This particular set of teachings from the Dalai Lama is a very clear and straightforward introduction to the more complex aspects of Buddhist thought and practice. Covering the major topics like the Four Noble Truths, karma, the differing Buddhist schools of thought, as well as the central intertwining of emptiness and compassion and basics of meditation, the brief chapters contained within cover a very wide amount of material in a concise compilation.

What makes this book so effective in addition to its brevity is the care taken with translation and delivery. Not only are both well crafted for a western audience, but they are quite conversational in tone as well. Throughout the book HHDL takes great care to demystify Buddhism, focusing on the practicality of the concepts and advising the reader, as the Buddha himself would, to experiment with practice rather than strictly follow dogma. With an emphasis on approaching the understanding of emptiness, it’s certainly not light reading, but nevertheless its brevity makes it less intimidating than the more voluminous dharma texts available.

Apart from his more secular works focusing worldly ethics, A Profound Mind is a beneficial resource with surprising depth for those with a developing interest in Buddhism.

Captain Swing is a frenzied mix of clashing societal and seemingly fantastical forces. Enigmatic spring-heeled figures, harnessing blue lightning, are caught slinking about the streets and rooftops of London.  Murdered Bobbies, drawn and quartered with all signs of foul-play pointing to the sky.  Add to this confusion the turbulence of 1830s London with the eruption of the Swing Riots, the peasant uprisings against industrialized agriculture, combined with the full-on war between the emergent policing factions of the Peelers and Bow Street Runners. All these factors paint a story of change swaddled in bedlam, easily personified through the notorious visage of Captain Swing.

Ellis writes a deceptively pithy story. Course like the London grime, his dialogue, especially between his policing factions, is as bawdy as it’s humorous and unsettling. Contrast this, however, to the utopian and progressive aspirations of his altruistic Swing. Thankfully, his own sentiment does not boil down to dualistic either-or scenario. Applying a shades-of-grey lens to the ideological questions concerning the nature of law, justice, piracy and knowledge, Ellis takes great care not to espouse any ideal but rather cloak it in uncertainty, showcasing only the confusion experienced by a rapidly changing English society.

The artwork of Raulo Caceres impeccably parallels Ellis’s authorship. Shades of navy, amber, lavender and maroon deliberately permeate the work, highlighting predominantly the shadows of London upon each character, each panel. Only the blindingly blue sparks in this pre-electrical era add any brightness to the sketches, drawn in finely intricate woodcut fashion. It is equally fun to gaze at the panels as it is to read.

Captain Swing is a grand synthesis of fiction, history and dark, alluring artwork. Whether for the casual comic fan or for readers with a more academic scrutiny, this work is an impressive exposition on the continuum of societal bedlam and progress.

Set in a pseudo-feudal fantasy, Skullkickers tells the story of two hardened thugs-for-hire (I’ll label them Baldy and the Dwarf) and pretty much the implosion of everything around them. In Volume one (1000 Opas and a Dead Body) the pair is enlisted to help locate an allegedly injured, uppity chancellor abducted from the infamously unimportant village of Mudwich. Volume two (Five Funerals and a Bucket of Blood) continues  their travels to the more cosmopolitan Urbia, detailing their highfalutin masquerades and encounters with a more fantastical cadre of environmentalists. Each volume details countless hackings, poisonings, corpse kicking and fist pummelings, inflicted upon and from a host of demons, summoned minions and their monstrous grotesqueries. Absorbing the violence itself is a fine read for a rainy weekend, especially cathartic for channeling one’s healthy aggression after a long day at work spent with annoying colleagues.

What sets the work apart, though, is the clever and humorous dialogue and narration. Expectedly, the protagonists are base and gruff, weirdly enlightened, or at the very least enchanting. Aside from the excitement from inflicting their pain-for-hire, they’re less interested in worldly matters other than properly supporting their “jumblies” and the refilled tankard at the local Gizzard. They’re discriminating brutes, not half bad, really. Even the supporting and disposable characters are as amusing as they are impermanent, helplessly ho-humming just before learning their grisly fate. But beyond the amusingly chippy back-and-forth, the narration really stands out in the series. Adding to the more traditional action descriptors one may remember from the Batman television show, the creators get innovative.  Just as much for the artwork, descriptors such as “Disgusting Spray!”, “Misplaced stab!” or my personal favorite, “Butter Knife Trauma!” had me in several bouts of chuckles. The narrative subtitles of various victims added on account of “mashed faced chatter” is a nice touch as well. Unrelentingly brutal though the sketches may be, the humor from these aspects provided a great balance to an otherwise intriguing concept.

My main descriptor of the artwork is that it’s simply vivid. Whatever skullkickery takes place, there is always a movie-tinged coloring to the panels. Especially captivating are the multitudes of lavender and purple depicting nighttime sequences. Combined with heavy uses of bright red and orange, the combined aesthetic action provided from Zub and colleagues Edwin Huang and Misty Coats never stops throughout the work.

Skullkickers is an entertaining read for those looking for a little brutal levity. My only near-criticism is that it seems that after only two volumes collected, the creators have set a high bar of quality that may prove hard to sustain over the long haul of publication. But with the passion Jim Zubkavich places on creator-owned comics and books, he seems the sort to not let such a slide happen. In the meanwhile it should be enjoyed thoroughly.

It is the story, or perhaps stories, of nothing more than Bras de Oliva Domingos, obituary writer and aspiring novelist. Looking to parallel the literary success of his father, Bras is an ordinary individual striving for some balance apart from Brasil’s numerous sensory distractions, constantly reminded to grasp the importance of living and dying in the moment. To be sure, there are plenty of distractions in Brasil, such as his friendships, family, loves and dreams, but none contemplated without quiet deliberation and perhaps a strong cup of coffee. Such deliberations are shown through a series of vignettes of various time periods in his life, each detailing the circumstances of these spontaneous moments when living and dying get in the way of his daily routine. These momentous accumulations, with a Tarantino-esque flair for anachronism, are caressingly startling. It is here where Ba and Moon confound the reader as to the intersection of reality and our dreams, and the wonder of life and death.

Like fellow Brasilian Rubem Fonseca, Daytripper provides a peek into the culture of passion in Brasilian South America. Despite the instances of death and violence in the work, there is an equal amount of warmth between the characters in their mutual goal of embracing the present. Additionally, the undertones of social and ethnic equality perceived in Brasil, exhibited through Bras and comrade Jorge, is also refreshing. Violence, inevitable as it is everywhere, is simply accepted as a sporadic part of life, a tolerated cost of a naturally unhurried and carefree lifestyle.

The lush coloring from Dave Stewart and sharp sketches from Ba and Moon make Daytripper an achingly quick read. For as much as the story emphasizes a deliberate and dreamlike pondering about life, it’s so engaging one can’t help but devour the atmosphere.

 Upon first glance Chinatown and the Mystery of Mr. Wicker can be wrongly dismissed as a duo of stories slapped together, providing a lengthier dose of unrepentant, whimsical pummeling one typically would expect from a Goon escapade. That expectation is immediately squashed with Powell’s blunt but effective disclaimer on page one: “This Ain’t Funny.” Even for a newcomer like myself, the blank slate this creates gives way to a duo of thoughtful interweaving of chronologically related episodes detailing a pensive depth to Powell’s chronicle of a brute foretold. Committed fans will receive a greater depth to Goon’s history, while new readers will get a firm grasp for the man himself in his quiet monstrosity.

The story dreamily flows back and forth between Goon’s young adulthood and his firm establishment as strongman-in-chief of the eerily invisible boss Labrazio. One half concerns the past circumstances detailing Goon and Franky’s reluctant negotiations of waterfront lebensraum with the entrepreneurial Triads, while the other with a more prickly unseen influence, straining the pair’s grasp on their community’s cash flow. Connecting these instances are the relationships experienced by Goon. His continual heartache with the sultry Mirna is better understood given the lessons learned from his time with Isabella in Chinatown. The resultant maturity Powell bestows upon Goon beyond mere street thuggery is thus the drive behind this story; it is where his scars, both visible and buried are fully revealed.

Which is not to say the tale lacks action in favor of romance. Powell sketches a startling brutality in Goon’s worldview, complete with flying fists, lead pipes and two-by-fours to all locations on the anatomical map. For however many lumps that Goon and Franky give, they receive an equal share, perhaps a reminder that they are admittedly little more than hardened tough guys and certainly no superheroes. Undoubtedly, though they live among countless thieves and slack-jaws, one can sympathize with their basic humanity but probably not much beyond an image of a pouncing Franky shrieking “Knife to the Eye!”

It is an elegantly sketched and colored brutality, though. The artwork emanates an expertly smoothened feel, showing great care attended to each line drawn on the page. The alternating time periods are brilliantly divided into a past colored in smoke-filled, charcoaled sepia, contrasted with a present washed in comfortable, light pastels with cloudy overshadowing of a rundown, quasi-gothic town. It is a strangely electrified and askew milieu, evoking both the squalor and dustiness imagined by John Steinbeck but with a supernatural and inviting charisma.  

Chinatown and The Mystery of Mr. Wicker is not only an excellent introduction to The Goon, it is a meticulous work of art. Hopefully it will introduce new readers to the creativity of Eric Powell but it may also serve an indication for Powell to continue his graphic novel exploration.

It is a touching story of wearied librarian Mary Colquhoun in her comfortable complacency in life. Sequestered from the world, she surrounds herself with books, the occasional second floor cadre of drifters, and the solace of the library’s nearly intact stained glass canopy, in favor of the quiet consolation from her youthful impetuousness.

Until the day the eccentrically bedizened Cedric arrives, enlisting her assistance to locate his giant frog run roughshod in her library. I’ll say no more, other than note her bittersweet rejuvenation in the pursuit of said quarry.

Greensleeves is exquisitely written. VanderMeer’s tale floats about the reader like an early winter zephyr, carrying both the beauty and chill of the coming snow, each rapping about our ears, reminding us to savor it before it turns to memory. Thankfully, this story can be savored with a well timed rereading before that happens.

It’s the story of a cargo ship’s crew inching through a harsh and remote desert world with little to control save their own psyches. Not much is known of their purpose except their eventual progression across the uneven sands, powered by a lumbering mechanical caterpillar of a vessel.  Conjoined with the vehicle is a semi-sentient, self-sustaining and incessantly oiled “pneumoarc”, the driving force behind an inevitable and undesirable turn of events.

Cardanica is a meaty however brief story containing a good mix of sci-fi, horror, and steampunk imaginings. It’s definitely more than a work of simple shock value; rather, the story is a well-conceived peep into a dissolution of desperate events facing an unequipped crew. While leaving a fair amount of questions at its conclusion, the work justifies further exposition, perhaps best as a graphic novel, requiring a greater sense of closure. It’s hard not to think of Cardanica as an overly oozing, anachronistic offshoot of Kubrick-inspired space drama, but is there anything wrong with that?

Her subtitle is spot on, however. From the very outset, Roach dispenses with the mystique of space in favor of the curious, no, rather the unsettling scientific and unacommodating realities of space travel, in every aspect imaginable for human beings.

Roach illuminates for the reader all the behind-the-scenes, between-the-lines unpleasantries unaware to the typical science fiction or emerging space enthusiast such as myself. From the international space station cooperation that is lost in translation, to the unorthodox psychology and research upon and performed on behalf of astronauts chosen for selection, the fallacy of weightlessness (epsecially in parabolic testing), the secrets held by our sebum layers outside the atmosphere, and the ever continuing conundrum of preventing rogue escapees through creation of the ultimate space toilet, Roach provides damning evidence that not only will we always be out of our element in space, but that our greatest challenge in space originates completely from within ourselves rather than from our stars.

Biologically and psychologically we are our own worst enemy, to be sure. Even more so in the heavens.  But as our futile enmity rages on down here on earth, there is no reason, as Roach appeals to the reader, to not push on and continue our exploration of the outer spheres. Space has never seemed so unfathomable and yet so cheekily inviting.

The story doesn’t have much of a center as it’s more a series of falling dominoes, beginning with an atypical breakup between lackluster couple Raymond and Julia,  and the subsequent societal fallout both monitored and controlled from forces unforeseen. Such forces reveal themselves as the interplay between two warring super-intelligent species of spider and wasp, molding our reality as omnipresent observers of “indeterminate ethnicities”, policing society’s actions in their own war of survival.

Mamatas frequently references the butterfly effect in this work, using timely and humorous popular social references to illustrate the torrential effect of the small actions people collectively take, whether they be defacing newly constructed mega-stadiums, driving buses into the United Nations, or enacting “Plan Z” through the perfected strategy of web-based, pseudo-bourgeois “mutually assured confusion”. With all these accumulated acts, Mamatas eagerly invokes the free will argument, whether in this highly controlled universe or that of the interweaved, yet nebulous “Simulacrum” in which our players occasionally encounter themselves.

There’s a lot going on in Sensation. With creepy subtlety and detachment, Mamatas brilliantly narrates from the view of his hyper-intelligent spider species; his interweave of our reality and that of the Simulacrum is too underdeveloped for my taste though, as he focuses on the plight of an overeducated, insipid Raymond and his ubiquitous Julia. More time could have been spent on the hive-mind of his wasp species, for it too, was left wanting in relation to his spidey sense. The absurdity emanating from and surrounding his characters in an ever insane New York is quite enjoyable though; Mamatas deftly strangles our sense of self-importance, adding a much needed humility to our unquestionably mindless endeavors. It’s also an unquestionably worthwhile read.

Stylistically the stories are wildly dissimilar, though all build a slow momentum to conclusions that are anything but. Stories that involve the best intentioned investigators who can’t help their attachment to the evidence, wild impromptu trysts of self-devouring in barroom lavatories, the story of sibling hoarders and their blind pursuit of each other buried within their castle, the detached indexing of the slow and gruesome disintegration of a family, and a priest’s obsession with the potential salvation of a new, steampunked Virgin Mary. Lingering stories that keep the readers guessing as to the characters’ interweaved histories.

Bell’s strength is evidenced by his incredible knack for manifesting a measured though chilling terror, but also for his unorthodox unlayering of the circumstances revealing the disturbing states in which his characters find themselves. Some of  the stories suffer slightly from overcomplexity but there’s no doubt about their powerful themes and Matt Bell’s potential. A quality read.