The Bunker #1

Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov
Art by Joe Infurnari

My strong dislike of webcomics developed an exception when I learned that Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin were publishing their wonderful Private Eye on-line only, and now this week, Joshua Hale Fialkov and Joe Infurnari were also able to convince me to purchase a digital file with the first chapter of their new series The Bunker.

I've been a fan of Fialkov's since I read the wonderful Tumor (which was also originally published as a webcomic), a became more fervent in my admiration of him after I read his brilliant Echoes and the very good Elk's Run.  His DC and Marvel stuff have not impressed me to the same degree, but I suppose that's to be expected.  With The Bunker, he feels like he's back at his fighting weight.

This book opens with a group of young people deciding to plant a time capsule as a way of celebrating their friendship and the fact that life is taking them in different directions.  Not all of them are into it though, and it becomes clear that while these are close friends, they are not above taking the piss out of one another.

While digging, they uncover a strange underground bunker with all of their names printed on the outside but for one.  Luckily, one of the characters makes the obvious reference to Lost herself, so the reader doesn't have to keep thinking it (that show has forever monopolized the old trope of finding a buried bunker in the middle of nowhere it seems - especially if it has a submarine-style hatch).  Inside the bunker are notes from their future selves, which depict a very bleak vision of where the world is headed, and explaining that most of the group are responsible for it.  One person doesn't have his name anywhere, nor does he get a note, but the reason why is pivotal to the issue.

Fialkov is setting up a pretty interesting story, with the suggestion that as bad as things get in the future, if the friends don't go about creating the things that got it that way, it's only going to get worse.  After reading these thirty-odd pages, it's hard to predict where this book is going to go.

Inurnari's art is suited to Fialkov's writing, just as his usual independent collaborator Noel Tuazon's is.  Both artists are a little scratchy and loose, and Infurnari does a great job of suggesting what the different friend's personalities are like just based on their appearance and facial expressions.

At just $2 a download, I highly recommend heading over to the Bunker website and getting this for yourself.  It's pretty good stuff.

Optic Nerve #13

by Adrian Tomine

It's always cause to celebrate when a creator like Adrian Tomine comes out with a new book, and even more so when he continues to release his material in the single-issue format.

This issue of Optic Nerve contains two short stories inside of it, and another short strip of Tomine being an artistic Luddite making up the cover (no wasted space here).

The first story, 'Go Owls' is a wonderful study of an abusive relationship.  A man meets a woman at a twelve step program, and the two of them hook up.  At first, the guy is loving and supportive, but over time, Tomine's portrayal of him changes to show that he's really a bit of a creep.  This guy is demanding and belittling, and also pretty weird in his pursuit of 'his sexy stuff', but the woman has nowhere to go, and so she stays with him.  It's not as bleak as it sounds though - there are some genuinely funny moments, and the ending is downright awesome.

The second story, 'Translated, from the Japanese' is beautiful.  It's narrated by a young mother who is returning to America with her daughter after a sojourn in Japan.  Each panel is either architectural in subject, or an extreme closeup of the things around the narrator.  None of the main characters are actually shown.  Most of the story takes place on the flight to California, where a Japanese professor befriends and entertains the young girl.  A flight attendant mistakes the trio for a family.  Upon landing, it becomes clear that the woman's nuclear family is going through a bit of a crisis.

These stories show Tomine at his best.  His pieces are literary and original, and show insight into the human condition.  His art is top notch, and the only thing I have to complain about this book is that it's probably going to be another year before we see any new work from him.  I cannot recommend this book enough.

Abandon the Old in Tokyo

by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

I'm not sure I was prepared for the utter bleakness of the stories collected in Abandon the Old in Tokyo.  I've read a few of Tatsumi's books now, most notably A Drifting Life, but I still didn't expect that his work would be quite this dark.

Tatsumi uses these stories, which originally saw publication in the 1970s, to explore the growing sense of isolation in Tokyo's cities, and the pressures placed on young men to be successful and happy.  His protagonists usually look the same in each story, giving the impression that we are seeing the same poor sap again and again.  His protagonists are also often silent or men of very few words; they allow others to shape their existences, be they demanding fiancés, infirm parents, creditors, or unfriendly editors.  Again and again we see these poor guys get beaten down, until they make some questionable life choices.

The most disturbing story in this book is 'The Hole', in which our protagonist is tricked into falling into a hole on a mountain, where a woman with a burned face and chest holds him captive for reasons that are never made clear.  Things get really twisted when the man's wife shows up, but insists she will only help him if he gives up his plans to divorce her.

Often when reading manga, I feel a cultural disconnect with the characters.  That's not the case here, as Tatsumi focuses on the problems of the modern condition; in many ways, this work is as relevant in post-recession North America as it was in post-war Japan.  This is a disturbing book, but it has been made by a master of the art form, and for that reason, it is a worthy read.

Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre

Written by Amanda Conner and Darwyn Cooke
Art by Amanda Conner

Before I begin to discuss this comic, I feel it's important to first acknowledge some of the controversy that has surrounded the Before Watchmen project.  I did not support the notion of DC Comics making prequels to the Watchmen series, not so much because I view that book as a 'holy text' of modern comics, as I feel that DC did and continues to knowingly cheat original creators Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons out of their rightful ownership of the property.  To that end, I felt that making a bunch of prequel comics, against the express wishes of the original creators, to be shady business.  That is why I did not buy these comics when they came out, and have no intention of buying any of the trades that are currently being released.

That said, I love me some comics, and there are some very impressive writers and artists involved in the Before Watchmen project (and some I don't care for).  So, how to satisfy my curiosity about, say a four-issue mini-series written and drawn by Amanda Conner, while still sticking to my morals, such as they are?  I could take the book out from the library, but instead, I found a complete set of this comic in a used bookstore, and figured that my purchasing it does not count as a monetary vote in favour of the project.

Anyway, regardless of whether you think this is a comics universe that needs revisiting (and I think it isn't) or not, this is one hell of a good comic.  Conner's art is fantastic, and with Cooke's help, she writes a very good story.  The young Laurel Jane, who will grow up to be the second Silk Spectre, is chafing under her mother's parenting skills.  She's in her last year of high school, and wants nothing more than to make friends, land a boyfriend, and enjoy herself.  Instead, her mother has her studying constantly, and training to be a fighter.  In one scene, her mother dresses up as an intruder and tries to attack her in her own home.

Laurie runs away to San Francisco with the boy she likes, and they find themselves in the middle of the growing hippie and drug culture of the 60s.  They also manage to find themselves some trouble, as the Chairman (i.e., Frank Sinatra) is not happy with the anti-consumerism that has become so popular among young people, and with the help of a guy called Gurustein, begins pumping a particular brand of LSD into the market which leaves its users full of the urge to shop and consume.

Laurie deals with heartbreak, beautiful kung fu henchwomen, and the irritating thought that her mother might have manage to prepare her for the world.  Laurie and her boyfriend's character arcs are handled very well, and Conner excels at depicting the hallucinogenic time period.

One thing that surprised me about this series was the extent to which Conner took it into the 'mature readers' world.  I questioned the likelihood that a female high school student in 1966 would make a joke that revolved around male ejaculate being on a girl's face, and was also a little surprised by the amount of nudity in the book, simply because I'd expected DC to try to be able to market this to as wide an audience as possible.  Given the crassness of this book's genesis, I would have thought that marketing would have had a stronger say in the actual content of the book.

In the end, this is a very solid comic.  I didn't bother reading the Crimson Corsair back-up pages, as that strip appeared in a number of different titles, but I was otherwise impressed with this book.  Too bad I wouldn't buy a sequel...

Monsieur Pain

by Roberto Bolaño

I am a huge fan of Roberto Bolaño's writing, but am at the point where I've read all but a few of his novels.  That means I'm picking up some of his earliest written pieces, and of course they don't hold up against his greatest work, like 2666.  At the same time, it's enjoyable to see where Bolaño began as a writer, and to try to recognize his genesis.

Monsieur Pain is an odd little book.  It's basically about a mesmerist who lives in Paris just before the beginning of the Second World War.  M. Pain sometimes helps with the medical treatment of patients (it's never made clear how), and the widow of a former patient of his (who he is in love with) wants him to help a friend of her's.  The friend is the wife of the Peruvian poet César Vallejo, who is himself in hospital with what appears to be a terminal case of the hiccups (this and a fever are the only symptoms he is showing of some unknown malady).  Pain wants to help, but he is being pursued by a pair of young Spanish men, who wish to bribe him into staying away from the case.

Things get a lot less structured from there, as Pain gives in to his own paranoia, and begins wandering the city at night.  Bolaño introduces us to a few strange characters, such as the brothers who like to construct model disasters in the bottom of fish tanks, and a few odd situations, such as the night Pain spends sleeping in a bathtub in a deserted warehouse.  This book touches on the Spanish Civil War, Mme. Curie's daughter's suitor, and features a hospital designed in such a way that the corridors seem endless.

Bolaño's ideas are strange, but sadly, the book never quite comes to life until the reader arrives at the epilogue, which fills in what happened to a variety of characters after the book ends.  This is not one of Bolaño's best, but it was a diverting read nonetheless.

Like A Sniper Lining Up His Shot

by Jacques Tardi, from a story by Jean-Patrick Manchette

Jacques Tardi's comic adaptation of a novel by French crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette is very capably done, but it's a strange little story.  In a lot of ways, Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot reminds me a great deal of Matz and Jacamon's The Killer.  Both books involve a hitman looking to retire from the business and settle down with a nice woman, and in both cases, the killer is forced back into the life he's trying to leave behind.

In this book, Martin Terrier hopes to walk away from ten years spent as a soldier of fortune and a gun for hire, and to reconnect with the girl he left back home, from whom he'd exacted a promise to wait for him.  Terrier's a strange character.  He doesn't show any remorse for his victims, or for the people in his life who get drawn into his mess, when the family of a victim come after him.  Yet, when he sees something that shocks him late in the book, he loses his voice and the ability to speak for some time.  That rang false for me, and kind of impacted my enjoyment of the book.

The strength of this novel is Tardi's wonderful artwork.  His figures are great, but I most enjoyed his portrayal of France in the 70s, especially the cars.  So far as crime comics go, this is a pretty solid one, and I got into it pretty quickly.

The 'Nam Vol. 2

Written by Doug Murray
Art by Wayne Vansant, Michael Golden, John Severin, Geoff Isherwood, John Beatty, and Bob Camp

It's worth wondering how my reading and educational history might have changed had my twelve and thirteen year old self been wise enough to realize what a cool and special series Marvel's The 'Nam was when it was first being published.  Were a series like this being launched today, I would support it whole-heartedly and with great enthusiasm.

Still, kids are dumb, especially given that some of these comics were drawn by Michael Golden, whose Micronauts issues were among the ones I treasured the most.

Anyway, The 'Nam was structured to try to show how the Vietnam War worked in real time.  A month of history passed between each monthly issue, and efforts were made to align the events that the soldiers of the 23rd Infantry Division experienced in the comic with what happened in the actual war.  It's an interesting structure, causing characters to move in and out of the book as they are injured or they become 'short'.  At times it doesn't work - when an unpopular and possibly psychotic lieutenant meets an unexpected fate on the base, it's two months before that event is dealt with by the brass.  One would assume the reaction would have happened quicker.

This comic is not blind in its portrayal of the more questionable aspects of the war.  When our point of view character gets back home, he is surprised to see how the war is being portrayed and understood in the media and even by his own parents.  There's not a lot of time for politics however, as Murray prefers to focus on the tight relationships formed among the men.  Many issues lack strong narrative structure on their own, and instead work as vignettes in a war that lasted a long time.

The art in this book, which collects ten issues of the series, is superb.  Golden drew this with a much looser style than he was known for at the time, and Wayne Vansant, who drew the lion's share of issues, echoed his style quite well while maintaining his own approach.  John Severin drew an issue, which is alone enough of a reason to buy this book.

Reading this, I'm kind of surprised that we haven't seen a more modern attempt to do this same sort of comic, but set in Afghanistan or Iraq.  Enough time has passed that these stories are becoming more common on television and in movies, but with the exception of DC's short lived war comic corner of the New 52, we aren't seeing enough exploration of these conflicts...

Mind MGMT #13

by Matt Kindt

Matt Kindt's monthly series Mind MGMT has been a terrific, genre-defying read, and with this issue, he begins his third story arc.  This is a perfect place for new readers who have been curious about Mind MGMT to jump on board, or to sample the title, as the inside front cover contains a summary of sorts, which also helps establish the spirit of this comic.

We know that Henry Lyme has put together a group of ex-Mind MGMT agents, psychic spies and the like, to help counter the group being put together by the sinister Eraser.  Meru, who has been our point-of-view character from the beginning is currently out of the picture, as both sides in the conflict scramble to find new recruits.

This issue doesn't really touch on any of that though.  Instead, we are taken to a very nice little suburbia, where couples in nice homes have parties and gossip about one another.  The men in the community have been finding some of their things going missing lately, a treasured grandfather's watch, and a priceless movie prop.  Accusations, and accusations of paranoia, threaten to overwhelm the small community, but it seems that the real culprit has to do with Mind MGMT's Matryoshka program, which has embedded one of the suburbanites into the picture, for ends that don't seem all that clear.

This is a nicely constructed single issue, which also fits into the larger story Kindt is working on.  It seems we may never know all of the MGMT's secrets, but I really like the pace at which we are learning many of them.

Kindt's art is not for everyone, but I can't imagine a story like this being told by a slicker or more polished artist.  Plus, look at how wonderful that cover is.  If you aren't reading this, please check it out.

Templar, Arizona Vol. 4: Trouble Every Day

by Spike

While I still enjoyed reading it, I found this volume collecting the sublime webcomic Templar, Arizona, to be a little frustrating.  The firmly established main characters, Ben and Reagan, are barely present, and the two characters that got the most space in the book, EJ and Elliott Bigelow, were ones I could barely remember from earlier volumes.

At the same time, Spike's strange world of Templar is a pretty fascinating one.  She is using her characters to reveal more and more of the world, as the Jakeskin go after Elliott, causing him and EJ to go on the run, and we get a better sense of what has been going on with Pippi, who is a bit of a mess.  Moze is having a good time with Tuesday, but she is still more concerned with what other people are broadcasting about her.  We also learn the meaning of 'Churchyard' in Templar, and it's not what Ben thought it was.

This time around, Spike gave us some more information about other parts of the world in this alternate timeline.  Most interesting is the explanation of what happened to Australia after the Japanese ran a more successful Pacific campaign during the Second World War.  Her notion of an indigenous insurgent army only helped strengthen the comparison in my mind between this book and Carla Speed McNeil's Finder.

I found this to be a quicker read than some of the other volumes of Templar, but haven't checked the varying page counts.  While I did find this volume to be a little frustrating, I would gladly pick up a fifth volume, if such a thing were printed.  As it stands, I may have to start reading this on the web, which is not my preferred method of reading comics.

Voices From the Storm

The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and its Aftermath

Edited by Lola Vollen and Chris Ying

The Voice of Witness series is a collection of books that share oral history on topics of social justice and human rights, published by McSweeney's.  Voices from the Storm is the second book in their series, and it tells the stories of a number of people from the New Orleans area who lived through Hurricane Katrina and the days of chaos and loss that followed it.

This book is fascinating.  The interviewers have found a wide cross-section of New Orleans people, from the poor black residents of the Ninth Ward, which was completely flooded, to a Vietnamese priest.  Thirteen people were interviewed at length, although some, such as Kermit Ruffins, the popular musician, were not given a lot of space on the page.  Their stories were structured chronologically, so that it's possible to follow the events of the storm as they happened, and see how the affected different people at different times.

Staying true to the structure of oral history, we read pretty much exactly what people said.  This gives us, in addition to an appreciation of the horror of the events, an authentic experience of dialect and diction which adds much local flavour to the stories.  The people interviewed here went through a lot, although by point of fact of their being around to tell their stories, they can be considered lucky to have survived.  Some of the things that they saw or had to go through are hard to imagine happening in a major American city, and this book makes a great companion to Spike Lee's terrific documentary When the Levees Broke.

One of the people interviewed here is Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who later became the subject of Dave Eggers's book Zeitoun.  I liked hearing about what happened to him from his own voice, as it added weight to his story, especially when I knew what was going to happen to him when he got picked up by the police.

This is a very well-put together history book, with a number of helpful appendices.  Some of the 'official record' of the storm is included here, and it is just as damming towards the government as the words of the grandmother who had to spend days walking around in deep water trying to find a way out of the city.  Very powerful stuff.

Grandville Mon Amour

by Bryan Talbot

The second of Bryan Talbot's Grandville graphic novels is perhaps more enjoyable than the first, since the world of Detective-Inspector LeBrock is established, and Talbot has a little more time and space to craft his story and characters.

Grandville Mon Amour is set in a world where Napoleon had taken over all of Europe.  England has recently won its independence from France after a long and bloody insurgency campaign, and the country is now poised to appoint its Prime Minister for the last number of years as President for life, a choice that many find odd.  These graphic novels fit in the steampunk genre, and LeBrock's world is full of steam-powered machines and odd technology.  Also, everyone is a talking animal, and while each species appears to only mate with their own kind, there doesn't appear to be much in the way of outright speciesism (racism?).

As this book opens, Mad Dog Mastock, a notorious serial killer and former resistance fighter makes his escape while on the way to the guillotine.  Our hero, DI LeBrock, is wallowing in guilt from the events of the first graphic novel, but when he hears that Mastock is loose, he demands that he be put on the case, as he is the one that brought the dog down in the first place.  His insistence gets him suspended, but in no time he is off to Grandville (Paris), with his partner Rodders, to track down Mastock on his own.  Mastock has been killing prostitutes there, but LeBrock begins to discover a pattern and method behind the killings that go beyond his usual depravities.

The story follows through a few twists and turns (a couple of them were kind of predictable, admittedly), and the story is much larger than a simple case of an escaped serial killer.  LeBrock, still stinging from the loss of his Sarah, ends up falling for another lovely female badger (how many of them could there be?), and Talbot keeps a romantic undercurrent flowing through the book.

As interesting as the story is, Talbot's art is the big draw here.  He's always been a remarkably detailed artist, but the pages of this book are lovely.  His animal characters and their environment are very believable, and the steampunk touches he's added are often fascinating.  This is a very accomplished book, and I recommend it.

Infinite Kung Fu

by Kagan McLeod

I've never been a huge fan of the Shaw Brothers style of kung fu movies (although I did become somewhat obsessed with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon when it came out), but I loved Kagan McLeod's Infinite Kung Fu, a nice chunky graphic novel love letter to that genre.

This book is set in the martial world, where the dead have started reanimating recently deceased bodies as thinking zombies.  Much of the martial world is ruled by an Emperor who is himself dead.  He has five armies, each controlled by a former student of one of the eight Immortals (there are others).  These students turned on their masters and learned Poison Kung Fu.

Now the Emperor is trying to put together his mystical armour so that he can come back to life and destroy the world for all time.  The Immortals have left the world and have vowed not to interfere in worldly affairs, except through the actions of their agents, and so they send a young deserter from the Emperor's army, Lei Kung, on a mission to learn powerful kung fu and save the day.

McLeod fully embraces the tropes of Chinese kung fu movies, but adds just the right amount of 70s blaxploitation to the mix, in the character of Moog Joogular, an afro-sporting fighter with the ability to remove and regrow his limbs.  Moog lives in a village that looks like Harlem, while the rest of the book is set in a more traditional Chinese countryside.  It's an odd addition to the book, but it's exactly the kind of thing that makes me like it.

McLeod's story is long and rambling, in an epic way (the book is about 450 pages) that circles back upon itself.  I enjoyed the flow of this story, and liked how complicated things got towards the end, as different factions competed for similar goals.

McLeod's art is very fluid, and his fight scenes are choreographed beautifully.  He captures the variety of time periods he's looking to capture (i.e., a 70s depiction of ancient China) very well, and propels the story perfectly.  McLeod's approach to this story is highly creative and never dull.  Recommended.

There is a Country: New Fiction From the New Nation of South Sudan

Edited by Nyuol Lueth Tong

The idea of a new nation, as touted on the cover of this very slim anthology of fiction (and one poem), suggests a newness of place, and the heady days of nation-building that resonate with North American audiences, who themselves don't feel all that far removed from the frontier-ism that shaped their homes.  The truth of the matter is that South Sudan is a very old place, albeit only recently recognized as a place of its own.

The people of South Sudan, having survived war with the country they used to be a part of, are now a diasporic people.  Reading the author bios at the back of this anthology show a collection of writers (sadly all male) who have been educated in England and Europe, and who have or have not returned to their homelands.  A surprisingly large percentage of them are doctors.

The stories here are scattered, capturing different moments in the South Sudanese experience, from migrant camps in Port Sudan to refugee camps presumably in the country itself.  The characters have suffered loss and displacement, although these are not always the themes of the stories.  Instead, we read about a blossoming love in a camp, or about the slow poisoning of an old endearment when decimated families have to resort to relying on the charity of old acquaintances.

The only story that directly portrays the way between North and South does it from the perspective of a soldier from the other side, which I found to be very interesting, especially given its sympathy for the character.

These are all very well-written stories, coming from a place not really known for its literary traditions.  A bulk of good fiction is essential in building the character of a nation, and while it faces many challenges now and in its future, the canon of South Sudan is in capable hands.

Sheltered #1

Written by Ed Brisson
Art by Johnnie Christmas

I've been a fan of Ed Brisson's writing since I first bought an issue of his Murder Book at TCAF a few years ago.  He has subsequently written the Image mini-series Comeback, which was interesting, but nowhere near the quality of the first issue of his new series, Sheltered.

This mini-series is set in Safe Haven, a collection of trailers and underground bunkers set in some remote location in the United States.  It's populated by a group of 'preparationists', militia-types who are laying in supplies for the end of the government or the world.  The adults in this small community busy themselves digging bunkers and buying canned goods, and we learn that not everyone in the group agrees with how they are going about things, but Brisson creates the impression that their sense of common purpose overcomes any procedural differences they might feel.

The kids are another problem though.  It's quickly apparent that not all of the teenagers that live in the area see things the same way as their parents, and as is normal with teenagers, they go about rebelling in their own way.  A pair of boys borrow a HAM radio because their own is broken, but are pointedly shown not using it.  A pair of girls like to sneak out into the woods to 'hike', but they take a flask with them.

During what looks like a normal day, the sound of a gunshot in the woods brings everyone running.  It seems that some men are trying to attack the compound - just what the adults have been expecting and training for.  Things are not exactly what they seem though, and I don't want to spoil the book.  Suffice to say, it's a very good read, and I'm looking forward to the next issue.

Johnnie Christmas's art looks quite nice in colour (I've only ever seen black and white work from him in Murder Book).  This book reminds me a little of Joshua Hale Fialkov and Noel Tuazon's excellent Elk's Run, but the twists are quite different.  I recommend checking this out.

Revolver Vol. 1

by Salgood Sam (with John O'Brien and A. J. Duric)

Salgood Sam is one of those comics creators that I feel we should see a lot more from.  He first caught my eye on the excellent Sea of Red vampire series, and his graphic novel with Jim Munro, Therefore, Repent! is a favourite of mine.

Revolver is an anthology of shorter comics by Sam, which are very introspective and powerful.  At the heart of the book is "The Rise and Fall of it All pt. 1", a story about a man who was downsized during the recent economic turmoil, and unable to pull things back together in his life.  This is a very poetic story, matched beautifully with Sam's expansive page layouts.

'Pin City' is an interesting bit about a very special city in the sky, and the way in which a man has to go about making a life for himself within it.

Some of the other stories are comics based on dreams, or the usual sort of short ephemera of sketchbooks.  Sam is a very interesting artist, and one worth keeping an eye on.