Kult Creations: Shokwave Book 1

 

US Comic Book size

Full Colour & B&W

44pp

£9.00 UK -book orderable https://shokwavecomic.blogspot.com/

THE ULTIMATE ANTHOLOGY COMIC! 

A quartet of ten page black and white and colour comic strips all written by John A. Short in an American comic sized square bound. Featuring NOSFERATU II drawn by David Hitchcock, THE CLOCK STRIKES! drawn by Vincent Danks, ANNA KEY drawn by Chris Askham and RESISTORS drawn by Richard Pester. 

Physical copies of Book 1 now available to order from this very site (to your right!) You can also buy it along with a copy of 2012's THE CLOCK STRIKES! 1  - a full length black and white comic by John A. Short and artist Vince Danks featuring a self-contained Clock adventure in American comics format. 

Hmm. "The ultimate anthology comic"? Well, I've done a ton and a half of them since 1984 but what the heck!  I am a reviewer not a comic publisher or historian (well...yes, I am but it does not matter here) but a CBO reviewer (the ONLY CBO reviewer!).

I spat my coffee out (avoided the comic though) when I saw The Clock in a story titled "Color Blind" as it was similar to (not seen by Short) the strip "Ruby White Eyes" the black jazz singer who the Clock has to rescue. I like the grey toned art and style used in this one and the story is interesting enough and I think worth checking out.

Resistors Chop Shop; it was a real treat to see the vastly -vastly- under rated Richard Pester in print again. I was beginning to think I would never see any more new work from him (complicated story) and then -BAM! Violent, a bit sweary but good to look at and a nice story for Pester to illustrate. I hope there is more to come!

Nosferatu is drawn by David Hitchcock. The first time I saw Hitchcock's work ( a good while ago now) I thought "Yech!" but, luckily, I always re-read things twice to make sure I take things in and see if first impression was correct. It wasn't. Hitchcock has a sketchy and almost "Gothic style" he uses here and the panels look almost as though they have a grey wash to them to create the atmosphere. This really worked and was a great addition to the book.

Anna Key drawn and in full colour by Chris Askham I am 50-50 on. I have no idea why as I think this is some of his best work to date. Probably my tired eyes! Seriously, his best wotrk to date so, again, a good read.

Only one thing missing: Gabrielle Noble!

In all this is not just a great read but production quality is also quite high so its a good product all over. Of course, all stories are written by John A. Short and how publications like 2000 AD are not noticing him is incredible. The fella has a real knack of turning his writing to any genre and style: what you HAD to do in the days of real comic book publishing and if he was around in the hey-day the likes of Valiant, Lion, Battle et al would probably have seen a lot of his scripts.

Check out the Kult Creations site as there are other books to order there and all have been reviewed on CBO (as far as I remember).