Results tagged “Darwyn Cooke” from Birmingham Mail - Speech Balloon

REVIEWING MORE comic books...

The New Frontier Volume 1
By Darwyn Cooke (DC)

A re-evaluation of 50s real world events and how they might have shaped the characters who sprang forth from National Comics (DC Comics as is) in the crimson dawn of the Silver Age of American Comics.

It's earnest, heartfelt without being whimsical, visually appealing in a sub-Alex Toth vein, utilising an interesting three-panel single tier layout in the main, that surprisingly doesn't dull.

Nitpicking, Howard Chaykin could have done a similar job with a spicier bite, and Steve Englehart and Dick Dillon actually told a similar story in a one-off from the original Justice League of America series back in the 70s (albeit that it was a giant sized one-off issue). For modern readers it's both a nostalgic reminder of past reading habits and a nod and a wink to real history. To most faithful older readers a smile may still be wrought about their lips. I do have mixed feelings about revisionist comics but Darwyn Cooke is obviously talented.

Thirt3en
By Mike Carey & Andy Clarke (2000AD)

Joe Bulmer's a telekinetic and a thief, and when he steals a black pearl (that's always coloured white in the story?) his powers increase and he starts seeing a hot-to-trot blond, straight out of a Fighting Fantasy derived game.

Alas, there are some men in black after him who use every Die Hard twist and turn cliff-hanger catastrophe to good effect, while Daksha, an Asian female telepath in their trust, goes over to the other side to help Bulmer.

It transpires the Amazonian blond (called Aden) came from a race who created Earth, and the men in black were her race's slaves

In the end it's a case of questioning who to trust and the conclusion is quite unique

The story attempts a Heavy Metal mag approach but it's grounded in old fashioned British comic strip values, both the good and the cliched.

Clarke's very average looking cover doesn't do him service .While a little stiff in places and with a penchant for figures rather than backgrounds, he has an appealing style in a Steve Dillon meets Jim Lee vein.

Carey is a writer whose dialogue used to grate with me in the past as I always found myself rewriting each and every balloon when I first saw his work on Lucifer. Not that anyone else has cared and he obviously did well in the intervening years I avoided reading his work. There was the odd mock cockney line I didn't care for here, but this was a story I enjoyed right to the end, being a satisfying adventure with plenty of sci-fi action.

City of Glass
By Paul Auster, Adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazzuchelli (Faber & Faber)

There's something awfully pretentious about this graphic novel.

It starts right from Art Spiegelman's backhanded compliments in his new introduction for this edition. He poo-poos the very idea of graphic novels as an entity, follows it by making a couple of historical comics fact errors, then starts name dropping for all he's worth, then seems grudging to give David Mazzuchelli his due (he makes it sound like the guy came up from the gutter drawing Daredevil and Batman), then praises Paul Karasik because he was his own student at New York's School of Visual Arts.

With such a foul taste already in my mouth I really wasn't feeling enthused to sit down and digest the actual contents of the book.

As it is the art's appealing, easy on the eye, in a casual non-intimidating manner, although it can be forced/strained a little in its use of visual metaphor at times. I'm also unsure who did what. Did they share art, did Karasik do some layouts but not all, Spiegelman's unclear and it doesn't say elsewhere in the book.

The story leaves more questions than answers and if someone says all modern stories are meant to I'll put my pacifist fist in their face right now. There are also actually too many questions unanswered in the actual relaying of the story for me to know the lead character intimately enough to care about his actual outcome.

This book dresses itself in the detective genre to tell a tale that is basically that of a widowed writer who now uses an alias to tell detective novels and then somehow gets involved in a real mystery himself that ends up questioning life, existence, duplicity, religion and self-sacrifice. Been there, seen it, done it, have we? Well, this book, or at least the comic adaptation doesn't actually. We just infer it's supposed to. It's heavy handed in its higher goal attempts, failing in results. But apparently it's an award-winner!

It's okay, there are some awfully nice sections but there's too little for me to applaud intentions over goals attained.

Hicksville
By Dylan Horrocks (Drawn & Quarterly)

Collecting the main storyline from the comic Pickle but with new and revised pages.

This is a tale of imagination and hard work put in on each page by Horrocks. It tells the tale of world famous cartoonist Dick Burger, or rather comics Journalist and biographer Leonard Balts' search to uncover how and why he got to be famous.

As Balts goes to Burger's remote New Zealand hometown (where they collect rare and obscure comics from around the globe. It's a world we're drawn into, one we dream of living in but is there innocence lost in this paradise?) it becomes a tale of betrayal, lost love and magic found. It embraces the comics medium and gives back to it. Italo Calvino's name is mentioned once and for those who've read his novels some of the things evoked in this book spring from a common source.

Certainly it feels influenced by the 80s British Fast Fiction/Escape school of comics - Paul Gravett, Ed Pinsett and others are given lip service and some might see an Eddie Campbell quality present but really it's Glen Dakin's Diary strips that was evoked most for me. And yet there's also a Daniel Clowes feel. Horrocks himself appears to love superheroes as much as all other genres and they're given an equally deserved footing.

A valuable book to hold up to show what the comic medium can achieve but more importantly a great read.