A Panel A Day (more or less)

I probably read too many comics. Here are some highlights. If you like, go give money to the creators.

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Just taking a moment to admire Dani's Artemis pin-up.

I've been a bit of a fan since buying some stickers and a zine (I think?) from her at the 2000AD 40th birthday thing and love to see her work appearing in more and more places, and watching it develop and get better and better.

There's a definite mid-late Miller stylistic influence (similar to Eduardo Risso, perhaps?), which I think is quite rare to see in artists despite the impact he's had on the industry, but the work stands out as her own distinctive vision, and always leaves me wanting to see what's next (I know there's something coming soon, but right now i can't actually remember what that is. Pretty sure I'll be buying it, if it isn't already on order!)

From Wonder Woman 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular, by various

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Really nice to see that DC chose to run a different memorial to John Paul Leon in a Milestone Media book than they printed in their other titles.

The 'standard' one is a single page with a crop of this art plus Batman and Superman crops, and a tribute from Jim Lee. This version is two pages, gets rid of Supes and Bats to use more of the original Static Shock 1 (2001) cover art, and hands the mic to Denys Cowan- one of the founders of Milestone Media who hired the young artist to work on their new line of comic books in the early to mid-90s- for a lengthier and more personal contribution; making it very much a Milestone tribute to one of their original artists.

Milestone's founding was largely based on a desire to increase the representation of 'minorities' in 'mainstream' comics, giving readers heroes, villains and normal people that were much more ethnically diverse and more representative of the cities people lived in, instead of the not inaccurate comic book stereotype of white men in tights fighting to protect mostly white cities filled with mostly white people problems. DC publishing two different memorials is another piece of evidence that the big name comic publishers have come to be more accepting of the idea that there isn't just one amorphous target audience out there, something that pretty much all media has historically been very poor at when it comes to recognising any sort of diversity in consumers.

As a result, it nicely highlights the influence that the artist, through the characters he worked on and the company he worked for at an early stage in his career, may have had on the industry as a whole in terms of increasing representation, over and above the exceptional artistic skills that made him the envy of his peers which have understandably been the focus of many of the tributes that have been paid to him.

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This is the first reference to the lock-down situation that I have seen in a comic. A pretty optimistic one, given that Melchester Rovers are soon off to Russia, Germany and Spain for a ‘friendly’ competition, a scenario that feels less and less likely as time goes on. I suspect it was a last minute dialogue tweak as there are only a couple of panels where the situation could plausibly be referenced before the football action takes centre stage.

The text story in this special- “One In A Million: A Rocky Race Story” by Tom Palmer- more fully engages with the idea of lockdown, focusing entirely on the Race family trying to deal with the implications of movement being exceptionally limited. It stands to reason that a text story with only a spot illustration of its protagonist is more readily able to be amended: even if a story had been submitted before the outbreak and it was a later editorial decision to replace it with a more contemporary scenario, the only time constraint is the author’s schedule. A comic strip needing a new script, art, colours and lettering is never going to be turned round as quickly, leaving only the opportunity for a quick dialogue pass to try and update the tale where possible.

In both cases, the inclusion of current events is very emblematic of British comics. Rather than ploughing on with what had already been planned, there must have been some conscious attempt made to at least try and reflect the life that readers were experiencing, and not just ignore them (as I suspect a lot of American mainstream output will). This continues a British tradition of attempting to reflect the life experienced by the comic’s readers.

Just a glance at the collections put out under The Treasury of British Comics confirms this as a not uncommon tendency: class, poverty, politics, etc. all seep into the pages of most, if not all, stories in that library. Not always explicitly, and not necessarily with a political point, but present enough to give readers a sense that their reality underpins the more fantastical events. The parallel earth of “The Sentinels” may be a sci-fi concept, but tower blocks of grim reputation were familiar to most readers. Similarly, “The Thirteenth Floor”‘s central premise of a new, wonderful kind of tower, full of future and promise, is exactly how these buildings were sold to the public. The fact that the building became a nightmare for many is effectively the history of high-rise council housing, although the bad experiences were consciously directed at villains in the case of the comic strip, rather than the less-discriminating decline that the housing saw in the real world.

2000AD was always quick to satirize what was happening in the real world, taking things to science-fiction extremes through extrapolation, but the more ‘realistic’ strips in other weeklies didn’t have the opportunity for that level of excess, so would adopt real world events and situations as the background for their stories. Yes, the bulk of this story is Melchester Rovers trying to overcome the best of European teams in the traditional underdog style, but the characters are coming from somewhere that readers can recognise, making that dream of triumph more plausible: a Britain without summer holidays, a family that struggled to keep it together because they were all trapped indoors together with no means of escape. The sort of place where they are now sitting and reading this story, which only makes their escapism a greater pleasure.

From “Roy Of The Rovers: Euro Adventure”, by Rob Williams, Elkys Nova, John Charles, Guilherme Lindemberg Mendes & Jim Campbell, in Roy Of The Rovers Summer Special 2020

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In all the “not actually Vertigo anymore” books published in this month, there are hints of a certain Liverpudlian gent’s return. I say ‘gent’, but perhaps chancer, con man, fraud, liar, trouble maker, magician and cheat, would be more accurate?

It really says something about Vertigo John that all it takes is a bit of attitude in a speech bubble, and you can be pretty sure that you know who it is. The DCU never really got that, I don’t think, even in the better versions they tried to sell us- the character occasionally got got close, but it just didn’t work well enough under the constraints of whatever rules police the boundaries between the DCU and Vertigo/Black Label, which is presumably why none of the incarnations stuck around very long.

Will the return to the Vertigo corner of the publisher’s world have the same longevity as the first time around? Who knows, these days (especially now that, between meaning to write this and actually getting round to it, a sudden absence of new comics from the shelves has raised many questions about what is next for the industry. I mean, it also raised many questions about what is next for society, late-model capitalism, human interactions, and the face mask industry, but let’s take it one thing at a time here...), but these little cameos at least hint that we are getting a recognisable Constantine back. Not a ‘reboot’ either- there’s an acknowledgement that something happened to him; ‘a billion echoes of himself coalesce’- coalesce out of the Multiverse seems a likely implication here, his consciousness being brought back to a critical location in terms of formative experiences in the ‘real’ world. So one assumes that if the audience is still there, and the character is truly back, there is a chance for a similar level of sales success here.

The only concern I initially had was this cross-title introduction- we don’t need a tight continuity out here in the stranger places, and DC’s obsession with that sort of thing makes me wary that given half the chance they would knit together a ‘Black Label Universe’, which would look like a hideous hybrid of one of Arcane’s Un-Men stapled to Ragman, topped off with a Rorschach mask. But the main Vertigo books always did exist in a ‘shared universe’ of sorts, it’s just no-one really cared most of the time. The characters could (and did) appear in other books, if the creative team felt that way inclined, so a ‘crossover’ tended to work because it felt like a creative decision rather than fan service or a sales gimmick, but for the most part the books all followed their own separate paths, none too fussed by continuity.

So I assume these teasers are just a nod to the same spirit that we saw back before Vertigo was even created, where John Constantine, Alec Holland, Matt Cable, Rac Shade, Black Orchid, Morpheus, Death, and so on, could all cross each other’s path when events led them that way, rarely hanging around for long as they all had their own problems to be getting on with, but just long enough to feel thematically relevant to the tale being told, as Constantine does here. Time will tell, of course, but the comics branded ‘The Sandman Universe’ at launch have so far successfully avoided the negative connotations of that label, and felt like a continuation of the Vertigo legacy they were celebrating, so there’s no real reason to fear that this won’t continue to be the case.

From The Dreaming 15, by Simon Spurrier, Bilquis Evely, Mat Lopes & Simon Bowland

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Time for some more Joëlle Jones Catwoman appreciation.

This panel is just amazing. I suppose it’s a relatively simple composition, with water being used to mirror the top half, but there’s something about the costume design that really makes the image striking. The dress and gloves recall the standard, tight leather style of the Catwoman costume, while the cape hangs like wings, a little bit bat(man)-like, perhaps. Her hands seem to mirror the flow of the cape, everything flowing downwards like the water in the background, leading us down to her reflection.

It just strikes me as elegantly simple, a portrait of Selina as much as a panel that forms a part of the wider narrative, happy to exist outside of the story as a fine piece of art and design. Or it would be, if it wasn’t for the hooded fellow in the lower corner (and the caption situated diagonally opposite to him) tying the panel to the story, preventing Selina from drifting off to be hung on a wall somewhere. Which is the right thing to do from a storytelling perspective, but what if I just want these panels to be hanging on my wall, dammit?

Can we have a Joëlle Jones draws Catwoman art gallery that I can easily visit, please?

From Catwoman 17, by Joëlle Jones, Laura Allred & Saida Temofonte

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There’s not as much horror as one might expect in a comic featuring a fiery skull-headed chap who made a deal with the devil, but this panel helps to make up for the preoccupation with motorbikes that was probably the character’s real origin.

A skeletal hand smashing through the confessional to exact revenge is pretty much what I want from my spirits of vengeance, and Budianski and Rubinstein make it look damn fine. I’ve not read much of Ghost Rider- probably because the bike (and now car) aspect doesn’t interest me, and mainstream superhero comics are not the best source of horror thrills- but if I thought it was like this more often, I might be persuaded to give him more of a chance.

From Ghost Rider 68, by Roger Stern, Bob Budiansky, Josef Rubinstein, Bob Sharen & Diana Albers, reprinted in Marvel Tales: Ghost Rider

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Perhaps his Kingdom is over, but I am glad to see his comic empire is still here. Now that the story of Kevin Matchstick and Mage is over, Grendel is the sole surviving Wagner book that spans pretty much his entire career, from early 80s Comico to 2020s Dark Horse.

Despite the concept of an entity that changes host (or perhaps an identity that appeals to successive people, or even a concept that takes root in peoples’ minds?), Wagner seems to have mostly settled on Hunter Rose (the first host that we really know of) and Grendel Prime (the paladin of the future kingdom of Grendel) as the two characters he appears to be most interested in revisiting. The former, after his early appearances at the start of the saga, has been seen in the Red, White & Black/Black, White & Red books of short stories with various artists, and the Behold The Devil series during the 25th anniversary year of Grendel, as well as a couple of crossovers (with Batman and The Shadow), while the latter has enjoyed a handful of Wagner penned reappearances beyond his initial story (War Child), in Devil Quest, another Batman crossover and now Devil’s Odyssey.

It perhaps seems strange that a series that began as the tale of one man building a crime empire in an American city now grows to span to the universe, but in many ways that is the only logical conclusion. From crime lord to ruler of all, centuries later, the Grendel influence has been ever expanding. That this trip beyond Earth is prompted by the end of His kingdom opens up new opportunities and questions- are we looking at the fall of an empire, just as all empires have fallen, or are we looking at the seeds of an expansion beyond anything seen before? Can Grendel dominate the universe? And what would this mean for humanity?

Where Rose was immoral, Prime always seemed honourable- the rule of Grendel (or at least of Orion’s descendants) appeared preferable to the chaos into which the world had descended, or the corrupt forces which looked to overthrow his reign, and so Prime’s loyalty to the kingdom seemed knightly rather the evil one might expect of the force that had led so many to their deaths over the centuries. Despite his name (and face), Grendel Prime never really seemed to be possessed of the same Grendel persona that ruled in the 20th century: neither murderous nor mad, he seemed a servant of those that ruled in the Devil’s name, one who did not endorse the worst behaviours of those leaders. There were clear parallels to a samurai discharging his duties in the name of his master while still seeking to remain free of dishonour- War Child’s set up of the paladin escorting the young Jupiter across the globe strongly evoked a larger scale, futuristic Lone Wolf And Cub, a reference which clearly links the character to the notion of doing the right thing, regardless of the machinations that seek to destroy him and his charge.

As his quest takes him alone into the stars, and Grendel into another genre, the destination is mysterious, but, I hope, unlikely to mean the Devil’s end.

Vivat Grendel!

From Grendel: Devil's Odyssey 1, by Matt Wagner, Brennan Wagner & Dave Lanpear

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You don’t often see the budgetary issues concerning the running of an intergalactic Empire being referenced in Star Wars, but given all the extra narrative space a bunch of licenced comics gives storytellers, it’s only fair someone talks about it.

That this particular someone uses such a topic to further their own position within the Empire and to take her own husband out of the picture only helps to emphasise all the corruption and questionable dealings that must make up the unseen details of the Empire. For all their power and the focus on them, it would be impossible for the Emperor and Vader, and sundry Grand Moffs etc. to be able to keep everything moving. So of course there are less prominent functionaries helping run thing and many out there taking what they can get for as long as they can, some out of a belief in the cause, some only in the belief of their own entitlement to anything they can get their hands on before they are busted..

I might be pushing it to claim this notion of profiting from an immoral regime is topical, but does anyone really know what the Intergalactic Planet Killer Association had to do with getting the Death Star approved, or who made the really big money on those expensive Empire construction contracts? Hmm?

From Doctor Aphra 36, by Simon Spurrier, Wilton Santos, Cris Bolson, Walden Wong, Chris O'Halloran & Joe Caramagna

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I suppose nothing quite symbolises the return of civilisation like the woman we thought was cool for wielding two swords and dragging a couple of armless zombies around with her now representing justice to the new society that has arisen from the ashes. Moving away from that comic book epitome of cool (single name and good with cool looking weapons- Hi Logan, Cable, et al.) to something much more necessary if civilisation is to fully recover, Michonne gains a last name, a title and an impressive promotion from her job as a lawyer before the dead started rising.

Throughout its 193 issues, it’s fair to say that not all (not many?) characters got the ending that they deserved. Death is all too common when the living are an endangered species, and sometimes the cruel and the criminal thrive due to their particular skills, but it was satisfying to see Michonne, at least, get a well deserved outcome. Rick’s fate was probably a painful surprise to most, I never felt a great attachment to Carl (although I enjoyed the way his arc ends with Michonne looking out for him, albeit in a less violent way than she had done when he was a child), and other favourites had long since been lost, so it was satisfying to see at least one character I had an affinity for getting a well-deserved happy ending.

And, you know, seeing a black woman on the bench is maybe a hint that rich white boy dominance of the courts/society has no place in the new world. The zombie apocalypse has its advantages after all...

From The Walking Dead Volume 32: Rest In Peace, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Stefano Gaudiano, Cliff Rathburn & Rus Wooton

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It’s 1985 and there is a Crisis On Infinite Earths.

It’s April the 18th 1938, and Siegel and Shuster don’t yet realise what they will lose as a result of giving the world a hero.

It’s February 2020 and I’m reading the conclusion of a 12 issue series that has taken just over two years to reach the finish line.

It’s 1987 and the first collected volume of Watchmen appears, an event that will ultimately see Alan Moore disavow his creation and any associated spin-offs or incarnations in other media.

It’s 34 years since Moore dedicated an issue to Manhattan’s perception of time, and the device feels neither fresh nor necessary here. Like the adoption of Rorschach’s syntax by Reggie, it seems a hollow echo of the source, an unnecessary cover of a classic song just to show the band knows the greats.

It’s two days before I read the comic, and a Twitter thread discusses how Pax Americana and Pete Cannon, Thunderbolt both understand, engage and seek to transcend the sacred Gibbons and Moore text, building on what came before rather than just echoing it. It positions Doomsday Clock at the opposite end of the scale, lacking a true understanding of the text and being shackled by it, trapped in the shadows of a better work. It doesn’t seem an unfair assessment.

It’s December 18th, 2019, and this book hits the stands, apparently promising an eternity of Crises on as many earths as it sees fit, forever and ever and ever amen.

It is now, and I don’t disagree with the central thesis here that Superman is central to everything that makes the DCU what it is (either within the fiction of the DCU or in terms of the company that screwed over Siegel and Shuster), that he makes each universe better for being there, that he inspires his reality to be heroic and that he can be reborn for every age to keep inspiring, in the hope that one day reality will finally catch up with what he represents. I feel happy to see the Legion, to see their Superboy connection acknowledged (even though I never cared for Superboy, I do appreciate his importance to the Legion), but wonder what the point was of all the Legion foreshadowing if they amount to a quick cameo and proof that Clark remembers things once erased from history.

Flight rings in the 21st century and Imra in Arkham seem to have had very little significance in the end. Which I suppose is representative of the series as a whole- hyped extensively (it is May the 25th, 2016. Batman finds the Comedian’s bloodstained badge in the Batcave. Hype builds. It is April 2017. Batman and the Flash investigate the button. Nothing much comes of it. Later that year, Doomsday Clock 1 is released, promotion indicates it is a significant event in the DCU. It is 2020 and I can’t really remember the details of any of this stuff and remain unconvinced of any great impact, whether on the fictional universe or the medium), but seems to end with little more than the promise of ever more events and reboots, as though hype is all there is. Rather than engaging with the medium, challenging it or changing it, it just reiterates its past and promises further reiterations of the same old things, well beyond the lifetimes of current readers.

I am sure there are good things here- it looks good, it seems to have been something Johns was passionate about- but I struggle to find anything that I have enjoyed in the series, beyond moments of fan service style recognition. Much of this is due to its failure to be in any way representative of Watchmen- to willfully take on a work that (like it or not) towers over much of the superhero genre suggests great hubris. To do so in a way that suggests, at least to me, that you didn’t really get what it was about, is the very downfall that the Greeks warned hubris would lead to.

Moore looked at time: aging, the loss of innocence, the change of public opinion and trends, the struggle to make sense of your place in a world where things are not constant- the clock ticking down was as much the one on your wrist as the one maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (it is 2020 and the hand is at 100 seconds to midnight), because time is against us all. Heroes must grow up, retire, die. Vigilantes cannot fight the same fight forever, because society changes and what was once ‘un-American’ now is not, and what was once a scientific endeavour that ended a World War is now the Sword of Damocles hanging over all our heads. The sins that were once justified as being in the interests of peace are seen as the cold manipulations of powerful men willing to sacrifice innocent lives in the interests of little more than their own ego. There are no true absolutes in Watchmen.

Doomsday Clock promises an infinity of crises, resetting things to better suit the age, but still the same- Superman as the promise of justice, the same heroes fighting the same evils. Maybe one day he will be black, or female, or something once unimaginable to past readers stuck in their particular period, but that change is superficial at best, everything else is a form of recycling, just as the syntax of Rorschach, the time travel of Jon and the grid layout of Gibbons are reused throughout.

It feels like everything Moore would be against, like the logical and heartbreaking result of losing your creation to a corporation. Whether you are Superman or Rorschach, you are now trapped in the infinite loop of crises, never really having to face up to the ticking of the clock, taking comfort in the fact that doomsday will only bring you back to the start, safe in your role forevermore, archetypes that will never really have to change or truly face change.

It is 1986, and Watchmen is heralded as a sign of a new maturity in superhero comics, an indicator of new life in a genre (rightly or wrongly) perceived as childish and lacking in wider appeal, caught up in its own continuity and lacking both moral and narrative complexity.

It is 2019 and we are promised a future filled with the same characters being reborn time and again, the past always being brought back, rather than the past giving way to the present, and the present surrendering itself to the future. Here, the Doomsday Clock cannot be allowed to reach midnight, because what (or who?) the book represents fears what may come with a new day, fears change, fears not belonging in the world the way it once did. Everything Moore wanted to leave behind to seek new forms and stories is determined to hold the medium in a frozen moment of perpetual Rebirth.

From Doomsday Clock 12, by Geoff Johns, Gary Frank, Brad Anderson & Rob Leigh

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Although the details here are a little unclear, it’s obvious John has been somewhere else, and I suspect the trip back from the DCU is a little rough, so who wants to dwell on that? Transatlantic wanderings to Houma, LA in the 80s to guide a nascent elemental are probably nothing compared to whatever one has to go through to get free from the editorial grip of that universe after it had grabbed hold and choked much of the life out of you.

Familiar signs are there to show us that he’s back ‘home’- continuity references spanning his time pre-DCU, as well as cameo appearances in other ‘Sandman Universe’ books- and then actual signs, such as this one, confirm that the character has also returned to the same place socio-politically, not just simply back to an imprint that allows swearing.

This billboard, plus a subsequent road sign where London has been ‘creatively’ altered to include the suffix ‘-istan’, puts both character and reader firmly on familiar ground. Born- in creative terms, not continuity-wise- in a broken Britain, and driven by a hatred of Thatcherism (amongst other things), it is most fitting that the Hellblazer returns at this time, where her legacy still threatens the poor, the vulnerable and the ‘different’. John has never shied away from saying ‘fuck you’ to the ruling classes and their collaborators, so he may just be the bastard Brexit Britain needs.

From The Sandman Universe Presents Hellblazer 1, by Simon Spurrier, Marcio Takara, Cris Peter & Aditya Bidikar

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In a mini-series focusing on Marvel’s female heroes, it was a fitting gesture to have this short story recognising two real world ‘gal’ heroes included, and showing them in their rightful place amongst their male colleagues.

Flo Steinberg, along with Stan Lee, was one of only two non-freelance staff at Marvel in the early days, and by all accounts she played no small part in keeping the ship afloat, before moving on and becoming friends with various creators in the alternative comix scene, including the author of this story. She was referred to as the ‘heart of Marvel’ in a statement from the publisher following her death in 2017.

Marie Severin was an artist and colourist for Marvel (following a start at EC, where her brother John was an artist, and some non-comics work following the publishers demise due to the Senate hearings into those immoral comic books that were corrupting America’s youth)- head colourist in fact, until the early seventies, when she decided to focus more on pencilling work. She worked on more than a few big names as artist (and co-created the Living Tribunal, Spider-Woman and Doctor Bong), and has a damn impressive bibliography (and a place in the Will Eisner Hall Of Fame).

The fact that they find themselves united in the afterlife, brought together not through common faith (Severin was Catholic, Steinberg Jewish), but through comics, stars in their own right amongst a constellation of names more familiar to casual fans (all male), is a fitting tribute to all that they contributed to the medium. Comics heaven doesn’t care about gender, it knows who deserves to enjoy an ice cream and be remembered for their work and passion.

From "Two Gals Eating Ice Cream" by Trina Robbins, Marguerite Sauvage & Cardinal Rae, in Fearless 4

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Not the most dark and gritty and urban take on Batman, but the Dark Knight confessing his love of dinosaurs to Green Lantern on a double page spread of Dinosaur Island seems a pretty honest character moment. Like the man says, “I have a giant dinosaur in my Batcave”, so who can really argue with this fact?

From Batman Universe 3, by Brian Michael Bendis, Nick Derington, Dave Stewart & Carlos M. Mangual

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I enjoy the Doctor Who comics best when they are doing something that TV can’t do, or would at least struggle to do justice. By allowing the medium to play to its strengths, benefiting from its visual nature and its freedom from production budgets and the technological limitations of VFX, they become a great companion to the TV incarnation without slavishly mirroring it.

These transparent sort of whales (and even the New York setting) would be beyond the typical BBC budget, I suspect, and the emphasis on sound is ironically well suited to this visual medium. Through creative use of lettering- a variety of colours, sizes and styles are used outside of the standard speech bubbles- the sense of noise in a city is portrayed in a way that lets you know something is wrong, since you never see so many incidental sounds featured so noticeably in normal comics syntax. So it is clear that everything is clearly louder, much more disruptive than usual, but in a way more palatable to the reader than a TV show with the background noise turned up to excruciating volume would be if we were to watch this as a televised adventure. The choice of colours also hints at the beauty behind the disruption- little comfort for the passerby who just find themselves deafened by a cacophony, but it prepares the reader for that sense of wonder that the Doctor can bring into lives, so at least we get a sense of what being a companion might be like, finding the magical and mysterious in what at first just seems to be something discomforting.

From Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor 10, by Robbie Morrison, Eleonora Carlini, Hi-Fi, Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt

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There’s plenty that is familiar, and just as much that has changed in this latest incarnation of the Legion. I’ll give it a couple of issues to get me orientated on the new landscape of the future, but I did like this little idea- the 'Frichtman Tag'. Of no great narrative significance, it is a nice little comic book in-joke, taking those name and brief descriptor box-less captions that are increasingly common, and making them diegetic, because future technology. The fact that they help address social anxiety because they remind you who’s who and their basic details (powers and homeworld, key Legion facts we used to have memorize!) is clearly a very practical use of future technology, and maybe we want them to be real now. I mean, I mostly know everyone I meet’s homeworld, but names and powers, those I forget.

What I didn’t realise was that this is a nod to Matt Fraction who used these little character summaries in X-Men (I am not sure if he was the first or not, but Bendis says he got them from him), and so gets them named after him. It’s not a bad legacy to leave to the 31st century, all things considered.

From Legion Of Super-Heroes 1, by Brian Michael Bendis, Ryan Sook, Wade Von Grawbadger, Jordie Bellaire & Dave Sharpe

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Who knew that the ridiculously long and convoluted Clone Saga could have been told in one page, rather than however many issues of various Spider-Man books over a couple of years? Many people probably, as it has never seemed to be a particularly popular time in the character’s history, even if elements of the saga are still used today.

An advantage of a book like this is that it can brush over some of the more awkward periods, highlighting only the relevant or interesting points and writing the less popular aspects out of the History Of The Marvel Universe (literally). While I kept expecting a story to form in the series- other than the plot of the framing device- it’s now clear that the history is the story. The stories we know, and might expect to see replayed, even if briefly, are mere sentences in this much wider ranging history, and so there’s no need to let those sentences run on, or else the complete history would never be told. Getting caught up in the Clone Saga (or the various overly complicated X-Men twists and turns from that same period) would be to the detriment of the larger tapestry, and history is only interested in the details when their study is actively chosen by people who want to know more about particular events or people or periods, for which we have trades, and omnibuses, and digital comics, so we are free to dig into that history as much- or as little- as we want. The back pages of each issue point us in the right direction if we want to know more, allowing the flow of history to carry on uninterrupted by any of the messier details.

From History Of The Marvel Universe 4, by Mark Waid, Javier Rodríguez, Álvaro López & Joe Caramagna

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The Dark Horse Neil Gaiman adaptations rarely want for good art (P. Craig Russell, John Bolton, Michael Zulli, and so on), but this one is a real beauty, with art that is a great deal more stylised than Doran’s last contribution to the Gaiman library, Troll Bridge.

It put me in mind of Beardsley, but the artist’s notes point the reader in the direction of Harry Clarke if they want to learn more about her inspiration, and it’s definitely something I’ll be doing as soon as I can- book illustrations and stained glass in this style sound like something I really need to see, and I am disappointed in myself that I didn’t already know about his work. Just a quick search reveals that his Poe and Perrault illustrations alone are worth further investigation.

I love that Doran has used this book to draw people’s attention to an influence- it’s a great way of broadening the reader’s knowledge of art history, and it feel very Gaimanesque to do so. As an author who is proud to name-check his influences, both in the text- whether through deliberate pastiche or explicit reference- and in interviews, it’s only fitting that a comic book adaptation of his writing also sends readers who have enjoyed the tale away to learn more about what has come before. As in literature, so in art, there is nothing better than learning where a work might have come from, who or what may have inspired its style and form, and looking at the interactions between the then and the now in the work, and in culture in general.

As with Gaiman’s writing, Doran’s art is high quality in and of itself, but by placing it in a broader context, the experience of reading can only be further enhanced, as we learn more about the artistic canon, and how various links can perhaps deepen the reading experience. There’s possibly a more direct link, but for example, Clark illustrated a volume of Perrault’s tales, who wrote “La Belle au bois Dormant”, which was likely the basis for the version later collected by the Brothers Grimm, who also included “Snow White” in their collection of folk tales. “Snow White”, along with darker folk tales and legends, forms the basis of this story, and following these story links and reading other stories in the collections would show you a lot of Gaiman’s inspirations.

Even just following the art might take you to Clark’s illustrations of Poe stories, another writer who had some influence on Gaiman (and I have just found that Gaiman seems to have written the introduction to an edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination that included Clark illustrations- so much synchronicity!). And even if you don’t follow the path to the written word, there is a lot of beautiful art to enjoy thanks to Doran drawing attention to a short lived but highly talented Irish artist.

From Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman & Colleen Doran