Harry 20 on the High Rock

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 Harry 20 on the High Rock (Rebellion/Simon & Schuster, 2010).



A few weeks back, I mentioned that I had already purchased several collected editions of Rogue Trooper before the latest book to reprint a big chunk of them. Now here is Harry 20 on the High Rock, another strip I have at least three times already, in its original appearance, a colorized American reprint from the late '80s, and a magazine supplement from about ten years back. It has never been collected in book form before, however, and this is the sort of thing that my collector's urge and my otherwise naked shelves need.

The serial originally ran for five months across 1982-83 in the pages of 2000 AD and was written by Gerry Finley-Day and drawn by Alan Davis in one of his earliest professional jobs. For this new edition, Davis contributes a two-page foreword explaining that it was intended that he alternate the art chores with John Watkiss, but he had to bail out, leaving Davis with a heck of a lot of design work and catching up to do. It turns out that the third episode was actually drawn first, and it was interesting to compare the pages and see how the strip's look evolved as a consequence.

At any rate, the strip is the story of Harry Thompson, a political prisoner of a corrupt regime sent to spend a twenty-year sentence on an inescapable satellite prison. It's a little ridiculous and juvenile, and the constant use of pun names for characters will make anybody who found Finley-Day's similar affectations writing Rogue Trooper put this down with a grimace. The writing is dated, boys' adventure stuff, but the artwork is just terrific throughout. Davis has since become better known for his work on Marvel Comics' superhero titles, and his many fans will probably enjoy checking out this material.

This new edition is a pretty nice collection of the comic. Along with the original adventure, there's an eight-page sketchbook section full of interesting notes by Davis about the characters' appearance, and three of the covers from its original appearance in 2000 AD. One of these, incidentally, spoils a pretty critical plot twist, so don't flip towards the back for the bonus stuff until you've read the story! For now, it's a North American exclusive, part of Simon & Schuster's line of reprints from Rebellion, and not available in England. Certainly recommended, although, considering the silly and dated story, perhaps not as loudly as some other material from the period.

The Complete D.R. & Quinch

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 Complete D.R. & Quinch (Rebellion / Simon & Schuster, 2010)



I don't know whether I have very much left to say about D.R. & Quinch, but I'll give it a try. Originally published in 1983-84, it still sits pretty high on my list of favorite Alan Moore titles. It's a juvenile, loud, anarchic and convention-busting serial about two heavily-armed students who enjoy boozing up more than anybody you ever met, and whose wild adventures set the template for many Alan Moore heroes that would follow. You can find the DNA of Waldo "Diminished Responsibility" Dobbs and Ernest Errol Quinch in almost all of Moore's Tomorrow Stories, and you can find the DNA of The Young Ones, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the National Lampoon feature O.C. and Stiggs in these stories.

Dated they may be, but D.R. and Quinch's brand of mayhem and one-liners remains one of the most entertaining and ridiculous experiences in comics. Moore, abetted by Alan Davis's remarkable designs, clear storytelling and solid character work, came up with some incredibly absurd plots and, once D.R. is given dialogue in the second story - the first is told in narration - it's comedy gold on every page. Sure, the duo's brand of fun involves everything from playing tennis with hand grenades to terraforming planets to write obscene graffiti, but really, who among us hasn't longed to get away with that?

D.R. & Quinch did not run for very long. Moore only wrote six stories, each between one and five 6-page episodes, before retiring the characters. They were resurrected in 1987 for nine "Agony Pages" scripted by Jamie Delano in which the demented duo offered advice for readers. Their advice usually required access to fission material or Adnan Khashoggi's telephone number.

There have been collections of D.R. & Quinch before, many times, but this is by far the most expansive and complete collection published to date. It contains all of the Moore episodes, and all nine Delano-scripted pages, reproduced in color for the first time. Two years ago, Rebellion had released a volume which did have the Agony Pages, but in black and white. This volume also includes a huge collection of pin-ups and sketches of the characters, along with some cameos that they made in the pages of a British comic convention's program book, and a couple of pages of Moore's original script.

I don't know what more to add. It's a great collection of very funny comics, done very well on nice paper. It's the first of two collections aimed at the American market as a co-publishing venture of Rebellion and Simon & Schuster, the other being a new edition of Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 01 with a new cover, and everybody's hoping that emphasizing the resumes of Alan Moore and Alan Davis over the comic where they originally appeared might make a difference in how the books perform domestically.

Unlike the previous collections in 2000 AD's large graphic novel line, these are available from big box domestic retailers like Barnes & Noble and Borders, and don't have to be special-ordered through comic specialty shops with fingers crossed. Happily, these have been designed to fit right in with the many previous collections, with matching spines and layout, so people who have been collecting the line and care about this sort of thing (going by the forums, that would apparently be "almost all of us") can breathe easily - Simon & Schuster have totally done right with this collection, and it bodes well for future books in the line. Highly recommended.

Mighty Marvel Mediocrity Edition, with Power Man, Iron Fist and Captain Britain

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



Oh, the things I buy when I find a sale. Honestly, when I was young, my taste in Marvel books ran towards the odder, like The Defenders and Ghost Rider - inasmuch as any title with Don Perlin's workhorse art could be described as even slightly "odd" - and I never actually read a single issue of Power Man and Iron Fist before now, and so I was curious what it might be like. I didn't miss much. Most of the book is written by Mary Jo Duffy, and she keeps things moving at a pretty brisk pace, with a good supporting cast and subplots that keep your interest, but in the end, these stories are toothless and uninspiring, and to label them as "essential" is not in any way accurate. Recommended for under-twelves.




The first thing that struck me when looking at this collection is how godawful the coloring is. There exists a subset of superhero nerd which cannot stand looking at black and white funnybooks, ignoring the simple fact that work designed and balanced for blacks, whites and grays always looks hideous when color is applied to it. It is for these numbskulls that Alan Davis's artwork, which was the best thing about this material, is butchered.

The next thing that struck me was how primitive the early episodes looked and felt. This fault is shared between the lettering by Jenny O'Connor, which put me in mind of a high schooler's efforts, and the actual words the poor soul had to stick in them. Alan Moore hadn't yet learned to edit himself at all yet, and the result is garishly overwordy, a poor imitation of Roy Thomas and Chris Claremont, with characters agonizingly relating not merely complete sentences but giant novels of soul-searching in thought bubbles.

The story is an interlocking series of tales from an epic called "Jaspers' Warp," told across two years (1981-83?) of Marvel UK's various reprint anthologies in episodes of 8-10 pages each. The book does not include the opening six or seven episodes, which were scripted by a guy named Dave Thorpe, nor does it include a "story so far" explanation. To be fair, after about forty pages of barely readable schlock, around the time Steve Potter shows up to make the lettering look better, Moore settles down and what looks to be a good story gets going. But no sooner does the threat get serious and I was looking forward to watching our hero and his gang struggle against Jim Jaspers' government getting out of control does the story suddenly jump forward in time, Jaspers already victorious. What's left is typical convoluted Marvel storytelling, with cosmic entities manipulating the action and reality-warping superpowerful creatures exchanging blows on scales unimaginable to mere mortals, like our quickly-sidelined heroes. It's nothing that hadn't already been done before and better in any number of Marvel books in the sixties and seventies. Okay, "Captain Airbase-One" is funny, and a cute foreshadowing of the third League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume, but otherwise this is recommended only to Alan Moore completists who've already read everything else they can find by the writer.

(Originally posted March 20, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)