May 2010 Archives

DEAD AHEAD, the sea-faring zombie adventure published by Image Comics is to be collected in graphic album form.

The Dead Ahead collection will include a bonus additional 14 pages of comic book story illustrated by the legendary Alex Nino, plus extras that include special guest introductions.

Below is a YouTube video, taken at the recent WonderCon in America, where creator Mel Smith talks about interest in the series being developed as a film, and the next story arc planned for the series.

Paul H Birch will again be on board in a wordsmith/co-scripting capacity, and he revealed that fans of Dead Ahead will be excited to find out who the artist will be on the next arc: "We're talking about another great here so expect another visual tour de force!"

CLICK ON Episode 19 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

For Andrew Dodd: www.timebombcomics.com

CHARLIE ADLARD, artist on The Walking Dead series, published in America by Image Comics will once more be attending BICS 2010 in Birmingham this October.

Below is a YouTube interview with the artist, conducted in New York in 2008.

Below is a trailer for The Walking Dead, by the series' creator Robert Kirkman, and featuring art by Charlie Adlard.

For more information on Charlie Adlard vist: http://www.charlieadlard.com/

For more information on BICS 2010 visit: www.thecomicsshow.co.uk

CELEBRATED CARTOONIST Hunt Emerson will once more be a guest at this year's BICS 2010 that takes place in Birmingham in October.

Type Hunt Emerson's name in the Search section to the right of this page and you will find a previous Speech Balloons' retrospective on the creator's career.

Better still visit his own website at: www.largecow.com

But before you go, here's a three year old clip of Hunt Emerson & The Hound Dogs playing a Bee Gees number live on stage... You'll find more old footage of Hunt's band on YouTube.

For more about BICS 2010 visit: www.thecomicsshow.co.uk

The British International Comics Show (BICS) has just updated its website for 2010.

The site now includes short features on guests who will be attending, current exhibitor and publisher lists, and information on how to get to the event along with hotel booking suggestions.

To find out more visit: www.thecomicsshow.co.uk

To whet your appetite for the October event, below is a little clip by the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre taken at BICS 2007. See how many of your favourite comic book creators you can spot singing and dancing along.

For more information on the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre visit: myspace.com/scottishfalsetto

NEW comic Spandex , featuring a team of gay superheroes, has been nominated for an Eagle Award.

Spandex creator Martin Eden was born and bred in Birmingham, although he's currently based in London, working as a magazine editor while compiling the comic in his spare time.

Spandex has been nominated in the fBritish Colour Comicbook

Martin said: "I'm completely shocked and I really didn't expect it! I'm so proud of my comic and I'm really trying to do things that have never been done in a comic before. I'm up against some big titles in my category, so it'd be so exciting if the independent guy from Birmingham won.
" I have some amazing plans for the next few issues of Spandex, and I can't wait to unleash it all on the comic-reading world."

Spandex is now being published as an ongoing comic title, with eventual book collections in the pipeline. "The original plan was to publish issue one, and then work on a bigger book," says Martin, "but after global media attention, it was just too exciting to wait!" Spandex hit the headlines back in November - not just in the UK, but in Australia, Russia, America, Germany - all over the world - too.

Tying in with this issue is 'Japandex', an online gallery of Japan - related artwork all with a Spandex twist - provided by the UK's best independent comic artists.

NEW comic Spandex , featuring a team of gay superheroes, has been nominated for an Eagle Award.

Spandex creator Martin Eden was born and bred in Birmingham, although he's currently based in London, working as a magazine editor while compiling the comic in his spare time.

Spandex has been nominated in the fBritish Colour Comicbook

Martin said: "I'm completely shocked and I really didn't expect it! I'm so proud of my comic and I'm really trying to do things that have never been done in a comic before. I'm up against some big titles in my category, so it'd be so exciting if the independent guy from Birmingham won.
" I have some amazing plans for the next few issues of Spandex, and I can't wait to unleash it all on the comic-reading world."

Spandex is now being published as an ongoing comic title, with eventual book collections in the pipeline. "The original plan was to publish issue one, and then work on a bigger book," says Martin, "but after global media attention, it was just too exciting to wait!" Spandex hit the headlines back in November - not just in the UK, but in Australia, Russia, America, Germany - all over the world - too.

Tying in with this issue is 'Japandex', an online gallery of Japan - related artwork all with a Spandex twist - provided by the UK's best independent comic artists.

Cinebook Recounts: Battle of Britain

Cinebook

This is a graphic novel wherein European creators relate how that old British spirit kept the Nazis at bay during World War II.

It's as if during the early 90s when Fleetway overhauled their line of comics and tried to make them more contemporary and relevant D.C. Thomson did so too, but kind of got it right, and created an alternative Earth version of their popular Commando title.

Both The Battle of Britain (1940) and The Bombing of Germany (1943 - 1945) are related in this collection and what we get are dramatised documentary style comic book stories of those historical events. There's an awful lot of detail gone into presenting the research as part of the ongoing story in an easygoing but informative narrative caption vein - not all of it is completely accurate, but I guess we must accept that this is also being presented as a work of fiction so some licence has been used, although personalities and their characterisations are not in depth, the way they are in Commando.

While I don't think this is a book I'll dip into soon again myself, it is a book I'll recommend for kids to read so they can appreciate some of what went on during World War II without getting bored reading rigid text books.

For more information visit: www.cinebook.com

Y The Last Man: Book 1 - Unmanned

Vertigo/DC

Collecting the first four issues of the Vertigo series, as I recall it was the trade back collections that helped turn this into a long running success, and that's now in development as a film.

The premise is that a plague envelops the world, literally overnight. The results of this kill 48% of the planet's mammalian population: who all happen to be male. And most of those guys surviving appear to have a sperm count of nil. Except our titular hero, Y, or more specifically Yorick Brown.. And, ahem, his pet monkey (Imagine Ross and Marcel from Friends and you're getting warm).

Yorick would like to meet up with his girlfriend, only she's in Australia and the running of the world seems to have ground to a halt so there's little chance of him getting there (or at least until near the end of the series I assume). Which kind of makes it useful (or dangerous?) that Yorick's mother's a congresswoman because with a male president, senate, and what have you all having bit the big one, women are in charge.

Only they're turning out to be about just about as bad as the blokes they're replacing: same angles, personal agendas and morally ambiguous frustrations. It's all a bit cut and dry in this collection because stock characters are being presented, and I keep considering the variable possibilities of how over the breadth of the series we could see these people position themselves over this sequential chessboard.

This is a near-future America as we've seen it many a movie, and comics too: all those isolated groups living out in the sticks are coming into their own as major power groups, tussling and killing each other for supremacy... It's an attempt to keep that Wild West frontier spirit going in a new age... It's like Mad Max with a Max Factor makeover.

The post apocalyptic survivor aspects remind me of Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy's Slash Maraud mini-series, not one of their best collaborations, but interestingly published by DC Comics some years back. While its theme of a planet where women still just might need a man to help them procreate was given a unique twist back in the mid-eighties when - again DC - published Me & Joe Priest; a graphic novel by Greg Potter and Ron Randall that had a sci-fi theme where a plague left only a Catholic preacher fertile.

So the basic tenets of this series, as they're presented in this collection, have been played out before.

What's different here is that they've been given a modern spin and all these things are presented for the first time, and very palatably I might add, to a new generation of readers: technology, politics, social defragmentation; the media as news versus TV dinner entertainment; those things are present, and you can slowly perceive how Vaughn will develop them to make this book a success while Guerra is adept and sympathetic in her visual continuity.

It's the portrayal of women I'm unsure about in this particular collection. I want to see this book as pre-feminist for all the right reasons but so far it doesn't offer me enough in that area.

I was actually reading Wonderful Today, the autobiography of Pattie Boyd (written with Penny Junor) at the same time as this, and while being concerned how Ms. Boyd's supposed free spirited 60s lifestyle ended up with her literally being a doormat for a couple of rock stars, I couldn't help but compare it to Y The last Man and see that even in liberated modern America not much has really changed; but then people will always try to take advantage of each other, no matter what their sex.

For Yorick Brown it's mostly a case of playing the part of a fugitive from women-kind: some want him to breed with, some to kill him because his sort should be hunted to extinction, and some want to experiment on him to see what is that's kept him alive. With a female government agent playing the part of grudging sidekick and Yorick's amateur escapologist tricks there's some humour to offset the dystopian angle. As an adventure book this first collection generally works (it has an oddly endearing 80s comics style pacing to it), its themes however are struggling to find space, so I hope to check out a later collection soon to see how well that aspect developed.

The Dead Boy Detectives

Vertigo/DC/Titan

Two young boys dream of becoming detectives, and while others play make believe games re-enacting and inventing mysteries and looking for made-up-on-the-spot clues.

Clive Rowland and Edwin Paine decide to do it for real however.

The little matter that they decide to make their headquarters in a tree house adds to the charm of their age. The rather harder matter that they happen to be ghosts means they'll never grow up and are quite likely never going to develop the maturity to handle such grown-up matters, but then maybe it's the sprite and spunk of youth that will eventually prove their worth.

This is a spin-off from DC's popular The Sandman series and as with other such spin-offs they never stray too far from the original patent's blueprint and tend towards having cameo appearances with other characters from that series too.

The plot: children are being killed in London Town, and it's believed they're being committed by someone who uses the children's spirits to enhance his own longevity of life. Our Dead Boy Detectives's first case is to find that immortal murderer.

To be frank it takes far too long for the lads to solve the mystery - while we can appreciate that wee lads might not cotton on to things, adult readers (who most of Vertigo's titles are) will have and it tends to become tiresome waiting for the story to resolve itself. This is the problem with fitting into the required 4 issue mini-series favoured by popular US comics, from which this collection originated.

There are some nice character pieces and observations, although at times it feels like Gaiman-lite rather than allowing Brubaker's own credible voice to be heard, and while Talbot and Leialoha are talented artists in their own right and rarely do a bad job artistically this again remains in the Vertigo-style and offers little surprises. A pleasant collection, a fair read, but not a must purchase.