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April 7, 2015

Superman Archives volume 8

By Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Don Cameron, Bill Finger, Alvin Schwartz, Whitney Ellsworth, Ed Dobrotka, Sam Citron, Ira Yarbrough, George Roussos, Jack Burnley, Wayne Boring & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2885-9

Today’s American comicbook industry – if it still existed at all – would have been utterly unrecognisable to us without Superman. His unprecedented invention and adoption by a desperate and joy-starved generation quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form.

Spawning an impossible army of imitators and variations, within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of eye-popping action and social wish-fulfilment which hallmarked the early Man of Steel had grown to encompass cops-and-robbers crime-busting, socially reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East embroiled America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and explosive derring-do.

In comicbook terms at least Superman was master of the world, having already utterly changed the shape of the fledgling industry. There was the phenomenally popular newspaper strip, a thrice-weekly radio serial, games, toys, as much global syndication as the war would allow and the perennially re-run Fleischer studio’s astounding animated cartoons.

Despite all the years that have passed since then, I – and so many others – still believe that superhero comics were never more apt or effective than when they were whole-heartedly combating the agents of Fascism (and yes by heck, even the dirty, doggone, Reds-Under-the-Beds Commies, who took their place in the 1960s too!) with mysterious masked marvel men in compulsive, improbable short, sharp exploits,

The most evocative and breathtaking moments of the genre always seem to occur as those gaudy gladiators soundly thrashed – and please forgive the offensive contemporary colloquialism – â€œNips, Nazis and Redsâ€. However, even in those dark days long-ago, the young and enthusiastic creators were wise enough to augment their tales of espionage and invasion with a range of gentler, more whimsical four-colour fare. By the time of the sagas in this superb seventh Superman full-colour hardcover Archive edition – re-presenting #30-35 (September/October 1944 to July/August 1944) of the Man of Tomorrow’s solo title – the apprehension of the early war years had been replaced with eager anticipation as tyranny’s infernal forces were being rolled back on every Front.

Superman was the premier, vibrant, vital role model whose startling abilities and take-charge, can-do attitude had won the hearts of the public at home and the troops across the war-torn world.

Now, although the shooting was all but over, stirring, morale-boosting covers and stories were being phased out in favour of gentler and even purely comedic themes.

Following a funny and informative Foreword: â€œLook! Up in the Sky! It’s a Birdâ€¦ it’s a Planeâ€¦it’s – An Imp?’ by cartoonist Evan Dorkin discussing the advent of super-foes, social change and a certain fifth dimensional jester, the action-laced whimsy begins with ‘Superman Alias Superman!’ by Don Cameron, Ira Yarbrough & Stan Kaye wherein lovelorn Clark Kent takes romantic advice from office-boy Jimmy Olsen and impersonates his own alter ego to impress Lois.

The doomed imposture is further complicated because his scathing, scoop-obsessed colleague is fully fixated on catching high society bandit Silver Foxx and has no time for Clark’s insecurities and idiociesâ€¦

The go-getting journalist was always too busy for romance back then, as can be seen in ‘Lois Lane, Girl Reporter: The Arch-Swindler’ by Cameron, Ed Dobrotka & George Roussos. In those turbulent times the interpretation of the â€œplucky news-henâ€ was far less demeaning than the post-war sneaky minx who was so popular in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Lois might have been ambitious and life-threateningly precipitate, but it was always to advance her own career, help underdogs and put bad guys away, not trap a man into marriage.

Her Superman-free exploits began in #28: a succession of 4-page vignettes offering breathless, fast-paced, screwball comedy-thrillers. In this example, spurred on by Clark’s teasing, she tracks down, is captured by and spectacularly turns the tables on murderous conman Jack Doverâ€¦

Back with the star feature, Bill Finger, Yarbrough & Roussos revealed how an ancient prophecy turns the Action Ace into ‘The King’s Substitute’ as centuries ago the ruler of tiny nation Poltavia learns that a Superman will one day deliver his country from bondage, restore a true heir and offer the people a wonderful thing called democracyâ€¦

Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster & Yarbrough then herald the start of a new kind of adventure as ‘The Mysterious Mr. Mxyztplk’ debuts. An utterly intoxicating daffy romp introduced the 5th dimensional imp who would henceforward periodically test the Man of Steel’s ingenuity and patience in a still-hilarious perfect example of the lighter side of super-heroics.

Mxyztplk (later anglicised to Mxyzptlk, presumably to make it easier to spell?) became a cornerstone of the Superman mythos: an insufferable pixie against whom all Superman’s strength and power were useless. From then on brains were going to be as important as brawn as frustration became the Man of Steel’s first real weaknessâ€¦

Superman #31 opens with crime-thriller ‘Tune Up Time for Crime’ (Finger, Sam Citron Roussos) as crooks with a deadly new sonic weapon turn out to have the scientific backing of the Metropolis’ Marvel’s oldest enemy, after which arch-whimsy reappears in ‘A Dog’s Tale’ (Finger, Citron & Roussos) when scruffy mutt Flip proudly tells his canine pals how he helped Superman crack a dognapping racketâ€¦

Cameron & Dobrotka then reveal how a gang of jewel thieves prove no match for dumb luck and journalistic moxie in ‘Lois Lane, Girl Reporter: The Aces Doonan Gang’ before Finger, Citron & Roussos close out the issue with a trip to the museum as ‘The Treasure House of History!’ finds Superman saving a noble institution from mismanagement, skulduggery and even closure whilst discovering a lost Mayan cityâ€¦

In #32 ‘Superman’s Search for Clark Kent!’ (Alvin Schwartz, Dobrotka & Roussos) finds the Action Ace an invincible amnesiac after volunteering for a scientific trial and forced to track down his own other identity whilst ‘Crime on Skis!!’ (Finger, Dobrotka & Roussos) sees the restored hero debunk a malign mythical bird as no more than a cover for more pedestrian killers plaguing a ski resort.

‘Lois Lane, Girl Reporter: Monkey Business’ (Whitney Ellsworth, Dobrotka & Roussos) is another splendidly frothy concoction describing how a ventriloquist at the zoo puts the jaunty journo on the trail of a pack of pickpockets, after which the terrible Toyman resurfaces to plague Metropolis, plundering wealthy antique collectors in search of a treasure hidden since the French Revolution in ‘Toys of Treachery!’ (Cameron, Dobrotka & Roussos).

Superman #33 opened with the hero following foolish Lois into ‘Dimensions of Danger!’ (Cameron, Yarbrough & Roussos) after she road-tested a Mxyztplk spell and ended up stuck in his home realm of Zrfff. Once there the Caped Kryptonian had the opportunity to do a little mischief-making of his ownâ€¦

With art by Yarbrough & Roussos ‘The Country Doctor!’ is the kind of socially aware redemptive tale Bill Finger was a master of and saw Clark Kent stuck in homey little Middletown watching aging Dr. David Brown make a difference – but little money – ministering to the poor souls around him.

The physician’s only regret was a son who preferred big city glamour cases and big city fees, but then something quite tragic happenedâ€¦

Ellsworth & Dobrotka’s ‘Lois Lane, Girl Reporter: The Purloined Piggy Bank’ found her being pranked by (male) cops before turning the tables on them and crushing a crime conspiracy. The issue ends with classic mystery yarn ‘The Compass Points to Murder!’ (Finger, Yarbrough & Roussos) finding the Action Ace darting to the four corners of the globe in search of a killer who believed he’d successfully silenced a shipping fleet magnate but had left one telling clue behindâ€¦

In #25 Mort Weisinger & Fred Ray’s ‘I Sustain the Wings!’ played a crucial part in America’s attempt to address a shortfall in vital services recruitment – a genuine problem at this time in our real world – and created an instant comics classic.

Artistically Superman #34 is an all Citron/Roussos affair, whose opening shot attempted to repeat the magic formula with Cameron scripted ‘The United States Navy!’ with Clark despatched to follow three college football heroes whilst they progress – in different maritime specialisations – through the war in the Pacific. Â

Then ‘Lois Lane, Girl Reporter: The Foiled Frame-Up’ (Ellsworth) sees her upset political scoundrels and expose a smear campaign after which Cameron instigates a prototype â€œImaginary Taleâ€ with ‘The Canyon that Went Berserk!’ wherein a fortune teller prompts Clark into daydreaming the prospecting adventure of a lifetimeâ€¦

‘When the World got Tired!’ (Finger) then ramped up the tension when a sinister epidemic of global indolence and sloth turns out to be the work of Lex Luthor and his new alien alliesâ€¦

The gaggle of Golden Age goodies conclude with the contents of Superman #35 (mostly illustrated by Yarbrough & Roussos), starting with the Cameron scripted ‘Fame for Sale!’, wherein shady cove and scurvy scoundrel J. Wilbur Wolfingham rears his conniving head once more. The magnificent pastiche of W. C. Fields as a ruthless Mr. Micawber returned like a bad penny over and again to bedevil honest folk and greedy saps and here he acted as an early kind of spin doctor/publicist for a millionaire miser, social climbing parvenu and even the Mayor of Metropolis, promising their names would be on everybody’s lips.

Of course he neglected to mention how he would accomplish the feats and drew the unwelcome attention of an always alert Action Aceâ€¦

A gang wanting to profiteer from a new medicine came to a painful end in ‘Lois Lane, Girl Reporter: The Drug Swindle’ (Cameron & Dobrotka) whilst Yarbrough & Roussos resumed their illustrative endeavours for Finger’s ‘Like Father, Like Son!’ wherein Superman cleared the name and reputation of a local politician whose enemies sought to tar him with the same scandalous brush as his supposedly criminal child, and the

‘The Genie of the Lamp!’ (scripted by Schwartz) then sees the Action Ace teach a wealthy young antique collector the difference between precious objects and people in need by masquerading as a wish-fulfilling spriteâ€¦

With stunning covers by Jack Burnley, Wayne Boring, Roussos & Kaye, plus a full ‘Biographies’ section this is another stunning selection of the stories which kept the groundbreaking Man of Steel at the forefront of comics for nearly 80 years.

As fresh and thrilling now as they ever were, these endlessly re-readable epics are perfectly situated in these gloriously luxurious Archive Editions; a worthy, long-lasting vehicle for the greatest and most influential comics stories the art form has ever produced.

So what are you waiting forâ€¦?
Â© 1944, 1945, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

April 6, 2015April 5, 2015

Shame: Conception, Shame: Pursuit, Shame: Redemption

By Lovern Kindzierski, John Bolton & Todd Klein (Renegade Arts Entertainment)
ISBNs: 978-1-908217-01-1, 978-0-986200-5-2 and 978-0-99215-088-4

It’s an unshakable adage that comics are a visual medium and that’s never been more clearly proved than in this enticing allegorical adult fairytale from writer Lovern Kindzierski, painter John Bolton and letterer Todd Klein.

The blithely inviting trilogy began in 2011 for then-new multinational Indie publisher Renegade Arts Entertainment (generally Alexander Finbow, Doug Bradley, Alan Grant, John Finbow, Luisa Harkins, Nick Wilson and Jennifer Taylor: a loose coalition originating comics, audio books, movies, animation, prose and graphic novels, merchandise and games) and after much too long a wait concludes here…

Always remember, appearances can be deceiving.

Once upon a time in Shame: Conception a rather lumpen and unlovely witch named Mother Virtue spent all her days doing grand good deeds for the unfortunate, and for these kind actions she was beloved by all.

She lived her life well growing old and content but one day a selfish thought passed idly through her mind: she longed for a daughter and wished for but a moment that she was a mother in fact as well as nameâ€¦

It was all the opening malign Shadow of Ignorance Slur needed. With dark magic he instantly impregnated the champion of Good with a dark and evil seed and in gloating triumph bragged to the witch that her diabolical daughter would be named Shameâ€¦

Repenting that selfish thought and dreading the horrors to come, Mother Virtue turned her cottage into a floral prison dubbed Cradle; designed and repurposed to isolate and contain the thing growing in her belly.

The miserable mother-to-be also assembled an army of Dryads to care for and guard the baby. After Virtue finally bore Shame, she quickly abandoned the devil’s burden to be reared in the mystic compound, where it grew cruel but so very beautifulâ€¦

Eventually, however, minions of Shame’s sire breached the green walls and began schooling the child in vile necromancy and her dire inheritance. Slowly Shame remoulded her guardians into something more pliable and appropriately monstrousâ€¦

As she physically ripened, Slur himself came and through him Shame learned the power of sex. With the aid of a demonic incubus which had stolen seed from many men, she quickened a child in her own belly and birthed a baby girl.

Into the infant Slur poured Mother Virtue’s soul, gorily ripped from her aging carcase at that moment. Even the nunnery she had locked herself within was not proof against the marauding Shadow of Ignoranceâ€¦

With her despised mother now her own child securely bound within the selfsame floral penitentiary, Shame went out into the world to make her markâ€¦

Shame: Pursuit was released in 2013 and took up the story sixteen years later. The Virtue baby had grown up strong and beautiful, despite every effort of the malformed and mystically mutated Dryads and Shame’s diabolical sorcery who had made every day of her young life a test of survival.

This made Shame, now queen of a mortal kingdom, furious beyond belief. When not burning witches and wise women who might threaten her absolute domination or having her unconquerable armies ravage the neighbouring realms, the hell-spawn spied upon her mother/child with infernal devices.

Elsewhere a valiant knight lay dying and bade his simple, ugly son Merritt farewell. Even with his last breaths, the father dreaded how his foolish and naive boy would fare in a world ruled by the Queen who had killed himâ€¦

The hopeless dreamer was stubborn if nothing else, and when Merritt discovered the vegetable hell-mound of Cradle, stories his mother told him as a child and a strange inexplicable yearning compelled him to overcome appalling odds to break in and liberate the beautiful prisonerâ€¦ although she did most of the workâ€¦

Once free of the mound, all Virtue’s mystic powers returned and far away Shame’s world reeled. Mocking Slur cared little for his daughter but much for his plans and thus revealed Merritt was Destiny’s wild card: a Sword of Fate who could reshape the future of humanity. Of course it all depended whose side he was onâ€¦

As the heroes neared the capital they were ambushed and, after a tremendous mystic upheaval, Merritt awoke in a palace with a dark-haired angel ministering to his every need and desire. Far below in a rank, eldritch dungeon Virtue languished and remade her plansâ€¦

The epic concludes in classic fashion with Shame: Redemption as Merritt falls deeper under the sultry sway of the dark queen. As he slowly becomes her tool of human subjugation, in a fetid subterranean stinkhole, Virtue weaves her magic with the paltry materials at hand under the very noses of her tormentorsâ€¦

Even in the Queen’s bed Merritt is still a child of his mother’s stories and when Virtue contacts him he readily sneaks down to her cell, dreams of nobility and good deeds filling his slow and addled headâ€¦

Now the scene is set for a final fraught confrontation between mother and daughter, but first Virtue sends Merritt straight to Hell on a vital quest to recover the hope of the worldâ€¦

The narrative core of all fairytales is unchanging and ever powerful, so tone and treatment make all the difference between tired rehash and something bold, fresh and unforgettable.

Moreover, the photo-based hyper-real expressionism of John Bolton’s lush painting transforms the familiar and potentially mundane settings of fantasy standards into something truly bleak and bizarre to match the grim, earthily seedy meta-reality of Kindzierski’s script.

Dark, nasty and packed with sumptuous seductions of every stripe, the sage of Shame is every adult fantasists’ desire made realâ€¦

Shame: Conception, Shame: Pursuit, Shame: Redemption the story, characters, world and designs are Â© Lovern Kindzierski, John Bolton and Renegade Arts Canmore Ltd.

April 5, 2015April 4, 2015

Where the Bird Sings Best

By Alejandro Jodorowsky, translated Alfred MacAdam (Restless Books)
ISBN: 978-1-63206-028-0

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky is a filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, comics writer, world traveller, philosopher and spiritual guru who was born in Tocopilla, Chile in 1929.

How his immediate ancestors got there from pogrom-afflicted Russia at the beginning of the 20^th century is only the faintest shadow of the body of this astounding, marvellously mythologized and mesmerisingly â€œMagic Realismâ€ filtered family historyâ€¦

The amazing modern polymath is most widely known for such films as Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Sante Sangre, The Rainbow Thief, The Dance of Reality and others, as well as his vast comics output, including Anibal 5 (created whilst living in Mexico), Le Lama blanc, Aliot, The Meta-Barons, Borgia, Madwoman of the Sacred Heart and so many more, co-created with some of South America and Europe’s greatest artists.

His decade-long collaboration with Moebius on the Tarot-inspired adventure The Incal (1981-1989) completely redefined and reinvented what comics could aspire to and achieve.

Best regarded for his violently surreal avant-garde films, loaded with highly-charged, inspired imagery – blending mysticism and what he terms â€œreligious provocationâ€ – and his spiritually-informed fantasy and science fiction comics tales, Jodorowsky is also fascinated by humanity’s inner realms and has devised his own doctrine of therapeutic healing: Psychomagic, Psychogenealogy and Initiatic massage. He still remains fully engaged and active in all these creative areas to this day.

He is also a raconteur of spellbinding imagination and truly devilish wit, all fully exercised and demonstrated in this stunning, outrageous re-imagining of the history of his antecedents, which was first published in 1992 as Donde mejor canta un PÃ¡jaro.

An astounding prose poem – intoxicatingly translated from the Spanish for this first English-language hardback edition by Professor of Latin American Literature Alfred MacAdam – this is an addictively enjoyable rollercoaster of arcane and obscene episodes seamlessly sewn together as Jodorowsky bounces across time and space, weaving stories of apostate Jewish grandmothers sharing their hatred for God, unworldly yet adaptable husbands, incestuous relations and relatives, all with a knack for finding disasters, wars, inquisitions, exploiters, monstrous suppressions, wanton violence and casual brutalityâ€¦

The mythologized epic of immigration and Diaspora is filled with unforgettable and improbable sexual situations, fortunes – usually in gold or diamonds – found and lost in the blink of an eye, animal encounters of the most outrÃ© kinds, earthquake-surfing and the kind of bizarre wisdom and ad hoc solutions only folk in perpetual crisis resort and adhere to.

The saga is engagingly peopled with utterly unique characters such as an assortment of plebeian and domestic visionary-seers, sheep-abusing Tsar/hermits, dwarves, prophets, prostitutes, sorcerers and demagogues, transsexual ballerinas, unlikely libertines, holistic bee-keeping pioneers, Kabbalists and victims of every stripe, shysters and gentle conmen, fully-immersive lion-tamers and knife-throwers and the ghost of a Rabbi whose path for successive generations of the family involves regular last-minute salvations but not necessarily happiness, safety or securityâ€¦

With the history slyly couched in terms of entertainment performances and themes of ballet and the circus, the mystic and miraculous generational saga explosively unfolds, reveals and even chronologically doubles back upon itself to share the experiences of a most accursed and blessed clan during the most difficult and dangerous period in human history, and even finds a moment to reveal the true origins and history of the Tarotâ€¦

An absolute crescendo of beguiling ideas, breathtakingly shocking, surreal scenarios, unholy grotesques, outspoken opinions and wickedly blasphemous visions, this is a wonder to read and utterly pointless to attempt reviewing.

It’s brilliant, read it now or regret it forever.

Not for the innocent, unimaginative or faint-hearted – although those souls are the ones who would benefit most from seeing it – Where the Bird Sings Best is that rarest of literary curios: a book not to be merely read but fully experienced.
Â© 2014 Alejandro Jodorowsky. Translation Â© 2014 Alfred Macadam.

April 4, 2015April 3, 2015

Melusine volume 1: Hocus Pocus

By Clarke (FrÃ©dÃ©ric Seron) & Gilson, coloured by Cerise and translated by Erica Jeffrey (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-20-5

Teen witches have a long and distinguished pedigree in fiction and one of the most engaging of all first appeared in venerable Belgian magazine Spirou in 1992. MÃ©lusine is actually a sprightly 119 years old and spends her days working as an au pair in a vast monster-packed chateau whilst studying to perfect her craft at Witches’ Schoolâ€¦

The feature ranges from one-page gag strips on supernatural themes to short tales detailing her rather fraught life, the impossibly demanding master and mistress of the castle and her large circle of peculiar family and friends.

Collected editions began appearing in 1995, with the 18^th published in 2010. Four of those have thus far made it into English translations thanks to the fine folk at Cinebook.

The strip was devised by writer FranÃ§ois Gilson (Rebecca, Cactus Club, Garage Isidore) and top flight cartoon humorist FrÃ©dÃ©ric Seron, AKA Clarke whose numerous features for all-ages Spirou and the acerbic adult humour publication Fluide Glacial include Rebecca, Les Cambrioleurs, Durant les Travaux, l’Exposition Continue… and Le Miracle de la Vie.

Under the pseudonym Valda, Seron also created Les Babysitters and as Bluttwurst Les EnquÃªtes de l’Inspecteur Archibaldo Massicotti, ChÃ¢teau Montrachet, Mister President and P.38 et Bas Nylo.

A former fashion illustrator and nephew of comics veteran Pierre Seron, Clarke is one of those insufferable guys who just draws non-stop and is sublimely funny. He also doubles up as a creator of historical and genre pieces such as Cosa Nostra, Les Histoires de France, Luna Almaden and Nocturnes and apparently is free from the curse of having to sleepâ€¦

Hocus Pocus was the seventh MÃ©lusine album, originally released in 2000, and offers a fine place for newcomers to start as the majority of the content is one or two page gags which – like a young, hot Broom Hilda – make play with fairy tale and horror film conventions and themes.

When brittle, moody Melusine isn’t being bullied for her inept cleaning skills by the matriarchal ghost-duchess who runs the castle, or ducking cat-eating monster Winston and frisky vampire The Count, she’s avoiding the attentions of horny peasants, practising her spells or consoling dreadfully unskilled classmate Cancrelune. Her boyfriend is a werewolf so she only sees him a couple of nights a monthâ€¦

Her days of toil are occasionally spiced up with and put in perspective by sports days such as blindfolded broom-flying contests and there’s always dowager Aunt Adrezelle who is eager and happy to share the wisdom of her so-many centuriesâ€¦

After a splendid succession of quick-fire japes and jests, things take on a touch of continuity and even tension when scandalous cousin Melisande pops in for an extended visit.

Spurning the dark, dread and sinisterly sober side of the clan, Melisande became a Fairy Godmother; all sparkles, fairy-cakes, pink bunnies and love. She’s simplicity, sweetness and light itself in every aspect, so what’s not to loatheâ€¦?

No sooner does the twinkling twit start to grow on everybody however than she falls victim to one of The Count’s periodic bite-fests and slowly metamorphoses into a true witches’ witch: skin-tight black leather, batwings and ready for wicked transformations and sorcery duels at the drop of a pointed hatâ€¦

The situation comes to a head and the cauldron boils over in the eponymous extra-long episode ‘Hocus Pocus’ as Melusine and Melisande finally face off to decide which witch is worstâ€¦

Clever, wry, sly, fast-paced and uproariously funny, this compendium of arcane antics is a great taste of the magic of European comics and a beguiling delight for all lovers of the cartoonist’s artâ€¦

April 3, 2015April 2, 2015

Spirou and Fantasio volume 7: The Rhinoceros’ Horn

By AndrÃ© Franquin, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-224-9

Spirou (whose name translates as both â€œsquirrelâ€ and â€œmischievousâ€ in the Walloon language) was created by French cartoonist FranÃ§ois Robert Velter under the pen-name Rob-Vel for Belgian publisher Ã‰ditions Dupuis in response to the phenomenal success of HergÃ©’s Tintin for rival outfit Casterman.

The legendary title was launched on April 21^st 1938 with a rival red-headed lad as the lead of an anthology weekly comic which bears his name to this day.

The character began life as a plucky bellboy/lift operator employed by the Moustique Hotel (a reference to publisher’s premier periodical Le Moustique) whose improbable adventures with his pet squirrel Spip eventually evolved into high-flying surreal comedy dramas.

Spirou and his associates have spearheaded the magazine for most of its life, with a phalanx of truly impressive creators carrying on Velter’s work, beginning with his wife Blanche â€œDavineâ€ Dumoulin who took over the strip when her husband enlisted in 1939.

She was assisted by Belgian artist Luc Lafnet until 1943 when Dupuis purchased all rights to the feature, after which comic-strip prodigy Joseph Gillain (â€œJijÃ©â€) took the helm.

In 1946 JijÃ©‘s assistant AndrÃ© Franquin assumed the reins, gradually sidelining the short, gag-like vignettes in favour of longer epic adventure serials, introducing a wide and engaging cast of regulars and eventually creating a phenomenally popular magic animal dubbed Marsupilami to the mix (first seen in Spirou et les hÃ©ritiers in 1952 and now a spin-off star of screen, plush toy store, console games and albums all his own).

He crafted increasingly fantastic tales and absorbing Spirou sagas until he resigned in 1969.

He was succeeded by Jean-Claude Fournier who updated the feature over the course of nine stirring adventures which tapped into the rebellious, relevant zeitgeist of the times with tales of environmental concern, nuclear energy, drug cartels and repressive regimes.

By the 1980s the series seemed outdated and without direction: three different creative teams alternated on the feature, until it was at last revitalised by Philippe Vandevelde – writing as Tome – and artist Jean-Richard Geurts AKA Janry, who adapted, referenced and in many ways returned to the beloved Franquin era. Their sterling efforts consequently revived the floundering feature’s fortunes and resulted in fourteen wonderful albums between 1984 and 1998.

As the strip diversified into parallel strands (Spirou’s Childhood/Little Spirou and guest-creator specials A Spirou Story Byâ€¦) the team on the main vehicle were succeeded by Jean-David Morvan & JosÃ©-Luis Munuera, and in 2010 Yoann & Vehlmann took over the never-ending procession of amazing adventuresâ€¦

Cinebook have been publishing Spirou & Fantasio’s exploits since October 2009, mainly translating Tome & Janry’s superb pastiche/homages of Franquin, but for the fifth episode (The Marsupilami Thieves), they reached all the way back to 1952 and the second appearance of the adorable wonder-beast by the great man himself.

With that brave experiment clearly having paid dividends they repeated the experiment here, but with times and taste having changed so radically felt the need to issue a heartfelt warning and carefully considered apologia regarding some content of The Rhinoceros’ Hornâ€¦

I’ll prÃ©cis it here: it was sixty years ago and our attitudes to hunting, minorities and especially the modern obscenity of killing for ivory and horn have thankfully changed. Please read this book with that in mind. The publishers, of course, phrased it much betterâ€¦

AndrÃ© Franquin was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3^rd 1924. Drawing from an early age, the lad only began formal art training at Ã‰cole Saint-Luc in 1943. When the war forced the school to close a year later, he found animation work at Compagnie Belge d’Animation in Brussels where he met Maurice de Bevere (Lucky Luke creator â€œMorrisâ€), Pierre Culliford (Peyo, creator of The Smurfs) and Eddy Paape (Valhardi, Luc Orient).

In 1945 all but Peyo signed on with Dupuis, and Franquin began his career as a jobbing cartoonist and illustrator, producing covers for Le Moustique and scouting magazine Plein Jeu.

All during those early days Franquin and Morris were being tutored by JijÃ© who was the main illustrator at Spirou. He turned the youngsters and fellow neophyte Willy Maltaite AKA Will (Tif et Tondu, Isabelle, Le jardin des dÃ©sirs) into a perfect creative bullpen known as the La bande des quatre or â€œGang of Fourâ€ who revolutionised Belgian comics with their prolific and engaging â€œMarcinelle schoolâ€ style of graphic storytelling.

JijÃ© handed Franquin all responsibilities for the flagship strip part-way through Spirou et la maison prÃ©fabriquÃ©e, (Spirou #427, June 20^th 1946) and the lad ran with it for two decades, enlarging the scope and horizons until it became purely his own.

Almost every week fans would meet startling new characters such as comrade and rival Fantasio and crackpot inventor the Count of Champignac. Along the way Spirou and Fantasio became globe-trotting journalists, continuing their exploits in unbroken four-colour glory.

The heroes travelled to exotic places, uncovering crimes, revealing the fantastic and clashing with a coterie of exotic arch-enemies such as Zorglub and Zantafio. This particular tale saw the debut of one of the first strong, capable female characters in European comics; rival journalist Seccotine (renamed Cellophine for this translation).

In a splendid example of good practise, Franquin mentored his own band of apprentice cartoonists during the 1950s. These included Jean Roba (La Ribambelle, Boule et Bill), JidÃ©hem (Sophie, Starter, Gaston Lagaffe) and Greg (Bruno Brazil, Bernard Prince, Achille Talon, Zig et Puce), who all worked with him on Spirou et Fantasio.

In 1955 – around the time this story was collected into an album – contractual conflicts with Dupuis forced Franquin to sign up with rival outfit Casterman on Tintin. Here he collaborated with RenÃ© Goscinny and old pal Peyo whilst creating the raucous gag strip Modeste et Pompon.

He soon patched things up with Dupuis and returned to Spirou, subsequently co-creating Gaston Lagaffe in 1957, but was obliged to carry on his Tintin work tooâ€¦

From 1959 on, writer Greg and background artist JidÃ©hem assisted Franquin but by 1969 the artist had reached his Spirou limit and resigned, taking his mystic Marsupilami with himâ€¦

His later creations include fantasy series Isabelle, illustration sequence Monsters and bleak adult conceptual series IdÃ©es Noires, but his greatest creation – and one he retained all rights to on his departure – is Marsupilami.

Franquin, plagued in later life by bouts of depression, passed away on January 5^th 1997 but his legacy remains, a vast body of work that reshaped the landscape of European comics.

The Rhinoceros’ Horn was originally serialised in two sequences in Spirou: #764-787 (Spirou et la Turbotraction) and #788-797(La corne de rhinocÃ©ros), spanning late 1952 and early 1953 before being united in hardback album La corne de rhinocÃ©ros in 1955.

The story begins with Spirou exulting over the success of Fantasio’s latest enterprise – personal helicopters worn as backpacks – but his pal is rather down in the dumps. He’s just been dressed down by his editor on The Mosquito and warned that the paper has hired a new reporter: a real go-getting hotshotâ€¦

Dejected and desperate Fantasio determines to revive his career by staging a publicity stunt: robbing the Good Bazaar Department Storeâ€¦

As the rattled reporter draws up his plans and sends a warning to the store of his intentions, a colossal explosion shakes the town. Persons unknown have blown up the nearby Turbot car plant. With even more to prove now, Fantasio proceedsâ€¦

Dragged along for the ride to photograph the stunt, Spirou and Spip reluctantly join their pal in the hare-brained venture. Landing on the roof of the emporium courtesy of the petrol-powered â€œFantacoptersâ€, they deftly break in through the fire-door, Spirou recording everything with his gigantic flash camera.

Typically the lead-footed burglars make an appalling clatter and tremendous mess but no night-watchmen confront them. They’ve all been incapacitated and tied up by real robbersâ€¦

Hearing the villains approach, the lads take refuge in a wardrobe in the bedrooms department and discover an old acquaintance already there. Behring works for Turbot and was wounded in the explosion earlier. Moreover, he’s carrying blueprints for the company’s latest advancement and the burglars in the darkened store are actually bandits trying to finish him off to get themâ€¦

Handing the boys an envelope and begging them to get it to his employer Mr. Martin, the troubleshooter loses consciousness just as the nervous heroes are challenged by a shadowy figure demanding the precious prize. It’s not the bad guys however, but Fantasio’s new journalistic nemesisâ€¦

Cellophine is already streets ahead of them: she knows of the plot to steal Turbot’s revolutionary supercar. All she needs is the address Behring muttered to secure an interview with the in-hiding Martin and her next terrific scoopâ€¦

And that’s when the gun-toting bandits make their move, demanding blueprints and rendezvous address. Thankfully Spirou is still holding the camera and super-bright flashgunâ€¦

Hilariously and calamitously fleeing for their lives through the darkened store, the boys eventually make their escape via fantacopters from the top storey, allowing Cellophine to lock the bandits up on the roof before dragging Behring to safety.

The next morning the boys are in Whistleton but Martin has already fled. His note reveals nothing, but later a sinister stranger in a cafÃ© advises them to surrender the blueprints and warns them not to join Martin in Bab-el-bled in North Africa.

Ignoring him and returning home, they encounter the distressingly persistent Cellophine and Spirou clues her in. Sadly the thugs have tracked them down and overhear the plans. When the boys catch a jet liner to Africa, the heavily disguised heavies are in the seats behind themâ€¦

They villains are on their tails all though the streets of Bab-el-bled, but a wig malfunction in the Souk warns Spirou they’re being followed and another hectic chase ensues.

Thinking they’ve at last shaken their pursuers our heroes go to Martin’s house only to learn he was ambushed by the banditsâ€¦

Happily the troubled Turbot exec escaped and fled further into North Africa. He’s rushing off to the M’saragba Animal Reservation but as the boys try to follow Cellophine appears and pips them to the last spot on the plane – stowed away in the baggage holdâ€¦

Forced to follow by train, it is eight days later when Fantasio and Spirou finally reach the Reserve and yet again – as the infinitely annoying Cellophine explains – they’ve just missed Martin. He was chased into the bush by the implacable banditsâ€¦

The youngsters go after him and, later that afternoon, find him just after the thugs do. Having shot Martin, the villains are smugly gloating when the sinister stranger from the cafÃ© in Whistleton appears. He’s a cop and finally has enough evidence to arrest them for blowing up the factoryâ€¦

They are all too late. The harassed entrepreneur has already got rid of his portion of the plans, giving them to a native friend to hide.

As Martin is carried to hospital, Spirou and Fantasio volunteer to retrieve the accursed documents but they have not reckoned on the quirky ingenuity of the chief of the Wakukus, the vastness of the reserve and the sheer bloody-mindedness of the local flora and fauna.

After days of unpleasant and painful adventures they finally locate the tribe and, following even more nerve-wracking moments convince the chief that they too are friends of Martin. That’s when the king delivers his bombshell.

Tasked with keeping safe the plans – now contained on a spool of microfilm – the wily Wakuku had his men capture a live rhino before drilling a hole in its horn and sealing the container within. He then released it back into the wild. He has no idea where it is now or even which of the 200 in the park it might beâ€¦

Determined to complete their mission, the lads spend months tracking and capturing the assorted beasts. The task becomes only slightly easier after they find a dipsomaniac white trader who sells them hunting gear and latterly, yellow paint so that they can tell the rhinos they’ve already checked from the ones so cunningly evading themâ€¦

It’s a backbreaking, heartbreaking and increasingly pointless task but only when their resolve crumbles and they brokenly give up and head for home do they find the prize in the very last place they lookedâ€¦

Even the trip back is a tribulation, and eventually they collapse only to awake in a nice clean hospital with Martin and Cellophine offering to fill in the blanks on this baffling caseâ€¦

Six weeks later the lads are recuperating at home when Behring shows up. He’s got a little reward for them from the grateful Turbot Company but, as usual, Cellophine is on hand to spoil it for Fantasioâ€¦

Stuffed with superb slapstick situations, riotous keystone kops chases and gallons of gags, this exuberant yarn is a true celebration of angst-free action, thrills and spills. Easily accessible to readers of all ages and drawn with all the beguiling style and seductively wholesome Ã©lan which makes Asterix, Lucky Luke, The Bluecoats and Iznogoud so compelling, this is another enduring comics treat from a long line of superb exploits, certain to be as much a household name as those series – and even that other kid with the white dogâ€¦
Original edition Â© Dupuis, 1955 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation 2014 Â© Cinebook Ltd.

April 2, 2015April 1, 2015

Hurricane Isle: The Best of Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs

By Roy Crane, edited by Rick Norwood (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-809-0

Modern comics evolved from newspaper cartoons and comic strips, and these pictorial features were until relatively recently utterly ubiquitous and hugely popular with the public. They were also highly valued by publishers who used them as an irresistible sales weapon to guarantee and increase circulation and profits.

It’s virtually impossible for us to today to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comic sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. â€œThe Funniesâ€ were the most common recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality.

From the very start humour was paramount; hence the terms â€œFunniesâ€ and â€œComicsâ€, and from these gag and stunt beginnings – a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and vaudeville shows – came a thoroughly entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Washington Tubbs II was a comedic gag-a-day strip not much different from family favourite Harold Teen (by Crane’s friend and contemporary Carl Ed). Tubbs was a diminutive, ambitious and bumbling young store clerk when the feature debuted on April 21^st 1924, but after only three months Crane re-evaluated his little enterprise and made a few changes which would reshape the entire art form.

Having Wash run away to the circus (Crane did much the same in the name of research) the artist gradually moved the strip into mock-heroics, then through a period of gently boisterous action romps to become a full-blown, light-hearted, rip-roaring adventure series. It was the first of its kind and dictated the form for decades thereafter. Crane then sealed its immortality with the introduction of prototype he-man and ancestral moody swashbuckler Captain Easy in the landmark episode for 6^th May, 1929.

As the tales gradually became more exotic and thrill-packed, the globe-trotting little dynamo clearly needed a sidekick and sounding board. After a few bright and breezy types were tried and discarded, Crane decided on one who could believably handle the combat side of things, and thus in the middle of a European war, in the fairytale kingdom of Kandelabra, Tubbs liberated a mysterious fellow American from a cell and history was made.

Before long the mismatched pair were inseparable; tried-and-true travelling companions hunting treasure, fighting thugs and rescuing a bevy of startlingly comely damsels in distressâ€¦

The bluff, two-fisted, completely capable and utterly dependable, down-on-his-luck â€œSouthern Gentlemanâ€ was something not seen before in comics: a taciturn, raw, square-jawed hunk played completely straight rather than the previously popular buffoon or music hall foil seen in such classic serials as Hairsbreadth Harry or Desperate Desmond.

Moreover Crane’s seductively simple blend of cartoon exuberance and design was a far more accessible and powerful medium for action story-telling than the somewhat static illustrative style favoured by artists like Hal Foster: just beginning to make waves on the new Tarzan Sunday page at this time.

Tubbs and Easy were as exotic and thrilling as the Ape Man but rattled along like the tempestuous Popeye, full of vim, vigour and vinegar, as attested to by a close look at the early work of the would-be cartoonists who followed the strip with avid intensity.

Floyd Gottfredson, Milton Caniff, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and especially young Joe Shuster were eager fans taking notes and following suitâ€¦

After a couple of abortive attempts starring his little hero, Crane eventually bowed to the inevitable and created a full colour Sunday page dedicated solely to his increasingly popular hero-for-hire. Captain Easy debuted on 30^th July 1933, in wild and woolly escapades set before his fateful meeting with Tubbs.

Both together and separately, reprinted exploits of these troubleshooters became staples of the earliest comic books (specifically The Funnies from October 1936 and The Comics, March 1937 onwards).

With an entire page and vibrant colours to play with, Crane’s imagination ran wild and his fabulous visual concoctions achieved a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The effect of the pages can be seen in so many strips since, especially the works of such near-contemporaries as HergÃ© and giants in waiting like Charles Schulz. They have all been collected in the four-volume Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips.

Those pages were a clearly as much of a joy to create as to read. In fact, the cited reason for Crane surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA Syndicate’s abruptly and arbitrarily demanding that all its strips be henceforward produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate them being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated. Crane just walked away, concentrating on the daily feature. In 1943 he quit NEA to create the wartime aviator strip Buz Sawyer, and Turner became the able custodian of the heroes’ fate.

Wash Tubbs ran until January 10^th 1988.

Before all that however Wash was the affable and undisputed star of a never-ending parade of riotous daily black and white escapades and this superb hardback opens with two of them: part of a cherry-picked compilation of ten of the very best adventures of the bombastic buddies. Hopefully if this book is a hit it will lead to another complete reprinting such as the 18-volume series covering the entirety of the Wash Tubbs run – 1934-1943 and published by NBM from 1987-1992â€¦

Before the non-stop nonsense begins author and pre-eminent comic strip historian Ron Goulart details all you need to know about the tales in ‘A History of Lickety Whop’ and editor Rick Norwood provides further background information in his copiously illustrated Introduction’ after which we’re all plunged into astounding adventure on ‘Hurricane Isle’ (which originally ran daily from February 23^rd to June 6^th 1928)â€¦

At this time Wash and fellow inveterate fortune-hunter Gozy Gallup are gloating over securing an ancient map which once belonged to the dread pirate Edward Teach AKA Blackbeard!

As they research the infamous buccaneer and scrabble to find a ship to take them to their destination, they are unaware that aggrieved enemy Brick Bane – the Bandit King of Mexico – is hard on their trail and hungry for revenge. Stalking them as they journey from New Orleans to the Caribbean, he takes a nasty sea captain into his confidence and arranges for the sinister salt to hire out his ship to the treasure seekers. The skipper is unsavoury brute Bull Dawson: destined to become Tubbs’ – and later Easy’s – greatest and most implacable foeâ€¦

After travelling to the island with them Dawson, having already removed Bane, springs his trap and turns Wash and Gozy into enslaved labourers, digging with the crew to find the fabled horde. The lads soon rebel and escape into the jungle to search on their own, and also abortively attempt to steal Dawson’s ship.

The wily brute is always too much for them however and even after the boys finally locate the loot, the malicious mariner reappears to take it from them. The sadistic swine is preparing to maroon them when Bane shows up with a ship full of his Mexican bandits and a shooting war breaks outâ€¦

With bullets flying and bodies dropping, Wash and Gozy convince affable deckhand Samson to switch sides and the trio take off for civilisation with the treasure in the holdâ€¦

Money comes and goes pretty freely for these guys but by the time ‘Arabia’ (July 30^th – December 12^th 1928) begins they are still pretty flush and so opt for a luxurious Mediterranean cruise. Unfortunately Wash’s propensity for clumsy gaffes raises the ire of a very nasty sheik named Abdul Hoozit Hudson Bey and the affronted potentate swears vengeance when the ship docks in Tunis.

As if icing fate’s cake, when wandering through the bazaar Wash is glamoured by a pair of gorgeous eyes and inadvertently seals his doom by attempting to rescue a girl from a seraglio: Jada is not only a distressed damsel but Bey’s favourite wifeâ€¦

Heeding the French authorities’ advice to leave town quickly, the lads take off on a camel caravan into the Sahara but have no idea they are heading into cunning Bey’s trapâ€¦

The fact that Jada is the favourite of the incensed chieftain saves them temporarily, but when the sheik finally finds a way to surreptitiously assassinate them, she and her devoted slave Bola dash into the deep desert to save them, and the quartet strike out for safety and freedom together.

That trek dumps them in the clutches of Bey’s great rival Abdullah Bumfellah and leads to a tribal shooting war. Happily Bola has been busy and found a Foreign Legion patrol to save the day.

And that’s when Jada drops her bombshell. She is actually a princess from a European principality, sold to Bey by her father’s Grand Vizier so that he could steal the throne. Now that she’s free again she must return to liberate her poor people. Despite having to get back to America, Wash won’t shut up about wishing he’d gone with herâ€¦

He soon gets the chance as ‘Kandelabra’ (April 11^th – July 6^th 1929) became the most significant sequence in the strip’s history; introducing Captain Easy in a riotous, rousing Ruritanian epic which we join after Wash reunites with Jada in the postage stamp kingdom she had been so cruelly abducted from.

Our little go-getter soon infiltrates the government and rises to the rank of admiral of the landlocked land but overplays his hand and is framed for stealing the army’s payroll. Delivered to a secret dungeon he (partially) escapes and finds a gruff fellow American who refuses to share his name but insists on being called â€œEasyâ€â€¦

Busting out his new pal, soon Wash and the stranger are caught in a bloody revolution when the aggrieved army mutinies. Before long the Vizier’s cronies are ousted, the vile villain accidentally orchestrates his own demise and the regally restored Jada declares the birth of the continent’s newest democracyâ€¦

In ‘Desert Island’ (February 6^th – June 7^th 1930) Bull Dawson returns to steal Tubbs’ entire fortune, flying off across America in a bid to escape with his ill-gotten gains. The robbery becomes a nationwide sensation and we join the action as Wash and Easy frantically pursue the fugitive. Tracking him to San Francisco they continue the chase when the malign mariner takes off in a schooner with our heroes as stowaways and, before long, prisonersâ€¦

The sadistic Bull lose faces after being thrashed in a no-holds barred fight with Easy which was merely subterfuge to allow the southern soldier of fortune to pick Dawson’s pocket and recover Wash’s easily portable $200,000 in cash. As the battered thug recuperates the ship is hit by a monster typhoon which apparently leaves our heroes the only survivors aboard the shattered shards of the schooner.

The wreck fetches up on a desolate Pacific atoll where the boys soon fall into the routine of latter-day Robinson Crusoes. The isolated idyll becomes complicated when they find the place is already home to a young woman who was the only survivor of an attack by roving headhunters from Borneo.

Mary Milton is brave, competent and beautiful and before long the lonely pals are fierce rivals for her affectionsâ€¦

The situation grows dangerously intense and only stabilises when the savages return, forcing the warring suitors to stand together or fall separatelyâ€¦

When the brutal battle ends the westerners are in possession of a sturdy war canoe and decide to risk their lives on an epic ocean odyssey to the nearest outpost of civilisation. It is only after the voyagers are far out to sea that Wash agonisingly recalls that he left his stash of dollars behindâ€¦

The next adventure (running from June 9^th – October 1930) immediately follows on as the weary travellers reach French Indo-China and, thanks to a friendly soldier, escape far inland via a mighty river. After days of travel they reach the previously hidden kingdom of Cucumbria and quickly fall foul of the toad-worshipping emperor Igbay Umbay who takes one look at Mary and decides he must have herâ€¦

Being a coward who stole the throne from his brother, the grand poobah hasn’t the nerve to simply take her and orchestrates a succession of scurvy schemes to get rid of Wash and Easy but the boys are too smart and bold to fall for them. Infuriatingly rising in power and status, aided by young prince Hilo Casino – freshly returned from college in America – the Americans finally seem be out of the Umbay’s hair after they agree to lead his armies against the supernatural rebel leader known as ‘The Phantom King’â€¦

Despite deep misgivings â€œGeneralâ€ Easy and his aide Washington Tubbs set out on a campaign that will ravage the hidden kingdom, unseat an emperor, cost thousands of lives and lose them the girl they both loveâ€¦

A year later ‘Down on the Bayou’ (March 12^th – July 25^th 1931) found the world-weary wanderers nearing home again only to be arrested as they approach New Orleans in a stolen plane. They were fleeing a clever frame-up in infamous Costa Grande, but without proof could only evade their US Navy captors and flee into the swampy vastness of the Mississippi Deltaâ€¦

Lost for days and starving, they are picked up by vivacious gangster’s moll Jean who recruits them into a gang of smugglers and rum-runners who inhabit a huge plantation somewhere between Pelican Island and Barataria dedicated to various criminal enterprises. Tubbs and Easy are soon comfortably settled in amidst the rogues and outcasts but everything changes when Jean’s brother returns from a smuggling trip. His name is Bull Dawsonâ€¦

The pirate is prevented from killing our heroes by Jean and the huge Cajun in charge of the outlaw outpost, but Dawson takes it badly and with his gang of deadly bodyguards decides to take over the whole enterprise.

A couple of murders later Bull is big boss but also oddly friendly to his most despised enemies. Maybe it’s a ploy to put them off guard, but perhaps it has more to do with the gang of Chicago mobsters who have come down to put an end to the bootlegging mavericks cutting into their profitsâ€¦

The troubles and bloodshed escalate exponentially and Jean drops her final bombshell: she’s a federal agent working with the Coast Guard to smash the budding criminal empireâ€¦

Once the dust settles she has one final surprise in store. In all the years of their friendship Wash could never get his taciturn pal to talk of his past or even reveal his real name. Now the government girl gives Mr. William Lee a message which sends him rushing across country to an old plantation home. Here the astounded Wash hears all about his pal’s shocking life, sordid scandals and abandoned wife â€¦and then he learns the truthâ€¦

Soon the impediments and lies which blighted Easy’s life are all removed and the wanderer settles in to a well-deserved retirement with the girl he always loved but could never have. Tubbs moves on, quickly reuniting with old chum Gozy Gallupâ€¦

A few weeks later the ever-restless Wash is riding a tramp steamer headed for Europe, intent on paying Jada a visit in Kandelabra but, falling foul of rustic transportation systems, ends up in the similar but so different Principality of Sneeziaâ€¦

Apart from pretty girls, the tiny kingdom has only one point of interest: the world’s dinkiest railway service. Run by aged expatriate American Calliope Simpson ‘The Transalpina Express’ (August 13^th – November 21^st 1931) links Sneezia to sister kingdom Belchia and is the most unique and beloved (by its intoxicated customers at least) service in the world.

Wash is especially keen to learn the business since being the engineer has made octogenarian Cal the most irresistible man in two countries, fighting off adorable young women with a stickâ€¦

The lad’s greatest dream comes true when Simpson finally elopes with one of his adoring devotees and Washington Tubbs become sole operator of the Express, but his joy at all the feminine attention soon sours when Belchia and Sneezia go to war and both sides want to use his train to move men and material into combat. Of course the dilemma can only end in disaster and before long our boy is running for his life againâ€¦

There’s a big jump to the next yarn which finds Wash and Easy reunited and stowing away on the wrong-est ship imaginable. Quickly caught, they are quite understandably assumed to be part of the contingent of prisoners bound for the final destination – ‘Devil’s Island’ (June 9^th – August 30^th 1932)â€¦

No sooner are they mixed in with the hopeless prison population than the planning of their inevitable escape begins, but success only leads to greater peril as they and their criminal confederates take ship with a greedy captain subject to murderous bouts of paranoia and madnessâ€¦

‘Whales’ (April 24^th – August 30^th 1933) is probably the most shocking – to modern sensibilities – of the perennial wanderers’ exploits as Wash and Easy are drugged in a Dutch cafe and dumped aboard one of the last sailing ships to work the whaling trade.

Elderly and nostalgic Captain Folly has been convinced by psychotic First Mate Mr. Slugg to compete one last time against the new-fangled factory whaling fleets, unknowingly crewing his creaking old ship with shanghaied strangersâ€¦

The grim minutiae of the ghastly profession is scrupulously detailed as our heroes seek some means of escape but with Slugg becoming increasingly unbalanced and eventually murdering Folly, bloody mutiny soon leads to the ship foundering and both factions – or at least the survivors of each – being marooned on the arctic Alaskan ice, where naturally our heroes find the only pretty girl in a thousand square milesâ€¦

This fabulous treasury of thrills concludes with one last battle against Bull Dawson after the incorrigible monster links up with gorgeous grifter Peggy Lake, who fleeces gullible Wash of his savings and disappears into the endless green wilderness of the swamps of ‘Okefenokee’ (June 13^th – July 24^th 1935).

The crime leads to a massive police manhunt through the mire before the boys personally track down the villains and deliver one more sound thrashing to the malodorous malcontent and his pretty patsyâ€¦

Rounding off this superb collection is a thorough ‘Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs Episode Guide’ by Rick Norwood as well as a glorious graphic Mexican travelogue feature by Crane in ‘An Afterword in Pictures’ as well as the informative biography section ‘About the Authors’.

If I’ve given the impression that this has all been grim and gritty turmoil and drama thus far, please forgive me: Crane was a superbly irrepressible gag-man and his boisterous, enchanting serials abound with breezy, light-hearted banter, hilarious situations and outright farce – a sure-fire formula modern cinema directors plunder to this day.

Easy was the Indiana Jones, Flynn (The Librarian) Carsen and Jack (Romancing the Stone) Cotton of his day – and, clearly blazing a trail for all of them – whilst Wash was akin to Danny Kaye or our own Norman Wisdom: brave, big-hearted, well-meaning, clay-footed, irrepressible and utterly indomitable everymen… just like all of us.

This superb monochrome landscape hardback (274 x 33 x 224 mm) is a wonderful means of discovering or rediscovering Crane’s rip-snorting, pulse-pounding, exotically racy adventure trailblazer.

This is comics storytelling of the very highest quality: unforgettable, spectacular and utterly irresistible. These tales rank alongside her best of HergÃ©, Tezuka and Kirby and led irrefutably to the creations of all of them. Now that you have the chance to experience the strips that inspired the giants of our art form, how can you possibly resist?
Hurricane Isle: The Best of Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs Â© 2015 Fantagraphics Books. All Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy Strips Â© 2015 United Features Syndicate, Inc. All other material Â© the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

April 1, 2015March 31, 2015

A Sailor’s Story

By Sam Glanzman (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-79812-7

Inexplicably, many superb creators who dedicate a lifetime to producing a volume of work are never properly rewarded for their efforts. Probably the most shamefully neglected of these hidden stars – at least in the American comicbook industry – is Sam Glanzman.

With a solid, uniquely informative and engagingly rough-hewn style, â€œSJGâ€ has worked since the 1940s on a variety of titles for a host of publishers, mostly on material in war, mystery, fantasy and adventure anthologies, but also occasionally on serial characters such as Willy Schulz, Hercules and Tarzan for Charlton, the astoundingly cool (and shamefully still uncollected) Kona, King of Monster Island for Dell and for DC The Haunted Tank and most significantly for us here U.S.S. Stevens (DD 479).

It is this last series of guardedly-autobiographical tales, derived from his tour of duty on that self-same American navy Destroyer during World War II, which formed the precedent for the superb compilation at last collected here – and if anybody from DC is reading this, those U.S.S. Stevens strips are so-very-long overdue for a trade paperback treatment, tooâ€¦

This criminally neglected talent had been quietly and resolutely generating comics magic for decades in his underplayed, effective and matter-of-fact manner and was still improving – crafting superb narrative art without flash or dazzle, winning fans among the cognoscenti yet largely unnoticed or at least unlauded by mainstream fans – when in 1987 he produced a quasi-autobiographical graphic novel that made quite a few waves.

Marvel editor Larry Hama made the bold decision to publish Glanzman’s understated, unadorned, wryly elegiac account of his days as a young man aboard a Pacific Fleet Destroyer as part of the company’s Original Graphic Novel imprint.

A Sailor’s Story captivatingly related his experiences as a young man aboard the U.S.S. Stevens in a no-nonsense, highly entertaining manner and broke new ground in the progress of the graphic novel as a medium for artistic expression. It also reached a lot of buyers who wouldn’t be caught dead with a copy of Spider-Man or Conanâ€¦

It was a high point in American sequential narrative and even spawned a sequel volume – an unprecedented feat for the line at a time when superheroes and licensed properties monopolised the marketplace.

Glanzman is a natural storyteller, with the ability to make dry fact entrancing and everyday events compelling. With his raw, gritty drawing style and powerful sense of colour he weaves memory into magic. His depiction of ship-board life is informative and authentic, and his decision to down-play action and concentrate on character is brave and tremendously effective. He also knows how to make a reader laugh and cry, and when.

A Sailor’s Story is a moving and obviously heartfelt paean to lost days: an impassioned tribute to lost friends and comrades; a war story that glorifies life, not death, by a creator who loved the experience and loves his art-form. When you read this superb book you will too.

Utterly devoid of unnecessary melodrama and conniving faux-angst, the history lesson starts as young Sam J. Glanzman enlists one year after Pearl Harbor – as soon as he turns 18. All the orphan leaves behind him in frigid upstate New York is one friendly farmer who promises to look after his devoted dog Beautyâ€¦

What follows is a mesmerising succession of snippets and memories and observations pieced together into a mosaic of life afloat during wartime: learning to speak what amounts to a new language, playing pranks and growing up in a pressure cooker. Along the way you make a few friends, some enemies but mostly just acquaintances: people doing the same things as you at the same time in the same place, but not necessarily for the same reasons and certainly with no dreams except having it all endâ€¦

Sam sees the world, the best and worst of life and survives the sailor’s greatest enemies: unseen, distant strangers trying to kill you, mindless tedium and dire, soul-destroying repetitive routine, eventually finding his niche – if never a decent place to sleepâ€¦

Through brief and terrifying clashes with the enemy, intimate associations and alliances aboard ship, intimate assignations ashore or on the frequent and increasingly bizarre and hilarious â€œLibertiesâ€ (those breaks from active duty us TV-reared landlubbers all mistakenly think of as â€œshore leaveâ€), the author debunks the myth of the magic of the seas, only to recreate it recast in terms any modern reader will instantly understandâ€¦

Eventually the war ends and long after that so does the sailor’s service, with only the merest few of his unforgettable memories sharedâ€¦

The sheer overwhelming veracity of the episodes is utterly overwhelming. Raucously funny, ineffably sad – â€œBeauty’s fateâ€ will break your heart or you’re not and never have been human – devoutly forgiving, patiently understanding and stunningly authenticâ€¦

This long longed-for complete edition (thank you, Dover Books!) also includes that sequel from 1989. Wind, Dreams and Dragons returns to the Pacific at the height of the war with a specific theme in mind and, by clever use of narrative devices such as Ship’s Travel Logs incorporated into the beguiling page designs, diagrams and cutaways as part of the text plus astoundingly affecting intimate details – most trenchantly humorous – fondly recalled and seamlessly staged, manages to instil an even more documentary atmosphere into this wonderfully human-scaled drama.

This is used to create a foreboding sense of dread as the crew encounters and learns to live with the then-unknown terror weapon of suicide-pilots who would become a household name to us: Kamikazeâ€¦

Combining the folksy, informative charm of the first volume with the â€œhurry-up-and-waitâ€ tension of modern warfare, all delivered in an increasingly bold and innovative graphic style, Wind, Dreams and Dragons is one of the best explorations ever produced of sea-combat as seen through the eyes of the ordinary seaman and compellingly communicates the terror, resolve and sheer disbelief that men on both sides could sacrifice so muchâ€¦

This is a fitting and evocative tribute from one who was there to all those who are no longer hereâ€¦

As if those back-to-back blockbusters were not enough, this oversized (279x210mm), fully colour-remastered paperback tome comes with a flotilla of extras beginning with a Foreword by Max (World War Z) Brooks and Introduction from original editor Larry Hama.

Following the colourful comics there is also a star-studded ‘Tributes’ section by Glanzman’s contemporaries: moving and frequently awe-struck commemorations, appreciations, shared memories and even many art contributions from Alan Barnard, George Pratt, Beau Smith (who shares a personal sketch SJG created for him), Stephen R. Bissette, Carl Potts, Chris Claremont, Denny O’Neil, Kurt Busiek, Stan Lee, Paul Levitz, Joe R. Lansdale, Walt Simonson, Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, Steve Fears, Thomas Yeates, Timothy Truman, Will Franz and Mark Wheatley.

There’s even a splendid photo parade entitled ‘Sam’s Scrapbook’ and warmly impassioned ‘Afterword’ by Chuck Dixon.

Topping everything is a new 10-page black-&-white hauntingly powerful USS Stevens tale entitled ‘Even Dead Birds Have Wings’. Now all we have to do is get those 50 or so USS Stevens micro classics tales into a book tooâ€¦ as soon as possibleâ€¦

Shockingly raw, painfully authentic, staggeringly beautiful, A Sailor’s Story is a magnificent work by one of the very best of â€œThe Greatest Generationâ€, a sublimely insightful, affecting and rewarding graphic memoir every home, school and library should haveâ€¦
Artwork and text Â© 2015 Sam Glanzman. All other material Â© 2015 its respective creators.

A Sailor’s Story will be released on May 29^th 2015 and is available for pre-order now. Check out www.doverpublications.com or your internet retailer or comic shop of choice.

March 31, 2015March 30, 2015

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant volume 9: 1953-1954

By Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-735-2

The stellar Sunday page Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur debuted on February 13^th 1937, a luscious, luminous full-colour weekly window into a miraculous too-perfect past of adventure and romance, even topping creator Hal Foster’s previous endeavour, the astoundingly impossibly popular comics masterpiece Tarzan of the Apes.

The saga of noble knights played against a glamorised, dramatised Dark Ages historical backdrop as it followed the life of a refugee boy driven from his ancestral homeland in Scandinavian Thule who grew up to roam the world and attain a paramount position amongst the heroes of fabled Camelot.

Auteur Foster wove his epic tale over decades, following the progress of a near-feral wild boy who grew into a paragon of chivalric virtue: knight, warrior, saviour, vengeance-taker and eventually family patriarch in a constant deluge of wild – and joyously witty – wonderment.

The restless hero visited many far-flung lands, siring a dynasty of equally puissant heroes and utterly enchanting generations of readers and thousands of creative types in all the arts.

There have been films, an animated series and all manner of toys, games, books and collections based on Prince Valiant – one of the few adventure strips to have run continuously from the thunderous 1930s to the present day (more than 4000 episodes and counting) – and even here at the end times of newspaper narrative cartoons as an art form, it continues to astound in more than 300 American papers. It has even cut its way onto the internet with an online edition.

Foster crafted the feature alone until 1971 when illustrator John Cullen Murphy (Big Ben Bolt) succeeded him as illustrator. Foster continued as writer and designer until 1980, after which he retired and Cullen Murphy’s daughter Mairead took over colouring and lettering whilst her brother John assumed the writer’s role.

In 2004 the senior Cullen Murphy also retired, since when the strip has soldiered on under the auspices of many extremely talented artists such as Gary Gianni, Scott Roberts and latterly Thomas Yeates with Mark Schultz (Xenozoic) superbly scripting. That scribe also provides this volume’s Introduction ‘More Than Pretty Pictures: Storytelling Beyond Genre, Gender, and Medium’ wherein Foster’s extraordinary facility with expressions and pioneering creation of strong and capable female characters is celebrated, analysed and explained by focusing on the artist’s astoundingly able wife and lifemate Helen.

This enormously entertaining and luxurious oversized (362 x 264mm) full-colour hardback reprints the pages from January 4^th 1953 to 26^th December 1954 (pages #830-933, if you’re counting) but before we proceedâ€¦

What Has Gone Before: Having negotiated a truce between Val’s Scandinavian nation Thule and the kingdom of Orkney, the restless Prince undertook his most momentous task yet. Bringing back missionaries from Rome at his father King Aguar‘s request, the rowdy knight of Camelot began overseeing the nation’s slow conversion from Paganism and Druid worship to Christianity.

The job was not without risk with the missionaries and their regal escort (who was still far from a believer in the One God himself) encountering stiff resistance and worse from the Thor-loving populace – and especially their profiteering priestsâ€¦

The saga resumes with Val and companions Helgi and Torr presiding over a tenuous truce between new and old faiths which is soon threatened after the Prince exposes the seeming â€œmiraclesâ€ of the Thor priests for what they truly are. In retaliation the new Christian chapel is burned down, but the missionaries’ stoic acceptance and calm rebuilding impresses the masses far more than all the druids’ tricks and bombastâ€¦

Assuming their job completed Valiant and his men depart only to be caught in a terrible forest fire which only two surviveâ€¦

Struggling home to his family, saddened Val monopolises all his wife’s attention and jealous first born son Arn acts up by leaving home to have adventures of his own. The little lad takes with him a hound of dubious pedigree and ancestry – dubbed Sir Gawain – and has a grand old time. Before true peril can threaten however the wanderers encounter an old friend of Valiant’s: another Round Table knight who is less than pleased to learn that he shares his noble name with a mangy, flea-bitten muttâ€¦

A pleasant time of gentle recuperation amongst friends is capped by another birth as Aleta’s Amerindian maid Tillicum produces a first son for her Viking husband Boltar but marred by separation as Valiant’s wife is called back to her own kingdom in the Misty Isles to quell a rebellion. He is unable to join her when Gawain’s mission is revealed: the Danes and Saxons have invaded Britain in a vast army with unbeatable new battle tactics and now lay siege to Camelot itselfâ€¦

Assured by Aleta that she can handle her crisis, Valiant and Gawain take ship and soon rejoin Arthur at Tintagel. The troubled monarch has learned that five kings of Cornwall are planning to ally with the invader Horsa and hopes the devious mind of the Prince of Thule can again trump overwhelming odds with keen wits and courageâ€¦

The campaign begins as Val impersonates a troubadour and sows treachery and dissent amongst the new allies. Soon one Celtic king is dead and the remaining quartet are frantically realigning with Arthur. With the defenders now united against the Saxons the long campaign to repulse them begins and once more the Prince’s unique and imaginative grasp of unconventional warfare is the defenders’ greatest assetâ€¦

With the tide turning, Val is surprised to be ordered away from battle to undertake another impossible task. Throughout Arthur’s reign the realm had periodically suffered raids from Ireland. Now they are a distraction England cannot afford and Valiant is despatched to the Emerald Isle to secure peace.

He has no idea how to accomplish the task but dutifully sails off, and gets into a fight as soon as he touches ground again. Happily his brawl with local chieftain Brian O’Curry impresses everyone so much that the boisterous hulking brute proclaims him a friend for life.

Soon they are travelling to capital outpost Cashel to meet current and pro tem overlord Rory McColm, but the journey is delayed as Brian’s clan encounters and has a quick war with a rival tribe. As Val learns from keenly observing holy man and Christian missionary Patrick, there’s nothing the Irish love more than fightingâ€¦

That also proves true when the visitor is finally granted an audience with the cruelly arrogant McColm, who spurns Britain’s entreaties and insults the infamously hot-headed Prince of Thule. Before long diplomacy is abandoned and a furious duel ensues. After Val ends all hopes of Rory’s retaining his crown – by defeating and mildly maiming him – the visitor becomes a harried fugitive running for his lifeâ€¦

With Brian and Patrick’s assistance Valiant escapes Ireland and heads for home where he meets Merlin who has an important prognostication for Arthur. Unfortunately before he can completely reveal it the aged mage is whisked away by enchanting temptress Nimue, leaving Valiant with nothing but frustrating fragments of a vital warningâ€¦

Rejoining the king as he struggles against the entrenched Saxons in Kent, Valiant finally deciphers the truncated message and goes about orchestrating the invaders’ ultimate defeat. The crucial first step is to allow himself to be captured and tortured by Horsa’s forcesâ€¦

The scheme works perfectly and as deep snows give way to spring the crushed and starving enemy are driven from Britain’s shores, allowing the wily tactician time to wonder how his wife fares in sunnier climes. He is eager to join her but sworn companion Gawain has fallen in love with the wrong maiden – again – and by the time the affair ends all he has to show for it is a new, exceedingly homely, inept yet oddly effective servant dubbed Pierreâ€¦

When Aleta arrived in the Misty Isles with her three children she found her sister and regent Helene increasingly under the sway of her husband Dionseus. The cagy thug had visions of turning the prosperous and peaceful trading nation into a piratical kingdom raiding and conquering the region. To achieve his aims he had slowly infiltrated the government, padding it with his cronies.

He has no idea of Aleta’s incomparable political acumen and astute manoeuvrings and, after failing to poison her and her heirs, somehow finds himself and all his mercenaries banished without a drop of blood being shedâ€¦

Humiliated and infuriated, Dionseus retrenches and begins planning his murderous return at the head of an invasion fleet, just as Valiant and Gawain finally arrive in the Misty Isles. Aleta, delighted to see them, has matters well in hand and prefers that they hang back and let her handle matters her way.

The Queen is grateful however for information provided by Pierre who, after a night of low carousing with servants in town, uncovers a plot by a coterie of nobles who plan to betray her for advancement in Dionseus’ men-only regimeâ€¦

Eventually, outthought and overmatched in every way, the usurper is utterly defeated and bored Valiant grows even more restless as Aleta sets to reforming her kingdom so that such a coup can never threaten again.

After tedium leads to a ferocious domestic spat the Prince and Gawain resolve to get out of everyone’s hair and go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Of course, no sooner have they arrived in the Holy City than they find themselves in hot water after seeing the plight of a Christian knight.

Thanks to another drunken debauch by Pierre the sly truth is soon revealed. Sir Basil has been held in an impenetrable but easily observed dungeon for a decade: an unwilling Judas Goat used by Sheik Ben El Rasch to trap European knights who would attempt to rescue their fellow and fall captive to a master of the art of ransoming.

The soon to depart occupying garrison of Roman soldiers are too busy preparing for their withdrawal to bother themselves with strictly local affairs so the Sheik has grown rich trading on the good intentions of noble Christian pilgrims and warriors, but now, forewarned, Valiant and Gawain are resolved to teach him a lesson he will never forgetâ€¦

Sadly they succeed all too well and taking El Rasch hostage leads to them being approached by his deadliest enemies who wish to buy him! Baulking at such barbarism but stalling until they have freed Sir Basil, the Round Table heroes thus incur the wrath of Syrian tribesmen too, but undaunted determine to finish their pilgrimage.

The decade-delayed Basil is eager to join them, but on every step of the quest they are pursued by two furious rival desert factions as keen to kill them as each otherâ€¦

Although implacable and numerous, the burnoosed hunters have never encountered fighters as cunning, imaginative and skilled as Valiant and his companions. Despite their best efforts – and even the seductive eyes of El Rasch’s daughter – the questors complete their journey and safely head back to the Misty Islesâ€¦

During their absence little Arn has grown old enough to notice girls and he does not like them. He and noble playmate Paul make an exception for kitchen-gamin Diane however, since she can sneak them out of the palace, teach them to fish and outfight them both.

When she subsequently saves their lives, Aleta neatly sidesteps all manner of court scandal and disapprobation by declaring her to be for a full year, a royal companion and a boyâ€¦

Everything seems spoiled though after the pilgrims return and the lad Diane develops a crush on Gawain. The legendary lover is deeply mortified by the sprite’s attention, but when a palace lothario attempts to get rid of Valiant and pursue the queen, Gawain steps in to defend her honour and is grateful for bold Diane’s help in avoiding a treacherous trapâ€¦

Soon however dull peace breaks out once more and before Val and his brother knight can ruin it again Aleta decrees it’s time for the royal family to head North once againâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Closing this astonishing epic of daring-dare-deviltry, Brian M. Kane scrutinises in searing detail the history of film and TV iterations in ‘Prince Valiant and the Sacking of Hollywood: The 60^th Anniversary of Hal Foster’s Creation on the Silver Screen’, featuring the apparently accursed 1954 movie and Foster’s subsequent starring role on This Is Your Life as well as the 1997 international film remake and animated series The Legend of Prince Valiant

Rendered in a simply stunning panorama of glowing visual passion and precision, Prince Valiant is a non-stop rollercoaster of boisterous action, exotic adventure and grand romance; blending human-scaled fantasy with dry wit and broad humour, soap opera melodrama with shatteringly dark violence.

Beautiful, captivating and utterly awe-inspiring, the strip is a true landmark of comics fiction and something no fan should miss.
Â© 2014 King Features Syndicate. All other content and properties Â© 2014 their respective creators or holders. This edition Â© 2014 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

March 30, 2015

Justice League: Midsummer’s Nightmare

By Mark Waid, Fabian Nicieza, Jeff Johnson, Darick Robertson, John Holdredge, Hanibal Rodriguez & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-338-4

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

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

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

However, the scene was set for them by a strikingly exuberant miniseries which acted as a reassessment and reintroduction of the World’s Greatest Superheroes. Since the Silver Age’s greatest team-book died a slow, painful, embarrassing death, not once but twice, DC were taking no chances with their next revival and tapped Big Ideas wÃ¼nderkind Morrison to reconstruct the group and the franchise.

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

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

All over earth humans are spontaneously developing super-powers as an inexplicable genetic â€œsparkâ€ triggers the next stage in evolution. Millions of superhumans are manifesting with no rhyme or reason whilst others seem doomed to remain merely mundane. It’s like a comicbook plot come to lifeâ€¦

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

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

In a hidden place, an immortal mastermind manipulates a super-villain the entire world has forgotten, using his power to reshape dreams to achieve an eons-long plan. However there’s far more to heroism than powers and each mentally diminished champion individually struggles to find the disturbing deeper truth they know has been somehow taken from themâ€¦

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

Elsewhere relative neophyte legacy heroes Wally and Kyle have their own epiphany moments as the second chapter ‘To Know a Veil’ finds a restored Superman and Batman systematically unravelling the sinister plot.

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

After the inconclusive clash the heroes realise they need their old telepathic team-mate back and hunt for J’onzz, eventually dragging the Martian Manhunter from his perfect dream of paradise regained in a bunker at Roswell. Having lost his world and family a second time, he is not in any mind to be merciful with his anonymous abductorsâ€¦

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

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

Fast-paced, action-packed and breathtakingly bold, this galvanic tale, pitting the greatest champion’s in DC’s pantheon against an immortal enemy whose roots stem back to the earliest days of the universe is a gloriously baggage-free romp and a splendid jumping on point for readers new and old alike, and this fantastic Fights ‘n’ Tights foray also includes a handy information section recapitulating and assessing the characters of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter.
Â© 1996 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

March 29, 2015March 28, 2015

The Moomins and the Great Flood

By Tove Jansson, translated by David McDuff (Sort Of Books)
ISBN: 978-1-90874-513-2

Tove Jansson was one of the greatest literary innovators and narrative pioneers of the 20^th century: equally adept at shaping words and images to create worlds of wonder. She was especially expressive with basic components such as pen and ink, manipulating slim economical lines and patterns to realise sublime realms of fascination, whilst her deeply considered dexterity made simple forms into incredibly expressive and potent symbols.

Tove Marika Jansson was born into an artistic, intellectual and practically bohemian Swedish family in Helsinki, Finland on August 9^th 1914.

Her father Viktor was a sculptor, her mother Signe Hammarsten-Jansson a successful illustrator, graphic designer and commercial artist. Tove’s brothers Lars and Per Olov became a cartoonist/writer and photographer respectively. The family and its close intellectual, eccentric circle of friends seems to have been cast rather than born, with a witty play or challenging sitcom – or immortal kids’ fantasy – as the piece they were all destined to act in.

After intensive study from 1930-1938 (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, the Graphic School of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and L’Ecole d’Adrien Holy and L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris) she became a successful exhibiting artist all through the troubled period of the Second World War. She was immensely creative in many fields, and began her first novel as the war clouds began blighting Europe in 1939.

As she recounts in her Preface to the 1991 Scandinavian edition, all too soon it became too much and she laid it aside. Only once the war was over did she acquiesce to the urgings of friends to complete it.

In 1945 the first fantastic Moomins adventure was published: SmÃ¥trollen och den stora Ã¶versvÃ¤mningen (The Little Trolls and the Great Flood or latterly and more euphoniously The Moomins and the Great Flood), a whimsical epic of gentle, inclusive, accepting, understanding, bohemian, misfit trolls and their strange friends, all searching for something precious that was lost in the aftermath of a terrible calamityâ€¦

A youthful over-achiever, from 1930-1953 Tove worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for Swedish satirical magazine Garm, and achieved some measure of notoriety with an infamous political sketch of Hitler in nappies that lampooned the Appeasement policies of Chamberlain and other European leaders in the build-up to World War II. She was also an in-demand illustrator for many magazines and children’s books, and had started selling comic strips as early as 1929.

Moomintroll was her signature character. Literally.

The lumpy, lanky, gently adventurous big-eyed romantic goof began life as a spindly sigil next to her name in her political works. She called him â€œSnorkâ€ and claimed she had designed him in a fit of pique as a child – the ugliest thing a precocious little girl could imagine – as a response to losing an argument about Immanuel Kant with her brother.

The term â€œMoominâ€ came from her maternal uncle Einar Hammarsten who attempted to stop her pilfering food when she visited by warning her that a Moomintroll guarded the kitchen, creeping up on trespassers and breathing cold air down their necks. Eventually Snork/Moomin filled out, became timidly nicer – if a little clingy and insecure – acting as a placid therapy-tool to counteract the grimness of the post-war world.

The Moomins and the Great Flood didn’t make much of an initial impact but Jansson persisted, probably as much for her own edification as any other reason, and in 1946 her second book Kometjakten (Comet in Moominland) was published. Many critics and commentators have reckoned the terrifying tale a skilfully compelling allegory of Nuclear Armageddon.

When it and her third illustrated novel Trollkarlens hatt (Finn Family Moomintroll or occasionally The Happy Moomins from 1948) were translated into English in 1952 to great acclaim, it prompted British publishing giant Associated Press to commission a newspaper strip about her seductively sweet and sensibly surreal creations.

Jansson had no misgivings or prejudices about strip cartoons and had already adapted Comet in Moominland for Swedish/Finnish paper Ny Tid. Mumintrollet och jordens undergÃ¤ng – Moomintrolls and the End of the World – was a popular feature so Jansson readily accepted the chance to extend her eclectic family across the world.

In 1953 The London Evening News began the first of 21 Moomin strip sagas which promptly captivated readers of all ages. Tove’s involvement in the cartoon feature ended in 1959, a casualty of its own success and a punishing publication schedule. So great was the strain that towards the end she had recruited her brother Lars to help. He took over, continuing the feature until its end in 1975, captivating generations of children and adults alike and pushing Jansson’s gentle gang to the forefront of literary universesâ€¦

Eventually after a succession of nine novels, five picture books and that sublime strip, Tove returned to painting, writing and her other creative pursuits, generating plays, murals, public art, stage designs, costumes for dramas and ballets, a Moomin opera as well as thirteen books and short-story collections strictly for grown-ups.

Tove Jansson died on June 27^th 2001 and her awards are too numerous to mention, but consider this: how many modern artists – let alone comics creators – get their faces on the national currency?

Her Moomin comic strips have long been available in Scandinavian volumes and the discerning folk at Drawn & Quarterly have translated these into English for your – and especially my – sheer delight and delectation.

The Moomins and the Great Flood – being slightly more sombre than the later tales – was out of print for years in Europe (until the aforementioned 1991 edition) and never translated into English at all until 2005 – published by Schildts of Finland for the 60^th anniversary of the series.

This resplendent hardback edition hails from 2012, published in Britain by Sort Of Books and a charmingly moving little thing it is. Not strictly a comic strip or a graphic novel, but rather a beautifully illustrated picture book, unafraid to be allegorical or scary or sad yet closing with a message of joy and hope and reconciliationâ€¦

It begins as capable Moominmamma and her nervous little son enter the deepest part of the great Forest one day at the end of August. They are tired and hungry and have been searching for the longest time for Moominpappa. The big gallant fool went off adventuring with the crazy wandering Hattifatteners and they haven’t seen him for yearsâ€¦

Soon they are joined by a nervous Little Creature and after escaping a Great Serpent meet a blue haired girl named Tulippa who used to live in a flowerâ€¦

Travelling together they meet an old gentleman who lives in a tree which contains a huge park full of sweets and treats, traverse a terrific abyss in a railway cart and narrowly escape an ant-lion.

Persevering the hopeful party continue their wandering search until they meet a band of Hattifatteners and join them on their boat just as the skies begin to darken and a vast deluge beginsâ€¦

The tumultuous voyage search takes them through a world turned upside down by calamity but eventually leads to a joyous reunion after all the assorted and individualistic creatures affected by disaster pull together to survive the inundation and its effectsâ€¦

Augmented with 14 stunning sepia-wash illustrations and 34 spot-illos in various styles of pen and ink scattered like cartoon confetti throughout the confection, this is a magical lost masterpiece for the young, laced with the unfettered imagination, keen observation and mature reflection which enhances and elevates only the greatest kid’s stories into classics of literature. Charming, genteel, amazingly imaginative and emotionally intense, this is a masterpiece of fantasy no one could possibly resistâ€¦
Text and illustrations Â© Tove Jansson 1945, 1991. English translation Â© David McDuff 2012.

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