I got hold of this pair at the Thing 2007 which just goes to show how powerful the extrapolatory abilities of Andy Luke must be that he was able to create a comic based on a new upcoming summer blockbuster and make it fairly similar to the end result using only the teaser trailer for references. The Transformers were created by Michael Bay and consist of robots in disguise, which would be a far better tagline in my opinion than the lame 'some will come to destroy, others will come to protect' or whatever it was on the posters. The comic begins with some pretty humorous stuff, mostly on the nature of the disguises the transformers assume and how you can't trust anything to be what it seems- satire. But god knows what happens after that, things are a bit of a mess and jump around alot, but there are some scenes that are funny, and would be more so had I known what exactly was happening. What I was really thinking about this one was 'what's the point?' It's a series of shorts that don't really go anywhere and don't really say anything. But in line with Monkeys Might Puke you get a feeling that there's something going on in there if only you can work it out.
His Jeremy Kyle comic is a far better beast, more focused and sense-making. But again I don't follow what Andy is trying to achieve, he gives JK an agenda so that he can interview american governement members, and that seems to be the agenda Andy agrees with. But the bullying, biased, rude and nasty methods JK uses in his interview don't exactly encourage agreement. I think this defeats the object of the comic, which on the back Andy explains is to encourage people to politley protest about their governments actions, but the reader is put off agreeing with that viewpoint because of the actions of the mascot in the comic.
At the end of the day, and I'm talking mostly about the JK comic here, Andy is doing something different by using comics as something other than entertainment, something which I don't think there is enough of in smallpress. He is taking advantage of creative control to it's fullest extent, in a way that people writing a noirish thriller with a less mainstream art style can only dream of. He should be lauded for that, but at the moment his work seems more to pursuade me that I should do a more coherent political comic myself, rather than follow Andys agenda.
But inspiring people to think about doing that at all is a success in itself is it not?
Pick his comics up for some money when you see him or visit his website:
Mostly a collection of sequential doodles from the margins of Andy Luke's mind, some appear little more than thumbnails for more substantial comics works, while others resemble the worked-on primitiveness of Outsider Art, but all are suffused with intent: we should know that victim status is unacceptable; that personal power can be used to combat world woes; that tucking ourselves into cosy lives is to sidestep responsibility. Luke seems to be highlighting society's inherent culpability as well as that of the usual suspects.
Yes, it's an unapologetic rant, targeting both the corrupt and the apathetic alike: Bush, Blair, you, me, Moloch – we are all guilty of what Jean-Paul Sartre termed bad faith. Thankfully the moral certainty with which Luke delivers his sermon is made palatable by a warmth fuelled by self-deprecating humour, and while occasionally the gap between panels is too wide for the average cognisance to bridge, the resultant sense of abandonment – of being lost – proves agreeably abstract in a David Shrigley kind-of-way.
20 A5 pages, £1, check availability at http://andyluke.livejournal.com/
This is the first handsome volume of Bulletproof Comics' anthology series, presenting new work by an accumulation of pro and semi-pro UK comic talent, and featuring a genre mix of fantasy, adventure and humour. Production values suggest that this US-sized glossy means mainstream business, and with a striking cover design (albeit with overly-busy illustration by Lee Langford and Klaus Belarski) and polished artwork throughout (particularly lovely is the scratchy-lined, Alfredo Alcala-like inking style of Jon Haward on Sideburns), there's little to deter the casual browser from parting with £2.50 for eighty pages of comics. And to further entice this page-flicking punter-in-waiting, The End is thrown-in a couple of times when a Next or To Be Continued would prove more to the point. (Count five complete strips.)
Ranging in length from one page to twelve, eleven conscientiously crafted strips are offered, with – in the main – neat, lucid storytelling the rule. Nigel Kitching's and David Hankin's lively Occultus rummages through Judeo-Christian baggage to realise its otherworld of flaming swords, its indigenous hierarchy and tree of eternal life. This is technically flawless stuff, and boasts a structural know-how; as does Snowstorm, an intriguing, cinematic story of small town Canadian lives impacted by a seemingly unprovoked act of violence, written by Paul H Birch, pencilled by Michael Perkins and inked by Garen Ewing. Curious superhero team Armageddon Patrol feature in the wonky Friends Like These, by John A Short and Simon Ecob: the patrol act as a superpowered special ops squad during the Vietnam War, to vaguely unsettling effect – it's either unpleasant misjudgement or finely-tuned cheese. And in Alan Grant's and Alan Burrows' Funguys, two annoying time-travelling mushrooms crash The Last Supper and buzz off Jesus and pals, to hilariously profane consequence.
Like most anthologies, this one dips and lurches, and inevitably some subject matter appeals-not to my jaded tastes, or some storytelling fails to satisfy my particular demands. However, while Editor-in-Chief and publisher Matt Yeo recognises the need for talents to emerge fully formed if the anthology is to realistically compete against a mass of always-available mainstream material (both past and present), the space allowed for those still in need of development is vital for the well-being of underexposed UK creators. And though spoiled-for-choice readers these days are inclined to easily lose patience with the second-rate, Bulletproof #1 provides quality enough for the mainstream comics fan and, with adult sustenance found elsewhere, for the small press enthusiast attentive to the demands of their inner teen.
US format, 80 pages (B&W interior), £2.50. For further details: http://www.bulletproofcomics.co.uk/
People, Summer Ball is a multi-layered recounting of Oli's final days with school-chums, relayed by the experience of the departed. Theres a lot of grey wash brush strokes, more about those in a bit. Smith has very much immersed himself in this project, so that it serves a reconciling purpose, relating to lives once entwined which just drifted. As Oli paints the comic full of these represented ones dear to him, each obviously part of some greater narrative and with only little clues to tip the reader off. This is part of the books charm - little unattended subplots all the way through that the reader can only marvel at for their aesthetic value. The artist has announced plans for six prequels, but there seems to me there might be something that might detract from this ? Surely an expanded edition of this book might be wiser.
I'm not a big fan of Oli's scripting. Sorry mate i'd buy you a beer i love you very much even though you're a big fop but it just ain't reviewing the other way.
Oli does something with his narratives though. He is genuinely a man who tells some fairly decent stories through his brushes and deciding what order to place those details in, and how he brings together these elements and the why. These are all very interesting things. Damn his arrogance, but hes entitled to it ! A whole ephemera is brought to the page, graceful portrayals and shapings giving this the properties of something much longer lasting, like say the music of Miles Davis. Oh I dunno. Some Martha Reeves and the Vandellas or Redding and Gaye Motown soul collection. Theres two markers, Olis work is somewhere around there.
Rumours his next work is some form of political comic having recently been recruited for an anthology contribution, and hyped up after Robbins' "Closing Shots". So while Oli sets about putting a spanner in the works of his detractors, you could do a lot worse than to hang around the highly memorable 'Summer Ball' for a while.
US size, 28 pages, two pounds
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Refounded Communist Party member Hannah Watts is convinced that Nazi thug George Bridger should have been strangled at birth, but relief teacher Margaret Cooper sits on him anyway and he comes inside her. Meanwhile, Professor David Wilson and son Dylan continue their lustful pursuits of Hannah; new world order capitalism carries on its destructive way; and something shadowy has got into historian, Frederick Burrell…
Once a brilliant scholar, but now jobless, homeless and living amongst an assortment of refugees and asylum seekers as he shifts from Salvation Army hostel to squat, Frederick Burrell has wound up on the 'wrong' side of the global division of rich and poor. It's the society he's compelled to live in, you see: Englishmen like him are ashamed of expressing nationalist pride and sentiments. What has the pursuit of democracy, freedom and prosperity achieved? Muslim settlers and a woman's right to wear the total burqa of Swabiastan, that's what! Is it any wonder Burrell finds himself following prostate-troubled imam Sadar Saddubin into the Gents toilet of the Drum And Billet public house, in his hand a sabre knife from a lost Afghan war, in his head the voice of Sir Michaeal Spearate, Duke of Hell?
A clear-sighted Mike Weller continues to track and backtrack the lives of his disparate group of characters, immersing them in a melting pot of psycho-sexual/political tongue-in-cheekery, emotional repression and demonic pathogens. Though not conducive to building a sense of momentum, the fragmented structure of the narrative remains compelling and agreeably off balancing, and enhances the quirky vitality of a dizzying, brain-adjusting read.
32 A5 pages, £2 inc p&p, available from Mike Weller, 3 Queen Adelaide Court, Queen Adelaide Road, Penge, London SE20 7DZ. E-mail: info(at)homebakedbooks.co.uk Site: www.homebakedbooks.co.uk