NowReadThis

January 9, 2013January 8, 2013

R.E.B.E.L.S. volume 2: Strange Companions

By Tony Bedard, Andy Clarke, Claude St. Aubin, Karl Moline, Derec Donovan, Kalman Andrasofszky & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-4012-2761-6

Once upon a time, DC’s vast pantheon of characters was sensibly scattered, segregated and wholly distinct: separated and situated on a variety of alternate Earths which comprised Golden Age hold-overs, contemporaneous Silver Age stars and later-created heroes. Further Earths were subsequently introduced for every superhero stable the company scooped up in a voracious and protracted campaign of acquisition over the decades. Charlton, Fawcett, Quality Comics and others’ characters resided upon their own globes, occasionally meeting in trans-dimensional alliances and apparently deterring new readers from getting on with DC.

Latterly, when DC retconned their entire ponderous continuity following Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985-1986, ejecting the entire concept of a multiverse and re-knitting time so that there had only been one world literally festooned with heroes and villains, many of their greatest characters got a unique restart, with the conceit being that the characters had been around for years and the readership were simply tuning in on just another working day.

Of course now the multiverse concept is back and not confusing at all (no! seriously?) but whatever the original reasons, that dramatic 1980s refit did provide for some utterly astounding and cleverly cohesive storiesâ€¦

In the aftermath of that event, the hero-packed planet Earth was targeted by a coalition of alien races and endured a full-on Invasion which was repulsed by the indomitable resistance of the World’s assembled heroes and villains and a few selected extraterrestrial allies. When the cosmic dust settled a few of these stayed together and formed cops-for-profit outfit dubbed L.E.G.I.O.N., led by a lying, scheming, manipulative obsessive super-genius bastard named Vril Dox: notional son of the villainous super-villain Brainiac of Colu and one of the most superciliously smug creatures in creation.

Overcoming all odds and the general distaste of his own chief lieutenants, Dox moulded his organisation into a force for justice and peace in the universe, with over 80 client worlds happily prospering, until his own son Lyrl – whilst still a baby – usurped control of the organisation: hunting Vril and his core agent team across the universe as desperate R.E.B.E.L.S. ruthlessly pursued by their own intergalactic commercial police force.

By the end of that run of comicbooks in 1996, order and the status quo were fully restored and the Licensed Extra-Governmental Interstellar Operatives Network went back to scrupulously and competently doling out all the peace and security solvent worlds could affordâ€¦

In the first volume, Dox’s organisation was snatched from his implacable grasp by an alien incursion from another galaxy, led by a terrifying mystery despot who had apparently subjugated the predatory Starros and turned their mind-sucking, power-leeching abilities to the creation of an unbelievably vast inter-galactic empire, policed by an unstoppable host of super-slaves and subservient legions.

Acting upon information received from his own descendent in the 31^st century, Dox began assembling a super-powered strike force from across known space: old allies and pawns, new heroes – and even villains and monsters. Whoever he couldn’t coerce or co-opt Dox created, such as with the crippled Anasazi girl he transformed into a ball of sentient space-spanning energy he dubbed Wildstarâ€¦

However, just as he was compiling his arsenal of living weapons and preparing to take back control of L.E.G.I.O.N., events overtook him again. From far outside our galaxy an impossible army of invaders burst through a space rift, all enslaved by and connected to a telepathic starfish creature named Starro, yet somehow controlled by a humanoid master who had learned how to psychically dominate the universally-feared pentagram predatorsâ€¦

Within hours the Armada had destroyed the impregnable homeworld of the dreaded Dominators and were preparing to spread across the Milky Way, until Dox, with typical reckless brilliance, locked the entire quadrant within an impenetrable forcefield stalling the invasion by trapping hundreds of worlds – and his ragtag R.E.B.E.L.S. unit with them – in an inescapable cage with the most rapacious creatures in creationâ€¦

Collecting issues #7-9 of the revived comicbook series and the first R.E.B.E.L.S. Annual: Starro the Conqueror (all from 2009), the drama is scripted as ever by Tony Bedard and continues with ‘No Way Out’ (illustrated by Andy Clarke) wherein the only Dominator to escape the fall of his own species’ ancient empire goes hunting for allies and revenge. Dox too is seeking outside help – with as little success – from planetary dictators such as Despero or Kanjar Ro and extremist regimes such as the bellicose Khunds: all elements he used to be paid good money to keep away from decent sentients and his client worldsâ€¦

The aquatic, methane breathing mega-teleporters of Gil’Dishpan at least agreed to a meeting with both Dox and the Dominator, keenly aware that their inherent space-shifting capabilities presented Starro’s forces with an irresistible opportunity to break out of the vast but impenetrable force cage frustrating their outward expansionâ€¦

The venal Gil’Dishpan had actually planned to give their diplomatic guests to Starro in return for a neutrality pact but the invaders instead attacked the methane-dwellers, ultimately forcing Dox and the last Dominator to make absolutely sure no teleporters remained for the starfish to mind-controlâ€¦

In ‘Stealth’ (Clarke art again) the ragtag band of resistors track down the banished and now teenaged Lyrl Dox, press-ganging the former tiny tyrant into the fight just as Starro’s metahuman brigade turned their unstoppable attentions upon the Khundish empire – with the now inevitable result of total submission through horrendous bloodshed.

On another front the insidious Psions contrived a ghastly biological cloaking mechanism and despatched the far-from happy Omega Men through the still-open space rift to the Horde’s mysterious point of originâ€¦

The titular ‘Strange Companions’ – lavishly rendered by Claude St. Aubin & Scott Hanna – pulls more threads into the swiftly expanding cosmic tapestry as Wildstar goes in search of other allies trapped within the contained quadrant whilst the Omega Men discover disquieting, unsuspected secrets on the other side of the sky.

As Starro lieutenant Smite personally crushes all resistance on Kanjar Ro’s fortress world Dhor, the dictator is rescued at the last moment by his archenemy Adam Strange, another recruit to Dox’s resistance movement as is Earthling mutant superman Captain Comet.

The assembled rebels don’t have long to catch their breath however as the frustrated Smite arrives in blockbusting manner leading a squad of Starro super-soldiers and tasked with capturing – or is that liberating? – Lyrl Dox: a lad who’s been correctly assessed as even smarter and more ruthless than the father he’s always hatedâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

The rest of this volume reprints the Annual; offering a quintet of tales uncovering secrets and disclosing hidden facts about the unbeatable enemy forces. The eponymous framing sequence ‘Starro the Conqueror’ (illustrated by St. Aubin & Hanna) connects five powerfully revelatory chapters beginning with ‘The Doom that Came to Kalanor’ as the supreme master of the invaders personally destroys the diabolical Despero – a brutal juggernaut who has killed billions in his day. That day, though, is soon doneâ€¦

The action continues by revealing the backgrounds of the pitiless, uncompromising invaders beginning with the tragic ‘Daughter of Storms’ (with art from Karl Moline & Mark Pennington): life-giving goddess of a world who lost everything when the starfish landed in her skiesâ€¦

This is followed by an introduction to the worst Starro can offer as St. Aubin & Hanna convene ‘The High Vanguard’: brutal monsters who serve the as the semi-autonomous elite of the rapacious Horde, after which Derec Donovan delineates the story of Smite who was ‘Scourge of the Stars’ even before falling to the unrelenting overlord of infinityâ€¦

This volume concludes with the horrific origin of ‘The Star Conqueror’ (art by Kalman Andrasofszky) which shows how a gentle holy man defeated an intolerable invading interplanetary predator and unwittingly unleashed a far greater menace upon all of creationâ€¦

With a spectacular cover gallery by Andy Clark & Andrasofszky, this slim tome offers a deliciously intoxicating blend of space opera and cosmic action that will push every button for lovers of staggering science fiction thrills, cut with sharp, mature dialogue and sublimely beautiful artwork. More straight and simple, mind-boggling, slyly cynical, riotous rollercoaster fun no fan of fantasy should do withoutâ€¦
Â© 2009, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

January 8, 2013January 7, 2013

Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon 1953

By Milton Caniff with Dick Rockwell (Checker Books)
ISBN: 978-1-93316-057-3

Steve Canyon began on 13th January 1947, after a canny campaign to boost public anticipation following creator Milton Caniff’s very conspicuous resignation from his previous and world-famous comic strip masterpiece Terry and the Pirates.

Caniff, a true master of suspense and expert in the dark art of forcing reader attention, didn’t show his new hero until four days into the first adventure – and then only in a ‘file photograph’. The primed-and-ready readership first met Stevenson Burton Canyon, bomber pilot, medal-winning war-hero, Air-Force flight instructor and, latterly, independent airline charter operator in the first Sunday colour page, on January 19^th 1947.

Almost instantly Caniff was working at the top of his game, producing material exotically familiar and – as ever – bang on the money in terms of the public zeitgeist and taste.

Dropping his hero into the exotic climes he had made his own on Terry, Caniff modified that world based on real-world events, but this time the brooding, unspoken menace was Communism not Fascism. Banditry and duplicity, of course, never changed, no matter who was nominally running the showâ€¦

Caniff was simply being marketably contemporary, but he was savvy enough to realise that with the Cold War â€œhotting upâ€, Yankees were going to be seen as spies in many countries, so he made that an intrinsic part of the narrative. When Canyon officially re-enlisted, the strip became to all intents and purposes a contemporary War featureâ€¦

Over the decades the Steve Canyon strip honestly embraced the philosophy of America as the World’s policeman, becoming a bastion of US militarism and remaining true to its ideals even as the years rolled by and national tastes and readership changedâ€¦

Steve foiled plots and chased his true love Summer Olsen around the globe for thirty years: continually frustrated that fate and his many antagonists cruelly kept them unhappily apart until they finally wed in 1970. Canyon had remained a far-ranging agent of Air Force Military Intelligence, even though by this time the Vietnam War had made the Armed Forces an extremely hot potatoâ€¦

This seventh volume covers the period May 15^th 1953 to August 5^th 1954 and shows how, as the Korean conflict stuttered to a weary impasse, Caniff smoothly changed tack but not gears reinstating characters, plots and situations he had shelved when the fighting began. Now, his charismatic cast were edging into another post-war worldâ€¦

Steve Canyon stories seldom had a recognisable beginning or end and the narrative continually flowed and followed upon itself, but for convenience the publishers have broken the saga into generally discrete tales which begin here with ‘The Princess and the Doctor’ which ran from May 15^th to September 12^th 1953 and saw the veteran adventurer â€œrequestedâ€ by his USAF superiors to ferry a doctor into the heart of Red China.

The tale started with a clever code message readers were invited to solve – with a $100 prize offered by the magnificent showman and publicist Caniff – before Steve and Chinese American medic Dr. Louis Shu sneak through Indian passes behind the Bamboo Curtain to save anti-communist rebel Princess Snowflower from a mystery malady that even her psychotically devoted American mentor and former shiftless Soldier-of-Fortune Dogie Hogan can’t handle (for full details of these incredible characters a thorough re-reading of Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon 1949 is advised and much recommendedâ€¦).

The Princess and her fanatically loyal forces have been holding out against the Chi-Com for years from an impregnable mountain fastness but her weakened condition is causing her devoted warriors to doubt their cause and Steve is needed to shore up the resistance movement within the new totalitarian monolithâ€¦

However Canyon and Hogan are old rivals who have butted heads since the fall of Imperial China and the grizzled veteran sees no reason to welcome the flashy air force know-it-all. He’d have been better advised to keep the good-looking surgeon away from the lonely, impressionable young girlâ€¦

And of course, to cap matters the Chinese have a new wonder general who thinks he can finally break the years-long impasse of the infernal royalist modern Masadaâ€¦

Packed with tension, blistering action, love, anger, betrayal, smouldering sex and withering comedy, this epic saga also features the welcome return of one of the strip’s most unique supporting characters before Steve leaves with his mission more or less accomplished, but with enough dangling plot threads to guarantee another tempestuous visit in the years to comeâ€¦

The soap opera shufflings and Cold War shenanigans were briefly sidelined in ‘The Halls’ (13^th September – December 30^th) wherein Canyon, travelling incognito through the contentious region, is mistaken for a Russian spy by overzealous border guards and wrongfully imprisoned in a small non-aligned nation between India and the USSR. Happily even that postage-stamp state has a US Consulate.

Homer Hall, his capable, beautiful and blind wife Gil and their imaginative daughter Hollister never expected much trouble, but when Holly and her pal Lise from the French Embassy discover an American in the city dungeons the romance-starved girls contrive his escape, even as the city’s inevitable cabal of true communist agents engineer a riot to spring their â€œSoviet Comradeâ€.

With Mr. Hall trapped outside the capital and riot in the streets, the girls free Steve and he valiantly returns the favour by saving Mrs. Hall from death in her own blazing Consulate buildingâ€¦

With a measure of order restored and Steve cleared of spying charges, his major difficulty is letting down Holly who has conceived the notion that Steve loves and wants to marry her. Mrs. Hall too harbours feeling for the rugged he-manâ€¦

The situation is swiftly exacerbated when the Hall Women are evacuated by train to safety in Indiaand the Consul asks Steve to escort them, only to have all three valuable Americans kidnapped by bandits eager for ransom. However the village of thieves panic when they see that Gil Hall is blind, as such women are bad luck, but their attempts to kill her are foiled by their charismatic chieftain Cobra Johnny, a lover of all things American – especially guns and moneyâ€¦

The robber king’s hold on his men soon slips however when smallpox breaks out in the village. With the men clamouring for the head of the â€œno-see womanâ€, Gil begins treating the ailing mothers and children: after all the disease took her sight years ago and she has nothing left to loseâ€¦

As events escalate Steve and Holly manage to signal the Indian forces searching for them but not before Johnny discovers their ploy and decides to cut his lossesâ€¦

After extricating himself from that menace the rescued aviator escapes mother and daughter’s unwanted attentions by faking a telegram from his long-lost love Summer Olsen and heads for points west but doesn’t get far. Called into the local Air Force office he is â€œinvitedâ€ to help with a little contraband problem.

‘Heroin Smuggler’ ran from December 31^st 1953 to April 30^th 1954 and saw Lieutenant Colonel Canyon go undercover to catch a diabolical murderer and expose a clever scheme wherein an old acquaintance was somehow running Chinese drugs into the West, past every trap and safeguard the British and Americans could deviseâ€¦

In a brilliant mystery thriller by the utterly on-form Caniff, Steve’s problem was not discovering how independent airline magnate Herself Muldoon had managed to become the East’s first and foremost drug trafficker, but how to stop his old foe when every agency in the area seemed to work for her. The horrific answer came when one of her ex-service-man pilots finally lost control of the monkey on his backâ€¦

The subsequent tale of tragedy was one of the earliest and still most harrowing depictions of the nature and consequences of narcotics addiction ever seen in comics, and the far-from-clean but coldly plausible resolution a moving reminder of the insidious power of the medium to inform and affectâ€¦

The worldly, war-weary, Canyon was a mature adventurer who could be sent literally anywhere and would appeal to the older, wiser readers of Red-Menaced, Atom-Age America, now a fully active player on the world stage. Canyon also reflects a more mature creator who has seen so much more of human nature and frailty than even the mysterious Orient could provide. A young Shakespeare could write â€œRomeo and Julietâ€ but maturity & experience were needed more than passion to produce â€œthe Tempestâ€ or â€œKing Learâ€, but in the final tale in this marvellous monochrome collection the author blends classic drama with sophisticate modern romance by finally allowing another bittersweet, ultimately frustrating reunion of his own star-crossed loversâ€¦

Widow and proud single parent Summer has been forced to take a high-powered, well-paying job with Steve’s industrialist nemesis Copper Calhoun, unaware that the sadistic millionairess was also obsessed – or perhaps infatuated – with Canyon; the one man she could not buy.

Now in ‘Triangle’ (May 1^st – August 5^th 1954) a long simmering plot boiled over as Canyon finally returned toAmerica and sought out Summer. Neither frustrated lover was aware that Calhoun had been using her vast resources to keep tabs on the pair and even intercept their communications; determined to keep them both separate and miserableâ€¦

As the Colonel hit USsoil, Copper despatched Summer and her son Oley on a long-overdue vacation to a fabulousFlorida resort.

Naturally with the pressure off, plenty of time and money on her hands, convivial company and the ardent attentions of dashing playboy Clarke Netherland, Summer’s head was turned – and that’s when the indomitable ingenious Steve burst in, having spent almost all his furlough tracking down his intendedâ€¦

After battering his way through all of Calhoun’s many obfuscations the last thing the Colonel expected was to have to fight a wooing campaign, but as the tale evolved into a delicious take on the sparkling, glamorous sophisticated Philadelphia Story/High Society movie comedies of the time, no one was aware of the dark secret the enigmatic Mr. Netherland harboured nor just what his conscience would eventually force him to doâ€¦

â€¦And as a bitter Steve again buried himself in another dangerous Air Force mission Summer, once more abandoned and bereft, at last discovered some brutal truths and had a final showdown with her boss the Copperheadâ€¦

Resulting in some of the most impressive and mature storytelling of his undeniably stellar career, Caniff seamlessly moved from hot combat to Cold War and from exotic locations to homespun soap opera at this time: his skilful passion-play perfectly showing a sublime ability to delineate character and mood.

The art here is some of the most subtly refined of his career and the brilliantly enacted storylines firmly put the series back on the original narrative tracks suspended by the Korean conflict â€¦and there was even better still to followâ€¦

Steve Canyon is comic storytelling at its best. Beautifully illustrated, mesmerising black and white sagas of war, espionage, romance, terror, justice and cynical reality: a masterpiece of graphic narrative every serious fan and story-lover should experience. â€¦And that’s not to in any way disparage the astounding artistic contributions of Dick Rockwell who began assisting with the artwork in 1952, pencilling the scripts which Caniff authored and then inked.

As the Master’s health gradually failed over the years, Rockwell invisibly assumed more and more of the strip’s visual aspect. When Caniff passed away in 1988, Rockwell continued and concluded the final adventure ‘The Snow Princess’ before the series was finally retired with honour on Sunday, June 5^th 1988.

Most cartoonists – or workers in any field of artistic endeavour – go to their graves never attaining the giddy heights of being universally associated with a signature piece of unequivocally supreme work. How incredible then when a guy achieves that perfect act of creation, not once but twice – and does so seven days a week for 64 years? Enticing, enthralling, action-packed and emotionally overwhelming, Steve Canyon is an unequivocal high-point of graphic narrative: a full-immersion thrill and a passport to the halcyon glory of another age.

Comics just don’t get better than this.
Â© Checker Book Publishing Group 2006, an authorized collection of works Â© Ester Parsons Caniff Estate 1953. All characters and distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of the Ester Parsons Caniff Estate. All rights reserved.

January 7, 2013January 6, 2013

Problematic: Sketchbook Drawings 2004-2012

By Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-594-5

Some creators in the world of comics just defy description and their graphic novels and collections are beyond the reviewer’s skills (mine certainly) to elucidate or encapsulate. Some are just so pedestrian or mind-numbingly bad that one simply can’t face writing about them. Others are so emphatically wonderful that no collection of praise and analysis can do them justice.

At the apex of that tricky funnybook pyramid is Jim Woodring: a position he has maintained for years and clearly appears capable of holding for years to come. Woodring’s work is challenging, spiritual, philosophical, funny, beautiful and extremely scary. And, even after reading that sentence, you will have absolutely no idea of what you will be seeing the first time you read any of it.

Moreover, even if you have scrupulously followed cartoonist, animator, Fine Artist, toy-maker and artistic Renaissance Man James William Woodring through an eccentric career spanning his first mini-comics in 1980, the groundbreaking Fantagraphics magazine series such as Jim (1986), the notional spin-off Frank (of which Weathercraft was the latest incredible instalment), Tantalizing Stories, Seeing Things, Congress of the Animals or his more mainstream features such as Star Wars and Aliens tales for Dark Horse, you’ll still have no idea how you will respond to his newest work.

Woodring delivers surreal, abstract, wild, rational, primal cartooning: his clean-mannered art a blend of woodblock prints, Robert Crumb style, wry humour and eerie conviviality, Dreamscape, religious art and monstrous phantasmagoria. His works form a logical, progressional narrative pockmarked with multiple layers of meaning but generally void of speech or words, magnificently dependent on the intense involvement of the reader as a fully active participant.

So you can imagine what his first formative thoughts, passing observations and moments of wild unfettered graphic whimsy must be likeâ€¦

This stunning little hardback opens the gates of dream just a crack and offers selected graphic snippets from his sketchbooks covering the superbly productive period following the millennium and offering a few choice views of the other graphic avenues he could have travelled if the world of harnessed hallucinations had not such a strong holdâ€¦

In his ‘Introduct’ Woodring describes his abandonment of traditional graphic tomes for diminutive â€œMoleskineâ€ doodle-pads, using the flimsy palm-sized books to capture ideas roughly, quickly and with intense immediacy â€¦and the gimmick clearly works.

The material collected here – mostly enlarged 140% up from the originals – simply buzzes with life and energy.

Many Frank regulars appear, including the eponymous Krazy Kat-like ingÃ©nue himself, and there are absolute torrents of bizarre, god-like household appliances, vulture-things, frog-things, rhino-things, plant-things and unspeakable Thing-things, that inhabit the insanely logical traumic universe of his sensoria.

There are snippets of reportage, plenty of designs and even roughs and layouts from finished stories. Woodring also proves himself a pretty sharp pencil when it comes to capturing the weird moment of reality we all experience, a keen caricaturist and a deliciously funny â€œstraight gag-manâ€, glamour artist and capturer of friends in idle moments â€“ just like all of us sad art-school escapees who break into a cold sweat whenever we realise we’ve left the sketchbook at home and there’s only beer-mats and napkins to draw onâ€¦.

Woodring is not to everyone’s taste or sensibilities – for starters, his drawings have a distressing habit of creeping back long after you’ve put the book down and scaring the bejeezus out of you – but he is an undisputed master of the form and an innovator always warping the creative envelope.

As such this welcome peek into his creative process and conceptual/visual syllabary offers encouragement and delight to artists and storytellers of every stripe, as well as being just plain wonderful to see.

All art-forms need such creators and this glorious hardback monochrome tome could well change your working and reading habits for life.

Go on, aren’t you tempted, tantalized or terrified yet? What about curious, thenâ€¦?
Â© 2012 Jim Woodring. This edition Â© 2012 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

January 6, 2013January 5, 2013

Wonder Woman Archives volume 3

By Charles Moulton (William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter) with Frank Godwin (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-814-4

Wonder Woman was conceived by polygraph pioneer William Moulton Marston and illustrated by Harry G. Peter in an attempt to offer girls a positive and forceful role model. She debuted as a special feature in All Star Comics #8 (December 1941), before springing into her own series and the cover-spot of new anthology title Sensation Comics a month later. An instant hit the Amazing Amazon quickly won her own eponymous supplemental title in late Spring of that year (cover-dated Summer 1942).

Once upon a time on a hidden island of immortal super-women, American aviator Steve Trevor of US Army Intelligence crashed to Earth. Near death, he was nursed back to health by young and impressionable Princess Diana.

Fearing her growing obsession with the creature from a long-forgotten and madly violent world, her mother Queen Hippolyte revealed the hidden history of the Amazons: how they were seduced and betrayed by men but rescued by the goddess Aphrodite on condition that they isolated themselves from the rest of the world and devoted their eternal lives to becoming ideal, perfect creatures.

However when goddesses Athena and Aphrodite subsequently instructed Hippolyte to send an Amazon back with the American to fight for global freedom and liberty, Diana overcame all other candidates and became their emissary – Wonder Woman.

On arriving in Americashe bought the identity and credentials of lovelorn Army nurse Diana Prince, elegantly allowing the Amazon to be close to Steve whilst enabling the heartsick medic to join her own fiancÃ© in South America. Soon Diana also gained a position with Army Intelligence as secretary to General Darnell, ensuring she would always be able to watch over her beloved. She little suspected that, although the painfully shallow Steve only had eyes for the dazzling Amazon superwoman, the General had fallen for the mousy but superbly competent Lieutenant Princeâ€¦

Using the nom de plume Charles Moulton, Marston (with some help in later years from assistant Joye Murchison) scripted almost all of the Amazing Amazon’s many and fabulous adventures until his death in 1947, whereupon Robert Kanigher took over the writer’s role. Venerable veteran illustrator and co-creator H.G. Peter performed the same feat, limning practically every titanic tale until his own death in 1958. A couple of the very rare exceptions appear in this volumeâ€¦

This third superbly luxurious full-colour deluxe hardback edition collects her every groundbreaking adventure from Wonder Woman #5-7 and Sensation Comics #18-24 from June-December 1943, and commences, after an appreciative Foreword from comics historian Les Daniels, with ‘The Secret City of the Incas’ from Sensation #18, illustrated by the superbly talented classical artist Frank Godwin, in which the Princess of Power rescued a lost Inca tribe from a despotic theocracy and ancient greed whilst in #19 (Godwin again)‘The Unbound Amazon’ responded to a little boy’s letter and stumbled onto big trouble in the far north woods. Of course Diana knew little Bobby from the Adventure of the Talking Lion (as seen in the previous Archive edition) and with wicked Nazi spy Mavis on the loose wasn’t about to take any chances.

This terrific thriller is notable for the revelation that if an Amazon removed her Bracelets of Submission she turned into a raving, uncontrolled engine of sheer destructionâ€¦

H. G. Peter drew the vast entirety of Wonder Woman #5 (June/July 1943), which presented an interlinked epic in the ‘Battle for Womanhood’ as war-god Mars (who instigated the World War from his HQ on the distant red planet through his earthly pawns Hitler, Â Mussolini and Hirohito) returned to plague humanity. This time he enlisted the aid of a brilliant but deformed and demented misogynistic psychologist with psychic powers. The tormented Dr. Psycho used his talents to marry and dominate a medium named Marva, using her abilities to form ectoplasmic bodies as he sought to enslave every woman in the world.

Happily Wonder Woman countered his gods-sponsored schemes, after which prominent sidekicks ‘Etta Candy and her Holliday Girls’ comedically crushed a burglary before ‘Mars Invades the Moon’ returned to the overarching tale when the frustrated war-god was ousted by the Duke of Deception.

In attempting to take over the Moon – home of peace-loving goddess Diana – Mars made the biggest error of his eternal life as the Amazing Amazon led a spectacular rescue mission which resulted in the invaders’ utter rout.

The issue then concluded with ‘The Return of Dr. Psycho’ who had escaped prison and again perpetrated a series of ghastly attacks on America’s security and the freedom of women everywhere until the Holliday Girls and their demi-divine mentor stepped inâ€¦

Sensation #20 was also by Peter – who was slowly coming to grips with the increased extra workload of the explosively popular 64-page Wonder Woman series every three months – and ‘The Girl with the Gun’ saw Diana Prince investigate sabotage at a munitions factory and the murder of a General at WAACs training base Camp Doe. To the Amazon’s complete surprise the culprit appeared to be Marva Psycho, but there was far more going on than at first appearedâ€¦

Godwin handled the art for #21 as Steve and Diana tracked down insidious traitor the American Adolf as he conducted a murderous ‘War Against Society’ whilst issue #6 – another all-Peter extravaganza – introduced another macabre foe in ‘Wonder Woman and the Cheetah’.

Marston’s psychiatric background provided yet another deeply disturbed antagonist in the form of sugar sweet debutante Priscilla Rich who shared her own body with a jealously narcissistic, savage feline counterpart dedicated to murder and robbery. The Cheetah framed the Amazing Amazon and almost destroyed Steve, Etta and the Holliday girls before Wonder Woman finally quashed her wild rampages.

It wasn’t for long as the Cheetah returned to mastermind an espionage-for-profit ring in ‘The Adventure of the Beauty Club’ which resulted in the Perfect Princess being captured by Japan’s High Command before spectacularly busting loose for a final confrontation in ‘The Conquest of Paradise’. Here the Feline Fury infiltrated the home of the Amazons and almost irretrievably poisoned the minds of the super women sequestered thereâ€¦

By this time Peter was fully adapted to his new schedule and in Sensation Comics #22 took the psychological dramas to new heights when a cured Priscilla Rich was seemingly attacked by her manifested evil selfÂ after the Cheetah stole America’s latest weapon ‘The Secret Submarine’â€¦

In issue #23 the creators tackled school bullying and women in the workplace as production line staff were increasingly stricken by ‘War Laugh Mania’. Only one of the problems was being promulgated by Nazi spies thoughâ€¦

It was back to straight action in #24 as ‘The Adventure of the Pilotless Plane’ saw Steve abducted by Japanese agents whilst investigating a new gas weapon which prevented US aircraft from flying. The vile villains had nothing that could stop Wonder Woman from smashing them and freeing him however, and the status quo was fully restored for the last saga in this lavish hardcover collection.

Wonder Woman #7 offered an optimistic view of the future in a fantastic fantasy tale ‘The Adventure of the Life Vitamin’ wherein America in the year 3000AD revealed a paradisiacal world ruled by a very familiar female President where a miracle supplement had expanded longevity to such an extent that Steve, Etta and all Diana’s friends were still thriving.

Sadly some old throwbacks still yearned for the days when women were second-class citizens subservient to males which meant there was still work for the Amazing Amazon to doâ€¦

‘America’s Wonder Women of Tomorrow’ continued the wry but wholesome sex war with Steve going undercover with the rebel forces uncovering a startling threat in ‘The Secret Weapon’ before the focus returned to the present and a far more intimate crisis for wilful child Gerta whose mother Paula (fully reformed ex-Nazi Baroness Paula von Gunther) was forced to deal with a ‘Demon of the Depths’.

But was that the evil octopus at the bottom of the paddling pool or her daughter’s dangerously anti-authoritarian attitudesâ€¦?

Far too much has been made of supposed subtexts and imagery of bondage and submission in these early tales – and yes, there really are a lot of scenes with girls tied up, chained or about to be whipped – but I still don’t care. Whatever Marston and Peters might have intended, the plain truth is that the skilfully innovative dramas and incredibly imaginative story-elements influenced the entire nascent superhero genre as much as Superman or Batman, and we’re all the richer for it.

This sterling deluxe book of nostalgic delights is a marvel of exotic, baroque, beguiling and uniquely exciting wonder and these Golden Age adventures of the World’s Most Fabulous female are timeless, pivotal classics in the development of comicbooks and still provide astounding amounts of fun and thrills for anyone interested in a grand nostalgic read.
Â© 1943, 2002 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

January 5, 2013January 5, 2013

Fantastic Four by Waid & Wieringo Ultimate Collection Book 2

By Mark Waid & Mike Wieringo, with Casey Jones, Karl Kesel & Larry Stucker (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5658-1

The Fantastic Four has long been considered the most pivotal series in modern comics history, introducing both a new style of storytelling and a decidedly different manner of engaging readers’ imaginations and attention. Regarded by fans as more as a family than a team, the roster has changed many times over the years but one which inevitably reverts again to its original core group.

Those steadfast stalwarts are maverick genius Reed Richards, wife Sue, their tried and true friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s younger brother Johnny; survivors of a privately-funded space-shot which went horribly wrong after Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding.

When they crashed back to Earth, the quartet found that they had all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks. Richards’ body became astoundingly elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible and project force-fields, Johnny could turn into living flame, and poor, tormented Ben was transformed into a horrifying brute who, unlike his comrades, could not reassume a semblance of normality on command.

This compilation gathers issues #67-70 of the 3^rd volume (before the series reverted to its original numbering) and then #500-502 plus bonus material from the Directors Cut edition of #500, highlighting the spectacular run by writer Mark Waid and much-missed illustrator Mike Wieringo, gloriously celebrating their â€œback-to-basicsâ€ approach which utterly rejuvenated the venerable property in 2003.

Key to that revival was a thorough reassessment and reappraisal of the team and their greatest enemy as seen in ‘Under her Skin’ (FF #67, May 2003, inked by Karl Kesel) wherein Victor Von Doom at last abandoned his technological gifts and inclinations, rejecting them for overwhelming sorcerous might to humiliate and destroy his greatest rival Reed Richards.

All he had to do was sacrifice his greatest love and only hope of redemptionâ€¦

This terrifying glimpse into Doom’s past and shocking character study in obsession was the prologue to a 4-part epic entitled ‘Unthinkable’ which opened one month later and would end with the resumption of the title’s original numbering in Fantastic Four #500.

Waid’s greatest gift is his ability to embed hilarious moments of comedy into tales of shattering terror and poignant drama, and it’s never better displayed than here when the First Family of Superheroes suddenly find their daily antics and explorations ripped from them. The method is straightforward enough: Doom attacks them through their children, using baby Valeria as a medium for eldritch exploitation and sending firstborn Franklin to Hell, a payment to the demons to whom the debased doctor has sold the last dregs of his soulâ€¦

A supreme technologist, Richards had never truly accepted the concept of magic, but with Master of the Mystic Arts Dr. Strange oddly unwilling to help, the reeling and powerless Mr. Fantastic nonetheless leads his team to Latveria for a showdown, still unable to grasp just how much his arch-foe has changed.

Invading the sovereign – if rogue â€“ nation, the team fight the greatest battle of their lives but lose anyway. The normally quicksilver mind of Richards seems unable to deal with the new reality and the FF are locked away in prisons specifically and sadistically designed to torment them. As a sign of his utter disdain, Doom locks his broken rival in a colossal library of grimoires and mystic manuscripts, knowing the defeated, dogmatic scientist can never make use of what is there. Big mistakeâ€¦

Before attacking the FF, Doom had ensorcelled Dr. Strange, but had greatly underestimated Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme. Struggling to free himself, the mage establishes contact with Richards and begins to teach the unbelieving ultra-rationalist the basic of magicâ€¦

By the time Doom discovers his danger, Reed has freed his comrades and daughter and in the catastrophic battle which ensues the Iron Dictator replaces Franklin in as the hostage of Hell, but not before, in one final act of malice, he maims Reed Richards with a searing mystic retaliation, melting half his face by means which neither magic nor medicine can mendâ€¦

Although victorious, the Fantastic Four are far from winners. Doom’s assault upon the family has scarred them all, but none more so than Franklin, whose time in Hell has left him deeply traumatised and almost catatonic. In the 2-part follow-up ‘5^th Wheel’ (illustrated by Casey Jones), Sue and Ben desperately search for treatments that can break through the boy’s wall of silence whilst Johnny begins a campaign to drag Reed out of a post-traumatic funk. The only thing that seems to motivate the obsessively brooding inventor is a half-baked scheme to use Doom’s captured time-machine and visit the dictator’s boyhoodâ€¦

Meanwhile in the now, a visit to a funfair has resulted in a breakthrough – of sorts – forFranklin, but only reveals that the boy is still, in so many ways, trapped in hell. â€¦And for Johnny there’s a terrifying realisation that his infallible, perfect Brother-in-Law is going to shoot the still innocent Victor Von Doom before the child can grow into the greatest menace in historyâ€¦

Superbly entertaining, immensely exciting and genuinely challenging, this run of tales was a sublime renaissance for the â€œWorld’s Greatest Comics Magazineâ€ and this collection also includes a wealth of bonus material from the Director’s Cut anniversary edition, including a cover gallery, deleted scenes and outtakes, with commentary from Waid & Wieringo, pencil cover sketches, unused draughts and designs, a rundown of the creative process from script to finished page, Stan Lee’s original treatment for Fantastic Four #1, a tribute section from cartoonist Fred Hembeck, and a reproduction of every cover in the series’ monumental run.

What more do you need to know?

January 4, 2013January 5, 2013

Batman: Streets of Gotham volume 1 – Hush Money

By Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen & Derek Fridolfs (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-853-8

With all the furore and hype surrounding the epic death and inevitable resurrection of Batman cunningly orchestrated by Grant Morrison, everybody seemed so concerned with what was going to happen next that they apparently ignored what was actually occurring in the monthly comicbooks in their hands. Now with the dust long settled let’s take a look at one of the better sidebar-series to come out of the braided Batman R.I.P./Final Crisis/Last Rites/Batman Reborn/Return of Bruce Wayne publishing eventsâ€¦

In the aftermath of the epochal loss of the Gotham Guardian, a sustained and epic Battle for the Cowl ensued amongst the fallen hero’s closest allies. Eventually Dick Grayson succeeded his lost mentor, carrying on the tradition of the Dark Knight with Bruce Wayne’s assassin-trained son Damian continuing as the headstrong and potentially lethal latest iteration of Robin, the Boy Wonderâ€¦

This volume collects the contents of Detective Comics #852, Batman #685 (both March 2009), before re-presenting the first four tension-drenched issues of Batman: Streets of Gotham spanning June to September of that portentous year, and deals with the strange fact that although most of the masked hero community knew the tragic truth, the general populace was blithely unaware that the true Batman had been replacedâ€¦

As if all that complex crossover-ry wasn’t enough, also working hard to ensure that no reader would dare miss a single issue was a project dubbed ‘Faces of Evil’ in which DC villains took centre stage in every comicbook that month. Thus, in the aforementioned Detective #852 and Batman #685, one of the hero’s most pernicious and obsessive foes reappeared to rebuild his empire of evil after the last crushing defeat at the gauntleted hands of Batmanâ€¦

Sublimely illustrated by Dustin Nguyen & Derek Fridolfs, the saga was another triumph for award-winning animator and director Paul Dini who once again proved himself the very best of contemporary Batman writers with a chilling, suspenseful epic of revenge and obsession featuring Bruce Wayne’s ultimate adversary Dr. Tommy Elliot, a beloved boyhood friend as warped by his own mother’s malign influence as the boy Bruce was transformed by the murder of his beloved parents Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Eminent surgeon Elliot became the twisted, sadistic and obsessive Hush to obtain vengeance on his only friend and childhood companion: one who had been perpetually held up to him as a perfect example of a son by Elliot’s disabled and deranged mother. Tommy even divined the billionaire’s greatest secret – the true identity of the Dark Knightâ€¦

After many deeply personal and lethally psychotic attacks on Wayne’s legacy and Batman’s friends, Hush took the ultimate step in his psychological war against his oldest pal by surgically transforming himself into Bruce’s doppelganger – attempting to entirely usurp his life.

After nearly killing Selina Kyle by literally stealing her heart, the faux-Bruce was only narrowly defeated and the captive Catwoman restored to some semblance of her former self (see Batman: Heart of Hush)â€¦

Now in ‘Reconstruction’ a broken Elliot wanders the snowy shady docks ofGotham before tumbling into the freezing river. Everything is over: his best efforts to destroy the Wayne myth have all failed and, in revenge for his attack on her, Catwoman has tracked down all his hidden bank accounts and stolen every penny he had – $200 million dollars – giving it all away to bleeding-heart charitiesâ€¦

Expecting to die, Elliot awakes on a boat, saved by hard-working stiffs who believe they’ve rescued wild-partying playboy Wayne from a drunken accident. Inspired, Elliot doesn’t disabuse them and begins to trade on his stolen looks to rebuild his fortune and take another stab at revengeâ€¦

Luck is with him: for some reason no one has seen either Bruce Wayne or Batman for weeks. Using the playboy’s reputation, Hush makes his way to the Caribbean, leaving a well-concealed trail of bodies and empty wallets behind him. By the time he reaches Australia he’s feeling pretty cocky but after being spotted by shapeshifting local hero Tasmanian Devil, Elliot heads for Vietnam, eager to put more miles and far less friendly borders between him and his inevitable pursuers. It’s a near-fatal mistakeâ€¦

The tale concludes in ‘Catspaw’ as â€œBruce Wayneâ€ is kidnapped by bandits from an animal poaching ring and finds himself face-to-stolen-face with Catwoman who has taken over the pet traders to actually save endangered species. Always willing to bear a grudge, she is delighted with the opportunity to put her former tormentor at the top of that listâ€¦

However the cat burglar has gotten in too deep and her greedily impatient gang are fed up with their animal-loving leader. Sensing a coup, Selina agrees to a truce with Elliot until they can escape the jungles and the bandits. To that end, she despatches her two most faithful henchmen to bring Hush to safety, but unfortunately nobody could leave a trail like Elliot’s and not be noticed by the well-schooled heirs of the World’s Greatest Detectiveâ€¦

Streets of Gotham debuted scant months later with Elliot an utterly isolated prisoner of the new Batman and Robinâ€¦

In ‘Ignition!’ a fresh era began with a reformed Harley Quinn making a nuisance of herself and distracting the Dark Dynamic Duo’s attention from a real threat. In the power vacuum following all the concatenating crises, many of Arkham Asylum’s inmates had absconded and were loose in the city, and flamboyant gangster Black Mask was celebrating his victory over rivals Two-Face and the Penguin – and subsequent elevation to supreme boss of the underworld – by recruiting the more biddable escaped maniacs to his teamâ€¦

With a mysterious new vigilante called Abuse adding to the general atmosphere of tension, one of Black Mask’s wildest employees finally slipped into total psychosis. Third-rate arsonist Garfield Lynns suddenly stopped torching buildings as Firefly and began turning random civilians into spontaneously combusting human torchesâ€¦

Taking full advantage of the situation in ‘City on Fire’, Hush then broke out of his velvet-lined cage whilst Batman and Robin tackled the utterly demented arsonist and again used his perfect imposture of Bruce Wayne to outmanoeuvre his foes.

Before Grayson, Damian and former Robin Tim Drake could react, Elliot made a very public appearance on TV and offered to bankrupt â€œhimselfâ€ to rebuild Gotham’s shattered infrastructure and decimated industriesâ€¦

The Batman Family had never accepted that their mentor was dead and all their actions were predicated upon the premise that he would eventually return to reclaim his mantle. Thus as ‘Hush Money’ opened, they were all forced to publicly accept and even join the returned â€œBruce Wayneâ€ as he effectively dismantled the lost hero’s life’s work to popular adulationâ€¦

Simultaneously in the city’s darkest nooks and crannies Black Mask’s disciples began to chafe under his increasingly oppressive and unpredictable yoke. The mobster’s most radical action was to give free rein to knife-wielding serial killer Victor Zsasz, offering to bankroll the butcher’s scheme to industrialise and mass-produce his particular brand of bloodlettingâ€¦

As the new Batman finally finds a way to neutralise Hush’s bold imposture, this initial volume concludes with a dark and nasty tale following Zsasz’s escalation of terror and slaughter by focussing on the tightrope-thin line career criminals must walk in Gotham. ‘Business’ invades the personal space of illicit fixer the Broker as the premier â€œgo-to guyâ€ in the city at last discovers to his surprise that there some things he won’t – can’t – do, no matter how big the pay-off might beâ€¦

With astounding covers by Andrew Robinson, Alex Ross, J. G. Jones & Dustin Nguyen, this visceral, imaginative and deliciously off-balance frantic psycho-thriller sets the scene for even darker strides down the darkest avenues in all of comicsâ€¦

January 3, 2013January 2, 2013

Cable volume 3: Stranded

By Duane Swierczynski, Paul Gulacy, Gabriel Guzman, Mariano Taibo & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 979-0-7851-4167-9

The son of X-Man Scott Summers and a clone of Jean Grey, Nathan Christopher Summers was infected with a techno-organic virus as a baby. He was only saved by being sent through time, subsequently spending his formative years in the far future where he became an unlikely and largely unwilling saviour of assorted humankinds against mutant overlord Apocalypse and his vile minions such as the clone-warrior Stryfe.

Afflicted with a stubborn certainty that he always knew best – probably due to his hard-earned foreknowledge and weary experience of how bad the days to come would be – Nathan evolved into time-travelling super-soldier Cable and gradually inserted himself into the lives of key figures in mutant history: figures such as Professor Charles Xavier and his own father Cyclops – the Moses and King David of mutant-kindâ€¦

Using his phenomenal psionic abilities to hold at bay the incurable, progressive condition inexorably consuming his flesh and only held in check by the victim’s indomitable force of will, the mysterious grizzled veteran slowly began interacting with and reshaping the pastâ€¦

Hope Spalding-Summers was the first Homo Superior born on Earth after M-Day, when the temporarily insane mutant Avenger Scarlet Witch used her reality-warping powers to eradicate almost all fellow members of her terrifying sub-species from existence.

Considered by many to be some sort of mutant messiah, the newborn girl was â€œappropriatedâ€ by militant warrior Cable – no stranger to the role of Sole Saviour – who raised her in the furious future, training her in all manner of lethal survival skills before she inevitably found her way back to the present where she was adopted by X-Men supremo Scott Summers AKA Cyclops.

Hers was a horrifically memorable childhood as this slim, satisfying collection (gathering issues #16-20 of the monthly Cable comicbook from July-November 2009) will surely attestâ€¦

From the start Hope had implacable foes hunting her. The most resourceful was another time-tossed former X-Man, Lucas Bishop, who was convinced the child would cause the diabolically dystopian alternate reality he originated in. To prevent such horror ever occurring, Bishop determined to kill her before she could become a mutant anti-Christ and not even Cable’s frequent temporal relocations would deter himâ€¦

With the entire time-busting saga scripted by Duane Swierczynski, the action here begins with the 2-part ‘Too Late for Tears’ – illustrated by legendary comics icon Paul Gulacy – as Cable and nine-year-old Hope prepare to again jump into the safely camouflaging corridors of chronality after a particularly contentious battle.

However, the increasingly rebellious girl strikes out at her protector during a fateful moment and the time-shift goes wrongâ€¦

Hope materialises in the same post-apocalyptic location but two years earlier in time and, with no further information to go on, endeavours to make herself secure until Cable finds her. Stuck in her future, Cable patiently waits for her to â€œcatch upâ€ but his techno-viral contagion flares up and threatens to end his appalling life before she gets thenâ€¦

And 127 years prior to Cable’s latest crisis Bishop activates his own time-machine and remorselessly continues his pursuit of Hopeâ€¦

Stuck, but not without resources, the girl explores a dying Earth where only two warring cities are still inhabited. Soon she is approached by a young boy named Emil who is instantly smitten by the lethally self-sufficient waifâ€¦

Just as Cable forces back his latest bout of all-consuming transmogrification by invasive code, Bishop arrives and a deadly destructive but ultimately inconclusive battle breaks out. The follower’s plan is obsessively simple: as soon as he sees Hope he will end her by detonating a nuclear device inside his body.

But she isn’t with Cable any longerâ€¦

In another era, Emil has gradually broken Hope’s wall of distrust but, just as she feels she can finally relax, the girl discovers that the revered spiritual head of the boy’s band of survivors is her very familiar foe. The â€œArch-Bishopâ€ has been so patiently waiting for his time-bending bÃªte-noir to resurfaceâ€¦

The seemingly benevolent holy man has no problems wiping out his entire flock to finish her for good but Hope perpetually avoids him and Bishop just can’t trigger the nuke until he’s absolutely certain.

And two long years later, Cable moves into one of the two cities, makings plans, winning allies and waiting, waiting, waitingâ€¦

When at last 11-year old Hope is reunited with Cable, it’s as both cities are on the verge of mutual destruction and the mutant has no time for her protests. He has spent his time constructing a working space ship and after forcibly dragging his furious charge aboard takes off for the safety of space leaving a heartbroken Emil behind. Happily for the lovesick lad the wonderful Archbishop can also construct star-craft. Very soon they will all be reunitedâ€¦

Artists Gabriel Guzman & Mariano Taibo take over for the eerie alien encounter ‘Brood’ beginning with ‘Bishop Takes Pawn’ wherein Bishop and Emil lead their people into a final battle with Cable’s ship and crew on the edges of the solar system. Thankfully the boy finds Hope before the mutant hunter does and she convinces her long-lost paramour of the deranged cleric’s true intentions before falling to Bishop’s murderous rage.

With nuclear obliteration seconds away events overtake all the manic participants as both ships – locked together in the vacuum of deep space – are invaded by creatures even more ferociously dangerousâ€¦

The Brood are ghastly alien parasites and rapacious intelligent body-stealers who lay eggs in hosts and use the victims’ genetic material to augment their unborn generations. For uncounted centuries they have greedily hungered for the exceptional advantages gained by infecting mutants and metahumansâ€¦

In ‘Queen Takes Bishop’ the disgusting matriarch of the invading beasts specifically targets Hope as her overwhelming spawn decimate the last remnants of humanity aboard both ships. However, the little lass has met Brood before and knows just how to deal with them. Elsewhere Bishop and Cable also manage to survive the appalling assault, both obsessed with finding Hope for their drastically opposing reasonsâ€¦

As an entire space fleet of the noxious beasts zero in on the last humans alive, Bishop utterly succumbs to his obsession by allying himself with the Brood Queen to ensure the final fate of Hope, but has completely underestimated the child’s resiliency, Cable’s compulsive dutiful determination, and the unmatchable power of young love in the blazing conclusion ‘Checkmate’â€¦

Time-travel tales often disappoint and frequently make people’s heads hurt, but this bombastic romp (augmented by covers and variants by Dave Wilkins & Rob Liefeld) manages to always stick to the point, offering sly tributes – and some not so much – to Les Miserables and Alien whilst following the pain-wracked consumption of Cable by of his own non-fleshly invaders through a clever and poignant Fights ‘n’ Tights sci fi horror drama that will impress and delight older fans of the genre(s).

January 2, 2013January 5, 2013

R.E.B.E.L.S. volume 1: the Coming of Starro

By Tony Bedard, Andy Clarke, Claude St. Aubin, Scott Hanna & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-4012-2589-6

Once upon a time, DC’s vast pantheon of characters was sensibly scattered, segregated and wholly distinct: separated and situated on a variety of alternate Earths which comprised Golden Age hold-overs, contemporaneous Silver Age stars and later-created heroes. Further Earths were subsequently introduced for every superhero stable the company scooped up in a voracious and protracted campaign of acquisition over the decades. Charlton, Fawcett, Quality Comics and others characters resided upon their own globes, occasionally meeting in trans-dimensional alliances and apparently deterring new readers from getting on with DC.

In the aftermath of that event, the hero-packed planet Earth was targeted by a coalition of alien races and endured a full-on Invasion which was repulsed by the indomitable resistance of the World’s assembled heroes and villains and a few selected extraterrestrial allies. When the cosmic dust settled a few of these stayed together and formed cops-for-profit outfit dubbed L.E.G.I.O.N., led by a lying, scheming, manipulative obsessive super-genius bastard named Vril Dox: notional son of the villainous super-villain Brainiac of Colu and one of the most superciliously smug creatures in creation.

Overcoming all odds and the general distaste of his own chief lieutenants, Dox moulded his organisation into a force for justice and peace in the universe, with over 80 client worlds happily prospering, until his own son Lyrl – whilst still a baby – usurped control of the organisation: hunting Vril and his core agent team across the universe as desperate R.E.B.E.L.S. ruthlessly pursued by their own intergalactic commercial police force.

All that background is largely superfluous to the enjoyment of this latest iteration of the splendidly wry and cynical sci fi adventure series as history repeated itself in 2008, and another cosmic event forced DC’s assorted space sentinels into action again. Adam Strange, the Omega Men, Captain Comet and Dox’s L.E.G.I.O.N. again came to the fore and their intergalactic exploits again began to impinge on the fate of this island Earthâ€¦

Collecting the first six issues of the revived R.E.B.E.L.S. comicbook series concocted by scripter Tony Bedard, the superbly intoxicating action begins in ‘The Future is Now’ (illustrated by Andy Clarke) as a fugitive Vril Dox crashes on Earth fleeing from a team of bounty hunters.

To ensure no further insurrections by greedy – or worse yet, moralistic – employees, the 10^th Level Intellect had largely replaced all his annoyingly autonomous agents with robotic units, but that had simply enabled some bright spark to co-opt his entire intergalactic army – again! – and Dox was now a target for assassination by L.E.G.I.O.N.’s new owner, as well as many of the criminals and warlords the Coluan had previously antagonisedâ€¦

Within mere moments of reaching our embattled world Dox, hotly pursued by monstrous alien powerhouse Tribulus, its cyborg controller Getorix, super-psychic Skwaul and former elite L.E.G.I.O.N.-ary Amon Hakk, is confronted by Supergirl, keen on stopping the sheer carnage caused by the invaders’ battles.

Freshly returned from an extended stay in the 31^st century, the teenaged Kryptonian had been turned into the unwitting receptacle of a message from Dox’s distant descendent Brainiac 5, conveying data and specifications for Vril to construct a precursor brigade of the Legion of Super-Heroes to combat an imminent threat to the universeâ€¦

Dox, contrary as ever, was more impressed with the files on the LSH’s terrifying enemiesâ€¦

Elsewhere the outlaw warriors dubbed the Omega Men had learned of Dox’s predicament and become aware what a powerful, if untrustworthy, ally he would makeâ€¦

The action resumed at the South Pole as the ousted Coluan cop and the Girl of Tomorrow defeated the alien hunters and turned the nigh-mindless Tribulus into ‘The First Recruit’. Dox then fled Earth in search of fresh cannon-fodder for his future-foretold team and exploited rather than allied himself with the Omega Men before heading to a lost colony of Amerindian ex-slaves for his next target.

Nearly a millennium before, an entire tribe of Native Americans had been stolen and dumped on the distant world Starhaven where they had evolved into the Anasazi, winged trackers of immense power and sensitivity. Now Dox arrived and offered to give a weak and feeble outcast the gifts fate and feeble genetics had denied her. However, even though he kept his word, the thing that Wildstar became had good reason to regret her devil’s bargainâ€¦

‘A World of Hurt’ saw the new R.E.B.E.L.S. take the battle to the usurped L.E.G.I.O.N. hierarchy; along the way picking up old comrade and dedicated Dox-hater Strata – a woman of living stone and high moral standards – plus energetic new recruit Bounder.

Just as the robotic forces now commanded by artificial life-form and ambulatory computer server Silica begin mercilessly eradicating anybody connected with the Coluan’s old organisation, the utterly dispensible Omega Men attack L.E.G.I.O.N.’s HQ on Maltus and destroy the traitorous living computer which had taken over the organisation.

Covertly despatched by the manipulative Dox, the Omegans have inadvertently handed back control of the rent-a-cops to Dox, but in the digital woman’s corpse the victors find the first clues as to the real threat: an eerie starfish creature capable of controlling anything it possesses. Tragically, before they can react another Starro beast arrives – wearing the body of a brutal alien war goddess named Astrid Storm-Daughterâ€¦

With Claude St. Aubin & Scott Hanna taking over the art chores, ‘From Beyond’ kicks the already fast-paced thriller into maximum overdrive as Amon Hakk, Getorix and Skwaul are rescued from earthly imprisonment by Durlan shapeshifter Ciji, unaware that Dox is no longer the problemâ€¦

On Maltus, the surviving Omega Men narrowly escape the new threat but discover the entire planet – the most populous in the galaxy – has been taken: each citizen wearing a Starro seed and contributing their enslaved psychic resources to a hidden masterâ€¦

Meanwhile in another part of space the aggressive space faring hive-culture known as the Dominators are also under attack by the Starro slaves. However this is unlike any previous incursion by the frequently occurring stellar starfish: there’s an implacable devouring consciousness behind the assaults. Even the inimical, scientifically sadistic Psions are scared – as evidenced by their rescuing of their greatest enemies the Omega Men â€“ and propose an alliance to defeat a threat that is pouring into our galaxy from a cosmic hole into another existenceâ€¦

As ‘The Stars We Are’ opens, in the strategically crucial Xylon Expanse a vast subspace rift is disgorging a host of ships and super-powered slaves into one of the most populous areas of the galaxy – and a centre of L.E.G.I.O.N. influence. Even as the Dominator’s mighty empire falls in hours, Astrid Storm-Daughter attacks Dox’s ship just as Ciji’s forces arrive. With all sentient life threatened, this initial collection concludes with the superb ‘Dominator’ as Dox again pulls an intellectual rabbit out of his hat and traps the entire invasion force – and their space rift – behind an impenetrable, quadrant-wide force field. Locked within an inescapable, parsecs-wide box of force, the terrifying humanoid master of the Starros is safely contained in a relatively small buffer zone and prevented from all further expansion.

Of course stuck on the wrong side of the fence with him are Dox, his unwilling newfound enemies-turned-allies and billions of potential slave-sentients on hundreds of sitting-duck worldsâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

With a spectacular cover gallery by Andy Clark, Ed Benes, Rob Hunter, Kalman Andrasofszky, this slim tome offers a deliciously intoxicating blend of space opera and cosmic Fights ‘n’ Tights action that will push every button for fans of staggering science fiction thrills, cut with sharp, mature dialogue and sublimely beautiful artwork. Plain and simple rip-roaring, rollercoaster rocket riding fun that no devotee of the genres should missâ€¦

January 1, 2013January 5, 2013

Pogo: the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips volume 2: Bona Fide Balderdash

By Walt Kelly, edited by Carolyn Kelly (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-584-6

Tragically this review copy didn’t reach me in time for a Christmas recommendation, but that’s okay as books of this calibre are worth buying and reading at every moment of every day, and rather than waste your valuable time with my purely extraneous blather, you should just hit the shops or the online emporia of your choice and grab this terrific tome nowâ€¦

If you still need more though, and aren’t put off by me yet, I’m happy to elucidate at some lengthâ€¦

Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. was born in 1913 and started his cartooning career whilst still in High School, as artist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post. In 1935, he moved to California and joined the Disney Studio, working on short cartoon films and such features as Dumbo, Fantasia and Pinocchio until the infamous animator’s strike in 1941.

Refusing to take sides, Kelly moved back East and into comicbooks – primarily for Dell who held the Disney funnybook license amongst others at that time.

Despite his glorious work on such popular people-based classics as the Our Gang movie spin-off, Kelly preferred and particularly excelled with anthropomorphic animal and children’s fantasy material. For the December 1942-released Animal Comics #1 he created Albert the Alligator and Pogo Possum, wisely retaining the copyrights in the ongoing saga of two affable Bayou critters and their young African-American pal Bumbazine. Although the black kid soon disappeared, the animal actors stayed on as stars until 1948 when Kelly moved into journalism, becoming art editor and cartoonist for hard hitting, left-leaning liberal newspaper The New York Star.

On October 4^th 1948, Pogo, Albert and an ever-expanding cast of gloriously addictive characters began their funny pages careers, appearing in the paper six days a week until the periodical folded in January 1949.

Although ostensibly a gently humorous kids feature, by the end of its run (reprinted in full at the back of Pogo: the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips volume 1) the first glimmers of the increasingly barbed, boldly satirical masterpiece of velvet-pawed social commentary began to emergeâ€¦

When The Star closed Pogo was picked up for mass distribution by the Post-Hall Syndicate and launched on May 16^th 1949 in selected outlets. A colour Sunday page debuted January 29^th 1950 and both were produced simultaneously by Kelly until his death in 1973 (and even beyond, courtesy of his talented wife and family).

At its height the strip appeared in 500 papers throughout 14 countries and the book collections – which began in 1951 – eventually numbered nearly 50, collectively selling over 30 million copies, and all that before this Fantagraphics series beganâ€¦

In this second of a proposed full dozen volumes reprinting the entire canon of the Okefenokee Swamp citizenry, possibly the main aspect of interest is the personable Possum’s first innocently adorable attempts to run for Public Office – a ritual which inevitably and coincidentally reoccurred every four years whenever the merely human inhabitants of America got together for raucous caucuses and exuberant electioneering – but it’s also remarkable to note that by the close of this two-year period Kelly had increased his count of uniquely Vaudevillian returning characters to over one hundred. The likes of Solid MacHogany, Tammanany Tiger, Willow McWisper, Goldie Lox, Sarcophagus MacAbre, the sloganeering P.T. Bridgeport, bull moose Uncle Antler and a trio of brilliantly scene-stealing bats named Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred, amongst so many others would pop up with varying frequency and impact over the next twenty yearsâ€¦

This colossal and comfortingly sturdy landscape compilation (three-hundred-and fifty-six 184x267mm pages) includes the monochrome Dailies from January 1^st 1951 to December 31^st 1952, and the Sundays – in their own full-colour section – from January 7^th 1951 to December 28^th 1952 – all faithfully annotated and listed in a copious, expansive and informative Table of Contents. Supplemental features comprise a Foreword from pioneering comedy legend Stan Freberg, delightful unpublished illustrations and working drawings by Kelly, more invaluable context and historical notes in the amazing R.C. Harvey’s ‘Swamp Talk’ by and a biographical feature ‘About Walt Kelly’ by Mark Evanier.

In his time the satirical mastermind unleashed his bestial spokes-cast on such innocent, innocuous sweethearts as Senator Joe McCarthy, J.Edgar Hoover, the John Birch Society, Richard Nixon and the Ku Klux Clan, as well as the likes of Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson and – with eerie perspicacity – George W. Romney, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Governor of Michigan and Pa of some guy named Mittâ€¦

This particular monument to madcap mirth and sublime drollery of course includes the usual cast: gently bemused Pogo, boisterous, happily ignorant alligator Albert, dolorous Porkypine, obnoxious turtle Churchy La Femme, lugubrious hound Beauregard Bugleboy, carpet-bagging Seminole Sam Fox, pompous (doesn’t) know-it-all Howland Owl and all the rest, covering not only day to day topics and travails like love, marriage, weather, fishing, the problem with kids, the innocent joys of sport, making a living and why neighbours shouldn’t eat each other, but also includes epic sagas: the stress of Poetry Contests, hunting – from a variety ofÂ points of view – Christmas and other Public Holidays, incipient invasion, war and even cross-dressing to name but a fewâ€¦

As Kelly spent a good deal of 1952 spoofing the electoral race, this tome offers a magical, magnificent treatment of all the problems associated with grass (and moss) roots politics: dubious campaign tactics, loony lobbying, fun with photo ops, impractical tactical alliances, glad-handing, a proliferation of political promos and ephemera, how to build clockwork voters – and candidates – and of course, life after a failed run for the Presidencyâ€¦

As the delicious Miz Ma’m’selle Hepzibah would no doubt say: plus Ã§a change, plus c’est la mÃªme choseâ€¦

Kelly’s uncontested genius lay in his seemingly effortless ability to lyrically, vivaciously portray through anthropomorphic affectation comedic, tragic, pompous, infinitely sympathetic characters of any shape or breed, all whilst making them undeniably human, and he used that gift to blend hard-hitting observation of our crimes, foibles and peccadilloes with rampaging whimsy, poesy and sheer exuberant joie de vivre.

The hairy, scaly, feathered slimy folk of the surreal swamp lands are, of course, inescapably us, elevated by burlesque, slapstick, absurdism and all the glorious joys of wordplay from puns to malapropisms to raucous accent humour into a multi-layered hodgepodge of all-ages delight – and we’ve never looked or behaved betterâ€¦

This stuff will certainly make you laugh; it will probably provoke a sentimental tear or ten and will certainly satisfy your every entertainment requirement. Timeless and magical, Pogo is a giant not simply of comics, but of world literature and this magnificent second edition should be the pride of every home’s bookshelf, right beside the first one.

â€¦Or, in the popular campaign parlance of the critters involved: â€œI Go Pogo!â€ and so should you.

December 31, 2012January 5, 2013

Barack Hussein Obama

By Steven Weissman (Fantagraphics Books International)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-623-2

Steven Weissman was born in California in 1968 and grew up to be an exceptionally fine and imaginative cartoonist. He has worked for Alternative Comics, Last Gasp, Dark Horse, Marvel, DC, Vice and Nickelodeon Magazine among others, and his artistic sensibilities have been influenced and shaped by such disparate forces as Super-Deformed manga, â€œOur Gangâ€ comedies, Abbott and Costello, Dan Clowes, Mike Allred and Peanuts – the strip, not the foodstuff.

Much of his groundbreaking, award-winning early work, dating from the mid-1990s, offered a post-modern, skewed and alternative view of friendship, childhood, world weirdness and people’s meanness and can all be enjoyed over and over again in such stunning compilations as Tykes, Yikes!, Lemon Kids, Don’t Call Me Stupid, Mean, Chewing Gum in Church, White Flower Day, Chocolate Cheeks and others. The French and Japanese – who really know quality comics – love him lots.

In 2012 Weissman literally went back to the drawing board, un-and-recreating himself and his aesthetic methodology for a weekly online strip entitled Barack Hussein Obama which has since been collected into a stunning and unbelievably enchanting hardcover cartoon book about the unsuspected nature of modern America.

Spiky, acerbic, tellingly mundane and captivatingly absurdist, it follows the day to day tribulations of this ordinary shmoe who just happens to be the President of the USA as he distractedly fails to deal with that persistently annoying old Joe Biden guy, the pushy, overly excitable Rodham Clinton dame and that obnoxious oaf Newt all whilst trying to placate his testily disappointed wife and their terminally trendy kids Malia and Sasha.

It’s a full, if confusing life, always filled with minor crises. When he’s not being accidentally racist at Press Conferences or making jokes journalists don’t get, Barack is happily sharing old family recipes or chatting with foreign dignitaries he can’t understand, even if Joe is always butting in, telling him off and acting hurt whilst the Secret Service guy is constantly hanging around looking meanâ€¦

â€¦And then there’s that bad-tempered Clinton lady sneaking off to get cosy with sex-bomb Muammar el-Qaddafi, the recurring stiff-necked, stuck-up ghost of long-dead President James Garfield peddling advice, the ongoing hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the old lady who managed to steal Barack’s identity and bought all that pet food and piano lessons…

No wonder the President needs to occasionally slip away now and then to get totally bakedâ€¦

All in all though Barack thought it was going pretty well until the bird started talking to him. It wasn’t long before Mr. President transformed into a gigantic parakeet on Air-force One and headed for the peacefully deep blue skiesâ€¦

With guest appearances – sort of – by Truman Capote, Nicholas SarkÃ¶zy, Alfred E. Neuman, The Punisher’s War Journal and more, this is a look inside the Oval Office like none you’ve ever seen, but no matter how much Tea Party Republicans would like it to be, it certainly isn’t another searing expose of dubious shenanigans from the pretender to a stolen throne.

It is, though, a generous, gentle and spectacularly surreal trip into the head of a very special and oddly observant US citizen who has creatively concocted a world that all rulers and/or prospective despots should visit at least once.

This isn’t the real Obama, but it might well be the one the average American deservesâ€¦

A lot of very smart people are saying a lot of very deep, very clever and appreciative things about this deliciously winning book, so I won’t waste my time competing with them. I will however tell you that Barack Hussein Obama is one of the most enticing, intriguing and sheerly delightful reads of the last year and anybody with half a brain – or even more: more is always better – would be crazy not to pick up a copy.

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