Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas and New Year everyone. Here's Pedro with his little tree. Now to teach him the true meaning of Christmas.

Comic Recommendations - Simon Moreton's 'Plans We Made'

Here's the last of my comic recommendations from Leeds Thoughtbubble, Simon Moreton's 'Plans We Made'. It's a memoir about teenage years spent in Marlow with his childhood friends, some from when he was twelve, and then getting older when he's about sixteen or so. It's drawn in his very minimal style, with very few words and panels. I really liked it. At first the kids just wander about happily and Simon remembers lots of little moments, sneaking out at night and wandering around in the woods. Later they start thinking about things a lot, so I guess the book is about growing up and losing your childhood feelings / wanting to move away. I especially liked a section where they get really drunk, in the special way you get when young, and he remembers the way they eventually get home. Highly recommended. Here's a proper review of it.

'So, The Headmaster Was Wondering...'

Another row of panels from 'Flying Sausage Academy 3'. I'm on page sixteen now, so two thirds done.

Comic Recommendations- Lydia Wysocki's 'Un Pear Able' and 'Andalusia'

 Lydia Wysocki's  'Andalusia' is a really good holiday sketchbook from July 2015. It's very fancy as if you have a smart phone and download an app for it, you can point the phone camera at the drawings and it shows you Lydia's photos from the same place. The drawings are really nice, as is the book design. I really like the inside covers where the drawings are placed on photos of floors and walls from the holiday. The only places in the book I've been to are the Alcazabar fortress in Malaga, and Malaga airport. 

'Un Pear Able' is a collection of puns about pears. There are a pear of books here too. I like both puns and pears so I liked these. The two books are sewn together in different ways, one fancy with stitching and letterpress hand done lettering, and one not so fancy, with string, but they both look very cool.

'Where Did it Come From?'

Another row of panels from 'Flying Sausage Academy 3'.

Comic Recommendations - William Cardini 'Vortex'

I didn't get this book at Thoughtbubble, I traded for it a month before, but I'm doing little reviews of all the books I liked this year. More Thoughtbubble comics to come in the rest of this month.

William Cardini's 'Vortex' is a very cool book. It starts with the Miizzzard, a powerful space sorceror, flying in his space ship to a new planet that is giving off curious readings. On the surface he meets and fights a weird alien race, who turn out to be sentient weapons created for some ancient and forgotten war. Have a look at the double page spread I've scanned above. The artwork is very interesting, and all done with computer textures which gives it a really strange otherworldly feel. The planet, and the long battle between the characters, come off as very alien things indeed. Highly recommended.

'How Was School, Son?'

Here's a row of panels from page six of 'Flying Sausage Academy 3'.

Comic Recommendations- Sean Azzopardi 'Tracks' & Nick Soucek 'Anthropocene'

 'Tracks' by Sean Azzopardi 
This is a very good comic about travelling, comic shows and remembering things. I think it's about living in the present and not dwelling too much on past adventures, however fun they were. It's got Sean travelling to SPX and remembering / retelling a drunken story from Leeds a few years earlier. Then he travels more, in America and Italy, meeting other old friends and thinking about their shared memories. There's a lot of very interesting drawing, trying loads of different ways to show the past and thoughts.

'Anthropocene- The Age of Man' by Nick Soucek. 
Another very interesting comic. This one has 23 images of cities and the countryside, in the Anthropocene, which is the age of the earth in which we live now, where man has the biggest effect on the environment. They are really nice grey toned drawings. I especially like the pylons and the oil wells.