The Gosh! Authority 09/06/10

Something we always get asked for that inevitably elicits a disappointing response is the long out of print Spanish/French comic Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. An English translation collection has been in the works for years but never materialised until Dark Horse picked up the reigns after a previous publisher bottomed out. It collects the first three books in the series, the final one in English for the very first time.

It’s a beautifully illustrated thing, a 1950s trenchcoat-and-cigarettes detective story about murders, child abductions and the like starring anthropomorphic private investigator John Blacksad. As this sceptical reviewer pointed out there’s many a furry character devoid of facial expression – not so in the case of Blacksad and its brilliantly rendered cast courtesy of ex-Disney artist Guarnido. Dark Horse have an extended flipbook preview for you.

Kathryn and Stuart Immonen’s second webcomic is a completely different beast to their Never As Bad As You Think. Moving Pictures, collected this week in a great looking book from Top Shelf, is set during WWII when the Nazis were pocketing much of Europe’s great art. But that’s not the point of it all.

“The history is just a backdrop to tell a f*cked up love story that's about how we assign value to things and people, how we behave when not everyone is playing by the same rules… in the end, maybe it's all about the fundamentally perverse nature of desire, about not being to help wanting what you want even if you don't know why. And how, from the outside, we really don't know anything about someone else's intimacies.”

More of that interview here along with preview pages too.

Two books on the making of Pixar’s Toy Story have arrived on our shelves, which means we’re not far off the release date for the third instalment. Us lot in the UK won’t be getting it ‘til time in late July, so in the meantime you’ll have to make do with these lovely things. The first is Toy Story: The Art and Making of the Animated Film which isn’t technically a new book but one that has fallen in and out of print over the last fifteen years. There are a lot of photos of its innards alongside this painfully ploddy review but worth having a look if you’re thinking about picking up a copy before it disappears again.

The other is the Art of Toy Story 3 which gets a cracking review over at Pixar Planet. Everyone who’s said anything about it on the web is pretty adamant that this is not something to read before the film if you’re the kind of person who gets stroppy around spoilers, consider yourself warned. Buy it and hide it from yourself for a month.

Next to that you’ll find the latest Harker book, The Woman in Black, by Roger Gibson and Vince Danks. This time they find themselves up north in time to witness the murder of mystery novelist Agatha Fletcher and the annual Whitby Goth Weekend. This trade collects issues 7 to 12 so it’ll bring you bang up to date. Preview pages, annotations and more over at Gibson’s blog.

The latest Hellboy trade paperback you’ll be requiring is Hellboy Volume 10: The Crooked Man & Others, which includes (obviously) The Crooked Man, Mignola and Corben’s Eisner Award-winning miniseries of two years ago. Ex-Gosh! Tom told you why you’d like it back then and I don’t see why I shouldn’t have him tell you again since he does it so eloquently. Preview.

The biggest comic out this week is undoubtedly Batman #700, one prong of Grant Morrison’s three-pronged Batman attack. Morrison has said that all his Bat books ultimately connect and interweave so if you’re following Batman & Robin you should probably be picking up Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne and his run on the regular Batman comic too. As for this week’s offering…

“#700 is my version of a traditional anniversary issue, so it's a kind of done-in-one story. Tony Daniel is doing the Batman of the past, which is Bruce Wayne, Frank Quitely is doing Batman & Robin of the present, with Dick Grayson, and Andy Kubert is doing Batman of the future, which is Damian. And there's also a final section with David Finch doing the Batman of the far future, right up to Batman 1,000,000. It's three Batman, one impossible crime, and there's a time-travel story involving Professor Nichols, who vanished from Batman around 1964, and it's got the Neal Adams Batman and the Carmine Infantino Batman... it's a mindbreaker of a story. It took me two months to write this monster. I hope it works. It's a stand-alone celebration issue--it's got a bunch of pin-ups in the back as well, I think.”

More of that at Techland. Batman #701 and #702 are also by Morrison so stick ‘em on your standing order if you haven’t done already.

The mysterious undead sheriff Buzzard in Eric Powell’s The Goon has landed his very own three-issue miniseries with the first instalment out this week. It’s not a reveal-all origin story and if anything the series merely adds to the guy’s mystery, according to Powell. "He begins to discover new things about himself. It's like going through puberty for a 100 year old ghoul who eats dead people." More of that interview here. As usual the art’s amazing and you can see it in this preview.

Dream Logic #1 is a new thing from David Mack (Kabuki), a 48-page art book full of sketches, step-by-step art techniques, commentaries, figure drawings, a tarot card set, paintings and scripts – all new stuff. I’ve been trying to find more information on it and failing. There’s a thing on Newsarama about it but for some reason their server ain’t working. Keep trying, it’ll wake up eventually. You can expect #2 some time in August.

Alan Moore’s fan-favourite pulp action hero returns this week in Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #1 (of 6) as written by 2000AD veteran Peter Hogan and illustrated by Tom Strong co-creator Chris Sprouse. Over at Newsarama Hogan talks about the character, writing Nazi speeches and how Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom may well be the best gig in comics.

Finally, big thank yous to everyone who came along to the Becky Cloonan, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie signing on Saturday. It’s lovely to see you twooting happily about the free prints you scored. If you didn’t make it on Saturday but would like a copy of the McCloonan jam print we’re now selling a limited number of them here at Gosh! for a tenner each. Overseas? We can do that too. Here it is again:

And here are their cheery faces:

Follow ‘em!: @kierongillen, @beckycloonan and @McKelvie.

-- Hayley