Author: NowReadThis

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World’s Finest


By Sterling Gates, Julian Lopez, Ramon F. Bachs, Jamal Igle, Phil Noto & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2797-5

For decades the Man of Tomorrow and Caped Crusader were quintessential superhero partners: the “World’s Finest team”. The affable champions were best buddies as well as mutually respectful colleagues and their pairing made sound financial sense since DC’s top heroes could happily cross-pollinate and cross-sell their combined readerships.

During the 1950s most superheroes of the American Golden Age faded away leaving only headliners Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (plus whoever they could carry in the back of their assorted titles) to carry on a rather genteel campaign against a variety of thugs, monsters and aliens.

With economics and rising costs also dictating a reduction in average page counts, the once-sumptuous anthology World’s Finest Comics (originally 96 pages per issue), which had featured solo adventures of DC’s flagship heroes plus a wealth of other features, simply combined the twin stars into a single lead story every issue, beginning with #71, July-August 1954.

And so they proceeded until 1970 when another drop in superhero fortunes saw WFC become a Superman team-up book with rotating guest partners. However, after a couple of years, the original relationship was rekindled and renewed and, with the World’s Finest Heroes fully restored to their bizarrely apt pre-eminence, enjoyed another lengthy run until the title was cancelled during Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985-1986.

The maxi-series rewrote the DC universe, and everything was further shaken up by John Byrne’s subsequent retooling The Man of Steel which re-examined all the Caped Kryptonian’s close relationships in a darker, more cynical light.

When the characters were redefined for the post-Crisis era, they were recast as suspiciously respectful co-workers who did the same job but deplored each other’s methods and preferred to avoid contact whenever possible – except when they were in the Justice League of America (but for the sake of your sanity, don’t fret that right now!).

Over the following few years of this new status quo the irresistible lure of Cape & Cowl Capers inexorably brought them together again, but now with added modern emotional intensity derived from their incontestable differences.

Moreover, sentimental fools that we comics fans are, the sheer emotional cachet (and perhaps copyright value of the brand) ensured that every so often a new iteration of the singular title was released to keep all interested parties happy…

Thus this moody, cleverly post-modern 21st century spin on the irresistible combination of heroic dynasties which gathers World’s Finest volume 4, #1-4 from December 2009-March 2010, set during the period of the recent overarching Superman publishing event “World of New Krypton/World Without Superman”, wherein 100,000 Kryptonians who have escaped imprisonment in the Bottle City of Kandor gain superpowers under Sol’s light, and build themselves a planet in our solar system…

The book also contains supplementary material from Action Comics #865, 2008 and DC Comics Presents #31, 1981.

With the Man of Steel’s arch-nemesis General Zod prominent and pre-eminent in the newly re-established society of New Krypton, and most of Earth crazy-paranoid about a world full of belligerent supermen flying around in their backyard, Kal-El has abandoned his adopted homeworld to keep an eye on the system’s newest immigrants…

Earth is not completely defenceless, however. As well as the JLA and Superman’s hand-picked replacement Mon-El of Daxam, Supergirl and a mysterious “Superwoman” still fly the skies and top-secret, sinister paramilitary, anti-alien task force Project 7734 is watching, certain that there are other ET insurgents just waiting in hiding…

Against such a backdrop this quartet of interlinked team-ups written by Sterling Gates charts a heroic procession which begins with ‘Nightwing and Red Robin’ (illustrated by Julian Lopez and Bit) and finds the latest Kryptonian to use the appellative seek out the third Boy Wonder’s aid in rescuing his partner Flamebird from the insidious criminal broker The Penguin…

In Case You Weren’t Paying Attention: “The Dynamic Duo of Kandor” were first created by pulp author Edmond Hamilton with artists Curt Swan & George Klein for Superman #158 (January 1963, ‘Superman in Kandor!’) which saw raiders from the Kryptonian enclave attacking the Man of Steel and painting him as a traitor to his people.

The baffled Superman then infiltrated the BottleCity with Jimmy Olsen where they created Batman and Robin-inspired masked identities Nightwing and Flamebird to ferret out an answer.

Over intervening decades the roles were reprised by a number of others in Kandor and on Earth, before eventually being appropriated for Bat-characters when Dick Grayson became Nightwing and original Batgirl Bette Kane re-branded herself as Flamebird.

The latest heroes to use the names are Kryptonians masquerading as human heroes during this time of xenophobic hysteria: failed soldier and former priest Thara Ak-Var and Lor-Zod, a boy born in the Phantom Zone and briefly adopted by Lois and Clark Kent (for further details check out Superman: Nightwing and Flamebird volume 1).

With Thara captive, the former Christopher Kent has tracked down Tim Drake, whom he had previously met. They unite to rescue Flamebird, consequently uncovering an insidious, wide-ranging plan involving many members of their respective crime-busting clans as well as villains Kryptonite Man and the robotic Toyman…

With mission accomplished the heroes are replaced in #2 by ‘Guardian and Robin’ (art by Ramon F. Bachs & Rodney Ramos) as the clone of 1940s mystery man Jim Harper tries to fill the Man of Steel’s shoes in Metropolis, battling human Xerox machine Riot, only to run into the latest iteration of Robin (Damien Wayne, son of Bruce and Talia Al Ghul).

The acerbic, abrasive, assassin-trained 10-year old is tracking stolen Waynetech gear and won’t let super creeps like Mr. Freeze or the life-leeching Parasite stand in his way – even if it means having to work with sanctimonious old fogeys like the Golden Guardian. Sadly neither generation of hero is aware that Toyman will intercept their prisoners as soon as they hand them over to the cops…

In another part of Metropolis, cyber-crusader Oracle contacts the undercover Girl of Steel for a mission. The enigmatic data-wrangler has tracked Freeze and Kryptonite Man to Gotham but her usual operatives have been captured by the mystery mastermind behind the plot. Flying to the rescue, Kara Zor-El effects their rescue but chooses not to work with the morally-ambiguous Catwoman. She has no problems pairing with the junior partner, however…

‘Supergirl & Batgirl’ (illustrated by Jamal Igle, Jon Sibal & Jack Purcell) finds the Kryptonian bonding with Stephanie Brown (daughter of C-list bad-guy Cluemaster, and previously known as The Spoiler and fourth Robin) tracking the nefarious trio of nogoodniks and uncovering the truth behind the far-reaching plot.

The original aged paranoid inventor Toyman wants to remove forever the threat of the aliens above him. To that end he has constructed a monolithic Superman/Batman Robot, stuffed it with lethal Green -K ordinance (courtesy of reluctant hostage Kryptonite Man) and sent it hurtling towards New Krypton.

At least he would have if those interfering kids hadn’t become involved and set the monstrous K-droid rampaging through downtown GothamCity…

Everything pulls together for the climactic ‘Superman & Batman’ – with art from Phil Noto – as replacement Dark Knight Dick Grayson convinces the original Man of tomorrow to temporarily abandon his clandestine assignment on New Krypton to join him in stopping the rioting robot.

The new Daring Duo are as much hampered as assisted by Robin and Batgirl, and things go from bad to worse when the manic mechanoid finally launches for space with Supergirl and Batman still aboard…

Despite a lot of potentially confusing backstory to navigate, this is a tremendously engaging Fights ‘n’ Tights romp, packed with rollercoaster pace and drenched with light-hearted action: even finding room for a portentous teaser of more sinister games in play. As such it should amply reward fans of either or both franchises, but this tome also includes even more comics thrills, chills and spills.

It starts with an introduction from Sterling Gates dealing with how star scribe Geoff Johns married a myriad different and conflicting versions of one of Superman’s oldest foes into a viable and thoroughly competent revival, revealing the life-secrets and horrific motivations of ‘The Terrible Toyman’ (Action Comics #865, July 2008, illustrated by Jesus Merino) to doomed hostage Jimmy Olsen and, of course, us…

Dick Grayson also gets a another shot sharing the limelight with the Man of Steel as ‘The Deadliest Show on Earth’ (by Gerry Conway, José Luis García-López & Dick Giordano from DC Comics Presents #31, March 1981) concisely describes the odd couple’s pre-Crisis battle against a psychic vampire predating the performers at the troubled Sterling Circus…

With covers and variants by Noto, Kevin Maguire, Brad Anderson, Ross Andru & Giordano, this is a surprisingly satisfying superhero treat for all fans of Costumed Dramas and raucous rowdy adventure.
© 1981, 2008, 2009, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Treasury of Mini Comics volume 1


By many and various, edited by Michael Dowers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-657-7

The act of stringing pictures and/or words together is something almost everybody has done at some stage of their lives. It’s a key step in the cognitive path of children and, for an increasing number of us, that compulsive, absorbing euphoria never goes away. Whilst many millions acquiesce to the crushing weight of a world which stifles the liberation of creation, turning makers into consumers, a privileged, determined few carry on: drawing, exploring, and in some cases, with technology’s help, producing and sharing.

Michael Dowers loves the concept of crafting and disseminating Mini Comics and his last book Newave!- The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980’s described and reproduced hundreds of examples: spotlighting with enticing, encouraging exuberance those driven artisans who came out of the “anything goes” 1960s and 1970s Underground Commix movement still craving a vehicle of personal expression.

These creators aren’t in it for the money and, in the era before computers, they found enough time to write, draw and compile artwork (small press people are notoriously generous, contributing work at the drop of a hat) before laboriously photocopying, cutting, folding, stapling and then distributing the miniscule marvellous results.

Just by way of definition: most mini comics were home-produced pamphlets using borrowed – or when necessary paid for – print processes. The most popular format was an 8½ x 11inch sheet, folded twice, and printed at local copy-shops (or clandestinely churned out on school/work repro systems like early Xerox, Photostat, Mimeo or Spirit Banda machines) on letter – or any other sized – paper.

Because they weren’t big, they were called “mini commix”. Inspired, no?

Now this superb sequel tome – another massive brick of fun (8500 monochrome pages, 178x127mm) – offers another trip through forty years of free-thinking, self-determined free expression and technological developments. Many of the key figures in the creation and steady proliferation of this uniquely eloquent people’s medium are included here, not only through examples of their groundbreaking work, but also through statements, interviews and fond reminiscences.

Nobody who wanted to and had access to any kind of reproductive technology ever resisted making their own comics, and content comes from all over the North American continent, covering everything from superhero spoofs, monster-mashes, autobiography, recreational drug, religious, spiritual and philosophical diatribes and polemics, surreal experimental design and just plain fun stories, chatter and gags: all as sexually explicit, violent, political or personally intimate as their creators wanted them to be…

It all starts with Michael Dowers, himself the force behind not only this compilation but also Brownfieldpress and Starhead Comix, whose Introduction leads into ‘The Story of Quoz in Leonard Rifas’s Own Words’ after which the breakthrough Quoz #1 (1969) is reprinted in its quirky absurdist entirety.

Justin Green lays claim to having created the winning format of mini comics in his reprinted blog ‘Statement…’ before his groundbreaking Spare Comic? and inspirational Underground Cartooning Course (both from 1972) show us all how it should still be done…

Gary Arlington is highlighted firstly through an interview he gave to Comics Journal (#264) reporter Patrick Rosenkranz and his uplifting Awake! mini from 1972, followed by the delightfully morose adventure of Johnny Hangdog in Useless (1980) by Jim Siergey, and Larry Rippee’s comically macabre Skeletoons #18 from 1979.

Dowers’ interview of Richard Krauss (midnightfiction.com) is followed by the latter’s first self-publication Bar Fly Theater from 1979 and Bug Infested Comics: a 2008 collaboration with Bob Vojtko, after which Dickhead #1 by Clark Dissmeyer & Par Holman (1982) elaborates on the tricky life of a blue-collar talking penis…

Tales from the Inside was inmate Macedonio M. Garcia’s description of a convict’s existence, tellingly realised here in issues #1 and 3 from 1981 and 1982 (assisted by a script from inmate Melander), after which minor legend Matt Feazell of Not Available Comics describes his prolific career and re-presents The Amazing Cynicalman and Board of Superheroes #1 (1981 & 1994).

Another major player who crossed over into mainstream funnybooks was Matt Howarth whose beguiling The League of Mikes from 1983 took the lid off the collectors’ mentality and still rings true today, Steven L. Willis’ Brave New Nazis of the Inland Empire (1985) savages fascists with excoriating mirth, whilst Nukemare by Donald Russell Roach (1983) combines Cold War paranoia with glittery science fiction hope.

‘The Story of Outside In’ details an extensive collaborative effort which spanned 1983-2003 as a succession of editors and publishers shepherded an ambitious idea and made a little history.

As described in ‘Outside In Introduction‘ by Rick Bradford, Steve Willis conceived and produced issues #1-14 of a invitational mini which sought to print self-portraits by the movement’s many artisans (further described herein with a canny, funny strip of the book’s early days by Willis) before Dowers, Edd Vick & Hall Hargit and Bruce Chrislip recount their own tenures at the top.

A complete Outside In contributor list covering #1-50 follows, plus Hargitt’s primer Outside In-formation, before Brad W. Johnson’s Wurst Funnies (1986) returns us to strip sampling with a selection of sausage-inspired cartoon capers.

Dowers then interviews Tim Corrigan of C&T Graphics, after which Serious Comics #14 and 15 (1985) highlights the nigh legendary Mightyguy (a long-running minor success of the mid-1980s “Black & White Explosion”) and, from the same year, David Miller’s No More Bottled Milk! explores less commonplace comicbook themes…

Break out mini comics star Colin Upton reveals all to Dowers before his Self-Indulgent Comics #10 and 2008 Diabetes Funnies leads into Acid Man Society (1989) by Robert Pasternak, whilst Glenn & David Lee Ingersoll’s The Davey Thunder Jack Lightning Show: The Ugly Dog of Heaven is followed by Roberta Gregory’s Devolution.

A John Porcellino Interview is augmented by a selection of his short works spanning 1983-1993, comprising ‘I Wrote My Own Pink Slip!!’, ‘Smells Like Teen Bullshit’, ‘In der Nacht die welt dreht sich das Oberste zuunterst’ and ‘Night Time’, after which a heartfelt commemoration of the life, works and contribution of Dylan Williams (1970-2011) is delivered by Tom Spurgeon.

This tribute to mini comics’ “great synthesizer”, a major publishing force and founder of Puppy Toss and Sparkplug Comics, is followed by his own stunning Horse #1 and an assortment of other strips.

Eric Reynolds contributes Broken Picture Tube Theatre  (1994), featuring ‘The Brady Lush’, ‘Barry Williams is Johnny Bravo‘ and other TV-triggered spoofs, whilst the bawdy Zelda Zonk’s Hyper Revue Folies Album (1993) comes courtesy of Quimby World Head Quarters and Molly Kiely, and is followed by the shockingly sordid Asphalt Aneurism #21 by Blair Wilson from 1994.

The mammary madness of Jim Blanchard’s Teat Warp #1 from the same year is counterpoised by 1995’s Moldy Fig (and other Sufi stories) by C. Cilla, whilst Jim Woodring & David Lasky’s sublime Jesus Delivers offers some sage advice to the overly zealous spiritual seekers to end this section.

Dowers’ Marc Bell Interview is followed by the beguiling sci-fi fable Arbeitees – Einer Industrium Dokument den Marc Bell ut Rupert Bottenberg (1996) and the documentary Yeast #6 by Ronald J.M. Regé Jr., before a Leela Corman Interview segues into her mordant 1997 Valentine and Karl Wills’ paean to childhood perversity Jessica of the Schoolyard in “Jessica’s Good Deed”.

Further of the period’s exemplars include Onsmith’s The Rouge Knuckle Gang, Cowboys Getting Racked by Travis Millard, the dark yet anthropomorphically lovely Kids These Days by M. Campos, Nate Beaty’s Mixtape (2006), I’m the Devil by Peter Thompson from 2007 and Fiona Smyth’s The Wilding from 2008…

The Carrie McNinch Interview by Dowers is backed up by her graphic journal You Don’t Get There From Here (#11, spanning December 15th 2008-March 23rd 2009) after which the Funchicken.com duo Mark Todd & Esther Pearl Watson are both interviewed,  prior to his Bad Ass booklet and her Bike Repair Kit which portray the infinite variety of American person-hood. Then after fantastical Rudy, Vasilios Billy Mavreas’s Year in a Cone explores the graphic outer limits of imagination whilst No Exit by Andy Singer offers a humorous glimpse at Yankee obsessions such as sport, pets and the justice system…

#Noah van Scriver’s autobiographical Complaints (2010) descibes his own painfully restricted life and Sadist Science Teacher (Kelly Froh, 2010) continues in a similar journalistic vein, whilst the anonymous members of gimmeshelterpress reveal the build up of Bad Energy (2010), before Max Clotfelter’s Hole Show #1 and Marc Palm’s Hole Show #2 opt for a science fictional setting for their round-robin exercise in graphic collaboration to end the immense collected display of narrative virtuosity.

However this massive monochrome collection still holds a few more delights and, after the list of Artist Website Addresses, a full colour section reprints David Heatley’s Yesterday comic strip diary (from 5/11 to 6/10 2003), Night Terrors by Laura Wady, Fiona Smyth’s The Parkdale Gyre and a selection of equally enhanced full-hued covers by Krauss, Vojtko, Beaty & Rippee for Bug Infested Comics, Mixtape and Skeletoons.

The pioneering craftsmen who simultaneous started a self-printing movement and – now – tradition led inexorably to today’s thriving Alternative/Small Press publishing industry as well as the current internet comics phenomenon, and thus this book has incredible appeal on an historical basis.

However, that’s really not the point: the real draw of this compilation is that creativity is addictive, good work never pales or grows stale and the great stories and art here will make you keen to have a go too.

I’ve done it myself, for fun – even once or twice for actual profit – and it’s an incredible buzz (I should note that I am still married to a wife not only tolerant but far more skilled and speedy in the actual “photocopy, cut, fold, staple” bit of the process and willing, if not keen, to join in just so she might occasionally be with the compulsive dingbat she married…)

The sheer boundless enthusiasm and feelgood reward of making comics celebrated in this astoundingly vast, incredibly heavy and yet still pocket-sized hardback is a pure galvanic joy that will enchant and impel every fan of the art-form: as long as they’re big enough to hold a pencil, old enough to vote, and strong enough to lift this book.
Treasury of Mini Comics volume 1 © 2013 Michael Dowers and Fantagraphics Books. All contents © 2013 their respective creators or authors. All rights reserved.

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Wallace & Gromit – The Complete Newspaper Comics Strips Collection volume 1: 2010-2011


By various (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-87276-032-0

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An X-mas tradition in the making… 10/10

Hard though it is to believe, Wallace & Gromit have been delighting us for nearly 25 years and this extremely engaging compilation perfectly attests to just how much a cornerstone of British culture the potty putty pair have become.

The ingenious, quintessentially English cheese-chasing chaps were originally conceived as an ArtSchool graphic novel for the student Nick Park, before the Plasticene lure of movement and sound diverted the concept to the world of animation.

Now a multi-media success, the animator’s ingenious inventors have come full circle with this compelling compilation of the newspaper comic strip adaptation spawned by their small (and big) screen endeavours.

According to the informative Foreword by Nick Park, in his youth the affable creator was a big fan of comics, newspaper strips and those gloriously fun-filled Christmas Annuals, so this book, incorporating all three, must be a big boost to the old glee muscles…

After years of perpetually waiting for more Wallace & Gromit, the public were given a big treat after Aardman and Titan Comics put their collective creative noggins together and produced a daily, full-colour comic strip to run in Red-Top tabloid The Sun.

The series was produced by committee and actually actualised (for this edition at least) by scripters Richy Chandler, Robert Etherington, Ned Hartley, Rik Hoskin, David Leach, J.P. Rutter and Rona Simpson, with Gordon Volke, Mike Garley, & Luke Paton with art by Jimmy Hansen & Mychailo Kazybrid, Sylvia Bennion, Jay Clarke, Viv Heath & Brian Williamson, inked by Bambos Georgiou with colours by John Burns & Digikore.

The rather complex creative process is explained in the closing essay ‘Tomb of the Unknown Artist’ if you’re of an inquiring technical nature…

Despite some early controversy about the suitability of the venue, the feature launched on Monday 17th May, 2010, cleverly offering a regular weekly adventure broken down into six, complete, stand-alone gags in traditional format (three panels: Set-up, Delivery, Punchline!). What could be better?

The tone is bright and breezy, inventive family fare with all the established characters in play and the emphasis equally on weird science and appalling puns.

…And Cheese, buckets and buckets of fermented milk-curd mirth…

Dedicated to the further adventures of Northern boffin Wallace and the incomparable best-of-breed working dog Gromit, and set as ever in and around scenic 62 West Wallaby Street, Wigan, the first six-day week reveals that ‘The Tooth Hurts’ in a painful progression from agonised impacted wisdom tooth through the construction of an oddly automated – and frankly terrifying – “Cavitron” to a more traditional extraction thanks to the dog’s sensibly take-charge attitude.

This is promptly followed by similar results from the construction of washing-up robot ‘Helping Hands’, sound amplifying ‘Hear Muffs’ and the first of a dozen double-page spread photo pin-ups taken from the original animated features.

Then ever-peckish Wallace attempts to update the ancient science of apiary in ‘Knowing Bee, Knowing You’, builds his own T-Rex in ‘Jurassic Lark’, “helps” Gromit solve the mystery of missing milk with the overzealous ‘Roboplod’ and even catch a tragic dognapper in ‘Pet Detectives’…

There’s a wealth of delightful in-jokes scattered throughout the strips such as scholarly Gromit’s quirky reading habits (The Dog Delusion by Richard Pawkins, Paws by Peter Barkly, Cracking Cakes by Nigella Pawson or On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwinalot…) as well as a glorious parade of pained and hangdog expressions on the permanently perplexed pooch’s puss.

After another tasty photo-spread the lads go into ‘The Restaurant’ business with their Cheesy Way Diner, get into a bit of a kerfuffle with long-suffering Reg and Ida from ‘The House Next Door’, herald the pastapocalypse with an ultimate noodle maker that triggers ‘The Spaghetti Incident’ after which the lucky dog discovers the lost city of Wallabyzantium under the house in ‘Raiders of the Lost Bark’…

Another pin-up heralds a commission to fix the clock tower chronometer in ‘Gromit Time’ whilst ‘Life’s a Beach’ introduces rival tinkerer Otto Bahn mit his hund Wulfie at the European Inventor’s Convention, before the appallingly keen Sharp-sichord quickly graduates from honing pencils to bigger challenges in ‘Wallace’s Sharp Idea’ and football is forever changed by the old fool’s Robo-goalie in ‘A Safe Pair of Hands’.

The sport of cheese-rolling was easy meat for Wallace in ‘The Edam Busters’ after which a series of unconnected one-off strips comprising ‘Funnies #1’ is followed by the return of penguin super-thief Feathers McGraw in ‘Jolley-Goode Jewels’, the advent of ruthless twitcher Albert Ross in ‘Watch the Birdy’ and a foray into automated barber-ism in ‘A Snip Above’

Feathers made a break for it in ‘It Had to be Zoo’ whilst Wallace was beta-testing his robot-muck-spreader, and the inventor made quite a splash in his new day-job as a chauffeur ‘Driving Miss Crazy’, before Gromit registered extreme discontentment with his instant-self-assembly kennel in ‘Gone Camping’.

The lads celebrated Halloween as paranormal investigators of a haunted school in ‘Ghostblusters’, before all that cheese got to Wallace and Gromit put him on a diet in ‘A Fridge Too Far’. Then, following some more solo ‘Funnies #2’, there was monkey business aplenty when an ape went ‘Bonkers About Conkers’ before ‘A Family Affair’ unearthed a tradition for innovation in our pair’s inspirational ancestors…

The threat of Ballroom Dancing with Wendolene prompts the construction of another ill-advised training robot in ‘Strictly Wallace’, and greedy impatience the building of a ‘Cake-While-You-Wait’ oven, before the far more efficient ‘12 6 Days of Christmas’ celebrates the season with speedily surreal succinctness, after which a half-dozen ‘Breakfast Gags’ usher in a new year rife with catastrophic potential…

The restless dilettante then improves winter sports with jet-pack technology in ‘Ice to See You’, safeguarded Reg and Ida’s sowing season with the accidentally sinister ‘Scarecrowmatic’ and builds a Caddy-Matic contraption to take the dullness out of golf in ‘Hole in One (Hundred)’, going on to sculpt ice statues and an ‘Abominable Snowman’ before retiring with a ‘Perfect Cuppa’ courtesy of a jury-rigged Teasmaid-from-Hell…

Another cash shortfall leads to a dalliance with the arts in ‘Bona Lisa’ whilst an overabundance of soft fruit inspires a domestic mechanised revolution in ‘Bit of a Jam’, after which Albert Ross returns to squash Wallace’s sky-writing enterprise in ‘Love is in the Air’. Gromit then wants a bit of help protecting nest boxes from predatory moggies and Wallace’s solution is certainly ‘For the Birds’…

Disappearing dairy comestibles prove that ‘Sweet Dreams are made of Cheese’ and poor TV reception requires ‘Another Grand Day Out’ to clear space of accumulated junk – good thing they had that old rocket lying about – but autumnal clutter needs a more hands-on approach in ‘Leaf it to Wallace’, whilst the bonkers boffin’s attempts to mechanise newspaper delivery don’t work so well for Gromit the ‘Paper Hound’…

There were too many strings attached to ‘The Pup-Pet Show’ for the impecunious innovator, but a complete overhaul of Mr. Braddle’s little enterprise into ‘The Hard Work Hardware Shop’ paid big dividends, leaving time for a little fishing break in ‘Hook, Line and Stinker’ but it’s soon back to business when Feathers set his beady eye on the ‘The Faver-Heigh Egg’ belonging to a crusty colonel…

The chaps’ attempt to put up the official town bunting for the Queen’s visit lead to ‘A Right Royal Knees Up’ after which a Mayoral Fancy Dress affair offers real rewards for the brace of ‘Caped Crusaders’ and this initial barrage of batty bewilderments concludes with one more snack break as the boys adapt their removals firm to the needs of a catering crisis in ‘Movers and Shakers’…

Lovingly rendered and perfectly timed, the skilful blend of low comedy and whimsy is just as memorable in two dimensions as four, and this book will make a lot of kids – of all ages – extremely happy. Moreover, for all those parents who deliberately avoided the strip because of the paper which carried it, you no longer have that excuse and should now consider this annual collection a “must have” for your family bookshelf…
WALLACE & GROMIT, AARDMAN, the logos and all related characters and elements are © and ™ Aardman/Wallace & Gromit Ltd. 2013. All rights reserved.

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Sinemania!


By Sophie Cossette with Phil Liberbaum & Ryan Lalande (ECW Press)
ISBN: 978-1-77041-112-8

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Because you’re you… 8/10

Filmmaking was the pre-eminent art form of the 20th century, capable of marrying the aesthetic strictures of humanity’s unfailing urge to create with the common herd’s insatiable desire to be distracted with stories. Cinema always aspired to educate, elucidate and entertain, but so often merely pandered, titillated and, if moralists and cultural blamestormers are to be believed, corrupted.

It’s apparently still going strong in the post-literate, increasingly online 21st century…

Practically all people everywhere love “The Movies” and controversial Canadian adults-only cartoonist Sophie Cossette (Mendacity, scripted by Tamara Faith Berger), her husband Phil Liberbaum and their close friend Ryan Lalande are amongst the most avid and erudite of aficionados.

Being proper grown-ups, however, they can readily accept that only a certain kind of person could envision, steer, wrangle and accomplish such an immense collaborative concoction and – like most of us – revel in the rewarding, gossipy indulgence that comes from debating, deconstructing, deriding and just plain mocking such auteurs’ inescapable sexual foibles and indisputably embarrassing kinky quirks.

Thus, Sinemania! – a bawdily baroque collection of graphic skits, sketches, articles, reviews, recommendations, games, featurettes and interpretations of behaviours favoured by Tinseltown’s most infamous denizens past and present, delivered in outrageously addictive cartoon narratives very much in the iconoclastic vein of Kenneth Anger’s notorious Hollywood Babylon.

Of course, famously fair and scrupulously polite, the Canuck contingent don’t stint in turning their all-seeing eyes on the worst excesses of British, European and their own Dominion’s savants as well.

Moreover, the project – financially supported by the prestigious Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Book Fund – is adamant that “this book is a work of satire. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons – living or dead, (celebrity or extra, clothed or naked) – business establishments, events or locales is either satirical or entirely coincidental.”

So there.

Subtitled ‘A satirical exposé of the lives of the most outlandish movie directors! Welles, Hitchcock, Taratino, and more!’ the cartoon calumnies commence, after Opening Shots and Introductory Thoughts from the team, with a 2-part biography of ‘Mondo Tarantino’ before taking a few well-aimed shots at ‘Alfred Hitchcock – The Hitch Who Lusted Too Much’.

A series of comparative reviews separating each entry begins with Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street (1954) analysed by Lalande and his 1953 Noir epic The Big Heat similarly examined by Liberbaum, after which ‘William Castle – the King of Gimmicks!’ tells of B-Movie excesses in excoriating fashion.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968) undergo the Ryan & Phil treatment before Roman Polanski gets a metaphorical thrashing in ‘Polanski! In the Corner! Now!’, and judgement of Tod Browning’s The Unknown (1927, by Ryan) and Freaks (1932, Phil) segues into ‘Diary of a Surrealist Madman’ with the shocking low-down on Luis Buñuel…

R & P assess David Lynch’s Elephant Man (1980) and Blue Velvet (1986) as Sophie plays ‘Tim Burton’s Dice Game’ whilst ‘Orson Welles – It’s All True!’ examines a stellar fall in what could so easily have been his own words.

Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Baby Doll (1956) precede the imaginary testimony of ‘Otto Preminger – The Man with the Iron Fist’ after which Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) and A Clockwork Orange get a solid thumbs up from the panel.

The antics of ‘Ken Russell – The Mad Hatter of British Cinema!’ are followed by Fargo (1996) and The Big Lebowski (1998) courtesy of The Coen Brothers via Phil & Ryan, and then there’s a sense of genuine outrage in Cossette’s dissection of ‘Russ Meyer – and the Immortal Mrs. Tease!’

Brian De Palma is represented by and lauded for Carrie (1976) and Carlito’s Way (1993), after which ‘Love at First Bark’ weighs the relative demerits of two directors dominated by the women in their lives in ‘Joseph von Sternberg vs. Guy Ritchie’ before Paul Thomas Anderson answers to Ryan & Phil for Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999)…

‘Sam Peckinpah vs. Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Duel of the Hellraisers!’ is another comparison (sour) taste test, including ‘The Prolific Rainer Werner Fassbinder Kraut Paper Doll’ complete with fetish outfits for you to cut out and enjoy, followed by reviews of Robert Wise’s Born to Kill (1947) and I Want to Live! (1956) and Cossette’s astounding, mindboggling ‘Pier Paolo Pasolini – The Jeremiad of a Modern Martyr’ totally steals the show in a blistering graphic panorama.

Phil & Ryan then dissect Federico Fellini’s The White Sheik (1952) and La Strada (1954) before a glimpse at a scrapbook divulges ‘Fritz Lang: The Secret Behind the Door’ and Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy (1950) and The Big Combo (1955) lead to stylishly open warfare in ‘Woody Allen and Spike Lee – Woody Spikes Things Up at Cannes!’

The magnificent Billy Wilder fares well under Ryan & Phil’s scrutiny of Sunset Blvd. (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951) whereas the reputation of Erich von Stroheim takes a bit of a bashing in Sophie’s ‘La Grande Delusion of Count von Stroheim’ and ‘Kenneth Anger’s Snakes and Ladders Game’ reveals even more of Hollywood’s seamier side.

The debased behaviour of Werner Herzog in ‘The Wild, Wild Adventures of a Shoe Eater!’ is balanced by reviews of Paul Verhoeven’s Turkish Delight (1973) and Showgirls (1995) before the industry somewhat eats itself in ‘Timothy Carey – And the Razzie Goes To…’

After Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker (1964) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975), the unflinching artist takes a glimpse closer to home through the works of Bruce McDonald and others in ‘Blame Canada!’

No cinematic catalogue of shame could be complete without ‘Dennis Hopper: A Man Under the Influence’ and his impossible life and dreams wrap up the main feature here after one last Ryan & Phil fest, examining Lindsay Anderson’s unique contributions in This Sporting Life (1963) and If…(1968), but please wait: there’s more…

This grotesquely compelling trawl through tacky times and turgidly lowered tone still holds a few Short Stories to titillate and thrill, beginning with witty eulogies to John Waters and Buster Keaton in ‘Tacky Trashy’ and ‘Shattered Silent Dreams’ before offering up a ‘Requiem for a Real Femme Fatale’ in the form of troubled, doomed-from-the-get-go Barbara Payton.

A trenchant comparison of ‘Slashers vs. Blockbusters’ segues neatly into a nightmare trip with Paul Schrader in ‘Confessions of a Taxi Driver’ and the curtain finally falls with an examination of Donald Cammell’s infamous psycho-sexual “Swinging Sixties” drama in ‘The Performance that Achieved Madness!’

Savage satire, scandalous extrapolation and scurrilous cartoon reportage from people who certainly love their movies – if not the shallow, flawed, nasty and just barmy army of self-appointed geniuses who shot them – make this a book not everyone can enjoy, but for those adults who are sincerely seduced by Silver Screen gems and love their comics, this might well be the most enjoyable book of the year.

© 2013 Sophie Cossette. All rights reserved.
For further movie madness and even more sordid pictorial portraits check out http://sophiecossette.blogspot.ca/

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Ray & Joe: the Story of a Man and his Dead Friend and Other Classic Comics


By Charles Rodrigues, Bob Fingerman & Gary Groth (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-668-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Sick, sick, sick – the perfect antidote to seasonal cheer overload… 9/10

Although largely unremarked and unremembered these days, Charles Rodrigues (1926-2004) is probably one of the most influential – and certainly most darkly hilarious – American cartoonists of the last century.

His surreal, absurd, insane, anarchic, socially disruptive and astoundingly memorable bad-taste gags and strips were delivered with electric vitality and galvanising energetic ferocity in a number of magazines. This was most effective in Playboy, The National Lampoon (from the debut issue) and Stereo Review – and the pinnacle of a career which began after WWII and spanned nearly the entire last half of the 20th century.

After leaving the Navy and relinquishing the idea of writing for a living, Rodrigues used his slice of the G.I. Bill provision to attend New York’s Cartoonists and Illustrator’s School (now the School of Visual Arts) and in 1950 began schlepping gags around the low-rent but healthily ubiquitous “Men’s Magazine” circuit.

He gradually graduated from girly-mags to more salubrious publications and in 1954 began a lengthy association with Hugh Hefner in his revolutionary new venture. He still contributed to what seemed like every publication in the nation using panel gags: from Esquire to TV Guide, Genesis to The Critic.

He even found time to create three strips for the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate – Eggs Benedict, Casey the Cop and Charlie.

Undoubtedly, though, the quiet, genteel devout Catholic’s lasting monument is the wealth of truly appalling sick, subversive, offensive and mordantly, trenchantly wonderful strip-series he crafted for The National Lampoon, whose editor Henry Beard sought him out in the earliest pre-launch days of 1969, and offered Rodrigues carte blanche, complete creative freedom and a regular full-page spot.

He stayed aboard from the 1970 debut until 1993, a mainstay of the legendary comics section…

Bracketed by informative text pieces ‘Introduction: An Appreciation of a Goddamn Great Cartoonist’ and ‘Biography: Charles Rodrigues’ by passionate devotee Bob Fingerman, the parade of diabolical disgust and fetid fun begins with the eponymous ‘Ray and Joe – the Story of a Man and his Dead Friend’ which follows the frankly disturbing buddy-movie path of Joe – whose death doesn’t upset his wife as much as you’d expect.

In fact when the cadaver’s former pal meekly inquires, she’s more than happy to let Ray keep the body. After all, it’s cheaper than a funeral…

There’s no agenda here: Ray just wants to keep his friend around, even going so far as to have him embalmed and put on roller skates. Of course most people simply don’t understand…

Rodrigues broke all the rules in these strips: taste, decency, even the contract between reader and creator. Often he would drop a storyline and return to his notional continuities at a later date. Sometimes he would even stop mid-episode and insert a new strip or gag if it offered bigger chortles or shocks…

Next up is ‘Deirdre Callahan – a biography’, the gut-wrenching travails of a little girl so ugly she could cause people’s eyeballs to explode and make almost everyone she met kill themselves in disgust.

Of course such a pitiful case – the little lass with a face “too hideous for publication” – did elicit the concern of many upstanding citizens: ambitious plastic surgeons, shyster lawyers, radical terrorists, enemy agents, bored, sadistic billionaires in need of a good laugh, the mother who threw her in a garbage can before fully examining the merchandising opportunities…

The artist’s most long-lived and inspired creation was ‘The Aesop Brothers – Siamese Twins’ which ran intermittently from the early 1970s to 1986 in an unceasing parade of grotesque situations where conjoined George and Alex endured the vicissitudes of a life forever together: the perennial problems of bathroom breaks, getting laid, enjoying a little “me time”…

In the course of their cartoon careers the boys ran away to the circus to be with a set of hot conjoined sisters, but that quickly went bits-up, after which the sinister carnival owner Captain Menshevik had them exhibited as a brother/sister act with poor Alex kitted out in drag.

There’s a frantic escapade with a nymphomaniac octogenarian movie goddess, assorted asshole doctors, Howard Hughes’ darkest secret, a publicity-shy rogue cop, marriage (but only for one of them), their appalling early lives uncovered, the allure of communism, multiple choice strips, experimental, existential and faux-foreign episodes, and even their outrageous times as Edwardian consulting detectives.

This is not your regular comedy fare and there’s certainly something here to make you blanch, no matter how jaded, strong-stomached or dissolute you think you are…

As always with Rodrigues, even though the world at large hilariously exploits and punishes his protagonists, it’s not all one-sided. Said stars are usually dim and venal and their own worst enemies too…

Hard on their four heels comes the saga of ‘Sam DeGroot – the Free World’s Only Private Detective in an Iron Lung Machine’ an plucky unfortunate determined to make a contribution, hampered more by society’s prejudices than his own condition and ineptitude.

After brushes with the mob and conniving billionaires’ wives, no wonder he took to demon drink. Happily he was saved by kindly Good Samaritan Everett, but the gentle giant then force fed him custard and other treats because he was a patient urban cannibal. Thankfully that’s when Jesus entered the picture…

During the course of these instalments the strip was frequently usurped by short guerrilla gag feature ‘True Tales of the Urinary Tract’ and only reached its noxious peak after Sam fell into a coma…

The artist was blessed or cursed with a perpetually percolating imagination and also crafted scandalously inaccurate Biographies.

Included here are choice and outrageous insights into ‘Marilyn Monroe’, ‘Abbie Hoffman’, ‘Chester Bouvier’, ‘Eugene O’Neill’ and ‘Jerry Brown’ as well as ‘An American Story – a Saga of Ordinary People Just Like You’, ‘The Man Without a County’ and ‘Joe Marshall Recalls his Past’…

The horrific and hilarious assault on common decency concludes with a selection of shorter series collected as The Son of a Bitch et al, beginning with the exposé of that self-same American institution.

‘The Son of a Bitch‘ leads into the incontinent lives of those winos outside ’22 Houston Street’, the ongoing calamity of ‘Doctor Colon’s Monster’, the domestic trauma of ‘Mama’s Boy’ and the sad fate of ‘The “Cuckold”’…

‘The Adventures of the United States Weather Bureau starring Walter T. Eccleston’ is superseded by ‘Mafia Tales’ and ‘VD Clinic Vignettes’ after which ‘A Glass of Beer with Stanley Cyganiewicz of Scranton, PA’ goes down smoothly, thanks to the then-contentious Gay question addressed in ‘Lillehammer Follies’, after which everything settles down after the recipe for ‘Everett’s Custard’…

Fantagraphics Books have again struck gold by reviving and celebrating a lost hero of graphic narrative arts in this superb commemoration of a mighty talent. This is an astoundingly funny collection, brilliantly rendered by a master craftsman and one no connoisseur of black comedy can afford to miss.
All strips and comics by Rodrigues © Lorraine Rodrigues. Introduction & Biography © Bob Fingerman. All rights reserved. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books.

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Egmont Classic Comics Postcard Sets


Battle 100 Postcards, 70’s Girl Comics 100 Postcards, Thunderbirds 100 F.A.B. Postcards
By various (Egmont)

ISBNs: 978-1-4052-6837-0, 978-1-4052-6838-7 & 978-1-4052-6893-6

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Fun and useful – a gift that keeps on giving… 10/10

I like to fool myself that I have a pretty good idea of what the Now Read This! regulars are like – (love art, adore stories, cherish childhood, never get enough exercise, never grew up…).

If that’s you, I think I’ve solved all your Christmas present quandaries.

Well, not me exactly, but hundreds of talented artists, years of accumulated nostalgia and those devilishly clever people at Egmont publishing…

Egmont UK’s Classic Comics library offers a huge variety of unforgettable British strips such as the iconic Roy of the Rovers, combat chronicles Charley’s War, Johnny Red and Major Eazy from legendary war comic Battle, spooky sagas from girls comic Misty and The Thirteenth Floor from kids’ horror anthology Scream – but only be accessed digitally via the iTunes store….

Now however the company has produced a trio of superb full-colour postcard sets: each providing 100 stunning recreations from the memory-mired vaults and all beautifully packaged in stylish commemorative caskets.

Seminal girl’s weekly Misty ran from February 1978 until 1980 when it merged with Tammy. The amalgam carried on until 1984 when it was subsumed into Princess.

In many ways Misty presaged today’s obsession with supernatural, doomed love: blending eerie chills with relationship dramas in such memorable serials as The Cult of the Cat, Moonchild, The Black Widow,  Hush, Hush, Sweet Rachel, The Sentinels, Mr. Walenski’s Secret and Sticks and Stones as well the comedy witch Miss T.

Even with scripts from Pat Mills, Malcolm Shaw and Barry Clements, the big draw was always the stellar art from international artists including John Armstrong, Joe Collins, Brian Delaney, John Richardson, Ken Houghton, Peter Wilkes, Eduardo Feito, Bob Harvey, Honiera Romeu, Badia, Barrera Gesali, Mario Capaldi & Jesus Redondo.

Misty is the most revered these days – hence the preponderance of pictures included here – but AP/Fleetway/IPC ran for decades and even if material from Princess, Girl, Pink, June and Sandie might have passed some sort of sell-by date, the assorted accompanying images and illustrations culled from Tammy, Penny, Jinty and Sally stuffed into this darkly delightful hope chest are truly timeless.

The cards here include many covers but there’s also a selection of beguiling single-page strips (such as the dubiously un-PC Bessie Bunter), Horoscopes, stunning single panels and posters, title pages like Guitar Girl and so very much more…

 

The aforementioned Battle is synonymous with British comics, which have always had a solid tradition for top-notch strips about the World Wars. However the material produced by this radically subversive and decidedly different publication in the 1970s and1980s surpassed all previous efforts and has been acknowledged as having transformed the entire art form.

Battle was one of the last great British weekly anthologies (the other of course being 2000AD). The all-combat comic began as Battle Picture Weekly on 8th March 1975 and through absorption, merger and re-branding survived becoming Battle Picture Weekly & Valiant, Battle Action, Battle, Battle Action Force and finally Battle Storm Force before itself being combined with the too-prestigious-to-cancel Eagle on January 23rd 1988.

Over 673 gore-soaked, epithet-stuffed, adrenaline drenched issues, it gouged its way into the bloodthirsty hearts of a generation, consequently producing some of most memorable and influential war strips ever conceived, including Major Eazy, D-Day Dawson, The Bootneck Boy, Johnny Red, HMS Nightshade, Rat Pack, Fighter from the Sky, Hold Hill 109, Fighting Mann, Death Squad!, Panzer G-Man, El Mestizo, Joe Two Beans, The Sarge, Hellman of Hammer Force and the stunning, landmark Charley’s War among so many others.

The list of talented contributors is equally impressive: writers Pat Mills, John Wagner, Steve McManus, Mark Andrew, Gerry Finley-Day, Tom Tully, Eric & Alan Hebden, collaborated with artists such as Eric Bradbury, Colin Page, Pat Wright, Giralt, Carlos Ezquerra, Geoff Campion, Jim Watson, Ian Kennedy, Mike Western, Joe Colquhoun, Carlos Pino, John Cooper, Mike Dorey, Cam Kennedy and many more too numerous – or uncredited – to mention.

The battered war-chest for this pack houses hordes of reproduction covers, electrifying series ads, cutaway-drawings featuring Master Plan, quizzes, single page strips such as This Amazing War, some stunning single panels and title pages and much, much more.

 

The last box is slightly different, featuring a century of scintillating photos and stills from Gerry Anderson’s astounding Thunderbirds TV series, and whereas I’d have liked to see captures from the superb comics associated with the show, these classic images are immensely evocative too – and there’s always room for a second set, right?

Contained herein are snaps from the unforgettable title sequence, portraits of the Tracy clan and their extended network of allies and companions, the malign, sinister Hood, and of course all those astounding, breathtaking wonder machines employed by the  International Rescue outfit to make the future a kinder, safer place.

 

At least one of these smart, sharp, impossibly satisfying packs are a perfect present for anybody in “our” set and you could even use them to send good old-fashioned thank you notes for your other presents…

But I’ll bet you won’t be able to…

70’s Girl Comics Collection © 2013 and published by Egmont UK Ltd. All rights reserved.

Battle Collection © 2013 and published by Egmont UK Ltd. All rights reserved.

Thunderbirds ™ and © ITC Entertainment Group Limited 1964, 1999, 2013. Licensed by ITV Ventures Limited. All rights reserved. Published by Egmont UK Limited.

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A1: The World’s Greatest Comics


By various (Atomeka/Titan Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-78276-016-0

A1 began in 1988 as an anthology showcase for comics creativity, free from the usual strictures of mainstream publishers, consequently attracting many of the world’s top writers and artists to produce work at once personal and experimental, comfortingly familiar and, on occasion, deucedly odd.

Editors Garry Leach and Dave Elliott have periodically returned to their baby and this year the title was resurrected under the aegis of Titan Comics to provide more of the same.

Always as much committed to past excellence as future glories (you should see the two page dedication list here) and following the grandest tradition of British comics, the new title already has a great big hardback annual and it offers the same eclectic mix of material old and new…

After that aforementioned thank you to everyone from Frank Bellamy to Faceache in ‘The Dream Day’s are Back: The One’s Especially For You…’ the cartoon carnival commences with a truly “Golden Oldie” as Joe Simon & Jack Kirby (inked by Al Williamson) provide the science fiction classic ‘Island in the Sky’ – which first surfaced in Harvey Comic’s Race for the Moon #2 September, 1958 – wherein an expired astronaut returns from death thanks to something he picked up on Jupiter…

Each tale here is accompanied by fulsome creator biographies and linked by factual snippets about most artists’ drug of choice.

These photographic examples of coffee barista self-expression (with all ‘Latte Art’ throughout courtesy of Coffee Labs Roasters) are followed by illustrator Alex Sheikman & scripter Norman Felchle’s invitation to the baroque, terpsichorean delights of the ‘Odd Ball’.

The fantastic gothic revisionism resumes after another coffee-break as the sublime Sandy Plunkett details in captivating monochrome the picaresque perils of life in a sprawling urban underworld with his ‘Tales of Old Fennario’

‘Odyssey: A Question of Priorities’ by Elliot, Toby Cypress & Sakti Yuwono is a thoroughly up-to-date interpretation of pastiche patriotic avenger Old Glory, who now prowls modern values-challenged America, regretting the choices he’s made and the timbre of his current superhero comrades…

‘Image Duplicator’ by Rian Hughes & Dave Gibbons is, for me, the most fascinating feature included here, detailing and displaying comics creator’s admirable responses to the appropriation and rapine of comic book images by “Pop” artist Roy Lichtenstein.

In a move to belatedly honour the honest jobbing creators simultaneously ripped off and denigrated by the “recontextualisation” and transformation to High Art, Hughes and Gibbons approached a number of professionals from all sectors of the commercial arts and asked them to re-appropriate Lichtenstein’s efforts.

The results were displayed in the exhibition Image Duplicator and all subsequent proceeds donated to the charity Hero Initiative which benefits comic creators who have fallen on hard times.

In this feature you can see some of the results of the comicbook fightback with contributions from Hughes, Gibbons, FuFu Frauenwahl, Carl Flint, Howard Chaykin, Salgood Sam, Mark Blamire, Steve Cook, Garry Leach, Dean Motter, Jason Atomic, David Leach, Shaky Kane, Mark Stafford, Graeme Ross, Kate Willaert & Mitch O’Connell.

Master of all funnybook trades Bambos Georgiou then offers his 2011 tribute to DC’s splendidly silly Silver Age in the Curt Swan inspired ‘Weird’s Finest – Zuberman & Batguy in One Adventure Together!’ and Dominic Regan crafts a stunning Technicolor tornado of intriguing illumination as Doctor Arachnid has to deal with cyber Psychedelia and a divinely outraged ‘Little Star’…

‘Emily Almost’ by Bill Sienkiewicz first appeared in the original A1 #4, a bleak paean to rejection seen here in muted moody colour, after which Scott Hampton revisits the biblical tale of ‘Daniel’ and Jim Steranko re-presents his groundbreaking, experimental multi-approach silent story ‘Frogs!’ and follows up with ‘Steranko: Frogs!’  – his own treatise on the history and intent behind creating the piece thirty years ago…

‘Boston Metaphysical Society’ is a prose vignette of mystic Steampunk Victoriana written by Madeleine Holly-Rosing from her ongoing webcomic, ably illustrated by Emily Hu, whilst ‘Mr. Monster’ by Alan Moore & Michael T. Gilbert (with inks from Bill Messner-Loebs) is a reprint of ‘The Riddle of the Recalcitrant Refuse!’

First found in #3 (1985) of the horror hunter’s own series, it recounts how a dead bag-lady turns the city upside out when her mania for sorting junk transcends both death and the hero’s best efforts…

‘The Weirding Willows: Origins of Evil’ by Elliot, Barnaby Bagenda & Jessica Kholinne is one of the fantasy features from the new A1 – a dark reinterpretation of beloved childhood characters such as Alice, Ratty, Toad and Mole, which fans of Bill Willingham’s Fables should certainly take notice of…

‘Devil’s Whisper’ by James Robinson & D’Israeli also comes from A1 #4, and features Matt Wagner’s signature creation Grendel – or does it?

Stechgnotic then waxes lyrical about Barista art in ‘The Artful Latte’ after which ‘Melting Pot – In the Beginning’ by Kevin Eastman, Eric Talbot & Simon Bisley ends the affair by revisiting the ghastly hellworld where the gods spawned an ultimate survivor through the judicious and repeated application of outrageous bloody violence.

Of course it’s a trifle arrogant and rather daft to claim any collection as “The World’s Greatest Comics” and – to be honest – these aren’t. There’s no such thing and never can be…

However this absorbing, inspiring oversized collection does contain a lot of extremely good and wonderfully entertaining material by some of the best and most individualistic creators to have graced our art form.

What more can you possibly need?

A1 Annual © 2013 Atomeka Press, all contents copyright their respective creators. ATOMEKA © 2013 Dave Elliott & Garry Leach.

Anyone wishing to learn more or donate to Hero Initiative can find them at www.heroinitiative.org

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Thunderbirds – the Comic Collection


By Alan Fennell, Scott Goodall, Frank Bellamy, John Cooper, Eric Eden, Graham Bleathman & various (Egmont)
ISBN: 978-1-4052-6836-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: 10/10 because it just is.

Stand By For Frothing!
Growing up in 1960’s England was the best of all possible worlds for a comic lover. As well as US imports you were treated to some frankly incredible weekly publications, and market bookstalls sold second-hand comics for at least a third of their cover price. We also had some of the greatest artists in the world working on some of the best licensed properties around. A perfect example is the TV – primarily Gerry Anderson – anthology comic TV Century 21.

For British kids of a certain vintage – it varies from eighty to four and three quarters – the Anderson experience is a large and critical component of the DNA of childhood. The TV episodes, toys, bubblegum cards, movies and especially the comic strips all irresistibly evoke and re-manifest the thrill and fevered anticipation of juvenile ecstasy in the millions of kids who enjoyed the weekly rush of mind-boggling, mouth-watering adventure – even decades after the initial hit.

Thus this latest glossy compilation, collecting some of the greatest strips in comics history is probably going to leave a lot of people gurgling in delight as they revisit or – if they’re incredibly lucky – see for the first time a spectacular panorama of futuristic fantasy thrills, spills and chills.

TV Century 21 (the unwieldy “Century” was eventually dropped) was patterned after a newspaper – albeit from 100 years into the future – and this shared conceit carried avid readers into a multimedia wonderland as television and comics fed off each other.

The incredible illustrated adventures were often supplemented with colour stills taken from the shows and photos also graced all text features and fillers which added to the unity of one of the industry’s first “Shared Universe” products. Even the BBC’s TV “tomorrows” were represented in a full-colour strip starring The Daleks.

The first issue launched on January 23rd 1965, instantly capturing the hearts and minds of millions of children and further proving to British comics editors the unfailingly profitable relationship between TV shows and healthy sales.

Filled with high quality art and features, printed in gleaming photogravure, TV21 featured such strips as Fireball XL5, Supercar and Stingray as well as a strange series about a posh future lady spy and her burglar chauffeur.

In an attempt to be topical, the allegorically Soviet and terribly totalitarian state of Bereznik was used in many strips, acting as an overarching, continuity-providing bad guy. Behind numerous plots and outrages, the TomorrowTerrorState constantly schemed against the World Government (for which read “The West”) in an eerily advanced Cold War espionage scenario which augmented the aliens, aquatic civilizations, common crooks and cataclysmic disasters that threatened the general well-being of the populace.

Although Thunderbirds did not premiere on TV until September of that year (with Frank Bellamy’s incredible strip joining the comic’s line-up in January 1966 with #52) Lady Penelope and Parker (subtitled as and promising “Elegance, Charm and Deadly Danger”) had been running since issue #1.

The aristocratic super-spy was promoted to her own spin-off, top-class photogravure publication in January 1966 – just as Anderson’s newest creations launched into super-marionated life: their comics exploits becoming the big draw in the already unmissable TV21.

All that is further explained in an expansive ‘Introduction’ before the procession of weekly wonderment – two staggeringly intoxicating pages every seven days! – begins in this massive (290 pages, 297x222mm) full-colour luxury hardback.

It all begins with the thirteenth adventure, which ran from #141-146 (30th September to November 4th 1967, scripted by Scott Goodall and illustrated by Frank Bellamy) and details how an avaricious madman intends splitting Persia in two with ‘The Earthquake Maker’.

The unforgettable alien invader story ‘Visitor from Space’ (#147-154) follows, with one of the most memorable monsters in comics history stealing the show on every page, after which ‘The Antarctic Menace’ (6th January-17th February 1968, #155 to 161) begins a brand new year with the same tried and true thrills as the Tracy boys are called in to save the day after the Australia-Antarctica highway is sabotaged!

‘Brains is Dead’ (#162-169, running until 13th April) features the skulduggery of the sinister Hood in a deadly game of industrial espionage, after which artist Graham Bleathman provides a captivating glimpse at those longed-for technical details with double-page cutaway spreads and single page strip sequences ‘Thunderbird 1 Technical Data’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 1’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 2’ and ‘Thunderbird 2 Technical Data’.

The suspenseful strip stories resume with ‘The Space Cannon’ (Goodall & Bellamy, from TV21 #170-172 April 20th to May 4th 1968) as the team have to stop a continually firing neutron cannon that’s crashed into the Thames, whilst follow-up yarn ‘The Olympic Plot’ by Howard Elson & Bellamy (#173-178) finds the great games – held in the crater of Vesuvius – disrupted not only by a lake of fire but also a madman digging up a pirate treasure hidden since the 17th century…

TV21 #184-187 (27th July-17th August 1968) offered ‘Devil’s Crag’ (Goodall & Bellamy) and saw International Rescue save a lost schoolboy; a spectacular visual extravaganza that belies its deceptively simple plot, after which ‘The Eiffel Tower Demolition’ (#188-191) goes dreadfully wrong and Scott and Virgil find themselves endangered by thieves and saboteurs…

Bleathman returns with more pictorial top secrets in ‘Specifications of Thunderbird 3’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 3’, ‘Launch Sequence: Thunderbird 4’ and ‘Specifications of Thunderbird 4’ after which Goodall & Bellamy expose ‘The Nuclear Threat’ (TV21 #192-196, 21st September-19th October 1968) of an out-of-control drone ferrying atomic weapons to their intended deep sea dumping ground, whilst the ‘Hawaiian Lobster Menace’ (#197-202) outrageously reveals a plot to turn tasty crustacean treats into explosive anti-personnel weapons…

‘The Time Machine’ (December 7th 1968 to January 11th 1969) used by Jeff and Scott Tracy malfunctioned in a most unfortunate manner, whilst from #209-217 a more domestic disaster saw ‘The Zoo Ship’ which foundered off Tracy Island lead to crewmen trapped aboard ship and savage beasts loose on shore with our harried heroes trying to save lives whilst keeping their secrets safe from the ever insidious Hood…

Bleathman has more artistic innovations to display in ‘Specifications of Thunderbird 5’, ‘The Construction of Thunderbird 5′, ‘This is Tracy Island’ and ‘Tracy Island’ giving us all the detail and data we desire before ‘City of Doom’ (Goodall as “Spencer Howard” & Bellamy from #218-226, 22nd March to May 17th) finds a top secret, ultra-futuristic Andean science metropolis endangered by a wild nuclear reaction…

Scripted by Goodall or (perhaps John W. Jennison?), ‘Chain Reaction’ ran in TV21 and TV Tornado #227-234, May 24th-12th July 2069) wherein the Tracy team had to stop an out of control 50,000-ton space freighter from impacting in the middle of San Francisco – and that’s just the start of an epic calamity which threatened to destroy the entire Pacific Rim…

There’s a big jump here to October 1968 for ‘The Big Bang’ by Geoff Cowan & John Cooper, possibly explained by the fact that once Bellamy left the strip, his cruelly underrated replacement rendered the strip in black and white. When Fleetway revived the Anderson franchise in the early 1990s the comics featured artwork from TV21 supplemented with new original material from another generation of fans and creators, but as Thunderbirds was far and away the biggest hit, some of Cooper’s strips were reprinted with the artist at last getting the chance to colour his efforts.

Thus this, his second original yarn from TV21 & Joe 90 #5-8 (25th October-15th November 1969), involving smuggled diamonds and a boy trapped on a building both sinking and about to explode…

The endeavours of the Tracy clan then conclude with ‘The Mini Moon’ (Richard O’Neill & Cooper (TV21 & Joe 90 #22-28, 21st February to April 4th 1970) as a roving planetoid menaces Earth and Brains, Alan and Gordon have to blow it up while it’s still far enough away to pose no extinction-level threat…

Happily there’s still plenty for fans to enjoy as, after Bleathman’s revelatory ‘The Secrets of FAB 1’ and Creighton-Ward Stately Home’, the adventures of Lady Penelope and her invaluable manservant Parker begin with ‘Mr. Steelman’ by Alan Fennell & Eric Eden. Originally seen in TV Century 21 #1-11, January 23rd to April 3rd 1965, this is a complex thriller involving espionage and a deadly robot, after which Bellamy handles ‘The Isle of Arran Riddle’ (#35-43, September 18th to November 13th 1965) wherein the Honourable Lady Creighton-Ward attempts to solve an ancient puzzle and inherit a fabulous ruby.

Eden returned for ‘The Vanishing Ray’ (#44-51) as the stately spy was mysteriously sent a torch that turned objects transparent, unaware that the wicked Hood was hot on its trail.

The deadly games end with ‘The Enemy Spy’, illustrated by the legendary Frank Hampson from the July 1965 Lady Penelope Summer Extra, wherein an idle glance at the TV news sets Her Ladyship on the trail of Bereznik’s top assassin…

But of course the real treasure is the phenomenal and unparalleled work of Frank Bellamy, whose fantastic design, drawing and painted colour (which holds up rather well here, despite the limitations of modern print technology to accommodate the subtleties of the photogravure process) steals the show – and usually one’s breath away!

The work of Bellamy and his successors are a cherished highpoint of British comic-making. Crisp, imaginative writing, great characters and some of the very best science-fiction art of all time make this a must-have book for just about anybody with a sense of adventure and love of comics. It doesn’t get better than this.
Thunderbirds ™ and © ITC Entertainment Group Limited 1964, 1999, 2013. Licensed by ITV Ventures Limited. All rights reserved.

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The Best of Archie Comics Book 3


By Bob Montana and many & various (Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-936975-61-7

For most of us, comicbooks mean buff men and women in capes and tights hitting each other, lobbing trees and cars about, or stark, nihilistic genre thrillers aimed at an extremely mature and sophisticated readership of confirmed fans – and indeed that has been the prolific norm for nearly twenty years.

However, over the decades since the medium was created in 1933, other forms of sequential illustrated fiction genres have held their own. One that has maintained a unique position over the years – although almost now completely transferred to television – is the teen-comedy genre begun by and synonymous with a carrot topped, homely (at first just plain ugly) kid named Archie Andrews.

MLJ were a small publisher who jumped wholeheartedly onto the superhero bandwagon following the debut of Superman. In November 1939 they launched Blue Ribbon Comics, promptly following with Top-Notch and Pep Comics. The content was the accepted blend of costumed heroes, two-fisted adventure strips and one-off gags. Pep made history with its lead feature The Shield – the industry’s first super-hero to be clad in the flag – but generally MLJ were followers not innovators

That all changed at the end of 1941. Even while profiting from the Fights ‘N’ Tights phalanx, Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater (hence MLJ) spotted a gap in their blossoming market and in December of that year the action strips were joined by a wholesome, ordinary hero; an “average teen” who had human-scaled adventures like the readers, but with the laughs, good times, romance and slapstick heavily emphasised.

Pep Comics #22 introduced a gap-toothed, freckle-faced, red-headed goof showing off to the pretty blonde next door. Taking his lead from the popular Andy Hardy movies starring Mickey Rooney, Goldwater developed the concept of a wholesome youthful everyman lad, tasking writer Vic Bloom and artist Bob Montana with the job of making it work.

It all started with an innocuous 6-page tale entitled ‘Archie’ which introduced Archie Andrews and pretty girl-next-door Betty Cooper. Archie’s unconventional best friend and confidante Forsythe P. “Jughead” Jones also debuted in that first story as did the small-town utopia of Riverdale.

It was an instant hit and by the winter of 1942 the feature graduated to its own title. Archie Comics #1 was the company’s first non-anthology magazine and began an inexorable transformation of the entire company. With the introduction of rich, raven-haired Veronica Lodge, all the pieces were in play for the industry’s second Phenomenon (Superman being the first).

By May 1946 the kids had taken over and, retiring its heroic characters years before the end of the Golden Age, the company renamed itself Archie Comics, becoming to all intents and purposes a publisher of family comedies.

Its success, like the Man of Tomorrow’s, forced a change in the content of every other publisher’s titles and led to a multi-media industry including TV, movies, pop-songs and even a chain of restaurants.

Over the decades those costumed cut-ups have returned on occasion but Archie Comics now seem content to specialise in what they do uniquely best.

The eponymous Archie is a good-hearted lad lacking common sense and Betty – the pretty, sensible, devoted girl next door, with all that entails – loves the ridiculous redhead. Veronica is spoiled, exotic and glamorous and only settles for our boy if there’s nobody better around. She might actually love him too, though. Archie, of course, can’t decide who or what he wants…

This never sordid eternal triangle has been the basis of seventy years of charmingly raucous, gently preposterous, frenetic, chiding and even heart-rending comedy encompassing everything from surreal wit to frantic slapstick, as the kids and an increasing cast of friends grew into an American institution.

Adapting seamlessly to every trend and fad of the growing youth culture, the host of writers and artists who’ve crafted the stories over the decades have made the “everyteen” characters of utopian Riverdale a benchmark for youth and a visual barometer of growing up American.

Archie’s unconventional best friend Jughead is Mercutio to Archie’s Romeo, providing rationality and a reader’s voice, as well as being a powerful catalyst of events in his own right. There’s even a scurrilous Tybalt figure in the Machiavellian shape of Reggie Mantle who first popped up to cause mischief in Jackpot comics #5 (Spring 1942).

This beguiling triangle (and annexe) has been the rock-solid foundation for decades of comics magic. Moreover the concept is eternally self-renewing…

Archie has thrived by constantly reinventing its core characters, seamlessly adapting to the changing world outside the bright, flimsy pages, shamelessly co-opting youth, pop culture and fashion trends into its infallible mix of slapstick and young romance.

Each and every social revolution has been painlessly assimilated into the mix with the editors tastefully confronting a number of social issues affecting the young in a manner both even-handed and tasteful over the years.

The cast is always growing and the constant addition of new characters such as African-American Chuck – who wants to be a cartoonist – his girlfriend Nancy, fashion-diva Ginger, Hispanic couple Frankie and Maria and a host of like spoiled home-wrecker-in-waiting Cheryl Blossom all contribute to a wide and refreshingly broad-minded scenario. In 2010 Archie jumped the final hurdle with Kevin Keller, an openly gay young man and clear-headed advocate capably tackling and dismantling the last major taboo in mainstream comics.

Of course such a wealth of material has provided for a splendid library of trade paperbacks and collected editions since the dawn of the Graphic Novel market at the beginning of the 1980s. In recent years the company has found many clever ways to repackage their irresistible product such as a series of reprint volumes examining the progress decade-by-decade.

This particular iteration of The Best of Archie Comics tweaks that idea by providing a sampling from each era in one big book, with the further fillip of the tales being favourites personally selected by editorial staff like Editor in Chief Victor Gorelick and Ellen Leonforte, creators – vintage and current – like J. Torres, Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz or avowed celebrity fans such as Kyle Gass (Tenacious D), Joel Hodgson (Science Mystery Theater 3000), Tom Root (Robot Chicken) and Stan Lee.

Archie in ‘The 1940s’ is superbly represented by a wealth of wry and riotous slapstick shenanigans beginning with ‘The 3-11 Club’ (by Bob Montana from Pep #36, 1943) which finds the young sap drawn into a duel with a Prep School cadet after taking haughty, fickle Veronica to a swanky night spot.

Co-creator Montana supplied most of these early episodes, such as the medieval fantasy-fest ‘Sir Archibald of the Round Table’ (Archie #2 1943) and the delightfully heart-warming tale of a boy and his dog – and the ten puppies which resulted when everybody misapprehended the gender of ‘Oscar’ (Pep #37 1943)…

Ed Goggin, Harry Sahle – and his favourite inker “Ginger” – captured the contentious boisterousness of ‘Spring Fever’ (Archie #2 1943), after which the red menace got another irksome pet in ‘Monkey Shines’ (by Montana from Archie #6, 1945), before a broken School clock made ‘Time for Trouble’ (Sahle & Ginger, Archie #7, 1945), with the decade closing for us with a catalogue of calamity in the Goggin/Sahle/Ginger exposé ‘Camera Bugs’ from Pep #48, 1946.

An era of conformity, stability and expansion, ‘The 50s’ open with ‘The Cook-Off’ (Little Archie #2, 1956) as Bob Bolling expertly extrapolates on the grade school years of that eternal love triangle and the boy learns early the wages of “sin” is bewilderment and a headache. Teen Veronica then takes centre stage in ‘Poor Little Rich Whirl’ by George Frese & Terry Szenics (Archie Annual #8, 1956-1957) flaunting her wealth to poor little Betty, and the section concludes with a rare full-length 5 part yarn from Jughead #1, 1957.

Here the ravenous nonconformist discovers the downside of becoming a global singing sensation in ‘Jughead’s Folly’ by the amazing Joe Edwards.

‘The 1960s’ were a time when youth culture took over everything and ‘Over-Joyed’ by Frank Doyle, Harry Lucey & Marty Epp (Archie #123, 1961) begins a second Golden Age for laughter as the carrot-topped Lothario endures a self-inflicted barrage of silent comedy catastrophes, before ‘Hi-Jinx and Deep Divers’ (by Bob White from Life with Archie #16, 1962) cleverly changes tack for a sub-sea science fiction adventure which finds Messrs. Andrews and Mantle battling mermen at the bottom of the sea…

In Archie’s Pals and Gals #29, 1964 Doyle, the brilliant Samm Schwartz & Epp superbly spoofed the British Pop Invasion by having the disgruntled lads of Riverdale form their own mop-top band in the still-hilarious ‘Beetlemania’, after which ‘The Hold Up’ by Doyle, Dan DeCarlo, Rudy Lapick & Vince DeCarlo offers a sharp and silly pre-Pussycats tale from She’s Josie #19, 1966.

In it rich brat Alexander Cabot III expends insane amounts of energy trying to get robbed because he hates anybody thinking he might be poor…

Apparently the most disturbing thing about Jughead is that he prefers food to girls – a situation the torrid teen temptresses of Riverdale High attempt to correct through modern technology in ‘Pardon My Computer’ by George Gladir, Schwartz & Epp (Jughead #119, 1966), after which the lad proves his love for cunning pranks in ‘Voice Control’ (Doyle & Schwartz from Jughead #120, 1966).

Practical jokes are an Art form in Riverdale – as seen in ‘Stick with It’ (Archie #178 Doyle, Lucey, Bill Yoshida & Barry Grossman) and the kids played with reality itself in ‘Visit to a Small Panic’ (Everything’s Archie #1 Gladir, Lucey, Epp & Yoshida) when they all visited the Hollywood animation studios then creating their Saturday Morning Cartoon Show.

A time of style-challenged sensuous silliness and ethical questing, ‘The ’70s’ is represented here with ‘The Bye Bye Blues’ (Laugh #276, 1974, Doyle, Lucey, Yoshida & Grossman) wherein the kids practise their life-governing philosophies to great effect, whilst Reggie’s adoption of the wrong spirit after watching ‘Kong Phoo’ (Archie at Riverdale High #18, 1974) by Doyle & Lucey only leads to personal pain and sorrow…

‘Minding a Star’ (Archie #264, 1977, by Doyle, Dan & Jim DeCarlo & Grossman) finds our brick-topped hero babysitting a TV celebrity chimp, whilst the Star Wars phenomena hit mean Mantle hard in ‘Costume Caper’ from Reggie and Me #104 (1978, Doyle, Dan DeCarlo Jr., Jim DeCarlo, Yoshida & Grossman).

The girls had their own pet passions as seen in the superb spoof ‘Melvin’s Angels’ (Betty & Veronica #277, 1979) from Doyle, Dan & Jim DeCarlo, Yoshida & Grossman.

‘The ’80s’ are still with us, of course, so the green message of ‘Verve to Conserve’ (by Gladir, DeCarlo Jr., Lapick & Yoshida from Archie # 292, 1980) retains much of the original merit and mirth, whilst Josie’s ongoing war with the Cabot clan on Sports Day results in ‘Scratch One Clown’ (Archie’s TV Laugh-Out #86, 1982, by Dan DeCarlo Jr., Jim DeCarlo & Yoshida).

Parental control and filial responsibility result in upset and big laughs in ‘Saturday’s Child’ (Archie #331, 1984 Doyle, Dan DeCarlo Jr. & Jim DeCarlo), whilst ‘The Plight of the Perilous Pike’ by Bolling, Bob Smith & Yoshida from Archie and Me #144 offers another view of the kids – one that displays their warmth, generosity and good hearts.

Around the same time that DC were first rationalising their sprawling universe, after years of unqualified success Archie Comics similarly undertook a massive gamble in the MTV, computer-game, reading-reduced decade by rebooting and updating the entire franchise.

Betty’s Diary #1, 1987 saw ‘The Art Lesson’ – by Kathleen Webb, Dan & Jim DeCarlo & Yoshida – in which the wholesome blonde showed her character by refusing an award she felt she hadn’t earned. Then ‘Back from the Future’ (Archie Giant Series #590, October 1988, by Rich Margopoulos, Rex Lindsey, Jon D’Agostino, Yoshida & Grossman and supplemented here by the cover) offers a fanciful comedy drama as the Jones boy is deputised by pretty red-headed, be-freckled mystery girl January McAndrews into the Time Police.

She believes that the slovenly moocher is the only one who can help her save history from malignant chronal crooks. Scary…

‘The ’90s’ section begins with the uncanny ‘Mystery of the Mummy’s Curse’ (New Archies Digest #10, 1990, by Mike Pellowski, Henry Scarpelli, Yoshida, Grossman, Nanci Tsetsekas & Gregg Suchow), a caper very much in the manner of TV’s Scooby Doo – but with the kids as pre-teens. Next, fame chasing Cheryl Blossom (#15 1995 by Dan Parent, D’Agostino, Yoshida & Grossman) takes time off from trying to steal Archie from Betty and Veronica to briefly pursue a life in reality TV by organising ‘Cheryl’s Beach Bash’…

That Scooby Gang motif was a popular one. In ‘The 2000s’ ‘A Familiar Old Haunt’ (Archie’s Weird Mysteries #6, 2000 by Paul Castiglia, Fernando Ruiz, Rick Koslowski, Vickie Williams & Rick Taylor) found the teenaged Riverdalers exposing charlatan monster-hunters, whilst a manga-style re-imagining of Sabrina (#70, 2005 by Tania Del Rio, Jim Amash, Jeff Powell, Ridge Rooms & Jason Jensen – and see Sabrina the Teenage Witch: The Magic Within Book 1) – found the student sorceress dealing with both mundane and mystical school tests in ‘Spell it Out’…

This marvellous meander down memory lane concludes with ‘2010 and Beyond’ and ‘Something Ventured, Something Gained’ (from Jughead #200, 2010 by Tom Root, Lindsey, Jack Morelli, Parent & Rosario “Tito” Peña) which sees young Forsythe sell his most unappreciated, vital characteristic to a conniving witch and only survive due to the self-sacrifice of his friends…

Also on show are some thoroughly modern spoof and pastiche ‘Variant Covers’ by Andrew Pepoy, Fiona Staples, Ramon Perez & Phil Jimenez from 2012-2013, before everything ends on a delirious dilemma in ‘The Great Switcheroo!’ (Archie #636, 2012 by Del Rio, Gisele, Koslowski, Morelli & Digikore Studios) as well-intentioned magic turns the town into in Reverse-dale and all the boys and girls unknowingly swap genders and problems…

Spanning the entire history of comicbooks and featuring vintage yarns, landmark material and up-to-the-minute modern masterpieces, this is a terrific tome for anybody looking for light laughs and the acceptable happy face of the American Dream.
© 2013 Archie Comics Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Autumnal


By Chris Boal, Tom Fassbender, Jim Pascoe, Cliff Richards & Joe Pimentel (Dark Horse Books/Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-382-7

Having conquered television, Buffy the Vampire Slayer began a similar crusade with the far harder-to-please comicbook audiences. Launched in 1998 and offering smart, sassy tales to accompany the funny, action-packed and mega-cool onscreen entertainment, the series began in an original graphic novel (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Dust Waltz) before debuting in a monthly series.

She quickly became a major draw for publisher Dark Horse – whose line of licensed comicbook successes included Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Aliens and Predator – and her exploits were regularly supplemented by short stories in the company’s showcase anthology Dark Horse Presents and other venues.

This particular UK Titan Books edition – illustrated by Cliff Richards & Joe Pimentel – features stories set during TV Season 4 and gathers issues #26-28 (October-December 2000), the pertinent covers by Christian Zanier, John Totleben, Ryan Sook, Galen Showman & Dave Stewart, plus a few photo portraits of the blonde bombshell in reflective mood.

What You Need to Know: Buffy Summers was a hapless Californian cheerleader Valley Girl until the night she inexplicably turned into a hyper-strong, impossibly durable monster-killer. Meeting a creepy old coot from a secret society of Watchers she discovered that she had become a “Slayer” – the most recent recipient of an ancient geas which transformed mortal maids into living death-machines to all things undead, arcane or uncanny.

Moving with her mom to the deceptively quiet hamlet of Sunnydale, Buffy soon learned her new hometown was located on the edge of an eldritch gateway known to the unhallowed as The Hellmouth…

Enrolling at Sunnydale High, Buffy made some friends and, schooled by new Watcher Rupert Giles, conducted a never-ending war on devils, demons and every shade of predatory supernatural species inexorably drawn to the area…

This slim supernal compilation finds Buffy with a new boyfriend – federal spook-buster Riley Finn – and starting out as a freshman college girl, as is trainee sorceress, roommate and BFF Willow. There’s no respite from her true calling, however, as the two-part ‘Heart of a Slayer’ scripted by Chris Boal soon proves…

The drama begins as a Slayer from the Dark Ages skitters through time to the present just as a seemingly indestructible horror targets Buffy. The beast is only driven away after the foul-smelling barbarous sword-maiden arrives, but the two monster-hunters are separated by more than language and seem destined to become bitter enemies.

The remnants of the “Scooby Gang” gather (Oz has gone walkabout and Cordelia has moved to Los Angeles with Angel) to try and learn the secret of the creature and the origins of the gothic slayer, but even as their researches uncover the appalling cost of stopping the ravenous monster, Buffy is astounded to find herself afflicted with an unwelcome messianic destiny…

Tom Fassbender and Jim Pascoe then pen the nightmarish voodoo thriller ‘Cemetery of Lost Love’ wherein the One True Slayer is plagued by unsavoury events and apparitions as she and recently reformed bad-boy vampire Spike seek to stop a very wilful girl getting herself immortalised by the local bloodsucker gang. Of course it’s all a devious trap…

This is another extremely accessible assemblage of arcane action and furious phantasm fighting, even for those unfamiliar with the extensive back history: one more self-contained creepy chronicle of stirring sagas as readily enjoyed by the newest neophyte as any confirmed connoisseur.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ™ & © 2001 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.