February 2010 Archives
CLICK ON Episode 9 of Shang Ri La La La below and it will expand to fill your screen.
For more information on the creators visit:
For Paul H Birch: www.myspace.com/paulhbirch
For Gary Crutchley: www.gcrutchley.blogspot.com
For Mats Engesten: www.go.to/engesten
For John Robbins: www.mylifeinshorts.blogspot.com
THE AWARD-WINNING publisher Classical Comics will again be attending The Education Show at Birmingham's NEC on March 4th - 6th.
Many educational authorities have already used Classical Comics books in the classroom or library and have commented on how great they can be for teaching Shakespeare and classic literature to pupils with different skill levels - not to mention encouraging pupils - especially boys - to read!
At the Education Show, Classical Comics will be offering show discounts across their entire range of Shakespeare and classic literature graphic novels. This offer is exclusive to the show so don't forget to pop along to stand C74.
For more about Classical Comics visit: www.classicalcomics.com
Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl the Graphic Novel
Adapted by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin
Art by Giovanni Rigano, colour by Paulo Lamanna
A graphic novel based on one of the best-selling kids' book series currently on the market, was a step too far for the likes of the Harry Potter franchise, but then (despite what they've done with the films) a comic strip version would probably have ended up quite diluted using below par artists. Not so with this graphic narrative tour de force for the formidable Artemis Fowl.
Artemis Fowl is a teenage criminal mastermind- Let's get that teenage bit in right away. Let's not flippantly call him a criminal mastermind period.
After all he's got a long way to go before he reaches the lofty heights that the likes of Professor Moriarty and Lex Luthor have attained; and let it not be forgotten that in comics, that king of crooks and the greatest criminal mastermind ever was The Spider whose tales needed to only take up a few pages of the Lion each week back in the days when we had a proper British comics industry (Watch out, Birch is on his high horse again!) and was drawn by no less that the very great Reg Bunn from Birmingham!
Right. Ahem.
But he is a teenage criminal mastermind. Seems it's a family tradition. Only his father's missing. Presumably dead. No doubt murdered by rivals. And the family fortune's gone with it. Oh, and his mother's not the full ticket either. Things don't look too good for Artemis.
Still he's got Butler on his side, who's a kind of butler but more a bodyguard (and probably a retired hitman for all I know). Butler's faithful to the core. Likewise Butler's sister Juilet. It's a good job too because as the story nears its conclusion it looks like Artemis is going to sell them both down the proverbial river!
Young Artemis has a plan to get back the family fortune. It's a most cunning and devilishly crafty one. At least it will be if all he's read isn't just a load of old fairy tales! Artemis has done his research and he believes that there is another race on this planet: fairies. Fairies that are armed and extremely dangerous, creatures whose magic is a technological advancement on our own, but also comes in all shapes and sizes from trolls to dwarves to LEPrecon officers whose job it is to police this depleted tribe and ensure humans keep their distance.
But Artemis hasn't gone all the way to Saigon on a wild goose chase. He does a deal that finds him in possession of a very ancient book. And all he has to do is translate the Gnommish language it's written in. And that's why you have computers. Once that job's done the rest seems easy: kidnap a fairy and hold her to ransom until your demands for more than just as pot of gold are met.
All goes well at first. Artemis is smart, there's no doubt. The fairy is caught and held captive. But she's also a LEPrecon office and it's like expecting a New York cop show SWAT team or the British SAS to sit back and let it all happen. So it doesn't. They use every trick in the book and then some. But so does Artemis.
It's not so much clever as smart, it's fast, it's thrilling, adventurous, and actually quite emotional. It's also a little too smug for its own good at times, but that kind of adds to the fun. Ultimately it looks like Artemis has bitten off more than he can chew, but he pulls it all off. It was a risk, but a calculated one.
Excellent scripting and very nice artwork by a couple of Italians who previously worked on the comic book version of W.I.T.C.H. - the translated version of which was a big hit with my daughter a couple of years ago.
I really ought to check out the books, and hear there's a film being developed. This is top notch stuff!
CLICK ON Episode 8 of Shang Ri La La La below and it will expand to fill your screen.
For more information on the creators visit:
For Paul H Birch: www.myspace.com/paulhbirch
For Gary Crutchley: www.gcrutchley.blogspot.com
For Mats Engesten: www.go.to/engesten
For John Robbins: www.mylifeinshorts.blogspot.com
In Odd We Trust
By Dean Koontz and Queenie Chan
HarperCollins
Bestselling international author Dean Koontz should need little introduction, even if you've never read one of his books you've surely walked by assorted sizeable paperbacks bearing his name in supermarkets as well as bookstores.
Odd Thomas is the star of a number of novels by Koontz. He's a 19 year old floppy-haired kid living in a fictional middle-America town of Pico Mundo, happy in his going-nowhere job as the local diner's pancake cook.
He's one of those nice guys with no sides to him that make all us guys living in the real world want to stick or fingers down our throats, not least because his girlfriend's not only hot, she's in love with him. So far nothing new, eh?
Well, let's add the fact that Odd also has ability to see the spirits of those who've died... Thinking this sounds pretty much The Ghost Whisperer TV series? Yeah, me too. I can't imagine Koontz was too happy about that one coming along, or maybe his lawyers were on his behalf.
Anyway, Odd sees these dead folk and it's no big thing to him. He can't talk to them (which is a shame because the ghost of Elvis Presely's always wandering round town and you just know we'd all have a few questions for him) but he can communicate in others ways, and it seems from time some of them are drawn to him to pass on their stories to living loved ones, or - so it's worth making a story out of - getting him to help them to help avenge their deaths.
In Odd We Trust is co-written with artist Queenie Chan, I'm not sure if it's a brand new tale or one adapted from a book, whichever it's a sprightly enough tale that lets us into the lives of all the major characters with ease and a certain charm.
The problem being, a child has died, been murdered no less, and Odd sets about trying to find out by whom, and it has a decent twist to it when we find out why.
Chan's manga art is mainstream-friendly (that's real mainstream as opposed to comics ghettoo mainstream), and there's an exert from one of Koontz's other Odd novels so I guess its main readership is intended as his pre-existing readers. While the graphic novel feels more a short story than an epic feel about it, I'm sure a lot of others would enjoy it too.
THE MULTIMEDIA experience of Shujaaz.fm is taking the comics format to another level over in Kenya.
Shujaaz.fm use the comic strip medium to entertain while offering practical social and educational solutions to youths for whom standard literary material may not have been a viable option for one reason or another. Yes, there are words - in Sheng, a Kenyan steet slang - but it is through using them in conjunction with the visual material that both the information offered and humor present in the strips that are made the best of.
Shujaaz.fm is multimedia in that the comics will be printed as an anthology and given away free with newspapers, collected as books, have its own dedicated website (with digital radio station) where the strips will appear, be available via mobile phones and no doubt a variety of other means as suits the access of technology best available to the readers.
It has been developed by Well Told Story and the internationally renowned cartoonist Hunt Emerson has been involved, albeit that he claims "only in a small way" and it is due to launch on 20th February.
"It's an exciting and interesting new departure for comics, both in Africa and in the rest of the comics world, and I'd recommend you take a look online," commented the Birmingham-based Emerson.
To visit the Shujaaz website visit: www.shujaaz.fm
A radio podcast from UN's new service, IRIN, featuring an informative interview with Rob Burnet, director of Well Told Story, the people behind Shujaaz.fm can be found at:
www.irinnews.org/audiofiles/IRIN_Talks_Bulletin_16_18022010.mp3
CLICK ON Episode 7 of Shang Ri La La La below and it will expand to fill your screen.
For more information on the creators visit:
For Paul H Birch: www.myspace.com/paulhbirch
For Gary Crutchley: www.gcrutchley.blogspot.com
For Mats Engesten: www.go.to/engesten
For John Robbins: www.mylifeinshorts.blogspot.com
I.R.$. Book 3 - Silicia, Inc
By Stephen Desberg & Bernard Vrancken
Cinebook
FAST CUTTING car chase scenes and murders in the dark give way to angry senate hearings before a slow burning tale of tax evasion and money laundering unfold through this 48 page collection.
Larry B. Max is the cool as a cucumber investigator behind this mystery series that takes as its premise that the USA's Internal Revenue Service will stop at nothing to get its due taxes.
From that you can take it as read that Max doesn't like CIA cover-ups and also knows how to use a gun when necessary.
Silicia, Inc proves a tad confusing initially as one pieces the characters and scenarios together, working out where our sympathies should lie.
The story is influenced in part by the real world Iran-Contra CIA/military cover-up that's of a certain vintage, and it's nice to know that at least in fiction the bad guys don't always win.
The case gets solved but it still feels like a prequel to the next book in line, The Corrupter , wherein it looks like we're going to find a hell of a lot more about the spectacled, red-haired lady fronting this book's front cover background and the peripheries of the story within... It could get nasty!
Stephen Desberg is the writer of one of my favourite graphic novel series, The Scorpion, and Bernard Vrancken is a fine draughtsman, his clear style reminding me of the late Pat Morisi (PAM) who did some very distinguishable work for America's Charlton Comics in the 60s and 70s - Indeed, while I feel I need to read a few more I.R.$. books to get a true flavour of where its heading, it has the feel of Morisi's Vengeance Squad given a modern edge.
For more about I.R.$. and Cinebook visit: www.cinebook.com
STAN LEE, the man who made Marvel Comics mighty, is to make a guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory!
The American CBS hit situation comedy show The Big Bang Theory has included comics and other aspects of popular culture as part of its winning formula since it debuted in 2007.
The series has also found fans in the UK where it is featured on Channel 4.
Now the series is to feature a guest appearance by Stan Lee, the editor and writer who lead Marvel Comics out from the low-ranks of the American comic book publishing field it had been in under various names since the 40s to become its nation's leading publisher of superhero comics.
Stan Lee co-created such enduring characters as The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man, The X-men and The Fantastic Four... All of which have been turned into hit movies.
CLICK ON Episode 6 of Shang Ri La La La below and it will expand to fill your screen.
For more information on the creators visit:
For Paul H Birch: www.myspace.com/paulhbirch
For Gary Crutchley: www.gcrutchley.blogspot.com
For Mats Engesten: www.go.to/engesten
For John Robbins: www.mylifeinshorts.blogspot.com
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