V For Vendetta

A clever and dark futuristic England, and the downfall of its dictatorial political regime

by Alan Moore

Rating: Adult

Genre / themes: Politics, freedom, terrorism, Guy Fawkes, Future England.

Art level: Basic, gets the job done. All black and white and quite small.

Star Rating: 4/5

Number of Books: One.

Other notes: Very thick book, a lot of writing and talking. 'Classic' of graphic novels. The recent film starring Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman was based of this book. Alan Moore also wrote Watchmen




My Review
Another book by Alan Moore, V For Vendetta was recently made into a fantastic film featuring Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman. Futuristic England is in the grip of fear and dictatorship, and V is the mysterious terrorist who decides to bring back the memory of Guy Fawkes and free England. A very good book, and again, like Watchmen, not for kids.

A thick book, with small black and white illustrations and a lot of text, this is a very interesting book to read and well deserves to be ranked up with classic novels (I'd put it well above The Great Gatsby for example!)

This isn't light reading, but it's one you'll go back to.

The film of the book

V for Vendetta (Widescreen Edition)

The recent movie, starring Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman, is one of my favourite films. It neatens up the storyline (of course) but is still very effective - dramatic, with sword fights and bullets, classical music and explosions, mysterious masks, government cover-ups, medical testing, plagues, people being 'disappeared', the Voice of London, murders, and imprisonment. And roses.

Three of my favourite parts include the explosions to music, the story of the woman who was questioned and executed for loving another woman, that Evey found (...for three years I had roses and apologised to no one) and of course V's entire speech from his very vivacious and veritably versatile first appearance:

V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villian by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. (he carves a "V" into a sign) The only verdict is vengence; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. (giggles) Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.


Evey: Are you like a crazy person?


V: I'm quite sure they will say so.

Strangers In Paradise

A tale of two girls in love, and the guy who loved them too. Also, crime, art, and growing up

By Terry Moore

Strangers In Paradise
Pocket Book 1

Rating: Young adult-adult

Genre / themes: Love, growing up, crime (mafia/drugs/prostitution), relationships, lesbian/bisexual, modern day America.

Art level: Good. Black and white.

Star Rating: 5/5

Number of Books: . Individual comics collated into nineteen graphic novels, also collected into six small pocketbooks.
Check the book order here

Other notes: Self-published. Lots of flashbacks and forwards. Music and poetry a major theme.

Strangers in Paradise: Amazon Blurb
Katchoo is a beautiful young woman living a quiet life with everything going for her. She's smart, independent and very much in love with her best friend, Francine. Then Katchoo meets David, a gentle but persistent young man who is determined to win Katchoo's heart. The resulting love triangle is a touching comedy of romantic errors until Katchoo's former employer comes looking for her and $850,000 in missing mob money. As her idyllic life begins to fall apart, Katchoo discovers no one can be trusted and that the past she thought she left behind now threatens to destroy her and everything she loves, including Francine. This is the first edition in the series - don't miss it! 


My Review

I LOVE this series.

Strangers in Paradise is the love story of Katchoo - a violent, intelligent, artistic blonde, with a troubled past and future, and Francine - the girl she grew up with, who's sweet and kind, has body image issues, and dreams of Mr. Right and the house with the white picket fence. It's also the story of art galleries and mobs, cancer and babies, death, guns, and school plays. Strangers in Paradise is kick ass, and philosophical, tasteful and sexy. The art is brilliant, and Terry Moore's lines are some of the few that make me want to draw cartoons instead of paintings.

The story of Katchoo, Francine and David is a brilliant graphic novel series. The explosiveness and the gentleness that is Katchoo will capture your heart and her story, and the story of her friends and love, interweaves deftly between art gallery, mafia, high school flashbacks, marriage, loss, jealousy, threesomes, death, and trust. This is an epic series. You can also read a bit more about Strangers in Paradise here.

The collected pocketbooks of Strangers In Paradise










The Strangers in Paradise: Treasury Edition is basically an edited version of the entire series in one book, with extra drawngs and cover art. Good for the beginner or collector, but the individual books are better for the entire story.

• For a more in-depth review of the Strangers in Paradise books, the music and the order of the entire nineteen large graphic novels (among other things!) check out this site on SiP.

• Check out the review of Strangers In Paradise at Good Lesbian Books
• Along with more lesbian graphic novels

Schlock Mercenary

Space-going mercenaries tough it out with teraporting, aliens, guns and lots of humour

by Howard Tayler

Schlock Mercenary (6):
Resident Mad Scientist 

Rating: Young adult-adult

Genre / themes: Science fiction, mercenaries, spaceships, traveling the galazy, crdue and advanced humour, AIs, robots, aliens, BIG guns

Art level: Terrible, but functional. The drawing style does actually suit the story and the characters - one of the only webcomics where the art doesn't impede the enjoyment of the strips. All in colour.

Star Rating: 4.5/5

Number of Books: Six so far (ongoing).
  Books are not numbered in the title, the order is :
* The Tub of Happiness
* Teraport Wars
* Under New Management
* The Blackness Between
* The Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance
* Resident Mad Scientist


Other notes: Also a webcomic that updates daily, self-published.

Schlock Mercenary: The Tub of Happiness: Amazon Blurb
Welcome to Tagon's Toughs, a mercenary company whose newest recruit is almost as much trouble as the new owners. They want to revolutionize space travel. Schlock just wants to hurt people and break things. This 240-page volume takes the reader back to the very start of Schlock Mercenary, and then some. It opens with nine pages of all-new strips telling the story of how Schlock came to enlist, and then forges onward chronologically from the very first strip. It also includes concept sketches, commentary, excellent guest art, deck plans for the Kitesfear. If you've been waiting to devour this Schlock Mercenary from the very beginning, the wait is over: grab your big spoon and dig into the Tub of Happiness.


My Review

Schlock Mercenary has terrible art, but it gets the job done - this is one of the best webcomics around. You should buy this for anyone who likes scifi, mercenaries, humour, big guns, stealing, time travel, and aliens who not only look like a pile of poop, but would eat it too. Full color illustrations that grow strangely in your affections as you read and very ...unique characters.

Schlock , the title character of Schlock Mercenary, is a rather unique alien - a carbosilicate amorph - that looks... well, like a toilet joke, and is basically indestructible. He has an almost religious love for plasma cannons. He signs up to a crew of tough space-going mercenaries and havok and politics ensues as they fly around the galaxy embroiled in politics, one step behind their last paycheck and always looking for bigger guns to play with. It is satirical, sarcastic and punny.

The stories range from little sideplots (often amusing) involving the jobs the crew takes on, and galaxy-spanning politics and machinations that they step into, break and run away from (such as the gatekeepers and their sinister behind the scenes cloning and control over galactic travel). Some of the science fiction gets a little wordy but Howard Tayler manages to explain what a teraport is (for example), while lightly glossing over the more boring details, so this shouldn't impede enjoyment.

All the books published so far, in order

Serenity (Firefly): Those Left Behind

The graphic novels that tell the story between Firefly and Serenity

Serenity, Vol. 1:
Those Left Behind

Rating: Young adult-adult

Genre / themes: Sci-fi, theft and petty crime, spin-off of Firefly.

Art level: Good. Colour.

Star Rating: 3.5/5 Stars. (plus a bonus 0.5 for being Firefly related)

Number of Books: Three so far, but I'm counting The Shepherd's Tale (a prequel) separately for the purposes of this review. So, two in the 'sequel' series.

Other notes: Picks up right after the last episode of the Firefly television series. Written by Joss Whedon and one of the writers of Firefly. Not mindblowingly awesome, but pretty darned good. With the exception of The Shepherd's Tale

See this series on Amazon
See this series at The Book Depository

My Review of Books 1 and 2

Serenity, Vol. 1: Those Left Behind 

Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days

Unlike the Buffy books, the two Firefly spin-offs - actually designed to fill in the gaps from the cancelled episodes - are worth reading for their own sake. The art is pretty good, the wit is witty, the criminals are criminal and our heroes are... well, the criminals.

It's the same familiar cast of Captain Mal Reynolds, his crazy crew, and the two stowaways, Simon and River. They pick up odd jobs, get in trouble with the law, and try and keep River away from the government.

The series is oddly constrained by the fact that it has to keep everyone alive and in the state they were at the beginning of Serenity, but does well enough within those boundaries. The first book is a good bridge/introduction between the Firefly television show and the film Serenity, with Agent Dobson (the Alliance spy from the very first episode) reappearing, and Inara leaving at the end of the book - although the second book is better.

Book Three Review


Art level: Bad, monotonous colour.

Star Rating: 2.5/5

I recently had the chance to read Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale (in the library, of course). It was very disappointing, and I'd give it 2.5 stars. While the cover is nice enough, and it was a hardback, I got through the whole story in less than ten minutes. I'm a fast reader, but I expect my graphic novels to last me at least twenty!

While it does give you Shepherd Book's backstory (which did affect how you see him, next time you watch him onscreen), it does it in a way that leaves you feeling cheated. Basically, it is in the format of flashback, after flashback, each only a couple of pages long, jumping further back into his life. And each flashback is just too short. The narrative would have worked better in the correct order, as you could have watched Book grow and change, but the authors clearly wanted the cheap tensions of the 'sudden reveals'. Also, the art  felt very dirty, which was probably intentional, to give it a 'gritty' feel. But the result, to me, was a book that looked ugly and slapdash.

And it could have been awesome. Despite the fact that they packed in more than they needed, it could have been an epic story. Only buy it if it's cheap, and you need to complete the set.

The Serenity Graphic Novels So Far