Podcast dell'Arte
LurkerWithout’s Sunday Trade: Asterix Omnibus
Asterix Omnibus written by Rene Goscinny, illustrated by Albert Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge
First published in 1961 Asterix has been one of the two pillars of European comics for FIVE decades. The tales of a fictional Gaul village in the 1st Century, holding out against the Roman conquest have sold millions of copies. This omnibus collects the first three stories. Astrix the Gaul which introduces the titular hero, his best friend Obelix and their village. Asterix and the Golden Sickle has the pair attempting to buy a new golden sickle for their villages druid, Getafix, and running up against a band of sickle smugglers. The last story Asterix and the Goths has Getafix kidnapped by the Goth chieftan Choleric, who hopes to use the druid’s magic to aid his plans for conquest…
The stories of Asterix are amusing as hell. Full of bad puns, running gags and broad physical humor. Its no wonder that for decades millions of people have been following the adventures of the clever Gaul and his friends…
LurkerWithout’s Sunday Trade: Nixon’s Pals
Nixon’s Pals written by Joe Casey, art by Chris Burnham, letters by Rus Wooton
Nixon’s Pals is about one of those simple high concepts that you can’t believe no one thought of before. In this case its this, Nixon Cooper is a parole officer for super-villains. Of course coming up with the concept is just the start. Casey and Burnham deliver a sharp bit of supers/crime mash-up fiction. With characters that have realistic motivations and problems and that are visually striking to boot…
And Nixon is perfectly done as an old-school crime/noir hero. Battered, pushed about and then battered again. But never broken no matter how much it piles on…
LurkerWithout’s Sunday Trade: Smoke and Guns
Smoke and Guns written by Kirsten Baldock, art by Fabio Moon
I don’t normally pick something up just for the art. ‘Cause that’s how you end up like my roommate owning a copy of Oktane. But I’m a sucker for anything by brothers Moon or Ba and this was only 12 bucks…
Its a fun little piece, about gun-toting cigarette girls. Their city is divided into violently defended sales districts, but Scarlett keeps straying out of her Puff district into that of the Belles. Which eventually escalates into a war between the two crews…
An enjoyable romp with hot women and lots of frenetic gun play…
LurkerWithout’s Sunday Trade: Parker the Hunter
Richard Stark’s Parker the Hunter adapted and illustrated by Darwyn Cooke
Most of you are probably more familiar with this one as the movie adaption Payback with Mel Gibson. Or maybe even the ‘67 Point Blank with Lee Marvin. But the Parker in those two is a cuddly puppy of love and forgiveness compared to the original. And that brutal bastard is the one you see in Cooke’s adaptation. This Parker is out for revenge and his missing money. But he wasn’t so much betrayed and robbed as beaten to the punch. Parker is a master thief and a cold-hearted machine…
And not enough can be said about Cooke’s art here. His simple inks evoke the noir style better than anything I can think of elsewhere. Cooke brings the full emotion of the story to..well not the light. But to well-defined shadows…
LurkerWithout’s Sunday Trade: Usagi Yojimbo – Yokai
Usagi Yojimbo: Yokai by Stan Sakai
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Usagi Yojimbo, Stan Sakai created this hard-bound short ghost story. In it Usagi is drawn into the woods in pursuit of a lost girl only to encounter an army of ghosts and demons. This night is one that happens every hundred years when the yokai or haunts walk the earth in great numbers and will try to bring their Witch Queen over. Luckily, Usagi’s friend Sasuke the Demon Queller is in the area to stop this so the samurai doesn’t have to face this danger alone…
PDA 005: ATOMIC ROBO – Brian Clevinger
Here are the things I learned about Brian Clevinger during the course of our interview. First, he works really hard.
Second, Brian doesn’t like to talk about himself. He likes to talk about other people. This is a shorter interview than the one we did with Scott because Brian is much more comfortable talking about Scott than he is about himself, and well, I had already interviewed Scott.
Discuss Brian on our forums.
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LurkerWithout’s Sunday Trade: The Dead Boy Detectives
The Dead Boy Detectives by Jill Thompson
The Dead Boy Detectives, Charles Rowland and Edward Paine, are a pair of young boys who are ghosts. The two first showed up in Gaiman’s “Season of Mists” arc of Sandman, where they refused to go back with Death when Hell was re-opened…
Here the pair respond to a letter asking for help from one Annika Abernathy, a girl at a private school worried about the disappearance of one of her friends. So the two ghosts travel to Chicago and help Annika and her gang investigate the missing Elizabeth…
The big appeal here is Thompson’s shoujo style of art and story-telling. The characters are exuberant and fun. And the story maintains a light and humorous tone throughout. Hell, the book has an excerpt from another Thompson created Vertigo manga where she makes Despair of the Endless cute. Thats no small feat indeed…
LurkerWithout’s Sunday Trade: ps238
ps238: With Liberty and Recess for All by Aaron Williams
I may have mentioned my love for the comic ps238 a time or two or twenty. Aaron Williams has created one of my favorite super-hero titles. He starts with a perfect high concept, a grade school for super-powered children. Then adds in various characters, some of whom are loosely based on more well-known characters. But through it all he writes children like what they are. Kids. ps238 is fun and smart and funny and even exciting on occasion…
This first volume collects issues #0-#5 of the series, which introduces the faculty and many of the student body. Including the “evil genius” Zodon, the alien visitor Prospero, Suzi the Nucleur Girl and Tyler the non-powered son of two of Earth’s mightiest heroes. It even has Revanent, the Batman archtype created by Michael Stackpole and gifted to Aaron to use in his book and Tyler’s off-campus mentor…
PDA 004: ATOMIC ROBO – Scott Wegener
Scott Wegener is the artist for the Atomic Robo series of comic books.
Atomic Robo publishes 8-10 issues a year
The Iron Giant came out in 1999, not 1989.
Jeff Powell stole Scott’s job
By unemployment, we meant welfare, but the principle was the same.
Aron at Ideology of Madness is a snob.
Joe knows the brother of Rob Schrab (creator of Scud). This makes Joe cool somehow.
Atomic Robo’s three seconds of fame
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Book Review: SHADOWRISE
SHADOWRISE by Tad Williams – The rural kingdom of Southmarch has the distinction of being the last stronghold before the Shadowline, the demarcation between human civilization and the alien fairies known as the Qar. The Shadowline was raised by the retreating Qar at the end of their last war with the humans. But it has moved forward, and with it an invading Qar army, to lay seige to a Southmarch in upheaval.
SHADOWRISE is the third book in best-selling author Tad Williams’ “Shadowmarch” series. Originally billed as the end of a trilogy, the manuscript grew too large to be published as a single volume. (Readers of Williams’ TO GREEN ANGEL TOWER will not be surprised. That book was so large that the mass market paperback had to be published in two volumes.)
The king of Southmarch is held hostage in the south by the god-king of the Xixian Empire. His elder son is assassinated, his younger son lost behind the shadowline, and his daughter fled a usurpation by their cousins who covet the throne. All this and a large cast of supporting characters move through the pages of SHADOWRISE, tying together the various plot threads that were established in SHADOWMARCH and then frayed in SHADOWPLAY, the first and second books of the series.
Much like the other masters of the epic fantasy genre, Williams has a large ensemble of characters to explore his massive and richly detailed world. At times it may seem frustrating, focusing on otherwise inconsequential characters (we’re talking about you, Matt Tinwright) until their personal stories criss-cross with other characters and the overall story becomes a little clearer. The true majesty of the book is in its setting. The world is incredibly detailed with evolved social structures that appear more like the result of a twenty-year D&D campaign rather than the imagination of an author over the course of the past decade. Take a single creation story and evolve it through four different cultures over centuries of history and ritual and then see how those cultures abut one another because of their changed beliefs. This is the thesis of the Shadowmarch series and SHADOWRISE brings into focus the origins of those cultures. Just in time for the world to end.
The book is large, and its level of detail slows the pace at times. Some characters, like the aforementioned Matt Tinwright, delay the chapters of more appealing characters, but in the end, contribute to the world and its majesty. The slow pace was more evident in SHADOWPLAY where some chapters felt intentionally repetitious in an effort to match chronology of character actions so they could arrive simultaneously at the climactic event. Not so in SHADOWRISE. Everything moves along steadily without treading water. With so many characters, though, that pace can feel slow. Regardless, SHADOWRISE is a wonderfully crafted offering by one of fantasy’s luminary authors and should not be missed (more so because Tad has claimed that this will be his last epic fantasy–we certainly hope that’s just exhaustion talking).
The book offers a summary of the previous two books in its forward, but even that cannot prepare a new reader to the level of detail and number of characters offered. It is recommended that new readers begin with SHADOWMARCH and proceed through the entire series. It is certainly worth the reading.
SHADOWRISE by Tad Williams is on sale at your local booksellers today.
