The Wicked and the Divine: Fandemonium

Writer: Keiron Gillen
Artist: Jamie McKelvie
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Flatter: Dee Cuniffe
Publisher: Image Comics

What's it about?
Every 90 years 12 Gods return as young people.  They live for two years.  Then they are dead, until the next cycle.

In this cycle they are pop stars.  Rock gods.  Choose the descriptor that gets you the most excited.  Everyone is a fan.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: Cosmic Cooties

Just a quick one today...

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is an absolute hoot.  Moon Girl is 9 year old Lunella Lafayette and Devil Dinosaur is her pet Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Lunella is a child prodigy, super clever and can build just about anything.  She is exposed to the Terrigen Cloud which turns her into an Inhuman and gives her a superpower, but it's not what she expects and it's not an easy or convenient power.  On top of this, a boy from the Kree homeworld has arrived on earth to capture her.

This is an all ages title and it's such good fun.  The art is superb.  It's cartoony and vibrant and so easy to read.  Cosmic Cooties is the second volume in the series but perfectly easy to jump into.

Credits:
Writers: Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder
Artists: Marco Failla and Natacha Bustos
Colour artist: Tamra Bonvillain
Letterer: VC's Travis Lanham
Publisher: Marvel Comics

The other volumes available are:
Volume 1: BFF
Volume 3: The Smartest There Is

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.

Love is Love

Writer: Various
Art: Various
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Curated by Marc Andreyko

What's it about
This is an anthology published to raise money for the survivors of the Orlando Pulse shooting.  On June 12 2016 a gunman opened fire in the gay club Pulse and killed 49 people.  Information about the attack on can be found on the BBC website here.

This anthology celebrates love and is full of one page stories on this theme.  There are stories about the survivors and the victims, about reactions to the attack, coming out stories and takes on it from fictional superheroes.

Girl in Dior

Writer and artist: Annie Goetzinger
Publisher: NBM

What's it about?
This book tells the story of the Dior fashion house through the eyes of a fictional journalist turned model. We meet Dior's four 'darlings' - the seamstress, secretary, muse, and fashion socialite (my terms). We are shown Dior's first show, the public's reaction, how Dior worked to develop his designs and how the rest of the house worked. We end with Dior's death in 1957. The back of the book is a lovely little mine of information. It lists his 22 collections, gives a brief description of his entourage (Humphrey Bogart! Lauren Bacall! Marlene Dietrich!), has a short glossary of job roles in the fashion industry, fabrics and accessories, and gives a bibliography.

Interview with Helen Bate, author of Peter in Peril

My last review here was Peter in Peril, a story about a Jewish boy living in Budapest during World War Two.  I was sent a copy of the book by the publishers and asked if I wanted to interview the author, well I enjoyed the book so of course I said yes.

You can read the review of the book here but as a brief reminder, it's told from the point of view of Peter and is suitable for ages 8 up.  Here go the questions:

Q1.  I understand that Peter in Peril is your first book and that you used to be an architect.  How did you get into comics and did being an architect have any influence on how you approached constructing the comic pages?

I gave up my architectural career after 10 years to do a degree in illustration and I initially illustrated some children’s books for Frances Lincoln and Harper Collins. The Peter story was done as a student project initially but in a very different form. I was thrilled when I got the opportunity to work with Janetta Otter-Barry to produce it in a way that would suit 8-10 year old children and the graphic story form seemed to be the one that best suited the complexity of the subject and the age range. I used more text than other graphic stories, as I wanted to allow the book to be read to a child. I also felt it was important with the subject matter to adequately explain to children what was happening in more detail.

I think my architectural background has quite an influence on my drawing style - drawing with a black line is a very big part of architectural drawing and I always tend to gravitate to that way of drawing… even though I’d quite like to have a looser style … but drawing is pretty much like your handwriting - it’s very personal to the individual. 

Peter in Peril: Courage and Hope in World War Two

Writer and artist: Helen Bate
Publisher: Otter-Barry Books

What's it about?
Peter is a boy living in Budapest in the 1930s. His family is Jewish and they fall victim to the anti-Semitic laws of those decades. It's told from Peter's point of view and he documents their lives through the war and in the years following. Peter and his family are real and the events shown in the story are true.