Best Wishes

Written by Mike Richardson
Art by Paul Chadwick

I consider Paul Chadwick to be one of the best straight-up comics artists in the business, so of course I wanted to read Best Wishes, his collaboration with Dark Horse president Mike Richardson.

This is a slightly odd magical realist series about work and relationships in New York City.  An old and ornate fountain is moved from Italy to New York's Central Park, but no one is aware of the fact that it might have some magical properties to it.  Cal is a struggling graphic designer who can't seem to break into the industry.  Mary is a struggling young woman who can't shake the feeling that her boyfriend, Josh, a famous quarterback, doesn't really love her.  When Cal and Mary make wishes in the fountain at the same time, their desires get mixed up.

In no time, Mary's random napkin doodle gets chosen as the new symbol of New York City, propelling her to the recognition and job that Cal wanted for himself.  When Cal meets Josh in an elevator while on his way to a job interview with Mary, Josh is not sure how to deal with the feelings that he starts to develop for the young man.  In no time, these three characters find themselves in a weird triangle of envy and desire.

I like the way that this book portrays the difficulty of simply living in New York City, as the characters struggle to make ends meet, and even acts of generosity don't extend further than the closest Ikea.  These characters, and the people that surround them, are very well-realized, and the implausible aspects of this story don't get in the way of enjoying their travails.

Of course, this book is so capably drawn that I'm sure it inspired the kind of envy that Cal shows throughout the book.  Chadwick is a treasure - he makes emotionally complex scenes clear and easy to understand.  I'm glad that Richardson is able to make sure that stories like this get told.  This was a quiet book that didn't make much of a splash, but is really worth taking a look at.

Nanjing: The Burning City

by Ethan Young

I have always loved war comics.  Unlike war movies, they often allow space to understand characters, and while many of them are steeped in easy cliché, there are a lot more that try to dig into the strength of character it takes to survive military conflict.

Ethan Young's Nanjing: The Burning City, is a very effective war comic.  It focuses on two Chinese men, a Captain and one of his men, who have somehow managed to survive Japan's taking of their city, and after their command structure fled, find themselves stuck in a ruined and occupied city.

They have some difficult choices to make.  Lu wants to make for the Safety Zone, a space reserved for refugees and watched over by Germans who are working with the Japanese Army (this happened in 1937, during the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, before the madness of WWII absorbed this conflict).  The Captain does not think they should do this, and instead wants to try to make his way out of the walled city through a particular gate.

The two men have to continue to make difficult choices as they make their way through the ruins.  They hear some soldiers attack a mother and her daughter, but have to deal with the fact that they can't do a thing to help.  Likewise, they have to turn down an old man's request for help, knowing that to leave him is to kill him.

Young, with his large panels, quiet scenes, and excellent facial expressions, makes this story tense and kind of horrible.  The Captain is a typically stoic military man who is doing all he can to hold it together, although when the pair meets a young family, they have to change their plans.

I really enjoyed this book, which helps to bring this story to a larger audience in North America, where the Nanjing story is not really taught or discussed often.

Sally Heathcote Suffragette

Written by Mary M. Talbot
Art by Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot 

I'll be the first to admit that I knew almost nothing about the struggle to gain women the vote in Great Britain.  I'm a little more familiar with the Canadian struggle, which to my knowledge, was neither so protracted, nor so bloody.

In Sally Heathcote, Suffragette, Mary M. Talbot uses a fictional character to explain and explore the various and fractious groups that fought for decades to get the vote, and the beginnings of some respect as equals, for women.  We meet the upper class women who threw themselves into the movement, as well as some of the lower class women, like Sally, who joined them and sacrificed much to gain enfranchisement.

Beyond demonstrating and publishing newsletters, the women used violence to further their cause.  I was surprised to see campaigns of window smashing and even the firebombing of the Prime Minister's unoccupied home.  As well, I was surprised to learn about how these women entered into a revolving system of imprisonment, hunger strikes, torturous force feedings, and eventual release, only to start all over again at the next possible demonstration.

Talbot's Sally has a strong narrative voice, and reports as much on the internecine rifts within the movement as on the advancement towards their goals.  Of course, it is the coming of war that led to increased opportunities for women, as men were either away or killed in such numbers that women needed to take on many of their social roles.

The art team of Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot works great.  The washes of colour on high quality paper make this book really stand out, and the artists (I'm not that clear on who did what) imbue each character with a great deal of personality.  No one radiates displeasure like Mrs. Pankhurst.

This was a great book shining a light on a topic rarely seen in comics.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties

Written by Neil Gaiman
Adapted by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

How to Talk to Girls at Parties began its existence as a short story by Neil Gaiman, but last became a graphic novel adapted by the brilliant Brazilian twins, Bá and Moon.

The story is about Enn, a fifteen year old who finds that it's very difficult to talk to girls, a problem not shared by his best friend, Vic, who is very good at this.  Vic drags Enn to a party he doesn't really want to go to, and they are both blown away by the beauty of the girls there, especially the one they think is the hostess.

As Vic spends time with her, Enn wanders the house, and has a few increasingly strange conversations with some of the girls who are not busy dancing.  It doesn't take long for the reader (although it takes a lot longer for Enn) to figure out that there is something very odd about these girls, perhaps even something otherworldly.

Bá and Moon are stunning artists.  I didn't really buy Enn or Vic as fifteen year olds, but aside from that, I love how they construct these scenes and build character through facial expressions and body language.

This is a good quick read, although I have to say I'm happiest when the twins are writing the stories they draw.  I think it's time for them to give us a long-form story like their Daytripper, which remains one of my all-time favourite comics.

High Crimes

Written by Christopher Sebela
Art by Ibrahim Moustafa

I really didn't know what to expect when I started reading High Crimes, the Dark Horse edition of which collects the original online Monkeybrain series by Christopher Sebela and Ibrahim Moustafa.  My only other exposure to Sebela's work wasn't all that memorable (Welcome Back?  something like that), and I had not heard a whole lot about this book going in.

Well, that's hard to understand, because this was one of the best-written, most suspenseful comics I've read in a long time.  The story is centred around Zan, a former Olympic snowboarder who basically chose to throw her life away, and is now working with a shady associate, Haskell, in the Himalayas, where they recover and repatriate mountain climbers' bodies for money.  When not working at this (or often while), Zan keeps a pretty steady stream of drugs and alcohol, not to mention self-loathing, flowing into her body.

Haskell returns from a trip up Mount Everest with the severed hand (it's too hard to bring the bodies down on spec) of a man Sullivan Mars, who died right beneath the summit of that storied mountain.  When his prints are run, it alerts a secretive US agency, and the plot of the book gets underway.  Zan discovers his journal and some hidden microfilm in Haskell's things, and takes it with her.

When this agency arrives, they force Haskell to take them up the mountain to find the body, while Zan decides that she needs to rescue her friend.

From there, Sebela and Moustafa give us a dense and layered story that explores Zan's character deeply, while making sure that tons of cautious readers will never attempt an expedition up the mountain.  They do an amazing job of capturing the majesty of the setting, and contrasting it with the constraints and difficulties of making a planned climb, let alone the drug-fuelled desperate attempt initiated by Zan.  There is a depth of research on display here that really impressed me, and the images of frozen corpses littering the trail to the summit will stick with me.

I really enjoyed this book, and wish that it had a higher profile.  It's fitting that the foreword to the book is written by Greg Rucka, because the writing here frequently reminded me of his style and intelligence.  I cannot recommend this book enough.

Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash

by Dave McKean

I've long held an interest in the First World War, and spent a lot of time studying the ways in which it was portrayed in, and shaped, art while I was in university.  I'm not all that familiar with the British artist Paul Nash, however.  Still, the news that Dave McKean, of Sandman, Signal to Noise, Violent Cases, and Cages fame (also he did this book called Arkham Asylum you might have heard of), got me pretty excited.

Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash is, first and foremost, an absolutely beautiful book.  McKean takes his usual multi-faceted approach to it, employing a variety of painting and drawing techniques to tell his equally multi-faceted story.

McKean explores Nash's war experiences and mind-state through his dreams, which tend to feature a black dog.  The story jumps around in time and location, leaving the reader to piece together much of it for him or herself.

McKean does a terrific job of capturing the strangeness of the first industrial-scale war.  Nash narrowly avoids sniper bullets in one instance, and in another, is able to have a calm conversation with his brother in a underground bunker while a barrage falls outside them.

Coming away from this book, I'm not sure that I learned a whole lot more about Nash, but my esteem for McKean's art has grown.  This oversized volume is really lovely, and well worth owning.

Blacksad: Amarillo

Written by Juan Díaz Canales
Art by Juanjo Guarnido

The Spanish Blacksadcomics are a real visual treat.  Artist Juanjo Guarnido is absolutely incredible, in the way that he combines a nostalgic eye for mid-twentieth century architecture with incredibly realistic anthropomorphized people.  Each page is a wonder to behold.

In this third Blacksad story, our hero finds himself broke in New Orleans, without enough money to get home.  He refuses a loan from Weekly, who is flying back to New York, and instead lucks into a job driving a car to Texas for a wealthy man.

As Blacksad's story begins to unfold, it crosses paths with that of two beatnik writers, stand-ins for Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who steal the car, setting John on their path.

This story is highly dependent on coincidence, as the FBI agents from the first Blacksad story get in on the chase after Lowell (the Kerouac stand-in) busts up a mailbox, a federal crime.  This tale involves a game of William Tell that leads to actual murder (I love seeing William Burroughs portrayed as a genteel flamingo), another murder at a circus, a laughing hyena lawyer, hidden identities, car chases, and a train scene.

This is a very entertaining read, which is elevated by the power of its art.  I'm not sure if any other Blacksad books have been published in Spain, but if there are more, I hope Dark Horse translates them soon.

Odd note:  I was surprised to see that legendary comics artist Neal Adams is one of the translators for this book.

Blacksad: A Silent Hell

Written by Juan Díaz Canales
Art by Juanjo Guarnido

I read and loved the first Dark Horse Blacksad graphic novel quite a while ago, and for some reason I've really taken my time in getting around to the second one, A Silent Hell (although the third is already in my to-read pile, so that will come a lot quicker).

Blacksad is a private investigator in a world of anthropomorphic animal people.  In this issue, he's come to 1950s New Orleans with his reporter friend Weekly, and has been hired by a dying jazz label impresario to track down a missing junkie piano player, who the old man loves as a son (and more than his own son).  Very quickly, as this is a fast-moving story, writer Juan Díaz Canales has us immersed in the underbelly of the jazz scene, as the old man's son tries to stop Blacksad, and some very questionable things start happening.

This book is absolutely gorgeous.  Artist Juanjo Guarnido employs a watercolour technique that leads to some truly stunning pages.  He also takes many, many pages to explain his process and show us a variety of sketches and colour treatments he executed to get the book to look this good.  This section would be a real boon to artists just starting out, or ones who are established and want to learn to use watercolours for comics.

I really enjoyed this book, which I devoured in one setting.  It gives us an interesting look at New Orleans and its black and creole cultures, and is a master class in pacing and using flashbacks to structure a story.  The two short stories added on the end are excellent as well.

I know that there are more Blacksad albums in Europe than there have been published in English, and I'm hoping that more of them will be made available to us.

ApocalyptiGirl: An Aria for the End Times

by Andrew MacLean

I enjoyed Andrew MacLean's Head Lopper, so I decided to pick up his earlier graphic novel, ApocalyptiGirl, when I saw him exhibiting at TCAF this year.

This is a fairly typical post-Apocalypse kind of story.  Aria is on her own, aside from the cat that she found who now travels with her everywhere, searching the ruins of a major city for something.  Her day usually consists of singing the arias that she is named after, and trying to get Gus, a large robot of some sort, working again, while also chasing any signals she happens to pick up.

She's not completely alone in the city though - there are two warring groups, the Blue Stripes and the Gray Beards, who she mostly avoids.

This not being a very long book, it's not long before there's a lot of mayhem going on, as a Stripe finds her makeshift home in the subways, and she has to fight for her survival, just as she finds the thing she's spent years looking for.

MacLean has a refreshingly minimalist approach to his artwork.  The drawings are lush and colourful, and while they are detailed, they are also very stylized.  It was his artistic approach that attracted me to Head Lopper, and it works well here too.  This was a decent read.

The Fifth Beatle

Written by Vivek J. Tiwary
Art by Andrew Robinson and Kyle Baker

I've never been a big Beatles fan, largely because to me, it's the music of commercials and montages in comedy movies.  That said, I'm always interested in serious graphic novels that examine periods of history, and so I thought it would be good to check The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story out.

Brian Epstein was the Beatles' manager, 'discovering' them in a small bar in Liverpool, and using his industry connections (he managed a large music store) to get them started on the road to superstardom.  This book is his story, mostly focusing on how he balanced his ambition, his hidden homosexuality, and his abuse of prescription medication.

Vivek Tiwary, the writer of this book, is incredibly knowledgeable about the Beatles, and does a great job of keeping Epstein squarely in the middle of this story, resisting the urge to make it be about the members of the band, who largely remain interchangeable and lost in the background, aside from Paul McCartney, who seems to have had a stronger connection with Epstein than the rest did.

Andrew Robinson is one of those artists who I always feel deserve a lot more renown than they get.  He excels at this kind of character-driven story, while also evoking the era beautifully.  The Kyle Baker segment is a cartoonish look at the band's adventures in the Philippines while on tour, and I felt that it kind of disrupted the flow of the whole story.

As a whole, this is a very sensitive and understanding look at the life of a man whose work is remembered much more than his name, and who had to live secretly and unhappily in order to achieve his goals.  It's sad, but also triumphant.

Tiger Lung

by Simon Roy

I'd read the first story in this hardcover when it was serialized in Dark Horse Presents, but didn't realize that there were two more Tiger Lung stories in the book.

Simon Roy is a very interesting creator, whose work I've been following ever since I bought a copy of Jan's Atomic Heart from him (or maybe it was Ed Brisson) at TCAF in 2009.  He stood out as a strong emerging artist, and confirmed that as he went on to work on Prophet with Brandon Graham, and has just completed an excellent story, Habitat in Island, the amazing anthology that Graham edits.

Tiger Lung is set in the Paleolithic era, and centres on a shaman who works to set his father's spirit to rest, to rescue a girl from hyenas, and to rescue another woman from a malevolent spirit.

Roy's put a lot of thought into what people and their tools would have looked like, but more than that, he's worked to recreate the thought patterns and beliefs of these primitive, yet still complicated, people.

This is a very nicely put together volume.  The map at the end of the book suggests that there might be more Tiger Lung stories to come (six more, according to the legend), and I hope that's something we see soon.  Actually, I'm equally okay with Roy going on to create yet another world on the scale of Habitat too; whatever this guy does, I'm going to follow him to it.

Concrete Park Vol. 2 R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Written by Tony Puryear and Erika Alexander
Art by Tony Puryear

When Tony Puryear and Erika Alexander's Concrete Park first debuted in Dark Horse Presents, I was immediately taken with their fascinating science fiction world.  On a distant planet, convicts are sent to work in subterranean mines, but a large group of freed and escaped cons have congregated in Scare City, dividing themselves into gangs that carefully protect their own borders.

We travelled into this world with Isaac, a new arrival from Earth whose transport ship crashes, with he and the man who killed his sister the only survivors.  New arrivals are a big deal on the planet (especially if they might be bringing food or other supplies with them), and we were quickly introduced to some of the major players on the planet or in the story, chief among them being Luca.

This second volume opens shortly after Isaac first meets Luca and her gang, just as they are beset upon by scavengers.  They make their way into the city, where the Potato King has made his move to seize territory from Luca.

There's a lot of chaos in this volume, which began life as a miniseries that was never concluded (I hate when publishers do that, and it makes me less likely to try out new minis) until the whole thing was collected in this second volume.  The story sprawls all over the place, as Isaac ends up in Las Cruces, where the gang leader employs some sort of magic, before finding himself in a gladiatorial arena, having to fight his sister's killer.

Along the way, we picked up subplots involving a race of natives indigenous to the planet, and a storyline involving food that grows there (apparently food is all imported, and shipments are decreasing). Then we get into the planet's gods, and things start to get really weird (while at least explaining the series's title).

There is a lot to like about this book, but I felt that as the story expanded in this volume, it really started to lose me.  I don't know if that's because Puryear and Alexander felt the need to accelerate their story due to low sales making a larger space less likely, or if this was always the plan, but it felt like a misstep to me.  Scare City is a fascinating place, and more time exploring it and getting to know some of its stranger denizens could only have made it better.

I like the way Puryear transfer LA gang culture to another planet, and weaves a variety of languages into the everyday English that's spoken on the streets.  It feels like a lot of thought and planning went into this series, and I would love to read a lot more of it; I just want to be able to follow the story in an organic way.

I don't know if there are further plans for more Concrete Park, but with the intensity of Puryear and Alexander's vision, and the figure-oriented beauty of Puryear's art, I'd be all over it.

Finder: Third World

by Carla Speed McNeil

I am a huge fan of Carla Speed McNeil's Finder, having come late to the title after Dark Horse published a couple of very handsome omnibus editions.  She's described her masterpiece as "indigenous science fiction", and that's very much on display in this graphic novel.

Third World follows her main character, Jaeger, through three loosely structured segments of story.  In the first, he's in Anvard, a gigantic domed city, working as a courier for a delivery company.  We follow him through a few of his odder jobs, including his helping an old woman find her way to her family.  The stories work well together to give us an idea of the depth of planning McNeil has put into this world.

The second story has Jaeger lost, for the first time, in an open environment town called Third World, among many other names.  In this place, he meets a few other Ascians (the nomadic people who adopted him), although they are not of his tribe.  This section addresses issues of indigenous land rights, artistic representation, and respect for burial rights.  It also gives us a dramatic look into Jaeger's role as a Sin-Eater among his people.

The final, shortest, section, has Jaeger turn up in Javecek, another domed city that is known for the sheer number of infectious diseases that inhabit it.  Here, Jaeger is exposed, and infected with a citizen's cancer, as a way of healing her.  The story ends with him being put in a difficult position by his employers.

McNeil's work is brilliant.  Her art is fantastic, and with this book being in colour (a Finder first), she is able to really expand on the depth of her world.  The copious explanatory notes at the back of the book really enhance the reading experience, as there is so much about this world that cannot be explained through the comics pages alone.

I did first read these stories in Dark Horse Presents when they were serialized, but reading them together in this format puts things in a different light.  First, I was a little surprised to see that there wasn't really a clear narrative through this whole book.  I also felt the ending was more unsettled than I would have liked, but knowing that there are new stories coming out in DHP right now helps rectify that.  The truth is that Finder is all about journeys, so in many ways, it makes sense that Jaeger's tale doesn't wrap up in easy segments.

I was going to wait for the next trade, but reading this makes me want to track down the new DHP issues (and reread the Omnibuses).

Hellboy: The Midnight Circus

Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Duncan Fegredo

There is often a paint-by-numbers quality to Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics.  In recent years, he's tried to stretch the character into new territory by killing him and dumping him in Hell, but the stories are much the same as they were before.  He's also started exploring Hellboy's earlier years a little more, and to me, that's been a more interesting and successful endeavour.

The Midnight Circus is a one-off hardcover graphic novel that came out in 2013 and features art by the amazing Duncan Fegredo.  The story is pretty straight-forward - young Hellboy sneaks out of the BPRD offices one night to try smoking, and ends up visiting a strange circus.

Mignola does not push this into any new directions.  The person running the circus is a demon or something, and is interested in testing the lad, while the woman with him wants to try to kill Hellboy, fearing his prophesied future.

While the story is nothing special, the art is very nice.  Fegredo is always good, and colourist Dave Stewart really knows how to bring out his better qualities.  I like the way the colours help separate the circus-world scenes from the rest of the book.

This is a very quick read, but it's still a decent comic.

Two Brothers

by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, based on the work of Milton Hatoum

Brazilian cartoonists Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá are two of my favourite people working in comics.  Their work with writers like Matt Fraction, Joss Whedon, Gerard Way, and Mike Mignola has always impressed me, and their Daytripper is one of my favourite series of all time.  I was very excited to get my hands on this new graphic novel, Two Brothers, based on a novel by the Brazilian writer Milton Hatoum.

This book tells the story of a Lebanese family that lived in Manaus, Brazil, after the Second World War.  Halim and Zana have three children: their daughter Rânia, and twin sons, Omar and Yakub.  They live with Domingas, an indigenous orphan they took in to work as a servant, and eventually, with her son Nael, who is the narrator of this book.

The two sons started fighting at an early age, and when Yakub made a move on a girl that both boys were interested in, Omar slashed his face, scarring him forever.  After this, Halim contrived to send Yakub to live and attend school in Lebanon.  It was supposed to be both boys who left, but Zana always favoured Omar, and kept him at home.

This made the rifts in the family unbridgeable, and after he returned to Brazil, Yakub stayed distant, and the conflict between the brothers continued to grow.  We follow this family over decades, as everyone except Omar, who remained a perpetual and unrepentant adolescent, grows older and settles into the lives that their choices have afforded them.

Moon and Bá do an amazing job of capturing the drama within this family, as well as the group's shifting fortunes.  We see a grand family decay much as the house around them does, just as the country goes through a series of repressive coups and militaristic crackdowns.  Floating slums are demolished, as are Zana's dreams for her children, especially her beloved caçula (youngest son).

Having not read Hatoum's novel, I have no idea how closely the brothers chose to stick to his plot, or if they restructured the story.  I am, as always, impressed by the way they seamlessly work together to craft a deeply affecting and moving story.

It's hard, when reading this book, to not wonder at the conversations the twin creators must have had, as twin brothers telling a story about twin brothers.  Where Bá and Moon collaborate constantly, Omar and Yakub cannot even be in the same room without resorting to violence, and that makes me wonder how many old arguments were dredged up in the crafting of this book.

I'm tempted to seek out a copy of Hatoum's novel, just to see how much of themselves Bá and Moon put into their adaptation.  It would also give me a good excuse to reread this book, which I'm tempted to do even though I just finished it.

Grendel: Devil's Legacy

Written by Matt Wagner
Art by Arnold Pander, Jacob Pander, Jay Geldhof, and Rich Rankin

I really wish I'd taken the time to track down issues of Grendel and read the classic series in order years ago.  Instead, my approach has always been piecemeal - an issue here, an issue there, and I extended that into my reading of the trades.  At this point, I know I've read way more than I haven't, so I don't see the need to invest in the omnibi that Dark Horse has released, although it would be nice to revisit the series in chronological order.

Devil's Legacy first ran in the first twelve issues of the Grendel series at Comico starting in 1986, and followed up on the first Grendel story, featuring Hunter Rose, that appeared in Mage before that.

Legacy is the story of Christine Spar, the daughter of Hunter Rose's adopted daughter, Stacy Palumbo.  When this book opens, Christine is a reporter, living with her young son Anson in Manhattan.  They, with Spar's friend Regina, attend a kabuki theatre presentation, and meet the show's star, Tujiro, who comes off as kind of creepy.  We see him snatch a hair off of Anson's head.  Later, the boy gets up in the night and walks off, meeting one of Tujiro's associates, and he's never seen again.

Spar, of course, reacts badly to this, but begins to piece together that this kind of thing often happens in the wake of Tujiro's appearances.  She steals Hunter Rose's mask and fork, and flies off to San Francisco to try to track down the killer.  We get to watch as she takes on the guise of Grendel, and it begins to affect her sense of self.  We also learn that Tujiro is not human.

There's a lot more going on with this story though, as the old conflict between Grendel and Argent, the werewolf figure that runs the police in New York, rears its head again.

Wagner's always been a great writer, and I feel like this is where he began to hit his stride.  He fills this book with strong character work, as we get to know Christine, her friend Regina, and meet Brian Li Sung, a stage manager who falls into Christine's orbit.  The depth of their emotions for one another, considering the rather short timeframe of this story, do ring false from time to time, but I like how Wagner uses their relationship to set up the next chapter in Grendel's history.

This series was drawn by the Pander Brothers, and mostly inked by Jay Geldhof.  The Panders are a bit of an acquired taste, especially since I can't think of another book that is more visually tied to the 80s than this one.  All the characters, men and women alike, have massive shoulders that could only be caused by excessive padding, and the general design of the clothing just screams out that this is what people in the 80s thought that the future would look like.

It works for this series, bringing to mind the fashion drawings of that timeframe, but it does not always make for pretty comics, especially when the Panders are inking their own work.  Still, this is a solid comic, and I'm a bit surprised that I'd never read such a seminal chapter of the Grendel chronicles.

Smoke/Ashes

Written by Alex De Campi
Art by Igor Kordey, Milton, Felipe Sobreiro, Carla Speed McNeil, Richard Pace, Dan McDaid, Mack Chatter, Colleen Doran, Bill Sienkiewicz, Alice Duke, Alem Curin, Jesse Hamm, James Smith, and RM Guéra

In 2013, Dark Horse published Smoke and Ashes in one volume, a nicely designed and chunky hunk of comics that has given me a lot of pleasure this week.  The two stories, both written by Alex De Campi, were separated by about seven years in their publication, with the second being the sequel to the first.

I decided it would be best to discuss each story separately, and to take a bit of a break between reading the two stories.

Smoke

I'd meant to pick this story up a number of times over the years, but I never saw more than the first issue, and didn't want to get swept up in a story I wouldn't be able to finish.  I'm glad I waited, as this was a very satisfying reading experience.

The story is set in a slightly into the future London (which, coincidentally, is more or less now, but would have been the future when De Campi wrote the story).  England is just about completely broke, and the IMF is poised to put their own measures in place to fix things.  A man named Lauderdale, who has the ear of the buffoonish Prime Minister, has a plan to fix things, and to profit for himself in the process.

His plot involves the kidnapping of the President of OPEC by an unwitting group of militant overweight people who want to use him as a bargaining chip in their quest for free plastic surgery in Argentina.  While the President is out of pocket, the plan is for OPEC to place England under a fuel embargo, which the government will be able to use to make a fortune on the futures market.

There are a couple of people who might be able to stop Lauderdale's plan, so he has them assassinated by a pair of freelancers who work for the government.  What he doesn't know is that one of his two targets is a close friend to Rupert Cain, the albino assassin he sent after the other target.  When Cain figures out what's happened, he makes it his business to avenge his friend.  Along the way, a journalist, Katie Shah, ends up working with him, at great personal expense.

The story is complicated, and I haven't mentioned the inclusion of a reporter who is covering the whole thing, the shadowy cabal that has been running England since the Second World War, nor the complicated relationship between Cain and his friend's daughter.  De Campi really packs a lot into the hundred and sixty pages that make up this story.

Things never feel complicated though, and Igor Kordey does a great job of helping keep things straight.  I've been a big fan of Kordey's work for a long time now (if all you've ever seen of his stuff is his New X-Men, you need to look at the rest of his body of work), so I really liked seeing what he did here.  Some of the action sequences, like the one where a group of killers try to take Cain out at a train station from the opposite platform, are incredibly impressive.

Ashes

Ashes is a very different beast than Smoke.  There was some sort of controversy about it involving Kickstarter and a falling out with the first artist De Campi worked with, but I don't remember what that was all about, and don't really see it as relevant to discussing the book.

It opens a few years after the events of Smoke.  London is not in great shape, but Katie Shah is even worse off.  After her involvement in the previous story, she's been effectively blacklisted in the field of journalism, and she's taken to drinking and sleeping with awful men.

In America, the body of No Face, the cyborg assassin from Smoke, is inadvertently given access to the Internet, and he transfers his consciousness just about everywhere.  All No Face wants is to get back at Rupert Cain, and when Katie calls him on a cellphone, Cain is back on the grid.

In surveillance-mad London, there is really nowhere to hide, so Cain and Shah go on the run, leaning on an old military connection of Cain's for help.  As the story progresses, we learn that Cain had a connection to No Face from one of his first missions.  We also learn, once again, that the people in charge of the world are pretty terrible.

This story felt less focused than Smoke, as De Campi develops characters in minor roles, like the pregnant widow of the first soldier killed by No Face.  She also builds up some interesting ideas, such as stem cell-grown pork farms that don't have any animals, which are tangential to the story at best.

This story was drawn by a very large number of talented artists.  It was cool to see an up-and-comer like Dan McDaid working alongside artists like RM Guera, Colleen Doran, Bill Sienkiewicz, and the fantastic Carla Speed McNeil (who has a series with De Campi coming at Image).  The transitions between artists could be jarring at times, but overall, this is a lovely book.

De Campi has not written a lot, but hers is a name that I'm seeing more and more often, from her upcoming Image work to her Grindhouse series at Dark Horse.  She's definitely a very talented writer, and I'm glad I've finally gotten around to reading her seminal work.

Sin Titulo

by Cameron Stewart

When I think of Cameron Stewart, I think of books like Seaguy, Catwoman, and now Batgirl.  He's someone I equate with more cartoony, fun comics.  He's not someone that I would immediately think of as the person to create so surreal and compelling a book as Sin Titulo, his webseries that Dark Horse published in a single, beautiful, volume.

Alex Mackay is an underachieving fact checker for a magazine company who falls down a particularly strange rabbit hole.  He makes a visit to his grandfather's rest home, only to discover that his grandfather had passed a month before.  When picking up his effects, he finds a photo of the old guy with a beautiful young woman he's never seen before.  When he asks about the woman's identity, the staff behaves strangely, and make off with the picture.  While waiting for answers, he stumbles across the sadistic and abusive behaviour of one of the orderlies.

From here, things just keep getting stranger for Alex.  He follows the orderly when he gets off work, and that leads him to an odd building, where he bluffs his way past the front desk to find himself in a room with a desk and a video phone, and the woman from the photo looking back at him.  As things continue to get weirder, Alex becomes more obsessed with things, losing his job and his girl over his behaviour (not to mention his car).

Throughout the book, Alex experiences dreams about a tree on a beach, sometimes with a person sitting under it (hence the cover).  It's difficult to explain this part without giving away some pretty big stuff, but the book really becomes interesting once Alex meets a painter who has been having the same dream, and painting the same image over and over again.

Stewart captures perfectly the Kafkaesque quality of this story, as Alex never quite questions his sanity, despite the fact that everyone around him is treating him like a crazy person (and he's wanted for killing two police officers).  The internal logic of this story keeps things moving quite well, and Stewart really takes the time to flesh out Alex's character, showing us scenes from his childhood and from an office party that help to colour who he really is, even though they aren't completely necessary to the story.

The story is told in pages of eight panels, which fit quite tightly on these sideways pages.  That helps add to the claustrophobic feeling of the story, until a key page towards the end when Stewart uses the whole page to stunning effect.  The book ends with a fight scene that could only be done in comics, the logistics of which must have been very difficult to plan.

In all, this is a very satisfying read.  It's given me reason to look at Stewart's other work from a different perspective, and I hope to see him doing something so psychological again soon.

Grandville Bête Noire

by Bryan Talbot

Bryan Talbot's Grandville stories are always a delight, and the third in the series, Bête Noir, is no exception.

These large graphic albums could have easily gone off the rails, buried under the weight of Tablot's central concept, but instead, these books are very well realized, gripping and beautiful adventure stories.

In the world of Grandville, Paris is the most important city in the world.  It has recently shaken off Napoleonic control, and is moving towards democracy.  England has been independent of French control for only about twenty years.  Talking animals are the ruling class, while humans (not so affectionately called 'doughfaces') make up a servant underclass, although they are beginning to advocate for their rights.  Oh, Talbot has embraced 'steampunk' ideals in designing this world.

Into this mix, we get the machinations of Baron Krapaud, an immensely rich toad, who would like very much to see democracy not gain a foothold in Paris.  He has a plan involving discrediting representational fine arts in favour of the abstract, and in placing automaton soldiers throughout the city to do his bidding.  I know that those two things don't really go together, but Talbot makes it all make sense, rather wonderfully.

Inspector LeBrock, our usual hero, gets involved when a French detective comes to him for help in solving a closed-door mystery, the murder of an artist set to design an important mural.  LeBrock and his associate, Roderick, make their way to Grandville, and waste little time in getting involved in the intrigue.

Talbot pays homage to James Bond films in this volume, as well as to the Wind in the Willows, through his choice of villain.  I enjoyed the depth of thought put into this book, as well as Talbot's always amazing artwork.  For such a short book, Talbot packs in a lot of information, and character development, by way of finally giving us a closer look at LeBrock's past, as he and the high-class prostitute Billie.  Talbot sets up the next volume (presumably) by letting us know that his greatest enemy is about to be released from prison.

I cannot recommend this book, and this series in general, enough.  It is a very solid read.

Concrete Park Vol. 1: You Send Me

Written by Tony Puryear and Erika Alexander
Art by Tony Puryear

I first read Concrete Park when it appeared in the 80-page run of Dark Horse Presents, and I was immediately impressed by what I saw.  Tony Puryear and his collaborators Erika Alexander and Robert Alexander (who is given a co-creator credit) have put together a very complete and interesting science fiction story, and each eight-page story only scratched the surface of the depth of planning and intent conveyed on each page.  It also left me wanting more, and kept me buying the anthology for longer than I'd intended.

Concrete Park was recently given its own limited series, although unfortunately that's been stealth-canceled by Dark Horse, with the last two issues to be printed as part of the second hardcover.  Just days before learning that, I'd picked up this first volume because I wanted to read these chapters again, and was curious to see how the story played out in a different format, with everything read together.

Basically, Concrete Park is about a whole bunch of people who were sent to a prison mining colony planet, who either escaped from custody, or were released on the surface, where they coalesced into Scare City, a gang-dominated warren of homes and businesses.  There are two main characters, so far as the reader is concerned.  Isaac was a gang-banger whose actions got his little sister killed.  We journey with him to the planet, where his prison 'bus' crashes on the surface.  Luca is the leader of the M-80s, a female gang.  Her territory has been targeted by other gang leaders, and when we meet her, she is in the middle of being set up by an ally.

Over the course of this short book, Puryear and company introduce a number of other interesting characters, like Monkfish the shape changer, and Silas, a gang leader who is really an alien.  The complexity of Scare City and its various factions is pretty fascinating, and Puryear's bold sense of graphic design and figure work really makes this book look nice.  His characters are all visually distinct, while he captures perfectly the sun-drenched environment they live in.

There has been a real resurgence in terms of quality science fiction comics over the last five years or so, and I would put this book among the best of them.  Puryear has developed and extensive vocabulary for his world, often blending Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and other languages to come up with a vibrant slang argot.  Everything about this comic feels like it was considered carefully and has a purpose.

I'm not happy that the second volume had its plans shifted, but having read this book in this format, I know I'm not going to complain when I pick up the second volume and get to read through it in one sitting.