Far Arden (Top Shelf Productions)
By Kevin Cannon
I hereby submit that Kevin Cannon has a fantastic last name, which lends itself well to all manner of occupations. Picture if you will, a rocket man with the last name of Cannon. Or a science gorilla. Or a pictorial ruttsmith. All of these work quite well… except for that last name, which would require a first name like “Fisty”, but that’s not the point. The fact of the matter is, Kevin Cannon has one of the better names in the comic book field – and somewhat coincidentally, he also has one of the best graphic novels from this year. Inside Far Arden , you’ll find a salty tale of a man named Army Shanks, who is not quite a good man, but a man nonetheless. Pirate by day (and also by night), Army spends his time searching for the mythical land of Far Arden, and his long lost mentor who disappeared while searching for it. During his journey, he is joined by a colourful cast, including a fox-boy (who is also an orphan), a couple of college student (who have some shady motivations), amoung many others. There’s also a ton of punching, which is appreciated in such a swashbuckling tale such as this. As a writer, Cannon uses a writing style that takes a bit of getting used to. He makes a concentrated effort to make all of the fantastic things that happen to Army (and the rest) seem like everyday occurrences, which takes a few pages to settle into. However, once you’ve dug yourself a nice cozy brain nook to stuff the tale’s logic into, things start to become very awesome. Equal parts mythic, fun, and mind-achingly heartrending, this book is what Scott Pilgrim would’ve been like had Bryan Lee O’Malley been fascinated with pirates and the Northwest Territories, rather than manga and video games.
Rating: 4/5 --B. Schatz
Graphic Classics: Oscar Wilde (Eureka Productions)
By Lance Tooks, Alex Burrows, Lisa K. Weber, Antonella Caputo, Nick Miller, Rich Rainey, Stan Shaw, Tom Pomplun, & Molly Kiely
I have to admit that I thought Wilde was an odd choice for an adaptation. Not because he isn't a good writer, but because he's pretty much forgotten nowadays. But maybe that's why he should be adapted, so people don't forget him. As always with the Graphic Classics collections, the adaptations are all solid, very faithful to the source material, and pretty much a solid collection all the way around. My favorite story here is one I haven't read before, “"Lord Arthur Savile's Crime”, a sort of dark comedy about a man who learns from a palm reader that he will commit a murder, and so to get it out of the way he decides to kill old, ill family members. None of this works out as he wishes, in more ways than one. “The Portrait of Dorian Grey” has been adapted so many times I wouldn't blame you for bemoaning yet another one. But this version emphasizes the classism in the story, and is very subtle in its touches of homoeroticism (supposedly Wilde himself toned it down in the second published edition of the novel), and the artwork by Weber is appealing. “The Canterville Ghost”is a cute story of a culture clash between a proper English ghost and a stereotypically loud American family, but it is rather text heavy (tons of captions here, which can slow down reading), and the art has a cartoonish sort of appeal, with the kids looking like the Katzenjammer Kids (how obscure a reference is that). My least favorite story, “Salome”, ironically has some of the best art. The problem isn't really with the adaptation; Wilde deliberately used overheated Biblical language in his story, but it's too purple and yet too plodding at the same time, too pedantic and stagy. But the art by Kiely is very well done, with thick, curving lines and lots of open spaces, letting the art breathe while the text itself is airless and somewhat suffocating. But another solid collection of an author who is slowly being eclipsed by time.
Rating: 4/5 --Andrea Speed
In The Flesh (Villard Books)
By Koren Shadmi
Although this sounds like it might be a horror GN, it's actually a short story collection about relationships. Really weird relationships. Actually, ones that are unhealthy or go wrong, portrayed with a great deal of surrealism to make it all the more stranger. The kick off story, “ The Fun Lawn”, is probably the most conventional, although it does deal with both loneliness and the need to achieve success however possible, although you can be forgiven for initially thinking this has something to do with “furries”. (See, the protagonist works on a kid's television show, where he wears a big dog costume, and this plays a part in the story's sad denouement.) “What Is Wrong With Me?” is particularly brutal, viewing a potential relationship from a split screen point of view, both male and female, where the man is obsessing about the woman and unable to get her out of his mind ... and she has clearly already forgotten about him. Ouch. “Radioactive Girlfriend” carries an unhealthy relationship to a literal extreme, as a guy becomes enamored of a girl who survived an atomic bomb blast. While she gets stronger and better during their relationship, he gets weaker and sicker, suffering from radiation sickness. But he couldn't love her more, even though she's inadvertently killing him. “Grandpa Minolta” is a super creepy short about a grandfather with a camera for his head, who takes unsavory pictures of his granddaughter. Shadmi uses hunger/love/food/sex metaphors a lot, in a couple of different stories, but probably most effectively in “Satisfaction Av.”, where a woman mistakes a desire for love as a desire for raw meat. Some of these stories fail despite intriguing set ups (my favorite failure being “Antoinette”, about a man obsessed with a girl who carries her severed head around with her), but at least they're interesting failures. The artwork has a soft quality about it, in spite of dark, curving lines and lots of telling details. The women have a tendency to look a bit alike from story to story, but in such a surreal universe, this may be a deliberate choice. Have you ever had a bad relationship, or even a bad date? Either you'll find it in here, or you'll feel so much better that it didn't involve radioactivity or cannibalism.
Rating: 4/5 --Andrea Speed
Masterpiece Comics (Drawn & Quarterly)
By R. Sikoryak
What a brilliant idea. In this oversized book, classic literature is “re-imagined” in classic comic strip form. So you have Christopher Marlowe's “Dr. Faustus” redone as “Mephistofield”, starring the cast of the Garfield comic strip, “Good Ol' Gregor Brown" portraying Kafka's Metamorphosis through the cast of Peanuts, the Batman cast coming in for Raskol's Crime and Punishment (a redo of the Dostoevsky novel), and in one of my favorite mash ups, Mac Worth, giving us an abbreviated version of MacBeth starring the Mary Worth cast. Other goodies here include Wilde's Dorian Grey meeting Little Nemo In Slumberland, Wuthering Heights meeting Tales From The Crypt, Little Lulu meeting The Scarlet Letter (this works so well it verges on genius), and the most unusual bit, “Action Camus", which tells the tale of The Stranger through mock up Action Comics covers featuring a Superman like character as our existentialist amoral antihero. The stories are compressed very well, and all the art styles Sikoryak takes on are pitch perfect. I mean, they look exactly like the comics they're supposed to be, including the end page of Beavis and Butthead's version of "Waiting For Godot" (again, genius). It's rare that parody could also be used as a refresher course in the classics (both literary and comic), but this could. It is brilliant, and you must run, not walk, to get this immediately. Every shelf needs this book.
Rating: 5/5 --Andrea Speed
Remake (AdHouse Books)
By Lamar Abrams
Let’s assume that it’s the future, and there’s a robot running around named Max Guy. He’s kind’ve a jerk, but that’s okay, because he’s also incredibly awesome – and he’s the star of this book. The plot? Well, the plot is pretty awesome and segmented neatly into easily digestible chapters. In one section he fights a giant cat that’s comprised from the vomit he made after eating his favourite cat-shaped breakfast cereal – in another, he gets tromped by some stretchy dude who went and smack’d up his bread pudding – with, like, no provocation! In addition to this, he’s a complete jerk to his best friend’s girl (who has stabbing arms for arms) – and carries around a “Max Blaster”, which turns things into other things, like bananas and knives and junk. All of this is straight up cool. If you like fun books about robots who are jerks to everyone around them, even though they’re maybe trying to save the world or something, then you’ll probably want this book. And if you don’t, I wish malaria upon your rotten corpse of a soul.
Rating: 4.5/5 --B. Schatz
Scalped: Indian Country (Vertigo/DC)
By Jason Aaron, R.M. Guera, & Lee Loughridge
You know, I got the first issue of this series, but it didn't make an impression on me. It was different, and a kind of a crime saga, but I didn't feel connected to the characters or the plot in any significant way. The problem, I think, was a cold open, as the graphic novel proves it only got better from there. Dashiell Bad Horse comes back to his home “rez”, and immediately falls in with the local crime boss, Red Crow, who is opening a brand new casino, much to the horror of some of the more activist members of the tribe. Bad Horse becomes a member of the corrupt tribal police (directly under Red Crow's aegis), much to the disapproval of his estranged mother, one of the biggest activists on the reservation. But what she doesn't know – what no one knows – is that Bad Horse is working undercover for the FBI. But there's lots of bad blood in the agency and in Bad Horse's past, and the plot gets twistier as the story goes on. The grinding poverty of Native American reservations is the perfect setting for a dark crime tale, and the art has that kind of gritty noir look suited to the story; dark, grim, and bloody. Even if you looked at one issue and gave it a pass, check it out on GN form. This seems to be the kind of story just perfect for the format.
Rating: 4/5 --Andrea Speed
Showcase Presents Ambush Bug (DC Comics)
By Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Paul Kupperberg, Carmine Infantino and other guilty parties
With Ambush Bug poised to regain his rightful place of... well... obscurity in the DC Universe, it seems like a good time to look at his very own Showcase collection, which includes virtually all of his appearances prior to his return in the pages of 52. This hefty volume begins with his early appearances as a villain, making headaches for Superman, the Doom Patrol, and the Legion (of Substitute Heroes), through his attempts to reform, and into the two miniseries, two one-shots, and Secret Origins stories that made him into the star he is today. Reading all of the Bug's appearances in one go like this one really affirms how the character is like a snowball. He began as a fairly innocuous villain -- annoying, but nothing memorable. But with each subsequent appearance, he begame more charming, more silly, and more out of control, until he finally got his own miniseries and went hog wild. I'm not sure how this story will play to readers who don't already have a love for the character. Ambush Bug is really a product of his time, of that brief period of insanity and inanity that made Keith Giffen great, and if you're not already a fan I don't know if this book will make you one. But for people like me, who have loved the character for years, it's a lot of fun to have this collection of stories, especially the ones I haven't read before.
Rating: 4/5 --Blake M. Petit
Tales Designed To Thrizzle Volume One (Fantagraphics Books)
By Michael Kupperman
Speaking of books every shelf needs, here's the collection of Tales Designed To Thrizzle. Yes, you need this book too. Surrealistic and silly, this is a straight shot of pure comedy to the brainpan, Yes, I reviewed most of the single issues since Brandon Schatz clued me in to this marvelous work of genius, but I missed a couple, and besides, this book deserves another mention. It's just hysterical, and I don't even believe in marriage (it's a mug's game), but I would marry this book if I could, that's how much I love it. How can you justify depriving yourself of the sheer genius that is the unlikely cop duo of Snake 'n' Bacon ( “Wipe me with a paper towel to remove excess grease!”) or the unlikely (and surprisingly violent) cop duo of Mark Twain and Albert Einstein? You'd miss the history of sex blimps in America, the brief fad of porno coloring books, the adventures of the Scardey Kids, Cousin Grandpa, and The Mannister (the superhero who becomes a banister), and the horrifying capitalism of Fireman Octopus. And you'd never see the wonderful ads for products you had no idea you needed, such as the amazing foreplay robot, taco repair, and Sidafexil, the medication that is nothing but bizarre side effects. Also, the artistry on display is mind blowing; he jumps from style to style easily and artfully. Impossible to describe adequately, and impossible not to love, you must go get this book! Or you'll never discover a cure for hair monkeys, and where will that leave you?
Rating: 5/5 --Andrea Speed
November 12th 2009, 04:08 AM
CAPTAIN ANDY'S GRAPHIC NOVEL FUNKAPUS #2
Linear Mode
