Flash Gordon: The Mercy WarsBrendan Deneen and Paul Green. Ardden Entertainment (www.ardden-entertainment.com), $19.99 (160p) ISBN 978-0-956-12590-3
After appearing in movies, TV, and porn parody, sci-fi icon Flash Gordon returns to the comics in this jazzy miniseries. A retooled origin story sends Flash, his girlfriend Dale Arden, and eccentric Dr. Zarkov off to the planet Mongo, where they are separated and thrown into the eponymous war between various squabbling races—hawkmen with big wings, lionmen with shaggy manes and big fangs, etc.—and tyrannical emperor Ming the Merciless, whose idea of “mercy” is to let everyone else serve him or die. Besides being impressively athletic, Flash is bright enough to realize that Ming's enemies would have a better chance of winning if they'd stop fighting each other. That's difficult to achieve; when, for example, hotheaded Prince Barin of Arboria catches his fiancée Princess Aura (who's also Ming's rebellious daughter) kissing Flash, a swordfight immediately ensues. In short, there are enough ethnic conflicts and personality quirks to keep the action bubbling. Deneen's script keeps the plot surprisingly clear, and Green's art combines mangaesque design and dramatic coloring. It's good, old-fashioned fun, freshly polished. (Feb.)
The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus IdentityMike Carey and Peter Gross. DC/Vertigo, $9.99 paper (144p) ISBN 978-1-4012-2565-0
A taut thriller that slyly plays off the real-world mania for imaginary ones like that of Harry Potter, Carey's new series undercuts the mythology of such all-pervasive media-hyped creations while at the same time hinting at a brilliantly imagined one of its own. Tom Taylor is the son of Wilson Taylor and the unwilling namesake of the protagonist in his dad's wildly popular 13-book fantasy series. The Tommy Taylor cottage industry of movies, video games, and geek-ridden conventions is given an extra dash of drama by Wilson's having mysteriously disappeared years before, leaving a cynical Tom (who inherited none of his millions) to eke out a grubby living at paid appearances. Carey's story (solidly illustrated by Gross) picks up speed fast when Tom realizes some elements of Wilson's stories might not be made up. By the time the first story is done, Carey has not only created a brisk and addictive story, sketched with crafty allusions to classic literature, but also neatly subverted the celebrity-worship manias of fantasy fandom and questioned the very nature of storytelling itself. (Jan.)
Johnny Cash: I See a DarknessReinhardt Kleist. Abrams ComicArts, $17.95 paper (200p) ISBN 978-0-8109-8463-9
Kleist taps into the mythic quality of the Man in Black's rise from impoverished farming in Depression-era Arkansas to his early success in the 1950s, pulling no punches depicting Cash's drug dependency and the gradual erosion of his first marriage thanks to constant touring and run-ins with the law. He takes readers through Cash's evolution as an artist whose work and social consciousness reflected the changing and volatile times in his troubled country. There are few figures in the history of 20th-century American music whose impact and appeal bore the resonance of Cash's, and this stark and stunning graphic novel—winner of several awards in Europe—is a marvel of visual storytelling that does great honor to both his distinctively American epic of triumph and tragedy and to the universality of the songs he sang. A solid winner from cover to cover, this effort is highly recommended for just about anyone intrigued by an American icon. (Nov.)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Vol. 1 Philip K. Dick and Tony Parker. BOOM! (www.boomstudios.com), $24.99 (144p) ISBN 978-1-60886-500-0
The first volume of this graphic novel adaptation of Dick’s iconic novel uses the entire text of the original. Dick’s original inventive, bizarre details—absent from the film Blade Runner, the best-known version of the story—get a great showcase: emotion-controlling computers, artificial pets, a cult based on simulated communal suffering. And the Rick Deckard presented here, while still a bounty hunter in pursuit of escaped androids, is a man with much more to lose, as he struggles to hold onto his rocky marriage and runs the risk of compromising his job. But the use of the original narrative text to describe what’s being shown is a disruptive method of presenting a graphic novel. And the text is so surreal and so heavily dependent on the mindset each reader brings to it that no single visual interpretation can live up to the original work. While the included essays by prominent comics and science fiction writers are an excellent addition, they only contribute to the sense that this series is more of an illustrated companion to the original text that isn’t capable of standing on its own. (Nov.)
