me, and over the years, Kiernan gotten better and better. With The Drowning Girl: A Memoir in early 2012, she hit yet another new high, and though her current prose projects aren't up my alley, exactly, I can't wait for her to get back to writing the dark fantasy I desire in my heart of hearts.

In her own time, obviously. I'm not even the boss of me; I wouldn't presume to tell anyone else what they should do!

Anyway, oddly enough, I'd read a whole lot of Kiernan's work without even realising it. I speak here of The Dreaming, DC Comics' superb Sandman spin-off, which she scripted from 1996, which I bought from that point on. I've followed her work with particular interest ever since I put two and two together a few years later.

Long story short, Kiernan's return to comic books last year was a dream come true for yours truly, and I've adored Alabaster so far. I own the hardcover collection of Wolves, and I've been buying single issues of Dark Horse Presents solely to keep up to speed with the further adventures of Dancy Flammarion in Boxcar Tales.

Alas, the dream looks to be over for the moment. According to a post on Aunt Beast's blog:

"Last week I spoke with my editor at Dark Horse and told him that it was time for me to step back from both Dancy and comics for the foreseeable future. That, after almost two years of pretty heavy involvement on this project, it was time to refocus my attention on my prose work. It felt a lot like I was tendering my resignation, like quitting a job, though it doesn't truly amount to quite that. It just means that, for the time being, I'm choosing to concentrate on other projects. In a lot of ways, working in comics is far more stressful than prose publishing, and, right now, I've got to decrease the stress in my life. 

"That said, working with Dark Horse has been a marvelous experience, and I thank everyone I've worked with – Rachel, Jemiah, Daniel, Shantel, Mike, Steve, Greg, Rachelle, Augie, and Spencer – for making Alabaster: Wolves and Alabaster: Boxcar Tales happen. I'm not an easy person to work with, and you've all shown admirable patience. I especially thank the many readers and reviewers who've believed in the books. Thank you. And if you are a fan, don't be sad.  

"There will be additional Dancy material from Dark Horse, but I'm not yet at liberty to announce what it will be or when it will be released. I'll make those announcements when I'm told that I can."

I take heart in the suggestion that this is not necessarily the end, however much it sounds like one. Still, I'll miss dear Dancy in the months or years between the forthcoming conclusion of Boxcar Tales and the beginning of whatever's next.

If you haven't already read an Alabaster book, I'm sure you know what to do.

But I Digress | The Life and Death of Dial H

Regular readers will recall that I came back to comic books a couple of years ago, after entirely abandoning what had become a bad habit at best: a pull list of single issues that broke the bank each and every week, and hardly interested me beyond satisfying my not-so-secret completionist streak.

It was something I needed to do, in truth, but I realised, relatively recently, that I'd thrown the baby out with the bathwater; that I'd gotten shot of a bunch of good comics along with all the bad books that had driven me away from the form in the first place. So I resolved to give the whole rigmarole another go.

And I'm glad I did. I'm glad because I've read some stonking good comic books since I made the decision discussed above. Denise Mina and Andy Diggle have hooked me on Hellblazer; I'm midway through Y: The Last Man, and it's getting better and better; Global Frequency was a bunch of fun; American Vampire and The Unwritten are pretty brilliant; and I enjoy a bunch of the Batman books.

But as it happens, everyone isn't a winner, so of course I've read some utter rubbish in the interim. I won't name names.

In any case, Dial H. As a devout scholar of the school of Mieville, Dial H excited me immensely. I followed the news of its conception and development with baited breath. Though I tend to consume my comics as and when they're collected, I bought the first issue as soon as I could.

On reflection, that wasn't the best introduction to what is a rather byzantine book. Afterwards, I resolved to wait for the first trade, to give Dial H a proper second shot. Into You finally came out in April, and I had a bit of fun with it, I admit. But on the whole? I'd have to say no. Or else, not yet.

I'll read the next collection when it's published, I guess — I do like to see a thing through, and knowing Mieville the book will get better as it goes — but if I'm honest, yesterday's news, that Dial H had been cancelled, was rather a relief. I'm truly sorry that the audience wasn't interested in something so different and ambitious, but let's face it: Mieville didn't make it easy. I've read almost everything he's written, and even I had a hard time figuring out whether or not Dial H was decent.

On the one hand, it's a shame that Dial H didn't work out. On the other — the glass half full hand — this frees up the esteemed author to refocus on the prose fiction I fell for in the first place, because I don't think it's a coincidence that this is the first year since 2008 that he hasn't published a new novel.

So roll on news of whatever Mieville's been working on since the release of Railsea. I still hold out hope that he'll go back to Bas-Lag, but I'll take whatever I can get... up to and including the second Dial H trade. In my heart of hearts, however, I can't help but feel relieved rather than bereaved by this news.

Is that mean-spirited of me?

Have you ever been perversely pleased to see something end, and if so, when?

I Tube | An Act of Faith: Alan Moore and I

It's been some time since Alan Moore really, truly moved me.

Don't misunderstand me: I admire the man in many senses. He has a pretty brilliant beard, and his work ain't too shabby either. But when in readiness for the three Century singles I went back to the beginning of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I got no further than The Black Dossier, which so bored me that I started skipping entire sections.

I can hardly express how utterly unlike me that is. For better or for worse, when I read something, I read it deliberately. I do not gloss; I don't know how to. But The Black Dossier's endless academic digressions drove me to distraction, so when I finally finished it, I was in no hurry to move on to the next volume. I haven't touched a single Century since, and it's been at least a year.

But now, between Moore's bravura introduction to The Vorrh - which I recently reviewed for Tor - and Antony Johnston's excellent adaptation of his screenplay Fashion Beast for Avatar Press, I find myself game for a touch more Moore. A quick Wiki says his next thing is The Moon and the Serpent Bumper Book of Magic, which sounds pretty terrific, but between now and whenever that graphic novel surfaces, he's written a short film.

Jimmy's End itself isn't out yet, but Act of Faith is. Intended to act as a curtain-raiser to the main event, in the great tradition Pixar brought back, it "unveils an isolated corner of the modern night, where carrion crows become the only comforters and it's a quarter to eternity."

I should stress that this description, lifted from the official site, is pure silliness. Instead, Act of Faith is a twisted 15 minute film about sex and suicide, starring a single actress and set in a single small space.

I'm going to say it's not safe for work. But if that's where you are at the moment, I'd urge you to save the link for later.

Otherwise, have at it immediately, please:

Well, what did you think?

Admittedly, the thing begins rather badly, but beyond the dodgy voice actor playing Faith's father, and the off-kilter camera angles, and the point about belief the short rather rams home, I enjoyed Act of Faith awfully.

Moore's script goes exactly where you expect it to, yet still it surprises; as the central character, Siobhan Hewlett is singularly riveting; overall, the atmosphere is fantastic, in no small part thanks to the soundtrack; and ultimately Mitch Jenkins' direction achieves the very voyeuristic feeling one imagines Moore was working towards. After a few minutes I simply submitted to this film, and Act of Faith's fuck you of a finale paid back my investment with interest.

I had mixed feelings about Alan Moore before this cunning curtain-raiser, but now I'm unbelievably keen to see Jimmy's End myself. I'll aim to alert you all as and when its creators make it available.

In the interim, it'd be great to hear from any other Alan Moore admirers out there. In fact, in my extended absence from the comic book form, I missed a great swathe of his work - other than Fashion Beast and a little of The League, I haven't read anything of his since the halcyon days of America's Best Comics - so I'd be interested to hear what, if anything, I'm missing.

Comic Book Review | The Shade by James Robinson

By all accounts, the New 52 has been a huge success for DC Comics. The relaunch has reinvigorated sales across the board. It's brought forgotten franchises and characters to the fore like never before, yet creatively, I can't help but consider that ancient saying: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Take the Shade — not to be confused with Shade, The Changing Man: he was an outright villain initially, then an anti-hero, and in the mid-90s - when last we heard of him, excepting cameo appearances in Brightest Day and Blackest Night - a mentor to James Robinson's renowned reinvention of Starman. But whether the Shade was using his unearthly powers for good or evil, or some nefarious purpose betwixt the two, he's always seemed a self-important leftover of another era.

I wasn't always so cynical. Well, I was, but when I heard DC were planning to bring the Shade back as the star of his own series, with none other than James Robinson at the helm... for a while there, I had hope.

But folks? Don't fall for it. The Shade, I'm afraid, is the same as he's ever been, which is to say old, cold, and so full of himself one wonders why he hasn't ascended into the heavens already.

Of course, great stories can still be told about terrible people, and I was ready for this series to take its place amongst them. In my view, Robinson is a woefully underrated writer, and some of the artists involved in the New 52 take on The Shade were worth getting excited about independently. Count amongst the creatives: Darwyn Cooke, of Richard Stark's Parker fame and Before Watchmen infamy; Scary Godmother creator Jill Thompson; Top 10's Gene Ha; not to mention Cully Hamner; Javier Pullido; and Frazer Irving.

Unsurprisingly, then, The Shade looks fantastic. But here's the thing: in comic books - a storytelling medium wherein narratives are complemented by aesthetics, and vice versa - incredible art doesn't immediately equal a must-read series. Must-see, maybe - thus The Shade is absolutely that - but the experience of reading it is... testing.

It starts pretty poorly. With the Shade lamenting the month of October. With the so-called Master of Darkness' girlfriend threatening to leave him unless he has another bloody adventure already. I can only imagine Hope O'Dare wants some time away from her miserable man - soon enough we will sympathise - but as of the offing, their relationship feels false. Small mercy, then, that the author abandons it whole-hog once the actual story gets going, but given its essential irrelevance, why begin with it? Why not in medias res?

The whole of the opening arc, in fact, feels like a poor man's prologue. But don't stop believing, because from here on out, The Shade gets incrementally better. Beginning with the first installment of the three-part Times Past - which occurs in reverse throughout the series, until it begins again in the final issue - the Shade becomes embroiled in a plot involving his blood, both figuratively and literally. It transpires that this is a story about family; about the ties that bind us and how we strive to escape our origins, eclipsing ancient legacies with our own; and about how much easier it is to be evil than do good.

This last sets the scene for a legitimately interesting reflection of our man's murky origins: recombined insight into the circumstances surrounding his dark powers, and his life before he became the Shade. If the series started here, I'd recommend it to you almost wholeheartedly, but whilst it ends very well, I fear it puts its worst foot forward.

Overall, Robinson simply takes too long to find his stride, and even when he has, The Shade comes across somewhat overwrought. Push through the iffy offing and patient readers might find a lot to like, but given the limited scope of this limited series - a trade paperback edition of which will be available in early 2013 - The Shade misses the target as often as it hits it, squandering at least as much of its promise as it spends well. Bear that in mind before you buy in.

Comic Book Review | Dollhouse Vol. I: Epitaphs

"Did I fall asleep?"

"For a little while."

A familiar refrain, the recent repetition of which - much to my surprise - made my goddamn day.

Let's begin with a quantity of that rarest commodity: honesty. For a brief period, I thought Dollhouse was awesome. Right through to the provocative first season finale, I was all for Joss Whedon's most recent TV series — even the sad fact that it was over was alright, considering how magnificently it had ended.

Except, as it happened, it hadn't ended. It wasn't over, after all. Because at the very last second, after the showrunners had closed the door on any suggestion of a sensible second season with was essentially an epilogue, optimistic execs brought Dollhouse back from the precipice. Its unlikely renewal meant that the overarching narrative, so smartly concluded in the episode "Epitaph One," had to find some way forward, or else test the patience of even its most dedicated viewers - of which I was one - by backtracking.

Instead, the second season of Dollhouse did both things... badly. This batch of episodes went so far, so fast, and so suddenly beyond the bounds of the first season's remit that it seemed like a completely different series. You couldn't help but suspect the writers were playing fast and loose with a mythology they no longer had a handle on. If I could unwatch it, mark my words: I would. 

Long story short, I was sweet on Dollhouse for a year, but its mishandled second season left me with a sour taste in my mouth. So it came as something of a shock to realise how happy I would be to hear the exchange with which we began again. I wasn't even aware there was a way for me to do so, short of rewatching the first season, until, quite by chance, I came across Epitaphs: the first - and thus far I fear the only - volume of a comic book continuation of the cancelled TV series, along the selfsame lines as Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, and involving some of the selfsame talent, including Andrew Chambliss and Joss Whedon's little brother Jed.

Epitaphs collects the complete five issue miniseries of the same name, as well as the one-shot prelude from the season two Blu-ray box-set. The action occurs after the events of the series, in an LA decimated by Dollhouse technology. The signal pioneered by the Rossum Corporation has gone viral, turning anyone who hears it into an automaton, open to instructions, up to and including orders to spread the signal ever further.

In amidst this apocalyptic chaos, we find what you might call a chaotic mind: the schizophrenic Alpha has been imprinted with so many personalities that the constant struggle to keep them in check - especially the wicked ones that want nothing so much as to stab folks in the faces - has left him as weak as any mere mortal. But when Alpha meets Trevor, a young boy reeling from the loss of his family, he sees that he can do good, too. Together, Alpha, Trevor, and the Ivys - a single rebel who has imprinted her personality upon multiple minds (and bodies, obviously) - together, they resolve to root out Eliza Dushku's Echo, who may be able to help them turn the tide against the Rossum Corporation.

Meanwhile, Felicia Day. That's really all I want to say.

These concurrent narrative arcs do come together eventually, but for the longest time I couldn't be bothered with the scenes starring her character. Perhaps Mag will play an important role in future Dollhouse comics, however in Epitaphs her pages are basically wasted space. Fan service, of a sort.

But that's the only complaint I want to make about Epitaphs, and it's really no big deal. On the whole, this is a great graphic novel. It's better paced and markedly more interesting than the second season of the ill-fated TV series, and its closing moments suggest a return to the fantastic form of the first. Returning characters, too, ring true, and those newbies introduced in Epitaphs - like Trevor - sit neatly alongside the likes of Echo and Alpha. I particularly enjoyed the interplay between the aforementioned Ivys.

Joss Whedon's actual involvement in this comic book may be minimal, especially compared to Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, but in its appealing cast, their smart, snappy banter, and the self-aware sense of humour that elevates even the most minor events above and beyond the banal, his geek-lord legacy is nonetheless felt.

I'm actually shocked at how much I enjoyed Epitaphs. I had not known that I missed this world, yet these characters and the "thoughtpocalypse" they find themselves embroiled in are as compelling to me as ever they were. Now that I've finished with this first volume of the TV series' continuation in comic book form, I can only hope that its creators come together again — and the sooner, the better!

Comic Book Review | PunisherMAX Vol. III: Castle and Vol. IV: Homeless

This is the end, my friends.

In the first half of PunisherMAX - collected in the trade paperbacks Kingpin and Bullseye, which I reviewed together here - Scalped's Jason Aaron impressed the hell out of me with his willingness to develop, on a fundamental level, a classic Marvel character that had been treading water for decades. All of a sudden there were stakes again. Heroes and villains alike, re-envisioned as if they existed in the real world rather than some impenetrable, comic-book bubble. And in the real world, narrative logic often fails to prevail. Good people suffer for nothing. Bad people get away with it, whatever it is, all the goddamned time. Shit happens, we say.

Well, shit happens on almost every page of PunisherMAX, and let me tell you this thing: very little of it is good. But bloody as it is, and unremittingly grim, it's also, equally, absolutely fucking fantastic. If I had thought - for a single, solitary second - that this lamentably limited series couldn't get any better, I'd be eating my words as we speak. Because it can. Because it does. But after Kingpin and Bullseye, I had good reason to expect the best.

Castle, for its part, picks up some time after Bullseye's shocking conclusion, with our bloody, broken and seemingly beaten anti-hero behind bars at last. After "punishing" a corrupt cop and being caught assaulting the Kingpin's impenetrable skyscraper, Frank finds himself locked up in a maximum security prison, surrounded by criminals on all sides... but with no way to make them pay! Instead, he turns inwards, remembering his family, and the sadistic circumstances by which he came to lose them.

Oddly, then, this third volume - of a total of four - is essentially a retelling of The Punisher's origin story, yet ye need not fear: it is not, not by any stretch, the tragic but by now over-familiar origin story fans of the franchise know to the last letter. Superficially, I suppose, the exact same things happen: after a career of killing remarkable even amidst the terrible violence in Vietnam, Frank returns home to New York City, only to find his family caught in the crossfire of a mob shoot-out in Central Park. As they bleed out in his arms one after the other after the other, to add insult to injury, The Punisher takes shape in Frank's fast-hardening heart.

However, where before Frank Castle was a victim of all this, fundamentally a family man driven to a dark place by the wickedness visited upon his nearest and dearest, PunisherMAX isn't so sure of his innocence. The continuity of Aaron's retcon is infinitely more perverse than the clear-cut conflict between the forces of good and the legions of evil that birthed The Punisher in the first. I won't give the game away, but let's say that in a very real sense, Castle implicates Frank in the deaths that have made him the murderer he is.

And Castle is just the calm before the storm, because of course Aaron isn't content to simply lock up The Punisher to rot, and throw away the keys. In Homeless, the fourth and final trade paperback collecting this stunning story arc - indeed the complete series - he breaks out of jail (with some surprising assistance, as it transpires) to wage one last on his arch-enemy: the so-called Kingpin of crime. But this time, they'll fight to the death. By the end, only one man will be left standing... and even then, no-one's truly safe in this series.

And I really do mean no-one.

If Kingpin and Bullseye were surgical strikes of a sort, these two concluding trades represent shock and awe on an epic yet still intimate scale. One senses Aaron is holding nothing back, and the rewards wrought by this no-holds-barred attitude are truly awesome, meanwhile Steve Dillion has never in recent memory been better, or ballsier. With amazing layouts and marvelous clarity, he captures the ugliness of Aaron's bastard cast of characters and the city they lay waste to like no other artist could. 

This, thus, is definitive. Never mind Garth Ennis' hallowed run on The Punisher under the Marvel Knights umbrella: PunisherMAX by Jason Aaron and Steve Dillon takes the cake, the pastry... the very dough, damn it. It's so incredibly good that I'm actually sort of bowled over that it exists to being with. After all, it ends; a real rarity in comic books — as discussed in my review of the first two trades. And though The Punisher will live on in other forms - there's already a separate ongoing series, penned by Queen and Country's Greg Rucka... which I'll probably check out eventually - it's hella hard to imagine how anything else bearing the brand at hand could live up to PunisherMAX's unforgettable finale.

I don't care if you've never given a crap about this character. PunisherMAX will make you care. Like so many of Frank Castle's unwitting targets, in fact, you'll have no choice in the matter. Unlikely as it sounds, PunisherMAX is as groundbreaking in its way as any of the medium's other high watermarks. And let's face it: Watchmen isn't half as much fun.

Guest Post | Ryan of Battle Hymns Considers Comic Books for Fantasy Fans

Without a shadow of a doubt, Battle Hymns is one of the very best blogs I've started reading in the last year. Ryan's been going a fair while longer than that, I should say - indeed, he started out in January of 2010, same as me! - but since I first came across Battle Hymns, I haven't been able to stay away.

 

Not least because Ryan loves a lot of the same things I love: progressive metal - ie. Opeth - fantasy fiction, and comic books, too. He's the reason I read Sweet Tooth, and countless other series besides. So when I asked him if he might be interested in contributing to The Speculative Scotsman in my absence, I was really hoping he'd review a graphic novel for you.

 

But boy, did he go above and beyond the call of duty. Good man! :)

Battle Hymns is brilliant, and if you aren't subscribed to it already, you should be. Enough said.

Below, Ryan considers what comic books fantasy fans might find to their liking, and I would second his every selection... except Orc Stain, and only then because I haven't read it yet.

***

 

I love comics. When done well, they're a glorious medium of unfettered possibilities. With pictures. Awesome pictures.

 

Wait, a "glorious medium of unfettered possibilities"? Sounds familiar! Sounds like... fantasy!

 

Damn right. Comics, like our well loved fantasy fiction, is a creative medium where lots of amazing things can and will happen. So maybe you're a comic lover, maybe you're a comic liker, or maybe you want to read comics but don't know where the fuck to begin (hint: not with Marvel or DC)...well, I'm gonna make it easy for you. I'll list some popular fantasy sub-genres and some awesome comics that fall under those categories. 

 

Steampunk

 

This little sub-genre is really popular these days, and I gotta admit, the aesthetic is pretty cool. Goggles are sweet. Tesla is a bad-ass. And air-ships are a combination of both; sweet and bad-ass.

There's not a lot of steampunky comics out there that are good. Too many feature busty, scantily clad babes running around in leather. Maybe that is cool if you are a 13 year old boy, but we are focusing on good comics. Good story, good art. The one to go with here is Captain Swing by comic-writing mad genius Warren Ellis.

This one has all the hallmarks of a good steampunk tale. You've got an Victorian England copper chasing down the murderous Spring-Heeled Jack. There's also some battling air pirates, guns with electric bullets, hidden lairs, and of course, goggles. Can't forget those.

Ellis is capable of writing an exciting story, and he does so here. Lots of twists, some great action, and some fun dialog. The art by Raulo Caceres is quite good too. He really captures the steampunk look and feel here. A very solid choice if you are looking for a steampunk fix.

Urban Fantasy

 

Even though I warned against comics from DC or Marvel earlier, there are of course a few exceptions to that rule. Batwoman is one of those exceptions. This one is exceptionally good, and the fact that the writers have taken an urban fantasy-esque approach to the comic is a big reason why it is so good. 

 

There's no better urban setting than Gotham City, and Kate Kane/Batwoman, who's been don't ask-don't telled out of the Marines, can hang with the best of the leading ladies of urban fantasy... she's even got the tats! 

 

The graphic novel to get your hands on is Batwoman: Elegy. It's written by Greg Rucka who has a history of writing fantastic female leads. In Elegy Batwoman battles the supernatural baddies of Gotham. There's a crime syndicate led by a creepy crime lord named Alice who quotes Lewis Carroll and wants to poison all of Gotham, not to mention a cult of shape-shifters.

Though the writing in Batwoman: Elegy is top notch, the art sorta steals the show [Agreed - Niall]. J.H. Williams III is definitely on the very tippy-top tier of comics artists, and he flexes his artistic muscles like a 'roided out body builder here. He switches up styles depending on what is going on in the story, and delivers some great double page splashes that will please the eye. All around a great comic. You can't go wrong here.

Post-Apocalypse

 

Thanks to stuff like The Road and I Am Legend this is another sub-genre that lots of fantasy lovers, myself included, enjoy. I like thinking about the end of the world... its a pretty interesting idea to speculate about. This also happens to be a pretty popular theme in comics. One of my all-time favorite series Y: The Last Man deals with a world where all the men, except one, have suddenly died. Though I could easily suggest that comic here I'm gonna go for a current title which fits the bill: Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth.

 

(But you should read Y: The Last Man too!)  

In Sweet Tooth, a mysterious plague has hit the Earth and has devastated the population. The sickness began about the same time that newborns started being born as strange animal/human hybrids. That's where we meet Gus, a young hybrid who finds himself alone in the woods after his father dies of the sickness. Gus soon meets Jeppard, a dangeous drifter who promises to help Gus find his way across the devastated American landscape to the fabled hybrid sanctuary.

Sweet Tooth stands out for having an incredible emotional impact, it has nearly brought me to tears on a few occasions... this one will punch you right in the feelings! [Ow, my feelings... - Niall] Lemire writes characters that are complex and wonderfully developed, they'll stick in your head long after you're done reading. This is easily one of my top three ongoing comics; I've been following it in single issues but the first four trades are available and get better and better as the story goes on.

Horror

Okay, horror isn't so much a sub-genre as it is it's very own beast, but I'm still gonna mention it here primarily because one of our modern horror masters, and one of my favorite authors, Joe Hill writes an amazing horror comic called Locke & Key that ranks among the very best stuff on the shelf. 

 

The Locke family has recently relocated to Lovecraft, Massachusetts after their father was brutally murdered by a couple of his former students at the family summer home. Needing a change of scenery in a big way, the mother Nina, and three children, Ty aged 17, Kinsey who's 15, and Bode, age 5, move into the Locke family ancestral manse. What begins as a look at a grieving family soon turns macabre as the youngest Locke boy discovers the key to a mysterious door that can work some spectral magic, and a well that houses a vile spirit bent on doing harm to the Lockes.

Apparently there's a bunch of magical keys hidden around the house that give the holder special abilities. These keys and their powers are slowly revealed, and help build tension while adding a mysterious magic element to the story.

 

I find that I'm rarely scared by works of horror, but Hill delivers some insanely terrifying and anxiety laden moments in Locke & Key. There were times when I found it impossible to stop reading because the story is so good. There's currently 4 out of an eventual 6 trades available, and I have had to force myself to work through them slowly so that I'm not pulling my hair out waiting for the last two volumes. [Good god man, get out of my head! - Niall] This is fantastic stuff, and should not be missed.

Other Fantasy Comics You'll Love

 

These ones don't quite fit under a sub-genre label, but are fantasy through and through and you don't want to miss them.

 

Orc Stain: Imagine a world where orcs are the top of the food chain, and orc penises, aka "gronch", are the main currency. That's the world of Orc Stain and it is a wonderful one to get lost in. James Stokoe writes, draws, inks, colors and letters this bad boy and it is beautiful to look at, and wonderfully written. One of the most creative and beautiful things I've ever laid eyes on. 

 

Planetary: This is another Warren Ellis-penned comic, and in my opinion, the best comic series ever written. This one is a cool science/fantasy/metahuman mash up with an incredibly compelling story, interesting characters and great art. Planetary is a must read for any comic fan. 

 

Hellboy: This is an incredibly popular title, and for good reason. Mike Mignola has blended Lovecraftian elements into real life myth... with some Nazis mixed in for good measure. [But of course! - Niall] The result is one of the most enduring comics of all time. Hellyboy exudes atmosphere and is another title that you'll find on most every comic lover's shelf. If you haven't already explored Hellboy, you should.

 

Like the world of fantasy, there's many wonderful comics out there, I'm discovering more and more each day. If you find yourself exhausting this list or looking for more hot tips, stop by my blog Battle Hymns or hit me up with an email. Happy reading!

***

Happy reading indeed. As the man says, or is slightly too polite to, there's an awful lot of other equally awesome stuff over at Battle Hymns, so if you haven't made a habit of visiting Ryan's blog before, what better time to check it out than now?

 

Thanks again, mate!

So. What's coming up on The Speculative Scotsman tomorrow? Well riddle me this, dear readers: what's blue, and gold, and anonymous all over?

Comic Book Review | Northlanders Vol. 2: The Cross + The Hammer

Late last year I reviewed the first volume of Northlanders, Brian Wood's Viking comic book. You can read all about it here.

In short, I found Sven the Returned to be brash, ugly and unduly brutal, but at the same time, kinda compelling. Deadwood with Norsemen instead of outlaws, and axes over six-shooters... though that's giving it more credit than I expect it deserves. In his first unnecessarily protracted arc, about a lone wolf's war on the evil uncle who'd hijacked his inheritance, Wood attempted nothing so ambitious as David Milch did. 

On the surface, Northlanders is all change as of The Cross + The Hammer, which is to say the second trade paperback collection of the series: there's a new artist - great at landscapes but lacking, I'm afraid, in the action department - a whole new story and a new central character. All appear to be huge upheavals, but however ostensibly different The Cross + The Hammer seems from Sven The Returned, I found the two books to be of a very similar spirit.

In Clontarf, in Viking-occupied Ireland, a spate of vicious killings has finally attracted the attention of the country's impromptu monarch. Someone - some gang of organised Irish rebels, by all appearances - is murdering the king's men, and only the king's men. Needless to say, this does not please the king, but he has kingly business to attend to - a war, amongst other things - so in his stead he sends Ragnar, a specialist hunter and killer of men, to put a stop to this insidious tyranny.

Curious and curiouser: when Ragnar arrives in Clontarf, in the first of the six single issues The Cross + The Hammer collects, he finds evidence that suggests they need trap only one man. But what kind of man must their mark be, to have slayed so many, and lived to keep killing?

Well he is a father, first and foremost: Magnus Rodain's life's work, as he sees it, has been about making Ireland a safer place for his little girl, Brigid, who travels with him, and indeed supports his every decision. This - Brigid's unquestioning willingness to hop along happily to the tune her father hums, despite all the awful things Magnus does supposedly in service of her future - this was the first of a few niggling issues I had with The Cross + The Hammer, and not the last.

In fact the last, if not the least or the most egregious, was the way Wood addresses the very problem I've just named and shamed. It beggars belief that Brigid comes to her father's aid after he's butchered an entirely innocent family because he was in a bad mood, certainly, but compared to the Shyamalanish reveal in the penultimate part, it makes perfect sense.

Between the first problem and that last, those reservations I have about The Cross + The Hammer will be familiar to anyone who read my early review of Sven the Returned. Most notably, there's an awful lot of wasted space on the page - in every issue an overabundance of wide or tall panels, and far too many splashes and spreads - such that reading this series on a monthly basis must have been particularly trying. With an entire arc gathered together like this the experience is markedly more tolerable, but you'll still make short work of it. There's perhaps than an hour's worth of reading in The Cross + The Hammer, give or take, so buy in with that in mind, if you're inclined to buy in at all.

And you know, I still think you should. Assuredly Northlanders would be a better book if it were a little less barren, especially if it stopped trying so damned hard to be provocative and "adult" - seriously - but it's a pretty decent one even given its predilections towards the empty and the explicit. Spare, in its way. And absolutely harrowing. With the aforementioned caveats, then, I'd certainly recommend The Cross + The Hammer, as I did Sven the Returned before it.

Comic Book Review | Shenzhen and Pyongyang by Guy Delisle

This will be old news to many of you, I expect, but in my other life, I'm a teacher.

Actually, no. That's not exactly true... and thank the lord for that! Strictly speaking I'm an English tutor - I chair courses on reading and writing at a private education centre here in central Scotland - and one of the things I'm often heard to say to the high-school students in my care is that there are stories everywhere. Wherever you look, and you needn't look far, or wide, there are narratives unfolding, complete with characters, conflicts, climaxes -- really the whole kit and caboodle.

They might not be good stories by any meaningful measure, but they are true stories, and often, I find, that's enough. If in a piece of writing one of my students can capture some fleeting fragmentary truth - some glimmer of insight into how we work, or the way the world works around us - then never mind all the elementary spelling mistakes and so on and so forth; no amount of misplaced punctuation marks can take away from an honest, relatable portrayal of some feeling, or facet of our lives.

Now whether I have my teaching hat on or not, that's a sentiment I stand by whole-heartedly, so it's an odd thing - but no less a true thing - that I don't, in my spare time, consume a great deal of non-fiction. Not in any form that I can think of: not in film, not in literature, and - excepting Persepolis - certainly not in comic books. At least, not till now.

I picked up Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea almost on a whim while out looking for a couple of last-minute Christmas gifts. I read the first few pages right there in the store, and immediately found myself hungry - like one of those hippos - for more. Home again, home again, jiggety jig, I polished off Pyongyang and its successor, Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, in a wonderful, whimsical week of evenings. I'd urge anyone with an interest in comics books, or culture, to do likewise.

Guy Delisle is - or was, when he put together these "graphic memoirs" (as the blurb would have it) - a jobbing French-Candian animator. His trips to Pyongyang and then Shenzhen were for business rather than pleasure, to oversee the work of various outsourcing studios, and it's just as well, because as he illustrates, there's precious little pleasure to be taken from either of these depressing places.

Saying that, there's not a dull moment in these travelogues, and that's no mean feat, because at around 150 pages each, they're certainly not short, and Delisle spends almost his entire time abroad in complete and utter isolation. He can't speak the required languages, he's restricted to certain areas, and he's made to stay in the most appalling, anonymous hotels. Weeks go by without him talking to anyone at all, or doing anything particularly interesting, so he has to amuse himself somehow -- and us.

To that end, Delisle doesn't spend too long documenting any one thing. Both Pyongyang and Shenzhen are broken up into easily-digestible episodes, about the length of a single issue each, and though he spends the vast majority of them pontificating about what it is to exist in these cities, under their respective regimes, whether as a citizen or a visitor - riffing on this thing he heard or that incident he saw - there are also several sequences wherein he talks about his job, offering insight into and anecdotal evidence of the increasingly bleak business of animation.

These recollections are perfectly fascinating in their own right, but they also work to punctuate the more troubling aspects of life in China and the so-called axis of evil, and there are, shall we say, some very troubling aspects. In any event, Delisle has a real knack for teasing out stories wherever he goes.

Admittedly I've never read anything remotely resembling either Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea or Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, but I adored both of these books. Guy Delisle is a disarmingly frank author, and an astute cartoonist, too; these graphic novels are replete with such wit and insight, such good humour and clear-eyed observational engagement - even from afar - that I can't recommend them highly enough, whether to fans of the comic form or simply people with a passing interest in what life is (or was) like in these little-seen cities, particularly in light of the recent reports of Kim Jong-Il's death.

I've holidayed in some strange and dangerous places in my time, and though I know better than to ever say never, realistically I'm not likely to spend several months in China or North Korea myself. Guy Delisle's marvelous, Hergé-esque graphic memoirs are thus as close as I expect to get, and that's quite close enough, thank you very much.

Now, to lay hands on a copy of The Burma Chronicles as soon as humanly possible...

Comic Book Review | Planet of the Apes Vol. 1: The Long War

When he's not writing tragicomic novels about the second coming of an undead messiah, or having his short story collection Unpossible described as one the year's best books, Daryl Gregory writes comic books. Damn fine comic books.

Among them, this one: the Planet of the Apes ongoing series from BOOM! Studies, which launched a little in advance of the latest film in the franchise, starring go-to dude in a suit Andy Serkis.

To be perfectly frank, I could give a monkey's uncle about the Planet of the Apes. I've seen a few of the original films, and both of the attempts in the last decade to reboot the feature series, but none of the above - excepting Andy Serkis' bravura performance as Caesar in this year's Rise of the Planet of the Apes - have managed to make me care about the mythos, such as they are. My interest in this future world, where apes either have or will one day overthrow humanity, is nominal at best.

Enter Daryl Gregory. The man's such a talent, and so unspeakably overlooked, that I've resolved to read whatever he writes from here on out, or until such a time as he releases something rubbish. On the basis of Planet of the Apes Vol. 1: The Long War, I don't see that happening anytime soon. Because where so many creators have tried and failed to convince me of the value of this to-my-mind one-note franchise, Daryl Gregory has gone and done it, be damned my disinclination.

The Long War collects the first four issues of the ongoing: a complete single story set, or so I gather, ten years after Battle for the Planet of the Apes, but before the events of the first film, which I see now was based on a book. I didn't realise! In any case, Gregory introduces us to a society somewhere between two more familiar extremes, of man versus animal in the last days or man, finally, as animal. In The Long War, the lunatics are already running the asylum, yet humans still have a place - albeit a small one - in Skintown, which is essentially a ghetto in the great ape city-state of Mak.

But when a masked assassin kills Lawgiver, one of the few remaining supporters of our lately endangered species, man and monkey stand poised on the brink of a conflict that could take away even that last refuge. Some people, like Sully - a pregnant women who the people of Skintown look to for leadership - think that everything that can be done to avoid a war and so safeguard the remains of our race should be done.

Others want the exact opposite: namely an end to the apes, or else an end to all the indignities of life not on top of the food chain, via certain death. Among this latter camp, the most vigilant are those who attend ceremonies at the Church of the Bomb - from the movies, remember? - where the investigation which Sully leads into Lawgiver's guerrilla killer begins.

The Long War is a short trade by all but the most generous of measures, yet it contains such a wealth of wonderful world-building and narrative know-how that you'd be forgiven for thinking it twice the length it stands at, which is to say a scant 112 pages. Gregory pulls no punches, either; the mysterious monkey-murderer is unmasked in the approach to the last act, and the plot moves on substantially thereafter. Dense, descriptive language gives the text a real sense of momentum, and a clarity that is altogether too rare in comics. Last but not least, a second (somewhat shocking) death quite suffices to get one's blood pumping for volume two, due from BOOM! Studios in May of 2012.

And there's can be no understating the part artist Carlos Magno plays in the success of this this initial collection. His pencils are perhaps a touch too grainy for my tastes, all fine lines and minute detail, leaving little for the imagination to play with, but they set the scene sumptuously - building the world as much as any amount of words would work to - and many of Magno's spreads are quite simply magnificent.

Somewhat to my surprise, then, The Long War gets this latest take on the Planet of the Apes off to an excellent start. For the first time in my life, thanks in equal part to Daryl Gregory and former Transformers artist Carlos Magno, I can't wait to see what's next from this franchise.

That is to say, this comic book franchise. The movies... meh.