>>Nostalgia For Infinity

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“In the circus, acrobatics where one person lies on the floor balancing another are called “Icarian Games”. Considering the fate of Icarus after he flouted his father’s advice and flew so close to the sun his wings melted, perhaps some dark humor is intended.

“In our particular re-enactment of this mythic relationship, it was not me but my father who was to plummet from the sky.”

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

So begins Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking work of memoir and comics, Fun Home. It’s an apposite beginning: at once literary, darkly humorous, and reservedly dramatic. Here, as throughout, Bechdel’s father is centre-stage, for this is a story of the last twenty years of his life, and the first twenty of Alison’s.

Bechdel’s artwork is fantastic; stylised and thorough with a wonderful eye for detail, and often playful. Sometimes she points out her small flourishes of authenticity, like part of a Halloween costume worn well after the event is passed. A fine example of more subtle detail is in a panel that follows several pages discussing the Gothic Revival house Bruce Bechdel has restored and in which the family live;  below the caption “Yet we really were a family, and we really did live in those period rooms” is a scene of the family in their 1860s living room. The children are playing and the parents are watching television whilst sharing a bucket of KFC. The anachronistic nature of the scene speaks for itself.

As any honest work of memoir must be, it is at times brutal in its depiction of events and character. Bruce Bechdel is portrayed as a man of violent tempers, intolerant cruelty towards his children, and central in driving the comic’s author into an obsessive-compulsive disorder. He is also shown as capable of simple acts of kindness and warmth, as a master of period restoration and interior design, and as a highly-cultured, well-educated man. The picture that emerges, overall, is of a man with severe problems, tragic weaknesses and admirable strengths.

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I’ve written about the independent comics publisher Big Head Press once before, indirectly, when I wrote about their excellent story La Muse. Their tagline is “thoughtful stories” and this was certainly true of La Muse, a comic in which a young woman with superpowers set about to change the world to something better.

They have recently concluded the story Odysseus the Rebel, which begins ten years after the fall of Troy. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s a re-imagining of the classic Odyssey with a distinct spin. Writer Steven Grant (an industry veteran, thought as a comics n00b I’m not that familiar with his work – he did a Punisher mini-series and has written for most of the major IP of the biggest comics companies in the last three decades) presents a much more cynical view of the great Greek heroes. Achilles and Ajax are simple-minded bullies, Agamemnon a selfish murderer, and Odysseus is a man determined to make his own way in life in defiance of what is demanded of him by higher powers. Following the fall of Troy, Odysseus’s fate tangles directly with vassals of Poseidon – god of the sea – who demands that Odysseus bend his knee to the will of the gods. Odysseus rejects him, refusing to willingly play a role as a mere pawn. And so begins an Odyssey quite distinct from the one you may be familiar with, in which the plots and power struggles of the Greek Pantheon, heroes and monsters play out in a manner not entirely expected.

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(It occurred to me after writing the review of ‘Feels Like Steven King’ last week that I’d promised to post my Vector reviews online a month or two after they appeared in the magazine itself. That deadline has long since passed for the first three reviews, so I’ll post one on Saturdays for the first three weeks of August.)

This all-new story set in Brooks’ world of Shannara is not only its first appearance in a graphic novel, but also my first experience of the setting. Fans may wish to take my opinions with a pinch of salt.

Set after the events of ‘The Wishsong of Shannara’, ‘The Dark Wraith of Shannara’ resumes the story of Jair Ohmsford, a young man capable of using a form of magic known as the wishsong. As the story begins Jair’s sister has him swear not to risk using the dangerous wishsong again, but Jair is troubled by portentous dreams. The following day he learns that several old friends have been kidnapped, and so Jair and those allies he can round up set out to rescue them. Along the way Jair learns more about the wishsong and about his own potential.

This story is generic, inoffensive quest fare, featuring appearances by various characters who I assume will be known to Shannara fans. The central plot works well enough; it is unoriginal but comprehensible to a newcomer. But it is as a graphic novel that ‘The Dark Wraith of Shannara’ is flawed. » Read the rest of this entry «

Steven Deighan has been plugging away in the indie horror scene for almost a decade now, and published his first collection in 2006 (which I reviewed for now-defunct site Yet Another Book Review). It was a promising if unpolished set of stories and I felt it was worth keeping an eye on Deighan’s work. Now, along with illustrator Terry Cooper, he brings us a short graphic novel titled ‘Feels Like Stephen King’. At a bit under 40 pages it’s more of a graphic short story than a graphic novel, but who’s counting? Aside from hardcore comics fans who are already grumbling at my use of the term “graphic novel”, of course…

Deighan’s story focuses on a somewhat autobiographical subject: Eric Bain, a young horror writer who is struggling to get his work noticed by a publisher. As the story opens he receives a returned manuscript in the post, and at first is filled with anger at another rejection. Once he reads the cover letter, however, he realises that DM Publications wish to publish his novel ‘The Dying Game’. As his relationship with the head of the publishing house develops, however, Eric finds that his life is beginning to resemble something out of one his stories.

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