Following 2010′s delightful DICK BRIEFER’S FRANKENSTEIN, this second volume in IDW’s “Chilling Archives of Horror Comics,” BOB POWELL’S TERROR, as edited by the ubiquitous Craig Yoe, is equally oddball-wonderful.
While the first book chronologically covered 15-odd years of both style and character development, this tome is limited to a much briefer segment. These 18 stories — from magazines like WITCHES’ TALES, THIS MAGAZINE IS HAUNTED, CHAMBER OF CHILLS and many others — all range from a narrow slice between July 1951 to August 1954.
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As much a biography on Art Spiegelman as it is his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, METAMAUS: A LOOK INSIDE A MODERN CLASSIC, MAUS is a beautiful book, both in visuals and themes, as the writer and artist is interviewed by Hillary Chute about the book that will not die, that he cannot escape, that he wishes would’ve been discovered only after 25 years after his death instead of being talked about for 25 years straight.
Not a chance, Art! First serialized in RAW (reprint please, Pantheon?) in 1980, MAUS not only changed the life of Spiegelman, but for graphic fiction in general. I recall being in high school when my journalism teacher, Mr. Effinger, told me I had to read this great book about the Holocaust that used mice as characters instead of humans. He loaned it to me, and I learned more about the Holocaust from it than any history class.
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Being the adventures of two Terran spatio-temporal agents, Valerian and Laureline, from 700 years in the future, THE EMPIRE OF A THOUSAND PLANETS, a self-sufficient follow-up to THE CITY OF SHIFTING WATERS, is equally equipped with eyeball kicks as it is with high adventure.
From their Galaxity spaceship, Valerian and Laureline observe the planet Syrtre, capital of a massive planetary system, to find out whether these Syrtians present any threat to their semi-benevolent Terran empire. Decadent and dying under the rule of an aristocracy controlled by a mysterious religious cult, our heroes plunge feet first into a heap of political intrigue leading towards a revolution, while trying to understand the Machiavellian machinations of this alien culture.
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Like a silent film from long ago, Thomas Ott can say a lot without saying a single word. Okay, to be fair, a few words are used in R.I.P.: BEST OF 1985-2004, a Fantagraphics-pubbed collection of nearly 20 tales, but the word count is so minute, it’s hardly worth mentioning.
The same can’t be said for Ott’s darkly humorous, black-and-white work, which tells wordless short stories of horror and suspense while spoofing the genres of their comics past (“A FUCKING WAR STORY,” proclaims the EC-esque symbol adorning “Headbanger”). His structure is as unique as his line-heavy art, striving to birth narratives strictly through visuals. For the most part, it works.
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