Grovel » Review

Stitches: A Memoir

Andy — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:00:02 +0000

Graphic autobiographies – those written and illustrated as comics – tend to be deeply personal affairs. Illustrator David Small gets extremely personal in Stitches: A Memoir, which shares the story of his childhood with the world. Small is now an illustrator of children’s books (check out When Dinosaurs Came With Everything, to pick a personal [...]

Red

Andy — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:00:02 +0000

Paul Moses is a retired CIA hitman, who’s travelled the world and assassinated hundreds of people. When a new CIA director is appointed and shown what Moses has done, which includes some extremely high-profile and controversial assassinations (think targets like JFK), he immediately orders Moses’s own assassination. He believes that Moses’s knowledge, were it to [...]

Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again

Andy — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:00:06 +0000

Two decades ago, a burst of adrenaline generated by The Dark Knight Returns was so intense, it scorched and irreversibly altered my cultural DNA forever. The guilty sequence was the return of Batman to the streets, viewed only through half-glimpsed shadows, third-party reactions and increasingly anxious news bulletins. The trick – so beloved of Hitchcock and [...]

Tamara Drewe

Andy — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:00:04 +0000

Posy Simmonds has something of a monopoly on the type of work she does. It’s so uniquely middle-class British that only a Brit could really pull it off. But it’s also her ability to blend character-based prose with comic book illustration that lifts both her words and her art to new levels. Tamara Drewe is a [...]

Aldebaran 2: The Group

Andy — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:00:42 +0000

The middle book of a trilogy serves an interesting purpose. Neither launching or concluding a story, its job is to keep things going, perhaps explaining a few things on the way and maybe adding a bit more drama to the proceedings. This second of three Aldebaran books does just that, moving the story on a [...]

Razorjack

Andy — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:00:04 +0000

While John Higgins may always remain most famous for colouring Watchmen, Razorjack is a clear demonstration that colouring is just one of many talents. Created, written, illustrated and coloured by Higgins, this side project, originally self-published, shows Higgins’ creative powers to their maximum potential. Razorjack is slightly unusual in that the character referred to in the [...]

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

Andy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:00:41 +0000

Neil Gaiman has made a deserved place for himself in the world of fantasy fiction, cutting his teeth with the phenomenal Sandman series. While this was rooted in the universe of DC Comics’ superheroes, it wasn’t in the least bit about superheroes. Instead it was about dreams, mythology, humanity and the telling of stories. These [...]

Western

Andy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:00:07 +0000

The latest of AccentUK’s comics anthologies is based on a theme, just like the previous Robots. As you might guess from the title, it’s based around the old West, taking its inspiration from a range of sources from John Wayne, through Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone, to more recent forays into the genre like Deadwood. The [...]

Sleeper: Season 1

Andy — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:00:46 +0000

There’s a good reason why the collaboration between Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips in Criminal has hit the ground running with such strength – they honed their skills on Sleeper first. Phillips’ art and Tony Avina’s colours are the first thing that will leap out of this book at you. It carries a style thick [...]

Berlin: City of Stones

Andy — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:00:11 +0000

Jason Lutes’ Berlin: City of Stones is a timely read in light of our troubled global economy. The graphic novel imagines Germany between the world wars, before Adolf Hitler stormed to power. Germany had lost World War I just a decade before and the severe economic sanctions imposed by the victors had crippled the country. The [...]