Author: NowReadThis

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Carnage


By Zeb Wells & Clayton Crain ((Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-492-8

In the anything goes, desperate hurly-burly of the late 1980s and 1990s, fad-fever and spin-off madness gripped the superhero genre in America as publishers hungrily exploited every trick to bolster flagging sales. In the melee Spider-Man spawned an intractable enemy called Venom: a deranged and disgraced reporter named Eddie Brock who bonded with Peter Parker’s old costume (an semi-sentient alien parasite called the Symbiote) to become a savage, shape-changing dark-side version of the Amazing Arachnid.

Eventually the spidery adversaries reached a brooding détente and Venom became a “Lethal Protector”, dispensing a highly individualistic brand of justice everywhere but New York City.

At one stage the Symbiote went into breeding mode; creating a junior version of itself that merged with a deranged psycho-killer named Cletus Kasady (in Amazing Spider-Man #344, March 1991). Totally amoral, murderously twisted and addicted to both pain and excitement, Kasady became the terrifying metamorphic Carnage and the kill-crazy monster tore a bloody swathe through the Big Apple before an army of superheroes caught him and the equally deadly “family” of otherworldly killers Kasady had gathered around himself – as seen in the crossover epic Maximum Carnage.

Kasady swiftly became one of the most dangerous beings on Earth until he was finally killed; his remains dumped safely into high-Earth orbit.

However, “safe” is an extremely relative word…

He made his inevitable, memorable return in a five-issue miniseries which ran from October 2010 to June 2011 and now collected in this dark and impressive tome which describes how ruthless media mogul Michael Hall allows his greed, arrogance and imagined rivalry with inventive genius Tony Stark to put the entire planet at risk once more…

Dr. Tanis Nieves is the dedicated psychotherapist tasked with curing Carnage’s mind-warping mutant “girlfriend” Shriek, but when a mysterious corporation buys the mental facility she works at and begins “employing” her patient in a top secret enterprise she fears the worst. As Doppelganger, another monstrous family member of the Maximum Carnage Family, resurfaces she is embroiled in a brutal superhero clash and maimed by her new employer’s security forces…

Meanwhile Hall has announced a new generation of prosthetic replacements, which too-perfectly mimic the subtlest actions of living limbs, as well as a cadre of armoured super-warriors to match the invincible Iron Man.

But his proposed business campaign is plagued by problems and escalating bloodshed. When Spider-Man and the Armoured Avenger investigate, they discover the monstrous lengths Hall has stooped to in his bid to become World Leader in advanced tech and, as the horrors Hall has resurrected rapidly achieve a blood-soaked autonomy, not only does Kasady make his own catastrophic return but a new generation of Symbiote is also unleashed…

Intoxicating, gripping and stunningly intense, this is a breathtaking horror movie-meets-corporate thriller yarn by Zeb Wells that rightly downplays the costumed heroics of Iron Man and the Wall-crawler to better revitalise and reinvigorate the now truly terrifying Carnage… and then let him loose on the Marvel Universe once more.

The only slight quibble I can proffer is that in some places the astounding painted artwork of Clayton Crain is perhaps a tad too dark and moody for my tired old eyes: still, that’s a minor moan and equally antiquated readers can at least revel in the glorious gallery of alternate covers at the back by the serried likes of Arthur Adams and Patrick Zircher.

Sharp superheroics, devilish corporate skulduggery, stupendous suspense and well-earned comeuppances abound and this is a shocker no fright-night thrill-fan will want to miss.

™ & © 2011 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A., Italy. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.

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Batman: The Black Glove


By Grant Morrison, J.H. Williams, Tony S. Daniel & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-962-8

In all the furore and hype surrounding the death and inevitable resurrection of Batman by Grant Morrison everybody seemed so concerned with what was going to happen next that they appeared to sideline what was actually occurring in the monthly comicbooks they were holding in their hands.

Now with the dust long settled let’s take a look at one of the collected volumes comprising the extended campaign of psychological warfare the Dark Knight faced on the complex and rocky road to his demise and disappearance at the conclusion of Batman R.I.P. (and Final Crisis, if you’re of a nitpicky nature like all us true comics fans…)

In the build-up to that epochal event a sustained and vicious multi-pronged attack was launched against the Gotham Guardian by an all-encompassing criminal hegemony calling itself The Black Glove which succeeded in destabilising the already dubious mental equilibrium of the emotionally and physically burned out Batman.

The Glove’s enigmatic, quixotic leader Dr. Hurt was masterminding every minute aspect of the war and was merrily dredging up long-forgotten foes and cases Bruce Wayne had all but banished from his mind…

This volume collects the contents of monthly Batman comicbooks #667-669 and #672-675; two impressive story-arcs which intensively reference tales included in the associate compilation Batman: the Black Casebook – so you might want to keep that tome handy, even though the new stories herein can readily be enjoyed without it.

The first of these is a delightful play on the hallowed and time-tested “locked-room” mysteries and “ten little Indians” plots of traditional detective thrillers as a group of Batman-inspired heroes from around the world reunite on a desolate isle to mull over the old days and what might have been…

Their original meetings had occurred in ‘The Batmen of All Nations!’ (Detective Comics #215, January 1955 and included in Black Casebook with its sequel ‘The Club of Heroes’ appearing in World’s Finest Comics #89, July-August 1957 – and collected in Showcase Presents World Finest volume 1).

Against his better judgement Batman agrees to a attend a reunion of the club – after a decade of embarrassment and acrimony – on ‘The Island of Mister Mayhew’ the millionaire backer of the original enterprise and a movie producer who’s most notable effort was a thriller entitled “The Black Glove”.

Like a garish High School Reunion, the years have not been kind to many of the B-list champions, but things get much worse when their transport is destroyed and heroes start dying in ‘Now We Are Dead!’ before traitors are uncovered, impostors unmasked and the true culprits get away to menace another day in the spectacular conclusion ‘The Dark Knight Must Die!’

Scripted by Grant Morrison with stunning illustration from J.H. Williams III, this is top-rate, classic Batman fare and some of the survivors of this saga even made it into the later Batman Incorporated storyline…

The four-part drama that follows (the intervening issues having formed chapters of Batman: the Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul crossover saga) sees a series of violently degenerate substitute Batmen unleashed on Gotham, beginning in ‘Space Medicine’, as the first ersatz crusader targets cops and their long-suffering chief Commissioner Jim Gordon.

When the real Dark Knight gets involved he soon realises in ‘Joe Chill in Hell’ that an old, nigh-forgotten case not only offers clues to his current dilemma, but might also have sown the seeds of his eventual defeat or victory.

Life-saving hallucinations and deeper explorations reveal that a long-buried contingency plan to protect his sanity might not be enough when ‘Batman Dies at Dawn’ before it all astonishingly comes together when he finally confronts ‘The Fiend with Nine Eyes’ and realises who his true enemy is and always has been…

With astounding art by Tony S. Daniel, Ryan Benjamin, Jonathan Glapion, Mark Irwin, Sandu Florea & Saleem Crawford, this visceral, imaginative and deliciously off-balance frantic psycho-thriller sets the scene for the ultimate showdown in Batman R.I.P. …

© 2007, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Add Toner – a Cometbus Collection


By Aaron Cometbus (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-753-2

Before the advent of computers and the internet gave everybody with a keyboard and an ounce of determination the ability to become writers and publishers, only those truly dedicated, driven or Full-On Compulsive individualists self-published.

…Or those with something to say.

Aaron Cometbus (not his real name: use your search engine if you absolutely must find out about the man, but the best route would be to read his wonderful work) has been a drummer, roadie, author, designer, traveller, raconteur, social historian, bookseller and cultural anthropologist of the American Punk movement from long before he began his hugely acclaimed and long-running ‘Zine Cometbus in 1981.

In the decades over which his hand-crafted publication has been released (as photocopy pamphlet, offset magazine and even audio-mag) his writing and art have covered every aspect of the life of the contemporary outsider from self-exploratory introspection, reportage, criticism, oral history, music journalism, philosophical discourse and even unalloyed fiction – from epigram to novella, news bulletin to chatty remembrance – usually in a distinctive hand-lettered style all his own, augmented by cartoons, photo-collage, comics and a dozen other monochrome techniques beloved of today’s art-house cognoscenti.

Cometbus tells stories and has been doing so since the first death of the Punk Rock movement at the end of the 1970s, but the material is and always has been about real, involved people, not trendy, commercialised bastardisations.

In 2002 Last Gasp released Despite Everything, a 600+ page Omnibus distillation of the best bits from the first 43 issues (and still available) and now, with the publication of Cometbus #54,a second compilation has been released.

Add Toner, which samples issues #44-46, 46½, and 47-48 is a far more comprehensive collection with stories, reminiscences, interviews, artworks and added features such as the novella ‘Lanky’ and a selection of previously withheld and self-censored pieces which simply captivate and enthral.

Particularly informative and moving for me are the collected illustrated interviews with the “staff” and patrons of punk watering hole and communal meeting space Dead End Café from #46 (gloriously redolent and evocative of my own art-school punk band hang-out The Horn of Plenty in St. Albans) and a fabulous three-chapter oral history examination of the post-hippie “Back to nature” movement divided into interviews with ‘The Kids’, ‘The Adults’ and an appreciation of ‘Back to the Land’: a fascinating period in American history neglected by just about everybody, probably since most of those flower-power Arcadians and disenchanted just-plain-folks grew more pot than potatoes…

With graphic contributions and supplementary interviews from Phil Lollar, Nate Powell, Katie Glicksberg, Idon, Lawrence Livermore & Michael Silverberg, this is a gloriously honest and seditiously entertaining view of life from the trenches: happy, sad, funny and shocking…

Eccentric, eclectic and essentially, magically picayune, Add Toner is a fabulous cultural doctorate from the Kerouac of m-m-my generation…

© Aaron Cometbus. All rights reserved.

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Essential Ghost Rider volume 1


By Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, Mike Ploog, Jim Mooney, John Byrne & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1838-1

At the end of the 1960s American comicbooks were in turmoil, much like the youth of the nation they targeted. Superheroes had dominated for much of the decade; peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Older genres such as horror, westerns and science fiction returned, fed by radical trends in movie-making where another, new(ish) wrinkle had also emerged: disenchanted, rebellious, unchained Youth on Motorbikes seeking a different way forward.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Jack Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen, Captain America and many others all took the “Easy Rider” option to boost flagging sales (and if you’re interested the best of the crop was Mike Sekowsky’s tragically unfinished mini-masterpiece of cool Jason’s Quest in Showcase). Over at Marvel, a company still reeling from Kirby’s defection to DC/National in 1970, canny Roy Thomas green-lighted a new character who combined the freewheeling, adolescent-friendly biker-theme with the all-pervasive supernatural furore gripping the entertainment fields.

Back in 1967, Marvel published a western masked hero named Ghost Rider: a shameless, whole-hearted appropriation of the cowboy hero creation of Vince Sullivan, Ray Krank & Dick Ayers (Magazine Enterprises from 1949 to 1955), who utilised magician’s tricks to fight bandits by pretending to be an avenging phantom of justice.

Scant years later with the Comics Code prohibition against horror hastily rewritten – amazing how plunging sales can affect ethics – scary comics came back in a big way and a new crop of supernatural superheroes and monsters began to appear on the newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving mystery men titles.

In fact the lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an en masse creation of horror titles (new stories and reprints from the first boom of the 1950s), in response to the industry-wide down-turn in superhero sales, that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to (temporarily, at least) bite the dust.

Almost overnight nasty monsters (and narcotics – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare within four-colour pages and whilst a parade of pre-code reprints made sound business sense the creative aspect of the contemporary fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.

As always in entertainment, the watch-world was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible.

When proto-monster Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of shocking superstars – beginning with a werewolf and a vampire – before chancing something new with a haunted biker who could tap into both Easy Rider‘s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the supernatural zeitgeist.

The all-new Ghost Rider debuted in Marvel Spotlight #5, August 1972 (preceded by western hero Red Wolf in #1 and the aforementioned Werewolf By Night).

This copious compendium collects in moody monochrome the earliest exploits adventures from Marvel Spotlight #5-12, Ghost Rider #1-20 and an horrific crossover with Daredevil #138, beginning with that landmark first appearance which introduced stunt biker Johnny Blaze, his fatally flawed father-figure Crash Simpson and Johnny’s devoted girlfriend: sweet virginal Roxanne Simpson…

‘Ghost Rider’, plotted by Thomas, scripted by Friedrich and stunningly illustrated by Ploog, saw carnival cyclist Blaze sell his soul to the devil in an attempt to save his foster-father Crash from cancer. As is the way of such things, Satan followed the letter but not spirit of the contract and Simpson died anyway, but when the Dark Lord later came for Johnny Roxanne intervened, her purity preventing the Devil from claiming his due. Temporarily thwarted Satan afflicted Johnny with a body that burned with the fires of Hell every time the sun went down…

Haunting the night and terrorising thugs and criminals at first, the traumatised biker soon left the Big City and headed for the solitary deserts where in ‘Angels From Hell’ the flaming skulled fugitive joined a biker gang led by the enigmatic Curly Samuels: a resurrected agent of Satan attempting to destroy the protective Roxanne and claim Blaze.

No prizes for guessing Curly’s true identity then, when the next chapter (inked by Frank Chiaramonte) is entitled ‘Die, Die, My Daughter!’ before the origin epic concluded with a monumental battle against ‘…The Hordes of Hell!’ (with a rather uncomfortable artistic collaboration by Ploog and Jim Mooney) resulting in a torturous Cold War détente between the still nightly-transforming Blaze and Satan, as well as the introduction of a new eldritch enemy in Native American Witch Man Snake-Dance…

Marvel Spotlight #9 saw the tragically undervalued Tom Sutton take over the pencilling – with inks by Chic Stone – for ‘The Snakes Crawl at Night…’ as Medicine Man magic and demonic devil-worship combined to torment Johnny Blaze just as Roxanne went west to look for him. To further confound the cursed cyclist, Satan decreed that although he must feel the pain, no injury would end Johnny’s life until his soul resided in Hell… which came in very handy when Roxanne was sacrificed by Snake-Dance and the Ghost Rider had to battle his entire deviant cult to rescue her…

In #10 ‘The Coming of… Witch-Woman!’ (Friedrich, Sutton & Mooney) opened with Blaze, a fugitive from the police, rushing the dying Roxanne to hospital whilst on the Reservation tensions remained high as Snake-Dance’s daughter Linda Littletrees revealed her own connection to Satan, culminating in a devastating eldritch assault on Blaze in #11’s ‘Season of the Witch-Woman!’ (inked by the incomparable Syd Shores).

That cataclysmic conflict continued into Ghost Rider #1 (September 1973), which further extended the escalating war between Blaze and the devil, whilst introducing a new horror-hero who would take over the biker’s vacant spot in Spotlight.

Linda Littletrees wasn’t so much a Satan-worshipping witch as a ‘A Woman Possessed!’ but when her father and fiancé Sam Silvercloud called Boston-based exorcist Daimon Hellstrom for help, they were completely unprepared for the kind of assistance the demonologist offered.

With Roxanne slowly recovering and Blaze still on the run, issue #2 saw the bedevilled biker dragged down to Hell in ‘Shake Hands With Satan!’ (illustrated by Mooney & Shores) before the saga concluded in Marvel Spotlight #12 with the official debut of ‘The Son of Satan!’ by Friedrich, Herb Trimpe & Frank Chiaremonte, which revealed Daimon Hellstrom’s long-suppressed inner self to be a brutal scion of the Infernal Realm eternally at war with his fearsome father.

The released Prince of Hell swiftly rushed to Blaze’s aid – although more to spite his sire than succour the victim – and, with his own series off to a spectacular start, continued to take the pressure of the flaming-skulled hero. From Ghost Rider #3’s ‘Wheels on Fire’ (Friedrich, Mooney & John Tartaglione) a fresh direction was explored with more mundane menaces and contemporary antagonists such as the thuggish gang of Big Daddy Dawson – who had kidnapped the still frail Roxanne…

Blaze also learned to create a spectral motorcycle out of the Hellfire that perpetually burned through his body: a most useful trick considering the way he got through conventional transport…

Eager to establish some kind of normal life, the still wanted-by-the-cops Blaze accepted a pardon by the State Attorney General in #4’s ‘Death Stalks the Demolition Derby’ (inked by Vince Colletta) in return for infiltrating a Las Vegas showman’s shady operation, leading to another supernatural encounter, this time against a demonic gambler dubbed Roulette in ‘And Vegas Writhes in Flame!’ by the transitional creative team of Marv Wolfman, Doug Moench, Mooney & Sal Trapani.

With #6, ill-considered attempts to convert the tragic biker into a more conventional superhero began with ‘Zodiac II’ (story and concept by Tony Isabella & Friedrich) as Blaze stumbled into a senseless fight with a man who had all the powers of the old Avengers’ arch-foes. However there was a hidden Satanic component to the mystery as Johnny discovered when reformed super-villain turned TV star Stunt-Master turned up to help close the case and watch helplessly as the one-man Zodiac fell-foul of his own diabolical devil’s bargain in ‘…And Lose His Own Soul!’ (Isabella, Mooney & Jack Abel).

A final confrontation – of sorts – began in Ghost-Rider #8 as ‘Satan Himself!’ came looking for Johnny’s soul with a foolproof scheme to force Roxanne to rescind her protection, which she finally did as the Hell-biker battled Inferno, the Fear-demon and most of San Francisco in a game-changing epic called ‘The Hell-Bound Hero!’ wherein Blaze was finally freed from his satanic burden by the intervention of someone who appeared to be Jesus Christ…

The cover of issue #10 (by Ron Wilson and Joe Sinnott, I think) featured Ghost Rider battling the Hulk, but a deadline cock-up delayed that tale until #11 and the already included origin from Marvel Spotlight #5 filled those pages. Gil Kane & Tom Palmer reinterpreted the scene for their cover on next issue which finally detailed ‘The Desolation Run!‘ by Isabella, Sal Buscema, Tartaglione & George Roussos, as Johnny joined a disparate band of dirt-bikers in a desert race which collided with the legendarily solitary and short-tempered Green Goliath, after which artists Frank Robbins, Frank Giacoia & Mike Esposito recounted the fate of World War I fighter ace Phantom Eagle when Blaze tried to unknowingly attempted to rescue the warrior’s murderer from the ‘Phantom of the Killer Skies’…

Ghost Rider #13 declared ‘You’ve Got a Second Chance, Johnny Blaze!’ (Isabella, George Tuska & Colletta) as the terms of the hero’s on-going curse were changed again, just as the dissolute biker headed to Hollywood and a promised job as Stunt-Master’s body-double. No sooner had he signed up however, than Blaze became involved with starlet Karen Page – Daredevil’s one-time girlfriend – and a bizarre kidnap plot by super-villain The Trapster.

Not included here is a yarn where Ghost Rider and Spider-Man battled the demented biker bad-guy The Orb (you’ll need to track down Marvel Team-Up #15 or at least the first Essential Marvel Team-Up volume for that tale) which is a pity as ‘A Specter Stalks the Soundstage!’ features his revenge-hungry return attempt to destroy Blaze which spectacularly concludes with ‘Vengeance on the Ventura Freeway!’ (illustrated by Bob Brown & Don Heck).

Whilst hanging out on the West Coast Blaze joined new superteam The Champions, but they played no part in Bill Mantlo, Tuska & Colletta’s fill-in issue ‘Blood in the Waters’ as the Ghost Rider oh, so topically tangled with a Great White Shark in the gore-soaked California surf before #17 highlighted a team-up with the Son of Satan in ‘Prelude to a Private Armageddon!’ (by Isabella, Robbins & Colletta) wherein fellow stunt-actor Katy Milner was possessed by a demon and only Hellstrom could help.

The saga continued with ‘The Salvation Run!’ as Blaze was forced to race through the bowels of Hell and relive his own traumatic past before finally saving the day, Katy and his own much-tarnished soul in ‘Resurrection’.

All this time the mystery of Karen’s attempted abduction had been percolating through the subplots here, but explosively boiled over in Daredevil #138 as ‘Where is Karen Page?’ (by Wolfman, John Byrne & Mooney) revealed the machinations of criminal maniac Death’s-Head to be merely part of a greater scheme involving Blaze, Stunt-Master, the Man without Fear and the homicidal Death Stalker. The convoluted conundrum cataclysmically climaxed in Ghost-Rider #20 with ‘Two Against Death!’ by Wolfman, John Byrne & Don Perlin…

This spooky, black and white thriller compendium finishes the chilling action with Marvel Universe Handbook pages imparting all the background you could ever desire regarding Johnny Blaze and Daimon Hellstrom to truly complete your fear-filled fun fest.

One final note: backwriting and retcons notwithstanding, the Christian boycotts and moral crusades of a later decade were what compelled the criticism-averse and commercially astute corporate Marvel to “translate” the biblical Satan of these early tales into generic and presumably more palatable or “acceptable” demonic creatures such as Mephisto, Satanish, Marduk Kurios and other equally naff downgrades, but the original intent and adventures of Johnny Blaze – and indeed series spin-offs Daimon Hellstrom and Satana, respectively the  Son and Daughter of Satan, tapped into the period’s global fascination with Satanism, Devil-worship and all things Spooky and Supernatural which had begun with such epochal films as Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski’s 1968 film more than Ira Levin’s novel) and remember aren’t your feeble bowdlerised “Hell-lite” horrors.

These tales are about the real-deal Infernal Realm and a good man struggling to save his soul from the baddest of all bargains – as much as the revised Comics Code would allow – so brace yourself, hols steady and accept no supernatural substitutes…

© 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 2005 Marvel Characters, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

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Unlucky Wally


By Raymond Briggs (Hamish Hamilton/Sphere/Penguin)
ISBN: 978-0-24112-106-1(hb),

Sphere pb: 978-074740-065-3   Penguin pb: 978-0-74740-065-348

Cartoonist, political satirist, philosopher, social commentator and delighter of children Raymond Briggs never forgets that kids think too. Many of his books for younger people revel in their fascination with all things gross and disgusting and he never underestimates the young mind’s capacity for empathy and understanding. Moreover, unlike so many working in the children’s book industry he isn’t afraid to be morose or even sad…

The comics industry has always cheerfully neglected Briggs’s graphic narratives which have reached more hearts and minds than Spider-Man or Judge Dredd ever will, yet his books remain among the most powerful and important in the entire field.

His most famous works such as The Snowman, When the Wind Blows and Fungus the Bogeyman are but the tip of an incredibly impressive and uniquely British iceberg of dry wit, cheeky sarcasm and poignant fellow-feeling for even the most ghastly and graceless of protagonists.

After leaving Wimbledon School of Art, Central and The Slade – and completing a stint of National Service in Catterick – Briggs began work as an illustrator in 1958. He has produced 36 superb books; ranging from illuminating other creators’ poetry and stories to crafting his own dingily fabulous yarns such as this mordantly hilarious visual paean to the ultimate “Neveryman” of our modern world.

Unlucky Wally was first published in 1987 and details – in stunning, disgusting detail -the many and various physical, mental and emotional shortcomings of Mr. Wallace Burke: a man the universe just does not like…

Wally isn’t smart, isn’t determined and perpetually suffers from a list of hideous ailments, everything from out-of-control earwax to mega-pimples to suspect testicles. Moreover, whatever he doesn’t have, he thinks he does: Wally is an Olympic-level hypochondriac.

Even the natural world is out to get him: incontinent pigeons hang on for hours until Wally comes outside, maggots always cluster in his takeaway food and he’s never been in water that hasn’t got eels, frogspawn, leeches or jellyfish in it…

Yet even with all the repellent, repugnant and vile visions and situations potently pictured by the astoundingly gifted and iron-stomached Briggs in this painfully hilarious, blackly comedic treat, the author still manages to have a gentle last laugh on us all, by revealing a perfectly plausible happy ending for the unsavoury unfortunate who is surely (to some extent at least) an autobiographical extension of us all…

Foolish fun with a pertinent point to make, Unlucky Wally is lovely tale for an often unloving world and one older kids in an increasingly “looks-are-everything” culture will adore – so isn’t it about time it was back in print?
© 1987 Raymond Briggs. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks volume 15: Silver Surfer 1-5


By Stan Lee, John Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-631-7

Although pretty much a last minute addition to Fantastic Four #48-50’s ‘Galactus Trilogy’, Jack Kirby’s scintillating creation the Silver Surfer quickly became a watchword for depth and subtext in the Marvel Universe and one Stan Lee kept as his own personal toy for many years.

Tasked with finding planets for space god Galactus to consume and despite the best efforts of intergalactic voyeur Uatu the Watcher, one day the Silver Surfer discovered Earth, where the latent nobility of humanity reawakened his own suppressed morality; causing the shining scout to rebel against his master and help the FF save the world.

In retaliation, Galactus imprisoned his one-time herald on Earth, making him the ultimate outsider on a planet remarkably ungrateful for his sacrifice.

The Galactus Saga was a creative highlight from a period where the Lee/Kirby partnership was utterly on fire. The tale has all the power and grandeur of a true epic and has never been surpassed for drama, thrills and sheer entertainment. It’s not included here: for that treat you’ll need to see Essential Fantastic Four volume 3 or many other Marvel collections…

In 1968, after increasingly frequent guest-shots and even a solo adventure in the back of Fantastic Four Annual #5 (also omitted, but it is in Essential Fantastic Four volume 4) the Surfer finally got his own (initially double-sized) title at long last.

This stellar hardback deluxe edition collects the first five extra-length adventures from August 1968 to April 1969 and begins with ‘The Origin of the Silver Surfer!’ by Lee, John Buscema & Joe Sinnott who, after a prolonged flashback sequence and repeated examples of crass humanity’s brutal callousness and unthinking hostility, detailed how Norrin Radd, discontented soul from an alien paradise named Zenn-La, became the gleaming herald of a planetary scourge.

Radd had constantly chafed against a civilisation in comfortable, sybaritic stagnation, but when Galactus shattered their vaunted million years of progress in a fleeting moment, the dissident without hesitation offered himself as a sacrifice to save the world from the Devourer’s hunger.

Converted into an indestructible gleaming human meteor Radd agreed to scour the galaxies looking for uninhabited worlds rich in the energies Galactus needed to survive, thus saving planets with life on them from destruction. He didn’t always find them in time…

The stories in this series were highly acclaimed – if not commercially successful – both for Buscema’s agonised, emphatic and truly beautiful artwork as well as Lee’s deeply spiritual and philosophical scripts; with the isolated alien’s travails and social observations creating a metaphoric status akin to a Christ-figure for an audience that was maturing and rebelling against America’s creaking and unsavoury status quo.

The second 40 page adventure detailed a secret invasion by extraterrestrial lizard men ‘When Lands the Saucer!’ forcing the Surfer to battle the sinister Brotherhood of Badoon without human aid or even awareness in ‘Let Earth be the Prize!’…

A little side-note for sad nit-picking enthusiasts like me: I suspect that the original intention was to drop the page count to regular 20-page episodes from #2, since in terms of pacing both the second and third issues divide perfectly into two-parters, with cliffhanger endings and splash page/chapter titles that are dropped from #4 onwards.

Silver Surfer #3 is pivotal in the ongoing saga as Lee & Buscema introduced Marvel’s Satan-analogue in ‘The Power and the Prize!’

Mephisto is Lord of Hell and saw the Surfer’s untarnished soul as a threat to his evil influence on Earth. To crush the anguished hero’s spirit the demon abducted Norrin Radd’s true love Shalla Bal from still-recovering Zenn-La and tormented the Sentinel of the Spaceways with her dire distress in his sulphurous nether-realm…

The concluding chapter sees mortal angel of light and devil of depravity conduct a spectacular ‘Duel in the Depths’ wherein neither base temptations nor overwhelming force were enough to stay the noble Surfer’s inevitable triumph.

Just as wicked a foe then attempted to exploit the Earth-bound alien’s heroic impulses in #4’s ‘The Good, The Bad and the Uncanny!’ (inked by new art collaborator Sal Buscema) wherein Asgardian God of Evil Loki offered lies, deceit and even escape from Galactus’ terrestrial cage to induce the Silver Stalwart to attack and destroy the Mighty Thor; resulting in a staggering and bombastic clash that just builds and builds as the creative team finally let loose and fully utilised their expanded story-proportions and page count to create smooth flowing epic action-adventures.

This magical collection concludes with a powerful parable about race, prejudice and shared humanity when the Surfer was befriended by ostracised black physicist Al Harper in ‘…And Who Shall Mourn Him?’

As the two outcasts bonded the scientist realised he might have a way to free the Surfer from his Galactine incarceration, but as they put their plan into operation remorseless alien entity The Stranger turned up, determined to erase the potential threat mankind offered to the rest of the universe. To stop him both Harper and Norrin Radd had to sacrifice everything they cherished most for a world that didn’t care if they lived or died…

The Silver Surfer was always a pristine and iconic character when handled well Рand sparingly Рand these early forays into a more mature range of adventures, although perhaps a touch heavy-handed, showed that there was far more to comicbooks than cops and robbers or monsters and misfits. That exploratory experience and mystique of hero as Christ allegory made the series a critically beloved but commercially disastrous cause celebr̩ until eventually financial failure killed the experiment.

After the Lee/Kirby/Ditko sparks had initially fired up the imaginations of readers in the early days, the deeper, subtler overtones and undercurrents offered by stories like these kept a maturing readership enthralled, loyal and abidingly curious as to what else comics could achieve if given half a chance and this fabulously lavish tome offers the perfect way to discover or recapture the thrill and wonder of those startlingly different days and times
© 1968, 1969, 1990 Marvel Entertainment Group/Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Flash: Crossfire


Geoff Johns, Scott Kolins, Doug Hazlewood & various (DC)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-852-5

There are many super-speedsters in the DCU and most of them congregate around the conjoined mid-western metropolis of Keystone and Central City. Wally West, third hero to claim the mantle of the Flash, lives there with his new wife Linda Park, his aunt Iris, and fellow Vizier of Velocity Jay Garrick – the original Fastest Man Alive.

Created by Gardner Fox & Harry Lampert, Garrick debuted in Flash Comics #1 (January 1940). “The Fastest Man Alive” wowed readers for over a decade before changing tastes benched him in 1951. The concept of speedsters and superheroes in general was successfully revived in 1956 by Julie Schwartz in Showcase #4 when police scientist Barry Allen became the second hero to run with the concept.

The Silver Age Flash, whose creation ushered in a new and apparently unstoppable era of costumed crusaders, died heroically during Crisis on Infinite Earths and was promptly succeeded by his sidekick Kid Flash. Of course, Allen later returned from the dead – but then again, doesn’t everyone?

The Flash: Crossfire (reprinting issues #183-191 of the monthly comicbook and portions of Flash: Secret Files #3) continues the astounding extended epic begun in Blood Will Run and Rogues – so you’d better have read those first – as Wally continued to fight a high-speed, all-out war on two fronts against a seemingly endless parade of super-villains and a deadly new/old AI villain, which is attempting to seize control of the twinned-metropolis of Keystone and Central City and the united mind of all humanity.

The rollercoaster action is initiated with the introduction of a new, nastier iteration of classic Rogue The Trickster in ‘Crossfire Prologue: Tricked!’ by revolutionary writer Geoff Johns, artists Scott Kolins & Doug Hazlewood and sublimely gifted colourist James Sinclair as the neophyte villain is introduced to the colossal criminal enterprise dubbed The Network; a national clearing house for loot and costumed looters run by the malevolent Blacksmith…

Crossfire proper opens with ‘Run Program’ and the tragic news that Joan Garrick, wife of half a century to the veteran hero, is dying of cancer. A little later Linda Park-West is attacked and suborned by evil electronic life form The Thinker in Keystone, but Wally is too busy to notice since an army of super-criminals has mounted a devastating assault on Central City…

Just when it seems too much threat for even the Scarlet Speedster to cope with, ‘Hide and Seek’ finds the Flash’s enemies attacking each other. The Thinker wants Wally for the World’s fastest computer processor whereas Blacksmith’s brigade just wants him dead…

As unconventional cops Morillo and Chyre discover just how different they are from your average Boys in Blue and launch their own counter-attack, the malignant AI invades Flash’s brain and both Keystone and Central City become explosive dual killing fields in ‘The Thinking Man’ with the war between Rogues and cybernetic parasite heating up to crisis point.

‘Run-Down’ (with additional inks from Dan Panosian) started the heroic fight-back as Wally began moving faster than thought to crush the conqueror inside his head and ex-Teen Titan Cyborg joined him to conclude the epic confrontation of ‘Metal and Flesh’.

In the aftermath Flash learned that Blacksmith had been acting to isolate the hero for months, but with her finally gone the surviving Rogues got a new leader just as Wally and Linda heard some truly shocking news..,

Rick Burchett & Dan Panosian then illustrated a tale of civic, civil and social reconstruction in ‘Messengers’ before Flash’s friend and reformed Rogue the Pied Piper – framed for murder and held in penal Hellhole Iron Heights and utterly unaware that he had already been cleared of all wrongdoing – became a desperate fugitive in the Justiano & Walden Wong limned ‘Rat Race’…

This volume concludes with a spectacular Kolins & Hazlewood fantasy thriller ‘The Brave and the Beaten’ with the battle-crazed Hawkman guest-starring in a classic fantasy-fest wherein demonic Brother Grimm returned (see Flash: Wonderland) to once more abduct and seduce Wally’s wife Linda…

Even with order restored, however, there’s a foreboding glimpse at even worse perils to come…

Also included in this magical Fights ‘n’ Tights bonanza is a gallery of covers from Kolins and Brian Bolland plus a Who’s Who entry revealing all you need to know about Iron Heights and its decidedly draconian and peculiarly hinky warden Gregory Wolfe…

These lightspeed-paced, all-action tales are the absolute acme of modern superhero comics: sharply written, enticingly drawn and designed to thrill the socks of the stunted eight year old in our heads.

Fun, furious and fantastic, The Flash has always epitomised the very best of fantasy fiction and these tales are more cream of that crop. The Geoff Johns years are slick and absolutely addictive: engrossing, rapid-paced, classily violent and often genuinely scary. If you haven’t seen them yet, run – don’t walk to your nearest dealer or on-line vendor and catch all the breathless action you can handle, lickety-split!
© 2002, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine


By Jason Aaron, Adam Kubert & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-476-8

Remember when comic stories were fun, thrilling and, best of all, joyously uncomplicated? Clearly a few people at Marvel still do if the six issue miniseries collected here as Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine is anything to go by…

Eschewing mind-boggling continuity-links and crossover overload, writer Jason Aaron and artist Adam Kubert, with the impressive support of inkers Mark Morales, Dexter Vines & Mark Roslan (as well as colourist Justin Ponsor and letterer Rob Steen) simply set out to craft a well-told, action-packed and even poignant time-travel fun-fest that does everything right… and superbly succeed.

Without giving away too much delicious detail – trust me you’ll be grateful once you read the full epic adventure – sixty-five million years ago, as a giant asteroid hurtles towards Earth and an impact which will wipe out the dinosaurs and at least two emergent species of proto-hominid, a warring couple of marooned superheroes from the 21st century sadly make peace with their fate if not each other.

Lost in time for months through the most ridiculous of circumstances, Wolverine and Peter Parker are ready to die. The feral mutant has become leader of the smart but diminutive Small People, leading them to salvation from the predations of their giant evolutionary rivals the Kill People and all other threats, whilst the erstwhile Spider-Man has isolated himself from all contact, terrified of rewriting the future even if he is no longer part of it.

Moreover, Parker’s dreams are haunted by a woman he doesn’t know, but who has become the only thing he cares for…

At a most precipitous moment the pair are snatched from their time zone and returned to what appears to be an utterly devastated present. The Small People have survived humanity’s fall and are new rulers of a shattered society, but now are at risk of losing their own shot as overlords of Earth. A fresh Armageddon from leftover human technology, a time-travelling z-list villain and a terrifying sentient planet with the ghost consciousness of Doctor Doom appears to be about to end civilisation one more time…

After Wolverine saves the day and is brought back from beyond death by Parker, they are separated in time and dumped at significant and harrowing moments of each other’s early life; but all the while sinister forces wielded by a hidden cosmic mastermind are manipulating not just the heroes but time itself…

After literally saving the world and perhaps the universe, the heroes are still hunted and continually assaulted by Temporal Gangstas The Czar and Big Murder, until Spider-Man and Wolverine finally strike back and seemingly triumph, only to be stranded in the American west for years.

At least this time Peter is happily united with the mysterious girl of his dreams.

However the epic is far from finished and heartbreak is just around the chronal corner…

Fast-paced, spectacular, incredibly ingenious and uproariously witty, this tale is a sparkling timeless gem and the perfect antidote for over-angsty costumed drama overload.

™ & © 2011 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A., Italy. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.

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Superman: The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen


By Otto Binder, Curt Swan, Ray Burnley & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1369-5

Although unnamed, a red-headed, be-freckled plucky kid worked alongside Clark Kent and Lois Lane from Action Comics #6 (November 1938) and was called by his first name from Superman #13 (November-December 1941) onwards. That lad was Jimmy Olsen and he was a major player in The Adventures of Superman radio show from its debut on April 15th 1940; somebody for the hero to explain stuff to for the listener’s benefit and the closest thing to a sidekick the Man of Tomorrow ever needed…

When the similarly titled television show launched in the autumn of 1952 it became a monolithic hit and National Periodicals began cautiously expanding their valuable franchise with new characters and titles. First up were the gloriously charming, light-hearted escapades of the rash, capable but naïve photographer and “cub reporter” from the Daily Planet: new star of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, which launched in 1954 with a September-October cover date.

The comic was popular for more than two decades, blending action, adventure, broad, wacky comedy, fantasy and science fiction in the gentle manner scripter Otto Binder had perfected a decade previously at Fawcett Comics on the magnificent Captain Marvel. As the feature progressed one of the most popular plot-themes (and most fondly remembered and referenced today by most Baby-Boomer fans) was the unlucky lad’s appalling talent for being warped, mutated and physically manipulated by fate, aliens and even his friends…

The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen delightfully collects some of the very best and most iconic tales from the series all of which originally appeared in issues #22, 28. 31-33, 41-42, 44, 49, 53, 59, 65, 72, 77, 80, 85 and 105 of the comicbook, as well as the lead story from the giant anthology Superman Family #173, into which Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen evolved.

The spellbinding wonderment begins with a selection of beautifully reconfigured covers (from issues 22, 44, 59 and 105) which act as contents and credit pages after which the story segments open with ‘The Super-Brain of Jimmy Olsen’ by Binder, Curt Swan & Ray Burnley, wherein resident crackpot genius Professor Phineas Potter evolved the boy into a man from 1,000,000AD. The seemingly benevolent being seems to have a hidden agenda however and is able to bend Superman to his will…

The same creative team produced ‘The Human Skyscraper’ with another Potter production enlarging Jimmy to monumental size, whilst in ‘The E-L-A-S-T-I-C Lad’ Superman was ultimately responsible for the reporter gaining stretching powers after leaving a chest of alien artefacts with the nosy, accident-prone kid.

‘The Jimmy Olsen from Jupiter’ by Alvin Schwartz, Swan & Burnley saw aliens mutate him into one of their scaly selves, complete with mind reading powers, whilst Binder’s ‘The Human Flame-Thrower!’ saw Potter’s latest experiment cause the worst case of high-octane halitosis in history, after which Robert Bernstein, Swan & John Forte displayed the lad’s negligent idiocy when Jimmy ate alien fruit and became ‘The Human Octopus!’

Craig Flessel inked the hilarious and ingenious ‘Jimmy the Genie!’ in which boy and magical sprite exchanged roles after which ‘The Wolf-Man of Metropolis!’ , by Binder, Swan, Stan Kaye, blended horror, mystery and heart-warming charm in a mini-classic of the genre.

Professor Potter was blamed for, but entirely innocent of, turning Jimmy into ‘The Fat Boy of Metropolis!’ – a daft but clever crime caper from Swan & Forte – whilst sheer mischance resulted in the now-legendary saga of ‘The Giant Turtle Man!’ and his oddly casualty-free rampage (courtesy of scripter Jerry Siegel) before Leo Dorfman, Swan & George Klein collaborated to produce the sparkling tale of alien love gone amiss, which resulted in our boy temporarily becoming ‘Jimmy Olsen, Freak!’

When Jimmy spurned the amorous attentions of supernatural Fifth Dimensional babe Miss Gzptlsnz, she quite understandably turned him into ‘The Human Porcupine’ by Siegel, Swan & Klein, who also crafted the intriguing enigma of ‘The World of Doomed Olsens!’ wherein Jimmy was confronted by materialisations of his most memorable metamorphoses…

‘The Colossus of Metropolis!’ saw Jimmy deliberately and daringly grow into a giant to tackle the rampaging Super-Ape Titano, whilst Siegel, Forte & Klein’s ‘Jimmy Olsen, the Bizarro Boy!’ was a merry comedy of errors with Potter’s cure for the backwards-living Bizarro beings going painfully awry, resulting in the poor lad being ‘Exiled on the Bizarro World!’

The immensely popular Legion of Super-Heroes guest-star in many of these tales and play a pivotal part in ‘The Adventures of Chameleon-Head Olsen!’, a madcap mirth spree as only Siegel, Forte & Klein could make ’em, whilst the far more menacing tale of ‘The World of 1,000 Olsens!’, by Binder, E. Nelson Bridwell & Pete Costanza was a product of changing times and darker tastes; with an actual arch-enemy trapping Jimmy on a murderous planet where everybody looks like but hates the cub reporter…

This fabulously strange brew concludes with a smart thriller set in the Bottled City of Kandor where Jimmy resumed his costumed-hero identity of Flamebird beside Superman to save the last Kryptonians from the ‘Menace of the Micro-Monster!’ …a sharp terrorist shocker by Cary Bates & Kurt Schaffenberger which satisfyingly closes this magically engaging tome.

As well as relating some of the most delightful episodes of the pre angst-drenched, cosmically catastrophic DC, these stories also perfectly depict the changing mores and tastes which reshaped comics from the safe 1950s to the seditious, rebellious 1970s, all the while keeping to the prime directive of the industry – “keep them entertained and keep them wanting more”.

I know I certainly do…

© 1957-1965, 1967, 1975, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks (volume 6): The Fantastic Four 11-20


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers, Steve Ditko & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-481-0   Second edition 978-0-7851-0980-8

After blasting into the comics-buying consciousness and swiftly garnering a devoted following in 1961 “the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” continued to live up to its boast in an astounding succession of boldly experimental, evocatively enthralling and amazingly human funny, thrilling and completely compelling sequential sagas.

This second deluxe hardcover compilation carries on reprinting those groundbreaking classics in lavish full-colour splendour, re-presenting Fantastic Four #11-20, originally released between February and November 1963, and almost unanimously the result of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers’ close and effective collaboration.

Actually I’m possibly rewriting history just a bit here. The innovations continued but didn’t always hit the mark, as tellingly described in Lee’s effusive introduction to this volume.

Issue #11 had two short stories instead of the usual book-length yarn; ‘The Impossible Man’ – a baddie-free yet compellingly light-hearted tale about a fun-seeking but obnoxiously omnipotent visitor from the stars and ‘A Visit with the Fantastic Four’, which offered background into the characters plus a behind-the-scenes travelogue of off-duty life with the team which mischievously reiterated the novel fact the heroes collected and read a comic book about themselves…

Fans hated the issue at the time but now these vignettes are considered some of the most effective tales of that formative period…

Fantastic Four #12 featured an early crossover experiment when the team were asked to help the US army capture ‘The Incredible Hulk’ (whose own short-lived title had recently been cancelled). This tense cold-war spy and sabotage thriller set the ground rules for many a two-fisted clash between the Jade Goliath and the blockbusting Thing…

This was followed by ‘Versus the Red Ghost and his Incredible Super Apes!’ another politically-charged, commie-baiting drama pitting Marvel’s First Family against a Soviet scientist in the space-race to the Moon: a tale notable not only for the supremely moody inking of Steve Ditko (replacing the adroit Ayers for one month) over Kirby’s astounding pencils but also for the introduction of the cosmic voyeurs called The Watchers and the discovery of the intoxicatingly intriguing lost city in the “Blue Area of the Moon”.

Issue #14 featured the return of ‘The Sub-Mariner and the Merciless Puppet Master!’ with the Atlantean Prince a hapless pawn of the mind-controlling doll-despot’s revenge plot, promptly followed by ‘The Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android!’ a chilling war of intellects with plenty of room for all-out action as a master-strategist manipulated the team into splitting up in order to steal all Reed Richards’ scientific secrets.

FF #16 revealed ‘The Micro-World of Doctor Doom!’ in a spectacular other-worldly rollercoaster action-romp guest-starring new hero Ant-Man, after which the incorrigible Iron-Clad villain promptly returned with infallible, deadly traps a month later when the quartet were almost ‘Defeated by Doctor Doom!’

A shape-changing super-alien with all their cosmically induced powers was next to menace our heroes when ‘A Skrull Walks Among Us!’ and issue #19 introduced another of the company’s top-ranking super-villains when the FF became ‘Prisoners of the Pharaoh!’ whilst exploring ancient Egypt seeking a cure for the blind sculptress Alicia Masters. This time travel tale has been revisited by so many writers that it is considered one of the key-stone stories of Marvel continuity.

Fantastic Four #20 concludes this compendium with a terrifying new foe, as the compulsorily aloof Watcher broke his eternal vow of neutrality to warn the heroes of a potential threat to all Existence before standing back and letting them do all the hard work by defeating ‘The Mysterious Molecule Man!’

Also included in this tantalising tome is a splendid Thing pin-up and a brace of pseudo-scientific Fantastic Four Feature Pages by Lee, Kirby & Ayers telling all you need to know about the powers of the Human Torch.

Although possibly – just, perhaps – a little dated in tone, these are undoubtedly graphic classics of comic story-telling illustrated by one of the world’s greatest talents just approaching his mature peak: fast, frantic fun and a joy to read or re-read. This comprehensive, joyous introduction (or even reintroduction) to these characters is a wonderful reminder of just how good comic books can – and should – be.
© 1963, 1964, 1988, 2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.