If you’re in the Washington DC area the weekend of September 11-12, do make sure to swing by! It’s a great show, and I say that not as someone who used to run it, but as someone who enjoyed going to the show so much that I wanted to help work on it. Just make sure to bring your wallet, there’s a tremendous amount of great stuff in store for you to buy.

And, as always, thanks for your patience.

Never let it be said that Harlan Ellison allows an idea to go to waste. For those unfamiliar with the television show The Starlost, it aired in the 1970s for a single season, originally created by Ellison. He withdrew from the series before it aired, though, and took his name off it and the pilot that he’d written. Since then, he’s published the script under the title he’d given it, Phoenix Without Ashes. And now, it’s back for a whole new generation who have probably never heard of it, as a comic-book mini-series. Here’s the thing, though: I’m not entirely convinced it needed to come back.

I’d never read the previous publication of Phoenix Without Ashes (or seen The Starlost), so I went the comic with middle-of-the-road expectations on what we’d actually get. And at first, I found myself going along with the story. It’s set in the future but most of the technology is distinctly in the past, bringing to mind Amish farming communities as our lead character Devon begs the preacher that runs the town for permission to marry Rachel, only to be denied because the computer says they aren’t genetically compatible. There are early hints on what’s going on laid out for us, though (mentions of a metal sky in particular), but only when Devon discovers a hatch in the ground at the end of the first issue is it becoming explicitly clear where Devon and the rest of his village really resides.

The problem is, what might have felt fresh and interesting in 1970s television isn’t quite as exciting now. Stories of communities in a larger craft, or other setting, are a dime a dozen. So when Ellison makes his big reveal to the reader, there isn’t the same sort of punch or moment of wonder. It’s a bit more of a "that’s it?" end to the issue, even as you’re fairly certain you know exactly where this is going. It probably doesn’t help matters that the script is somewhat weak; all the "thees" and "thous" from the preacher are trying to set his dialogue apart from Devon, but instead it comes across as a slightly impenetrable slab of words. On the screen this might have worked better, but here it felt like a large stumbling block for the reader’s eyes to slide over.

Alan Robinson draws Phoenix Without Ashes, and in a peculiar way it reminds me of old comics by Evan Dorkin. The characters have thick lines defining their faces, and characters feel slightly stiff and artificial. It’s a problem that Dorkin got over fairly quickly in his career as he continued to draw comics, and with any luck the same will be true for Robinson. Watching a three-panel progression of Devon running towards the church, it looks a little undynamic and posed. I appreciate that he’s trying to show time shift from one image to the next, but for now it’s just not quite there. Hopefully his action sequences, over time, will loosen up. It’s not a bad look overall, but every time motion shows up it’s hard to not see the stiffness in the work.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of Ellison’s writing over the years, but this feels like an odd project to bring to life. I’d rather see something new from Ellison (a big wish, I know), or even some more adaptations of his short stories like we had in the Harlan Ellison’s Dream Corridor series back in the day. This just doesn’t seem quite like the right project to bring back. Maybe if it continues beyond Ellison’s initial script it will begin to justify its existence, but for now, it just feels too dated to be that exciting.

I’ve always appreciated that Eddie Campbell isn’t afraid to take on strange projects. In theory, he could have kept writing and drawn Bacchus over the years, which had a built-up audience and a reputation within comics, or stuck with his autobiographical alter ego Alec. But instead, he’s continued to pick up different oddities over the years, the latest of which is Daren White’s script about a socially awkward playwright. It doesn’t sound like something to set the pages on fire, but I figured that Campbell had agreed to it for a good reason. And, of course, he was right. For a book that should have been annoying, White and Campbell make it startlingly compelling.

Each of The Playwright‘s ten chapters is a different vignette about the protagonist of the book, never referred to as more than the Playwright. At first it looks like an affection on the part of White, but the further into the book you read, the more it becomes clear. Reading those early chapters, focusing on the Playwright’s immense issues with dealing with the rest of the world (women and family in particular), it starts to shape up into a much larger work about our protagonist’s mental landscape. He’s slightly damaged, more than a bit neurotic, and out of place from the rest of the world. He’s unable to function quite like everyone else, and so instead he processes everything through his scripts. It’s not the most normal way of dealing with reality, but once you see it as the only way he can connect his inner feelings and turmoil to what’s actually happening, the Playwright becomes a much more interesting character.

It also helps that White isn’t afraid to slowly change the character of the Playwright over time. It would have been easy for the book to begin and end with the main character in the same position in life, making this just a series of observations on the Playwright’s part that we get to watch slowly play out. But at the halfway point of the book, things began to shift just as the reader might otherwise grow tired of the titular character. Given new responsibilities and a genuine supporting cast, the Playwright slowly becomes sympathetic once we see him deal with the same people and problems over an extended period of time. It becomes increasingly clear (if it wasn’t already) that he’s not a bad person, just one who over the years was mistakenly left to his own devices and matured in all the wrong ways. It’s certainly no coincidence that the neglect that happened in part due to his parents focusing on the needs of the Playwright’s mentally disabled brother is eventually undone by the return of the brother into the Playwright’s life, although not in any big or dramatic fashion. Rather, it’s the moment that gets the proverbial ball rolling, and the second half of The Playwright ends up that much more interesting.

Campbell draws The Playwright in a landscape format, with two or three panels side-by-side (almost as if we’re reading an extremely extended comic strip), then painted over with what looks to be watercolors. It’s an attractive look, despite (or perhaps because of) its distinctly average looking characters. Campbell draws nothing but ordinary people throughout The Playwright, and it’s that down to earth normal view of the world that helps contribute to my ultimate interest in the book. It would have be easy to make the Playwright into a hideous man to help play up his negative aspects, but he just looks slightly silly and out of place. His stiff poise and slightly unkempt hair bring both an attempt at being gentlemanly and a slight failure to his character, and I can’t think of a better way to sum up the character. White’s script may go a long way towards selling The Playwright, but Campbell’s art seals the deal.

I was actually prepared to not enjoy The Playwright; boiling the book down to its absolute basics, it sounded more like a title about a character you wouldn’t want to read about, a thoroughly unlikable person. I can’t help but feel that the wrong aspects of the book were played up, though. At the end of the day, The Playwright sneaks its charm in when you aren’t looking, and paints a robust view of a character who is anything but simple. The Playwright is a book I’d be happy to have on my bookshelves.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

I have a confession to make: about 25 years ago, I was a big Dungeons & Dragons geek. Played it all the time with friends, read the novels and comics, even helped maintain one of their official areas on a computer network back in the day. But 15 years ago, I fell away from it all and I haven’t come into much contact at all with the game or products since then. So when a copy of Dungeons & Dragons #0 ended up in my mailbox, well, I couldn’t help but get curious. I’d loved the comics by Jeff Grubb, Rags Morales, Dan Mishkin, Jan Duursema, and Tom Mandrake that DC had published many years ago. Could this be my new "gateway drug" back inside?

Dungeons & Dragons #0 has two short stories that are meant to lure readers into their upcoming Dungeons & Dragons ongoing series, as well as Dark Sun mini-series. The first, by John Rogers and Andrea Di Vito, could best be described as fantasy by the numbers. The thief who stops during battles to loot the bad guys, the dwarf who gets excited about combat, the mysterious elf who is, erm, mysterious. There’s even mentions about how dungeons are full of mazes and twisty passageways. I hate to say it but this reminds me less of an actual story, and more of reading a dramatization of a group of friend’s latest gaming session. It’s not bad, but it’s not terribly good either. It’s by the book, no-surprises writing. Di Vito’s art is similarly inoffensive; he’s come along way since his CrossGen days, with rounded features and forms being drawn, but it’s utterly average and slightly forgettable.

It’s the back-up story by Alex Irvine and Peter Bergting that stands out a bit, a prelude to the upcoming Dark Sun mini-series. Maybe it’s because the Dark Sun world is a deliberate step away from average fantasy, but this feels much more interesting. It’s funny, because Irvine’s story isn’t terribly substantial or out of the ordinary, but it feels much more natural and wasn’t written as a series of cliche lines. The ideas of slavery and caste positions are a much easier hook for the reader, and I’d be interested in seeing more of Irvine’s story. The big star of this entire issue, though, is Bergting. I like his slightly angular faces, the thick blacks used for hair, and the jagged tattoos drawn all over Grudvik. It has a genuine style and voice of its own, and Bergting is an artist that will go places.

Part of what I liked about the old DC/TSR comics back in the day was that the characters in addition to the plots were interesting, to say nothing of some attractive art. I didn’t get that feeling at all with the lead story by Rogers and Di Vito, unfortunately, but Irvine and Bergting are showing promise in that direction. This comic wasn’t the welcome return to the game and worlds that I once loved that I’d hoped for. But I will take a look at the Dark Sun mini-series in January 2011 when it shows up, because that has a lot of potential. It’s a half-victory, which with just a dollar price tag, isn’t too bad. I just wish both halves of the comic were this fun. When a willing audience isn’t ready to immediately jump on for more, it’s time to take a closer look at what is and isn’t working.

One of the things I’ve come to expect from Kathryn Immonen is that she doesn’t write stories that talk down to her readers. There’s always a lot packed into her scripts, both what’s being directly stated as well as what you have to piece together and infer for yourself. The end result is a reading experience that ends up being that much more rewarding when you hit the conclusion, and that’s something on display in her and Stuart Immonen’s new graphic novel Moving Pictures.

Stories set in World War II are a dime a dozen, but right off the bat Kathryn Immonen takes it in a different direction than most, letting her story revolve around a Canadian woman, Ila, who is trying to catalog and relocate as many works of art from the basement of a Parisian museum to keep them safe from German forces and the fighting that has broken out throughout the country. It’s a nice twist on the normal "resistance" story, shuffling paintings instead of people.

Of course, there’s more to Moving Pictures than just moving art around. The bulk of the book involves an extended interview session between Ila Gardner and Rolf Hauptmann, a German officer. That’s where Kathryn Immonen starts playing with her reader, letting her characters start circling around one another in a careful dance where Kathryn Immonen doesn’t let you know the intended destination, or even who is truly leading the other. That’s left up to you, trying to piece together the sequence of events and what exactly the Germans are looking for in their questioning of Ila. As Kathryn Immonen’s narrative jumps into flashbacks and then back to the present with no warning, you’re left to question who or what—if anything at all—is being saved.

I don’t mean to make it sound like Kathryn Immonen’s writing is obtuse, because it’s not. It’s actually carefully constructed, moving you step by step through a sequence that Immonen has carefully mapped out to its conclusion. Even people who might get lost by the turns and detours throughout Moving Pictures on their first read-through will still have a lot to enjoy here, for that matter. I love the way Kathryn Immonen writes dialogue; it has such a natural flow to its construction that it comes across as sounding more real than just about any other writer in comics. And when Ila and her fellow workers talk about art, it’s a joy to just sit back and read what comes out of their mouths.

I’m not used to seeing Stuart Immonen draw a black and white book, but seeing his work here makes me yearn to see more from him where he doesn’t have a colorist to fill in the details. Stuart Immonen uses the stark black and white look as a tool in its own right, from the very first page with Ila sitting in a triangle of light in an otherwise dark room, to the effect of white pages falling amidst a black background. Stuart Immonen uses a thin line with sharp edges here, something that those used to his softer art with inker Wade von Grawbadger might find a little surprising. It’s a great look though, interacting not only with the dark interrogation room as it slices its people into focus, but with the slightly ragged edges of the museum and the streets of Paris. Even people in the backgrounds are often cloaked in shadow, pushing them into the foreground or background as needed. It’s a effective use the dark inks, and he doesn’t miss a trick. Stuart Immonen sticks with variations on a six-panel grid here for his pages, not resorting to trickery but instead providing a straight-forward, easy to read progression of action from one panel to the next. It’s good solid storytelling, and considering a large portion of the book is two people talking in a darkened room, Stuart Immonen is able to still bring tension to Kathryn Immonen’s script.

Moving Pictures is the kind of book you’ll want to read two or three times to fully enjoy, each journey through war-torn Paris revealing something new and interesting to the reader. Kathryn Immonen is proving herself to be a writer to watch for, and her leap into a new genre here shows great strength and familiarity with it already. I’ve enjoyed Kathryn Immonen’s work at Marvel to date, but Moving Pictures is easily my favorite of her comics yet. Whatever Kathryn and Stuart Immonen work on together next, I’m already sold. Make time in your reading schedule to fit this book in.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

Reading a new collection of Sandman Mystery Theatre is a guilty pleasure, but not in the way one normally uses the phrase. Having stopped buying the series during its first year due to finances, there’s a certain amount of guilt now that shows up alongside Sandman Mystery Theatre, that nagging thought that once I had a little more money I really should’ve started reading the series again. Still, when all is said and done, it’s not a bad thing to read it now via collections. If anything, I think some of the slight flaws in the book are better mitigated when read in a large chunk.

Collecting eight issues of the title, the first storyline is "The Blackhawk," with guest artists Matthew Smith and Richard Case. By this point in the series, Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle had started sneaking in some other DC Comics characters, like Hourman and the Mist. Here, Wagner and Seagle bring Blackhawk on board, which makes perfect sense. Even though within the Sandman Mystery Theatre internal chronology the United States hadn’t entered World War II, it’s already raging across Europe and it was just a matter of time for this fighter pilot to make an appearance. "The Blackhawk" is easily the stronger of the two stories, and in some ways it’s one of the darker ones from the series. While many other stories in Sandman Mystery Theatre dealt with much more grim material, "The Blackhawk" is a story with a dark final message, that sometimes not everything is going to work out. Even Wesley Dodds himself makes a huge mistake or two in this story, and in many ways the underlying feeling of this arc is the failure of the heroes. Not all of the "good" characters get happy endings in a lot of Sandman Mystery Theatre, but for some reason "The Blackhawk" struck me as slightly darker than most.

Smith’s pencils in "The Blackhawk" are a great choice for this story arc. While I love Guy Davis’s art (which we’ll get to later), Smith manages to much better visually convey the idea of the strong-jawed, dashing airman that is needed for "The Blackhawk." Janos is supposed to be in consideration for movie roles, and you can absolutely see it here; Smith and Case provide crisp lines and uncluttered faces in this arc, and their panel-to-panel transitions are strong. A lot of Davis’s visual tricks (circular panel close-ups on faces, the wide two-page top panel that opens each chapter) are at play here, too, and it provides a good visual continuity.

"The Return of the Scarlet Ghost" is next, set among the early comics industry and its slow shift from the pulp genre to superheroes. It’s a a peculiar story in that while the main action felt a little too straight forward and uninteresting, it’s the character beats throughout the issues that kept my interest. I think that’s actually one of Sandman Mystery Theatre‘s strengths; by this point in the series, you care so much about Wesley Dodds and Dian Belmont that the pair of them can easily carry the book no matter what else happens. Dian’s interest in writing for the pulps is probably my favorite part of "The Return of the Scarlet Ghost," and while I found myself unable to care what happened to the actual publishers and bad guys, her journey through this story is one of her stronger moments in the series.

Davis returns as the artist for "The Return of the Scarlet Ghost," and his detailed lines and rich backgrounds are always welcome. Davis’s art always feels much more intricate, with its lined bookshelves, bustling streets, and tiled bathrooms. Davis immerses the reader in a world not quite like anyone else out there, and while his art is a little more staid than most, it’s a rare example of an artist being the perfect choice for an ongoing series. Looking at the extended dream sequence towards the conclusion of "The Return of the Scarlet Ghost," it’s hard to imagine anyone else doing that strong a job at making it thoroughly creepy. Daniel Torres draws the comic-within-a-comic for Sandman Mystery Theatre #50, and his clean and vigorous art was a nice surprise. His drawing the original Sandman and Sandy duo is a funny in-joke to comics readers, and a cute way to celebrate the anniversary issue.

My one big complaint has a bit more to do with DC’s collections department than anything else. At this point in the series, Sandman Mystery Theatre is more heavily referencing the events of Sandman Midnight Theatre, a one-shot by Wagner, Neil Gaiman, and Teddy Kristiansen that took place between issues #36 and 37. So of course, it was never collected within the Sandman Mystery Theatre volumes. Sure, readers can head over to Neil Gaiman’s Midnight Days to find it, but what seemed like a strange omission at first is now becoming glaringly obvious. Likewise, at this point I’m assuming we’ll also never see the Sandman Mystery Theatre Annual collected, which was published several years earlier. (I suppose it could be slipped in at the end, although it would be slightly out of place in terms of the internal chronology.) It’s a shame these two stories might end up left out of this series of collections.

Still, when it’s all said and done, Sandman Mystery Theatre Vol. 8: The Blackhawk and the Return of the Scarlet Ghost is a keeper. If you haven’t been reading the collections, don’t let those strange missing stories scare you away. It’s been an absolute pleasure to pick up the new collection each year, and this one is no exception. It’s easy to see why so many people were upset when the series finally ended; Sandman Mystery Theatre is a jewel in Vertigo’s publishing history crown.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

With House of Five Leaves Vol. 1, another one of the SIGIKKI website’s online strips is making the jump to a print edition. As it’s by Natsume Ono (not simple, Ristorante Paradiso), I knew it wouldn’t be your typical samurai story. What I found, though, was a nice play on the genre where no one is quite what they seem, and I think it’s probably the best of Ono’s works brought into English to date.

House of Five Leaves stars Masa, a yojimbo (masterless samurai) who sells his services to anyone who’s interested. Unfortunately for Masa’s finances, he’s quite possibly the utter antithesis of a typical samurai. He’s weak-willed, nervous, and apologizes to people who bump into him in the marketplace. He’s everything you wouldn’t want when hiring a swordsman, which is why out of desperation he takes his initial job with Yaichi, a man who is quickly revealed as the head of the criminal organization the House of Five Leaves. It’s from there, though, that Ono’s story takes a turn for the interesting.

House of Five Leaves is one of those stories where no one’s inner self matches with their title or initial impression. So we have characters like Masa the feeble samurai, or Yaichi the kidnapper who targets corrupt houses and businesses. No one is who they initially appear to be, but what’s nice is that it’s more than a simple switching of roles. Ono starts slowly peeling back the layers of characters at a gradual pace, letting us get to know them step-by-step so that they become more interesting as time goes on. It’s just the right speed, because it never feels like Masa is rushing into decisions or his slow acceptance of the House of Five Leaves, but at the same time it doesn’t come across to the reader as Ono dawdling for time.

As the lead character, Ono pays particular attention to Masa, and while it’s hard to keep from occasionally getting irritated by his general cluelessness (there are times when you almost want to slap him for being so dense), I think Ono is careful to give him just enough redeeming features that you can’t write him off. He’s someone who is clearly unsuited as a samurai (and while there are hints as to why he took this role in the first place, it’s a story that Ono hasn’t shared with us by the end of the first volume) but we start to see his gifts in other areas as the chapters play out. By the end of the book, I found myself wanting to see Masa succeed in spite of himself, and I have to hand it to Ono that she made me come around on the character.

Ono’s art has her typical shaky lines and large eyes in House of Five Leaves; here, though, we also often get large, thick brush strokes of ink as well. It’s a nice combination, bringing to mind old Japanese brush paintings from an earlier time, and helping set the story in its era. Ono draws Masa’s nervous face well, but it’s the sly expressions on the other members of the House of Five Leaves that really drew me in. There’s something about those characters that draw you into the art, those glances that they shoot one another. It’s a fun, sly look for the characters, and it fits their personalities well.

Since House of Five Leaves is part of the SIGIKKI group of titles at Viz, that means you can also check out chapters of the story for free on their website. That said, House of Five Leaves is a title I definitely want to have permanent copies of on my bookshelf. After a slightly disappointing turn with Ono’s Ristorante Paradiso, I’m fully back on board with Ono here. I’m definitely going to keep reading.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

Aaron Renier’s debut graphic novel, Spiral-Bound (Top Secret Summer), was a strong splash by the cartoonist; I remember being almost instantly impressed at how strong he was able to convey a sense of adventure and fun into both his script an art. It’s been a long time coming, but his new book The Unsinkable Walker Bean is here. The end result? It’s a book with so many different ideas and concepts that it feels like Renier almost doesn’t have room for them all.

Walker Bean is a young man whose grandfather has fed him stories of adventure on the seas his whole life, but those stories have finally come home to roost when a skull that dooms those who look into its eyes seeking knowledge puts Walker’s grandfather on death’s door. It’s a simple, easy enough hook for the rest of the book; it opens with the story of the two sea monsters who created the wall of cursed skulls, then brings it back around to something that affects our main character. From there, though, Renier’s story expands at an extremely rapid pace. We’re introduced not only to characters in Walker’s home town, but an entire ship of pirates. For the first quarter of the book, new characters, objects, and ideas are thrown into the mix with great abandon, and there are parts when I started to wonder if I was missing a page here and there.

Fortunately, that’s a problem which soon subsides. Once Renier’s script slows down, the pacing feels much more natural and lets the ideas breathe and feel natural. I appreciate that Renier didn’t waste any time in getting things rolling in The Unsinkable Walker Bean, but it’s the second half of the book in particular that sold me on the title. That’s where everything starts to pay off with monsters, mysterious artifacts, and crazy inventions left and right. Walker’s schemes and plans to stop the pirates and get hold of the skull once again are beautiful and intricate, and a spin-off book titled Walker Bean’s Crazy Ideas would be an instant purchase for me.

I also liked how, once the book slowed down, we see Walker’s friendships slowly form throughout The Unsinkable Walker Bean. They’re not instant, and don’t have any moments where characters turn to one another and say, “Let’s be friends!” In other words, they develop over time and feel natural; seeing Walker slowly gain the trust of people on the ship and have them eventually willing to go to bat for him is one of the high points of the book.

The one unsurprising thing about The Unsinkable Walker Bean is Renier’s art, which is even more intricate and detailed than I remember. There’s a moment early on where Walker flees into his grandfather’s old water tower project, and the inside is a teenage boy’s dream come true. Massive bookshelves, ancient tribal masks on the walls, stuffed hammerhead sharks and narwhals hanging from the ceiling, new inventions scattered across the floor… It’s like every great adventure story has been compressed into a single hideout. Renier’s lush drawings, with Alec Longstreth’s rich colors, make The Unsinkable Walker Bean burst to life. Even drawings that are similar in concept to earlier ideas we’ve seen from Renier (the shipboard garden reminds me a lot of the apartment roof garden Renier created for his story in Papercutter #1) seem more vibrant and fully realized here. When massive sea creatures rise up out of the ocean to attack, or Walker’s ideas to change the way the ship move come to life, I found it more riveting than a lot of summer movies I’ve seen this year.

The Unsinkable Walker Bean started off with a lot going on, perhaps a little too much in places. But before long, the book solidifies into a thoroughly enjoyable adventure. There are some elements of the story that are never really explained, and at this point I’m unsure if I want to see them addressed in the promised Volume 2, or if I think leaving them up in the air is the better option. Either way, though, I’m looking forward to reading a lot more about Walker Bean. The Unsinkable Walker Bean is a series I want to read for many years to come.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

I picked up the first volume of Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip solely due to a friend of mine (also named Greg), who grew up reading Tove Jansson’s Moomin books and had utterly fallen in love with them. His descriptions over the years had intrigued me, with promises of whimsy and silliness mixed in with satire and cleverness. That’s exactly what I found in these collections of comic strips drawn for London’s The Evening News. The fourth volume, however, was the first to feature some strips written by Tove Jansson’s brother Lars Jansson, and this fifth volume published the final collaborations between Tove and Lars before Tove quit the strip entirely. This book, then, was a test. Would Lars be able to grow into the strip enough to make me want to read it once Tove was gone?

Having felt slightly lukewarm about Lars’s writing in the previous volume, Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip Vol. 5 was a bit of a relief. It’s still not as strong as Tove’s own writing, but there’s definite signs of improvement. The first story, "Moomin Winter," has the Moomin family trying to settle down to hibernate but has them continually interrupted by new visitors asking to stay with them for the season. It’s a cute enough story, especially once a special delivery of a Nibling appears and begins to wreak havoc with his continual sharp observations and discovery of everyone’s secrets. It’s probably the best of the three stories in Vol. 5, aided in part by a confined setting that forces Lars to keep a relatively sharp focus on the plot.

By contrast, "Moomin Under Sail" is much more meandering, taking the characters along with Too-Ticki onto a sea voyage that includes stowaways and pirates, among other obstacles. It’s not a bad story, but it seems to go every which way at a moment’s notice. Lars still hasn’t quite mastered the rambling story in the way that Tove had, and there are times when it feels almost like Lars himself has no idea where his characters are headed. "Fuddler’s Courtship," likewise, shifts positions wildly, going from a romance gone wrong to a strong and pointed satire of psychiatry. The slightly more adult subject material here actually feels off-putting in places when Lars’s script feels slightly strident, but before too long it calms down and goes back into a tone we’re more used to.

There are some nice bits with Lars’s writing that weren’t evident with Tove’s, most notably when Lars breaks the proverbial fourth wall. When the Nibling arrives at the Moomin house, the Nibling says his mother asked for him to be sent to the Moomin family "in the papers" and that clearly they were much more well-off as a result. "Moomin Under Sail" is even more blatant, with the first three strips revolving around the fact that the Moomins are trying to find a new plot for their latest storyline, at one point Moominpapa even staring out at the audience and saying, "My goodness! Readers…" It’s never overused, and comes across as cute and sweet.

Tove’s art looks as adorable as always, the Moomins looking like ambulatory hippos with their wide eyes and huge snouts. There’s such a wide variety of body types here, each new crazy looking creature more fantastic than the previous. My favorite character design here is probably the young Nibling in "Moomin Winter," with his schoolboy hat and innocent expression even when he’s tormenting everyone else. He’s so adorable you want to kill him, which is exactly what Lars’s script calls for.

I’m going to miss Tove in Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, so much that I’ve finally broken down and bought the first two Moomin novels (which are being reissued in North America, hurrah!) for once the withdrawal hits. And while Lars’s take on the Moomin characters is certainly slightly different than Tove’s, after this book I’m interested enough in his version that I’ll take a look next year when Drawn & Quarterly releases the first collection of strips both written and drawn by Lars. Until then, though, I’ll probably just re-read some of the earlier strips. They’re great enough that they never get old. It’s nice to finally see what all the fuss is about with the Moomins.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

Long-time readers will know I’m a fan of a good comics anthology. It doesn’t have to be overly long; Greg Means’s Papercutter, after all, proves on a regular basis that you can have a three-story collection and still end up strong. I was fairly psyched, as a result, to find the debut issue of Robert Kirby’s new anthology Three waiting for me in my mailbox recently. Based on this initial line-up of creators, I think there’s finally another regular anthology comic for me to look forward to.

The opening story of Three is from Eric Orner, probably best known for his comic strip The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green. I’ve only seen Orner’s work there, which is a strange and quirky little soap opera that always left be amused but slightly befuddled at the same time. His story "Weekends Abroad," as a result, is a huge revelation in terms of what else Orner can do. His autobiographical story of going to Israel for a three-month job that has extended to two years and counting draws you into the plot almost instantly; he opens it with a brief sequence explaining how he got kicked out Hebrew School as a child, and goes from there to show us how he’s fumbling through life in a country where he can’t read or speak the official language.

Watching him drift through life in Israel veers between funny and sad; he’s trying to make due the best he can, but you end up with an overwhelming sense of him being alone and slightly lonely. He goes to the beach by himself, gets talked him going to a bar with his boss frequented by 23-year olds (and then promptly abandoned), and even his attempt at a hook-up goes badly. Orner’s story of being far away from the world he knows is more than just a physical distance, but rather an emotional one as well. It’s helped in part by Orner’s art, which uses tiny lines and details to create a strange, cramped world that Orner is penned in by. It’s only when Orner gets lost that you start feeling like, visually, he’s letting himself escape his surroundings; his wandering down darkened streets and alleys starts to feel almost like home instead of an odd locale. I must admit I’d forgotten all about Orner the past few years, but now I’m hoping we get more comics from him soon.

Joey Alison Sayers is next with "Number One," a quick story about Sayers and her landscaping co-workers on a new job where Sayers makes a critical mistake: asking to use the bathroom from the client. It’s short and sweet, but it made me laugh, both at the reaction from the client, and then from Sayers and her friends. Sayers plays up the humor, but at the same time there are flashes into her life which keep the story from being entirely one note; her thinking about the nature of her job and needing to find a new one, or the process she has to go through to use a client’s bathroom, make it that much more realistic. Sayers’s art is stripped down and adorable, with big mouths showing off jagged teeth, and little pinholes for eyes. It’s a fun story.

The book concludes with a story from editor Kirby, and "Freedom Flight" is the most serious piece in the comic. It starts with his main character Drew spontaneously deciding to leave his boyfriend Mitch and just run for freedom, and from there we watch his attempt at escape. There isn’t any physical barrier keeping Drew around, and as a result this is a story which has to delve deeply into Drew’s head to try and explain the psychological and emotional barriers that he has to fight through. It’s a surprisingly powerful story, one that lets you fully understand what Drew himself can’t about why he’s trying to run away. Kirby’s soft lines in his art provide the perfect complement for the the story; when Kirby draws the three-legged dog in the park, there’s something in the dog’s eyes that just speaks volumes. Drew himself has a slightly confused and lost expression on his face or most of the story, and it helps show us the turmoil running through his head. I enjoyed all of Three #1, but "Freedom Flight" was easily my favorite of the three stories.

Three has a strong debut issue, and based on the excerpts of art for the next issue, it looks like Three isn’t going to be daunted at all by topping itself with the next issue. With Kirby’s Boy Trouble anthologies done for the time being, Three is a nice substitute that promises great things. You can order Three #1 directly from Rob Kirby Comics, and I whole-heartedly recommend you do so. Definitely check it out.