Recently by Paul Birch

Valerian and Laureline Book 3: The Land Without Stars

Cinebook

One by one, our two spatio-temporal agents stop off at each individual new planet colony within a star cluster, with Valerian being taken aside to partake of the alcoholic hooch brewed by its inhabitants, getting drunker with each collective stop-off then sobering, though not quite abruptly, as news of a rogue planet heading towards the cluster and about to bring doom to all is revealed, and so the adventure gets on its way.

Our hero and heroine rush towards the planet, landing and finding living creatures though ones living underground and unaware of the outside world, let alone the universe. They befriend nomads but learn of two warring citadels; one ruled by women, the other men and there the adventure unfolds.

A battle of the sexes might have been all the rage in the 70s when this first appeared but it's hard to get excited and not find it all a bit too twee several decades later. That stated, the imaginative take on differing races and how they develop their cultures still has worth and is more space fantasy than sci-fi flavoured.

The resolution is a little forced, and rushed it has to be said, and perhaps a step back from Book 2's development.

For more information on Valerian and Laureline visit: www.cinebook.com

Valerian and Laureline Book 2: The Empire of a Thousand Planets

Cinebook

On a world where Aztec headgear seems to be the fashion for priests who rule over all they survey and the ruling prince spaces himself out having his every whim being pandered to arrive Valerian and Laureline undercover, attempting to find if Syrte could present a future danger to their home planet Earth.

Our heroes don't go unnoticed for long, forcing them to be separated and go their own ways as the plot unfolds and the adventure expands taking in some delightfully created alien landscapes, buildings and alien types from the old style school of sci-fi for which this book was first created back in the seventies.

Mézières' figure art lends itself towards cartooning, but it's generally a heroic undertaking in a potted epic filled with incident and characters we're offered in this book rather than being played for comic effect. True Christin may have his leads being light-hearted or the story appearing part tongue in cheek at times, but his intent is earnest, though perhaps pushing an ideological, philosophical or even political viewpoint here and there in ways that don't quite gel. But then that's stated about a book written 40ish years ago by a grown up about a book initially intended in the main for kids. The fact that it's still a good romp gives it a thumbs up.

With decidedly less time and space hopping around, this is a much more linear read than the debut Valerian and Laureline book published in English by Cinebook, and all the better for it.

For more information on Valerian and Laureline visit: www.cinebook.com

CLAWING YOUR way this Sunday: Carter's Column exclusively at the Birmingham Mail's Speech Balloons.If you're new to Carter's Column head over to the Search button and check out the previous online serials where you'll find featured artists have included John Royle (Wolverine: Evilution, Spider-Man) and Gary Crutchley (2000AD, Death Race).

What's more it's not just the previous serials you'll find but features about the series along with exclusive character sketches and special interviews with the various creators and news about their other current projects.

For more information on the creators:

For Paul H Birch: www.myspace.com/paulhbirch & www.paulhbirch.co.uk

For Jon Edwards: www.facebook.com/MightyJonE

For Mats Engesten: www.go.to/engesten

For John Robbins: www.mylifeinshorts.blogspot.com

For Gavin Ross: www.gavinross-artist.blogspot.com

RETURN NEXT SUNDAY FOR A BRAND NEW FULL COLOUR SUNDAY EDITION OF CARTER'S COLUMN!

STILL GET that sinking feeling?... Click on the Farmageddon strips below for this week's fun & frolics...Below is a preview video for the Farmageddon animation series that is in development:

For more on Farmageddon visit: www.farmadeggon.tv

For more on Gordon Fraser visit: www.freewebs.com/gordonfraser/

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ED PISKOR'S Wizzywig relates the story of a computer hacker named computer-hacking named Kevin (Boingthump) Phenicle in a graphic novel due from Top Shelf this July.

Said to be inspired by real events and real people but filtered through the creator's off-kilter style, an official Wizzywig theme song, written and performed by nerdcore rapper Adam WarRock (The Browncoats Mixtape, Parks & Rec EP, that Downton Abbey rap song) is featured in the music video/book trailer that can be viewed below:

For more information on Wizzywig visit: www.topshelfcomix.com

Deep City

Catalan Communications

A collection of short stories revolving around a former boxer and now police commissioner named Evaristo, set in the politically corrupt and socially troubled 1950s of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

When this English language edition first saw publication back in 1986 writer Carlos Sampayo had been receiving critical acclaim in the USA for translations of other crime noire material produced in collaboration with artist Jose Munoz, notably their Alec Sinner series. Franciso Solano Lopez was pretty much unknown to North American readers though, whereas over in the UK children had been brought up on a weekly diet of comics featuring strips drawn by him as diverse as the football strip Raven on the Wing and cursed time traveller Adam Eterno.

A looser art style than Brit kids were accustomed, more open panels too; as if inviting us in to the brutality reality of hard life under a corrupt regime, cast in black and white with so many grey areas to circumnavigate philosophically. The translation tends towards abruptness and while fitting in with the crime noire genre you feel it's not as complete as Sampayo may have intended. Possibly neither of the creators' best work but worth experiencing as a singular read; bleak though it is. There are apparently a lot more pages never translated and the series as a whole may have more to offer in terms of emotional catharsis.

Burton & Cub

Catalan Communications

Take a blue-eyed blond all-American looking jock and a shifty-looking four-eyed gun-toting cyborg in a space opera setting where they're galactic conmen seeking riches and quick scams and you have Burton & Cyb, a series created back in 1987 by the popular Spanish pairing of Antonio Segura & Jose Ortiz.

Ortiz's name became established with UK readers via his artwork on series like Rogue Trooper for 2000AD, having worked un-credited work on other IPC/Fleetway weekly adventure comics, while in the USA he was the most prolific of those Spanish artists who would produced material for Warren magazines, and I for one am still waiting the conclusion of the Don McGregor created Sabre series he was drawing. His work in Europe is much more well-known, and well it should be, not least because his work has been credited there since the 1950s.

Segura became a writer to be reckoned with in the 1980s, working with many top artists, and collaborating on many series with Ortiz.

This 1991 English translation is not their best work, but it's fun enough in a bombastic throwaway manner if you can pick it up in a bargain box. The pairing do their best to fleece galactic despots, alien legions and rocket ship mechanics. Han Solo and Chewbacca it ain't but the short stand alone strips could easily have filled the pages of a British comic like Valiant if it had continued in some alternative world.

Whether or not it's the translation the humour doesn't always pay off verbally, and where there's a double bluff the stories work better. Ortiz's art however is quite delightful; the genre allowing his imagine free rein, the colouring giving humour to an art style English speaking readers are more used to seeing sombre tales.

WESTERNOIR VOLUME 1 Book 1 features the debut appearance of Josiah Black in what is planned as a new four issue series being published by Accent UK.

Written by Eagle Award winning writer Dave West (Whatever Happened to the Word's Fastest Man) and illustrated by Gary Crutchley (2000AD, Death Race) and in the main feature that is The Woman with the Dead Eyes it relates the tale of bounty hunter Josiah Black, his agreeing to capture the monstrous killer Jim Wilson and how this impacts on his own life.

It is a western travelling down a dark, dusty Sam Peckinpah road where Joe Lansdale deals cards of chance in a last chance saloon with the outlaw spirits of John Lee Hooker and Johnny Cash growling out a duet by the piano in the background before sending its reluctant hero out to battle the mysteries of American folklore, well allegorically speaking at least.

Book 1 also features a vignette afterward of a back story for the Wilson character that is more than incidental to the main feature.

For artist Crutchley this follows fast on the heels of the Ken Thomas scripted one-shot A Tale of a Well Hung Man published by Lazy Bones Studios in the USA, and falls between completion of the graphic novel Hard Country, scripted by Andrew Elliott (Taboo). Westerns all.

Meanwhile, Westernoir Volume 1 Book 2 is already in development and will run with the feature length story The Crocodile Tears of the Louisiana Swamp Men.

For more information on Westernoir visit: www.accentukcomics.com

Lucky Luke Book 33: The One-Armed Bandit

Cinebook

I could be wrong, but this may be the final book that Lucky Luke creator Morris worked on, before he passed away, and if so De Groot concluded the unfinished tale.

Out in Michigan two brothers, have become inventors, the results of which - like a mechanical cockerel cockadoodling at all hours - has sent their mother quite mad. When they devise a gambling machine, the one-armed bandit of the book's title, Senator Ball is impressed and thinks they can make a small fortune hiring the machines out to various towns' saloons, only the brothers are as innocent as they are inventive and have barely left their own family homestead. Thus old friend Lucky Luke is called upon and the odds are on that misadventures can be expected, calamities will occur and some running gags pulled out along the way. And so it goes.

If De Groot did complete this book, rather than work in tandem with Morris, he does an unenviable but good job. While some subplots conclude briskly negotiating a different feel of pacing near the end, most of the Lucky Luke series' motifs and traditions kept in place.

For more information on Luck Luke books in English visit: www.cinebook.com

ONE YEAR of appearances in Japan, are we heading for a big climax? Read this Sunday's episode of Carter's Column featured exclusively here at the Birmingham Mail's Speech Balloons to find out if our reporter's just heading for the sidewalk.If you're new to Carter's Column head over to the Search button and check out the previous online serials where you'll find featured artists have included John Royle (Wolverine: Evilution, Spider-Man) and Gary Crutchley (2000AD, Death Race).

What's more it's not just the previous serials you'll find but features about the series along with exclusive character sketches and special interviews with the various creators and news about their other current projects.

For more information on the creators:

For Paul H Birch: www.myspace.com/paulhbirch & www.paulhbirch.co.uk

For Jon Edwards: www.facebook.com/MightyJonE

For Mats Engesten: www.go.to/engesten

For John Robbins: www.mylifeinshorts.blogspot.com

For Gavin Ross: www.gavinross-artist.blogspot.com

RETURN NEXT SUNDAY FOR A BRAND NEW FULL COLOUR SUNDAY EDITION OF CARTER'S COLUMN!