Great Deeds Against the Dead - Part Two Finally Finished

Hurray! It's finally finished. It took me ages and ages and ages to clean up all the pages but now I have burnt them to a disc so they are off to the printers tomorrow. Too late for Thought Bubble of course but they should be on sale after the end of this month...

Jiro Taniguchi – A Distant Neighbourhood – Books 1 & 2

These were very enjoyable to read. I ended up reading them both in one go to find out the mystery at the end. The art is beautiful as you would expect from Taniguchi, very detailed and with a great sense of place.

It’s a time travel / body swop story were the middle aged hero gets drunk at his mothers grave and suddenly finds himself back in his 14 year old body in the past. Once he gets over his confusion a bit, he likes being young again, having loads of energy and life. Also with his adult memories he finds all the classes easy, which is very different from when he was young and they were a hard slog. He starts changing all the things that happened when he was young, now he is dating the most beautiful girl in the class who he didn’t dare approach as a child…

Then he remembers that his dad left them without saying a word at the end of the summer holidays when he was fourteen and tries to find out why he left, and stop him if he can.

I liked these books a lot more than ‘The Ice Wanderer’ which I read last year but my favourite Taniguchi is still ‘The Walking Man’ so read that first if you are only going to get one of his books to try.

Benjamin Marra - Night Business - Issues 1 & 2

Waaaaaaaaaaahhhh these are awesome. They may well be my favourite comic of the year. The drawing is so fascinating, everyone is super shiny looking with tiny hands and strange poses. Grrrrr they are angry. (As you can see the best way of describing it is by writing funny noises)

The story is set in ‘the city’ at night in 1983. Johnny and Steve are running an agency ‘Glitz Glam’ which looks after exotic dancers. A crazy masked murderer has killed one of their girls in a frenzied knife attack and now they are after him. Johnny gets one of the girls to act as bait to draw out the murderer. The city is very sleazy, full of pimps and strip clubs. Benjamin Marra is a very funny man, the authors descriptions on the back pages of the comics made me laugh out loud. Highly recommended, go and order it from his website.

Great Deeds Against the Dead - Part Two First page with Greys

I didn't get much done tonight as i started drinking some Lambs Navy Rum. Here's the first page of 'Great Deeds 2' with the grey tones added. This is page 3 confusingly. Only 28 more pages to add grey tones too.
P.S. I am excited about GRINDER!!

Great Deeds Against the Dead - Part Two Cover in Progress

I have been working on the cover all night, needs more messing with yet.

Reinhard Kleist - Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness

Woah, the drawing in this book is lovely. It’s really great. The story seems familiar ‘cos I’ve seen that ‘Walk the Line’ film and lots of documentaries about Cash over the years, but the drawing really makes the book. My favourite bits are his trees, they’re amazing. He’s very good at the faces too and I like the way he illustrated the songs. It took me a few goes to get into it but it was worth the effort as I really enjoyed it in the end. I think the book gets a lot better after the first couple of chapters, especially the bits were he goes to Folsom Prison to play his famous concert.

John Porcellino - Map of My Heart

This is a great book containing six years worth of King Cat’s (minus the long story from the first few that has already been released as ‘Perfect Example’. It’s really very good, I highly recommend it to everyone. If you have just read one or two King Cat’s and weren’t that blown away you should try reading a whole bunch of them all together, as they build really nicely and become more than the sum of the little stories.

The six years were very crazy for John, he gets marries and moves house, then he gets very sick, moves house, gets divorced, moves house again, and finally falls in love again at the end of the book. Some of it is very sad and there are some beautiful poem comics. I really like his drawing, it’s just right for what he wants to do. It made me want to draw, which is always a great sign. Also it made me want to wander round looking at things and exploring. I’d read a few of the later ones before when they came out but it’s still worth getting them as the book too. It adds lots of context, and you get John’s notes on what was going on at the time too.