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Spacehawk


By Basil Wolverton with commentary by Monte Wolverton (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-550-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Basil Wolverton was one of a kind: an artist, humourist and wordsmith of unique skill and imagination and one whose controversial works inspired and delighted many whilst utterly revolting others. Born in Central Point, Oregon on July 9th 1909, Wolverton worked as a Vaudeville performer, reporter, illustrator and cartoonist. However, unlike most artistic tyros of his time, he preferred to stay far away from the big city. For most of his life, he mailed in his artistic offerings from the rural wilderness of Vancouver, Washington State.

He made his first national cartoon sale at age 16 and began pitching newspaper strips in the late 1920s. A great fan of fantastic tales and the swiftly-developing science fiction genre, Wolverton sold Marco of Mars to the Independent Syndicate of New York in 1929, but the company ultimately declined to publish it, citing its similarity to the popular Buck Rogers feature they sought to compete with!

Equally at home with comedy, horror and adventure/fantasy material, the young creative dynamo adapted easily to the notion of superheroes, and began working extensively in the new medium of comic books, generating such gems as Spacehawks and Disk-Eyes the Detective for Circus Comics, plus a brace of minor hits and unabashed classics. These included Rockman – Underground Secret Agent for Timely/Marvel’s USA Comics and today’s star: the grimly imaginative (but unrelated) cosmic avenger Spacehawk for Target Comics. Apparently tireless and blessed with unlimited imagination, Wolverton also produced a seemingly endless supply of comedic features, ranging from extended series (like Superman/sports parody Powerhouse Pepper) to double-, single- and half-page gag fillers such as Bedtime Bunk, Culture Quickie and Bedtime Banter.

In 1946, he notoriously won a national competition held by Al Capp – of Li’l Abner fame – to visualise Lena the Hyena, that strip’s “ugliest woman in the world”, and, during the space and horror boom the 1950s, crafted some of the most imaginative short stories comics have ever seen. He also worked for Mad Magazine with staggering effect…

Wolverton became a member of the Radio Church of God in 1941. The organisation was devised by Herbert W. Armstrong: a prototype televangelist of a then-burgeoning Christian fundamentalist movement. In 1956, Wolverton illustrated the founder’s pamphlet 1975 in Prophecy and two years later produced a stunning illustrative interpretation of The Book of Revelation Unveiled at Last. Soon after, he began writing and drawing an illustrated 6-volume adaptation of the Old Testament. Entitled The Bible Story: The Story of Man, it was serialised in the sect’s journal The Plain Truth. His association with the Radio Church of God endured for the rest of his life. In 1973 the artist returned to comic books, illustrating more of his memorably comedic grotesques for DC’s Plop!, before suffering a stroke the next year. Basil Wolverton died on December 31st 1978.

His greatest triumph is undoubtedly the WWII-adjacent adventures of a mysterious, solitary steely-jawed he-man known only as Spacehawk. The strip debuted in the June 1940 issue of Target Comics (volume 1, #5) and ran for 30 issues until Wolverton left the company. With his origins only hinted at, Spacehawk initially prowled the star-lanes and outer reaches: a grim, relentless avenger of the persecuted innocent,. The stark, boldly exaggerated but meticulous art served only to highlight the singular appearance of the alien monstrosities and landscapes envisaged by Wolverton and defeated by “the Superhuman Enemy of Crime”. Some kids had nightmares after reading Spacehawk, and many parents wrote complaining letters because of it…

This epic assemblage gathers all those stunning stories in one breathtaking curated outburst, and begins by sharing pertinent background and context regarding the artist and his works in Monte (his son and also a cartoonist) Wolverton’s Introduction “The Lone Wolf of Void”. The heir also provided – from his father’s notes – individual episode names for those yarns that were originally untitled. Thereafter, the entire Spacehawk oeuvre unfolds in blistering force and all its delightfully overwhelming mechanistic totality.

Wolverton senior was clearly an avid follower of the nascent new genre of “scienti-fiction” in the grand Hugo Gernsback manner and his vivid, vibrant pages were bursting with highbrow concepts and images built from Functional Utilitarianism, with every panel crumbling under the weight of assorted tubes or tentacles, rockets, rays and bolts (both kinds) in service to the tale of a solitary, implacable dispenser of pitiless cosmic justice and retribution…

Just remember, this is not “retro”. This is what the term retro is referring to…

In the first episode (from Target Comics volume 1 #5 and cover-dated June 1940) the living enigma prowls the life-packed solar system in an era of constant interplanetary travel and commerce, albeit one plagued by petty regional tyrants and interworld piracy. With nothing but veiled hints of his coming from another system – if not galaxy – Spacehawk was simply a superior being resolved to do good and punish evil: a physical and mental marvel, brilliant beyond measure, and armed with psionic powers and an arsenal of astounding devices he set about righting wrongs wherever he found them. Yes: Doc Savage in space…

Delivered in an eye-popping and baroque style of fantastic imagination, introductory exploit ‘Spacehawk and the Creeping Death from Neptune’ sees the pitiless, mysteriously masked nemesis of evil drawn to the eighth planet to rescue kidnapped humans used as test subjects for sadistic Martian pirate Gorvak who is employing protoplasmic horrors to kill his victims.

With those monsters safely despatched, the still-faceless hero returned in vol. 1 #6 for ‘Spacehawk and the Lost Tribe of Mercury’ to save – through forced evolution – peaceful sea-dwellers on Venus as predatory Mercurians Rogg & Grebo ravage the water-world as they seek to locate, rob and kill refugees from their own fiery world, before #7 details how a beautiful Earth woman unmasks him. Whilst battling bizarre bandits Jark & Zork in ‘Spacehawk and the Perilous Planetoid Trap’ he strives to crush ruthless pirates using ballistic asteroids and gravity waves to plunder stellar shipping, but almost abandons his mission thanks to the charms of a newly-liberated slave girl…

Back to his stolid dedicated self, the Lone Wolf then battles cunning scavengers from his past and another star-system in ‘Spacehawk and the Vulture Men from the Void’ and displays his undercover credentials when he is dragged into the cesspit morass of politics in #9’s ‘Spacehawk and Mayhem at the Martian Election’. In Target Comics #10 ‘Spacehawk and the Pirate City on Venus’ – wherein the vigilante saves interplanetary police from a cosmic corsair citadel by extraordinary trans-species brain surgery – is supplemented by prose vignette ‘The Scratches of Doom – A Spacehawk Adventure’ as the astral avenger uses ancient detective methods to ferret out a cunning but short-sighted murderer. TC #11 finds him back in all his visual magnificence for ‘Spacehawk and the Pirates of Saturn’ as his relentless pursuit of evil briefly reunites him with Galar: another of his own race of supermen but one who has drifted from the path of virtue and valour…

Target #12 (January 1941) ended the first volume by introducing some recurring friends and foes as ‘Spacehawk and the Treachery of Smebar’ sees the hero save Neptune’s Noomite Queen Haba from her lustful, ambitious and usurping chief minister – who sees himself as a potential global overlord – whilst volume 2 #1 sees the Lone Wolf still in the vicinity and the focus of ‘Droon’s Plot Against Spacehawk’. However, the promise of Haba’s vile science advisor to make the enigmatic hero more tractable and amenable to her amorous overtures is foiled in vol. 2 #2’s ‘Spacehawk and the Master Plan of Droon’… just in time for a radical course correction…

Redefined by the designation Defender of America, the remaining Spacehawk tales are all Earth-based, with his mighty mentality and staggering superscience aimed at a contemporary, immediate and local threat. When the US entered the war on December 8th 1941, Wolverton’s editors compelled him to shift his story perspectives. Thus the space ranger took up a close orbit and faced Axis powers Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan (but not Italy) who gave the stellar Sentinel far more trouble than all the devils in the rest of the solar system, thereby further diluting the eerie power of the series but never the astounding illustration. By the end of 1942 (Target Comics volume 3, #10) Wolverton and his interplanetary masterpiece were gone, and headed for less hostile climes and more appreciative bosses.

In the first Terran trial he rapidly ends a Japanese scheme to bomb American cities from an artificial asteroid before vol. 2 #3’s ‘Spacehawk and the Undersea Tank’ sees Democracy’s newest champion spectacularly scuttling a city-sized subsea moving fortress constructed to sink US shipping and destroy the Panama Canal…

Wolverton’s wicked gift for caricature increasingly came into play from now on, and in Spacehawk and the Submarine Attack’ the alien Übermensch abducts grotesque and clownish German dictator “Moosler” and gives him a terrifying taste of battlefield conditions before deploying his mentally-controlled robotmen to wreck another marine masterplan in vol 2. #5’s ‘Spacehawk and the German Submarine Carrier’, after which ‘Spacehawk and the German Snow Airbase’ details how a hidden arctic airfield is destroyed and all its bombers shot down by the Stratospheric Sentinel…

An earthly archenemy manifests next as a sinister mercenary scientist steals many of the Lone Wolf’s secrets (including the ubiquitous and awesome antigravity principles) after our hero is ambushed and tortured in ‘Dr. Gore’s Hidden Lab’. Although his escape is prompt and vengeance terrible, the miscreant is as hard to kill as a cockroach and promptly retaliates in sequel saga ‘Dr. Gore’s Ant-Gravity Villainy’. Thankfully, the hero has enlisted a willing extraterrestrial sidekick in mighty minion Dork, a gleeful but so-homely comedic collaborator set on smashing bad guys and a being happy to maroon Gore on barren Mars once Spacehawk has done with him…

Target Comics vol, 2 #9 introduces another manic and hilariously libellous faux Fuhrer as ‘Nitwitler’s Secret Stratosphere Ships’ finds Spacehawk saving Canada from high-altitude bombardment before ‘Spacehawk and the Disks of Death’ sees him perform similar service, saving San Franciso from propaganda inundation and deadly skyscraper-scything missiles…

A change of pace in v2 #11 has the hero and Dork heading out west to stop subversive Bund leader Herman Vogel building a Fifth Column army in ‘Spacehawk and the Bullet Ship …That Brought Vengeance from the Void’ before the final issue of volume 2 (cover-dated February 1942) explores ‘Spacehawk and the Return of Dr. Gore’. Now, having escaped Mars, the tyrannical technologist wreaks vengeance on American infrastructure using stolen antigravity tricks… until Spacehawk intervenes…

Volume 3 #1 (March 1942) ramps up the patriotic fervour as ‘Spacehawk and the Battling Bullet Ships’ details the Deep Space Duo’s demolition of enemy planes bombing Iceland, before again going undercover to ferret out saboteurs wrecking dam construction in ‘Spacehawk and the Case of the Black Avenger’. Then, madder than ever, Dr. Gore resurfaces in ‘Spacehawk and the Blazing Death’ using an artificial storm cloud to blast US ships after which a turning point is reached…

Vowing to use his science directly for the war effort, the alien ace joins government think tanks in ‘Spacehawk and his Super Divebomber’ (Target vol. 3 #4) building revolutionary aircraft and crushing the wave of saboteurs resolved to destroy them. However, he is soon called away to wipe out a fiendish Japanese super-sub squadron in 5 ‘Spacehawk and the Devil Divers of the Deep’ before going on to Alaska in vol.3 #6 and destroying an invasion force in ‘Spacehawk and the Secret Japanese Base’…

‘Spacehawk and the Mystery of the Green Faces’ finds him recalled to Washington DC to cure a diabolical bio-weapon that turns sufferers into emerald-hued raving fascists. After defeating the archenemy behind the threat he then delves into creating his own weapon of mass destruction in ‘Spacehawk and the Supersonic Siren’…

The foe of fascism was happy to employ their own methodology against them with both bio-weapons and ultimate destruction devices leaping off his drawing board and into action, but he also fought an occasional small battle. In TC v3 #9, Spacehawk and the Case of The Missing Tires’ delivers a wry, light-hearted romp as the Lone Wolf grudgingly helps a feisty motorist made victim of tyre thieves (a grievous and growing felony in those times of war-effort rationing) and finds himself in over his head as left-leaning actress Diana Drean refuses to be patronised, assisted, sidelined or assassinated by the tyre-stealing gangsters…

Sadly that delightful switch in tone was never built upon as vol 3 #10 (December 1942) presented one final exploit in ‘Spacehawk and the Secret Submarine Fuel Depot’ with the space ace uncovering an enemy U-Boat installation in neutral Mexico and taking appropriate definitive action….

And that was that.

Changing times and tastes meant that Wolverton never returned to dramatic serial storytelling but instead went on to master anthological short graphic fiction – especially in the booming post-war fields of horror and science fiction (so stay tuned for those in days to come). This titanic tome also abruptly ends, delivering one last treat in a sublimely pencilled ‘Spacehawk cover sketch’ plus his only front of house appearance in the ‘Spacehawk cover’ on Traget Comic vol. 1 7…

Finally achieving the measure of popular recognition he always deserved, Basil Wolverton was a truly unique visionary and graphic pathfinder who inspired hundreds and entertained millions. This compendium from 2012 gathers all those so-Retro sidereal sagas and is an unmissable example of a creator given latitude and permission to be himself. If you love outré wonder and breathless, breakneck joy in motion, this is a treat you must not miss…
© 2012 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All contents © 2012 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. unless otherwise noted. “The Lone Wolf of the Void” © 2012 Monte Wolverton. All rights reserved.

Today in 1897 pioneering and groundbreaking Russo-Serbian cartoonist Ivan Sensin was born, with Barney Google creator Fred Lasswell arriving in 1916; Archie Comics head honcho Richard Goldwater, coming along in 1936 and Underground legend S. Clay Wilson (Zap Comix, The Checkered Demon) in1941. Italian comics creator Anna Brandoli (Cuba 42, La Strega) was born in 1945 and French artist/raconteur Thierry “Ted” Benoit (Bingo Bongo et son Combo Congolais, Ray Banana, Blake and Mortimer) followed in 1947: as did cartoonist Ray Billingsley (Lookin’ Fine, Curtis) in 1957 and artist/letterer Galen Showman in 1972.

Today in 1887 journalist, playwright, social reformer and Punch co-founder Henry Mayhew died. In 1982 Canadian adventure strip god Hal Foster (Tarzan, Prince Valiant) died too.

Today in 2007 The United States Postal Service introduced Marvel superhero postage stamps.

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Pigeons from Hell


By Robert E. Howard, adapted by Scott Hampton & lettered by Steve Vance (Eclipse Books)
ISBN: 0-913035-69-6 (Limited Edition Album HB), 978-0-91303-568-9 (Album TPB)

This book contains Discriminatory Content commonplace in less enlightened times. This book includes Discriminatory Content used for dramatic effect.

Robert Ervin Howard is justly celebrated for his burly, barbarian sword-&-sorcery creations such as Conan, Kull, Bran Mak Morn and others but as a successful jobbing writer in the heyday of pulp fiction he also turned his blazing typewriter to most of the other extant genres of the era. Moreover, as aficionados of his blistering fantasy fiction are well aware, he was a dab hand at creating tension, suspense and moody macabre horror.

During the too-brief time of his creative peak he crafted a select pack of chilling spooky supernatural stories set in the evocative southern milieu known as ArkLaTex – a doom- shrouded, decadence-driven Deep South meeting-point of the darkest corners of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and his beloved Texas. Deeply moved and inspired by old stories heard at his grandmother’s knee, Howard transformed oft-told anecdotes into timeless masterpieces of terror such as The Shadow of the Beast, Moon of Zambebwie, Black Hound of Death, Black Canaan and especially the yarn under scrutiny here: a chilling confection described by Stephen King as “one of the finest horror stories of our century”.

The tirelessly prolific Howard took his own life in 1936 and the prose Pigeons from Hell (unsold since its completion in 1932) was published posthumously in the May 1938 edition of premier pulp Weird Tales. It has become a classic not just of the genre but also a notional inclusion of the prestigious Southern Gothic movement of writers including Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Tennessee Williams and others.

In 1988 the original text was incorporated into a stunningly lush, lavishly painted deeply faithful adaptation by Scott Hampton and published by West Coast mavericks Eclipse Books, which, despite a later version by Joe R. Lansdale & Nathan Fox in 2008 (published by Dark Horse and reviewed here, remains one of the best horror graphic novels ever produced. This is in no small part due to its being printed on magnificently larger-than-life, glossy square white pages produced in the oversized European Album format of 285 x 220mm rather than the standard US proportions of 258 x 168mm.

Following an impassioned Introduction from Horrorist Supreme Ramsey Campbell the Depression-era exercise in the unnatural opens with ‘The Whistler in the Dark’ as a pair of perambulating New Englanders bumming their way across America on a motoring vacation reach the southlands region of Piney Woods and decide to spend the night in a dark, decrepit, abandoned antebellum plantation house.

Crashing out on the musty floor of the main downstairs room they sink into exhausted sleep, but in the middle of the night Griswell is awakened by bad dreams. They’d begun with replaying their arrival at sunset, discovery of the ramshackle edifice and all the oddly ethereal white birds their presence had disturbed. From there his visions had moved on to their quick, cold repast and weary lapse into slumber before shifting into nightmare feelings of disquiet. When Griswell roused, anxious and disturbed, it was with images of ghostly doves, hidden rooms concealing ancient hanging bodies and a sense that something was hiding just beyond his sight…

Trying to shake himself to full alertness, Griswell suddenly heard an eerie whistling and, helpless, watched his companion John Branner rise – as if sleepwalking – to ascend the grand staircase to the upper storey and into all-enveloping darkness. Incapable of movement, Griswell followed the sounds of Branner’s progress and suddenly, a hideous scream came…

Before he could move, Griswell heard Branner’s slow return. Then moonlight allowed a glimpse of his companion, and the sight was enough to send Griswold screaming helter-skelter into the night…

Reaching their automobile he found the vehicle infested with snakes and kept on running, convinced some unknown beast was at his heels. Careering ever on, he ran straight into a local lawman who instantly emptied his revolver into a shadow that pursued him…

‘Return’ fully introduces capable County Sheriff Kirby Buckner, who surprisingly accepts much of Griswell’s incredible tale and provides historical insight into the woeful tale and sinister reputation of Blassenville Manor as he and the terrified vacationer revisit – in full, comforting daylight – a scene of dreadful slaughter.

Swiftly ruling out the possibility of argument and murder amongst friends, Buckner begins searching the house for the true killer but comes up empty. Furthermore, knowing how bad things would look in a rational courtroom, he invites traumatised Griswell to help him get to the truth, by joining him and spending another night in the house…

‘The Snake’s Brother’ finds them preparing for that horrific prospect by researching the tragic history of the last of the Blassenvilles. In the years following the Civil War, three unwed daughters and a cousin, struggling to maintain the old pile, were eventually joined and chaperoned by their cold, brutal Aunt Celia, who had returned from the West Indies to watch over them.

Celia was a terrifying presence, as harsh with the girls as she was with remaining plantation staff and her own much-maltreated “mulatto” maid Joan…

The legend of the girls’ mysterious and sudden disappearance was common knowledge, but for more details Buckner and Griswold question an aged Negro who used to work on the plantation. When pressed, the still-mortally terrified dotard Jacob reveals a fantastic tale of brutal oppression, serpent worship, voodoo and appalling, unleashed, brooding vengeance… until he is hideously struck down by the power that lurks in the mansion…

Appalled, deeply shaken but more resolved than ever, Buckner and Griswold head for the Manor, mistakenly believing that they have a handle on what unquiet horror haunts the place and how to handle it in final chapter ‘The Call of Zuvembie’. They have jumped to a ghastly and tragic wrong conclusion…

Not only is the original prose work one of the best pieces of horror fiction ever written, but in this rare instance this adaptation – crafted over two long, meticulous years by Hampton – more than matches the power and all-encompassing mood of its source material. This is a classic of graphic narrative and fear fiction no fan will want to miss – but only with all the lights on…
© 1932, 1988 the Estate of Robert E, Howard, Glenn Lord Executor. Adaptation and painting © 1988 Scott Hampton. Introduction © 1988 Ramsey Campbell. Pigeons from Hell © 2008, 2009 Robert E. Howard Properties Inc. (“REHP”). All rights reserved.

Today in 1907 Antonia Yeoman was born: an Australian-Englishwoman cartoonist who became the only female member of Punch’s elite (male only) Toby Club. She shares the date with veteran colourist Gene D’Angelo (The Phantom, Flash Gordon, Blondie, Mandrake the Magician, Beetle Bailey, Superman Family, Action Comics, World’s Finest, Flash, Superboy, Justice League of America), born in 1924; Batman artist Lew Sayre Schwartz in 1926; artist Ricardo Villamonte (Doctor Strange, Saga of Crystar) in 1932; Australian cartoonist, sculptor, caricaturist and satirist Pat Oliphant in 1935. In 1947 Filipino artist Romeo Tanghal (New Teen Titans, Wonder Woman, Men of War) arrived on Earth, joined in 1958 by writer/editor Bob Greenberger (Crisis on Infinite Earths, Doom Patrol, Who’s Who in the DC Universe, Star Trek, Suicide Squad), and one year later by Guyanese American illustrator Trevor Von Eeden (Black Lightning, Batman, Thriller), with Colleen Doran (A Distant Soil, Amazing Spider-Man, The Sandman, Orbiter) coming along in 1963.

British Superman Garth debuted today in 1943, in a Daily Mirror strip by Steve Dowling & John Allard that ran until 1997.

The day also saw the deaths of some major and much-beloved players, such as illustrator Lou Fine (The Ray, Black Condor, The Flame, Uncle Sam, The Spirit, Taylor Woe, Adam Ames) in 1971; All Ages All Star Warren Kremer (Richie Rich, Caspar the Friendly Ghost, Hot Stuff the Little Devil, Little Audrey, Stumbo the Giant, Joe Palooka, Planet Terry, Count Duckula, Ewoks, Royal Roy, Top Dog) in 2003 and in 2012, Chilean cartoonist Themístocles Nazario Lobos Aguirre – AKA “Themo Lobos” – (Máximo Chambónez, Ferrilo, Nick Obre, Alaraco, with his most famous work being Mampato, Cucalón) and Indonesian comics author “R. A.” (Raden Ahmad) Kosasih (Sri Asih, Ramayana, Siti Gahara, Seri Mahabharata, Setan Cebol).

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Embroideries


By Marjane Satrapi, translated by Anjali Singh (Pantheon Graphic Libraries/Jonathan Cape)
ISBN: 978-0-37542-305-5 (Pantheon HB/Digital edition) 978-0-22407-440-7 (Cape TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content used for dramatic effect.

The recent loss of one of our art form’s most successful and influential exponents still hasn’t prompted any kind of rush to republish, so here I am suggesting the first of a few books that could do with prompt rereleasing.

When Marjane Satrapi died on June 4th this year, her comics canon included the astounding memoirs Persepolis and sequel Persepolis – The Story of a Return; her similarly award-winning graphic novel Chicken With Plums and others such as The Sigh, Monsters are Afraid of the Moon, and this sublime peek behind the strictly policed curtain of modern Iranian life.

Another wickedly barbed commentary and autobiographical revelation first seen in French in 2003 as L’Association’s Broderies, the English-language version Embroideries was released two years later, again employing the potent primitivist imagery of a child’s eyes. Via ostensibly unrefined stylings and the shaded remembrances of a girl maturing in an age of unrest and (necessarily) guarded innocence, Satrapi revisited Tehran in 1991 and relates here conversations with older women that at last included her. Returned as a young woman, she saw through far more sophisticated eyes and speaks here with a mature voice, sharing what the oppressed, sequestered women of her kin and the country were doing when the men were all off “running” things…

Generally, that was drinking tea, sewing and gossiping: trading experiences and stories, suspicions and suppositions about relationships, men, sex, virginity and its surgical repair…

The setting and staging are restricted and formal: seven characters interacting and telling tales in one room, just as if the sole proscenium set in a play.

Following a contextualising ‘Prologue’ setting the kaffeeklatsch scene and introducing recurring chatterers Marji, her forthright, wise (opium-addicted) grandmother, tolerant mother, some aunts and a few close chums – like Parvine and Amineh – the ground-rules are established before the wide-ranging discourses are shared in secure comfort. Sans any male presence or shocked oversight, the women settle down to lively discourse and conversations turn to arranged marriage, cosmetic surgery, adultery, and virginity… although all the needles out are verbal for these ‘Embroideries’.

Topics ebb and flow, such as how as a knowledgeable teen herself, Mom helped her friend Nahid fake her wedding night virginity, or how to have four kids without ever seeing a male member.

The subjects expand to encompass the ups and downs of frequent divorce and easy remarriage; European vs Muslim men; generals, aristocrats and 13-year-old brides; men’s fragile pride, unavoidable infidelity and constant lies; why woman have to be virgins but men don’t; why it’s better to be a mistress than a wife; the uselessness of employing magicians to solve marital problems; how to catch your spouse cheating; physical improvements and cosmetic surgeries and, inescapably, labial repair, reshaping and reconstruction.

Apparently, in common Farsi parlance among women in the know, such renovations and alterations are coyly or obliquely termed “embroideries”…

Born in 1969, the author grew up during the Fundamentalist revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran and replaced him with an Islamic theocracy. Here, however, her recollections and hilariously forthright pictorial reconstructions wryly shine a light on the concerns and lives of her theocratically oppressed female relatives, neighbours and friends, drawing back a veil of state-sanctioned secrecy and institutionalised invisibility with little attention paid to the men in her life. Again Satrapi curates incidents with her starkly primal and forthright art drawing a curtain on life under theocratic dictatorship. However, unlike her global breakout hits Persepolis and Persepolis – The Story of a Return, this is not a personal drama set against a political backdrop but the potent testimony of an entire gender unbowed under oppressive bootheels millennia old, and as always the response is managed resistance, scorn and derision…

Graphic narrative is as much an art form of craft, profound thought and social change as it can be the dustbin of sophomoric genre stereotyping many critics still regard it as and relegate it to. Marjane Satrapi created works both powerful and engaging and of lasting merit and entertainment value. Embroideries is one book that not only touches comics fans, but also the entire general public, and should not be something you still have to be convinced to read.

Originally published in France as Broderies by L’Association, Paris in 2003. © 2003 by L’Association, 16 rue de la Pierre Levee, 75011 Paris, Translation © 2004 Anjali Singh.
© Marjane Satrapi 2005.

Today in 1888 master cartoonist Gluyas Williams (Fellow Citizens; Life, Collier’s, Century, The New Yorker, The Plain Dealer) was born, preceding both strip cartoonist Gus Arriola (Gordo) and comics writer France “Ed” Herron (Captain America, Captain Marvel Jr, Batman, Tomahawk, Challengers of the Unknown, Davy Crockett, Frontiersman, Nero Wolfe) in 1917; Argentinian writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld (Sgt Kirk, Ernie Pike, Roland el Corsario, El Eternauta, Mort Cinder, Vida del Che) in 1919. In 1947, artist Mike Vosburg (Tales from the Crypt, Savage She-Hulk, Sisterhood of Steel, Bloodshot, Archer & Armstrong) joined the party as did artists Kelley Jones (Micronauts, Batman, Deadman, The Sandman) and Dale Keown (Incredible Hulk, The Darkness, Pitt) in 1962.

Today in 2017 the incredible Flo Steinberg – secret power behind the rise of Marvel Comics – died.

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Murder by Remote Control


By Janwillem van de Wetering & Paul Kirchner Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)

ISBN: 978-0-486-80560-3 (TPB) 978-0-486-81208-3 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Graphic Novels are utterly ubiquitous these days, even though a vast part of the population still can’t – or won’t – differentiate between the big books we insiders mean and the flimsy, pamphlet periodicals comprising the bulk of items on sale.

Can I at least muddy the waters a little more?

Yes I Can.

Something that gathers a selection of previously-published material – strips from newspapers or anthological sources, comic book issues, selected stories on a theme – all used to be deemed an Album, Collection, or even, Gods help us, an Omnibus or Trade Paperback. These included any re-presentation of superhero sagas like Archives or Essentials, themed or curated conglomerations like Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told or Marvel Visionaries or even the groundbreaking Cerebus “phone-book” editions. Anything serialised in periodicals, but intended from conception to be eventually gathered into one unified form, WAS a graphic novel (Maus, Watchmen, Persepolis or Cerebus again). As Bugs Bunny adroitly quipped “confusing… ain’t it?”

Any long-form tale utilising sequential narrative (A Contract with God, Sabre, Pride of Baghdad) released in one big bite is a true Graphic Novel these days called an OGN -Original Graphic Novel, That’s what Will Eisner, Jim Steranko & Neal Adams were getting at when they started using the term in the late 1970s, and it’s what we should mean when lobbing these terms about willy-nilly.

For every person who accepts those categorisations, there are dozens who will violently disagree and can cite at least one package which correctly refutes and defies the definition. And because I’m a wilfully contrary pixie, I’ll just remind you that Charles Dickens published his greatest books as periodical magazine part-works before some avaricious bright spark stitched them all together in single complete editions called novels…

I don’t care: just remember all modern comics publishers crave the cachet of the term graphic novel attached to their product but it is one that has been adopted and most ardently championed by retailers and distributors who, from the moment big books of drawn stories started appearing at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, needed some way to pigeonhole and differentiate them from cookbooks, coffee-table tomes, kids storybooks and other releases packed with pictures.

Murder by Remote Control is a true Graphic Novel – amongst the very first planned and premeditated examples of the form – and after decades in obscurity was granted a second chance to be seen it in all its intended glory…

In the 1980s US comics got a huge creative boost with the advent of high quality pictorial narrative magazines like Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated which showcased adult-oriented material with high quality graphics and formats such as had taken Europe by storm a decade previously. Earlier American experience of such work had been limited to the Underground Comix scene (in terms of content if not production values, at least) and an occasional independent, out-market experiment of such maverick luminaries as Wallace Wood, Steve Ditko or Steranko.

When Heavy Metal premiered in April 1977, looking very much like its French conceptual parent Métal Hurlant, there was precious little original American material to supplement the sumptuous continental treats therein. One of the first US creators to join the magazine was Paul Kirchner (The Bus, Realms, Dope Rider), who had worked as an assistant to Wood in the early 1970s and contributed to such indie projects as Big Apple Comics. Born in 1952, Kirchner was in his third year at Cooper Union School of Art in New York when Neal Adams & Larry Hama introduced him to the horror editors at DC, whose anthology titles always needed fresh blood. He thereafter assisted Tex Blaisdell on Little Orphan Annie and in 1973 joined Ralph Reese at Wood’s studio.

A young man in tune with many spiritual and conceptual tropes prevalent during those culturally cosmopolitan times, there was a thoughtful, underplayed intensity in his meticulously-crafted work, but Kirchner was hampered by slow working-speed, at a time when quick turnaround always trumped artistic merit or quality. He eventually drifted out of comics to find far better-paying work in the advertising, animation and design trades. In recent years he has drifted back into comics with additions to his Bus and Dope Rider sequences…

Part of the reason for the transition is explained in his Introduction, which describes his meeting with Dutch expatriate author Janwillem Lincoln van de Wetering (The Empty Mirror, Grijpstra and de Gier crime novels, Hugh Pine (the Porcupine) Judge Dee Plays His Lute) He is a global-traveller and Zen Buddhist scholar who eventually settled in Maine. Under circumstances best enjoyed first hand by reading the actual Intro, the exuberant writer and jaded cartoonist met in 1981 and decided to work together on a dream project: a crime mystery in comics form.

The project took Kirchner a few years to complete but when ready for publication the real hard work began. Most publishers prefer to work in 20-20 hindsight: happy to jump on a successfully blazing bandwagon but preferring to chew off their own arms rather than risk money on being first with something new that can’t be easily categorised. The completed work was schlepped around for two years until Ballantine bought it in 1986. This was when Maus, The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman simultaneously slapped the world in the face and the public went ga-ga for graphic narratives…

Ballantine – who had decades earlier introduced America to comic strip paperbacks with its digest-sized collections of Mad reprints – were willing to take a chance on a mass-market edition, albeit in a diminished size and format, even though as Moord Op Afstand the tale had been a success in Holland and elsewhere as a lavish, full-sized hardback album. Despite favourable coverage from Gahan Wilson in The New York Times Book Review, that bowdlerised Murder by Remote Control sank without trace and the creators reluctantly moved on to other things.

Back in 2016, after far too long, Dover added the sublime metaphorical masterpiece in monochrome to their crucial list of rescued comics treasures, restored to its intended page size (278 x 218 mm) and with the original cover replacing the sliced-&-sampled multiple-panel mock-up of the 1986 edition. The story itself would have been groundbreaking if it had been released in 1983 but happily remains decidedly off-key, devilishly off-beat and delightfully engaging with echoes of Agent Dale Cooper, Blue Velvet or other cult entertainment icons eerily abounding here…

After obnoxious property speculator Mr. Jones starts buying up sections of idyllic Maine coastline, he suddenly turns up dead in his little fishing dingy. The death occurs in full view of four residents who each might have a strong motive to remove the interloper, but the County Sheriff is extremely keen on ruling the case an accidental death. However, his report results in the unwelcome arrival of agonisingly restrained and refined – almost emotionless – Detective Jim Brady from the Augusta Office.

Cool and preternaturally calm, the self-effacing little man has a way of seeing deep into the hearts and minds of everybody, and he quickly rules it a homicide by most arcane means. Now he’s planning on hanging around, probing the characters and backgrounds of the uniquely baroque quartet of suspects and undoubtedly sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong…

Informed by Zen principles, the story unfolds as Brady flamboyantly deconstructs each potential suspect, consequently uncovering far more secrets than any little rural enclave could possibly contain before reaching his conclusions. However, even with the case closed, his actions remain at odds with your run-of-the-mill copper, and there’s one last twist still in store…

Cool, surreal and challengingly psychedelic, the plot is realised with sleek and understated panache; mixing the welcoming warmth and idiosyncratic style of Ditko’s figurework and facial expressions with the glossily sleek glamour and factual solidity of Wood. This book is a delicious treat for the eyes and a therapeutic exercise for the mind…

Supplemented by Stephen R. Bissette’s incisive and expansive Afterword ‘A Man, A Boat, A Bay, A Bite, A Beer Can…’ offering historical context and artistic commentary, this is a magnificent lost gem, rightly restored to its place in the history of our art form, but it’s also a beautifully-crafted, intellectually challenging Bloody Good Read.
Go get it.

© 1986, 2016 by The Wetering Family Trust and Paul Kirchner. Afterword © 2016 by Stephen R. Bissette. All rights reserved.

Today in 1936 British licensed strip superstar creator Angus Allan (Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Logan’s Run, Six Million Dollar Man, DangerMouse) was born, and shares his natal day with iconic cartoonist Vaughn Bodé (Cheech Wizard, Cobalt-60, Deadbone) in 1941.

In 1939 this day DC Thomson’s landmark but luckless UK weekly The Magic Comic launched, as did Frédéric Othon Théodore “Fred” Aristidès’ strip Philémon in Pilote in 1965 and Go Nagai’s manga thriller Violence Jack in 1973.

We lost two giants of all ages cartooning on this date: Mickey Mouse pathfinder Floyd Gottfredson in 1986 and the wonderfully inventive, brilliant talented and kind John Ryan (Captain Pugwash, Harris Tweed, Mary, Mungo and Midge, Crockle, Sir Prancelot) in 2009.

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Tiny Titans volume 4: The First Rule of Pet Club…


By Art Baltazar & Franco with Geoff Johns & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2892-7 (TPB), 978-1-4012-4528-3 (Digital edition)

DC’s Cartoon Network imprint was a potent and fun-filled bastion of children’s comics in America and consolidated the link between TV and 2D jollies and thrills with stunning interpretations of television landmarks like Ben 10, Scooby Doo, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory and others. The comics line also generated truly exceptional material based on screen iterations of their proprietary characters such as Teen Titans Go!, Legion of Super Heroes, Batman: Brave and the Bold and Krypto the Super Dog as well as original material like Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam!, which were merely indistinguishable in tone and content.

Arguably the imprint’s finest release was a series ostensibly aimed at early readers but which quickly became a firm favourite of older fans – and a multi-award winner too. Superbly mirroring the magical wonderland inside a child’s head where everything is happily mixed up together, Tiny Titans became a sublime nostalgia-weaponised antidote to continuity cops and slavish fan-boy quibbling by reducing the vast cast of successive Teen Titans animated series, the greater boutique of mainstream comic books and, eventually, DC’s entire Universe to little kids and their parents/guardians in the wholesome kindergarten environment of Sidekick City Elementary School – a scenario spring-loaded with in-jokes, sight-gags and beloved yet gently mocked paraphernalia of generations of strip readers and telly-watchers…

Art Baltazar and co-creator Franco (Aureliani) mastered a witty, bemusingly charming style of storytelling that just happily rolls along, with assorted characters getting by, trying to make sense of the great big world and just coincidentally having “Adventures in Awesomeness”. The method generally involves stringing together smaller incidents and moments into an overall themed portmanteau tale and it works astoundingly well. Rounding up issues #19-25 and spanning cover-dates October 2009 – April 2010 of the magically madcap, infinitely addictive all-ages mini-masterpiece, this fourth volume begins on a romantic note by looking at the kids ‘Deep in Like’.

After a handy and as-standard identifying roll-call page, ‘Imagine Me and You…’ finds scary blob Plasmus and tiny winged Bumblebee brightening up each other’s drab day, before a similar cupid moment affects The Brain and best-est pal M’sieu Mallah, even as diligent overachiever Robin (accompanied by faithful Bat-hound Ace) finds his earnest attempts to finish his homework disturbed by a succession of pesky young ladies including Starfire, Batgirl & Duella all caught up in a ‘Like Triangle’. ‘Dates’ then sees Bumblebee & Plasmus inadvertently causing chaos during an afternoon movie monster mash – and even in the ‘Intermission’ – after which a sly sight gag for us oldies highlights the company’s many Wonder Girls in ‘Jump Rope’.

DC’s hallowed anthropoid obsession is highlighted in ‘New Recruits’ when Beast Boy chairs a meeting of the Titans Ape Club before regular feature The Kroc Files depicts ultimate butler Alfred, roguish reptilian star Kroc and Plasmus each demonstrating ‘How to Enjoy a Lollipop’ in their own signature manner. The issue closes with a word puzzle whilst the next promises to disclose The Hole Truth about Raven: beginning with a daybreak disaster at ‘Home with the Trigons’. Raven’s dad is an antlered, crimson transdimensional devil-lord as well as a teacher at Sidekick Elementary, so when he oversleeps, his sorceress scion gets him to work on time by simply opening a few wormholes. Of course, leaving those dimensional doors around is just asking for trouble…

Meanwhile, it’s washday at Wayne Manor, but Alfred won’t let Robin, Beast Boy or Aqualad go down ‘To the Batcave’. Sadly, even the dapper domestic can’t withstand united pester-power and eventually gives in… and learns to regret it. Following a perplexing maze game-page, the All Pet Club Issue! launches as Starfire and mean sister Blackfire write home for their beloved critters Silky & Poopu, so they can go to the oh-so-secret social event, whilst can-do kid Cyborg actually builds himself a brace of chrome companions in ‘Pet-Tronics’…

With ‘Club Hoppin’, the entire school gathers with their accommodatingly and uniquely compatible pets to interview potential new members – specifically tongue-tied-&-thunderstruck Captain Marvel Junior and his fuzzy pal Hoppy, the Marvel Bunny. With so many members, the club must find roomier quarters, leading to a painful tryst for Beast Boy and Terra in ‘Meanwhile, on the Moon…’

There’s a brilliant vacuum-packed bonus pin-up of the Tiny Titans in space by Franco before ‘Hot Dogs, Titans, & Stretchy Guys!’ presents the kids back on solid ground and wrapped up with the DCU’s many flexible fellows as ‘Offspring into Action’ introduces Plastic Man’s excitably boisterous bonny boy. Then, ‘Just Playing and Bouncing’ sees Bumblebee spend some time with the diminutive Atoms Family but lose control of their Teeny-Weeny, Super Duper Bouncy Ball and accidentally get Plastic Man, Offspring, Elongated Man and Elastic Lad all wound up, before helplessly watching it bowl over Principal Slade and Coach Lobo in ‘Coffee Dog Latte’.

Thankfully, Robin has exactly the right gimmick in his utility belt to set things straight, but can’t stay long as he’s en route to his Bird Scouts meeting where potential new members Hot Spot and Flamebird are trying out for Hawk, Dove, Raven & Talon. Distressingly, when shiny Golden Eagle turns up, the girls all want to make him the new leader…

The semi-regular ‘Epilogue’ page often supplies one more punch-line to cap each themed issue and this one leads directly into a convoluted and confounding Elastic Four pin-up/cover which in turn precedes a spookily uproarious tale of Bats, Bunnies, and Penguins in the Batcave! Oh My!...

It all begins in ‘Ice to Meet Ya!’ when Wayne Manor’s extraordinarily if not excessively large penguin population get into a turf war with the house rabbits, displacing the Batcave’s regular inhabitants in ‘Driving Me Batty’. The conflict escalates in ‘All in the Batman Family’ before Robin gets a rather stern admonition from his senior partner to put things right… or else.

Happily, ever-so-cute & capable Batgirl is willing to lend a hand. Unfortunately, so too are the kids she’s baby-sitting (Tim & Jason: you’ll either get that or you won’t, bat-fans) and impishly infuriating Batmite. With even Batcow helping out, things soon start calming down, but ‘Meanwhile, at the Titans’ Treehouse…’ not all of the fugitive Bat-bats have heard the good news…

Once your ribs have stopped hurting you can then enjoy a Tiny Titans Aw Yeah Pin-up from Franco before ‘The All Small Issue!’ opens with assorted big kids accidentally drinking ‘Milk! Milk!’ from the Atoms’ fridge and shrinking away to nearly nothing. Good thing the Atomic nippers think to call their dad, who’s with fellow professional dwindlers Ant, Molecule and substitute Atoms Adam & Ryan (another in-continuity howler targeting old fogey fans) for a Team Nucleus meeting…

That compressive cow-juice causes more trouble in the ‘Epilogue’ before a Blue Beetle puzzle clears the mind in advance of an outrageous ending as ‘Superboy Returns!’ in a fairly cosmic crossover – and requiring some additional scripting by Geoff Johns.

When Conner Kent shows up, all the girls are really impressed and distracted, whilst – across town – Speedy is trading a lot of junk he shouldn’t be touching to Mr. Johns’ Sidekick City Pawn Shop and Bubblegum Emporium in ‘Brightest Day in the Afternoon!’ When Starfire & Stargirl then buy the seven different coloured “mood rings” from the shop, they and BFFs Duella, Batgirl, Wonder Girl, Terra and Shelly, are turned into Green, Red, Yellow, Orange, Blue, Violet and Indigo Lanterns! Soon, the Tiny Titans are up in the air again and annoying The Guardians of the Universe and their super-serious Green Lantern Corps.

It all ends well, though, in an Emerald ‘Epilogue’ and a lavish pin-up of a posse of pistachio-painted interplanetary peacekeepers…

Despite being ostensibly aimed at super-juniors and TV kids, these wonderful, wacky yarns – which marvellously marry the heart and spirit of such classic strips as Peanuts, The Perishers or Calvin and Hobbes with something uniquely mired and marinated in pure comic-bookery – are deliciously hilarious tales no self-respecting or self-indulging joy-lover should miss: accessible, entertaining, and wickedly intoxicating. Go mellow out with some kids’ stuff, now, okay? Why should they have all the fun?
© 2009, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1948 cartoon gadfly Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury) was born, followed in 1950 by scripter and gamed developer Bill Kunkel (Doorway to Nightmare, Vigilante, Marvel Team-Up, Richie Rich). In 1942, Italian artist Giove Toppi died. He was the first cartoonist to draw Mickey Mouse in comics.

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Mighty Love


By Howard Chaykin, with Don Cameron, Kurt Hathaway & Dave Stewart (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-930-0 (HB) 978-1-56389-931-7 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times and deliberately employed to provoke and annoy you.

Don’t let the outfits fool you: it’s not just another kinky love story…

Oddly released under the DC rather than Vertigo imprint when it debuted in 2003, this is a story about crime in the big city and of the compromises individuals must make to achieve their private and personal purposes.

Delaney Pope is a rough, tough cop on a completely corrupt force who is fed up with seeing the scum she arrests get away with murder – and far worse. Lincoln Reinhardt is a slick, liberal defense attorney constantly thwarting the frames and set-ups of those cops. He constantly clashes with Pope in the course of his job. They both loathe each other with a passion.

Unbeknownst to either they both assuage their workday frustrations by putting on masks and costumes to beat the crap out of criminals (with or without badges) in the commission of their crimes on the streets and in the backrooms… an arena where there are no doubts about guilt, innocence or mitigations.

The thrill of these nocturnal forays inevitably lead to a meeting of “Skylark” and “Iron Angel”, and a tenuous, teasing (if not actually titillating) team-up when separate cases bring them together against the city’s first criminal mastermind. Not knowing each other’s real identity, but afraid to unmask and lose that so-tantalising tension, the pair must decide what’s most important, the actual or the promised…

This delightfully fizzy adult romp prods all the fetishistic trappings of superhero storytelling as the brassy and whimsical writer/artist (with computer effects by Don Cameron, lettering by Kurt Hathaway and colours from Dave Stewart) blends classic romcom movie riffs as seen in The Shop Around the Corner, The Thin Man, Pat and Mike and even Adam’s Rib with a welter of crime caper movies to produce a costume drama in the unmistakable Chaykin manner.

Presumably a pilot for an unrealized longer series, Mighty Love was a fast & stylish, done-in-one oddity that reads well and looks great – so if all you want is a good time; Baby, look no further, and seek this out…
© 2003 Howard Chaykin, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Born today: long serving Golden Age artist/strip creator John Lehti (Crimson Avenger, Cotton Carver, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Tales of the Great Book, Tommy of the Big Top, Big Town, Lassie, Tom Corbet, Space Cadet, Sgt. Rock, The Losers) in 1912; Al Bryant (Gale Allen, Shark Brodie, Military Comics, Feature Comics) in 1917; multi-talented artist/editor/publisher Dick Giordano (Sarge Steel, Judomaster, Batman, Human Target, Elongated Man, Modesty Blaise, countless features at Warren, Valiant, DC & Marvel) in 1932 and, in 1990 Brazilian artist Bilquis Evely (Luluzinha Teen e Sua Turma, Doc Savage, Shaft, Wonder Woman, The Dreaming, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow).

On this date in 1975, Walt Kelly’s astounding strip Pogo published its last episode, and in 1995 writer/editor/animator George Caragonne (The Legend of Zelda, Masters of the Universe, Planet Terry, Star Brand, Penthouse Comix) died today.

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Drought Chic – a Dry Analysis of the Water Shortage


By Shary Flenniken (Shary Flenniken)
No ISBN: (Digest PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

People – mostly climate-denying morons and stupid orange presidents – keep going on about the heatwave of 1976 like it was a biblical event. It WAS NOT as bad what we are enduring right now. Take it from someone who was there – and this time I don’t just mean me…

As I’m feeling nostalgic, thirsty, overheated and deeply in need of a well-limned laugh all at once, here’s an intriguing and enchanting self-published gem from 1977 whose theme and subject matter seems to be coming back into vogue as the days seep by…

Do you remember that sweet pretty girl you admired and daydreamed about from afar? All glowing soft focus summer afternoons and sherbet refreshers, scents of new-mown hay, tinkly bells and soaring strings? And after a lifetime you found the courage to talk to her and she swore like a trooper, cackled like a loon, pulled your hair, mocked your clothes and was all loud and boisterous and not at all serious and girly and your heart broke just a little?

Shary Flenniken’s sense of humour is like that. With her affable, underplayed, deceptively simple line drawing style (so devastating effective in the glorious Girl and her Talking Dog strip Trots and Bonnie) everything looks clean and sugary and chocolate-coated, but then you realise there’s a devastatingly sharp mind and a tungsten-tipped razor-edged scalpel sense of humour at play as you’re hit with a really spiky and heavy giant pink boxing glove…

Flenniken is a scripter/artist/editor/illustrator/screenwriter of enormous talent who contributed to and edited the funniest years of National Lampoon, has published her own books – such as the slim gem under review today – and illustrated some of the funniest books even written by other people, with titles like When a Man Loves a Walnut, Blood-Lust Chickens & Renegade Sheep and Nice Guys Sleep Alone.

She started out as an underground cartoonist in 1971 with the fabulously notorious Air Pirates Collective (the other bold cartoonists taking on Disney whilst preserving the classic heritage of past cartoon masters waving the flag for free speech and the Right to Parody and Satirise at Will being Bobby London, Dan O’Neill, Gary Hallgren and Ted Richards).

Her own drawing style is often likened to pioneering strip artists Clare Briggs (When a Feller Needs a Friend!!, Danny Dreamer, The Days of Real Sport, Mr. and Mrs, Real Folks at Home, Someone’s Always Taking the Joy Out of Life) and laconically mordant Harold Tucker Webster (Our Boyhood Ambitions, How to Torture Your Wife, Life’s Darkest Moment, How to Torture Your Husband and the legendary Caspar Milquetoast/The Timid Soul). That was all best viewed in the long-running (1971-1990) and aforementioned sardonic comedy masterpiece Trots and Bonnie which I simply must get around to one day…

In recent years Flenniken has edited Seattle Laughs: Comic Stories about Seattle, worked for DC’s Paradox Press and Mad, freelanced in Premiere, Details and The American Lawyer, all whilst winning critical acclaim for her adaptations of the works of Mark Twain, O. Henry and others.

She self-published Drought Chic in 1977, and this tiny tidal wave of crafty cartoons and satisfyingly salty asides resulted from close observation and experience of the global heat-wave (are you able to remember that Long Hot Summer of Punk in the UK?) and perennial water paucity of America’s West Coast. Here she wryly – I so want to say “dryly” – extrapolated on the stupidly standard sage advice dashed out by those in power as the USA all-too briefly saw the (fashionably faddy) sense of dabbling with water discipline… or indeed restraint of any kind.

Suggestions to the trendsetters of society riffed-on here include “share baths and showers”, “don’t flush toilets”, “import icebergs”, “replant your lawn with cactus” and “drink something else”: directives I’m fairly sure we’ll all be considering again in the days and years ahead.

Of course here in Britain we have already taken the most effective step to conserve water consumption by selling off the utility, privatising a natural resource and watching it being run down whilst being priced out of the reach of ordinary folk – and look how well that all worked out…

Still, if you’re saving a little time and money as a new member of the Great Unwashed at least you can spend your grubby free hours seeking out this wry, dry and slyly sophisticated soupcon of delightful disinformation. It also available online for free if you can still work a dry dusty keyboard and the lack of liquids hasn’t brought down all the servers. Who knew H2O was so crucial to so many types of farming?
© 1977 Shary Flenniken. All rights reserved.

Today in 1934 Polish comics legend Janusz Christa (Kajtek i Koko, Kajko i Kokosz) was born, as was writer/publisher Richard Pini (Elfquest, WaRP Graphics) in 1950 and the indescribable Bob Burder (Flaming Carrot Comics, Gumby’s Summer Fun Special, Mystery Men) in 1952, a birthday shared with comic creator Ron Fontes (Atalanta, The Legendary Underdogs, Captured by Pirates). In 1959 this date illustrator Luke McDonnell (Justice League of America, Iron Man, Suicide Squad, Dreadstar, The Phantom) arrived with cartoonist Terry LaBan (Unsupervised Existence, Cud, Edge City) coming along in 1961; writer Devin Grayson (Black Widow, Batman, The Titans, User) in 1970 and artist Jamal Igle (Supergirl, Firestorm, The Wrong Earth) in 1972.

In 2005 comics giant Jim Aparo (The Phantom, Nightshade, Phantom Stranger, The Spectre, Aquaman, Batman, The Outsiders) died, followed two years later by Argentinean comics creator Roberto “El Negro Fontanarrosa” Fontanarrosa (Inodoro Pereyra, Boogie – el aceitoso, Los Clásicos según Fontanarrosa).

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Pride & Joy


By Garth Ennis & John Higgins, lettered by Annie Halfacree (Vertigo/Image)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-803-7 ( 2004 Vertigo TPB), 978-1-4012-0190-6 (2016 Image TPB/ Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Garth Ennis has a well-deserved reputation for shocking, moving and wickedly funny storytelling, and is accomplished in blending genres for maximum effect, as his successes with The Boys, Battlefields, Ghost Rider, The Punisher, foundational runs on Preacher and Hellblazer, impious seminal shocker True Faith and a dozen other tales can attest.

One of his least regarded or remembered – in my opinion unjustly so – is this ferocious family saga of a painfully mundane domestic world turned upside down by an unredeemed past. It is a story of pedestrianly ordinary folk with none of the baroque or flamboyant characters that populate regular fiction…

There’s this guy called Jimmy Kavanagh. His wife is long-dead and son Patrick is at that revolting sulky teen age, but at least his little daughter Rachel is still the most beautiful girl in the whole world. Life is hard: his own dad, a war-hero, has just passed on, but the family are doing okay…
That all changes in a moment after Jimmy’s stupid past resurfaces. Back in 1972 he and a couple of his idiot pals reckoned they were going to be big-time hoods when they agreed to rip-off a gang boss. The gig had been planned by the boss’ own bodyguard, Stein, who promised them a million dollars…

Unfortunately for everybody but Jimmy, his pals were real shmucks, and ballsed up the caper. Cops came, busted Stein before he could kill them all and took him away for twenty-to-life. Scared straight by the experience, Jimmy got on with his life… until now. One night he gets a call and his world starts to implode. Coming home to finds the babysitter gutted like a fish. Stein is out and he wants revenge…

Gathering his kids and linking up with his old “colleagues” they go on the run together, but the hunter can’t be shaken and innocent people keep dying. Unable to bond with his son during their entire life together Jimmy finally, tragically connects with Patrick as the sorry saga comes to a small and dirty close…
With chilling echoes of Cape Fear (the 1962 Gregory Peck/Robert Mitchum release) this tale examines how ordinary people cope with ordinary evil: a cheap thug with a knife is just as deadly as a horde of vampires. You and yours can only die once – painfully, horribly; but just once. Pride & Joy is a tale about dreams and hopes and heritage, showing how mediocre people cope, illustrated with perfect subtle understatement by John Higgins. Nothing about this story is big or bold or bombastic: but it could really happen. It’s that scary…
© 1997, 2004 Garth Ennis and John Higgins. All Rights Reserved.

Born today in 1926 Mexican writer Yolanda Vargas Dulché de la Parra (Memín Pinguín), sharing the day with artist Phil Noto (Gen13, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Jonah Hex. Green Lantern, Indiana Jones, Captain America) in 1971 and writer/musician/attorney Charles Soule (Daredevil, Letter 44, Swamp Thing, Death of Wolverine) in 1974.

This day in 1975 we lost revolutionary cartoonist Vaughn Bodé (Cheech Wizard, Cobalt-60, Deadbone,) and in 1990 French auteur Yves Chaland (Adventures of Freddy Lombard, Bob Fish, Adolphus Claar, Retro-Spirou).

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Benny Breakiron volume 2: Madame Adolphine


By Peyo, with backgrounds by Will, translated by Joe Johnson (Papercutz/NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-59707-436-0 (HB Album/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

In anticipation of 2028’s proposed CG animation version (which cannot possibly match the style and charm of these scribbled pages!) here’s a quick look back at how the Europeans handled superheroes and kids in crisis from a master of our artform…

Pierre Culliford was born in Belgium in 1928 to a family of British origin living in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels. An admirer of the works of Hergé and US comics licensed to Le Journal de Mickey, Robinson and Hurrah!, he refined his artistic skills, and developed his storytelling abilities but the war and family bereavement forced him to forgo further education and find work. After time toiling as a cinema projectionist, in 1945 Culliford joined C.B.A. animation studios, where he met André Franquin, Morris & Eddy Paape. When the studio closed, he briefly studied at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts before moving full-time into graphic advertising. In his spare time, he began submitting comic strips to the burgeoning flock of post-war comics publishers.

His first sale came in April 1946: Pied-Tendre, a tale of American Indians in Riquet, the comics supplement to the daily L’Occident newspaper. Further sales to other venues followed and in 1952 his knight Johan found a permanent spot in Le Journal de Spirou. Retitled Johan et Pirlout, the strip prospered and in 1958 introduced a strange bunch of blue woodland gnomes called Les Schtroumpfs. Culliford – who now used the nom de plume Peyo – would turn those adorable little mites (known to us and most of the world as The Smurfs) into an all-encompassing global empire, but before being sucked onto that relentless treadmill, he still found time to create a few other noteworthy strips such as the titanic tyke on view here today.

In 1960 Benoît Brisefer – AKA Benedict Ironbreaker or in Dutch Steven Sterk – debuted in Le Journal de Spirou #1183 (December 1960). With a few slyly added tips of the hat to Siegel & Shuster’s Superman, the wryly bucolic adventures celebrated a small town small boy with superhuman strength living in a generally quiet and unassuming little Belgian city.

Quiet, well-mannered, gentle and a bit lonely, Benny just happens to be the mightiest boy on Earth: able to crush steel or stone in his tiny hands, leap vast distances and run faster than a racing car. He is also pretty much immune to all physical harm, but his fatal, somewhat ubiquitous weakness is that all his strength deserts him whenever he catches a cold…

Benny never tries to conceal his abilities but somehow no adults ever catch on. They generally think he’s telling fibs or boasting, and whenever he tries to prove he can bend steel in his hands, the unlucky lad gets another dose of the galloping sniffles…

Most kids avoid him. It’s hard to make friends or play games when a minor kick can pop a football like a balloon and a shrug can topple trees.

Well-past-it Brits of my age and vintage might remember the character from weekly comics in the 1960’s. As Tammy Tuff – The Strongest Boy on Earth, and later as Benny Breakiron and Steven Strong, our beret-wearing blockbuster appeared in Giggle and other periodicals from 1967 onwards.

With Peyo’s little blue cash-cows taking up ever larger amounts of his concentration and time, other members of his studio assumed greater responsibilities for Benoît as years passed. Willy “Will” Maltaite, Gos, Yvan Delporte, Françoise Walthéry and Albert Blesteau all pitched in. and Jean Roba created many eye-catching Le Journal de Spirou covers, but by 1978 the demands of the Smurfs were all-consuming and all the studio’s other strips were retired.

You can’t keep a good super-junior down, though, and after Peyo’s death in 1992, his son Thierry Culliford and cartoonist Pascal Garray revived the strip, adding six more volumes to the eight generated by Peyo and his team between 1960 and 1978. Thanks to the efforts of US publisher Papercutz, the first four of those gloriously genteel and outrageously engaging power fantasies are still available to English-language readers again – both as robust full-colour hardbacks and as all-purpose eBooks – and this second translated exploit begins in the sedate city of Vivejoie-la-Grande, where the kid goes about his rather solitary life, doing good deeds in secret and being as good a boy as he can…

After another day of being shunned by everyone around, disconsolate Benny heads for the park and is befriended by a sweet old lady named Adolphine. No respecter of advanced age or graceful retirement, the old dear romps boisterously and disgracefully with the lad – to the disgust of the other park patrons. Eventually, Benny escorts her to his home where she has a strange fit and collapses.
When even a doctor refuses to help, Benny finds a phone number in her bag and acts as any good boy should. Soon a rather strange gentleman comes to collect her, but he’s none too gentle in his behaviour and throws the old lady in the boot of his car! Far more distressingly, when Benny sees her in the street next day, Madame Adolphine says she has never met him before!

Baffled but unwilling to let the matter go, Benny tracks her down to a toyshop run by seedy inventor Serge Vladlavodka and finds her standing over the tinkerer’s unconscious body with a massive mallet in her hand. Moreover, Madame’s manner is brusque and almost callous and the belligerent biddy bustles off whilst Benny is trying to revive her prone victim. When Serge at last recovers, he also rushes away, fearing the harm she might cause. Accompanying him, Benny learns a startling secret…

There are two Adolphines – and one is indeed a sweet old lady. The other is an increasingly unstable, aggressive and just plain mean robot doppelganger who soon begins robbing banks and terrorising the public, so guess which one the police subsequently arrest?

As indignant Benny singlehandedly busts the organic pensioner out of prison, amok automaton Adolphine recruits a gang of nasty professional thugs and embarks on a crime spree the cops are utterly helpless to handle. Good thing Benny is made of sterner stuff…

This superbly surreal spoof has delicious echoes of classic Ealing Comedies like The Ladykillers or The Lavender Hill Mob as it follows the little wonder boy’s resolute, dynamic and spectacular campaign to save his friend: blending deft wit with bombastic and hilarious slapstick. Madame Adolphine is a fabulously winning fantasy about childhood validation and agency, offering a distinctly Old-World spin to the concept of superheroes and providing a wealth of action, thrills and chortles for lovers of incredible adventure and comics excellence.
© Peyo ™ & ©2013 – licensed through Lafig Belgium. English translation © 2013 by Papercutz. All rights reserved.

Today in 1871 pioneering cartoonist Lyonel Feininger (The Kin-der-Kids) was born, followed in 1913 by Golden Age creator Marc Swayze (Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel, The Phantom Eagle, Flyin’ Jenny) and in 1917, animator-turned-cartoonist Gustavo “Gus” Arriola (Krazy Kat, Tom and Jerry, Gordo). In 1932 Argentinian satirist & cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón AKA “Quino” (Mafalda) was born, with master raconteur Hermann Huppen (Jeremiah, Les Tours de Bois-Maury, Bernard Prince, Comanche) arriving in 1938, and comic book artist/animator Jimmy Janes (Legion of Super-Heroes, Moon Knight, Xanadu) in 1947; writer/editor/comics historian Mike Tiefenbacher in 1952; writer J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Rising Stars, Superman: Earth One, Captain America) in 1954; all-rounder Richard Moore (Boneyard, Déjà Vu, Far West) in 1966; letterer Liz Agraphiotis in 1970; illustrator Pete Woods (Archie, Deadpool, Superman, Harley Quinn) in 1971 and writer Brian K. Vaughan (Pride of Baghdad, Batman, X-Men, Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Runaways, Saga, Paper Girls) in 1976.

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Captain America: Hail Hydra!


By Jonathan Maberry, Sergio Cariello, Tom Scioli, Phil Winslade, Kyle Hotz & Graham Nolan, Chris Sotomayor, Bill Crabtree, Chris Chuckry, Dan Brown, Ian Hannin & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: ?978-0-7851-5127-2 (TPB) ?978-1-30236-799-2 (Digital Edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Everything changed for a little company called Marvel when, in issue #4 of The Avengers, the assembled heroes found the body of US Army Private Steve Rogers floating in a block of ice and consequently resurrected World War II hero Captain America. With this act bridging the years to Timely/Atlas Comics (which had in fact begun with the revival of Sub-Mariner in Fantastic Four #4), Marvel instantly acquired a comforting longevity and potential-packed pre-history: lending an enticing sense of mythic continuance to the fledgling company that instantly gave it the same cachet and enduring grandeur of market leader National/DC.

In 2010, after years of conflicting continuity and with a movie in the offing, Marvel updated and sought to rationalise those pivotal events and early future-shocked days in our contemporary world with stunning re-interpretation Captain America: Man Out of Time before repeating the operation with another generational miniseries: this time scripted by Jonathan Maberry tracing the returned Sentinel of Liberty as he fought an extended campaign against a fearsome and undying foe that had begun even before he knew of his enemy’s existence.

Captain America: Hail Hydra! focuses on five crucial skirmishes fought over the Red, White and true Blue hero’s long years of valiant service, wherein he continually – albeit periodically – clashed with an organisation of insidious evil and astounding ambition. Each issue was dutifully depicted by a different artist in a knowing pastiche of the relevant era.

Illustrated by Sergio Cariello and colourist Chris Sotomayor, the action opens in 1944 as Captain America and youthful partner Bucky work behind enemy lines, helping German anti-Nazi freedom fighter Trude Lohn smash a plot by the baroquely bonkers, certifiably mad Doctor Geist, who has discovered how to reanimate the dead. During the apocalyptic struggle against the resurrected corpses of Das Aufertehungs Korps, Cap is injected with Geist’s unholy Lazarus serum and although the triumphant trio succeeded in depriving Hitler of an undead army, they have no idea of the sinister scientist’s greater scheme, the ancient society he actually toils for or what effect his devil drugs will have on America’s greatest warrior…

Tom Scioli pictured the second instalment in vivid tribute to Jack Kirby, wherein more historical flashback hints into the history of the cult that would become Hydra are interspersed with Cap’s first days as an Avenger following his half-century enforced hibernation. After surprisingly reuniting with now geriatric Trude, he and his new comrades clash with Nazi war criminal Baron Strucker and Geist’s unliving army, only to be thoroughly overmatched and outmanoeuvred. The deranged doctor seemed more interested in gathering blood samples from Cap and Thor than winning the battle he had instigated…

A few years later (just after modern day Captain America Sam Wilson got his first flying outfit and was learning to prowl the skies, if you’re counting) the plan becomes clearer when the Sentinel of Liberty, partner in crime-fighting The Falcon, and African Avenger Black Panther face an army of zombies seeking to steal the fabled Elixir of Life from hidden Wakandan repository of knowledge the Grotto of Solomon. Lavishly rendered by Phil Winslade, with colours from Chris Chuckry & Dan Brown, the spectacular clash is also lightly dusted with further glimpses of the order’s historic attempts to gather arcane knowledge and artefacts pertaining to their mysterious goal.

That is ultimately revealed to be the conquest of death and ascension to godhood via their Infinitas Agenda – and the history of Spanish alchemist Dr Garibaldi, who would shepherd the project over hundreds of years…

For a brief period the US government replaced the Star-Spangled Avenger with a less single-minded and independent agent compelling Steve Rogers to create the identity of “The Captain”. Here Kyle Hotz & Dan Brown delineate an adventure from those turbulent times as the unencumbered hero tackled Geist’s latest monstrosity beside Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. to get one step ahead of Hydra. However, after thwarting a terrifying attack on the heart and soul of America, Rogers is forced to consider not only what Geist is truly after but also what his devilish serum might have made of Captain America that fateful night back in 1944…

Graham Nolan and colourist Ian Hannin close the macabre saga in captivating style as Rogers, now Director of the Avengers, and original partner Bucky Barnes (formerly Soviet assassin Winter Soldier and the current Captain America) enlist a garrison of guest-stars as they home in on Strucker and Geist just as their incredible seven-thousand year scheme reaches its shocking culmination. Even the World’s Mightiest Heroes are hard-pressed to overcome the incredible beings Hydra has at long last birthed…

This extended yarn does have some niggling plot flaws but nothing so flagrant that it disrupts the overall flow of action and delicious flavour of nostalgia; so unless you’re a dedicated, nit-picking devotee the striking art and rollicking rollercoaster thrills and chills should carry the day nicely, providing a solid dose of immortal, enticing entertainment

Fast-paced, epic in scope and rocketing from one full-on spectacle to the next, via ingenious but faithful infilling of established canon, makes Captain America: Hail Hydra! a striking saga that will make many fresh fans for Marvel’s eternally evergreen old soldier.
© 2011 Marvel Entertainment LCC and its subsidiaries. All rights reserved.

Today in 1890 pioneering strip cartoonist Carl Ed (Harold Teen) was born, sharing the day with Canadian author & illustrator Russ Jones (founding editor and creator of Creepy magazine) in 1942 and cartoonist, fandom founder Steve Stiles in 1943.

The day also saw the loss of two major talents – Lucky Luke creator Morris (Maurice de Bévère) in 2001 and UK adaptions all-star Angus Allan (Stingray, Thunderbirds, Garth, DangerMouse, The Six Million Dollar Man, Logan’s Run, Charlie’s Angels) in 2007.