Batman: Ego and Other Tails:
Batman: Ego and
Other Tails is nearly all written and illustrated by Canadian comics
creator Darwyn Cooke. It’s a collection of shorter works by Cooke, all of which
feature Batman except for story that focuses on Catwoman. Paul Grist wrote one
of the stories and Bill Wray and Tim Sale drew one story apiece. My enjoyment
of the collection was lukewarm as far as the Batman stories are concerned.
Nothing really engaging or truly original happens. I enjoyed the art by Cooke,
Bill Wray and Tim Sale but the writing that accompanied those stories was flat.
I remember very little from the stories and I read them less than a day ago.
It’s pleasant to read but it left no impression on me.
The Catwoman story, titled “Selina’s Big Score” was a
different thing all together. In essence, it’s about Selina Kyle, better known
as Catwoman, pulling a heist. At the beginning of the story she does a job that
ends without pay and she quickly finds another job to pull, one with a big
payout if everything goes right. The rest is played out like a novel written by
Richard Stark. People who are familiar with Cooke’s body of work will know that
he’s no stranger to Richard Stark, particularly his Parker series. “Selina’s Big Score” follows the formula of the Parker novels and the effect makes for a
stellar comic. It’s also a little strange as it also works as a crossover story
between Catwoman and Parker. Parker is named Stark and visually he is based on
Lee Marvin except he’s uglier which suits the character just fine. The
structure is just like that of a Parker novel.
It’s in four part and the third part is presented from a different point of
view, namely that of Slam Bradley a private detective who resides in Gotham
City. The idea to make a crime story starring Selina Kyle is a stroke of
genius. Her thieving background makes it a natural fit. It’s not surprising
that this 80-odd-pages graphic novel led to an ongoing Catwoman series by Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke. It’s solid work in
an otherwise unimpressive collection.
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| Alfred Hitchcock cameo in La Diligence. |
Lucky Luke: La Diligence (The Stagecoach):
I’ve mentioned before that my childhood was filled with
hours spent reading. I devoured my dad’s collection of bandes dessinées for
years. The only reason I stopped is because I eventually moved out of my
parents’ house when I finished high school. Since then I’ve occasionally read a
BD but nothing has quite captured me like the titles I read in my youth. Last
weekend took a few Lucky Luke albums
from my dad’s collection and La Diligence
is the first of those that I’ve reread. Lucky
Luke is still one of my favourite all ages BD.
Originally created by Maurice De Bevere, better known by
his pen name Morris, Lucky Luke has
been in publication since 1946. It’s a giant in the BD industry and new stories
continue to be released even after Morris’s death in 2001. La Diligence is written by René Goscinny, Morris’s most famous
collaborator on Lucky Luke. The story
is pretty straight forward. Lucky Luke is hired to protect a Wells Fargo &
Co. stagecoach as it travels a vast distance to transport gold and passengers
from Denver to San Fransisco. The whole thing is a publicity stunt to show the
world that Wells Fargo stagecoaches are a safe means of travel. The gold cargo
is heavily advertised and as such the stagecoach becomes a target for
desperados and thieves throughout the entire journey.
Morris and Goscinny use this simple story to provide the
reader with numerous funny scenes in which Lucky Luke gets to show off his
skill as a cowboy and the passengers each get their little moment in the
spotlight. It’s a fun story that never forgets what it’s all about; that is to
say a fun western adventure story with some jokes, some less subtle than
others. What makes this is many other Lucky
Luke stories is how it takes a few aspects of American history from the 19th
Century and spins it into an entertaining BD. This album obviously dealt with
the realities of traveling by stagecoach and it’s notably for its inclusion of
Black Bart, a notorious thief who specialized in robbing stagecoaches. The
historical aspects are often caricaturized but there is still considerable
attention given to historical accuracy. At the very least, Lucky Luke: La Diligence tells the kind of story that will not only
entertain readers of all ages, it will likely inspire you to do a bit of
research on the more historically interesting elements of the story.
My review is based
on the French edition of La Diligence published by Dargaud published in 1984.
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