| |
|
Okey dokey, then.
Off the top of my head, I'd recommend:
RED ROCKET 7: Hi-fi sci-fi, as an alien clone moves Zelig-like through forty years of rock'n'roll history against the backdrop of a pleasantly whacked fifties-style bug-eyed monster movie. Mike Allred wrote and drew it; not life-changing, but it's executed with great love and enormous energy.
THE ADVENTURES OF LUTHER ARKWRIGHT: written and drawn by Bryan Talbot. Even more than from Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius books, Arkwright is the rich, funky soil from which Gideon Stargrave grew. An adventure that literally spans all of time and space, with nothing less than the next stage of human evolution at stake. Groundbreaking in its use of cinematic techniques: expanded the vocabulary of comics hugely. Done in the mid-1970s, and looks like it was drawn yesterday. Essential.
HEAVY LIQUID: Paul Pope wrote and drew. Takes place in the future, but is only barely "science fiction"—it's a story about love, and art, and addiction—and, most of all, about yearning. Beautiful/ugly artwork, loose and full of life. Sweet and strange.
FINDER: Carla Speed McNeil. Indescribable. Epic. Packed to the gills with ideas, with brilliantly-realized characters and relationships, in a world almost but not quite entirely unlike our own (but human nature never changes...)—and it's the teasing hints of familiarity that so ensnare—a world at once impossibly advanced and fallen to ruin—a world that slowly unfolds itself as you read, with never an indigestible chunk of exposition, but through the careful accretion of detail. You can see the storytelling and the art come into their own before your eyes: the early chapters are a trifle uncertain, but Speed soon hits her stride and just keeps getting better. Huge bravura scenes and tiny intimate details. A phenomenal work.
CHANNEL ZERO and METABARONS would probably be good calls too, but I'll leave it to someone else to pitch for them... |
|
|
