By Bryan Talbot Publisher: Jonathon Cape ISBN: 978-0-224-08488-8 I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting from Grandville. Bryan Talbot is a flexible and innovative creative individual (Alice in Sunderland probably shows this off best) so would I be getting social commentary, science fiction, a gritty action piece or a throwback to the more creative […]
Archive | Reviews
Spirou & Fantasio: Adventure Down Under
By Tome & Janry Publisher: Cinebook ISBN: 978-1-84918-011-5 Back at the beginning of the year I was asked to teach a course in Winchester to get adults into cartooning. One of the students was from Portugal, and he spent quite some time enthusing about his personal favourite, Spirou and Fantasio. Unable to lay his hands […]
World War II In Cartoons
By Mark Bryant Publisher: Grub Street ISBN: 978-1-904943-06-8 Newly reprinted, this is an amazingly detailed and fantastically researched book that deserves a space on any cartoonist's or history buff's shelf. Divided into yearly sections that map the progress of the war, it offers a wonderfully rich selection of cartoons that reflect the events of the […]
The Bluecoats: The Navy Blues
By Willy Lambil & Raoul Cauvin Publisher: Cinebook ISBN: 978-1-905460-82-3 It's baffling at how this sort of book can be created in mainland Europe but spectacularly fail to exist in the UK and US, and there's the added irony here that the subject matter is the American Civil War. Certainly in the UK, we have […]
Usagi Yojimbo Book 1: The Ronin
By Stan Sakai Publisher: Fantagraphics ISBN: 978-0-93019-335-5 You've no doubt seen Mad magazine at some stage in your life, and the brilliant Mad Marginal cartoons by Sergio Aragones. Well Sergio produces an on-and-off comic called Groo The Wanderer, and it's coloured by the author and illustrator of this particular collection (and have fun spotting the […]
Cedric Vol 2: Dad’s Got Class
By Laudec & Cauvin Publisher: Cinebook ISBN: 978-1-84918-003-0 Cedric is eight-years-old and the trials of his life will be familiar to everyone. I did question what this book could offer me, presuming it was aimed just at children, and perhaps because there's a slight resemblance to Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, this didn't look like […]