Absalom: Ghosts of London

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 Absalom: Ghosts of London (Rebellion, 2012).


Seven or eight years back, there was a successful and popular series in 2000 AD called Caballistics Inc. that followed the adventures of a gang of occult demonbusters. Among the supporting players in the series was an aging, alcoholic, hard-as-nails London copper called DI Harry Absolam, who took a keen interest in the team when he learned one of them was harboring a nasty demon.

Fast forward a few years. Caballistics' writer, Gordon Rennie, had stepped away from comics for a time to do some work in the video game industry. When he returned, quite welcome, to the pages of the Galaxy's Greatest, many people hoped that he would resume that series, and some others, and deal with the lingering subplots left behind. But he did what has, surprisingly, turned out to be a much more fun idea instead. He took that supporting character, brushed off almost every connection to Caballistics, even changing his name from Absolam to Absalom, just so everybody's clear, and made him the headliner of his own unrelated series. And good grief, does he ever carry it well.

Harry Absalom has got to be one of the least likely lead characters for an adventure story. Rennie, very ably assisted by Tiernen Trevallion on art chores, has gone back to the old ideal that 2000 AD's leads shouldn't be pin-ups. He appears to be in his late sixties and keeps a "purely medicinal" flask of some kind of spirit around, but it's strongly hinted that he's much older than he appears, and he's a lot meaner and tougher. Trevallion draws him with so much impact that somehow, this skinny, cancer-ridden old cuss, with dialogue that deliberately echoes John Thaw from TV's The Sweeney, appears to be the most intimidating copper in London. Put another way, if I had to go rounds with a comic book cop, I'd rather take the short experience of Judge Dredd's daystick than worry about what Absalom's going to do when he tells me I'm nicked.

Absalom heads a special task force assembled to enforce The Accord, a five hundred year-old diplomatic treaty between the throne of England and Hell. Unfortunately, Hell has a hard time keeping track of all its denizens, who often find themselves tempted to cause trouble on Absalom's manor. As we follow a new detective sergeant assigned to his force, we learn that there are creepy and occasionally timelost entities throughout the country. Some of them seem to want to behave or assist Absalom in keeping the peace, and others have mayhem in mind. Once again, Rennie is creating another big supporting cast in a deeply-layered story full of subplots. I hope we meet the weird undertaker with the strange eyes and - is that a brass plate in the back of his head?! - again very soon.

Absalom was an immediate hit when it launched in the summer of 2011. This collected edition compiles the first three stories from 2000 AD: two serialized adventures and a one-off. There's a fourth story, another one-off, currently available in the annual year-end bumper edition of the comic, Prog 2013, and fingers are crossed that Absalom will be back defending his manor in another serialized adventure later this year. It's a terrific series, and one which everybody would love to see much more frequently. Nobody would complain if this were given a seven-month residency. Absolutely recommended.

Aquila: Blood of the Iceni

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 Aquila: Blood of the Iceni (Rebellion, 2012).


Seventy years before Christ was born, Spartacus led a rebellion against Rome that did not go well. Six thousand prisoners were sentenced to crucifixion, their bodies lining the road from Capua to Rome. In a new recurring series in the pages of 2000 AD, one of these is a huge man named Aquila who, nailed to that cross, prays to every god and goddess whose name he knows for salvation and vengeance. One of their number blesses - slash - curses him with immortality and great strength, among other powers, taking away his soul while he roams the earth doing her bidding and bringing her more souls.

Aquila debuted with a one-off prologue episode in the annual extra-sized year's end edition of 2000 AD. Written by Gordon Rennie and illustrated by Leigh Gallagher, it actually has its roots not just in two thousand year-old history, but in something more recent. Thirty-odd years ago, there had been another series about a huge, soulless man fighting in Roman times. Black Hawk, written by Gerry Finley-Day and later by Alan Grant, and drawn by several artists, including the great Massimo Bellardinelli, only ran for about a year or so, first in Tornado and later 2000 AD, but it has always been popular among the comic's older fans.

In updating (or revising) Black Hawk, Rennie followed the template established by Pat Mills when he returned to the character of Bill Savage after twenty-something years, and also when he revamped the old MACH One series into Greysuit, but he also put some expected Rennie trademarks into the mix. It is a more adult series, certainly, with darker themes, sex, and more visceral violence, but it is also rich with subplots and the promise of much, much more at work than readers are shown. "Blood of the Iceni," the first continuing adventure for Aquila, sees him allied with Boudica as she continues the Britons' uprising against Rome around the year 60. But the Romans have superpowered allies of their own. This is a world where consulting entrails really can give visions of the future, and Aquila is by no means the only one to make pacts with underworld goddesses.

Aquila is off to a terrific start. The disagreeable practice in 2000 AD these days is to present only about a single story from each of its long list of continuing series each year, but there's just so much promise in Aquila that this simply won't do. This series would benefit, hugely, from a proper residency of six or seven months in the comic. There has not been enough of the series to collect in book form yet, but curious readers can hop on board by clicking the link in the image above and purchasing prog 1792, with part one of "Blood of the Iceni." Then be sure to let the editor know you'd like to see much more of this series.

Lenny Zero and the Perps of Mega-City One

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 Lenny Zero and the Perps of Mega-City One (Rebellion / Simon & Schuster, 2011).



I really don't envy anybody's job in trying to introduce Americans to the sprawling world of Judge Dredd. (This collection is among the titles co-published with Simon & Schuster for the American market.) Start anywhere in the present day, and much of the subtleties of such long-running subplots are lost. Start at the beginning and you're looking at something that really takes a lot of effort, primitive stories told in a visual language with which most Americans are unfamiliar. Dredd is always a work in progress, and his stories have leaked out into dozens of other short-run series with other lead characters, set in his universe with rules most familiar to readers who already know Dredd fairly well.

The godawfully titled Lenny Zero and the Perps of Mega-City One collects two of these short series, along with three installments of Dredd that feature a recurring criminal, wrapping up with a fourth memorable character starring in a two-part Dredd tale by Robbie Morrison and Henry Flint. There is some very good stuff in this collection, but as a book, it is really difficult to embrace.

First up are the three stories of Lenny Zero by Andy Diggle and Jock. These are hugely fun little adventures about a clever undercover judge who decides that a life of crime is too darn appealing and sets about taking down the assets of a gangster. They're followed by the first three of four stories for Bato Loco by Gordon Rennie and Simon Coleby. Our "hero" here is a weaselly little con artist and very minor link in various organized crime chains who manages more last-second lucky breaks than anybody deserves.

Unfortunately, while these are both fun little series and, as they are too short to be realistically collected any other way, it's good to see them finding space in an anthology like this, they are also the clear standouts of the material, and the rest of the book just doesn't measure up. Three Dredd episodes featuring the villain Slick Dickens follow these, and it won't take a very trained eye to realize that they all have the same plot, and not a particularly good one. The less said about "Street Fighting Man," with its sentimental underpinning and risible, out-of-character climax, the better, although it's certainly drawn well by Henry Flint.

The problems are just huge, across the board, despite the quality of the ten or so episodes that form the six Lenny Zero and Bato Loco stories. These are good stories, but this presentation doesn't make any sense to me. 160 pages simply isn't enough to really dig into the fun of Mega-City One's criminal culture. Slick Dickens is stunningly out of place among the violence and mayhem, and would have worked better as a single episode coda, suggesting how the criminal class of the city would like things to be. A larger book that incorporated, say, some of the classic Mega-Rackets of the early 1980s, or the completely brilliant "Flood's Thirteen" caper from five or six years ago, would have fit much better thematically.

While 160 pages were not enough to really dig into the material that could have been included, most of the stories here are still entertaining, and they're presented with Rebellion's expected attention to detail and excellent reproduction. Curiously, this book retains the interior design elements of the rest of their extensive line, but neither the front cover nor the spine match anything else from the publisher, an aggravating oversight that will annoy completists, most of whom probably have most of this material in other editions already. Recommended, therefore, for new readers only.

Mean Machine: Real Mean

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 Mean Machine: Real Mean (Rebellion / Simon & Schuster, 2011).



I have previously noted that Rebellion, the British-based publishers of 2000 AD, have teamed up with Simon & Schuster for a line of comic collections aimed at the American market. A small majority of these are revamps of their existing line, but some of the titles are exclusive to the US. Real Mean, an introduction to the immortal, villainous Mean Machine, is one of these. Mean is one of Judge Dredd's recurring antagonists, an incredibly bad-tempered, foul-mouthed and small-minded petty criminal who can take one heck of a lot of abuse before he goes down.

I wrote this about Mean some time back: "One of Dredd's most popular returning foes, Mean Machine Angel was one of the nasty Angel Gang - a crowd of outlaws in the Cursed Earth who made life hell for muties and anyone fool enough t' venture too far afield from Texas City. Pa Angel and his sons Junior, Mean and Link were introduced in a 1980 serial called "The Judge Child," wherein Dredd killed them all. Mean, a giant man with a huge metal claw and a dial on his head which regulates both his temper and the power of his head-butting, was later resurrected by the Judge Child. Despite spending the bulk of the last twenty years in psycho-cubes and undergoing various lobotomies, hypnotherapies and surgical implants to curb his psychotic anti-social ways, Mean Machine remains an ornery, upitty cuss with an intense hatred of Dredd."

Over the years, writer John Wagner has gone back to this well, principally to exploit the character's huge comedic possibilities. More than once, some big-dreaming psychiatrist schemes to build his reputation on curing Mean. Since the character is as volatile as an atomic bomb, extremely wacky hijinks usually ensue.

This collection reprints seven stories of varying length, and is built around the ridiculous and wonderful "Son of Mean," a pretty long story from 1994-95 wherein Mean's previously unmentioned son, a sweet and good-natured boy who loves his dollies, is sent by his criminal mother into the city for some proper learning in the art of being rotten. Mean has no real idea how to go about doing this - he had no real idea how it was that he came up with a son in the first place - but it's a hilarious story which asks the immortal question: Can love triumph over stupidity and extreme violence? The story is painted by Carl Critchlow and the reproduction is a little dark - as seen in the story illustrated by Richard Dolan that opens the book, many of 2000 AD's artists in the early 90s had taken to painting with mud in a misguided effort to hitch a ride on Simon Bisley's coattails - but it's a story that still has me giggling after several rereads.

This is not a complete collection of Mean's adventures - such a beast would be phonebook-sized - but it's a very fun introduction. You get four stories written by Wagner and two, shorter tales by Gordon Rennie. The artists featured are Critchlow and Dolan, along with David Millgate, Steve Dillon, Kev Walker and Paul Marshall. The Rennie and Walker episode, wherein a captive Mean finds himself at the mercy of some even smaller-minded environmentalists, is an absolute treasure. Mean might have actually received some closure and been retired in the pages of Judge Dredd a few years ago. Time will tell, I suppose, but until he's seen again one day, this is a great book to celebrate his over-the-top silliness. Recommended.

Hey, readers! I have reactivated my long-dormant Thrillpowered Thursday blog for a short trial run. This will be the last 2000 AD-related review here while that's going on, and also, content will only appear here once a week during this experiment. I certainly appreciate your reading!

The 86ers

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 86ers (Rebellion, 2009)



Rebellion, publisher of My Favorite Comic(TM), has recently suffered the aggravation of having some books solicited for direct-market distribution by Diamond, only to have the distributor turn around and cancel the orders. One of the books impacted by this was the collected edition of Gordon Rennie's The 86ers, released in May of this year. The book is available, therefore, to proper bookstores in Britain, and easily obtainable online, but not from local comic book shops. The series is a sequel to Rennie's 2002-2005 run on Rogue Trooper. A few months after his last episodes of that series, we met up again with Rafe, a genetically-engineered pilot introduced as one of Rennie's new supporting cast. She's transferred to the 86th Air Support Reconnaissance Squadron and tasked with protecting supply routes to a strategically important mining planet. The series could have been an engaging mix of future war, ancient superweapons and political intrigue, but unfortunately, it never really gelled as a serial.

It's my habit to not sit down and really reread the contents of the Rebellion trades if it's a reprint of material I haven't yet come to in my Thrillpowered Thursday reread, so perhaps I'm being unfair to The 86ers when I say that other than Rafe and the briefly-seen villain Colonel Kovert, a baddie from Rogue Trooper's original run, I have no idea who any of the characters in The 86ers are. There are a lot of them, and a lot of subplots, but after the ten episodes in 2006 (published in three batches over nine months) and the six that came six months later, none of them had made an impact on me at all. Rather than slipping the series quietly under the rug after that, Tharg commissioned six wrap-up episodes earlier this year from Arthur Wyatt, in order to get enough material to warrant publishing a collected edition at all. Rennie, clearly disinterested by this point, had moved on to work for some video game company. I'm sure Wyatt did the best anybody could hope for with what he had to work with, but neither the original run a few years ago, nor a refresher that I gave myself shortly afterwards, nor a quick thumb-through of this edition to confirm what was in it has provided my memory with the name of a single character other than Rafe or Kovert.

In many ways - and this is something we will definitely come back to in Thrillpowered Thursday - The 86ers exemplifies Smith's tenure as 2000 AD editor. He's done so much that is very right during his time in the hot seat, but his biggest failing has been the reversal of the semi-residencies that were common while David Bishop was editor. Ongoing series simply need extended runs of at least 10-13 weeks every year in order to make a consistent impact, particularly if they're going to have many recurring subplots and characters. There are occasional dramatic, exciting moments in The 86ers, and the art, initially by Karl Richardson before PJ Holden takes over, is quite good throughout, but there's too much talking between characters who take forever to do anything.

As a collected edition, The 86ers is nevertheless an impressive one. Released just a few weeks after it concluded in the weekly, the book contains all 22 episodes, along with the single installment of Rogue Trooper that introduced Rafe, some of the series' original covers and sketchbook art from Richardson and Holden. It's a truly fine collection of a sadly inessential series.

Rogue Trooper and Sha

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. This time, reviews, of sorts, of Rogue Trooper: Realpolitik (Rebellion, 2007) and Sha (Heavy Metal, 2008).



Rogue Trooper is a perennial 2000 AD franchise featuring a blue-skinned clone soldier, gone AWOL to track down a traitor and wandering a chemically-wasted future landscape. The character was dusted off for a new series of adventures by Gordon Rennie to tie in to Rebellion's spiffy video game in 2005. Rennie wrote most of the episodes in this book, with a final three-parter tackled by Ian Edginton and Steve Pugh. Overall, they are not bad, and the structured, overarching plot is more engaging than the patchy, episodic nature of the character's 1980s series. There are a couple of stumbles, mainly built around a ponderous "they were soldiers and they died heroes and war is hard" two-parter that reads like Garth Ennis-lite, but there are some great new characters devised for the run, and some great black and white artwork from contributors like PJ Holden and Dylan Teague. Recommended.



I've always been curious about the comics that Pat Mills writes for European publishers. If I understand correctly, many of these appear as annual 48-page serialized editions in France, and are later translated back to English to run in the pages of Heavy Metal.

Sha orginally appeared in France as three books from 1997-99 and tells the story of a police officer in the ugly, dystopian future city of New Eden trying to solve the horrific murders of some corporate overlords. These "men" are actually demonically possessed avatars of constantly-reincarnating beings who, centuries before, had put a witch to the stake, and she called upon a spirit of vengeance called Sha to avenge her death...

I don't want to call it Mills by the numbers, but this certainly follows familiar patterns from Mills' other work in the 1990s. Especially in the first storyline, the way the villains emphasize their fetish for technology and firepower only to be thwarted with minimal effort by Sha's use of bizarre magic is very reminiscent of his early '90s series Finn. The crusading, repugnant Christians remind me of Torquemada and his crew from Nemesis the Warlock, as does the use of constantly-reincarnated lives. And there is much, much more one could see.

It's certainly not bad, and Oliver Ledroit's glorious depiction of such a horrible future will keep any reader's attention. Yet there's much here which, to my overcooked, over-analytical eye, looks a lot like work I've read before and follows a very similar template, with little variety in emphasis or tone. Recommended for Mills devotees.

(Originally posted September 24, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Solar Wind and Pogo

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. Today: reviews of The Bumper Book of Solar Wind vol. 2 (Omnivistascope/Lulu, 2008) and Phi Beta Pogo (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1989).



I told you about the first collection of Solar Wind last month, and happily the second bumper book is almost as good as the first one. If you're just breezing through, however, this is a small press tribute to old British newspaper comics, with work from a who's who of the scene's regulars - Paul Scott, Al Ewing, Leigh Shepherd, PJ Holden, Mike Molcher, even old pro Gordon Rennie gets his licks in with a delightful story called El-Alamein Anderson.

So the second book starts with the final three issues of Solar Wind. The first one is another fake merger issue, this time with Sporto: The Comic About Sports, and it's fantastic. Unfortunately, it leads with by far the best strip, the riotous Murderdrome by Ewing and Simon Penter - "the only way to score a goal is with the severed head of an opposing player!" - and the other, wonderful strips just can't keep up with those four pages.

The last two Solar Winds admittedly see a malaise creeping in. Issue 7's celebration of the photo strips that the 1980s Eagle popularized is cute for a time, but it does feel a little long-winded, and the final issue has gags a-plenty, but doesn't seem sure where it should end. Next up is Big War Comic, which skewers Battle Picture Weekly, Warlord, Commando and just nails everything in 32 delicious parody-filled pages, ending with Lord Charley's War by Wyatt and Chris Askham (the team behind the brilliant Zoe Biddle, Wheelchair Ballerina), which, mercifully, Pat Mills was said to have a sense of humor about.

Then there's the two issues of Sunny for Girls, with more ballerinas, and horses, and spunky young public schoolgirls, and the time-travelling Enid Foulbroom, Puritan Hunter by Paul Glasswell and PJ Holden. This is great stuff - when are we seeing those "Best of Misty" volumes, Titan?! At any rate, despite some evident overwork and exasperation on the part of Paul Scott in assembling these contributor-packed tomes, there are still buckets of fantastic gags, and, as I mentioned before, they're very highly recommended, especially at less than eleven bucks! So click the link and get your copy from Lulu!

Read more about the Omnivistascope small press world, from which Solar Wind emerged, at their web site!



Fantagraphics has the rights to Walt Kelly's Pogo and has been promising new editions, but apparent problems in securing complete, best-quality images of the earliest strips has meant they've held off on soliciting the new series, and so people who'd like to read old Pogo have to make do with old, scattershot editions.

Case in point: this is a very odd little collection I found a couple of months ago at the Great Escape in Louisville. It was apparently assembled by the people behind the fanzine Okeefenokee Star, and its principal draw is a complete set of 1953 Pogo dailies. There's some great stuff here, and I laughed out loud several times watching our heroes dealing with interloping ne'er-do-wells like Simple J. Malarkey and Mole MacCarony inflicting the insanity of the outside world on them. Whether involving themselves in schemes to sell dirt - you can't get good results from cleaning powder without dirt, after all - or starting colleges with faculty and sports teams but no students, each storyline is absolutely wonderful, full of puns, wordplay and an enormous cast of engaging, lovable characters. And while Sarcophagus MacAbre isn't exactly lovable, he has the best name ever.

But more than the '53 strips, this includes a massive pile of supplemental material, including an essay by Bill Watterson and interviews about Kelly with his peers Milt Canniff and Ward Kimball. There's a brief look into the three years of Pogo strips produced after Kelly's death, and a festival held down in Waycross. I don't know that the presentation of all this background material is really essential, but it's enlightening, and it will certainly make do until Fantagraphics gets around to the period in their volumes.

This book's long out of print, but I found a copy for cover price at Mile High Comics. Click the link in the cover image and give it a shot!

(Originally posted June 17, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Terrifying Horror Edition, with Caballistics Inc. and the Corpse Delivery Service

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



Oddly, I didn't enjoy this as much as I was planning to - Gordon Rennie really works out some long-running, slow burn subplots and what seems like it's taking forever when published in sporadic weekly episodes really does satisfy even more when compiled. But while these stories of an occult investigation team in present-day Britain are entertaining, the book is sorely lacking a "story so far" catchup. For example, the book begins with an episode in which an Israeli special forces team shows up to execute a member of Caballistics Inc. for an old war crime, but all of that backstory, much of which I'd forgotten, was explained in the first volume, 2006's Going Underground. People who already enjoy this series will probably really like this book, but a little more work might have been done to make this collected edition more palatable to new readers. Recommended for fans of Hellboy and Necronauts, with hopes for a little more backstory included on new or future editions to make each book stand out a little better.




The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service appears monthly in the Japanese anthology Shonen Ace and is written by Eiji Otsuka and drawn by Housui Yamazaki, the creator of the occult thriller Mail. Each of these collected editions - there are six now, from Dark Horse - compiles four episodes of the series, in which five recent college graduates, each with some psychic power, form a company to help the deceased fulfill their final wishes. This usually has them stumbling onto unsolved murders or old conspiracies, and despite a tendency towards villain-of-the-week syndrome, it's done with a good deal of style and wit, in equal measures humorous and creepy. I don't feel like I've gotten to know any of the individual characters yet, though. Recommended.

(Originally posted March 21, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Storming Heaven and Box Office Poison

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



This is a collection of most of Frazer Irving's work for 2000 AD, including one Shaun of the Dead strip which actually appeared in a promotional comic. Not included are the long form stuff which has already been compiled, such as Necronauts, or the guest contributions to ongoing series. What is included certainly looks brilliant but is occasionally frustrating to read. John Smith's A Love Like Blood and Gordon Rennie's Storming Heaven are both too short to do justice to their high-concept plots, and oddly it's relative newcomer Simon Spurrier whose 30-page From Grace comes off best in this book, a fascinating little study of real evil borne of circumstance which reminded me of Gregory Maguire's Wicked, oddly enough. Recommended with reservations.



It took me forever, and a deeply discounted copy of Tricked, to try Alex Robinson. I should have sampled him earlier. He has a brilliant ear for dialogue, and in Box Office Poison, his first long-form story, he creates several incredibly vibrant, wonderful characters. I couldn't wait to find out what would happen to them. The story is quite sprawling at 600 pages, but generally it is about a number of post-graduates slowly making their way through life in New York City... one of them, Ed, takes a job assisting an aging cartoonist from comics' Golden Age who has been shafted by the company where he created a lucrative comic and film franchise. Is there a way for the old-timer to get the justice he deserves? This is threaded through a number of equally strong plots about noisy neighbors, ice skating, nowhere jobs, and I realize that sounds a little banal, but it's done with such style and such wonderful characters that you can't put this book down. Highly recommended.

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