The People Inside

by Ray Fawkes

Ray Fawkes is an interesting, very multi-faceted comics professional.  Over the last bunch of years, he's become a much more recognized name, writing for Batman Eternal, Justice League Dark, Constantine, and the excellent Gotham by Midnight.  He also co-wrote the terrible Wolverines though.

Outside of that, he's built a following for his children's comic Possessions, and has put together some very artsy, very strange books like Intersect, The Spectral Engine, and the incredible One Soul.

The People Inside is a stylistic follow-up to that endeavour.  Where that book focused on individual lives, from birth to death, this one looks at relationships.  Each double-page spread follows twenty-four people.  Most of these people are paired up with one another, creating at most a six-panel grid on the page, but as partners separate, their panel splits into two smaller ones.  When a character dies, their panel goes black and stays that way through the rest of the book.  The position of each character's panel never changes, although at one point, two people meet and begin a relationship together, and their panels merge.

Fawkes uses a very minimalist style in this book.  His simple pencils tell just enough information to get a sense of what's going on, and he blends dialogue with stream of consciousness inner monologue, so it's often impossible to tell if we are hearing a character's words or their thoughts.  It's very effective, although at times, I found it hard to keep track of who was who, and would sometimes have to flip back a few pages to remind myself which story was happening in which panel.

Fawkes includes a fair amount of sexual diversity in this book, featuring straight, gay, and bi couples.  We also see reflected in this book the full gamut of relationships, from one that is incredibly happy and rewarding, to one that is so abusive that one partner ends up in prison.  A couple of the characters never really find someone for themselves, although I kept expecting them to hook up.

While this book is very beautiful, it's also a little cynical.  More than the average number of people end up killing themselves here, and very few of these relationships end up being fruitful in the long term.

This is definitely an important book though, and works nicely as a companion to One Soul.  I'd like to see more like this from Fawkes in the future - not necessarily in this format, but with this level of inventiveness.

Showa: A History of Japan 1926-1939

by Shigeru Mizuki

I really don't know a lot about Japanese history, and since I liked Shigeru Mizuki's Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, his account of his own involvement in the Second World War, I thought it would be interesting to read his broader take on the country's history.

Showa is a multi-volume look into the era that began when Emperor Hirohito took the throne.  This also coincided, roughly, with Mizuki's birth.  The first volume of this series covers the start of the era through to the Second World War, and this was a time of great turmoil throughout Japan.

A devastating earthquake created economic instability, which was made worse by the Great Depression.  Following that, a number of 'incidents' in China, and a shocking level of independence in the military, plunged Japan into many years of militaristic expansion into other countries, notably Korea and China.

The larger history of the country is told a variety of ways.  We get straight narration, we sit in on discussions among regular men on the street, and are directly told what's going on by Nezumi Otoko, a magical character from Mizuki's other work.  These sections of the book are interesting, but often became a string of names and faces to me.

Of more interest were the sections that juxtaposed Mizuki's own life with the events of the time.  We see young Shigeru move from being a small child through to his early adulthood.  This provides some context to the larger events, and remind us that at every point of history where major events have happened, there have been people just going about their day.

This is a hugely ambitious project from a much-loved cartoonist who sadly passed away this year.  I look forward to reading the rest of this.

Ciudad

Written by Ande Parks
From a story by Ande Parks, Joe Russo, and Anthony Russo
Art by Fernando León González

Oni Press consistently puts out some very beautifully-designed and well-written hardcover graphic novels.  Seeing that this was published by them (and was clearly not a kids or YA-oriented book) was enough to get me to want to glance through it.  Recognizing Ande Park's name on the cover, the writer of the excellent Capote in Kansas, was enough to make me want to buy it.

Ciudad is a story about an American mercenary who is hired to rescue a Brazilian drug lord's daughter from kidnappers.  They have taken her to Ciudad del Este, the Paraguayan border town known for its open border and access to just about any kind of trade you can imagine.  The American, who goes by many names, gets her out of captivity in the first few pages of the book (the backstory is filled in as we go), and together they find themselves running a gauntlet of shady people, from police, the drug lord's people, and others who want them dead or at their disposal.

The Russo brothers, who came up with the story alongside Parks, are filmmakers, and that blockbuster energy is clear on just about every page of this book.  Like many comics, I feel like this might have been made as a prelude to trying to make a movie, and so things rarely slow down for more than a page at a time.  Parks paces the story well.

The art, by Fernando León González, is nice but a little stiff.  Too many of the action sequences became confusing, when González had to fit multiple vehicles or people into panels that are a little too small.  His work is fine, but something more dynamic might have helped propel the story better.

Still, if you're looking for a solid adventure read, you will be happy with this fine graphic novel.

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.

Fairest In All The Land

Written by Bill Willingham
Art by Chrissie Zullo, Karl Kerschl, Renae De Liz, Ray Dillon, Fiona Meng, Mark Buckingham, Phil Noto, Meghan Hetrick, Russ Braun, Tony Akins, Gene Ha, Tula Lotay, Marley Zarcone, Ming Doyle, Chris Sprouse, Karl Story, Nimit Malavia, Dean Ormston, Kurt Huggins, Adam Hughes, Al Davison, Shawn McManus, Inaki Miranda, and Kevin Maguire

I'd gotten pretty bored of Fables and its related properties, but with this hardcover, featuring work by a number of fantastic artists, but telling one complete story from beginning to end, my appreciation of Bill Willingham's work with these characters was restored.

Fairest: In All the Land is a terrific murder mystery that begins in the lost Business Office, and is narrated by the Magic Mirror.  Our narrator is also a participant in the story, as he realizes that a visitor has come into the office, a space that has been set dimensionally adrift, and has been cut off from the other Fables for a long time.  Shortly after this, beautiful Fables, starting with Rose Red, are being murdered.  A list of intended victims is found, and Cinderella is pressed into solving the murders.

Cindy's skills lean more towards espionage than detective work, and so it takes her a while to figure things out.  The Mirror has an idea of what's going on, but isn't able to communicate with anyone, trapped as he is.

This story ranges across the history of Fabletown, and involves a number of supporting characters showing up for a bit to play their part.  I'm not sure that someone new to Fables would get a lot out of this, but for a long-time, lapsed, reader, it was a treat.

Willingham was assisted by a remarkable list of artists.  I'm not sure what I found more exciting - to see up and comers like Tula Lotay, Ming Doyle, and Marley Zarcone represented, or to see actual interiors by Adam Hughes.  There are a few artists here who are unfamiliar to me, which is also pretty exciting, as the art is consistently great throughout this book.

Having finished this, the only Fables left for me to read is the last volume; I'm going to have to get around to that some time soon.

We Can Never Go Home

Written by Matthew Rosenberg and Patrick Kindlow
Art by Josh Hood and Brian Level

Black Mask has done it again with this excellent collection of We Can Never Go Home, a miniseries that was sold out long before it found its way onto my radar.

Madison is a very unique high school student.  In addition to being a straight-A student and the only Asian girl in her community, she has various abilities that kick in when she is stressed out.  Duncan is a typical misfit who likes to play with guns and doesn't have any friends.  He claims that he also has abilities - he killed his mother with his mind, but has not used these powers since.

The two teenagers get to know each other after Duncan interrupts Madison's boyfriend from getting a little too grabby at a popular makeout spot.  They sort of become friends, and when Madison rescues Duncan from a beat-down by his father, they have no choice but to go on the run together.

As the story unfolds, they attempt to rob a local drug dealer, and end up committing a murder.  Now, they are being pursued by the FBI (who already appear to know about Maddie's powers) and by the drug lord they robbed, who also has powered individuals in his employ.

The story, as written by Rosenberg and Kindlow, is very strong in terms of character development and their relationship with one another.  Both characters feel real, as do their reactions to things.  It's interesting to watch them get closer to each other.  The art, by Hood and Level, is pretty good, in a standard indie kind of way.  It definitely told the story well, and sometimes used some very interesting layout designs.  The general design of this book is phenomenal.

I've decided that it's past time to pay a lot more attention to everything that Black Mask puts out; they've definitely come out of nowhere to be a major company to keep an eye on.

Space Riders Vol. 1

Written by Fabian Rangel Jr.
Art by Alexis Ziritt

Basically, Space Riders is everything I'd hoped that the recent Dynamite version of Jack Kirby's Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers was going to be.  Fabian Rangel Jr. and Alexis Ziritt have channelled Kirby during a particularly productive ayahuasca session, and have come up with this wonderful comic.

The Space Riders are a strange trio who fly around the galaxy in their skull-shaped space ship, looking to dispense justice as it's needed.  The leader of the trio, Capitan Peligro has just returned to the service, and has to prove himself after a disgrace a year before.  He's joined by Mono, an alien mandrill, and Yara, a robot.

As they go about their psychedelic adventures, they rescue a space whale, fight a large group of robots, and end up squaring off against Hammerhead, the Capitan's former best friend who betrayed him and plucked out his eye.

On one level, this is pretty standard space comics stuff, with more than a little flavouring from Joe Casey's Gødland, but Ziritt's fantastically crazy art really elevates the material.  Many of these cosmic style books get boring quickly, but that's not an issue here at all.  This is another example of how Black Mask Comics are sometimes hitting it out of the park with their more unconventional titles.

Sullivan's Sluggers

Written by Mark Andrew Smith
Art by James Stokoe

Sullivan's Sluggers is a very enjoyable oversized graphic novel, with amazing artwork by James Stokoe.  I'd like to focus on that in writing about it, but it's important to point out that this book became the poster child for caution when dealing with Kickstarter, and that writer and owner Mark Andrew Smith really did not make himself a lot of friends while preparing this book.  I don't want to go into it here - you can google it and learn the whole thing, I'm sure.

The book, read outside of the context of its production woes, is very good.  The Sluggers are a team of washed-up baseball players (and one plucky rookie) who travel from town to town to play in exhibition games.  They are  a rough bunch.  Their coach has rage issues, and most of them drink or do drugs.

They accept a job in the town of Malice, and all is going well until the sun sets, and we learn that everyone in town turns into gigantic monsters that like to eat people.  From there, we fall pretty quickly into Walking Dead territory, only with massive monsters.  There is a backstory to the town, and that keeps the story interesting.

What makes this book so great is Stokoe's art.  That would come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his work, but there are still many pages that impressed me (to say nothing of the fold-out page).  He's the reason why I wanted to read this book, although I did like the story, and really enjoyed the high-quality production values.

Meteor Men

Written by Jeff Parker
Art by Sandy Jarrell

I assumed that it was very likely that I would enjoy a graphic novel written by Jeff Parker, but I still came away from Meteor Men pleasantly surprised.

This OGN, beautifully illlustrated by Sandy Jarrell and coloured by Kevin Volo, is mostly set on a farm outside of a fair-sized town.  Alden Baylor is the teenage owner of the farm, inheriting it after his parents died.  He lives there with his uncle, and sometimes his uncle's friend (I like how Parker never quite nailed down the specifics of the relationship there), who is also an astronomer.

The book opens on the night that a comet is set to pass over the town, and Alden has invited anyone who wants to to sit out on his property to watch the show.  Everyone is a little surprised to see larger meteors crossing the night sky, and are even more surprised when one lands on the property.  It looks like a hollow shell that has split open.

Soon, Alden starts to see a strange-looking humanoid figure on his property, at the same time that we learn that hundreds of these meteors made it to Earth.  Eventually, as things get weirder, Alden, the adults around him, and the entire world realize that they have been visited by creatures from another world, although Alden sees their intent differently from the military or world leaders.

Parker has created an interesting character in Alden.  He's wise beyond his years, and a very capable teenager, but also very much a regular kid.  As things get stranger around him, his vision might be the only thing that can save people.

I liked this book a lot.  Jarrell's art, mixed with Volo's colours, looks terrific.  This book feels very much like a collaboration between people who have been working together for a long time, and much like Parker's series Underground, the story keeps you enchanted throughout.  This book didn't get a lot of press when it came out, but it deserves more recognition.

Richard Stark's Parker Book Four: Slayground

Written by Donald Westlake
Adapted by Darwyn Cooke

The latest of Darwyn Cooke's Parker books, Slayground, is immediately gripping, but is also the slightest entry in the series so far.

Parker, the master criminal, has participated in the heist of an armoured car in Buffalo in winter, but things went bad when his driver ended up flipping their getaway car.  Hurt, Parker runs with the loot, and takes shelter in Fun Island, an amusement park that has been closed for the winter.

He hasn't gotten into the place unobserved though, as a pair of crooked cops and their criminal accomplices see him get into grounds of the park, and more importantly, see him with a large bag of cash.  Once they learn about the heist, they decide to go in to Funland and help themselves to Parker's score.

Parker has some time to prepare for them though, and we sit back and watch him go about his business.

This set-up gives Cooke a lot of opportunity to do some cool things with the visuals in this book.  There is a fold-out map of Funland, and Cooke uses a number of interesting layouts, as Parker runs around setting up traps.

Cooke's retro-stylings always make his Parker books a treat.  We really don't know Parker as a character (and I have no reason to believe you learn more about him from reading Westlake's original novels), but he works well as a cipher in these kinds of situations.

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.

Escapo

by Paul Pope

Paul Pope is not a very prolific cartoonist, and I find that there are often more older pieces by him that I wasn't aware of that keep resurfacing or showing up almost at random.  Escapo, the 2014 book published by Z2, collects two short stories from the 90s, and gives them the deluxe treatment, with colours by Shay Plummer, in a nice hardcover volume.

Escapo is an escape artist who works in a travelling circus.  He has feelings for an acrobat, has a bit of a facial deformity or wound, and some self-doubt.

In one story, he tries to get with the acrobat, and in the other, he ends up making a deal with the devil when it looks like he might not be able to escape from a water-filled deathtrap.

There's not a lot of story here, but there is a great deal of big, exciting Paul Pope pages, and that's what I bought this book for.  Pope is a dynamic and exciting cartoonist, and this is a very cool looking book.  I'm not sure it would be worth the cover price of $25, but I paid less than half of that, so it's all good.

I do wish we would see more work from this amazing artist.

Doomsday.1

by John Byrne

Like any comics reader about my age, I have been a big fan of John Bryne's work over the years, although that has not always translated into my enjoying his more current work.

Doomsday.1 was a four-issue miniseries published by IDW a few years ago.  It stars a group who were on the International Space Station when a massive solar flare erupted, sending a ball of plasma larger than the Earth crashing into our home, burning and destroying much of the planet.  Our main characters managed to avoid the destruction, and make their way to the planet, where they spend the rest of the series trying to put together a new life.

The concept is a good one, and Byrne has taken some pains to try to keep his story within the confines of what would have most likely happened, but he's chosen to structure the story rather strangely.  Each issue after the first one features the dwindling group of survivors through some episodic adventures.

In Texas, they come across some prisoners who have taken over a penitentiary.  In New York, they find rats and badly burned people.  In Brazil, they find a wild tribe of indigenous people, who are being led by an English-speaking Dutchman.  This issue is pretty unfortunate on a whole lot of levels, the most egregious being the overly stereotypical portrayal of the tribe.

I wonder if Byrne had perhaps intended for this to be a much longer-running series, and then just decided to focus on a few chapters, but the jumping forward in time, and the way in which characters are introduced and then abandoned (like the Cuban kid the group rescued in Miami and took with them to New York, who was never seen again).  There is little in the way of sustained character development, although I did like the fact that Richard Branson was used as a model for one character.

This is not Byrne at his best.  His Cold War series at IDW was a better read, but there is something that I will always find comforting about reading pages of his art.  He still draws the most recognizable rubble in comics.

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.

Troop 142

by Mike Dawson

Troop 142, Mike Dawson's graphic novel about a week at Scout camp in 1995, brought back some serious memories.

This book, which was originally published as a webcomic I believe, takes us through the entire week at camp, and while it is narrated by one of the fathers accompanying the boys, we get inside many of their heads and see the experience in a multi-faceted way.

I had my own experiences with the Boy Scouts through the 80s and early 90s, and while there are some differences, there was a lot of stuff in this book that I could relate to, and memories came flooding back as I read it.  The terrible campfire songs, and the endlessly corny skits; the smell of the canvas-covered wooden platforms that we slept in, and the senior leader (in this case, an old white man who goes by Big Bear) whose sense of privilege and morality gives him permission to drone on about character at every opportunity.

More at the heart of this book is the casual cruelty of the boys towards one another.  They jockey endlessly for position, turning on friends, and making life miserable for the boys that they have decided they don't like, such as Chuck, the son of one of the leaders and the camp pariah.  Dawson also captures the weird line between homoeroticism and homophobia that is rampant at these gatherings.  Some of these scenes get pretty awkward, especially when Dawson hints at a relationship growing between two of the youngest boys, but never makes it clear what happened between them.  And, of course, at the end of the week, Big Bear turns one of his morality speeches into a rant against gay Scoutmasters, but no one sees a problem with the troop playing with a carved wooden dildo the next morning.

Even more subtle is the way that Dawson manages to show that no one is enjoying themselves at camp.  This matches a lot of my memories, where the fun is only to be had in retrospect; too much of the time, you are focused on feeling dirty, uncomfortable, exhausted, and frequently unsafe.

The whole Boy Scout thing is a unique experience for boys (and now girls, although that would necessitate some big changes in terms of the shared latrines and showers) and one which I think is on the wane, at least where I live.  Dawson manages to tell a good story and preserve a unique North American experience.  This is a very good book.