Cemetery Beach is delicious

Any new Warren Ellis comic book is something to look forward to and one with Jason Howard even more so given their illustrious collaboration on Trees. Cemetery Beach issue #1 arrived on my iPad this week and was the first comic that I read in bed with my first cup of tea on Saturday morning.

It comfortably lived up to expectations. This double-page spread starts to explain why.

Obviously the art work is lovely and the scene is futuristic and interesting. Also, like the five pages after it, it has no words.

It's early days but I am already deep into an exciting adventure that is steeped in mystery. I love the story, I love the action, I love the exhilarating pace of it. I love this comic already.

Blown away by Gideon Falls

Andrea Sorrentino work has appeared in this blog a few times over the years, usually because I have liked the samples shown in DC Comics Digital Sneak Peeks, most of which I singularly failed to tag with his name at the time. Anyway, the point is I have liked his work for a while.

I have also liked the little of Jeff Lemire's work that I have read, notably A.D.: After Death and X-Men.

The two had worked together a few times before, to great acclaim, but not on anything that I had read. Even so, that reputation was enough to get me interested in Gideon Falls.

It is my favourite current comic.

The art is as decisive as I expected with sharp lines and dramatic page layouts. The story is just as good. It is about an evil barn, a priest who lives nearby and a psychiatric patient who collects small parts of it from waste dumps across the city. If that sound weird then it is in all the ways that you want weird to be.

The two main characters' stories are told in parallel and so far, after four issues, have yet to come together. Happily Gideon Falls is billed as an ongoing series so there is plenty of time for this expected thing and many unexpected things to happen. I'm hooked and will be along for the ride all the way.

Loving The Old Guard

It has probably been forty years since I've loved comics as much as I am now. Then the two main publishers, Marvel and DC, published a host of off-mainstream books like Warlock, Claw the Unconquered, Deathlok the Demolisher, The Warlord and Killraven, all by top class creators many of whom rose from these humble starts to become genuine stars, including Jim Starlin and P. Craig Russell.

This golden era is different in that it is the fringe publishers, notably Image, that are doing the interesting books while Marvel and DC are mired in constantly trying to refresh the dying superhero books. Another difference is that this time a lot of the good books are coming from established stars, like Brian Wood and Brian K. Vaughan.

The Old Guard appealed to me because it looked interesting visually and as a concept and because there was a lot of buzz around its launch. The barrier for entry to new comics is now very low, as soon as I hear about something that I like I can go online to buy it and the iPad means that I can read comics in any free moment. I currently have 89 books on my iPad waiting for free moments but that does not stop me buying more.

The Old Guard is very old in some cases. These are people who have lived for centuries, or millennia, simply because they cannot be killed very easily. Being almost immortal has brought them all together and made then successful mercenaries. Not a unique concept by any means but there is a lot more to the story than that and the story telling, words and pictures, is excellent. It is both a fun book and one that stands up to critical scrutiny.

The good news is that it is coming back for a second series, the bad news is that is in 2018.

Black Road by Brian Wood and Gary Brown

My time available for reading comics is still very limited, though the new job is helping with the shorter commute making more free time in the day some of which spills though into more time for reading, and that means taking care over what I buy. The days when I bough almost everything that Marvel published and a lot from DC too have long gone.

I am also looking for different things to read. There are still some good superhero comics out there but the overall standard has fallen with the proliferation of titles (there are three or four different Avengers books every month) and the interest in the characters has gone with the innumerable relaunches and resurrections. I have no idea who DR Henry Pym is these days and I do not care anymore.

On the plus side, the rest of the comics market is very vibrant, particularly Image Comics, and it is easy to find and buy new things on the internet. My current reading list includes Trees, Injection, Sage, Autumn Lands, Midnight of the Soul and Fuse. To that list I have just aded Black Road.

The Black Road leads to the north of Norway and this is a medieval world with a powerful church, waring lords and wolves. Travelling the hazardous road are a warrior and a young woman who grew up as a slave in Rome.

The blurb sounded interesting and I had liked Brian Wood's work on one of the (many) X-Men books and that was enough for me to take a punt on issue #1. Having read that I immediately bought the other published issues (#2 to #4) and then subscribed to the series to get all future issues (#5 is due on 17 August).

There is a lot to like the book. It has lots of familiar themes, the journey, the companionship, the church, the primitive setting, the mysterious ast, etc. and they are brought together skilfully to make something new and interesting, much as Game of Thrones does.

The main narrative is the journey, hence the title of the book, and that drives the story in a clear direction, unlike Game of Thrones!, and makes it a compelling read.

I do not often fall in love with books as quickly as I did this one and not only have I got a new title to read every month I've also been encourage to try some other new titles.

Supreme: Blue Rose is another great read from Warren Ellis

I knew nothing of the history of Supreme before latching on to Supreme: Blue Rose, though I probably should.

Supreme was an the Extreme Studios/Image Comics/Awesome Comics character created by Rob Liefeld and for whom Alan Moore wrote a run in the mid-1990s, and anything with Moore's name attached I should have picked up on.

The name that made me pick up on the new Supreme: Blue Rose series was that of Warren Ellis, a serious contender for my favourite comics writer and an even more serious one for those still writing comics.

The next part of the story is increasingly familiar; Supreme: Blue Rose was published by Image Comics and I bought it digitally to read on my iPad (which I bought three years ago primarily to read comics on).

Also as is becoming the custom, I binge read the seven part series in one sitting. To be honest, I did read issue #1 when it first came out in July 14 but it was a complex story and I was sure to forget some of it so I left it alone to reread it when I had the whole series.

And that tells you the first thing about the story, this was a single story spread over seven issues. One of the things that I like about Ellis is the way he does both single-issue story comics, e.g. Moon Knight, Nextwave: Agents Of H.A.T.E. and Transmetropolitan, and also comics with long story arcs, the best example being FreakAngels.

My lack of knowledge of Supreme before reading this series did not seem to be a problem either, much as having read Moon Knight before did little to enhance my reading of that series. There may well have been references to previous plots, events or characters but I did not pick them up and that did not matter.

The story itself was a little weird, which is what was hardly unexpected for an Ellis story (think Planetary) but was also grounded in the real-world (possibly!) which gave it touch-points into normality.

Adding to the weirdness was the wistful, almost ephemeral, art work by Tula Lotay, a new name to me.

The art was coloured subtly which both matched the mood of the piece and also made it very clear that this was not a superhero comic.

The heart of the story was simple enough in that the world needs to be reset from time-to-time and normally this happens without any of us noticing but this time there was a little problem and it needed to be fixed. Trying to fix it, or trying to stop the fixers, was a large cast of characters who spawned their own little stories and who gave their own perspective on events. Not everything seen or heard could be believed, though the car ride to the Moon was real enough.

Reading the comic was like swimming in some goo made by mixing elements of science and magic and it was that swimming experience that I enjoyed so much rather than the path that I swam along. It was more like reading poetry than prose and it had an unusually high word-count for an Ellis book (despite me choosing to show a page that has no words!). In an action comic often pictures are all you need but in the subtle space of Supreme; Blue Rose it was the words that carry the message and the tone.

I would not claim to have understood every detail of the story, and as I said earlier I am sure that I missed some references, and that did nothing to diminish my enjoyment. This was Warren Ellis doing one of the things that he does very well.

There is much to admire about Ellis and one of them is the way that he will take on fringe books like Supreme: Blue Rose when he has also written for the likes of X-Men and Iron Man. And it is comics like Supreme; Blue Rose, and several other Image titles, that have got me so interested in comics again.

Trees by Warren Ellis is as strange as it is beautiful

It does not take much to get me to buy a Warren Ellis comic and I jumped in to Trees with issue #1 in May 2014 and I was hooked immediately. Now the first arc has just concluded with issue #8.

Warren's name may have been the main reason for reading Trees but Jason Howard's name helped. The two first worked together in 2013 on Scatterlands, an experiment in producing a weekly comic in the style of a newspaper strip. That experiment may have been inconclusive but it brought Warren and Howard together, so that part worked.

The other bit of good news is that Trees is published by Image Comics, currently my favourite publisher thanks to their diverse range of top-quality comics. As with all Image Comics, I bought Trees in digital format.

The idea behind Trees is simple enough, the Trees, as we called them, are an alien life-form that arrived on Earth, planted themselves across the globe and stood there doing nothing for ten years. That's when the comic starts.

The people of Earth reacted to the Trees differently, some studied them while other ignored them. The comic tells the story of some of these groups of people. These include a test community created by the Chinese around the base of a couple of trees, an Arctic science station and a retired secret service agent in Italy.

Dramatic things happen to each group thanks to the indirect influence of the Trees that just stand there motionless throughout the story.

I like Warren's writing style as he is economical with words and lets the pictures tell the story when they are all that is needed to do so. In issue #8 their is a four page section that just has one word and that is a person's name. The lack of words gives more space to the art and that is a good thing as Jason's art is beautiful. It has a gritty, linear style that is entirely suited to the story and helps to make it stand out from the usual.

This early scene shows the arrival of the Trees in Rio.

The first story-arc ends on a dramatic point and while that may be where the story was going to end I am delighted to say that other people like Trees as much as I do and so a second story is on the way. This will be called Two Forests, which sounds somewhat ominous. I'll be there to find out.

I've fallen in love with Tooth And Claw already

This is another good example when lots of digital things came together to my great benefit.

Digital comics have become important to me, more so than the paper ones now, because of the ease of discovery, purchase and reading. Playing a big role in this are Image Comics and I now read seven of their titles regularly, which is about the same number that I read from Marvel.

One of the many ease of use features of digital comics is that I can browse new titles on my iPad from the comfort of my armchair or bed. All of the big brands (Image, Marvel, Vertigo, etc.) have their own stores that show new issues and then there is ComiXology which shows all those and the smaller brands (e.g. Oni Press, Boom!) too. Finding new comics to read has never been easier.

Of course that does not mean that everything is perfect and it is still quite possible to miss good book, the cover and summary description are not always enough to tell you what you need to know. For example it took me a while to plunge into Sage and I also overlooked Tooth and Claw initially.

The main way that I find new comics to read is via recommendations on Twitter. I follow several people in the comics and most of the main brands who are very good, understandably, at retweeting good reviews that they get. It was a Tweet linking to a review that made me buy Tooth and Claw #1.

I had looked at it briefly when it came out and the author's name, Kurt Busiek, lept out at me as I had loved his run on Marvel's The Avengers at the turn of the century that had ended with the Kang Dynasty saga, but that was not enough at the time ot make me add another title to my reading list. Then the review came and I bought the first issue.

Tooth and Claw is beautiful.

It is a full-blown fantasy story in the swords and sorcery vein (mostly sorcery so far) with animalistic characters.

In the introductory forty four pages we are introduced to a new world facing a major problem and a host of characters. The problem is that magic is fading and ambitions plans are made to bring it back but these go wrong and everything changes.

The story sets off a lot of threads and seems to have ambitions of being as complex and compelling as Game of Thrones, and it has the advantage of being able to invent more fantastical things as it is not constrained by physical places and people.

I was quickly hooked to the story by its freshness and I fell in love with it because of Ben Dewey's art. You can see for yourself just how good it is. I love the detail that he puts in and the way that he constructs his pages. The story flows at the right pace and in the right direction. It's an effortless and pleasant read, as it should be.

The rest of the team play their parts well too. Jordie Bellaire's colours give depth and mood to the art. This one example shows the first, not the later which is achieved by applying different washes to different panels. John Roshell's lettering is clear and unobtrusive, and I like the way that it is in mixed case rather than the uppercase that is the rule in superhero comics.

Everything about this comic is fantastic and I am completely hooked.

The Fuse is another good read from Image Comics

My continuing experiment with digital comics in general and those from Image in particular has led me to The Fuse, a crime story set in space. I do not normally read crime fiction, apart from The Saint of course, and I was tempted in to this one by the creative team of Antony Johnston and Justin Greenwood.

It has just finished its first arc, The Russia Shift,and I read it in one shift on the slow train journey back home from a day's work in Reading. I had started reading the individual comics when they came out but the complexity of the plot got to me and I needed to read it one go to keep all the threads connected in my head.

The three stars of the book are two newly twinned police officers and The Fuse itself. The officers are a "cynical, foul-mouthed" and "fresh-faced idealist" which makes for an interesting clash of styles, ages and genders. The Fuse is an orbiting energy platform that has gradually expanded to house a "five-mile-long jury-rigged steel city stuffed with a half million people". It has a frontier town feel to it.

The three interesting characters make it more than a whodunnit and its a good whodunnit too.

Getting into Image comics digitally

Digital has gradually become my preferred method of reading and buying comics, and this is one of the main reasons that I bought my iPad with Retina display a couple of years ago.

The change has also allowed me to try new comics out, which I had been meaning to do for years.

This is much easier to do digitally as all issues are always available and teaser sales are quite common. I got in to comics like Umbral and Saga because the first issues are free.

The change in the type of comic that I read has, unintentionally, changed the publishers that I read. DC Comics have all but gone (because their digital strategy is all but missing) and Image comics now features prominently.

Despite being an American publisher Image has some high-profile titles by established British writers and my library has Trees and Supreme Blue Rose by Warren Ellis and Umbral and The Fuse by Antony Johnston. These are also the first comics that I read when they come in.

Marvel retains a sizable footprint on my iPad thanks to its enlightened digital strategy which means that on almost all of their titles buying the paper copy also gets you the digital version.

This costs slightly more than the digital only version would cost, but not any more than the paper only copies were so it is a good deal. I read the digital copies and file the paper ones away.

By "file away" I obviously mean leave in tall piles in my study but I have now bought boxes and individual plastic bags to store a thousand of them and five hundred have been bagged and boxed already. I'm going to need more bags and boxes.

Finding time to read comics is a perennial problem and I have severely curtailed the number that I buy and that means that the core of my Marvel purchasing is Avengers and X-Men titles, spiced with a couple of oddities like Daredevil and Moon Knight (by that man Warren Ellis again).

The future of comics is decidedly digital and I see that as more of an opportunity than a threat, though I do worry about the impact on the specialist shops that help new people get in to comics in the first place.

Umbral is fantastical

One of the best things about digital comics is that it is easy to try out new titles and when they work out to buy the subsequent issues. And so it was with UMBRAL.

I have felt for a while that I should be reading stuff by Antony Johnston and have recently started his new series The Fuse.

Wasteland was the other obvious one to try but that is only available via ComiXology which no-longer supports in-app purchases (a very silly mistake) and so I preferred to keep with titles published via the Image comics app.

Umbral fitted the bill nicely.

It was still on my must-try-one-day list when the first issue was suddenly made available for free in the hope that it would encourage people to buy Volume 1 which collects issues 1 to 6. I downloaded the free issue and read it almost immediately.

I was blown away by the beauty of it and so did as was expected and bought the first volume which I then read. It got better.

Umbral sits more-or-less in the Swords and Sorcery camp of, for example, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser but with a twist of horror added. There are feudal kingdoms, wizards, assassins, pirates, ghosts and a guild of thieves. These provide a familiar context but the story is more complex and more gripping that most in that genre.

Christopher Mitten's stunning artwork adds the knock-out blow because it is beautiful in all sort of ways. It's slow and dramatic when it needs to be, such as in the full-page panel above and at other times it flows with Antony Johnston's pacey script.

I think that this typical page shows why the comic is so good. The heroes are being chased (that happens a lot), the detail in the archers in the middle panel is exquisite, the tower they are climbing down could only belong to another realm, the different perspectives in each panel emphasis the action, and the story just runs down the page, a page that urges to be turned.

It has been quite a while since a comic has hit he as hard and as fast as Umbral has. The only downside is that I am now completely up to date with the book which has ended on something of a cliffhanger and it is going to be a frustrating wait for issues 7 to 12.

Saga is every bit as good as people say it is

It has taken me far longer to get in to Saga than it should have, but I am fully on-board now.

I was aware of writer Brian K. Vaughan because of his various works at Marvel and DC, especially Y: The Last Man and was also aware that Saga was collecting rave reviews and awards from the start. The first trade paperback collection of issues 1 to 6 won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story and awards do not come much bigger than that.

Issue 1 of Saga has been available for free for some time and I have "bought" it several times in several different comics apps for the iPad intending to launch into it from there. Somehow that never happened.

Then a casual tweet read in the pub informed me that the Hugo Award winning Volume 1 was on short-term sale for just £1.49. I bought it then and there.

Incidentally, easy purchasing is one of the best things about comics apps especially when reading a run on a title as you can seamlessly buy the next issue (unless you use the dreadful new ComiXology app, I use the branded ones from Image and Marvel instead).

The essence of the story is given in the first cover. A mixed-race couple fight to protect their daughter from the many forces ranged against them, including the armies of both their races, robots, ghosts, mercenaries and magic. These strange worlds are designed brilliantly by Fiona Staples who, as illustrator, co-creates the book.

Image describe Saga as "Star Wars meets A Game of Thrones" which is both right and wrong. It has the galaxy-spanning chase of the rebels that Star Wars has and the swords and sorcery of Game of Thrones but it is more human that either with the young lovers and their baby at the heart of the story, not the empires opposed to them. And from this emotional human heart comes a lot of the little detail that makes the book so good. Sagas are far from uncommon, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant come to mind, but this is also a story about a couple who laugh, cry, argue and support each other.

Saga is a very human tale about aliens. I'm hooked.