Give Me Comics Or Give Me Death!

  Clearly writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips realised they'd found success - both artistically and commercially - with their modern noir series Criminal and whilst that recently relaunched series continues in its rich vein of form, the pair have also cleverly diverged into projects that put a twist on their formula; the Lovecraft influenced Fatale, super-heroes with Incognito (and the excellent Sleeper , which pre-dates Criminal ), the Hollywood setting of The Fade Out , and the supernatural in Kill Or Be Killed.   This time around the USP is a tale set in the Wild West, although in typical Brubaker/Phillips (Bruillips?  Phillbaker?) fashion things aren't all that they initially seem to be. Behind the gorgeous sepia-ish cowboy cover by Phillips lies a story set in New York City 1939, where lead character Max Winters is a down-on-his-luck comic book writer.  Now, granted almost all of the characters in these Brubaker/Phillips stories are down-on-their-luck. but we'

  I wonder what it says about me that in a book about people and their challenges in life - the author and his grief, his girlfriend Kristen's battle with an ultimately fatal condition, Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake's roles in the popularisation of surfing - that I was most drawn to the absence of them in Dungo's wonderfully powerful seascapes.  The ocean has always been a popular and useful metaphor in art, and its massive expanse emphasising the individual's loneliness and helplessness, coupled with the deep dark unknown under the surface, works perfectly here to mirror the tragic tale.  The use of simple colour - some chapters are all green tones, some all browns - lends a dreamlike quality to the art, which nicely complements the themes of memory and the past that are prevalent in the book.  It is of no surprise that it is published by Nobrow, veering as close to a house style for the publisher as you are probably going to find.  Its a testament to Dungo's writi

 Fun Home is the somewhat depressing memoir-cum-analysis of cartoonist Alison Bechdel's childhood and teenage life, linking her own discovery of her sexual identity with the death of her father and the subsequent revelations of his sexuality. Contradiction and ignorance lie at the heart of this story.  Bechdel's childhood is portrayed as the product of a cold and loveless marriage, where the children are treated more as school pupils and free labour than beloved offspring.  Yet Bechdel and her siblings for the most part come across as happy and content with their lives - at least until the confusion of puberty and sex rears its head in the later years.  The narrative revolves around the death of Bechdel's father - hit by a truck whilst crossing the road from a house he was renovating - which she adamantly maintains throughout the story was an un-confessed suicide driven by his secret homosexuality (or bisexuality - he never articulates any specifics) in their local sm