Sinister Dexter: The Taking of the Michael

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Sinister Dexter: The Taking of the Michael (Rebellion, 2016).


A little over two years ago, I raved about the return and resurrection of Sinister Dexter, and the series has not done a darn thing to reward my loyalty until now. If you're unfamiliar with this series, I covered its peaks and chasms in that review and won't go into them again. Much.

The problem is that Dan Abnett - who, in fairness, seems to be writing a dozen other stories for a dozen publishers and may not have the time to devote to keeping this series vital - often falls back on comedy and cliche in Sin Dex, and that's amusing to a point but what works best for the series is taking the protagonists dead seriously. Donald Westlake could juggle both jet-black melodrama and lighthearted capers, but he used different protagonists in his stories. Ramone and Finnigan work best when they are frighteningly efficient at their jobs, and when their jobs are really, really serious. But after that triumphant 12-week return in 2013, a handful of subsequent stories were back in the safe arms of gentle parody and mild comedy, throwing away the incredible opportunity that came with the "Witless Protection" story.

But now, oh. We're four weeks into "The Taking of the Michael," written by Abnett and illustrated by Patrick Goddard, and it's remarkable. Ray and Finny are dangerous, ruthless, and completely horrifying in a way that they're rarely depicted. In episode two of the story, one of two bent witness protection agents arranges for our heroes to be abducted in broad daylight, and that turns out to be an awfully bad error. I love the way that Goddard draws the violence. It's depicted with cold, brutal realism and just left my eyes popping.

And I am completely loving the structure of this story. It's told in flashback, as two detectives investigate the aftermath of a huge gunfight on the deck of a yacht. It belongs to longtime series villain Moses Tanenbaum. There are many bodies, many chalk outlines. Each episode opens with a few more words from their investigation, a few more clues as to what will happen as the story unfolds. We're not sure who has died, but each episode shows more of the small supporting cast meeting grisly ends before Ray and Finny even make it to the ship. The second federal agent's wallet has been found. It's possible that she's among the fatalities.

For that matter, our heroes may not have made it out of this one alive. Sure, they probably did, but if any comic in history has ever made readers genuinely question the safety of its characters, it's 2000 AD. The brutality and shock of this story is strong enough that I'm perfectly prepared to place one bet on this story quietly concluding the long-running series (almost twenty years!) with the revelation of the leads' deaths, while also placing a second bet on them making it out alive and showing up in another four-part satire next summer. Fingers crossed for the former, but whichever way, I am absolutely enjoying the daylights out of the uncertainty, and reading each episode with relish. Highly recommended.

(Clicking the link in the image will take you to 2000 AD's online shop, where you can purchase the issue that begins the story. PDFs of these issues were provided by the publisher for the purpose of review. If you'd like to see your books (typically comics or detective fiction) featured here, send me an email.)

Sinister Dexter: Witless Protection

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Sinister Dexter: Witless Protection (Rebellion, 2013).


I was startled when I heard the news that Sinister Dexter, a seventeen year-old action series written by Dan Abnett and drawn by dozens, was coming back after what seemed like an understated and overdue finale. I thought for sure that beast had been put out of our misery. Then I read that John Burns would be in charge of art duties and, for the first time since the series should have ended in 2005, I looked forward to the new episodes. John Burns painting Sinister Dexter is so obvious a pairing that everybody was amazed that it had not happened previously.

Sinister Dexter is an occasionally lighthearted and pun-filled melodrama about two gunmen for hire in the ugly, futuristic megalopolis of Downlode, a crime-ridden nightmare that sits atop what's today central Europe, and which is controlled by warring underworld factions. Over its first several years, when the series was a semi-regular in the pages of the anthology 2000 AD, we met a huge cast of characters and followed several overlapping and complex subplots. Rather than linger on its fall from grace, suffice it to say that the last essential Sin Dex tale was told in 2005 - I do mean essential; the epic "...and death shall have no dumb minions" is a must-read for anybody who likes good fiction in this medium - and it has been treading creative water ever since. Mercifully, it seemed to end six years later. Nobody mourned it or clamored for its return.

I wonder whether Abnett knew that he'd be writing for John Burns, because the latest twelve-week run of this series plays very much to this artist's strengths. Burns, to my mind, doesn't have a very deep bag of tricks, but what he has, he uses better than most anybody. He doesn't seem to have updated his reference material since the 1970s, and so the best of his work - possibly the really fun Bendatti Vendetta from the mid-2000s - has a deep sensibility of the 1970s to it. The urban grime of Times Square, the squealing tires of action-packed cop shows, ugly fat men with bad moustaches, and, when a little playful sexiness is needed - it isn't, not in these particular pages, but it often was in some of Nikolai Dante - it comes with a late-period Carry On slide whistle.

With that in mind, this new adventure picks up some time after we last saw our heroes Finnigan Sinister, Ramone Dexter, and Dex's girlfriend Tracy Weld. After dismantling one of their enemies' huge criminal operations, they've been taken into witness protection and moved off-planet to a sprawling frontier world called Generica, which had been introduced some years previously. Finny is relocated to a city that, perfectly, looks exactly like Pittsburgh in a 1974 Quinn Martin production for CBS. You can almost hear the bow-chicka-bow as gigantic cars with unbelievable suspension fishtail across wet pavement.

It's almost as though Abnett scripted this adventure in direct response to fan complaints about its six years of meandering. The cast is cleaved down, the subplots start from scratch, and while the heroes still have the seemingly-immortal kingpin Moses Tanenbaum as their main villain, we're actually given a specific reason why they need to hunt this guy down. It's a convoluted and suspiciously convenient reason, not to mention full of sci-fi implausibility, but this time, I'm actually willing to buy it.

The twelve-week run comprises three stories, the first two painted by Burns. In the opening four-parter, Finny looks for work in his new home, discovers that Tannenbaum has also been relocated to Generica, and decides to find Dex and Tracy, who are in some other state. Doing so, he runs afoul of the witness protection agency and an old crime boss from Downlode. In the second, things get majestically awesome as he makes a deal with the devil and takes a job with his old enemy to get the funds to cross the country. Things don't go well.

This second story is in the running for one of Dan Abnett's best stories ever, as it becomes apparent that Finny is teetering closer than ever to a breakdown. He's become the narrator of his story, talking to himself in a sarcastic approximation of tough-guy fiction. Strikingly, he's aware that he's doing it, but he can't stop, and it isn't played for laughs. As if this story wasn't bold enough already, it then climaxes in an unbelievable explosion of meticulously-crafted violence. Finnigan's ruthless killing prowess had previously only been depicted either as black comedy or as a heroic talent. This time, we see him through different eyes and, for the first time ever in the series, he's absolutely terrifying. It is a bold and stunning choice, certain to leave readers wondering whether we can ever go back to the silly quips and puns when we see that this brutal, remorseless murderer is capable of such carefully-choreographed butchery.

This leads me to speculate on where things could possibly go next. The third and last of the new stories sees old hand Simon Davis back on art duties. For the first time ever, putting the great Davis back on Sin Dex, where he had previously been the shining best of all its many artists, manages to disappoint. In part that's because in my daydreams, Davis is diligently working on episodes twenty-three to twenty-five of a six-month Ampney Crucis Investigates story (quiet at the back, it could happen), and in part because Burns is just so damn good that I don't want substitutes. But Davis brings his best and the resulting three-part story, checking in on Dex and Tracy, is certainly really great despite my silly grumbling. As foreshadowed, Dex and Tracy are doing quite fine without Finny in their lives. They've begun their lives together at last, and simply don't need the violence of Downlode and Moses Tannenbaum any more, but of course, they're going to get it...

It's like this: Abnett, Burns, and Davis have done the impossible. They've taken an aging disappointment, slow on its feet and full of fat, and turned it into the can't miss title of the summer. Week twelve came too soon; when Sin Dex returns in 2014, I honestly hope that it's for a lot more than three months. If you'd told me a year ago I'd be saying that, I'd have said you were drunk. It's that impressive. Go buy episode one by clicking the image above.

2000 AD's Free Comic Book Day Prog

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of 2000 AD's Free Comic Book Day Prog (Rebellion, 2011).



Here's a book that, if I may say so, is long overdue. Every year for about the last decade, the principal comic book distribution company, Diamond, has sponsored this event where retailers order a bunch of comics to be given out freely to customers. The idea is that the comic shops will promote a big event at their store and guests will arrive to reacquaint themselves with how great it was to read funnybooks, and established customers will pick up a couple of new titles. 2000 AD, despite being the most consistently entertaining and rewarding comic book published over the last three decades, has never joined the party until this year. At last, there's a free 2000 AD comic to promote in the US. Free Comic Book Day has come and gone, but it's possible - in fact, it's almost likely, considering the leftover stock that I see in some stores - that there may be a copy or two floating around for new readers to try.

2000 AD is an anthology book, and this issue gives people a reasonably good idea what to expect from any given issue, with a quibble or two. Judge Dredd, as always, is the star of things, and the rest of any given issue is taken up with a mixture of recurring series, serials and short one-off stories. Here, Dredd is ably represented by a short story written by his creator John Wagner and illustrated by Val Semeiks and Cliff Robinson. It's a good introduction, letting people know that Dredd lives in a world where life is violent and technology is downright weird.

The principal backups are Slaine by Pat Mills and Clint Langley, Kingdom by Dan Abnett and Richard Elson, and Shakara by Robbie Morrison and Henry Flint. Kingdom and Shakara are each very recent and popular series - Shakara actually reached its bug-eyed, mad, memorable conclusion earlier this year - and they are each represented by their initial installments. Kingdom is the lyrically paced (if that makes sense) story of a dog soldier called Gene the Hackman, who, with his pack, is defending Antarctica from huge insectoid aliens. Shakara tricks readers into thinking that it's the story of the very last human, an astronaut who was in space when bizarre aliens destroyed Earth, but then it swerves, magically, and shows off that it is not about that at all. Both are completely terrific, and collected editions of each are already available in England. American editions, distributed by Simon & Schuster, will be arriving in a few months' time.

The Slaine story is a pleasant surprise. Slaine has actually been running since 1983 with a dozen different artists illustrating Pat Mills' scripts. The episode here is the first in a series of adventures called "The Books of Invasions" that was painted / photomanipulated by Clint Langley. Langley's tenure on the strip is available in three hardback editions, with a fourth scheduled for later in the year, but I don't believe that these are planned for separate American release (and, presumably, promotion) at this time.

The comic is bookended by a couple of short one-offs, a Tharg story from 1977 illustrated by Kevin O'Neill that introduces readers to the concept of this comic having an alien editor who programs robots to write and draw the features, and a one-page Zombo short by Al Ewing and Henry Flint which is just violent and ridiculous and wonderful. Frankly, 2000 AD should run silly little single pages like this more frequently.

As an introduction, I think this does a pretty good job, although I might quibble that it emphasizes the over-the-top, hyperviolent side of 2000 AD perhaps a little more than I might like. This led at least one store in Atlanta to restrict the freebie to adults only. (I protested that all Earthlet children should be exposed to thrillpower at the earliest possible age.) While 2000 AD, it must be said, isn't for everybody - and a regularly-scheduled, stereotype-avoiding, female-led series is long overdue and would help there - many of its best series are nowhere as dementedly gruesome as the offerings suggested here, and I'm not sure that this really gives readers a feel for how broad the scope of 2000 AD is.

Another eight pages could have introduced readers to the classical pirate adventure of The Red Seas or the weird Victorian crime drama of Stickleback or the Western-in-Hell Ichabod Azrael or the brand new cops vs. demons Absalom, all of which are certainly violent, but not quite as visceral and outlandish as what's on offer here, and I think that might have been a bit more of a balance. Well, now we know for next year! Certainly recommended.

Fiends of the Eastern Front

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Fiends of the Eastern Front (Rebellion, 2010).



Of all the recent examples of contemporary funnybook writers paying tribute to, and rehabilitating the image of, mostly retired or deceased members of the industry, Pat Mills' talking-up of Gerry Finley-Day hasn't got a lot of press. You've got plenty of blogs and essays discussing Seth's curations of Doug Wright and John Stanley, and Eddie Campbell's defense of Vince Coletta got a lot of attention, but, as is disagreeably common, the British creators just don't get a lot of press in the American-dominated blogosphere.

The thing here is, most people aren't going to know what the heck that Finley-Day did that was allegedly worth discussing. We all like to call Pat Mills the godfather of British comics for his work on Battle Picture Weekly, Action and 2000 AD, but Mills is just as quick to cite Finley-Day as the man we should actually be praising, for his work creating and editing an apparently bleak and miserable girls' comic called Tammy, which ran from 1971-84. Mills later brought Finley-Day into Battle, where he wrote D-Day Dawson, and to 2000 AD, where he created The V.C.s, Harry Twenty on the High Rock and Rogue Trooper. The annual 100-page year-end edition of 2000 AD, available this month, features a new Finley-Day Rogue Trooper story, his first comics' work in more than twenty years.

Of course, a reputation's only worth what we can see. In the case of his heroes Wright and Stanley, Seth has the publisher Drawn & Quarterly on his side, putting out lovely editions of those artists' work. While most of his other, earlier work for IPC remains in limbo, Rebellion has repackaged most of his 2000 AD series and serials for everybody to enjoy. The most recent of these is Fiends of the Eastern Front, which ran for ten weeks in 1980, and is considered one of the downright oddest stories that appeared in 2000 AD in that decade.

Many things make Fiends stand out from its companion stories of the day, like its tone, unusual protagonist and brevity, but the real surprise is that it isn't a science fiction story at all. Of course, after more than thirty years of strips as widely divergent as Slaine and Bec & Kawl, that doesn't seem like a big deal, but an occult World War 2 thriller in which a German infantryman figures out that his Romanian allies are a company of vampires was really unusual at the time. What elevates it from curiosity to such a delightful pleasure is the twisting plot, the terrific framing device of having the tale recounted from a dead man's diary found in a present-day building site, and the great artwork by Carlos Ezquerra, done in between the first two serialized adaptations of The Stainless Steel Rat. Plus, it must be said that Captain Constanza is a truly great villain, all smiles and believably urbane charm when necessary, with a bloodthirsty streak just behind the surface.

After the serial, Fiends was retired as a lead feature for a respectable 26 years. It was reprinted a time or two - one of these coincided with a surprising one-off episode of The Scarlet Apocrypha by Ezquerra and Dan Abnett, in which the Romanians find that Russia has their own super-vampire weapon to oppose them - and found a new life in a series of four novels written by David Bishop. Bishop later collaborated with artist Colin MacNeil on a second comic story, serialized across eight issues of the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine. It's not at all bad, although it reads as a little more choppy and fragmented in places than most of these episodic installments naturally do. Bishop came up with some excellent action set pieces in this story, and a terrific, underplayed enemy for the vampires in a beautifully-designed golem with a look quite unlike any other I've seen before.

So Rebellion's latest reprint is the most complete to date. It's still pretty slim; at just over 100 pages, this is not a concept that gets run into the ground. It includes Finley-Day and Ezquerra's original story, Bishop and MacNeil's 2006 revisitation, and Abnett and Ezquerra's 2002 one-off. That's everything save a silly cameo in a silly Garth Ennis Judge Dredd epic, which wouldn't have been necessary or sensible. The only complaint that I have is that sadly, there wasn't room in the budget to revisit the lettering on the MacNeil pages. Halfway through that run, mercifully, Ellie De Ville stepped in to letter the project; previously, MacNeil had been doing it himself with less-than-stellar results.

Otherwise, this is a terrific little book. It's nicely-priced for British readers at £9.95, and, in what must be a first for any 2000 AD project solicited through Diamond for the American market, it's actually priced at a proper exchange rate of $14.99, without some insane markup. Let's see more of that, please! Recommended? Absolutely! Now let's get somebody to reprint more of Finley-Day's ostensibly excellent 1970s stuff so Pat Mills can call his mission accomplished!

The V.C.s: Back in Action

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of The V.C.s: Back in Action (Rebellion, 2009)



A comic as old as 2000 AD thrives by keeping one eye on its past and another on the shock of the new. Once in a while, the editors will revive a dormant feature. The V.C.s is one that thrived well during its decades in hibernation. The original series, whose creators included Gerry Finley-Day, Garry Leach and Cam Kennedy, ran for nine months in 1980 and was fondly remembered by a legion of fans for many years. One of them was writer Dan Abnett, who finally persuaded editor Matt Smith to give his revival the go-ahead. The resulting series ran for five short runs over four years, the first three of which are collected in this edition from Rebellion.

Set decades after the original, this space opera sees Major Steve Smith, the hero of the first series, living a blue-collar life while Earth has been at peace with their old enemies the G'egeekajee. On the anniversary of the armistice, the aliens surprise Earth with a sneak attack, prompting Smith, who's spent the last several years haunted by the ghosts of his dead colleagues from the first series, to re-enlist. What follows is a fascinating action series which involves several alien races in a long guerrilla war against an implacable enemy.

Honestly, I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped at the time, and a reread isn't knocking my socks off, either. You could do a million times worse, but Abnett never really finds voices for the disparate characters in Smith's crew, beyond simply "the girl" and "the obnoxious one everybody hates," and consequently it's almost impossible to become engrossed in what happens to them. The artwork, however, is superb throughout. Henry Flint gets things off to a strong start before regular 2000 AD pinch-hitter Anthony Williams comes aboard with his own, inventive stamp. It only disappoints in comparison with the creators' other projects; this simply isn't as exciting as I had been hoping.

Oddly, it looks as though the story won't be concluded anytime soon. As noted, the book reprints three of the series' five runs in 2000 AD. A follow-up book is advertised on the inside back cover with a December '09 release date, but the collection was never issued, and does not appear in Rebellion's plans for 2010.

This book was originally offered for sale to North American comic stores through Diamond, but was withdrawn and canceled with no announcement. Interested readers will have to order it from a British bookseller instead. Readers looking for some intricate outer space action, or fans of Dan Abnett's work for Marvel's "cosmic" titles, could certainly do worse than to check this out.

Doctor Who: A Cold Day in Hell!

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Doctor Who: A Cold Day in Hell! (Panini, 2009)



We've reached the point in these collections of the Doctor Who strip where I originally stopped buying the magazine, so I was pretty interested in checking this book out. I'm kind of hazy as to why I quit reading, but I sort of recall that the price went up and they dropped eight pages back in 1987. I'm also pretty sure that I enjoyed Sylvester McCoy's Doctor more than anybody else that I knew at the time, but my enthusiasm had still ebbed after a couple of years of fandom. I also seem to recall one issue's cover with McCoy and Richard Briers making stupid faces at each other, and lit so they looked like a couple of ugly jack o'lanterns and deciding my money would be better spent on Siouxsie and the Banshees records.

Inside, the comic was going through some radical changes. In the seven pages of commentary in this collection, John Freeman interviews the comic's editor, Richard Starkings, who confirmed that the magazine was going through some belt-tightening at the time, and that artist John Ridgway, who had drawn the strip since the first Colin Baker episode, was passed over in favor of a rotating series of writers and artists.

The intent was apparently to follow the TV series' lead, as of course each serial had its own screenwriter and director. However, this simply doesn't work as well with an ongoing comic. Particularly in collected form, the inconsistent tone provided by having a new team for each story really jars.

As for the individual stories, some fail spectacularly, but some are pretty good. Freeman's two-part "Planet of the Dead" is a really fun romp, and I like the way the Doctor really seems completely lost, yet still in character, but it's undermined by Lee Sullivan's artwork. In time, Sullivan would grow into a favorite on Judge Dredd, but this early work is really rough and his storytelling is confusing, and the story's aliens, a shapeshifting bunch called the Gwanzulum, are just about the dumbest looking monsters in a series known for dumb-looking monsters. It ends up feeling like a rough draft for what should have been a memorable anniversary runaround, just a disappointment.

A lot of the book is like this, with novice artists just starting their comic career undermining a good story or two. Admittedly, neither Kev Hopgood nor Dougie Braithwaite were ever among my favorites when they started on 2000 AD a few years later, but their work here is just terrible. So is "Culture Shock!," a one-parter written by Grant Morrison and utterly ruined by a teenage Bryan Hitch, who would of course go on to far better things in the future, but who barely understands page composition here. It works the other way around in one case, though: veteran Alan Grant turns in a completely awful script called "Invaders from Gantac!" about an alien invasion of Earth totally at odds with anything else Doctor Who has ever presented, but somehow artists Martin Griffiths and Cam Smith make it look readable.

Elsewhere, among the 21 episodes in the collection, are two crossovers with other Marvel UK titles, putting this Doctor in the same continuity as Death's Head and the Sleeze Brothers. Apparently, these really aggravated readers when they originally appeared. Having never read Death's Head or the Sleeze Brothers myself, all I can say is that I am in no rush to go back and read any other Marvel UK series that I might have missed. These are just awful.

The best stories here are the first four episodes by Simon Furman and John Ridgway, before he moved on, a one-off by Furman and the wonderful John Higgins, and a creepy, clever two-parter by Dan Abnett and the returning Ridgway. Everything really meshes with these episodes, and I almost get a sense for what a regular team might have accomplished. While I honestly liked the artwork in this book by Griffiths and Higgins, the collection in some alternate universe where Ridgway got to draw the whole thing would certainly be a superior prospect. Recommended for fans only.

(Oh, one final bugbear about this book: while I realize that exchange rates often make it difficult to price things in advance, if you're out there, Panini, I really didn't appreciate ordering a book solicited in Diamond for $24.99 only to have it arrive costing $31.95. Seriously, are you going to do this with the supposedly $24.99 [see here] edition of "The Widow's Curse" when it shows up in November?)

Sinister Dexter: Eurocrash

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Sinister Dexter: Eurocrash (volume 4) (Rebellion, 2009).



Having spoken of 2001's episodes of Sinister Dexter in recent installments of Thrillpowered Thursday, let's dive back into the duo's recent past and the new collected edition of "Eurocrash." Like "I Say Hello," this is a straight-up Sin Dex classic. The collection starts with a couple of short stories and then dives right in to the exceptional, epic-length storyline in which crime queenpin Demi Octavo's hold over her city slips out from under her, leading to blood in the streets. By the time it's over, the balance of power in Downlode is changed forever, and Sinister and Dexter go their separate ways, each determined to ferret out the mysterious parties behind the carnage, and to never see each other again.

Which makes it incredibly hard to understand why, when you turn the page, the deadly duo are working together as a team.

Rebellion's line of reprints is easily the best in the industry right now. They do a laudable job 49 times out of 50, picking great material and presenting it in a standout format, on glossy paper, with matte-finish covers and typically some very nice extras. Well, their skimpy little creator biography paragraphs could use a little work, but otherwise it's a terrific reprint line. That's what makes this book so darned hard to understand. For some utterly baffling reason, the collection skips over twenty-four freaking episodes of the series.

As screw-ups go, this one ranks up there. The whole phase of the series when it was retitled Downlode Tales is excised, as well as two one-offs that ran alongside Eurocrash's earliest episodes and set up characters who would reappear within the bigger epic. What you got in those 24 episodes, apart from some very nice artwork by Simon Davis, Greg Staples and Chris Weston, among others, were some critical continuing subplots, the return of Billie Octavo and the deaths of several major recurring players, including both Bunkum and Nervous Rex. Oh yeah, and the whole point, the whole payoff, of the vengeful promises of the last two pages of "Eurocrash." At least Monty Python gave us a "scene missing" screen; this book just hopes you're not reading very closely.

I've never said this about a Rebellion book before, but this is one to avoid. Do not buy this book. They should pulp every copy they can get their hands on and issue a second edition with "Lone Shark," "The Ass Kickers," "Scrubbers" and "The Whack Pack" following Eurocrash. The fifth Sin Dex collection should have "City on Fire" and "Lock and 'Lode" and then the four stories which conclude this book: "Exit Wounds," "Observations," "Mission to Mangapore" and "Life Behind Bars," and probably a couple of other episodes after them. Otherwise, neither this nor the next book are worth purchasing. Speaking as a huge fan of the publisher and a pretty big fan of Sin Dex, I wish I didn't have to say that.

(Excerpted from Thrillpowered Thursday.)

Kingdom: The Promised Land

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Kingdom: The Promised Land (Rebellion, 2008).



In other news, Rebellion recently issued "The Promised Land," the first collected edition of Kingdom, a very pleasant surprise from the Atavar team of Dan Abnett and Richard Elson which debuted without hoopla in December 2006 and proceeded to knock all the readers on their backsides with its incredibly clever take on the hoary old post-apocalypse genre.

Giving away too much about Kingdom would really spoil the great pleasure in watching it unfold and learning about the wild and dangerous world the creators put together. It starts with a pack of nine foot-tall genetically engineered dog-soldiers patrolling a wintry landscape and chopping apart hideous, slimy alien bug-things. The pack's alpha male is called Gene the Hackman and like the others, he speaks in slow, careful, simple sentences. The dialogue is countered by a surprisingly rich narration, suggesting the stories of Gene and his pack are treasured tales from a long, otherwise forgotten time. It's a comic where part of the joy is simply following the construction of the language, and how often do you get to say that about a comic book?

Of course, Kingdom proves to be about something bigger and sadder than the snow-covered wastes that these characters walk around, and as the scope increases to incorporate other characters, so does the opportunity for heartbreak and really powerful drama, the sort that Abnett doesn't often get to write in 2000 AD's pages. Each of the two series of Kingdom (2006-07 and 2007-08) are reprinted in this book along with some great-looking extra artwork by Elson. The third series is in production and planned to appear in 2000 AD later in the year. The book's certainly worth your time; every page is a real treat.


(Excerpted from Thrillpowered Thursday.)

Mutant Bounty Hunter edition with Strontium Dog and Durham Red

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death.



Absolutely triumphant. There's a reason this is one of the Eagle Award nominees for best reprint volume of '07: it's absolutely the work of three creators at the top of their game, telling brilliant stories with a mix of lighthearted wit and downright mean energy. Wulf Sternhammer's death really was a shock at the time; what's even more shocking in retrospect is the impact it has on Johnny Alpha, who becomes a taciturn, vengeance-driven monster for many episodes thereafter. The revenge he takes out on Max Bubba is the sort of thing that superhero funnybooks just wish they could get away with. Highly recommended!




This is the last of a three-volume series telling the story of what happened to the sexy vampire bounty hunter Durham Red several centuries after she was last seen as a supporting character in Strontium Dog. It never really sparks, suggesting it would have worked better as two books rather than three, although Mark Harrison's art is never less than interesting.

What really makes this collection shine is the inclusion of the seven episodes of "The Scarlet Apocrypha," in which Dan Abnett reimagines the character in seven very different scenarios, with seven very different artists, throughout history and fiction. Only one doesn't work - Steve Kyte's Japanese animation parody is just stupid - but some of these are downright excellent. John Burns really shines depicting Red in the setting of a 70s Italian horror film, and Enric Romero has fun putting her up against Count Dracula. Steve Yeowell, Frazer Irving and Carlos Ezquerra also contribute great installments before Harrison returns with a fascinating, dense and fun story drawn in a completely different style from his standard - an imitation of Mad's Mort Drucker! - and set at a science fiction convention in a world where Durham Red movies have been sci-fi staples for decades. It's very fun stuff, and, packed as it is with background notes and production artwork, it's a package I have to recommend, even though the lead story left me a bit cold.

(Originally posted April 11, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)