Judge Dredd: The XXX Files

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 Judge Dredd: The XXX Files (Rebellion / Simon & Schuster, 2014).


I wasn't completely sure I believed that a book like this would work, or read well. As part of their co-publishing strategy with Simon & Schuster, 2000 AD's publisher has assembled a really strange collection of Judge Dredd episodes. They basically identified either every story with a bare butt or breasts in it, along with a few others that deal with sex in the 22nd Century, and gave them this very fun and very neat presentation. It's a very nice and expansive 224 pages, and it doesn't drag in quite the way that I thought it might.

By that I mean, sure, there have been longer collections of Dredd before, but they're either linked by continuity, in which you get a long run of episodes from the same time period, or by artist, where you've still got a strong visual link. This book is just barely linked by anything. It has episodes from here and there across a quarter century stretch, with supporting players who were major points of interest for a few years making a single, somewhat strange appearance outside of their context.

The obvious example here is Judge Jura Edgar, the sinister head of Mega-City One's "Public Surveillance Unit," which turned out to be an ominous prediction of our own NSA. Edgar shows up in the triumphantly cool noir story "Sleaze," which was originally published during a curious time in 2000 AD's sister book Judge Dredd Megazine's life. Fleetway, then the publisher, was set to cancel that title for low sales in the wake of that boom that they expected in '95 and the movie with Sylvester Stallone that tanked. In a desperate move to cut costs and make it profitable, for a couple of years, there was only a single, 17-page Dredd episode in each issue, and reprints of "mature readers" comics, principally Vertigo's Preacher, bulking it up. So on the one hand, the creators - this one's written by John Wagner and painted by John Burns - had more freedom to explore darker and more mature stories, and on the other, there was a much greater public interest in government conspiracies at that time. Most of this book is silly, fun, and occasionally a little bawdy, but "Sleaze" is about the judges holding onto evidence of corruption and vice in order to keep the citizen councils under their thumbs. It really sticks out, and I really love that. It should remind readers that Judge Dredd is not a series that can be pigeonholed as an action strip or a comedy or a parody or a procedural. It evolves and changes all the time.

As for most of the book, it's very silly and fun. Most of it is written by Wagner, who has a ball dropping Dredd into situations where human lust and foolishness leads them to make bad decisions. The first three episodes are the three installments of "Love Story," drawn by Ian Gibson and published over a twenty-year stretch. Bella Bagley is an unfortunate, mentally ill woman who believes that Dredd is her boyfriend. Her desperation leads her into becoming increasingly unhinged and violent. I got the feeling that the brilliantly talented Gibson really loved working on these stories and gave them far more than his usual level of great detail, to the point that when Bella meets her inevitable end, he couldn't bear to draw the details of the bullet wounds.

Lots of other really terrific artists contribute to the book. Apart from Gibson and Burns, who does sterling work, Carlos Ezquerra, Greg Staples, Cliff Robinson, and Vince Locke are all here and they all have great stories. Ezquerra's "The Girlfriend" has always been a favorite, and Gibson gets to draw the blazes out of a hilarious story where Dredd is arresting people behind the scenes of a TV dating game. Lots of the stories here are really funny. Sex tends to be. That's the right attitude. I'd say recommended for everybody, but only if you're understanding that boys will be boys, and some of them are going to want to rush their new acquisition upstairs as soon as they get home. For older readers, then.

A PDF of this book was 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.

Nikolai Dante: Sympathy for the Devil

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 Nikolai Dante: Sympathy for the Devil (volume 11, Rebellion, 2012).


A few people, not least a couple of the good people employed by 2000 AD's publisher, Rebellion, have expressed a little disappointment that the conclusion of Nikolai Dante after fifteen years did not attract a little more comment from the comic-book-world media. Rereading his final adventures, collected here in the eleventh and last volume in the series, I can't honestly claim to be surprised myself. The American-led funnybook press is built around the world of endless continuity. The notion of a story ending is not just anathema to most of their writers; they don't quite understand what it means for a "continuing" character to reach the end of his journey.

As finales go, not very many come grander than this. Over the course of the previous installments, compiled in Book Ten, we learned that the Romanov patriarch, Dimitri, was still alive, very active, very powerful, and ideally poised to take advantage of the power vacuum at the heart of far-future Russia. As Book Eleven opens, Nikolai and his allies are ready to strike back, rescue Jena Romanov, and finally bring some conclusion to a war-weary world. But things get off to a terrible start when one of the allies pulls a not-entirely-unexpected betrayal and our hero is captured.

The amazing thing about this book is that by this time, Robbie Morrison's story should by rights have been at least a little patience-exhausting, with two twist endings, if not more, too many. As the series continued, it built up a gigantic cast of recurring players, and while its reputation among fans and readers was almost always a good one, it did get occasional teasing for suggesting that quite a few of these characters were dead only to have them resurface, often switching sides. One of the really great twists comes when one of the principal villains, Vladimir, is shown here to escape captivity. There's a sense of "you have got to be kidding; our heroes have to beat him and his loyal forces again?", but what actually happens is wildly unpredictable.

The entire series is completely terrific, of course, but I really enjoyed the pacing and setup of the final stories. The major climax to all of the action comes about two-thirds of the way through this book, leaving plenty of space to say farewells to the characters who made it so far. Katarina Dante and Viktor Romanov each get just about the best send-offs of anybody in the comic medium, and the final fate of the recurring cowards Flintlock and Spatchcock is terrific fun. I love the balancing act of humor and knife-in-your-heart tragedy in these stories, with moments that are completely unforgettable.

Dante was co-created by Morrison and artist Simon Fraser, who handles most of the artwork in this collection. John Burns, who became a principal artistic collaborator as the series continued, got to make his farewells in the six episodes that precede the six-part finale. Both artists are on the top of their game and their work is wonderful throughout. Nikolai Dante has been one of my favorite comic characters since his debut in 1997, and while I will certainly miss the guy, I am very pleased that this epic can honestly be said to have a beginning, middle, and, that rarest of things in the comic world, an end. Highest recommendation.

Nikolai Dante: Hero of the Revolution

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 Nikolai Dante: Hero of the Revolution (volume 10) (Rebellion, 2011).

I'm sitting down to write this little feature about seven days before Robbie Morrison's final Nikolai Dante story, believed to be an eight-parter, begins in 2000 AD. It has been a blast. There has not been any other comic adventure, at all, to provide such an incredibly fun and long roller coaster of a ride in the last fifteen years.

With the tenth and penultimate collection of the series here, I can't think of a better example of a roller coaster. This book starts with the story of Dante leading his army of thieves and whores against Tsar Vladimir, and this epic, painted by John Burns, takes up about half the book. There are fatalities and losses along the way. Lauren's death is one of the few in the series that's really telegraphed ahead of time, as I don't believe that there was room for both her and Jena in the same narrative. Nevertheless, it's still a kick in the head when it happens.

When these episodes were originally published across 2010, everybody reading them believed that they were the last great war story, and that all that would be left, after the surrender of Vladimir, were loose ends and final farewells. "Heroes Be Damned," the next story, begins with the wedding of Dante's brother Viktor and the promise of a happily-ever-after ending for Dante and Jena. There's a school of thought that the series could have ended right there, sort of like Phoebe from Friends reporting how her mother would turn off Old Yeller before he tries to bite the younger brother. Because that episode is beautiful and upbeat, but just a few pages later, one of those weird loose ends turns out to be a genuinely stunning game-changer. Nikolai Dante had never shied away from killing off its supporting cast - some of us still raise a glass to Andreas - but what happens to Dante and his allies at the trial of Vladimir is just thunderous. You remember how, last year in Doctor Who, Alex Kingston was talking about how the Doctor would rise higher than ever before and then fall so far, and then we scratched our heads as he neither rose particularly high nor fell all that far either? That's not what happens in "Heroes Be Damned."

This is capped by the hallucinogenic masterpiece "A Farewell to Arms," drawn by Simon Fraser, in which a valued supporting character gives Dante a last goodbye, and it is right up there with all the very best "remember when" moments of great deaths in comics. It probably has very nearly the same impact as Tonantzín Villaseñor's end in Human Diastrophism, or at least I think that it might. An acquaintance of mine, who's really a lovely person, is still due something of a brutal ass-kicking for spoiling it for me, should I ever make it to England again, so I'll never know.

The sense of desperation and resolve at the end of this book is just amazing. It's like Morrison and his artists asked, "You know all the hell that Dante went through in this series to beat Vladimir? Well, now he has to go through all that hell again, but worse, and with far fewer resources." The last chunk of the book, featuring 2010's final episodes, puts the pieces in place for the grand finale. 2011 saw only a single short, six-week run of the series - that's how The Love Bunglers was able to walk away with everybody's vote for best comic of last year, 'cause there wasn't enough Dante - but the first four months of 2012 were just a wild and amazing seat-of-your-pants / depths-of-despair triumph.

Only six or eight more weeks of this to go. I am going to miss this series when it ends like you just don't know. Hot damn alive, is this ever recommended; what in creation are you waiting for?

I'll write again about the final run of Dante episodes later in the summer, after the next batch of Thrillpowered Thursday blogs wraps up. That'll give everybody time to buy some vodka and join me for a celebratory toast, okay?

Angel Zero

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 Angel Zero (published in 2000 AD, Rebellion, 2011).



Since I have been known, within the past year, to point a finger and give 35 year-old boys' comic 2000 AD a tut-tutting about its lack of strong female leads, I should have the courtesy to point out that the anthology did feature something new along those lines in the last quarter of 2011. It was a thirteen-week serial called Angel Zero, written by Nigel Long, a fellow who first started offering scripts in the early '90s under his pseudonym "Kek-W" but who has been mostly absent from the comic field for years, and painted by longtime mainstay John Burns.

It's flawed, but a definite step in the right direction. The lead character is Maggie Roth, a woman who's trying to live a simple life as a welder and artisan in a sparsely-populated frontier town on some planet in the future. She's plagued by bad dreams, thanks to having a battle computer that she thought had been removed from her spine still sending out signals. The organization that she left wants her back for testing, as, while the "angel" tech has been upgraded and improved in her absence, something about how Maggie was able to escape demands further study. After a comparatively slow-paced opening episode to set the tone, this quickly becomes a very fast-paced thriller.

I was hoping for something a little less conventional from Long, who often feels like he's reining in some more remarkably wild and outre influences when he's working on material for 2000 AD. As the image above indicates, this does turn out to be a story that pits a superpowered character against a lot of heavily-armed thugs, and I was reminded of the long subplot in TV's Firefly about River Tam and the corporation - slash - government from which she was running. It all gets rushed and frantic towards the end, in part because, curiously, and worryingly, the page count is an unusually low four pages per episode. We certainly hope that doesn't become a regular fact.

There have been exceptions, but the vast majority of 2000 AD's female leads have either been spinoffs from male-led features, or members of an ensemble cast. (Agent Mariah Kiss from last year's Indigo Prime is a noteworthy example of the latter.) It was very agreeable reading something that broke the mold, and did so with panache. The climax never really rises to the promise of an incident about a third of the way through, where Maggie, desperate, goes in for some very risky surgery to make damn sure that every trace of the computer is removed, but as action melodramas go, this was satisfying and engaging, and recommended.

(The series ran in 2000 AD issues 1751-1763 last year. Clicking the image takes you to the digital download site, Clickwheel, where readers may purchase the issues individually. There is, at this time, no capacity to purchase series by-the-story.)

The Bendatti Vendetta

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 Bendatti Vendetta (Rebellion, 2011).



I must admit that I was very surprised to see a complete collected edition of The Bendatti Vendetta, a series that first appeared in the pages of Judge Dredd Megazine about a decade ago. It's not very long - 12 episodes, comprising three stories, over just 96 pages - but with its creators, Robbie Morrison and John Burns, quite popular from their work on other properties, notably Nikolai Dante, a collection has a hook upon which to hang a little publicity.

While many of Morrison's scripts emphasize character, this is a neat exercise in going plot-first and seeing whether readers will wish to follow. The first episode has all the appearance of the most exciting pre-credits sequences of any action film from the seventies. We don't know who the characters are, but some people have slipped into some mob boss's party and caused almighty havoc, with fisticuffs and bullets flying every which way.

I say this is perfectly suited for John Burns because I perceive him, rightly or wrongly, as an artist most comfortable in the modern age. No matter how well he paints the adventures of Judge Dredd or Nikolai Dante, something about his work on those strips never completely gels for me, particularly in conveying a sense of place. His Mega-City One is rarely more than dark alleyways, and his future Russia is often just bombed-out war zones. But The Bendatti Vendetta is clearly set in the humdrum of our world, and when Burns brings this to life, it's vastly more vivid and exciting. Well, it's less our world than our recent history - it doesn't appear that Burns has updated his reference material in many years, but since the violent iconography within the script screams "seventies action film," it doesn't matter, he's still exactly right for the artwork. Put another way, I keep expecting Ian Hendry and Britt Ekland to make supporting appearances.

We never learn very much about them, despite scenes and sequences set in their headquarters, but the Bendatti are sort of a reverse Mafia, handling personal cases of vengeance and retribution. Each of the stories is incredibly satisfying, but despite the inclusion of the full series, it still feels incomplete, like these tales were setting up something involved and intricate that never came. Or perhaps it just hasn't come yet. Who knows, maybe with Nikolai Dante coming to an end in early 2012, there will be a chance for Morrison and Burns to return to this and give it the teeth it seemed like it really wanted to show. Recommended.

Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 16

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 Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files Volume 16 (Rebellion, 2010).



The last time that I reviewed a Judge Dredd Case File, I said that we were rapidly approaching the point where recommending these comics isn't just a given anymore. These days, Judge Dredd is terrific, even better than it was in its celebrated mid-80s heyday. The recently-completed "Tour of Duty" storyline makes a strong case for being the best Dredd serial ever, and a highlight of any comic serial over the last decade. But in 1991-92, Dredd was a surly teenager of a comic, all mouth and no soul.

Writer Garth Ennis, responsible for the bulk of the stories here, ran out of ideas very quickly during his tenure on the title. The book is incredibly tedious, with overlong chapters of tough-guy nonsense going nowhere fast. Sadly, a lot of the fault is down to artist Simon Coleby, who we must agree has developed amazingly and has, over the last few years, contributed several great-looking pages to the various series that run in the weekly 2000 AD anthology. In 1991-92, however, his work was awkward, blocky, stilted and he was assigned to all of Ennis's worst stories. "The Flabfighters," "A Clockwork Pineapple," "School Bully" and the risible "Koole Killers," a dull one-parter bloated to an agonizing three, would have been awful stories in anybody's hands, but giving them to Coleby was a facepalm of a mistake.

"Justice One" is the longest Ennis story in the book. Painted in various shades of brown mud by Peter Doherty, another talent who has improved tremendously over the years, this murder-in-space mini-epic promises on the opening page that what will happen onboard Justice Department's flagship starliner will be unimaginable. It isn't. After a promising first episode, this story reveals itself as just another "judges in love and trying to flee" mess, the sort of thing John Wagner was doing in his sleep six years previously, albeit with a laughably absurd getaway plan.

It's not all this awful, but enough of it is. Ennis did contribute a couple of amusing one-offs before mediocrity completely overwhelmed him. There's a clever Twin Peaks parody, and a Cliff Robinson-illustrated story about the first guy that Dredd ever arrested making an unwelcome comeback to say hello closes his portion of the book. You can occasionally see Ennis's love of the character shine through, but weekly deadlines on this strip just weren't for him. But at least he liked Dredd. What's coming up when we hit the 1993-95 run really will be tough to get through.

While Ennis was the main writer on the weekly comic, Alan Grant took over writing duties on the strip in the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine. This book collects another clutch of ten installments. Some of these episodes are pretty good, but it really looks like somebody was saving money by just letting anybody draw it. "Raptaur" is a long epic that could have been a good read - there's actually a funny little bit about an eloping couple on gliders - but the artwork by Dean Ormston is just horrible. Same with a one-off drawn by Charlie Adlard - another who'd improve massively over time - and one drawn by American artist Sam Kieth in, apparently, twenty minutes. The policy of putting untried artists on Dredd really was one of the editorial team's worst blunders. Occasionally, some good pages by Robinson, Colin MacNeil or John Burns make it through, but for the most part this is an ugly, ugly book.

Well, that's not completely true. The interiors are mostly garish and undercooked, but the book itself is another example of Rebellion's very classy work with reprints, which puts damn near everybody else in the field to shame. In all, it collects fifty episodes in color on nice paper. The reproduction is very good and if you must have ten months' worth of Dredd from this period, it might as well be in a package that looks as good as this. Recommended for completists, but not with any real enthusiasm.

Nikolai Dante: Amerika

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 Nikolai Dante: Amerika (volume nine) (Rebellion, 2009).



When you publish as many fantastic comics as the 2000 AD group of titles have, it must be a real bear figuring out reprint plans. Just balancing the budget of keeping proven classics in print while collecting the new hits of the comic's current platinum age for new readers must be a bear on its own, and I'm sure the constant demands of yokels like me and the rest of the fans for personal favorites to make it to bookshelves is a considerable distraction. But I'll tell you, the best decision that anybody in charge of collected editions at 2000 AD ever made was to keep up with Nikolai Dante, the best comic of the last decade.

"Amerika," the ninth book in the soon-to-be-concluding series, collects the 27 episodes that appeared in 2008 and 2009. It was published just about a year ago and very neatly formed a nice recap before the series resumed this past January. Since then, a couple of dozen further episodes have run, and presumably these will all either be collected in a tenth book next spring before the final run of episodes, or else the tenth book will be a final, oversized volume wrapping up the series? The smart money's on Nikolai Dante concluding in 2011; it's just a question of how many episodes it will take to get to the end.

So around half of this book is taken up with the titular story, in which Dante, still working as "the sword of the tsar," is sent to New York to put down the smack on some uprising among the populace there. It turns out that our planet's alien enemy, the often-overlooked White Army, has been using the region as a bridgehead in their plans for conquest. Without giving too much away, the story ends with Dante leaving Vladimir the Conqueror and raising up that army of thieves and whores that he spent the eighth book secretly assembling, setting the stage for his big guerrilla war to begin.

Everything in here is just flatly amazing. The story is by Robbie Morrison, and he's just got this story twisting and turning into surprising and wild directions every time you blink. Artwork duties are shared between Simon Fraser and John Burns, with a special four-part contribution by Paul Marshall focusing on Nikolai's dangerous half-sister Lulu. Excellent work all around, especially by Fraser, who turns the climax of the main story from a stunner into something unforgettable, but everybody is bringing their best in these stories. If you've not read Dante before, then your library is nowhere close to complete. All nine books are highly recommended.

Nikolai Dante: The Beast of Rudinshtein

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 Nikolai Dante: The Beast of Rudinshtein (volume 8) (Rebellion, 2009).



The eighth Nikolai Dante collection was released a few months ago. This compiles all of the episodes that originally appeared in 2000 AD # 1518-1580 - 31 in total, all written by Robbie Morrison, with art by Simon Fraser and John Burns.

Maybe the old reviewing circuits are needing a little juice, because I can't come up with much better of a reason for anyone to own this other than "it's freaking Nikolai Dante, people, come on!" By this stage of the series, Dante is working as Tsar Vladimir's principal envoy and blunt instrument. We catch up with several cast members from previous installments, seeing what terrorism Dante's half-sister Lulu has been committing in the name of the Romanovs, crossing paths with his old criminal sparring partner the Countessa de Winter, and making a swath of new enemies while quietly working out some scheme of his own to get back at the tsar.

This set of episodes from what I term the fourth phase of the Dante epic (it is entering its fifth and probably final stage in current installments) is completely terrific. I think there are a few episodes where John Burns' painting is not as detailed as would be preferred, but his work on "The Tsar's Daughter," which looks into the strange death of Jena Makarov's mother many years previously, is truly remarkable. Simon Fraser is as fantastic as ever. He's teamed with colorist Gary Caldwell and the "Thieves' World" story, in particular, is vibrant and exciting. With the expected excellent reproduction from Rebellion, nice binding, gorgeous paper and matte cover, it's a far better-looking collection than practically anybody else in the industry. One of the best comics of the last decade in a package this gorgeous? Surely everybody is reading this, right?

(Excerpted from Thrillpowered Thursday.)

New 2000 AD Books

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 Button Man: The Confession of Harry Exton, Nikolai Dante: Sword of the Tsar and Stickleback: England's Glory (all Rebellion, 2008).



Rebellion's been continuing a program of about two reprint collections a month. I buy almost all of them, and these are some of the latest ones. The second Button Man book reprints the second lengthy story of this sporadically-published tale by John Wagner and Arthur Ranson. It first appeared over four months in 1994, and the third wouldn't appear until 2001. In it, the mercenary Harry Exton, whom we thought dead at the end of his first adventure, wakes up in upstate New York, having been rescued and conscripted by a wealthy benefactor to serve as his new hired gun. Genuinely thrilling and full of sharp, unexpected plot twists, I still think the first two Button Man stories will make one hell of a great movie one day.

The seventh Nikolai Dante book features several shorter adventures, 26 episodes in all, published sporadically over an eighteen month run from 2005-06. It wraps up the long run which had Dante, the most wanted man on Earth, hiding out with his mother, the most notorious pirate queen of the Pacific, but there, as always, working both sides of a con. The downside to this book is that almost all of it features John Burns on art chores. Burns is a superb artist, but I simply don't enjoy his work on Dante. The character's co-creator Simon Fraser returns for the final storyline, which sees Dante pulled out of what looks certain to be the worst scrape he's ever been in and dumped in one that's even worse - a new job in the tsar's employ - and sets up a pile of new subplots and problems that are driving the strip in its current run in 2000 AD. It's very good, but Dante is at his best when he's dealing with ugly politics in the Russian court, and there's not quite as much of that in this book as I'd prefer.

I think most American readers have not yet heard of Stickleback, and, good Lord, are you ever missing out. The brainchild of Ian Edginton and D'Israeli, this misshapen, vulgar gentleman with the hunchback, hideously deformed and visible spine and long nose is the Pope of Crime in Victorian London, a place beset by Lovecraftian nightmares, secret societies, ancient evils, Chinese dragons and undead cowboys. He's appeared so far in two series, starting in 2007. These are compiled here along with supplemental material from D'Israeli's sketchbook, and if there was any justice in the world, I could take myself an apple to work in a Stickleback lunchbox. To be fair, I was pleased but not blown away by the first series when it initially ran; the creators made the unusual decision to frame Stickleback and his world through the eyes of his antagonist, Detective Inspector Valentine Bey, and several episodes passed with only the briefest glimpse of the villain. But it gels perfectly in the end, and the second series is just thunderously weird and wonderful, with a new, left-field jawdropper every five pages or so, as Stickleback and his crew match wits with Wild Bill Hickock and his travelling freakshow. Absolutely essential stuff - now when the heck do we get a third series, Tharg?

(Originally posted November 10, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Love and Look-In

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 Amor y Cohetes (Fantagraphics, 2008) and The Best of Look-In: The Seventies (Prion, 2007).



Having assembled all of the Hernandez Brothers' Palomar and Locas stories from the first fifty issues of Love & Rockets across six unmissable volumes, Fantagraphics has most recently compiled all (or at least most) of the remaining odds and ends from that comic into a big anthology volume called Amor y Cohetes.

I think it would be simple and repetitive to cough up a list of what all's in this book because content rundowns are available just about everywhere you look. In fact, you can follow the Amazon link in the image for two, and there you'll find an comparison I certainly enjoy. It's like a B-sides and rarities collection, the Hernandez version of Dead Letter Office. Some of these comics are amazingly self-indulgent and showy, some are very clever, and at least one - Mario's "Somewhere in the Tropics" - is completely stunning.

There's also this demented, stream-of-consciousness installment called "Hernandez Satyricon," in which Gilbert uses Jaime's "Locas" characters in a rambling, nutball, nightmarish sci-fi tale. At one point, all of the characters swap genders, allowing Gilbert to ever-so-briefly give us Hopey & Maggie yaoi. Well now. Recommended for mature readers.



I first learned of this collection shortly after I posted my Reprint This! feature on Sapphire & Steel. Look-In was a long-running magazine for teens and preteens in Britain, one that mixed comic strip action with features on the week's TV offerings and the current flash-in-the pan pop fad. I have a few issues, and so I certainly enjoyed Lew Stringer's recent look back at the title.

The thing about the seventies is that you still aren't sure elements of them ever really happened. This compilation book finds room for an article about a new series of interview LPs, with the host of some yoof-teevee program interviewing the likes of Gary Glitter and the Sweet for a monthly record release. And then there's Flintlock. The only reason anybody ever heard of Flintlock, a boy band which followed the Bay City Rollers' playbook and troubled the top 30 exactly once, is that their drummer was one of The Tomorrow People. And yet they're all over this book, with concert reports and a comic adventure. Somehow the editors also found room for a two-page feature on Our Kid, who don't even have the Tomorrow People connection. Roxy Music only gets a half-page.

Anyway, the comics of course reprint a Tomorrow People story, along with multi-part adventures of Black Beauty, The Bionic Woman and Sapphire & Steel. Artists on these stories are John Burns, Mike Noble, John Bolton and Arthur Ranson. There are other comics as well, including generally unfunny humor strips based on Man About the House and Benny Hill and a lightweight ABBA biography which reads as even more woeful in the wake of the Gilbert Hernandez bio of Frida Kahlo in Amor y Cohetes.

And it's full of old ads, for Doctor Who Weetabix (some sort of British breakfast cereal, I think) and Six Million Dollar Man dolls. I think this book is incredibly fun and proved to be a very silly read, particularly when some award ceremony from 1977 gives The Tomorrow People a "best drama" nod, and The New Avengers "best family programme." (Shurely shome mishtake!) That said, I kind of think you need to have been born prior to 1980 to find much charm in this.

And we're still waiting for proper compilations of all the comics, without interruptions by articles on the thrilling new hobby of badge collecting. Make it so, Prion!

(Originally posted September 12, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Constantine, Blaise and Rao

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 Hellblazer: Tainted Love (DC/Vertigo, 1998), Modesty Blaise: Yellowstone Booty (Titan, 2008) and Sand Land (Viz, 2004).



In many of DC's contemporary collected editions, a little work on the part of some editors is sorely missed. This one, assembled before their line got so slapdash, is reader-friendly to the point of including an introduction, explaining recent events in the life of John Constantine, the powerful English mystic and con man, who, in these six stories by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, has hit rock bottom after his girlfriend Kit has left him. Constantine is easy prey for the vampires and demons who've got a grudge when he's homeless and drunk. I'm not sure that this is in any way a good introduction to the character - for Ennis-written Hellblazer, you want Dangerous Habits or Damnation's Flame, I think - but it feels like some effort and love went into this volume. The story about Kit going home to her sister in Northern Ireland is a truly beautiful piece of writing, glowing with a love of family and community. Recommended for mature readers familiar with the character.



Now I'm certain that all of you reading this have taken my advice and started reading Modesty Blaise, right? Good. Well, since there's very little continuity in the series, you can probably give this one a miss until later on. Oh, it isn't bad, don't get me wrong, but the second story, in which Peter O'Donnell gives a little too much credence to the "mystic powers of the martial arts" malarkey, brings an otherwise thrilling story of an old enemy springing a trap in Cambodia to such a damp climax that you can't help but feel a little cheated. Anyway, this reprints another 14 months of the strip, from 1978-79 and gives you the last two stories illustrated by Enric Romero before he took a hiatus to draw Axa, and the first one handled by John Burns, better known for his work painting Judge Dredd and Nikolai Dante. If you like Burns's painted art, you will really like his linework, which I find even more agreeable. Recommended for readers pretty familiar with the character.



Very, very fun stuff! Akira Toriyama is best known around the Hipster Pad for Dr. Slump, but he's best known everywhere else for Dragon Ball, a strip so phenomenally successful in Japan that it elevated Toriyama to the very rare position of being able to do whatever the heck he wants in comics and not have to sign long-term contracts to keep producing stuff every week in order to also sell the things his heart's really in. So from what I gather, he sold Shonen Jump the concept as a 14-week, fast-paced serial with a definite beginning and end. While I'm certain the magazine would prefer a 14-year Toriyama strip which they could then turn into a huge line of books, they ran the series in the summer of 2000. It's about a retired general in an arid wasteland ruled by a fat, corrupt king who asks a pair of wisecracking demons to help him find a fabled water source. The three of them steal a tank and make their way south while the military and some bizarre criminals try to stop them.

You can tell there's the background here for something that could have run a lot longer, but Toriyama resisted the opportunity for the long-winded "power-up" fights that made Dragon Ball so agonizing, and just kept to the meat of his story. It's lean, fast-paced and very funny, with goofball characters and unexpected comic twists, suggesting what Dragon Ball might have been had the pressure and the money not been so great as to keep him and his studio working on it so long past its sell-by date.

Wikipedia suggests that Sand Land has been the last comic project for Toriyama in some time, and the only one of his short post-Dragon Ball series to be collected in English, though I'm optimistic we'll see the mid-90s Dr. Slump Returns, But Only for a Little While after Viz finishes that series' original run. I understand he's wealthy enough to not have to draw comics anymore, but damn, he's too talented to stay retired, don't you think? Recommended!

(Originally posted July 04, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

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.)