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DC Finest: The Demon – Birth of the Demon


By Jack Kirby with Mike Royer, Bob Haney, Bob Rozakis, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, Jim Aparo, John Calnan, Mike Golden, Steve Ditko, José Delbo, Bob McLeod, Dick Giordano, Dave Hunt & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1799507437 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Jack “King” Kirby shaped the very nature of comics narrative. A compulsive storyteller, Jack was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He had seen Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures. He was open-minded and utterly wedded to the making of comics stories on every imaginable subject. He began at the top of his game, galvanising the comic book scene from its earliest days with long-term creative partner Joe Simon: creating Blue Bolt, drawing Captain Marvel and adding lustre to Timely comics with creations such as Red Raven, Hurricane, Captain America and The Young Allies.

In 1942 Simon & Kirby moved to National/DC and hit even more stellar highs with The Boy Commandos, Newsboy Legion, Manhunter and The Sandman before the call of duty saw them inducted into the American military.

On returning from World War II, they reunited, forming a studio working primarily for the Crestwood/Prize publishing outfit. Here they invented the entire genre of Romance comics. Amongst that dynamic duo’s other concoctions for Prize was a noir-ish, psychologically underpinned supernatural anthology Black Magic and its short-lived but fascinating companion title Strange World of Your Dreams. All their titles eschewed traditional gory, heavy-handed morality plays and simplistic cautionary tales for deeper, stranger fare. Until the EC comics line hit their peak, S&K’s were far and away the best and most mature titles on the market.

Kirby understood the fundamentals of pleasing his audience and always strived diligently to combat the appalling state of prejudice about the comics medium – especially from industry insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies world” they felt trapped in. When the 1950s anti-comics comics witch hunt devastated the industry, Simon & Kirby parted ways. Jack went back to DC briefly and created newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force before partnering with Stan Lee at what remained of Timely Comics to create the monolith of stars we know as Marvel. After more than a decade there he felt increasingly stifled and side-lined and in 1970 accepted an offer of complete creative freedom at DC. The jump resulted in a root and branch redefinition of superheroes in his quartet of interlinked Fourth World series.

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

At DC’s suggestion, Kirby had already briefly returned to his supernatural experimentation in a superb but poorly received and largely undistributed monochrome magazine. Spirit World launched in the summer of 1971, but as before, editorial cowardice and back-sliding scuppered the project before it could get going. You can see what might have been in a collected edition re-presenting the sole published issue and material from a second, unreleased sequel in Jack Kirby’s Spirit World…

With most of his ideas misunderstood, ignored or side-lined by the company, Kirby opted for more traditional fare. Never truly defeated though, he cannily blended his belief in the marketability of the mystic unknown with flamboyant super-heroics to create another unique and lasting mainstay for the DC universe: one whom lesser talents would make a pivotal figure of the company’s continuity.

This compilation collects The Demon #1-16 (1972-1973), classic team-ups from The Brave and the Bold #109 & 137 and key appearances from Batman Family #17, Detective Comics #482-485 and Wonder Woman volume 1 #280-282, cumulatively spanning cover dates August/September 1972 through August 1981, providing a comprehensive introduction to one of Kirby’s most broadly reinterpreted and reimagined characters.

Inked by Mike Royer, The Demon #1 introduces a howling, leaping monstrosity (modelled after a 1939 sequence from Hal Foster’s Arthurian epic Prince Valiant) in ‘Unleash the One Who Waits’. This shocking force of un-nature battles beside its master Merlin as Camelot dies in flames, a cataclysmic casualty of the rapacious greed of sorceress Morgaine Le Fey. Out of that apocalyptic destruction, a man arises and wanders off into the mists of history…

In our contemporary world (or at least the last quarter of the 20th century) demonologist and paranormal investigator Jason Blood has a near-death experience with an aged collector of illicit arcana. This culminates in a hideous nightmare about a demonic being and the last stand of Camelot. He has no idea that Le Fey is still alive and has sinister plans for him…

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

Blood is wealthy, reclusive and partially amnesiac, but one night he agrees to host a small dinner party, entertaining acquaintances Harry Mathews, psychic UN diplomat Randu Singh and his wife Gomali plus their flighty young friend Glenda Mark.

The soiree does not go well. Firstly, there is the painful small talk, and the sorcerous surveillance of Le Fey, but the real problems start when an animated stone giant arrives to “invite” Blood to visit Castle Branek. This shattering voyage leads to Merlin’s last resting place but just as Blood thinks he may find some answers to his enigmatic past, Le Fey pounces. Suddenly he starts to change, transforming into the horrific beast of his dreams…

Issue #2 – ‘My Tomb in Castle Branek!’ – opens with wary villagers observing a terrific battle between a yellow monster and Le Fey’s forces, but when the Demon is defeated and Blood arrested, only the telepathic influence of Randu back in America can help him. Le Fey is old, dying, and needs Merlin’s grimoire, the Eternity Book, to extend her life.

Thus, she manipulates Blood – who has existed for centuries, completely unaware that Merlin’s hellish attack dog the Demon Etrigan is chained inside him – to regain his memories and awaken the slumbering master mage. It looks like the last mistake she will ever make…

Kirby’s tried-&-trusted approach was always to pepper high concepts throughout blazing, breakneck action, and #3 was one of the most imaginative yet. ‘Reincarnators’ finds Blood back in the USA, aware at last of his tormented history, and with a small but devoted circle of friends. Adapting to a less lonely life, he soon encounters a cult able to physically regress people to a prior life… and use those time-lost beings to commit murder. The Demon #4-5 comprise one single exploit, wherein a simple witch and her macabre patron capture the reawakened, semi-divine Merlin. ‘The Creature from Beyond’ and ‘Merlin’s Word’s …Demon’s Wrath!’ introduce cute little monkey Kamara the Fear-Monster (later used with devastating effect by Alan Moore in Saga of the Swamp Thing #26-27) and features another startling “Kirby-Kritter”: Somnambula, the Dream-Beast…

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

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

An extended epic, ‘Phantom of the Sewers’ skilfully combines movie and late-night TV horror motifs in the dark and tragic tale of actor Farley Fairfax, cursed by the witch he once spurned. Unfortunately, Glenda is the spitting image of the departed Galatea, and when, decades later, the demented thespian kidnaps her (in ‘Whatever Happened to Farley Fairfax?!!’) to raise the curse, it could only end in a flurry of destruction, death, consumed souls and ‘The Thing That Screams’…

In case you were wondering: the first musical adaption of The Phantom of the Opera (by Ken Hill) was in 1976, and the one you’re thinking of launched in 1986. The King was always ahead of the curve and subtly influential…

This 3-part thriller is followed by another moody, multi-part masterpiece (The Demon #11-13). ‘Baron von Evilstein’, ‘Rebirth of Evil!’ and ‘The Night of the Demon!’ comprise a powerful parable about worth and appearance, featuring the ultimate mad scientist and the tragic, misunderstood monster he so casually builds. It’s a truth that bears repeating: ugly doesn’t equal bad…

An opportunity to widen the horror-hero’s appeal came next in The Brave and the Bold #109: as Bob Haney & Jim Aparo unship superb supernatural thriller ‘Gotham Bay, Be My Grave!’ wherein the Caped Crusader and Kirby’s Kritter Etrigan the Demon fractiously unite to battle an unquiet spirit determined to avenge his own execution after nearly a century…

Despite the King’s best efforts The Demon was not a monster hit – unlike his science-fiction disaster drama Kamandi – and by #14 it’s clear the book was in its last days. Not because the sheer pace of imagination, excitement and passion diminished – far from it – but because the well-considered, mood-drenched stories were suddenly replaced by rocket-fast, eldritch romps populated with returning villains. First back was Klarion in ‘Return of the Witchboy!’ who creates a deadly doppelganger to replace Jason Blood and kill his friends in ‘The One Who Vanished!!’ (#14-15) before the series succumbed to irresistible economic forces with #16 (cover dated January 1974) in a climactic if hasty showdown with ‘Immortal Enemy’ Morgaine Le Fey…

Etrigan and cohort resurfaced in 1977 and B&B #137 (October) as Haney, John Calnan & Bob McLeod subjected Batman, Jason Blood’s friends and The Demon to war with resurrected Chinese wizard Shahn-Zi at ‘The Hour of the Serpent!’ before in a guest shot led to short revival. In Batman Family #17 (cover-dated April/May 1978), the Man-Bat serial saw Bob Rozakis & Mike Golden celebrate a happy event as the Chiropteran Crusader awaited the natal event of his firstborn child only to learn ‘There’s a Demon Born Every Minute!’ with devil babies infesting the maternity ward the hero welcomes the arrival of Etrigan (eventually) before teaming up to again thwart the diabolical schemes of malign Morgaine Le Fey.

Implicit invite accepted, Gotham resident The Demon took up residence in anthological blockbuster Detective Comics beginning with #482 (February/March 1979). Here Len Wein, Golden & Dick Giordano opened a tense quest for ‘The Eternity Book’ of Merlin. As Steve Ditko added his unique vision to the optics, the chase caught Etrigan clashing with mad mystic academic Baron Tyme in DC #483’s ‘Return to Castle Branek!’ before hurtling to a chaotic, cataclysmic conclusion in #484’s ‘Tyme Has No Secrets!’ and furious finish in #485’s ‘The Fatal Finale!’

The riotous revelries conclude with an often overlooked team-up. For Wonder Woman #280 (volume 1, June 1981), Gerry Conway, José Delbo & Dave Hunt detail how Air Force officers Diana Prince and Steve Trevor investigate the prestigious Delphi Foundation after demon Baal-Satyr abducts their friend Etta Candy. They uncover senatorial corruption and insidious infiltration by witchboy Klarion and use arcane connections to link up with Randu Singh, Blood and his infernal alter ego prior to a rescue raid on ‘The Castle Outside Time!’ (WW #281), enduring more hellish treatment prior to #282’s triumphant, resurgent ‘Return and Redemption’…

With covers by Kirby, Royer, Tatjana Wood, Aparo, Rich Buckler, Ross Andru & Dick Giordano, this is a sublime slice of Right Place, Wrong Time entertainment: a wondrously economical collection every comics fan of today should have and cannot help but enjoy.
© 1972, 1973, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981, 2026 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today comic strip master Sy Barry arrived in 1928, whilst Graham Nolan didn’t turn up until 1962 and much-missed Italian artist Massimiliano Frezzato (I custodi del Maser, Margot) in 1967.

We lost Barney Baxter cartoonist Frank Miller in 1949, and the amazing Arnold (Deadman, Doom Patrol, Guardians of the Galaxy) Drake in 2007 but could enjoy Treasure Chest comics from 1946 and Hank Ketchum’s (US) Dennis the Menace from 1951.

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Footrot Flats Book 7


By Murray Ball (Onrin Books)
ISSN: 978-0864640222 (PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for comedic effect.

Once upon a time, Britain ran an Empire, and now we’ve found a more equitable station as just one of 56 (ish) independent nations in a Commonwealth. This is a fluid and ongoing situation so keep watching…

Some of those nations have always been handy with comebacks, rejoinders and cartoon salvos of their own, and whilst this particular item may not have the political venom of Murray Ball’s earlier works, it more than makes up for it by being the absolute best comedy strip the Commonwealth has ever produced (and yes, I’m even including our very own long lost and much missed The Perishers).

New Zealand’s greatest natural wonder and National Treasure was in fact a comic strip. Footrot Flats is one of the funniest ever created, designed as a practical antidote to idealistic pastoral fantasy and bucolic self-deception and concocted in 1975 by cartoonist and comics artist Murray Ball after returning to his New Zealand homeland from an extended work tour of the UK and other, lesser, climes.

The fantastical farm feature ran for a quarter of a century, appearing in newspapers on four continents until 1994 when Ball retired it, citing reasons as varied as the death of his own dog and the state of New Zealand politics. Such success naturally spawned a multitude of merchandising material such as strip compendia, calendars and special editions released regularly from 1978 onwards.

Once Ball officially ceased the daily feature he began periodically releasing books of all-new material until 2000, with a net yield of 27 collections of the daily strip, 8 volumes of Sunday pages dubbed “Weekenders”, 5 pocket books and ancillary publications such as “school kits” aimed at younger fans and their harried parents. There was a stage musical, a theme park and in 1986 a truly superb feature-length animated film. The Dog’s Tail Tale became New Zealand’s top-grossing film (and remained so until Peter Jackson started associating with Hobbits) – track it down online or petition the BBC to show it again; it’s been decades, for Pete’s sake…

The well-travelled, extremely gifted and deeply dedicated Mr. Ball had originally moved to England in the early 1960s, becoming a cartoonist for Punch (crafting Stanley the Palaeolithic Hero and All the King’s Comrades) as well as drawing numerous strips for DC Thompson and Fleetway and even concocting a regular political satire strip in Labour Weekly. After marrying, he returned to the Old Country and resettled in 1974 – but not to retire. Ball was busier than ever once he’d bought a small-holding on the North Island to farm in his “spare time”, which inevitably led to the strip under review here.

Taking the adage “write what you know” to startling, heartbreaking and occasionally stomach-turning heights, the peripatetic pencilpusher broke most of the laws of relativity to make time for these captivatingly insane episodes concerning the highs and lows – and most frequently “absurd” – of the rural entrepreneur as experienced by the earthily metaphoric Wallace Footrot Cadwallader: a proper bloke never too-far removed from mud, mayhem, ferocity and frustration…

Wal is a big, bluff farmer. He likes his grub; loves his sport – Rugby, Football (the Anzac sort, not the kiddie version Yanks call Soccer) Cricket, Golf(ish) and even hang-gliding; each in its proper season and at no other, since he just wants the easiest time a farmer’s life can offer…

Wal owns a small sheep farm (the eponymous Footrot Flats) honestly described as “400 acres of swamp between Ureweras and the Sea”…

With his chief – and only – hand Cooch Windgrass (a latter-day Francis of Assisi), and a verbose and avuncular sheepdog, Wal enjoys being his own boss – as much as the farm cat, goats, chickens, livestock and his auntie will let him.

Other persons of perennial interest include Wal’s fierce and prickly little niece Janice – known to all as Pongo – the aforementioned Aunt Dolly (AKA sternly staunch and starched Dolores Monrovia Godwit Footrot); smart-ass local lad Rangi Wiremu Waka Jones; Dolly’s pompous and pampered Corgi Prince Charles and Pew, a sadistic, inventive, obsessed and vengeful magpie who bears an unremitting grudge against Wal…

When not living in terror of the monumental moggy dubbed Horse, teasing the corpulent Corgi or panic-attacking himself in imagined competition with noble hunting hound Major, The Dog narrates and hosts the strip.

A cool, imaginative and overly sentimental know-all and blowhard, Dog is utterly devoted to his (for lack of a better term) Master – unless there’s food about, or Jess the sheepdog bitch is in heat again. However, the biggest and most terrifying scene-stealer was that fulsome feline Horse; a monstrous and imperturbable tomcat who lords it over every living thing in the district…

One of the powerful and persistent clichés of life is that to make people laugh one truly needs to experience tragedy and, having only recently lost two of my own four-footed studio-mates and constant companions, I can certainly empathise with the artist’s obvious manly distress as this otherwise magnificently hilarious collection is movingly dedicated to the uniquely charming real-world inspiration for the battered and bewhiskered juggernaut… which only makes the comedy capers contained within even more bittersweet and effective, beginning with the poem to his departed companion and the bluff, brisk photo tribute which opens proceedings.

Once again the funny businesses comes courtesy of the loquacious canine softie, taking time out from eking out his daily crusts (and oysters and biscuits and cake and lamb’s tails and scraps and chips and…) and alternately getting on with or annoying the sheep, cows, bull, goat, hogs, ducks, bugs, cats, horses and geese, as well as sucking up to the resolutely hostile wildlife and the decidedly odd humans his owner knows or is related to.

Dog – his given name is an embarrassing, closely and violently guarded secret – loves Wal but always tries to thwart him if the big bloke is trying to do unnecessarily necessary farm chores like chopping down trees, burning out patches of scrub, culling livestock, or trying to mate with the pooch’s main rival Darlene “Cheeky” Hobson, hairdresser-in-residence of the nearest town. As is also the case with the adoring comradeship of proper blokes, Dog is never happier than when embarrassing his mate in front of others, which explains those pages extracted from Wal’s old albums, showing the man to be in various humiliating baby shots and schoolboy scrapes…

Following on is the epic adventure ‘The Invasion of the Murphy Dogs’ – barbaric hounds from a neighbouring farm only afraid of one thing…

This extra-large (262 x 166 mm) landscape monochrome seventh volume came from Australian Publisher Onrin Books and continued the policy of dividing strips into approximately seasonal sequences, and after a few more all-original cartoons again opens with ‘Spring’ – the busiest season of the farmer’s year (apart from the other three) – and concentrates on Pew’s first attempts at avian homemaking, Dog’s libido, horny farmers and hussy-hairdressers, loopy lambs, wild pigs, killer eels and CRICKET, as well as an extended sequence in which Wal and the Dog become involved in the local school’s curriculum and cuisine…

Once the long hot ‘Summer’ settles in, bringing fun with chicken-shearing, busy bees, a plague of carnivorous Wekas, thistles, Horse’s softer side (!) and his war with Pongo and Aunt Dolly, Hare infestations, river-rafting, Irish Murphy’s Pigs (far worse than his dogs), Cheeky’s picnic charm-offensive and the growing closeness of Rangi and Pongo…

‘Autumn’ brings piglets, scrub-burning, the revenge of dispossessed magpies, amorous bovines, fun with artificial insemination, fence-lining and back country cattle, honey-harvesting, darts and rugby, a confused ram who’d rather pursue Dolly than associate with eager ewes and Horse’s crucial role in the war against the magpies…

As ‘Winter’ closes in, offering floods, the mixed messy joy of lambing season, mud, mad goats, whitebait fishing and footy, Wal unwisely agrees to take a class of schoolkids and their puritanical, prudish and priggish teacher on an eye-opening nature-lesson around Footrot Flats. Touched by the painful experience, the bluff cove then volunteers to coach the school’s sports and, after much humiliation, spends the rest of the book discovering how hard – and, for all us observers, funny – farming in a plaster cast can be…

As you’d expect, the comedy content is utterly, absolutely top-rate and the extended role played throughout by the surly star Horse all the more poignant…

Murray Ball – who died in 2017 – was one of those truly gifted individuals who could actually imbue a few lines on paper with the power of Shakespeare’s tragedy and the manic hilarity of jester geniuses like Tommy Cooper or the Marx Brothers. When combined with his sharp, incisive yet warmly human writing, the result was, is, and will remain sheer, irresistible magic.

In the early 1990s Titan Books published British editions of the first three volumes and German, Japanese, Chinese and American translations also exist, as well as the marvellous Australian compendia reviewed here – as ever the internet is your friend (although prices for individual volumes can make your eyes water, so if ever there was an argument for a comprehensive archival re-release, sheer profit would seem to be it)…

Dry, surreal and wonderfully self-deprecating, Footrot Flats always successfully wedded together sarcasm, satire, slapstick and strikingly apt surrealism in a perfect union of pathos and down to earth (and up to your eyebrows) fun that was and still is utterly addicting, exciting and just plain wonderful.

Plant the seeds for a lifetime of laughs by harvesting this or indeed any volume and you’ll soon see a bumper crop of fun irrespective of the weather or market forces.
© 1981-1982 Murray Ball. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1900, Frederick Burr Opper’s Happy Hooligan first appeared, as did legendary Spanish comic TBO in 1917 and Mort Walker’s Boner’s Ark in 1968. Colour artist Lynn Varley was born today in 1958, and deaths include The Gambols creator Barry Appleby in 1996, Harvey Comics stalwart Sid Couchey in 2012 and Murray Ball in 2017.

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Dargaud Presents Lieutenant Blueberry: Fort Navajo & Thunder in the West


By Charlier & Giraud, translated by Anthea Turner & Derek Hockridge (Egmont/ Methuen)
ISBN: 978-0-41605-370-8 and 978-0-41605-370-X (Album PBs)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Franco-Belgian comics have enjoyed a decades-long love affair with the mythos of the American West and responded with some of the most beautiful and exciting graphic narratives in the history of the medium. They have, however, had less success creating characters that have gone on to be global household names. One that did has made that jump is Michel Charlier & Jean Giraud’s immortal bad-ass Blueberry.

Sadly, although many publishers have sporadically attempted to bring him to our thrill-starved shores, there’s no readily available complete catalogue (STILL!) of the quintessential antihero in the English language. Thus, this first of many forthcoming reviews with a brace of albums that are decades old, although they do still turn up in back-issue bins and in second hand or charity shops – if those still exist…

Jean-Michel Charlier was arguably Europe’s most important writer of realistic adventure strips.

Ever.

He was born in Liege, Belgium in 1924 and like so many groundbreaking comics creators, began as an artist, joining the staff of Le Journal de Spirou in September 1944, contributing aviation illustrations, and a strip about gliders co-produced with Flettner. In 1946 Charlier’s love affair with flying inspired him to co-create fighter-pilot strip Buck Danny, providing scripts for star turn artist Victor Hubinon. Before long – and on the advice of prestigious senior illustrator Jijé – Charlier was scripting full time and expanding his portfolio with many other series and serials.

In 1951 he co-created historical series Belles Histoires de l’Oncle Paul which afforded dozens of major artists their big break over the years, and supplemented the series with other strips such as Kim Devil (art Gérald Forton), Jean Valhardi and Marc Dacier (both with artist Paape) and Thierry le Chevalier (with Carlos Laffond), as well as popular scouting series La Patrouille des Castors, illustrated by MiTacq. In conjunction with Goscinny and Uderzo, Charlier founded the business and industry oriented commercial comics agency Edifrance after which Charlier and Goscinny edited the magazine Pistolin (1955-1958) before launching Pilote together in October 1959. For the soon to be legendary periodical Charlier created Tanguy and Laverdure (with Uderzo and later Jijé), Barbe-Rouge (with Hubinon) and Jacques le Gall (with MiTacq). In 1963, after Charlier visited the US he created arguably his most significant character – and Europe’s greatest Western comic – which would eventually be known as Blueberry.

In later years, the engaging antihero supported his own equally successful spin-off La Jeunesse de Blueberry (AKA Young Blueberry, illustrated by Colin Wilson) but Charlier never rested on his laurels, concocting further grittily realistic fare: historical biographies in collaboration with Hubinon (Surcouf, Jean Mermoz, and Tarawa) and Martial (Alain et Christine in Libre Junior, Rosine in Pistolin), Brice Bolt for Spirou with Aldoma Puig, Los Gringos with Victor de la Fuente and many more. He passed away in 1989.

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in the suburbs of Paris on 8th May 1938. Raised by grandparents after his mother and father divorced in 1941, he began attending Institut des Arts Appliqués in 1955, becoming friends with Jean-Claude Mézières who, at 17, was already selling strips and illustrations to magazines such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and LJdS. Giraud apparently spent most of his college time drawing cowboy comics and left after a year.

In 1956 he travelled to Mexico, staying with his mother for eight months, before returning to France and a full-time career drawing comics, mostly Westerns such as Frank et Jeremie for Far West and King of the Buffalo, A Giant with the Hurons and others for Coeurs Valliants, all in a style based on French comics legend Joseph Gillain AKA Jijé. Between 1959 and 1960 Giraud spent his National Service in Algeria, working on military service magazine 5/5 Forces Françaises before returning to civilian life as Jijé’s assistant in 1961, working on the master’s long-running (1954-1977) western epic Jerry Spring. A year later, Giraud and Belgian Jean-Michel Charlier launched serial Fort Navajo in Pilote #210. All too soon the ensemble feature threw forth a unique icon in the shabby shape of disreputable, rebellious Lieutenant Mike Blueberry who took over as the star and evolved into one of the most popular European strip characters of all time…

In 1963-1964, Giraud produced numerous strips for satire periodical Hara-Kiri and, keen to distinguish and separate the material from his serious day job, first coined pen-name Moebius…

He didn’t use it again until 1975 when he joined Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Philippe Druillet – all devout science fiction fans – as founders of a revolution in narrative graphic arts created by Les Humanoides Associes. Their ground-breaking adult fantasy mag Métal Hurlant utterly enraptured the comics-buying public and Giraud again wanted to utilise a discreet creative persona for the lyrical, experimental, soul-searching material he was increasingly driven to produce: series such as The Airtight Garage, The Incal and mystical, dreamy flights of sheer fantasy contained in Arzach…

To further separate his creative twins, Giraud worked his inks with a brush whilst the dedicated futurist Moebius rendered his lines with pens. After a truly stellar career which saw him become a household name, both Giraud & Moebius passed away today in 2012.

Fort Navajo and Thunder in the West were originally released in Britain in 1977 by Euro-publishing conglomerate Egmont/Methuen; the first of four full-colour albums which utterly failed to capture the attention of a comics-reading public besotted in equal amounts by Science Fiction in general, Star Wars in specific and new anthology 2000AD in the main. It’s a great shame: if the translated series had launched even a year earlier, I might not be whining about lack of familiarity with a genuine classic of genre comics…

The magic begins in Fort Navajo as clean-cut West Point graduate Lieutenant Craig takes a break from his dusty journey. The stagecoach stopover is just another town on the border between Arizona and New Mexico, but leads to involvement in a brutal battle sparked by a cheating cardsharp. After the gun-smoke clears the military paragon is appalled to discover that the quick-shooting cad at the centre of the chaos is a fellow officer stationed at his new posting.

Further outraged after Lieutenant Mike Blueberry inadvertently insults Craig’s father – a much-decorated general – the pair acrimoniously part company, but are soon reunited on the trail as the scoundrel’s horse dies even as Craig’s stagecoach encounters remnants of settlers slaughtered by marauding Indians…

Dying survivor Stanton informs them that his son has been taken by the Apache. However, Craig’s vow to hunt them down is overruled by Blueberry and the stage crew and passengers. Incensed, the young fool sets off in pursuit of the attackers on his own. Despite his better judgement, Blueberry trails him, cursing all the while. After using an arsenal of canny tricks to repeatedly save Craig from his suicidal notions of heroism, the pair are picked up by a relief column from Fort Navajo led by Major Bascom: a man who sincerely believes the old maxim that the only good Indians are dead ones…

Ignoring orders and the advice of his officers, Bascom decides to pursue the kidnappers and compounds that insubordination by attacking a group of women, children and old men. The massacre would have been total had not Blueberry “accidentally” given the wrong bugle calls and called the cavalry back too soon. Learning quickly, Lieutenant Craig covertly assists the rogue in calling back the troops…

In the aftermath, Bascom demonstrates how unstable he is by trying to execute Blueberry without convening a court martial and goes near-ballistic when Craig prevents him by quoting chapter and verse of the military code. Frustrated on all sides, Bascom can only turn the column back to Fort Navajo and plan revenge on the puppies that baulked his bloodlust. Commanding officer Colonel Dickson is a reasonable man, however, and refuses Bascom’s entreaties. He even tries to broker a “pow-wow” and new treaty with great chief Cochise for the return of the kidnapped boy and to forestall the war Bascom so fervently desires. It’s a valiant effort doomed to failure. The Apache were not responsible for the butchery and abduction at all. The true culprits were Mescaleros from across the Mexican border.

Tragically, when Dickson is bitten by a rattlesnake, Bascom seizes command and uses peace talks to capture Cochise and his delegation. In a flurry of action the aged warrior breaks free and escapes to his waiting armies: determined to make the two-faced soldiers pay for their treachery by bringing blood and vengeance to all of Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico…

The brooding tension resumes in Thunder in the West as affronted tribal chiefs fiercely debate how to liberate the rest of their hostage peace-delegation before their own war-hungry followers start a bloodbath no one can win. At Fort Navajo Blueberry & Craig ponder the coming dawn and are on hand when a tortured settler arrives to warn them every messenger sent for reinforcements has perished, and the savages have taken dozens of new prisoners. The weary soul then delivers an ultimatum and final offer from Cochise: safe passage for the soldiers to Tucson or Albuquerque in return for the captive Indians in their custody. Bascom, clearly beyond all reason, instead threatens to execute the prisoners…

Desperate Blueberry counters with a tactic to forestall the growing certainty of all-out war: attempting to cross the siege lines and reach Tucson for reinforcements. However, before he can start, a fellow officer – “half-breed” scout Lieutenant Crowe – acts precipitately and frees the Indians from the stockade. Whilst Bascom raves and blusters, Blueberry takes off anyway, undertaking an epic journey through hostile territory past hundreds of warriors hungry for blood, not just to call for more troops but to get snakebite antidote for Dickson so that he can end the escalating madness…

Capping peril-filled days of fight & flight, the battered cavalryman successfully crosses searing desert only to stumble into Mexican bandits who almost end his voyage and life… until he turns their own greed against them. Finally, Mike rides into Tucson, only to find the town all but deserted because thousands of Apaches have been approaching the outskirts of town for hours…

Frantically batting his way out of the trap, Mike wearily retraces his route to Fort Navajo. The citadel is deserted except for Crowe, who tells him that after a catastrophic battle he negotiated a truce allowing the white survivors a means of escape. Now the half-breed has a new plan. He and Blueberry will track down the Mescalero renegades who actually started the war by abducting young Stanton…

A feat of staggering bravado, the audacious plan succeeds, but as Blueberry outdistances the outraged renegades and thunders through the mountains with the rescued boy on his horse, he realises Crowe is missing and must go back for him…

To Be Continued…

Although perhaps a tad traditional (and painfully unreconstructed!) for modern tastes and nowhere near as visually or narratively sophisticated as it was to become, this epic opening to the saga of immortal Blueberry is an engaging all-action romp and stunning reaffirmation of the creative powers of Charlier & Giraud. This potent testimony to the undying appeal and inspiration of the Western genre deserves it place on graphic novel shelves and must be seen by all who love comics.
© 1965, 1966 Dargaud Editeur. Text these editions © 1977 by Egmont Publishing Limited, London. All rights reserved.

Today in 1877 was born political cartoonist turned strip star Norman E. Jennett (The Monkey Shines of Marseleen) and in 1935 Bill Holman’s epic strip Smokey Stover debuted.

It’s a remarkable day for departures however, with Tex Willer co-creator Aurelio Galleppini passing on in 1994, Stan Drake (Blondie, Heart of Juliet Jones, Kelly Green) in 1997, historian, founder of the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art & co-editor of The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics Bill Blackbeard in 2011, as well as historian Don Markstein (Don Markstein’s Toonopedia) and Giraud one year later.

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Giant


By Mikaël, translated by Matt Maden (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-68112-253-3 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68112-254-0

As a purported land of promises and untapped opportunity, America has always fascinated storytellers – especially comics-creators – from the “Old World” of Europe: an inclination and interest that has frequently delivered potent and rewarding results. This continentally-published yarn by self-taught, multi-disciplined, multi award-winning French-born Québecois auteur Mikaël (Harlem, Junior l’Aventurier, Rapa Nui, Promise) was first released by Dargaud in 2018 as twinned albums before breaking into English via a monolithically oversized hardback (229 x 305mm) edition that got the entire story done-in-one.

Everything about this stylish Depression-era drama is big and powerfully mythic. In March 1932, with poverty wracking the nation and the world, and Herbert Hoover dreading the upcoming Presidential election, immigrants and natives flock to Manhattan and the bustling, dangerous construction site that will one day be Rockefeller Center. Casualties are high as we focus on the Irish contingent rushing daily into the skies to rivet and weld a concrete and steel colossus into New York City’s ever-changing skyline.

The story unfolds through the eyes of fresh-off-the-boat new recruit Dan Shackleton who joins the crew after the death of “high-steel” man Ryan Murphy. Dan is a garrulous, easy-going son-of-the-sod, but even he has difficulty befriending the taciturn, thoughtful, barely-human behemoth everyone calls Giant. A formidable, remarkable worker, Giant lives in a grubby flophouse and keeps to himself, but affable Dan persists and eventually the big man almost-imperceptibly thaws… at least enough that Shackleton becomes unwitting witness to a strange ritual…

Hiding a tragic secret that dates back to the recent Irish War of Independence, the Big Man is a solitary creature of fiercely controlled passions who keeps his every opinion to himself. A dutiful worker, Giant was given the task of informing Murphy’s widow in Ireland when he died. Instead, he began impersonating the dead man in a string of letters containing the bulk of his own carefully-hoarded wages and savings. Over months, a bizarre one-sided relationship develops that metastasizes into a full-blown crisis after the silent bruiser falls foul of organised crime. When the letters and money stop, Mary Ann Murphy and her children take ship for America to be reunited with her beloved husband. As the wounded colossus recuperates, he has no idea of the troubles that are heading his way…

Tapping into a wealth of powerful socially-crusading movies that immortalised pre-WWII America and packed with period detail and mythology, pungent political commentary, a broad cast of moving characters and timeless drama, this is a human-scaled tale playing out amongst mighty edifices – both human and architectural – with warmth, passion, humour and beguiling humanity.

Supplemented with an Introduction by Jean-Louis Tripp and a stunning selection of production sketches, covers and other art, Giant is a stunning saga of uncommon folk in perilous times and one no lover of grand stories could possibly resist.
© 2018 Dargaud-Benelux. © 2020 NBM for the English Translation. All rights reserved.

Most NBM books are also available in digital formats. For more information and other great reads go to NBM Publishing at nbmpub.com.

Today in 1923 American Blondie artist Paul Fung Jr was born, while Warrington’s finest author/animator/cartoonist/editor John Geering (Puss ‘n’ Boots, Smudge, Bananaman, Danger Mouse, Count Duckula) came along in 1941, and Rich Burchett (The Batman Adventures, Superman Adventures, Blackhawk) in 1952, but we lost Doc Attaboy, It’s Papa Who Pays! and Toots and Casper cartoonist Jimmy Murphy in 1965.

In 1974 the 11-year run of UK goggle fest Whoopee! began today.

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No Surrender


By Constance Maud: adapted by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-406-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

Happy International women’s day 2026! And if you’re a guy who groaned. swore and reached for your huge, Massive THROBBING keyboard to type out those trollish insults someone else made up for you, HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2026 AGAIN! SEE YOU NEXT YEAR?

Constance Elizabeth Maud (1857-1929) was a child of privilege: daughter of a celebrated English scholar and cleric. She was primarily educated in France and lived there or in Chelsea for most of her life. Between 1895 and 1924 she wrote numerous articles and 8 novels – of which No Surrender was the penultimate – and became a member of the 400-strong Women Writers Suffrage League. In 1908 she joined The Women’s Social and Political Union and The Women’s Freedom League: turning her writings to the needs of the cause. Her work subsequently appeared in many periodicals, especially magazines like the Suffragist movement’s newspaper Votes For Women.

In No Surrender (published in 1911 – and again in an annotated centenary edition released by publisher Persephone in 2011), Maud incorporated actual events with fictionalised analogues of many contemporary activists participating in the struggle to craft a history and playbook of the campaign for emancipation. The book became a rallying point and recruiting tool for the movement and was used to promote the soft end of the battle for equality. It inspired countless women (and presumable many male sympathisers) with a dramatised story of how the great and good would join with the humblest workers and unite to overcome…

Maud lived just long enough to see British women secure the right to vote: in 1918 with the Representation of the People Act – which enfranchised women over 30 years old – and at last witnessing universal female suffrage established in 1928’s Act, legislating that all Britons of 21 years or above could freely vote.

The main reason why No Surrender was such an effective weapon in the war to win the vote for all is that its propaganda and polemic were deftly disguised by readily accessible drama. Beginning in industrial hub Greyston, ‘The Mill’ tells how northern mill worker Jenny Clegg is fired up by the many injustices afflicting women’s lives: with cruelty, unfair taxation, financial neglect, legitimised maltreatment and a status of second-class citizens chaining every female to a man of the gutter…

Rebelling, she forsakes her crusading socialist love interest Joe Hopton – a successful prime mover in winning better lives and wages for male workers – and dedicates her life to winning those same rights and representation for women. Upper class Suffragist Mary O’Neill has a more refined but similarly intransigent family at ‘The Country House’, all decrying her passion for women’s suffrage. She and Jenny will become friends, allies and leading lights in the struggle, inspiring millions of women, converting men, embarrassing the authorities and challenging a society where even other women refuse to see a status quo threatened…

Both driven by ‘The Calling’, they and a growing army of allies will invade London and suffer police and legal suppression in ‘The Courtyard’ and face ‘The Magistrate’ but never stray from their course. Whether testing tactics in ‘The Routes To Battle’ or challenging their detractors through heated debate on ‘The Cart’, the socially-distanced allies never stop their work, and gradually make converts even amongst the stratified intelligentsia who enjoy the closeted luxuries of ‘The Weekend Cottage’…

Just like a soap opera, the story sees multiple characters interact on many levels but underpinning it all is a roster of actual protest events woven into the plot, such as ambushing off-duty cabinet ministers in ‘The Church’ and then infiltrating ‘The Dinner Party’ to reinforce their message.

The darkest and most notorious moments of the cause are also featured, as Clegg, O’Neill and other noted activists of every class endure imprisonment, abuse and medical torture – but each according to their own social rank and standing – in ‘The Crushed Butterfly’, ‘The Prison’ and the deeply distressing culmination of ‘The Punishment’. Always, efforts to disunite and separate rich from poor, inherently virtuous from tawdry and lowborn, fails as their core principle – that they are all women together – utterly eludes the smug, hectoring, insensate elitist male oppressors; prejudiced and scared working men and the Anti-Suffrage Women’s groups populated with ladies who know and defend their privileged positions in the world…

Ultimately, Jenny and Joe are united in the cause and Mary makes her own converts in ‘The Homecoming’ before the story ends with a proud rallying of all in the march to inevitable universal enfranchisement and victory in ‘The Standard is Raised’ – a rousing graphic tour de force with illustrator Sophie Rickard crafting a stunning multi-page fold-out any art fan would cry to see…

Maud’s tale was ostensibly a romance and account of families in crisis with a thinly disguised moral message like any Dickens or Thomas Hardy novel. She explored and contrasted the lives of poor working folk with gentry and aristocracy, but also scrupulously catalogued the added travails and insecurities of working women. At this time women had been successively deprived of most financial and civil rights and privileges. They had to pay taxes but enjoyed no representation under the law; could not be legal guardians of their own children or property and, if married, could not divorce whilst their husbands could. The men could also beat them, but only with cudgels of judicially-mandated size…

At the end of this hefty and deliciously substantial graphic novel there’s a chart showing when – and how incrementally – nations of the world instituted female enfranchisement, and an Afterword by adapting creators Scarlett & Sophie Rickard (This Slavery, Mann’s Best Friend, A Blow Borne Quietly, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists), naming names and offering factual provenance for incidents and characters enriching the narrative. It also declares why – in the current environment where a citizen’s right to dissent and protest is being deviously and criminally whittled away – the principles of organised resistance and role and consequences of righteous civil disobedience must be stridently defended…

Fair minded, honestly and powerfully expressing the views of all – including those opposing universal enfranchisement (and restoration of previously-removed social and civil rights) – Maud’s words are reinvigorated here with the authorities, capitalists, police and judiciary all given a fair hearing – and generally convicted out of their own mouths. Of particular interest to modern readers will be the opinions of women who didn’t want a vote and the low workingmen who were generally the most passionate and violent opponents of change and equality…

Powerful, enraging, engaging and even occasionally funny, this never-more-timely tale of the force of the disenfranchised with their backs to the wall and ready to fight is supremely readable and should be compulsory viewing for all – as long as we don’t force anyone to…
© 2022 SelfMadeHero. Text © 2022 Sophie Rickard. Artwork © 2022 Scarlett Rickard. All rights reserved.

Today in 1880 Wonder Woman co-creator Harry G. Peter was born.

In 1907 Dutch comics master Charles Boost (Broeder Bastiaan, Knor de Pot, Neppie Tuun, Jan de Zeehond, Robinson Crusoë) was born, as was Mad magazine cartoonist Jack Rickard in 1922, Sal Amendola in 1948, and Eric Powell in 1975.

In 1936 The Sunday Post featured Dudley D. Watkins’ The Broons & Oor Wullie for the first time, and in 1975 iconic UK comic Battle Picture Weekly launched the first of its 644 issues, and just kept on doing it until January 1988.

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Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham


By Mike Mignola, Richard Pace, Troy Nixey, Dennis Janke & Dave Stewart (DC Comics) ISBN: 978-1-4012-5806-1 (TPB/Digital edition)
This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic effect.

The origins of the Dark Knight are so well-known now that it’s simple to twist and tweak them to suit almost any tale. It doesn’t hurt that the character has a universal recognition factor that holds up in almost any imaginary scenario…

Released in 2015, available in trade paperback and digital formats and collecting a 3-issue Elseworlds miniseries (from November 2000 – January 2001), The Doom That Came to Gotham was written by horror mood-meister Mike Mignola (Hellboy; duh!) and Richard Pace (Negative Burn; Ashes; Starman; Terror Inc.; Imaginary Fiends), limned by Troy Nixey (Harley Quinn; Trout; Only the End of the World Again; The Matrix Comics), inker Dennis Janke & colourist Dave Stewart.

In case you came in late: During the 1990s, DC regrouped to rebrand its frequent dalliances with alternate reality scenarios under the copious and broad umbrella of a separate imprint. The Elseworlds banner and credo declared heroes would be taken out of their usual settings and put into strange places and times – some that have existed, or might have existed, and others that can’t, couldn’t or shouldn’t exist…

No doubts here, however, as the tale deftly takes us back to Roaring Twenties America, dishing out a daring dose of pulp fiction plumb centre of the ghastly spine-chilling mythos of Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft and their darkly-dementing contemporaries…

It’s 1928 and orphaned Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City two decades after his parents were murdered by a maniac. He’s been roving the world, and recently uncovered the fate of long-lost Professor Cobblepot’s fabled Antarctic expedition. That jaunt resulted in a clash with a naked madman who talked to penguins and a large slab of ice with a creature inside it: a thing that never evolved on this world…

By the time he and his close associates Alfred, Dick, Jason and the rest have docked in his bleakly daunting home town, they have all had more than enough of the vile dreams the thing in the hold has generated…

There are more surprises when he reaches his long-shuttered mansion: a dead man who somehow speaks and a mysterious stranger named Jason Blood who claims he’s been sent to deliver a dire warning. Turning into an actual demon, the visitor warns that to save Gotham, Bruce must cut out its heart. Although shocked, Bruce is ready to act, and dons the bizarre outfit that makes him look like a human bat…

…And thus begins a skilful, macabre pastiche of classic noir horror traditions, as the desperate, driven mystery man haunts the alleys and byways of the city, testing corrupt cops, self-serving officials and outright villains – all with names most comics fans will recognise – uncovering a long-suppressed, centuries-old secret, even as literal Things From Beyond Human Comprehension and the borders of time and space congregate.

Can even a heroic Bat Man triumph against such odds and if so, at what cost…

Taking its title from H.P. Lovecraft’s 1920 novella The Doom That Came to Sarnath and inspired by August Derleth’s 1945 novel The Lurker at the Threshold (written from Lovecraft’s unfinished plot notes), the eldritch epic is complemented by a full cover gallery by Mignola and a hefty sketches & design section featuring pencilled pages by Pace (originally slated to illustrate the tale) and layouts by Nixey.

Bold, compelling, potently stylish and chilling in all the right places, The Doom That Came to Gotham is a supernatural romp to delight and impress: once read and never forgotten. Yes there’s an animated movie released in 2023, but truly that’s just gilding. This dark lily is what you must have…
2000, 2001, 2015 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1920 Belgian wonder Eddy Paape (Emmanuel, Valhardi, Luc Orient, Johnny Congo) was born, with Gray Morrow (Man-Thing, Tarzan, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon) arriving in 1934 and Alan Weiss (Warlock, Batman: the Blue, the Grey and the Bat, Steelgrip Starkey) in 1948. In 1949 Godfather of British Comics Pat Mills was born and in 1967 mangaka marvel Ai Yazaw, (Nana, I’m No Angel, Neighborhood Story, Paradise Kiss) arrived. Two years later Cully Hamner (Down, Green Lantern: Mosaic, Blue Beetle, Red) came along, but it was 1978 before Australian horror star Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night) turned up.

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The Spirit: An 80th Anniversary Celebration


By Will Eisner with Abe Kanegson, Sam Rosen, Laura Martin, Jeromy Cox & various (Clover Press)
ISBN: 978-1-95103-805-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

It is pretty much accepted today that Will Eisner was one of the prime creative forces that shaped the comic book industry, but still many of his milestones escape public acclaim in the English-speaking world.

William Erwin Eisner was born on March 6th 1917, in Brooklyn, and grew up in the ghettos of the city. They never left him. After time served inventing much of the visual semantics, semiotics and syllabary of the medium he dubbed “Sequential Art” in strips, comicbooks, newspaper premiums and instructional comics, he then invented the mainstream graphic novel, bringing maturity, acceptability and public recognition to English language comics.

In 1978 a collection of four original short stories in comics form released in a single book, A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories. All the tales centred around 55 Dropsie Avenue: a 1930’s Bronx tenement housing poor Jewish and immigrant families. It changed the American perception of cartoon strips forever.

Eisner wrote and drew a further 20 further masterpieces, opening the door for all other comics creators to escape the funny book and anodyne strip ghettos of superheroes, funny animals, juvenilia and “family-friendly” entertainment. At one stroke comics grew up.

Eisner constantly pushed the boundaries of his craft, honing his skills not just on the legendary Spirit but with years of educational and promotional material. In A Contract With God he moved into unexplored territory with truly sophisticated, mature themes worthy of Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald, using pictorial fiction as documentary exploration of social experience.

Restlessly plundering his own childhood and love of human nature as well as his belief that environment was a major and active character in fiction, in the 1980s Eisner began redefining the building blocks unique to sequential narrative with a portmanteau series of brief vignettes that told stories and tested the expressive and informational limits of representational drawings on paper. From 1936 to 1938, Eisner worked as a jobbing cartoonist in the comics production firm known as the Eisner-Eiger Shop, creating strips for domestic US and foreign markets. Using pen-name Willis B. Rensie he conceived and drew the opening instalments of a huge variety of characters ranging from funny animal to historical sagas, Westerns, Detectives, aviation action thrillers – and superheroes – lots of superheroes…

In 1940 Everett “Busy” Arnold (head honcho of the superbly impressive Quality Comics outfit) invited Eisner to take on a new challenge. The Register-Tribune newspaper syndicate wanted a 16-page weekly comic book insert to be given away with the Sunday editions. Despite the terrifying workload such a commission demanded, Eisner jumped at the opportunity, creating three strips which would initially be handled by him before two of them were handed off to his talented assistants. Bob Powell inherited Mr. Mystic whilst masked detective Lady Luck fell into the capable hands of Nick Cardy (then still Nicholas Viscardi), and later the inimitable Klaus Nordling.

Eisner kept the lead strip for himself, and over the next twelve years The Spirit became the most impressive, innovative, imitated and talked-about strip in the business. In 1952 the venture folded and Eisner moved into commercial, instructional and educational strips. He worked extensively for the US military in manuals and magazines like P*S, the Preventative Maintenance Monthly, generally leaving comics books behind.

In the wake of “Batmania” and the 1960s superhero craze, Harvey Comics released two giant-sized reprints with a little new material from the artist, which lead to underground/indie editions and a slow revival of the Spirit’s fame and fortune via monochrome newsstand reprint magazines. Initially, Warren Publishing collected old stories, even adding colour sections with painted illumination from such contemporary luminaries as Rich Corben, but with #17 the title reverted to Kitchen Sink, who had produced the first two underground collections.

Eisner found himself re-enamoured with graphic narrative and saw a willing audience eager for new works. From producing new Spirit covers for the magazine (something the original newspaper insert had never needed) he became increasingly inspired. American comics were evolving into an art form and the restless creator finally saw a place for the kind of stories he had always wanted to tell.

Eisner began crafting some of the most telling and impressive work the US industry had ever seen: first in limited collector portfolios and eventually in 1978, A Contract With God. If Jack Kirby was American comics’ most influential artist, Will Eisner undoubtedly was – and remains – its most venerated and exceptional storyteller. Contemporaries originating from strikingly similar Jewish backgrounds, each used comic arts to escape from their own tenements, achieving varying degrees of acclaim and success, and eventually settling upon a theme to colour all their later works. For Kirby it was the Cosmos, what Man would find there, and how humanity would transcend its origins in The Ultimate Outward Escape. Will Eisner went Home, went Back and went Inward.

The Spirit debuted on June 2nd 1940 in the Sunday edition of newspapers belonging to the Register and Tribune Syndicates. “The Spirit Section” expanded into 20 Sunday newspapers, with a combined circulation of five million copies during the 1940s and ran until October 5th 1952. This collection re-presents a selection of classic adventures from the original 12-year canon, in stark stunning monochrome, with five digitally recoloured by Laura Martin and Jeromy Cox. Furthermore, each episode is preceded by an essay from Industry insiders and unashamed fans.

Leading the charge and providing a fascinating breakdown on the history of the masked marvel is former publisher (one of 15 to date) Denis Kitchen, who provides ‘A Brief History and Appreciation of The Spirit’ before the Cox-coloured ‘Who is The Spirit?’ reveals how a battle of wills between private detective Denny Colt and scientific terror Dr. Cobra leads to the hero’s death and resurrection as the ultimate man of mystery…

Editorial wonder Diana Schutz deconstructs one of Eisner’s most metaphysically mirthful yarns as ‘No Spirit Story Today’ treats us all to monochrome madness with a deadline crunch inspiring a Central City cartoonist to break the fourth wall. Dean Mullaney then spills the beans over atomic era intrigue as Martin’s hues add bite to the 1947 armageddon spoof ‘Wanted’, with the entire world as well as our hero hunting a little man with a deadly secret…

According to Bruce Canwell’s essay, Li’ Abner parody ‘Li’l Adam’ was part of a scheme between Eisner and Al Capp to mutually boost popularity of their respective properties. The jury’s still out, but there no doubt that the Spirit portion is one of the wackiest episodes in the gumshoe’s case files, unlike the moody, compelling tragedy of ‘The Strange Case of Mrs. Paraffin’ (previewed by Charles Brownstein), wherein the ghostly gangbuster strives to convince a widow that she is not also a murderess…

Paul Levitz examines authorial inspiration in anticipation of a return to black & white and The Spirit’s battle against arsonist ‘The Torch’: a potentially passé romp rendered hilariously unforgettable by Eisner’s wry poke at advertising sponsorship, before Beau Smith fondly recalls his mentor’s gift for teaching using modern magic realist western ‘Gold’ as his exemplar…

Coloured by Cox and discussed by Craig Yoe, ‘Matua’ is a deftly winsome tribute to myths and legends disguised as a poke at monster movies with the Spirit wandering the Pacific Islands and meeting an awakened colossal beast, after which Greg Goldstein focusses on ‘Sound’ as a monochrome moment again peeks behind the curtain of a cartoonist’s life.

Eisner always had a superb team to back him up and here letterers Sam Rosen & Abe Kanegson combine with design assistant Jules Pfeiffer to make the wordforms the surreal stars of this picture show about another murdered pencil pusher…

Rounding out this tribute to eight tumultuous decades of Spiritual Enlightenment is a Will Eisner Art Gallery of latterday sketches, pin-ups and covers by the master.

Will Eisner is rightly regarded as one of the greatest writers in American comics but it is too seldom that his incredible draughtsmanship and design sense get to grab the spotlight. This book is a joy no fan or art-lover should be without, and is especially recommended for newbies who only know Eisner’s more mature works.

By the Way: Although Eisner started out utilising the commonplace racial and gender stereotypes employed by so many sectors of mass entertainment, he was among the first in comics – or anywhere else – to eschew and abandon them. In these more enlightened, if not settled, times, it’s nice to see a statement addressing the historical and cultural problems not to mention potential distress these outdated sensibilities might cause right at the front of the collection. So, if funny books can do it, how come statues and people can’t?
THE SPIRIT and WILL EISNER are Registered Trademarks of Will Eisner Studios, Inc. Will Eisner’s The Spirit © 2020 Will Eisner Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other material © its respective contributor. © 2020 Clover Press, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

In case you missed it, today in 1917 Will Eisner was born, and shared his natal day with Al Milgrom in 1950 and Kieron Dwyer in 1967. The date also marks the deaths of Jack Abel in 1996 and in 2007, groundbreaking woman artist Lina Buffolente who drew Italian comics from age 17 in 1941 ‘til the end.

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Golden Age Starman Archives volumes 1 & 2

These books include Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Golden Age Starman Archives volume 1
By Jack Burnley, Gardner Fox, Alfred Bester, Ray Burnley & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-622-4 (HB)

After the staggering, near-instant successes of Superman and Batman, National Comics/DC launched many new mystery men in efforts to capitalise on the phenomenon of superheroes, and – from our almost century-distant perspective – it’s only fair to say that by 1941 the editors had only the vaguest inkling of what they were doing.

Since newest creations The Sandman, The Spectre and Hourman were each imbued with equal investments of innovation, creativity and exposure, editorial powers-that-be were rather disappointed that these additions never took off to the same explosive degree. Publishing partner but separate editorial entity All American Comics had meanwhile generated a string of barnstorming successes like The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman and recent radio sensation Hop Harrigan and would imminently produce the only rival to Superman and Batman’s status when Wonder Woman debuted late in the year. Of course, AA had brilliantly “in-tune” creative/editorial prodigy Sheldon Mayer to filter all their ideas through.

Thus, when Starman launched in the April 1941 issue of Adventure Comics (relegating Sandman to a back-up role in the venerable heroic anthology), National/DC trusted in craft and quality rather than some indefinable “pizzazz” they couldn’t get a handle on. The editors were convinced the startlingly realistic, conventionally classical dramatic illustration of Hardin “Jack” Burnley would propel their newest concept to the same giddy heights of popularity as the Action Ace and Gotham Guardian.

Indeed, the strip – always magnificently drawn and indisputably one of the most beautiful of the period – was further blessed with mature and compelling scripts by Gardner Fox and Alfred Bester: compulsive and brilliant thrillers and even by today’s standards some of the very best comics ever produced.

However – according to the artist in his Foreword to this first stunning deluxe hardback collection – that was possibly the problem. Subtle, moody, slower-paced stories just didn’t have the sheer exuberance and kinetic energy of the most popular series, which all eschewed craft and discipline for spectacle and all-out action.

Happily, these days with an appreciably older and more discerning audience, Starman’s less-than-stellar career in his own time can be fully seen for the superb example of Fights ‘n’ Tights wonderment it truly is, and – in his anniversary years – cries out for a definitive archival collection… especially since his legacy descendant Stargirl was a big shot TV sensation…

This epic collection reprints the earliest astounding exploits of the Astral Avenger from Adventure Comics #61-76 (spanning April 1941- July 1942), including some of the most iconic covers of the Golden Age, by Burnley and, latterly, wonder-kids Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.

Burnley came up with the Starman concept but, as was often the case, a professional writer was assigned to flesh out and co-create the stories. In this case said scribe was the multi-talented Gardner Fox who wrote most of them. The illustrator also liberally called on the talents of his brother Dupree “Ray” Burnley as art assistant, and sister Betty as letterer to finish the episodes in sublimely cinematic style.

In those simpler times origins were far less important than today, and the moonlit magic here begins with ‘The Amazing Starman’ from #61. Cover-dated April the book hit newsstands on March 5th 1941. Happy 85th anniversary, space cowboy!

America suddenly suffers a wave of deadly electrical events! Appalled and afraid, FBI chief Woodley Allen summons his latest volunteer operative. Bored socialite Ted Knight promptly abandons his irate date Doris Lee to assume his mystery man persona, flying off to stop the deranged scientist behind all the death and destruction. Almost as an aside we learn that secret genius Knight had previously discovered a way to collect and redirect the energy of starlight through an awesome handheld device he calls a “gravity rod” and thereafter resolved to do only good with his discoveries…

The intrepid adventurer tracks diabolical Dr. Doog to his mountain fortress and spectacularly decimates the subversive Secret Brotherhood of the Electron. Next month, in #62, the Sidereal Sentinel met another deadly deranged genius who had devised a shrinking ray. It even briefly diminishes Starman before the sky warrior extinguishes ‘The Menace of the Lethal Light’, after which ‘The Adventure of the Earthquake Terror’ (#63) depicts the US attacked by foreign agent Captain Vurm, using enslaved South American tribesmen to administer his grotesque ground-shock engines. He too falls before the unstoppable cosmic power of harnessed starlight. America was still neutral at this time, but the writing was on the wall and increasingly villains sported monocles and Germanic accents…

Adventure Comics #64 pitted the Astral All-Star against a sinister mesmerist who makes men slaves in ‘The Mystery of the Men with Staring Eyes’, after which – behind a stunning proto-patriotic cover – Starman solves ‘The Mystery of the Undersea Terror’, wherein the ship-sinking League of the Octopus proves another deadly outlet for the greedy genius of The Light…

In #66 ‘The Case of the Camera Curse’ layered a dose of supernatural horror into the high-tech mix as Starman tackles a crazed photographer employing a voodoo lens to enslave and destroy his subjects, before #67’s ‘The Menace of the Invisible Raiders’ introduced the Astral Avenger’s greatest foe. Mysterious menace had The Mist devised a way to make men and machines imperceptible and would have conquered America with his unseen air force had not the Starry Knight stopped him…

Alfred Bester provides a searing patriotic yarn for #68 as ‘The Blaze of Doom’ sees Starman quenching a forest fire and uncovering a lumberjack gang intent on holding America’s Defence effort to ransom, after which Fox scripts #69’s ‘The Adventure of the Singapore Stranglers’ in which the heavenly hero stamps out a sinister cult. In actuality, the killers were sadistic saboteurs of a certain aggressive “Asiatic Empire”. American involvement in WWII was mere months away…

The martial tone continued in ‘The Adventure of the Ring of Hijackers’ as Starman battled Baron X, whose deadly minions wrecked American trains carrying munitions and supplies to embattled British convoy vessels, although a welcome change of pace came in #71 when ‘The Invaders from the Future’ strike. Brigands from Tomorrow are bad enough, but when Starman discovers one of his old enemies has recruited them, all bets are off…

For #72, an Arabian curse seems the reason explorers are dying of fright, but the ‘Case of the ‘Magic Bloodstone’’ proves to have a far more prosaic – if no less sinister – cause…

With Adventure Comics #73, Starman surrendered the cover-spot, as dynamic duo Simon & Kirby took over ailing strips Paul Kirk, Manhunter and Sandman. However, ‘The Case of the Murders in Outer Space’ proved the Knight Errant was not lacking in imagination or dynamic quality, as he matched wits with a brilliant mastermind murdering heirs to a Californian fortune by an unfathomable method before disposing of the bodies in an utterly unique manner…

Sinister science again reigned in #74 as ‘The Case of the Monstrous Animal-Men’ finds the Starlight Centurion tragically battling ghastly pawns of a maniac who turns men into beasts, whilst #75’s ‘The Case of the Luckless Liars’ details how Ted Knight’s initiation into a millionaires’ fibbing society leads to Starman becoming a hypnotised terror tool of deadly killer The Veil before this initial foray into darkness ends with a rollicking action riot as ‘The Case of the Sinister Sun’ sees cheap thugs of the Moroni Gang upgrade their act with deadly gadgets: patterning themselves after the solar system in a blazing crime blitz… until Starman eclipses them all.

Enthralling, engaging and fantastically inviting, these early Golden Age adventures are a lost highpoint of the era – even if readers of the time didn’t realise it – offering astonishing thrills and amazing chills for today’s sophisticated readership. Starman’s exploits are some of the best of those halcyon days.


Golden Age Starman Archives volume 2
By Ray Burnley, Gardner Fox, Alfred Bester, Don Cameron, Joe Samachson, Ray Burnley, Mort Meskin, George Roussos, Emil Gershwin, Sam Citron & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2283-3 (HB)

When Starman launched in 1941 Adventure Comics National/DC trusted in craft and quality rather than some indefinable pizzazz. Before too long, though, the editors were forced to concede that even the forcefully realistic, conventionally dramatic illustration of Jack Burnley would not propel their newest concept to the same giddy heights of popularity as the Action Ace or Gotham Guardian.

The strip, always magnificently drawn and indisputably one of the most beautifully realised of the period, was further blessed with mature and compelling scripts by Gardner Fox, Alfred Bester, Don Cameron and latterly Joe Samachson but just never really caught on. However, by today’s standards these compelling, compulsive fun-filled and just plain brilliant tales are some one of the very best comics that era ever produced.

Happily these days, with an appreciably older and more discerning audience, Starman’s less-than-stellar War years career might be more fully appreciated for the superb example of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction it truly was. This volume sees the opening subtly, moody, slow-paced intellectually edgy stories supplanted by shorter yarns brimming with sheer exuberance and kinetic energy as, with the Nazi menace beaten, home grown criminals began to congregate on comics pages…

For this second stunning deluxe hardback outing – completing the Sidereal Sentinel’s tenure in Adventure Comics (issues #77-102, spanning August 1942 to February 1946) – Golden Age guru Roy Thomas offers his own absorbing critical overview in the Foreword and the volume even includes some of the most iconic covers of the Golden Age (by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby) even though most of them only feature Starman in a little insert in one corner!

As was often the case, although Burnley came up with the concept and look for the Astral Avenger, a professional writer was assigned to flesh out and co-create the stories. At first Gardner Fox handled the job, but eventually Alfred Bester supplied the scripts, whilst the illustrator also liberally called on the talents of his brother Ray Burnley as art assistant and inker with sister Betty as letterer finishing the episodes in sublimely cinematic style.

The period peril resumes here with ‘Finders Keepers!’ by Fox & Burnley, wherein arch-nemesis The Mist combined his invisibility gimmicks with a subtle psychological scheme. When members of the public found valuable “lost property” they had no idea each item carried a posthypnotic command to surrender their own valuables to the criminal mastermind, only to become embroiled in a concatenation of increasingly dangerous stunts. Happily Starman was able to turn the repentant fool into a real hero…

Burnley bowed out in style in Adventure #80 (November 1942) in Bester’s ‘The Time-Machine Crime!’ wherein thugs used said purloined device to kidnap William Shakespeare, in hopes his canny mind could plan the perfect crime. Fox returned for another stint in #81 as the explosively kinetic Mort Meskin & George Roussos briefly took on the art. In ‘Starman’s Lucky Star!’ a poor blind boy who wanted to be an astronomer was mistakenly kidnapped instead of his wealthy playmate. Thankfully the Star Sentinel was available to put everything right, after which ‘Hitch a Wagon to the Stars’ (AC #82, Fox, Meskin & Roussos) spotlighted a brilliant young inventor whose obsession with astrology blighted his life, and nearly made him a patsy for Nazi spies… at least until Ted Knight and his alter ego intervened.

With Adventure Comics #83, Emil Gershwin became main illustrator for the series – a solid, polished artist much influenced by Mac Raboy. ‘Wish Upon a Star!’ gave him the opportunity to shine in the moving, socially-charged tale of three prep school boys whose unselfish wishes came true thanks to Starman. At this time the Astral Avenger’s page counts began to decline as his popularity dwindled – from an average of 11 to 7 or 8 – and ‘The Doom From the Skies’ reflected a growing trend towards fast-paced action as a burglar stole the Gravity Rod, leaving our hero an amnesiac and his weapon a deadly death ray, whilst #85’s ‘The Constellations of Crime!’ introduced Astra the Astrologist who used predictions as the basis of extravagantly deadly crimes…

In the next issue a disgraced sportsman pretended to undertake a lunar trip whilst equipping his gang with clever gimmicks to rob and restore his fortune as ‘The Moonman’s Muggs!’ before an element of detection fiction was added in Adventure #87 when Starman exposed a gang selling the inexplicably popular paintings of the worst artist in America as ‘Crime Paints a Picture!’ before rejoining the war-effort in #88 as the Stellar Centurion solved ‘The Enigma of the Vanishing House!’ and smashed a Nazi spy-ring. In #89 old foes the Moroni Gang broke out of jail and restarted their nefarious careers as Sun, Moon and Saturn, but ‘The Plundering Planets!’ quickly fell foul of Starman and a couple of really annoying prankster kids…

Meskin & Roussos popped back in #90 to vividly envision the anonymous thriller ‘Land Beneath the Fog!’ wherein Starman saved a lady scientist accused of witchcraft in a lost medieval kingdom, whilst in the next issue Don Cameron, Meskin & Sam Citron jointly detailed ‘The Rising Star of Johnny Teach!’ as another young man emotionally crippled by a nonsensical faith in astrology found the courage to turn his life around… after a little prompting from Starman.

With Adventure #92 Joe Samachson took over the scripting and Gershwin returned to illuminate the series until its conclusion. The run began with ‘The Three Comets!’ – circus acrobats Starman was convinced doubled as flamboyant thieves. All he had to do was find out where they stashed the loot…

In #93’s ‘Gifts from the Stars!’ the hero almost died after getting in between a squabbling scientist and a financial backer whose protracted arguments allowed robbers to blindside them both, #94’s ‘Stars Fall on Allie Bammer!’ had gangster Blackie Kohl use a meteor shower to gain entrance to an impregnable estate, and ‘The Professor Plays Safe!’ in #95 found a muddle headed astronomer at the wrong conference only to end up locked in a safe – until Starman stepped in. ‘Prediction for Plunder!’ saw Ted Knight and some superstitious crooks both ticked off at the unscrupulous editor of the Weekly Horoscope. The socialite wanted no more scary predictions worrying his nervous friends, but the thugs were actually using those specious prognostications to plan their jobs…

Adventure #97 saw impoverished stargazer Jimmy Wells agree to let wealthy Wesley Vanderloot take all the credit for his discoveries in return for direly needed cash, but his ‘Stolen Glory!’ almost cost the scientist and Starman their lives when the millionaire faced humiliating exposure, after which #98 revealed a stellar conundrum giving the hero belated insight into a bizarre crime-wave where one gang was framing another for their jewel heists in ‘Twin Stars of Crime!’0 Fame was again the spur in ‘My Fortune for a Star!’ when a destitute astronomer discovered a new star and offered to sell the naming rights to the highest bidder. Naturally whenever cash is being thrown around thieves are never far away…

By Adventure Comics #100 Starman had dropped to the back of the book and the plots were beginning to feel a little formulaic. In ‘Life and Death of a Star!’ a friend of Ted’s thought he’d discovered a new star, but upon investigation Starman found the strange light was just a clever signal to convicts planning a jailbreak, whilst in #101 ‘The Sun-Spot Scoundrel!’ featured a savant who posited that mysterious solar blemishes caused increased criminal activity even as they neutralised the mighty Gravity Rod…

It was all over in #102, although the last tale was far from a damp squib. ‘The Meteor Mob’ saw savvy mobster Shiver using a cannon to create his own shooting stars… only these ones only ever fell on banks and jewellery stores…

Despite that unwarranted fizzling out, the Golden Age Starman is a strip that truly shines today. These simple straightforward adventures should be considered a high-point of the era – even if readers of the time didn’t realise it – and his exploits are among the most neglected thrillers of those halcyon days. However modern tastes will find them far more in tune with contemporary mores, making these books unmissable delights for fans of mad science, stylish intrigue mystery, murder and crazy crime capers. Truly terrific treats but what a shame they’re out of print and not available digitally (HINT! HINT!)

© 1941, 1942, 2000 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
© 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

In 1872 Canadian Joseph (Père Ladébauche) Charlebois was born, as was Jean (Iznogoud) Tabary in 1930. One year later Philémon creator Frédéric Othon Théodore Aristidès AKA “Fred” arrived.

In 2007 we lost Yvan Delporte and in 2012 Muntañola AKA Joaquim Muntañola (Josechu el Vasco, Angelina y Cristobalito, Doña Exagerancia), with inker fine artist Dave Hunt dying in 2017 on the same today, and Underground commix legend Jay (Bijou Funnies) Lynch, as well as Dutch journeyman cartoonist/illustrator Frans Meijer (Prikkel-idyllen, Klappertjes, Uzeltje) in 1962.

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Otto’s Orange Day


By Frank Cammuso & Jay Lynch (Toon Books/Raw Junior)
ISBN: 978-0-9799238-2-1 (HC) 978-1-935179-27-6 (PB/Digital edition)

If you give them a chance and the right material, kids love to read. Happily, these days there’s a grand renaissance of books for the next generation to cut their milk-teeth on, and thanks to the dedication of folk like David Fickling Books (and their wonderful comic The Phoenix) in Britain and Toon Books/Raw Junior in the USA, almost enough avenues for youngsters to grow up reading comics too. This one comes courtesy of award-winning political cartoonist Frank Cammuso (also the creator of, Salem Hyde, Edison, Beaker, Knights of the Lunch Table, Max Hamm: Fairy Tale Detective) who joined here with legendary industry giant Jay Lynch (Mad, Bijou Funnies, Phoebe and the Pigeon People, Nard ‘n’ Pat, Wacky Packages, Garbage Pail Kids) to relate a boisterous and visually flamboyant yarn of foolish enthusiasm…

Otto was a ginger cat and utterly obsessed. He always said – long and loud and often – that orange is ‘My Favorite Colour’. He proclaimed it in verse and through dance and even had a song about the best hue in the world. That’s why his Aunt Sally Lee sent him an old dusty lamp she found in a store. It was pretty dusty and banged up, but beneath the grime, it gleamed orange…

Otto gave the old relic a thorough dusting and was amazed to see a gigantic blue genie offering him one wish. Otto had no doubts what it should be…

Opening the door he found the entire world painted in shades of the greatest colour of all. He couldn’t wait for winter when he could make orange snowmen! Sadly, he soon started seeing the downside and learned to ‘Be Careful What You Wish For!’ Roads were more dangerous, people were hard to recognise and even Otto couldn’t stomach orange lamb chops with orange mashed potatoes and orange spinach!

Knowing he had to turn things back, Otto tried to find the lamp but it was difficult to do when all his toys and games were orange too…

However, even when he finally locates the magic artefact there’s still another problem: only one go per owner and the genie says that changing the world back counts as ‘A New Wish’ and is far from happy to start making changes now…

Aimed at the five-&-over age-range, this splendidly child-sized (152 x 126 mm) tome is a gloriously evocative, sleekly exciting kid-friendly caper, produced in 32-page, full-colour landscape format and the kind of illustrated extravaganza kids of all ages will adore – and probably fight over. At least there’s a sequel to placate multi-kid cat-loving households…

Toon Books/Raw Junior was founded by Art Spiegelman & Françoise Mouly to provide high-quality comics stories to entice pre-schoolers and beginning readers into a life-long relationship with graphic narrative and traditional reading.

With a select pantheon of creators they have produced many brilliant books sub-divided into First Comic for brand new readers (Level 1), (Easy-to-Read for Emerging Readers Level 2) and Chapter Books for Advanced Beginners (Level 3).

The company supports publications with on-line tools at TOON-BOOKS.com, offering interactive audio-versions read by the authors – in a multitude of languages – and a “cartoon maker” facility which allows readers to become writers of their own adventures.

I haven’t seen or reviewed – anything of theirs since 2019, but maybe I should…
© 2008 RAW Junior, LLC. All rights reserved.

Today in 1842 Canadian cartoonist, journalist/lawyer and creator of the satirical weekly Le Canard Hector Berthelot was born, backed up in 1895 by the astounding Milt Gross (Count Screwloose of Tooloose) and in 1921 the utterly yet mildly magnificent John (Captain Pugwash, Harris Tweed, Sir Prancelot, Mary Mungo and Midge) Ryan. Making the scene in 1932 was car dude and Rat Fink creator Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, with Simon Bisley showing up in 1962 and Skottie Young in 1978.

We lost Charles (Crime Does Not Pay, The Little Wise Guys, Airboy, Steel Sterling, Crimebuster) Biro in 1972 and Barney Google guy Fred Lasswell in 2001, but can commiserate over the fact that Knockout weekly began today in 1939 and clocked up 24 years of publication whilst Alex Raymond debuted private eye strip Rip Kirby right about now in 1946.

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All the places in between (Wellness and Green Living)


By John Cei Douglas (Liminal 11)
ISBN: 978-1-912634-23-1 (PB)

These days we’re all locked up in our own heads as much as in our homes or inescapably foredoomed lives, constantly in search of solutions to ease anxiety, however we can. Here then – in timely fashion and most serendipitously – is a sublime gem in the conceptual mould of Tove Jansson, laced with oblique yet helpful ruminations on healing mindfulness and enjoyed as a voyage of genuine inner discovery.

Not only is the message calming and helpful – and delivered in beguiling imagery guaranteed to restore your weary disposition – but it also guarantees a solidly entertaining mystery journey helping to moderate your hunger for physical travel and fresh experience.

Crafted in dreamy, silent passages, All the places in between follows a pensive girl by a barren seashore as she fretfully, nervously but determinedly passes from ‘All the places we’ve been’ to ‘All the places we’re going’…

On the way she meets her exact opposite and is cast ‘adrift’: occupying ‘the lighthouse’ before finding civilisation drowned and devastated. Time drags ‘between’ before isolation draws her to ‘the city’ where she finds ‘a companion’ to care for.

Eventually that temporary relationship sunders, ‘buried’ in the wreckage of the world and dwarfed by insurmountable chasms prior to a ‘tsunami’ that brings resolution of sorts as ‘the lighthouse returns’, prompting a revelatory resolution in ‘space’…

Filled with delightful human moments, and not a book to summarise, but definitely one to look at and wonder over and over again, John Cei Douglas’ oneiric ramble is a calming and enticing trip we can all benefit and draw comfort from.
© 2020 John Cei Douglas. All rights reserved.

Today in 1913, Mickey Mouse Sunday strip illustrator Manuel Gonzales was born, as was British strip maestro Harry Bishop (Gun Law, Bonanza, Tarzan) in 1922. Anticipating an end to war and no need to boost morale anymore(!!) Milton Caniff’s armed services strip Male Call ended today in 1946…
Max Allen Collins (Road to Perdition, Ms. Tree, Batman, Dick Tracy) was born in 1948, and Matthew Dow Smith (Astronauts in Trouble, Doctor Who) in 1950, with Dan Mishkin (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, Blue Devil) turning up in 1953 and Claudio Castellini Nathan Never) arriving in 1966.
Today in 1983 Hergé left us, as did Italian Disney superstar Giovan Battista Carpi in 1999.