Category Archives: Modern Classics

Twin Spica volumes 1 & 2

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By Kou Yaginuma, translated by Maya Rosewood (Vertical)
ISBNs: 978-1-934287-84-2 & 978-1-934287-86-6

The mystery and imagination of space travel, so much a component of immediate post-World War II industrial society, returns in all its resplendent wonder and glory in this freshly translated new manga series from young talent Kou Yaginuma who first stormed to public attention with the poignant short story ‘2015 Nen no Uchiage Hanabi’ (‘2015: Fireworks’, published in Comics Flapper magazine, June 2000) before turning the subject, themes and characters into a longer epic combining hard science and fiction with lyrical mysticism and traditional school days growth pangs

2024AD: Asumi Kamogawa is a teenaged girl who has always dreamed of going into space. From her earliest moments the lonely child has gazed up at the stars with her imaginary friend Mr. Lion, staring at the heavens, and especially at the twinkling glow of Virgo and the alluring binary star Spica. An isolated, serious child, she lives with her father, a labourer who once worked for the consortium which built the space rockets for Japan’s Space Program.

In 2010, when Asumi was a year old the first Japanese space launch ended in complete disaster when the ship, dubbed Shishigō (“The Lion”), exploded and crashed to earth on the city of Yuigahama. Hundreds of people were killed and injured, including Asumi’s mother. Maimed and comatose, she took years to die and the trauma broke her grieving husband and utterly traumatised the infant Asumi.

In response to the disaster Japan founded an astronaut and space sciences training school and as the first volume opens Asumi discusses with her imaginary friend the best way to tell her dad that she has secretly taken the entrance exam. Tomoro Kamogawa is a no fan of the space program, having lost his wife, his engineering job and his pride to the race for space. He has raised his daughter alone by working two and often three menial jobs at a time for over a decade.

The problem is taken out of her hands when he opens her results letter and sees that she has been accepted for the next intake for the Tokyo National Space School. After initial resistance he surprises Asumi by not only allowing her to go, but also by giving her all his savings to pay her expenses. Arriving in Tokyo, Asumi moves into the dilapidated campus dormitory with a few other students too poor to live in private lodgings. A further surprise comes when she discovers that Shinnosuke Fuchuya, the boy who teased and bullied her all through school, has also been accepted for the Astronaut course. When questioned he grunts that he’d rather do anything other than run the family fireworks shop…

The course is heavily over-subscribed so the candidates are winnowed out by spending the first week in an adaptability stress test: three to a room, in complete isolation, taking mental and physical tests to determine how they would cope with conditions similar to an extended stay in a space capsule. Tiny Asumi (only four feet, eight inches tall) is placed with the jolly Kei Oumi and chilly, acerbic Marika Ukita whilst Fuchuya’s team is cursed with spooky, ultra-cool style-icon Shu Suzuki…

It quickly becomes clear that the tutors are being devious and the tests are actually designed to measure not just their survival capabilities but also their ability to get on in a crisis. As the week progresses tempers fray and Asumi suffers a flashback to the aftermath of The Lion’s crash…

Only thirteen teams make it through the test. However, even though she is a survivor, worse is to come for the young Asumi…

This first volume includes that painfully powerful and wistful tale‘Fireworks: 2015’, the first of five introductory stories the artist produced for Seinen (manga for older readers; mostly males aged 18-30) publication Comics Flapper. Asumi is a troubled little girl: always running away and even stealing the ashes of her mother, who has just died after years in a coma following the crash of the space rocket onto Yuigahama city.

On her travels the little girl meets a man with a lion’s head, who seems to know her teacher Suzinari. Deeply concerned for Asumi, Suzinari also has problems of her own. She still desperately misses her fiancé, who piloted The Lion and died in the tragic explosion five years previously…

‘Asumi’ is another prequel tale, showing the miserable, melancholic period immediately following the disaster. Bullied in elementary school the little stargazer runs away and gets lost in the wild woods, before chief miscreant Fuchuya heroically saves her from drowning. But were the people Asumi met just hallucinations of an oxygen-starved brain or something far more meaningful and miraculous…?

The first book ends with the vignette ‘Another Spica’ wherein wannabe manga artist Yaginuma is working part-time on a soft-drink stand one Christmas when he sees a little girl who twinkled like the stars and a man with a lion’s head…

The second volume follows space cadet Asumi as she adjusts to life in Tokyo: moving into women’s dorm “The Seagull”, making friends, starting classes and scraping by on her meager funds. An assiduous student, she nevertheless incurs the hostility of the astrophysics lecturer Professor Sano. Unknown to her Sano has bad history with her father and will seemingly do anything to thwart her dreams…

Asumi is far smaller than all the other candidates and though determined to succeed in the arduous physical and mental training incurs real problems in the swimming classes due to her near-drowning as a child. Moreover her size means she will need a custom-made pressure suit – giving Sano an opportunity to force her out by citing budget restrictions.

When this doesn’t work he steps up his campaign and really turns the screw on the unsuspecting Asumi, revealing a shocking secret about her father…

This volume also contains prequel stories of Asumi’s early life and in ‘Campanella’s Forest’ (referencing author Kenji Miyazawa’s novel Night on the Galactic Railroad) and exploring the past of the astronaut who piloted The Lion and highlighting Suzinari’s relationship with him. Meanwhile, Asumi has got lost again and stumbled upon something wonderful in the woods…

Tomoro Kamogawa is the tragic star of ‘Our Stars, Leaf Stars’. In the wake of the Lion disaster Asumi’s father was assigned by the corporation who built the ship to head the reparations committee. Guilt-wracked and himself bereaved, the devastated engineer had to visit and apologize to each and every survivor or victim’s grieving family. Meanwhile, little Asumi has found a new friend: another little girl forever scarred by the crash.

And as always the faithfully attendant Mr. Lion looks sadly on …

The volume concludes with a second ‘Another Spica’ episode as the cartoonist relates the time he worked in a shopping mall and had to dress up in a monkey suit, as that girl and that lion-headed guy simply looked on and mocked…

Twin Spica ran for eight enchanting years (September 2001 to August 2009): sixteen full volumes tracing the path of Asumi and her friends from starry-eyed students to fulltime astronauts and the saga spawned both anime and live action TV series.

This delightful comicbook epic has everything: plenty of hard science to back up the savvy extrapolation, a believable, likable cast, an enduring mystery, tender moments, isolation and teen angst, dawning true friendships, all wrapped up in a joyous coming-of-age drama with supernatural overtones and gobs of pure sentiment.

This tale reinvigorates the magical allure of the Wild Black Yonder for a new generation and is a treat no imagineer with head firmly in the clouds can afford to miss…

These books are printed in the Japanese right to left, back to front format.

© 2010 by Kou Yaganuma/Media Factory. Translation © 2010 Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 3

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By The Hernandez Brothers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-379-8

A year goes by like 365 days when you’re waiting for something really special and very often the anticipation is far headier than the eventual pay-off. Mercifully in the case of Love and Rockets: New Stories such in not the case, as the third annual volume proves to be the best yet, combining eccentric drama, bright fantasy, captivating whimsy and appalling human frailty into a package of stunning graphic intensity.

In the 1980s a qualitative revolution forever destroyed the clichéd, stereotypical ways different genres of comic strips were produced and marketed. Most prominent in destroying the comfy pigeonholes we’d built for ourselves were three guys from Oxnard, California; Jaime, Mario (occasionally) and Gilberto Hernandez.

Love and Rockets was an anthology magazine featuring slick, intriguing, sci-fi tinted hi-jinx of punky young things Maggie and Hopey – las Locas – and heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasies from the rural Central American paradise of Palomar. The Hernandez Boys, gifted synthesists all, enthralled and enchanted with incredible stories that sampled a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from Comics, TV cartoons, masked wrestlers and the exotica of American Hispanic pop culture to German Expressionism. There was also a perpetual backdrop displaying the holy trinity of youth: Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll – for which please hear alternative music and punk rock.

The result was dynamite. Mario only officially contributed on rare occasions but the slick and enticing visual forays by Jaime explored friendship and modern love whilst destroying stereotypes of feminine attraction through his fetching coterie of Gals Gone Wild and Gilberto created the hyper-real landscape of Palomar: a playground of wit and passion created for the extended serial Heartbreak Soup, in the quicksilver form of a poor Latin-American village with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast. The denizens of Palomar still inform and shape the latest tales from Beto both directly and as imaginative spurs for unassociated stories.

Everything from life death, adultery, magic, serial killing and especially gossip could happen in Palomar’s meta-fictional environs, as the artist mined his own post-punk influences in a deceptively effective primitivist art style which blended the highly personal mythologies of comics, music, drugs, strong women, gangs, sex and family using a narrative format that was the graphic equivalent to the literary discipline of Magical Realism.

Winning critical acclaim but little financial success the brothers temporarily went their own ways but a few years ago creatively reunited to produce these annual collections of new material in their particularly peculiar shared or rather, intermittently adjacent pen-and-ink universes.

This third volume commences with Gilbert’s ‘Scarlet by Starlight’ a multi-perspective narrative that appears at first to be a science fictional fable before evolving into something far more disturbing. On a distant world, a team of three earthling explorers are becoming far too intimate with the primitive yet buxom anthropoids that populate the planet and as the human relationships break down, unwise new bonds are formed with unpleasant and even harrowing results…

Savage and sexually explicit, this exploration of drives and desires takes a further step into forbidden territory when the explorers return home…

Maggie Chascarrillo – star of las Locas – takes centre stage in Jaime’s ‘The Love Bunglers Part One’, a lonely middle-aged lady, still looking for her life’s path and still an unsuspecting object of desire to the men who flock around her. But who is that particularly dangerous-looking bum stalking her?

The central portion again features Gilbert’s newest fascination: the young, rebellious and dangerously pneumatic underage Latina spitfire dubbed “Killer” – actually the juvenile character Dora Rivera – granddaughter of Palomar’s formidable Matriarch Luba (see Luba and Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 2) grown to a far more dangerous age.

As seen in the previous volume, Killer, who is slowly making her way into the exotic B-movie arena that fascinated and overwhelmed her Aunt Fritz (See also High Soft Lisp and The Troublemakers) is a highly strung creature on the verge of losing all her remaining innocence and in ‘Killer*Sad Girl*Star’ is considering remaking one of her aunt’s strangest movies whilst becoming involved in a senseless tragic crime… or is she?

Maggie’s turbulent childhood is revealed in Jaime’s startling and truly disturbing ‘Browntown’ as the Chascarrillo family move to a new city where both parents and all four kids undergo differing ordeals which reshape them forever. A note of warning: There are some heart-rending situations of child-abuse here that, although artistically valid and even necessary, are also genuinely upsetting, so please remember that this is a book strictly for mature readers.

The harrowing revelations of ‘Browntown’ lead directly into ‘The Love Bunglers Part Two’ as many of the mysteries set up in the first chapter are thrown into stark relief by the events from Maggie’s past, leading to a surprisingly warm-hearted conclusion to this deceptively hard-hitting book.

Stark, challenging, charming and irresistibly seductive, Love and Rockets: New Stories is a grown up comics fan’s dream come true and remains as valid and groundbreaking as its earlier incarnations – the cutting edge of American graphic narrative.

© 2010 Gilberto, Jaime and Mario Hernandez. This edition © 2010 Fantagraphics Books. All Rights Reserved.

Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories

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By Moto Hagio, translated by Matt Thorn (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-377-4

It’s Great Big Gift Giving Season: Win’s Christmas Recommendation: 10/10

Girls’ comics have always taken a secondary role in publishing – at least in most countries. In Japan this was the case until a new wave of female artists and writers stormed the male bastions in the 1970s transforming a very much distaff niche into a viable, autonomous marketplace, consequently reshaping the entire manga landscape in the process. At the forefront and regarded as part of a holy trinity of astoundingly gifted and groundbreaking creators is Moto Hagio. The other two, if you’re in the mood to Go Googling (and of course, other search engines are available) are Keiko Takamiya and Yumiko Oshima…)

This lovely hardback collection presents ten of her best short stories gleaned from a career than spans more than forty years, over which time she and her revolutionary compatriots created whole genres, advanced the status of fantasy, horror and science fiction tales, reinvented and perfected the shōjo (“girl’s story”) form, and introduced a degree of literacy, symbology, authority and emotional depth to the medium that has gone on to transform comics in Japan and globally.

Editor, translator and cultural ambassador Matt Thorn has contributed an informative historical treatise on Japan’s comic world and those revolutionary comics creators (thoroughly annotated) as well as providing a far-reaching, moving and engrossing interview with the artist and academic herself.

Although her most popular works are generally science fictional (another arena where she broke new ground in such sagas as ‘They Were Eleven!’, ‘Marginal’ and ‘Otherworld Barbara’), socially probing human dramas like ‘Mesh’ and ‘A Savage God Reigns’ explored previously forbidden realms of psycho-sexual and abusive family relationships with such deft sensitivity that they served to elevate manga from the realm of cheap escapism to literature and even Great Art – a struggle we’re still waging in the West…

This volume traces her beginnings through more traditional themes of romance, but with growing success came the confidence to probe into far darker and more personal subjects, so whereas my usual warnings are about pictorial nudity and sexual situations, here I’m compelled to say that if your kids are smart enough the contextual matter in these tales might be a tad distressing. It is all, however, rendered with stunning sensitivity, brilliantly visual metaphors and in truly beautiful graceful tones and lines.

The comics section (which is re-presented in the traditional front-to-back, “flopped” manner) begins with ‘Bianca’ from 1971: a wistful reminiscence and disguised disquisition on creativity wrapped in the tragic story of a childhood companion whose parents separated, whilst ‘Girl on Porch with Puppy’ (1971) is a disquieting cautionary tale about disobedient little girls who don’t try to fit in and ‘Autumn Journey’ from the same year is a complex mystery concerning a young man trying to meet his favourite author – as well as a painful exploration of families growing up apart.

‘Marié, Ten Years Late’ from 1977 is a heartbreaking example of a “Sophie’s Choice” as a lonely, frustrated artist discovers the truth behind the breakup of a perfect friendship which twisted three lives whilst the eponymous science fictional ‘A Drunken Dream’ (1980) describes a doomed reincarnating romance which has spanned centuries and light-years. This is the only full colour story in a generally monochrome volume.

Moto Hagio is one of a select band of creators credited with creating the “boy’s love” sub-genres of shōnen-ai and Yaio: sensitively homoerotic romances, generally created by women for women and now more popularly described as BL (as opposed to Bara – gay manga created by men for men) and this lyrical, star-crossed fantasy is a splendid example of the form.

‘Hanshin: Half-God’ (1984) is a disturbing, introspective psychological exploration of Hagio’s favoured themes of familial pressure and intolerance, described through the lives of anther girls’ comic favourite; twin sisters. The siblings here however are conjoined: Yucy is a beautiful angelic waif whilst her monovular other Yudy is an ugly withered homunculus.

The story is told by ugly Yudy whose life is changed forever by an operation to separate them. This incredibly moving tale adds barbed edges and ground glass to the ugly ducking fairytale and cannot fail to shock and move the reader…

From the same year comes the longer romantic tale ‘Angel Mimic’ as a failed suicide eventually evolves into a slim chance of ideal love, which poesy leads into the harrowing tale of rejection that is ‘Iguana Girl’.

Although couched in fantasy terms this tale of contemporary Japanese family life follows the life of Rika, an ordinary girl whose mother thinks she is a monster, and how that view warps how the child perceives the world throughout her life.

‘The Child Who Comes Home’ (1998) again examines rejection but uses the memory of a dead son and brother to pick open the hidden scabs of home and hearth – or perhaps it’s just a sad ghost story to clear the palate before this superb commemoration ends with the elegiac and almost silent, solitary pantomime of 2007’s ‘The Willow Tree’ which shows yet another side of family love…

Abuse of faith and trust. Love lost or withheld. Isolation, rejection, loss of purpose: all these issues are woven into a sensuously evocative tapestry of insightful inquiry and beautiful reportage. These tales are just the merest tip of a cataclysmic iceberg that invaded the stagnant waters of Girls’ comics and shattered their cosy world forever. The stories grew up as the readers did; offering challenging questions and options not pat answers and stifling pipedreams.

Until the day our own comics industries catch up at least we have these stories – and hopefully many more from the same source. Sequels please, ASAP!

All rights reserved. Original Japanese edition published 1977, 1985, 2007, 2008 by Shogakukan Inc. English translation rights arranged through Viz Media, LCC, USA. © 2010 Fantagraphics Books.

The Groo Garden

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By Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier & Stan Sakai (Epic/Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-78510-026-3

Both in comic narrative and the infinitely trickier field of gag-cartooning Sergio Aragonés has produced uncountable volumes of excellent work. His darkly skewed sensibilities and death-grip on the cosmically absurd, wedded to a totally unique drawing style and frankly terrifying professional discipline have made his (usually) silent doodles a vibrant proof of the maxims that laughter is universal and a picture is worth a thousand words.

After working for years for Mad Magazine and DC’s horror titles on gag features and the occasional full comic strip in 1981, with writer and associate Mark Evanier, Aragonés produced a madcap four-page parody of the Sword-and-Sorcery genre as a contribution to the Creators Rights benefit comicbook Destroyer Duck published by Eclipse Comics.

Following a second outing in Mike Grell’s Starslayer (#5) Pacific Comics launched Groo the Wanderer in his own title. After 8 issues (December 1982-April 1984) the troubled company folded but the unsinkable barbarian (that’s a joke I’ll explain later) resurfaced in the Groo Special one-shot from Eclipse (October 1984), before finding a home at Epic Comics: Archie Goodwin’s creator-owned corner of the Marvel Universe.

Aragonés had first created his witless warrior in the 1970s but no publisher would take on the property unless he sold all rights – an almost universal situation in the industry until the advent of the Direct Sales market transferred power from companies and distributors to creators and consumers.

The character is arguably the most successful creator-owned property of the American comic-book market, and this seventh volume (of 27 thus far) collects issues #25-28 (March-May 1987) from the Epic incarnation, with the itinerant idiot fully established in a capacious and vast feudal landscape of wizards, warriors, wild women and weird beasts. With a burgeoning supporting cast, Aragonés and his co-conspirators have plenty of wonky, misshapen leg-room to experiment with narrative and visual merry-making…

For the slow of mind however let me recapitulate:

Groo is the smelliest, ugliest, stupidest unluckiest mercenary in the world – but he’s also the best swordsman in creation and far too stupid to be harmed. He is always hungry and wanders because most places he pause in burn down, wash away or crash into rubble soon after he arrives. He loves to fight and entire nations and navies reel at the mention of his name. Of course they do the same when they stand downwind of him too…

The volume opens with ‘Divide and Conquer’ as the unemployable oaf has something similar to an idea and quite effectively foments unrest between relatively peaceful kingdoms in the hope that somebody will hire him to quell the unrest – with the usual catastrophic results, whilst two sinister sorceresses who really should know better are forced to employ the him again in ‘Arba Dakarba’, shrinking the wandering warrior to the size of his own intellect to steal a wishing amulet.

‘Spies’ places Groo in the background as The Sage and The Minstrel are captured by an army and accused of espionage. To forestall their executions the pair entertain the Commanding General with stories of the worst soldier in existence, but unlike Scheherazade, no tale of Groo can ever have a happy – or safe – ending. Then this chronicle concludes with ‘The Gourmet Kings!’ as the ever-ravenous reaving rover’s always empty stomach leads him to gainful employment and chef-stealing. Naturally the whole affair leads to an excess of chopping, slicing and dicing all around…

Marvelously cynical, wildly witty and stunningly silly Groo is the comic that people who hate comics read: brilliantly tongue-in-cheek, sharply sarcastic and devastatingly self-deprecating. An irresistible humour tour-de-force astoundingly scribed and illustrated by jesters who don’t know when – or how – to stop. New readers can start practically anywhere – and still be none the wiser…

The unstoppable brain-donor (Groo, not Aragones or even wordsmith Evanier, letterer Stan Sakai or colourist Tom Luth) has since rambled on to shut down Image Comics and now threatens to finish off Dark Horse, but as they haven’t completely gone belly-up yet there’s still plenty of material for you to track down…
© 1987, 1994 Sergio Aragonés. All Rights Reserved.

The Groo Adventurer

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By Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier & Stan Sakai (Epic/Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-87135-703-8

Both in comic narrative and the infinitely more strenuous field of gag-cartooning Sergio Aragonés has produced vast volumes of excellent work. His darkly skewed sensibilities and grasp of the cosmically absurd, wedded to a totally unique drawing style and frankly terrifying professional discipline have made his (usually) silent doodles a vibrant proof of the maxims that laughter is universal and a picture is worth a thousand words.

After working for years for Mad Magazine and DC’s horror titles on gag features and the occasional full comic strip in 1981, with writer and associate Mark Evanier, Aragonés produced a madcap four-page parody of the Sword-and-Sorcery genre as a contribution to the Creators Rights benefit comicbook Destroyer Duck published by Eclipse Comics.

Following a second outing in Mike Grell’s Starslayer (#5) Pacific Comics launched Groo the Wanderer in his own title. After 8 issues (December 1982-April 1984) the troubled company folded but the unsinkable barbarian (that’s a joke I’ll explain later) resurfaced in the Groo Special one-shot from Eclipse (October 1984), before finding a home at Epic Comics: Archie Goodwin’s creator-owned corner of the Marvel Universe.

Aragonés had first created his witless warrior in the 1970s but no publisher would take on the property unless he sold all rights – an almost universal situation in the industry until the advent of the Direct Sales market transferred power from companies and distributors to creators and consumers.

This volume collects the first four (of 120) issues from the Epic incarnation (March-April 1985) and reintroduces readers to the smelliest, ugliest, stupidest itinerant mercenary in the world. Luckily he’s also the best swordsman in creation and too thick to be harmed. The unstoppable brain-donor has since moved on to Image and Dark Horse Comics, but they haven’t completely gone belly-up yet…

Groo is always hungry and wanders because most places he stops at burn down, wash away or crash into rubble soon after he gets there. He loves to fight and the entire world trembles at the mention of his name. They do the same when they smell him too…

Produced in unique fashion by Aragonés, wordsmith Evanier, letterer Stan Sakai (creator of Usagi Yojimbo) and colourist Tom Luth, the idiot’s adventures form one of the longest running humour comicbook series in America and this volume is merely one of 27 to date.

Beginning with ‘The Song of Groo’ which introduces a wandering minstrel to the insane cast of a mediaeval wonderland of kingdoms, villages and provinces roughly mirroring Earth circa 1000AD, wherein the peripatetic poltroon botches a simple guard’s job and precipitates an international war, whilst ‘Dragon Killer’ allows him the opportunity to slay a beast, wipe out a paradise and blow up an entire country.

‘The Medallion’ is a safe-passage token that proves to be the most fray-provoking, schism-inducing peace symbol in the world and this chronicle concludes with ‘World Without Women!’ as the ever-eager hero-in-his-own-mind rescues helpless wives and maidens from zeppelin-riding pirates who keep them in utter luxury, returning the frail, fragile creatures to their rightful lives of dirt, drudgery and husbandly domination…

A magically cynical and silly comedy of errors Groo is the comic that people who hate comics read: brilliantly tongue-in-cheek, sharply sarcastic and devastatingly self-deprecating. An irresistible humour tour-de-force astoundingly scribed and illustrated by jesters who don’t know when – or how – to stop. New readers can start practically anywhere – and still be none the wiser…

Oh yeah, that sinking thing: among his other lack of abilities Groo cannot travel by ship. He’s not sea-sick or anything – it’s just that his mere presence on a maritime vessel causes it to sink…
© 1985, 1990 Sergio Aragonés. All Rights Reserved.

Jack Kirby’s The Demon

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By Jack Kirby & Mike Royer (DC Comics)

ISBN: 978-1-4012-1916-1

There’s a magnificent abundance of Jack Kirby collections around these days (though still not all of it, so I remain a partially disgruntled fan) and this magnificent hardback compendium re-presents the complete “King’s Canon” of possibly his most enduring – although subsequently misunderstood and mishandled – DC creation after the comics landmark that was his Fourth World Cycle.

Famed for his larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, “King” Kirby was an astute, spiritual man who had lived though poverty, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He had seen Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures. He was open-minded and utterly wedded to the making of comics stories on every imaginable subject.

On returning from World War II, with his long-term creative partner Joe Simon, he created the genre of Romance comics for the Crestwood/Prize publishing outfit. Amongst that dynamics duo’s other concoctions for Prize was a, noir-ish, psychologically underpinned supernatural anthology Black Magic and its short-lived but fascinating companion title Strange World of Your Dreams. These titles eschewed the traditional gory, heavy-handed morality plays and simplistic cautionary tales for deeper, stranger fare, and until the EC comics line hit their peak were far and away the best mystery titles on the market.

Kirby understood the fundamentals of pleasing his audience and always strived diligently to combat the appalling state of prejudice about the comics medium – especially from industry insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies world” they felt trapped in.

After his controversial, grandiose Fourth World titles were cancelled Kirby looked for other concepts which would stimulate his vast creativity and still appeal to an increasingly fickle market. General interest in the Supernatural was rising, with books and movies exploring the unknown in gripping and stylish new ways, and the Comics Code Authority had already released its censorious choke-hold on mystery and horror titles, thereby saving the entire industry from implosion when the superhero boom of the 1960s fizzled away.

At DC’s suggestion the King had already briefly returned to his Black Magic experimentation in a superb but poorly received and largely undistributed monochrome magazine. Spirit World #1 – and only – launched in the summer of 1971, but as before, editorial cowardice and back-sliding scuppered the project before it could get going.

Material from a second, unpublished issue eventually appeared in the colour comic-books Weird Mystery Tales and Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #6, but with most of his ideas misunderstood, ignored or side-lined by the company Kirby opted for more traditional fare. Never truly defeated though, he cannily blended his belief in the marketability of the supernatural with flamboyant super-heroics to create another unique and lasting mainstay for the DC universe: one that lesser talents would make a pivotal figure of the company’s continuity.

The Demon #1 launched in September 1972 and introduced a howling, leaping monstrosity (famously modelled after a 1939 sequence from Hal Foster’s Arthurian classic Prince Valiant) which battled beside its master Merlin as Camelot died in flames: a casualty of the rapacious greed of sorceress Morgaine Le Fey.

Out of that apocalyptic destruction, a man arose and wandered off into the mists of history…

In our contemporary world Jason Blood, demonologist and paranormal investigator, had a near-death experience with an aged collector of illicit arcana, which resulted in a hideous nightmare about a demonic being and the last stand of Camelot. He has no idea that Le Fey was alive and had sinister plans for him…

And in distant Moldavia, strange things were stirring in crumbling Castle Branek, wherein lay hidden the lost Tomb of Merlin…

Blood was wealthy, reclusive and partially amnesiac, but one night he agreed to host a small dinner party, entertaining acquaintances Harry Mathews, psychic UN diplomat Randu Singh, his wife Gomali and their flighty young friend Glenda Mark. It did not go well.

Firstly there was the painful small talk, and the sorcerous surveillance of Le Fey, but the real problems started when an animated stone giant arrived to “invite” Blood to visit Castle Branek. This epic journey led to Merlin’s last resting place but just as Blood thought he might find some answers to his enigmatic past Le Fey pounced. Suddenly he began to change, transforming into the horrific beast of his dreams…

Issue #2, ‘My Tomb in Castle Branek!’ opened with wary villagers observing a terrific battle between a yellow monster and Le Fey’s forces, but when the Demon was defeated and Blood arrested, only the telepathic influence of Randu in America could aid him. Le Fey was old, dying, and needed Merlin’s grimoire, the Eternity Book, to extend her life. Thus she manipulated Blood, who had lived for centuries unaware that the Demon Etrigan – Merlin’s hellish Attack Dog – was chained inside him, to regain his memories and awaken the slumbering master mage. It looked like the last mistake she would ever make…

Kirby’s tried and trusted approach was always to pepper high concepts throughout blazing, breakneck action, and #3 was one the most imaginative yet. ‘The Reincarnators’ saw Blood back in the USA, aware at last and with a small but devoted circle of friends. Adapting to a less lonely life he encountered a cult who could physically regress people to a prior life – and use those time-lost beings to commit murder…

The Demon #4-5 comprised a two-part adventure, wherein a simple witch and her macabre patron actually captured the reawakened, semi-divine Merlin. ‘The Creature from Beyond’ and ‘Merlin’s Word’s… Demon’s Wrath!’ introduced that cute little monkey, Kamara the Fear-Monster (later used with devastating effect by Alan Moore in Saga of the Swamp Thing #26-27) and featured another startling “Kirby-Kreature” – Somnanbula, the Dream Beast.

It seems odd in these blasé modern times but the Demon was a controversial book in its day – cited as providing the first post-Comics Code depiction of Hell and one where problems were regularly solved with sudden, extreme violence. ‘The Howler!’ in issue #6, was a truly spooky yarn with Blood hunting a primal entity of rage and brutal terror that transformed its victims into murderous lycanthropic killers, whilst #7 introduced a spiteful, malevolent young fugitive from a mystical otherplace.

‘Witchboy’ Klarion and his cat-familiar Teekl were utterly evil little sociopaths in an time where all comic-book politicians were honest, cops only shot to wound and “bad” kids were only misunderstood: another Kirby first…

‘Phantom of the Sewers’ skilfully combined movie and late night TV horror motifs in the dark and tragic tale of actor Farley Fairfax, cursed by the witch he once spurned. Unfortunately Glenda Mark was the spitting image of the departed Galatea, and when decades later the demented thespian kidnapped her to raise the curse, it could only end in a flurry of destruction, death and consumed souls.

This three-part thriller was followed by another extended epic (The Demon #11-13) ‘Baron von Evilstein’ a powerful parable about worth and appearance featuring the ultimate mad scientist and the tragic monster he so casually built. It’s a truth that bears repeating: ugly doesn’t equal bad…

Despite Kirby’s best efforts The Demon was not a monster hit, unlike the science-fictional disaster drama Kamandi, and by #14 it’s clear that the book was in its last days. Not because the sheer pace of imagination, excitement and passion diminished – far from it – but because the well-considered, mood-drenched stories were suddenly replaced by rocket-fast eldritch romps – with returning villains.

First back was Klarion the Witchboy who created a ‘Deadly Doppelganger’ to replace Jason Blood and kill his friends in #14-15, before the series – and this wonderful hardcover treasury of wicked delights – ended in a climactic showdown with the ‘Immortal Enemy’ Morgaine Le Fey…

Kirby continued with Kamandi, explored WWII in The Losers and created the magnificent Omac: One Man Army Corps, but still could not achieve the all-important sales the company demanded. Eventually he returned to Marvel and new challenges such as Black Panther, Captain America, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man and especially The Eternals.

As always in these wondrously economical collections it should be noted that the book is stuffed with un-inked Kirby pencilled pages and roughs, and Mark Evanier’s fascinating, informative introduction is, as ever, a fact-fan’s delight.

Jack Kirby was and is unique and uncompromising: his words and pictures are an unparalleled, hearts-and-minds grabbing delight no comics lover could resist. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind.

That doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby’s work from 1937 to his death in 1994 shaped the entire American comics scene and indeed the entire comics planet – affecting the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour for generations and still winning new fans and apostles every day, from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. His work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep and simultaneously mythic and human.

He is the King and time has shown that the star of this book is one of his most potent legacies.

© 1972, 1973, 1974, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Penny Century (Las Locas volume 4)

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By Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-342-2

Please pay attention: this book contains stories and images of an extremely adult nature, specifically designed for adult consumption and the kind of coarse and vulgar language that most kids are fluent in by the age of ten. If reading about such things is likely to offend you, please stop now and go away. I’ll be back with far more wholesome, family friendly and acceptable violence and explosions tomorrow. So come back then.

Love and Rockets is an anthology comics publication that originally featured slick, intriguing, sci-fi-ish larks, heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasies and bold experimental comic narratives that pretty much defied classification, all wrapped up in the ephemera of the LA Hispanic and punk music scene. The synthesistic Hernandez Bros joyously plundered their own relatively idyllic childhoods to captivate with incredible stories that sampled a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from comics and TV through alternative music to German Expressionism and masked wrestlers.

Jaime Hernandez was always the most visible part of the graphic and literary revolution that is Love and Rockets, his slick, seductive, clean black line and beautiful composition, not to mention impeccably rendered heroes and villains and the comfortingly recognisable comic book iconography, being particularly welcomed by readers weaned on traditional Marvel and DC superheroes.

However his love of that material, as well as the best of Archie Comics cartoonists (I often see shades of the great Sam Schwartz and Harry Lucey in his drawing and staging), accomplished and enticing as it is, often distracted from the power of his writing, especially in his extended saga of Maggie Chascarillo and Hopey Glass – Las Locas.

Palomar was the conceptual and cultural playground of brother Gilberto, whilst Jaime initially began with a fantasy-tinged adventure serial (as seen in volume #1 ‘Maggie the Mechanic’) which eventually evolved into a prolonged examination of love and friendship as Maggie and Hopey, chums since childhood and occasional lovers, drifted into and away from each other over the years. The later stories also yielded focus to an increasing number of truly unique friends and acquaintances…

This volume ostensibly stars Hopey’s lifelong friend and wild child Beatriz Garcia who meticulously reinvented herself as the cosmic starlet and ambiguous super-heroine Penny Century, but the whole utterly magnetic cast are on board for a series of revelatory tales, casting light on both the shadowy histories and portentous futures as Maggie and Hopey approach middle age – still beautiful, still feisty but not really that much wiser…

Collected from the spin-offs and miniseries ‘Whoa Nellie!’, ‘Maggie and Hopey Color Fun’ and ‘Penny Century’ produced between 1996 and 2002, the pageant of wonders begins with a disturbingly compelling side-trip into the world of women’s wrestling, following the lives and glory-days of two women as they strive to become tag-team champions: a visually mesmeric and touchingly poignant dissection of an extraordinary friendship.

The spotlight lands squarely on Hopey in the second extended tale as the older but no wiser wildcat revisits her good old days with Maggie, before the main event, told through a succession of short stories, commences. Beginning with two instalments of ‘Locas’, and three of ‘Penny Century’ the narrative is interspersed with nineteen fascinating complementary vignettes and sidebars such as ‘La Pantera Negra’, ‘Hopey Hop Sacks’, ‘Look Out’, ‘Chiller!’, ‘C’Mon Mom!’, and ‘Loser Leave Oxnard’ – the secret origins of most of the extended cast are laid bare in progressively more funny and tragic tales of missed opportunities and lost last chances…

Every bit as surreal and meta-fictional as brother Beto’s incredible tales of Luba and Palomar, Jaime’s continuing development as a writer both stirring and meaningful is a delight to experience, whilst his starkly beautiful drawing – even when he affectionately dabbles with other styles – is an utter joy. It’s an amazing trick to tell such wistful, insightful and even outright sad stories with so much genuine warmth and slapstick humour but this book easily pulls it all off.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll own one hell of a good book when you buy Penny Century… and you may regret it forever if you don’t.
© 2010 Gilbert Hernandez. All Rights Reserved.

High Soft Lisp

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By Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-318-7

Please pay attention: this book contains stories and images of an extremely adult nature, specifically designed for adult consumption and the kind of coarse and vulgar language that most kids are fluent in by the age of ten. If reading about such things is likely to offend you, please stop now and go away. Tomorrow I’ll write about something with violence and explosions, so come back then.

In addition to being part of the graphic and literary revolution that is Love and Rockets (where his astonishingly compulsive tales of Palomar and the later stories of those characters collected as Luba gained such critical acclaim) Gilbert Hernandez has produced stand-alone tales such as Sloth, Grip and Girl Crazy, all marked by his bold, instinctive, simplified line artwork and a mature, sensitive use of the literary techniques of Magical Realist writers Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez: techniques which he has added to and made his own.

Love and Rockets is an anthology comics publication that features slick, intriguing, sci-fi-ish larks, heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasy and bold experimental comic narratives that pretty much defy classification. The synthesistic Hernandez Bros still captivate with incredible stories that sample a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from Archie Comics and alternative music to German Expressionism and masked wrestlers.

Palomar was the conceptual and cultural playground of Gilberto, created for the extended serial Heartbreak Soup: a poor Latin-American village with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast. Everything from life death, adultery, magic, serial killing and especially gossip could happen in the meta-fictional environs of Palomar, and did, as the artist explored his own post-punk influences, comics, music, drugs, comics, strong women, gangs, sex, family and comics, in a style that seemed informed by everything from Tarzan comics to Saturday morning cartoons and the Lucy Show.

Beto, as he signs himself, returns to Palomar constantly, usually with tales involving the formidable matriarch Luba, who ran the village’s bath house, acted as Mayor and sometimes police chief – as well as adding regularly and copiously to the general population. Her children, brought up with no acknowledged fathers in sight, are Maricela, Guadalupe, Doralis, Casimira, Socorro, Joselito and Concepcion.

Luba eventually migrated to the USA and reunited with her half-sisters Petra and the star of this volume, Rosalba “Fritz” Martinez. This collection was compiled from assorted material that first appeared in Love and Rockets volume II and Luba’s Comics and Stories, with some new pages and many others redrawn and rewritten.

Fritz is a terrifyingly complex creature, a psychiatrist, therapist, B-Movie actress, belly dancer, drunk, gun-fetishist, sexually aggressive and a manipulative serial spouse. Beautiful, enticingly damaged, with a possibly intentional speech impediment she sashays from crisis to triumph and back again, and this moving, shocking, funny chronicle uses the rambling recollections of one of her husbands, motivational speaker Mark Herrera, to follow her life from punkette outsider at High-School through her various career and family ups and downs.

Under the umbrella title of ‘Dumb Solitaire’ what purports to be the memoir of Senor Herrera reveals in scathing depth the troubled life of the woman he cannot stay away from, in an uncompromising and sexually explicit “documentary” which pulls no punches, makes no judgements and yet still manages to come off as a feel-good tale.

High Soft Lisp is the most intriguing depiction of feminine power and behaviour since Flaubert’s Madame Bovary – and probably just as controversial – with the added advantage of Beto’s intoxicating drawing adding shades of meaning that mere text just cannot impart.

Very funny, very moving, remarkable and unmissable: no mature fan of the medium can afford to miss this treat.

© 2010 Gilbert Hernandez. All Rights Reserved.

300

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By Frank Miller & Lynn Varley (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-402-7

Generally I reserve these graphic novel reviews for less successful affairs since I figure that most people have probably checked out something which has garnered as much press attention outside the comics industry as this chronicle has; but when I was joining my local library at the weekend this sturdy landscape-format hardback literally leapt off the shelf at me (almost killing the small child reaching stubby, stained fingers up to it). I took it as an omen from the gods to proceed.

Fear not, I didn’t steal it from that clumsy urchin either: his mother took one look at the thing and (ignoring the excessively graphic violence lovingly, almost poetically rendered by Miller and painted by Lynn Varley) dropped it like a burning brick when she saw that some of the warriors had no pants on.

Storming off to complain that the cartoon men had their willies out she left the tome in my bemused hands…

300 is not a history book.

This visually arresting drama retelling the Battle of Thermopylae is not a way to crib on your exams but rather a potent hymn to the ancient manly virtues of courage, honour, duty, patriotism and sacrifice, told mostly through the words and attitudes of an aging king (in the ancient world anyone who reached their fifth decade was truly remarkable) who decided that his code of conduct was more important than his life and even those of the men who loved and trusted him.

A picture book for adults, this fable is pared down to a rhythmic, economical asperity as austere as the legendary code of the Spartans it eulogises, with only the rich primal colours of passion – deep blues, blood reds, warm golds – to lift the spirits. The narrative is delivered in short choppy cadences that evoke the no-nonsense, terse lifestyle of the warrior king.

Originally released as a five issue miniseries, drawn as double page spreads for a truly epic scope, the five chapters Honor, Duty, Glory, Combat and Victory tell of the voracious Persian emperor Xerxes, whose armies were incomprehensibly vast and who determined to add the squabbling collection of states known as Greece to his dominions. It tells of the harsh, Darwinian life of Sparta and the unbending pride and courage of their king Leonidas.

In 480BC, unable to muster Sparta’s army to resist the Persian invasion due to the corrupt intervention of his own priests, Leonidas and 300 friends went “for a walk” to the “Hot Gates” of Thermopylae, where with the dubious aid of a few thousand lesser Greeks they fought an incredible holding action until betrayed by one of their own. Finally surrounded, with no hope of escape, the Spartans all went to their gods with heads and spears held high, their example as much as their actions inspiring Greece to finally destroy the mad ambitions of Xerxes…

If you’ve seen the film based on this book, you still haven’t experienced the raw power and untrammeled tension of Miller’s original interpretation. Here there’s no padding: no perfumed council debates, no farewell lovemaking, no treacherous Dominic West (Theron to you) to dilute the polemical energy of the tale. The equation is pure simplicity: Homeland Endangered + Way Of Life Imperiled = Resistance At All Costs.

Now in its tenth printing – and still going strong – this is a book that perfectly displays everything comics can do that is unique to our art-form. If you still haven’t read 300, waste no more time: this tale was made for you…

© 1998, 1999, 2006 Frank Miller. All rights reserved.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – Century part 1: 1910

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By Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill (Top Shelf/Knockabout)
ISBN: 978-0-86166-160-2

The Victorian era saw the birth of mass publishing, particularly in imaginative, entertaining escapist popular literature. The modern genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror and adventure all grew out of the latter half of the 19th century. Writers of varying skill and unshackled imagination recounted personal concepts of honour and heroism, wedded unflinchingly to an unshakable belief in English Superiority. In all worlds and even beyond them the British gentleman took on all comers for Right and Decency, regarding danger as a game and showing “Johnny Foreigner” just how that game should be played.

For all the problems such material might raise with modern sensibilities, most of these stories remain uncontested as classics of literature, generating all the archetypes for modern fictional heroes. Open as they are to charges of Racism, Sexism (even misogyny), Class Bias and Cultural Imperialism the best of them remain the greatest of all ripping yarns.

An august selection of some of these prototypical champions were seconded by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill at the end of the last century, resulting in two more great books about great heroes.

In Century: 1910 the first of a tryptich delineating the hundred years following the previous shared exploits of vampire-tainted Wilhelmina Murray, Great White Hunter Allan Quatermain, Invisible Man Hawley Griffin, charismatic “Hindoo” savant Captain Nemo and Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mister Hyde, the repercussions of both League of Extraordinary Gentleman volumes I and II are being felt through a shaky Empire still recovering from a Martian Invasion.

It is twelve years later and Nemo lies dying. His daughter Janni escapes his deathbed wishes and proclamations, fleeing to England on a ship which also carries the returning Jack the Ripper. Once “Mack the Knife” resumes his old occupation, psychic ghost-breaker Carnacki begins receiving troubling visions which might impact upon the upcoming coronation of the new King.

As ever spymaster Mycroft Holmes is on top of the situation and assigns Miss Harker, Quartermain, gender-optional immortal Orlando, gentleman thief Raffles and time traveller Andrew Norton to deal with the colliding events, but opposition from a circle of magicians led by “the most wicked man that ever lived” threaten to undo everybody’s plans. Meanwhile Janni’s fortunes have been ill-starred and she resignedly takes charge of the super-vessel Nautilus to exact a terrible vengeance…

Moore’s astounding imagination and vast cultural reservoir have provided the detail-fiends with another elite selection of literary and popular culture touchstones to enhance the proceedings, and this darkly sardonic tale is illustrated with the usual brilliance of the graphic-compulsive Kevin O’Neill.

This certainly bodes well for the future of a concept far too good to abandon. Just be glad there are no more films to tarnish the glister of this superb series…

This book is another fascinating blend of scholarship, imagination and artistry recast into a fabulous pastiche of an entire literary movement. It’s also a brilliant piece of comics magic of a sort no other art form can touch, and just as with the previous volumes there is a text feature at the back, which some might find a little wordy.

Read it anyway: it’s there for a reason and is more than worth the effort as it further outlines the antecedents of the League in an absorbing and stylish manner. It might also induce you to read some other very interesting books…
© & ™2009 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill. All Rights Reserved.