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Tosh’s Island

Version 1.0.0

By Linda Sargent, Joe Brady & Leo Marcell, adapted by Kate Brown (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-333-2 (Digest HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Powerful, Moving and Memorable… 9/10

British comics’ triumph The Phoenix has been generating fun, fantasy and wild adventure for kids since 2012, scoring some impressive results – such as Bunny Vs Monkey, Mega Robo Bros and No Country – and generally lifting the standards of comics literature and quality of graphic novels for children.

Now, thanks to writers Linda Sargent (drawing on her own childhood experiences) & Joe Brady, and illustrator Leo Marcell, the comic periodical has developed a far more traditional kind of children’s drama: one that should rank beside such potent “real-world” fantasies as A Dog So Small, The Family from One End Street or The Secret Garden.

Tosh’s Island is set in bucolic Kent hops country in the era between the end of rationing and advent of mobile phones, and follows the decline and resurgence of an indomitable spirit coming to terms with the cruellest and most unjust of circumstances.

It begins as Tosh is getting ready for secondary school: helping dad ready the hops and prepare the Oast House for Autumn and having him tell again the story of her being The Gooseberry Girl found under a bush. It’s much better than the ordinary story of how they adopted her. Tosh is fit and active and great at rounders, loves her bike, climbing with best friend Millie, and making up fantastic tales – especially about mermaids…

And suddenly, one afternoon it all starts to go wrong.

Slowly pain visits her, increasingly wracking her body and sucking all the energy out of her. The doctor thinks it’s nothing, but soon Tosh is constantly, chronically suffering. Not wanting to make a fuss, she soldiers on, but soon, it’s impossible to keep her suffering – and fears – secret. As big school starts, she finds everything harder, and old and new friends soon start talking about and taunting the troublesome attention-seeker.

Thankfully, her parents believe her, moving heaven and earth to get to the bottom of the mystery. There’s always hope of a recovery or at least end to pain, and treats like a visit to the beach. Here she meets a lonely French boy as forlorn as her – and as imaginative. Together they build a mind palace of refuge, an island for mermaids and shark rides and castles in the air. Corresponding with Louis will save Tosh’s sanity, but only after inadvertently causing her immense grief and embarrassment…

The mystery and misery continue until at last the right diagnosis and even treatment is found, but it certainly not all good news…

A forceful and evocative personal history of fortitude and resolve mesmerisingly clad in whimsy, charm and beguiling imagination, Tosh’s Island is a brilliant introduction to real world problems any kid can grasp and be moved by, in exactly the way books like Animal Farm, Tarka the Otter or Lord of the Flies negotiate the transition from sheltered child to understanding proto adult… and all in utterly entrancing pictures.

Do not miss this landmark tale.
Text © Linda Sargent & Joe Brady, 2024. Illustrations © Leo Marcell, 2024. All rights reserved.

Tosh’s Island will be published on October 10th 2024 and is available for pre-order now.

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Ghosts and Ruins


By Ben Catmull (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-678-2 (HB/Digital edition)

If you know the works of Sidney Sime and Edward Gorey, the horror comics of Bernie Wrightson and Michael Kaluta or simply love to peep through your interlocked fingers at the films of Tim Burton or the creepy backgrounds in Charles Addams’ creations, you’re clearly an aficionado of silly, spooky business and know mordant fantasy plays best when played for laughs.

With that in mind, you might be interested in this macabrely monochrome inconceivably un-famous coffee-table art book from cartoonist Ben Catmull (Monster Parade, Paper Theater). It classily celebrates the stuff of nauseating, stomach-churning terror and sinister, creeping suspense in a series of eerie illustrated plates crafted in scratchboard on Masonite – for extra-spooky darkness!

All that audaciously arcane art is wedded to epigrammatic prose snippets to comprise tantalising skeletons of stories best left untold and consequences safely ajudged as unimaginable…

The engrossing landscape hardback (268 x 222mm but digital views may vary!) combines gloomy gothic imagery with wry & witty updates on uncanny situations in a procession of locations best left well enough alone, commencing with six views of the dank domicile of diabolical ‘Drowned Shelley’ and a single ghastly glimpse of ‘The Buried House’.

A queasy quartet then divulges the doings of the ‘The Disgusting Garden’, after which one sight of ‘The Secluded House’ leads inexorably to a triptych revealing ‘The Woman Outside the Window’…

Four frightful frames of ‘Wandering Smoke’ miasmically meander towards ‘The Order of the Shadowy Finger’ – five in full – before giving way to three glimpses of ‘The Lighthouse’; a visit to a domicile all ‘Hair and Earwigs’ and thence to numerous views of the monstrous masterpieces hewn by horrific revenant ‘The Sculptor’…

On view is the ‘Labyrinth of Junk’ once concocted by a demonic carpenter, but that is as nothing compared to the sheer terror of ‘The Crawling House’ and the ghastly practises of a ‘Lonely Old Spinster’…

Mordantly blending bleak, spectral dread and anxious anticipation with timeless scary scenarios, this terrifying tease – a kind of IKEA Fall Catalogue of the Damned – is a sheer delight no lover of Dark Art could conceivably resist…
© 2013 Ben Catmull. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics. All rights reserved.

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Bunny vs Monkey Book 10: The Great Big Glitch!


By Jamie Smart, with Sammy Borras & Paul Duffield (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-308-0 (Digest HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because… Just Because… 10/10

Bunny vs Monkey has been the inspirationally bonkers breakout star of The Phoenix since the first issue in 2012: recounting a madcap vendetta gripping animal archenemies set amidst an idyllic arcadia, masquerading as more-or-less mundane but critically endangered English woodlands. Concocted with gleefully gusto – but increasingly with cerebral cosmic crescendo in mind – by cartoonist/comics artist/novelist Jamie Smart (Fish Head Steve!; Looshkin; Max and Chaffy, Flember), these trendsetting, mind-bending yarns have been wisely retooled as best-selling, graphic albums available in remastered, double-length digest softcover and hardback editions such as this one. All the tail-biting tension and animal argy-bargy began yonks ago after an obnoxious little beast plopped down in after a disastrous British space shot. OR DID IT?

Crashlanding in Crinkle Woods – scant miles from his launch site – lab animal Monkey believed himself the rightful owner of a strange new world, despite every effort of genteel, contemplative, reasonably sensible forest resident Bunny to dissuade him. For all his patience, propriety and good breeding, the laid-back lepine could not contain or control the incorrigible idiot ape, who to this moment remains a rude, troublemaking, chaos-creating, noise-loving lout intent on building his perfect “Monkeyopia” and/or being a robot, with or without the aid of evil supergenius Skunky or “henches” Metal Steve and Action Beaver…

Daily wonders and catastrophes were exacerbated by a broad band of unconventional Crinkle creatures, none more so than monochrome mad scientist Skunky, whose intellect and cavalier attitude to life presents as a propensity for building dangerous robots, bio-beasts and sundry other super-weapons. He is, at his core, a dangerously inquisitive thinker and tinkerer…

Here – with artistic assistance from design deputy Sammy Borras – the war of nerves and mega-ordnances resumes and culminates, even though everybody thought all the battles had already ended. We even seemingly explain the odd behaviour of intermittently encroaching Hoo-mans…

Once again divided into seasonal outbursts – OR IS IT? – this tenth magnificent hardback archive asylum of weirdness opens in traditional manner: with our lop-eared protagonist snug at home amidst winter snows as incurable innocent Pig Piggerton comes frantically calling. It appears his woodlouse pet ‘Mister Bum Bum’ is in dire need of it to be warm and summery.

Thankfully, after a recent return from the Puddle of Eternity (thanks to a fluke of the Molecular Stream) Bunny is now completely connected to nature and able to manifest a small patch of magic sunshine. When Monkey turns up in another death-machine, it is Pig who actually saves the day…

The hairy halfwit (I’m being generous here) is mad and manic as ever, unleashing ICBM ‘Wieners!’, and ‘Shark Attack’ cannonades the largely shellshocked populace (superfast Aye-aye Ai, Weenie Squirrel, Metal E.V.E., Lucky the Red Panda, mysterious Le Fox and the rest) all try to ignore, but as ‘Doctor Pig’ seeks to help the hopeless with a brand new therapy recently discovered, deep underground Monkey & Skunky experience something strange and start to suspect every they know might be wrong after feeling the force of ‘The Glitch’…

The skunk knows all about “Simulation Theory” even if you and I don’t, and makes some plans. Elsewhere, Hoo-man Toby and faithful assistant Alice finally admit there’s something deeply wrong in their system and start looking for answers by resetting the year back to January again – OR DO THEY…?

In Crinkle Woods, life manically meanders on with mad inventions and fantastically odd food fomenting foolishness in ‘Un-Lucky’, ‘Pug of Dooom!’, ‘Piggy Pog Pog’, on a culinary ‘Journey for the Wobbleberries’, and in clash of escalating titans ‘Big Me’. Anarchy reigns when Monkey’s ‘Bloblems’ and ravaging ‘Jelly Plops’ threaten, but no one really grasps what it all means until ‘The Second Glitch’…

With Toby now fatally intwined and connected to the Crinkle critters in ways he cannot fathom, and which restarting the year won’t fix, a rash of irrationality – even by Woodland standards – ensues in ‘Roll ‘em Up!’ and ‘Mine’. Toby’s fate is sealed when he inserts himself into the world of ‘Weirdos’ and he gets stuck there – OR DOES HE?

Even sensible, naïve robot Metal E.V.E. doesn’t believe the Hoo-Man is just a park warden and all too soon he is both appalled spectator and collateral casualty in spiralling strangeness as seen in ‘When in Rome’, ‘Extreeeeme!’ (debuting social media manipulator/teen Hyee-Hee-Heena Pootle B. Thunderbum to the menagerie) or ‘And Now, a Special Presentation’. Such ‘Warning Signs’ are useful to Skunky who instinctively understands what’s really going on. As Toby continues searching for his glitch – only stopping for ‘Biscuits’ – our lax lepine steps up as a problem-solving ‘Magic Bunny’, prompting a woodlands ‘Pause!’ as Skunky takes control.

Experiencing rather disturbing ‘Deja Vu’, some sort of truth unfolds in ‘The Story So Far’, delivering revelation and ‘An Escape’ as Skunky crafts a figurative shark just to jump it and enter the fabled ‘Land of the Hoo-Mans’, bringing the rest with him to help and hinder his acquiring ‘Stolen Tech’.

…and then all the critters get ‘Upgrades’…

With Bunny a magical Guardian of the Woodlands, Monkey a robot and his chief hench turned into an Action Cow, ‘Beefy Squirrel’ uses her new physique and superstrength to save Pig as metamorphic ‘Module Madness’ grips the critter cast. She needn’t have fussed, as her pal becomes super-secret agent ‘Codename P.I.G.’ to counter the chaos.

Deep below Crinkle Woods, the King of the Undercreatures craves ‘Yum Yums’ and strikes a shady deal with one stalwart supposed hero, sparking a fearsome clash with terror-beast Boggoth on ‘Fight Night’, and another between upgraded stars in ‘Bunny vs Monkey’. It swiftly draws in Beefy Squirrell for ‘Surf’s Up!’, before cosmically unfortunate red panda Lucky is convinced to try ‘Just One Wish’ on the troublesome upgrade module.

Metal E.V.E. evaluates the merits of change in ‘Transform!’, leading to Skunky’s ascension as ‘The Architect’ of reality and rueful admission ‘That Escalated Quickly’. Finally, magic Bunny and compelling, morally ambiguous outsider refusenik Le Fox unite to confront ‘The Omnipresent Skunky’ and battle beside everyone left ‘All in This Together’, before even greater revelations are exposed and calm(ish) order is restored with all ‘Finally Happy’, despite it being – just for a bit – ‘Metal Steve’s World’ and an ephemeral plane of ‘The Endless’ only truly sorted and made wonderfully again thanks to Bunny in ‘The Release’.

There’s also ‘An Epilogue’ with Le Fox explaining things, but unless you’re as smart and fun-loving as your kids, it won’t do you adults any good…

The agonised, anxiety-addled animal anarchy might have ended for now, but there’s a few more secrets to expose, thanks to detailed instructions on ‘How to Draw Wizard Bunny!’, ‘…Buff Weinie!’ and ‘…Action Cow!’, as well as previews of other treats and wonders available in The Phoenix to wind down from all that cosmic furore…

Another book for your kids to explain to you, the zany zenith of absurdist adventure, Bunny vs Monkey is weird wit, brilliant invention, potent sentiment and superb cartooning all crammed into one eccentrically excellent package. These tails never fail to deliver jubilant joy for grown-ups of every vintage, even those who claim they only get it for their kids. Is that you?

Text and illustrations © Fumboo Ltd. 2024. All rights reserved.
Bunny vs Monkey: The Great Big Glitch! is published on October 10th 2024 and available for pre-order now.

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Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight and Nightmares


By John J Muth (NBM/Marvel-Epic)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-060-8 (HB) (Marvel Graphic Novel #25: 978-0-87135-171-5)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As part of an adventurous foray into the then-budding world of graphic albums, the Marvel Graphic Novel line combined experimental projects and storytelling alongside glorified giant comic books. This particularly arty package from came from gallery guy/award winning children’s book illustrator Jon J. Muth.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 28th 1960, he is much travelled, and studied sculpture and shodō (brush calligraphy) in Japan, and in England mastered painting, drawing and printmaking. For a brief moment, years ago, he was a new force in sequential art, scoring much attention on Sandman: The Wake, Lucifer: Nirvana, Swamp Thing: Roots, and The Mystery Play, after turning heads at Marvel and Epic with Moonshadow and Havok and Wolverine: Meltdown.

Also a writer, in 1986 Muth appropriated and accommodated elements of Bram Stoker’s classic novel, reweaving them as the framework for a painterly tour-de-force of gothic set-pieces and moving, intimate images. Familiarity with the original’s plot is not essential – if not actually ill-advised – as mood rather than narrative is favoured in Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight and Nightmares, and the pictures are of paramount interest even if, jarringly and inexplicably, Muth’s narrative mixes first-hand accounts from protagonists Lucy Seward and her father, prose and “newspaper excerpts”, with faux film-script pages into this dark tale of bloody obsession.

For all these problems, it was picked up by NBM in 1992 and re-issued as a gloriously enlarged upscale hardcover album (with eventually a paperback edition) which particularly enhanced those extended sections where Muth’s paintings were allowed to carry the story without the distraction of text.

Although this is so much more “Graphic” than “Novel” and not quite as clever as first seems – all beautiful surface with no depth at all – it is staggeringly pretty, and a delight for any fan with an appreciation of the visual arts and dark delights.
© 1986, 1992 John J Muth. All rights reserved.

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Everything’s Coming Up Beatrix – A Breaking Cat News Adventure (volume 6)


By Georgia Dunn (Andrews McMeel)
ISBN: 978-1-52487-974-7 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-5248-9062-6

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Categorically Unmissable… 9/10

There’s a burgeoning trend amongst certain men – mostly loitering on the internet – to think their threat of replacing women they can’t “get” with sex-bots that don’t exist is in some way a deterrent to being turned down by people they don’t have the ability to ask nicely in the first place. These uncouth, mis-evolved oafs also warn that if the “females” don’t wise up and lower their standards they will be stuck with living with cats…

Guys – and I’m using the term in the least pejorative manner I can muster – wise up, yourselves. Neither of those propositions are unwelcome outcomes. Cats already rule the world and you just can’t compete.

On any level.

In 2016, illustrator and cartoonist Georgia Dunn found a way to make her hairy housemates (the ones with more than two feet) earn their keep after watching them converge on a domestic accident and inquisitively, interminably poke their whiskery little snouts into the mess. That incident led to Breaking Cat News: a hilariously beguiling webcomic detailing how her forthright felines operate their own on-the-spot news-team, with studio anchor Lupin, and field reporters Elvis (investigative) and Puck (commentary) delivering around-the-clock reports on the events that really resonate with cats – because, after all, who else matters?

On March 27th 2017, a suitably modified (for which read fully redrawn and recoloured) version began newspaper syndication, alternating with new material designed expressly for print consumption. As the strip and cast grew, print publication led to books like these – also a far more enticing prospect than any night out with the boys…

If you’re a returning customer or already follow the strip, you’re au fait with a constantly expanding cast and ceaselessly surreal absurdity, but this stuff is so welcoming, even the merest neophyte can jump right in with no confusion… other than that which is intentional…

Be warned though, Dunn is a master of emotional manipulation and never afraid to tug heartstrings. Always keep hankies close. You too, lads…

In this volume, the strip’s spookier whimsy-corners are revisited, and the year’s seasonal markers (a mainstay of most newspaper comic strips for more than a century) are gleefully addressed as the news-mews crew and other occupants of the ancient (by US standards!) house pop up in short gags and extended serial dramas, beginning with a passionate yet hilarious cartoon polemic encouraging everyone to defend libraries, librarians and reading itself in today’s dangerously post-literate America.

Returning to episodic riffs in celebration of ‘Fuzzy Blanket Season’, we see the Dunn’s toddler – under the guidance of the scoop-starved kitties – cope with the loss of plushy pal Pengo. His return from the washing machine leads to learning all about the dangers of peanut butter before the felines face another crunchy leaf crisis and anticipate impending Halloween treats through the eyes of the new baby.

The jaded kitties clue in viewers to the best comestibles, carry on the search for legendary cryptid “The mailman” and celebrate the joyous resurrection of ‘The Space Heater’, with a “camp in” and some scary tales…

An extended frightening yarn – which does end happily, my nervous darlings – finds three-legged Puck indulge his passion for climbing and get lost in the house’s superstructure. When he is in danger of suffocating, ghosts of previous pets and the old lady who originally owned the place augment the frantic, still-breathing searchers…

The story of the were-floof segues into more spectral surprises – such as the advent of Count Puckula – before order of a catly kind is ultimately restored, leading to riffs on feline trophy-taking, coiffure gaffes and monsters under beds. When  Christmas and New Year’s come, the cats are ready even if The People aren’t, and no decoration or fancy edible is safe. At least wrapping paper is a gift that keeps on giving and giving and giving and…

January sees a big expose on ‘Shelves, the Silent Killer’, more “facts” about snow – and groundhogs – as well as sweaters, colds, why the People bathe, and contagious cat clumsiness. Food items are always newsworthy, and a protracted debate on the point of lettuce leads to fun with temporary foster kitten and agent of chaos Beatrix…

Time marches on to St. Patrick’s Day, which is co-opted by adherents of feline patron saint St. Gertude to launch new holiday ‘St. Catty’s Day’, complete with a bundle of new traditions. Eating corned beef might not make the final cut, though…

Another high point comes with the launch of affiliate BCW, but is the world ready for Best Cat Wrestling and glam-costumed kitty luchadores? If not there’s always cake and reading. That’s what new cat Sophie prefers, much to outside cat Tommy’s disappointment. It almost makes up for The Woman running out of coffee and English period detective dramas.

By the time Peep Toad season starts, Beatrix is moving on to her forever home – a book shop – and social media goes into  underdrive. At least old pals like the “gypsy” cats are happy to provide entertainment to the news-starved, and there is always cat yoga, home-tanning, sock-hunting, new toys to review and the start of baseball season…

As always Rolling News episodes revisit favourite themes like things that don’t need to be on shelves, climbing into bags, kibble, packaging helping The People eat, sleep and exercise…

Closing festivities is another selection of activity pages considered as Breaking Cat News: More to Explore providing full painted and fully-detailed tips and plans on how to ‘Make your own Bookmarks!’, ‘Make a Little Book!’ and ‘Build a Reading Fort!’

Outrageous, alarming, extra-especially courageous and always charming – and certainly often far too autobiographical for comfort – the romps, riffs and occasional sad bits about a fully integrated multi-species family is a growing necessity of life for many folk – just like most men simply Are Not. Smart, witty, imaginative and deliciously whimsical, Breaking Cat News is fabulously funny, infinitely re-readable feel-good fun rendered with artistic elan and a light and breezy touch to delight not just us irredeemable cat-addicts but also anyone in dire need of a good laugh.
Everything’s Coming Up Beatrix © 2023 Georgia Dunn. All rights reserved.

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Melusine volume 4: Love Potions

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By Clarke (Frédéric Seron) & Gilson, coloured by Cerise and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-005-4 (album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Like most things in life, this ideal keepsake for Love’s Labours Ludicrously Lost comes far too late to be the perfect St. Valentine’s Day recommendation, but let’s face it: if you want to read a comic rather than romance a paramour – imagined, potential, fairly won or even abducted (wow, that got dark!) or any otherwise – there’s little hope for you anyway…

And Nether Gods forbid if you think buying one for him/her/they/it counts as a Romantic Gesture. You deserve everything you get. Anyway every fule knoes it’s all candies and pumpkin spice this time of year…

Witches – especially cute and sassy teenaged ones – have a long and distinguished pedigree in fiction and one of the most seductively engaging first appeared in venerable Belgian magazine Le Journal de Spirou in 1992. Mélusine is actually a sprightly 119-year-old, diligently studying to perfect her craft at Witches’ School. To make ends meet she spends her days – and far too many nights – working as au pair and general dogsbody to a most disgraceful family of haunts and horrors who inhabit/infest a vast, monster-packed, ghost-afflicted chateau somewhat chronologically adrift and anachronistically awry around the time in the Middle(ish) Ages…

The long-lived, much-loved feature comes in every format from one-page gag strips to full-length comedy tales, all riffing wickedly on supernatural themes and detailing the winsome witch’s rather fraught existence: filled with the daily indignities of the day-job, college studies, the appallingly trivial domestic demands of the castle’s master and mistress and even our magic maid’s large circle of exceedingly peculiar family and friends.

The strip was devised by writer François Gilson (Rebecca, Cactus Club, Garage Isidore) and cartoon humorist Frédéric Seron – AKA Clarke – whose numerous features for all-ages Spirou and acerbic adult humour publication Fluide Glacial include Rebecca, Les Cambrioleurs, Durant les Travaux, l’Exposition Continue… and Le Miracle de la Vie.

Under the pseudonym Valda, Seron also created Les Babysitters and as “Bluttwurst” Les Enquêtes de l’Inspecteur Archibaldo Massicotti, Château Montrachet, Mister President and P.38 et Bas Nylo.

A former fashion illustrator and nephew of comics veteran Pierre Seron, Clarke is one of those insufferable guys who just draws non-stop and is unremittingly funny. He also doubles up as a creator of historical and genre pieces like Cosa Nostra, Les Histoires de France, Luna Almaden and Nocturnes. Apparently, he is free of the curse of having to sleep…

Collected Mélusine editions began appearing annually or better from 1995 onwards, with 27 published thus far. Sadly only a handful (yes, five) of those made it into English translations before Cinebook paused the project, but hope springs eternal…

Originally released in 1998, Philtres d’amour was Continentally the fifth fantabulous folio of mystic mirth and is most welcoming to the casual eye: primarily comprised of 1 & 2 page gags which delightfully eschew continuity for the sake of new readers’ instant approbation…

As the translated title suggests, Love Potions devotes the majority of attention to affairs of the heart – and lower regions – demonstrating how to alchemically stack the deck in the dance of romance…

When brittle, moody Melusine isn’t being bullied for inept cleaning skills by the matriarchal ghost-duchess who runs the chateau, ducking cat-eating monster Winston, dodging frisky vampire The Count or avoiding the unwelcome and often hostile attentions of horny peasants and over-zealous witch-hunting priests, our “saucy sorceress” can usually be found practising spells or consoling/coaching inept, un-improvable and lethally unskilled classmate Cancrelune.

Unlike Mel, this sorry enchantress-in-training is a real basket case. Her transformation spells go awfully awry, she can’t remember incantations and her broomstick-riding makes her a menace to herself, any unfortunate observers and even the terrain and buildings around her…

This tantalising tome features a melange of slick sight gags and pun-ishing pranks, highlighting how every bug, beast, brute and blundering mortal suffers pangs of longing and occasionally needs a little Covenly charisma to kick romance into action. Whether that means changing looks, attitudes or minds already firmly made up, poor harassed student Mel is bombarded with requests to give Eros a hand…

Her admittedly impatiently administered, often rather tetchy aid is pretty hit-or-miss, whether working for peasants, rabbits, tortoises or even other witches, and helping poor Cancrelune is an endless, thankless and frequently risky venture. Moreover, the castle master & mistress have obviously never had an ounce of romance in them, even when they were alive…

At least daunting dowager Aunt Adrezelle is always around to supply the novice with advice, a wrinkly shoulder to cry on and, when necessary, a few real remedies…

This turbulent tome also includes a longer jocular jaunt exploring the dull verities of housework, anti-aging elixirs and the selfish ingratitude of property-speculators, before wrapping up the thaumaturgical hearts-&-flowers with eponymous extended epic ‘Love Potions’. This portrays Melusine’s patience pushed to the limits after another attempt by the local priest to “burn the witch” leads to her helping the locale’s latest scourging saurian marauder find the dragon of his fiery dreams…

Wry, sly, fast-paced and uproariously funny, this compendium of arcane antics is a great taste of the magic of European comics, and a beguiling delight for all lovers of the cartoonist’s art. Read before bedtime and share with your loved ones – but only after asking politely first and maybe sharing our sweets too…
Original edition © Dupuis, 1998 by Clarke & Gilson. All rights reserved. English translation 2009 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Halloween Tales



By O.G. Boiscommun & D-P Filippi, translated by Montana Kane (HumanoidsKids)
ISBN: 978-1-59465-654-5 (HB/Digital editions)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The trauma-tinged, gluttonously anarchic ceremonies of Halloween are celebrated far and wide these days, and although the basic principles are fairly homogenised, different regions can throw up a few enticing variations that are well worth noting. A graphic series that proved a huge European best-seller when released in 2017, the three stories comprising this magnificent hardback compilation are also available digitally in the original 3-album format, albeit translated into English for your delectation and approval.

Snob and eco-supporter that I am, these days, I’m going to say buy or gift the book if you like: I’m reviewing the electronic editions here…

Devised by writer/artist Olivier Boiscommun (Renaissance: Children of the Nile) and full-time screenwriter/scenarist Denis-Pierre Filippi (Gregory and the Gargoyles, Muse, Fondation Z, John Lord), these overlapping adventures focus on a band of kinds in an oddly archaic city of indeterminate vintage. It’s a place of towers and cathedrals, strange moods and winding streets, perfectly captured by Boiscommun’s exaggerated painting style.

The first album – Halloween Tales: Halloween – sees a gaggle of adolescents gathering to celebrate the night with frolics and mischief: elaborately costumed and frightening each other. However, gauntly-garbed Asphodel remains gloomy and aloof, eventually heading off alone. Her thoughts are locked on death, until she is accosted by a strange, clownish figure who seems barely real. He seeks to alter her mood and mind with a strange philosophy…

Second volume Halloween Tales: The Story of Joe is delivered in eerie monochrome tones and hues, returning us to the mountainous outskirts of that dreaming city where little Bea can’t understand why playmate Joe is being so mean. As they idle about on the rooftops, the boy and his new pet cat survive a close encounter with a huge bat that leaves Joe scarred and bleeding. His doting dad is too busy working these days, so it’s Bea who first notices some bizarre changes – physical as well as emotional – increasingly afflicting her friend, before culminating in him dealing with bullies who persecute them with terrifying power. Only when Joe’s awful transformation is nearly complete do Bea, the cat and his father find a way to challenge the tainted child’s descent into nocturnal isolation and monstrosity…

Scripted by D-P Filippi, Halloween Tales: The Book of Jack completes the trilogy with a return to vibrant colour as a pack of children, led by overbearing Stan, dare little runt Jack to break into a spooky haunted mansion. As the moppet mob approaches the dilapidated pile through a statuary-infested overgrown garden – or is it a graveyard? – lanky Sam tries to reason with her little companion. She has plenty of misgivings and a really bad feeling about all this…

Bravado and peer pressure win out, and Jack enters the derelict building, to discover the biggest library in the world in its centre. Suddenly panicked, he snatches up a tatty tome to prove his triumph and dashes for the door. Only when they are all safely back outside the gates does Sam realise there’s something odd about the book. Many pages are blank, but gradually filing with spindly writing every moment – each unfolding line magically recording what Jack is doing as he does it. Mean, jealous Stan sees an opportunity for mischief…

Next morning the book has vanished, and Jack is slowly becoming a gigantic, savagely uncontrollable beast. Sam knows what’s happened and starts searching the city for the miraculous chronicle, determined to get it and literally rewrite her friend’s appalling future…

With All Hallows festive celebrations inexorably installed in so many modern cultures, it’s grand to see an alternative to the almost-suffocating commercialising and movie tropes where heart, sentiment and yes, unease and outright fear can be safely experienced and expunged. These moody escapades are a true treat, in darkness or in light, and that’s no mean trick…
© 2017 Humanoids, Inc. Los Angeles (USA) All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks: Werewolf by Night volume 2


By Marv Wolfman, Mike Friedrich, Gerry Conway, Tony Isabella, Doug Moench, Mike Ploog, Don Perlin, Tom Sutton, Gil Kane, Gerry Conway, Pat Broderick, Frank Chiaramonte, Mike Royer, Vince Colletta, Tom Palmer& various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4948-8 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Magical unrealism… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in 1970, in the wake of losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators – Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby – they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties.

The only real exception to this was a mass release of horror titles rapidly devised in response to an industry-wide down-turn in superhero sales. The move was handily expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

Almost overnight nasty monsters (plus narcotics and bent coppers – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare within four-colour pages and whilst a parade of 1950s pre-code reprints made sound business sense (so they repackaged a bunch of those too) the creative aspect of the contemporary fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.

As always, the watch-word was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible…

When proto-monster Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of scary stars – beginning with a werewolf and traditional vampire – before chancing something new via a haunted biker who could tap into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the supernatural zeitgeist.

With its title cribbed from a classic short thriller from pre-Code horror anthology Marvel Tales #116 (July 1953), Werewolf By Night debuted in Marvel Spotlight #2. It had been preceded by masked western hero Red Wolf in #1, and was followed by the afore-hinted Ghost Rider, but this hairy hero was destined to stick around for a while.

This chillingly crackers compendium compiles more moody misadventures of a good-hearted young West Coast lycanthrope who briefly shone as an unlikely star for the entire length of a trading trend, as proved here by the reprinted full-colour contents of Werewolf By Night volume 1 #9-21, Giant-Size Creatures #1, and Tomb of Dracula #18, plus some enticing extracts from Monsters Unleashed #6 & 7: collectively spanning September 1973 to September 1974.

Jack Russell is a teenager with a rare but very disturbing condition. On her deathbed, his mother revealed unsuspected Transylvanian origins to her beloved boy: relating a family curse which would turn him into a raging beast on every night with a full moon… as soon as he reached his 18th birthday.

And so it began…

After many months of misunderstanding as Jack tried to cope alone with his periodic wild side, Jack’s stepfather Philip Russell expanded the story, revealing how the Russoff line was cursed by the taint of Lycanthropy: every child doomed to become a wolf-thing under the full-moon from the moment they reached adulthood. Moreover, the feral blight would do the same to his little sister Lissa when she reached her own majority…

As Jack tried and repeatedly failed to balance a normal life with his monthly cycle of uncontrollable ferocity, he met eventual mentor and confidante Buck Cowan, an aging writer who became Jack’s best friend after the pair began to jointly investigate the wolf-boy’s past. Their incessant search for a cure was made more urgent by little Lissa’s ever-encroaching birthday. In the course of their researches they crossed swords with many monsters – human and otherwise – including off-the-rails cop Lou Hackett, who had been going increasingly crazy in his off-the-books investigation/hunt for a werewolf nobody believed in. This time we will meet a fellow horror hairball who has found a shocking remedy to their condition…

Following fond and effusive recollections from novelist/comics scribe Duane Swierczynski in his Introduction ‘My Favorite Fur Baby’, the saga resumes as Jack heads back to LA after meeting Spider-Man, only to find ‘Terror Beneath the Earth!’ Here, Conway, Tom Sutton & George Roussos delve into an impending and thoroughly nefarious scheme by business cartel The Committee. These out-of-the-box commercial gurus somehow possess a full dossier on Jack Russell’s night-life and hire a maniac sewer-dwelling sound engineer to execute their radical plan to use monsters and derelicts to boost sales in a down-turned economy.

Sadly, the bold sales scheme to frighten folk into spending more ends before it begins as the werewolf proves to be far from a team-player in wrap up ‘The Sinister Secret of Sarnak!’

Werewolf by Night #11 revelled in irony as Marv Wolfman signed on as writer for ‘Comes the Hangman’ – illustrated by the incredible Gil Kane & Sutton – in which we learn something interesting about Philip Russell and The Committee, whilst Jack’s attention is distracted by a new apartment, a very odd neighbour and a serial kidnapper abducting young women to keep them “safe from corruption.” When the self-deluded hooded hero snatches Lissa, he finds himself hunted by a monster beyond his wildest dreams…

Concluding chapter ‘Cry Werewolf!’ brings in the criminally underappreciated Don Perlin as inker. In a few short months he would become the strip’s penciller for the rest of the run, but before that original illustrator Mike Ploog (with Frank Chiaramonte) pops back for another stunning session, introducing a manic mystic and a new love-interest (not the same person) in WBN #13’s ‘His Name is Taboo’. An aged sorcerer coveting the werewolf’s energies for his own arcane purposes, the magician is stunned when his adopted daughter Topaz finds her loyalties divided and her psionic gifts more help than hindrance to the ravening moon-beast.

‘Lo, the Monster Strikes!’ pits the wolf against Taboo’s undead – but getting better – son and sees revelation and reconciliation between Philip and Jack Russell. As a result, the young man and new girlfriend Topaz set off for Transylvania, the ancestral Russoff estate and a crossover confrontation with the Lord of Vampires…

Tomb of Dracula #18 (March 1974) commences the clash in ‘Enter: Werewolf by Night’ (Wolfman, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer) as Jack & Topaz investigate a potential cure for lycanthropy, only to be ambushed by Dracula. Driven off by the strange girl’s psychic powers, the cunning Count realises the threat she poses to him and resolves to slay her…

It concludes courtesy of Wolfman, Ploog & Chiaramonte in Werewolf by Night #15 and the ‘Death of a Monster!’ as the battle of beasts resolves into a messy stalemate, but only after Jack learns of his family’s long connection to Dracula…

The suspense builds as Jack & Topaz reach Paris. After failing to find a cure in his Balkan homeland, and clashing with a vampire they were forced to endure a tiresome – and crucially untimely – forced stopover in the City of Lights. Quel dommage!

This leads to an impromptu clash with a modern-day Hunchback of Notre Dame (he doesn’t sing and he’s not very gentle here) and ends with ‘Death in the Cathedral!’. Scripted by Mike Friedrich and inked by Chiaramonte, this bombastic battle was co-originator Ploog’s farewell performance as artist in residence.

WBN #17 was by Friedrich & Don Perlin, with Jack & Topaz escaping Paris only to fall into The Committee’s latest scheme, as blustering Baron Thunder and his favourite monster ‘The Behemoth!’ try to make the werewolf their plaything again. The plot concluded in ‘Murder by Moonlight!’ (Perlin inked by Mike Royer) as the secret of Jack’s mystery neighbour is exposed when Thunder attacks again, aided by witch-queen Ma Mayhem. However, it’s all a feint for The Committee to kidnap Lissa who will, one day soon, become a werewolf too… and hopefully a far more manageable one…

A potent pin-up carries us onwards before – whilst searching for Lissa – Jack finds out some of the secrets of nasty neighbour Raymond Coker before falling foul of two undead film-stars haunting the Hollywood backlots in #19’s ‘Vampires on the Moon’ (Friedrich, Perlin & Vince Colletta).

Armed with the knowledge that for a werewolf to lift his curse, he/she must kill another one, it’s a swift lope to  Giant-Size Creatures #1, where Tony Isabella, Perlin & Colletta moodily re-imagine a failed costumed crusader and introduce a new creepy champion in ‘Tigra the Were-Woman!’ Greer Nelson – one-time feminist avenger The Cat – is “assassinated” by Hydra agents, revived by ancient hidden race the Cat-People and becomes an unwilling object of temporary affection for feral and frisky moonwalker Jack Russell…

Following text piece ‘Waiter, there’s a Werewolf in my Soup!’ – also from Giant-Size Creatures and explaining the genesis of Marvel’s horror line – WBN #20 debuts writer Doug Moench to wrap up all the disparate plot threads in ‘Eye of the Wolf!’: a rushed but satisfactory conclusion offering a whole pack of werewolves, Baron Thunder, Ma Mayhem and lots and lots of action.

With the decks cleared, Moench began making the series uniquely his own, beginning with #21’s ‘One Wolf’s Cure… Another’s Poison!’, wherein he starts playing up the ever-encroaching 18th birthday of little Lissa, before deftly engineering the final reckoning with rogue cop Hackett…

With the stage set for some truly outrageous yarn-spinning we abruptly divert to a brace of sidebar shorts taken from Monsters Unleashed #6 and 7. Here Gerry Conway’s prose yarn ‘Panic by Moonlight’ and concluding instalment ‘Madness Under a Mid-Summer Moon’ (with spot illustrations by Ploog, Pat Broderick & Klaus Janson) detail how a gang of bikers pick the wrong night to home-invade the flashy singles complex Jack Russell lives in…

Kicking off the bonus section is an Introduction by Ralph Macchio first seen in 2017’s Werewolf By Night: The Complete Collection volume 1, contemporary house ads and – complementing the cover gallery by Sutton, Kane, John Romita, Ernie Chan, Ploog, Palmer, Frank Giacoia, Ron Wilson, Klaus Janson – a selection of original art by Kane, Ploog, Perlin & Chiaramonte.

A moody masterpiece of macabre menace and all-out animal action, this compilation comprises some of the most under-appreciated magic moments in Marvel history: tense, suspenseful and solidly compelling. If you must have a mixed bag of lycanthropes, bloodsuckers and moody young magical misses, this is a far more entertaining mix than many modern movies, books or miscellaneous matter…
© 2023 MARVEL.

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Batman: Haunted Knight


By Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1 401-28486-2 (TPB/Digital edition) 978-1-7795-1638-1 (Deluxe HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Timeless Seasonal Wonderment… 9/10

The creative team of Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale tackled many iconic characters in a number of landmark tales, but their reworkings of early Batman mythology – such as The Long Halloween – must certainly rank amongst their most memorable. Set during the iconic Batman: Year One scenario created by Frank Miller, and originally released as a 13-part miniseries (running from Halloween to Halloween), that epic shed new light and plenty more shadows on the early alliance of Police Captain Jim Gordon, District Attorney Harvey Dent and the mysterious vigilante Batman, to destroy the unassailable mob boss who ran Gotham City; Carmine Falcone: “The Roman…”

However, prior to that epic undertaking, the creators coproduced another All Hallows adventure; one that grew like Topsy to eventually become a triptych of Prestige One-Shot Specials under the aegis of Archie Goodwin’s most significant editorial project…

After the continuity-wide reset of Crisis on Infinite Earths, and with DC still in the throes of re-jigging its entire narrative history, a new Batman title launched, presenting multi-part epics refining and infilling the history of the post-Crisis hero and his entourage. The added fillip was a fluid cast of prominent and impressively up-and-coming creators…

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight was a fascinating experiment, even if ultimately the overall quality became a little haphazard and hit-or-miss. Most early story-arcs were quickly collected as trade paperback editions – helping to jumpstart the graphic novel sector of the comics industry – and the moody re-imaginings of the Gotham Guardian’s salad days gave fans a wholly modern insight into the ancient yet highly malleable concept.

As explained in ‘Trick or Treat’ – Editors Goodwin’s reproduced introduction from the 1996 compilation – the first Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special began life as a story-arc for the monthly series, before being cannily promoted to a single, stand-alone publication released for October 1993. Its success spawned the two sequels also included in this volume and the aforementioned Long Halloween epic. If you spring for the spiffy Deluxe Edition from 2022, there are even more secrets revealed…

Otherwise, collected in one spooky, stripped-down paperback and/or eBook compilation, those three scary stories comprise a raw and visceral examination of an obsessive hero still learning his trade and capable of deadly misjudgements as seen in initial yarn ‘Fears’.

Here, after spectacularly capturing terror-obsessed psychopath Jonathan Crane, the neophyte Caped Crimebuster leaves him to mere policemen ill-equipped to cope with the particular brand of malicious insanity cultivated by The Scarecrow…

It’s fair to say that the man behind the bat mask is distracted; still attempting to reconcile his nocturnal and diurnal activities. Young Bruce Wayne is currently floundering before the seductive and sophisticated blandishments of predatory social butterfly and matrimonial black widow Jillian Maxwell. Faithful major-domo Alfred Pennyworth, however, is not so easily swayed. Left too much to his own devices, The Scarecrow has run wild through Gotham, but when he abducts Gordon, he at last makes a mistake the Dark Knight can capitalise upon…

One year later, another Halloween brings ‘Madness’ as rebellious teen Barbara Gordon choses exactly the wrong moment to run away from home: a night when her dad’s mysterious caped pal is frantically hunting Jervis Tetch – a certified nutcase abducting runaways to attend decidedly deadly Tea Parties orchestrated by a truly Mad Hatter…

Steeped in personal nostalgia as a maniac rampages through his city, inadvertently trampling upon some of Bruce Wayne’s only happy memories (of his mother’s favourite book), the heroic pursuer almost dies at the hands of the Looking Glass Loon, only to be saved by unlikely angel Leslie Thompkins – another woman who will loom large in Batman’s future…

The final fable here pastiches that Christmas classic by Charles Dickens as ‘Ghosts’ sees a delirious Bruce uncharacteristically taking to his bed early on the night before Halloween.

After socialising with young financier Lucius Fox, eating bad shrimp and crushing baroque bird bandit The Penguin, our sick and weary playboy lapses into troubled sleep, only to be visited by three spectres…

Looking like Poison Ivy, The Joker and the corpse of Batman himself, whilst representing Past, Present and inescapable Future, these phantoms prove that only doom awaits unless the overachieving hero strikes a balance – or perhaps truce – between his two divergent identities.

Trenchant with narrative foreboding (long-time fans already know the tragedies in store for all the participants, although total neophytes won’t be left wondering) these eerily enthralling Noir thrillers by Loeb perfectly capture the spirit of the modern Batman, supremely graced with startlingly powerful images of Mood, Mystery and rampant Mayhem from the magic pencil and brush of much-missed Tim Sale, vividly augmented by the colours of Gregory Wright and lettering of Todd Klein.

Adding lustre to these moody proceedings are a gallery of prior covers culled from earlier collections as well as a Sale Batman sketch, making this one of the very best Batman books you could read.

So, do…
© 1993, 1994, 1995, 2014, 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Bunny vs Monkey: The Gigantic Joke Fight!


By Jamie Smart, with Sammy Borras (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78845-334-9 (Digest HB)

Bunny vs Monkey has been the hairy/fuzzy backbone of The Phoenix since the very first issue back in 2012: recounting a madcap vendetta gripping animal arch-enemies in an idyllic arcadia masquerading as more-or-less mundane but critically endangered English woodlands.

Concocted with gleefully gentle mania by cartoonist, comics artist and novelist Jamie Smart (Fish Head Steve!; Looshkin; Max and Chaffy, Flember), his trendsetting, mindbending multi award-winning yarns have been wisely retooled as graphic albums available in digest editions such as this one.

All the tail-biting tension and animal argy-bargy began yonks ago after an obnoxious little anthropoid plopped down in some serene British woodland, in the wake of a disastrous local space shot. Crashlanded in Crinkle Woods, scant miles from his launch site, lab animal Monkey reckoned himself the rightful owner of a strange new world… despite every effort to dissuade him by reasonable, rational, sensible, genteel, contemplative forest resident Bunny. No amount of patience, propriety or good breeding on the part of the laid-back lepine could curtail, contain or control the incorrigible idiot ape, who to this day remains a rude, noise-loving, chaos-creating, troublemaking lout…

A keen rivalry arose between them, as the ape intruder crudely made himself at home, and to this day Monkey remains a rude, noise-loving, chaos-creating, troublemaking lout intent on building his perfect “Monkeyopia” – with or without the aid of evil supergenius ally Skunky or their “henches” Metal Steve and Action Beaver…

Problems are exacerbated by other unconventional Crinkle creatures, like Pig, Weenie, Ai, Lucky, Le Fox and especially mad scientist Skunky whose intellect and cavalier attitude to life presents as a propensity for building extremely dangerous robots, Brobdingnagian bio-beasts and sundry other super-weapons…

Here the mundane multi-coloured manic war of nerves and mega-munitions is temporarily terminated for a twits & giggles diversion in magnificent monochrome as the entire cast are embroiled in a mysterious competition to determine who knows the best jokes – a cunning ploy to resurrect the subgenre of cartoon joke books that made the 1960s, Seventies and Eighties such a tedious, ear-bending chore for teachers and parents and so much fun for us…

The search to determine “The Funniest Creature in the Woods” grips everybody and over ‘Welcome to the Woods’, ‘Bunny Makes a Funny’, ‘Monkey’s Merciless Mirth!’, ‘Skunky’s Genius Jokes!’, ‘Weenie and Pig’s First Go at Telling Jokes!’, ‘Lights. Camera. Action Beaver!’, ‘Metal Steve and Metal E.V.E.’s Joke Processing’, ‘Le Fox is Far Too Cunning’, ‘Ai is So Fast’, ‘A Very Lucky Joke!’, ‘Weenie and Pig Return!’, ‘Readers’ Jokes – You Make the Laughs!’ and ‘And Now, the Conclusion!’, deliver themed and specialised chapter collections of Dad Jokes, Bum Jokes, Fart Jokes, Poo Jokes, Food Jokes, Baby Jokes, Knock-Knock Jokes and Pirate Jokes, as well as jests & japes about Genius, Robots, Computers, School, Experiments, Monsters, Ghosts, Chickens and Road Crossing, whilst also offering some riddles, brain-teasers and even tips on what Jokes are and How To Tell Them…

Daft, compulsively addictive, dangerously read-out-loud-able and fearfully unputdownable, this cutting edge retro-treat is the perfect gift… for someone else’s kids…
Text and illustrations © Fumboo Ltd. 2024. All rights reserved.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because You’re Only Young Once, unless you’re a Guy… 8/10

Bunny vs Monkey: The Gigantic Joke Fight! Will be published on October 10th 2024 and is available for pre-order now.