Graphic Novels > B Graphic Novels

Advantages: Unique story-telling; brilliant artwork; allegorical themes
Disadvantages: Minimalist and not to everyone's taste

"In the future we will send all the fat people to the moon and they will be as light as a feather" - the protagonist, Amazing Rain Sam Brown's unassuming talent has captivated me ever since I was first introduced to his work on homepage explodingdog.com. The reason for our introduction was slightly cringe-worthy - I had seen his delightful stick figures used in various emo avatars and icons - but I was pleasantly surprised to find that his art ...
...works like so: visitors email him a phrase, any phrase at all, and he draws his interpretation of these on a computer using a tablet. The results are sometimes bizarre, but always entertaining. A phrase may be anything from "i like hotdogs" to "these daisies are overcooked" and the resultant doodles tend to feature adorable stick figures sometimes accompanied by small birds, stars, monsters or angular dogs and robots. Amazing Rain is Mr Brown's ... Read review

Advantages: A fascinatingly different take on the super-hero genre
Disadvantages: None to speak of

Kurt Buseik’s Astro City has been running (on and off) for the last few years, through a variety of publishers. It is a superhero title, but is far from being of the standard bill of fare. The focus of the series is not on hero/villain conflict, but on the effects these can have on the many people involved, costumed or otherwise. Writer Kurt Buseik is keen to point out in his introduction to this volume, which collects the first six issues of Astro ...
...Read on… SETTING Astro City doesn’t have a central set of characters as such, and each chapter in the story is told from the perspective of a different person, super or otherwise. The city itself is an important part of the story, having a fleshed-out history and a well-developed structure with distinct neighbourhoods, which begin to be introduced in these issues. This is one of the most believable of pretend cities, as it was worked out fully ... Read review

Advantages: Keeps my 8 year old son amused/is cheaper than other comics/magazines
Disadvantages: None

...inside page with, of course, Dennis the Menace and Gnasher, who else?!. Other cartoon stories include oldies such as Ball Boy, The Numskulls, Little Plum, The Bash Street Kids, Minnie The Minx, Rodger the Dodger, Billy Whizz, with a few new ones amongst them such as Ivy The Terrible and Tim Traveller. My son loves The Beano so much that in almost 2 years he has collected roughly 100 copies. Where does he keep them? Having tried to get him to part ...
...beloved Beanos being recycled, we found out that you can actually purchase Beano Binders to hold your comics in. I purchased a couple on the Internet by going into www.beanotown.com but have to admit that, although the binders are great at keeping all his comics together and in one place, they are quite pricey (about £5-£6 if I remember rightly). Joining the Beano Club is also well worth it - £15 for kids, £17 for adults. This gives you a whole year's ... Read review

Advantages: Bizarre stories, very funny, good artistry, disregard for superhero convention
Disadvantages: Sometimes patchy jokes

...on a motorbike with a flaming skull for a head?” DESPERATE EXEC #67 ½ - “Or an Amazon woman with an invisible jet?” DESPERATE EXEC #33rpm - “No – I got it! A team of freaks lead by a man in a wheelchair!” DESPERATE EXEC #1 – “You’re all a bunch of screwballs! Get the hell out of my office! YOU! Take this down!” SECRETARY – “Yessir!” DESPERATE EXEC #1 – “We’ll just give some guy a cape, say he came from space and give him super senses. And x-ray ...
...guess what? He wrote The Flaming Carrot too. Flaming Carrot is a joy to the lovers of surreal humour amongst us. If you’re a fan of Reeves and Mortimer or Big Train, chances are Flaming Carrot will strike a chord with you. The Flaming Carrot follows its titular hero through many a bizarre adventure. His powers are like Batman’s – he has none. This is my favourite thing about the character – he is a complete simpleton, on a par with Homer Simpson. ... Read review

Advantages: Gravity-dispelling
Disadvantages: Concentration-demanding

...rivers, broken paths and thunder-stones, Kai Lung came on the seventh day at evening to the outskirt of a trackless morass that barred his further progress.” * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * It took me some time to select an opening quotation with which to introduce this piece, one that would convey the flavour of Kai Lung quickly and succinctly to the reader. I’m not sure I’ve succeeded. As Ernest Bramah, the author, has Kai Lung ...
...of the humour of the Kai Lung books lies in the elliptical stylistic flourishes. The difficulty is rather that the shorter snappier aphorisms often depend for their full effect on the context that the author has cunningly contrived before deploying them. If, for example, I were to quote “He who would feast with vampires must expect to provide the meat,” you might find it no more than mildly amusing. The full force is only felt when you have read ... Read review