Mann's Best Friend (Gluepott Books)

Creators: Scarlett and Sophie Rickard

The story of Terry Mann who has a good job which he is frustrated in having been passed over for promotion to management by his friend, former housemate and soon-to-be brother-in-law Vick. Two years out of a relationship he is still very much feeling sorry for himself, stuck in a downward spiral of self loathing which he takes out on the large dog he owns. The dog was bought for his former partner as he hoped would keep them together, but she left anyway a couple of weeks holding the baby (or puppy in this instance) which has since grown into a rather large dog. There appears to be no love lost between pet and owner.

The dog, Eric, will soon be instrumental in bringing Terry’s life to a point down which happiness lies after seeming to hit rock bottom. Eric and Mia, Vick’s sister whom he meets at a family gathering to celebrate the coming marriage of Terry’s sister and Vick. Terry is very much the black sheep of his family, held in low regard by his parents in comparison to his sister. Mia falls under the same role in her family, with the crucial difference that Mia is happy with herself and has a balanced outlook on life. Terry and Mia appear to hit it off but can there be true happiness ahead.

This is a wonderful read with art and text melding beautifully to communicate the story. Particularly impressive is the use of numerous silent panels wherein the art has to show the feelings of out protagonist via body language and facial expressions.

There is also a great contrast between Terry’s rather uptight, clinical and cold home, and Mia’s poorer but warmer, more casual and homely dwelling.

There is also a wonderful sense of place engendered by the art. It really shows the creators experiences growing up in North-West England rural towns. The comic is bookended by two images, shown from slightly different angles, of the town from the side of a hill. The one at the start is dark and overcast whilst at the end it is bright and sunny, reflecting the inner emotions of Terry.

A lovely book I will no doubt return to again and again.

Geis: A Matter of Life and Death (Nobrow) by Alexis Deacon

A ruler of a city dies and her last will and testament states that the next ruler should be chosen by a contest consisting of three tasks, between fifty different people.  However is soon emerges that this is no voluntary contest, and there are dire consequences for not completing the tasks.

This is very much an all ages book, and a fine start to a fantasy trilogy. Alexis Deacon was new to me and introduced by the comic shop Page 45 as their Comic Book of The Month  for July. The story is intriguing as the personalities of the protagonists are demonstrated through their reactions to what they learn about the contest, and the Geis of the title, and the art is both beautiful and appropriately strange, drawing you into the story and making you feel part of the world.

At times the art reminded me of the children's book Struwwelpeter, which I had as a child and which seemed a little strange and disturbing, a bit like the effect of Windsor McCay's work can have. 

A comic that can be read and enjoyed on different level by all the family is something to be treasured. I would urge everybody who loves fantasy to read this, especially those with children as it is a book to be shared.

Tim Ginger (Top Shelf Productions)

A Page 45 Comic Book of the Month
Creator: Julian Hanshaw

“Live the life you love...Choose a god you trust. And don't take it all so seriously.”

Ostensibly this comic is about a former test pilot who thinks he saw something on one of his flights and who lost his wife to an early death. However it is really a book that has a deep and profound theme applicable to almost every adult in the western world over the age of thirty. We must let go of the past to allow progress to a happier future. We don't forget the past and the people and places we knew, but they cease to act as a chain tethering us to something we can never return to.

In between the main tale are excerpts from a comic written by an old female colleague and object of mild flirtation, Anna. These all deal with people who decided not to have children, their reasons why and reactions to sometimes passive-aggressive queries as to why they have made this choice. These parts of the comic, whilst entertaining, don't really seem to add anything to it. I'd have liked them to act as a sort of comment on the main narrative, the classic example being the pirate comic excerpts in Watchmen, but they don't seem to function in this way, or if they do I'm missing it. In and of themselves however they are well designed, with a change to black and white and a page design that makes it appear you have just left the current comic and opened Anna's book yourself.

Overall this is a lovely book with a touching story. There is a hint of Kevin Huizenga about the art, especially in the opening aspect-to-aspect panel transitions, the occasional focus on wildlife, which to my mind acts as metaphor for the internal struggles of our protagonist, and in the line. Colour is s strong point too, with a very tight palette used effectively to indicate both time and place.

One final comment on the lettering. I like those subtle details which work on a subconscious level whilst you're reading, and there are a couple of these. The first is what appears to be a slight change to a more formal style when Tim and Anna first say hello when getting reacquainted over a cup of coffee after they have met again at a convention. Following the intial greetings, where they must have been nervous and slightly apprehensive, the lettering quickly returns to the more informal style which looks almost like handwriting and contributes to the feeling of intimacy we have with the tale. The second is where Tim's agent tries to start chatting Anna up, to which her exasperated “REALLY?” is all in upper-case. Small details but they help communicate the feelings of the characters in a very efficient and effective way.

There is a message that comes through strongly. We are all made of the stars, and a glimpse of the universe lets him know we are all connected, and out in the desert under in the almost total darkness you can see so much more of the universe than under the urban light-polluted sky. Don't be scared of the dark times. Once accepted they will help you to see the light that much better, and it can be quite majestic.

Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon

Writer: Matt Fraction
Artists: David Aja, Javier Pulido (Alan Davis/Mark Farmer on Young Avengers)
Colour Artist: Matt Hollingsworth

A Page 45 Comic Book of the Month

Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye): “Ok...this looks bad.”

Page 45 have been running the Comic Book of the Month Club for about six years now, the idea being that they recommend a comic every month and those that sign up get 20% discount. There's no tie in, and you don't have to buy each one. It's a wonderful way to expand one's literary horizons, especially given that the people there have very good taste. I've probably not enjoyed two of the books, and given there's been seventy four of them so far, that's an excellent hit rate. It has to be said also that even the ones that missed at least had something interesting about them. The seventy fifth Comic Book of the Month (or CBOTM) was announced at the start of April – Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon. A super-hero book for the first time in the club's six year history.

I am not a big fan of modern day super-hero comics. I've tried to like them, and always find myself gravitating back towards them, only to leave after a year or so. For the most part they are extremely derivative and incestuous. An example would be the prevalence of major supporting characters and villains that first emerged fifty years ago, or at best twenty years ago. They seem to have lost their sense of fun and are written as if they want to be taken seriously as adult works, but have the most ludicrous plots this side of Dan Brown. An instance of this would be known psychotic Norman Osborne being made head of the US intelligence agency, or whatever SHIELD is, a few years ago due to one action during an invasion by aliens. That would work in a comic aimed at children up to the age of fourteen, as they used to be. Aimed at an adult audience, that sort of weak writing just does not hold water.

Anyway I don't want to digress too much into my feelings on a genre of comics. I just felt it necessary to lay the context for this brief review of Hawkeye.

So what did I make of Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon? It has a lot to recommend it. Stephen Holland at Page 45 said that “...it's not even a super-hero comic” and he's right. Five of the chapters are extremely light on the tropes you would expect of the genre, and the first chapter especially is close to wonderful, without anything that would indicate this was part of the whole tights and capes thing. It feels much more of a crime comic, and one can't help but speculate as to whether the creators would like to have pursued that route, with Russian gangsters and a flawed, and very vulnerable hero, trying to do the right thing. At times it reminded me very much of Frank Miller's run on Daredevil in feel, when Miller was desperately trying to disguise the crime stories he wanted to write. David Aja's art especially seemed to evoke this, particularly in the scene in which Clint Barton enters the underground casino.

Matt Fraction and David Aja were unfortunately only together for the first three issues here. Unfortunate because, despite the couple of issues which I will be coming to, the there was real promise of something a little different. Matt Fraction's plots feel fresh and his dialogue is sharp. His handling of foreign languages is brilliant and funny:

Ringmaster: “Ladies and gentlemen. (French stuff.) (Wait, maybe some Italian too)”

Trust me this comes across much better on the page. The real star is David Aja though, which is why it was such a shame he only did three chapters of this book. The design is beautiful, but it fits perfectly into a seamless storytelling. There's a scene where our two heroes are walking across the floor to some stairs at a posh circus party, and Aja executes this with such grace it makes you want to shout out with joy. It is this quality that makes this shortcomings all the more galling.

Let's take the first problem I found. In the first issue, Matt Hollingsworth uses a nice subtle colour code to illustrate time, with pages that take place later in the narrative in a predominantly blue pallette. It worked well until the Russian thugs visit Hawkeye in a vets, which utilises the colours to let us know this is later in the narrative. At the bottom of the page we cut to a long rectangular window seen from the outside, and that blue palette. The very next panel, at the top of the next page shows Hawkeye being thrown through a window and landing outside. The same blue colours are used, so I didn't click that this was going back in the story again. I could have noticed that the window was different, but these were action scenes so the pace is fast. The average reader doesn't slow down to examine every detail in the panel during these scenes, or if they do the artist has usually done their job incorrectly (although admittedly there are times when you want the reader to slow down during an actions sequence). A minor thing maybe, but it pulls you out of the story, and thus shatters the spell that the creators have been trying (successfully) to weave to that point.

The second major problem is much more intrusive. The thing with super-hero comics is that they usually rely too much on prior knowledge on the characters and what has happened to them. In order for this book to really succeed as a self-contained effort, it would need to be a satisfying read for a reader with no prior knowledge of the characters inside. To this end I tired to approach it as if I did not have any knowledge of the characters (not too hard as I've never really read much of Hawkeye outside his Avengers exploits, and I know nothing of Young Avengers). So Kate Bishop, the other major character in this story, is introduced thus:

Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye): “Kate took over for me as Hawkeye once upon a time when I was...well dressing up like a ninja, sort of, is the short version. She is without doubt the finest and most gifted bowman I've ever met but she's like nine years old and spoiled rotten.”

She's nine years old. This brings up some major problems with the whole story, but the first thing I wondered was why Matt Fraction didn't bother to tell the artist, or why David Aja decided to draw her more like a young woman the a pre-pubescent girl. There are other problems at work here too, such as why Matt Fraction, having said she's nine years old, then tells her one of the reasons he wants her to work with him is that he doesn't want to sleep with her, which together with the images leads the reader to think that maybe she's not nine years old after all, but closer to twenty. Kate is persistently portrayed as being sexually mature until Javier Pulido draws her being unmasked in a later story, in a panel swiped directly from one of the Hernandez brothers in which she looks just like a little girl. There's also the unlikely ability of a little girl to pass herself off as a major criminal, to mix in adult society with ease, and to drive a car like an expert. Normally you could pass this off as the sidekick genre trope, but the book moves so firmly away from these tropes that this jars badly. We're shown Hawkeye getting consistently hurt and ending up in hospital at times. It goes to such great lengths to present a much more adult tale, and this aspect just ruins all of that.

The two chapters drawn by Javier Pulido are decent enough, but it is a bit of a let down after the opening chapters, and does not appear to advance the plot any from chapter two, at the end of which it appears that Clint Barton has drawn the eye of many of the heavy hitters in the underworld. In fact my last main criticism of this book is the inclusion of the Young Avengers chapter at the end. If anything it should have come near the start to illuminate the relationship between Kate Bishop and Clint Barton. As a self-contained work it would really have been more useful to have just included the issues that advanced the overarching story, unless this has not been finished or even dealt with. The Young Avengers chapter instead just reads like filler.

Surprisingly enough I did actually enjoy reading this book, especially the first three chapters, despite the above criticisms. As I said earlier, the standard set by Fraction, Aja and Hollingsworth was so high that the faults, when they appear, impact a lot more than they would normally have done. I would still urge all to read this, even if just for the consummate skill Aja shows in his page design and storytelling. That's half the fun of participating in the CBOTM club. I would never have picked this book up on my own, and so would have been unaware of just how good Aja can be. Now he's an artist I'll be on the look out for, and definitely someone I'll be investigating further, and so the sum of my knowledge becomes a little greater, and my appreciation a little deeper.

The New Deadwardians (Vertigo)

Writer: Dan Abnett
Artist: I.N.J Culbard

A Page 45 Comic Book of the Month

“Chief Superintendent Carstairs: What the did, they did with the most principled intentions.

Chief Inspector George Suttle: They ruined the world, Carstairs.”

In the week that Margaret Thatcher died, it is hard to think about Dan Abnett and I.N.J Culbard's “The New Deadwardians” without reading a condemnation of the former Prime Minister's policies into the narrative. For some she was a figure to be admired, somebody who got Britain respected in the world community again. The Daily Mail newspaper had the headline, “The Woman Who Saved Britain” on the morning following her death. For others it was a cause for unprecedented celebration. Whatever one's political stance, the one thing that can be said for certain is that, in light of the diametrically opposed reactions to her passing, she was a divisive figure who left a divided country.

The theme of a divided Britain, along lines of class and class privilege, runs right through this book. Some sort of disease has run through the working class, turning them into mindless zombies, greedy for human flesh. To combat this the ruling classes took what they called the “Cure” which turned them into vampires. The poor were kept in zones away from the ruling classes who were now immortal, or at least unable to die as they were already dead. There are demonstrations and riots by the common folk who have not succumbed to the curse. This all seems very symbolic of Britain in the Eighties.

Chief Inspector George Suttle is the last homicide detective left in the Metropolitan Police. His department has all but been dissolved as there are no murders, at least among the vampiric ruling classes; until one of them turns up dead with none of the three known ways they can die (impalement of the heart, decapitation and incineration). The subsequent investigation leads him right up to the very highest power in the land.

Our protagonist comes across as a decent sort of man. He looks after his elderly and infirm mother, he dislikes the derogatory term “brights”, which is used to refer to the common folk who are not zombies, He takes his maid for the cure after she is bitten by a zombie, and speaks respectfully to all he comes across. He is haunted by memories of the war fought against the zombies in 1861, and the acts he had to commit for Queen and Country. It is through Suttle's musings that we come to the second main theme of the book, that of the nature of life. In giving up their lives to become undead, they lose all their old desires, dreams and motivations. They lose all that made life worth living and so for them they are merely existing. Some are able to fool themselves, but like Antoine Roquentin in Satre's Nausea, Suttle is tormented by the existentialist dilemma. In living forever they have lost their life. They are no longer living, merely existing.

There is much to like about this book. I.N.J. Culbard produces some attractive art. Detailed backgrounds are used where they are required to communicate some crucial part of the story (e.g. the Houses of Parliament where the murder victim is found, and for all establishing shots). However for large parts of the book the backgrounds are blank. This helps focus the eye on the characters, emphasising where the importance lies – this is a book about people and how they are treated. There is also a symbolic element to this, as the walls remain empty of décor and detail in the same way that the lives of the vampires are empty.

Dan Abnett's script is tight. He manages to tie everything up in eight issues where some would have tried to string it out as long as possible. His dialogue is realistic and there are some nice, humorous touches, as in the following exchange between Suttle and his driver Bowes:

“George Suttle: I'm not familiar with the area myself. I live in Zone-A, Marylebone.

Bowes (muttering): You don't live nowhere at all, mate.”

Unfortunately there are some areas where this strip lets itself down, not least in it's treatment of women. There are only really four women characters in it. Suttle's mother serves to comment on George himself. George's maid is there to be a victim of a zombie attack so we can see how wonderful Suttle is. Sapphire, the whore who falls for George incredibly quickly and for no discernible reason other than it served the plot as she later becomes a kidnap victim. The murder victim's mother is there to mourn her husband, and her daughter is a stereotypical firebrand feminist who is defined by her stance against men. It is perhaps a little unfair to pick up on this here as The New Deadwardians is far from alone in this depiction of women, and I don't think it was a deliberate decision to have all the females defined by the relationship to men, but it stands out in a book which appears to want to point out the problems with social inequality due to class.

These gender issues are a shame as this is otherwise a wonderful book, with memorable scenes and with a desire to say something, to reflect something about our society. I'd still recommend purchasing this as it is well written, but the problems with gender are to the detriment of the work as a whole.

Goliath (Drawn & Quarterly)

Creator: Tom Gauld

A Page 45 Comic Book of the Month

This is the first long form work that I have read by Tom Gauld, having been entertained by his cartoons in The Guardian for a while now. His style is such that it was difficult to see whether it would sustain a longer narrative. It is with some pleasure that not only does it sustain such a work, but it helps to enhance its meaning.

The style itself is one of seemingly simple, cartoonish figures (closer to the Schulz end of the spectrum than Eddie Campbell), and panels drawn with a confidence that allows for quite extensive use of negative space. Gauld's panel layouts are never cluttered, his page design quite elegant, and the use of splash pages effective. His panel borders are hand drawn, and the shaky line lends an extra human quality to the look.

All of this contributes to the matter-of-fact attitude that is used to communicate the story. There's no over the top melodrama that you would imagine Marvel possibly using to put over the tale of David and Goliath, no over emoting. Rather the artist takes this gentle, peace loving character and shows the events that lead to his tragic demise, in much the same way that the source material puts across the story with little emotion, but to much different effect.

As for the story, we all know the tale of David and Goliath. What Tom Gauld does here is show Goliath of Gath not as a violent, fearsome hero of the Philistines, but as a more peaceable fellow caught up in the machinations of his senior officer and the apathy of his King:


"...I believe I can end this stalemate and win the war in two weeks at a maximum cost of two Philistine lives."

To be fair to the Captain, he does seem to be concerned with ending the war with the least amount of casualties to his side, but this requires a sacrifice, and he certainly isn't going to use a skilled warrior. Thus Goliath is chosen, especially as his height makes him seem tougher and more convincing as a champion of the Philistines, which comes as some surprise to the man himself. The first time he sees the speech he has to shout challenging the enemy send one man to try to kill him, he faints. When he comes round he is a little confused:

"There's been a mistake...I'm not the champion. I'm the fifth-worst swordsman in my platoon...""

Assured by his Captain that there is no risk and he is merely doing his bit for the cause, Goliath continues to shout this message day after day until one day, as we all know, he is killed by a stone launched from the sling of David. This scene is shown with exactly the same lack of melodrama as the rest of the story, even down to the decapitation, and the simplicity and rapidity with which the death of this character we truly feel for happens is heartbreaking.

"Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith."
- King James Bible

This death scene is much more affecting in Tom Gauld's comic than the above description. What the artist appears to have done is to have given us a deconstructionist text, forcing the reader to look at the David and Goliath story from a different angle, forcing us to question our inbuilt assumptions about firstly this story, and secondly about the use of violence as a means to an end, and the presentation of this violence, which occurs often in the Old Testament, within a body of work that influences politics and society today (as an example you only have to look at the homophobic reaction of some members of the Christian community who will hold up selective quotes from the Old Testament as some sort of justification).

The decapitation of Goliath, for whom we feel a great deal of sympathy in this comic, raises memories of the horrific decapitations that have been broadcast over the internet by certain religious extremists, and this should make us question our assumptions that the Old Testament should be held up as a moral guide, rather than the gentler New Testament, which is rather less quoted by the intolerant given its propensity for tolerance and forgiveness.

Ultimately what Gauld forces us to confront is the human cost of war and violence. As with the novel, All Quiet on the Western front, so with Goliath - if we humanise the enemy we find that he is more like us than we would have believed, and our desire for violent confrontation is greatly diminished. This is a crucial message given the bloodshed of the last decade.

daytripper (DC vertigo)

Creators: Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon

A Page 45 Comic Book of the Month

In an episode of the “Wonders of the Universe” television programme, Professor Brian Cox demonstrated how all life is made up of elements that result from the death of a star. In other words, we are all dependent on the process of death and rebirth. The latest Vertigo offering from the Brazilian brothers Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, takes this concept as its central theme in a story about the sheer joy of being alive.

Daytripper opens with words penned by our protagonist, Bras de Olivia Domingos, about death:

“When the cancer that had spread throughout most of his brain finally took the best of him...”

These are words that Bras has written about a stranger in his job as an obituary writer (incidentally this is a text book example of the storytelling technique of introducing character). The words are dark and gloomy and depressing, in marked contrast to the words at the end, also about death but written by Bras' father, Benedito, on the birth of Bras' son, and intending to accept death as part of the celebration of life. The most important part of the letter begins:

“Only when you accept that one day you'll die can you let go...and make the best out of life.”

In the letter, Benedito explicitly spells out the theme of death and rebirth:

“This baby is the new master of your life. He is the sole reason for your existence. You'll surrender your life to him, give him your heart and soul because you want him to be strong...to be brave enough to make all his decisions without you.”

“Your life is out of your hands now...just like mine has been since the day you were born.”

There are obvious shortfalls in telling a story like this, the most obvious being the potential for it to come across as smug and sickly sweet. The two brothers neatly avoid many of the problems, and the only real misstep is in the first chapter, which feels too melodramatic and out of keeping with the tone of the rest of the book. The bar owner's death at the hands of his nephew feels overly contrived. Why wouldn't the nephew simply ask for some money or a loan. Shooting his uncle and an innocent bystander seems counter productive to his aims.

Of course it needs to be remembered that this was a DC Vertigo series, and as such there are likely inbuilt assumptions about the reader base. Given that Vertigo readers tend to have come from a super-hero reading background, a certain amount of overt violence is probably expected. Obviously this is a huge generalisation, but it would certainly explain this opening chapter, which would originally have been the first issue of the comic with the aim of hooking the readers in. If this had been a release by a different publisher (e.g. Fantagraphics) then I imagine the first chapter would have been different in feel and would have presented a much more cohesive whole as a collected work. However this is a minor point and it certainly does not detract from the artisitic success of Daytripper.

In terms of technique, the most obvious little trick employed throughout this book is the use of full bleeds on certain panels on most pages. This seems to serve to do a couple of things. On a subconscious level it attracts the readers eye, emphasising what is happening in that panel and making it stand out a little more on the page. The other is in the evocation of atmosphere. A quick example would be in the second chapter, where certain panels with the sea bleed to the edge of the page, giving a feeling of calm, whilst also placing emphasis on the sea as an important part of the chapter. This is also used in the busy marketplace, and we feel like we are part of a bustling market.

The style of art used is itself interesting. On the scale of abstract to realism, it veers towards the cartoony end. However at the end of the book Fabio states that they wanted a world which felt real:

“Every reference, every photo, every color and every character, everything was made to reproduce feelings. A feeling that you were alive, happy, lonely, afraid or in love. We wanted that feeling that life was happening right there, in front of every one of us, and we were living it.”

To this end, the use of a more abstract style makes perfect sense, especially if we agree with Scott McCloud's assertion, in Understanding Comics, that the more cartoony style allows the reader to project themselves into the image more completely:

“...when you enter the world of the cartoon...you see yourself.”

Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics. 1993)

This style perfectly fits a book about the world within each of us rather than the world around us, and this is definitely a story about our inner world, how we see and understand ourselves and fully appreciate the joy of life and through this the world around us.

Daytripper is a truly wonderful experience. There are numerous touching scenes, particularly in chapter eight where Bras never appears, but we see the positive impact he has made as a husband and father. Ultimately this is how our lives will be judged a success or not. The amount of money we make, or supposed power we wield are, in the end, meaningless. It is how we are seen by our loved ones – friends, partners and, most importantly, children. The impact on children is the most important because they are completely reliant on their parents, not just for feeding and housing them, but to demonstrate how people should behave within themselves and towards one another. This seems to be one of the messages of the book. As we see the positive impact Bras has had on his son, we also witness the positive impact his father made on him.

This is a great book, which came out last year and deserves to be on everybody's must-read list. It is uplifting and thought provoking without being cloying or didactic, and it stays in the mind so long that one read is not enough. The good thing is that subsequent readings will reveal further meanings, but all these meanings will be personal to that particular reader.

Dotter of her Father's eyes (Jonathan Cape)

A Page 45 Comicbook of the Month


Writer: Mary M Talbot
Artist: Bryan Talbot

Dotter of her Father’s Eyes is one of the more interesting comics to have been released recently, and it starts with the way the title is set out. On the book it is “Dotter of her Father’s Eyes”, a lower case “h”, where one would normally expect “Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes”.  It’s a small thing, and something I only noticed when I was looking at the cover as I started to write this, but it’s a good example of how much this book rewards close and repeated readings. The lower case here is significant as the whole book is about gender, about the oppression of women during the twentieth century and their changing status.

The book deals with Mary Talbot’s upbringing and her relationship with her father, a leading Joycean scholar, in parallel with that of James Joyce’s tragic daughter Lucia. The narrative rarely takes place in the present, but in an early scene where Mary is chatting to two of here colleagues about Lucia Joyce who ask if she is finding parallels, she replies:

“I bloody hope not! She spent most of her life in mental institutions.”

As the story goes on though, we do find some parallels, but the gender has changed. Lucia is oppressed and opposed in her creativity, and dealt with coldly, by her mother, who seems bitter that Lucia is, initially at least, able to be more independent than her mother could ever have dreamed of being. It isn’t spelled out in the book, but one gets the impression that her mother’s deep lying resentment comes from having the burden of being responsible for raising a family whilst her husband indulges every artistic whim, dragging the family hither and thither with little to no security other than can be obtained by his reputation as a Modernist genius.

Lucia has a talent and a drive for dance, and it is her relentless pursuit of this, which only mirrors her father’s relentless pursuit of literary perfection, which results in her persecution and mental instability. Ultimately she is betrayed by her father, on whom she should have been able to rely as a fellow artist, in this exchange:

“Lucia, dearest, this latest obsession is doing you no good. You have to stop. Find some other creative outlet. This dancing is too much for you.”

“But it’s my life, Babbo. How can I not dance?”

“Lucia, Lucia. Be content. It’s enough if a woman can write a letter and carry an umbrella gracefully.”

Although Lucia is not committed to an asylum until her brother does it after she attacks her mother during an argument, it feels like this is where she is broken. The one person you would expect support from, who seems to pride himself on how unconventional he is, reveals his own conventional prejudices on a woman’s place in society.

As mentioned before, there do appear to be parallels between Mary and Lucia. These help show how the role of women in society has changed somewhat over the years, but more importantly also help bring home the impact of these attitudes due to Mary being brought up in a “normal” (for want of a better word) household in the north-west of England. For somebody like me, from a similar area if not era, Mary’s story brings the message home very effectively.

Mary’s story shows her father, her “cold mad feary father” to be emotionally distant and angry, with the occasional bouts of closeness. He is emotionally and physically violent towards his daughter, and loves to put her down. Two instances of this come to the fore immediately. The first is when Mary’s mother is reading out her good school report which states that Mary always tries, to which her father retorts, “Mary is always trying. How true!”. this scene goes on to show him decrying all women using a latin phrase from a poem. When he should be building up his daughter’s confidence, he seems to wish to demolish it simply so he can, in his own eyes, look clever. The other is when she completes her BA at Preston Polytechnic, whilst she has a young family to tend to, and to which he says, “B.A? Bloomin’ Awful!”. However unlike Lucia, Mary is empowered to stand up for herself, to defy this misogynist:

“No, Dad. Brilliant Achievement!”

To be honest, the emotional response in the reader at this point is to cheer her to the rafters.

There are other obvious parallels between Lucia and Mary’s experiences. Mary too desires to be a ballerina. In a class at her primary school the children are being asked what they wish to do when they grow up. A girl who answers that she would like to be a nurse gains approval, “Well that’s a nice job for a girl...". Mary makes a rather innocent but cutting answer:

“And Mary, what about you?”

“I want to be a ballerina, Sister Bernadette.”

“Well now, that’s pretty, I suppose. And if God doesn’t want you to be a ballerina, what else would you like to do?”

“Draw a pension, Sister.”

This is an allusion to a remark made by one of her working class neighbours who where looking after her whilst her mother was at work after school. Class runs through this as well, which is to be expected of a story emerging from Britain, but it is pretty much subsumed by that of gender. After all women where subject to prejudice and misogyny regardless of what class they belonged to.

One scene that does need to mentioned is the rather horrific birth scene. I was born in the same era as Mary and Bryan’s sons in 1970, and the thought that women had to experience such neglect for the physical and emotional well being during birth such a short time ago is quite appalling.

In all of this I have failed to mention Bryan Talbot’s artwork. In most cases with an artists so well known, you could say that it was in his usual style and up to his usual standard. Unfortunately that is never the case with Mr. Talbot. It is up to his usual standard in every way. In terms of pure storytelling, this is a comic which a lot of artists would do well to study. Clear and concise, it gets all the information required over to the reader so that you are never forced to read a page two or three times just to understand what is going on at the most fundamental level.

Any reader of Bryan’s though would understand that the man has no set style. He has a huge range, using what is most appropriate to the story being told, whether that is the intense science fiction action caperings of Luther Arkwright, the distressing but uplifting “Tale of One Bad Rat”, the experimental “Alice in Sunderland” or sundry others.  In this he has used a ligne clair style for the most part, with deviation for some of the more emotionally dramatic sequences involving Lucia. Particularly effective is the page design for Lucia’s committal to asylum.

Overall there is so much to this book that it will take me a few more readings to fully appreciate everything that is being said. There is a lot more to it than I have mentioned here, and I look forward to Mary M Talbot’s historical graphic novel. If it is a fraction as good as this then it will still be better than 99% of everything else.

Habibi (Pantheon Books)

A Page 45 Comic Book of the Month

Created by: Craig Thompson

Craig Thompson is primarily known as the creator of the critically acclaimed and popular graphic novel Blankets. He worked on Habibi from late 2004, and has put together a beautiful looking book, which is gorgeously packaged. To hold it in your hands is to understand the devotion and love that has gone into this. Clearly this book means something more to the author than just entertainment.

On reading the novel one is made aware of the number of themes flowing through it. Essentially the story concerns a young girl called Dodola, who is a slave who escapes at age 12, taking with her a little black skinned baby called Cham, who she renames Zam and who subsequently becomes the titular Habibi (beloved). For nine years they survive in the desert on a marooned boat, Dodola feeding them exchanging sex for food from caravans that travel nearby. After these nine years they are separated when Dodola is captured and sent to be a part of the Sultan's harem. The remainder of the book deals with the trials they undergo before they are eventually reunited.

On the surface this is a simple story of two people forced apart and tossed about by fate, who come through a number of trials to be together once again. It is an optimistic book, concluding with the idea that people can be treated extremely poorly by society and yet can still break the cycle and not perpetrate the same suffering on subsequent generations. However, the artist interweaves numerous themes within this, including religion (both Islam and Christianity) ownership, the environmental destruction of the planet and sex, which he manages to link together rather wonderfully. To write about all the different themes in this one entry would result in a piece of text too long for my tastes in a blog, so I'll take each in turn over time, beginning with sex.

Sex is unavoidable in Habibi. It is everywhere you look, on a huge number of pages. However the aim is not to titillate but to comment on the use of sex and sexuality within society; to show the problems that can be caused by not dealing with the subject in a sensible manner, devoid of hysteria and puritanism.

A key moment in the drama of the novel is the choice Zam makes to be castrated. Such an extreme and irreversible undertaking demands that we ask why he chose this? What prompted such an extreme undertaking?

The text shows Zam’s experience of sex up to that point as being:

• Innocently washing Dodola’s boobs at age 9 but Dodola getting a little uncomfortable with it.
• Staring in fascination at Dodola’s boobs at age 10 and Dodola being uncomfortable with it, demonstrating an emerging sexuality in Zam.
• Furtively staring at Dodola bathing when he was age 12 andboth being embarressed when Dodola catches him, as shown is the typical exchange that follows when she discovers him spying:

 Dodola: "How long have you been standing there?"

 Zam: "I… I just woke up"

This is the first time Zam lies about looking at Dodola’s nakedness, and so the first indication we have that Zam is starting to feel a shame associated with sex. Later whilst out looking for water, we see Zam imagining Dodola’s clothes slipping off her. Like a lot of adolescent boys he is thinking about sex a lot, and is facinated but clearly does not quite understand what he is feeling as this fantasy segues into Dodola becoming a vision of Eve.

After Eve leaves to go for food, Zam looks out of the window and gets an erection and looks troubled by this. Disobeying Dodola’s instructions, he leaves to follow her to the caravan where she has gone to get food, and witnesses her being forcefully taken by one of the merchants. He fantasizes about killing the merchant, but being so young is able to do nothing and so can only watch in horror.

This is his first experience of sex and it clearly traumatises him. We see him later painfully punching the erection he gets after thinking about Dodola’s naked body, then banging his head against the rock. We see him in the bath doing the same thing, and then waking from a nightmare where he is dressed as the merchant having sex with Dodola, so he sleeps on the floor and not in their bed:

“I’m too big to share a bed anymore.”

The innocence has gone, as it must for all, but Zam’s idea of sex is one of violence and he misinterprets his desire for Dodola as a desire to hurt her and is thus ashamed of himself, and filled with rage at the organ which seems to be responsible for such desires.

Sex throughout the book is depicted as either violent and/or an act of ownership and exploitation, as Dodola encapsulates when she says:

“I’d once used my body to my advantage, but even then it didn’t belong to me, posessed instead by the LUSTS of men."

It is not until the end of the book, when Zam and Dodola have sex together for the first time, albeit obviously non-penetrative, that we are witness to any sort of positive, loving, mutually pleasurable sexual activity.

What can we infer from this? Clearly we have an argument here against sex being used as exploitation or ownership, such as can be found in prostitution and pornography. However there are women who work within the sex industry who do not see themselves as being exploited (e.g. Dr Brooke Magnanti in her Belle-de-Jour blog, and Anna Arrowsmith who as Anna Span has directed some of the most popular porn films by and  aimed at women).

So is the argument for more positive information about sex to be made available to people as they mature into sexual beings? Neither Zam nor Dodola had any guidance as to how to react as first Dodola and then Zam matured into sexual people. Their only experiences where negative, and lead inevitably to tragedy, before their redemption at the end of the book. Should they have been educated in the changes happening within them as they went through puberty; should they have been taught that there was nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed of; should they have been taught to be open and had authority figure they could trust to ask qustions of; should the experiences they had or witnessed to do with sex have been positive ones of respect and mutual pleasure; would this have lead to a much more positive and better life for them? These are the questions raised by the book on this theme, and the conclusions you come to will depend on your existing prejudices.

Criminal: The Last of the Innocent (Marvel Icon)

Writer: Ed Brubaker

Artist: Sean Philips

Marvel Comics launched their Icon imprint back in 2004. The most famous and successful and famous Icon comic is probably Kick-Ass by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., which just goes to show that the world loves to have its prejudices about comics being second-rate, immature entertainment for emotionally stunted boys (albeit boys in their thirties and forties) reinforced. However the most consistent in terms of release and quality is Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, which is now released in story arcs averaging around four issues before going on hiatus until the next arc is ready, and the two creators have released other projects.

Ed Brubaker had been around for some considerable time as an “alternative” comic creator. I first read him in Dark Horse Presents in the late nineties on a strip called The Fall, which failed to grip me but this was more to do with the fact that I didn't have all of the issues of DHP that contained the strip, and it wasn't until Gotham Central from DC Comics, a police procedural that just happened to be set in the Gotham City of Batman, that I really started to take notice. His run on Captain America for Marvel helped reinvigorate the title, but to my mind Criminal is where he really demonstrates his chops.

As a twenty-something in the early nineties I latched onto Sean Phillips art in the relaunch of the Judge Dredd Megazine in which was the John Smith and Sean Phillips strip, Devlin Waugh. At the time I felt that this art was like nothing else I'd seen in comics, and he certainly stood out as somebody who could clearly tell a story whilst at the same time providing some innovative visuals. On reading Criminal all these years later, it is clear that he is the perfect artist for the title. He and Brubaker seem to have developed a definite chemistry. This is very much a comic by two co-creators rather than one dominating the other.

I was a latecomer to Criminal. Page 45 (the comic shop in Nottingham) featured the collection of the first story arc, Coward, as their Comic Book of the Month, and I've not looked back since. 

The title itself consists of self contained story arcs set at different times in Central City. Each arc can be read on its own with no reference to any of the others and provides a complete and satisfying story. However for regular readers there is also the connections that can be made between the different characters. It is not unusual for the people we have met in a previous story to turn up in a minor role, or mentioned, or in the background of some other story. Sometimes we get to see these people later on from a different point of view, or we have seen them earlier and so the mere mention of them has a ring of frisson about it.

The latest story arc is set in 1982 and concerns a man called Riley Richards going back to his home town of Brookview for a few days to see his terminally ill father. Richards is far from innocent, having a fondness for strippers and gambling, and being in debt to Sebastian Hyde, the kingpin of organised crime in Central City. However his trip back to the small town of his childhood is also a trip back to innocence as he stays in his old bedroom that has not been changed since he left, and meets up with his old childhood sweetheart and his best friend. This glimpse of how simple life used to be gives Riley the wherewithal to get rid of his debt and to be with his childhood sweetheart. All he needs to do is murder his wife, who just happens to be from a wealthy family and whose father made him sign a pre-nuptial agreement. What follows is the very opposite of innocent as he murders his adulterous wife and frames her lover, who happens to be another childhood acquaintance. Oh and he kills his childhood best friend too.

As usual with this title, and noir in general, none of the characters are what you could term wholesome. The title would seem to refer to the one person totally untainted by anything, Riley's childhood girlfriend Lizzie Gordon. You find yourself pulling for Riley and wanting him to win through, but the sucker punch in him killing his best friend is quite a blow. It shows just how far gone Riley is, and brings to mind the quote from Macbeth after he has murdered his friend, the noble Banquo:

“...I am in blood

Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o'er.”

• Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4

Sean Phillips compliments the story perfectly, utilising the dark style consistent with the rest of the series, with a more innocent style reminiscent of Archie for the flashbacks to more innocent times. This is effective as used throughout, but the real payoff comes in the last panel, where we see Riley and Lizzie together, drawn in the innocent style, against a backdrop of a seedy city scene drawn in the more familiar dark, sinister style; an omen of the changes that are about to come crashing into the innocent Lizzie Gorden's life we wonder?

Criminal is a wonderful comic and this latest arc has been it's strongest yet. The plot may not have exactly been original, but it was executed with sufficient panache and style to feel fresh, and Sean Phillips excelled his usual high standards, pulling out all the stops to maximise the emotional resonance of the tale.

Rachel Rising #1  (Abstract Studio)

Creator: Terry Moore


A woman walks through a forest to a ditch and watches as another female rises from the ground as if buried alive. The just-buried girl walks home and then tries to figure out what happened to her. She has a mark around her throat that her memory, which is extremely unreliable, indicates is a rope that was used to strangle her. Her eyes are very strange and her cat is afraid of her. Finally she is told that she is not who she thinks she is - she is not Rachel. Thus ends issue one.

Hot on the heels of the rather magnificent science fiction series, Echo, comes this seeming horror/mystery title from Terry Moore. Mr. Moore uses an effective narrative device here as the main protagonist is as clueless as the reader as to the events that led up to the start of the book. We learn as she learns, and at the end of the first issue this reader really wanted to get straight into the next issue to learn more about this girl and the whole mystery. Fortunately as I was late getting onto this series, my comic shop sent both issues one and two together (thanks Page 45). Sometimes being slow off the mark can have its advantages.

The second issue cranks the mystery up and expands on Rachel's world as she goes to visit her Aunt Johnny, who works at a mortuary and is a little mentally unstable. We get the impression that Rachel is dead as he lumps her in with all the other apparitions of dead people that he experiences whilst working in the mortuary at night. The mysterious woman from the start of issue one turns up again and encounters a sweet little girl, who suddenly turns extremely violent after the visit. We leave the issue with two questions - what has happened to Rachel and who is this mysterious woman?

Let me first say that I have always admired and enjoyed Terry Moore's work, from Strangers in Paradise through Echo and now onto Rachel Rising. He is an extremely talented cartoonist and his art is an unalloyed joy to look at. His storytelling technique is top level, and he always manages to leave you finishing an issue and wanting the next one immediately (something I've experienced with every Moore comic I have ever read). I do have one problem - his depictions of women.

Terry Moore's women all look stunningly beautiful, although not in a cheesecake style. The problem is that they all look very similar and it can sometimes be difficult to tell one blond from another. That causes some very minor problems here as I'm not sure if the mysterious woman is in some way Rachel, or whether she just looks like Rachel because they both have blond hair. It detracts a little from the enjoyment when you don't know whether something is as it is actually depicted, or if this is because of limitations of the artist.

That final criticism is very minor though, as this is shaping up very promisingly and looks, at this early stage, like it could at least be the equal of Echo and Strangers in Paradise, although it is closer in feel to the more recent strip. You owe it to yourselves as lovers of fine comics to pick this up either in the individual issues or when the trade is issued. If you can wait for the trade then it will read even better than it does now, but I can't wait that long and have to get as much as I can of this story as soon as is possible.

Some People (Self Published)

A Page 45 Comic Book of the Month

Created by: Luke Pearson

Let's get this out of the way first. This comic is four pages of strip, with a couple more of development sketches and notes, and cost me £2.00. It is also free on-line. Despite all this, I have to say that £2.00 is a bargain and you should all go out and buy it now (Page 45 may still have some copies).

The artist quite clearly states in his introduction that you can go to his website and print out as many copies as you want. However £2.00 will provide support for an extremely promising UK creator to create more high quality work, and you can never have too much of that.

This is a clever little strip, showing how we are all "some people" and we are all in some way linked together. We start with a young man being abused by a youth wearing an outfit designed to strike fear into the Daily Mail readers amongst us, a hoodie. We then see this youth ageing to become a cuddly Grandad to a little girl, who then ages to become a bitter single mother with a daughter of her own whose classmate...

You can see how this is going. Luke Pearson introduces us to each character for four panels, time passes and we get a link to another person, until eventually we come back round to the young lad from the start as a disillusioned middle aged man spending all his time at the pub rather than with his family. The underlying theme is similar to Ray Fawkes' more ambitious One Soul, and it is remarkable how much empathy the artist elicits from the reader for these characters that we meet for only a brief period.

In his introduction, Luke Pearson says, "If I was to die right now, this is what most people would know me for.". I have to say that if that was to have happened, we would be mourning the loss of such huge potential. As I write this I have learned that he has a new book out called Everything We Miss published by Nobrow (a review of which you can find by the ever reliable Stephen Holland here) so with a bit of luck we have plenty more work to look forward to.