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Bang! by Matt Kindt and Wilfredo Torres

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Doomsday Clock - Geoff Johns & Gary Frank

Unlike some I have no particular quibble with taking Alan Moore & Dave Gibbon's seminal comic Watchmen and using those characters to tell new stories.  The original stands on its own merits and always will.  Indeed, the current Rorschach comic and the critically acclaimed Watchmen TV series suggest that sealing the original off from any further works would only deny us some expertly crafted additions to the canon.  Is it snobbish, or perhaps gatekeeping, to expect Watchmen art to be held to a higher standard though?  Is the original held in such holy reverence that to besmirch the Watchmen name is tantamount to heresy?  Or can we put these characters alongside all the other pop culture icons and accept that they are simply tools to be used and that the resulting quality may be good, bad, or indifferent, just as with, say, any Batman or Spider-Man comic, regardless of the origins or high watermarks of the past? I ask these questions because Doomsday Clock , the somewhat controve

The Eyes of the Cat - Jodorowsky and Mœbius

    Simplicity, minimalism, and restraint, are not usually words you would associate with a comic written by Alexandro Jodorowsky.  The man who usually fills each page of his sci-fi adventures with more ideas than most writers come up with in a lifetime, on this occasion, managed to pare it down to just one.  The Eyes of the Cat , his very first work with artist Mœbius, allows the drawing space and time to breath, and the result is much more akin to Mœbius' solo work than their other collaborations (most famously The Incal ). The narrative is straightforward enough; in some future or alien city an eagle soars above the streets looking for a cat at the behest of a blind master, to whom it then returns to with the titular 'eyes of the cat'.  What makes this work stand out is how this tale is presented.  The art and story split into two separate parts; on the left hand pages is a simple silhouetted image of the master in the window, taking up perhaps a third of the page (and i

Pulp - Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips

  Clearly writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips realised they'd found success - both artistically and commercially - with their modern noir series Criminal and whilst that recently relaunched series continues in its rich vein of form, the pair have also cleverly diverged into projects that put a twist on their formula; the Lovecraft influenced Fatale, super-heroes with Incognito (and the excellent Sleeper , which pre-dates Criminal ), the Hollywood setting of The Fade Out , and the supernatural in Kill Or Be Killed.   This time around the USP is a tale set in the Wild West, although in typical Brubaker/Phillips (Bruillips?  Phillbaker?) fashion things aren't all that they initially seem to be. Behind the gorgeous sepia-ish cowboy cover by Phillips lies a story set in New York City 1939, where lead character Max Winters is a down-on-his-luck comic book writer.  Now, granted almost all of the characters in these Brubaker/Phillips stories are down-on-their-luck. but we'

In Waves - AJ Dungo

  I wonder what it says about me that in a book about people and their challenges in life - the author and his grief, his girlfriend Kristen's battle with an ultimately fatal condition, Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake's roles in the popularisation of surfing - that I was most drawn to the absence of them in Dungo's wonderfully powerful seascapes.  The ocean has always been a popular and useful metaphor in art, and its massive expanse emphasising the individual's loneliness and helplessness, coupled with the deep dark unknown under the surface, works perfectly here to mirror the tragic tale.  The use of simple colour - some chapters are all green tones, some all browns - lends a dreamlike quality to the art, which nicely complements the themes of memory and the past that are prevalent in the book.  It is of no surprise that it is published by Nobrow, veering as close to a house style for the publisher as you are probably going to find.  Its a testament to Dungo's writi

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

 Fun Home is the somewhat depressing memoir-cum-analysis of cartoonist Alison Bechdel's childhood and teenage life, linking her own discovery of her sexual identity with the death of her father and the subsequent revelations of his sexuality. Contradiction and ignorance lie at the heart of this story.  Bechdel's childhood is portrayed as the product of a cold and loveless marriage, where the children are treated more as school pupils and free labour than beloved offspring.  Yet Bechdel and her siblings for the most part come across as happy and content with their lives - at least until the confusion of puberty and sex rears its head in the later years.  The narrative revolves around the death of Bechdel's father - hit by a truck whilst crossing the road from a house he was renovating - which she adamantly maintains throughout the story was an un-confessed suicide driven by his secret homosexuality (or bisexuality - he never articulates any specifics) in their local sm

Sub-Mariner: The Depths

One big trick I think Marvel is constantly guilty of missing is that they’ve created this huge and popular universe, filled with vibrant characters and a rich history, yet they only really use it to tell superhero stories.   Sub Mariner: The Depths , originally published in five parts under the Marvel Knights banner in 2009, is a rare exception. This claustrophobic psychological thriller, written by Peter Milligan with art by Esad Ribic, is loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (which also served as the basis for the film Apocalypse Now ), and is one of Marvel’s best comics in recent years.   The tale is a fantastic little examination of what it must be like to live in the Marvel universe, however unlike Kurt Busiek’s Marvels which tackled the same issue, The Depths  is more about what we don’t see than what we do. Set in an art deco Marvel universe before the advent of the super-heroes, Dr Randolph Stein - scientist and ‘profession