All Star Comic Shop

Check out the DC Comics trade paperbacks shipping in August 2008. Order online from Amazon.co.uk using the links provided.

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The trailer for the Watchmen film, due out in March 2009, can now be seen in HD on Apple.com.

Looking fantastic!

• Watchmen Trailer

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Watchmen (Paperback)  £10.79 (at time of writing, check link for current price):

Amazon.co.uk Review
Has any comic been as lauded as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns but Watchmen remains the critics’ favourite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller’s fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre’s finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and recently From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to garner praise since.

The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore’s characterisation is as sophisticated as any novel’s. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling, rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control–indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making “adult” comics a reality. The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD’s Rogue Trooper and DC’s Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore’s paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other “works” and “studies” on Moore’s characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the fine pace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up–it retains its crown as the best the genre has yet produced.

–Mark Thwaite

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By Carl Doherty

With the success of the movie adaptation Stardust, as well as his novel American Gods, Neil Gaiman’s work is finally getting the mainstream attention it deserves. Though alongside Allen Moore, Gaiman has been one of the few American comic writers to enter popular culture, gathering critical acclaim from outside the comic book sphere, many of his appreciators may still not recognise his graphic novel work outside of The Sandman series and its numerous offshoots.

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Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Paperback) - £5.99 (at time of writing, check link for current price):

Amazon.co.uk Review
If any comic has a claim to have truly reinvigorated the genre then The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller - known recently for his excellent Sin City series and, previously, for his superb rendering of the blind superhero Daredevil - is probably the supreme contender.

Batman represented all that was wrong in comics and Miller set himself a tough task taking on the camp crusader and turning this laughable, innocuous children’s cartoon character into a hero for our times. In his introduction the great Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, the arguably peerless Watchmen) argues that only someone of Miller’s stature could have done this. Batman is a character known well beyond the confines of the comic world (as are his retinue) and so reinventing him, while keeping his limiting core essentials intact, was a huge task.

Miller went far beyond the call of duty. The Dark Knight is a success on every level. Firstly it does keep the core elements of the Batman myth intact, with Robin, Alfred the butler, Commissioner Gordon and the old roster of villains, present yet brilliantly subverted. Secondly the artwork is fantastic - detailed, sometimes claustrophobic, psychotic. Lastly it’s a great story: Gotham City is a hell on earth, streetgangs roam but there are no heroes. Decay is ubiquitous. Where is a hero to save Gotham? It is 10 years since the last recorded sighting of the Batman. And things have got worse than ever. Bruce Wayne is close to being a broken man but something is keeping him sane: the need to see change and the belief that he can orchestrate some of that change. Batman is back. The Dark Knight has returned. Awesome.

–Mark Thwaite

Synopsis
This ground-breaking synthesis of comic-book icons and modern cinematic sensibilities redefined an American myth and reshaped the face of modern graphic novels. And now, a decade later, it’s back…to inspire a new generation! This edition contains 28 pages of never-before-seen sketches, art and text, with a new cover, designed by Chip Kidd. This is the tale of a tortured hero’s twilight and his efforts to save the city he had once sworn to protect from spiralling relentlessly into chaos. Batman’s struggles with a new breed of criminal, the training of a new Robin, and his fateful final encounters with Superman, Two-Face and The Joker, are all woven together seamlessly to mark a warrior’s mythic rite of passage.

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