Festive Reading

BRITISH ANNUALS are a must have item for any true comic fan, plus there are graphic novels galore available these days to offload those book tokens you received as Christmas presents.

Here are some titles you could have picked up:

The Beano Annual 2010
By Various
D.C. Thomson

Great cartoonists including Birmingham's Laura Howell and Hunt Emerson pack this book full of daft laughs and silly hi-jinks, with some particularly fun Roger the Dodger strips plus a pretty cool Billy the Cat adventure saga from Nigel Dobbyn.

The Dandy Annual 2010
By Various
D.C. Thomson

For most of its many decades the weekly Dandy comic was traditionally more staid than its rival The Beano, reflecting its lower, but still massive, sales for most of that time. The last decade or so it has been overhauled rather drastically, a couple of times at least.

The more radical, as such, cartooning that proliferate the comic and this annual is fine in places, but doesn't always work. What works even less are some of the jokes, and maybe it's me but I simply don't understand the hang-up Desperate Dan's suddenly now got about bears. Maybe someone could explain?

Winners are the one page Marvo the Wonder Chicken single page of slapstick continuities by Nigel Parkinson, the madcap savagery of Puss 'n' Boots (that when it first appeared all those years ago seemed to be Tom & Jerry living in the surreal world of The Goodies, and must have been early reading material for Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson who would take it to even great extremes in their own Bottom TV series), and some classic looking Beryl the Peril strips (if you ignore Dad's goatie beard that is) by Steve Bright.

The Rainbow Orchid Volume One
By Garen Ewing
Egmont

The Rainbow Orchid has been reviewed and commented on all over the place, from back in the day when Garen started serialising it in a b/w anthology, to taking it over in its own book, right through to Egmont proving they're a forward looking publisher and taking it up for this graphic novel series.

Everyone's made favourable comparisons to Tintin (not me, I'm one of the great unwashed who's still never read the books) and we all know it's going to get nominated for awards, and ought to win a few too. It's pointless for me to make a straightforward review of this, too many have done so.

I wouldn't be surprised if it gets optioned for TV or a movie too, because - perhaps using his amateur theatrical interests - Garen has set the majority of this volume in surprising few locales. Since it's about an impending treasure hunt (for The Rainbow Orchid) I'm also reminded of the classic filmed version of The Maltese Falcon that features only a few sets.

If anything, Volume One actually feels like a prelude to the main event, but what an adventure if already feels.

This is a drama, sure there's melodrama and some slapstick humour present, but you can't avoid Garen's scratching beyond the surface value of his characters - the spotlight's on Julius Chancer and Lily Lawrence, but there are a couple of pages where Sir Alfred Catesby-Grey starts showing shades of different colours, and you're wondering if this dark horse is going to be more than a Nero Wolfe to Julius' Archie Goodwin as the story develops.

Buy this book, get it from a library if it's in there, sit back and enjoy it. Britain was not great because it once ruled an empire, but because of daring adventurers who respected their past and also looked forward and explored new worlds, concepts and ideas.

With The Rainbow Orchid Garen Ewing proves he himself is such a person. I respectfully bow my head in appreciation, egotistically boast that he is a friend, and genuinely can't wait to read Volume Two.