Zombies Can’t Swim

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Now Read This

By Kim Herbst (Borderline Press)
ISBN: 978-0-99269-726-6

It’s pretty certain now that we can’t escape the oncoming Zombie Apocalypse, since dealing with the shambling horrors has even been added to the “What Would You Do…?” topic list of idle pub chatter and polite dinner party conversation, right below “… if you had a million dollars?” and “…if you had a month to live” but still above “…if you were irresistible to the opposite sex?”…

Now British publishing house Borderline Press has taken those idle musings and given them concrete form in a deliciously wry and whimsical horror fantasy that is sublimely enchanting and gloriously engaging.

Kim Herbst was born in Taipei and taught to toddle in Tokyo before learning how to slaughter the Undead growing up tough in New Jersey.

After graduating the Illustration course at the Maryland Institute College of Art she moved to San Francisco and pursued a commercial art career, with various illustrations in children’s educational books, magazines like GamesTM and Rhode Island Monthly and covers for Boom! Studios, all whilst pursuing the day-job drawing for mobile games company Juicebox Games.

Her first full comics extravaganza, Zombies Can’t Swim developed out of a casual conversation with her fiancé whilst sitting on a hill in idyllic rural Japan, and that’s where this mordantly gripping, breakneck-paced visualisation of that idle chat begins as big hulking him and cute little her are compelled to continue their debate on the run.

That’s because assorted apparitions and rampaging reanimated revenants are trying to make the couple the next appetiser in an orgy of unending consumption…

In a country where guns are scarce, motor cars can be stolen on every street corner and fantastically lethal exotic medieval weaponry can be found in any museum, the fantasy within a fantasy follows our philosophical debaters in a gruesomely gory two-player re-enactment of every Walking Dead flick you seen in the last decade as the famished Dead keep Walking towards them and the young romantics make their way towards some sort of safe haven.

Amidst frantic combat, abortive rescues, crashed copters and incipient immolation the frantic morsels make a decision. Japan is an island so if they head for the harbour and steal a boat they’ll be safe.

After all everybody knows Zombies Can’t Swim…

This wild and witty two colour tome is a brief and vivid vignette all horror fans will adore: captivating cathartic, violently vicarious fun against a foe everybody knows it’s okay to kill (kill again? Put an end to? Render finally harmless?) but sharp enough to blur the lines between fearful frenzy and frantic frolic.

© Kim Herbst 2014.
Borderline Press Books are available from selected retail outlets or direct from http://borderline-press.com/Shop

Batman: Bruce Wayne – The Road Home

Posted on March 9, 2014 by Now Read This

By Fabian Nicieza, Mike W. Barr, Bryan Q. Miller, Derek Fridolfs, Adam Beechen, Marc Andreyko & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3081-4

At the climax of a harrowing and sustained campaign of terror by insidious cabal The Black Hand and following an all-out invasion by the New Gods of Apokolips, the original Batman was apparently killed.

The world at large was unaware of the loss, leaving the superhero community to mourn in secret whilst a small, dedicated army of assistants, protégés and allies – trained over years by the contingency-obsessed Dark Knight – formed the Network to police Gotham City in the days which followed: marking time until a successor could be found or the original restored…

Most of the Bat-schooled battalion refused to believe their inspirational mentor dead. On the understanding that he was merely lost, they eventually accepted Dick Grayson (the first Robin and latterly Nightwing) as a stand-in until Bruce Wayne could find his way back to them…

This companion volume to Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne features eight one-shot specials depicting how after the original Dark Knight (marooned in the corridors of history by Darkseid) got back, he created a new identity to scrutinise just how his absence had affected the friends and deputies who soldiered on without him in the urban hell-pit he called home.

Collecting the outrageously tongue-twisting octet Batman: Bruce Wayne: Batman & Robin #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Red Robin #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Outsiders #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Batgirl #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Catwoman #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Commissioner Gordon #1, Batman: Bruce Wayne: Oracle #1 and Batman: Bruce Wayne: Ra’s Al Ghul #1 from December 2010, the drama begins with ‘Outside Looking In’ by Fabian Nicieza & Cliff Richards and a covert scrutiny of Bruce’s son Damien Wayne and Grayson – the triumphantly innovative new Batman & Robin…

As these Partners in Peril are foiling an attack on Mayor Hady by super-assassins the Hangmen, former star reporter Vicki Vale is nailing down the story of her life.

She has spent months assiduously gathering snippets of information, following hunches and piecing vague suspicions together and is now convinced that she has identified the secret identities of all Gotham’s Bat guardians – and that her old boyfriend Bruce is Batman.

All she needs is proof, and when she finds a bat-bug placed on her by Dick, she has it…

As the Dynamic Duo follow the last Hangman, they are unaware that they are in turn being tracked by an enigmatic armoured figure whose all-encompassing bodysuit mimics the many powers of the Justice League…

Elsewhere caretaker patriarch Alfred Pennyworth enacts a desperate plan to deceive Vicki, blackmailing Tommy Elliot – the villain Hush, who had turned himself into a perfect duplicate of Bruce – into again impersonating the missing playboy, but the canny journalist is not fooled…

Elsewhere the enigmatic Insider rendezvous with Tim Drake AKA Red Robin.

The third Boy Wonder already knows who is inside the super-suit and tentatively acknowledges the necessity of keeping the return a secret, but comes bearing critical new information. He has discovered the abortive scheme to murder Hady was only part of a concerted international effort by cadres of assassins to eradicate city leaders across the globe…

With a live case going global Bruce is forced to adapt his reconnaissance assessment mission on the fly…

The saga continues in Batman: Bruce Wayne: Red Robin #1, where ‘The Insider’ (Nicieza Ramon Bachs & John Lucas) sees Tim head for Amsterdam and a confrontation with killer cabal The Council of Spiders. The battle leads to a reunion with unpredictable erstwhile companion Prudence, a former member of the League of Assassins and devout follower of immortal conqueror Ra’s Al Ghul.

She claims to serve Tim now but the lad has his doubts…

Even together they are barely a match for the arachnoid assassins, but then the Insider appears…

In Gotham Alfred plays his final card and tells Vicki everything she’s compiled and deduced is true. While she’s reeling he then swipes her only piece of evidence…

Back in Holland Insider, having infiltrated the Spiders, uses their initiation assignment to test Tim’s combat skills in a no-holds barred rooftop battle, having discovered the planet-wide contract on city leaders is part of a mystery manipulator’s vast, inexplicable Tournament of Death…

When Batman’s methods clashed with the JLA’s scruples, the Dark Knight formed his own superteam. Eventually he dumped them, only occasionally reuniting with Geo-Force, Halo, Looker, Katana and the rest.

Now in Batman: Bruce Wayne: Outsiders #1, (‘Inside Interference’ by Mike W. Barr, Javier Saltares, Rebecca Buchman & Walden Wong) the returned crusader travels to European kingdom Markovia to find his former followers in the midst of civil unrest with their current leader targeted for death…

Having sorted that crisis with a little inside help, Bruce confronts his forth sidekick Stephanie Brown…

Daughter of C-list bad-guy Cluemaster, she began her costumed crime-busting career as the Spoiler, secretly scotching Daddy Dearest’s schemes before graduating to a more general campaign against the city’s underworld.

Eventually, she undertook a disastrous stint as the fourth Robin: a tenure which provoked a brutal gang war which devastated Gotham and ostensibly caused her own demise under torture at the red hands of psychopathic mob boss Black Mask.

When Stephanie returned to Gotham after months in self-imposed exile, she overcame incredible obstacles – the greatest of which was the Bat-family’s deep mistrust – and inherited the role of Batgirl from Cassandra Cain, a former assassin who had revived the role after her own predecessor was crippled and forced to retire…

Batman: Bruce Wayne: Batgirl #1, ‘Batgirl’ by Bryan Q. Miller & Pere Perez sees the Insider directly assault the flamboyant, cocky teen tornado, simultaneously testing her fighting skills and deductive abilities even as elsewhere the undaunted Vicki Vale attempts to push original Batgirl Barbara Gordon into an unguarded admission…

Selina Kyle had taken Bruce’s death hard, aligning herself with known felons Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. In Batman: Bruce Wayne: Catwoman #1, ‘Lifting the Vale’ by Derek Fridolfs, Peter Nguyen & Ryan Winn, the former thief and her new gal-pals save Vicki from disaster when she invades an underworld auction. It’s all a scam however as the feline fury only wants to copy all the journalist’s findings for Bruce…

The most impressive chapter here is the stark and shocking ‘Gotham’s Finest’ (Adam Beechen & Szymon Kudranski) from Batman: Bruce Wayne: Commissioner Gordon #1. In it the Tournament of Death takes a personal turn when Vicki becomes the target of The Penguin’s metahuman mercenaries and Gotham’s top cop has to fight his way out of his own HQ with her, whilst every bent officer on the force tries to kill them.

With the Insider almost too late Jim Gordon proves just why he’s the man Batman respects and trusts the most…

Police Commissioner’s daughter Barbara became computer crusader Oracle after her career as Batgirl ended when the Joker blew out her spine during one of his manic kill sprees. Although trapped in a wheelchair, she still hungered for justice and found new ways to make a difference in a very bad world.

Reinventing herself as a cyber-world information gatherer for Batman, she became an invaluable resource for the entire superhero community, before putting together her own fluctuating squad of crimefighters – the Birds of Prey.

With the grudging acceptance of stand-in Dark Knight Dick Grayson, she mentored Stephanie as the troublesome teen attempted to combine undergraduate studies with her compulsive mission to save lives and help the helpless…

In ‘Oracle’ by Mark Andreyko & Agustin Padilla (Batman: Bruce Wayne: Oracle #1) Babs makes the missing connections and works out who’s behind the massed assassin squads around the world… and how it impacts the entire Bat Network.

However with the legendary Seven Men of Death moving to silence Vicki – now revealed as the ultimate target – Oracle sets the Insider to guard the journalist while she activates all her available Birds (Man-Bat, Hawk & Dove, Ragman, Manhunter and Batgirl), but even their massed might is insufficient to prevent the reporter being abducted by Batman’s hidden foe: a man who will let nothing sully the pristine reputation and myth of the only person on Earth worthy of his respect…

With a cover gallery by Shane Davis & Barbara Ciardo, the sprawling, explosively absorbing saga concludes with the inevitable confrontation between the resurgent Bruce and his polar opposite as Batman: Bruce Wayne: Ra’s Al Ghul #1, (by Nicieza, Scott McDaniel & Andy Owens) details the final fate of Vicki in ‘A Life Worth Saving’…

Fast, furious, complex and enticing, this is a spectacular and accessible yarn that stands on its own merits, so even the freshest newcomers and the very antithesis of Batmaniacs can enjoy the helter-skelter thrill-ride in perfect confidence of a great read.
© 2010, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

The Plain Janes

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Now Read This

By Cecil Castellucci & Jim Rugg (Minx Books/DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1115-8

In 2007 DC comics had an honest go at building new markets by creating the Minx imprint. Dedicated to producing comics material for the teen/young adult audience and especially the ever-elusive girl readership, the intent was to tailor material for readers who had previously embraced foreign material such as manga and momentous global comics successes like Maus and Persepolis and the abundant market for prose serials/pop phenomena as Roswell High, Twilight and even Harry Potter.

Sadly after only a dozen immensely impressive and decidedly different black-&-white graphic novels, Minx shut up shop in October 2008, magnanimously NOT citing publishing partner Random House’s failure to get the books onto the appropriate shelves of major bookstore chains as the reason.

Nevertheless the tomes that did reach the bookshelves are still out there and most of them are well worth tracking down – either in the US originals or the British editions published by Titan Books.

One of the most impressive – and the title selected to launch the line – was The Plain Janes, written by Young Adult fiction author Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof, The Queen of Cool) and illustrated by Jim Rugg (Street Angel, Afrodisiac, One Model Nation).

Their impressive collaboration captivatingly turned the hoary new-kid-in-town trope on its head, wittily blending loss, crushing on the wrong guy and teen rebellion into a tale of dogged determination to overcome all obstacles and establish your own place in the world…

When the bomb went off in Metro City young Jane Beckles was one of the lucky survivors. Her near-death experience obsessed her parents, however, so they closed their successful hairdressing business and headed across country to the somnolent safe suburb of Kent Waters.

Jane didn’t want to go but wasn’t consulted. The introspective aspiring young artist was most upset about deserting the man she called John Doe: the still unidentified victim who was found near her, and remained in a coma to this day.

Jane used to visit and talk to him, and when her family moved she took his sketchbook, promising to fill up the pages in his honour and bring it back to him…

Pokey provincial Buzz Aldrin High School was everything she dreaded, but after doggedly declining the entreaties of the Cool Girls’ Clique, the displaced person found solace in the gruff and initially hostile company of three other self-identifying outcasts: aspiring actress Jane, science nerd Jayne and sporty girl-jock Polly Jane…

Main Jane describes her concerted efforts to unite and join the trio of loners in her letters to sleeping John, and slowly assimilates – at least at the fringes – into the school social hierarchy.

Whilst watching how her new comrades were daily frustrated in their efforts to succeed in their chosen areas of endeavour, and doodling in John’s sketchbook, Jane conceives a notion and enlists the assistance of her namesake outsiders in a bold and subversive new undertaking…

One morning sleepy Kent Waters wakens to find a guerrilla art project in their ordered tidy environs: the site of a proposed strip mall has been transformed into a pyramidal playground – one signed by “People Loving Art In Neighborhoods”.

The mysterious operatives of P.L.A.I.N. follow up with bolder and more baroque projects – filling the town fountain with bubbles, inundating the animal shelter with cuddly toys – and soon the sleepy hamlet is abuzz with only one topic…

However the campaign quickly polarises the populace along generational lines, with the high schoolers avidly following the cool pranks, and adults like Jane’s increasingly paranoid and PTSD-wracked mom seeing it all as the start of more serious, terrorist-inspired anarchy…

And then one night everything gets more complicated when surly transfer student Damon catches the guerrilla girls setting up another of their inspired installations. Although he says nothing the P.L.A.I.N. Janes are rattled, and the situation worsens next day when overzealous Police Officer Sanchez addresses the entire school, accusing students of causing the disorder and delivering ranting, thinly veiled threats…

After initials qualms the Janes retaliate by turning his police station into a garden gnome sanctuary. The war of wills escalates…

Main Jane meanwhile is developing feelings for Damon, and thinks it’s mutual (but who can tell with boys?)…

The campaign is now enticing all the kids in town to perform meaningless acts of unified and unqualified self-expression and Sanchez has all after-school clubs and activities suspended. When that doesn’t break the student body’s spirit, with the full support of the parents he imposes a mandatory after-dark curfew on all teenagers.

Jane has bigger problems: when her latest letter to John comes back unopened she fears the worst and convinces Damon to drive her to MetroCity in a stolen car…

And in Kent Waters, with New Year’s Eve approaching, the Janes and the entire teenage population gather to plan the greatest art attack of all…

Don’t be fooled by seeming plot similarities to Footloose; The Plain Janes is a clever, warm and beguiling tale of self-expression, personal ambitions, friendship and growing up which confronts and counteracts the hackneyed and stereotypical Stifling-Parents versus Right-On Rebel Kids genre to tell a compassionate, moving story with no easy answers condescendingly served up but plenty of questions and passion on show…

This gloriously understated marriage of smart narrative and sublime cartooning is a perfect vehicle for attracting new and youthful readers with no abiding interest in outlandish power-fantasies or vicarious vengeance-gratification (yes, that does mean girls) to our medium, and whilst Minx may be gone, the stories the company released changed comics for good and for ever.

Why not track them all down and enjoy a genuinely different kind of graphic reading experience?
© 2007 Cecil Castellucci & Jim Rugg. All rights reserved.

The New Avengers volume 1: Sentry

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Now Read This

By Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven, Mark Morales & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1672-1

During Marvel’s rebirth in the early 1960’s Stan Lee & Jack Kirby took their lead from a small but growing band of costumed characters debuting or reviving at the Distinguished Competition.

Julie Schwartz’ retooling of DC Comics’ Golden Age mystery-men had paid big dividends for the industry leader in recent years, and Editor Lee’s boss (publisher Martin Goodman) insisted that his company should get in on the act too.

Although National/DC had achieved incredible success with revised and updated versions of the company’s old stable, the natural gambit of trying the same revivification process on characters that had dominated Timely/Atlas in those halcyon days didn’t go quite so well.

The Justice League of America-inspired Fantastic Four featured a new Human Torch but his subsequent solo series began to founder almost as soon as Kirby stopped drawing it. Sub-Mariner was back too, but as a villain, as yet incapable of carrying his own title…

So a procession of new costumed heroes began, with Lee, Kirby and Steve Ditko churning out numerous inventive and inspired “super-characters”.

Not all caught on: The Hulk folded after six issues and even Spider-Man would have failed if writer/editor Lee hadn’t really, really pushed his uncle, the publisher…

Even so, after nearly 18 months during which the fledgling House of Ideas had created a small stable of leading men (but only a sidekick woman), Lee & Kirby finally had enough players to stock an “all-star” group – a format which had made the JLA a commercial winner – and assembled a handful of them into a force for justice and even higher sales…

Cover-dated September 1963, The Avengers #1 launched as part of an expansion programme which also included Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and The X-Men and, despite a few rocky patches, the series soon grew into one of the company’s perennial top sellers.

However times and tastes always change and after four decades, during the latter part of 2004, the “World’s Mightiest Heroes” were shut down and rebooted in a highly publicised event known as Avengers Disassembled.

Of course it was only to replace them with both The New and The Young Avengers. Affiliated comic-books Thor, Iron Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Captain America, and Fantastic Four ran parallel, quasi-interconnected story-arcs to accompany the Big Show.

The entire tale revealed the worst day in the team’s history as staunch Avenging veteran the Scarlet Witch was discovered to have gone crazy, attacking the team who had been her family and causing the destruction of everything they held dear.

With several members dead, Captain America and Iron Man disbanded the team and turned out the lights.

The most important development from that epic ending was The New Avengers, and this second collection gathers issues #7-10 from that celebrated revamp (covering July to September 2005) with additional fact pages culled from New Avengers: Most Wanted Handbook as scripter Brian Michael Bendis, with artists Steve McNiven & Mark Morales, further redefined the nature of group heroics for a darker, more complex century.

Following an orchestrated breakout of a lethal legion of super-villains from floating ultra penitentiary The Raft, Captain America had convinced metahuman first responders Luke Cage, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jessica (Spider-Woman) Drew, Spider-Man and Iron Man to join a new iteration of Avengers. On the Raft they had been assisted by Matt Murdock, (recently “outed” as Daredevil by the media) and a mystery prisoner named Bob Reynolds who nobody seemed to know anything about…

Reynolds or Sentry – the most powerful being on Earth – had in fact volunteered to be incarcerated for the murder of his own wife… who was still alive…

Tentatively united, the team – sans Bob who had vanished – rocketed to the Antarctic Savage Land (a sub-surface wonderland of cavemen, dinosaurs and even stranger things, left in splendid isolation as a UN Protectorate) to recapture Karl Lykos, who fed on mutant energy to become reptilian monster Sauron. Apparently he was the actual target of the orchestrated breakout…

The impromptu mission was an unmitigated disaster with the disparate champions marooned, mauled by dinosaurs and captured by mutant mega-genius Brainchild and his Mutates.

Lykos’ escape had been engineered by the evil experimenter, who considered humans as guinea pigs and wanted to eradicate them all. Happily the neo-Avengers’ mission overlapped with the intentions of Wolverine, who had independently resolved to end the threat of Sauron forever, no matter who got in the way…

Uneasy allies, the heroes then discovered that an apparently rogue faction of S.H.I.E.L.D. had enslaved indigenous peoples of the region, using them to mine the miracle element Vibranium.

There were even scarier discoveries to come. The mass-escape had exposed the fact that many of the criminals held on the Raft had been officially dead for years and Cap’s new recruits had to face the prospect that the Free World’s greatest peacekeeping force might be partly – or even completely – corrupt. After all they were demonstrably stockpiling super-weapons, exotic elements and even metahumans for what could not possibly be any good reason…

Volume two opens with part one of 4-chapter saga ‘The Sentry’ as Tony Stark begins a report to fellow over-achieving, high-minded individuals Reed Richards, Charles Xavier, Prince Namor, Doctor Strange and Black Bolt (later revealed as elitist heroic clandestine cabal The Illuminati) about the reformation of the Avengers and the menace of the 46 still-at-large Raft escapees. Eventually the discussion turns to the potentially world-shattering mystery of Bob Reynolds…

On Long Island, Stark’s new comrades Spider-Woman, Cage, Spider-Man and Wolverine are trying to arrest Asgardian-powered street-thug The Wrecker, whilst under the Nevada Desert Director Maria Hill leads a S.H.I.E.L.D. team trying to re-arrest the despondent, semi-catatonic Sentry who never returned after helping to quell the breakout.

She is unhappy that Iron Man and Captain America have invited themselves along, but far more upset that Reynolds seems to be completely insane; terrified of some nebulous, evil other self he calls “The Void”…

Stark has done his homework. The only references to the Sentry on the entire planet are from some old forgotten comicbooks, so he found and brought along the writer of the pamphlets and another tangentially linked individual.

The scribe doesn’t upset the cowering powerhouse nearly as much as Lindy Reynolds, the wife Bob clearly remembers killing…

Following ‘Alien Agenda’ (an extract from an old Sentry comicbook craftily scripted by Paul Jenkins and classily rendered by Sal Buscema), the mystery in the Nevada cave deepens as, confronted with conflicting truths, Bob Reynolds vanishes in a slash of energy…

An emergency meeting of the Illuminati then dredges up a disquieting fact. Even these most puissant forces for good have never heard of Sentry, but shockingly Reed’s personal computer has. As it reels off a tidal wave of records and files it becomes apparent that the mightiest minds on Earth have all been tampered with…

Soon happy suburbanite Bob wakes up on a sunny morning to discover almost every superhero in America on his front lawn and in stunned disbelief then watches them fall to the malignant power of The Void…

The heroes have not come unprepared. The first prong of their assault is a collection of record tapes Sentry made for Mr. Fantastic, detailing how he was having periodic memory lapses where he kept forgetting who he was and suppositions about the true psychic nature of The Void.

Sadly, thanks to telepath Emma Frost, all these revelations are only occurring within his mind whilst his almighty body is occupied smashing the largest assemblage of metahuman power on Earth, but it’s all merely a preamble to Reynolds psychically curing himself…

When the breakthrough finally comes and the villains behind brainwashing Sentry and mindwiping the world are exposed, the psionic backlash instantly transforms the Avengers’ monumental and far distant New York skyscraper, creating an eerie ebony Watchtower above it in the blink of an eye…

The apparently healed hero then joins the team, but only, as Stark advises his Illuminati brethren, to keep him closely monitored…

Plot-light and blockbustingly all-action, this volume also includes the 50-page New Avengers: Most Wanted Handbook, which provides information and a list of various metahuman prisons in the MU and detailed data and threat-assessment reports by the costumed champions on the Raft fugitives they missed; specifically Armadillo, Barbarus, Blackout, Blood Brothers, Brothers Grimm, Bushwacker, Carnage, Centurious, Chemistro, Constrictor, Controller, Corruptor, Count Nefaria, Crossbones, Crossfire, Crusader, Cutthroat, Deathwatch, Dr. Demonicus, Foolkiller, Graviton, Grey Gargoyle, Griffin, Hydro-Man, Jigsaw, King Kobra, Mandrill, Mentallo, Mr. Fear, Mr. Hyde, Molecule Man, Nitro, Purple Man, Rampage, Razor-Fist, Sauron, Scarecrow, Shockwave, Silver Samurai, Slug, Tiger Shark, Typhoid Mary, U-Foes, Vermin, Wrecking Crew and Zzzaxx…

With covers-&-variants by David Finch, Steve McNiven, Neal Adams, John Romita Sr., Herb Trimpe & Sal Buscema this is a deliciously plain and simple Fights ‘n’ Tights fiesta for the devoted fanbase and another terrific jumping-on point for readers familiar with the TV animation series and movie franchises of the World’s Greatest Superheroes.
© 2005, 2006, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

It Came!

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Now Read This

By Dan Boultwood, Esq. (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-005-4

Once upon a time “retro” only meant rockets, with all those thrilling chilling connotations of clunky spaceships, cardboard robots and men in Baco-foil suits shambling about and terrifying avid children who had stayed up late to watch B-movie sci-fi yarns on black-&-white TV sets.

Jeepers, I miss those days, and so, apparently, does multi-talented, forward-thinking nostalgeologist Dan Boultwood.

In 2013, his 4-issue miniseries offered a tantalising tribute to the fantastic fantasy movies which fuelled the imaginations of British Baby-Boomers: simultaneously recapturing the wide-eyed wonder of the period whilst adding layers of archly post-modern humour to the mix…

This stirring monochrome graphic-novelisation of a faux-classic effort from the rightly almost-forgotten Pinetree Studios outfit now allows modern film fans to experience (or revisit) the quirky delights which wowed their grandparents – and all from the comfort of their own homes – or even whilst out riding in a open-topped omnibus…

Packed to bursting with and supplemented by oodles of outrageous, hilarious, mood-setting ads for everything from Smoke & Choke’um Cigarettes to Johnny Foreigner Engine Oil, the story is a loving but irreverent paean of praise not only to those inspirational filmic marvels but also to the small repertory of actors and producers who made the late 1950s and early 1960s such a cornucopia of movie madness.

Like all such matinee marvels, the main feature here is preceded by a short trailer (for The Lost Valley of the Lost) which serves to introduce our cast, specifically He-Man Lead Dick Claymore as the sexist, pipe-chewing, tweed draped boffin Dr. Boy Brett and strident starlet Fanny Flaunders as his long-suffering, infinitely patient, glamorous-whilst-screaming assistant/secretary Doris Night.

The vintage supporting cast includes Bertrum Cumberbund, Spencer Lacey and Joan Fetlock, stalwart Pinetree thespians all…

It’s 1958 and in a beautiful bit of rural, ill-educated England a colossal robot rampages…

Two days later Dr. Brett from SpaceUniversity is treating working class ingénue Doris to a ride in his Morris Minor. He decides they should stop for a Ploughman’s Lunch in a strangely quiet and quaint village, blithely unaware that the reason it’s so still is because the aforementioned alien automaton has depopulated the shire…

Its subsequent surprise attempt to trap the tourists founders only when it stumbles into a cloying web of obfuscating, celebratory bunting…

After their spectacular close call the harried humans reach the next village over, but despite the boffin’s Old Boy Network connections, it’s the Devil’s own job to get the Ministry to mobilise the Military.

Nevertheless, Boy persists and soon a squad of veterans arrive to take control of the situation (a superb pastiche of the venerable icons of the “Carry-On” film franchise), only to vanish as the rapacious robot strikes again…

Undaunted, Boy drags Doris into more trouble and soon they find themselves aboard a vast Flying Saucer, uncovering the nature of the invaders’ appalling assault. The creepy, apparently unstoppable horrors are imprisoning salt-of-the-earth British citizens and somehow extracting their Stiff Upper Lips…

Following a necessary Intermission for the purchase and consumption of gin and fags, the cartoon/celluloid calamity continues as our hero – and the girl – escape and head for London to warn the authorities, but not before accidentally dropping a handy but unlucky army division on exercises right in the UFO’s marauding sights.

Dr. Brett arrives barely ahead of the indestructible, unbeatable Saucer and, as the World’s Smoggiest Capital burns and founders, he is compelled to stop running and turn his mighty, college-honed intellect to the task of destroying the threat to civilisation…

This collection is also augmented by the original full-colour covers, hysterical background “information pages” on and intimate photos of stars Claymore and Flaunders, blueprints and design sketches for the alien Grurk and Flying Saucer, a selection from the infamous It Came! Cigarette Cards and colour posters for other Pinetree Studio releases such as ‘My Reptilian Bride!’, ‘Rocket Into Space!’, ‘The Lost Valley of the Lost’ and ‘Myopic Moon Men from the Moon’…

More revelations are forthcoming in the ‘Metropolitan Police Incident Report on Mr. Claymore’s “eccentric” Drinking Habits’, and Director Boultwood’s photo-feature exposing his Special Effects magic in animating the Saucer for celluloid.

It Came! is a brilliant and sublime masterpiece of loving parody, perfectly executed and astoundingly effective. It is also the funniest – both visually and verbally – book I’ve read in years, blending slapstick with satire, outrageous ideas with infamous characterisations, and spit-taking puns, single entendres and innuendoes that would do Sid James, Charles Hawtrey or Kenneth Williams proud.

Miss it at your peril, Chaps (and Ladies too…).
It Came! ™ and © 2014 Dan Boultwood.

It Came! is published on March 11th.

Sock Monkey Treasury – A Tony Millionaire’s Sock Monkey Collection

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Now Read This

By Tony Millionaire (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-696-6

It’s a fact sad but true that we can’t always be in the right place at the right time. No matter how scrupulous or diligent one might in the pursuit of a passion or hobby, things get missed. I, for example, missed the first comicbook releases of Dark Horse’s Sock Monkey by Tony Millionaire in 1998.

Sure, thanks to the miracles of back issue comic-shops I wasn’t deprived for long, but still, it was a close thing…

You, happily, don’t have any such worries, especially as Fantagraphics have just released a huge (286 x 203mm) and sumptuous 336 page hardback – 80 in full colour – collecting and commemorating all twelve uniquely dark and fanciful monochrome, multiple award-winning, all-ages adventures originally published as occasional miniseries between 1998 and 2007. Also included are the two colour hardcover storybooks Millionaire created in 2002 and 2004.

Tony Millionaire clearly loves to draw and does it very, very well; referencing classical art, timeless children’s book illustration and an eclectic mix of pioneering comic strip draughtsmen like George McManus, Rudolph Dirks, Cliff Sterrett, Frank Willard, Harold Gray, Elzie Segar and George Herriman: seamlessly blending their styles and sensibilities with European engravings masters from the “legitimate” side of the pictorial storytelling racket.

Born Scott Richardson, he especially cites Johnny (Raggedy Ann and Andy) Gruelle and English illustrator Ernest H. Shepard (The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh) as definitive formative influences.

With a variety of graphical strings to his bow such as his own coterie of books for children (particularly the superbly stirring Billy Hazelnuts series), animation and the brilliant if disturbing weekly strip Maakies – which describes the riotously vulgar and absurdly surreal adventures of an Irish monkey called Uncle Gabby and his fellow über-alcoholic and nautical adventurer Drinky Crow. They are abetted but never aided by a peculiarly twisted, off-kilter cast of reprobates, antagonists and confrontational well-wishers.

Those guys are the mirror universe equivalents of the stars of these sublime confections…

In a Victorian House – of variable shape and size – by the sea, an old Sock Monkey named Uncle Gabby has great adventures and ponders the working of a wonderful yet often scary world. His constant companion is a small cuddly-toy bird with button eyes called Mr. Crow, who doesn’t understand why he cannot fly and sometimes eases his sorrow with strong spirits.

Their guardian is a small girl named Ann-Louise, and many other creatures living and artificial share the imposing edifice…

The gloriously imaginative forays into the fantastic begin as the material monkey is chased through the house by marauding toy pirates in their brigantine. In his flight he espies a gleaming, glittering glass concoction hanging from the ceiling. Convinced something so beautiful must be the Promised Land he enlists his artificial avian pal to help him enter ‘Heaven’. However the pirates have not given up and the chaos soon escalates…

‘Borneo’ describes the pair’s discovery of a shrunken human head and subsequent heroic oceanic odyssey to return the decapitated talisman home. Of course, if they had thought to unseal the sewn-shut lips he could have told them they were going in the wrong direction…

The next tale is a macabre all-action thriller which begins when a lost bat gets stuck in the attic ‘Dollhouse’. Mr. Crow meanwhile is attempting to console the freshly widowed Mrs. Smalls in the cellar. Things go even more savagely awry when the faux crow and well-meaning matchmaker Uncle Gabby try to introduce the grieving mouse to the strapping, winged stranger, utterly unaware of his pedigree as a South American Rodent-Eating Bat…

Knick-knacks, trinkets and ornaments have been going missing in the next tale and Ann-Louise attributes the thefts to ‘The Trumbernick’ who lives in the Grandfather clock. Having mislaid his hipflask, Mr. Crow investigates and finds the horde of goodies, in truth purloined by a capricious Blue Jay.

Disillusioned by the death of a beloved myth and disheartened by the antics of a venal – and extremely violent – bird, they are subsequently stunned to see an actual Trumbernick return, righteously enraged at the blow to his spotless reputation…

In ‘The Hunters’, stuffed bird and Sock Monkey, inspired by a room full of trophies and stuffed beasts, decide to take up the sport of slaughter, only to find that their size, relative ineffectuality and squeamishness – not to mention the loquacity and affability of their intended prey – prove a great impediment to their ambitions…

Millionaire proves the immense power of his storytelling in ‘A Baby Bird’, as Uncle Gabby’s foolish meddling with a nest – after being specifically told not to – results in tragedy, and brutal self-immolating repercussions that would make King Lear quail…

The author abandoned his masterful pen-&-ink etching style for soft mutable charcoal rendering in ‘The Oceanic Society’, wherein excitable doll Inches unknowingly performs an act of accidental cruelty at the shore and invites the vengeance of many outraged sea creatures against the tot inhabitants of Ann-Louise’s house…

An innocent attempt by the little girl and Mr. Crow to find Uncle Gabby a romantic companion goes hideous wrong and results in monstrous ‘Heartbreak’ when they throw away his actual true love and replace her with a ghastly mechanical monkey horror. The bereft puppet can then only find surcease in escalating acts of hideous destruction…

In 2002 Millionaire took his characters into a whimsical watercolour wonderland with “a Populare Pictonovelette” hardback entitled ‘The Glass Doorknob’. The beguiling tale is included here a series of full-colour plates supplanted by blocks of text, describing how the house dwellers once saw an indoor rainbow beneath a doorknob and spent all summer trying to recreate the glorious spectacle by acquiring and aligning every other item of glass, crystal or pellucid material they could find or steal…

The return to stark, inky monochrome augurs the onset of the terrifying 4-part epic ‘The Inches Incident’ which begins off the coast of Cape Ann when grizzled mariner Oyster Joe discovers thieving stowaways plundering his sailing ship.

Amidst spectacular hunts for sea monsters the villains Uncle Gabby and Mr. Crow explain how their former friend Inches mysteriously shanghaied and dumped them at sea…

Their new ally returns them home, but upon arrival they discover that the doll has become Evil! Boldly braving the house they discover the poor creature has been possessed by an inconceivable horror which drives them off and provokes a fantastic sea voyage to find the devil’s only nemesis…

This staggering, bleakly charming compendium closes with an existential treat from 2004. ‘Uncle Gabby’, coloured by Jim Campbell, was another one-shot hardback – albeit in standard comics format – which offered a few revelatory indulgences on the puppet heroes’ poignant origins, all wrapped up in a baroque bestiary and imaginative travelogue as the Sock Monkey discloses his shocking ability to un-name things and thereby end their existences…

Visually intoxicating, astoundingly innovative and stunningly surreal, Sock Monkey yarns judiciously leaven wonder with heartbreak and gleeful innocence with sheer terror. Millionaire describes them as for “adults who love children’s stories” and these tall tales all offer enchanting pictorial vistas and skewed views of the art of storytelling that no fan of comics or fantasy could ever resist.
Sock Monkey Treasury © 2014 Tony Millionaire. This edition © 2014 Fantagraphics Books.

The Simon & Kirby Library: Horror!

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Now Read This

By Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Mort Meskin and various (Titan Books)
ISBN13: 978-1-84856-959-1

After too many years left languishing, there’s some magnificent vintage Jack Kirby material around these days, and the latest in Titan Books’ splendidly sumptuous Simon & Kirby Library gathers that iconic coupling’s groundbreaking contributions to the genre of mystery, suspense and the supernatural.

His collaborations with fellow industry pioneer Joe Simon always produced dynamite concepts, unforgettable characters, astounding stories and huge sales no matter what genre avenues they pursued (they actually invented the Romance comicbook), blazing trails for so many others to follow and always reshaping the very nature of American comics with their innovations and sheer quality.

Comicbooks started slowly in 1933, until the creation of superheroes like Superman unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and invented a new genre. Implacably vested in the Second World War, the masked mystery man swept all before him (very occasionally her or it) until the troops came home and older genres supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Although new kids kept up the buying, much of the previous generation also retained their four-colour habit but increasingly sought more mature themes in the reading matter. The war years altered the psychology of society and a more world-weary, cynical reading public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything. Their chosen forms of entertainment – film and prose as well as comics – increasingly reflected this.

Western, War and Crime comics, madcap teen comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, the aforementioned love comics appeared in 1947 and pulp-style Science Fiction began to spread, but gradually another global revival of spiritualism and interest in the supernatural (possibly provoked by the monstrous losses of the recent conflict, just as had happened in the 1920s following WWI) led to a wave of increasingly impressive, evocative and even shocking horror comics.

There were grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in costumed hero trappings (the Spectre, Mr. Justice, The Heap, Frankenstein, Sargon the Sorcerer, Zatara, Dr. Fate and dozens of others), but these had been victims of circumstance: the Unknown as power source for super-heroics.

Now the focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering, the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped on the monumentally popular juggernaut, but B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launched the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948, although Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon whose impressive single issue release Eerie debuted and closed in January 1947. They wised up late and launched a regular series in 1951.

By this time Classics Illustrated had already long milked the literary end of the medium with adaptations of the Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

It was at this time that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby identified another “mature market” gap for the line of magazines they autonomously packaged for publishers Crestwood-Prize-Essenkay to supplement Headline Comics, Justice Traps the Guilty, Police Trap, Young Romance and their other anthologies. They too saw the sales potential for spooky material, resulting in the superb and eerily seminal Black Magic (launched with an October-November 1950 cover-date) and the boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams in1952.

Marvel had jumped on the bloody bandwagon early but National/DC Comics only reluctantly bowed to the inevitable, launching a comparatively straight-laced short story title that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

Soon after, however, a hysterical censorship scandal led to witch-hunt Hearings (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time) which panicked most comics publishers into adopting a castrating straitjacket of self regulatory rules…

Just like today, America back then cast about wildly looking for external contaminants rather than internal causes for a perceived shift in social attitudes and youthful rebellion, happily settling on bloodthirsty comics about crime or horror, drenched in unwholesome salacious sex, as the reason their children were talking back, acting up and staying out.

S&K didn’t do those kinds of comicbooks but they got tarred – and metaphorically feathered too – in the media-fuelled frenzy…

This striking full-colour hardback begins with the essay ‘That Old Black Magic’ by series editor Steve Saffel, delineating the history of the title and tone of the times whilst ‘Simon and Kirby’s Little Shop of Horror’ describes the working of the small but prolific studio of rotating artists who augmented the output of the named stars: creators such as Mort Meskin, Bill Draut, Martin Stein, Ben Oda, George Roussos, Vic Donahue, Bill Walton, Jim Infantino, Bruno Premiani, John Prentice, Jerry Grandenetti and more…

With a vast output across many titles, S&K simply couldn’t produce every story and many yarns here are ghosted by other hands, although each and every one does begin with a stunning Kirby splash panel.

As with all their titles, Simon & Kirby offered genre material tweaked by their own special sensibilities. Black Magic – and the Mort Meskin-inspired The Strange World of Your Dreams - eschewed cheap shocks, mindless gore and goofy pun-inspired twist-ending yarns in favour of dark, oppressive suspense soaked in psychological unease and inexplicable unease: tension over teasing…

The stories presented fantastic situations and too frequently for comfort there were no happy endings, pat cosmic justice or calming explanations: sometimes the Unknown just blew up in your face and you survived or didn’t… and never whole or unchanged.

The compendium of black cartoon cavortings commences with ‘Last Second of Life!’ (from volume 1 #1, October-November 1950) wherein a rich man obsessed over what the dying see at the final breath, but learned to regret the unsavoury lengths he went to finding out, after which ‘The Scorn of the Faceless People!’ (#2 December 1950-January 1951) relates the meaning behind a chilling nightmare. It’s not hard to believe this one must have prompted the creation of the spin-off Strange World of Your Dreams. Issue #2 also provided a chilling report on a satanic vestment dubbed ‘The Cloak!’ whilst an impossible love in the icy wastes of Canada ended with ‘A Silver Bullet for Your Heart!’ in #3 (February-March 1951).

Issue #4 provided ‘Voodoo on Tenth Avenue’ as a disgruntled wife went too far in her quest to get rid of her man, whilst in #5 ‘The World of Spirits’ recounted the uncanny predictions of Emanuel Swedenborg in a brief fact feature before #6 described psychic connection and a ‘Union with the Dead!’ and a ravaged mariner survived meeting ‘The Thing in the Fog!’ (#7) – an encounter with the legendary Flying Dutchman…

Black Magic #8 (December 1951-January 1952) detailed the sacrifice a woman made to save her man from ‘Donovan’s Demon!’ (mostly illustrated by Bob McCarty) whilst ‘Dead Man’s Lode!’ (#10 March 1952 – the series now being monthly) related a ghostly experience in an old mine and ‘The Girl Who Walked on Water!’ in #11 showed the immense but fragile power of self-belief…

Meskin & Roussos illustrated #12’s ‘A Giant Walks the Earth!’ as a downed pilot lost his best friend to a roving colossus in India, after which the utterly chilling and unforgettable ‘Up There!’ kicks off three stories from the landmark 13^th issue…

That saga of a beguiling siren of the upper stratosphere is followed by ‘A Rag – a Bone and a Hank of Hair!’ (Meskin) and a pile of trash that learned to love, whilst ‘Visions of Nostradamus!’ (by Al Eadeh) tracked and interpreted the prognosticator’s predictions.

‘The Angel of Death!’ in #15 detailed a horrific medical mystery and ‘Freak!’ (#17, possibly by Bill Draut) exposed a country doctor’s deepest shame.

Black Magic #18 (November 1952) is another multi-threat issue. ‘Nasty Little Man!’ gets my vote for scariest horror art job of all time and saw three hobos discover to their everlasting regret why you shouldn’t pick on short old men with Irish accents.

Then ‘Come Claim My Corpse’ (Martin Stein?) offers a short, sharp, shocker wherein a convict discovers too late the flaw in his infallible escape plan, before an investigator tracing truck-wreckers learns of ‘Detour Lorelei on Highway 52’ (McCarty)…

‘Sammy’s Wonderful Glass!’ in #19 (December 1952) outlined the tragic outcome of a retarded lummox whose favourite toy could expose men’s souls, after which two shorts from #20 (January 1953) follow.

‘Birth After Death’ retold the true story of how Sir Walter Scott’s mother survived premature burial, whilst ‘Oddities in Miniature: The Strangest Stories Ever Told!’ offered half a dozen uncanny tales on one page.

Issue #21 provided ‘The Feathered Serpent’ in which an American archaeologist uncovers the truth about an ancient god, #22 (March 1953) slipped into sci-fi morality play mode with the UFO yarn ‘The Monsters on the Lake!’, and ‘Those Who Are About to Die!’ from #23 sketched out the tale of a painter who could predict imminent doom…

A brace of tales from #24 – May 1953 – begin with a scholar who attempts to contact the living ‘After I’m Gone!’, complemented by the half page fact feature ‘Strange Predictions’ (Harry Lazarus) after which ‘Strange Old Bird!’ is the first of three stories from the (again bimonthly) Black Magic #25 (June-July 1953).

In this gently eerie thriller a little old lady gets the gift of life from her tatty old feathered friend, whilst ‘The Human Cork!’ precis’ the life of the literally unsinkable Angelo Faticoni , before a man without a soul escapes the morgue to become ‘A Beast in the Streets!’

There’s a similar surfeit of sinister riches from #26, beginning with ‘Fool’s Paradise!’ wherein a cheap bag-snatcher makes a deal with the devil, after which ‘The Sting of Scorpio!’ sees a rude sceptic wish she’d never taunted a fortune teller, whilst ‘The Strange Antics of the Mystic Mirror!’ terrified nurses in a major metropolitan hospital and ‘Demon Wind!’ (Kirby inked by Premiani) finds a brash Yankee learn not to mock the justice system of primitive native peoples…

‘The Cat People’ (#27) mesmerised and forever marked an unwary tourist in rural Spain, and the same issue exposed a seductive Scottish supernatural shindig hosted by ‘The Merry Ghosts of Campbell Castle’, whilst #28 saw an unwilling organ donor return to take back his property in ‘An Eye For an Eye!’ after which the same issue revealed with mordant wit how a mummy returned to make his truly beloved ‘Alive After Five Thousand Years!’…

From an issue actually cited during the anti-comicbook Senate Hearings, ‘The Greatest Horror of Them All!’ (#29 March-April 1954) told a tragic tale of a freak hidden amongst freaks, before Black Magic #30 revealed the appalling secret of ‘The Head of the Family!’ (Kirby & Premiani) whilst #31 provided both alien invasion horror ‘Slaughter-House!’ and the cautionary tale of a child raised by beasts in ‘Hungry as a Wolf!’ (Ernie Schroeder).

‘Maniac!’ from #32 is another artistic tour de force and a tale much “homaged” in later years, detailing how a loving brother stops villagers taking his simple-minded sibling away, and the Black Magic section concludes with a terrifying fable of atomic radiation and mutated sea creatures in ‘Lone Shark’ from #33 November-December 1954.

With the sagacious, industry-hip, quality-conscious Simon & Kirby undoubtedly seeing the writing on the wall, their uniquely macabre title was wisely cancelled in 1954, not long before the Comics Code came into effect. A bowdlerised version was relaunched in 1957, long after they had dissolved their partnership and moved into different areas of the industry.

However the eerie treats don’t end as a short but sublime sampling from their other mystery title is appended here.

‘We Will Buy Your Dreams’ discusses the features and stories from abortive and revolutionary title The Strange World of Your Dreams, a title inspired by studio-mate Mort Meskin’s vivid night terrors. The premise involved parapsychologist Richard Temple explaining and analysing storied nightmares and pictorially dramatising dreams sent in by readers.

The too short comics section then begins with ‘Send Us Your Dreams’ from #1 (August 1952), a “typical” insecurity nightmare and the chilling ‘I Talked with my Dead Wife!’, whilst #2 (September-October) provided a trio of traumen tales: ‘The Girl in the Grave!’ a scary wedding scenario in ‘You Sent Us This Dream!’ and ‘Send Us Your Dreams’ in which Dr. Tempe describes the extent of self preservation imagery…

‘The Woman in the Tower!’ came from #3 (November-December) and detailed typical symbolism whilst ‘You Sent Us this Dream’ from the same issue explains away a nightmare climb up an unending tower…

Capping off everything is a spectacular Cover Gallery reprinting Black Magic #1 through #33 plus a stunning unpublished cover, and performs the same service for The Strange World of Your Dreams #1-4, and includes the unpublished #5 just to make our lives utterly complete.

The Simon & Kirby Library: Horror! is a gigantic compendium of classic dark delights that perfectly illustrates the depth and scope of their influence and innovation and readily displays the sheer bombastic panache and artistic virtuosity they brought to everything they did.

This tremendous hardcover is a worthy, welcome introduction to their unique comics contributions, but there’s loads left still to see so let’s have some more please…
© 2014 Joseph H. Simon and the Estate of Jack Kirby. All Rights Reserved.

Chronos Commandos: Dawn Patrol

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Now Read This

By Stuart Jennett (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-006-1

In a marketplace stuffed to bursting point with books and stories that are only parts of a greater whole, it’s a merciful delight to see that some publishers and creators are still sticking to the perfect basics and delivering complete, enthralling and fundamentally cool packages for kids of all ages (at least if you’re a bit liberal/traditional in your views of parenting and accept the intrinsically bloodthirsty nature of children)…

If you’re British a reader of a certain vintage – and more or less male – you never really grew out of the fundamental and sheerly gratuitous entertainment of seeing soldiers, explosions, chases, big guns and dinosaurs, and this spectacularly backwards-looking romp from Stuart Jennett (Warheads, 2000AD) punches all those buttons in a riotous time-travel war story which originally appeared in 2013 as a 5-issue miniseries.

The idea of honking big lizards against honking big guns is venerable, unceasingly cool and simply too good a concept to resist. I believe it all kicked off with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World and was refined by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Caprona stories (known alternatively as the Caspak Trilogy or “the Land That Time Forgot”, although many of his other novel sequences contained saurian co-stars) providing everything imaginative boys could wish for: giant lizards, humongous insects, fantastic adventures, hot cave girls and two-fisted heroes with lots of guns…

The most successful comics instance of this must surely be Robert Kanigher’s The War that Time Forgot (which debuted in Star Spangled War Stories #90, April-May 1960). The stories of US troops fighting Germans, Japanese and hungry monsters ran until #137 (May 1968) skipping only three issues: #91, 93 and #126 – the last of which starred the United States Marine Corps simian Sergeant Gorilla…

Whereas this fine new iteration, given a quirkily British spin, boasts no busty babes in either torn but oddly obfuscating scraps of lab coat or fetching muskrat-pelt bikinis (though maybe there’s room in the sequel), it does contain fast-paced, gory antediluvian slaughter and a twisty-turny, time-bending plot to heighten the gruelling, gripping duel between the world’s first full time chronal combatants…

Following Jennett’s Introduction the non-stop action begins deep in dinosaur times and climes as a veteran US Army Sergeant leads his squad in another raid to stop Nazi time-troopers from mucking up history in the Fuhrer’s favour.

Temporal travel is still a new arena for combat and nobody really knows the rules, but the Professor back in 1944 is pretty adamant that visitors to the past should harm or kill as little as possible.

Of course that’s easy for him to say from his nice safe lab…

Time-Landings are haphazard at best and the G.I.s have to cut through miles of swamp to reach their current objective, so before too long only Grease and the Sarge are left to sneak up on the Nazi Time-Bell, doing God knows what to win the war for Uncle Adolf…

In charge is old enemy Kapitan Dieter Richter, Germany’s top Chrono-Kriegsmann, and the wily fox again manages to escape even though the Sarge succeeds in blowing up his base…

Exhausted and wounded, the Sarge treks back alone and triggers his Chronosphere’s return, only to emerge into another blazing firefight. Nazi agents have successfully infiltrated the Allied time lab of Project: Watchmaker and stolen the Professor’s Chronos Core – the invention which powers the trips and enables US time-teams to return home…

A traitor has jumped back to the Cretaceous, intent on handing the core over to a Kraut team and giving them an unbeatable edge in time tech, leaving the Americans with only 30-minutes Relative to prevent the end of Allied Chronal Operations forever.

Frantically, Sarge assembles a 4-man team from the lab’s surviving soldiery to give chase and recover the device, utterly unaware that he has left the Prof unprotected with another insidious Nazi infiltrator…

The grizzled Non-Com would be no happier knowing that he’s bringing one back to the age of reptiles with him too…

What follows is a desperate and ghastly race against time with hungry saurians, deadly giant bugs and murderous bushwhacking Nazis all adding to the body count, whilst in the Age of Man lethal paradoxes multiply and the fragile stability of all time and space begin to fracture…

Riotous and spectacular, explosively gung-ho but still smart enough to pile on the temporal pressures and leavened with sly, knowing black humour, Dawn Patrol offers a bullet-ridden rollercoaster of blockbuster thrills no big kid could possibly resist.

Also included here is a large section of added features from the ‘Chronos Commandos Supplemental Briefing Pack’ which includes such text background as ‘Official Papers Transferring Sgt. XXXX to Project: Watchmaker…’, ‘Black Star Initiative Operational Parameters’, ‘Chronos Commandos Search and Destroy Mission Briefing’, ‘Dr. Herla’s Autopsy Report: including Discussion of His Various Fatal Mutations, and Informed Speculation on the Perils of Time Travel’ and ‘Know Your Enemy Dinosaur Comparison Charts’.

Also included are the tragic fragments of a lost hero’s life in ‘Peabody’s ‘Letters from Home’ and his ‘Vintage Crash Jordan Serial Poster’ as well as Blueprints for both the Allied and Nazi Time Pods, original comics ‘Series Covers’ and extensive excerpts from ‘The Chronos Commandos Sketchbook’.

Chronos Commandos: Dawn Patrol is published on March 11^th. For details of how to meet the author and get a copy signed, check out our Noticeboard section.

Perfect Nonsense: the Chaotic Comics and Goofy Games of George Carlson

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Now Read This

By George Carlson, edited by Daniel F. Yezbick & Rick Marschall (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-508-2

The art and calling of mesmerising children is a rare one, but the masters of such an imaginative discipline – whether through words or pictures – have generally become household names.

Lewis Carroll (although that’s really two people, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson & Sir John Tenniel), Edward Lear, J.M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum, Enid Blyton, Maurice Sendak, Kenneth Graham, Arthur Rackham and their ilk, or cartoon-oriented craftsmen such as Winsor McCay, Sheldon Mayer, Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, George Herriman, Elzie Segar, S.J. Perelman, Alfred Bestall, Crockett Tubbs, Milt Gross, Carl Barks, Bill Holman and others have all garnered some measure of undying fame for their sublime cannons of entertainment, but apparently these days, nobody knows George Carlson.

Carlson was both a unique and prolific, surreally absurdist, sublimely stylised magician of children’s entertainments and a diligent commercial artist, tireless, dedicated educator and print illustrator and designer.

He absolutely loved games and puzzles and was besotted with all aspects of print media.

A son of Swedish immigrants, he plied his trade(s) from New York and Connecticut between 1903 to 1962, producing everything from editorial cartoons, book jackets (including famously the iconic first edition of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind), magazine illustration, typographical design, games, sheet-music, utterly unique advertising materials, books, pamphlets and so much more.

And comics: some of the most original, eccentric and captivating comics for youngsters America or the world has ever seen…

This superb and colossal compendium, the brainchild and magnum opus of extreme fan Daniel Yezbick, is the result of 15 years toil and superbly details every aspect of the lost master’s life, stuffed to overflowing with intimate photos, wonderful anecdotes and page after page of glorious, enchanting stories, poems, puzzles and pictures that still have the power to take your breath away, no matter how old you are.

This calculated resurrection of a lost giant begins with ‘Preface: Great Gran’pa Gookel’ by Carlson’s descendent Allison Currie, and an effulgent Introduction’ by author, critic, historian and cartoonist R.C. Harvey who kindles the lost days in ‘A Very Admiring and Well-Plumbed Apostrophe to George Carlson, Cartooning Genius’, whilst Yezbick’s fulsome Foreword declares ‘At Long Last, the Carnival’s Come Back’…

Firstly Yezbick takes us through the great man’s multi-faceted career, beginning with ‘The Jolly Books of the Puzzling Private’ describing early works and the artist’s two decades writing, illustrating, designing and creating engaging and educational games and puzzles for iconic and influential children’s pulp magazine John Martin’s Book. Also heavily featured is Carlson’s first great creation Peter Puzzlemaker, whose visual and verbal conundrums fascinated and expanded the minds of generations of kids.

The tireless scribbler also ghosted Gene Ahern’s classic newspaper strip Reg’lar Fellers for years and was engaged during WWI as an army cartographer.

‘The Whimsical Wizard of Fairfield, Connecticut: Family Life and Commercial Art in the 1920s and 1930s’ details his most productive period, not just as a consummate long-distance entertainer of kids, but in local and publishing national arenas.

Whilst addressing Carlson’s lifelong fascination with transport – especially his astounding illustrations of ships and trains – ‘Gone With the Wiggily: Flirting with Fame in the 1930s and 1940s’ covers the Mitchell cover creation and other book jackets as well as Carlson’s far more lasting and influential contributions to children’s literature.

Most important of these are his superb illustrations for Howard R. Garis’ ubiquitous and bucolic tales of venerable rabbit grandfather figure Uncle Wiggily and the artist’s wholly originated series of Puzzles, Fun Things to Do, Play and Colouring books, as well as a succession of “How to” books revealing the secrets of drawing and creating your own cartoons.

The origin of his short but incredible funnybook career is covered in ‘The Road to Pretzleburg: George Carlson and Self-Destructing Comic Book Narrative’ and the latter disappointing years of changing public tastes in ‘Slouching Towards Fumbleland: The Restoration of the Whifflesnort’ which prompted his just-too-soon abortive creation of graphic novels (in 1962) with the never published Alec in Fumbleland and the artist’s immortalisation as the creator of a series of images locked in a time capsule that won’t be opened until 8113AD…

The major portion of this sturdy compendium is taken up with hundreds of astounding reproductions of Carlson’s vast and varied output, beginning with ‘Early Works and Illustrations’ including scenes from many classical stories such as Icarus, Neptune and Amphitrite, Aesop’s Fables, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Tom Sawyer and full colour cover and plates for such books as The Magic Stone, Uncle Wiggily, The Prince Without a Country and more…

Also included are examples of ‘Adult and Genre Works’ such as Broncho Apache, Death on the Prairie and Scouting on the Mystery Trail…

‘Pulps, Poems and Pixies: John Martin’s Books’ offers a wealth of images and designs from Carlson’s 20 year tenure as contributing editor on America’s premiere pulp publication for children.

A master of what we now call paper and print technologies with the budget and freedom to go wild, he concocted covers, frontispieces, book plates, Holiday editions, graphically integrated poem pages, astounding layouts, games pages, riddles, nonsense word glossaries, animal alphabets and so many other ways to educationally enthral, engage and stretch growing minds…

The artist was also a brilliant composer of clever, witty limericks, odes, riddles, gags and brainteasers: a advocate and devotee of whacky word play in the manner of Lear and Carroll, and ‘Carlson’s School of Nonsense’ catalogues many of his most impressive cartoon-garnished confections whilst ‘Jolly Books’ displays his creations and tales for premium pamphlets (a forerunner of comicbooks) commissioned as give-aways by department stores, cxall dutifully crafted and packaged by the John Martin team.

As the magazine refused to carry straight advertising – feeling it was an abuse and betrayal of their young readers’ trust – Carlson and brilliant co-editor Helen Waldo devised a sponsorship method which name-checked at one remove selected backers and commercial interests through ingenious story puzzle pages, rebuses, acronyms and acrostics…

Once upon a time paper and printing were the internet: a nigh-inexhaustible, readily available resource which could provide stories, games and puzzles, information and diversions which only required a creator’s imagination and ingenuity.

There was nobody more skilled, adept or inspired than Carlson, whose life-long fascination with language, crosswords, puns, riddles, rebuses, maths, wordplay and graphic invention seemingly occupied every non-working, waking moment.

He also knew music (his wife Gertrude was a professional pianist and gave lessons from their home) and here ‘Songs, Games and Other Pastimes’ displays his charming amalgamations of graphics and terpsichorean instruction as well as his science-based features, articles and books, whilst ‘Tutorial Cartooning and Art Instruction’ offers concrete examples of the artist’s many years of publishing tracts and tomes intended to teach young and old alike the fundamentals of narrative art.

‘Trains and Transportation’ reveals in spectacular detail Carlson’s fascination with engineering, locomotives and all aspects of shipping – including the revolutionary and mindboggling book Queen Mary Comparisons – after which ‘Portraits, Presidents and Personalities’ displays a selection of his superb commemorative images, whilst ‘Adventures in Advertising’ reveals his unbelievable versatility in putting across ideas and selling, including many examples of the aforementioned John Martin stealth ads plus a plethora of delightful make-them-yourself Premiums he designed for youngsters.

‘Original Art, Lost Works, and Forgotten Frolics’ explore tantalising might-have-beens and unearthed treasures before the groundbreaking kids comics are highlighted in ‘Laughter, Puns, and Speed’.

Subtitled ‘The Whifflesnorting Thrills of George Carlson’s Eastern Color Comics’, a brief essay reveals the history of the illustrator’s short foray into comicbooks and the creation of anthology Jingle-Jangle Comics, which launched in February 1942 (running until 1949) and which headlined two features exclusively written and drawn by Carlson.

‘The Pie-Faced Prince of Old Pretzleburg’ was a manic, pun-filled procession of insane and wholesome nonsense which related the fast and frantic screwball adventures of royal mooncalf Prince Dimwitri and his inamorata Princess Panetella Murphy, and the too short collection of complete capers commences here with the fast, frenetic debut from #1, in which he saved the King’s breakfast pretzel from the insidious Green Witch.

Also included are escapades from issues #11, #15, #16, #20, #35, #36 and #41, absurdist adventures in rumbling tumbling happily tumultuous word and picture tales involving jet-powered kites, assorted bandits, scurrilous scarecrows, stolen violins, fabulous beasts, living jet-mobiles, talking animals, baking, belligerent unicorns and more.

Carlson brought a deliciously skewed viewpoint to the still-evolving syllabary of comics: there are hilariously punny labels and signs everywhere and in some shots weary birds rest on free-floating word balloons…

Without doubt, however, Carlson reserved his greatest flights of fancy for the inventive fractured fairy stories that comprised the eponymous ‘Jingle Jangle Tales’ – one-off fables starring peculiarly reinvented standbys like princesses and knights, interacting with astonishing animals and far-from-inanimate objects all imbued with a bravura lust for life and laughs.

Included here are ‘The Moon-Struck Unicorn and the Worn-Out Shadow’ from #13, ‘The Straight-Shooting Princess and the Filigree Pond-Lily’ (#22), ‘The Musical Whifflesnort and the Red-Hot Music Roll’ (#23), ‘The Rocketeering Doodlebug and the Self-Winding Horsefly’ (#25), extraordinarily mirthful mystical melanges augmented by a brace of outrageously wry spoofs of American classics ‘Skip van Wrinkle, the High-Hatted Hunter’ from #28 and the impossibly raucous and breathtaking lunacy of ‘Sleepy Yollow, the Bedless Norseman’ (#31).

Harlan Ellison correctly dubbed Carlson’s sublimely inviting whimsy for the very young as “Comics of the Absurd” and these cartoon capers are urgently in need of their own complete and comprehensive collection – preferably in a lush and lavish full colour hardback archive edition…’

If you have an abiding love of creative fantasy and access to beginning reading-age children (boy, that came out creepier than I imagined!), you simply must get this terrific tome and open their eyes to wonderment, enlightenment, entertainment and education in this timelessly addictively accessible chronicle.

Ultimate Fantastic Four volume 1: The Fantastic

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Now Read This

By Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar, Adam Kubert, Danny Miki, John Dell & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1393-5

After Marvel’s financial – and indeed creative – problems in the late 1990s, the company came back swinging. A key new concept was the remodelling and modernising of their core characters for the new youth culture. The Ultimate imprint abandoned monumental continuity – which had always been Marvel’s greatest asset – to re-imagine major characters in their own self-sufficient universe, offering varying degrees of radical makeover to appeal to the supposed contemporary 21^st century audience and a chance to get in on the ground floor.

Peter Parker was once again a nerdy high-school geek, brilliant but bullied by his physical superiors, and mutants were a dangerous, oppressed ethic minority scaring the pants off the ordinary Americans they hid amongst. There were also fresh and fashionable, modernistic, scientifically feasible rationales for all those insane super-abilities manifesting everywhere…

The experiment began in 2000 with a post-modern take on Ultimate Spider-Man with Ultimate X-Men following in 2001 and Avengers retread The Ultimates in 2002.

The stories, design and even tone of the heroes were retooled for the perceived-as-different tastes of a new readership: those tired of or unwilling to stick with precepts originated by inspirational founding fathers Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, or (hopefully) new consumers unprepared or unwilling to deal with five decades (seven if you include Golden Age Timely tales retroactively co-opted into the mix) of continuity baggage.

The new universe prospered and soon filled up with more reinterpreted, morally ambiguous heroes and villains and eventually even this darkly nihilistic new universe became as continuity-constricted as its ancestor. In 2008 the cleansing event “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which excised dozens of superhumans and millions of lesser mortals in a devastating tsunami which inundated Manhattan, courtesy of mutant menace Magneto.

This volume collects Ultimate Fantastic Four #1-6 (February to July 2004), the fourth pillar of Marvel’s radical new edifice; more tweaked than reconceived by writers Brian Michael Bendis & Mark Millar, and illustrated in a lush, painterly manner by artists Adam Kubert, Danny Miki, John Dell and digital-colourist Dave Stewart.

The biggest change to the concept was a rather telling one: all four heroes were far younger than their mainstream antecedents…

Whereas in the original, middle-aged maverick genius Reed Richards, trusty friend Ben Grimm, sort-of girlfriend Sue Storm and her younger brother Johnny survived a privately-funded space-shot which foundered when Cosmic Rays penetrated their vessel’s inadequate shielding and mutated the quartet into quirky freaks, here events transpired rather differently…

The saga opens with telling snapshots from the unpleasant life of infant prodigy Reed: a lonely super-genius increasingly despised by his abusive blue-collar dad, bullied at school and obsessed with other dimensions. His only friend is classmate sports star Ben Grimm, who has unaccountably appointed himself the uber-nerd’s protector…

Reed’s life changes on the day his High School science project – teleportation – catches the eye of a clandestine government talent scout from a high powered think tank. He’s offered a place at a New York facility for budding geniuses and Reed’s dad couldn’t be happier to be rid of him – especially as the school pays parents for the privilege of educating their odd, smart kids…

The Baxter Building was a wonderland of top-flight resources, intellectual challenges and guarded support, but it was still a school and the kids were expected to produce results…

The ideas factory is run by brilliant Professor Storm and, although the administrator’s son Johnny was there mostly as a courtesy, Storm’s daughter Sue is one of the biggest young brains on Earth… and pretty too…

Reed’s teleportation researches were only a necessary preliminary to his greater goal. The boy had long posited – and now proved – the existence of a strange sub-dimension – a place the Baxter scientists call the Negative Zone – and with their aid the next five years were largely spent in trying to fully access it.

Regular studies continued too, with a few casualties. Some burn out like young Phineas Mason but creepy, arrogant, insular Victor Van Damme, after a particularly galling incident with Reed, somehow manages to swallow his animosity. Soon they are working together to crack the dimension calculations…

The tutors also walk psychologically fine lines. One such is creepy aberrant Dr. Arthur Molekevic, whose constant barracking of the not-overachieving-enough young boffins leads to a breakdown, unsanctioned experiments with artificial life and eventual expulsion by the military brass who actually run the establishment…

Jumping to now, 21-year-old Reed and his fractious lab partner Victor are in Nevada for the first full test of the N-Zone teleport system, with the Storms along for the ride. As the army technicians count down, Van Damme is still kvetching about the final hotly-contested calculations, but Richards is doubly distracted.

Firstly, young backpacker Ben Grimm has just wandered into camp to see his old sidekick after more than a decade apart, but most importantly snotty teen Johnny has just revealed that sister Sue has the hots for the obsessed and diffident Reed…

The test firing is a literal catastrophe.

The site is devastated in a shattering release of energy and Reed awakens some distance away as an amorphous blob of eerily boneless flesh, mistaken by the soldiers for an extra-dimensional invader.

In Mexico, Ben awakens to find he’s become a huge rocky orange monster, and Johnny eventually calls in from a hospital bed in France. He keeps catching on fire without ever burning himself…

Sue has just vanished without a trace…

Eventually gaining control of his limbs and the acceptance of the grown-ups, Reed discovers Victor had changed the settings just before the test, but now he can’t be found either…

Susan regains consciousness in a strange place with a familiar and unwelcome companion. Arthur Molekevic has become an actual Mole Man, re-populating ancient, previously inhabited colossal caverns 1.4 miles beneath New York with a selection of his dish-grown monsters and homunculi. Somehow she had materialised right at his scurvy, sweaty feet…

The rapidly reunited Reed and Johnny are joined by the tragically incredulous Ben at the BaxterBuilding and begin to learn how to control their incredibly altered states, even as the unctuous, unpleasantly foetid Mole Man is exploring his unwilling guest’s newfound and unwanted ability to bend light rays.

The unsavoury savant postulates that somehow the quartet had been projected through N-Space, utterly unprotected from whatever transformative energies and unknown physical laws might apply there, and their new gifts and appearances are the result.

The madman’s knowledge of current affairs above ground is easily explained. Ever since his ignominious dismissal – after which he had retreated to these mysterious subterranean vaults – he has kept an unceasing eye on his former pupils by tapping into every camera and computer feed in the BaxterBuilding…

He also reveals that he loves Sue and that she actually rematerialised three miles from Vegas, but his faithful creatures carried her all the way back to him. Moreover, as a gesture of his sincere affection, he has despatched one of his most gargantuan creatures due up to fetch her beloved brother…

On the surface when the monster erupts out of the ground, Johnny’s biggest worry is that it might be Sue, but soon he, Reed and Ben have soundly defeated it, despite being complete neophytes with their powers. Instead of receiving grateful thanks they are summarily attacked by the Army who accuse them of being rogue mutants…

Whilst Dr. Storm tries to placate the terrified soldiery, Reed talks his new comrades into jumping into the mile deep hole and finding out where the beast came from… straight into a cataclysmic clash with their old teacher and his apparently unlimited legions…

With a cover gallery by Bryan Hitch and Kubert plus design sketches by Hitch, this smart, fast, action-packed and brimful of teen-oriented humour for the era of the acceptable nerd and go-getting geek offers a solid alternate view of Marvel’s most important title that will impress open-minded old fans of the medium just as much as the newcomers they were ostensibly aiming for.
© 2004 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Now Read This!

Graphic Novel Reviews and Recommendations by WIN WIACEK

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The Simon & Kirby Library: Horror!

Chronos Commandos: Dawn Patrol

Perfect Nonsense: the Chaotic Comics and Goofy Games of George Carlson

Ultimate Fantastic Four volume 1: The Fantastic

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