Spewing punk fury and coquettish sexuality, Tank Girl remains the undisputed icon of Britain's experiment with edgier, adult comics in the late-80s and early-90s. The headliner of the groundbreaking magazine Deadline (1988-95), Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett's anarchic heroine had a huge impact on the British counterculture of the period. Celebrating her 20th anniversary, this hardcover provides a lavish showcase of Hewlett's energised, surrealist artwork - which manages to retain all its fulsome, rebellious attitude.
Forty-two years ago, when pop culture was in the grip of Batmania thanks to the ultra-camp TV show, a Japanese Manga anthology commissioned its own Batman & Robin strips. A year later, the strip abruptly halted; never collected or translated. Chip Kidd's marvellous feat of Comics excavation, Bat-Manga!, finally sheds light on this long-lost moment of Bat-History, collecting hundreds of pages of art alongside photographs of very rare - and often bizarre - Batman toys.
Although it's Alan Moore that typically leaps to mind when the seminal, award-winning series Watchmen (1986) is mentioned, it's impossible to underestimate the enormous contribution of artist and co-creator Dave Gibbons. His virtuoso work was instrumental in the dazzling manipulation of Comics' visual language, and is justly being celebrated in this lavish hardcover book, flashily designed by Chip Kidd.
At a time when America is grappling with its identity, there's something very penetrating about Tim Lane's Abandoned Cars - a collection of noir-ish narratives which explore the underbelly of the American Dream. Populated with characters who exist on society's margins, Lane's tales are pulpy (and oddly romantic) creations about hope and redemption - best exemplified in 'The Drive Home', the affecting story of a man adrift, striving to regain the family he has lost.
Eddie Campbell's scratchy, impressionistic pen and ink illustrations were already hugely compelling when showcased in the epic From Hell (his signature collaboration with Alan Moore). Given an added sheen of watercolour paint, they become even more beguiling. Dan Best's whimsical tale – about a young circus acrobat in 1930s America who faces the tricky proposition of replacing his famous uncle, "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard" – finds Campbell on superb form, marvellously capturing the feel of a bygone age.
News
Mon 11 Feb, AT 17:56
Gay porn comics beloved of Japanese girls are heading West, says Sean Thomas
Pages
