5 Comics Worth Reading This Weekend (28th Oct)
Staving off the hateful idiocy with a celebration of what comics can do!
This week, the two distinct heads have risen from the body of the comics industry. The industry that boasts the most influential storytelling in most (if not 'any') media today, the industry that glories in bringing refined artwork to the general public week in and week out, was mired in controversy again when some "fans" took to twitter to lash out at bestselling novelist Chelsea Cain because of the unabashed feminism she included in her final issue of Mockingbird (#8)
One creator wrote "We need to be better" and that's what I hope to do here.
This week is one that celebrates what comics do best: make art. When you think about the average cost of a comic and then you see the work and dedication that goes into developing the skill the storytellers (and don’t forget, that includes writers, pencillers, inkers, colourists, letterers and an army of people working together just to get the bloody thing on a shelf somewhere!) use to produce them, every issue somehow seems criminally cheap. (Even though buying all of them would cost a small fortune. Thank Agamotto for good libraries!)
This week, that artwork is put to good use in celebrating 75 years of Wonder Woman, glorying in Strange origins (old and new) and seeing two of the great literary stories spliced together. Perhaps not the issues you’d be expecting this week but certainly ones that are worth picking up...
5. Tarzan On The Planet Of The Apes #2
(Dark Horse/Boom) Walker/Seeley/Dagnino/Molina
Worth Reading For: Dagnino’s Art That Swims In Molina’s Sweltering Colours
“Early twentieth-century British colonialists have rebuilt the slave trade around the intelligent apes that raised Tarzan in the jungles of Africa. Now Tarzan and his adoptive brother Caesar fight back to free the apes—but discover that man and ape will have to unite if the surface world is to survive.”
There are plenty of cross-overs that either entice or enrage but this is very much the former. Walker and Seeley succeed in splicing together Pierre Boulle’s world with that of Edgar Rice Burroughs - so much so that you can barely see the seams on their contemporary social criticism - but the driving force of this story is the art.
Fernando Dagnino builds his lines and tones in layers so fluid they seem to move both when you’re not looking and when you are, and Sandra Molina’s colours dowse them in a sweltering heat that you can feel coming off the page.
If you’re in for a cold winter pick up this comic and you’ll find your escape.