Pandora's Box (2) : Sloth

The second of the Pandora's Box series, which takes one of the seven deadly sins as the basis for its story, this time tackles the sin of sloth with the story of an Olympic athlete desperate to win the 100m.

This story also takes on elements and inspiration from Homer's Iiliad epic tale of the Trojan War. A highly successful and clean sprinter has remained undefeated for a number of years but with the Olympics approaching he suffers an injury and falls behind on his training. It looks increasingly likely that a young rival will finally seize his crown.

One option is to become a drug cheat, will he take this option and is he prepared for the high price?

This is a truly involving and intelligent story packed full of emotion and thought provoking ideas. You just know the hero will take the fall and he does but not in the way that might be expected.

Star Wars #54

Years ago (a lot of years ago) i used to get the Star Wars comic every week. We're talking back in the late 70s and early 80s here. Like much else from my childhood the comics have long gone as i didn't have the foresight to know that people would pay good money for such things on a global visual network yet to be created one day. However one comic did survive as it was left at my Grandmothers' house and years later i made sure i would keep this one...

Star Wars #54 then was released on Valentine's Day 1979 and includes a Star Wars comic strip and two other stories (The Micronauts and The Warlock which i wasn't that interested in back then and not so much now either). The Star Wars comic started off a weekly comic telling of the first Star Wars movie but once they blew up the Death Star and Darth Vader went spinning off into space they had to continue the comic with an early example of the Extended Universe at least until Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980.

The story here concerns Luke, Leia and Tagge who appears to be some kind of galactic mafia boss who hates Vader. Luke and Leia are trying to discover why and how Tagge can fly TIE fighters into the atmosphere of the gas giant Yavin while at the same time evading Tagge's TIE fighter patrols. Of course the story here was set between the two films and no one but George Lucas knew that Luke and Leia were siblings, so we get a little bit of mild incest.

The cliffhanger has their ship under attack by TIE fighters and the intriguing teaser that next week is called "R2 D2 Casualty Of War", as to what happened in Star Wars #55 i couldn't remember, but obviously R2 was fine as he made the next film OK. Later on i began buying the collected volumes...

The complete Ro-Busters

One day when i was a (small) boy my parents bought me a comic, it was a newish title called Star Lord and it probably changed my life. Why, well it included an amazing comic strip about a group of misfit robots involved in disaster rescue and recovery called Ro-Busters. I immediately became a massive fan and to this day love the adventures of Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein which also had a big influence on my own comics i started making not long afterwards...

This amazing volume collects together all of their adventures from Star Lord and later on 2000AD (which i started reading because Ro-Busters moved there when Star Lord folded). In many ways Ro-Busters was inspired by the TV series Thunderbirds though with sarcastic robots instead of puppets obviously. The earlier adventures are fairly simple adventure stories but later on the stories began to mature and politics and social comment make their appearance, especially after the move to 2000AD. Despite being a comic strip primarily involving robots the stories managed to include amazing levels of emotion and soul...

Ro-Jaws, Hammerstein and the rather dodgy cyborg boss Mr Quartz are the stars of the strip though as time went on a whole host of secondary characters also began to build up including the deranged Mek-Quake. The collection takes us through to the conclusion of the script in an epic final story where the Ro-Busters are broken up and Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein try and escape the Earth. Later on they were reunited in Nemesis and the ABC Warriors of course...

Yoko Tsuno (3) : The Prey and the Ghost

Yoko Tsuno is a young Japanese woman who, like many people in the comicverse, always seems to have a knack of getting into trouble or being in the right time and place to get involved with a new adventure...

The first 2 books in the Yoko Tsuno i found a little difficult to get into because of the fantasical themes including aliens, time travel, cloning et cetera which stretched credibility a little far for a story which is drawn and written like a classic children's or young person's adventure. However this book is a (fairly) straight forward mystery adventure in a haunted Scottish castle and is very enjoyable indeed.

(And before anyone says i know its maybe a little unfair to criticise the earlier books in this way because the theme of most Yoko Tsuno books tends to be science fiction or fantasy but i felt this story worked a lot better than the first 2 released by Cinebook!)

When she almost runs down a girl running seemingly for her life Yoko is drawn into an adventure that involves mysterious deaths, ghosts and strange goings on. As the adventure draws on Yoko finds she maybe isn't in a ghost story after all but maybe something that is more Earthly yet also more deadly.

Yoko Tsuno by Roger Leloup is a beautifully drawn comic strip and this issue has an engaging and interesting story which brings to mind classic mystery dramas especially those set in ancient castles full of hidden passages and rooms!

• Cinebook page
• The Prey and the Ghost: Yoko Tsuno 3 (Amazon)

Asterix and the cauldron

Or it could be titled... "How to make money in the Ancient Roman world". In this volume Asterix is cast out from the village for bringing shame upon the village for losing the money of another tribe which had been held there to keep it out of the Romans' hands. Asterix and Obelix set off with the empty cauldron the money was held in to refill it with sestertii and restore honour to both himself and the village...

Earning an honest sestertus is easier said than done though, everything is tried including being a market trader, an actor, even a gladiator but no matter what they try the cauldron seems to remain as empty as always. Even Getafix's magic potion can't solve the problem this time or can it?

This is a hilarious volume in the series with plenty of satirical comment on the world of work and the market. Not one of the very best Asterix books but still a very enjoyable romp.

Orbital (2) : Ruptures

This continues the story of the future galaxy diplomatic corp duo (who seem to combine quiet diplomacy with kick-ass action quite seamlessly) who at the end of volume 1 in the Orbital series were on a rain swept planet about to be overrun by multi-legged beasties. This volume concludes the story of Caleb and Mezoke trying to avert a war on a rather miserable little planet.

This well-drawn story is actually quite complicated and at times you do lose track a bit about what is going on, various competing factions in the foreground and background of the story do make it a bit confusing sometimes though you do manage to (more or less) work out what is going on by the end! I wonder if it would have been better to spread this story across 3 volumes and have a little more back-story and explanation about whats going on?

Its a well-drawn graphic novel and the artist has created a compelling and realistic future. The story is also complex and immersive, many things that still confuse will hopefully be explained later in the series...

Tintin in America

Tintin in America, the third book in the series, continues the early theme of Tintin being a crime fighting superhero who just happens to be a journalist too (something which was toned down in subsequent books, though lets face it Tintin was seldom ever seen doing anything that remotely resembled being a journalist).

Tintin arrives in the USA to clean up Chicago and is almost immediately thrown into peril. The story is a break-neck series of adventures as Tintin battles Al Capone and has other adventures across the US.

Thus there isn't the intricate plot that marks out the later books, this one is more a series of events that just happen to take place in the same country however its still a good read. There is some great satire here such as the fancy metropolis that pops up overnight after the discovery of oil and social comment on the bad treatment of Native Americans (though they do look like they come straight out a Western movie).

It is full of stereotypes but these reflected the America that existed (and still does to an extent) in the minds of Europeans in the pre-war period. Their image of America largely came from the movies. Thus America is a land of skyscrapers, canyons, mobsters, Red Indians, cowboys and lynching! Quite a few movie references were thrown in by Herge.

The artwork is not up to quite the standard of the later books but still good. Its worth reading, you miss the ensemble that was built up in later books, but enough of the magic is still there.

Lucky Luke 3 : Dalton City

The third book in Cinebook's sequence of Lucky Luke introduces the Daltons, a gang of desperate men who are luckily (for everyone else) pretty stupid too. The Daltons escape from jail and set up their own outlaw town. In steps Lucky Luke, the man who shoots faster than his shadow, to bring them to justice.

Like the first 2 books this is a very enjoyable read with plenty of the humour those familiar with some of Goscinny's other works may find familiar. There is so much to enjoy here such as Luke's horse and its sarcastic quips, the Daltons all looking the same except for being different sizes and the rubbish telegraph operator. Its a great comedy western, it even has an overworked and overeager undertaker.

What i really enjoy about these stories is that even though Luke is a gunman without peer he seldom relies on his gunslinging to catch the bad guys rather using his cunning and trickery to enshare the bad guys in an intricate plan, though the stories would be a lot shorter of course if he did!

Morris' artwork is fine though one criticism is that it suffers from "lazy colouring" with whole chunks of the same frame in the same colour though this was common in older comic strips (early Asterix for example). Its only a minor point though, this is a great read.

Agatha Christie's Death On The Nile

A graphic novel adaptation of the Agatha Christie "whodunnit" classic? When its done as lavishly and as opulent as this then why not? Its a beautiful piece of work in full colour and is a hardback book too. The story is claimed to hark back more to the interwar mystery of the original book rather than later film adaptations starring the likes of Peter Ustinov but i have to admit i had him or David Suchet in my mind whenever Poirot appeared on page!

The story of course involves a murder that takes place on a luxury cruise down the River Nile in Egypt and the investigation (and further events) that take place later on. Famed detective Hercule Poirot is luckily one of the passengers on the cruise and begins to investigate the crime...

The only criticisms of this work is that sometimes it is a bit unclear what is going on because some of the characters are a bit similar looking and some of the panels probably could have done with being reorganised a bit to make the narrative flow more clearly. These are minor niggles though that do not detract from the sheer enjoyment you get from this stylish production that transports you to that lavish and mysterious 1930s world... where posh people had a rather unfortunate habit of being murdered.