To The Last Page

Threatened by the three ominous figures that appear at their idyllic forest home, a father takes his son on a long journey to escape the dark fate that seems to be in store for the young child. Pedrosa’s drawing ability, as seen previously in his Ring Circus books with David Chauvel, is impressive. Less refined here, the black-and-white pencil, ink and charcoal work here lends a fluid, sketchy and expressive quality to the storytelling, each frame beautifully composed and drawn. The cartoony Disney Lilo and Stitch/Hunchback of Notre Dame style (Pedrosa previously worked as an artist for Disney) of the opening sections gives way to a darker and more surreal Mattotti style as the tone of the story darkens. Pedrosa also finds some imaginative ways of his own to express the fear and the flight of his characters, but the design appears a little over-worked, not always chiming with the emotional content.

Over 30 years in the making, the care and detail lavished in Selden Edwards's debut novel is evident the love for which he depicts the splendour of turn-of-the-century Vienna, where the 'Jung Wien', the Secessionists, Mahler, Freud and the numerous important figures are about to modernise music art and philosophy and make an indelible mark on the twentieth century. That it sets about depicting this world through a time-travel adventure is intriguing and relevant to showing the tremendous impact this period would have on the world today, but it's also problematic.  In this Vienna of Freud, Wittgenstein and the Secessionists Edwards finds the essence of modern day thought, enlightenment, emancipation and the greatness that humanity can aspire to, the cultural apex that sets the foundation for the modern world to create all-American heroes, athletes and musicians, men of honour, discipline and learning. That much is entertainingly achieved, even if the heroic qualities of ...

When an alien spaceship crashes in the south of Spain after an intergalactic battle, a young English boy living in the valley’s English community discovers one of the robot suits the aliens used for planetary exploration. Donning the suit he becomes Mr Roberts and finds that the fearsome figure can be used for good or bad. Well, to be honest, it’s only really useful for greedy and nasty purposes, particularly when his neglectful mother gets her hands on it. Having a great deal of mild fun at the expense of Spanish customs, English ex-pats, theatre and television types, religion and even Scientology, Sayle’s entertaining short novel makes for an enjoyable light read. Surreal and satirical, this is everything you would expect from Alexei Sayle and even better if you read it with his sarcastic rapid delivery Scouse accent in mind.

It goes without saying that Chris Ware's latest instalment of his on-going, continually evolving work is as beautifully designed and packaged as ever, as much as it is evident that the tone is the familiar one of almost overwhelming regret and sadness for past mistakes, creating a sense of self-pity that prevents his characters from moving forward or even being able to fully appreciate their present lives. That sense of past, present and future combined is ambitiously tackled here in ANL book 18 by Ware in a way that can perhaps only really be accomplished graphically, not just relying on the standard of flashbacks, but having all time periods operating almost simultaneously, and often viewed from the perspective of an apartment building - shown in typical Ware cutaway - where the protagonist, a young woman with one leg amputated below the knee lives. Her life is similarly dissected with surgical graphic precision and laid out in cut-away on the page. The sense of narrative flow in...