Month: June 2012

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Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde Vol. 5

By P. Craig Russell
Adapted from a story by Oscar Wilde
32 pages, color
Published by NBM

When I’d reviewed The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde Vol. 4: The Devoted Friend and the Nightingale and the Rose back in 2004, I’d commented that it had been 6 years since the last volume and that I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed them. With hindsight being 20/20, I now realize that I’d cursed myself for an 8-year wait for The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde Vol. 5: The Happy Prince, and that this time around I should just say, "Hurrah! A new P. Craig Russell graphic novel!" Because ultimately, that’s the response you should have to just about any book by Russell, and The Happy Prince is no exception.

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Superman Family Adventures #1

Written by Art Baltazar and Franco
Art by Art Baltazar
32 pages, color
Published by DC Comics

After a 50-issue run on the all-ages series Tiny Titans, I was a little sad to hear that Art Baltazar and Franco were wrapping up the title. Fortunately, they’ve promptly moved over to a brand new comic, Superman Family Adventures. And like Tiny Titans, it’s a book that I think really does appeal to all ages; little kids will like the fun adventures, while more comic-savvy readers will get a good chuckle over some of the inside jokes aimed at them.

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Judge Bao & The Jade Phoenix

Written by Patrick Marty
Art by Chongrui Nie
160 pages, black and white
Published by Archaia

While I’d never read any of the historical Judge Bao stories before, while in high school we did read some other retellings of classic Chinese "judge" stories. In most of them, a traveling Judge would enter a town, discover a great wrong, and together with his assistants find the corruption inherent in the town’s government and right all the wrongs. That’s what we have here with Judge Bao & The Jade Phoenix, the first in a series of Judge Bao graphic novels originally published in France that take a classic Chinese character and create graphic novels around him. And all in all, it’s something not quite like anything else in the North American comics market right now.

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