SEQUENTIAL
DOWNPOUR
Special
Comics for Stranded Commuters
So, it’s raining outside, and in here it feels like somebody left a nappy in the oven. You're on the way to work, or you're packing for your hols, like the good, hard working folks you are, but you’re dreading that twelve-hour wait at the airport, or that interminable claustrophobia of the morning commute. Even now, you’re rending your clothes in terror at the thought of trying to plow through more of the same old free newspapers or airline magazines.
Well fear not, o faithful Fistoleer. We’ll save you having to endure the latest sub-Grisham legal grinder. We’ll make sure that you board that plane with enough comic entertainment to keep you grinning from ear to ear, and from ‘ere to there.
These comics are novel-length, densely plotted and the sort of books that will keep both sides of your brain occupied as you hurtle over the Atlantic (or along the Northen Line). These are the comics that will make Bank Holiday traffic jams bearable. These are the comics that will turn heads as you bask on the beach.
These are the comics that will make British Rail fun again.
So join us now, as we present the Robot Fist Guide to the Best Travel Comics.
ASTRONAUTS
IN TROUBLE: MASTER FLIGHT PLAN
Larry Young, Charlie Adlard, Matt
Smith
AiT/planetLar Comics
Either we’re alone in the Universe, or we’re not. Either there are new friends to make beyond the Solar rim, or the cosmos is our playground. Ether way, Humanity’s destiny – Humanity’s only hope – is to one day leave the nest.
And build a bar on the moon.
Larry Young’s magnum opus takes us back to the moon, for the first time in a long time. In Astronauts in Trouble, he shows us what it took to get us there in the first place, what it might cost to get us back, and finally, what might be waiting for us when we get there. Young’s story is enthralling, rambunctious fun, full of hope and humour and hardy machismo. Charlie Adlard is, as ever, a first-rate partner in crime, with energy and emotional depth to spare.
AiT veers from Cheers territory to Die Hard with a camcorder, but it never loses sight of the promise of Tomorrow, and the simple joy of storytelling.
THREE
DAYS IN EUROPE
Antony
Johnston and Mike Hawthorne
Oni
Press
Jack and Jill are in a comfortable three-year rut - - er, relationship. They’re a well-heeled couple for whom the world is most definitely the mollusc of their choice. Then they have the bright idea of organising a secret romantic trip for two. At the same time.
Each as stubborn as a mule, Jack and Jill refuse to back down, and end up on each other’s dream vacation. And things go from bad to worse.
Three Days In Europe is a breakneck transcontinental farce that takes in three of the world’s most beautiful cities, two of the world’s most popular fantasies, and comes up with one of the world’s few universal truths: that Love Ain’t Easy.
Johnston’s script is classical in scope: clearly influenced by the great romantic comedies of the ’50’s and ‘60’s, it finds the reader investing in the characters and the plot quickly and deeply. Mike Hawthorne’s keen eye for character and sharp sense of humour is at work in this book, and the two mesh tightly.
Three Days in Europe is a romance novel with ice and a twist.
LOST
AT SEA
Bryan
Lee O’Malley
Oni
Press
Lost at Sea is a travel novel in which a young girl, on the cusp of adulthood, rides across America in a car full of strangers, in search of her soul.
Which may be in a cat.
Lost at Sea has a drawn, bleak edge, driven as it is by the lead character’s quest to understand why she feels so empty and broken inside. It’s a poignant tale, sharing a sense of Oh-Shit-I’m-A-Grown-Up-What-The-Fuck-Next? with the otherwise dissimilar Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World. It develops, however, a curious sense of optimism: a sense that, no matter how hard you might want to beat yourself up, you don’t have to feel like you’re alone. Not all the time, at any rate.
O’Malley’s dialogue is smooth and natural. His characters exude youth and self-deprecation. Lost at Sea is the cult arthouse story that every university student with half a soul would be worshipping, if it had been a movie. It has an arc and a motion that can truly be appreciated on the move. It’ll break your heart, but don’t worry: it’ll put it back together again when it’s done.
SHUTTERBUG
FOLLIES
Jason
Little
Doubleday
Bee works in a busy metropolitan photo lab. She gets to see life through the lens – weddings, birthdays, parties and funerals are her bread and butter. But then she happens across a photo that looks suspiciously like someone’s murder, and before she knows it, Bee finds herself at the centre of the shitstorm.
Of all the books in this list, Shutterbug Follies is the one most likely to turn heads. Jason Little’s novel is a hardcover thing of technicolour beauty. Modelled after a photo album, with panels shaped like photographs, Little’s story reads like Alfred Hitchcock’s TinTin, or Kate Winslet’s One Hour Photo: a realistic world, draped in bright (but not garish) primary colours. Bee is a disarming, if implacable amateur sleuth, and she comes into conflict with an assortment of sufficiently threatening characters.
Shutterbug Follies is an atypical murder mystery, and just the thing for a long train ride, or a dreary summer thunderstorm.
TOP
TEN (Vols. 1 & 2)
Alan
Moore, Gene Ha & Zander Cannon
America’s
Best Comics
Neopolis is a city built, run, populated and policed by superheroes. And in a world where the extraordinary is everywhere, and the unusual ubiquitous, it takes a special kind of cop to keep the city clean.
You’ll want both volumes of Top Ten. Themes and plotlines developed in Volume One carry over into Volume Two. Together, they comprise a complete, discrete story, equivalent to an entire season of NYPD: Blue, CSI or The Shield.
In Top Ten, it is character, rather than gimmick, that drives the story. And yet, Moore makes the most of both, indulging in his gifts for wordplay, dialogue and plot, to layer the world of Top Ten with characters from Norse myth, science fiction and superheroes that will seem as fresh as they do familiar.
Gene Ha and Zander Cannon have a symbiotic relationship that allows them to create a world worth dreaming about, seemingly from whole cloth. The sheer range and number of clever little easter eggs – characters familiar to the widely read comic fan – is staggering, but none of them detract from the charming, novel, and wide-ranging cast.
An ensemble drama on a par with anything you care to mention – in any medium – Top Ten is what police comics – all comics – should aspire to – a black belt exhibition of craft, so delicately applied as to be invisible behind the wall of Plot and Character..
Comics are the perfect antidote to the holiday blues. They are involving, holistic affairs, the words and pictures engaging different parts of the brain at the same time, and they draw the reader in to worlds of rare beauty, adventure and horror. The comics on this list are the perfect length for the train, the plane, the back of the car, the beachfront bar – or, naturally, the time spent on the toilet with Unfortunate’s Belly.
Holidays are a great time to go new places and try new things. Long train or coach journeys may be the only time you get to enjoy a seriously good read. If you're looking for some novelty with your novel, and if comics are new to you – or new again – then there are worse places to start than the books on this list.
Essay Text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist, and modified for publication here.