I still have plenty of gift recommendations to get through before Christmas. Today, let’s look at Richard Stark’s Parker: Slayground, adapted and illustrated by Darwyn Cooke.

By now, I expect you know the general idea behind this series. Richard Stark was actually a mystery writer named Donald Westlake, and his series of hard-boiled crime novels about a heist artist named Parker has been quite popular for decades. Darwyn Cooke, who creates great retro-pulp comics like “DC: The New Frontier” and the “Spirit” revival from a few years ago, has done several graphic novel adaptations of the Parker novels. And this one is the latest one.

In “Slayground,” Parker’s latest heist has gone sour. He’s made his escape into Fun Island, an amusement park in Buffalo, New York, that’s been closed for the winter. Parker knows some cops saw him climb into the park — but they aren’t coming after him. He quickly deduces that the cops are crooked, and they and a bunch of mafia goons are planning on coming after him, stealing the loot, and killing him to cover up their own crimes.

But it’s a big park. And the longer they wait before they move in after him, the more time they give him to hide and to turn the rides and attractions into deathtraps under his control.

Verdict: Thumbs up. What’s not to love? It’s “Home Alone” with a sociopath in place of Macauley Culkin!

Seriously, I’m gonna go ahead and keep this fairly short. Y’all must know by now how much I love Cooke’s Parker graphic novels. The big difference between this and the previous three is that there’s a lot less heisting, a lot more action, and no gorgeous bombshells getting in Parker’s way.

What’s it got? It’s got fantastic art, a thrilling story, great characters, and the distinct brand of awesomeness we’ve come to expect from the Parker books.

You want more in-depth analysis? Read my previous reviews of the Parker comics. You want it short and simple? This will be a great gift for anyone who loves crime comics, cool, retro artwork, and noir storytelling. Go pick it up.

I got so much stuff I want to review for the Gift Bag, and so little time left before Christmas, so I’m gonna try to get all the reviews I can. Today, we’re going to talk about Bandette, Volume One: Presto! by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover.

That’s our lead character up there — Bandette, agile, laughing, clever, somewhat deranged Parisian thief. We meet her for the first time while she’s robbing an underworld figure of some small Rembrandt portraits — and she’s soon on the run from his heavily armed guards. Perhaps she could escape from them on her own, but instead she enlists the aid of her Urchins — friends ranging from little children to ballerinas — to get the bad guys thrown off the scent.

And even though Bandette is a notorious — yet daring and celebrated — thief, she is pursued by the police — so that they can ask her for help! Her skills are so remarkable that she can take down a gang of armed robbers without difficulty! Is there nothing Bandette cannot accomplish? Well, perhaps she cannot best the famed thief Monsieur. Perhaps she cannot avoid the assassins of Finis. Perhaps she cannot avoid the blade of Matadori. Perhaps she cannot vanquish the heart of the hapless Daniel.

Ha ha! How droll! Of course Bandette can do all these things!

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is a wonderfully charming comic. Can I say it’s delightful and still keep my street cred? I don’t care, I’ll say it anyway. It’s delightful. Completely delightful.

Colleen Coover’s artwork is fun and charismatic and kinetic and joyful and dadgummed delightful. Her artwork will make you fall in love with Bandette and Daniel and Monsieur and Matadori and the ballerinas and even gruff Inspector Belgique. If you love Colleen Coover’s art, this should be on your wish list.

And Paul Tobin’s writing is equally fun and charismatic and joyful and delightful. He stuffs Bandette and all her friends (and her rivals, too) with so much personality and life. It’s an extraordinarily French comic. Well, I’m not sure how authentically French it may be — probably not very authentically French at all. But it sure as heck feels French, and you’ll spend the next few days after reading it wishing you could eat in small cafes and looking at pictures of Paris and muttering all the French words you know under your breath. It’s a grand and delightful piece of storytelling.

It strikes me that this is something that young female readers are going to enjoy greatly. Bandette is a wonderful, fun-loving heroine, and many of her friends and foes are girls, too. It’s got swashbuckling thievery, ballerinas, romance, and Paris — all things which many girls like. But on the other hand, I know this book is also very well-loved by many male readers as well.

It’s definitely the kind of comic that should be great for readers of all ages and all genders. So definitely go pick it up.

It’s December, and that means everyone’s looking for more ideas for presents for family and friends, so let’s take another look into our Holiday Gift Bag for some more great stuff we can give. Today, we’re gonna check out Hip Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor.

Piskor is a cartoonist best known for his Wizzywig graphic novel, and he’s been running this new series as a webcomic on the Boing Boing website. It’s basically a crash course on the history, culture, and personalities of hip hop, starting in the mid-1970s, when most of the elements of what we now call hip hop came together.

I’ll say, first, that I simultaneously want to call this a very brief history and a very in-depth history. It rockets through a dizzying number of musicians, both obscure and famous, more and more of them on almost every page, so it feels like we’re just hitting the high points — but on the other hand, the entire book covers a fairly short span of years. All those names were people who were pretty influential in the early days of hip hop, so while the book moves fast, it’s also covering almost every person who’d need to be covered.

And I’ll also say, as a white boy who grew up in rural New Mexico, that a lot of the stuff I read here was completely new to me — and completely amazing. The guy who invented record scratching did it completely by accident? Afrika Bambaataa was a gang leader who got into the music scene to steer his followers in more nonviolent directions? Fab Five Freddy and Chuck D both got into hip hop through art? Blondie helped push rap into the mainstream? They didn’t teach this stuff in school, and I kinda wish they did.

And it’s not just musicians we get to meet. We get introduced to a lot of producers and moguls — Russell Simmons, Sylvia Robinson, Rick Rubin, and tons of others, both small- and big-time. And a lot of the time, they come off a lot worse than any of the performers — they often seem greedier, more conniving, and sometimes less forward-thinking than the musicians. But they’re still super-important, because they were the ones putting rappers and DJs on records when no one else thought there was any point.

And we get a few micro-moments here and there — a few single nights or single encounters that get multiple pages devoted to them. Maybe the best of the bunch is the epic battle rap between Busy Bee Starski and Kool Moe Dee.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I seriously love this book so much. My musical education was stunted for years, thanks in part to access to little beyond Top 40 and AOR radio in my wayward youth, and this book introduced me to a lot of old-school performers I’d never heard much of. So it was really useful for helping me learn that I had so much I needed to learn.

Piskor’s art style is beautifully stylized here. His caricatures are often hilarious all on their own — Russell Simmons nearly never comes off well, Sylvia Robinson always wears the same outfit, Melle Mel always looks musclebound and furious, Grandmaster Flash always looks stylish, Afrika Bambaataa always looks gigantic and terrifying. Of course, they don’t look a lot like that in real life, but it’s a great way to characterize the major players quickly. The artwork is funny and expressive and just fun to look at.

And the book itself looks amazing. It’s an oversized comic — 9×13 inches, so you’ll have to store this one in the big bookcase. The pages are yellowed, like an old ’70s comic, and it’s even colored in old-school four-color style, so it almost feels like you’re reading a hip hop comic that was actually made in the ’70s.

It’s gonna be a perfect gift for the hip hop fan in your life — or for someone who you need to turn into a hip hop fan. Go pick it up.

Friends with Boys

It’s been a while since I reviewed a graphic novel by Faith Erin Hicks — and luckily, I have one sitting right here that I can write about…

Maggie is the youngest kid in her family, preparing to start high school. She’s been home-schooled prior to this and doesn’t have a lot of friends — or really, any friends other than her older brothers. So while her brothers are as helpful as they can with trying to get her adjusted to the new world she’s stepping into, she still has a lot to figure out on her own. So she has to navigate the mean kids and the kids who ignore her and the two friendly punks — who her brothers are inexplicably hostile to.

And on top of that, Maggie is being haunted by a ghost that started following her around after she visited the cemetery.

Can Maggie make it through her first months in school? Can she make friends? Can she survive the mean kids on the volleyball team? Can she figure out how to put the ghost to rest?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a charismatic, funny, wonderfully human book.

Do we even need to talk about the art? If you’ve ever seen Hicks’ work, you know her art is primo. Her art is always fun, and if you love her art, that may be enough reason all on its own for you to pick this up.

The story itself is nothing earthshattering — it’s just a story about a kid in school, her very normal friends, her very normal enemies, her very normal family, her very normal problems. And a slightly out-of-the-normal ghost. No one has to save the world — but a great story doesn’t require the world to get saved, right? It’s a normal story, and it drags you right in.

The characters really shine in this book. It’s easy to love these characters — not just because they’re drawn attractively, but because they’re depicted, both in art and writing, with such great clarity and style. They all feel like real people — might be because Hicks has a few similarities with Maggie, but it’s also because she’s a wonderful storyteller as well as a wonderful artist.

It’s a great comic — and hey, kudos to First Second Books, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite comics publishers for all the amazing books they’ve put on the shelves. Anyway, go pick this one up, people.

Hellboy: The Midnight Circus

If it’s Halloween, it must be time for a new Hellboy graphic novel. This one is written, as always, by Mike Mignola, with illustrations by Duncan Fegredo and lovely coloring by Dave Stewart.

Our story is set in 1948, when Hellboy was just a little kid. He’s stuck in the BPRD’s headquarters all the time, and everyone treats him like a baby — and he’s decided he wants to get out, for just one night, and do his own thing.

And then Hellboy runs across a circus — A.T. Roth‘s Circus Spectacular! “From the clock strikes midnight — to the fearful crack of dawn!” A whole big circus, operating only at night, with almost no publicity, out in the middle of nowhere. Sounds wholesome, doesn’t it?

It’s pretty obvious that this isn’t a normal circus, as the clown who starts the festivities does so by causing the demonic performers to appear out of thin air in the middle of the big top. He’s enticed by a sultry succubus, but rescued by the ringmaster. Hellboy tells the ringmaster about reading the story of Pinocchio — the artificial boy who wants to be real, turns into a donkey, and is then restored when he’s eaten by a fish.

While Professor Bruttenholm and the rest of the BPRD look for him, Hellboy is shown nightmarish visions by the ringmaster. He flees the circus, pursued by demonic animals — and then gets cornered by evil spectral hobos. Can Hellboy survive the night? Will the forces of Hell turn him to their side?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A great multi-layered story by Mignola. The bit about Pinocchio seems like a throw-off bit, but the theme keeps reappearing in ways both obvious and subtle that make great sense for the story.

And Fegredo’s art is just absolutely monumental. The center ring of the circus, with the flame and lightning and demonic elephants, is stunningly beautiful. The undersea voyage, the hobo camp, the attack of the animals — all simply gorgeous. You’ll want to read this over and over just so you can glory in the artwork.

And it’s Kid Hellboy. In a circus of fear.

That’s what Halloween is all about.

Go bug your local comic shop ’til they order you a copy. You won’t regret it, children.

Revival

There are so many zombie comics out there right now. So very many. Ever since before “The Walking Dead” came out, there have been so many zombie comics, and the success of Robert Kirkman’s comic and the resulting TV show have just ensured that even more zombie comics would get released. So when Tim Seely and Mike Norton’s “Revival” series was announced, I thought the previews looked interesting, but not enough for me to add it to my pull list. That was a mistake, because it’s plenty interesting and entertaining.

Our setting is small, rural Rothschild, Wisconsin, which is your typical sleepy small town until one day, unexpectedly, inexplicably, the recent dead are returned to life. But they’re not ravening, brain-eating zombies — they’re intelligent, they remember who they are, their personalities are intact. They’re not even evil. They’re just people. Not that they’re normal people — all of them heal from all injuries at an astonishing rate, and they’re a lot stronger than they used to be. The “revival” didn’t happen anywhere else — just in this little Wisconsin town. So the government has the town under a quarantine ’til they can figure out what’s going on. And the town is surrounded by curiosity-seekers and religious fanatics who think there’s a conspiracy to keep a miracle from the masses.

Enough background? Our main characters are Dana Cypress, a police officer and daughter of the town’s police chief, and Martha Cypress, Dana’s sister, a college student, and — as we learn at the end of the first issue — a secret reviver. Martha was murdered, but she doesn’t remember who killed her, so she and Dana are concerned with discovering the murderer.

And there are concerns that the revivers may not have come back entirely right. One of them, an elderly woman, is soon driven mad because she can’t wear her false teeth anymore. Her teeth keep growing back, no matter how fast she pulls them, and the unpleasant sensations eventually drive her to murder. Martha’s self-destructive urges are growing stronger. Someone in the community — possibly a reviver — is killing other people. And there’s something running around out there in the wilderness — possibly a ghost, possibly an alien, possibly something entirely other — and no one really knows what it is. Can Dana and Martha discover what’s happening around them, what caused the dead to rise, who killed Martha the first time… or are things just going to get bloody?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This has been promoted as a “rural noir,” which I mostly don’t get. Yeah, there’s some cop work, and everyone seems to have secrets, but that’s not enough to make it noir for me. This is horror with the nice added twist of the zombies being pretty normal people.

The art and writing are both fantastic, and the characterization — over a whole town, with dozens of major and minor characters — is just superb. Unlike lots of comics with large casts, you don’t really lose track of who all the characters are. They’re all distinct people, and they all make sense.

The horror is, for the most part, the slow burn variety. Yeah, we get plenty of good, bloody, terrifying moments where various people get carved up by other people — and then heal themselves up again so they can carve up some people on their own. But the horror that drives this story forward is behind the scenes, under the ground, under the skin. What separates life and death? What separates sanity and madness? What separates good and evil? Where is the line, and how close can you get to the edge without going too far, past the point where you can get back? A little blood and guts is nothing compared to that.

The series is available in a couple of trade paperbacks, as well as the ongoing series. Visit your local comic shop and pick ’em up.

Anya’s Ghost

It’s Halloween Week! Got more room for ghosts? Heck yes, we do.

This graphic novel by Vera Brosgol comes across, at least initially, as a typical teen coming-of-age story. Anya Borzakovskaya is the daughter of a Russian immigrant. She’s frustrated with her family, frustrated with school, frustrated with her (kinda sorta) best friend Siobhan, frustrated with her body and her (lack of) love life and everything else around her. And then one day, Anya falls into a hole in the park and finds a skeleton. And the skeleton comes with a ghost attached — a skinny little girl named Emily who’s been stuck in the hole for 90 years.

When Anya gets rescued, Emily ends up tagging along. Anya doesn’t much want a ghost in her life, but she is helpful in certain ways. She can help her with answers during tests. She can find out when her crush will be out of class. She gives her tips on being popular. Emily wants to be Anya’s friend forever. And that could be a problem, because Emily is keeping secrets, and she’s a lot more dangerous than she lets on…

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m not sure I was expecting a lot from this. It really starts out as the way we’ve seen a couple dozen other graphic novels — misunderstood geek girl, unhappy with her life, grows up, becomes more mature, learns to appreciate the friends and family she has and maybe makes some more friends, too.

This one? It follows the familiar path for a while, and then, slowly, it turns into fairly straightforward horror. The end goal is still the same — personal and emotional growth for the protagonist — but it’s interesting how much the tension and fright ramps up, and how serious and powerful the threat becomes. There’s no gore or anything like that, but it’s still a nice piece of low-key horror.

The characters are great, too. Anya and Emily are the obvious focal points, but Anya’s mother and brother are also very well-created. Everyone else is fun, too — there’s not a dull character in the bunch — snarky Siobhan, geeky Dima, skeezy Sean, beautiful but miserable Elizabeth, even the school principal at the end.

Vera Brosgol’s art is moderately cartoony — but as I know I’ve said plenty of times before, cartooning helps make the characters and situations more universal, more appealing, and more emotional. And the art does a fantastic job of conveying the humor of the story, as well as the eerie shenanigans going on behind the scenes.

It’s a genuinely frightening comic. So go pick it up.

March: Book One

When I heard about this one, I knew I’d have to get it.

It’s basically the autobiography of civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis, in graphic-novel format. The project came about because some of his staff were making jokes about staffer Andrew Aydin, who was a comics fan, but Lewis pointed out that a comic book about Martin Luther King, Jr. helped inspire him to get involved in the civil rights movement. Soon, Aydin was co-writing this book with Lewis, while Nate Powell put the art together.

Though the book starts out with what’s probably the most horrifying incident of Lewis’ life — when state troopers attacked peaceful marchers and fractured his skull on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama — we soon settle into a more straightforward biography. We visit Lewis as a child, obsessed with being a preacher and delivering passionate sermons to the family’s chickens as practice. We watch him growing up, going to college, becoming more socially aware, meeting Martin Luther King, becoming an activist…

Approximately the last half of the book focuses on the lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, following them from the organizing and planning stages through the actual sit-ins and through the trials and aftermath. It’s simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s an amazing work of art, exciting, scary, beautiful, inspiring, and informative all at once. Part memoir, part history.

Like I said, a big chunk of the book is devoted to the sit-ins, and they’re probably the most interesting parts of the story, especially for those of us who were too young to have heard about these while they were happening.

I never knew that participants had to go through training sessions to make sure they were really willing to abide by the principles of non-violence — there was a lot of roleplaying involved, with everyone calling each other names, heaping abuse on each other, blowing cigarette smoke in their faces and dousing them with water — because that’s what they knew would happen at protests, and they had to make sure that everyone could handle the pressure without snapping and punching some Nashville cop in the neck.

And the specifics of the sit-ins were pretty interesting, too — all the detail and planning that went into them, what actually happened during the sit-ins, how people reacted, they’re all extremely informative. All of this got glazed over in school, so we never learned any of this. The history makes it worth reading.

Is there rude language? Yes, there is — racial epithets are used, just as they were used in real life. Is it still kid-friendly? I think it is. Again, this is historical info, and it’s important for kids and adults to know what happened. There’s nothing explicit — there’s no gore, no sex, no over-the-top swearing — but the difficulty of life in the South for African-Americans, and what it was like to attend protests and marches — none of this is sugar-coated, and none of it should be.

It’s a great story, it’s all true, and it’s the first graphic novel written by a member of Congress! I’d consider that a must-read. Go pick it up.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

Here’s a nice, thick, but light-hearted graphic novel written by Prudence Shen and illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks.

Our lead character is Charlie, the captain of the high school basketball team, whose main interests outside of basketball involve not having terrible things happen to him. Unfortunately, he’s stuck between two opposing forces — his best friend Nate (and his cohorts in the robotics club) and his ex-girlfriend Holly (and her fellow cheerleaders). See, the robotics club wants funding to attend a robotics competition, and the cheerleaders want funding for new uniforms — and there’s not enough funding for both.

So Nate decides to run for student body president, and in retaliation, the cheerleaders register Charlie as a candidate, too. And from there, the campaign gets really ugly really fast, as both sides unleash a string of dirty tricks, most of which end up humiliating Charlie. After both sides end up defacing the football field, the principal declares that neither the robotics club nor the cheerleaders are going to get the funding they want. So what happens now? Both sides are going to have to team up to get the funding they want — with deadly robot warriors!

Wait, so it turns into a science fiction epic? No, not really, though the book jacket does kinda leave that impression. With the cheerleaders offering up some money to help out, the robotics club converts their robot — designed to compete in a standard autonomous robotics competition to demonstrate that the team is good at engineering and programming — into a fighting robot, designed to compete in remote-controlled robot fighting leagues, which have much different requirements. Like built-in chainsaws. Can Charlie, Nate, the robotics club, and the cheerleaders prevail? Can they get the funding they need to complete their projects? Can the survive the repercussions of ditching their families on Thanksgiving Day?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a great, fun little story. It’s the type of thing that looks kinda light and airy — oh, just a high school story. But there’s also action, high drama, comedy, angst, conflict — and robots. Fighting robots! They could make this a movie, and it’d probably make scads of money.

The characterization is great, too. Sad sack Charlie, arrogant Nate, cold, steely Holly (the other cheerleaders take their cues from her), passionate, robot-loving Joanna, the pervy, hilarious twins, and even Charlie’s camping-obsessed father. Again, you put these people in a movie, and it’d be hilarious.

A lot of what I love about this book is how much it does seem like a movie. I kinda get the impression that Shen originally planned to make this a screenplay before opting to go the graphic novel route. I could be wrong, of course — but either way, there’s a great eye here for fast-moving, kinetic storytelling. And if I’m the first person to ever think of making this into a movie, and it eventually does hit the big screen, I want a percentage on points.

And of course, there’s the art. We’ve talked before about how awesome Faith Erin Hicks is, right? Awesome, charismatic, emotive artwork. She’s great at showing action, great at showing emotions, great at showing big, dramatic moments. She’s a fantastic cartoonist, and we should thank our lucky stars she’s getting as much work as she is.

This comic was a blast. Go pick it up.

Crud, I don’t have a lot of time for a long review today, so we’re going to make this one kinda short.

Legends of Zita the Spacegirl

We reviewed the first book in this fun series by cartoonist Ben Hatke way back before Christmas. This one picks up shortly after the end of the previous graphic novel.

Zita, along with all of her alien and robot friends, has saved the planet of Scriptorius and is hailed across the galaxy as a hero. But she doesn’t really enjoy all the acclaim and attention. Luckily, she stumbles on a robot with a bad case of hero worship — and it’s able to turn itself into a close duplicate of Zita. Seeing an opportunity to avoid some irritating public appearances, she lets the robot impersonate her while she and her giant mouse pal go to the circus. Unfortunately, the robot loves being Zita too much, and the real Zita gets left behind by her friends. And when she tries to steal a spaceship to catch up with them, she quickly finds herself a wanted criminal across the sector.

And even if Zita can escape the cops and bounty hunters and soldiers who are tracking her, will she have a chance to get back to her friends? Will she be able to save yet another planet from certain doom without sacrificing her own life in the process?

Verdict: Thumbs up. If you loved the characters, art, story, dialogue, and all-around fun factor of the first “Zita the Spacegirl” graphic novel — and if you didn’t love it, there’s something bad wrong with your head — then you’re going to love the banana creme frosting out of this one, too. Ben Hatke has absolutely got it goin’ on, and you are going to want this on your bookshelf, or on the shelf of your kids or anyone else who loves great all-ages science fiction heroics.

I know, I know, it’s a short review, but don’t take that to mean this is an unimportant or inconsequential comic. It’s big fun, and you really should go pick it up. (Now I just hope Hatke will create some more Zita comics…)