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Cavalcade of Comics 2
9 months ago
It never fails: just as you're mopping up the blood of the last heretic and you're beginning to think all your problems are solved, things get worse. In Cult of the Lamb: The First Verse (Oni Press, 2024, 978-1-63715-522-6), the sacrificial Lamb is resurrected as vengeance incarnate, until they get their first heady taste of actual worship. Worship makes the Lamb more powerful, and power is addictive.
One can see the theme here -- that religion exists on a continuum in which the faith of the followers fuels and sustains an endless series of atrocities directed by one sect against another. That this is depicted in a graphic novel with cute cartoon animals who live in a world of murder, mutilation, maggots, and literal shit is arresting enough, but (British) writer Alex Paknadel and (Canadian) artist Troy Little invest the story with genuine, heartbreaking emotion as well. There's a point in this book where I had tears in my eyes and that...well, that was unexpected.
Judge Dredd, a science fiction satire that predicted today's militarized police forces, is the series that kickstarted artist Brian Bolland's career. Working on the comic from 1977 to 1981, he learned that his meticulous attention to detail was not suited for the industry's expected page-a-day production rate, but what pages he drew during his run! Judge Dredd by Brian Bolland: Masterpiece Edition (Rebellion, 2024, 978-1-83786-194-1) presents high-resolution scans of 93 of Bolland's surviving, fully inked pages from the British weekly 2000 A.D.
No complete stories here, but you do get to see Bolland's seamless blend of sardonic humor, dynamic action, grotesque, cartoonish exaggeration, and clean-line hyperrealism on display in several story arcs, including The Cursed Earth (Dredd faces off against a homicidal Col. Sanders), The Day the Law Died, The Judge Child Quest, and Judge Death Lives. There's a generous selection of cover art from the American Judge Dredd Monthly (where Bolland goes out of his way to put the humorless Dredd into absurd situations and poses), 2000 A.D. Monthly, and eleven pages of Walter the Wobot backup strips. A generous gallery of groundbreaking art at a more than reasonable price -- don't wait too long to pick up a copy.
https://www.amazon.com/Cult-Lamb-Vo.....sr_1_1?s=books
https://www.amazon.com/Judge-Dredd-.....943/ref=sr_1_1
One can see the theme here -- that religion exists on a continuum in which the faith of the followers fuels and sustains an endless series of atrocities directed by one sect against another. That this is depicted in a graphic novel with cute cartoon animals who live in a world of murder, mutilation, maggots, and literal shit is arresting enough, but (British) writer Alex Paknadel and (Canadian) artist Troy Little invest the story with genuine, heartbreaking emotion as well. There's a point in this book where I had tears in my eyes and that...well, that was unexpected.
Judge Dredd, a science fiction satire that predicted today's militarized police forces, is the series that kickstarted artist Brian Bolland's career. Working on the comic from 1977 to 1981, he learned that his meticulous attention to detail was not suited for the industry's expected page-a-day production rate, but what pages he drew during his run! Judge Dredd by Brian Bolland: Masterpiece Edition (Rebellion, 2024, 978-1-83786-194-1) presents high-resolution scans of 93 of Bolland's surviving, fully inked pages from the British weekly 2000 A.D.
No complete stories here, but you do get to see Bolland's seamless blend of sardonic humor, dynamic action, grotesque, cartoonish exaggeration, and clean-line hyperrealism on display in several story arcs, including The Cursed Earth (Dredd faces off against a homicidal Col. Sanders), The Day the Law Died, The Judge Child Quest, and Judge Death Lives. There's a generous selection of cover art from the American Judge Dredd Monthly (where Bolland goes out of his way to put the humorless Dredd into absurd situations and poses), 2000 A.D. Monthly, and eleven pages of Walter the Wobot backup strips. A generous gallery of groundbreaking art at a more than reasonable price -- don't wait too long to pick up a copy.
https://www.amazon.com/Cult-Lamb-Vo.....sr_1_1?s=books
https://www.amazon.com/Judge-Dredd-.....943/ref=sr_1_1
