Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:49 am Post subject: A Blast From The Past
Here we will hopefully find some interesting stuff from the past, things you may have heard about but have never read, and things you may never have heard of but would like to read.
I am keen on this subject as it promotes comics, and at the end of the day thats what we are "a comics shop/site" there are some very fine works that have been done in the past that have too some extent been all but forgotten, and thats a crying shame.
Its being kicked off with a look at Nemisis the Warlock by our very own Catfang, yes i know its not here yet, its going to be moved here soon, and just as soon as its been moved the next blast is ready to go. is there anything from the past that you are particularly fond of? anything that you would like to blast about? then Blast it HERE. _________________
Catwoman
By Mindy Newell, J.J. Birch & Michael Bair.
Published in 1989 this four issue Catwoman Mini series is labelled a suggested for mature readers book, it was during the mid eighties that we were to witness nothing short of a revolution in comic books, most of which was coming from DC Comics and the Independents, this is one of those titles that helped pave the way to a more adult style of story telling.
We all talk of how hip it is to mention the Watchmen, how absolutely dark and diabolical the genius of V for Vendetta was and is, and how the Dark Knight Returns paved the way for the 1989 Tim Burton Batman Movie. But there were other books out during this period which also need recognition, and this is one such book.
It could be said that this is the Catwoman story that D.C. would like to erase from history, but like all good stories it resurfaces now and again, the story is directly linked to the Frank Miller’s Batman Year One as to the notoriety of the work, we see a certain Selina Kyle portrayed as a prostitute and sexual-dominatrix, with child-prostitution and abuse covered in the character of Holly. on top of that her sister is a Catholic nun, so this is religions twist, furthermore, this tale revives the sexual attraction between Batman and Catwoman with a classic kiss shared by the two on the roof top, a scene used by Tim Burton in the "Batman Returns". Movie.
The powers that be decree that this story is no longer part of the DCU continuity, Zero Hour saw to that. I say that it’s a must for anyone who likes a good read, it also stands as a good historic point on the road between Batman and Catwoman then, And the Catwoman and Batman now. A most excellent piece of work.
9/10 _________________
Writer: Pat Mills
Artists: Ken O’Neill, Bryan Talbot, John Hinkleton, Henry Flint, Jesus Redondo, Clint Langley, David Roach, Carl Critchlow, Tony Luke (I think that’s everyone)
“10/10 –Credo!”
Darkness has a new Champion.
Ripped lashing and screaming from the pages of 2000AD is Nemesis the Warlock, an ambiguous alien anarchist, leader of the rebellion against the imperial tyranny of Torquemada, Lord of Termight.
From a “one-shot” beginning inspired by a punk song (Going Underground by The Jam) Nemesis The Warlock grew into a complex, dark, funny, moving, grotesque satire on power and control in Thatcher’s Britain. Like most of 2000AD it is unmistakably British.
Pat Mills has never been shy about his politics, and many of his stories are explorations of those beliefs. Nowhere has this worked as well as in Nemesis where his brilliant, bristling hatred for all forms of intolerance and repression drives the narrative onwards at an amazing pace through a timeline twistier than the Terrortubes themselves. It’s a dimension-spanning, head-spinning shoot around terrorism, freedom, divine right, religion, racism, freewill and predestination – and believe me you won’t feel any better once the ride has stopped.
The over-arching story covers the running battle between the “arch-deviant” demon Nemesis, often aided by his human side-kick Purity Brown, and Torquemada, one of the best (and pointiest) villains in comics history.
The motivations of all the major players are complicated, sometimes confusing and often conflicted. We are given as much insight into the character development and workings of the villain as the hero, with Torquemada often taking centre stage for long periods. This means that, given the alien nature of Nemesis, readers are actually forced to a better, if uncomfortable, understanding of the villain, in all his awful humanity, than the hero. A neat trick and very well accomplished. The concerns of the story are beyond good and evil and as time passes the idea of any kind of simple line between “right” and “wrong” is erased in the kind of swirling chaos at which Pat Mills excels.
The art (whichever artist is drawing) is really a thing of beauty. A vicious, disturbing beauty, it’s true, but there is nothing like it. From the original sleek design of Kev O’Neill, through the more sensuous, softer lines of the classic Bryan Talbot era, to the scratchy, almost depraved, visceral contortions of John Hinkleton (which many people did not like, but I think are fantastic) this is comics art really pushing right to experimental edges of the form. There is a dizzying sense of vertigo, and, well, sheer “alien-ness” about it. You know how a roller coaster can make you queasy, but in a good, excited way..? Some of the artwork in Nemesis is closest you will get to “punk on a page”.
From left to right: Kev O'Neill, Bryan Talbot, John Hinckleton
“I am the Nemesis, I am the Warlock, the Shape Of Things To Come, the Lord of the Flies, Holder Of The Sword Sinister… The Death-Bringer… I am the one who waits on the edge of your dreams… I am all these things and many more…"
Most of the material is black and white, although book three goes into colour towards the end. As well as the core story there is also “extra material” included, collecting stories from annuals, specials and so on. There is even a mystifying photostory of Nemesis meeting Torquemada in the original Forbidden Planet which really defies any explanation. In addition there are also some little essays by Mills, Talbot, and O’Neill.
If you like the political discussions in more modern comics like Civil War, Black Summer , or The Authority, or going back a bit further V for Vendetta and Watchmen, and feel like a few hours gazing into the abyss, put on some proper 70s punk, and give this a try.
Above all though remember, “Be Pure, Be Vigilant, Behave!”
Volume one collects books 1 -4 with intro by Pat Mills and afterword by Kev O’Neill, a covers gallery and pin-up art
Volume two collects books 5 -7 with intro by Pat Mills, afterword by Bryan Talbot and over 40 pages of extra materials including 2 “choose your own adventure” style games where you play as either Nemesis or Torquemada.
Volume three collects books 8-10 with a foreword by Pat Mills and is partly in colour.
Also, be sure to check out The Meknificent Seven and The Black Hole collections of ABC Warriors as they are crossovers and you really need them to make sense of the plot in book 2.
Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 4:31 pm Post subject: Warlock: The Magus Sage
Art and Script: Jim Starlin
This review covers the Magus Saga (begun in Strange Tales 178-181) and continued into Warlock, (revived for issues 9-15).
I don’t know that I have the words to try and express the mad immensity of this book, which could be a bad start for a review!
Top line is that this is one of the most stunningly audacious comics I have ever read. They must have had some very good drugs in the 1970s. This is mind-bendingly groovy, baby, it’s drawn in liquid LSD and licking the pages will probably get you tripping.
The epic story begins by following Adam Warlock in his war against The Universal Church Of Truth a corrupt, religious space empire. Deep breath. As if this wasn’t bad enough he is also fighting his own destiny as he tries to avoid becoming his tyrannical future incarnation, The Magus (sporting a fetching purple afro), who is himself working backwards through time to affect Warlock’s transformation to evil so as to assure his own existence as a god (arrgh paradoxes!!!). Oh and he’s also got to defeat the super villain Titan, Thanos , as well taking time to battle the Star Thief in a creepy little episode involving a comatose human whose mind is able to roam free in time and space and is trying to unmake reality. Along the way he is joined by Pip, the filthy troll “this is more fun than brown-eyeing”!? and Gamora, “the deadliest woman in the universe” a beautiful, green skinned, alien assassin. Phew!
As in other works by Jim Starlin there are recurrent themes about the purpose of existence, reality, identity, freedom, the nature of time, the horrors of madness and powerlessness and musings on destiny, futility and ambition.
There is enough metaphysics here to get you through the first year of most philosophy degrees – although it is much more interesting, being mostly expressed by means of cosmically powered creatures punching each other and brooding.
Boldly displaying its “code approved” badge, I expected something pretty tame and flat and maybe with some sort of mealy mouthed moral message. However, hardly has the cover been turned before the story is happy splashing about in murder, necromancy, suicide, madness, obsession, injustice and violation (of several kinds). Seduction of The Innocent, indeed.
This is not to mention the powers of the sinister Soul Gem or the multi-dimensional, fractured timelines and alternate futures that would give Stephen Hawking a headache.
The writing is certainly of the “MIGHTY” style – don’t ever mutter “nothing” when there is the opportunity to bellow “naught” for example – but that has a charm of its own when done well, and it is done very well here. The language is very high-blown and theatrical but it all adds to the sense of drama and magnificence – and strangely enough it works – but that is partly a function of how the art style so perfectly complements the text and expresses the world.
So, to the art. Jim Starlin is probably top of the top three most inventive artists I have seen (the others being P Craig Russell and Frank Miller) in terms of being in complete command and control of the narrative space - from the level of the individual panel, up through the metapanel of the page right into the visual grammar and conceptual maps of the worlds he is drawing his readers inside. An example – how would you go about visually expressing the real-time fracturing of a consciousness into tiny fragments, or how about a multi-dimensional decision crossroads intersecting alternate versions of time and space? Although it was in another book (Captain Marvel) I have seen this man draw a 35 panel page – and none of it looks crowded!
The visual design of the characters and the world is bold and strong, with each character (even minor minions and henchmen) having a distinctive, detailed look – The InBetweener is my personal favourite. This is important as, due to the concepts discussed, the characters, while having their own personalities, are also something like archetypes in an older, deeper story. Every gesture is exaggerated and expansive because everything expresses something of timeless galactic importance. The “statuesque” nature of the design and the poses lends a mythic quality that sweeps you along in a dance at once alien and familiar.
I was a bit doubtful when the idea of reading Warlock was suggested to me. I didn’t think 70s code approved superheroes would be my kind of thing. It just goes to show the benefit of experience over belief – I wish I had discovered them long ago.
Highly recommended- but they come with a health warning – opening the cover is like drinking the Kool Aid, you will be drawn into the cult, and the brain washing is set to spin cycle.
Put on the Lava Lamp, light up the patchouli sticks and get ready to alter your consciousness and expand your mind.
You've made me interested in reading this... and Warlock is something I've never considered before (perhaps because I tend to avoid anthing remotely cosmic in nature).
As for the Comic Code, I woud be willing to bet that this came after the fabled Amazing Spider-Man 96-98, a famed three-issue run that saw print without Comic Code approval because the primary sub-plot dealt with drug abuse.
The result saw the Comic Code appear rather foolish and, following this, comic companies challenged the Code at every twist and turn by presenting ever more detailed, daring and realistic stories (not to mention with a far greater level of violence than seen during the sixties). This clearly appears to be one of them. _________________ With Great Power, Comes Great... Potential to ROB BANKS!!! HAHAH! THAT'S HOW TO BEAT THE RECESSION!!!
Thanks. Definitely you should read it. I have just bought a run from Manny, so I don't know if there is another one in the shop.
If you start with this you may as well just hand your wallet. Remember that the words "I think you might enjoy this...just take a look when you get chance" are really just a polite form of mugging
Another interesting thing about the Code is that my understanding is that it was supposed to have been necessary because "comics are for kids" but about 90% of the adverts in the comics are definitely targetted at late teenagers or adults. Politics, I guess.
Also meant to say that the Cat Woman looks very interesting too. I'll probably be wanting that next time I come down. _________________
“Where did she go? OUT.
What did she do? EVERYTHING…”
The Ballad of Halo Jones began in 2000AD in the mid-eighties. At first it tries to have you believe it is just another lighthearted, semi-satirical future romp of the kind 2000AD excelled at. There are the usual trappings, stylish punky clothes, future-speak, invasive media (well that was still a fiction, back then), in-jokes about mass unemployment and other British eighties concerns …don’t believe it…it is a trick!! I mean, if someone had asked you if wanted to read the “first feminist space opera” what would you have said?
But, like with all good misdirection, by the time you realise you’ve been had it’s far too late. There is no way to back out now, but you’ll find, in fact, that you don’t want to leave. We should have looked at the title. How many run of the mill comics can you think of that have “ballad” in the name? Even though this is quite early work for him Alan Moore already has a very large bag of tricks. He gets to use most of them.
Once past the first 50 pages or so of, albeit well written, standard “sci-fi chick goes future shopping with a grenade launcher, ha ha” Moore launches into a sweeping story of an ordinary girl thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and in doing so slyly offers a treatise on rebellion, promises, friendship, loyalty, war, experience and innocence, humanity, love and morality that is a fantastic and beautiful read.
“Halo Jones left earth with a robot dog for company…and never came back. That’s the whole story.”
We follow Halo from her existence as a bored teenager living in “the hoop” with her flatmates, out across the stars and in to the depths of her soul. When we leave her, or should that really be when she leaves us, it is as a damaged, desensitised and yet strangely hopeful woman in her thirties. Actually she may be much older than that, technically, as there are odd things done with space, time and gravity, but we’ll get to them in a minute.
The whole thing has a haunting, bittersweet note, and I would be tempted to call it a tragedy, but that’s not quite right. Things can, and do, go catastrophically wrong, there can be unendurable pain and loss, but there is no sense of predestination, no hurtling towards an unavoidable doom. The very terrifying randomness of the world is what allows for the possibility of miracles, and often it makes it worse that there can always be hope.
That sounds so sad though, and it’s not the whole picture. The story is so multi-layered, and the layering so subtle, and the story and character development so clever, that it’s difficult to really give the right impression. This is, after all, a story that ran in an action comic for boys. There are gangs, heavy weaponry, robot dogs, Rat Kings, speaking dolphins, invisible women, amazons, murder, warfare – it’s an exciting ride. There is no shortage of Tharg’s Thrill Power here.
Speaking of the warfare there is a combat in this book that is one of the most innovative things I have seen in any fiction, in any medium. I won’t describe it as it needs to be read, and is quite a major spoiler, but it has to do with time passing differently on a high gravity battlefield to the “standard” gravity base and what this means for the officers planning the war and the soldiers fighting it.
There is often criticism of how women are portrayed in comics, particularly when they are written by men. In fact there is lovely flash forward to the future when Halo has become a legend and her story is being discussed in a college class studying “The Halo Jones myth in modern Concordian folklore”. The students learn “that at one time it was even claimed she was a man”. Halo is no gun-toting sex-object of any stripe. She is not a Barbarella or a Vasquez. You will fall in love with her though. She is adventurous and fascinating. Sometimes she is brave, sometimes she is kind, sometimes she is selfish or gullible or weak. Mostly though, she is real. One of my favourite lines is her explanation of why she fell for a murderous alien general: “Because you scare me…because you have nice hands…because I knew you were going to bad news and I wanted to be with you anyway. You think that means I've got an unhealthy attitude?…” But then she wasn’t written by a man so much as created a comics god!
Ian Gibson is one of my favourite artists. His work is simultaneously very stylised and very realistic. That is, the accentuated nature of his character design allows him to express a “realism” in their attitudes and poses. It is very “pouty” art, everyone has killer cheekbones and beautiful eyelashes and strikes just the right poses with their jutting hips and aggressive shoulders to throw the perfect stark shadows. There is a strutting confidence that gets across a lot about the hardness of the world and the characters that live there.
Halo Jones is a masterpiece. Writing a character of his own invention Moore’s work is vivid, witty, daring and heart-breakingly brilliant. The way that plot threads come together books later than when the seeds were first sown is nothing short of amazing. The structure is intricate, but not confusing. I can’t really think why this is not listed alongside V for Vendetta and Watchmen as some of his best work - probably only because it was never picked up by a big American publisher. It deserves to be as widely read.
Halo is not a hero in the traditional sense. She didn’t try to change the world, she left it behind. Instead she changes herself, and this is the message of the book as I read it – the most important revolutions are on the inside
“She wasn’t anyone special. She wasn’t brave or clever or strong. She was just somebody who felt crammed by the confines of her life. She was just somebody who had to get out. And she did it. She went out past Vega, and past Moulquet and Lambard. She saw places that aren’t even there anymore. And do you know what she said? Her most famous quotation? “Anybody could have done it.”.”
The only downside is that we don’t get to the end. This may be called the “complete” Ballad of Halo Jones, but it is only 3 volumes out a planned 10. The idea was that the books would follow Halo right up to old age but “differences of opinion” between Alan Moore and the 2000AD editorial staff over copyright ownership mean that it was never finished. That is not to say the story does not come to a satisfying conclusion. Moore is too great a craftsman for that. It is open enough that more could be written. Hoping against hope, keeping my fingers crossed.
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