A4
44 pages
Square bound,
colour and black & white
£6.50 UK
The Octobriana 50th Anniversary Special is now available to buy from the Kult Creations blog spot Just select where you live (the UK or Europe or Outside Europe) and click on the button.
It's a 44 page, square bound, American comic sized colour and black and white comic featuring five new Octobriana strips. It features art and stories by Chris Askham, Simon Breeze, Susan Fenn, David Hitchcock, Gabrielle Noble, Andrew Richmond and John A. Short. With a cover by Gabby Noble. JOIN THE REVOLUTION!
Art by Chris Askham
Art by Andrew Richmond
Art by Gabby Noble
Art by Simon Breeze
Art by Susan Fenn
Art by David Hitchcock
Opening up the book you start with the Octobriana profile just in case you have no idea who she is (had she taken up Simon Cowell's management offer she'd be a daily Yahoo! new feature). Then you get into the stripwork which is lucky as this is a comic album.
Octobriana's Nemesis (Agent Omega) is a good play on the time paradox and the artwork looked good and the twist in the ending was also well done (no spoilers). Andrew's art on Caught in the Web was very reminiscent of 1980s small press comics and it's good to see some b&w work included.
The highlight, of course, was Ultimate Octobriana drawn in full colour by the amazine Gabrielle Noble. It guest stars Rasputin so....
Octobriana The Lost Strip I was a tad less excited over. There is a one page intro to the strip which when I saw it I immediately thought "this is not Soviet era comic art!" I've written about Russian comics on CBO before so go look that up. Also I contributed to a couple East German Samizdat publications back in the day so I saw a lot of "Soviet era" art. It is not as crude as is drawn here -the big mistake everyone makes is that all Golden Age comics or former Soviet era comics were crudely drawn. They were not. Also the big clue is in the art which screams "Andrew Richmond".
Here is where I think things went wrong. There was the one page illo. The fake 'lost' comic strip and then, the next page -the "joke" that it is believed Short and Richmond created the strip. That fell flat. Octobriana has so much myth and legend around her -the strip identified by someone in the U.S. last year as being drawn by me...wasn't. Wrong title/story and art. A bit more effect into the fake and this could have gone down as another mystery.
The three illustrations in Susan Fenn's The Three Poisons is interesting but I'd like to see more of her work in strip form.
So, miserable Terry aside, is it worth buying this book? The short answer to that is "Yes" -it is an enjoyable read with nice art so what more do you want -and John Short delivers his usual quality scripting and Gabrielle Noble has work in the book. Come on -are you cannot need a better reason than that....can you??
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