REVIEW: Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts by Craig Phillips

Above: the cover for Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts by Craig Phillips.

Since my childhood I've been a fan of world mythology - creations stories, and tall tales from around the globe. Seeing these stories adapted in comics form, from Jack Kirby's take on the Norse myths in Thor, or Bill Willinghams' use of various fairy tale and mythological characters in Fables, it's always a treat to see these stories come alive on the page. 

Earlier this year I came across Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts: Ten Tales from the Deep, Dark Woods, a handsome paperback written and drawn by Craig Phillips. Inside you'll find re-tellings of classic fairy tales and mythology spanning the globe, from 'Snow White and Rose Red' (from Germany) to 'Thor' (from Scandinavia), 'Momotaro' (from Japan) and Finn McCool (from Northern Ireland) to name a few. All the stories are richly illustrated in full colour, drawing from the traditional folklore - so they aren't sanitised in a Disney version: Russia's fabled witch Baba Yaga will still threaten to EAT Vasilisa for supper if she doesn't do all her chores! Which I'm sure will go down a treat with most kids looking for a bit more bite in their picture books.

Above: Artwork from Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts by Craig Phillips.

I was pleasantly surprised to read that the author Craig Phillips is currently based in New Zealand, and produced Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts with the assistance of an Australian Arts Grant. I also understand he'll be appearing at the upcoming Overload Convention in Auckland, so keep an eye out for his artwork! Speaking of which, his art chops are of a high standard in this book, featuring clear storytelling with plenty of character and great colouring and design. It certainly reminded me of some of P. Craig Russell's comics collaborations with Neil Gaiman. So if you're a fan of those books and looking for a new take on folklore stories for you and the family, this collection is for you!

Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts: Ten Tales from the Deep, Dark Woods by Craig Phillips is out now from Allan & Unwin with an RRP of $27.99NZ. You can also visit Craig's website HERE, and follow the book's Facebook page HERE for updates.

- AK!

Review: Mansfield and Me by Sarah Laing

Above: The cover of Mansfield and Me by Sarah Laing.

One of the great delights of the NZ Summer Holidays is the opportunity to take the time to sit back in the sun and enjoy reading some of the great books released over the Christmas period. When it comes to new graphic novel releases, Sarah Laing’s Mansfield and Me was the ‘must read’ of the summer. Released in October, it spent over 10 weeks on the Booksellers Top Ten List, with strong sales ensuring the book made it into plenty of Christmas Stockings over the holidays.

A graphic memoir, Mansfield and Me traces Laing’s journey to becoming a writer alongside the life of Kathrine Mansfield, one of her literary idols. Memoirs have become a hugely popular sub-genre of graphic novels – drawing praise and recognition from the literary community, from titles as diverse as Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home to the likes of Freddie and Me by Mike Dawson. Laing has a similar starting point to Dawson, whose book discussed his adolescence and fan obsession with Freddie Murcury. Laing mentions her own teen idols - Morrissey, Madonna and Frida Kahlo, but it is Mansfield whose presence is most felt in the background of her everyday life, from community stories to sharing geographically linked childhood experiences.

While Dawson’s book was primarily about a fan experience, Laing’s memoir goes deeper: tracking the intersections between her own life and literary ambitions and Mansfield’s. There are passages in the book where she imagines interacting with Mansfield, almost haunted by her presence - at times Mansfield pops up to offer commentary and faint praise as Sarah’s writing career progresses. These interactions drive one of the most compelling themes of the book: how do we measure ourselves against our idols?

Laing does a great job of seamlessly weaving her life with Mansfield’s, finding places where they intersect (both professionally and personally): both Laing and Mansfield left New Zealand to pursue a career in writing – Mansfield to England, Laing to New York. There’s a passage where Laing writes about moving to the country to flat with her first boyfriend and a difficult flatmate, contrasted to Mansfield’s own country living experience with her second husband John Middleton Murry, and their neighbour novelist D.H. Lawrence, who also turned out to be difficult and demanding host (at one point challenging Murry to a naked wrestling match – as one does).

Above: A page from Mansfield and Me by Sarah Laing.

Laing shares from her own life and experiences very candidly – the eventful missteps in relationships and jobs, and the changing circumstances that ultimately brought her back to New Zealand and her dream of becoming a published writer. A goal she achieved in 2007 with her short story collection, Coming up Roses. She was 34, the same age Mansfield was when she died.

This is a very personal memoir, produced in vibrant watercolour artwork written in Laing’s own handwriting, which really gives you that tactile feel, like you’re reading from a private diary and sketchbook.

It’s a book about that compelling urge to be creative with the time you have – Mansfield achieved so much in a short time, but it was extremely difficult in her last years with tuberculosis. She never got to write that great novel, as she bitterly laments to Sarah after reading her short story collection: “you still have time…unlike me”. Laing has since written two novels and an ongoing blog with plenty of new comics to come.

It’s a remarkable ode to creativity and a personal journey to achieving one’s ambitions. If you love great memoirs and want to experience one that’s a bit unconventional but highly entertaining, this is the one for you.
You can visit Sarah Laing's blog, Let Me Be Frank HERE for more of her comics and out-takes/bonus material from Mansfield and Me. You can also listen to my review of Mansfield and Me featured on Radio NZ HERE.

Mansfield and Me Sarah Laing
336 Pages
Paperback, colour
160x245mm
ISBN: 9781776560691

Published by Victoria University Press

RRP: $34.99

- AK!

REVIEW: Rufus Marigold by Ross Murray

This week sees the launch of Mount Maunganui artist Ross Murray's completed webcomic, Rufus Marigold. A thoughtful, and darkly funny comic about a character living and dealing with Social Anxiety Disorder. Inspired by his own personal experience battling anxiety, Murray successfully obtained funding from Creative New Zealand earlier this year to create a comic strip that would help shine a light on this rarely discussed condition.

Above: Panels from Rufus Marigold by Ross Murray. Copyright Ross Murray 2016.

When we first meet Rufus - portrayed in the artwork as a chimpanzee, visually the odd-man out - we find him struggling to deal with everyday interactions: answering the phone, running into a friend on the street; brief exchanges that are major internal challenges for Rufus to deal with on the fly. We then accompany him on more stressful situations that are relatable to many, like a new job interview. Murray's clear-line art style accompanied by flat colouring works perfectly for this subject on a number of levels. Stylistically, it recalls the artwork of safety instruction manuals: clear and easy to follow visual representation without unnecessary detail, which is fitting given its subject matter and Rufus' internal struggles (remain calm, don't panic). It gives his world an antiseptic appearance: non-threatening, but at the same time distanced and detached. The muted tones invite us into Rufus' head-space, where we get to relate and empathise with him as he experiences anxiety in work and social situations.

Above: Panels from Rufus Marigold by Ross Murray. Copyright Ross Murray 2016.

This visual detachment allows us to enjoy the bleakly funny aspects of Rufus' interactions (eg. announcing his mother's death to avoid a work presentation) as situational comedy without judging or short-changing the character. No doubt drawing on his personal experiences, Murray understands the inherent humour in these situations and uses the 'set-up/punch-line' language of the comic strip to express this with panache. 

Above: Panels from Rufus Marigold by Ross Murray. Copyright Ross Murray 2016.

Yet beneath the humour there is a very carefully calibrated emotional arc. As the strips progress Rufus' anxiety increases; he begins to drink more to manage social gatherings and interactions. Soon he reaches breaking point, when his social anxiety affects his ability to act in an emergency situation. The climax and resolution of Rufus Marigold's journey are both wordless strips which speak volumes. Creativity is what ultimately brings Rufus back from isolation and allows him to communicate and connect with others. It's a story that is probably more common than many of us are aware of, and I'm grateful to Ross Murray for creating Rufus and sharing his experiences with us.

Above: Panels from Rufus Marigold by Ross Murray. Copyright Ross Murray 2016.

You can read the full Rufus Marigold webcomic HERE. And for more information on Anxiety, you can visit the Ministry of Health website HERE and the Mental Health Foundation of NZ HERE for information and helpful links.

- AK!

Review: The Adventures of Kory: Flight of the Kiwi by Paul Martin

Above: The Adventures of Kory: Flight of the Kiwi by Paul Martin.

It seems like an obvious go-to for local comics, but there have been few examples of comic books or graphic novels starring our furry national icon - the Kiwi - as the main protagonist. One of the most recent and notable is The Adventures of Kory: Flight of the Kiwi (2013), the first graphic novel by Paul Martin. A former Rugby player for Waikato and the Chiefs, Martin has always been an avid cartoonist, and developed the idea for his graphic novel while on a Rugby sabbatical in France. 

Above: A page from The Adventures of Kory: Flight of the Kiwi by Paul Martin.

The story opens in Whale Bay, where Kory the Kiwi and his friend Bert the Gecko enjoy spending their afternoons surfing and basking in the sunshine. Meanwhile, a world away in the Swiss Alps, a game hunting wolf named Gregor is seeking new and exotic prey to hunt, and set his sites on the brown kiwis of New Zealand. Armed with a ship manned by a motley crew of dogs and stouts, Gregor sets sail for New Zealand, and in short order kidnaps Kory's family and returns to Europe where they await a gruesome fate unless Kory and Bert can use their 'kiwi ingenuity' to save them.

Above: A page from The Adventures of Kory: Flight of the Kiwi by Paul Martin.

Taking inspiration from other 'album style' graphic novels like Tintin or more locally, Kerr and Ballantyne's Terry Teo and the Gunrunners, this is a fairly straightforward adventure yarn, with plenty of colourful characters and a snowboarding finale in the Swiss Alps which will surely entertain the younger target audience. With the added experience of having lived in France, Martin is able to add enough authentic details in the story to make the shift in locations from New Zealand to Europe feel natural, and enrich proceedings. Older readers may find the flow of the dialogue a little stilted in places, but younger readers tackling this on their own shouldn't have any problems following this upbeat adventure.

Handsomely presented in full-colour hardback, this is a fun read for younger readers who are just discovering graphic novels and looking for something set closer to home.

The Adventures of Kory: Flight of the Kiwi HC

Paul Martin

$29.99NZ

ISBN: 9780473265113

For more information and to order a copy, you can visit the book's official website HERE.

- AK!

REVIEW: The Heading Dog Who Split in Half by Michael Brown & Mat Tait

Above: The cover for The Heading Dog Who Split in Half by Mat Tait.

It has been around 5 years in the making, having appeared in installments online and in various anthologies, but finally writer Michael Brown and artist Mat Tait's The Heading Dog Who Split in Half: Legends and Tall Tales from New Zealand is here!

As the title suggests, this is a collection of local folklore legends: accounts of extraordinary events that are believed to have happened, and tall tales: far-fetched and exaggerated yarns that are so well told and memorable that they have taken hold in the community imagination and been passed on in story or song.

Authors Mat Tait and Michael Brown first met at the Ilam School of Fine Arts at Christchurch University in the late 1980s. They stayed in touch, and after several years of researching and writing about New Zealand folklore, Brown approached Tait with the idea of adapting these tales into graphic form. Over the years Tait had quietly carved out a career as one of our most gifted comics illustrators. His artwork is an immaculate mix of razor-sharp line work and fluid inking. There’s an attention to detail that gives his work a haunting realism, combined with a cartoonist’s eye for composition and humour, that is perfect suited for this subject matter.

When it comes to tall tales you want to be drawn in and convinced that there’s a germ of truth in the telling, and that’s exactly what Brown and Tait have achieved here: these stories will entertain you, unnerve you, and haunt you – in the best possible way.

Above: A page from The Heading Dog Who Split in Half, artwork by Mat Tait.

There’s the title yarn, The Heading Dog Who Split in Half, a legend from the MacKenzie high country of Canterbury, about a heading dog that was so fast at mustering that one day it hit a half buried fencing standard at such speed that it was split in two. It’s owner puts the two halves back together and it speeds off and completes the job. Only once it returns does the owner see that it is grotesquely joined with one half the wrong way up! Captured in freakish detail by Tait's artwork, on paper it's a tale so vivid it leads you to wonder - what grain of truth could have given rise to this outlandish fantasy? 

And that's where the Additional Notes section at the back of the book comes in, providing the sources for the stories and comparisons to other well known legends from around the world. In this case, the Heading Dog comes from a rich vein of mythological carved dogs, that have appeared in Native American tales and similar animals like the reversible hare that appears in The Adventures of Baron Munchhassen. This added context greatly enhances the reading experience, inviting you to go deeper into each story if you wish to learn more about the origins if these fascinating yarns.

Above: A page from The Phantom Canoe, artwork by Mat Tait.

A book on local legends wouldn't be complete without a great ghost story, and this one contains a doozy in the form of The Phantom Canoe. It was sighted on Lake Tarawera in 1886, just a few weeks prior to the eruption of Mt Tarawera. A boat of tourists and local maori led by Te Paea Hinerangi (a well known local guide) who described the war canoe as been manned by warriors with the heads of dogs, and the illustration of them here is just chilling – a close encounter with spirits on the eve of apocalyptic destruction.

This story is significant as it is an example of a shared supernatural occurance witnessed by both Maori and Pakeha, suggesting that the spirit world of myth was not as far removed from their reality as the calonial settlers may have believed, and both cultures may still have something to fear from the mysterious and strange land of New Zealand.

Above: A page from A Tale of Old Waihi, artwork by Mat Tait.

Other yarns are more humourous, like A Tale of Old Waihi, a bragging story told to out-of-towners featuring their gargantuan Crayfish – and its many uses. For example, you can use it’s eyes for bowling balls, claws for pick axes, add wheels to it’s tale for a baby pram and the shell can be used for an outside dunny(!). There's also an illustrated sea shanty in the form of Ranzo, Boys, Ranzo!, and the darkly gothic tragedy of Dunedin's Legend of Tunnel Beach.

Published by Potton & Burton in an oversized format on thick unprocessed paper, it's a real treat to turn the page an enjoy the large lavish artwork in inky black & white as always intended. Combining their considerable storytelling skills, Brown and Tait have produced a truly essential New Zealand graphic novel - that deserves a spot on every local bookshelf, where it will haunt and entertain readers of all ages for years to come.

You can also listen to my audio review of The Heading Dog Who Split in Half on Radio NZ Nights HERE. For more information you can also visit their website, Old Weird New Zealand HERE.

The Heading Dog Who Split in Half: Legends and Tall Tales from New Zealand

Michael Brown & Mat Tait

ISBN: 9781927213575

$39.99 NZ

- AK!

REVIEW: Incomplete Works by Dylan Horrocks

Above: Incomplete Works by Dylan Horrocks. Copyright Dylan Horrocks 2014.

Here at Earth's End, the work of Dylan Horrocks hardly needs an introduction: celebrated author of Hicksville, Eisner Award winner, New Zealand comics ambassador extraordinaire. And yet, outside of a copy of Hicksville, gathering a sizable collection of his comics is tough going - tracking down early issues of Pickle, a few mini-comics here and there, or clippings from decade old back issues of the NZ Listener. So this collection comes as a great relief to local readers and collectors everywhere. Thanks to the arm-twisting from VUP publisher Fergus Barrowman, we now have a handsome collection of some of Horrocks' rarest work to add to the growing bookshelf of classic New Zealand graphic novels, and it's a fine addition.

Above: A page from 'Little Death' (1986) by Dylan Horrocks. Copyright Dylan Horrocks 2014.

This collection of stories spans Dylan's comics career, from early efforts in 1986, to recent diary comics in 2012. Together these stories form a visual diary of sorts, or a 'stealth autobiography', as the events of Dylan's own life are never far from the surface. The earliest entry, 'Little Death' reflects on Auckland's cafe/bar scene from 1986, in which our protagonist spies a woman across the room, much like Dylan did while drawing this strip, where he met his future wife Terry (there are echoes of this meeting in other strips, like 'Summoning'). 

The thin line weaved between Dylan's fiction and personal life has always been a real strength in his work, and I feel it's that layer of truth behind the fiction that strikes a chord with readers. 'Captain Cook's Comic Cuts' (1994) may well convince you that Cook had a sideline in cartooning because Horrocks' essay feels so genuine, acting as a sort of prelude to Hicksville it takes you on a detour to a world where comics played a more important part in our national history - and why not?

Above: A page from  'The Last Fox Story' (1990) by Dylan Horrocks. Copyright Dylan Horrocks 2014.

Other stories are more openly autobiographical, as 'The Last Fox Story' (1990) takes us inside one of Dylan's biggest turning points, as he struggles to reconcile his relationship to comics while living in England. The reproduction of the mini-comic format (two small spreads a page) feels both intimate and appropriately claustrophobic, as Dylan works through a phobia of comics and rediscovers his own creative voice as a cartoonist. This mini comic became the first issue of Pickle, which in turn lead to the comic series that gave birth to Hicksville. In a very real way his current career is built on the catharsis of this story, and anyone who has gone through a creative or personal crisis can appreciate just how special this story is.

We also get see his cartooning style mature and grow throughout the collection, into the assured creative voice we know today, currently hard at work on his forth-coming second graphic novel, Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen - due out later this year, but serialized weekly over at his website HERE.

Above: A page from  'A Cartoonist's Diary' (2012) by Dylan Horrocks. Copyright Dylan Horrocks 2014.

As it's published locally by VUP, Incomplete Works is also a particularly kiwi collection, featuring strips like The State of Things and Maungarei, with points of reference that would probably be lost on foreign readers. There are also helpful author notes at the back of the book to put these stories into context. It's a minor quibble, but I'd have liked to have seen these formatted with the stories to avoid flipping back to read them after each entry - but this would take away from the diary feel of the reading experience, so it's a forgivable trade-off.

This collection is a great road map of Horrocks' comics career to date, and I'm sure I'll be adding plenty more of his works to my bookshelf in the future.

As an added bonus, you can also listen to my audio review of the book on National Radio's Nights show.

If you are in Auckland, there will be a launch event for the book this Tuesday evening at the Auckland Central City Library, 44-46 Lorne St, Auckland Central, from 6pm-7pm. Dylan will be discussing the collection with cartoonist and author Sarah Laing. So come along to purchase a signed copy and enjoy drinks and nibbles! For more details you can join the Facebook event page HERE.

Incomplete Works by Dylan Horrocks is published by Victoria University Press, RRP $35NZ and is available in bookstores now!

- AK!