Good Comics Not Many People Read: Green Manor vol. 1 (Cinebook, 2008)

I'm getting burned out by superhero comics lately but I still love to read books with pictures and word balloons so it was quite serendipitous that I found out about Cinebook, a British publisher that translates European comics into English, and a damn fine job they're doing too. Check out their site and see some stuff that may not have come to the attention of fans of mainstream comics (read: US superhero comics)

I particularly like Green Manor, a French comic. It is actually a series of short stories, none longer than 8 pages, framed at the beginning and at the end of the book by a mental patient who claims that he used to be an employee of Green Manor. The Green Manor is an exclusive gentleman's club in Victorian England which on the surface doesn't make it any special than the other clubs...except that the patient insists that most of the Manor's posh members are nothing more than thieves, conmen and murderers (mostly murderers). His years there have made him privy to a lot of stories and it is these stories that he tells.

The stories themselves are quite enjoyable. Seeing as how none of them exceed 8 pages, the stories have to move along at a brisk pace and writer Fabien Vehlmann succeeds. That doesn't mean the stories are simple though. The plots are intriguing and the mysteries always end in some kind of twist. My favourite story in this volume is Post-Scriptum where a club member challenges another member to stop him from killing a woman by midnight the next evening. He actually succeeds in killing both his intended target and the man he challenged to stop his murderous plan but did not realise that his victim had prepared something beforehand, just in case. Vengeance from the beyond the grave, so to speak.

There is no gore in any of the stories. The killings are almost always off camera and artist Denis Bodart's cartoony style presents a nice contrast to the dark mood of the stories. It is a pity that Green Manor, despite being translated into English, would probably fail to capture the attention of comic fans outside of Europe. It is time we realise that there are a lot of good stuff out there that is not necessarily from the US. They may not feature powerful people in spandex punching other powerful people in spandex but these books are no less well written and illustrated. If you like murder mysteries, check out Green Manor from Cinebook. I bought mine from Amazon UK. I wished the creators had written more but there are only three volumes of the Manor (Cinebook combined the second and third books together so the English version only has two volumes).

Good Comics Not Many People Read: Scarlet Traces: The Great Game (Dark Horse, 2007)

Last week I reviewed a very good but little known graphic novel called Scalet Traces which was a sequel to H.G. Wells' classic invaders-from-Mars novel, The War of the Worlds. Then Ian Edginton and D'Israeli wrote a second sequel, Scarlet Traces: The Great Game.

I call it a sequel but like Scarlet Traces, The Great Game can also be read as a self contained book by itself without any knowledge of the prior graphic novel (or even the source novel that inspired it). At the end of Scarlet Traces, the truth about the missing girls is revealed and the last page shows the British government launching an invasion fleet on Mars and you could have stopped at that cliffhanger and you would have read a very good, albeit depressing, story.

The Great Game takes the reader about 40 years after the events from the first book. British troops are still on Mars and still fighting. The news is always rosy: Our boys are vanquishing the Martians, brave Commonwealth troops captures vital Martian stronghold, yada yada yada. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Britain is gradually turning fascistic with tight controls over the press and freedom of speech. All in the name of security, you understnd. They even locked up Eric Blair (George Orwell's real name). Yes, I thought that was a nice nod to 1984 as well.

But like the first book, there is also something far more sinister going on that isn't very clear at first. By the end of the story the reader may not be so quick to condemn the politicians. Without spoiling anything, suffice it to say that the Martians were not totally defeated in H.G. Wells' book. That was just an advance force. The rest of them are still on Mars. They have learned their lesson and came up with Plan B on how to colonise Earth. Unfortunately, no one on Earth knows about it because the politicians are keeping that under wraps. Why? Well, that would be telling. Go read the book and find out.

The Great Game has the same nice excellent quality that made Scarlet Traces such a pleasure to read. The plot moves along nicely and the artwork is amazing. It also has a lot more in-jokes within its pages, though you would only notice it if you were a fan of British comics and shows like Dan Dare, Dr. Who and Thunderbirds.

If you like to read about old-school adventure stories in space, you can't go wrong with Scarlet Traces: The Great Game. Make sure you read Scarlet Traces as well. Edginton and D'Israeli also adapted Wells' prose novel into a graphic novel but I never read that one so I can't comment on it. Oh, just get all three and have a rollicking good time. Makes a change from reading Batman. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Good Comics Not Many People Read: Scarlet Traces (Dark Horse, 2003)

What happened after the events in H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds? The Martians have been defeated, Britain is victorious. So then what happened? That is the premise of Scarlet Traces, a comic book sequel to Wells' seminal work.

10 years have passed after the doomed Martian invasion and England has prospered, thanks to the alien technology that the British have exploited. Spoils of war and all that. But not all is well. While England has advanced with an industrial revolution powered by Martian knowledge, Scotland has been under martial law with government troops disptached there to quell any resistance by any means necessary. The other worldly technology has meant that one machine can do the work of a hundred men and that has resulted in unemployment and massive resentment amongst the people.

In the middle of all this, our protagonist Major Robert Autumn is thrown into a mystery when his valet's brother (a Scots) has been arrested in London for trespassing in an abandoned government building. He claims to be looking for his daughter who came down to London answering a job advertisement and was never seen or heard from again. And she wasn't the only one. It seems many young women from the impoverished North have answered the same advertisement and travelled down to London only to suffer the same fate. Major Autumn, feeling left out in a world moving too fast into the future for his taste, eagerly takes up the challenge to solve this mystery and I'm not spoiling anything when I say it won't end well for some people.

I was a bit sceptical at first when I found out that this book was a sequel to a classic novel. These kind of sequels never turn out to be good, never mind the fact this version was done in a sequential art form. It's still a sequel not written by the original author. I was afraid it was going to end up like that Gone With the Wind sequel that no one talks about nowadays. I'm glad I was wrong.

The mystery moves along at a brisk pace and since the Martian invasion plays a major part of the story, you know those pesky aliens are involved in this somehow. Ian Edginton has pulled off a miracle by writing a sequel to a classic novel that did not suck. D'israeli's art is beautiful eye candy especially when it comes to the futuristic cityscape of Victorian London. It did make me stop and wonder whether they could have achieve all this within 10 years of accidentally defeating the Martians. Mastering a new piece of technology is one thing, mastering an alien technology within 10 years during the Victorian-era is incredible. Then I realise it's just a comic book, so screw logic!

Scarlet Traces is one of those books that flew under a lot of comic book aficionado's radar when it came out 6 years ago but if you like to read a darn good story, this book should be right up your alley.

Good Comics Not Many People Read: Agents Of Atlas HC (Marvel, 2007)

Now that they have their own series, it's about time I give a shout out to what is probably the best comic miniseries that not many people read: Agents of Atlas. Came out two years ago and still available at Amazon, doncha know? AoA introduced me to Jeff Parker and if you click his name at the tag section down there you will know I totally have a platonic guy-love for Jeff Parker and it's all because of this book. Seriously, it's fun, funny, exciting and jam packed with extras if you like that sort of thing in your collected editions. And Leonard Kirk's pencils aren't too shabby either.

I guess it is possible to take a group of obscure characters from a publisher's early days, feature them in a miniseries and not make it suck. Having a talking gorilla as one of the characters also helps.

I honestly don't know how long their ongoing series will last. I'm guessing about 30 issues worth since most of the books I like tend to get cancelled before their 50th issue. I'm a regular Jonah, I am. But check out their miniseries collection first. It has a semi naked love goddess prancing about seducing bad guys, a killer robot shooting rays, a sea queen, a secret agent, a spaceman and the aforementioned talking gorilla.

And a dragon called Mr. Lao. Seriously.