And More Graphic Novel Reviews

HOW TO get the best use out of a dead tree... Birch's Bark continues.

Supreme: The Story of the Year
By Alan Moore & Various (CheckerBPG)

This collection found Alan Moore moving on from his 1962 concepts and the odd conceit to clear the way for his ABC line of thinking. It's the tale of Superman (in all but name) given some modern spin.

The theme is faithful to the heart of what traditionally makes a hero and yet is clothed in new technology theories (reminding us perhaps of that age-old tale of The Emperor's New Clothes and the moral implicit within it?).

Where the story fails is Moore's overused plot device of the villain of the piece always being the person you'd least expect... simply because he or she has been standing next to you through thick and thin for several hundred pages! Still we fall for it the nine times out of ten that he uses this because we get carried along with the characterisations and never look for any other would be red herrings.

Visually, Rick Veitch gives a more than decent take on pre-modern American comic art styles for the flashback scenes produced within, but, curiously, Moore's words are best complimented by the various Image/Rob Liefield styled guys on this particular book. There is a downside to this, if what I hear is true, because I understand that apart from Liefield none of the creators have received monies from this particular collection.

Bruce Wayne: Murderer?
By Various (DC/Titan)

There's an old plot creaking away in this book, The Count of Monte Christie used it to some effect, among others. Basically, Batman's alter ego of Bruce Wayne is accused of killing a former lover. Did he, didn't he? That's the game the extended Batman family have to play within this collection and they do it well enough with Nightwing (Dick Grayson, the original Robin) getting the best lines.

The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel
By Various (iBooks)

The contents within were first published as a mini-series from Topps, and apparently previously collected by Bantam. They were also available for viewing online as a subscription service from Stan Lee's Sunday Comics on www.Komikweks.com.

You can't fault the standard of artwork; from Richard Corben to P Craig Russell it's all top-notch stuff. And Bradbury is a world-renowned science fiction author so there's little doubt that the book should at least attract the browser's attention.

The trouble is, while there's a star team on the bench they don't deliver the goods when they're out on the field.

I think the main problem is that these adaptations follow too closely Bradbury's texts, or at least the prose part of what comics is about. They linger and seek to resonate when they should allow the pictures themselves to activate and engage. Not always, but often enough to make it a less than a cohesive whole. Strangely, having just stated that, it's the more painterly artists like Jon J Muth and John Van Fleet whose work comes off as having least pretensions towards the conventions of what constitutes real art and actually take the stories to a higher plane.

The Story of Tao: 1
By Andy Seto and Ding Kin Lau (ComicsOne.Corp)

Mixing various Eastern cultures' ideals of heroism to bring about a manga style adventure of gods walking the earth kung fu-ing each other and seeking forbidden romance on the side. It doesn't always come off, and you probably need to see yet another 100 pages of what is no doubt an epic before really getting into it, but there are some interesting enough visual moments.

King Volume 3
By Ho Che Anderson (Fantagraphics Books)

What little I had seen of Anderson's art previously made me recall the poor man's painter division that developed in America after Bill Sienkiewicz's shift in art style after once being labelled a Neal Adams clone. This is opposed to the one year in art school swipers who got work in the UK once Simon Bisley made it big, by the way.

Anderson's artwork lacked definition. It was sketchy without style. Frankly, it did not move me in any way. He either got a lot better or I wasn't looking hard enough before. I'm still not enamoured of his art but it works well in tandem with the story he's telling in this volume.

The story is indeed a very terse one, because we know the inevitable outcome that will come in the final pages. I say "we" but sadly, do the young still know who Martin Luther King was and what he achieved?

Anderson doesn't portray King as a complete saint, but a man, that's what kept my interest.

Remembrance of Things Past: Combray
By Marcel Proust, adapted by Stephane Heuet (NBM Comics Lit)

Some consider Proust brilliant, others unreadable. Having never read him apart from in this graphic novel adaptation I have to assume it's somewhere in between with some good pruning by Heuet.

Proust lived between 1871 and 1922 so his wordy descriptions reflect those times and the bourgeois society he lived in. The book is basically a man remembering events in his youth, you keep expecting them to tie in to each other but they don't. And that's irritating. However, the passages do act as an interesting barometer to the social history of the times albeit that one feels like a voyeur. It never truly engages the reader, but it has its moments. The art follows the clear line European school method but it is only functional rarely doing more than illustrate the words.

The Invisibles Book 7: The Invisible Kingdom
By Grant Morrison & Various (Vertigo-DC/Titan)

The series may well have gone on too long but Morrison brought most of the bits together to play mind games for the Mission Impossible crowd one last time so that The Prisoner in each of us could break free to politely shout "Hooray!" for a genuinely satisfying climax. The changing tour of duty for the artists in the latter part of the book actually works better for me than the first part that is predominately drawn by Phillip Bond.