Author: NowReadThis

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Bluecoats volume 18: Duel in the Channel


By Willy Lambil & Raoul Cauvin, with Leonardo & translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-152-1 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times but also emphasised for dramatic effect.

Devised by Louis “Salvé” Salvérius & Raoul Cauvin – who scripted the first 64 volumes until retirement in 2020 – Les Tuniques Bleues (or Dutch iteration De Blauwbloezen) began as the 1960s ended: created to soften the blow of losing Lucky Luke when that mild-mannered maverick megastar defected from Le Journal de Spirou to arch-rival periodical Pilote. From the start, the substitute strip was popular: swiftly becoming one of the most-read bande dessinée series in Europe. Following stints by the Jose-Luis Munuera and BeKa writing partnership it is now scribed by Kris and up to 68 volumes…

Salvé was a cartoonist in the Gallic big-foot/big-nose humour manner, and after his sudden death in 1972, successor Willy “Lambil” Lambillotte gradually moved towards a more realistic – but still overtly comedic – tone and look. Born in 1936, Lambil is Belgian and, after studying Fine Art in college, joined publishing giant Dupuis in 1952 as a letterer. Arriving on Earth two years later, scripter Cauvin was also Belgian and – prior to entering Dupuis’ animation department in 1960 – studied Lithography. He soon discovered his true calling was comedy and began a glittering, prolific writing career at Le Journal de Spirou. In addition, he scripted dozens of long-running, award winning series including Cédric, Les Femmes en Blanc and Agent 212: clocking up more than 240 separate albums. Les Tuniques Bleues alone has sold over 15 million copies… and counting. Cauvin died on August 19th 2021, but his vast legacy of barbed laughter remains and – as of ten minutes ago – Lambril, at 87, is still drawing the Boys in Blue…

The Bluecoats are long-suffering protagonists Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield and Corporal Blutch: worthy, honest fools in the manner of Laurel & Hardy; ill-starred US cavalrymen defending a vision of a unified America during the War Between the States – well, at least one of them is…

The original format offered single-page gags set around an Indian-plagued Wild West fort, but from second volume Du Nord au Sud, the sad-sack soldiers were situated back East, perpetually fighting in the American Civil War. Subsequent exploits are set within the scant timeframe of the Secession conflict, but – like today’s tale – occasionally range far beyond the traditional environs of the sundered USA, dipping into and embracing actual events (also like today’s tale), tackling genuine, thoroughly researched moments of history…

Blutch is an everyday, whinging little-man-in-the street: work-shy, mouthy, devious and ferociously critical of the army and its inept orchestrators and commanders. Ducking, diving, deserting at every opportunity, he’s you or me – except at his core he’s smart, principled, loyal and even heroic… if no easier option presents itself. Chesterfield is a big, burly professional fighting man: a proud career soldier of the 22nd Cavalry who devoutly believes in patriotism and esprit-de-corps of The Army. Brave, bold, never shirking his duty and hungry to be a medal-wearing hero, he’s quite naïve and also loves his cynical little pal. Naturally, they quarrel like a married couple, fight like brothers and simply cannot agree on the point and purpose of the horrendous war they are trapped in. That situation again stretches their friendship to breaking point in this cunningly conceived instalment, in which both find themselves pretty much fish out of water…

Coloured by Vittorio Leonardo, Les Tuniques Bleues Duel ans la Manche was serialised continentally in Le Journal de Spirou #2967-2976, before becoming the 37th album in 1995, and Cinebook’s 18th translated Bluecoats book. Once more it diverges from the majority of tales, which tread a fine line between comedy and righteous anger, so if you share these books with younger kids, read it first. However the trenchant wit and sardonic comedy are unleashedly full bore as the tale explores a triumphant maritime moment in US history with the lads hapless witnesses.

It begins in the port of Amsterdam on June 10th 1864, where Blutch and Chesterfield have just debarked from US navy vessel USS Kearsarge. However, unlike the rest of their crewmates, shore leave holds no joy for them. They – even Blutch – would much rather be back in the army, but that’s currently impossible.

Following a disastrous attack by new commander General McLellan, the northern land forces were responsible for the deaths and wounding of many of their own troops and, seeking scapegoats, the big boss arbitrarily blamed it all on the boys…

Disgusted by the whole face-saving process, their immediate superior General Alexander secretly arranges for their transfer to the sea borne services and, after a period stoking boilers and hating water, they fetch up in the beguiling city of a thousand pleasures. Chesterfield wants none of it and yearns to be on a horse of the 22nd Cavalry, charging into fusillades of hot lead, but his little pal can see the upside, even as they both fall foul of sharpers, merchants and good time girls who don’t even speak English let alone what these Yankee louts are spouting…

Unluckily for them the Kearsarge is in the midst of a vendetta with Confederate Navy ship CSS Alabama: a seagoing marauder that has already sunk many Union vessels. Captain John Ancrum Winslow has sworn to sink the Alabama and has trailed her to Cherbourg where she is undergoing repairs. Winslow has sworn to destroy her or not return. Everywhere it seems is filled with madmen resolved to cause Blutch’s doom…

Of course, the odd couple are well-versed in making enemies too, and it’s almost a relief when the recall comes and the rowdy crew are mustered to go into battle again. Nevertheless, when they reboard the Kearsarge, an alarmingly determined Dutch vendor follows them…

Battle is joined on June 19th but by then Blutch and Chesterfield have so incensed the Captain that when the cataclysmic clash occurs they are chained to the floor of the brig with no chance of escape if their despised ship sinks…

Somehow surviving the historic victory, the boys are soon on burial duty and ready to make more trouble when word comes from America that they can return… if they want to…

Again highlighting not only divisions and disparities of officers and enlisted men but also of the American class structure – particularly the inherent racism driving the rich and poor players on all sides – Duel in the Channel is another edgy epic based on a true incident, but if you can refrain from looking up the history until you finish, it will be to your benefit.

Devastatingly exploiting history to make a point, Duel in the Channel proves how much stranger than fiction is truth and reveals how war costs everybody, but only profits a few of the very worst, by making moments of shocking verity doubly powerful and hard-hitting. Funny, thrilling, beautifully realised and eminently readable, Bluecoats is the best kind of war-story and Western: appealing to the best, not worst, of the human spirit. And this one is really, really sad…
© Dupuis 1995 by Lambil & Cauvin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2024 Cinebook Ltd.

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Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room


By Paul Auster, adapted and illustrated by Paul Karasik, Lorenzo Mattotti & David Mazzucchelli (Faber & Faber)
ISBN: 978-0-571-38928-5 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic effect.

We reviewers frequently use the phrase “better read that critiqued” for difficult books, because although it’s a lazy cop-out it’s also immensely useful and mostly true. It’s generally a cue that what we’re recommending is exceptionally special and that you’d be an idiot not to take the hint and dive into the item under the lens…

The three prose novels comprising The New York Trilogy are far better read than critiqued by me (or anyone else) and you should get to them ASAP. Written by Paul Auster (Moon Palace, The Book of Illusions, Winter Journal, 4 3 2 1) and originally published as 1985’s City of Glass, with both Ghosts and The Locked Room released a year later, they are lauded as postmodern masterpieces. The stories use the trappings and tone of detective and mystery fiction – especially the haunting modes of Film Noir – to explore literary and philosophical themes and do it in a totally absorbing and compulsive manner, equal parts gripping, mystifying and oddly charming.

The prose trilogy has been adapted to many other forms, including an audiobook version, and opening piece City of Glass has been two separate plays; one in the US and the other here in Britain. Art Spiegelman illustrated a prose rerelease in 2006, and there was a gallery show at the 2009 Dedica Literary Festival in Pordenone, Italy, but to my admittedly prejudiced mind, nothing has bettered the graphic novel adapted by Paul Karasik (How to Read Nancy: The Elements of Comics in Three Easy Panels, You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation!) and David Mazzucchelli (Asterios Polyp, Batman: Year One, Daredevil: Born Again, Rubber Blanket, Big Man).

It was first published by Avon Books in 1994 as Neon Lit: Paul Auster’s City of Glass (a Graphic Mystery), but despite being named one of “The Top 100 English-Language Comics of the Century”, vanished without trace until rereleased in 2004 as City of Glass: The Graphic Novel and finally finding fame on the international scene; if not the English-speaking world. Now it forms the spine of a fabulous complete compilation of Auster’s triptych as Karasik – who has worked with Auster for decades (until his death April 2024) on adapting Ghosts and The Locked Room – completes a task decades in the making.

In the shadows of Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, and John Barth, and enlisting the fundamental themes and tools of postmodernism – metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality – these graphic interpretations also act in conjunction with Auster’s own personal beliefs about human nature, communication and language, concerns about isolation, identity, coincidence, chance and the inescapable lure of obsession.

Layered with meaning and conceptual red herrings, City of Glass “stars” a crime fiction writer inexorably drawn into a real-life investigation following a bizarre and disturbing wrong number on the telephone. The case comes with real dangers, chilling consequences and alarming revelations, but just like poor demented Don Quixote, the paid fantasist cannot let go and will not reclaim his good sense, and thereby pays the full price…

It’s followed by two premiers as both illustrated adaptations Ghosts and The Locked Room are published for the first time in this volume. Illustrated by master draughtsman Lorenzo Mattotti (Fires, Stigmata, Labyrinths, Murmur, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Guirlanda) from Kurasik’s script, Ghosts is a far more formally orchestrated crime caper and mystery play. Set firmly in the celluloid wonderland of post-WWII America, with characters assuming colour-based pseudonyms Mr. Brown, Mr. Gray, Mr. Green, Mr. White, Mr. Black and more, all the layers of players are circling youthful but driven surveillance specialist Mr. Blue who gradually grows too close to his subject and suddenly finds he’s in far too deep…

Concluding the project, Kurasic writes and draws the tale of The Locked Room. Here a failing and uninspired editorial writer rediscovers his own spark of creative greatness after the wife of an almost forgotten childhood pal asks him to assess and curate the literary life’s work of an unsuspected genius wordsmith. Sadly, as the works of Fanshawe permeate the failure’s life, the missing man’s wife dominates his emotional world, and our unhappy, unremarkable and unreliable narrator begins to realise he is being buried alive whilst Fanshawe is neither missing nor dead but rather close by with an alarming personal agenda in play…

This evocative tribute to the subgenre of locked room mysteries and power of lost loves concludes a powerful and beguiling walk in the shadows that will stay with the reader forever, and which makes this very visual New York threesome a book that must be seen and savoured.
Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room © William Golding 1954. Adaptations and illustrations © Aimée de Jongh 2024. All rights reserved.
Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room will be published on April 10th 2025 and is available for pre-order now.

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Batman: The Cult – Deluxe Edition


By Jim Starlin & Bernie Wrightson, with Bill Wray, John Costanza & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-77952-827-8 (HB Deluxe/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Once the runaway success of The Dark Night Returns proved that fans wanted tales with darker, edgier heroes and would stump up big bucks to get them, the floodgates opened for miniseries released on expensive Baxter paper in book-like formats. DC quickly complied, following up with this deceptively effective thriller by two of the industry’s biggest fan-favourites: Jim Starlin and master of horror and suspense Bernie Wrightson, ably augmented by colour artist Bill Wray and lettered John Costanza.

The tale is a straightforward if apocalyptic action-adventure modern film fans will readily recognise, as so many visual elements and beats (if not villains) of the saga appeared in the Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy. Following trenchantly sardonic introduction ‘Burn This Book’ as written by Starlin for the 1990 collected edition, it begins with ‘Ordeal’ as the Batman, experiencing mind-bending hallucinations and irresistible cravings to commit bloody slaughter, slowly awakes to the realisation that he has lost track of how long he has been a has been a prisoner of the army of hoboes, gutter-trash and voluntarily missing citizens who have taken over Gotham City’s worst streets. The legion of the lost are being led by a charismatic self-appointed priest named Deacon Blackfire, with his holy word disseminated by extremely capable lieutenant Jake Baker and cadre of fanatical faithful fronted by the revolting Ratface…

Moreover, this dark messiah claims to be an immortal savant who drove off of the indigenous Miagani people who populate the land now called Gotham City long before the White Men came…

Batman knows exactly what Deacon is doing: employing standard techniques developed by cult-leaders and spies to break down resistance. Pain, isolation, sense deprivation, drugs and starvation are all used to break down resistance and individuality: but the harried hero just can’t stop his iron resolve crumbling under the assault. It is more than any man could bear…

In flashbacks that heighten the aura of confusion, the story unfolds. With increasing severity and frequency the city’s worst predators are found beaten or dead, as the worst areas of the metropolis suddenly became safer to live in. The good news soon took a dark turn as fewer thugs were worked over and dumped, and far more just went missing, with only bloodstains and silence to mark their passing. Batman had followed the clues into the sewers… and wasn’t seen again.

Crime levels are down all over: thieves, pimps and muggers are too scared to venture out. Commissioner Gordon knows it’s too good to be true, as does Robin (reformed street kid Jason Todd) but public opinion is hugely supportive of Deacon Blackfire’s clean-up campaign…

… And deep underground, the Dark Knight is crumbling as the army of derelicts find they have a taste for blood and power. Already their definition of what constitutes valid targets has slipped…

In ‘Capture’, the broken Bat has become one of Blackfire’s army, but still baulks at murder. On a tightly controlled sortie up into the city he abruptly rejects Baker’s suggestions and Blackfire’s instructions, instead escaping into the night, rambling and incoherent as he fights off the drugs and conditioning. When Blackfire moves to seize control of the entire city, assassinating police and almost all of the civic officials, Batman is retaken, but this time Robin follows him to the grim world of tunnels and terror. The dynamic duo soon make a break for freedom, but end up deeper underground and unearth horrifying proof of the depths of the Deacon’s terrible madness… or is it magical malignancy?

‘Escape’ sees the hobo army run amok like zombies in the streets as Robin struggles to break the broken Batman out of the sewer citadel. Gordon discovers impossible evidence indicating Deacon’s claims to immortality might not be spurious. Total anarchy has taken hold with citizens being casually murdered in their homes and when Gordon is gunned down the State Governor declares Martial Law and deploys a woefully under-prepared National Guard. With Batman mentally incapacitated and physically depleted, four million citizens flee the city just before the military units are systematically massacred and their top-of-the-line ordnance becomes Blackfire’s.

In response, the federal government simply pulls out, abandoning Gotham and what remains of its population to the cult’s disciples…

The situation appears hopeless and Robin and Alfred can only wait to see if Bruce Wayne will ever become Batman again. After a harrowing re-examination of his history and purpose, a determined, angry and far Darker Knight emerges, with new tactics, harsher weapons and an unshakable hunger to destroy Blackfire and take back his city, as final chapter ‘Combat’ sees the fightback begin with the debut of the “Monster Truck Batmobile” and a sustained assault on the concrete hell beneath Gotham. However, even with the hard-fought battle won and Deacon seemingly dead and gone, inexplicable facts are still emerging…

Added feature ‘The Cult of Wrightson’ closes the case with a stunning treat for art lovers; reprinting 25 pages of roughs, designs, page layouts, pencils and inked pages and even colour process guides, to unravel the creativity behind all that magic and illusion…

Batman: the Cult is a grim and powerful thriller emphasising the psychological rather than physical or technical attributes of the most popular superhero in the world, but the saga is still packed with tension and suspense, peppered with spectacular action set-pieces and bolstered with outlandish gadgets. Fierce, frenzied and ferociously fun, this is a long-neglected slice of Batlore ripe and ready for your reappraisal.
© 1990, 2024 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Kusama: Polka Dot Queen (Art Masters)


By Simon Elliott (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-430-0 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic effect.

The Sixties were an amazing time, I remember them well – which apparently means that I wasn’t really there. However, many others were and this potent revisitation and exploration of one of the most misplaced icons of that era reveals in fabulous fashion how she overcame institutional neglect, habitual sidelining, racial intolerance and gender prejudice to finally see her merit and achievements acknowledged.

Moreover, the long climb and her subsequent fame and influence have been magnified in the decades since, both abroad and – most crucially – in the land of her birth and where she was first discarded. Apparently, living long and well and true to oneself is the best revenge…

Legal eagle Simon Elliot (art obsessive, criminal barrister and stand-up comedian by night) adds to his list of side hustle successes with another superb artist biography to supplement Hockney: A Graphic Life (Frances Lincoln, 2023), and 2024’s Vincent: A Graphic Biography by here encapsulating and reassessing, in potent pictorial terms, the life of Japanese sensation and grande dame Kusama Yayoi.

Avant-garde icon, globetrotting art ambassador, Pop Art Darling and perennial target and headline fodder for paparazzi and media parasites, Kusama is best known for literally thousands of artworks comprised of countless dots painstakingly painted, drawn and stuck down, and her vast “infinity nets” works. However, as seen in this compelling biography, her unique manner of perceiving the world and addressing her mental health issues has also been impressively expressed in other forms of conceptual art, including filmmaking, poetry, fashion design, fiction, performance and video art, as well as tradition but novel sculptural and painted forms. You can actually own a piece of her massive and monumental output simply by buying a copy of the 2012 Penguin Classics Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland which she illustrated.

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Kusama Yayoi grew up in a wealthy home, afflicted by appalling abusive parents in the go-getting yet ferociously hidebound and formal Japan ruled by empire-building militarists. Subjected to a cruel home life and the whims of capricious parents at war with each other, the little girl was ostracised by her siblings and became obsessed with nature and art. She also suffered from periodic hallucinogenic episodes…

Enduring war, occupation in the aftermath and parental pressure to marry beneficially and strategically for the sake of the family, Yayoi pursued her art intensely and reached out to other women artists. In 1958 she managed to escape to America just in time for the art and social revolution to swallow her…

As with other women during the Pop Art era, Yayoi “inspired” white male artists including Andy Warhol and particularly Claes Oldenburg. The latter shared studio space with Kusama, whose rubber and fabric installations only coincidentally predated Oldenburg’s soft sculpture phase… and that’s when her story, artistic ascension, international expansions and eventual triumph begins…

Gloriously vibrant and ebullient, this light-looking but heavy-hitting appreciation, history and assessment of a figure unique even for the weird world of gallery art is a beguiling and powerful introduction to a much overlooked (here in the west at least) artist who deserves to be a household name right beside her avant-garde contemporaries and cherished for everything she’s done since…
Text and images © 2025 Simon Elliot.

Kusama: Polka Dot Queen will be published on 10th April 2025 and is available for pre-

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Showcase Presents Eclipso


By Bob Haney, Lee Elias, Alex Toth, Jack Sparling, Bernard Baily & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2315-1 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Now that DC have finally launched their line of archival collections celebrating many years, styles and vogues of publication, I expect to be far less proselytising about books like this one not being in print. However, you can never really satisfy an Old Moaner, so until the wide and wonderful new assortment of DC Finest collections are also available digitally, I’ll still have something to whine about. Meanwhile, here’s a reminder about a book I suspect will be a while making the jump to a fresh full-colour edition…

Although it’s generally accepted that everybody loves a good villain, until rather recently they bad guys were  seldom permitted the opportunity of starring in their own series – except in British comics, where for decades the most bizarre and outrageous rogues such as Charlie Peace, Spring-Heeled Jack, Dick Turpin, Von Hoffman, The Dwarf and so many macabre others were seen as far more interesting (or possibly a threat to our jolly old class-strictured status quo) than mere lawmen.

However, when America went superhero crazy in the 1960s (even before the Batman TV show sent the whole world into a wild and garish “High Camp” frenzy), DC converted all its anthology titles into character-driven vehicles. Long-running paranormal investigator Mark Merlin suddenly found himself sharing the cover spot with a costumed but very different kind of co-star.

Breathing new life into the hallowed Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde concept, Bob Haney & Lee Elias debuted ‘Eclipso, The Genius Who Fought Himself’ in House of Secrets #61, cover-dated July-August 1963 and on sale from May 16th. Here began the torturous saga of solar scientist Bruce Gordon who was cursed to become host to a timeless Evil…

Whilst observing a solar eclipse on tropical Diablo Island, Gordon is attacked and wounded by Mophir, a crazed witchdoctor wielding a black diamond. As a result, whenever Gordon is in the locality of an eclipse – natural or artificial – his body is possessed by a demonic, destructive alter ego with incredible powers and malign hyper-intellect. The remainder of the first instalment depicted how the intangible interloper destroyed Gordon’s greatest achievement: a futuristic solar-powered city.

Format and formula established, Gordon, his fiancée Mona Bennett and her father, who was also Gordon’s mentor, pursued and battled the incredible Eclipso and his increasingly astounding schemes all across the world. At least the Demon of Darkness had a handy weakness: sudden exposure to bright lights would propel him back to his cage within Bruce Gordon…

‘Duel of the Divided Man’ saw the helpless scientist attempting to thwart the uncontrollable transformations by submerging to the bottom of the Ocean and exiling himself to space, to no effect, whilst in ‘Eclipso’s Amazing Ally!’ – illustrated by the justifiably-legendary Alex Toth – the malignant presence manifests when an artificial eclipse and lab accident frees him entirely from Gordon’s body. Against the backdrop of a South American war, Gordon and Professor Bennett struggle to contain the liberated horror but all is not as it seems…

HoS #64’s ‘Hideout on Fear Island’ finds Gordon, Mona & Bennett hijacked to a Caribbean nation inundated by giant plants for an incredible clash with giant robots and Nazi scientists. Naturally, when Eclipso breaks out things go from bad to worse. ‘The Man Who Destroyed Eclipso’ has the Photonic Fiend kidnap Mona before a deranged physicist actually separates Eclipso and Gordon as part of his wild scheme to steal a nuclear missile, after which the threat of a terrifying alien omnivore forces heroes and villain to temporarily join forces in ‘The Two Faces of Doom!’

‘Challenge of the Split-Man!’ sees Gordon and Eclipso again at odds as the desperate scientist returns to Mophir’s lair in search of a cure, before inexplicably following the liberated villain to a robot factory in Scotland. Veteran cartoonist Jack Sparling took over the artist’s role with #68, wherein ‘Eclipso’s Deadly Doubles!’ expose Gordon’s latest attempt to effect a cure but which only multiplies his problems, after which ‘Wanted: Eclipso Dead or Alive!’ relates how the beleaguered boffin is hired by Scotland Yard to capture himself – or at least his wicked and still-secret other self – before ‘Bruce Gordon, Eclipso’s Ally!’ returns the long-suffering trio to Latin America where an accident robs Gordon of his memory – but not his curse – leading to the most ironic alliance in comics…

‘The Trial of Eclipso’ has the astronomically-aligned felon finally captured by police and threatening to expose Gordon’s dark secret, after which ‘The Moonstone People’ strand the Bennetts, Gordon and Eclipso on a lost island populated by scientists – or is that “natural philosophers”? – who haven’t aged since their own arrival in 1612…

Even such a talented writer as Bob Haney occasionally strained at the effort of writing a fresh story for a villainous protagonist under Comics Code restrictions, and later tales became increasingly more outlandish. In ‘Eclipso Battles the Sea Titan’, a subsea monster threatens not just the surface world but also Eclipso’s ultimate refuge – Bruce Gordon’s fragile body – after which another attempt to expel or eradicate the horror inside accidentally actualises a far more dangerous enemy in ‘The Negative Eclipso’, whilst a criminal syndicate, fed up with the Photonic Fury’s disruption of their operations, decrees ‘Eclipso Must Die!’ in HoS #75.

It had to happen – so it did – when Mark Merlin (in his new and unwieldy superhero persona of Prince Ra-Man) clashed with his House of Secrets stable-mate in book-length thriller ‘Helio, the Sun Demon!’ (#76), with concluding chapter limned by the inimitable Bernard Baily. Here Eclipso creates a fearsome, fiery solar slave and the Bennetts team with the enigmatic super-sorcerer to free Bruce and save the world from flaming destruction.

All-out fantasy subsumed suspense in the strip’s dying days with aliens and weird creatures abounding, such as ‘The Moon Creatures’ which Eclipso grew from lunar dust to do his wicked bidding, or the hidden treasure of Stonehenge that transformed him into a ‘Monster Eclipso’. Issue #79 saw a return match for Prince Ra-Man in ‘The Master of Yesterday and Tomorrow!’, with Baily again pitching in for an extended epic as Eclipso gets his scurrilous hands on a selection of time-bending trinkets, before #80 (October 1966) ended the series with no fanfare, no warning and no ultimate resolution as ‘The Giant Eclipso!’ pitted the fade-away fiend against mutants, cops and his own colossal doppelganger.

Not everything old is gold and this quirky, exceedingly eccentric collection of comics thrillers certainly won’t appeal to everyone. However, there is a gloriously outré charm and helter-skelter, fanciful delight in these silly but absorbing sagas. If you’re of an open-minded mien and the art of Elias, Toth, Sparling and Baily appeals – as it should to all right-thinking fans – then this old-world casket of bizarre wonders will certainly appeal. In fact the drawing never looked more vibrant or effective than in this crisp and splendid monochrome collection.

Not for him or her or them then, but perhaps this book is for you?
© 1963-1966, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks presents Daredevil volume 3: Unmasked


By Stan Lee & Gene Colan with Frank Giacoia, Dick Ayers, John Tartaglione & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5428-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer whose remaining senses hyper-compensate, making him an astonishing acrobat, formidable fighter and living lie-detector. Very much a second-string hero for most of his early years, Daredevil was nonetheless a striking and popular one, due in large part to the roster of brilliant artists who had illustrated the strip. He battled thugs, gangsters, a plethora of super-villains and even the occasional monster or alien invasion, quipping his way through life and life-threatening combat. His civilian life consisted of assorted legal conundra and manfully standing back and suppressing his own feelings as his portly best friend and law partner Franklin “Foggy” Nelson vainly romanced their secretary Karen Page.

DD only really came into his own once illustrator Gene Colan signed up for the long haul, which properly begins with the tales in this collection: part of a series of Mighty Marvel Masterworks available as kid-friendly digest paperbacks and eBooks. Gathering Daredevil #22-32 (November 1966 to September 1967) it traces a move from morose masked avenger to wisecracking Scarlet Swashbuckler, offering a marked improvement in overall quality as scripter Lee utilises extended soap operatic plot-threads to string together Colan’s unique fight scenes as he shook off the remnants of predecessor John Romita’s art style.

In a very short time Romita had made the Sightless Swashbuckler his own before graduating to Spider-Man, so when Colan took over on DD, he initially kept the clipped, solid, nigh-chunky lines for rendering the Man Without Fear, but increasingly drew everything else in his loose, fluid, tonal manner. With these tales, his warring styles coalesced and the result was literally poetry in non-stop motion…

Without preamble the action opens with ‘The Tri-Man Lives’ (inked by Frank Giacoia & Dick Ayers), containing Gangland themes and malignant machinations whilst sharing focus with super-menaces The Gladiator and Masked Marauder, whose eponymous killer android proves less of a threat than expected. The villains had sought control of international organised crime syndicate The Maggia but their master plan to prove their worthiness by murdering the Man Without Fear goes badly awry after the kidnapped hero refuses to simply lie down and die…

Concluding in #23 with ‘DD Goes Wild!’, the ending sees our hero trapped in Europe, but soon making his way to England and a violent reunion with Tarzan analogue Ka-Zar who has become prime suspect in #24’s chilling puzzle ‘The Mystery of the Midnight Stalker!’

This tale contains my vote for the Most Obnoxious Misrepresentation of Britain in Comic Books Award as a policeman – sorry, “bobby” – warns, “STAY BACK, PLEASE! THE MILITIA WILL BE ARRIVING IN JIG TIME!”…

After clearing the jungle hero’s name, Matt Murdock heads back to America in time to enjoy the less-than-stellar debut of a certified second-rate super-villain as ‘Enter: The Leap-Frog!’ introduces a thief dressed like Kermit on steroids with springs on his flippered feet. Yes, really…

However, the big event of the issue is meeting Matt’s hip and groovy twin brother Mike…

By the time ‘Stilt-Man Strikes Again’ (DD #26, March 1967) Colan is totally in command of his vision and a leaner, moodier hero is emerging. The major push of the next few issues was to turn the hopeless romantic triangle of Matt, Foggy and Karen Page into a whacky quadrangle by dint of fictitious twin Mike, who Matt would be “expose” as Daredevil to divert suspicion from the blind attorney who actually battled all those weird villains…

Confused, much?

Still skulking in the background, arch-villain Masked Marauder slowly closes in on DD’s alter ego. He gets a lot closer in ‘Mike Murdock Must Die!’ (Giacoia inks) after Stilt-Man teams with the Marauder and the ever-fractious Spider-Man once again clashes with old frenemy Daredevil before the villains meet their apparent ends.

The Sightless Swashbuckler has his first encounter with extraterrestrials in #28’s moody one-trick-pony ‘Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Planet!’ – an Ayers-inked thriller wherein invading aliens’ blindness-inducing rays prove inexplicably ineffective against the Crimson Crime-crusher. John Tartaglione inked the next tale, a solid, action-packed gangster-thriller entitled ‘Unmasked!’ whilst issue #30 opened a protracted and impressive clash with former Thor foes the Cobra and Mister Hyde. The bombastic first bout comes complete with an Asgardian cameo in ‘…If There Should Be a Thunder God!’

Attempting to catch the rampant super-criminals, DD masquerades as the Asgardian Avenger only to encounter the real McCoy. Sadly, the villains ambush the mortal hero once the Thunderer departs and, as a result of the resultant battle, DD loses his compensating hyper-senses. Thus, he must perpetrate a ‘Blind Man’s Bluff!’… which almost fools Cobra & Hyde…

Naturally, it all goes wrong before it all comes right and against all odds Murdock regains his abilities just in time ‘…To Fight the Impossible Fight!’…

Supplemented by a Colan cover gallery and original art pages, this tome reveals how The Man Without Fear blossomed into a truly magnificent example of Marvel’s compelling formula for success: smart stories, human characters and magnificent illustration. This is pure Fights ‘n’ Tights magic no fan of stunning super-heroics can afford to ignore.
© 2024 MARVEL.

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The Joker: A Celebration of 75 Years


By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, Don Cameron, Jack Burnley, Dick Sprang, Lew Sayre Schwartz, Win Mortimer, David V. Reed, Sheldon Moldoff, Charles Paris, Dennis O’Neil & Neal Adams, Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin, John Byrne & Karl Kesel, Jim Starlin, Jim Aparo, Mike DeCarlo, J.M. DeMatteis, Joe Staton, Steve Mitchell, Chuck Dixon, Brian Stelfreeze, Greg Rucka, Devin Grayson, Damian Scott, Dale Eaglesham, Sean Parsons, Sal Buscema & Rob Hunter, Paul Dini, Don Kramer & Wayne Faucher, Tony Daniel & Ryan Winn, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4759-1 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are quite a few comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few will be unjustly ignored. This guy ain’t in the latter category.

When the very concept of high-priced graphic novels was just being shelf tested in in the 1980s, DC Comics produced a line of glorious full-colour hardback compilations spotlighting star characters and celebrating standout stories decade by decade from the company’s illustrious and varied history. They then branched out into themed collections which shaped the output of the modern industry; such as this fabulous and far from dated congregation of yarns offering equal billing and star status to one of the most enduring archfoes in fiction: The Maestro of Malignant Mirth dubbed The Joker.

So much a mirror of and paralleling the evolution of Batman, the exploits of the Joker are preceded here by a brief critical analysis of significant stages in the vile vaudevillian’s development, beginning with the years 1940-1942 and Part I: The Grim Jester.

There will be more on him and his co-anniversarians Robin and Catwoman throughout the year, but today it’s the turn of the opening act of the landmark issue to take his bow in the spotlight…

After erudite deconstruction comes sinister action as debut appearance ‘Batman Vs. The Joker’ – by Bill Finger & Bob Kane from Batman #1, cover-dated Spring 1940 and on sale on April 25th – provides suspenseful entertainment whilst introducing the most diabolical member of the Dark Knight’s rogues’ gallery. A chilling moody tale of brazen extortion and wilful wanton murder begins when an eerie character publicly announces that he will kill certain business and civic figures at specific times…

An instant hit with readers and creators, the malignantly mirthful murderer kept coming back and appeared in almost every issue. In Batman #5 (March 1941, by Finger, Kane & Jerry Robinson) ‘The Riddle of the Missing Card’ once again saw the Crime Clown pursue loot and slaughter, but this time with a gang of card-themed crooks at his side. It did not end well for the whimsical butcher of buffoonery…

Fame secured, the Devil’s Jester quickly became an over-exposed victim of his own nefarious success. In story terms that meant seeking to reform and start over with a clean slate. Turning himself in, the maniac grasses on many criminal confederates but ‘The Joker Walks the Last Mile’ (Finger, Kane & Robinson, Detective Comics #64, June 1942) shows that tousled viridian head twisting inexorably back towards murderous larceny…

As years passed and tastes changed, the Cackling Killer mellowed into a bizarrely baroque bandit. Part II: The Clown Prince assesses that evolution, before providing fascinating examples beginning with ‘Knights of Knavery’ from Batman #25 (October/November 1944 by Don Cameron, Jack Burnley & Robinson). Here he and arch-rival The Penguin fractiously join forces to steal the world’s biggest emerald and outwit all opposition, before falling foul of their own mistrust and arrogance once the Caped Crusaders put their own thinking caps on.

‘Rackety-Rax Racket’ Batman #32 (December 1945, Cameron & Dick Sprang) is another malevolently marvellous exploit which sees an ideas-starved Prankster of Peril finding felonious inspiration in college-student hazing and initiation stunts, after which ‘The Man Behind the Red Hood’ (Detective Comics #168, February 1951) reveals a partial origin as part of a brilliantly engrossing mystery by Finger, Lew Sayre Schwartz & Win Mortimer. It all began when the Caped Crusader regales eager young criminology students with the story of “the one who got away”- just before the fiend suddenly came back…

In ‘The Joker’s Millions (Detective #180, February1952) pulp sci fi writer David Vern Reed, Sprang & Charles Paris provide a gloriously engaging saga disclosing how the villain’s greatest crime rival took revenge from the grave by leaving the Harlequin of Hate too rich to commit capers. It was all a vindictive double-barrelled scheme though, making the Joker a patsy and twice a fool, as the Caped Crusaders eventually found… to their great amusement.

From World’s Finest Comics #61 (November 1952) Reed, Kane, Schwartz & Paris co-perpetrate ‘The Crimes of Batman’ as Robin is taken hostage and the Gotham Gangbuster must commit a string of felonies to preserve the lad’s life. Or so the Joker vainly hopes…

‘Batman – Clown of Crime’ (Batman #85, August 1954, Reed, Sheldon Moldoff & Paris) captures the dichotomy of reason versus chaos as the eternal arch enemies’ minds are swapped in a scientific accident. Soon a law-abiding Joker and baffled Robin are hunting down a madcap loon with the ultimate weapon at his disposal, the secret of the Gotham Guardian’s true identity

The Silver Age of US comic books utterly revolutionised a flagging medium, bringing a modicum of sophistication to the returning sub-genre of masked mystery men. However, for quite some time, changes instigated by Julius Schwartz in Showcase #4 – which rippled out to affect all National/DC Comics’ superhero characters – generally passed Batman and Robin by. Fans buying Batman, Detective Comics, World’s Finest Comics and even Justice League of America would read adventures that in look and tone were largely unchanged from the safely anodyne fantasies that had turned the grim Dark Knight into a mystery-solving, alien-fighting costumed Boy Scout as the 1940s turned into the1950s.

By the end of 1963, Schwartz, having either personally or by example revived and revitalised much of DC’s line and by extension the entire industry with his modernizations, was asked to work his magic with creatively stalled and nigh-moribund Caped Crusaders just as they were being readied for mainstream global stardom. ‘The Joker’s Jury’ (Batman #163 May 1963 by Finger, Moldoff & Paris) was the last sight of the Cosey Clown before his numerous appearances on the blockbuster Batman TV show warped the villain and left him unusable for years…

Here, however, Robin and his senior partner are trapped in the criminal enclave of Jokerville, where every citizen is a fugitive bad-guy dressed up as the Clown Prince, and where all lawmen are outlaws.

The story of the how the Joker was redeemed as a metaphor for terror and evil is covered in Part III: The Harlequin of Hate and thereafter confirmed by the single story which undid all that typecasting damage. ‘The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge’ (Batman #251, September 1973 by Dennis O’Neil & Neal Adams) reversed the zany, “camp” image by re-branding the characters and returning to the original 1930s concept of a grim and driven Dark Avenger chasing an insane avatar of pure chaos. Such a hero needed far deadlier villains and, by reinstating the psychotic, diabolically unpredictable Killer Clown who scared the short pants off readers of the Golden Age, set the bar high. A true milestone utterly redefining the Joker for the modern age, the frantic moody yarn sees the Mirthful Maniac stalking his old gang, determined to eradicate them all, with the hard-pressed Gotham Guardian desperately playing catch-up. As crooks die in all manner of Byzantine and bizarre ways, Batman realises his archfoe has gone irrevocably off the deep end.

Terrifying and beautiful, for many fans this is the definitive Batman/Joker story.

The main contender for that prize follows: a two-part saga from Detective Comics #475-476 (February & April 1978) that concluded a breathtaking, signature run of retro tales by Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin. The absolute zenith in a short but stellar sequence resurrecting old foes naturally starred the Dark Knight’s nemesis at his most chaotic, beginning with ‘The Laughing Fish’ and culminating in ‘The Sign of the Joker!’: comprising one of the most reprinted Bat-tales ever concocted and even adapted as an episode of the award-winning Batman: The Animated Adventures TV show in the 1990s.

In fact, you’ve probably already read it. But if you haven’t… what a treat awaits you!

As fish with the Joker’s horrific smile began turning up in sea-catches all over the Eastern Seaboard, the Clown Prince attempts to trademark them. When patent officials foolishly tell him it can’t be done, they start dying – publicly, impossibly and incredibly painfully…

The story concluded in a spectacular apocalyptic clash which shaped, informed and redefined the Batman mythos for decades to come…

Although Crisis on Infinite Earths transformed the entire DC Universe, it left the Joker largely unchanged, but did narratively set the clock back far enough to present fresher versions of most characters. ‘To Laugh and Die in Metropolis’ comes from Superman volume 2 #9 (September 1987) wherein John Byrne & Karl Kesel reveal how the Malicious Mountebank challenges the Man of Steel for the first time. The result is a captivating but bloody battle of wits, with the hero’s friends and acquaintances all in the killer clown’s crosshairs…

The next (frustratingly incomplete) snippet comes from one of the most effective publicity stunts in DC’s history. Despite decades of wanting to be “taken seriously” by the wider world, every so often a comic book event gets away from editors and publishers and takes on a life of its own. This usually does not end well for our beloved art form, as the way the greater world views the comics microcosm is seldom how we insiders and cognoscenti see it.

One of the most controversial sagas of the last century saw an intriguing marketing stunt go spectacularly off the rails – for all the wrong reasons – and become instantly notorious whilst sadly masking the real merits of the piece it was supposed to plug.

‘A Death in the Family’ Chapter Four originated in Batman #427 (December 1988), courtesy of Jim Starlin, Jim Aparo & Mike DeCarlo. It needs a bit more background than usual, though. Robin, the Boy Wonder debuted in Detective Comics #38 (April 1940) created by Kane, Finger & Robinson. The kid was a juvenile circus acrobat whose parents were murdered by a mob boss. The story of how Batman took orphaned Dick Grayson under his scalloped wing and trained him to fight crime has been told, retold and revised many times over the decades and still undergoes the odd tweaking to this day. The child Grayson fought beside Batman until 1970 when, as a sign of those turbulent times, he flew the nest, becoming a Teen Wonder and college student. His invention as a junior hero for younger readers to identify with had inspired an incomprehensible number of costumed sidekicks and kid crusaders, and Grayson continued in similar vein for the older, more worldly-wise readership of America’s increasingly rebellious youth culture. During the 1980s he led the New Teen Titans, re-established a turbulent working relationship with Batman and reinvented himself as Nightwing. This of course left the post of Robin open…

After Grayson’s departure, Batman worked alone until he caught a streetwise urchin trying to steal the Batmobile’s tires. Debuting in Batman #357 (March 1983) this lost boy was Jason Todd, and eventually the little thug became the second Robin (#368, February 1984), with a short but stellar career, marred by his impetuosity and tragic links to one of the Caped Crusader’s most unpredictable enemies…

Todd had serious emotional problems which became increasingly apparent in issues leading up to story arc ‘A Death in the Family’. As the kid became more callous and brutal in response to daily horrors he was exposed to, Jason deliberately caused the death of a vicious drug-dealer with diplomatic immunity. It triggered a guilty spiral culminating in the story-arc which comprised Batman #426-429. Ever more violent and seemingly incapable of rudimentary caution, Jason is suspended by Batman. Meanwhile the Joker returns, but rather than his usual killing frenzy, the Clown Prince is after mere cash, because the financial disaster of Reaganomics has depleted his coffers… meaning he can’t afford his outrageous murder gimmicks…

Without purpose, Jason has been wandering the streets where he grew up. Encountering a friend of his dead mother, he learns a shocking secret. The woman who raised him was not his birthmother, and there exists a box of personal papers naming three different women who might be his true mother. Lost and emotionally volatile, Jason sets out to track them down…

After monumental efforts, he locates Dr. Sheila Haywood working as a famine relief worker in Ethiopia. As Jason heads for the Middle East and a confrontation with destiny, he is unaware Batman is also in that troubled region, hot on the Joker’s trail as the Maniac of Mirth attempts to sell stolen nuclear weapons to any terrorist who can pay…

When Jason finds his mom, he has no idea that she has been blackmailed by the Clown Prince of Crime into a deadly scam involving stolen relief supplies.

I’m not going to bother with the details of the voting fiasco that plagues all references to this tale as it’s all copiously detailed elsewhere, but suffice to say that to test then-new marketing tools a 1-900 number was established and, thanks to an advanced press campaign, readers were offered the chance to vote on whether Robin would live or die in the story. Against all and every editorial expectation vox populi voted thumbs down and Jason died in a most savage and uncompromising manner. Shades of the modern experience of Boaty McBoatface! The public cannot be trusted to take any plebiscite seriously…

Jason had increasingly become a poor fit in the series and this storyline galvanised a new direction with a darker, more driven Batman, beginning almost immediately as the Joker, after killing Jason in a chilling and unforgettably violent manner, became UN ambassador for Iran (later revised as the fully fictional Qurac – just in case!) and, at the request of the Ayatollah himself, attempted to kill the entire UN General Assembly at his inaugural speech.

And here is the true injustice surrounding this tale: the death of Robin (who didn’t even stay dead) and the media uproar over the voting debacle took away from the real importance of this story – and perhaps deflected some real scrutiny and controversy. Starlin had crafted a clever, bold tale of real world politics and genuine issues – and most readers didn’t even notice.

Terrorism Training Camps, Rogue States, African famines, black marketeering, Relief fraud, Economic, Race and Class warfare, Diplomatic skullduggery and nuclear smuggling all featured heavily, as did such notable hot-button topics as Ayatollah Khomeini, Reagan’s Cruise Missile program, the Iran-Contra and Arms for Hostages scandals and the horrors of Ethiopian refugee camps. Most importantly, it signalled a new, fearfully casual approach to violence and death in comics.

The story selected to represent the lad here is a poor choice, however. This is not to say that ‘A Death in the Family’ is a lesser effort: far from it, and Starlin, Aparo & DeCarlo’s landmark, controversial story of the murder of brash, bright Jason Todd by the Joker shook the industry and still stands the test of time. However, all that’s included here is the final chapter, and even I, having read it many times, was bewildered as to what was going on.

If you want to see the entire saga – and trust me, you do – seek out a copy of the complete A Death in the Family .

In 1989 Batman broke box office records in the first of a series of big budget action movies. The Joker was villain du jour and stole the show. That increased public awareness again influenced comics and is covered in Part IV: Archnemesis before ‘Going Sane’ Part Two ‘Swimming Lessons’ offers a fresh look at motivations behind his madness. The story comes from Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #66 (December 1994). LoDK began in the frenzied atmosphere following the movie. With planet Earth completely Bat-crazy for the second time in 25 years, DC wisely supplemented the Gotham Guardian’s regular stable of titles with a new one specifically designed to focus on and redefine his early days and cases through succession of retuned, retold classic stories.

Three years earlier the publisher had boldly begun retconning the entire ponderous continuity via landmark maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths; rejecting the concept of a vast multiverse and re-knitting time so that there had only ever been one Earth. For new readers, this solitary DC world provided a perfect place to jump on at a notional starting point: a planet literally festooned with iconic heroes and villains draped in a clear and cogent backstory that was now fresh and newly unfolding. Many of their greatest properties got a reboot, all enjoying the tacit conceit that the characters had been around for years and the readership were simply tuning in on just another working day.

With Batman’s popularity at an intoxicating peak and, as DC was still in the throes of re-jigging narrative continuity, his latest title presented multipart epics reconfiguring established villains and classic stories: infilling the new history of the re-imagined, post-Crisis hero and his entourage.

An old adage says that you can judge a person by the calibre of their enemies, and that’s never been more ably demonstrated than in the case of Batman and The Joker. The epic battles between these so similar yet utterly antithetical icons have filled many pages and always will…

With that in mind, J.M. DeMatteis, Joe Staton & Steve Mitchell’s 4-part psychological study ‘Going Sane’ takes us back to a time when Batman was still learning his job and had only crossed swords with the Clown Prince of Crime twice before. After a murderously macabre circus-themed killing-spree in the idyllic neighbourhood of Park Ridge and abduction of crusading Gotham Councilwoman Elizabeth Kenner, a far-too-emotionally invested Batman furiously plays catch-up. This leads to a disastrous, one-sided battle in front of GCPD’s Bat signal and a frantic pursuit into the dark woods beyond the city.

Driven to a pinnacle of outrage, the neophyte manhunter falls into the Joker’s devilishly prepared trap and is caught in an horrific explosion. His shattered body is then dumped by an incredulous, unbelieving killer clown reeling in shock at his utterly unexpected ultimate triumph. Stand-alone extract ‘Swimming Lessons’ opens here with Batman missing and Police Captain James Gordon taking flak from all sides for not finding the Predatory Punchinello or the savage mystery assailant who recently murdered an infamous underworld plastic surgeon…

Under Wayne Manor, faithful manservant Alfred fears the very worst, whilst in a cheap part of town thoroughly decent nonentity Joseph Kerr suffers terrifying nightmares of murder and madness. His solitary days end when he bumps into mousy spinster Rebecca Brown. Days pass and two lonely outcasts find love in their mutual isolation and shared affection for classic slapstick comedy. The only shadows blighting this unlikely romance are poor Joe’s continual nightmares and occasional outbursts of barely suppressed rage…

As days turn to weeks and months, Alfred sorrowfully accepts the situation and prepares to close the Batcave forever. As he descends, however, he is astounded to see the Dark Knight has returned…

The story of Joe Kerr – fictive product of a deranged mind which simply couldn’t face life without Batman – is another yarn readers will want to experience in full, but that too will only happen in a different collection.

The World’s Greatest Detective continues to relentlessly battle the Clown Prince in ‘Fool’s Errand’ (Detective Comics #726, October 1998) as Chuck Dixon & Brian Stelfreeze depict a vicious mind-game conducted by the Hateful Harlequin from his cell, using a little girl as bait and an army of criminals as his weapon against the Dark Knight, after which ‘Endgame’ Part Three ‘…Sleep in Heavenly Peace’ (by Greg Rucka, Devin Grayson, Damian Scott, Dale Eaglesham, Sean Parsons, Sal Buscema & Rob Hunter in Detective #741, February 2000) sees the Joker plaguing a Gotham struggling to recover from a cataclysmic earthquake.

It’s Christmas, but the stubborn survivors are so stretched striving to stop Joker’s plan to butcher all the babies left in town, that they are unable to notice this real scheme which will gouge a far more personal wound in their hearts…

‘Slayride’ by Paul Dini, Don Kramer & Wayne Faucher (Detective Comics #826, February 2007 and another Seasonal special) is one of the best Joker – and definitely the best Robin – stories in decades. This Christmas chiller sees our Crazed Clown trap third Boy Wonder Tim Drake in a stolen car, making him an unwilling participant in a spree of vehicular homicides amongst last-minute shoppers. If there is ever a Greatest Batman Christmas Stories Ever Told collection (and if there’s anybody out there with the power to make it so, get weaving please!), this just has to be the closing chapter…

Brining us up nearly to date, Part V: Rebirth focuses on 2011’s New 52 continuity-wide reboot and the even grimmer, Darker Knight who debuted in Detective Comics volume 2 #1 with what might then have been assumed to be the last Joker story. Crafted by Tony Daniel & Ryan Winn, ‘Faces of Death’ follows the mass-murdering malcontent on another pointless murder spree ending with his apparent death, leaving behind only his freshly skinned-off face nailed bloodily to an asylum wall…

One year later the Joker explosively returned, targeting Batman’s allies in company-wide crossover event dubbed Death of the Family. The crippling mind games and brutal assaults culminated in ‘But Here’s the Kicker’ (Batman #15, February 2013 by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo & Jonathan Glapion) and purportedly the final battle between Bat and Clown: but we’ve all heard that before, haven’t we?

The Joker has the rare distinction of being arguably the most iconic villain in comics and can claim that title in whatever era you focus on; Noir-esque Golden Age, sanitised Silver Age or malignant modern and Post-Modern milieux. This book captures just a fraction of all those superb stories and we’re long overdue an update or second showing…

Including pertinent covers by Sayre Swartz & Roussos, Mortimer, Moldoff, Adams, Rogers & Austin, Byrne, Mike Mignola, Staton & Mitchell, Stelfreeze, Alex Maleev & Bill Sienkiewicz, Simone Bianchi, Daniel & Winn and Capullo, this monolithic testament to the inestimable value of a good bad-guy is a true delight for fans of all ages and vintage.
© 1940, 1941, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1964, 1973, 1978, 1987, 1988, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2014 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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X-Men Epic Collection volume 5: Second Genesis (1975-1978)


By Len Wein, Chris Claremont, Bill Mantlo, Bonnie Wilford, Dave Cockrum, Bob Brown, Tony DeZuñiga, John Byrne, Sal Buscema, Bob McLeod, Sam Grainger, Frank Chiaramonte, Bob Layton, Tom Sutton, Dan Green, Terry Austin, Mike Esposito, Frank Giacoia, Ricardo Villamonte & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0390-9 TPB/Digital edition

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

In the autumn of 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced Scott (Cyclops) Summers, Bobby (Iceman) Drake, Warren (Angel) Worthington, Hank (The Beast) McCoy and Jean (Marvel Girl) Grey: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier. The teacher was a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants dubbed Homo Superior; considered by many who knew him as a living saint.

After almost eight years of eccentrically spectacular adventures the mutant misfits virtually disappeared at the beginning of 1970 during another periodic downturn in superhero comics sales. Just like in the closing years of the 1940s, mystery men faded away as supernatural mysteries and traditional genre themes once more dominated the world’s entertainment fields. Although their title returned at the end of the year as a cheap reprint vehicle, the missing mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit players throughout the ongoing Marvel universe, whilst the bludgeoning Beast was opportunistically transformed into a scary monster to cash in on the horror boom.

Then, with sales of the spooky stuff subsequently waning in 1975, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas green-lit a bold one-shot as part of the company’s line of Giant-Size specials and history was made on April 1st when something very special hits newsstands…

This fabulous mass-market collection is ideal for newcomers and neophytes, celebrating the revival and unstoppable march to market dominance through the exuberant and pivotal early stories: specifically, Giant Size X-Men #1, issues #94-110 of the “All-New, All-Different” X-Men, plus guest appearances in Iron Fist #14-15, Marvel Team Up #53, 69-70 and Marvel Team Up Annual #1, spanning cover-dates May 1975 to June 1978.

Tracing the reinvigorated merry mutants from young, fresh and delightfully under-exposed innovations to the beginnings of their unstoppable ascendancy to ultimate comic book icons, in their own title and via an increasingly broad clutch of guest shots, the epic voyage begins without pause or preamble, in a classic mystery monster mash from Giant Size X-Men #1. Here, Len Wein & Dave Cockrum – the latter a red-hot property following his stint reviving DC’s equally eclectic fan-fave superteam The Legion of Super-Heroes – detailed in ‘Second Genesis!’ how the original squad (all but new Avengers recruit The Beast) had been lost in action. With no other choice Xavier is forced to scour Earth and the entire Marvel Universe for replacements…

To old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire is added a one-shot Hulk adversary the Wolverine, but the bulk of time and attention is lavished upon original additions Kurt Wagner, a demonic-seeming German teleporter codenamed Nightcrawler; African weather “goddess” Ororo Monroe – AKA Storm, Russian farm-boy Peter Rasputin who turns into a living steel Colossus, and bitter, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar, cajoled and coerced into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird.

The second chapter ‘…And Then There Was One!’ reintroduces battered, depleted but unbowed team-leader Cyclops who swiftly drills the newcomers into a semblance of readiness before leading them into primordial danger against the monolithic threat of ‘Krakoa… The Island That Walks Like a Man!’ Overcoming the phenomenal terror of a rampaging rapacious mutant eco-system and rescuing the “real” team was intended to lead into a quarterly Giant-Size sequel for a new, expanded squad, but so great was fan response that the follow-up adventure was swiftly reworked into a 2-part tale for the rapidly reconfigured and revived comic book which became bimonthly home to the neophyte heroes

X-Men #94 (August 1975) began ‘The Doomsmith Scenario!’ – plotted by editor Wein, scripted by Chris Claremont and with Bob McLeod inking man-on-fire Cockrum – in a canny Armageddon-shocker with a pared-down unit deprived of Sunfire and still-recuperating Marvel Girl, Angel, Iceman, Havok and Lorna Dane. It begins when the new kids are called in by The Beast to stop criminal terrorist Count Nefaria from starting an atomic war. Employing a gang of artificial superhumans, the insidious mastermind has seized control of America’s Norad citadel and accidentally escalated a nuclear blackmail scheme into an inescapable countdown to holocaust, leaving the untrained, unprepared mutants to storm in to save the world in epic conclusion ‘Warhunt!’ (inked by Sam Grainger). One of them doesn’t make it back…

X-Men #96 sees Claremont take charge of the writing (albeit with some plotting input from Bill Mantlo) for ‘Night of the Demon!’ Guilt-wracked Cyclops blames himself for the loss of his teammate, and in his explosive rage he accidentally unleashes an antediluvian demonic horror from Earth’s primordial prehistory for the heroes-in-training to thrash. The infernal Nagarai would return over and again to bedevil mankind, but the biggest innovation in this issue is the debut of gun-toting biologist/housekeeper Moira MacTaggert and the first inklings of the return of implacable old adversaries…

A cosmically-widescreen storyline started in #97 with ‘My Brother, My Enemy!’, as Xavier – tormented by visions of interstellar war – takes a vacation, just as Havok & Lorna (finally settling on superhero nom de guerre Polaris) attack: apparently willing servants of a mysterious madman using Cyclops’ old undercover alter ego Eric the Red. The devastating clash segues into a spectacular 3-part yarn, as pitiless robotic killers return under the hate-filled auspices of mutantophobe Steven Lang and his enigmatic backers Project Armageddon. The action opens with #98’s ‘Merry Christmas, X-Men… the Sentinels Have Returned!’

With coordinated attacks capturing semi-retired Marvel Girl plus Wolverine, Banshee and Xavier, Cyclops and the remaining heroes co-opt a space shuttle, storming Lang’s orbital HQ to rescue them in ‘Deathstar Rising!’ (inked by Frank Chiaramonte): another phenomenal all-action episode.

The saga concludes on an agonising cliffhanger with the 100th issue anniversary tale. ‘Greater Love Hath no X-Man…’ (with Cockrum inking his own pencils) sees the new X-Men apparently battle the original team before overturning Lang’s monstrous schemes forever. However, their catastrophic clash destroys the only means of escape and, as a gigantic solar flare threatens to eradicate the satellite-station, their only chance of survival means certain death for another X-Man. As #101 unfolded, Claremont & Cockrum were on the on the verge of utterly overturning the accepted status quo of women in comics forever…

Led by field-commander Cyclops, the team now comprised old acquaintance/former foe Sean – Banshee – Cassidy, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus with part-timer Jean Grey still labouring under the nom-de guerre Marvel Girl – but not for much longer…

‘Like a Phoenix from the Ashes’ (Chiaramonte inks) sees a space shuttle cataclysmically crash into Jamaica Bay. The X-Men had safely travelled in a specially-shielded chamber but Jean had manually piloted the vehicle, unprotected through a lethal radiation storm. As the mutants escape the sinking craft, a fantastic explosion propels the impossibly still alive Jean into the air, clad in a strange gold & green uniform, screaming that she is “Fire and Life Incarnate… Phoenix!”

Immediately collapsing, the critically injured girl is rushed to hospital and a grim wait begins. Unable to explain her survival and too preoccupied to spare time for teaching, Xavier packs Banshee, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Storm and Colossus off to the Irish mutant’s home in County Mayo for a vacation, blissfully unaware Cassidy Keep has been compromised and is now a deadly trap for his new students. Within the ancestral pile, Sean’s mutant cousin Black Tom has usurped control of the manor and its incredible secrets before – at Eric the Red’s behest – contriving an inescapable ambush, assisted by an old X-Men enemy.

‘Who Will Stop the Juggernaut?’ (Grainger inks) sees the inexperienced heroes in over their heads and fighting for their lives, but still finds room to reveal the origins of Storm and provide an explanation for her crippling claustrophobia, prior to ‘The Fall of the Tower’ explosively ending the tale with mutant heroes and the Keep’s Leprechaun colony (no, really!) uniting to expel the murderous usurpers.

Although still bi-monthly, the series kicked into confident top gear with ‘The Gentleman’s Name is Magneto’ with the weary warriors diverting to Scotland to check on Moira MacTaggert’s island lab: a secret facility containing myriad mutant menaces the X-Men have previously defeated. It’s a very bad move since ever-active Eric has restored the dormant master of magnetism to full power. The mutant terrorist had been turned into a baby – a strangely commonplace fate for villains in those faraway days – but he was all grown up again now and indulging in one last temper tantrum…

Freshly arrived from America, Moira and Cyclops are only just in time to lead a desperate, humiliating retreat from the triumphant Master of Magnetism. Scott doesn’t care: he realises the entire affair has been a feint to draw the team away from Xavier and Jean…

He needn’t have worried. Although in ‘Phoenix Unleashed’ (inks by Bob Layton) Eric orchestrates an attack by Firelord – a cosmic flamethrower and former herald of Galactus much like the Silver Surfer – Jean is now fully evolved into a being of unimaginable power who readily holds the fiery marauder at bay. In the interim a long-standing mystery is solved as visions which have tormented Xavier are revealed as a psychic connection to a runaway princess from a distant alien empire. Lilandra of the Shi’ar had rebelled against her imperial brother and, whilst fleeing, somehow telepathically locked onto her trans-galactic soulmate Charles Xavier. As she made her circuitous way to Earth, embedded Shi’ar spy Shakari had assumed the guise of Eric the Red, seeking to remove Lilandra’s potential champion before she arrived…

During the blistering battle which follows the X-Men’s dramatic arrival, Shakari snatches up Lilandra and drags her through a stargate to their home galaxy, and with the entire universe imperilled, Xavier urges his team to follow. All Jean has to do is re-open a wormhole to the other side of creation…

A minor digression follows as overstretched artist Cockrum took a breather via a fill-in “untold tale” of the new team featuring an attack by psychic clones of the original X-Men. ‘Dark Shroud of the Past’ is a competent pause by Mantlo, Bob Brown & Tom Sutton, set inside a framing sequence from Cockrum. The regular story resumes in a wry tribute to Star Trek as ‘Where No X-Man Has Gone Before!’ (Claremont, Cockrum & Dan Green) finds the heroes stranded in another galaxy where they meet and are beaten by the Shi’ar Imperial Guard (an in-joke version of DC’s Legion of Super Heroes in the inimitable Cockrum manner), until bold interstellar rebel freebooters The Starjammers bombastically arrive to turn the tables whilst uncovering a mad scheme to unmake the fabric of space-time.

Lilandra’s brother Emperor D’Ken is a deranged maniac who in his quest for ultimate power wants to activate a cosmic artefact known alternatively as the M’Kraan Crystal and “the End of All that Is”. He’s also spent time on Earth in the past and played a major role in the life of one of the X-Men…

This tale (from #107) was Cockrum’s last full X-ploit for years. He would eventually return to replace the man who replaced him. John Byrne not only illustrated but also began co-plotting the X-tales and, as the team roster expanded, the series rose to even greater heights. It would culminate in the landmark Dark Phoenix storyline and first-&-best death of arguably the book’s most beloved and imaginative character and departure of the team’s heart and soul. The epic cosmic saga also seemed to fracture the epochal working relationship of Claremont and Byrne. Within months of publication they went their separate ways: Claremont staying with the mutants whilst Byrne moved on to establish his own reputation as a writer on series such as Alpha Flight, Incredible Hulk and his revolutionised Fantastic Four and reboot of Superman for DC.

Here though, X-Men and Starjammers battle the Crystal’s astoundingly deadly automated guardians, as this final chapter depicts the newly puissant Phoenix literally saving Reality in a mind-blowing display of power and skill. Trapped inside a staggering other-realm, appalled and enthralled by the intoxicating, addictive nature of her own might, Phoenix reweaves the fabric of existence and for an encore brings the heroes home again. The conclusion of this ambitious epic was drawn by Byrne and inked by Terry Austin. Their visual virtuosity was to become an industry benchmark as the X-Men grew in popularity and complexity.

However, even though the bravura high-octane thrills of ‘Armageddon Now’ seem an unrepeatable highpoint, Claremont & Byrne had only started. The best was still to come, but it precluded ending their other ongoing collaboration: a mystic martial arts thriller…

Inked by Dan Green in Iron Fist #14, ‘Snowfire’ finds masked marvel Danny Rand and his combat colleague Colleen Wing running for their lives in arctic conditions after a vacation retreat to a palatial Canadian Rockies estate is ruined by a criminal raid. Leading the plunderers is deadly mercenary Sabretooth. Despite being rendered temporarily blind, the K’un Lun Kid ultimately defeats the mutant marauder, but his fiercely feral foe would return again and again to bedevil both Danny and the X-Men. With Claremont & Byrne increasingly absorbed by their stellar collaboration on the revived and resurgent adventures of Marvel’s mutant horde, Iron Fist #15 (September 1977) was their last martial arts mash-up for a while. The series ended in spectacular fashion as, through a comedy of errors, Danny stumbles into a morass of misunderstanding and ends up battling recently returned galaxy rovers Storm Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Banshee, and Phoenix in ‘Enter, the X-Men’…

X-Men #109’s ‘Home Are the Heroes!’ (Claremont, Byrne & Austin) sees Wolverine finally developing a back-story and some depth of character whilst technological wonder Weapon Alpha attacks the recuperating team in an attempt to force the enigmatic Logan to rejoin the Canadian Secret Service. Renamed Vindicator, Alpha would later return leading Alpha Flight – a Canadian government sponsored superteam which would eventually graduate to their own eccentric high-profile series.

Eschewing chronological sequence, this is followed by an extra-length exploit from Marvel Team Up Annual #1 (1976 by Mantlo, Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito, from a plot by Mantlo, Claremont & Bonnie Wilford). ‘The Lords of Light and Darkness!’ sees Spider-Man and X-Men Storm, Banshee, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Phoenix & Cyclops assisting Xavier in combatting a pantheon of scientists mutated by atomic accident and elevated to the ranks of gods. Like most deities, these puissant ones believe they know what is best for humanity and don’t like being disabused of the notion…

Mantlo then teamed with Byrne & Frank Giacoia to bring closure to a tale begun – and left hanging – in Marvel Premiere #31. Set minutes after the Annual, Marvel Team Up #53 (January 1977) reveals a ‘Nightmare in New Mexico!’ as Spider-Man says goodbye to the X-folk and hello to The Hulk and troubled gene-splicing experiment Woodgod after the tragic bio-construct flees from corrupt Army Colonel Del Tremens. As Tremens sought to suppress the calamitous crisis and his own indiscretions by killing everybody, the final scene sees the webspinner trapped in a rocket and blasted into space. The tale has very little to do with the X-Men, other than a rather gratuitous overlap and ends here without resolution, but still looks pretty damn good after all these years…

Cover-dated April 1978 X-Men #110 (Claremont, Tony DeZuñiga & Cockrum) detail ‘The “X”-Sanction!’: a rather limp and hasty fill-in where cyborg mercenary Warhawk infiltrates Xavier’s mansion in search of “intel” for a mysterious, unspecified master… before getting his shiny silver head handed to him.

This compendium of uncanny X-episodes wraps up with the contents of Marvel Team Up #69 & 70 (May & June 1978) as in ‘Night of the Living God!’ (Claremont, Byrne & Ricardo Villamonte) Spider-Man clashes with Ancient Egyptian-themed thieves and is drawn into the perpetual duel between cosmic-powered X-Man Havoc and his personal nemesis The Living Monolith. When the battle turns against the heroes it requires the might of Thor to stop the ravening monumental menace in conclusion ‘Whom Gods Destroy!’ (DeZuñiga inks).

Following the cover of 1975’s all-reprint Giant-Size X-Men #2, this tome terminates with a glorious and revelatory selection of extras including John Romita’s original design sketches for Wolverine; Byrne’s first X-Man work (a puzzle from Marvel fanzine F.O.O.M. #7) and design material from Cockrum’s DC Comics proposal The Outsiders (a Legion of Super-Heroes spin-off he later retooled to create Nightcrawler, Storm, Phoenix and the other New X-Men). There are also unused Cockrum pencil pages, initial sketches for the Starjammers, costume upgrades for Angel, cover art for X-themed The Comic Reader #145, and model sheets for Nightcrawler, Storm, Phoenix and Colossus.

Further treasures include Gil Kane’s cover sketch and original art for Giant-Size X-Men #1; original Cockrum pages from GSXM #1 and F.O.O.M. #10 (an all-X issue); articles from the fanzine – Mutation of the Species, X-Men! X-Men!. Read All About ‘Em! – a pin-up by Don Maitz, X-Men X-posé and spoof strip ‘EggsMen’; unused pages by Bob Brown and previous collection covers by Kane and Cockrum, given painted makeovers by Dean White.

Entertaining, groundbreaking and incredibly intoxicating, these adventures are an invaluable and crucial grounding in contemporary fights ‘n’ tights fiction no fan or casual reader can be allowed to ignore.
© 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Bob Powell’s Complete Cave Girl


By Gardner Fox & Bob Powell, with James Vance, John Wooley, Mark Schultz & various (Kitchen Sink/Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-700-3 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

Like every art form, comics can be readily divided into masterpieces and populist pap, but that damning assessment necessarily comes with a bunch of exclusions and codicils. Periodical publications, like pop songs, movies and the entirety of television’s output (barring schools programming), are designed to sell to masses of consumers. As such the product must reflect the target and society at a specific moment in time and perforce quickly adapt and change with every variation in taste or fashion.

The situation is most especially true of comics – especially those created before they had won any kind of credibility: primarily deemed by their creators and publishers as a means of parting youngsters from disposable cash. The fact that so many have been found to possess redeeming literary and artistic merit or social worth is post hoc rationalisation. Those creators striving for better, doing the very best they could because of their inner artistic drives, were being rewarded with just as meagre a financial reward as the shmoes just phoning it in for the paycheck. That sad state of affairs in periodical publication wasn’t helped by the fact that most editors thought they knew what the readership wanted – safe, prurient gratification – and mostly they were right.

Even so, from such swamps gems occasionally emerged…

The entire genre of “Jungle Girls” is one fraught with perils for modern readers. Barely clad, unattainable, (generally) white paragons of feminine pulchritude lording it over superstitious primitives is one that is now pretty hard to digest for most of us hairless apes, but frankly so are most of the attitudes of our grandfathers’ time.

However, ways can be found to accommodate such crystallised or outdated attitudes, especially when reading from a suitably detached historical perspective and even more so when the art is crafted by a master storyteller like Bob Powell. After all, it’s not that big a jump from fictionalised 1950s forests to today’s filmic metropolises where leather armoured (generally white) Adonises with godlike power paternalistically watch over us, telling us lumpy, dumpy, ethnically mixed losers how to live and be happy…

Sorry, I love all comics in all genres from all eras, but sometimes the Guilty Pleasure meter on my conscience just redlines and I can’t stop it. Just remember, it’s not real…

As businessmen or employees of such, editors and publishers always knew what hormonal kids wanted to see and they gave it to them. It’s no different today. Just take a look at any comic shop shelf or cover listings site and see how many fully-clad, small-breasted females you can spot. And how many equivalent male inamoratii there aren’t..

Cave Girl was one of the last entries of the surprisingly long-lived Jungle Queen genre and consequently looks relatively mild in comparison to other titles as regards suggestive or prurient titillation. Here the action-adventure side of the equation was always most heavily stressed and readers of the time could see far more salacious material at every movie house if they needed to. And the pages were so damn well drawn…

End of self-gratifying apologies. Let’s talk about Bob.

Stanley Robert Pawlowski was born in 1916 in Buffalo, New York, and studied at the Pratt Institute in Manhattan before joining one of the earliest comics-packaging outfits: the Eisner-Iger Shop. He was a solid and dependable staple of American comic books’ Golden Age, illustrating a variety of key features. He drew original Jungle Queen Sheena in Jumbo Comics plus other JG featurettes and Spirit of ’76 for Harvey’s Pocket Comics. He handled assorted material for Timely titles such as Captain America in All-Winners Comics, Tough Kid Comics plus such genre material as Gale Allen and the Women’s Space Battalion for anthologies like Planet Comics, Mystery Men Comics and Wonder Comics.

Bob was recently revealed to have co-scripted/created Blackhawk as well as drawing Loops and Banks in Military Comics, as well as so many more now near-forgotten strips: all under a variety of English-sounding pseudonyms, since the tone of the times was rather unforgiving for creative people of minority origins. Eventually the artist settled on S. Bob Powell and had his name legally changed…

Probably his most well-remembered and highly regarded tour of duty was on Mr. Mystic in Will Eisner’s Spirit Section newspaper insert. After serving in WWII, Bob came home and quit to set up his own studio. Eisner never forgave him. Powell – with his assistants Howard Nostrand, Martin Epp & George Siefringer – swiftly established a solid reputation for quality, versatility and reliability: working for Fawcett (Vic Torry & His Flying Saucer, Hot Rod Comics, Lash Larue), Harvey Comics (Man in Black, Adventures in 3-D and True 3-D) and on Street and Smith’s Shadow Comics.

He was particularly prolific in many titles for Magazine Enterprises (ME), including early TV tie-in Bobby Benson’s B-Bar-B Riders, Red Hawk in Straight Arrow, Jet Powers and the short but bombastic run of quasi-superhero Strong Man. Bob easily turned his hand to a vast range of War, Western, Science Fiction, Crime, Comedy and Horror material: consequently generating as by-product some of the best and most glamorous “Good Girl art” of the era (remember, this is pre pornhub and MTV), both in comics and in premiums strip packages for business. In the 1960s he pencilled the infamous Mars Attacks cards, illustrated Bessie Little’s Teena-a-Go-Go and the Bat Masterson newspaper strip, before ending his days drawing Daredevil, Human Torch and Giant-Man for Marvel.

This captivating compilation gathers all the Cave Girl appearances – written by equally gifted and ubiquitous jobbing scripter Gardner F. Fox – from numerous ME publications.

The company employed a truly Byzantine method of numbering their comic books so I’ll cite Thun’da #2-6 (1953), Cave Girl #4 (1953-1954) and Africa, Thrilling Land of Mystery #1 (1955) simply for the sake of brevity and completeness, knowing that it makes no real difference to your enjoyment of what’s to come.

This splendid tome includes a Biography of Bob, an incisive Introduction from Mark (Xenozoic, Superman: Man of Steel, Prince Valiant) Schultz, and an erudite essay – ‘King of the Jungle Queens’– by James Vance & John Wooley, diligently examining the origins of the subgenre (courtesy of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, William Henry Hudson’s novel Green Mansions and a slew of B-movies); its development in publishing; the effect of the phenomenon and Powell’s overall contributions to comics in a far more even-handed and informed way than I can manage…

That done, it’s time to head to an Africa that never existed for action and adventure beyond compare. Cave Girl started as a back-up feature in Thun’da #2: a primeval barbarian saga set in an antediluvian region of the Dark Continent where dinosaurs still lived. In ‘The Ape God of Kor’ the mighty primitive encounters a blonde stranger who can speak to birds and beasts, and helps her escape the unwanted attentions of a bestial tyrant. When that’s not enough to deter the monstrous suitor, Thun’da and Cave Girl have no choice but to topple his empire…

In #3, the wild woman met ‘The Man Who Served Death!’ – a criminal from the outer world whose hunger for gold and savage brutality necessitates his urgent removal from the land of the living. Cave Girl’s beloved animal allies are being wantonly slaughtered to appease ‘The Shadow God of Korchak!’ next, forcing the gorgeous guardian of the green to topple the lost kingdom’s debauched queen, after which the tireless champion tackles a trio of sadistic killers from the civilised world in ‘Death Comes Three Ways!’

A rather demeaning comedy sidekick debuted in ‘The Little Man Who Was All There!’ (Thun’da #6) as pompous “pigmy” (sorry, so sorry!!) bumbler Bobo attaches himself to Cave Girl as her protector. From there the forest monarch sprang into her own title, beginning with Cave Girl #11. ‘The Pool of Life!’ delved back in time to when a scientific expedition was wiped out, leaving little blonde toddler Carol Mantomer to fend for herself. Happily, the child was adopted by Kattu the wolf and grew tall and strong and mighty…

The obligatory origin dispensed with, the story proceeds to reveal how two white explorers broach the lost valley and reap their deserved fate after finding a little lake with mystic properties. Time honoured tables are turned when explorer Luke Hardin deduces Cave Girl’s true identity and convinces the wild child to come with him to Nairobi and claim her inheritance. Already appalled by the gadgets and morass of humanity in ‘The City of Terror!’, Carol’s decision to leave is cemented by her only living relative’s attempts to murder her for said inheritance…

En route home, her wild beauty arouses the desires of millionaire hunter Alan Brandon, but his forceful pursuit and attempted abduction soon teaches him he has a ‘Tiger by the Tail!’ before, her trek done, Cave Girl traverses high mountains and finds Alan and Luke have been captured by beast-like primitives and faces the ‘Spears of the Snowmen’ to save them both.

Even the usually astoundingly high-quality scripting of veteran Gardner Fox couldn’t do much with the formulaic strictures of this subgenre, but he always tried his best, as in Cave Girl #12 which opened with ‘The Devil Boat!’ – a submarine disgorging devious crooks in death-masks intent on plundering archaeological treasures found by Luke. Then when an explorer steals a sacred cache of rubies he learns that even Cave Girl can’t prevent his becoming ‘Prey of the Headhunters!’

Fantastic fantasy replaces crass commercial concerns as ‘The Amazon Assassins’ seeking to expand their empire ravage villages under Cave Girl’s protection. The Women Warriors have no conception of the hornet’s nest they are stirring up…

Cave Girl #13 took its lead tale from newspaper headlines as the jungle defender clashed with ‘The Mau Mau Killers!’ butchering innocents and destabilising the region, after which ‘Altar of the Axe’ features the return of those formerly all-conquering Amazons. They believe they can counter their arch-enemy’s prowess with a battalion of war elephants. Their grievous error then seamlessly segues into a battle with escaped convict Buck Maldin as ‘The Jungle Badman’ who is beaten by Cave Girl but allows greedy buffoon Bobo to claim the reward – and quickly regrets it…

Powell reached a creative zenith illustrating for Cave Girl #14 (1954), his solid linework and enticing composition augmented by a burst of purely decorative design which made ‘The Man Who Conquered Death’ a dramatic tour de force. When a series of murders and resurrections lead Cave Girl to a mad scientist who has found a time machine, she is transformed into an aged crone, but still possesses the force of will to beat the deranged meddler…

A tad more prosaic, ‘The Shining Gods’ sees a rejuvenated Cave Girl (and Luke) stalking thieves swiping tribal relics, only to uncover a Soviet plot to secure Africa’s radium, after which the queen of the jungle is “saved” by well-intentioned rich woman Leona Carter and brought back to civilisation. Happily, after poor Carol endures a catalogue of modern mishaps which equate to ‘Terror in the Town’, Cave Girl is allowed to return to her true home…

Officially the series ended there, but ME had one last issue ready to print and deftly shifted emphasis by re-badging the package as Africa, Thrilling Land of Mystery #1. It appeared in 1955, sporting a Comics Code Authority symbol. Inside, however, was still formulaic but beautifully limned Cave Girl exposing a conniving witch doctor using ‘The Volcano Fury’ to fleece natives, restoring ‘The Lost Juju’ of the devout Wamboolis before foiling a murderous explorer stealing a million dollar gem, and crushing a potential uprising by taking a fateful ride on ‘The Doom Boat’…

And then she was gone.

Like the society it protected from subversion and corruption, the Comics Code Authority frowned on females disporting themselves freely or appearing able to cope without a man, and the next half-decade was one where women were either submissive, domesticated, silly objects of amusement, ornamental prizes or just plain marital manhunters. It would be the 1970s before strong, independent female characters reappeared in comic books…

Whatever your political leanings or social condition, Cave Girl – taken strictly on her own merits – is one of the mostly beautifully rendered characters in pictorial fiction, and a terrific tribute to the talents of Powell and his team. If you love perfect comics storytelling, of its time, but transcending fashion or trendiness, this is a treasure just waiting to be rediscovered.
Bob Powell’s Complete Cave Girl compilation © 2014 Kitchen, Lind and Associates LLC. Cave Girl is a trademark of AC Comics, successors in interest to Magazine Enterprises and is used here with permission of AC Comics. Introduction © 2014 Mark Schultz. “King of the Jungle Queens” essay © 2014 James Vance and John Wooley. All rights reserved.

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Vampirella Archives volume One


By Forrest J. Ackerman, Don Glut, Nicola Cuti, Bill Parente, R. Michael Rosen, Al Hewetson, Terri Abrahms, Nick Beal, Bill Warren, Richard Carnell, Jack Erman, T. Casey Brennan, Gardner F. Fox, Vern Burnett, Larry Herndon, Buddy Saunders, Doug Moench, Tom Sutton, Billy Graham, Reed Crandall, Neal Adams, Ernie Colon, Billy Graham, Mike Royer, Tony Tallarico, Jerry Grandenetti, Bill Fraccio, Dick Piscopo, William Barry, Jack Sparling, Ed Robbins, David St. Clair, Jeff Jones, Dan Adkins, Frank Bolle, Frank Frazetta, Vaughn Bodé, Ken Kelly Bill Hughes, Larry Todd & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-175-5 (HB/Digital edition) 978-1524126506 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

After years of stifling restriction, the American comic book industry finally started to break out of a self-imposed straitjacket in the mid-1960s. Kids of the Counterculture had begun creating and disseminating material relevant to their lives in self-produced “Underground Commix” whilst other publishers sought other ways around the draconian Comics Code applied to comic books.

The most elegant solution was the one chosen by Jim Warren, who had originally established himself with black & white B-Movie fan periodical Famous Monsters of Filmland and satire magazine Help! In 1965 he took his deep admiration of the legendary 1950s EC Comics to its logical conclusion: reviving the concept of anthology horror short stories and pitching them at older fans of the new generation. Of course that actually meant all us kids under 10…

Creepy was stuffed with clever, sardonic, tongue-in-cheek strip chillers illustrated by the top artists in the field (many of them ex-EC stars). Warren circumvented the US’s all-powerful Comics Code Authority – which had ended EC’s glory days and eventually their entire comics line – by publishing his new venture as a newsstand magazine. It was a truly no-lose proposition. Older readers didn’t care to be associated with “kid’s stuff” comic books whilst magazines had tempting cachet (i.e. mild nudity and a little more explicit violence) for readers of a transitional age; moreover the standard monochrome format was a quarter of the costs of colour periodicals.

Creepy was a huge and influential hit, especially among the increasingly rebellious, Rock ‘n’ Roll-crazed teen market, frequently cited as a source of inspiration for the nascent commix underground and furiously feeding on growing renewed public interest in the supernatural. In true Darwinian “Grow or Die” mode, Warren looked around for new projects, following up with companion shocker Eerie and the controversial war title Blazing Combat.

As the decade closed he launched a third horror anthology, but Vampirella was a little bit different. Although it featured the now traditional “host” to introduce and comment on the stories, this narrator was a sexy starlet who occasionally participated in stories. Before too long she actually became the hero and crowd-pulling star of her own regular feature, but that’s material for a later volume…

The other big change was that here female characters played a far more active role. They were still ornamental, prizes, victims and targets but increasingly, whether name stars or bit players, they were as likely to be the big menace or save the day. Whatever their role, though, they were still pretty much naked throughout. Some traditions must be protected at all costs.

Another beguiling Warren staple was the eye-catching painted cover fronting every issue. Here, as crafted by Frank Frazetta, Bill Hughes, Larry Todd & Vaughn Bodé, Jeff Jones & Bodé and Ken Kelly, they are the only full colour pages in an otherwise magnificently monochrome/duo-toned tome. However to be fair I must say that the reproduction on some black-&-white pages leaves much to be desired…

This massive magazine-size (216 x 32 x 279 mm if you opt for physical editions) collection gathers in their entirety the contents of the first seven issues (spanning September 1969 to September 1970). This was a crucial transitional period which saw superheroes dying out at every publishing company; replaced by a genre revival and spearheaded by a tidal wave of horror titles after the Comics Code was frantically rewritten to combat plunging sales.

This volume begins with Vampirella #1, that aforementioned painted cover and a black-&-red Frazetta frontispiece – probably scripted by Editor Bill Parente – setting the blackly humorous tone for a fearsome fangtastic fun fest. The original contents page follows – as do they all in their appropriate place. The compendium also includes every letters page and fan feature – and even nostalgia-triggering ads of the era. If you’re a modern monster fan or kit collector you’ll probably simultaneously weep and drool at the sight of these lost treasures.

The strip sensationalism begins with ‘Vampirella of Drakulon’ by Forrest J. Ackerman & Tom Sutton; introducing a planet where the rivers ran with blood and life evolved to drink it.

However, following a withering drought, Drakulon is dying. Happily for the sultry starving vampire, a ship from Earth arrives, full of people with food in their veins and a ship that can take her to where there’s plenty more.

Vampi’s role from the outset was to be another story host and for the rest of this collection that’s what she mostly is. Her role as an active adventurer didn’t properly begin for quite a while. So, here the chills continue with ‘Death Boat!’ by Don Glut & Billy Graham with the survivors of a shipwreck being picked off one by one by a bloodsucker in their midst. They perish one per night but when the mortals number just two both are still wrong about who the killer is…

Glut & master draughtsman Reed Crandall conspired on ‘Two Silver Bullets!’ as a trapper fights to save his daughter from a werewolf after which ‘Goddess from the Sea’ by Glut and Neal Adams offers a splendid treat for art-lovers: the story of a man seduced by a sea-siren was shot directly from the illustrator’s incredible pencil art. Glut & Mike Royer offer a timely Halloween warning in ‘Last Act: October!’ whilst ‘Spaced-Out Girls!’ (Glut & Tony Tallarico) sees a saucer full of saucy extraterrestrial honeys come shopping for husbands before the premier package closes with Nicola Cuti & Ernie Colon’s mindbending magical murder mystery ‘A Room Full of Changes’.

The spooky story-bonanza resumes in issue #2, opening with coming attraction featurette ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ – courtesy of Sutton – after which Vampi’s putative cousin ‘Evily’ is introduced by Bill Parente & veteran horror-meister Jerry Grandenetti. Here Drakulonian émigré and Earthly sorceress climactically clash over star-billing and bragging rights…

‘Montezuma’s Monster’ is scripted by R. Michael Rosen (incorrectly credited to Glut) and illustrated by Bill Fraccio & Tallarico in their composite identity of Tony Williamsune, detailing the fate of a treasure-hungry explorer who doesn’t believe in feathered serpents whilst ‘Down to Earth!’ by Ackerman & Royer leaves the hosting to Vampirella’s blonde counterpart Draculine as our star auditions for a film role…

That theme continues in ‘Queen of Horror!’ (Glut & Dick Piscopo) wherein a B-Movie starlet uses unique and uncanny advantages to get everything she deserves whilst Cuti & William Barry reveal the tragedy of two brothers who discover a new predatory species of inland cephalopod in ‘The Octopus’. Cuti & Colon’s ‘One, Two, Three’ then explores the power of love in a world of robots and Glut & Graham render a ‘Rhapsody in Red!’ with weary travellers fetching up at a lonely house to deliver a big surprise to the resident vampire…

The third issue augmented ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ with correspondence section ‘Vampi’s Scarlet Letters’ before ‘Wicked is Who Wicked Does’ features the return of Evily in a short shocking battle against ogres by Parente & Sutton. Al Hewetson & Jack Sparling count ‘4- 3- 2- 1- Blast Off! To a Nightmare!’ in the tale of a spaceship full of 24-hour party people who end up as hors d’oeuvres for something very nasty even as ‘Eleven Steps to Lucy Fuhr’ (by Terri Abrahms [story]; Nick Beal [adaptation] and art by Ed Robbins) sees many men drawn to a bizarre bordello and a sinister fate… until the unlikeliest of saviours takes a hand.

‘I Wake Up… Screaming!’ is an all Billy Graham affair as a frightened girl is made aware of her true nature in a sci fi chiller whilst Cuti & Piscopo mine mythology to deliver a salutary tale of fairy tale oppression and bloody liberation in ‘The Calegia!’ A cunning vampire meets his lethal match in Graham’s ‘Didn’t I See You on Television?’ after which Rosen & Sparling close the issue detailing the downfall of a vicious spoiled brat caught in ‘A Slimy Situation!’

Vampirella #4 opens on Sutton revealing past episodes of witch killing in ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales: Burned at the Stake!’ prior to Parente & David St. Clair reaching psychedelic heights in a tale of alien amazons and their deadly ‘Forgotten Kingdom’ whilst Cuti & Royer combine murder and time travel in ‘Closer than Sisters’. A city-slicker falls for a hillbilly hottie and gets sucked into a transformative shocker after trying ‘Moonshine!’ (Glut & Barry), Bill Warren & Sparling reveal the fate of a beautiful and obsessive scientist who bends the laws of God and Man ‘For the Love of Frankenstein’ and a most modern black widow asks a controlling stalker to ‘Come Into My Parlor!’ in a wry yarn by Rosen & Piscopo. Richard Carnell (story); Jack Erman (adaptation) & Sparling then close the show with a weird and nasty tale of a nobleman auditioning women for marriage in ‘Run for Your Wife!’

The fifth issue begins with the usual ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ as Sutton exposes ‘The Satanic Sisterhood of Stonehenge!’ before Glut, Fraccio & Tallarico see a greedily impatient heir speed his benefactress to her ultimate end, unheeding of her beloved pets and ‘The Craft of a Cat’s Eye’. Cavemen battle dinosaurs in an arena of ‘Scaly Death’ – a visceral treat from Glut & Graham – whilst the astounding Jeff Jones lends fine art sensibilities to the murderous saga of a girl, a guy and ‘An Axe to Grind’, after which Parente & Sutton detail the crimes of a sadistic Duke whose fate is sealed by an aggrieved astrologer and astrally ‘Avenged by Aurora’…

Glut, Fraccio & Tallarico see graves robbed and corpses consumed in neat bait-&-switch thriller ‘Ghoul Girl’ whilst T. Casey Brennan & Royer reveal the solution of a bereaved husband who finds an ‘Escape Route!’ back to his dead beloved, before Glut & Sparling end it all again via an implausible invasion from the moon in ‘Luna’.

In Vampirella #6, Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ features Dan Adkins’ graphic chat on centaurs as prelude to romantic tragedy the ‘Curse of Circe!’ as Gardner Fox & Grandenetti combine to relate how a strange sea creature offers the witch’s latest conquest his only certain method of escape. Cuti & Sparling then share a story of civil war in the land of ghosts and how love toppled ‘The Brothers of Death’ whilst ‘Darkworth!’ by Cuti & Royer shows how a stripper graduates to murdered assistant of a stage magician and pulls off her own amazing trick in the name of vengeance, after which Fox & Adkins explore the lives of the recently dead with ‘New Girl in Town!’ and Vern Burnett & Frank Bolle return to gothic roots to depict embattled humans outwitting nocturnal predators by volunteering a ‘Victim of the Vampyre!’

Larry Herndon, Fraccio & Tallarico (as Tony Williamsune) get creepily contemporary as a doctor tries to fix an overdosed patient and sends him way, way out on a ‘One Way Trip!’ before Buddy Saunders & Bolle combine adultery and attempted murder in ‘The Wolf-Man’: a wickedly scientific shocker about a very different kind of feral killer…

Vampirella #7 saw Archie Goodwin join as Associate Editor and perhaps his influence can be seen as the issue experiments with a connected theme and extended tale scripted by Nicola Cuti. Graham & Frazetta start the ball rolling by explaining ‘Why a Witch Trilogy’ and Vampirella introduces ‘Prologue: The Three Witches’ before Sutton to segues into the sad story of ‘The White Witch’ who could never feel the sunlight. Ernie Colon picks up the experimental progression as ‘The Mind Witch’ trades magic for science to expose the fate of a psychic predator, after which Graham closes the deal with ‘The Black Witch’ who thought she could conquer love but failed to realise its appalling power…

After Cuti & Sutton’s palate-cleansing ‘Epilogue: The Three Witches’, Doug Moench graduates from letter writer in #3 to scripter as ‘Plague of the Wolf’ – illustrated by Bolle – tracks a bloody serial killer’s progress under the full moon and ‘Terror Test’ offers shocking psychological thrills by Rosen & “Williamsune” with more than one sting in the tail.

In ‘The Survivor’, Saunders & Colon unite to explore a post-apocalyptic world where dedicated archaeologists still struggle to escape their bestial natures and this mammoth first compilation concludes with Rosen & Grandenetti viewing ‘The Collection Creation’ with an artist who finds the wrong kind of immortality…

Stark, surprisingly shocking and packed with clever ideas beautifully rendered, this epic tome (narrowly) escapes and transcends its admittedly exploitative roots to deliver loads of laughs and lots of shocks: a tried and true terror treat for fans of spooky doings and guiltily glamorous games.
© 2012 DFL. All rights reserved.