Koom Kankesan Comic Reviews

August: Osage County (2013), adapted by Tracy Letts from his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2007 play, and directed by John Wells, tells the story of a family that comes together after the matriarch's husband has died. The matriarch, mean and pill addled, insists on berating each of the attendees, opening up various insights and conflicts that keep the audience on its toes. It features revelations, strife, discord, and admissions, focused around two very charged performances by Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep. A solid adaptation of the source material, it's the kind of family drama we don't see much of anymore in American cinema.9 out of 10

Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill follow up their vaunted League series with a collaboration that plays to their strengths. Taken from the pages of the Cinema Purgatorio anthology, this collection features dreamlike episodes in which a narrator visits a macabre and disturbing revival theatre. The films she and we watch are both familiar and alien. Weaving together Moore's predilection for cultural history, the dreamlife surrounding 'reality', and human accountability through O'Neill's unique sensibility and craft, this slim yet satisfying volume is searing and sanguine in its salutation to sin - a fitting capstone and counterpoint to the League work.

Frank Thorne the Blue: Wizard of the Comic Arts by Alex Grand and Jim Thompson of the Comic Book Historians Podcast transcribes an interview with Frank Thorne before Thorne's death. The interview is bookended by personal essays by both Grand and Thompson, recounting their discovery of Thorne's comics and their appreciation of his craft. The interview is even, personable, and thoroughly discusses Thorne's long and accomplished career, working in a variety of genres, before discovering his personal fire and style through Red Sonja and Thorne's subsequent adult oriented material.

This new collection of autobiographical miscellania chronicles the author's ongoing attempts to follow his vocation as a cartoonist, despite life's gaffes and humiliations. Employing Noah Van Sciver's scathing wit, it takes aim at all those awkward conversations, interactions, and moments most of us keep bottled up. Both acerbic and earnest, it's extremely funny and well worth the read, even if its very nature makes it hard to be sympathetic with Van Sciver's ethos.

Alex Grand and Sebastian Guidobono's 'Journey Into Mexico' is an all-ages graphic novel weaving together Latin American mythology and Mexican history. Well informed and of serious intent, it struggles to harmonize the two aspects, achieving breadth, but struggling to develop characters and nuanced storytelling. However, the result is an interesting experiment, reminiscent of 90's Vertigo projects. With colourful art and jaw cracking action, it will appeal to traditional comics fans who like a little historical righteousness with their supernatural punch outs.