Results tagged “Scott Mills” from Birmingham Mail - Speech Balloon

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Stormwatch: Force of Nature
By Warren Ellis, Tom Raney, Randy Elliott et al (WildStorm-DC/Titan)

Transmuting new ideas from left of field philosophy, science and the current zeitgeist of the moment into comics has never been a problem for Warren Ellis. Making them accessible to a greater reading public took its time though - his use of dialogue as communication of feeling and not just information can be viewed slowly developing on the pages of this collection of #37-42 of the old Stormwatch series.

Truth to tell you can see panels and pages where main pencil artist Tony Raney alongside Pete Woods and Michael Ryan's storytelling use of panel cuts, choice of close up etc possibly doesn't gel quite where Ellis's script might have intended and lessens the emphasis. But all in all, the collection's a good starting point for where Ellis would culminate his thoughts on the subject of groupings for hero-dom: their cause and effect, at the end of his run on The Authority.

As we open the pages, one Henry Bendix is in control as Weatherman, controller of Stormwatch, and the United Nations have told him that he can do as he damn pleases in so far as Special Crisis Intervention goes, at least for the time being. What Henry does is pension off a truckload of spandex clad heroes, bring a few new ones in (most notably Jenny Sparks and Rose Tattoo who read like characters straight out of 2000AD joining Marvel's The Avengers). It's not long before he's told to leave America alone - the implication being that they can carry on bullying the rest of the world.

Stormwatch Prime deals with superhuman hot war situations, Stormwatch Black with covert threats/black ops/spying, and Stormwatch Red is a deterrent and retaliation force. Bendix splits his new mob into these three distinct groups and each get a turn to headline feature subsequent issues collected in this book, That kind of thing can often be the equivalent of painting by numbers, no matter how well by some. Regardless, it's fast moving, neu-thriller styled, the odd experiment in storytelling or mix and match of sub-genres. The end result pretty satisfactory and leaving you wondering how it can all turn rotten so quickly then be re-ignited as The Authority. The seeds have been sown; it's a force of nature, unstoppable.

Celeb
By Charles Peattie & Mark Warren (Masterley Publishing)

British TV viewers might recall Harry Enfield and Amanda Holden starring in a BBC1 comedy series from a couple of years back featuring the exploits of a mindless rock star and his latest model trophy wife. It was based on the comic strip series collected within this book.

The TV version only lasted one series, unsurprisingly. Enfield played the part of an Ozzy Osborne caricature when Gary Bloke, the lead character, should be more of a MickJagger/Rod Stewart/Phil May of the Pretty Things, even Phil Collins actually, type. And Samantha Janus would have played his wife better.

Anyway, Bloke is a wrinkly rock star so cue: booze, drugs, women and the usual send-ups. As a comic it's all pretty funny too.

Peattie of course draws the Alex newspaper strip and his writer/collaborator on that does supply additional material whether that's the more cerebral to Warren's more off the wall material I couldn't say though.

Within a standard four-panel comic strip the characters evolve well over time, collecting work from 1987 to 2002 as originally published in Private Eye magazine.
It is a portrait shaped book with four strips per page filling around 100 pages of fun digs at petty jealousies, media fads and innocent screw-ups all lumped together!

My Own Little Empire
By Scott Mills (Ad House Books)

Mills unravels a story of a gang of kids hanging out, cruising in their car (how do American school kids get to do this?), drinking and doing other dumb youth things. There's a series of misadventures for the misanthropes and the boy who seeks the girl eventually gets her.

It's alright. Not great. The jokes are hit and miss. I don't want to put it down but after Trenches I was hoping for more from Scott Mills than a minor diversion. He again uses the odd landscape four panel to a page book format - It's also rather pricey for so little story content here in the UK.

David Boring
By Daniel Clowes (Pantheon-Random House/Jonathan Cape).

The son of a second rate comic book artist who ran out on him and his mother, David Boring's life tends to be a little less than his name supposes, despite his permanent blank facial expression.

The guy has an ass fetish. Whether he actually ever has sex with the various partners we see him with or that they're his internal fantasises visualised for our own sense of sexual voyeurism I remain unsure - and like it for being so! And then the murders that we see happening, I gather they're real, but who's responsible? David? His lesbian best friend, Dot?

In between all this there's David's search for his father, his piecing together of one of his comics to tell or misinform points of view is an integral part of this - the use of the colour comic panels, not just pages in such sections enhances these subjective points of views and it's a costly one as far as printing goes so my hat goes off to the various publishers involved along the way.

As a whole the book doesn't quite fulfil the promise you believe it will give but there are some valiant underplayed moves to use the comic forms' narrative and visuals and move them on a step or two - but perhaps the story is itself too enigmatic to attain a greater acceptance by a reading public? Or too clever for its own good? Or is it just me being a thick Brummie and needing stuff spelt out for me? Maybe the movie version is clearer, or will that dilute the intentions behind it all?

A journey down a lot of dead-end roads that take you back to one of the first tried. Curious. Worthy of more study by serious guys who have something more to say than the "I like this, you might too" attitude I've opted for, perhaps.