Entries by tag: comics
NB: With Russia's unprovoked murderous assault on Ukraine, I am actively looking at alternative hosts for this journal, preferably those which will retain as much content as possible. I am very uncomfortable with being part of the Russian economic system at present, in however small a way. In the meantime:
Second frame of third section of Scherven:
Chris: "It's about time you had a wee chat with her."
I picked this up on spec last year from one of the local comics shops. It's a story of young Dutch people in the occupied Netherlands during the second world war; after it's all over, the protagonist, Victor, meets up with his ex-girlfriend, Esther, and reminisces in a series of nested flashbacks about the good times, the bad times and the terrifying times with their friend Chris, who got killed by the Germans (this is not a spoiler, the first page shows his gravestone in detail). The plot is yer typical young-folk-under-occupation tale; the art consciously refers to Dutch propaganda posters of the period, and as is often the case with graphic stories sometimes catches feelings and events that mere prose cannot. It's backed up by photographic and documentary evidence about what happened to the real people on whom the story is based, which I guess makes it more immediate, though personally I'm generally happy to accept that fiction can have truth without being tightly linked to actual historical events.
The title translates as "Splinters", and a second and final part of the series has now been published with the title "Littekens" / "Scars". To be honest I made yet another of my mistakes in buying it - I thought it was by a Flemish writer, and it wasn't until I got to the bits about Queen Wilhelmina that I made sense of the various hints that it was not set in Belgium after all. Still, it was engaging enough that I will probably get the second half.
You can get it here in Dutch and here in French; not yet in English apparently.
This was my top unread graphic novel in a language other than English. Next on that pile is Junker: een Pruisische blues, by Simon Spruyt.
Second frame of third section of Scherven:
Chris: "It's about time you had a wee chat with her."
I picked this up on spec last year from one of the local comics shops. It's a story of young Dutch people in the occupied Netherlands during the second world war; after it's all over, the protagonist, Victor, meets up with his ex-girlfriend, Esther, and reminisces in a series of nested flashbacks about the good times, the bad times and the terrifying times with their friend Chris, who got killed by the Germans (this is not a spoiler, the first page shows his gravestone in detail). The plot is yer typical young-folk-under-occupation tale; the art consciously refers to Dutch propaganda posters of the period, and as is often the case with graphic stories sometimes catches feelings and events that mere prose cannot. It's backed up by photographic and documentary evidence about what happened to the real people on whom the story is based, which I guess makes it more immediate, though personally I'm generally happy to accept that fiction can have truth without being tightly linked to actual historical events.
The title translates as "Splinters", and a second and final part of the series has now been published with the title "Littekens" / "Scars". To be honest I made yet another of my mistakes in buying it - I thought it was by a Flemish writer, and it wasn't until I got to the bits about Queen Wilhelmina that I made sense of the various hints that it was not set in Belgium after all. Still, it was engaging enough that I will probably get the second half.
You can get it here in Dutch and here in French; not yet in English apparently.
This was my top unread graphic novel in a language other than English. Next on that pile is Junker: een Pruisische blues, by Simon Spruyt.
Second frame of third chapter:
French bande dessinée given to us for Christmas by a friend. Carbone ("Carbon") and Silicium ("Silicon") are two artificial intelligences constructed in the near future, given humanoid bodies, and observing and participating in the gradual decline of humanity and the end of the world in environmental catastrophe. It's much slower paced than, say, Barbarella, but thoughtful as well as grim. As my regular reader knows, I'm not a huge fan of stories with anthropomorphic robots; however this somehow worked for me. You can get it here; the English translation is available in six parts, here, here, here, here, here and here.
 Do you think so? |
Second frame of third page of first volume:
Second frame of third page of second volume:
Famous French comic of the 1960s, on which the cult film of 1968 was based. Barbarella is a leader of men and women who biffs as much as she bonks. Her clothes do have a tendency to come off, voluntarily as often as not. Kelly Sue DeConnick has now given us an updated translation, which reads a lot more smoothly and wittily than the long-standing text by Richard Seaver.
It's not deep, but it is fun. You can get vol 1 here and vol 2 here.
Second frame of third page of second volume:
Famous French comic of the 1960s, on which the cult film of 1968 was based. Barbarella is a leader of men and women who biffs as much as she bonks. Her clothes do have a tendency to come off, voluntarily as often as not. Kelly Sue DeConnick has now given us an updated translation, which reads a lot more smoothly and wittily than the long-standing text by Richard Seaver.
Seaver translation:  |
DeConnick translation:  |
It's not deep, but it is fun. You can get vol 1 here and vol 2 here.
Second frame of third chapter:
Captain Cartier: No, I haven’t myself… but scientists have detected
a significant underground mass, exactly where you predicted, yes.
Third and final volume of the award-winning bande dessinée series, of which I very much enjoyed volume 1 and volume 2. We start a year on from previous events, with the reappearance of the mysterious Umo, an enigmatic huge extraterrestrial entity, after it was banished at the end of the last volume, and its incursion into mainland France, throwing the government of President Fillon into disarray and bringing about new and nasty alliances between the forces of state coercion and the underworld, while our protagonist Tayeb mobilises the George Sand, a giant killer robot, to try and save the day. To be honest, I was not convinced that Vehlmann and De Bonneval successfully kept all the plates spinning in their convoluted plot, though they ask a lot of interesting questions. But the art by Tanquerelle and Blanchard is very good, and the first volume of the trilogy set a very high bar which the other two did not quite reach.
You can get the whole third volume in French here.
Captain Cartier: No, I haven’t myself… but scientists have detected
a significant underground mass, exactly where you predicted, yes.
Third and final volume of the award-winning bande dessinée series, of which I very much enjoyed volume 1 and volume 2. We start a year on from previous events, with the reappearance of the mysterious Umo, an enigmatic huge extraterrestrial entity, after it was banished at the end of the last volume, and its incursion into mainland France, throwing the government of President Fillon into disarray and bringing about new and nasty alliances between the forces of state coercion and the underworld, while our protagonist Tayeb mobilises the George Sand, a giant killer robot, to try and save the day. To be honest, I was not convinced that Vehlmann and De Bonneval successfully kept all the plates spinning in their convoluted plot, though they ask a lot of interesting questions. But the art by Tanquerelle and Blanchard is very good, and the first volume of the trilogy set a very high bar which the other two did not quite reach.
You can get the whole third volume in French here.
Second frame of third chapter (on Egypt):
This is actually a lot less exciting than it sounds, a brisk history of white people's sexuality (a follow-up volume looks at Asia and Africa) looking also at historical understandings of marriage and other sexual arrangements. Philippe Brenot is a veteran French sexologist who has written two dozen other books on the subject, and artist Laetitia Coryn is a well-known bandes dessinées writer who is also an actor and voiceover artist. It's not especially erotic, though it's certainly descriptive. In general the points landed fairly and not too didactically; but the scope is not particularly broad. Here's one nice frame about religion, sex and St Paul:
You can get it here.
This was my top unread comic in English (though originally in French). Next on that pile is the second volume of Kieron Gillen's Once and Future.
This was my top unread comic in English (though originally in French). Next on that pile is the second volume of Kieron Gillen's Once and Future.
Second paragraph of third section of the main essay, Nadine Strossen's address at the International Comics Convention, San Diego, 1996:
It's funny how last-century this all feels; sure, protecting freedom of speech from government interference is still an issue, including in the creative industries (just last week we had another redneck Texan legislator protesting against subversive literature in schools), but it seems to me that the debates we are now having are more often about the use of (legally protected) speech to punch down at the oppressed, and what options are open to the rest of us exercising our rights of freedom of association and freedom of speech to object to creators who choose to do that, while at the same time of course deploring acts or threats of violence by state or non-state actors. As so often, xkcd summed it up well:
This was the shortest book still on my shelves acquired in 2015 and not yet read. Next on that pile is Sweeney Todd, another from the Neil Gaiman Humble Bundle.
The first core principle states what is not a sufficient justification for government restrictions on speech. This principle is "content-neutrality" or "viewpoint-neutrality." It was recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in its two decisions striking down laws that criminalized the burning of the U.S. flag.9 In those decisions, the Court described the requirement of content- or viewpoint-neutrality as the "bedrock principle" of our free speech jurisprudence; it is the notion that government may never suppress speech merely because the majority in the community is offended by or disagrees with the content or viewpoint of the speech. That this is indeed a core, central tenet is underscored by the fact that those two decisions were joined not only by the two most liberal Justices at the time — Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall—but also by two of the Court's most conservative members, Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.Another of the Neil Gaiman Humble Bundle books that I have been working through, this being part of his Comics Legal Defence Fund activism; Strossen's speech on behalf of the ACLU at the San Diego convention is the core, book-ended by much shorter contibrutions from Gaiman and other writers - from Dave Sim before he turned out to be a misogynist, and Frank Miller before he turned out to be a bigot.
9 See generally U.S. v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990); See also Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989)
It's funny how last-century this all feels; sure, protecting freedom of speech from government interference is still an issue, including in the creative industries (just last week we had another redneck Texan legislator protesting against subversive literature in schools), but it seems to me that the debates we are now having are more often about the use of (legally protected) speech to punch down at the oppressed, and what options are open to the rest of us exercising our rights of freedom of association and freedom of speech to object to creators who choose to do that, while at the same time of course deploring acts or threats of violence by state or non-state actors. As so often, xkcd summed it up well:
This was the shortest book still on my shelves acquired in 2015 and not yet read. Next on that pile is Sweeney Todd, another from the Neil Gaiman Humble Bundle.
First frame of third page (should be second frame if I followed my usual practice, but I like this more):
Deep on the bottom
of the ocean
lived
a whale.
She was
a hundred thousand
years
old.
This won the Willy Vandersteen Prize last month, for the best comic in Dutch of the last two years. (I raise my eyebrows a little at this, as Zidrou, the writer, is a Francophone, and the book was published in French as La Baleine bibliothèque before the Dutch version came out.) I previously read and enjoyed Judith Vanistendael's De maagd and de neger; here she is the artist, Zidrou is the writer, and they have produced a lovely and moving short story about a whale who contains an entire library, and the marine postman who makes friends with her. The Willy Vandersteen jury described it as "F***ing accessible" which seems to me a slightly strange but not inaccurate description. Once the English translation comes out, get it for your younger friends or relatives and enjoy it with them, and if you want to practice your French or Dutch, you can get the French version here and the Dutch version here.
Deep on the bottom
of the ocean
lived
a whale.
She was
a hundred thousand
years
old.
This won the Willy Vandersteen Prize last month, for the best comic in Dutch of the last two years. (I raise my eyebrows a little at this, as Zidrou, the writer, is a Francophone, and the book was published in French as La Baleine bibliothèque before the Dutch version came out.) I previously read and enjoyed Judith Vanistendael's De maagd and de neger; here she is the artist, Zidrou is the writer, and they have produced a lovely and moving short story about a whale who contains an entire library, and the marine postman who makes friends with her. The Willy Vandersteen jury described it as "F***ing accessible" which seems to me a slightly strange but not inaccurate description. Once the English translation comes out, get it for your younger friends or relatives and enjoy it with them, and if you want to practice your French or Dutch, you can get the French version here and the Dutch version here.
Second frame of third chapter:
One of my impulse purchases at Shakespeare and Company in July, this is a graphic story presentation of Rebecca Hall's research into a particularly obscure bit of American and British history: the role of women in leading revolts of enslaved Africans, in the 18th century. The first part of the book looks at New York, not usually remembered as the hotbed of the slave trade that it actually was at one time, where enslaved women have been more or less erased from the narrative even when they were the instigators of local (usually very local) attempts to overthrow white oppression. She then goes on to England, where she is abruptly blocked from looking at the records of Lloyd's (a shameful act from the venerable insurance company) but finds enough to keep her going at the role the women had in the shipboard revolts of slave transports - basically, while the men were chained below decks, women were allowed some freedom to sit above, where they served the needs of the white sailors, including their sexual demands, but also had relatively easy access to weapons and the motivation to use them. She finishes up by imagining the environment that slaves would have come from in West Africa, where the tradition of enslavement after a military defeat by your neighbours, lasting a few years and then you went home, was completely disrupted by the Atlantic slave trade.
The whole book is presented as Hall's research process, which anyone who's ever done historical research will deeply sympathise with, against the dynamic of leaving her partner and young child behind while she heads off to New York and England to find answers. And of course it's also rooted against the continuing discrimination against women and people of colour in the USA especially, though also in Europe. The title refers both to the wake of the history of the slave ships, and I think to the need to become woke. It's a really good book and you can get it here.
I'm going to annoyingly divert for a moment to an odd bit of slaving history, the fort of São João Baptista de Ajudá, in Ouidah, Benin, which remained a Portuguese possession until 1961 though it was only 70m square and had a population of less than a dozen; it was probably the smallest territory ever recognised as a separate polity, albeit a Portuguese colony. (The Turkish exclave of the tomb of Suleyman Shah isn't a separate polity from Turkey, and has only one inhabitant, who has been dead since 1236.)
This was my top unread comic in English. Next on that pile is The Story of Sex: From Apes to Robots, by Philippe Brenot and Laetitia Coryn.
One of my impulse purchases at Shakespeare and Company in July, this is a graphic story presentation of Rebecca Hall's research into a particularly obscure bit of American and British history: the role of women in leading revolts of enslaved Africans, in the 18th century. The first part of the book looks at New York, not usually remembered as the hotbed of the slave trade that it actually was at one time, where enslaved women have been more or less erased from the narrative even when they were the instigators of local (usually very local) attempts to overthrow white oppression. She then goes on to England, where she is abruptly blocked from looking at the records of Lloyd's (a shameful act from the venerable insurance company) but finds enough to keep her going at the role the women had in the shipboard revolts of slave transports - basically, while the men were chained below decks, women were allowed some freedom to sit above, where they served the needs of the white sailors, including their sexual demands, but also had relatively easy access to weapons and the motivation to use them. She finishes up by imagining the environment that slaves would have come from in West Africa, where the tradition of enslavement after a military defeat by your neighbours, lasting a few years and then you went home, was completely disrupted by the Atlantic slave trade.
The whole book is presented as Hall's research process, which anyone who's ever done historical research will deeply sympathise with, against the dynamic of leaving her partner and young child behind while she heads off to New York and England to find answers. And of course it's also rooted against the continuing discrimination against women and people of colour in the USA especially, though also in Europe. The title refers both to the wake of the history of the slave ships, and I think to the need to become woke. It's a really good book and you can get it here.
I'm going to annoyingly divert for a moment to an odd bit of slaving history, the fort of São João Baptista de Ajudá, in Ouidah, Benin, which remained a Portuguese possession until 1961 though it was only 70m square and had a population of less than a dozen; it was probably the smallest territory ever recognised as a separate polity, albeit a Portuguese colony. (The Turkish exclave of the tomb of Suleyman Shah isn't a separate polity from Turkey, and has only one inhabitant, who has been dead since 1236.)
This was my top unread comic in English. Next on that pile is The Story of Sex: From Apes to Robots, by Philippe Brenot and Laetitia Coryn.
Second frame of third chapter:
I have been thoroughly enjoying the Thirteenth Doctor comics, perhaps even a little more than the TV show. Here Jody Houser brings the four-strong TARDIS crew to play a Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern type role in the background of Blink, which remains for me the single best episode of New Who. The Thirteenth Doctor bonds with Martha Jones, and sheepishly realises the Tenth Doctor's emotional cluelessness; and the Tenth Doctor meanwhile is perturbed by three time-travelling strangers. There are Autons and a Time Agent as well, but who cares? It's immense fun just to see the characters actually doing something together, and wishing it could have been televised like this. (Though there are already rumours that Tennant will return for the 60th anniversary...) You can get it here.
This was my top unread comic in English. Next on that pile is Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, by Rebecca Hall.
I have been thoroughly enjoying the Thirteenth Doctor comics, perhaps even a little more than the TV show. Here Jody Houser brings the four-strong TARDIS crew to play a Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern type role in the background of Blink, which remains for me the single best episode of New Who. The Thirteenth Doctor bonds with Martha Jones, and sheepishly realises the Tenth Doctor's emotional cluelessness; and the Tenth Doctor meanwhile is perturbed by three time-travelling strangers. There are Autons and a Time Agent as well, but who cares? It's immense fun just to see the characters actually doing something together, and wishing it could have been televised like this. (Though there are already rumours that Tennant will return for the 60th anniversary...) You can get it here.
This was my top unread comic in English. Next on that pile is Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, by Rebecca Hall.
Second frame of third chapter:
Yajna: "We still have not been accepted as
a permanent member of the UN Security
Council, despite our diplomatic efforts."
I read the first volume in this series a couple of months ago, and enjoyed it; the second keeps up the pace, with a well-realised set of characters stealing a giant nuclear-powered battle robot from its resting place in Bombay and bringing it towards its destiny in the Algerian desert; meanwhile the baby born at the end of the previous volume has a very mysterious mark on its forehead which seems linked with the mysterious intrusion into our reality from another world. This volume is a little middle book-y as we travel from start to conclusion of the trilogy (in a giant killer robot floating westward over the Indian Ocean), but the pace is kept up very well. The third and final volume comes out next month, and I'm looking forward to it.
French readers can get the complete second volume here. English readers can get the ten parts in translation here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
This was my top unread comic in a language other than English. Next on that list is vol 2 of Retour sur Aldebaran, by Leo. (Though I'll bump that down a step if I get hold of Le Dernier Atlas 3 first.)
Yajna: "We still have not been accepted as
a permanent member of the UN Security
Council, despite our diplomatic efforts."
I read the first volume in this series a couple of months ago, and enjoyed it; the second keeps up the pace, with a well-realised set of characters stealing a giant nuclear-powered battle robot from its resting place in Bombay and bringing it towards its destiny in the Algerian desert; meanwhile the baby born at the end of the previous volume has a very mysterious mark on its forehead which seems linked with the mysterious intrusion into our reality from another world. This volume is a little middle book-y as we travel from start to conclusion of the trilogy (in a giant killer robot floating westward over the Indian Ocean), but the pace is kept up very well. The third and final volume comes out next month, and I'm looking forward to it.
French readers can get the complete second volume here. English readers can get the ten parts in translation here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
This was my top unread comic in a language other than English. Next on that list is vol 2 of Retour sur Aldebaran, by Leo. (Though I'll bump that down a step if I get hold of Le Dernier Atlas 3 first.)
Here's a lovely thing. The Slovenian Presidency of the EU has made available a book from each of the 27 EU member states for us all to read. Nine of them are picture books, and there's a graphic novel; seven are represented by short stories, four are rather bravely represented by poetry, three have novels and the last three are represented by essays.
I had a sleepless night the other night and fairly quickly worked through the nine picture books. I think all of them require a decent-sized screen to really appreciate; but I also think all of them could be bought for the small person of your choice. As is my usual habit, I'm listing them here in my reverse order of preference, with my favourite kept till last.
Portugal: Trocoscópio, by Bernardo P. Carvalho. Third page:
Comes with a helpful video in English and Slovenian explaining how to read the book. (I love the sound of spoken Slovenian, more than any other Slavic language.)
A series of geometrical drawings, into which you can project your own story. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from Amazon here.
Spain: La Ciudad (The City), by Roser Capdevila. Third page:
Only five pages, each a vignette of life in a city not very different from Barcelona. Lots of detail in each one. Not a lot of non-white people though. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from Amazon here. An English translation (of a book with hardly any words!) may also exist.
France: Sortie de nuit (A Night Journey), by Laurie Agusti. Third page:
Imago smells something different. In the crowd, with no nectar, he is still hungry.
Imago the butterfly flies on a somewhat creepy journey through the city at night. I have to say that knowing how fragile butterflies are, I found this really creepy, especially when we meet the dark butterflies towards the end. Perhaps I am overthinking, but this one did not help me sleep. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from Amazon in French here.
Netherlands: In de tuin (In the garden), by Noëlle Smit. Third page:
March Spring is coming. Look, the first crocuses!
A straightforward set of pictures of a market garden through the twelve months of the year, which would appeal a lot to people who are more interested in gardening than I am, and to their children. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from Amazon in Dutch here or in English translation here.
Hungary: Otthon, by Kinga Rofusz. Third page:
A book with only one word ("eladó", meaning "for sale") and lots of pictures explaining a child's feelings as his family moves from the only home he has ever known to a new house. Rather sweet but very short. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from the publisher here.
Denmark: Hr. Alting (Mr Everything), by Bente Olesen Nyström. Third page:
Wow. This is pretty psychedelic. There is in fact a table of contents in Danish, supplying captions for each page, but they are very far from meshing with the content of the pictures (eg the one for page 3 is "the hidden treasure of the hurricane"). Mr Everything's world is a rich and fantastic one, and perhaps it's better if the instructions are in a language you don't understand. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from the publisher here.
Finland: Meidän piti lähteä (We Had to Leave), by Sanna Pelliccioni. Third page:
Worldless story of a family who have to flee their home because of war, and end up makign a new home somewhere else. Rather moving. Sometimes you don't need words. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from the publisher here.
Austria: Fridolin Franse frisiert (Fridolin’s Hair Salon), by Michael Roher. Third page:
washing
A customer comes into Fridolin's hair salon with very long hair, in which a vast number of stories are concealed. Maybe I'm easily pleased but this was sheer delight. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from Amazon in German here.
Belgium: Mijn straat: een wereld van verschil (My Street: a world of difference), by Ann De Bode. Third page:
At Jona's (Jona is from Israel)
I had a sleepless night the other night and fairly quickly worked through the nine picture books. I think all of them require a decent-sized screen to really appreciate; but I also think all of them could be bought for the small person of your choice. As is my usual habit, I'm listing them here in my reverse order of preference, with my favourite kept till last.
Portugal: Trocoscópio, by Bernardo P. Carvalho. Third page:
A series of geometrical drawings, into which you can project your own story. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from Amazon here.
Spain: La Ciudad (The City), by Roser Capdevila. Third page:
France: Sortie de nuit (A Night Journey), by Laurie Agusti. Third page:
Imago smells something different. In the crowd, with no nectar, he is still hungry.
Imago the butterfly flies on a somewhat creepy journey through the city at night. I have to say that knowing how fragile butterflies are, I found this really creepy, especially when we meet the dark butterflies towards the end. Perhaps I am overthinking, but this one did not help me sleep. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from Amazon in French here.
Netherlands: In de tuin (In the garden), by Noëlle Smit. Third page:
March Spring is coming. Look, the first crocuses!
A straightforward set of pictures of a market garden through the twelve months of the year, which would appeal a lot to people who are more interested in gardening than I am, and to their children. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from Amazon in Dutch here or in English translation here.
Hungary: Otthon, by Kinga Rofusz. Third page:
Denmark: Hr. Alting (Mr Everything), by Bente Olesen Nyström. Third page:
Finland: Meidän piti lähteä (We Had to Leave), by Sanna Pelliccioni. Third page:
Austria: Fridolin Franse frisiert (Fridolin’s Hair Salon), by Michael Roher. Third page:
washing
A customer comes into Fridolin's hair salon with very long hair, in which a vast number of stories are concealed. Maybe I'm easily pleased but this was sheer delight. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from Amazon in German here.
Belgium: Mijn straat: een wereld van verschil (My Street: a world of difference), by Ann De Bode. Third page:
At Jona's (Jona is from Israel)
I don't think it's just patriotic fervour on my part; the Belgian entry is really good, a series of vignettes of life on an urban street (probably Antwerp) where everyone has character without veering into thoughtless stereotypes, with everyone looking forward to the street party at the end. (And then I had to go back and look for the hidden gnome in each picture.) Loved it and will look out for other work by this artist. You can get it on the European Readr site here, or a hard copy from the publisher in Dutch here.
This leafing through nine of the 27 books was prompted by insomnia, but I think I'll try and work through the other eighteen now, and hopefully while I am awake.
A couple of people have asked me if I will return to the staff of DisCon III now that the Chair has resigned. Whoever the new Chair is, I will decline any such invitation. My former position as WSFS Division Head was filled within twenty-four hours of my own resignation, by someone who (unlike me) has actually done that job before, and who does not need me looking over their shoulder. I have no information about the rest of the vacancies, and frankly it's none of my business whether others of the former team decide to return if invited to do so. Whoever does pick up the reins, I wish them well; I think that we left the Hugo Administration side of things in pretty good shape, and there is of course continuity in Site Selection and the Business Meeting. (One of my few regrets about the way things ended is that we had not yet set up systematic monitoring of the votes coming in, so I have absolutely no idea who is winning.)
Having been liberated earlier than I expected from my responsibilities for this year's Hugos, I can start blogging my views on the finalists for those who are interested. I think the Best Graphic Story or Comic category has really improved over the years that it has been run; as my regular reader knows, I am worried about category inflation for the Hugos, but this one certainly brings more than it takes.
6) Invisible Kingdom, vol 2: Edge of Everything, by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward
Second frame of Part 03:
One of the problems of this Hugo category is that when later volumes in a series are nominated by people who have grown to love the series as a whole, those of us who have not read the preceding volumes are rather at a loss to understand what is going on. This is gorgeously drawn, intense space opera, but I have not read the first volume so was missing the background, and on top of that not much seemed to actually happen despite a lot of running about. You can get it here.
5) DIE, Volume 2: Split the Party, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles
Second frame of Part 8:
And here's another second volume on the final ballot, with the important difference that the first volume was on last year's ballot, so I had at least read it. It's about a group of role-playing friends who are swept into a fantasy world and must try and reunite to get back. Again, quite a lot of middle-book running around, and I do not really care for any of the characters. You can get it here.
4) Monstress, vol. 5: Warchild, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Second frame of Chapter 27:
Not a second volume, but a fifth, where all four previous volumes were Hugo finalists and indeed three of them won, two of them in years when I was the Hugo Administrator. The art is gorgeous and the world-building fascinating; however I have slightly lost track of the plot and, as with previous volumes, the violence is a bit too squicky for my taste.
Though there was one moment that gave me a big laugh.
You can get it here.
3) Ghost-Spider vol. 1: Dog Days Are Over, by Seanan McGuire, Takeshi Miyazawa and Rosie Kämpe
Second frame of third part:
I have not always got on with McGuire's work before, but I did enjoy this, a Buffy-esque story of teen superhero Spider-Gwen trying to keep a handle on both her crime-fighting life and her college education - in a parallel Earth, of course - which being hunted by a Baddie. Laugh-out-loud funny in places. You can get it here.
2) Once & Future vol. 1: The King Is Undead, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora, Tamra Bonvillain, and Ed Dukeshire
Second frame of Chapter 3:
Another one that I really liked - an audacious reinvention of the Matter of Britain, where King Arthur returns as an undead horror in league with present-day fascists, and our hero, together with his tough-as-nails granny, must thwart them. Moves at a cracking pace with some good set-pieces in south-west England. You can get it here.
1) Parable of the Sower, written by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
Second frame of 2026 section:
I was sure I had read the original version of Parable of the Sower, but I can't actually find a record anywhere of having done so, and don't seem to have it on my shelves. So I was coming to the story as a whole fresh, a grim tale of a young woman's experience of the catastrophic breakdown of society in near-future California (much nearer now than it was when the book first came out) and her building for a better world. I think Duffy and Jennings have done a tremendous job of bringing Butler's prose respectfully to graphic life, not going overboard on the horror but not underselling it either, and making each character distinct on the page. So it gets my top vote this year. You can get it here.
2021 Hugos: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form | Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar | Astounding
Having been liberated earlier than I expected from my responsibilities for this year's Hugos, I can start blogging my views on the finalists for those who are interested. I think the Best Graphic Story or Comic category has really improved over the years that it has been run; as my regular reader knows, I am worried about category inflation for the Hugos, but this one certainly brings more than it takes.
6) Invisible Kingdom, vol 2: Edge of Everything, by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward
Second frame of Part 03:
One of the problems of this Hugo category is that when later volumes in a series are nominated by people who have grown to love the series as a whole, those of us who have not read the preceding volumes are rather at a loss to understand what is going on. This is gorgeously drawn, intense space opera, but I have not read the first volume so was missing the background, and on top of that not much seemed to actually happen despite a lot of running about. You can get it here.
5) DIE, Volume 2: Split the Party, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles
Second frame of Part 8:
And here's another second volume on the final ballot, with the important difference that the first volume was on last year's ballot, so I had at least read it. It's about a group of role-playing friends who are swept into a fantasy world and must try and reunite to get back. Again, quite a lot of middle-book running around, and I do not really care for any of the characters. You can get it here.
4) Monstress, vol. 5: Warchild, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Second frame of Chapter 27:
Not a second volume, but a fifth, where all four previous volumes were Hugo finalists and indeed three of them won, two of them in years when I was the Hugo Administrator. The art is gorgeous and the world-building fascinating; however I have slightly lost track of the plot and, as with previous volumes, the violence is a bit too squicky for my taste.
Though there was one moment that gave me a big laugh.
You can get it here.
3) Ghost-Spider vol. 1: Dog Days Are Over, by Seanan McGuire, Takeshi Miyazawa and Rosie Kämpe
Second frame of third part:
I have not always got on with McGuire's work before, but I did enjoy this, a Buffy-esque story of teen superhero Spider-Gwen trying to keep a handle on both her crime-fighting life and her college education - in a parallel Earth, of course - which being hunted by a Baddie. Laugh-out-loud funny in places. You can get it here.
2) Once & Future vol. 1: The King Is Undead, by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora, Tamra Bonvillain, and Ed Dukeshire
Second frame of Chapter 3:
Another one that I really liked - an audacious reinvention of the Matter of Britain, where King Arthur returns as an undead horror in league with present-day fascists, and our hero, together with his tough-as-nails granny, must thwart them. Moves at a cracking pace with some good set-pieces in south-west England. You can get it here.
1) Parable of the Sower, written by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
Second frame of 2026 section:
I was sure I had read the original version of Parable of the Sower, but I can't actually find a record anywhere of having done so, and don't seem to have it on my shelves. So I was coming to the story as a whole fresh, a grim tale of a young woman's experience of the catastrophic breakdown of society in near-future California (much nearer now than it was when the book first came out) and her building for a better world. I think Duffy and Jennings have done a tremendous job of bringing Butler's prose respectfully to graphic life, not going overboard on the horror but not underselling it either, and making each character distinct on the page. So it gets my top vote this year. You can get it here.
2021 Hugos: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form | Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar | Astounding
Second frame of third story ("Man-hating Madness"):
I got this in 2019 because one of the stories, "Battle for Womanhood", was up for the Retro Hugo that year, which I was administering, and it won - topping the poll at nominations stage and convincingly carrying the final ballot. I voted for it too, and on reflection I'm really not sure why; these are a weird set of stories combining an attractively subversive feminism with some pretty awful racism against the Japanese. (But the Chinese, who of course are allies and victims of Japan, are all right.) I almost gave up after the first few, which were all about Wonder Woman biffing either the Germans or the Japanese, though getting tied up a lot. Then it starts getting interesting, with weird alien creatures and ancient gods getting involved, and an interesting mentoring relationship between Wonder Woman and human girl; along with the full-figured Etta Candy and her sorority, and recurrent villains Dr Psycho and the Cheetah, and Wonder Woman still gets tied up a lot. Oh, and Steve as well.
But honestly, it's not all that good. Inspiration for what came later, of course, and it's not like any comics were especially brilliant by today's standards at the time. But I am a bit surprised at my own vote, in retrospect. Anyway, you can get it here.
This was my top unread English-language comic. Next up, if I can find it, is a slim volume called Eurofiles.
I got this in 2019 because one of the stories, "Battle for Womanhood", was up for the Retro Hugo that year, which I was administering, and it won - topping the poll at nominations stage and convincingly carrying the final ballot. I voted for it too, and on reflection I'm really not sure why; these are a weird set of stories combining an attractively subversive feminism with some pretty awful racism against the Japanese. (But the Chinese, who of course are allies and victims of Japan, are all right.) I almost gave up after the first few, which were all about Wonder Woman biffing either the Germans or the Japanese, though getting tied up a lot. Then it starts getting interesting, with weird alien creatures and ancient gods getting involved, and an interesting mentoring relationship between Wonder Woman and human girl; along with the full-figured Etta Candy and her sorority, and recurrent villains Dr Psycho and the Cheetah, and Wonder Woman still gets tied up a lot. Oh, and Steve as well.
But honestly, it's not all that good. Inspiration for what came later, of course, and it's not like any comics were especially brilliant by today's standards at the time. But I am a bit surprised at my own vote, in retrospect. Anyway, you can get it here.
This was my top unread English-language comic. Next up, if I can find it, is a slim volume called Eurofiles.
Second frame of third story:
I've enjoyed Tomine's work before, and Anne kindly got this for my birthday, and I enjoyed it too. It's a set of vignettes from Tomine's life, most of them incidents of toe-curling embarrassment or micro-aggression, told in confessional or self-deprecating tone. Tomine's main subject is himself, though also the people he loves and the people he works with, and he makes us sympathetic and perhaps even understanding of the lifestyle of the self-employed artist. Some of the stories very funny indeed (eg the date where the people at the next table are disparaging his work, not knowing that he is in earshot; and the incident with his daughter's kindergarten class). Recommended. You can get it here.
I've enjoyed Tomine's work before, and Anne kindly got this for my birthday, and I enjoyed it too. It's a set of vignettes from Tomine's life, most of them incidents of toe-curling embarrassment or micro-aggression, told in confessional or self-deprecating tone. Tomine's main subject is himself, though also the people he loves and the people he works with, and he makes us sympathetic and perhaps even understanding of the lifestyle of the self-employed artist. Some of the stories very funny indeed (eg the date where the people at the next table are disparaging his work, not knowing that he is in earshot; and the incident with his daughter's kindergarten class). Recommended. You can get it here.
Two very short works by Neil Gaiman, one illustrated by Mark Buckingham, the other inspired by scupltures by Lisa Snellings.
Second frame of third story of Feeders & Eaters & other stories ("An Image to Maintain", in which Buckingham portrays himself on the phone to Gaiman):
The title story is Gaiman's account of a spooky late-night encounter in a cafe (which has been dramatised); the second is about Alan Moore; and the third is a one-pager by Buckingham. Perhaps a little more refective on the nature of the artist's work than sometimes.
Second paragraph of the third of the Sculpture Stories, "The Sea Change":
Very very short collection of six fiction pieces (on in verse) and an interview, all inspired by Snellings' work.
Neither of these is available o themarket; I got them as part of a Humble Bundle several years ago.
Second frame of third story of Feeders & Eaters & other stories ("An Image to Maintain", in which Buckingham portrays himself on the phone to Gaiman):
Second paragraph of the third of the Sculpture Stories, "The Sea Change":
"Now hear us as we cry to Theeinspired by this sculpture, "Aqua Marie".
For those in peril on the sea"
Neither of these is available o themarket; I got them as part of a Humble Bundle several years ago.
Second frame of third chapter:
Momo: Hey, can I talk to you? [literally: are you listening to me?]
Ismaël: Yes.
I'm always trying to broaden my reading of bandes dessinées, and this won the Prix René Goscinny 2020 so I thought I would give it a go. The setting is a really interesting alternate history (uchronie as the French put it), in which France won the Algerian war by developing giant nuclear powered robots to stomp out the resistance; but in the end, Algeria gained independence after all after the 1976 Batna disaster (which everyone mutters about but has not yet been described) and the robots were all dismantled apart from one which is quietly rusting away in India. Our protagonist, a hoodlum from Nantes in roughly the present day (2020 ish, in the alternate timeline), is given the task of retrieving it for his crime boss. Meanwhile in the Algerian desert, something very strange is happening.
This is really good, and you don't need to be an expert in the history of France and Algeria to appreciate it. The characters are all well drawn and well depicted, and the scenes of France, Algeria and India are convincing, with the legacy of colonialism a major subtheme. Giant nuclear-powered robots are a silly idea, of course, but the point is that they and their crew became cult figures for kids in the 1970s like our protagonist, who still has his sticker book. Gloriously, the robot he is sent to India to retrieve is named after George Sand, the embodiment of French culture stomping out the natives. Here's the promotional video for the second volume, which is next on my list of non-English-language comics.
It hasn't been translated into English yet (surely some smart publisher will pick it up?) but you can get it here.
Momo: Hey, can I talk to you? [literally: are you listening to me?]
Ismaël: Yes.
I'm always trying to broaden my reading of bandes dessinées, and this won the Prix René Goscinny 2020 so I thought I would give it a go. The setting is a really interesting alternate history (uchronie as the French put it), in which France won the Algerian war by developing giant nuclear powered robots to stomp out the resistance; but in the end, Algeria gained independence after all after the 1976 Batna disaster (which everyone mutters about but has not yet been described) and the robots were all dismantled apart from one which is quietly rusting away in India. Our protagonist, a hoodlum from Nantes in roughly the present day (2020 ish, in the alternate timeline), is given the task of retrieving it for his crime boss. Meanwhile in the Algerian desert, something very strange is happening.
This is really good, and you don't need to be an expert in the history of France and Algeria to appreciate it. The characters are all well drawn and well depicted, and the scenes of France, Algeria and India are convincing, with the legacy of colonialism a major subtheme. Giant nuclear-powered robots are a silly idea, of course, but the point is that they and their crew became cult figures for kids in the 1970s like our protagonist, who still has his sticker book. Gloriously, the robot he is sent to India to retrieve is named after George Sand, the embodiment of French culture stomping out the natives. Here's the promotional video for the second volume, which is next on my list of non-English-language comics.
It hasn't been translated into English yet (surely some smart publisher will pick it up?) but you can get it here.
Biggest frame of vol 1, page 3:
Biggest frame of vol 2, page 3:
I saw this recommended somewhere: two albums written by French author Filippi, best known for his writing for young adults, and illustrated by Dodson, better known for his Marvel and DC work on superheroes.
I'm not sure that I'd repeat the recommendation. Our heroine, Coraline, takes a job as governess to a teenage boy who invents lots of machines in his spare time. At night she has strange dreams which always seem to end with her clothes falling off. The end of the second volume reveals What Is Really Going On, and I have to say that it makes no sense at all in terms of what we have been told of the story. Also notable that the titles of the volumes are the wrong way around - vol 1's title is "Celia", but she is the sister of Coraline, the main character, and not otherwise mentioned until halfway through vol 2. The art is lush and gorgeous, but basically it's two short books about boobs. You can get them here and here.
Biggest frame of vol 2, page 3:
I saw this recommended somewhere: two albums written by French author Filippi, best known for his writing for young adults, and illustrated by Dodson, better known for his Marvel and DC work on superheroes.
I'm not sure that I'd repeat the recommendation. Our heroine, Coraline, takes a job as governess to a teenage boy who invents lots of machines in his spare time. At night she has strange dreams which always seem to end with her clothes falling off. The end of the second volume reveals What Is Really Going On, and I have to say that it makes no sense at all in terms of what we have been told of the story. Also notable that the titles of the volumes are the wrong way around - vol 1's title is "Celia", but she is the sister of Coraline, the main character, and not otherwise mentioned until halfway through vol 2. The art is lush and gorgeous, but basically it's two short books about boobs. You can get them here and here.
Little U and I had a nice excursion into Brussels this morning, to see a small exhibiton on comics and censorship at the Bozar centre
We had a difficult moment taking a shortcut through the Galerie Ravenstein (a shopping arcade linking the musem to Central Station) when we encountered a pigeon in the rotunda. U has a thing about birds, and the pigeon seemed to be looking at us. It aggressively hid behind a staircase, causing further unease; and then flew up to the top of the gallery and malevolently dropped a twig on the floor, less than twenty metres away from where we were standing. Poor U was so frozen in terror of the evil pigeon that I could not even persuade her to turn her back on it so that we could walk the long way round via the Mont des Arts. Eventually the pigeon went away, to fulfill its nefarious plans elsewhere, as pigeons do, and we were able to proceed. As you can see from my photo (taken later), the Ravenstein rotunda is a small confined intimate claustrophobic space, where a determinedly murderous pigeon could easily wreak mayhem on unprepared human passers-by.
The Bozar exhibition itself is recommended, and it's only on for a month, so you need to go soon, if you are going at all. It is very cheap - U and I got in for €2 and €4, though I am not sure which of us was which. You get to it through a slightly labyrinthine set of steel corridors which I guess avoid the fire damage that the Bozar suffered in January. The exhibiton is a set of a dozen or so square pillars, each illustrating a particular theme of censorship of Belgian comics, with captions in English, Dutch and French. It's based on a book by Jan Smets. The themes include violence, sex, drugs (legal and illegal) and interestingly also criticism of the Belgian monarchy.
I was interested to see Bucquoy mentioned, but not his 1985 work Mourir à Creys-Malville, in which Prince Laurent is installed as monarch of a Fascist Wallonia, a puppet state of the evil French, in about 1993.
Also on display in Bozar is a rather wacky sculpture of a car encrusted with drinking glasses and tributes to the philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
The exhibition did not take us long (and frankly it did not really engage U's interest), and we followed up with a cup of tea in the Park in the sun. Here's U with her faithful Android, and behind her you can just about see the Kiosk, described in Villette by Charlotte Brontë:
No crowds today. There was a briefer incident with a threatening pigeon in the Galerie Ravenstein on the way back, but we got home safely.
We had a difficult moment taking a shortcut through the Galerie Ravenstein (a shopping arcade linking the musem to Central Station) when we encountered a pigeon in the rotunda. U has a thing about birds, and the pigeon seemed to be looking at us. It aggressively hid behind a staircase, causing further unease; and then flew up to the top of the gallery and malevolently dropped a twig on the floor, less than twenty metres away from where we were standing. Poor U was so frozen in terror of the evil pigeon that I could not even persuade her to turn her back on it so that we could walk the long way round via the Mont des Arts. Eventually the pigeon went away, to fulfill its nefarious plans elsewhere, as pigeons do, and we were able to proceed. As you can see from my photo (taken later), the Ravenstein rotunda is a small confined intimate claustrophobic space, where a determinedly murderous pigeon could easily wreak mayhem on unprepared human passers-by.
The Bozar exhibition itself is recommended, and it's only on for a month, so you need to go soon, if you are going at all. It is very cheap - U and I got in for €2 and €4, though I am not sure which of us was which. You get to it through a slightly labyrinthine set of steel corridors which I guess avoid the fire damage that the Bozar suffered in January. The exhibiton is a set of a dozen or so square pillars, each illustrating a particular theme of censorship of Belgian comics, with captions in English, Dutch and French. It's based on a book by Jan Smets. The themes include violence, sex, drugs (legal and illegal) and interestingly also criticism of the Belgian monarchy.
I was interested to see Bucquoy mentioned, but not his 1985 work Mourir à Creys-Malville, in which Prince Laurent is installed as monarch of a Fascist Wallonia, a puppet state of the evil French, in about 1993.
Also on display in Bozar is a rather wacky sculpture of a car encrusted with drinking glasses and tributes to the philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
The exhibition did not take us long (and frankly it did not really engage U's interest), and we followed up with a cup of tea in the Park in the sun. Here's U with her faithful Android, and behind her you can just about see the Kiosk, described in Villette by Charlotte Brontë:
a Byzantine building—a sort of kiosk near the park's centre. Round about stood crowded thousands, gathered to a grand concert in the open air.
No crowds today. There was a briefer incident with a threatening pigeon in the Galerie Ravenstein on the way back, but we got home safely.
Second frame (more or less) of third story in original and translation - you must read the text from right to left, of course. Both sentences are spoken by Sui's genius father.
This was one of the works of 20th-century sf set in the year 2021 that I listed a while back, but it took me a while to get hold of the English translation of the first volume. This is manga written for a teenage girls' magazine, which is not a sub-genre that I am at all familiar with; Vermillion the robot is being taught how to be human by his creator's teenage daughter Sui, and Feelings ensue.
I had to get to grips with reading right to left, and with the very fluid approach to frames - the story sometimes flows all over the page; and there's a lot of incidental detail that is hinted at rather than shown or told. But these are five solid enough sf stories with a firmly shared setup; Sui and her father are enmeshed in a society where some have an irrational hatred of robots, some are jealously trying to move in on her father's trade secrets, and Sui herself is trying to be a normal teenager in 2021 with a beautiful boy robot waiting for her at home. (Her mother is not mentioned at any point.)
It did seem to me that Vermillion the robot is a perfect unthreatening boyfriend in that he is good company, helps out with the house work and not a sexual prospect in any way - in the very first story, he calls out a predatory professional contact of Sui's father's; there is genuine physical peril for the characters in most of the stories, which Vermillion is usually able to help them to escape from. I still hate cute anthropomorphic robots as a theme, but this was far enough off my usual beat to keep me interested. I don't think I will bother with any more, though, I don't think that there will be any development of the overall story arc; it's really a case of this month's perilous situation. Still, you can get the first volume here.
I was trying to imagine how a British version of this would have looked, and actually it's not too difficult; scanning the storylines of Bunty over the years shows that a number of them did have robot-based plots. (There were fewer in Mandy, but still more than one.)
This was one of the works of 20th-century sf set in the year 2021 that I listed a while back, but it took me a while to get hold of the English translation of the first volume. This is manga written for a teenage girls' magazine, which is not a sub-genre that I am at all familiar with; Vermillion the robot is being taught how to be human by his creator's teenage daughter Sui, and Feelings ensue.
I had to get to grips with reading right to left, and with the very fluid approach to frames - the story sometimes flows all over the page; and there's a lot of incidental detail that is hinted at rather than shown or told. But these are five solid enough sf stories with a firmly shared setup; Sui and her father are enmeshed in a society where some have an irrational hatred of robots, some are jealously trying to move in on her father's trade secrets, and Sui herself is trying to be a normal teenager in 2021 with a beautiful boy robot waiting for her at home. (Her mother is not mentioned at any point.)
It did seem to me that Vermillion the robot is a perfect unthreatening boyfriend in that he is good company, helps out with the house work and not a sexual prospect in any way - in the very first story, he calls out a predatory professional contact of Sui's father's; there is genuine physical peril for the characters in most of the stories, which Vermillion is usually able to help them to escape from. I still hate cute anthropomorphic robots as a theme, but this was far enough off my usual beat to keep me interested. I don't think I will bother with any more, though, I don't think that there will be any development of the overall story arc; it's really a case of this month's perilous situation. Still, you can get the first volume here.
I was trying to imagine how a British version of this would have looked, and actually it's not too difficult; scanning the storylines of Bunty over the years shows that a number of them did have robot-based plots. (There were fewer in Mandy, but still more than one.)
Second frame of third part:
Another very successful installment in the series of Thirteenth Doctor comics by Houser and an all-woman team of artists. Here, the Tardis team meet up with none other than the Corsair, subject of a throwaway line about Time Lords changing gender in The Doctor's Wife, here a swaggering part-time criminal who does it for fun rather than out of malevolence. The Corsair is a great creation, a different take on the Doctor's irreverence for authority and tradition, and Houser has the two developing a lovely sparking relationship, convincingly giving the sense of two people who know each other well but maybe not always as well as they think. The core narrative is that the Doctor is accused of stealing a valuable object which in fact was stolen by the Corsair, and this lands them in all sorts of trouble. The rest of the Tardis crew don't get a lot of page time, but this is the Corsair's story, and it's a good one. You can get it here.
This was my top unread comic in English. Next on that pile is Wonder Woman: The Golden Age, by William Moulton Marston with art by Harry G. Peter.
Another very successful installment in the series of Thirteenth Doctor comics by Houser and an all-woman team of artists. Here, the Tardis team meet up with none other than the Corsair, subject of a throwaway line about Time Lords changing gender in The Doctor's Wife, here a swaggering part-time criminal who does it for fun rather than out of malevolence. The Corsair is a great creation, a different take on the Doctor's irreverence for authority and tradition, and Houser has the two developing a lovely sparking relationship, convincingly giving the sense of two people who know each other well but maybe not always as well as they think. The core narrative is that the Doctor is accused of stealing a valuable object which in fact was stolen by the Corsair, and this lands them in all sorts of trouble. The rest of the Tardis crew don't get a lot of page time, but this is the Corsair's story, and it's a good one. You can get it here.
This was my top unread comic in English. Next on that pile is Wonder Woman: The Golden Age, by William Moulton Marston with art by Harry G. Peter.
Second frame of third page:
Lancelot: Get back, I'm going to break the door down!
I got this because it won the Prix Saint-Michel in 2009 for best comic by a Dutch-speaking author. Linguistically I feel a bit cheated; the book was originally published in French as Kaamelott, tome 3: L'Énigme du Coffre, and won the prize because Dupré's native language is Dutch. That seems to me a bit of a stretch. I note that this category has been dropped for the most recent years of the Prix Saint-Michel.
Alexandre Astier created the TV series Kaamelott and starred in it as King Arthur. It's a humorous take on the Arthurian mythos with the Knights of the Round table turning out to be stupid, lazy, cowardly, and ineffective. This award-winning comic is a story of buried treasure and taxation. All of the reviews that I have found online say that if you liked the series, you'll love the comic. I haven't seen the series and it left me rather unimpressed. But you can get it here in Dutch, as I did, and here in the original French.
This was my top unread comic in a language other than English. Next up is Le Dernier Atlas, written by Fabien Vehlmann and Gwen de Bonneval, art by Hervé Tanquerelle and Frédéric Blanchard.
Lancelot: Get back, I'm going to break the door down!
I got this because it won the Prix Saint-Michel in 2009 for best comic by a Dutch-speaking author. Linguistically I feel a bit cheated; the book was originally published in French as Kaamelott, tome 3: L'Énigme du Coffre, and won the prize because Dupré's native language is Dutch. That seems to me a bit of a stretch. I note that this category has been dropped for the most recent years of the Prix Saint-Michel.
Alexandre Astier created the TV series Kaamelott and starred in it as King Arthur. It's a humorous take on the Arthurian mythos with the Knights of the Round table turning out to be stupid, lazy, cowardly, and ineffective. This award-winning comic is a story of buried treasure and taxation. All of the reviews that I have found online say that if you liked the series, you'll love the comic. I haven't seen the series and it left me rather unimpressed. But you can get it here in Dutch, as I did, and here in the original French.
This was my top unread comic in a language other than English. Next up is Le Dernier Atlas, written by Fabien Vehlmann and Gwen de Bonneval, art by Hervé Tanquerelle and Frédéric Blanchard.
Two more short comics from the Neil Gaiman Humble Bundle that I invested in some years back.
Neil Dreams is in fact a compilation of two issues of Rick Veitch's series Rare Bit Fiends, in which he asked well known comics creators to retell their dreams. Both are pretty brief. The second frames of the third pages of each are as follows:
It's as interesting as most cases of people telling you about their dreams, which is to say, not very.
The other short, An Honest Answer and Other Stories, brings together three very brief meditations on the creative process, the first two ("An Honest Answer" and "From Homogenour to Honey") illustrated by Bryan Talbot and the third ("Villanelle") by Dave McKean; this is the second frame of the third.
Brief work which doesn't require much analysis. I normally link to places you can buy these books, but they are not available anywhere.
Neil Dreams is in fact a compilation of two issues of Rick Veitch's series Rare Bit Fiends, in which he asked well known comics creators to retell their dreams. Both are pretty brief. The second frames of the third pages of each are as follows:
It's as interesting as most cases of people telling you about their dreams, which is to say, not very.
The other short, An Honest Answer and Other Stories, brings together three very brief meditations on the creative process, the first two ("An Honest Answer" and "From Homogenour to Honey") illustrated by Bryan Talbot and the third ("Villanelle") by Dave McKean; this is the second frame of the third.
Brief work which doesn't require much analysis. I normally link to places you can buy these books, but they are not available anywhere.
Second frame of third chapter:
I picked this off the bookshop shelves ages back, and have now got around to reading it. It's a graphic novel about Marie, growing up in England in the 1960s, Catholic family and school, but herself determined to live her own life and to love who she wants. And the story then goes through to the 1990s when things are different in some ways and the same in others, through sadness and happiness. I generally liked it, but was a bit surprised that Marie didn't especially seem to have learned much or developed much over the decades. Still, it's the kind of book you could give to gently educate. You can get it here.
I picked this off the bookshop shelves ages back, and have now got around to reading it. It's a graphic novel about Marie, growing up in England in the 1960s, Catholic family and school, but herself determined to live her own life and to love who she wants. And the story then goes through to the 1990s when things are different in some ways and the same in others, through sadness and happiness. I generally liked it, but was a bit surprised that Marie didn't especially seem to have learned much or developed much over the decades. Still, it's the kind of book you could give to gently educate. You can get it here.
Second frame from third page of tome 3:
Hakim: Stop, Selkert! Manon doesn't like the spotlight. You'll make her blush.
Selkert: Apologies! But you can be proud of what you have done.
Second frame from third page of tome 4:
Antac: I'll turn around. We need an attack plan!
Second frame from third page of tome 4:
Manon: Hmm, it's like it wanted to warn us about a danger that could come from the sea.
I read the first two volumes in this set of five last year and liked them. The second part of the storuy continues in the same veing - the young folks stranded on a hostile alien planet, with friends (such as the catlike Hollorans Antac and Selkert) and enemies. I felt it petered out a bit in terms of momentum - there's a lot of capturing, getting rescued and running away - and in the end there's a somewhat awkward bridge to the rest of the series, but redeemed by a bittersweet ending, and anyway always gorgeous to look at and as naturalistically realised as a story about life on alien planets can be.
Manon: Twelve beers please.
Waiter: Twelve? There are only seven of you..
Max: Yes, but we want twelve beers all the same.
Djamile: And chips. A mountain of chips.
You can get the French originals here, here and here, and the English translations here, here and here. (Covers below are French, but link to the English.)
Hakim: Stop, Selkert! Manon doesn't like the spotlight. You'll make her blush.
Selkert: Apologies! But you can be proud of what you have done.
Second frame from third page of tome 4:
Antac: I'll turn around. We need an attack plan!
Second frame from third page of tome 4:
Manon: Hmm, it's like it wanted to warn us about a danger that could come from the sea.
I read the first two volumes in this set of five last year and liked them. The second part of the storuy continues in the same veing - the young folks stranded on a hostile alien planet, with friends (such as the catlike Hollorans Antac and Selkert) and enemies. I felt it petered out a bit in terms of momentum - there's a lot of capturing, getting rescued and running away - and in the end there's a somewhat awkward bridge to the rest of the series, but redeemed by a bittersweet ending, and anyway always gorgeous to look at and as naturalistically realised as a story about life on alien planets can be.
Manon: Twelve beers please.
Waiter: Twelve? There are only seven of you..
Max: Yes, but we want twelve beers all the same.
Djamile: And chips. A mountain of chips.
You can get the French originals here, here and here, and the English translations here, here and here. (Covers below are French, but link to the English.)
Second frame of third section of Chronin Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back:
Second frame of third section of Chronin Volume 2: The Sword in Your Hand:
This two-volume graphic novel was in this year's Hugo voter packet, but I've only now got around to reading it. It's an interesting story of Japan just before the Meiji Restoration, with a woman from 2042 masquerading as a samurai and a time-travel screw-up potentially erasing our version of history. The plot is intriguing enough, and has some good gender-bending twists, but I'm afraid I found the art (also by the author) rather deficient; it was difficult to tell several of the key characters apart, and they sometimes seemed rather awkwardly posed, which rather distracted me from what was going on. I'd be interested to see the results of the author pairing up with another artist. If you missed the Hugo packet, you can get the two books here and here.![0375866248.01._SX175_SY250_SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/nwhyte/1071362/1933442/1933442_original.jpg "0375866248.01._SX175_SY250_SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg")
![0377066a0cba06c596a46397151437641506f41_v5[1].jpg](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/nwhyte/1071362/1933578/1933578_original.jpg "0377066a0cba06c596a46397151437641506f41_v5[1].jpg")
Second frame of third section of Chronin Volume 2: The Sword in Your Hand:
This two-volume graphic novel was in this year's Hugo voter packet, but I've only now got around to reading it. It's an interesting story of Japan just before the Meiji Restoration, with a woman from 2042 masquerading as a samurai and a time-travel screw-up potentially erasing our version of history. The plot is intriguing enough, and has some good gender-bending twists, but I'm afraid I found the art (also by the author) rather deficient; it was difficult to tell several of the key characters apart, and they sometimes seemed rather awkwardly posed, which rather distracted me from what was going on. I'd be interested to see the results of the author pairing up with another artist. If you missed the Hugo packet, you can get the two books here and here.
Two brief Neil Gaiman comics which I picked up from the Humble Bundle some years ago.
Second frame of third page of Blood Monster (art by Marlene O’Connor):
This one's only five pages, a father tells his kids a gruesome bedtime story and their mother is not amused, especially not by the consequent nightmares. That's it.
Second frame of third page of Being An Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolus:
This is a bit more substantial (15 pages rather than 5!) and I think it's the only case I have seen of Neil Gaiman illustrating his own work. It's a reflection on the third-century teenage Roman emperor, whose brief reign was characterised by religious and sexual controversy; Gaiman draws parallels with the ambiguous sexuality of Oscar Wilde, and imagines the short reign's excesses in sconomic but evocative detail. A memorable short piece.
I knew a bit about Heliogabolus from Gibbon Chapter VI:
Blood Monster is available in the Prince of Stories collection, which you can get here, and Heliogabolus is available online here.
![B004QTOS22.01._SX175_SY250_SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/nwhyte/1071362/1933210/1933210_original.jpg "B004QTOS22.01._SX175_SY250_SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg")
![B01GU3XNHM.01._SX175_SY250_SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/nwhyte/1071362/1934050/1934050_original.jpg "B01GU3XNHM.01._SX175_SY250_SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg")
Second frame of third page of Blood Monster (art by Marlene O’Connor):
This one's only five pages, a father tells his kids a gruesome bedtime story and their mother is not amused, especially not by the consequent nightmares. That's it.
Second frame of third page of Being An Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolus:
This is a bit more substantial (15 pages rather than 5!) and I think it's the only case I have seen of Neil Gaiman illustrating his own work. It's a reflection on the third-century teenage Roman emperor, whose brief reign was characterised by religious and sexual controversy; Gaiman draws parallels with the ambiguous sexuality of Oscar Wilde, and imagines the short reign's excesses in sconomic but evocative detail. A memorable short piece.
I knew a bit about Heliogabolus from Gibbon Chapter VI:
And this story prompted me to do a bit more digging on the subject of the holy stone (a fallen meteorite) which was the centre of worship in Heliogabolus' home town (Emesa in Syria, now Homs). After his death, it was returned from Rome to Emesa, where it remained the centre of worship until the official arrival of Christianity the next century and then Islam three hundred years after that. The temple of El-Gabal was converted into a Christian church of St John the Baptist in the late 4th century, and then part of it became the Great Mosque of al-Nuri. Apparently some parts of the Roman-era stonework remain in the mosque. I wonder if the sacred stone itself is still there, buried under layers of later religious history and architecture. Homs is not exactly a massive tourist destination right now, so it will be a while before I check it out for myself.In a magnificent temple raised on the Palatine Mount, the sacrifices of the god of Elagabalus were celebrated with every circumstance of cost and solemnity. The richest wines, the most extraordinary victims, and the rarest aromatics, were profusely consumed on his altar. Around the altar a chorus of Syrian damsels performed their lascivious dances to the sound of barbarian music, whilst the gravest personages of the state and army, clothed in long Phoenician tunics, officiated in the meanest functions, with affected zeal and secret indignation.I dunno, it sounds rather fun to me. (When I read this passage out to my wife, she sensibly asked, "If their indignation was secret, how do we know about it?")59 A dancer was made præfect of the city, a charioteer præfect of the watch, a barber præfect of the provisions. These three ministers, with many inferior officers, were all recommended, enormitate membrorum.That is, because they had very large penises; but we don't write that bit in English, Mr Gibbon.
Blood Monster is available in the Prince of Stories collection, which you can get here, and Heliogabolus is available online here.
We've been to Bruges twice in the last few days, parking both times in the Zilverpand car park, which is nice and central. Overlooking the escalators between level -1 and level -2 of the car park are two rather interesting art works - one showing, er, people on an escalator, the other showing a rural local scene with a white bird in the foreground. (Just to add confusion, the second picture is shown in the first picture, but on the wrong side of the escalators - it's actually on the right-hand wall as you go down.)
Both appear to be signed "J Servais 92".
My Google-fu may be weak today, but I've totally failed to find any reference to anyone called Servais in connection with the Zilverpand centre. But they are striking works of art.
I have a hesitant identification of the artist. The Belgian comics artist Jean-Claude Servais normally signs his name in capitals, and also normally adds an emphatic C for Claude, but even so I think his signature looks similar to those on the Zilverpand paintings. (Singatures taken from various hand-drawn art found in online auctions.)
Jean-Claude Servais' usual style is admittedly more naturalistic than the escalator painting. Out of curiosity I got and read his 1984 album, Isabelle, which is the most popular of his books available on Kindle. The second frame of the third page is Isabelle, the title character, greeting her doll:
The troubador who loves Isabelle fortunately sings in lower case:
So we can do a more direct comparison of the writing, particularly since the word "serais" is conveniently in the first line of that frame, and "erv" in "épervier" a bit lower down:
Well, you can choose to believe it or not, but I'm reasonably convinced that this is the same handwriting, making allowances for the different flourishes you make when writing out a song or when signing an artwork.
Isabelle is beautifully illustrated, but I found the plot a bit less compelling - she and her lover are, er, very young; both are swept away to the Land Of Scantily Clad Fairies, where the Fairy Queen becomes jealous of Isabelle and brings about her doom. Still, I might try some of his later work.
Both appear to be signed "J Servais 92".
My Google-fu may be weak today, but I've totally failed to find any reference to anyone called Servais in connection with the Zilverpand centre. But they are striking works of art.
I have a hesitant identification of the artist. The Belgian comics artist Jean-Claude Servais normally signs his name in capitals, and also normally adds an emphatic C for Claude, but even so I think his signature looks similar to those on the Zilverpand paintings. (Singatures taken from various hand-drawn art found in online auctions.)
Jean-Claude Servais' usual style is admittedly more naturalistic than the escalator painting. Out of curiosity I got and read his 1984 album, Isabelle, which is the most popular of his books available on Kindle. The second frame of the third page is Isabelle, the title character, greeting her doll:
The troubador who loves Isabelle fortunately sings in lower case:
Well, you can choose to believe it or not, but I'm reasonably convinced that this is the same handwriting, making allowances for the different flourishes you make when writing out a song or when signing an artwork.
Isabelle is beautifully illustrated, but I found the plot a bit less compelling - she and her lover are, er, very young; both are swept away to the Land Of Scantily Clad Fairies, where the Fairy Queen becomes jealous of Isabelle and brings about her doom. Still, I might try some of his later work.
Second frame of third chapter:
A comic with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith encountering mosters rooted in Greek mythology in Victorian England (and elsewhere). Well put together and a careful homage to the Hinchcliffe/Holmes years. You can get it here. Was actually at the top of my pile of unread comics in English. Next on that list is Chronin, by Alison Wilgus.
A comic with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith encountering mosters rooted in Greek mythology in Victorian England (and elsewhere). Well put together and a careful homage to the Hinchcliffe/Holmes years. You can get it here. Was actually at the top of my pile of unread comics in English. Next on that list is Chronin, by Alison Wilgus.
One of the problems with this Hugo category (which has, thank heavens, been renamed to include the crucial word "Comic" - after extraordinary struggle) is that we are not always comparing like with like. For this year, we have two standalone stories, two finalists that are the concluding installments of long series, and a middle volume and a first volume. It's very good to see that the publishers of all three established series included all previous volumes in the Hugo Packet - in two of the three cases, I already had the previous volumes as well, but it certainly made a difference for me in the third case. In the end if we are going to have just one Hugo category covering comics, we're always going to have these situations (and I don't think we need another Hugo category of any kind). Anyway, here are this year's finalists and what I thought of them.
Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, letters by Clayton Cowles
Second frame of third chapter:
First volume of what promises to be an ongoing serial. Our protagonists were sucked into a parallel dimension while playing an RPG twenty-five years ago, and were returned to the real world, scarred and damaged; now they are sucked back into the parallel universe. Good art and nicely executed symbolism; but I didn't really engage with the characters, and it's pretty bleak in tone. You can get it here.
LaGuardia, written by Nnedi Okorafor, art by Tana Ford, colours by James Devlin
Second frame of third chapter:
I rather bounced off Okorafor's Binti novellas, but very much liked her earlier novel Lagoon, and I'm glad to say that this story is in the Lagoon universe, or one closely related to it. Aliens have landed some time ago; some of the countries of the world are adapting well to integrating this new source of diversity, others are not, and our pregnant heroine is navigating the human/alien encounter inside her own body as well as in her dealings with society in New York and Nigeria. Well done and realised. Slightly inconclusive. You can get it here.
Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen, written by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda
Second frame of third chapter (Chapter 21)
The first three volumes of Monstress won the last three Hugos in this category; will it be four out of four? Myself I find the art and world-building truly extraordinary, but am squicked by the graphic violence (OK, there's less of it this time) and am getting a bit lost in the overall storyline (perhaps I should go back and reread the first three volumes, kindly included in the Hugo voter packet). You can get the four volumes here, here, here and here.
Mooncakes, by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker, letters by Joamette Gil
Second frame of third chapter:
This was the surprise in the Hugo final ballot - the one finalist from a smaller publisher (four of the other five are from Image, and LaGuardia is from Dark Horse). It's a YA romance story of Chinese-Americans in rural New England, where our heroine, a young witch, teams up with her beloved, a non-binary werewolf, to overcome evil and bring about a better world (at least for them). Very sweet. You can get it here.
Paper Girls, Volume 6, written by Brian K. Vaughan, drawn by Cliff Chiang, colours by Matt Wilson, letters by Jared K. Fletcher
Second frame with dialogue in from the third chapter of each of the six volumes:
I've already written about this, in October last year. I said then:
The Wicked + The Divine, Volume 9: “Okay”, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, colours by Matt Wilson, letters by Clayton Cowles
Second frame from the third chapter in each of the nine volumes:
I was very interested to read this - I had seen it bubbling around the threshold for the Hugo ballot in previous years (volume 7 missed last year by only 3.38 points, and volumes 3 and 5 both came in ninth place in 2016 and 2017). Volume 9 concludes the story of twelve gods who return to earth, incarnated as young people, every few decades to live for two years and then die. In the meantime they possess divine powers and become objects of popular fascination and cultlike devotion. Reading volume 9 on its own left me frankly pretty confused; the publishers' decision to give Hugo voters access to the previous 8 volumes as well was very helpful and clarified some of what was going on. I still didn't find the characters all that engaging, I must admit. (Also for narrative purposes you can skip Vol 8 which comprises sidelines to the main story.) But you can get the nine volumes here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
I may have been a bit snarky in a couple of cases above, but I enjoyed reading all of these.
1945 Retro Hugo for Best Graphic Story or Comic
The same applies as for this year: we are not really comparing like with like here. Three of the finalists are daily or weekly newspaper strips; the other three are standalone stories. But we are where we are. Worth noting that the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon stories draw heavily on the wartime environment. Ian's guide to the 1945 Retros has useful pointers to where you can read the comics, thanks to Art Lortie.
Buck Rogers: “Hollow Planetoid”, by Dick Calkins, available here.
Second frame of third installment:
Our hero is marooned in space with the wrong girl. 150 daily strips, but well-plotted, with women characters showing some agency (though also motivated by mutual jealousy) and a real sensawunda glowing from the fairly basic illustrations.
Donald Duck: “The Mad Chemist”, by Carl Barks, available here.
Second frame of third page:
The Mad Chemist of the title is Donald Duck himself, who invents a new explosive and flies to the moon and back, to the consternation of the nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie.
Flash Gordon: “Battle for Tropica”, by Don Moore & Alex Raymond, available here.
Second frame of third installment:
Another serial story, with 30 weekly installments, which I felt slightly lacking a clear beginning or end, though some of the middle is pretty good.
Flash Gordon: “Triumph in Tropica”, by Don Moore & Alex Raymond, available here.
Second frame of third installment:
I actually found this a lot more coherent than the previous Flash Gordon strip, as our heroes, having penetrated the city of Tropica, do their best to overthrow the dictator from within.
The Spirit: “For the Love of Clara Defoe”, by Manly Wade Wellman, Lou Fine and Don Komisarow, available here.
Second frame of third page:
The Spirit protects an actress and also deters the Commissioner's daughter from a career on the stage. Nicely drawn but didn't seem to me to have any sfnal element (the acid, perhaps?) which means I bump it down my list a bit.
Superman: “The Mysterious Mr. Mxyztplk”, by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, available here.
Second frame of third page:
Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, letters by Clayton Cowles
Second frame of third chapter:
First volume of what promises to be an ongoing serial. Our protagonists were sucked into a parallel dimension while playing an RPG twenty-five years ago, and were returned to the real world, scarred and damaged; now they are sucked back into the parallel universe. Good art and nicely executed symbolism; but I didn't really engage with the characters, and it's pretty bleak in tone. You can get it here.
LaGuardia, written by Nnedi Okorafor, art by Tana Ford, colours by James Devlin
Second frame of third chapter:
Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen, written by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda
Second frame of third chapter (Chapter 21)
Mooncakes, by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker, letters by Joamette Gil
Second frame of third chapter:
Paper Girls, Volume 6, written by Brian K. Vaughan, drawn by Cliff Chiang, colours by Matt Wilson, letters by Jared K. Fletcher
Second frame with dialogue in from the third chapter of each of the six volumes:
Volume 1 (originally in issue #3)
Volume 2 (originally in issue #8)
Volume 3 (originally in issue #13)
Volume 4 (originally in issue #18)
Volume 5 (originally in issue #23)
Volume 6 (originally in issue #28)
Volume 2 (originally in issue #8)
Volume 3 (originally in issue #13)
Volume 4 (originally in issue #18)
Volume 5 (originally in issue #23)
Volume 6 (originally in issue #28)
I've already written about this, in October last year. I said then:
This is the story of four 12-year-olds delivering newspapers in 1988 in Cleveland, Ohio, all from different ethnic backgrounds, who get swept up into a mysterious time war which takes them to the future and past, both near and far. Unlike with some comics compilations, each of the sic volumes has its own arc, though I don't think you could describe them as completely self-contained; I definitely would have benefited from reading Volume 2 before Volume 3.This is one of the two cases where the last volume of the series is on the ballot, but it's impossible to make a fair judgement of its impact without having read the previous five volumes, so it's just as well that the publisher has made those available.
It's awfully well done. The four girls are Erin (Asian), Mac (tomboy), KJ (Jewish and gay) and Tiffany (African-American and the most nerdy). Each of them gets to confront different versions of their own future - I think the best bit is in Volume 2, where the girls meet Erin's 40-year-old future self in 2016 Cleveland.
The art is great throughout. There is a particularly strong part in Volume 6 where the four girls are scattered into different timelines and we follow each of them on her own line across the pages, like a musical score. One is never in any danger of getting confused between the main characters, and when people turn up at different ages, they remain recognisable.
I haven't seen Stranger Things (apart from one episode which I watched for the 2017 Hugos) but I understand it's along the same lines, and that if you like one, you'll probably like the other. I found this immensely satisfying. You can get the six volumes here, here, here, here, here and here.
The Wicked + The Divine, Volume 9: “Okay”, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, colours by Matt Wilson, letters by Clayton Cowles
Second frame from the third chapter in each of the nine volumes:
Volume 1 (originally in issue #3)
Volume 2 (originally in issue #8)
Volume 3 (originally in issue #14)
Volume 4 (originally in issue #20)
Volume 5 (originally in issue #25)
Volume 6 (originally in issue #31)
Volume 7 (originally in issue #36)
Volume 8 (originally in 1831 issue)
Volume 9 (originally in issue #42)
Volume 2 (originally in issue #8)
Volume 3 (originally in issue #14)
Volume 4 (originally in issue #20)
Volume 5 (originally in issue #25)
Volume 6 (originally in issue #31)
Volume 7 (originally in issue #36)
Volume 8 (originally in 1831 issue)
Volume 9 (originally in issue #42)
I was very interested to read this - I had seen it bubbling around the threshold for the Hugo ballot in previous years (volume 7 missed last year by only 3.38 points, and volumes 3 and 5 both came in ninth place in 2016 and 2017). Volume 9 concludes the story of twelve gods who return to earth, incarnated as young people, every few decades to live for two years and then die. In the meantime they possess divine powers and become objects of popular fascination and cultlike devotion. Reading volume 9 on its own left me frankly pretty confused; the publishers' decision to give Hugo voters access to the previous 8 volumes as well was very helpful and clarified some of what was going on. I still didn't find the characters all that engaging, I must admit. (Also for narrative purposes you can skip Vol 8 which comprises sidelines to the main story.) But you can get the nine volumes here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
I may have been a bit snarky in a couple of cases above, but I enjoyed reading all of these.
1945 Retro Hugo for Best Graphic Story or Comic
The same applies as for this year: we are not really comparing like with like here. Three of the finalists are daily or weekly newspaper strips; the other three are standalone stories. But we are where we are. Worth noting that the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon stories draw heavily on the wartime environment. Ian's guide to the 1945 Retros has useful pointers to where you can read the comics, thanks to Art Lortie.
Buck Rogers: “Hollow Planetoid”, by Dick Calkins, available here.
Second frame of third installment:
Donald Duck: “The Mad Chemist”, by Carl Barks, available here.
Second frame of third page:
Flash Gordon: “Battle for Tropica”, by Don Moore & Alex Raymond, available here.
Second frame of third installment:
Flash Gordon: “Triumph in Tropica”, by Don Moore & Alex Raymond, available here.
Second frame of third installment:
The Spirit: “For the Love of Clara Defoe”, by Manly Wade Wellman, Lou Fine and Don Komisarow, available here.
Second frame of third page:
Superman: “The Mysterious Mr. Mxyztplk”, by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, available here.
Second frame of third page:
First appearance of what would become a regular recurring character in the Superman universe, now spelt Mxyzptlk, an intruder from another dimension with awesome supernatural powers. Interesting to challenge Superman with a superior force, which he eventually defeats with a ruse straight out of the 1001 Nights.
I feel the Retro Hugo in this category is coming into its own - we are seeing a consistent set of interesting finalists, which are admittedly of their time, but do point towards the future of the genre. It's a shame that only one comic originally published in a language other than English has ever made the final ballot though. (Hergé's The Secret of the Unicorn, last year.)
I feel the Retro Hugo in this category is coming into its own - we are seeing a consistent set of interesting finalists, which are admittedly of their time, but do point towards the future of the genre. It's a shame that only one comic originally published in a language other than English has ever made the final ballot though. (Hergé's The Secret of the Unicorn, last year.)
Second frame of third chapter of De dag waarop de bus zonder haar vertrok:
This time nothing else can go wrong...
Second frame of third chapter of De dag waarop ze haar vlucht nam:
*giggle* For the first time in my life I am doing something crazy! I am heading off!
Just like that! I'm taking a plane to go visit people who I don't even know!
These looked promising on the shelf in FNAC, so I bought them for Anne for Christmas, and have now got around to them myself. I was a bit annoyed to realise, soon after starting, that I had actually got Dutch translations of the original French bandes dessinées - Le jour où le bus est reparti sans elle and Le jour où elle a pris son envol. (There are two more volumes, Le jour où elle n'a pas fait Compostelle and Le jour où il a suivi sa valise.) It was fairly easy to spot because the architecture of the city where our protagonist lives is very obviously Parisian. The creators are a bit less obvious; the writer is credited as "Béka", the joint pseudonym of Bertrand Escaich and Caroline Roque, and the artist as "Marko", the pen-name of Marc Armspach. Maëla Cosson seems to be the colorist's real name, but the Dutch-language translator is identified only as "Xmed". I'm not in a position to judge how accurate the translation is, but it's idiomatic and comfortable at least.
The first book is rather charming, as Clementien (presumably Clémentine in the original), heading off to a yoga weekend with a bunch of people she doesn't know, is left behind during a pit stop and approaches enlightenment with Antoine, the wise and kindly owner of the roadside motel/café where she has ended up. Many Zen parables are told. In the second book, she puts her life on hold to go to Berlin and find further enlightenment and Zen parables, and to be honest it doesn't work as well; the joke perhaps has worn a bit thin. I'm not really inclined to seek out the third volume. However, the first is recommended.
You can get the first volume in the original French here, and the second in the original French here. They have not yet been translated into English, but I see Spanish listings too. I suspect that if you want to refresh your French fairly painlessly, this would be a good way of doing that.
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Yeah, and…
I’ve been obsessed with “A Boy and His Dog” for as long as I can remember, and I look for new scholarship and articles on the novella (and the film) regularly, just to keep up to date…