The Brown Wedge

Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Recent Superheroes

I covered Grant Morrison a few entries ago, but there are some other terrific talents producing superhero stories these days.

The other writer I follow most faithfully is Mark Millar. Again, I should declare a bias, as many years ago I gave him his start in comics, with Saviour (i.e. I had enough sense to recognise an obvious genuine talent when it showed up in my mailbox). In recent years he’s been one of mainstream US comics’ biggest stars, and deservedly so. His Ultimates series, with Bryan Hitch art, was particularly superb. Marvel’s Ultimate line is a fresh universe, starting from scratch with new versions of their biggest characters; The Ultimates is that world’s equivalent of the Avengers, and they are wonderfully reimagined. His Ultimate X-Men was also excellent. He does a lot, mainly for Marvel, and it’s all at least worth a look. I particularly recommend, from their regular universe, his Wolverine story ‘Enemy of the State’, in which the character, who I’ve always been much less keen on than most, is brainwashed into a deadly assassin; and the current ‘Old Man Logan’ story, set in a future after the supervillains have won, which is exciting me as much as any superhero book in years. There is plenty more - he’s currently writing an astonishing number of comics, and I’m enjoying them all.
… read on …

furrealism

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Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Indie Comics

Don’t let any perfectly sensible distaste for indie music let my terminology here deter you. I’m using it to collect a few creators I want to mention who can’t be pegged into a genre easily, perhaps more akin to modern underground comics than anything else.

Daniel Clowes gained fame when Ghost World was made into the best comic book movie ever. His work generally focusses on odd outsider characters, alienated and often kind of grotesque, written and drawn with a cool clarity, with a huge enthusiasm for pop culture. I find his work compelling and often shocking (he edges towards horror at times), with genuinely memorable characters. As well as Ghost World, any of his collections (mostly previously serialised in his Eightball comic) are worth reading - I’d particularly recommend David Boring and Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron.
… read on …

Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Koike & Kojima

If you like Kurosawa’s samurai movies, it’s a very good bet that you’ll like Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s comics - it’s the closest movie/comics match this side of Sin City, which is kind of cheating given Frank Miller’s involvement in the movie too.

Koike is as superb a craftsman as you’ll find writing comics anywhere. You get very substantial characters, thematic content, motif and strong stories. His knowledge of Japan’s history has immense breadth and depth - he gets at the motivations and circumstances of the times with genuine insight, as well as doing his research thoroughly. Best of all, he creates some extraordinary characters, and drives the story from them.

Kojima was a world class comic artist, immensely powerful and exciting - think of the battle climax of Seven Samurai. His work is gritty and flowing, fast and as muscular as it gets, with exceptional control of the very different pacing Japanese comics offer. He also provides great moments - there’s a shot of a pair of eyes in one Lone Wolf & Cub story that I’ll never forget. … read on …

i vant to suck your blood

Hold on. How come there are books about high school vampires (the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer) for which people make SOCK PATTERNS and no-one has TOLD ME?

Bizarrely, these books are authored by a rather “keen” Mormon author, and don’t feature drinking, drugging or… s3xxxing? Hold on a second, but you know the whole vampire thing is massively… like… about…? SINKING FANGS INTO NECKS and so on? Apparently these series are big business in the US (apparently whilst magic is evil, vampires - providing they don’t booze or s3×0r - are fine!) and set to be huge in other territories. Now I love me some teen vampire trash but when written by a woman who allegedly hasn’t seen an R-rated film “on principle” - whut?

I admit I haven’t seen an R rated film myself - I still don’t QUITE know what it means! I thought it was the stage above 18, but apparently not! From FAN FIC, I have the following assumptions about RATINGS: … read on …

Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison may well be my favourite comic writer ever, by now. I find him and endlessly imaginative, exciting and delightful writer, one who maintains my faith in buying individual comics rather than, as many have, buying the collections - he writes such great single issues, and I love the feeling of waiting impatiently for the next instalment. I’d maintain that his first great work was a comic called St Swithin’s Day, with Paul Grist, in which a young man dreamt about shooting Margaret Thatcher. Of course, since I edited that, I may be biased.

He started at DC around that time. On his own recommendation, I have never read the first four issues of Animal Man, but the fifth, centred around a version of Wile E. Coyote, is dazzling, and the meta elements of the rest of the highly imaginative series are extraordinary. His Doom Patrol run may be even better, bursting with strange ideas and breathtaking stories, and some great characters, not least Danny the Street, a superpowered street. … read on …

My Exciting Life In ROCK!

Yes, yes, I know, why not just change the name of the website to New Morrissey Express Freaky Hibbett and be done with it, but just one more, then I’ll shut up for a bit.

In actually two hours time I set off for EDINBURGH where myself and Mr Hibbett will be showing, for your delectation and delight, My Exciting Life In ROCK!

think that just about covers everything, Medina is here, right off Bristo Square (it’s the downstairs bit). If you’re in Edinburgh please come along, mention the “Freaky Trigger Special Offer” to get two for one all week, cos I’m generous like that.

Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Modern Humour Strips

The second half of the 20th Century was far less rich in great humour strips than the first half. Having said that, there were a couple that rank with the best ever.

The only place to start is with what was by far the dominant humour strip of that era, Peanuts. Charles Schulz throughly earned his place in the hearts of millions around the world, with one of the great casts of characters and some wonderfully subtle comedy writing. Some great humour writers would take pride in a strip being taken as against both sides of an argument; Schulz felt that way about one strip that was taken as in favour by both sides, the issue being prayer in school - I guess this is the difference between a satirist and someone with as much human warmth in his work as Schulz. Perhaps his artistic limitations would have been more exposed in earlier decades, when comic strips were a lot bigger, but he found a style that worked very well for him. Peanuts was a magnificent strip, particularly so soon after he’d found his stride, in the ’60s especially. In Charlie, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and Peppermint Patty in particular he created some of the best known and most loved comic characters ever. … read on …

Life Imitates Tharg part 374

Can Electronic Cigarettes Beat The Smoking Ban?

“I think people need to be cautious,” warns Dr Roberta Ferrence, director of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit. “It’s an unknown.”

“The concern is that the product will probably be promoted as something that’s safer than smoking,” she adds. “What needs to happen to make the dangers of smoking clear is for the product to be fitted with an electronic voice, perhaps one possessed of a piercing Mexican accent and a series of warning phrases such as “No no Senor Slade! Thees ees madness!”"  .

Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: SF

I guess the place to start for SF comics, particularly on a British site, is 2000AD. Its title now makes it sound very unlike SF, but it’s been running future adventure stories for decades. It’s never been consistently great, but it’s had lots of great strips over the years: Alan Moore and Ian Gibson’s future-Locas series Halo Jones, Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell’s superhero strip Zenith, Pat Mills’ future-inquisition story Nemesis, with lots of artists, but most famously, Judge Dredd. I don’t know how many Dredd stories there have been by now, but nearly all of them are at least pretty good - Mills and John Wagner managed a strong standard for a very long time. It’s hard to know where to start with highlights, but the early Judge Death stories, with art by Brian Bolland, are wonderful (a sample is shown, a favourite comic moment of mine), and Mike McMahon’s art in the same era is as good as British action art has ever been - well, except he may have beaten it on Pat Mills’ Celtic fantasy series Slaine, also in 2000AD. … read on …