The Gosh! Authority 25/02/09

Hello and welcome to Obama Week! That bloke’s everywhere this Thursday: New Avengers #50, Savage Dragon #145, Thunderbolts #129 and Youngblood #8. But he’s not in My Mommy Is In America And She Met Buffalo Bill which is a great-looking Obama-free graphic novel by Emile Bravo who you would have seen in MOME if nothing else.

This is the first English edition of the award-winning French book about a 5-year-old growing up in rural France in the 70s. His mother has died but his neighbours give him postcards ‘from his mother’ to keep up the pretence that she’s only away on holiday. There are several preview pages here which will give you an idea of why Bart Beatty was so keen to shake the man’s hand in Angouleme.

Hurk’s Urgent Telex isn’t as colourful nor as award-winning as the above but it is out this week and far too good for something that’s supposedly small press. He last appeared on the Gosh! Blog when his mini-comic Minder came out in October of last year. (We’ve just got some more of those, incidentally, and you’ll want one now because the new series is on the telly. Won’t you.) Anyway, here’s what Hurk says about his latest offering:

[It’s] 40 pages thick and includes my 'Glass Chops' strip that I entered for the last Observer competition along with a longer previously unpublished story and some other bits and pieces all wrapped up in a hap-hazard 2-colour screen-printed cover. Limited edition of 50 numbered copies. Instead of a full list of stats, I'll summarise by rating this comic 92 (1 being 'I made no effort' and 100 being 'this was the best comic I could have made to my ability at this time and with my limited means').

Trade-paperback Number Four of the comic Newsarama’s Jeff Marsick said is "consistently worth every cent thrown across the counter” is out now! I’m talking about Criminal, of course, one of the best comics of 2008. In Bad Night Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips give you another tale of sex, obsession, greed and insanity, all under one of the most striking covers I’ve seen in ages. Of the many reviews I could link to I choose this one. Four lines long, it ends with “if you're not reading Criminal then f*** you.”

Also out in trade paperback is Garth Ennis’ Battlefields: Night Witches. Quick, eh? If you missed it in floppy-form here’s a preview of the first issue, which begins the story of the 599th Night Bomb Regiment, all women, who fly lethal night missions over German lines in wooden biplanes. Newsarama review the trade here, which collects all three issues, a cover gallery by John Cassaday and Gary Leach (Dan Dare), plus a making-of thing with artist Russ Braun.

Another Garth Ennis offering is the Dan Dare Omnibus Volume 1 hardcover with art by Gary Erskine. Colonel Dare, the quintessentially British hero from the pages of Eagle Comic, is now retired and in self-imposed exile. The original cast are here, including Digby, Professor Peabody, The Mekon, and a bunch of baddies; all in a lovely edition featuring a complete cover gallery and a cover by Dave Gibbons.

If you were impressed by Dark Horse’s Creepy Archives you’ll probably be wanting this one too: Eerie collected for the first time ever in the very same format as its Creepy kin! Here Cousin Eerie introduces 240 pages of gruesome terror and spookiness

from the likes of Gray Morrow, Frank Frazetta, Alex Toth, Neal Adams, Joe Orlando and a bunch of others too.

Last week I forgot to point out Vigilante: City Lights, Prairie Justice when I should have. It’s a trade-paperback collecting the four-issue 1995 mini-series by James Robinson with art by the amazing Tony Salmons. Greg Saunders, better known as The Vigilante, and is off to Hollywood to star in a Western but gets sidetracked when his sidekick gets into trouble with some gangsters. It’s old West justice meets big city glamour and you should probably give it a look ‘cos it’s rather good.

And finally, given the look of astonishment on the faces of those who’ve already picked one up I thought I should mention this: Comics International has actually arrived! In this issue Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli talk about Vertigo’s Unknown Soldier, Jason Wilson discusses his controversial Smuggling Vacation, Peter Milligan on Sub-Mariner: The Depths, Jai Nitz and Phil Hester talk El Diablo, and lots of other stuff you should have read in October but is probably just as interesting now.

And that’s it for another week.

-- Hayley