Aaaaaand we're back! Round-up post by Andrew

So I'm back! Props to Mark for some sexy, sexy articles in the last week.

What I have been up to (comics wise, obviously) in the last month I hear you shriek!

Well, I'll tell you...

mother fucker can Paul Pope draw...

I was lucky enough to get my hands on all four issues of THB6 by Paul Pope. These four comics are just so totally perfect in every possible way. They are all currently out of print and cost, like, £20 each on Amazon (luckily, a friend of mine was kind enough to lend them to me) So kinda pointless that I'm talking about them really but we'll press on.

THB6 is a sci-fi tale set on Mars. We follow HR Watson, teenaged girl and THB her fucking awesome, big, red robot (or Mek as THB would have it) 

see, told you....fucking awesome!

THB6 is the second arc of Pope's THB saga. Having never seen any of the other arcs I don't know if this is a continuation of the story or if it branched away from the initial arcs. Ijust jumped into the story and got lost in the dirty streets of the cities Pope populates Mars with.

Pope is from New York....go figure..

HR's father is a powerful industrialist and the evil, bug faced bad guys are hunting her down to try and fuck with her daddy's head. HR has her trusty Mek, THB, by her side and a gang of young, street urchins and bohemians. It feels like New York on Mars...There is a weird Downtown 81 via Kurt Vonnegut sci-fi vibe doing on through out all four issues. You are thrown right into the action, the bug-eye guys show up and HR, THB and their buddies are scattered, The fight scenes are beautifully illustrated.

so fucking kinetic!

Pope's art is just gorgeous through out, deep inky blacks and stark, eye popping whites jostle for position on the page, like each line and brush stroke is vying for your attention.

Pope balances the hard sci-fi elements and the emotional weight of HR basically being a teenage fugitive perfectly. THB6 is pure visual poetry, even the word balloons are beautiful.  

Next up, The Victories by Michael Avon Oeming.

I picked up the first 2 issues of this mini-series a couple of weeks back. Oeming's work in Powers is amazing, it has a real Bruce Tim vibe and his use of negative space and inky, deep black tones is almost Mignola-esque. 

The Victories focusses on the titular superhero team, Faustus is a wise cracking, slightly Batman-esque protangonist. We meet him in the first issue fucking up a werewolf guy who has just decapitated the mayor!

little tinker...

Faustus and the other Victories later go and bust up a drugs den were they are manufacturing a drug that makes you fly, Oeming illustrates these scene really nicely, the bodies have this weightless, eerie look.

nice

Two issues in The Victories is a fun gritty romp, the plot doesn't really get moving until the end of the second issue but it is really pretty to look and and nice and violent and sweary!

HAPPY! #1 by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson

 

FUCK. FUCK FUCK FUCK.

The word bounces of almost every panel of the opening to Grant Morrison's first book for Image Comics more than any other, and immediately, you have to start asking yourself why. It's this stylistic virtuosity that punctuates all of Morrison's work; everything he does, he does for a reason. You just have to work out what it is.

And so, in this bleak and ultra-sweary landscape, we meet ex-cop Nick Sax, who may or may not be a nice guy underneath (let's find out over the next 4 issues), a grizzled and compromised individual who winds up being wounded in a hit-gone wrong.

Don't worry, not THAT wounded.

The initial premise of the book as laid out above aligns it with other ultraviolent, ultra-explicit and you guessed it ultra-scary comics out there. But as I said above, this is Morrison, and you have to expect more. Perhaps despite the ridiculous saturation of colourful language in the first few pages, it doesn't become apparent that this is entirely satirical until we meet the book's hero... Happy.

 

Happy is a talking, flying, imaginary blue horse who is about to help Nick out of a tight spot. And that's about as far as we get in this superbly-paced first issue, which starts as one thing and ends as completely another. 

Many years ago, in 1988, when Morrison wrote Animal Man #5, he treated the world to a story which combined his fledgling superhero project with a striking metatextual twist in 'The Coyote Gospel'. 

 

 'The Coyote Gospel' is absolutely insane, but jaw-droppingly brilliant. In the story, Crafty, a cartoon character not-so-loosely based on Wile E Coyote, assures the peace of his plane of existence with his creator (writer) by being sent to the world of comic books. Animal Man Buddy Baker is absent for most of the issue, with the story instead focusing on Crafty being perpetually hunted by a truck driver in a violent and disturbing manner which amplifies the sadistic chase of the cartoon world to a palpable, tragic and very engaging level. 

Crafty and Happy draw inevitable parallels and comparisons, both being out of place in their narrative. Crafty's true form is a Looney Tunes character pulled into the world of a more realistic anatomy, and Happy, too, is a cutesy creation appearing in the most gritty of situations.

But perhaps we could posit that while the two stories may have similar preoccupations, they are products of different times and have different points to make. Crafty's creator is sadistic, joyful in the horror that he forces the coyote to experience in order to ensure the safety of his world. Happy, however, has a writer who is turning the microscope the other way, and wants to dissect the reader's psyche instead. Is ultraviolence what you really want, or do you want a cute fucking blue horse? Does violence and swearing really make you Happy?

We'll learn more as the story progresses, but Morrison recently described Happy as "Sin City meets It's A Wonderful Life" and having read the first issue it seems a likely trajectory that our blue friend will show us that we need something lighter than the world Sax comes from...