I've only had rather long blog entries in mind recently, and no time to write them. I'll cross one off the list now though, as I've had quite a few comics come my way in the past couple of weeks, and will write a little on each.
The first comes from Denmark, and is from the same publisher as for the Nofret book I bought last year, Eudor Comics. This is Frank Madsen's Kurt Dunder in Tirol, which I believe is currently the only English translation from this series. And it's good stuff - the art is fluid and attractive, quite cartoony, and the story is my favourite kind, a mystery adventure (quite commonplace in Europe, but still a rare beast as far as comics in the UK are concerned). It has some good daft humour, mostly in the shape of Attilia, a mischievous though useful monkey. Kurt Dunder himself is described as a 'globetrotter and adventurer', which gives fair license for his exploits, and the other main supporting character is his sidekick, a rotund Tintin-quiffed fellow named Bill.
We need a translation of the next book, The Fifth Gospel (which I'm not certain has been completed yet), as the adventure continues there, though this volume does provide a satisfying read in itself. The translation is largely very good, but there is the odd error that stands out. I look forward to more English translations from Eudor, and definitely urge you to support them and buy their books to encourage this - both Nofret and Kurt Dunder provide marvellous reads.
Next up is Rick Geary, someone whose work I have been meaning to get hold of for years, but have only recently done so. Part of the reason I have only just dived in to his oeuvre is because so many of his works interest me, especially the treasuries of Victorian murder, and I wasn't really sure where to start. In the end it was the relatively recent release of The Adventures Of Blanche that hooked me in - and I think I have indeed been hooked!
Blanche is based loosely on Geary's own grandmother, with tales set in the early years of the twentieth century. The Adventures... book is a collection of three stories, a cthulhoid tale set in New York in 1907, a silent film yarn set in the Hollywood of 1915 (my favourite), and a mystery set in Paris in 1921. Blanche has a touch of Adele Blanc-Sec about her, though she is more a victim of circumstance rather than a driving force herself.
The other Geary book I bought is also fairly recent, and forms the first in his new series of treasuries of twentieth century murder, it being a documentary tale of the kidnapping of The Lindbergh Child. The case is told in the author's customary careful laying out of the facts, and similarly clear graphical presentation, to give a very decent yet unbiased overview. I'm looking forward to his next in the series, a case I have had some interest in before through Taylorology, the William Desmond Taylor murder.
The Linbergh affair gives a link to the next work I have, Rivière and Solidor's bande dessinée adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, a tale that was written just two years after the Lindbergh tragedy which heavily informed the backdrop of this Hercule Poirot whodunnit. The adaptation is cool and stylish, though sometimes a little stiff, and lacks the air of mystery the story deserves I think (perhaps something is lost in the translation). It's a nice volume though, and is one in a series of Christie adaptations from Harper Collins (I'd link to the series website but the the URL on the back of the book leads to a page error).
Entirely coincidentally, but just to further the link I've mentioned between Lindbergh and Christie, while colouring pages over the Easter weekend I listened to an audiobook version of Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, an excellent and intriguing book that follows the case of a child murder in 1860 and involving one of England's original eight Police Detectives.
Now onto a couple of self-published titles. Rol Hirst has produced PJANG number two, and if I tell you that PJANG stands for 'People Just Ain't No Good', then that may give a clue to the direction Rol's tales can often take. He's an excellent writer of character and observation, and the story here - '24 Minutes' - is nicely constructed. I've liked Dave Metcalf's artwork ever since the days of The Jock, and the atmosphere of the story is well reflected in his bold lines, but I did feel some slightly clearer scene setting would have benefited the comic in its early pages. Mind you, if I was the artist, I wouldn't exactly thank the author for situating the entire comic in a crowded railway station, and Dave has risen to the occasion. A good read with a lovely cover from Nigel Lowrey, and I recommend it.
And David Baillie has produced a lovely hardback volume of Tongue of the Dead, a fantasy tale that took me back to the days of White Dwarf magazine and Robert E. Howard's Conan, the novels of which also turn out to have been David's prime inspiration. The well-told story more than kept my interest throughout, and the clear illustration is easy on the eye and uncluttered. Extras come in the form of a series of one-page Zombie Interviews (as seen in Accent UK's Zombie anthology) and a few pages of story annotations, which I always appreciate, plus a short prose story to end with. A nice addition to your bookshelf.
I have two more comics in my pile, as yet unread, so I will leave Jason Lute's Berlin volume two (City of Smoke), and Osamu Tezuka's Mw for another day.