Difference between revisions of "Newest Graphic Novels Reviews"
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| + | |author=Rob Williams and Simon Coleby | ||
| + | |title=The Royals: Masters of War | ||
| + | |rating=5 | ||
| + | |genre=Graphic Novels | ||
| + | |summary=It's World War Two, but not as we know it. The circumstance is building up to be pretty much what we know – the Allies have ideas to land at Normandy, the Germans have rockets ready to pummel a Blighty only just getting over the Battle of Britain, and the Americans are being pressured by Churchill to enter the war, little knowing what Japan would have in mind to force the issue. But many things are different. For this is a world where the Royal blood disease of Europe is not something ailing, debilitating and embarrassing, but instead the giver of super powers. The names in Buckingham Palace are different, but the opulence remains, and with the history of the current incumbents one where their powers are not exercised, people are being tasked with making sure that remains so. But how can you stop an immovable force when it has enough might and strength to turn the tide of the war single-handed? | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1401250548</amazonuk> | ||
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{{newreview | {{newreview | ||
|author=Paco Roca | |author=Paco Roca | ||
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|summary=All of humankind is living on a single train. I know British commuters feel that way at times, but this is a much different circumstance – it is a train miles long, running non-stop as a self-contained unit across tracks circling a desolately frozen Earth, moving on endlessly until, perhaps some time in the distant future, the planet can recover from the cataclysm that froze it. It's certainly been going on long enough for it to have a culture – a hierarchical society from the rich and leisured classes near the front, through the orgiasts, past the useful carriages set aside for producing food, to the underclass at the end. It's all set in its routine, set in motion. But there are two fishes out of water – a man from the rear who escaped, and a middle-class woman working with civil rights campaigners. | |summary=All of humankind is living on a single train. I know British commuters feel that way at times, but this is a much different circumstance – it is a train miles long, running non-stop as a self-contained unit across tracks circling a desolately frozen Earth, moving on endlessly until, perhaps some time in the distant future, the planet can recover from the cataclysm that froze it. It's certainly been going on long enough for it to have a culture – a hierarchical society from the rich and leisured classes near the front, through the orgiasts, past the useful carriages set aside for producing food, to the underclass at the end. It's all set in its routine, set in motion. But there are two fishes out of water – a man from the rear who escaped, and a middle-class woman working with civil rights campaigners. | ||
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782761330</amazonuk> | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782761330</amazonuk> | ||
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Revision as of 09:35, 18 December 2014
The Royals: Masters of War by Rob Williams and Simon Coleby
It's World War Two, but not as we know it. The circumstance is building up to be pretty much what we know – the Allies have ideas to land at Normandy, the Germans have rockets ready to pummel a Blighty only just getting over the Battle of Britain, and the Americans are being pressured by Churchill to enter the war, little knowing what Japan would have in mind to force the issue. But many things are different. For this is a world where the Royal blood disease of Europe is not something ailing, debilitating and embarrassing, but instead the giver of super powers. The names in Buckingham Palace are different, but the opulence remains, and with the history of the current incumbents one where their powers are not exercised, people are being tasked with making sure that remains so. But how can you stop an immovable force when it has enough might and strength to turn the tide of the war single-handed? Full review...
Wrinkles by Paco Roca
Never let them tell you life begins at 40, or ends when you enter a retirement home. Ernest has just entered an old folk's establishment, and life is ever-changing. There's the time he meets a person hounded by the idea at least of alien abduction, the moment he forgets the word for 'ball' when holding one while doing armchair exercises, and the galling day he finds out he shares a medication routine with the most helpless and locked-in of inmates. No, for Ernest, especially in the hands of his new room-mate Emile who will do anything to earn a fast buck, life is full of some kind of variety. Full review...
Unforgotten by Tohby Riddle
Think of fallen angels, and Lucifer and the like come to mind. But they don't have to have fallen with such speed, for such a distance or with such effect. This book concerns one such creature, and while it's not named as an angel as such, and it's identified only by nobody knowing from where it comes yet everyone silently gets to appreciate its presence, it certainly looks like a Western, Christian, angel form. And so the plot of this gentle, poetic picture book looks at the chance of such a bad thing as the fall of an angel being followed by anything more positive. Full review...
Thunderbirds Comic: Volume 1 by Gerry Anderson and Frank Bellamy
Meet the Thunderbirds. If you don't know anything about the Tracy family and their International Rescue organisation, then I'm not sure where you've been. For people of a certain age (OK, mine, at least) they were the staple of Saturday morning cinema clubs, a highlight of BBC2 when repeated teatime, and even managed to make those 3D rotating card-a-vision things worthwhile. They've been in cinemas since then, of course, but now with the world needing everything everywhen we've got a welcome chance to look back at some of the original comic book spin-offs, that probably haven't been much seen since then. With five volumes of these books on the cards, it's worthwhile sticking to the first and seeing just what these retro delights – or otherwise – could bring. Full review...
The Lost Sock by Gillian Johnson
A lost sock. We’ve all had them. In fact, I know people who only buy socks of one colour in order to always have matching socks. I, who prefer to buy brightly coloured socks (much like the man in this book), seem to spend my life with my feet constantly mismatched. It doesn’t bother me all that much, but it certainly affects the hero of this tale, who goes on an adventure in order to find the missing sock. Full review...
Meteor Men by Jeff Parker and Sandy Jarrell
Meet Alden. He's only at high school, but as his parents have died the farm is his – his and the couple of professors the smart kid hangs out with. One night a large gathering forms on an ad hoc basis to watch the Perseid meteor shower – and one of them unexpectedly lands. The rock is Alden's as it landed on private property, but the planetarium's main scientist is keen for science to learn from it – or that it should pay for Alden getting through university. But the rock has a lesson much bigger than even that premise could provide for – it wasn't a hundred per cent rock. And Alden also owns a much greater connection to what was inside it when it landed… Full review...
Charley's War: A Boy Soldier in the Great War by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun
The answer, it seems to me, when writing war stories, is to take something we can all imagine – the young lad signing up and finding out the real truth behind the glorified propaganda of his masters – and still making something unexpected out of it. People have to die in unexpected ways, because that's what war is. Soldiers have to face misery, because that's what war brings them. The writer has to be a godlike entity able to give the power of victory or defeat to either side, because the common or garden soldier character certainly can't. In putting all this and more into a comic for boys, where it had previously been thought a WWI story with the rigid and static nature of trench warfare would be neither visually nor dramatically appealing, Pat Mills both challenged himself and won many over with his brilliance. Young Charley certainly gets to know the misery, unexpected death and people in command of his fate. And with the dramatic narrative artwork here, so do we. Full review...
Trillium by Jeff Lemire
It's the future of at least a thousand years hence, and humanity is in trouble. The species has spread itself thinly out in the galaxy, but is under threat from a sentient virus, which is beating all efforts – military, scientific – to best it. The nearest thing to hope is in the unlikely form of a jungle flower, found only in realms sacred to the natives of one of humankind's planets. Elsewhere and elsewhen a shell-shocked WWI veteran is taken with his brother to South America, to gain the secrets and glories of the remotest Incan temples. It therefore sounds entirely unlikely that the main alien life scientist in the future and the earlier explorer will meet, but meet they do – and then things start to get weirder and weirder… Full review...
Alex and Ada Volume 1 by Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn
Meet Alex. You'd probably be in a minority if you did, for he's a bit of a loner since he broke up with his last girlfriend. He meets few people in the workplace, has a quite antiseptic flat with his virtual cinema and his flying robotic kitchen aide, and that's about it. But others aren't too keen for Alex to carry on like that – people such as his gran, who has given herself the gift of an android in the form of a handsome young man to, er, keep her company. And yes, that too. Unfortunately, as Alex sees it, she buys him one for his birthday as well – a Tanaka X5, which you wake up by tugging on an earlobe. This being a world where the first real Artificial Intelligence went nasty and killed people a year ago, Alex is certainly torn about having the thing in his flat – especially as it just kowtows to his wishes and opinions without having anything like its own, as it is not allowed to get that close to sentience. But Alex changes his mind right upon the point of returning the thing, and begins to explore just what kind of life the gift could end up presenting to him. Full review...
The People Inside by Ray Fawkes
Love happens. There, that must be the shortest plot summary on this site, but the fact remains that you can say a lot more about what is on these pages, and you still have all you need to know in those two words. This book takes the profound – which, of course, love can be, and the mundane – ditto, and presents them to us happening in quiet, pacific black and white, and it does so in quiet usual, and in incredibly unusual, ways. Full review...
The Strain Book One by Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan, David Lapham and Dan Jackson
A liner ends its journey from Europe in a port city, and waits, silently, holding whatever secrets it had with little signs of life. It is found to contain a heavy box, almost coffin-like, containing mud – and something else. But this is not the coasts of England, and this is not Bram Stoker. This is also not a sailing boat, but an airliner – a Boeing 777, stuck at JFK airport with no signs of life. The CDC and one man – Dr Ephraim Goodweather – are tasked with looking into it. But he won't like what he finds – and nor should anyone. The problem is, some do… Full review...
The Art of Neil Gaiman by Hayley Campbell
An early Neil Gaiman book was all about Douglas Adams, and came out at the time he had a success with a book of his own regarding definitions of concepts that had previously not had a specific word attached. Gaiman himself is one of those concepts. I know what a polyglot is, and a polymath – but there should be a word for someone like Gaiman, who can write anything and everything he seems to want – a whimsical family-friendly picture book, a behemoth of modern fantasy, an all-ages horror story, something with a soupcon of sci-fi or with a factor of the fable. He can cross genres – and to some extent just leave them behind as unnecessary, as well as cross format – he was mastering the lengthy, literary graphic novel just as 'real' books were festering in his creativity, and songs and poems were just appearing here and there. So he is pretty much who you think of as regards someone who can turn his hands to anything he wishes. He is a poly-something, then, or just omni-something else. Full review...
I Was the Cat by Paul Tobin and Benjamin Dewey
Meet Burma. Allison Breaking, blogger and journalist behind the Breaking News website is about to, for she's accepted his giant wage packet to ghost write his memoirs. She's been told to expect the unexpected as regards his looks, but she is shocked to find that Burma is in fact the world's only talking cat, and that he has not one but nine lives to talk about. The past eight were full of a lot of evil, sin and death – but at least he's coming clean now, right? Full review...
Letter 44 Volume 1: Escape Velocity by Charles Soule and Alberto Jimenez Alburquerque
I guess we don't always think of the President of the USA as someone who is thrown into the deep end on day one, given his retinue of advisors and aides. But this one is – when being inaugurated as the 44th POTUS, Stephen Blades gets a letter from the outgoing premier. He – and we – learn that the prior two terms, when America was busy fighting in the eastern hemisphere and not getting her economy into gear, were pretty much just a cover-up. The military presence and lack of economic benefit at home was purely due to something a long way away – the discovery of something being manufactured by aliens within our own asteroid belt. Due to some cloaking technology little is known about what is up there – and that applies to our own response, too – the ultra top secret mission we've sent up, both scientific and military, to have a closer look. Welcome to the job, Mr President. Full review...
Death Sentence by Montynero and Mike Dowling
It's AIDS, Jim, but not as we know it. G+ is the new sexually transmitted disease sweeping the nation's reckless youth, and it has even further-reaching consequences. It boosts your brain activity, and makes you a stronger and more promiscuous carrier of the virus – so you can be beating a supercomputer at chess one moment and rolling around a bed with a host of ladies the next. But either way, it kills you within six months. Here it affects three people with more cerebral, supernatural powers – a young female artist in need of confirmation, an egotistical junkie rock star, and a certain highly-rated comic with Russell Brand's hair and Kasabian's wardrobe designer. It's a combination of the three people and their own G+ that will make sure the world is most certainly aware of their activities – death sentence or no death sentence… Full review...
Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For by Frank Miller
Ava. Damn. With that repeated refrain we're forcibly given Dwight's viewpoint and made to agree with it. Ava is quite a woman. She was Dwight's, but now she's not, and he's forced to ignore his photojournalism career in favour of his night-time job of photographing evidence for adultery cases, and to struggle to stay away from the fags and off the booze. But now it's all going to be much harder, for Ava has come back. She's stifled in a loveless, violent marriage, trapped in a gated villa with her husband and his man mountain of a bodyguard, and only Dwight has the flutter in her heart and the iron in his fist and gut to make things right for her. Damn Ava? You bet he's going to… Full review...
Modesty Blaise - The Young Mistress by Peter O'Donnell and Enric Badia Romero
Modesty Blaise is slowly becoming like an old flame of mine – just popping back into my life every few months to regale an adventure, have a catch-up and be on her way. This latest fleeting visit shows Modesty, the most ironically-named brunette in the world of solving crime, having old flames of her own – although she calls them 'escorts'. They're prevalent in the first and title story, where her doctor lover has a patient with whip marks, which leads into a full-blown action adventure regarding art forgeries. Her American 'escort' wants to replace the doctor, but has to wait for a story all of his own, when his own prize racehorse is a target for criminals. And in the third story there are a lot of returning characters – but not all are as they might at first appear… Full review...
Manifest Destiny Volume 1 by Chris Dingess, Matthew Roberts and Owen Gieni
It's 1804 and some newly-American soldiers are expanding the territory to the west, at the orders of President Jefferson – orders which allude to the pioneering party encountering some very unusual things. And they do – first a huge arc of greenery, putting the modern reader in mind of the Missouri landmark arch as bastardised by something along the lines of the Statue of Liberty in the original 'Planet of the Apes'. But when that site gets attacked the weirdness certainly starts to show itself… Full review...
Hilda and the Black Hound by Luke Pearson
Hilda and the Black Hound is the fourth book in the “Hildafolk” series, each of which is a self-contained tale about a highly inquisitive little girl and her adventures. This time Hilda joins the Sparrow Scouts and befriends a house spirit whilst in the meantime a mysterious beast stalks the town of Trolberg. Full review...
The Bojeffries Saga by Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse
A very truncated history of comics will start with the idea that they should be funny strips – one jape then you're out; then that they should have more – perhaps a superhero; then that you can have so much more than just a superhero – witness the works of Alan Moore. But you mustn't be too surprised to see the whole thing come around in a full cycle. Because Alan Moore has, with this volume, concluded his own funny strip japery, and whatever history or greater opinions about the canon of comix might say, it's just about his best ever book. Full review...
The Secret Service - Kingsman by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons
He is Mister London. Jack London. He is the longest-serving, most experienced and downright most suave secret agent the country has. But he now has a problem possibly bigger than even those he's had to face up to before – his nephew. Gary Unwin, Eggsy to his friends, is stuck in a rut called Peckham, living with his kid brother and his single mum, and her latest bullying, abusive partner. His life is the X-Box, cheap four-packs and TWOCing the neighbourhood cars. Reluctantly casting his mind from the problem of someone kidnapping the greats of TV sci-fi history, Jack undergoes his most awkward mission yet – raising his nephew to be a world-saver. Full review...
Jane, The Fox and Me by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault
Bullied at school and lonely because her former friends don't talk to her, Helene loses herself in the pages of Jane Eyre. To a girl who thinks of herself as fat and plain, Jane's story gives her hope - but can she find happiness? And how will a trip to a nature camp affect her? Can it give her the confidence and courage to change the way she sees herself? Full review...
Nemo: Roses of Berlin by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
It's all very well having a heroic band of brigands and workers plucked from literature and being able to do the jobs that can't ever even feature in top secret files. Submariners, invisible men, and other individuals of mysterious origin, powers and sometimes intent aren't unique to English, or England. Hence this loose approximation of World War II, when Berlin is turned into a Germania-meets-Judge-Dredd-Megacity, and the Indian daughter of Captain Nemo and her very own special Captain Jack have a much more personal mission. The Fuhrer – and the real people and things behind the throne of the Nazi-type superpower – have something they'll fight to the end to get back – their own offspring. Full review...
Snowpiercer Vol.2 - The Explorers by Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette
All of humankind is living on a single train. Oh sorry, as this is the sequel, make that two trains. Launched on the same tracks as the original Snowpiercer, but clearly at a slight remove, was a second mile-long behemoth of a train, designed with the latest high tech to be completely self-sustaining as it travelled ceaselessly on the tracks encircling a frozen Earth, waiting for the time the world was inhabitable once more. But the high tech on board, complete with lemon farms, and differing qualities of virtual holidays depending on cost and class of customer, has not put paid to one aspect of society – and in fact the sole aspect of society not featured in the first book – religion. Some people are fearing the end time, when the Icebreaker crashes into the original Snowpiercer. Some believe they're duped into the whole train idea, and are in fact on a spacecraft. Some people know something else – the rare few explorers who get to go outside the train into the world beyond, and see glimpses of what came before… Full review...
Line of Fire : Diary of an Unknown Soldier (August, September 1914) by Barroux
A scientist can tell a bit about an animal's nature just by observing the beginnings of its life ('it's in water, ergo it's probably a fish'). They don't need to study every ant in the colony to see how ants collaborate and work together, for the detail is pretty much shared from one ant to the next. So it is with soldiers, at least as far as this book is concerned. You can pick one soldier from all the battalions and learn something of soldierly life. You can see the nature of the war from what happens at the outset. And here all we get is the outset, for this graphic novel is based on a manuscript the artist found purely by chance, of a solitary soldier's diary that covers only a couple of weeks in 1914, and stops obliquely. Full review...
Snowpiercer Vol.1 - The Escape by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette
All of humankind is living on a single train. I know British commuters feel that way at times, but this is a much different circumstance – it is a train miles long, running non-stop as a self-contained unit across tracks circling a desolately frozen Earth, moving on endlessly until, perhaps some time in the distant future, the planet can recover from the cataclysm that froze it. It's certainly been going on long enough for it to have a culture – a hierarchical society from the rich and leisured classes near the front, through the orgiasts, past the useful carriages set aside for producing food, to the underclass at the end. It's all set in its routine, set in motion. But there are two fishes out of water – a man from the rear who escaped, and a middle-class woman working with civil rights campaigners. Full review...
