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Showcase Presents The House of Secrets volume 1


By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-054-3

American comicbooks started slowly until the creation of superheroes unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and invented a new genre. Implacably vested in the Second World War, the Overman swept all before him (and very occasional her or it) until the troops came home and the more traditional genres resurfaced and eventually supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Although new kids kept up the buying, much of the previous generation also retained their four-colour habit but increasingly sought older themes in the reading matter. The war years altered the psychological landscape of the world and as a more world-weary, cynical young public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything, their chosen forms of entertainment (film and prose as well as comics) reflected this. As well as Western, War and Crime comics, celebrity tie-ins, madcap escapist comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, but gradually another of the cyclical revivals of spiritualism and public fascination with the arcane led to a wave of increasingly impressive, evocative and shocking horror comics.

There had been grisly, gory and supernatural stars before, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in mystery-man garb and trappings (the Spectre, Mr. Justice, Sgt. Spook, Frankenstein, The Heap, Sargon the Sorcerer, Zatara, Zambini the Miracle Man, Kardak the Mystic, Dr. Fate and dozens of others), but these had been victims of circumstance: the Unknown as a power source for super-heroics. Now the focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering the reader.

Almost every publisher jumped on the increasingly popular bandwagon, with B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launching the first regularly published horror comic in the Autumn of 1948, although Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon who had released an impressive single issue entitled Eerie in January 1947 before launching a regular series in 1951, by which time Classics Illustrated had already long milked the literary end of the medium with adaptations of the Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

If we’re keeping score this was also the period in which Joe Simon and Jack Kirby identified another “mature market” gap and invented the Romance comic (Young Romance #1, September 1947) but they too saw the sales potential for spooky material, resulting in the seminal Black Magic (launched in 1950) and boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams (1952).

The company that would become DC Comics bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

When the hysterical censorship scandal which led to witch-hunting hearings (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April- June 1954 into your search engine at any time… You can do that because it’s apparently a free country now) was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self regulatory rules. Horror titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised and anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore but the appetite for suspense was still high and in 1956 National introduced the sister title House of Secrets which debuted with a November-December cover-date.

Stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, rationalistic, fantasy-adventure vehicles which dominated the market until the 1960s when super-heroes (which had started to creep back after Julius Schwartz began the Silver Age of comics by reintroducing the Flash in Showcase #4, 1956) finally overtook them. Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and a slew of other costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked mavens which even forced the dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books with Martian Manhunter and Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery and Mark Merlin -later Prince Ra-Man – sharing space with Eclipso (see Showcase Presents Eclipso) in House of Secrets.

When the caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, Secrets was one of the first casualties and the title folded with #80, the September-October 1966 issue.

However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and at the end of the 1960s the Silver Age superhero boom was over, with many titles gone and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain too…

This real-world Crisis led to the surviving publishers of the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles but as the liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Worlds Beyond, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious “no-brainer.” Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle Chillers…

Thus with absolutely no fanfare at all House of Secrets was resurrected with issue #81, cover-dated August-September 1969 – just as big sister The House of Mystery had done a year earlier.

Under a spooky bold banner declaiming “There’s No Escape From… The House of Secrets” writer Mike Friedrich, Jerry Grandenetti & George Roussos introduced a ramshackle, sentient old pile in ‘Don’t Move It!’ after which Bill Draut illustrated the introduction of caretaker Abel (with a guest-shot by his murderous older brother Cain from HoM) in ‘House of Secrets’, after which the portly porter kicked off his storytelling career with the Gerry Conway & Jack Sparling yarn ‘Aaron Philip’s Photo Finish!’, and the inaugural issue was put to bed with a Draut limned ‘Epilogue’…

There are no scripter credits for most of HoS #82 but Draut drew both ‘Welcome to the House of Secrets‘ and the ‘Epilogue’, whilst cinema shocker ‘Realer Than Real’ was illustrated by Werner Roth & Vince Colletta. ‘Sudden Madness’ was a short sci fi saga from the brush of Dick Giordano, ‘The Little Old Winemaker’ (Sparling art) a salutary tale of murder and revenge and ‘The One and Only, Fully-Guaranteed, Super-Permanent, 100%’ – written by Marv Wolfman and realised by Dick Dillin & Neal Adams – a darkly comedic tale of domestic bliss and how to get it…

After Draut & Giordano’s ‘Welcome to the House of Secrets‘ piece superstar Alex Toth made his modern HoS debut with the Wolfman written fantasy ‘The Stuff That Dreams are Made Of’, Mikes Royer & Peppe visualised the sinister love-story of ‘Bigger Than a Breadbox’ and Conway & Draut revived time-honoured gothic menace for a chilling fable ‘The House of Endless Years’.

Conway & Draut maintained the light-hearted bracketing of the stories as #84 began with ‘If I Had but World Enough and Time’ (Wein, Dillin & Peppe), a cautionary tale about too much television, after which the tension grew with Wolfman & Sid Greene’s warning against wagering in ‘Double or Nothing!’ and an utterly manic parable of greed ‘The Unbelievable! The Unexplained!’ (by Steve Skeates, Sparling & Jack Abel), before Wein & Sparling messed with our dreams in ‘If I Should Die before I Wake…‘

Cain and Abel acrimoniously opened HoS #85 after which Wein & Don Heck disclosed what happens to some ‘People Who Live in Glass Houses…’ whilst art-legend Ralph Reese illustrated Wein’s daftly ironic ‘Reggie Rabbit, Heathcliffe Hog, Archibald Aardvark, J. Benson Babboon and Bertram the Dancing Frog’…

John Costanza contributed a comedy page entitled ‘House of Wacks’ and Conway, Gil Kane & Neal Adams heralded the upcoming age of slick and seductive barbarian fantasy with the gloriously vivid and vital ‘Second Chance’. Issue #86 featured the eerily seductive ‘Strain’ with art by George Tuska, a powerful prose puzzler ‘The Golden Tower of the Sun’ written by Conway with illustrations from Gray Morrow, after which the writer and Bill Draut tugged heartstrings and stunned senses in the moving, moody madness of ‘The Ballad of Little Joe’…

The issue ends with an episode of the peripatetic, post-apocalyptic, ironic occasional series ‘The Day after Doomsday’ courtesy of Wein and Sparling.

The chatty introductions and interludes with Abel were gradually diminishing to make way for longer stories and experimental episodes such as #87’s ‘And in the Darkness… Light’, sub-divided into ‘Death Has Marble Lips!’, a sculptural shocker from Robert Kanigher, Dillin & Giordano; sinister sci fi scenario ‘The Man’ from Wolfman, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito and the excellent weird pulp pastiche ‘The Coming of Ghaglan’ by veteran Raymond Marais & talented newcomer Michael Wm. Kaluta. Much the same was #88’s dread duo ‘The Morning Ghost’ by Wolfman, Dillin & Frank Giacoia and ‘Eyesore!’ by Conway & Draut.

Most of the covers were the magnificent work of Neal Adams but HoS #89 sports a rare and surprisingly effective tonal image by Irv Novick (although attributed here to Gray Morrow): a gothic romance special with period thrillers ‘Where Dead Men Walk!’ which is drawn by Morrow and ‘A Taste of Dark Fire!’ from Conway & Heck. This latter tale debuted Victorian devil-busting duo Father John Christian and Rabbi Samuel Shulman who appeared far too infrequently in succeeding years (see also Showcase Presents the Phantom Stranger volume 2).

Tuska illustrated the uncredited futuristic thriller ‘The Distant Dome’ in #90, whilst Wolfman, Rich Buckler & Adams described the short, sharp lives of ‘The Symbionts’, after which Mike Friedrich & Morrow ended this S-F extravaganza with the perplexing tale of ‘Jedediah!’

There are no writer’s credits for #91 but South American revolutionary rollercoaster ‘The Eagle’s Talon!’ was drawn by Wally Wood; Jack Sparling illustrated the faux-factual feature ‘Realm of the Mystics’, Sam Glanzman produced a potent parable of alienation in ‘Please, Don’t Cry Johnny!’ and Murphy Anderson wrapped up the wonderment with a deadly doppelganger drama ‘There are Two of Me… and One Must Die!’

Issue #92 was one of those rare moments in comics when all the factors are in perfect alignment for a major breakthrough. The twelfth anthology issue of House of Secrets cemented the genre into place as the industry leader. In it writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson produced a throwaway thriller set at the turn of the 19th century, wherein gentleman scientist Alex Olsen is murdered by his best friend and his body dumped in a swamp. Years later his beloved bride, now the unsuspecting wife of the murderer, is stalked by a shambling, disgusting beast that seems to be composed of mud and muck…

‘Swamp Thing’ was cover-featured and eerily illustrated by Wrightson for HoS #92 (June-July 1971) striking an instant and sustained chord with the buying public. It was the bestselling DC comic of that month and reader response was fervent and persistent. By all accounts the only reason there wasn’t an immediate sequel or spin-off was that the creative team didn’t want to produce one.

Eventually however, bowing to interminable pressure, and with the sensible idea of transplanting the concept to contemporary America, the first issue of Swamp Thing (see Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis) appeared on newsstands in the Spring of 1972. It was an instant hit and an immortal classic.

The remaining pages in that groundbreaking issue aren’t bad either, with Jack Kirby & Mark Evanier scripting the psychodrama ‘After I Die’ for old Prize/Crestwood Comics stable-mate Bill Draut to illustrate, whilst ‘It’s Better to Give…’ by Virgil North provided an early chance for Al Weiss & Tony DeZuniga to strut their superbly engaging artistic stuff. The issue ends with a sudden shocker by Dick Dillin (possibly via Grandenetti?) entitled ‘Trick or Treat’

House of Secrets #93 (August/September 1971) saw the comicbook expand from 32 to 52 pages – as did all DC’s titles for the next couple of years, opening the doors for a magnificent period of new material married to the best of the company’s prodigious archives for an appreciative, impressionable audience.

Jim Aparo made his HoS debut here in the Skeates scripted spook-fest ‘Lonely in Death’ and so did macabre cartoonist Sergio Aragonés in ‘Abel’s Fables’, after which the reprint bonanza began with ‘The Curse of the Cat’s Cradle’ (originally from My Greatest Adventure #85) stupendously depicted by Alex Toth. Jack Abel’s ‘Nightmare’ was followed by golden oldie ‘The Beast From the Box’; courtesy of Nick Cardy and House of Mystery #24, after which Lore (Shoberg) contributed another page of ‘Abel’s Fables’ before the entertainment ended with the chilling ‘Never Kill a Witch’s Son!’ by John Albano & DeZuniga, rounding out the fearsome fun in period style…

Issue #94 began by revealing ‘The Man with My Face’ (art by Sparling) and ‘Hyde… and Go Seek!’ by Wein & DeZuniga, whilst ‘The Day Nobody Died’ (George Roussos, Tales of the Unexpected #9) and ‘Track of the Invisible Beast!’ (Toth from House of Mystery #109) provided vintage voltage before another Aragonés ‘Abel’s Fables’ and ‘A Bottle of Incense… a Whiff of the Past!’ by Francis Bushmaster, Weiss & Wrightson closed proceedings in devilishly high style…

Albano & Heck showed domesticity wasn’t pretty in ‘Creature…‘, everybody got a nasty case of chills in ‘And Thing That Go Bump in the Night!’ (credited to Sparling but probably Tuska & Win Mortimer) before ‘The Last Sorcerer’ (Bernard Baily from House of Mystery #69) and ‘The Phantom of the Flames!’ – a rare DC illustration job for the great Joe Maneely from HoM #71. The dark dramas closed with Jack Oleck and Nestor Redondo’s ‘The Bride of Death’. Issue #95 also included a couple of Lore’s ‘Abel’s Fables’, a Sparling ‘Realm of the Mystics’ and a Wein & Sparling ‘Day after Doomsday’.

‘World for a Witch’ by Oleck & Draut opened the next peril-packed issue, followed by a high-tension, high-tech Toth reprint ‘The Great Dimensional Brain Swap’ (from House of Secrets #48) and Wein, Dillin & Jack Abel’s ‘Be it Ever So Humble…’ whilst Oleck & Wood’s ‘The Monster’ described a different kind of horror before ‘The Indestructible Man’ (by unsung master-draughtsman Bill Ely, and originally seen in Tales of the Unexpected #12) closed the show. Also lurking within this issue was another agonisingly funny Aragonés ‘Abel’s Fables’ contribution…

The penultimate issue in this sparkling collection led with classical creep-show ‘The Curse of Morby Castle’ by Sparling. Skeates & Aparo returned to ‘Divide and Murder’ and Aragonés struck again in ‘Abel’s Fables’. Blasts from the past ‘The Tomb of Ramfis’ (House of Mystery #59, by the fabulous John Prentice) and ‘Dead Man’s Diary’ (drawn by Ralph Mayo for House of Mystery #46) were demarcated by another trenchant Wein & Sparling ‘Day after Doomsday’, before Jose Delbo delineated a manic monster-fest entitled ‘Domain of the Damned’.

The last issue in this first compendium opened with a glorious intro page from Mark Hanerfeld and Kaluta, after which the artist entrancingly illustrated Albano’s tough-as-nails-thriller ‘Born Losers’ and Toth illuminated the ‘Secret Hero of Center City’ (originally seen in House of Mystery #120). After one more Aragonés ‘Abel’s Fables’ Wein, Mikes Roy & Peppe revealed why ‘The Night Train Doesn’t Stop Here anymore!’ and another John Prentice treat was served up in ‘The Fatal Superstition’ (House of Mystery #35) before the great Adolfo Buylla celebrated the end of the affair in grisly fashion with ‘Happy Birthday, Herman!’

These terror-tales captivated the reading public and critics alike when they first appeared and it’s no stretch to posit that they probably saved the company during one of the toughest downturns in comics publishing history. Now their blend of sinister mirth, classic horror scenarios and suspense set-pieces can most familiarly be seen in such children’s series as Goosebumps, Horrible Histories and their many imitators.

If you crave beautifully realised, tastefully splatter-free sagas of tension and imagination, not to mention a huge supply of bad-taste, kid-friendly cartoon chills, book your stay at the House of Secrets as soon as you possibly can…

© 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Al Williamson Archives volume 1


By Al Williamson with an introduction by Angelo Torres (Flesk)
ISBN: 978-1-933865-29-4

Al Williamson is one of the greatest draughtsmen ever to grace the pages of comicbooks and newspaper comics sections. He was born in 1931 before his family moved from New York City to Bogota Columbia at the height of the Golden Age of syndicated adventure strips.

The lad’s passion for strips – especially Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim – was broadened as he devoured imported and translated US material as well as the best that Europe and Latin America could provide in such anthology magazines as Paquin and Pif Paf. Aged 12 Williamson returned to America and, after finishing school, found work in the industry that had always obsessed him.

In the early 1950s he became a star of E.C. Comics’ science fiction titles, beside kindred spirits Joe Orlando, Wally Wood, Roy G. Krenkel, Frank Frazetta and Angelo Torres, and drew Westerns Kid Colt and Ringo Kid for Atlas/Marvel. During the business’ darkest days he gravitated to newspaper strips, assisting John Prentice on Rip Kirby – another masterpiece originally created by Alex Raymond.

When comicbooks gradually recovered, Williamson drew Flash Gordon for King Comics and worked on mystery tales and westerns for DC whilst drawing such globally distributed newspaper features as Secret Agent Corrigan plus groundbreaking film adaptations of Bladerunner and Star Wars.

His stunning poetic realism, sophisticated compositions and fantastic naturalism graced many varied tales, but in later years he became almost exclusively a star inker over pencillers as varied as John Romita Jr., Larry Stroman, Rick Leonardi, Mark Bright, José Delbo and a host of others on everything from Transformers to Spider-Man 2099, Daredevil to Spider-Girl.

Al Williamson passed away in June 2010.

Flesk Publications is an outfit specialising in art books and the tomes dedicated to the greats of our industry include volumes on sequential narrative and fantasy illustration starring Steve Rude, Mark Shultz, James Bama, Gary Gianni, Franklin Booth, William Stout and Joseph Clement Coll. The guiding light behind the company is devoted and passionate art lover John Fleskes.

This initial oversized (305 x 232mm) 64 page collection of sketches, working drawings, unused and unfinished pages from one of the stellar creators of our art form stars captivating heroines, lusty barbarians, space heroes, beasts, aliens and so many wonderful dinosaurs, but also presents lesser known western scenes, science fiction tech, character sketches, duels, action sequences, nudes and glamour studies, unfinished pages from Xenozoic tales and John Carter of Mars, religious scenes and delicious unseen excerpts from Rip Kirby, as well as a glimpse into Williamson’s creative process.

The beautifully intimate glimpses of a master at work, with full colour reproduction capturing every nuance of Williamsons’ gorgeous pencil strokes, make this a book a vital primer for anybody dreaming of drawing for a living and the stirring lavish material revealed here will enthral and entice every fan of wondrous worlds and fantastic forgotten realms.

© 2010 Al Williamson. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents Justice League of America volume 5


By Mike Friedrich, Len Wein, Dick Dillin & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-195-9

After the actual invention of the comicbook superhero – for which read the Action Comics debut of Superman in 1938 – the most significant event in the industry’s progress was the combination of individual sales-points into a group. Thus what seems blindingly obvious to us with the benefit of four-colour hindsight was proven: a number of popular characters could multiply readership by combining forces. Plus, of course, a mob of superheroes is just so much cooler than one (…or one-and-a-half if there’s a sidekick involved…).

And so the Justice Society of America is rightly revered as a true landmark in the development of comicbooks and when Julius Schwartz revived the superhero genre in the late 1950s, the key moment came with the inevitable banding together of the reconfigured mystery men.

That moment came with issue #28 of The Brave and the Bold, a classical adventure title that had recently transformed into a try-out magazine like Showcase. Just before Christmas 1959 the ads began running. “Just Imagine! The mightiest heroes of our time… have banded together as the Justice League of America to stamp out the forces of evil wherever and whenever they appear!”

The rest was history: the JLA captivated the youth of a nation, reinvigorated an industry and even inspired a small family-concern into creating the Fantastic Four, thereby transforming the art-form itself

Following a spectacular rise, TV spin-offs brought international awareness which led to catastrophic overexposure: by 1968 the superhero boom looked to be dying just as its predecessor had at the end of the 1940s. Sales were down generally in the industry and costs were beginning to spiral. More importantly “free” entertainment, in the form of television, was by now ensconced in even the poorest household. If you were a kid in the sixties, think just how many brilliant cartoon shows were created in that decade, when artists like Alex Toth and Doug Wildey worked in West Coast animation studios.

Moreover, comicbook heroes were now appearing on the small screen. Superman, Aquaman, Batman, the Marvel heroes and even the JLA were there every Saturday in your own living room even after the global bubble had burst…

It was a time of great political and social upheaval. Change was everywhere and unrest even reached the corridors of DC. When a number of creators agitated for increased work-benefits the request was not looked upon kindly. Many left the company – not always voluntarily – for other outfits. Some quit the business altogether.

This fifth monochrome volume compellingly reflects the signs of the times as new writers fostered a “new wave” before slowly and safely returning the World’s Greatest Superheroes to the tried and tested Fights ‘n’ Tights arena…

Collecting issues #84-106 (and re-presenting the stirring covers of #85 and 93: giant editions which reprinted issues #10-11and #13 and18, respectively), this tome covers the period when the market changed forever, and comics stopped being a casual, disposable mass-entertainment.

By the end of this volume the publishers had begun the conceptual and commercial transition from a mass-market medium which slavishly followed trends and fashions to become a niche industry producing only what its dedicated fans wanted…

The dramas begin here with Justice League of America #84 (November 1970) and a guest-script from veteran writer Robert Kanigher illustrated by Dick Dillin & Joe Giella. ‘The Devil in Paradise!’ wherein a well-meaning but demented scientist builds his own Eden to escape the world’s increasing savagery before attempting to cleanse the Earth and start civilisation afresh.

With superheroes on the outs the team was severely truncated too. Issue #86 tackled impending global starvation as Mike Friedrich began a run of excellent eco-thrillers with ‘Earth’s Final Hour!’ as businessman Theo Zappa traded away the planet’s plankton (base of our entire food-chain) to a race of aliens with only Superman, Batman, Flash, Aquaman, Atom and Hawkman on hand to thwart him, whilst #87’s ‘Batman… King of the World!’ brought in occasional guest-star Zatanna and the semi-retired Green Lantern to tackle a deadly alien robot raider: a devious and cleverly veiled attack on Big Business and the Vietnam war, most famous these days for introducing a group of alien superheroes mischievously based on Marvels Mighty Avengers…

The human spirit and enduring humanity were highlighted when ancient refugees from the lost city of Mu returned to find us in charge of the planet they had abandoned millennia ago. ‘The Last Survivors of Earth!’ showed that even when superheroes were outmatched by scientifically-instigated global catastrophes, the simple patience, charity and self-confidence of ordinary folks can move mountains and save worlds.

‘The Most Dangerous Dreams of All!’ is one of the oddest tales in JLA history with a thinly disguised Harlan Ellison psychically inserting himself into the consciousness of Superman and Batman to woo the Black Canary with near-fatal repercussions, in a self-indulgent but intriguing examination of the creative process whilst #90’s ‘Plague of the Pale People!’ saw Aquaman’s submerged kingdom of Atlantis conquered by a primitive sub-sea tribe (the Saremites from Flash #109 – for which story check out Showcase Presents the Flash volume 1) using nerve gas negligently dumped in the ocean by the  US military.

In a mordant and powerful parable about lost faith and taking responsibility the JLA were forced to deal with problems much tougher than repelling invaders and locking up bad-guys…

Justice League of America #91 (August 1971) began the hero-heavy first part of the annual JLA/JSA team-up with ‘Earth… the Monster-Maker!’ as the Supermen, Flashes, Green Lanterns, Hawkmen, Atoms and Robins of two separate Realities simultaneously and ineffectually battled an alien boy and his symbiotically-linked dog on two planets a universe apart, until ‘Solomon Grundy… the One and Only!’ gave them a life saving lesson on togetherness and lateral thinking…

Following the cover of reprint giant #93, Neal Adams stepped in to provide additional pencils for the tense mystery ‘Where Strikes Demonfang?’ as ghostly guardian Deadman helped Batman, Aquaman and Green Arrow foil a murder mission by the previously infallible Merlyn and the League of Assassins. The issue ended on a cliffhanger as Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman were lost in a teleporter accident leaving Batman, Black Canary, Green Arrow and the Atom to fight ‘The Private War of Johnny Dune!’ wherein a disaffected black Vietnam veteran discovered the power and temptation of superpowers. Tragically even the ability to control minds wasn’t enough to change an unjust society two hundred years in the making…

The JLA returned to large-scale cosmic drama with issue #96 as Superman located the lost Leaguers on the distant yet familiar world of Rann (at least if you’ve read Showcase Presents Adam Strange volume 1) battling a planet-killing energy vampire in ‘The Coming of… Starbreaker!’

Their hard-won triumph only brought Earth to the attention of the extinction-event-level villain, leading to #97’s ‘The Day the Earth Screams!’ – a 37-page epic incorporating and recapitulating the team’s origin from #9 – resulting in a positively charged team, aided by Golden Age magician Sargon the Sorcerer, finally crushing the Stellar Leech in the climactic ‘No More Tomorrows!’

Environment-in-extremis was once more the theme in #99’s ‘Seeds of Destruction!’ as two alien Johnny Appleseeds began reseeding Earth with plants irrespective of whether or not humans want – or can survive – their monstrous crop…

Justice League of America #100 (August 1972) heralded the move away from relevancy and hot button social topics and a return to full-on Costumed melodramas beginning with a colossal three way team-up featuring almost every hero in the then-DC pantheon.

Beginning as part of the annual JLA/JSA summer blockbuster ‘The Unknown Soldier of Victory!’ featured the debut of Len Wein as scripter as the assembled champions of two Earths began a monumental hunt through time to retrieve forgotten heroes the Seven Soldiers of Victory; not simply out of common decency but because the vanished vigilantes held the answer to defeating a criminal mastermind literally holding the world of Earth-2 to ransom.

The quest continued in ‘The Hand that Shook the World!’ before ending in one adventurer’s gallant final sacrifice in #102’s ‘And One of Us Must Die!’ (with additional inking from Dick Giordano).

Returned to their own planet the JLA teamed up with and then inducted one of the few mystery men who hadn’t accompanied them to Earth-2 in ‘A Stranger Walks Among Us!’ (Wein, Dillin & Giordano) as the cross-genre horror-hero Phantom Stranger foiled a plot to sorcerously slaughter six Leaguers during the annual Halloween carnival in Rutland, Vermont, after which Green Lantern’s arch-enemy Hector Hammond orchestrated an attack on his old foe by setting an unstoppable monster loose on the League in ‘The Shaggy Man Will Get You if You Don’t Watch Out!’

The “More-the-Merrier” recruitment drive continued in #105 as the Elongated Man signed up to save the day against marauding, malignant putty-men in ‘Specter in the Shadows!’, anonymously aided by a miraculously resurrected robotic Red Tornado who joined up in #106, unaware that he had been reprogrammed into becoming a ‘Wolf in the Fold!’ which neatly concludes this delightful fifth volume of extraordinary exploits.

The Justice League of America has become a keystone of American comics and these tales are still among the most thought-provoking, controversial and purely entertaining episodes in their half-century history.

Just Imagine…

© 1968-1972, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Blue Beetle: Black and Blue


By Matthew Sturges, Will Pfeifer, Mike Norton, David Baldeón, Carlo Barberi & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-85768-016-7

At the height of the Infinite Crisis El Paso teenager Jaime Reyes found a strange bug-shaped blue jewel. That night it attached itself to his spine, transforming him into a bizarre insectoid warrior. He was promptly swept up in the universe-rending chaos, aiding Batman and other heroes in a space battle. He was lost for a year…

Finally returned home, he revealed his secret to his family and tried to do some good in El Paso but had to rapidly adjust to some big changes. His best bud Paco had joined a gang of super-powered freaks, the local crime mastermind was the foster-mom of his other best bud Brenda and a really scary military dude named Peacemaker started hanging around, claiming the thing in Jaime’s back was malfunctioning alien tech not life-affirming Egyptian magic…

The Scarabs were designed to pave the way for a full invasion but fortunately the one attached to Jaime had been damaged over the centuries it was buried here and wasn’t working properly. With a little help from his friends and the newly rebellious gem itself Jaime thwarted the rapacious and infinitely patient invaders of The Reach and continued his unlikely mission as protector of El Paso and superhero in training.

The Hispanic Blue Beetle pluckily battled on as a back-up feature in Booster Gold and as a Teen Titan and this final volume (or perhaps not, since rumours of a Blue Beetle TV show still abound…) collects the previously-uncollected issues #27, 28, 35 and 36 of his own comicbook plus the Booster Gold back-ups from volume 2, issues #21-25 and 28-29 for your undoubted approval, courtesy of writers Matthew Sturges and Will Pfeifer and artist Mike Norton, David Baldeón, Carlo Barberi, Steve Bird, Jacob Eguren, Norm Rapmund & Sandra Hope.   J. Torres & Freddie Williams Jr. and battles one of the DC Universe’s gravest menaces in the startlingly powerful change of pace tale ‘Total Eclipso: the Heart’ by Rogers & Albuquerque.

The wonderment commences with ‘Black Magic Woman’ as Jaime and new girlfriend Traci Thirteen stumble onto an out-of-control supernatural vengeance plot instigated by a trio of slacker teens that looks likely to rip El Paso apart. Good thing then that our hero’s significant other is one of the most powerful witches on Earth…

Following that is a superb little yarn of generational evil, forgiveness and redemption guest-starring original Blue Beetle Dan Garrett which perfectly illustrates how much the kid hero had grown in the monstrous parable of ‘Brutus’, after which the continuity jumps to issue #35 (and if you’re a chronology-fiend here’s where Blue Beetle: Boundaries should go, so if you need to, read that before continuing…).

The solo comicbook concluded in a tense, life-changing two-parter ‘Only Change Endures’ which opened with a horde of the second Blue Beetle’s old foes attacking El Paso only to be soundly thrashed by his youthful successor. During the fray Jaime realised something was severely amiss with his scarab: it was becoming increasingly bloodthirsty and constantly urged him to use deadly force options from its vast weapons array…

At school romance was in the air, but when a battalion of other scarab-powered Blue Beetles calling themselves the “Khaji-Da Revolutionary Army” the situation went from hearts and flowers to def-con four …

Apparently when Jaime defeated the all-conquering alien Reach (Blue Beetle: Reach for the Stars) he inadvertently started a dissident movement amongst the interlinked insectoid warriors. Now they want Jaime to lead them in a bloody war of liberation across the galaxies and although the human was appalled by the thought his rebellious scarab was overwhelmingly in favour…

Of course it all ends in a devastating blockbuster battle, but before Jaime can regain control of his symbiotic scarab one of his closest friends pays the ultimate price and life just isn’t so much fun anymore…

After a brief sojourn in funnybook limbo Blue Beetle returned as a supporting strip in Booster Gold and those tales follow here, starting with a reintroduction and recap in ‘The Golden Child’ – part one of the thee-chapter ‘Armour-Plated’ wherein Jaime tackled a succession of robots with daddy-issues, resulting in excessive carnage and destruction in ‘Silver Spoon’ before ‘Thoroughly Modern Maria’ ended the drama on a cliffhanger when future villain Black Beetle turned up to instigate a centuries-long vendetta in the two-part ‘Black and Blue’ by attempting to murder the entire Reyes family…

The saga reached a climactic conclusion when old tutor Peacemaker helped heal the madly malfunctioning scarab in ‘The Beginning of the End’ after which a mission to the ancient Reach pyramid set everything to rights (for the moment at least) in the spectacular ‘The End of the End’.

Although long-gone as a comicbook series the latest incarnation of the undying Blue Beetle brand still survives and thrives in trade paperback collections where you can – and must – experience the frantic, fun, thrill-packed and startlingly moving exploits of a truly ordinary teenager catapulted into the terrifying world of high-level super-heroics.

Hopefully with the TV series apparently completed and awaiting scheduling, a new comicbook series can’t be too far away, so what better time can there be to finally tune in and catch up with all of these addictive super-teen triumphs?

© 2008, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Jack of Fables volume 4: Americana


By Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Russ Braun, Tony Akins, Andrew Pepoy, & Steve Leialoha (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-050-5

Just so you know, Fables are fairytale, storybook and mythical beings hidden on our mundane Earth since their various magical realms fell to a sinister monstrous Adversary. Arriving hundreds of years ago (and still coming) the fantastic refugees hid their true natures from humanity and built isolated enclaves where their immortality and utter strangeness could not endanger the life of uneasy luxury they buried themselves within. Many of these elusive eternals wander the human world, but always under strict and draconian mandate to never get noticed.

In Fables: Homelands the utterly self-absorbed and absolutely amoral Jack of the Tales (basis for such legends as Beanstalk, Giant-killer, Frost, Be Nimble and many more) broke all the rules – because that’s his nature – by stealing Fabletown cash and moving to Hollywood. Once there he set up as a movie producer, created the most popular fantasy film triptych of all time.

A key tenet of the series is that the more “mundies” (that’s mortals like you and me) think about a fable character, the stronger that actual character becomes. Books, TV, songs, all feed their vitality. So when the movies based on Jack’s life ultra-charged him they also brought him much unwelcome attention. The avaricious rat-bag coined vast amounts of filthy lucre in the process, but it all led the Fabletown authorities straight to him.

In Jack of Fables: The (Nearly) Great Escape our irreverent faux-hero was brought to task by the Fables Police, exiled from Hollywood and ordered to disappear, with only a suitcase full of cash to tide him over. He was also banished from all Fable properties and domains. Alone and unprotected he was soon captured by The Golden Bough, a clandestine organisation that had been hunting Fables for centuries.

Jack escaped during a mass break-out of forgotten, adulterated and abridged Fables, all fleeing from a particularly horrific fate – metaphysical and contextual neutering.

He is presently on the run from those selfsame forces (in the distractingly vivacious shape of the Page Sisters, dedicated hunters of everything Fable-ulous) and constantly seeking to restore his cash-flow as this fourth volume – collecting issues #17-21 of the monthly Vertigo comic – commences with first chapter of the eponymous ‘Americana’ as Jack reviews his simple life goals – to be the richest, most powerful and best-looking Fable in the universe – and have lots of really hot sex…

‘On Eggshells’ opens with Jack, Gary, the Pathetic Fallacy and cynical sidekick Native American Raven hiding out in a cheap motel as Hillary Page, with diminished giant Paul Bunyan and Babe (a blue ox with a remarkable imagination), zeroes in on the fugitives.

Things pick up however when Jack reassembles the shell-shocked Humpty Dumpty who has the location of a monolithic treasure drawn on fractured exterior. Such a shame a few fragments are missing, or the daring band of brothers could go directly to the mythic Fable-realm of Americana and plunder the Lost City of Cibola…

As it is, the treasure-seekers have to hop a freight-train in time-honoured legendary manner, but ghostly iron horses are few and far between, so it’s no real surprise that they catch the same one as Hillary and Company…

‘Mind the Zombies’ follows the uneasy allies’ circuitous route via steamboat to the perfectly average, undead-infested picture-perfect little town of Idyll where they meet the utterly sinister Librarian of Americana. His name is Burner, but he considers it more of a job-description…

Narrowly escaping with their legendary, literary lives Jack, Hillary and the rest resume their peripatetic journey to Cibola, unaware that Burner has set the indefatigable Leatherstocking Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo (that’s Hawkeye to you folks) on their rapidly scampering tails…

‘On the Road’ details the inevitable clash with literature’s greatest tracker and subsequent narrow escape into more trouble amidst the Ganglands of hard-boiled crime fiction. From their it’s an epic trek to the Great White North, mythical New York City and Broadway, Witch-haunted Puritan New England, the Antebellum South and the “Injun” infested Wild West, before finally reaching their ultimate goal in ‘Goldrush’ wherein Jack achieves all his ambitions, fiscal and carnal…

It’s not long before the boom is once more lowered on the obnoxious sap and Americana concludes on a chilling cliffhanger as the Bookburner vacates the United States of Fiction, intending to eradicate all the Fables still interned at the Golden Bough…

However there’s yet one more treat for fans as the metaphysical, engagingly peculiar and trouble-attracting Pathetic Fallacy takes centre-stage for ‘Gary Does Denmark’ wherein the affable, nigh-omnipotent sad-sack recounts his history with Shakespeare’s greatest work, ably hampered by our regular cast and with Jack’s evil prototype Wicked John standing in for the named star of our show…

Written by Bill Willingham & Matthew Sturges, illustrated by Russ Braun, Tony Akins, Andrew Pepoy & Steve Leialoha this tome sees the series develop into a uniquely whimsical and absurdist meta-fictional delight that no fan of reading, high art or low comedy can afford to miss…

This imaginative and breathtakingly bold rollercoaster ride of flamboyant fantasy and snappy street-smarts is a supremely saucy, self-referential, darkly, funny fairytale for adults concocted with much more sly cynical humour and sex than your average funnybook – so po-faced moralistas and societal stickybeaks be warned!

Every enchanting volume should be compulsory reading for jaded imagineers everywhere – and in some as yet unreachable realm they actually are…

© 2007, 2008 Bill Willingham and DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Approximate Continuum Comics


By Lewis Trondheim, edited & translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-410-8

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 and working with the industry’s top artists; overseeing animated cartoons of his print successes as La Mouche (The Fly) and Kaput and Zösky and even editing a 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 his scripts for the continent’s most popular artists include Le Roi Catastrophe and Vénézia with Fabrice Parme, Les Cosmonautes du futur (Manu Larcenet), Allez Raconte and Papa Raconte (José Parrondo) and Petit Père Noël (Thierry Robin).

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

I first became aware of Lewis Trondheim’s subtly engaging comics mannerism in Fantagraphics’ Mome anthologies which reprinted excerpts of his comics blog Little Nothings wherein Trondheim’s friends and acquaintances, drawn as anthropomorphised animals (with him a dowdy, parrot-beaked central figure) revisit episodes of his life, flavoured with philosophy, personal introspection, whimsical inquiry and foible-filled observations.

These mini-treats have since been gathered into three terrific tomes of drawn diaries for constant re-reading (Little Nothings: Curse of the Umbrella, The Prisoner Syndrome and Uneasy Happiness) and are available as collected gift set entitled Bigger Nothings.

However, before all that Trondheim first explored the idea as a four issue American styled comicbook project in 1993 and those prototypical slices of wry and winning reportage are finally available in a translated black and white softcover collection.

Some of the very first autobiographical works on the French bande dessinée scene, these little gems were a genuine game-changer for cartoonists and storytellers, prompting a rise in personal stories that has produced many works to rival the best of Harvey Pekar himself…

In the collected Approximate Continuum Comics the trademark blend of visualised introspection and self-condemnatory flagellation finds the younger Trondheim questioning his own professional integrity, violently and graphically wish-fulfilling his way through rush-hour crowds (haven’t we all?), planning – for which read risk-assessing – his marriage, and dealing with his unfathomable Japanese publisher during the early days of creating his multi-media hit La Mouche.

He regularly gets lost in his own free-associating daydreams and rightly fears being castigated by his own conscience for swimming in megalomania, indecisiveness, forthrightness and deference.

Trondheim’s many inner voices don’t like him very much: there are myriad incidences of self-abuse where his alternate egos beat the crap out of him; counterbalanced with gloriously loaded “real-world” episodes where he lampoons and embarrasses his fellow studio-mates of publishing collective L’Association.

(To be fair these are fabulously balanced by a marvellous section at the book’s end where such maligned and injured creative colleagues as David B., Emile Bravo, Didier Tronchet, Jean-Christophe Menu, Killofer and Philippe Dupuy among others, as well as civilian friends, his wife Brigitte and even his mother all get a trenchant and often hilarious right-to-reply.)

The first inklings of the artist’s perennial problems with technology in general and computer games in particular appear here, as do many childhood memoirs and sundry diatribes against people and places either experienced or sometimes only imagined.

One of the best sequences concerns the trip-of-a-lifetime to America (first of many, but he didn’t know that then…) and his apparent inability to think of one single strip idea about it, only surpassed by his behaviour at a raucous party held in his beloved studio.

During the course of these cartoon capers, Trondheim married his fiancée, sired his first child and moved into a new home, but although these major events are thoroughly and compellingly covered they still pale into insignificance against the spectacular battles against his inevitably spreading paunch, obsessively mean-spirited self-criticism and the thunderbolt-like occasional phone call from his mum…

…And whenever that’s no longer painful enough there’s always the violent physical assaults and punishment-beatings from his inner selves…

Superbly skilled at switching imperceptibly from broad self-parody to cripplingly painful personal revelation, wild surrealism to powerful reportage and from clever humorous observation to howling existentialist inquisition, Trondheim’s cartoon interior catalogue is always a supremely rewarding and enjoyable experience and, as these ancient texts prove, always has been…

© 2001 Lewis Trondheim and Cornélius. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. All Rights Reserved.

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Yeah!


By Peter Bagge & Gilbert Hernandez, with Jaime Hernadez & Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-412-2

More generally known for their challenging (I so loathe that word “alternative”) material for mature audiences, cartooning legends Peter (Neat Stuff, Hate, Buddy Bradley) Bagge and Gilbert (Love & Rockets, Birdland, Sloth) Hernandez collaborated in 1999 on an intriguing and manically enticing, all-ages cartoon romp for the grievously underserved juvenile girls market, published by mainstream industry leader DC under their WildStorm imprint.

Said feature has finally been collected – regrettably without the gloriously vivid colour – in a superbly silly upbeat collection that will hopefully, in these more enlightened graphic times, find the approving audience it deserved.

As Bagge relates in his introduction, the original concept was an updating of Dan DeCarlo’s Josie and the Pussycats (voluntarily created under the strictures of the Comics Code) which would appeal to a pre-teen market; inspired by the writer’s complete immersion in the Girl-Power culture of the Spice Girls and their many imitators, thanks to his own daughter turning eight and discovering pop music…

Yeah! follows the trials and tribulations of fresh young New Jersey girls Woo-Woo, Honey and Krazy, who with their on-again, off-again, sleazy-hippie-burn-out manager Crusty seek stardom and a steady paycheque. Naturally it’s not quite that straightforward…

The girls’ extremely unique situation is introduced in ‘Everybody Say Yeah!’ as they finish a tour of the galaxy which sees them crowned “the Most Popular Band in the History of the Universe” before returning to Earth where they are still completely unknown and unable to land a single gig. Crusty has unique contacts and connections but none of them are on the planet of his birth. The best he can manage here is a cheesy school talent contest with their arch rival boy-band The Snobs…

Fed up, fame-hungry keyboardist Woo-Woo sets up a meeting with disgusting mega-millionaire Mongrel Mogul, who agrees to manage and promote them – but only if guitarist Krazy agrees to marry him. Although Woo-Woo thinks it’s worth it the girls eventually decline and Mogul instead aligns himself with their arch-enemy Miss Hellraiser…

None of the performers in Yeah! are ordinary or average. Woo-Woo’s ambitions are all-encompassing, diminutive drummer Honey is a Vegan eco-activist with a befuddled hippie boyfriend called Muddy and Krazy has telepathic powers. … And old Crusty really does commune regularly with extraterrestrials…

We meet the parents in ‘Woo-Woo, Phone Home!’ as the girls fail at a succession of menial jobs whilst waiting for the Big Time (alien money being useless on Earth) before giving up and moving to the Planet Erb where they’re properly appreciated. Unfortunately they – and especially Muddy’s goat – can’t handle the food and they have to go back when Woo-Woo’s terrifyingly blue-collar dad gets ill – but not before Crusty signs up and then abandons an Erbian tribute act called “!yaeH”…

‘Stalky’ reveals that whilst they’ve been gone an alien has been crashing at Krazy’s place, consuming her stupendous stash of junk-food (the only thing she ever eats), but the girls have bigger problems: Crusty has lined them up to be Miss Hellraiser’s backing band – and for free!

‘The Origins of Yeah!’ reveals how the girls met, when The Snobs became their enemies and why Hellraiser isn’t in Yeah! anymore, whilst ‘Yeah! Takes Off!’ uncovers Crusty’s alien connections and the girls first intergalactic successes, before ‘Honey’s Crisis!’ highlights corporate skulduggery and girly passions as Krazy and Woo-Woo become rivals for the attention of Hobo Cappilletto – the most successful boy pop-star in the World – culminating in the minor mega-sensation making his romantic play in ‘Hobo’s in Love!’

The band gets caught up in an interplanetary conflict when ‘Yeah! Goes to War!’, unexpectedly becoming folk heroes of planet Sunburnia before the fight for fame comes to an abrupt end in ‘Make Way for !yaeH’ as the erstwhile Erbian trio become a sensation on Earth whilst Yeah! still can’t get arrested in their own home town…

The volume ends with creator biographies and a mini-saga written and illustrated by Bagge hilariously depicting ‘A Day in the Life of The Snobs’…

There’s precious little around for kids and especially girl readers in American funnybooks: their options relegated to Archie Comics’ prodigious, but generally safe, output or whatever manga makes it into English translation so this intriguing and wildly imaginative series which seamlessly combined fantasy, science fiction, fashion, pop and school cultures in a wild blend of frantic fun and thoroughly deserves another chance to shine.

Moreover let’s hope the publishers follow up with more of the same and Bagge’s marvellous warts-and-all comedic comics-industry expose Sweatshop is soon to follow…

© 2011 Peter Bagge. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. All Rights Reserved.

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Eye of the Majestic Creature


By Leslie Stein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-413-9

Help Wanted: Girl cartoonist seeks meaning of contemporary existence and like minded individuals to share bewilderment and revelations with.

Interests/Hobbies include: drinking, counting sand, growing stuff, antiquing for pop culture “trash”, drinking, meaningful conversations with musical instruments, playing board games with same, recreational herbal intoxicants, reminiscing about wild-times with gal-pals and old cronies, drinking, visiting difficult relatives…

After graduating from the New York School of Visual Arts Leslie Stein began producing unbelievably addictive cartoon strips in the self-published Yeah, It Is. Winning a Xeric Grant for her efforts, she started the even better comicbook Eye of the Majestic Creature, blending autobiographical self-discovery, surreal free-association, philosophical ruminations, nostalgic reminiscences and devastatingly dry wit to describe life filtered through a seductive meta-fictional interior landscape. This lady laconically tans under vastly different suns and the results are enchanting and entrancing.

This volume collects the first four issues in a dreamy, beautifully realised manner of visual mood-music – loose, flowing line-work, detailed stippling, hypnotic pattern-building and honest-to-gosh, representational line-drawing, each at the most appropriate juncture – eschewing chronological narrative for a easy, breezy epigrammatic mode of delivery.

As seen in the opening vignettes ‘The Country is Calling!’, ‘Seashell Arrives’ and ‘Someone is Yelling At Me over the Phone: You Are Disgusting!’ Larrybear is a girl deliberately and determinedly on her own, trying to establish her uniquely singular way of getting by. She has friends (most especially her talking guitar Marshmallow) interests and ambitions of a sort, but just isn’t looking for an average life, just more companions to share with …

In ‘Fun Time with “I Eat Peanut Butter Between Naps”’ the cast expands as Larrybear goes walkabout, beginning with house-sitting for some very individualistic friends…

Encountering ‘Insanity at Every Turn’ she travels across America to visit her difficult family in Chicago and very-welcome old school friends, taking in San Francisco too before settling for New York in ‘Back For More’…

Delivered in mesmerising, oversized (7½ x 11″/192 x 280mm) black & white, these incisive, absurdist, whimsically charming and pictorially intoxicating invitations into a singularly creative mind and fabulous alternative reality are a glorious rewarding cartoon experience and one no serious fan of fun can afford to miss.

© 2011 Leslie Stein. All Rights Reserved.

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Warlock 5 the Graphic Album


By Gordon Derry & Denis Beauvais (Aircel)
ISBN: 0-921052-08-1

The late 1980s were a fertile time for American comics-creators. It was as if an entire new industry had been born with the proliferation of the Direct Sales market and 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 accustomed – or 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 most critically acclaimed and just plain fun features came from Canadian outfit Aircel Publishing, founded by prolific all-rounder Barry Blair. Aircel began publishing at the start of the black and white comics bubble of 1985-1986 with strong, impressively airbrush-toned monochrome fantasy/adventure titles such as Samurai, Elflord, Adventurers and Dragonring; swiftly becoming one of the movement’s major players and most prodigious publishers.

After weathering the worst of the industry’s vicissitudes Aircel merged with Malibu/Eternity Comics in 1988 before the entire agglomeration was purchased by Marvel in 1994.

This original iteration of Warlock 5 (a rebooted second volume version came later, written by Blair himself) debuted in 1987 and instantly caught the comic-buying public’s attention, due in large part to its manic narrative style, luscious art and glorious blend of contemporary cultural tropes, fads and icons, happily poaching striking imagery from Cyberpunk, popular movies, rock and punk music scenes and role-playing gaming.

Conceived and crafted by Gordon Derry and Denis Beauvais the series posited a universe of multiple worlds in a splintered reality, each divergent slice shepherded by a supreme mystic being dubbed “warlock”.

This collection reprints the first five issues of the initial run (with selected text and background features from #6) and details the escalating conflict between a handful of warlocks competing, colluding and double-dealing their way to sole dominion of the world.

In eons past the universe fractured into disparate realities and time-lines, cosmically overlaying and overlapping each other in a fantastic web of being referred to as The Grid. Each of these varied Realities converge in a present-moment under a certain North American city on Our Earth and the ongoing situation has resulted in a highly volatile multiverse with new Realities born or destroyed every moment.

Each reality has a Gate to the convergence with a warlock guardian and, since the Cosmos is constantly seeking to realign and balance itself, these gatekeepers are constantly battling each other. In the end when Reality finally corrects itself… there can be only one Warlock.

Starting explosively and getting faster and more frenetic, the saga opens with malign medieval magician Doomidor assembling his knights to attack his rivals at their latest parlay in a vast subterranean car-park; just as Terminator inspired robot Argon does the same…

When White Witch Tanith and man-dragon Savashtar (a serpentine mage from the far future) try to mediate the clash they and their armies are also sucked into the battle. When punkette, zombie-slut-queen Zania arrives she resolves the dispute by attacking everybody indiscriminately…

As the madness escalates the wildly warring warlocks tear a hole in the Grid itself allowing the dead of all realities to begin pouring in to our world…

…And that’s just issue #1. The drama recommences in issue #2 with the mutually inimical and hostile forces compelled to grudgingly work together and rectify the situation, but even under such conditions they cannot act honestly and shifting alliances begin to tear the crisis-management team apart even before they can start…

Moreover even the Warlocks’ trusted familiars and servants are looking to betray their masters and as events unfold, intriguing peeks into the back-stories of the protagonists only reveal deeper darknesses and more exploitable chinks in their mystic armours…

Raw, frantic, hyper-violent, explosively imaginative and beautifully compelling, Warlock 5 is a fabulous forgotten treasure from a wild and crazy time, long overdue for a comprehensive review and reappraisal.
© 1987, 1988 Gordon Derry and Denis Beauvais. All rights reserved.

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JLA vol. 13: Rules Of Engagement


By Joe Kelly, Rick Veitch, Darryl Banks, Doug Mankhe, Duncan Rouleau & various (DC Comics)
ISBN 978-1-84023-923-5

When the Justice League of America, driving force and cornerstone of the Silver Age of Comics, were relaunched in 1997 (see JLA: New World Order) the sheer bravura quality of the stories propelled the series back to the forefront of industry attention, making as many new fans as it recaptured old ones; but the intoxicating sheen of “fresh and new” never lasts and by the time of these tales there had been numerous changes of creative personnel – usually a bad sign…

However Joe Kelly’s tenure proved to be a marvellous blend of steadying hands and iconoclastic antics through which the JLA happily continued their tricky task of keeping excitement levels stoked for a fan-base cursed with a criminally short attention span.

Kelly’s run on the series has some notable highs (and lows) and this portmanteau collection (gathering issues #77-82 of the monthly comicbook) happily falls into the former category as the team readjusted to modern life after the time-lost traumas of the Obsidian Age (see JLA:The Obsidian Age).

However the adventure actually kicks off with an impressive, clever and fast-paced fill-in tale from Rick Veitch, Darryl Banks & Wayne Faucher wherein the team – Batman, Superman, Atom, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern John Stewart and Firestorm – are attacked by a civilisation-crushing cosmic wanderer which achieves its goals by invading brains and stealing knowledge in ‘Stardust Memories’…

That threat successfully circumvented, the World’s Greatest Superheroes learn of an interplanetary conflict that looks likely to divide the team forever in the eponymous two-parter ‘Rules of Engagement’ by Kelly, Doug Mankhe and Tom Nguyen. With half the team travelling, uninvited, many light-years to stop a war, the remainder of the JLA stay to police Earth, giving the opportunity to add some long-missed sub-plots to the usually straightforward storytelling; specifically some unpleasant hints into new member Faith’s clouded past, a long-deferred romantic dinner for Bruce Wayne and Amazonian Princess Diana and the beginnings of a very hot time for the Martian Manhunter with fiery potential paramour Scorch…

On the distant world of Kylaq, Leaguers Superman, Wonder Woman, Major Disaster, Manitou Raven, John Stewart and Faith act unilaterally to prevent the invasion of the Peacemaker Collective but are keenly aware that once they succeed they leave the rescued world to the mercies of its own highly suspect government… especially Defense Minister Kanjar Ro, intergalactic slave-trader and one of their oldest, most despotic foes…

The last half of the book fills in some of Faith’s background as the reunited team are called to an Oregon cult compound where a new Messiah has created Safe Haven: a separatist enclave for metahuman children. Unfortunately, the Federal Authorities are not prepared to leave them alone and the resultant clash of ideologies leaves a thousand dead children on the crippled consciences of the devastated superheroes…

Yet something isn’t right: why does each JLA-er believe that they alone are responsible for the massacre? Moreover, what is the actual goal of master manipulator Manson and how does neo-Nazi team Axis America fit into the scheme?

This thrilling, action-packed three-part mystery saga comes courtesy of Kelly, Duncan Rouleau & Aaron Sowd and satisfyingly closes this fast and furious selection of witty, engaging, beautiful and incredibly exciting yarns: some of the best modern superhero adventures ever created and a reading treat well worth your time and attention.

© 2003, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.