by Josh Crawley

With Daytripper #1 by Gabriel Bá & Fabio Moon (published by DC/Vertigo) now available for order, I figured it would be a good time to introduce you to some of their previous works. If you’ve already read them, consider this a reminder to re-freshen your mind’s palette as to just how tasty these books are.

The first time I something from either of these two that I recall it leaving an impression was Casanova #1, written by Matt Fraction (who I want to write a column on soon). Bá’s consistent-width line work, along with the black, white, and green interior color palette were something I liked from the very beginning. The cover palette of orange, purple, and white was very striking, too. While I’m not a fan of the title character’s resemblance to Mick Jagger, it doesn’t keep me from enjoying the story in any way. If you’re a fan of bad/good boys with even better/badder parallel-reality sisters working for their espionage-fueled fathers, I’m guessing you should check this out.

I prefer the European style over-sized hardcover, but there’s also a standard trim size soft cover if you are so inclined.

Ursula is a fantastic all-ages story by the duo of brothers that was published by AiT/PlanetLar. I’m a fan of romance in my comics, and it has a bit of that, too. While our distributor tells us they stock it, they don’t have any currently.

Ursula herself makes a cameo in De:Tales, another book by the duo featuring stories from their home of urban Brazil. Our distributor will take a backorder on this, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. Dark Horse’s website has a short preview.

When the second Casanova story arc came out, I realized I’d seen Moon’s lush, brushy art before in the awesome Smoke & Guns graphic novel written by Kirsten Baldock! If you’re a fan of crazy, kinetic action comics, such as Brian Wood’s Couriers graphic novels, be sure to check this out! Plus, it has smoking-hot (no pun intended) cigarette girls!

Bá, in the meantime, has been working on The Umbrella Academy, written by My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way. Surprisingly, I’ve only read about two issues worth of Umbrella Academy comics, total, of the 13 (plus shorts). I missed out on the Absolute-style deluxe slip-cased hard cover of volume 1, but being the hard cover fanatic I am, I grabbed the smaller-than-standard hard cover set that came with a PVC figure of The Violin. Since I know not everyone is as neurotic as I am, here are links to the Volume 1 Apocalypse Soft Cover, Volume 2 Dallas Soft Cover and the Deluxe Slip-cased Hard Cover of Volume 2.

And just to make everyone look lazy, the brothers have also been working on BPRD 1947, too.

A hard cover graphic novel I have yet to have a chance to read (don’t be fooled, though; I very well may have read this book before this is posted!), so I have less to say about it than usual, is Pixu. Joining the brothers are Becky Cloonan (Demo with Brian Wood, American Virgin with Steve Seagle, both available in softcover from DC/Vertigo) and Vasilis Lolos (Last Call, published by Oni Press). Also, you may recognize these names from the recent Buffy the Vampire Slayer one shot Tales of the Vampires.

There’s plenty of other work by the brothers out there, but these are the books I’d start with.

I’ve only gotten one entry for my Free Vertigo First give-away. While I don’t have a problem sending one person all three books, do you really want to let him get away with that?! Also, a quick addendum to the legal mumbo jumbo last week: if you’re a customer at the retail store, valid, state-issued photo identification that I approve of can work as your Age Verification.

I started watching pro hockey this week; that has nothing to do with the rest of this column.

Feel free to contact me with creators you’d like to see covered, comics for review, comments, concerns, corrections, questions, or even just your favorite beer. Be sure it says ATTN: JOSH otherwise there may be issues involving me living up to that “Master of Disaster” tag I’ve gotten. If you just want more of me running my mouth, check Twitter.com/joshcrawley.

josh@westfieldcomics.com

Westfield Comics
ATTN: JOSH
7475 Mineral Point Rd STE 22
Madison WI 53717
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Josh Crawley is the tenured Master of Disaster at Westfield Comics, so you should check yourself.