Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

The Jester Awards 2007 - Part Three

By Regie Rigby

A Happy New Year to you all, my Foolish Friends, and welcome back once again to the Jester Awards 2007. This is the third and final instalment of this year’s ceremony, and there are only two more categories to announce – “Best Writer” and “Best Comic”. I’ve reduced the number of categories this year because everyone hates awards shows that just go on and on and on, don’t they?

So, I guess it’s time to get on with it and look at the candidates for “Best Writer 2007”. Well, there’s Warren Ellis, who won last year and who has continued to spew his genius for dialogue and idiosyncrasy onto the pages of all manner of fine books. Hell, he even managed to fit publishing a novel, the exquisite Crooked Little Vein.

It remains true that I’m able to walk into a comics store and pick up anything with Warren Ellis’ name on it and know that it will be good and that I’ll enjoy it. There aren’t many writers you can do that with, and it’s undeniable that Ellis would be a deserving winner.

He’s not the only one though. Bryan Talbot would also be up for this award, had he not already won a Jester this year. The astonishing Alice in Sunderland was without question the finest Original Graphic Novel I saw this year, and also one of the finest pieces of writing I have ever encountered. The way Talbot made his narrative dance was nothing short of joyful. What could have been a dry and rather obsessive little history lesson (and I’d love to have been in the meeting where he pitched the idea to the publisher – “It’s all about how a children’s author spent some time in the North East…”) into a magical tour through mysteries stories and solid places that leads the reader by the imagination.

It’s almost a travesty that I can’t give the Best Writer Jester to Bryan Talbot, but rules is rules. I’ll probably have to have a look at that for next year, but you can’t move the goalposts in the middle of a match, so with regret we must move on.

And then of course, there’s Tony Lee.

Now, 2007 was supposed to have been his breakout year, as predicted by me, and I have to say we’ve seen rather less of his work than I was expecting. I have, however, read a good deal more of it than most of you, since I’ve been privileged to see some of the stuff he’s working on.

It’s good. It’s very good. And you’re going to love it.

Suffice to say that Tony is my hot tip for the 2008 Best Writer Jester. We shall see, I suppose…

Who else was in the frame? Well, Bill Willingham’s work on Fables continues to impress – he plays with an ensemble cast of all too familiar characters from childhood, but twists them in new directions to create a frisson of unfamiliarity which I find never fails to drag me in. Then there’s Stan Saki, who has been producing a magnificent period drama set in Feudal Japan, disguised as an anthropomorphic story about a Samurai Rabbit, for years, and who has produced some particularly fine work this year as the lives of his characters continue to develop.

In the end though, I find I have but the one real contender for the Best Writer Jester this year. Step forward Garth Ennis – who would deserve this for They Boys alone – a book which does crudity, foul language and ultra violence better than anything I’ve ever seen before. I’ve been a fan of Ennis for a very long time, but this is by far the cleverest thing he’s ever done. It’s not his best work – for me that remains the epic Preacher, but damn The Boys is clever.

The story is straightforward enough – dealing as it does with a bunch of people who exist to keep the Supes in line. In many ways there are similarities with Ennis’ Hitman character, and indeed with Ellis’ Authority. But The Boys is more knowing, and frankly rather less respectful to the genre, than either of those examples.

It would be easy to dismiss The Boys as “juvenile shock bollocks” (a friend of mine dismissed it in just those terms in a recent conversation). The humour is often more than a little scatological, the language is coarse and unrestrained while the sex and sexual innuendo could justly be described as puerile in places.

But that, as I believe I have observed in the past, is to miss both the joke and the point entirely. The Boys is a real piece of work – subversive, satirical and funny, certainly. But it is also enough to make the reader slightly uneasy – and so it should. The cavalier attitude to life and death exhibited by the characters, the mix and match morality they employ, are reminiscent of the kind of compromises many people who exist to “serve and protect” have to make. It’s good to be reminded of this in such a non-preachy and funny (did I mention it was funny?) manner.

Of course, if that was all there was to it Ennis wouldn’t be anything special. The Boys is good – but if that’s all there was it wouldn’t be enough to win Ennis a Jester. I mean, we’re not as prestigious as the Eagles or anything, but I still don’t just give ‘em out in Christmas Crackers you know…

But there is more to Ennis’ work. His back catalogue is well known, and varied – from the gently traumatic Troubled Souls to the cheerfully insane work he did on Judge Dredd, and all points in-between. And of course The Boys is not the only work he’s done this year. At the point of writing, I’ve only read the first issue of his new Dan Dare series, but I already know I like it. Streets of Glory, Ellis’ western from Avatar comics has also managed to arouse my interest in a genre that I had previously only really been interested in if it was served up through Sci-Fi filters.

So it is with pride that we award the Jester for Best Writer 2007 to Garth Ennis.

Which just leaves the Jester for “Best Comic”. This was hard. Very, very hard. The category is open to anything that could be described as a comic, was published for the first time in 2007, and couldn’t really be called a Graphic Novel.* As you see, I draw no distinction between ongoing and limited series, or between “major”, “independent” and “small press” publishers. Such distinctions are increasingly meaningless in any event. A kid with an idea and a Mac can get comics with production values every bit as good as the big two in front of massive audiences using modern communications technology, and all the best marketing is without question word of mouth. And what even counts as an ongoing series these days? Series that are envisaged as running for decades get cancelled for low sales after issue six, while finite series such as Transmetropolitan, Preacher and Sandman run literally for years.

No, the real problem with this category is that because there are so many different kinds of comics you are always comparing apples and oranges. Can a non-fiction comic such as Understanding Comics be meaningfully compared with Batman? Or Anyway, in the frame for this Jester were Britain’s own 2000AD, Vertigo’s DMZ, Fables, also from Vertigo, and Wormwood from Avatar Comics.

Wormwood was a strong contender. It was funny and, in its way, rather profound. Wormwood himself was a strong character, and I found his relationship with Jesus to be deeply moving – not something you can normally say about the Anti-Christ, I suspect. But the best comic of 2007?

No. Not really. It was good, but not that good.

I’m not giving the Jester to Fables either. I love the book, and I’m enjoying the ride immensely, but while it’s an excellent story, it is perhaps a little rambling at times, and the tendency it has to sort of wander off into new trains of thought every so often, while one of the things I like most about it, also makes the narrative a little tricky to follow in places. In other words, the greatest strength s of the book are also its greatest weakness.

The same is also true of Britain’s big contender, the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic, 2000AD. Like all anthologies, ‘Tooth has much about it that I love – Dredd is as good as he’s ever been, Nikolai Dante is fabulous, and Frazer Irving’s art on Button Man is, quite simply, breath-taking. But there’s rather a lot about ‘Tooth that I just can’t get on with. I have, for example, never forgiven them for what they’ve done with the barbarian hero Slaine.

Other people love him of course. And that’s the curse of the anthology. You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you’ll never please all of the people all of the time. There’s almost always going to be something you just can’t get on with – however good it is.

The observant amongst you will have worked out that this means the Jester for “Best Comic 2007” goes to The DMZ. There are several reasons for this of course. It’s good – it’s very good – but then so are all the other comics on the short list. What wins it for The DMZ is partly the inspired and gentle writing of Brian Wood, and partly the utterly sympathetic art by Wood and his co-artist Riccardo Burchielli.

But mostly it’s the fact that this is one hell of a story. The idea that New York might be torn apart and become the buffer between opposing sides in a new American Civil War resonates all too strongly in this post 9/11 world, but the situation allows Wood to comment all too clearly on so many aspects of modern politics, particularly some uncomfortable aspects of the “War on Terror”.

But beyond the politics, there is also a more philosophical mediation on the meaning of war, and what is important in life. And beyond even that there is a profound insight into what people, ordinary, regular, folk, will do to survive in extremis.

The books has also been about the journey of Matthew Roth – an accidental hero, a man who never asked to be where he is, who never meant to get involved, but now finds that he has to report. I find myself wishing that there were rather more war correspondents like Matthew Roth. And I find myself wishing that there were more comics like The DMZ.

So, that’s the final Jester for 2007. Please do feel free to swing on by the message board and either agree or disagree with the results, and indeed to castigate me for leaving out so many of the categories. For now, the whole of 2008 stretches out before us, holding promise and threat in equal measure.

Here’s to it – and to you my Foolish Friends. I hope 2008 brings to you everything you would wish.

See you in seven!








*And as ever, to avoid argument later, publications fall into one category or another because I say they do. My decision is final. And probably right…