New Reviews By The Web of Fear

Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond

Various authors

Published by Wexner Center For The Arts

The Wexner Center in Ohio recently hosted a display of the same name as this book. As my chances of getting to the exhibition were always rather slim, I was pleased to read that the exhibition catalogue was available, so I got a copy off the shelf as soon as I saw it.

It’s a nicely presented hardback book, and a good companion volume to Dark Horse’s Art of Bone book. While the Art book contains lots of sketches and the like, it’s somewhat light on analysis of the 1,300 plus pages of dense story. This book is almost the polar opposite. Very little (if any) artwork I haven’t seen before, but lots of discussion about the storytelling and artwork in Bone, and a good look at the influences, particularly newspaper cartoon strips.

The main chunk of the book is a frank interview with Smith himself about his influences and crafting his magnum opus, which I found fascinating. Neil Gaiman offers a retrospective, while Scott McCould makes some prudent observations about the subtleties of the artwork.

What I did find a slight oddity in the book is a lengthy chapter about Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge stories (not something I’m familiar with). It traces how these influence the creation of the greedy Phoney Bone, as well as the dynamic of his relationship with his cousins Fone and Smiley. However, it also recounts quite of few of the duck’s adventures, and could have been shortened a bit. However, this is only a minor quibble, and I did gain some insight from this.

Nonetheless, I will certainly be adding this to my recommendations for those who want to know more about the origins of Bone.

Onto my second purchase...

Scarlet Traces HC

Written by Ian Edginton

Art by D’Israeli

Published by Dark Horse Comics

As a fan of H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds, Victorian crime stories as well as the LEOG, this seemed ideal. Set ten years after the Martian Invasion is over, England has recovered. Not only has it recovered, Britain is stronger than ever. Martian technology has been salvaged and mastered by the British, so now homes are heated by the heat ray, and cars and hansom cabs scuttle along on spider like legs. Britain uses the technological superiority to (rather ruthlessly) maintain the Empire.

When mutilated bodies start to wash up in the Thames, retired soldier Robert Autumn and his manservant Archie Currie are drawn into a conspiracy that leads to a dark secret at the heart of the Empire (don’t they aways). The story is slim, so to say more will give too much away.

The artwork is bold, clean and colourful. The project was originally going to be a web based animation that fell through, and that shows in the art. The adaptations of the Martian technology are ingenious (including some mini tripods cleaning London’s flying rats away).

The story is clever, and I like many of the concepts, but frankly moves too quickly. I read it all on the train on the way back home. This is my main gripe with the book – it’s too short. Everything moves along at a breakneck speed, and there seems like there’s hardly any time to get to know characters, or for those characters to develop. Perhaps other than the relative twist in the ending, the characters did seem a little clichéd.

Plus, the conspiracy seems to be unravelled with such relative ease that one wonders how the regular authorities missed it, or how it was covered up to begin with.

In fairness, there is another volume that takes up events after this story that I have yet to read. I probably will get this in due course, but I wasn’t so gripped by the story that I wanted to rush out and get hold of it immediately. This just wasn’t as satisfying a read as I had hoped for.

Madame Mirage TPB

Written by Paul Dini

Art by Kenneth Rocafort

Published by Top Cow

Quick review here.

Picked this up from my LCS for a reasonable price and it’s quite good value for money. This collects 6 issues, an entire arc, with a complete cover gallery in a nicely presented trade.

It’s set in the future where meta humans have been banned, and the bad guys hire out their services to the highest bidder. That is until Madame Mirage shows up. She’s a buxom brunette (hardly surprising in a Top Cow comic) in anachronistic 40’s clothes, who’s capable of kicking serious bad guy ass.

It’s pretty clear that she’s out to take down the bad guys, and has more than a secret or two of her own to share as she works her way up the bad guys food chain.

There’s lots of action, and Mirage’s abilities make her an unpredictable opponent in fights. Rocafort’s artwork is nice, but somewhat typical of the Top Cow “house style” for want of a better phrase.

Overall, I found the story a bit slight, but nonetheless enjoyable.

Nothing outstanding, but nothing awful either.