The Manara Library: Vol. Two

Milo Manara and Hugo Pratt, trans. from the Italian by Kim Thompson. Dark Horse, $59.99 (280p) ISBN 978-1-59582-783-8

The latest volume of the works of Italian master artist Manara, newly translated, collects a long work of historical fiction alongside nine short biographical works. The standout piece is “El Gaucho,” with art by Manara and a script by Hugo Pratt (Corto Maltese). Set in the 19th century, it follows the lives of several people arriving in Argentina on the eve of a British attack, including British soldier Tom Browne, prostitute Molly Malone, and hunchbacked shipmate Matthew. All have their own reasons for seeking to break free of the people controlling them and try to use the chaos of the outbreak of war to slip away. But in each case their desire to help others leads to tragedy. Also included, Manara’s Trial by Jury series, in which noted historical figures from to Nero and Helen of Troy to Custer and Oppenheimer are put on hypothetical trials for their crimes, presented in biographical flashbacks. “El Gaucho” is beautifully drawn and colored, full of the sensuality Manara is known for, but not overwhelmed by it. The Trial by Jury stories, rather text heavy, take a more serious, chaste tone, but still are gorgeous to look at. (Feb.)

Womanthology: Heroic

Various. IDW, $50 (335p) ISBN 978-1-61377-147-1

This massive anthology, with more than 150 women creators, has so far been better known for its funding and—raising over $100,000 on Kickstarter—than for its content. That should change now that the book is here. There’s a wide variety of talented work on display, showing how many diverse styles and subjects can make for great comics. The different portraits and definitions of heroism encompass everything from caped fliers to historical allusions to quiet bravery. The tips scattered across the bottom of various pages on how to be a comics professional are helpful but seem to have wandered in from some other book. The editors have attempted to create an all-in-one book, showing what women can do in comics, with historical profiles and interviews with current creators. Although most would agree that women have already proven their place in the comics medium, the book does suggest an instant time capsule, a volume to look back at in five or 10 years and see art from who they were when. The reader is left wanting a lot more from the contributors than these short pieces, and that was undoubtedly the goal. (Mar.)

Zombies Hate Stuff

Greg Stones. Chronicle, $9.95 (64p) ISBN 978-1-4521-0740-0

If you’ve ever had the experience of connecting with a graphic novel that takes two and a half minutes to read, you’ll appreciate Zombies Hate Stuff. In it, Stones tells a simple tale of what zombies hate, what they don’t mind, what they really hate, and finally, what they love. With typically no more than a word or two on each page describing the object of a zombie’s hatred, indifference, loathing, or affection, Stones’s panels have a cool way of collectively turning a grin into a chuckle (and perhaps, dare it be said, into a hearty guffaw). Stones is able to tap into what readers love or hate about the things he presents, and in a strange way manages to get readers to see them through the zombie’s rather glazed eyes. When it comes to creating humor, Stones uses all the tricks of the trade, including awkward juxtapositions, sight gags, incongruity, visual references, and even—if you can believe it—dramatic irony (well, at least in the case of the clown). It’s perfect as a conversation piece or for a laugh around the water cooler, unless you know people at work who love bagpipes or are into sock monkeys. (Mar.)

100 Months

John Hicklenton. Cutting Edge (www.cuttingedgepress.co.uk), $29.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-9565445-2-0

In his final graphic novel, the late Hicklenton (Nemesis the Warlock; Judge Dredd) leaves us with a haunting and powerful legacy. In a work that reads like darkly illustrated scripture, he presents the story of Mara, the earth goddess or “Anima Mundi,” who sets out to avenge the desecration of her kingdom by those who worship the “Longpig.” There is little question that Hicklenton’s vision for this work was informed not simply by his sense that humanity has pushed itself past the brink of inevitable collapse, but by the demons he faced in his own struggle with multiple sclerosis. Hicklenton’s work deftly draws upon scriptural and mythological allusion in realizing his vision of the last brutal day of the story’s 100 months, and then devastates us with the force of his illustrations and the inevitability of his message. What is most satisfying in 100 Months is that the message is not tempered to make it more palatable for delicate sensibilities—it is brutal and unadulterated and, in the final analysis, beautiful. Like the Book of Revelation, it is not interested in diluting judgment with pity. It’s a haunting legacy for the artist. (May)

Jinchalo

Matthew Forsythe. Drawn & Quarterly, $19.95 (152p) ISBN 978-1-77046-067-6

Midway through Forsythe’s mostly text-free graphic fable—the follow-up to the Eisner-winning Ojingogo—some readers may suspect that they are being fed some kind of moral, or worse yet, an allegory. What else can they be expected to make of a story so overstuffed with brazenly mythological overtones, journeys, mysterious creatures, and dreamlike encounters? A young girl of formidable appetite (she demolishes log-size sushi rolls like they were canapés) is sent off to market by her father to replenish their food supplies. It’s a simple enough task, but one immediately complicated by her running into a tricky shape-shifter. After that, she’s launched into one dream-logic encounter after another (robots, a headless giant meeting bodyless heads, a great tree that grows out of her pack). Forsythe’s manga-inspired style, with its mellow blue-tones and wide-open white margins is deceptively coolheaded. There’s a frantic but calculated imagination rumbling underneath the surface that recalls the films of Hayao Miyazaki in its fantastical beauty and the wordless glee of Andy Runton’s Owly. There likely are allegories upon allegories threaded through this book, but it can be enjoyed just as well without unraveling them. (Feb.)

Uglies: Shay’s Story

Scott Westerfeld, Devlin Grayson, and Steve Cummings. Del Rey, $10.99 trade paper (208p) ISBN 978-0-345-52722-6

The story of Westerfeld’s bestselling YA dystopia, Uglies, retold from the point of view of recurring frenemy Shay, this original graphic novel is set in a time when we are remembered only as the long-vanished “Rusties,” a future time when discord is suppressed through ruthlessly enforced conformity and obligatory plastic surgery at age 16. Eschewing a future of bland artificial beauty as a Pretty, Shay yearns for freedom. An encounter with the flawed and alluring David, a covert envoy from the Smoke, a secret community of nonconformists, may offer Shay the escape she craves, but despite her best efforts Shay faces unexpected rejection and unwitting sabotage from her closest friends. While Cumming’s mangaesque art is craftsmanlike, it is also limited in its range; the underage Uglies and the older Pretty cohort appear similarly flawless, undermining a vital element of the story. The strength of the tale comes from its change in perspective. Shay is a more interesting protagonist than the rather passive Tally, protagonist of the Uglies novels; unlike Tally, Shay is driven to act by her own desires and goals rather than the desires and goals of others, and the story that results is far more engrossing. (Feb.)

Rohan at the Louvre

Hirohiko Araki. NBM (www.nbmpub.com), $19.99 (128p) ISBN 978-1-56163-615-0

A departure from the typical shonen or shojo manga styles, this weird fantasy tale from the creator of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure tells of a young man’s encounter with a mysterious divorcée who moves into his grandmother’s boarding house and how that meeting returns to haunt him a decade later. During his teens, Rohan aspires to be a manga artist, and his fledgling efforts attract the attention of the beautiful, apparently emotionally disturbed boarder, who tells him of the darkest, most evil painting ever crafted. She violently destroys his first completed work, a story featuring her image as its female lead, and disappears, leaving behind several unanswered questions. Ten years later, Rohan visits the Louvre and discovers the mysterious evil painting is housed in one of the museum’s closed wings, after which Stygian horror ensues. Looking like the work of a Japanese P. Craig Russell, Araki’s art lends a wistful mood to the tale’s proceedings and arrests the eye with willowy figures and expressive faces. Previous volumes of this graphic novel series published by the Louvre itself have all been excellent, and this is no exception. (Apr.)

Are You My Mother?

Alison Bechdel. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $22 (224p) ISBN 978-0-618-98250-9

There was a danger inherent in the bestselling microscopically examined autobiography of Bechdel’s Fun Home, namely that further work from this highly impressive artist could disappear so far down the rabbit hole of her own mind that readers might never find their way back out. Her first book since that masterful 2006 chronicle of her closeted father’s suicide narrowly avoids that fate, but is all the stronger for risking it. This Jungian “comic drama” finds Bechdel investigating the quiet combat of another relationship: that of her distant, critical mother and her own tangled, self-defeating psyche. Bechdel’s art has the same tightly observed aura of her earlier work, but with a deepening and loosening of style. The story, which sketches more of the author’s professional and personal life outside of her family, is spiderwebbed with anxiety and self-consciousness (“I was plagued... with a tendency to edit my thoughts before they even took shape”). There’s a doubling-back quality, mixed with therapeutic interludes that avoid self-indulgence and are studded with references to creative mentors like Virginia Woolf (another obsessive who yet took daring creative leaps), analyst Donald Winnicott, and Alice Miller. Though perhaps not quite as perfectly composed as Fun Home, this is a fiercely honest work about the field of combat that is family. (May)


Power Girl: Old Friends

Judd Winick, Matthew Sturges, and Sami Basri. DC, $19.99 trade paper (200p) ISBN 978-1-4012-3365-5

Created in 1976 as an alternate world version of Supergirl, Karen “Power Girl” Starr has long been the victim of ever changing continuity, with her origin, character, and abilities altered to suit the passing whims of editors. In this volume, this mutable figure struggles to realize herself, embracing her identity as a business leader and rebuilding her shattered company while fighting evil with her current set of familiar powers. The writers are in no way responsible for the act of narrative sabotage committed on this volume by its editors, but this work stands as a warning of what inept editorial decisions can do to an otherwise harmless, if occasionally trite, collection of short works of fiction: not only does Power Girl’s personality shift from story to story as one might expect as writing teams change, but an important enemy is introduced only to have what may well have been an Earth-shattering conclusion resolved offstage. Artist Basri doesn’t stint on showcasing Power Girl’s famous assets, but stays within the bounds of decency. The result is an uneven work that only hints at the character’s potential. (Feb.)

Play Ball

Nunzio DeFillippis, Christina Weir, and Jackie Lewis. Oni, $19.99 trade paper (144p) ISBN 978-1-934964-79-8

An enjoyable sports story for all ages, this comic traces a high school girl’s struggle to join a boys’ baseball team. Freckle-faced Dashiell Brody was good at softball in her private girls’ school; now that she’s moved to another city with her mother and older sister and they must enroll in public school, she wants to play the real game, despite stereotypical resistance from school administrators and some jocks. Nothing that happens in DeFillippis and Weir’s script is especially surprising, and Lewis’s b&w art is just energetic enough to do the job. As the action continues, though, the characters become more richly complicated than they first appeared—for example, when Dashiell yearns for her father to rejoin the family to sit in the crowd at one of her games, or when her taciturn coach slowly begins seeing her as a real member of the team. On the whole, it’s a pleasant, feel-good performance. (Apr.)

Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland

Harvey Pekar and Joseph Remnant. Top Shelf/Zip, $21.99 (128p) ISBN 978-1-60309-091-9

The late Pekar celebrates, to the extent the obligatorily morose underground cartoonist was capable of celebrating anything, his hometown of Cleveland and the life he spent there. After a pocket history of that once great city, Pekar focuses on the period he lived through, a period that sadly came to an end in July 2010 with his death. Rambling but often insightful, and unafraid to show himself in an extremely uncomplimentary light, Pekar illustrates 70 years of recent history as seen through the eyes of one gloomy but talented pessimist. Despite his personal proclivities, Pekar occasionally comes close to visible enthusiasm for a city he clearly loved, warts and all, for his entire life; there is even the faintest hint of optimism that “the mistake by the lake” might someday regain its lost glory. Pekar’s insights are more than matched by Remnant’s art—although akin to the crosshatched realism of one of Pekar’s most acclaimed collaborators, R. Crumb, Remnant brings this very personal history to vibrant life with his own flair for the charm of the ordinary. With an introduction by Alan Moore and a short essay by Jimi Izrael, Cleveland will stand as a must-have volume in Pekar’s body of work. (Apr.)

Glitz-2-Go

Diane Noomin. Fantagraphics, $19.99 (144p) ISBN 978-1-60699-481-8

For almost 40 years, from Women’s Comix to the Nation, underground comics pioneer Noomin has shared painfully hilarious episodes from the life of DiDi Glitz, who’s partly her alter ego, but mostly a dreadful example of what a woman who’s not hip or self-aware can do to herself. Occasionally exploiting but usually exploited, DiDi is enthusiastically tasteless and (barely) sensitive enough to realize that there’s something missing in her life. Pursuing cheap sex as the only intimacy she can imagine, she’s usually wearing stiletto heels and fishnet stockings, with a blonde beehive wig jammed on her head. DiDi’s “successes” turn out to be only briefly satisfying, though, and Noomin’s faux-primitive, b&w art stresses how ugly and vulgar her lovers are. Still, despite wrinkles and rejections, she never gives up, and her grandiose antics are as amusing as they are pathetic. Containing all of DiDi’s stories and a selection of Noomin’s other art, this collection is valuable in itself and as an important comment on women’s issues. (Feb.)

At the Mountains of Madness

H.P. Lovecraft & I.N.J. Culbard. Sterling, $14.95 trade paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-4027-8042-4

Lovecraft’s At the Mountain of Madness opens with a newspaper announcement of a voyage to Antarctica, immediately followed by the narrator, Professor William Dyer stating his opposition to it. From there, the book launches into the story of Dyer’s own, earlier expedition to the Antarctic wasteland, one that culminated in murder and horror in the aforementioned mountains. Lovecraft was a master of writing about indescribable horrors whose visages violate the laws of nature in unsettling ways. Right off the bat, this creates a problem for anyone seeking to translate his work into a visual medium: how to keep the sense of unspoken tension and dread? Artist I.N.J. Culbard addressed this concern admirably by telling the story largely through radio broadcasts, which forces the reader to feel the tense isolation felt by the explorers as they uncover progressively horrific mysteries from the Antarctic ice. Culbard also effectively threads a sense of dread throughout the book with subtle touches of the macabre, such as a glimpse of two blind penguins swimming in the foreground of an early frame. This is one of Lovecraft’s most famous stories. Although it is questionable whether it needed an adaptation, this is an excellent one. (Feb.)

Xombi

John Rozum & Frazer Irving. DC, $14.99 trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-1-4012-3346-4

Magical man-beasts constituted of dead wasps and primeval demons inhabit this ode to the supernatural. With nanotechnologist David Kim’s body inhabited by nanomachines that can cure any condition or repair any injury, Kim has become a Xombi—an immortal, nearly indestructible force for good, his condition likened to a genetically altered incarnation of primal magic. Called upon by a consortium of superpowered nuns and a mustachioed mage by the name of Julian Parker, Kim must combat an eclectic assortment of evildoers, first among them a jacked-up version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which could be dubbed Hyde and Hyder—the latter being an antediluvian creature called Maranatha whose ambition is solely to reduce the world to rubble. The story is all over the map and then off the borders, as this troupe of religiously inclined do-gooders then forays into space to take on the cryptic and Machiavellian Finch, who inhabits a massive skull orbiting the Earth. Though this book’s plot meanders at times, both the wickedly good art, which boasts a particularly colorful palette and atmospheric air-brushstrokes, and the florid imagination of author Rozum (Kobalt), carry the day. (Feb.)

Avengelyne: Devil in the Flesh

Rob Liefeld, Mark Poulton, and Owen Gieni. Image, $24.99 (184p) ISBN 978-1-60706-493-0

A warrior angel must readjust to life on Earth as she fights old foes and reunites with old friends as a new creative team revisits creator Liefeld's battle between the forces of heaven and hell. Avengelyne first finds herself with a minor case of amnesia as her soul has been taken from her body and placed inside the body of adult film star Heaven Starr. Her old body has been possessed by her old enemy Red Dragon, the Prince of Darkness, and Avengelyne will need the support of Passover, the warrior angel of death, and priest Fr. Peter Clifton to stop Red Dragon and recover her body. In a second story, Avengelyne and Passover must investigate a series of vigilante killings that are traced back to Fr. Michael O'Bannon, an ex-military man who hears voices he believes are from God. The two stories are an overcomplicated mix of reintroducing old characters that have little importance in the current stories yet also assume readers are already familiar with the backgrounds of certain important characters. Gieni's art is best at portraying fantastic battles between hypermuscular angels and horrific demons. But his manga-influenced style is a strange choice to portray Avengelyne herself. (Feb.)

Tales from Beyond Science

Rian Hughes, Mark Millar, Alan McKenzie, and John Smith. Image, $16.99 (88p) ISBN 978-1-60706-471-8

Twenty years ago, Hughes illustrated eight bizarre short stories in English comics magazine 2000AD written alternately by Millar (The Ultimates; Wanted), McKenzie (Doctor Who), and Smith (Judge Dredd). Those stories are collected here, along with new fake retro comic covers and advertisements by Hughes. The visual creativity on display is impressive. The covers, especially, suggest immense worlds and possibilities behind them, and the compositions, gorgeously colored, suck the reader in. When it comes to the stories themselves, the eight-pagers feature a simplified, elegant style that makes them feel timeless, although certain details—the sharp shoulders, high-contrast design—speak to their age. The tales are narrated by Hilary Tremayne, a British civil servant type with pipe and armchair, and feature conspiracy theories, a musician whose songs control minds, speaking with the dead, fantastic creatures, missing time—all favorite topics beloved of fans of the weird and mysterious, vignettes of how weird things might really be. The chapters are mere presentations of ideas, premises instead of stories, but those who enjoy wacky “what ifs” will enjoy these well-illustrated momentary dips into weirdness. (Mar.)

Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City

Guy Delisle, trans. by Hegle Dascher. Drawn & Quarterly, $24.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-77046-071-3

Delisle returns to his autobiographical travel format (Burma Chronicles; Pyongyang) with this engaging and troubling look at life in Jerusalem in 2008 and 2009 that won a gold medal for Best Graphic Albumat Angoulême. With his wife, who works for Doctors Without Borders (Medecins sans Frontières, MSF), and their two young children, Delisle sees Jerusalem and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with the eyes of an outsider. His experiences are recorded in vignettes that touch on such topics as the wall that separates Palestinian and Israeli territories, the problems of airport security, and the very different tours visitors receive depending on the perspective of their guides. Like MSF, Delisle’s perspective tends heavily in favor of the Palestinians, particularly those killed in the bombings of Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, which took place during his year there. Delisle is not religious, and his lack of identification with any of the religions of Israel allows him to comment freely on all of them. With a more simplistic style than in Pyongyang, Delisle’s use of less shading and starker line work highlights the very complex lives of Israelis, Palestinians, and foreign residents. Dascher’s translation is fluid, and the colors by Delisle and Lucie Firoud are effective at setting off distinct scenes. (Apr.)