Kill Shakespeare, Vol. 1: A Sea of Troubles, by Conor McCreery, Anthony Del Col and Andy Belanger (IDW) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review previously appeared in TQF67 (July 2020).

Written by Canadians Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col, with art by Andy Belanger, this book collects the first six issues of the comic book.

It begins in Denmark, after Hamlet has mistakenly killed Polonius. As in Act IV of the play, he is sent on a ship to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. In this version, Rosencrantz reveals the treacherous letter to Hamlet, but it saves him not since he is killed when the pirates attack and sink the ship. Hamlet washes up in the kingdom of Richard III, who declares him the Shadow King, meant to fulfill a great prophecy. He is supposedly to free all these characters from the tyranny of William Shakespeare, their writer and god, by stealing his quill. In truth, Richard III and his allies – including Iago, Lady Macbeth and the witches – want the bard dead.

Starstruck, by Elaine Lee and Michael Wm. Kaluta (IDW) | review by Stephen Theaker

Reviewing Starstruck is difficult, since I barely understood a word of what was going on. In that sense, as well as in the detailed art, lettering and beautiful colours, it reminded me of reading French graphic novels – in French. There are people, in space. A ruler, who has a son and daughter who fight. A girl becomes an Amazon and as part of her initiation must battle some half-naked trolls. A psychic little girl climbs into an aquarium exhibit to communicate with the psychic aquatic life forms on display, sending her talent into overdrive, and when she’s older is placed with a fraudulent society of nuns. There’s a lot more going on, and a lot to take in, and I failed at that. Any individual page of it is glorious, and as a whole it’s admirable if baffling. Text pages at the end reveal that it’s all a prequel to a stage play, which helped me to understand it a little better: if I’d read it with a better idea of which characters were the protagonists, and what I was supposed to be rooting for, I would probably have enjoyed it more. And in a print edition, I might have realised sooner from flicking through that there was an extensive glossary; that would have helped too. New readers might be better off starting two hundred and thirty-eight pages in, with the stories of young Brucilla in the Galactic Girl Guides, since they are easier to follow and provide a more straightforward introduction to this universe. Overall, I enjoyed it, I think, but I started reading it in November 2013, and finished it in November 2017, which tells its own story. I would only recommend it if it sounds like something you’d really dig, if you like spending lots on time on each page of a comic, and plan to read it in print or on a tablet with a big screen. Having said that, its fans must have been delighted to have the whole saga collected in one book. ***

Superf*ckers Forever, by James Kochalka and chums (IDW) | review by Stephen Theaker

A five-issue miniseries of the utmost puerility, this is very entertaining. The Superf*ckers are a Legion of Super-Heroes-esque gang of teenagers who live inside a club house and act like complete idiots. Even Vortex, who fixes up the universe every time the others destroy it, is willing to lie down on a sofa that has just been peed on by his colleagues Jack Krak the Motherfucker and Ultra Richard (it’s better than weeing in the toilet, they decide, because you never have to clean it). The skull possessed by interdimensional super-villain Omnizod shows up, first getting turned into a lamp by stinky Grotessa, then encouraging Princess Sunshine down a megalomaniacal path. Orange Lightning is jonesing for his next fix of Grotus’s slime, Computer Fist is struggling to get his robot fists working properly, and team leader Superdan returns from Dimension Zero just in time to lead a pointless new mission into Dimension Zero. The stories are sweary, rude and gross, and all the better for it. Kochalka’s artwork is as brilliantly characterful as ever, while a series of backups by other creators show that these heroes look just as silly through their eyes. The entire series can be read in under an hour, but what a great way to spend an hour. ****

Locke & Key, Vol. 6: Alpha & Omega, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW Publishing) | review by Stephen Theaker

Since the Locke family moved to the town of Lovecraft, Massachusetts, and began to live in the big old Keyhouse, things have been weird, dangerous and magical. By the time this final collection begins the children have almost got to the point where they can cope with their losses and new responsiblities, but the demon that possessed Luke Caravaggio is hiding among them, gathering keys of power and waiting for the most devastating time to strike: prom night, when the kids are planning to have an afterparty in the cave down by the ocean. Just where he wants them. Luckily Tyler, Kinsey and Bode have found friends and allies since they came to town, so they won’t have to face this fight alone. Writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez bring their story to a satisfying conclusion. The stakes are high, the heroes are brave, the villain is vile, and thematically it all ties up with where it began, Tyler telling the bad guy, “I wouldn’t underrate the power of regret. It doesn’t feel good… but it’s hard to learn anything important without it.” That’s “Omega”, and in the epilogue, “Alpha”, Tyler makes some kind of peace with his own great regret. It’s a good place for the story to end, though you feel there’s still a lot of space in this world for new stories to be told. ****

Star Trek: Gold Key Archives, Vol. 1, by Dick Wood, Alberto Giolitti and Nevio Zeccara (IDW Publishing) | review by Stephen Theaker

Back when the William Shatner version of Captain James Kirk first commanded the USS Enterprise, Gold Key published these cheesy but energetic stories about him and his crew; even in those early days for the franchise, half-Vulcan first officer Spock must have been the clear breakout character, since he appears more prominently than the captain on four of the six covers. Tony Isabella explains in the introduction that none of the creators involved in this series saw any episodes before starting work, which may explain why Scotty is in these issues an awkward blonde, and why in “The Planet of No Return” an encounter with a plant civilisation ends with the planet being scoured of all life, on Spock’s urgent recommendation. In “The Devil’s Isle of Space” the crew nonchalantly leaves convicts to be killed in an explosion, simply because it is “the way of their society”. These are big-scale stories where anything goes. In “Invasion of the City Builders”, a planet’s land has been almost completely covered by cities, thanks to automation gone too far, and “The Peril of Planet Quick Change” features missiles being fired into the planet’s core. In “The Ghost Planet” the ship drags the rings away from a planet, and in “When Planets Collide” the ship must somehow stop two worlds from crashing into each other, an impact which would pitch many of the planets of the Alpho galaxy “out of orbit… to burn in space!” Galaxies seem to be quite small here, and the ship seems to visit a new one every issue! Time is measured in lunar hours and galaxy seconds, everyone in the universe speaks Space Esperanto, and Kirk calls aliens “space scum”. So the stories are goofy, but that only makes them more enjoyable. It does capture that sense from the original series that the universe was an incredibly dangerous place where even heroes like Kirk and Spock would only survive if luck was on their side. The newly recoloured art looks great, and the simple six-panel grid layout makes for very easy reading. ***

Star Trek, Vol. 1, by Mike Johnson, Stephen Molnar and Joe Phillips (IDW Publishing) | review by Stephen Theaker

The ongoing Star Trek comic follows the adventures of the Chris Pine version of Captain James Kirk and his crew, as shown in Star Trek XI, XII and XIII. This first volume collects issues one to four, set soon after the eleventh film, with Kirk in charge of the USS Enterprise a good deal sooner than in the previous continuity, and the five year mission off to an early start. Oddly, though, they still run into many of the same situations, since the two stories here are adapted from the television episodes “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, in which crewman Gary Seven acquires the powers of a god after the Enterprise tries to cross the galaxy’s edge , and “The Galileo Seven”, in which a shuttlecraft crew led by an as-yet untrusted Spock is lost and stranded on a dangerous world with aggressive locals. James Blish’s prose adaptations tended to improve on the original programme, so maybe these comics could do the same? Sadly not. Adapting forty-minute episodes to forty-page comics doesn’t leave room for a lot of detail, and although the stories are subtly changed by taking place in the new continuity they feel sketchy and underfed. The artwork is good, the likenesses pretty decent, it’s just that the project itself feels a bit pointless. Perhaps it’s aimed at fans of the new films who haven’t watched the original show? Either way, it’s good to see that subsequent volumes add new, original stories to the mix. **

Book notes #6

Notes and ratings from TQF50 and TQF51 for books I didn’t review. Credits from Goodreads; apologies to anyone miscredited or missing.

Fear Itself (Marvel), by Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen. An underwhelming crossover story. Odin has given up on Earth, but Thor and the Avengers think there is still hope. ***

G.I. Joe: Classics, Vol. 4 (IDW Publishing), by Larry Hama, Rod Whigham, Frank Springer, Mark Bright, Bob Camp and Rod Wigham. Collection of Marvel’s attempt to create decent comics based on the daft soldier toys. ***

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlepig (Beale-Williams Enterprise) by Tad Williams. A novella about an angel advocate trying to help out a werewolf client. ***

God’s War (Del Rey), by Kameron Hurley. Grimdark science fiction about an unlikeable mercenary and her gang. Nyx used to be a Bel Dame, sent by the government to take the heads of boys running away from the war, but now she’s freelance. Her world is one of strong religion and what seems to us like magic, where insect life is the basis for technology and wombs can be dropped off at organ banks to avoid putting them in any danger. It’s a bit of a grind, full of torture, misery, and characters who hate each other, but it was good. Reminded me of things like John Carpenter’s Escape from New York and Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley. A bit like 2000AD if it were written by John Brunner instead of Pat Mills & co. ***

Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (PS Publishing), by Lavie Tidhar. Not, as a previous issue of this magazine had it, Gorel and the Pot-Bellied Pig! This is, as its subtitle tells us, a guns and sorcery novella. Gorel was “cast out of Goliris”, “exiled to the harsh lands of Lower Kidron”, where he makes his way as a hired hand, riding an insectoid Graal, hoping always to return home to avenge his family and punish his betrayers. In this story he encounters the froggish falang and the god they worship. This novella dates back to 2011, and ever since this review has glared balefully at me, even while I’ve reviewed several of the author’s other books. That was just because I read it quickly in amongst a bunch of other books, not because I didn’t enjoy it enough to write a review. Far from it: I thought this was terrific, and began a run of Tidhar’s books that have made him one of my favourite authors. It’s an extremely interesting book, reminding me of Elric in the way it attacks the conventions of the genre. You read it assuming that Gorel is a Conan-type hero, but as he does bad things it’s almost as if the author is saying, this is your hero? He’s a drug addict, injecting himself with gods’ dust, and he’s still your hero? What about when he does this? Or this?! How bad can a badass hero get before the reader stops admiring them? ****

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1: Cosmic Avengers (Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven, Sara Pichelli, Michael Avon Oeming and many others. This shows up as a 350pp book on Comixology, so I was expecting an epic in the style of DC’s three-issue crossover Invasion. Sadly not; most of it is a series of single panel guided view strips; the real story is only ninety pages or so. Lacks the verve of the Abnett and Lanning series, but the art is nice. ***

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1: Legacy (Marvel), by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Paul Pelletier. Inspiration for the film, with a similar spark. Here the new Guardians assemble in the aftermath of a galactic crisis. ***

Book notes #5

Notes and ratings from TQF50 and TQF51 for books I didn’t review. Credits from Goodreads; apologies to anyone miscredited or missing.

Doctor Who: Lights Out (Puffin), by Holly Black. The twelfth Doctor is buying coffee for Clara when another person in the queue falls down dead. Somehow manages to have a good handle on Peter Capaldi’s Doctor despite being written before his first full episodes were on. ***

Doctor Who: Something Borrowed (Puffin), by Richelle Mead. The sixth Doctor and Peri encounter an enemy, who is about to get married. Captures very well what came closest to being good about that period of the show. ***

Doctor Who: The Chains of Olympus (Panini UK Ltd), by Scott Gray, Mike Collins, Martin Geraghty, Dan McDaid. Eleventh Doctor adventures from Doctor Who Magazine. The Doctor meets the Greek gods. ***

Doctor Who: The Ripple Effect (Puffin), by Malorie Blackman. A nice little Doctor Who book. The seventh Doctor and Ace land on Skaro, centre of learning and peace, the Athens of space. Nice to read a Doctor Who book that is actually aimed at children. ***

Doctor Who: The Roots of Evil (Puffin) by Philip Reeve. The fourth Doctor and Leela land in a giant tree. That is a space station. That has been programmed to kill the Doctor. A neat premise, deftly handled. ***

Drunk with Blood – God’s Killings in the Bible (SAB Books), by Steve Wells. Eye-opening account of how many people get killed in the Bible, often for the silliest of reasons. At times you’d think it was the Master or Lex Luthor messing with history. The stuff in here makes the Red Wedding look like a pleasant family gathering. *****

Edison Rex, Vol. 1 (IDW Publishing) by Chris Roberson and Dennis Culver. This Lex Luthor type was right. His Superman was a dangerous alien with a hidden agenda, and Edison Rex managed to get rid of him. Now he wants to make the world a better place, but everyone still thinks he is a supervillain. A quick read. Text pages flesh it out a bit. ***

Edison Rex, Vol. 2: Heir Apparent (IDW Publishing) by Chris Roberson and Dennis Culver. Edison Rex is still trying to establish himself as a hero, but the former members of hero teams The Peacemakers and Teenpeace are suspicious, and he’s not keeping a close enough eye on his allies. Enjoyable, but a bit thin: of its 139 pages, 30 are single panels with white backgrounds of Edison talking to ROFL, this world’s Mister Mxyzptlk. ***

Fables, Vol. 16: Super Team (DC Comics) by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Terry Moore and Eric Shanower. Mister Dark attacks, and in response Pinocchio and Ozma create a super-team to fight him. Meanwhile the North Wind has resolved to kill one of the Big Bad Wolf’s children. This is the sixteenth book in the series, and I’ve only previously read the first couple, but it was easy enough to pick up. Good story, with excellent artwork. Shame about the repetitive borders on the main story, which take up a lot of screen space when reading it on a tablet. ***

Fantastic Four, Vol. 1: New Departure, New Arrivals (Marvel) by Matt Fraction, Mark Bagley and Mike Allred. Slightly muddled collection of two separate but related titles, as Reed Richards realises he is dying and takes the family off to find a cure – without telling them. Loved the pages with Mike Allred art. ***

Fatale, Vol. 1: Death Chases Me (Image Comics), by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Graphic novel written by Ed Brubaker and drawn by Sean Phillips, who previously collaborated on several well-regarded crime comics. It is the story of Jo, an ageless, beautiful femme fatale (on double duty as this book’s McGuffin), and the men who enter her life. In the forties that was a US soldier, who has become by the fifties a corrupt, dying police officer who barely visits her any more, ashamed of his own ageing. Dominic Haines is a married journalist who meets her in the fifties. Nicolas Lash is Dominic’s inheritor, who discovers among his godfather’s papers an unpublished manuscript from 1957, “The Losing Side of Eternity”. But before he can read it weird guys with bowler hats, round glasses and guns pull up outside. “And I realised exactly how far out in the woods I actually was. And how far away the police would be.” Jo comes to the rescue (well, almost) and the convalescent Lash reads his godfather’s story, of black magic, cultists and Lovecraftian gods. Dave Stewart (presumably not the one with spiky headphones) does a wonderful job on colours, finding exactly the right tone. ****

The X-Files: Season 10, Vol. 1 by Joe Harris and friends | review by Stephen Theaker

The X-Files: Season 10, Vol. 1 by Joe Harris, Carlos Valenzuela and Michael Walsh (IDW, tpb, 138pp) tries to follow the example of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 in providing the comics continuation of a beloved and much-missed television series. Unlike Buffy, Mulder (as played by David Duchovny, until recently shedding his trousers twelve weeks a year on Californication) and Scully (Gillian Anderson, last seen on Hannibal and the BBC) had pretty much given up the fight by the time their series ended, their replacements Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Reyes (Annabeth Gish) taking the limelight up until the originals returned for the disappointingly low-key second feature film.