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Underground > Comic Books >

Hype: non- monthly comics and graphic novels

07:51 / 19.06.03

OK, here is the deal

We all talk about non-mothly titles that we are looking forward to/really enjoyed and see if other people have read it/we can get other people to read some good stuff.

Basically a recommendations thread with feedback...

I'll go first

I'm really looking forward to the iminent release of Scarlet Traces. 64 page murder mystery set in London ten years after the Martian invasion from War of the Worlds. Rebuilt using plundered Martian technology, the city is
a place of mile-high alabaster towers and eight-legged Hansom cabs.

When the blood-drained bodies of dozens of young girls are found washed up on the banks of the Thames, rumours abound that the fabled vampire Old Varney is once again stalking the East End. But when adventurer and gentleman spy Major Robert Autumn starts investigating the disappearance of his valet's niece, he uncovers a far more sinister plot that goes right to the very heart, and future, of the British Empire itself...

check out the website for art samples.

13:00 / 19.06.03

Thought it was LOEG3 first, but it's not, eh? Looks really great.

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:02 / 19.06.03

Very excited about this one. The genius behind the it-sold-three-copies masterpiece the Establishment, and D'Israeli. D'Israeli, I tell you.

I love D'Israeli. My love of D'Israeli is matched only by my love of Philip Bond. And, you know, my mum. And stuff. I've never understood why he has done so little big American comic stuff - I mean, McKeever gets work.... can he not be bothered, or has he gone into the Rian Hughesy design work? Or is it just that the world is a wretched and woebegone place?

19:49 / 19.06.03

Wasn't one of the Ripper books that inspired / sourced Moore's 'From Hell' entitled 'White Chapel, Scarlet Tracings', also being an account of a murder (duh)?

Anyways, yes, this looks very good, although it's that classic conundrum - something that will clearly read better in the trade and yet might well not make it there if I don't buy the issues. And I hate to do both.

Didn't D'Israeli have some work wrapped up in the (unfortunately nixed) fifth Miracleman series, 'The Silver Age'?

Personally, I'm really into Jason Lutes's Berlin and Linda Medley's Castle Waiting, both of which are reviewed at the same site, co-inky-dentally.

Berlin is an amazing tale of the lives of a number of interconnected characters during the corrupt, decadent Weimar Republic of the 1920's. This is the period of the movie Cabaret, the time of the Nazi's rise to power and the source of all those goose-stepping music hall scenes that Alan Moore had David Lloyd put into V for Vendetta. Lutes's first work, Jar of Fools was a brilliantly touching tale of a failing stage magician and his relationship with his senile former "master" who had broken out of the nursing home. Scott McCloud dissected and praised it in Reinventing Comics, which turned me onto it. I think this guy's ace.

Castle Waiting is a brilliant and bizarre blending of old school fairy tales (by which I mean, "unsanitized"), the lives of Saints and the weird imagination of its creator, Linda Medley. The book has beautiful art which often looks like old woodcuttings. Currently, two comic trades and a text / full page art book are available, with as-yet uncollected single issues continuing to trickle out.

As I mentioned above, neither of these are "flashy" books, neither of them provide the "big wow", but both are excellent. Read a whole issue of one and see if you aren't intrigued to lay hands on the next one.

21:26 / 19.06.03

I had a copy of D'Adventures of I.S.R.A.E.L.I.! Who wants to touch me? Of course, I gave it to Grant Balfour many years ago, so you're probably better off touching him...
As for GN recommendations, any of the Too Much Coffee Man collections are excellent, blending self-deprecating surrealism with a nicely subversive chocolately coating.Also, the irregular comic turned into an irregular counter-cultural magazine that's worth a shufti.

23:12 / 19.06.03

Two more nods for Berlin and Castle Waiting. The latter is thematically similar to the popular FABLES book from Vertigo but it's flavor is more fabulast than modern. It's the type of book that you can give to kids or adults and both groups will appreciate.

Berlin is one of the best sustained adult graphic stories in the biz. I use adult in the best sense of the term: mature themes depicted in thoughtful, precise narrative. jason Lutes has one of the cleanest styles in the field, avoiding the excess of over rendering, with a nice thick line. It's marvelous to read a work with rich historical and social underpinnings. Since it focuses on Germany before WWII, it could almost be considered a bookend, with MAUS by art spiegelman at the other end. Great stuff.

00:17 / 20.06.03

The Monarchy and, recently, Sleeper wank all over The Establishment by way of Wildstorm comics.

Non-monthly comics? I like The Ultimates. Does that count?

14:27 / 26.06.03

Recently picked up the reissued Bratpack by Rick Veitch's own King Hell Press.

This book is an absolute must for self-styled anti-establishment comix literati. This is the book that Veitch did for revenge after DC fired him over the whole Swamp Thing - meets - Jesus incident. It's also a (somewhat heavy-handed) satire on the Death Of Robin By Phone In Poll stunt that DC pulled somewhere along about the end of the '80's. It's ugly, cynical, sickening and actually quite good, although the end is a bit obscure.

Better than the Bratpack, and perhaps worth reading first if you can lay hands on it, is Veitch's second graphic novel in this series, The Maximortal, which brings the same acidic (both HCl and LSD) sensibilities to the Superman character. This is a world where Oppenheimer smears radioactive poop from another world on his forehead to stimulate his brain as he quotes from the Bhagavad Gita, where President Truman authorized the dropping of the first man-made superhuman on Hiroshima, giving birth to the True-Man project, and also the story of two Seigel and Schuster-a-likes battling their way down into depression beneath the weight of the early comics community. To my mind, it tells the story that Kavalier & Clay misses - the really sad story in which there isn't a happy ending, just the impossible solutions to the insoluble problems.