Weekly Treats! In The Kitchen With Alain Passard & Godzilla!

Christophe Blain

Here's a wonderful hybrid of a book that utilises the potential of the medium in the vein of The Photographer by Emmanuel Guilbert (which told the real-life biography of a photographer mixing sequential art storytelling with the original photographs). In The Kitchen With Alain Passard (Chronicle) explores the world of the highly-regarded French chef, written and illustrated by another French master; Christophe Blain. This isn't really a biography; what it does is to convey the essence of the man and of his life at the moment by infusing actual recipes and 'how-to' illustrations with conversations with Passard, observations in the kitchen, tours of Passard's gardens and anecdotes from a junior chef colleague. Blain brings it all together by writing himself into the book - on one level it is almost a book about writing a book about a chef. This means that he is not only our gushing tour guide but also the method to communicate, in a slightly self-deprecatingly over-the-top way, the taste and aroma of the food. This is all done with Blain's usual economic but wonderfully expressive line-work. 

Taken from the French edition

Just as child-like Christophe Blain's love and enthusiasm for food drips off every page within In The Kitchen... with our second featured book there's also a sense that the creator was just itching to get their hands on the project. Looking at Godzilla: Half Century War (IDW) it feels as if writer/artist James Stokoe (previously of Orc Stain) is the proverbial kid in a sweet shop. There's fabulous energy to the artwork - any double page spread could be an old movie poster - but also a glorious attention to detail capturing both the scale and devastation of the destruction. The story takes us back to 1954 when Godzilla first hits Japan...

For the weeklies, there's a significant moment in Green Lantern #20 (DC) history with Geoff Johns' last bumper issue on his almost decade-spanning run of the series and a great cover on the impossibly hip Young Avengers #5 (Marvel). A new Tank Girl series is always welcome, this one - Solid State Tank Girl #1 (Titan) of 4 - showcases the nicely quirky artwork of Warwick Johnson-Cadwell and Occupy Comics #1 brings together comic legends such as Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman to pontificate on the themes, ideals and goals of the Occupy movement whilst raising money for the cause.

Full list of releases, as ever, under the tab at the top of the page...