NowReadThis

June 5, 2018June 4, 2018

Superman Adventures volume 1

By Paul Dini, Scott McCloud, Rick Burchett, Bret Blevins, Mike Manley & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-5867-2

A decade after John Byrne galvanised, reinvigorated and reinvented the look and feel of the Man of Steel animator Bruce Timm returned to comicbook country to meld modern sensibility and classic mythology with Superman: The Animated Series.

With Paul Dini he had designed and overseen Batman: The Animated Series: a 1993 TV show that captivated young and old alike and breathed vibrant new life into an old concept. In 1996 lightning struck a second time. The show was another masterpiece and led to a tranche of sequels and spin-off including The New Batman/Superman Adventures, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

Although the Superman cartoon show (which originally aired in the USA from September 6^th 1996 to February 12^th 2000) never got the airplay it deserved in Britain, it remains a highpoint in the character’s long, long animation history, second only to the astounding and groundbreaking seventeen shorts produced by the Max Fleischer Studio in the 1940s.

These stylish modern visualisations became the norm, extending to the Teen Titans, Legion of Super Heroes, Young Justice and Brave and the Bold animation series that so successfully followed.

The broad stylisation – described as â€œOcean Liner Art Decoâ€ – also worked magnificently in static two dimensions for the spin-off comicbook produced by DC as seen in this first of four (so far) trade paperback and eBook compilations, gathering Superman Adventures #1-10 from November 1996 through August 1997.

With no further ado the all-ages action opens with ‘Men of Steel’ by show writer Paul Dini and illustrated with dash and verve by Rick Burchett & Terry Austin. Because they know their audience, the editors wisely treated the animated episodes and comicbook releases as equally canonical and here shady mega-billionaire Lex Luthor is a public hero even whilst clandestinely organising clandestine criminal deals, international coups and a secret war against the Man of Tomorrow.

The devil’s brew of dark deeds culminates here in the oligarch’s creation of a new secret weapon: a hyper-powerful robot-duplicate of Superman, which he uses to initially discredit and ultimately battle against the Caped Kryptonian. If it manages to kill him, Lex will mass-produce them and sell them to warlords around the worldâ€¦

Comics grand master Scott McCloud comes aboard as regular scripter with the second issue as ‘Be Careful What You Wish Forâ€¦’ sees the return of Kryptonite-powered cyborg Metallo. The mechanical maniac – like the rest of Metropolis – erroneously believes lonely, attention-seeking Kelly to be Superman’s girlfriend, but his sadistic revenge scheme hasn’t factored in how Lois Lane might react to the claimâ€¦

Computerised Kryptonian relic Brainiac resurfaces in ‘Distant Thunder’, having placed its malign consciousness into Earth artefacts (such as robot cats!) before building a new body to facilitate a new attack on the Metropolis Marvel. As ever, Brainiac’s end goal is assimilating data, but Superman quickly realises how to turn that programmed compulsion into a weapon ensuring the computer tyrant’s defeatâ€¦

Apprentice photo-journalist Jimmy Olsen‘s dreams of success and stardom get a big boost in issue #4’s ‘Eye to Eye’. After Luthor orchestrates a deadly attack on Superman with an enhanced gravity-weapon, the cub reporter learns it’s as much about grit and guts as it is being in the right place at the right timeâ€¦

Bret Blevins pencils fifth exploit ‘Balance of Power’ as electrical villain Livewire awakes from a coma and sets about equalizing gender inequality by taking over the world’s broadcast airwaves. With all male presences edited out thanks to her galvanic power, the sparky ideologue then returns to her original agenda and attempts to eradicate too-powerful men like Superman and Luthor

McCloud, Burchett & Austin reunite for the astoundingly gripping ‘Seonimod’ wherein Superman utterly fails to save Metropolis from complete annihilation. All is not lost however, as Fifth Dimensional imp Mr. Mxyzptlk has trapped the Man of Steel in a backwards-spiralling time-loop, allowing the hero one last chance to track a concatenation of disasters back to the inconsequential event that triggered the string of accidents which wiped out everything the hero cherishesâ€¦

‘All Creatures Great and Small part 1’ opens a titanic two-part tale which sees Kryptonian Phantom Zone villains General Zod and Mala escape the miniaturised prison Superman had incarcerated them in. In the process they also shrink our hero to a few centimetres in height, but the endgame is far more devilish that that.

When scientific savant Professor Hamilton and top cop Dan â€œTerribleâ€ Turpin join Lois in using a growth ray to restore Superman, Zod intercepts them and transforms himself into a towering colossus of chaos and carnage. Utterly overmatched and without options, the miniscule Man of Tomorrow is forced into the most disgusting and risky manoeuvre of his career to bring the gigantic General low in the concluding ‘All Creatures Great and Small part 2’â€¦

Mike Manley pencils Superman Adventures #9 as ‘Return of the Hero’ focuses on an idealistic boy whose two heroes are Superman and Lex Luthor. However, as a series of arson attacks plagues his neighbourhood, Francisco Torres learns some unpleasant truths about the billionaire that shatter his worldview and almost destroy his family. Happily, the Caped Kryptonian proves to be a far more dependable role modelâ€¦

Wrapping up this first cartoon collection is a classic clash between indomitable hero and deadly maniac as twisted techno-terrorist Toyman returns, peddling Superman action figures designed to plunder and rob their owners’ parents. ‘Don’t Try This at Home!’ by McCloud, Burchett & Austin once again proves that no amount of devious deviltry can long deter the champion of Truth, Justice and the American Wayâ€¦

Breathtakingly written and spectacularly illustrated, these stripped-down, hyper-charged rollercoaster-romps are pure, irresistible examples of the most primal kind of comics storytelling, capturing the idealised essence of what every superman story should be. This is a compendium every fan of any age and vintage will adore.
Â© 1996, 1997, 2015 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

June 4, 2018June 3, 2018

Superman: The Many Worlds of Krypton

By E. Nelson Bridwell, Denny O’Neil, Cary Bates, Marv Wolfman, Elliot S. Maggin, Paul Kupperberg, John Byrne, Murphy Anderson, Dick Giordano, Gray Morrow, Michael Kaluta, Dave Cockrum, Dick Dillin, Marshall Rogers, Howard Chaykin, Paul Kupperberg, Mike Mignola, Rick Bryant, Carlos Garzon & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7889-2

For fans and comics creators alike, continuity can be a harsh mistress. These days, when maintaining a faux-historical cloak of rational integrity for the made-up worlds we inhabit is paramount, the worst casualty of the semi-regular sweeping changes, rationalisations and reboots is great stories that suddenly â€œnever happenedâ€.

The most painful example of this – for me at least – was the wholesale loss of the entire charm-drenched mythology that had evolved around Superman’s birthworld in the wonder years between 1948 and 1985.

Silver Age readers avidly consuming Superman, Action Comics, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, World’s Finest Comics and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen (not forgetting Superboy and Adventure Comics) would delight every time some fascinating snippet of information leaked out.

We spent our rainy days filling in the incredible blanks about the lost world through the tantalising and thrilling tales from those halcyon publications. The Fabulous World of Krypton was a long-running back-up feature in Superman during the 1970s, revealing intriguing glimpses from the history of that lost world.

Throughout the decade and into the 1980s – and an issue of giant-sized anthology Superman Family – the feature delivered 27 â€œUntold Tales of Superman’s Native Planetâ€ (and long overdue for a complete archival collection) by a host of the industry’s greatest talents which further explored that defunct wonderland.

A far-too-small selection of those are re-presented in this beguiling trade paperback and eBook commemoration, taken from Superman #233, 236, 238, 240, 248, 257, 266 and Superman Family #182, to augment a brace of miniseries World of Krypton #1-3 and World of Krypton volume 2 #1-4 (December 1987-March 1988).

These collectively span 1971-1988 and, following scene-setting introduction ‘The World (of Krypton) According to Paul (Kupperberg)’, kick off Chapter 1: Fabulous World of Krypton with E. Nelson Bridwell (who was always the go-to guy for any detail of fact or trivia concerning the company’s vast comics output) & Murphy Anderson’s trendsetting and groundbreaking yarn ‘Jor-El’s Golden Folly’.

Follow-up tales would alternate between glimpses of historical or mythological moments in the development of the Kryptonians and tales of the House of El, such as this astoundingly concise and drama-packed yarn which in seven pages introduces Superman’s father, traces his scholastic graduation and early triumphs in anti-gravity physics and rocketry and reveals how he met his bride-to-be, trainee astronaut Lara Lor-Van.

The story goes on to reveal how she stows away on a test rocket, crashes on the (luckily) habitable moon Wegthor and survives until her infatuated suitor finds a way to rescue her.

This a superb adventure yarn in its own right and, set against what we fans already knew about the doomed planet, augured well what was to followâ€¦

The remaining tales in this section concentrate on non-Jor-El episodes – presumably in lieu of what follows – so the next fable comes from Superman #236 with Green Arrow and Black Canary hearing their Justice League recount the story of ‘The Doomsayer’ (by Denny O’Neil & Dick Giordano). This eco-terror tale reveals how scientist Mo-De detected the mounting tectonic pressures at the planet’s core but was silenced by modern day lotus eaters who didn’t want to hear any unpleasant truthsâ€¦

In the guise of a Kryptonian kindergarten class story-time, Cary Bates & Gray Morrow devised a hard science creation myth for Superman #238 as ‘A Name is Born’ details how two marooned – and initially mutually antagonistic – aliens crashed on the primeval planet and joined to birth a new race togetherâ€¦

Bates & Michael Kaluta teamed in #240 for a cunning, irony-drenched murder mystery as ‘The Man Who Cheated Time’ details the unexpected consequences of an ambitious scientist who stole from and slaughtered his rivals only to pay for his crimes in a most unexpected manner.

Kryptonian archaeologists unearth a lost moment in planetary history as ‘All in the Mind’ (by Marv Wolfman & Dave Cockrum from #248) discloses how the ancient war between the city states of Erkol and Xan resulted in a generation of mutants. Apparently, if the parents had been more understanding and less intolerant, those super-kids might have saved their forebears from extinctionâ€¦

Superman #257 (October 1972) offered a timeless instant classic wherein Elliot S. Maggin and illustrators Dick Dillin & Giordano celebrated ‘The Greatest Green Lantern of All’. Here avian GL Tomar-Re reports his tragic failure in preventing Krypton’s detonation, unaware that the Guardians of the Universe had a plan to preserve and use that world’s greatest bloodline – or at least its last sonâ€¦

Maggin, Dick Dillin & Joe Giella then emphasised a long-hidden connection between Earth and Krypton in #266 as ‘The Face on the Falling Star’ reveals how in eons past two Kryptonian children are saved from doom by a strange device fallen from the sky: a machine sent from a lost civilisation on pre-historic Terraâ€¦

Wrapping up this section is ‘The Stranger’ by Paul Kupperberg, Marshall Rogers & Frank Springer and first seen in Superman Family #182: an analogue Christmas fable explaining how four millennia past a holy man named Jo-Mon sacrificed his life to liberate the people and end the depredations of the tyrannical Al-Neiâ€¦

The second section here is Chapter 2: The Life of Jor-El and reprints a pioneering miniseries that referenced many of those 27 vignettes as well as the key Krypton-focussed yarns of the Superman franchise.

In 1979 – when the Superman movie had made the hero a global sensation once more – scripter Paul Kupperberg and artist Howard Chaykin (assisted and ghost-pencilled by Alan Kupperberg) and inkers Murphy Anderson & Frank Chiaramonte synthesised the scattered back-story details into DC’s first limited series World of Krypton.

Although never collected into a graphic novel, this glorious indulgence was resized into a monochrome pocket paperback book in 1982, supervised by and with an introduction from the much-missed, multi-talented official DC memory E. Nelson Bridwell. That magical celebration of life on the best of all fictional worlds is a grand old slice of comics fun and forms the spine of this new composite compilation.

The story opens on ‘The Jor-El Story’ with Superman reviewing a tape-diary found on Earth’s moon: a record from his long-deceased father which details the scientist’s life, career and struggle with the nay-saying political authorities whose inaction doomed the Kryptonian race to near-extinction.

As the Man of Steel listens, he hears how Jor-El wooed and won his mother Lara Lor-Van despite all the sinister and aberrant efforts of the planetary marriage computer to frustrate them, how his sire discovered anti-gravity and invented the Phantom Zone ray, uncovered the lost technology of a dead race which provided the clues to Kal-El’s escape rocket, and learns his father’s take on Superman’s many time-twisting trips to Kryptonâ€¦

In ‘This Planet is Doomed’ the troubled orphan feels his father’s pain when android marauder Brainiac steals the city of Kandor, reels as rogue scientist Jax-Ur blows up the inhabited moon of Wegthor, and is revolted as civil war almost crushes civilisation thanks to the deranged militarist General Zod and when his own cousin Kru-El forever disgraces the noble House of Elâ€¦

The countdown to disaster continues until ‘The Last Days of Krypton’ as political intrigue and exhaustion overwhelm the distraught scientist and, all avenues closed to him, Jor-El takes drastic actionâ€¦

Heavily referencing immortal classics such as ‘Superman’s Return to Krypton’ (Superman volume 1 #141, November 1960), Fabulous World of Krypton mini-epics ‘Jor-El’s Golden Folly’, ‘Moon-Crossed Love’, ‘Marriage, Kryptonian Style’ and a host of others, this epochal saga from simpler and more wondrous times is a sheer delight for any fan tired of unremitting angst and non-stop crisesâ€¦

The final section – Chapter 3: The World of Krypton – is a dark reworking by John Byrne, Mike Mignola, Rick Bryant & Carlos Garzon depicting a radically different planet.

In 1985 when DC Comics decided to rationalise, reconstruct and reinvigorate their continuity with Crisis on Infinite Earths, they used the event to simultaneously regenerate their key properties at the same time. The biggest gun they had was Superman and it’s hard to argue that the change was not before time.

The big guy was in a bit of a slump, but he’d weathered those before. So how could a root and branch retooling be anything but a pathetic marketing ploy that would alienate the real fans for a few fly-by-night Johnny-come-latelies who would jump ship as soon as the next fad surfaced?

This new Superman repurposed the hero into a harsher, more uncompromising hero who might be alien in physicality but completely human in terms of feelings and attitudes. As seen in Man of Steel #1 (not included here), ‘From Out of the Green Dawn’ traced the child’s voyage in a self-propelled birthing matrix to a primitive but vital and vibrant world.

He had escaped from a cold, sterile, soulless and emotionally barren planet barely glimpsed before it was gone in a cosmic flashâ€¦

As the hero’s new adventures became a sensational success, his creators felt compelled to revisit the hero’s bleakly dystopian birthworld. It was however, now conceived of as a far darker and more forbidding place and 1987’s 4-issue miniseries opted to reveal how that transformation came about.

Scripted by Byrne, it all begins in ‘Pieces’ (art by Mignola & Rick Bryant) as an indolent hedonistic scientific paradise comes crashing into ruin after the age’s greatest moral dilemma boils over into global civil war.

For 10 thousand generations Kryptonians have enjoyed virtual immortality thanks to the constant cultivation of clones to use for medical spare parts. The rights of the clones had been debated for centuries but has recently resulted in sporadic violence. The situation changes after ultra-privileged Nyra is exposed as having stolen one of her supposedly brain-dead clones for an act of social abomination. Exposure leads to murder, suicide and a rapidly escalating collapse of social cohesionâ€¦

Centuries ‘After the Fall’, Van-L wanders a planet shattered by devastating war technologies, surviving only because of the nurturing war suit. The grand planetary society is gone, replaced by constantly warring pockets of humanity, but Van is in need of allies, even if they were once lovers or despised foes. He has learned that the original instigator of the collapse still lives and plans to assuage his shame and guilt by blowing up the planetâ€¦

For the third issue the scene shifts to millennia later as young scholar Jor-El immerses himself in a traumatic ‘History Lesson’.

The distant descendant of Van-L obsessively probes the last days of the conflict and the nuclear annihilation scheme of terrorist cell Black Zero, but his compulsion causes him to almost miss a crucial social obligation: meeting his father and the grandparent of Lara, selected by The Masters of the Gestation Chamber as his ideal DNA co-contributor to the first Kryptonian allowed to be born in centuriesâ€¦

Carlos Garzon steps in to finish Mignola’s pencils for concluding chapter ‘Family History’ as, in contemporary times, Superman agrees to an interview with Daily Plant reporter Lois Lane. The subject is how Krypton died, and whyâ€¦

Precising the intervening millennia of history and stagnation, the Last Son of Krypton reveals how his own birth-father uncovered a shocking secret, rebelled against his moribund, repressed culture and found brief comfort with perhaps the last kindred spirit on his world. Kal-El then tells of how they ensured his survival at the cost of their ownâ€¦

Celebrating the many and varied Worlds of Krypton, this is a magnificent tribute to the imagination of man creators and the power of a modern mythology: the ever-changing evolution of a world we all wanted to live on back in the heady days of yoreâ€¦
Â© 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1987, 2008, 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

June 3, 2018June 2, 2018

Superman: The Atomic Age Sundays volume 1: 1949-1953

By Alvin Schwartz, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye (IDW/DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-262-3

It’s indisputable that the American comicbook industry – if it existed at all – would have been an utterly unrecognisable thing without Superman. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s bold and unprecedented invention was fervidly adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation and quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form.

He was also shamelessly copied and adapted by many inspired writers and artists for numerous publishers, spawning an incomprehensible army of imitators and variations within three years of his summer 1938 debut.

The intoxicating blend of breakneck, breathtaking action and triumphal wish-fulfilment which epitomised the early Man of Steel soon grew to encompass cops-and-robbers crime-busting, socially reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East also engulfed America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

In comicbook terms Superman was master of the world. Moreover, whilst transforming and dictating the shape of the fledgling funnybook industry, the Man of Tomorrow relentlessly expanded into all areas of the entertainment media.

Although we all think of the Cleveland boys’ iconic invention as the epitome and acme of comicbook creation, the truth is that very soon after his debut in Action Comics #1 the Man of Steel became a fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse.

Diehard comics fans regard our purest and most powerful icons in primarily graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Avengers and all their hyperkinetic kind long ago outgrew their four-colour origins and are now fully mythologized modern media creatures, instantly familiar in mass markets across all platforms and age rangesâ€¦

Far more people have viewed or heard the Man of Steel than have ever read his comicbooks. His globally syndicated newspaper strips alone reached untold millions, and by the time his 20^th anniversary rolled around at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics, he had been a thrice-weekly radio serial regular and starred in a series of astounding animated cartoons, as well as two films and a novel by George Lowther.

Superman was a perennial sure-fire success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and had just ended his first smash live-action television serial. In his future were three more shows (Superboy, Lois & Clark and Smallville), a stage musical, a franchise of blockbuster movies and an almost seamless succession of games, bubblegum cards and TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even his superdog Krypto got in on the small-screen actâ€¦

However, during his formative years the small screen was simply an expensive novelty so the Action Ace achieved true mass market fame through a different medium: one not that far removed from his print origins.

Although pretty much a spent force these days, for the majority of the last century the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail that all American cartoonists and graphic narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country – and frequently the planet – it was seen by millions, if not billions, of readers and generally accepted as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books. It also paid far better.

And rightly so: some of the most enduring and entertaining characters and concepts of all time were created to lure readers from one particular paper to another and many of them grew to be part of a global culture.

Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, Charlie Brown and so many more escaped humble and tawdry newsprint origins to become meta-real: existing in the minds of earthlings from Albuquerque to Zanzibar.

Some still doâ€¦

Even so, it was always something of a risky double-edged sword when a comicbook character became so popular that it swam against the tide (after all weren’t the funny-books invented just to reprint strips in cheap accessible form?) to became actual mass-entertainment – and often global – syndicated serial strips.

Superman was the first original comicbook character to make that leap – about six months after as he exploded out of Action Comics – but only a few have ever successfully followed. Wonder Woman, Batman (eventually) and groundbreaking teen icon Archie Andrews made the jump in the 1940s with only a handful such as Spider-Man, Howard the Duck and Conan the Barbarian having done so since.

The daily Superman newspaper comic strip launched on 16^th January 1939, supplemented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5^th of that year. Originally crafted by such luminaries as Siegel & Shuster and their studio (Paul Cassidy, Leo Nowak, Dennis Neville, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul J. Lauretta & Wayne Boring), the mammoth task soon required the additional talents of Jack Burnley and writers Whitney Ellsworth, Jack Schiff & Alvin Schwartz.

The McClure Syndicate feature ran continuously from 1939 until May 1966, appearing at its peak in more than 300 daily and 90 Sunday newspapers; boasting a combined readership of more than 20 million. For most of the post war years Boring & Stan Kaye illustrated the spectacular Sundays (eventually supplemented by artists Win Mortimer and Curt Swan). The majority of the strips – from 1944 to 1958 – were written by still largely unsung scribe Alvin Schwartz.

Born in 1916, Schwartz was an early maestro of comicbooks, writing for Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel and many other titles and companies. Whilst handling the Superman strip he also freelanced on Wonder Woman and other superheroes as well as genre titles such as Tomahawk, Buzzy, A Date with Judy and House of Mystery.

After numerous clashes with new superman Editor Mort Weisinger, Schwartz quit comics for commercial writing, selling novels and essays, and latterly, documentaries and docudramas for the National Film Board of Canada. He also worked miracles in advertising and market research, developing selling techniques such as psychographics and typological identification and was a member of the advisory committee to the American Association of Advertising Agencies. He died in 2011.

After too many years wallowing in obscurity most of Superman’s newspaper strip exploits are at last available to aficionados and the curious newcomer in tomes such as this compiled under the auspices of the Library of American Comics.

Showcasing Schwartz and artist Wayne Boring in their purest prime, these Sundays (numbered as pages #521 to #698 and collectively spanning October 23^rd 1949 to March 15^th 1953) feature a nigh-omnipotent Man of Steel in domestically-framed and curated tales of emotional dilemmas and pedestrian criminality rather than a parade of muscle-flexing bombast, with humour, wit and satire comfortably replacing non-stop angst and bludgeoning action.

Following an affable appreciation of the creators and the times in ‘An Introduction’ by Mark Waid, ‘A Wayne Boring Gallery’ provides a tantalising selection of Superman and Action Comics covers from the period before the weekly wonderment commences in all its vibrant glory.

Sadly, the serials are untitled, so you’ll just have to manage with my meagre synopses of the individual yarnsâ€¦

Kicking things off is a charming fantasy as the Metropolis Marvel is temporarily stranded in Arthurian Britain after a US government time travel experiment goes awry. Whilst living in the past he befriends and helps out court magician Merlin: an old duffer whose conjuring tricks aren’t fooling anyone anymoreâ€¦

The first new story of 1950 begins on February 12^th and details how swindler Joseph Porter cons the Man of Steel into taking his place and clearing up his problems with the cops and the numerous gulled victims. This includes a hilarious spoofing sequence as Superman plays un-matchmaker to a scandalously-affianced hillbilly ingenue that will delight fans of Li’l Abnerâ€¦

The extended tale opening on May 28^th offers another timeless human-interest drama given a super-powered spin as two aging robber barons recall their regulation-free heydays before embarking on a ruthless wager to see who will get â€œanything they wish forâ€ first.

The only limitations imposed are their imaginations and financial resources and before long Superman is hard-pressed to keep collateral casualties to a minimumâ€¦

One of the few antagonists to transfer from the funnybooks to the Funnies pages was fifth dimensional prankster Mr. Mxyztplk who popped back to our third dimension and took instant umbrage to an arrogant Earth educator. Dr. Flipendale had the temerity to declare the imp a mass delusion and refused to believe or even acknowledge the escalating chaos his pronouncements triggeredâ€¦

Strip #573 (October 22^nd) offers a different take on the classic secret identity crisis when Clark is exposed as an invulnerable man to all of Metropolis. Although gangsters are convinced, Lois Lane is not, claiming the underworld is perpetrating a frame-upâ€¦

That yarn takes us to the end of the year and 1951 opens on January 7^th with a tale of suspicion and injustice as Clark heads back to childhood hometown Smallville to celebrate Superboy Week and encounters a young man nursing an ancient grudge.

When a poison pen and rumour campaign looks set to spoil the festivities, the hero’s investigations uncover a betrayed child, a framed, murdered father and nefarious clandestine misdeeds carried out by corporate rogues in the Boy of Steel’s nameâ€¦

Another identity crisis bedevils Clark beginning on April 1^st 1951. Here a killer’s case of mistaken identity seemingly exposes the reporter as super-strong and bulletproof. Surely, he must be the indomitable Man of Steel in disguise?

Not according to Professor Pinberry who believes the hapless scribe has been accidentally exposed to his new superpower ray machine, Clark is happy to grasp at the fortuitous alibi but trouble mounts after the public demands to see the machine in action again and the city’s biggest mobster goes after the gadget to make himself Superman’s equalâ€¦

Strip #609 starts the next quirky exploit on July 1^st as old duffer Salem Cooley comes to Metropolis and enjoys the most miraculous winning streak in history. Even Superman’s astounding powers can’t keep up with the string of happy circumstances, fortuitously profitable accidents and close shaves. Everybody wants to be the old coot’s pal, so who then is behind the constant assassination attempts on superstitious Salem and what reward could possibly tempt anyone to challenge the luckiest man alive?

A new serial opens on September 9^th as Superman agrees to write Daily Planet articles about some of his previous exploits to benefit crime prevention charities. However, when the capers he cites are restaged by mysterious malefactors the city soon turns against the Man of Tomorrow and it takes all his super-wits to uncover the mastermind behind it all and stop one of the boldest crimes in the city’s historyâ€¦

To lure a crime boss out, Superman agrees to be absent from Metropolis for a few weeks in the next adventure (running from November 18^th 1951 to January 13^th 1952). However, when a poverty-struck boy succumbs to disease and depression, the Man of Might decides to return and act undercover, inspiring the kid’s recovery by granting wishes made on a â€œmagic wandâ€.

That task becomes increasingly difficult after crooks get hold of the stick and the invisible hero has to play along to sustain little Teddy’s recuperationâ€¦

From January 20^th Superman plays guardian angel to former wastrel and drunken playboy Reggie de Peyster who swears he’s a reformed character. Nobody but Superman realises the trust fund brat is sincere and all the appalling and shameful scandals he’s currently implicated in are being manufactured to cut the heir out of a vast inheritanceâ€¦

Lois Lane takes centre stage in the tale opening on April 6^th as, after months of being sidelined, the daring reporter quits her job to find a career offering some real excitement. She’s soon the assistant to private detective Mike Crain, catching crooks and bodyguarding glamourous stars, but the work seems dull and pedestrian. Of course, Lois is utterly oblivious to the fact that Superman is secretly intervening in his patriarchal efforts to get her back where she belongs. Ah, different times, eh?

When maverick Hollywood producer/director Hans Bower arrives in Metropolis, (June 29^th he promptly declares Clark Kent to be his latest mega-sensational super-star. A force of nature unable to take â€œnoâ€ for an answer, he soon has the bewildered reporter helming his next box office blockbuster but as shooting progresses Superman uncovers a covert agenda and shocking secret behind the mogul’s extraordinary actions.

Uncanny crime is the order of the day from September 21^st when bizarre illusions plague Metropolis and scientist Dr. Wagonrod accuses Superman of perpetrating hoaxes and staging crises due to an undiagnosed split personality. The truth is far more devious than that, thoughâ€¦

Concluding this first Atomic Age collection, from November 30^th 1952 to March 15^th 1953, readers were avidly watching the skies as an alien capsule fell to Earth and disgorged a succession of alien bio-weapons to test humanity. The Man of Steel was hard-pressed to defeat the army of bizarre beasts but did have one immeasurable advantage: the sage advice and input of life-long science fiction fan Sedgwick Rippleâ€¦

The Atomic Age Superman: â€“ Sunday Pages 1949-1953! is the first of three huge (312 x 245 mm), lavish, high-end hardback collections starring the Man of Steel and a welcome addition to the superb commemorative series of Library of American Comics which has preserved and re-presented in luxurious splendour such landmark strips as Li’l Abner, Tarzan, Rip Kirby, Polly and her Pals and many of the abovementioned cartoon icons.

It’s an unimaginable joy to see these â€œlostâ€ Superman stories again, offering a far more measured, domesticated and comforting side of one of America’s most unique contributions to world culture. It’s also a pure delight to see some of the most engaging yesterdays of the Man of Tomorrow. Join me and see for yourselfâ€¦
Â© 2015 DC Comics. All rights reserved. SUPERMAN and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics.

June 2, 2018June 1, 2018

Superman’s First Flight

By Michael Jan Friedman & Dean Motter (Scholastic)
ISBN: 978-0-43909-550-1

Congratulations on your Anniversary, Man of Tomorrow!

We parochial and possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely sequential narrative terms, but characters such as Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman long ago outgrew their four-colour origins and are now fully mythologized modern media creatures instantly familiar in mass markets, platforms and age ranges.

One particularly captivating case in point is this enthralling retelling of the Man of Steel’s formative journey to self-discovery, retold for youngsters as part of the Hello Reader early-learning program devised by children’s publisher Scholastic.

Categorised as US Level 3 (school years 1 and 2), with Level 2 being kindergarten and 1 as pre-schoolers, the smartly recapitulated story spans that crucial divide wherein kids still want their parents to read to and with them, but as the little tykes are also beginning that wonderful, magical journey into literacy as solo voyagersâ€¦

This clever, sensitive and age-appropriate retelling by Michael Jan Friedman encapsulates and addresses every maturing child’s growing feelings of potential alienation, sense of growth, self-discovery and independence by focussing on High School student Clark Kent on the day that the solitary teen discovered exactly why he has always felt somehow different from his classmates.

When Clark suddenly, impossibly, hears and sees a car crash occurring miles away, without thinking he is running and jumping over buildings. Arriving on the scene he tears the metal doors off burning cars and outraces an explosion to save a trapped driverâ€¦

Terrified that he is some kind of monster he confides in his parents, who promptly share a secret they have been harbouring all Clark’s life.

In the barn they show the awe-struck lad a tiny one-man spaceship which had crashed to Earth years ago. Its cargo was an alien babyâ€¦

As Clark approaches the relic a hologram activates and he witnesses his birth-parents Jor-El and Lara who explain why he can perform feats no one else canâ€¦

Shocked and distraught, Clark runs away as fast as he can and before he even notices it is flying high above the world. The glorious shock at last makes him realise that different doesn’t mean badâ€¦

Before long the world is daily improved and even saved by a visitor from afar known as Supermanâ€¦

This captivating adventure is a cleverly weighed introduction into the Action Ace’s canonical comicbook history, subtly addressing issues of adoption and belonging as well as more modern ideological issues such as the plight of refugees and immigrants. Remember, for a very long time distressed and needy strangers were welcomed with open arms in civilised countriesâ€¦

Magnificently complemented by 31 painted illustrations by design guru and illustrator Dean Motter, this is an epic retold that will amaze kids and astound even their jaded, seen-it-all-before elders.

No Supermaniac could consider their collection complete without a copy of this wonderful little gem. Superman’s First Flight is the ideal introduction for youngsters to their – surely – life-long love affair with the Last Son of Krypton and reading in generalâ€¦
Â© 2000 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All Rights Reserved.

June 1, 2018May 30, 2018

My First Superman Book

By David Katz, designed by George Rucker with illustrations by JosÃ© Luis GarcÃa-LÃ³pez (Downtown Bookworks)
ISBN: 978-1-935703-00-6

Happy Birthday, Caped Kryptonian!

Superman is a hero for all ages. Since his debut in June 1938 (actually Action Comics #1 was on newsstands in May but let’s not quibble here), that’s a fact his creators and owners have always understood, with spin-offs and specially tailored books and other merchandise. He’s also the ideal power-embodiment that appeals to the little kid in us all: an unstoppable icon that says â€œyou can’t dictate to me. I know what’s right and I’m going to do it!â€

Good thing he’s not a bully then, no?

Such a potent image is ones you simply can’t assimilate early enough and there are number of books and merchandise items tailored to the youngest of potential fanatics. This is one of my very favourites and because of the art (yeah, sure, fanboy) is one even older and aged aficionados can legitimately hunt down.

Printed on solid durable board, My First Superman Book reiterates the key aspects of the Man of Steel’s mythology with bold primary-coloured art-spreads, courtesy of DC’s top brand and merchandising visualiser JosÃ© Luis GarcÃa-LÃ³pez. As an added inducement, the images are enhanced with 3D additions and gimmicks such as X-ray vision demonstrated by pop-up and pull-away tabs, as is the legendary phonebooth costume change.

Fabric and faux fur inserts afford a tactile dimension to the hero’s billowing cape and superdog Krypto‘s glowing coat, whilst abundant glitter overprints add a sparkling sheen to the fabulous arctic Fortress of Solitude.

This book is a captivating introduction to the world of classic superhero symbology: offering a literally solid grounding in the basics of the Man of Steel’s incomparable legend and never forgetting the dual aim is inculcating fun and wonder.

A genuine delight and one you could even have some children to share it with if you wantâ€¦
â„¢ and Â© DC Comics 2010. All Rights Reserved.

May 31, 2018May 30, 2018

The Adventures of John Blake volume 1: Mystery of the Ghost Ship

By Phillip Pullman & Fred Fordham (David Fickling Books)
ISBN: 978-1-91098-929-6 (HB)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 978-1-78845-059-1 (PB)

Since its premiere in 2012, The Phoenix has offered humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a traditional-seeming weekly comics anthology for girls and boys. The vibrant parade of cartoon fun, fact and fantasy has won praise from the Great and the Good, child literacy experts and the only people who really count – a dedicated and growing legion of totally engaged kids and parents who read it avidlyâ€¦

The potent periodical is rapidly approaching the 300^th issue and showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, the company is expanding its output through a range of graphic novels and a new imprint of cartoon and strip illustrated biographies highlighting historical and contemporary groundbreakers and Earthshakers. Keep your eyes peeled for our reviews – and more importantly the actual books – bearing the legend First Namesâ€¦

Today however, it’s the turn of another kind of landmark, one from that aforementioned growing library of graphic novels for young people, and heralding the advent of a new juvenile hero in the grand tradition of Jim Hawkins and Alex Riderâ€¦

Prestigious and multi award-winning author Philip Pullman (The Haunted Storm, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, His Dark Materials) is a bit of a comics fan and – joined here by artist and painter Fred Fordham (Nightfall, Aces High, The Phoenix) – in 2017 introduced a bold new hero in beguiling and gripping sea yarn of mystery, imagination and literally timeless adventure.

Now available in a mass market paperback edition, Mystery of the Ghost Ship blends maritime swashbuckling, contemporary corporate skulduggery, sci fi bravado and high-octane espionage derring-do in a mesmerising rollercoaster ride of action and intrigueâ€¦

The eternal oceans obscure and contain many secrets, but none more baffling than the enigmatic Mary Alice: a roving phantom schooner perpetually wreathed in fog and mired in doom-laden prophecy and legend.

Seagoing folk have spoken of its comings and goings for decades – possibly centuries – and dread catching the attention of the red-shirted boy who gazes out from her silent, vaporous bow. The old adage says that those who look him in the eyes will be dead in a monthâ€¦

In some ultra-modern quarters, the legends are taken extremely seriously. Tech-billionaire Carlos Dahlberg has been devoting precious time and immense amounts of his cutting-edge resources to tracking the Mary Alice, compiling sightings going back as far as 1614 Anno Domini.

He has to. Although notionally the most powerful man on Earth, his entire empire could be shattered by the appalling event he instigated one night in 1973 San Francisco: one witnessed and recorded by the ship’s youngest crewmanâ€¦

Also obsessed with plotting the ship’s course and history is oceanographer Danielle Quayle Reid. So effective is she that her endeavours make her another target for Dahlberg’s ruthless and omnipresent organisationâ€¦

A third interested party is hyper-efficient British intelligence operative Commander Roger Blake. He and his superiors at the Admiralty have also been piecing together the myths surrounding the Mary Alice. They have a slight advantage in that they already know when, where and why the 1929 Einstein-Carmichael Expedition concealed an early high energy particle experiment that abruptly ended in a bizarre and uncanny accident.

What nobody knows yet is how that trip resulted in the luckless schooner being lost in the mists of time or what has happened to it sinceâ€¦

Someone with far more hands-on experience of the vessel is Australian schoolgirl Serena Henderson. When her woefully-inexperienced dad abruptly decided to sail his family around the world in 2017, Serena was promptly lost at sea somewhere in the South Pacific.

Tossed about in a huge storm she is plucked from a watery fate by an intense boy named John Blake and becomes the latest addition to a crew of seemingly-doomed seamen rescued by the ghostly crimson mist-runner.

As the boy tries to explain the strange meanderings of the ship, Serena gets to know the resolute, unflappable Captain Quayle and Davy Johnson, last survivors of the original 1929 crew and learns that all of the mariners are temporary travellers.

The ship perpetually (and apparently aimlessly) sails from age to age, epoch to epoch. Whenever the Mary Alice stops there is the chance of being attacked, picking up another sailor, and very occasionally visiting a port and time that allows a voyager to return to approximately their home era.

Serena’s current shipmates include Chinese trader Sammy Wu (picked up in the 1890s), British deckhand Charlie Banks (1790), 17^th century Devon fisherman – and escaped slave of Barbary pirates – Dick Merryfield and Marcus Tullius Pallas, a Roman engineer hailing from the end of the 2^nd century AD. They are all rather in awe of John, who seems to exert some control over the ship’s wanderings and is the only one to understand the arcane workings of the engine that moves them all.

As they progress about the sea through time and space, Serena is deemed to be far luckier than all of them as her initial outing looks to be her last. The schooner is heading for Fiji and remains – or has returned to – 2017â€¦

In a world of satellites and instantaneous communications her return is suddenly big news and Danielle Quayle Reid is soon heading there too. She only makes it because Roger Blake intercepts and forcefully deals with the merciless mercenaries Dahlberg set on her trailâ€¦

When John brings Serena back to her family, more of the billionaire’s thugs are waiting to capture him, but the valiant kids double back, eluding them after a frantic high-speed chase culminating in their return to the swiftly-fading schoonerâ€¦

Revealing close family ties to members of the ghost crew, Roger and Danielle compare notes and decide to go after Dahlberg even as, aboard the ship, John and Serena discuss their plight and the tech-entrepreneur’s reasons for hunting them.

John knows he is close to fixing the ship’s randomness and swears Mary Alice is both alive and helping him. After a chilling encounter with a true enigma of the deep, the schooner â€œfortuitouslyâ€ approaches present-day San Francisco and a truly explosive showdown with Dahlberg, unaware that the missing piece of the puzzle rests with Roger and Danielle who are also closing in on the monied murder-fiendâ€¦

Also offering a full rundown on ‘The Crew’, this debut outing blends blockbuster action and superspy chic with eerie mystery and enchanting fantasy to entice and enthral readers who would love to see Horatio Hornblower, Dan Dare and James Bond team up to battle bad guys and trounce villainy in extreme HD and cosmic SurroundSound.

A non-stop joy from start to finish with the promise of more and even better to comeâ€¦
Text Â© Philip Pullman 2017 and illustrations Â© Fred Fordham 2017. All rights reserved.

The Adventures of John Blake volume 1: Mystery of the Ghost Ship paperback edition will be released on 7^th June 2018 and is available for pre-order now.

May 30, 2018May 28, 2018

Showcase Presents the Haunted Tank Volume 1

By Robert Kanigher, Russ Heath, Irv Novick, Jerry Grandenetti, Joe Kubert, Jack Abel & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0789-2

Robert Kanigher (1915-2002) was one of the most distinctive authorial voices in American comics, blending rugged realism with fantastic fantasy in his signature war comics, horror stories and superhero titles such as Wonder Woman, Teen Titans, Hawkman, Metal Men, Flash, Batman and others genres too numerous to mention here.

He also scripted ‘Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt’ – the first story of the Silver Age introducing Barry Allen as the new Flash to the hero-hungry kids of the world in 1956.

Kanigher sold his first stories and poetry in 1932, wrote for the theatre, film and radio, and joined the Fox Features shop where he created The Bouncer, Steel Sterling and The Web, whilst providing scripts for Blue Beetle and the original Captain Marvel.

In 1945 he settled at All-American Comics as both writer and editor, staying on when the company amalgamated with National Comics to become the forerunner of today’s DC. Whilst writing Flash and Hawkman, he created Black Canary and, decades later, debuted another memorable female lead in Lady Cop, as well as many memorable villainesses such as Harlequin and Rose and the Thorn.

This last torrid noir temptress he redesigned during the relevancy era of the early 1970s into a schizophrenic crime-busting super-heroine who haunted the back of Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, which Kanigher also scripted.

When mystery-men faded out at the end of the 1940s, the ever-resourceful writer/editor shifted over to westerns and war stories, becoming in 1952 writer/editor of the company’s combat titles: All-American War Stories, Star Spangled War Stories and Our Army at War.

He created Our Fighting Forces in 1954 and added G.I. Combat to his burgeoning battle-portfolio when Quality Comics sold their line of titles to DC in 1956, all the while providing scripts for Wonder Woman, Johnny Thunder, Rex the Wonder Dog, Silent Knight, Sea Devils, Viking Prince and a host of others.

Kanigher was a restlessly creative writer and frequently used his uncanny but formulaic adventure arenas as a testing ground for future series concepts. Among the many epochal war features he created were Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace, The War that Time Forgot and The Losers as well as the irresistibly compelling â€œcombat ghost storiesâ€ collected in this stunning and economical monochrome war-journal.

This terrific first monochrome tome re-presents the early blockbusting exploits of boyhood friends Jeb Stuart Smith, Arch Asher, Slim Stryker and Rick Rawlins as depicted in G.I. Combat #87-119 (April/May 1961- August/September 1966) and also includes guest-star missions from The Brave and the Bold #52 (February/March 1964) and Our Army at War #155 (June 1965).

The eerie action begins with ‘Introducing – the Haunted Tank’, illustrated by the sublime Russ Heath. In this introductory tale the now-adult pals are all assigned to the same M-3 Stuart Light Tank, named for the legendary Confederate Army General who was a strategic wizard of cavalry combat. During a patrol the underdog neophytes somehow destroy an enemy Panzer even though they are all knocked unconscious in the processâ€¦

Narrated by Jeb as he mans the Commander’s spotter-position (head and torso sticking out of the top hatch and completely exposed to enemy fire whilst driver Slim, gunner Rick and loader Arch remain inside) the tanker recounts how a ghostly voice seems to offer advice and prescient, if veiled, warnings. These statements and their midget war machine soon draw the jibes of fellow soldiers who drive bigger, tougher war machinesâ€¦

Eventually the little tank proves its worth and Jeb wonders if he imagined it all due to shock and his injuries, but in #88 ‘Haunted Tank vs. the Ghost Tank’, Jeb is actually seeing and conversing with his phantom namesake as he and the boys solve the utterly rational mystery of an enemy battle-wagon which seems to disappear at will.

‘Tank with Wings’ in G.I. Combat #89 was illustrated by Irv Novick and describes how old General Stuart’s impossible prophecy comes chillingly true after the M-3 shoots down a fighter plane whilst hanging from a parachute, after which Heath returned to limn a brutal and staggering clash against German ‘Tank Raiders’ who steal the Americans’ haunted home on treads.

Throughout the early days Jeb’s comrades continually argued about what to do with him. Nobody believed in the ghost and they all doubted his sanity, but ever since he began to see the spirit soldier Stuart Smith had somehow become a tactical genius. His â€œgiftsâ€ were keeping them all alive against incredible, impossible odds.

In #91’s ‘The Tank and the Turtle’ a chance encounter with a plucky terrapin leads to brutal clashes with strafing aircraft, hidden anti-tank guns and a booby-trapped village whilst ‘The Tank of Doom’ (illustrated by Jerry Grandenetti) sees the snowbound tank-jockeys witnessing true heroism and learning that flesh, not steel, wins warsâ€¦

In #93 Heath depicted a ‘No-Return Mission’ which depleted American tank forces until the Ghostly General took a spectral hand to guide his mortal protÃ©gÃ© through a veritable barrage of traps and ambushes, after which ‘The Haunted Tank vs. the Killer Tank’ seeks to widen the General’s role as the phantom protector agonises over intel he is forbidden to share with his Earthly namesake during a combined Allied push to locate a Nazi terror-weapon.

This time it’s the young sergeant who has to provide his own answersâ€¦

The rest of the crew are near breaking point and ready to hand Jeb over to the medics in #95’s ‘The Ghost of the Haunted Tank’, but when Slim assumes command he too begins to see and hear the General amidst the blistering heat of battleâ€¦

In ‘The Lonesome Tank’ Jeb is back in the hot-seat and scoffing at other tank commanders’ reliance on lucky talismans, until the General seemingly abandons him and he is pushed to the brink of desperation, after which G.I. Combat #97’s ‘The Decoy Tank’ proves that a brave man makes his own luck after a Nazi infiltrator takes the entire crew hostage.

‘Trap of Dragon’s Teeth’ allows the Ghostly Guardian to teach Jeb a useful lesson in trusting one’s own senses over weapons and machinery in combat, and issue #99 greets the legendary Joe Kubert who opens a stint on the series in the book-length thriller ‘Battle of the Thirsty Tanks’, with the Stuart labouring under desert conditions which reduce both German and American forces to thirsty wrecks as they struggled to capture a tantalising oasis.

The crew reveal that their fathers had all been tank jockeys in WWI who had disappeared in action when ‘Return of the Ghost Tank’ in #100 finds the lads back in Europe. Shock follows shock as they realise their sires had all been part of the same crew and credibility is further stretched when the M-3 begins to retrace and re-enact the last mission of their missing fathersâ€¦

Any doubts about whether the General is real or imagined are finally laid to rest in #101’s ‘The Haunted Tank vs. Attila’s Battle Tiger’ (illustrated by Jack Abel), as the evil spirit of the barbarian becomes patron to a German Panzer and opens a campaign to destroy both the living and dead Jeb Stuarts, after which Kubert returned for ‘Battle Window’; a moving tale of old soldiers wherein a broken-down nonagenarian French warrior is given one final chance to serve his country as the American tank blithely trundles into a perfect ambushâ€¦

A particularly arcane prognostication in #103 drives Jeb crazy until ‘Rabbit Punch for a Tiger’ shows him how improvisation can work like magic in a host of hostile situations, whilst ‘Blind Man’s Radar’ helps the crew complete a dead man’s mission after picking up the sightless sole survivor of an Allied attackâ€¦

In the mid-1960s before the Batman TV show led to rampant â€œBat-maniaâ€, The Brave and the Bold was a comicbook featuring team-ups of assorted DC stars.

Issue #52 (February/March 1964) grouped Tankman Stuart with Sgt. Rock and Lt. Cloud as the 3 Battle Stars in ‘Suicide Mission! Save Him or Kill Him!’ (Kanigher & Kubert). In this superb thriller the armoured cavalry, infantry and Air Force heroes join forces to escort and safeguard a vital Allied agent who had been sealed into a cruel and all-encompassing iron suit.

Fast-paced, action-packed and utterly outrageous, the perilous chase across occupied France produced one of the best battle blockbusters of the era.

Back in G.I. Combat #105 the ‘Time-Bomb Tank!’ starts seconds after the B&B yarn as the Haunted Tank receives intel that Sgt. Rock’s Easy Company are under attack. As they dash to the rescue, however, circumstances soon cause the M-3 to become a mobile Marie Celesteâ€¦

The ‘Two-Sided War’ finds Jeb promoted to Lieutenant and suffering apparent hallucinations where he and his crew are trapped in the Civil War, after which #107’s ‘The Ghost Pipers!’ details how the tankers aid the last survivor of a Scottish battalion in an attack that actually spans two wars, before the armoured cavalrymen again team up with Rock in ‘The Wounded Won’t Wait’. As Rick, Arch and Slim are injured, the Easy Co. topkick rides shotgun on the brutal return trip back to baseâ€¦

Issue #109’s ‘Battle of the Tank Graveyard’ downplays the supernatural overtones in a more straightforward clash deep within a deadly mountain pass whilst ‘Choose Your War’ has the Confederate General chafing at his role assisting â€œUnionâ€ cavalryâ€¦ until circumstances again seem to place the modern soldiers in a historical setting and the two Jeb Stuarts work out their differences.

For #111’s ‘Death Trap’ the uncanny crew again work with Easy Company – in the desert this time since continuity was never a big concern for Kanigher – but when the M-3 is captured by the enemy, Jeb and the boys endure a bloody taste of infantry fighting before taking it back.

‘No Stripes for Me’ is actually a Sgt. Rock adventure from Our Army at War #155 (June 1965) with the Haunted Tank in close support as a battle-hungry General’s son continually refuses the commendations and promotions his valiant actions deserve, no matter what the cost to men or morale around himâ€¦

Rock and Jeb stayed together for G.I. Combat #112’s struggle against the Luftwaffe ‘Ghost Ace!’ who is Attila the Hun’s latest mortal avatar: a blistering supernatural shocker that once more forces the Phantom General to take a spectral hand in the battle against evil, after which ‘Tank Fight in Death Town!’ sees the war following the M-3 crew back into a much-needed leave.

Luckily Rock and Easy Co. are around to provide vigorous fire-supportâ€¦

After nearly four years in the saddle, scripter Kanigher decided to revamp the backstory of the crew and issue #114 (October/November 1965) featured the Russ Heath illustrated ‘Battle Origin of the Haunted Tank’ with the General revealing that he had been assigned to watch over the M-3’s boys by Alexander the Great.

In the afterlife all great military commanders sponsor mortal combatants but Stuart had refused to pick anybody and was stuck looking after â€œDamned Yankeesâ€. Happily, the courage and mettle of the boys under fire had changed many of his opinions after watching their first battle in the deserts of North Africaâ€¦

Heath also drew the team-up in #115 wherein Jeb is reunited with Navajo fighter-pilot Johnny Cloud as ‘Medal for Mayhem’ pits both spiritually-sponsored warriors against overwhelming odds and forced to trade places in the air and on the ground. (Cloud regularly encountered a cirrus-mounted Indian Brave dubbed Big-Brother-in-the Sky galloping across the heavens during his fighter missionsâ€¦)

Novick then illustrated a sequel when Cloud and Stuart help proud Greek soldier Leonidas fulfil his final mission in the stirring ‘Battle Cry of a Dead Man!’

‘Tank in the Icebox’ in #117 is another Heath martial masterpiece wherein a baffling mystery is solved and a weapon that turns the desert into a frozen hell is destroyed before Novick assumes the controls for the last two tales in this volume, beginning with ‘My Buddyâ€¦ My Enemy’ wherein a bigoted Slim learns tragically too late that not all Japanese soldiers are monsters and #119 again asks difficult questions when Jeb and the crew must escort an American deserter to his execution, with German forces attempting to kill them all before they got there in ‘Target for a Firing Squad!’

An added attraction for art fans and battle buffs are the breathtaking covers by Heath, Kubert and Grandenetti, many of them further enhanced through the stunning tonal values added by DC’s brilliant chief of production Jack Adler.

These spectacular tales cover the Haunted Tank through the blazing gung-ho early years to a time when America began to question the very nature and necessity of war (Vietnam was just beginning to really hurt the home front in 1966) and combat comics started addressing the issues in a most impressive and sensitive manner.

The stories here combine spooky chills with combat thrills but always offer a powerful human message that has never dated and may well rank amongst the very best war stories ever produced. This is a series long overdue for a modern archival and digital renaissance.
Â© 1961-1966, 2006 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

May 29, 2018May 28, 2018

JLA: A Midsummer’s Nightmare Deluxe edition

By Mark Waid, Fabian Nicieza, Jeff Johnson, Darick Robertson, John Holdredge, Hanibal Rodriguez & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7432-0 (HB)

There are many facets that contribute to the â€œperfect mixâ€ in the creation of any continuing character in comics. How much more so then, when the idea is to build a superhero team that will stand out from the seething masses that already exist?

In the mid-1990s, the iconic squad which truly ushered in the return of superheroes to comics suffered one of its periodic plunges in quality and popularity and ignominiously folded.

Of course the Justice League of America is too hallowed, venerated and valuable to fester in oblivion for any length of time and was quickly reconvened in a fresh new interpretation which quickly became the breakout book of 1997, courtesy of Grant Morrison & Howard Porter.

However, the scene was set for them by a strikingly exuberant miniseries which acted as a reassessment and reintroduction of the World’s Greatest Superheroes. Since the Silver Age’s greatest team-book died a slow, painful, embarrassing death, not once but twice, DC were taking no chances with their next revival and tapped Big Ideas wunderkind Morrison to reconstruct the group and the franchise.

However, he was to a large extent riffing on groundwork laid by writers Mark Waid and Fabian Nicieza – as well as the impressive illustration of Jeff Johnson, Darick Robertson, John Holdredge & Hanibal Rodriguez – in a captivating no-nonsense miniseries which went a long way towards regenerating interestâ€¦

This slim sleek Deluxe celebration (collecting in both hardback and eBook editions, Justice League: Midsummer’s Nightmare #1-3 from September-November 1996) opens with an effusive Introduction from Morrison before a world of confusion is revealed in ‘True Lies’ wherein comicbook artist Kyle Rayner struggles to meet the deadline for his assignment. He can’t understand why anybody would want to read about whacky, fictitious masked mystery-men characters like Green Lantern when the entire planet is in the midst of a cosmic revolution.

All over earth humans are spontaneously developing super-powers as an inexplicable genetic â€œsparkâ€ triggers the next stage in evolution.

Millions of superhumans are manifesting with no rhyme or reason whilst others seem doomed to remain merely mundane. It’s like a comicbook plot come to lifeâ€¦

Amongst the ordinary mortals left behind are reporter Clark Kent, billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne, schoolteacher Diana Prince, college lecturer Wally West and corporate compliance officer Arthur Curry. Elsewhere, separated by immeasurable gulfs, scientist J’onn J’onzz leads an idyllic life under the skies of Mars with his wife and daughterâ€¦

The dreams of all these mortals are troubled. They have vague, impossible recollections of being colourful champions and indomitable heroes in a world filled with their like, not this savage situation where selfish â€œSparkersâ€, intoxicated with newfound power, squabble and bicker like bullies and thugs in a primarily plebeian universeâ€¦

Meanwhile, in a hidden place, an immortal mastermind manipulates a super-villain the entire world has forgotten ever existed, using his potent power to reshape dreams to achieve an eons-long planâ€¦

However, there’s far more to heroism than powers and each mentally diminished champion individually struggles to find the disturbing deeper truth they know has been somehow taken from themâ€¦

The spell of targeted amnesia starts to unravel when journalist Kent somehow survives being caught in a savage exchange between rival Sparker gangs. Shocked back to Kryptonian normality, he starts tracking down his vanished costumed contemporariesâ€¦

Elsewhere relative neophyte â€œLegacy Heroesâ€ Wally and Kyle have their own epiphanic moments as the second chapter ‘To Know a Veil’ finds a restored Superman and Batman systematically unravelling the sinister plot.

In a hidden sanctum, Machiavellian Know Man further exploits the reality-warping gifts of his slave Doctor Destiny to manufacture a Sparker-squad specifically designed to eradicate the re-emergent heroes. During this time Aquaman and Wonder Woman have united with the World’s Finest team in time to be ambushed by an army of enhanced myrmidons. The battle is in no way certain until the fully-recovered and restored Flash and Green Lantern pile inâ€¦

After the inconclusive clash the reassembled heroes realise they need their old telepathic team-mate back and hunt for J’onzz, eventually dragging the Martian Manhunter from his perfect dream of paradise regained – in reality a seedy bunker at Roswell, New Mexico. Having lost his world and family a second time, J’onn is in no mind to be merciful with his anonymous abductorsâ€¦

The saga kicks into terminal high gear with ‘Daze & Knights’ as Know Man’s tailor-made Sparker-squad attacks, only to fall as one before the brutal psychic assault of the furious and heartbroken Manhunter.

His mental capabilities then glean the whereabouts of their true foes from data buried by rebellious Dr. Destiny in Kyle’s subconscious and the fighting-mad team race off to a final confrontation with their hidden enemyâ€¦

Fast-paced, action-packed and breathtakingly bold, this galvanic tale pits the greatest champions in DC’s pantheon against an immortal enemy whose roots stem back to the earliest days of the universe is a gloriously baggage-free romp and a splendid jumping on point for readers new and old alike.

This fantastic Fights ‘n’ Tights fable also includes a handy information section recapitulating and assessing the characters of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter, plus a gallery of covers from the original miniseries previous collections.
Â© 1996, 2017 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

May 28, 2018May 28, 2018

The Black Panther Epic Collection volume 1 1966-1976: Panther’s Rage

By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Don McGregor, Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, Billy Graham, Keith Pollard, Klaus Janson & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0190-5 (TPB)

Acclaimed as the first black superhero in American comics and one of the first to carry his own series, the Black Panther‘s popularity and fortunes have waxed and waned since he first appeared in Fantastic Four.

In fact, the cat king actually attacked Marvel’s First Family as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father. He was also the first black superhero in American comics, debuting in summer 1966.

As created by Jack Kirby & Stan Lee, T’Challa, son of T’Chaka, is an African monarch whose secretive kingdom is the only source of vibration-absorbing wonder mineral Vibranium. The miraculous alien metal – supposedly derived from a fallen meteor which struck the continent in lost antiquity – is the basis of the country’s immense wealth, enabling Wakanda to become one of the wealthiest and most secretive nations on Earth. These riches also allowed the young king to radically remake his country, creating a technological wonderland even after he left Africa to fight as one of America’s mighty Avengers.

For much of its history Wakanda has been an isolated, utopian technological wonderland with the tribal resources and people safeguarded and led since time immemorial by a human warrior-king deriving cat-like physical advantages from secret ceremonies and a mysterious heart-shaped herb. This has ensured the generational dominance of the nation’s Panther Cult and Royal Familyâ€¦

The top-secret â€œVibranium moundâ€ had guaranteed the country’s status as a clandestine superpower for centuries but in modern times has increasingly made Wakanda a target for subversion, incursion and even invasion as the world grew ever smaller.

This trusty trade paperback (and eBook) gathers the dynamic debut from Fantastic Four #52-53 (cover-dated July and August 1966) and the groundbreaking solo stories from Jungle Action volume 2 #6-24, spanning September 1973-November 1976.

Before that though, the innovative and unforgettable character debuted in ‘The Black Panther!’: an enigmatic African monarch whose secretive kingdom was the only source of a vibration-absorbing alien metal. These mineral riches had enabled him to turn his country into a technological wonderland before he lured the FF into his savage super-scientific kingdom as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father.

After battling the team to a standstill, King T’Challa revealed his tragic origin in ‘The Way it Began..!’, detailing how his father was murdered by marauding sonic science researcher Ulysses Klaw. As the monarch details how he took vengeance and liberated his people, word comes of incredible solidified-sound monsters attacking the region. Klaw has returned at lastâ€¦

The cataclysmic clash that follows set the scene for the African Warrior-Chieftain to guest star with a number of Marvel superstars before breaking out into the wider world, but it would years before he finally won his own solo seriesâ€¦

After wandering around the Marvel Universe, enjoying team-ups and saving the world on a semi-regular basis as one the â€œEarth’s Mightiest Superheroesâ€, the summer of 1973 saw the Black Panther finally become a solo star in his own series.

Scripter Don McGregor opted to return the King to his people for an ambitious epic of love, death, vengeance and civil war: inventing from whole cloth and Kirby’s throwaway notion of a futuristic jungle the most unique African nation ever seenâ€¦

Jungle Action launched with an October 1972 cover-date, a cheap reprint vehicle for old Atlas-era Tarzan and Sheena knock-offs like Tharn, Jann and Lorna (â€¦of the Jungle). The fifth issue (not included here) abruptly changed tack, reprinting the Black Panther-starring saga from Avengers #62 as prelude to the start of T’Challa’s own all new adventures, which open here with # 6 and the eponymous ‘Panther’s Rage’ illustrated by Rich Buckler & Klaus Janson.

The story opens with the Panther back in his contradictory African homeland, stumbling upon the torture of an elderly farmer. Despite T’Challa’s best efforts the victim dies in his arms, swearing he never lost faith in king or countryâ€¦

Learning the attack is the work of brutal rebel leader Erik Killmonger, T’Challa sets all the resources of his inner court circle to finding the monster. With reports of further atrocities mounting, he leaves his American lover Monica Lynne to hunt the perpetrators and soon confronts his potential usurper at the potently symbolic Warrior Falls roaring above the life-sustaining River of Grace and Wisdom.

The barbarous-seeming giant is not cowed by the Panther’s power or prowess and easily wins the no-holds barred battle that followsâ€¦

The initial episode is supplemented by detailed maps of Wakanda (the first fans had ever seen) before JA #7 mobilises ‘Death Regiments Beneath Wakanda’. Barely surviving his fight with Killmonger, T’Challa is nursed back to health by Monica at the Palace even as hideously disfigured American Horatio displays his skill with snakes and poisons to his friend N’Jadaka.

Known to their recruits as Venomm and Erik Killmonger, these rebel leaders plot their next attack which results in the reptilian insurgent ambushing T’Challa when the king investigates an illegal mine. This shocking atrocity is being used to siphon off raw Vibranium to pay for Killmonger’s increasingly violent and widespread attacks on the outlying population centresâ€¦

Although triumphant this time, T’Challa realises this is a many-layered war: one he might not winâ€¦

Whilst the Black Panther renews his powers through ancient ritual, Jungle Action #8 introduces another super-powered rebel with ‘Malice by Crimson Moonlight’ revealing a spear-wielding wonder woman invading the Royal Palace.

Advisor Taku is interrogating Venomm – and gradually making inroads into turning the bitter outcast – when Malice attacks. Only the power of the Panther saves the servitor and prevents the brutal jailbreak from succeedingâ€¦

After more maps of the hidden country and detailed plans of ‘Central Wakanda’s Palace Royale’ the saga resumes in #9 with ‘But Now the Spears Are Broken’ (illustrated by Gil Kane & Janson) as T’Challa goes in-country to learn the effects of the power struggle on ordinary Wakandans.

After saving little boy Kantu from a rhino, the king is made painfully aware that the common people view his foreign woman Monica with as much suspicion as the constantly-raiding insurgents. That feeling even penetrates to the heart of the palace. When advisor Zatama is murdered, Monica is arrested for the crimeâ€¦

T’Challa is not there to protest or defend her; he has returned to Kantu’s village to investigate strange disappearances, discovering a seeming mass-rising of zombies led by a skeletal maniac called Baron Macabre. Once more the Great Cat is forced to ignominiously retreatâ€¦

Supreme stylist Billy Graham takes over the pencilling with #10 as the Black Panther returns to the zombie nest, exposing a cunning charade beneath the deserted village as well as a super-scientific base run by a malignant, mind-warping mutant in ‘King Cadaver is Dead and Living in Wakanda!’

Accompanying the dark drama here are examples of ‘Black Panther Artistry’ – specifically, Kirby’s first designs for the hero back when he was going by the provisional title of ‘The Coal Tiger’ and Buckler and Janson’s first depiction of ‘Erik Killmonger’â€¦

Due to an extremely unfavourable publishing schedule, Panther’s Rage unfolded with agonising slowness, but the lengthy wait between episodes allowed McGregor the latitude to pick and choose key events, with readers accepting that some stuff was actually occurring between issues.

In #11 (September 1974), the civil war had proceeded unchecked and ‘Once You Slay the Dragon!’ sees the Panther and his forces launching a long-awaited counterattack on Killmonger’s base in N’Jadaka Village. The battle is vicious and brief, introducing yet another powered lieutenant in the shape of pitiless high-tech armourer Lord Karnajâ€¦

And on the home front, T’Challa finally clears Monica and captures Zatama’s killerâ€¦

With Killmonger temporarily pushed back, the Panther goes on the offensive, using the rebel’s most inconsequential converts – Tayete and Kazibe – as guides to follow his ultimate enemy to his most secret strongholds. Heading into the mountains and the fabled Land of Chilling Mists, the Panther discovers mutagenic temple the Resurrection Altar.

Used by Killmonger to create his grotesque super-warriors, it is presided over by scientifically-spawned vampire Sombre. When T’Challa confronts them, he is again overpowered by Erik and left for the wolves to devour in ‘Blood Stains on Virgin Snow!’

Craig Russell inked the next chapter as, enduring incomprehensible hardships in sub-arctic conditions, T’Challa perseveres to follow Killmonger into the temperate swamps of Serpent Valley in #13.

However, this is only after facing a pack of Wakanda’s white apes. To survive, the Panther must blasphemously ignore the sacred (to many of his subjects) religious aspect of the mighty carnivores and become ‘The God Killer’â€¦

Following a Venomm pin-up, JA #14 then reveals that ‘There Are Serpents Lurking in Paradise’ (inked by Pablo Marcos) as T’Challa clashes once more with Sombre before encountering an affable forest sprite guarding Serpent Valley.

Pixie-like Mokadi asks difficult moral questions as T’Challa rushes towards his next battle with Killmonger, making him too late to stop the rebel capturing a legion of the valley’s awesome dinosaurs. The usurper even has time to leave one behind as a lethal parting gift for the embattled and exhausted Wakandan chieftainâ€¦

The endgame rapidly approaches in #15 as ‘Thorns in the Flesh, Thorns in the Mind’ (inked by Dan Green) finds T’Challa still tracking his nemesis only to be overcome by Killmonger’s archer assassin Salamander K’Ruel. Beaten and left to be dismembered by a ravenous Pterosaur, T’Challa incredibly overcomes every challenge before – against all odds – staggering back to Monica for another bout of recuperationâ€¦

Graham inked his own pencils for the beginning of the end in #16 as T’Challa and Monica’s time of idyllic passion culminates in catastrophe when ‘And All Our Past Decades Have Seen Revolutions!’ reveals the origins of Killmonger and sees the vast cast all converge for one final battleâ€¦

That comes in #17 as an army of war-trained dinosaurs invades Central Wakanda only to be finally crushed by the Panther’s forces and superior technology. The affair concludes as it began at Warrior Falls, but ‘Of Shadows and Rages’ also holds a shocking twist as the great game of kings is ultimately decided by a player no one considered of any relevanceâ€¦

With its nuanced emotional interplay, extended scope and fiercely independent supporting cast, Panther’s Rage was a milestone in dramatic comics storytelling but it harboured one last punch in a gripping 18 ‘Epilogue!’ (Jungle Action #18, November 1975).

Bob McLeod inked McGregor & Graham’s forceful look at the repercussions of conflict as T’Challa and maimed security chief Wakabi are targeted by feral woman Madame Slay: Killmonger’s ardent and unsuspected lover who believes her loss can only be assuaged by having her pack of loyal leopards eviscerate the victorious Wakandansâ€¦

Cover-dated January 1976, Jungle Action #19 premiered McGregor’s most audacious and ultimately frustrating project, with T’Challa accompanying Monica back to America. The Panther versus the Klan shifted focus from war stories to crime fiction, replacing fabulously exotic Africa for America’s poverty-wracked, troubled, still segregated-in-all-but-name Deep South for a head-on collision with centuries of entrenched and endemic racism.

Illustrated by Graham & McLeod, ‘Blood and Sacrifices!’ sees Monica back with her family after her sister is murdered. All too soon T’Challa is ferociously battling a gang of purple-hooded killers who appear to have set up in opposition to the ancient white-hooded Ku Klux Klan.

Moreover, both sects seem determined to conceal the truth of Angela Lynne‘s deathâ€¦

A break comes when bumbling, well-meaning reporter Kevin Trublood stumbles into an attack on the newcomers by the strangely multi-racial Klan sect calling itself the Dragon Circleâ€¦

With neither townsfolk nor lawmen offering any welcome, T’Challa faces unbridled hostility and suspicion at every turn. He is even attacked by cops and a mob of citizens when he thwarts a knife attack on Monica. Although Sheriff Roderick Tate makes all the right noises and seems helpful, in ‘They Told Me a Myth I Wanted to Believe’, the Panther opts to pursue his own investigation before being overwhelmed by an army of white-robed Klansmen who tie him to a burning cross and leave him to dieâ€¦

As Monica and Kevin puzzle out the convoluted web of mysteries, the Panther exerts all his uncanny talents to escape becoming ‘A Cross Burning Darkly Blackening the Night!’ Later, as he slowly recovers in hospital, Monica’s family, Kevin and Tate review the few verifiable facts of Angela’s demise before patriarch Lloyd Lynne urges T’Challa to stop looking. He only has one daughter left after allâ€¦

Nevertheless, when the Panther and Trublood invade and disrupt a Klan rally, Lloyd is right there with themâ€¦

With Rick Buckler joining Graham on pencils and Jim Mooney alternating with McCleod on inks, Jungle Action #22 takes a bizarre turn as ‘Death Riders on the Horizon’ explores a Lynne family legend dating back to the formative days of the Klan in 1867 when old Caleb was targeted by the vile southern knights and their seemingly supernatural sponsor the Soul Strangler. As Monica listens to the ghastly, appallingly unjust tale, her mind fills in how T’Challa would have acted in such a hopeless situationâ€¦

Issue #23 (September 1976) was a deadline missed and a rapidly-sourced reprint from Daredevil #69 – represented here only by the pertinent cover and a Buckler pin-up – before this tantalising tale is unhappily cut short in final published instalment ‘Wind Eagle in Flight’ (by McGregor, Buckler & Keith Pollard).

The multi-layered, many-stranded plot suddenly expands as the Black Panther is almost killed by a mysterious new player who flies into the ever more bewildering clash between cops, Klan, Dragon Circle and Lynne family but, before the mystery could move any further, Jungle Action was cancelledâ€¦

A wholly different kind of Black Panther and utterly unrelated adventures would reappear two months later, under the auspices of returning creative colossus Jack Kirby. It would be years before the enigma of Angela’s death and the hero’s war against the Klan would be resolvedâ€¦

So that’s what to look forward to in the next volumeâ€¦

Here, however, bonus extras include Kirby & Sinnott’s unused original art cover for FF#52, John Romita’s cover for Jungle Action #5; McGregor’s correspondence with then-fan Ralph Macchio and the author’s original working notes, plot synopses and candid contemporary photos of the close-knit creative team.

Also on show: original cover art, pages and sketches by Buckler & Janson and Kane; pencils and layouts by Graham & Buckler plus a Steve Gerber ‘Jungle Re-Actions’ text feature from Jungle Action #7. Capping off the freebie joys are the un-inked Buckler story pages that would have been #25.

A truly groundbreaking classic of comics narrative, Don McGregor’s Black Panther is stark, vibrant proof that the superhero genre works best when ambitious and passionate creators are given their head and let loose to get on with it. Now, supported by a major movie, perhaps readers will finally see how the Fights ‘n’ Tights game should be playedâ€¦

May 27, 2018May 26, 2018

Sky Masters of the Space Force: The Complete Dailies

By Jack Kirby, Dick & Dave Wood, Wally Wood & Dick Ayers (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-129-8

Sky Masters of the Space Force was – and remains – a beautiful and eminently readable newspaper strip but one with a chequered and troubled back-story. How much so you can discover for yourself when you buy the book.

Even ever-upbeat and inspirational comics mega-creator Jack Kirby spent decades trying to forget the grief caused by his foray into the newspaper strip market during the height of the Space Race before finally relenting in his twilight years and giving his blessing to collections and reprints such as this one from Hermes Press.

I’m glad that he did because the collected work is one of his greatest achievements, even with the incredible format restraints of one tier of tiny panels per day, and a solitary page every Sunday. More than 50 years later this hard-science space adventure is still the business!

And that’s despite the acrimonious legal manoeuvrings that poisoned the process of creating the strip from start to finish. That can of worms you can you can read for yourself in Daniel Herman’s forthright ‘Introduction: Jack Kirby, Wally Wood, and Sky Masters’ which precedes the astronautical adventures contained hereinâ€¦

Just for context though: against a backdrop of international and ideological rivalry turned white-hot when the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik in 1957, the staid George Matthew Adams newspaper syndicate decided to finally enter the 20^th century with a newspaper feature about space.

After approaching a reluctant DC Comics (then known as National Periodicals Publications) a deal was brokered. The project was steered by editor Jack Schiff and he convinced Jack Kirby, inker Wally Wood (later to be replaced by Dick Ayers) and scripters/brothers Dick and Dave Wood (no relation to Wally), to begin bringing the conquest of the cosmos into our lives via an all-American astronaut, his trusty team of stalwart comrades and the philanthropic largesse of the newly-minted US Space Forceâ€¦

The daily strip launched on September 8^th 1958 and ran until February 25^th 1961; a scant few months before Alan Shepherd became in reality the first American in Space on May 5^th.

The Sunday colour page told its five extended tales (The Atom Horse, Project Darkside, Mister Lunivac, Jumbo Jones and The Yogi Spaceman) in a separate continuity running from February 8^th 1959 until 14^th February 1960. They are sadly not included in this superb monochrome hardback archival collection, but at least that gives us fans something to look forward toâ€¦

This tense, terse and startlingly suspenseful foray into a historical future begins with ‘The First Man in Space’ (September 8^th – November 21^st 1958) as Major Schuyler â€œSkyâ€ Masters becomes the second man in space. Romantically involved with Holly Martin, he is hurled into orbit to rescue her astronaut father after the bold pioneer encounters something too horrible to contemplate in the pitiless reaches above Earthâ€¦

The human tragedy and ever-impinging fear of the unknown of that moody tale informs all the following stories and as Holly Martin’s feisty brother Danny and burly Sgt. Riot join the cast (who do they remind me of?) for ‘Sabotage’ (22^nd November – 7^th March 1959), the quintessential components of all great comics teams are in place.

In this second encounter the stage expands enormously and a member of the vast Space Force contingent sinks into derangement: convinced that the colonization of the void and abandonment of Mother Earth is an unholy abomination.

That’s bad enough, but after he is despatched as one of the six pathfinders constructing America’s first permanent orbiting space station, disaster is assured unless Sky can expose him and stop his deadly machinationsâ€¦

Even as grim yet heady realism slowly grew into exuberant action and fantastic spectacle the strip moves into high dramatic gear as woman pilot (or â€œaviatrixâ€) ‘Mayday Shannon’ (9^th March – 9^th May) joins the squad. The Brass have high hopes that she will prove females can thrive in space too but didn’t reckon on her publicity-hungry greed and selfishness.

Luckily, the magnetic allure of the stars overcomes her bad side and Sky is on hand to deal with her ruthlessly unscrupulous managerâ€¦

A medical emergency tests the ingenuity of the dedicated spacers when project instigator and patriarch Doctor Royer is taken ill and Sky must ferry a surgeon to him in ‘To Save a Life’ (11^th May – 10^th June) after which the tireless Major and an unsuspected rival for Holly’s affections are stranded together on a New Guinea island of cannibals after losing control of ‘The Lost Capsule’, (11^th June – 23^rd September)â€¦

During that heady meeting of ancient and modern cultures, inker and finisher Wally Wood was replaced by Dick Ayers (although the signatures remained â€œKirby & Woodâ€ for years more. Maybe the credit was for the writers?).

The incalculable terrors of space manifested with the next saga as ‘Alfie’ (24^th September 1959 – 13^th January 1960) carried the heroes of the New Frontier into the next decade. When young astronaut crewman Marek joins the orbiting space wheel he is soon periodically experiencing bizarre fits. Every four hours, for seven and a half minutes the young American seems to channel the personality of an aging East End cockney thief called Alfie Higgins. With the fear that it might be some kind of infectious space madness, Sky and Riot head for London to link up with Scotland Yard in a gripping mystery drama blending jewel robbery and murder with the eerie overtones of Dumas’ Corsican Cousinsâ€¦

The ever-present tensions of the Cold War and Space Race come to the fore in ‘Refugee’ (14^th January – 19^th February) as Sky and the US Space Force aid the most unlikely and improbable Soviet defector escape to the Westâ€¦

Now a fully-trusted and dedicated member of the squad, Mayday Shannon returns to solve an astronaut’s romantic dilemma by arranging a ‘Wedding in Space’, (20^th February – 20^th April) before the true threat of the outer depths is tackled as Sky meets astronautical guru and maverick Martin Strickland. A tempestuous but invaluable asset of the Space program, the intellectual renegade has proof of alien life but won’t share the ‘Message from Space’ (21^st April – 22^nd June) unless the military and civil authorities give him carte blanche to act on humanity’s behalfâ€¦

Counterbalancing such speculative sci fi aspects, the penultimate adventure is very much Earthbound and grounded in contemporary science and economics. In ‘Weather Watchers’ (23^rd June – 27^th December) greedy capitalist entrepreneur Octavius Alexia realises he can make huge profits by scamming insurers if he has access to the advance weather predictions afforded by the growing web of satellites orbiting the world.

To secure that valuable information he targets Mayday with the latest in espionage technologies and a male honey trap named J. Mansfield Sparks III. It might have all gone his way too if the woman hadn’t been so smart and his hired gigolo had remained unencumbered by conscienceâ€¦

The strip ended in a rather rushed and rapid manner with ‘The Young Astronaut’ (28^th December 1960 – 25^th February 1961) wherein a new recruit proved to be too good to be true. Excelling at every aspect of the harsh training, Frederick T. â€œFissionâ€ Tate had ulterior motives for getting into space. Luckily, suspicious Major Masters was right beside him on that first flight into the Wide Black Yonderâ€¦

As well as these stellar tales of stellar wonder, this volume also contains an abundance of visual extras such as a numerous covers and samples of Kirby’s contemporary comicbook work and original art panels in a ‘Focus’ section, which almost compensates for the absence of the Sunday colour pages. Almostâ€¦

This compilation comprises a meteoric canon of wonderment that no red-blooded armchair adventurer could possibly resist, but quite honestly, I simply cannot be completely objective about Sky Masters.

I grew up during this time period and the â€œConquest of Spaceâ€ is as much a part of my sturdy yet creaky old bones as the lead in the paint, pipes and exhaust fumes my generation absorbed. That it is also thrilling, challenging and spectacularly drawn is almost irrelevant to me, but if any inducement is needed for you to seek this work out let it be that this is indisputably one of Kirby’s greatest accomplishments: engaging, challenging and truly lovely to look upon.

Now go enjoy itâ€¦
Â© 2017 Herman and Geer Communications, Inc. d/b/a Hermes Press. Introduction and Focus Â© 2017 Daniel Herman.

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