Mudman Volume 1

Grist weaves his magic on a tired, old concept...young adult acquires super powers and learns the less of "with great responsibility." As with Jack Staff an Kane, Mr. Grist infuses humor and fun for an entertaining read. He comes up with great characters that you care about an want to know more about.

I should start by saying I am a HUGE fan of Paul Grist.His work is perfect for someone who is growing tired of or jaded with a genre, because the minimal style he renders his stories with assumes that you have read enough comics to fill in the details. Grist doesn't waste a line, a splash of color, or a turn of phrase.Grist knows enough tricks and narrative hacks to tell a lot of story using very little. That kind of efficiency is much harder than it looks.Grist shows off his mastery of the form by leaving stuff out, not by overwhelming the reader with detail. The mastery is evident because there is almost no sense of confusion reading a Paul Grist book, except where he is enacting a character's point of disorientation or mystery on purpose.After the success of his expansive world-building Jack Staff superhero series, Grist returned to the genre for Mud Man, which feels more grounded in classic friendly neighborhood superheroics that stays in one place. The exploration here is more personal. The teen protagonist is still deciding who he will be after stumbling into his super powers.I don't remember buying this book, but I recently found it while going through things in storage. I couldn't remember ever reading it, so I assumed it to be inferior to his other work. But I decided to reread it anyway.It was amazing. Grist plays with the teen everyman genre, and while it feels evocative of Lee/Ditko Spider-Man, his lovable and mildly rebellious protagonist also has hints of Batman Beyond's Terry Mcginnis. Grist lovingly plays with the tropes of teen hero comics, while subverting them at the same time. His matter-of-fact, slice-of-life style forgoes titillation in favor of relatability. Like a true cartoonist, he offers shorthand notes of superhero moments and trusts the reader to fill in details with their own imaginations.If you need high detail splash pages, femme fatales with lip gloss popping, and med-school-grade anatomy, chances are you will not like Mud Man, or any Paul Grist books, for that matter.But if you don't mind seasoning your own food (so to speak), and you want a fresh take on a well-tread superhero genre, Mud Man will probably make you smile.My only disappointment is that there doesn't appear to be a volume 2 available. Even so, Mud Man Volume 1 is a fun read, worthy of your time.

Anything Paul Grist writes/draws is worth picking up and Mudman is no exception. Anyone who loved Paul's previous superhero opus (Jack Staff) will get a kick out of his reinvention of the teen superhero genre. Now where's Volume 2?

Just fell in love with Paul Grist's cartooning style!!

Having put "Britain's greatest hero" Jack Staff on hiatus, British writer/artist Paul Grist has come up with a new hero. Correction, a new British super hero and Grist's superheroes are like no other. Now I could say that superficially there is a resemblance between Mudman and Spider-Man in that both gain their powers in their mid-teens and have to learn how to use them, also they suffer from being bullied. But that's as far as it goes. Peter Parker lives in New York. Owen 'Mudman' Craig (age 15) lives in Burnbridge-on-Sea, a decaying seaside resort that has definitely seen better days.Owen is a generally well-meaning kid (a spot of spraying graffiti with his best mate aside) who has a copper for a dad and a student older sister and is prone to get into trouble at school. When Owen and his best mate break into an old empty house they find two bank robbers have decided to use it as a hideout and as a result he gains his mud-powers. From then on Owen's life gets very complicated with a mystery woman, a new pretty girl at school, adults with powers, one of whom seems to know about Owen being a superhero, learning how to use his powers, solving the mystery of how he gained his powers (spoiler: he doesn't, not in this volume), and more.All this is done is Grist's usual attractive style of loose (but effective) layouts and imagery that straddles the borderland of realistic and surreal.This is a great start to a new series which is very British, very entertaining, and really very good indeed. Did I mention it's very British?

Né en 1960, Paul Grist est un auteur de BD britannique (scénarios et/ou dessins), principalement connu pour l'instant grâce à sa série policière "Kane" (créée en 1993, trouvable chez Image Comics : ' Kane: Greetings from New Eden ' et s.) et pour le super-héros britannique "Jack Staff" (créé en 2000, trouvable chez Image Comics : ' Jack Staff 1: Everything Used to Be Black and White ' et s.).Avec ce "Mudman", aka Owen Craig, un adolescent d'une ville balnéaire britannique qui se découvre la mystérieuse capacité de transformer son corps en boue, Grist mixe la tonalité policière de "Kane" (la papa d'Owen est flic) et le contexte super-héroïque de "Jack Staff".L'originalité de l'art séquentiel de Paul Grist se situe dans la dimension onirique et poétique de ses histoires (pitches, dessins et dialogues), ainsi que dans ses découpages (cf. les raccourcis et autres passages abrupts d'une temporalité à une autre).De plus, s'il y a des seconds rôles dans les comic books de Paul Grist, il y a peu de place pour la foule ou les citoyens du quotidien en fond de case ainsi que pour les décors grandioses et fouillés. Paul Grist n'est pas Bryan Hitch...Avec les 5 premiers comic books ici réunis, qui se concluent comme il se doit sur un énorme "cliffhanger", Grist démarre une nouvelle série à sa manière sensible (un méchant aquatique évoque les monstres à la Jack Kirby du début des années 1960) et inimitable, alors que les fans attendaient peut-être en priorité une suite à "Kane" ou à "Jack Staff". Belles et efficaces couleurs du dénommé Bill Crabtree. Kane: Greetings from New EdenJack Staff 1: Everything Used to Be Black and White