Osamu Tezuka - Dr Thrill

Here's a classic Tezuka series from 1959. There's a boy solving mysteries and having adventures with his faithful dog, which saves him from lots of cliff hanging style dangers. It's got all the classic characters in it, like Inspector Mustache and lots of others I recognise but don't know their names. It's a good silly book.

Here's a bit of whats going on from the proper Tezuka book review site - "Along the way they encounter an evil group of assassins that plant a time bomb in the belly of a foreign dignitary in an attempt to kill his prince, and the leader of a gang of narcotic smugglers who dresses like a giant insect and hides their wares in honeycombs.  They duke it out the Black Tengu gang for possession of a treasure, come to the aid of a young boy with insomnia who witnesses a murder.  They even get kidnapped by an evil gang of international conspirators – and that’s just the beginning!". Cool.

Taiyo Matsumoto - Sunny Volumes 1 and 2

I really liked the first two volumes of Sunny by Taiyo Matsumoto. It's about a big group of kids living in a children's home. The slice of life stories follow different ones of the kids, or different groups of them as they get up to things.

The drawing is amazing as to be expected.

Sunny is the name of a yellow car that's parked behind the childrens home. The children often sit in the car and think about things or imagine they are driving along. Matsumoto draws the best cars, bicycles and animals, which are about the hardest things for me to draw.

I'd really recommend this series, it's out in English too.

Taiyo Matsumoto - Brothers of Japan and Zero

I got a few more Taiyo Matsumoto books in Japan too. Here's the first 'Brothers of Japan'. It's a book of his short stories. There's a wide range of different stories. Here's one about a gorilla riding in a motorbike race. The drawing is all great as usual with amazing lines, and great use of black and white.

Also I got 'Zero' which is about a boxer. Here's a double page from it.

This one is great too. I always like how he puts so many animals in his stories, just wandering about in the backgrounds. This one seems more like a standard comic, with more of a usual story, but it's still very idiosyncratic.

Usamaru Furuya - Bokura No Hikari Club

This is a pretty twisted manga about a gang of misfit boys who form an evil club. This is a prequel to the main story apparently, showing how they get together in the first place.  In the later volumes they build a robot to kidnap women for them as they are all losers. It's a very satirical story with lots of black humour, it's not trying to be serious.

It's all drawn in a very similar style to Suehiro Maruo, which is funny. The kids look like his drawings of evil boys.

Here's the leader of the gang trying to be evil by painting a big black star on the floor. I found this manga very amusing.

Osamu Tezuka - Microid S Volume 1

Here's another book by Osamu Tezuka. This one is about an army of insect people who are planning to exterminate all humans. Three of the tiny insect people escape from their base deep in the desert to try and warn the humans. They keep getting captured by humans and put in jam jars, nearly eaten etc. They are quite superhero looking with letters on their shirts and special powers.

They try and warn people at the United Nations but no-one will listen, except for one scientist. Meanwhile a kid is being bad at school and fighting gangs of kids and his evil teacher, but he will turn out to be the hero.

The insects attack in lots of places and kill loads of people leaving piles of bodies in the streets. Can they be stopped?

There's lots of adventure and excitement, it's a good story.

Osamu Tezuka - MW Volumes One and Two

I went to Book Off again when I was in Japan, under the bridge in Akihabara and bought a big pile of super cheap manga. Here's one of them, Osamu Tezuka's 'MW'. It's available in English as well which I didn't know.

It's a weird one as Tezuka is trying to write a much darker style of manga. The antihero is this banker character here. As a child he was saved from a poison gas attack on an island by the hero, a priest. The gas caused him to lose all his conscience so he is very evil and does whatever he wants, such as bank robberies, kidnappings and murders.

The antihero is gay and so is the priest character. The antihero is always disguising himself as a woman to carry out his evil schemes, as he is here. The priest is a very conflicted character who blames himself for the evil antihero, who he is in love with, and is trying to save him.

There's a lot of action, brutal murders and very dark stuff. By the end the antihero is trying to get hold of the MW poison gas that nearly killed him, and release it, to kill everyone else on earth. It's very 1970's which is fun. I had to look up the English synopsis to find out what was going on by the end, as it was getting very busy.

Victoria Lomasko - Other Russias

This is a very good book I picked up in a charity shop, I hadn't heard of it before but it had a recommendation quote from Joe Sacco on the back so I bought it. It is a illustrative / comics reportage book about modern Russia. Victoria Lomasko travels round Russia talking to people and drawing really nice portraits of them. She attends the trials of Pussy Riot and other show trials, meets some sex workers in a grim city, goes to a juvenile prison and meets striking truck drivers. It's really good. Here's a Guardian article about the artist.

Tim Bird - 'The Great North Wood'

I enjoyed Tim Bird's new book 'The Great North Wood'. It's just come out from Avery Hill. It's all in colour with a nice pallette of pink, blue and brown. It's about the big wood that once stood in South London between Croydon and Deptford.

The book uses a fox as a framing device, the fox wanders around in the modern remains of the wood, and looks into the past when the wood was much bigger and more magical. The book has some good stories from the wood about gypsies who lived there and told fortunes, and bandits and outlaws who hid in the woods and robbed passers by. It talks about how the names of the places came from the woods that once stood there like Gipsy Hill, Honor Oak and Norwood.

I liked the drawing a lot and especially the use of colour. Here's Tim's website.

Lydia Wysocki - 'Everyone With a Nose Should Picket'

This is a collection of comics Lydia made while on strike in the University and College Union strike for fair pensions. It was in February and March this year, so it was very cold and snowed a lot. It seems a very long time ago now, but the pensions dispute is not settled yet.

It was a proper strike with picket lines and placards, and signs saying 'Beep for the Strike'. Some people are very nice to the strikers, others make excuses. It's a diary type of comic going on for the first fourteen days of the strike, mainly with stick figures and very nice stamped lettering. They worry that no one will turn up some days as the snow gets really deep, but they carry on picketing. It's very good and interesting.

Here's Lydia's website and shop.
 On the website is the whole series of her diary comics of the strike so you can carry on reading it after the pages from the comic, for all the rest of the strike.

I've never had the chance to go on strike, we had one days strike back when I was a student but all we did was go to the pub early in the morning and then stayed there all day.

Simon Moreton - Athens (Αθήνα)

I liked this little square travel zine Simon has just brought out about his holiday in Athens. It's lots of different kinds of drawings and a few photographs. The sink fellow on the front cover is a nice character. I went to Thessaloniki last year, which was my first time going to Greece, so its fun to look at the drawings and see if I recognise similar things. He also sees a tortoise and a hoopoe and I never saw any of those.
Highly recommended, I really like the square format, it works very well for these drawings. Here's a link to Simon's shop.

Michael Kupperman - 'All the Answers'

I really enjoyed Michael Kupperman's new book 'All the Answers' which has just come out. I have always liked his work, especially 'Tales Designed to Thrizzle'.

This book is a biography / autobiography about his father who was called Joel Kupperman and was a very famous child star on a weird radio and then very early tv show called 'Quiz Kids'. His dad met all the famous people of the time like Orson Welles, Harpo Marx and Abbott and Costello. Being on the show really messed his dad up and the family never spoke of it during Michael's childhood. Michael tries to work out what happened and how it affected his own childhood and his relationship with his father.

Here's a good review of the book from Rob Clough. I really enjoyed the book and so it's highly recommended.The surreal-ness of his father meeting all the famous people in odd situations (and often not caring, as he doesn't know who they are) makes it seem a lot like Kupperman's other books at times. It also has a lot of emotions in it as Kupperman tries to work out why his dad was like he was.

Emil Ferris - 'My Favourite Thing is Monsters'

I bought myself this book for my birthday as it had been top of loads of peoples 'Best Comics of 2017' lists. It's massive, 386 colour pages, and it's only the first part of the story. It's set in 1960's inner city Chicago and has ten years old Karen trying to solve the murder of her upstairs neighbour, the mysterious Anka Silverberg. She is the beautiful woman on the front cover. Karen loves monsters and nearly always draws herself as a werewolf. While she is detectoring she puts on a trench coat and hat, as a werewolf detective. The chapters in the book are separated with copies of pulp horror magazines, most of them seem to correspond indirectly with the story. The whole book is made to look like a spiral notebook that Karen is drawing in, there are holes for the binding, and the whole thing is on lined paper.

There is such a lot going on in the story. Karen finds tapes made by a reporter who met Anka where she tells the story of her horrible life. She was Jewish and born in Berlin in the 1920's. Her mother worked in a brothel where Anka lived too, and later sells her into child prostitution just before the Nazi's rise to power. The book also tells what Karen finds out about the people around her, her mother, her brother Deeze, the other people who live in their apartment block and her few friends . It's very grim at times, there is a huge amount of bad stuff going on and I feel it could all end up very badly for the characters. The Chicago Art Institute is also very important to the story, as it is Karen's favourite place. There are lovely drawings of the paintings, and Karen can crawl right into them and find things out.

The drawing is very very beautiful. There are lovely really lifelike portraits and drawings of all the characters on some pages. The drawings of Karen's mother are especially great. On others it gets much more scribbly and loose with little panels, whatever is best for the story.  Some of the crosshatching is amazing, all done with coloured biros and pens.

I really enjoyed this book and would tell anyone to buy it. It's a lot of money but it's a massive book and well worth it. I reckon I will be able to read it a lot of times and notice a lot more stuff each time. I'm going to get part two once it comes out, though I am worried for the characters.

Fraser Geesin - The Cleaner (Man of Destiny) Issues One and Two

I really enjoyed these two comics from Fraser Geesin. I hadn't heard of him before but I saw some recommendations for them on twitter, and then that he was having an October sale.

The comics are mainly about his job as a cleaner, which he has been doing for about ten years at the time of  the first comic. He mainly cleans peoples houses and doesn't have to go back if they annoy him too much. It sounds quite a good job. He goes off on a lot of tangents and daydreams, talking about other low paid jobs he has had, such as traffic surveying, street sweeping and selling tickets to fairground rides. The comics are very funny and interesting too. Comics about people with different jobs are cool, and he has plenty to say, even if it's only about how boring bits of his jobs can get. Highly recommended.

Robert Wells - Back, Sack & Crack (& Brain)

 I really enjoyed Robert Wells new graphic novel 'Back, Sack & Crack (& Brain) which has just come out. I leant it my brother, who doesn't read a lot of comics, and he really liked it too.

 As it says on the cover it is 'a rather graphic novel about living with embarassing health problems'. Robert has lots of awful problems and chronic pains with his balls, his digestion and his back and unsurprisingly gets really depressed at times as he tries to deal with them. He has terrible trouble trying to find out what is wrong with him. He goes to see loads of doctors and specialists and they all treat him very differently, some don't believe him at all and think he's making the whole thing up. Others give him perscriptions for many different drugs or send him for operations, some of which seem to make things worse.

It is written with a great sense of humour and is very funny, even though it has the most drawings of balls and the most and harshest descriptions of chronic ball pain I have seen in a comic.

I really liked it, very highly recommended. It is the best comic I have read so far this year.

Richard Swan - 'Parallel Lines'

 This is a cool wordless book by Richard Swan. It describes a little world of odd creatures. A group of sort of robots are mining coal. They have shovels for hands and their bodies hold the coal. They are overseen by another strange creature. A few of them wander off from work while on a break and find a doorway in a tall brick wall. Sometimes it leads to a beach but huge machinery like a train comes out of the ground, and can move the doorway so it leads to other places. The overseer becomes worried about all the missing robots and not hitting his targets with the mining and rings an alarm in his hut. This brings his overseer along to see what the trouble is. Lots more strange things happen.

I liked it a lot, the drawing is really cool with a lot of detail, and with very interesting and unique creatures. I didn't work out why it was called Parallel Lines though.

Paul Rainey & Robert Wells - 'Thunder Brother Special'

This is a great comic from Paul Rainey. It's got two complete new Thunder Brother stories and another story 'Connected' written by Paul and drawn by Robert Wells. Both the Thunder Brother's are really good. In the first one a woman who was extracted from a soap world tries to force Sally to get her put back, and in the second a new producer sends a woman into a soap world to break up a couple, in order to get higher ratings. I was wondering what happened to Thunder Brother, we still never found out much about the Library King, who was the mysterious villain of the series.
I liked 'Connected' a lot. Jonathan is given a chip for his smart phone by his inventor brother, which allows him to access something called the 'Universal Network'. This is like a galaxy wide 'ask your phone for help' thing. It was funny and reminded me of the ultranet in 'There's No Time like the Present'. Robert Wells drawing is really good. Highly recommended.

Paddy Johnston - Ballgame #1

This is a nice little comic by Paddy Johnston. It's almost a sports comic, I wonder if the second issue will show some games, but this one is more of an autobiographical comic. Paddy grows up trying to like football to fit in, but he never really gets into it. He goes to try out for the football team but plays really badly and doesn't like all the swearing. He is very into Peanuts and so has a romantic view of baseball but the one game of softball he gets to play at school ends in disaster. The final page shows him as the captain of the Hawks Softball Team, as they practice for a game in London, so issue two will have to show how he ended up there.

I went watching a game of baseball once in Korea and it was very boring, I bet it's a lot more fun to play than to watch. Also you probably have to support one of the teams to get into it, and have some idea of what is going on. There were a lot of flashing lights and noises from the scoreboard, like I'd imagined there would be.

Nekojiro - Nekojiro Udon 1

This is the last of the manga books I bought on holiday. I remembered Nekojiro from 'Secret Comics Japan' or 'Sake Jock', one of those early books of underground Japanese comics. Do you remember when that was the only way to see any weird manga? This collection has the story from there, the one where they hold a court to judge insects in their backyard. The other stories are all different types, a lot are dark, weird or philosophical. The stories usually star the brother and sister cats. They can be cruel, but they are cats after all.

Here's a double page from a story about priests trying to convert the cats, but they are not keen.

Matsumoto Taiyou - No. 5 Volume 1

 This is a very fancy manga from Matsumoto Taiyou. It has lots of colour dustjackets and fold out paintings. It's about a group of global security masters who are protecting the world. One of them goes rogue so the others decide whether to kill them or what else to do. It's a lovely looking book so well worth buying for the artwork, as always with Matsumoto. This was the hardest of my manga purchases to follow so I didn't understand the story properly, the first two came out in English but they never finished the series which is a shame.

 It is full of drawings of animals, nearly every page has at least a few.

 There's a lot of violent fights in some sections as the masters try to kill each other with assassins or by battling in the thick dark forests.

There is a very fancy colour fold out painting at the back of the book, with a lot more animals.

Atsushi Kaneko - Bambi and Her Pink Gun Vol 2 - 1

 This is a fun manga I picked up. I'd heard of Bambi somewhere so it caught my eye. Bambi is driving her tiny car (with eyes painted on) through the post apocalyptic landscape. She has kidnapped a child who is always starving to eat as much junk food as possible. There's a massive reward on the child's return so all the gangs of bikers, bandits, crazed truckers, Mexican wrestlers and psychopaths are out to kill her. It's very Mad Max. She kills a lot of people with her gun.

It's got a very nice print job with lots of different colours of printing for different chapters, tinted pages and ends up all red in a massive explosion.