NowReadThis

April 29, 2011May 1, 2011

Ultimate Thor

By Jonathan Hickman, Carlos Pacheco & Dexter Vines (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-484-3

In 2000, when Marvel retooled their traditional continuity into a separate, darker, grittier universe more relevant to the video game-playing, movie-watching 21^st century readers than the 1960s Lee/Kirby/Ditko ongoing monolith, they started with the most popular characters and only gradually added analogues for the established characters and trademarks.

Even when the Avengers finally appeared as the Ultimates, readers were only sparingly brought up to speed on the assorted back-stories of the alternative heroes and villains – especially the wild, hammer-wielding warrior who couldn’t decide if he was Thorlief Golmen, mental patient, psychiatric nurse and anti-American radical protester or Thor, ancient Norse god of Thunder and battle.

After many struggles against his malicious, reality-warping brother Loki, the immensely powerful Thor is found here as a patient under the care of the European Union Super Soldier program. When his doctors call in linguistic expert and psychotherapist Donald Blake the true and fantastic story of his origins unfoldâ€¦

Eons ago Asgard was a fantastic place of adventure and glory; an ideal paradise for the young warrior-brothers Balder, Thor and Loki to fight, carouse and enjoy life. But even gods grow older and apartâ€¦

The time is just prior to the start of World War II Nazi Occult scientist: Baron Zemo leads an army against Asgard, having already allied himself with the gods’ greatest enemies, the Frost Giantsâ€¦

All is not as it seems however, and Zemo is no mortal invader. Moreover his intention is to end all the gods and bring about Ragnarokâ€¦ and despite the magnificent heroics of the Norse deities he succeeds. But now it is revealed that the brothers did not die and were reborn in mortal form on Earthâ€¦

Now as an Age of Supermen begins the brothers awakeâ€¦ and one of them is madâ€¦

Compellingly scripted by Jonathan Hickman and beautifully illustrated by Carlos Pacheco & Dexter Vines this lovely yarn (originally released as miniseries Ultimate Comics Thor #1-4) could probably be a mite confusing for readers who haven’t seen Thor’s other Ultimate appearances and certainly is quite choppy in delivery as it in-fills the missing portions of those stories. Even so, this is still a hugely engaging adventure that could easily act as an introduction to those other epics and is well worth your attention.

April 28, 2011April 28, 2011

Bigger Nothings: The Little Nothings Gift Set volumes 1-3

By Lewis Trondheim, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: vol. 1: 978-1-56163-523-8 vol. 2: 978-1-56163-548-1 vol. 3: 978-1-56163-576-4
Gift pack ISBN: 978-1-56163-599-3

I first became aware of Lewis Trondheim’s subtly enchanting vignettes in Fantagraphics’ Mome comics anthologies rather than through its internet presence and it’s an utter delight for this old duffer (me, not him) to see this blend of cartoon philosophy, personal introspection, whimsical inquiry and foible-filled observations gathered into such handy tomes for constant re-reading.

With over 100 books sporting his name, (which isn’t actually Lewis Trondheim but Laurent Chabosy) the writer/artist/editor and educator is one of Europe’s most prolific comics creators: illustrating his own work, overseeing animated cartoons of such print successes as La Mouche (The Fly) and Kaput and ZÃ¶sky and editing the younger readers book series Shampooing for Dargaud.

His most famous works are the global hits ‘Les Formidables Aventures de Lapinot’ (translated as The Spiffy Adventures of McConey) and, with Joann Sfar, the Donjon (Dungeon) series of nested fantasy epics (see the translated Dungeon: Parade, Dungeon: Monstres and Dungeon: the Early Years).

In his spare time he has written for satirical magazine Psikopat and provided scripts for many of the continent’s most popular artists – such as Fabrice Parme (Le Roi Catastrophe, VÃ©nÃ©zia), Manu Larcenet (Les Cosmonautes du futur), JosÃ© Parrondo (Allez Raconte and Papa Raconte) and Thierry Robin (Petit PÃ¨re NoÃ«l),

He is a cartoonist of uncanny wit, piercing, gentle perspicacity, comforting affability and self-deprecating empathy and prefers to control scrupulously what is known and said about himâ€¦

A little while ago the well-travelled graphic introvert began drawing a deliciously intimate cartoon blog wherein all the people Trondheim knows are rendered as anthropomorphisedÂ animals (with him a dowdy, parrot-beaked actor/director) which has been edited into a series of enchanting full-colour albums. Page after page of introspective, whimsical, querulous and enticingly intriguing reportage has emerged since, and thanks, presumably, to the global recession you can now pick up the first three in an extremely economical bargain gift packâ€¦

Volume 1, The Curse of the Umbrella, features ruminations on gardening and possessing a vegetable death-touch, introduces his family, examines the love-hate relationship with technology and computer games and covers the dramas of becoming first time cat-owners at an advanced age. Hypochondria and the internet’s impact as an enabler of such recurs, as do work-processes for the self-employed, keeping fit, snacks, memory, death, bird-poop, the weather and travel to comics events in exotic locations such as the Reunion Islands and Edinburgh. The daily bulletins explore little events and really big themes and there are also purely visual moments that you just have to see to getâ€¦

In volume 2, The Prisoner Syndrome, the cascade of cartoon delights continues with more of the same whilst adding summer beach madness, floating with the fishes, exploring volcanoes, ecology and hotel wastefulness, comic convention memory (so different from the regular kind). There’s animal antics, travel, energy-saving, visiting Africa, Guadeloupe, Romania and London, the differences between men and women, global political crises and the heartbreaking helplessness and inevitable consequences of seeing your pet die.

Uneasy Happiness, the third and final volume in this collected set, sees the bird-faced gentleman amicably nit-picking and further musing his way through the life of an old and successful comic creator: travelling to conventions, making stories and dealing with the distressingly peculiar modern world, especially focusing on his increasing hoarding proclivities, concerns over his creative and financial legacy, mice in the bookshelves and packing…

The ruminations and anti-dramas regularly range from his inability to de-clutter (every comic maven’s weakness!), toilet etiquette (public and private), gadgets, marriage, parenthood, the actual science in TV shows, how mad cats are, brilliant ideas that come when you’re asleep, computers, and getting old, interspersed with reactions to the many wonderful places he has visited on the comics convention circuit (Venice, Portugal, Fiji, Australia and others in this volume).

All genteelly re-coloured for book publication, these Little Nothings have become some of my favourite 21^st century graphic novels; gently contemplative, subtly pleasingâ€¦

I strongly suggest that if you need a little non-theological, un-theosophical yet hilariously existential spiritual refreshment you take advantage of this fortuitous collection with the utmost alacrityâ€¦

April 27, 2011April 27, 2011

Thor: For Asgard

By Robert Rodi & Simone Bianchi (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-482-9

Once again a major motion picture adaptation has generated a host of supplemental comics product and as Thor thunders onto silver screens everywhere there’s plenty for established fans and freshly-interested parties to grapple withâ€¦

In this effective and beautiful re-imagining by Robert Rodi, illustrated with astounding imagination and beauty (if not always the greatest narrative or sequential clarity) by Simone Bianchi, the long dreaded Twilight of the Gods has begun and cracks are beginning to show in the heroic faÃ§ade of the noble and mighty Asgardiansâ€¦

Reprinting the six-issue miniseries published in 2010 under the Marvel Knights imprint the saga opens in the second icy year of the dread Fimbulwinter, with the shining god Balder long dead, all-father Odin long missing and Thor as Regent.

A better warrior than ruler Thor leads an embattled, increasingly contentious and disgruntled populace in punitive forays against old enemies such as the Frost Giants. All around them former vassal states are stretching long unused muscles and airing old grievances and his two closest advisors are at constant odds with each otherâ€¦

With the snowy streets of Asgard awash with resentment, if not outright sedition, Idunn informs the out-of-his-depth Thunderer that the Golden Apples – source of immortality – are almost gone and with Spring and Summer banished, no more will grow.

Asgard’s enemies are gathering, led by a secret mastermind, Odin’s mysterious mission has gone awry and, in the gleaming city, mutterings have become desperate, traitorous acts. With even Valhalla, the glorious Hall of the Dead, threatened, and now murder in the streets, Thor needs all his powers to help him, but even his faithful magic mallet has betrayed him: it has been long indeed since the Prince of Asgard was worthy enough to wield the Hammer of the Godsâ€¦

With chaos and destruction all around can the hard-pressed Thor hold things together or would the truly heroic thing be to let Ragnarok come and start fresh amid the ruinsâ€¦?

Bleak, subtly allegorical and utterly enchanting, this moody epic of endings and new beginnings is a powerful tale of a deftly different pantheon that will delight newcomers to the character but possibly irritate long-term Marvelites.

Moreover, by ending on a foreboding note – completists should take heed – the tale is not completely done and there may be more to followâ€¦

April 26, 2011April 27, 2011

R.I.P. Best of 1984-2004

By Thomas Ott and friends (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 987-1-60699-417-7

Being an old geezer but unreconstructed punk at heart I can firmly attest and confirm that the teen-years urge to shock and addiction to loud, fast, shouty-boy music never goes away. The same holds true for in-your-face comic stripsâ€¦

Thomas Ott is a Swiss cartoonist, musician, satirist and film-maker (born in Berne in June 1966) who has, since the mid-1980s, been producing stunning strips and pastiches for commercial publications such as Ahai, Okay Erotik Magazin, Strapazin, SÃ¼ddeutsche Zeitung, El Vibora, LibÃ©ration, L’Echo des Savanes and a host of others whilst pursuing his own uniquely meticulous trash-culture visions in self-published monochrome anthological albums such as Tales of Error, Dead End, and Greetings from Hellville.

Now this retrospective compendium from Fantagraphics presents 19 of the very best (seven never before seen) spanning two decades of shocking horror, crime noir, mordant, nihilistic love, juicy revenge, surreal justice and bleak, black irony all delivered in Ott’s signature and obsessively meticulous scratchboard style, with gleaming white narrative emerging from ebon pages, sans dialogue but occasionally boasting impressive and imaginative typography.

Beginning with raw and raucous EC comics homages ‘The Hero’, ‘Clean Up!’, ‘A Wrinkled Tragedy’ and ‘Headbanger’; gradually building up to longer – and far shorter – pieces such as ’10 Ways to Kill Your Husband’, ‘Massacre Melodies Presents Buddy Butcher in â€œBuddy Goes Bloodyâ€’, ‘G.O.D.’, ‘Goodbye!’, ‘The Job’,Â ’10’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

Hardbitten mystery and sardonic imagination begin to predominate with ‘Breakdown’, ‘The Millionairs’ and ‘Washing Day’ but there’s still room for a laugh in ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘The Clown’ or a disturbing chill in ‘La FiancÃ©e du Lapin’ (written by David B) and sheer exuberance in ‘Recuerdos de Mexico’ before ending in classic droll darkness with ‘The Hook’.

Ott’s psychobilly sensibilities litter his narrative world with pimps, thugs and geeks; desperate chancers, deadly beloveds and down and outs on the edge of reality as well as society, so if jaded comics fans might feel they’ve been here before, the wider world are still only curious first-timers into a dismal dimension of vice, spice and bad adviceâ€¦

Graphic, violent funny and unforgettable this is a special treat for thrill-starved adults in search of something a little beyond the normâ€¦

April 25, 2011April 27, 2011

Krampus: the Devil of Christmas

By various, edited by Monte Beauchamp (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-747-1

With Easter upon us it’s clearly time to start thinking about Christmas and this delightfully engrossing hardback celebration from artist, historian and designer Monte Beauchamp (a welcome expansion on his 2004 book The Devil in Design) focuses on a lost aspect of the Season of Good Will.

For decades Monte Beauchamp’s iconic, innovative narrative and graphic arts magazine Blab! highlighted the best and most groundbreaking trends and trendsetters in cartooning and other popular creative fields. Initially published through the auspices of the much-missed Dennis Kitchen’s Kitchen Sink Press it moved first to Fantagraphics and exists as the snazzy hardback annual Blabworld from Last Gasp. Here however he looks back not forward to revel in the lost exuberance and dark creativity of a host of anonymous artists whose seasonal imaginings spiced up the Winter Solstice for generations of kidsâ€¦

In Western Europe, particularly the German-speaking countries but also as far afield as Northern Italy and the Balkans, St Nicholas used to travel out with gifts for good children accompanied by a goat-headed, satanic servant. Fur-covered, furtive, chain-bedecked, sinister and all-knowing, the beast-man with a foot long tongue and one cloven hoof, wielded a birch switch to thrash the unruly and a large sack to carry off disobedient children.

The Krampus became a fixture of winter life in Austria, Switzerland and the German Principalities, with his own special feast-day (December 5^th – just before St. Nikolaus’ Day), parades, festivals and ceremonial child-scaring events. Back then we really knew how to reward the naughty and the niceâ€¦

This spectacular tome celebrates the thrilling dark edge of the Christmas experience as depicted through the medium of the full-colour postcards that were a vital facet of life in Europe from 1869 to the outbreak of World War I.

However, even with fascinating histories of the character and the art-form related in ‘Greetings From Krampus’, ‘Festival of the Krampus’ and ‘Postal Beginnings’ the true wonder and joy of this collection is the glorious cacophony of paintings, prints, drawings collages – and even a few primitive photographic forays – depicting the delicious scariness of the legendary deterrent as he terrified boys and girls, explored the new-fangled temptations of airplanes and automobiles and regularly monitored the more mature wickednesses of courting couplesâ€¦

A feast of imagination and tradition ranging from the wry, sardonic and archly knowing to the outright disturbing and genuinely scary this magical artbook is a treasure not just for Christmas but for lifeâ€¦

April 24, 2011April 24, 2011

Essential Defenders volume 2

By Len Wein, Steve Gerber, Sal Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2150-1

Last of the big star-name conglomerate super-groups, the Defenders would eventually number amongst its membership almost every hero – and a few villains – in the Marvel Universe. No surprise there then since the initial line was composed of the company’s major league bad-boys: misunderstood, outcast and often actually dangerous to know.

For Marvel in the 1970s, the outsider super-group must have seemed a conceptual inevitability – once they’d finally published it. Apart from Spider-Man and Daredevil (both of whom come visiting in this tome) all their heroes regularly teamed up in various mob-handed assemblages, and in the wake of the Defenders’ success even more super-teams featuring pre-existing characters would be packaged – the Champions, Invaders, New Warriors and so onâ€¦ but never with so many Very Big Gunsâ€¦

The genesis of the team in fact derived from their status as publicly distrusted â€œvillainsâ€, and they never achieved the â€œin-continuityâ€ fame or acceptance of other teams, but that simply seemed to leave the creators open to taking a few chances and playing the occasional narrative wild card.

This second semi-chronological monochrome masterpiece collects a wealth of material from a large list of sources: Giant Sized Defenders #1-5 (not 1-4 as it so embarrassingly states on the cover), Defenders #15-30, Marvel Two-In-One #6-7, Marvel Team-Up #33-35 and Marvel Treasury Edition #12 and opens with a stunning combination of highly readable reprints wrapped in a classy framing sequence by Tony Isabella, Jim Starlin & Al Milgrom.

Giant Sized Defenders #1 (cover-dated July1974) begins with Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers’ ‘Banished to Outer Space’ from The Incredible Hulk #3, followed by a brilliant 1950s Bill Everett Sub-Mariner fantasy-thriller ‘Bird of Prey!’ From there the focus switches to Dr. Strange for the Denny O’Neil scripted Steve Ditko mini-masterpiece ‘To Catch a Magician!’ (Strange Tales #145) and the concoction concludes with a big battle as the three stars plus sorcerer’s apprentice Clea and the valiant Valkyrie dispatch a self-inflicted mystic menace.

After a splendid double-page pin-up by Sal Buscema the regular epics resume with Defenders #15 and a two-part duel manic mutant Magneto who first institutes a ‘Panic Beneath the Earth!’ courtesy of writer Len Wein, Buscema & Klaus Janson, leading X-Men mentor Charles Xavier to enlist the outcast heroes aid.

The concluding clash includes the Brotherhood of Evil and ‘Alpha the Ultimate Mutant’ (inked by Mike Esposito) after which Giant Sized Defenders #2 (October1974) positively astounds with the superb supernatural thriller ‘Hâ€¦ as in Hulkâ€¦ Hellâ€¦ and Holocaust’ wherein Wein, Gil Kane and Janson pit the always-embattled Jade Giant against the sinister Sons of Satanish and the Defenders must perforce call on Daimon Hellstrom, Son of Satan, for some highly specialised assistanceâ€¦

In Defenders #17 the core-group of Dr. Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie and reformed bad-boy Nighthawk engaged with and then enlisted the aid of Hero for Hire Luke Cage in ‘Power Play’ (Wein, Buscema & Dan Green) wherein the bombastic Wrecking Crew’s decimation of New York’s prime real estate while hunting for a hidden super-weapon led to a spectacular ‘Rampage!‘ before the furious finale (Chris Claremont, Wein, Buscema & Janson) found everybody frantically ferreting out the location of a deadly ‘Doomball!’

Immediately afterwards, Strange, Clea and Fantastic Four lynchpin The Thing encountered a disharmonious cosmic challenge in Marvel Two-In-One #6’s ‘Death-Song of Destiny’ (by Steve Gerber, George Tuska & Esposito) that concluded in #7 with ‘Name That Doom!’ (Sal Buscema pencils) as Valkyrie joined the melee just in time to cross swords with the egregious Enchantress and Executionerâ€¦

The aftermath of that eldritch encounter spilled over into Defenders #20 as Gerber came aboard to begin a truly groundbreaking run of stories. ‘The Woman She Wasâ€¦’ (Buscema & Vince Colletta) started to unravel the torturous backstory of Valkyrie’s unwitting human host Barbara Norris during a breathtakingly bombastic battle that also reanimated the diabolical threat of the Undying Ones (see Essential Defenders volume 1 for details).

Steve Gerber was a uniquely gifted writer who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with irrepressible wit, dark introspection and measured imagination and surreality. His stories were always at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction.

In Defenders #21 he began a long and epically peculiar saga with ‘Enter: the Headman!’ (illustrated by Buscema & Sal Trapani) wherein a trio of thematically linked scientists and savants, all â€œstarsâ€ of Marvel’s pre-superhero fantasy anthologies, opened their insidious campaign of conquest and vengeance by driving the city temporarily insaneâ€¦

Before the next chapter however, a brace of extended sagas play chronological catch-up here: firstly ‘Games Godlings Play!’ from Giant-Size Defenders #3 (written by Gerber, Starlin & Wein with art from Starlin, Dan Adkins, Don Newton & Jim Mooney) with Daredevil joining Strange, Valkyrie, and Sub-Mariner to save the Earth from the Grandmaster, a cosmic games-player whose obsession with gladiatorial combats pitted the heroes against intergalactic menaces from infinityâ€¦ and beyond.

Then follows a more down-to-Earth tale as the ex-Avenger Yellowjacket popped in to help crush insane criminal genius Egghead and Nighthawk’s old gang the Squadron Sinister on ‘Too Cold a Night for Dying!’ (Giant Sized Defenders #4, by Gerber, Don Heck & Colletta).

Marvel Team-Up #33-35 come next; a triptych of tales by Gerry Conway, Buscema and Colletta opening with Nighthawk and Spider-Man asking ‘Anybody Here Know a Guy Named Meteor Man?’, leading the webslinger to an inflammatory death-cult and requiring Valkyrie to help mop up the sky-borne bandit in ‘Beware the Death Crusade!’.

MTU #35 revealed how Dr. Strange and The Human Torch cleaned out that fiery ‘Blood Church!’ whilst Valkyrie languished in the cultist’s dungeon dimensionâ€¦

Meanwhile, in Defenders #22’s ‘Fangs of Fire and Blood!’ (Gerber, Buscema & Esposito) the secret society known as the Sons of the Serpent began another hate-fuelled racist terror-pogrom, forcing the outcast champions into an uncomfortably public response in ‘The Snakes Shall Inherit the Earth!’ with Yellowjacket returning to confront his old enemies (See Essential Avengers volume 2).

Even with his assistance the Defenders were defeated and left ‘â€¦In the Jaws of the Serpent!’ (inked by Bob McLeod) necessitating a nick-of-time rescue by Daredevil, Luke Cage and Daimon Hellstrom before the epic ended in a stunning twist as ‘The Serpent Sheds its Skin’ (inked by Jack Abel).

Giant Sized Defenders #5 was another diverse-hands production with the story ‘Eelar Moves in Mysterious Ways’ credited to Gerber, Conway, Roger Slifer, Wein, Claremont & Scott Edelman. Dependable Don Heck & Mike Esposito drew the satisfyingly cohesive results: how the Defenders met with future heroes Guardians of the Galaxy in a time-twisting disaster yarn that set up the next continued arc for the monthly comicbookâ€¦

‘Savage Time’ (Defenders #26 by Gerber, Buscema & Colletta) saw Hulk, Strange, Nighthawk and Valkyrie accompany the Guardians back to 3015AD in a bold bid to liberate the last survivors of mankind from the alien, all-conquering Badoon: a mission which opened with ‘Three Worlds to Conquer!’, became infinitely more complicated when ‘My Mother, The Badoon!’ revealed the sex-based divisions that so compellingly motivated the marauding lizard-men and triumphantly climaxed in the stirring ‘Let My Planet Go!’

The pressures of producing regular comics is staggering and constant with the slightest communications delay, illness, personal emergency or even work lost in transit causing all manner of costly hiccups. During the 1970s these â€œDreaded Deadline Doomsâ€ occurred all too often and in response Marvel instituted a policy of keeping one-size-fits-all, complete stories for every title in â€œinventoryâ€: i.e. stashed in a drawer ready to use in an emergencyâ€¦

Designed to fill pages on time but produced with the intention of never being used, most of them were not that goodâ€¦

‘Gold Diggers of Fear!’ (Defenders #30, by Bill Mantlo, Sam Grainger & Jack Abel) pitted Strange, Hulk, Nighthawk and Valkyrie against Tapping Tommy, a high-tech assassin who based his modus operandi and weaponry on Busby Berkeley musical numbersâ€¦

The 1970s were strange: When Gerber’s eccentric throwaway character Howard the Duck proved popular enough to support his own series it quickly became one of Marvel’s top sellers. So much so that when the 1976 Presidential race began fans began a campaign to nominate the moody mallard through a Write-in Vote. Their satirical slogan was â€œGet Down, America!â€

This bizarrely appealing volume ends with Marvel Treasury Edition #12, originally a tabloid-sized special which followed Howard’s reluctant bid for the Oval Office in ‘The Duck and the Defenders’ (Gerber, Buscema & Janson); an hilarious guest-star stuffed extravaganza pitting the World’s Weirdest Heroes against a dryly sardonic team of mystic wannabes – comprising Sitting Bullseye, Tillie the Hun, The Spanker and their implausible guru Dr. Angst â€“ all bound and determined to frustrate the will of the masses and gain ultimate power themselvesâ€¦

It’s not serious Fights ‘n’ Tights but it is seriously funny.

For the longest time The Defenders was the best and weirdest superhero comicbook in the business, and this bitty, unwieldy collection was where it all started. The next volume would see the inspirational unconventionality reach stellar heightsâ€¦

If you love superheroes but crave something just a little different these yarns are for youâ€¦ and the best is still to come.

April 23, 2011April 24, 2011

Showcase Presents Eclipso

By Bob Haney, Lee Elias, Alex Toth & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2315-1

Although it’s generally accepted that everybody loves a good villain they seldom permit them the opportunity of starring in their own series (except perhaps in British comics, where for decades the most bizarre and outrageous rogues such as Charlie Peace, Spring-Heeled Jack, Dick Turpin, Von Hoffman or The Dwarf were seen as far more interesting than mere lawmen).

However when America went superhero crazy in the 1960s (even before the Batman TV show sent the entire world into a wild and garish â€œHigh Campâ€ frenzy) DC converted all of its anthology titles into character-driven vehicles and long-running paranormal investigator Mark Merlin suddenly found himself sharing the cover spot with a costumed but very different kind of co-star.

Breathing new life into the hallowed Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde concept, Bob Haney and Lee Elias debuted ‘Eclipso, The Genius Who Fought Himself’ in House of Secrets #61, cover-dated July-August 1963, the saga of solar scientist Bruce Gordon who was cursed to become host to a timeless Evil.

Whilst observing a solar eclipse on tropical Diablo Island, Gordon was attacked and wounded by a crazed witchdoctor named Mophir, wielding a black diamond. As a result whenever an eclipse occurred Gordon’s body was possessed by a demonic, destructive alter ego with incredible powers and malign hyper-intellect. The remainder of the first instalment showed how the intangible interloper destroyed Gordon’s greatest achievement: a futuristic solar-powered city.

The format established, Gordon, his fiancÃ© Mona Bennett and her father, who was also Gordon’s mentor, pursued and battled the incredible Eclipso and his increasingly astounding schemes. At least he ha a handy weakness: exposure to sudden bright lights would propel him back to his cage within Bruce Gordonâ€¦

‘Duel of the Divided Man’ saw the helpless scientist attempting to thwart the uncontrollable transformations by submerging to the bottom of the Ocean and exiling himself to space – to no effect, whilst in ‘Eclipso’s Amazing Ally!’, illustrated by the legendary Alex Toth, the malignant presence manifests when an artificial eclipse and lab accident frees him entirely from Gordon’s body. Against the backdrop of a South American war Gordon and Professor Bennett struggled to contain the liberated horror but all was not as it seemedâ€¦

Issue #64 ‘Hideout on Fear Island’ saw Gordon, Mona and Bennett hijacked to a Caribbean nation inundated by giant plants for an incredible clash with giant robots and Nazi scientists. Naturally when Eclipso broke out things went from bad to worseâ€¦

‘The Man Who Destroyed Eclipso’ had the Photonic Fiend kidnap Mona before a deranged physicist actually separated Eclipso and Gordon in a wild scheme to steal a nuclear missile, whilst the threat of a terrifying alien omnivore forced heroes and villain to temporarily join forces in ‘The Two Faces of Doom!’

‘Challenge of the Split-Man!’ found Gordon and Eclipso once more at odds as the desperate scientist returned to Mophir’s lair in search of a cure before inexplicably following the liberated villain to a robot factory in Scotland.

Veteran cartoonist Jack Sparling took over the artist’s role with #68 wherein ‘Eclipso’s Deadly Doubles!’ revealed how Gordon’s latest attempt to effect a cure only multiplied his problems, after which ‘Wanted: Eclipso Dead or Alive!’ found the beleaguered scientist hired by Scotland Yard to capture himself – or at least his wicked and still secret other selfâ€¦

‘Bruce Gordon, Eclipso’s Ally!’ returned the long suffering trio to Latin America where an accident robbed Gordon of his memory – but not his curse, leading to the most ironic alliance in comics, ‘The Trial of Eclipso’ had the periodically freed felon finally captured by the police and threatening to expose Gordon’s dark secret and ‘The Moonstone People’ stranded the Bennetts, Gordon and Eclipso on a lost island populated by scientists who hadn’t aged since their own arrival in 1612â€¦

Even such a talented writer as Bob Haney occasionally strained at the restrictions of writing a fresh story for a villainous protagonist under Comics Code Restrictions and the later tales became increasingly more outlandish after ‘Eclipso Battles the Sea Titan’ wherein a subsea monster threatened not just the surface world but also Eclipso’s ultimate refuge – Bruce Gordon’s bodyâ€¦

Another attempt to expel or eradicate the horror inside accidentally created a far more dangerous enemy in ‘The Negative Eclipso’ after which a criminal syndicate, fed up with the Photonic Fury’s disruption of their operations, decreed ‘Eclipso Must Die!’

It had to happen – and did – when Mark Merlin (in his superhero persona of Prince Ra-Man) met his House of Secrets stable-mate in the book-length thriller ‘Helio, the Sun Demon!’ (#76, with the concluding second chapter drawn by the inimitable Bernard Baily) wherein Eclipso created a fearsome, fiery solar slave and the Bennetts teamed with the enigmatic super-sorcerer to free Bruce and save the world from flaming destruction.

All-out fantasy subsumed suspense in the strip’s dying days with aliens and creatures abounding, such as ‘The Moon Creatures’ which Eclipso grew from lunar dust to do his wicked bidding or the hidden treasure of Stonehenge that transformed him into a ‘Monster Eclipso’.

Issue #79 featured a return match for Prince Ra-Man in ‘The Master of Yesterday and Tomorrow!’ with Baily again pitching in to tackle an extended epic wherein Eclipso got his scurrilous hands on a selection of time-bending trinkets, whilst #80 (October 1966) ended the series with no fanfare, no warning and no ultimate resolution as ‘The Giant Eclipso!’ pitted the fade-away fiend against mutants, cops and his own colossal doppelganger.

Not everything old is gold and this quirky, exceedingly eccentric collection of comics thrillers certainly won’t appeal to everyone. However there is a gloriously outrÃ© charm and fanciful delight in these silly but absorbing sagas if you’re of an open minded mien, and the art of Elias, Toth, Sparling and Baily has never looked more vibrant or effective than in this crisp and splendid black and white collection.

Not for him or them then, but perhaps this book is for youâ€¦

April 22, 2011April 24, 2011

The Agents

By Ben Dunn & Kevin Gunstone (AP Pocket Manga)
ISBN: 1-932453-64-4

After decades of homegrown comics product America finally began to grow aware of other country’s graphic treasures through of all things television, when in the late 1960s imported cartoons from Japan first began appearing as part of Saturday morning programming. With shows like Astroboy, Marine Boy, Speed Racer and others reshaping a nation’s most malleable minds, it wasn’t too long before Western anime lovers also branched out into the scrupulously stylised world of manga tooâ€¦

By the 1980s translated works were increasingly dominating the US and world markets and devotees also found a burgeoning and impressive subgenre market of cross-cultural, fan-turned-pro material we now know as OEL (â€œOriginal English Languageâ€) or Amerimanga.

Probably the most adept and successful of these new creators is Ben Dunn, who was born in Taiwan in 1964, where he was exposed early and often to the fabulous alternatives of the East, before returning to Kentucky and Texas. He founded his own publishing house Antarctic Press in 1984 during the first days of the black and white comics boom, and with both timing and raw talent on his side created a series of wonderful trans-Pacific series which combined the best of American and Japanese art style and storytelling philosophy.

Among his best known creations are Ninja High School and Warrior Nun Areala and Marvel tapped his expertise when they launched their own â€œMangeverseâ€ sub-imprint in 2000.

A man of diverse interests, Dunn also cites the fabulous Film and TV fantasy adventures of the Swinging Sixties as a major interest and influence, as can be seen in this pocket collection of a six-issue miniseries he produced with writer Kevin Gunstone for Image in 2004.

The Agents is set in an alternative future: a glorious and outrageous homage to Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet, The Prisoner, Green Hornet, and such superspy stalwarts as Derek Flint, James Bond, John Steed & Emma Peel and Lady Penelope Creighton–Ward as well a dozens of lesser lights from that unforgettable age of heroesâ€¦

The action opens in ‘You Only Live Once’ as thirty years from now veteran agent Nigel Cord is called back to active service when the only super-villain to have ever outwitted him makes the world an incredible offer.

Three decades ago criminal mastermind Professor Daedalus nuked Washington DC and Moscow and took over Paraguay in the aftermath. With both global Super Powers reeling Great Britain stepped in to assume the role of World Policeman and civilisation has been in a spiral of escalating scientific terrorism ever since. Now the dying megalomaniac is offering his technological marvels in return for one last confrontation with his arch nemesisâ€¦

Meanwhile irreplaceable Boy Savant Mike 70 has gone missing and masked sidekick Haiku, without the fortifying influence of his mentor the Red Wasp is losing his edge in the unceasing battle to reclaim the streets of New York from gangsters and anarchists whilst spymaster Lady Pippa seems intent only on drinking herself to death and bedding the new recruits ‘On His Majesty’s Secret Agency’â€¦

There are other factors in play such as the deadly C.A.B.A.L. assassin Kristal Veil and her increasingly erratic paymasters, whilst secretive crisis-management organisation the Tomahawks use advanced technology to fight disasters but do nothing to fix the political inconsistencies which cause them.

‘The Spy Who Saved Me’ finds Cord and Veil as guests of the dying Daedalus whilst the C.A.B.A.L. war among themselves and ‘Her Majesty’s Secret Agent’ reveals that the New World Order is riddled with moles and traitorsâ€¦

With global Armageddon minutes away the action and intrigue accelerates to a fatal climax in ‘Thundercrack’ before ‘Our Man Cord’ finally saves the day – if not the status quoâ€¦

With all such nostalgic pastiches of bygone glories there’s an overwhelming temptation to tweak the source material for modern consumption – or perhaps just to show how clever we all are these days – but The Agents generally resists that urge, preferring to present a full-on, exuberant and magically honest appreciation of great times gone by.

Drawn in monochrome manga style but still genuinely Vista-Visioned and happily Super-Marionated, this lost delight might just be the best paean to lost days any wistful, thrill-starved baby-boomer could desireâ€¦ and it’s even available as an ebook.

April 21, 2011April 18, 2011

Richard Corben Complete Works volume 3: Rowlf/Underground

By Richard Corben and various (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-031-6

Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest living proponents of comic strip storytelling: springing, as so many have, from the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in sequential narrative with an unmistakable style and vision. He is equally renowned for his mastery of the airbrush, captivatingly excessive anatomical stylisation and his delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales.

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, he graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 and found work as an animator. At that time, the neutered comicbooks of the Comics-Code Authority era were just starting to lose disaffected, malcontented older fans to the hippy-trippy, freewheeling, anything goes publications of independent-minded creators across the continent who were increasingly making the kind of material Mummy and her lawyers wouldn’t approve ofâ€¦

Shocking, rebellious, pharmacologically-enhanced sensibilities and unconventional lifestyles, acting on creative impulses honed by 1950s EC Comics, Carl Barks’ Duck tales and other classy early strips called out to young artists like Corben, who responded in kind, in a variety of small-press publications including Grim Wit, Slow Death, Skull, Fever Dreams and his own mag, Fantagor.

Often signing with his sardonic pseudonym â€œGoreâ€, Corben’s work increasingly began to appear in more professionally produced venues. As his style and skills developed he worked for Warren Publishing’s Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and graphically outrageous adult science fiction anthology 1984/1994. He also famously re-coloured a number of reprinted strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s the Spirit.

In 1975 Corben approached French fantasy phenomenon MÃ©tal Hurlant and became a fixture of its American iteration Heavy Metal. Soon he was producing stunning graphic escapades for a number of companies, making animated movies, painting film posters and producing record covers such as the multi-million-selling Meatloaf album Bat Out of Hell. He never stopped making comics but preferred his own independent projects with collaborators such as Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jones and Jan Strnad.

This regrettably out-of-print collection is the last of three collecting his early efforts and includes his longest and most ambitious tale of those learning years, but before that the appetite is whetted by the surreal black and white parable ‘When Dreams Collide’ (1970) wherein a repressed priest and a free-spirited flower-child share a bus ride and a daydream and ‘Bug’, a far nastier science fiction fantasy with a hidden message for anybody tempted to play house outside their speciesâ€¦

‘Rowlf’ was first crafted in 1971 and reworked in 1979 into the full-colour saga presented here. Ambitious and more emotionally multilayered, it follows the troubled life of Princess Maryara, whose only friend is her dog. Father wants to marry her off to a pompous royal jackass and to that end she is dragged off to the local wizard who has a fine line in transformation spells for reluctant things and people…

When technological demons invade and kidnap Maryara, faithful Rowlf defends her as best he can but is no match for their guns and tanks. However when the dog stumbles into one of the wizard’s spells the bizarre human/canine hybrid that results is a far more formidable proposition. One thing hasn’t changed though – Rowlf’s unfailing devotion to the lost princess. He will find her and face any threat to rescue herâ€¦

This impressive and touching 32 page yarn is followed by ‘Mangle, Robot Mangler’, a sexy, seditious monochrome parody of the classic comicbook hero, followed by an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s eerie suspense thriller ‘The Rats in the Walls’: a grisly psychological terror-tale of fallen castles and inherited horrors.

This volume closes with a splendidly dark and seductive pastiche of the genre in ‘A Gothic Tale’, produced in collaboration with Tom Veitch, stuffed with nuns, covens, family secrets and shocking twistsâ€¦

Violent, cathartically graphic and often blackly hilarious, Corben’s infamous signature-stylisation always includes oodles of nudity, extreme violence and impossibly proportioned male and female physiques – and there’s plenty of all that in here. However this volume also shows hints of the narrative maturity which helped reshape our art-form so the fact that so much of his canon is currently unavailable in English is an unbearable calamity. Not only are these early works long overdue for a definitive re-issue but all his rude, riotous, raucously ribald revels need to be re-released nowâ€¦
Â© 1970-1987 Richard Corben. Collection Â© 1987 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

April 20, 2011April 18, 2011

Celeb

By Charles Peattie, Mark Warren & Russell Taylor (Private Eye/Corgi)
ISBN: 0-552-13858-4

In terms of taste, as in so many other arenas, our modern world seems to be heading for Heck in a hand-basket, so Â I thought I’d take the opportunity to cover a little lost gem of British cartooning delight that’s increasing re-relevant in these appalling days of fame campaigns and dodgy talent show democracy.

Celeb was a strip which ran in that evergreen gadfly Private Eye, beginning in May 1987, created by Mark Warren and the team of Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor (who were simultaneously crafting the abortive first iteration of greed-glorifying mini-classic Alex for Robert Maxwell’s short-lived London Daily News).

For years credited to the pseudonymous â€œLiggerâ€, the pithy and hilarious episodes followed the day to day life of Swinging Sixties survivor and disgracefully declining rock-legend Gary Bloke as he dealt with a changing world, thinning hair, parenthood and inexorable middle age.

These days with 24/7 reality shows, desperate celebrities enduring career-resuscitating humiliations in locked houses and jungle clearings and a host of other self-inflicted, double-edged B-list exposÃ© freak-shows everywhere, the outrageous pronouncements and antics of Gary seem pretty tame but in the days before Ozzy Osbourne became more famous for parenting and not singing whilst footballers’ performance off the field took precedence over goals scored on it, the sozzled, crass, befuddled, and pitifully pompous cocky cockney-boy-made-good was the very epitome of affably acceptable, ego-bloated, publicity-seeking, self-aggrandizing, drug-fuelled idiocy.

Within this collection from 1991 the legendary â€œMan of the Peepleâ€ distributes kernels of hard-won wisdom to the likes of Michael Parkinson, Terry Wogan, Clive James, Cilla Back, Ruby Wax, Barry Norman, Anne Diamond, Selena Scott, Michael Aspel and other interviewers of lesser longevity, tackles world poverty and the environment head-on (and eyes tight shut), learns how to cope with those new-fangled rock videos, adapts to the needs of his burgeoning family and, of course, consumes a phenomenal quantity of recreational pharmaceuticals…

Including a selection of interviews from the Sunday Times (October 1989), The Sun (Wednesday August 3^rd 1988) and candid shots of Gary with Bob Geldof and George Michael at Live Aid, the collection concludes with the infamous days during which Gary was dead of an overdose and met both God and Elvis, plus the sordid truth behind his numerous brushes with the law, leading to his 18-month stretch At Her Majesty’s Pleasure and subsequent key role in a terrible prison riot for better conditions and macrobiotic foodâ€¦

The heady cocktail of drink, sex, drugs, money, sport, music, adoration and always-forgiven crassness is perhaps the reason so many folks are seduced by celebrity. If you want to see another side to the fame-game and have a hearty laugh into the bargain Gary Bloke is your manâ€¦
Â© 1991 Peattie, Taylor & Warren. All Rights Reserved.

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