GNG Tackles Gun Street Girl
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains plot details, so if you value surprise, stop reading here! The L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group met Saturday, February 14 and this is what happened in our hour-long meeting. The book: Gun Street Girl, written by Barb Lien-Cooper, and illustrated by Ryan Howe. Published by London’s Lucha Comics. The discussion: In our lightning round – every group member gets two minutes to give their overall impressions of the book at the start of each session – it was clear most of us enjoyed Gun Street Girl and found something to appreciate about it. The central characters are Liz, a bodyguard, her boss, Eddie Caution, a paranormal investigator, and Prana, who is Liz’s girlfriend. Eddie hires Liz to be his muscle on paranormal adventures. The action takes place in England, specifically London, so will please Anglophiles (there are several scenes in a pub), and follows the pair as they encounter such monsters as demons, trolls and a baby griffin – so if you’re versed in Dungeons & Dragons or Harry Potter lore, you’ll already have the basic vocabulary down. I guess Gun Street Girl would fall into the urban fantasy genre. What I found fascinating is that despite the title, which is taken from a Tom Waits song, the reader hardly ever sees Liz at work. Her fights mostly take place offstage. In fact, if my memory serves, there’s maybe one panel in the whole collection showing Liz firing her gun. What this means is, the focus is not on violence or gore. I think the heart of the book is the back-and-forth between Liz and Eddie, who is Liz’s guide to the supernatural. It felt to me like a really good workplace sitcom. The very first chapter, for instance, starts in medias res – Liz and Eddie have been captured by a wizard and must figure a way to avoid impending doom. Other stories in Gun Street Girl aren’t about jump scares, but a slow burn of suspense. There’s also a great sense of humour pervading the whole book, which helped me as a reader to accept the premise. It’s a way for the creative team to wink at the audience, allowing readers to suspend their disbelief. So even though the cover (which evokes Alan Davis for me), depicts Liz blasting her way out of a door with tentacles slithering out of it, the thrust of this collection is the relationship between the two leads. What could a lesbian monster assassin and a crusty, over-the-hill mage possibly have in common? One of our other points of discussion was how the dialogue gets better the deeper you get into the book. I figure any creative team takes some time to establish the characters in any given story. I would readily recommend Gun Street Girl. You’ll find it in L.A. Mood on the rack reserved for books and comics with a local connection. A second volume looks to be coming this year, which I can’t wait for. L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of every month. Next month’s selection is The Goon: Bunch of Old Crap by Eric Powell. I know little about the Goon, so I’m looking forward to learning more about this long-lived Dark Horse Comics title, which goes all the way back to the 1990s. We’re set to meet March 14 at the gaming tables in the store at 11 a.m. All are welcome to join the discussion! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
The Woodchipper is Evidence of Joe Ollmann’s Greatness
By Dan Brown At some point in the last few years, Joe Ollmann went from being a very good graphic novelist to a truly great one. His new book, The Woodchipper, is proof he has made that transition. Out now, the collection contains five graphic short stories – or whatever you want to call them. “Short-story collections can be a hard sell,” the Hamilton comic creator’s cartoon self explains in the book’s introduction. Maybe so, but Ollmann is making a strong case for the possibilities of the genre. Just as the late Alice Munro was a legendary writer of prose short stories, Ollmann has mastered the graphic equivalent. His stories are thought-provoking, funny, and sad. The common thread running through the five pieces here is how Ollmann concludes each with one of his patented “anti-twist endings,” in which almost nothing happens, yet the main character’s world is forever changed. My favourite of the lot is called Meat, and tells the story of Kara, a security guard at an animal-packing plant who befriends one of the protesters outside the company fence. “I’m Paul Blart with a moral conscience,” Kara says in her inner monologue, before being presented with an ethical dilemma. I won’t give away the rest of the story, but let’s just say Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth is no longer the only tale from a Southwestern Ontario creator that features a half-human, half-pig hybrid. And that’s the thing about the stories in this collection: None of them suffers for being short. They all feel as complex as a “full” graphic novel. Ollman packs each one with so much character detail and meaning. Also not to be missed is Nestled All Snug, in which bookstore employee Sasha gets locked in a bathroom in the back of the shop over the Christmas holidays. The slowly building drama here isn’t so much dependent on whether she can escape or not, but on what she will do to survive. Can Sasha, her mouth dry from hours of captivity, break down and drink the toilet water in order to endure? You’ll have to read the story to find out what she decides. As for the title story, it’s a perfect example of Ollmann’s theory about creating reverse-surprise endings. I’ll spoil it by revealing no human appendage actually gets torn to pieces in the titular chipper, but nothing is the same at the end of the story as it was in the beginning. Maybe you’re not familiar with Ollmann’s work. Maybe you’re looking for a point of entry into his oeuvre, which also includes full-length graphic novels such as Fictional Father and The Abominable Mr. Seabrook and yet more short-story collections. The Woodchipper, full of compelling character moments that centre on “non-incidents,” is the perfect place to start. I doubt Ollmann needs ideas, but I hope he considers a straight-on autobiography next time out. The snippets of his life we get from the introductions to his books just aren’t enough anymore. How about it, Joe? Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Dawn of the Black Axe is Amazing
Dawn of the Black Axe is amazing By Dan Brown David Petersen’s Mouse Guard: Dawn of the Black Axe is a superlative series that will make for a must-read graphic novel come January. The three-issue title debuted and wrapped from March to June this year. The collected version lands on store shelves January 20. Do yourself a favour and pre-order your copy now. Although I initially felt trepidation that another comic creator – Gabriel Rodriguez – handled art duties, instead of Petersen, my skepticism soon melted away when I got a closer look at the individual issues, which are gorgeous. As Mouse Guard fans know, Petersen is the Michigan writer/artist who originated the idea of a medieval mouse society protected by the members of the Guard, forest rangers who serve to keep the far-flung mouse communities safe. Petersen’s art in the main title is amazing, which is what I’m used to. But Rodriguez’s lines are just as expressive, in their own way. There are fantasy/sorcery elements to the story – mostly in the form of a ghostly elk, who guides Bardick, the first-ever bearer of the black axe, in his quest to kill five giant snakes who are tightening their grip on mouse territory by raiding villages and breeding more young. The blade itself was fashioned by the blacksmith Farrer, whose own wife and children were slain by one of the serpents. “I’ll take all the pain forged in this weapon and protect mouse kind,” Bardick vows, perhaps not realizing he will be in the forest for many a season before he can rest. I was able to enjoy Rodriguez’s art on its own terms. He can do action just as well as he can render scenes in which the characters are static. He is also so good at evoking a sense of time – the reader sees Bardick grow weary as his adventures drag on over years. And that mysterious ghost elk is ethereal, except when he’s material, in one panel helping Bardick ford a stream. Each image rewards repeated attention, as the reader absorbs more detail and is drawn deeper into the Mouse Guard world. Nor is it a foregone conclusion that the slithering death threatening mouse communities will be vanquished. Bardick lives to see some of the mice thrive, but Petersen has a twist up his sleeve that will force readers to re-think what they thought they knew about the enemies of the mice, who have a “seething fury . . . boiling in their collective cold hearts.” What I know for sure about Mouse Guard is how Petersen is not interested in telling the same old stories. In a previous adventure, some mice rebelled against the mouse matriarch – but instead of taking the side of the rebels, a tale we’re all familiar with, he told it from the vantage of those trying to keep order. Another way of saying it is, Mouse Guard comics remind me of the spirit of the 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as well as the Lord of the Rings books and the best Star Wars movies/TV shows. I’m already excited for 2026. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
More Patented Tom Gauld Science Humour
By Dan Brown I’m a fan of Tom Gauld’s work, so I was already inclined to like his latest collection, Physics for Cats: Science Cartoons, which was published in October. It’s as strong as such previous books as his Department of Mind-Blowing Theories, Baking with Kafka, and Mooncop. The cartoons collected in his latest publication originally appeared in New Scientist magazine. They continue his tradition of absurdist humour and once again, he covers the gamut from slapstick comedy to highbrow references (H.P. Lovecraft has been a recurring source of laughs for many years). If the idea of a fun-sized Hadron Collider you can take to the beach strikes you as funny, then Gauld is the cartoonist for you. The closest comparison I can come up with is Gary Larson, who used to do The Far Side. Gauld has the same sort of cock-eyed way of looking at the world. The toons here feature a cast of cat scientists, human scientists, cockroach scientists, alien scientists, medieval scientists, and talking dogs. You don’t have to be a scientist to appreciate them, in fact a number of them revolve around petty office politics – apparently the science community is no different from any other made up of human beings. In fact, Gauld hints that the only thing separating modern scientists from old-school witches is their lab coats. Do real scientists actually take the extra bones from museum exhibits and create super-scary monster skeletons out of them? I don’t know, but Gauld’s men and women of science do. Or imagine a job interview at the Institute for Lifespan Extension Research. Of course the applicant is asked, “Where do you see yourself in 500 years?” There’s a fair bit of play with panels here as Gauld tries to stretch his usual platform of a single rectangular box. One panel in Physics for Cats can be read upside-down, another front to back. Yet another panel is phasing out of existence. And in one cartoon, the framing looks something like a traditional Sunday newspaper strip. In one three-part cartoon, a scientist looks at a floating black disc. “I stared into the abyss,” she begins. “The abyss stared back.” The punchline comes in the third panel: “One thing led to another, and now I meet the abyss for regular chats in the coffee shop near my lab.” Gauld has clearly mastered the cartoon form by now. I would still love to see him experiment more with long-form narratives, as he did with 2016’s Mooncop. That said, if you have an egghead on your Christmas list, or even just someone who’s really well-read, you could do a lot worse than Physics for Cats. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
New Collection Features Hamilton’s Finest
By Dan Brown Bonk’d Vol. 1 is “your new favourite comics anthology,” according to the blurb on the back cover. It features work from 25 Hamilton-based and -connected cartoonists. The 114-page collection is the brainchild of Hammer comic creators Joe Ollmann, Sunny Singh and Paul Palacios. You may know Ollmann from his many superlative graphic novels, including Fictional Father and The Abominable Mr. Seabrook. In the book’s brief introductory strip, Ollmann explains how the idea behind Bonk’d is to give local creators a showcase where they can “work out shorter ideas.” He also admits such collections don’t have an illustrious history: “Maybe we’ll be like those 80s and 90s anthologies in terms of a one-issue print run.” But based on this volume, Bonk’d should have much more staying power. This is a strong group of stories without any obvious weak spots. There are contributions from old hands like Seth, whose four-panel cartoon haikus – taken from his sketchbook – are a highlight. Then there are names that might be less familiar to readers outside Steeltown, such as James Collier, whose strip Kitty Finds Employment comes closest to capturing the feel of the underground comix of the 1970s. Some of the artists involved tackle the question of Hamilton’s identity in a direct way. Matt MacInnes’s piece LRT Buyouts is a visual record of all the structures “designated to be, or already have been, demolished to build the light rail transportation (LRT) system.” “Hundreds of low-income and working-class people have been displaced in this process,” MacInnes notes. It’s such a simple idea, yet it makes for a powerful statement. That’s in contrast to Kento’s I Need/Like/Thank you HSR, a warm tribute to the city’s public transit. “The bus makes me feel like part of my community,” the single-name artist/writer muses. “Riding the bus feels like riding through the bloodstream of the city. I like being a cell.” MacInnes is also responsible for a two-page spread about the Hamilton Tigers, who have the distinction of being the only NHL team to ever go on strike, a move that cost them the Stanley Cup. Palacios publishes under the name Rulito. His The Stranger in the Bowtie is dedicated to profiling a local oddball, one of those figures that every city or town has who embody the spirit of that community in a gnarly way. (For London, think local legends like Roy McDonald or Bill Paul.) Palacios grapples with Steeltown’s civic identity in What is Hamilton Anyways?, the second panel of which features a hand giving the finger to the CN Tower: “It’s definitely NOT Toronto, despite being close to it.” His conclusion would do the folks in Austin, Texas proud. In Hamilton, he writes, “You can be as weird as you want. And we will love you for that.” Are readers demanding an anthology like Bonk’d? Will it have appeal outside the Hammer’s city limits? Let’s hope so. Whatever happens, Bonk’d Vol. 1 is clear evidence that Hamilton has the talent to turn this project into a going concern rather than just a one-off. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
I’m the Odd Man Out as GNG Takes on Roaming
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains details from the graphic novel Roaming, so if you value surprise stop reading right now! Here’s the rundown on the most recent meeting of the L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group, which was held Saturday, July 12. The book: Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s Roaming, which follows three Canadian first-year university students on a five-day trip to New York City. The discussion: In short, I was in the minority as the only GNG member who really enjoyed the book. Odd man out, as usual! GNG has a custom of choosing a Canadian comic for our July meeting, so we honoured that tradition with this selection. (By sheer coincidence, it comes on the heels of two other books by Canadian creators in May and June.) I, along with one other member of the group, pitched Roaming back in January. While I love everything by the Tamakis, other members of the group strongly disliked Roaming, including someone who couldn’t even finish the thing. The thick volume centres on Dani, Fiona, and Zoe, three university students who take a trip to New York for a brief holiday from their studies. It’s very much a story about the problems of young people, which I think is where most of the antipathy comes from. No one at the table said it wasn’t a realistic portrayal of characters in their late teens/early twenties – in fact, the problem seemed to be it was too accurate. Carol Vandenberg, co-owner of L.A. Mood, said Roaming didn’t work for her because it isn’t leavened with humour. The trio of characters see Big Apple sights, go to bars, get coffee, eat pizza, and of course there’s a drama because Fiona is an interloper who threatens Dani and Zoe’s friendship. Spats ensue. Carol made the point that if you’re going to tell a story about young people, a better approach would have been the one John Hughes adopted with the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Play the foibles of youth for laughs. Gord Mood, L.A. Mood’s other owner, echoed that sentiment, adding the example of another funny coming-of-age comedy, Dazed and Confused. Several elements prevented GNG members from enjoying the travel tale including the ending, which doesn’t wrap anything up. Other members said the art was prosaic, and that a flashback scene – in which we observe Dani and Zoe at a high-school party – wasn’t introduced in a way the reader could understand. Why do I feel differently? Part of my reason for pitching the book was how the character of Fiona is a huge drama queen. Very early in the book, there are signals to readers to treat anything she says with skepticism. The question in my own mind was, “Can we appreciate this book even if one of the leads is an awful person?” After all, if an artist and writer can create a comic with a character who turns you off, isn’t the fact you reacted to a fictional character like you would to a real person a sign the creative team has done a good job? (Would be interested in any opinions on this question in the comment box below.) I also believe there’s something darkly funny about a group of friends whose relationship revolves around avoiding roaming charges on their cellphones. As it turned out, Fiona was just one of the reasons GNG members didn’t enjoy the book, although someone suggested a comic depicting the same characters once they are out of school and taking on careers might make for a better read. Further reading: If you aren’t daunted by now, two other graphic novels by the Tamakis come to mind – Skim (it follows high-school friends) and This One Summer (which features a tween lead). L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of each month. Next month’s selection is I Am Stan, Tom Scioli’s graphic biography of the one-time Marvel Comics editor-in-chief. You might have heard of Lee before! We will reconvene August 9 at the gaming tables in the store at 11 a.m. You are invited to come join the discussion! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
