Limit Break Comics: New Releases – Comic Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

Dublin-based comic collective and independent publisher Limit Break Comics recently launched five brand new titles at last month’s Dublin Comic Con. We’ve taken a look at what’s on offer!

Old Game Plus #1

Old Game Plus #1 is a short anthology book that takes inspiration from video games. The issue manages to include six short stories from a number of different creators, presented with varying art styles.

The first story, ‘A Warrior’s Journey’, is a take on Street Fighter, following a guy who looks suspiciously like Ken as he discusses his recent loss with his partner and he reflects on the journey he’s taken around the world fighting folks.

The second story, ‘It’s Just Another Saturday’, draws inspiration from skater games, and sees a young woman skating around an empty building, doing tricks, and grabbing collectables. It’s a story with no dialogue or narration, and has a nice art style that looks like a rough sketch. The third story, ‘Speedrun’, seems to be set inside the Resident Evil mansion as the protagonist rushes from room to room to get to their goal, trying to speed run the game. This was a fun look at this unique area of gaming.

The fourth story, ‘Brake, Brake, Accelerate’, looks to have drawn inspiration from futuristic racing games like F-Zero, and is another story told without any dialogue. The art looks really nice here, with some lovely crisp drawings and a nice muted colour palette. ‘Weapon of Choice’ is the one story where I couldn’t pick out one specific game that it might have drawn inspiration from, and instead seems to be a nod to fantasy games in general. It’s a neat little story that will have you guessing what might come next, with some great art.

The final entry is ‘For The Love of the Game’, which sees an adventurer doing a run through a lost jungle temple, doing their best to avoid traps. Once again, this story was delivered without dialogue, and relies on the really pretty art to tell the story. Old Game Plus is a nice mix of different stories, all of which will seem familiar to gamers, and felt like a great intro to the new wave of Limit Break books.

LENS

LENS is the biggest book on offer from this new wave of releases, and brings together a number of comic shorts that were originally published in other titles, to create one cohesive narrative.

The story follows the contract killer Lens, a woman who uses her position as a photo journalist to gain access to her targets. When Lens is hired to kill the CEO of a major corporation she finds herself being pushed to her limits and having to rely on all of her skills just to stay alive.

Written by Garry Moloney, LENS moves at a pretty fast pace, especially as it was originally broken down into small parts. Because of how it was originally published the story doesn’t hang around, and has some short scenes. Despite this, it manages to flow really well and you get a good sense of who Lens and the other characters are without being able to spend a whole lot of time with them.

The artwork, provided by Raquel Kusiak, certainly looks unique, with very thin, angular looking people with bold facial features. Kusiak also uses a very limited colour palette depending on the scene, with one colour dominating each scene. It gives the book a very bold look, one that has its own sense of style.

Plexus #2

Plexus #2 is the second issue in another Limit Break Comics anthology series, this time focusing on science fiction themes and technology.

The first story in the issue, ‘Ghosts’, follows Tommy, a guy whose apartment building seems to be haunted by some kind of ghost that inhabits technology. Whilst at first Tommy and the entity come into conflict, as the story progresses we learn more about what this creature is and where it came from, and see the relationship between the two of them change. This story is interesting, and pretty bold in a few ways, and boasts a cool art style that really works for this story.

The second story, ‘Run’, centres on a scientist who’s forced to run for his life through a ruined world, where pieces of earth hang in a white void of destruction, floating in a nothingness of annihilation. The man is desperate to get to one particular building, where he believes the means to his escape lies.

There are a lot of small nods and winks to other sci-fi stories in this tale, particularly thanks to small details in the art where you’re able to pick out stuff like the TARDIS console, and the Stargate amongst others. This is definitely the shortest feeling story of the three, but has an enjoyable twist ending that makes it worth reading.

The final story, ‘Oneira’, sees a man being haunted by nightmare-like people he can’t understand. This story is probably the hardest to follow, due in large part to the very strange art style used. It feels twisted and disjointed, like visualising a nightmare, and because of this I honestly couldn’t tell you what this story was about.

Overall the quality of Plexus #2 was good, with longer stories than the other anthology books on offer. However, with one of the stories making little to no sense I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as Old Game Plus.

Meouch  #2

Meouch #2 is the second issue in a series that began back in 2019, which follows the adventures of a cat assassin as he tries to deal with some rival killers, and a deal that goes horribly wrong when he’s double crossed.

This issue picks up where the first left off, as Frankie returns to his employers’ building looking to get answers about why he was double crossed. This leads him into conflict with rival cat killers and he’s forced to run for his life. With no other options open to him, Frankie plans an assault on the home base of the man responsible for the whole thing, Doggo Shady.

Written by Paul Carroll, with art by Gareth Luby and Rebecca Nalty, Meouch is a very silly book, one that is trying to combine the brutal horror of murder and the cliches of action movies with small furry animals.

On occasion it works, but more often than not it feels like the book is going too far into the silliness, and doesn’t feel particularly entertaining, especially with all of the cat puns. Another thing that doesn’t help this title at all is that it’s been three years since the first issue was released. With the fact that this is an ongoing story it seems like a tough thing to recommend a series where you have to wait years between chapters.

Limit Break Presents #1

Another anthology title, Limit Break Presents is the first issue of a new anthology series that brings together three groups of creators to tell stories tied together by a central theme. The theme of this issue isn’t hugely obvious, though may be something like ‘being yourself’ or ‘overcoming your insecurities’, but this isn’t hugely obvious. Whatever the theme, this book’s stories are pretty entertaining.

The first, ‘How Do I Look?’ sees a couple getting ready for an evening at a gala event. Presented in black and white, the story follows a man and woman as they prepare for an evening out, with the man having some misgivings and thoughts about whether what they’re doing is right.

The second story, ‘Shine’, is a huge contrast to the first. Presented in bright, bold colours, and with a very animated and stylised art, this story follows a couple of super-powered school teens as one of them has a meltdown in the bathroom. Unable to control her power, and worrying about what people are saying about her, it’s only when her friend comes to reassure her that she can learn to just let it all go and be herself. The story is pretty nice, has a lovely look to it, and a great message about being true to yourself.

The final story, ‘Tomb of the Unworthy’, sees a young internet influencer trying to break her way into an ancient temple in order to take a selfie with an artefact everyone is trying to get to. This is an interesting story, with some good art, and feels much more like a self contained narrative than the others. It makes its points well, and doesn’t feel like there’s much more to tell than’s already presented here. Despite the theme of this issue not being hugely obvious Limit Break Presents proved to be a great anthology collection, with some interesting stories with some bold and different styles that all stand out from each other and look great on the page.

Limit Break Comics seems to be the best when working in the anthology format, with four of the five new releases doing so. The only book that is part of an ongoing narrative is Meouch, and this was definitely the weakest of the set. If you’re looking for some interesting short stories and aren’t wanting anything big to read, these titles might just be perfect for you.

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The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle – Throwback 120

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

If you were asked to name the most famous mystery stories of all time, the greatest mysteries that have ever been told, chances are pretty good that The Hound of the Baskervilles would be on that list, and would be placing pretty high. Having been called one of the greatest mystery novels ever written, the most famous Sherlock Holmes book is celebrating the 120th anniversary of its publication.

After killing the character of Sherlock Holmes in the 1893 story ‘The Final Problem’, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spent almost a decade being sent letters from fans asking, or downright demanding, that he bring the character back. Holmes was such a popular character that the public couldn’t take his passing, and thanks to this level of harassment Doyle gave in and wrote a new novel telling a ‘lost’ story from Holmes’ past. Thus The Hound of the Baskervilles was born, and I’ve never been more grateful for obsessive fans hounding a creator!

The story of The Hound of the Baskervilles begins when Dr James Mortimer visits the home of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in London, asking for their help. His friend, Sir Charles Baskerville, was recently found dead on his estate in Dartmoor, apparently having died of a heart attack. However, Mortimer tells the detectives that Baskerville had a look of pure terror on his face, and believes that his death is related to the legend of the Hound, a large, spectral dog that has haunted the family for generations, and taken the lives of many of its members. He backs up his claims by saying that large paw prints were found nearby.

Despite dismissing the claim of the monstrous dog, Holmes agrees to meet with Henry Baskerville, the next in line in the family, and to look into the mystery. Sending Watson to Dartmoor to look into things for him, the mystery seems to deepen when Watson, Henry, and Dr Mortimer experience strange, unsettling events in the night. Things seem even more dire when the trio learn that an escaped murderer is loose in the surrounding moors. Thus begins a case that will go on to be one of the most popular in the entire Sherlock Holmes catalogue.

It would seem like the inspiration for The Hound of the Baskervilles came from the legend of Squire Richard Campbell, a figure that has been described as ‘monstrously evil’ by historical accounts. Inspiring the story of the Baskerville ancestor, Campbell was said to have sold his soul to the devil, as well as murdering his own wife. Upon his death a pack of spectral hounds were said to be seen around his tomb, and that ever since, on the anniversary of his death, his ghost could be seen leading the hounds across the moors. Having an interest in the supernatural, despite it being an area that Holmes never put much stock in, Doyle was drawn to this story and took a number of the elements for the creation of his own tale, and would even go on to explore Dartmoor in person in order to capture the correct look and feel of the place for his first Holmes story in almost a decade.

Despite The Hound of the Baskervilles being a Sherlock Holmes story, and the first one since the character’s death, and following a several year gap, the story doesn’t feature Holmes a great deal. Instead, Watson is very much the lead character for this story. Watson has always been a huge part of the Sherlock Holmes world, especially as the stories are written from his perspective, but Holmes is still largely the key figure in the stories, with his absences being small when they happen. But for The Hound of the Baskervilles Watson carries much of the story, especially when Holmes sends him off to Dartmoor alone to investigate for him.

I don’t know if Doyle’s decision to sideline Holmes in this story came from a desire to showcase Watson as a capable lead, able to head up an investigation himself on the chance that he might want to continue the stories without Holmes’ return, or if perhaps he felt out of practice writing the character after so long and didn’t want to feature him much, or maybe even it could have simply been him messing with his fans by releasing a new Holmes story that hardly featured the character. Whatever the reason for Doyle’s decision, it actually worked out rather well, and gave the often overlooked Dr a chance to shine on his own without Holmes there.

The Hound of the Baskervilles became a huge success after its release, and this is probably a large part of why Doyle would bring Holmes back to life for real a few years later. The story has only grown in popularity over the years, and has become one of the most adapted books of all time, with more than twenty film and television versions of the story, as well as audio books, audio plays, stage plays, and even appearances in comics, anime, manga, and video games. With the huge popularity of the story, the fact that fans were demanding it for years, and that it helped to bring the world’s greatest detective back from the dead, it has well earned its place as one of the greatest mystery stories of all time.

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Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad – Throwback 120

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

There are certain books that even if you’ve never read you’ll have heard about. They’ll be brought up as some of the ‘greatest books ever written’, studied in schools and higher education, they’ll inspire adaptations, and they often go on to last forever. Heart of Darkness is one of these books. It’s a book that I’d heard of many times in my life, but it wasn’t until just a year ago that I ever actually picked up a copy.

This short novella, barely more than a hundred pages in many editions, was first released in three parts in Blackwood’s Magazine across 1899, and it wasn’t util three years later that it would finally be published in novel form. To celebrate the 120th anniversary of this hugely influential and well known novel, I decided to take a look at it.

Partly inspired by the life of author Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness tells the story of Charles Marlow, who narrates a story about how as a younger man he travelled to Africa to discover some of the ‘blank spaces’ on the map. In his flashbacks, Marlow travels to Africa and gets work as part of a Belgian trading company who are colonising the area. After several incidents, Marlow is eventually put in charge of a steamer ship and tasked with sailing it up river to find one of the company’s camps, run by a man named Kurtz.

There have been rumours of terrible things happening in the area, of people becoming ill, and Marlow is tasked with finding Kurtz and bringing him back. During the journey the steam ship is attacked, shot with arrows out of the early morning fog, and members of the crew are injured and killed. When Marlow comes across a wandering Russian man he learns some troubling news: that Kurtz has apparently gone mad, and is being worshipped by the native people. Arriving at the camp these suspicions seem to be proven when they find severed heads on stakes, and Kurtz seems to command the natives like a small army.

Eventually Marlow is able to get Kurtz onto his ship and begins the journey back, bringing the sick Kurtz with him. Along the way Kurtz’ health worsens. Kurtz provided Marlow with secret documents that he begs to be kept out of the hands of the trading company managers, before dying of his sickness. Upon returning, Marlow sends the papers to the press.

Despite how popular a story Heart of Darkness is today, the book wasn’t a success within Conrad’s life, and when it was first published in 1902 it received little attention from critics at the time. According to some literary historians, even Conrad himself thought little of the book. However, despite this, the book began to find more and more of an audience as the years went by, with people gravitating towards its heavy use of metaphor and symbolism in order to leave a sense of mystery; as well as its commentary on colonialism in Africa.

By the 1970s, Heart of Darkness became a popular text for study in senior schools and universities, and has sparked a number of debates over the years. One of the areas in which the book has been discussed a lot, and is even often criticised is in postcolonial studies. Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe gave a lecture at the University of Massachusetts in 1975 titled ‘An Image of Africa’, in which he condemned the racism of the novel and stated that whilst Conrad wasn’t responsible for the xenophobic image of Africa in the novel, it does continue to perpetuate the damaging stereotypes. The essay sparked a great deal of debate around the book, and is still a huge touchstone to this day when discussing the merits of the text, and the racist elements within it.

Heart of Darkness isn’t just a popular feature in the classroom and lecture halls though, and has been adapted a number of times over the decades since it was published. One of the first adaptations was a radio drama written by and starring Orson Welles, who changed the story to focus on the rise of a fascist dictator. The story also appeared on film, with its first adaptation for the screen being the television play Heart of Darkness (Playhouse 90), produced by CBS as part of an anthology television series of filmed plays. This version saw screen legend Boris Karloff in the role of Kurtz.

The story would also inspire a number of loose adaptations too, stories that didn’t directly recreate the source material, but instead used it as an influence. It was used in video games a number of times, with it being a heavy inspiration for Far Cry 2, which was set in Africa and saw the player trying to stop an arms dealer, and featured a final area called ‘The Heart of Darkness’. The much acclaimed game Spec Ops: The Line also borrowed heavily from the book, and featured the character John Konrad in a role much like Kurtz. Perhaps the most well known story inspired by Heart of Darkness however, is Apocalypse Now. The 1979 film shifted the setting from Africa to the Vietnam War, but still kept much of the central plot ideas, and themes, and had Marlon Brando in the role of a Colonel Kurtz.

Heart of Darkness is not an easy book, despite its short length. It can be a hard read at times, and it’s easy to see why some people have come to dislike it over the years. Whatever you think of it though, it has clearly become one of the best received, more important works of fiction in many, many years. The story has lasted for a hundred and twenty years so far, and it’s anyone’s guess how many more decades it will remain relevant and popular.

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Virus: 32 – Film Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

New Uruguayan horror Virus: 32 has been marketed as a zombie movie, and whilst it does share some similarities with the zombie genre it’s very much its own animal. Following a mother and daughter with a tough relationship as a deadly virus sweeps through the city, Virus: 32 is a tense and creative survival horror story.

The film begins innocently enough, introducing viewers to the inhabitants of an apartment building where our lead, Iris (Paula Silva), lives with her flatmate. Whilst nothing obviously awful happens we do get a hint that something terrible is stirring just beneath the surface, when one of her elderly neighbours attacks and kills their pet bird. We learn that Iris is separated from her partner, and has temporary custody of her daughter Miriam (Sofía González).

Iris is introduced as a young woman who likes to party, whose apartment is filled with empty bottles and drugs. She doesn’t seem to take her life seriously, and has managed to mess up her plans to take care of her daughter by agreeing to work the night shift at the local community centre where she’s a security guard. She’s pretty far from being the mother that Miriam needs in her life. Despite her flaws, she tries to do her best, and sneaks Miriam into the community centre to spend the night with her. Whilst the two of them are inside the building something begins to spread throughout the city: a virus that drives those infected into a murderous rage. With their exit blocked off, the two of them must try to find a way to survive the night and make it to safety.

Virus: 32 is less of a zombie film, and is more in line with 28 Days Later, and I think people who enjoyed this British horror film (which is now 20 years old!) will find a lot to like with this movie. If you watched 28 Days Later and wanted to know what happened during the initial outbreak, to see the chaos of the virus tearing through society and causing havoc, this film pretty much does that, though on a small scale. Due to the budget of the movie being pretty low we never really leave the confines of the community centre. Anything that’s happening beyond those walls we see in the distance, we hear as faint screams and sirens.

Rather than being a negative, I thought that this actually helped the film in a lot of ways. It made the film have to focus on this very personal story, of this one woman trying her best to be a good mother and to protect her daughter whilst the world goes to hell around her. We know that awful things are happening everywhere else because we can see it in the distance, but we don’t need to focus on that. It doesn’t matter where this virus came from, if the government are doing anything about it, and how many other survivors there are because those things don’t matter to Iris in this moment. The only thing that matters is her and Miriam’s immediate survival, and the film does a great job on pushing that to the fore.

The lead actress, Paula Silva, does brilliantly in the role of Iris. When first introduced there’s no indication that she’s a mother. She acts like a woman barely out of her teens, more focused on the next time she can go out partying than she is on her daughter. Obviously there are parents like this in the world, and not acting in a traditional motherly role doesn’t take away her parenthood, but it’s rare to see a parent depicted this way in film. This is a big part of her story, however, and over the course of the film Iris is forced to step up and be a better mother, facing her own issues and the reason why she’s the way she is in order to do so. Considering how short the runtime of the film is and how much gets focused on the horror of surviving against the infected, we get a surprising amount of time given over to her characterisation and her backstory – something that proved to be one of the more interesting parts of the movie.

The film also tries to do something a little different with the infected, and adds a unique spin on things. Whilst they’re most similar to the rage infected in 28 Days Later, these infected don’t seem to be angry all the time, and when not actively hunting people they will wander around places, performing small tasks. This makes them pretty creepy at times, and we get some very tense moments where Iris has to try and sneak past them as they do their thing. But there’s also another added twist. Whenever the infected perform a violent act, whenever they kill anything, the rush of having killed seems to send them into a trance-like state where they shut down. This allows survivors a few moments, 32 seconds to be precise, to try and get away, sneak past, or kill them, whilst they do nothing. This is something that I’ve never seen in a zombie infection style movie before, and adds a whole new element; though one that I don’t think was utilised nearly enough.

Virus: 32 is an interesting film that’s trying to add some new twists to a pretty well worn formula. Rather than taking a big, grand approach to an end of society story it focuses on the human element, and thanks to some great performances it manages to deliver an engaging, personal story of a mother and daughter and their strained relationship. Fans of zombie infection movies will find a lot of familiar stuff here, but will also discover some new twists on the formula that are pretty unique.

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Call Me Nathan by Catherine Castro – Graphic Novel Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

''All I want is a proper body . . . ' Born as biologically female, Nathan spends his formative years facing questions without answers, social ostracism from his peers, and incomprehension from his family—because from as early as he can remember, he knows he has been born in the wrong body. But, as his family comes to recognize, a physical identity is harder to change than a piece of clothing or a haircut. So from the moment he is at last supplied with a professional term for his self-diagnosis—“gender dysphoria”—he is able to leave behind his complicated psychological history, the challenges of his self-harming, and his struggles with sexual identity, and begin the difficult process of claiming his true self. Based on a true story, at first hand, Call Me Nathan issues a moving call for understanding, a powerful denunciation of prejudice, and a celebration of everything it means to love.'

SelfMadeHero have produced a number of graphic novels over the years that touch on important issues, moments from history, and real stories. A lot of the time when the publisher creates stories about real people it’s famous figures like George Orwell, Harry Haft, and Diego Rivera; figures that have a place in history and have done things of note. Call Me Nathan is slightly different though, as whilst it’s based upon the life of a real person, it’s a very normal person. This isn’t the story of someone who has done something world changing, it’s not a story that is well known or in the history books. This is a simple story of one man’s fight to simply exist as himself.

Call Me Nathan follows the life of Nathan Molina, a young man living in France. The story begins with Nathan in his teens, during the time in his life where those around him still saw him as a girl. You see, Nathan was born female, and all his life he’s known that something wasn’t right with him, that he wasn’t happy being a girl, and never felt like he really fitted in. As Nathan enters his teens these feelings intensify, especially when puberty begins, and his body starts to change.

Nathan begins to become withdrawn, spiralling into a depression. He lashes out at others. He had nightmares about the changes that are happening to him. He even begins to self harm. Nathan is unsure what’s happening to him, he only knows that there’s something different about him to those around him. After doing some research Nathan learns of the term transgender, and realises that it describes him, knowing that he really is a boy, and that he can change his outsides to match who he is on the inside. Now all he has to do is convince his family that this is the right thing for him.

There is a lot of stuff in Call Me Nathan that is shockingly familiar to me. Despite having a very different experience of transition than Nathan there’s a lot of his journey here that felt like it had been taken from my own life. The desperate longing to be who you’re meant to be, the sense that you’re losing out on your real life, the pain and depression that never seems like its going to end. I think that Catherine Castro does an amazing job of capturing those feelings and experiences, especially the strange miasma that hangs over your life when you know that something is wrong but can’t quite figure it out. So many trans stories seem to have characters who have always known they were trans, and to see an experience that echoed my own, where figuring that out was a huge step of the journey, felt so wonderful to see.

Thanks to the sheer amount of awful stereotypes and misinformation in the world about trans people right now it would have been really easy for this book to have gone wrong, to have perpetuated harmful lies, but you can tell that Castro took the time to actually look into this, that she spent time with the young trans man in her life, Lucas, and tried to create a real story. Nathan isn’t a real person, his story isn’t completely true, but it is based on a real story, on real experiences, and I think that sometimes that can matter just as much as any one true story. Nathan is a stand-in for one of thousands of trans men in the world whose life echoes this, who can see themselves in this book and feel represented well.

And that kind of representation does really matter. Especially now. The trans community is not in a good place right now. We’ve never been more under attack than we are now. States in the US have passed laws to ban trans-affirming healthcare for anyone under 19, whilst other states have begun to treat parents of trans children who support them as child abusers, even taking legal action against them. Here in the UK there are transphobic pieces in the media every single day. The same week that I read and reviewed this book it was announced that trans people would not be part of the conversion therapy ban, effectively giving the green light to torture trans people, and the Prime Minister spouted transphobic talking points on television. Trans people are in literal danger, our lives are at risk, and all because a hateful, vocal minority spread lies and misinformation about us as loudly as they can. And books like this go a long way to help challenge that.

Call Me Nathan doesn’t glamorise the trans experience, but shows it in a very real light. It shows the pain that trans people go through when their identities are denied. It shows the harm that going through the wrong puberty can do to us. It shows how hard it is to fight just to be seen as yourself. But just as importantly, it shows how wonderful and affirming it is when you get that. This book dispels so many myths and lies, it tells an honest story, and at times like this, when trans people are called sexual predators and child groomers just for existing, we need these kind of honest narratives.

I can’t talk about the book without mentioning the art, provided by Quentin Zutton. The art for the book doesn’t look like what most people would think of when they hear the word comic. There are no panels or hard boxes for the artwork to sit inside of, and much of the book looks more like a sketchbook, where the art has simply been drawn onto the page in a way that feels less rigid and more free-flowing. This really helps the story I think, and it gives things more of a stream of consciousness feel at times, especially when we’re left in Nathan’s head space. The lack of rigid form and the simple artwork complements the story, and it looks really beautiful at times too, with some pages that really sell the horror of Nathan’s experience, as well as his massive joy.

I don’t think the term SelfMadeHero has ever felt more apt for this company than this book, because Nathan, like all trans folk, are self made heroes. Trans people have to fight every single day to be who they are, and that makes them heroes in my book. Like Nathan himself says, when looking at the scars on his chest from his top surgery – they’re his “war wounds. I won this fucking war”.

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Ladies With Guns, Part One by Bocquet Olivier - Book Review

 

'Five women from various backgrounds are brought together by fate to fight as allies for their survival. A retired schoolteacher, an Indian who's handy with a bow, a young, immigrant widow from London, a brothel worker who's made off with the till and a fourteen-year-old slave who's been put in a cage. This unlikely band of adventurers must fight off the violence men resort to when caught in greed's ubiquitous grip. They'll do it with arrows, pies, brooms, pots, knitting-needles, and a lethal revolver that becomes even more dangerous in the hands of the sharpest-shooter of them all: a teenager who's been whipped, locked in a cage and freed only to fall victim to pneumonia. These women have got each other's backs and don't take kindly to the worst mankind has to offer.'

Ladies With Guns is a new graphic novel from Europe Comics that takes readers to the wild west to follow the exploits of five women dealing with the evil that men do.

The story begins with Abigail, a teenage slave who is making her way through the countryside trapped inside a steel cage. Dragging and carrying her cage around her as she walks, Abigail has made a desperate bid for freedom, but runs into trouble when a pack of coyotes begin to attack her. Thankfully, help arrives in the form of Kathleen. Kathleen has recently moved to the West from her home in London as she and her husband attempt to build a new life for themselves. However, Kathleen's husband is killed when he's caught up in an accident, and when their caravan comes under attack from Native Americans she flees into the woods, where she finds Abigail.

Kathleen didn't flee the attack unnoticed, however, and is followed by Chumani, a young warrior woman who has followed Kathleen to exact revenge. Kathleen was forced to kill Chumani's brother in order to escape, and Chumani wants revenge. However, the two women put aside their differences in an attempt to help Abigail out of her cage. Unfortunately, the lock proves too hard to break, and so the two women carry Abigail, and the cage, to find help. Abigail falls sick along the journey, and when Kathleen tries to get help in a small town she's almost thrown into jail. Fortunately for her, Daisy, a retired school teacher comes to her aid. Daisy, and runaway sex worker Cassie, go with Kathleen to help Abigail, and the five women are forced to come together to fight for their lives when a posse of men come calling for their blood.

Ladies With Guns is something of a brutal book. The entire premise is about the evils that women are made to live with at the hands of men, and the book doesn't shy away from showing that. The women are hit, stabbed, shot, and beaten as they try to fight off the men who want to reclaim the small, scarred, and hurting slave girl who has already been a victim of abuse and sexual violence. Writer Bocquet Olivier puts the violence front and centre, but never revels in it, never makes it something to look forward to or find joy in. Even when the awful men are being hurt by the women there's no happiness in the act.

What is the source of happiness in this book is seeing these women come together and forming bonds with each other. Chumani, Kathleen, and Abigail are together the longest, and form the biggest bonds. At the start of the book Chumani wants to harm Abigail simply for having defended herself, blaming her for the death of her brother. But, by trying to work together to help Abigail they begin to see that the differences of their people, the animosity between the white invaders and the native people doesn't have to extend to them if they don't want to. A genuine friendship seems to form between them, and soon they begin risking their lives not just for Abigail, but each other too.

Daisy and Cassie are later additions to the story, and whilst we get a good sense of the type of person she is pretty quickly Cassie remains largely something of an enigma by the time the book comes to a close. She seems much more out for herself than the others, was less willing to get her hands dirty to help Abigail for example; but I expect that she will be expanded upon in the next volume, and that my thoughts on her could change.

Speaking of the next volume, I really enjoyed how this part ended, with a huge culmination of things that were building from the very beginning in a huge, brutal showdown that showed that these women are not meant to be messed with. Unfortunately for them, they're now in a position where they can't just claim self defence, that they've just been trying to do the right thing and don't know they've broken laws, as this volume ends with them wanted for multiple counts of murder. It's a great ending to this book, and sets up for some great stuff to come. I'm excited to find out what happens to them next, who could come hunting for the bounty on them, and if they can ever find a safe way to escape from the men pursuing them.

The art for the book is provided by Anlor, who does a great job throughout. All of the environments, from the open plains of the west, to the lush forests, to the old western style buildings all look brilliant and really put you into the setting. It feels like a bold and dynamic film at times, and the choices made for framing and action in the panels make things pop a lot. Speaking of action, Anlor does a fantastic job at making the violence in the book feel violent. There's no moment where it feels like larger than life characters hitting each other to little effect, and every slap, punch, and worse, feels like a huge impact. People get hurt in realistic and brutal ways, and it makes you uncomfortable to watch. Which is perhaps once of the best compliments for a book about the awful nature of violence.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Ladies With Guns when I picked it up, due to the almost exploitative and sensationalist title. But this isn't a story about over-the-top female characters going around shooting things up and being action heroes, it's a story about the violence that women face, the brutality they go through, and five incredibly strong women who stand up and refuse to take any more. This is definitely a series where I'm going to be eagerly looking forward to the next volume.

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Ragged by Christopher Irvin - Book Review

 

'In a feral twist on crime fiction, Cal, a mutt with a criminal past, must step back into the world of animal violence to avenge the death of his wife and protect his pups from the inherent darkness of nature.

'A stunning anthropomorphic tale of love and revenge, Ragged; or, The Loveliest Lies of All is a dark story of a vibrant animal community in a New England wood. Grieving the loss of his wife to a mysterious case of rabies, Cal must avenge her death and protect his pups from the coming winter and the horrors of the forest. It's Wind in the Willows and Fantastic Mr. Fox meet Fargo in Christopher Irvin's signature slice-of-life crime style.'

Ragged isn't your typical crime noir mystery. Yes, there's characters with dark pasts, criminals, death, and infection on the horizon that all put this small community in danger, but thanks to Christopher Irvin's wonderfully weird imagination Ragged does something very different; it sets it all in a community of woodland animals.

Cal is a dog who grew up outside of the woodland community, a member of the wasteland gang, a group of criminals and killers made up of rats, stoats, and weasels, headed up by Maurice, the cruel raccoon. But Cal has long since given up on that old life, having started a family and become a member of the woodland community. However, when his wife, Winifred, goes missing Cal tracks her down to the fells, where she's fled to escape her family, to keep them safe as the infection that courses through her blood turns her feral. Cal does the only thing he can, and ends his wife's suffering.

Keeping Winifred's infection and subsequent death a secret, lest the community think he and his family could be sick and cast them out, Cal tries to find out how his wife was infected in a bid to seek revenge. As Cal investigates the rest of the community tries to deal with the increasingly difficult problems that come from a lack of food and supplies as the local traders haven't visited the village in weeks. Everyone is on edge, waiting for help to come; and with infection and the denizens of the wasteland stirring more trouble is on the horizon for the citizens of the woodlands.

The blurb for Ragged described the story as being a cross between Wind in the Willows and Fargo, and that's a pretty apt description. The book features anthropomorphic animals yes, but it's not a story for kids, and has a much darker tone. The book begins with Winifred being infected, struggling to focus and to get away from her family, and the tone doesn't really get any lighter from there. There's a constant sense of unease and sadness that permeates the book, and as the reader you're waiting for something worse to happen as Cal and the others try their best to carry on.

The story has a large cast of characters, and if the book was featuring humans I think that perhaps it would be easy to get lost as you get dropped into this large community of people. However, thanks to the cast being made up of different animals it became a lot easier to keep track of who everyone was, and what kind of person they were. The characters aren't just regular humans in animal form, and have aspects of their animal personalities baked into them. Certain traits that would feel weird, or perhaps over-the-top in humans fit perfectly with the characters of Ragged, especially as they walk a fine line between civilised and feral.

The story is definitely improved by it being animals as well, and whilst this could have worked in some form with people, changing out the rabies infection to some other form of disease that could cause problems for the community, it just wouldn't have been the same. Irvin didn't just take a story and throw animals into it, but made a plot and a world that could only work because of the unique take on the characters. So much of this book comes back to it being these anthropomorphic animals that you don't even realise how much world building and clever creation has gone on because you're so wrapped up in the main mystery to realise.

I really do think that Ragged is one of those books that will give you different feelings whilst reading it to when you've finished, and that once you start looking back at it once its done you start to see how much bigger it was than you first thought, and how much more intricate everything is. Because of this I think this could easily be one of those books that people end up reading more than once, just to try and get more and more out of it.

Ragged was an enjoyable read, one that was more complex and interesting than I was first expecting, with some unique ideas and innovative takes on the genre that a lot of stories would struggle to get away with. One that's definitely worth checking out for fans of the genre who're looking for something a bit different.

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The Forest of Time Volume One: Children of the Stone by Tristan Roulot - Book Review

 

'Deep in the heart of an enchanted forest, a small village of children lives unaffected by the passage of time thanks to a powerful stone that protects them from it. But when the stone is shattered and a thief runs off with one of the shards, four of the children must set out at once in search of the missing shard before their village is swallowed up by time and everybody in it dies. Armed with four crystals with special powers, the children bravely make their way through the dangerous forest to hunt down the thief, making friends and enemies along the way and encountering one strange creature after another.'

The Forest of Time is a new fantasy graphic novel series coming from Europe Comics that takes readers to a strange world where a small enclave of children have been living deep inside an enchanted forest, where time stands still. These children have been living with the Worshipul One, the only adult, who leads them in their life of science and experimentation.

The children of this small village have lived together for years, longer than their ages would imply, and have dedicated their many years to furthering their knowledge and understanding of the universe. There are philosophers, astronomers, mechanics, and biologists. The children and the Worshipful One have used the agelessness of their village to their advantage, spending years in study of the fields that fascinate them. However, one night a mysterious young woman breaks her way into the village, and shatters The Stone, a magical artefact that kept the passage of time at bay. Stealing one of the pieces of the stone, the thief has destroyed the village's way of life.

With the stone's powers failing, and no way to repair it without the missing piece the thief took, four of the children set out to find the woman and get the missing piece back. However, as they begin their journey into the world beyond their village they encounter new allies, and new dangers; including a masked old man who draws the life force from those around him, who seems bent on stopping the children.

The Forest of Time: Children of the Stone is an interesting start to this new series, and establishes some pretty firm foundations for things to come. The first thing that the book does well is to establish our lead characters, giving us a good idea of who our main children are before things have even gone wrong. Max is the oldest of the children, a brave young man who seems to make taking care of the younger kids a priority, and is the first to step forward when they need someone to go looking for the stone. Theo and Leo are a pair of inventors, and are the comedic duo of the book. When we first meet them they're working on their latest invention, a mechanical bird that can poop on people. Whilst they initially seem to be something of a joke, they prove to be incredibly resourceful, and because of their outgoing nature it's no surprise when they step forward.

The fourth of the heroes sent from the village is the one that makes the least amount of sense to begin with. Marie is one of the youngest of the children, and hasn't yet found the thing that grabs her. Whilst others have chosen their paths to explore she seems like something more of a daydreamer. However, she chooses to go on this mission because she saw the woman who broke the stone, a woman she thinks could be her mother, and who told her to leave with the others. Whilst Marie's thoughts that this woman who looks just like her might be her mother isn't a bad one, thanks to clues scattered throughout the book, and the focus on time an its manipulation, I think it's a lot more likely that the female thief is actually an older Marie, and that she was spurned onto her adventure by her older self.

This is something that I also think might be happening with other characters too. We see time being manipulated in a few different ways,  so going backwards in time isn't a wild an idea as it sounds. I do look at both the Worshipful One and the Time-Eater and think that they're pretty similar looking. If the Worshipful One's beard got a bit wilder and greyer it would fit; plus he could easily be wearing the mask so that the children he raised don't recognise him. Tristan Roulot has certainly seeded a lot of potential plot ideas in this first volume that make it feel like this story is going to be a bit more complex than I was expecting, and will be doing some sneaky and surprising things with the story.

The art for the book has been provided by Guerrero, and looks really nice. All of the children have bold, distinct designs that make them instantly stand out on the page and you never get confused as to who is who; which is a good thing with how many children there are at times. The environments all look really pretty and have a huge amount of detail to them, and you can spend ages looking through some of the locations picking out small details.

Overall I had a really good time with The Forest of Time: Children of the Stone, and am looking forward to finding out where the story goes from here. There's been some interesting stuff introduced so far, and promise of more exciting things to come.

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The Cellar – Film Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

Haunted house stories can be hard to get right. They’re one of the oldest staples of horror, and it seems like every take on them possible has already been done. Despite this, The Cellar manages to find an odd little niche to expand upon ghosts, spirits, and the world of the occult: mathematics.

The Cellar follows the Woods family, who have moved into a huge new home that they bought cheap at auction. The house, a huge old manor complete with massive fireplaces, old portraits on the walls, and a fully stocked library, is being pushed as a new start by parents Keira (Eisha Cuthbert) and Brian (Eoin Macken), and whilst young son Steven (Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady) is excited for the move, teenage daughter Ellie (Abby Fitz) hates the idea. Ellie’s hate for the house intensifies when she gets stuck in the cellar whilst touring the house, and gets creeped out by something in the darkness.

When Keira and Brian have to head in to work for an important pitch on the first night in the new house, Ellie is left in charge. When Steven finds a secret compartment in one of the rooms that has an old gramophone, they play the record to find a recording of a strange mathematical equation.

When the power goes out later that night Ellie has to head into the cellar to turn the fuses back on. Terrified of heading in there alone she stays on the phone with her mum. Keira encourages Ellie down into the cellar, telling her to count the ten steps down as she goes to calm herself. But when Ellie keeps counting, her voice going strange, Keira and Brian rush home to find out what’s going on. When they return Ellie is missing. Keira is convinced that something strange is going on in the old house, something connected to the odd mathematical carvings scattered around the building.

The Cellar is a haunted house story mixed with a mystery. The first portion of the film focuses on building tension with small scenes that show Ellie becoming more and more afraid of the house, and the cellar in particular. These moments are pretty well done, and thanks to some long, lingering camera shots, some creepy music, and well crafted sets, the house does quickly get a spooky vibe to it. Even when Ellie disappears and the film takes on more of a mystery vibe to it there are some pretty creepy sequences scattered throughout. One in particular made my skin crawl.

The central mystery of the piece, the strange cellar and the odd carvings and formulae scattered throughout the house, is one that I found genuinely intriguing, and thanks to a handy mathematics professor that Keira can visit, we get some suitably vague explanations for what’s going on that leads to a type of haunting that feels strangely different from most. This isn’t just a lingering spirit, and it’s not your average demon summoning. The Cellar is genuinely trying to do something different here, and I think it deserves points for that alone. Though in some ways the film does remind me of 2010’s Insidious. I won’t say why, but once you’ve seen the film I’m pretty sure you’ll get what I mean.

The films focuses on the Woods family, and as such only has a small cast. Outside of the family itself there’s only a handful of named characters and speaking parts, and as such the core cast have to work hard to carry the plot themselves. Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady and Abby Fitz are pretty good in their roles of the kids, with Fitz in particular coming off well. She plays the angry teenager well, though has a level of vulnerability to her that you genuinely believe her when the cellar leaves her terrified. There are times where Fitzmaurice Brady comes across as a little creepy, and I’m not sure if it’s an intentional part of the film or not, but it definitely doesn’t hurt for a horror film.

Eoin Macken falls into the stereotypical horror father role, of not believing that there’s a supernatural explanation for his daughter’s disappearance, and has to be brought round to believing the very obvious creepy things happening around him. Cuthbert, however, is the stand out star of the film. This was the first time that I’d seen her in anything since 24, and found her completely unrecognisable. Being twenty years older than the last time I’d seen her, and with completely different hair colour, she felt like a different actress in this film.

She fits the mother role well, and you can see a genuine struggle going on for her as she tries to balance her work life with her kids. She also seems to still be playing an American character, despite sounding Irish half the time. The occasional slips into a more American accent and the use of certain words show that she’s not native Irish like her family, and this made for some great subtle character choices, showing her as someone who has mostly assimilated to living across the world, yet still slips from time to time. Having known people who have married into Irish families, and who’ve ended up picking up a lot of the accent and words to the point you’d think they were Irish too, it felt like a very believable choice for the character.

The Cellar is overall a pretty enjoyably movie. It has some good moments of tension, doesn’t really rely on jump scares or loud music to make the audience feel frightened, and has a unique twist on this kind of story. But it’s far from perfect; it doesn’t really take too many chances, and it doesn’t always keep the tension going. I’d have loved to have seen more time spent on certain aspects of the movie, but sadly because it never took the time to do so it’s not going to be a film that stands out from the crowd.

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Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney – Book Review

 

Originally published in Set The Tape

'Life gets complicated when Death gets involved.

'To be born into a family of royal assassins pretty much guarantees that your life is going to be… rather unusual. Especially if, like Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones, you also have a vicious allergy to all forms of violence and bloodshed, and an uncanny affinity for bringing the dead back to life.

'To make matters worse, family debt looms – a debt that will have to be paid sooner rather than later if Lanie and her sister are to retain ownership of the ancestral seat, Stones Manor. Lanie finds herself courted and threatened by powerful parties who would love to use her worryingly intimate relationship with the goddess of death for their own nefarious ends. But the goddess has other plans…'

Saint Death’s Daughter tells the story of Miscellaneous ‘Laine’ Stones, a member of the Stones family, a group of people who have strange powers that allow them to tap into magic. Laine is a necromancer, the only one to be born into her family for generations, and thanks to being allergic to all forms of violence has had to live a life sheltered away in her huge family home in order to keep herself alive. But when her father, the royal executioner, and her mother, the royal assassin, both die in quick order she finds her life being thrown upside down.

Laine has to call her older, twisted sister, Animita ‘Nita’ Muscaria Stones, back from her studies abroad to help at the family home when it is revealed that her family was in a great deal of debt. With that debt now fallen onto the two surviving Stones women they have to come up with a way of saving their family home, or risk losing the lives that they’ve become accustomed to. However, when more deaths begin to happen it becomes apparent that there’s more going on than first appeared.

I really wanted to like Saint Death’s Daughter. The blurb sounded really interesting, the set-up sounded fun. It seemed to be the kind of dark fantasy story that I normally enjoy. But thanks to the writing it just felt incredibly inaccessible, off-putting, and hard to follow.

One of the biggest issues with the book is that the author begins by giving the reader a huge info dump. We get seven new days, twelve new months, and a dozen gods and their domains to learn before we’ve even begun the story. This kind of thing, putting huge lists of new names and places at the start of fantasy stories before you’ve even met a single character, has always been something that I’ve found off-putting. I understand that sometimes books throw a lot at you, and that it can help to have a guide to use to remind you of stuff as you go along, but whenever I see pages like this at the start of the book it makes me feel like I’m about to start reading a text book, rather than a story.

Once the story began, this feeling really only intensified. Despite being given a huge info dump right at the start I found myself getting pretty lost very early on, with large sections of the prologue and opening chapters making little sense. The biggest problem was that not only do the characters drop names and phrases that we have no context for at this point, but their regular speech comes across like they’ve swallowed a thesaurus too, so even the parts that you should be able to understand come across as confusing.

I’m used to picking up books where there are strange character names, where we get given places we’ve never heard about, and other in-world words and phrases that you’ve got to learn; it’s a fairly standard part of fantasy. But whilst with most books I am able to learn as I go along, Saint Death’s Daughter never felt like that. Thanks to the way it is written and its over-use of flourishes and excessively odd text I was never able to just relax into the book and go along with it, picking it up as I went. I was drawn out of the story on almost every page as I was going back and rereading things to try and make sense of them.

Some of this confusion wasn’t helped with the constant asides and added information that the author would throw into scenes too. You’ll be reading about Laine and what she is doing in the moment and you’ll suddenly get several sentences telling you about a great-great aunt and her life and how she dies that doesn’t really add anything to the story, slows you down, and makes it harder to try and keep up with the plot. Most of the times these asides seem to be attempts at humour, to inject some kind of odd levity in the scene, yet thanks to them often feeling forced they never feel humorous at all.

It feels like Cooney has written an entire world down for this book, that they’ve worked out how everything works, who everyone is and their families going back several generations. It does feel like a thought out and realised world, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were stacks of notebooks on the author’s desk. However, it also seems like they’ve tried to cram it all into this one book, to try to show off how well planned and deep their world is, without realising that it’s taking away from the enjoyment of the story. I’ve seen some reviews comparing the book to Pratchett, that it’s trying to emulate the sense of weirdness and whimsy of the Discworld books, and I definitely see that here; but rather than creating something slowly like Pratchett did, the author seems to want it all up front, dumping several books on us in one overlong and unfunny volume.

There are some good things about this book, it has some dark moments, some interesting characters, it has positive queer, polyamorous, and trans representation. It takes a great approach to normalising more marginalised folk. But it just seems like the author tried to be too big and clever and funny and failed on all accounts, resulting in a book that is an absolute slog to get through (the close to five hundred pages felt closer to a thousand), and something where I was relieved once it was over. I’m sure there’s an audience out there for this book, but I honestly couldn’t recommend it to folks.

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