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October 21, 2015

Long John Silver volume III: The Emerald Maze

By Xavier Dorison & Mathieu Lauffray, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-105-1

British and European comics have always been far more comfortable with period-piece strips than our American cousins and much more imaginative when reinterpreting classical fiction for jaded comicbook audiences. The happy combination of familiar exoticism, past lives and world-changing events blended with drama, action and, most frequently, broad comedy has resulted in a uniquely narrative art form suited to beguiling readers of all ages and tastes.

Our Franco-Belgian associates in particular have made an astonishing success out of repackaging days-gone-by but this particularly enchanting older-readers yarn forgoes the broad belly-laughs whilst extending the adventures of literature’s greatest rogue into a particularly engaging realm of globe-girdling thriller.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island was originally serialised from 1881-1882 in Young Folks magazine as Treasure Island or, the mutiny of the Hispaniola, as pseudonymous penned by one â€œCaptain George Northâ€.

It was collected and published as a novel in May 1883 and has never been out of print since. A landmark of world storytelling, Treasure Island has been dramatised too many times to count and adapted into all forms of art. Most significantly, the book created a metafictional megastar – albeit at best an anti-hero – as immortal as King Arthur, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan or Superman. Almost everything the public â€œknowsâ€ about pirates devolves from the book and its unforgettable, show-stealing one-legged antagonistâ€¦

Writer Xavier Dorison was born in Paris in 1970 and graduated business school before moving into storytelling. He works as an author, film writer, lecturer and movie script doctor. He began the award-winning Long John Silver in conjunction with preferred collaborator Mathieu (Prophet) Lauffray in 2006, with the last volume released in 2013.

Lauffray is also a Parisian born in 1970. He spends his days illustrating, drawing comics, crafting games and concept designing for movies. His art has graced international items as varied as Dark Horse’s Star Wars franchise, games like Alone in the Dark, the album Lyrics Verdun, February 21, 1916 – December 18, 1916, Tarzan and much moreâ€¦

Their collaborative exploration of the piratical prince’s later years is a foray into far more mature arenas set decades after the affair of the Hispaniola and ranges far and wide: from foggy, oppressive England to the vast, brooding inner recesses of the Amazon.

What has Gone Before: in 1785 treasure-hunting Lord Byron Hastings found the lost bastion of Guiana-Capac but needed further funds to exploit this fabulous City of Gold.

In England, his profligate and wanton wife Lady Vivian had been enjoying herself too much and was with child by lecherous neighbour Lord Prisham. With a baby in her belly and a husband gone three years, she was considering having Byron declared dead and undertaking a hasty remarriageâ€¦

Suddenly shattering those plans her despised brother-in-law turned up with an aged, garish tribesman named Moxtechica bearing a message and map from her long-lost husband. Prudish and cruel, Royal Naval officer Edward Hastings gleefully told the scheming strumpet he abhorred that his brother had succeeded and demanded she sell everything – including all the treasured family possessions, manor house and lands she brought to the marriage – to finance his returnâ€¦

Byron named Edward sole Proxy and the martinet delighted in giving high-born trollop Vivian her marching orders. He even urged her to confine herself to a convent and save them all further shame and disgraceâ€¦

Raging in front of her conniving maid Elsie, the Lady considered a number of retaliatory tactics before settling upon the most bold, dangerous and potentially rewarding. After announcing to the stunned Edward that she would accompany him to South America and reunite with her beloved husband, the fallen noblewoman sought out a doctor to take care of the biological problem she was still secretly carryingâ€¦

Dr. Livesay was a decent, god-fearing soul who led a quiet, prosperous life ever since his adventures on Flint’s Island. However, it was not just her condition which brought Vivian to the physician’s door, but also persistent tales of a former acquaintance; a formidable, peg-legged rogue with a reputation for making life’s difficulties disappearâ€¦

Against his better judgement, Livesay capitulated to Vivian’s urgings and introduced her to retired sea-cook John Silver. Amidst the (alleged) ex-pirate’s inner circle of scary-looking confederates she spun the story of the Spaniard Pizarro‘s discovery of a City of Gold and how, centuries later, her husband had reclaimed it.

She wanted to travel there with a few capable men and make those riches her own and needed Silver and his colleagues to infiltrate Edward’s crew, seize the ship he chartered and complete the voyage under her commandâ€¦

Unable to convince Vivian to desist or Silver to reject her offer, Livesay reluctantly joined them in vain hopes that he could keep the debased woman from mortal harm. Nobody was aware that Silver concealed a debilitating and soon-to-be-fatal affliction as the rascal orchestrated his own hiring and packed the Neptune with suitable scoundrels and compelled Lady Vivian to sign a sacrosanct Pirates Contract.

With all the various schemers believing their own plans were proceeding satisfactorily, the Neptune set sail for the Americas, but at the last moment Silver suffers a major setback when rival rogue Paris inveigled his way into the crewâ€¦

As the tension-driven voyage progressed, Silver’s men, Paris’ contingent and even Captain Hastings’ innocent hires all slowly succumbed to the Sea Cook’s glib tongue and fascinating tales of the Red Brotherhood.

Only Hastings’ lieutenants Dantzig and Van Horn had any inkling of the battle of wills occurring below decks, but even that shaky dÃ©tente shattered after Elsie was murdered. Well-aware that everybody aboard was gripped by gold-fever, Hastings tried to rule with a rod of iron and full naval discipline. Settling upon boy seaman Jack O’Kief (a protÃ©gÃ© of Paris, but beloved by Silver) as responsible for the maid’s death, Hastings had him brutally flogged.

A vicious and prolonged battle of wills followed, pushing the crew to the edge of mutiny. Hastings delayed making final landfall on the tantalisingly close South American coast and strained tensions exploded just as a colossal storm pushed Neptune inexorably towards its foregone destination. An inevitable mutiny erupted, resulting in appalling bloodshed and a red-handed settling of many scoresâ€¦

Literally above it all, old shaman Moxtechica rode out both tempests, patiently waiting to see what the calm of dawn might bringâ€¦

The Emerald Maze opens in the ghastly aftermath of the maelstroms of human and natural forces with the becalmed and battered Neptune drifting idly off-shore and the survivors reeling aimlessly on her decks. In sight of terrifying cliffs, the stunned rabble are near panic and babbling of sailing on to Tortuga until Silver’s ferocious tongue-lashing brings them to heel.

Now completely in charge, the old pirate almost loses them again after making Dantzig (the only trained pilot and navigator left alive) second-in-command, despite the Navy Man swearing he’ll see them all hang one dayâ€¦

Boldly sailing Neptune straight into the cliffs, Silver and Dantzig navigate a barely discernible channel in the stony walls and bring the ship through into a calm and beguiling tributary of the Amazon. With time taken to repair and recover, however, the men soon resort to their old ways. Dead are buried, a few old scores settled and Jasper, a new rival to Silver’s authority, begins to assert himself. Seeing the way things are going, Vivian steps in and employs her wiles and cunningâ€¦

She quickly beguiles the entire crew with her story of the Emperor Viracocha and his immense pagan City of Gold. She tells of how her husband claimed it and wins them all over by promising how they will take it from himâ€¦

With their goal so close, the wary mariners impatiently and so-slowly sail up the vast river in an epic journey through labyrinthine courses and jungle backwaters. Each time they stall or founder Moxtechica is there, silently divining which way they should go in the inexorable voyage to lost Guiana-Capac.

This in itself is a cause of growing suspicion to Lady Vivian. Her brutal, impatient husband was never a man to trust others or inspire loyalty – even in other Englishmen – and now she begins to have grave doubts over the shaman’s true motivesâ€¦

Those same thoughts are plaguing Silver and his wily old shipmate Olaf as the river gradually becomes perilously shallow. Soon the voyagers are shocked to see the foundered, rotting wreckage of Lord Byron Hastings’ ship The Nimrod in the scant waters abutting a hugely overgrown and jungle-covered cityâ€¦

As Silver readies his depleted contingent to begin searching the ruins, Vivian surprises the pirate by requesting to be left aboard Nimrod. She has too many questions and perhaps her husband’s ship holds some answersâ€¦

As Vivian find a grimy journal and begins to read, aboard the Neptune nobody really cares that Moxtechica has gone missingâ€¦ but they shouldâ€¦

To Be Concludedâ€¦

Tense, evocative, shockingly powerful and eerily, magnificently realised, these further exploits of Long John Silver are a modern masterpiece of adventure fiction worthy of Stevenson’s immortal adventure. They might even convince a few more folks to actually read the original novelâ€¦
Â© Dargaud, Paris, 2010 by Dorison & Lauffray. All rights reserved. English translation Â© 2011 Cinebook Ltd.

October 20, 2015

Crisis on Multiple Earths: the Team-Ups volume 2

By John Broome, Gardner Fox, Mike Friedrich, Neal Adams, Murphy Anderson, Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1228-5

Super-Editor Julius Schwartz ushered in the Silver Age of American Comics with his Showcase successes Flash, Adam Strange and Green Lantern, directly leading to the Justice League of America which in turn inspired Fantastic Four and the whole Marvel Empire and changed the way comics were made and readâ€¦

Whereas the 1940s were about magic and macho, the Silver Age polished everything with a thick veneer of SCIENCE and a wave of implausible rationalistic concepts quickly filtered into the dawning mass-consciousness of a generation of baby-boomer kids.

The most intriguing and rewarding was, of course, the notion of parallel worldsâ€¦

It all began, naturally enough, in The Flash, flagship title of the Silver Age Revolution. After ushering in the triumphant return of the costumed superhero concept, the Crimson Comet, with key writers Gardner Fox and John Broome at the reins, set an unbelievably high standard for superhero adventure in sharp, witty tales of technology and imagination, illustrated with captivating style and clean simplicity by Carmine Infantino.

Fox didn’t write many Flash scripts at this time, but those few he did were all dynamite; none more so than the full-length epic which literally changed the scope of American comics forever.

‘Flash of Two Worlds’ (Flash #123, September 1961) introduced the theory of alternate Earths to the continuity which grew by careful extension into a multiversal structure comprising Infinite Earths. Once established as a cornerstone of a newly integrated DCU through a wealth of team-ups and escalating succession of cosmos-shaking crossover sagas, a glorious pattern was set which would, after joyous decades, eventually culminate in a spectacular Crisis on Infinite Earthsâ€¦

During a benefit gig Flash (police scientist Barry Allen) accidentally slips into another dimension where he finds the comic-book hero upon whom he based his own superhero identity actually exists. Every adventure he had absorbed as an eager child was grim reality to Jay Garrick and his comrades on the controversially designated â€œEarth-2â€. Locating his idol, Barry convinced the elder to come out of retirement just as three Golden Age villains were making their own wicked comebackâ€¦

The floodgates were opened, as over the months that followed many Earth-1 stalwarts met their counterparts either in annual collaborations in the pages of Justice League of America or in their own series. Schwartz even had a game go at reviving a cadre of the older titans in their own titles. Public approval was decidedly vocal and he used DC’s try-out magazines to take the next step: stories set on Earth-2 exclusively featuring Golden Age characters.

Showcase #55 and 56 saw Doctor Fate and Hourman as a dynamic duo battling Solomon Grundy and the Psycho-Pirate and, still searching for an concept that would support its own series, Schwartz, Fox and Murphy Anderson debuted the team of Starman and Black Canary in The Brave and the Bold #61 (September-October 1965); the first of two stunning sagas which somehow led to nothingâ€¦

All those stories can be found in the previous edition (Crisis on Multiple Earths: the Team-Ups volume 1) whilst this second splendid collection – chronologically re-presenting The Atom #29 & 36, Flash #170 & 173, Green Lantern #45 & 52 and The Spectre #3 , cumulatively spanning October/November 1965 to April/May 1968 – opens with Brave & Bold #62 and a second Starman/Black Canary case wherein the resurgent champions ferociously face off against husband-and-wife criminals Huntress and Sportsmaster who had been stalking superheroes for kicks and profit. By the time Feline Fury Wildcat became their victim our heroes were on the case and ready for anythingâ€¦

This compelling thriller was originally augmented by a text feature biography of the original Starman and that is reprinted here before Earth-2 Emerald Gladiator Alan Scott reunites with â€œourâ€ Hal Jordan (Green Lantern #45, June 1966, by Broome, Gil Kane & Sid Greene) to thwart ‘Prince Peril’s Power Play’ as Scott’s comedy foil Doiby Dickles was romanced by an alien princess. The only fly in their ointment was a gigantic and ambitious space warrior who needed her to cement his own plans for conquest, but judicious use of green energies soon taught him that nobody likes a pushy tyrant…

Earth-2’s Tiny Titan was Al Pratt, a short man with super-strength, whilst we had size changing physicist Ray Palmer. When they met in Atom #27 (February/March 1967, by Fox, Kane & Greene) it was for an all-out cataclysmic clash between the Mighty Mites and one of the most dangerous villains of DC’s Golden Age in ‘The Thinker’s Earth-Shaking Robberies!’

With Green Lantern #52 (Broome & Kane, April 1967) Alan Scott and Doiby popped over from Earth-2 to aid Hal against the scurrilous return of his arch nemesis Sinestro in camp-crazed and frankly rather peculiar fight-frenzied fist-fest ‘Our Mastermind, the Car!’ after which a brace of Scarlet Speedsters at long last reunited in Flash #170 to face the ‘The See-Nothing Spells of Abra Kadabra!’ (May 1967 by Broome, Infantino & Greene) which found the Vizier of Velocity hexed by the cunning conjuror and rendered unable to detect the villain’s actions or presence.

Sadly for the sinister spellbinder, Jay Garrick was visiting and called on the services of JSA pals Doctors Fate and Mid-Nite to counteract the wicked wizard’s wilesâ€¦

Promptly following, Flash #173 (September 1967 by Broome, Infantino & Greene again) featured a titanic team-up as Barry, Wally â€œKid Flashâ€ West and Jay were sequentially shanghaied to another galaxy as putative prey for alien hunter Golden Man in ‘Doomward Flight of the Flashes!’

However, the sneaky script slowly revealed devilish layers of intrigue and his Andromedan super-safari concealed a far more arcane purpose for the three speedy pawns, before the wayward wanderers finally fought free and found their way home againâ€¦

Eventually Schwartz finally achieved the ambition of launching a Golden Age hero into his own title; sadly just as the superhero bubble was bursting and supernatural stories were again on the rise…

After three Showcase appearances and many guest-shots, The Spectre won his own book at the end of 1967. From #3 (March/April 1968) comes this all Earth-2 team-up by neophyte scripter Mike Friedrich and artistic iconoclast Neal Adams which exposed the ‘Menace of the Mystic Mastermind’ wherein pugilistic paragon Wildcat confronted head-on the inevitable prospect of age and infirmity even as an inconceivable force from another universe possessed petty thug Sad Jack Dold and turned him into a nigh-unstoppable force of cosmic chaosâ€¦

This fabulous peek into forgotten worlds and times concludes with one of the very best team-up tales of the Silver Age as the Earth-2 Atom returns in ‘Duel Between the Dual Atoms’ (April/May 1968, by Fox, Kane & Greene) wherein a radiation plague plays hob with victim’s ages on both worlds simultaneously. Sadly the deadly situation also turns normally hyper-rational Ray Palmer into an enraged maniac and almost more than his aging counterpart can handleâ€¦

Still irresistible and compellingly beautiful after all these years, the stories collected here shaped the American comics industry for decades and are still influencing not only today’s funnybooks but also the wave animated shows, movies and TV series which grew from them. These are tales and this is a book you simply must have.

October 19, 2015October 18, 2015

Showcase Presents Weird War Tales volume 1

By Robert Kanigher, Bob Haney, Bill Finger, Sheldon Mayer, Jack Oleck, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, Dennis O’Neil, Russ Heath, Mort Drucker, Frank Thorne, Alex Toth, Reed Crandall, Sam Glanzman, John Severin, Howard Chaykin, Ed Davis, Frank Robbins, Nestor Redondo, George Evans, Alex NiÃ±o, Russ Heath, Neal Adams & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3694-6

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Inventive, Intense and Intoxicatingâ€¦ 9/10

American comicbooks just idled along rather slowly until the invention of Superman provided a flamboyant new genre of heroes and subsequently unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and imaginative generation for a suddenly thriving and voracious new entertainment model.

Implacably vested in World War II, these gaudily-attired mystery men swept all before them until the troops came home, but as the decade closed more traditional themes and heroes began to resurface and eventually supplant the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Even as a new generation of kids began buying and collecting, many of the first fans who had retained their four-colour habit increasingly sought more mature themes in their pictorial reading matter. The war years and post-war paranoia had irrevocably altered the psychological landscape of the readership and as a more world-weary, cynical young public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything, their chosen forms of entertainment (film, theatre and prose as well as comics) increasingly reflected this.

To balance the return of Western, War and Crime and imminent Atomic Armageddon-fuelled Science Fiction comics, celebrity tie-ins, madcap escapist or teen-oriented comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features sprang up, but gradually another of the cyclical revivals of spiritualism and a public fascination with the arcane led to a wave of impressive, evocative and shockingly addictive horror comics.

There had been grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in superhero trappings but these had been victims of circumstance: The Unknown as a power source for super-heroics. Now focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped on an increasingly popular bandwagon, with B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launching the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948, although their Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon. The book and comics publisher had released an impressive single issue entitled Eerie in January 1947 but didn’t follow-up with a regular series until 1951.

Classics Illustrated had already secured the literary end of the medium with child-friendly comics adaptations of The Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

If we’re keeping score this was also the period in which Joe Simon & Jack Kirby identified another â€œmature marketâ€ gap and invented Romance comics (Young Romance #1, September 1947) but they too saw the sales potential for spooky material, resulting in the seminal Black Magic (launched in 1950) and boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams (1952).

The company which would become DC Comics bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

After the hysterical censorship debate which led to witch-hunting Senate hearings in the early 1950s was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulation, titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, but the audience’s appetite for suspense was still high and in 1956 National introduced sister titles Tales of the Unexpected and House of Secrets.

Stories were dialled back from uncanny spooky yarns to always marvellously illustrated, rationalistic fantasy-adventure vehicles and, eventually, straight monster-busting Sci Fi tales which dominated the market into the 1960s. That’s when super-heroes – which had gradually enjoyed their own visionary revival after Julius Schwartz reintroduced the Flash in Showcase #4 – finally overtook them.

Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and a growing coterie of costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked mavens which forced previously staunchly uncompromising anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character books. Even ACG slipped tights and masks onto its spooky stars.

When the caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, superheroes began dropping like Kryptonite-gassed flies. However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and, at the end of the 1960s with the cape-and-cowl boom over and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain, the surviving publishers of the field agreed to revise the Comics Code, loosening their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics.

Nobody much cared about gangster titles but, as the liberalisation coincided with yet another bump in public interest concerning supernatural themes, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious â€œno-brainer.â€

Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle Chillersâ€¦

Thus, with absolutely no fanfare at all horror comics came back and quickly dominated the American funnybook market for more the next half decade. DC led the pack: converting House of Mystery and Tales of the Unexpected into supernatural suspense anthologies in 1968 and resurrecting House of Secrets a year later.

Such was not the case with war comics. Tales of ordinary guys in combat began with the industry itself and although mostly sidelined during the capes-&-cowls war years, quickly began to assert themselves again once the actual fighting stopped.

National/DC were one of the last publishers to get in on the combat act, converting superhero/fantasy adventure anthology Star Spangled Comics into Star Spangled War Stories the same month it launched and Our Army at War (both cover-dated August 1952) and promptly repurposing All-American Comics into All-American Men of War a month later as the â€œpolice actionâ€ in Korea escalated.

They grew the division slowly but steadily, adding Our Fighting Forces #1 (November 1954) – just as EC’s groundbreaking combat comics were vanishing – and in 1957 added GI Combat to their portfolio when Quality Comics got out of the funnybook business.

As the 1950s closed however the two-fisted anthologies all began to incorporate recurring characters such as Gunner and Sarge – and latterly Pooch – from Our Fighting Forces #45 on, (May 1959), Sgt Rock (Our Army at War #83 (June 1959) and The Haunted Tank (G.I. Combat #87, April/May 1961) and soon all DC war titles had a lead star or feature to hold the fickle readers’ attention. The drive to produce superior material never wavered however, hugely aided by the diligent and meticulous ministrations of writer/editor Robert Kanigher.

In America after the demise of EC Comics in the mid-1950’s and prior to the game-changing Blazing Combat, the only certain place to find controversial, challenging and entertaining American war comics was DC. In fact, even whilst Archie Goodwin’s stunning but tragically mis-marketed quartet of classics were waking up a new generation of readers in the 1960s, the home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman was a veritable cornucopia of gritty, intriguing and beautifully illustrated battle tales presenting warfare on a variety of fronts and from many differing points of view.

Whilst the Vietnam War escalated, 1960s America increasingly endured a Homefront death-struggle pitting deeply-ingrained Establishment social attitudes against a youth-oriented generation with a radical new sensibility. In response the military-themed comicbooks from National Periodical Publishing, as it then was, became even more bold and innovativeâ€¦

However the sudden downturn in superheroes at the end of the 1960s led to some serious rethinking here and although the war titles maintained and even built sales they beefed up the anthological elements.

Thus in 1971 a title combining supernatural horror stories with bombastic battle yarns in an anthological setting seemed a forgone conclusion and sure thing to both publishers and readers alike and this economically epic monochrome tome collects the contents of Weird War Stories #1-21 (cover-dated September/October 1971 to January 1974), offering a broad blend of genre mash-ups for readers with a taste for the dark and uncanny to relish.

The series launched in a 52-page format combining new material with adapted reprints featuring a veritable Who’s Who of top flight creative talent – both seasoned veterans and stars in waiting – and #1 saw Editor Joe Kubert writing and illustrating an eerie linking story entitled ‘Let Me Tell You of the Things I’ve Seen’ as a lost GI stumbles into the personification of Death (the title’s long-term narrator in various blood-stained uniforms) who tells him a few storiesâ€¦

The reaper began with ‘Fort Which Did Not Return!’ by Robert Kanigher & Russ Heath as originally seen in GI Combat #86, detailing how a bomber continued its mission even after the crew bailed out and followed up with all-new ‘The Story behind the Cover’ wherein Kubert revealed how a shunned German soldier carried on his duties after deathâ€¦

From Star Spangled War Stories #71 (July 1958) Bob Haney & Kubert revealed ‘The End of the Sea Wolf!’ as a sadistic U-Boat captain was sunk by one of his own earlier victims whilst SSWS #116 (August/September 1964) originally saw France Herron & Irv Novick’s ‘Baker’s Dozen’ with a fresh-faced replacement to a super-superstitious platoon battling to prove he’s not their unlucky thirteenth manâ€¦

The issue ends with that lost GI realising just who has been telling tales in Kubert’s ‘You Must Go!’â€¦

The reprints included in these early issues were all taken from a time when supernatural themes were proscribed by the Comics Code Authority, but even so they all held fast to eerie aura of sinister uncertainty – the merest hint of the strange and uncanny to leaven the usual blood and thunder of battle booksâ€¦

In Weird War Tales #2 Kubert reprised his bridging vehicle as ‘Lookâ€¦ and Listenâ€¦’ saw a crashed Stuka pilot meeting a ghastly stranger at a battle-torn desert oasis before ‘Reef of No Return’ (by Haney & Mort Drucker from Our Fighting Forces #43, March 1959) detailed a determined frogman’s most dangerous mission and Kanigher & Frank Thorne’s new WWI silent saga ‘The Moon is the Murderer’ proved that overwhelming firepower isn’t everythingâ€¦

Kubert’s ‘Behind the Cover’ featured a prophetic dream and terrifying telegram after which ‘A Promise to Joe!’ (Kanigher & Novick, G.I. Combat #97 (December 1962-January 1963) sees a dead gunner seemingly save his friend from beyond the grave and the superb ‘Monsieur Gravedigger’ – by Jerry DeFuccio & the legendary Reed Crandall – follows the follies of a sadistic Foreign Legionnaire who pushed his comrades too farâ€¦

Cartoonist John Costanza delivers some gag-filled ‘Military Madness’ and Kubert & Sam Glanzman offer a fact-packed ‘Sgt. Rock’s Battle Stations’ about ‘The Grenadier’ before Bill Finger, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito examine a young recruit’s rite of passage and development of ‘The Face of a Fighter’ (Our Fighting Forces #25, September 1957) after which ‘Oasis’ concludes the sorry saga of that downed Aryan airmanâ€¦

American Naval Aviators ditching at sea were the unwilling audience for Death’s stories as WWT #3 opens with Kubert’s ‘Listenâ€¦’

The itinerary starts with ‘Been Here Before!’ (Finger, Andru & Esposito, G.I. Combat #44 January 1957) as a soldier under fire turns his mind back to boyhood games to save the day after which we see an aerial battle and parachute drop from the perspective of ‘The Cloud That Went to War!’ (Our Fighting Forces #17, January 1957 by Dave Wood, Andru & Esposito).

More Costanza comedy from ‘The Kreepy Korps!’ precedes an early tale by relative newcomers Len Wein & Marv Wolfman, ably illustrated by Russ Heath as both cave tribes and modern soldiers battle to possess ‘The Pool’, before the artists earlier collaboration with Bob Haney reveals how ‘Combat Size!’ is all a matter of mental attitude in a tale first seen in Our Army at War #66 (January 1958).

Glanzman’s ‘Battle Album’ explains ‘Flying Guns’ after which a finny friend helps a US submarine sink an aircraft carrier in Finger & Drucker’s ‘Pilot for a Sub!’ (Our Army at War #68, March 1958) before the issue ends as Kubert sends a ‘Lifeboat’ for those tragic aviatorsâ€¦

The fourth issue opens with Kubert’s final linking tale as a ‘Gypsy Girl’ and her family find wounded soldier Tony after his buddy runs off to get a medic. They kindly offer to pass time with him sharing stories such as ‘Ghost Ship of Two Wars’ (Kanigher & Novick from All-American Men of War #81, September 1960) wherein an obsessed WWI pilot seemingly slips into 1944 while pursuing of his unbeatable arch-enemy the Black Ace.

‘Time Warp’ by Kanigher and Gene Colan originally appeared as ‘The Dinosaur who Ate Torpedoes!’‘ in Star Spangled War Stories #123 (October/November 1965 and part of the uniquely bizarre War That Time Forgot series), pitting US frogmen against colossal sea-going saurians, after which ‘The Unknown Sentinel’ (by author unknown & Mort Meskin from House of Mystery #55, October 1956) saves the lives of two soldiers lost on manoeuvres on America’s most famous battlefield.

Glanzman then offers one of his magnificently engaging autobiographical USS Stevens vignettes with the all-new elegiac ‘Prelude’ before Kubert wraps up his chilling drama as ‘I Know Them to be True’ sees medics arriving to find Tony a much changed man, leaving Costanza to close things down with a laugh and some ‘Military Madness’â€¦

Weird War Tales #5 opens with Haney & Alex Toth providing the book-end tale of ‘The Prisoner’ held by Nazis in Italy. Seeking a way out he recalls tales of escape such as ‘The Toy Jet!’ (Haney & Heath from All-American Men of War #78, March/April 1960), a chilling psychological thriller about an interned pilot in North Korea, and ‘Human Trigger’ (Herron, Andru & Esposito, Star Spangled War Stories #18, February 1954) which shows how a soldier lying on a mine deftly saves his own lifeâ€¦

Herron & Carmine Infantino then reveal how an American spy is forced to ‘Face a Firing Squad!’ (SSWS #14, November 1953) and Norman Maurer instructs with the history of ‘Medal of Honour: Corporal Gerry Kisters’ and Willi Franz & Heath detail the victory of a ‘Slave’ in Roman times before Haney & Toth offer a final release in ‘This Is It!’

Issue #6 saw Weird War drop to a standard 36 page package and take a step into tomorrow with Haney & Toth’s battlefield test of ‘Robots’. Wolfman & Thorne expanded the theme in ‘Pawns’ as humans and mechanoids finally decided who worked for whom whilst ‘Goliath of the Western Front!’ (Herron, Andru & Esposito from SSWS #93 (October/November 1960) featured a giant mechanical Nazi and an American David who finally did for him, before Haney & Toth settled all debate with the conclusive ‘Robot Fightin’ Men’â€¦

Wolfman & Kubert combined to provide thematic bookends for issue #7, beginning with ‘Out of Action’ with wounded GIs awaiting the worst and trading tales like William Woolfolk, Jerry Grandenetti & Joe Giella’s ‘Flying Blind’ (Our Army at War #12 July 1953) as a wounded pilot was forced to trust someone else for the first time in his life if he wanted to land his burning jet, whilst Kanigher & Kubert’s ‘The 50-50 War!’ (All-American Men of War #41, January 1957) finds sporting rivals forced to help each other after both suffer injuries on an alpine mission, with Costanza adding more much-needed levity through his ‘Military Hall of Fame’â€¦

‘The Three GIs’ (Finger & Heath, SSWS #62, October 1957) riffs smartly on those monkeys who respectively can’t see, hear and speak and the Purple Heart yarns end with Wolfman & Kubert’s chilling ‘I Can’t See’â€¦

From #8 editorial control switched to the mystery division under the control of Joe Orlando and with it the reprints were shelved in favour of all-original material as publication frequency graduated from six times a year to monthly.

This all German-focused issue begins with a gruesome ‘Guide to No-Man’s Land’ (probably written by assistant editor E. Nelson Bridwell and illustrated by Tony DeZuniga) before moving on to ‘The Avenging Grave’ by Kanigher & DeZuniga with SS officers learning too late the folly of desecrating the dead of WWI, whilst anonymously scripted ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill!’ – with art by Steve Harper & Neal Adams – sees more gloating Nazis facing a vengeful golemâ€¦

Kanigher & DeZuniga then return to reveal the fate of an arrogant 1916 air ace in the skies over No-Man’s Land in ‘Duel of the Dead’ before the artist’s ‘Epilogue’ wraps things upâ€¦

Weird War Tales #9 invites us to ‘Enter the Portals of War’ in an introduction drawn by Howard Chaykin, swiftly followed by a trio of Kanigher yarns illustrated by the cream of DC’s Filipino artists.

‘The Promise’ was limned by Alfredo P. Alcala, telling a tale in two eras as both Teutonic knights in 1242 and German tankers seven centuries later fail to cross frozen Lake Chud, whilst Gerry Talaoc renders the disastrous end of deathly, determined ‘Blood Brothers!’ during the American Civil War and the incomparable Alex NiÃ±o details ‘The Last Battle’ between East and West before Chaykin pops back to declare ‘Death, the Ultimate Winner’.

Sheldon Mayer & Toth open WWT #10 with a deliciously whimsical ghostly love story in ‘Who is Haunting the Haunted Chateau?’ before Raymond Marais & Quico Redondo change the tone as a Death-Camp commandant returns after the war to salvage his ill-gotten gains from ‘The Room that Remembered’ whilst Wein & Walter Simonson – on the artist’s pro comics debut – reveal how invading Nazis shouldn’t have abused the town idiot and incurred the wrath of ‘Cyrano’s Army’â€¦

Always experimental, the creative team of Mayer, DeZuniga, Alcala, Talaoc & NiÃ±o tried their hand at a time-twisting complete adventure for issue #11. Occurring on ‘October 30′ over 99 years beginning in 1918, the tale compares the progress of an ambitious German General granted a wish for glory by a treacherous spirit of war with three ghostly Americans determined to fix a long-standing mistake whatever the costâ€¦

DeZuniga draws the introduction to #12, featuring tales of ‘Egypt’ starting with Kanigher & Talaoc’s tale of an ancient warlord who learned to regret spitting on the ‘God of Vengeance’, whilst ‘Hand of Hell’ (Kanigher & DeZuniga) saw Anubis similarly deal with one of Rommel’s least reputable and most sadistic deputies, after which Arnold Drake & Don Perlin switch locales to Roman Britain where a centurion takes an accidental time-trip and ultimately overthrows the Druids in ‘The Warrior and the Witch-Doctors!’â€¦

Weird War Tales #13 opens with ‘The Die-Hards’ by Jack Oleck & Nestor Redondo, with Nazis realising there are even worse killers than they haunting their latest conquered village before Drake & NiÃ±o determine that ‘Old Samurai Never Die’ when a would-be shogun offends the patron spirit of Bushido and ‘Loser’s Luck’ by Michael J. Pellowski, George Kashdan & DeZuniga details the harsh choices facing the unfortunate winners of the next, last warâ€¦

Mayer, DeZuniga & Alcala unite in #14 to tell an eerie tale of doomed love and military injustice from the days before Pearl Harbor which begins with a ‘Dream of Disaster’, incorporates a deadly flight with a ‘Phantom for a Co-Pilot’ and marines who arrive ‘Too Late for the Death March!’ before finally meeting ‘The Ghost of McBride’s Woman’ and vindicating an unsung heroâ€¦

A little boy enamoured of war’s glory learns a lesson in WWT # 15 when his dead grandfather takes him back to WWI to see how ‘â€œAceâ€ King Just Flew in from Hell’ (Drake & Perlin) after which Oleck & Talaoc reveal the doom of ‘The Survivor’ of a Viking raid which offends a sorceress, and Oleck & Alcala detail the shocking fate of a fanatical crusader who succumbs to ‘The Ultimate Weapon’ of a Saracen wise manâ€¦

Drake & Alcala describe transplant science gone mad in #16’s ‘More Dead than Alive!’, whilst the first of a NiÃ±o double bill sees him delineate ‘The Conquerors’ (scripted by Oleck) who eradicate humanity – but not the things that predate on them – before Drake’s ‘Evil Eye’ sees a little boy inflict hell’s wrath on both Allies and Axis alike.

In #17 Kanigher & George Evans disclose how a dishonourable French Air Ace is punished by ‘Dead Man’s Hands’ before Pellowski, E. Nelson Bridwell & Ernie Chan show how a murdered soldier is avenged by ‘A Gun Named Marie!‘

WWT #18 has Drake & DeZuniga sketch the brief career of ‘Captain Dracula!‘ as he marauds through (mostly) German forces in Sicily before Mayer & Talaoc reunite for the cautionary tale of a greedy German sergeant in France whose greed makes him easy prey for the ‘Whim of a Phantom!’

Drake & Talaoc started #19 with the full-length story of the agent who infiltrated the Nazi terror weapon known as ‘The Platoon That Wouldn’t Die!’ whilst #20 reverted to short stories with Oleck & Perlin’s ‘Death Watch’ of a doomed coward who should have waited one more day before deserting, Drake & Alcala’s period saga of a witchcraft vendetta in ‘Operation: Voodoo!’ followed by their Battle of Britain chiller wherein a burned out fighter pilot learns ‘Death is a Green Man’â€¦

This blockbusting blend of military mayhem, magical melee and martial madness concludes with Weird War Tales #21 and ‘One Hour to Kill!’ by Drake & Frank Robbins wherein an American soldier is ordered to go back in time to assassinate Leonardo Da Vinci and prevent the invention of automatic weapons before Mayer & Bernard Baily show just how a foul-up GI became an unstoppable hero ‘When Death Took a Hand’â€¦

Classily chilling, emotionally intense, superbly illustrated, insanely addictive and Just Plain Fun, this is a deliciously guilty pleasure that will astound and delight any lover of fantasy fiction and comics that work on plot invention rather than character compulsion.
Â© 1971, 1972, 1973, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

October 16, 2015October 15, 2015

Secret Invasion: Captain Marvel

By Brian Reed, Paul Jenkins, Lee Weeks, Tom Raney & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2422-1

The Skrulls are shape-shifting aliens who’ve bedevilled Earth since Fantastic Four #2, and they have long been a pernicious cornerstone of the Marvel Universe. After decades of use, abuse and misuse the insidious invaders finally proved their villainous worth as the sinister stars of a colossal braided mega-crossover event beginning in April 2008 and running through all titles until Christmas.

The premise of Secret Invasion is simple: the would-be alien conquerors, having barely survived a devastating disaster which destroyed much of their empire, subsequently undergo a mass, fundamentalist religious conversion. The upshot is that the majority of the survivors believe now Earth is their new Promised Land and ultimate holy homeworld.

They are now utterly resolved and dedicated to take the planet at all costs.

To this end they have ever-so-gradually replaced a number of key Earth denizens – most notably superheroes and other metahumans. When their plot is at last uncovered no defender of the Earth truly knows who is on their sideâ€¦

Moreover the cosmic charlatans have also unravelled the secrets of Earth magic and genetic superpowers, creating amped-up equivalents to Earth’s mightiest. They are now primed and able to destroy the world’s heroic defenders in face-to-face confrontations.

Rather than give too much away, let me just say that if you like this sort of thing you’ll love it and a detailed familiarity is not crucial to your understanding.

However, for a more complete experience, you will want to see the other 22 â€œSecret Invasionâ€ volumes that accompany this one, although at a pinch you could get by with only the key collection Secret Invasion – which contains the 8-issue core miniseries, one-shot spin-off â€œWho Do You Trust?â€ and illustrated textbook â€œSkrullsâ€ which claims to provide a listing and biography for every shape-shifter yet encountered in the Marvel Universe (but if they left any out, who could tell?).

Back in 1968 Captain Mar-Vell was a dutiful soldier of the alien Kree empire dispatched to Earth as a spy. However due to interaction with humans – especially American Security Agent Carol Danvers – he subsequently went native, becoming first a hero and then the cosmically â€œawareâ€ protector of the universe, destined since life began to be its champion in its darkest hour.

In concert with the Avengers and other heroes he defeated death-worshipping Thanos, just as the mad Titan transformed into God, after which the good Captain went on to become a universal force for good.

In the early 1980s, due to the long-lasting effects of a skirmish with super-maniac Nitro, Mar-Vell died of cancer.

That event was one of the major tragedies of Marvel continuity and the company has had a fair few stabs since at reviving the beloved warrior, as well as passing his name around a legion of legacy heroes – as much to keep fans happy as to retain the all-important copyrightâ€¦

Gathering relevant sections of Civil War: The Return (March 2007) and subsequent 5-issue miniseries Captain Marvel from January-Jun 2008) this slim, sleek tome again addresses that need to restore the original and begins with a short tale set during the Civil War between Earth’s heroes.

Scripted by Paul Jenkins and illustrated by Tom Raney & Scott Hanna, ‘Captains Courageous: the Return of Captain Marvel’ finds the dead warrior inexplicably back and in command of America’s Negative Zone-situated prison for metahuman malefactors. However, as the penitentiary suffers a massive assault by the ravenous creatures that infest the anti-matter universe, flashbacks reveal that the troubled Kree has only been in situ for days.

Prior to that he had been calmly meditating in the Neg Zone before being irresistibly sucked into a time-warp and washing up in his own future. An astute sort, he quickly deduced from shocked friends in the Avengers and Fantastic Four that he had returned after his own death, and meekly acquiesced when they all suggested he stay out of sight by taking charge of the fortress quickly filling up with resistors of the Government’s new Super-Human Registration Actâ€¦

The saga skips neatly to after the Civil War for Brian Reed & Lee Weeks’ 5-chapter epic (inked by Stefan Gaudiano, Jesse Delperdang, Rob Campanella, Butch Guice & Klaus Janson), which commences with ‘I Am Here’ as American Security Chief and Director of SHIELD Tony Stark assigns Agent Heather Sante to keep tabs on the Kree Warrior.

Since returning to Earth Mar-Vell has spent most of his time quietly brooding – especially about Alexander the Great, who also died at 33 years old – and has become obsessed with a certain painting in the Louvre.

However, after a brief clash with European super-criminal Cyclone calls him back into action, word of Captain Marvel’s resurrection spreads. The biggest repercussion is upon fringe whacko cult â€œThe Brotherhood of Halaâ€ who are suddenly galvanised into massive expansion and propelled towards the realms of a genuine religionâ€¦

World-weary journalist Nathan Jefferson has been on the trail of the strange sect for years: ever since heiress Julia Starr renamed herself Mother Starr and turned all her financial assets to promoting the gospel of Mar-Vell.

The hero himself seems unaware of the cult but his desire for anonymous reflection is frustrated when a colossal robot almost slaughters the Avengers and he is forced to spectacularly save the dayâ€¦

‘Reconstruction’ opens with Mar-Vell a reluctant global sensation and apparently only Nathan Jefferson worried that the public is treating a masked man like the Messiah Reborn.

Mar-Vell, as befits a potential Saviour, is taking constant stock of himself and is deeply worried that he has gaps in his memories. Most disturbingly he has somehow lost his greatest ability: the â€œCosmic Awarenessâ€ which puts him in touch with the entire universe.

He still cannot stop staring at that painting eitherâ€¦

Stark is also concerned. Mar-Vell is still a wanted outlaw to the Kree and all attempts at contacting the Empire are being blocked. With no other option he asks Carol Danvers – now known as Avengers team-leader Ms Marvel – to have a heart-to-heart with her old friend and almost-loverâ€¦

Typically their intimate conversation is cut short when supposedly-dead Cobalt Man inexplicably attacksâ€¦

Later whilst Nathan attempts to infiltrate the ascendant Church of Hala and is caught by some extremely unpleasant acolytes, Iron Man personally tries to interrogate Mar-Vell but is interrupted by a team of attacking Kree commandosâ€¦

The marauders are far from what they appear and ‘Deep Background’ reveals the first hints of a deadly cosmic conspiracy with the time-lost Captain Marvel as its target. The not-Kree intruders are soon subdued and as Stark begins the laborious task of getting useful intel out of the survivors, across the country Nathan is now a convert to the Church of Hala.

The organisation has spread like wildfire around the globe and is now one of the most powerful charities and most effective providers of war and famine relief on Earthâ€¦

Agent Sante has also infiltrated the new church and discovered something terrifying lurking at its heart. She is in fear of her life even as the transplanted Mar-Vell is made painfully aware that his oldest foes are somehow involved.

Troubled and turbulent, the prospective Kree messiah begins to see Skrulls everywhere and demands that Carol prove herself humanâ€¦

When a prisoner challenges everything the foredoomed warrior believes, the result in ‘Alien Hated’ is hardly what the duplicitous, mind-muddling shapeshifter expected. Mar-Vell goes on a brutal rampage, abandoning his superhero friends before flying off to meet with pious Mother Starr and involving himself in her relief efforts in Sudan.

Unfortunately when militant rebels attack the Mission all his pent-up frustration comes out in another murderous display of Kree military training, before he apparently accepts his destiny as saviour and publicly demands Earth end all warâ€¦

In climactic finale ‘Orthodox’, with the international crisis now threatening to become a global catastrophe, Stark orders Ms Marvel to deal with the tormented Kree warrior but the duel in Negative Zone goes badly wrong and Mar-Vell emerges even stronger with his memories restored. With knowledge that a Secret Invasion by the Skrulls is already underway the time-traveller joins with Agent Sante and begins a clandestine war against the hidden infiltrators that will eventually change Earth foreverâ€¦

To Be Continued Elsewhereâ€¦

Thoughtful, suspenseful and wickedly clever, this Byzantine prologue to the Main Event is a powerful examination of the nature and motivations of heroes: a quirky, moving, and winningly low-key epic which is supplemented here with a striking cover and variants gallery by Ed McGuiness, Dexter Vines and Terry and Rachel Dodson.

Oddly although part of a massive story-event this quirky yarn actually has legs of its own and stands up quite well when read in isolation but although impressive and entertaining, this great Fights ‘n’ Tights will truly benefit from you checking out the collections Secret Invasion: the Infiltration, Avengers Disassembled, as well as the rather pivotal New Avengers: Illuminati graphic novel.
Â© 2007, 2008, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

October 15, 2015October 14, 2015

Blake and Mortimer: The Time Trap

By Edgar P. Jacobs, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-214-0

Pre-eminent fantasy raconteur Edgar P. Jacobs devised one of the greatest heroic double acts in fiction: pitting his distinguished Scientific Adventurers Professor Philip Mortimer and Captain Francis Blake against a wide variety of perils and menaces in a stellar sequence of stunning action thrillers which merged science fiction scope, detective mystery suspense and supernatural thrills. The magic was made perfect through his stunning illustrations rendered in the timeless Ligne claire style which had made intrepid boy-reporter Tintin a global sensation.

The Doughty Duo debuted in the very first issue of Le Journal de Tintin (26^th September 1946): an ambitious international anthology comic with editions in Belgium, France and Holland. The magazine was edited by HergÃ©, with his eponymous star ably supplemented by a host of new heroes and features for the post-war worldâ€¦

The Time Trap comes from a transitional period when the entire world seemed to be changing. The tale was originally serialised from January 8^th 1958 to 22^nd April 1959 and subsequently collected in a single album, as B & M’s eighth drama-drenched epic album escapade, six months after the conclusion. However, as befitted the times, this largely solo saga seemed to offer faster, leaner drama and stripped-down action in bigger, less dense panelsâ€¦

It was only recently translated by Cinebook (2014 as their 19^th Blake and Mortimer release), and begins here with the heroes relaxing in Paris when Mortimer gets a rather shocking message. Not long before, the incomparable boffin had been instrumental in foiling the plans of diabolical Professor Milosh Georgevich who used the vast resources of an aggressor nation to weaponise the weather (as seen in SOS Meteors) in advance of an audacious scheme to invade France, and now the villain has seemingly communicated from beyond the graveâ€¦

The literally mad scientist was believed to have perished and now word comes that he has bequeathed to Mortimer – the only man he considered an intellectual equal – his estate as well as his last and greatest inventionâ€¦

With his naturally suspicious comrade called to Germany on another Secret Service errand, the Professor slowly motors alone down to rural La Roche-Guyon and – still looking for traps – cautiously inspects the 10^th century house known locally as â€œThe Bove of the Maidenâ€ bequeathed to him by Milosh.

The idyllic setting, complete with haunted, legend-drenched castle, is not one to likely to set off any alarms in his bemused headâ€¦

What he finds in the deep cellars beneath his new property defies belief and comprehension. As described in recorded messages Georgevich had solved the mystery of time travel and, since he was dying of radiation poisoning, wanted his incredible device to be used by the only other person who could truly appreciate the scope of his geniusâ€¦

In a daze the still sceptical Mortimer follows the taped instructions, donning the protective suit provided before activating the vehicle. Only as the â€œChronoscapheâ€ rumbles into action and deposits him a terrifying antediluvian world of colossal plants, rampaging dinosaurs and marauding giant bugs does he realise how he has been trickedâ€¦

Against all his expectations the time machine works, landing him in a fantastic lost realm. Sadly the machine’s selector controls have been sabotaged, leaving Mortimer no way to returnâ€¦

Devilish Milosh however has not counted on his dupe’s steely determination, expansive brilliance and sheer stubbornness, and before long the Professor is hurtling forward 100,000,000 years through eternity, roughly calculating in his shaggy head his original point of origin.

He’s not far off in his sums, relatively. The cellar is indeed the one he first found the Chronoscaphe in, but some time before Georgevich built his lab. Realising he needs to know the exact date before he can fine-tune his calibrations Mortimer works his way through the tunnels towards the surface and promptly finds himself in the midst of a feudal rebellionâ€¦

Gui de la Roche is not a benevolent overlord and is currently losing control of his lands to an uprising of his Serfs. The petty tyrant is understandably unhappy and suspicious when a strangely dressed Englishman drops into the middle of the conflict, babbling like a loon. The ill-educated peasants simply think he’s a demonâ€¦

Mortimer barely makes it back to the Chronoscaphe and in his haste overshoots his desired destination, encountering a few bizarre temporal manifestations as he plunges far into a dystopian futureâ€¦

Finding himself embroiled in an all-out war to liberate mankind from an insidious global dictator, the Professor’s insights wedded to the technology of a broken future soon topple the tyrant and he thereafter adapts Tomorrow’s technology to solving his own problems.

With everything he needs to steer true a course home, the wily boffin even has an opportunity to turn the tables on the madman who caused his eccentric odyssey through the corridors of timeâ€¦

Swift-paced, witty and spectacularly action-packed, this solo outing for Mortimer rockets from staggering sci fi set-piece to set-piece, building to an explosive conclusion with a tantalising final flourish, resulting in a superbly engaging blockbuster to delight every adventure addict.

This Cinebook edition also includes excerpts from two other Blake & Mortimer albums plus a short biographical feature and publication chart of Jacobs’ and his successors’ efforts.
Original edition Â© Editions Blake & Mortimer/Studio Jacobs (Dargaud-Lombard s. a.) 1962 by E.P. Jacobs. All rights reserved. English translation Â© 2014 Cinebook Ltd.

October 14, 2015October 13, 2015

The Bumper Book of Roy of the Rovers

By Tom Tulley & David Sque (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84576948-2

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: The Next Best Thing to Actually Being Thereâ€¦ 9/10

Every Christmas I recommend what I consider to be some of the best new comics-related books on the market as presents, but that’s actually doing a great disservice to material that whilst not new might well be even more welcome as a treat for fans or better yet people who have left comics long behind them.

In a spirit of near-toxic nostalgia then, here’s a notionally old item – although still readily available through online dealers – which might delight British boys and girls of a certain ageâ€¦

There was a time when British comics reflected the interests of a much broader proportion of our youthful population, and when adults kept their fascination with picture strips a closely guarded secret. Now that it’s actually cool to read graphic narratives, one of the nation’s greatest heroes – sporting, as well as comic related – should be making a proper comeback any day now.

Roy of the Rovers started life on the front cover of Tiger, a brand-new weekly anthology comic published by Amalgamated Press (later IPC and Fleetway Publications) and launched on September 11^th 1954.

The â€œSport and Adventure Picture Story Weeklyâ€ was a cannily crafted companion to Lion, Amalgamated’s successful response to Hulton Press’ mighty Eagle (home of Dan Dare), but from the kick-off Tiger concentrated heavily on sports stars and themes, with issue #1 also featuring The Speedster from Bleakmoor, Mascot of Bad Luck and Tales of Whitestoke School amongst others. In later years racing driver Skid Solo and wrestler Johnny Cougar joined more traditional, earthy strips such as Billy’s Boots, Nipper, Hotshot Hamish and Martin’s Marvellous Mini, but for most of its 1,555-issue Tiger was simply the comic with Roy of the Rovers. Such was his cachet that he starred in his 37 of own Christmas Annuals between 1958 and 2000.

Roy was created by Frank S. Pepper who used the pseudonym Stewart Colwyn, and drawn by Joe Colquhoun (who inherited it when he took over scripting the feature) after which it was written by Tiger’s Editor Derek Birnage (credited to â€œBobby Charltonâ€ for a couple of years), with additional tales from Scott Goodall and Tom Tully.

In 1975 Roy became player-manager and the following year graduated to his own weekly comic, just in time for the 1976-77 season, premiering on September 25^th and running for 855 issues (ending March 20^th 1993).

Roy Race started as a humble apprentice at mighty Melchester Rovers, and gradually rose to captain the first team. After many years of winning all the glories the beautiful game could offer, he settled down to live the dream: wife, kids, wealth, comfort and triumphant adventure every Saturdayâ€¦

During the first decade of the 21^st century Titan Books released a number of compilations starring the ageless sporting ace and one of the most impressive was a selection of material taken from many of those early aforementioned Roy of the Rovers Annuals, cunningly presented as a sturdy hardback which perfectly mimicked those beloved end-of-year treatsâ€¦

This splendid specimen of nostalgic imposture perfectly resembles those Bumper British books and is stuffed with a selection of the very best strips, prose stories, games, quizzes and features culled from them. The editors have also wisely included ads from the period to better inculcate a flavour of those bygone times.

My only quibble is that the strips and features are all anonymous, so we’ll be labouring under my far from specialised assumptions when apportioning credit. Amongst the likeliest candidates are Colquhoun, acclaimed sports strip artist Paul Trevillion (Hey Ref! and You Are the Ref), plus any number of freelancers who specialised in the Annuals’ production and a selection of cruelly unknown Spanish and South American illustrators who freelanced for British publishers during the 1960s.

The contents kick off with a splendid hark back to simpler times as ‘Meet the Rovers’ – from the 1960 Annual – introduces the doughty 14-man squad in full process colour, and a beautiful painted frontispiece entitled ‘Heads to It!’, by Van from 1959, precedes the kick-off for an untitled ‘Roy of the Rovers’ yarn from 1957 wherein Roy is forced to drastic action after changing room dissent turns into a disastrous vendetta on the field.

Originally published in the 1962 Annual ‘The Rebel Who Made Good’ is a prose yarn, with monochrome spot illustrations by a continental artist sadly unknown to me, revealing how a spate of thuggish vandalism leads Roy to signing a few apprentice stars, promptly followed by light-hearted factual cartoon strip ‘Could You Pass a Kit Inspection?‘ (1964), a full colour commemoration of the Beautiful Game’s contemporary glittering prizes in ‘Silver Trophies for Super Teams’ (1962) and a paralysingly nostalgia-drenched ad for the Action Manâ„¢ Footballer with kit of your choiceâ€¦

More thinly-veiled strip-style fact-features follow as ‘Meet Trainer Taff Morgan’ (1960) gives a candid glimpse at the work behind the scenes, ‘Great Goalgetters of Yesterday’ (1962) offers brief bios of halcyon superstars before ‘If You Were the Refâ€¦’ (1962) poses and answers the kind of conundrums which keep fans arguing from Saturday to Saturdayâ€¦

More evocative ads precede a colour account of the stellar career of ‘â€œBombshell Bobbyâ€: the Bobby Charlton Story’ – and this was only up to 1961 – before a Dinky Toys commercial segues into ‘Roy’s Soccer Quiz’ (1962) and a relatively late sci-fi tinged monochrome comic adventure wherein the entire team are kidnapped by a bizarre boffin intent on building footballing robots in ‘The Man Who Stole the Rovers’ (1969)â€¦

The sporting gags of ‘Touch-line Fun’ (1965) lead merrily into a revelatory full-colour sneak peek in ‘Take a Tour Round Melchester Stadium with Roy Race as Your Guide’ (1958) and a classic anti-smoking ad by the legendary Brian Lewis, after which another illustrated text tale details a potential mutiny when management hires an Army PT Instructor in ‘Rovers on Parade’ (1966).

In stark black and white ‘Roy Explains the Offside Law’ (1960, and about time somebody didâ€¦) before a splash of colour signals ‘Roy Invites You to Come Special Training’ (1960) and ‘All Sorts of â€œFootballâ€’ (1959) details exotic ball game from around the world.

Another ad break then leads into more sparkling colour fact-features including ‘Wembley, Captains, Clubs and Continental Colours’ and ‘Footer Giants of Foreign Teams’ (all 1960), whilst monochrome is sufficient for ‘â€œPenalty!â€: Facts About Spot-Kicks’ (1958) and a photo-feature on technological advances in ‘Soccer Machines’ (1966).

After drooling wistfully over Corgi Rockets (no longer available at any good toy shop) you can ‘Learn to Play the Roy Race Way’ (1960) before prose thriller ‘Bandit Hunters’ (1959) sees the team held to ransom whilst on a tour of the Pyrenees, whilst – after mulling over stamps for your collection or opting to join the Army Cadets – an untitled

‘Roy of the Rovers’ strip from 1971 reveals how the ace goal-scorer deals with accusations of collusion with a bent refereeâ€¦

Wrapping up the armchair time-travel is a crucial ‘Answers Page: Don’t Look Now’ and

‘F.A. Cup Fight Record’ (1969) plus one last fact-feature revealing that even in 1961 ‘Soccer Stars Cost Fortunes’ before the final whistle blows with a gorgeous full-colour ‘Roy Race’s Score-A-Goal Game’ from the 1958 Annual (dice and counters not included) to complete that feeling that the Good Old Days really wereâ€¦

Beautifully and respectfully restored and packaged, this is a splendid slice of memorable fun which hits home with stunning force. So why not get yours Before Saturday Comesâ€¦
Roy of the Rovers Â© Egmont UK Ltd 2008.

October 13, 2015

Yoko Tsuno volume 9: The Forge of Vulcan

By Roger Leloup (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-197-6

The uncannily edgy yet excessively accessible European exploits of Japanese scientific adventurer Yoko Tsuno began first began gracing the pages of Spirou in September 1970 and are still going strong.

The explosive, eye-popping, expansively globe-girdling multi-award winning series was devised by Roger Leloup, another hugely talented Belgian who worked as one of Herge’s assistants on the Adventures of Tintin strip before striking out on his own.

Compellingly told, superbly imaginative but always solidly placed in hyper-realistic settings sporting utterly authentic and unshakably believable technology, these illustrated epics were at the vanguard of a wave of strips starring smart, competent and brave female protagonists which revolutionised Continental comics from the last third of the 20^th century onwards and are as potently empowering now as they ever were.

The initial Spirou stories ‘Hold-up en hi-fi’, ‘La belle et la bÃªte’ and ‘Cap 351’ were short introductory vignettes before the formidable Miss Tsuno and her always awestruck and overwhelmed male comrades truly hit their stride with premier extended saga Le trio de l’Ã©trange which began serialisation with the May 13^th 1971 issue.

That epic of extraterrestrial intrigue was the first of 26 European albums, and this one was first serialised in 1973 (Spirou #1819-1840) and released the same year as La forge de Vulcain. A spectacular earth-shaking rollercoaster romp, it was chronologically the third album and reaches us as Cinebook’s ninth translated chronicle.

It all begins when Yoko spots a TV report of a disaster on an oil rig near Martinique and realises the drill has impacted and penetrated the same strange material – â€œvitreous, luminous and ultra-magneticâ€ – that was a basic building material of the subterranean aliens known as the Vineansâ€¦

Those ancient wanderers had been secretly hibernating deep within the earth for hundreds of thousands of years until she and her new comrades (freelance TV producer Vic Van Steen and his frivolous cameraman pal Pol Paris) encountered them and set the lost race on a new pathâ€¦

Now the Vineans seem to be at the heart of a burgeoning ecological catastrophe of cataclysmic proportions, and none too soon Yoko and the lads are winging their way to the Caribbean. Upon landing they waste no time in bluffing their way into the offices of oil company Forex, aided by a few mementoes of their under-earth adventure.

They are, however, about to be unceremoniously ejected when news comes that the soon-to-explode rig has encountered a new problem: a strange craft, unlike any ever seen, is trapped in the rig’s legs even as inexplicable seismic distortions are propagating, creating an area of meteorological instability.

Yoko desperately tries to convince the manager that she has prior experience in matters like these and is promptly jetting over in a helicopter. Of course, she had to stow away firstâ€¦

Before long she is valiantly prying a live Vinean and his scout vessel out of a boiling gusher of mud and has discerned the true scale of the threat. The rig’s drill has intercepted a Vinean magma tunnel – used in their construction projects – which has strayed too close to the oil field and triggered a potential geological time-bombâ€¦

Thankfully the crisis has brought forth an unexpected benefit too as old friend and benevolent alien scientist Khany arrives to take charge.

The forthright technologist already has a plan but needs her old surface allies’ assistance to carry it out. Soon Yoko, Pol and Vic are abandoning the incredulous rig engineers and heading back under earth where an unpleasant surprise is awaiting them.

The Vineans had slept in huge, manufactured caverns for almost half a million years, but since recently reviving, internecine strife has entered the lives of the blue-skinned colonist/refugees.

In The Curious Trio, ambitious militaristic throwback Karpan made a play to seize power from the vast electronic complex known as The Centre which regulated the lives of the colonists but he was ultimately frustrated by Khany and her newfound surface pals.

Now though – thanks to humanity’s underground atomic testing – the blustering bully has returned to prominence amongst his terrified people and undertaken a dangerous scheme to destroy Earth’s civilisation and conquer the survivors.

Subverting a plan to divert magma and grow a new continent for the Vineans to occupy, Karpan wants to use the colossal magma-shifting technology to drown the surface world and conquer the survivorsâ€¦

Khany and her followers were already attempting to scuttle the scheme but now that grim fortune and the humans’ drill has damaged the vast, super-engineered magma-tubes, a drastic solution is necessary to save the planet both species occupy from exploding like a cosmic firecrackerâ€¦

Naturally Yoko has a plan, but this one depends as much on luck as her scientific ingenuity and martial arts prowess as she tries to mould lava like plasticine and thwart Karpan’s globally suicidal schemesâ€¦

As always the most potent asset of these breathtaking dramas is the astonishingly authentic and staggeringly detailed draughtsmanship, which benefits from Leloup’s diligent research and meticulous attention to detail, honed through years of working on Tintin.

Possible the most frenetic and visually spectacular of all her adventures, The Forge of Vulcan is a relentless, rocket-paced race to doom or salvation that will appeal to any fan of blockbuster action fantasy.
Original edition Â© Dupuis, 1973, 1979 by Roger Leloup. All rights reserved. English translation 2014 Â© Cinebook Ltd.

October 12, 2015October 8, 2015

Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1968-1969

By Whitney Ellsworth, Joe Giella, Al Plastino & various (IDW)
ISBN: 987-1-63140-121-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Sheer Nostalgic Magicâ€¦ 9/10

For more than seven decades in America the newspaper comic strip was the Holy Grail cartoonists and graphic-narrative storytellers hungered for. Syndicated across the country and often the planet, winning millions of readers and accepted (in most places) as a more mature and sophisticated form of literature than comic-books, it also paid better, with the greatest rewards and accolades being reserved for the full-colour Sunday page.

So it was always something of a poisoned chalice 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?) and became a syndicated serial strip. Superman, Wonder Woman and Archie Andrews made the jump soon after their debuts and many features have done so since.

Due to a number of war-time complications, the first newspaper Batman and Robin strip was slow getting its shot, but when the Dynamic Duo finally hit the Funny Pages the feature quickly proved to be one of the best-regarded, highest quality examples of the trend, both in Daily and Sunday formats.

Yet somehow the strip never achieved the circulation it deserved, even though the Sundays were eventually given a new lease of life when DC began issuing vintage stories in the 1960s for Batman 80-page Giants and Annuals. The exceedingly high-quality all-purpose adventures were ideal short stories and added an extra cachet of exoticism for young readers already captivated by simply seeing tales of their heroes that were positively ancient and redolent of History with a capital â€œHâ€.

Such was not the case in the mid-1960s when, for a relatively brief moment, mankind went bananas for superheroes in general and most especially went â€œBat-Madâ€â€¦

The Silver Age of comicbooks revolutionised a creatively moribund medium cosily snoozing in unchallenging complacency, bringing a modicum of sophistication to the returning genre of masked mystery men.

For quite some time the changes instigated by Julius Schwartz (in Showcase #4, October 1956) which rippled out in the last years of that decade to affect all of National/DC Comics’ superhero characters generally passed by Batman and Robin. Fans buying Batman, Detective Comics, World’s Finest Comics and latterly Justice League of America would read adventures that – in look and tone – were largely unchanged from the safely anodyne fantasies that had turned the Dark Knight into a mystery-solving, alien-fighting costumed Boy Scout just as the 1940s turned into the 1950s.

By the end of 1963, however, Schwartz having, either personally or by example, revived and revitalised the majority of DC’s line (and, therefore by extension and imitation, the entire industry) with his reinvention of the Superhero, was asked to work his magic with the creatively stalled and near-cancellation Caped Crusaders.

Installing his usual team of top-notch creators, the Editor stripped down the accumulated luggage and rebooted the core-concept. Down – and usually out – went the outlandish villains, aliens and weird-transformation tales in favour of a coolly modern concentration on crime and detection. Visually, the art-style itself underwent a sleek streamlining and rationalisation. The most apparent change to us kids was a yellow circle around the Bat-symbol but, far more importantly, the stories had changed. A subtle aura of genuine menace had crept back in.

At the same time Hollywood was in production of a television series based on Batman and, through the sheer karmic insanity that permeates the universe, the studio executives were basing their interpretation not upon the â€œNew Look Batmanâ€ currently enthralling readers but the rather the addictively daft material DC was emphatically turning its editorial back on.

The Batman TV show premiered on January 12^th 1966 and ran for three seasons of 120 episodes, airing twice weekly for the first two. It was a monumental, world-wide hit and sparked a wave of trendy imitation. The resulting media hysteria and fan frenzy generated an insane amount of Bat-awareness, no end of spin-offs and merchandise – including a movie – and introduced us all to the phenomenon of overkill.

No matter how much we might squeal and froth about it, to a huge portion of this planet’s population Batman is always going to be that â€œZap! Biff! Pow!â€ buffoonish costumed Boy Scoutâ€¦

â€œBatmaniaâ€ exploded across Earth and then as almost as quickly became toxic and vanished, but at its height led to the creation of a fresh newspaper strip incarnation. That strip was a huge syndication success and even reached fuddy-duddy Britain, not in our papers and journals but as the cover feature of weekly comic Smash! (from issue #20 onwards).

The TV show ended in March, 1968. As the series foundered and faded away, global fascination with â€œcampâ€ superheroes – and no, the term had nothing to do with sexual orientation no matter what you and Mel Brooks might think – burst as quickly as it had boomed and the Caped Crusader was left with a hard core of dedicated fans and followers who now wanted their hero backâ€¦

However, from the time when the Gotham Guardians could do no wrong comes a second superb compilation re-presenting the bright and breezy, sometimes zany cartoon classics of Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder, augmented by a wealth of background material, topped up with oodles of unseen scenes and background detail to delight the most ardent Baby-boomer nostalgia-freak.

The fun-fest opens with more informative and picture-packed, candidly cool revelations from comics historian Joe Desris in ‘A History of the Batman and Robin Newspaper Strip: Part 2′; stuffed with behind-the-scenes set photos, communications between principal players like Bob Kane and the Producers, clippings and glorious unpublished pencils from strip illustrator Joe Giella as well as newspaper promotional materials, and is followed by compulsive pictorial essays on ‘Newspaper Strip Trivia’ and ‘Batman/Superman Crossovers’, more unpublished or censored strips and a note on the eclectic sources used to compile this collection before the comics cavorting continueâ€¦

Dailies and Sundays were scripted by former DC editor (and the company’s Hollywood liaison) Whitney Ellsworth and initially illustrated by Bob Kane’s long-term art collaborator Sheldon Moldoff, before inker Giella was tapped by the studio to produce a slick, streamlined and modern look – usually as penciller but ALWAYS as embellisher.

Since the feature was a seven-day-a-week job, Giella had often called in comicbook buddies to help lay-out and draw the strip; luminaries such as Carmine Infantino, Bob Powell, Werner Roth, Curt Swan and othersâ€¦

In those days, black-&-white Dailies and full-colour Sundays were mostly offered as separate packages and continuity strips often ran different stories for each. With Batman the strip started out that way, but by the time of the stories in this volume had switched to unified seven-day storylines.

Riding a wave and feeling ambitious, Ellsworth & Giella had begun their longest saga yet in July 1967 combining the tales of ‘Shivering Blue Max with â€œPretty Boyâ€ Floy and Flo’ wherein a perpetually hypothermic criminal pilot accidentally downed the Batcopter and erroneously claimed the underworld’s million dollar bounty on Batman and Robin.

Our heroes were not dead, but the crash caused the Caped Crusader to lose his memory and, whilst Robin and faithful manservant Alfred sought to remedy his affliction, Max had collected his prize and jetted off for sunnier climes.

With Batman missing, neophyte crimebuster Batgirl then tracked down the heroes – incidentally learning their secret identities – and was instrumental in restoring him to action if not quite his fully-functioning facultiesâ€¦

However when underworld paymaster BG (Big) Trubble heard the heroes had returned, he quite understandably wanted his money back, which forced already-broke Max back to Gotham where he gullibly fell foul of Pretty Boy whilst that hip young gunsel and twin sister Flo were enacting a murderous scam to fleece a horoscope-addicted millionaireâ€¦

The tale picks up here on January 1^st 1968, with Batman held at gunpoint, patiently trying to convince supremely suggestible, wealthy whale Tyrone Koom that he is not there to assassinate him as the tycoon’s new astrologer Madame Zodiac (AKA Flo Floy) was insisting she had foreseenâ€¦

When her dupe proves incapable of murder, Flo/Zodiac takes matters into her own hands and knocks out the mighty manhunter, but despite all her and her brother’s arguments the millionaire cannot be convinced to pull the trigger.

Instead befuddled Koom – still thinking the masked marvel wants to him dead – has Batman bundled off to an isolated island where a fully-automated, exotic palace of wonders will act as the Caped Crusader’s impregnable prison for the rest of his lifeâ€¦

With the hero as good as dead Pretty Boy and Flo plan to claim BG’s million dollar bounty, but they have not reckoned on Blue Max horning inâ€¦

When the pilot collides with Robin (who has been tracking his senior partner by Bat-Radio) the erstwhile enemies reluctantly join forces but are ultimately unable to prevent Batman’s banishment. Moreover, in the frantic melee, the Boy Wonder suffers a broken leg.

Lost in an endless ocean, Batman slowly adjusts to a life of enforced luxury on palatial penitentiary island Xanadu, unaware that life at home has become vastly more complicated for Robin and Alfred. Not only do they believe the Cowled Crimebuster to be dead but Max has ferreted out their secret identities and blackmailed them into cooperating in his vengeance scheme against Pretty Boy. Max plans to prevent the young thug collecting the reward by impersonating Batmanâ€¦

Events spiral to a grim climax when Max finally confronts his criminal enemies and Koom realises he’s been played for a fool. The dupe’s guilt-fuelled final vengeance ends all the villains at once, but not before Pretty Boy presses a destruct button that will cause Xanadu to obliterate itself in an atomic explosion.

Thankfully Superman and especially Sea King Aquaman have already been mobilised to help find the missing Masked Manhunter but the countdown – although slow – is unstoppableâ€¦

During this sequence the severely overworked Giella bowed out and a veteran Superman illustrator took over the pitiless illustration schedule.

Alfred John â€œAlâ€ Plastino was a prodigious artist with a stellar career. He had been active in the early days of comicbooks, with credits including Captain America and Dynamic Man before serving in the US Army. His design talents were quickly spotted and he was soon seconded to Grumman Aerospace, The National Inventors Council and latterly The Pentagon, where he designed war posters and field manuals for the Adjutant General’s office.

In 1948 he joined DC and quickly became one of Superman’s key artists. He drew many landmark stories and, with writer Otto Binder, created Brainiac, Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. From 1960-1969 Plastino ghosted the syndicated Superman newspaper strip and whilst still drawing Batman, also took over Ferd’nand in 1970, drawing it until his retirement in 1989.

He was extremely versatile and seemed tireless: in 1982-1983 he drew Nancy Sundays after creator Ernie Bushmiller passed away and was controversially hired by United Media to produce fill-in episodes of Peanuts when Charles Schulz was in dispute with the company. Al Plastino died in 2013.

With a new policy of introducing guest stars from the DC pantheon, Plastino was the ideal successor and as the assembled champions desperately sought to find and save their missing comrade, a new tone of straight dramatic adventure largely superseded the campy comedy shenanigans of the TV seriesâ€¦

The search for Batman had been continually hampered by the Man of Steel’s strange weakness and loss of powers, but now that the Gotham Gangbusters were reunited they concentrated their efforts on finding out why. The deductive trail soon led to bone fide mad scientist ‘Diabolical Professor Zinkk’ (which originally ran from March 19^th to August 6^th) and saw the Dynamic Duo tracking down a mercenary maniac who had found a way to broadcast Kryptonite waves and was oh-so-slowly killing Superman for a big payout from Metropolis’ mobstersâ€¦

This is a cunningly convoluted, beautifully realised and supremely suspenseful tale with the clock ticking down on a deranged and dying Metropolis Marvel with Batman and Robin hunting rogue radio-physicist Zoltan Zinkk to divine the method by which he has brought low Earth’s greatest defender. It culminates in a savage, spectacular and truly explosive showdown before the World’s Finest heroes finally triumphâ€¦

Another tense thriller then sees Aquaman return to share the spotlight and begins as determined dolly-bird Penelope Candy perpetually plagues news outlets and even pesters the Gotham Police Department in her tireless quest to be put in touch with Batman.

The man in question is blithely unaware: Bruce Wayne is dealing with a small personal problem. In his infinite wisdom he intends for Robin to temporarily retire while young Dick Grayson completes a proper education and to that end has engaged a new tutor for the strongly-protesting Boy Wonderâ€¦

With that all acrimoniously settled, the Caped Crusader roars out into the night and is filmed falling to his doom in a river trying to save apparently suicidal Penny Candyâ€¦

At first the heartbroken lad doesn’t know Batman is still alive but has actually been drawn into a Byzantine scheme devised by Penny to find her missing father.

Oceanographer Archimedes Candy disappeared after working with Aquaman on a serum to allow humans to live beneath the sea. She is convinced somebody has abducted the researcher and, after Batman contacts Robin and has the junior crimebuster send out a radio alert for the Sea King, the impatient pair then try the potion together. ‘Breathing Underwater’ (August 7^th – December 15^th), they set off on a sub-sea search for the missing sea scientistâ€¦

Of course Penny’s suspicions of foul play are all justified and before long she and Batman are reunited with Dr. Candy. Sadly that’s as captives of nefarious international smuggler Cap’n Wolf and they are nearly done to death by being abandoned on a mountain in the airy atmosphere they can no longer breathe before Aquaman arrives to settle mattersâ€¦

Even as Batman makes his way home the next adventure has started. Gangster fugitive Killer Killey devised the world’s most perfect hiding place and in ‘I Want Bruce Wayne’s Identity!’ (December 15^th 1968 – May 30^th 1969) abducts the affable millionaire so a crooked plastic surgeon can swap their faces and fingerprints. The scheme is hugely helped by the fact that Dick has been packed off with tutor Mr. Murphy and his daughter Gazelle on a world cruise whilst Alfred has used his accumulated vacation time for an extended visit to England.

When Killer captures Bruce and discovers he also has Batman the mobster is truly exultant. However the plan soon goes awry when the victim escapes the death-trap which should have resulted with the authorities finding â€œKilley’sâ€ drowned body, and the subsequent move into Wayne Manor becomes a fraught affair.

Perhaps he’d be less troubled if he knew that although alive, the real Bruce Wayne has once again lost his memoryâ€¦

Moreover, unbeknownst to anybody, neophyte crimebuster Batgirl already knows Batman’s other identity and now her suspicions are aroused by the state of the mansion and behaviour of Bruce and his new girlfriendâ€¦

As events escalate and spiral out of control, Killer, still safely hidden behind Wayne’s face – starts to crack and stupidly antagonises the one person he thought he could always rely onâ€¦

This volume’s comics cavortings end with the opening shots of ‘My Campaign to Ruin Bruce Wayne’ (which ran from May 31^st – December 25^th1969) but as only seven days of that tale unfold in this volume I think we’ll leave that for the next volume and simply sayâ€¦

To Be Continued, Bat-Fansâ€¦

The stories in this compendium reveal how gentler, stranger times and an editorial policy focusing as much on broad humour as Batman’s reputation as a crime-fighter was swiftly turned to all-out action adventure once Batmania gave way to global overload and ennui. That was bad for the strip at the time but happily resulted in some truly wonderful adventures for die-hard fans of the comicbook Caped Crusader. If you’re of a certain age or open to timeless thrills, spills and chills this a truly stunning collection well worth your attention.

Batman: Silver Age Dailies and Sundays 1968-1969 is the second in a set of huge (305 x 236 mm) lavish, high-end hardback collections starring the Caped Crusaders, 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, Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the Pirates, Bringing Up Father, Rip Kirby, Polly and her Pals and many other cartoon icons.

If you love the era, the medium or just graphic narratives, these stories are great comics reading, and this is a book you simply must have.
Â© 2014 DC Comics. All rights reserved. Batman and all related characters and elements â„¢ DC Comics.

October 9, 2015October 8, 2015

Gabriel

By Jim Alexander, David Hill & Mick Trimble (Planet Jimbot)
No ISBN

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Home-Grown Feast of Wondersâ€¦ 8/10

There’s a wonderful intensity to creator-owned comic tales which is all too often lacking in slicker projects from major outfits with all the financial resources in the world at their fingertips.

When just the right creative elements are in place it can be like seeing The Buzzcocks playing live at a sweaty, heaving college gig in 1976 but then going home to watch to â€œEver Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)â€, all seamlessly schmaltzed-out and over-produced to buggery by some cosmetically-enhanced, Ã¼ber-styled photogenic twinkie on X-Factorâ€¦

Past masters of getting the very best out of finite resources, fresh talent and strong ideas, Jim Alexander and his compadres at Planet Jimbot (whose new periodical release APP-1 will star in our next Small Press Sunday feature) have been crafting superbly enthralling graphic narratives for a wee while now and have recently added to their roster this smart, magnificently chilling – and, arguably, cheekily blasphemous – intellectual challenge to complacent Christianityâ€¦

Packaged as a slim, starkly effective monochrome trade paperback, Gabriel is an archly askew urban drama touted as â€œa true story taking place in an alternative Scotlandâ€. The only noticeable difference I can see is that demons and angels are real and regularly meddle in mortal lives and matters.

â€¦That and the fact that the Church is still supremely powerful: publicly operating its own secret service and special police force which supersedes regular Rozzers in matters both spiritual and temporalâ€¦

Writer Alexander’s prodigious back catalogue includes Calhab Justice and other strips for 2000 AD, Star Trek the Manga, GoodCopBadCop and bunches of stuff for The Dandy, DC, Marvel, Metal Hurlant, plus loads of other places and here – bolstered by carefully understated illustrator David Hill (Luther: Echoes of the Hammer) – he turns his mercurial imagination to troubled soul Stewart Gabriel: a poor sinner in another Glasgow with more than his fair share of burdensâ€¦

Stewart is an introspective, isolated chap who doesn’t want any bother but has trouble relating to his surviving relations. That’s not uncommon, but he’s also afflicted with terrible dreams of past lives and demonic darkness. Perhaps it’s all because he and his estranged wife Donna are trying to get a shameful, nigh-sacrilegious divorceâ€¦

Of course that major doctrinal misdemeanour can’t explain why he is somehow being irresistibly drawn to scenes of carnage and chaos involving the extremely excessive Saint Templar Church militia or why he’s suddenly started walking through walks, doors and other solid objects and even blinking out and rematerialising at scenes of infernal atrocity…

Glasgow is under siege these days: not just from increasingly violent protestors demanding sexual equality and abortions but also reeling from a series of savage serial killings by a particularly gruesome and determined demon.

The beast has decidedly dark â€œmommy-issuesâ€ and is gleefully causing a stink and slaughtering the faithful, especially if they’re partial to a little sin or hypocrisyâ€¦

In the higher ecclesiastical echelons, the synod of church leaders known as the Living Saints are fiercely debating how best to quell The Abomination’s sanguine spree and when one of their number prophetically divines Gabriel’s name in connection to the crisis and moves to have him brought in for a little inquisition, the demon is listeningâ€¦

Despite the growing movement agitating for personal freedoms and responsibilities, this is still a world with no need for faith.

God is. The Devil is. Nobody is asked to believe anything because the spiritual is in fact all physical. So why does Gabriel believe there’s something going on that can’t be explained?

With chaos in the streets, events spiral to bloody climax when The Beast invades the church sanctum and confronts Gabriel, Donna and the Living Saints with a testament and revelation of his ownâ€¦

First seen in the fabled 1990s thanks to much-missed pioneering publisher Caliber, this modern Mystery Play has been properly remastered for the 21^st century and concludes here with an all-new palate cleansing whimsical addendum deftly illustrated by Mick (Bloodfellas) Trimble.

Set six months later, ‘I Am the Resurrection’ follows a good-natured beardy-bloke as he spends one eventful day and night washing the feet of hookers, avoiding death and giving dodgy traders in Temple Market a bit of a kicking. Naturally he ends up in jail – the regular nick, not the Templars’ stronghold – and has a remarkable interview with dying priest Father Salmon, who felt so very much better after giving the stranger the all-clearâ€¦

Things only really start to make sense after the unworldly weirdo pops by Gabriel’s placeâ€¦

Smart, incisive and fictively fascinating, Gabriel builds a brilliantly enticing world before asking all the right questions and offering just enough answers to make readers hungry for a sequel.

This is another dark delight for all those who seek some intellectual meat in their reading matter, so why not break bread here and now?
Gabriel Â© 2015 Jim Alexander (story) and David Hill (art). I Am the Resurrection Â© 2015 Jim Alexander (story) and Mick Trimble (art).
Planet Jimbot has a splendid online shop so why not check out: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/244444294/gabriel-tpb

October 8, 2015October 6, 2015

Incredible Hulks: Planet Savage

By Greg Pak, Dale Eaglesham, Tom Grummett, Drew Hennessy, Cory Hamscher, Rick Magyar & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5159-3

Once upon a time, Bruce Banner was simply a military scientist accidentally caught in a gamma bomb blast of his own devising. Thereafter, stress or other factors caused him to unpredictably transform into a gigantic green monster of unstoppable strength and fury. As both occasional hero and mindless monster he rampaged across the Marvel Universe for decades, becoming one of the world’s most popular comicbook features and multi-media titans.

As such, he has often undergone radical changes in scope and format to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compellingâ€¦

In recent years the number of Gamma-mutated monsters rampaging across the Marvel landscape has proliferated to inconceivable proportions. There are now assorted Hulks, She-Hulks, Abominations and all kinds of alien affiliates and ancillary atomic berserkers roaming the planet, so be prepared to experience a little confusion if you’re coming to this particular character cold. Nevertheless these always-epic yarns are generally worth the effort so persist if you can.

During the all-encompassing ‘Planet Hulk’ storyline of 2006-2007, the Jade Juggernaut was exiled to space and crashed on distant, brutally primitive world Sakarr, where he was enslaved as a gladiator before rising to briefly become messiah-king of the entire place after defeating the terrifying Red King.

He married an incredibly powerful once-enemy with ancient, ancestral tectonic gifts dubbed Caiera the Oldstrong, unknowingly spawned a son, and lost his new wife when the ship that brought him to Sakaar explodedâ€¦

Bereft and enraged he made his way back to Earth, oblivious of what he’d left behind and inflicted a punishing World War Hulk on the heroes and homeworld which betrayed him. Eventually that blew over too – but not without horrific and lingering consequences. Now Banner has notionally taken charge of a cadre of his fellow gamma gargantuansâ€¦

This collection gathers The Incredible Hulks #623-629 – a tome of two halves covering April to July 2011 – written in its entirety by film director, screenwriter and comics-nerd Greg Pak; opening with the eponymous ‘Planet Savage’ illustrated by Dale Eaglesham & Drew Hennessy.

In a hidden lab a worried cohort of monsters and outcasts (She-Hulk, Red She-Hulk, A-Bomb, Skaar: Son of Hulk, Korg of Krona, No-Name of the Brood, Sakaarian Elloe Kaifi and mostly human scientist Kate Waynesboro) battle to save the transformed Banner-Hulk from succumbing to injuries incurred battling demons and almighty Grecian Skyfather Zeus.

No sooner has he barely passed that crisis than the original green giant – who currently possesses Banner’s intellect – is off answering a distress call from the fantastic antediluvian nature preserve dubbed the Savage Land.

After trying to restrain the recuperating hero, a cadre of comrades reluctantly join him, painfully aware that the only thing keeping their friend alive is the Hulk’s inner core of rage: if Bruce rests or even calms down, both will assuredly dieâ€¦

The clarion call they’re answering comes from modern-day Tarzan and self-appointed wild-life guardian Ka-Zar. Something very nasty has gorily eradicated a small enclave of Sakaarian refugees and the jungle lord is in dire need of a little back-up.

Sadly, not all of the otherworldly asylum-seekers are victims or innocent and before long the Hulk’s heavy-hitters are battling to the death against an army of mutated horrors controlled by a former ally.

Most horrifically, Banner’s compromised state has made him easy prey for an insectoid infestation that could end his rampages foreverâ€¦

Following the conclusion of that gorily bombastic battle the tone twists to wry and witty Spy-Fi in a light-hearted, tradecraft-tinted tale ‘The Spy Who Smashed Me’, limned by Tom Grummett, Cory Hamscher & Rick Magyar.

The sensational skulduggery starts as Bruce’s ex-wife Betty Ross vanishes. That’s a pretty big deal since she is also the Red She-Hulkâ€¦

After still-recuperating hubby asks Amadeus Cho (8^th smartest brain on Earth and 2^nd most aggravating kid in the world) for assistance in locating her, they jointly discover that Betty’s power-levels are fluctuating to the point that she’s on the brink of a most unwelcome and soon-to-be-permanent final transformationâ€¦

Man and boy track her to Italy where Bruce goes undercover in a very stylish tuxedo made of unstable molecules, but ‘When in Rome’ Betty is no mood to quit partying and refuses to come back to the med-lab. Perhaps it has something to do with mesmerising immortal arch-enemy Tyrannus who’s ensorcelled her into helping him steal the legendary Pandora’s Box from the Museo della Mitologia Anticaâ€¦

Almost immediately the undercover part of the mission heads south and the artefact – still packing the destructive equivalent of â€œAll the World’s Evilsâ€ – triggers global panic-alerts, prompting NATO to grudgingly accept the Hulk’s â€œofferâ€ of assistance in ‘Live and Let Smash’.

Working with sultry Museum Director and antiquities expert Dr. Sofia di Cosimo, Hulk heads straight for Tyrannus’ subterranean realm to stop the former Roman Emperor from opening the most dangerous container on Earthâ€¦

And that’s when an unsuspected third faction busts in; snatching the doctor, the dictator and the hotly disputed relic, unleashing mythological madness and forcing Red and Green Gamma Gladiators to work together in a manic effort to halt a mystical meltdown and apocalyptic return of ancient atrocities in the spectacular showdown ‘License to Smash’â€¦

If you’re still capable of being shaken and stirred this collection also includes a cover and variant gallery by Eaglesham & Hennessey, Jock, Doug Braithwaite & Sonia Oback, Frank Cho & Jason Keith, Eaglesham &Peter Steigerwald and Michael Del Mundo, plus a ‘Pencil Gallery’ featuring covers and full pages by Eaglesham.

An intoxicating rollercoaster of action and sheer fun with plot pared back to a bare minimum, there’s much to recommend in this blistering, romp, especially if you’re a fan of magnificent mindless graphic mayhem – and what follower of the Hulk isn’t?

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