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I think I’ve sorted out the podcasting gremlins to be honest, however there is still some work to be done in getting my feeds sorted out on itunes as well, so we’ll see how that all works out.

I’ve got to say that this book took me over 6 months to get around to reading. This wasn’t because I was excited about reading it, this wasn’t because I had better things to read (as you’ll understand from the review) but it was mainly because the story content hits far too close to home for my liking. I’m Lebanese and therefore have see the effects of war on my country. I know what it’s like to walk through the streets of your capital and see pure destruction all around. Scorched black buildings, bullet holes the smell of burn and the uneasy nature of the whole experience.

What I thought I wouldn’t have to live through twice in my life I did, during the summer of 2006 as my country got levelled once again. That was around the time that DMZ came about, it’s about the fictional second American Civil war and is set in New York City.

DMZ stands for Demiliterized Zone. Unfortunately for me I didn’t need to go to Wikipedia to find this out as Lebanon used to have one. In layman’s terms it’s a buffer zone that keeps two people away from each other. This story is set in the DMZ of the second American Civil war. The story picks up thick in the middle of things with Matty Roth being taken away on his internship to the DMZ to cover a story. Things don’t go according to plan and Matt’s left stranded in the middle of the war zone. In the first issue he tries to get his employers to get him out and is disgusted by the nature of their rescue attempt which effectively sets the stage for him staying in the DMZ and being the only reporter living there.

The book is written by Brian Wood. I actually rate Brian as a creator, he’s got a certain earthiness that I really enjoy and I have stated before just how much I enjoyed Channel Zero, however I’ve got to say that DMZ is so far his greatest achievement to date and there are many reasons for this. For a start he’s actually got the room to play around with the knowledge that he’s got room to allow his ideas to grow. Let the characters breathe and let the story evolve. In most of his other works there does seem to be a little bit of restriction, this can be attributed to several things. One has always been the length of his stories. They seem to be cut short before he’s really had a chance to explore things a little more. Thankfully he’s better honed is craft to be enable him to do this particular story the justice it deserves.

The story starts to slowly explore the city as it is now. What’s changed, what has stayed the same. What are the new rules? I guess you’d definitely get a bigger kick out of this story if you actually knew New York City, or had the deep affection for the place that Brian has that you could appreciate what he was trying to produce. It’s a strange love story of a writer to a city to be honest. Rather than showing it in all it’s beauty Brian’s effectively destroyed it and showed how people tried to preserve it and tried to keep it relevant. Coming from a country where this fictional story is my reality it’s amazing how close he is in hitting those feelings one feels when his city lies in ruins around him, it’s a feeling I wouldn’t wish on anyone and yet millions of people know exactly how that feels.

The other significant part of the success of this series in my eyes has a great deal with the artist. Riccardo Burchielli’s is a new name to me, however I’m extremely impressed by his style. It oozes with a certain amount of confidence and it really compliments the style that is being driven here. The stories never waver in their detail and their emotion. While his stuff isn’t Akira in their detail, it’s just him (while Akira had like a whole army drawing that stuff) he does definitely pack a lot of stuff in the pages and it’s both raw and polished at the same time. He gives the story that edgy realism while keeping with the Brian Wood sensibilities as established by the writer’s covers (that has got to be a Vertigo first, where the writer actually is the cover artist).

If you’re still on the fence on this series, and I can understand why you might be considering the subject matter, go to the official Vertigo website and download the first issue, not a bad way to spend 10 or 15 minutes of your time I assure you.

We’re in a golden age for good comic book series. I’m talking about classic series that are very well written and amazingly illustrated. Ex Machina continues that trait as Tony Harris gets down and dirty and gets stuck into a sequential story after playing around in the DC University on books like JSA and some other things. I’ve not picked up any of that stuff, but to be fair if I did it wouldn’t be for the characters or the writing and only for the artwork; it’s something I refuse to do nowadays as I look for the ultimate combinations which as hopefully Splash Panel is showing there are plenty of those knocking about.

Brian Vaughan is not an unknown property. He’s proved himself with Y The Last man. That series didn’t really tickle my fancy, both from the story POV and the artwork however he’s really firing on all cyclinders in Ex Machina as I see this as his magnus opus. When I think of Vaughan, I think of Ex Machina.

So what is this series about? Mitchell Hundred was the mayor of New York City between 2002 and 2005 and he’s telling us the story of his term in office. The difference is that Mitchell used to be a vigillante or tried to be a superhero. After a weird accident (which hasn’t been completely explained) at the bottom of Brocklyn bridge his face fused with something that was growing there and he can now listen and talk to machines. With this new found ability he was talked into ‘helping’ people. However it because apparent very quickly that there were better ways to do this and so he ran for office.

While the premise sounds very comic booky, I promise you the rest of the series isn’t. The series has many great characteristics, these include the cast of characters that all have a distinct voice which Vaughan does a great job of making them shine through the spectacular dialogue he’s got them saying. Oftentimes the characters will go off on a complete tangent and talk about a random bit of historical point about the city of New York. It’s crazy because Brian really looks like he’s done his homework, because I doubt he could make this shit up and I guess you learn a little bit more about New York City’s short history. It is very amusing most of the times, shocking in other times.

First of all I’ve got to say that it was a major coup for Wildstorm to pick this series to publish it because it would have feel in the Vertigo category more easily, except and I really hate saying this, better production values. Vertigo is not known for flashy interior artwork and this is seen by the fact that they don’t use glossy paper for their books and the colour palette that is used for their books is always relatively muted. It’s a terrible shame because most of the Vertigo Comics artists can run circles around the average superhero comic book artist. In this book the Jolly Roger team really put their stamp of the look of the book. It simple screams class in every panel.
Tony Harris and his co-consiprators have seriously removed all the stops and it really shows how much fun their having with this series. The facial expressions are always spot on and the designs all look incredible real.

At the back of the book there are a few goodies that seem to be more rare and rare these days. The only people that seem to actually add ‘DVD’ style extras at the back are the ones that are self publishing their books or publishing them through Image. This book shows us the process in which the artwork is made. All of the panels (at least the ones where it’s really talking bodies) are done through a process of setting up the scene in real life with friends and randoms I guess acting the roles of the characters. Harris uses the lighting and whatever to help him build the scene and then comes everything else. Some people would think that this was cheating and that Harris is a hack for needing to use photoreference; I say the man’s found a technique that works for him. All that matters is the final page that you see and that page is always spectacular.

Final element of this book that I’ve got to mention is the fact that it’s a wrap around cover. I really miss these things, as usually in a trade paperback that option is often forgotten or not used and I really think it’s a missed opportunity to felx your artistic muscles. Glad to report that Harris not only takes this opportunity but also continues it in all the future trade paperbacks. That’s a nice touch and one that sets the series above the rest straight away from something as simple as a wrap around cover, it just looks like a different series straight away.

What’s great is that if you’re still on the fence you can download the first full issue from the official website right here. Also while you’re at it, check out the official Ex Machina website. It’s not that great, as the flash is kinda choppy and a bit lame in parts, but it’s good to see that the creators are at least trying to make something more for this excellent series.

There’s something seriously cool about this book. Maybe it’s the Warren Ellis introduction that really sells the book exceptionally well. Maybe it’s the fantastic graphic design of the entire package. The truth however is probably a combination of all these points and the story found within these pages. Originally it was released by Image Comics but it didn’t find the audience that it needed, which is just as well for Larry Young (the publisher of Ait-Planetlar) since he’s found his golden boy.

Looking at the front cover when Channel Zero was published the San Francisco publisher had a mere 6 other graphic novels in it’s library (3 of which were more graphic novellas than novels but I digress). This was the biggest release by Ait-Planetlar at the time and it still sells for them and with good reason.

The book is set in New York sometime in the future, after the Clean Act. A bill passed in parliament that put a stranglehold on free speech. Everything was censored and the government clamped down. The story follows Jennie 2.5 as she tries to wake people up, as she stages her resistance to this situation. The story is told from a first person perspective as you get into Jennie’s mind as she fights through. The resistance is being built and staged in a different way, it’s dirtier, it’s grittier, the future it’s portraying is real. This is a resistance as someone young would stage it.

Artistically the book is a pastiche of black and white photographs superimposed on solid black inks, done in a very scratchy style. The art style fits the story perfectly. I’d even go so far to say that I couldn’t imagine any other style associated with this type of story. The really annoying thing is that Brian Wood doesn’t draw much sequential stories anymore as he concentrates to drawing/designing covers and writing stories for others to draw. It’s a shame really because I think that is what gives him that certain edge to his work. It’s like because he’s drawing it he puts that much more emotion into the page and he makes it all count.

One of the great little details that I love about the book are the little messages that are scattered randomly about the page. It’s a good little way of showing off what it’s trying to tell you. My absolute favourite line in the book is:

‘Your Mind is a Weapon. Use it’

However there are loads more:

• Beware those who know
• Bomb the system
• Don’t be a puppet

On Broken Kode, I wrote an entry a while back that effectively attacked Brian Wood’s latest work (at the time latest). Unfortunately if you google Ait Planetlar in google that particular post comes up on the first page. What the post also fails to tell you why I was upset. The reason was simple, I had read Channel Zero. It’s a very tough act to follow, and unfortunately that was Brian’s first sequential work. I have enjoyed a few of his books since this book was released, however they can’t match this, although I’m always keen to see if he can.

Writer : Brian Wood
Illustrator : Brian Wood
Letter: Brian Wood
Publisher: Ait-Planetlar

Little can be said that hasn’t already been said about the genius that is Alan Moore. The reason why the man occupies such an amazing place in the minds of people who have read graphic novels can be attributed to the fact that his body of work spans across several genres and each one of his stories is a gem, with a great deal of emotion and thought brought to the table ,where before it was bare. He does this best with his own creations but also for any work for hire he’s done in the past.

V for Vendetta is about revolution, anarchy, hope and corruption. It’s about fighting for your beliefs. It’s a powerful story set in the backdrop of the 80s England, which as far as I can tell, was not a very nice place to be. The story is set in the late 90s after a nuclear war; however since Moore didn’t have all the actual facts about what such a war would do to the world. He describes very slightly what the after effects of the war were but this is downplayed a great deal in the book. Moore admits in his introduction that in fact when the story was written it was unsure whether or not anything could survive a nuclear war. That explains why the cities are still standing and haven’t been rendered to rubble like something out of Mad Max. A fascist party controls the country under an iron grip of controlled media and constant camera surveillance, not dissimilar to what’s going on now in England, only in a much more toned down way.

The structure of the book is such that it is served in different sizes chunks of story, ranging from 5 pages to 12 or whatever. Sometimes continues, sometimes picking up a different area of the story. Each story title begins with the letter V, and the more you read the more you understand the reason behind this. The main character is simply called V and he wears a spooky smiling mask. He’s got a dark coat on and a long hat. V has got a master plan to bring down the people that have taken over and nothing he does is for chance.

Moore has an incredible nack for making it all so obvious, after he’s actually told you what’s going on. The dialogue exchanged by V and many of the characters is absolutely superb, I’ll leave you with my favourite:

There’s only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.

The cover isn’t the most spectacular when you look at it as a piece of art, however once you’ve read the story, it’s the most perfectly rendered painting this side of Alex Ross. There is something seriously haunting about V and his mask. David does an amazing job of making all these characters very real. I’ve not seen anything else from the man on the shelves which is a damn shame because he is a very good storyteller. The inside cover says that the man is working on something called Kickback, so I’ll definitely be looking out for that when it comes out.

I do wonder about the colouring choice on this book, however I do need to consider that this book was started in 1980s before computer colouring came to the scene (and of course I’m not thinking about giving it flashy colours, but something a bit less washed out might have been appropriate).

I will admit that V for Vendetta was actually one of the last works by Alan Moore that I had not read until recently (finished it yesterday). The main reason was that I didn’t know what it was about. That’s no excuse really because the man’s proven himself to be the best in the business that I shouldn’t have had any apprehensions because he does not disappoint. Anything the man writes is golden.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November.

Story: Alan Moore
Artist: David Lloyd
Colourist: David Lloyd, Steve Whitaker and Siobhan Dodds
Publisher: Vertigo Comics

Before I get into the review of this book I just wanted to make an observation regarding the nature of graphic novels and the creators behind them. It’s such a small tight nit community that it’s completely normal for the readers to interact with the creators online as soon as they’ve read and devoured the work. Case in point, I sent an email to Jock earlier yesterday asking him for the above trade dress for the full wrap around cover, to which he graciously sent to me in like a few hours from me asking. Direct contact with the man. That’s just another reason that makes the sequential storytelling art form special and unique in direct comparison with other entertainment mediums.

Ante Up collects the first 6 issues from this great little action-political-mystery series from Vertigo Comics. The first chapter is self contained called Dead Man’s Hand, while the rest of the book concentrates on a single story arc, Goliath. The best way to describe ‘The Losers’ is one of the best action movie you’ve ever seen drawn on paper. The action movie model is taken and translated extremely well within the covers of this book.

The story
The plot centres around a group of agents who have been betrayed by the Company (CIA). The Company didn’t really do that great a job of killing them off completely so they’re out to find both answers, retribution and hopefully a chance to get back to their normal lives or at least that’s the plan in the beginning. The story involves American foreign policy, corporate politics and a slash of espionage.

While it may sounds all very simple the way in which the stories are presented and setup does make you take stock and think things through. The real mystery beings on the last page of the book however where the direction of the series is hinted at. It’s not 120 pages of stuff blowing up, it’s a whole lot more than that. However when stuff does blow up Diggle and jock make the page itself want to explode as you don’t get that type of energy found on each page in many other action comic books.

The characters
This is easily one of Andy’s strongest assets as a storyteller. His characters shine through. Each one of them has a distinct voice that rings true. Jensen has the best lines, and I guess I like him because of that (and being the computer jockey/geek of the group). Aisha’s completely crazy but at the same time you know she could can hold her own. You’ve got the Colonel, the second in command Roque, Pooch (the fly-boy) and Cougar (the sharp shooter) as well completing the dirty half dozen characters.

The Art
Jock provides the artwork for this series. You can tell he has the most fun when he’s drawing machinery, helicopters, trucks, tanks, oil tankers, cars whatever. He skews the angles a bit.

Another thing he captures very well is mood. Through the use of thick solid blacks he gives you that darker edge that you want. The artwork is slightly sketchy, which comes off as a little dirty, and that’s the overall feel you get reading this book. It’s not about the happy and clean, it’s about the ugly and dirty. Another fine example of the art complimenting the story to be told. So if the artwork doesn’t grab you straight off the bat, know that by the end of reading this you won’t be able to imagine another artist doing the characters any justice but Jock.

The Covers
The thing that does stand out for me are the covers which are done by the series artist. It’s an important point to make as traditionally in Vertigo comics there is usually a cover artist. It’s usually a visual treat with people like Dave Johnson and James Jean doing the honours, but it’s hardly ever the interior artist. In addition to that the covers are usually painted, whereas in this particular case Jock does it with a bit of pencil and a lot of ink, and the results are what made me pick the book up in the first place. The covers are soo distinct and colourful. They’re also telling of what is in the books themselves. This is a concept that’s been lost for a while. I know it’s a series of comics put together into one package, so the covers are little more than pin ups, I see them as dividers to chapters, giving me a brief glimpse of what I can expect in the new chapter effectively.

The book design by John Hill is also one that breaks the normal standard Vertigo fare. I like a certain amount of experimentation in the cover designs. Books like Wildcats 2.0 (review coming soon) definitely brought the cover design aspect to the forefront after people like Warren Ellis hammering on about it for ages, but Hill and Ryan Hughes are actually doing something about it.

Writer: Andy Diggle
Artist: Jock
Colourist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Clem Robins
Covers: Jock
Book Design: John J.Hill
Publisher: Vertigo Comics
Book Volume 1