Some Monday Reading

GRAPHIC NOVELS reviewed.

Fathom: Killian's Tide
By Michael Turner, Bill O'Neil & Talent Caldwell et al
(Top Cow/Titan)

There are various inkers at work in this collection, allowing a scratchy definition to the finished work.

It's the story of how Killian, villain from the late Michael Turner's main Fathom series, became what he is. We're talking various undersea kingdoms populated by beings superior to mortal kind in almost everyway except their fear of the landlubbers' faster breeding techniques and vainglorious attitudes towards inevitable nuclear folly.

The story is credited to all three names listed above, script and pencil art to Caldwell alone, and even if it's only the dialogue he's responsible for he does it well.

There are Machiavellian sub-plots aplenty in some undersea variation on Westside Story, youths gone wild then unknowingly used as pawns by elder statesmen for political advantages of their own. Rather convincing stuff I have to admit. Having never read old Plato's Republic what pocket libarary versions may have been sifted for use I've no idea, but again, well done if so for using them in such a commercially palatable manner.

The ending's inevitable add a little strained to get there and make Killian who he is, but it shows genre fiction can work on commendable levels. The art's a question of taste, and doesn't always grab me but it's far from poor.

Othello by William Shakespeare
Adapted by Oscar Zarate
(Oval Projects Ltd)

I've been curious about this book for some considerable time. Absolute years in fact! Heard about it, albeit rarely, and never seen a single panel until now.

The book came out way back in 1983. The inside listings note there was also a special package including two audiocassettes made of the BBC World Drama Production of Othello (with respected actors). Actually, it might best have been read while listening at the same time, that way one reads at the speed and tempo believed best to accommodates the drama of the work.

It's old Billy's full and unabridged script, we even get the scenes and acts listed as captions. Frankly, I would rather it have been cut down to size as a comic book. 130 pages of far too many talking heads rarely works for me.

Zarate's actual figure illustrations don't always do it for me either in this book: if there's a beauty of characterisation revealed in the angular facial features it doesn't translate well to my mind, and his coloured pencils, I assume, have a childlike reminiscing quality that could appeal to some but it doesn't take advantage of the comic form - the panoramic views, extreme close ups, shifts in perspectives and a plethora of visual trickery is underplayed. Odd then that it also fails to capture the movement inherent in the actual play that gets performed.

You want the plot? Othello's a Moor, a black guy in the white man's world that is the Venice of the 1600s. He falls in love and marries Desdemona. Everyone is up in arms over this, but he's a valiant soldier and all's put aside. Especially since he's needed to hold back the Turks from attacking Cyprus. All that is, save old Iago, who's jealous that Othello made Cassio his lieutenant instead of him. Thus Iago spins an ever growing web of deceit and lies that turns everyone's heart black when they begin to believe and act upon them, turning it into a long drawn out tragedy, without the need for Chinese Whispers.

I wanted to like this for all the right reasons but it simply doesn't pass muster. Maybe it's the story itself, it's a hard one to accept wholeheartedly in this day and age, and hard to make work without in some ways reinforcing black stereotypes. It's also not that great a long comic and that is ultimately why it took so long to find a copy and it couldn't have been a commercial success outside the potentially profitable education niche market.

Battle of the Planets: Trial by Fire Vol 1
By Various (
Top Cow/Titan)

I gather this is based on a popular classic anime or Japanese cartoon series, but the comic book story collated within these pages too often presupposes you're aware of all this and the various characters and their pre-established scenarios that have gone on before in the other medium, even though it is meant to be origin story of sorts here.

Too much is left out and the action's too fast cutting in an Americanised manga manner to really put any meat onto the bones.

The way I read it (and this is about 4 USA issues' worth) aliens have attempted to take over Earth before covertly and are doing so again, but this time they're coming and doing it openly. Doing battle with them are a bunch of scientifically-enhanced sub-mystically tapping in ninja kids (it's never explained how they got to be this way or their back story).

It's all too superficial to grab me, but I think I can see how the original cartoon might have influenced various US comics back in the 80s, Evanier and Meugnoit's DNAgents, maybe even Phoenix in The X-Men.

Top Cow put out some good stuff but they need to put things in perspective for the book market - a description, précis or frontispiece at the start of the book would be useful for all concerned.

No More Shaves
By Dan Greenberger & Various artists
(Fantagraphics Books)

Duplex Planet was initiated in 1979 by Greenberger to record the comments of those residing in an elderly people's retirement home. They were featured as one-page comic strip adaptations in the early issues of Daniel Clowe's Eightball and followed by Duplex Planet Illustrated itself.

A variety of artists, of varying skills, delineate the stories, reminisces, wise words and madness of the folk throughout these pages. They are funny, odd, sad and annoying. They are humanity captured at the end of its days, no less or more than when it began in many cases. Not all of it works, but when it does it, it can echoes throughout your very being.