THE HAMMER RISES

BLOODY PULP

I have no idea why this entry is at the top of my personal list this month – I didn’t even read it properly first time out. Whatever appealed (and it certainly wasn’t genre) it must have had some weight behind it. Perhaps my subconscious asking the same question over and over – “What does he do with the heads?” Fortunately Rob is around to explain everything but the heads. I’ll take notes and listen … probably.

Read his full review after the break

LONGSWORD PART 11

Click for page 11

HEY KIDS

Once again with the news round-up. Some of this stuff may be stale, but that’s never closed my local bakery so what the hell. And when I say ‘Hey Kids’ I don’t actually mean kids, I mean some of this links might take you to places you’d rather not go to read things you might not even want to think about. So, if you are a kid – go read something else!

With that in mind here are two stories that appeared on the BBC new site, one worryingly more prominent than the other. The first might test your opinion on censorship, the second, much more shocking, might test it again, but in a different way. Just who is censoring what? And why?

We return now to the less worrying world of comics and design. Read on for da old new news …

TONY CHRISTIE – AVENUES AND ALLEYWAYS

That shirt seems terribly familiar!

LONGSWORD PART 10

Click for page 10

STAR CHAMBER – JULY

OK Zuda fans! Gimme a Z! Gimme a U! Gimme a … holy crap, I’ve been at this too long! Never mind, here is the new look all-different Star Chamber ranking for the month of July.

The new deal is thus. A whole heap o’ judges from all the four corners of Zudaland, sometimes twenty but never less than ten, consider, cogitate and then pronounce the order of ranking they would like to see at the very end of this month’s competition. Their rankings are put in a blender to make a spectacular Zuda-smoothie. Then we sprinkle some opinions over the whole shebang and slam the door in the face of fear, publish and be damned.

Although I take part in the ranking process the opinions below are not mine. Oh no, I would never say such things. I comment by the title on the general ranking position having taken all the judges comments into account. Read on if you dare …

MATT MONROE – WALK AWAY

Stripped down and laid bare who can compare? There are some artists alive today who could survive the attitude Matt Monroe displays here, but not many. This is what sorts the men from the boys, the pretenders from the real deal. You could argue that they simply didn’t have the technical resources back then to achieve anything better, but that’s what forces them to BE better!

LONGSWORD PART 9

Click for page 9

DIE HARD

As I was saying, a cool hero, a cigarette, a clean white vest and forty stories of sheer adventure! Not two trucks loaded with nitro-glycerine? Oh, well you can’t have everything. But that’s what Die Hard (1985) tries to deliver. Although I didn’t pick up on all the signs and symbols the first time around I knew this was a landmark film, not because it was so new or different, but because it harked back to everything that was great about movies that had gone before. That’s what made it so good. Takes the past and ramping it up so that looked all shiny and new. It set the standard for action adventure movies for the next twenty years by taking everything that was good from the previous forty years. The white vest comes directly from The Wages of Fear, the skyscraper from Towering Inferno perhaps, the small town cowboy ‘tec from a multitude of sources, a heady and not unsubtle blend.

One of the most notable and pleasant aspects of the film was the restraint with which the action scenes were shot. A heck of a lot of action, but hardly a note of unpleasantness. The second film was much much cruder in that regard. The villain there had to kill almost everybody before we, the audience, could be allowed to figure out that “gosh, duh, like he must be evil!” At least Die Hard doesn’t throw in the towel so easily. The villain here remains the bad guy. He doesn’t suffer the indignity of having motivation other than greed, and yet he is still human, capable of error and doubt. If this ever seems like a series of cardboard cut-out characters then you’ve not been watching blockbuster movies in the past twenty years – because this is positively Shakespearean by comparison. What was RKB saying about villains?

JANIS IAN – AT SEVENTEEN

Never mind basketball, what about cricket?

LONGSWORD PART 8

Click for page 8

ASSIGNMENT

‘The’ Assignment by Anthony Peruzzo & Justin Jordan has a neat little move there in the title, but even that didn’t get it placed first in that all un-important Zudabetical list. One thing I do with all entries is I speed click through them all just to get a feel and for some reason on this one I stopped before the last screen. My aged brain must have sensed an ‘end moment’ on screen seven. That’s not important as it turns out as I was already confused by the first screen. I think it’s nice when you can overturn expectations, but you have to do it successfully, positively, otherwise the reader just feels lost. I was initially up for the sequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing, but that was all too quickly snatched away. So, then we get some fairly pedestrian assassination plot thang with a kinda mostly silent vibe to it. Well, to tell the truth that was a bit of a relief seeing the awesome wordage on some of the other strips! But what does it all amount to? It doesn’t seem to be taking itself terribly seriously (a gun in a guitar case – casually comical murders) and yet it isn’t a comedy either. And then there’s that last screen – quite a curve ball. But confusing rather than intriguing.

The art was pretty throughout, but felt a little weak at some crucial points – particularly the assassination itself. Coming from a print background I always like to see a good halftone dot, but most seem irritated by it. I thought the effect worked sufficiently and I’ve seen it executed less well elsewhere. Perhaps the colour choices themselves are a little too in-your-face. But at the end of the day, or at least the end of the strip, all I want is an interesting story and a coupla characters I want to spend some time with. I don’t find that here, but overall and in comparison with the other entries this seems as if it might go somewhere, given the chance. I’ve been wrong before but that’s the competition – to provide solid proof of intent, not a lottery ticket for something that might possibly maybe one-day take off.

PANEL PECULIAR

OK, how about you try and name this artist who usually manages to turn in some pretty sexy ladies despite not being at all obvious about it! If I were mean I’d ask you to name the comic, but that might be pushing things too far.

Last week’s trauma was arrested with the help of Lady Cop from First Issue Special #4! Not worthy an ongoing series – now that is a crime!

LONGSWORD PART 7

Click for page 7