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Page 45, 9 Market Street, Nottingham (2026)

09/06/2026

Criminal: Five Gears In Reverse by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips with Jacob Phillips.

They just can’t help themselves, can they? None of them.

“The more I think about this whole thing, the more it starts to feel like a trap I set for myself. ‘Cause in case you haven’t noticed by now, I’m kind of a f**kup.”

What a belter! Best book from Brubaker & the family Phillips since WHERE THE BODY WAS, with a lot more action that everyone within would have done better to avoid. To be fair, some of them tried – even Ricky Lawless.

Funny – there’s a very, very funny f**ked-up theft early on with Ricky, lying in wait for his mark, accidentally snorting he**in rather than co***ne... Horrific – well, you’re not going to like the lawyer. Nor is Ricky, but he’s got to extract the gnarled bastard alive, because if he doesn’t... Heart-breaking – it’s Ricky Lawless; of course it’s heartbreaking.

Every CRIMINAL is a completely self-contained cascade of catastrophic miscalculations, one impacting the other, so you don’t need to know Ricky Lawless’s past or even future to be swept along on this careening car crash. But the second I closed these covers I snapped back open the first two books (COWARD and LAWLESS) because they’re all interconnected, shifting backwards and forwards in time, and then I re-read CRUEL SUMMER, which is where you’ll discover precisely what I mean by heartbreaking.*

Sean Phillips and Jacob on colour art drown each book in atmosphere. Every character inhabits their twilight. Sean Phillips remains one of the greatest actors in comics: faces sculpted from the shadows emerge into a half-light of sudden recognition or anxiety-stricken realisation. Or they just stand there, smoking with barely suppressed rage. Plus Brubaker’s uncanny ability to slip inside his fatally flawed creations’ surprisingly self-aware heads will have you rooting even for the most wretched of them.

I promise you will care.

*And then I re-read the others. I couldn’t help myself – appropriately enough. And the wider, intricate tapestry unfurled itself, with sly cameos by major characters and poor Ricky laughing his doomed head off in -- well, you’ll get there.

02/06/2026

Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month June 2026

A People’s History Of Football by Mickael Correira, Jean-Christophe Deveney & Lelio Bonaccorso.

Absolutely kickin’, this strikes straight to the core of soccer’s long and surprisingly ancient history of seemingly incessant socio-political struggles while celebrating – with exceptional panache – the almighty skills of some of its barrier-breaking stars!

Did you know Brazil’s Garrincha had one leg 6cm shorter than the other? It added unpredictability to his already nimble dribble. The art is equally agile as multiple, beautifully balanced, fleet-of-foot Garrinchas run rings round the opposition stuck in side-stepped slow-mo. Perfect use of the punctured panel border too!

Long before corrupt-as-f**k FIFA sank its gouging, unprincipled talons into its soft-skinned ball, the great game has been continually co-opted by those wishing to forge positions of power, often over entire populations.

Did you know each pitch used to be the size of a parish?! Yep, village would battle village across The Commons... until the rich stole swathes of that common grazing ground for themselves. Folk Football was a safe way to settle rivalries semi-peaceably – a point that didn’t go unnoticed by social engineers then, later and further afield.

This vibrant, revelatory album tells precisely the story it promises: of the people’s fight to keep possession of the ball for their own collective enjoyment. The opposition...? Industrialists, white colonialists, priests, politicians, psychiatrists (pfft!) and a patronising, patriarchal press hoovering up profits and unilaterally deciding who they deign may play the game.

Did you know that women’s football was MASSIVE during WWI? Factories fielded their new female employees – the Munitionettes – for charity matches. Why was this then suppressed? You’ll groan.

I’m afraid you’ll groan right through to the final whistle, but you’ll thrill throughout as individual players make their play, their stand ground and supporters unite to fight. Oh Egypt!

“But Stephen, you’ve not even mentioned the key role of private boarding schools like Rugby in –“

F**k ‘em.

26/05/2026

The End Of The Arab Of The Future: A Youth In The Middle East vol 1 (1992-1994) by Riad Sattouf

Ever since the earlier volumes invited us to eye-roll at his dominant, mansplainining Dad, I’ve sold Sattouf’s travels (and yes, travails while being dragged helplessly round his father’s former stomping grounds in the Middle East) as having all the educational entertainment of a Guy Delisle travelogue (PYONGYANG, SHENZHEN etc) but with the additional observational eyes of a young boy, as recalled in adulthood.

He’s a bit older here, but the same twin vision applies, for we see the world very differently when younger: our senses, perceptions and priorities are different – we instinctively look for and search out different things.

I’ve not had chance to delve in properly yet, but these interior art snaps should give you a fair flavour, and the veey first volume of the series remains in stock and is relish-reviewed at length on our website.

Of this volume, the publisher writes:

"Riad is a teenager growing up in the French region of Brittany, where he lives with his mother and brother and attends high school in Rennes. But his adolescence is anything but typical. Born to a Syrian father and a French mother, Riad spent much of his early childhood in Libya, rural Syria, and France—moving through contrasting worlds, political ideologies, and daily absurdities.
Years earlier, his father—charismatic, authoritarian, and obsessed with dictators and with building a utopian Arab society—abducted Riad’s second younger brother, Fadi, and returned to Syria, leaving behind a fractured family. At 14, Riad navigates puberty, isolation, and the pressures of French society, while haunted by the absence of his father and brother, and the sadness of his mother. He turns to books, heavy metal, and drawing as refuge.
The tone is darkly comic and sharply observant, capturing both the universal pains of adolescence and the surreal contradictions of the 1990s. Blending personal story and social commentary, this standalone volume offers a biting, poignant portrait of a young man coming of age in a world that feels both familiar and foreign.”

21/05/2026

The Beast vol 1 (of 2) h/c by Zidrou & Frank Pe.
Exuberant, comical, tragic and true, this has all the feels!

There is so much exquisite cartooning on offer. I do like the lithe-as-you-like titular Marsupilami with its vulpine face, spotted, tufty, leopard-like fur and its prehensile tail. And I love the energetically gesticulative mother and child. But oh how I adore the rustic Belgian homestead imposing in rain-soaked silhouette or low-lit as a glowing sun sets, ranching staked out across uneven ground as stone steps descend the untended garden in shorthand – magnificent!

Inside, poor Jeanne Steinberg, herself subject to so much gossip and abuse for having loved a German during the war, is trying to provide for her picked-upon son. Her son, meanwhile, drags home all manner of animal waifs and strays so that the household looks (and probably smells!) just like the Durrells’ in Corfu.

“That’s enough, Francois! You’ve gone too far! This is a house, not a zoo! An albino mole! An old cat with indigestion! Salamanders! A three legged dog! The only daytime bat in the world! And eagle that can’t even fly!”
“A vulture! Frankie is a vulture!”
“A jittery hedgehog! A turkey who thinks he’s a rooster! A senile garter snake! A half-paralyzed hare! An alcoholic workhorse! Two beavers who mate non-stop!”

They can’t keep their paws off each other and pine upon separation. I think those are my favourite panels of all – too funny! And that old nag, necking any old bottle it can find through the bathroom window! It’s Disney at its best, circa Aristocats etc.

And like Disney at its best, it captures the cruelty of man’s careless, callous inhumanity to our fellow mammals. The opening pages in the hold of a tanker transporting livestock now mostly dead are dreadful. And, parenthetically, that’s how our exotic Marsupilami arrives on these European shores. It escapes.

As I promised, so many ups and downs. including romance, rejection, brutal schoolyard bullying, provision for others and a magnificent menagerie of very eccentric animals.

19/05/2026

Die: Loaded vol 1 by Kieron Gillen & Stephanie Hans

“When I was single-parenting, I longed for the time to make to-do lists. I just kept the plates spinning, reassuring myself anytime I felt I was doing a crappy job, with the mantra ‘Everyone fed, nobody dead’.”

Bloody hell. Rarely have I felt so keenly the excruciating weight of dramatic irony induced specifically by my knowledge of a book’s length – of how many more pages remain – while its disadvantaged narrator forges on, in the dark.
Not only that, but I’m stunned to report that against all reasonable expectations this fresh new series is even more enveloping than the already impressive original, not least because I am given to care so very much more for this hapless cast than I did for their predecessors, particularly its oh so impressive narrator: stoicism in the wake of adversity. Same goes for Matt and his family. Gillen’s empathic ability to walk several miles in each of his protagonists’ projected shoes is astonishing.

Previously on DIE: six teenagers gathered together to play a role playing game one of them had created. They each chose their own roles, including the dungeon master. Two years later they reappear on a roadside, one of them minus an arm, all of them minus the dungeon master.And after 25 years of trying to reconstruct their lives – some more successfully than others – they’re pulled back again to face to repercussions of their first... game... and negotiate/fight their way out. Once more, not all of them make it back.

This is most emphatically about what happens next, but because of who its new hapless victims are (teasingly revealed, chapter by chapter), it’s also about the impact of the previous protagonists’ absence during the two times they faced the unforgivingly consequential realms of Die.

As well as being meditations on fantasy, gaming, and their creation, both outings are about actions and consequences, and how so many of us treat each other. Clue: callously. And now: even worse.

“So... everyone fed, nobody dead.”

You will not believe the cliff-hanger.

13/05/2026

Faster by Jesse Lonergan.

Perfect. Expensive, but perfect.

It’s all about trajectories with Jesse, innit it. He’s applied them to space travel, mythology, and now Lonergan’s applied them to hairpin cutthroat car racing in a French-flapped pocketbook throbbing and firing on all high-octane combustion-engine cylinders. I’m not a mechanic, no.

I have no idea what I’m even typing right now (or even ever) but if you feel the need for speed, the lust for dust and desire for tyre fire then this is like the loudest (and possibly coolest) episode of The Wacky Races played on fast-forward x 120.

Oh the drama of it all!

Also available on our Comics Car Circuit: INITIAL D manga.

As ever, this post comes with 9 pages of interior art.

Vroooooooom etc

12/05/2026

The Wreck h/c by Lizzy Stewart.

Some of the very best prose I’ve ever read.

(Terms of reference: I am a huge fan of E.M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen, Bernadine Evaristo, Larry McMurtry, Yuval Noah Harari etc.)

Things are looking pretty peachy for Charlotte as our story unfurls.

Sadly (Charlotte might even say 'predictably') as it unfolds, all will unravel. Some of it may even be her own fault. But probably not as much as Charlotte will blame herself for.

“When I was thirteen years old my mother told me, with only the slightest hint of impatience in her voice that I was ‘determined to burn every bridge offered to me’.”

So there’s that, and it’s just the opening salvo.

Charlotte and Bill are living together. Charlotte somehow manages to make a living from writing literary reviews while Bill is a blameless, loyal, loving, practical carpenter so it’s actually pretty idyllic if a little ramshackle. Then wealthier and more successful TV Producer Francesca rolls back into her life with attendant boyfriend and war photographer Adrian whom Charlotte almost dated at university. And they offer Bill and Charley lodging in their beautiful rectory in the beautiful countryside – it’ll be like recreating their college daze! So yeah, the rectory is the titular Wreck. Maybe.

Rich in candid psychological self-analysis, its chief protagonist and initial narrator, Charlotte, is highly aware of the her own flaws (some of which she has harboured since childhood; but hey, there’s always room to develop a few more) so that the overall effect is of someone observing their own car-crash downfall in such slow motion that there is time or room to ruminate on each in detail as they are triggered.

And it’s all absolutely terrific – terrific! – except for the comic bits, sorry, those actually detract from the prose they’re so jarring. The miracles Posy SImmonds achieves ain’t so easy, are they? V pretty, though. Now forget you read this tiny paragraph because the prose is Booker-worthy. True fact!

Lastly, yeah it’s true about who you know etc.

From the creator of former Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month ALISON.

05/05/2026

The Ends by David & Maria Lapham.

Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month April 2026.

The finest work from the Laphams since early STRAY BULLETS.

1985. Jennnifer End is in love with Angelo Rodriguez. He isn’t white.

Jen’s fired up the internet to land on her brother’s home-page.

“Welcome to The End family, Mrs Rodriguez.”
“What is this racist garbage?”
“My Dad’s a huge racist. My Mom’s a church-going racist. I guess I’m a born and raised racist, too... But the problem right now is my brother, Jack. He’s a N**i racist skinhead who runs a group called The Freedom Knights. Only now he’s expanding his group.
“They’re here. All these neo-N**is are here right now!”

They’re in deep trouble. Self-righteous skinheads spoiling for a fight are pouring onto the sleepy Oceanside beach island in droves, picking fights with black store owners, women and their boyfriends, retired soldiers, even police officers; and incendiary Jack End, furious at his sister, is at their fore.

Worse still, police officers are complacently underestimating the neo-N**is’ volatile contempt, and have yet to call the National Guard. Good job there’s a reunion of armed and able veterans who know exactly who they fought against in the last world war. Or is it? They’ve just seen one of their own go down, and their charismatic, equally itchy leader isn’t about to let the skinheads off the island before he’s found and personally punished the scum responsible. Time to blow up the causeway, I guess.

This full-on conflagration is far more complex than I can convey in 2,200 characters. Take the End family whose father despises his son’s neo-N**i allegiances on account of his Dad fighting in WWII, yet he owns Himmler’s luger, beats his wife bloody, and fuelled his son’s racism with his own flailing, drunken diatribes against outsiders, insiders, everyone.. As to Jen... well, she said it. You’re going to wince throughout, but that’s what makes this so brilliant: you will care. Now so does she.

Indoctrination of the nation: this is how it happens, and all before the sorry existence of unsocial media. Stunning WWII flashbacks embellished by Scorpio Steele which directly inform its combustible present.

01/04/2026

Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month: Skating Wilder by Dumais & Dungo.

One of the most visually thrilling, fluid and effervescent expression of comics as a medium, the skateboarders here flip and fly off every page from every conceivable angle! Arms thrust out, baggy tops and trousers back-flapping, they infect you with their gravity-defying faith, skill and joy!

Yet another relentless succession of dull, rectangular panels would have robbed this of its freedom and zeal, but the artist is a surfer and it shows. Dumais’ years as a skateboarder shine through too, for he’ll take you on a revelatory, cross-cultural history lesson in skateboarding history from the first rudimentary steel-wheeled, homemade efforts, through commercial construction, vertical experimentation, trick perfection, early zines and social growth, then the shift in music from punk to hip-hop when skateboarders first roamed into city centres to repurpose whatever they found into brand new concrete challenges. In history, context is everything, and here you’ll learn the when AND why as well as the who, what and how. All accompanied by a lyrical beauty, wit and especially insight:

“If you skate in the streets for long enough, it will change the way you see the world. You’ll start paying attention to how rough the sidewalk is, checking out every crack and bump. You’ll be counting stairs, running your foot over ledges to check if they’re slippery. But be warned... Once you develop that second sight, it’s permanent. There is no turning back from seeing the skate potential in everything. And I mean everything...”

There follow 21 panels of Dumais finger-flipping an imaginary skateboard over suspended power lines, flyover freeways, cathedral domes etc.

And I kinda concur ‘cause playing 500 hours of early Tombraider in front of my Ma reshaped our worldview too. In heavenly Venice, for example, we’d gaze admiringly up at St Mark's Square’s arresting architectural skyline, and after considered study based on our considerable combined knowledge of both Byzantine and Baroque declare:

“Single jump, single jump...”
“Oh, but THAT is a runny jump...”

I’m so ashamed.

10/03/2026

The Wilderness Collection h/c by Claire Scully.

Oh my god it’s gorgeous.

All three contemplative landscape explorations collected under a single, hand-sized hardcover. I’ve included photos of all three.

Of the first, INTERNAL WILDERNESS, I wrote almost exactly 10 years ago:

One of the most beautiful artefacts I’ve beheld this year.

It’s a silent, 4 x 6 inch comic printed on sturdy, finely grained, crisp white paper with an even thicker cardstock cover.

We travel under moonlight which bounces off snow-capped mountains and shimmers on the surface of the lakes or lochs and the fresh, fast-flowing rivers which meander into their midst.

There’s barely another soul in sight, but there’s evidence of human habitation, albeit asleep save for single chimney stack’s plume of white smoke swirling into the sky and a light-house’s giant lantern, a comforting, reassuring beacon in the night.

All else is bathed in the softest of blue-tinged greys under a rich midnight blue. The shapes and the textures of the trees, the leaves, the tall blades of grass and the fern-fronds are exquisite.

By contrast there’s a sheer sheet of ice below us, breaking up; above or at eye-level depending on how high we’ve climbed, there are equally pristine layers of mist suspended in the sky.

If you are need of serenity or simply crave its experience, you’ll find it waiting within.

“INTERNAL WILDERNESS is part of an ongoing project looking at ‘landscape and memory’ – our relationship with the environment, effects we have on the world and space around us and in turn its profound effect on our own memory and emotions.”

Returning to 2026, and twice this weekend I’ve had two very different individuals bring this to the counter with memories of its original incarnation as mini-comics, and how quietly but profoundly affected they were by their first read. So much so, that they bought this too.

Page 45

09/06/2026

02/06/2026

26/05/2026

21/05/2026

19/05/2026

13/05/2026

12/05/2026

05/05/2026

01/04/2026

10/03/2026

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