Rivers Of London: Stray Cat Blues TP Review

 

Writer: Andrew Cartmel

Creator: Ben Aaronovitch

Penciler: José María Beroy

Inker: David Cabeza

Colorist: Jordi Escuin Llorach

Letterer: Jim Campbell

Cover Artist: VV Glass

Publisher: Titan Comics

Price: $17.99

Release Date: December 4, 2024

 

Kitty distributed homegrown marijuana along the river. But after getting busted, Kitty looks after her bedridden Uncle Jake and does community service at Her Haven women’s shelter. One day, her uncle’s neighbor calls with a problem. Gina Penlaw has heard reports of foxes attacking cats and is worried about her canal boat pet. But before Kitty can visit her former accountant, Gina photographs someone tangling with foxes on her boat. Who is this Cat Protector? And who will protect the foxes from her wrath? Let’s sink our claws into the Rivers Of London: Stray Cat Blues TP and find out!

 

Story

Kitty Butchart led an exciting life as the notorious Hoodette. While confined to her wheelchair, Gina helped Kitty with her finances. Now, instead of growing marijuana in the hull of Jake's canal boat, Kitty grows organic tomatoes using her uncle’s magical light. Things are tighter now, as she must pay for Jake’s medical care. Still, Gina’s photo intrigues her.

 

The foxes of London also need help in the Rivers Of London: Stray Cat Blues TP. Lately, a Cat Woman has stopped them from chasing cats away from the trash bins in their territories. When the Cat Woman follows two foxes to Gina's canal boat, she is also drawn there by Uncle Jake's magical light. But then, Stephanie is an enchanted creature. Even if Kitty is fulfilling community service at Her Haven, she understands the plight of endangered and traumatized women.

 

The agents of the Folly know all about Martin Chorley, the magic practitioner who operated The Strip Club Of Doctor Moreau. He created Human-Animal Chimeras like Stephanie to entertain his customers. Now, a gangster and his blind mother hold Stephanie’s sisters captive. The Cat Woman needs help to set them free. What the agents don’t realize is that the foxes have enlisted one of their students to help Stephanie’s sisters escape from the high-security compound of a gangster and his blind mother.

 

In Andrew Cartmel's story, Gina and bedridden Uncle Jake are among those who have traded expensive flats and houses for life along the river. Kitty looks out for her economically and physically challenged friends in the Rivers Of London: Stray Cat Blues TP. How can Kitty say No when Stephanie requests her help, especially when a teenage magician offers to help the Hoodette rescue Cat Women trapped in a life of sexual slavery?

 

Art

A boardwalk covers the towpath where Gina Penlaw and Uncle Jake have tied up. Both have lined their boats with windows to enjoy the daylight and surrounding greenery. Uncle Jake has expanded his boat with a rectangular modernist design in Rivers Of London: Stray Cat Blues TP. The taller boat allows people to care for him in his hospital bed, surrounded by framed Bob Dylan posters. During her visits, Kitty descends a circular staircase to tend tomatoes in wooden beds in the hold.

 

Jordi Escuin Llorach fills José María Beroy and David Cabeza's art with vibrant color. When an orange Fox confronts a tiger-striped cat, an orange and red highlighted purple arm tosses it off the boat. The movement traces red, yellow, and orange through the air before the fox climbs from a river streaked with white, greenish-blue, and purple. After Abigail leaves the white and brown building, she kneels to speak with the foxes while people walk past the wrought iron fencing for a residents-only garden. As the moon shines in a dark blue sky, the pink street reflects the red doubledecker bus as Abigail and the foxes travel toward Gina's green boat.

 

Jim Campbell conjures black uppercase letters into white dialogue balloons and colored narrative boxes. The sparse sound effects help us hear the Hoodette extend her baton and a (Fantastic Mr) fox enjoy his cheese puffs. Thanks to Titan Comics for providing a copy for review.

 

Final Thoughts

A former drug trafficker and a young magician join forces to help Human Feline hybrids escape a life of sexual slavery. The Rivers Of London: Stray Cat Blues TP tackles the criminalization of drug use, the human trafficking that flourishes in "civilized" society, and the socioeconomic factors that push the poor and disadvantaged out of economically prosperous areas.

 

Rating 9.2/10

 

To look inside see my preview at The Dragon's Cache.

Rivers Of London: Stray Cat Blues TP Preview

 

Before they became bestselling novelists, Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel worked on Doctor Who. While Andrew Cartmel oversaw the Seventh Doctor's tenure, Ben Aaronovitch brought Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart back to TV screens in his story Battlefield. It was a terrific story involving King Arthur and magic. (It also reunited actors Jean Marsh and Nicholas Courtney, who had worked together on the First Doctor serial The Daleks Masterplan). 

Ben Aaronovitch helped keep Doctor Who fandom alive after the BBC canceled the TV series by continuing the Seventh Doctor's adventures through Virgin's New Adventures novels. Andrew Cartmel also contributed to Virgin Publishing's Doctor Who novels. His first entry was Cat's Cradle: Warhead. Andrew Cartmel delivers a terrific story about magic and cats in this graphic novel based on Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers Of London series.

Here's all the info from Titan Comics:

RIVERS OF LONDON: STRAY CAT BLUES

Authors: Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel

Illustrators: José María Beroy

Publisher: Titan Comics

SC, 112 pages, FC, $17.99

ISBN: 9781787743847

On sale December 3, 2024

 

A cat-woman, a notorious London gangster, and a brothel specialising in chimeras. Or just another Wednesday as it’s known in the world of Rivers of London. Stray Cat Blues is the latest adventure in the critically acclaimed series.

 

CSI meets Harry Potter in this supernatural police procedural crime series based on characters and the books written by Ben Aaronovitch. This new series is scripted by regular co-writer Andrew Cartmel author of the Vinyl Detective.

 

Old frenemies become allies in the latest Rivers of London adventure when a mysterious cat-woman comes to The Folly looking for help to free her sisters from a notorious chimera brothel run by London gangster Monty and his sinister magically endowed mother, Mrs. Napier.

 

Now, Romeo, together with Abigail, Kitty Butchart aka Hoodette, Reynard Fossman, and Gina Penlaw must rescue the three imprisoned women before the Faceless Man can get his hands on them…

 

Collecting together the critically acclaimed original four-issue mini-series.

 

With exclusive bonus material, included a script to art comparison, covers gallery and a collection of the backup articles from the four comics.

 

The continuing comic-book adaptation of Ben Aaronovitch’s hugely successful and award-winning 10-book novel series first published in 2011.

 

An all-new original adventure starring the Peter Grant the wizard-in-training hero of the first Rivers of London Novel, ‘Rivers of London’, also known as Midnight Riot in the US.

 

Now, let's take a look inside:

 

 

 

 

Rivers of London: Stray Cat Blues is on sale December 3, 2024 at bookstores, comic shops and digital. Pre-order now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million and Forbidden Planet for UK. 

 

Thanks to Titan Comics for sharing this preview with us!

May Reading Roundup Part 2

6. Transit by Ben Aaronovitch. What if you could travel to another planet simply by boarding a train. This is the future that the seventh Doctor Who and his companion Bernice Summerfield confront in this New Adventures novel. The only problem is that, by creating wormholes through normal space, the designers have given entry points for beings from another dimension. The action takes place all over the solar system, from Earth to Mars to Pluto, and all places in between. The Doctor will not allow these beings to take control of our worlds and our lives. But can he prevent it? The action, and the reasoning behind it, may be a little difficult to follow at times, following as it does the English literary style of the New Weird. But the story is fun, told at an epic scale, and features a young black woman who is a descendant of the classic Doctor Who character, Brigadier Leftbridge Stewart.

7. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. I also read this classic novel on my Kindle. We meet a mole who decides that, instead of keeping his home underground tidy, he would rather go boating every day with his friend the water rat. He and Rat get along famously, and make a new friend in Toad. But whereas Mole and Rat make rational, thoughtful decisions, the Toad always wants to be the center of attention. He follows the latest fads, but never takes the time to master any skills. Thus, when he discovers he likes driving automobiles, he drives them too fast, and crashes them. Rat and Mole try to intervene, and prevent him from ruining his reputation, and losing his wealth through his extravagance, but Toad escapes from them, and gets into even more trouble. It's a fun novel, which has been adapted many times for TV. It amazes me how powerfully this simple story has affected generations of readers and viewers. Sadly, my version didn't come with any illustrations, such as in the edition pictured above. Maybe I'll have to watch a TV version, and see how others adapted it for the small screen.

8. Artemis Invaded by Jane Lindskold. This is the second of a two-part series about a planet that has been lost by galactic civilization. After society climbs back from its crash, one young man from a powerful family discovers Artemis, a world created by prior generations as a pleasure planet. Technology does not work there, and his shuttle crashes before he can land safely. But he makes friends with a young lady, a hunter, who has a psychic connection with a puma. In this second novel, other members of the man's family land on Artemis. They seek to control the natives and exploit the technology of a former age. As some of this technology involves powerful weapons, this is of concern to all. But the biggest dilemma is faced by Adara, the young huntress. During the events of book one, she came into psychic communication with the planet's consciousness. Artemis offers her stronger powers, and a means to defend her world against the grasping avarice of the man's family. But to accept Artemis' gift means opening herself up even more to Artemis. Will there be anything of Adara left is she accepts these offered powers? Or will she become simply a human extension of the planetary consciousness? 

A building in Oxford, the historic university
Gerald will later attend.

9. Gerald Eversley's Friendship by James Welldon. This is an ebook which I read in the PDF format on my computer. It's a nineteenth century English novel written by a Church of England priest. The title character attends St Anselm's on a scholarship, as his father, the vicar of a small country village, could not have afforded to send him. There he makes a friend in the rich son of an English lord. While Gerald is introverted, and makes few friends, he slowly gains the respect of his peers through his scholastic efforts, as well as his sterling character. He eventually gains a scholarship to Oxford University. But while it seems like his life is a smooth rise to the top of society, it is anything but. His growing knowledge of the world around him makes it difficult for him to believe in the tenets of Christianity, which separates him from his parents. And another setback, the illness of someone he loves, looms in his future. Ultimately, the friend he made the first day at St. Anselm's school that will save him from committing a terrible folly. But then, that is the power of friendship.

Dinosaurs live not only on isolated Central American plateaus,
but also in Natural History Museum in Oxford, England.

10. The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. A family member once told me that, while he would never read any story I wrote, he would watch a film version of any book I wrote. The numerous film versions of The Lost World demonstrate how var a film (or for that matter, a TV adaptation) can veer from the original novel. I've seen several versions, and none of them bear much resemblance to Doyle's classic novel, at least in my memory. Actually, this novel reminds me of the trilogy of novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, beginning with The Land That Time Forgot. It's the story of Professor Challenger, who leads an expedition to a Central American plateau. There dinosaurs live, along with a few primitive humans, and a race of intelligent, aggressive apes. But no creatures are more aggressive than the pterodactyls, those dragons of the prehistoric age. It was interesting to read the Sherlock Holmes stories, so grounded in nuts and bolts of normal Victorian life, and then read this flight of fantasy by the same author. But then, while Burroughs' novels are more fantasy than science, Doyle writes a quintessential science fiction novel. To honor him, Michael Crichton gave his sequel to Jurassic Park the same title as Doyle's classic novel. A few years ago, I read Dinosaur Summer, which author Greg Bear fashioned as a more direct sequel to Doyle's. Only instead of Doctor Challenger, his heroes are real life people like special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, and the men who made the original movie "King Kong."

11. The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie. A young man travels from Africa to England. Although he attended the best schools in England, he travels under an assumed name. He does so because he left England to escape large debts. He also wishes to keep a low profile. He undertakes this journey for two reasons. He must deliver the memoirs of a deceased politician to the publishers, while evading the agents of government factions who wish to see the manuscript destroyed. He also seeks to return a collection of letters to a lady, a member of the aristocracy, who would see her world erupt in scandal should they reach other members of society. But on his first day in England, he is attacked in his hotel room. That night, the letters are stolen. The following day, he delivers the memoirs to an agent of the publisher, only to later learn that the man to whom he delivered the manuscript was an imposter. His efforts to reclaim the manuscript and the letters will lead him to Miss Virginia Revel, the woman implicated in the letters, and take him to a grand English manor house known as Chimneys. I found this novel impossible to put down. I read the final half of it one evening. The recent TV version featured Miss Marple, and told an entertaining story. But this novel, which Agatha Christie wrote two years before she created her classic heroine, seemed far richer.

Well, there you have it, the list of books I read May. It does not attempt to address all the individual issues of comics I read, aside from those collected in book form. It was a good month for reading, and I can say that, for all their differences, I enjoyed them all a lot. That being said, I hope for a full return to health next month, and less reading. While I enjoy having virtual adventures on the printed page, I prefer to have some real life adventures as well. Still, if I had to be sick, I couldn't have wished for better books to keep me company.

Dragon Dave