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The Drowned Girl


By Jon Hammer (Piranha Press/DC)
No ISBN:

During the anything goes 1980s the field of comics publishing expanded exponentially with new companies offering a vast range of fresh titles and ideas. To combat this upstart expansion, Marvel and DC also instigated and created innovative material for those freshly growing markets with the latter cartoon colossus especially targeting readers for whom old-fashioned comicbooks were anathema …or at least a long-abandoned dalliance.

DC created a number of new, more mature-oriented imprints such as Vertigo and Helix, but some of the most intriguing projects came out of their Piranha Press sub-division, formed in 1989 and re-designated Paradox Press in 1993.

When DC founded this adult special projects imprint, the resulting publications and reader’s reaction to them were mixed. It had long been a Holy Grail of the business to produce comics for people who don’t read comics and, despite the inherent logical flaw, that’s a pretty sound and sensible plan.

However, the delivery of such is always problematic. Is the problem resistance to the medium?

Then try radical art and narrative styles, unusual typography and talent from outside the medium to tell your stories: you get some intriguing results but risk still not reaching a new audience whilst alienating the readers already on board…

This eclectic and overwhelmingly effective tome was one of the best and simultaneously one of the least appreciated…

Dick Shamus lives in New York City. Not necessarily the one you know but one equally composed of snippets of books, flickers of films and TV titbits all filtered through the fried brains of an incorrigible addict who’s been off his prescription Lithium for far too long now…

Dick Shamus is a Private Eye. If he says so then it’s got to be true, right?

On one night so much like every other, Dick, bombed out of his gourd on his tipple of choice – embalmers’ formaldehyde with a chocolate drink chaser – picks up a useful tip about a Nazi weight-lifting club from one of his usual sources: few of them credible and none of them real…

The drink might be the secret CIA vaccine to prevent AIDS but it sure plays hob with the deductive faculties…

The side of the city only he can see tells the weary, ravaged gumshoe that there’s a connection between the Fascist health fanatics, India and the Drowned Girl – whoever she is – and as his personal reality intercepts and continually collides with the equally outrageous consensus reality the rest of us are stuck with, Dick is carried by events to a tragic and disturbing rendezvous.

If only he could recall who the client was…

Raw and savagely beguiling, the one night’s odyssey of the perceptually challenged Shamus as he weaves between rich bastards, gutter-scum, gullible art-trendoids, yuppie-gentrifiers and armchair anarchists, affable protester-bashing cops and a hundred other “normal” folks in search of his dimly perceived targets…

This disturbing, hard-luck pilgrim’s progress is as truly thought-provoking, hard-bitten, revelatory and socially castigating as the works of Dashiell Hammett, William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Raymond Chandler or Gabriel García Márquez, whilst the brutally unrefined and intoxicatingly vibrant painting of author Jon Hammer makes this perhaps the very best psycho-detective graphic novel you’ve never read.

But all that could change if and when you too track down The Drowned Girl…
© 1990 Jon Hammer. All rights reserved.

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The Desert Peach book 3: Foreign Relations


By Donna Barr (Aeon)
ISBN: 1-883847-04-4

The Desert Peach is the supremely self-assured and eminently accomplished gay brother of the legendary “Desert Fox” and one of the most perfectly realised characters in comics.

Set in World War II Africa and effortlessly combining hilarity, absurdity, profound sensitivity and glittering spontaneity, the stories describe the daily grind of Oberst Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel; a dutiful if unwilling cog in the German War Machine and his efforts to remain a perfect gentleman under the most adverse and unkind conditions.

As formidable as his beloved elder sibling Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the gracious and genteel Peach is a man of breeding who loathes causing harm or giving offence and thus spends his dry and dusty days commanding the ever-so-motley crew of the 469th Halftrack, Gravedigging & Support Unit of the Afrika Korps, trying to remain stylish, elegant, civil and gracious to the men under his command, the enemy forces opposite him and all the unfortunate natives whose countries both Allied and Axis powers are currently running riot within.

It’s a lot of work: the 469th houses the worst dregs of the Wehrmacht, from malingerers and malcontents to useless wounded, sharpers, screw-ups and outright maniacs.

Pfirsich applies the same genteel courtesies and rule of well-manicured thumb to the sundry indigenes populating the area surrounding the camp and the rather tiresome British – not all of whom are party to a clandestine non-aggression pact Pfirsich has agreed with his opposite number in the opposing British Forces.

The romantic fool is passionately in love with and engaged to Rosen Kavalier: handsome Aryan warrior and outrageously manly Luftwaffe Ace: in fact the only people the Peach really has no time for are boors, bigots and card-carrying Blackshirts…

Arguably the real star of these fabulous frothy epics is the Peach’s long-suffering, unkempt, crafty, ill-mannered, bilious and lazily scrofulous orderly Udo Schmidt, a man of many secrets and non-existent morals whose one redeeming virtue is his uncompromising loyalty and devotion to the only decent man and tolerable officer in the entire German army.

This hard to find but supremely superb third monochrome compendium reprints issues #7-9 and includes an all-new tale too.

Battle commences with ‘The Spoiled Fruit’ as the mild mannered and utterly urbane Peach is accidentally dosed with shell-shocked veteran Corporal Doberman‘s anti-psychotic medication. The ghastly experimental brew acts like Angel Dust on the sweet lad and turns Pfirsich into a raging warmongering lunatic, who goes on a three day battle-jag, dragging the 469th with by sheer rampaging willpower and almost winning the desert war single-handed… until the drugs stop working.

Even more embarrassing than the death and bloodshed he caused and certainly more painful than the bullet wound in his posterior is brother Erwin awarding him a medal…

This is followed by international adventure and intrigue in ‘Dressing Down’ as an old-fashioned army concert-party leads to one of the most ludicrous espionage missions of the war.

In an attempt to raise morale Udo organises a show where he and a few other ranks dress up in drag. Although a little unhappy at the sordid and distasteful turn of events, Pfirsich lets it go but is horrified when an intelligence officer from his brother’s staff claims that Udo-as-a girl looks just like Hannah Mardi, a German agent currently missing in England.

She and her sister were the only hope of recovering the stolen plans for Rommel’s latest tank but for such a mission to succeed Hannah should be accompanied by her usual partner. What a happy coincidence that Pfirsich looks so much like the equally absent “Portia Sophi”: the Peach could pass for her with almost no make-up at all…

Arriving at the last known address of the missing spies in London, the terrified and mutinously reluctant Pfirsich and Udo are horrified to discover something very peculiar is going on in the agents’ old lodgings and things become surreal, hilarious and quite, quite tricky when the Peach realises that the landlady’s son Willie is the same delightful boy who befriended him in those carefree days before the war..

The reprints end with ‘Scourge of Love’ as the ever-horny Udo unwittingly turns a bargaining session for fresh rations with Tuareg traders into an accidentally proposal to the Chieftain’s beautiful daughter Falila.

He thought he was getting a “quickie” from a easy trollop but too soon Udo realises he was not only betrothed to the proud princess of a people who have turned avenging insults into an art-form and spectator blood-sport, but that to prove himself worthy he would have to steal a herd of camels from the Arabs’ greatest and most ancient enemies.

With a tribal revolt threatening to interfere with the smooth course of the war, Udo’s tenderest and most cherished organs at risk and, most importantly, the honour and happiness of a lady at stake, the Desert Peach has no choice but to step in and settle matters in his own uniquely sensitive and refined manner…

The new epilogue ‘Home is Where…’ is set in the Peach’s declining years, wherein Pfirsich and his adult son Mani play host to a reunion of the 469th few survivors: a bittersweet vignette which delights and fearfully foreshadows tragedies yet to come. This moving vignette also appears in Book 4 Baby Games.

Referencing the same vast story potential as Sgt. Bilko, Hogan’s Heroes, Oh, What a Lovely War! and Catch 22, as well as such tangential films as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Birdcage, the Desert Peach is bawdy, raucous, clever, authentically madcap and immensely engaging.

These fabulously weird war stories were some of the very best comics of the 1990s and still pack the comedic kick of a floral-scented howitzer, liberally leavened with situational jocularity, accent humour and lots of footnoted Deutsche cuss-words for the kids to learn.

Pfirsich’s further exploits continue as part of the Modern Tales webcomics collective…

Illustrated in Barr’s fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style, this book is a must-have for any history-loving, war-hating lover of wit, slapstick, romance and belly-laughs. All the Desert Peach books are pretty hard to find these days but if you have a Kindle, Robot Comics have just begun to release individual comicbook issues for anybody who can make their way around Das Ferslugginer Internetten …
© 1990-1994 Donna Barr. All rights reserved. The Desert Peach is ™ Donna Barr.

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New Teen Titans: the Judas Contract


By Marv Wolfman, George Perez, Romeo Tanghal, Dick Giordano & Mike DeCarlo (DC Comics)
ISBN: 0-930289-3A-X   (2004) ISBN: 978-0-93028-934-8

Deathstroke the Terminator is a flamboyant cover identity for mercenary/assassin Slade Wilson who underwent an experimental procedure whilst an American Special Forces soldier. He was invalided out but later developed fantastic physical abilities that augmented his military capabilities.

He debuted in the second issue of the New Teen Titans in 1980, assuming a contract that had been forfeited when neophyte costumed assassin The Ravager died trying to destroy the kid heroes. The deceased would-be killer was actually Grant Wilson, a very troubled young man desperately trying to impress his dad. Slade’s other children would also be the cause of much heartache and bloodshed over the years…

That venerable squad of sterling sidekicks had first debuted in the Swinging Sixties, battling all manner of outlandish threats and menaces (see Showcase Presents the Teen Titans volumes 1 and 2 for just how “out there” they were) but had been cancelled a number of times before writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez found just the right tone and brought them back to become one of DC’s biggest sensations.

The New Teen Titans went from strength to strength, with its close continuity, tight character interaction and stupendous action quickly winning a loyal and dedicated following and this controversial extended storyline proved it to be one of the most innovative and daring superhero series of the decade.

If a comic book story garners death-threats you know you’re doing something right, right?

In 1988 The Judas Contract (re-presenting The New Teen Titans #39-40, Tales of the New Teen Titans #41-44 and Annual #3 from February-July1984) was one of DC’s earliest and most successful trade paperback collections and remains so to this day.

The compendium opens with ‘Clash of the Titans’ a contextual explanatory introduction from author Wolfman and an insightful remembrance from Pérez entitled ‘The Contract Begins…’ before the comicbook wizardry started to unfold.

By the time of ‘Crossroads’ (inked by Romeo Tanghal) the youthful superteam were involved in a life or death battle with Brother Blood, a seemingly immortal and diabolically subtle cult-leader who used media manipulation and religious zealotry to supplement his awesome power and fanatical army of followers to run rings around the politically naive heroes.

Moreover they had just admitted as a probationary member Tara Markov, a 14 year old metahuman girl who had been the captive of terrorist kidnappers for years. Terra was slowly being accepted by the team when a turning point arrived and founder member Kid Flash decided to retire. Moreover, team leader Robin was facing a crisis of conscience and had decided to abandon the costumed identity he had employed since he was nine years old…

The war against the cult continued in ‘Lifeblood’ as Dick Grayson went undercover in the Rogue nation of Zandia where the Brotherhood was engaged in a cold war with the Island’s ruler. When the rest of the Titans invaded the villain’s temple sanctum they were overcome and the concluding ‘Baptism of Blood’ found them fighting for their lives and souls before Terra’s earth-moving geo-powers turned the tide…

The Judas Contract proper began in issue #42 with ‘The Eyes of Tara Markov’ (inked by Dick Giordano) wherein the irascible temperament and short temper of the newest member was finally explained. As the novice was granted full security access and learned the secret identities of her team-mates, Tara was exposed – to the readers at least – as the lover and pawn of the Titan’s greatest enemy Deathstroke: planted as a deep cover agent within the team and tasked with learning all their weaknesses before the Terminator’s final assault…

‘Betrayal’ (inked by Mike DeCarlo Giordano) opened with Dick Grayson narrowly escaping an ambush in his apartment and learning too late that all his friends were gone. On the run from Deathstroke, the heir of Batman deduced what had happened to his team just as he was approached by Wilson’s ex-wife Adeline and her mute son Joe who revealed the truth about Terra and her horrifyingly psychotic true nature.

With the Titans at last in the hands of criminal cabal The HIVE, who had originally commissioned the doomed Ravager, Adeline also revealed the astonishing origins of Slade and Joe before ‘There Shall Come a Titan’ in #44 introduced Grayson’s new costumed persona as he became Nightwing for the first time.

With Joe Wilson, in his own new heroic identity of Jericho, Nightwing invaded the organisation’s stronghold and in ‘Finale’ (Tales of the New Teen Titans Annual #3 and inked exclusively by Giordano) freed the helpless heroes only to fall foul of the terrifyingly insane Tara Markov who wouldn’t let the Titans, HIVE or even her lover Slade stop her from getting what she wanted…

Stirring, imaginative, controversial and immensely entertaining, this stunning Fights ‘n’ Tights extravaganza set a new standard for superhero storytelling and stills ranks as one of the best Costume Dramas ever crafted.
© 1983, 1984, 1988 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Zora and the Hibernauts


By Fernando Fernández (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-001-7

Multi-disciplinary Spanish artist Fernando Fernández began working to help support his family at age 13 whilst still at High School. He left in 1956 and immediately began working for British and French comics publishers. In 1958 his family relocated to Argentina and whilst there he added jobs for El Gorrión, Tótem and Puño Fuerte to his ongoing European and British assignments for Valentina, Roxy and Marilyn.

In 1959 he returned to Spain and began a long association with Fleetway Publications in London, producing mostly war and girls’ romance stories.

During the mid-1960’s he began to experiment with painting and began selling book covers and illustrations to a number of clients, before again taking up comics work in 1970, creating a variety of strips (many of which found their way into US horror magazine Vampirella), the successful comedy feature ‘Mosca’ for Diario de Barcelona and educational strips for the pubshing house Afha.

Becoming increasingly experimental as the decade passed, Fernández produced ‘Cuba, 1898’ and ‘Círculos’ before in 1980 beginning his science fiction spectacular ‘Zora y los Hibernautas’ for the Spanish iteration of fantasy magazine 1984 which was eventually seen in English in Heavy Metal magazine. His later graphic spectacles include ‘Dracula’ for the Spanish iteration of Creepy, mediaeval fantasy thriller ‘La Leyenda de las Cuatro Sombras’ (working with Carlos Trillo), ‘Argón, el Salvaje’ and a number of adaptations of Isaac Asimov tales in ‘Firmado por: Isaac Asimov’ and ‘Lucky Starr – Los Océanos de Venus’.

His last comics work was ‘Zodíaco’ begun in 1989, but his increasing heart problems soon curtailed the series and he returned to painting and illustration. He passed away in August 2010, aged 70.

The stunning adult epic Zora and the Hibernauts exploits classic science fiction themes of sexual politics to explore the perceived role and character of men and women and opens, after a truly breathtaking biography and gallery section, with the first staggeringly lush chapter as, far into the future, warrior-women from the artificial moon Honeycomb (home to the censorious, draconian colony of the Sisterhood) land on the deadly and biologically inimical planet Earth searching for lost technology and other objects of interest or value.

The crew is led by the competent Zora, a space veteran who has won the love and devotion of her crew through years of sterling service. The ancient birthplace of humanity has long been quarantined: a pestilential hell-hole where radiation and disease have created unspeakable horrors, but the explorers have no idea what shocks await their first forays into the unknown landscape they call Terra-Lune…

The search goes badly and crew-women are lost to plants, beasts and things which qualify as both and neither, but Zora is intent on finding some specific unknown treasure. Meanwhile, back on Honeycomb, scientist Nylea breaks the Queen’s taboo and searches the ancient archives for proscribed information on the extinct creature once called “man”…

On Terra-Lune the invaders have broached a long-hidden chamber and found six hibernation pods from before the Earth died…

They contain frozen men and Zora, defying orders and centuries of custom, decants and revives the perfectly preserved creatures rather than destroy them, setting herself on a path that will lead to civil war and the restoration of the natural order…

She is strangely drawn to one of the men: Astronaut Commander Amon, who holds crucial knowledge of the fall of humanity and whose presence stirs the quizzical Zora in ways she doesn’t understand…

Taking her prizes back to Honeycomb where they are interviewed by Supreme Sister Rasam, Zora is ordered to keep the hibernauts in personal custody, but isn’t surprised when Nylea informs her that the queen is planning to destroy her and the men who threaten the hegemony and beliefs of the all-female, in vitro parthenogenetic culture.

Following a brutal battle, Zora, Nylea and the males take refuge on toxic Terra-Lune where they encounter another man: an incredible immortal named Rob who has survived on the poisoned planet for uncounted ages and aids the fugitives when the Sisterhood ships come hunting them…

Escaping the stalkers, the refugee band hides deep within the horror-world and inevitably Zora and Amon perpetrate an act of love not seen on Earth for millennia, after which Rob reveals the location of a fully-functioning ancient starship and offers them a means of fighting back against the tyranny of Rasam.

But whilst Rob relates the secret of his incredible longevity, on Honeycomb long-suppressed antagonisms begin to re-emerge.

Terra-Lune still holds many threats and horrors however, and whilst the outcasts battle for survival against beasts and monstrous sub-men on the debased planet, a deadly civil war erupts on the artificial satellite led by ambitious hardliner and second-in-command Sharta. By the time Zora and her followers are ready to attack Rasam, Honeycomb is in the midst of civil war…

Just when events are their most fraught, the universal implications of the struggle are revealed when a god-like timeless entity appears, disclosing Zora’s cosmic importance and that her womb now carries the first naturally conceived and developing human baby in thousand of years. Zora has been chosen by the higher powers of the universe to restore and perpetuate the human species…

The grand concepts come thick and fast in Zora and the Hibernauts and although the narrative is a little muddled in consequence, this breathtaking yarn delivers fast paced, action-packed, staggeringly beautiful and astoundingly exciting adult science fiction thrills in the tradition pulp manner. Being Spanish, however there’s a slight tinge of macho, if not subverted sexism, on display and of course, there is extensive female nudity throughout – so much so that by half-way through you won’t even notice…

If naked bald women are liable to offend you, give this as miss, but for all the normal red- blooded fans out there this is a superb tale by a master craftsman you’ll certainly want to track down and savour.

© 1981 Fernando Fernández. English edition © 1984 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers in The Idiots Abroad


By Gilbert Shelton & Paul Mavrides, colour by Guy Colwell (Knockabout)
ISBN: 0-86166-053-6

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers shambled out of the Underground Commix counter-culture wave in 1968; initially appearing in Berkeley Print Mint’s Feds ‘n’ Heads, and in Underground newspapers before creator Gilbert Shelton and a few friends founded their own San Francisco based Rip Off Press in 1969.

That effective collective continued to maximise the reefer madness and the hilarious antics of the “Freaks” (contemporary term for lazy, dirty, drug-taking hippy folk) quickly captured the imaginations of the more open-minded portions of America and the world (not to mention their kids)…

In 1971 they published the first compilation: The Collected Adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers – which has been in print all around the planet ever since – and soon assorted underground magazines and college papers were joined by the heady likes of Rip Off Comix, High Times and Playboy (and numerous foreign periodicals) in featuring the addictive adventures of Freewheelin’ Franklin, Phineas T. Freakears and Fat Freddy Freekowtski (and his cat): siblings in sybaritic self-indulgence.

Always written by Shelton and, from 1974 illustrated by Dave Sheridan (until his death in 1982) and Paul Mavrides, the disjointed strips (sorry; bad puns are my opiate of choice) combined canny satire, worldly cynicism, surreal situations, drug-based scatological sauciness and an astounding grasp of human nature in brilliantly comedic episodes that cannot fail to amuse anyone with a mature sense of humour.

All the strips have been collected in various formats (in Britain by the fabulous folks of Knockabout Comics) and have been happily absorbed by vast generations of fans – most of whom wouldn’t read any other comic.

Despite the hippy-dippy antecedents and stoner presentiments, Shelton is irrefutably a consummate professional. His ideas are always enchantingly fresh, the dialogue is permanently spot-on and his pacing perfect. The stories, whether half-page fillers, short vignettes or full blown sagas, start strong and relentlessly build to spectacular – and often wildly outrageous, hallucinogenic yet narrative-appropriate – climaxes.

Franklin is the tough, street-savvy one who can pull the chicks best, Phineas is a wildly romantic, educated and dangerous (to himself) intellectual whilst Fat Freddy is us; weak-willed, greedy, not so smart, vastly put upon by an uncaring universe but oddly charming (you wish…)

One last point: despite the vast panoply of drugs ingested, imbibed and otherwise absorbed, both real and invented, the Freaks don’t ever do heroin – which should tell you something…

‘The Idiots Abroad’ was first published in issues #8-10 of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comicbook, beginning in 1982, by Shelton & Paul Mavrides with colour separations by fellow controversial Underground cartoonist Guy Colwell (see Doll). This compilation first appeared in 1988.

The alternative anarchy and high-strung hilarity opens with a cunning monochrome introduction set in the high-tech Bastion of Commerce which is the Rip Off Press High-rise after which the scene switches Oz-like to full-colour as the beardy boys, just chilling in their latest crash-pad, realise that they’re paying too much for their drugs. If they just holidayed in Colombia they could buy the stuff at source and make a killing…

Keen and eager the trio set off for the airport, expecting an easy flight to their Promised Land. Fat Freddy falls in with a drunken bunch of Scottish football fans, Phineas accidentally boards a jet for the Middle East and only Franklin actually gets on a plane for South America: of course it is a package tour of survivalists…

Ever vigilant, the US government quickly dispatches dedicated super-cop Norbert the Nark to follow the Brothers…

As Franklin finds himself in bed with freedom-fighting, drug-dealing Indio eco-warriors and quite sensibly runs for his life, in Scotland Fat Freddy has been mistaken for nuclear terrorist Andre the Hyena and similarly bolts.

Making his way across Europe the corpulent clown unwittingly takes with him a soccer-ball shaped thermonuclear device and stumbles into a global military conspiracy conceived by the Colonels of every nation to seize control of human civilisation…

Phineas meanwhile has landed in Mecca and through his usual incredible good fortune has become a valued member of the government and a major player in OPEC.

Whilst Franklin joins a cruise ship full of millionaires and ends up sold into slavery when the vessel is attacked by pirates, Fat Freddy rampages across Spain and meets the utterly “out there” Anarchist genius Pablos Pegaso before invading the Warsaw Pact countries at the artist’s suggestion, ending up in Moscow at just the wrong moment…

The stupendous saga of outrageous Unrealpolitik ramps up even more when the assembled Colonels take over the world and in a Saudi dungeon Franklin and the now thin Freddy are sold at auction to all-powerful Father Phineas, the Honest Hierophant who has converted his immense wealth into real money by inventing “Fundaligionism” which is now the hottest Faith around and has made him the richest person on the planet…

And that’s when the cartoon craziness really starts to motor…

And they’re so very, very funny.

Without Shelton and the Freaks the whole sub-genre of slacker/stoner movies, from Cheech and Chong‘s assorted escapades to Dude, Where’s My Car? and all the rest – good, bad or indifferent – wouldn’t exist. Whether or not that’s a good thing is up to you.

Chaotically satirical, poisonously cynical and addictively ludicrous, the madcap slapstick of the Freak Brothers is always an unbelievably potent tonic for the blues and this epic escapade of inspired insanity is among their very best exploits. However, if you’re still worried about the content, which is definitely habit-forming, simply read but don’t inhale…
© 1987 Rip Off Press, Inc., and Gilbert Shelton. All rights reserved.

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The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told


By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 0-932289-36-6

When the very concept of high priced graphic novels was just being tested in the late 1980s DC Comics produced a line of glorious full-colour hardback compilations spotlighting star characters and celebrating standout stories from the company’s illustrious and varied history decade by decade.

They then branched out into themed collections which shaped the output of the industry to this day, such as this fabulous congregation of yarns which offered equal billing and star status to one of the most enduring arch-foes in fiction: the Monarch of Malignant Mirth known only as the Joker.

Devised as a bookend and supplementary edition to the Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told and devised in the run-up to the launch of the immensely anticipated 1989 Batman movie, this glorious comedy of terrors features an eclectic and absorbing selection of stories (co)starring the Clown Prince of Crime which followed him through the then five decades of his comicbook existence.

Edited by Mike Gold with associates Brian Augustyn and Mark Waid, this splendid tome opens with ‘The Joker’s Dozen’ by Gold, describing the history and selection process involved in choosing from the literally hundreds of eligible stories, and also includes an end-piece essay ‘Stacking the Deck: The other Joker Stories’ by Waid, expansive biographies on the creators involved, and a fabulous gallery of the striking covers from tales which didn’t make the final cut.

However, fascinating and informative as those features are, the real literary largesse is to be found in the 19 stirring tales which comprise the bulk of this tome…

One note of advisement: when this collection was released many of the stories’ creative details were lost, but have been rediscovered since. Many of the credits are mistaken or just plain wrong, so wherever possible I’ve substituted the current attributions.

The suspenseful entertainment opens with ‘Batman vs. The Joker from Batman #1 (Spring 1940 by Bill Finger, Bob Kane & Jerry Robinson) which introduced the greatest villain in the Dark Knight’s rogues’ gallery via a stunning tale of brazen extortion and wilful wanton murder.

A year later ‘The Case of the Joker’s Crime Circus’ (Batman #4, Winter 1941) saw the Mountebank of Menace plunged into depressive madness before recruiting a gang from the worst that the entertainment industry and carnival trade could offer; setting off on a renewed course of plunder, mayhem and death…

‘The Joker and the Sparrow’ comes from the Sunday section of the short-lived Batman syndicated newspaper strip (from October 28th – December 9th 1945, but misattributed to 1946 in this volume) wherein Alvin Schwartz, Hardin “Jack” Burnley & Charles Paris recount the gripping and often hilarious war between the Deadly Jester and a mysterious new contender for the title of “Gotham’s Cleverest Criminal”…

‘The Man Behind the Red Hood’ (Detective Comics #168, February 1951) finally gave the Joker an origin in a brilliantly engrossing mystery by Finger, Lew Sayre Schwartz & Win Mortimer, which all began when the Caped Crusader regaled criminology students with the story of “the one who got away”…

‘The Joker’s Crime Costumes’ comes from Batman #63 (February/March 1951, by Finger, Dick Sprang & Charles Paris), recounting how the Laughing Larcenist impersonated famous historical comedy figures and clowns such as Falstaff, Mr. Pickwick and Old King “Coal” to commit modern day mayhem.

Batman #73, (October/November 1952, by pulp sci fi writer David Vern, Sprang & Paris) described a classic clash with the Dynamic Duo temporarily stymied by ‘The Joker’s Utility Belt’ as the Harlequin of Hate created his own uniquely perverse iteration of the heroes’ greatest weapon and accessory whilst, almost simultaneously over in World’s Finest Comics #61 (November 1952), ‘The Crimes of Batman’ by Vern, Kane & Paris found Robin a hostage and the Gotham Gangbuster compelled to commit a string of felonies to preserve the lad’s life. Or so the Joker vainly hoped…

From a period when the Joker appeared almost once a month in one Bat-title or other, Alvin Schwartz, Sprang & Paris concocted something extra-special for Batman #74 (December 1952-January 1953). ‘The Crazy Crime Clown’ had the exotic but strictly larcenous Baroque Bandit apparently go bonkers and end up committed to the Gotham Institute for the Insane. Of course, there was method in the seeming madness as Batman discovered when he infiltrated the worthy asylum in disguise…

By the time of World’s Finest Comics #88 (May/June 1957) the solo strips of the Man of Steel and Caped Crusader therein had amalgamated into a series of shared adventures, and ‘Superman and Batman’s Greatest Foes (by Edmond Hamilton, Sprang & Stan Kaye) offered a clever mystery as “reformed” villains Lex Luthor and the Joker set up in the commercial robot business as a blind for their most audacious scheme whilst in Batman #110 (September 1957), the ‘Crime-of-the-Month Club’ by Dave Wood, Sprang & Paris, a series of seemingly unconnected but brilliant robberies proved to be the Joker’s latest scheme: selling his felonious plans to other thieves while he worked on a much grander scheme…

‘The Great Clayface-Joker Feud’ (Batman #159 November 1963) was a bright moment at the otherwise uninspired tail-end of a bad period in Batman’s history. Bill Finger, Jim Mooney & Sheldon Moldoff produced a big story where two arch-rivals first competed and then became allies to almost overwhelm the Dynamic Duo and the original Batwoman and Bat-Girl too, whilst ‘The Joker Jury’ (Batman #163, May 1964 by Finger, Moldoff & Paris) found Robin and his mentor trapped in the criminal enclave of Jokerville, where every citizen was a criminal dressed up as the Clown Prince and where all lawmen were outlaws.

This was the very last old guard story: with the next issue Julie Schwartz ushered in his streamlined, more down-to-Earth “New Look” Batman and super-villains all but disappeared from the scene…

At least until the Batman TV show took the world by storm. Up next is a rarely seen and quite lovely tale by E. Nelson Bridwell, Carmine Infantino & Murphy Anderson which appeared in the Premium promotional giveaway Batman Kelloggs Special 1966.

‘The Joker’s Happy Victims’ is sheer graphic poetry in motion as the Dynamic Duo were forced to extraordinary measures when all the victims of the Riotous Rogue’s latest rash of robberies refused to press charges…

During the late 1960s superheroes experienced a rapid decline in popularity – possibly in reaction to the mass-media’s crass and crushing over-exposure – and the Batman books sought to escape their zany, “camp” image by methodically re-branding the character and returning to the original 1930s concept of a grim and driven Dark Avenger.

Such a hero demanded far deadlier villains and with one breakthrough tale Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams & Dick Giordano also reinstated the psychotic, diabolically unpredictable Killer Clown who scared the short pants off the readers of the Golden Age Dark Knight.

‘The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge’ (Batman #251, September 1973) is a genuine classic that totally redefined the Joker for our age as the Mirthful Maniac stalked his old gang, determined to eradicate them all as the hard-pressed Gotham Guardian desperately played catch-up. As the crooks died in all manner of Byzantine and bizarre ways, Batman realised his arch-foe has gone irrevocably off the deep end. Terrifying and beautiful, for many fans this is the definitive Batman/Joker story.

Brave and the Bold #111 (February/March 1974) boasted “the strangest team-up in history” as Batman joined forces with his greatest enemy for a brilliantly complex tale of cross and double cross in ‘Death has the Last Laugh!’ – by Bob Haney & Jim Aparo – which may well have lead to the Harlequin of Hate’s own short-run series a year later.

‘The Last Ha Ha’ came from The Joker # 3 (September 1975, written by O’Neil with art from Ernie Chan/Chua & José Luis García-López) wherein a robbery and the kidnap of star cartoonist Sandy Saturn, by a green-haired, laughing loon, led the cops to the ludicrous conclusion that The Creeper was the culprit. Cue lots of eerie cackling, mistaken identity shenanigans and explosive action…

When Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin took over the Batman feature in Detective Comics their landmark retro-styled collaboration utterly revitalised the character for a new generation of readers.

Their undoubted peak in a short but stellar run naturally starred the Dark Knight’s nemesis as his most chaotic beginning with ‘The Laughing Fish’ in #475 (February 1978) and spectacularly culminating a month later in ‘The Sign of the Joker!’, comprising one of the most reprinted Bat-tales ever concocted, and even adapted as an episode of the award-winning Batman: The Animated Adventures TV show in the 1990s. In fact you’ve probably already read it. But if you haven’t… what a treat you have awaiting you!

As fish with the Joker’s horrific smile began turning up in sea-catches all over the Eastern Seaboard the Clown Prince attempted to trademark them. When patent officials foolishly told him it can’t be done, they start dying… publicly, impossibly and incredibly painfully…

The story then culminated in a spectacular apocalyptic clash which shaped and informed the Batman mythos for the next two decades…

This terrific tome then concludes with ‘Dreadful Birthday, Dear Joker…!’ from Batman #321 (March 1980), by Len Wein, Walt Simonson & Giordano, wherein the Malevolent Mummer planned to celebrate his anniversary in grand style: kidnapping a bunch of old friends like Robin, Jim Gordon, Alfred, Catwoman and others to be the exploding candles on his giant birthday cake…

The Joker has the rare distinction of being perhaps the most iconic villain in comics and can claim that title in whatever era you choose to concentrate on; Noir-ish Golden Age, sanitised Silver Age or malignant modern and Post-Modern milieus. This book captures just a fraction of all those superb stories and with the benefit of another two and a half decades of material since the release of this compendium, just think of what a couple of equally well-considered sequels might offer…

Slightly differing versions of this initial hardback volume have been released as the paperback editions Stacked Deck: The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told in 1990 and The Joker: Greatest Stories Ever Told in 2008.
© 1939-1983, 1988 DC Comics Inc. All rights reserved.

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X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills – Marvel Graphic Novel #5


By Chris Claremont & Brent Eric Anderson (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-93976-620-8   1994 edition 0-939766-20-5   2011: 978-0785157267

Following hard on the heels of their X-line expansion with The New Mutants, Marvel capitalised on the buzz by releasing a hard-hitting graphic novel which emphasised and cemented the aspects of alienation and bigotry which underpinned relations between Homo Sapiens and Superior with a stunningly effective modern parable starring the Uncanny X-Men in a landmark tale worthy of the company’s hot new format as a Marvel Graphic Novel.

At that time Marvel led the field of high-quality original graphic novels: offering big event tales set in the tight continuity of the Marvel Universe, as well as series launches, creator-owned properties, movie adaptations and licensed assets in lavishly expansive packages based on the well-established European Album format.

With bigger, almost square pages (285x220mm rather than the customary 258x168mm) which felt and looked instantly superior to the gaudily standard flimsy comicbook pamphlets, the line did much to improve the overall poor, shoddy and especially cheap image of comics, paving the way for today’s ubiquitous market where anything pictorial between two covers can be so designated, irrespective of how good, bad or incomprehensible the contents might be.

After the immensely successful in-House epic The Death of Captain Marvel, licensed properties Elric: the Dreaming City and Dreadstar set the seal on Marvel’s dedication to experimentation. The New Mutants then proved the growing power of the burgeoning Comicbook Direct Sales Market when the introductory graphic novel (only available in those still-scarce and widely scattered emporia) led directly into a nationally distributed new monthly series. Some fans had to jump through incredible hoops to pick up that all-important initial adventure…

God Loves, Man Kills repeated the furore for rabid X-Fans as the grim cautionary tale unfolded only for those fans near a comic store or prepared to buy through the mail…

The story itself is one of the most disturbingly true to life in the entire canon and opens with the murder of two children. The “Purifiers” responsible then proudly display the bodies in the playground where they died with the placard “muties” around their necks.

When mutant terrorist Magneto finds the bodies the stage is set for one of the X-Men’s darkest cases…

Fundamentalist preacher Reverend William Stryker is the demagogue of the hour: his evangelical crusade against unholy, ungodly mutants has made him rich and powerful whilst his sinister secret death-squads have enabled him to undertake the latest stage of his mission in the full, controversial glare of the public eye. He even has powerful friends and allies within the Government…

Stryker’s divinely-inspired mission is to incite a race-war and eradicate the entire sub-species of Homo Superior, using not only his television ministries to whip up public fear and hatred, but with a private army of merciless mutant-hating racist killers.

The next phase involves taking out the X-Men and begins when Professor Xavier, Cyclops and Storm are ambushed after participating in a TV debate.

When news of their deaths reaches the test of the team, Colossus, Wolverine and Nightcrawler track down the assailants and discover that their friends are only captives of Stryker’s Purifiers, just as old enemy Magneto appears, proposing a temporary truce…

Meanwhile Colossus’s sister Illyana and Kitty Pryde have stumbled upon the captives’ fate and been attacked too. Kitty escapes and goes on the run with murderous Purifiers hot on her trail…

Stryker has been busy: whilst happily torturing his captives he has devised a way to use Xavier’s telepathic abilities to destroy mutants and all those with latent mutant genes at one genocidal stroke.

As the hate-peddler’s plans enter the final stage Magneto and the remaining X-Men prepare for their most important battle, but the showdown on live TV from Madison Square Gardens offers many surprises and reversals of fortune as Stryker, in his paranoid hubris, overestimates the power of blind prejudice and the underestimates the basic humanity of the common man …

This tale is perhaps the most plainspoken and shocking example of mutants as metaphors for racial abuse in society and the stark message herein, savagely delivered by author Chris Claremont and artist Brent Anderson at the very top of their game, made explicit the power of bigotry and the ghastly repercussions of allowing it to bloom uncontested…

A slightly re-proportioned and reformatted edition was released in 1994, reduced in size to approximate standard comicbook size and the tale has also been reprinted, in similarly reduced circumstances in 2006 and 2011.

Moving, scary and immensely influential, God Loves, Man Kills is the comicbook X-Men at their most effective and movie-going readers will recognise much of the tale as it formed the basis for the X-Men film sequel X2.
© 1982, 1994, 2006, 2011 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Wonder Woman Archives Edition volume 1


By Charles Moulton (William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter) (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-402-5

Wonder Woman was famously created by polygraph pioneer William Moulton Marston – apparently at the behest of his formidable wife Elizabeth – and illustrated by Harry G. Peter in an attempt to offer girls a positive and forceful role model.

Her launch and preview came as an extra feature in All Star Comics #8 (December 1941 – and that’s the comic book heroine, not Mrs. Marston), home of the immortal Justice Society of America and one of the company’s most popular publications. The Perfect Princess gained her own series and the cover-spot in new anthology title Sensation Comics a month later.

The Amazing Amazon was a huge and instant hit, quickly gaining her own eponymous title in late Spring of that year (cover-dated Summer 1942).

Using the nom de plume Charles Moulton, Marston scripted all the Amazing Amazon’s many and fabulous adventures until his death in 1947, whereupon Robert Kanigher took over the writer’s role. The venerable co-creator H.G. Peter illustrated almost every WW tale until his own death in 1958.

This superb full-colour deluxe hardback edition collects that seminal debut from All Star Comics #8, and her every iconic adventure from Sensation Comics #1-12 plus Wonder Woman #1, after opening with a heartfelt and appreciative Foreword from performer, writer and social activist Judy Collins.

The comic milestones begin with ‘Introducing Wonder Woman’ as on a hidden island of immortal super-women an American aviator crashed to Earth. Near death Captain Steve Trevor of US Army Intelligence was nursed back to health by young Princess Diana. Fearing her growing obsession with the man, her mother Queen Hippolyte revealed the hidden history of the Amazons: how they were seduced and betrayed by men but rescued by the goddess Aphrodite on condition that they isolated themselves from the rest of the world and devote their eternal lives to becoming ideal, perfect creatures.

However when Trevor explained the perfidious spy plot which accidentally brought him to the Island enclave, Athena and Aphrodite appeared and ordered Hippolyte to assign an Amazon warrior to return with the American to fight for freedom and liberty.

Hippolyte declared an open contest to find the best candidate and, despite being forbidden to participate, young Diana won. Accepting the will of the gods, the worried mother outfits Diana in the guise of Wonder Woman and sends her out to Man’s World…

A month later the story continued where the introduction had left off in Sensation Comics #1 as ‘Wonder Woman Comes to America’ found the eager immigrant returning the recuperating Trevor to the modern World before trouncing a gang of bank robbers and falling in with a show business swindler. The major innovation was her buying the identity of love-lorn Army nurse Diana Prince, elegantly allowing the Amazon to be close to Steve whilst enabling the heartsick medic to join her fiancé in South America.

Even with all that there was still room for Wonder Woman and Captain Trevor to bust up a spy ring attempting to use poison gas on a Draft induction centre before Steve broke his leg and ended up in hospital again, where “Nurse Prince” could look after him…

Sensation #2 introduced the deadly enemy agent ‘Dr. Poison’ in a cannily crafted tale which also debuted the most radical comedy sidekicks of the era…

The plucky fun-loving gals of the Holliday College for Women and their chubby, chocolate-gorging Beeta Lamda sorority chief Etta Candy would get into trouble and save the day in equal proportions for years to come, constantly demonstrating Diana’s – and Marston’s – philosophical contention that girls, with the correct encouragement, could accomplish anything that men could …

With the War raging and a military setting espionage and sabotage were inescapable plot devices. ‘A Spy in the Office’ saw Diana transfer to the office of General Darnell as his secretary so that she could keep an eye on the finally fit Steve. She wasn’t there five minutes before she’d uncovered a ring of undercover infiltrators amongst the typing pool and saved her man from assassination.

Unlike most comics of the period Wonder Woman followed a tight continuity. ‘School for Spies’ in #4 saw some of those fallen girls murdered and introduced inventor genius and Nazi master manipulator Baroness Paula Von Gunther who used psychological tricks to enslave girls to her will and set otherwise decent Americans against their homeland. Even Diana succumbed to her deadly machinations until Steve and the Holliday Girls crashed in…

America’s newest submarine was saved from destruction and a brilliant gang of terrorists brought to justice in ‘Wonder Woman versus the Saboteurs’ before issue #6 found the Amazing Amazon accepting a ‘Summons to Paradise’ to battle her immortal sisters in Kanga-riding duels before receiving her greatest weapon: an unbreakable Lasso of Truth which could compel and control anybody who fell within its golden coils.

It proved very handy when Paula escaped prison and used her invisibility formula to wreak havoc on American coastal defences.

‘The Milk Swindle’ is a pure piece of 1940s social advocacy magic as racketeers and Nazi Von Gunther joined forces to seize control of America’s milk supply with the incredibly long-sighted intention of weakening the bones of the country’s next generation of soldiers, followed in Sensation #8 by ‘Department Store Perfidy’ wherein the Amazon went undercover in the monolithic Bullfinch emporium to win better working conditions and fair pay for the girls employed there.

There was a plethora of surprises in #9 with ‘The Return of Diana Prince’ from South America. Now Mrs Diana White, the young mother needed her job and identity back until her inventor husband could sell his invention to US army. Luckily, Wonder Woman and an obliging gang of saboteurs helped expedite matters…

The next landmark was the launch of her own solo quarterly title. The first issue began with the photo-feature ‘Introducing Wonder Woman’s New Editor’ before offering a text feature on the Amazon’s pantheon of godly patrons in ‘Who is Wonder Woman?’

The comic action then commenced with an greatly expanded revision of her first appearance in ‘A History of the Amazons: the Origin of Wonder Woman’, swiftly followed by the beguiling mystery tale ‘Wonder Woman Goes to the Circus’ wherein Diana had to solve the bizarre serial murders of the show’s elephants.

Paula Von Gunther again reared her shapely head in ‘Wonder Woman versus the Spy Ring’ wherein the loss of the Golden Lasso almost caused the heroine’s demise and the ultimate defeat of the American Army before the issued ended with ‘The Greatest Feat of Daring in Human History’ as Diana and Etta headed for Texas, only to become embroiled in a sinister scheme involving Latin Lotharios, lady bullfighters, lethal spies and a Nazi attempt to conquer Mexico…

Back in Sensation Comics #10 ‘The Railroad Plot’ celebrated Steve and Wonder Woman’s first anniversary by exposing a sinister plan by Japanese and German agents to blow up New York using the labyrinth of subway tunnels under the city, whilst ‘Mission to Planet Eros’ began the series’ long line of cosmic fantasies when the Queen of Venus requested the Amazon’s aid in saving an entire planetary civilisation from sexual inequality and total breakdown…

This first sterling compendium concludes with ‘America’s Guardian Angel’ from Sensation #12 with the Warrior Princess accepting an offer to play herself in a patriotic Hollywood movie, only to find the production had been infiltrated by Nazi Paula and her gang of slave-girls…

Too much has been posited about the subtexts of bondage and subjugation in Marston’s tales – and frankly there really are a lot of scenes with girls tied up, chained or about to be whipped – but I just don’t care what his intentions might have been: I’m more impressed with the skilful drama and incredible fantasy elements that are always wonderfully, intriguingly present: I mean, just where does the concept of giant battle kangaroos come from?

Exotic, baroque, beguiling and uniquely exciting these Golden Age adventures of the World’s Most Famous female superhero are timeless and pivotal classics in the development of comics books and still provide lashings of fun and thrills for anyone looking for a great nostalgic read.
© 1941, 1942, 1998 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Mike Baron’s The Group LaRue: the Ultimate Gaming Adventure


By Mike Baron, David Campiti, Paul Curtis, Faye Perozich, Andy Kuhn & Chris Tsuda (Innovation)
No ISBN:

Once upon a time Dungeons & Dragons style role playing games were the most compelling and obsessive things kids could do. All over the civilised world bands of youngsters would gather in furtive secrecy to play at being wizards, thieves and heroes with dice and bits of paper. How spoiled modern children must be with their electronic paraphernalia and tolerant parents, but at least it’s not like my distant school days when we just stood in the pouring rain, rolling hoops, hitting each other in the face with 24lb leather footballs and imagined ourselves as heroes by hitting each other with sticks whilst chain-smoking, beer-swilling teachers gazed on uncaringly…

But I digress: the late 1980s were a fertile time for American comics-creators. An entire new industry had been born with the growth of the Direct Sales market and its dedicated specialist retail outlets; new companies were experimenting with format and content, and punters even had a bit of spare cash to play with.

Moreover much of the “kid’s stuff” stigma had finally abated and the country was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be a for-real actual art-form…

Consequently many young start-up companies began competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown resigned to getting their on-going picture stories from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material had been creeping in and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Capital, Now, Comico, Dark Horse, First and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads.

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. Even smaller companies had a fair shot at the big time and a lot of great material came – and too often, quickly went – without getting the attention or success it warranted.

One of the last to emerge as a contender was Innovation Publishing, founded by David Campiti in 1988, which added canny reprints collections like Bill Ward’s Torchy, Larry Harmon’s Bozo, the World’s Most Famous Clown and Walt Kelly’s Santa Claus Adventures and a judicious accumulation of acquired ongoing titles such as The Maze Agency and Hero Alliance to its deftly imaginative run of original titles like Scarlet Kiss, Cyberpunk, Legends of the Star Grazers, Scaramouch, Straw Men and many others.

The company’s true strength lay in a vibrant specialisation in adapted fantasy properties ranging from Lost in Space, Quantum Leap, Dark Shadows, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Beauty and the Beast and other media sensations to popular literary works such as Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality, Gene Wolf’s The Shadow of the Torturer and a welter of blood-drenched vampire epics based on the horror works of Anne Rice.

At its height Innovation ranked fourth in market share behind Marvel, DC and Dark Horse Comics but intriguingly, one of their earliest failures – a troubled series devoted to the magic of RPG – was, in retrospect, amongst the best yarns in their canon…

Devised and scripted by Nexus and Badger creator Mike Baron the short and sweet saga of the Group LaRue told the tale of five role-playing kids who suddenly realised it wasn’t just a game anymore…

This slim full-colour collection gathers the three issue tale beginning with ‘Enter: the Group LaRue!’ by Baron and illustrators Andy Kuhn & Chris Tsuda, as five Minneapolis kids sneaked into an old deserted mansion to play their weekly game only to be interrupted by a real wizard.

When he was killed by a gigantic spear his magic gem exploded and the play-actors suddenly transformed into the characters they were channelling: a psychic Precog, superheroes Spark and Lead Plate, super-genius Scrambler and a flying Werewolf.

This last was Gil La Rue – whose illusionist grandfather built the abandoned mansion years ago, before suddenly vanishing.

The boy took charge when the villains in their planned game scenario manifest and deadly giant bug-men attack the bewildered kids…

Escaping with their lives the disbelieving players regrouped outside the mansion only to discover that Gil’s house had burned down and his whole family were gone…

Staying with best friend Manny Rhodes AKA Lead Plate, Gil deduced that whatever forces they unwittingly unleashed might well be hunting them all…

And that’s when estate executor Bob Whitney arrived, offering to reveal the secrets and reasons for their uncanny transformations. Apparently the elder La Rue belonged to a cult which covertly guards humanity against supernatural invasion, but now only Gil and his friends are left to carry on the interrupted mission…

Baron was gone by the second issue ‘Thrown for a Loup!’ but scripters Campiti & Paul Curtis carried on the saga with Kuhn & Tsuda faithfully continuing the art chores as the kids reluctantly explored the subterranean netherworld beneath La Rue mansion, battling more bug-things and seeking out the evil sorcerer who controlled them, but it’s soon clear that there was far more to good old Bob than met the eye…

The yarn came to an abrupt end with ‘Bug Out!’ (written by Campiti & Faye Perozich) as the team, still trapped in some otherworldly underground dimension learned the kind of man Bob was and a few basic home-truths such as not all monsters look scary, ugly doesn’t mean evil and especially “there’s no place like home”…

Clever, funny, thrilling and gloriously cathartic in a wholesome all-ages way, this old-fashioned adventure fantasy with a thoroughly modern “happy ever after” was fabulously fun and definitely deserved a longer run and a steady creative team behind it.

Even with the action long over there’s still plenty of enjoyment for modern readers and magic loving fans to discover if they can track down this buried treasure
™ and © 1989 Michael Baron. Product package © 1989 Innovative Corp. Part #1 story © 1989 Michael Baron. Part #2-3 story © 1989 Innovative Corp. Artwork © 1989 Andy Kuhn. All rights reserved.

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Essential Avengers volume 5


By Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Barry Windsor-Smith, Rich Buckler, Don Heck, Bob Brown, Sal Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2087-4

The Avengers have always proved that putting all one’s star eggs in one single basket pays off big-time: even when all Marvel’s all-stars such as Thor, Captain America and Iron Man are absent, it merely allows the team’s lesser lights to shine more brightly.

Of course all the founding stars regularly featured due to the rotating, open door policy which means that most issues includes somebody’s fave-rave – and the boldly grand-scale impressive stories and artwork are no hindrance either.

This monolithic and monumental fifth tome, collecting the absolute best of the Mighty Avengers‘ world-saving exploits (presenting in crisp, stylish black and white the astounding contents of issues #98-119 of their monthly comic book between April 1972 and February 1974, plus crossover appearances in Daredevil #99 and The Defenders #8-11), saw scripter extraordinaire Roy Thomas hand over the reins to an even more imaginative and groundbreaking author who took the team to dizzying new imaginative and dramatic heights…

Opening this epochal tome is ‘Let Slip the Dogs of War’ from Avengers #98, by Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith & Sal Buscema, which finds harried heroes Captain America, Iron Man, Vision, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Thor, all survivors of the recently concluded Kree-Skrull War, debating the loss of their comrade Goliath, missing in action since he explosively stopped an alien warship from nuking Earth…

As the Thunderer headed for Asgard and its magic scrying mirrors, the fruitless debate was curtailed when war-mongering demagogue Mr. Tallon began inciting riot in the streets of New York. The gathered crowds attacked the Avengers when they tried to quell the unrest and it was soon evident that the war-hawk had supernatural assistance… and in the dimensional void the Thunder God found all access to the Immortal Realms had been cut off…

By the time Thor returned to Earth his comrades had been bewitched too. Joining with the seemingly immune Vision in a last-ditch, hopeless battle, he fought their best friends until the tide was turned by a perfectly aimed arrow… heralding the return of Goliath to his original Hawkeye identity.

Moreover he had with him another Avenger: an amnesiac Hercules, Prince of Power, whose only certain knowledge was that Earth and Asgard were doomed…

‘…They First Make Mad!’ (inked by Tom Sutton) extended the epic as the Avengers called on all their resources to cure Hercules and decipher his cryptic warning whilst the World’s leaders seemed determined to hurl the planet into atomic Armageddon.

As Hawkeye revealed his miraculous escape from death in space and how he found Hercules the call went out, summoning every hero who had ever been an Avenger. Suddenly two Grecian Titans materialised to trounce the team, dragging the Prince of Power back to Olympus…

The epic concluded in the staggeringly beautiful anniversary 100th issue ‘Whatever Gods There Be!’ (inked by Smith, Joe Sinnott & Syd Shores) as thirteen Avengers – including even the scurrilous Swordsman and blockbusting Hulk – invaded the home of the Gods to discover old enemy the Enchantress and war god Ares behind the entire malignant plot…

With the supernatural wonderment concluded new penciller Rich Buckler – doing his best Neal Adams impersonation – took over the art, limning a Harlan Ellison/Roy Thomas tale, inked by Dan Adkins.

‘Five Dooms to Save Tomorrow!’ was based on an Ellison novella from 1964 and found the Avengers battling Leonard Tippit, an ordinary man granted incredible power so that he could murder five innocent humans beings whose innocuous continued existence nevertheless threatened Earth’s future.

Determined to stop him whatever the ultimate consequences, the murky moral quandary tested the Avengers to their utmost, but they were on firmer, more familiar ground in #102 when the Grim Reaper returned, offering to place the Vision’s consciousness in a human body in return for the android’s aid in ‘What to Do Till the Sentinels Come!’ (Thomas, Buckler & Sinnott) as the mutant hunting robots kidnapped the Scarlet Witch and attempted to eradicate the threat of Homo Superior forever…

The budding romance between the Witch and the Vision revealed tensions and bigotries in the most unexpected places as the cataclysmic tale continued with ‘The Sentinels are Alive and Well!’ with the team searching the globe for the monstrous mechanical marauders before being captured whilst invading their Australian Outback hive. The tale concluded in ‘With a Bang… and a Whimper!’ as the assembled heroes thwarted the robots’ intention to sterilise humanity – but only at the cost of two heroes’ lives…

The grieving Scarlet Witch took centre stage in #105 as ‘In the Beginning was… the World Within!’ (by new scripter Steve Englehart, John Buscema & Jim Mooney) found the team travelling to South America and encountering cavemen mutants from the lost world known as the Savage Land, after which the Avengers discovered ‘A Traitor Stalks Among Us!’ (illustrated by Buckler, George Tuska & Dave Cockrum) as the revelation that perennial sidekick Rick Jones had become atomically bonded to alien hero Captain Marvel triggered a painful flashback in the memory-blocked Captain America, and an old foe turned the team against itself.

Avengers #107 revealed ‘The Master Plan of the Space Phantom!’ (Jim Starlin, Tuska & Cockrum) and his complex and sinister alliance with the Grim Reaper as the love-sick Vision finally accepted the offer of a human body.

Unfortunately, the corpus on offer was the Star-Spangled Avenger’s…

‘Check… and Mate!’, illustrated by veteran Avenger artist Don Heck and inkers Cockrum & Sinnott, wrapped up the intriguing saga in spectacular fashion as an army of Avengers thrashed the Phantom, the Reaper and the hordes of Hydra as well but the true climax was the Vision and Witch’s final acknowledgement of their love for each other.

The announcement provoked a storm of trouble…

In #109 Hawkeye, who’d always carried a torch for the beautiful Wanda, quit the team in a dudgeon. ‘The Measure of a Man!’ (Heck & Frank McLaughlin) found the heartsick archer duped by billionaire businessman Champion and almost causing the complete destruction of California before wising up and saving the day, after which the depleted team of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Vision and Black Panther investigated the disappearance of mutant heroes the X-Men and were thoroughly beaten by an old enemy with a new power.

‘… And Now Magneto!’ (Englehart, Heck, Frank Giacoia & Mike Esposito) ended with half the team brainwashed captives of the master-villain and the remaining crusaders desperately searching for new allies whilst in San Francisco and the crossover Daredevil and the Black Widow #99 (May 1973, by Steve Gerber, Sam Kweskin & Syd Shores) The Mark of Hawkeye!’ found Natasha Romanoff’s old boyfriend fetch up on the Widow’s doorstep, determined to reclaim her, culminating in the Archer’s sound and well-deserved thrashing.

When the last Avengers arrived, asking him to return and assist he refused, but DD and the Widow didn’t…

The story resumed in ‘With Two Beside Them!’ (Englehart, Heck & Esposito) saw the West Coast vigilantes successfully help the ragtag heroes rescue the X-Men and Avengers enslaved by the malevolent Magneto. With the action over, Daredevil returned to California but the Black Widow chose to stay with the World’s Mightiest Heroes…

Avengers #111 introduced a new supernatural menace in ‘The Lion God Lives!’ (by Heck & Frank Bolle) wherein a rival African deity sought to destroy the human Avatar of his great rival The Panther God. As the Black Panther and his valiant comrades tackled that threat in the wings an erstwhile ally and enemy and his exotic paramour made their own plans for the team…

Prejudice was the theme of #113’s ‘Your Young Men Shall Slay Visions!’ (Bob Brown & Bolle) as a horde of fundamentalist bigots offended by the “unnatural love” of Wanda and the Vision turned themselves into human bombs to destroy the sinful, unholy couple whilst the ‘Night of the Swordsman’ in #114 (Brown & Esposito) formally introduced the reformed swashbuckler and the enigmatic psychic martial artist Mantis to the team just in time to thwart the Lion God’s latest scheme

One of author Englehart’s other assignments was the anti-hero team The Defenders and since issue #4 he had been carefully putting players in place for a hugely ambitious cross-over experiment: one that would turn the comics industry on its head.

The classic confrontation finally commenced in Avengers #115 with a lead story ‘Below Us the Battle!’ (Brown & Esposito) wherein the still-understaffed heroes travelled to England and the castle of the Black Knight, only to encounter mystic resistance, a troglodytic race of scavengers and a comrade long missing…

The issue also contained a little prologue, ‘Alliance Most Foul!’, which saw other-dimensional Dark Lord Dormammu and Asgardian god of Evil Loki united to search for an ultimate weapon which would give them ultimate victory against all their foes.

This despotic duo would trick the Defenders into securing the six component parts by “revealing” that the reconstructed Evil Eye could restore the Black Knight – who had been turned to stone by the Enchantress months previously – a plan that began in a similar prologue at the end of Defenders #8…

‘Deception’ (Englehart, Sal Buscema & Esposito) was the first chapter in ‘The Avengers/Defenders Clash’ as a message from the spirit of the Black Knight was intercepted by the twin gods of evil, leading directly to ‘Betrayal!’ in Avengers #116, wherein the Avengers, hunting for their missing comrade, “discover” that their oldest enemies Hulk and Sub-Mariner may have turned the Black Knight to stone.

The third chapter ‘Silver Surfer Vs the Vision and the Scarlet Witch’ comprises the remainder of that issue, illustrated by Brown & Esposito, wherein the rival teams split up: one to gather the scattered sections of the Eye and the other to stop them at all costs…

Defenders #9 (art by Buscema & McLaughlin) began with the tense recap ‘Divide …and Conquer’ before ‘The Invincible Iron Man Vs. Hawkeye the Archer’ and ‘Dr. Strange Vs. the Black Panther and Mantis’ shed more suspicion and doubt on the mystical malcontents’ subtle master-plan.

Avengers #117 ‘Holocaust’, ‘Swordsman Vs the Valkyrie’ and the turning point ‘Captain America Vs Sub-Mariner’ (Brown and Esposito) led to the penultimate clash in Defenders #10 (Buscema & Bolle) ‘Breakthrough! The Incredible Hulk Vs Thor’ and the inevitable joining together of the warring camps in ‘United We Stand!’, but sadly too late as Dormammu seized the reconstructed Evil Eye, using its power to merge his monstrous realm with ours.

Avengers #118 provided the cathartic climactic conclusion in ‘To the Death’ (Brown, Esposito & Giacoia) as all the other heroes of the Marvel Universe battled the demonic invasion whilst the Avengers and Defenders plunged deep into the Dark Dimension itself to end the threat of the evil gods forever (or at least for the moment…).

With the overwhelming cosmic threat over the victorious Defenders attempted to use the Eye to cure their stony comrade only to find that his spirit had found a new home in the 12th century. In #11’s ‘A Dark and Stormy Knight’ (inked by Bolle), Dr. Strange, the Valkyrie, Silver Surfer, Sub-Mariner , Hawkeye and the Hulk battled black magic during the Crusades, failed to retrieve the Knight and went their separate ways – as did departing scripter Englehart who surrendered scripting of the “Non-Team” to concentrate his creative energies on the World’s Mightiest Heroes.

This epic monochrome collection concludes with a delightfully traditional spooky Halloween tale as the Avengers, warned by clairvoyant vision from Mantis, head to Rutland, Vermont for the ‘Night of the Collector’ (#119, illustrated by Brown & Heck); encountering old friends, a dastardly foe and blistering action and suspense…

Roy Thomas and Steve Englehart were at the forefront of Marvel’s second generation of story-makers, brilliantly building on and consolidating the compelling creation of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko: spearheading and constructing a logical, fully functioning wonder-machine of places and events that so many others were inspired by and could add to.

These terrific tales are perfect examples of superhero sagas done just right and also a pivotal step of the little company into the corporate colossus. Englehart’s forthcoming concoctions would turn the Marvel Universe on its head and pave the way for a new peak of cosmic adventure…

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