Grovel

Dark Edge

Andy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:00:51 +0000

UPDATE: Volume 10 out now. When Kurou Takagi’s mother dies, he has to face the horror of transferring to a new school. Luckily, his father is the proprietor. Unluckily, this means he has to stick around the school after hours, and finds that it’s riddled with zombies. As Kurou makes new friends with his classmates, they [...]

Soul Stealer

Andy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:00:43 +0000

Some people believe that love is the most powerful force in the universe. It’s a nice thought but, when you think about it, there are plenty of obstacles love still struggles to cross, including death and time. Michael Easton and Christopher Shy explore this and a few other things besides in Soul Stealer. When a mighty [...]

Faust

Andy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:00:53 +0000

UPDATE: The 2nd volume in the series is out now. Many aspects of Japanese culture have been influenced by manga – not just the obvious things like animé. These anthologies celebrate manga’s influence, collecting short prose stories and comics alike, alongside a few extras like interviews and columns. This makes it a must-have for Japanophiles who [...]

Hum

Andy — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:00:05 +0000

This far-future sci-fi tale tells the story of a distant human colony. When 80 percent of the people are blinded by a natural disaster, they are enslaved by those with sight, forced to work as miners in terrible conditions. This oppression has gone on for a thousand years, but perhaps now is the time for [...]

Batman Annuals, The

Andy — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:00:01 +0000

From the DC Comics Classics Library comes another slice of comics history, reprinting the first three Batman annuals, from 1961 to 1962 (yes, we know, that’s too many to actually make them annual – the first one sold so well that the second one came out just over four months later). Written and illustrated by some [...]

Silverfish

Andy — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Step-mothers are something of a thriller cliché. The standard wicked step-mother pattern usually involves a recently bereaved widower finding solace in the arms of another woman. Meanwhile, teenage daughter, who’s probably had the thankless task of being mother to younger siblings and held the family together while Dad falls apart, sees this usurper of her [...]

Roy of the Rovers

Andy — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:00:47 +0000

UPDATE: The 2nd volume in the series – The Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1970s – is out now. British men of a certain age will remember Roy of the Rovers with a generous dollop of nostalgia. Roy appealed to nearly every 8-year-old boy, as star striker of Melchester Rovers (a fictitious soccer team), [...]

Passion of the Hausfrau, The

Andy — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:00:30 +0000

I can’t speak for mothers, not being one myself, but as I was passing through the first few weeks of horror that is realising what you’ve let into your house when you have your first child, I had serious concerns that I’d been duped – that there was a conspiracy of silence about the trials [...]

Rocky

Andy — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:00:56 +0000

UPDATE: The 2nd volume in the series – Rocky Volume 2: Strictly Business – is out now. Not the Sylvester Stallone Hollywood heavy-weight, but a cartoon dog. The creation of Martin Kellerman, Rocky is an autobiographical daily strip, a slice-of-life comic that follows twenty-something Rocky as he attempts to launch a career as a cartoonist. On [...]

Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers

Andy — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:00:42 +0000

Boody Rogers was responsible for creating strange but raucous comics that influenced many of today’s big-name underground cartoonists, from Art Spiegelman to Johnny Ryan. Characters like Sparky Watts, Babe and Dudley won’t mean much to modern audiences, but in the 1930s they were the cutting edge, with his strips featuring in theThe Funnies – the [...]