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Tarzan versus The Nazis (Complete Burne Hogarth Comic Strip Library volume 3)


By Burne Hogarth with Don Garden & Rubén Moreira (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78116-319-1 (Album HB)

The 1930 and 1940s was an era of astounding pictorial periodical adventure. In the years before television, newspaper strips (and later comic books) were the only visually-based home entertainment for millions of citizens young and old and consequently shaped the culture of many nations. Relatively few strips attained near-universal approval and acclaim. Flash Gordon, Terry and the Pirates and Prince Valiant were in that rarefied pantheon but arguably the most famous was Tarzan.

The dramatic adventure serial as we know it started on January 7th 1929 with Buck Rogers and Tarzan debuting that day. Both were adaptations of pre-existing prose properties and their influence changed the shape of the medium forever. An explosion of similar fare followed, launched with astounding rapidity and success. Not just strips but actual genres were created in that decade, still impacting on today’s comic-books and, in truth, all our popular fiction forms.

In terms of sheer quality, the adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ immensely successful novels starring jungle-bred John Clayton, Lord Greystoke by Hal Foster were unsurpassed, and the strip soon became a firm favourite of the masses, supplementing movies, books, a radio show and ubiquitous advertising appearances. As detailed in previous volumes of this oversized (330 x 254 mm), full-colour hardback series, Foster initially quit at the end of a 10-week adaptation of first novel Tarzan of the Apes and was replaced by Rex Maxon. At the insistent urging of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Foster returned when the black-&-white daily expanded to include a lush, full colour Sunday page featuring original adventures.

Maxon was left to capably handle the weekday book adaptations, and Foster crafted the epic and lavish Sunday page until 1936 (233 consecutive weeks). He then left again, for good: moving to King Features Syndicate and his own landmark weekend masterpiece Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur which debuted in February 1937. Once the four-month backlog of material he had built up was gone, Foster was succeeded by a precociously brilliant 25-year-old artist named Burne Hogarth: a graphic visionary whose astounding anatomical acumen, cinematic design flair and compelling page composition revolutionised the entire field of action/adventure narrative illustration. The galvanic modern dynamism of the idealised human figure in today’s comicbooks can be directly attributed to Hogarth’s pioneering drawing and, in later years, educational efforts. Burroughs cannily used the increasingly popular comic strip to cross-market his own prose efforts with great effect…

This third titanic tome begins with the prolifically illustrated ‘Hogarth on Burroughs’: George T. McWhorter’s interview with the master draughtsman from 1982’s Edgar Rice Burroughs Quarterly volume 1 #1, after which the timeless adventure resumes. At this time Hogarth had assumed writing the strip too, with veteran collaborator Don Garden leaving to pursue other, more patriotic pursuits.

Running from 30th October 1943 – March 12th 1944 (episodes #660-679), ‘Tarzan Against Kandullah and the Nazis’ is an explosive procession of coiled-spring action and crushing suspense as the Ape-Man, incessantly crisscrossing fabled, unexplored Africa returns to the lands of the Boers. Here he discovers his old friends infiltrated by insidious Nazi deserters. The human monsters have seen the tide of history turn against them and instead of fighting on or surrendering are attempting to secure this desolate enclave from which they can rebuild a Fourth Reich to attack democracy again at some future date…

Their plan is to divide and conquer: fomenting strife between the indigenous Mogalla tribe and the isolationist Afrikaaners. After narrowly averting one blood-stained crisis, Tarzan swears to deliver a military packet for a dying Allied airman, undertaking a staggering trek across the hostile lands before anonymously completing his mission and heading back into the veldt. His travels next bring him into contention with a baroque and murderous slave-master in ‘Tarzan Against Don Macabre’ (#680-699, running from 19th March to 30th July). After rescuing beautiful captive Thaissa from his decadent clutches, the all-conquering Ape-Man decimates the Don’s menagerie of savage beasts – everything from a ravening bull to a giant octopus – and leads a slave revolt deep within his island citadel…

Once back on the mainland there was an extended return engagement for modern history’s most popular bad guys in ‘Tarzan Against the Nazis’ (#700-731, August 6th 1944-March 11th 1945). This clash began innocuously enough with the Jungle Lord saving albino ape Bulak from his own dark-pelted tribe, before being distracted by sadistic Arabian hunter Korojak. The vile stalker was trapping hundreds of animals for his master Emin-Nagra – and secretly mistreating his prizes for his own sick amusement – until Tarzan taught him the error of his ways. Sadly, it was not a lesson which stuck and before long both Bulak and Tarzan became part of the booty being transported to golden-domed city Bakhir…

While the Ape-Man chafed in captivity as part of Emin-Nagra’s Circus, agents of Germany and Japan were negotiating for the oil under the cruel potentate’s pocket kingdom and quietly confident of a favourable deal, due to their column of storm troopers. However, when Tarzan faced a tidal wave of starved jungle beasts in the Circus, he turned them into his personal army to bring down the despot. Then he turned his merciless attention to the Nazis and their nearby new oil wells…

With the real-world war winding down, escapist fantasy became a larger part of the Sunday strip environment. ‘Tarzan Against the Gorm-Bongara Monster’ (#732-748, 18th March to July 8th) saw the nomadic Ape-Man encounter a lost tribe of pygmies in a primordial valley, battling against them before becoming their champion against a marauding, voracious dinosaur. His inevitable victory led directly into ‘Tarzan and The Tartars Part One’ (#749-768, July 15th – November 25th) wherein landless Prince Kurdu begged the Ape-Man’s assistance in overthrowing a usurper and saving his oppressed kingdom. The turbulent alliance offered privation, hardship, a quest for mystic relics and – for one of the heroes at least – the promise of true love. This romantic epic is divided into separate chapters because from December 2nd 1945 onwards, Hogarth was replaced as illustrator by Ruben Moreira, who finished the tale from his predecessor’s scripts.

‘Tarzan and The Tartars Part Two’ (pages #769-778) concluded with the February 3rd 1946) instalment, after which Don Garden returned to provide fresh material for Moreira. You won’t find that here…

Hogarth was in dispute with the feature’s owners and had moved to the Robert Hall Syndicate for whom he produced seminal adventure classic Drago and thereafter United Features where he created comedy strip Miracle Jones. During the time away from Tarzan, Hogarth – with Silas Rhodes – also opened the Cartoonists and Illustrators School which later evolved into the School of Visual Arts.

After his two-year hiatus, Hogarth bombastically returned to the Lord of the Jungle in 1947, midway through an ongoing story. For the sake of convenience, Garden & Moreira’s ‘Tarzan on the Island of Ka-Gor Part One’ (#840-856, April 13th-3rd August 1947) is included here, setting the scene as sassy Texan heiress Dallas Doyle journeys to the home of Tarzan and his mate Jane, determined to recruit the famed adventurer in the search for her long-missing father. It takes a lot of persuading, but eventually Tarzan capitulates, due in no small part to the urgings of native mystic Maker of Ghosts…

Following an old map of a diamond mine, the expedition proceeds slowly until sneak thief Dirk Mungo and a devious riverboat skipper steal it and frame Tarzan. Jailed by a corrupt police official, the Ape-Man abandons the niceties of civilisation and breaks out, following the villains with Dallas and golden lion Jad-Bal-Ja rushing to keep up. The trail takes them through all manner of incredible horror before culminating in an aeroplane dogfight. Shot down but surviving, the pursuers doggedly press on, until captured by pygmies who trade them to decadent priests…

‘Tarzan on the Island of Ka-Gor Part Two’ (#857-861, August 10th to 7th September 1947) sees Hogarth’s spectacular re-emergence, illustrating Garden’s script as the lost Doyle patriarch is finally found and rescued, just as the entire lost world he ruled succumbs to volcanic destruction. Hogarth then took sole control again for the concluding instalments.

‘Tarzan on the Island of Ka-Gor Part Three’ (#862-874, 14th September-7th December 1947) swiftly wrapped up the saga with the hero saving his companions but almost losing his own life in the process.

Wounded unto death, Tarzan is lost and expiring with rumours of his passing inciting various villains of the jungle lands to begin their raids and depredations again. However, saved by the tender ministrations of Manu the monkey and elephantine comrade Tantor, Tarzan soon storms back to restore his fair if heavy-handed peace…

To Be Continued…

These tales are full of astounding, unremitting, unceasing action with Hogarth and the other contributors spinning page after page of blockbuster Technicolor action over months of non-stop wonder and exoticism. Plot was never as important as engendering a wild rush of rapt and rousing visceral responses, and every Sunday the strip delivered that in spades.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was a master of populist writing and always his prose crackled with energy and imagination. Hogarth was an inspired intellectual and, as well as gradually instilling his pages with ferocious, unceasing action, layered panels with subtle symbolism. Heroes looked noble, villains suitably vile and animals powerful and beautiful. Even vegetation, rocks and clouds looked spiky, edgy and liable to attack at a moment’s notice…

These vivid visual masterworks are all coiled-spring tension or vital, violently expressively explosive motion: stretching, running, jumping, fighting in a surging rush of power and glory. It’s a dream come true that these majestic exploits are back in print for ours and future generations of dedicated fantasists to explore and enjoy.
Tarzan ® and Edgar Rice Burroughs ™ & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All images Edgar Rice Burroughs, 2015. All text copyright Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc 2015.

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Doctor Strange Epic Collection volume 2: I, Dormammu 1966-1969


By Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Dennis O’Neil, Raymond Marais, Jim Lawrence, Dan Adkins, Bill Everett, Marie Severin, George Tuska, Tom Palmer, Gene Colan, John Buscema, Herb Trimpe, George Klein, Sam Grainger & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5315-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

When the budding House of Ideas introduced a warrior wizard to their burgeoning pantheon in the summer of 1963 it was a bold and curious move. Bizarre adventures and menacing monsters remained incredibly popular but mention of magic or the supernatural – especially vampires, werewolves and their eldritch ilk – were proscribed by a censorship panel which dictated almost all aspects of story content.

At this time – almost a decade after a painfully public witch hunt led to Senate hearings – all comics were ferociously monitored and adjudicated by the Comics Code Authority. Even though some of the small company’s strongest sellers were still mystery and monster mags, their underlying themes and premises were almost universally mad science and alien wonders, not necromantic or thaumaturgic horrors.

That might explain Stan Lee’s low-key introduction of Steve Ditko’s mystic adventurer: an exotic, twilit troubleshooter inhabiting the shadowy outer fringes of rational, civilised society.

The company had already – and recently – published a quasi-mystic precursor. Trench-coated savant Doctor Droom – later redesignated Dr. Druid – had an inconspicuous run in Amazing Adventures (volume 1 #1-4 & #6: June-November 1961). He was a psychiatrist, sage and paranormal investigator tackling everything from alien invaders to Atlanteans (but not those Sub-Mariner ruled). Droom was subsequently retro-written into Marvel continuity as an alternative candidate and precursor for Stephen Strange’s ultimate role as Sorcerer Supreme.

Nevertheless, after a shaky start, the Marvel Age Master of the Mystic Arts became an unmissable icon of the cool counter-culture kids who saw in Steve Ditko’s psychedelic art echoes and overtones of their own trippy explorations of other worlds and realms. That might not have been his intention but it certainly helped keep the mage at the forefront of Lee’s efforts to break comics out of the kids-stuff ghetto…

This enchanting full colour compilation collects the mystical portions of Strange Tales #147-168, Doctor Strange #169-179 and Avengers #61, plus a minor mystic mirthquake from Not Brand Echh #13, collectively spanning August 1966 to May 1969.

The previous volume had seen Stephen Strange defeat his arch nemesis Baron Mordo, extra-dimensional overlord Dormammu, Mordo’s unnamed and now-unemployed disciples and sundry other minor menaces before the dark lord returned to seemingly destroy himself in a hubris-fuelled, suicidal attack on the omnipotent embodiment of the cosmos called Eternity…

The cataclysmic chaos ruptured the heavens over infinite dimensions and when the universe was calm again both supra-deities were gone. Rescued from the resultant tumult, however, was the valiant girl Strange had loved and lost who finally introduced herself as Clea. Although Strange despondently left her in the decimated Dark Dimension, everyone knew she would be back…

This time-period – encompassing a full-blown Marvel expansion and Strange’s solo-star status – saw the magician entering a period of creative instability under a welter of briefly employed writers and artists after the originator abruptly left the company at the height of his fame and success in early 1967. The catastrophic cosmic swansong was Ditko’s last hurrah. Issue #147 saw a fresh start under the auspices of co-scripters Lee & Denny O’Neil, with comics veteran Bill Everett suddenly and surprisingly limning the arcane adventures. As Strange returns to his Greenwich Village abode ‘From the Nameless Nowhere Comes… Kaluu!’ sees sagacious mentor The Ancient One rush to his pupil’s side mere moments before an ancient enemy launches a deadly attack from beyond the unknown. O’Neil & Everett then trod new ground by revealing ‘The Origin of the Ancient One!’ even as the mysterious foe intensifies his siege of the Sanctum in #149’s ‘If Kaluu Should Triumph…’

Roy Thomas stepped in to write concluding battle bonanza ‘The Conquest of Kaluu!’ as Master and Student defeat the overwhelmingly powerful intruder through grit and ingenuity. ST #150 then wraps up on an ominous note as with Dormammu gone another ancient evil begins to stir in the Dark Dimension. Throughout his despotic reign the Dread One had apparently been keeping captive a being every bit his equal in power and perfidy and his superior in guile and cruelty. She was his sister and in #151 ‘Umar Strikes!’ returning scribe Lee & Everett document her ascent to the throne, revenge on Clea and plans for Earth before hurling Strange ‘Into the Dimension of Death!’ in #152. Naturally, she also underestimates the puny mortal and Strange begins his retaliation even as he finds himself traversing outer dimensions and ultimately ‘Alone, Against the Mindless Ones!’ The episode is notable for the pencilling debut of magnificent Marie Severin, who applies a sense of potent wonder and film-inspired kinetics to the storytelling. Strange Tales #154 sees Lee, Severin & Umar declare ‘Clea Must Die!’, but the task proves harder than imagined once Strange finds macabre and unlikely allies in the demonic dictator’s own dungeons.

Winning a temporary reprieve, Strange and Clea voyage to Earth where the Ancient One moves her beyond Umar’s reach forever, before ‘The Fearful Finish…!’ escalates the dark goddess’ determination and wrath. In #156 she resolves to dirty her own hands and all too soon, ‘Umar Walks the Earth!’ She is too late. Strange’s mentor has despatched him to a distant realm beyond all worlds on a suicide mission that could endanger all creation…

Artistic superstar-in-waiting Herb Trimpe signed on as inker for #157’s ‘The End of the Ancient One!’ as Strange and his unleashed secret weapon arrive back in time to see off Umar, but only at an unforgivable cost…

Bereft and aghast, Strange then faces alone the monster he has unleashed, unaware that his liberation of the beast Zom has not only sparked an awakening of mystic force all over the world but also invoked the draconian assessment of supernal arbiter The Living Tribunal who rules that Earth must die. With Thomas again scripting, the Cosmic Judge manifests ‘The Sands of Death’ to eradicate the destabilising wild magic infesting the planet but grudgingly accepts Strange’s plea bargain to save the universe from ‘The Evil That Men Do…’

This constant ramping up of tension proceeds as Strange enlists old enemy Mordo, who magnanimously agrees to absorb all that empowering evil energy the Doctor siphons from a legion of newly-empowered sorcerers.

In Strange Tales #160 Raymond Marais, Severin & Trimpe show what a bad idea that is as ‘If This Planet You Would Save!’ depicts the amped-up Baron turning on his benefactor, exiling Strange to a fantastic alien cosmos in #161’s ‘And a Scourge Shall Come Upon You!’ (Marais & new star-turn artist Dan Adkins). In that uncanny other-realm Strange meets former romantic entanglement Victoria Bentley before both are accosted by a macabre mystic tyrant offering aid against the nigh-omnipotent Mordo… for a price.

‘From the Never-World Comes… Nebulos!’ (scripted by James Bond strip writer Jim Lawrence & rendered by Adkins) sees Strange pull all the stops out: smashing Mordo, outwitting Nebulos and stymying The Tribunal’s ‘Three Faces of Doom!’ just in time to save Earth. As his reward, the Good Doctor is despatched by the Grand Arbiter into a ‘Nightmare!’ pursuit of Victoria, arriving on a monster-ridden planet ruled by a techno-wizard named Yandroth who declares himself Scientist supreme of the universe…

The subject of a case of hate at first sight, Strange endures more gadget-laden peril in issue #165 as Yandroth inflicts testing to destruction on ‘The Mystic and the Machine’. Defeated by the hero’s courage and magic, the bonkers boffin activates his doomsday scenario, stating ‘Nothing Can Halt… Voltorg!’ (Lawrence, George Tuska & Adkins) until science proves him wrong…

O’Neil & Adkins teamed up in ST #167 for ‘This Dream… This Doom!’ wherein Strange returns to Earth, indulges in a spot of handy resurrecting and tracks down still-missing Victoria Bentley. That excursion takes the Wizard of Greenwich Village deep into the realm of imagination where Yandroth is waiting for him. The end comes suddenly in #168 as ‘Exile!’ apparently sees the end of the villain and a quick return to home in time for a bold new start.

Big things were happening at Marvel in 1968. After years under a restrictive retail sales deal, The House of Ideas secured a new distributor and were finally expanding with a tidal wave of titles. “Split-Books” like Strange Tales were phased out in favour of solo series for their cohabiting stars and, for the Master of the Mystic Arts at least, that meant a bit of rapid reset. The expansion brought a measure of creative stability as the mystic master now explored the unknown in his own monthly solo title thanks to a neat moment of sleight of hand: assuming the numbering of Strange Tales under his own shingle.

To begin the new era of sorcerous super-shenanigans Thomas & Adkins resumed with a reworking of the Mage’s origins. Extrapolating and building upon the Ditko masterpiece from Strange Tales #115, ‘The Coming of Dr. Strange’ details how he was once America’s greatest surgeon. A brilliant man yet greedy, vain and arrogant, the healer cared nothing for the sick except as a means to wealth and glory. When a self-inflicted, drunken car-crash ended his career, Strange hit the skids.

Fallen as low as man ever could, the debased doctor overheard a barroom tale leading him on a delirious odyssey – or, perhaps more accurately, pilgrimage – to Tibet, where a frail, aged mage changed his life forever. Eventually, enlightenment through torturous daily redemption transformed Stephen the derelict into a solitary, dedicated watchdog at the fringes of humanity, challenging every hidden danger of the dark on behalf of a world better off not knowing what dangers lurk in the shadows.

The saga also featured his first clash with the Ancient One’s other pupil Mordo, revealing how Strange thwarted a seditious scheme, earning the Baron’s undying envious enmity…

The expanded exploration of the change from elitist, dissolute surgeon to penitent scholar and dutiful mystic guardian of humanity neatly segues into another clash with a lethally persistent foe as ‘To Dream… Perchance to Die!’ (#170) finds the Ancient One trapped in a coma thanks to the malevolent lord of dreams. To wake his master, Strange impetuously enters the astral realms and defeats Nightmare on his own terms and turf after which #171 introduces someone who will become a key contributor to the mystic’s career.

Pencilled by eventual inker supreme Tom Palmer, with Adkins supplying finishes, ‘In the Shadow of… Death!’ sees Strange lured away from Earth by news of long-lost Clea. To facilitate her rescue, the sorcerer unthinkingly calls on Victoria Bentley, unaware or uncaring of her romantic feelings for him.

Their trek through the outer deeps of The Realm Unknown is fraught with deadly traps and peril, but does lead to missing Clea… after Bentley is captured and Strange is ambushed by his most powerful and hate-filled foe…

A magical creative team formed for Doctor Strange #171 as Gene Colan signed on for an astoundingly experimental run, with Palmer now handling inks. Humanity is endangered by ‘…I, Dormammu!’ as the Dark Lord reveals how he has orchestrated many recent attacks designed to weary and drain Earth’s champion. The gloating fiend shares how his apparent destruction battling conceptual being Eternity in fact resulted in transdimensional exile and the subjugation of a demonic race dubbed Dykkors: now his eager and willing foot-soldiers lurk, ready to ravage the realms of Mankind. The Dark Despot has even suborned his hated sister and former foe Umar the Unspeakable to his scheme…

As always, Dormammu underestimates the valour and ingenuity of Strange. ‘…While a World Awaits!’, the monstrous conqueror leads a demonic army through the Doorway of Dimensions, leaving the human mage time to liberate Clea and Victoria, before engaging the fearsome forces in a mystic delaying tactic that again allows Dormammu to defeat himself…

With former associate Dr. Benton seeking to convince Strange to abandon crazy charlatanry for a life of respectable medical consultancy, #174 sees the Master of the Mystic Arts helping magical Clea adapt to mundane life on Earth. However, ‘The Power and the Pendulum’ also finds him accompanying brave, secretly despondent Victoria home to England, before being diverted to a foreboding castle where sinister Lord Nekron has laid an eldritch trap.

The crazed noble has made a bargain with hellborn Supreme Satannish, offering his soul for fame and immortality. Instead, the Lord of Lies devised a counter-offer, calling for the substitution of another mystic at the end of one year. With time running out and Strange fitted up for the switch, doom seems inevitable, but Earth’s champion has a timely trick to play…

The late sixties were an incredibly creative period and comics greatly benefitted from that atmosphere of experimentation. Colan used page layouts in wildly imaginative ways to stun readers, but that same expanded vision has often been cited as the reason for the title’s poor sales. I suspect the feature’s early cancellation was as much the result of increasingly sophisticated and scary stories from Thomas, who early on tapped into growing global fascination with supernatural horror and urban conspiracy such as seen in #175’s ‘Unto Us… the Sons of Satannish!’ – coincidentally, the last issue to carry the original title logo.

Just like Ira Levin’s 1967 book and hit 1968 movie Rosemary’s Baby, Strange’s next case involved devil-worship in safely mundane Manhattan, working in secret to achieve diabolical aims. Denied access to the film’s simmering sexuality and mature themes, Thomas, Colan & Palmer stuck to comic book strengths as Clea’s immigrant experience abruptly encompasses ostracization, isolation, suspicious reactions and even assault by ordinary New Yorkers. This leads her straight into the hands of hidden cult The Sons of Satannish, whose charismatic   leader Asmodeus deals with the devil, attempting to win ultimate power by eradicating Strange and replacing him in #176 which whilst sporting a new, eerie and abbreviated logo and masthead, asked ‘O Grave Where is Thy Victory?’…

Those aforementioned sales problems were not going away and #177’s concluding chapter ‘The Cult and the Curse’ addressed the issue in tried & true manner. Exiled from his own existence and persona, Strange saved Clea but could only strike back and reclaim his life by magically reinventing himself… by devising a brand new look. The mask & tights of a traditional superhero were apparently the only way to outmanoeuvre Asmodeus, but sadly, not in time to stop him activating a deathbed curse to destroy the world…

The super-suited & booted thoroughly modern mage needed information to proceed, and Dr. Strange #178 has him seeking to question the Satannish worshippers Asmodeus had cruelly banished. Once again exploiting poor Victoria Bentley, Strange recognises her new neighbour Dane Whitman as part-time Avenger The Black Knight and a plea for aid results in an assault on the dimension of decay-god Tiborro ‘…With One Beside Him!’

The saga concluded in Avengers #61 with ‘Some Say the World Will End in Fire… Some Say in Ice!’ by Thomas, John Buscema & George Klein. After Asmodeus’ recued minions reveal the cult’s failsafe spell unleashed Norse demons Surtur and Ymir to destroy the planet, Strange and Black Knight recruit The Vision, Black Panther and Hawkeye to help them save the globe on two fronts…

Although the comics spellbinding ends here, also on offer is the cover of Dr. Strange #179: a Barry Smith treat from 1969 fronting an emergency reprint of Lee & Ditko’s ‘The Wondrous World of Dr. Strange’ from Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2. It precedes one last strip surprise: Marie Severin’s cover of Not Brand Echh #13 (May) and comedy treat ‘Dr. Deranged vs Deadpan!’: a frantic spoof by Thomas, Colan & Sam Grainger with “Marble Comics’” madcap mage facing off against lampooned DC supernatural stalwarts Deadman and The Spectre (or Spookter right here, right then…). Also on view are the covers by Jack Kirby, Everett, Jim Steranko, Severin Adkins, Colan, John Buscema and Barry (not yet Windsor) Smith and a selection of original art, beginning with an unused try-out page by Palmer & Adkins, full pages by Adkins, Colan & Palmer and cover art to #174 and 175, topped off with a House Ad heralding the 1968 bifurcation of Strange Tales.

The Wizard of Greenwich Village was always an acquired taste for mainstream superhero fans, but the pioneering graphic bravura of these tales and the ones to come in the next volume left an indelible mark on the Marvel Universe and readily fall into the sublime category of works done “ahead of their time”. Many of us prefer to believe Doctor Strange has always been the coolest of outsiders and most accessible fringe star in Marvel’s firmament. This glorious grimoire is a miraculous means for old fans to enjoy his world once more and a perfect introduction for recent acolytes or converts created by the movie iteration.
© 2024 MARVEL.

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Batman Beyond!


By Hilary J. Bader, Rich Burchett, Joe Staton, Terry Beatty & various (DC comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-604-0 (TPB)

The Batman Animated TV series masterminded by Eric Radomski, Bruce Timm, Paul Dini and others in the 1990s revolutionised The Dark Knight and led – with a tie-in monthly printed series – to some of the absolute best comic book tales in his 85-year publishing history. With the hero’s small screen credentials firmly re-established, follow-up series began (and are still coming), eventually feeding back into the overarching multiversal DCU continuity.

Following those award-winning animated sagas, in 1999 came a new incarnation set one generation into the future, following Bruce Wayne in the twilight of his life reluctantly mentoring a new teen hero picking up his eerily-scalloped mantle. In Britain the series was inspirationally re-titled Batman of the Future but for most of the impressed cognoscenti and awestruck kids worldwide it was Batman Beyond!

Again the show was augmented by a cool kids’ comic book. This inexplicably out-of-print collection re-presents the first 6-issue miniseries in a hip and trendy, immensely entertaining package suitable for fans and aficionados of all ages. Although not necessary to a reader’s enjoyment, passing familiarity with the TV episodes will enhance the overall experience. All stories were written by Hilary J. Bader and we open with a 2-part adaptation of the pilot, illustrated by Rick Burchett & Terry Beatty.

‘Not On My Watch!’ serves up glimpses of the last days of Batman’s crusade against crime before age, infirmity and injury slowed him down to the point of compromising his principles and endangering the citizens he’d sworn to protect…

Years later, Gotham City in the mid-21st century (notionally accepted as 2039 AD – 100 years after the Dark Knight’s debut in Detective Comics #27) is a dystopian urban jungle where angry, rebellious schoolkid Terry McGinnis strikes a blow against pernicious pimped-up street punks The Jokerz and is chased out of town all the way to the gates of a ramshackle mansion. Meanwhile, his research scientist dad has discovered a little too much about how the company he works for operates.

Wayne-Powers used to be a decent place to work before old man Wayne became a recluse. Now Derek Powers runs the show and is ruthless enough to do anything to increase profits… Outside town, Terry is saved from a potentially fatal Jokerz encounter by a burly old man who then collapses. Helping aged Bruce Wayne inside the mansion, Terry discovers the long neglected Batcave before being chased away by the surly saviour. McGinnis but doesn’t really care… until he gets home to find his father has been murdered…

In a storm of emotion, he returns to Wayne Manor as concluding chapter ‘I Am Batman’ sees McGinnis attempting to force Wayne to act before giving up in frustration and stealing the hero’s greatest weapon: a cybernetic Bat-suit that enhances strength, speed, durability and perception. Alone, untrained and unaided, a new Batman sets to enact justice and exact revenge…

In the ensuing clash with Powers the unscrupulous entrepreneur is mutated into a radioactive monster – dubbed Blight – before Wayne and Terry negotiate a tenuous truce and grudging understanding. For now, Terry will continue to clean up Gotham City as an apprentice- and strictly probationary-hero…

With #3, Bader, Burchett & Beatty began crafting original stories of future Gotham, commencing with ‘Never Mix, Never Worry’ wherein Blight returns to steal a selection of man-made radioactive elements which can only be used to cause harm… or can they?

Joe Staton took over pencilling with #4 as a schoolboy nerd frees a devil from limbo and old man Wayne introduces the cocksure Terry to parapsychologist Jason Blood and his eldritch alter ego Etrigan the Demon in spooky shocker ‘Magic Is Everywhere’. That sentiment is repeated and reinforced when a school-trip to a museum unleashes ancient lovers to feed on the students’ life energy in delightfully comical tragedy ‘Mummy, Oh! and Juliet’…

This captivating compendium concludes in another compellingly edgy thriller as Terry stumbles into a return bout with a shapeshifting super-thief in ‘Permanent Inque Stains’, only to find there are worse crimes and far more evil villains haunting his city…

In 2000 Titan Books released a British edition re-titled Batman of the Future (to comply with the renamed UK TV series) and this version is a little easier to locate by those eager to enjoy the stories rather than own an artefact. Fun, thrilling and surprisingly moving, these tales are magnificent examples of comics that appeal to young and old alike and are well overdue for re-issue. They also prove the foundation concepts of Batman can travel far and riff wildly, but always deliver maximum wonderment.
© 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Doctor Strange: Dimension War


By James Lovegrove (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-8033-6257-1 (HB/Digital edition/Audio book)

Modern Marvel is a multimedia entertainment colossus but all those multitudinous branches and subdivisions ultimately derive from stories in comic books. Thanks to recent on-screen exposure, ultimate Marvel outsider Stephen Strange is now a popular hot property, which no doubt inspired this prose reinterpretation based on his founding exploits as originally detailed by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee…

Marvel’s sustained presence on non-graphic bookshelves really began in the 1990s with a string of hardback novels. Since then, those who want to supply their own pictures to MU exploits have basked in a procession of text-based thrills in all book formats. Of late, Titan Books has been supplying powerhouse prose publications and here addresses the interests of fans brought in by the recent movies as well as those lifelong devotees of the ever-enlarging continuity who can’t bear to miss a single instance of their fave raves.

Written by British author/designer/illustrator James Lovegrove (Hope, Redlaw, Age of Odin, The Clouded World, Untied Kingdom, Pantheon series, Firefly), Dimension War takes Ditko & Lee’s early episodic exploits of the “Master of Black Magic”: tweaking and shuffling them into one cohesive story arc detailing the coming of the mage and his accession to the role of Sorcerer Supreme.

By downplaying more esoteric episodes – such as battling Asgardian god Loki and stealing Thor’s hammer, rescuing Queen Cleopatra, banishing a sentient predatory house, evicting body-stealing aliens, battling decadence demon Tiborro and saving human burglars from enslavement in the Purple Dimension – the author delineates and extrapolates an intriguing ongoing war from Strange’s frequent clashes with rival student Baron Karl Mordo.

The origin is included and expanded upon as morally bankrupt, crippled superstar surgeon Dr. Stephen Strange finds new purpose after losing everything he thought mattered. By saving aged Tibetan mystic The Ancient One from his ambitious murderous disciple Mordo Strange dedicates himself to become a magical adept: resolved to save humanity from diabolical and extradimensional threats.

Focussing on the many battles with dream demon Nightmare, implacable Mordo and his extradimensional tyrant god patron Dread Dormammu as well as the start of a prolonged but doomed romance with beguiling alien witch-with-a secret Clea, the saga traces a far hipper and less aloof mage than most comics fans will be used to: one who tirelessly strives to keep Earth safe and frustrate demonic schemes of monsters consumed by avarice and arrogance and who ultimately learn there’s always someone bigger and stronger and that pride invariably goes before a great fall…

Reprocessing material from Strange Tales #110, 111 and 114-146, spanning July 1963 to July 1966, as an added treat, the epic ends in an epilogue as first seen in pictures in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2 (October 1965). There and then the Good Doctor first fully entered the glamourous, bright and shiny superhero universe, joining the wondrous wallcrawler to defeat thieving wizard Xandu who ensorcelled thugs to make invulnerable zombies and purloined the terrifying Wand of Watoomb…

Slick and fast paced at the cost of much of the mood of the comics, the tale will certainly please movie converts and apostles, and should you wish to see the way it all began and unfolded in pictorial terms, the basis for all this arcane armageddon action can be found in Doctor Strange Epic Collection volume 1 (1963-1966): Master of the Mystic Arts.
© 2024 MARVEL.

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Ruins (Paperback Edition)


By Peter Kuper (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-18-8 (TPB/Digital edition)

Multi award-winning artist, storyteller, illustrator, educator and activist Peter Kuper was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1958, before the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio when he was six. Growing up there he (briefly) met iconic Underground Commix pioneer R. Crumb and at school befriended fellow comics fan Seth Tobocman (Disaster and Resistance: Comics and Landscapes for the 21st Century, War in the Neighborhood, You Don’t Have to Fuck People Over to Survive).

As they progressed through the school system together, Kuper & Tobocman caught the bug for self-publishing. They then attended Kent State University together. Upon graduation in 1979, both moved to New York and whilst studying at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute and The Art Students League created – with painter Christof Kohlhofer – landmark political art/comics magazine World War 3 Illustrated. Separately and in conjunction, in comics, illustration and via art events, Kuper & Tobocman continued championing social causes, highlighting judicial and cultural inequities and spearheading the use of narrative art as a tool of activism.

Although a noted and true son of the Big Apple now and despite brushing with the comics mainstream as Howard Chaykin’s assistant at Upstart Associates, most of Kuper’s singularly impressive works are considered “Alternative” in nature, deriving from his regular far-flung travels and political leanings. Moreover, although being about how people are, much of his oeuvre employs cityscapes and the natural environment as bit players or star attractions.

When not binding his own “Life Lived in Interesting Times” into experimental narratives – such as with 2007’s fictively-cloaked Stop Forgetting To Remember: The Autobiography of Walter Kurtz – or bold yarns like Sticks and Stones (2005), Kuper created The New York Times’ first continuing strip (1993’s Eye of the Beholder) and regularly adapts to strip form literary classics like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1991), Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (2019), Kafka’s short stories  Give It Up! (1995) and Kafkaesque (2018) as well as longer works like The Metamorphosis (2003), all while creating his own unique canon of intriguing graphic novels and visual memoirs.

Amongst the so many strings to his bow – and certainly the most high-profile – was a brilliant stewardship of Mad Magazine’s beloved Spy Vs. Spy strip, which he inherited from creator Antonio Prohias in 1997, and he also chases whimsy in children’s books like 2006’s Theo and the Blue Note or experimental exercise The Last Cat Book (1984: illustrating an essay by Robert E Howard). Whenever he travelled – which was often – he made visual books such as 1992’s Peter Kuper’s Comics Trips – A Journal of Travels through Africa and Southeast Asia. Three years later he undertook a bold creative challenge for DC’s Vertigo Verité imprint: crafting mute, fantastically expressive thriller/swingeing social commentary The System.

Kuper’s later comics – all equally ambitious and groundbreaking – had to make room for his other interests as he became a successful commercial illustrator (Newsweek, Time, The Nation, Businessweek, The Progressive, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly and more), lecturer in Graphic Novels at Harvard, a teacher at Parsons School of Design and The School of Visual Arts and – since 1988 – co-Art Director of political action group INX International Ink Company. Translated into many languages, he has built a thriving occupation as a gallery artist exhibiting globally and scored a whole bunch of prestigious Fellowships and Educational residencies as a result.

He still finds time to pursue his key interests – such as contributing to benefit anthology Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds and cultivates a lifelong passion for entomology. This hobby infused 2015’s fictionalized autobiographical episode Ruins: an Eisner Award winning tome now available again in an enthralling trade paperback edition.

A passionate multilayered tale of crisis, confrontation and renewal infused by his ecological concerns, political leanings, rage against authoritarianism and love of Mexico, it draws from the same deep well as 2009’s Diario De Oaxaca: A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Mexico. Between 2006 and 2008, Kuper, his wife and young daughter lived in Oaxaca, absorbing astounding historical and cultural riches, beguiling natural wonders, hearty warmth and nonjudgemental friendliness. They also witnessed how a teacher’s strike was brutally and bloodily suppressed by local governor/dictator Ulises Ruiz Ortiz – AKA “URO” – in a series of events with a still heavily disputed death toll scarring the region and citizens to this day.

Part travelogue, part natural history call to arms and paean to the culture of Oaxaca, Kuper’s tale details a marriage in crisis played out against a disintegrating crisis of governance. Recently unemployed, socially withdrawn and emotionally stunted museum illustrator/bug lover George finally capitulates and voyages to the Mexican dreamland his wife Samantha has been pining for since before they met. Under the aegis of a sabbatical year taken to write a book on pre-conquest Mexico, she has dragged him out of ennui and churlish career doldrums to a place where he can indulge his abiding love of insects, if not her…

For Samantha, it’s a return to a paradisical place and magical time, albeit one where she loved and lost her first husband. That’s not the sole cause of growing friction between the increasingly at odds couple. The lengthy trip’s overt intention of reuniting them falters as she is drawn deeply into stories of how the Conquistadors destroyed Mesoamerican cultures they found and highlights parallels to her own plight. There are other earthier distractions she just can’t shake off too…

Slowly, George’s intransigence melts as he meets people willing to tolerate his ways, see beyond his shell, and share the history, geology, geography and serenely easy-going culture that eventually penetrates his crusty exterior. All manner of distracting temptations – like the infinite variety of cool bugs! – are endless and constant as he makes friends and finds healthier ways to express himself. He even tries to renew his constrained relationship with Samantha, but there will always be one impossible, impassable barrier to their future happiness…

… And then they’re caught up in the Teachers’ strike and extra-judicial methods Governor URO employs to end it even as George achieves the milestone life goal he never thought possible and visits the Michoacan forest where Monarchs come to breed and die.

… And finds it expiring from human intrusion…

Acting as thematic spine and tonal indicator for the unfolding story, each chapter follows – with snapshot scenes of changing, degrading landscapes – the epic flight of a lone Monarch butterfly, from its start in Canada, across America to the forest’s lepidopteran devotee George ostensibly left his comfort zone home to see.

With overtones of Peter Weir’s film The Year of Living Dangerously (and Christopher Koch’s novel too), Ruins layers metaphor upon allegory, distilling political, ecological and personal confrontation into a powerfully evocative account of people at a crossroads. Inspirationally visualised in a wealth of styles by a true master of pictorial narrative and classic drama, this new paperback edition also includes an ‘Afterwords’ where the author adds context to the still ongoing saga of the civil war crime underpinning his story.

Clever, charming, chilling and compulsively engrossing, this delicious exercise in interconnectivity is a brilliant example of how smart and powerful comics can and should be.
© Peter Kuper 2015. All rights reserved.

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Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection volumes 9: Spider-Man or Spider-Clone? 1975-1977


By Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, Ross Andru, Gil Kane, Sal Buscema, Mike Esposito, Frank Giacoia, Dave Hunt, John Romita & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4874-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

Amazing Spider-Man was a comic book that matured with – or perhaps just slightly ahead of – its fan-base. This epic compendium of chronological webspinning wonderment sees the World’s Most Misunderstood Hero facing even greater and evermore complex challenges as he slowly recovers from the trauma of losing his true love and greatest enemy in the same horrific debacle. Here you will see all that slow recovery comes unstuck.

Once co-creator Stan Lee replaced himself with young Gerry Conway, the scripts acquired a far more contemporary tone (but feeling quite outdated from here in the 21st century): purportedly more in tune with the times whilst the emphatic use of soap opera subplots kept older readers glued to the series even when bombastic battle sequences didn’t. Moreover, as a sign of those times, a hint of cynical surrealism also began creeping in…

For newcomers – or those just visiting thanks to Spider-Man movies: super smart-yet-ultra-alienated orphan Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider during a school outing. Discovering strange superhuman abilities which he augmented with his own natural chemistry, physics and engineering genius, the kid did what any lonely, geeky nerd would do with such newfound prowess: he tried to cash in for girls, fame and money. Making a costume to hide his identity in case he made a fool of himself, Parker became a minor media celebrity – and a criminally vainglorious one. To his eternal regret, when a thief fled past him one night he didn’t lift a finger to stop him, only to find when he returned home that his guardian uncle Ben Parker had been murdered.

Crazed and vengeful, Peter hunted the assailant who’d made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known. He discovered to his horror it was the self-same felon he had neglected to stop. His irresponsibility resulted in the death of the man who raised him, and the traumatised boy swore to forevermore use his powers to help others. Since that night, the wallcrawler tirelessly battled miscreants, monsters and madmen with a fickle, ungrateful public usually baying for his blood even as he perpetually saves them.

The high school nerd grew up and went to college. Because of his guilt-fuelled double-life he struggles there too but found abiding love with cop’s daughter Gwen Stacy… until she was murdered by the Green Goblin. Now Parker must pick up the pieces of his life…

This compelling compilation reprints Amazing Spider-Man #143-164 and Annual #10: collectively covering cover-dates April 1975 to January 1977, and confirming an era of astounding introspective drama and captivating creativity wedded to growing science fictional thinking. Stan Lee’s hand-picked successor Gerry Conway moved on after reaching a creative plateau, giving way to fresh authorial guide Len Wein.  Thematically, tales moved away from sordid street crime as outlandish villains and monsters took centre stage, but the most sensational advance was an insidious scheme which would reshape the nature of the web-spinner’s adventures to this day.

For all that, the wallcrawler was still indisputably mainstream comics’ voice of youth, defining being a teen for young readers of the 1970s, tackling incredible hardships, fantastic foes and the most pedestrian and debilitating of frustrations. Now its later and still-grieving Parker is trying to move on as we open with Amazing Spider-Man #143 (by Conway, Ross Andru, Frank Giacoia & Dave Hunt) in ‘…And the Wind Cries: Cyclone!’ Peter is in Paris to deliver a ransom and save kidnapped publisher J. Jonah Jameson but resorts to his arachnid alter ego to deal with a hyper-fast French supervillain. The run-of-the-mill tale’s real kicker comes from an overly-fond farewell expressed by “casual chum” Mary Jane Watson: a kiss that finally shifts traumatised Peter’s thoughts from his recently murdered beloved.

The creative team capitalised on the situation after Spider-Man saves Jonah and clobbers the kidnappers before Pete returns to New York and his usual daily travails as #144 launches a shocking new worry. ‘The Delusion Conspiracy’ (ASM #145) builds the tension and focuses on a baffled girl’s confusion and terror at everyone’s reactions when she comes home and the entire world screams ‘Gwen Stacy is Alive… and, Well…?!’

With Gwen somehow resurrected and Peter on the edge of a mental breakdown, Aunt May is hospitalised just in time for another old foe to strike again in ‘Scorpion… Where is Thy Sting?’, but the real kick in the tale is irrefutable scientific and medical reports proving the increasingly bewildered Miss Stacy is not an impostor but the genuine article…

In Spider-Man #147 Peter finds some answers as further tests prove Gwen is actually a true human clone (remember, this was new, cutting-edge stuff in 1975) but all too soon he’s distracted by another bad-guy with a grudge and hungry to prove ‘The Tarantula is a Very Deadly Beast’ (inked by Mike Esposito & Dave Hunt). It’s all part of a convoluted, utterly byzantine revenge scheme conceived by a malign enemy. When the hero is ambushed by a mesmerised Gwen at the behest of the archfiend, ‘Jackal, Jackal, Who’s Got the Jackal?’ at last discloses shocking truths about one of Peter’s most trusted friends prior to the Delusion Conspiracy explosively concluding in #149’s ‘Even if I Live, I Die!’ (Andru & Esposito art).

Learning he and Gwen had been covertly cloned by their biology teacher Miles Warren, the Amazing Arachnid must defeat his alchemical double in a grim, no-holds-barred identity-duel, with neither sure who’s the real McCoy. The battle eventually results in the copy’s death. Maybe. Perhaps. Probably…

The moment of unshakeable doubt over who actually fell informs anniversary issue Amazing Spider-Man #150, with Archie Goodwin, Gil Kane, Esposito & Giacoia taking the hero down memory lane and up against a brigade of old antagonists to decide whether ‘Spider-Man… or Spider-Clone?’ survived that furious final fight, before debuting regular scripter Len Wein joins Andru & John Romita Sr. to launch a new era of adventure…

After disposing of his duplicate’s corpse in an incineration plant, Spider-Man finds time to let Peter reconnect with his long-neglected friends. However, a jolly party is soon disrupted as blackouts triggered by a super-menace lead the wallcrawler into the sewers for a ‘Skirmish Beneath the Streets!’ It results in his almost drowning and nearly being ‘Shattered by the Shocker!’ (Esposito & Giacoia inks) in a conclusive and decisive return engagement before a moving change-of-pace tale sees a blackmailed former football star giving his all to save a child in ‘The Longest Hundred Yards!’ (Andru & Esposito).

However, it’s left to Spider-Man to make the true computer-crook culprits pay, after which #154 reveals ‘The Sandman Always Strikes Twice!’ (with art by Sal Buscema & Esposito) – albeit with little lasting effect – until devious murder-mystery ‘Whodunnit!’ (Buscema & Esposito) cunningly links three seemingly unconnected cases in a masterful “Big Reveal”…

A long-running romance-thread culminates in the oft-delayed wedding of Pete’s old flame Betty Brant to reporter Ned Leeds, but the nuptials are sadly interrupted by a new costumed crook in ‘On a Clear Day, You Can See… the Mirage!’ (Wein, Andru & Esposito), even as a sinister hobo who was haunting the last few yarns strode fully into the spotlight…

In the past, a protracted struggle for control of New York between Dr Octopus and cyborg gangster Hammerhead escalated into a full-on gang war and small-scale nuclear near-disaster, with Spidey and his aunt caught in the middle. The devilish duel concluded with an atomic explosion and the seeming end of two major antagonists. However, #157 exposed ‘The Ghost Who Haunted Octopus!’ as the long-limbed loon turns again to May Parker for salvation.

With Peter in attendance, the many-handed menace seeks to escape a brutal ghostly stalker tormenting him, but their unified actions actually liberate a pitiless killer from inter-dimensional limbo in ‘Hammerhead is Out!’, leading to a savage three-way showdown with Spidey ‘Arm-in-Arm-in-Arm-in-Arm-in-Arm-in-Arm with Doctor Octopus!’ to save the horrified Widow Parker.

Courtesy of plotter Wein, scripter Bill Mantlo and Kane, Esposito & Giacoia, a new insectoid archfoe debuted in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #10, where ‘Step Into My Parlor…’ depicts obsessed Spider-hater J. Jonah Jameson hiring outcast, exceedingly fringe-science biologist Harlan Stilwell  to create yet another tailor-made nemesis to destroy the webslinger.

Meanwhile, the detested hero is ending a vicious hostage situation manufactured by psychotic Rick Deacon, but when the killer escapes and breaks into a certain lab he’s transformed into a winged wonder hungry for payback on the webspinner in ‘…Said the Spider to the Fly!’

In the monthly mag Wein, Andru & Esposito fired the opening shot of an extended epic as a criminal inventor – and one of the wallcrawler’s oldest enemies – recovers Spidey’s long-ditched, satisfactorily drowned “Spider-Mobile”, tricking it out to hunt down its original owner in #160’s ‘My Killer the Car!’…

Having narrowly escaped doom and debacle in equal measure Spidey met a new friend and clashed with an old one, although rising star Frank Castle was reduced to a bit-player in Amazing Spider-Man #161-162 (October & November 1976), as the All-Newly-Reformed X-Men were sales-boosted via a guest-clash in ‘…And the Nightcrawler Came Prowling, Prowling’, wherein the Amazing Arachnid jumps to a completely wrong conclusion after a sniper shoots a reveller at Coney Island. By the time moody mutant Nightcrawler explains himself – in tried-&-true Marvel manner by fighting the webspinner to a standstill – old skull-shirt has turned up to take them both on before mutual foe Jigsaw is exposed as the real assassin in concluding episode ‘Let the Punisher Fit the Crime!’

The mystery villain behind much of Spider-Man’s recent woes is at last exposed in ‘All the Kingpin’s Men!’ as a string of audacious tech-robberies lead the hero to another confrontation with the deadly crime lord. This time, however, the Machiavellian mobster is playing for personal stakes. His son has been on the verge of death for months and his remedy is to electronically transfer the Spider-Man’s life force into the ailing patient. Discarded after the process, Peter Parker’s impending ‘Deadline!’ is extended by old friend Curt Connors until they can explosively set things right…

To Be Continued…

As always the narrative delights are supplemented by added extras which this go-round include contemporary house ads, Romita & Joe Sinnott’s cover/back cover, frontispiece, contents page and double-page cast pin-up from 1975 tabloid edition Marvel Special Edition #1: The Spectacular Spider-Man, and the Andru- & Esposito-rendered entry for The Mighty Marvel Bicentennial Calendar 1976 (June) and Ronn Sutton’s cover for George Olshevsky’s 1982 The Marvel Comics Index: The Amazing Spider-Man and the 1985 Frontispiece by John Allison. Also on view are Andru’s prankish private joke pencils for the big reveal in ASM #144, editorial ‘Of Jackals and Juxtaposition’ from The Spider’s Web column in #153, and original art pages by Punisher design sketch by Romita and original art pages by Kane, Romita Andru & Esposito.

Blending cultural veracity with superb art, and making a dramatic virtue of the awkwardness, confusion and imputed powerlessness most of the readership experienced daily resulted in an irresistibly intoxicating read, especially when delivered in addictive soap-styled instalments, but none of that would be relevant if Spider-Man’s stories weren’t so utterly entertaining. This action-packed collection relives many momentous and crucial periods in the wallcrawler’s astounding life and is one all Fights ‘n’ Tights fanatics must see…
© 2023 MARVEL.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Showcase Presents Batman volume 1


By John Broome, Gardner Fox, Ed Herron, Bill Finger, Carmine Infantino, Bob Kane, Sheldon Moldoff, Joe Giella, Sid Greene & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1086-1 (TPB)

Although cover-dated May 1939, Detective Comics #27 was on sale from March 30th. Happy Anniversary, Dark Knight! Because we like being us, let’s look at a perennial comics incarnation too long overdue for re-evaluation and re-inclusion in the greater Batty-verse…

I’m assuming everybody here loves comics and that we’ve all had the same trying experience of attempting to justify that passion to somebody not genned up or tuned in. Excluding your partner (who is actually right – the living room floor is not the place to leave your D*&$£! funnybooks), many people STILL have an entrenched and erroneous view of narrative strip art, resulting in a frustrating and futile time as you seek to dissuade them from that opinion.

If so, this collection might be the book you want next time that confrontation occurs. Collected here in stark and stunning monochrome are tales which reshaped the Dynamic Duo and set them up for global Stardom – and subsequent fearful castigation from fans – as the template for the Batman TV show of the 1960s. It must be noted, however, that the canny producers and researchers of that landmark derived their creative impetus from stories and especially movie serials of the era preceding the “New Look Batman”, as well as the prevailing tone of those socially changeable times…

So what’s going on here?

By the end of 1963, editor Julius Schwartz had revived much of DC’s science fiction and fantasy line – and the entire industry – with his deft reinterpretation and modernization of the Superhero. He was then asked to work his magic with the creatively stalled, nigh-moribund Caped Crusader franchise of titles. Bringing his usual team of top-notch creators with him, Schwartz stripped down the core-concept, downplaying aliens, outlandish villains and daft transformation tales, to bring a cool modern take to the pursuit and capture of criminals, and even overseeing a streamlining rationalisation of the art style itself.

The most apparent change readers was a yellow circle around the Bat-symbol on his chest, but far more importantly, the stories also changed. A subtle aura of genuine menace re-entered the comfortable, absurdly abstract world of Gotham City….

This initial Showcase Presents Batman compendium collects all the Bat-Sagas (STILL the only place to find them reprinted in full and in chronological order) as seen in Detective Comics #327-342 and Batman #164-174: 38 stunning stories that reshaped a legend and spanning cover-dates May 1964 to September 1965. The revolution began with the lead yarn in Detective #327, written by John Broome and illustrated by Carmine Infantino & Joe Giella at the very peak of their creative powers and collaborative partnership, before the Big Change was fully formalised with two tales from Batman #164.

‘The Mystery of the Menacing Mask! was a cunning “Howdunnit?” long on action and peril, as hints of a criminal “underground railroad” led the Dynamic Duo to a common thug seemingly able to control the heroes with his thoughts. The venerable title was clearly refocusing on its descriptive, evocative title for the foreseeable future, and to ram the point home, a new back-up feature was introduced – “Stretchable Sleuth” The Elongated Man. This comic book was to be a suspenseful brain-teaser from now on…

In the eponymous Batman title, action and adventure became paramount. ‘Two-Way Gem Caper!’ pitted Batman & Robin against slick criminal Dabblo, but the thief wasn’t the true star of this tale. Almost as an aside, a new Batcave and refashioned Wayne Manor were introduced, plus a sleek, compact new Batmobile – more sports-car than super-tank. This story was written by Ed “France” Herron and drawn by “Bob Kane”. Veteran inker Giella was tasked with finishing the contents of both Bat-books in a bid to generate uniformity in all stories. The inker would ultimately perform the same role when the Batman syndicated newspaper strip was revived, beginning on May 29th 1966…

A new semi-regular feature debuted in that issue. “The Mystery Analysts of Gotham City” was a private club of detectives, criminologists and crime-writers who met to discuss their cases. Somehow the meetings always resulted in an adventure such as ‘Batman’s Great Face-Saving Feat!’ (Herron & Kane), wherein eager applicant Hugh Rankin applied his Private Eye talents to discovering the Gotham Gangbuster’s true identity in an effort to win a seat at the sleuths’ table. Suffice it to say, he had to reapply…

‘Gotham Gang Line-Up!’ completed the transformation of Batman. Written by original co-creator Bill Finger and pencilled by Kane, this rather mediocre crime-caper from Detective #328 is most remarkable for the plot-twist wherein long-serving butler Alfred sacrificed his life to save the heroes, prompting Dick Grayson’s Aunt Harriet to move into Wayne Manor.

From this point, the process fell into a pattern of top-of-the-line tales punctuated by utterly exceptional occasional epics of drama, mystery and action. These would continue until the infamous TV show’s success became so great it actually began to inform – or taint – the style of story in the comics. And while I’m into editorial asides: whenever the credits read “Bob Kane” the artist usually doing the drawing was unsung hero Sheldon Moldoff.

Written by Broome and pencilled by Infantino, Detective #329’s ‘Castle with Wall-To-Wall Danger!’ was a captivating international thriller seeing the heroes braving deadly death-traps in Swinging England whilst pursuing a dastardly thief, before eerie science fiction saga ‘Man Who Quit the Human Race!’ (Gardner Fox, Kane & Giella) led in Batman #165 finding fantastic fantasy still had a place in the Gotham Guardian’s new world. A potential new love-interest debuted in back-up tale ‘The Dilemma of the Detective’s Daughter!’, courtesy of Herron & Kane, as student policewoman Patricia Powell left cop-college for the mean streets of the city.

Over in Detective #330, Broome & Kane detailed a new kind of crime in ‘The Fallen Idol of Gotham City!’, wherein a mysterious phenomenon turned ordinary citizens into blood-hungry mobs on command. In Batman #166, ‘Two-Way Deathtrap!’ sees a pair of petty thugs set up the perfect ambush after finding a pipeline into the Batcave whilst, ‘A Rendezvous with Robbery!’ pictured a return engagement for Pat Powell during a frantic crime caper with both tales by Herron & Kane. A rare full-length story in Detective #331 guest-starred Elongated Man as the ‘Museum of Mixed-Up Men’ (Broome & Infantino) united costumed sleuths against a super-scientific felon, after which a Rogues Gallery super-villain finally appeared in #332’s ‘The Joker’s Last Laugh’ (Broome & Kane), set on switching places with the Caped Crimebusters in his own manic manner…

In Batman #167 Finger & Kane declared ‘Zero Hour for Earth!’ as international espionage pulled the Titanic Team from Gotham into a global manhunt for secret society Hydra prior to Detective #333 pitting the heroes against a faux goddess and real telepaths in the ‘Hunters of the Elephants’ Graveyard!’, courtesy of Fox & Infantino. Then ‘The Fight That Jolted Gotham City!’ opened Batman #168 with a blockbusting battle between the Masked Manhunter and temporarily deranged circus strongman Mr. Muscles after which the Mystery Analysts resurfaced to close the book, explaining ‘How to Solve the Perfect Crime… in Reverse!’ (both tales by Herron & Moldoff).

The opening shot in an extended war against an incredible new foe dubbed The Outsider came with Detective #334 and the introduction of Grasshopper – ‘The Man Who Stole from Batman!’ (Fox & Moldoff), whilst Fox & Infantino’s ‘Trail of the Talking Mask!’ in #335 gave the Caped Crimebusters opportunity to reinforce their sci-fi credentials in a classy high-tech thriller guest starring PI Hugh Rankin.

Wily, bird-themed badman The Penguin popped up in Batman#169 (Herron & Moldoff), making the heroes his unwilling ‘Partners in Plunder!’, after which inker Sid Greene made his debut delineating ‘A Bad Day for Batman!’, wherein he overcomes many vicissitudes of cruel coincidence to nab a determined thief. Detective #336 (Fox, Moldoff & Giella) featured ‘Batman’s Bewitched Nightmare’ as a broom-riding crone attacks the Dynamic Duo at the Outsider’s behest. In later months the witch was revealed to be sultry sorceress Zatanna, but most comics cognoscenti agree this was not the original plan, but rather cannily back-written during the frantic months of “Batmania” that followed the debut of the TV show (for a fuller explanation see JLA: Zatanna’s Search).

An intriguing new foe made his modest mark in Batman #170 with highly professional thief Roy Reynolds running rings around the Gotham Gangbusters – at least initially – as the ‘Genius of the Getaway Gimmicks!’ (Fox & Moldoff) with Finger providing a captivating, human-scaled drama in ‘The Puzzle of the Perilous Prizes!’ enabling Giella to show off his pencilling as well as inking skills. ‘The Deep-Freeze Menace!’ (Detective #337, Fox & Infantino) focuses on captivating fantasy, pitting Batman against a super-powered caveman encased in ice for 50,000 years, before the caped crimebuster gains his own uncanny advantage in #338 as a chemical accident renders ‘Batman’s Power-Packed Punch!’ too dangerous to be near…

After an absence of decades, ‘Remarkable Ruse of The Riddler!’ reintroduced the Prince of Puzzlers in Batman # 171: a clever book-length mystery from Fox & Moldoff which did much to catapult the previously forgotten villain to the first rank of Bat-Baddies, after which DC’s inexplicable (but deeply cool) long-running love-affair with gorillas resulted in a cracking doom-fable as ‘Batman Battles the Living Beast-Bomb!’ (Fox & Infantino in Detective #339) highlighting the hero’s physical prowess in a duel of wits and muscles against a sinister super-intelligent simian. Broome came back to script the eerie conundrum drawn by Moldoff which opened Batman #172. ‘Attack of the Invisible Knights!’ proved to be wicked science not ancient magic, whilst Batman’s own technological advances played a major role part in backup ‘Robin’s Unassisted Triple Play!’ (Fox, Moldoff & Greene), giving the Boy Wonder plenty of scope to show his own skills against a gang of murderous bandits.

Detective #340 saw the war against Batman escalate when ‘The Outsider Strikes Again!’ (Fox & Moldoff), offering further clues to the hidden foe’s incredible abilities by animating everyday objects – and the Batmobile – to attack the Caped Champions, before Broome & Infantino detailed a cinema-inspired catastrophic campaign in #341’s ‘The Joker’s Comedy Capers!’ Criminal mastermind/blackmailer Mr. Incognito then offered ‘Secret Identities For Sale’ in Batman #173’s lead tale and Broome, Moldoff and inker Sid Greene depicted ‘Walk Batman – To Your Doom!’: a sinister psychological murder-plot years ahead of its time.

Broome & Moldoff’s ‘The Midnight Raid of the Robin Gang!’ (Detective #342) hinted at the burgeoning generational unrest of the 1960s as the faithful Boy Wonder seemingly sabotaged his mentor before signing up with costumed juvenile delinquents, before this collection of Caped Crusader Chronicles concludes with Fox & Moldoff’s Batman #174: a brace of blockbusters comprising a brutal story of street-fighting as the Gotham Guardian is ambushed and becomes ‘The Human Punching Bag!’ before the Mystery Analysts find themselves the intended victims of a “Ten Little Indians” murder-scheme in ‘The Off-Again, On-Again Lightbulbs!’ (inked by Greene).

No matter how much we might squeal and foam about it, to a large portion of the world Batman will always be the “Zap! Biff! Pow!”, affably lovable, caped buffoon of that 1960s television show. It really was that popular. Whether you tend towards the anodyne light-heartedness of then, commercially acceptable psychopathy of the current day or actually just like the comic book character in all eras, if you sit down, shut up and actually read these wonderful adventures for all (reasonable) ages, you will find the old adage “Quality will out” still holds true. And if you’re actually a fan who hasn’t read this classic stuff, you have an absolute treat in store…
© 1964, 1965, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Adam Warlock Omnibus


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, Mike Friedrich, Ron Goulart, Gerry Conway, Tony Isabella, Jim Starlin, Bill Mantlo, David Anthony Kraft, Len Wein, Mark Gruenwald, Gil Kane, Bob Brown, Herb Trimpe, John Buscema, Tom Sutton, John Byrne, Steve Leialoha, Jerry Bingham, Joe Sinnott, Vince Colletta, Dan Adkins, Jack Abel, Josef Rubinstein, Al Milgrom, Alan Weiss, Dave Hunt, Frank Giacoia, Mike Esposito, Gene Day & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4987-7 (HB/Digital edition)

And lo… there came another star to the firmament…

During the 1970s in America and Britain (the latter of which deemed newspaper cartoons and strips worthy of adult appreciation for centuries whilst fervently denying similar appreciation and potential for comics), the first inklings of wider public respect for the medium of graphic narratives began to blossom. This followed avid and favourable response to pioneering stories such as Denny O’Neil & Neal Adams’ “relevancy” Green Lantern run, Stan Lee & John Buscema’s biblically allegorical Silver Surfer or Roy Thomas’ ecologically strident antihero Sub-Mariner; a procession of thoughtfully-delivered depictions of drug crime in many titles, and the sustained use of positive racial role models everywhere on four-colour pages.

Comics were inexorably developing into a vibrant forum of debate (a situation also seen in Europe and Japan), engaging youngsters in real world issues relevant to them. As 1972 dawned, Thomas took the next logical step, transubstantiating an old Lee & Kirby Fantastic Four throwaway foe into a potent political and religious metaphor. As described in his Introduction ‘Rebirth’ the kernel of that character debuted as FF foe Him before being re-imagined by Thomas & Gil Kane as a modern interpretation of the Christ myth: stationed on an alternate Earth far more like our own than that of Marvel’s unique universe.

This massive epistle re-presents Fantastic Four #66-67, The Mighty Thor, #165-166, Marvel Premiere #1-2, Warlock #1-15, Strange Tales #178-181, Incredible Hulk #176-178 and Annual #6, Marvel Team-Up #55, Avengers Annual #7 and Marvel Two-in-One #61-63 and Annual #2 – collectively spanning cover-dates September 1967 to May 1980 – and starts with that cataclysmic clash as Ben Grimm and his friends search for The Thing’s true love Alicia Masters.

The mystery of her disappearance is revealed in ‘What Lurks Behind the Beehive?’ by Lee, Kirby & Joe Sinnott, as the outraged FF trail the seemingly helpless artisan to a man-made technological wonderland. Here a band of rogue geniuses have genetically engineered the next phase in evolution only to lose control of it even before it can be properly born…

Fantastic Four #67 exposes the secret of the creature known as Him in ‘When Opens the Cocoon!’ where only Alicia’s gentle nature is able to placate the nigh-omnipotent creature until the heroes save her and the creation deals with its squalid makers, before heading into the starry universe to mature…

‘Him!’ resurfaced in Thor #165 & 166 (June & July 1969), returned to earth in his gestation cocoon and stumbling into battle with a severely over-stressed Thunder God. The situation intensified when the creature created by evil scientists to conquer mankind sees Sif and decides it’s time he took a mate…

Conclusion ‘A God Berserk!’ sees Thor trailing the artificial superman across space and assorted dimensions with companion Balder who witnesses his gentle comrade’s descent into brutal “warrior-madness” resulting in a savage beating of naive childlike Him. By the time the Thunderer regains his equilibrium, he is a shaken, penitent and guilt-ridden hero eager to pay penance for his unaccustomed savagery whilst the modern homunculus has retreated to the chill depths of space again…

Jump forward to tumultuous turbulent 1971 where the story really begins with the April cover-dated Marvel Premiere #1 (on sale from November 1971) which boldly proclaimed on its cover The Power of… Warlock. Inside, the stunning fable by Thomas, Kane & Dan Adkins declared ‘And Men Shall Call Him… Warlock’: swiftly recapitulating the artificial man’s origins as a lab experiment concocted by rogue geneticists eager to create a superman they could control for conquest. Also on view is the manufactured man’s face off with the FF, and clash with Thor over the rights to a mate before returning to an all-encompassing cosmic cocoon to evolve a little more. Now the shell is plucked from the void thanks to the moon-sized ship of self-created god The High Evolutionary. Having artificially ascended to godhood, he is wrapped up in a bold new experiment…

Establishing contact with Him as he basks in his cocoon, the Evolutionary explains that he is constructing from space rubble a duplicate planet Earth on the opposite side of the sun. Here he will replay the development of life, intending that humanity on Counter-Earth will evolve without the taint of cruelty and greed and deprived of the lust to kill. It’s a magnificent scheme that might well have worked, but as the Evolutionary wearies, his greatest mistake intervenes…

Man-Beast was over-evolved from a wolf and gained mighty powers, but also ferocious savagery and ruthless wickedness. Now he invades the satellite, despoiling humanity’s rise and ensuring the new world’s development exactly mirrors True-Earth’s. The only exception is the meticulous exclusion of enhanced individuals. The beleaguered orb has all Earth’s woes but no superheroes to save or inspire its people.

A helpless witness to the desecration, the golden being furiously crashes free of his cocoon to save the High Evolutionary and rout Man-Beast and his bestial cronies (all similarly evolved animal-humanoids called “New-Men”). When the despondent, enraged science god recovers, he decides to erase his failed experiment but is stopped by his rescuer. As a helpless observer, Him saw the potential and value of embattled humanity. Despite all their flaws, he believes he can save them from imminent doom caused by their own unthinking actions, wars and intolerance. When his pleas convince the Evolutionary to give this mankind one last chance, the wanderer is hurled down to Counter-Earth, gifted and graced with a strange “Soul Gem” to focus his powers, on a divine mission to find the best in the fallen and a name of his own…

Marvel Premiere #2 (July 1972) sees the golden man-god crash down in America and immediately win over a small group of disciples: a quartet of disenchanted teen runaways fleeing The Man, The Establishment and their oppressive families. His cosmic nativity and transformation leave the newcomer briefly amnesiac, and as Warlock’s followers seek to help, all are unaware that Man-Beast has moved swiftly, insinuating himself and his bestial servants into the USA’s political hierarchy and Military/Industrial complex.

This devil knows the High Evolutionary is watching and breaks cover to introduce unnatural forces on a world previously devoid of superbeings or aliens. The result is an all-out attack by rat mutate Rhodan, who pounces on his prey at the very moment Colonel Barney Roberts, uber-capitalist Josiah Grey and Senator Nathan Carter track their missing kids to the desolate Southern Californian farm where they have been nursing a golden angel. Men of power and influence, they realise their world has changed forever after seeing Warlock destroy the monstrous beast and ‘The Hounds of Helios!’

Doctor Strange was revived to fill the space in MP #3, as the gleaming saviour catapulted into his own August cover-dated title. Inked by Tom Sutton, Warlock #1 decreed ‘The Day of the Prophet!’: recapping key events and seeing the High Evolutionary safeguard his failing project by masking Counter-Earth from the rest of the solar system behind a vibratory screen.

With his mistake securely isolated from further contamination, HE asks Adam if he’s had enough of this pointless mission, and is disappointed to see Warlock’s resolve is unshaken. That assessment is questioned when the disciples take the spaceman to his first human city. Senses reeling, Warlock is drawn to a bombastic street preacher and his psychic sister Astrella, both seemingly targeted by the Man-Beast. Of course, all is not as it seems…

This issue saw the first letter page ‘Comments from Counter-Earth’ and is included here as are all subsequent editorial columns.

Mike Friedrich scripted Thomas’s plot and John Buscema joins Sutton in #2’s illuminating ‘Count-Down for Counter-Earth!’: taking biblical allegory even further as Warlock is captured by his vile foes and tempted with power in partnership with evil, even as his young disciples are attacked and deny him. Counter-Earth has never been closer to damnation and doom, but once more the saviour’s determination overcomes the odds…

The epic expands with Friedrich in the hot seat and Kane & Sutton reunited to steer the redeemer’s path. ‘The Apollo Eclipse’ begins with Adam and his apostles harassed by the increasingly impatient High Evolutionary following a breaching of his vibratory barrier by the Incredible Hulk and the Rhino (in Hulk #158 and reprinted in many volumes… but not this one). That episode is soon forgotten when they are targeted by another Man-Beast crony, hiding his revolting origins and unstable psyche behind a pretty façade. The hirsute horror attacks a rocket base where Adam seeks to reconcile his youthful followers with their parents, but the subsequent clash turns to tragedy in #4’s ‘Come Sing a Searing Song of Vengeance!’ as the exposed monster takes the children hostage. Astrella senses that visiting Presidential candidate Rex Carpenter holds the key to the stalemate, but when he intervenes at her urging, unbridled escalation, death and disaster follow…

Although super-beings were excised from the world’s evolution, extraordinary beings still exist. Warlock #5 (April 1973) sees Ron Goulart write the anxious aftermath as the doubt-riddled redeemer emerges from another sojourn in a recuperative cocoon. In the intervening months Carpenter has become President and ordered increased weapons testing to combat the incredible new dangers he personally witnessed. Tragically, he also ignores warnings from government scientist Victor Von Doom, and when a military manoeuvre sparks ‘The Day of the Death-Birds!’ Adam helps when a dam is wrecked. His divine might is sufficient to halt autonomous robotic drones programmed to strafe ground-based beings, but cannot stop the grateful citizenry turning on him when Carter declares him a menace to society…

Friedrich scripts Goulart & Thomas’ plot and Bob Brown joins the team as penciller in #6 as Warlock battles the army and Doom contacts fellow genius Reed Richards for help. Sadly, the Latverian is unaware of a shocking change in his oldest friend who is now ‘The Brute!’: a mutated cosmic horror enthralled by the malign thing running the White House and now ordered to ambush Warlock as Astrella brings him to truce talks…

It’s a pack of lies and a trap. As the Golden Gladiator defeats Richards, enraged mobs egged on by PotUS attack Warlock’s growing band of supporters. Now, though, the alien’s very public life-saving heroics have swayed fickle opinion and Carter is forced to reverse his stance and exonerate Warlock. Even this is a ploy, though, allowing him to set the energy-absorbing Brute on the redeemer in ‘Doom: at the Earth’s Core!’ Beyond all control, Richards’ rampage threatens to explode Counter-Earth, and only the supreme sacrifice of one of Adams’s constantly dwindling band of supporters saves the planet…

Warlock’s rocky road paused with the next issue. Cancelled with #8, Friedrich, Brown & Sutton dutifully detailed ‘Confrontation’ in Washington DC as the supposed saviour’s supporters clashed with incensed cops. Intent on stopping a riot, Warlock’s work magnifies when Man-Beast’s New-Men minions join the battle. The saga ends on an eternal cliffhanger as Warlock finally exposes what Carpenter is… before vanishing from sight for 8 months.

The aforementioned Hulk #158 had seen the Jade Goliath dispatched to the far side of the Sun to clash on Counter-Earth with the messiah’s enemies. Although it is excluded here, the 3-issue sequel it spawned was concocted after the Golden Godling’s series ended. When the feature returned, the tone – like the times – had comprehensively changed. All the hopeful positivity and naivety had, post-Vietnam and Watergate, turned to world-weary cynicism in the manner of Moorcock’s doomed hero Elric. Maybe a harbinger of things to come…?

The cosmic codicil completing Warlock’s initial cosmic journey came after The Hulk’s encounter with the Uncanny Inhumans and a devastating duel with silent super-monarch Black Bolt. Following the usual collateral carnage, the bout ended with the monster hurtling in a rocket-ship to the far side of the sun for a date with allegory, if not destiny. Counter-Earth had seen messianic Adam Warlock futilely battle Satan-analogue Man-Beast: a struggle the Jade Juggernaut had learned of on his previous visit. Now he crashed there again to end the cruelly truncated metaphorical epic, beginning in ‘Crisis on Counter-Earth!’ (Incredible Hulk #176, June 1974) by Gerry Conway, Herb Trimpe & Jack Abel.

Since his last visit Man-Beast and his bestial flunkies had become America’s President and Cabinet. Moving deceptively but decisively, they had finally captured Warlock and led humanity to the brink of extinction, leaving the would-be messiah’s disciples in total confusion. With America reeling, Hulk’s shattering return gives Warlock’s faithful flock opportunity to save their saviour in ‘Peril of the Plural Planet!’ but the foray badly misfires and Adam is captured. Publicly crucified, humanity’s last hope perishes. The quasi-religious experience concludes with ‘Triumph on Terra-Two’ (Conway, Tony Isabella, Trimpe & Abel, Incredible Hulk #178). Whilst Hulk furiously battles Man-Beast, the expired redeemer resurrects in time to deliver a karmic coup de grace before ascending from Counter-Earth to the ever-beckoning stars.

The epic pauses here for Douglas Wolk’s critical appreciation of what happens next in ‘Unmistakable Talent’ before even more grandiose events are revealed…

The messianic saga apparently ended when Warlock died and was reborn, thwarting Satan-analogue Man-Beast with the aid of the Jade Juggernaut enacting a cosmic resurrection and ascending into the unknown. However, when the feature returned at the end of 1974 the tone, like the times, had hugely changed. In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, hope, positivity and comfortable naivety had become world-weary cynicism. The new Adam had changed too, and was now draped in precepts of inescapable destiny in the manner of doomed warrior Elric. It was a harbinger of things to come…

The story resumed in Strange Tales #178 as ultra-imaginative morbid maverick Jim Starlin (Captain Marvel, Master of Kung Fu, Infinity Gauntlet, Dreadstar, Batman, Death in the Family, Kid Kosmos) turned the astral wanderer into a nihilistic, Michael Moorcock-inspired, death-obsessed, constantly outraged, exceedingly reluctant and cynical cosmic champion. The slow spiral to oblivion began in February cover-dated Strange Tales #178, wherein Starlin introduced alien Greek Chorus Sphinxor of Pegasus to recap the past by asking and answering ‘Who is Adam Warlock?’

Handling everything but lettering – that was left to Annette Kawecki – Starlin’s solitary stellar nomad Warlock is brooding on a desolate asteroid in the Hercules star cluster just as a trio of brutes attack a frightened girl. Despite his best efforts they execute her, proud of their status as Grand Inquisitors of the Universal Church of Truth who have ecstatically excised one more heathen unbeliever…

Appalled to have failed another innocent, Warlock employs the Soul Gem at his brow to briefly resurrect her and learns of an all-conquering ruthless militant religion dedicated to converting or eradicating all life. His search triggers a chilling confrontation as ‘Enter The Magus!’ manifests the living god of the UCT who attacks Warlock with a crushingly awful truth: the man who has subjugated worlds, exterminated trillions and fostered every dark desire of sentient beings is his own future self. Adam vows to end this perverse impossible situation, doing whatever is necessary to prevent becoming his own worst nightmare…

With Tom Orzechowski lettering and Glynis Oliver-Wein doing colours, Starlin’s pilgrimage sees Warlock attack a UCT warcraft transporting rebels, “degenerates” and “unproductives” from many converted worlds. The church only deems basic humanoids as sacred and worthy of salvation, with most other shapes useful only as fodder or fuel. However, despite their appearance as humanish, The Church does make an exception for the universally deplored, vulgar and proudly reprobate race called “Trolls” who are too salacious to exist…

In the dungeon-brig of the ship Great Divide, Adam’s gloomy mood is irresistibly lifted by disgusting troll Pip: a lout revelling in “independent manner and cavalier ways”, unphased or frightened by the imminent death awaiting them all. Meanwhile, enhanced true believer Captain Autolycus gets a message from Temporal Leader of the Faithful The Matriarch. She has decided to ignore her god’s instruction to capture Warlock and keep him unharmed…

As Adam instructs his fellow dregs in the nature of rule, Autolycus acts on her command, losing his entire crew and perishing when Warlock finally breaks loose. After escaping the ‘Death Ship!’, Adam realises Pip – keen to share a new adventure – has stowed away, but lets it go. He has a bigger problem: in the climactic final battle, the Soul Gem refused his wishes. Acting on its own, it consumed Autolycus’ memories and persona, binding them inside the twisted champion’s head…

With additional inking by Alan Weiss, ST #180’s ‘Judgment!’ finds Pip and Warlock submerged in the heaving masses of Homeworld whilst hunting the living god. Terrified of the uncontrollable spiritual vampire on his brow, Adam tries to remove it and discovers it has already stolen him: without it he will perish in seconds…

Living on borrowed time and pushed into precipitate action, the apostate avenger invades the Sacred Palace and is offered a curious deal by the Matriarch who imprisons him when he refuses. Subjected to ‘The Trial of Adam Warlock’, the appalled adventurer endures a twisted view of the universe courtesy of Grand Inquisitor Kray-Tor, even as in the city, Pip thinks he has scored with a hot chick when in fact he’s been targeted by public enemy number one. Called “the deadliest woman in the whole galaxy” Gamora has plans for Adam, which include him being alive and free…

Back in court, the golden man rejects Kray-Tor’s verdict and, revolted by the proceedings, foolishly lets his Soul Gem feed. The carnage it triggers and his subsequent guilt leaves Adam catatonic in the hands of the Matriarch’s cerebral re-programmers…

Starlin was always an outspoken, driven creator with opinions he struggled to suppress. His problems with Marvel’s working practises underpin ST #181’s ‘1000 Clowns!’ as old pal Al Milgrom inks a fantastic recap and psychological road trip inside the champion’s mind. None of the subtext is germane if you’re just looking for a great story however, and – in-world – Warlock’s resistance to mind-control is mirrored by Pip and Gamora’s advance through the UCT citadel to his side. Embattled by the psychic propaganda assaulting him, Warlock retreats into the safety of madness, learning to his horror that this is what The Magus wanted all along. Now the dark messiah’s victory and genesis are assured…

The triumph was celebrated by the resurrection of the hero’s own title. Cover-dated October 1975, Warlock #9 revealed the master plan of Adam’s future self. Inked by Steve Leialoha, ‘The Infinity Effect!’ depicted the mirror images in stark confrontation with evil ascendent, unaware Gamora was an agent of a hidden third party and that all the chaos and calamity was part of a war of cosmically conceptual forces. The saga heads into the Endgame as the Magus explains in cruel detail how he came to power and how warlock’s coming days are his past, before summoning abstract conceptual terror The In-Betweener to usher in their inevitable transfiguration. There is one problem however: the first time around Adam/Magus was never attacked and almost thwarted by an invisible green warrior woman…

Crushed by realisation that he will become a mass-murdering spiritual vampire, Adam reels as the hidden third element arrives to save everything. Inked by Leialoha, #10’s ‘How Strange My Destiny!’ finds Pip, Gamora, Adam and Thanos of Titan battling 25,000 cyborg Black Knights of the Church who rapturously pay ‘The Price!’ of devotion in a horrific stalling tactic until the In-Betweener comes…

Kree Captain Mar-Vell narrates a handy catch-up chapter detailing ‘Who is Thanos?’ as the beleaguered champions escape, before ‘Enter the Redemption Principle!’ explores some of the Titan’s scheme and why he opposes the Magus and his Church, even as the dark deity realises that Thanos’ time probe is the only thing that can upset his existence…

How Strange My Destiny – with finished art by Leialoha from Starlin’s layouts – continues and concludes in #11 as ‘Escape into the Inner Prison!’ sees the Magus and his Black Knight death squads brutally board Thanos’ space ark. A combination of raw power and the Soul Gem buy enough time for Warlock and Pip to use the time probe, which deposits them in the future, just as In-Betweener arrives to convert the hero and supervise ‘The Strange Death of Adam Warlock!’, resulting in a reshuffling of chronal reality and mad Thanos’ triumph…

After months of encroaching and overlapping Armageddons, Warlock #12 digresses and diverts with ‘A Trollish Tale!’ as Pip’s fondness for hedonism and debauchery entrap him in professional harlot Heater Delight’s plan to escape a life on (non)human sexual trafficking in a star-roaming pleasure cruiser. He’s happy with the promised reward for his efforts, but hasn’t considered that her pimp might object to losing his meal ticket…

Cosmic conflict returns in #13 as ‘…Here Dwells the Star Thief!’ introduces an existential threat to the entire universe lying in a hospital bed on Earth. New England’s Wildwood Hospital houses Barry Bauman, whose life is blighted by a total disconnection between his brain and nerve functions. Isolated, turned inward for his entire life, Barry has developed astounding psychic abilities, the first of which was to possess his nurse and navigate an unsuspecting outer world by proxy. Barry’s intellect also roams the endless universe and brooding, doomed Warlock is there when Barry consumes an entire star just for fun…

Outraged at such cruel wilful destruction, Warlock uses his own powers to trace the psionic force, resolved to follow it back to the planet of his original conception even as ‘The Bizarre Brain of Barry Bauman’ explores the Star Thief’s origins and motivations prior to the psionic savant formally challenging Adam to a game of “stop me if you can”…

Spitefully erasing stars and terrorising Earth as Warlock traverses galaxies at top speed, Bauman knows a secret about his foe that makes victory assured, but he still lays traps in the hero’s interstellar path. The ‘Homecoming!’ is accelerated by a shortcut through a black hole, but when Adam arrives in Sol system, he receives a staggering shock: his voyages and simple physics have wrought physical changes making it impossible to ever go home again. Sadly for gleeful Barry, the frustration of his foe distracts him just when he should be paying closer attention to his physical body…

The series abruptly ended again (November 1976), Starlin returned to full art & story chores in #15’s ‘Just a Series of Events!’ Exiled from Earth, Adam rants as elsewhere, Thanos expedites long-term plans. With The Magus removed, his desire for total stellar genocide can proceed, but the Titan worries that his adopted daughter Gamora might be a problem, when he really needs to be more concerned about his own nemesis-by-design Drax the Destroyer. The saga then pauses with Adam confronting a host of plebian injustices and seemingly regaining command of his Soul Gem at last…

Vanished again, Warlock only languished in limbo for a few months. In mid-December 1976, Marvel Team-Up #55 (cover-dated March 1977) addressed his physically altered state as Bill Mantlo, John Byrne & Dave Hunt crafted ‘Spider, Spider on the Moon!’ For reasons too complicated to explain here, Spider-Man had been trapped in a rocket and blasted into space before being happily intercepted and left by Warlock in Luna’s habitable “Blue Area”. The nomad then assisted the Arachnid and mysterious alien The Gardener against overbearing exotic ephemera collector The Stranger who sought possession of the Golden Gladiator’s life-sustaining Soul Gem, but soon discovered an equally fascinating alternate choice…

Despite his sporadic and frankly messy publishing career, Warlock has been at the heart of many of Marvel’s most epochal and well-regarded cosmic comic classics, and ending this compendium is probably the very best: an extended epic spanning two summer annuals and seemingly signalling the end on an era…

‘The Final Threat’ (by Starlin & Joe Rubinstein in Avengers Annual #70, sees Protector of the Universe Mar-Vell AKA Captain Marvel and Titanian ultra-mentalist Moondragon back on Earth with vague anticipations of impending catastrophe. The premonitions are confirmed when Warlock arrives with news that death-obsessed Thanos has amassed an alien armada and built a soul gem-fuelled weapon to snuff out stars like candles. Spanning interstellar space to stop the scheme, the assembled heroes forestall alien invasion and prevent the Dark Titan from destroying the Sun, but only at the cost of Warlock’s life…

‘Death Watch!’ (Starlin & Rubinstein, Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2) then finds Peter Parker plagued by prophetic nightmares. These disclose how Thanos had snatched victory from defeat and now holds The Avengers captive whilst again preparing to extinguish Sol. With nowhere else to turn, the anguished, disbelieving webspinner heads for the Baxter Building, hoping to borrow a spacecraft, and unaware that The Thing also has a history with the terrifying Titan. Utterly overmatched, the mismatched Champions of Life nevertheless upset Thanos’ plans for long enough to free the Avengers before the Universe’s true agent of retribution ends the Titan’s threat forever… at least until next time…

Meanwhile on Earth, events are unfolding that will impact the future. The Hulk, bereft by the death of his subatomic lover Jarella, joins Defender chief Doctor Stephen Strange in David Anthony Kraft, Herb Trimpe and inkers Frank Giacoia & Mike Esposito for Incredible Hulk King Size Annual #6’s ‘Beware the Beehive!’ Here three of the mad scientists who made Him attempt to recreate their greatest success and failure. Morlak, Shinsky and Zota of rogue science collective The Enclave reactivate their hidden “Beehive” for another go at building a compliant god they can control, and abduct Doctor Strange to replace their missing fourth. The undercover magician summons the Jade Juggernaut to extract him from the experiment’s inevitable consequences when a compassionless super-slave dubbed Paragon emerges from a cocoon.

Before The Hulk arrives the natal menace tries to eradicate Strange and subdue mankind, but happily, after a border-shattering, army-crunching global rampage, that’s when the Hulk kicks the wall in and goes to work, forcing Paragon to return to its chrysalis and pursue further growth…

The stellar epic continued in Marvel Two-In-One: a title that had become a clearing house for unfinished plotlines and sagas. In #61 (cover-dated March 1980), Mark Gruenwald, Jerry Bingham & Gene Day unveiled ‘The Coming of Her!’ as time-travelling space god and 31st century Guardian of the Galaxy Starhawk became entangled in the birth of a female counterpart to artificial superman Adam Warlock. Picking up threads of the Hulk tale as well as Warlock’s quest, the tale told how Paragon awoke fully empowered and in female form and configuration and instantly began searching Earth for her predecessor. The fading psychic trail led to Ben Grimm’s girlfriend Alicia and Moondragon, who were pressganged across the solar system, arriving by MTIO #62 in time to witness ‘The Taking of Counter-Earth!’

Hot on their heels, The Thing and Starhawk catch Her just as the women encounter a severely injured High Evolutionary, and discover the world the self-created science god so carefully built and casually discarded has been stolen. Now united in mystery, the strange grouping follow the lost planet’s trail out of the galaxy and uncover the incredible perpetrators, but Her’s desperate quest to secure her predestined mate ends in tragedy when she learns ‘Suffer Not a Warlock to Live!’

The sidereal saga seemingly done, this collection also offers a bonanza of bonus treats which include a gallery of covers by Kirby, Sinnott & Colletta, Kane & Adkins, Frank Giacoia, John Romita, John Buscema, Trimpe, Starlin, Weiss, George Pérez & Terry Austin, house ads, original art pages by Kirby, Sinnott & Colletta, the 1972 Marvel Bulletin Page announcing Adam Warlock’s debut, John Romita corner-box art for Marvel Premiere #1, unused and corrected page & panel art, 9 pages of Kane finished art and numerous pencil roughs, augmented by 16 pages by Starlin and the cover of F.O.O.M. #9 (March 1975 and a “Special Cosmic Issue”) plus Duffy Vohland’s illustrated essay ‘Man is the Father to Him’.

Also on view are Starlin & Alan Weiss’s contributions to The Mighty Marvel Bicentennial Calendar 1976, and 16 pages of unused pencils by Weiss. (The photostats come from an issue lost in transit, and are supplemented by before-&-after panels judged unsuitable by the Comics Code Authority, the various production stages of Starlin & Weiss’ cover art for Warlock #9, with sketches, designs, frontispieces and full pages of original art). More Starlin original art and Weiss’ ‘Thanos War’ plate for the Marvel Team-Up Portfolio (1982).

Fact-filled pages on Warlock, The Enclave, Drax the Destroyer, The Gardener, In-Betweener, Gamora, Her, High Evolutionary, Moondragon, Pip the Troll, Thanos and 8 Alien Races from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (1983-1985) precede a comedic offering from August 1982’s What If? #34 and Bob Budiansky & Bob Wiacek’s cover for Marvel Treasury Edition #24: The Rampaging Hulk (reprinting the Warlock saga from #175-178). The Fantastic Four “Him” debut was reprinted in Marvel’s Greatest Comics #49 & 50 (May & June 1974) and the covers are included here, as are those of Fantasy Masterpieces volume 2 #8-14 (1980-1981 reprinting Starlin’s early Warlock stories). They are augmented by the wraparound covers from 1983’s Warlock Special Edition #1-6 reprint series – including additional bridging pages, text and cartoon editorials by Al Milgrom and Starlin pin-ups.

A Craig Hamiliton Warlock plate from 1986’s Marvel’s Comics Limited Edition Superhero Print Series is followed by covers for 1992-1993’s Warlock rerun series (#1-6 and released to support the Infinity Gauntlet miniseries) and 9 prior collection and omnibus covers by Kane, Adkins, Richard Isanove, Starlin, Tom Smith, Weiss, Thomas Mason, Dean White and InHyuk Lee.

Ambitious, unconventional and beautiful to behold, Warlock’s oft-reprinted adventures are very much a product of their tempestuous, socially divisive times. For many, they proved how mature comics might become, but for others they were simply pretty pictures and epic fights with little lasting relevance. What they unquestionably remain is a series of crucial stepping stones to greater epics: unmissable appetisers to Marvel Magic at its finest.
© 2023 MARVEL.

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Batman: Detective No. 27


By Michael Uslan & Peter Snejbjerg with Lee Loughridge (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0185-2 (HB) 978-1401-2010-74 (TPB)

Although cover-dated May 1939, according to most scholars Detective Comics #27 was on sale from March 30th. That makes today the actual anniversary date of the Dark Knight. Because we like to be unpredictable here, let’s look at an intriguing offshoot and permutation of the now-mythic inspirational lawman by one of the most important but least-appreciated creators in his history.

Not so long ago and for a brief while, DC’s experimental Elseworlds imprint – where famous & familiar characters and accepted consensual continuity were radically or subtly reimagined – was a regular hive of productivity and generated some wonderful – and quite a few ridiculous – stories.

By using what readers thought they knew as a springboard, the result – usually constricted into a disciplined single story – had a solid and resolute immediacy that was too often diluted in regular periodical publications where an illusion of constant change always trumps actual innovation in long-running characters… unless they are about to be cancelled…

No chance of that with this property and franchise figure, but still a fine example of that process is this intriguing pulp mystery and generational drama blending the lineage of the Gotham City Waynes with covert societies and secret history of the United States of America.

Oh, in case you were wondering: after a couple of fallow decades, DC reinstated most of those Elseworlds experiments as part of a greater multiverse, so they all turned out to “real” too, somewhere in time and space…

April 1865, Washington DC: President Abraham Lincoln overrides the objections of Allan Pinkerton (who had created the Secret Service to protect him) and goes to see popular play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. The resultant assassination prompts the infuriated and humiliated security genius to create a dedicated clandestine force beyond the reach of everything but their mission and their own consciences…

April 1929, Gotham City: a doctor, his wife and their young son exit a movie theatre where they have thrilled to the exploits of Douglas Fairbanks as Zorro. Suddenly, sneak thieves confront them and in the struggle Thomas & Martha Wayne are gunned down, leaving a grieving boy kneeling over their bloody corpses. Family butler Alfred packs the coldly resolute boy off on a decade-long world tour to study with masters of criminology around the globe…

Lincoln’s murder was planned by a cabal of Confederate plotters: the Knights of the Golden Circle. Their leader, an early eugenics-inspired geneticist named Josiah Carr, outlines a Doomsday vengeance plot that will take decades to complete…

January 1st 1939: Bruce Wayne finally returns to Gotham, ready to begin his life’s mission, but is diverted when crusading newspaperman Lee Travis (DC’s first costumed mystery man shamus The Crimson Avenger in mainstream continuity) reveals the existence of the Secret Society of Detectives and invites the young man to become their 27th operative since Pinkerton.

Charming and relentlessly compelling, this superbly pacy thriller follows two time-lines as the founding Detective hunts the Golden Circle through the years, enlisting the covert aid of many historical figures such as Kate Warne (the USA’s first official female detective), journalist and President-to-be Teddy Roosevelt and biologist/monk Gregor Mendel whilst Wayne closes in on the long-awaited climax of the Doomsday plot with the aid of Babe Ruth and Dr. Sigmund Freud. He even confronts cunningly-customised versions of such classic Bat-foes as Catwoman, Scarecrow, Hugo Strange and The Joker.

Best of all, there’s a deliciously wry cameo from the Golden Age Superman as well as a magnificent surprise ending to this two-fisted tribute to the “Thud-and-Blunder” era of the 1930s pulps that spawned Batman and all those like him.

This is a conspiracy thriller stuffed to overflowing with in-jokes, referential asides, pop culture clues and universal icons that make The Da Vinci Code and its legion of even more tedious knock-offs look like dry words on dusty paper. The only flaw is that writer Uslan -lawyer, author, educator, producer and über Bat-fan and the man who brought the Gotham Gangbuster back to cinema screens in 1989 – with illustrator Peter Snejbjerg (The Books of Magic, Abe Sapien, Starman) & colourist Lee Loughridge (Saucer Country, The Batamn Adventures, Stumptown) were never able to create a sequel…

And just in case you need a really big clue: the comic book Detective Comics #27 featured the very first appearance of a certain Dark Knight…
© 2003 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.