Alasdair Stuart's Blog

(Note: Clicking on the title of the book will take you to it’s Comixology page where you can purchase it. Clicking on the cover of the book will take you to it’s home page and clicking on a creator name will take you to their twitter feed).

And then. It’s a phrase redolent with meaning, with coiled potential and it’s a phrase that lies at the heart of the five launch titles from Monkeybrain Comics. Each picks up it’s story at the point where most would leave it or skip to the next beat and as a result each feels grounded and contextualized whilst still breaking new ground. Plus, these books have a wicked sense of humor.

This is probably most relevant in Edison Rex, written by Chris Roberson and illustrated by Dennis Culver with colors by Steve Downer and lettering by John J. Hill. It opens with the last battle between Valiant, the most powerful superhuman on the planet and Edison Rex is his arch enemy. Or, Valiant is a privileged idiot who got handed every single one of his godlike advantages and Edison is a self made genius who has done everything he can to better humanity, only for Valiant to render him irrelevant. Or, Valiant is an alien menace who doesn’t even know he’s a menace and Rex is the only man who can save the world, by persuading Valiant to kill himself. Or, Rex is evil. Or all of the above. The book’s central premise is wonderfully old school but unlike so many superhero comics it never puts on it’s father’s clothes and parades around, declaring how clever it is. The story is played absolutely straight, albeit with some touches of black humor, and by the end of the issue you find yourself not only caring about Rex and his new found responsibilities, but admiring Valiant for making one of the most difficult choices of all. The script is tight, character driven and ideas heavy and meshes perfectly with Culver’s clean, precise lines which are in turn neatly accentuated by Downer’s colors. Hill’s lettering is great too, one of the unsung heroes of the book as it shifts from iconic pseudo-comic title logos to sound effects and some nuanced work that really helps the tempo of the dialogue leap off the page. This is a book with a nasty gleam in its eye and it’s going to be a pleasure to see where it goes next.

That sense of progression lies at the heart of Amelia Cole and the Unknown World too. Written by Adam P. Knave and DJ Kirkbride, with art by Nick Brokenshire and lettering by Rachel Deering it too opens in the middle of what should be the big finish. Amelia, the heroine and a woman with high end magical capabilities is battling a demon on the city streets, a fact she finds particularly irritating because she had plans for that afternoon. Straight away Amelia is established as a smart, pragmatic character by touches like this and the genius idea of her fighting a persuasion demon with her headphones on so she can’t hear the thing speak.

Knave and Kirkbride litter the script with neat touches like this, most notably when Amelia steps across to the other Earth. In this universe, magic takes the place of technology and travel between them is accomplished by nothing more than opening a certain type of door. But now the doors are decaying and Amelia, a woman raised in one world and comfortable in both finds herself faced with a string of impossible decisions. Knave and Kirkbride’s script establishes a complex premise without resorting to info dumping whilst Brokenshire’s art shows a keen eye for both the fantastic and the mundane and his character and design work is excellent, especially on the magical police of the other Earth. Deering’s lettering matches his art work neatly, both clean and precise and there’s a sense, as with Edison Rex of a much deeper world beneath the surface of the issue, waiting to be discovered.

That idea, of the rich and strange world that ours floats on top of is also central to Matthew Dow Smith’s The October Girl. Written and drawn by Matthew, it follows Autumn Ackerman, a woman trapped in the limbo we all fall into in our twenties. She wants to go to college but can’t afford it, wants a better job but won’t get it, wants things to be easier and simpler and knows that will never happen. Until it does, unfolding into a world of complexity that dwarfs her problems at the same time as throwing them into absolute focus. Dow Smith has a keen ear for dialogue and observation and most of this issue is a painfully accurate depiction of twentysomething ennui. This is, superficially, the least fantastical of the five titles and for some people that’s a bad thing but the book absolutely rewards perseverance, especially with a beautifully realized, and deeply unsettling final reveal. Most of us want but we don’t know how to get. Judging by the that reveal in the last few pages, Autumn has just got and the rest of the book will be about what happens next.

Passing the time whilst you wait for whatever happens next is what lies at the heart of Aesop’s Ark, written by J. Torres and drawn, and lettered, by Jennifer L. Meyer, is the most esoteric and yet most familiar of the books. These are the stories the animals on the Ark tell to pass the time, the petty squabbles they have and the sudden bright moments of unity. The rain is still falling, the boat is still rocking and they are in a state of suspension, neither here nor there, the food chain suspended and trailing away behind the ship as it sails. The story sees a tortoise come to a Lion to ask for help with getting her neighbours to pull together and help plug a leak in the ship. The Lion tells them a story about a mule and a donkey climbing a hill, using that to show them the importance of team work and the dangers of leaving their friends behind. Torres’ deft characterization and Meyer’s breathtaking art combine to make this a break out in a line filled with extraordinary work and Meyer’s panel structure is particularly noteworthy, with the first page’s panels slanting to mirror the motion of the Ark and the story about the mule and the donkey told in the structure of the hill they’re climbing. That’s all there is to it, but this is elemental storytelling rather than simply storytelling, something we instinctively recognize.

Recognition, and instinct, both lie at the heart of the final book in the launch line. Bandette, written by Paul Tobin with art by Colleen Coover, Bandette is the story of a female cat burglar with a quick wit, a strong sense of justice and an excellent cape. The book is steeped in European style, from the moped chase to the Gendarmerie who arrest the villains and it carries itself completely differently to almost anything else on release at the moment. There’s a sparky, graceful sense of fun to the book as it follows Bandette on a job (‘This is called justice. Or larceny. One of the two.’) at the same time as a local bookseller, Mr Corvid, receives a phone call, and an offer, that his own cat burglar persona, Monsieur, can’t turn down. In turn, the introduction of Mr Corvid introduces us to Daniel, the takeaway moped courier for the wonderfully named Rad Thai restaurant and in turn we see him connected to Bandette through her panic button, a signal system that brings the entire town down on the men pursuing her. There’s a sense of the Baker Street Irregulars to these scenes, as disparate groups come to her aid just in time for her to make a perfect escape and move onto the next problem. This is a book that tumbles and flips as gracefully as it’s lead, and it’s sense of fun is just as infectious.

A possibly misunderstood super villain, a polite young woman with two worlds to care for, another young woman about to enter an entirely new world, the last animals on Earth and a stylish young cat burglar. If anything truly unites these ideas it’s the sense of fun that runs through all of them, a lightness of touch that’s only accentuated by the ‘and then’ approach each premise takes. These books all somehow manage to feel familiar without ever losing their brand new sheen, a collection of five fiercely well realized ideas that entertain completely first and quietly shatter accepted tropes and wisdom second. The future of comics starts here, and at this quality and these prices, it’s a future almost everyone should be able to afford.

Here’s where you can find me this week:

Bleeding Cool

A busy week for me at Bleeding Cool began with interviewing Si Spurrier about Crossed: Wish You Were Here, Avatar‘s second web comic. The first print collection was solicited this week and I talked to Si about the genesis of the series, the very interesting meta-fictional elements of it and how writing a weekly comic is different to his other work. Si’s a great writer, Crossed is a gleefully horrific universe and Wish You Were Here is one of the strongest entries in the series so far.

The San Diego Comic Con hype machine is gearing up and I wrote about an interesting rumor that the Gareth Edwards-directed Godzilla movie is scheduled to make it’s first appearance, of sorts, there. Given some of the other movies debuting there it would make a ton of sense and the production has been suspiciously quiet, even if cameras haven’t quite yet rolled yet.

Atomic Robo is rapidly becoming one of my all time-favorite comic series. The story of an artificially intelligent robot created by Nikola Tesla in 1923 and his adventures down through the decades, it’s a series which balances pulp sensibilities and invention with pitch perfect humor and extremely smart writing. The latest series, Atomic Robo and the Flying She-Devils of the Pacific, began this week and it was a pleasure both to read and write about.

Finally, the long-awaited trailer for The Man With The Iron Fists, directorial debut of The RZA and a heady combination of Kung Fu, Western and one of the most eclectic casts of recent years, arrived this week. I pointed out nine things about it.

SFX

This week’s Blogbusters saw me ask the team what fictional city they’d like to live in, as well as, once again, expressing my rank amazement at R Kelly’s unique view of Gotham City. One day I’ll get over that, but not, it seems, today. I really enjoy doing the bumpers for Blogbusters and I suspect this is one of the times it shows.

The second of my reviews of the magnificent Atomic Robo also went up there this week. Once again, this is a comic called Atomic Robo and the Flying She-Devils of the Pacific and it’s at least as fun, if not more so, than that name suggests.

I also blogged about the Waffles for Stephanie campaign, which has to be one of the politest, most good-natured pieces of fan activism I’ve ever seen. If you’re a Batgirl fan, go, look and consider sending DC Comics some waffles. Steph would do the same for you. Special thanks for this piece also has to go the magnificent DC Women Kicking Ass, one of the best comics sites there is. If you’re a comics fan, especially a DC one, you need to be reading it.

The Girls’ Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse

This week I ended up on the other side of the keyboard, when The Girls’ Guide To The Apocalypse interviewed me as part of their Ask The Experts feature. GGSA is a superb site run by good friends of mine, who, realizing how well prepared they were for the apocalypse (Any apocalypse) decided to pool and share that knowledge with the internet. They are, flat out, one of the best sites out there and it was a pleasure to be interviewed by them. Plus the photo used makes me look just a little outdoorsy.

Pseudopod

Fyodor Sologub’s The White Dog was this week’s Pseudopod story, bookended, as ever by me. Expertly read by Tanja Milojevic, it’s an ice cold story of identity, loss and what it means to fall outside society.

By this stage, Prometheus has been dissected, reviewed, criticised, lauded and pulled apart a few hundred different ways. Ridley Scott’s prequel / do over on the ideas presented in Alien, the film is one of those fascinating pieces that brings out entirely different responses in everyone who sees it. To my mind it’s both massively ambitious and massively flawed, and it’s been fascinating to see how the blame — or perceived blame — has fallen on some elements of the production more than others. In particular, one thing regularly cited as a major failing in the early reviews is Marc Streitenfeld’s soundtrack.

To me, the soundtrack is one of the strongest elements of the film. There’s some fascinating work done with the refrains from the Alien soundtrack, linking the two films musically as well as visually. Similarly, one of the film’s major closing action beats is scored with music of an almost religious tone, as well as the usual action bombast, giving credence to some of theories presented about what’s actually going on.

There’s one track which utterly fascinates me. ‘Life’ is heard for the first time very early in the film, and it musically encodes the central conflicts of the movie — religion versus science, humanity making it’s way out into a bigger universe and realizing how little it matters –  into 2:30 of music.

Here’s the piece.

The first thing you hear is that rumbling, low noise we’re programmed to associate with the vast. It’s lower than normal too, until a single, slow drum beat sounds. The meat of the piece lands with the opening horn refrain, alone against that rumbling background bass note. The refrain rises, finishes higher than it started and the emotional response it evokes is instantaneous. This is brave new world stuff, astronauts gazing up and out of recruitment posters as they stare towards the infinite they will soon conquer. It’s a Starfleet style call to arms and, yet, it’s slightly mournful. This isn’t just about the grandeur and vastness of space, the big answers that Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway seek. This is about realising how small we are, how little we matter. The grandeur, the scope of human achievement and endeavor is embodied both in the Prometheus as a ship and in the refrain we get here; proud, heroic, noble and complete over shadowed by the constant, rising bass note. As the strings come in, they pick up the refrain and build on it, whilst the bass note continues to rise in the background. The refrain builds and turns, handed off between the strings and horns.

The choir kicks in last and here the piece becomes overtly religious. This is the sort of music we’re programmed to respond to with awe and wonder, the sort of music that Stephen Spielberg happily used to show how wonderful alien life is, how beautiful and intricate and glorious the universe is around us. It’s ascendant, aspirational: this is where we should be, we’re taking our place in the universe. The choir is deliberately angelic, but they’re always a little out of reach, a little too high and breathy. Beautiful voices just out of reach of understanding, always leading us further out into the black as they rise. Angels? Or sirens?

Then the percussion hits, hard, and the piece curdles. This is the moment everything goes wrong, the moment the expedition realizes how horribly out of it’s depth it is. A single group of humans, two years from help, trapped in the middle of events far larger than they can comprehend. Each note is stretched, the tempo increases, the piece builds yet again and then … stops. We’re left, like the crew, in the middle of nowhere with no way home.

It’s a fascinating, smart, mournful piece of music and the complex reactions it evokes mirrors the complex reactions people have had to both the movie and the main character, Doctor Elizabeth Shaw. Science versus religion, faith versus fact, belief versus action. It’s all here waiting to be discovered like the Engineers themselves.

As for what you find? Well…  that’s an entirely different matter.

Henry keeps secrets. He has a soldier’s build with military shoulders, a precise gait and hair just long enough to be rebellious. He’s the quiet man in the corner of the room who keeps checking the exit. When you ask him, he’ll say he works for the Highway Department and you’ve seen him hold forth on the vagaries of dual carriageways and how important it is to get parity of testing standards for driving tests across the country so many times you’ve lost count. You can see the person he’s talking to’s eyes crossing, see them start to find the excuse to leave and see Henry sag, just a little, with relief, when they do.

Then one night, Henry’s the last one there. He’s drunk and maudlin and desperately English and his opening line, hand to God, is ‘I keep secrets for a living’ and you almost laugh and he does and with something that sits halfway between flirtation and curiosity you say ‘You’d best tell me some, then. I’ll put the kettle on.’

You hand him some tea, he starts talking and as he digs in, as he tells you what he has to watch for a living you can feel yourself tensing up, hunching a little further forward. It’s not what he’s saying, although God knows the videotapes of a family tormented by something as invisible as it was impossible will stay with you for a while. No, what bothers you is how matter of fact he is.

‘On Monday I had to watch footage of what really destroyed that Tagruato oil rig. On Tuesday I had to watch three generations of a family record the gradual destruction of their sanity. On Thursday I watched three young men fly.’

That one brings you up short. You ask him to tell you more and he smiles. The tone in the room has shifted, he’s centre stage instead of invisible and he’s drunk on that as much as anything else. He drains his tea, picks up a wine glass and starts talking about Matthew, Andrew and Stephen and the thing they found in the caves. He tells you about the rocks and the way they shine, the way the three young men seem…absent, even before they find it.

‘The problem’ he says ‘is that you only ever see what they recorded. Early on there’s a moment where Steve mentions how lots of people used to be obsessed with the caves and if they were triggered, or enhanced or…whatever IT did then…’ His voice trails off. ‘We don’t have all the answers, but we do have what Andrew recorded.’

‘What did he record?’

Henry smiles tightly, unpleasantly. ‘Very nearly everything.’

He doesn’t tell you everything, of course he doesn’t, a good magician never reveals their tricks. Instead he tells you about what stayed, stays, with him from the tape. Steve looking utterly peaceful as something organic unfurls down a glowing crystal towards his head, the static, the things Henry thinks he heard in it, and what he thinks the techs may find when they’ve done treating the film. The fact that the amount of time missing from the film is so precise, almost as though it was erased or Andrew was…compelled…not to record.

He changes the subject then, deliberately lightening the tone. He tells you about the boys acting out, using their incredible abilities to prank people, move cars and play football in the clouds. There’s a cheerful banality to their antics and you find yourself wondering what exactly you’d do in their position. You’re still wondering that when Henry tells you about the man they nearly kill, and the rules, and Andrew’s tragic home life. The tone changes again and you can see Henry keeping something contained. He knows how this ends, but that’s not what’s bothering him. What bothers him, what horrifies him, is the fact that given astonishing, superhuman capabilities, these three young men could only relate to them through the lives they already had. They could fly, pull things apart with their minds, protect themselves from any damage and they spent their days pranking grown ups, rigging talent contests and making themselves popular. Boys with motorbikes, boys with booze, boys with guns, boys with superpowers. Children in a grown up world, he says, almost to himself and you know what’s coming.

It ends badly. Not as badly as it could, but when he tells you about the Seattle earthquake and what really caused it, you feel another scale slide from your eyes. Two teenagers, two hormone explosions tore a city apart, one trying to kill, the other trying to save. He tells you about the bus being hurled thousands of feet into the air, the chase where an entire parking lot is used as a melee weapon. His voice breaks, not through sadness but through fear and somehow that’s what tells you this is real. This happened. He saw it. Henry starts to tell you what happened, how it ended, something about a statue and his voice breaks. The mood, the spell, goes with it. You pat him on the shoulder and he stands, says something desperately English about how it’s late and sorry to trouble but would you mind if he called a taxi and you hug him. He hugs back and shivers and something a lot like a sob escapes him. Then he stands, collects himself and smiles and it’s wide and broad and utterly genuine.

‘Flying boys.’ He kisses your forehead and whispers ‘Thank you’ and leaves. At the door you turn and ask what happened. He turns and looks at you and he’s weeping. ‘Tibet.’ he says and leaves. The next time you see him, weeks later, he’s doing the Highways department spiel and looks over at you. To your utter surprise, he winks and makes a flying gesture with one hand. You smile, make it back and turn away. Henry keeps secrets, and now, you help him.

d his voice breaks. The mood, the spell, goes with it. You pat him on the shoulder and he stands, says something desperately English about how it’s late and sorry to trouble but would you mind if he called a taxi and you hug him. He hugs back and shivers and something a lot like a sob escapes him. Then he stands, collects himself and smiles and it’s wide and broad and utterly genuine.

‘Flying boys.’ He kisses your forehead and whispers ‘Thank you’ and leaves. At the door you turn and ask what happened. He turns and looks at you and he’s weeping. ‘Tibet.’ he says and leaves. The next time you see him, weeks later, he’s doing the Highways department spiel and looks over at you. To your utter surprise, he winks and makes a flying gesture with one hand. You smile, make it back and turn away. Henry keeps secrets, and now, you help him.

Everyone knows the stories about the marshes. The coach that got lost there, the lights that lead down impossible roads, the sounds. The music. Everyone knows and everyone, as they do in all the places which are old and not quite uninhabited, keeps it in the corner of their eye. There are certain conversations you don’t have, certain things you must accept as part of village life. On occasion, certain funerals to attend.

Sam’s old guard though, from the time before the time. He’s alone now, his poor wife passed a few years back and he keeps himself to himself. There was some business with the old house, something unpleasant that he was indirectly involved in and it broke him. That much is clear from the moment Sam comes in; he’s a little stooped, unsure, grey where he used to be black, the magnificent old motor car outside,once the first in the village, now as old and as slightly tattered as it’s owner. There’s still marsh mud on the wheel hubs and it’s matched by the mud on his shoes. Sam’s been out walking, and that’s never a good thing.

She walks in the marsh.

But then again, no one talks about that. Except Sam.

He’s greeted warmly though, the old guard knowing what he’s been through, what’s coming, happy to see part of the town’s history alive and well and muddy-shoed. Sam politely checks in with the few old faces he remembers, listens with interest to the few young faces who’ve survived to adulthood. For their part, they look at Sam the same way they look at his motor car; like a fascinating antique, something in surprisingly good condition because it’s been left alone for years and years. He’s vintage, a class act, proper, completely and totally out of place. Everyone checks in on him, not just because it’s been a while but because they know why he’s here.

It’s the story.

It’s always the story. The one about the woman, and the young man and the deaths.

There are empty chairs in the pub because of the story, your school photograph was tiny because of the story. The story has been part of the town from the start and whilst you always knew Sam had been a part of it, you never expected to see him here, in the flesh. Sam and the young man, and the dead woman, and the ghosts, were part of whispered conversation after dinner, the one word in three you caught crouched on the stairs listening to the grown ups talk. Listening to them weep. Watching them hold each other through the bannisters. It was all a game, all grown up and adult and exciting and all on the other side of the coin to the endless funerals, the bitterness in the Priest’s voice, the dead eyes of parents with no one to look after. Now it’s real, now it’s in front of you, now Sam is talking about the fire. The way the young man, Arthur Sam thinks he was called and you know, you know he knows full damn well the young man’s name. The way Arthur dived into the flames, what he said he saw there. The more Sam talks, the more animated he becomes and you can see the years fall away like the mud from his shoes. This is a man recanting an adventure and as he keeps talking, you get a sense of the showman to this polite old man as much a part of the town’s history as the Earth it’s built on. He’s changing the language, the timbre of how people talk, adapting it for his modern audience and whilst he falters a little he never loses the beat, the pace of the events. The dog, that you know was vital to so much, is relegated to a guest appearance whilst the horrors the young man saw, the things Sam has no way of knowing for sure, are embellished and polished. In his hands, in his words, they become oil slick pieces of night, a horror moving across the world with as much sadness as rage.

He stops short and you know what he’s not talking about, see the shape of it in the story. You can see the chubby little boy, his face mottled by years beneath the waves, hear his voice as he calls to his father. You can see every inch of this man wanting to do nothing but more run to his child and knowing that the second he does, he’s lost. Sam was wounded by this town long, long ago and he’s never recovered. The only way he’s kept going is by seeing, understanding, trying to throw his arms around the impossible, give it shape and form and imprison it.

Lock her in words so she can’t take any more children.

He failed. He knows it. It’s not killed him and he wishes it had. You can see that from the way he moves and talks, the way the story follows a parabolic arc out of his mouth and up to the glorious, horrifying insanity of Sam and Arthur hauling a carriage with a dead child aboard out of the marshes and down to the moment where he says goodbye to Arthur, unaware of exactly how final that goodbye will be. For a brief shining moment, you see him for what he was; a proud, vital, kind man who had refused to let tragedy break him and loved his wife desperately. In a kinder town Sam would have been a mayor or a headmaster. In this town he’s an antique people forgot to polish.

There’s silence after he finishes speaking, as always there is. The entire pub has gravitated towards and around him and his silence is like a light going out, it changes the tone of the room. Sam, bless him, knows when his time’s up and makes polite, faked excuses and leaves. You see him look at every empty chair on the way out and, against your better judgement you watch him leave.

You’re not alone in doing it. At the far end of the street, positioned so Sam can see her but no one else can, is the woman no one talks about, the one who hasn’t been alive for decades now. She makes Sam see her as he drives past and there’s just a hint of a chubby face and a smile to her right side. You close your eyes and remember the old man’s broken voice, just for a second. Then you open them and watch as his headlights become an abstraction, a hint, a ghost. Sam does this every few years, and he won’t be back for a while. He’s told the story, warned a new generation. Now he’s just another of the ghost lights, twinkling dimly, somewhere over the marsh.

Speed and skill versus size and endurance. Do you hit faster, more often and more accurately or do you eat the shots to get close enough to land a single devastating blow? Who’s more experienced? Who can stay calm when they take the first punch? Who’s plan survives contact with the enemy?

Who wins?

She’s brand new, the first fighter. Tall and athletic, raven black hair and a look which is both classical and slightly eccentric. The camera can do nothing but follow her as she comes on screen, wearing street clothes, a woollen cap, rolling her wrists, cricking her neck. She moves with the casual experience that only professional fighters have, the awareness of where their body is at all times, the odd sense of gravity working just a little bit differently for them. She circles her opponent, bunching and unbunching her hands and smiles. She wants this, this is going to be fun.

Her opponent doesn’t move. He’s older than she is, has maybe fifty pounds of muscle on her and decades of experience. He’s dressed simply, wearing black trousers, a black t-shirt, his hair occasionally slicked back, occasionally longer than it perhaps should be. In a certain light he’s Bond, in another, he’s Bourne, in another he’s Ethan Hunt. What remains the same, regardless of his face, of his ability, is the shape he makes in the story. The seasoned operator, the grizzled spy, the lone troubled man doing the best he can in a world where his ethics and morals are challenged and he can only redeem himself by killing an awful lot of people. He’s a contradiction, a man on the edge who stays on the edge, a man pushed past his limits who knows exactly when to push back. He doesn’t smile, this isn’t going to be fun. But he wants it too.

Their eyes meet and there’s a split second of acknowledgement and she moves. She darts forward, bringing her hands up and pushes off from one foot, clearing the ground and hammering her right hand into his face, her entire bodyweight behind it. His head snaps back, his arms pinwheel and she follows him as he staggers, throwing alternating kicks to his chest and head and grabbing him by the back as he slumps forward, driving her knee into his chest and face over and over again. There’s nothing flashy, nothing showy about this assault, it’s all function dictated, very slightly, by form. She moves fast, she hits hard, she does damage and we watch it all, locked off in mid shot. Every grunt, every thud, every crack as bones break, and they will.

He slumps and she backs off, drops her hands. The camera pans round him as he takes a breath, spits a gobbet of blood out onto the floor and looks up at her. He stands, in slow motion of course, and she raises her hands, her eyes blazing as she dares him to come meet her and he does. He’s slower, and she lands another punch as he closes but it doesn’t matter. He’s inside her guard now and they grapple, him using his superior weight to control where she goes, her using her speed and flexibility to get out of one out of every two moves he tries. This is a conversation as much as a fight, red in tooth and claw and syntax and as she scissors her legs around him and he drives her into a wall there’s a moment which is one part intimacy and one part rage. They’re the same these two, hero and heroine. They may be evenly matched, they may not, but that’s something they’re here to find out. That’s the end of the conversation, the resolution, and the only way they get there is through her letting him go as he smashes her into a wall, him throwing her through a flat screen TV, her taking his legs away and trading punches as she kneels on his chest. Smaller vs bigger, experienced vs new.

He stands, she folds around him again and he bounces her off another surface. She puts an elbow into his nose as she drops and he staggers, blood running as she slumps and tries to collect herself. She’s good, the best since Ripley, Conner, Summers, and she’s got a real shot at this, at taking his title, taking his slot. She’s got real life experience, years as a Thai Boxer, as a Mixed Martal Artist, real world, applicable skills that teach her how to wound, how to strike, how to take a punch and keep going.

She’s never fought an archetype before though. That’s what he is as much as a man, a stereotypical spy, an archetypal antagonist, someone with as many faces as years she’s been born. She breaks James Bond’s nose and Jason Bourne punches her in the face. She chokes Jason Bourne out and Ethan Hunt throws her against a wall. She kicks Ethan through a plate glass door and John Scott stands up in his place. There are so many of him, each fresh and ready and each in control of the space as much as the fight. The camera’s locked off and that certainly gives her space to move, to hurt, but it also gives him time. There’s no pace to this fight,these fights, just an endless stream of long shots and knee strikes, pans and right crosses, bloody knuckled algebra being worked out in the middle distance with desperate urgency for everyone in the fight and mild interest for everyone outside it. There’s violence here, there’s emotion but it’s at two removes. No one cheers her on.

But no one cheers him on either. He’s first up this time and it hurts. He’s slow, unsteady and telegraphs his first three punches. She dodges them, fires back with a pair of kicks that knock him sideways and follows with a knee strike to the temple, looking to end this once and for all.

He catches it, picks her up and half runs, half falls through a door into the bedroom. She barely has time to close one foot in the crook of the other knee, constricting his head between her legs before he slams her off the bed. He’s bright red, bleeding from his lip, his nose, his cheeks. She’s as bad, she can tell, an ugly cut on one eye, blood streaming from her nose, her ribs throbbing from where he’s struck her.

She ignores it. She realises he can’t. He flails, throws one, two, three more punches to her face and she eats them all because she can, because she’s winning and she wants, needs, him to see that. His throat bubbles and surges, his eyes roll up into his head. Seconds left.

She rolls them off the bed, hitting him in the back of the head with the floor, her legs still tight around him. She lets go, just a little, demands answers about why this is happening to her. He begins to explain, a halting, almost apologetic tone to his voice. His right hands moves to the underside of the mattress, where she stashed her gun. She pretends not to notice.

He explains that it isn’t personal. That she was simply the right woman in the right place at the right time. This wasn’t about her, even with the camera so fond of her, even with the space left in the story for her and her talent for violence. It’s a revenge story, plain and simple, one where she’s a pawn not a Queen.

His hand closes on the grip of the gun.

She digs further, asks why her, what the plan is, who’s betrayed her. He tells her ‘Everyone’ and smiles as for the first time she feels real pain as a result of his actions. Her boyfriend, her colleagues, everyone she let get close has let her down. Everyone she trusted to get behind her hands, under her guard has used that lack of distance to hurt her so efficiently, so badly, she almost didn’t notice.

He sees her put it together.

He draws the gun

She hits him, once, takes the gun off him, pulls a pillow from the bed and puts it over his face.

There’s a single gunshot.

She gives herself a moment, just one to feel pain. Then she stands up, drags the body into the bathroom and showers their blood off her. The equation’s been solved, the answer’s been reached and she has a lot of work to do, more than she was expecting. This is a victory, but not a clean one. She has work to do, pace to improve on, and she can do it. But this isn’t her world, at least not quite, yet. So she showers and she changes and she runs, not away from her enemies but straight at them. Because she’s brand new, and it’s time to fight this war in a brand new way. Somewhere out past the film reel, her next opponent bunches his fists and waits. She’s ready, but he’s no longer sure if he is.

The man on the stage is big. He’s not so much poured into the dinner jacket as it’s built around him, emphasising his powerful shoulders and neck. He’s top heavy, the sort of top heavy you get from extended periods of training. He should lumber, thudding across the stage like a large, angry, tuxedoed wall but instead he moves fast and light, feet and hands always in motion. He waves to the crowd, capers, dances. He’s the centre of attention and he’s arrogant certainly but he has reason to be. His latest film is a success, he’s handsome, rich, successful and has a spectacular dog. Life couldn’t be better.

He’s not alone up there either. His wife pirouettes in from one side of the stage, a little resentful, a little bored, but she’s smiling and he’s clearly delighted to see her. From the other side of the stage, the owner of the studio strides into view, waving and smiling and counting the empty seats, the sad faces. His smile is a little more fixed, a little more hungry. Behind him comes our hero’s chauffeur, a tall, older man with a severe look but kind eyes. He takes up position the same place he always does; to the right of our hero, standing at attention, ready. They’re joined in turn by a leading lady, a gaggle of extras and a dog. Always the dog. Mimicking our hero exactly, keeping pace with him, a silent partner, the other, arguably more important part of the double act.

Our hero is turned, walking backwards, waving and playing with the dog when a woman steps out of the audience. He cannons into her and down they go, a tangle of limbs and excellent hats, elegance and glamour dropped on top of each other from a great height. The theatre falls silent as our hero helps the woman to her feet, everyone waiting for him to berate her for breaking the routine. Instead he looks her up and down, laughs and applauds her. She starts dancing. He applauds more and laughing, she dances in place as the entire theatre turns to face her. She stumbles a little and our hero jumps in next to her, their feet sympatico, the smiles on their faces the same. He can’t stop looking at her and as a result doesn’t see the things starting to happen behind him. The leading lady talking to the movie mogul, the increasingly angry look on his wife’s face. There’s just her and the music and him and-

Sound.

Our hero stumbles.

The audience’s attention shifts.

Our hero dances a little faster, smiles a little wider and the audience’s attention shifts back to him. Not completely though, the sound echoing around the theatre and settling in particular around the head of the girl from the audience. The audience’s attention follows it and our hero dances a little faster, smiles a little wider as he realises that fewer and fewer people are looking at him.

Clearly he must work harder. He breaks out every single move in his arsenal, every slide, every jump, every acrobatic trick, throwing his big frame around the stage with grace and speed and just a little desperation now. He hits all the right spots, makes all the right choices and lands, centre stage, waiting for applause.

The theatre is empty. From next door, he hears the leading lady speak and the audience applaud. He hears the girl from the audience speak, and his heart breaks. The lights go out and, even then, he stays on his stage, alone apart from the chauffeur, and, of course, the dog.

There are things our hero doesn’t see, and those things start the moment his reflection ends. He’s a good man, a great man in many ways, but he’s completely convinced of his own greatness. That sort of self confidence can take you to incredible places but it will never, ever drive you home from them again and as our hero finds himself forced to let his chauffeur go, he shrinks even further into his own private universe.. He used to be great. He used to be successful. He used to be somebody. He used to dance. His life is two dimensional now, rendered down to a strip of film, a perfect, lush, black and white image packed with glamour and charm but an image nonetheless. Something which will only keep you warm at night if you burn it. As the flames rise, our hero finds himself faced with one last choice, one so elemental that it’s completely eluded him; who’s music is he dancing to? His own? Or the audience’s? And why is he dancing alone?

The man on the stage is big. His dinner jacket is tattered now, scorched and covered in soot but it still emphasises his powerful shoulders and neck. He’s top heavy, the sort of top heavy you get from extended periods of training. He should lumber, but instead he smiles, stands, takes the hand offered to him and begins to dance a very different number. One where you can hear his shoes against the floor, where he’s part of the film instead of the thing that stands in front of it. He’s still the centre of attention but he still has reason to be and this time he’s not alone. The girl from the audience dances next to him, the studio head applauds from behind the camera and as the music he’s never heard before swells, he smiles and lets go. Sound isn’t for him, even now, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is he’s still elegant, still dancing. And now he’s dancing in company. And, of course, the dog is still spectacular.

The dead are rising, literally. The lazy way to put it would be that zombies are the new vampires but the truth is both a little simpler and a little more nuanced than that. Zombies, like vampires, are a concept that’s beautiful in its simplicity; a human corpse, still wearing the physical and emotional accoutrements of its life, animated and seeking living flesh. Zombies rise with satire and commentary hard-wired in and you only have to look at the variety of approaches taken to the concept, from the brutally dark comedy of both versions of Dawn of the Dead through to the quiet, English apocalypse of the 28 Days Later diptych to see that the zombie can be whatever we want or need it to be. This is the monster as blank canvas, inviting and daring authors to do something different with them.

Necropolis Rising does two very clever, very pulpy things with its central conceit. Here the action is moved to Birmingham, England’s second city and the last place anyone would expect Armageddon to begin. Jeffrey has a nice eye for human for detail and the events that destroy so many lives are started here by nothing but good intentions and bad luck. It’s a ‘for wont of a nail’ kind of approach and it works well, especially coupled with the gentle, almost polite descriptions of Birmingham. It’s a nice city, one where normal things happen and Jeffrey has great fun turning that on its head, especially in the sequence where an entire football stadium of fans, killed and resurrected, assaults the main characters.

Jeffrey also uses this normality to emphasise how abnormal the situation is. There’s a palpable sense of panic to a lot of the scenes on the ground, and Jeffrey again has a nice eye for detail as two separate teams of characters converge on one location for very similar reasons. This gives the book’s action sequences, especially the climactic ones, a real sense of scale as one group of characters witness something that the other has caused, or the consequences of one person’s actions are felt by everyone still standing, regardless of whether or not they have a pulse. Jeffrey thinks big and that action movie sensibility, combined with the unusual setting gives the story a unique tone balanced somewhere between macho chest beating and desperate pathos.

This is further accentuated by Jeffrey’s smart character choices. The principles are a group of thieves who’ve been hired to extract something from Hilton Towers, the building at the centre of both the story and the disaster. It’s a nice idea, juxtaposing the discipline of the armed forces with the shambling anarchy of zombies and it’s given an extra twist here by the characters’ backgrounds. Kevin O’Connell and Stu Kanaka, the two leads, are ex-Royal Marines driven to their life by making a difficult, and right, choice. Neither man is a saint, both have blood on their hands but both are trying to use their past rather than make amends for it. These are good men who do bad things for a living and Jeffrey uses the Birmingham disaster to bring this to the fore again and again. O’Connell in particular is a fascinating character, a man with infinite compassion and infinite capacity for violence, both of which lie at the heart of his relationship with his team. O’Connell is pathologically incapable of walking away from someone in need and this colours his interactions with his team, in particular Suzy Hanks, his girlfriend. O’Connell is a troubled man, certainly, but he’s fiercely loyal and Jeffrey cheerfully uses that loyalty as a stick to beat his hapless hero with. No one wins in Necropolis Rising, people just get lucky and far fewer people than normal at that.

This willingness to take pulp archetypes and situations and turn them on their head is what lies at the heart of the book. Jeffrey lays out all the usual toys for a story like this; shadowy corporation, different types of zombie, lone survivor, traitor in our midst etc and uses all of them in very different ways. Some of it is groundwork for the sequel, certainly, but the interaction between O’Connell’s team and the Royal Marines sent in to extract the only survivor of the Hilton Towers experiments is very unusual and pleasantly surprising. Likewise that survivor, Thom Everett, is an odd combination of every-man and potential monster and it’ll be interesting to see where Jeffrey goes with him in the sequel. There’s a lot of ground work wrapped around Thom but his abilities are neatly tied to his dreadful childhood in a way which balances empowerment with vengeance. Thom could go either way, and that sense of jeopardy, of contained threat is something which Jeffrey uses to tremendous effect. The finale in particular is a colossal action sequence with one genuinely unique high spot, all of which is wrapped around a very strong emotional core. This is a zombie apocalypse story, certainly, but the people on the front line are just that; people. Flawed, desperate, human and very mortal.

Necropolis Rising is a neatly balanced combination of action, polite English apocalypse and smart, tightly designed pulp. It’s assured, tightly plotted and consistently surprising, marking it out as something very different in an increasingly crowded market. If you like your thrills undead, then you need to read this.

Blackhawks is one of the more eccentric of The New 52, reviving a set of characters created by Will Eisner, Chuck Cuidera and Bob Powell in 1941. The Blackhawks were a squadron of fighter pilots, each a different nationality and united to fight in World War II. The concept was immensely successful, although as World War II ended and more time passed, it became increasingly difficult to sell the idea without plugging it into more conventional superhero trappings. The characters were revived twice, made several appearances elsewhere but the concept as a whole began to fade into DC history.

This version, written by Mike Costa, manages to not only honour that concept but nest it inside two separate, but complimentary, modern tropes. The first is the re-imagining of the squadron as a much larger unit,with ground forces, logistical staff and UN backing. This places them, interestingly, in almost exactly the position the original version of Stormwatch occupied, and also allows for a larger cast and scope. There are echoes of the classic Larry Hama run on GI Joe here, with the team’s secret headquarters, vast array of aircraft and concealed headquarters, along with their code names and differing specialities all elements that echo Hama’s work whilst still honouring the original cconcept. They’re still an elite unit of international misfits but by placing them in a deliberately contemporary, grounded setting, Costa is able to expand the focus of the series but not lose sight of it.

The second is the inevitable engagement of pop culture with the War on Terror. Pop culture, by its very nature, reflects the time in which it was produced, as shown by the original series using World War II as a backdrop. That engagement has, over the space of the last ten years run the gamut of responses, from gutpunch emotional reaction to cynicism to it becoming a backdrop rather than an active element of fiction. Geopolitical chaos has become a fact of life, and, at its best, pop culture has explored both the human consequences of that and the ways in which society has reacted.

Which all seems like a colossally over intellectual approach to a comic involving fighter planes, power armour and a Russian who is called the Irishman but this is the background that Costa plays with and he plays with it well. He neatly sketches out the idea of the Blackhawks as an elite special forces unit who are tied to the United Nations but not as tied as some might think. It’s another standard trope, one which Ellis used to great effect in his run on Stormwatch and which was later explored by Greg Rucka in Checkmate and it works well here, once again. The end result is the sensation that the Blackhawks are essentially this universe’s attack dogs, the unit that the UN unleash when something difficult and unpleasant needs doing. He does a good job of sketching out the characters too, with the unflappable Canada and Kunoichi, the team’s resident pointwoman and seeming adrenalin junkie the two standouts. Again, none of these characters are unique or revolutionary but none of them need to be. This is high tech pulp, and as a result the more familiar the characters the better.

Blackhawks is a known quantity but a welcome one. Costa’s script has some nice action beats to it and the art, by Graham Nolan on layouts and Ken Lashley on finishing and cover is brawny but expressive, giving the characters and the tech room to shine. All in all, this is certainly one of the more left of centre of the DC New 52 but it’s also one of the best put together. It’s a smart, ideas-heavy fast paced modern thriller and it deserves to be given a chance to shine.