War of the Worlds

Spending a lot more time at home than usual is allowing me to hit my rather large comics backlog. I started with War of the Worlds.

The simple premise of the story is that the Martians from H. G. Wells' famous story, were not wiped out by bacteria and went on to win the war. A few humans remained free to fight them and Killraven was one of these.

I have several of the original comics in my attic (somewhere) but I had never read the full run before. It was always on my to-do list and I bought Killraven Masterworks Vol. 1 when it hit the ComiXology sales a while ago.

That 470 page volume included the 65 page Marvel Graphic Novel #7: Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds which I had previously bought a digital copy of to add to my existing paper one.

My driver to read the series was to enjoy the P Craig Russell artwork and this cover shows you why. It surprised me how much of the series had been drawn by other artists but as these included people like Herb Trimpe, Neal Adams and Gene Colan that was a bonus.

The story was constrained, as the helpful foreword explained, by not being allowed to end the War of the Worlds. The result was a series of encounters between Killraven and his small band with Martians and their human helpers. These encounters were fantastical and horrific with the Martians engaged in grotesque activities such as farming human babies for food.

The story telling style was very much of its time, early 70s, with a lot of text in addition to the dialogue. It was nice to revisit that style and I think that there is still a place for it.

What I had completely missed when first reading it was the racial sensitivities of that time and place, particularly the Deep South, and the first interracial kiss in comics was only allowed after much discussion at the highest levels within Marvel.

I liked the story and the way that it was written but, as expected, it was the art of P Craig Russell that I loved the most.

The Vampire of Prague

Three of my very favourite things are comics, Prague and the art of P Craig Russell so getting all three together is bound to be a winning combination.

The occasion for the inspired confluence is "Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others", the seventh trade paperback collection in the Hellboy series created by Mike Mignola.

Most of the volume is reprints of the Hellboy comic but The Vampire of Prague was commissioned for the collection and so had not appeared in print before.

It is in full colour but I chose this black and white sample from the few readily available online because it is so distinctly Prague.

The story itself, like most Hellboy stories, is short, mysterious and quirky; almost like Neil Gaiman but with fewer words. That means it is good.

If that is not enough to convince you to investigate this book then knowing that the last story was drawn by Richard Corben should be the clincher!

Sandman: The Dream Hunters #3

Sandman: The Dream Hunters is still the first comic that I read when it's in the pile that I collect from They Walk Among Us; and deservedly so.

Issue 3 marks a noticeable change of pace with what was originally an illustrated work (i.e. mostly words with a few pictures) morphs in to comic book that carries the story with its pictures and uses words sparingly.

Sadly I have not been able to find any of the sumptuous interior artwork by P Craig Russell online so you will just have to make do with the cover and imagine the rest!

The next issue, #4, marks the end of the story and while that will be a sad moment it will also be a good excuse to read all four episodes again.

Sandman: The Dream Hunters #1

The much anticipated, and not just by me, first issue of Sandman: The Dream Hunters proved to be just as gorgeous as I hoped.

The Neil Gaiman story is fairly simple and fits squarely into his familiar territory of magic and myths.

That is not meant to belittle it at all as an "average" Neil Gaiman story is well worth reading, and the simplicity and slowness of the plot allows both the prose and art to flourish imaginatively.

And imaginative artwork is most definitely where P Craig Russell has always triumphed!

The first picture here is the cover which sets the scene. We have Neil Gaiman's version of the Sandman and that tells us that this story involves the world of dreams.

We also see the fox, one of the main characters in the story.

But most of all, we see trees contorted in to delicate shapes and rich pink blossom that contrasts with the dark blue background and makes the scene tranquil and enticing.

Further in to the story we are treated to this page of artwork, taken from P Craig Russell's own web site and showing the art before the lettering is added.

Here the first thing we notice is the unusual layout of the panels, rather a change from the square panel layout the most of us grew up with in comics like the Beano.

We also notice that not much happens, there is little dialogue and no discernible action.

So we linger and look at the art work more closely and then we see exquisite detail, subtle colours and imaginative shapes. And demons. Without knowing the author or what the story is about we can tell that this is something that we are going to enjoy reading.

The bad news is that I now have to wait a month for issue 2 and the worse news is that there are only four issues altogether.

Dream Hunters adapted by P Craig Russell

P Craig Russell has been a favourite artist of mine for many years having first fallen in love with his delicate style in the mid-70s Killraven, Marvel's loose adaptation of War of the Worlds.

Since then he has worked on diverse projects such as opera adaptions, Elric an Conan, all with a large element of fantasy where he excels.

But his most famous work is probably with Neil Gaiman, starting with the special fuller length story in Sandman #50.

Since then he has adapted some Neil Gaiman prose stories including Coraline and, my favourite, Murder Mysteries.

Now comes the excellent news that P Craig Russell is adapting Dream Hunters, one of Neil Gaiman's most fantastical Sandman story. This is going to be a real treat :-)