Newest Graphic Novels Reviews
The Quest for the Time Bird by Serge le Tendre, Regis Loisel and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator)
In order to defeat a vengeful god, who is within days of getting out of his prison – a sacred conch shell – several things must happen. First, the conch must be united with the witch powerful enough to sustain the incantation keeping him locked up. Then she must use her helpers to endure great danger and find the information she seeks in the most perilous of places for knowledge of the ultimate part of the puzzle – the Time Bird. All this calls for heroes, but in the world of fantasy anyone can call themselves a hero – from the witch's own buxom daughter, Pelisse, to an old warrior called Bragon that the girl is forced to unite with and fight alongside. Full review...
Showman Killer: Heartless Hero by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Nicolas Fructus and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator)
A long way away, in terms of both time and space, the most perfect assassin is formed – genetically bred, adept at magical transformations, with the most athletic and deadly abilities, and with the complete lack of emotion needed. All he will ever seek is the highest price for the best job – a job that will, now and again, force him to meet with the most unusual people… Full review...
21st Century Tank Girl by Jamie Hewlett, Alan Martin and others
I sometimes wonder, when keying in book reviews, if ISBNs are not constructed by design instead of the formal accident that is supposed to create them. Surely it's intentional that this book has 666 in its code – it's the most devilishly brash, ugly and foul-mouthed comic around, and people who like that kind of thing will like this. Especially as this book is a return to waaay distant form, and waaay distant creative partnerships, with the original artist Jamie Hewlett back on board. It's time to cuss and roll once more… Full review...
Trashed by Derf Backderf
For those people who think graphic novels are rubbish, this is the epitome of that baseless argument. Its subject is junk, it's trash, it's landfill, and garbage. That's not a verdict on its qualities, which are great and fine ones, but its very topic. Straight from school, our author was actually a bin man for a few seasons – riding on the back of something like Betty, the garbage van featured here. It's a job nobody wants in all honesty, of course – but the book is fine enough to actually make the subject something most people should read about. Full review...
Hilda and the Troll by Luke Pearson
Hilda, a rather delightful small, blue-haired girl, is never far from an adventure. She is confident and excitable, brave and creative, and her stories are slightly mad, and very, very readable! Full review...
Wheels of Terror: The Graphic Novel by Sven Hassel and Jordy Diago
War books and anti-war books, in my mind, have a lot in common and only a couple of easy things need be changed to turn one to the other. This is dressed as an anti-war book, but here is the lead character surviving against all odds – the platoon whittled down several times while he and his few friends go strong; here he is overcoming all kinds of difficulty and adversity and still coming out the other end; here he is doing proper heroic deeds – or his colleagues saving the day at the last minute – and the war carries onwards towards its inevitable end. The difference perhaps is in the minutiae of what those difficulties and deeds need be, with the anti-war book having a simple honesty about them and their overall worth that the gung-ho, militaristic piece would patently lack. And when you face the guts and gore of the kind of warfare on these pages, you don't really expect jingoism and 'hoo-rah!' attitudes. No, even if the DNA is pretty much the same, the result here is definitely, grimly and firmly anti-war. Full review...
Username: Evie by Joe Sugg
Meet Evie. She's surprisingly unwelcome and alienated at school – for a trendy and attractive girl, nobody at all seems to have any time for her, apart from the geeky card-collecting boy with the milk-bottle glasses on the bus. Perhaps it has something to do with her father's thatched house – after all, she must be a witch to live there. It's not that she would wish to live there, with nobody else around, and the memory of her deceased mother. But luckily someone is choosing a place for her –her father is able to put all his work into a cyber-world for her, the E-Scape, which is close to the perfect world. All that remains is to programme the humans to be her friends, and make the connection Evie has with them and them with her in return to be of mutual, confirming, happy benefit. But someone else has entered the E-Scape, and their influence seems all that much more powerful than Evie's tentative happiness… Full review...
13 Coins by Michael B Jackson, Martin Brennan and Simon Bisley
For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. There, I've done it – quoted the Bible in a review. It's certainly pertinent in the world of this graphic novel, where the fallen angels have one get-out clause they have been seeking since those very lapsarian events. They turned a little section of chain holding their leader eternally captive into the titular coins, which can influence the human holders into sheer evil, but might just cause an open war on Heaven, whether they or the best of the holy on earth use them all. The best of the holy then, offspring of the good angels, are culled as a routine, but not one – John Pozner, who of course has no idea of his place in the celestial circle of life… Full review...
J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan: The Graphic Novel by Stref
Here's a quiz question for you – despite the uniform seventy year copyright rule, which work has been the sole recipient of an endless extension of it, courtesy of an ex-Prime Minister? The answer is obvious now at least, as this is one such volume. It's a very readable and pleasant variant on J M Barrie's original stage version and novel regarding Peter Pan, which of course helps and always will now help the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. And for a boy who never grows up, at 111 years old he's in spritely good health. Full review...
Modesty Blaise - The Killing Distance by Peter O'Donnell and Enric Badia Romero
Oh, such things just HAPPEN to that pair, Sir. The pair referred to, of course, are Modesty Blaise, sexy femme fatale with a head full of morals and a pair of legs full of kicking power, and Willy Garvin, the only man to call her Princess and get away with it – intelligent, practical and yet equally resilient in a fight with a baddy. The things that happen to them are legion, over many novels and 95 daily newspaper comic strips, and this is one of the better examples of the current collections of the latter. Where else can you get movie stunts going wrong, pregnant women in danger on the high seas, and people escaping from bomb-laden planes, all in a Jolly Hockey Sticks mood that smacks of pastiche and vintage ribaldry, were it not from the heady days of the mid-'90s? Full review...
The Evil Within by Ian Edginton and Alex Sanchez
What do you fear most? And when you've answered that, think on why – is it something that happened to you, something you saw or read, or something you yourself did? The nature of horror is looked at in this graphic novel, which spins the usual web of nightmares around some fit young adults, and tests them with graphic death on the cards at the same time as keeping them in the dark about what has brought the doom and gloom to them. Starting with Dana, a college girl seeking her kidnapped best friend, things get darker, weirder, and forever more violent… Full review...
Rutabaga the Adventure Chef: Book 1 by Eric Colossal
Meet the latest adventurer to scour the land. He has a talent for finding the obscure and seeking out the rare, and surviving all the undignified fates the world has in store. He even has a magical companion. He will be open to any challenge set upon him, from locating dragon-smiting swords to besting the largest, most locally loved, rival. He is Rutabaga, and he is, of course, a chef. Full review...
Kick-Ass 3 by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr
At the start of this book, Hit-Girl is stuck in a super-max prison (don't ask why). The entire east coast Mafia command is up for grabs (you don't need to ask why – Hit-Girl killed most of them herself). As for Dave, or Kick-Ass, he's failing. He has a whole cohort of other super-heroes, which in this world means dweebish fans of comics with a stupid costume yet no power other than the determination to do well for society, but they're not going anywhere. They're not spotting crime or solving conspiracies, and they're certainly not getting their colleague and mentor Hit-Girl out of jail. Dave could in actual fact be in danger of the most heinous crime of all – growing up. Full review...
The Avengers Vault by Peter A David
It's not just because the third richest take of any movie is about to get a sequel that we have this pictorial background guide. There have been decades of action featuring the main characters of The Avengers, and they themselves are fifty years old as a collective entity, so this book has a lot of ground to cover. To its benefit there are hardly any mentions of the global behemoth that are Marvel films these days, beyond a couple of references where relevant. Instead we're looking back, with bright and eager eyes, to see what we can find, what the beginner may need to know, and what the fan will have fond memories of. Full review...
In God We Trust by Winshluss
To start with, a rhetorical test. How about God and Adam playing badminton day in and day out, until one gets bored and decides to create Eve? Or the defeater of Goliath and the saviour of the Israelites being one Conan the Barbarian? Or this as a test – Jesus Himself failing to have a successful session of tequila slammers with Gabriel due to the holes through His hands? I barely need mention that in these pages God does battle with Superman, for you to have answered the test and put yourself firmly in one of two camps for this book – one very much opposed to buying it, and one very much in favour. Full review...
Catherine Certitude by Patrick Modiano, Sempe (illustrator) and William Rodarmor (translator)
What little I know of Patrick Modiano was gained from the number of 'no, we've never heard of him, either' articles and summaries that came our way when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the end of 2014. They suggested his oeuvre was mature, slightly thriller-based but not exclusively so, and asked lots of accumulative questions regarding identity with regard to the Vichy government during WWII. Identity is a lot more fixed in this musing little piece, for the adult voice-over looks back over a wide remove, and says there will always be a little bit of her living the events and situations of the book. Those situations are of a young dance-school attendee, and her loving and much-loved father, living a cosy life in Paris – even if the girl never once really works out what it is her father does for a living… Full review...
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...
