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The Forecast for July 27th 2005
Welcome to The Forecast. Every Monday, Ninth Art's core team of comment writers, the Ninth Eight, will be your guides to the best, worst, weirdest and most noteworthy books on the shelves of your local comic shop. BOOK OF THE WEEK: SILENT DRAGON We can all convince ourselves that we like intellectual comics. "Oh", we say, "I love GOOD-BYE, CHUNKY RICE. And JIMMY CORRIGAN was something special, wasn't it? Pass the EIGHTBALL collection, would you?" Underneath this ostensibly respectable veneer, though, we all secretly know that MAUS would have been improved by the addition of giant mecha, and THE GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING was sadly lacking in the ninjas department. That's why it's so good to see SILENT DRAGON appear on the scene. Written by Andy Diggle, one of the best action writers in comics today (as evidenced by his great work on THE LOSERS), and drawn by the superb Leinil Francis Yu, it's an SF action crime story with big guns, big swords and big fights all over the place. Set in a future Tokyo, SILENT DRAGON follows the story of Renjiro, a Yakuza bodyguard who's torn between the demands of honour and the demands of the heart. The first issue puts him in a dangerous place both physically and morally, and how (or if) he survives forms the starting point for a gripping and kinetic adventure tale, taking in holographic demons, gigantic samurai death machines and double-double-crosses. Leinil Yu has always been a great action artist, from his early days on WOLVERINE through to the BATMAN/DANGER GIRL one-shot, and the art from SILENT DRAGON shows that he's continuing to raise his game. Renjiro's life is a series of conflicts, and it's a tribute to Yu's talent that he's able to put across the internal ones just as well as the external. A lot of superhero comics artists could do worse than to look to Yu for tips on how to achieve detailed, expressive artwork without losing the kinetics that characterises a good fight scene. SILENT DRAGON is recommended for anyone who likes crazily big fights, tormented characters, gunplay, swordplay and killer cliff hanger endings. And that includes you, ya big faker. [Alistair Kennedy] ¡JOURNALISTA! Good comics journalism - by which I mean journalism in the form of comics, as opposed to writing about comics - is hard to find. Probably the best example of 'journo-comics' is Joe Sacco. Sacco's eye for detail - not just dry minutiae, but for the subtleties of expression and motivation - would be an asset to any comic, fiction or non-fiction. But books such as PALESTINE carry an intimacy that connects the reader with these important, real-life stories in a unique and powerful way. Which is why it's always nice to see more of them. COMBAT ZONE is a journo-comic graphic novel from an unlikely source: Marvel Comics. Following the fighting men of the 82nd Airborne over three months leading up to and into the war in Iraq, COMBAT ZONE purports to tell 'True Tales of GIs in Iraq' from the point of view of one of the many embedded journalists covering the war. COMBAT ZONE was originally solicited as a five-issue monthly miniseries, and the reasons behind its move to graphic novel status (especially in light of Joe Quesada's constant nay-nay-and-thrice-nay-ery on OGNs) are a little cloudy. While it's true that the war in Iraq was and is extremely controversial, it's not like there aren't plenty of books and documentaries on the subject already. In fact, COMBAT ZONE will be author Karl Zinsmeister's second book about the 82nd Airborne's time in Iraq. It may be that the author of the book proved too controversial for some retailers. Zinsmeister is what Americans call a "neo-conservative" - a right-of-centre political affiliation, rather than something Chris Claremont might invent to revirginise Kitty Pryde - and furthermore, he's the editor-in-chief of a neo-conservative magazine. Such an author is bound to have a polarising effect on potential readers. And unlike other conservative writers, such as ULTIMATE IRON MAN's Orson Scott Card, Zinsmeister's book is on a subject people actually care about. While some retailers (and readers) might welcome such a nakedly partial book, others might see it as jingoistic tripe at best, and propaganda at worst. I'm honestly not sure what to make of COMBAT ZONE. Previews for the book have been non-existent. Dan Jurgens is the artist on the book, which is a good sign: he's an artist of the John Buscema school, who can turn his hand to anything. It occurs to me that whatever your opinions on the war, everybody deserves to have their story told, fairly and objectively. Whether Zinsmeister can do that remains to be seen. [Matthew Craig] INDIGESTION Ye gods, but this comics thing can be a frustrating business. You wait ages for a decent comic to come along, then forget to buy it. Then, just when you've resigned yourself to waiting for the trade, the trade doesn't appear, because some fool has decided that the best format for the collection is... the digest! Gah! The digest format. Cheap and cheerful, yet entirely wrong for certain comics. For instance: LONE WOLF AND CUB. While I can appreciate the need to make the entire seven hundred and twelve-volume series affordable, there was and is no need to make the individual books unreadable to anyone without a scanning electron microscope. Sometimes, of course, the reduced-size format works. The new SIN CITY trades, which are just under an inch wider and taller than a DVD case, actually look damn good, and thanks to the promotional pricing policies of certain purveyors of premium pulp, I've been able to purchase plenty of 'em in the weeks since the movie came and went. But cost aside, why would anyone choose to make their comics smaller? It's not like your average comic reader carries around a little Prada handbag, is it? It's not like there isn't room in a briefcase, rucksack or tatty carrier bag for one measly little trade. So why, when cost and portability aren't such an issue - as in the case of this week's single-volume SPIDER-MAN/HUMAN TORCH paperback - would you squish and squash the thing down to digest size? Dan Slott's story is hardly aimed at the same young novice readership as MARVEL ADVENTURES. Neither is it aimed at the TokyoPop/manga crowd: Ty Templeton's art, while fantastic, is appropriately traditional: each chapter is set in a different era, from Lee/Ditko/Kirby to the present day, and the art changes to mirror the times. It appears as if SPIDEY/TORCH, with its strong emphasis on the long history between the characters, is aimed squarely at the veteran readership. So why, when all the other FANTASTIC FOUR tie-ins, from the overpriced THING: FREAKSHOW to the retro FANTASTIC FOUR/SPIDER-MAN CLASSIC have been in the regular comic-sized format, is this one in the smaller format? Answer: because it's the only one I'm buying. And because the world hates me. Goddamnit. [Matthew Craig] THE SHIPPING LIST FOR JULY 27th 2005: Shipping details come courtesy of Diamond. Visit the Diamond website for the latest information, as the list is subject to change. DC COMICS JAN040261D (USE MARVEL MAY051756 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #522 $2.50
OTHER PUBLISHERS APR052818F ANTIQUE BAKERY GN VOL 1 $12.95
The Ninth Eight are Matthew Craig, John Fellows, Kieron Gillen, Alistair Kennedy, Zack Smith, Andrew Wheeler, Ben Wooller and Bulent Yusuf. Ninth Art endorses the principle of Ideological Freeware. The author permits distribution of this article by private individuals, on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice. Back. |