King City by Brandon Graham

I have been waiting a long time for the King City collection to be republished in its entirety by Image Comics.

Since I found out about it I have become a huge fan of Brandon Graham. His art is so unique and his his writing (chiefly in Prophet and his short story, The Voice from Dark Horse Presents) is exciting and fresh. 

So after what felt like a bajillion years (that is an actual number, ok?) I finally got my hands on the whole of King City in a nearly five hundred page tome of sheer, unfiltered, weapons grade A W E S O M E N E S S !

FULL DISCLOSURE: if you are looking for an impartial critique of King City you won't find one here!  it's fucking awesome!

Joe, our protagonist, is a Catmaster. Returning to King City after a 2 year hiatus at a training retreat with his cat, Earthling. He finds the city pretty much as he left it, full of criminal gangs, Sasquatch hotel proprietors and intrigue. Joe remarks:

'I heard that somewhere in this city they have the brains of Walt Disney and Theodore Roosevelt in jars....They take them out and put them in robotic spiders bodies to have them fight in an arena'

Early on we see what being a catmaster is all about. Earthling, Joe's adorable moggy, is one versatile kitty. A quick splash of 'cat juice' and Joe and Earthling can achieve just about anything. The first such instance features Joe copying a key for a shadowy client. He injects Earthling with some of the aforementioned 'cat juice' and Earthling copies the key by eating it and coughing it back up. As with Prophet Graham seems to revel in creating technology, magic, even types of food and drink. It gives King City a real lived in feel and adds a depth that feeds into the wider story. 

The city is the star of this comic, rendered in a dizzying fashion by Graham, there is so much detail packed into every panel and spread that when reading King City you can spend four or five times longer on each page just soaking up the intricacies woven in to the page. I swear down Brandon Graham is some sort of fucking pencil wizard. He knows when to pile on the detail but acts with great restraint, sometimes in the space of the same page, like so:

that is some serious manga x Lovecraftian monster action going on there!

Observe! The beautiful white expanse of the sky, dotted with tiny helicopters surrounding the squishy squid-monster and the amazingly detailed city-scape that spread out from the monster into the foreground. The road and the tunnel draw you right into the city, you can smell the exhaust fumes, the smog, you can feel the sunshine and if you listen hard enough you can hear the roaring of the scary big bad in the background! look how huge it is! 

Cityscapes aren't the only thing that Graham can draw really, really well. The denizens of King City are as diverse and colourful as the city they populate. Take our central cast of characters; Joe the slacker catmaster, his balaclava wearing best buddy Pete Taifighter (amazing name), Joe's ex-girlfriend Anna and her Chalk addicted, Korean Xombi war vet boyfriend Maximum Absolute (another amazing name). It's not just the central cast that stand out, every single person that is visible throughout the pages of King City is unique. Brandon Graham is a world builder, every level is created with equal love and care.

Joe and his cat, Earthling...

I have to mention how much attention Graham pays to the female characters within King City, far from rendering his female leads in the standard misogynist, pneumatic-chested fashion that you would typically find in a comic the ladies of King City are unique and sexy without being scantily clad and improbably proportioned. 

i realise this picture may render my above argument moot but it's my blog so go fuck yourself...

  
At the centre of this story is a beautifully executed ensemble cast, Joe and his aforementioned friends, ex-lovers, current lovers and fellow (incredibly fucking awesome) Catmaster brethren. The way Graham writes about relationships between people (relationships of all kinds) really touches me, he has such a deft understanding of how to convey the essence of an emotion with so little text. There is a scene where Joe is ruminating over a girl he has seen; 'that girl today, fucking sweet and sour' this conveys the excitement of meeting someone you are physically attracted to, but follows this with 'and then there's Anna out there somewhere, too much Anna on my brain today' which is so loaded with melancholy it's palpable. Really Graham excels in dialogue generally, peppering the story with puns and sly jokes and references to manga and films. 

so.fucking.awesome.

This comic is tremendous fun, it's bright and weird and sexy and sad and scary and exciting and cool and fun. At no point throughout King City does Graham bring anything other than his A-game. So much effort and time is written into the pages of this comic. Little things like this:

it's a King City board game! son of a bitch!

Yes, a King City board game! you can actually play it and everything! You don't get that with Spider-Man now do you?


There are also copious extra's in the back of the book. Covers of the original individual issues, short 'Omake' style comic strips by James Stokoe and Marian Churchland!


I can't recommend this book enough, seriously...why are you still sitting there?! Go and and buy it! 

and if you are still not convinced after this panel...you are offically dead to me!

*Guest post by Mark!* INVINCIBLE: created by Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker

I know fuck all about superhero comics. Well, that is to say, I know fuck all about the minutiae of the big two's universes, nay, multiverses, and only fleeting knowledge of a few "crises" here and there, and the odd "saga" or pivotal trade paperback. So, don't take me as an authority on any of that - leave that to this blog's learned creator. And so, despite countless potential jumping-on points, I find most of the regular superhero universes pretty impenetrable. That said, I don't dislike the genre, and was looking for a superhero fix when I started reading about Invincible, created by Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker (now pencilled by Ryan Ottley).

Being a huge fan of The Walking Dead, also written by Kirkman, I knew (or hoped) to expect great writing, characters, and pacing, and boy I was not disappointed. About a year ago now I picked up the first trade, collecting the first 4 issues from back in 2003, and have just finished the fourteenth trade (up to issue 78).

Ooh - just to note - there are going to be some spoilers here (otherwise I couldn't really talk about it!) but I'll try not to ruin anyone's enjoyment of this superb book...

It begins using a lot of similar superhero motifs that we've come to know from many other very similar stories. Mark Grayson is your typical teenager, powering through puberty and living with his mum and Dad, Nolan, who also happens to be Omni-Man, a Freddie Mercury lookalike from the planet Viltrum (where EVERYONE has a moustache!!!). Omni-Man is the most powerful superhero on the planet, flanked by a Government-sanctioned team of heroes called the Guardians of the Globe, a group run by the haggard Cecil Steadman. Mark begins to manifest hereditary superpowers and, before long, Nolan is showing him how to be a superhero and telling him about his Viltrumite origins. Nolan explains that he's an ambassador of sorts for Viltrum, and that Earth is his charge. Mark meets some other teen superheroes, Atom Eve, Robot, and Rex Splode, and as Invincible, he gets into a few scrapes and misadventures over the course of the first few issues. So far, so safe.

Then it starts to get dark. Really dark. In Issue 7, the Guardians of the Globe are all murdered, and there's confusion abound. In a remarkable twist (STOP READING HERE if you don't want to know any more!) the killer is revealed to be none other than Omni-Man himself... you see, he's not been entirely truthful about the Viltrumites' intentions for Earth, and now that Mark's started to understand his powers, he chooses this time to reveal his true nature and request Mark join his mission: to conquer Earth. In a spectacular battle, Nolan battles Invincible in the skies and cities of Earth, claiming thousands of lives through collateral damage and beating his own son to a pulp in the process as they argue their ideologies; and then, Invincible having refused to join his father, Nolan disappears into space, tears in his eyes... setting the stage for the central continuous plotline in the book.

So there's the epic scale of that plot... which to some writers might be enough, but this is Kirkman, and he's invested so much into building a self-contained universe for Invincible that there are dozens of subplots running at the same time. There are expository one-page stories so quick you might miss them which foreshadow new villains and conflicts eight or so issues before we come back to them. We have, for example, the character arc of scientist Angstrom Levy, who collects the brainpower of scores of alternate versions of himself for good, only to be injured in an accident which causes him to blame Invincible and turn evil; there's the expedition to Mars which introduces not one but two new alien races; there's the Mauler Twins, clones who perpetually argue over which is the 'real' one (despite neither of them being the original); or crime boss Titan... at any one time Kirkman has so many plot threads dangling it's a wonder he can sew them together. But that he does, and spectacularly so.

As well as plot threads, Invincible is continually playing with similar motifs and themes; one very important aspect of the book as Mark's development into an adult (another unusual thing for a superhero book, Invincible unfolds pretty much in real time, so he's a young man now), equating his physical and intellectual growth with the development of his powers, but also the fleshing out of his moral core. Issue 50 follows the breakdown of his relationship with Cecil, whom he believes to be making morally incorrect decisions, only for this to be revisited twenty or so issues later as Cecil turns the tables on him and points out that Mark's recent behaviour has been less than morally straightforward. We also get the more human life lessons through our emotional connection to the characters - particularly poignant are the effects of Nolan's absence following his fight with Invincible; his mother's despair, alcoholism, acceptance and grief are beautifully played out alongside Mark's reactions. And of course, his love pentagon (?) with Atom Eve, Rex Splode, best friend William and girl next door Amber.
The other thing that's very noteworthy about Invincible is the GORE. From Mark's early confontation with Nolan to his battles with other Viltrumites, especially the female Anissa (no moustache) and the absolutely brutal Conquest, this book pulls no punches on the graphic content front, and therefore I would say kids or people of a weak disposition should not pick it up! Innards, teeth and limbs spill out and off the page at regular intervals, with long battles offering us very sustained levels of violence.

This, though, is where Ryan Ottley absolutely excels (having taken over the series from Cory Walker at issue 8-ish - NB Walker has done the odd bit of pencilling since). Ottley's work is detailed, but more than anything FUN even in these extended scenes of gore. He can be quite daring with his layouts, notably a wonderful double page montage showing Invincible and Atom Eve's courtship, and more recently as part of the Viltrumite War arc, several wordless double page spreads in a row, all incredibly dynamic and detailed.

In short, I can't recommend Invincible enough. Whether the superhero genre is your bag or not, this is a book that offers well-rounded characters (hundreds of them!), larger than life new worlds (hundreds of them!) and moustaches (hundreds of them!)

Invincible is published monthly by Image Comics (current issue #89) and is collected in 15 trade paperbacks, 6 oversized hardcovers, and one compendium.

Jean Giraud aka Moëbius R.I.P

It is with a genuinely heavy heart that I type this blog out today.

I was on my way home from the comic shop when I found out that legendary comics illustrator Jean Giruad aka Moëbius had passed away.

Moëbius was a gifted man. Scarily gifted. His pencils crammed so much detail into every panel he drew yet at the same time could convey so much with so little. Also no one could draw a straight line like Moëbius.

none of these picture can do justice to seeing Moëbius' work with your eyes...

I have felt like Moëbius has been a part of my life forever. He produced concept art for Tron:

He also produced concept art for Alien (alongside H.R Giger):

And he was also responsible for concept art for The Fifth Element:

Moëbius also produced some of the greatest comics I have ever read. I suppose chief amongst the comics I have read that Moëbius has worked on is The Incal, his collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky. Mind-blowing barely covers it, it is a defining work in the medium of comics (or if we are getting all scholarly; sequential art), observe:

just drink in those lines

not many artist can convey scale like Moëbius

staggering, just staggering...

The Incal is so much more than a comic, for me it feels like a stroll around the minds of Moëbius and Jodorowsky. It is at times it is funny, hilarious even. Other times it is deeply philosophical and psychedelic. Go here and pick it up. If you have even a passing interest in comics as a medium you owe it to yourself to read it, it changed the inner workings of my brain so much that 'normal' superhero comics don't seem as interesting or fun anymore, not now I know that i can pick up The Incal and immerse myself in Moëbius' beautiful line-work. 

Moëbius has been written about a lot on the internet, you can find blogs dedicated to his work, most of which is not even available in English. The Quenched Conciousness blog features tons and tons of illustrations and sketches and is well worth immersing yourself in, there are some very fine examples of Moëbius' erotic work there:

I 

I'm going to finish with a quote from my good friend Tom:

'Moëbius by his very nature is infinite. Long live Moëbius'

Cover of the week 4-march-2012 : Orc Stain #7

Orc Stain (by James Stokoe, Everything) comes out so infrequently that when a new issue surfaces it is a reason to rejoice! This week a brand new shiny issue arrived on the shelves and it didn't disappoint. Stokoe crams so many teensy, tiny lines into every drawing he does. The detail on the pile of guts in the background, the little notches and ridges on the staff the cat-creature is carrying and the warts and nodules on the shield. I can easily kill many, many minute (maybe hours) just staring at ANY James Stokoe illustration. This is no exception.

I fully intend to post about my love for Orc Stain in the very near future.

The Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larocca

Iron Man is FUCKING cool. This is not a question or a fact that is up for debate, it's a statement. Sure, Superman can shoot lasers out of his eyes and Batman has gadgets and Hulk can lift a bus over his head and rip it in half but Iron Man can do all of these things i've just mentioned whilst wearing a kick-ass metallic suit!


But Iron Man is more than just a dude in a flashy hi-tech battle armour. Tony Stark is a man (he is also The Man but we will get on to that later) Multi-billionaire, playboy, super genius inventor, wise guy and recovering alcoholic.


I've always loved Iron Man, i'm a sucker for robot/mech design of any type, but in 2008 Marvel release Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. It was awesome. In one word: SPLOOOSH!

i was a VERY happy bear...

Around the same time Marvel brought out a new Iron Man comics with a brand new creative team. Invincible Iron Man #1 written by Matt Fraction (the same Matt Fraction I gushed about here) and illustrated by Salvador Larocca. The aim was to bring the Marvel Comics character Tony Stark in-line with the silver screen version. It has now been running for nearly 4 years, its never been late or had any one draw a fill in issue (there have been some excellent guest artists for back -up stories and specials). Its as regular as clockwork and very high quality.

hi-five!

For the last four years Fraction has essentially been writing one long continuous story arc, starting with Stark in charge as the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D (kinda like the U.N but more badass), through his battle with Norman Osborne (wherein Osborne fired stark as director of S.H.I.E.L.D and hunted him down in one of his own suits of armour), to his wiping of his mind and subsequent mental recovery and his bankruptcy and founding of Stark Resilient, where Stark's 'Repulsor' technology is being applied to domestic machines like cars.

I WANT ONE!!!!

Fraction achieves the perfect mix of hi-tech industrial espionage, corporate power struggles and classy robotic armour clad slugfests! It certainly takes place in the Marvel Universe, Thor and Captain America show up and there is the whole thing with Osborne (Spidey shows up a few times too!) but it doesn't feature the usual roster of spandex clad super-folk. Fraction's incarnation of Invincible Iron Man concentrates on the tech. Stark's main rivals, Ezekiel Stane and the Hammer girls are using his own technology against him, it feels like an arms race with Stark wanting to help the world and the bad guys wanting to take Stark and his whole operation apart. It plays out like a high paced action movie or something like 24.

i don't even know what this is but i still WANT ONE!!!!!!

The flip side of the story is a really rather emotionally written document of Tony Stark's alcoholism. Booze has been a demon of Stark's since forever, classic storylines have already detailed his struggles. Fraction places Stark firmly in the 'recovering alcoholic' ballpark, a recent issue showed Stark attending an AA meeting:

It's refreshing to see a so-called 'super hero' painted as a vulnerable, fragile human rather than an indestructible powerhouse. It is also well documented that Fraction himself struggled with alcoholism for many years prior to making it as a comic writer. As in the panels above it feels at times that Fraction is talking directly to the reader of this comic about the dangers of the demon booze, I think that it is this honesty that really gives this comic some gravity, it's not all explosions and fighting....Tony Stark is constantly in the public eye, he is a corporate giant, an Avenger and an alcoholic.

so. fucking. badass.

Pencilling duties are handled by Salvador Larocca. This guy has drawing convincing and cool looking tech down to an art. Sharp lines and complex designs really make Invincible Iron Man feel all futuristic. I'm just gonna post examples for a bit as it's just better to see these hulking metal behemoths:

USA!!! USA!!!

this is like PORNOGRAPHY to me...

oh baby....

and there's your money shot....

See what I mean! He can also draw human figures really well to obviously but it is all about Larocca's tech design. It gives me boners. The colours for this comic are handled by Frank D'Armata (and have been since the comics inception) He knows how to make things look like they are glowing. Check out all the images i've posted, firey orange whip things and icy blue holographic displays populate Iron Man's world, little touches like this really make the world Fraction, Larocca and D'Armata are creating come to life.


Currently The Mandarin (the Chinese fella with the glowing rings in the last pic, above), one of Stark's oldest and most colourful adversaries is having' another pop at taking Stark down, with Zeke Stane, the Hammer girls and most of Stark's tech clad, armour sporting enemies from years past returning, Stark Resilient has a mole in the company and mole is making it's move and Stark is reeling from a relapse into drinking alcohol again. Its like a soap opera with robots in it! Every month with-out fail these guy pump out another issue, it is one of the best mainstream comics around on the the stands right now. I recommend this series to so many people purely because it's everything an Iron Man comic should be and, more broadly its everything a comic should be. Streamlined sleek and dependable like one of Starks Repulsor cars!

leave it, Kanye!