Category: Best of British

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Mega Robo Bros: Nemesis


By Neill Cameron & various (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-315-8 (TPB)

Mighty in metal and potent in plastic, here’s the latest upgrade in this sterling, solid gold all-ages sci fi saga from Neill (Tamsin of the Deep, Pirates of Pangea, How to Make Awesome Comics, Freddy) Cameron. Perfect purpose-built paladins, the mecha-miraculous Mega Robo Bros find that even they can’t punch out intolerance or growing pains in these electronic exploits balancing frantic fun with portents of darker, far more violent days to come…

It’s still The Future! – but maybe not for much longer…

In a London far cooler but just as embattled as ours, Alex and his younger brother Freddy Sharma are notionally typical kids: boisterous, fractious, perpetually argumentative yet still devoted to each other. They’re also not too bothered that they’re adopted. It’s really no big deal for them that they were meticulously and covertly constructed by the mysterious Dr. Roboticus before he vanished, and are considered by those “in the know” as the most powerful – and only fully SENTIENT – robots on Earth. Of course, ultimately events conspire to challenge that comforting notion…

Dad is just your average old guy who makes lunch and does a bit of writing (he’s actually an award-winning journalist), but when not being a housewife, Mum is pretty extraordinary herself. Surprisingly famous and renowned robotics boffin Dr. Nita Sharma harbours some shocking secrets of her own…

Life in the Sharma household aims to be normal. Freddy is insufferably exuberant and over-confident, whilst Alex is at the age when self-doubt and anxiety hit hard and often. Moreover, the household’s other robot rescues can also be problematic. Programmed to be dog-ish, baby triceratops Trikey is ok, but eccentric French-speaking ape Monsieur Gorilla can be tres confusing, and gloomily annoying, existentialist aquatic waterfowl Stupid Philosophy Penguin hangs around ambushing everyone with quotes from dead philosophers…

The boys have part-time jobs as super-secret agents, although because they aren’t very good at the clandestine part, almost the world now knows them. However, it’s enough for the digital duo that their parents love them, even though they are a bit more of a handful than most kids. They all live as normal a life as possible: going to human school, playing with human friends and hating homework. It’s all part of their “Mega Robo Routine”, combining dull human activities, actual but rare fun, games-playing, watching TV and constant training in the combat caverns under R.A.I.D. HQ. Usually, when a situation demands, the boys carry out missions for bossy Baroness Farooq: head of government agency Robotics Analysis Intelligence and Defence. They still believe it’s because they are infinitely smarter and more powerful than the Destroyer Mechs and other man-made minions she usually utilises.

Originally published in UK weekly comic The Phoenix, the saga reopens with the lads’ reputations as global heroes increasing coming under fire and into question. After defeating dangerous villains like Robot 23 and thwarting a robot rebellion sparked by artificial life activist The Caretaker, the Bros battled monstrous, deadly damaged droid Wolfram in the arctic and learned he might be their older brother. Even so, they had to destroy him; leaving Alex deeply traumatised by the act…

Over the course of that case they learned that fifteen years previously their brilliant young roboticist Mum worked under incomparable but weird genius Dr. Leon Robertus. His astounding discoveries earned him the unwelcome nickname Dr. Roboticus and perhaps that’s what started pushing him away from humanity. Robertus allowed Nita to repurpose individually superpowered prototypes into a rapid-response team for global emergencies. Their Mum had been a superhero, leading manmade The Super Robo Six and while saving lives with them she first met crusading journalist/future husband Michael Mokeme. He proudly took her name when they eventually wed…

Robertus was utterly devoid of human empathy but – intrigued by the team’s acclaim and global acceptance – created a new kind of autonomous robot. Wolfram was more powerful than any other construct, and equipped with foundational directives allowing him to make choices and develop his own systems. He could think, just like Alex and Freddy can. Only, as it transpired, not quite…

When Robertus demoted Nita and made Wolfram leader of a new Super Robo Seven, the result was an even more effective unit, until the day Wolfram’s Three Directives clashed during a time-critical mission. Millions of humans paid the price for his confusion and hesitation…

In the aftermath, R.A.I.D. was formed. They tried to shut down Robertus and decommission Wolfram, but the superbot rejected their judgement, leading to a brutal battle, the robot’s apparent destruction and Roboticus vanishing…

As the boys absorbed their “Secret Origins” Wolfram returned, attacking polar restoration project Jötunn Base. It covered many miles and was carefully rebalancing the world’s climate, when Wolfram took it over: reversing the chilling process to burn the Earth and drown humanity. Ordered by Baroness Farooq to stay put and not help, Alex and Freddy rebelled, but by the time the Bros reached Jötunn, Wolfram had crushed a R.A.I.D. force led by their friend Agent Susie Nichols. After also failing to stop the attacker, kind contemplative Alex found a way to defeat – and perhaps, destroy – his wayward older brother and save humanity…

Their exploit made the Bros global superstars and whilst immature Freddy revels in all the attention Alex is having trouble adjusting: not just to the notoriety and acclaim, but also the horrifying new power levels he achieved to succeed and also the apparent onset of robot puberty. It’s afflicted him with PTSD…

A drawing together of many long-running plot threads, Nemesis opens with a potential disaster in the city as human intolerance breaks out everywhere. As this penultimate epic begins, friction between the brothers is constantly building: petty nagging spats that seem pointless but are driving a wedge between them. It’s not helping that a growing faction of people -calling themselves “Humanity First” are actively agitating to get rid of all robots, and their spokesman is targeting the Bros specifically as a threat to mankind on the R-Truth show, and is particularly hateful about Alex’s well-publicised friendship with the next king of Britain, Crown Prince Eustace.

Peril increases after both the fleshy and metallo-plastic members of the Sharma clan start a well-deserved holiday in Brighton. As Alex nearly succumbs to a beach romance with ardent fan Erin and mischievous hijinks with her wayward sibling Finn, a trip to the robotic Steel Circus leads to an accidental but catastrophic encounter with old foes the Bros had completely forgotten even existed…

The consequent riot is readily contained, but the clowns the kids capture at the end clearly don’t have the ability to do what has just been done and the return home is fraught and pensive…

As school starts again, The Baroness calls a conference to discuss the rise in anti-automaton hate crimes, before – in a bid to promote inclusivity – ordering Alex and Freddy to appear on TV show Mega Robo Warriors. Sadly, it’s all another trap and as Freddy delightedly trashes a host of war bots, his self-control starts to slip and Alex realises his hostile attitudes and violent reactions have been building for some time…

Soon after, a protest by Humanity First at Tilbury Port is deliberately escalated into a full-on meat vs metal riot, and Freddy goes apparently berserk, attacking humans trashing helpless mech droids. What might have happened next is thankfully forestalled when all the robots – including R.A.I.D.’s police drones – are corrupted by the perniciously hostile Revolution 23 virus. Total chaos is only avoided when Wolfram appears to offer all liberated machines sanctuary in his robot republic Steelhaven: a cloaked robot utopia of liberated mechanoids that has declared independence from humanity.…

Clashes between the brothers are almost constant when Alex decides to forget his troubles for a day and go out with his friends Taia and Mira…and – under duress – Freddy. The trip to Camden Lock is spiced up by a holographically incommunicado Prince Eustace, and provides a vast bonus when Mira finds a junked bot and works out the secret of the Revolution 23 Malware. It’s just in time to see common people begin to turn on Humanity First’s fanatics…

Thanks to Mira, the battling Bros finally have a lead on the mastermind behind all their current woes, but Freddy’s emotional problems have reached a point where he just won’t be talked down. Fired by righteous fury, the younger bot blasts off, hot-headedly streaking into another trap by their most cunning and patient foe. Descending into rage and madness, he begins razing London, and Alex realises that to stop his to little brother he may have to destroy him…

How that all works out sets up the saga for a spectacular finale, so let’s stop here with the now-mandatory “To Be Concluded…”

Crafted by Cameron and colouring assistant Austin Baechle (with a cohort of robots designed by readers of The Phoenix), this rip-roaring riot isn’t quite over yet. Adding informational illumination are activity pages on ‘How To Draw Robot 23’ and ‘How To Draw Mr. Donut’, and a bonus Preview selection of what the periodical Pheonix has to offer

Bravely and exceedingly effectively interweaving real world concerns by addressing issues of gender and identity with great subtlety and in a way kids can readily grasp, this epic yarn blends action and humour with superb effect. Excitement and hearty hilarity is balanced here with poignant moments of insecurity and introspection, affording thrills, chills, warmth, wit and incredible verve. Alex and Freddy are utterly authentic kids, irrespective of their origins, and their antics and anxieties strike exactly the right balance of future shock, family fun and superhero action to capture readers’ hearts and minds. What movies these tales would make!
Text and illustrations © Neill Cameron 2024. All rights reserved.

Mega Robo Bros Nemesis will be released on May 2nd 2024 and is available for pre-order now.

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Jamie Smart’s Looshkin: Honk If You See It!


By Jamie Smart with Sammy Borass & John Cullen (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-313-4 (TPB)

Since launching in 2012, The Phoenix has offered humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a traditional-seeming weekly comics anthology for girls and boys. The vibrant parade of cartoon fun and fantasy has won praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who really count – a dedicated, growing legion of totally engaged kids and parents who read it avidly…

Devised by Jamie Smart (Fish Head Steve!; Bunny vs. Monkey, Corporate Skull and bunches of other brilliant strips for The Beano and more) from what I assume is close-hand observation and meticulous documentation comes another outing for Looshkin – a brilliantly bonkers addition to that vast feline pantheon of horrifying hairballs infesting cartoondom – featuring further “adventures of the Maddest Cat in the World!!” This new magnum (sweet, dark, nutty, creamy and constantly making your fillings hurt) opus shares fresh nuggets in the life of a totally anarchic kitty just like yours: cute, innocently malign and able to twist the bounds of credibility and laws of physics whenever the whim takes hold…

Once upon a time Mrs Alice Johnson brought home a kitten from the pet shop. Not one of the adorable little beauties in the window though, but an odd, creepy, lonely little fuzzy hidden at the back of the store.

The Johnsons are not an average family – even for Croydon. Firstborn son Edwin watches too many horror films and keeps a book of spells in his room. Dad is a brilliant inventor who needs peace and quiet to complete his fart-powered jet-packs or potato-powered tractors. With a new cat now, those days are gone for good…

That sweet little daughter isn’t all she seems either: when kitten Looshkin attended her tea party in the garden, the toys all warned the cat of horrors in store. Making allies of teddy bear Bear and glove-puppet Mister Frogburt Looshkin was soon in his element and even escalated the carnage and chaos. He has found his natural home even though it’s surrounded by weirdoes like Great (and so very rich) Auntie Frank and her precious ultra-anxious prize-winning panic poodle Princess Trixibelle and neighbour/former TV host Sandra Rotund whose own cat Mister Buns is a force to be reckoned with.

Reality is notional at best around here, and many episodes adopt the conceit of being excerpts, articles or ads from magazines: frequently interspersed by hilarious pin-ups…

This outing spans a week – which is a long time in cat reality – and quite naturally begins with a recap/origin of sorts as ‘Looshkin: A Comprehensive Catalogue of His Rise to Infamy!!’ reminds the regulars and forewarns the new fools and curious what the feline is like via newspaper clippings from The Daily Pickles before ‘Beef’ sees kitty in full-annoy mode and testing the force of an unblinking stare, before triggering traffic conniptions, wedding woes, acting anarchy and another trip to the Society of Cat Brain Doctors…

Oddly, hypnotising the cat to think he’s a chicken is not the major therapeutic breakthrough everyone hopes it would be and results in a riot of farm vehicle spawned carnage…

With the media mad to find out ‘Who is Tractor Cat?’ neighbour Arnold Johnson is driven to distraction when Looshkin affixes ‘Fried Egg Wheels on my Bottom’ and plays kidnapper in ‘Family Ties’, after which a day dream of deadly ‘Danger Sausage!’ prompts the fuzzy blue fool to start ‘Piggy Piggle’ races and play ‘Hide n Seek’ with a 15 trillion year old dinosaur egg…

All intent to be good in his alternate ego of cosmic champion ‘Johnny Rad’ is doomed from the get-go, so the cat dials back and tries to help party performer Billy Crabs retrain for better jobs in ‘Tears of a Clown’. Shame about the guinea pigs though…

The dangers of Dress-Up-Like-Your-Favourite-Character-From-a-Book day manifest with a vengeance when Jonty-kins kits up like the krazy kitty in ‘Reluctant Reader’ before Frogburt announces ‘I hereby declare Looshkin to be an enemy of Frogtopia!!’ in a daring nautical tale before angry Arnold Johnson declares a poster war and more when Looshkin goes looking for his lost love ‘Sharon!’

More fabulously funny faux mag articles and ads segue swiftly into the cat and the bear auditioning a scatological skit in ‘Musical Number Two’ whilst time runs wild in ‘Eloh Kcalb Eht’ and a brief biography of ‘Bear – Treasure Hunter of the Sahara!’ broadcasts how to fight mummies, vampires and zombies with chicken nuggets and other party treats before feline goes fowl in ‘Metamorphoduck’…

When the cat goes missing we discover why one must ‘Honk if You See It!’ and discover more shocking stuff about pigs ‘In Which Looshkin Tries to do a Thing but it doesn’t work out and as ever Bear is the One Who Suffers’ after which Who is the Best Cat is determined by a ‘Big Race’ that doesn’t end well…

Massive amounts of money and power prove no hindrance or help to our cat and his family when they take a turn as ‘City Types’ before soap spoofery becomes Weird – and offensive – Science when the cat adopts some ‘Bum Angels’ prior to a little literary sabotage and cunning catfishing in maritime madcappery ‘The Old Man and Harold’…

Looshkin’s love of melody and his bear overcome him in ‘Sing Da Song’ before he dabbles with bodybuilding in ‘Bros!’ whilst Frogburt whips up nothing like ‘A Lovely Dinner’ and that sweet little girl goes one step beyond with the class bunny ‘Dongles’ even as Looshkin evolves into ‘The Gigantic Head in the Sky!!’

It all gets a bit cosmic on Sunday when the teddy reveals he’s actually ‘Bear X’ on a secret space mission before the cat spoofs Speed driving a hijacked passenger vehicle and doing ‘Bus Stuff’ after which you’ll learn nothing useful but embrace full daftness in ‘How a Looshkin Comic is Written – A step-by-step guide!’ and enjoy a fake excerpt from a book that doesn’t exist in ‘The Cat with a Light Shining out of its Bottom.’

The cat faces replacement media property ‘Marmalade!!’ as this tome terminates, fighting off corporate ineptitude and media manipulation with one last murder-mitten Halloween swipe at ‘Telly!’ and, Fun Done, surrenders to a selection of handy previews of other treats and wonders available in The Phoenix to wind us down from all that angsty satirical furore…

Utterly loony and inescapably addictive, Looshkin: Honk if you See It! is a fiendishly surreal glimpse at the insanity hardwired into certain cats and other critters (probably not yours, but still…) and another unruly, astoundingly ingenious romp from a modern master of that rebellious whimsy which is the very bedrock of British humour.
Text and illustrations © Fumboo Ltd. 2024. All rights reserved.

Looshkin: Honk if you See It! will be released on April 4th 2024 and is available for pre-order now.

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The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia


By Mary M Talbot & Bryan Talbot (Jonathan Cape/Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-0-22410-234-6 (HB Cape) eISBN: 978-1-63008-697-8 (DH)

The power of comics to resurrect historical figures and tap into their lives whilst potently and convincingly extrapolating their deeds and even characters has been a recent revelation that has completely revitalised graphic narratives. One of the most telling and compelling of these narratives was crafted by British National Treasure Bryan Talbot and his even more impressive wife.

Academic, educator, linguist, social theoretician, author and specialist in Critical Discourse Analysis, in 2012 Dr. Mary M. Talbot added graphic novelist to her achievements: collaborating with her husband on the first of many terrific comics tales. Award-winning memoir/biography of Lucia Joyce Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes was followed by Sally Heathcote: Suffragette (drawn by Kate Charlesworth), today’s recommendation, Rain and Armed With Madness: supplementing an educational career and academic publications such as Language and Gender: an Introduction and Fictions at Work: language and social practise in fiction. Dr. Talbot is particularly drawn to true stories of gender bias and social injustice…

Bryan has been a fixture of the British comics scene since the late 1960s, moving from Tolkien-fandom to college strips, self-published underground classics like Brainstorm Comix (starring Chester P. Hackenbush – the Psychedelic Alchemist!), prototypical Luther Arkwright and Frank Fazakerly, Space Ace of the Future to paid pro status with Nemesis The Warlock, Judge Dredd, Sláine, Ro-Busters and more in 2000 AD. Inevitably headhunted by America, he worked on key mature-reading titles for DC Comics (Hellblazer, Shade the Changing Man, The Nazz, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Fables, The Dead Boy Detectives and The Sandman) and was a key creative cog in short-lived shared-world project Tekno Comix, before settling into global acclaim via steady relationships with Dark Horse Comics and Jonathan Cape. These unions generated breakthrough masterpieces like The Tale of One Bad Rat and a remastered Adventures of Luther Arkwright.

Since then he’s been an independent Force To Be Reckoned With, doing just what he wants, promoting the art form in general and crafting a variety of fascinating and compelling works, from Alice in Sunderland o Cherubs! (with Mark Stafford), to Metronome (as Véronique Tanaka) and his fabulously wry, beguiling and gallic-ly anthropomorphic Grandville sequence, as well as his mostly biographical/historical collaborations with Dr. Mary…

In the interest of propriety, I must disclose that I’ve known him since the 1980s, but other than that shameful lack of taste and judgement on his part, have no vested interest in confidently stating that he’s probably Britain’s greatest living graphic novelist…

Here their vast talents combine to capture and expose the life of a woman who arguably reshaped the history of the whole world, but one largely lost to history…

On May 29th 1830, Louise Michel was born out of wedlock to a serving maid at the Château de Vroncourt in Northeastern France. Her father was the son of the house and his ashamed parents gave their unwelcome granddaughter a liberal education and set her up as teacher. In 1865 she opened her own progressive school in Paris, whilst corresponding with social and political thinkers such as Victor Hugo and Théophile Ferré. Embracing radical ideas, Michel co-founded the Société pour la Revendication des Droits Civils de la Femme (Society for the Demand of Civil Rights for Women) and forged links to Société Coopérative des Ouvriers et Ouvrières (Cooperative Society of Men and Women Workers) and when revolution came again to France was amongst the first to man the barricades of the Paris Commune. She fought for The National Guard and was known as “the Red Virgin of Montmartre”…

Michel loved the notion of science and fairness building a better world, and spent much time discussing utopias with scientists and engineers. She was an author, poet, orator, anarchist, educator, rabble rouser and revolutionary whose activities as a Communard saw her exiled to New Caledonia in 1873. Once there, she befriended the subjugated Kanak people, acting as a teacher and healer, and participated in their abortive fight for liberation. Surviving the French colonisers’ reprisals she was returned to France after seven years as part of a general amnesty for Communards. She had become a political celebrity, and began touring the world and lecturing – especially to groups seeking change such as the Pankhurst family’s suffrage followers and adherents. Apparently tireless, the Red Virgin began campaigning for an amnesty for Algerian rebels…

Leading a poverty demonstration of French unemployed, she coined the slogan “Bread, work or lead” and adopted the black flag which remains to this day the symbol of the anarchist movement. The act earned her six years in solitary confinement, imprisoned with political visionaries like Peter Kropotkin, but when she was released she went right back to work…

Over her lifetime she wrote dozens of books and tracts, with another five published posthumously: all entreating people to be better and rulers to be fair and just. At least she died – in January 1905 – before her beloved ideology and trust in technological advancement were seen to be corrupted by the old ruling forces that manufactured the Great War…

Under the Talbots’ curated guidance what is seen in The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia is not dry polemic or radical hagiography, but a wryly witty examination – via flashbacks and clever character interplay – of an indomitable force for change with a marvellously human face. Depicted in monochrome and judicious splashes of reds. pinks and scarlets, the tale unfolds from a time of Michel’s latter triumphs, as seen through the eyes and conversations of admirers and converts. These are mainly other women seeking to change society working against a backdrop of scientific breakthroughs that the would-be emancipator was convinced would elevate everyone together…

Also included here are a copious list of ‘Sources’, and extensive personal commentary, photos, maps and historical context in ‘Annotations’.

Gripping, infuriating and utterly compelling, this is a tale of achievement and frustration that is still unfolding but which confirms that all change starts with someone extraordinary saying “I have a vision”…
© 2016 by Mary Talbot & Bryan Talbot. All rights reserved.

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Mongrel


By Sayra Begum (Knockabout)
ISBN: 978-0-86166-269-2 (TPB)

Comics offer an immediate and potent method of communication that is both universally accessible and subtly intimate. You want countless characters and exotic locales? Just draw them. Need to navigate the most torturous tracks of the psyche and expose the most taciturn soul? Just fill captions and balloons with the words and tone that cut to the heart of the matter…

Somebody who got that from get-go was Sayra Begum, who first presented her life story in pictorial form in 2017. Happily, she shared it with the perceptive folks at Knockabout Comics who recognised a great work when they saw it. In her own incisive words and deft pencil work, Begum – identifying here as “Shuna” – shares what growing up meant for the child of a strict, devout and loving Bangladeshi Muslim mum only living in England until the family has enough money to retire to a mansion in her beloved homeland. It’s not an easy existence since her dad is a white man (a convert to Islam) who still remembers the freedoms of his old life. Moreover, the community treats them with polite disregard…

As seen in ‘Meet the Mongrel’, ‘Memories of Waterland’, and ‘The Forgotten Self’, Shuna and her siblings are pulled in so many directions growing up. She wants to be an artist, but her Amma is more concerned that she be ‘A Good Muslim’, believing ‘Life is a Test’ and her old ways such as ‘An Arranged Marriage’ are the only proper life to live…

For her parents, England ends at the front door and the household is pure Bangla within the walls. The lure of the outer world has already proved too much for one brother as seen in ‘My Poor Family’, ‘Suffocated’ and ‘The Disownment’ and soon Shuna too is living a secret life with an English lover mother could never approve of…

Continual contrasts with her perfect cousin in Bangladesh constantly wrack her conscience but Shuna has long capitulated to the wiles of Shaitan in her head. Life has a habit of upsetting all plans and exposing secrets and ‘Our Parallel Family’, ‘The Meeting’, ‘Judgement Day’ and ‘The Mongrel Children’ all reveal how even the harshest opinions may shift, leading to a truly romantic happy ending in ‘Goodbye Anger’ prior to a ruminatory ‘Epilogue’…

Begum weds brisk, informative line drawing with the dazzling traditional patterns of Islamic art and excesses of surrealism to weave a compelling and visually enticing tale of real people coping with ancient intolerances and the rapidly evolving family stresses of a fluid and fluctuating multicultural society. It’s all the more affecting to realise she’s bravely sharing the minutiae and intimacies of her own life to highlight a situation as old as humanity itself.

A magical story and a stunning debut, Mongrel is book you must read and one that has never been more timely or pertinent.
Mongrel © by 2020 Sayra Begum All rights reserved.

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Steed & Mrs Peel: Golden Game


By Grant Morrison, Anne Caulfield, Ian Gibson, Ellie De Ville & various (Boom Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-60886-285-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

The (British) Avengers was an astoundingly stylish, globally adored TV show glamorously blending espionage with arch comedy and deadly danger with technological extrapolation, running from the Swinging Sixties through to the end of the decade. A phenomenal cult hit, it and sequel The New Avengers still summons up pangs of Cool Britannia style, cheeky action-adventure, kinky quirkiness, mad gadgetry, dashing heroics, bizarrely British fetish attire, surreal suspense and the wholly appropriate descriptive phrase “Spy Fi”….

Enormously popular everywhere, the light-hearted show evolved from 1961’s gritty crime drama Police Surgeon into a paragon of witty, thrillingly sophisticated espionage adventure lampoonery with suavely urbane British Agent John Steed and dazzlingly talented amateur sleuth Mrs. Emma Peel battling spies, robots, criminals, secret societies, monsters and even “aliens” with tongues very much in cheeks and always under the strictest determination to remain calm, dashingly composed and exceedingly eccentric…

As played by Patrick Macnee, Steed was a nigh-effete dandy and wry caricature of an English Gentleman-spy, counterbalanced by a succession of prodigiously competent woman as partners and foils. The format was pure gold, with second sidekick Peel (as played by Dame Diana Rigg) becoming the most popular right from her October 1965 debut. Rigg was hired to replace Honor Blackman – landmark character Dr. Cathy Gale – the first full-on, smartly decisive fighting female on British Television.

Blackman left to play the female lead in Bond movie Goldfinger – allowing her replacement to take the TV show to even greater heights of global success – as she became a style icon of the era. Her trademark Op art “Emmapeeler” catsuits and miniskirts (designed by series costumiers John Bates and Alun Hughes) were sold across the country and the world…

Emma Peel’s connection with viewers cemented into communal consciousness and the world’s psyche the feminist archetype of a powerful, clever, competent and always-stylishly-clad woman: largely banishing screaming, eye-candy girly-victims to the dustbin of popular fiction. Rigg left in 1967 – also for an 007 role (Tracy Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) – and was followed by Linda Thorson as Tara King: another potent woman who carried the series to its demise in 1969. Continued popularity in more than 90 countries led to a revival in the late 1970s as The New Avengers saw posh glamor-puss Purdey (Joanna Lumley) and manly Gambit (Gareth Hunt) as assistants to the apparently ageless, debonair and deadly Steed…

The show remains an enduring cult icon, with all the spin-off that entails. During its run and beyond, The Avengers spawned toys, games, collector models, a pop single and stage show, radio series, audio adventures, posters, books, a modish line of “Avengerswear” fashion apparel for women and all the other myriad merchandising strands that inevitably accompany a media sensation.

The one we care most about is comics and, naturally, the popular British Television program was no stranger there either. Following an introductory strip starring Steed & Dr. Gale in listings magazines Look Westward and The Viewer – plus The Manchester Evening News – (September 1963 to the end of 1964), legendary children’s staple TV Comic launched its own Avengers strip in #720 (October 2nd 1965) with Emma Peel firmly ensconced as co-lead. This series ran until #771 (September 24th 1966) with the dashing duo also appearing in TV Comic Holiday Special, whilst a series of young Emma Peel adventures featured in June & Schoolfriend, before transferring to DC Thomson’s Diana until 1968 whereupon it returned to TV Comic from #877, depicting Steed and Tara King until 1972 and #1077.

In 1966 Mick Anglo Studios produced a one-off, large-sized UK comic book, and two years later America’s Gold Key’s Four-Color series published their own try-out book utilising recycled UK material. It was called John Steed/Emma Peel since some outfit called Marvel had secured an American trademark for comics called “The Avengers”. There were of course wonderful, sturdily steadfast hardback annuals for the British Festive Season trade, starting with 1962’s TV Crimebusters Annual and thereafter pertinent TV Comic Annuals before a run of solo editions graced Christmas stockings from 1967 to 1969: later supplemented by a brace of New Avengers editions for 1977 and 1978.

Between 1990 and 1992 Eclipse Comics/ACME Press produced a trans-Atlantic prestige comic book miniseries. Steed & Mrs. Peel was crafted by Grant Morrison & Ian Gibson with a second exploit scripted by Anne Caulfield, and that entire affair was reprinted in 2012 by media-savvy publishers Boom! Studios as a soft pilot for their own iteration which you’ll find reviewed here.

The original 90s comics tales are whimsically playful and diabolically clever but perhaps require a little backstory. When Emma Peel joined the TV show, she was a new bride, recent widow and old acquaintance of Steed’s. The motivation for bereaved martial artist/genius level chemist Emma Knight’s call to action was that her brand new husband (dashing test pilot Peter Peel) had been lost over the Amazon jungles and his loss impelled her into a life of (secret) service. The amateur adventurer’s second career ended in-world when hubby was found alive and she returned to him and the Amazonian Leopard-People he had discovered, leaving Steed to muddle along with fully trained professional British agent Tara King…

Here that marital reunion informs Morrison (Animal Man, Zenith) & Ian Gibson’s ‘The Golden Game’: a 4-act chapterplay serially comprising ‘Crown & Anchor’, ‘Hare & Hounds’, ‘Fox & Geese’ and concluding instalment ‘Hangman’. It opens six months later with Mrs Peel’s abrupt recall to duty after Miss King goes missing whilst investigating leaks at the Admiralty and suspicious doings at elite games fraternity The Palamedes Club.

When the disappearance is linked to the truly baroque murder of puzzle-obsessed founding member and key military strategist Admiral “Foggy” Fanshawe, Steed’s handler “Mother” insists he investigate but trust no one, which the super-agent imputes to mean no one currently active in the agency…

With willing and able Emma Peel back from South America, he traces a string of excessively imaginative card and boardgame-themed slayings to an old school chum who really can carry a grudge and knows how to implement stolen nuclear launch codes to a wild and weird climax with Peel ultimately saving the day and the world…

Anne Caulfield scripted fantasy-fuelled follow-up ‘Deadly Rainbow’ as Mr and Mrs Peel reunite in the scenic English village of Pringle-on-Sea – where they had their honeymoon – only to find the laws of science and nature being warped by what appear to be the Leopard People Peter had befriended in the Amazon…

With minds clouded, telepathy and prophecy running riot, zombies marching and entire bodies (not just heads) being shrunken amidst scenes of bucolic domesticity, Peter soon goes missing again. When exploitative American resource plunderers who have been deforesting the tribe’s hidden home, it’s not long before Steed comes to Emma’s call…

The breezy satire, edgy social commentary and especially the pure peril-embedded nonsense of the original shows is perfectly captured by much-missed, recently departed pioneering 2000 AD stalwart Ian (Ballad of Halo Jones, Robo-Hunter) Gibson (February 20th 1946 – December 11th 2023) who especially goes to town on the weird events of the second saga and also contributes a variant cover gallery featuring 11 playfully suspenseful images.

Emma Peel may have been a style icon of the sixties, but she was also (and still is) a fierce, potent, overwhelming example and role model for girls. Her cool intellect, varied skills and accomplishments and smooth confidence inspired – as much as action contemporary Modesty Blaise – a host of fictive imitators whilst opening up new vistas and career paths for suppressed millions of prospective and downhearted future underpaid secretaries, nurses, shopgirls and teachers and frustrated wives. Peel’s influence even briefly reshaped the most powerful symbol of female empowerment in the world as her crimebusting detective troubleshooter alternate lifestyle became the model for sales-impoverished Wonder Woman who in the late 1960s ditched powers and costumes for bullets and boutiques…

Thrilling, funny, and eternally fabulous, Emma Peel is a woman to be reckoned with and these are tales you need to read…
© 2012 StudioCanal S.A. All Rights Reserved. The Avengers and Steed & Mrs Peel are trademarks of StudioCanal S.A. All Rights Reserved.

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Biscuits Assorted


By Jenny Robins (Myriad Editions)
ISBN: 978-1-91240-82-90 (TPB)

There’s a 1944 Powell & Pressburger film called A Canterbury Tale, wherein a group of disparate, loosely ordinary associated characters weave in and out of each other’s lives for a defined period, gradually proceeding towards a shared denouement. It’s about far more than that and is really good. You should see it.

Biscuits Assorted is a bit like that, but also completely different. You should read it. It’s really, REALLY good.

Artist, teacher, Small Press artisan and author Jenny Robins is clearly a keen observer and gifted raconteur deftly attuned to nuance and ambiance and quite possibly hopelessly in love with London. Her award-winning debut graphic novel is a paean to modern living in the city, recounted through overlapping snapshots of many women’s lives in the months of ‘June’, ‘July’ and ‘August’ of a recent year (and don’t worry about which one).

If you need the metaphor explained, there are different varieties and, occasionally, they don’t do quite what it says on the tin…

Seriously though, here in captivating and compelling monochrome linework are a plethora of distinct, well-rounded individuals of differing ages and backgrounds working, playing, living, dying, risking, winning, failing and constantly interacting with each other to a greater or lesser extent. They are all united by place, circles of friends, shared acquaintances and enjoying – for once – full access to their own unexpurgated voices.

Strangers or seasoned intimates, life-long or Mayfly-momentary, this addictively engaging collection of incidents and characters share locations and similar pressures as they go about their lives, but the way in which they each impact upon one another is utterly mesmerising. I’m a bluff old British codger and I’ve been meeting these very women and girls all my life, except for those who are completely new to my white male privileged experience. Now, however, I know what they’re like and what they’ve been thinking all this time…

Moreover, it’s outrageously funny and terrifying elucidating, rude in all the right ways and places, and absolutely able to break your heart and jangle the nerves with a turn of a page.

Biscuits Assorted is a brilliant and revelatory picaresque voyage impossible to put down and deserves to become a classic of graphic literature. It’s also the most fun you can have with your brain fully engaged.
© Jenny Robins 2020. All rights reserved.

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The Wolf of Baghdad


By Carol Isaacs/The Surreal McCoy (Myriad Editions)
ISBN: 978-1-912408-55-9 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-912408-71-9

Contemporary history is a priceless resource in creating modern narratives. It has the benefits of immediacy and relevance – even if only on a generational level – whilst combining notional familiarity (could you tell the difference between a stone axe and a rock?) with a sense of distance and exoticism. In comics, we’re currently blessed with a wealth of superb material exploring the recent past and none better than this enchanting trawl through a tragic time most of us never knew of…

A successful musician who has worked with The Indigo Girls, Sinead O’Connor and the London Klezmer Quartet (which she co-founded) Carol Isaacs – as The Surreal McCoy – is also a cartoonist whose graphic gifts are regularly seen in The New Yorker, The Spectator, Private Eye, Sunday Times and The Inking Woman: 250 Years of Women Cartoon and Comic Artists in Britain. Some while ago she found great inspiration in a 2000-year old secret history that’s she been party to for most of her life.

British-born of Iraqi-Jewish parents, Isaacs grew up hearing tales of her ancestors’ lives in Baghdad: part of a thriving multicultural society which had welcomed – or at least peacefully tolerated – Jews in Persia since 597 BCE. How 150,000 Hebraic Baghdadians (a third of the city’s population in 1940) was reduced by 2016 to just 5 is revealed and eulogised in this potently evocative memoir, told in lyrical pictures and the curated words of her own family and their émigré friends, as related to Carol over her developing years in their comfortably suburban London home.

Those quotes and portraits sparked an elegiac dream-state excursion to the wrecked, abandoned sites and places of a socially integrated, vibrantly cohesive metropolis she knows intimately and pines for ferociously, even though she has never set a single foot there…

As well as this enthralling pictorial experience, the art and narrative were incorporated into a melancholy motion comic (slideshow with original musical accompaniment). That moving experience is supplemented by an Afterword comprising illustrate text piece ‘Deep Home’ (first seen in ‘Origin Stories’ from anthology Strumpet) which details those childhood sessions listening to the remembrances of adult guests and family elders, and is followed by ‘The Making of The Wolf of Baghdad’ explaining not only the book and show’s origins, but also clarifies the thematic premise of ‘The Wolf Myth’ that permeates the city’s intermingled cultures.

‘Other Iraqis’ then reveals some interactions with interested parties culled from Isaacs’ blog whilst crafting this book, whilst a comprehensive ‘Timeline of the Jews in Iraq’ outlines the little-known history of Persian Jews and how and why it all changed, before ‘A Carpet’s Story’ details 1950’s Operations Ezra and Nehemiah which saw 120,000 Jews airlifted to Israel. Wrapping up the show is a page of Acknowledgements and Suggested Reading.

Simultaneously timeless and topical, The Wolf of Baghdad is less a history lesson than a lament for a lost homeland and way of life: a wistful deliberation on why bad things happen and on how words pictures and music can turn back the years and make the longed-for momentarily real and true.
© Carol Isaacs (The Surreal McCoy) 2020. All rights reserved.

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The Misadventures of Jane


By Norman Pett & J.H.G. “Don” Freeman & various (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-167-0 (HB)

For the longest time, Jane was arguably the most important and well-regarded comic strip in British, if not World, history. The feature panel debuted on December 5th 1932 as Jane’s Journal: or The Diary of a Bright Young Thing: a frothy, frivolous gag-a-day strip in The Daily Mirror, created by freelance cartoonist Norman Pett.

Originally a nonsensical comedic vehicle, it consisted of a series of panels with embedded cursive script to simulate a diary page. The feature switched to more formal strip frames and balloons in late 1938, when scripter Don Freeman came on board whilst Mirror Group supremo Harry Guy Bartholomew was looking to renovate the serial for a more adventure- and escape-hungry audience. It was also felt that a second continuity feature – like Freeman’s other strip Pip, Squeak and Wilfred – would keep readers coming back: as if Jane’s inevitable – if usually unplanned – bouts of near-nudity wouldn’t…

Jane’s secret was skin. Even before war broke out there were torn skirts and lost blouses aplenty, but once the shooting started and Jane became a special operative of British Intelligence, her clothes came off with terrifying regularity and machine gun rapidity. She infamously went topless when the Blitz was at its worst.

Pett drew the strip with verve and style, imparting a uniquely English family feel: a joyous lewdness-free innocence and total lack of tawdriness. The illustrator worked from models and life, famously using first his wife, his secretary Betty Burton, and editorial assistant Doris Keay, but most famously actress and model Chrystabel Leighton-Porter – until May 1948 when Pett left for another newspaper and another clothing-challenged comic star…

From then his art assistant Michael Hubbard assumed full control of the feature (prior to that he had drawn backgrounds and mere male characters), and carried the series – increasingly a safe, flesh-free soap-opera and less a racy glamour strip – to its end on October 10th 1959.

This Titan Books collection added the saucy secret weapon to their arsenal of classic British comics and strips in 2009 and paid Jane the respect she deserved with a snappy black and white hardcover collection, augmented by colour inserts.

Following a fascinating and informative article from Canadian paper The Maple Leaf (which disseminated her exploits to returning ANZAC servicemen), Jane’s last two war stories (running from May 1944 to June 1945) are reprinted in their entirety, beginning with ‘N.A.A.F.I, Say Die!’, as the hapless but ever-so-effective intelligence agent is posted to a British Army base where someone’s wagging tongue is letting pre-D-Day secrets out. Naturally (very au naturally) only Jane and sidekick/best friend Dinah Tate can stop the rot…

This is promptly followed by ‘Behind the Front’ wherein Jane & Dinah invade the continent, tracking down spies, collaborators and boyfriends in Paris before joining an ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) concert party, and accidentally invading Germany just as the Russians arrive…

As you’d expect, the comedy stems from classic Music Hall fundamentals, with plenty of drama and action right out of the patriotic and comedy cinema of the day – but if you’ve ever seen Will Hay, Alistair Sim or Arthur Askey at their peak, you’ll know that’s no bad thing – and this bombastic book also contains loads of rare contemporaneous goodies to drool over.

Jane was so popular that there were three glamour style-books – called Jane’s Journal – for which Pett produced many full-colour pin-ups and paintings as well as general cheese-cake illustrations. From those lost gems, this tome includes ‘The Perfect Model’, a strip feature “revealing” how the artist first met his muse Chrystabel Leighton-Porter; ‘Caravanseraglio!’ – an 8-page strip starring Jane and erring, recurring boyfriend Georgie Porgie – plus 15 pages of the very best partially- and un-draped Jane pin-ups.

Jane’s war record is frankly astounding. As a morale booster she was reckoned to have been worth more than divisions of infantry, and her exploits were regularly cited in Parliament and discussed with complete seriousness by Eisenhower and Churchill. Legend has it that The Daily Mirror‘s Editor was among the few who knew the date of D-Day so as to co-ordinate her exploits and fullest exposures with the Normandy landings…

In 1944, on the day she went full frontal, American Service newspaper Roundup (distributed to US soldiers) went with the headline “JANE GIVES ALL” and subheading “YOU CAN ALL GO HOME NOW”. Chrystabel Leighton-Porter toured as Jane in a services revue – she stripped for “the lads” – during the war and ultimately in 1949 starred in her own feature film The Adventures of Jane.

Although a product of simpler, far-less enlightened, indubitably more hazardous times, the naively charming, cosily thrilling, innocently saucy adventures of Jane, her patiently steadfast beau Georgie Porgie and especially her intrepid Dachshund Count Fritz Von Pumpernickel are incontestable landmarks of the art form, not simply for their impact but also for the plain and simple reason that they are superbly drawn and huge fun to read if you can suspend or hold in abeyance the truly gratuitous nudity.

Don’t waste the opportunity to keep such a historical icon in our lives. You should find this book, buy your friends this book, and most importantly, agitate to have her entire splendid run reprinted in more books like this one. Do your duty, citizens…
Jane © 2009 MGN Ltd/Mirrorpix. All Rights Reserved.

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Axa Adult Fantasy Color Album


By Enrique “Enric” Badía Romero & Donne Avenell (Ken Pierce Books/Eclipse Comics)
ISBN: 0-912277-27-0 (TPB)

Born in 1930 Enrique “Enric” Badía Romero’s comics career began in his native Spain fifteen years later when he was apprenticed to popular creator Emilio Freixas. By 1949 – as “Badia” – he was drawing strips for Susy and other publications, and in 1953, launched his own magazine Alex, before going on to found publishers Ruiz Romero where he produced everything from westerns, sports, war stories and trading cards – mostly in conjunction with his brothers Jorge and Jordi. Their most memorable series were Cromos, Hombres de Lucha and Historia de la Guerra.

“Enric” began working for the higher-paying UK market in the 1960s, on strips such as ‘Cathy and Wendy’, ‘Isometrics’ and ‘Cassius Clay’ before successfully assuming drawing duties on the high-profile Modesty Blaise adventure-serial in 1970. He left in 1978 when an enticing new prospect appeared whilst he was simultaneously illustrating Modesty and Rahan with André Chéret for Franco-Belgian weekly Pif gadget. Even for the prolific artist something had to give…

Axa ran in The Sun Monday to Saturday from 14th July 1978 to her abrupt cancellation on November 16th 1986 – purportedly a victim of political and editorial intrigue which saw the strip cancelled in the middle of a story. Other than the First American Edition series from strip historian Ken Pierce and this colour collection, there has never been a definitive English language collection. It should be noted also that at the time of this book she was still being published with great success and to popular acclaim.

Back then in Britain it often appeared the only place where truly affirmative female role-models appeared to be taken seriously were cartoon sections, but even there the likes of Modesty Blaise, Danielle, Scarth, Amanda, Wicked Wanda and all the other capable ladies who walked all over the oppressor gender – both humorously and in straight adventure scenarios – lost clothes and shed undies repeatedly, continuously, frivolously and in the manner they always had…

Nobody complained (at least no one important or who was ever taken seriously): it was just tradition and the idiom of the medium… and besides, artists have always liked to draw bare-naked ladies as much as blokes liked to see them. It was even “educational” for the kiddies – who could buy any newspaper in any shop without interference, even if they couldn’t get into cinemas to view Staying Alive, Octopussy or Return of the Jedi without an accompanying adult…

Tough ’n’ sexy take-charge chicks (without clothes) were a comic-strip standard by the time the Star Wars phenomenon rekindled interest in science fiction, and the infallible old standby of scantily-clad, curvy amazons in post-apocalyptic realms never had greater sales-appeal than when The Sun – Britain’s sleaziest yet best-selling tabloid – hired Romero & Donne Avenell to produce a new fantasy feature for their already well-stacked cartoon section.

This beautifully illustrated but oddly out of kilter collection doesn’t bear much similarity in terms of tone or format to the (ostensibly) family-oriented daily strip, and features none of the regular supporting cast like long-suffering lover Matt or robotic companion Mark 10, which leads me to suspect it was created independently for a European market, perhaps as a Sunday page in Romero’s homeland or elsewhere where attitudes and mores were more liberal.

Certainly in the early 1980s Axa appeared in adult bande dessinée icon Charlie Mensuel (which reprinted many classic newspaper strips from around the world) and after that closed in Swedish publication Magnum.

Whatever their origin, the tales collected here are far stronger and more explicitly sexual in nature; occasionally coming close to being macho rape-fantasies, so please be warned as such content, no matter how winningly illustrated, will certainly offend most modern consumers.

The eponymous heroine was raised in a stultifying, antiseptic and emotionless domed city: a bastion of technological advancement in a world destroyed by war, pollution and far worse. Chafing at the constricting life of loveless living dead men, Axa broke out and, ancient sword in hand, chose to roam the shattered Earth searching for something real and true and free…

This slim oversized tome opens with Axa crossing trackless wasteland under a scorching sun until she finds a hidden grotto beneath a ruined building. The coolly sensual hidden pool is a welcome delight but harbours a ghastly monster and mutant voyeur…

Captured by a hideously scarred human degenerate Axa discovers his gentle nature but is soon abducted by his far-less sympathetic brethren who want to use her as a brood mare for their next generation. Ultimately, fate, her newfound friend and that ever-present longsword combine to effect her escape…

Resuming aimless exploration, Axa encounters a coastal village and is almost killed by wild dogs. Desperate flight takes her to a lighthouse on the promontory above the deserted town where ruggedly handsome Juame and his teenaged daughter Maria have been trapped for months. Swiftly, sexual tension between Axa and Jaume culminates in the only way it can as Maria is driven mad by jealousy she can barely comprehend. When a roving band of vicious post-apocalyptic Hell’s Angels hits town hungry for slaughter and kicks, the conflicted teen opens the tower doors for them…

The brutes casually murder her father and are intent on adding her and Axa to their string of human playthings, when a terrific storm hits and Axa breaks loose to become the bloody tool of harsh, uncompromising and final fate…

This incarnation of the warrior wanderer is certainly harder-hitting and more visceral than the British strip version and has little of the feature’s sly, dry humour, but art-lovers cannot fail to be impressed by Romero’s vibrant mixed-media illustration and imaginative, liberating page compositions.

Lush, lavish, luxurious and strictly for adventure-loving adults, Axa is long overdue for a comprehensive ethical overhaul and definitive comics collection. Is there a bold publisher out there looking for the next big thing and prepared to face a barrage of ethical vituperation?
Axa © 1985 Enrique Badia Romero. Previously © 1983, 1984 in Spanish. Express Newspapers, Ltd.

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Modesty Blaise: The Green Eyed Monster


By Peter O’Donnell & Enrique “Enric” Badía Romero (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1840238662 (Album PB)

Spanish artist Romero was a familiar presence for generations of British comics and newspaper strip readers. He died on February 15th this year with most of his work out of print and nigh forgotten. Here are two reasons why that’s not right and should be rectified as soon as possible.

Infallible super-criminals Modesty Blaise and her lethally charming, compulsively platonic, equally adept partner Willie Garvin gained fearsome reputations whilst heading underworld gang The Network. At the height of their power, they retired young, rich and still healthy. With honour intact and hands relatively clean, they cut themselves off completely from careers where they made all the money they would ever need and far too many enemies: a situation exacerbated by their heartfelt and – for their calling – controversial conviction that killing was only ever to be used as a last resort.

When devious British Spymaster Sir Gerald Tarrant sought them out, they were slowly dying of boredom in England. That wily old bird offered them a chance to get back into harness, have fun and do some good in the world. They jumped at his offer and began cleaning up society’s dregs in their own unique manner. That self-appointed crusade took decades…

From that tenuous beginning the dynamite duo went on to crush the world’s vilest villains and most macabre monsters in a succession of tensely suspenseful, inspirational action thrillers over more than half a century. The inseparable associates debuted in The Evening Standard on 13th May 1963 and, over passing decades, starred in some of the world’s most memorable crime fiction, in approximately three panels a day.

Creators Peter O’Donnell & Jim Holdaway (who previously collaborated on Romeo Brown – another lost strip classic equally as deserving of its own archive albums) crafted a timeless treasure trove of potent pictorial escapades until the illustrator’s tragic early death in 1970, whereupon Spanish artist Enrique “Enric” Badía Romero (and also occasionally John Burns, Neville Colvin & Pat Wright) assumed art duties, taking the partners-in-peril to even greater heights.

The series was syndicated world-wide and Modesty starred in prose novels and short-story collections, several films, a TV pilot, radio play, original American graphic novel from DC, an audio serial on BBC Radio 4 as well as nearly 100 comic adventures. The strip’s conclusion came on 11th April 2001 in The Evening Standard. Many papers around the world immediately began running reprints and further new cases were conceived, but British newspaper readers never saw them. We’re still waiting…

The pair’s astounding exploits comprise a broad blend of hip adventuring, glamorous lifestyle and cool capers: a melange of international espionage, crime and even plausibly intriguing sci fi/supernaturally-tinged horror fare, with ever-unflappable Modesty & Willie canny, deadly, yet all-too-fallibly-human defenders of the helpless and avengers of the wronged…

We have Titan Books to thank for collecting the saga of Britain’s Greatest Action Hero (Women’s Division), although they haven’t done so for a while now…

This volume was the first to feature Romero as sole artistic hand, following the unexpected death of Holdaway partway through ‘The Warlords of Phoenix’. To ease him into the job author O’Donnell was asked to write a lighter tale to follow up the epic. ‘Willie the Djinn’ plays well to the new artist’s strengths, and although there are echoes of a previous O’Donnell &Holdaway Romeo Brown romp, this tale of kidnapped dancing girls, oil sheikhs and military coups is a short, sweet treat, and change of pace to the usual storm of murder, intrigue and revenge.

Those elements return in ‘Green-Eyed Monster’ as the spoiled and obnoxious daughter of a British ambassador is kidnapped by South American rebels. Modesty & Willie must use all their skills to get her out of the terrorists’ clutches, escape deadly jungles and resist the overwhelming temptation to kill her themselves….

‘Death of a Jester’ closes out the volume as our antiheroes stumble across a bizarre murder that leads to another job for British spymaster Sir Gerald Tarrant. A man in Jester’s garb is impaled by a knight’s lance and thrown to lions in a caper revolving around Mediaeval Re-enactments, a band of bored and dangerous British ex-commandos and the impossible theft of the Navy’s latest super torpedo.

The infectious whimsy of the early 1970s was becoming increasingly present but under the strictly controlled conditions of prolific, ingenious O’Donnell and sleek slick Romero, Blaise & Garvin grew in stature and accomplishments to carve out a well-deserved reputation for excellence in these magnificent tales of modern adventure. Certified Gold. So bring them back please…
© 2005 Associated Newspapers/Solo Syndication.