Best of 2013: Spandex

Writer: Martin Eden
Art: Martin Eden
Publisher:  Self published and Titan Books

What's it about?
Spandex tells the story of a group of 8 queer superheroes and their enemies, living in Brighton, UK.  For those of you that don't know, Brighton is an LGBT friendly city on the south coast of England.  The members of Spandex are Butch, Diva, Glitter, Indigo, Liberty, Mr Muscles, Neon and Prowler.  Spandex generally has 7 members at a time, and their costumes are coloured according to the colours of the rainbow.  Butch wears green, Diva wears red, Glitter is orange and so on.

Between them their power set covers unbreakable skin, light based powers, teleportation, a danger sense called gaydar, ultra strength, ability to absorb other gay people's powers and skills.  All members are on the LGBT spectrum.  There are recurring characters such as the pink ninjas and the 50 foot lesbian.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

adapted by Tony Lee from the novel by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
adapted from the original novel by Jane Austen
art by Cliff Richards

What's It About?This is a graphic novel adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith's best selling novel that merges the work of Jane Austen with flesh-eating zombies. In this version the courtly Bennet sisters are fearsome warriors in the war against the undead “Unmentionables”. Elizabeth Bennet's classic tale of love and manners now takes place in equal parts in the ballroom and in battle and disapproving aunts are now far from the only threat she and the arrogant swordsman Mister Darcy have to face.

Maggie the Mechanic. A Love and Rockets book

written and drawn by Jaime Hernandez

What’s It About?
The thing about siblings is you love them but at the same time you need space from them. When Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez decided to start a comicbook together they neatly solved this problem by taking half the book each. In his half Gilbert created the village of Palomar (reviewed here) and in his half Jaime created Las Locas.

The Locas are a largely female, largely Mexican-American cast living around the early-80s LA punk scene. Jaime Hernandez tried to inject some reality into communities and peoples he had too often seen portrayed in the media only through stereotype and cliché: the punk scene, homosexual relationships, bisexuality and his own Mexican-American background. Added to this realism was a touch of science-fiction and so Maggie the Mechanic, Mexican-American bisexual punkette, also ends up travelling the world fixing up spaceships and armies of robots, riding a hover-scooter and teaming up with professional wrestler/revolutionary agitator Rena Titanon between adventures at home with a large, varied and endearing cast of friends.


Now Fantagraphics are publishing a series of collections bringing together the complete canon of Las Locas stories in strict chronological order of publication, starting with Maggie The Mechanic.

Heartbreak Soup. A Love and Rockets book

written and drawn by Gilbert Hernandez
Publisher: Titan Books

“Welcome my friends, to Palomar. Where the men are men,

and the women need a sense of humour.”
- Carmen

What’s it About?
Palomar is an isolated hamlet on the coast of Mexico mostly untroubled by the passage of time or the existence of the outside world. There are no phones, no televisions and only six cars running in the entire town, most anything anyone eats is grown or hunted locally. If you want a bath most likely you won’t have one in your house so you’ll have to go see the banadora and she’ll bath you.

Palomar was the creation of Mexican-American author Gilbert Hernandez who populated it with a wealth of interesting, diverse characters. Published over thirteen years the Palomar stories were a soap opera on a grand scale as it followed the town's ever-growing, ever-evolving population through love, death, marriage, childbirth and everything in between. Heartbreak Soup is the first in a series of books from Fantagraphics collecting the entire Palomar canon in strict order of publication.