Tag Archives: graphic novel

A King Comes Riding and Other Stories

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Chronicles of Kull: A King Comes Riding and Other Stories [Amazon, Abebooks, Publisher, Local Library] by Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, John Jakes, & al., based on Kull of Atlantis of Robert E Howard, volume 1 of the The Chronicles of Kull series.

Howard Thomas The Chronicles of Kull Atlantis A King Comes Riding and Other Stories

This trade paper comics volume collects the earliest Marvel comics featuring Robert E. Howard’s Kull of Atlantis, from the early 1970s. It’s a very full book, containing about ten individual comics worth of material. 

Kull is king of Valusia in the pre-Hyborian age of the far antiquity of Howard’s imagination. In these stories (some of them based on REH originals), he is continually subjected to court intrigues, sorcerous impersonations, assassination attempts, and the like. The narrative tone is dark, verging on paranoid. 

The art, meanwhile, though often providing moments of violence, tends toward light. Marie Severin’s four-color treatments would look better on old-fashioned newsprint, but they come out jarringly bright on the glossy white stock of this reprint volume. The visual design of Valusia is not so exotic (as Mark Finn points out in the foreword). Instead, it has a decidedly medieval European look, crossing the blood-and-guts REH concept with something of the style of Prince Valiant. Kull’s costuming varies quite a bit; he often runs about in what appears to be little more than briefs, owing perhaps to his barbarian origins.

While most of the inhabitants of his kingdom seem to be unreliable if not inimical, Kull’s best pal — the only other character for whom he shows actual affection, in fact — is Brule, who is a Pict and thus a hereditary enemy of the Atlantean savage Kull, though he plays the Robin to King Kull’s Batman. Not only does the lead character show a surprising shortage of libido (if we discount lust for battle), there aren’t many women in evidence in these stories at all. The few who do appear are inevitably high-born, and serving as pawns in a larger game. 

On the whole, these pieces from the first heyday of sword and sorcery color comics aren’t awful, but they do show their age.

Engines of Desire

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Doktor Sleepless: Engines of Desire [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Warren Ellis and Ivan Rodriguez.

Ellis Rodriguez Doktor Sleepless Engines of Desire

This volume contains the first eight issues of Doktor Sleepless, plus some endmatter consisting of painted cover art from individual issues, and print snapshots of the wiki at Doktorsleepless.com. Having started in this vein, I plan to follow this title in trade paperback format, though goodness knows there’s enough meat to each issue to make it worth reading in individual comics. 

Although there is no resolution to the steadily-intensifying plot in this collection, there is a climactic epiphany in the eighth issue. Doktor Sleepless invites comparison with Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, although the target is clearly today’s USA, rather than the Thatcherite UK of Moore’s dystopian fantasy. As in V, the central character is a self-caricaturing enigma who is engineering the collapse of the existing social order. He’s got a girl sidekick, and seems as much villain as hero. There’s even business with mass-distribution of masks — Ellis doubles down on that trope, in fact. 

Creepy, violent, and believable, this comic picks up and continues the outrage over injustice that Ellis exhibited in Transmetropolitan, while stripping the (always somewhat ornamental) science-fictional elements down to a bare minimum. A kindred cyberpunk comic would be Testament, but where Rushkoff uses the Bible to frame his tale of techno-sociological crisis, Ellis substitutes the Necronomicon (or something worse). 

Anyhow, it certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’ll be impatient for the next collection.

Tall Tales

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Bone: Tall Tales [Amazon, Publisher, Local Library] by Jeff Smith, part of the Bone series.

Smith Bone Tall Tales

Three of the tall tales in this volume are stories about the fabled Bone pioneer Big Johnson Bone, as written by Tom Sniegoski for the setting invented and illustrated by Jeff Smith. They are framed by Smith’s “Smiley and the Bone Scouts” with the introductory tale “The Powers That Be.” All of them are comedic, without the epic and tragic events that characterize the original Bone series. If that’s what you’re after, though, they deliver. My daughter found them hilarious.

Serially, this book falls after the original triple trilogy, but familiarity with those books in completely unnecessary, and there are no significant spoilers present.

A Little World Made Cunningly

A Little World Made Cunningly by Scott David Finch, a 2013 paperback graphic novel, with an afterword by Steven L Davies discussing Gnostic interpretation and parallels, is part of the collection at the Reading Room courtesy of the author.

Scott David Finch A Little World Made Cunningly

“At the beginning of this dreamlike graphic novel, a young woman’s sleep is disturbed by a mysterious voice calling in the night. She follows the sound into a forest grove where she is inspired to weave a dress of leaves. As she adorns her garment with one last leaf, it breaks and falls away, ruining her creation. She collapses in frustration only to awaken as some other tiny self on the surface of that torn leaf. She begins to explore her microscopic new world under the moonlight, unaware that a frightened, hungry creature, Samael, is growing on the darkened underside of this leaf world.

Scott David Finch’s A Little World Made Cunningly is a story about creativity built on the ancient template of the Creation Story.

Drawing upon images from esoteric Christianity, the syntax of postmodernism, and Saturday morning cartoons, Finch’s work demonstrates an interest in the arcane strata below and beyond ordinary waking consciousness. He often employs several parallel lines of metaphor at once in a dense, layered visual language.

After more than twenty years of making large brightly colored paintings derived from photographic imagery, during a creative block 2010, images of a woman weaving leaves into a dress around her own body began to unfold in his mind’s eye. This narrative impelled him to devote the next year to writing and drawing A Little World Made Cunningly.” — back cover

Scott David Finch A Little World Made Cunningly detail

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

A Little World Made Cunningly

A Little World Made Cunningly by Scott David Finch, is a graphic novel that may be of interest.

Scott David Finch A Little World Made Cunningly

“At the beginning of this dreamlike graphic novel, a young woman’s sleep is disturbed by a mysterious voice calling in the night. She follows the sound into a forest grove where she is inspired to weave a dress of leaves. As she adorns her garment with one last leaf, it breaks and falls away, ruining her creation. She collapses in frustration only to awaken as some other tiny self on the surface of that torn leaf. She begins to explore her microscopic new world under the moonlight, unaware that a frightened, hungry creature, Samael, is growing on the darkened underside of this leaf world. Scott David Finch’s A Little World Made Cunningly is a story about creativity built on the ancient template of the Creation Story.

Drawing upon images from esoteric Christianity, the syntax of postmodernism, and Saturday morning cartoons, Finch’s work demonstrates an interest in the arcane strata below and beyond ordinary waking consciousness. He often employs several parallel lines of metaphor at once in a dense, layered visual language. After more than twenty years of making large brightly colored paintings derived from photographic imagery, during a creative block 2010, images of a woman weaving leaves into a dress around her own body began to unfold in his mind’s eye. This narrative impelled him to devote the next year to writing and drawing A Little World Made Cunningly.” [via]

Clockworks

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews Locke & Key Volume 5: Clockworks by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez:

Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez's Clockworks

 

Clockworks is the penultimate collection of the Locke & Key comics series, and in this volume, there is a very full account of the multiple backstories progressively hinted at in the earlier parts of the series. The final confrontation to which the whole narrative has been building is effectively put on hold, while the Locke children (the ones that aren’t possessed by horrible demons) use a newly-discovered key to travel in time — well, eavesdrop in time is really more like it — and find out the centuries-old history of the keys and the events of their father’s generation.

The book is great, with no flagging of the amazingly high quality of the story and art that have come before. There is a two-page spread of looking into the head of a possessed Dodge Caravaggio that was such an amazing image, it repaid the entire story to that point all by itself. [via]

 

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Before The Incal

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews Before The Incal Classic Collection by Alexandro Jodorowsky, illustrated by Zoran Janjetov:

Alexandro Jodorowsky and Zoran Janjetov's Before The Incal

 

This volume collects the full-length prequel series that provides background for the classic Jodo/Moebius Incal books. The stories are all set on the planet Earth 2014, and they center on the young John Difool, particularly the vicissitudes of his romance with an aristo girl Luz and his progress from gutter rat to revolutionary to detective.

Jodorowsky’s storytelling is as fun as ever, although these are heavy on the social satire, and they don’t dive as deeply into the mythic strata that dominate The Incal. The sixth and last of the parts of Before the Incal is a little frenetic, making connections and tying up loose ends in order to maintain the continuity between this arc and that one. Even so, it seems like an incipient galactic revolution got lost somewhere between the two books.

Janjetov’s art is terrific. According to the Lambiek Comiclopedia, Janjetov first worked with Jodorowsky and Jean “Moebius” Giraud as a colorist on some issues of the original Incal series, and he had the express blessing of Moebius to continue the work with Jodo. In Before the Incal, he mostly emulates Moebius’s style from the earlier material, but he occasionally experiments (quite successfully) with integrating the more highly-rendered style that he would later use in other Incal-related books (Metabarons and Technopriests). [via]

 

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Templar

Templar is a graphic novel by Jordan Mechner (of Prince of Persia fame), illustrated by LeUyen Pham and Alexander Puvilland.

Jordan Mechner's Templar

Over on Boing Boing, you can check out a review by Cory Doctorow at “Templar: historical caper graphic novel from Prince of Persia creator” and gander through some pages at “Templar: new 480-page graphic novel about the Knights Templar [excerpt]”

“Martin is one of a handful of Templar Knights to escape when the king of France and the pope conspire to destroy the noble order. The king aims to frame the Templars for heresy, execute all of them, and make off with their legendary treasure. That’s the plan, anyway, but Martin and several other surviving knights mount a counter-campaign to regain the lost treasure of the Knights Templar.

With gorgeous illustrations by LeUyen Pham and Alexander Puvilland and lush coloring from Hilary Sycamore, this 480-page, full-color, hardcover graphic novel by Jordan Mechner is itself a treasure.”

Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste

Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste by Martin Hayes, illustrated by R H Stewart, is a new graphic novel which may be of interest. Richard Kaczynski provides an foreword to this book.

Martin Hayes and R H Stewart's Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste

“‘… deftly weaves together the spiritual and the mundane, truth and rumour, into what is ultimately a human story about one of the most ambitious people ever to live … a work to savour and return to.’ — from the foreword by Richard Kaczynski author of Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley.

Know then the life and times of England’s most infamous son. Occultist, artist, poet, prophet, record-setting mountaineer, drug and free-love pioneer, spy, scholar, and legendary bad-egg. Summoner of demons and loser of friends. An explorer of many realms who conversed with gods and angels but ended his days labelled ‘The Wickedest Man in the World.’ Aleister Crowley. A foolish genius. A much maligned history. A wanderer of the waste.”