Helen and the Go-go Ninjas
Ant Sang and Michael Bennett
Penguin Random House, $30.00,
ISBN 9780143771241
A creative collaboration between a writer and artist is common in the world of comics and graphic novels. Celebrated collaborators like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Goscinny and Uderzo, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, and many more have frequently combined their talents to create memorable graphic stories.
Island to Island: A Graphic Exchange Between Taiwan and New Zealand
Ant Sang, Tim Gibson, Rachel Fenton, Sean Chuang, 61Chi and Ahn Zhe
Dala Publishing, $45.00, ISBN 9789866634567
Island to Island is the unique product of a joint publishing initiative between the Publishers Association of New Zealand, the Taipei Book Fair Foundation and the New Zealand Book Council, in the form of a graphic novelist exchange: giving three cartoonists from New Zealand and three from Taiwan the opportunity to collaborate and produce a graphic novel together.
The Heading Dog Who Split in Half: Legends and Tall Tales from New Zealand Michael Brown and Mat Tait Potton and Burton, $40.00, ISBN 9781927213575 One of my reservations about graphic novels has been that they limit readers’ imaginative options.…
Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen
Dylan Horrocks
Victoria University Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9780864739759
The Bitter Sweet Philosophies
K K Jart (text) and Nick Fedaeff (paintings)
Eunoia Publishing, $40.00,
ISBN 9780692215630
As the superheroes wage their endless battle in the sky above, Alice reassures Sam, “But what does it matter if it’s not real? It’s a Fantasy. The idea is to enjoy it!” But Sam is unconvinced: “I know it’s a fantasy, but it’s not mine.”
Incomplete Works
Dylan Horrocks
Victoria University Press
ISBN 9780864739223
Incomplete Works is a collection of short comics created by Dylan Horrocks between 1986 and 2012. Much like the B-sides of records, the comics sit beside one another like rough or rare tracks, some experimental, some raw, some polished – all different, but with a consistent thematic undercurrent.
Horrocks’s comic form places a generally even emphasis on words and art. He is a poetic writer, and the text commands a decent amount of space on the page. Mainly black and white, his drawings are beautifully spare, appearing as if the marks are as quick to ink as the handwritten words, confirming the equal importance of both when reading the story.
From Earth’s End: The Best of New Zealand Comics Adrian Kinnaird Random House, $60.00, ISBN 9781869799953 I’ve read comics since I was very young. I travelled into history with Asterix and to the moon with Tintin. But it wasn’t until…
Reach Hugh Brown HarperCollins, $23.00, ISBN 9781869509569 Broken Elizabeth Pulford Walker Books, $22.00, ISBN 9781921529887 Both Reach and Broken feature episodes of the superhero genre, and in each case this element of the story functions as an exploration into the…
Kimble Bent: Malcontent Chris Grosz Random House, $24.99, ISBN 9781869795160 Recent claims of a resurgence in New Zealand historical fiction might seem forcefully underlined by the appearance of local cartoonist and designer Chris Grosz’s Kimble Bent: Malcontent. This graphic…
Hicksville: A Comic Book Dylan Horrocks Victoria University Press, $38.00, ISBN 9780864736246 The current republication of Dylan Horrocks’ brilliant graphic novel, Hicksville, is long overdue; however, the relative obscurity to which it has been consigned over the last 10 years…