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It's been a good month for Grist fans, with the release by Slave Labor (nice to see them again - what are they doing these days?) of "Absent Friends", a collection of his magazine strips with Phil Elliot, and "Everything used to be Black and White", the monumental collection of the complete black and white Jack Staff comics.
"Absent Friends" I found very much a young work - Elliot's writing is whimsical, at times engaging but too often easily distracted or airy. It feels insubstantial, and the best story is probably at the beginning - later attempts at continuing narratives feel forced and directionless.
Jack Staff, ont he toher hand, is the bomb. I haven't seen the colour Image title for a bit - it hasn't been cancelled, has it? - but the black and white run (of which I had previously only really seen the Sergeant States episodes) is just superb. In many ways it reads like the Establishment, if the Establishment had not been written, drawn and edited ineptlty - a reworking of all sorts of British comics characters (Robot Archie, The Steel Claw) and cultural icons (Dad's Army, Steptoe and Son, the Sweeney) into some beautifully drawn and scripted comics. His layouts are tremendous, and the narrative only very rarely loses pace (the Druid I found superfluous and a bit silly, although any storyline in which Neil Gaiman is arrested for being pretentious is a winner). In general, the characterisation is beautifully done, running from pure slapstick to somewhat sinister, and in particular the relationship between Becky Burdock and John Smith is very nicely drawn - they're a very British couple; Specifically, Castleford, even though its population and scenarios are drawn culturally from London, feels a lot like a big but somewhat old-fashioned town in the Midlands, for some reason - maybe it's just Slade playing in the first episode...
Hoom. Anyway, what did everyone think? |
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