Posts

Posted on

Studs Terkel’s Working: a graphic adaptation


By Harvey Pekar, Pablo G. Callejo, Gary Dumm, Danny Fingeroth, Peter Gullerud, Bob Hall, Ryan Inzana, Sabrina Jones, Peter Kuper, Terry LaBan, Dylan A.T. Miner, Pat Moriarity, Emily Nemens, Joan Reilly, Sharon Rudahl, Nick Thorkelson, Anne Timmons, Lance Tooks & various, edited by Paul Buhle (The New Press)

ISBN: 978-1-59558-321-5 (TPB, 978-1-59558-515-8 (Digital edition)

Further pushing the boundaries and stoking the social conscience of American comics, the truly unique Harvey Pekar, along with a coterie of his best artistic collaborators, once adapted a landmark book by an immense talent and irreplaceable social commentator.

Son of a Jewish tailor, Louis Terkel was born in New York on May 16th 1912. When he was 8 years old, the family (father Samuel, mother Anna and older brothers Ben & Meyer) moved to Chicago where they ran a rooming house. The later writer “Studs” cited this crossroads of society as the root of his interest in and understanding of broad humanity. He studied law, married and tried many professions including hotel concierge, actor, and even writer; working with the Depression-era Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers Project before finding a true home in broadcast radio – everything from news and sports announcing, soap opera, voiceovers, disc-jockeying, advertising and scripting.

In 1952, he converted his semi-improvisational, picaresque television-drama Studs’ Place into a 5-days-a-week, hour-long radio chat show entitled The Studs Terkel Program, where he interviewed the Great and the Good and every shade of person in-between for 45 unbroken years. In 1956 he published his first book Giants of Jazz, and followed it with many other volumes of non-fiction, all exploring the historical role of the common man, and exploring the social condition and context of the nation. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two. Studs Terkel died on Halloween, 2008, due to complications from a fall.

He was probably America’s greatest proponent of Oral History: preserving the lives of ordinary people in their own words, and all compiled to form a human-scaled understanding of the past and present which seemed so much more open and honest than great events starring Great Men, as written down by great – and professional – storytellers.

In 1974 he released the epic Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do to such critical acclaim that it was adapted as a Broadway show in 1978 and a PBS TV show in 1982.

Thus in 2009 that other champion of the “Ordinary Joe” Harvey Pekar – in conjunction with acclaimed social historian and academic Paul Buhle – crafted this compelling and wondrous tome which graphically expanded on the seminal prose work, and will undoubtedly whet readers’ appetites for the rest of the book – and maybe perhaps a few more serious tomes. It’s certainly what our industry and art-form for too long (AND STILL) considered frivolous, juvenile and crassly commercial could do with…

Thanks to the startlingly varied artistic approaches and skills of fellow adaptors Pablo G. Callejo, Gary Dumm, Danny Fingeroth, Peter Gullerud, Bob Hall, Ryan Inzana, Sabrina Jones, Peter Kuper, Terry LaBan, Dylan A.T. Miner, Pat Moriarity, Emily Nemens, Joan Reilly, Sharon Rudahl, Nick Thorkelson, Anne Timmons & Lance Tooks, what could have been a worthy but dull illustration of sparkling interviews with a broad spectrum of ordinary Americans becomes in fact a sparkling visual extravaganza that perfectly marries the text to the icon-ised hopes, joys, regrets and passions of the interviewees.

Sub-divided into the categories Working the Land, Pecking Order, Footwork, In the Spotlight, Behind a Desk, Appearance, Cleaning Up, Second Chance and Looking After Each Other (From Cradle to Grave), these 28 individual stories range from the tragic indifference of The Hooker, the passion of the Union Organizer and the frustration of the migrant Farm Worker to the simple joy and fulfilment of the Mail Carrier and the Baby Nurse… with each tale more moving than the last.

The New Press is a not-for-profit alternative to Corporate publishers, established in 1990 and dedicated to innovation in publishing and the promotion of creative works of educational, cultural and community value, and many of their books have promoted social activism and liberal causes. They’re not in it for the money and you can find out more about them at The New Press.

Then go buy this magnificent piece of narrative art and give them the wherewithal to do something else that’s great to read and a benefit to our art form.
© 2006 Harvey Pekar & Paul Buhle. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Zatanna and the House of Secrets – A Graphic Novel


By Matthew Cody, Yoshi Yoshitani & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-9070-2 (TPB), 978-1-77950-204-9 (Digital edition)

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

In recent years DC broadened its shared superhero universe and amazing character pantheon to encompass Original Graphic Novels featuring its stars in stand-alone adventures for the demographic sadly saddled with the soubriquet “Young Adult”. To date, results have been a bit hit or miss, but when they’re good, they are very good indeed…

An ideal example is this cheery chiller reinterpreting the formative years of DC’s mystic marvel Zatanna and concentrating on her early relationship with her oh-so-mysterious parents…

As I’m sure you already know, Zatanna has been around since the early 1960s, and boasts an impressive heritage going back to the first moments of comic book superheroes. With Julius Schwartz & John Broome, writer extraordinaire Gardner Fox invented the Silver Age of Comic Books and laid the foundations of the entire DC universe. They were also canny innovators, with Fox one of the earliest proponents of extended storylines. These have since become overwhelmingly familiar to us as “braided crossovers”.

A lawyer by trade, Fox began his comics career in the Golden Age on major and minor features, working in every genre and for most companies. One of the B-list strips he scripted was Zatara – a magician-hero in the Mandrake manner and a mystic who had fought evil and astounded audiences in the pages of Action and World’s Finest/World’s Best Comics for over a decade, beginning with the very first issues. Zatara fell from favour as the 1940s ended, fading from memory like so many other outlandish crime-crushers.

In 1956, Schwartz & Co reinvented the superhero genre, reintroducing costumed characters based on the company’s past pantheon. Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman and The Atom were refitted for the sleek, scientific atomic age, and later their legendary predecessors were reincarnated, returning as champions of an alternate Earth.

The experiment became a trend and then inexorable policy, with enduring heroic survivors Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Aquaman & Wonder Woman all retrofitted to match the new world order. The Super Hero was back and the public’s appetite for more seemed inexhaustible…

For their next trick, Fox & Schwartz turned to the vintage magician and presumably judged him wanting. However, rather than condemn him to Earth-Two (where all the original Forties champions were parcelled off for guest-shots), they instead created the first “legacy hero” by having Zatara reported long-missing by a dutiful daughter. She then set out on a far-reaching quest to find him. Zatanna debuted in Hawkman #4 (cover-dated October/November 1964) illustrated by the great Murphy Anderson in a tale entitled ‘The Girl who Split in Two’. From that yarn, she moved on to a string of guest shots, before winning her own occasional series and becoming a mainstay of the Justice League and greater DCU.

Here and now, scripted by children’s author Matthew Cody (Powerless, Super, Villainous) and illustrated by concept artist Yoshi Yoshitani in their debut graphic novel lettered by Ariana Maher, this stylish spooky surprise jiggles and resets continuity so that “Zee” (for Zatanna) is now a vivacious schoolgirl living in a rather foreboding manse with her stage magician dad.

Her mother has been gone for a long time, lost to sickness, but Zatanna and her rabbit Pocus are pretty much happy and normal…

Everything changes one day at school after a pack of bullies are inexplicably transformed during a confrontation. On returning home, the stunned magical lass overhears a charged conversation between her dad and.. Someone… in his workshop. When he is called away, over-inquisitive Zatanna breaks in and discovers evidence that her mother Sindella is still alive…

Angry and betrayed, Zee breaks curfew to attend a school dance and encounters a really weird kid who secretly steals a key from Pocus’ collar. When she finally gets back to their dilapidated domain she finds the house bizarrely altered and the weird kid already there, cowering behind a bossy woman calling herself Witch Queen. When Zatara abruptly confronts them all, his daughter’s life changes forever…

Suddenly catapulted into a world where magic is real and deadly dangerous, the feisty girl learns that her father is a true sorcerer: caretaker of magical preserve The House of Secrets and a vast reservoir of arcane power. Sadly, that cannot save him from the cruel Queen and her son Klarion the Witch Boy, and with his defeat Zatanna is trapped in a dread domicile where all reality is overwhelmed by eldritch chaos. Thankfully, Pocus is now able to talk and explains some facts and rules whilst giving her a crash course in making magic, arming her for a lifechanging duel with cosmic forces and catastrophic showdown with the malefic invaders.

That entails redeeming Klarion, rescuing her dad, defeating the Queen and embracing her destiny, but along with her newfound responsibility for the miraculous House of Secrets comes an incredible unexpected reward…

Bold, beguiling and deliciously uplifting, this magical rite of passage is a slick reinvention of Zatanna’s wondrous worlds and a rousing reminder that there is magic everywhere.
© 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

White Death


By Robbie Morrison & Charlie Adlard (Image Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-632151-42-1 (HB/Digital edition)

More than a century after the conflict ended, the First World War still has a terrifying grip on public consciousness and remains culturally relevant.

For years I’ve been championing Charley’s War; the best story about the Great War ever created, but while I remain convinced of that fact, there are so many (and yet paradoxically still never enough) strong contenders for the title and it’s always worth seeking out fresh viewpoints and visualisations. This particular moody masterpiece originally emerged as kind of transcontinental self-published venture by writer Robbie Morrison (Nikolai Dante; Judge Dredd; Doctor Who; Batman) and ace illustrator Charlie Adlard (Judge Dredd; X Files; Astronauts in Trouble; Batman; The Walking Dead). They initially crafted the international bestseller under the guise of Les Cartoonistes Dangereux in another century – specifically way back in 1998.

It was subsequently rereleased in 2002 by AiT/Planet Lar before becoming a luxurious hardback and digital tome in 2014 under the aegis of Image Comics. It remains a stunning and moving saga of a largely overlooked theatre of that conflict. This edition also offers commentary; biographies; a short vignette created as a prelude to the main story and used as a promotional device in French comics magazine Bo Dois, plus a feature detailing the process from original script to finished art. This last is a particularly fascinating inclusion as illustrator Adlard devised a whole new way of delivering comics narrative for the story…

The tale itself is simple and straightforward: based on truly horrific events during what was known as “the White War” and is fully contextualised in Morrison’s introductory notes.
It’s 1916 and on the Italian Front, the war against the forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (allied with Germany) is as stalled, tedious and horrifically murderous as the trench warfare in France and Belgium, even though it’s being fought across the Alighieri plateau in the mountains of Trentino.

Added to the generally accepted litany of horrors generated by the conflict are paralyzing cold, constant mist, fog and snow and the extreme likelihood of being crushed, broken and smothered once the bright sparks shelling each other realise they can also trigger avalanches just by aiming a little bit higher…

Into this mess trudges new recruit Pietro Aquasanta. He grew up in these mountains, but sees little to engender fond feelings or happy memories. Firstly, even his status and intentions are suspect since he used to soldier for the other side, thanks to the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s conscription policies and the Allies’ habit of taking absolutely anybody – even enemy combatants – who can hold and point a gun.

Secondly, even though he’s now an Italian fighting for his own homeland, most of Aquasanta’s comrades are fools, the generals are callous idiots and his immediate superior – sergeant major Orsini – is a fanatical war-loving bastard who will do anything to keep the killing going. Still and all, even solitary outsiders like Pietro can’t help seeking companionship when life is so visibly brief and death looms over everything like a million-ton white shroud…

And as the campaign progresses the turncoat advances simply by not dying…

Leavened through mordant trench humour (I guess the clue is in the name), peppered with painfully human moments of tragedy or unwavering friendship and capturing the numbing horror of ceaseless struggle against the elements, environment, other humans and one’s own self-destructive demons, White Death is a compelling comics classic to be savoured and shared.
© 2014 Robbie Morrison & Charlie Adlard. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Archie’s Weird Mysteries


By Paul Castiglia, Fernando Ruiz, Rich Koslowski & various (Archie)
ISBN: 978-1-879794-74-0 (TPB), 978-1-619881-92-1 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Family Friendly Seasonal Fear Fest… 8/10

MLJ were a publisher who almost immediately jumped on the “costumed mystery-man” bandwagon following the debut of Superman. They began their own small but inspirational pantheon of gaudy crusaders in November 1939, starting in Blue Ribbon Comics and following up with Top-Notch and Pep Comics. The content was a standard blend of masked heroes, two-fisted adventure strips, prose pieces and gag panels.

A few years later, Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater (hence MLJ) spotted a gap in their blossoming market. At the end of 1941 (and cover-dated December) the costumed heroes and two-fisted adventure strips were gradually nudged aside by a far less imposing paragon: an “average teen” enjoying ordinary adventures just like the readers, but with the laughs, good times, romance and slapstick emphasised.

Pep Comics #22 introduced a gap-toothed, freckle-faced red-headed goof showing off to the pretty blonde next door. Taking his lead from the popular Andy Hardy matinee movies starring Mickey Rooney, Goldwater developed his concept of a young everyman protagonist, tasking writer Vic Bloom and artist Bob Montana with the job of making it work.

In six pages, eponymously entitled ‘Archie’ introduced goofy Archie Andrews and pretty girl-next-door Betty Cooper. Archie’s unconventional best friend and confidante Jughead Jones also debuted in that first story, as did the scenic small-town utopia Riverdale.

The feature was an instant hit and by the winter of 1942 had won its own title. Archie Comics #1 was the company’s first non-anthology magazine and with it began the gradual transformation of the entire company. With the introduction of rich, raven-haired Veronica Lodge, all the pieces were in play for the comicbook industry’s second Genuine Phenomenon (Superman being the first). By 1946 the kids had taken over, so the company renamed itself Archie Comics, systematically retiring its costumed characters years before the end of the Golden Age to becoming, to all intents and purposes, a publisher of family comedies.

Its success, like the Man of Steel’s, changed the content of every other publisher’s titles, and led to a multi-media industry including TV, movies and a chain of restaurants. In the swinging sixties pop hit Sugar, Sugar (a tune from their first animated television show) became a global smash. Wholesome garage band “The Archies” has been a fixture of the comics ever since.

Adapting seamlessly to every trend and fad of youth culture since before there even was such a thing, the host of writers and artists who’ve crafted the stories over the decades have made the “everyteen” characters of utopian Riverdale a benchmark for childhood development and a visual barometer of growing up. At the end of the last century, one of those fads was for savvy bands of teenagers to fight Vampires and Demons in a small town…

It led to Archie’s Weird Mysteries: a French/American animated TV co-production with the regular cast encountering all manner of bizarre phenomena, creatures and situations after Archie starts writing a school newspaper column on mysteries and cryptozoology. That small screen enterprise generated a comic book iteration mostly created by Paul Castiglia, Fernando Ruiz & Rich Koslowski, backed up by letterer Vickie Williams and colourists Rick Taylor & Stephanie Vozzo.

With parody and contemporary satire leading the thematic charge the company also used the broad church the series presented to reintroduce a number of those early MLJ super-doers, but sadly, they are not included in this all-strange phenomena compilation…

In this splendidly entertaining collection, the warring gal-pals and extended cast of the small-town American Follies are plunged deep into terror territory as Archie‘s Weird Mysteries #2 (March 2000) reveals how the gang are targeted by a spooky movie monster in ‘Shriek’.

The deft (and suitably daft in appropriate places) spoof of film franchise Scream is followed by a delightful and arch tribute to the incomparable Scooby-Doo phenomenon as ‘A Familiar Old Haunt’ (#6 July) sees Archie signing up for “Bo and Gus’s Paranormal Investigation Camp” with Jughead, Betty & Veronica joining him in a borrowed panel van. Even Jughead’s faithful mutt Hot Dog tags along. The freak du jour is a bizarre vegetable horror, but it’s no match for a bunch of pesky kids…

Archie‘s Weird Mysteries #10 (July) found a fashion for manly beards and chest hair at Riverdale High. However, hirsute attractiveness and rampant testosterone can’t explain why girls and boys are all going follicle crazy until Archie uncovers a ‘Bigfoot on Campus’…

At the height of competitive sports season school principal Mr. Weatherbee is kidnapped by aliens who need his (sadly non-existent) baseball expertise to beat a band of bullying space jocks in ‘U.F.O. Uh-oh!’ (#7 August) after which ‘The Scarlet Chronicles’ (AWM #10 July) introduces vampire hunter Scarlet Helsing to readers who might have missed her starring role in the TV show. As seen in the brace of cartoon episodes reprised here, the beautiful young warrior was drawn to Riverdale and allied with the town’s reclusive paranormal expert Dr. Beaumont to battle the assembling forces of darkness…

New ground is broken with #12 (April 2001) as ‘The Return of Scarlet’ sees the slayer suborned by a band of bloodsuckers and set upon Beaumont and Archie. Naturally, Betty is ready to lead the gang in their counterattack…

Complimenting the chronicles is a light-hearted cartoon ‘Guide to Fighting Vampires’ from AWM #15 (September 2001) wherein Scarlet lists a number of methods for defeating the Darkness before this fun-filled fear-fest finishes in behind-the-scenes text feature ‘Scarlet’s Guide to Archie’s Weird Mysteries’, interviewing Castiglia & Ruiz on their roles in the TV iteration and how the comic book spun out of it.

Co-starring all the crucial supporting characters we know and love, these smartly beguiling skits are a prime example of just why Archie has been unassailable for generations: providing decades of family-friendly fun and wholesome teen entertainment – complete with goblins, ghosts and ghouls as required.
© 2011 Archie Comic Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

JLA: Year One (Hardcover Deluxe Edition)


By Mark Waid, Brian Augustyn & Barry Kitson with Michael Bair, John Stokes, Mark Propst, Pat Garahy, Ken Lopez & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: ?978-1-4012-7086-5 (HB/Digital Edition), 978-1-56389-512-8 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Fabulous and Fulsome Fights ‘n’ Tights Furore …9/10

If the chop-and-change continuity gymnastics DC have undergone in recent years gives you a headache, but you still love reading excellent superhero team stories, you could just take my word that this is one of the best of that breed and move on to the next review. If you’re okay with the confusion or still need convincing, though, please read on…

With then-partner All-American Publishing, in 1940 DC published the Justice Society of America in All-Star Comics in #3. Cover-dated “Winter Issue”, the issue was on sale from November 22nd 1940 with a shelf life that spanned the year’s end and until January. The JSA were the first superhero team in comics.

In 1960 – following a decade largely devoid of superheroes – the now fully-amalgamated publisher sagely revived the team concept as the Justice League of America, thereby gradually reintroducing the JSA ancestors as heroes on an alternative Earth to a fresh new caped and cowled world. By 1985, the ever-burgeoning continuity had become saturated and overcrowded with so many heroic multiples and close duplicates that DC’s editorial Powers-That-Be deemed it all too confusing. As a deterrent to new readers, they decreed total change must come. This resulted in maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths and the events of that earths-shattering, groundbreaking saga led to a winnowing and restructuring of the DC Universe…

With all the best bits from past stories (for which one could read “least charming or daft”) having now occurred on one singular and sole Earth, and with many major heroes remade and re-launched (Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash et al.), one of the newest curses to readers (and writers) was keeping definitive track of what was now DC “History” and what had now never actually happened. Thus 12-issue maxiseries JLA: Year One presented the absolute, definitive, real story of the formation and early days of the Justice League, the World’s Greatest – but no longer first – band of Superheroes…

Of course, since Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis and all the other subsequent publishing course-correcting extravaganzas (such as 52, Countdown, Dark Nights: Death Metal and so on) it’s not strictly true anymore. Still. Again…

None of which impacts upon the superb quality of the tale told here. Way back then – January to December 1998 and in the wake of Grant Morrison & Howard Porter’s spectacular re-reboot of the then-current team – Mark Waid, Brian Augustyn & illustrator Barry Kitson (plus assorted assisting inkers, colourist Pat Garahy & letterer Ken Lopez) crafted a superb version of that iteration’s earliest days. It’s still one of the best and most readable variations on the theme, and was finally acknowledged as such with a premier hardcover edition in 2017 which is happily still available now.

It all begins “ten years ago” in ‘Justice League of America: Year One’ as a hidden observer gathers files on a newly emergent generation of costumed heroes. When an alien invasion from Appellax brings inexperienced neophyte heroes Flash, Green Lantern, Black Canary, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter together to save Earth from colonisation, the media scent a news sensation, but the real story is the hidden forces hovering in the background of the event…

Black Canary was reimagined as the rebellious daughter of the JSA original who had been active during WWII, and the others, like the Sea King and J’onn J’onzz, had undergone recent origin revisions too. The main action begins after that initial victory, as the heroes – novices all, remember – opt to stick together as a team, only to be targeted by secret super-science society Locus, who start snatching up alien corpses for genetic experimentation…

The second issue/chapter sees the new kids as media sensations overwhelmed and out of their depth. Everyone wanting a piece of them. Older outfits like the Blackhawks, Challengers of the Unknown and even officially-retired JSA veterans are watching with apprehension whilst Bruce Wayne wants them far away from Gotham City as they establish their ‘Group Dynamic’. Even trick archer Green Arrow is constantly hanging around, clearly angling for an invitation to join… but that’s never gonna happen. Immortal villain Vandal Savage targets the inexperienced heroes with a squad of veteran supervillains – The Thorn, Solomon Grundy, Clayface and Eclipso – as everywhere, more new superheroes are emerging. Savage is utterly resolved to stop this second Heroic Age before it begins…

In #3, Locus’ bio advancements lead to alliance with Savage, but their schemes are sidelined as the team struggle to work together. Every man there seems distracted by Black Canary, but their “chivalrous impulses” in combat are not only insulting but will get someone killed – if not by enemies, then by her…

The team is fully occupied playing ‘Guess Who?’ after accepting funding and resources from a mystery billionaire. The influx of cash results in a purpose-built secret mountain HQ, a covert personal communications network, live-in custodian/valet/tech support Snapper Carr and a security system designed by maverick teen genius Ted Kord. At least the heroes are starting to bond, sharing jokes, origins and trade secrets, but tensions are still high and trust in each other is fragile…

Inker Michael Bair joins with #4 as ‘While You Were Out…’ sees Locus at last launch their campaign of conquest: picking off lone hero Dan Garrett, whose mystic Blue Beetle scarab proves no match for alien-enhanced bio-weaponry, even as the heroes are all singled out for close observation by mystery operatives…

The merciless Brotherhood of Evil unleash Locus-designed horrors on Manchester, Alabama in #5, leading to a tenuous team-up of Justice League and Doom Patrol that ends in disaster and defeat. Maimed and deprived of their abilities, they are ‘A League Divided’ until the DP’s resident genius Niles Caulder provides stopgap powers and weapons in ‘Sum of Their Parts’ (inked by Bair & John Stokes), enabling the heroes to rally and restore themselves…

In ‘The American Way’ the JLA suffer a shock after their greatest inspiration – Superman – declines an offer to join, even as Locus’ endgame begins. The dispirited champions barely notice, as ‘Loose Ends’ exposes treachery in the ranks, further distracting those heroes who discover a trusted ally has been spying on them in their private lives. They have no idea what’s really going on. With unity shattered, the JLA turns on itself, missing Locus’ attempt to terraform Earth and literally ‘Change the World’…

‘Heaven and Earth’ (inked by Bair & Mark Propst) finds all humanity’s helpless and all its many heroes subdued in a superpowered blitzkrieg that catches the planet napping. Crushed, defeated and interned in ‘Stalag Earth’, all hope is lost until the reunited Justice League lead a counter-offensive, turning tragedy into triumph and ensuring ‘Justice for All’…

A brilliantly addictive plot, superbly sharp dialogue and wonderfully underplayed but enticingly efficient art suck the reader into an enthralling climax that makes you proud to be human… or at least terrestrially-based. This saga of our champions’ bonding and feuding under extended threat of rogue geneticists, planetary upheaval, and the mystery of who actually bankrolls the team, all added to continual, usual, everyday threats in a superhero’s life, is both enchanting and gripping.

Also included in this bombastic bonanza is an Introduction from author Wade to usher you in to the wonderment balanced by biographies, the wraparound cover by Kitson for that 1999 edition plus the (fully annotated) equivalent wraparound cover for this volume complete with

a selection of sketches, designs and art process pages.

When it’s done right there’s nothing wrong with being allowed to feel ten years old again. In-the-know fans will delight at the clever incorporation of classic comics moments, in-jokes and guest-shots from beloved contemporaneous heroes and villains such as The Sea Devils, Metal Men, Atom and such, but the creators of this revised history never forgot their new audience and nothing here is unclear for first-timers. The finale is a fan’s all-action dream with every hero on Earth united to combat all-out alien invasion!… and of course, the rookie JLA save the day again in glorious style.

This is what superheroes are all about. Don’t stint yourself…
© 1998, 1999, 2017 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Twin Spica volumes 1 & 2



By Kou Yaginuma, translated by Maya Rosewood (Vertical)
ISBNs: 978-1-934287-84-2 (Tank?bon vol. 1), 978-1-939130-25-9 (vol. 1 Digital edition) & 978-1-934287-86-6 (Tank?bon vol. 2)  978-1-939130-26-6 (vol. 2 Digital edition)

It’s Bonfire Night in Britain and these are the only fireworks – other than the verbal and online political rockets still “bursting in air” across the pond today – that me and the cat care about. Please think of pets, the nervous and all those who don’t care for bangs of any size or volume, and keep everybody safe and untroubled over the forthcoming pyrotechnic pandemonium. In fact, why not read some comics instead?

It’s long past time to revisit this astounding manga series and get a whole new generation (one not consisting of Arsehole Billionaires) all fired up about space again…

The mystery and imagination of space travel, so much a component of immediate post-World War II industrial society, revived and returned in all its resplendent wonder and glory for this manga series from Kou Yaginuma. He first stormed to public attention with the poignant short story ‘2015 Nen no Uchiage Hanabi’ (‘2015: Fireworks’, published in Comics Flapper magazine in June 2000) before turning the subject, themes and characters into a longer epic combining hard science and fiction with lyrical mysticism and traditional school days growth pangs.

2024 AD: Asumi Kamogawa is a teenaged girl who has always dreamed of going into space. From her earliest moments the lonely child gazed up at the stars with her imaginary friend Mr. Lion, staring at the heavens, and especially at the twinkling, beguiling glow of Virgo and alluring binary star Spica. An isolated, serious child, Asumi lives with her father, a labourer who was once highly placed in the consortium which built the rockets for Japan’s Space Program.

Back in 2010, when Asumi was a year old, the first Japanese space launch ended in utter disaster when the ship designated Shishig? (“The Lion”) exploded and crashed to Earth on the city of Yuigahama. Hundreds of people were killed and injured, including Asumi’s mother. Maimed and comatose, she took years to die whilst the trauma broke her grieving husband and utterly traumatised their infant child. In response to the disaster Japan founded an astronaut and space sciences training school and as the first volume opens Asumi discusses with her imaginary friend the best way to tell her father that she has secretly taken the entrance exam.

Tomoro Kamogawa is a no fan of the space program, having lost his wife, his engineering job and his pride to the quest for space. He has subsequently raised his daughter alone by working two – and often three – menial jobs at a time for over a decade. The problem is taken out of Asumi’s hands when he opens her results letter and sees that she has been accepted for the next intake for the Tokyo National Space School…

After initial resistance Tomoro surprises her by not only allowing Asumi to attend the school, but also by giving her all his savings to pay her expenses. Arriving in Tokyo, Asumi moves into the dilapidated campus dormitory with a few other students too poor to live in private lodgings. A further surprise comes when she discovers that Shinnosuke Fuchuya, the boy who teased and bullied her all through school, has also been accepted for the Astronaut course. When questioned, he grunts that he’d rather do anything other than run the family fireworks business…

The training course is heavily over-subscribed, so candidates are winnowed out by spending the first week in an adaptability stress scenario: three to a room in complete isolation, taking a range of mental and physical tests to determine how they would cope with conditions similar to an extended stay in a space capsule. Tiny Asumi (only 4 feet, 8inches tall) is placed with jolly Kei Oumi and chilly, acerbic Marika Ukita whilst Fuchuya’s team is cursed with spooky, ultra-cool style-icon Shu Suzuki…

It quickly becomes clear that the tutors are being deliberately devious and their tests are designed to measure not just their survival capabilities but also an ability to get on in a crisis. As the week progresses, tempers fray and Asumi suffers a flashback to the aftermath of The Lion’s crash…

Only 13 teams make it through the introductory program. Moreover, even though she is a survivor, worse is to come for the young Asumi…

The first volume includes that painfully powerful, wistful graphic vignette ‘Fireworks: 2015’: first of a quintet of introductory stories Yaginuma produced for Seinen publication (older readers’ manga – mostly males aged 18-30) Comics Flapper. Asumi is a troubled little girl: always running away and even stealing the ashes of her mother, who has just died after years in a coma following the crash of a space vessel onto Yuigahama city. On her travels the little girl meets a man with a lion’s head, who seems to know her teacher Suzinari. Despite her deep concerns for Asumi, Suzinari has problems of her own. She still desperately misses her fiancé, who piloted The Lion and died in the tragic explosion 5 years previously…

‘Asumi’ is another prequel, showing the miserable, melancholic period immediately following the disaster. Bullied in elementary school, the little stargazer runs away and gets lost in the wild woods before chief miscreant Fuchuya heroically saves her from drowning. Were the people Asumi met on the run simply hallucinations of an oxygen-starved brain or something far more meaningful and miraculous…?

The first book ends with spin-off vignette ‘Another Spica’ wherein wannabe manga artist Yaginuma works part-time on a soft-drink stand one Christmas and revolves around when he sees a little girl who twinkled like the stars accompanied by a man with a lion’s head…

Twin Spica volume 2

The follow-up tome resumes reviewing space cadet Asumi as she adjusts to life in Tokyo: moving into women’s dorm “The Seagull”: making friends, starting classes and scraping by on her meagre funds. An assiduous student, she nevertheless endures unprovoked hostility from astrophysics lecturer Professor Sano. Unknown to her, Sano has bad history with her father and will seemingly do anything to crush her dreams…

Asumi is far smaller than the other candidates and although determined to succeed in the arduous physical and mental training, incurs real problems in the swimming classes due to her near-drowning as a child. Moreover, her size means she will need a custom-made pressure suit; giving Sano opportunity to force her out by citing budget restrictions. When this doesn’t work, he steps up his campaign, really turning the screws on unsuspecting Asumi, before revealing a shocking secret about her father…

This volume also contains prequel stories of Asumi’s early life. ‘Campanella’s Forest‘ (referencing author Kenji Miyazawa’s novel Night on the Galactic Railroad) explores the past of the astronaut who piloted The Lion and highlights school teacher Suzinari’s relationship with him. Meanwhile, Asumi has got lost again and stumbled upon something wonderful in the woods…

Tomoro Kamogawa is the tragic star of ‘Our Stars, Leaf Stars’. In the wake of the Lion disaster Asumi’s dad was assigned by the corporation who built the ship as head of the reparations committee. Guilt-wracked and himself bereaved, the devastated engineer had to visit and personally apologize to each and every survivor or victim’s grieving family… During this period, little Asumi found a new friend, another little girl forever scarred by the crash.

…And as always, faithfully attendant Mr. Lion looks sadly on…

The volume concludes with a second ‘Another Spica’ episode as our cartoonist relates that time he worked in a shopping mall and had to dress up in a monkey suit, just as that little girl and that lion-headed guy simply looked on and mocked…

The texts are also augmented by context- enhancing Notes on the Translation, should the gloriously fine and empathetic artwork and clearcut storytelling not be enough…

Twin Spica ran for eight enchanting years (September 2001 to August 2009): filling 16 volumes that captivatingly traced the trajectory of Asumi and her friends from starry-eyed students to fulltime astronauts. The saga spawned both anime and live action TV series, but this delightful comicbook epic has everything already: plenty of hard science to back up the savvy extrapolation; a believable, likable cast; enduring mystery; tender moments; isolation and teen angst and dawning true friendships, all wrapped up in a joyous coming-of-age drama with supernatural overtones and gobs of pure sentiment.

This tale reinvigorated the magical allure of the Wild Black Yonder for a new generation and is a treat no imagineer with head firmly in the clouds can afford to miss…
© 2010 by Kou Yaganuma/Media Factory. Translation © 2010 Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Romo the WolfBoy (paperback edition)


By ILYA (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-53-9 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Vital Vintage Verve & Vitriol to Vamp Up the Season of Virtue and Mystery …9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for comedic and dramatic effect.

Take it from an old print and publishing lag. A book has to be good to be released in fancy prestige hardcover mid year and re-released for Christmas as a mass market paperback. Just ask other British comics sensation Jamie Smart…

The Man called ILYA is a multi-award winning comic book writer and artist whose work has been published by Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Kodansha and independent companies all over the world. Previous prose and/or pictorial accomplishments include the Manga Drawing Kit; Time Warp: The Future’s Now… and it’s a Riot; BIC; The End of the Century Club sequence; Room for Love; The Clay Dreaming and modern sequential graphic drama Skidmarks. Commercial clients comprise the BBC, Royal Academy of Arts, newspapers including The Times, Guardian, East End Life and legendary stripzine Deadline.

ILYA has worked with Eddie Campbell on Deadface and Bacchus, edits the Mammoth Book of Best New Manga series, and – like all comics creators – fosters a secret identity by sometimes answering to the soubriquet Ed Hillyer…

His latest venture combined an obvious love of British mythologies, whimsies and historical micro-cultures, cunningly interwoven with cheeky comics lore from across the earth. A genre-mixing mystery yarn of the strange and (potentially) paranormal, this potent pastiche debut yarn introduces a brace of old-fashioned odd fellows visibly seen evolving into an emergent crime-solving association…

The unfolding imbroglio is delivered primarily in welcoming pencil hues and traditional block-text & image format (with the occasional modern graphic narrative tweak): all premiering a fresh pantheon of eclectic wonders, as we joyously peep into the closeted lives of a troupe of travelling entertainers perambulating around Victorian England. Revelations are seen through the learning experiences and rapid advancement of a secretive neophyte recently enrolled as a stage hand, and the bizarrely enigmatic living attraction who befriends and adopts the secretive newcomer…
Romo the Wolfboy (… in Strange Case of Cackle and Hide) heaps tragedy upon mystery as tight-lipped “Francis X” – who ran away to the circus for reasons of their own – develops a few transformative friendships (and some foe-making) after being accepted into the closed family circuit of Blimey O’Riley’s Travelling Circus. The serried hierarchical ranks of outsiders have their own ways, cherished observances and even unique language – and also hard-held misconceptions and prejudices – but Francis is smiled upon by Ringmaster O’Riley himself. It’s an attraction and fascination shared by the weird, non-verbal freak who is said to have been raised by wild animals…

As Francis & Romo spar and bond, they come to grips with this oddly-enclosed world in miniature; one that encompasses love and hate, fear and acceptance and all the broad panoply of human life in between. However, everything takes an unpleasant and even uncanny turn after the big top is set up in the next village. Here, despite the gob-smacked anticipation of the locals, sabotage, unwarranted assaults and ultimately murder-attempts start chipping away at the wandering clan’s solidarity, Soon a monstrous uncannily giggling villain is recognised if not actually identified, and Romo and Francis X are catapulted into the role of guardians and problem-solvers. The hunt for the obsessed village elite determined to destroy them all… or at least banish the players from the region… is hard, baffling work, and most disturbingly, many incidents defy logic or reason while somehow connecting past sins to future threats. … And what role do the chickens play in all this?

Bracketed by context-creating preludes ‘The Carny Code’ and ‘Introducing…’ the hilarious, uproarious and outrageous events are balanced by further extras at the end. Enhancing enjoyment with education and elucidation we ‘Roll up Roll up’ to explain historical carny argot “Ciazarn” – readily deployed through the tale to enhance the experience – in a fascinating briefing that seamlessly segues into teasing tweaks of meta-reality moments as the author offers a list of devious ‘Easter Eggs’ buried within the sawdust saga before ending the entertainment with extracts from his ‘Romo the WolfBoy Production Blog’ …

Wry, anachronistically bold, and breezily beguiling, Romo the WolfBoy began as online episodes on ILYA’s Substack, playing out over a year. Thus this unmissable day out delight and jolly jaunt concludes with an acknowledgement of the Kickstarter contributors who helped its transition to the thick comforting pages here with big thank you ‘Made Possible by Public Funds’…

All the fun of the fair plus every additional chill and thrill you could possibly stand besides, the wonderment here is but a teaser of more and greater marvels to come, so read this now, give copies to all your coolest and most well-educated chums – and anyone you’re still trying to impress – and you can all communally agonise in anticipation of forthcoming encore Romo the WolfBoy and Francis X (Investigators of the Paranormal) in The Fall and Rise of Springheeled Tom…
© & ™ Ed Hillyer / ILYAgraphic. All rights reserved.

Romo the WolfBoy (paperback edition) is released on November 26th 2026 and is available for pre-order now

Posted on

The Human Torch and the Thing: Strange Tales – the Complete Collection


By Stan Lee, Kirby, Larry Lieber, Robert Bernstein, Ernie Hart, Jerry Siegel, Larry Ivie, Jack Dick Ayers, Bob Powell, Steve Ditko, Carl Burgos, George Roussos, Paul Reinman, Frank Giacoia, Chic Stone, Mike Esposito, Wallace Wood, John Romita Sr., Joe Sinnott, Ron Wilson, Gil Kane, Al Milgrom, Vince Colletta & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1334-2 (TPB), 978-1302505455 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Monolithic modern megamedia Marvel truly began with eccentric monster ‘n’ alien filled adventures of a compact superteam as much squabbling family as coolly capable costumed champions. All that Modern Marvel is, company and brand, stems from that quirky quartet and the inspired, inspirational, groundbreaking efforts of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby…

Cautiously bi-monthly and cover-dated November 1961 (Happy 65th Birthday!) Fantastic Four #1 was raw and crude even by its ailing publisher’s straitened standards. However, it seethed with rough, passionate, uncontrolled excitement, and thrill-hungry kids pounced on its dynamic storytelling. The series caught a wave of change beginning to build in America, and every succeeding issue changed comics a little bit more… and forever.

Revealed in that premier, maverick scientist Reed Richards, fiancée Sue Storm, close friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s bratty teenaged brother survived an ill-starred private spaceshot after cosmic rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding. Permanently mutated, Richards’ body became elastic, diffident Sue became (even more) invisible, Johnny Storm burst into living flame and tragic Ben shockingly devolved into a shambling, rocky freak. After the initial revulsion and trauma passed, they solemnly agreed to use their abilities to benefit mankind. Thus was born The Fantastic Four – you can add your own fanfare and timpani here if you wish…

Hot on the heels of the runaway success of Fantastic Four, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby spun the most colourful and youngest member of the team into his own series, hoping to recapture the glory of the 1940s when the Human Torch was one of the company’s “Big Three” superstars. This captivatingly esoteric and economical collection of pure 1960s superhero shenanigans gathers those eclectic yet crucial yarns (no less than five major Marvel villains debuted in blistering battle against the Flaming Kid as seen in Strange Tales #101 – 134). Also included here is the lead story from Strange Tales Annual #2, with it all spanning October 1962 to July 1965.

Festooned and filled with fabulous classics of old school Marvel Fights ‘n’ Tights mayhem and mirth, this compendium also finally acknowledges that for a large part of that run Johnny’s rocky companion and elder gadfly Ben Grimm was an equal player and partner in crime-busting.

Within a year of FF #1, former magic-&-monsters anthology Strange Tales was home for the hot-headed hero who started his ancillary solo career in eponymous epic ‘The Human Torch’. Scripted by Larry Lieber (over a plot by his brother Stan Lee) and sublimely illustrated by Kirby & Dick Ayers, here the plucky lad investigates sabotage at a new seaside amusement park and promptly discovers Commie-conniving thanks to a Red spy called the Destroyer. Kirby would pencil the first few adventures before moving on, after which inker Ayers would assume control of the series’ look for most of its run – although The King would generate some of the best covers of his Marvel career throughout the Torch’s tenure in Strange Tales.

An odd inconsistency or, more likely, tension- and drama-inducing gimmick did crop up here. Although public figures in the FF, Johnny and his sister Sue lived part-time in Long Island hamlet Glenville and, despite the townsfolk being fully aware of her as the glamorous and heroic Invisible Girl, they seem oblivious to the fact that her baby brother is the equally famous Torch. Many daft-but-ingenious pages of Johnny protecting his secret identity would ensue before the situation was brilliantly resolved…

Although something of a hit-or-miss proposition in itself, above the strip was the origin point for many of Marvel’s greatest villains. The first of these appeared in the very next issue. ‘Prisoner of the Wizard’ (Lee, Lieber, Kirby & Ayers) sees a spiteful and publicity-hungry intellectual giant determined to crush the Torch to prove his superiority to the callow kid who steals all the newspaper headlines…

The same creative team produced captivating classic ‘Prisoner of the 5th Dimension’, as Johnny defeats an imminent invasion and frees a captive populace from tyranny before easily trashing adhesive-toting adversary ‘Paste-Pot Pete!’ (later revamped as the Trapster), before teaming with sister Sue to tackle the perilous ‘Return of the Wizard’. When Kirby moved on to engineer and design a host of new characters and concepts (occasionally returning as necessity or special events warranted), Ayers assumed full art duties beginning with Strange Tales #106 (March 1963). This Lee & Lieber yarn was notable in that it revealed that the entire town of Glenville had always known the Torch’s secret identity but were just playing along to keep him happy! In ‘The Threat of the Torrid Twosome’, when Acrobat Carl Zante knocks on Johnny’s door to offer him a better-paying gig, the kid’s head is swelled and swayed, but he soon learns he’s been played by a master conman and diabolical bandit…

This first hint of tongue-in-cheek whimsy presaged an increasing lightness of touch which would come to characterise the Marvel style as much as the infighting between team-mates. The villainous Zante would return for another milestone in issue #114…

ST #107 was officially Lieber’s last as Ayers drew a potent punch-up with ‘Sub-Mariner’ – a tale reminiscent of the spectacular and immensely popular Golden Age battles of their publishing forebears. Veteran writer Robert “Berns” Bernstein scripted the next two – frankly daft – sagas over Lee’s plots, but the saving grace of both ‘The Painter of a Thousand Perils!’ (empowered by an alien art kit which brought illustrations to life in ST #108) and ‘The Sorcerer and Pandora’s Box’ (#109, with monstrous demons attacking humanity) was the brief return of Kirby to the pencilling.

H.E. Huntley (Ernie Hart) typed the words for Ayers to illumine in ‘The Human Torch vs. the Wizard and Paste-Pot Pete!’: a cunning clash presaging the villains’ eventual evolution into FF’s evil counterparts the Frightful Four whilst one issue later, the Torch made short work of ‘Fighting to the Death with the Asbestos Man!’ – yet another demented scientist experiencing the travails and tragedies of simpler times.

Scripted by Jerry Siegel under penname Joe Carter, Strange Tales #112 debuted murderous electrical marauder the Eel, who accidentally swiped and activated a miniature A-bomb in tense, multifaceted thriller ‘The Human Torch Faces the Threat of the Living Bomb!’, after which 1963’s Strange Tales Annual #2 featured ‘The Human Torch on the Trail of the Amazing Spider-Man!’ This terrific romp by Lee, Kirby & Steve Ditko details how the wallcrawler is framed by international art thief The Fox…

In regular comic book Strange Tales #113, “Carter” created another long-term always-employed baddie in ‘The Coming of the Plantman!’ before November’s Strange Tales #114 changed the face of the Marvel Firmament forever. Written by Lee and illustrated by Kirby & Ayers, it featured the return of the third of Timely Comics’ Big Three – or at least an impersonation of him by the insidious Acrobat – in a blockbusting battle entitled ‘The Human Torch meets… Captain America!’

Here’s a quote from the last panel…

“You guessed it! This story was really a test! To see if you too would like Captain America to Return! As usual, your letters will give us the answer!” I wonder how that all turned out?

Lee took over as scripter with ST #115’s ‘The Sandman Strikes!’ as Johnny impersonates Spider-Man to defeat granular gangster Flint Marko, after which the Torrid Teen and team-mate Ben Grimm battle each other while ‘In the Clutches of the Puppet Master!’ (#116, with Ayers inked by George Roussos in his own secret identity of George Bell).

‘The Return of the Eel! proved far more of a challenge in #117, after which The Wizard has another go as ‘The Man Who Became the Torch!’, consequently nearly killing Thing and Reed Richards besides. A first brush with Marvel’s soon-to-be core readership came in #119. ‘The Torch Goes Wild!’ details how Commie Agent the Rabble Rouser mesmerises decent citizens, making them surly and rebellious, after which Kirby stepped back in for #120 as ‘The Torch Meets Iceman!’: a terrific action-extravaganza that pretty much ended the glory days of this strip.

From then on, despite every gimmick and occasional burst of pure inspiration the Bullpen could muster, a slow decline set in as quirky back-up strip Doctor Strange grew in popularity – and cover space. ST #121 saw Johnny as ‘Prisoner of the Plantman!’ (Lee & Ayers) and #122 found a thug, a conman and a yogi all augmented by Dr. Doom mustered as the woefully lame Terrible Trio, ordered to launch an ill-conceived attack in ‘3 Against the Torch!’ whereas #123 details a creepy inventor building himself an impressive insectoid exo-suit to get rich the easy way. Crucially, in an effort to boost ratings The Thing now became a permanent fixture in ‘The Birth of the Beetle!’ This so-so saga was most notable for the pencil job by Golden Age Torch creator Carl Burgos, after which Johnny & Ben tackle a re-designed ‘Paste-Pot Pete’ (inked by Paul Reinman) before going after another old adversary in ‘The Sub-Mariner Must Be Stopped!’

‘Pawns of the Deadly Duo!’ sees Puppet Master return, allied to the Mad Thinker in a clever but shallow yarn before #127 pits Ben & Johnny against a bizarre puzzle and ‘The Mystery Villain!’ Then, following a stunning Kirby Thing pin-up, the Fantastic Two then unwillingly battle ‘Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch’ in #128 (this one inked by Frankie Ray, AKA Frank Giacoia), as the Homo Superior siblings make an abortive first attempt to quit Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, prior to ‘The Terrible Trio!’ once more failing to impress or assassinate our heroes…

Pop culture reeled and staggered in #130 with ‘Meet the Beatles’ (not villains, but actually some sort of popular musical combo of the era, and they actually didn’t meet them at all), although brilliant Golden Age artist Bob Powell (inked by Chic Stone) did take over the art chores for the comedy of errors/crime caper. Ayers returned to ink #131, the frankly dire ‘Bouncing Ball of Doom!’ with Mad Thinker siccing a cybernetic bowling bowl on the duo, before Larry Ivie delivers a capable Space Race thriller in ‘The Sinister Space Trap!’ (inked by Mike Esposito under his Mickey DeMeo alias).

Stan Lee returned for the last two tales in ST #133 & #134; ‘The Terrible Toys’ wherein Puppet Master seeks a new modus operandi and ‘The Challenge of… The Watcher!’ (inked by the majestic Wallace Wood) wherein Torch & Thing are transported back to legendary Camelot to battle time-reaver Kang the Conqueror, but it was clear the writer’s mind was elsewhere, most likely with the new Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. strip that would replace the FF pair beginning with Strange Tales #135.

Wrapping up this memory lane meander are a marvellous melange of original art pages by Kirby and/or Ayers; nostalgia-invoking House Ads and a cover gallery from the 1974-75 reprint series of Golden/Silver Age Torch Tales, rendered by John Romita, Joe Sinnott, Larry Lieber, Ron Wilson, Frank Giacoia, Gil Kane, Al Milgrom & Vince Colletta, plus the Kirby/Richard Isanove paint cover from Marvel Masterworks: The Human Torch #1.

It’s interesting to note that as the parent Fantastic Four title grew in scope and quality, the Torch’s own series diminished. Perhaps there’s something to concentrating one’s efforts or not overexposing your stars. What was originally a spin-off for a younger audience faded as Marvel found its voice and marketplace, although there would be periodic efforts to relight the Torch.

Sadly, historic value often supersedes the quality of these strange tales, but there’s still a good deal that’s great about this series, and Costumed Drama devotees with a sense of tradition and love of fun will find this book irresistible and unmissable: still filled with the right kind of fireworks.
© 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 2018 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Haunt of Horror: Lovecraft


By H.P. Lovecraft adapted by Richard Corben with Jeff Eckleberry (MARVEL MAX)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3287-5 (HB), 978-1-3025-2149-3 (Digital edition)

Richard Corben was one of America’s greatest proponents of graphic narrative: an animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist, who sprang from the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in graphic narrative storytelling derived from his own unmistakable and unique style and vision.

Equally renowned for his mastery of airbrush, captivatingly excessive anatomical stylisation and delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales, in later years he was an elder statesman of horror and fantasy comics lending his gifts and cachet to such icons as John Constantine, Hulk, Hellboy, Punisher and Ghost Rider as well as new adaptations and renditions of literary classics by the likes of William Hope Hodgson, and the master of gothic terror Edgar Allan Poe.

Corben never sold out and American publishing eventually caught up, finally growing mature enough to accommodate him – due in no small part to his own broad and wickedly pervasive influence…

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, Corben graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 and found work as an animator. At that time, the neutered comic books of the Comics Code Authority era were just starting to lose disaffected, malcontent older fans to the hippy-trippy, freewheeling, anything-goes publications of independent-minded creators across the continent. These folks were increasingly making the kind of material Preachers and Mummy and their Lawyers wouldn’t approve of…

Their innate creativity honed by the resplendent and explicitly mature 1950s EC Comics, Carl Barks’ perfectly crafted Duck tales and other classy early strips, a plethora of young artists like Corben responded with numerous small-press publications – including Grim Wit, Skull, Slow Death, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor – which featured shocking, rebellious, raw, brutal, sexed-up, psychedelically-inspired cartoons and strips blending the new wave of artists’ unconventional lifestyles with their earliest childhood influences and honestly crafting the kind of stories they would like to read.

Corben inevitably graduated to more professional – and better paying – venues. As his style and skills developed, he worked for Warren Publishing in Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and the outrageous pan-international adult science fiction anthology 1984/1994. Corben also famously coloured strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

Soon after, he was generating stunning graphic escapades for a number of companies, making animated movies, painting film posters and producing record covers such as multi-million-selling album Bat Out of Hell. He never stopped creating comics but always preferred personal independent projects or working with in-tune collaborators such as Bruce Jones, Jan Strnad and Harlan Ellison.

In 1975, Corben approached French fantasy phenomenon Métal Hurlant and quickly became a fixture of its American iteration Heavy Metal, cementing his international reputation in the process. Garnering huge support and acclaim in Europe, he was been regularly collected in luxurious albums even as he seemingly fell out of favour – and print – in his own country. Through it all he never strayed far from his moss-covered roots.

Corben died in 2020.

This particular tome gathers a 2007 return to adaptations of classic literary horror canon. First published as a 3-issue limited series, it features adaptations of poems and stories by an undisputed master of supernal terror: H.P. Lovecraft. The tales are radical reworkings of the troubled author’s works, rendered in line and gray-tones, and each sequential narrative reinterpretation is accompanied by its original prose iteration.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in August 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island and his life in New England was one of gradual loss and despair. His father was institutionalised when he was young, and a comfortable life of wealth ended when his grandfather died. Enduring privation, he lost his mother to another asylum in 1919. He married in 1924 after moving to New York, where his writing for Weird Tales and other pulp fiction magazines drew acclaim – and even acolytes – but little by way of commercial security.

He returned to New England in 1926 and wrote ever more fevered and chilling tales of weird science, fantasy and horror fiction. In the next 11 years he penned some of the most disturbing stories in literature, centred around his belief in Civilizational decline and Cosmicism: affirming the insignificance of humanity and its ultimate fragility and inability to endure in a harsh, unforgiving universe. He is best remembered today for his Cthulhu Mythos: an elder god cosmology as seen in The Call of Cthulhu and other stories.

Lovecraft died in 1937 as a result of stomach cancer.

This selection of speculative meanderings opens with ‘Dagon’, wherein an ailing, oppressed marine researcher records how a close call with a German U-boat catapulted him onto a lost isle of monsters and ancient artefacts, and forever marked him as prey for an indescribable horror. The original prose epigram follow as it does for each illustrated vignette here.

Then ‘The Scar’ tells of betrayal and abandonment as a young man opts to save himself – but not his companion – from hellish plants, That grisly episode is eerily expanded upon from the poem ‘Recognition’ collected in the tome Fungi from Yuggoth. From the same book comes both the poem ‘A Memory’; a chillingly icy exploration as Jack searches the desolate polar region that claimed his father and finds a relic that that dooms him via fatal family connection to lost and malign cultists of Shub Niggurath…

The second issue opened with ‘The Music of Erich Zann’, as an impoverished student recalls how long ago he lived in a hilltop hovel where an elderly fellow boarder played bizarre melodies which shook the world and summoned arcane atrocities before – again bordered and bracketed by text originals – another extract from Fungi from Yuggoth follows a flood survivor desperately searching for her lost love in the body-packed detritus of ‘The Canal’.

Sticking with the bulletins from Yuggoth, ‘The Lamp’ focuses on an unexpected and angry archaeological breakthrough that is alive and hungry after four millennia, before a final issue greets us with extended scary satire ‘Arthur Jermyn’ (and thereafter its primary text ‘Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family’). In a wry change of pace, it traces via his proud descendants the history and heritage of a gentleman explorer and anthropologist who in 1750 discovered a lost kingdom and injected some new blood into an old, old race.

Of course the miscegenation has resulted in some few throwbacks and anomalies in the hallowed English lineage since then…

Another ravening predator inhabits ‘The Well’ foolishly dug by southern farmer Seth Atwood, one using love and thirst to draw in victims, and our last glimpse of the outer dark comes through ‘The Window’ of a desolate old house as an orphan son returns to discover exactly what took his parents 25 years ago…

A potent and evocative glance at the nastiest places in creation, this collection also includes ‘Cover Sketches’ and ‘Promotional Images’, plus a selection of inked pages prior to the application of the cloaking but elucidatory grey tones.

Infamous for his dark, doom-laden horror stories, Lovecraft was a pioneer of the subgenre of supernal, inescapable terror and under Corben’s imaginative scrutiny, these grim, gloomy odes and yarns take on a whole new level of distressing dissonance. This compelling collection of classic chillers is a modern masterpiece of arcane abomination and inhuman horror no shock addict of mystery lover will want to miss.
© 2020 MARVEL.

Posted on

Dripping With Fear: The Steve Ditko Archives volume 5


By Steve Ditko with Joe Gill & various; edited by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-706-2 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Once upon a time the short complete tale and the anthological package were the sole staple of the comic book profession, with the plan being to deliver as much variety as possible to the reader. Sadly, that particular creative discipline is all but lost to us today except in compilations like this already lost-treasure trove…

Steve Ditko (November 2nd 1927 – c. June 29th 2018) was one of our industry’s greatest talents and probably America’s least lauded in his own lifetime. His fervent desire was to just get on with his job telling stories the best way he could. Whilst the noblest of aspirations, that dream was always a minor consideration (and frequently stumbling block) for the commercial interests which for so long controlled all comics production, and still exert an overwhelming influence upon the mainstream bulk of funnybook output. Let’s see what happens in the days and months to come now that the entire world is on the edge of financial, physical, emotional, spiritual and digital assault by plagues, rogues and rogue actors. Hey, that might make a good comics story…

Before his first time at Marvel, young Ditko mastered his craft creating short stories and visual vignettes for a variety of companies and in every genre imaginable, and it’s an undeniable joy to be able to look at some of this work from a such an innocent time. By the time of the tales in this titanic tome, Ditko was just starting to make waves and be noticed around the industry: as he tirelessly honed his craft in any category of sequential narrative and for whichever publisher would have him. That, despite an increasing presence at the small, dying outfit that used to be called Atlas, was primarily quiet, non-nonsense Connecticut company Charlton Comics. For them Ditko toiled determinedly and utterly free from the interference of intrusive editors…

This fifth fantastic full-colour deluxe hardback – or potently punchy digital treasure trove – re-presents another heaping helping of his ever more impressive efforts: published between July 1957 and March 1959, and almost all courtesy of the surprisingly liberal (at least in its trust of its employees’ creative instincts) sweat-shop publisher Charlton Comics. If we’re being technically accurate it’s also important to note that the eventual publication dates of the stories in this collection don’t have a lot to do with when Ditko rendered the mini-masterpieces. Charlton paid so little, the cheap, anthologically astute outfit had no problem purchasing material it would leave on a shelf for months – if not years – until the right or most convenient moment arrived to print…

All the tales and covers reproduced here (in strictly chronological creation order) were created after implementation of 1955’s draconian, self-inflicted Comics Code Authority rules. These sanitised the industry following US Senate Hearings, a media witch-hunt and subsequent public outcry accusing comics stories of harming children and meant that the public’s apparently endless hunger for scary, strange and uncanny thrillers were once again the main territory of movies, and a range of television and radio shows that had populated airwaves for decades. They too were anthological, with names like The Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff’s Thriller and One Step Beyond. Of course with such a dominant zeitgeist, comics competed as they could, with licensed spin-offs or original vehicles offering bowdlerised kiddie-appropriate fare in place of shock and terror once EC was killed and Atlas Comics imploded. In comics books fantasy fables became a region of wonders not horrors, with human nature as the narrative engine and at this Ditko excelled.

Here these include uniformly enticing, bizarrely baroque and marvellously inexplicable fantasies and life-affirming atomic age Sci Fi yarns, whilst also offering a smattering of general comic book mainstays of the post-war Superhero Interregnum. Like any dedicated freelancer, Ditko tackled assignments for almost any consumer sub-strand from to crime war to humour, or western and romance and let editors decide where to run his work. In this book everything is helpfully annotated with its original purchase and commissioning numbers to indicate approximately when they were actually drawn.

Sadly, there’s no indication of how many he actually wrote, but at this time astoundingly prolific writer/editor Joe Gill was churning out hundreds of stories per year for Charlton, so he’s always everyone’s first guess when trying to attribute script credit…

This time however we open with a dash of controversy. Prior to the strip sensationalism starting comes another historically informative Introduction and more passionate advocacy by Blake Bell. However, this time the essay is easily as interesting as the comics that come after, as it catalogues and discusses a period and genre output Ditko the artist/auteur was not proud of and spent years denying ever even happened…

‘Comic Books & Kinky Hooks’ augments the usual historical background and context with Bell’s exploration of an open secret that was seemingly Ditko’s greatest shame: his long and productive association with Fetish pornographer Eric Stanton. The closest thing yet to the truth is exposed and images included that reveal all, highlighting how and where the two old friends’ separate oeuvres overlapped and cross-fertilised especially in Ditko’s Doctor Strange tales. And yes, you sad deviants, there are many artistic snippets among the candid historical photos to be “appreciated”…

From there it’s straight into the curated comics classics (all published between release dates May 1958 and April 1959 and spanning a remarkably broad cross-section of differing staple-genres (think “as seen on TV…”) but specifically tracking the artist’s transition from moody macabre fantasy towards gleaming space opera and foreboding fictional futures…

Scripted by Gill (as was probably everything in this collection) and as first seen in Out of This World #9 (August 1958), ‘Journey’s End’ is a parable of hope as aliens flee extinction perpetrated by the thinking machines they built to cosset and narrowly escape being caught up in potential refuge planet Earth’s own mistrust and paranoia…

This is followed by ‘Second Chance’ from Unusual Tales #11 (March 1958) which sees an elderly scientist on the verge of changing the world suddenly slip back 30 years in time, forced to review the life choices that brought him to this juncture. That tense moment is maximised when city authorities face a torrent of missing persons cases in ‘Second Hand’ (Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #7 February 1958), No one expected the cause to be that the humans were being replaced by extradimensional infiltrators…

In Out of This World #8 (May 1958), mean little slingshot-wielding animal-abuser Danny gets far too close to nature and experiences events that cannot be put down to ‘Imagination’ before Unusual Tales #11 (March 1958) sees a returning soldier explain to a newly-bereaved war-widow the impossible act of service performed by ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Die’.

The rocketing appetite for space opera meets contemporary ruminations about souls for machines next as ‘Moon-Run!’ (Space Adventures, vol 1 #24, July 1958) sees an unlucky pilot leaving all he loves behind to learn a cosmic truth, after which the first late-published holdover of an earlier success makes itself known. ‘Valley of Eternity’ was published in Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #11 (February 1959). He was one of Charlton’s earliest star characters, with the title derived from a radio thriller show which the comics publisher licensed. The lead was a host and narrator who acted more as voyeur than active participant, speaking “to camera” and asking readers for opinion and judgement as he shared a selection of funny, sad, scary and wondrous human interest yarns all tinged with a hint of the weird and supernatural. That format readily translated to comic books when rendered by Ditko, whose page design, storytelling acumen and full, lavish brushwork were just beginning to come into maturity. Here, the Traveler is in India, observing the fate of four scoundrels who rendezvous at a holy place and meet a holy man who reveals that not all of them will ever be saved…

Then from Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #9 (September 1958) Emperor Kasimir of Cretonia encounters in incredible, inconceivable doppelganger in ‘The Imperial Double’ in advance of Strange Suspense Stories #36 (March 1958) highlighting ‘The Shadow’ that stalked and stopped two criminals sup to no good. The masterfully moody cover to Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #10 (November 1958) heralds – from that very issue – cosmic thriller of scale and misunderstanding ‘Forbidden Planet’ before Out of This World #9 (August 1958) shares a Hispanic-flavoured parable about thrift, diligence and effort in ‘Mañaña!’

Charlton’s other cloaked host was Doctor Haunt – usually seen in This Magazine is Haunted but moonlighting here in Out of This World #11 (January 1959) to detail the fate of ‘The Careless Man’. Fired for negligence, he used magic to gain vengeance but wasn’t really paying attention when he should have…

Still in residence, Dr H delivers paired tales from Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #10 (November 1958) begin with a dying boy’s ‘One Way Trip’ that offers a vision of hope and salvation before a spy stealing atomic secrets is accidentally exposed and thwarted by ‘The Joke’ before expounding in depth on the mesmerising power of ‘The Green Peace’ (This Magazine is Haunted vol. 2 #16, May 1958) that grips and transforms deep sea divers…

For MoUW #9 (August 1958) Ditko’s ‘Can This Be Real?’ exploits US Atom Age paranoia in the tale of a paparazzi who uncovers a fantastic federal secret whilst ‘A Matter of Luck’ (Unusual Tales #12, July 1958) details the domestic fallout of a decent family guy afflicted with unflinching good fortune…

In Outer Space #18 (August 1958) an unstoppable threat to Earth is finally traced to aliens acting ‘For Amusement Only’ prior to breezy comedic diversions ‘Such a Strange Case!’ (Strange Suspense Stories #40, February 1959) and ‘The Strange One’ (MoUW #10, (November 1958) wryly exploring psychiatry on one hand and castaway mutants on the other. An aura of Kafkaesque confusion then pervades ‘The Night Was Strange’ (TMiH vol 2 #16, May 1958) as a voyager returns home to discover nothing is the same… or ever was…

The wealth of Big Hat energy is amplified as returning to Tales of the Mysterious Traveler results in many more captivating Ditko yarns. The evocative procession of mystery and imagination commences with ‘The Statues That Came to Life’ (TotMT #10, Nov. 1958) as the wanderer observes firsthand the tragedy of Pygmalion, Phidias and Galatea, before the cover of #11 (Feb. 1959) is backed up corresponding interior conundrum ‘The Other Form’ wherein a greedy French colonial seeks too much from a fakir and pays a heavy price.

TotMT #10 then proffers a briefing on the Flying Dutchman in ‘Who Knows?’ before #9 (Sep. 1958) offers the lowdown on a ventriloquist act in ‘The End of Edward’ and #11 takes us ‘Inside the Crystal Globe’ of a conman swami who finally looks fate in the face…

The section ends with a case of painful hubris as a know-it-all janitor arrogantly and illegally cures an amnesia case at the asylum only to himself become ‘The Man Who Forgot’ (Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #9)…

The old saw of a genie who waits millennia to be freed and swears harm on his rescuer gets a mirthful makeover in ‘Glow of Woe’ (Strange Suspense Stories #39, Nov. 1958) before we momentarily drop fantasy for other preoccupations.

One of Charlton’s Fawcett-acquired properties was western Rocky Lane – AKA a celebrity tie-in featuring popular movie cowboy Allan Lane. As was so often the case. his heroic horse was also a big draw and for (Rocky Lane’s) Black Jack #24 (October 1958) Ditko delineated ‘The Enemy’ as wild-living wonder-steed was captured by a cruel horse-breaker and taught the inhuman brute a necessary lesson, after which ‘A Remembered Friend’ (#25, Dec. 1958) sees the ebony maverick lead a foal-hood companion (and its two humans) out of a deadly desert. The auteur assayed a more standard sagebrush saga in ‘Help Wanted!’ as an undercover US Marshal cleans up a town cowed by bandits and badmen (Outlaws of the West #18, Jan. 1959) before returning to Black Jack #24, to reveal how the horse won ‘The Fiery Feud’ instigated by another horse-breaker who thought he knew best…

The future beckons again in four Ditko delights from Strange Suspense Stories #39 (Nov. 1958), beginning with “robots-among-us!” parable ‘Orgo Serves!’, expanding in an early example of paranoid delusion “Replacement Theory” in ‘Mystery from Mars’ before sidestepping into cosy haunted house country for ‘They Say It’s Haunted’ and closing with a cautionary time-travel warning to all crooked scientists taking a ‘Doorway into Tomorrow’.

Staying with Strange Suspense Stories, in #41 (April 1959) Ditko drew brief light-hearted parallel worlds spoof ‘Off Limits’ and mermaid encounter ‘Casy’s Kiss’ for #40 (Feb. 1959), the last of which also featured extended saga of obsessive vengeance ‘The Strange Machine’ wherein a an impoverished genius toiled for years to bring back his dead grandfather only to regret the “treasures” the act unearthed…

Bowing to a UFO fad/frenzy and growing public notions of imminent conquest of the stars, Ditko frequently contributed to flagship sci fi vehicle Outer Space and here #18 (August 1958) details a voyage of discovery and the result of becoming ‘First on Mercury’ after which #19 (October) inventively speculates on ‘What Are the Flying Saucers?’ whilst Space Adventures #25 (Sep. 1958) opines on peaceful cooperation with thirsty refugees from the Red Planet when they get here in 1964 after escaping ‘The Great Martian Drought’…

This collection closes with an opportunity to savour Ditko’s action appeal when he was offered a chance to play with classic stars. Using a cleaner, open style, sans his signature feathering and scratchy textures for a bright, bold forest romp, he crafted ‘Lure of the Maiden’ for Robin Hood and His Merry Men #38 (cover-dated August 1958). When the wicked Sheriff seeks to capture the legendary good outlaw, the vile villain forces a Saxon maid to act as honeytrap. However, the archer also has allies in the opposition camp and a trick up his sleeve…

This capacious volume has episodes to terrify, amaze, amuse and enthral: utter delights of vintage graphic fantasy fiction with lean, stripped down plots and simple dialogue that let art set the tone, push the emotions and tell all. They stem from times when a story could end sadly as well as happily and only wonderment was guaranteed, hidden or not. Stories display the sharp wit and constrained comedic energy which made so many Spider-Man/J. Jonah Jameson confrontations unforgettable treats half a decade later, and the instant mood-setting that defined Doctor Strange. It all makes this penultimate collection not only superb in its own right but telling proof of the genius of one of the art-form’s greatest stylists.

This is a book serious comics fans would happily kill or die or be lost in time for…
This edition © 2015 Fantagraphics Books. Introduction © 2014 Blake Bell. All rights reserved.