Mata Hari


By Emma Beeby, Ariela Kristantina, with Pat Masioni & Sal Cipriano (Berger Books/ Dark Horse)
ISBN: 987-1-50670-561-3(TPB) eISBN: 987-1-50670-590-3

Until relatively recently (some would argue that should read “hopefully soon”), History has never really treated women well or even factually or fairly. When not obscured, sidelined or just written out, they have been cruelly misunderstood and misrepresented. Moreover, as we’re all painfully aware these days, a bold lie or convenient fabrication has far more veracity than simple, muddled, messy truth.

Margaretha Geertruida “Margreet” MacLeod (nee Zelle) was born on August 7th 1876 in Leeuwarden (in the Dutch Netherlands) to milliner and later industrialist Adam Zelle. She was the eldest of four children raised in wealth… until her father lost it all. Margreet’s life became more troubled and remarkable after that, before she died on 15th October 1917 in front of a French firing squad.

In between, she had married, lived in the East Indies, had children she never really knew and artfully remade herself as a rather scandalous dancer and performer. Margreet adopted a stage name – Mata Hari (which means “eye of the dawn” in Malay) – and her gifts, drive and determination led to her becoming a successful courtesan in the highest circles of privileged society, with princes, ambassadors, tycoons and generals all clamouring for her attention. She was also courted by some countries – including France and Great Britain – to act as an operative in the dangerous world of espionage.

After a chequered life during a volatile period when European society seemingly embraced and welcomed strong independent women, she was accused on meagre evidence of spying for the Germans during the Great War, and rapidly convicted. Deemed to have caused the death of 50,000 men, and the moral ruination of countless others, Mata Hari became and remains the purest and most enduring symbol of the deadly, cunning femme fatale…

However, in the last few decades, serious historical investigation has cast a rather different, and far fairer complexion on the mythical spy in film, song, ballet, books, musicals and all arenas of popular culture. Among the most compelling was an imaginative 5-issue miniseries from Dark Horse’s Berger Books imprint: a collaboration of writer Emma Beeby (Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, Judge Anderson), artist Ariela Kristantina (Wolverine: The Logan Legacy, Deep State, Insexts), colourist Pat Masioni and letterer Sal Cipriano.

Blending hard fact with emotive supposition and informed extrapolation, the sorry episode unfolds in the flashbacks and daydreams of a prisoner held at the Saint-Lazare Prison for Prostitutes in Paris in October 1917. Opening chapter ‘Bare Faced’ introduces Margreet as she strives and struggles to complete a book that will tell her story in her own words…

Against a backdrop of political and military manipulation resolved to make an example of her, ‘Bare Breast’ details her disastrous, life changing marriage and its terrible consequences whilst ‘Bare Heart’ relates her fight back to independence and notoriety after which ‘Bare Teeth’ moves on to the war and great love for a Russian soldier that led to her downfall in ‘Bare All’…

Real life doesn’t work the way narrative would like and the people there aren’t actors. Packed with documentary photos, this contemplative fable carefully acknowledges all that frustrating complexity in an account scrupulously devoid of heroes and outright villains whilst exposing centuries of institutionalised injustice in an extremely entertaining manner. It closes with a series of textual Codas (offering even more intimate photos of the woman and her times) with ‘Mata Hari’s Conviction’, relating oddities and strange events regarding the disposal of her body plus an authorial opinion by Beeby in ‘Was Mata Hari a Martyr?’…

In both word and imagery, Mata Hari is a potently beguiling, evocatively uncompromising retelling of a murky and long-misconceived moment in history any student of the past and lover of comics will adore.
Mata Hari text and illustrations © 2019 Emma Beeby and Ariela Kristantina. All rights reserved.

Horizontal Collaboration


By Navie & Carole Maurel, translated by Margaret Morrison (Korero Press)
ISBN: 978-1-91274-001-7 (HB)

With its world-shaking reordering of society and all the consequent, still-felt repercussions World War II remains very much in people’s minds. This translated European tale is a potent counterpoint to the usual commemorative bombast, devoting much-delayed attention to the ever-dwindling last of “The Few”. Here, as well as the valiant men, we see acknowledgment of the nigh-universally disregarded contributions of women caught up in the conflict, not to mention unsung heroes of all nations who were drawn into the horror.

Horizontal Collaboration is not about heroes. It deals with people: civilians and fugitives, women and invading occupiers: the ones who are seldom celebrated but who also confronted the triumph of global darkness, all in their own small, unnoticed way…

France was taken by the Nazi war machine in 1940: occupied and partitioned on June 22nd, with the Germans holding the industrial north and central regions whilst Marshal Philippe Pétain’s puppet protectorate Régime de Vichy was allowed to govern the south and pacified colonies such as Algeria. When France was liberated in September 1944, a wave of retaliation began against those who “cooperated” with the conquerors in all ways great and small.

A sordid time of scores (real, imagined or fabricated) settled and cruel abuses arbitrarily inflicted on guilty and innocent alike plagued France for years afterwards. The most telling indignities were perpetrated upon women – wives, mothers, sisters or strangers – accused of fraternising with or giving comfort to the enemy. Such liaisons were called “Collaboration Horizontale” and even the most nebulous or unfounded accusation carried a heavy and immediate price…

Just about now, a grandmother listens to her granddaughter unload about her current amour and her mind drifts back to the war and a secret she has never shared with anyone…

In 1942, a large apartment house on Passage de la Bonne-Graine is filled with families, all dealing with the German conquerors in their own way. Despite the change in their fortunes, they have not found any way to overcome the petty grudges and ingrained social difficulties that have always kept them at odds with each other… even before war broke out.

Surly aged crone Madame Flament is rude to everyone. She spends all her time complaining or disappearing into the cellars to feed her cats. What secret is she really hiding?

Old Camille is deemed the man of the house, but he is gentle, ineffectual and blind: blithely letting life go on around him and apparently noticing nothing. His wife is the building’s concierge. Brusque matron Martine Andrae is a snooping busybody loudly championing decency and family values, but her home life is nothing to envy and her sharp tongue scores points off family, friends and foes indiscriminately. She despises the younger women and their families in the building, especially pretty Joséphine Borgeon who makes ends meet through her theatre act. Surely, everybody knows what she really does to survive?

Also viewed with suspicion is young mother Rose. Her husband Raymond has been taken away to work for the Nazis, so his friend and neighbour Leon – a gendarme – has been keeping a “friendly” eye on her, even though his own pregnant wife Judith keeps clumsily falling and hurting herself and certainly needs proper supervision…

Strangely boyish artist Simone keeps to herself as much as she can and – originally – there was also a Jewess called Sarah Ansburg and her little son. They somehow disappeared before the Germans could find them. That must be the reason Abwehr intelligence officer Mark Dinklebauer spends so much time in the building. It couldn’t possibly be that he has fallen in love with one of the occupants, or that this most forbidden of passions is dangerously, illegally reciprocated, can it?

Crafted with deft incisiveness by media writer and historian (Mademoiselle) Navie and rendered in a beguiling style (powerfully reminiscent of Will Eisner in his later years) by seasoned illustrator/author Carole Maurel (Luisa: Now & Then, Waves, L’apocalypse selon Magda), this is a meditative but uncompromising glance at ordinary lives under relentless pressure: an ensemble piece of human drama taking as its heart and centre point an unlikely flowering of true but doomed love…

Moving, beguiling and evocatively rewarding, Horizontal Collaboration is a beautiful tragedy and potent reminder that love takes no prisoners while enslaving all it touches.
© Editions Delcourt – 2017. All rights reserved.

Marie Curie – The Radium Fairy


By Chantal Montellier & Renaud Huynh translated by Lara Vergnaud (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: digital-only publication

I’ve waited ages (well, since March 2017, but I’m old and joyless and my days are clearly pretty limited now) for this superb book to be picked up by a print publisher, but now I’m just going to plug it again it anyway and assume that as you’re reading this on a computer, you can make the leap to seeing comics that way too.

And yes, I know all about the smell and feel of proper books. I feel that way too, but we’re killing more trees than we need to. Just think of it as portable fun you can’t crumple or rip…

Originally released across Europe in 2011, Marie Curie La Fée du Radium was produced in collaboration with the Curie Museum and the Cité des sciences et del ’industrie (part of Universcience), with educator, illustrator and bande dessinée creator Chantal Montellier (Odile et les crocodiles, Les Damnés de Nantes).

The book summarises and dramatizes via graphic narrative a most astounding life, prior to research scientist, educator and museum curator Renaud Huynh’s (La fantastique histoire du radium) extensive and copious Timeline which traces the triumphs, tribulations and legacy of Marie Sklodowska-Curie (1867-1934): thus far the only woman to win two Nobel Prizes.

The critical comics component kicks off in Stockholm on September 4th as aging Marie Curie works on a speech; preparing to receive that second cherished accolade. Thinking back, she pictures her departed husband Pierre Curie. Their joint isolation of the element they named Polonium after her place of birth was a grand achievement but doesn’t make up for her years of struggle for acceptance or his tragic accidental death so early in their marriage…

And so, briefly, concisely and sans fanfare unfolds a true tale of brilliance applied, adversity overcome and persistence rewarded. Today, Curie is credited with adding two elements to the Periodic Table – Radium was the other one – and venerated for her unceasing researches. She was also the first woman allowed to teach at the prestigious Sorbonne, but for much of her life had to overcome entrenched patriarchal attitudes and oppression whilst being vilified in the media and by wider society for her “scandalous” personal life… and generally just for being an uppity female who didn’t know her place.

Isn’t it great how much everything has changed since then? (I am of course waiting for my own Nobel for the isolation of Sarcastium…)

This small but powerful digital-only tome concludes with that large and detailed Timeline. Huynh’s pictorial essay is packed with photographic illustrations, cartoons and clippings combining to encapsulate and clarify Curie’s life and achievements. It is all deconstructed and précised in chapters entitled 1867/1895 Warsaw-Paris’, ‘1896/1905 A Scientific Dream’, ‘1906/1911 Hardships and Success’, ‘1912/1921 The Radium Institute’ and ‘1922/1934: An International Figure’, before concluding with an ‘Epilogue’ revealing how 60 years after her death, Marie Curie’s ashes were transferred to the Pantheon (resting place of the nation’s greatest citizens). She was the first woman to be accorded this honour based solely on her own merits…

Making learning fun, Marie Curie – The Radium Fairy is a potent and powerful inspiration, venerating one of history’s most dedicated scientists: one every youngster of any age should know.
© 2016 – DUPUIS – Chantal Montellier & Renaud Huynh. All rights reserved.

The Cabbie volume 1


By Marti, with an introduction by Art Spiegelman (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-4504 (HB/Fantagraphics) 978-0874160420 (Album PB Catalan Communications)

Although out of print since 1987, in 2011 Fantagraphics rescued from relative obscurity one of the darkest yet most grimly illuminating classics of European cartooning in this remastered and augmented reissue of The Cabbie: a stylish, nightmarish psycho-sexual noir thriller that has as much seedy kick now as it had when first translated by Catalan Communications…

Now as the macabre maestro has died, my conscience prompts me to pay for neglecting such wonderful comics and it’s only right we should pause to revisit his greatest achievement. Maybe some publisher will endeavour to bring some of his other dark wonders – like Doctor Vertigo, Propaganda Moderna, crime fantasy-thriller Calvario Hills, Cien dibujos por la libertad de Prensa or Terrorista – to a wider international audience.

Marti Riera Ferrer (1955 – 19th January 2024) was born in Barcelona during the heyday of fascist rule. He studied at the Massana School of Arts and Crafts where his efforts coincided with the Generalissimo’s death, and from 1975 to 1979 a liberalisation saw “Marti” creating comics for alterative magazines like Rock COMIC and Star.

From its launch in 1979 he also began contributing to apocalyptic iconoclast El Vibora: short stories and series such as Tony Nuevaola and – with Rodolfo – Lola Lista contra los Nada. These efforts brought international interest and Marti began appearing in Raw and Drawn & Quarterly. Il TaxistaThe Cabbie – began in 1982 and he episodically added to the canon over succeeding years, and although semi-retired from the early Nineties he continued generating other material at his own pace for the magazine Makoki and Tobalina. These tales varied from erotic fiction to general illustrated fare.

Dick Tracy is one of the most well-known strips on Earth and the super-cop’s contributions to the art form are many and indisputable. They occurred over many decades and the medium of graphic narrative grew up with it. Imagine the effect instant exposure – or overexposure – to such an uncompromising, bombastic, iconic property on the artists of a nation where free-expression and creative autonomy was suppressed for generations. That’s what happened when the death of General Franco (who had held Spain in a fascistic time-warp from his victory in April 1939 until his death in November 1975) opened up and liberalised all aspects of Spanish life. When Marti saw the strip he was changed for life…

As Art Spiegelman says in his introduction, “decades of political and social repression gave way to a glorious eruption of creativity that allowed a full-fledged counterculture to come to life at just about the same time that America’s “Love Generation” gave way to what Tom Wolfe labelled the “Me Generation.””

How odd yet fitting then that an American symbol of “The Establishment” so enchanted and captivated young cartoonist Marti Riera that he assimilated every line and nuance to create a bleak, stripped-down and extremely angry homage detailing the tribulations of a seedy, desperate taxi-driver trapped in an abruptly vanished past and prey to a world at once free and dangerous, ungoverned and chaotic…

Driving around the seediest part of town our hero picks up a high-rolling gambler who’s just won big, but the driver’s night goes horribly wrong when a knife-wielding thief hijacks the cab and robs his passenger. Luckily, the Cabbie can handle himself and he quickly, brutally subdues the thug.

Our protagonist is a decent, hard-working man who lives with his ailing mother, humouring her talk of a mysterious inheritance, and allowing her to keep the embalmed cadaver of his father in the spare bedroom, but he’s tragically unaware that his citizen’s arrest will have terrible repercussions for them both. When the son of the thief he captured is released from prison, the ingrate immediately begins a grim campaign of retribution against the Cabbie that creates a maelstrom of tragedy, degradation and despair.

This is a harsh, uncompromising tale of escalating crime and uncaring punishments: blackly cynical, existentially scary and populated with a cast of battered, desolate characters of increasingly degenerate desperation. Even the monsters are victims, but for all that The Cabbie is an incredibly compelling drama with strong allegorical overtones and brutally mesmerizing visuals.

Any mature devotee of comics should be conversant with Marti’s superb work, and with a second volume out there and the hope of digital editions (One bloody Day!), hopefully we soon all will be…
The Cabbie (Taxista) © 2011 Marti. Introduction © 2011 Art Spiegelman. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books.

The Lincoln Brigade


By Pablo Durá, Carles Esquembre & Ester Salguero, translated/edited by Andrea Lorenzo Molinari (Caliber Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-63529-822-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

I’m glad my parents are dead.

Their generation thought that they had dealt with fascism so their children wouldn’t have to, but every day it looks like that kind of intolerance is hardwired in some of us and never goes away. Maybe we simply need to be as ruthless and unforgiving as the foe if we want the insanity to finally end.

At least there are still plenty of people willing to fight and keen to share warnings from the past in books like this digital clarion call.

Preceded by an contextualising Introduction by Josephine Nelson – Commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and daughter of Abraham Lincoln Brigade leader Steve NelsonThe Lincoln Brigade is a brief but powerful account ruminating on what 3,015 mostly white, largely second-generation European American, passionately Communist volunteers of the 17th (latterly 58th) battalion of the XV International Brigade experienced during the heroic but doomed struggle to defend Republican Spain from Franco and his Nazi allies in the Spanish Civil War (17th July 1936 -1st April 1939). That skilfully managed proxy conflict is now considered by many historians as a test run for World War II: something certain Russian asshats know very well…

The struggle is seen through the eyes of Oliver Law – one of the few black comrades of the “Lincoln Brigade”. Texas born Law (October 23rd 1900 – July 9th 1937) served in the 24th Infantry Regiment, US Army: a professional soldier in a “coloured unit” stationed on the Mexican border. He served efficiently and with honour from 1919-1925 and on mustering out moved gradually north via Indiana and Chicago, finding jobs as a cement worker, taxi driver, restaurateur and dock worker.

Law’s experiences led to him becoming a labour organiser and member of the American Communist Party. As the Great Depression progressed, he was a member of the International Labor Defense movement employed by the Works Project Administration. Moments of early activism are observed as he meets legendary, inspirational African American freedoms fighter Harry Haywood (February 4th 1898 – January 4th 1985) and faces strike-breaking cops beside equally fervent allies of all colours.

In 1936, Benito Mussolini ordered an invasion of Ethiopia in one of the first overt acts of fascist expansionist colonialism and Law realised – as did so many others across the world – that he would have to fight the rise of a tyranny even greater than that he and his kind faced at home. When Spain erupted into chaos with Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde leading the army (supported by Nazi/Italian National Fascist Parties) in revolt against the democratically elected government, Law and thousands like him volunteered to fight for the embattled Republic.

In this fictionalised account of events by Pablo Durá (Original Sins, Tales of Rogues) illustrated by Carles Esquembre (Lorca – un poeta en Neueva York) and colourist Esther Salguero we see how Law – like so many others – had to sneak across neutral Europe into Spain by pretending to be a tourist or else face arrest by his own government. Like most nations the USA and Britain had signed a non-intervention treaty Italy and Germany were happy to flout…

What comes next is grim, tragic, stupid and shameful as the daily grind of driven idealists betrayed by their own supposed allies and cut down as much by indifference and ineptitude as enemy action lead to Law’s swift rise as a soldier and untimely death. In the course of his duties the Texan advances to Commander of the Machine Gun Company and before his death was for a brief moment the official Commander of the whole Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Of the approximately 3000 Americans he so briefly led, 681 were killed in action or died of wounds or sickness…

Oliver Law commanded the first fully-integrated unit of American soldiers in combat 10 years before white and black US soldiers were in 1948 forcibly made to serve together by Presidential decree of Harry S. Truman

It’s all here for you to see and you really should, as it’s delivered with coldly emphatic understatement and clinically clear authenticity: blurring fact with myth and history with extrapolation in the same compelling, upsetting manner as Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, or in graphic novels like Paco Roca, Rodrigo Terrasa & Astiberri’s El abismo del olvido (The Abyss of Forgetting), Mónica Montanés’ Different: A Story of the Spanish Civil War Picture Book or Vittorio Giardino’s epic No Pasaran! trilogy.

Like all those, this too is a book anyone unhappy with the way things are should peruse and ponder upon.
© 2020 Pablo Durá and Carles Esquembre. All Rights Reserved.

Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery (10th Anniversary edition)


By Mat Johnson & Warren Pleece, with Clem Robbins (Berger Books/Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-564-4 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-50670-591-0

What’s prejudice? How does bigotry and unthinking fear and hatred of otherness work? What happens when haters can’t tell the difference between “us” and “them”?

Those are frankly disturbing and astonishing questions first asked in 2008 in an Original Graphic Novel released by DC’s Vertigo imprint which made a lot of noise and changed some lives. The book won acclaim and awards and its subject matter started conversations in exactly the right places: classrooms where it became a selected text for high schools and colleges. The questions have not gone away and the issues have not been resolved but the book and its sequel remain to carry on asking them.

This 10th Anniversary edition reprints the original tale in all its moody monochrome glory, backed up by a contextualising Author’s Note (‘I grew up a black boy who looked white’) and Afterword plus a copious sketchbook section featuring designs by Warren Pleece and ‘Reading Group Guide/Questions & Topics for Discussion’.

The tale itself is set in the segregationist South of the early 1930s and opens at a social gathering in Tuscaloosa with families all cheerfully gathering to see a black boy strung up. As the attendees patiently queue for a picture with the “strange fruit”, a newcomer takes their names and addresses. It’s only when the commemorational photographer denies hiring him that Zane Pinchback of (New York City’s African American newspaper) The New Holland Herald realises that he’s pushed his luck and needs to run for his life now.

Sadly, however, not before a visiting bigwig from the Ku Klux Klan gets a good look at him and starts wondering…

Safely back north of the Mason-Dixon Line, Pinchback’s latest headline grabber upsets liberals and shames the perpetrators, but the journalist is still unhappy. His exposés change nothing and he feels a fraud: a proud black man who makes a living pretending to be white. He can’t even use his own name – hence his byline “Incognegro” – or face on his widely syndicated columns: that would instantly negate the genetic advantage of a negro who can “pass” for white. Things are liberal enough in Manhattan that he and his debonair wastrel pal Carl can intermingle with most folk and go drinking in swish clubs, but Zane knows things can go bad easily enough and resolves to quit and go legit…

His editor staunchly refuses to accept, instead offering him a deal: one more undercover assignment. He’s certain Zane will accept. The negro jailed in Tupelo, Mississippi accused of killing a white woman is someone he’s known his entire life. Heading off in a hurry and readying himself to play the high stakes game of his life, Zane has no idea how complex and convoluted this job will be, or that blithely incautious Carl has invited himself along to a place where his kind of playful idiocy has lethal consequences…

Author Mat Johnson took inspiration from his own childhood and exploits and activities of Walter White (ultimately Chief Exec of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) who began his career investigating lynchings because of the same genetic quirk as Zane Pinchback.

Still available in hardcover, trade paperback, digital editions and even in the original DC/Vertigo edition, Incognegro is smart, funny where it can be and devastatingly effective whenever it needs to be. As well as the racial injustice so savagely skewered here, this is a cunning and engrossing murder mystery with plenty of twists, which even finds room to have a stab at the still largely unaddressed problems of women’s independence and transgender acceptance. If you love great storytelling underpinned by real-world issues, this is something you must see.
Incognegro ™ & © 2008, 2018 Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece. All rights reserved.

Billie Holiday


By José Muñoz & Carlos Sampayo, translated by Katy MacRae, Robert Boyd & Kim Thompson (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-093-5 (HB/Digital Edition)

Argentinian José Antonio Muñoz was born on July 10th 1942 in Buenos Aires and studied at the prestigious Escuela Panamericana de Arte de Buenos Aires, under comics geniuses Hugo Pratt and Alberto Breccia. Aged 18, he joined the prolific and prestigious Francisco Solano Lopez studio and soon his work was appearing in Hora Cero and Frontera Extra all whilst ghosting episodes of legendary serial Ernie Pike for his old tutor Pratt.

Through the Argentine-based Solano Lopez outfit, he found work on strips for UK publishing giant Amalgamated Press/IPC, but had no real feeling for the material he was producing. Moreover, like so many others, he was increasingly uncomfortable living in his homeland. Eventually (in December 1972) he was compelled to leave Argentina as the military junta tightened its totalitarian grip on the country, clamping down on free expression and the arts, as well as all forms of overt or covert dissent.

Moving to England, Spain and later Italy, in 1974 Muñoz met again fellow émigré and creative soul-mate Carlos Sampayo in Barcelona and convinced the poet, music critic, copywriter and author to try his hand at comics. The result was a stunning expressionistic noir Private Detective masterpiece of loss and regret called Alack Sinner.

Born in 1943, Sampayo grew up with all the same formative experiences as his artistic comrade and, after a similar dispiriting start (he’d tried writing and being a literary editor before resigning himself to work in advertising), moved to Spain in 1972. The pair were first introduced in 1971 when mutual friend Oscar Zarate left Argentina at the forefront of the creative exodus sparked by the rise of “the Colonels”…

Urgently urged by mentor Hugo Pratt to “do something of your own”, Muñoz & Sampayo started producing grimly gritty adventures of an ex-New York cop-turned-shamus haunting the shadows of the world’s greatest, darkest city, encountering the bleak underbelly of the metropolis and all the outcasts, exiles and scum thrown together at its margins. Alack Sinner debuted in experimental Italian anthology Alter Linus, was picked up by Belgian giant Casterman for A Suivre and latterly compiled in albums across the continent. The feature was set solidly in history, confronting issues of prejudice, bigotry and corruption head-on through shocking words and imagery. In one of their stories Sinner played merely a bit part as the pages examined the life, times and fate of one of the most ill-starred women in the history of Jazz and modern America.

And that’s where this powerfully moving biography finds us…

Originally translated and published by Fantagraphics in the early 1990s, NBM’s Billie Holiday takes us into the heart and soul of the doomed and self-destructive nightingale whose incredible voice was all-but-lost to the world for decades before kinder, more evolved ears of all colours rescued her works from oblivion. This epic tome dissects her life and influence through the eyes of distant observers, opening with Francis Marmande’s essay ‘Billie Holiday: Don’t Explain’ providing a fact- and photo-packed biographical appreciation of the singer in her heyday.

Eleanora Holiday – also known as Billie and “Lady Day” – was born April 7th 1915, and died July 17th 1959. In between those dates she won many fans and earned tons of money, but it never bought her acceptance in a world where black skin provoked revulsion, cruelty and smug superiority. It didn’t even buy her protection from New York cops who considered her a prostitute made good, and an uppity subhuman who never knew her proper place…

Billie lost money as quickly – or even faster – as she earned it: to unscrupulous friends and management, or corrupt officials, although most of it was frittered away by the succession of cheating, brutal men she was hopelessly drawn to and whom she could never resist.

A short, stark story of graphic flair offering many powerful full-page images, the tale begins in 1989 as a journalist is assigned to write a feature commemorating the 30th anniversary of a Jazz singer. He’s never heard of Billie Holiday but is good at his job and starts digging…

He reads about a poor black girl raped as a child and forced into child prostitution who (almost) escaped a commonplace fate by singing. She became successful, but never dodged the traps and pitfalls of her life: booze, drugs, sleazy men, manipulative bosses and her own seeming hunger for conflict. Even so, the way she sang was uniquely hers and changed lives forever. She called herself Billie and always performed with a flower in her hair…

For a while the great and good came to watch and hear, and jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Lester Young came too. Their gifts also gave them limited entry to the privileged life – but never enough acceptance – but they seemed to understand. Never enough, though, to save Billie from herself.

This intensely personal interpretation is less biography and more a heartfelt paean of appreciation, channelling and exploring the hard, harsh tone of those troubled times where talented, dogged souls fought for recognition and survival at the fringes of a world determined to exploit and consume them. In that respect, no one was more exploited than Lady Day…

Also included here, ‘Jazz Sessions’ offers a stunning gallery of a dozen stark, chiaroscuric, powerfully evocative images based on scenes from Holiday’s short, sad life and dedication to the freedom of the musical form of Blues and Jazz that she graced and transformed through her vocalisations.

Moving, justifiably angry and pitifully sad, this tale holds the singer up to the light and must be read. Just remember, there’s no Happy Ever After here.
© 1991 Casterman. All rights reserved. © 2017 NBM for the English version.

Glorious Summers volume 2: The Calanque 1969


By Zidrou & Jordi Lafebre, with additional colour by Mado Peña, translated by Lara Vergnaud (Europe Comics)
No ISBN: Digital edition only

It’s close (OMG! LESS THAN A WEEK!) to the most stressful and commercialised event of the singleton calendar for unattached people who wish they weren’t, so let’s look at what all that amorous manoeuvring and romantic strategizing is supposed to lead to as perfectly depicted in a sublime and delightful family feast of “Happy Ever Afters”…

Until comparatively recently, comics in the English-speaking world mostly countenanced comedic or numerous adventure sub-genres (crime, superhero, horror, sci fi), with only a small but vital niche of “mundane world” ventures, usually depicted via graphic biographies and autobiographies like They Called Us Enemy, Breakwater, Love on the Isle of Dogs, Wage Slaves or Sour Pickles offering a different feel and flavour. Even historical sagas were treated as extraordinary moments with larger-than-life characters whenever possible.

What we have never had – and still largely don’t – is a comics equivalent to general fiction, drama and melodrama. That’s not so in Japan, South Korea or Europe, where a literal “anything goes” attitude has always accommodated and nurtured human-scaled, slice-of-life tales depicting ordinary people in as many quiet as extraordinary moments. Surely it can’t be that hard to tell engaging stories in pedestrian, recognisably ordinary settings? Medical traumas, love stories, school tales and family tragedies about common folk seem to play well on various-sized screens around the world, so why not in English language comics? The closest we seem to get are comedies like John Allison’s superb Giant Days (which I really must review soon)…

People being people is more than enough for Europeans. There apparently is an insatiable appetite for everyday events aimed at properly “mature readers”, joyfully sans vampires, aliens or men in tights. These even have sub-genres of their own. For example, there’s a wealth of superb material just about going on holiday. So, since our own Government-in-Absentia have ensured that it’s now all-but-impossible for any UK-based citizens to pop across and have une petite vacances in Europe, let’s stare & glare covetously at them having a good time. After all, over there holidays are an inalienable right, and they have some simply fabulous tales about a simple break. This one is probably amongst the best you’ll ever see…

An absolute exemplar of fantasy vacations made real, Glorious Summers: Southbound! (1973) was a nostalgia-drenched confection by Zidrou and regular collaborator Jordi Lafebre: a sublime example of idyllic group memory made into graphic sorcery in an everyday account utterly unafraid to temper humorous sweetness and light with real-world tragedy and suspense.

Perhaps some context is in order. Summer holidays – “Midi” – are a big deal in France and Belgium. The French divide into two tribes over the annual rest period, which generally lasts an entire month. Juilletistes only vacation in July, wielding dogmatic facts like rapiers to prove why it’s the only way to take a break. They are eternally opposed, heart, soul, and suntan lotion, by majority faction the Aoûtiens, who recharge their batteries in August whilst fully reciprocating the suspicion, disdain and baffled scorn of the early-leavers. Many European sociologists claim the greatest social division today is not race, religion, gender, political affiliation or whether to open boiled eggs from the top or the bottom, but when summer holidays begin and end…

Les Beaux Étés 1: Cap au Sud! was first in a string of family visits that began in 2015 courtesy of scripter Benoît “Zidrou” Drousie and Spanish illustrator Jordi Lafebre. Drousie is Belgian, Brussels-born in 1962 and was a school teacher prior to quitting marking books in 1990 to begin making them. His main successes include school dunce series L’Elève Ducobu, Petit Dagobert, Scott Zombi, La Ribambelle, Le Montreur d’histoires, the revival of Ric Hochet, African Trilogy, Léonardo, Shi and many more. His most celebrated and beloved stories are this memorable sequence and 2010’s Lydie, both illustrated by Lafebre.

That gifted, empathically sensitive illustrator and art teacher was born in Barcelona in 1979 and has created comics professionally since 2001, first for magazines like Mister K, where he limned Toni Font’s El Mundo de Judy. He found regular work at Le Journal de Spirou, creating the romance Always Never and collaborated with Zidrou on La vieille dame qui n’avait jamais joué au tennis et autres nouvelles qui font du bien, Lydie, and La Mondaine.

A combination of feel-good fable and powerful comedy drama, Glorious Summers depicts memories of an aging couple recalling their grandest family moments, beginning with a momentous vacation in 1973 where their four kids nearly lost their parents….

Here however, second volume The Calanque focuses on August 1969 as pregnant Maddie Faldérault (soon to deliver precociously hyperactive Paulette AKA Peaches) tries to amuse her three impatient kids whilst hubby Pierre frantically puts finishing touches to his latest comic strip. It’s a regular ritual before his month off, but this time less annoying as it’s also his first work as a named creator rather than an anonymous ghost artist for others. Apparently the world is finally ready for a four-armed cowboy gunfighter…

Their kids are immune to bedtimes and indulge in time-honoured holiday rituals like shouting, fighting and singing odd songs, before Pierre downs his brushes. Now the annual Faldérault escape from gloomy Brussels for a month in sun-drenched France can start.

Only… on the way they need to see his dad. Pépé Buelo moved to Brussels when General Franco took over Spain. He made a good life as bricklayer and husband, but now he’s on his own and a little lonely…

Eventually, the family set off with introspective toddler Louis reading, drawing and constantly sharing his far from limited knowledge of where babies come from, even as self-conscious oldest girl Jolly-Julie anxiously ponders life without bathrooms and in-betweener Nicole tells everyone they meet that mummy is going to be a mummy again. As they motor south in the dark – they left really, really late – they play their annual game of deciding where they’re going by solving riddles because planned destinations and pre-booked rooms are for wimps…

True free spirits, they pick up a hippie hitchhiker and scare him witless with their laid back attitudes – especially teasing Jolly-Julie’s reticence to use nature as a restroom. When he drops out they resume southern roaming and finally decide to camp in a shady wood for the night. In the morning the family Faldérault realise their error as elderly French couple Rufus and Ramona discover they have Belgians in the back garden…

After a few lovely days as guests who can’t politely escape, Pierre and Maddie learn that Rufus knows the perfect spot for travellers to enjoy their break, directing them to a hidden cove on the sea coast. It’s beautiful: an idyllic cliff-screened rustic paradise with a ramshackle fishing hut just ready to be temporarily occupied. Rufus even provides a guide in the form of his exuberant older brother – aging fisherman Marius.

What follows is timeless weeks of wonder and unforgettable explorations on endlessly sunny days, with local villagers taking the wanderers to heart and welcoming them to a taste of rustic heaven. Even the Americans landing on the moon or the Tour de France victory of Belgian Eddie Merckx can’t compare…

Ultimately the real world calls them back and the holidaymakers pack up for home. Awaiting them is bad news for Pierre, a new job for Maddie and a rainy grey hometown. One clear sign of normality resuming comes as they find a dog abandoned by the roadside, but brilliantly and boldly they turn that traumatic event into a lasting positive…

This tale is another beautifully rendered and realised basket of memories stitched seamlessly together. It’s funny, sweet and charming whilst delivering painful blows you never see coming. There aren’t any spectacular events and shocking crises and that’s the whole point…

If you’re British – and old enough – this series (six translated albums thus far, plus a French omnibus edition) will echo revered family sitcoms like Bless This House or Butterflies and generational ads starring the “Oxo Family”. (If that description doesn’t fit you, I pity your browsing history if you look up any of that…). The rest of you in need of an opening (but unfair) comparator could break out the Calvin and Hobbes collections and re-examine the bits with his embattled parents when the kid’s out of the picture…

Lyrical, laconic, engagingly demure, and debilitatingly nostalgic, this holiday romance is sheer visual perfection wrapped in sharp dialogue and a superbly anarchic sense of mischief. Vacations are built of moments and might-have-beens, packaged here in compelling clips making the mundane marvellous.
© 2018 -DARGAUD BENELUX (Dargaud-Lombard s.a.) – ZIDROU & LEFEBRE, LLC. All rights reserved.

Highlands Books 1 & 2 (of 2)


By Philippe Aymond, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-110-1 (Album PB/Digital edition Bk 1) 978-1-80044-111-8 (Album PB/Digital edition Bk 2)

Robert Burns was born on January 25th 1759 in Alloway. His father was a farmer who went to great lengths to ensure his children were properly educated. Schooled in Classics, French and Latin, Robert began his creative writing at age 15. He led a successful, tempestuous life – particularly favouring boozy carousing and roistering escapades with the ladies – and died in 1796 aged 37. As well as dialectical and vernacular poetry, Burns preserved traditional Scottish songs and folklore and is more popular today than he has ever been. He is the only poet in history to have his own globally celebrated holiday, with his birth anniversary an affair universally honoured by food, drink, recitations and well-loved scary stories.

Of course, he’s just the tip of a vast iceberg of Scots raconteurs who have used their cultural and historical heritage to tell astounding stories: ranging from Walter Scott and John Buchan to Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. Their collective efforts have created an Hibernian meta-reality inspiring countless others…

One such is the epic historical drama under review today…

Born in Paris on February 3rd 1968 Philippe Aymond studied visual arts at the University of Paris. In 1989, after taking a Master’s Degree, he was pushed by comics veteran Alexandre-Nicholas Coutellis (Goimbax, le VRP Masqué, La dame de Singapour, Chuck Dougherty, le Privé, Tanguy et Laverdure, Le Vagabond des Limbes, Man, Super-héros Polyvalent, Bienvenue à Welcome Land) toward a career in bande dessinée.

Aymond met Jean-Claude Mézières (Valerian, Bill le Sheriff, Valerian et Laureline, Les Aventures de Latex, Lady Polaris, and Valerian!!) who offered him a place in the studio he shared with Pierre Christin (who also did the world-changing Valerian and so much more). Aymond worked with Hughes Labiano, Philippe Chapelle & Christin on Canal Choc until 1992 and two years later he & Christin co-created L’Homme qui Fait le Tour du Monde, following up in 1997 with Le Voleurs de Villes and adventure series Les 4X4.

He teamed with Laurent-Frédéric Bollée on Apocalypse Mania from 2001-2010, all the while supplementing his illustration career as colourist on other features and one-offs. Aymond has drawn political thriller Lady S since 2005 and graduated to writing with this historical drama in 2012. He has since expanded his oeuvre by adding to the canon of continental legend with Les Nouvelles Aventures de Bruno Brazil and his own creation Black Program (tomes 1 & 2 released in 2019 and 2020 respectively).

Written drawn and coloured by Aymond, Highlands Book 1: The Portrait of Amelia plunges head-on into epic romance territory as a young artist freshly back from Italy is hired by Gordon Menmuir, Duke of Paxton. Joseph Callandar is in fact returning to his Highlands home, but his abrupt arrival stirs up long-stewing animosities amongst powerful clan lords.

Menmuir of Clan Grant is politely genteel but adamantly neutral politically, whilst generally in opposition to powerful, violently pro-English laird Robert MacTallan. It is the summer of 1743 and the clans are in turmoil: split between support of Jacobite Pretender “Bonnie Prince Charlie” and obeisance to King George II of England, sovereign of a Kingdom officially United since the Act of Union in 1707.

As Paxton’s artist in residence had joined King George’s Court in London, MacTallan planned to plant his own son Angus as a replacement at the Duke’s castle, gaining an advantageous position to glean secrets. Instead Paxton belatedly and covertly dragooned Callandar for the post, with his new position at Blackwater Castle delaying exposure of Paxton’s son-&-heir William as a passionate Jacobite activist. There reluctantly at best, Joseph meets Menmuir’s daughter Amelia and his life is forever changed…

The commoner is a gifted artist who has come home concealing secrets of his own, and as he reacquaints himself with old friends – like former patron Dr Murdoch – he can’t help but feel the tense undercurrent of rebellion festering in the beautiful hills and Lochside villages. When he stumbles into Amelia being kidnapped he becomes an inadvertent hero by rescuing her… and then drawing a portrait/wanted poster of the perpetrator.

By January 1744, Callandar is fully ensconced at Blackwater Castle, working on Paxton’s official portrait, but blithely unaware that more than one of the close family retinue has dark plans for him. By May, myriad tensions build as petty plots spiral and converge after Amelia makes amorous overtures to the painter but can’t get past his tragic secret grief. When William shames and endangers the whole family by declaring his Jacobin loyalties at a Royal party, “below stairs” a loyal retainer sets in motion a scheme that will see both Joseph Callandar and Lady Amelia face trial for sedition, seduction and treason with horrific consequences for all concerned…

Highlands Book 2: The Survivors of Blackwater

After a shocking cliffhanging denouement, the end of the saga opens at Loch Lochy on March 22nd 1745. English troops are on the move through the Highlands and death trails in their wake. William Menmuir leads a band of rebel/outlaws and prepares for the imminent landing of “The King across the water”. Dr Murdoch dutifully attends Lady Amelia, as she languishes in a cell at St Andrews’ Hospital in Glasgow. She has been alternately violent or silent and semi-catatonic since she was publicly shamed as a wanton during the trial.

Everyone believes Joseph Callandar was killed that day by her brother William, but as the Highlanders plans to liberate Scotland proceed and the English fortify and advance into clan heartlands, that proves to be merely another fallacy. As the fateful summer unfolds and the liberation war falters and crashes to doom, a dead man goes out, having at last deduced how he was framed and who mut pay for the cruel manipulation and betrayal of poor Amelia…

Packed with intrigue and passion, epic action and intimate confrontations play out against a backdrop of nigh-mythic scenarios where love and vengeance drive the tale to a shattering climax on April 16th 1746, at a sodden field called Culloden…

Life goes on, however, and for Joseph and Amelia, the aftermath affords them not just final payments of debts due in moments of quiet justice, but also a fresh start in a New World…

Bold in scope and classical in delivery, Aymond’s story of love and death in war and peace is subtly engaging and crafted with powerful authenticity and visual veracity: a properly tasty scotch broth of gallic verve and panache.
© Dargaud 2012, 2013 by Aymond. All rights reserved. English translations © 2023 Cinebook Ltd.

Showcase Presents The Losers volume 1


By Robert Kanigher, Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, John Severin, Ken Barr & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3437-9 (TPB)

Team-ups are a valuable and all-but-inescapable comics standby, and war stories have always thrived by calling together strange bedfellows – none more so than this splendid composite: another woefully neglected series in today’s graphic novels marketplace. The Losers were an elite unit of US soldiers formed by amalgamating three previous war series together. Gunner and Sarge (later supplemented by the “Fighting Devil Dog” Pooch) were Pacific-based Marines, debuting in All-American Men of War #67, (March 1959) and running for 50 issues in Our Fighting Forces (#45-94, May 1959-August 1965). Captain Johnny Cloud was a native American fighter pilot who shot down his first bogie in All-American Men of War #82 (December 1960). The “Navaho Ace” flew solo until issue #115 (1966), and entered a brief limbo until the final component of the Land/Air/Sea unit was filled by Captain Storm. He was a disabled PT Boat skipper who fought on despite losing a leg and gaining a wooden prosthesis in his own eponymous 18-issue series from 1964 to 1967.

All three series were created by comic book warlord Robert Kanigher and had pretty much passed their individual use-by dates when they were seconded as guest-stars in a Haunted Tank tale (G.I. Combat #138 October 1969), but these “Losers” found a new resonance together in the “relevant”, disillusioned, cynical Vietnam years. The rather nihilistic, doom-laden antihero group assumed the lead spot in Our Fighting Forces #123 beginning a lengthy run of blistering yarns written by Kanigher and illustrated by such giants as Ken Barr, Russ Heath, Sam Glanzman, John Severin and Joe Kubert. With the tag-line “even when they win, they lose”, the team saw action all over the globe, winning critical acclaim and a far-too-small but passionate following. Although they official died during Crisis on Infinite Earths, their missions ran until OFF # 181 (October 1978) and this year marks their 55th Anniversary – or 65th for most of the individual stars.

This magnificent monochrome tome collects that introductory tale from the October 1969 G.I. Combat and the formative run of suicidal missions from Our Fighting Forces #123-150 (January /February 1970-August/September 1974). At that point comic book messiah Jack Kirby took over the series for a couple of years and made it, as always, uniquely his own. For that seminal set you must see Jack Kirby’s The Losers Omnibus (no, really, you must. That’s an order, Soljer…

Kanigher frequently used stories in established venues as a testing ground for new series ideas, and G.I. Combat #138 (October 1969) introduced one of his most successful. Illustrated by magnificent hyper-realist Russ Heath, ‘The Losers!’ saw the Armoured Cavalry heroes riding in The Haunted Tank encounter a sailor, two marines and grounded pilot Johnny Cloud: each individually and utterly demoralised after negligently losing all the men under their respective commands. Guilt-ridden and broken, the battered relics are re-inspired by tank commander Jeb Stuart who fans their sense of duty and desire for vengeance until the crushed survivors regain a measure of respect and fighting spirit by uniting in a combined suicide-mission to destroy a Nazi Radar tower…

By the end of 1969 Dirty Dozen knock-off Hunter’s Hellcats had outstayed their welcome in Our Fighting Forces and with #123 (January/February 1970) were evacuated in the epilogue ‘Exit Laughing’ which segued directly into ‘No Medals, No Graves’, illustrated by Scottish artist Ken Barr. His stunning work in paint and line had graced everything from Commando Picture Library covers, through Marvel, DC and Warren, to film, book and TV work and he continued the tale as Storm, Cloud, Gunner & Sarge sit in enforced, forgotten idleness until departing star Lieutenant Hunter recommends them for a dirty, dangerous job no sane military men would touch…

It appears Storm is a dead ringer for a British agent – even down to the wooden leg! – and the Brass need the washed-up sailor to impersonate their vital human resource. The only problem is that they want him to be captured, withstand Nazi torture for 48 hours and then break, delivering damaging disinformation about a vast commando raid that won’t be happening. The agent would do it himself but is actually dead…

And there was even work for his despondent companions as a disposable diversionary tactic added to corroborate the secrets Storm will hopefully betray after two agonising days…

Overcoming all expectation the “Born Losers” triumph and even get away intact, after which Ross Andru & Mike Esposito became the regular art team in #124 where ‘Losers Take All’ shows how even good luck is bad, after a mission to liberate the hostage king of a Nazi-subjugated nation sees them doing spectacular hard work before losing their prize to Johnny-come-lately regular soldiers…

In #125 ‘Daughters of Death’ sees the suicide squad initially fail to rescue a scientist’s children, only to blisteringly return and rectify their mistakes, However, by then the nervous tension has cracked the Professor’s mind, rendering him useless to the Allied cause. ‘A Lost Town’ opens with The Losers undergoing a Court Martial for desertion. Reviled for allowing the obliteration of a French village, they face execution until an old blind man and his two grandkids reveal what really happened in the hellish conflagration of Perdu, whilst in ‘Angels Over Hell’s Corner’, a brief encounter with a pretty WREN (Women’s Royal Navy Service) in Blitz-beleaguered Britain draws the unit into a star-crossed love story even death itself cannot thwart…

In a portmanteau tale disclosing more details of the events which created the squad, Our Fighting Forces #128 described the 7 11 War’ wherein a hot streak during a casual game of craps presages disastrous calamity for any unlucky bystander near to the Hard Luck Heroes, before Ride the Nightmare’ sees Cloud endure horrifying visions and crack up on a mission to liberate a captive rocket scientist. Then the team again become a living diversion in #130’s ‘Nameless Target’. By getting lost and hitting the wrong target, The Losers gift the Allies with their greatest victory to date…

John Severin inked Andru in OFF #131, in preparation to taking over full art chores, as ‘Half a Man’ hints at darker, grittier tales to come when Storm’s disability and guilty demons begin to overwhelm him. Considering himself a jinx, the sea dog attempts to sacrifice himself on a mission to Norway but has not counted on his own brutal will to survive. Back in London, Gunner & Sarge are temporarily reunited with ‘Pooch: the Winner’ (OFF #132 by Kanigher & Severin), prompting a fond if perilous recollection of a distant Pacific exploit against the Japanese. However, fearing their luck was contagious, the soldiers sadly decide the beloved “Fighting Devil Dog” is better off without them…

Dispatched to India in #133’s ‘Heads or Tails’, The Losers must assassinate the “the Unholy Three”: Japanese Generals responsible for untold slaughter amongst British and native populations. In sweltering deadly jungles, they only succeed thanks to the determined persistence and sacrifice of a Sikh child hiding a terrible secret. Our Fighting Forces #134 has them brutally fighting from shelled house to hedgerow in Europe until Gunner cracks. When even his partners can’t get him to pick up a gun again it takes the example of indomitable wounded soldiers to show him who ‘The Real Losers’ are…

OFF #135 began a compelling extended epic radically shaking up the team after ‘Death Picks a Loser’. Following an ill-considered fortune telling incident in London, the squad ship out to Norway to organise a resistance cell, despite efforts to again sideline one-legged Storm. They rendezvous with Pastor Tornsen and his daughter Ona and begin by mining the entire village of Helgren, determined to deny the Nazis a stable base of operations. Even after the Pastor sacrifices himself to allow villagers and Americans time to escape, the plan stumbles when the explosives fail to detonate and Storm, convinced he’s a liability, detonates the ordnance by hand. Finding only his wooden leg in flattened rubble, The Losers are further stunned when vengeful orphan Ona volunteers to take the tragic sailor’s place in the squad of Doomed Men…

The ice-bound retreat from Helgren stalls in #136 when she offers herself as a ‘Decoy for Death’, leading German tanks into a lethal ambush, after which Cloud solos in the Pacific: inspiring natives to resist the Japanese as a resurrected ‘God of the Losers’

Reunited in #138, the Bad Luck Brigade become ‘The Targets’ when sent to uncover the secret of a new Nazi naval weapon sinking Allied shipping. Once more using Ona as bait, they succeed in stunning fashion, but also pick up enigmatic intel regarding a crazy one-eyed, peg-legged marauder attacking both Enemy and Allied vessels off Norway…

Our Fighting Forces #139 introduced ‘The Pirate’, when a band of deadly reivers attack a convoy ship carrying The Losers and supplies to Norwegian resistance fighters. Barely escaping with their lives, the unit is then sent to steal a sample of top secret jet fuel but discover the Sea Devil has beaten them to it. Forced to bargain with the merciless mercenary for the prototype, they find themselves in financial and combat competition with an equally determined band of German troops who simply won’t take “nein” for an answer…

‘Lost… One Loser’ reveals Ona was with Storm at the end and is now plagued by survivor’s guilt nightmares. Almost convincing her comrades he still lives, the traumatised girl leads them on another Norway mission, again acting as a honey trap to get close to a German bigwig and secure incontrovertible proof Storm was dead when she picked up his battered, burned dog-tags…

Still troubled, Ona commandeers a plane and returns home to assassinate her Quisling uncle in #141’s ‘The Bad Penny’, only to be betrayed to the town’s German garrison and saved by the pirate who picks that moment to raid the occupied outpost. Even with other Losers in attendance, the Pirate’s rapacious rogues are ultimately triumphant but when the crippled corsair snatches Ona’s most treasured possession, that dingy dog-tag unlocks suppressed memories and Storm (this is comics: who else would it be?) remembers everything…

Answers to his impossible survival come briskly in OFF #142 as ‘½ a Man’ concentrates on the Captain’s struggle for reinstatement. Shipping out to the Far East on a commercial vessel, he’s followed by his concerned comrades whilst stumbling into an Arabian insurrection with three war-weary guardian angels discreetly dogging his heel…

Back with The Losers again in #143, Storm is soon involved in another continued saga as ‘Diamonds are for Never!’ finds the Fatalistic Five in Africa to stop an SS unit hijacking industrial diamonds for their failing war effort. However, even after liberating a captured mine, the team fail to get the gems when monkeys make off with the glittering prizes. Hot on their trail in ‘The Lost Mission’, the pursuers stumble onto a Nazi ambush of British soldiers and determine to take on their task – demolishing an impregnable riverside fortress…

Despite apparent success, the Squad are driven inland and are lost in the desert where they stumble into a French Foreign Legion outpost and join its last survivor in defending ‘A Flag for Losers’ from a merciless German horde and French traitors…

Still lost in the trackless wastes they survive ‘The Forever Walk!’ in #146, battling equally-parched Nazis for the last precious drops of water and losing one of their own to a terrifying sandstorm. ‘The Glory Road!’ then sees the sun-baked survivors encounter the last survivor of a German ambush, but British Major Cavendish is unable to differentiate between his early days as a star of patriotic films and grim reality. When a German patrol captures them all the mockery proves too much for the troubled martinet…

Again lost and without water, in #148 ‘The Last Charge’ sees The Losers save a desert princess and grant her warrior father the opportunity to fulfil a prophecy and die in glorious battle against the Nazi invaders, whilst #149 briefly reunites the squad with their long-missing former comrade before tragically separating again in ‘A Bullet for a Traitor!’

This fateful combat fury concludes with ‘Mark our Graves’ from #150 as The Losers link up with members of The Jewish Brigade (a special British Army unit) who all pay a steep price to uncover a secret Nazi supply dump. Although a superbly action-packed and deeply moving tale, it was an inauspicious end to the run and one which held no hint of the creative culture-shock that would explode onto the pages of the next instant issue when the God of American Comic Books blasted in to create a unique string of “Kirby Klassics”…

With covers by Joe Kubert, Frank Thorne and Neal Adams, this grimly efficient, superbly understated, beautifully rendered collection is a brilliant example of how war comics evolved in the 1970s, proving these stories still pack a TNT punch few other forms of entertainment can match. Surely by now there’s appetite for a revival and further volumes of this superb series?
© 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.