SAGA by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples

 

 

The posters promised one thing from Saga: it would be EPIC. The title itself immediately identifies itself as something large in scale, an important event, a major book. And a major work, too, which would be no small feat for a writer responsible for one of the most engrossing and popular books of the last 20 years, Y: The Last Man (which I may one day write about here). Usually such things cannot live up to what has been promised, but the cynics among us were proved wrong, as the book dazzled upon its release earlier this year, with the first issue going back for an unprecedented five printings. 

Now on its sixth issue, it seems like the perfect time to reflect on what Saga has given us so far. Many readers have remarked that such a grand and detailed story lends itself to being read in trade format, and that buying monthly is a bit stop-starty. I totally get that, but I finf myself reading each issue two or three times each month, absorbing the tiny details and quirks that make it so good. However, a book must have an arc, and I think we just hit the end of our first. So what's it all about? Perhaps now is a good time for you all to jump into this beautiful world...

 

Marko and Alana are an odd couple. And really, that is the crux of the book in many ways and drives many areas of the narrative. First and foremost, they are a couple from very different races. She comes from the Coalition of Landfall and has wings, he from the planet Wreath and has horns. Sadly, these two factions are at war, and their union represents a great transgression. The story begins with their escape and subsequently the birth of their child, Hazel, who narrates the book with a series of childlike scrawls which appear floating over the traditional panels. Of course, their difference also drives the book in terms of their personalities - both are very well-crafted characters and their relationship is played out, intentionally no doubt, as a democratic partnership. Their debates are immensely enjoyable, the dialogue crackles, the comedy simmers through even in the most perilous situations.

Speaking of perilous situations, they are pursued by a number of equally different and wild characters, notably one main antagonist from each of the pair's kingdoms. In the red corner, from the Robot Kingdom, Prince Robot IV:

 

This guy is a huge douche. And he's got a TV for a head for reasons I can't explain. He's affiliated with Landfall, from which Alana comes, and is not very nice. And in the blue corner:

 

This is The Will, and he's a bounty hunter from Wreath. And that's his cat, er, Lying Cat. Kind of reminds me of Bubastis, Ozymandias' pet from Watchmen. Anyhow, you know that anyone named The Will is going to be a badass, but the reason he's my favourite character to have appeared so far is that he seems to have a moral code. The best sequence in the book so far, in my opinion, revolves around The Will's visit to a territory called Sextillion (more in a bit) where his objection to being presented with a child as a sex slave disgusts him to the point where he will jeopardise his mission and safety to protect the child (by essentially clapping the head of a pimp to bits)

Sextillion, which we encounter in issue four, is a perfect case study for us to examine the scope of the world Vaughan and Staples are invested in creating. It's a debauched free-for-all where anything goes. We have hookers who have heads and legs but nothing else next to... well actually, I don't want to spoil it because every turn of the page has 1,000 more ideas on it ready to blow your mind. Sorry I teased it, you'll just have to fucking buy it.

For all its otherworldliness, Saga has its roots firmly in our own conflicts, both large and small scale. It's a masterstroke that the universe depicted in Saga is full of liminal characters, blinding in their originality but themselves made up of amalgams of familiar motifs and tropes representative of our own world, where we may as well have TVs for heads or just be faces with a pair of legs. Hell even Sextillion isn't a million miles from our tabloid porn fests. Star Wars with a social conscience maybe? In the middle of it all, certainly, we can find community in the most unlikely of places - and from those places, hope can be born, like Hazel, a symbol of two worlds coming together.

Let's hope that the sales keep going the way they are, as Vaughan and Staples are clearly in for the long haul on this book, and so should we be - whether monthly, trades, in a year maybe hardbacks, in five years maybe this will all be collected in a tome that will outsell the fucking Bible! 

In the meantime...

 

Godzilla: The Half Century War #1 by James Stokoe

Picture what you would want from a Godzilla comic...visualise it clearly in your mind. got it? good!

Now go and buy a copy of Godzilla The Half Century War #1 and revel in how shitty your imagined version of Godzilla smashing Tokyo up actually was, because this comic looks like this:

yeah, i know right!

That's right people, this Godzilla comic is written and drawn by James Stokoe. For those of you the don't know Stokoe is the supremely talented mother fucker responsible for Orc Stain, one of the greatest comics out there on the stands. It was announced earlier this year he would be helming a five part Godzilla miniseries, whilst this means we probably won't get an issue of Orc Stain this year I think it's a fair trade off because, again, we get to point our greedy little eyes at shit like this:

i mean seriously! SERIOUSLY!

It was very tempting to run a review of this comic that comprised of just images of Stokoe's pencils and the word 'FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK' because the pencils in this book (like EVERYTHING Stokoe draws) are FUCKING INSANE. 

Every panel is hyper detailed, crammed with rubble or smoke or explosions or broken glass or debris. There is so much to look at in the pages of this comic. Hell, you know you are reading something special when you have genuinely just spent about fifteen minutes looking at how awesome all the explosions and plumes of smoke are. 

But the primary focus of this book is the big green bastard, Godzilla. The sense of scale in this comic is like nothing i've seen since I last read Akira. Stokoe makes Godzilla tower above the Tokyo skyline, smashing buildings in half with his tail and letting off massive beams of irradiated energy and toppling skyscrapers. The first glimpse of Godzilla we get is a giant foot looking from behind a building, I audibly gasped when I looked at it:

FUCK

Stokoe's linework comes off like a radiation soaked hybrid of Moebius and Akira Toriyama. Godzilla looks towering and indestructible whilst the humans scampering around beneath his feet are fleshy and vulnerable, like our protagonist Lt Ota Murakami.

A special mention should be made about the tank in Half Century War, I haven't seen a tank imbued with such personality since the Fuchikomas from Ghost in the Shell. As Murakami and his war buddy (Kentaro) attempt to distract Godzilla and draw him away from the populace of Tokyo the little green tank looks like it is running for his little life!

holy shitsnacks!

The plot of Half Century War is simple. Murakami first encounters the irradiated beast in 1954, destroying Tokyo. This issue chronicles his first encounter and how he became involved with this hulking reptilian leviathan. Incoming issues promise to explore this bizarre relationship throughout the decades.

As pure spectacle this comic excels, Stokoe's lush manga informed style is so exciting to look at, the rich and lurid colours burn off the page into your retina. But the story itself is also of equal quality. It feels like the first half of the first act from a really badass Godzilla movie, a proper Toho one not that walking abomination that was the Hollywood effort (with pastry faced Matthew Broderick, god that was a shitty movie). I'm hooked already, I didn't even need to read this comic to know I would be as James Stokoe is one of the industries most gifted story tellers. Go. Now. Buy it, read it and thank god you don't live in coast Japan...

DEBRIS #1 : an immersive and engaging apocalypse

 

 

KURTIS J. WIEBE is a busy boy. In the last year, we've seen some great stuff coming from him, his THE INTREPIDS and GREEN WAKE among the best books of 2011. The former was a FUN 6-part limited series following a bunch of superspy teens led by a mad scientist, who battled a series of increasingly bizarre robot-mammal-monster hybrid creatures woven in with a very human backstory which was ultimately a heartbreaking tale of betrayal and loyalty. The latter was an incredible (sadly cancelled) dark masterpiece. In direct contrast with The Intrepids' cartoonish art by Scott Kowalchuk were Riley Rossmo's surreal and jagged painted lines, suiting the tone of grief and darkness that pervades the story's setting perfectly. I bloody loved that book... just look at this for a second - this is the kind of blood-spattered psychological nightmare we got over its 10 month run...

In more recent months, I've not been massively turned on by Wiebe's projects. Peter Panzerfaust was obviously a labour of love for the writer, an update of the Peter Pan story set against the backdrop of 1940s occupied France. Hugely ambitious and critically well received, it was well executed but ultimately didn't hold my attention. Following swiftly was Grim Leaper, an interesting concept based around a protagonist stuck in a Quantum Leap scenario - albeit with added violent death... which again didn't pull me in like his earlier series. Meanwhile Rossmo worked on the limited series Rebel Blood, which he drew and co-wrote with Alex Link - a confounding, mulit-layered zombie(ish) tale where you're never really sure what's real and what's not, perfectly suited to the dark and often very gory nature of Rossmo's art:

Yeah, this book is disgusting

And so this brings us to Debris which is Wiebe and Rossmo's first post-Green Wake co-venture. I'd heard about the premise a few months back in the solicitation and been instantly excited: "In the far future, humanity has doomed planet earth to rot and decay, covering her surface with garbage. Now, ancient spirits called the Colossals rise from the debris and attack the remaining survivors, forcing the human race to the brink of extinction. One warrior woman, Maya, sets out to find the last source of pure water to save the world before the monsters bring it all to an end."

...the FUCK is that?!

 This book doesn't fuck around with exposition. It immediately immerses you in a new world and demands that you make sense of it on your own, in a similar way to Brandon Graham's Prophet. We've very quickly got to get used to a new world, new creatures, a new way of speaking.While perhaps not to the same degree or level of sophistication as that title, it shares the same sense of a future far-flung from our comprehension. However, similar to another current Image title, Brian K. Vaughan's Saga, we quickly understand the emotional stakes and the plight of the protagonists, even if we don't fully understand the world they inhabit just yet.

Naturally, the art is top notch. What's actually refreshing about Debris is how light the colour palette is, especially given the darkness of Rossmo's other recent work. We've got bright blue skies instead of murky swamps, which helps the book breathe - this is a large, expansive world we are entering, not a claustrophobic psychological prison like Green Wake or the world of Rebel Blood.

Oh yeah, did I mention how freaking cool the creatures in this book look?

Wiebe and Rossmo have consolidated their status as somewhat of a dream team here, as Wiebe's sparse scripts let Rossmo's art do the talking. Here's hoping this book does well and they continue to work together in the future.

Aliens Salvation By Dave Gibbons and Mike Mignola

The Alien films (specifically Aliens) resonate greatly with me as I'm sure they do for any self-respecting fan of all things nerdy, I saw it for the first time when I was probably too young, already obsessed with 'video nasties' my first viewing was on a now ancient vhs copy. The heady mix of sci-fi, horror and Ripley's fuck off, massive power loader really spoke to me as a small boy (and continues to speak to me as a nearly 30 year old boy to this day)

GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH!

The Nineties are responsible for many, many shitty comics (Hey, Marvel! the Clone Saga in Spider-Man ringing any bells with ya!?) and even more movie tie-in's and company cross-overs of varying quality. I vaguely remember looking through a friend's older brother's collection of Batman Versus Predator comics at the time and being intrigued (I would would have been around 12 at this point, I imagine).

Predator, there...probably still speaks in a more intelligible manor than Tom Hardy's Bane!

These Batman Versus Predator comics were written, I found out years later, by Dave Gibbons (you know, the fella that co-created Watchmen and drew Rogue Trooper for 2000AD!).  I duly forgot that Gibbons had written comics of this nature until about a fortnight ago. I was 'round at a friends house and we were talking, as one does, about Mike Mignola (Legendary artist and creator of Hellboy), my friend mentioned Mignola had drawn an Alien comic. After laundering my undergarments after the mild soiling I googled this information and was presented with the following:

Well FUCK ME!....

A few Clicks later and I had bid on this comic on Ebay and around a week later, after winning, it arrived in the post (I'm sorry you are all aware of how ebay works but please indulge me...)

I had in my hands an Alien graphic novel written by Dave Gibbons and illustrated by Mike Mignola....To say I was excited was an understatement.

what a delightful smile...

Aliens Salvation saw the light of day in 1993, Both Gibbons and Mignola had already established themselves with their own projects and work for the Big Two (Marvel and DC, obviously...) which might be why this comics has slipped under my radar for so long (well that and the fact that I was 11 when this came out!). A slim 'graphic novella' of around 50 pages unleashed right around the time there were a shit-ton of Aliens and Predator comics bursting out all over the stands. 

The narrative thread of this story is delivered in the form of an extended plea to god for salvation by the chaplain of a cargo ship carrying something back from deepest space for the very shadowy sounding Nova Maru company. After a violent and bloody altercation on board said cargo vessel the chaplain finds himself crash landed on a big, jungley planet with an injured, brutish member of the ships crew. They had found the cargo they had been carrying was very much alive and very dangerous, the injured crewman complaining of an acid like burn of his leg should hint a little at what we are dealing with here. YES! XENOMORPHS!

oh did i not mention...THATS RIGHT MOTHER FUCKER! PTERODACTYLS!

This first act shows us how the chaplain chooses to survive in this hostile terrain (pterodactyls, son....damn!) with his hostile crew mate and the threat of being impaled on one of the aliens weird, little extending mouth things. Whilst not as brutal and depressing as something like, say, The Walking Dead this first section shows what lengths the chaplain already has had to go to to survive and how much of his humanity he is willing to sacrifice, even under the ever watchful eyes of his god.

Having never read anything written by Gibbons and not really knowing what to expect I was seriously impressed. I'm a sucker for the narrative technique Gibbons uses in this comic, a long monologue stretching the length of the story (peppered with dialogue, of course). It feels like a prayer, a desperate plea for salvation. The is a really pleasing three act structure to this story, it feels lean and focussed. The dialogue, especially between the crew of the cargo vessel feels authentic to the source material, for instance 'Screw 'em....dead anyway...only one lifeboat on this bucket'.

yes, it's in French...at least that way there won't be any spoilers...

After freaking the fuck out for a few pages the chaplain goes in search of the cargo vessel. He finds it and the lone survivor of it's fiery descent, First Officer Dean. Dean is basically Ripley. Ballsy is not the word, the chaplain sees her as his angel, his way out of this hell he has found himself in. The second act follows them through the jungle undergrowth and soon become a really awesome chase and fire fight with the rampant xenomorphs! 

more french.....

Mike Mignola is a huge favourite of mine, his art is so distinctive, you can tell his pencils a mile off. His work in Salvation is no exception. As you can see from the pages in this article, he can pretty much make anything look amazing. The balance of black negative spaces and the muddy earthy colour tones used in the jungle chase scene (see above, yo!) are just beautiful, thanks to Kevin Nowlan's masterful inking and Matt Hollingsworth's restrained colour palate.

But no amount of me waffling on about how amazing Mignola is will ever be able to top just looking at this: 

sexy, sexy shit...

I have yet to see a Mignola pencilled comic and be disappointed and Salvation is no exception, all the Mignola staples are here; the aforementioned masterful use of negative space and silhouette, the stunning, almost poetic, panel layout and a real, palpable atmosphere on every page.


By the End of the third act everything has gone straight to hell in a hand-basket. We see how far the chaplain is prepared to go to stop the xenomorphs and we learn a few shocking surprises to boot. As a standalone sci-fi comic this works really, REALLY well. Its short enough to read in one sitting but doesn't feel like it is missing anything story and art wise. As part of the extended Alien universe I think this excels, it has the used, gritty and grimy feel the Nostromo had. The xenomorphs themselves are seen infrequently enough to retain suspense but do get chance to smoosh some heads with their weird mini-mouth things (YES!).

i didn't draw the moustache on....still funny though..

I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this comic. I already knew I'd love the pencils but the story blew me away that little bit more. It's a genuinely gripping and at times shocking tale that is executed by masters of the craft. Seriously pick a copy up if you see it (or I'll lend it you or whatevs)






Not bad for £2.99 on eBay!