Once more I dive into the catalogue at Top Shelf 2.0 and with my noted martial arts prowess I snatch the nearest comic off the top of the pile. Lazy kung fu student am I! Distilling references from all over the seventies comes Kagan McLeod’s INFINITE KUNG FU – soon to be published in graphic novel format. This is a black and white martial arts and magic extravaganza which manages to pull in both blaxploitation and zombie movies with it’s heady mix of just about every kung fu flick you’ve ever seen. The most compelling aspect of this feature for me is the illustration – and make no mistake – Kagan is an expert illustrator who has work all about the place, but the best of which is collected on his own website KaganMcLeod.com. Kagan’s site also reminds comicbook creatorss not to be so narrow minded as to limit themselves in any way and to embrace all opportunities for illustration and cartooning.

The pace, the space and the quality of that illustration is what works for me here with Kagan’s Infinite Kung Fu story. The blend of story elements and the odd character mix, along with a lot of the humour, doesn’t interest me personally quite so much. Having seen most of the material in its original form in those very chop-socky movies of the seventies, along with enough of all the other references, I feel I’ve seen it all before in other media. Still, the quality of content is there to be enjoyed for new readers less jaded than myself and there is enough to be learned from the artwork, the structuring of the story, the pacing and the attitude that make it a highly recommended read for anyone hoping to tread the delicate rice paper path of comic book enlightenment – is that not so Grasshopper?

From Kung Fu we ride side saddle into into the old west with Caryn A Tate’s RED PLAINS, produced in its early stages with artist Noel Tuazon. We saw something of Noel’s work in my last review and here he makes me wonder about the very nature of comic strip art. But first – the story is a familiar one. Is there anything new about the western genre – something we’ve not seen a thousand times already? Well, I’m not so sure there’s anything startlingly fresh here, but sometimes fresh is not what you need. If you like westerns – you’ll undoubtedly find what you like here. I’m no great fan of the western genre but I found this to be a enthralling read. It’s quite simple – I wanted to know what happened next, and there was enough quirky interest along the way to keep me solidly with it. That’s the first part anyway.

I’ve not read beyond the point at which Noel leaves the project. But really it’s Noel’s contribution here that has me thinking. You might say all sorts of things about Noel’s artwork depending on your prejudices – rough, scribbly, unfinished, more suited to storyboards, technically insufficient? You may be right on any of those points but there’s something about this attitude to process that’s intriguing to my mind. Setting aside writing and art as the twin giant disciplines that dominate our ideas of what constitutes a good comic, the other critical aspect we overlook all too easily is production. The schedule that demands new pages on a regular basis has been dismissed as being of the least importance for too long now.

It’s often talked about when deadlines are missed but really this idea of schedule is intrinsic to the very idea of a comic book series. It really doesn’t matter what the subject, Ulysses or Batman, or the delivery method, monthly printed comic book or daily online strip, the fact of the matter is that this schedule is one of the great pillars without which comics become something less than they are. Naturally graphic novels circumnavigate this issue by being complete works, but they are rare – our very idea of graphic novels being swamped by the completely different idea of trade paperback collections – which are different beasts again. An idea to explore in greater detail later mayhap!

Anyway, see what you think of Red Plains and let me know how it strikes you. This column is here to provoke conversation, not to inform you of my random thoughts on the subject. Let me have your bone-crunching thoughts on Infinite Kung-Fu too! See you next week.

Tags: Caryn A Tate, Kagan McLeod, Noel Tuazon, Top shelf 2.0

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