Tag Archives: Science fiction comics

Apocalipstick

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Invisibles 2: Apocalipstick [Amazon, Publisher, Local Library] by Grant Morrison with Chris Weston, Dennis Cramer, Jill Thompson, John Ridgway, Kim Demulder, Paul Johnson, Sean Phillips, Steve Parkhouse, & al., part of The Invisibles series.

This second volume of The Invisibles does create some sympathy for its protagonists that I found lacking in the first. In particular, much of it is constructed around the origin myth of Lord Fanny, and the new character Jim Crow (an Invisibles avatar of Papa Guedhe) is quite engaging. While reading, it struck me that Grant Morrison’s comic was not quite so innovative as it has been made out to be. Steve Englehart’s Coyote actually covered a lot of this ground at the end of the Cold War, before the seeming monopolarity of the milennium threw popular esotericism into the insurgent mode (later called jihad by Hakim Bey). Still, I have to hand it to Morrison for his ability to introject dead baby jokes and the occasional shocking profundity, such as the placenta as ur-Christ (46)! As a symptom of its occult charge, The Invisibles: Apocalypstick manifested several synchronicities with my life experience in the context of reading it.

FreakAngels

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews FreakAngels, Vol. 1 [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield, part of the FreakAngels series.

The first print volume collecting the FreakAngels webcomic by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield is very good indeed. The FreakAngels are a group of young mutants with psychic powers, who believe themselves to have been responsible for the collapse of modern civilization. They serve as warrior sentinels to a somewhat utopian community of a few hundred people assembled in Whitechapel in the midst of a flooded future London. The story was inspired by John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos, although the comics medium makes it hard not to read it in light of the X-men and other mutant superhero bands.

The characters are strongly drawn, with the central corps of the dozen FreakAngels complemented by a few key ordinary people. Dialog is often telepathic, and Ellis and Duffield manage to convey that with a number of seemingly effortless narrative and pictorial devices. As is typical of Ellis, there is some violence, the more brutal for being set in the midst of stretches of calmer, more reflective storytelling.

Paul Duffield’s art is very beautiful. There’s no garish four-color palette here: the future is gray and green and ivory, and the FreakAngels are pale and purple. The ruined and flooded cityscape is lovingly and credibly rendered.

The physical production of the Avatar Press softbound volume is quite satisfactory. The book’s webcomic origins have two interesting effects. First, the page/panel design is quite inflexible, accommodating only quarter-, full-, and half-page rectangular panels. Second, the narrative pacing doesn’t “chunk” into roughly 20-page “issue” components, as one can routinely expect from trade volumes that collect individual print comic books. Nor does it fully resolve at the end of this book. Having been frustrated by Ellis’s apparently stalled Doktor Sleepless after reading its first trade collection, I’m relieved and gratified to see that there are already six FreakAngels volumes in print.

Century 2009

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 2009 [Amazon, Abebooks, Publisher, Local Library] by Alan Moore, Kevin O’Neill, & al.

This bleak final (?) entry in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen saga is redeemed somewhat by Alan Moore’s wholesale assault against today’s most “successful” living English author. Also: Oliver Haddo does a full involuntary Templar Baphomet just in time for the eschaton. Kevin O’Neill continues to provide effective illustration, replete with peculiar cameos and side-jokes that I feel I must be missing 60% of. The indicia and and credits pages are hilarious parody material.

I’m leaving the final installment of the “Minions of the Moon” prose serial appendix for a sit-down reading of the entire Century arc.

World of Mars

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews John Carter: World of Mars [Amazon, Abebooks, Publisher, Local Library] by Peter David, Luke Ross, & al.

This “Official Prequel” to the Disney John Carter movie collects the four issues of the Marvel comic John Carter: World of Mars. It is only indirectly rooted in the Burroughs stories; it is very faithful to the Disney screenplay and visual designs. In a frame story narrated by John Carter (who is thus only pictured in cover art and the opening pages of issue #1, along with the final panel of #4) this book provides back-stories for Tars Tarkas, Dejah Thoris, and Sab Than — the last of whom is presented as even more of a sociopath and tyrant than in the movie. Peter David’s story works pretty well, and the Luke Ross art is effective enough. Anyone who liked the movie (I did) should be able to enjoy this little graphic novel.

The book is padded out at the end with some design sketches and the complete typescript draft of the first issue, effectively appending “roughs” from both the artist and the writer. I find design sketches an interesting addition to a volume like this, but the script just seems like an indulgent waste of paper that added nothing to the final content.

Since the book is really fixed in the movie continuity, it actually doesn’t connect very smoothly with the other Marvel title John Carter: A Princess of Mars, which is more of an adaptation of the Burroughs book, albeit with some anticipation of the Disney treatment.

Weird Worlds

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars: Weird Worlds [Amazon, Abebooks, Local Library] by Marv Wolfman, John Byrne, Murphy Anderson, Gray Morrow, Sal Amendola, Joe Orlando, Howard Chaykin, & c.

Well, despite being nonplussed by the recent Barsoomian offerings from Marvel Comics, I admit they do improve on the crude Tarzan and Weird Worlds DC material of the early 1970s collected in this trade paperback from Dark Horse. Writer Marv Wolfman shows an appropriate level of humility about his wooden writing when reflecting on it in his 2010 introduction.

The best art of the volume is in the single issue by Gray Morrow, which — if nothing else — relieves the reader from the goofy goggle eyes that Murphy Anderson bestowed upon his version of the Tharks, subsequently taken up by Sal Amendola. In fact, some of the better art in the whole book is in a trio of cover thumbnails (7), showing work by Joe Kubert, Michael Kaluta, and Howard Chaykin. (Wouldn’t you know it, Chaykin manages to have a Barsoomian babe in manacles and fishnet hose on the cover of Weird Worlds #7!)

I don’t know how well the four-color style hues in this book track with the original comics, but there is some obvious difficulty with Martian skin tones. The Red Martians are often as white as John Carter. (Exhibit A is the book’s cover, showing the palest Dejah Thoris ever.) Morrow dissents from the other artists on yet another issue of Thark anatomy: he only gives the females two teats (20), contrasted with the four afforded by Anderson and Amendola.

The book in hand covers the full run of DC Barsoomiana, which amounts to adaptations of A Princess of Mars and Gods of Mars with a very little other material mixed in. I’m happy to have it in my library for comparative and historical purposes, but its value pretty much ends there.

A Princess of Mars

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter: A Princess of Mars [Amazon, Abebooks, Local Library] by Roger Langridge, Filipe Andrade, &al.

This book collects the Marvel Comics title (issues 1-5) released to capitalize on the Disney John Carter film. It is more an adaptation of the original Burroughs story, although the final issue includes an epilogue that draws on the frame story established in the film.

The writing is reasonably capable, although I was a little put off by the implicit comparisons of Than Kosis to Saddam Hussein. Carter refers to deposing him as “regime change,” and there is a panel of the Zodangan people pulling down the statue of Than Kosis with his right arm outstretched just like this.

The art by Filipe Andrade was deeply unsatisfying to me. As in the Disney movie, Dejah Thoris wears entirely too much clothing. All of the human and Red Martian physiques are impressionistically ropy, and the faces are distorted in stylized ways that make them look as alien as the Tharks.

Overall, I found this version inferior to the bulk of the current Barsoom comics from Dynamite.

ETA: The “John Carter (TM)” super-title creates the odd effect of suggesting that Captain Carter is himself “a princess of Mars”!

Spin Angels

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Spin Angels [Amazon, Abebooks, Local Library] by Jean-Luc Sala and Pierre-Mony Chan. (See also the Spin Angels series.)

Billed in the jacket copy as “a head-on collision between John Woo and John Paul II,” Spin Angels (originally Crossfire) is also like what you’d get if Dan Brown were assigned to write a serial plot arc for Charlie’s Angels — although to be fair to author Sala, the details of religious conspiracy and ancient heresy are actually presented more credibly in this comic than what you’ll find in the Da Vinci Code. Certainly, the characters are more vivid and entertaining. Artist Chan mixes manga visual conventions with a detailed, painterly style and highly dynamic panel compositions.

This volume collects the first four issues of the Marvel Comics English translation of the original Soleil bandes dessinées for this title, which do not in any way conclude the story. The fifth (and most recent as of this review) was published in French in 2010. Recommended to those who enjoy the application of adrenaline and testosterone to esoteric religion.

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.

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.

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