Results tagged “Garth Ennis” from Birmingham Mail - Speech Balloon

GRAPHIC NOVELS reviewed...

Circling the Drain
By Evan Dorkin (Slave Labor Graphics)

Prefixed inside as The Collected Dork Vol 2, this collects #7-10 of the occasional SLG series plus other sundry pieces.

Within these strips Dorkin bridges the gap between the biographical my-life-is-miserable confessor approach and that of old fashioned storyteller, that he also meshes the styles together then adds a William Burroughs like cut and paste format surprisingly makes most of it work in both an interesting and highly entertaining manner.

The guy has an obvious big love for his wife/partner Sara Dyer and it shows. He's not a depressive but he can be prone to bouts of great misery, it's what sets him apart from many of the autobiographical comic types; they tend to live in someone like Crumb or Pekar's shadow, Dorkin's using different emotional starting point so his destination ends ups in elsewhere too.

We at turns laugh with and at him, but there's a difficult point to decide where. The more fictional aspects are often recited by a character known as the Devil Puppet and they come across like some old Charlton or ACG comic strip given old testament blood and thunder at times.

It's a thoughtful examination of the creator at work, or at least as he wants us to perceive him, as, after all, he's still self-editing what he wants us to see. It's well produced and despite its psychological bits a generally pretty fun book throughout.

Just A Pilgrim
By Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra (Black Bull Entertainment/Titan)

Pilgrim is Ennis' typical Eastwood wandering cowboy transplanted to a future apocalyptic time where the sun's gone red and the Earth's oceans dried. It's a joke that humanity will live past our imminent global problems, but the surviving humans in this fiction seek more prosperous places to live (in this case a stage wagon) only to be thwarted by mad pirate type and saved by Pilgrim - a character who freely admits he was a Hannibal Lecter like cannibal until he found God!

Better than the second book, reviewed previously at Speech Balloons, but aside from a couple of good ideas just your average filer as an Eerie or old 2000AD strip.

White Flower Day
By Steven Weissma (Fantagraphics)

Li'l Buddy, Pullapart Boy? What kind of names are these? I feel like I came in halfway through an ongoing Addams Family goes Peanuts soap opera comic strips and I'm probably half right.

There's a lot of promise inherent in the idea but frankly, on the one hand the material doesn't go that extra mile towards the truly surreal, while on the other hand they're not rooted in enough coherent plot to make valid statements. It's all a bit like treading water in quicksand. What's the point?

Basically it's about these weird kids doing kid things - is it the play of imagination we're reading rather than reality? I don't know. Some of the dialogue and rebukes ring true but that's it. Okay cartooning, but a very odd indiscriminate use of spot colour confuses as much as the book as a whole. I wanted to like it but it was too bland in its trying to be oddly cute and I felt like gagging. Does that make it scary or stupid? Or is it me who's stupid?

Flash Gordon
By Alex Raymond (Checker Book Publishing Group)

This is an excellently produced hardback collection of the very first Flash Gordon newspaper strips. Truth to tell we're all more familiar with those old Buster Crabbe movie serials than the actual originating strip - though some of the latter ones herein of the mid 30s have been reprinted are familiar to me.

Flash Gordon debuted on Jan 17th 1934 and for a good year it stuck rigidly to a 2-3 panel per tier on a 4 tier grid system, decent enough reading even today but the plot basically revolves around the principle of creating a new fantasy each instalment, and to my mind curiously comes across like a hardboiled version of Little Nemo!

It's only when the Hawkmen debut that Raymond breaks out of his rigid grid format to allow bigger panels and create more drastic and awe-inspiring changes in perspective and emotion that the heat turns up. If nothing else the whole damn comics medium owes Raymond more than it can ever pay for that breakthrough moment.

The plot retreads material frequently but it's all fast paced with brisk enough text for you to forgive it, and nearing the end of the collection Raymond's art does start to become very special indeed. This is the blueprint for all that's come since in the adventure and superhero mould.

This book proves Flash Gordon was more than just a John Carter rip-off. But did everyone really fall in love with Dale Arden as has been claimed over the years? Surely the ever-on-heat smouldering of Princess Aura was what real boys, and men, were interested in.

WELCOME TO Birch's Bark Part III as we look at some more graphic novels that are out there in your comic shops, book stores and libraries!

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
By Mattotti & Kramsky (NBM Comics Lit)

Look for a large hard cover when browsing through your shop for this European reprint. It contains an abstract painted adaptation of the classic Robert Louise Stevenson novel, so don't expect the old films when you pick it up and leaf through its pages. It works. One word to describe it? Creepy!

Total Sell Out
By Brian Michael Bendis (Image)

A great collection of strips from hither and yon by the man who's been responsible for writing an awful lot of Marvel's best selling comics in recent years.

Bendis' mainstream action art never appealed to me before and I'm familiar with his work as early as his Caliber Press days. He seems to know the reason why that may be himself. In one of the written pieces he notes he's a poor inker. It muddied the dramatic intent of the draughtsmanship skills he was still learning back then.

His cartoon work, however, is a most pleasing graphic revelation - it sits there balanced on the page with suitable tones and lighter inking applications. His ear for dialogue is where Bendis wins you over, and there's a really good batting average of successful strips - a lot of them comedy ones, some crime stuff, and the odd slice of life too.

Coming in a standard paperback book size this b/w collection is worth picking up.

Just A Pilgrim: Garden of Eden
By Garth Ennis & Carlos Ezquerra (Black Bull Entertainment/Titan)

Ennis and Ezquerra have brought Clint Eastwood type characters to the printed pages several times before.

This is a post apocalyptic tale of the sort that ran as filler material back in the heyday of 2000AD before veering dangerously close to ripping off aspects of Ezquerra's fellow Spaniard Victor de la Fuente's Haxtur saga. It's professionally done but there's little reason to get excited about it.

Oh, and by the way, in case you think I'm harping on about how wonderful 2000AD used to be, forget it - that comic had countless great moments, but it had many a failing too. When failings can be regurgitated for the modern age and get false praise we've hit a major problem so I'm not giving this any.

Portajohnny
By Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics)

Subtitled The Best of Angry Youth Comix the Early Years this is wicked toilet humour that I picked up courtesy of the British Library system - Thank you, fellow tax payers! Let's hope the library assistants don't put it down on the lower shelves by mistake though.

We're talking material coming from the same ballpark as early Peter Bagge (who wrote the introduction) and J.D. King. A fast, furious totally dispensable but nonetheless lowbrow funny read!

BIG BOYS, bad boys, girls without sugar but plenty of spice -Not every graphic novel is worth its listed price. Welcome to Birch's Bark Part II!

The Witching Hour
By Jeph Loeb & Chris Bachalo/Art Thibert
(DC/Titan)

Initially, this collection has no clear direction, and once the plot develops it's not that original a story I'm afraid.

A small coven of witches are allowed to play the time worn role of The Fates but on a shoe string budget in that they can give mortals the choice over which path their life can take come the stroke of midnight. A modern day all grown-up fairytale? Well, I guess that's a tagline the Vertigo imprint played to for its first ten years.

It pulls you in for Loeb's matter of fact narration that pulsates with ideas casually thrown away in its very conversational flow. I found Bachalo's art to be rather pleasing and influenced by the work of Bernie Wrightson for this book but no one else I've mentioned this to can see it - which only goes to prove how subjective anyone's opinion can be!

Transmetropolitan: Dirge
By Warren Ellis & Darick Robertson/Rodney Ramos
(DC/Titan)

Many claim this is Ellis's old Lazarus Churchyard character rebooted for the American market. I seem to recall him telling quite a tale in a short space within the pages of Blast where Lazarus first appeared. Here it takes a whole graphic novel collection of water treading (for those of us who've just dipped in for the first time) to work out that the President of the United States has set lead character Spider Jerusalem up.

We do this before the lead character, and that may be admirable for our part, but it's of little literal substance when your lead character's supposed to be some Hunter S.Thompson-styled investigative journalist.

There's a nice attitude to some of the dialogue but other than that I would hardly presume this to be one of the must-have collections from the series. If it had run in the weekly British comic 2000AD during its heyday it might have been episode 6 in an 8 part run, and only needed to have lasted 6 pages.

Hellblazer: Haunted
By Warren Ellis & John Higgins
(DC-Vertigo/Titan)

A truly gripping tale is held within these pages as John Constantine seeks the murderer of an old lover and finds black magicians at work in every nook and cranny of London's occult underbelly.

Its plot is only two steps removed from that of Transmetropolitan: Dirge but Ellis stands up to the platform and delivers the goods this time round. This is worthy to stand alongside the early Delano and Ridgway tales for evoking an undercurrent of political intrigue fostered by Old World magic.

Shonen Graphic Novel: Yu-Gi-Oh! Book 1
By Kazuki Takahashi (Viz)

Based on the top rated animation show, card collecting game, and now film, this manga collection features Yuri, a small Japanese kid fascinated by games. When he solves the Millennium Puzzle it miraculously gives him the power to get back at bullies of all shades and sizes.

I'm presuming that it was originally intended for kids around 13 years old but it's a damned sight more mature than anything their English speaking counterparts ever get (or got in my very old case) offered. There's some sheer knee-jerk stuff too so don't get the wrong impression. What I'm talking about here is Takahashi's ability to focus on teenage preoccupations and fears as the regular cast's characters develop.

The stories themselves do veer towards plot set-up similarities though. And the endings are almost consistent in that Yuri uses the Millennium Puzzle to exact his revenge against a bully. Mind you, the gruesome manner that this is undertaken brings to mind those old Michael Fleisher & Jim Aparo stories of The Spectre in DC's Adventure Comics from the 70s. In both that series' case and this book's the unique way the dastardly ends are made are worth going along on the ride for.

The Big Book of Bad
By Various (DC)

From the much overlooked Paradox Press imprint this offers a vast array of cartoonists & artists who deliver, in the main, entertaining, interesting, or both, tales on people and ideas that are considered bad. Stand out artists include Roger Langridge and Brian Buniak.