Review of the Year 2009

Note to regular readers; I know I said I'd take a proper look at the book Comic Book Design in this blog but, seeing as Christmas and New Year are almost upon us, I've moved it forward to the next blog. Meanwhile...

The Storm Comics Blog Review of the Year

A short, completely biased collection of my favourite comic-related things of the past twelve months.

Favourite comic title: Captain Britain
When the rest of Marvel seemed to be drearily going on about who was or wasn't a Skrull, Paul Cornell successfully revamped Captain Britain. Although rooted in Marvel's Secret Invasion, Cornell chose not to follow the obvious path but to focus on the Skrulls plans to vanquish magic, the roots of which are found within our very shores. It was an enjoyable though short-lived series that went from strength-to-strength. A nice cast of characters was built up and developed and Pete Wisdom is a much under-used character in the Marvel pantheon. The final Vampire State storyline was another twist on the usual blood-sucking saga as Dracula and Doctor Doom appeared to join forces to make Britain a nation of vampires. There was more going on in fifteen issues than normally goes on in a hundred of some other titles and despite a reasonably large cast and some complex ideas, the whole thing held together and was very enjoyable to read. Even Gordon Brown got a look in as widely reported in the British Press at the time. This series will be missed (by me, at any rate).

Favourite 2000AD Thrill: Cradlegrave
I am one of those tedious old bores that have been there since Prog 1 and nothing will ever tear me away from my weekly dose of thrill-power! Cradlegrave however seemed to be one of those strips that polarised its readers. I was clearly on the side of loving it even though it was a rather disturbing and twisted addition to 2000AD's ouvre; at times it felt slightly illicit as though you were reading something you shouldn't. John Smith is, I believe, very good at the limited series (Leatherjack, Cinnibar) and in Cradlegrave he built a very believable world and cast of characters. The art was consistently good throughout and this is probably the closest to the real world that 2000AD has ever ventured, a world of lost souls with no money, no jobs, living on a sink estate and with no hope or aspiration for anything better. It really was one of those strips people either love or hate in equal measure but either way I think it was abrave attemnpt by The Mighty One to try something different. I'm still not 100% what it was all about though; I don't know what that John Smith is on but I don't want any!

Favourite comic magazine: Crikey!
Now that Comics International seems to have vanished off the radar, Crikey has well-and-truly picked up the baton and run with it. Every issue gets bigger, glossier and jam-packed with interviews and features. It improves every time having reduced the nostalgia-quotiant to concentrate on the histories and development of British comics across the ages. It is good to see the likes of Pat Mills wrting for Crikey! as well, shedding light on some of the less-remembered people whose careers were steeped in comics in the days when it was an industry. Its only failing for me is in some of the editing where paragraphs get repeated from one page to the next, or dropped altogether and some of the illustrations which don't always bear any relation to what is written. But overall this is a terrific title and it is good to see it making it onto the shelves of high-street newsagents. It gives hope that public interest in comics is still there bubbling away beneath the surface; we just need to tease it out.

Favourite independent title: Harker
A tricky one this as it was a very close tie with Tony McGee's Outcastes. Harker won out simply by being the more easily accessible of the two to a wider audience.A fairly straight-forward tale of a quirky detective and his sidekick as they unravel the slightly unusual murders that come their way, the strip is deftly told with some very striking artwork. Anyone who enjoys any number of the cop dramas on TV will be more than familiar with the format and as such I believe anybody could pick this comic up and follow it, regardless of whether they normally read comics or not. I could easily see this sitting comfortably alongside the Vertigo range of titles. Outcastes is similarly good but its slightly twisted fairy-tale style and its use of comic-specific storytelling probably makes this cleverer but less easy for a non-comics readership to follow. Then again, who ever said it was for them? It is a great title, very different from anything else I can think of at present and both these comics are worthy winners.

Favourite comic-related book: Blazing Combat
Tricky, this one, as I was engrossed in the book 'Strange Days' about Steve Ditko earlier in the year. I enjoyed Marvel's omnibus edition of the old Marvel UK Captain Britain strips and recently I've been poring over Dark Horse's collection of Martha Washington in the 21st Century. However, the title that won out for me is Fantagraphic's volume collecting the four issues of the 1960's title written and edited by Archie Goodwin, Blazing Combat. Apart from being a great collection of stories told from many different angles, it wins out simply by being the one I keep going back to to gaze at the varied art styles contained within. It is a collection of work by some of the great artists of the period and shows what American comics might have been like had they not got so tightly wrapped up in their spandex. And it is worth reading for the Martin Gaines and Archie Goodwin interviews in the back that demonstrate how powerful comics can be in shaking those in power. Anti-war comics have never been better than this.

Favourite TV: Torchwood - Children of Earth
A kind of comic strip on TV and the Titan volume of strips was very enjoyable so I make no apology for including it here. The first series was very silly, the characters were all over the place and the series looked very uncomfortable, not really seeming to know where it belonged. By the second series, the characters were much more consistent and bonded, the stories had upped the ante and the finale was a real tear-jerker with the deaths of not one but two main characters (and one of them had already died once). And then they upped the ante even more when this year we got Children of Earth, a story that unravelled over the course of five nights on BBC One. And I found it completely engrossing. It was a powerful story with lots of layers, a complex cast in which even supporting characters would come to the fore and with the most chilling suggestion of what a government might sacrifice to save power. Peter Capaldi was fantastic playing a government pawn who got trapped within the moral dilemmas thrust upon him; the scene where he quietly walks into his two daughters' bedroom, closes the door and all we hear are several gunshots made our hearts go out to him despite some of the evils he had perpertrated in the name of government. The survivng team drifted apart at the end but If the BBC has any sense it will bring them together again for another TV event next year.

And so on into 2010...
Well that's my review over. Next time I promise I'll get around to Comic Book Design which if I'd read it earlier in the year might have made it to Favourite comic-related book. Maybe next year.

Unti next time, may I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. May Santa bring you all the comics you desire and if he doesn't then head along to stormcomics.com and take advantage of our three for £8 only offer.

Ho, ho, ho!

Lettering sins

I have recently been reading a tome called Comic Book Design by Gary Spencer Millidge, more of which in my next blog. For now though, one aspect I hadn't given much thought to was the fine art of lettering. It looks like it should be the easiest part of comic book production but having tried it I can assure you that it isn't.

My own attempts were done on PC and while readable and clear were perhaps not as well laid out as they might have been. Although I would quickly sketch out a thumbnail outline for each page of art, I didn't usually hone it down enough and frequently found myself filling the frames or placing figures in positions that made it awkward to squeeze in text. In the Marvel style I often wrote the text afterwards to balance the page as much as I could but I confess that didn't always work.

One thing the book mentioned is that many people consider the crossing of tails between speech balloons to be a lettering sin. Although I used balloon tails I did on the whole manage to avoid crossing them although I am probably guilty on one or two occassions.

I was reasonably happy with my choice of font, pretty much a neccssity for me as some macular degeneration in my eyes has made precision work difficult so lettering by hand would be quite a strain. Even so, I may try experimenting with creating a handwritten font to use in future.

We're lucky in that a large majority of comics make use of lettering by hand rather than standard font faces. There have been some comics I have given up on through the difficulty of trying to read them (2000AD's Dafoe often uses a fine, hand-written font which I find particularly difficult, so much so I don't tend to read it much these days - a shame as I love the art). I also find some magazines and comics use bizarre colour schemes with their letting such as blue or red on black or somesuch heading into migraine terriorty.

The point of all this is that it is making me rethink my approach and pick my gamne up in future. The book is a goldmine of design tips and ideas and it is something I will write up more fully next time round. Hope to see you here then.

Where do my old comics go when I die?

Funerals and wills have been on my mind lately! Following a number of funerals my mind has been contemplating life and death and all the stuff in between. I've begun to realise just how much stuff I've accumulated over the years and got to wondering what on earth I'm going to do with it all. Some things, such as the stacks of family history research I've done I hope will stay in the family. A lot of it can be given away, sold off or whatever. But there are a few treasured things which I would like to give a good home too after I'm gone.

I'm talking here of my comics, graphic novels, limited editions, some original artwork and suchlike (this is a comics blog, what else would I be talking about). But where will it all go? My family and friends take a polite interest in my comics work and interest in the media but I hardly think any of them would want to be lumbered with any of my collections. The early issues of Battle, Warlord and 2000AD might hold some nostalgic interest but their value and importance in British comics history would almost certainly pass by unnoticed. Unless I leave some instruction then the chances are they will end up in a recycling bin - I'd be turning in my grave!

I could have them buried with me for something to read on the way to the afterlife but since I don't believe in such things it is more likely they will end up like me, as worm food - no less an ignominious fate than recycling which I suppose it kind of is in away.

Then I got to thinking a bit more about this. There are all sorts of repositories for collecting everything from books, records, CDs and cassettes to dead insects, clocks, post cards and even mobile phones and computers. Many accept donations, albeit often of the rarer items, in order to keep a comprehensive collection for posterity and future study. But is there such a place that accepts people's comic collections? Is there, like the books of the British Museum Reading Rooms, a place that collects together copies of every single comic ever published? I've done a basic search on the web but have not found anywhere that fits the criteria yet (perhaps you know otherwise). If there isn't then perhaps we should get one started. After all, every passing year must see a few more old issues crumble to dust or get piled into a recycling bin. Then the day will come when no more such issues of a title exist anymore, a fate which must surely have befallen some comics already?

It would be some kind of irony if my first self-published title, Afterlife, should have no afterlife except decomposition into the earth. In the long-term future that's inevitable (dust to dust, and all that) but it would be nice to think there were a few around for a while after I'm gone. Of course, you could help out here by purchasing a copy from my main web site and thus ensuring a greater chance that an issue might survive some time into the future. Even death is no barrier to business!