Good News Bible: The Deadline Strips of Shaky Kane is exactly what the title says. The book collects the comic strips that Michael “Shaky Kane” Coulthard wrote during his time working for Deadline, a comics magazine during the ‘80s and early to mid ‘90s.
Out of Kane’s creations the one to get the most attention in this collection is The A-Men. For the benefit of reads unfamiliar with this strip, imagine what it would look like if Judge Dredd were a Jehovah’s Witness. The result is every bit as brutal, and unusual as that sentence implies. The main character goes around promoting the “good book” with all the zeal, and with the same methods, as you would expect from Judge Dredd to use when he is fighting crime.
What is even stranger than the A-men is the fact that the pages dedicated to that particular creation are arguably the least bizarre part of this book.
The comic strips themselves are not the only content on offer in Good News Bible. Both the introduction and afterward are on hand to lend some context to Shaky Kane himself, with anecdotes that explain a little of how others view him, and what his place in the comic book industry was. Within there are also annotations written by Kane. These extras all help to imbue it with a sense of looking back at something, and thinking about what it meant then, and still means today.
Good News Bible: The Deadline Strips of Shaky Kane is a book that collects and pays tribute to a very particular time in comics for a very particular creator. It is advisable that any reader seeking out the work of Shaky Kane does not use this book as their first exposure to said work. This book isn’t for tipping your toe into Kane’s style, as it is immersing yourself fully in the strange art and characters that he created. If you are already a fan however and want a good selection of his work in one place, this could be just the book that you are looking for.
GOOD NEWS BIBLE: THE DEADLINE STRIPS OF SHAKY KANE / AUTHOR: SHAKY KANE / PUBLISHER: BREAKDOWN PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
