Author: NowReadThis

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Kindred – A Graphic Novel Adaptation


By Octavia E. Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy & John Jennings (Abrams ComicArts)
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0947-0 (HB), 978-1-4197-2855-6 (TPB), 978-1-6131-2862-6 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

This month we’re again focussing on material pertinent to Black History Month whilst simultaneously indulging ourselves in the mandatory Halloween fright-fest. Maybe one year minorities and women will get a whole month to themselves or perhaps the powers that decree these arbitrary festivals might even acknowledge that these subjects are acceptable everyday fare…

However, here and now let’s peruse a different kind of scary story qualifying on either and both counts..

Octavia Estelle Butler (1947-2006) overcame the stacked handicaps of being female, shy, dyslexic, depressive, fatherless, poor and black in post-war America to become a shining light of the socially-aware science fiction scene that grew out of the works of Philip K Dick, Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Samuel R. Delaney, Zenna Henderson, John Brunner and others. Reared in ethnically diverse but still segregated Pasadena, California, she studied hard, followed her passions, took every opportunity available to studious young women of colour to became one of the most innovative, lauded science fiction authors of her generation.

Butler went to community college just as the Black Power Movement took off and – attending writers workshops – realised that her own experiences could and should inform her writing. In series like her Parable books, Patternist and Xenogenesis sequences, stand-alone novels and dozens of award-winning short stories, Butler explored how societies and splinter groups acted, addressing themes of alienation, exclusion, social and biological evolution, control through belief systems, mutual coexistence of species, genetic manipulation, parapsychic abilities and biological adjustment.

These subjects were frequently screened through a lens of co-dependent cultures of dominance and submission and framed in terms of “racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other ‘isms’ that cause so much suffering in the world.” Elements of loss, contamination, interbreeding, miscegenation, mutation, symbiosis, surrender of autonomy and especially fear continually resurface as scenes of coercion, rape and violence: exploring how and why the weak are ruled by the strong while suggesting such actions are a kind of evolutionary parasitism that might be corrected by sociobiological interventions…

Her works are often associated with the vibrant subgenre of Afrofuturism (as so ideally depicted in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther stories and the Marvel movies featuring secret paradise Wakanda) but Butler’s stories are rife with disenfranchised outsiders or lowly minority characters who are putatively weak, seen as born compromised, enduring and tolerating appalling changes of state and status simply to survive.

Such is certainly the case with the protagonist of Kindred. Adapted here by Damian Duffy and illustrated by John Jennings, the 1979 novel was a stand-alone time-travel tale written by Butler in response to a colleague’s questions about why antebellum slaves tolerated captivity and treatment. Her response was this story, offering brutal, inescapable context justifying  how those accepting years of “willing” subservience might have worked. I believe it’s still in preproduction-limbo for a TV series , but until then you can hunt it out in two kinds of print: prose and pictorial…

The graphic odyssey is preceded by a heartfelt ‘Introduction by Nnedi Okorafor’ before the shocking drama opens with a ‘Prologue’ as African American Dana contemplates the limb she no longer has.

A mystery starts to unravel on June 9th 1976, as she and her (white) husband Kevin Franklin celebrate her 26th birthday by unpacking the boxes that brought all their worldly goods into their new home. They’re both writers and have lots to stuff into this house, but their dreamy domesticity ends abruptly as she’s seized by an uncanny force and vanishes. Dana reappears by ‘The River’ just in time to save a little a white boy named Rufus from drowning…

Dana is then attacked and beaten by his mother and shot at by his father before warping back to Kevin and home. Her soaked, dishevelled condition categorically proves that what she experienced was no delusion but truly an inexplicable event that has shattered her joy and composure. Dana no longer feels safe or secure: here or anywhere…

A similar dreadful incident reoccurs mere hours later with Dana manifesting in Rufus’ bedroom just as he’s igniting ‘The Fire’ that would have destroyed the vast plantation house he lives in. The boy is at least four years older this time and deeply troubled, but Dana patiently establishes a working relationship with him, based on a shared fear of his parents. With open mind and terrified conviction, Dana concludes that she is somehow being pulled through history to a place where her kind are objects bought and sold, a fact Rufus confirms when he reveals the year is 1815. Further cautious conversation draw from the boy his surname – Weylin – and the plantation’s location in Maryland. With horror, Dana recalls snippets of her personal family history and realizes this half-crazed, privileged, firebug WHITE brat is her direct ancestor…

Despite her bizarre clothes, hair, manners and spurious claims to be a freed woman, when Dana tries to flee the manorial house she is caught up in a slave-taker’s punishment raid. After torturing actual runaways they then turn on her and a callous beating edges into a sexual assault that only a sudden switch back to 20th century California prevents from becoming her last moment alive. Grievously battered, she refuses to let Kevin call an ambulance. By his reckoning, she’s only been gone for three minutes, but Dana cannot bear the thought of vanishing again from a hospital…

Anticipating another vanishing, husband and wife assemble a “go-bag” of 20th century medicines and tools for her next abduction and Kevin bones up on black history from their reference library. Here and now, knowledge is power…

Fondly recalling how they first got together, Dana is unprepared for the next summoning, but when the force grips her now, Kevin reacts rapidly. Grabbing her, he is transported with her and sees first-hand the living past. Rufus is visibly older and has just broken his leg in ‘The Fall’. Reacting with fury to the news that these adults are married – scandalously illegal miscegenation! – Rufus is taken into their confidence when they conclusively prove they come from the future.

Forced to be Dana’s “owner” whilst a guest in the Weylin household, Kevin spends too much time apart from his wife whilst she is assigned to the plantation staff. After savagely beating her for teaching blacks to write, Dana’s shameful, shocking ability to read is secretly exploited by Rufus’ parents, who remain unaware the strange slave is making many friends and useful connections amongst the lower orders. Tragically, when the future calls her again, Kevin is nowhere to be found and left behind…

And so the story unfolds, years passing as eyeblink instalments with Dana gradually building a seditious second life among slaves she secretly seeks to radicalise and protect, under the aegis of her family recollections. She searches in vain for her lost husband and contrives a disturbing, discordant, deeply unhealthy relationship with cruelly manipulative (and now adult) ancestor/owner Rufus in ‘The Fight’, before the time-lost lovers are finally reunited in ‘The Storm’.

Eventually, an ending arrives after Dana’s lowest moments in ‘The Rope’…

The scattered threads of family are then drawn together in an ‘Epilogue’ that trusts but cannot prove that the mystery is solved and the travelling done…

A chilling, complex and extremely challenging reappraisal of many kinds of status quo, Kindred is more topical and germane than ever, examining social, racial and gender roles in a culture that has never been less stable or secure. Delivered with the full, uncompromising force of graphic narrative and in the charged, unrestrained terms and language of the 19th century via 1970s liberal outrage, this is a rewarding, informative yet potentially shocking narrative demanding your full attention and a tacit acceptance that history must not be shaded or censored. If raw, unsanitised violence, non-voyeuristic nudity and harsh language are more distressing to you than learning uncomfortable truths, you might be better served by another book today…

Adding value here, this adaptation (which was followed by the team’s treatment of Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents) includes biographies ‘About Octavia E. Butler’ and ‘About the adaptor and artist’ plus ‘Acknowledgements’ and items recommended ‘For Further Reading’…

Kindred is powerful and upsetting, just like it was always meant to be, and is a story you should know in all its forms. There’s no time like the present.
Kindred © The Estate of Octavia E. Butler. Adaptation © 2017 Damian Duffy and John Jennings. Introduction © 2017 Nnedi Okorafor. Based on the novel Kindred by Octavia E. Butler © 1979. All rights reserved.

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Toys in the Basement


By Stéphane Blanquet, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-402-3 (HB)

It’s that special time if you have kids who love the darker, grimmer side of storytelling. Originally published abroad as Chocottes au sous -sol!, this sublime slice of macabre all-ages Euro-whimsy comes courtesy of wildly talented, incredibly prolific animator, auteur and multimedia artist Stéphane Blanquet who has to date over 64 art books, graphic novels, collaborative works and books for kids published since 1994. These include Dungeon: Monstres (volume 2), Kramer’s Ergot, and Zero Zero, as well as the numerous international exhibitions, shows and movies to his name…

Do you remember the heart-wrenching scene in 1964 stop-motion television classic Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer when the runaway ruminant finds the Island of Misfit Toys? Do you recall how all they wanted was children to love them? Hold on to that thought…

Once upon a time at a Halloween fancy-dress party a disgruntled little boy is sulking. In his heart he’s a vicious pirate king, but his cheapskate mother would only pay for a pink bunny costume nobody else wanted…

As the other kids tease and bully him, he retreats to a corner where he meets a geeky kid in a chicken suit. Poultry boy has a broken leg and a raging thirst, but his friend – a girl kitted out as a kitten – has been down in cellar fetching drinks for ages. After some pleading, Pink Bunny, extremely keen to avoid any further embarrassment – or to be seen with a nerd dressed like a chicken – goes after her.

At the bottom of the stairs he finds her paralysed with fear: the basement is filled with maimed and broken toys, alive, angry and determined to wreak bloody vengeance on the cruel children who maltreated and abandoned them. Luckily, because of their stupid outfits, the toys assume the kids are also dolls, because if they were real children…

Playing for time, Catgirl and Bunnyboy follow the malevolent maladjusted playthings into a vast underground cavern where all the world’s broken toys are massing, readying for the day they will rise and take over. The undercover tykes gasp in horror at the artificial army’s secret weapon – a gigantic ravenous Frankensteinian beast named Amelia, cobbled together from thousands of discarded toy fragments, all hungry for righteous slaughter…

It’s at that moment Chicken-boy stumbles upon them and blows their cover…

Dosed with dry, mordant wit and just the right tone of moodily macabre Ghost Train suspense, Toys in the Basement is a simply terrific goose-bumpy thriller rendered magical by the wildly eccentric, brilliantly imaginative and creepily fluid artwork of Blanquet. This dark delight – sadly out of print but still available from the regular online vendors  – also has the perfect moral message for loot-hungry, attention-deprived youngsters; and their kids and grandchildren too.
© 2005 Editions La Joie de Lire SA. This edition © 2010 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Ghost Rider Marvel Masterworks volume 4


By Michael Fleischer, Don Perlin, Carmine Infantino, Ricardo Villamonte & Tom Sutton, with Bob Budiansky, Bob Wiacek, Al Gordon, Jack Abel, Al Milgrom, Bob McLeod, Joe Rubinstein, Gil Kane & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3322-7 (HB), 978-1-3029-4371-4 (Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

At the end of the 1960s the US comic book industry was in turmoil, much like the youth of the nation. Superheroes had dominated for much of the previous decade, peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Established genres including teen humour, war, science fiction and particularly westerns and horror came back in a big way, presumably stoked by contemporary events and radical trends in movie-making. On that Big Screen, another new(ish) wrinkle had emerged: a post-hippie, pre-Grunge motorcycle chic idolising disenchanted, rebellious, unchained Youth on Wheels singly and in packs seeking a different way forward…

Robin, the Teen Wonder, O’Neil & Adams’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen, Captain America and so many others all followed the Easy Rider option to boost flagging sales (and if you’re interested, the very best of that gang was Mike Sekowsky’s tragically unfinished mini-masterpiece of cool Jason’s Quest in Showcase). Over at Marvel – a company still reeling from Kirby’s defection to DC/National in 1970 – canny Roy Thomas green-lit a new character who combined the freewheeling, adolescent-friendly biker-theme with the all-pervasive supernatural furore gripping the entertainment fields.

Back in 1967, Marvel had published a western-era masked hero dubbed Ghost Rider: a whole-hearted appropriation of the cowboy star creation of Vince Sullivan, Ray Krank & Dick Ayers (for Magazine Enterprises from 1949 to 1955), who utilised magician’s tricks to fight bandits by pretending to be an avenging phantom of justice. Scant years later, with the Comics Code prohibition against horror hastily recently revised – amazing how plunging sales can affect morality – scary comics came back in a big way. A new crop of supernatural superheroes and monsters began to appear on newsstands to supplement the revitalised anthology titles filled with ghosts, ghoulies and goblins (but NOT Zombies!) already slowly infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving superhero titles. In fact, softening the Code ban resulted in such an avalanche of horror titles (new material and especially reprints from the first fear boom in the 1950s), in response to the industry-wide down-turn in costumed crusaders, that it probably caused an even more venerable mystery man to – albeit temporarily – bite the dust.

Almost overnight, nasty monsters became acceptable fare for four-colour pages and whilst a parade of pre-Code reprints made sound business sense, the creative aspects of the fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by embracing trends as much as adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public. As always in mass entertainment, the watchword was fashion: what was big outside comics was incorporated into the mix as soon as possible. When proto-monster Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (cover-dated October 1971) and no one too official spoke up, Marvel moved ahead with a line of shocking superstars beginning with classical tropes – a werewolf and a vampire – before broadening the scope with a haunted biker tapping into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and a prevailing supernatural zeitgeist.

Preceded by western hero Red Wolf in #1 and the aforementioned Werewolf by Night in #2-4, an all-new Ghost Rider debuted in Marvel Spotlight #5 (August 1972) and took off like a bat out of… well, you know. Soon he was a solidly steadfast part of an all-inclusive Marvel Universe – although admittedly a bit off to one side! This sturdy hardback (or equivalent digital) compendium collects a ferocious fourth helping of his flame-filled early exploits as our haunted outsider hero began his own search for somewhere safe and something special, as specifically seen in Ghost Rider volume 2, #36-50, spanning cover-dates June 1979 to November 1980. As ever the times, tone and context are pre-explained in a forthright essay conveyed here by Jim Salicrup in his Introduction ‘Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself…’

What Has Gone Before: Carnival stunt cyclist Johnny Blaze sold his soul to the devil in an attempt to save his foster-father Crash Simpson from cancer. As is the way of such things, Satan follows the letter but not spirit of the contract and Simpson dies anyway. When the Dark Lord later comes for his prize, Blaze’s beloved virginal girlfriend Roxanne Simpson intervenes. Her purity prevents the Devil from claiming his due and, temporarily thwarted, Satan spitefully afflicts Johnny with a skeletal form that burns with the fires of Hell every time the sun goes down…

After dancing with the Devil and assorted demons for months, Johnny headed to Hollywood and worked as a cinematic double and stuntman: a hazardous gig that brought him into a romantic dalliance with starlet Karen Page, and team-ups with many superheroes and even more clashes with supervillains. He even dabbled with team superheroics as one of The Champions, but the regular paying gig trapped Blaze in a slow but pitiless war with aspiring super-mobster The Enforcer. Moreover, the infernal taint of his curse increasingly brought the Rider (who increasingly presented as an entirely different personality to Blaze) into conflict with misguided heroes like Doctor Strange, Doctor Druid, Hawkeye & Two-Gun Kid… so Johnny ultimately dropped everything to hit the road again…

He consistently found trouble – mundane and supernal – everywhere. Battling human thugs, mutants, magical demons. monsters and aliens the ride almost ended after a deadly race against the personification of death, but Blaze rode ever on…

Now primarily crafted by Michael Fleischer (November 1st 1942 – February 2nd 2018) & Don Perlin (August 27th 1929 – May 14th 2024), Blaze’s trail resumes here as we roar at top speed down among the dead men for GR #36’s ‘A Demon in Denver!’ Fleischer (Jonah Hex, The Spectre, Conan, Junker) & Perlin (Werewolf By Night, The Defenders, Bloodshot, Solar Man of the Atom) were consolidating a new kind of storytelling style for their hellbound lone star: a nonstop trouble-finding ride across middle America that affected dissolute cycle-bum Blaze as much as his increasingly uncontrollable arcane alter ego…

It brings aimless, penniless Johnny into the mountain metropolis and to a bar where he catches the approving gaze of waitress/dancer Debbie. Tragically, her kindly attentions trigger the brutal, bullying xenophobic and manically possessive local patrons. When their intended beating/lynching of the stranger arouses a diabolical walking hell-storm, Blaze is hard-pressed to divert it and save his attackers from themselves and the city from the enraged, unleashed Ghost Rider…

With their personalities both at war and apparently merging, the flaming demon is then drawn to a circus where stunt cyclists attempting to smash Johnny Blaze’s world car-jumping record. However, his arrival on the ‘Night of the Flame Cycles!’ is also when mobster Dirk Varden sabotages the attempt to extort money out of show owner Farley. In the aftermath, with both his parents dead, the stunt-bikers’ son Davey is offered a way to resurrect them by a satanic cultist…

The cruel temptation is observed by Blaze, who reveals his spectral alter ego to stop the boy repeating his own mistake. As Ghost Rider races away to inflict vengeance on the guilty, the grief-wracked kid follows, witnessing what hell holds as the baleful biker invades Varden’s palatial estate and destroys dozens of mobsters and hangers-on in his drive to punish a killer, subsequently scaring Davey straight when he seeks to shoot Varden, before delivering his own infernal death sentence…

Ever moving on, Blaze faces motorcycle death worshippers ‘The Cult of Doom’ – a growing force in the region but ones who cannot stop him saving the kidnapped daughter of the state Senator Sterling from their acolytes. This noble act makes him a prime target as the disciples of Death and their secret leader turn their full attentions to the Flaming Menace. Blaze finds a job and new friend in mechanic “Harley” Baggs, even agreeing to participate in his dirt bike rally, but when suicidal cult bikers again try to seize Karen Sterling as she also races across the desert, everything turns sour. Johnny again comes to Karen’s rescue, an act that puts him, Baggs and the Brimstone Biker at the top of the Cult’s hit list…

Their next murderous assault unleashes Ghost Rider’s full fury, but only directs the demon into a lethal ambush as ‘Into the Abyss!’ (GR #39, December 1979) reveals his foes are programmed to die rather than fail, and live close to home.

Barely surviving the death riders’ ambush, Johnny joins Senator Sterling’s campaign to end the cult, only to discover vipers at the heart of that project and even more tragedy after briefly growing closer to Karen. In the end, after the demon on wheels confronts the true villains, all Blaze can do is move on and try to forget…

A swift change of pace comes after Johnny reaches the Wichita-Karcinoma Nuclear Plant only to be struck by a hit-&-run driver. Given shelter by disgraced atomic scientist Thurgood Vance and his daughter Angela, Blaze is on hand when gangsters seek to use the boffin’s comeback project – an atom-powered armoured supersuit – to get rich. When their abduction of Angela goes tragically wrong and Thurgood goes berserk, ‘The Menace of the Nuclear Man!’ ultimately pits magical hellfire against atomic fury after Thurgood seeks to assuage his grief by destroying the power plant and everyone in detonation range…

After the Revenant Rider spectacularly foils a truck robbery by notorious bandits The Jackal Gang, exhausted mortal Johnny Blaze hops ‘The Freight Train to Oblivion!’ where fellow freeloaders savagely assault him, thereby stealing not only his wallet and I.D. but also his memories. His befuddled wandering in the desert leads him to an isolated racetrack where race driver Gina Langtree is having car troubles. Whoever the amnesiac is he’s good with engines and soon after she names him Frank Ryder, the wounded wanderer is adopted into the pit crew, provoking an instant attack by pit boss Carl Travis. Thumped by Frank and bollocked by Gina, Travis is put in place and the new couple start some mild canoodling.

Frank ends his very busy day in the bunkhouse. Sadly that’s when the dormant Ghost Rider awakens seeking vengeance on the jackal Gang and roars off into the night of a bike formed from infernal fire…

The lost weekend stops in #42’s ‘The Lonesome Death of Johnny Blaze!’ as Frank awakens in the Langtree Motors bunkhouse, troubled by odd recollections but otherwise unaware of what the Brimstone Biker has done to the robbers he so easily found. Ryder’s second day is his last however as, after saving Gina from a crash, Frank is knocked unconscious by Travis and left to burn in the wreck. Sadly for Carl, Gina sees it all and mourns her new beau even as Travis is arrested. Sadly for what remains of the Jackals, the immolation has reactivated the Ghost Rider who roars off unseen by all to finish what was started the night before. When it is done and humanity returns, a baffled Johnny Blaze is miles from where he last was and taunted by flashes of memories that he can’t explain…

Guest artists Carmine Infantino & Ricardo Villamonte join Fleischer for ‘Night of the Crimson Mage!’ as the Brimstone Biker’s pursuit of robbers traps him into the clutches of scheming sorcerer Azaziah Hornsby. The mystic succeeds in separating the Rider from Blaze, leaving the human to slowly perish whilst the unfettered demon mercilessly rages against all humanity. The tirade one that only pauses after Johnny leaves his deathbed to fight him. In the Tom Sutton inked conclusion ‘Cloak of Crimson – Soul of Dust!’ the unequal contest continues until the unchecked demon notices he also is losing power. The Crimson Mage wants to absorb the hellish force to fuel another thousand years of life, but foiled by Blaze who (despite being hunted by cops) invades the magical citadel and steals paraphernalia to restore the demon to its imprisonment inside him…

Perlin returns for #45 with an overarching plot strand that begins in ‘To Banish a Ghost!’ Downing a beer in Big Herbie’s Tavern, Blaze is infuriated to see swaggering braggart Flagg Fargo on TV, boasting that he will soon take all fabled Johnny Blaze’s stunt records. The clientele soon recognise a star in their midst and drunkenly swear to sponsor him if he will ride against Fargo…

On a new bike with fresh leathers and kit, Johnny starts his comeback duel but his luck runs true and he is hit by a car as he practises. His decline accomplished, his fall comes in ‘The End of a Champion!’ as, despite all his efforts – and in front of the entire world – his boastful opponent proves too much for him. This time even the Ghost Rider cannot help him…

Branding himself a loser, Blaze starts drinking and is targeted by a biker gang, who merciless stalk him. Despite finding some solace with bar server Amy, the relentless bullying and beatings almost break his spirit. In one weak moment he allows ‘The Demon Within!’ to emerge and solve his problems Hell’s way, before finally getting a grip. Blaze recalls his flaming passenger and flees before Amy is harmed, heading into the wastes where more horror awaits. That ride ends as he is attacked by colossal vampire bats in ‘Wind of the Undead!’ before being accused by unfriendly townsfolk of causing trouble and targeted by terrorist Transylvanian émigrés Tabitha Arcanne and Dalton Cartwright. They not only control the winged beasts but also have a medallion that can command the Ghost Rider. It’s not quite enough to save them, though…

As much a lone rider as any cowboy hero, Blaze inevitably met his western cowboy-era prototype predecessor The Night Rider (renamed for convenience and a western reprint title running seven issues from October 1974 to August 1975) as part of his 50th issue celebration. To facilitate that, the modern, devil-tainted Ghost Rider was subject to ‘The Wrath of the Manitou!’ in #49 after failing to stop dam-bombing saboteurs inundating the region and despoiling sacred Indian burial grounds…

The failure hurled the haunted hero back to the 1870s where Bison Bend school teacher Carter Slade battled injustice as Night Rider, blessed by the spirits and employing legerdemain to bamboozle the wicked. Blaze’s arrival converges with a full-scale attack by a masked supervillain/bandit but as ‘Manitou’s Anger… Tarantula’s Sting!’ shows, valour and hellfire are a formidable force that cannot be overcome. Having proved himself to the Spirits and saved history, Johnny is returned to the now just before that bomb detonates and enjoys a second chance to make things right…

To Be Continued…

Big bold bonanza #50 also included a pin-up selection of ‘Ghost Rider’s Gallery of Guest Stars!’ – namely The Son of Satan by Infantino & Wiacek, Incredible Hulk by Gil Kane & Klaus Janson and Phantom Eagle by Herb Trimpe – as well as a comprehensive Index of all his far-flung fearsome appearances. This titanic turbo-charged tome with covers throughout by Bob Budiansky and inkers Bob Wiacek, Al Gordon, Jack Abel, Al Milgrom, Bob McLeod, Joe Rubinstein, then concludes with the original cover art to #50 and a copious Creator Biographies section.

These tales return Ghost Rider to his roaming roots, and imminent threat of the real-deal Infernal Realm: showing a good man struggling to save his soul from the worst of all bargains – as much as the revised Comics Code would allow – so brace yourself, hold steady and accept no supernatural substitutes…
© 2022 MARVEL.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Fast ‘n’ Loose Spooky Truths… 8/10

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Another Realm


By Kristyna Baczynski (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-917355-35-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

The basis of all drama is an examination of the human condition – albeit sometimes in extraordinary forms, configurations or circumstances. Somehow, that’s even more true when your characters aren’t human at all – as seen throughout this compelling compendium of past works by author/illustrator Kristyna Baczynski. The author/artist hails from the Pennines of Yorkshire, by way of the Carpathians of the Ukraine. That’s not at all germane here, but does hint at many places visited to get here, with events already witnessed. It also sounds incredibly romantic, conjuring up all manner of deep-seated preconceptions about windy moors, bleak moody peaks, poignant meetings, sudden surprises and perpetually building new homes and friendships.

In a nutshell, preconceptions, aspirations, dreams, realisations and that old devil hope are what this book is about…

The appetising menu consists of Baczynski’s first longform comics work – released in 2018 – adroitly accompanied by a glorious smorgasbord of briefer comics works crafted since 2012. During that period they have built a body of work spanning independent zine culture to mainstream publishing, with major names including 2000 AD, Penguin Random House, Hachette, Carlton and Canongate paying bills whilst self-publishing and small press freedoms renourish their soul, and reinvigorate the speculative whimsy…

The review opens with the main course and a fresh look at Retrograde Orbit.

In a faraway star system, a little girl grows up as refugee and immigrant. Flint finds it hard to adapt to life on mining colony world Tisa. Even though she has no real memories of the place, she feels the call of her long-abandoned homeworld Doma. The exodus was due to a geological or maybe industrial toxic detonation, but no one at school cares or understands, and mother and grandmother never want to talk about it…

Years that are never easy go by anyway, and those feelings of something missing don’t go away. Days pass too and Flint grows up, acting out like any teen. She inevitably graduates into a mining job, but the something-missing still plagues her. Moments pass as she collects memoirs and mementos of her lost world, whilst growing increasingly colder and duller.

…And then a message is received from the supposedly dead, barren planet. Flint now has a purpose and a goal, and nothing will stand in the way of her return…

This lyrical, uplifting yarn offers a beautifully understated, moving glimpse at the power of Place in our lives, employing science fiction themes and trappings to dissect the most primitive and fundamental longings to which humans are subject. It also reminds us that there’s always hope. In a glorious celebration of humanity’s constant follies and greatest assets, this tale is certain to be a beloved touchstone for every lover of aspiration and resolve.

The remainder of this virtuoso graphic dishes consist of tasty and tempting small press tales, self-published unless otherwise noted. Leading off and addressing recurring themes of living alone (and the perniciousness of plants!) is ‘My New Hobby Craves Violence’ wherein lonely bookshop worker Pip, fresh out of a soured relationship, adopts a strange pot plant and – aided by online kibitzers and supporters – nurses it back to life with appalling, life-changing repercussions…

‘Vessel’ then audits the life of a youngster looking to fill herself with vivid experiences before ‘A Measure of Space’ shares the life of one of those who survived the meteor crash that shook the world and changed all life upon it…

First seen in 24×7 (published by Fanfare in 2016) ‘Hand Me Down’ traces the mighty passage of life from great saurids through us to what follows humanity, as recorded by an artefact that survives a cascade of eras and epochs by being precious to those at the top of each food chain, after which ‘Vantage’ similarly follows the progress of assorted life forms who think the world revolves for and around them…

Next comes a selection of pieces appropriately deemed Short and Sweet, beginning with a pictorial proposition (from OffLife #6, 2013) that the brain and mindscape are just a ‘Repository’ of experience, followed by scary yarn ‘Yaga’s Light’ (Bimba #2, 2013) wherein dying, desperate peasants follow a phantom into the woods and beg the evil capricious witch there to save them…

That’s augmented by surreal cautionary vignette ‘Scratcher’ (OffLife #10, 2014) and twinned tales from (The Hic & Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humour, 2013). A witty peek at a bunch of funny bones, ‘Fossil Waffle’ is supplemented by a bargain-boasting going-out-of- business sale after Earth calls in the Receivers and canny ET buyers enjoy ‘Galactic Savings’. Next, The Warriors of Junkfood (2026) unleashes kaiju fast food as rampaging ‘Greasy Bandits’, prior to one woman failing to control her appetite for ‘Dinner at Eight’ (from The Strumpet, 2013) before (from The Stool Pigeon, 2012) a beleaguered broken bunny battles on and broaches ‘Another Year, Another Easter’…

Closing our narrative window, ‘Compliments – A Study’ is a dose of self-analysis latterly confirmed by ‘Bleeding’ and a demonstration that ‘A Drawing is Like a Seed’ before a cruelly funny countdown to ultimate feline mortality is explored in ‘Nine Lives’ (originally self-published before picked up by Fantagraphics for The Treasury of Mini Comics volume 2 in 2015). We then close on an expansive ‘Gallery’ of 11 miasmic scenes all intended to further stretch the mind and heart.

The intoxicating joy of drawing and sheer buzz of creation bursts from every page of this cartoon cavalcade, as a rich cosmopolitan blend of inspirational formative events and an international/intergalactic taste for the unexplored and as yet unreachable stars above. From human depths to stellar heights, Another Realm is a gateway to adventure and home away from home for all dreamers to visit as often as possible.
© Kristyna Baczynski 2026. All rights reserved.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Star-Struck Wonderment… 8/10

Another Realm will be released on October 28th 2026 in Britain and on December 2nd in the USA. It is available for pre-order now.

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In the Pines – 5 Murder Ballads


By Erik Kriek (Fantagraphics/Canongate Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78689-214-0 (HB/Digital edition)

This book contains Discriminatory Content included for historical authenticity.

If you don’t know what a murder ballad is you should start this sublime hardcover anthology by reading Jan Donkers’ superb background essay at the back of the book before treating yourself to the grim graphic glories crafted by Dutch artisan/illustrator Erik Kreik.

In ‘Murder Ballads’ you will learn the history of the ancient musical sub-genre as well as the direct genealogy of the quintet of sordid, sorry sagas adapted from sound to stunning words and pictures here. However – and just because it’s you – the term is generally applied to folk music story-songs from many countries all dealing with love, crime, sex, social transgression and unnatural death…

In 2016 Erik Kriek (creator of silent superhero spoof Gutsman; Little Andy Roid; Het Onzienbare/From Beyond) – adapted a number of vintage and modern Murder Ballads into strip format. A huge fan of all forms of popular Americana, he also covered the songs with his band The Blue Grass Boogiemen on a CD naturally entitled In the Pines – 5 Murder Ballads. The book won Germany’s 2016 Rudolf Dirks Award and the spin-off garnered Album of the Year 2017 from Dutch Comics.

Amsterdam-born Kriek is a graduate of the Rietveld Academy for Art and Design and a hotly in-demand illustrator of books (like Holland’s Tolkien & Harry Potter editions), magazines, apparel, skateboards, et al, and will happily turn his hand to a variety of styles & disciplines. Gutsman was reconceived as a soundless mime ballet in 2006 and his collection of Lovecraft adaptations Het onzienbare, en andere verhalen H. P. Lovecraft has been republished in many languages. He followed up this with his first children’s book Mika, the Little Bear That Didn’t Want to Go To Sleep.

A multi-national phenomenon, In the Pines delivers its moody messages of ill-starred love in dreamy, two-coloured incidents. US fans will recognise the drawing style as echoing the very best EC horror tales by “Ghastly” Graham Ingels or early Bernie Wrightson. The concerto of terror opens with ‘Pretty Polly and the Ship’s Carpenter’, a much-covered traditional ditty (The Byrds; Judy Collins; The Stanley Brothers) rendered here in green & black on crisp white pages. It details the fore-doomed fate of a young man who fled to sea to escape his sins, only to see them resurface in death for his shipmates during a seemingly supernatural storm…

Tinted in sepia, ‘The Long Black Veil’ is a relatively modern song, composed and written by Marijohn Wilkin & Danny Dill in 1959 and most notably recorded by Lefty Frizzell, Johnny Cash, The Band, Mick Jagger, Nick Cave amongst so many others. It reveals how a farmer is faced with a staggering choice: hang for a murder he did not commit or betray the confidence of the adulterous woman who is his only alibi…

Racially-charged and rendered in tones of muddy ochre, ‘Taneytown’ was originally delivered by Steve Earle, a synthesis of so many lynching incidents that shame and blight the history of the (early) 20th century American South. Here a young black man, sick of the life he’s subject to in rural Maryland, takes the knife his negro war hero father used in the trenches of the Great War and heads for trouble in the whitest part of town…

Written by singer Gillian Welch, ‘Caleb Meyer’ is adapted in tones of chilling aquamarine and presents a young wife betrayed, terrorised and assaulted who wins for herself a potent dose of ironic retribution before we close this sinister songbook in tones of watered down blood with ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’.

Possible the most well-known of the perilous pentangle, the strip is based on a dark ditty created by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds for their 1996 album Murder Ballads. Sung as a duet with Kylie Minogue, the song was based on traditional air Down in the Willow Garden. The story seen here presents a complex web of trauma and tension involving a murderous escaped convict, a gang of hidden outlaws, lost treasure, a solitary house in the deep woods and a protective mother most conveniently absent. Tragically, neither the rapidly pursuing posse nor the vile-intentioned villain have any idea what young Elisa is truly capable of, or why her father called her his “wild rose”…

Making something compelling and beautiful from the worst aspects and acts of human behaviour is no mean feat, either in song or pictures, but In the Pines accomplishes the deed with gripping style, vibrant polish and immense charm. This is a book every lover or victim of human foible will adore, potent and evocative with a sly gift to captivate and transport us just as the music intoxicates the mind’s eye through the ears.

One last note: Kriek is reputed to relax in Irish bars – possibly drinking but mostly singing and playing the banjo – so let’s hope that he’s got many more songs yet to draw, once the ambience reaches the appropriate crescendo.
© Erik Kriek, 2016. “Murder Ballads” © Jan Donkers. 2016. All rights reserved.

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Green Lantern Sector 2814 volume 2


By Len Wein, Paul Kupperberg, Steven Englehart, Dave Gibbons, Bill Willingham, Joe Staton, Bruce Patterson, Mark Farmer, Rich Rankin & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4078-3 (TPB), 978-1-4012-4812-3 Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

When mortally wounded alien cop Abin Sur crashed on Earth, he commanded his power ring – a device which could materialise thoughts – to seek out a replacement officer, honest and without fear. Scanning the planet, it selected brash young test pilot Hal Jordan in nearby Coast City, California and brought him to the crash-site. The dying alien then bequeathed his ring, the lantern-shaped Battery of Power and his professional vocation to the astonished Earthman.

Over many traumatic wonder-packed years, Jordan grew into one of the greatest members of a serried band of indomitable law-enforcers. The Green Lantern Corps protected the cosmos from evil and disaster for billions of years, policing vast numbers of sentient beings under the severe but benevolent auspices of immortal superbeings who appointed and considered themselves Guardians of the Universe. These undying patrons of Order were one of the first races to evolve and dwelt in sublime, emotionless security and tranquillity on the world of Oa at the very centre of creation.

Green Lanterns are chosen for their capacity to overcome fear and are equipped with a ring that creates solid constructs out of emerald light and offers other informational, procedural defensive, communicative and administrative facilities. The miracle weapon is fuelled by the strength of the user’s willpower, making it one of the mightiest tools imaginable.

For eons, a single individual from each of 3600 arbitrary sub-divisions – “sectors” – of known space was selected to patrol his, her or its own beat, but being cautious, methodical and meticulous masters, the Guardians laid contingency plans, such as appointing designated reserve officers.

Jordan’s substitute was a nice quiet (white) PE teacher named Guy Gardner, but when he was critically injured the Oans’ fallback option was a little worrying to staid, by-the-book Hal. In Green Lantern/Green Arrow #87 (December 1971/January 1972) ‘Beware My Power!’ a bold, new and painfully contemporaneous character was introduced to the DCU. Back then John Stewart was an unemployed architect and full-time radical activist: an angry black man always spoiling for a fight and prepared to take guff from no-one.

Jordan was convinced the Guardians had grievously erred when selecting rash, impetuous Stewart as Sector 2814’s official GL stand-in, but after seeing how his proposed pinch-hitter handled a white supremacist US presidential candidate trying to foment race war, the established and entrenched Emerald Gladiator was delighted to change his tune…

As time progressed Stewart popped up occasionally, even as the Guardians’ motives and ineffability increasingly came into question from many of their once-devoted operatives and peacekeepers. All too frequently, the grunts saw their formerly infallible little blue gods exposed as venal, ruthless, doctrinaire and even capricious…

As his repute grew, headstrong Hal enjoyed an extremely tempestuous relationship with his bosses which eventually resulted in them accusing him of neglecting his space sector – 2814 – to concentrate on Earth’s problems and criminals. When he couldn’t reconcile his love for Carol Ferris and duty to the Corps, Jordan quit…

This second stellar Fight’s ‘n’ Tights compilation gathers Green Lantern #182-183 and 185-193, comprising cover-dates November 1984 through October 1985: a period of radical change and increasing cosmic calamity as the DCU counted inexorably down to a reality-altering Crisis on Infinite Earths…

Without preamble, Len Wein, Dave Gibbons & Mark Farmer continue their groundbreaking reshaping of the legend in ‘It’s a Dirty Job, But…’ wherein the now merely mortal Jordan second-guesses his decision as he revisits Abin Sur’s remote resting place. Meanwhile, across the universe, the Guardians moved swiftly, promoting Stewart to the peacekeeping position in his sector. At this time, the architect is working on rebuilding the shattered Ferris Aircraft complex (a regular collateral casualty of Green Lantern’s complex lifestyle) and had no idea that Hal Jordan was the alter ego of his abruptly “retired” predecessor, nor that GL Jordan’s old enemy Major Disaster had returned and was looking for a fight…

Further complicating matters, Dr. Bruce Gordon – currently employed building a solar engine for Ferris – was being stalked and harassed by his own inner demon made manifest. Before Green Lantern Jordan had helped cure him, Gordon was the unwilling host to a demonic hate-filled energy spirit called Eclipso. Now, that monster was apparently back and seeking to steal the almost-completed solar engine for his own dark designs…

Calamitously, when Major Disaster furiously threatens to destroy a massive hydroelectric dam and flood the entire state, the Emerald Gladiator he stridently demands a rematch with is not the one who turns up…

Refusing to accept any substitute, the madman tectonically triggers a ‘Day of Disaster’… and learns to his sorrow that the masked black man is every inch as competent and formidable as his despised archfoe.

Green Lantern #184 reprinted the origin of Guy Gardner from #59 (1968) and was omitted from this collection but Wein & Gibbons (inking himself) return for #185 as ‘In Blackest Day…!’ sees the new ringbearer for Sector 2814 fully acclimate to his responsibilities. An overnight celebrity and media sensation, Stewart is courted by TV reporter Tawny Young but earns her enmity after refusing to divulge the circumstances of his origin and promotion.

On a more mundane level, Hal still frets over his decision and loss of power, even as his supposedly free-&-clear romance with Carol hits a new snag. Unknown to either of them, she has acquired a super-powered stalker determined to protect her from anything he perceives as a threat…

With Eclipso still secretly beleaguering Gordon, Hal prepares to test-fly the prototype Ferris solar jet, but is ambushed by his old pal and mentor Rich Davis. That medically-disqualified pilot wants one last flight of glory and takes Hal’s place, only to become a hostage when Eclipso snatches the jet out of the sky from his fantastic landscape-rending moon satellite…

‘In Brightest Night…!’ Wein & Gibbons (with plotting input from Paul Kupperberg) sees the new GL rush to the rescue as Hal can only look on helplessly. Then, Carol’s mystery suitor The Predator also boards the moon globe and the situation flares beyond control, resulting in victory at a terrible cost…

Kupperberg, Bill Willingham & Rich Rankin provide a rapid fill-in for #187 (April 1985) as ‘A Day in His Life…’ finds Carol confronted by the Predator who declares his amorous intentions by beating up her current boyfriend Hal, even as John Stewart tackles his first space catastrophe and narrowly escapes destroying the malfunctioning space shuttle he was trying to save. Thankfully, the all-wise Guardians have anticipated teething troubles and despatched veteran GL Katma Tui be his training officer…

The next issue heralded a changing of the guard as writer Steve Englehart and illustrators Joe Staton & Bruce Patterson signed on with ‘Decent Exposure’, wherein Tawny Young outs Stewart on national TV, and he – after some early frustration – decides “so what?”

With Predator proving to be far more than a mere abusive, controlling maniac, proud but pounded Hal swears revenge, even as European ultra-nationalist Sonar returns to destroy the new Green Lantern in his obsessive campaign to prove the superiority of his postage-stamp principality Modora…

After Stewart proves his worth with a uniquely elegant solution to the villain’s sound weapons, ‘Echoes!’ sees Sonar bounce back, escaping from custody with enhanced allies Blindside & Throttle, despite the assistance of Katma Tui. Hal and Carol’s search for Predator lead them to a much-delayed visit with practically-braindead shut-in Guy Gardner, which inadvertently starts those long-dormant cogs clicking again…

Even as Stewart at last apprehends his fugitive foes, a new crisis breaks. ‘Time Out of Mind!’ starts with Tawny Young re-entering the picture, touting years-old video-tape interviews she carried out with Green Arrow, Black Canary, the previous GL, Carol and Stewart himself. Disturbingly, nobody on Earth remembers these meetings and if the journalist hadn’t been raiding the archives, never would have…

As she shows the tapes to the astounded superheroes, Predator nonchalantly ambles in to steal the records and is stunned to realise that the gimmick he’s used to make everyone unable to see him doesn’t work on alien Katma…

A back-up tale – ‘Mind Out of Time!’ – focuses on Hal’s hunt for Predator and furious confrontation in a theatre in front of a bizarre alien musical organ. That preliminary bout becomes the main event in GL #191 as ‘Macho!’ sends John & Katma off-earth to work with Dalor of Timron – Green Lantern of neighbouring Sector 2813 – whilst Hal’s final confrontation with Predator reveals an uncanny, impossible connection to Carol which revives her own darkest and most suppressed secret…

Green Lantern #192 sees the separate storylines converge in ‘First Star I See Tonight!’ with the off-world Emerald officers tackling the immortal amazon warriors of Zamaron, whilst on Earth, Carol reverts to sometime-alter ego Star Sapphire, a murderous monster now finally purged of the annoying, pitiful humanity that held her back from operating as the dominating tyrant and chosen queen of those self-same Zamarons…

Utterly dominating powerless Hal, she reveals the decades-long machinations that have led to this moment of terrible triumph… before teleporting home where three furious Green Lanterns are waiting…

This volume concludes with the return of another Hal villain in ‘Dead Ringer’, but where Jordan defeated the tragic alien Replikon through brute force and guile, Stewart proves his worth through innovation and compassion: building a solution which makes friend out of foe and corrects a grave cosmic injustice…

Way back then, many fans and critics felt the substitution of Jordan with John Stewart was little more than a PC stunt, but time and the quality of the stories proved the decision to be a brilliant one. It certainly offered a cruelly under-served portion of the readership another solid role model, but as time progressed and the different personalities and approaches coalesced, the move led to a huge expansion and re-evaluation the nature of being a DC hero.

And the best was still to come…
© 1984, 1985, 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Broadcast


By Eric Hobbs & Noel Tuazon (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-590-0 (TPB)

When you read that as many as one million Americans were fooled into hysterical panic by Orson Welles’ now-legendary Halloween radio broadcast of the War of the Worlds, it’s hard not to think “how dumb are you?” or “don’t you people read books?” but the sad fact remains that a vast proportion of the population back then heard only a little piece of the innovative updating of the H.G. Wells classic on October 30th 1930 and some genuinely thought the end of humanity had come.

…Or it never happened at all and the media perpetrated one more lie upon for inexplicable reasons…

This superbly understated, low-key monochromatic tale takes a canny peek at human nature in a time of sustained privation (the Great Depression had just hit the USA a damned sight harder than any Martian death-ray could) and urgent – if only imagined – emergency as a small community in rural Indiana endures a couple of unhappy coincidences that result in a horrific but very human confrontation…


At the height of a brutal storm, a small band of farmers and families huddle in a barn. It’s been a bad day all around. Young Gavin Baker has finally asked wealthy Thomas Shrader if he could marry his daughter Kim, but that meeting didn’t go well. Nevertheless, the lovers still plan to escape to New York where Kim can become a writer…

Shrader has made a killing bailing out and buying up failing farms over the past year and isn’t well liked by newly-destitute townsfolk such as widower Jacob Lee or cropper Eli Dawson, but he’s the only employer left, so they make do…

A severely beaten, wandering Negro named Martin Steinbeck stumbles into the Baker place later that day. He’s clearly had a brutally rough encounter and is astonished when the family offer him help and sustenance rather than hatred and further violence. Later, throughout the community townsfolk tune in their radios and catch what they believe to be newscasts reporting Martian invaders blasting New York and New Jersey. Suddenly, a storm hits and the Indiana town loses power…

With phones and lights out, panicked, terrified citizens all head towards the Shrader place with its solid storm cellar, but, when Kim discovers a truck with dead bodies it in, the only conclusion is that the aliens have already reached the Heartland…

As the families arrive, Shrader delivers an ultimatum: only five people will be allowed refuge: him, his wife and three others – and only if rebellious Kim is one of them…

With imminent doom lurking in the growing darkness, friendship, civility and human empathy start to break down, and a very human atrocity appears inevitable…

This is an enchantingly subtle and impressive tale, deftly avoiding histrionics and bombast, and is ultimately uplifting and positive. Eric Hobbs (The Librarian, Nightcrawler Tales, Awakenings) focused on the communal heroism of the common man, with the misty, raw line-&-wash illustration of Noel Tuazon (Elk’s Run, Kismet, Man of Fate, Tumor) marrying dreamy introspection with painful sufferance to bestow the ensemble cast with a look far removed from the general run of modern comics.

The book also offers a photo-&-clippings gallery displaying the media’s response to that original radio broadcast; deleted scenes; character sketches and a brief commentary on the creator’s working process. Tense, ironic and deeply moving, this is a lost gem of our art form, long overdue for some popular attention and absolutely ripe for a modern digital rerelease.
© 2010 Eric Hobbs.

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Marvel Zombies Vs. Army of Darkness


By John Layman, Fabiano Neves, Fernando Blanco, Sean Phillips & Arthur Suydam with John Byrne, Terry Austin, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Carmine Infantino, Ross Andru, Dick Giordano, Jim Lee, Jim Starlin, Frank Miller & various (MARVEL/Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4243-0 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Swiftly catching a cultural wave to become one of turn-of-the-century Marvel’s most popular niche-franchises, a canny blend of gratuitous violence, sharp wit and arrant buffoonery led to the Marvel Zombies taking the comics-reading world by storm in the mid-2000s. So big was the concept that, like a flesh-eating infection, it even escaped the confines of corporate continuity to engender an inter-company crossover with another hugely popular horror franchise. The result was carnage, mayhem, buckets of blood, macabre laughs via a 5-issue miniseries that mutated into this hard-to-find but fab-to-read treat…

You will need not nets, swords or shotguns but cold hard currency in various formats…

In one of so many Marvel universes an intruder from beyond brought an extra-dimensional curse to that tragic reality: a pestilence that without exception turned the infected (for which read “bitten” and “chewed on”) victims into ravenous, undead eating machines.

Confronted by wave after wave of valiant superheroes, “patient zero” defeated them all and his contagion spread exponentially as defenders fell to rise again as voracious monsters. Before a day was out, a chain-reaction of hungry terror devastated the world, leaving its costumed champions as no less than the apex predators atop a rapidly diminishing food source…

Ash Williams – as played on-screen by actor Bruce Campbell (and who wrote the eerily  excellent DC Horror Presents: Sgt. Rock vs. the Army of the Dead) is the implausible demon-killing star of the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness movies devised by Sam Raimi. A horny, misogynistic oaf and utterly charmless goon, he is nonetheless chosen by fate to destroy all “deadites”: ravening evil ghosts intent on ending all life, and originally spawned by a malignant, malevolent sentient tome known as The Necronomicon.

For a total butthole, Ash is surprisingly competent at his job…

Dark Horse Comics produced the first Evil Dead comic book series in 1992 before Dynamite Entertainment picked up the license in 2004, opening with dark ‘n’ daft miniseries Army of Darkness: Ashes 2 Ashes. That led to 2005’s Army of Darkness: Shop Till You Drop (Dead) and Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator before an on-going series was finally commissioned in 2006. Considering his predilection for gory, sardonic splatter-tainment, the dimension-hopping, time-jumping Ash was a dead cert to visit Marvel’s funerary fun house…

This slim, sinister inter-company chronicle collects Marvel Zombies Vs. Army of Darkness #1-5 (May – September 2007), by scripter John Layman and illustrator Fabiano Neves, with Fernando Blanco, Sean Phillips and colourist June Chung all contributing to the moody mix.

Unusual for such intersecting universe imbroglios, the events of this yarn are “in-continuity”, occurring during, contiguous with and ultimately affecting the tragic happenings seen in ‘Marvel Zombies: Dead Days’. It even offers key story points not revealed in the exclusively Marvel tales, so completists be warned…

It all begins after Ash arrives on (an) Earth in the hours before the infection first hits. A no-nonsense blue-collar kind of guy, the Deadite Destroyer can take demonic monsters and time-travel in his stride but is flabbergasted to see grown men in tights beating each other up.

Watching Daredevil battle supervillain Thunderball, the nonplussed necromantic nomad is unable to discern who is good and who evil, but his amazement is suspended after the wicked spirit of the Necronomicon appears to taunt him with a prophecy… “this world will die and an army of the dead will rise”…

Stuck in a la la land of costumed clowns, Ash opts to go straight to the top, seeking out Avengers Mansion, where the assembled heroes refuse to believe his warnings of doom. Being dumped in a lake by The Scarlet Witch only serves to jog his memory, however, and he recalls his last moments before arriving in this fruity, steroid-infested madhouse…

He was happily dead and about to enter Heaven when a costumed maniac attacked, biting the deceased, turning them into flesh-eating horrors and wrecking the entire Afterlife. Ash escaped back to the lands of the living, but the creature followed him…

The superheroes are leaving to investigate reports of a monster when Ash finds them again, and Colonel America orders Spider-Man to take the raving lunatic away for his own safety. By the time the traveller convinces the Wallcrawler that he isn’t crazy, the damage has been done. Almost all of the World’s Mightiest Heroes are now ravening undead horrors and Ash is ‘Earth’s Mightiest Zero’…

Stunned, the late-arriving webspinner is easy meat for the Star-Spangled zombie, leaving Ash helpless before a hungry rabble of former heroes. Events kick into grisly top gear in ‘Marvel Team-Ups’ as Spider-Man, frantically fighting the hunger that’s killing him, whisks Ash to temporary safety before fleeing, leaving the extra-dimensional demon killer all alone …until seeming kindred spirit The Punisher shows up.

The man with the skull on his chest doesn’t care about undead monsters: he’s busy killing a few living ones like The Kingpin, Hammerhead and The Owl. However, once his current task is completed, he comes around to Ash’s way of thinking, but his confrontational manner of only dealing with things head on soon ends his usefulness. The vigilante does leave Ash with a lot of serious ordnance, though which cocky Mr. Williams uses to save hot babe Dazzler from imminent death by superhero bite…

Ash is convinced the Necronomicon is summoning Deadites to this Earth and – after informing the mutant musical transducer that an evil magic book is behind all the grief – Dazzler takes him to the home of Doctor Strange, reasoning that if the chronicle of chaos is to be found anywhere it will be in the library of Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme…

They are far too late: ‘Night of the Livid Dead’ finds Ash reunite with Scarlet Witch (now the only still-breathing Avenger) and encounters his Marvel Earth counterpart as well as a flesh-eating humanoid duck named Howard, but the mystic they’re seeking is long gone. Ash and his new team do however convince other tormented tomes in the library to tell them where the Necronomicon is currently located and, leaving scenes of escalating horror behind them, the mortals fly to Latveria to confront a foreigner with the unlikely name of Doctor Doom…

By the time they get there the plague has gone global and the Balkan kingdom is under siege: possibly the only place on Earth where humans still live – and only then behind the straining forcefields of Castle Doomstadt.

‘The Book of Doom’ opens with the Iron Dictator disregarding Ash’s warnings of infernal invasion in favour his own conclusions of a simple pan-dimensional virus, before dumping him in the pens where a breeding stock of humans is cached, ready to repopulate Earth after Doom inevitably destroys the zombie hordes.

Unconvinced by his captor’s arrogant assurances, Ash busts out and meets Scarlet Witch on her way to the dictator’s library. Soon they are interrogating the Devil Doctor’s copy of the Necronomicon and Ash discovers he been played from page one…

Reeling with despair and defeat he then releases a hot chick in a glass tube who calls herself Amora the Enchantress, blissfully unaware that she is both an evil goddess and a plague-carrying zombie Doom has been experimenting on…

The tale and the world comes to an explosive, blood-drenched end in concluding chapter ‘The Stalking Dead’ wherein an army of undead heroes converge on Latveria, but not before Ash and Doom pull a minor rabbit out of their combined hats, ferrying the last humans to a place of other-dimensional safety. The hapless Haunt Hunter, however, is less lucky and lands in a dimension with a monster problem even he hasn’t encountered before…

Fast-paced, irreverent, raucous and gorily outrageous, this laugh-out-loud saga of no-guts-&-less-glory will sit well with readers hungry for immature entertainment and all comic book completists, and comes with a splendid gallery of covers-&-variants by Arthur Suydam, recreating eight classic scenes from Marvel history. Also included are inspirational originals by John Byrne, Terry Austin, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Carmine Infantino, Ross Andru, Dick Giordano, Jim Lee, Jim Starlin and Frank Miller.
© 2007, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. All Marvel characters, names and distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Marvel Characters, Inc. Army of Darkness and all characters, names and distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Orion Pictures™ & © 1993-2009 Orion Pictures Corporation, Inc. All rights reserved. Licensed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. to Dynamic Forces Inc. Dynamite, Dynamic Entertainment & its logo ™

& © & Dynamic Forces Inc. Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Complete Peanuts volume 11: 1971-1972


By Charles M. Schulz & various (Fantagraphics Books/Canongate Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-1456-9 (US HB/Digital edition), 978-0857864079 (UK HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Peanuts is unequivocally the most important comic strip in the history of graphic narrative. It is also the most deeply personal. Cartoonist Charles M Schulz crafted his moodily hilarious, hysterically introspective, shockingly surreal philosophical epic for half a century: 17,897 strips spanning October 2nd 1950 to February 13th 2000. He died – from complications of cancer and in suitably mythopoeaic manner – the day before his last strip was printed.

At its height, Peanuts ran in 2,600 newspapers, in 21 languages and 75 countries. Many of those venues still run it in perpetual reprints, as they have ever since his death. During his lifetime, book collections, a merchandising mountain and television spin-offs had made the publicity-shy doodler an actual billionaire at a time when that really meant something…

None of that matters. Peanuts – a title Schulz loathed, but one the Syndicate forced upon him – changed the way comics strips were received and perceived: proving cartoon comedy could have edges and nuance and meaning as well as soon-forgotten pratfalls and punchlines.

For this 11th compendium we begin with a photo-portait of the man at work followed by an effusive Foreword from film & theatre star Kristin Chenoweth, recalling her time (1998-1999) as part of the gang. This is thanks to her stage triumph as Sally in musical phenomenon You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and here she shares memories and thoughts on Schultz; and thoughts on what makes the little sister tick on stage and on page…

As always, however, our pictorial focus and primary point of contact remains quintessential loser Charlie Brown who, alongside and yet simultaneously far behind fanciful, increasingly multi-personalitied, high-maintenance mutt Snoopy, remains squarely at odds with a mercurial supporting cast. They all timelessly hang out, doing what at first sight looks like Kids Stuff in an ever-more complex and adverse universe of perverse happenstance. But remember now, with this collecton it’s the socially aware, all-change era of “the Seventies”, when lots of untouchable notions were being deconstructed and reconsidered everywhere… even on the funny pages.

Individual strip slices focus on play and copious leisure time; varying degrees of musicality; childish pranks; interpersonal alignments; mounting pressures of evermore oppressive education and mass media lensed through wide (but often squinty) young eyes that witness it all with unguarded openess. These moments come pre-leavened by agonised teasing, aroused and/or crushed hope, naïve, baffled generalisations and observations with our little tots occasionally acting a bit too much like grown-ups.

With this tome’s tales, themes and tropes defining the series (especially in the wake of so many animated TV specials) became mantra-like and endlessly variable for the growing radership. Focus now is less on Charlie Brown and more on those around him but this time everybody’s hunger for acceptance has been subsumed into a deliciously overarching environmental constant that grows more abundant in its fallout… everyone is growing aware  of relationships and LOVE…

Of course, most human interactions still find our boy a pitiable outlier who only really understands sports – or so he thinks. People come and go but although Mean Girl Violet and Pig-Pen might be fading into the background, a core grpup consisting of musical prodigy Schroeder, self-taught psychoanalyst/dictator-in-waiting Lucy van Pelt, her brilliant but off-kilter little brother Linus and Charlie’s sister Sally are all abundantly on view, but regularly ensnared in the sundry traps of romance and attraction, and seem to be leaving our boy behind…

Snoopy, by strutting his many and varied imaginry selves – such as a predatory vulture waiting to pick off frozen kids in the snow – plays many key roles. These include the savvy sports-beagle; the pronosticating owner of an eerily insightful “Beagle Board”; a reputed war hero/author and so many more, but he too has a dubious, inexplicable relationship. His time with his secretary – a tiny, ditzy bird called Woodstock – is open to frequent comment, much of it from the beagle himself…

Our titular star still pines for the unattainable  “Little Red-haired Girl” who so tragically moved away before he could summon the nerve to speak to her…

The kids and critters are primarily fixtures honed to generate joke-routines and gag-sequences around signature foibles, but some (like African American Franklin and even author-Snoopy) enjoy more serious roles too and have become signposts for specific cntemporary themes. In this book one extended instance is when Snoopy’s favourite writer (Helen Sweetstory of The Six Bunny-Wunnies fame) is removed from the school library, as the strip homed in on the then-growing real-world crime of parentally-steered book-banning…

Another star on the rise is Patricia Reichardt AKA tomboy Peppermint Patty (who had debuted four years earlier on August 22nd 1966). She had been a strong, opinionated female achetype and a counsellor to younger girls, when not inadvertantly outshining Charlie Brown in sporting endeavours, but here gains far greater feminist prominence. Her key moments include making a stand for personal female individuality after School introduces more feminine dress codes (but only for half the students); struggling with learning issues and slowly, painfully finding herself falling for utterly oblivious, deeply lonely “Chuck” Brown.

That overstrained relationship is agony to watch unfold (…crash, burn and then begin all over again) with Patty growing increasingly upset and unnerved by new kid Marcie (she of the bottle-specs and 1000-yard stare) who tags along, calling her “Sir”…

Sally Brown has grown from frail infant to needy complainer, and just enough to become another trigger for Charlie’s relentless self-excoriation. As she ages (a rare event in a strip about eternal tots) and forms her own anxieties, she declaims loud opinions and propounds steadfastly misinformed views, with him relegated to being her dumber, protective but outgunned and baffled big brother. Sally now gets all the best lines yet still struggles with school in many strips depicting her attitudes to study and homework, which reveal the contest is pretty even and not at all one-sided…

Resigned to – but far from uncomplaining about – life as a loser in the gunsights of cruel and capricious fate, the boy Brown is still helpless in the clutches of openly sadistic Lucy. When not sabotaging his efforts to fly a kite or kick a football or while endlessly sabotaging his beloved baseball games, she monetises his discomfort with spiteful verve via a 5¢ walk-in psychoanalysis booth, ensuring that whether at play, in competition, in despair, allowing hope to flower or just brooding, the round-headed kid truly endures the character-building trials of the damned.

In this era, the beagle is the true star of our show, with his primary quest for fame or at least more and better food playing out against a magnificently baroque inner life. There are wild encounters with birds, skateboarding, dance-offs, ice skating and snow-sport trysts, philosophical ruminations, martial assignations and ever-more-popular catchphrases to learn. As burgeoning whimsy and dreams of writing bestsellers blossom, we catch constant glimpses of the dog’s WWI other life, but also acknowledge the the world’s growing teen scene with his reinvention in new personas like college frat boy Joe Cool and cosmopolitan rake Joe French.

Perhaps his most momentous new alter ego is The Attorney who so often steps in to lend legal sagacity to the kids in times of growing litigiousness and political protest…

Naturally all of these shadow-dogs harbour fondness for little Woodstock and abiding animus for natural enemy Lucy, whose life is also plagued by mounting hurdles. Paramount are her weirdo brother Linus (who has become obsessed with undiscovered cryptids like Gully Cats and Queen snakes)  and his comfort blanket; that dog; failure to boss everyone around enough, that dog and piano-boy Schroeder’s utter inability to realise that he loves her…

Timeless episodes of play, peril, peewee psychoanalysis, philosophical ponderings, anxiously anticipatory cinema-visits and personal recrimination are cunning beards for some heavy topics. Always realised in stark monochrome are more new characters, more plot developments (like the threatened return of Snoopy’s childhood nemesis Lila!) and the founding of even more traditions we all revere to this day.

As suggested, the beagle is the only force capable of challenging – if not fully countering -Lucy. Over these two years, her campaign to curb the weird dog; cure her brother of comfort blanket dependency; seduce Schroeder and generally reorder reality to her preferences reach astounding heights and appalling depths, but Snoopy keeps trying and scores many minor victories. In the main, though, Lucy continues to consistently suck all the joy out of the white wonder stuff, green summers, fallen leaves, refreshing rain, hobbies, sports, music and anthing else other people like. Except skipping. Playing with a jump rope is still acceptable…

Hilariously, her reality takes a solid knock when Mr & Mrs Van Pelt announce the imminent arrival of a new baby sister, an intruder shellshocked Lucy instantly names “Rerun”…

From the start Schulz established way points in his year: formally celebrating certain calendar occasions – real or invented – as perennial shared events: St. Valentine’s Day, Mothers & Fathers’ Days, Fourth of July strips and the like are accompanied in their turn by yearly milestones lincluding Christmas, Easter, Halloween/Great Pumpkin Day and Beethoven’s Birthday.

Here they are augmneted by another American ritual as many of the cast return to (and are dismissed from) summer camp. This results in fresh heartbreak for all after Patty finally meets the nigh-legendary Little Red-haired Girl and realises all hope is lost. There’s even more endless heartbreak heading for Charlie Brown too, as he looks on and can do nothing. The poor oaf still has no idea how to begin to respond to closer ties with his dream girl or why even Patty cares…

Sports fun looms large and terrifying as ever, but star athlete-turned-coach/manager Snoopy is more interested in new passions than boring old baseball, hockey, tennis and football. These include fishing, swimming, skiing, skating and new sensation Frisbee-ing, as well as embracing the ups and downs of perilous passtime “Ha-Ha, Herman!” and watching Lucy learn some hard truths while rollerskating…

Even she finds far more absorbing pastimes but still revels in crushing the spirits of her teammates in whatever endeavour they are failing at. Linus endures more disappointment in two Great Pumpkin seasons as well as his rare-animal searches, and before you know it, there’s the traditional countdown to Christmas and another year filled with weird, woolly and wonderful moments…

Neatly interspersed with the daily doses of gloom, the Sunday page debuted on January 6th 1952: a half-page slot offering more measured fare than 4-panel dailies. Thwarted ambition, sporting failures, crushing frustration – much of it psychoanalysis or sport related – abound, alternating with Snoopy’s inner life of aviation, war stories, star gazing, shooting the breeze with bird buddies, weather woes, fame and food fiascos. These and other signature sorties across the sabbath indulgences afforded Schulz room to be his most imaginative, whimsical and provocative… or just plain jokey…

Tentpole moments to relish this time include intensification of the magnificently barbed romantic triangle involving Lucy, Schroeder & Beethoven; Linus kicking the blanket habit only to be dragged back in under again; more Snoopy v Lucy deathmatches as well as a claws & paws clash of our dog and the despised cat-next-door. Charlie Brown’s food feud with the beagle continues, as do assorted night terrors, Lucy’s unique solutions to complex questions; Valentines’ card coup counting, doggy dreams; sporting endeavours,  all counterpointed by Snoopy’s latest top secret mission for the Head Beagle and the paving over of his puphood home…

To Be Continued…

To wrap it all up, Gary Groth celebrates and deconstructs the man and his work in ‘Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000’, preceded by a copious ‘Index’ offering instant access to favourite scenes you’d like to see again…

Readily available in many formats, this volume guarantees total enjoyment: comedy gold and social glue metamorphosing into an epic of spellbinding graphic mastery that still adds joy to billions of lives, and continues to make new fans and devotees long after its maker’s passing.
The Complete Peanuts: 1971-1972 (Volume Eleven) © 2009 Peanuts Worldwide, LLC. “Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000” © 2009 Gary Groth. All rights reserved.

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Batman: Scarecrow Tales


By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson & George Roussos, Gardner F. Fox, Dennis O’Neil, Elliot S! Maggin, Gerry Conway, Mike W Barr, Peter Milligan, Devin Grayson, Sheldon Moldoff, Joe Giella, Ernie Chan & Dick Giordano, Irv Novick & Tex Blaisdell, Don Newton & Dan Adkins, Alan Davis & Paul Neary, Duncan Fegredo & Bjarne Hansen, Roger Robinson & John Floyd, with Paul Gulacy, Carmine Infantino, George Pratt, Mike Mignola, Arthur Adams, Dermot Power, Mark Stutzman, Jim Balent & Bill Sienkiewicz & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0443-3 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As is only sensible, when filmmakers unleash a comic book villain of any vintage, savvy publishers collate, curate and commercialise. Thus in 2007 when The Scarecrow was named a villain du jour on Batman Begins DC dashed out a fine volume of reprints featuring a few key and generally accessible comic book appearances. Although having a much shallower well to draw from, there are some wonderful tales on offer (and the occasional dog, it must be admitted) with various pin-up pages and a cover gallery closeted here in this out of print and begging for resurrection tome…

The obvious kick-off is the first appearance by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson & George Roussos. Alternatively entitled ‘The Riddle of the Human Scarecrow’ or simply ‘The Scarecrow’ from World’s Finest #3 (1941), it spookily introduced rather odd, painfully poor and book-obsessed college psychology professor Dr. Jonathan Crane (no relation to any comedy shrink). His ill-considered classroom antics forced him out of the teaching profession and started him pursuing his nefarious dreams by making his wealthy victims afraid… at least until Batman & Robin stepped in and stepped up…

Crane only appeared once more in the Golden Age and here is reintroduced in the Silver one, after patiently serving his time in jail, in ‘Fright of the Scarecrow’ (Batman #189, cover-dated February 1967) wherein scripter Gardner Fox – despite being rather handcuffed by the overwhelming popularity of the comedic TV show – introduced the Master of Terror’s abiding modern Modus Operandi of chemically or artificially inducing anxiety, fear and screaming heebie-jeebies. This has ever since stayed the way as Crane followed the twisting path of a deranged mad scientist rather the greedy crime bandit style which consisted mostly of shooting at you until you wet yourself and coughed up the valuables…

The spooky sage’s resumed rampage through Gotham was ultimately quashed here by the daredevil Dynamic Duo as fabulously finessed by illustrators Sheldon Moldoff & Joe Giella.

Then from a far less frightening but more carefully inclusive era come a brace of arguably lesser and decidedly off-kilter efforts. From Batman #262 (April 1975), Denny O’Neil, Ernie Chan & Dick Giordano ‘The Scarecrow’s Trail of Fear!’ finds the hero victim of a fear inducer machine whilst racing to uncover hidden loot squirreled away by a crook literally scared to his death. Then comes a frankly bizarre duel with Gotham’s other contender for Most Scary Villain (not counting Batman!). In The Joker #8 (August 1976). Gotham’s self-acclaimed Master of Terror instigates ‘The Scarecrow’s Fearsome Face-Off!’ by stealing from his rival and reaping the revolting results in a weird war tale crafted by Elliot S! Maggin, Irv Novick & Tex Blaisdell…

For Detective #503 (June 1981) Gerry Conway wrote ‘The 6 Days of the Scarecrow’, beautifully illustrated by sorely missed Don Newton, and inked by Dan Adkins, wherein The Deacon of Dread turns Batman into a being who can literally scare those around him to death. However, Crane foolishly discounts the fact that his foe has allies such as Robin & Batgirl willing to do anything to save him… not that the Gotham Gangbuster needs them to…

Then, in a revitalised new world stemming out of Crisis on Infinite Earths, a fresher Dynamic Duo (with young, callow Jason Todd as the second Robin), Mike W. Barr, Alan Davis & Paul Neary pursue lighter, more liberating tales but still convincingly convey the tragedy of ‘Fear For Sale’ in Detective #571 (February 1987), after Scarecrow charges desperate sports stars to remove their caution and ability to fear consequences and triggers a storm of callous carnage…

Next is ‘Mistress of Fear’ by Peter Milligan & Duncan Fegredo from one-shot New Year’s Evil: Scarecrow #1 (February, 1998): a truly exceptional low key, high-octane psychological thriller wherein Crane kidnaps law student Becky Albright. She had previously testified against him and still isn’t afraid, even after he begins the torturous process of converting her into his sidekick and accomplice…

Devin Grayson, Roger Robinson & John Floyd then display ‘Fear of Success’ (Gotham Knights #23, January 2002) to round out these scary stories with a swipe at corporate greed, as Dr. Crane is paroled from Arkham Asylum to lecture Gotham’s Movers & Shakers thanks to the sponsorship of business paragon Mulitigon. Thankfully, Bruce Wayne (and his new bodyguard Sasha Bordeaux) are invited as Scarecrow again unleashes his Fear Toxins just to see what happens. Although Batman quickly ends the threat, he is not quick enough to avoid a potentially deadly dose of the hallucinogenic horrors…

Also on show are a moody cover gallery and bonus material including pages from Who’s Who – The Definitive Directory of The DC Universe #20 (1986) & Who’s Who in the DC Universe #21 (1990) by Art Adams and George Pratt respectively; Mike Mignola’s Saga of the Dark Knight trading card (#51); Batman: Masterpieces (1998) by Dermot Power and an original pin-up by Mark Stutzman.

Some of these scurrilous scare-sagas made it into the 2015 compilation Batman: Arkham – Scarecrow but that book has enough different and darkly desirable material to warrant its own review… possibly even before the month is out…

As a trawl through the changing nature of the industry, Batman: Scarecrow Tales is quite illuminating although one glaring omission is the utter shunning of the numerous exploits featuring the creepy character that appeared in assorted issues of the TV cartoon based Batman Adventures comic book. Now those were thrilling…

Absolutely worth re-issuing with a few of the newer tales (especially those sublime all-ages versions Batman Animated franchise), perhaps DC could award the other, OTHER Dr Crane his own 85-year Celebration album, like all those other A-lister Bat-villains. Now that’s a scarily comforting thought…
© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.