Author: Now Read This

By Daniel Torres (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 0-87416-025-1

Torres returns with another scrumptiously retro, tongue-in-cheek pastiche of fifties Americana and Space Opera that nevertheless is a thumping good tale of action and intrigue. In this absurdist and over-the-top blend of detective thriller, science-fiction and B-Movie melodrama, retired and incognito space hero Rocco Vargas is lured back from his sedentary role of author Armando Mistral.

Earth is sweltering under a global heat-wave. Water is scarce and dwindling daily but effete Mistral simply idles in ennui. When old comrade Doc Covalsky comes to him with a scheme to mine icebergs from the winter resort world of Triton he scarcely raises an eyebrow. But when Covalsky dies in mysterious circumstances his daughter becomes the trigger for the return of the legendary Rocco Vargas for one last splendid adventure. The plot rockets along blending corporate skulduggery, insidious interplanetary spies and a plan to bankrupt Earth in a breezy comedy-thriller that Hollywood just isn’t capable of making anymore.

Classic movie fashions, technology with Fins and Jazz-culture pace make Triton a graphic delight. Raucous, racy, outrageous and passionately reverential to a by-gone age, this is a sheer delight for comic fans and anybody who loves American films from the 1930s and 1940s. Clever yet daftly sophisticated, it blends the sensibilities of Hergé’s classic Tintin tales with the exuberance of Raul Walsh and the verve of Buster Crabb’s Flash Gordon serials.

Torres’ work is always a hoot and a treat. In recent years Dark Horse have reprinted a few of his tales and I sincerely recommend you go find some and get back to a much missed Future.

©1986 Daniel Torres, copyrights managed by Norma Agency, Barcelona.
English language edition ©1986 Catalan Communications. All Rights Reserved.

By Dan Jurgens & various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-747-1

The second volume of tales from Earth #9 of the new DC universe (see Tangent Comics: volume 1, ISBN13: 978-1-84576-670-2) collects the remaining four tales from 1997 and one from the sequel series from 1998. Tangent Comics: The Joker, Tangent Comics: Nightwing, Tangent Comics: Secret Six, Tangent Comics: Doom Patrol and Tangent Comics: The Batman all occur on an Earth where the Cuban Missile Crisis led to a nuclear exchange which changed the world and permanently entrenched the Cold War between the Soviets and the West.

The Joker is a mysterious madcap girl who seems determined to bedevil beat cop John Keel as he tries to do his job in the futuristic madhouse that is New Atlantis, built on the irradiated skeleton of Atlanta. ‘Laugh ’till it Hurts’ is written by Karl Kesel, drawn by Matt Haley and inked by Tom Simmons and provides a dark mystery to contrast the outlandish crime-busting hi-jinks.

Nightwing is the codename for a band of rogue mystics planning to expose and defeat a US government agency that uses Magic to achieve its ends – and naturally has its own agenda to fulfil. ‘The Most Dangerous Man in the World’ is by long-time creative collaborators John Ostrander and Jan Duursema.

The Secret Six is the inevitable star team-book, scripted by Chuck Dixon and illustrated by Tom Grummett. ‘Bad Moon’ sees newcomers The Spectre (a teen who can phase out of reality) and the artificial shape-changer Plastic Man unite with The Atom, The Flash, Joker and Manhunter to prevent a madman from becoming all the water on Earth, whilst the Doom Patrol are four enhanced individuals who travel back from 2030 AD to prevent the end of the World. ‘Saving Time’, by Dan Jurgens, Sean Chen and Kevin Conrad, is a rather formulaic chronal escapade with the misunderstood heroes discovering that they may be the trigger for the events they have come to prevent.

The volume closes with the lacklustre ‘Covenant of Iron’ as Jurgens and Klaus Janson reinterpret The Batman as an empty suit of armour animated by the willpower of Sir William, a cursed and lovelorn knight who survived the fall of Camelot, imprisoned in the ethereal Castle of the Bat.

As the middle of a trilogy of volumes it’s perhaps unwise to judge this book on its own merits, but frankly this is a mediocre book you don’t want to pick up without first reading its predecessor, and perhaps not at all until that third book comes out.

© 1997-1998, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Bill Everett, Paul Gustavson & others (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-7851-1617-6

After his dynamic relaunch in Marvel Comics #1 (soon to become Marvel Mystery Comics) and having first appeared in black and white in Motion Picture Funnies, Prince Namor, The Sub-Mariner, promptly gained his own title. Dated Spring 1941, that first issue featured two strips starring the hero/villain ruler of Atlantis as well as the costumed detective and adventurer The Angel in the first of a long run of macabre thrillers.

In the first tale the Sub-Mariner, hybrid offspring of a sub-sea Atlantean princess and an American polar explorer, goes to war against the perfidious Nazis when a fleet of German U-Boats depth-charges the underwater city. Namor retaliates in a bombastic show of super-power that perfectly displays the graphic virtuosity of creator Bill Everett.

The second story concerns a deadly disease afflicting his aquatic subjects which necessitates The Sub-Mariner’s return to New York to obtain – by any means necessary – a supply of Radium. The dual Hero/Villain nature of the character was always a major factor in Prince Namor’s popularity, and even a shared enemy couldn’t keep him on the good side of the American Authorities for long. These deluxe collections also include the mandatory text features that comics were compelled to include to keep their postal status (an arcane system that allowed them to procure large postal discounts as “second class mail”) so you can also enjoy ‘Namor… His Boyhood’ by Roy Gill before moving on to Paul Gustavson’s costumed detective in the 20 page gothic chiller ‘The Angel and the House of Horror’.

Although dressed like a superhero, this do-gooder was a blend of Leslie Charteris’s The Saint and The Lone Wolf (Louis Vance’s urbane two-fisted hero who was the subject of 8 books and 24 b-movies between 1917 and 1949), although his foes tended towards the spooky, the ghoulish and the just plain demented. He also seemed able to cast a giant shadows in the shape of an angel. Not the greatest aid to cleaning up the scum of the Earth but he seemed to manage. Dedicated fans should also note that this book reprints many of the original house ads for other comics the company were producing; and a very tantalising bunch they are.

Issue #2 (Summer 1941) starts off with another Nazi-busting tale (remember America was officially neutral until December 8th of that year) as Namor foils a scheme to spring thousands of German POW’s from internment in Canada. Everett’s hand is still in evidence but by this time an increasing number of assistants were slowly diluting his work as he struggled to produce a monthly strip in Marvel Mystery and his other commitments. The second adventure finds him in a Pennsylvanian town hunting fifth-columnists and spies who have fomented a strike amongst the miners producing coal for ships fuel. Cartoonist Lewis Glanzman provided a gag page and young Stan Lee a text feature entitled ‘The Story behind the Cover’ before The Angel quashed a sinister plot in New England to free ‘The Slaves of the Python’.

The Fall issue began with ‘The Mystery of the Disappearing Island’, a strikingly topical tale that includes Churchill, the question of Irish neutrality and a sub-sea city of druids captured by Nazis as a staging post for bomber raids. This exotic adventure, tinged with immediacy by political issues was an extra-long one (40 pages) followed by a mediocre prose tale ‘Dispatch from Africa’ and this issue closed with a rather incestuous murder mystery as the Angel hunts for a killer when ‘Death Draws a Comic Strip!’

The fourth issue begins with ‘Murders by Ghost Light’ as Namor investigates a haunted hospital, and continues a spooky theme when he encounters a giant monster in ‘The Horror that Walked.’ ‘Fresh Meat for a Raider’ is a prose naval adventure written by a young Mickey Spillane, and ‘Pop’s Woppers’ is a jolly gag feature from Art Gates followed by another spooky puzzler for the Angel: ‘Death’s Merry-Go-Round!’. The vintage thrills and laughs conclude with a lost gem from the legendary Basil Wolverton who wraps things up with a surreal Dr. Dimwit page.

Many early Marvel Comics are more exuberant than qualitative, but this volume, even if largely devoid of premiere league talent, is a wonderful exception and a reading as well as historical treasure that fans will find delightful.

©1941, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.