Comic Reveiws: Anomaly

I can just imagine what it must have been like to pick up a copy of The Fantastic Four #1 off the stands or The Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns.  To sit there and read them and just know that the game has changed.  That from that moment on the art form of comics had just taken a giant leap forward and could never go back.  That is the feeling I had reading Anomaly, the original graphic novel written by Skip Brittenham and Brian Haberlin with art by Brian Haberlin and Geirrod Van Dyke.

If Avatar and The Lord of the Rings had a love child it would be named Anomaly.  The year is 2717.  Having stripped the Earth of it’s resources a handful of power companies under the banner of The Conglomerate have banded together to exploit distant planets.  The Conglomerate controls a powerful army lead by Enforcers and the best of them is Jon, at least he was the best until an accident on a planet leaves many of his men dead.  Years later he is given the opportunity to redeem himself by accompanying a group determined to try to peacefully contact another planet.  A betrayal by the Conglomerate leaves this group of humans stranded on a planet controlled by dangerous mutants and it is up to Jon to figure out how to gather the free “people” of the planet together to battle the mutants.

If the story seems a little bit basic and “been there read that” it is.  The idea of the outsider coming in and leading the natives has been in used in so many books and movies by now (the latest being Avatar) that it is almost a cliché and that’s not a bad thing.  If the formula works why change it?  The story is there only to serve as the hooks to hang all of this beautiful artwork on and after 7 or 8 pages I stopped actually reading the story and just experienced it.  It was like watching a big screen epic play out in front of me and I just had to hang on for the ride.

When you buy the book you get a free UAR (Ultimate Augmented Reality) app to download.  Just point it at certain pages and the creatures pop off the pages and perform some basic animation.  Since we are on an alien world the UAR segments didn’t feel out of place but instead kind of functioned as a moving encyclopedic guide to the strange creatures on the planet.  Click on THIS LINK for a demo to get a taste of what I’m talking about.  If you don’t have the ability to use the app don’t worry as this will not affect your enjoyment one bit.

While the book might set you back $75.00 every bit of this 12 x 16.5”, 6 pound, 370 page book is worth the price you pay.  And even though it is the longest original graphic novel ever published when it ends it STILL feels like it ended too soon.  This is easily the best graphic novel of the year hands down, period, end of sentence.  If you love comics you owe it to yourself to make sure this is at the top of your Christmas list.  

Comic Reviews: Delilah Dirk & Fairy Tale Comics

Delilah Dirk & The Turkish Lieutenant

She first causes his execution and then saves his life.  To repay that debt Selim the mild-mannered Turkish Lieutenant joins firecracker Delilah Dirk on her adventures, and thus a partnership is started on page 30 and they (and the reader) are off and running at breakneck speed on an adventure that sits squarely at the crossroads of Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, Moonlighting, the Hope/Crosby Road movies, Buffy, and Robin Hood.  

In a wonderful inversion of the normal roles Delilah is the skilled thief who acquires a diamond-in-the-rough distressed damsel sidekick in the form of Erdemoglu Selim who prides himself on his ability to make great tea.  They steal treasure, are pursued, lose treasure, steal more treasure, and each comes to the conclusion by the end that the greatest treasure is the adventures themselves.  The story such as it is exists only to move along our “heroes” from one adventure set piece to the next.  While the pace may be fast author Tony Cliff still manages to sneak in enough character bits to give us fully fleshed out characters and not just cyphers.

Lately it seems to me that the big two are putting out nothing more than complex cross-connected stories you need to have read the last five years of continuity to understand.  And the violence, blood, and language would rate at least a PG-13 rating on the big screen it is nice to find a self-contained, fun book suitable for all ages.  This is a summer blockbuster of a book and I mean that in the nicest possible way.  And speaking of younger readers…..

Fairy Tale Comics

“The reason we have smaller numbers of comics readers is because we don’t have any comics for kids.“  How many times have you heard this?  Despite what you’ve been told there are comics for kids, you just have to look a little harder to find them.  And if you did find suitable titles what kind should they be to hook the little rugrats and breed a whole new crop of readers?  My suggestion would be to take a bunch of stories that should be familiar and put them in a comic format that is perfect for parents to read to their kids before bed.  And better yet let’s make it an anthology with a whole bunch of great artists such as Jaime Hernandez, David Mazzucchelli, Craig Thompson, and Emily Carroll to do the adaptations.  First:Second Comics editor Chris Duffy must have had the same thought because he did just that when he put together Fairy Tale Comics.

As a comics reader myself I realize that I have to do a lot of the work for the comics companies to help grow a new generation.  And obviously a book called Fairy Tale Comics isn’t written for someone in his late 30’s so I decided the only way to see how good it really was meant reading it to my 5 year old and over the space of a week we read one story after another.  Did he enjoy every story?  No, but he enjoyed many of them and by the time he was done he was asking me to reread some of them.  Basically what I witnessed was the beginning of a new comics reader and I can’t give a title a better endorsement than that.  If you have children find this book and buy it and share it, it really is that good.