Fantasy and Heroics in your Graphic Novels

MORE GRAPHIC novels reviewed, many collections of popular series.

Fables Vol 5: The Mean Seasons by Bill Willingham & Various (Vertigo/DC/Titan)

Fabletown, where the folk of fairy stories go to live in an all too real world. Politics, sexual drama and the odd bit of hokum. Always loved Willingham's superior soap opera way with words even if it falls to Vertigo to ghettoize him. Appealing Mark Buckingham work. The plot: who will become new mayor of Fabletown and is there a serial killer loose in town?

Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others
By Mike Mignola (Dark Horse Comics)

One does tend to wonder at times if all Hellboy needs to do is go in swinging his fists Thing style to solve any problem that come his way when dealing through this collection, but Mignola marries atmospheric scene setting with matter of fact storytelling to deliver contemporary pulp fiction that's engrossing and wholesomely satisfying.

The Spider: Scavenger of the Slaughtered Sacrifices
By Don McGregor & Gene Colan (Vanguard)

It's a little unclear who actually commissioned this book, and one expects only dedicated fans and the downright curious will actually pick it up.

The Spider is a classic pulp character, and the masked crime-fighter featured in this contemporary tale has him attempting to stop heinous murders and the like that are the copycat crimes of a TV show - thus we have metaphors with the pulps, comics and everything else that has been cool for kids at one time or another. These themes take up an awful lot of the story time and because it's McGregor most often by narrative caption, this is indeed something worthy of the title of being a book.

The actual fight that begins at the outset lasts some 50 pages before we change location and during that time the caption boxes hypothesize and pontificate with great gusto. It's eccentrically paced to say the least, and we're not even talking about the abrupt conclusion.

This aside it's a heartfelt story, but Colan's art - reproduced from his pencils - while nice and occasionally exquisite, even obscurely painterly, tends to visualise the most basic interpretation of the what's happening as indicated in the words, thus illustrating rather than illuminating and not moving the story along as it should within the comic medium.

McGregor fans will forgive this, fans of the Spider may to, I myself and pleased I actually sat down and read it, but I wouldn't hold it up as an interesting experiment rather than anything like the best of either of the creators' work.

Ex Machina: The First Hundred Day
By Brian K Vaughn & Tony Harris (WildStorm/DC/Titan)

Michael Hundred is the mayor of New York City. He used to a superhero. If you like The West Wing but want thrills with your drama this is your book. It also pre-dates Heroes. Excellently well told, and written with unobtrusive style. Flashbacks add intrigue rather than being an outdated dramatic device. There's a subplot or two and a satisfactory conclusion to the collection. It's fully rounded with a supporting cast you want, need, to know more about. The art may too photo referenced at times but that can be forgiven. Superb stuff.

Swamp Thing: Bad Seed by Andy Diggle & Enrque Breccia (Vertgo/DC/Titan)

The Swamp Thing tends to be all the more exciting when that Hellblazer John Constantine makes a guest appearance. It's always a case of pouring oil on burning water too.

The Swamp Thing now controls the ancient Greek element of fire, water, air and naturally earth - but he's got Sargon the Sorcerer giving his elemental daughter Tefe the Chinese whispers about how daddy's going to tip the natural world off balance and between a parent-child grudge and heroine heroics she gets lead down the proverbial garden path.

It's all rather interestingly put together because when it comes to it and all the sections can get broken down and the themes it tries to put across are also the type seen in a standard TV soap opera. However, when Breccia's art lets rip with the horror elements the standard goes up several sharp notches.

Tales of the Vampires
By Joss Whedon & Various (Dark Horse/Titan)

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator gathers his TV scripting crew to create short comic strips about vampires. It uses a framing sequences of children learning how to be slayers at the feet of a shackled vampire so they can learn about their enemies first hand, and there's a suitable twist in the tale to that.

The short stories are generally decently entertaining. It's more for the vampire fan than the Buffy completist I'd have thought unless characters within get expanded at a latter date.