Page 45 Review by Stephen
"Once you have tasted the fruit of the village, it is impossible to forsake its seductive power."
That certainly sums up STRANGEHAVEN to perfection!
A true British classic beloved by Bryan Talbot, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis and JH Williams III amongst many, many creators, STRANGEHAVEN sadly stalled ten years ago at three volumes with one more to come, but now it is back with a vengeance!
It's also now in full colour: colours which are so warm and rich against a crisp, cloudy sky and as British as the oak tree itself. As the village's vicar takes a stroll round the countryside (and swift swig of whisky straight from the bottle) he reflects on how far his beloved flock have gone astray: on the arrival of Alex Hunter "literally by accident - when he crashed his car into a tree" since when Alex has felt unable to leave, his coercion into the masked Masonic Lodge and all the subsequent deaths and disappearances.
"George gave in to the temptation of an illicit affair with the doctor's wife Maureen. So much for brotherly love.
"But he's in a better place now.
"In the ground, decomposing."
I didn't say "consequent", I said "subsequent". Let's see how it all plays out first, shall we?
It's a fluent introduction, deftly done with real character, so new readers are embraced and some of us old-timers are provided with a far from boring, much-needed refresher course on just how much is Not Quite Right in this secluded parish of Strangehaven.
Speaking of Not At All Right, there are further Masonic manoeuvrings including temptation and even deeper induction, while one village member's playing truant. That doesn't go down well. That doesn't go down well at all…
MEANWHILE is a fresh UK anthology with something for everyone and almost all of it for me.
I adored Sally Jane Thompson's self-contained short story told in the same bilberry blues as THIS ONE SUMMER. Their gloss here is so attractive. In it a young woman makes or takes a phone call. We don't know what she says but to begin with she's quite quiet, subdued, then annoyed then despondent. When you see how Sally accomplishes that in her speech bubbles, I rather think you will smile. It concludes on a magical note of determined resolve thanks to a blackbird's feather found on the floor.
Sean Bright's 'Peas In Our Time' one-page, nine-panel nonsense made me laugh and it's not often that politics makes one laugh at the moment, is it? A bag of frozen peas wins the UK General Election. The effects prove efficacious. And then we go and blow it all in the final panel's punchline which made me howl!!!!
There's a burst of black and white sci-fi, a Kate Brown-influenced episode of black and white fantasy from Yuko Rabbit whose external townscape on the final page took my breath away, and then there's the first instalment of 'The Bad Place' by THE MAN WHO LAUGHS' David Hine and Mark Stafford.
A girl call Jenny is warned away from the fabled perfect new town of Faraway Hills by its Town Crier. He is its only resident remaining. The town was built on the site of Crouch Heath with its tavern, The Horned Man. That too was deserted and had fallen into dereliction but everything was knocked down and built back up apart from the Castavette estate. Nought was left there but a wasteland of tipped rubbish yet with no known descendents, still it could not be compulsory-purchased.
Then overnight the Castavette mansion rematerialised in all its hideous, Victorian, four-storey splendour and that's when things began to go seriously awry…
