Nat Turner

I’ve been meaning to review this for the last few years, always planning on posting about it during Black History Month in February, and every year, I get distracted and forget. Not this year — here’s Kyle Baker’s amazing graphic novel biography of Nat Turner, the leader of the bloodiest slave rebellion in the United States.

Turner was a slave living in Virginia. He’d taught himself to read, because it was illegal to teach slaves to read — slaveowners didn’t want educated slaves because they were more likely to rebel. Turner’s interest in reading was mainly so he could study the Bible, and his knowledge and high moral character had many fellow slaves referring to him as a prophet — he also had periodic visions which he believed came to him from God. And one of his visions, combined with a few convenient solar eclipses, eventually convinced him that God wanted him to lead a battle against the forces of evil. And in the American South of the 1830s, evil was definitely well-represented among white slaveowners.

When Turner and his accomplices began their rebellion, they initially stuck with quiet weapons — knives, axes, farming implements — rather than guns, and they didn’t just kill slaveowners — they killed women and children, too. They spared poor whites who they felt were as downtrodden as slaves, but they still ended up killing 60 people and amassing a force of 70 slaves and free blacks. Turner himself is believed to have killed only one person — he was extremely smart, but he was a lousy fighter. The rebellion was put down after two days, but Turner was able to hide out for several months. When he was finally captured, he was tried and sentenced to be hanged. He was also beheaded, and his body was buried in an unmarked grave.

Kyle Baker’s book takes most of its text from Thomas Ruffin Gray’s book, “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” which included extensive interviews with Turner during his trial and before his execution. His art illustrates passages from the book, or interprets common episodes in the lives of slaves. There is very little dialogue or word balloons, and the art is entirely black, white, and sepia-toned brown.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Turner’s story is an amazing one — I’m really surprised that Hollywood has never made a major movie about him. Maybe his character and personality are too complex for film — he’s not a pure hero or villain — yes, he fought against terrific injustice, but he committed widespread murders. Baker depicts Turner warts and all — but I think it’s clear he sympathizes with him and his cause. (As do I — knowing what we know about the horrors and monstrous injustices of slavery, I don’t blame anyone for rising up against it.)

It’s a stark and brutal story, frequently very violent. Turner and his rebels massacre families, ambush people in their homes, behead children — their actions shock us, and I think, rightfully so. But it’s still very hard not to sympathize — Turner’s actions aren’t sugarcoated, but it’s also made very clear that he’s living in a terribly unjust world, where slaves were subjected to horrible punishments for crimes like reading and playing drums. Slaveowners were said to be terrified of slave rebellions — and a lot of that terror may have been because they knew they deserved whatever the slaves would do to them.

If you only know Baker’s work from his wonderful “Plastic Man” series from a few years ago, this story will probably knock you out of your socks. His cartoonish style on DC’s comedic series is nowhere to be seen here. The art is, at turns, rough-hewn and furious, and then lushly rendered and gloriously lit, sometimes crudely emotional, sometimes shockingly beautiful, and sometimes both at once.

It’s a fantastic story about an unsung American freedom fighter, beautifully illustrated by one of our great graphic storytellers. You bet you should go pick it up.

Giants Beware!

I picked this one up a couple weekends ago, considered holding onto it to use for next December’s gift recommendations, then figured, heck with it, I wanted to go ahead and review it now.

I’ve been trying to keep my eye open for more fun all-ages comics, and I’d heard several friends recommending this one. It’s written by Jorge Aguirre and illustrated by Rafael Rosado, and it was released back in 2012. Our story is set in Mont Petit Pierre, a small quasi-medieval city surrounded by a fortress to keep monsters and other threats away. Our lead characters are Claudette, a young tomboy who craves battle against the legendary Baby-Feet-Eating Giant; Gaston, Claudette’s brother, a coward and remarkable pastry chef; and Marie, who aspires to become a princess; and Valiant, Claudette’s brave bulldog.

Our plotline: Everyone’s heard the stories about the giant driven away from the city years ago. Claudette is full of bravado and wants to go out and kill the giant herself. The Marquis, Marie’s father, mostly ignores her. Claudette’s father, the village blacksmith, who lost his legs and an arm in a battle against a dragon, and his assistant Zubair try to discourage her from foolish talk. Gaston only cares about staying away from danger and making delicious pastries. And Marie only cares about stuff that princesses care about.

But eventually, Claudette convinces Marie and Gaston to accompany her on her giant-killing quest. They must face danger at every turn, from a witch who wants to cook them into a potion to restore her beauty to the mad king of the river, who wants to force Marie into a marriage with his son — who is a fish. The townspeople are pursuing them, too, hoping to return them to the city where they’ll be safe. And of course, there’s a terrible giant waiting for them at the top of Giant’s Peak. Can the three children prevail against a giant?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a fantastic story, with grand adventure and derring-do, outstanding characterization, and great humor. It’s perfect for kids of all ages, and for both boys and girls.

Heck, let’s talk about the characters some more. Claudette is a rough-and-tumble little girl who specializes in goading everyone around her into action — she makes a great show of her bravery, but it doesn’t always hold up like she’d want it to. Her brother is such a richly strange kid — an avowed coward whose greatest passions are making delicious pastries and making swords. His father won’t let him learn the blacksmithing business yet, but it’s clear to everyone that Gaston doesn’t fit any stereotypes at all. Marie is every little girl who wants to be a princess — but where her friends are content to act spoiled and willowy, she is quite comfortable taking action, even if she’d prefer just ruling everyone from a throne.

Even the adults are interesting — the Marquis is a fool when it comes to leading a posse through the wilderness, but he seems a decent administrator of the village’s business — and he’s hiding something possibly dangerous, too. Claudette’s father throws a bit of a shock into us the first time we see him — we’re used to blacksmiths being big, strong men — which Augustine is — but to see him in a wheelchair is not the way we’re accustomed to imagining our blacksmiths. Not that he’s slowed down a bit — he’s the most capable adult we meet in the entire story. And Zubair, Augustine’s assistant, shows depths of wisdom and insight that few other characters possess.

What about our villains? The witch is definitely a bad guy — she captures the children and intends to sacrifice them for her potion so she can appease her own vanity. But she’s dealt with compassionately, and no one seems to perceive her as a truly vile person, particularly Augustine, who has encountered her before. The Mad Lake King is less evil, but he’s still a kidnapper and child-endangerer — and he’s still perceived as more of a misguided person than a true villain. And the giant — well, that would spoil things too much, wouldn’t it?

This is the type of story that’s going to be greatly enjoyed by kids who are around lower elementary age. The characters are well-drawn and interesting, but just a bit silly, and it’ll be incredibly easy for kids to identify with one or more of our heroes. There’s worlds of wonderful but bloodless action, but just as much time devoted to the kids thinking their way out of trouble and finding ways to empathize with others. With two of our heroes being young girls, it’s going to be a great book for girls who want to read comics full of adventure, action, and humor. And I think boys will enjoy it, too — because again, adventure, action, and humor!

It’s a great book for kids or for grownups — and especially for grownups who enjoy reading to their kids. Go pick it up.

We’re getting mighty close to Christmas, but there’s still time for some more gift recommendations for the comic book lover in your life.

Today, we’re going to talk about three different comics that I’ve already reviewed multiple times (click on the links at the bottom of this post if you want to see my more in-depth reviews of each issue) — but they’re now out in trade paperbacks, there’s a decent chance they’ll still be available in your local comics shop for you last-minute shoppers, and they’ll make great gifts for any comics fan who hasn’t yet gotten to enjoy the series.

First, there’s Moon Knight: From the Dead, by Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey.

Ellis and Shalvey’s much-too-short run on the series produced one of the best superhero comics of the past year, as Marc Spector takes on military cyborgs, snipers, killer psychotrobic mushrooms, punk rock ghosts, and more, all wearing amazing all-white costumes — standard superhero costumes, suits and ties, magical bone armor.

The art and storytelling here are simply amazing. You get six done-in-one stories, beautifully illustrated, gloriously colored, fantastically action-packed. Almost every issue Ellis and Shalvey produced could be nominated for awards — and should be — and if you know a comics fan who loves innovative storytelling and spectacular art, you can get this at your local shop for about $18.

Next, we get Southern Bastards: Here Was a Man, by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour.

This is a grimy, deep-fried Southern noir starring an old man named Ernest Tubb who’s returned to Craw County, Alabama for the first time in decades. He gets pulled into the dirty political machinations of the town, thanks to a bunch of redneck thugs picking on innocent people, and because of Coach Boss, the coach of the local football team, owner of the best barbecue joint in town, and the local crime boss.

Aaron and Latour are both from the South, and they end up bringing a lot of both the good and the way-too-frequent bad of the Deep South. The noir is pitch-black — more a tragedy than a traditional Southern gothic — the characterization and dialogue are grand, and there’s even a recipe included for Aaron’s mom’s fried apple pies. And it’s just $10, which is a great way to introduce this series to the crime fiction fan on your shopping list.

And finally, here’s The Wicked + the Divine: The Faust Act, by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, and Matthew Wilson.

This one has a really great hook — every 90 years, a dozen young people become the avatars of actual gods. They are worshiped and revered, despised and denounced. They perform miracles, and they perform concerts. And within two years, all of them die. It’s time for a new celestial cycle, and we follow two main characters — Laura, a divine fangirl and wannabe, and Luci, which is short for Lucifer. She’s the Devil.

The art is crisp and glorious, the story is inspired and mind-blowing, and the characters are people you want to learn more and more and more about. The “gods as supernatural pop stars” is a fantastic set-up, and the mystery at the heart of the story is fascinating and terrifying. You’ve got someone on your holiday list who would absolutely love this one, and you can get it for ’em for just ten bucks.

Alright, folks, it’s time for us to dive back into our Holiday Gift Bag for some great gift recommendations for the comics fan in your life. Today, it’s time to review Strong Female Protagonist by Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag.

“Strong Female Protagonist” got its start as a webcomic before recently being published in book form, partly thanks to a very successful Kickstarter campaign and partly due to a publishing deal with Top Shelf Comics. Our lead character here is Alison Green, a college student and former superhero with breathtaking superstrength, invulnerability, and, as the webcomic puts it, “a crippling sense of social injustice.”

As Mega Girl, Alison was a member of the Guardians, fighting supervillains and giant robots, but when her mind-reading arch-nemesis, Menace, presents her with evidence that other superhumans — who had powers that would let them drastically improve the world — had been murdered by governments and corporations because they’d upset too many rich and powerful people, Alison ends up quitting the superhero gig to try to learn something in school that’d let her really help people around the world.

That doesn’t leave her out of the superhero business entirely. She’s going to class, helping out with one of the local fire departments, trying to live a normal human life — but she still runs into the members of the Guardians, especially the shrinking super-scientist Pintsize, she socializes with Menace, and she tangles with a couple of supervillains, particularly the monstrously powerful Cleaver. She meets a fellow superhero named Feral, whose powers involve animal-like fighting skills and a beyond-Wolverine healing factor, and who has an unusual plan for saving the world by herself. And she also has her college friends, her professors, and her family back home, who help keep her grounded, and who sometimes help contribute to her superhuman sense of guilt that she can’t keep everyone safe…

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is a really fun series, and it’s really cool to have it all collected in a nice thick book.

I love Ostertag’s art, which is pretty wonderfully humanizing while still embracing some of the cool and sometimes bloody weirdness of the superhero world. And Mulligan’s writing is great, too, with lots of fun dialogue and plotlines that combine with Ostertag’s art to make some really grand storytelling.

The characters are probably the most fun part of the entire book. Alison is fantastically fun to read about, earnestly trying to be both a normal person and a hero — all while frequently showing off strength and sometimes furious rants that make her absolutely terrifying to everyone around her. Also great are awkwardly geeky Pintsize and the sometimes villainous, sometimes romantic Menace, whose mind-reading abilities are convincing, weird, and often fairly funny. Feral is an absolutely amazing character, rough-hewn and animalistic, but still probably the most purely heroic character in the entire book. Even Cleaver, who seems to be only a one-note brute, gets his moments of sympathy within his storylines.

Why should you get the book instead of reading it all for free online? Well, it’s got fantastic art and storytelling, and these days, we all need more fantastic art and storytelling. It’s a great way to support a couple awesome comic creators. And it’s easier to read in book form than it is online. And it’s a heck of a lot easier to give as a gift. You do want to give this as a gift, don’t you?

If you’re looking for a great gift for a superhero fan, this is going to make a great present. This may also make a great gift for teen readers — there’s some rude language and blood, but no nudity — and Alison is definitely the type of hero almost anyone can look up to. Go pick it up.

My children, we have completed our traditional Thanksgiving celebration once again. We have imbibed turkeys and yams and pies. We have endured Uncle Edgar’s racist yammerings. We have watched football, unless we were sensible and avoided football. And it is now time for our nation’s most entirely noxious tradition: Black Friday, when we go out in the wee hours (or, if you particularly hate goodness and decency, Thanksgiving Day itself!) to track down dubious bargains, to battle for mall parking, to press your face obscenely against glass doors and scream at underpaid department store clerks to open the doors right now, and to fight other customers for, I dunno, wifi toasters or something.

But you don’t have to put yourself through that! In fact, there are many wonderful gifts you can get at your friendly neighborhood comics store! Shall we examine a few?

Let’s kick things off with Mouse Guard by David Petersen.

This is a great series taking place in a quasi-medieval fantasy setting where mice are our heroes, facing off against various predator species. Our main characters for much of the series are Saxon, Kenzie and Lieam, who are all Guardmice, dedicating their lives to protecting mouse cities, citizens, and merchants and to combating threats like ferrets, weasels, owls, and snakes — and sometimes, they have to deal with threats from within mousedom.

The action is often jaw-droppingly awesome — after all, these are mice fighting and often beating owls, hawks, snakes, and other animals that are much larger and stronger. But even better is the character work — to our human eyes, one mouse looks much like another, so visually, the only difference we may see in most of them is different colored cloaks. But each of the mice we meet is a very distinct character, with different personalities and styles of speaking. The dialogue is often gloriously fun to read, too.

And a big chunk of the appeal of the story is the background. Each of the collections includes maps of the mouse territories, descriptions of their tiny cities hidden inside trees and rock walls, common mouse trades, and more. And it’s just grand fun to imagine life inside these tiny cities, intricately carved out by tiny mouse tools, guarded by brave mouse warriors, served by craftsmen and merchants.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The whole series is incredible fun, with David Petersen’s amazing art and storytelling running through every major storyarc. Yeah, the action is great, the characterization and dialogue are wonderful — but there’s nothing like turning a page and discovering a whole new setting you never could’ve imagined before, whether that’s an entire city or just a simple tavern or workroom, built and decorated by mice.

It’s a kid-friendly series, but it’s not entirely violence-free — characters are terribly injured and sometimes die, so don’t expect to just drop this in your kindergartener’s lap unless you want to deal with the emotional traumas yourself. But for the right kid — and especially for the right adults — this is beautiful, emotionally vibrant storytelling that you’ll treasure.

About the worst thing you can say about it is that it’s an unusual size for a comic — the books are just about square, so it can be hard to display them in some bookshelves. And there are quite a few books in the series — Fall 1152, Winter 1152, and The Black Axe are the books in the main storyline, while the two Legends of the Guard books are collections of stories from different creators — they’re all greatly worth reading, though. And you’ll also want to look for a new collection called Baldwin the Brave and Other Tales, which is full of Petersen’s incredibly charming Free Comic Book Day stories.

Mouse Guard is a perfect gift for kids and adults who love mice, action, and fantasy. You can find them at many comic shops, and you can also order them online from many different store. Go pick ’em up!

Bad for You: Exposing the War on Fun! by Kevin C. Pyle and Scott Cunningham

If there’s one important thing to remember about being a kid, it’s that all the stuff that’s the most fun is the stuff that everyone is absolutely convinced is bad for you. Comic books? Bad. Video games? Bad. Dungeons & Dragons? Bad. Skateboarding? Bad. Rock music? Bad.

So here’s a book dedicated to talking about all the things that were so awful for us, and how they weren’t really bad for us at all.

Kevin C. Pyle and Scott Cunningham put this together. It’s not quite a comic book — there’s a lot of straight text here — but it’s all broken up with plentiful comic illustrations. And appropriately, it starts out talking about how everyone was convinced that comics were bad for us, mostly focusing on the fraudulent research of Dr. Fredric Wertham. But it doesn’t stop there.

Among the other panics we’ve seen over the years, this book also spotlights fairy tales, Harry Potter books, all kinds of games (including soccer, chess, pinball, and shuffleboard), texting, social media, beepers, playgrounds, skateboarding, and much more.

But the most terrifying and infuriating chapter of the book is the one focusing on education. While things would seem to be much improved from the days when most children spent their days working in factories instead of going to school, the situation is definitely declining now. Schools and education “experts” have decided that recess is bad for you, that vacations are bad for you, that art and music are bad for you, that free time is bad for you — you see, they all get in the way of studying to pass the standardized tests.

We also learn about censorship in schools, as administrators crack down on student reporters, usually for the crime of making administrators look bad. And we learn that research has shown that students who sleep later do better in school — yet schools still keep demanding that classes must start at crack-o’-dawn in the morning. We learn more about the ongoing ridiculousness of Zero Tolerance policies, which appear to be designed solely to assault children and send them to jail for laughably trivial reasons.

While the other chapters made adults look like misguided fools reflexively hating anything new that kids were doing, that last chapter makes our educators, school administrators, and police officials out to be actively malign influences on our children, working to make our kids less educated and less secure, and mostly interested in abusing their power to kick kids out of school and stick them in jail.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Most of the book is very entertaining and informative — you’ll learn plenty, and you’ll find plenty of things to laugh about, too. Yeah, there are people out there who seem to genuinely hate it when kids have fun — but ultimately, they lose, and they go to their graves mocked and derided.

But again, that last chapter is shocking and infuriating. I don’t have kids, but holy bananas, I’m amazed some of the tyrannical teachers and awful administrators depicted here have managed to survive to the present day. I’m even more surprised that the terrible policies governing our schools haven’t been overturned, just because the resulting educational disaster is just so screamingly obvious. If reading this chapter doesn’t absolutely infuriate you, there’s a very good chance you’re already a school principal or school board member.

Go pick it up, partly for the humor, partly for the rage, partly to remember that today’s kids are no more awful than you were when you were in school.

The Return of Zita the Spacegirl

When last we left our heroine, Zita the Spacegirl, she had been captured by the forces of galactic oppression. The third volume of Ben Hatke’s all-ages-friendly space adventure serial picks up from that point — Zita is brought before the tyrannical court of Dungeon World, jeered as Zita the Crime Girl, and thrown into a cell to rot, while her friend, Pizzicato the giant mouse, is slated for execution. The only way Zita can save him, even briefly, is by agreeing to work in the mines of the planet as a slave. Her only companions in her cell are Femur, a talking skeleton, and Ragpile, a talking, um, ragpile. And her only ally is a mysterious figure wearing a blue tentacled cloak…

Can Zita make an escape? Can she survive slavery and betrayal? Can she keep the villains from finding and enslaving Earth? Will her many friends ever manage to find her before it’s too late? And most important of all — Will Zita be able to save everyone?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Rousing, gloriously fun science fantasy. It’s a little darker than the previous books — not that they didn’t have their moments of darkness, too — but after all, the heroine spends so much of this story trapped in a dungeon breaking rocks while villains plot the invasion of her homeworld.

But for all the darkness, it just makes Zita’s victory all the more wonderful — and more bittersweet at the same time. It’s a story that can haul you bodily from one emotion to the next, where you exult in the appearance of each long-lost friend, and then cringe at the suggestion that Zita could lose them all again.

You’ve read the first and second volumes of these books, right? You loved the cosmic dust out of ’em, right? You’re definitely going to want to pick this one up.

Andre the Giant: Life and Legend

A graphic novel biography of the biggest wrestler who ever lived? Well, okay, I’m fine with that.

It’s actually really straightforward. It’s a collection of vignettes about the life of Andre Roussimoff, a man afflicted with acromegaly, who became world-famous as a professional wrestler and actor. We get Andre at just 12 years old, already too big to ride a schoolbus, getting a ride from playwright Samuel Beckett. We get Andre flipping a car over. We get Andre intimidating the law at a bar in Dallas. We get Andre insulting Bad News Brown with an inappropriate racist joke and making up with him years later.

We get Andre slowly suffering more and more as his condition worsens. We get Andre getting into fights both in the ring and in real life. We get Andre hanging out with friends and strangers, both famous and obscure. We get a bunch of short stories about Andre during the filming of “The Princess Bride.”

And we get truly epic tales of how much Andre could drink. Because the man could drink a heck of a lot.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great work on both cartooning and storytelling by Box Brown.

This certainly qualifies as a warts-and-all biography — and there are a lot of warts to cover. The most obvious example is Andre’s racist joke and feud with Bad News Brown. Even if he was simply ignorant about how offensive those jokes were to Brown, Andre still comes off looking like a colossal jerk. In fact, he looks like a jerk pretty often — being rude to fans, using his size and strength to intimidate and humiliate people, drinking and drinking and drinking and drinking…

But it’s also a very affectionate biography, too. Andre is a jerk, but he’s also a hugely charismatic jerk, and he also has lots of moments of compassion and kindness and friendship and humor. He inspired great loyalty and affection in many people who knew him, and his struggles with his condition — as well as his refusal to give in to despair and his vast zeal for life — are entirely inspiring.

You’ll read this, and you’ll want to go watch his matches or his movies. So go pick it up.

Is it time for another Holiday Gift Bag? Yes, it is. It’s time for more Holiday Gift Bag. Today, we’re talking about Cursed Pirate Girl by Jeremy A. Bastian.

Our lead character is… THE CURSED PIRATE GIRL! Not that she has a pirate ship, at least not initially. She doesn’t seem particularly cursed either. She might be cursed with madness, but she’s no different from any other character we encounter here — everyone’s a nut.

She’s definitely trying to find her father, though — he’s one of the great Pirate Captains who sailed the legendary Omerta Seas, and she desperately wants to find him and join his crew. But she’s offended the governor, who orders one of his thugs to kill her. He fails, luckily, and she gains her first ally — Pepper Dice, a parrot who crawls into a fish (Yes, the whole story’s a bit loopy) so he can lead her to the secret entrance of the Omerta Seas. She also meets Sir Haffu and Sir Halek, a couple of quarreling swordfish knights.

But there are lots of deadly foes on the Omerta Seas — specifically, rival pirates like Captain Holly and his grotesque crew of scallywags! Can the Cursed Pirate Girl win out over them all? Will she ever manage to find her father? Will she eat better than any other pirate? How did she get that awesome eyepatch? How much does she love laughing?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a deeply weird and surreal and hilarious book. Just about everyone is deformed and grotesque, both physically and mentally. The world is full of freaks and monsters of all types — and usually, they’re not there to menace our heroine — they’re just background color. They’re just there to remind you how spectacularly weird this little world is.

And holy quackers, you’re gonna have to check out the art on this one. Y’all know I’m not an artist and don’t know a whole heck of a lot about art history, so it’s tough for me to pin down just which artists Bastian reminds me of. It’s a bit like Windsor McKay’s work on “Little Nemo in Slumberland,” a bit like Richard F. Outcault’s Yellow Kid comic strip, a bit like Thomas Nast’s editorial cartoons, a bit like Gustave Dore. It’s weird and intricate and beautiful, and you can sit there and look at a whole page over and over and always find something you’d missed the first time.

You can’t say this about every graphic novel out there, but the physical presentation of this is a definite selling point. You gotta get the hardcover with the rough-cut pages. I got some serious happiness just from the tactile sensations of holding the book and turning the pages — it makes you feel like you’re really reading something special.

Get this for anyone — kids or grownups — with a taste for surreal, swashbuckling adventure, or for someone who really appreciates weird humor or gorgeous artwork. I bet someone on your Christmas list is going to love this, so go pick it up.

Already? Another visit to the Holiday Gift Bag? Well, we didn’t get new comics here yesterday because of a slowdown in shipping from last week’s ice storm, so I gotta have something to write about. So let’s talk about Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff.

You like swashbuckling adventure, don’t you? Nod your head — of course you love swashbuckling adventure. This story stars Delilah Dirk, an expert swordswoman, archer, and acrobat who travels the world stirring up trouble, and Erdemoglu Selim, a mild-mannered lieutenant in the Turkish Janissary Corps, whose greatest pleasures involve resting quietly and brewing excellent tea. Due to a misunderstanding — Delilah was robbing his employer, and Selim’s employer was an idiot — they end up on the run together, trying to avoid capture and execution while absconding with wonderful treasures.

Selim would really prefer to settle down alone in a quiet town, but he sticks with Delilah, partly out of duty and partly because everyone seems to want both of them dead. Actually, Selim might not quite admit it, but there are other benefits — adventure, flying boats, hair’s-breadth escapes, gold, tea, a beautiful woman who only almost gets him killed every few days… But will their amazing adventures end with them living lives of endless wealth or getting the pointy end of the headsman’s axe?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s an utterly beautiful comic. It’s a bit cartoony at times — and I know we’ve talked about how that ain’t a bad thing — but sometimes you turn the page and hit this astonishingly gorgeous landscape shot that completely transports you into the story.

Cliff is a fantastic storyteller — dialogue, characterization, body language are all hugely entertaining. Delilah and Selim are extremely appealing and charismatic people, and it’s a real pleasure to read about them, whether they’re gambling their lives against impossible odds or just sitting around their flying boat chit-chatting.

The action is just plain jaw-dropping. Bridges get blown up. Towers get holes punched in them. Bad guys get with swords and chairs, and thrown through windows, and clobbered with buckets and fists and feet and everything else they could get clobbered with. And there’s a flying boat. Did I mention that? A genuine flying boat. The action, again, is just plain jaw-dropping.

You’re going to want this for anyone who loves truly breathtaking swashbuckling adventure, for anyone who loves great comic book art, for anyone who loves fantastic female heroines and reluctant male heroes. Go pick it up, people, and do not delay.