Strontium Dog - The life and death of Johnny Alpha: The Project

Earth, the late 22nd century. Many survivors of the devastating Atomic Wars were mutated by Strontium 90 fallout. These ‘mutants’ became a victimised underclass- hated by the ruling ‘norms’ and forced into squalid ghettos, the only job left for them was bounty-hunting. 
 The best of the Search/ Destroy agents (also known as Strontium Dogs) was a man called Johnny Alpha. He became famous for fighting for mutant right and died defending his kind from ultimate destruction. 

But it seems even death can’t keep a good dog down and rumours are circulating about Alpha’s return..

When I first got wind of the potential return of Johnny Alpha, I was bitterly disappointed. Don’t get me wrong – I loved Strontium Dog, and Johnny Alpha was the template for every other RPG or PC game I played across my teenage years (and beyond tbh). I sobbed like a madman when he was killed. But it was a Good Death. He died for his convictions, and went down fighting, scant consolation for the mutant shaped hole in my life that his death left behind. I took some solace in the knowledge that the impact of his death was such that Carlos Ezquerra didn’t want to illustrate that issue. It made my grief feel a bit more legitimate.

 So. On one hand it would be good to have Johnny back, but that was far outweighed by the worry that his ‘resurrection’ would be a tawdry and cynical gambit that would cheapen his death and dilute the impact of such a powerful story. Then I heard that the story was being helmed by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra once again, the same pairing that created Strontium Dog all those moons ago, and some of my dread passed, although it still took some time before I found myself sitting down and turning to page 1 of The Project.

Ezquerra’s familiar and distinctive art immediately leaps out and welcomes you, a continuity of style that’s immediately reassuring. The story starts with and follows Precious, a writer compiling a true account of the events surrounding Johnny’s death. She teams up with a barely sober Middenface McNulty to start seeking out accounts from the surviving witnesses of his death regarding the rumour that contrary to the official account, Johnny’s body was brought back through the dimensional portal that he had given his life to open.

It’s a clever device that allows Wagner to feed through enough backstory that anyone unfamiliar with the original story won’t feel utterly lost. It also lets the story gather pace without feeling rushed, so that by the time that they’re closing in on Johnny’s resting place it's gathered enough gravitas that it doesn’t feel rushed, distancing it from the way that deaths in the Marvel/ DC universes have lost their impact.

 I have to say that I came away from this feeling optimistic about the resurgence of Strontium Dog. It’s handled very well, the story is as strong as anything that has gone before, laden with twists and revelations and, damn it, Johnny’s back!

A fine job by Messrs Wagner and Ezquerra, and well worth the wait.

Find the full story here.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Graphic Novel

Writer: John Jackson Miller (from screenplay by David Koep)
Illustrators: Luke Ross; Cliff Richards (pencils); Fabio Laguna; Eber Ferreira (inks)
Publisher: Titan Books

As a huge Indiana Jones fan I was very excited to get a copy of this graphic novel as a freebie recently from an event we attended.

I devoured it in one sitting and felt even more let down by the graphic novel than I did by the movie. There was nothing wrong with the artwork which was excellent, the colours were true to the movie and the franchise, but to be honest, it just didn't spark.

The story takes the big set pieces from the movie and puts it into graphic novel form and it just doesn't work. If I hadn't seen the movie I probably wouldn't have followed the confusing storyline. Now - be nice here: I'm talking about the graphic novel and not the movie, which although pretty dire, had some merit.

We can't blame the Mr. Miller, the writer, because how exactly do you cram an action packed 2 hour movie into less than say 100 pages of graphic novel? It just won't work. Also, he had to obviously stick to the script and to be fair, he does it admirably, but there just was no lift in your spirit that you get when you read something really good.

The story feels flat and unpleasant and as a fan I thought it just didn't work on a variety of levels. There was no impact and Indy himself is a stock adventurer, as is the villain of the piece, Irina Spalko, who is nothing more than a cold-war puppet and decidedly one dimensional.

As a graphic novel reader, I thought that had I been the one to sell this storyline to a buddy to read, I'd be fired from the friendship on the spot.

This is definitely not a graphic novel I'd recommend, not even if you were a fan of the movies (pre or post Crystal Skull) or the Indy omnibusses. Omnibussi? *blinks*

And it makes me a little sad as I feel quite let down by it because I wanted to love it. But no. Not going to happen.

My verdict is: I am so glad I didn't buy it.

Aya of Yop City - M. Abouet & C. Oubrerie

I like to keep an open mind when it comes to trying new books, so when I slipped Aya from the shelf it was with a sense of cautious anticipation -I really had no idea what to expect.

The story opens with the elders of the titular Aya’s family debating who the father of her child could be and from there fractures into several different storylines as the various family members go on with their lives, gradually building up an image of life in the Ivory Coast in the late 70’s.

It was only after I realised that Aya had been on my reading pile for close on a fortnight that I started realising that I was only reading in fits and starts, and the more I thought about it the more I realised that the reason for this is that it simply wasn’t holding my attention for very long. I’d read a section, find myself thinking about something else, find an excuse to go make another cup of tea and put it aside for the next day.

And that’s the problem; it reads like an inoffensive soap opera. The characters’ lives are mundane, and the divergent stories diluted the drama and prevented it from building enough momentum to make me want to find out what happened next. Perhaps this was intentional, a mechanism to suggest the sleepy pace of life in old Africa, and as such it enjoys a measure of success -but it comes at a price.

Oubrerie's illustrations are warm, bright, his characters expressive and, while hardly groundbreaking, they lend Aya a quirky, retro feel that sits well with its period setting.

If you’re feeling nostalgic about life in an African state, then perhaps Aya is for you. If you’re looking for something a bit more entertaining or gripping, it’s probably best to keep looking.

Cairo by G Willow Wilson, illustrated by MK Perker

Synopsis:

The creative team behind the new monthly series AIR brings together ancient and modern Middle East with a Vertigo twist. A stolen hookah, a spiritual underworld and a genie on the run change the lives of five strangers forever in this modern fable set on the streets of the Middle East's largest metropolis. This magical-realism thriller interweaves the fates of a drug runner, a down-on-his-luck journalist, an American expatriate, a young activist and an Israeli soldier as they race through bustling present-day Cairo to find an artifact of unimaginable power, one protected by a dignified jinn and sought by a wrathful gangster-magician. But the vastness of Africa's legendary City of Victory extends into a spiritual realm – the Undernile – and even darker powers lurk there…

Cairo was my first official purchase from Orbital Comics (the other purchases were done by Mark so they don't count as being purchased by moi) and I couldn't have been happier with it. Beautifully illustrated by MK Perker I was sucked into the story of the various characters as they go around one of my favourite cities I've ever visited.

The story starts off quietly, almost unassumingly, following the five different characters, effortlessly setting them up and giving you a handle on their motivations. We have a drug-smuggler, with a sister who is friends with a journalist experiencing some heavy censorship with the press, who in turn meets an American girl travelling around Egypt on her own. The smuggler sells on a hookah he found in an abandoned shack to a Lebanese boy but the hookah's owner wants it back and takes the reporter and American girl hostages to get it back...and that's because the hookah contains a genie.

It's an involved, interesting story, with glimpses into a culture everyone thinks they know something of or have an opinion about. I enjoyed Cairo and feel that you can read as much as you want into the overall story, or you can check it out because it's an entertaining read that is beautifully drawn by MK Perker and cleverly written by journalist G Willow Wilson.

Cairo is published by Vertigo and should be available in most comic book shops / online.