By Cardinal Cox
Written by Serena Valentino, illustrated by Ted Nefiah. Published by Labour Craphics.
www.serenavalentino.com www.slavelabor.com
Somewhere, Goths hangout in a nightclub run by Isabella. Max loves Isabella. Lex loves Max. Sebastian loves Chrys, but Sebastian has a monster living under his bed who has eaten his last few girlfriends. Oh, and Sebastian's father looks an awful lot like Vincent Price!
This is a more appealing look at the Goth subculture than has featured in, say, the pages of The Dreaming. The characters have a real-world feel to them, even if the supernatural (or an imagination of Catherine Morland proportions) has impinged upon them.
The art is good, using a variety of compositional styles; background figures are lightly sketched so as not to distract from the important characters. Nice attention to detail in teh clothes.
I have high hopes for this title.
Reprinted from prism 24.2 March/April 2000
HEART OF EMPIRE : THE LEGACY OF LUTHER ARKWRIGHT
Written and illustrated by Brian Talbot. Published by Dark Horse Comics.
www.bryan-talbot.com www.darkhorse.com
The publication of the original Luther Arkwright series was a convoluted affair, starting in the '70s in underground comics and ending in 1989 with the Valkyrie Press editions. Going back to that story, it is possible to see both the artistry and the story-telling develop. The first series ended on Parallel 00.72.87, with Queen Anne's forces triumphing over the Puritan Dictatorship in Britain; a revolution led by Octobriana in Russia; and Luther departing (having saved the Multiverse) for dimensions new.
Now, Talbot returns to his well-loved characters, with Victoria (the daughter of Luther and Queen Anne) grown into a young woman about to have her twenty-third birthday - though she has been insulated from the truth (that the British Empire now rules much of the world, slavery is a reality, and the dying Pope will stop at nothing to have the empire for the Church). In Parallel 00.00.00, Rose Wylde is recalled to work for WOTAN as something in the Multiverse is going to cause a cataclysm in only a few days time...
Features of Talbot's work that we have come to expect are visible in Heart of Empire. the nature of the superhero that he examines in Lutehr Arkwright and The Nazz, teh development of a credible female character in Tale Of One Bad Rat, and the other-world equivalents of people from our world : Kenny (R2-D") Baker as the Queen's Dwarf, Tony Blair as the organiser of the Crystal Palace exhibition, and (on p. 202) such writers as Brian Aldiss, Bob Shaw, michael moorcock, and Colin Greenland.
A worthy successor to the earlier series, but different. The coming disaster, although a threat to many realities, is never lent the gravity of the Fire-Frost and Trans-dimensional plots of the earlier series. Hopefully, the publication of this new series will stimulate a publisher to release a collection of short stories (commissioned for an anthology similar to The Sandman Book Of Dreams), to which I know several authors have contributed!
Reprinted from Prism 24.3 May/June 2000
Fans will be interested to hear that Big Finish Productions (best known for its Doctor Who audios) will shortly be releasing a Luther Arkwright audio adventure.
