Category: Older kids

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Zombies Can’t Swim


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After all everybody knows Zombies Can’t Swim…

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

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

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The Plain Janes


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Chronos Commandos: Dawn Patrol


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chronos Commandos™ and © 2014 Stuart Jennett. All rights reserved.

 

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

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Sucker Bait and Other Stories


By illustrated by Graham Ingels, written by Al Feldstein with Ray Bradbury & Bill Gaines (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-689-8

For most people who have heard of them, EC Comics mean one thing only: shocking, appalling, stomach-turning horror. Moreover, the artist they’re probably picturing – even if they can’t name him – is Graham Ingels, who wryly sighed his work “Ghastly”…

The company began in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines – presumably seeing the writing on the wall – sold the superhero properties of his All-American Comics company to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Picture Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market.

He augmented his flagship title with Picture Stories from American History, Picture Stories from Science and Picture Stories from World History but the worthy projects were all struggling when he died in a boating accident in 1947.

As detailed in the comprehensive closing essay of this superb graphic compilation (‘Crime, Horror, Terror, Gore, Depravity, Disrespect for Established Authority – and Science Fiction Too: the Ups and Downs of EC Comics’ by author, editor, critic and comics fan Ted White) his son William was dragged into the company by unsung hero and Business Manager Sol Cohen who held the company together until the initially unwilling Bill Gaines abandoned his dreams of being a chemistry teacher and transformed the ailing Educational enterprise into Entertaining Comics…

After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments copying industry fashions, Gaines took advantage of his multi-talented associate Al Feldstein, who promptly graduated from creating teen comedies and westerns into becoming Gaines’ editorial supervisor and co-conspirator.

As they began co-plotting the bulk of EC’s stories together, they changed tack, moving in a boldly impressive new direction. Their publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field, was to tell a “New Trend” of stories aimed at older and more discerning readers, not the mythical semi-literate 8-year-old all comicbooks ostensibly targeted.

From 1950 to 1954 EC was the most innovative and influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of crime, horror, war and science fiction and originating an entirely new beast: the satirical comicbook…

Feldstein had started life as a comedy cartoonist and, after creator/editor Harvey Kurtzman departed in 1956, Al became Mad‘s Editor for the next three decades…

This seventh volume of the Fantagraphics EC Library gathers a mind-boggling selection of Feldstein’s most baroque and grotesquely hilarious horror stories – mostly co-plotted by companion-in-crime Gaines – and all illuminated by the company’s enigmatic yet unsurpassed master of macabre mood, in a lavish monochrome hardcover edition packed with supplementary interviews, features and dissertations.

It begins with historian and lecturer Bill Mason’s touching and revelatory commentary ‘Mr. Horror Builds his Scream House’ before dipping into the diary of disgust and dread with ‘Hook, Line, and Stinker!’ (Vault of Horror #26, August/September 1952): the tale of a spinster’s vengeance after she finds the man she’s been engaged to for fifteen years spends his weekends in the arms of a young floozy rather than on his precious – and fictitious – fishing trips…

The most memorable assets of EC’s horror titles were the uniquely memorable hosts whose execrable wisecracks bracketed each fantastic yarn. The Vault-Keeper, Crypt-Keeper and Old Witch were the only returning characters in the company during the New Trend era, becoming beloved favourites of the “Fan Addict” readership. Haunt of Fear #14 (July/August 1952) revealed the shocking and hilarious origins of the scurvy sorceress herself in a sublime pastiche of the Christian Nativity dubbed ‘A Little Stranger!’ …

A murderous circus elephant trainer’s infidelities came back to haunt him in ‘Squash… Anyone?’ (Tales From the Crypt #32, October/November 1952), whilst in that same month, in Vault of Horror #27, a rat-infested kingdom where starving peasants were tormented by their over-stuffed queen provided grisly meat for ‘A Grim Fairy Tale!’

‘Chatter-Boxed!’ (Haunt of Fear #15, September/October 1952) is a superb blend of maguffins as a man terrified of premature burial takes special steps to insure he’s never buried alive, but even after factoring in that his wife is always gabbing on the phone, there’s one element he could never have foreseen…

Next follows a wealth of material published in titles cover-dated December 1952/January 1953, beginning with ‘Private Performance’ from Crime SuspenStories #14, wherein a burglar witnesses a murder in an old Vaudevillian’s home before hiding in exactly the wrong place, whilst ‘None but the Lonely Heart!’ (Tales From the Crypt #33) reveals the ultimate downfall of a serial bigamist and black widower.

‘We Ain’t Got No Body’ (Vault of Horror #28), ghoulishly revels in the vengeance of a man murdered by his fellow train commuters before ‘Sugar ‘n Spice ‘n…’ (Shock SuspenStories #6) toys wickedly with the fable of Hansel and Gretel, proving that some kids get what they deserve…

A pioneering surgeon is blackmailed for decades by his greatest triumph in ‘Nobody There!’ (Haunt of Fear #16, November/December 1952), whilst in ‘Hail and Heart-y!’ (Crime SuspenStories #15 February/March 1953) a lazy husband drives his enduring wife to exhaustion and over the edge by feigning disability, before Ingels superbly captures the macabre eccentricity of Ray Bradbury’s story of a crusty dowager too mean to stay decently dead in ‘There Was an Old Woman!’ from Tales From the Crypt #34 (February/March).

That same month Vault of Horror #29 featured ‘Pickled Pints!’, as unscrupulous rogues buying cut-rate blood from winos push their plastered pumps a little too far, after which Haunt of Fear #17 (January/February) produced the acme of sinister swamp scare stories in ‘Horror We? How’s Bayou?’ a tale of rural madness and supernatural revenge long acclaimed as the greatest EC horror story ever crafted.

An irritated and merciless mummy stalks an Egyptian dig in ‘This Wraps it Up!’ (Tales From the Crypt #35, April/May 1953; the same month Vault of Horror #30 told a far more chilling tale of human retribution when the good citizens of a small town finally find the writer of cruel poison-pen letters in ‘Notes to You!’, whilst ‘Pipe Down!’ (Haunt of Fear #18, March/April) goes completely round the bend to describe how a young wife and handsome plumber got rid of her rich old man… and what the victim did about it…

Bradbury’s disturbing yarn ‘The Handler’ was adroitly adapted in Tales From the Crypt #36 (June/July) depicting how an undertaker’s secret liberties – inflicted upon the cadavers in his care – came back to haunt him, whilst over in Vault of Horror #31 that month ‘One Good Turn…’ revealed one little old lady’s gruesome interpretation of the old adage, and Haunt of Fear #19 (May/June 1953) disclosed the incredible lengths some men will go to in order to kill vampires in ‘Sucker Bait!’

From August/September ‘The Rover Boys’ in Tales From the Crypt #37 is a purely bonkers tale of brain transplantation gone wild, whilst Vault of Horror #32 offered up more traditional fare in ‘Funereal Disease!’ which described how a murdered miser got back what he loved most, and ‘Thump Fun!’ (Haunt of Fear #20, July/August) knowingly revisited Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart whilst adding a little twist…

‘Mournin’ Mess’ (Tales From the Crypt #38, October/November) is a stylish and clever mystery about rich men funding a paupers graveyard – and why – whilst over in Vault of Horror (#32) ‘Strung Along’ depicted the revenge marionettes inflicted on the greedy woman who murdered their elderly puppeteer before the artistic arcana all ends with ‘An Off-Color Heir’ (Haunt of Fear #21, September/October 1953) and the salutary tale of an artist’s wife who discovered just too late her man’s habits and horrific heritage …

Adding final weight to the proceedings is S.C. Ringgenberg’s biography of the tragic genius ‘Graham Ingels’, the aforementioned history of EC and a comprehensively illuminating ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ feature by Mason, Spurgeon and Janice Lee.

The short, sweet but severely limited output of EC has been reprinted ad infinitum in the decades since the company died. These astounding stories and art not only changed comics but also infected the larger world through film and television and via the millions of dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales.

However, the most influential stories are somehow the ones least known these days. Although Ingels turned his back on his comics career, ashamed of the furore and frenzy generated by closed-minded bigots in the 1950s, his incredible artistic talent and narrative legacy are finally gaining him the celebrity he should have had in life.

Sucker Bait is a scarily lovely tribute to the sheer ability of an unsung master of comics art and offers a fabulously engaging introduction for every lucky fear fan encountering the material for the very first time.

Whether you are an aging fear aficionado or callow contemporary convert, this is a book you must not miss…
Sucker Bait and Other Stories © 2014 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All comics stories © 2014 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., reprinted with permission. All other material © 2014 the respective creators and owners.

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Zero Hour and Other Stories


Illustrated by Jack Kamen, written by Al Feldstein, Bill Gaines, Ray Bradbury & Jack Oleck (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-704-8

From 1950-1954 EC was the most innovative and influential comicbook publisher in America, dominating the genres of crime, horror, adventure, war and science fiction. They even originated an entirely new beast – the satirical comicbook – with Mad.

After a shaky start and following the death of his father (who actually created comicbooks in 1933), new Editor/publisher William Gaines and his trusty master-of-all-comics trades Al Feldstein turned a slavishly derivative minor venture into a pioneering, groundbreaking enterprise which completely altered the perception of the industry and art form.

They began co-plotting the bulk of EC’s output together, intent on creating a “New Trend” of stories aimed at older, more discerning readers (rather than the mythical 8-year-olds comics ostensibly targeted) and shifted the emphasis of the ailing company towards dark, funny, socially aware broadly adult fare.

Their publishing strategy also included hiring some the most gifted writers and artists in the field. One of the earliest and certainly most undervalued at the time was Jack Kamen…

This lavish monochrome hardcover volume, another instant classic in Fantagraphics’ EC Library, gathers a scintillating selection of Kamen’s quirkily low-key science fiction tales which always favoured character over spectacle or gimmicks and human frailty and foibles: the kind of offbeat yarns which predominated in such cleverly thought out TV shows as Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, which followed in EC’s wake…

This almanac of The Unknown is, as always, stuffed with supplementary features beginning with ‘Graceful, Glamorous, and Easy on the Eye’: an informative, picture-packed history and critical appreciation by lecturer Bill Mason, after which the succession of scary, funny Tomorrow Stories opens with ‘Only Human!’

Kamen actually began working for EC before their New Trend days, brought in by old friend Al Feldstein (who scripted most of the stories here after barnstorming plot-sessions with affirmed SF fan and closet scientist Gaines) and this yarn from Weird Science #11, January/February 1952, perfectly shows the artist’s facility for capturing feminine allure (which served him well in his earlier romance comics days).

The tale is smart too as a group of readers is hired to educate the first ever electronic brain, but are unable to keep their feelings from contaminating the project…

‘Shrinking from Abuse!’ (Weird Fantasy #11, also January/February 1952) is more recognisably EC “just desserts” fare, as an abusive chemist’s size-changing solution leads to his beleaguered wife getting the final word in, whilst ‘The Last Man!’ from W S #12 (March/April 1952) plays morality games after a male survivor of atomic Armageddon finally locates a new Eve and finds she is the only woman he can’t possibly repopulate the world with…

Weird Fantasy #12, (March/April 1) revealed ‘A Lesson in Anatomy’ as a little lad’s ghoulish curiosity inadvertently ended an alien infiltration attempt, after which ‘Saving for the Future’ (Weird Science #13, May/June) offered a stunning lesson in Compound Interest when a poor couple opened a bank account and went into induced hibernation for 500 years, whilst ‘The Trip!’ (W F#13, May/June) looked at a different aspect of the topic as a philandering scientist attempted to use quick freeze tech to run off with his pretty assistant, but forgot something really important…

‘Close Call!’ (W F #14, July/August) took a rather cruel look at a female scientist who wished that her male colleagues would stop hitting on her and wasn’t too happy at the hand fate then dealt her, before Weird Science #15 (September/October 1952) took a knowing glimpse at everyman’s dream when a nerd accidentally acquired the time-lost means to make perfect, willing women – and still got everything wrong due to ‘Miscalculation!’…

Feldstein worked on every genre in EC’s stable, but the short, ironic, iconic science thrillers he produced during that paranoid period of Commies and H-Bombs, Flying Saucer Scares and Red Menaces, irrevocably transformed the genre from cowboys in tinfoil suits and Ray-gun adventure into a medium where shock and doom lurked everywhere.

His cynically trenchant outlook and darkly comedic satirical stories made the cosmos a truly dangerous, unforgiving place and kept it such – until the Comics Code Authority and television pacified and diminished the Wild Black Yonder for all future generations. He did however maintain a strong working relationship with Space-babes and ethereally beautiful E.T.s – and nobody drew them better than Kamen…

 ‘He Who Waits!’(Weird Fantasy #15, September/October 1952) revealed one of their best collaborations as an old botanist discovered a luscious, seductive maiden only eight inches tall, living in one of his plants. The bittersweet tale showed that love could overcome any obstacle…

Greed is another unfailing plot driver in EC stories and in ‘Given the Heir!’ (W S #16, November/December) a poor new husband recruits his own descendent in a crazy plan to change the past and inherit millions. Unfortunately he didn’t pay as much attention to family history as he should have…

‘What He Saw!’ in W F #16, (November/December) is an unrelenting tale of induced madness inflicted upon a lost space explorer whilst 1953 began in fine style with another science lesson as ‘Off Day!’ (Weird Science #17, January/February) outrageously depicted the potential results of the law of averages taking a day off before ‘The Parallel!’ (W S #18, March/April 1953) explored the concept of alternate earths as a smart but poor genius attempted to improve his life by murdering his other selves…

Weird Fantasy #18 (March/April) featured the eponymous ‘Zero Hour’ – adapted from a Ray Bradbury short story – and dealt with the subtlest of Martian invasions as imaginary friends used human children to pave their way, after which the Gaines/Feldstein brain trust described the grim fate of a chancer who used intercepted future gadgetry to turn his automobile into a getaway vehicle nobody could catch… or find… in ‘Hot-Rod!’ (Weird Fantasy #19, May/June 1953).

Cold, emotionless invaders infiltrated human society only to be doomed by seductive feelings in ‘…Conquers All!’ (W F #20, July/August) after which the Bradbury prose piece “Changeling” became ‘Surprise Package’ in Weird Science #20 (also July/August 1953) detailing the complex web of savage emotions engendered when Love Mannequins become commonplace…

Bradbury’s sequel ‘Punishment Without Crime’ (W S #21, September/October) took the theme further by considering if killing such automata might be murder, before ‘Planely Possible’ (W F #21, September/October) returns to the concept of parallel Earths for a car crash survivor who would do anything to be reunited with his dead wife – or nearest approximation – after which cruel and unscrupulous carnival owners learn what its like to be ‘The Freaks’ (Weird Fantasy #22, November/December 1953)…

Cold war paranoia and repression inform the 1984-like world of ‘4th Degree’ (Weird Science-Fantasy #27, January/February 1955) as a closet rebel attempts to unmake his totalitarian world through time travel, and this glossy, dark trip through vintage tomorrows ends with ‘Round Trip’ from Weird Science-Fantasy #27 (March/April 1955) with a touching and contemplative reverie of a life lived long if not well…

Regarded as one of the company’s fastest artists (only the phenomenal Jack Davis turned in his pages at a greater rate) Kamen always produced illustrative narrative which jangled nerves and twanged heartstrings: his lush forms and lavish inks instantly engaging and always concealing brilliant touches of sly, knowing humour. He was often overshadowed by EC’s other stalwarts but he was every bit their equal.

The timeless comics tales are followed by more background revelations in S.C. Ringgenberg’s ‘Jack Kamen’ and a special essay on the artist’s later life in ‘From Science Fiction to Science Fortune’ drawing intriguing parallels between his EC cartoons and the design assistance he later contributed to his inventor son Dean’s landmark creations – the portable Drug Infusion pump, portable Kidney Dialysis machine and Segway PT (yeah, that Dean Kamen) – before ending on another comprehensively illuminating ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ from Tom Spurgeon, Janice Lee and Arthur Lortie.

The short, sweet but severely limited output of EC has been reprinted ad infinitum in the decades since the company died. These astounding, ahead-of-their-time-comics tales did not just revolutionise our industry but also impacted the whole world through film and television and via the millions of dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales.

Zero Hour is the 8th Fantagraphics compendium highlighting the contributions of individual creators, adding a new dimension to aficionados’ enjoyment whilst providing a sound introduction for those lucky souls encountering the material for the very first time.

Whether an aged EC Fan-Addict or the merest neophyte convert, this is a book no comics lover or crime-caper victim should miss…
Zero Hour and Other Stories © 2014 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All comics stories © 2014 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., reprinted with permission. All other material © 2014 the respective creators and owners.

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Ark


By Peter Dabbene & Ryan Bayliss (Arcana Studio)
ISBN: 978-1-77135-122-5

It’s not that often that I can allow myself to be relatively succinct, but every now and then a tome turns up which is pretty much comic book perfect and I’m left with very little to say except read this by any means necessary…

The first one I’ve seen this year is a gloriously understated science fiction thriller suitable for older teens that got far too little attention (mine included) when it came out, and which is definitely worth the time for any fan of science fiction or offbeat detective stories…

This transatlantic collaboration is written by New Jersey Boy Peter Dabbene and illustrated by British artist Ryan Bayliss, who combine to tell an all too human tale which holds your interest in both the characters and concept long after the final page turns…

It begins far beyond the orbit of Pluto where Explorer, Earth’s first extra-solar colonisation ship, silently drives ever deeper through interstellar space.

The crew, whose families are also aboard, are all fatalistically dedicated to their mission – to find and settle a new world – although some still harbour suspicions and distrust of the unique passengers… even after thirteen years of watching them grow from little children into young adults.

That small select group are all civilians and all Meta-Humans: genetically engineered hybrids combining human and animal DNA, with incredible abilities still barely revealed or explored.

But now a crisis has arisen and Captain Smith is at odds with his Second-in-Command Victor Diaz about how to proceed…

As the entire ship’s company discovers next morning, all contact with Earth has stopped and the Captain wants to ask the Hybrids to join the crew in running the vessel as it continues the mission. Commander Diaz however does not like the freaks and believes it dangerous to allow them full and unfettered access to the ship.

Even the teenagers in question are undecided on the matter. Some, like chimp-form Gerry, are keen and eager to do their bit, but a small rebellious faction feels they are being drafted and exploited.

Debate rages throughout Explorer: many humans have grown close to their cargo over the years and, now the Hybrids have matured, fraternisation – if not love – has become an issue. The die-hard crewmembers draw much comfort from the fact that the freaks age faster than humans and were all designed to be sterile mules…

Most importantly, many of the crew have begun to question the very nature of the mission itself; constantly finding glaring illogicalities in the whole undertaking… Thoughts turn to the possibility that some disaster has befallen the mother planet…

Smith is more worried about the loss of signal than he lets on, however, and tasks Gerry – who is a very literal-minded mega-genius – to help communications officer Winfield  look into why Earth has gone silent.

Ever eager to please, the simian sets to, uncovering a coded message where no normal person would expect to find it and rushes to share it with Captain Smith. The next morning Gerry is gone: apparently lost in space…

Lizard-girl Darien was a silent observer of what truly happened, and although she refuses to share what she saw, mistrust and paranoia run rampant throughout the enclosed community. Nobody believes Gerry died accidentally, but was it suicide or murder?

As suspicions mount and tensions rise, a microcosmic species war erupts which only a concerted coalition of humans and Metas can quash. Throughout the crisis, however, a greater mystery and threat remains: what was in that final message from Earth and does it reveal the real true purpose of the Ark in space?

Clever, beguiling and splendidly aware that with murder what’s paramount is who dies rather than how many, Ark offers a singularly sophisticated tale of unalterable human passion that will delight readers jaded by cosmic megadeaths and overblown angsty overkill.

Perhaps a little hard to find now as a physical book, Ark is available digitally at http://www.comixology.com/ARK/comics-series/10257 but if, like me, you’re a sucker for paper and the scent of ink and glue, you can get a proper book edition from the U.S. Amazon website (http://www.amazon.com/Ark-Peter-Dabbene/dp/1771351225/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391613791&sr=8-1&keywords=ark+dabbene) Or from the publisher Arcana at http://www.arcana.com/store.php?item=633
© 2012 Arcana Studio, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 8: 1951-1952


By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-699-7

The stellar Sunday page Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur debuted on 13th February 1937, a luscious and luminous full-colour weekly window into a miraculous too-perfect past of adventure and romance, even topping creator Hal Foster’s previous impossibly popular comics masterpiece Tarzan.

The saga of noble knights played against a glamorised, dramatised Dark Ages historical backdrop as it followed the life of a refugee boy driven from his ancestral homeland in Scandinavian Thule who grew up to roam the world and attain a paramount position amongst the heroes of fabled Camelot.

Writer/artist Foster wove the epic tale over decades, as the near-feral wild boy matured into a paragon of chivalric virtue: knight, warrior, saviour, vengeance-taker and eventually family patriarch in a constant deluge of wild – and joyously witty – wonderment.

The restless hero visited many far-flung lands, siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes and utterly enchanting generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

There have been films, animated series and all manner of toys, games and collections based on Prince Valiant – one of the few adventures strips to have lasted from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (over 4000 episodes and counting) – and even here in the end times of the newspaper narrative cartoons, it continues to astound in more than 300 American papers. It’s even cutting its way onto the internet with an online edition.

Foster tirelessly crafted the feature until 1971 when illustrator John Cullen Murphy (Big Ben Bolt) succeeded him as illustrator. Foster continued as writer and designer until 1980, after which he retired and Cullen Murphy’s daughter Mairead took over colouring and lettering whilst her brother John assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired, since when the strip has soldiered on under the extremely talented auspices of artists Gary Gianni and latterly Thomas Yeates with Mark Schultz (Xenozoic) scripting.

Before the astonishing illumination of dauntless derring-do recommences, Editor Brian M. Kane discusses, in amazing detail, the incredible tales of the creator’s pre-and-early comics days as an advertising artist and the impact of his “Mountie” paintings on early 20th century American ads in the fascinating Foreword essay ‘An Artist Nowhere Near Ordinary: Hal Foster’s Lord Greystoke of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’.

This volume of sublime strips is also balanced by another erudite Kane piece at the back: describing the now forgotten entertainments phenomenon of the Silver Lady Awards bestowed annually by the fabled, prestigious but now forgotten “Banshees”.

‘Hal Foster and the Other Woman’ reveals the story behind the story of King Features’ “Shadow Cabinet” and how Foster won his Silver Lady in1952 as well as noting many of his other testimonials such as the Rueben, the Swedish Academy’s Adamson Award and his election to our own Royal Society (for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce): an honour he shared with the likes of Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Hawking…

This 8th enormously entertaining and luxurious oversized (362 x 264mm) full-colour hardback volume reprints the pages from January 7th 1951 to 28th December 1952 (pages #726 to 829, if you’re counting) but before we proceed…

What has Gone Before: after the double christening in Camelot of his and Prince Arn of Ord‘s sons, Valiant was soon back in the saddle as an Arthurian troubleshooter, cleaning out a extortion-minded sorcerer’s den in Wales and picking up new squire Geoffrey – known affectionately as Arf – before heading North to Hadrian’s Wall and a brutally punishing and protracted siege by invading Picts.

It was nearly Val’s last battle…

When Aleta joined her dying husband he miraculously recovered. His forthright wife elected to take him back to his Scandinavian homeland so she dispatched Geoffrey to Camelot with orders for her handmaiden Katwin and nurse Tillicum to obtain a ship and meet her with baby Arn at the village of Newcastle…

Soon the group were bound for Thule, bolstered by the bombastic return of boisterous far-larger-than-life Viking Boltar: a Falstaff-like “honest pirate” who ferried the re-united extended family to Valiant’s harsh, cold homeland. Along the way Boltar found himself bitten by the love bug …

A chance meeting with an old cleric also disclosed the truth about Arf: the faithful squire had been forced from his home when his sire Sir Hugo Geoffrey took a new young bride. She didn’t want an annoying stepson underfoot but now she was gone and the boy could return home… if he wanted to…

Eventually the party reached the chilly castle of King Aguar and settled in for a winter of snowy rest and recuperation – although the temperatures could not cool Arf’s hot temper and propensity for finding trouble…

Aguar, meanwhile, had been seriously considering converting his rowdy Norse realm to the peaceful tenets of Christianity, but all the missionaries roaming his lands were cantankerous idiots preaching their own particular brand of faith – when not actively fighting each other.

Therefore when spring arrived he tasked his fully recovered son with a mission to Rome, beseeching the Pope to send proper priests and real teachers of the officially sanctioned religion to spread the Word of God.

No sooner had Val, Arf, doughty Rufus Regan and new comrade Jarl Egil set off, however, than vassal king Hap-Atla – seething from an old slight delivered to his deceased sire – rebelled, besieging Aguar’s castle. With manpower dangerously depleted the situation looked grim until wily Aleta took control, scoring a stunning triumph which shockingly contravened all the rules of manly warfare.

Valiant and his companions meanwhile had landed in Rouen and trekked onwards to the HolyCity, encountering thieves, murderers and worse as Europe, deprived of the Pax Romana, had descended into barbarism: reduced to a seething mass of lawless principalities ruled by greedily ambitious proto-emperors…

In one unhappy demesne the quartet dethroned a robber-baron but almost ended up wed to his unsavoury daughters, whilst in another Val encountered an alchemist-king who had accidentally invented an explosive black powder…

Exhausted, they eventually were welcomed at the castle of benevolent noble Ruy Foulke – but their good night’s sleep was spoiled when their host was attacked by villainous overlord Black Robert and his savagely competent forces…

This chronicle’s action commences as the visitors stoutly and resolutely defend their host against overwhelming force, with all combatants blithely unaware that Foulke’s daughter and Black Robert’s son are lovers. The youngsters almost sacrifice their lives to end the hostilities, and Valiant brokers an alliance which ends the bloodshed but has to leave quickly as his actions have deprived the invaders of much promised booty…

On the road again they missionaries encounter roving bands of barbarian reivers and take refuge in a monastery at the foot of the French Alps. The clerics offer to guide the quartet over the mountains to Italy, but are woefully short of the protective garments made from the cold-resistant Chamois, so Valiant goes off hunting the elusive antelope.

Trouble is never far from the Prince of Thule and his frozen safari brings him into conflict with another band of invading Huns or Tartars, which only ends when the capable northerner destroys them with an avalanche.

Properly kitted out, Arf, Egil, Rufus and Val are then taken over the horrific high passes, enduring ghastly arctic conditions before they reach the other side. Young Arf suffers most, and Val has to leave his crippled squire – whose feet have frozen – at a hospice in Torino whilst the remainder of his battered party carry on to Rome.

The EternalCity has become a cess-pit of iniquity since it was sacked by the barbarians and the Missionaries are given a constant run-around by greedy and duplicitous officials until Val discovers that the Pope has removed himself from the city and established a new home in Ravenna.

Although Valiant is still denied a meeting, the Pontiff appoints a committee which agrees to send true Christian teachers to icy Thule, but before details can be finalised the Prince is called back to Torino where Arf has taken a turn for the worse…

The Squire has lost the will to live, along with his left foot, and with all his chivalric ambitions destroyed is beyond consoling. In a powerful and moving sequence Valiant patiently brings the boy back from a fatal depression and sets him upon a new path: scholar and official historian of the kings of Thule.

Since the boy cannot handle the arduous trek back to Scandinavia, Valiant sends Egil and Rufus on ahead with the Pope’s team of missionaries and teachers by the most direct route whilst he accompanies Arf in a more leisurely and roundabout journey by ship.

En route the fierce man of war helps found the Christian Mission at San Marino before he and the still emotionally fragile lad board a Genoese trader. After crossing the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), fresh passengers join them and the boy is utterly smitten by the demure charms of the beauteous Adele, daughter of wealthy Eastern lord Sieur Du Luc…

Luckily, Valiant has been schooling his former squire in the courtly skills of music and poetry…

The boy’s timorous wooing of the Mediterranean charmer pays off in a multitude of ways. His strength and confidence returns, Adele favours and returns his attentions and the amused and charmed sailors, delighted to have the burdensome (and occasionally pirate-plagued) journey eased somewhat, carve Arf a marvellous wooden leg which is so well-fashioned that he can throw away his crutches and walk as a man should…

When the vessel reaches England the boy takes time to reconcile with his father and introduce Adele so that the tricky and torturous process of making a marriage match may begin, whilst Valiant’s return to Camelot and joyous reunion with best friend Sir Gawain propels the two old comrades and devoted merry pranksters into an orgy of practical jokes and good-natured duels with their fellow knights…

Sadly the riotous times end too soon, as word comes from Aguar that Val should return to Thule with the utmost speed. Arranging for Arf to meet them en route, Valiant accepts Gawain’s offer to take ship from his own island kingdom of Orkney, but although his brother-in-arms is a fine fellow, the knight’s family are another matter.

Gawain’s mother Morgause is reputed a witch, whilst her other sons Agravaine, Gaheris and vile Mordred are little better than brutes and outright villains. Moreover the men of Orkney have little love for Scandinavians, being regular recipients of savage raids from assorted Northmen…

After Gawain scotches their plan to hold Valiant for ransom, the Prince proposes ending years on enmity with a trade agreement which will make the ancient nations allies and at last sets off for Thule to receive some shocking news: during the year he has been away Aleta has given birth to twin daughters.

Although the proud father is astounded and delighted, his firstborn son is not taking the loss of star-status well – as described in a charming sequence of comedic adventures starring Prince Valiant Arn in the Days of King Arthur…

Another crisis soon occurs however as Boltar, ignorant of Aguar’s new treaty, accidentally pirates the Orkney ship transporting Adele to Thule and suffers the wrath of his king and former comrades.

Imprisoned in Aguar’s castle, the confused and indignant Boltar is secretly released by Tillicum, but the old rogue, misinterpreting her gesture of love, does her the honour of kidnapping her – just as all his romantic forebears have – and is baffled when she escapes and pulls a knife on him…

Fed up and utterly desolate, Boltar and his crew continue to their base in the Shetlands, leaving Aleta to mend fences with the King and discuss with the disconsolate nanny how best Tillicum can get her man…

Boltar meanwhile has been thoroughly tested: Thule’s ancient rivals the Danes have amassed a fleet to attack Aguar and offer his now-disgraced “Good Right Hand” a share of the spoils and glory to join his ships to their armada…

Despite being vexed and tempted, the old pirate instead risks his life to warn Aguar of the sneak attack and after a spectacular campaign of seaborne slaughter accepts his long-delayed punishment. To keep him in line, Aguar makes Tillicum responsible for his continued good behaviour…

Idyllic weeks pass until Valiant, bored with inaction, drags his new biographer Arf into a patrol of the nation’s border, only to have them both washed away in a flash flood and forced to spend weeks fighting their way back to civilisation from the primitive northern wilderness.

There are gentler moments in the restless warrior’s life, such as the foolish wager he makes soon after his triumphant return that he can catch and train a hawk better than Aleta’s Merlin and his father’s Golden Eagle, but the days are mostly quiet in Thule… until at long last Rufus and Egil arrive with the Pope’s Christian missionaries.

Both have converted on the trip and Valiant and Aleta are overjoyed that their daughters Valeta and Karen can be baptised, but the task of taking the gospels to the devoutly warlike worshippers of Thor and Odin will be far from simple…

As the European set to, lecturing and building churches, Val and Rufus become involved in a cross-border water dispute and the Prince, in a rare moment of diplomacy, furnishes a solution that prevents rather than ends bloodshed.

No such opportunity arises when he is ambushed as he returns to Aguar. The arrow that nearly ends his life is fired in error, by a serf who mistakes the prince for the local under-chief, Sigurd Holem.

Once a noble and trusted deputy of Aguar, the Fief-holder has become a cruel tyrant: enslaving his own countrymen and defying any – including his Lord’s heir – to stop him.

Determined to avenge the cruelties of Sigurd, Valiant infiltrates the monster’s impenetrable citadel and, through cunning engineering tricks, brings the entire daunting edifice crashing into ruins…

The next few strips use the device of Arf’s growing biography to lavishly recapitulate many of Valiant’s greatest exploits, such as the overthrow of Sligon and restoration of Aguar to Thule or the haunting fate of doomed mountain outpost Andelkrag, before the tone switches again and little Arn is forced to face the stomach-churning consequences of being a “mighty hunter” when nanny Tillicum makes him confront the results of his firing arrows at animals…

The boy and his guardian take centre-stage in the next sequence too when Boltar returns home from another bloody and profitable voyage and jealous rivals at court attempt to humiliate the rowdy blowhard.

The plan is cruel and simple. When Tillicum rejoins her man at his home Vikingsholm she brings the wide-eyed Arn with her, where during a moment of quiet converse with Boltar the hunting-mad lad slips from her careful scrutiny and is abducted.

The kidnappers however have not reckoned on the Native American’s determination or tracking skills. After stalking them all alone for days, she rescues the boy just as the furious following Boltar catches up to her, and the conspirators have mere moments to regret their vile actions…

And when Valiant hears of the plot, he and Boltar then deal with the rest of the plotters in similar manner…

This volume’s stunning saga temporarily end with the opening movements of another epic extended story arc as the progress of the Christian missionaries leads Valiant – still far from a believer in the One God – to be targeted by Druids and Pagan warriors determined to crush the threat to their bombastic pantheon before it can take hold…

To Be Continued…

Rendered in a simply stunning panorama of glowing visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a non-stop rollercoaster of boisterous action, exotic adventure and grand romance; blending human-scaled fantasy with dry wit and broad humour, soap opera melodrama with shatteringly dark violence.

Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring, the strip is a landmark of comics fiction and something no fan can afford to miss.
Prince Valiant and all comics material © 2014 King Features Syndicate. All other content and properties © 2014 their respective creators or holders. This edition © 2014 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 6: 1947-1948


By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-588-4

Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur launched on February 13th 1937, a luscious full-colour Sunday newspaper strip offering wonder-struck readers safe passage into a world of noble combat, rousing adventure and thrilling romance. Year by year in real time, the strip followed the exploits of a royal exile, driven by invaders from his ancestral homeland in Scandinavian Thule, who grew up to roam the world and ascended to a paramount position amongst the mightiest heroes of fabled Camelot.

Crafted by sublime master draftsman and tale-teller Harold “Hal” Foster, “Val” matured to clean-limbed manhood in a heady sea of exotic wonderment; visiting far-flung lands and siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes whilst captivating and influencing generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

The feature has sired films, animated series and all manner of books, toys, records, games and collections based on the strip – one of too few to have lasted from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (over 4000 episodes and still forging ever onward) – and, even in these declining days of newspaper narrative cartoons as a viable medium, it still claims more than 300 American papers as its home. It has even made it into the very ether via an online edition.

Foster produced the saga single-handed, one spectacular page a week from 1937 until 1971, when he began to ease up on his self-appointed workload. With the syndicate’s approval – and after auditioning the likes of Gray Morrow and Wally Wood – Big Ben Bolt illustrator John Cullen Murphy was selected to become illustrator of the feature, with Foster continuing as writer and layout designer until 1980, after which he fully retired and Murphy’s son assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired (and died a month later on July 2nd) since when the strip has soldiered on under the auspices of writer Mark Schultz and artists Gary Gianni and Tom Yeates.

This sixth magnificently oversized (362 x 268mm) full-colour hardback volume reprints the strips from January 5th 1947 to 26th December 1948 as Foster began a phenomenally impressive and productive run on a strip which was already regarded as one of the greatest in existence, revelling in the fact that with war-time restrictions ended, he could devote an entire colossal page to each ever-more gripping and luscious instalment…

The introductory essay for this volume is ‘Foster of the Yukon or The Son Also Rises’ by Brian M. Kane (with Dr. Christine Ballengee-Morris), exploring the early life of the creator when he worked for the Hudson Bay Company and detailing his many connections to the Canadian wildernesses and indigenous people – as well as his prior illustration work featuring Canadian cultural themes and motifs.

Also included is a critical and scholarly overview by Native American Dr. Ballengee-Morris, discussing this collection’s material and use of First Nation characters and customs.

What Has Gone Before: Having finally wooed and been won by Queen Aleta of The Misty Isles after many fantastic hardships and spectacular trials and travails, Val and his willing prize briefly sojourned in Rome where they were wed before eventually arriving in Camelot.

Here his unconventional and strong-willed bride caused quite a commotion before foiling a seditious scheme by Mordred to humiliate Queen Guinevere and destroy Sir Launcelot.

Her tactics almost ended her own marriage, and only Aleta’s ferociously loyal, tempestuous fire-haired northern handmaiden Katwin was able to bring Valiant to his outraged senses…

Reunited and both duly penitent, the newlyweds voyaged to winter-locked Thule, where King Aguar could meet his new daughter-in-law. It was not a peaceful homecoming and the barely-rested Val had to quell potential rebellion in fractious Overgaard whilst another brewed in the fiefdom of former ally Earl Jon.

With the doughty Prince recovering from many wounds – again – bright-and-breezy Aleta struggled to win the favour of her straight-laced and sternly formal Father-in-Law and his dour, grim-minded warriors…

Her charm offensive began by solving Aguar’s quarrel with Jon through diplomacy and party-throwing. But even after being accepted by the family the Princess Bride had trouble adapting to the rough sports and pastimes of the chilly region – such as skiing and bear hunting – and she was delighted when the snows finally relented and the Spring thaws began.

Now, the receding snows also bring visitors to the annual parliamentary “Thing”. Hostile sub-chief Gunguir and his mighty son Ulfrun, pride of the Vikings, come to pay their reluctant respects but the latter takes an instant and unhealthily obsessive interest in the golden Princess …

As Val visits old friend and shipbuilding genius Gundar Harl, the nefarious Ulfrun kidnaps Aleta and, despite the heroic efforts of Katwin, sails away into the cold Atlantic seas. Nigh-drowned and with a broken arm, the handmaiden finds Valiant and alerts him to the crisis.

As he readies his pursuit the wounded tigress also informs him that his stolen wife is pregnant and that she must be there when they rescue her…

As he sails ever westward Ulfrun begins to realise his mistake. His purloined prize shows no fear, refuses him all things and even begins to win over his rough Viking warriors…

Val and a hand-picked crew are in full pursuit in Gundar’s most advanced sailing ship, utilising the mariner’s greatest invention – a sextant – to follow the abductors. Never out of sight for long, the followers push Ulfrun further and further west and north, past Greenland and into uncharted waters. After weeks of cat-and-mouse sailing with common sailors on both vessels contemplating mutiny, Valiant’s vessel inexorably closes in until a huge sudden storm finally separates stalkers and quarry…

Days later, in the following calm Val’s ship reaches a strange shore where he finds evidence of Ulfrun’s survival: a native village devastated by the Viking’s men. Hot to pick up the trail again he nevertheless finds time to administer aid to the survivors before following the Raiders’ boat into this NewFoundLand…

The pursuit is easy if slow. As Ulfrun’s Dragon-ship sails ever onwards, finding a vast mainland and constantly attacking the red-skinned natives’ settlements for provisions. Val and Gundar patiently follow their crimson wake, always stopping to offer assistance and consequently gaining allies who will allow him first crack at the murderous invader.

Eventually just as they reach a vast inland sea (Lake Ontario) the pressure proves too much and, after killing a mutinous shipmate, Ulfrun attacks Aleta even as Val’s ship heaves into view. The Prince’s men, supplemented by Native allies, ferociously attack but in the melee Ulfrun and two of his subordinates flee deep into the wild green interior…

The chase is manic and a final confrontation inevitable. On a mighty cliff vengeance is taken and justice served, but even as Val deals with Ulfrun Aleta has managed to talk his men into surrendering…

His passion for slaughter slaked, Valiant convinces the aggrieved Red Men to let all the surviving Raiders board their Dragon-ship and try to return to their homes. In one last betrayal, however, the Vikings raid Gundar’s vessel, stealing food stores and his invaluable sextant before setting off downriver towards Newfoundland. They never made it back to Europe…

Valiant and Aleta meanwhile have decided to winter in this strange yet inviting country and, with their faithful retinue and new feather-wearing native friends, prepare for the cold season by hunting, fishing, exploring and building a peculiar dwelling of felled logs.

As the sagacious Tribal Chiefs observe the golden woman in their midst a strange notion forms, and when a spectacularly fortuitous event occurs whilst she and Val visit the Great Falls (yep, Niagara) the savage savants decide that she is far more than human…

Moreover the tribal women can clearly see that the “Sun Woman” is with child…

This particular section is a mesmerising change of pace in the ongoing saga, focusing on paradisiacal, humour-tinged Arcadian splendour rather than constant angst and action, and Foster’s sublime facility for illuminating the wonders of the wilds make these episodes irresistibly beguiling.

With the snows coming, the Tribes decide that the newfangled log-cabin is insufficient to Aleta’s needs and construct a magnificent birch bark Lodge to keep her in perfect comfort whilst her barbarian men can sit and shiver in their draughty wooden house. Even more insultingly, they hold a village ceremony and appoint a forbidding guardian midwife to look after the incipient’ mother’s natal needs.

Although getting increasingly annoyed at their hosts’ interfering hospitality, nobody has the nerve to gainsay the stoic and terrifying Tillicum… not even Val himself on the morning she kicks him out of Lodge and indicates that from now on he sleeps with the other men…

Soon after, the next prince of Thule is successfully delivered and an amazed, astounded – and hung-over – happy father greets his son and proceeds to get in the way and underfoot.

Luckily for him youngest crewman Gunnar has gone missing so, saying farewell to his smiling “Sun Woman” (and her scowling servants Tillicum and Katwin), Valiant heads off into the snow-covered forests to find him.

The trail takes him to a far distant region which has never seen white skins before, just in time to save the wayward youth from the curious natives, but their hazardous trek back takes quite a while and the ice is melting on the Niagara river before they reach friends once more.

With the cold season gone Valiant and Gundar prepare to make the voyage back to Europe (even though the inventor secretly fears it impossible without his sextant) so Val takes one last opportunity to explore.

Their is precious little food around yet and to provision the ship Val, with a hand-picked squad of Northmen, joins his native pals in a prodigious canoe journey to the Great Lake Trading Center in the Land of the Hurons…

The great event is another chance to meet and exchange ideas but proceeds at its own laborious pace. Happily Val’s impatience is assuaged once he is introduced to the intriguing, bone-crunching pastime called “Lacrosse”…

Eventually fully-supplied the men return to the Lodge and begin preparations to leave. The little prince – to be christened Arn once they reach Camelot – has grown strong and boisterous: and would not be overly imperilled by a perilous sea voyage, but another delay has suddenly manifested. Many of the tribes that live on the great river which will carry them back to the Atlantic are in revolt…

Valiant is again outclassed as his golden bride – a master of subtle diplomacy – who devises a cunning, slaughter-free solution to the problem, but her plan almost rebounds as the natives then baulk at the though t of letting their Sun Woman go back beyond the seas…

Once that obstacle is surmounted the only remaining problem is Tillicum, who refuses to be left behind…

The homesick crew head into the unknown and their journey becomes an incredible odyssey as only a general sense of the right direction, shipwreck, icy seas and appalling storms batter the lost voyagers before the weary sailors finally fetch up on a familiar shore.

No sooner has Aleta set foot on land for a moment’s solitude than she is spotted by Hibernian king Roary Dhu who fancies making her the next queen of Ireland…

That difference of opinion leads to appropriate outrage and bloodshed before Valiant and his rapidly diminishing crew head back out to sea, but at last fortune favours them when they are intercepted by Sir Launcelot’s personal ship.

The situation in Camelot is still tense after all these months, but Val’s faithful crew are exhausted and heartsore, so he and his extended family party transfer to the new vessel, leaving his weary followers to return to their own homes in Thule with tidings of his safe return and new son…

All Camelot is lifted by the presence of the Prince and his family, but another crisis is brewing and too soon Valiant is heading towards Cornwall to apply his lethal brand of problem-solving to murderous despotic, rebel king Tourien who, with his brutal sons Alp the Strong, Cedric the Dandy and Doorne the Slave Driver, flouts Arthur’s authority, murders his servants and believes himself utterly untouchable and beyond the monarch’s justice…

Eschewing a large armed force Valiant decides to dismantle the renegade’s threat from the inside using duplicity, and although largely successful he still has to resort to savage force of arms before the Cornish rat’s nest is finally cleaned out…

Back in Camelot again the victorious hero’s thoughts turn to his baby’s long-delayed christening. The only possible choice for a Godfather is his boyhood rival and the child’s namesake Prince Arn of Ord but when Val journeys to the outlying principality he receives an almighty shock…

To Be Continued…

This volume then concludes with ‘Coloring Valiant’ by in Brian M. Kane: a fascinating feature on Foster’s process to provide colour indications for the printers to work from which includes a huge and beautiful gate-fold fold-out of one of his original water-coloured pages, topped off and balanced by the published page his avid fans finally saw.

Rendered in a simply stunning panorama of glowing visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a non-stop, celebration of the human spirit in action, under torment, enduring duty and enjoying grand romance; mixing glorious historic fantasy with dry wit, broad humour with shatteringly dark violence.

Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring, this is a masterpiece of fiction: a never-ending story no one should be without. If you have never experienced the intoxicating grandeur of Foster’s magnum opus these magnificent, lavishly substantial deluxe editions are the very best way to do so and will be your permanent portal to an eye-opening world of wonder and imagination…
Prince Valiant © 2012 King Features Syndicate. All other articles, content and properties © 2012 their respective creators or holders. All rights reserved.

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Usagi Yojimbo book 6: Circles


By Stan Sakai (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-146-0

Wandering rabbit bodyguard Miyamoto Usagi started life as a background character in Stan Sakai’s anthropomorphic comedy The Adventures of Nilson Groundthumper before indomitably carving his own unique path to graphic glory.

Creative mastermind Sakai was born in 1953 in Kyoto, Japan before the family moved to Hawaii two years later. On graduating from the University of Hawaii with a BA in Fine Arts, he pursued further studies at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design in California and started in comics as a letterer, most famously for the inimitable Sergio Aragonés’ Groo the Wanderer.

Eventually the cartoonist within resurfaced: blending a passionate storytelling drive and abiding love of Japanese history and legend with a hearty interest in the filmic works of Akira Kurosawa and his peers, Sakai began crafting one of the most enticing and impressive fantasy sagas of all time.

And it’s still more educational, informative and authentic than any dozen Samurai sagas you can name…

The addictive period epic is set in a world of sentient animals (with a few unobtrusive human characters scattered about) but scrupulously mirrors the Feudal Edo Period of Japan – (roughly the 17th century AD by our reckoning); simultaneously referencing classic contemporary cultural icons from sources as varied as Zatoichi and Godzilla, whilst specifically recounting the life of a peripatetic Lord-less Samurai eking out as honourable a living as possible by selling his sword as a Yojimbo (bodyguard-for-hire).

As such, his destiny is to be perpetually drawn into a plethora of incredible situations.

He is a rabbit – brave, noble, sentimental, gentle, artistic, empathetic, long-suffering, conscientious and devoted to the tenets of Bushido – who simply cannot turn down any request for help or ignore the slightest evidence of injustice…

This superbly stirring sixth black-&-white blockbuster collects yarns from Fantagraphics’ Usagi Yojimbo comicbook volume 1, #25-31 plus an extra attraction from funny animal anthology Critters #50, offering a selection of complete adventures tantalisingly tinged with supernatural terror and drenched in wit, irony and pathos.

Following an adulatory Introduction from Jeff Smith, the restless Miyamoto encounters a Hannya (female demon) plaguing travellers whenever they try to cross ‘The Bridge’ after which ‘The Duel’ sees him targeted by a ruthless bookie.

The gambler’s professional duellist only needs one final big payday to safely retire with his beloved wife and child, but his disreputable boss is determined to fleece the locals no matter who has to die…

‘Yurei’ means ghost and, when a weeping woman’s spirit invades the Yojimbo’s dreams crying for justice, Usagi becomes an unwitting avenger whose presence provokes her murderer into making a huge and fatal mistake, after which ‘My Lord’s Daughter’ finds the Rabbit Ronin relating his greatest – battle against a horde of Obakemono (monsters) and demons to rescue a princess – in a wry fairy-tale tribute to the aforementioned Groo…

The remainder of this rousing compendium details a revelatory exploit wherein Usagi makes for his home village with thoughts of finally staying in one place. However when he meets again his childhood sweetheart Mariko a shocking secret regarding her soon changes everything.

‘Circles’ is divided into a succession of connected vignettes beginning with ‘Wind over the Tombstones’ as the homeward-bound hero discovers his former sensei Katsuichi – whom he believed dead – is very far from it…

Then in ‘Remembrances’, young Jotaro is abducted by the deadly Jei.

This veritable devil in human form believes himself a “Blade of the Gods” singled out by the Lords of Heaven to kill the wicked. The raving loon has been hunting Usagi ever since the Yojimbo defeated him – with the aid of a fortuitous or possibly divinely sent lightning bolt….

Now, in the little boy Jei senses a connection to his despise quarry and recruits a band of brigands to assist him in his schemes for revenge…

When the devil’s hired killers attack the village where Mariko’s husband Kenichi is headman, the strands of fate knit together as ‘Shroud Over the Mountain’ unites former friends and rivals in their desire to save the boy – who has already escaped and got into even more trouble…

The drama comes to an emotionally shattering climax in ‘Closing the Circle’ as the Rabbit Ronin learns at last the shocking truth about Jotaro and Mariko.

Arranging for his aging sensei to take on a new pupil he then wearily resumes his restless wanderings …

Triumph, tragedy, terrific action and terror all seamlessly flow together in this addictive epic, and Circles is still one the best collections in an unbroken run of classic graphic masterpieces.

Usagi Yojimbo has been in continuous publication since 1987, resulting in more than 30 graphic novel collections and books to date. The Legendary Lepus has guest-starred in many other comics and nearly had his own TV show – but there’s still time yet and fashions are ever fickle so hope endures…

As well as generating a horde of high-end collectibles, art prints, computer games, RPGs, a spin-off sci-fi series and lots of toys to promote popularity, Sakai and his creation have deservedly won numerous awards both within the Comics community and amongst the greater reading public.

Fast-paced yet lyrical, funny and scary, always moving, astoundingly visceral, ferociously thrilling and simply bursting with veracity and verve, Usagi Yojimbo is a work of cartoon genius: engaging and irresistible with a broad appeal that will delight devotees and make converts of the most hardened hater of anthropomorphic adventures.
Text and illustrations © 1992, 1993, 1994 Stan Sakai. Usagi Yojimbo is ® Stan Sakai. Book editions © 1994, 2006 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.