What If?

Randall Munroe
What If?

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

Randall Munroe is the creator of the popular web comic xkcd, and a physicist with a degree, who once worked in NASA. I've never read his comics, and in general would never have guessed that Munroe the comics writer and Munroe the author of this book is the same person, if not the press release from the publisher.

Munroe writes quite unpretentious comics, we can say even amateur, and this simplicity is in many ways very suitable format for this book. Munroe the artist helps Munroe the physicist to illustrate the text blocks. Moreover, some fragments are generally similar to the graphic novel.

Munroe not out of the blue has written this non-fiction. He has for more than a year on his website received weird questions from readers and wrote detailed, reasoned answers to them. Weirdest and even worrying questions (like "How many nuclear missiles would have to be launched at the United States to turn it into a complete wasteland?") have gone unanswered, whether because to the fact that they are weird, or because Munroe could not answer to them, but they are included in the book in separate units, often with a humorous response in the comic form.

The questions that deserve an answer got the most detailed answers with calculations, proofs, experiments and sometimes help from scientists from the respective areas. At first glance, the questions themselves seem silly and unworthy of response. I’ll list some questions:

- What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light?
- If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?
- What would happen if everyone on Earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?
- In the movie 300 they shoot arrows up into the sky and they seemingly blot out the sun. Is this possible, and how many arrows would it take?

Perhaps, any physicist with proper training can answer these questions,. The problem is that you will not find a solution in a textbook, and you will need to apply your erudition and imagination, to advance even a little closer to the answer.

Since the questions are usually from people who are far from physics, Munroe first sets out the conditions of the problem, and only then begins to consistently solve it. In some questions, you just need to strictly follow the logic, and the answer will come by itself, and in some cases you need to apply some erudition, as there isn’t the only correct answer. The questions themselves are asked by curious people and even geeks, and the book seems to be written just for geeks from science. This does not negate the fact that approximately 90 percent of questions and answers are written in a completely accessible way and will be understood by everyone, from children to senior people. Even if some formulas cause confusion, they can be compensated by pictures.

Not all questions are from the physics. There is a question on mathematics, logic, there are questions from mixed areas. It is important that any of them Munroe treats seriously. That means that the answer to the question will rely on scientific calculations, research, logical assumptions. At the same time, the author is not afraid to joke and even, where possible, jokes heavily, don’t forget that What If? is written for geeks, without humor any geek quickly will be tired.

Well, the most interesting questions are those where Munro in his answers dives into improvisation. The author deliberately think up additional conditions to the problem, expanding his answer, offers the alternative solutions. For example, the question about Lego "How many Lego bricks would it take to build a bridge capable of carrying traffic from London to New York? Have that many Lego bricks been manufactured?". The author obviously enjoys the answer. Initially, he comes up with a floating version of the bridge, then, as a protection against storms, makes the bridge more durable and stable, and then offers a bridge, resting on the sea ground, and finally calculates the cost of the bridge.

In conclusion, Munroe gives an unexpected alternative: why build a bridge when it is possible even for part of the cost to buy the entire real estate in London and ships it to New York?

It is difficult to say whether it is possible to grow wiser after reading this book. It is sure that strange questions start to appear in you head and you want to ask Munroe to answer them.

comics I read last week

Sam & Twitch: Udaku, 1- 4

Image Comics

Two New York cops left the service to become private investigators, but quickly went back, when they were unable to earn as freelancers a minimum. Sam and Twitch, however, behave more like private detectives: Very Dark City (and the action takes place there, rather than in New York) has some sort of police problem, since Sam and Twitch are working on their own, only obeying coroner and no one more. Lieutenant of the two detectives has been found with his head severed in the basement, God rest his soul (Lieutenant, not the basement).

For four issues announcements convince us that Sam & Twitch adjoins the Spawn universe, but we are not even close to Spawn (which can not be said about the other damn things). Bendis avoids the "bubble" dialogue, all conversations are tied by the threads to their characters.

At the end of one issue Bendis said that Sam & Twitch was inspired by a dialogue with his wife, who has seen enough of the great TV series Homicide. So the main question that arises while reading Sam & Twitch, should not sound like, "Where is Spawn?", but as «Where is Pembleton?».



The Bulletproof Coffin, 1-4

Image Comics

When life gets to you, you can use a help of a bottle of vodka, but you cango upstairs to your room and read comics. The protagonist of The Bulletproof Coffin is the owner of an unusual profession: he is Voids Contractor. After one cleaning in the hands of Steve Norman lands an unusual collection of old comic books, which actually should not even exist. These comic issues are created by David Hine and Shaky Kane, they also created The Bulletproof Coffin. Yes, it's post-modern comics. Yes, it's a kick in the ass to superhero comics.

comics I read last week

Let's kick off a new column with a formal review.

Eamon Espey
Songs of the Abyss

Secret Acres, 2012

The second book of Eamon Espey was released four years after the first, Wormdye. These four years we have enjoyed a reality, resting from the nightmare that Wormdye was. In Songs of the Abyss we are again immersed in the dream and see the nightmare worse than the previous one. Songs from the title of the book are a lullaby to help us fall asleep; they are also prayers for the dead to help us fall asleep forever.



Retelling other people's dreams is a vain exercise. What could see stabbed to death by his brother Abel? Death, cradling a child? A severed head in his hands of an Egyptian god? What would be a nightmare for the devil? Manna from heaven throwing off by the aliens? Lynching Santa Claus? Each page in «Songs of the Abyss» is an excerpt of another's sleep, interrupted, staccato flowing from one nightmare to another.

The book is formally divided into several parts, but inside there is no logic of our world, only dream logic. The pages of the book are populated by the same monsters, otherworldly creatures, drawn as if Espey during the making of his book held regular spiritual seances and talked personally with the evil spirits of all kinds.
Espey continues to draw maps of hell, a "hell", which is known only to him. The book is entirely made with ink, which gives it the appearance of ancient manuscripts. In ancient myths Espey seep elements of modernity: On some pages you can find a moving line, flying saucers’ aliens, cars, guns. All this seems to be alien to the ancient objects, but who said that in the nightmares cars can not be combined with devils’ rig?

At the end of the book Espey succinctly describes each page of the book. It is superfluous: the author said and did everything with his art and without words. Therefore, these descriptions can be read as poetry, and they are written like poems:

«the children are of the snake
ghost and warrior go into the elevator
the door opens and enery pours out
a phoenix emerges
inside the flame is the ocean
the whale is no longer in a bowl
he swims without constraint
in his belly joan has lived and prayed for forty nights
she cuts through the blubber with her sword of truth
water earth
sky
space»

best books of the year: comics

When I looked at the list of comics and graphic novels that I'd read this year I wasn't happy with myself. I wish I read much more, but in the second part of the year I didn't have enough reading time. All time I had was dedicated to reading fiction. Some comics that made my top were published this year, some were published before.

Best graphic novel of the year:

Eamon Espey
Wormdye

Runners-up:

Kevin Huizenga
Ganges #2

Joshua Hale Fialkov (writer), Noel Tuazon (artist)
Tumor

Stephane Blanquet
Toys in the Basement

Willy Linthout
Years of the elephant

Gummbah
Meanwhile, Between Two Eternities of Darkness

Solipsistic Pop #3

Stripburger 54

Derek McCulloch (writer), Greg Espinoza (artist)
Pug

Eric Hobbs (writer), Noel Tuazon (artist)
The Broadcast

Ganges #2

Kevin Huizenga
Ganges #2

Fantagraphics, 2008

Glen Ganges returnes in the second volume of «Ganges». This collection includes two short stories. The first is a computer game. The player himself, though, will not appear, before us only the screen with a strange toy on it (and indeed it is not clear, is there player at all). After the hieroglyphs we see a choice of players, and the hero is someone like a hedgehog, but with long human legs. This hedgehog-man begins to hit other obscure characters. The meaning of this story in general and its inclusion in this collection may well have remained a mystery if it were not for one thing. The thing is that you do not need to look for a meaning there, when you can see what figures Huizenga draws. The figures, which are built from computer characters, are similar to figures of the Aztecs, the structure of a human cell and a key to unraveling the mysteries of the universe, at the same time. You have never been under hypnosis? So Huizenga’s art proficiency hypnotize you, just try it.





The second story in the book, «Glenn Ganges in Pulverize», is an unexpected continuation of the first one. This computer game is the game that all the office staff, where Ganges works, plays. In the late 90's an Internet start-up begins, something like Yahoo, pre-doomed to failure, and Ganges and his colleagues tried to make money on the internet. And just a whole day (and staying at work past midnight) the entire office was playing a computer game on the network. There were not hedgehog-mans, it was something like a shooter where players only shooting at each other. "Pulverize" gradually began to replace reality for Ganges. About this comic a lot can be said like "our whole life is a game», and this will be true, but more true to saywill be that all good things must come to an end, you’ve played, and that's enough. And the moral is simple: not work joins people together, but fun.

Ganges #1

Kevin Huizenga
Ganges #1

Fantagraphics/Coconino, 2006

Glenn Ganges - the protagonist of the first volume of the series «Ganges» - is a dreamer, an eccentric, a loving husband, but first and foremost a restless man. Meaningless details do not give rest to him, he makes a mountain out of a molehill, and his fantasies replace the reality. Five stories under one cover are the five pieces of a day in the life of Ganges. These fragments were not worth any attention to, if their hero was someone else, not Glenn Ganges. Ganges goes to the library. Ganges returns home. Ganges sits next to his wife while she works at the computer. Ganges goes to sleep. Ganges is asleep.



But Huizenga splash with something each of these individual stories (although the book is done in only three colors: black, white and shades of green). On the way to the library Ganges moves in time. Then he sees the cyclist, throwing trash on the road, and moves ahead in the future of the cyclist. Then he argues with his wife because of the song. Then he goes to bed and thinks what love is. Ganges himself steps into the background, replacing himself by his own imagination. And all those themes and issues that Ganges raises in conversations with his wife or, more commonly, with himself, how serious they wouldn’t be, you can’t take them seriously. Last, night, part of the book, when Ganges and his wife go to sleep, is the most sophisticated in terms of art. There is no division between the panels, Ganges’ ideas are moving and moving, not letting him fall asleep, and the darkness are enveloping here, but not sleepy.



I’d like to meet this Ganges.

Dr. Seuss & Co. Go To War

Andre Schiffrin
Dr. Seuss & Co. Go To War: The World War II Editorials Cartoons of America’s Leading Comic Artists

The New Press, 2011

The sequel to the collection of Dr. Seuss «Dr. Seuss Goes To War». What is interesting is that this collection of The World War II caricatures and cartoons, so this is the fact that it contains not only cartoons by Dr. Seuss, which became known mainly through his children books, but by also other artists of that time, who published the cartoons in newspapers and magazines.
Cartoon is a type of art that should immediately cause a smile (and even better laugh), but at the same time cause embarrassment. This is a sign of good cartoons. Ironically, the works of the doctor Seuss are not impressive. Whether they are too parochial, understandable only to the Americans, and even then not to all, or graphics are clumsy, but the fact is that the drawings of Dr. Seuss do not raise either smile or embarrassment. Despite the extensive commentary by Andre Schiffrin to each section of the book, explaining the situation in the U.S. in the late 30's and early 40's and the government's attitude to U.S. military operations in Europe and the Pacific ocean, these comments are still no substitute for knowledge of the inner and foreign U.S. policy in wartime.

Nevertheless, the book is a success, thanks to the work of other artists of the forties. Cartoons drawn by Saul Steinberg, Melville Bernstein, Al Hirschfeld, John Groth, Eric Godal are far wittier and more inventive visually, than the pictures by Dr. Seuss. These cartoons highlight the inner life of States and the war with Nazi Germany. They are simply easier to understand for Europeans, and even without commentary. Caricature is the same joke, and if you begin to explain the effect is lost. Especially there is worth mentioning the work of Saul Steinberg. He is a true master. In the book he is represented by single cartoons and short comics. He draws in a number of pictures Hitler so fun that you laugh to tears. He has a very simple drawing style, but he feels a joke on a subconscious level. Every one of Steinberg's cartoons are fun.

The book covers the period from 1941 to 1945-th, and there makes fun of everything, from Stalin to Japanese kamikazes. «Dr. Seuss & Co. Go To War» is an excellent tutorial on the history, and most importantly - very funny one.

Cavemen in Space

Joey Weiser
Cavemen in Space

Self-published, distr. by Adhouse Books, 2010

A scientist from the future takes away some prehistoric cave men and places them in his spaceship «The Wheel». With the help of special techniques the scientist works on brains of people from the past, raising their level of intelligence. Chief of the cavemen - a tall man in an animal's skin with the name Washington - is the principal assistant of the scientist. Each of the cavemen do what they do once in the past, but this time more consciously. To the spacecraft with an unexpected tour comes an alien race with outwardly friendly intensions. But the aliens are more insidious than they appear, and the team of cavemen will beat off the alien hordes.



«Cavemen in Space» is a funny story in the spirit of science fiction of 40-50th with a mixture of "Flintstones." Subject of jokes here are the future technology and the past of the cavemen. Do not expect from a novel infinite action. The battle with the aliens begins only at the end of the book, and the battle scenes are drawn in cartoon style. Weiser carefully looks at the problem of adaptation of cave men in the world of the future. Washington and his friends feel the new features, feel the need in them, they like to help a scientist, like to develop, but their origin is not extinguish. For all the sophistication of the brain inside each cave man still Cro-Magnon sits, whose survival instincts trump everything else. And so the most important task for the cavemen is not to fight with the aggressive aliens but to choose his true purpose: to go back and be himself or to stay and feel his own inferiority to the end of days?
Weiser in his seemingly young adult book asks not children's questions.

Popgun Vol. 4

Popgun Vol. 4
Ed. by D.J. Kirkbride, Anthony Wu, Adam P. Knave

Image Comics, 2010

How to define the compilers of this anthology, «Popgun» is a mixtape. Completely different styles, different stories, different characters. If we continue to compare the book with music, something there sounds out of tune, something is too loud, somewhere there is nice vocals (art), but the music (the plot) is so-so. 500-plus pages of colors and you can’t like all of that.

To start, there is too much escapism in the book. People from our world are faced with another world, and the parallel world, however beautiful or dangerous it was, is always better than our world. Sci-fi here is in all its forms, from fantasy to neocyberpunk mystery. And if art is most often very good, the stories are always too flighty, with no internal logic. Almost always there is interesting complication of the plot, but not a solution. However, a number of works in «Popgun» proved to be equally successful in terms of art and in terms of plot.



A realistic story of Stephanie Ramirez «Thinking Out Cloud» reads like a YA fantasy. In the «Agent Orange» by Darren Rawlings robot private detective exposes dishonest businessman, knocks-out a few robots and saves the world from an ancient curse. «Family Reunion» by David Brenion and Joe Flood tells about what happened to the heroes of cartoons and books after they lost their former glory. Authors create a funny satire on Superhero stamps. «The Eye» by Jeremy Tinder starts as a typical story about a private eye with a big eye instead of a head, but later the story turns into something bigger (and with large portions of the black humor). «Rusted: Faded Signal» by Nick Tapalansky and Alex Eckman-Lawn attracts the attention first of all with a wonderful art, you get the impression as if you read the yellowed parchment. The story unfolds in a desert, where, after some catastrophe, a girl tries to find a radio tower to get the help. Completely insane is «Sasquatch» by Nick Edwards. Children go into the woods for a picnic, and one of the boys, bespectacled Nigel, becomes so teased that he runs away to the river, looking for solitude, but instead meets sasquatch. They become friends, and here you can begin to laugh. Hilarious story.



One of the few realistic graphic stories here is «Hamburgers for One» by Frank Stockton, it is also one of the best in the book. Plump clumsy young man takes out the trash, feeds rat with a candy and goes to fast food cafe. In there his attention is attracted by a pretty brunette cashier. Stockton is unhurried, attentive to details; sometimes the artist achieves photographic autenticity in panels.

We should also mention a number of single-page strips by Erik Larsen «Reggie the Veggie». First and foremost this is a very clever and funny comics, as comic strip about a legless cripple can be funny.

Graphically «Popgun» is an almost ideal anthology, bright, bold, diverse, but it lacks good storytelling.

Lemon Styles

David King
Lemon Styles

Sparkplug Comics, 2010

We often perceive comics as moving pictures - with the obvious plot complication and denouement - as opposed to art books, where the drawing deliberately stopped in time. «Lemon Styles» is a mix between a comic and an art book, with the clarification that this art book drawn by a comics fan and a man with a good sense of humor. This slim book is a collection of single-page strips with a repeating set of characters. They are three of them: the blonde with pierced ears, balding bespectacled man with a bow tie instead of a tie and long-nosed curly man with larhe eyebrows. On each page, they play some scene from everyday American life. This is King's neighbors, as they are represented to us by the author.



Each page is divided into four panels, and that is plays obtained in four acts. In each of the plays at first glance, there is a plot, but I did not in vain called «Lemon Styles» art book as well. It’s good to keep on the coffee table and read a page a day, otherwise all the pages will be merged into one. David King on its pages captures something elusive, that moment between intention and the rejection of the action. And if you read the book in one read, important component of the book will disappear. The author has excellent sense of humor, but he applies this sense here in the opposite direction. When you read from page three panels of the four, it is clear that the fourth will be a gag: gag is that there is no gag. Behind this book we can see a great aptitude of David King, the next time I want to see how he can use his strange sense of humor in a large project.

Tumor

Joshua Hale Fialkov (writer), Noel Tuazon (artist)
Tumor

Archaia, 2010

Washed-up aging private detective Frank Armstrong unexpectedly receives a client in the face of the local drug lord. He asks to find his missing daughter. Armstrong wants to give up at first, but then sees in this business opportunity to earn money and somehow rehabilitate itself. The only thing that prevents the PI from doing his job decently is a brain tumor. Starting search for the girl with her boyfriend, Armstrong finds him in his own apartment - murdered. There appeares armed mobster hired by the father of the girl, and then suddenly appears disappeared girl, with a gun in her hand. Before Frank manages to do something, he loses consciousness from a brain attack. Thus, turning out between a hospital bed and in the street, leading the investigation, having lost the difference between past and present, Frank saves the gangster’s daughter and unravels the murder of his wife, committed several decades ago.



We have already seen a fair amount of amnesia noir, now we have a new, previously unknown kind – onko-noir. The tumor in Frank’s head gradually kills him, taking away the opportunity to think and live proper life. Detective loses his sense of space and time, not knowing where he is and what year. More frequent attacks lead to Frank coming again and again to the hospital, runs away from there thinking that next attack will definitely be the last for him. Events of past and present have become for detective a single entity. A reader can distinguish them only by art. Noel Tuazon blurs those panels, where the action takes place in the past, and conversely, uses dark lines, if it is present. Tuazon’s style makes this story very old-fashioned: it is a good illustrated pulp-novel, in which you never guess that the action takes place not in the 50s or 60s, but almost in our days. So suddenly you become surprised when there are mobile phones and internet in the book. It is not a believable story; it is a typical PI novel. Much more interesting is how the Fialkov weaves two plot lines in the end, allowing Frank defore the death to correct the mistakes of the past, not allowing history to repeat itself twice.



I should also mention the design of this hardcover (graphic novel was originally released in Kindle-version): between the chapters there are single page insertions, illustrating Frank’s headaches - pain, comparable to the shot in the head; in the end there are sketches, interviews with the creators and bonus story about Frank’s pat.

Fialkov and Tuazon in tandem have created an excellent novel.

Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened

Postcards: True Stories That Never Happen
Ed. By Jason Rodriguez

Villard, 2007

This comics anthology had an interesting concept, but the final result was not impressed. The essence of the project was to invited authors and artists have painted the detailed stories, based on the old postcards. The failure of the project, perhaps, is that the authors had too little space, so that did not work to create a decent story. All the postcards at the same time belonged to the first half of XX century or second half of XIX century. Because of that is the monotony of the times and characters.



Most often in the course of reading of «Postcards» I admired the art, but remained totally cold to the stories themselves. Only two stories-postcards art and plot story had a resonance. In «Homesick» by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Micah Farritor husband and wife, escaped to Paris during the Great Depression in the U.S., go through the city streets hoping to find a new life in a new place. The wife suffers from a cold and misses home, her husband does not intend to return. For him, France is a paradise. «Quarantined» by Jason and RJ Rodriguez and Seamus Heffernan is a story of a father and daughter. Plague stalks a small town, so that the girl's father treats patients, holding the child at home under lock, trying to protect the baby from the deadly pestilence. But once a girl leaves home and goes to the ward for the sick. Heffernan accurately depicted the metamorphosis that has occurred to the girl: before the disease she is a big-eyed curly child, when she is infected, she looks like a small death with the abyss in the eyes.

The subtitle of the anthology reads: ten stories that never happened. It would be not bad if they really did not happen.

Wormdye

Eamon Espey
Wormdye

Secret Acres, 2008

«Wormdye», a collection of interconnected stories of the same world, starts out as a family chronicle with a fair amount of violence: two brothers put their cat in a microwave oven, heated, and then throw the corpse into the toilet. In the next episode we see how these same brothers, their mother and sister standing at the grave of the father. The father, however, is not dead, but in the post-mortem travels gets all the pleasures of life that he has not had time to get in his time. In the next episode we see crime scene, when the scientist conducting the experiment on mutants (people-larvae), is killed by a group of masked robbers, who then kidnapped the mutant girl.



Such oddities can lasts and lasts, and they are not going to end. Among the other defendants in the events - the Pope, eating spaghetti with worms, wolf devoured the woman, puking children, the aliens. Eamon Espey has a great imagination. Imagine Bosch, who had read Philip K. Dick, the ancient legends and had seen enough of reality shows - this nuclear mix will be called «Wormdye». Plots of stories often are legends remakes - with Romulus and Remus, the Vatican, the ancient Greek voyages. But the classic stories change under the influence of modern culture. This is an ancient world, but with a TV and microwave, postcards and aliens. You won’t understand the nature of this world after reading the book, so I think, as the author himself. Espey certainly is the chronicler of strange times: between the novellas in the book often there are pages in the form of the ancient wall maps. It is not only a world map of Wormdye, it is maps of the entire universe. These huge paintings, which occupy page or two, dispense with the plot as such, but contain a bottomless pit of information. Emon Espy saturate the page with so many small details, from people to the quaint lines, that you can not look away a glance from a page for a few minutes - an abyss of information is mesmerizing.



Espey’s art is in harmony with the wild and crazy world of «Wormdye». The art is both primitive, simple, full of small details. When you look at the picture, you do not believe that it has drawn by a human, our contemporary. Likely to believe that this is done by someone from another civilization that lived long before us.



«Wormdye» is an artifact from another world and another time. This is a world that can be admired on paper, but you do not want to be there for a moment. And is this not the best compliment to the book.

Ribstallments

Noel Tuazon
Ribstallments

Self-published, 2010

This small book is a collection of short comics written and drawn by Noel Tuazon. All of them are drawn in usual Tuazon’s style - black and white sketch-y illustrations. Tuazon usually acts as an artist, but in this book he shows himself also as the author of the plots. All the stories collected here are delicate stories with a touch of fantasy.

The most successful of all turned out, oddly enough, the first and last stories. In the first one, «Door», a person gets into some cave and sees the front door, entirely composed of human heads. No way out, and we can only guess that the heads in the door belong to the same, like this man, strangers who find themselves in a cave - and stayed here forever. The last story in the book, which has remained without a title, is much easier and more fun (although it only seems so, the last panel changes everything). In a post-apocalyptic world, a man in sunglasses and a little Asian girl somewhere go in the desert, hoping to find refuge. The man is clearly not the father of the little girl, but worries about her. The girl also keeps dangerous secrets.

The author without the use of color creates a very old-fashioned stories, with thick lines making drawing more convex. In «Ribstallments» Noel Tuazon established himself also as a fairly good writer.

The Broadcast

Eric Hobbs (writer), Noel Tuazon (artist)
The Broadcast
NBM, 2010

In 1938 Orson Welles’ radio show «War of the Worlds» stir among many Americans. In a small town in Indiana, this show led to the massacre. When at night a terrible storm begins, residents think that the Earth was indeed attacked by aliens. People can hide in a shelter in the house of a local rich man, but a place of refuge is limited: only 5 people can be saved. The serious struggle for a place begins. In this situation, all the discontent open, conflicts erupt. Gavin, a worker on a farm, propose a rich man's daughter Kim Shrader, but the father of the bride even does not want to hear that his only daughter will be married to a beggar. Shrader once raised the city, but after that has enslaved all his employees. And here is another conflict: workers do not mind to get rid of a tyrant. Later there is another character, a wounded negro Eli, and Gavin’s father helps him. Others begin to look suspisionly at Eli, and Shrader, guessing that the Negro is associated with gangsters, uses the man in his intrigues. All they want to survive, to save their loved ones and not lose the human face, but doing it will be extremely difficult.



«The Broadcast» gets you for the throat from the first page and do not let go until the very end. This is partly melodrama, part crime thriller, but because of the "War of the Worlds" even want to add – partlu science fiction, all ingridients are well mixed. The story reveals the major conflicts of prewar America, social, racial, class. Portrayal of the characters of the book turned out not quite impressive. For example, the daughter of wealthy Shrader is a writer, but we only at the very beginning see how she prints on a typewriter, but otherwise she remains the only daughter of her father. Eric Hobbs makes not the most original story a much more tense by adding a storyline with a black gangster Eli implicated in a double murder near the home of Shrader. Eli enjoys the hospitality and hides in a house together with everyone, but Eli is a hesitant gangster, incapable of meanness.



Art of Noel Tuazon is veryfitting to the raging weather. Blurry black-and-white sketches give the impression that the heroes of the book are always in the rain, even when they are indoors. Incompleteness of the picture does thr narrative more emotional, so that you can feel that all participants in this event are very nervious. Nuazon never gives close-ups, keeping the reader at a distance and not doing anyone special: it is not specific Shrader, Gavin, Eli, etc., they are a rich farmer, a rural worker and a gangster as such. Blur of the picture gives to the story surrealistic features.

Brilliant work.

Mineshaft #26

Mineshaft #26

The new issue of the small magazine Mineshaft is better than the previous one. If Mineshaft number 25 suffered from an excess of strange materials, are often so bizarre that it was hard to even understand what it was and for whom it has been written, in this issue the proportion is observed: half of the issue is weird pieces, while the other part is comics - and a very high quality comics.

Definetely, the best material there is a single strip, for some reason, unsigned, titled «Batman and Robin Meet the Great Depression». Batman and Robin are depicted there as a couple of homeless people, who beg, steal, sleep on the benches, and spend money on booze and cigarettes. Incredibly funny.



In his autobiographical comics by Dennis Eichhorn and David Collier «The Geriatric Comic» protagonist is an old stand-up comedian with a cane and a cape, and he is far better than younger comedians. Another comics in this issue, too, is partly autobiographical - «August 1976" by Nina Bunjevac. Her art almost entirely filled with black color accompanies the text between the panels: it’s two letters, first from the father to his wife and daughter, and then from the daughter to her father. This seems to be a quiet story but with high voltage, preparing the reader to something tragic.

A good number, but there is no limit to perfection. We’ll wait what happen in the next issue.

Toys in the Basement

Stephane Blanquet
Toys in the Basement

Fantagraphics, 2010

At a costume party for young children a boy sits on the couch alone: instead of a pirate costume his mom bought him a costume of pink bunny, and now the other kids laugh at him. Another boy, a bespectacled cock with a comb on his head, complains that he has a broken leg and asks the Rabbit-boy to come down to the basement to check his girlfriend dressed as a cat, she somehow delayed. When the Rabbit comes down to the basement, the Cat-girl shows him to dump toys. Basement is full of old broken toys for destruction. Toys, however, begin to move, and the green bear, without one eye and with damaged head, takes a boy and a girl for real toys, not the costumed children. The bear and the other toy, armless superhero, say the children that they need to be rescued and they all dig a tunnel to crawl back to where all broken toys hide. Children are in a big danger.

This slim graphic novel is nominally novel for children, but the art of the Frenchman Blanquet takes a children's story to an unexpected level. Costumes worn by the boy and girl, are as if one whole with the children so that children look like more as an animals capable of violence without explication. Not without reason toys are so afraid of children: a mangled dolls know who made them disabled, who scoffed at them. All faces of those heroes of the novel, both children and toys, has some wild expression, both horror and disgust.

For children who are reading this book, toys have been brought in a completely different light than they are accustomed to see them. They live and they have an instinct for survival, too.

This surrealist book by writer-artist Blanquet brings to the young reader a simple message: retribution will come, and you never know from which side.

Meanwhile, Between Two Eternities of Darkness

Gummbah
Meanwhile, Between Two Eternities of Darkness
Translated by David Colmer

De Harmonie, 2010

I should start with the fact that it is insanely funny book. You may not be a fan of comics, but if you are a connoisseur of good jokes, this Gummbah’s book will become a pleasure for long couple of hundred pages. On every page here there are two panels more often, and not funny ones among them can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
However, after this it is worth noting another fact - humor here is very politically incorrect, sometimes openly rude, and more - all the jokes are very strict.

Everything is under attack: unsuccessful writers and pedophiles, homosexuals, and dildos, religion and sex. It can only be confusing at first, until you start to delve into the image of the world created by the author. Despite the fact that all the panels are completed on its own, however, each of them belongs to the same world. People in it are ugly and not attractive. There are no children (nominally there are children, but they are all drawn in the form of adults). They just do nothing but fuck, laugh at other people's shortcomings, insult each other, go to the doctor, rape animals. Gummbah, however, created the world that does not look real: seemingly so, almost everywhere it is drawn: families, conversations between friends, picnics, trips by transport, in general, everything that is natural, what people are and do all the time but you feel that it is rather dark fantasy, not in vain here often appear gnomes (from the comics Smurfs), Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck. By introducing these characters into the narrative, Gummbah, firstly, shows the grotesqueness of the world: even where there is no Mickey Mouse there, we see that the world upon Gummbah exists under other laws. Secondly, Smurfs and Mickey Mouse show that the author sees a connection between his own work and the European and American comics.

Gummbah’s art is grotesque – grotesque-realistic: the artist often draws in color, but sometimes there are black and white panels, and sometimes the author has resorted to a collage, which is funny too, but they drop out of the aligned series of characters. Focusing on people and relationships between them, the artist neglected backs, often drawing the characters on a background of bare walls or solid color fills. It is difficult to attribute to the flaws, still Gummbah does not aim at full representation of the world, he is just joking.

In two words: an impressive book.

Solipsistic Pop #3

Solipsistic Pop #3
Edited by Tom Humberstone

«Solipsistic Pop» is an anthology of British comics, published twice a year. The theme of this issue is wonder. There are a lot of wonders indeed. Part of the comics is made for younger readers, some for grown-ups, but even those comics who seem to be quite childish in style and art, will please fans of comics of all ages.

The first thing that catches your eye when you start flipping «Solipsistic Pop» is this is a colorful book. There is no black and white works, and among all the colors red predominates. Already a saturation of only red staggers and prepares for a heap of wonders.

«A Joke» by Tom Smith is accompanied by a poetic text. Poems here are as a voice-over to the surreal story: a young man goes to drink at the bar, and there he is met by the animals. The reader knows in advance that the entire story is a joke, but here's a young man about it yet to learn. Darryl Cunningham is represented in the book with three single-page stories, in each of which he exploits the same technique: the main character, which is easier to describe in two words «unknown animal», finds application to intangible objects in the picture, making them tangible. This animal uses the cloud and the so-called bubbles with words and thoughts. Cunningham comics are very simply painted, very funny, but jokes apart they still have genuine feelings of sadness, joy, and loneliness.

«The Torturer's Garden» by Rob Davis is a much more sophisticated. Davis experiments with the framework panels, alternating black humor with cruelty, and in the end uses postmodern trick. Philippa Rice in her «Interdimensional Treehouse Party» uses the most unusual artistic means. Two bored hero, like everything else in this comic, are not just painted, but carved out of paper, thus Rice makes something middle between a traditional animated film and a comic book. On the one hand, it narrows the artistic possibilities (too much static), on the other - the opposite of expanding. At least this reads very funny.

Octavia Raitt in «Molly vs. The Wondertaker» united in her short work two styles: the usual manner with a realistic three-dimensional on the description of the monster, the Wondertaker. In fiction narrative about a bored little girl, the author also put in pseudodocumental story about a monster. Fiction-like part often looks more organic, but the whole story together is a pleasure. Andrew Waugh in his «Teething Problems» uses the minimum number of words, but the picture conveys subtle humor stories. At the heart of comics is the relationship between suffering from excessive love for the master robot and a man. The story is full of gags, it has a very funny ending, but the author conveys to the reader one simple truth: we have a responsibility to those we have tamed, even if it's a robot.

«The Elephant of Surprise» by Faz Choudhury is like an illustrated story by Edgar Allan Poe with the elements of weird. Art of Choudhury is full of dark colors, details. «Sardines» by Becky Barnicout is drawn in indie-style, a style recalling Robert Crumb and co. This is a story of indifference, where in each panel, we look at abomination. Very strong work.

«Magic and the Man» by Kristyna Baczynski is a two-page comic drawn in a mirror manner: on one page we see the magician is at home, on the other - at work. That’s funny story, with impeccable design. «The Haunted Barb House» by Mark Oliver is a great example of how to paint a surreal story. The author not only invented a strange world filled with strange characters, he also added a few stylistic highlights: for example, answers of one of the two comic book heroes do not appear in the cloud, as it is customary, but directly on the face, making the man faceless. «The Egg» by Luke Pearson is another strange story about a boy and a girl. Power of Pearson in the first place is in his art: The picture is very realistic and at the same time it is something dreamy.

I was not very impressed with the plot of «Fruits Delamer» by Warwick Johnson Cadwell, but his artistic style charms. The author seems to admit negligence in the casting and working with color, but it works on the picture: art seems faded, lines are coarsening, and the picture begins to match the story, which is already several hundred years old.

«Solipsistic Pop» is 80 pages of continuous enjoyment. There is enough room for wonders for a year-old child and for one hundred years old.

Stripburger 54

Stripburger 54

If the previous issue of "Stripburger" was a disappointment for me - too many pictures and too little comics - that this, number 54, dedicated to Brazilian authors, is a delight.

In the issue there is an interview with one of the Brazilian artist Marcelo D`Salete. In this interview, D’Salete complains that nobody takes seriously comics in Brazil. Artists do not publish books because there are no comics publishers, readers do not read, because there are no comics and nowhere to learn about them, publishers do not want to hear about comics, making an exception for illustrated books for children. If you like to draw comics and be published - do comics for children. Such a situation recalled the situation in Russia, one to one similar to the Brazilian. If you do comics, just look for the opportunity to be published in the West, at home you could onlu get mockery. D’Salete in an interview remarked that comics in Brazil, made for adult audiences, have social background. His own strip in this issue is one of the strongest stories here. At the heart of D’Salete’s strip is a story about a girl who has lost her mobile phone. On the small number of pages of his work the artist tells us about the social life of Brazil more than we could learn from the Wikipedia articles or from news reports. Unsightly houses, barred windows, open spaces, the dark train, cowboy hats, petty criminals - the author doesn’t focus on this account, the reader himself notes the elements of urban life. D’Salete has lyric black and white art. Alternating panels on people and elements of landscape, the author demonstrates the inextricable link between the inner world of man and the place where he lives. Open ending does not contain harsh sentencing of Brazilian society, leaving hope for the best.

Allan Sieber, also from Brazil, is far less serious. Characters in his strip «Sorry, Olivia» are the couple drawn in the form of cats. The husband has a drinking problem and severe, the wife is tired of suffering. In brutal two-page comic «Car-Boy's Family» by Max Andersson from Sweden children's cruelty finds sometimes bizarre forms and it is aptly portrayed by Andersson.

In Rafael Sica’s works there are a lot of marginals. People in his comics are ugly, miserable, and full of despair. Sica often loops narrative in his short strips, thus speakingyou can not escape from your nature. In the comics of Laura Teixeira the time stops. Artist dispenses with plot, but her art is the story. Teixeira catches not a moment, but what happens between moments.

Art of Mateus Acioli in his comic strip «Prick» seems to have originated in North America, but the story is purely Brazilian, with elements of magical realism. Work of Acioli is about a moment, too, that moment almost doesn’t live and then die at once and it is impossible to capture.

It turns out that Brazil is full of excellent comic authors and «Stripburger» has done a great job to convey to the reader the best of Latin American artists.