By Steve Parkhouse, David Lloyd & John Bolton (Marvel)
ISBN13: 978-1-85400-557-3
In the good old days comic stories were pithy and punchy, (like the all-but-dead and much-missed prose short-story) relying on mood and action rather than excessive exposition and breast-beating pseudo-poetry to enthral their readers. A perfect example would be the three page instalments of pulp-noir magic created by Steve Parkhouse and David Lloyd for the weekly Hulk comic produced by Marvel UK in 1979.
Gathered in this volume and coloured (the originals were captivating in stark, moody black and white) they outline the earliest adventures of Night Raven, a helmeted, trench-coating wearing vigilante who stalked the grimy streets and alleys of Prohibition-era America dealing out fearsome personal justice to a succession of low-life hoods and thugs. Lloyd masterfully illustrated Night-Time in the City, Blind Justice, Gang Rule, In the Frame, The Assassin and Scoop before leaving the strip, but his replacement was another British star on the rise.
The Dragon is an eerie drama of the mythic Chinese Tongs that resonates with Parkhouse’s long fascination with all subjects Oriental, powerfully realised by John Bolton, in the days just before he made it big with King Kull, Marada the She-Wolf and Classic X-Men.
Clean, simple and irresistibly compelling these action vignettes serve to show how far we’ve come since the 1970’s, and sadly just how much we’ve lost in telling comic stories. But at least we can still see how it should be done…
©1979, 1990, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.