Ultimate Fantastic Four volume 2: Doom


By Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1457-4

After Marvel’s financial problems and creative roadblock in the late 1990s, the company came back swinging. A critical new concept was the remodelling and modernising of their core characters for the new youth culture.

The Ultimate imprint abandoned monumental long-grown continuity – which had always been Marvel’s greatest asset – to re-imagine major characters in their own self-sufficient universe, offering varying degrees of radical makeover to appeal to the contemporary 21st century audience and offer them a chance to get in on the ground floor.

Peter Parker was once again a nerdy high-school geek, brilliant but bullied by his physical superiors, and mutants were a dangerous, oppressed ethic minority scaring the pants off the ordinary Americans they hid amongst. There were also fresh and fashionable, modernistic, scientifically feasible rationales for all those insane super-abilities manifesting everywhere…

The experiment began in 2000 with a post-modern take on Ultimate Spider-Man. Ultimate X-Men followed in 2001 and Mighty Avengers reworking The Ultimates came in 2002.

The stories, design and even tone of the heroes were retooled for the perceived-as-different tastes of a new readership: those tired of or unwilling to stick with precepts originated by inspirational founding fathers Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, or (hopefully) new consumers unprepared or unwilling to deal with five decades (seven if you include Golden Age Timely tales retroactively co-opted into the mix) of interconnected story baggage.

The new universe quickly prospered and soon filled up with more refashioned, morally ambiguous heroes and villains but eventually even this darkly nihilistic new universe became as continuity-constricted as its ancestor.

In 2008, imprint-wide decluttering exercise “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which excised dozens of superhumans and millions of lesser mortals in a devastating tsunami which inundated Manhattan, courtesy of mutant menace Magneto.

Before that, however, Marvel’s original keystone concept was given an Ultimate working over and this stellar volume collects Ultimate Fantastic Four #17-12 (August to December 2004), and digital-colourist Dave Stewart relates how a subtly different Awesome Foursome began to affect the brand new, yet chillingly familiar world.

The most significant change to Stan & Jack’s breakthrough concept was a rather telling one: all four heroes were far, far younger than their mainstream antecedents…

Whereas in the original, middle-aged maverick genius Reed Richards, doughty friend Ben Grimm, ineffectual girlfriend Sue Storm and her younger brother Johnny survived a privately-funded space-shot which foundered when cosmic rays penetrated their vessel’s inadequate shielding and were mutated into a quartet into quirky freaks, here events transpired in a far more sinister manner…

Infant prodigy Reed was a lonely super-genius increasingly despised by his abusive blue-collar dad, bullied at school and obsessed with other dimensions. His only friend was classmate and school sports star Ben, who had unaccountably appointed himself the wonder-nerd’s protector…

Reed’s life changed the day his High School science project – teleportation – caught the eye of a government talent scout from a high powered think tank. Soon the outsider kid was ensconced in a New York facility for budding geniuses…

Run by brilliant Professor Franklin Storm, the Baxter Building was a wonderland of top-flight resources, intellectual challenges and guarded support, but school was primarily an ideas factory and the 100 strange, bright kids were expected to produce results…

Administrator Storm’s son Johnny was there mostly as a courtesy, but his daughter Sue was a biology prodigy and one of the biggest young brains on Earth…

Pretty hot, too…

Reed’s teleportation researches were just a necessary preliminary to his greater goal: mastery of a strange sub-dimension – a place the Baxter scientists call the Negative Zone. With their aid the passing years were largely spent in trying to fully access it, but regular studies continued too, with quite a few burn-outs and casualties.

Some kids thrived on the aggressive hot-housing; especially creepy, arrogant, insular Victor Van Damme, who after a particularly galling incident with Reed, somehow managed to swallow his seething animosity to collaborate on cracking the dimension calculations…

At last 21-year-old Reed and fractious lab partner Victor were shipped out to Nevada for the first full test of the N-Zone teleport system. The Storms went along for the ride, but as the army technicians counted down, Van Damme argued with Richards before secretly changing the still hotly debated and contested calculations…

At that moment backpacker Ben Grimm had wandered into camp to see his old sidekick after more than a decade apart, and snotty Johnny distracted Reed by disclosing that his sister Sue had the hots for the long-obsessed but crushingly shy wonderboy…

The test firing became a literal catastrophe.

The site was devastated in a shattering release of energy and Reed awoke some distance away as an amorphous blob of eerily boneless flesh, mistaken by the soldiers for an extra-dimensional invader.

Ben came to in Mexico as a huge rocky orange monster, and Johnny eventually called in from a hospital bed in France. He kept catching on fire without ever burning himself…

Sue has simply vanished without a trace…

She was eventually recovered from miles below New York City, gifted with invisibility and force field powers but captured by disgraced and long-missing Baxter Building boffin Arthur Molekevic: a literal Mole Man re-populating ancient, previously inhabited caverns with a selection of his own dish-grown monsters and homunculi…

The unsavoury savant had deduced that the quartet’s uncontrolled projection through N-Space – utterly unprotected from whatever transformative energies and unknown physical laws might apply there – had transformed them on some unfathomable fundamental level. Their incredible new gifts and appearances are the result…

When Mole Man attacked the surface world the foursome had chaotically united to defeat him and this second 6-part saga – by Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger and digital colour wizard Dave Stewart – picks up the story as Reed, perpetually pondering and fixating upon what transformed them and how, at last deduces that Victor had tampered with the N-Zone Superpostioner codes…

He is then pressured by Sue into finally submitting to a barrage of biological tests; even convincing barely-reactive, stonily shellshocked Ben into doing likewise. The findings are astounding, unbelievable and – for us readers – rather gross and pretty hilarious…

Victor has been missing since the test went so explosively awry. Unknown to all, he was also transformed into an uncanny new life-form and now lurks in a ramshackle communal squat in Denmark, obsessing on his abusive father and the daily cruelties that direct descent of Vlad Tepes had inflicted upon his only heir in the name of honouring the august and reviled line of Dracula…

Victor wants revenge and needs data, so his nimble but malformed hands have cobbled together a lethal swarm of killer spy wasps from discarded cellphones and the electronic detritus scattered in the streets…

As the bugs head for America the last scion of the Draculas advances his other plan: building a kingdom of the wretched from the city’s outcasts and dropouts. They all love and revere him. The electronic tattoos admitting them to his Order of the Dragon guarantee that…

When the swarm at last reaches the Baxter Building they utterly overwhelm and eradicate the military forces “protecting” the unsettling quartet of freaks, but after a spectacular struggle fall before the incredible power of Ben, Sue and Johnny.

Aware at last that the accident has turned the trio into beings as advanced as he, Victor lays new plans whilst largely discounted and loathed Reed frantically attempts to track the source of the assault.

The furious prodigy realises that if he can get the altered N-Zone Superpostioner codes from Victor, there’s a strong chance he can reverse the process and restore them all to true humanity.

Sadly, Professor Storm won’t let them go and instead dispatches a military squad to covertly rendition Van Dammer from sovereign Danish territory, but Reed is no longer the docile star pupil and sneaks off with “his” team in a flying supercar he built when he was thirteen.

He’s going to get those codes out of his treacherous lab partner and have a normal life no matter the cost…

Unfortunately Victor is waiting for them with an horrific range of new powers, deadly weapons and an army of unwashed hippie slaves, but the manic control freak is totally unprepared for the fact that his deadly rival has powers too: a fact none of his death-bugs managed to convey before they were destroyed.

The conflict then spirals completely out of control when US Special Forces blaze in to snatch Van Damme and run slam-bang into an extremely ticked off Danish army a trifle upset by the illegal American incursion…

Rocket-paced, razor sharp and blisteringly action-packed, this riotous romp is also liberally dosed with teen-oriented humour for the era of the acceptable nerd and go-getting geek, delivering a sublimely enthralling alternate view of Marvel’s most important title that will impress open-minded old fans of the medium just as much as the newcomers they were ostensibly aiming for.
© 2005 and 2005 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

Batman Chronicles volume 11


By Bob Kane, Don Cameron, Bill Finger, Jack Schiff, Alvin Schwartz, Joe Greene, Mort Weisinger, Dick Sprang, Jack Burnley, Jerry Robinson, George Roussos & various (DC Comics) ISBN: 978-1-4012-3739-4

Debuting a year after Superman, “The Bat-Man” (and latterly Robin, the Boy Wonder) cemented DC/National Comics as the market and conceptual leader of the burgeoning comicbook industry. Having established the parameters of the metahuman in their Man of Tomorrow, the physical mortal perfection and dashing derring-do of the strictly human-scaled adventures starring the Dynamic Duo rapidly became the swashbuckling benchmark by which all other four-colour crimebusters were judged.

This eleventh volume of chronological Batman yarns from the dawn of his career covers Batman #20-21, Detective Comics #82-85 and World’s Finest Comics #12, and again features their exploits from the height of World War II – specifically December 1943 to March 1944.

These Golden Age greats are some of the finest tales in Batman’s decades-long canon, as lead writers Bill Finger and Don Cameron, supplemented by Jack Schiff, Alvin Schwartz, Joe Greene and Mort Weisinger pushed the boundaries of the adventure medium whilst graphic genius Dick Sprang slowly superseded Bob Kane and Jack Burnley: making the feature uniquely his own and keeping the Dynamic Duo at the forefront of the vast army of superhero successes.

War always stimulates creativity and advancement and these sublime adventures of Batman and Robin more than prove that axiom as the growing band of creators responsible for producing the bi-monthly adventures of the Dark Knight hit an artistic peak which only stellar stable-mate Superman and Fawcett’s Captain Marvel were able to equal or even approach.

Moreover with the conflict finally turning in the Good Guys’ favour the escapades became upbeat and more wide-ranging. The Home Front seemed a lot brighter as can be seen in Batman #20 which opened with the Joker in ‘The Centuries of Crime!’ (Cameron & the Jack and Ray Burnley) with Mountebank of Mirth claiming to have discovered a nefariously profitable method of time-travelling, whilst ‘The Trial of Titus Keyes!’ (Finger, Kane & Jerry Robinson) offered a masterful courtroom drama of injustice amended, focussing on the inefficacy of witness statements…

‘The Lawmen of the Sea!’ by Finger & the Burnley boys found the Dynamic Duo again working with a lesser known Police Division as they joined The Harbor Patrol in their daily duties and uncovered a modern day piracy ring, before the issue concluded on a dramatic high with ‘Bruce Wayne Loses Guardianship of Dick Grayson!’ wherein a couple of fraudsters claiming to be the boy’s last remaining relatives petition to adopt him. A melodramatic triumph by Finger, Kane & Robinson, there’s still plenty of action, especially after the grifters try to sell Dick back to Bruce Wayne…

In Detective Comics #82 Cameron, Kane & George Roussos explored the dark side of American Football through the rise and explosive downfall of the ‘Quarterback of Crime!’ after which premiere anthology World’s Finest Comics #12 revealed how ‘Alfred Gets His Man!’ (Finger & Sprang), as Batman’s faithful new retainer revived his own boyhood dreams of being a successful detective with hilarious and action-packed results…

Portly butler Alfred’s diet regime thereafter led the Gotham Guardians to a murderous mesmerising medic and criminal insurance scam in ‘Accidentally on Purpose!’, courtesy of Cameron, Kane & Roussos (Detective #83), after which Batman #21 catered an all-Sprang art extravaganza.

The drama opened with slick Schiff-scripted tale ‘The Streamlined Rustlers’ following the Gotham Gangbusters way out west to solve a devilish mystery and crush a gang of beef-stealing black market black hats, after which Cameron described the antics of murderous big city mobster Chopper Gant who conned a military historian into planning his capers and briefly stymied Batman and Robin with his warlike ‘Blitzkrieg Bandits!’

Alvin Schwartz penned the delightfully convoluted romp ‘His Lordship’s Double’ which saw newly dapper, slimline manservant Alfred asked to impersonate a purportedly crowd-shy aristocratic inventor… only to become the victim in a nasty scheme to secure the true toff’s latest invention…

It all culminates with ‘The Three Eccentrics’ by Joe Greene, which detailed the wily Penguin‘s schemes to empty the coffers of a trio of Gotham’s wealthiest misfits…

Over in Detective Comics #84, Mort Weisinger & Sprang (with layouts by Ed Kressy)

pitted the Partners in Peril against an incredible Underworld University churning out ‘Artists in Villainy’ before Detective #85 – written by Bill Finger – closes this compilation highlighting Sprang’s first brush with the Clown Prince of Crime. In one of the most madcap moments in the entire annals of adventure, Batman and his arch-foe almost united to hunt for the daring desperado who stole the Harlequin of Hate’s shtick and glory as ‘The Joker’s Double’…

This sublime selection of classic comicbook clashes comes in the bold primary palettes of the original release and on authentically textured white newsprint: a true multi-sensorial joy to hold and to read whilst showcasing creators and characters at their absolute peak.

If only other companies with an extensive Golden Age back-catalogue like Marvel and Archie would follow suit…

© 1943, 1944, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Death Sentence


By Montynero & Mike Dowling (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-008-5

For most of us Sex Sells.

If that’s not you and you’re easily shocked or offended, stop Right Here, Right Now and come back for a less grown up review tomorrow…

As for the salacious, tawdry, vulgar rest of humanity, however, fornication is a force that cannot be resisted and we’re always gagging for it.

One outrageous potential result of that inescapable biological imperative was recently examined and scathingly lampooned in a dark and decadent fable from scripter, artist and games designer Montynero and sublime illustrator Mike Dowling. Death Sentence – after an initial and truncated appearance in Clint Magazine in 2012 – was retooled and completed in a breakthrough 6-issue miniseries which took the comics world by storm when it was released in October 2013.

Now the entire sordid episode has been compiled – along with a scintillating selection of irresistible extras – in a stout and sturdy hardcover collection that promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year…

The author’s own Introduction kicks everything off (and is complemented by another from Rob Williams) before the seductively apocalyptic tale begins with ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ wherein frustrated artist Verity Fette is getting some very distressing news in a Camden doctor’s surgery.

She’s just been diagnosed with G+: a new, universally fatal sexually transmitted disease that has a rather peculiar side-effect.

Although this STI kills in six months, for the length of that time the victim “suffers” from increased vigour, stamina, sex drive and even develops some form of super power…

Over in Primrose Hill, disgraced, shambolic and rapidly fading rock star Daniel Waissel AKA Weasel awakes from another unspecified period of debauched excess and tries to make sense of what his A&R man Russ is saying.

Apparently having G+ might be the only thing to revive his failing career and, if his power is music-related, perhaps he can still get all six of the albums he’s contracted for finished before he joins all the other dead legends going out in a blaze of lucrative glory…

Whilst Verity is quitting her meaningless job, over the river in a South Bank TV studio comedian, media darling, affirmed libertine and G+ carrier David “Monty” Montgomery is charmingly, charismatically, shockingly titillating the nation again; avowing that his final months on Earth won’t alter his pleasure-seeking behaviour or sensuous attitudes…

Later, Weasel’s powers at last manifest when a couple of irate drug dealers turn up, wanting payment for the prodigious amount of pharmaceuticals the creatively blocked musician has consumed, but neither he nor the other two G+ sufferers are aware that a shady government agency is keeping tabs on them.

Unfortunately, when the spooks decide to “acquire” Verity the result is spectacular and very messy…

Determined to keep the populace in the dark, the Department of National Security goes into utter bastard mode: blaming the gory fiasco on fictitious terrorists whilst covertly hunting the terrified ‘Dissolved Girl’ through the seedy streets of London.

Weasel is – as always – an emotional wreck, avoiding decisions – or making rock & roll – via a constant flurry of sex and drugs. His wake-up call comes when he realises his new normal has ended his latest bedmate in a most unsavoury manner…

Monty, however, is completely in control: aware of what he’s doing and not about to let a few interfering coppers get in his way.

Appalled and guilt-ridden, Verity regains consciousness on a remote Scottish island, where a very nice old lady makes her an intriguing offer before inviting the still-frustrated artist into the huge secret base beneath the heather…

‘Royals‘ finds bored and increasingly irresistibly Monty pondering how to top his already prodigious and unsurpassed career of licentious excess before heading off to Buckingham Palace…

North of the border Verity is beguiled by talk of a cure and agrees to let Dr. Lunn train her in the use of her rapidly-expanding abilities whilst on a quiet London street fugitive Weasel sneaks into the bedroom of his son.

Leaving Mickey with his mother might well be only good thing he’s ever done in his whole wasted life…

This sentimental act is a big blunder though, as a flotilla of copters leads a blistering military ambush which, after a spectacular chase, finally leads to the capture of the musical rebel without a clue…

When he arrives on the island, the nice doctors are keen on helping Weasel learn about himself and sexy fellow inmate Verity. They happily provide space, time, tuition, medical grade drugs…

Down South, Monty, having crowned himself King of Britain, is barely able to contain his self-absorbed glee. ‘In the City’ sees him really stretching himself, and after a psionic flexing of his mental muscle, bloodily destroying a division of the army as well as the ruling elite of Britain, he declares London a city free from all laws.

Influenced as much by a sense of wild liberty as Monty’s surging mental influence, the population descends into gory debauchery, prompting the American President and NATO to take matters into their own hand before the seditious super-maniac works himself up into becoming a global threat…

In Scotland Dr. Lunn is helpless to prevent the DNS frantically turning her research subjects into weapons to use against the rogue G+ victim who has turned London into a sex-fuelled charnel house. Their main concern is to end the affair before the full NATO fleet steaming ominously towards Britain takes the matter into their own terrified, remorseless, thermonuclear hands…

‘This Woman’s Work’ ratchets up the tension as Monty increasingly opts for slaughter over sex whilst Verity and Weasel have no choice but to grudgingly accept that they might be the only way to stop him. The crisis then reaches a catastrophic climax in ‘To the End’…but not in a way you’d suspect or be comfortable with…

Each chapter is bolstered by a series of faux news articles and public service features ranging from ‘Pop goes the Weasel’ to a medical advice website page for potential G+ sufferers, and this lewdly lavish hardback tome also includes a fifteen-strong covers-&-variants gallery, a fulsome, informative and frequently hilarious ‘Death Sentence Commentary’ from Montynero and Mike Dowling, and more.

Bold, slick, immensely engrossing and intoxicatingly enjoyable, Death Sentence is a black, uproarious fairytale for adults that blends superhero tropes with outrageous cheek, deliriously shocking situations and in-your-face irreverence, making it one of the most notable and unmissable comics tales of the last half century…

Buy it, read it and spread it around to everyone…

Death Sentence ™ and © 2014 Montynero, Mike Dowling and Titan Comics. All rights reserved.

Babak Ganjei’s Road House


By Babak Ganjei (Records Records Records Books)
ISBN: 978-0-9566330-7-1

Comics are a uniquely universal and predominantly graphic engine of narrative which can be as clear, concise and precise as a diagram or as shaded and meaningfully obscurantist as “Beat” poetry or The Clangers.

Moreover, when sequential panels are loaded with layers of pristine clarity which are simultaneously hooded or non-specific imagery, the effects can be spectacularly engaging.

According to author/illustrator Babak Ganjei this particular pictorial feast results from a momentary connection of artistic drudgery to a state of pure channelled creativity.

“I was hung-over; sitting in my studio, everyone else was working around me. I had Road House streaming from Netflix, I started drawing it; more than anything just to look busy. However as I got through the first few scenes I thought how it would be nice to truly immerse myself in a project that would take some time and with that time become it’s own thing”…

The enterprise grew and, despite overrunning the artist’s self-imposed time and space restrictions, gelled into a compulsive exhibition of artistic motor skills and disassociative construction of story elements. The brain wants logic and sees patterns: the hands and eyes just keep moving. Just ask any freelancer who has spent three days awake finishing a rush deadline job…

In case you haven’t caught it, Road House was released in 1989, a low-budget action flick starring Patrick Swayze, Sam Elliott and Ben Gazarra. It was directed by Rowdy Herrington, and John Wilson (founder of the Golden Raspberry Awards) listed it as “one of the 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made”.

The transformed, reconstituted result is a beguiling 192 page landscape hardback continuity (185 of which are the resultant images) delivered in a stark, enthralling monochrome which offers a truly raw storytelling experience, with one panel per page each captioned with brief, pithy “found” quotes from a wide range of other sources such as Foucoult, Foster Wallace and Baudrillard, Ali to Richard Pryor to Steve Martin…

A moodily effective, oddly gripping little (148 x 210mm) experimental treat, Babak Ganjei’s Road House is practically Dadaist in delivery and ferociously enticing, something no lover of comics or practitioner of the visual arts should miss… and perhaps later attempt for themselves.

Perhaps this is the beginning of a new trend or Olympic sport…

Tantalising thought, no…?

© Records Records Records 2013.

Barnaby volume 2


By Crockett Johnson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-709-3

This is one of those rare books worthy of two reviews. So, if you’re in a hurry…

Buy Barnaby volume 2 now – it’s one of the five best comic strips of all time and this superb hardcover compilation has lots of fascinating extras. If you harbour any yearnings for the lost joys of childish wonder and the suspicious glee in catching out adults trying to pull a fast one, you would be crazy to miss this book…

However, if you’re still here and need a little more time to decide…

Today’s newspapers have precious few continuity drama or adventure strips. Indeed, if a paper has any strips – as opposed to single panel editorial cartoons – chances are they will be of the episodic variety typified by Jim Davis’ Garfield or Scott Adams’ Dilbert.

You might describe these as single-idea pieces with a set-up, delivery and punch-line, all rendered in a sparse, pared-down-to-basics drawing style. In that they’re nothing new and there’s nothing wrong any of that ilk on their own terms.

Narrative impetus comes from the unchanging characters themselves, and a building of gag-upon-gag in extended themes. The advantage to the newspaper is obvious. If you like a strip it encourages you to buy the paper. If you miss a day or two, you can return fresh at any time having, in real terms, missed nothing.

Such was not always the case, especially in America. Once upon a time the daily “funny” – comedic or otherwise – was a crucial circulation builder and preserver, with lush, lavish and magnificently rendered fantasies or romances rubbing shoulders with thrilling, moody masterpieces of crime, war, sci-fi and everyday melodrama. Even the legion of humour strips actively strived to maintain an avid, devoted following.

And eventually there was Barnaby, which in so many ways bridged the gap between then and now.

On April 20th 1942, with America at war for the second time in 25 years, the liberal New York tabloid PM began running a new, sweet little kid’s strip which was also the most whimsically addicting, socially seditious and ferociously smart satire since the creation of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner – another utter innocent left to the mercy of scurrilous worldly influences…

The outlandish 4-panel daily, by Crockett Johnson, was the product of a perfectionist who didn’t particularly care for comics, but who – according to celebrated strip historian Ron Goulart – just wanted steady employment…

David Johnson Leisk (October 20th 1906-July 11th 1975) was an ardent socialist, passionate anti-fascist, gifted artisan and brilliant designer who had spent much of his working life as a commercial artist, Editor and Art Director.

Born in New York City and raised in the outer wilds of Queens when it was still semi-rural – very near the slag heaps which would eventually house two New York World’s Fairs in Flushing Meadows – “Dave” studied art at Cooper Union (for the Advancement of Science and Art) and New York University before leaving early to support his widowed mother. This entailed embarking upon a hand-to-mouth career drawing and constructing department-store advertising.

He supplemented his income with occasional cartoons to magazines such as Collier’s before becoming an Art Editor at magazine publisher McGraw-Hill. He also began producing a moderately successful, “silent” strip called The Little Man with the Eyes.

Johnson had divorced his first wife in 1939 and moved out of the city to Connecticut, sharing an ocean-side home with student (and eventual bride) Ruth Krauss, always looking to create that steady something when, almost by accident, he devised a masterpiece of comics narrative…

However, if his friend Charles Martin hadn’t seen a prototype Barnaby half-page lying around the house, the series might never have existed. Happily Martin hijacked the sample and parlayed it into a regular feature in prestigious highbrow leftist tabloid PM simply by showing the scrap to the paper’s Comics Editor Hannah Baker.

Among her other finds was a strip by a cartoonist dubbed Dr. Seuss which would run contiguously in the same publication. Despite Johnson’s initial reticence, within a year Barnaby had become the new darling of the intelligentsia…

Soon there were book collections, talk of a Radio show (in 1946 it was adapted as a stage play), a quarterly magazine and rave reviews in Time, Newsweek and Life. The small but rabid fan-base ranged from politicians and the smart set such as President and First Lady Roosevelt, Vice-President Henry Wallace, Rockwell Kent, William Rose Benet and Lois Untermeyer to cool celebrities such as Duke Ellington, Dorothy Parker, W. C. Fields and even legendary New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

Of course the last two might only have checking the paper because the undisputed, unsavoury star of the strip was a scurrilous if fanciful amalgam of them both…

Not since George Herriman’s Krazy Kat had a piece of popular culture so infiltrated the halls of the mighty, whilst largely passing way over the heads of the masses and without troubling the Funnies sections of big circulation papers.

Over its 10-year run (April 1942 to February 1952), Barnaby was only syndicated to 64 papers nationally, with a combined circulation of just over five and a half million, but it kept Crockett (a childhood nickname) and Ruth in relative comfort whilst America’s Great and Good constantly agitated on the kid’s behalf.

What more do you need to know?

One dark night a little boy wished for a Fairy Godmother and something strange and disreputable fell in through his window…

Barnaby Baxter is a smart, ingenuous and scrupulously honest pre-schooler (four years old to you) and his ardent wish was to be an Air Raid Warden like his dad. Instead he was “adopted” by a short, portly, pompous, mildly unsavoury and wholly discreditable windbag with pink pixie wings.

Jackeen J. O’Malley, card carrying-member of the Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns and Little Men’s Chowder and Marching Society – although he hadn’t paid his dues in years – unceremoniously installed himself as the lad’s Fairy Godfather. A lazier, more self-aggrandizing, mooching old glutton and probable soak (he certainly frequented taverns but only ever raided the Baxter’s icebox, pantry and humidor, never their drinks cabinet…) could not be found anywhere.

Due more to intransigence than evidence – there’s always plenty of physical proof, debris and fallout whenever O’Malley has been around – Barnaby’s mum and dad adamantly refuse to believe in the ungainly, insalubrious sprite, whose continued presence hopelessly complicated the sweet boy’s life.

The poor parents’ greatest abiding fear was that Barnaby was cursed with Too Much Imagination…

At the end of the previous volume O’Malley became implausibly – and almost overnight – an unseen and reclusive public Man of the Hour, preposterously translating that cachet into a political career by accidentally becoming a patsy for a corrupt political machine. In even more unlikely circumstances O’Malley was elected to Congress…

This strand gave staunchly socialist cynic Johnson ample opportunity to ferociously lampoon the electoral system, the pundits and even the public. As usual Barnaby’s parents had to perpetually put down their boy: assertively assuring him that the O’Malley the grown-ups had elected was not a fat little man with pink wings…

Despite looking like a fraud – he’s almost never seen using his magic and always has one of Dad’s stolen panatela cigars as a substitute wand – J. J. O’Malley is the real deal: he’s just incredibly lazy, greedy, arrogant and inept. He does sort of grant Barnaby’s wishes though… but never in ways that might be wished for…

Once O’Malley had got his foot in the door – or rather through the bedroom window – a succession of bizarre characters began to regularly turn up to baffle and bewilder Barnaby and Jane Shultz, the sensible little girl next door.

Even the boy’ new dog Gorgon was an oddity. The pooch could talk – but never when adults were around, and only then with such overwhelming dullness that everybody listening wished him as mute as every other mutt…

The mythical oddballs and irregulars included timid ghost Gus, Atlas the Giant (a two foot tall, pint sized colossus who was not that impressive until he got out his slide-rule to demonstrate that he was, in truth, a mental Giant) and Launcelot McSnoyd, an invisible Leprechaun who was O’Malley’s personal gadfly: always offering harsh, ribald counterpoints and home truths to the Godfather’s self-laudatory pronouncements…

Johnson continually expanded his gently bizarre cast of gremlins, ogres, ghosts, policemen, Bankers, crooks, financiers and stranger personages – all of whom could see O’Malley – but the unyieldingly faithful little lad’s parents were always too busy and too certain that the Fairy Godfather and all his ilk were unhealthy, unwanted, juvenile fabrications.

This second stupendous collection opens with a hearty appreciation from Jules Feiffer in the Foreword before cartoonist, biographer and historian R. C. Harvey provides a critical appraisal in ‘Appreciating Barnaby and the Power of Imagination’ after which the captivating yarn-spinning takes us from January 1st 1944 to December 31st 1945.

There’s even more elucidatory content at the back after all those magic-filled pictures too, as education scholar and Professor of English Philip Nel provides another fact-filled, scene-setting, picture-packed ‘Afterword: O’Malley Takes Flight’ and Max Lerner’s 1943 PM feature ‘Barnaby’s Progress’ is reprinted in full.

Nel also supplies strip-by-strip commentary and background in ‘The Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder & Marching Society: a Handy Pocket Guide’…

However what we all love is comics so let’s jump right in as the obese elf gets caught up in exhibiting his miniscule expertise in ‘The Manly Art of Self-Defense’ (which ran from 28th December 1943 to 19th January 1944), and follows Mr. Baxter’s purchase of a few items of exercise equipment.

Always with an eye to a fast buck, O’Malley organises a prize fight between poor gentle Gus and the obstreperous Brooklyn Leprechaun, all whilst delaying his long overdue return to the Capitol.

The godfather is expert in delay and obfuscation but eventually, in a concatenation of curious circumstances, the Congressman buckles under pressure from both his human and fairy-folk constituents to push through a new hydroelectric project – in actuality two vastly different ones – and wings off to begin the process of funding ‘The O’Malley Dam’ (20th January – 22nd April)…

As the political bandwagon gets rolling, further hindered by Mr. Baxter and Barnaby visiting the Congressman’s never-occupied office in Washington DC, the flighty, easily distracted O’Malley takes it upon himself to enscribe the natural history of his people in ‘Pixie Anthropology’ (24th April-18th May), even as back home the Big Fight gets nearer and poor Gus continues to flap under his punishing training regimen…

‘Mr. O’Malley, Efficiency Expert’, which ran from 19th May to 8th June, then saw the Fairy Fool step in when overwork and worry laid Mr. Baxter low. The factory manager was pilloried by concerns over production targets, but whilst he was remanded to his sickbed, the flying figment was busy “fixing” the crisis for him…

During that riotous sequence another oddball was introduced in the diminutive form of Gridley the Salamander: a “Fire Pixey” who couldn’t raise a spark even if supplied with matches and gasoline…

The under-worked winged windbag was a master of manipulation and ‘O’Malley and the Buried Treasure’ (9th June – 7th September) saw the airborne oaf inveigle invitations for the Baxters to the beachside cottage owned by Jane’s aunt. Once there it wasn’t long before avaricious imagination and a couple of old coins spawned a rabid gold rush amongst the adults who really should have known better.

The extended vacation also saw the first appearance of moisture-averse sovereign of the seas Davy Jones…

Whilst the Congressman was busily avoiding work, his seat vanished during boundary reorganisation, but ever-undaunted the pixilated political animal soldiered on, outrageously campaigning in the then-ongoing Presidential Election throughout the cruelly hilarious ‘O’Malley for Dewey’ (8th September – 8th November 1944)…

Newspaper strips always celebrated seasonal events and, after the wry satire of the race for power, whacky whimsy was highlighted with the advent of ‘Cousin Myles O’Malley’ (9th – 24th November). The puny Puritan pixie had come over on the Mayflower and was still trying to catch a turkey for his very first Thanksgiving Dinner.

Naturally his take-charge, thoroughly modern relative was a huge (dis)advantage to his ongoing quest…

With Christmas fast approaching, an injudicious expression from Ma Baxter regarding a fur wrap sets Barnaby and his Fairy guardian on the trail of the fabled and fabulous, ferocious ermine beast and sees the introduction of ‘The O’Malley Fur Trading Post’ (25th November 1944 to 27th January 1945).

Although legendary and mythical gnomish huntsman J. P. Orion fails to deliver, an unlucky band of fur thieves fall into the hunters’ traps and soon find their latest haul missing. Before long poor Mr. Baxter is looking at the chilling prospect of jail time for receiving stolen property…

With the global conflict clearly drawing to a close, Johnson threw himself into the debate of what the post-War world would be like in a swingeing attack on the financial system and the greedy gullibility of professional money men. Barnaby and most especially his conniving godfather almost shatter the American commercial world in a cunning fable entitled ‘J.J. O’Malley, Wizard of Wall Street’ (29th January – 26th May)…

With America still reeling, the ever-unfolding hilarity took an arcane turn and saw Mr. Baxter suffer more than the usual degree of personal humiliation and confusion when he took Barnaby, Gorgon and Jane for a short walk and lost them in the littlest woods in America.

They had of course been led astray by O’Malley who accidentally dumped them on ‘Emmylou Schwartz, Licensed Witchcraft Practitioner’ (28th May – 3rd July). She had been in a bad mood since the Salem Witch Trials…

As a result of this latest unhappy encounter and a shameful incident with a black cat, the dogmatic dog was hexed and became ‘Tongue-Tied Gorgon’ (4th – 10th July)… not that most people could tell…

When Barnaby’s Aunt Minerva wrote a bestseller, O’Malley felt constrained to guide her budding career in ‘Belles Lettres’ (11th July – 17th August). The obnoxious elf was a little less keen when he discovered it was only a cookbook, but perked up when it led to Minerva being offered a newspaper column.

Being an expert in this field too, O’Malley continued his behind-the-scenes support amidst ‘The Fourth Estate’ (18th August-8th September), renewing his old acquaintance with an impishly literal Printers Devil named Shrdlu…

Despite O’Malley’s best efforts Minerva remained a success and was soon looking for her own place. In ‘Real Estate’ (10th September – 10th October), Barnaby was helpless to prevent poor Gus being used by the godfather as a ghostly goad to convince a spiritualist-obsessed landlady to let to his aunt rather than a brace of conmen…

A perfect indication of the wry humour that peppered the feature can be seen in ‘Party Invitations’ which ran from 11th – 20th October as O’Malley attempts to supersede the usual turkey-and-fixin’s feast with a fashionable venison banquet – even though he can’t catch a deer and won’t be cooking it once it’s been butchered…

Congruent with that was the introduction of erudite aborigine ‘Howard the Sigahstaw Indian‘ (22nd October-23rd November) – who was just as inept in the hunting traditions of his forefathers – after which the festive preparations continued with ‘O’Malley’s Christmas List’ (24th November-15th December) wherein the always-generous godfather discovers the miracle of store credit and goes shopping for presents for everybody.

Never one to concentrate for long, he is briefly distracted by a guessing competition in ‘Bean-Counting’ (8th – 15th December) – the prize of a home movie camera being the ideal gift for young Barnaby – and this parade of monochrome cartoon marvels concludes with the dryly hilarious saga of ‘The Hangue Dogfood Telephone Quiz Program’ (17th December 1945-1st January 1946) wherein Gorgon’s reluctant answers to an advertising promotion again threaten to hurl the entire American business world into chaos…

Intellectually raucous, riotous, sublimely surreal and adorably absurd, the untrammelled, razor-sharp whimsy of the strip is always instantly captivating, and the laconic charm of the writing is well-nigh irresistible, but the lasting legacy of this ground-breaking strip is the clean sparse line-work that reduces images to almost technical drawings, unwavering line-weights and solid swathes of black that define space and depth by practically eliminating it, without ever obscuring the fluid warmth and humanity of the characters.

Almost every modern strip cartoon follows the principles laid down here by a man who purportedly disliked the medium…

The major difference between then and now should also be noted, however.

Johnson despised doing shoddy work, or short-changing his audience. On average each of his daily encounters – always self-contained – built on the previous episode without needing to re-reference it, and contained three to four times as much text as its contemporaries. It’s a sign of the author’s ability that the extra wordage was never unnecessary, and often uniquely readable, blending storybook clarity, the snappy pace of “Screwball” comedy films and the contemporary rhythms and idiom of authors such as Damon Runyan and Dashiel Hammett.

He managed this miracle by type-setting the dialogue and pasting up the strips himself – primarily in Futura Medium Italic but with effective forays into other fonts for dramatic and comedic effect.

No sticky-beaked educational vigilante could claim Barnaby harmed children’s reading abilities by confusing the tykes with non-standard letter-forms (a charge levelled at comics as late as the turn of this century), and the device also allowed him to maintain an easy, elegant, effective balance of black and white which makes the deliciously diagrammatic art light, airy and implausibly fresh and accessible.

During 1946-1947, Johnson surrendered the strip to friends as he pursued a career illustrating children’s book such as Constance J. Foster’s This Rich World: The Story of Money, but eventually he returned, crafting more magic until he retired Barnaby in 1952 to concentrate on books.

When Ruth graduated she became a successful children’s writer and they collaborated on four tomes, The Carrot Seed (1945), How to Make an Earthquake, Is This You? and The Happy Egg, but these days Crockett Johnson is best known for his seven “Harold” books which began in 1955 with the captivating Harold and the Purple Crayon.

During a global war with heroes and villains aplenty, where no comic page could top the daily headlines for thrills, drama and heartbreak, Barnaby was an absolute panacea to the horrors without ever ignoring or escaping them.

The entire glorious confection that is Barnaby is all about our relationship with imagination. This is not a strip about childhood fantasy. The theme here, beloved by both parents and children alike, is that grown-ups don’t listen to kids enough, and that they certainly don’t know everything.

For far too long Barnaby was a lost masterpiece. It is influential, ground-breaking and a shining classic of the form. You are all the poorer for not knowing it, and should move mountains to change that situation. I’m not kidding.

Liberally illustrated throughout with sketches, roughs, photos and advertising materials as well as Credits, Thank Yous and a brief biography of Johnson, this big hardback book of joy is a long-overdue and very welcome addition to 21st century bookshelves – most especially yours…

Barnaby vol. 2 and all Barnaby images © 2014 the Estate of Ruth Krauss. Supplemental material © 2014 its respective creators and owners.

The Weirding Willows volume 1: What the Wild Things Are


By Dave Elliott, Barnaby Bagenda, Sami Basri & various (Atomeka/Titan Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-78276-035-1

Phillip Jose Farmer’s Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) are probably the earliest modern examples of our current fascination with concatenating assorted literary icons and fictive childhood companions into heroic associations and fantasy brotherhoods, but as fantasy consumers we’ve always wanted our idols to clash or team up.

So many comics from Scarlet in Gaslight (Sherlock Holmes and Dracula) to Planetary (pulp vigilantes and other companies’ superheroes cheekily retooled) to the magnificent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (everybody you’ve ever heard of and some you haven’t) and an uncountable number of TV shows, books and movies have mined this boundless seam of entertainment gold.

The Weirding Willows by Dave Elliott, Barnaby Bagenda, Sami Basri and an army of colourists continues that topical trend; recombining the innocent headliners of many a beloved British children’s book into a slick, harsh, creepily adult reconfiguration…

One cautionary note: as with every entry into this amalgamating sub-genre, if you are a literary purist you are going to hate this – or indeed any – contemporarily-toned, edgily in-your-face interpretation. Nothing I can say will change your mind, so don’t bother.

There are plenty of other graphic novels and albums around that will better suit your temperament. Please try one of those…

The series launched in the latest iteration of anthology title A1 and this collection of first story-arc What the Wild Things Are also includes a whole new chapter exclusive to this lush and beguiling hardback compilation.

Rural, bucolic Willow Weir is a quintessentially English hamlet with a big secret. The riverside association of houses and farms intersects a number of portals to numerous other Realms and Dimensions, and things strange and uncanny are often seen – if not discussed. The human folk who abide there are not so simple and frequently as odd as the creatures that roam the wild woods and harmless-seeming riverbanks…

Following author Elliott’s Introduction a handy map offers the geographical lowdown on the green and pleasantly deceptive land before the tale unfolds with ‘A Wicked Witch This Way Comes’ wherein we meet worldly wise teen totty Alice Moreau, a girl greatly at odds with her father’s scientific preoccupations.

Dad and daughter reside in the house abandoned by Professor Donald H. Lambert when he rode his time machine into the future, and the abrasive single parent soon filled the vacant dwelling with an assortment of animals for his experiments.

This particular morning he is dickering with Dr. Henry Jekyll who has provided formal introduction for a green-bedecked dowager temptress named Margareete Marche; a traveller from a distant land who wishes to commission the radical surgeon to construct for her an army of winged monkeys…

Insolent Alice isn’t impressed: she’s far more concerned that sheep are going missing from nasty Farmer McGregor‘s spread. Naturally darling Daddy is the prime suspect. There’s no love lost between father and daughter, ever since she followed a rabbit through a portal to Wonderland and told her father all about it. He didn’t believe a word and has mocked her ever since…

The unpleasant confrontation with McGregor is cut short when a trio of talking rabbits summon her away to deal with another crisis. She doesn’t get far, though, as Montgomery Doolittle arrives with a barge full of fresh beasts for the operating table…

The cargo has also drawn a new player to the dell of domesticity. This black-maned wild child is desperate to rescue his beloved companions Baloo and Bagheera from the clutches of the obnoxious white man who can talk to animals…

‘If You Go Down to the Woods Today…’ sees Alice finally follow her bunny buddies as enraged Mowgli tries – and fails – to free his wild brothers: becoming instead more prospective raw material for Doctor Moreau. As Alice slips away no one pays any attention to a bizarrely grinning cat named Cheshire, and her own attentions are soon fully occupied by the rampages of an extremely angry example of the surgical efforts of an earlier modern Prometheus…

‘The Prisoner of Doctor Moreau’ finds Mowgli imprisoned with an exotic young woman named Kamaria, as across the river Alice brokers a peace between the rabbit race and Frankenstein’s Monster. As usual he has been gravely misunderstood: his frantic acts were merely the result of extreme concern for a lost companion.

Rosalind had gone missing and he has tracked her through a portal from Pellucidar – the world at the Earth’s Core – and is quite concerned. So is everybody else when they learn that Rosalind is a dinosaur…

‘What Lies Beneath Badger’s House’ introduces badger Victor Stoker, toad Dudley Cook, mole Morris Moore & ratty Terry James as well as a sinister hidden city deep down under Badger’s house, whilst in Moreau’s cellar laboratory the Cheshire Cat gives Mowgli some dangerous advice.

Meanwhile, the multi-species search party have found Rosalind on McGregor’s Farm, ferociously guarding a clutch of recently laid eggs…

That discovery only leads to tragedy as the obnoxious smallholder shoots Rosalind and claims the eggs for himself in ‘Here There Be Dragons!’ Thankfully Alice quickly deals with the farmer before monstrous Damon can get his second-hand hands on him…

Things take an even stranger turn when Victor, Morris, Dudley and Terry turn up. The Badger seems to know an awful lot about the experiments of the long-dead Dr. Frankenstein…

Night comes on and, in Moreau’s cellar as the full moon shines down on Kamaria, she begins to change and howl…

At a loss, Alice brings the whole menagerie back to her place in ‘What the Wild Things Are!’, much to the angry astonishment of her father, and at least has the satisfaction of proving that her “childish ramblings” were all true, all along…

However, when the rampant Kamaria werewolf tumultuously breaks out, strange alliances are quickly formed before the whole lethally helter-skelter hurly-burly is unconventionally settled in the low-key conclusion ‘Worlds Within Worlds’.

In the aftermath Alice at last finds time to renew an old acquaintanceship with a four-armed green man from another world…

Each chapter is concluded with an excerpt from The Weirding Willows Field Guide, detailing pertinent facts and shameful secrets about Alice, Philippe Moreau, Monty Doolittle, Damon Frankenstein, Victor Stoker, Dudley Cook, Morris Moore & Terry James, Margareete Marche, Dr. Henry Jekyll & Edward Hyde, Mowgli, The Worriers Three (talking rabbits Benjamin Buckle, Peter Pipp & Hoetoe Darwin), Professor Donald H. Lambert and enigmatic, formidable bunny-with-a-secret Norman Pipp, and the tome terminates with the author’s afterword ‘Inspirations’ and some informative creator ‘Biographies’.

Magnificently, mesmerisingly illustrated, this is a visual feast no fan of fantastic fantasy mash-ups will want to miss…

The Weirding Willows © 2014 Dave Elliott. ATOMEKA © 2014 Dave Elliott & Garry Leach. Atomeka Press, all contents copyright their respective creators.

Essential Punisher volume 1


By Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, Len Wein, Mike W. Barr, Marv Wolfman, Dennis O’Neil, Roger McKenzie, Frank Miller, Bill Mantlo, Stephen Grant, Jo Duffy, Ross Andru, Tony DeZuniga, Frank Springer, Keith Pollard, Al Milgrom, Greg LaRocque, Mike Zeck, Mike Vosburg& various  (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-8571-2375-0

Although one of the industry’s biggest hits from the late 1980s onwards, the compulsive vengeance-taker known as The Punisher was always an unlikely and uncomfortable star for comicbooks.

His methods are always excessively violent and usually permanent. It’s intriguing to note that unlike most heroes who debuted as villains (Black Widow or Wolverine come to mind) the Punisher actually became more immoral, anti-social and murderous, not less: the buying public simply shifted its communal perspective; The Punisher never toned down or cleaned up his act…

He was created by Gerry Conway, John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru; a necessarily toned down, muted response to such increasingly popular prose anti-heroes as Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan: the Executioner and a bloody tide of fictive returning Viet Nam vets who all turned their training and talents to wiping out organised crime in the early 1970s.

The story goes that Marvel’s bosses were reluctant to give The Punisher a starring vehicle in their standard colour comic-book line, feeling the character’s very nature made him a bad guy and not a good one. Other than the two magazine stories and the miniseries which closes the volume, Frank Castle was not supposed to be the star or even particularly admirable to the impressionable readership.

Therefore these early appearances might disappoint die-hard fans even though they are the formative tales of his success. Perhaps it’s best to remember and accept that when not actually the villain in the tales he was at best a worrisome guest…

Boy, how times do change…

He was first seen as a villain and patsy in Amazing Spider-Man #129, repeatedly returning thereafter before getting his shot at the big time – and then not in newsstand publications but in the company’s black and white, mature magazine line…

This initial Essential compilation gathers all those tentative stabs and guest-shots from February 1974 through to the breakthrough 1986 miniseries which really got the ball rolling: specifically Amazing Spider-Man #129, 134-135, 162-163, 174-175, 201-202; Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15; Giant-Size Spider-Man #4; Marvel Preview #2; Marvel Super-Action #1; Captain America #241; Daredevil #182-184; Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #81-83 and The Punisher #1-5, and many die-hard fans might be a little disappointed in the relative lack of brutality, carnage and even face time contained herein.

Just keep in mind that for the greater part of these early appearances the Skull-shirted slayer was at best a visiting partner and usually the villain du jour…

The first case in this mammoth monochrome war journal comes from Amazing Spider-Man #129, introducing not only the renegade gunslinger but also nefarious manic mastermind The Jackal in ‘The Punisher Strikes Twice!’ by Conway, Andru, Frank Giacoia & Dave Hunt wherein the Man with the Guns was duped by manipulative Professor Miles Warren into hunting Spider-Man. The unhappy Wallcrawler was currently a suspect in the death of Norman Osborn and subsequently set up by the Jackal for the murder of the Punisher’s gunmaker…

The much-misunderstood champions of the oppressed crossed paths again in Amazing Spider-Man #134-135 when a South American bandit intended to be his oppressive regime’s Captain America attempted to pillage a Manhattan tour boat in ‘Danger is a Man Named… Tarantula!’ Once again unwilling allies, the duo dutifully dismantled the villains schemes after a ‘Shoot-Out in Central Park!’

The Punisher played a more pivotal role in Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 (April 1975) when the Webslinger forced himself into one of the Lone Gunman’s cases in ‘To Sow the Seeds of Death’s Day!’ Ruthless arms dealer Moses Magnum had perfected a lethal chemical weapon and begun testing it on randomly kidnapped victims. Tracking down the vile monster in ‘Attack of the War Machine!’, the pair found themselves infiltrating his ‘Death-Camp at the Edge of the World!’ before summary justice was dispensed as much by fate as the heroes…

John Romita senior’s original concept pencil sketch of The Punisher from 1973 is followed by the vigilante’s first solo role – in black-&-white magazine Marvel Preview #2 (August 1975) – where Conway & Tony DeZuniga pronounced a ‘Death Sentence’ on some of Castle’s old army buddies who had been tricked into becoming assassins by a millionaire madman who wanted to take over America. The gritty yarn also at last revealed the tragic reasons for the Punisher’s unending mission of vengeance.

Highly decorated Marine Castle saw his wife and children gunned down in Central Park after the carefree picnickers stumbled into a mob hit. When the killers turned the guns on the witnesses, only Castle survived. Recovering in hospital the bereft warrior dedicated his life to eradicating criminals everywhere…

Following a stunning Punisher and Dominic Fortune pin-up by Howard Chaykin, ‘Accounts Settled… Accounts Due!’ by Archie Goodwin, DeZuniga & Rico Rival from Marvel Super Action #1 (January 1976) follows the matured-themed plot to a close as Castle at last tracks down the gunsels who carried out the shooting and the Dons who ordered it, only to find that his bloody vengeance hasn’t eased his heart or dulled his thirst for personal justice…

Castle was reduced to a bit-player in Amazing Spider-Man #162-163 (October and November 1976, by Len Wein Andru & Esposito, as the newly reconstituted X-Men were sales-boosted by a guest-clash with the Wallcrawler in ‘…And the Nightcrawler Came Prowling, Prowling’, wherein the Arachnid jumps to wrong conclusion after a sniper shoots a reveller at Coney Island.

By the time Nightcrawler has explained himself – in the tried-and-true Marvel manner of fighting the webspinner to a standstill – old skull-shirt has turned up to take them both on before mutual foe Jigsaw is exposed as the real assassin in the concluding episode ‘Let the Punisher Fit the Crime!’

Amazing Spider-Man #174 from November 1977 declared ‘The Hitman’s Back in Town!’ (inks by DeZuniga & Jim Mooney) and saw Castle hunting a costumed assassin hired to remove J. Jonah Jameson but experiencing an unusual reticence since the killer was a old army pal who had saved his life in Vietnam. Nevertheless the tale ended with a fatality in the ‘Big Apple Battleground!’ in #175.

Captain America #241 (January 1980, by Mike W. Barr, Frank Springer & Pablo Marcos) was very much a fill in which benefited from the Frank Miller effect – he drew the cover – as ‘Fear Grows in Brooklyn’ as the Sentinel of Liberty got in the way of a mission and refused to allow the Punisher to go free.

He couldn’t however, stop him from escaping police custody and Amazing Spider-Man #201-202 –‘Man-Hunt!’ and ‘One For Those Long Gone!’ (February and March 1980, by Marv Wolfman, Keith Pollard & Mooney) – reveal how The Punisher almost uncovers Peter Parker‘s big secret whilst relentlessly stalking a mob boss responsible for the death of a kid who had saved Castle’s life…

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15 (1981 by Dennis O’Neil, Frank Miller & Klaus Janson) is putatively the genesis of the antihero in his true form. ‘Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?’ sees maniac fugitive Frank Castle back in the Big Apple and embroiled in a deadly scheme by Doctor Octopus to poison five million New Yorkers.

It’s not long before both Peter Parker and his colourful alter-ego are caught in the middle of a terrifying battle of ruthless wills in a tense and clever suspense thriller, which perfectly recaptures the moody mastery of Steve Ditko’s heydays.

The Miller connection continued in three unforgettable issues of Daredevil (#182-184 from May-July 1982) which perfectly encapsulated everything that made the Punisher run such a momentous, unmissable, “must-read” character…

Beginning with only a pertinent untitled excerpt by Miller & Janson from ‘She’s Alive’ wherein a reeling Matt Murdock is trying to cope with the murder of his first love Elektra whilst elsewhere Castle is clandestinely removed from prison by a government spook to stop a shipment of drugs the authorities can’t touch. Once he’s killed the gangsters, however, The Punisher refuses to go back to jail…

The story proper begins in ‘Child’s Play’ – with Roger McKenzie lending a scripting hand – and deals with school kids using drugs. It was originally begun by McKenzie & Miller but shelved for a year, before being reworked into a stunningly powerful and unsettling tale once Miller & Janson assumed the full creative chores on the title.

When Matt visits a High School he is a helpless witness when a little girl goes berserk, attacking staff and pupils before throwing herself out of a third floor window.

She was high on “Angel Dust” and as the appalled hero vows to track down the dealers he first encounters her bereaved and distraught younger brother Billy, determined to exact his own vengeance and later the coldly calculating Castle who has the same idea and far more experience…

The hunt leads inexorably to a certain street pusher and DD, Billy and the Punisher all find their target at the same time. After a spectacular battle the thoroughly beaten Daredevil has only a bullet-ridden corpse and Billy with a smoking gun…

The kid is innocent – and so, this time at least, is Castle – and after Murdock proves it in court, the investigation resumes with the focus falling on the pusher’s boss Hogman. When DD’s super-hearing confirms the gangster’s claims of innocence his alter-ego Murdock then successfully defends the vile dealer, only to have the exonerated slime-ball gloatingly admit to having committed the murder after all…

Horrified, shocked, betrayed and determined to enforce justice, DD finds a connection to a highly-placed member of the school faculty deeply involved with Hogman in the concluding ‘Good Guys Wear Red’ but it’s far too late: Castle and Billy have both decided the end the matter Hogman’s way…

Scripted by Bill , Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #81-83 (August to October 1983) opens with ‘Stalkers in the Shadows’, illustrated by Al Milgrom & Mooney, and sees an increasingly crazy Punisher going after misdemeanour malefactors with the same murderous zeal he previously reserved for killers and worse. Spider-Man meanwhile has his hands full with teen vigilantes Cloak and Dagger who have graduated from tackling street drug pushers to go after Wilson Fisk, Kingpin of crime.

‘Crime & Punishment!’ sees Castle applying lethal force indiscriminately all over town, culminating in his own crazed attack on Fisk… who beats him to a pulp.

The saga ends with ‘Delusions’ by Mantlo, Greg LaRoque & Mooney wherein the Punisher goes on trial and is found to have been dosed with psychosis-inducing drugs…

At last Marvel gave way to the inevitable and commissioned a Punisher miniseries, although writer Steven Grant and penciller Mike Zeck apparently had an uphill struggle convincing editors to let the grim, gun-crazed maniac loose in that shiny world where little kids might fixate on a dangerous role model – and their parents might get all over-protective, litigious and (skull) shirty…

In 1985 they finally got the green-light and the 5-issue miniseries – running from January to May – turned the industry on its head. There was indeed plenty of controversy to go around, especially as the tale featured a “hero” who had lots of illicit sex and killed his enemies in cold blood. Also causing problems for censorious eyes were the suicide of one of the major characters and the murder of innocent children. Doesn’t it make you proud to realise how far we’ve since come…?

The company mitigated the potential fall-out with the most lacklustre PR campaign in history, but not telling anybody about The Punisher didn’t stop the series from becoming a runaway, barnstorming success. The rest is history…

Two years later as the graphic novel market was finally getting established and with Frank Castle one of the biggest draws in comics (sorry, I’m such a child sometimes), that contentious series was released as a complete book and it remains one of the very best of all his many exploits.

Here, rendered even more stark and uncompromising in gritty moody monochrome, the action begins in ‘Circle of Blood’ as Castle is locked in Ryker’s Island prison where every inmate is queuing up to kill him. Within hours though he has turned the tables and terrified the General Population, but knows that both old foe Jigsaw and the last of the great mob “Godfathers” have special plans for him…

When a mass breakout frees all the cons, Castle brutally steps in. For this he is allowed to escape by the warden, who casually offers him membership in The Trust, an organisation of “Right-minded, law-abiding citizens” who approve of his crusade against crime. Castle also discovers he’s being stalked by Tony Massera, a good man who thought he had escaped the influences of his bad family…

Tony wants to kill Castle to avenge his father, one of Punisher’s many gory successes – but only after the streets have been swept clean of scum like his own family…

‘Back to the War’ finds the Punisher on the streets again, hunting scum, armed and supplied by the Trust but still not a part of their organisation.

After an abortive attempt to blow up The Kingpin, Castle is saved by the mysterious Angel, and begins a loveless liaison with her. With everybody mistakenly believing the master of New York’s underworld dead, a bloody gang-war erupts with greedy sub-bosses all trying to claim the top spot, but by the events of ‘Slaughterday’ Castle realises that too many innocents are getting caught in the crossfires.

He also discovers in ‘Final Solution’ that the Trust have their own national agenda as hit men and brainwashed criminals dressed in his costume surreptitiously hit the streets, executing mobsters and fanning the flames…

All the Trust’s plans for this “Punishment Squad” and the country are uncovered in the blockbusting conclusion ‘Final Solution Part 2’ as all the pieces fall into place and the surviving players reveal their true allegiances. In a classy final chapter mysteriously completed by the highly underrated Jo Duffy and Mike Vosburg, from Grant’s original plot, The Punisher takes charge in his inimitable manner, leaving God and the cops to sort out the paperwork….

We can only speculate as to why the originators fell away at the last hurdle, but I’m pretty sure those same reluctant editors played some part in it all…

This economical Essential edition comes with a plethora of pin-ups and concludes with a comprehensive information dossier culled from the ever-informative Marvel Universe Handbook, and these superbly gritty, morally ambiguous if not actually ethically challenging dramas never cease to thrill and amaze, and have been reprinted a number of times.

Whichever version suits your inclinations and wallet, if you love action, cherish costumed comics adventure and crave the occasional dose of gratuitous personal justice this one should be at the top of your “Most Wanted” list.

© 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1986, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Extinction Parade


By Max Brooks & Raulo Caceres (Avatar Press/Titan Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-59291-234-6

I’ve never been the keenest consumer of zombie stories but occasionally something really intriguing and different crops up and I’m compelled to re-think my position. Somehow, that usually only occurs when Max Brooks is involved.

Brooks is a successful actor and screenwriter (most notably part of the team scripting Saturday Night Live) and cartoon fans might recognize his name from the voice credits of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Batman Beyond and Justice League. You probably laughed at a lot of his dad’s movies: High Anxiety, Young Frankenstein and the first version of the Producers amongst others.

The guy also loves to play around with the conventions of horror. His previous books include The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z and the graphic novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.

Now he’s come up with what seems a brilliant “no-brainer” concept that somebody should have had decades ago (and probably did in some old EC horror or DC story, as some veteran fright fan is sure to comment somewhere)…

In his latest charnel confection – a comicbook series from cutting (bleeding?) edge adult publisher Avatar Press – he’s also finally and thankfully returned vampires to their proper place as cold, relentless, loveless apex predators; discarding dubious modern notions of Nosferatu as chaste touchy-feely dreamboats for adolescents or pulchritudinous, perpetually priapic passion pets for hot and horny humans.

Brook’s vampires just kill and kill and kill – as much for fun as for sustenance…

The initial five issue arc of The Extinction Parade introduces us to two such bloodsuckers: haughty, disdainful, distant and aristocratically discrete female night-hunters who have dined on the best, brightest and most dangerous examples of humanity – “solbreeders” – for untold ages.

As such they have often encountered outbreaks of the slow, shambling, stupidly voracious plague-zombies which have periodically broken out amongst the human populations. They always watched with haughty amusement as the brain-dead “Subdead” mindlessly attacked until they’d exhausted their frightened food supply or some king or band of warriors wiped them out. Then the vampires usually hunted the victorious human heroes, assured at least of some thrilling sport…

The saga is set in the exotic technopolises of modern Malay peninsula where the queens of the damned look on and laugh from on high at human inefficiency as Singapore, Sumatra and Sarawak, Thailand, Cambodia and Burma and all points East are ravaged and reduced by a gory tide of unthinking mobile contagion carriers, killing and consuming everyone in their shuddering path…

Blithe and oblivious, the immortal killers carry on their sybaritic bloodletting, glorying in the carnage and delighted that to the ever-expanding wave of subdead biting beasts they are utterly invisible and undetectable. Even these monsters they can destroy with ease and no hint of fear or retaliation…

As city after city, nation after nation, continent after continent succumbs to the plague, all the vampire girls can think of is the opportunity to abandon caution and restraint, indulging in wanton public slaughter: “nights of glory” spent preying on the rapidly declining humans before the stupid but relentless subdead can…

And then with fire and death everywhere an impossible new notion finally sinks into minds stupefied by blood, euphoria and centuries of untouchable, blasé privilege…

With all parts of Earth accessible as never before, with the subdead multiplying with every bite and no sense of preservation or the future, what will vampires eat when there are no humans left?

To be fair, their daylight caretaker Willem tried to tell them repeatedly that this time something was different, but when have vampires ever listened to servants or humans?  The first inkling the spoiled bloodsuckers have of a real problem is the night their major domo is not there when they awake from their red-spattered repose…

The pitifully few undead elite gather to watch an inexorable tide wipe out what might be the last vestiges of humanity in the city, and rage and frustration and perhaps fear grip the shell-shocked dowagers of doom. Without thinking they explode into action, tearing apart the unthinking oblivious subdead shamblers.

Tirelessly, methodically they dismember and destroy the Zombie pack. It is a turning point in the history of the undead. The vampires will war with the unthinking eaters for the right to consume mortals.

However, the battle has highlighted a disturbing fact: vampires are not completely immune to the taint that drives zombies to mindless endless hunger…

To Be Continued…

Narrated in an effective first person narrative with bleak deadpan delivery, this is also a visceral, visual gorefest from illustrator Raulo Caceres that no lover of shock-horror could resist. This luxurious full colour paperback compilation also includes a seventeen page covers-&-variants gallery plus a scarlet-spattered eleven page preview of forthcoming volume The Extinction Parade: War.

The Extinction Parade ™ & © 2014 Max Brooks.

World War One: 1914-1918


By Alan Cowsill, Lalit Kumar Sharma, Jagdish Kumar & various (Campfire)
ISBN: 978-93-80741-86-4

In 1914 following thirty years of empire building and politicking by wealthy nations, Europe was a tinderbox sitting atop a powder-keg. On June 28th in the city of Sarajevo a bomb was thrown, shots were fired and a spark set everything off…

There have been many graphic novels set in and about the Great War, but very few that have been brave enough to offer a comprehensive overview of the entire conflict. This compelling primer by writer Alan Cowsill and illustrators Lalit Kumar Sharma & Jagdish Kumar pulls off the neat trick of bullet-pointing the key events whilst simultaneously personalising the conflict through the unfolding fortunes of a number of ordinary “Tommies” who enlisted at the very start…

The account begins on The Somme in 1916 where George Smith and his brother Joe prepare to go “Over the Top”. As the attack commences he recalls how they all got there, beginning with a review of the initially botched assassination by a dying Serbian Nationalist in an inconspicuous little town in Bosnia-Herzegovina – and how German military ambition and Austro-Hungarian indignation slowly, inexorably kindled the flames of conflict on a continent enmeshed in a convoluted web of complex alliances…

The tale then switches to idyllic England where anti-German sentiment was the backdrop to the introduction of the Smith boys. Older brother Joe was part of the first wave – the British Expeditionary Force – dispatched to France in August 1914 for the hellish wake-up call that was the Battle of Mons…

Back home underage George and his pal Fred Cowsill had little problem enlisting and were soon coping with basic training as focus shifts to the Central Powers where German plans were explored and the appalling rate of attrition meant younger and younger soldiers were being ferried to the front…

And so it continues: the Smith’s experience of mud, mayhem and crippling tedium interspersed with incisive examinations and overviews of the military and political forces at play,

Whilst the boys slogged through mud, dug trenches and dodged bullets and gas, the narrative explores the role of other advantage-seeking countries such Japan, naval engagements and the supremacy of submarine combat, the war in Africa, Germany’s role in the Russian Revolution and the foolish mistakes which led America to surrender its neutrality and join the Allied Powers…

Also touched upon are the achievements of T.E. Lawrence (“…of Arabia”), Wilfred Owen, the Christmas Day football match, the creation of Tanks and development of aerial combat, the disproportionate and astounding contributions of the Australian and New Zealand contingents, the bombing of Britain, the vile executions of deserters and psychologically scarred “shellshock” victims and how, but for political intransigence, the war might have ended in 1916…

Quite understandably for a book from an Indian publisher, some long-delayed attention is paid to the crucial contributions of the Empire’s Asian soldiery, such as Sepoy Khudadad Khan Minhas (first soldier of the Indian Army to win the Victoria Cross) whom Joe meets in a field hospital, and there are some damning views of the folks at home, smugly doling out white feathers to any men they consider shirkers or cowards…

Peppered with significant factual titbits and landmarks, the report continues, following the disastrous campaigns, the technological advancements, the battles, the global involvement and implications and how, even after the Armistice, the killing continued, whilst George and his comrades fall one by one by one…

Superbly précising the entire conflict, smartly mixing factual overview with eyewitness perspective at home and abroad and never straying far from action and bloodletting, this is a captivating introduction to the “War to End All Wars” (although I might quibble on the art side and wish for a little more diligent use of photo reference in certain places) and is ably augmented by fact-features such as ‘Was it Really a World War?’ and a truly heartbreaking illustrated essay on ‘Silent Soldiers’: the astounding animals who were awarded incredible honours for their incomprehensibly valiant deeds in the human Armageddon…

© 2014 Kalyani Navyug Media Pvt Ltd. All rights reserved.

Snowpiecer: The Escape


By Jacques Lob & Jean-Marc Rochette translated by Virginie Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-143-3

All science fiction is social commentary and, no matter when, where or how set, holds up a mirror to the concerns of the time of its creation. Many stories – in whatever medium – can go on to reshape the culture that spawned them.

There’s a reason why the Soviets proscribed many types of popular writing but actively encouraged (certain flavours of) science fiction. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Metropolis, 1984, Solaris, Star Trek, Alien and so many others escaped the ghetto of mere genre to change the cognitive landscape of the world, and hundreds more such groundbreaking and worthy efforts would do the same if we could get enough people to read or see them.

And most importantly, when done well and with honesty, such stories are also incredibly entertaining.

All over the world comics have always looked to the stars and voyaged to the future. Europe especially has long been producing spectacularly gripping and enthralling “Worlds of If…” and Franco-Belgian graphic storytelling in particular abounds with undiscovered treasures.

For every Blake & Mortimer or Barbarella, Valérian & Laureline, Airtight Garage, Chimpanzee Complex or Gods in Chaos there is an impossible hidden wealth of others, all perched tantalisingly out of reach for everybody unable or unwilling to read nothing but English.

To coincide with the release of spectacular summer blockbuster movie Snowpiercer, Titan Comics have released an economical paperback edition of another long-overlooked masterpiece. The book – a stunning example of bleak Cold War paranoid fantasy – is also electronically accessible to iPhone, iPad, Web, Android and Kindle consumers.

The original mesmerising monochrome adventure, written by Jacques Lob (Ténébrax, Submerman, Superdupont) and rendered by painter/illustrator Jean-Marc Rochette (Le Dépoteur de Chrysanthèmes, Les Aventures Psychotiques de Napoléon et Bonaparte), was first serialised in 1982 in À Suivre and collected two years later as Le Transperceneige, and like most landmark yarns has a driving central conceit which is simple, brilliant and awesome.

In the future life is harsh, oppressive and ferociously claustrophobic. When eternal winter descended upon the Earth, fugitive remnants of humanity boarded a vast vacation super-train and began an eternal circumambulation of the iceball planet on railway tracks originally designed to offer the idle rich the ultimate pleasure cruise.

Thanks to lax security, as the locomotive started its unceasing circuit of the globe, gangs of destitutes boarded the vehicle, but were forced by the military contingent into the last of the 1001 cars pulled by the modern miracle of engineering.

Now decades later, the self-contained and self-sustaining Engine hurtles through unending polar gloom in a perpetual loop, carrying within a raw, fragmented and declining microcosm of the society that was lost to the new ice age…

All contact with the Tail-enders of the “Third Class” has been suspended ever since they tried to break through to the better conditions of the middle and front carriages. Their “Wild Rush” was repelled by armed guards and the survivors – who recall the terrifying event as “the Massacre” – were kicked back to their rolling slums and sealed in to die…

The story proper begins as Lieutenant Zayim is called to an incident in a toilet. Somehow an individual has survived the -30 degree chill and monstrous acceleration, climbing along the outside of the train to smash his way into a centre carriage.

Normally the importunate refugee would be killed and ejected but the stunned officer receives instruction from his Colonel that the indigent – named Proloff – is to be interviewed by the leaders up in First Class.

Before that, however, the invader must be quarantined as the carriage doctor has no idea what contagions must proliferate in the squalor of the rear. But whilst Proloff is isolated, idealistic young activist Adeline Belleau forces her way into the carriage.

She is with a humanitarian Aid Group agitating to integrate the abandoned Tail-enders with the rest of the train, but is unceremoniously confined with the intruder and suffers the same appalling indignities as her unfortunate client…

After a “night” in custody Proloff and Adeline are escorted by Sergeant Briscard and his squad through the strange and terrifying semi-autonomous carriages: each a disparate region of the ever-rolling city, contributing something to the survival of all.

Travelling through each car during their slow walk, Proloff observes how humanity has uniquely adapted on the journey to nowhere, but that each tiny kingdom is filled with people scared, damaged and increasingly dangerous.

In one car they are even attacked by bandits…

The invader also begins to glean certain facts: a religion has grown that worships the unlimited life-bestowing power of Saint Loco, rumours that the train is inexorably slowing down, reports that a plague has begun in the carriage he broke into. Even Adeline has picked up a cold from somewhere…

As they slowly approach the front, Proloff and Adeline grow closer, uniting against the antipathy of the incrementally better off passengers who all want the Powers-That-Be to jettison the dragging, superfluous end carriages packed with filthy Tail-enders…

When they at last reach the luxurious “Golden Cars” the outcasts are interviewed by military Top Brass and the President himself.

He confirms that the train is indeed losing speed and that the furthest carriages will be ditched, but asks Proloff to act as an emissary, facilitating the dispersal of the human dregs throughout the rest of the train.

Billeted with Al, the timidly innocuous Train Archivist, Historian and Librarian, Proloff quickly confirms his suspicion that he is being played. Whilst deftly avoiding the grilling regarding conditions at the train’s tail, he swaps some theories about how the ice age really began and just how coincidentally lucky it was that this prototype vacation super-train was set up, ready and waiting to save the rich and powerful… and only accidentally and unwillingly a selection of the rest of humanity…

Stoically taking in the decadent debauchery of the First Class cars, Proloff is ready to die before going back, and when word of plague and revolution provokes an attack by the paranoid autocrats, he and Adeline decide to move even further forward, to see the mighty Engine before they die.

What they find there changes everything for everyone, forever…

This incisive exploration of a delicately balanced ostensibly stable society in crisis is a sparkling allegory and punishing metaphor, playing Hell and poverty at the bottom against wealth in Heaven at the top, all seen through the eyes of a rebel who rejects both options in favour of a personal destiny, and is long overdue for the kind of recognition bestowed on that hallowed list of SF greats cited above.

Dark, brooding, manic and compulsive, Snowpiercer is a must-see masterpiece no fantasy fan can afford to miss.

Transperceneige/Snowpiercer and all contents are ™ and © 2013 Casterman.