Misery City: The most miserable fun I've ever had (in a good way)..

Having finally gotten around to my stack of new comics, courtesy of London Super Comic Convention and its focus on creators and comic books rather than hype and shiny things,  I'm pleased to announce I can begin to share my thoughts on them. I know I know, this is the moment you've all been dreaming of (yes I have been drinking, no I'm not drunk).

But lets not dwell on me and how much of a hero I am but rather lets look at Max Murray, on one hand the classic pulp detective, fedora pulled down low, trench coat wrapped around him to keep out the chill of the city, and on the other, a man stuck in Misery City with hell itself coming out of the ground and very possibly the only person capable of doing anything about it, even if it is rather begrudgingly. This is Misery City, it's pulp noir meets the supernatural, a twist of Sin City with a dash of the Maltese Falcone and a sprinkling of Lewis Carrol, and even this doesn't quite sum it up, it just is Misery City. And I love it, the grimy feel, the fear and hate held within the pages, the desperate wish to be elsewhere but the need to keep going, its everything I want from a book titled Misery City.

And the reason for all this? The creators, the honest to god geniuses behind it, K.I. Zachopoulos and Vassilis Gogtzilas (I've checked the spelling of their names three times and I'm still not sure it its right) who I had the honour of talking to at LSCC and one thing is obvious, their passion for this book, and I can feel it, it reaches out through the words and art. K.I. Zachopoulos is a literary phenomenon and one of the main reasons for the brilliance of this book, with the other being the artistic talent of Vassilis Gogtzilas but I'll get to that. The words that man can use, they way he plays with them, its a joy to read, you can feel the icy fingers of his words caressing your soul, drawing you in deeper until they are clawing at your mind but you cant look away. And its then you realise that you are Max Murray, and all because of K.I. Zachopoulos.

However, this is a comic, and the words are only half the story, with the other half being the art, art that fully expresses the misery and decay, the hopelessness of life, the power of cruelty and the rawness of the story,  the art of Vassilis Gogtzilas. And it fits right in, it takes those words and wraps them in misery that shoves them straight into the nerve centres of the brain. The harsh raw line worked, like the hacked limbs of the unlucky, and the decayed murky colour of the world a reflection of the souls that inhabit Misery City and the splashes of colour, the show the power of hate and pain that shine like a beacon within this world created by Vassilis Gogtzilas and K.I. Zachopoulos. Its the perfect pairing, and it truly is miserable, but utterly fantastic because of it. Read it.

If you don't you'll be haunted by midget killer clowns in your sleep, I promise you that.