Author: NowReadThis

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Vampirella Archives volume One


By Forrest J. Ackerman, Don Glut, Nicola Cuti, Tom Sutton, Neal Adams, Ernie Colon, Billy Graham, Jeff Jones, Dan Adkins, Frank Frazetta & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-175-5

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

The most elegant solution was the one chosen by Jim Warren, who had originally established himself with black and white B-Movie fan periodical Famous Monsters of Filmland and satire magazine Help!

In 1965 he took his deep admiration of the legendary 1950s EC Comics to its logical conclusion: reviving the concept of anthology horror short stories and pitching them at older fans. Creepy was stuffed with clever, sardonic, tongue-in-cheek strip chillers illustrated by the top artists in the field (many of them ex-EC stars). Warren circumvented the all-powerful Comics Code Authority – which had ended EC’s glory days and eventually their entire comics line – by publishing his new venture as a newsstand magazine.

It was a no-lose proposition. Older readers didn’t care to be associated with “kid’s stuff” comic-books whilst magazines had tempting cachet (i.e. mild nudity and a little more explicit violence) for readers of a transitional age; moreover the standard monochrome format was a quarter of the costs of colour periodicals.

Creepy was a huge and influential hit, especially among the increasingly rebellious, Rock ‘n’ Roll crazed teen market; often cited as a source of inspiration for the nascent underground commix movement and now furiously feeding on the growing renewed public interest in the supernatural.

In true Darwinian “Grow or Die” mode, Warren looked around for new projects, following up with companion shocker Eerie and the controversial war title Blazing Combat.

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

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

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

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

This volume begins with Vampirella #1, that aforementioned painted cover and a black-&-red Frazetta frontispiece – probably scripted by Editor Bill Parente – setting the blackly humorous tone for a fearsome fangtastic fun fest.

The original contents page follows – as do they all in their appropriate place. This compendium also includes every letters page and fan feature – and even the nostalgia-triggering ads of the era. If you are a modern monster fan or kit collector you’ll probably simultaneously weep and drool at the sight of these lost treasures…

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

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

Vampi’s role from the outset was to be another story host and for the rest of this collection that’s what she mostly is. Her role as an active adventurer didn’t properly begin for quite awhile…

So here the chills continue with ‘Death Boat!’ by Don Glut & Billy Graham with the survivors of a shipwreck being picked off one by one by a bloodsucker in their midst. They perish one per night but when the mortals number just two both are still wrong about who the killer is…

Glut & master draughtsman Reed Crandall conspired on ‘Two Silver Bullets!’ as a trapper fights to save his daughter from a werewolf after which ‘Goddess from the Sea’ by Glut and Neal Adams offers a splendid treat for art-lovers: the story of a man seduced by a sea-siren was shot directly from the illustrator’s incredible pencil art.

Glut & Mike Royer offer a timely Halloween warning in ‘Last Act: October!’ whilst ‘Spaced-Out Girls!’ (Glut & Tony Tallarico) sees a saucer full of extraterrestrial honeys come shopping for husbands before the premier package closes with Nicola Cuti & Ernie Colon’s mindbending magical murder mystery ‘A Room Full of Changes’.

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

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

That theme continues in ‘Queen of Horror!’ (Glut & Dick Piscopo) wherein a B-Movie starlet uses unique and uncanny advantages to get everything she deserves whilst Cuti & William Barry reveal the tragedy of two brothers who discover a new predatory species of inland cephalopod in ‘The Octopus’.

Cuti & Colon’s ‘One, Two, Three’ then explores the power of love in a world of robots and Glut & Graham render a ‘Rhapsody in Red!’ with a weary travellers fetching up at a lonely house to deliver a big surprise to the resident vampire…

The third issue augmented ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ with correspondence section ‘Vampi’s Scarlet Letters’ before ‘Wicked is Who Wicked Does’ features the return of Evily in a short shocking battle against ogres by Parente & Sutton.

Al Hewetson & Jack Sparling count ‘4- 3- 2- 1- Blast Off! To a Nightmare!’ in the tale of a spaceship full of 24-hour party people who end up as hors d’oeuvres for something very nasty even as ‘Eleven Steps to Lucy Fuhr’ (by Terri Abrahms [story]; Nick Beal [adaptation] and art by Ed Robbins) sees many men drawn to a bizarre bordello and a sinister fate… until the unlikeliest of saviours takes a hand…

‘I Wake up… Screaming!’ is an all Billy Graham affair as a frightened girl is made aware of her true nature in a sci fi chiller whilst Cuti & Piscopo plunder mythology to deliver a salutary tale of fairy tale oppression and bloody liberation in ‘The Calegia!’

A cunning vampire meets his lethal match in Graham’s ‘Didn’t I See You on Television?’ after which Rosen & Sparling close the issue detailing the downfall of a vicious spoiled brat caught in ‘A Slimy Situation!’

Vampirella #4 opened with Sutton revealing past episodes of witch killing in ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales: Burned at the Stake!’ before Parente & David StClair reach psychedelic heights in a tale of alien amazons and their deadly ‘Forgotten Kingdom’ whilst Cuti & Royer combine murder and time travel in ‘Closer than Sisters’…

A city-slicker falls for a hillbilly hottie and gets sucked into a transformative shocker after trying ‘Moonshine!’ (Glut & Barry), Bill Warren & Sparling reveal the fate of a beautiful and obsessive scientist who bends the laws of God and Man ‘For the Love of Frankenstein’ and a very modern black widow asks a controlling stalker to ‘Come Into My Parlor!’ in a wry yarn by Rosen & Piscopo.

Richard Carnell (story); Jack Erman (adaptation) & Sparling then close the show with a weird and nasty tale of a nobleman auditioning women for marriage in ‘Run for Your Wife!’

The fifth issue begins with the usual ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ as Sutton exposes ‘The Satanic Sisterhood of Stonehenge!’ before Glut, Fraccio & Tallarico see a greedily impatient heir speed his benefactress to her ultimate end, unheeding of her beloved pets and ‘The Craft of a Cat’s Eye’.

Cavemen battle dinosaurs in an arena of ‘Scaly Death’ in a visceral treat from Glut & Graham whilst the astounding Jeff Jones lends fine art sensibilities to the murderous saga of a girl, a guy and ‘An Axe to Grind’ after which Parente & Sutton detail the crimes of a sadistic Duke whose fate is sealed by an aggrieved astrologer and astrally ‘Avenged by Aurora’…

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

Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ in Vampirella #6 features Dan Adkins’ graphic discourse on centaurs acting as a prelude to romantic tragedy the ‘Curse of Circe!’ as Gardner Fox & Grandenetti combine to relate how a strange sea creature offers the witch’s latest conquest his only certain method of escape.

Cuti & Sparling then share a story of civil war in the land of ghosts and how love toppled ‘The Brothers of Death’ whilst ‘Darkworth!’ by Cuti & Royer shows how a stripper graduates to murdered assistant of a stage magician and pulls off her own amazing trick in the name of vengeance after which Fox & Adkins explore the lives of the recently dead with ‘New Girl in Town!’ and Vern Burnett & Frank Bolle return to gothic roots to depict embattled humans outwitting nocturnal predators by volunteering a ‘Victim of the Vampyre!’

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

Vampirella #7 saw Archie Goodwin join as Associate Editor and perhaps his influence can be seen as the issue experiments with a connected theme and extended tale scripted by Nicola Cuti. Graham and Frazetta start the ball rolling by explaining ‘Why a Witch Trilogy’ and Vampirella introduces ‘Prologue: The Three Witches’ before Sutton to segues into the sad story of ‘The White Witch’ who could never feel the sunlight.

Ernie Colon picks up the experimental progression as ‘The Mind Witch’ trades magic for science to expose the fate of a psychic predator, after which Graham closes the deal with ‘The Black Witch’ who thought she could conquer love but failed to realise its appalling power…

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

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

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

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The Broons and Oor Wullie: The Sensational Sixties


By Dudley D. Watkins & various (DC Thomson)
ISBN: 978-0-85116-712-8

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Evergreen Seasonal Traditions Celebrated and the ideal last minute gift… 10/10

Published eternally in perfect tandem, The Broons and Oor Wullie are two of the longest running newspaper strips in British history, having appeared almost continuously in the Scottish Sunday Post since their dual debuts in the March 8th 1936 edition.

Both the boisterous boy and the gregariously engaging inner city clan were co-created by writer and Editor Robert Duncan Low in conjunction with Dudley D. Watkins; a man who would become DC Thomson’s greatest – and signature – artist.

Three years later the strips began being collected in reprint editions as Seasonal Annuals; alternating stars and years right up to the present day and remaining best-sellers every single time.

Low (1895-1980) began at the publishing monolith as a journalist, rising to the post of Managing Editor of Children’s Publication and launching, between 1921 and 1933, the company’s “Big Five” story-papers for boys: Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur.

In 1936 his next brilliant idea was the Fun Section: an 8-page pull-out comic strip supplement for Scottish national newspaper The Sunday Post. The illustrated accessory launched on 8th March and from the very outset The Broons and Oor Wullie were its unchallenged stars…

Low’s shrewdest move was to devise both strips as domestic comedies played out in the charismatic Scottish idiom and broad unforgettable vernacular. Ably supported by features such as Auchentogle by Chic Gordon, Allan Morley’s Nero and Zero, Nosey Parker and other strips, they laid the groundwork for the company’s next great leap.

In December 1937 Low launched the DC Thomson’s first weekly pictorial comic. The Dandy was followed by The Beano in 1938 and early-reading title The Magic Comic the year after that.

War-time paper shortages and rationing sadly curtailed this strip periodical revolution, and it was 1953 before the next wave of cartoon caper picture-papers. The Topper started the ball rolling again (with Oor Wullie in the logo and masthead but not included amongst the magazine’s regular roster) in the same year that Low & the great Ken Reid created Roger the Dodger for The Beano…

Low’s greatest advantage was his prolific illustrator Dudley Dexter Watkins, whose style, more than any other, shaped the look of DC Thompson’s comics output until the bombastic advent of Leo Baxendale shook things up in the mid-1950s.

Watkins (1907-1969) had started life in Manchester and Nottingham as an artistic prodigy. He entered Glasgow College of Art in 1924 and it wasn’t long before he was advised to get a job at Dundee-based DCT, where a 6-month trial illustrating boys’ stories led to comic strip specials and some original cartoon creations.

Percy Vere and His Trying Tricks and Wandering Willie, The Wily Explorer made him a dead cert for both lead strips in the Sunday Post‘s proposed Fun Section and, without missing a beat, Watkins later added The Dandy‘s Desperate Dan to his weekly workload in 1937, eventually including The Beano‘s placidly and seditiously outrageous Lord Snooty seven months later.

Watkins soldiered on in unassailable homely magnificence for decades, drawing some of the most lavishly lifelike and winningly hilarious strips in illustration history. He died at his drawing board on August 20th 1969. For all those astonishingly productive years he had unflaggingly drawn a full captivating page each of Oor Wullie and The Broons every week, and his loss was a colossal blow to the company.

DC Thomson’s chiefs preferred to reprint old Watkins episodes of the strips in both the newspaper and the Annuals for seven years before a replacement was agreed upon. The Dandy reran Watkins’ Desperate Dan stories for twice that length of time.

An undeniable, rock-solid facet of Scots popular culture from the very start, the first Broons Annual (technically Bi-Annual) appeared in 1939, alternating with the first Oor Wullie book a year later (although, due to wartime paper restrictions, no annuals at all were published between 1943 and 1946) and for millions of readers no year can truly end without them.

This particular commemorative collection is tinged with sadness as the strips included here – probably written by David Donaldson, Iain Reid and some anonymous others – are perhaps the very best of Watkins’ astounding career, as well as his last.

So What’s the Set Up?: the Brown family inhabit a tenement flat at 10 Glebe Street, in the timelessly metafictional Scottish industrial everytown of Auchentogle (sometimes Auchenshoogle); based on the working class Auchenshuggle district of Glasgow. As such it’s an ideal setting in which to tell gags, relate events and fossilise the deepest and most reassuring cultural archetypes for sentimental Scots wherever in the world they might actually be residing. And naturally, such a region was the perfect sounding board to portray all the social, cultural and economic changes that came after the war…

The adamant, unswerving cornerstone of the family feature is long-suffering, ever-understanding Maw, who puts up with cantankerous, cheap, know-it-all Paw, and their battalion of stay-at-home kids. These comprise hunky Joe, freakishly tall Hen (Henry), sturdy Daphne, gorgeous Maggie, brainy Horace, mischievous twins Eck and the unnamed “ither ane” plus a wee toddling lassie referred to only as “The Bairn”.

Not officially in residence but always hanging around is sly, patriarchal buffoon Granpaw – a comedic gadfly who spends more time at Glebe Street than his own cottage and constantly tries to impart his decades of out-of-date, hard-earned experience to the kids… but do they listen?

Offering regular breaks from the inner city turmoil and a chance to simultaneously sentimentalise, spoof and memorialise more traditional times, the family frequently repair to their But ‘n’ Ben (a dilapidated rustic cottage in the Highlands) to fall foul of the weather, the countryside and all its denizens: fish, fowl, farm-grown, temporary and touristic…

As previously stated, Oor Wullie also launched on March 8th 1936 with his own collected Annual compilations subsequently and unfailingly appearing in the even years.

The basic set-up is sublimely simply and eternally evergreen, featuring an imaginative, scruff with a weakness for mischief, talent for finding trouble and no hope of ever avoiding parental retribution when appropriate…

Wullie – AKA William MacCallum – is an archetypal good-hearted rascal with time on his hands who can usually be found sitting on an upturned bucket at the start and finish of his page-a-week exploits. His regular cast includes Ma and Pa, local copper P.C. Murdoch, assorted teachers and other interfering adults who either lavish gifts or inflict opprobrium upon the little pest and his pals Fat Boab, Soapy Joe Soutar, Wee Eck and others. As a grudging sign of changing times, in later volumes such as this, he’s occasionally caught in the company of fetching schoolgirls like Rosie and Elizabeth…

A compilation in monochrome with some full-colour pages, The Sensational Sixties was released in 1999 as part of a concerted drive to keep earlier material available to fans: a lavishly sturdy hardback (still readily available through internet vendors) offering a tantalising selection of Sunday pages from 1960 to August 24th 1959, covering every aspect of that white-hot era of rapid change, and yet all still uproariously funny even now…

Each year of selected gems commences with an atmospheric photo-clippings and news-headlines feature, book-ending every following year with a similar capsule feature of the unfolding years and usually accompanied by a colour Watkins cover or title-page from an Annual of the period.

The endless escapades of the strip stars comprise the happily standard subject-matter: galling goofs and gaffes, family frolics, sly pranks and cruel comeuppances: a regular menu of gloriously slapstick shenanigans including plumbing pitfalls, decorating disasters, fireplace fiascos, school foolishness, dating dilemmas, appliance atrocities, fashion freak-outs, bothered Bobbies, teacher tantrums, excessive exercise exploits, chore-dodging and childish pranks by young and old alike, all glimpsed through the lens of a comfortably traditional world inexorably transitioning as fashionable technology slowly altered the lives of everyone, whether they wanted it to or not…

 

Although The Beatles, political and celebrity assassinations, space races and moon-shots or Vietnam apparently played little part in the lives of our Scottish stars, contemporary dance crazes are acknowledged, as are student-hostellers, package holidays, electric blankets and long-haired, fashion-crazed boys. There’s even an increase in football-related japery in the 1966 and 1967 chapters for some reason…

Uncontested and always welcome are wry and weighted comparisons of the good old days with mere modernity, rib-tickling scenes of sledding and skating, stolen candies, Christmas revels, torn clothes, recycled comics, breakings into one’s own home, sparring school kids, ladies and lassies lost and found, harmless practical jokes and social scandals: stories intended to take our collective mind off troubles abroad and at home, and for every thwarted romance of poor Daphne and Maggie or embarrassing fiasco focussing on Paw’s cussed recalcitrance, there’s an uproarious chase, riotous squabble and no-tears scrap for the little ‘uns.

With snobs to deflate, bullies to crush, duels to fight, chips to scoff, games to win and rowdy animals (from cats to cows) to escape, the eternally affable humour and gently self-deprecating, inclusive frolics make these superbly crafted strips an endlessly entertaining, superbly nostalgic treat.

Fans of the creative process will also delight in bonus features such as unused pencilled pages of Watkins’ art and the fulsome tribute section showing the illustrator’s first and last Broons and Oor Wullie strips: simply four more of the near 3500 pages he immaculately conceived for the staunchly timeless features.

Packed with all-ages fun, rambunctious homespun hilarity and deliriously domestic warmth, these examples of comedic certainty and convivial celebration are a sure cure for post-modern glums… and you can’t really have a happy holiday without that, can you?
© D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd. 1998.

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Little Mouse Gets Ready


By Jeff Smith (Toon Books/Raw Junior)
ISBN: 978-1-935179-01-6 (HB)                    978-1-935179-24-5 (Pb)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An Utterly Ideal First Book for Kids… 10/10

If you give them a chance and great material, kids love to read and will do so for their entire lives. Thankfully, there’s an absolute goldmine of grand books for the young, such as this beguiling, award-winning slab of cartoon magic from the astonishingly gifted Jeff Smith (Bone, Rose, RASL, Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil) around to draw the little perishers in with…

Crafted as a tale for very young and emerging readers, Little Mouse Gets Ready features the frantic antics of a young field mouse chivvied along by his impatient mum. It is rendered in warm colours and bold, welcoming lines that a classic Disney animator would have given his grandmother to have drawn…

Toon Books/Raw Junior was established by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly as an imprint of the groundbreaking alternative comics magazine to provide high-quality comics stories which would entice pre-schoolers and starter-readers into a lifelong love affair with strips in particular and reading in general.

Released as a child-sized (231 x 151 mm), this gloriously compelling full-colour 32-page landscape treat is available in both hardback and softcover: the kind of illustrated extravaganza kids of all ages will treasure forever and return to again and again.

Little Mouse Gets Ready is silly and witty and fun: truly beautiful to look upon and I must shamefully admit that I read it three times on the first day I got it. Rack it next to the set of Beatrix Potters and the Velveteen Rabbit – and why not get the download edition too for those fractious family journey by planes, trains or automobiles?
A TOON Book ™© 2009 Jeff Smith & RAW Junior, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Archie Americana Series: The Best of the Seventies


By Frank Doyle, George Gladir, Dan DeCarlo, Samm Schwartz, Harry Lucey, Stan Goldberg & various (Archie Comics)
ISBN 978-1-87979-405-4

The monolith of wholesome fun that is Archie Comics had fully cemented its place in America’s popular culture scene by the 1960s. With the Youth Market an acknowledged commercial powerhouse, the red-haired archetype (and the company which created him) was known as much for animated TV shows, the pop single “Sugar, Sugar” and soon a chain of restaurants. Archie also totally dominated the comicbook humour market.

This volume – now also available as a digital download – collects a scant few of the stories from that decade; concentrating on fashions and fads such as Hot Pants, CB radio, Protest Movements, the Bicentennial, Disco, the advent of video games and even popular movie and TV sensations as well as the ever-widening divide between rebellious teens and oppressive adults.

It also delightfully shows the overwhelming power of good writing and brilliant art to captivate an audience of any age. Padding out this potently nostalgic package is a brace of House-ads from the period and a fulsome cover-gallery of iconic power and riotous wit.

The eternal verities are still in effect. Jughead Jones is still wise, weird and eternally hungry. The teachers at Riverdale High School are still hard-pressed and harassed. Archie Andrews is, as ever, that good-hearted, well-meaning boy lacking common sense. Betty Cooper is still the pretty, sensible girl next door, and glamorous Veronica Lodge is as rich, exotic and quixotic as ever, whilst the school and leisure antics of the broader cast are hip, engaging and hugely entertaining.

The eternal triangle and perfect laugh formula was first seen in 1941 and forms the basis of decades of charming, raucous, gentle, frenetic, chiding and even heart-rending comedy ranging from surreal wit to frantic slapstick, and has never been better depicted than here.

Following a poetic Introduction from actress Shirley Jones, the merriment kicks off with

‘Protest’ (Life with Archie #93, January 1970) by Frank Doyle & Samm Schwartz, seeing an ever-more frantic Archie desperate to join the national wave of teen rebellion but unable to find anything to dissent over or anyone angry enough to march with him…

George Gladir, Dan DeCarlo & Rudy Lapick regale us with Riverdale’s response to daring new fashion must-have ‘Hot Pants’ in a wry observation from Laugh #248 (November 1971) after which ‘Decisions, Decision’ (Archie #214, December 1971, by Doyle, Harry Lucey & Marty Epp) deliciously reveals how that Archie-Betty-Veronica quandary keeps going…

The anonymously crafted ‘Bubble Trouble’ (Everything’s Archie #21, April 1972, possibly Stan Goldberg pencilling?) then reveals how the garage band The Archies disprove media accusations that they are merely a bubblegum rock band with the help of a certain legendary star of Rock ‘n’ Roll…

From Archie #217 (April 1972) by Doyle, Lucey & Epp comes ‘The Late Archie Andrews!’ as desperate Principal Mr. Weatherbee goes to outrageous lengths to get the unlucky red-head to school on time, before a quartet of cool covers bridge the gap until the wackiness resumes.

‘Patch Match’ (Betty & Veronica #198, June 1972, Gladir & DeCarlo) details how Betty monopolises that Andrews boy by offering to sew onto his jacket all the cool badges he’s been collecting. Veronica of course responds with all the wealth in her arsenal but still comes out second-best…

‘Loyalville, USA’ (Archie at Riverdale High #12 December 1973, Doyle, DeCarlo & Lapick) sees Betty and Archie help out the town’s worst memorabilia vendor whilst Gladir, Goldberg & Jon D’Agostino prove there’s ‘No Fuel Like an Old Fuel’ (Pep #296, December 1974) by finding a way to save gas during an energy crisis that nevertheless lands Archie and Jughead in a storm of trouble…

Probably the most affecting tale in this collection, ‘You Came a Long Way, Baby’ (Betty & Veronica #233, May 1975, by Doyle, DeCarlo & Lapick) dramatically teaches the condescending girls how much progress in gender equality old maid Miss Grundy has been responsible for at Riverdale High. Then sadly uncredited ‘Bicentennial Banter’ (Archie’s TV Laughout #36 December 1975) sees those same lasses girls teach the boys about the female contributions and the decisive roles played by women during the American Revolution as they rehearse for a commemorative school play…

Archie’s eager fondness for CB radio is detailed in ‘Over and Out’ (Archie #256, September 1976: Doyle, Dan DeCarlo & Lapick) before more covers whet the palate for further fun which comes through an animal-free ‘Pet Parade’ (Everything’s Archie #57, June 1977).

Our gormless star naturally becomes ‘A Fool for Cool’ (Archie Giant Series/World of Archie #461 September 1977) after listening to bad advice and patterning his dating techniques on the Fonz from TV phenomenon Happy Days…

Betty & Veronica #263 (November 1977) was the original home for Gladir & DeCarlo’s ‘Video Vexation’, with the girls losing their place as the boys’ abiding passion once Pop Tate installs a computer arcade system, after which Star Wars gets thoroughly spoofed in ‘Costume Caper’ (Reggie & Me #104, April 1978) with Lapick adding his inking sheen to Gladir & DeCarlo’s smart rib-tickler.

‘Melvin’s Angels’ (Betty & Veronica #277, January 1979) by Doyle, DeCarlo & Lapick then sees Betty & Veronica undertaking a bruising mission for a mystery man on a speaker phone before the glitzy glamour-era comics celebration concludes with ‘Disco Dude’ (Laugh #343 October 1979) as a big food prize entices slovenly slowpoke Jughead to show off his amazing dance moves. Of course, his cunning plan goes disastrously awry…

These charming and comfortable yarns are a gentle delight and a much neglected area of cartoon and graphic narrative. It would benefit us all to take another long look at what they have to offer. If only to see how far fashion has not come…
© 1970-1979, 1998 Archie Publications Inc. All rights reserved.

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Iron Fist Epic Collection: The Fury of Iron Fist – volume 1 1994-1997


By Roy Thomas, Chris Claremont, Doug Moench, Tony Isabella, Gil Kane, Larry Hama, John Byrne & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9164-3

Comicbooks have always operated within the larger bounds of popular trends and fashions – just look at what got published whenever westerns or science fiction dominated on TV – so when the ancient philosophy and health-&-fitness discipline of Kung Fu made its unstoppable mark on domestic entertainment it wasn’t long before the Chop Sockey kicks and punches found their way en masse onto the four-colour pages of America’s periodicals.

As part of the first Martial Arts bonanza, Marvel converted a forthcoming license to use venerable fictional villain Fu Manchu into a series about his son. The series launched in Special Marvel Edition #15, December 1973 as The Hands of Shang Chi: Master of Kung Fu and by April 1974 (#17) it became his exclusively.

A month later the House of Ideas launched a second oriental-tinged hero in Iron Fist; a character combining the Eastern combat philosophy with high fantasy, magic powers and a proper superhero mask and costume…

The character also owed a hefty debt to Bill Everett’s pioneering golden Age super-hero Amazing Man who graced various Centaur Comics publications between 1939 and 1942. The tribute was paid by Roy Thomas & Gil Kane who adopted and translated the fictive John Aman’s Tibetan origins into something that gibed better with the 1970’s twin zeitgeists of Supernatural Fantasy and Martial Arts Mayhem…

This collection gathers the far-ranging appearances of the Living Weapon from Marvel Premier #15-25, Iron Fist #1-15 and Marvel Team-Up #63-64 (spanning May 1974 to December 1977), which saw the high-kicking wonder uncover his past and rediscover his heritage and humanity before inevitably settling into the inescapable role of costumed crusader as half of superhero and detective bromance Power Man and Iron Fist.

The saga began on a spectacular high in Marvel Premier #15 with ‘The Fury of Iron Fist!’ by Thomas, Kane and inker Dick Giordano as a young masked warrior defeats the cream of a legendary combat elite in a fabled other-dimensional city before returning to Earth.

Ten years previously little Daniel Rand had watched as his father and mother died at the hands of Harold Meachum whilst the party risked Himalayan snows to find the legendary city of K’un Lun.

Little Danny had travelled with his wealthy parents and business partner Meachum in search of the fabled city – which only appeared on Earth for one day every ten years. Wendell Rand had some unsuspected connection to the fabled Shangri La but was killed before they found it, and Danny’s mother had sacrificed herself to save the child from wolves and her murderous pursuer.

As he wandered alone in the wilderness, the city found Danny. The boy spent the next decade training: mastering all forms of martial arts in the militaristic, oriental, feudal paradise and enduring arcane ordeals, living only for the day he would return to Earth and avenge his parents…

After conquering all comers and refusing immortality, Iron Fist returned to Earth a Living Weapon able to turn his force of will into a devastating super-punch…

From the outset the feature was plagued by an inability to keep a stable creative team, although, to be fair, story quality never suffered, only plot and direction. Reaching New York City in #16, ‘Heart of the Dragon!’ by Len Wein, Larry Hama & Giordano found Iron Fist reliving the years of toil which had culminated in a trial by combat with mystic dragon Shou-Lao the Undying, winning him the power to concentrate his fist “like unto a thing of Iron” and other unspecified abilities. The epic clash permanently branded his chest with the seared silhouette of the fearsome wyrm.

His recollections are shattered when martial arts bounty hunter Scythe attacks, revealing that Meachum knew the boy was back and had put a price on his head…

Danny had not only sacrificed immortality for vengeance but also prestige and privilege. As he left K’un Lun, supreme ruler of the city Yü Ti, the August Personage in Jade, had revealed that murdered Wendell Rand had been his brother…

Marvel Premier #17 saw Doug Moench take over scripting as Iron Fist stormed Meachum’s skyscraper headquarters; a ‘Citadel on the Edge of Vengeance’ converted into a colossal 30-storey death trap, leading to a duel with a cybernetically-augmented giant dubbed Triple-Iron and a climactic confrontation with his parents’ killer in #18’s ‘Lair of Shattered Vengeance!’

The years had not been kind to Meachum. He’d lost his legs to frostbite returning from the high peaks, and, hearing from Sherpas that a boy had been taken into K’un Lun, the murderer had spent the intervening decade awaiting in dread his victims’ avenger…

Filled with loathing, frustration and pity, Iron Fist turns away from his intended retribution, but Meachum dies anyway, slain by a mysterious Ninja as the deranged multi-millionaire attempts to shoot Danny in the back…

In #19 Joy Meachum and her ruthless uncle Ward – convinced Iron Fist had killed the crippled Harold – steps up the hunt for Iron Fist via legal and illegal means, whilst the shell-shocked Living Weapon aimlessly wanders the strange streets of Manhattan. Adopted by the enigmatic Colleen Wing Danny meets her father, an aging professor of Oriental Studies who has fallen foul of a ‘Death Cult!’

In his travels the aged savant had acquired ancient text The Book of Many Things, which, amongst other things, held the secret of K’un Lun’s destruction. The deadly disciples of Kara-Kai are determined to possess it. After thwarting another murder attempt Iron Fist tries to make peace with Joy, but instead walks into an ambush with the bloodthirsty ninja again intervening and slaughtering the ambushers…

A period of often painful inconsistency began as Tony Isabella, Arvell Jones & Dan Green took over with #20. The Kara-Kai cultists renew their attacks on the Wings whilst Ward Meachum hires a veritable army of killers to destroy the Living Weapon in ‘Batroc and other Assassins’ – with the identity of the ninja apparently revealed here as the elderly scholar…

Marvel Premier #21 introduced the ‘Daughters of the Death Goddess’ (inked by Vince Colletta) as the Wings are abducted by the cultists and bionic ex-cop Misty Knight debuts, first as foe but soon as an ally. When Danny tracks down the cult he discovers some shocking truths – as does the ninja, who had been imprisoned within the ancient book by the August Personage in Jade in ages past and recently possessed Professor Wing in search of escape and vengeance…

All was revealed and the hero exonerated in #22’s ‘Death is a Ninja’ (inked by “A. Bradford”) with the ninja disclosing how, as disciple to sublime wizard Master Khan, he had attempted to conquer K’un Lun and been imprisoned within the crumbling tome for his pains.

Over the years he had discovered a temporary escape and subsequently manipulated the Wing and Iron Fist to secure his permanent release and the doom of his jailers. Now exposed, he faces the Living Weapon in a final cataclysmic clash…

A measure of stability began with #23 as Chris Claremont, Pat Broderick & Bob McLeod took the series in a new direction. With his life’s work over and nearly nine years until he could go “home”, Danny was now a man without purpose… until whilst strolling with Colleen he stumbles into a spree shooting in ‘The Name is… Warhawk.’

When the cyborg-assassin has a Vietnam flashback and begins heedlessly sniping in Central Park, the Pride of K’un Lun instantly responds to the threat… and thus began his career as a hero…

In ‘Summerkill’ (inked by Colletta) the itinerant exile battles alien robot the Monstroid and opens a long and complicated association with Princess Azir of Halwan, with the mysterious Master Khan resurfacing, apparently intent on killing her and seizing her country…

Marvel Premier #25 was the last of the hero’s run and the start of his short but sweet Golden Age as John Byrne became regular penciller for ‘Morning of the Mindstorm!’ (inked by Al McWilliams). Whilst Colleen is driven to unconsciousness and abducted – and her father driven to the edge of insanity – by mind-bending terrorist Angar the Screamer, Danny, made of far sterner stuff, overcomes the psychic assaults and tracks the attackers to Stark Industries and into his own series…

Iron Fist #1 (November 1975) featured ‘A Duel of Iron!’ as he is tricked into battling Iron Man, even as Colleen escapes and runs into Danny’s future nemesis Steel Serpent before being recaptured and renditioned to Halwan…

After a spectacular, inconclusive and ultimately pointless battle, Danny and Misty Knight also head for Halwan in ‘Valley of the Damned!’ (#2, inked by Frank Chiaramonte) with our hero recalling a painful episode from his youth wherein his best friends Conal and Miranda chose certain death beyond the walls of regimented K’un Lun rather than remain in the lost city where they could not love each other…

As Master Khan begins to break Colleen, Danny and Misty stopover in England where a nuclear horror named The Ravager slaughters innocents by blowing up London Airport and the Post Office Tower (we rebuilt it as the BT Tower, so don’t panic), compelling Iron Fist to punch way above his weight in ‘The City’s Not For Burning!’

Inevitably it ends in ‘Holocaust!’ as Ravager is unmasked as old villain Radion the Atomic Man. He fatally irradiates Danny until the wounded warrior fortuitously discovers the cleansing and curative power of the Iron Fist and storms to his greatest triumph yet…

With Misty recuperating, Danny gets involved with a guilt-ridden IRA bomber named Alan Cavenaugh before tackling another of Khan’s assassins in ‘When Slays the Scimitar!’ after which Iron Fist and Misty finally infiltrate Halwan in #6, courtesy of crusading lawyer Jeryn Hogarth who also promises to secure Danny’s inheritance and interests from the Rand-Meachum Corporation.

The Pride of K’un Lun doesn’t much care since the successfully brainwashed Colleen had been unleashed by Khan, determined to kill her rescuers in ‘Death Match!’…

None of the earthly participants are aware that, from a hidden dimension, Yü Ti is observing the proceedings with cold calculation…

By using his mystic Iron Fist to psychically link with Colleen, Danny breaks Khan’s conditioning and at last the malignant mage personally enters the fray in #7’s ‘Iron Fist Must Die!’: a blistering battle which breaches the dimensions and exposes the August Personage in Jade’s involvement in Wendell Rand’s death.

Given the choice between abandoning his friends on Earth or returning to K’un Lun for answers and justice, the Living Weapon made a true hero’s choice…

With Iron Fist #8 Danny returns to New York and attempts to pick up the pieces of a life interrupted for more than a decade. Unaware that Steel Serpent now works for Joy Meachum, Danny joins the company until merciless mob boss Chaka and his Chinatown gangs attack the business ‘Like Tigers in the Night!’ (inked by Dan Adkins), and Iron Fist is fatally poisoned.

Sportingly offered an antidote if he survives a gauntlet of Chaka’s warriors, Danny triumphs in his own manner when ‘The Dragon Dies at Dawn!’ (Chiaramonte inks) but when a hidden killer bludgeons Chaka, Danny is once again a fugitive from the cops and dubbed the ‘Kung Fu Killer!’ (Adkins) until he, Colleen and Misty expose the entire plot as a fabrication of the gangster.

In #11 ‘A Fine Day’s Dawn!’ the Living Weapon squares off against the Asgardian-empowered Wrecking Crew and, with Misty a hostage, is compelled to fight Captain America in #12’s ‘Assault on Avengers’ Mansion!’ until the Pride of K’un Lun and the Sentinel of Liberty unite and turn the tables on the grotesque god-powered gangsters…

In the intervening time Cavenaugh arrives in New York, but has not escaped the reach of his former Republican comrades. They hire hitman Boomerang to kill the defector and ‘Target: Iron Fist!’ with little success, whereas the villain introduced in issue #14 comes a lot closer: even eventually eclipsing Iron Fist in popularity…

‘Snowfire’ – inked by Dan Green – finds Danny and Colleen running for their lives in arctic conditions when a retreat at Hogarth’s palatial Canadian Rockies estate is invaded by deadly mercenary Sabre-tooth. It just wasn’t their week as, only days before, a mystery assailant had ambushed Iron Fist and impossibly drained off a significant portion of the lad’s Shou-Lao fuelled life-force…

Despite being rendered temporarily blind, the K’un Lun Kid ultimately defeats Sabre-tooth, but the fiercely feral mutant would return again and again…

With Claremont & Byrne increasingly absorbed by their stellar collaboration on the revived and resurgent adventures of Marvel’s mutant horde, Iron Fist #15 (September 1977) was their last Martial Arts mash-up for a while. The series ended in spectacular fashion as – through a comedy of errors – Danny stumbles into battling Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Banshee, Storm and Phoenix in ‘Enter, the X-Men’.

The cancellation was clearly not planned however as two major subplots went unresolved: Misty had disappeared on an undercover assignment to investigate European gang-boss John Bushmaster and Danny again had his chi siphoned off by Steel Serpent…

Fans didn’t have to wait long: Claremont & Byrne had already begun a stint on Marvel Team-Up and turned the Spider-Man vehicle into their own personal clearing house for unresolved plot-lines.

MTU #63-64 (November & December 1977 and inked by Dave Hunt) revealed the secret of K’un Lun exile Davos in ‘Night of the Dragon’ as Steel Serpent sucked the power of the Iron Fist from Danny, leaving him near death. Risking all she had gained, Misty broke cover and rushed to his aid…

With the Wall-crawler and Colleen (the girls using the team name “Daughters of the Dragon”) to bolster him, Iron Fist defeated Davos and reclaimed his heritage in ‘If Death be my Destiny…’ before shuffling off into a quiet retirement and anonymity.

…But not for long – and certainly the subject of further mammoth full-colour paperback Epic Collections to come…

Although suffering a few grim patches, the greater bulk of the Iron Fist saga ranks amongst the most exciting and enjoyable Costumed Dramas of Marvel’s second generation. If you want a good, clean fight comic this is probably one of your better bets, especially if you’re a fan of original artwork as this titanic tome closes with a fabulous selection, shot from Byrne’s inked pages and original pencil character sketches…
© 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 2015 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Adventures of Blake and Mortimer: The Francis Blake Affair


By Jean Van Hamme & Ted Benoit (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-63-2

Belgian Edgard Félix Pierre Jacobs (1904-1987) is one of the founding fathers of the Continental comics industry. Although his output was relatively modest compared to many of his iconic contemporaries, Jacobs’ landmark serialised life’s work – starring scientific troubleshooters Professor Philip Mortimer and Captain Francis Blake – practically formed the backbone of the modern action-adventure comic in Europe.

His splendidly adroit, roguish yet thoroughly British adventurers were conceived and realised for the very first issue of Le Journal de Tintin in 1946, and quickly became a crucial staple of life for post-war European kids – much as Dan Dare was in 1950s Britain.

After decades of fantastic exploits the series apparently ended with the eleventh album. The story had been serialised between September 1971 and May 1972 in Tintin but after the first volume was completed the author simply abandoned his story due to failing health and personal issues.

Jacobs died on February 20th 1987 before completing extended adventure Les 3 formules du professeur Satō.

The concluding volume – Mortimer contre Mortimer – was only released in March 1990 after veteran cartoonist Bob de Moor (Bart de Scheepsjongen, Monsieur Tric, Balthazar, Barelli and many others) was commissioned by the Jacobs family and estate to complete the tale from the grand originator’s pencils and notes.

The long-postponed release led to a republishing of all the earlier volumes, followed in 1996 by new adventures from two separate creative teams hired by the Jacobs Studio…

The first was the L’Affaire Francis Blake by Jean Van Hamme (Thorgal, XIII, Largo Winch) & Thierry “Ted” Benoit (Bingo Bongo et son Combo Congolais, Ray Banana) which settled itself into a comfortably defined and familiar mid-1950s milieu whilst unfolding a rousing tale of espionage and double-dealing.

The tale also controversially omitted the fantastic elements of futuristic fiction and fringe science which had characterised Jacobs’ creation. The story also focused on the cool, suave MI5 officer rather than bombastic, belligerent boffin and inveterate scene-stealer Professor Mortimer…

It all begins in the highest echelons of the government’s security services as news of a mole reaches the press and creates a scandal. MI5 chief Francis Blake carefully explains how difficult tracking the infiltrator has become, but none of the great men in the room have any patience for excuses…

Blake explains the dilemma to Mortimer at their Club that evening, but events are unfolding which will soon curtail their cosy get-togethers. British surveillance operatives may be slow but they are inexorably steady and when a photograph of a drop-off reveals that Blake himself is the traitor, MI5 moves quickly to arrest their disgraced leader. Unmasked, the spy master only escapes detention through a spectacular fast getaway across London, leaving shocked friends and associates in his wake.

Despite a mountain of damning evidence, Mortimer cannot believe his greatest ally against evil is a money-hungry villain and begins his own investigations, despite also being the subject of an MI5 watch team. The scientist is also keenly aware that in regard of man with all the secrets like Blake, death is preferable to capture as far as his pursuers are concerned.

Ditching his government shadows Mortimer also goes on the run…

Naturally Captain Blake is completely innocent, and has been playing his own deep game. Now, having has shaken loose the real traitor, our cunning hero has gone straight to the mastermind behind the infiltration of the security services. Sadly that human devil has not been fooled for a moment and acts accordingly…

Mortimer meanwhile has trailed his friends through some skilfully laid clues and breadcrumbs; uncovering Blake’s secret army of off-the-books, utterly loyal sleeper agents who render him every assistance as he closes in on Blake and the true masterminds behind an unbelievably bold plot…

With the country in an uproar, Mortimer heads ever-northward, having deduced Blake’s intended final destination and the incredible real motive behind all the cloak-&-dagger skulduggery. He arrives just in time for a grand reunion with his old comrade and a blistering battle against the forces of evil and subversion threatening our way of life…

Strongly founded upon and in many ways a loving tribute to John Buchan’s classic thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, this is a devious and convoluted spook show to delight espionage aficionados and a solidly entertaining addition to the canon of the Gentleman Adventurers.
Original edition © Editions Blake & Mortimer/Studio Jacobs (Dargaud-Lombard S. A.) 1996 by Ted Benoit & Jean Van Hamme. All rights reserved. English translation © 2008 Cinebook Ltd.

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The Art of Sean Phillips


By Sean Phillips, Eddie Robson and various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-420-6

Win’s Christmas Recommendation: A Magical Trawl through Fan-favourite Moments… 9/10

Sean Phillips started selling comic strips in 1980. He was 15 years old, still at school and for all intents and purposes “living the dream”. He’s been doing it ever since, with dedication, professionalism and ever-increasing proficiency.

This magnificent oversized (234 x 310 mm) hardback reproduces hundreds of comics pages and covers, plus an assortment of out-industry artwork, as accompaniment to an astonishingly forthright extended interview and career retrospective of the phenomenally talented and terrifying dedicated illustrator, covering his earliest cartooning efforts right through to his next big thing. There’s even baby pictures and school work. Of course Sean and his friends did make their first professional strip sale – to the local newspaper – when they were twelve…

Compiled by Phillips and writer and journalist Eddie Robson, with contributions from fellow artists, writers and editors the artist worked with over the decades, the book includes an Introduction from co-conspirator Ed Brubaker and offers many complete strips fans will probably never have seen.

As well as many unpublished works the gallery of visual wonder include early strips on “Girls” comics and Annuals such as Bunty, Judy and Diana For Girls as well as college work, try-out pages and portfolio pieces created with the sole purpose of getting into the cool mainstream…

Phillips is equally adept with paints and pen-&-ink and the book tracks his career as a jobbing artist through Bunty to early “mature reader” title Crisis (Crisis, New Statesmen, Straitgate), 2000AD and The Megazine (Armitage, Devlin Waugh), and that crucial jump to America as part of the “British Invasion”; producing features and one-offs at Vertigo and becoming part of the initial intake who launched and cemented the radical imprint’s look. Of particular interest and strongly emphasised are his runs on Kid Eternity, Hellblazer and The Invisibles.

The longed-for move into super-heroics began with Batman, a sidestep into Star Wars and back to Spider-Man. Early hints of later specialisation can be spotted in Scene of the Crime, Gotham Noir and Sleeper, but he was also busy with Wildcats and X-Men. He truly became a major name through the monumental sensation that was Marvel Zombies, but more attention here is paid to poorer-selling critical hit and career crossroads Criminal.

The parade of pictorial perfection continues with finished pages and original art from many more titles including User, Intersections, Incognito and more, strips and covers for licensed titles such as Serenity, Predator, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower spin-offs and for classic film repackager Criterion. Other non-comics work includes true lost gems such as political strip ‘Right Behind You’ from The Sunday Herald depicting how a certain meeting between George W. Bush and Tony Blair probably went as a certain invasion was discussed…

The comics conversation concludes with sneaky peeks at then-upcoming projects Fatale and European album Void 01 and we know just how damn good those both turned out…

Also sporting a healthy Bibliography section, heartfelt Acknowledgements and a Biography page, this massively entertaining, vibrant tome is as much an incisive and philosophical treatise on work-ethic as celebration of a stellar career telling stories in pictures: a beautiful, breathtaking and brilliantly inspirational compendium for the next generation of artists and writers, whatever their age.

If you already have the urge to make pictures but want a little encouragement, this rousing celebration offers all the encouragement you could possibly hope for – and is just plain lovely to look at too.
© 2013 Dynamite Entertainment. All artworks, characters, images and contributions © their respective creators or holders. All rights reserved.

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Heart of the Beast – A Love Story


By Dean Motter, Judith Dupré & Sean Phillips (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-491-6

What is art? Does it have anything to do with creativity? What is its value and what is the cost?

Originally released as an original hardback graphic novel in 1994 as one of the early experimental triumphs of DC’s Vertigo imprint, this evocatively disturbing reworking – or more accurately contemporary sequel – to one of literature’s greatest stories of mystery and gothic imagination features a tragic, doomed love triangle and carefully unravelled mystery.

In August 2014 this remastered 20th Anniversary commemorative hardcover edition was released by Dynamite, re-presenting the tale in all its subtly sinister glory, bolstered with a few textual extras for the inquiring, bonus-hungry minds of post-Millennials.

The first of those is ‘Circa Soho’: an atmospheric mood-enhancing and memory-intensive reminiscence from co-scripter Judith Dupré; now a globally celebrated author, commentator and critic on The Arts, but back then a fully active participant and observer in the scene.

As a self-confessed “Gallerina” making a living amongst the wild creatives and greedy lampreys attached to the arena of contemporary art burgeoning in the former no-go areas of New York City she was the perfect partner for writer, illustrator and designer Dean Motter.

Having worked on Mr. X, The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, Batman: Black and White, Electropolis and many more projects for young and old, Dean Motter is a creator with a singularly unique voice and style. Here his collaboration with Dupré on this striking addendum to a classic literary marvel and social critique of the price of creation adds chilling edges to a fantasy suitably sub-titled “a love story”…

The saga tells of Sandra, who spends a fateful night tending bar at a so-fashionable Gallery opening paid for by the rich but creepy celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Andrew Wright. Even in the supremely decadent world of the Art Glitterati the surgeon is infamous, with dubious connections to both the high and mighty and the down and dirty. His patronage of bellicose wunderkind Jacob Sistine is fraught with haughty tension, pompous one-upmanship and barely suppressed loathing…

Drowning in the self-serving, pretentious pontificating of this week’s models, Sandra is surprised when she meets beautiful, sensitive Victor, a poetic rose among crass, wealthy thorns. Despite herself, she is drawn to the mysterious paragon who seems so much more than just Dr. Wright’s factotum and dogsbody.

A man of many secrets, Victor is almost the ideal (and – most frustratingly – reluctant and still largely prospective) lover, but his devotion to the shadier side of the doctor’s dealings with gangsters, fame-chasing poseurs and art forgers augers nothing but disaster for their budding relationship. Furthermore, there is some hideous secret Victor is keeping from her – an undisclosed past and unmoving obstacle not even the truest love or most forgiving nature can overcome…

I’ve endeavoured to obscure the originating source work since the unfolding secret is cleverly handled and the growing realisation adds to the dawning horror of the situation. The love-story spirals to its tragic conclusion, helped in no small part by the beguiling painted art of young Sean Phillips evoking the distant past and spotlighting the harsh modern world with equal skill and sensitivity.

In the intervening years the illustrator has risen to a position of revered prominence in the comics business and this collection closes with a fascinating ‘Codex’ with Phillips plundering his files and wracking his memory in an interview and commentary section packed with photos, layouts, roughs and sketches detailing the development of the project, whilst Motter enthusiastically shares his childhood obsession with scary movies and horror tales in a picture-packed Afterword ‘Frankenstein & Me’…

This cunning yarn failed to find its proper audience when first released, but is a solid story superbly told for all that and might well be the treat that turns your film freak into a comicbook zombie…
Heart of the Beast – A Love Story © 2014 Dean Motter, Judith Dupré & Sean Phillips. All Rights Reserved.

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Small Press Sundays

Like so many others I started out in the business making minicomics, collaborating on fanzines and concocting stripzines with fellow weirdoes, outcasts and addicts. Even today, seeing the raw stuff of creativity in hand-crafted paper pamphlets – or better yet professionally printed packages which put dreamers’ money where their mouths are – still gets me going in ways which imperil my tired old heart…

So here’s a long-overdue peek at a brilliant publishing project bringing a wealth of independent graphic craft to your attention…

DiRTY ROTTEN Comics #8

By various, Edited by Gary Clap & Kirk Campbell (Throwaway Press)
No ISBN

Graphic narrative and cartooning covers a vast range of genres, formats, disciplines and tastes. Moreover, to my jaded old eyes, these days all the very best and most imaginative work seems to come from outside the pool of professional creators and publishers from what used to be called the “Small Press” …

At the moment in Britain we’re blessed with a fresh, vital and engaging wave of strip-makers and DiRTY ROTTEN Comics is periodically gathering up a wide sampling of the most impressive work and packaging it in sleek, professional-looking black-&-white books I would have killed to be printed in back in the so-cool, tech-deprived Seventies…

The brainchild of – and edited by – Gary Clap and Kirk Campbell, this splendidly broad church of graphic recollection, exploration, extrapolation and fancification is a superb snapshot of the creative vitality, welcome diversity and uncompromising inclusivity of the modern stripzine scene, and sheer heaven for an avowed sucker for all forms of black and white art such as we. I gravely mourn its passing in both film and comics media…

This particular compendium – the Autumn 2016 edition – opens with whimsical rumination in ‘Lady Masque’ by David Robertson and segues into nostalgic reflection with Henry Miller’s charming ‘Real Roman Coins’ before sliding towards comedic anarchy in ‘Journey into Stupid: Summer’ from Claude T. C. & Kyle Gerdes…

Andrew Warwick then heads into spooky M. R. James territory with ‘Insert 20 Pence’ whilst Joanna Harker Shaw waxes poetic with ‘Extract from ‘The Lesson” after which ‘Wallace’ experiences a technical itch in a comedy short from Kevin Loftus.

Maria Stoian explores domestic isolation in ‘Nighttime Routine’ whilst a child’s salient question gets a typically brusque adult answer in ‘Seabass’ by Stanley Miller.

Petitecreme’s manga-styled discursive debate on mourning in ‘It’ll Be OK’ quickly gives way to frustrating and surreal terror courtesy of Benjamin Leon’s ‘Knots’ and trenchant black humour in ‘What A Catch’ from James Gifford.

Social overload leads to a welcome moment of calm in ‘Dandelion’ by Francis M. whilst Faye Spencer displays another method of maintaining equilibrium in ‘Bile’ even as Lukasz Kowalczuk shows the world’s next owners at their unsavoury worst in ‘Hollow Earth’.

Benjamin A.E. Filby introduces us to a very human monster in ‘SANGUISUGE’ whilst Scott Wrigg nervously anticipates ‘Those Days’ and bereavement concerns inspire Rozi Hathaway’s bleak and languid ‘Sørgedag’.

Mock heroics and a search for love (or at least acceptance) concern diminutive ‘Sir Tramsalot’ in Ben Hutching’s mirthful, moving vignette, whilst Jey Levang examines the downside of immortality in ‘Amaranthine’ and Tom Mortimer considers the ramifications and necessity of population control in ‘#Neutered’.

A delicious moment of domestic veracity in depicted in ‘Maladroit’ by Josh Hicks after which Elias Bevan comments on the small press creative mill with ‘Grow Them…’ before this aggregate walk on the personal side concludes in epic style with James Wragg’s poignant mystic ‘Remembrance’…

Concise, expressive, intimate and evocative, this is a compendium with something for everybody who loves the comics medium and is well worth your time, money and impassioned support.

All content © 2016 by their respective creators.
For more information and sales details check out THROWAWAYPRESS.COM

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Marvel Masterworks: Luke Cage, Hero for Hire volume 1


By Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, Billy Graham, Tony Isabella, George Tuska & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9180-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Ideal Item for new Marvel Movie-verse addicts… 8/10

In 1968 the consciousness-raising sporting demonstration of Black Power at the Olympic Games politicised a generation of youngsters. By this time a few comics companies had already made tentative efforts to address what were national and socio-political iniquities, but issues of race and ethnicity took a long time to filter through to still-impressionable young minds avidly absorbing knowledge and attitudes via four colour pages that couldn’t even approximate the skin tones of African-Americans.

As with television, breakthroughs were small, incremental and too often reduced to a cold-war of daringly liberal “firsts.” Excluding a few characters in Jungle comic-books of the 1940s and 1950, Marvel clearly led the field with a black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos team (the historically impossible Gabe Jones who debuted in #1, May 1963, and was accidentally re-coloured Caucasian at the printers, who clearly didn’t realise his ethnicity). He was followed by first negro superheroes Black Panther in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966), and the Falcon in Captain America #117 (September 1969).

America’s first Black hero to star in his own title had come (and gone largely unnoticed) in a little remembered or regarded title from Dell Comics. Created by artist Tony Tallarico and scripter D.J. Arneson, Lobo was a gunslinger in the old west, battling injustice just like any cowboy hero would, first appearing in December 1965.

Arguably a greater breakthrough was Joe Robertson, City Editor of the Daily Bugle; an erudite, brave and proudly ordinary mortal distinguished by his sterling character, not a costume or skin tone. He first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man # 51 (August 1967), proving in every panel that the world wouldn’t end if black folk and white folk occupied the same spaces…

This big change slowly grew out of raised social awareness during a terrible time in American history; yes, even worse than today’s festering social wound, as typified by cops under pressure providing no answer to the seemingly constant Black Lives Matter events. Although far rarer, those tragedies occur here in the UK too, so we have nothing to be smug about either. We’ve had race riots since the Sixties here which left simmering scars that only comedians and openly racist politicians dared to talk about. Things today in post-Brexit Britain don’t seem all that different, except the bile and growing taste for violence is turned towards European accents as well as brown skins…

As the 1960s became a new decade, more positive and inclusive incidences of ethnic characters appeared in the USA, with DC finally getting an African-America hero in John Stewart (Green Lantern #87 December 1971/January 1972), although his designation as a replacement Green Lantern might be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary.

The first DC hero with his own title was Black Lightning, who didn’t debut until April 1977, although Jack Kirby had introduced Shilo Norman as Scott Free‘s apprentice (and eventual successor) in Mister Miracle ##15 (August (1973).

As usual, it took a bold man and changing economics to really promote change. With declining comics sales at a time of rising Black Consciousness, cash – if not cashing in -was probably the trigger for “the Next Step.”

Contemporary “Blaxsploitation” cinema and novels had fired up commercial interests throughout America, and in that atmosphere of outlandish dialogue, daft outfits and barely concealed – if justified – outrage, an angry black man with a shady past and apparently dubious morals must have felt like a sure-fire hit to Marvel’s bosses.

Luke Cage, Hero for Hire launched in the summer of 1972. A year later the Black Panther finally got his own series in Jungle Action #5 and Blade: Vampire Hunter debuted in Tomb of Dracula #10.

This stunning full-colour hardback compendium collects the first 16 issues of the breakthrough series: the entire run before the series was thematically adjusted to become Luke Cage Power Man.

The saga begins with Lucas, a hard-case inmate at brutal Seagate Prison. Like all convicts he claims to have been framed and his uncompromising attitude makes mortal enemies of the savage, racist guards Rackham and Quirt whilst not endearing him to the rest of the prison population such as genuinely bad guys Shades and Comanche either…

‘Out of Hell… A Hero!’ was written by Archie Goodwin and illustrated by George Tuska & Billy Graham – with some initial assistance from Roy Thomas and John Romita senior – and sees a new warden arrive promising to change the hell-hole into a proper, correctly administered correctional facility.

Prison Doctor Noah Burstein then convinces Lucas to participate in a radical experiment in exchange for a parole hearing, having heard the desperate con’s tale of woe…

Lucas had grown up in Harlem, a tough kid who had managed to stay honest even when his best friend Willis Stryker had not. They remained friends even though they walked different paths – until a woman came between them. To be rid of his romantic rival Stryker planted drugs and had Lucas shipped off to jail. While he was there his girl Reva, who had never given up on him, was killed when she got in way of bullets meant for up-and-coming gangster Stryker…

With nothing to lose Lucas undergoes Burstein’s process – an experiment in cell-regeneration – but Rackham sabotages it, hoping to kill the con before he can expose the illegal treatment of convicts. The equipment goes haywire and something incredible occurs. Lucas, panicked and somehow super-strong, punches his way out of the lab and the through the prison walls, only to be killed in hail of gunfire. His body plunges over a cliff and is never recovered…

Months later a vagrant prowls the streets of New York City and stumbles into a robbery. Almost casually he downs the felon and accepts a reward from the grateful victim. He also has a bright idea. Strong, bullet-proof, street-wise and honest, Lucas will hide in plain sight while planning his revenge on Stryker. Since his only skill is fighting, he became a private paladin… A Hero For Hire…

Making allowances for the colourful, often ludicrous dialogue necessitated by the Comics Code’s sanitising of “street-talking Jive” this is probably the grittiest origin tale of the classic Marvel years, and the tense action continued in ‘Vengeance is Mine!’ as the man now calling himself Luke Cage stalks his target.

Stryker has risen quickly, now controlling a vast portion of the drug trade as the deadly Diamondback, and Cage has a big surprise in store when beautiful Doctor Claire Temple came to his aid after a calamitous struggle.

Thinking him fatally shot her surprise is dwarfed by his own when Cage meets her boss. Seeking to expiate his sins, Noah Burstein has opened a rehab clinic on the sordid streets of Times Square, but his efforts have drawn the attention of Diamondback who doesn’t like someone trying to fix his paying customers…

Burstein apparently does not recognise Cage, and even though faced with eventual exposure and return to prison, the Hero for Hire offers to help the hard-pressed medics. Setting up an office above a movie house on 42nd Street Cage meets a lad who will be his greatest friend: D.W. Griffith: nerd, film freak and plucky white sidekick.

However, before Cage can settle in, Diamondback strikes and the age-old game of blood and honour plays out the way it always does…

Issue #3 introduced Cage’s first returning villain in ‘Mark of the Mace!’ as Burstein – for his own undisclosed reasons – decides to keep Cage’s secret, and disgraced soldier Gideon Mace launches a terror attack on Manhattan. With his dying breath one of the mad Colonel’s troops hires Cage to stop the attack, which he does in explosive fashion.

Inker Billy Graham graduated to full art chores for ‘Cry Fear… Cry Phantom!’ in #4 as a deranged and deformed maniac carried out random assaults in Times Square. Or was there perhaps another motive behind the crazed attacks?

Steve Englehart took over as scripter and Tuska returned to pencil ‘Don’t Mess with Black Mariah!’ in the next issue: a sordid tale of organised scavengers which introduced unscrupulous reporter Phil Fox, an unsavoury sneak with greedy pockets and a nose for scandal…

The private detective motif proved a brilliant stratagem in generating stories for a character perceived as a reluctant champion at best and outright antihero by nature. It allowed Cage to maintain an outsider’s edginess but also meant that danger and adventure literally walked through his shabby door every issue.

Such was the case with ‘Knights and White Satin’ (by Englehart, Gerry Conway, Graham and Paul Reinman) as the swanky, ultra-rich Forsythe sisters hire him to bodyguard their dying father from a would-be murderer too impatient to wait the week it will take for the old man to die from a terminal illness.

This more-or less straight mystery yarn (not counting a madman and killer-robots) is followed by ‘Jingle Bombs’, a strikingly different Christmas tale by from Englehart Tuska & Graham, before Cage properly entered the Marvel Universe in ‘Crescendo!’ when he is hired by Doctor Doom to retrieve rogue androids which had absconded from Latveria.

They were hiding as black men among the shifting masses of Harlem and the Iron Dictator needed someone who could work in the unfamiliar environment. Naturally Cage accomplishes his mission, only to have Doom stiff him for the fee. Big mistake…

‘Where Angels Fear to Tread!’ in issue #9 finds the enraged Hero for Hire borrowing a vehicle from the Fantastic Four to play Repo Man in Doom’s own castle just in time to get caught in the middle of a grudge match between the tyrant and an alien invader called the Faceless One.

It was back to street-level basics in ‘The Lucky… and the Dead!’ as Cage takes on a gambling syndicate led by the schizophrenic Señor Suerte who could double his luck by becoming murderous Señor Muerte (that’s Mr. Luck and Mr. Death to you): a two-part thriller complete with rigged games and death traps that climaxes in the startling ‘Where There’s Life…!’ as relentless Phil Fox finally uncovers Cage’s secret…

Issue #12 featured the first of many battles against alchemical villain ‘Chemistro!’, after which Graham assumed full art duties with ‘The Claws of Lionfang’ – a killer using big cats to destroy his enemies – before Cage tackles hyperthyroid lawyer Big Ben Donovan in ‘Retribution!’ as the tangled threads of his murky past slowly become a noose around his neck…

‘Retribution: Part II!’ finds Graham and Tony Isabella sharing the writer’s role as so many disparate elements converge to expose Cage. The crisis is exacerbated by Quirt kidnapping Luke’s girlfriend, and fellow Seagate escapees Comanche and Shades stalking him whilst the New York cops hunt him.

The last thing the Hero For Hire needs is a new super-foe, but that’s just what he get in #16’s ‘Shake Hands With Stiletto!’ (Isabella, Graham & inker Frank McLaughlin): a dramatic finale which literally brings the house down and clears up most of the old business. This would lead to a re-branding of the nation’s premier black crusader, but that’s meat for a different collection.

Bracketed by an Introduction from Steve Englehart – offering an informative issue-by-issue breakdown on how the series was created and bonus material including a cover gallery, promotional material from the times, unused artwork and pre-corrected/toned down pages (LCHFH was one of the most potentially controversial and thus most scrupulously edited books in Marvel’s stable at the time) and full creator Biographies, this is a fabulous and unmissable glimpse at one of the edgiest series of the era, and a fine way to back up the live-action Netflix iteration.
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