Created by: Ross Mackintosh / Published by: Com.x / Format: Paperback / Release date: Out now

This intimate graphic novel chronicles the relationship between a father and son, as the father Zaz succumbs to cancer and the son Ross Mackintosh processes the chain of events leading to his father’s death and how this will colour his feelings towards his own children. This story about death and grief is ultimately life-affirming and a heartfelt tribute to a lost father, capturing the quirks and wry humour that characterised Zaz’ relationship to his family and meditating on the hole left in his absence.

I’ve read several other reviewers expressing surprise that Seeds is Ross Mackintosh’s first book-length work, but I disagree with this assessment and feel that Seeds reads very much like a first graphic novel. It succeeds because of its sincerity and tight focus, but Seeds sometimes falls short with themes and ideas that are not really developed. At one point Ross talks to a friend about how he’s thinking about turning his experiences into a comic, but this never goes anywhere and is so brief that I wondered why it was included at all. The potential was there for a commentary, possibly on the cathartic process of turning the experience into art, but instead it wasn’t developed and I found that I couldn’t understand the author’s intention.

The difficulty in objectively appraising Seeds is that to criticise it is to criticise a love letter to a lost father, but the faults in Seeds are slight and the finished graphic novel makes good on Ross’ intention to capture some of the flavour that characterised his father’s life and the tragedy of his decline. The art is simple and functional, but this simplicity works in Seeds’ favour, allowing the reader to imprint their own relationships on the characters and in a small way share in Ross’ grief. The honesty and insight of Seeds’ contents outstrip the craft through which they are expressed, but in a story like this honesty is infinitely more valuable than artistic polish.

Autobiographical comics so often transform mundane events by attributing greater significance to them than they might deserve, but Seeds does the opposite, taking an intimate event of catastrophic significance and somehow capturing it in such a way that we come closer to understanding its complexity. More than just a graphic novel, Seeds becomes an expression of graphic non-fiction in which Ross Mackintosh’s loss becomes our loss and through Seeds we all mourn for his father Zaz.

Written by: David Hine / Illustrated by: Shaky Kane / Published by: Image Comics / Cover Price: $3.99 / Release Date: Out Now

Insane, unadulterated genius. Welcome to the world of The Bulletproof Coffin, where pulp comic characters merge with their real world counterparts and nothing is ever as it seems. With hard-hitting hyperbole and bloodshed that would make Geof Darrow jealous, this is a world where deranged pop-art flashes psychedelic images at your brain and dares you to keep up.

I am no stranger to The Bulletproof Coffin. The original miniseries was recommended to me by more people that I could count and contained a deranged vigour that was difficult not to like. Something special is happening in this Disinterred sequel, something that makes this the rare comic that’s possible to enjoy with no knowledge of the original. The first issue contains one of the most brilliant openings to a series that I’ve ever read, easily rivalling the long-cherished Watchmen, and does so in a way that completely characterises the irreverence we’re to expect from the rest of the series. Familiar characters appear but the focus of this first issue is squarely on The Shield of Justice, featuring in a hard-boiled crime caper that include a headless victim with a squid wired to the stump of her neck! My interpretation of the story will, I expect, change after reading subsequent issues, but it says a lot that since writing for Starburst this has probably been the first comic that I’ve felt compelled to reread immediately. You should see my to-read pile, it doesn’t allow for luxuries like this!

I enjoyed the first Bulletproof Coffin series very much, but it didn’t engender in me quite the same loyalty that it seemed to in my peers. It was bold and new, but I wasn’t clamouring to tell everyone about it. Disinterred takes things to the next level. This, you have to read. Whichever muse visits Hine and Kane has a fondness for hallucinogens and a sick sense of humour, but that’s fine by me. Leave your logic by the door and enjoy The Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred for what it is, a fantastical journey into two diseased minds, homage to all things pulp and fun, and the first step into a brave new world.

Review: The Phoenix / Creators: Various / Published by: The Phoenix Comic / £2.99 per issue / Available: Weekly (UK)

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The Phoenix is a weekly story comic for children, created by some of the most talented comic creators in the UK, and each issue contains a massive array of full-colour comic strips, both one-off and ongoing, aimed at a wide range of ages and complemented by puzzles, games and competitions. 

This is everything that children’s comics should be, bold, vibrant, eclectic and exciting. Unlike the competition, The Phoenix doesn’t dwell on anachronistic characters from the beginning of the twentieth century, so we’re not subjected to any ill-behaved schoolboys sporting pea-shooters and catapults, instead each page overflows with invention, from dinosaur riders to Arabian Nights-inspired folk tales. Every issue comes with a two-page short story or excerpt from acclaimed children’s books and a How To Make Awesome Comics section that sums up in a single page what some lacklustre writers can’t accomplish in complete art books.

It should be clear to all concerned that I’m not the target audience for The Phoenix, but that’s what my children are for. My son is three years old, and while he’s only just old enough to appreciate The Phoenix, appreciate it he did. We sat together and read the first two issues in bed and they had such an impact on his tiny imagination that the next morning while I showered he crept downstairs and read them both in his pyjamas. Jamie Smart’s Bunny Vs Monkey hits exactly the right tone for younger readers, capturing his bizarre humour perfectly in a strip that’s packed with colourful characters and madcap antics. Kate Brown’s The Lost Boy has the hallmarks of a brilliant adventure story with an added online element where readers can examine the shipwrecked protagonist’s map collection. The Pirates of Pangaea was undoubtedly my son’s favourite, in which a gorgeous tropical world is populated by pirates and giant dinosaurs. Even as an adult reader Pirates is an unqualified success, with such a clarity of linework and depth of colours that the adventure almost comes to life. Most of the other content was beyond my ability to explain to such a young boy, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate the extraordinary range demonstrated by the Etherington brothers or the winning charm of Simone Lia.

Possibly the greatest achievement of The Phoenix is its steadfast refusal to dumb down for its readers. This is not to say that the contents are lofty or too-ambitious but that alongside the slapstick action and the animal editorial team there are sometimes reams of text and ambitious storytelling techniques. The Phoenix caters to a broad range of abilities and as such can inspire children to move onto the more difficult and engaging strips. That’s the biggest difference between The Phoenix and its competitors, The Phoenix has ambition and trusts that a child’s imagination can cope with ideas more complex than naughty pranksters, and as a result we’re rewarded with content that I actually enjoyed reading to my son. I received these first two issues to review for free and as a result I’ve taken out a subscription for my family. I recommend that you do likewise.

Review: Earthling! / Written by: Mark Fearing, Tim Rummel / Art by: Mark Fearing / Format: Hardback / Published by: Chronicle Books (UK) / Release date: February

Do you remember that animated TV show from the 80s Galaxy High School? Yes? Good wasn’t it? I have often wondered why there hasn’t been a remake or some kind of film adaptation. In these idea starved times it must surely be in the works. Until that materialises we will have to make do with the charming kids’ graphic novel Earthling! Written and illustrated by Mark Fearing who co-created the story with Tim Rummel.

Our story begins with nine year old Bud moving to New Mexico with his astrologist father. You know that big desert with all the radar dishes in it from the film Contact? Yes, they move there. Moving to a new town and a new school Bud is understandably uneasy about making new friends. However he unwillingly gets on the wrong bus on his first day, a bus full of aliens that is bound for Cosmos Academy, a school in the outer reaches of space. Once on the bus, Bud bonds with alien Gort McGortGort and saves his life when they have to abandon the bus and get to escape pods to the academy. Gort learns that Bud is an earthling and decides to pass him off as a Tenarian exchange student. We learn that Earthlings are amongst the most hated and feared beings in this galaxy and the principal and his minions are constantly paranoid about being spied on by agents from Earth. Due to the students and teachers thinking Bud is a Tenarian, he is roped into taking part in the zero-ball tournaments which Tenarian’s are naturally good at and forms a team with Gort and a bunch of other outcasts who are not the popular aliens in the academy. Being rubbish at zero-ball starts to arouse suspicion from the teachers and brings Bud to the attention of the paranoid principal. Bud and Gort start to hatch a plan to get Bud back to Earth safely but it will mean that Bud has to get good at zero-ball (kind of a reverse basketball in anti-gravity by the way) in order to hijack a trip to a tournament. Will the principal find out Bud’s true identity and put him in stasis before they can complete their plan? I’m not going to tell you…

If you are nine years old then you are probably just the right age to get the most out of this book. The story isn’t complicated; it’s not layered with mythology and subtext. It’s a simple tale of a stranger in a strange land that will resonate with any kid who feels a little bit outside of the mainstream and like he is still trying to find where he slots in at school. There are a few long words that younger children might struggle with which mostly relate to interstellar travel but the book is ideal as something to read with the kids at bedtime over about a week or so.

The artwork is simple and unfussy which is something of a mixed blessing. At times it feels like the artist gave up trying to come up designing fun looking aliens and just decided to draw a bunch of vaguely humanoid blobs and pass them off as aliens. I mean, imagine if George Lucas had just done that! This becomes more apparent towards the end of the book with an action packed climax where you sometimes struggle to understand what is going on because of the similarity of a lot of the locations and the lack of speech. The drawings do have a certain charm to them though and reminded me of the rough but likeable style of the old art that used to accompany Roald Dahl books.

The plotting is simple and efficient, as previously mentioned Earthling! isn’t concerned with telling a mythology dense tale it just wants to thrill your inner nine year old and make you laugh and this it does with aplomb. Around the halfway point I became invested in the story and was excited to see where it went and if Bud’s true identity would get found out. The climax told over the last ten pages or so is genuinely epic and thrilling with plot revelations and a warm satisfactory climax.

Earthling! never shattered my universe but it did take me back to a simpler time and made me wish I was a kid so I could discover these sorts of stories all over again and as a result it’s hard not to like.

Review: Tank Girl: Bad Girl Rising / Written by: Alan Martin / Art by: Rufus Dayglo / Format: Hardback / Published by: Titan Books (UK) / Release date: January 27th

Language dirtier than a paedophile’s text message and an ambition to have at least one testicle-shooting fatality in every issue means one thing – Tank Girl is back in rude form.

Co-creator Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett replacement Rufus Dayglo continue not so much to batter back standards of taste and decency but to run at them with atomic bombs strapped to their backs as the Mohawk queen of grunge and kangaroo boyfriend Booga do the unthinkable – break up.

The schism in their relationship is not so simple, fuelling a bizarre tale of mind control and warped conspiracy theories of time travel paradoxes, wrapped in a universe ending prophecy and lathered with lashings and lashings of ultra-violence. Cue mad professors, a wacked-out shaman, a Bond superspy and the rest of team Tank Girl all rubbing together in a paper-thin caper to save the world.

While Tank Girl spends most of the time smoking industrial strength weed while trying to work out who has been pulling her strings, Booga finds himself up against his former gang out for revenge.

Martin ticks all the boxes of the Tank Girl formula: nonsensical plot, check; as many swear words that can be loaded into a speech balloon, check; random excerpts popping up at infrequent intervals, check; bashings, shootings and stitching together of the really taboo swear words into strange new beasts, double check. As half of the crazy geniuses who dreamt up what became an icon of riotgrrrl culture, no-one else but Martin could be truly capable of coughing up that Tank Girl anarchy and then spewing it at a page. At times it all seems like The Beano on acid.

It wouldn’t be Tank Girl without an equally insane artist and in Dayglo that Hewlett craziness has found a suitable match. His drawing skills are very close to Hewlett’s, the only thing you could say against him is that he doesn’t grab every opportunity to insert some random piece of oddness into the background, foreground or any ground that the original Tank Girl artist did. The green tint of the colouring can also make your eyes feel ill after a few dozen pages. Tank Girl is a colourful character, so why not put her in colour?

Tank Girl is always going to be a bit of a Marmite comic: newcomers will either fall in love with her and drink down the anarchy spirit of it all or she’ll send you running to the hills.

Bad Wind Rising is on the pricey side for a £14.99 hardcover containing a 96-page story, beautiful as it is, even if it comes with a few extra pages of Dayglo’s how-I-draw stuff and full-page images. No doubt the discerning shopper will find it cheaper. It will probably take an hour, tops, to read cover to cover though it is difficult to imagine a lengthy Tank Girl story that wouldn’t leave you slightly demented with a case of Tourette’s and/or an urge to hurt someone.

Tank Girl remains cool to read despite being more mainstream than her rough-and-ready origins but don’t leave it lying around children unless you want them learning to say c***y b******s.

Review: Monocyte / Written by: Menton3, Kasra Ghanbari/ Art by: Menton3 / Published by: IDW / Release date: Issue 1 Out Now, Issue 2 Out December 28th

Nihilistic, visceral and incendiary, Monocyte is a vision of hell that drags you screaming into the darkness of a world on the brink of destroying itself. Fiercely intelligent and unapologetically dense, this is the kind of comic where you could frame every panel and hang it on your wall or spend nights endlessly rereading each page to reveal further complexities within the narrative.

In a blackly dystopian future a mysterious character known as Monocyte, the one-eyed man, acts on behalf of death as the catalyst for a war between the two remaining strands of humanity, the Olignostics and the Antedeluvians. The Olignostics are a race of immortals that evolved through technology, developing a system to subjugate humanity and feed on humans to prolong their own lifespan and extend their power. The Antedeluvians are an immortal race that evolved in tandem with humanity, existing in the shadows as knowledge-seekers and psychic vampires, occasionally surfacing as public figures of great importance, such as Moses the prophet. When the Olignostics ascended publicly the Antedeluvians were galvanised into formalising their organisation, beginning an endless war between two immortal races that rely upon humanity for sustenance but loathe the remaining mortals as nothing more than cattle. As intense as this background to the miniseries might seem, Monocyte achieves that rare synchronicity where story and art strive towards the same goals, meaning that what you see on the page is every bit as ambitious and complex as the plot that it serves.

Comparisons to Giger are inevitable, which should give you an idea of the level of artistry on show here. Recurring motifs present themselves across the ruined civilisation, the Olignostics feeding on humans through fields of circuitry, Monocyte seemingly drawing power from the bones of his victims, countless spheres of power that serve either to preserve or dissipate life-energies. Visually the macabre is always close at hand in the form of battlegrounds formed from rotting corpses and grotesque character designs that echo the Cenobites from the Hellraiser films or dark counterparts to the holy figures depicted in classical religious paintings. What’s striking about Monocyte is the extent to which the story justifies the art, because so often in the past I’ve been disappointed by artists setting out to achieve similar goals but whose work collapses under the weight of their ideas. The dense, foreboding artwork works only because it is accompanied by an elaborate, adult plot that would certainly be lessened without the illustrations.

Not everybody is going to appreciate Monocyte. If you’re one of the 50,000 people that picked up a copy of Supergirl #1 during DC’s big relaunch and felt vindicated for the money that you’d spent for such flimsy and insubstantial content then Monocyte will probably give you a migraine. If, however, you’d rather not have every reveal spelled out to you, if you demand value for money and a deeper level of engagement with the stories that you read, then Monocyte will reward your attention with an experience like no other.

Review: Fan Dan Go / Written by: Kate Holden/ Art by: Kate Holden / Format: Hardcover / Published by: IndieManga / Release date: Out Now

This vibrant first collection of webcomic Fan Dan Go features an eclectic range of characters in what creator Kate Holden calls a Retropunk Fantasy setting. Setting the story in a northern English town in an alternative version of 1975 imbues the series with a strong voice and identity, just as the rich use of colour sets Fan Dan Go apart from other heavily manga-influenced comics.

Protagonist Rekki Lune is a noble Knight charged with keeping the peace in a world subtly different to our own. Her backstory echoes Nobuhiro Watsuki’s Rurouni Kenshin but thankfully the similarities end there, because despite the horrors of war that she experienced at an early age Rekki cuts through life with all the grace of a wrecking ball, being predisposed to act upon impulse and solve problems with pyrokinesis. Each of the characters is equally well-defined and the cast is definitely one of Fan Dan Go’s strongest selling points. The plot pits imperial rebels against the class of ruling nobility, though in this first collection that concept never evolves far beyond acting as a vehicle for conflict. Better developed are Holden’s ideas of how her fantasy world works. In combat the characters draw upon a sphere of magic based on combinations of runes that I found reminiscent of the way that Japanese language is constructed. These runes manifest visually as symbols that act as recurring motifs throughout the comic, a nice touch that adds another layer to the fictional world.

Just as notable as the personalities of Holden’s creations are their intricate, original costumes, blending 1970s fashion trends with the kinds of outfit more commonly seen in series like Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto. The detail of these costumes makes them incredibly well-suited for cosplay, rounding out the character designs and lending an authenticity to this period world. The rich palette of colours used ties all of the elements of Fan Dan Go into more than the sum of its parts, and thankfully the colours have not only survived the transition to the printed page but have also acquired a new depth and solidity, making the collected edition my preferred version of the comic.

At times the bright colours become a substitute for backgrounds, detracting from the reader’s overall immersion in the world, but my overall impression from Fan Dan Go was of an artist that had assimilated many influences and was using them to forge something unique and very much her own. Kate Holden has created a cast that it’s impossible not to like and if she continues to build tension in the conflict between the different classes then Fan Dan Go has the potential to become a truly compelling series.

Review: Thought Bubble #1 / Featuring: Charlie Adlard, Mike Carey, Becky Cloonan, Andy Diggle, Duncan Fegredo, Robin Furth, Stuart Gordon, Antony Johnston and more / Published by: Image Comics / Release date: Out Now 

This first anthology created by Leeds’ sequential arts festival is everything that you would expect from Thought Bubble – diverse, unconventional and ambitious.  Collecting winning entries from their Northern Sequential Art Competition alongside work from internationally renowned comic creators and donating all profits to the children’s charity Barnardos, this anthology is every bit as successful as the festival that it represents.

There can be no mistaking the assured storytelling on offer in Antony Johnston and Charlie Adlard’s short Wasteland tale or Andy Diggle and D’Israeli’s charming one-page strip, but the real stars of the anthology come from unexpected places. Robin Furth, whose work I know only from Marvel’s Dark Tower, has a strip called A Thief’s Tale about the Norse gods that easily matches the best Thor comics of the past decade. Mike Carey has collaborated with two of Starburst’s favourite UK creators M D Penman and Andrew Tunney on an unexpectedly funny two-page strip that’s would be worth the cover price of the whole anthology. Sally Jane Thompson’s one-page The Very Best contains a warmth and wit that reminds me of the work of Sara Varon and Thought Bubble 2011’s Artist-In-Residence Kristyna Baczynski accomplishes more in half a page than most people could with a whole comic. The Hound, adapted from H P Lovecraft by Stuart Gordon and Tula Lotay, echoes James Jean and Mike Allred in a haunting tale with eerily atmospheric colouring that takes excellent advantage of the newspaper-style printing.

Even the paper stock and fold-out, broadsheet style printing denote the Thought Bubble anthology as something innovative and bold. As a platform for exposing talented new comic creators and an advertisement for one of the UK’s best loved comic festivals this anthology is a success and I hope very much that it will become an annual event that develops in tandem with the festival. Endeavours like this are exactly what the UK needs if we’re to compete globally and avoid the familiar fate of Marvel and DC poaching all of our best writers and artists.

Review: VerityFair / Written by: Terry Wiley / Art by: Terry Wiley / Published by: IDCM Comics / Release Date: Out Now

Terry Wiley is the most unassuming comic creator that I have ever met, but his characters have no such qualms about selling themselves and somehow through them Terry achieves a feat that I had always thought impossible – he makes ordinary people seem interesting. Far from being some spandex space-opera or shonen adventure, VerityFair chronicles the life of aspiring (and ageing) actress Verity Bournville in a story that just might contain bums and swears. 

In the mid-1990s Terry Wiley enjoyed a celebrated position among comic creators in the UK, before languishing in relative obscurity for the best part of a decade.  I had no prior knowledge of his work before reading VerityFair and as such was wowed that such an accomplished, consistent and insightful artist could exist quietly creating great comics without drawing more attention to himself. VerityFair has a light touch, existing in the same space as our soap operas and sitcoms, following the lives of a mundane set of characters that are illuminated by the playful deference that Terry pays to their problems and insecurities. People audition for mediocre acting roles, sag in all the wrong places and retain a zest for life that turns every line of dialogue into a pleasure to read. If we could get VerityFair into the right hands then it has the potential to be the UK’s most widely-read, mainstream comic in existence, without any explosions or deals with the devil, without stunt deaths or summer crossovers, relying instead on a steady trickle of exposition and wry wit that laughs with the characters for their foibles more often than it laughs at them.

Compounding Terry’s generosity is the inclusion in VerityFair of cameos by many of Newcastle’s Paper Jam Comics Collective and the main character from Chris Doherty’s Video Nasties. This is a man whose work should be representing our country internationally, who thinks nothing about sharing a page with aspiring comic creators and approaching his art as if he were more a part of the comics community than the comics industry.

VerityFair contains everything that I never wanted to read about in escapist entertainment and somehow through sheer talent transforms the material into vital reading. If you could comprehend the magnitude of my distaste for the everyday then you would understand quite how impressive a feat this is.

Review: One Model Nation / Written by: Courtney Taylor-Taylor / Art by: Jim Rugg / Format: Hardcover / Published by: Titan Books (UK) / Release date: January 27th

One Model Nation is a story of angry youth, politics and pop culture colliding.

Set in 1977 Germany, the band One Model Nation find themselves becoming increasingly popular but also unwittingly, the public face for a terrorist movement known as RAF (Red Army Faction). The RAF are responsible for bombings, police killings and shootings and although the band denies involvement in any of these actions, their clothing, friends and illegal concerts all add together to create an image the press easily sell to the public as defining the “terrorist generation.” The four members try to prove their love lies strictly in the music but every acquaintance they have seems to suck them in deeper to the RAF, the infamous Baader-Meinoff Gang and the political underground.

I really enjoyed the premise of this graphic novel, the idea of band or musician being labeled as the face of movement or generation has always been fascinating to me. This probably hails from my teenage love for Marilyn Manson and the way he became the public whipping boy, blamed for the spread of youth violence and especially teen gun crime in the 90’s. From Elvis to My Chemical Romance, almost every generation has had a music genre, band or musician that has taken the blame for teenage rebellion and this story sums it up perfectly.

Another great level to this story, that I was unaware of until reading the extras at the end of the novel, is that some of the characters are based on real people, as are some of the historical events. I am not up on my post World War 2, German communist movements and for those with me on that, the Baader-Meinoff Gang were a real terrorist gang inside the RAF and the characters Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof were true life members. One of the main scenes in the graphic novel where Ulrike frees Andreas from custody by killing his guards after he’s arrested is also based on true events. I was unsure of this scene as I first read it but the explanation of it by Taylor-Taylor at the end gave me a whole new appreciation for it.

Overall I really enjoyed this evocative indie story. The illustration and colouring is emotive and beautifully done. The story is thought provoking but I did find the characterisation of the separate band members a bit lacking as I struggled to tell one from another. This is Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s (from The Dandy Warhols) first venture into graphic novels but I will most definitely be looking into the artist Jim Rugg’s previous work.