Find(s) of the week: Pop-up Jules Verne & The Story Of Gardens

As I haven't done one of these for a while I thought I would start with a double whammy.


Last weekend I went to London and visited the fantastic Out Of This World exhibit at The British Library which is running until the 25th of September. A pretty comprehensive collection of science fiction/speculative fiction featuring some of the earliest examples complete with a variety of illustrations and vintage cover design, with some comics thrown in for good measure. Definitely worth a visit, and it's free!

Whilst there I spotted something I could only hope was available to buy, and thankfully when I started to browse the gift shop, I noticed it was for sale.


The item in question was a pop up hardback comic book version of Jules Verne's classic 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Sam Ita. Complete with moving parts, hidden flaps, and massive 3D renditions of scenes such as the discovery of Atlantis and the notorious giant squid attack this is an innovative and fresh approach to the genre. One thing that puzzles me is whether or not this pop-up book can actually be considered aimed at children, for the most part the language is fairly comprehensible, but there are occasional words that may trouble a child, not to mention the violent anti-colonial undertone that has been kept from the original book. One thing is for certain the visual devices alone could be a brilliant way of getting children into reading and eventually turning them on to the greats (anyone who argues comic books encourage illiteracy is a narrow-minded fool).


Sam Ita has also published two more pop up comic book literary adaptations: Mary Shelley's Frankenstien and Herman Melville's Moby Dick.



Next I finally visited the Nobrow shop and gallery and picked up a nice little mini comic The Story Of Gardens by polish artist Kuba Woynarowski. Fitting the sci-fi theme of this post nicely this starkly finished black white and blood red surreal and wordless tale presents us with the ultimate 'what if...?'. Tying into and exploiting our current environmental fears it shows a world devoid of human life, but where disregarded human artifacts remain. Slowly but surely nature begins to regain its stronghold in the world through the presence of an eiree looking shrimp like insect and the eventual swamping growth of plants and weeds. There are some wonderfully creepy and atmospheric sequences in this little comic, including a scene with the shrimp like insect emerging from the 'heart' of a blood red cabbage which reminds me a lot of Charles Burn's work with its nods to B-movie horror. This mini comic presents a possible future world like an unsettling alien landscape and sends a shudder down your spine in a mere 16 pages!

Review: Afrodisiac-Jim Rugg&Brian Maruca

What do you get if you mix the blacksplotation cinema of the 70's such as Superfly and Black Shampoo with 50's b-movie monsters, sci-fi, and the superhero and romance comics of yore? The answer lies in this fantastic pastiche come love letter, Afrodisiac. The character of Afrodisiac was born in Rugg and Maruca's ongoing series Street Angel about a 12 year old homeless kung foo fighting skateboarding prodigy.


This book is not a continuous flowing graphic novel, neither are the stories in anyway interconnected (in fact in each separate episode Afrodisiac's origin story is different). This is a post modern artifact, a found object, a mish-mash of styles, fast-paced, action-packed, and pretty absurd. Images are cropped, cut-out and resized, giving this book a distinct scrapbook feel (see also Al Columbia's Pim & Franchie). A variety of styles are adopted, from film noir moody shadows and almost Hanna Barbaraesque cartoonishness , to big eyed anime antics and aging pulp comic effects(*1). The book is full of great little touches such as fake comic covers, letters pages, and coupons to send away. As well as this there is a moment when you have to flip the book on it's side in order to read the story properly, and a deja vu storyline where the payoff of the strip shows Afrodisiac break out into the blank white plain to meet a scantily clad death.
When Rugg and Maruca parody these shadows from popular cultures forgotten vaults it is refreshing to get the feeling, the enjoyment that they got from these things, rather than them falling back on the tried and tested 'enjoying it ironically' angle (e.g. it's so bad it's good).
You know what they say, 'One man's trash is another man's treasure'. This book may be escapist nonsense, but it's escapist nonsense par excellence.


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(*1) This is a similar style aged comic effect that Daniel Clowes uses in some of his comics such as David Boring and Eightball, and looking at the design of some of his characters (his villains in particular) you can see a slight affinity between Clowes and Rugg

Find of the week: Heavy Metal Ulysses

Whilst visiting my parents recently I stumbled across this little beauty in Forbidden Planet Nottingham for a tenner. Illustrated by G.Prichard and adapted by Lob from Homer's epic poem The Odyssey this is a translated masterpiece of Eurotrash put out by french sci-fi comics magazine Metal Hurlant. This short but sweet hardback mixes elements of the Greek mythology with sleazy sci-fi ala Barbarella and 60's pop art and Art Nouveau, with nod towards the details of Grecian urns in some of the character design. In this version however we have Zeus and the rest of the gods flying around in a giant space aged fortress, the cyclops emitting a deadly ray from a metal helmet, and Circe luring Ulysses into her den of psychedelic drug paraphernalia and technological S+M gadgets. Being Heavy Metal there is no shortage of exposed females to please the repressed adolescent in all of us, and you also get the added postmodern bonus of seeing Homer join Ulysses on his quest conducting the poem as he goes, eager for adventure, but mostly for thirsty for women and drugs! If I was to pin the influence of this style of work on to any contemporary comic artist it might be Lauren Weinstein with her Goddess of War book which also mixes old age mythology with sci-fi technology and has a similar colour scheme in places. This book is available (but copies are limited) on Amazon, and I would recommend it as pure escapist fun that also looks astounding!