There is one criticism of smallpress comics that I use more than any other, one that is almost universally applicable. When it comes to reviewing something I find myself time and time again saying "yes well, the art is very good, shame about the story".
Again with this comic the art is fantastic, very well stylised, distinctive, very professional looking inside (the cover could do with some more thought regards layout) with gorgeous quality paper (I have a thing for comics with a good 'feel' to them). And it's not that this story is bad at all, it's amusing and lighthearted; The plot revolving around a bar for the undead and a mysterious Banshee woman who arrives looking for a job, not the most original thing ever (undead behaving like soap characters), but one of the better examples of its type.
My criticism then, in this case is not specific. It applies to most smallpress, and that is that it's alright, but a bit, well, boring.
People seem to think that 20 pages isn't enough to tell a decent story, that we can have a set-up, middle, or finale, but no more than one of those. And because fo this the comics have no structure, there is no reward for following the story through because by the end of the comic nothing has actually happened (this problem is also evident in Tales from the Flat, much as I enjoy it, it gets frustrating waiting 5 issues for the big fight scene you realy needed in issue one or two to drag the reader in). There is no action.
What happened to the days of the O Men, where in the first issue we were introduced to a bunch of interesting characters and then watched as half of them were promptly murdered? Martin Eden sacrificed no subtle characterisation for that, I felt in two pages more interest in one of his characters than 90 percent of the comic heroes I have been introduced to since. I feel exhausted after I finish an issue with him, I feel like I've BEEN somewhere. It's that ability to create real protagonists without having to spend 20 pages doing so, that makes Martin such a damn good writer. (He hasn't paid me to write this by the way.)
It's all very well taking time over characters, giving them depth, but if nothing happens in that issue because of it, it's a waste of time because I won't come back for more... A bit like LOST.
That said, I quite enjoyed these comics and hope something happens in future issues to keep readers buying them.
Now, despite the fact that Douglas is a fellow reviewer on TRS2, and despite the unwritten rule that one should never review the work of an aquaintance. I am hereby going to write a brief comment on the latest issue of Douglas' convention staple, Strip for Me and if you don't like it, bite me.
The usual format of Strip for Me is a series of short stories, all very bleak in nature, which may or may not be returned to in future installments. He appears to aim to give the reader more a sense of atmosphere than a story, as most plots (if there are any) meander into either symbolism or pretentiousness depending on how cynical a reader you are. Personally I am a cynic, although it has been known for his autobiographical 'Borders' pages to touch me quite profoundly.
Issue 23 is a different beast though, a 'feature length' tale of a grieving artist who lives alone atop a hill, and the woman who visits in search of answers to his reclusive behaviour and the circumstances surrounding his wife's death.
It's a character piece that doesn't fully answer the questions raised, and with an ending spookily reminiscent to that of Mauretania by Chris Reynolds, despite Douglas' denile of any familiarity with that particular work. Parrallels with the story and Citizen Kane are also evident.
I was enthralled right from the first page, the sparse artwork style seeming as if it had only been developed specifically for this story, and when I finished I felt something Doouglas' comics don't usually instil in me, that of optimism.
To me this comic is his best work, a must have.
Placed 8th in the 'best magazine' category at the last Hugo Awards, Albedo One's inexorable rise to the top gains momentum with this issue's expertly assembled and fluid mix of speculative fiction. As one premise ideal for comment on the human condition is directed elsewhere by a writer's particular focus, another story is imbued with this ambition. As one writer fries a father on the first mouthful of mains-wired cutlery, another conjures a utopian consciousness. Seven stories feature:
Unnatural, by John Hogan, is an evocative World War I morality play-with-a-twist. With British railway guns finding their range and infantry advancing, a mysterious runner is blasted from front to second line of German trenches, but suffers ill-effects only when flung into the graveyard of the village of Saint Martin du Sacre-Coeur – now re-sculpted by the weight of British ordinance. Even in these unnatural times, the runner's pleas for help from two German comrades seem out of the ordinary.
Blink, by Ruth Nestvold, is an amusing 'distraction'. Being a science fiction writer (social, no doubt), Tess is forced underground by the fundamentalist government of the New Republic of Texas. But the Resistance is weakening and Tess has writers block – without her reason for being, she is dying quietly before her partner's eyes. If she could only tap the love of her man, write the story of their struggle, then New York Times headline 'Science Fiction Writer Breaks Through Curtain Of Silence' could be hers.
Times Winged Chariot, by Nicola Caines, is affecting magic-realism. A mother believes that aliens (probably Orkan) have covertly altered her biology: she is growing younger. Her opportunity unimaginatively grasped, the years pass. So do mother and daughter: the latter toward old age, the former toward a childhood where even paedophiles have their uses for a libidinous kid. But where is this reversal to end? Is daughter to witness mother expire, a raw, red, pulsating lump, no more than the guilty leavings of an illicit abortion?
Katrina's Kostumes, by Stephen Owen, is Roald Dahl creepy but with a substance-lacking CGI-ness permeating its House Of Wax horrors. When an inebriated father loses his three year-old on a busy city street, it occurs to him that the boy has been lured into a costume shop by a mannequin clown in the store window. The ensuing search takes on nightmarish proportions as father is overwhelmed by the shifting display of costumes, which grows more menacing, more animated, the deeper he delves.
Homo Incognito, by Will Sand, is sterling science fiction with metaphysical bite. When a burnt-out journo makes some effort to revamp his nondescript life by investigating a revolutionary company rumoured to possess an extraterrestrial think-tank, he is seduced into non-action by the promise of a life full of possibilities, without limitations or consequence. However, first he must enter a physical state more confining than a nightmare. What's he to do, this man so unused as to be unknown?
Danny's Inferno, by Brian Stableford, reworks principles related to Heaven and Hell to enchanting, potentially corrupting consequence. A couple of eloquent primary school pals – one is dead, the other, our narrator, is living – share matter-of-fact conversation at this dead pal's funeral. The deceased explains: "In Hell, everyone is the age they were when they'd committed enough sins to be irredeemably damned." He's seven. And our narrator is wickedly philosophical about his own chances of eternal happiness.
Counting Tadpoles, by Uncle River, is a smart, incantational parable. A student discovers another green world on an ecological field study in Las Cruces. Aided by a polymathic hermit with irreverence for a government which conditions its citizenry to be docile, the student receives lessons in ecological degradation, the sacrifices required to become a sovereign individual, and demon wars in a wilderness haunted by an indigenous culture with its own maths. Is this student to be woken from his consumer lifestyle?
Also on offer behind Alexander Kruglov's fine cover art: in-depth book reviews by Andrew McKenna which are both lucid and intimate, letters of comment, and Dev Agarwal interviews a candid Christopher Priest, biographer of Olympian, Sally Gunnell – "80,000 words in a month. I had just spent three long unpaid years writing The Prestige and was desperate for some cash." A sound issue then, reliably measured to appeal to the palate of the discerning genre fan, and with a smack of earthly relevance that lends some satisfying weight.
64 A4 pages for £3.95 / €5.95, available from www.albedo1.com
So close to retirement, the last thing that ageing inspector Jim Pannifer wants is a hate crime perpetrated by Satanists, or tit-for-tat exchanges between the right-wing Social Order Movement and Islamic extremists. But, in an Addingcombe graveyard, a white cat's decapitated head, thirteen black candles and a twisted key with nine notches are found, and two headstones desecrated with black paint now bear the scrawled name of Mayor Biff Scourge – the "F's" in the shapes of swastikas, the "O" crossed like a Nazi wotan symbol.
Yes, a suit of respectability may cover Mayor Scourge's tattoos, but even occult seduction to the Otherworld and alliance with M'wboe (the Man-With-Blanked-Out-Eyes) can't suppress a racial prejudice founded in his days as a 1930s Nazi Blackshirt. When a polemical bullet is administered to his brain and, subsequently, an imam in Addingcombe – Sadar Saddubin – is found dead with a sabre knife up his jacksy, inspector Pannifer's desire to write an Agatha Christie style crime novel must simmer patiently on the backburner.
This is another state of the nation reconstruction fuelled by fantastical elaboration, which contains magpie-snatchings of found socio-political reality and popular culture, all charged with a supernatural current guaranteed to weird you out. Roses open for Christmas, a two-headed entity orgasms, and Grungehill Comprehensive ex-pupil Glenford Gates stammers. The push and pull of Mike Weller's prose is lent hypnotic clarity by an omniscient third-person narrative, and this Slow Science Fictions series is of- and out of- this world.
28 A5 pages, £2 inc p&p, available from Mike Weller, 3 Queen Adelaide Court, Queen Adelaide Road, Penge, London SE20 7DZ. E-mail: mikejweller(at)hotmail.com Site: www.homebakedbooks.co.uk