NowReadThis

May 30, 2013May 29, 2013

Essential Killraven

By Don McGregor & P. Craig Russell, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Bill Mantlo, Neal Adams, Herb Trimpe, Gene Colan & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1777-3

When the first flush of the 1960s superhero revival began to fade at the end of the decade Marvel, who had built their own resurgent renaissance on the phenomenon, began desperately casting around for new concepts to sustain their hard-won impetus. The task was especially difficult as the co-architect of their success (and the greatest and most experienced ideas-man in comics) had jumped ship to arch-rival National/DC, where Jack’s Kirby’s battalion of Fourth World series, The Demon, Kamandi, Last Boy on Earth and other innovations were opening up new worlds of adventure to the ever-changing readership.

Although a global fascination with the supernatural had gripped the public – resulting in a huge outpouring of mystery and horror comics – other tried-and-true genre favourites were also revived and rebooted for modern sensibilities: westerns, war, humour, romance, sword & sorcery and science fictionâ€¦

At this time Stan Lee’s key assistant, star writer, ex-English teacher and lover of literature Roy Thomas was increasingly dictating the direction of Marvel: creating new concepts and securing properties that could given the â€œMarvel Treatmentâ€.

The policy had paid huge dividends with the creation of new titles Tomb of Dracula, Monster of Frankenstein and Werewolf by Night, whilst the brilliantly compelling Conan the Barbarian had quickly resulted in a whole new comicbook genusâ€¦

This compilation collects the bold and mercurial science-fiction thriller from Amazing Adventures #18-39, the saga’s nominal conclusion in Marvel Graphic Novel #7, a rare crossover appearance from Marvel Team-Up #45 and the 2001 Marvel Knights one-shot Killraven #1: an eclectic and admittedly inconsistent hero-history that has at times been Marvel’s absolute best and strong contender for worst character, in a sporadic career that spanned May 1973 to 1983 with occasional revivals and near-conclusions ever since.

The feature struggled for a long time to carve out a solid identity for itself, but finally found a brilliantly effective and fantastically poetic voice when scripter Don McGregor arrived – and stayed – slowly recreating the potential epic into a perfectly crafted examination of contemporary American society in crisis; proving the old adage that all science fiction is about the Present and not the Futureâ€¦.

He was ideally complimented in his task by fellow artisan P. Craig Russell whose beautifully raw yet idealised art matured page by page over the long, hard months he illustrated the author’s increasingly powerful and evocative scripts.

The dystopian tomorrow first dawned in Amazing Adventures #18, conceived by Thomas & Neal Adams, but scripted by Gerry Conway, wherein a ‘Prologue: 2018 A.D.’ introduced a New York City devastated by invasion and overrun by mutants, monsters and cyborgs all scavenging for survival. The creative process was a very troubled one. Adams left the project in the middle of illustrating the debut episode, leaving Howard Chaykin & Frank Chiaramonte to finish the tale of how a refugee mother lost her life defending her two boys from terrifying alien Tripods and vile human turncoats who had early switched allegiance to their revolting, human-eating new mastersâ€¦

Young warrior and escaped gladiator Killraven then overcame all odds to kill a monstrous genetic manipulator dubbed the Keeper and save his brother Joshua, only to discover his sibling long gone and his despised tormentor grateful for death.

The elderly scientist had been compelled to perform many mutagenic experiments for his alien masters but had secretly enacted a Machiavellian double-cross, creating hidden powers in Jonathan Raven which might eventually overthrow the conquerors.

All the boy had to do was survive their horrific arena games until he was old enough to rebel against the Martians who had occupied Earth since 2001â€¦

With his dying breath, Keeper provided his uneducated murderer with the history of ‘The War of the Worlds!’: of Free Mankind’s furious futile, atomic last stand and how the conquerors had possessed the shattered remnant of Earthâ€¦

He reveals how his gladiatorial training and scientific abuses shaped Killraven into the perfect tool of liberation and retribution, even to the warrior’s recent escape and first attempts at raising a resistance movementâ€¦

However just as the story ends the liberator realises he has tarried too long as mutant monsters close inâ€¦

The adventure resumed in #19 as the rebel narrowly escaped the psionic snares of ‘The Sirens of 7^th Avenue’ (Conway, Chaykin & Frank McLaughlin) and the myriad terrors of the devastated metropolis to link up with second-in-command M’Shulla and strike a heavy blow against the alien butchers by destroying two hulking mechanical Tripods.

Newly elevated to the status of genuine threat to the conquerors, the rebels planned a raid on a New Jersey base but were instead captured by the mesmerising Skarlet, Queen of the Sirens, who handed them over to the Martian in charge of the cityâ€¦

Forced to fight a mutated monstrosity in the alien’s private arena, Killraven unexpectedly turned the tables and drove off the gelatinous horror before boldly declaring that he was the guardian of Mankind’s heritage and would make Earth free againâ€¦

Amazing Adventures #20 was written by Marv Wolfman, with Herb Trimpe & Frank Giacoia illustrating ‘The Warlord Strikes!’, wherein the Freemen raided a museum and acquired weapons and armaments even as Killraven got himself a new look.

Easily defeating the traitorous lackeys of the Martian Masters the rebels were blithely unaware that the carnivorous extraterrestrial devils were deploying their latest tool: a cruelly augmented old enemy who hunted them down and easily overcame their primitive guns, swords and cross bows with his own onboard cyborg arsenalâ€¦

The ambitious series was already floundering and dearly needed a firm direction and steady creative hands, so it’s lucky that the concluding chapter in #21 (November 1973) saw the debut of Don F. McGregor, a young ambitious and lyrically experimental writer who slowly brought depth of character and plot cohesiveness to a strip which had reached uncanny levels of clichÃ© in only three issues.

With Trimpe & â€œYolande Pijckeâ€ illustrating, ‘The Mutant Slayers!’ began the necessary task of re-establishing the oppressive, hopeless, all-pervasive horror and loss of Well’s original novel.

Determined to translate the concept into modern terms for the new generation of intellectual, comics-reading social insurgent, McGregor also took the opportunity to introduce the first of a string of complex, controversial and, above all, powerful female characters into the mixâ€¦

Carmilla Frost was a feisty, sharp-tongued geneticist and molecular biologist ostensibly faithful to her Martian masters, but she took the earliest opportunity to betray their local human lieutenant and help Killraven and the Freemen escape the brutal clutches of the Warlord.

For her own closely-guarded reasons, she and her bizarrely devoted monster anthropoid Grok the Clonal Man then joined the roving revolutionaries in their quest across the shattered continentâ€¦

In issue #22 (illustrated by Trimpe & Chiaramonte), the motley crew arrived in the former capital and encountered a ‘Washington Nightmare!’ After defeating a band of slavers led by charismatic bravo Sabre, Killraven formed an uneasy alliance with local rebel leader Mint Julep and her exclusively female band of freedom-fighters.

The green-skinned warrior woman had also battled Sabre and cautiously welcomed Killraven’s offer of assistance to rescue her captured comrades from the literal meat-market of the Lincoln Memorial, where flesh-peddling mutant horror Abraxas auctioned tasty human morsels to extraterrestrial patrons.

The raid went badly however, and it was Killraven himself who ended up on the conquerors’ menu in ‘The Legend Assassins!’ wherein the newly liberated resistance fighters united in a last-ditch attempt to save their tempestuous leader from the High Overlord.

Killraven, meanwhile, found himself main course in a public propaganda-feeding/execution, about to be devoured by a debased vermin-controlling freak named Rattackâ€¦

The hero’s faithful followers – including gentle, simple strongman Old Skull and embittered Native American Hawk – arrived just in time to join the furious fray in #24’s spectacular ‘For He’s a Jolly Dead Rebel’ (inked by Jack Abel) but their escape was only temporary and they were quickly recaptured.

However their example impressed more than one disaffected collaborator. When former foes led by Sabre united in battle against the Martian Overlord, the result was a shattering defeat for the once-unbeatable oppressorsâ€¦

Amazing Adventures #25 introduced a returning nemesis for the charismatic rebel and his freedom fighters in ‘The Devil’s Marauder’ (art by Rich Buckler & Klaus Janson), as Killraven inconclusively clashed with Cyclopian Martian flunky Skar. During the battle the hard-pressed human was unexpectedly gripped by a manifestation of hidden psychic power – granting him visions he could not comprehendâ€¦

Travelling across country the rebels had stumbled onto another forgotten glory of Mankind’s past in the state once dubbed Indiana. The race circuit of the Indianapolis 500 was now a testing-ground for new terror-tripods and thus a perfect target for sabotage. However, when the fury-filled Killraven tackled human-collaborators and the sinister Skar returned, the incensed insurgent stepped too far over ‘The Vengeance Threshold!’â€¦

In issue #26 Gene Colan & Dan Adkins illustrated ‘Something Worth Dying For!’ as the Freemen reached Battle Creek, Michigan where the Rebel Rouser encountered a feral snake/horse hybrid that he simply had to possess before the band was ambushed by human outlaws guarding a fabulous ancient treasure at the behest of petty tyrant Pstun-Rage the Vigilantâ€¦

As the place had once been the site of America’s breakfast cereal empire and this wry yarn is filled with oblique in-jokes – many of the villains’ names are anagrams of Kellogg’s cereals – you can imagine the irony-drenched secret of the hoard the defenders gave their lives to protect and the pragmatic Killraven’s reaction to itâ€¦

The drama kicked into spectacular high gear in Amazing Adventures #27 with the arrival of Craig Russell (inked by Jack Abel) and the start of a dark epic entitled ‘The Death Breeders’.

Whilst crossing frozen Lake Michigan in March 2019, the band was attacked by monstrous lampreys and Grok suffered a wound which would eventually prove fatalâ€¦

McGregor always hated the notion of simplistic, problem-solving, consequence-free violence which most entertainment media thrived on and frequently, slavishly, tried to focus on some of the real-world repercussions such acts should and would result inâ€¦

The heroes were headed to what was once Chicago; now a vast industrialised breeding pen to farm human babies for Martian consumption. En route they met pyrokinetic mutant Volcana Ash who had her own tragic reason for scouting the ghastly palaces of Death-birthâ€¦

Whilst the new allies undertook an explosively expensive sortie against the Death Breeders, at the same time in the far-distant halls of the Martian Kings of Earth, the Warlord was tasking the recovered, repaired Skar with a new mission: hunt down Killraven and destroy not only the man, but most importantly the legend of hope and liberation that had grown up around himâ€¦

In #28 (pencilled, inked and even coloured by Russell in the original) Ash revealed her horrific origins and the purpose of her quest as the Freemen battled monsters which abounded in the chemically compromised lake.

Elsewhere, chief butcher The Sacrificer watched his depraved boss Atalon live up to his decadent reputation as ‘The Death Merchant!’ – emotionally tenderising the frantic â€œAdams and Evesâ€ whose imminent newborns would be the main course for visiting Martian dignitariesâ€¦

Everything changed during Killraven’s fateful raid to liberate the human cattle, however. When the disgusted hero skewered one of the extraterrestrial horrors, he experienced severe psychic feedback and realised at last that his debilitating, disorienting visions had been an unsuspected ability to tap into Martian mindsâ€¦

And in the wastelands, Skar was murderously retracing the Freemen’s route, getting closer and closer to a final showdownâ€¦

With Amazing Adventures #29 the series title was changed to Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds as ‘The Hell Destroyers’ saw the rebel leader score his greatest victory, inspiring thousands of freshly-liberated earthlings by utterly destroying the temple of atrocity before gloriously escaping into the wilderness and modern mythologyâ€¦

The pace of even a bi-monthly series was crippling to perfectionist Russell, and ‘The Rebels of January and Beyond!’ in #30 was a frantic six-page melange from him, Adkins, Trimpe, Chiaramonte & Abel, all graphically treading water as The Warlord â€œreviewedâ€ (admittedly beautiful) fact-file pages on Killraven, M’Shulla and Mint Julep.

The saga continued in #31 on ‘The Day the Monuments Shattered’ wherein McGregor & Russell ended the Death Breeders storyline in stunning style. Pursued by Atalon and The Sacrificer into the icy wilds from Gary, Indiana to St. Louis where broken Earth outcasts hid as the Twilight People, the fugitives took refuge in a cavern. This was to allow an accompanying Eve to give birth in safety, but only led to an attack by a monolithic mutant monster just as their pursuers found them.

The battle changed the landscape and ended three ghastly travesties foreverâ€¦

In #32 ‘Only the Computer Shows Me Any Respect!’ (art by Russell & Dan Green) found the reduced band in devastated Nashville, where Killraven, M’Shulla, Carmilla, Old Skull and Hawk wandered into leftover holographic fantasy programs which conjured both joy and regret, even as Skar’s tripod brought him ever-closer to a longed-for rematch.

Things took a nasty turn when Hawk’s painful memories of his father’s addictions to fantasy detective Hodiah Twist manifested as cruelly real threats and the malfunctioning program materialised a brutally solid savage dragonâ€¦

Issue #33 was another deadline-busting fill-in. ‘Sing Out Loudlyâ€¦ Death!’ was written by Bill Mantlo and illustrated by Trimpe & D. Bruce Berry, wherein the Freemen took refuge from the elements in a vast cave and encountered a hostile tribe of refugee African Americans who had gone native and returned to their roots.

The hidden wild men had only one rule – kill all honkies – but that changed once Killraven saved them from a marauding giant octo-beastieâ€¦

The long-delayed clash with Skar at last occurred in #34 as the cyborg Cyclops ambushed the wanderers when they reached Chattanooga, Tennessee and caused ‘A Death in the Family’ (McGregor & Russell) – two deaths, actually – before the heartbroken, enraged Warrior of the Worlds literally tore his gloating nemesis to piecesâ€¦

Killraven fully entered Marvel Universe continuity – albeit on a branch line – with a crossover appearance by Spider-Man: courtesy of a time-and-space spanning multi-parter in Marvel Team-Up which saw the Amazing Arachnid lost and visiting the past and a number of alternate tomorrows.

From issue #45 ‘Future: Shock!’ by Mantlo, Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito saw the weary Wallcrawler wash up in this particular furious future just as Killraven was cornered by killer tripods, and offer arachnid assistance as the liberators stumbled into an hallucinogenic nightmare. Immediate problem solved, the chronologically adrift Arachnid continued his time-tossed travelsâ€¦

Amazing Adventures #35 resumed the epic tragedy as the last battered survivors stumbled into Atlanta, Georgia and met ‘The 24-Hour Man’ (McGregor & Russell, but finished by Keith Giffin & Abel), encountering an addled new mother and instant widow, even as Carmilla was abducted by a bizarre mutant with an irresistible and inescapably urgent biological imperativeâ€¦

‘Red Dust Legacy’ (illustrated by Russell & Sonny Trinidad in #36) focused on Killraven’s developing psychic powers as the charismatic champion gained unwelcome insights into the Martian psyche, even as The Warlord travelled to Yellowstone and taunted the rebel leader with news that his long-lost brother Joshua lived. The hero had no idea it was as an indoctrinated pawn code-named Death Raven.

The self-appointed defender of humanity then invaded a replica Martian environment in Georgia and destroyed the Martians’ next generation by contaminating their incubatorsâ€¦

Inked by Abel, #37 revealed the origins of affable Old Skull in ‘Arena Kill!’ when the wanderers discovered a clandestine enclave of humans in the Okefenokee Wildlife Preserve.

One final fill-in by Mantlo, Giffin & Al Milgrom appeared in #38. ‘Death’s Dark Dreamer!’ saw Killraven separated and stumble into a wrecked but still functional dream-dome to battle the materialised fantasies of its ancient occupant, whose pre-invasion memories fuelled attacks by strangely familiar defenders patterned after Iron Man, Man-Thing, Dr. Strange and almost every other hero you could think ofâ€¦

The beautiful, troubled and doomed saga stopped – but did not end – with Amazing Adventures #39 (November 1976) as McGregor & Russell introduced the decimated Band of Brothers to an incredible new life-form in ‘Mourning Prey’â€¦

And that’s where the gloriously unique, elegiac, Art Nouveau fantasy vanished with no comfortable resolution until 1983 when Marvel Graphic Novel #7 featured an all-new collaboration by McGregor and Russell starring Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds.

That painted full-colour extravaganza is reproduced here and commences after a catch-up Prologue and six pages of character profiles to bring readers old and new up to speedâ€¦

‘Last Dreams Broken’ opens in February 2020 at Cape Canaveral where Killraven connects again to a distant consciousness and sets off for Yellowstone in search of answers to inexpressible questionsâ€¦

Along the way the rebels meet 59-year old Jenette Miller – probably the last surviving astronaut on Earth – as ‘Cocoa Beach Blues’ finds her teaching the warrior wanderers some history and human perspective in between the constant daily battles, whilst in ‘Blood and Passion’ The Warlord prepares his deadliest trap for his despised antagonist as Killraven is finally reunited with Joshua.

The drama runs its inevitable course in ‘Let it Die Like Fourth of July’ as all the hero’s hopes and fears are cataclysmically realisedâ€¦

McGregor’s long-anticipated conclusion did not disappoint and even set up a new beginning, but in this monochrome edition Russell’s stunning colour artwork suffers egregiously from being reduced to greyscale tones, and if you get the chance to see the original Graphic Novel version, grab it and runâ€¦

Those same artistic mixed results plague the last tale in this tome too.

In 2001 the Marvel Knights imprint offered another revival as Killraven #1, written and painted by Joseph Michael Linsner with Eva Hopkins, saw the Warrior of the Worlds back in New York as ‘Killraven: 2020’, fleeing tripods and stumbling into an untouched alcove where a flower-child from 1976 lay preserved in a hibernation-chamber.

Alice and two dozen happy young liberals thought to sleep their way out of the pollution, violence and corruption of those unhappy times, but as the only survivor she found the future far from what she had expected.

The unhappy Hippy did have some life-changing advice and insights for the crazy war-monger who rescued her, thoughâ€¦

Also included here is the text introduction page from Amazing Adventures #18 for a fascinating insight into Roy Thomas’ expectations of what became a landmark of visual narrative poetry that was far beyond its time and mass audience’s taste.

Confused, convoluted, challenging, controversial (this series contained the first ever non-comedic interracial kiss in American comics – in 1975 if you can believe it!), evocative, inspirational and always entertaining, this is graphic narrative that no serious fan or fantasy addict should miss. Do it now: the future is not your friendâ€¦
Â© 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1983, 2001, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

May 29, 2013May 28, 2013

Showcase Presents the Spectre volume 1

By Gardner F. Fox, Bob Haney, Michael L. Fleisher, Paul Kupperberg, Murphy Anderson, Neal Adams, Jim Aparo & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3417-1

The Spectre is one of the oldest characters in DC’s vast stable, created by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily in 1940 and debuting via a 2-part origin epic in More Fun Comics #52 and 53. Moreover, just like Siegel’s other iconic creation, he soon began to suffer from a basic design flaw: he’s just too darn powerful.

Unlike Superman however, this champion of justice was already dead, so he can’t really be logically or dramatically imperilled. Of course in those far off early days that wasn’t nearly as important as sheer spectacle: forcibly grabbing the reader’s utter attention and keeping it stoked to a fantastic fever pitch.

Starting as a virtually omnipotent ghost, the Grim Ghost evolved, over various returns, refits and reboots into a tormented mortal soul bonded inescapably to the actual embodiment of the biblical Wrath of God.

The story is a genuinely gruesome one: police detective Jim Corrigan was callously executed by gangsters before being called back to the land of the living. Ordered to fight crime and evil by a glowing light and disembodied voice, he was indisputably the most formidable hero of the Golden Age.

He has been revamped and revived many times, and in the 1990s was revealed to be God’s Spirit of Vengeance wedded to a human conscience. When Corrigan was finally laid to rest, Hal (Green Lantern) Jordan and latterly murdered Gotham City cop Crispus Allen replaced him as the mitigating conscience of the force of Divine Retributionâ€¦

However the true start of that radically revised and revitalised career began in the superhero-saturated mid-1960s when, hot on the heels of feverish fan-interest in the alternate world of the Justice Society of America and Earth-2 (where all the WWII heroes retroactively resided), DC began trying out solo revivals of 1940’s characters, as opposed to their wildly successful Silver Age reconfigurations such as Flash, Green Lantern, Atom and Hawkmanâ€¦

This sublime and colossal Showcase selection collects and documents the Man of Darkness’ return in the Swinging Sixties, his landmark reinterpretation in the horror-soaked, brutalised 1970s and even finds room for some later appearances before the character was fully de-powered and retrofitted for the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe.

As such this mammoth monochrome tome (624 peril-packed pages!) contains Showcase #60, 61 and 64, The Spectre #1-10, team-up tales from The Brave and the Bold #72, 75, 116, 180 & 199 and DC Comics Presents #29, the lead strips from Adventure Comics #431-440 and one last hurrah from horror-anthology Ghosts #97-99, encompassing the end of 1965 to the middle of 1983.

As previously mentioned, DC tried out a number of Earth-2 iterations (Starman/Black Canary – with Wildcat – in The Brave and the Bold #61-62 whilst Showcase #55 & 56 spotlighted Doctor Fate & Hourman with a cameo from the original Green Lantern), but Schwartz and Fox only finally achieved their ambition to launch a Golden Age hero into his own title with the revival of the Ghostly Guardian in Showcase – but it was hard going and perhaps benefited from a growing general public interest in supernatural storiesâ€¦

After three full length appearances and many guest-shots, The Spectre won his own solo series at the end of 1967, just as the super-hero craze went into a steep decline, but maybe Showcase #60 (January/February 1966) anticipated the rise of supernatural comics by re-introducing Corrigan and his phantom passenger in ‘War That Shook the Universe’ by Earth-2 team supreme Gardner F. Fox & Murphy Anderson.

This spectacular saga revealed that the Heroic Haunt had vanished two decades previously, leaving the fundamentally human Corrigan to pursue his war against evil on merely mortal terms until a chance encounter with a psychic investigator freed the ghost buried within him.

A diligent search revealed that, twenty years previously, a supernal astral invader had broken into the Earth plane and possessed a mortal, but was so inimical to our laws of reality that both it and the Grim Ghost were locked into their meat shells – until nowâ€¦

Thus began a truly spectre-acular (don’t groan – that’s what they called it back then) clash with the devilish Azmodus that spanned all creation and blew the minds of us gobsmacked kidsâ€¦

Issue #61 (March/April) upped the ante when the even more satanic Shathan the Eternal subsequently insinuated himself into our realm from ‘Beyond the Sinister Barrier’, stealing mortal men’s shadows until he was powerful enough to conquer the physical universe. This time The Spectre treated us to an exploration of the universe’s creation before narrowly defeating the source of all evilâ€¦

The Sentinel Spirit returned in Showcase #64 (September/October 1966) for a marginally more mundane but no less thrilling adventure when ‘The Ghost of Ace Chance’ took up residence in Jim’s body. By this time it was established that ghosts needed a mortal anchor to recharge their ectoplasmic â€œbatteriesâ€, and the unscrupulous crooked gambler was determined to inhabit the best frame availableâ€¦

The try-out run concluded, the editors sat back and waited for sales figures to dictate the next move. When they proved inconclusive Schwartz orchestrated a concerted publicity campaign to further promote Earth-2’s Ethereal Adventurer.

The Brave and the Bold #72 (June/July 1967) saw the Spectre clash with Earth-1’s Scarlet Speedster in ‘Phantom Flash, Cosmic Traitor’ by Bob Haney, Carmine Infantino & Charles â€œChuckâ€ Cuidera. This sinister saga saw the mortal meteor transformed into a sinister spirit-force and power-focus for unquiet American aviator Luther Jarvis who returned from death in 1918 to wreak vengeance on the survivors of his squadron – until the Spectre intervenedâ€¦

Due to the vagaries of comicbook scheduling, Brave and the Bold #75 (December 1967/January 1968) appeared at around the same time as The Spectre #1, although the latter had a cover-date of November/December 1967.

In the Batman team-up title – scripted by Haney and drawn by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito – the Ghostly Guardian joined the Dark Knight to free Gotham City’s Chinatown from ‘The Grasp of Shahn-Zi!’: an ancient oriental sorcerer determined to prolong his reign of terror at the expense of an entire community and through the sacrifice of an innocent child, after which the Astral Avenger finally, simultaneously, debuted in his own titleâ€¦

The Spectre #1 featured ‘The Sinister Lives of Captain Skull’ by Fox & Anderson, and divulged how the botched assassination of American Ambassador Joseph Clanton and an experimental surgical procedure allowed one of the diplomat’s earlier incarnations to take over his body and, armed with mysterious eldritch energies, run amok on Earth.

Those â€œmegacyclic energyâ€ abilities enabled the revenant to harm and potentially destroy the Ghostly Guardian and compelled the Spectre to pursue the piratical Skull through a line of previous lives until he could find their source and purge the peril from all time and spaceâ€¦

With issue #2 (January/February 1968) artistic iconoclast Neal Adams came aboard for the Fox-scripted mystery ‘Die Spectre – Again’ wherein crooked magician Dirk Rawley accidentally manifested his etheric self and severely tested both Corrigan and his phantom partner as they sought to end the double-menace’s string of crimes, mundane and magical. At this time the first inklings of a distinct separation and individual identities began. The two halves of the formerly sole soul of Corrigan were beginning to disagree and even squabbleâ€¦

New scripter Mike Friedrich joined Adams for #3’s ‘Menace of the Mystic Mastermind’ wherein pugilistic paragon Wildcat faced the inevitable prospect of age and infirmity even as an inconceivable force from another universe possessed petty thug Sad Jack Dold and turned him into a nigh-unstoppable force of cosmic chaosâ€¦

‘Stop that Kidâ€¦ Before He Wrecks the World’ was written & illustrated by Adams and saw a similar trans-universal malignity deliberately empower a young boy as a prelude to its ultimate conquest, whilst #5’s ‘The Spectre Means Death?’ (all Adams again) appeared to show the Ghostly Guardian transformed into a pariah and deadly menace to society, until Jim’s investigations uncovered the emotion-controlling Psycho Pirate at the root of the Spectre’s problemsâ€¦

Despite all the incredible talent and effort lavished upon it, The Spectre simply wasn’t finding a big enough audience. Adams departed for straight superhero glory elsewhere and a hint of changing tastes came as veteran illustrator of horror comics Jerry Grandenetti came aboard.

Issue #6 (September/October 1968) saw his eccentric, manic cartooning adding raw wildness to the returning Fox’s moody thriller ‘Pilgrims of Peril!’ and Murphy Anderson also re-enlisted to apply a solid ink grounding to the story of a sinister invasion by a quartet of phantom Puritans who invaded the slums of Gateway City, driving out the poor and hopeless as they sought lost arcane treasures. These would allow demon lord Nawor of Giempo access to Earth unless The Spectre could win his unlife or death duel with the trans-dimensional horrorâ€¦

As the back of issue #7 was dedicated to a solo strip starring Hourman (not included in this collection), The Spectre saga here – by Fox, Grandenetti & Anderson – was a half-length tale which followed the drastic steps necessary to convince the soul of bank-robber Frankie Barron to move on. Since he was killed during a heist, the astral form of aversion therapy used to cure ‘The Ghost That Haunted Money!’ proved to be not only ectoplasmically effective but outrageously entertainingâ€¦

Issue #8 (January/February 1969) was scripted by Steve Skeates and began a last-ditch and obviously desperate attempt to turn The Spectre into something the new wave of anthology horror readers would buy.

As a twisted, time-lost apprentice wizard struggled to return to Earth after murdering his master and stealing cosmic might from the void, on the mundane plane an exhausted Ghostly Guardian neglected his duties and was taken to task by his celestial creator.

As a reminder of his error, Penitent Phantasm was burdened by a fluctuating weakness – which would change without warning – to keep him honest and earnest. What a moment for the desperate disciple Narkran to return then, determined to secure his elevated god-like existence by securing ‘The Parchment of Power Perilous!’â€¦

The Spectre #9 completed the transition and opened with an untitled short from Friedrich (illustrated by Grandenetti & Bill Draut) which saw the Man of Darkness again overstep his bounds by executing a criminal. This prompted Corrigan to refuse the weary wraith the shelter of his reinvigorating form and, when the Grim Ghost then assaulted his own host form, the Heavenly Voice punished the spirit by chaining him to the dreadful Journal of Judgment: demanding he atone by investigating the lives inscribed therein in a trial designed to teach him again the value of mercyâ€¦

The now anthologised issue continued with ‘Abraca-Doom’ (Dennis J. O’Neil & Bernie Wrightson) as The Spectre attempted to stop a greedy carnival conjurer from signing a contract with the Devil, whilst ‘Shadow Show’ by Mark Hanerfeld & Jack Sparling detailed the fate of a cheap mugger who thought he could outrun the consequences of a capital crimeâ€¦

The next issue gave up the ghost and The Spectre folded with #10 (May/June 1969), but not before a quartet of tantalising tales by writer or writers unknown showed what might have beenâ€¦

‘Footsteps of Disaster’ with art from Grandenetti & George Roussos, followed a man from cradle to early grave and revealed the true wages of sin, whilst ‘Hit and Run’ (probably drawn by Ralph Reese) proved again that the Spirit of Judgment was not infallible and even human scum could be redeemedâ€¦

‘How Much Can a Guy Take?’ (Sparling) offered salvation to a shoeshine boy pushed almost too far by an arrogant mobster, and the series closed with a cunning murder mystery involving what appeared to be a killer ventriloquists doll in the Grandenetti & George Roussos illustrated ‘Will the Real Killer Please Rise?’

With that the Astral Avenger returned to comicbook limbo for nearly half a decade until changing tastes and another liberalising of the Comics Code saw him return as the lead feature in Adventure Comics #431 (January/February 1974) in a shocking run of macabre, ultra-violent tales from Michael L. Fleisher & Jim Aparo.

‘The Wrath ofâ€¦ The Spectre’ offered a far more stark and unforgiving take on the Spirit Sentinel and reflected the increasingly violent tone of the times as a gang of murderous thieves slaughtered the crew of a security truck and were tracked down by a harsh, uncompromising police lieutenant named Corrigan.

When the bandits were exposed, the cop unleashed a horrific green and white apparition from his body which inflicted ghastly punishments that horrendously fitted their crimesâ€¦

With art continuity (and no, I’m not sure what that means either), from Russell Carley, the draconian fables continued in #432 as in ‘The Anguish ofâ€¦ The Spectre’ assassins murdered millionaire Adrian Sterling and Corrigan met the victim’s daughter Gwen. Although the now-infallible Wrathful Wraith soon exposed and excised the culprits, the dead detective had to reveal his true nature to the grieving daughter. Moreover, Corrigan began to feel the stirring of impossible, unattainable yearningsâ€¦

Adventure #433 exposed ‘The Swami andâ€¦ The Spectre’ as Gwen sought spiritual guidance from a ruthless charlatan who promptly paid the appalling price when he finally met a real ghost, whilst in #434 ‘The Nightmare Dummies andâ€¦ The Spectre’ (with additional pencils by the great Frank Thorne) saw a plague of department store mannequins run wild in a killing spree at the behest of a crazed artisan who believed in magic – but couldn’t imagine the cost of his dabblingâ€¦

Issue #435 introduced journalist Earl Crawford who tracked the ghastly fallout of the vengeful spirit’s anti-crime campaign and became ‘The Man Who Stalked The Spectre!’ Of course once he saw the ghost in grisly action Crawford realised the impossibility of publishing this scoopâ€¦

Adventure #436 saw Crawford still trying to sell his story as ‘The Gasmen andâ€¦ The Spectre’ set the Spectral Slaughterman on the trail of a gang who killed everybody at a car show as a demonstration of intent before blackmailing the city. Their gorily inescapable fate only put Crawford closer to exposing Corrigan, after which in #437 ‘The Human Bombs andâ€¦ The Spectre’ (with pencils from Ernie Chan & Aparo inks) found a kidnapper abducting prominent persons – including Gwen – to further a merciless madÂ scheme of amassing untold wealthâ€¦ until the Astral Avenger ended their depredations foreverâ€¦

In #438 ‘The Spectre Haunts the Museum of Fear’ (Chan & Aparo again) saw a crazed taxidermist turning people into unique dioramas until the Grim Ghost intervened, but the end was in sight again for the Savage Shade and #439’s ‘The Voice that Doomedâ€¦ The Spectre’ (all Aparo) turned the wheel of death full circle, as the Heavenly Presence who created him allowed Corrigan to fully live again so that he could marry Gwen.

Sadly it was only to have the joyous hero succumb to ‘The Second Death of Theâ€¦ Spectre’ (#440, July/August 1975) and tragically resume his endless missionâ€¦

This milestone serial set a stunning new tone and style for the Ghostly Guardian which has informed each iteration ever sinceâ€¦

From midway through that run, Brave and the Bold #116 provided another continuity-crunching supernatural team-up with Batman in a far less graphically violent struggle against the ‘Grasp of the Killer Cult’ (Haney & Aparo). When Kali-worshipping Thugs from India seemingly targeted survivors of a WWII American Army Engineer unit, Detective Corrigan and the Dark Knight clashed on both the method and motives of the mysterious murderersâ€¦

DC Comics Presents #29 (January 1981, by Len Wein, Jim Starlin & Romeo Tanghal) revealed what happened after Supergirl was knocked unconscious after a cataclysmic battle and sent hurtling through dimensions measureless to man. When her cousin tried to follow, the Ghostly Guardian was dispatched to stop the Metropolis Marvel from transgressing ‘Where No Superman Has Gone Before’â€¦

By the early 1980s the horror boom had exhausted itself and DC’s anthology comics were disappearing. As part of the effort to keep them alive, Ghosts featured a 3-part serial starring â€œGhost-Breakerâ€ and inveterate sceptic Dr. Terry 13 who at last encountered ‘The Spectre’ in issue #97 (February 1981, by Paul Kupperberg, Michael R. Adams & Tex Blaisdell), where terrorists invaded a high society sÃ©ance and were summarily dispatched by the inhuman poetic justice of the Astral Avengerâ€¦

Now determined to destroy the monstrous revenant vigilante, Dr. 13 returned in #98 as ‘The Haunted House and The Spectre’ found the Ghost-Breaker interviewing Earl Crawford and subsequently discovering the long sought killer of his own father. Before 13 could act, however, the Spectre appeared and stole his justifiable retribution from the aggrieved psychic investigatorâ€¦

The drama closed in Ghosts #99 as ‘Deathâ€¦ and The Spectre’ (Kupperberg, Michael R. Adams & Tony DeZuniga) found the scientist and the spirit locked in one final furious confrontation.

This staggering compendium of supernatural thrillers concludes with two more team-up classics from Brave and the Bold beginning with ‘The Scepter of the Dragon God’ by Fleisher & Aparo (from #180, November 1980).

Although Chinese wizard Wa’an-Zen stole enough mystic artefacts to conquer the world and destroy the Spectre, he foolishly underestimated the skill and bravery of the merely mortal Batman, whilst #199 (June 1983) ‘The Body-napping of Jim Corrigan’, by Mike W. Barr, Ross Andru & Rick Hoberg, found the ethereal avenger baffled by the abduction and disappearance of his mortal host.

Even though he could not trace his own body, the Spectre did know where the World’s Greatest Detective hung outâ€¦

Ranging from fabulously fantastical to darkly â€“ violently â€“ enthralling, these comic masterpieces perfectly encapsulate the way superheroes changed over a brief twenty year span, but remain throughout some of the most beguiling and exciting tales of DC’s near-80 years of existence. If you love comicbooks you’d be crazy to ignore this oneâ€¦
Â© 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1974, 1975, 1981, 1983, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved

May 28, 2013May 28, 2013

Tales from The House of Mystery

By Jack Oleck, illustrated by Berni Wrightson (Warner Paperback Library)
ISBN: 0-446-75226-6- 095

When superheroes entered their second decline in the early 1970s, four of the six surviving newsstand comicbook companies (Archie, Charlton, DC, Gold Key, Harvey and Marvel) relied increasingly on horror and suspense anthologies to bolster their flagging sales. Even wholesome Archie briefly produced Red Circle Sorcery/Chillers comics and their teen-comedy core moved gently into tales of witchcraft, mystery and imagination.

DC’s first generation of mystery titles had followed the end of the first Heroic Age when most comicbook publishers of the era began releasing crime, romance and horror genre anthologies to recapture the older readership which was drifting away to other mass-market entertainments like television and the movies.

As National Comics in 1951, the company bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology – which nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles – with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

When a hysterical censorship scandal led to witch-hunting hearings attacking comicbooks and newspaper strips (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time) the industry panicked, adopting a castrating straitjacket of stringent self-regulatory rules and admonitions.

Even though mystery/suspense titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, the appetite for suspense was still high, and in 1956 National introduced sister titles Tales of the Unexpected and House of Secrets.

Supernatural thrillers and spooky monster stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, genteel, rationalistic fantasy-adventure vehicles which nonetheless dominated the market until the 1960s when the super-hero returned in force – having begun a renaissance after Julius Schwartz reintroduced the Flash in Showcase #4, 1956.

Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and a host of other costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked myrmidons which even forced the dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books with Martian Manhunter and Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery and Mark Merlin – later Prince Ra-Man – sharing space with anti-hero Eclipso in House of Secrets.

When the caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, Secrets was one of the first casualties, folding with the September-October 1966 issue. House of Mystery carried on with its eccentric costumed cohort until #173 and Tales of the Unexpected to #104.

However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits, and at the end of the 1960s the superhero boom busted again, with many titles gone and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain tooâ€¦

This real-world Crisis led to the surviving publishers of the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles at the time, but as the liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Great Unknown, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious â€œno-brainer.â€

Thus with absolutely no fanfare at all House of Mystery and Unexpected switched to scary stories and House of Secrets rose again with issue #81, (cover-dated August-September 1969); retasked and retooled to cater to a seemingly insatiable public appetite for tales of mystery, horror and imagination â€¦ Before long a battalion of supernatural suspense titles dominated DC and other companies’ publishing schedules again.

Simultaneously and contiguously, there had been a revolution in popular fiction during the 1950s with a huge expansion of affordable paperback books, driving companies to develop extensive genre niche-markets, such as war, western, romance, science-fiction, fantasy and horrorâ€¦

Always hungry for more product for their cheap ubiquitous lines, many old novels and short stories collections were republished, introducing new generations to fantastic pulp authors like Robert E. Howard, Otis Adelbert Kline, H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth and many others.

In 1955, spurred on by the huge parallel success of cartoon and gag book collections, Bill Gaines began releasing paperback compendiums culling the best strips and features from his landmark humour magazine Mad and thus comics’ Silver Age was mirrored in popular publishing by an insatiable hunger for escapist fantasy fiction.

In 1964 Bantam Books began reprinting the earliest pulp adventures of Doc Savage, triggering a revival of pulp prose superheroes, and seemed the ideal partner when Marvel began a short-lived attempt to â€œnoveliseâ€ their comicbook stable with The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker and Captain America in the Great Gold Steal.

Although growing commercially by leaps and bounds, Marvel in the early 1960s was still hampered by a crippling distribution deal limiting the company to 16 titles (which would curtail their output until 1968), so each new comicbook had to fill the revenue-generating slot (however small) of an existing title. Even though the costumed characters were selling well, each new title would limit the company’s breadth of genres (horror, western, war, etc) and comics were still a very broad field at that time. It was putting a lot of eggs in one basket and superheroes had failed twice before for Marvel.

As Stan Lee cautiously replaced a spectrum of genre titles and specialised in superheroes, a most fortunate event occurred with the advent of the Batman TV show in January 1966. Almost overnight the world went costumed-hero crazy and many publishers repackaged their old comics stories in cheap and cheerful, digest-sized monochrome paperbacks. Archie, Tower, Marvel and DC all released such reformatted strip books and the latter two carried on their attempts to legitimise their output by getting them into actual bookshops to this day.

Released in 1973, when the horror boom was at its peak, Tales from The House of Mystery was another attempt to breach the bookshop barrier. A prose anthology by veteran comics scripter Jack Oleck, the compendium adapted and modified, for a presumed older audience, eight short scary stories from the comics, each magnificently illustrated by DC’s top terror artist â€œBerniâ€ Wrightson, who also provided a moodily evocative frontispiece starring the comic’s macabre host Cain and the stunning painted cover above.

The wry, dry shock-ending mini-epics begin with ‘Chamber of Horrors’ wherein a violently paranoid young man gets the notion that the newcomers in town are a family of vampires, after which ‘Nightmare’ reveals the uncanny fate of an obnoxious American vacationer who was determined to ruin a day-trip to Stonehenge for all those gullible over-imaginative fools on the tour busâ€¦

‘Collector’s Item’ related how two old friends sharing a passion for coin collecting met a ghastly fate after squabbling over some particularly impressive specimens from ancient Judea, and ‘Born Loser’ proved that for some poor schmucks even magic wasn’t enough to escape a shrewish wife and the consequences of murderâ€¦

‘Tomorrow, the World’ detailed the efforts of a concerned psychiatrist who was unable to shake the convictions of his hopeless patient that a coven of witches and warlocks was about to conquer the world for Satan, whilst the bittersweet romance of ‘The Haunting’ revealed a shocking truth about the house acquired by devoted newlyweds Joel and Peggy.

Voodoo and reincarnation proved the lie to the maxim ‘You Only Die Once’ after a French plantation owner thought he had gotten away with murdering his coldly disdainful wife, and this brief box of dark delights ends on a savagely ironic and even cruel note as well-meaning social workers and doctors cure a desolated lame orphan of his foolish belief in a happy fantasy land by an ‘Act of Grace’â€¦

By today’s standards this octet of occult thrillers might seem a little tame or dated, and the experiment clearly had no lasting effect on either comics or book consumers, but this little oddity is still a fascinating experiment that will delight comics completists, arch-nostalgics and fantasy fans alikeâ€¦
Â© 1973 National Periodical Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

May 27, 2013May 28, 2013

Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Iron Man Reloaded

By Stan Lee, Archie Goodwin, Mike Friedrich, Tony Isabella, Len Kaminski, Matt Fraction, Don Heck, George Tuska, Greg LaRocque, Kev Hopgood, Salvador Larroca, Carmine di Giandomenico, Nathan Fox, Haim Kano & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-529-1

With Summer Movie Blockbuster season hard upon us Marvel has again sagaciously released a wealth of film-inspired tie-in books and trade paperback collections to maximise exposure and cater to those movie fans wanting to follow up the cinematic exposure with a comicbook experience.

Produced under the always intriguing Marvel Platinum/Definitive Editions umbrella, this treasury of tales gathers a few of the more impressive but happily less obvious landmarks from the Steel Sentinel’s extensive canon; this time cannily focusing on sinister mastermind, ultimate arch-enemy and movie menace the Mandarin.

Contained herein are high-tech hi-jinks from Tales of Suspense #50, Iron Man volume 1, #21-22, 68-71, 291 & 500, Marvel Team-Up #146 and Iron Man volume 5 #19, (listed on Marvel’s Database as Invincible Iron Man volume 1 #19), spanning 1964 to 2011, which offers a fair representation of what is quite frankly an over-abundance of riches to pick fromâ€¦

Arch-technocrat and supreme survivor Tony Stark has changed his profile many times since his debut in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963) when, as a VIP visitor in Vietnam observing the efficacy of the munitions he had designed, he was critically wounded and captured by sinister, cruel Communists.

Put to work building weapons with the dubious promise of medical assistance on completion, Stark instead created the first Iron Man suit to keep himself alive and deliver him from his oppressors. From there it was a simple jump to full time superheroics as a modern Knight in Shining Armourâ€¦

Since then the inventor and armaments manufacturer has been a liberal capitalist, eco-warrior, space pioneer, Federal politician, affirmed Futurist, Statesman and even Director of the world’s most scientifically advanced spy agency, the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, and, of course, one of the world’s most prominent superheroes with the Mighty Avengersâ€¦

For a popular character/concept lumbered with a fifty-year pedigree, radical reboots are a painful but vital periodic necessity. To keep contemporary, Stark’s origin and Iron Man’s continuity have been drastically revised every so often with the crucible trigger event perpetually leapfrogging to America’s most recent conflicts. As always, change is everything but, remember Man, these aren’t just alterations, these are upgradesâ€¦

After the now-mandatory introduction from Stan Lee, the star-studded action begins with ‘The Hands of the Mandarin!’ from Tales of Suspense #50 wherein the wonderful Don Heck returned as regular penciller and occasional inker after a brief absence, and Lee introduced The Golden Avenger’s first major menace: a modern-day Fu Manchu who terrified the Red Chinese so much they tricked him into attacking America in the hope that one threat would destroy the other.

In response Iron Man invaded the mastermind’s oriental citadel where, after a ferocious but futilely inconclusive fight, he simply went back home to the Land of the Free.

The furious Mandarin held a grudge however and would make himself arguably Iron Man’s greatest foe.

Of course whilst Stark was the acceptable face of 1960s Capitalism – a glamorous millionaire industrialist, scientist and a benevolent all-conquering hero when clad in the super-scientific armour of his alter-ego – the turbulent tone of the 1970s soon relegated his suave, â€œcan-doâ€ image to the dustbin of history. With ecological disaster and social catastrophe from the myriad abuses of big business manifestly the new zeitgeists of the young, the Golden Avenger and Stark International were soon confronting a few tricky questions from their increasingly politically savvy readership.

With glamour, money and fancy gadgetry not quite so cool anymore, the questing voices of a new generation of writers began posing uncomfortable questions in the pages of a series that was once the bastion of militarised Americaâ€¦

Iron Man #21-22 (January & February 1970, by Archie Goodwin, George Tuska & Joe Gaudioso) found the multi-millionaire trying to get out of the arms business and – following a heart transplant – looking to retire from the superhero biz.

African-American boxer Eddie March, became ‘The Replacement!’ as Stark, free from the heart-stimulating chest-plate which had preserved him for years, was briefly tempted by a life without strife. Unfortunately, unknown to all, Eddie had a major health problem of his ownâ€¦

As Stark pursued a romantic future with business rival Janice Cord, her chief researcher and would-be lover Alex Niven was revealed as a Russian fugitive using her resources to rebuild the deadly armour of the Crimson Dynamo. The renegade easily overcame the ailing substitute Avenger and, when Soviet heavy metal super-enforcer Titanium Man resurfaced with orders to arrest Niven, a three-way clash ensued. Stark was forced to take up his metal burden again – but not before Eddie was grievously injured and Janice killed in #22’s classic ‘From this Conflictâ€¦ Death!’

Stark’s romantic liaisons always ended badly. Four years later he was ardently pursuing Roxie Gilbert, a radical pacifist and sister of his old enemy Firebrand. She, of course, had no time for a man with so much blood on his handsâ€¦

Iron Man #68-71 (June to November 1974) was the opening sortie in a multi-part epic which saw mystic menace The Black Lama foment a war amongst the World’s greatest villains with ultimate power and inner peace as the promised prize. Written by Mike Friedrich and illustrated by Tuska & Mike Esposito, it began in Vietnam on the ‘Night of the Rising Sun!’ as the Mandarin struggled to free his mind, which was currently trapped in the dying body of Russian villain the Unicorn.

Roxie had dragged Stark to the recently â€œliberatedâ€ People’s Republic in search of Eddie March’s lost brother, a POW missing since the last days of the war. Then the Americans were separated when Japanese ultra-nationalist, ambulatory atomic inferno and sometime X-Man Sunfire was tricked into attacking the Yankee Imperialists. The attack was abruptly ended when Mandarin shanghaied the Solar Samurai and used his mutant energies to power the mind-transfer back into his own body.

Reinstated in his original form, the Chinese Conqueror began his campaign in earnest, eager to regain his castle from rival oriental overlord Yellow Claw. Firstly though, he had to crush Iron Man who had tracked him down and freed Sunfire in ‘Confrontation!’ That bombastic battle ended when the Golden Avenger was rendered unconscious and thrown into spaceâ€¦

‘Who Shall Stopâ€¦ Ultimo?’ found the reactivated giant robot-monster attacking the Mandarin’s castle as the sinister Celestial duelled the Claw to the death, with both Iron Man and Sunfire arriving too late and forced to mop up the sole survivor of the contest in ‘Battle: Tooth and Yellow Claw!’â€¦

‘Hometown Boy’ (September 1984, by Tony Isabella, Greg LaRocque & Esposito) comes from the period when Stark succumbed to alcoholism and lost everything and his friend and bodyguard Jim Rhodes took over the role of Golden Avenger.

As Stark tried to make good with a new start-up company, this engaging yarn from Marvel Team-Up #146 sees the substitute hero still finding his ferrous feet whilst battling oft-failed assassin Blacklash at a trade fair in Cleveland, as much hindered as helped by visiting hero Spider-Manâ€¦

Despite successfully rebuilding his company, Stark’s woes actually increased. Iron Man # 291 (April 1993) found the technocrat trapped in total paralysis and using a neural interface to pilot the armour like a telemetric telepresence drone. He had also utterly alienated Rhodey who had been acting as his proxy in a tailored battle suit dubbed War Machineâ€¦

Concluding an epic saga, ‘Judgment Day’ by Len Kaminski & Kev Hopgood explosively revealed how the two feuding friends achieved a tentative rapprochement whilst battling a proverbial army of killer robots and death dealing devices programmed to hunt down Rhodes at all costsâ€¦

Invincible Iron Man #19 comes from December 2009 by Matt Fraction &Salvador Larroca. During this time the Federal initiative known as Superhuman Registration Act led to Civil War between costumed heroes and Stark was appointed the American government’s Security Czar – the â€œtop copâ€ in sole charge of a beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom. As Director of high-tech enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. he was the last word in all matters involving metahumans and the USA’s vast costumed communityâ€¦

However his mismanagement of various crises led to the arrest and assassination of Captain America and an unimaginable escalation of global tension and destruction, culminating in an almost-successful Secret Invasion by shape-shifting alien Skrulls.

Discredited and ostracised, Stark was replaced by rehabilitated villain and recovering split-personality Norman Osborn (the original Green Goblin), who assumed full control of the USA’s covert agencies and military resources, disbanded S.H.I.E.L.D. and placed the nation under the aegis of his new umbrella organisation H.A.M.M.E.R.

Osborn was still a monster at heart however and wanted total power. Intending to appropriate all Stark’s technological assets, the â€œreformedâ€ villain began hunting the fugitive ex-Avenger. Terrified that not only his weaponry but also the secret identities of most of Earth’s heroes would fall into a ruthless maniac’s hands, Stark began to systematically erase all his memories, effectively lobotomising himself to save everythingâ€¦

‘Into the White (Einstein on the Beach)’ reveals the conclusion of that quest as Stark, little more than an animated vegetable wearing his very first suit of armour, faced his merciless adversary in pointless futile battle, whilst in America faithful aide Pepper Potts, the Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s last deputy director Maria Hill raided Osborn’s base to retrieve a disc with Tony’s last hope on it and simultaneously engineer the maniac’s ultimate defeatâ€¦

The comics portion of this winning compilation concludes with the lead tale from Iron Man volume 1 #500 (March 2011) wherein the generally recovered Stark is plagued by gaps in his mostly restored memory.

‘The New Iron Age’ by Matt Fraction, Carmine di Giandomenico, Nathan Fox, Haim Kano & Salvador Larroca, is a clever, twice-told tale which begins when Stark approaches sometime ally and employee Peter Parker in an effort to regain more of his lost past.

Stark is plagued by dreams of a super-weapon he may or may not have designed, and together they track down the stolen plans for the ultimate Stark-tech atrocity which has fallen into the hands of murderous anti-progress fanatics resulting in spectacular showdown of men versus machinesâ€¦

Contiguously and interlaced throughout the tale are dark scenes of the near future where the Mandarin has conquered the world, enslaved Tony Stark and his son Howard and, with the ruthless deployment of Iron Man troopers and that long-ago designed super weapon, all but eradicated humanity.

With Earth dying, rebel leader Ginny Stark leads the suicidal Black Widows in one last charge against the dictator, armed with primitive weapons, aided by two traitors within the Mandarin’s household and guided by a message and mantra from the far forgotten pastâ€¦

The book is rounded out with pertinent covers from Jack Kirby, Tuska, Esposito, Jim Starlin, Dave Cockrum, Ron Wilson, John Romita Sr., LaRoque, Bob Layton, Hopgood & Larroca, plus a dense and hefty 21 pages of text features, including ‘The Origin of the Mandarin’ by Mike Conroy and history, background and technical secrets of Crimson Dynamo, Justin Hammer, Happy Hogan, Mandarin, Pepper Potts, Stark Industries, Titanium Man and War Machine.

This thoroughly entertaining accompaniment to the cinema spectacle is also a well-tailored device to turn curious movie-goers into fans of the comic incarnation and another solid sampling to entice the newcomers and charm the veteran Ferro-phile.
Â© 2013 Marvel. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

May 26, 2013October 14, 2013

Sabrina the Teenage Witch: The Magic Within Book 1

By Tania del Rio & Jim Amash (Archie Comics Publications)
ISBN: 978-1-936975-39-6

Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch debuted in Archie’s Madhouse #22 (October 1962), created by George Gladir & Dan de Carlo as a throwaway character in the gag anthology which was simply one more venue for comics’ undisputed kings of kids comedy. She instantly proved popular enough to become a regular in the burgeoning cast surrounding the core stars Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge and Jughead Jones.

By 1969 the comely enchantress had grown popular enough to win her own animated Filmation TV series (just like Archie and Josie and the Pussycats) and graduated to a lead feature in Archie’s TV Laugh Out before in 1971 finally winning her own title.

The first volume ran 77 issues from 1971 to 1983 and, when a hugely successful live action TV series launched in 1996, an adapted comicbook iteration followed in 1997. That version folded in 1999 after a further 32 issues.

Volume 3 – simple titled Sabrina – was based on new TV show Sabrina the Animated Series. This ran from 2000 to 2002 for 37 issues before a back-to-basics reboot saw the comicbook revert to Sabrina the Teenage Witch with #38, carefully blending elements of all the previous print and TV versions. A creature of seemingly infinite variation and variety, the mystic maid continued in this vein until 2004 and #57 wherein, acting on the global popularity of Japanese comics, the company boldly switched format and transformed the series into a manga-style high school comedy-romance in the classic ShÅjo manner.

Written and drawn by Tania del Rio and inked by Jim Amash, this canny supernatural soap ran until #100 in 2009. The series folded four issues later.

An incredibly successful experiment, the beginnings of the manga saga were collected in a trade paperback as Sabrina – the Magic Revisited and issues #58-67 were later added to Archie Comics’ online library as digital editions. Now with the release of this black-&-white digest sized US tankÅbon edition, the concept comes full circleâ€¦

Collecting Sabrina the Teenage Witch #58-68 from 2004-2005, this vibrant slice of wild whimsy opens with ‘Entering the Magic Realm’ – a fond remembrance from del Rio – and a handy character guide before issue/chapter 1 introduces us to a different kind of Winsome Witch in ‘Spellfreeze’â€¦

Sabrina is just a typical Greendale High School girl. She lives with her Aunts Hilda and Zelda Spellman, has a pet cat Salem and barely conceals a crush on childhood pal Harvey Kinkle. The cute but clueless boy reciprocates the affection but is far too scared to rock the boat by acting on his desires.

Sabrina is also an atypical witch: living in the mortal world and passing herself off as normal. To make up for this peccadillo she has to attend Charm-School in the â€œOther Realmâ€ to learn all about her heritage, powers and especially the rules of magic/mortal interaction.

Her life takes a complicated turn when a cute new boy enrols at Greendale. Shinji Yamagi is gorgeous and instantly popular – but he’s also a young warlock from Sabrina’s class at her other school. He’s on Earth to clandestinely study for a Charm-School project but soon finds it hard to keep his gifts secret.

Moreover he’s soon turning Sabrina’s head and she can’t decide which boy she likes bestâ€¦

Complicating the mess is mortal Amy Reinhardt – a spiteful rival for Harvey’s affections who will do anything to upset Sabrina and sharp enough to instantly realise that she can use Shinji to further her ambitionsâ€¦

Shinji is having real problems not using his magic to ease the tedious drudgery of mortal life and is soon openly flouting the rules just to make himself popular. Knowing that eventually somebody will realise he’s not simply performing tricks – and perhaps just a little jealous – Sabrina determines to stop himâ€¦

Salem is not just an ordinary cat; long ago he was Salem Saberhagen: the most powerful warlock of all. After trying to conquer the world he was imprisoned in a cat’s body where he could do no magic, but he can still talk and his rehabilitation is very grudging. He doesn’t need much urging to guide Sabrina to the Magic Realm where she can obtain a spell to neutralise Shinji’s powers.

It’s quite complex though, and the junior conjuress gets it badly wrong. Rather than freezing the warlock’s magic the spell turns Shinji’s body to ice.

Horrified at her mistake Sabrina confesses all to her Aunts and learns that only a kiss can turn him back to normal, but she’s slowly becoming aware that for all his arrogant faults, she really, really likes Shinji and doesn’t fully trust herselfâ€¦

Chapter 2 has a sporting theme as Sabrina tries to get Harvey to make his move. Although a star of the basketball squad, the wishy-washy boy is badly fumbling the school tradition of bestowing a team ribbon upon the girl of one’s dreams.

Sabrina is cruelly teased by Amy who tells her Harvey has already offered her his silken favour in ‘Blue Ribbon Blues’ and the distraction cannot come at a worse time. There’s a big test coming up in Charm-School – it’s the time when students have to make their first flying broomstick – and a bad result could affect her whole lifeâ€¦

Unbeknownst to her Shinji too is feeling the power of attraction. In ‘Councils and Concerts’, Aunt Hilda is lobbying to be elected to the ruling Council of the Magic Realm and needs no embarrassing distractions, but that hope is doomed after Sabrina is summonsed by the fearsome Galiena, Czarina of Decree to explain her recent rule-breaking and magical abuse of the adults-only spellfreeze incantation, not to mention riding a broom without a licenseâ€¦

As the depressed teen talks things over with best friend and eldritch classmate Llandra da Silva, Shinji appears and asks her on a date to see the hip, magic band Oberon. The wayward warlock has had plenty of run-ins with the Council though, and advises her just to ignore them, even as Llandra warns him not to come between her BFF and poor mortal Harveyâ€¦

After the gig, Shinji tries to get Sabrina to join him in another illegal broom flight and they have a blazing row before he ditches her. Humiliated and furious, all she can do is call the aunt she has again let downâ€¦

A Halloween party is the setting for ‘The Magic Within’ as troubled Goth girl Gwenevive Ricci arrives in Greendale, a mortal who can somehow make real magic. The brittle human is rather hard to like, but when Salem investigates he finds the secret of Gwenevive’s powers to be a rival someone he’d thought long gone and the soiree turns into a deadly supernatural battle.

More by luck than skill Sabrina saves the world and vindicates herself with the Council, but they might not be so mellow if they realised she had accidentally allowed Gwen to learn her secretâ€¦

‘Winter Wallflower’ deals with some of the potential repercussions as witchly wannabe Gwen pumps Sabrina for more information, blithely uncaring that she risks having her mind wiped by the Council. However rebellious Sabrina faces even greater challenges when she finds herself dateless for a school dance. Good old dependable Harvey has asked a cute freshman to the affair, and when Sabrina goes looking for Shinji she sees him in a passionate embrace with Llandraâ€¦

This chapter is complimented by a one-page gag strip starring Salem who abuses a present in ‘House Cat!’ before the Sabrina/Harvey/Shinji romantic triangle is dramatically resolved in ‘Cabin Fever’ wherein the kids and Llandra dash off for a winter break in a log cabin (with Aunt Zelda along as reluctant chaperone). However when the boys drive off for provisions they are caught in a killer ice storm and trapped on a mountain.

Soon their seething rivalry for Sabrina causes a confrontation, but after Harvey saves Shinji from death the chastened young magician determines to help Harvey win the girl of his dreams – even if neither of them is sure that’s what he wantsâ€¦

After another Salem single ‘Here’s Looking at You’, Harvey’s indecisiveness resurfaces during Valentine’s Day. Despite the warlock boy’s every effort, his new mortal pal just cannot summon up the courage to ask Sabrina out. Moreover the frustrated teen Witch knows something’s amiss and has been having nightmares waiting for Harvey to make his move.

Unfortunately Sabrina talks – and enchants – in her sleep and wakes up on February 14^th with the power to see ‘Love Connections’ between people and even animals. The teen witch spends the day acting as an unofficial Cupid, bringing together people who don’t realise how close their one true loves actually are, before – unable to handle Harvey’s paralysis – she just gives up and makes the first move herself.

Watching from concealment Shinji is delighted that at last they are together – and cannot understand why his own heart is breakingâ€¦

‘Caught on Tape’ deals with another kind of crisis just as Sabrina is finally together with Harvey. Hilda has been elected to the Council as Czarina of Meditation and the entire family has to move to the Magic Realm. The boy is still unaware of her true nature and now she may never see him againâ€¦

However when evidence is found of mortal poachers in the Magic Realm, Sabrina’s knowledge of the mundane world enables them to track down unscrupulous crypto-zoologist Atticus Rex and free the fantastic beast he thought would make him a TV sensation.

Realising that they increasingly need contact with Earth, the Council relents and stations Hilda permanently in the human Realm, but even after having his memories wiped the Spellmans have not seen the last of Atticusâ€¦

When Shinji’s mortal, toymaker uncle arrives from Japan and sees Sabrina’s cat he copies the creature’s unique appearance and spawns global ‘Salem Mania’. With the cat now on backpacks, apparel, toys, jewellery and every other form of merchandise as the ignominious ‘Mr. Kitty Litter’, the furious former arch-mage alternately plans revenge and how to cash in, with Sabrina otherwise occupied and unable to stop or help him.

Her attention has been diverted by an impossible dilemma: now that she has Harvey, why is she so jealous that Llandra is with Shinji?

This beguiling first collection concludes with a crossover of sorts when Shinji is â€œdiscoveredâ€ by a fashion agency and briefly becomes a male model. With Sabrina becoming increasingly disenchanted with Harvey, the warlock suddenly goes slow with Llandra and is romantically linked to pop sensations Josie and the Pussycats, but his meteoric career comes to a sudden halt when his bosses demand to see a little too much skinâ€¦

Enticing, funny and genuinely enthralling, this witty, fresh take on a classic American icon will delight most fans and readers. With actual human interaction rather than manufactured atom-powered fistfights to hold your attention, it offers women in particular a solid entertaining reason to give comics one more try. Sheer exuberant fun; perfectly crafted and utterly irresistible.
Â© 2013 Archie Comics Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

May 25, 2013May 24, 2013

Avengers: Avengers World

By Jonathan Hickman, Jerome OpeÃ±a, Adam Kubert & various (Marvel/Panini UK)

ISBN: 978-1-84653-536-9

In the aftermath of the blockbuster Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, the company-wide reboot MarvelNOW! began repositioning and recasting the entire continuity in the ongoing, never-ending battle to keep old readers interested and pick up new ones – a problem increasingly affecting all publishers of print periodicals, not just comicbooksâ€¦

For the House of Ideas this meant a drastic reshuffle and rethink of key characters, concepts and brands and, since movie media darlings the Avengers are the most public of the company’s current super-successes, the â€œWorld’s Mightiest Heroesâ€ understandably got the most impressive – and accessible – refit.

Collecting Avengers volume 5 #1-6 (cover-dated February-April 2013), this big picture series is written by Jonathan Hickman (The Nightly News, Pax Romana, Secret Warriors, Fantastic Four and more); someone with a flair for making the truly mind-boggling thrilling and readily digestible. This sector of the superhero sub-set (the others being Uncanny Avengers, Avengers Arena, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Young Avengers and Avengers Assemble) could be seen as the spine which conceptually links the many series and stars together.

The bombastic adventure begins with a cataclysmic 3-part yarn that firmly sets a formidable new standard as the team evolves from plain old world- to periodic universe-saversâ€¦

‘Avengers World’ (drawn by Jerome OpeÃ±a and colour-rendered by Dean White) finds Iron Man and Captain America pondering past errors and potential future crises before laying plans to make Earth’s defenders a truly unstoppable army. The opportunity to test the plan soon arises as a trio of god-like creatures arrive on Mars and begin bombarding our world with bio-mutational â€œOrigin bombsâ€.

When core group Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Hulk, Iron Man and Cap arrive on the Red Planet to stop the assaults, they find the once desolate landscape teeming with exotic, deadly life-forms and are soundly thrashed by the robotic Aleph, seductive Abyss and passionate Ex Nihilo. To show their diffident disdain, the terraforming terrors return the battered Star Spangled Avenger to Earth to let the obsolescent masses know their time is doneâ€¦

‘We Were Avengers’ (with colours from White, Justin Ponsor & Morry Hollowell) sees the infinitely old creatures claim to have been tasked by the first species in creation and their â€œMotherâ€ (of the entire universe) to test and, when necessary, eradicate, recreate, and replace life on other worlds.

As Ex Nihilo slowly tinkers with the prototype Adam that will supersede humanity on Earth, Captain America has gathered the first of the proposed expanded contingent: old comrades and new champions gathered from across the globe.

Wolverine, Spider-Man, Falcon, Spider Woman, master of Kung Fu Shang-Chi and Captain Marvel are joined by former X-mutants Cannonball and Sunspot, teleporter and reality shaper Eden Fesi (now calling himself Manifold), extra-dimensional superman Hyperion, cosmic entity Captain Universe and alien mystery woman Smasher, even as six more DNA-warping blockbuster bombs fall on some of Earth’s most populated and remote regions.

With monsters devastating and remaking our world, Cap leads his utterly unprepared squad back to Mars and ‘The Garden’ (coloured by White, Frank Martin & Richard Isanove) for the shattering final battle where a most unexpected secret is revealedâ€¦

With the cosmic trio defeated, the back stories of the expanded Avengers are then explored, beginning with Hyperion in ‘The Death and Resurrection of Major Titans’ (illustrated by Kubert & Laura Martin).

Although Ex Nihilo’s bio-attacks have ended, the things already transformed and evolved at the previous strike-sites still need to be tackled, but when an Avengers task force is dispatched to sanitise the dinosaur preserve of the Savage Land they find the techno-terrorists of Advanced Idea Mechanics already in situ and exploiting the unnatural disasterâ€¦

Particularly troubled is Hyperion, since the treatment of some of the less menacing newly evolved creatures causes the other causes the other-dimensional Atomic Ace to revisit some very unpleasant aspects of his own past, and interactions with AIMâ€¦

None of the triumphant heroes realise that there were in fact seven bio-bombs and, in desolate Norway, an AIM team has found the terrifying result of that Origin-strikeâ€¦

As Tony Stark seeks to understand the â€œAdamâ€ left in Avengers’ care after Ex Nihilo departed, ‘Superguardian’ (Kubert & Frank Martin) reveals the origins of ordinary Iowa-farmgirl Izzy Dare, who found a fragment of lost Shi’ar technology and was transformed into alien super-soldier Smasher.

Moreover Izzy’s new status then draws her, Cap, Wolverine, Hulk, Falcon and Manifold into a shooting war on the other side of the universe as that alien empire’s Imperial Guard are attacked by overwhelming invading forces.

Only after defeating the mystery raiders does the combined Terran/Shi’ar force realise that their foes were not hungry for conquest but frantically fleeing an even greater menaceâ€¦

This stunning tome concludes with ‘Zen and the Art of Cosmology’ as philosophical warrior Shang-Chi attempts to divine the tragic secrets of the traumatised human flotsam hosting the eerily puissant energy force known as Captain Universe. However even as the empathetic fist-fighter unlocks the horrific tale of broken mother Tamara Devoux, arcane elements of the Infinite are aligning and both Adam and the cosmic crusader are suddenly aware of a shattering â€œWhite Eventâ€ beginning even as they speakâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Pure superhero magic that will delight every fan of Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy, this book comes with a stupendous, sublime and expansive covers-and-variants gallery: two dozen superb images by Dustin Weaver & Justin Ponsor, Steve McNiven, Esad Ribic, Hastings, Jeff Scott Campbell, Scott Young, John Romita Jr., Adi Granov, Mark Brooks, Daniel AcuÃ±a, Dale Keown & Frank D’Armata, Paulo Manuel Rivera and Carlos Pacheco, and a cryptography-key page for the alien ‘Builder Machine Code’ used throughout the stories. As standard now, there are also selections of extra content for tech-savvy consumers in the form of AR icon sections best described as:

Code for a free digital copy on the Marvel Comics app (for iPhoneÂ®, iPadÂ®, iPad TouchÂ® & Android devices) and Marvel Digital Comics Shop. This collection also features special augmented reality content available exclusive through the Marvel AR app – including cover recaps, behind the scenes features and more.

Can’t say fairer than that, eh?

May 24, 2013May 23, 2013

So Long, Silver Screen

By Blutch, translated by Edward Gauvin (Picturebox)
ISBN: 978-0-9851595-1-1

Cinema was the paramount art form of the 20^th century and, in France more than any other country and society, the â€œMovieâ€ is celebrated, venerated and critically examined as no other creation of man.

This lyrical, declamatory, harshly imaginative and lyrically introspective collection of short tales – as much stern self-analysis as autobiographical exploration – by pre-eminent cartoonist and illustrator Blutch examines the creator’s relationship to and lifelong shaping by the magic of celluloid fantasies and the mythical icons who made and populated them.

Christian Hincker was born in Strasbourg in 1967. He grew up there and studied at the famous School of Decorative Arts before beginning his spectacular career into comics after winning a competition in the magazine Fluide Glacial in 1988.

His strips for the prominent avant-garde adult comic include light humour serials Pecos Jim, Johnny Staccato and Mademoiselle Sunnymoon, whilst his features for other publishers range from adventure series such as La Lettre AmÃ©ricaine & Mitchum, the groundbreaking Peplum (a Gay tragedy set in Ancient Rome and based on Petronius’ Satyricon), Vitesse Moderne – his first graphic novel foray into full colour art – and his whimsical autobiography Le Petit Christian (‘The Small Christian’) amongst a host of tales.

As an illustrator and collaborator with other creators, his uniquely unassuming visual questioning has appeared in such disparate places as LibÃ©ration, The New Yorker and Les Inrockuptibles as well as on strips such as Trondheim & Sfar’s Dungeon saga or Congratulations Rancho (with Jean-Louis Capron). He has even dabbled in film making with the animated short Peur(s) du noir – Fear(s) of the Dark to you and meâ€¦

In this stunning hardback edition – the prolific craftsman’s first to make the jump to English, and designed by US comicbook genius David Mazzucchelli – Hincker inserts himself Robert Crumb-like into a series of uncompromising dissertations and conversational comic dialogues about the consumption, effects of and responses to the fantasy-land of movies.

Moreover his expansive, enticing arguments are packed with character roles, cameos, walk-ons and special guest appearances by the likes of Hollywood greats such as William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Kirk Douglas, King Kong, Tony Curtis, Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Johnny Weissmuller – and Cheetah – as well as Euro-stars like Luis BuÃ±uel, Claudia Cardinale, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Delon, Susan Travers, and probably more I don’t recogniseâ€¦

‘Adieu Paul Newman’ opens the show with typical movie staging, sexual tension and even violence as the creator remarks on the passing of a legend through his interactions with the girl of his dreams and the woman who puts up with him, after which the happy faraway land of cloistered childhood is revisited through adult eyes in ‘The Swiss Family Robinson’.

That broken fantasy realm poses its own imponderable questions nowâ€¦

‘A High Wind in Jamaica’ examines the cruel trick of growing old, impotent and useless under the full and unforgiving public gaze by fixating on the brutish vitality of Burt Lancaster through his 46 years of film-making, whilst ‘A Portrait of Luchino Visconti’ provides seven views of the master’s works, and ‘Shutting You Up’ then deals with the author’s early romantic dalliances – when hot blooded teens in the comforting cinema darkness never got to see more than fifteen minutes of any filmâ€¦

‘Women in Film – A Modern Olympia’ explores the harsh treatment and idolatry of women in movies with telling and evocative contributions from Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Rita Hayworth, Anne Margaret, Betty Grable, Maureen O’Sullivan and others. Blutch convincingly ruminates on how technology moved furtive solo imaginings onto walls of light, and invented democratised pornography, whilst turning women into unattainable property and sanitising if not advocating violence against themâ€¦

The querulous tirade of romantic, regretful, puzzled meditations on an incomprehensibly still-beloved addiction concludes with a seductive trip to ‘The Imaginary Museum’, and a treatise on a train (going into that inevitable tunnel) on the inescapable influence of prolific French superstar Michel Piccoli and the beloved slavery of the artist Blutch for that other art formâ€¦

Challenging, enticing and genuinely thought-provoking, this delicious cartoon voyage with a keenly enquiring companion – who has all of the questions but so few answers – is a sheer joy that no grown-up fan of graphic narratives and motion pictures can afford to miss.
Â© DARGAUD 2011 by Blutch. All rights reserved. Translation Â© 2013 Edward Gauvin.

May 23, 2013May 22, 2013

Fantastic Four: Disassembled

By Mark Waid, Karl Kesel, Paco Medina, Mike Wieringo & Juan Vlasco (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1536-6

The Fantastic Four is rightly regarded as the most pivotal series in modern comics history, introducing both a new style of storytelling and a strikingly fresh manner of engaging readers’ imaginations and attention. The heroes are felt by fans to be more family than team and, although the roster has temporarily changed many times over the years, the line-up always inevitably returns to the original core group of maverick genius Reed Richards, wife Sue, trusty friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s younger brother Johnny; all survivors of a privately-funded space-shot which went horribly wrong when Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding.

After crashing back to Earth, the quartet found they had all been mutated into 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 monster who, unlike his comrades, could not reassume a semblance of normality on command.

This particular game-changing compilation gathers issues #514-519 (August-December 2004), highlighting more of the spectacular run by writer Mark Waid and much-missed illustrator Mike Wieringo; celebrating their â€œback-to-basicsâ€ approach which utterly rejuvenated the venerable property and marked one more ending of an era.

What You Need To Know: after banishing their greatest enemy to Hell, the team attempted to save Doctor Doom‘s now-leaderless nation of Latveria. To do this, Reed unilaterally seized control of the postage-stamp kingdom to keep it being from being torn apart and swallowed by its land- and tech-hungry Balkan neighbours.

Although done for the right reasons, Mr. Fantastic’s drastic solution alienated friends and allies – and even his own team-mates – and lost him the respect and support of the entire world.

Contemporaneously in the Marvel Universe: as the FF became unloved pariahs and practically bankrupt, the â€œWorld’s Mightiest Heroesâ€ were shut down and rebooted in a highly publicised event known as Avengers Disassembled (of course it was only to replace them with both The New and Young Avengers).

The event spilled over into the regular titles of current team members and affiliated comic-books such as Spectacular Spider-Man, with close allies the Fantastic Four inexorably drawn into their Big Show.

Said Show consisted of the worst day in superhero history as the unsuspectedly insane Scarlet Witch attacked the Avengers from within, resulting in the utter destruction of everything they held dear and the death of several members and associates. The side-bar sagas collected here concentrate on the uncalculated fall-out of that devastating sequence of eventsâ€¦

It begins in the 3-part ‘Dysfunctional’ (by Karl Kesel, Paco Medina & Juan Vlasco) when, with the heroes at their lowest ebb, incorrigible arch-foe The Wizard targets them, using a new roster of his antithetical cohorts in The Frightful Four. This iteration (Hydro-Man, the Trapster and mysterious new pyrokinetic â€œFire Maidenâ€ Salamandra) start enacting the Wizard’s devious plan just as Johnny finds his new girlfriend Cole Wittman at the centre of a bizarre series of tectonic disasters.

When she is invited back to FFHQ for tea and tests, shock follows shocks as Cole reluctantly lets the Wizard’s minions inâ€¦

The poor girl is the unwitting product of the evil super-genius’ genetic tinkering: a test-tube baby combining his and Salamandra’s DNA and somehow able to affect gravity. It is, unfortunately, an ability the poor dupe has no control overâ€¦

As the two FF’s spectacularly clash and the villains come out on top, the Wizard’s true intentions are revealed as he murderously disposes of one of his own to make way for Daddy’s little girl to join his team. Moreover he has broadcast the entire battle to the world, in his arrogant determination to prove his superiority to the fallen Reed Richardsâ€¦

Battered but unbroken the heroes pick themselves up, determined to find their foes and rescue Cole. The girl is already regretting her actions as her â€œfatherâ€ elatedly reveals the circumstances of her creation and exults in the success of his greatest â€œexperimentâ€â€¦

The staggering counterstrike almost goes horribly wrong when Salamandra’s true nature is exposed, resulting in a catastrophic struggle and a tragic pyrrhic victory for the Fantastic Fourâ€¦

The main event sees the return of creators Waid & Wieringo (with Kesel inking) for ‘Fourtitude’ as Halloween finds the team on the road to recovery if not public redemption. Reed has already rebuilt their fortune with a brief flurry of invention and profitable patents – such as the self-inflating, self-retrieving basketball â€“ and, as darkness falls, cosmic calamity offers Fantastic Four, Inc. a chance to restore their shredded reputationâ€¦

Out of the darkness of space four monumental alien pylons crash into the waters around Manhattan and begin sucking the island up into the void. With the Avengers gone, the Mayor has no choice but to turn to the pariah-team to save his city and perhaps the worldâ€¦

They are already at work rescuing citizens when the call comes and soon Richards and his comrades have penetrated one of the vast constructs to discover the horrible truth behind Manhattan’s abduction.

Benevolent alien technologist Zius had discovered a way to mask planets from the attention of world-devouring Galactus, potentially saving trillions of lives and possibly resulting in the eventual doom by starvation of the cosmic cannibal. However he has learned that on Earth a counter to his process exists.

Thus he has raced to our world to remove that single threat to universal salvation.

It doesn’t take long to determine that the force in question is Sue, whose powers include making the unseen visible. Zius was willing to throw New York into the Sun to ensure the safety of the cosmos, but with the World-Eater undoubtedly getting closer every moment she surrenders herself in return for the island’s safe returnâ€¦

Desperate Reed quickly devises a way to obviate the necessity to kill his wife and the aliens prepare to leave, satisfied but utterly unaware of the brilliant stratagem Richards has used to bluff them.

As New York rejoices in the triumph of its now restored and redeemed champions, Sue discovers she is now a Human Torch whilst her brother possesses the critical invisibility power.

â€¦And that’s when the star god arrives and takes possession of the mortal threat to his infinite existenceâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

With an eye-catching cover gallery by Gene Ha, Morry Hollowell, Wieringo, Kesel & Paul Mounts, this compulsively engrossing epic of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction truly carries on the legacy of mind-bending imagination and breathtaking excitement established by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

May 22, 2013May 21, 2013

Ratspike

By John Blanche & Ian Miller (Games Workshop)
ISBN: 978-1-87237-200-6

I haven’t covered an actual art book in an age, so let’s look at a little known gem sorely in need of a new edition featuring the grotesquely beautiful art of painter and illustrator Ian Miller (The City, The Luck in the Head, Green Dog Trumpet) and designer, model-maker and illustrator John Blanche.

Both eclectic individualists found a spiritual home and an outlet for their fantastic fantasy imaginings at role-playing, book and comics publisher Games Workshop/Black Library, and their painterly endeavours happily led to the stunning celebration of the macabre and mind-bending melange of modern myth realisation under review today.

The legendary entertainment firm began by importing American product at the beginning of the Dungeons and Dragons craze in the 1980s before quickly moving on to creating their own material. Soon they were expanding into prose and pictorial fiction too, supported by some frankly astounding illustration material on their game packaging, periodical publications (White Dwarf, Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, Warhammer 40,000, Inferno and others) as well as sequences of original material novels in the fantasy, horror and science fiction genres.

This stunning oversized (29 x 21.8 x 1.5cm) hardback coffee-table tome was released in 1989 and offers a mesmerising selection of paintings and drawing from two uniquely inspired creators, beginning, after a Foreword by fantasy illustration giant Patrick Woodroffe, with John Blanche.

Eventually becoming Games Workshop’s Art Director, Blanche got his first big break after meeting Roger Dean, subsequently going on to develop a dark, punk-inspired painstakingly classical illustration style, usually working smaller than published size and having his work â€œblown upâ€, not reduced, for printing.

This compulsive chronicle combines, intersperses and interweaves the art with creator commentary, personal memories, insights and creative secrets as well as evocative literary quotes and snatches of poetry to enhance the images and, after Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, plunges into a welter of nearly 80 paintings and drawings over 62 pages, crammed with amazons, warriors, aliens, barbarians, fairy princes, eldritch post-apocalyptic demons and all the attendant genre icons beloved by generations of imaginers.

The affable maven of menace macabre discusses his unforgettable work such as ‘Ice Unicorn’, ‘War Boss’, ‘Good King Otto’, ‘Amazonia Gothique’ and ‘McDeath’ plusÂ devoting much time to the infinitesimal discipline of building and painting miniatures – many of which have their own scarily impressive, ironically, mordantly funny section here.

The second half of the book is devoted to Ian Miller’s bleakly complex, convoluted classicist DÃ¼rer, Bosch and Druillet inspired futurisms which, before his association with Games Workshop, were best seen illustrating Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast stories as well as in films such as Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards and Coolworld.

His concluding half of the graphic gallery – 68 pages in all – combines quotes from Treasure Island, children’s nonsense rhymes, an intimate biography and disquieting slogans and snatches of prose with sketches, drawings, pen-and-ink studies and more than 100 paintings and less conventional images, displaying the artist’s signature brain-blasting architecture, eye-shredding monsters, blasted trees, isolated warriors and chaos knights.

Also on show are notional comic-strip sequences and works with such evocative if non-defining titles as ‘Death in the Rocking Horse Factory’, ‘Udder Woman, Killer of Cows’, ‘Angel Butcher’, ‘Hollywood Gothic’ and ‘Those Sent to that Dark Place’, all guaranteed to subtly engender unease and worseâ€¦

With the fantasy genre in full revival mode thanks to the likes of movies like The Hobbit and TV shows like Game of Thrones and Da Vinci’s Demons, there’s never been a better time to revisit this book or even further explore the lost marvels of a superb cadre of forgotten artists. So if you need to escape this ghastly world of humdrum terrors for a brief moment – and don’t we all? – seek out this Bestiary of the Bizarre and let yourself goâ€¦
Â© 1989 GW Books. Â© John Blanche & Ian Miller. All rights reserved.

May 21, 2013May 20, 2013

Showcase Presents Batman volume 5

By Frank Robbins, Dennis O’Neil, Mike Friedrich, Irv Novick, Bob Brown, Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Joe Giella & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-853-8

After three seasons (perhaps two and a half would be closer) the overwhelmingly successful Batman TV show ended in March, 1968. It had clocked up 120 episodes and a movie since the US premiere on January 12, 1966 and triggered a global furore of â€œBatmaniaâ€ and indeed hysteria for all things zany and mystery-mannish.

As the series foundered and crashed the global fascination with â€œcampâ€ superheroes – and yes, the term had everything to do with lifestyle choices but absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation, no matter what you and Mel Brooks might think about Men in Tights – burst as quickly as it had boomed, and the Caped Crusader was left with a hard core of dedicated fans and followers who now wanted their hero back.

For character editor Julius Schwartz – who had tried to keep the most ludicrous excesses of the show out whilst still cashing in on his global popularity – the reasoning seemed simple: strip out the tired gimmicks and gaudy paraphernalia and get him back to solving baffling mysteries and facing genuine perils as soon and as thrillingly as possible.

This also meant slowly phasing out the boy sidekickâ€¦

Many readers were now acknowledged as discerning, independent teens and the kid was no longer relevant to them or the changing times. Although the soon-to-be college-bound freshman Teen Wonder would still pop back for the occasional guest-shot yarn, this fifth astoundingly economical monochrome monument to comics ingenuity and narrative brilliance would see him finally spread his wings and fly the nest for an alternating back-up slot in Detective, shared with relative newcomer Batgirl in stirring hip and mod solo sallies.

Collecting the newly independent Batman‘s cases from September 1969 to February 1971 (issues #216-228 of his own title as well as the front halves of Detective Comics #391-407), the 30 stories gathered here – some of the Batman issues were giant reprint editions so only their covers are reproduced within these pages – were written and illustrated by an evolving team of fresh-thinking creators as editor Schwartz lost many of his elite stable to age, attrition and corporate pressure.

However the â€œnew bloodâ€ was fresh only to the Gotham Guardian, not the industry, and their sterling efforts deftly moulded the character into a hero capable of actually working within the new â€œbig thingsâ€ in comics: suspense, horror and the supernaturalâ€¦

During this pivotal period the long slow road to our scarily Dark Knight gradually revealed a harder-edged, grimly serious caped crusader, even whilst carefully expanding the milieu and scope of Batman’s universe – especially his fearsome foes, who slowly ceased to be harmless buffoons and inexorably metamorphosed into the macabre Grand Guignol murder fiends of the early 1940sâ€¦

The transformational process continued here with the Frank Robbins-scripted Detective #391, as ‘The Gal Most Likely to Be – Batman’s Widow!’ (illustrated by Bob Brown & Joe Giella) saw the fleeting return of abortive modern love interest Ginny Jenkins who had become the passing fancy of mobbed-up publisher and extortionist Arnie Arnold.

By crushing the crooked editor’s scam to fleece Gotham’s society eateries, Batman paved the way for Ginny to settle down with the true man of her dreamsâ€¦

Robbins (illustrious creator of newspaper strip Johnny Hazard) always had a deft grip on both light adventure and darker crime capers as seen in issue #392’s ‘I Diedâ€¦ A Thousand Deaths!’ wherein the Gotham Gangbuster’s plan to take down mobster Scap Scarpel went dangerously awry after trusting a less than honest â€œconfidential informantâ€. In Batman #216 (November 1968), Robbins gave faithful butler Alfred a surname (after thirty years of service) by introducing the old retainer’s niece Daphne Pennyworth in ‘Angel – or Devil?’ (art from Irv Novick & Dick Giordano).

The aspiring actress had become ensnared in the coils of a band of very crooked travelling players and nearly became their patsy for murderâ€¦

In an era where teen angst and the counter-culture played an increasingly strident part in the public consciousness, Robin’s role as spokesperson for a generation was becoming increasingly important, with disputes and splits from his senior partner constantly recurring.

A long overdue separation came in Detective #393’s ‘The Combo Caper!’ (Robbins, Brown & Giella) as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson took a young delinquent with them on their last vacation together, embroiling Batman and Robin in a sinister string of high end gem heistsâ€¦

The partnership ended in Batman #217 and ‘One Bullet Too Many!’ (Robbins, Novick & Giordano) as Dick shipped out for Hudson University and Batman undertook a radical rethink of his mission and goals.

Dapper Gentleman’s Gentleman Alfred became a far more hands-on part of the mythology – like Margery Allingham’s Magersfontein Lugg from the Albert Campion mysteries rather than Wodehouse’s smugly unflappable Jeeves – from this point on: shutting up the stately Manor and moving the Batcave into the basement of the Wayne Foundation in the heart of the city where all the crime and injustice actually lurkedâ€¦

The first case – a brilliant old-fashioned whodunit – of the streamlined setup involved the unsolved murder of a paediatrician, but the real innovation was the creation of a new Wayne Foundation outreach project: the Victims Incorporated Program which saw both superheroism and philanthropy combine to provide justice for those who couldn’t afford to buy itâ€¦

The scheme immediately hit a deadly snag in Detective #394’s ‘A Victim’s Victim!’ (Robbins, Brown & Giella) when a crippled racing car driver came looking for vengeance; claiming Wayne had personally sabotaged his career. It took all of the Dark Detective’s skills to uncover the deadly truthâ€¦

Batman #218 was an all-reprint Giant Annual represented here only by the glorious Murphy Anderson cover, whereas the next tale marked a landmark step forward in the history of the Caped Crusader.

Neal Adams had been producing a stunning succession of mesmerising covers on both Batman and Detective Comics, as well as illustrating a phenomenal run of team-up tales in World’s Finest Comics and The Brave and the Bold, so his inevitable switch to the premier league was hotly anticipated. However Dennis O’Neil’s script for Detective Comics #395’s ‘The Secret of the Waiting Graves’ (January 1970 and inked by Giordano) also instituted a far more mature and sinister – almost gothic – take on the hero as he confronted the psychotic nigh-immortal lovers named Muerto whose passion for each other was fuelled by deadly drugs and sustained by a century of murderâ€¦

Adams’ captivating dynamic hyperrealism was just the final cog in the reconstruction of the epic Batman edifice but it was also an irresistibly attractive one.

Issue #219 led with a cracking political thriller in (Robbins, Novick & Giordano’s) ‘Death Casts the Deciding Vote’ wherein Bruce took his V.I.P. scheme to Washington DC and stumbled into a plot to assassinate an-anti-crime Senator, but the astounding Christmas vignette ‘The Silent Night of the Batman’ (by Mike Friedrich, Adams & Giordano) completely stole the show – and became a revered classic – with its eerily gentle, moving modern interpretation of the Season of Miraclesâ€¦

Adams couldn’t do it all and he didn’t have to. Detective #396 saw artists Brown & Giella up their game in Robbins’ clever contemporary yarn ‘The Brain-Pickers!’

Teen financial wizard Rory Bell cornered the stock market from the back of his freewheeling motorbike, only to be kidnapped by a greedy gang with an eye to a big killing – corporate and otherwise – until the Caped Crimebuster got on their trail whilst Novick & Giordano similarly adapted their styles for Batman #220.

‘This Murder has beenâ€¦ Pre-Recorded!’, scripted by Robbins, saw Bruce finally meet journalist Marla Manning (whose writing inspired the V.I.P. initiative) when an exposÃ© of corrupt practises made her the target of a murder-for-hire veteran.

O’Neil, Adams & Giordano reunited for Detective #397 and another otherworldly mystery when obsessive millionaire art collector Orson Payne resorted to theft and worse in his quest for an unobtainable love in ‘Paint a Picture of Peril!’, whilst #398 saw Robbins, Brown & Giella pose ‘The Poison Pen Puzzle!’ when muckraking gossip columnist Maxine Melanie‘s latest book inspired her murder and an overabundance of perpetrators queuing up to take the creditâ€¦

‘A Bat-Death for Batman!’ by Robbins, Novick & Giordano led in issue #221 as the Dark Knight headed for Germany to track down Nazi war criminals and their bio-agent which turned domestic animals and livestock into rabid killers, whilst the Friedrich-scripted ‘A Hot Time in Gotham Town Tonight!’ saw the Masked Manhunter eradicate the threat of a mystic idol capable of turning the city into smouldering ashes.

Detective #399, by O’Neil, Brown & Giella, introduced anti-Batman campaigner and political hack Arthur Reeves and revealed how ‘Death Comes to a Small, Locked Room!’ in a clever mystery centred on the apparent assassination of a martial arts teacher, whilst Batman #222 featured two tales illustrated by Novick & Giordano.

‘Deadâ€¦ Till Proven Alive!’, written by Robbins, featured a guest shot by Robin as British band The Oliver Twists hit Gotham, mired in speculation that one of that Fabulous Foursome had been killed and secretly replaced (a contemporary conspiracy theory had it that Beatle Paul McCartney had been similarly dealt with), after which Friedrich contributed another superb human interest yarn as an exhausted hero pushed himself beyond his limits to help a deaf mugging victim in ‘The Case of No Consequence!’

The big anniversary Detective Comics #400 introduced a dark counterpoint to the Gotham Gangbuster as driven scientist Kirk Langstrom created a serum to make himself superior to Batman and paid a heavy price in ‘Challenge of the Man-Bat!’ by Robbins, Adams & Giordano.

Batman #223 was another Annual, this time sporting a captivating Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson cover, after which Detective #401 spotlighted Robbins, Brown & Giella’s ‘Target for Tonight!’ as insane playboy hunter Carleton Yager stalked Gotham’s most dangerous game, armed only with his wits, weapons and knowledge of the Dark Knight’s true identityâ€¦

Batman #224 opened an era of eerie psychodramas and manic murder as the hero travelled to New Orleans to solve the mystery murder of a Jazz legend and battled the monstrous Moloch in ‘Carnival of the Cursed’ by O’Neil, Novick & Giordano, after which Detective #402 saw the Dark Knight capture the out-of-control thing that was once Kirk Langstrom and ponder if he had the right to kill or cure the beast in ‘Man or Bat?’ by Robbins, Adams & Giordano.

Batman #225 (O’Neil, Novick & Giordano) saw the murder of divisive talk show host Jonah Jory with witnesses swearing the city’s greatest hero was the killer in ‘Wanted for Murder-One, the Batman’, after which Detective #403 featured the gothic thriller ‘You Die by Mourning!’ (Robbins, Brown & Frank Giacoia, with a splash page by Carmine Infantino), in which the V.I.P. project turned up grieving widow Angie Randall who needed justice for her murdered husband.

This cunning conundrum revolves around the fact that dear dead Laird wasn’t dead yet – but would be tomorrowâ€¦

Detective Comics #404 then offered the magnificent ‘Ghost of the Killer Skies!’ (O’Neil, Adams & Giordano) which found the Masked Manhunter attempting to solve a series of impossible murders on the set of a film about German WWI fighter ace Hans von Hammer.

All evidence seemed to prove that the killer could only be a vengeful phantom, whereas in Batman #226 skewed science produced a new mad menace in ‘The Man with Ten Eyes!’ by Robbins, Novick & Giordano.

A cruel misunderstanding during a robbery pitted security guard Reardon against Batman just as the real thieves detonated a huge explosion. Blinded, traumatised and shell-shocked, Reardon was then subjected to an experimental procedure which allowed him to see through his fingertips but the Vietnam vet blamed the Caped Crimebuster for his freakish fate and determined to extract his vengeance in kindâ€¦

Detective #405 was the inauspicious start to a whole new world of intrigue and adventure as ‘The First of the Assassins!’ (O’Neil, Brown & Giacoia) found the Gotham Guardian seconded to Interpol to solve the murders of fifteen shipping magnates. Whilst struggling to keep the sixteenth healthy against a fusillade of esoteric threats from oriental fiend Tejja, the Dark Night first learned of a vast global League of killersâ€¦

Another groundbreaking narrative strand debuted in Batman #227 in ‘The Demon of Gothos Mansion’ (O’Neil, Novick & Giordano) as Daphne Pennyworth returned, begging help to escape her latest employment as a governess in a remote household. When Batman investigated he discovered a cult of madmen, demonic possession and what less-rational men might consider a captive ghostâ€¦

The epic, slow-boiling battle against the League of Assassins continued in Detective Comics #406 as in ‘Your Servant of Death – Dr.Darrk!’ (by O’Neil, Brown & Giacoia) another tycoon almost dies and Batman at last clashes with the deadly mastermind behind the global campaign of terrorâ€¦ or does he?

This staggering compendium of comics wonderment concludes with Detective #407; the final chapter in a triptych of tales introducing tragic Kirk Langstrom. In ‘Marriage: Impossible!’ (Robbins, Adams, Giordano), the ambitious scientist’s fall from grace is completed when he infects his fiancÃ©e Francine Lee with his mutated curse and forces the Dark Knight into an horrific choiceâ€¦

One last treat here is the cover to Giant Batman #228: another spectacular visual feast from Swan & Anderson which ends this marvellous meander through memory lane in perfect style.

With the game-changing classics in this volume, Batman finally shed his alien-bashing Boy Scout silliness and returned to his original defining concept as a grim relentless avenger of injustice. The next few years would see the hero rise to unparalleled heights of quality so stay tuned: the very best is just around the cornerâ€¦ that dark, dark cornerâ€¦
Â© 1969, 1970, 1971, 2011 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

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