Ganesha's Sweet Tooth

Writer: Sanjay Patel and Emily Haynes
Art: Sanjay Patel
Publisher: Chronicle Books

What's it about?
Ganesha is a Hindu god. He's very important and powerful.  And a tad chubby.
But when he was a kid, he was just like any other kid...
except that he had an elephant's head and cruised around on a magical mouse collecting fruit, rice, sweet, and other gifts from the temples in his neighbourhood.

This is a retelling of the Hindu legend about how Ganesha came to write the Mahabharata.

It's sold as a picture book, not a comic, but as Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics says, if a story is told through sequential art it can be considered a comic.

Mouseguard: Fall 1152

Writer and artist: David Peterson
Publisher: Villard Books

What's it about?
Mouseguard is a series about a mouse civilisation. They have towns, artists, blacksmiths, and guardsmice who patrol outlying areas, act as guides, and protect citizen mice from predators,thieves and insurrectionists.

The Chicken Thief

The Chicken Thief
Writing and art by Beatrice Rodriguez
Publisher: Gecko Press

What's it about?
This is sold as a wordless book where children can invent their narratives to go along with the illustrations.  It's really a comic - sequential art where the entire double page is given over to the art, and there are no narrative boxes, speech bubbles, or sound effects.

It's only about 10 pages long and is pretty simple - fox grabs chicken and runs off, chicken's friends follow in hot pursuit through forest, sea and sand.  There is a twist at the end!

Comixology submit: comics for kids and teens

Comixology's submit sale had quite a lot of comics aimed at and suitable for children and teenagers.  Here's the best of the ones I read:

For younger kids:
The Antler Boy and Other Stories - this is a fun kids' book with a whole host of imaginary and not so imaginary creatures.  It's great fun.
Writing and art: Jake Parker
Publisher: Self published

Squid and Owl - this is less of a comic and more of an illustrated picture book.  It's a bit weird, there's only a few lines of text on each page, and the art is quite ethereal and dream like.  It's like a stream of consciousness in picture form.  I hesitate to say it's aimed at children because adults will appreciate the beauty in the illustrations too, but it's set out a bit like a child's picture book.
Art and writing: John Holbo
Publisher: Rhinobird books

For teenagers:
The Deep: Here Be Dragons - the Nektons are a multiethnic family of aquanauts journeying through the seas in hunt of strange creatures.  The Nektons are son Ant; daughter Fontaine; mum Kaiko; and dad Will.  Ant is brilliant.  This is worth the price for the absolutely gorgeous art of deep sea monsters.  The first few pages are full of drama and danger.
Writer: Tom Taylor
Art: James Brouwer
Publisher: Gestalt Comics

Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter - Chloe has a job to hunt and destroy monsters but she doesn't really care for it.  She hasn't got super strength or a heightened sense of danger - she's just like you and me, but maybe slightly more cynical.  This isn't like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It is good fun and I can seen teenagers getting a lot of mileage out of it.
Writing and art: Marc Ellerby
Publisher: Great Beast Comics

Jackie Rose - This is set in an alternative 1940s and tells the story of Jackie Rose, teen adventurer.  In this volume she gets kidnapped by air pirates.  It's suitable for teenagers and has an air of a young Indiana Jones about it.
Writing and art: Josh Ulrich
Publisher: Self published

The Only Living Boy - Erik Farrell has no memory and is in a world filled with humanoid creatures and monsters.  He doesn't know how he got there but he wants to survive.  Forced into battle, he proves his worth through the use of his wits alone.  This is 53 pages and it's great.  It's a lot more serious than the others in this post.
Writer: David Gallagher
Art: Steve Ellis
Publisher: Bottled Lightning

Reynard City

ReynardCity, a foxy webcomic

http://reynardcity.com/

Writer: Will Turner
Artists: Various
Publisher: Independent/webcomic

Today's guest review comes courtesy of Dan Wright.  Dan is a writer of Manga and Fantasy, who currently has two books out. He also reviews part time on Read2Review and does what he can to help indie authors. Check out his website at the provided links:

Facebook and Twitter and his Website.

On with the review!

What’s it about?

Reynard City is the brain child of Will Turner, whose story tells of three superpowered foxes fighting for their lives on their homeworld of Animal Kingdom. Fighting against the villainous Mega Fox (a villain so badass that even Megatron the Transformers villain would cower before him), the start of the story throws you right into the action and doesn’t let up; until the foxes (and Mega Fox himself) find themselves teleported in Reynard City, amongst the humans.

Split up from each other and constantly hunted by their enemies, the team take on human personalities and now have to juggle double lives as both humans and crime fighters.

Garfield minus Garfield

Writer and Illustrator: Jim Davis
Garfield removed by Dan Walsh

What's it about? 
Garfield is a fat orange tabby cat, who likes pizzas and being sarcastic.  He hates Mondays, diets and doing things.  As a cat, he naturally knows he's better than everyone else, particularly his owner Jon and the dog, Odie.  Garfield has been running as a comic strip since the late 70s and is beloved by many people the world over.  There's been a film, TV shows, toys, mugs, t-shirts, all sorts of merchandise.

What Dan Walsh has done, is take Garfield strips and remove Garfield from them.  This invariably leaves Jon looking, well, decidedly odd.

Gear

Created, Written and Drawn by: Doug TenNapel
Colorists: Joe Potter and Katherine Garner
Publisher: Fireman Press Ltd (issues)/Image Comics (tpb)

What’s it about?
Gear is a fantasy/scifi tale done by the very talented famous cartoonist Doug TenNapel.

Now, in case you haven't been introduced to TenNapel before, let me do it for you;
Doug TenNapel is an American cartoonist best known as the creator of the video game and cartoon character Earthworm Jim, which has now been turned into a very popular franchise. He has worked on various mediums over the years including cartoons, comics and games. He designed the look of the adventure game The Neverhood and worked on the Nickelodeon cartoon Catscratch, which was very loosely based on this very comic.
And most recently he worked on the internet live mini-series Go Sukashi! and Sockbaby.

Gear takes place in a very unique fantasy world where there lives a lot of anthropomorphic animals.
There, the various factions (species) are in wars over their borders. The cats in the south are trying to expand their land, while the dogs in the north are turning their defenses into offensive forces. Meanwhile an army of insects is preparing to invade both.

The story follows a group of four cat "soldiers". Waffle, Mr. Black, Simon and Gordon. They aren't the smartest bunch of the cat troops but they've got heart and good intentions.  One time they happen to high-jack one of the Guardians - mysterious robotic totems in the forms of either cats or dogs.
But when things seemed to be going fine everything starts falling apart quickly... The troops are launched, the insects attack and our team gets caught in-between.

There's also a mysterious artifact everyone seems to be after called "gear" which seems to have strange powers over the Guardians and our cats befriend one of the insects, Chee.

Calvin & Hobbes

Writer and Artist: Bill Watterson
Publisher:  Sphere

What’s it about?

Mostly, it’s about six year old Calvin and his overactive imagination.  His best friend is a stuffed Tiger named Hobbes, with whom he invents numerous characters and stories, ranging from Spaceman Spiff, Captain Stupendous, tyrannosaurs (usually based on his mother), alien invasions (usually based on both parents), and far far more.

The perils of Calvin’s life can be summarised thus:

School, bathtime, Rosalyn the babysitter, school photos, camping trips, his long suffering neighbour neighbour Susie and his very attentive parents.

Animal Man: Animal Man, Origin of the Species, Deus Ex Machina

Writer: Grant Morrison
Penciller: Chas Truog (vol 1, 2, 3), Tom Grummett (vol 1, 2), Paris Cullens (vol 3)
Inker: Doug Hazelwood (vol 1, 2, 3), Mark McKenna (vol 2 ), Steve Montano (vol 2, 3), Mark Farmer (vol 3),
Letterer: John Constanza (vol 1, 2, 3), Janice Chiang (vol 2)
Colourist: Tatjana Wood, (vol 1, 2, 3), Helen Vesik (vol 2)
Covers: Brian Bolland
Publisher: DC Comics

What’s it about?

These 3 trades collect 26 monthly issuers of the 1980s Animal Man comic, written by Grant Morrison.  It concerns Buddy Baker, a man who gradually becomes aware of his existence as a fictional character within a comic book.

Morrison tends to write grand, complex meta-narratives and this book, produced early in his career, is no exception.  The interest in these volumes lies in seeing how Buddy comes to realise his fictionality, understanding the effect this has on him looking at our roles as consumers of his story.

(Click each picture to get a bigger version)

Laika

Writer and artist: Nick Abadzis
Publisher: First Second
 
What's it about?
This is the story of the Russian fight to win the space race and the little dog they sent into orbit, Laika.  All events are centred around Laika, but it is not told from the perspective of Laika, or Kudryavka as she is named by various carers.  It's part fiction, part fact.

The story is narrated chiefly by three people, Korolev, Chief Designer of the space rockets, Yelena, dog handler for the programme, and fictionalised families that have cared for Kudryavka in her early years.

By using these different viewpoints Abadzis walks us through many aspects of Soviet life and we bear witness to the diffiuclties and contradictions facing everyday people, as well as the joys.  We learn about the cruelty of the ruling party, the ambition of your average Soviet citizen, the transition from Stalin's regime to Khruschev's, and we get an inkling of the effect that life in the gulags had on those poor souls sent there.

Creatures of the Night

As Valentine's Day draws near we at New readers... think you should be offered a variety of romance themed books to mark this particular day.  Being the kind of people we are, these won't be your typical boy meets girl stories, rather they will represent oddities and interests from among our comic collection.  Read on for the first suggestion....

Writer: Neil Gaiman

Illustrations: Michael Zulli

Letters: Todd Klein

Publisher: Vertigo

What's it about?

It's comprised of two tales, The Black Cat and The Daughter of Owls, based on Neil Gaiman's short stories of the same name.  They have a touch of the Gothic romance feel to them, despite not being about love or relationships.  Instead, these stories concern Good and Evil and the fight between the two.

The Black Cat concerns a family of cat lovers who discover a new stray amidst their lives one day, a mysterious black cat.  Soon they discover this feline coming home with unexplained injuries and as they seek to learn the cause of these they find that the fate of their family appears to be tied into the fate of the cat.

The Daughter of Owls is written in the style of John Aubrey and starts with a baby girl being found abandoned on the town steps.  She has no name, no family and is only clutching an owl pellet.  The townsfolk deem her unholy and lock her in an old convent to grow up alone.  As she grows older news of her beauty spreads and tragedy strikes.  Is she human or does she belong to the owls?  What befalls those who would harm her?

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Writer: Grant Morrison
Pencils: Frank Quitely
Colour and Inks: Jamie Grant
Letters: Todd Klein
Publisher: Vertigo


What's it about?
Three animals - a dog, cat and rabbit - are transformed into cyborgs by the United States army.  They are taught to speak and trained to kill on covert military missions.  There have been rumours in the past of the American military taming dolphins and using them as suicide bombers to attack enemy boats.  Regardless of whether these stories are true or not, this book picks up from that idea and takes it several steps further.

The animals escape from their laboratory home and start searching for a distantly remembered home where they were once loved and cared for as pets.  The military wish to recapture the animals and the conclusion to the story starts to unfold. 

Pride of Baghdad

Writer: Brian K Vaughan
Artist: Nico Henrichon
Letters: Todd Klein
Publisher: Vertigo

What's it about?
In Spring 2003, a pride of lions escaped from the Baghdad zoo during an American bombing raid.  This book tells their story, from the perspective of the animals involved.

There are four lions in the pride.  Zill, the patriarch, Safa, an old lioness who relishes the safety and care provided within the zoo, Noor, a younger lioness with dreams of freedom to be found outside the confines of the zoo, and Ali, Noor's cub.  He is young, eager and enthusiastic about the world.  During the bombing raid the zoo is hit and the lions are forced to leave their home and venture out into the city.  Once out, they discover more about humans, the war and the difficulties surrounding life on their own.

The animals symbolise the innocents involved in this war, and other wars.  The only humans we see are two Iraqi zookeepers, featured briefly at the start of the book, and the American soldiers, again appearing briefly, at the end of the book.