Author: NowReadThis

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Fires


By Lorenzo Mattotti (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 0-87416-064-2

Lorenzo Mattotti was born in Brescia 1954, and after studying architecture became a comics storyteller before graduating into a second career as a designer and illustrator. As well as the book under discussion here, his most well-known work is probably his 2003 Eisner award-winning adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His stunning illustrations have graced magazines as varied as Cosmopolitan, Le Monde, Vogue and The New Yorker.

Initially working in a stylish but standard manner he gradually became obsessed with expanding the traditional comics form; capturing the power of light, hue and motion on the page and exploring the inner world of the characters populating it, beginning with the seminal Il Signor Spartaco in 1982.

With all his successive works from Murmur, the semi- autobiographical ‘The Man in the Window’ (where he applied the same creative questioning doctrine to line-drawing as he had to paint, pastel and chalk colour), the historical Caboto and others he pursued a technique of offering multiple meanings and interpretations to the reader…

Fires was released in 1986, and details the experience of a navy officer seduced by the magical nature of a tropical island. Either that or a classic case of a sensitive nature driven to madness by the regimentation of militarism…

When the warship Anselm II drops anchor in the bay of the paradisiacal islet of St. Agatha to investigate the growing loss of merchant shipping, junior officer Lieutenant Absinthe is troubled by the stunning natural beauty of volcanic atoll. The government of the new super-state of Sillantoe has dispatched the dreadnought to explore the place, and if populated, civilise or pacify the natives.

On the night before Absinthe and a landing party are dispatched, blazing fires can be seen brilliantly lighting up the dark and the Lieutenant thinks he sees strange creatures invading the ship. When the away team trudges through the foliage the next morning, he thinks he sees them again, but for some inexplicable reason cannot bring himself to report the sighting.

The officer is increasingly disturbed by the joyous, dancing flickering figures, and even though he says nothing the crew knows something is happening to him. Absinthe only feels happy or at peace on the island, and one night he goes AWOL. Seeing islanders all the time now he goes fully native, reveling in the spectacular blazes that roar and dance every time darkness falls.

Eventually the sailors recapture their “hallucinatory” comrade and the order comes to bombard this isle of the damned until it is razed of all possibility of life.

And now the nightmare truly begins…

This examination of technology vs. nature, freedom challenging duty and man against civilisation is rendered in a euphoric blaze of expressionistic colour and frantic movement reminiscent of Disney’s Fantasia and bolder abstract experimental animations, with forms and actors reduced to primal shapes surging across the landscape of a page. Mattotti’s questing style blends the colour philosophy of Fauvism with the stripped-down forms and perfect structures of Italian Futurist painters such as Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni and Russian Natalia Goncharova whilst the story itself has the brooding, paranoiac, inevitable-descent-into-madness feel of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and its filmic avatar (Coppola’s) Apocalypse Now.

Astounding, compelling and deeply moving this book (there’s also a 1991 British edition from Penguin – ISBN 978-0-14013-889-4 available) is a mesmerising classic and high point of our art-form and one any serious devotee of sequential narrative would be proud to own.
© 1986-1988 by Editions Albin Michel S. A. English language edition © 1988 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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Dr. Watchstop: Adventures in Time and Space


By Ken Macklin (Eclipse Books)
ISBN: 0-913035-85-8

Before becoming a successful games artist for LucasArts graphic adventure games (I don’t actually grok push-button fun but I gather that Maniac Mansion, Loom, the second and third Monkey Island contraptions and the character Bubsy the bobcat number among his electronic hits) Ken Macklin was an underground/small press creator who delighted in cleverly whimsical and witty funny animal strips during the late 1970s in indy publications such as Quack!

Married to equally talented anthropomorphic raconteur Lela Dowling, he assisted and contributed to her marvelously manic Weasel Patrol tales, which were published in the lost and long-lamented sci-fi anthology Fusion whilst producing his own diabolically wonderful one-shot space opera romp Contractors and the stimulating vignettes gathered here.

As well as a talented designer and illustrator Macklin is a gifted painter and slyly devious writer and in 1982 he began selling brief, luxurious mini-epics starring an astonishingly brilliant but outrageous innocent multi-discipline savant named Dr. Watchstop to Epic Illustrated and Fusion: high quality graphic fantasy magazines aimed at older readers.

In an era where science fiction was synonymous with and indistinguishable from cops and cowboys with blasters, Watchstop’s antics were contemplative, slapstick, wickedly ironic, eyes wide-open wonderments that only saw the ridiculous side of technology and the future cosmos…

Still readily available this oversized compilation gathers all those marvelously intellectual, winningly funny spoofs and japes, opening in glorious painted colour with ‘Dr. Watchstop Faces the Future’ (Epic #10 February 1982), possibly the last word in time paradox tales, followed by an amoebic dalliance ‘One Cell at a Time’ before demonstrating the downside of ancient alien artifacts in ‘Time Bomb’ (Epic #14 and #17 respectively).

If possible Macklin’s art is even better as monochrome tonal washes, as perfectly illustrated in the hilarious ‘Unique Specimen’ (Fusion #1, January 1987), life-through-a-lens fable ‘Modern Culture’ (Fusion #3) and natural history segments ‘Right Stuff’ (Fusion #7) and ‘Bugs’ (Fusion #5).

‘Relic’ (Fusion #2) is pure Future Shock whilst full-colour ‘The Single Electron Proof’ from Epic #21(September 1983, and with the timely assistance of Toren Smith) will stretch the higher mathematics prodigies amongst us with a little metaphysical tomfoolery.

Epic #29 provided a first home for ‘In Search of Ancient Myths’, #33 both ‘Reaching Out’ and ‘Beating the Heat’ whilst the last colour cosmic conundrum ‘Wasting Time’ debuted in #34. The remainder of this collection features more black and white antics from Fusion, beginning with the vaudevillian ‘Gone Fishing’ (#4), moving adroitly into ‘Xlerg’s Fossil Emporium’ (#8) and anarchically culminating in a riotous Weasel Patrol collaboration enigmatically entitled ‘The Weasels Fill In’ from Fusion #9 (May 1988)

Sheer artistic ability and incisive comedy for smart people is never going to be out of style and this stellar compilation will be a constant joy for any fan smart enough to unearth it.
© 1989 Ken Macklin, and where appropriate Raymond E. Feist, Toren Smith, Lela Dowling and LX Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge in Hawaiian Hideaway


By Carl Barks (Gladstone Comic Album #11)
ISBN: 0-944599-10-9

Amongst the other benefits to derive from the radical shake up of the American comics industry in the 1980s (specifically the creation of a specialist retailing sector that ended the newsstand monopoly by sale or return distributors) was a crucial opportunity for small publishers to expand their markets. There was an explosion of companies with new titles that quickly came and went, but there was also an opportunity for older, wiser heads to get their product fairly seen by potential fans who had for so very long been subject to a DC/Marvel duopoly.

Gladstone Publishing began re-releasing a selection of other Disney strips in classy oversized albums based on a format that had been popular for decades in Scandinavia and Europe. Reintroduced to the country of their birth the archival material quickly led to a rapid expansion and even resulted in new comicbooks being created for the first time since Dell/Gold Key quit the comics business.

That West Coast outfit had for decades published the lion’s share of licensed properties, delighting generations of children with their film, TV and movie comicbooks. One of their greatest wage-slaves was a shy, retiring and fiercely independent writer/artist named Carl Barks.

From the late 1940’s until the mid-1960s Barks worked in productive seclusion writing and drawing a vast array of comedic adventure yarns for kids, based on and expanding the Disney stable of Duck characters. Almost single-handed he crafted a Duck Universe of fantastically memorable and highly bankable characters such as Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952) and Magica De Spell (1961).

Throughout this period Barks was blissfully unaware that his work (uncredited by official policy as was all Disney’s cartoon and comicbook output), had been singled out by a rabid and discerning public as being by “the Good Duck Artist.” When some of his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, his belated celebrity began.

Undoubtedly though, Barks’ greatest creation was the crusty, energetic, money-mad yet oddly lovable dodecadillionaire Scrooge McDuck who premiered in the Donald Duck tale ‘Christmas on Bear Mountain’ (Four Colour Comics #178 December 1947).

This book highlights another of the Money-mad Mallard’s spectacular battles of wits – and avarice – with nefarious criminal clan the Beagle Boys: another Barks confabulation who first collectively cased the duck’s ponderous holdings in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #134 (November 1951).

Printed in that aforementioned European oversized format (278mm x 223mm) this captivating caper originally appeared in Uncle Scrooge #4 (December 1953-February 1954) and relates how the security-conscious Scrooge buys an island where he can safely squirrel away his acres of cash. Unfortunately the ever-rapacious Beagles get wind of his scheme and plan to intercept the moolah in transit, leading to nautical hi-jinks that would stun Jack Sparrow himself and jungle japes that captured the true mysterious glamour of the South Pacific…

Luckily Donald and his scarily inventive nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie are there to counteract the villains – as well as a decidedly supernatural presence derived from Barks’ scrupulous and exhaustive research. As well as a brilliant artist and inspired gag-man Barks was a fanatical armchair explorer and his addictive light adventure yarns always had some basis in authentic fact or folklore.

Filling out this volume are a clever Gyro Gearloose vignette from Uncle Scrooge #26 (1959) wherein ‘Krankenstein Gyro’ flaunts the laws of chemistry and biology as well as his traditional physi   cs in an attempt to create life; all prompted by an ill-advised trip to a monster matinee and that lucky old duck Glandstone Gander gets annoyingly involved in Scrooge’s newest scheme to camouflage his cash in the farm-belt in an untitled Donald Duck yarn from Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #126 (April 1951). Sadly, when Scrooge bought the farm nobody reminded him that the Mid-West is tornado country…

Dryly satirical and outrageously slapstick, Bark’s delightfully folksy observations on the frustrating responsibilities and ultimate worthlessness of wealth have never been better expressed than here and these captivating parables are among his very best.

Even if you can’t find this particular volume, Barks’ work is now readily accessible through a number of publications and outlets. No matter what your age or temperament if you’ve never experienced his captivating magic, there’s no time left to lose. Read your way out of this financial crisis with a healthy helping of fiscally prudent fun fiction…
© 1988, 1959, 1953, 1951 The Walt Disney Company. All rights reserved.

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Jack Staff: Everything Used to Be Black and White


By Paul Grist (Dancing Elephant/Image)
ISBN: 978-1-5824-0335-9

Growing up a comic fan in 1960s and 1970s Britain was an oddly schizophrenic situation. Not only were we bombarded and enthralled by our own weirdly eclectic mix of TV stars, Empire jingoism and military bluster, fantastic anti-establishment fantasy, science-fiction and sport yarns – augmented by the sheer inspired, madcap anarchy of the gag strips that always accompanied such adventure serials in our anthology weeklies, but from 1959 we also had unfettered access to the exotic worlds and thinly veiled cultural imperialism of American comicbooks, bulk-imported as ballast in cargo ships and readily available in glorious full colour…

And don’t even get me started on the few, but classy European wonders such as Tintin, Lucky Luke and Asterix that also filtered into the funnybook gestalt brewing in our fevered little heads. All this pictorial wonderment tended to make us young disciples a tad epicurean in our tastes and broad-minded, eccentric synthesists about our influences…

I’ve followed Paul Grist’s work since the small press days of Burglar Bill and St. Swithin’s Day and his brilliantly refined design sense and incisive visual grasp of character have made his interpretations of Grendel, Judge Dredd and other commercial properties an excellent example of why individuality always trumps house-style. However, when he writes his own material, he steps into a creator class few can touch, always blending and refining the key elements of genre and shared public consciousness into a stunningly inviting new nostalgia. For a perfect example check out what he accomplished with hard-boiled detective archetypes in his splendid Kane (see Kane: Welcome to New Eden among others).

He established his own company, Dancing Elephant Press, to produce the kind of works big-time publishers lacked the imagination to support and in 2002 returned to the childhood delights of superhero comics with the creation of Jack Staff, who began life as a proposed Union Jack story for Marvel.

When they pulled the plug, Grist, unable to let a good idea go and now freed of the usual creative restraints that come from playing with other people’s toys, went wild and produced a purely British take on the superhero phenomenon that is simultaneously charming, gripping and devilishly clever.

I usually go into laborious (most would say tedious) detail about the events in these graphic novel reviews but this first Jack Staff collection (gathering the first 12 issues) will be an exception as Grist’s captivating style here – based on and mimicking the anthology format of British Weeklies such as Lion and Valiant – mean that each issue feels like seven stories in one. As my intention is to convince to buy this book I’m sacrificing detail for brevity… you lucky people.

Becky Burdock is a feisty girl reporter for trashy newspaper The World’s Press in a nondescript British city.  In ‘Yesterday’s Heroes’ whilst hunting down a serial killer scoop on the “Castletown Slasher” she accidentally stumbles onto the identity of Jack Staff (Britain’s greatest costumed hero since WWII, but a man missing since the 1980s) when local builder John Smith saves her from a collapsing billboard.

This precipitates memories of a wartime international superhero team’s The Freedom Fighters and a battle against a centuries old vampire and strangely involves the British Q Branch (investigating un-rational or weird crimes) and US superhuman Sgt. States, Staff’s opposite number and another seemingly immortal patriotic hero.

Marvel Zombies will rightly identify this tale has echoes of the Roy Thomas & Frank Robbins “Baron Blood” storyline from the 1970s comic The Invaders and if Marvel had been more accommodating this would indeed have been a classy sequel to that saga. However they missed their chance and this magically tongue-in-cheek pastiche is the magnificent result.

There are still superhumans in this world such as heroic Tom Tom, the Robot Man and the villainous Doc Tempest and even mortal champions such as Albert Bramble and his son Harold who battle dark forces as Vampire hunters, but even they cannot prevent Becky from becoming a victim of the killer stalking the city. John Smith is clearly reluctant to rejoin the masked hero community but events keep pushing him until he uncovers an international conspiracy of sanctioned atrocity that naturally gets hushed up by the powers that be…

These stories are rife with references and cameos from fifty years of popular culture – and not just comics: thinly disguised TV icons such as Steptoe and Son, Dad’s Army and The Sweeney jostle alongside purely comicbook stars such as Captain America and Dr. Strange and members of our own uniquely bizarre pantheon such as Robot Archie, Zip Nolan, Kelly’s Eye, Jason Hyde, Adam Eterno and even relatively real people such as Alan Moore and Neal Gaiman.

A far larger part is played by incomparable poacher turned gamekeeper The Spider in the second story-arc ‘Secrets, Shadows and the Spider!‘ as things go quirkily cosmic when Becky Burdock, Vampire Reporter and the increasingly intriguing Q cops stumble into real X Files territory and we get some welcome background into recent history when a 1960s super-criminal starts stealing again.

Or does he? The Spider never shot anybody before…

The mystery is cleared up when elderly Alfred Chinard (it’s a partial anagram – work it out…) hires builder John Smith and springs a trap on his old foe before they notionally team up to stop the real thief. Of course it doesn’t really go Jack’s way and he is literally left holding the bag. After a full length Q adventure ‘Quotations’ involving a meta-fictional serial killer, ‘Out of Time’ rounds out the book.

Here, Victorian showman and escapologist Charlie Raven (a canny reworking of the superb Janus Stark) enters the picture, encountering a Dorian Gray-like mystery and losing a battle to a foe who consumes time itself. As a result the charismatic Raven endures an Adam Adamant moment and ends up in 21st century Castletown, where his enemy is still predating the human populace. Also causing trouble is Ben Kulmer – the invisible bandit known as The Claw (lovingly homaging Ken Bulmer, Tom Tully and Jesús Blasco’s astounding antihero The Steel Claw).

When that nice Mr. Chinard turns up again the stage is set for a spectacular time-rending chronal clash involving the entire expansive cast that is spectacular, boldly bewildering and superbly satisfying

The stark yet inviting black and white design, refined, honed and pared down to a minimalist approachability has an inescapable feeling of Europe about it. If ever anyone was to create a new Tin Tin adventure, Grist would be the ideal choice to draw it. Not because he draws like Hergé, but because he knows his craft as well as Hergé did. However I’m deliriously happy that he has so brilliantly assimilated the essences of the cherished keystones of my beloved comics-consuming past and given them such a vital and compelling new lease of life.

Thrilling, funny, fabulous. Buy this Book!

™ & © Paul Grist. All rights reserved.

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Golgo 13 volumes 1-4


By Takao Saito, translated by Patrick Connolly (LEED Publishing)
ISBNs: 4-947538-57-0, 4-947538-59-7, 4-947538-61-9 & 4-947538-62-7

Almost from its very beginnings the Manga marketplace addressed the needs of a broad audience and adult-oriented material was always a confirmed and successful part of the Japanese publishing landscape. One of the earliest stars of this arena was the incredible, prolific Takao Saito, who began in 1969 to document the gritty adventures of the world’s greatest hitman.

Golgo 13 is a man of mystery: an ice-hearted assassin for hire who picks his assignments depending on a private code of honour: meticulous, remorseless, infallible. He never fails and is always at the heart of whatever real-world political or social scandal his creator happened upon.

The cognomen Golgo denotes hints of a Biblical connection to crucifixion site Golgotha and other Christian iconography, but is only one of this darkly Bond-like protagonist’s many names. However “Duke Togo” – his most common pseudonym – is Japanese through and through and there is no hint of a religious sensibility (except possibly Old Testament style vengeance) – only a truly remorseless social conscience.

The strip debuted in the January 1969 issue of Shogakukan’s premier title Big Comic and has run more or less continually ever since, with compilation sales topping 200 million copies, with attendant immensely popular films, anime, TV series and video game adaptations. Golgo’s monthly strip adventures have been collected into 155 tankobon editions (the term means discrete or stand alone edition, but the manga industry has adopted the term to describe a collected book length volume irrespective of whether or not the story within concludes).

In 1986 just as the western world was beginning to franchise and translate selected manga properties LEED Publishing and Vic Tokai Electronics Corporation repackaged a selection of Golgo 13 tales into four spectacularly addictive English language editions to promote one of the aforementioned games, but regrettably failed to capture the attention of the sci-fi and superhero besotted comics buying public. In 1991 LEED tried again in conjunction with Viz Media via a three issue miniseries entitled Golgo 13: The Professional, but once more the super-assassin failed to hit his mark.

A couple of years ago they tried again as part of the Viz Signature imprint, and here the jury is still out…

Takao Saito was born in 1936 and grew into a tough kid and brilliant storyteller. Eschewing a boxing career he began working in the relatively new field of Manga in 1955 with the adventure strip Baron Air, displaying a love of gritty adventure and science fiction over the next fifteen years. He formed Saito Production in 1960 and in 1971 he began a second career as a teacher of the comic arts.

The four volumes covered here show creator and character at the very peak of their game. The first ‘Into the Wolves’ Lair: The Fall of the Fourth Reich’ includes a fold-out “dossier” on Golgo 13 before launching into a stunning 120 page saga as the Israeli intelligence service Mossad hire the unstoppable hitman to invade and destroy an impregnable fortress in Buenos Aires where the implacable mastermind behind the Nazi holocaust has engineered a new army of fascist psychopaths to once more menace humanity.

A hallmark of Saito’s process is the meticulous attention to detail and the tension-building way his protagonist plans every mission: as engrossing a factor as the inevitable explosive culmination of each mission. The preparation pays off when the one man death squad blazes effortlessly through the Nazi’s final Festung but even so there’s one last surprise in store…

This 17 chapter epic is balanced with a shorter, five part, but no less topical tale. ‘Fighting Back‘ is set in Afghanistan during the then on-going Soviet Occupation, and details a specialist Russian force hunting the assassin who killed the General-Director of Military Political Affairs with an impossible 1km rifle shot through the windscreen of a moving armoured vehicle…

Tough and dedicated soldiers, the soldiers track the killer through the rocky passes and isolated villages until they make a huge mistake and catch him…

Book 2, ‘Galinpero’ is set in the Amazon River Basin and sees the enigmatic anti-hero accept a commission from a dead man. Agreeing to hunt down a pack of government-sponsored diamond miners-come-slavers using the natives to enrich themselves before slaughtering all witnesses, once more G13’s careful planning and apparent insanity lead to a particularly mordant demonstration of cosmic justice spectacularly appeased.

The killer’s technical proficiency is displayed in ‘110º: The One-Ten Angle’ as Golgo is hired to kill the man who raped and murdered a Saudi Arabian princess. When her distraught father discovers the culprit is the Crown Prince (the victim’s own cousin) he tries to cancel the hit and suppress a scandal, even sending his own assassins after the mercenary mastermind. Securing the prince deep within the imperial palace he feels secure that nothing can reach the tarnished target – but G13 never fails…

Crafty, sly and deftly understated, this gripping thriller combines modern geo-political double-dealing with the most ancient of motives and actions…

‘Ice Lake Hit’ leads off the third volume and finds “Duke Togo” hunting Moose in the arctic Northwest Territories of Canada. When he makes an impossible shot it quickly attracts the suspicions of the Game Warden and local Mounties, but the visitor’s real prey are more than capable of shooting back…

In a veritable bloodbath the story of a CIA traitor and a Soviet spy-ring emerges, but as ever careful planning and uncanny skill are more than a match for mere guns and numerical superiority…

The second tale deals with the legal and illicit trade in horsemeat to Japan and sees a motorbike-riding G13 stalking a gang of modern rustlers terrorisingTexas. ‘Machine Cowboy’ finds Togo employed by a widow whose one true love was taken from her, and  even if the cops are reluctantly prepared to investigate the murder of her ranch foreman they won’t do anything to find the killers of her beloved steed Whitey – but Golgo 13 will…

Produced for adults, all these tales are casually steeped in nudity, torture and brutal graphic violence, but the content and heartfelt outrage Saito imbues this tale with make it easily the most disturbing story many readers will ever experience.

The final volume is also an ecological nightmare scenario. ‘The Ivory Connection’ begins when unchecked elephant poaching in Uganda prompts members of the World Wildlife Fund to hire G13 to cull the offending culprits (and wouldn’t it be nice to think that all our past donations were as sensibly used?). The trail leads from British mercenaries through African civil wars to the medicine monsters of the Chinese triads, but as ever the ice-man has just the plan to handle all his opposition…

This book ends with ‘Scandal! The Unpaid Reward’ and pits Togo against a West German kingmaker who wants his political rival not only dead but his victim’s party utterly humiliated and discredited. Set at the height of the Cold War this tense thriller perfectly illustrates why, if you hire the world’s greatest assassin, it’s imperative to pay him what you promised once he’s accomplished his mission…

Like most tankobon editions each volume in this too-brief series (which reads from left to right in the Western manner), begins with a painted colour section which devolves into two tone (black and red) before eventually resolving into standard monochrome for the bulk of each book, but readers of British comics shouldn’t have any problems with that, and these savage, addictive, so very clever and compelling tales are worth a little time and effort. Track him down: you won’t regret it…
© 1986, 1987 Saito Production Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Flash: Terminal Velocity


By Mark Waid, Mike Wieringo & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-249-3

When Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash whose creation ushered in a new and seemingly unstoppable era of costumed crusaders, died during Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, he was succeeded by his sidekick Kid Flash. A young man who initially struggled to fill the boots of his predecessor, both in sheer physical capability and, more tellingly, in confidence, Wally West felt a fraud, but like a true hero he persevered and eventually overcame.

After years in the role, West had adapted and made a convincing argument for being an even greater hero as he triumphed over his mentor’s uncanny foes and a whole new Rogues’ Gallery of his own. In Terminal Velocity (reprinting issues #0 and #95-100 of the monthly Flash comicbook) scripter Mark Waid and an impressive band of illustrators went into creative overdrive following the company wide reboot and strategic reworking of the entire continuity dubbed Zero Hour.

The event was marked by an “issue zero” for every title then being published, wherein the new official origin for each character was established as well as setting up new storylines and it is with Wally West’s new beginning that this pulse-pounding superhero saga opens. ‘Flashing Back’ by Waid, Mike Wieringo & Jose Marzan Jr. found the Scarlet Speedster a helpless stream of Speed Force energy bouncing through his own history until he returned to his correct place in time, just in time for the six-part epic Terminal Velocity which began with ‘Mach One: The Dead Yet Live’ (pencilled by Salvador Larrocca).

There are many super-speedsters in the DCU and many of them congregate in the twinned metropolis of Keystone and Central Cities. Here Wally’s true love, journalist Linda Park, his Aunt Iris and fellow fast fighters Jay Garrick and Impulse anxiously awaited his return, but when he appeared they couldn’t help but notice a subtle, disturbing change in the once easy-going young man. This Wally was driven, determined and possessed strange new abilities and handicaps. Moreover he took to training the attention-deficit plagued kid Impulse with frantic determination…

Since the ophidian terrorist Kobra had taken to constantly harassing the cities he got plenty of practice and it’s wasn’t long before the problem was revealed. In ‘Mach Two: All the Wrong Moves’ Linda discovered Wally’s secret – his brush with the time stream had changed his body and if he ran too fast his body would revert to energy. It was only a matter of time before he slipped, turned to lightning and would be sucked into the Speed Force forever…

But that wasn’t all: something even more terrifying was troubling the Flash – something he refused to share with anybody…

As Wally’s condition deteriorated and Kobra’s predations increased, Impulse’s training went badly and Flash had to call in specialised help from Jay Garrick, fellow WWII hero Johnny Quick and Zen Master of Speed Max Mercury, oldest speedster on Earth. ‘Mach Three: The Other Side of Light’ revealed Mercury’s origins and hinted of the horrors facing Wally. Meanwhile Linda and Iris used old fashioned detective work to track down Kobra, and as Johnny’s daughter Jesse Quick joined the squad the snake lord’s ultimate plans manifested and it became increasingly clear that Impulse was far from ready to inherit Flash’s mantle should the necessity arise…

In ‘Mach Four: Hit and Run’ Jesse took over as the next Flash as Kobra seized control of the Twin Cities and the reason for Flash’s desperate actions was finally revealed, whilst in ‘Redline: Ultimate Rush’ (with additional pencils from Carlos Pacheco) Wally and Jesse found themselves hopelessly overmatched until Impulse came to their rescue. The saga concluded with an explosive sprint finish in ‘Overdrive: The Quick and the Dead’ (a marathon-length episode with art from Larrocca, Sergio Borjas, Pacheco, Oscar Jimenez & Marzan) wherein the Speed Team settled Kobra’s scaly hash whilst a coterie of superhero guest-stars pitched in to help save the world.

Best of all, Wally even sorted out the horror he glimpsed whilst falling through time and got to live happily after – for the present…

Gripping, immensely exciting and cathartically joyous, this beautifully realised and illustrated tale catapulted the Flash to the top of every fan’s must-read list and presaged a period of incredible creativity for this venerable character. Terminal Velocity embodies the very best of modern superhero storytelling (even if it is fifteen years old) and is a book any fan reader can – and should – enjoy…

© 1994, 1995 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved

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Walking Dead volume 1: Days Gone Bye


By Robert Kirkman & Tony Moore (Image)
ISBN: 978-1-58240-672-5

In advance of the television debut and sarcastically smug in the knowledge that at least one American University is now offering Zombie Studies as part of its curriculum, I think it’s about time that I turned my winnowing gaze on the most critically successful comicbook on the subject of the restless and infinitely hungry horrors that have recently captivated the global imagination.

The Walking Dead began in 2003 as an unassuming black and white monthly from Image Comics, once a cooperative of comics media darlings that has since evolved into a welcome clearing house of good ideas and different concepts that bigger publishers are too commercially timid to risk releasing. Writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore took the tried and trusted format pioneered by George A. Romero in his 1968 satirical shocker Night of the Living Dead, and stripped it of its sensationalistic brutality and anti-war sub-text, producing a very human and scarily passionate exploration of human nature under extreme and sustained duress.

In that light if zombie invasions are a metaphor for Life During Wartime then Walking Dead is more about civilians than soldiers and explores the Spirit of the Blitz rather than the last ditch heroics of Dunkirk or the Alamo.

The series has won many awards and, since 2004, been collected into numerous editions including 13 trade paperbacks each containing six issues, six deluxe hardbacks with a dozen issues each and bonus material, three omnibus editions with two years of material in each and even a Compendium volume containing the first 48 issues. There’s even a book of covers planned but I don’t know if that’s out yet… Being an old purist with weak wrists, I’m plumping for the very first trade edition for this graphic novel review.

Rural Kentucky cop Rick Grimes is shot whilst apprehending a rampaging felon with his friend and deputy Shane. He awakes from a coma in a deserted hospital littered with dead bodies and, whilst weakly making his way outside, discovers that not all the corpses are staying dead.

Chased by aggressively hungry but slow-moving zombies in various stages of decomposition Rick flees town and makes his way to the family home. His wife and son are missing but before he can search he is overwhelmed by Morgan Jones and his little boy Duane, fugitives from the undead plague which has overwhelmed the entire planet.

They bring Rick – and us – up to speed on the situation, explaining how to kill the monsters and relating all the news on the creatures that was broadcast before the media outlets were overrun. Most importantly, they reveal that uninfected humans have been advised to relocate to major cities. Knowing his wife had family in Atlanta, Rick tools up with weapons and supplies from the police station and sets off after his missing loved ones – even though Morgan clearly prefers to take his chances out in the wilds…

Experiencing all manner of sedate horrors Rick eventually reaches the big city but the scene is one of desolate carnage. The zombies are everywhere and when he is surrounded his own death looks certain until he is rescued by Glenn, a young man scavenging supplies for a small band of survivors hidden outside the city.

Shocks come thick and fast when the Rick finds wife Lori, son Carl and former deputy Shane are all part of the disparate group. They have been roughing it in a camp formed of assorted motor vehicles, living off the land, and waiting to be rescued or killed.

Also, something significant has happened between Shane and Lori…

Tensions amongst the survivors build as cold weather encroaches, resources diminish and the erratically wandering zombies gradually close in on the camp. Moreover, the unspoken friction between Rick, Lori and Shane is inexorably building and after an unusually heavy assault that kills two of their number results in a bitterly tragic climax…

Despite the trappings of dark, bloody horror, this is a series about humanity: its foibles, frailnesses, fallibilities and formidable resilience. Ancient anxieties such as ravenous unreasoning monsters rub alongside more modern bogeymen such as fear of the disease, and all the sins of humanity still plague the dwindling humans in this supremely underplayed gem, especially in Tony Moore’s deceptively comforting clean lined art; subversively enhancing the ghastly situation with quiet power and smooth grey-tone embellishments.

Whatever format you prefer this distinctly different horror show is one that will take your breath away and leave you so very hungry foe more…

© 2005, 2006 Robert Kirkman. All Rights Reserved.

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Buster Book of Spooky Stories 1976


By various (IPC Magazines)
ISBN: 85037-199-6

Considering that Halloween is a still a children’s festival (tabloid press and TV reports of Binging adult excess notwithstanding) I thought I’d review this delightful package that epitomises the veritable End of Days of the traditional post-war English Comics industry.

By 1975 the glory days of the children’s periodical publishing business were swiftly fading. The accepted wisdoms that comics were only read by children who would eventually move on to better and more acceptable forms of entertainment (and these were opinions held by the monolithic managements which produced them!) were gradually eroded by more creative types within the industry who saw the potential of the medium and by the increasingly vocal fan movement which kept on buying and reading the iniquitous, garish little pamphlets even after they had all “grown up.”

Fleetway was an adjunct of the world’s largest publishing company IPC, and had, by the early 1970s swallowed or out-competed all the other companies producing mass-market comics except the exclusively television-themed Polystyle Publications. As it always had been, the megalith was locked in a death-struggle with Dundee’s DC Thomson for the hearts and minds of their assorted juvenile markets – a battle the publishers of the Beano and Dandy would finally win when Fleetway sold off its diminishing comics line to Egmont publishing and Rebellion Studios in 2002.

In 1974 Fleetway’s hidebound, autocratic bureaucracy still ruled the roost, even though sales had been steadily declining in all sectors of the industry (pre-school, juvenile, boys and girls, educational) since the end of the 1960s, and increasingly the company considered niche products to shore up sales rather than expand or experiment. A young sub-editor on Buster, Dez Skinn, who would go on to produce a number of successful independent publications such as Starburst, House of Hammer and Warrior, as well as partially reviving the fortunes of the moribund reprint house Marvel UK, proposed a kids horror comic called Chiller to fill a perceived gap in the market, even preparing new and revised reprint material to show the “higher ups.”

His cautious bosses nixed the idea but decreed that the prepared material would be used in one-off annuals as part of the occasional, themed series “The Buster Book of …” which had begun in 1970 with “Gags” and provided cost-effective, profitable items with a longer shelf-life for the lucrative Christmas and summer holiday markets. For further details and intriguing insider information check out the excellent website Dezskinn.com.

Of course I knew none of this when I picked up this second Buster Book of Spooky Stories in 1975 (annuals were forwarded-dated) a period when I was far more interested in girls and beer than funnybooks. It was a remarkable experience: instant, brand new nostalgia…

Behind its gaudy soft card covers lay a delightful blend of new and old; comedy strips, fact features and scary adventure yarns that had been the stuff of my formative Christmas experiences throughout the 1960s. The jollity commences with a Reg Parlett (?) ‘Rent-A-Ghost Ltd.’ two-page howler, the teasing essay ‘Do You Believe in Ghosts?’ and more ghost gags before the first lengthy scare-fest begins… ‘The Ghostly Guardian’ followed the trials and tribulations of young Jim Frobisher who fled the home of his abusive foster-uncle and took up residence with a stray dog and his own deceased ancestor – a 17th century pirate named Firebrand Frobisher.

This is a resized weekly serial collected from I know not where, but is still resonates with thrills, spills and comedy chills, delivered in beautiful moody monochrome drawn by the Solano Lopez studio (sadly these credits are mostly guesswork as the work was deliberately un-attributed at the time). The eponymous star of the book contributes the first of 2 ‘Buster’s Dream World’ episodes, followed by a Ken Reid ‘Face Ache’ yarn, the first of many ‘Spooky Scapbook’ fact-files and a short tale of ‘Horace the Hopeless Haunter’ before the real gem of the book begins: the first of two Cursitor Doom tales, jazzed up for the sinister seventies by re-jigging them as tales of Curtis Bronson: Ghost Hunter.

Cursitor Doom first appeared in the revamped Smash in 1969, created by Ken Mennell and illustrated by the utterly brilliant Eric Bradbury, an elderly mystical troubleshooter (Doom not Bradbury) who hired burly he-man Angus McCraggan to be his agent in the physical side of the eternal battle against manifest evil. Here Angus has been redrawn to resemble contemporary anti-hero Charles Bronson and in ‘The Phantom Friar’ goes solo protecting a couple of damsels in distress from a spectral monk and greedy relative.

The next comedy section comprises ‘Angel Face and Dare Devil’, ‘The Creepy Crawleys’, ‘Whacky Waxworks’, ‘Chilling Chuckles’, an extended jape ‘The Mummy’s Curse’ and ‘The Scareys of St. Mary’s’, neatly bisected by the text terrors ‘Ghost Stories of the Sea’ and another ‘Do You Believe in Ghosts?’ before the original spooky thrill-fest resumes with ‘The Ghost of Gaunt Manor’ and a suitably themed ‘Puzzle Page’.

After another ‘Spooky Scrapbook’ Ken Reid returns with an hilarious ‘Davy Jones Locker’ strip and nefarious Buster regular Charlie Peace debuts in a Victorian shocker ‘The House of Thrills’ whilst tyrannical 15th century warlord Ungar the Merciless comes a cropper when he tries to steal ‘The Mystic Fountain’. ‘Rent-A-Ghost Ltd.’, ‘The Scareys of St. Mary’s’, ‘Whacky Waxworks’ and yet another ‘Do You Believe in Ghosts?’ precede the second and final instalment of ‘The Ghostly Guardian’.

More ‘Angel Face and Dare Devil’, ‘Puzzle Page’ and ‘The Mummy’s Curse’ follow and a ‘Creepy Cackles with ‘The Scareys of St. Mary’s’, after which ‘The 13th Man’ a brief western terror tale provides some all-new thrills, balanced by more ‘Davy Jones Locker’, ‘Horace the Hopeless Haunter’, ‘Do You Believe in Ghosts?’, ‘The Creepy Crawleys’, ‘Face Ache’ and ‘Ghost Stories of the Sea’ before the serialised Mummy’s Curse concludes.

The final section opens with a final witchly romp for ‘The Scareys of St. Mary’s’ and ‘Curtis Bronson meets The Snake Mummy’ a Bradbury drawn drama which tingles with menace and in which Cursitor Doom makes a telling appearance, albeit in the trendier guise of Septimus Drood. Just to ensure there’s not too many nightmares ‘Rent-A-Ghost Ltd.’, ‘Spooky Scapbook’ and the other ‘Buster’s Dream World’ make their last appearances and the book ends with an activity page, the ‘Haunted House Escape Game!’

In 1984 the company released the short-lived Scream!, an excellent weekly kids horror anthology modeled on the inexplicably (to management, at least) successful 2000AD, but the supernatural zeitgeist of the 1970s was long gone and the comic foundered and was cancelled after four months, which probably means something, but I’m to polite to say what…

This book is a delightful monster-mish-mash and one that will delight older fans and deliver lots of laughs and shivers to the young. Well worth tracking down and rapturously reading over and over again.
© 1975 IPC Magazines. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents House of Mystery volume 1


By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0786-1

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 the very occasional her) until the troops came home and older genres 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 psychology 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, madcap escapist comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, but gradually another periodic revival of spiritualism and interest in the supernatural led to a wave of increasingly impressive, evocative and even 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, 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 ostensibly a free country now) was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self regulatory rules HoM and its sister title House of Secrets were dialled back into rationalistic, fantasy adventure vehicles, and even became super-hero tinged split-books (With Martian Manhunter and Dial H for Hero in HoM, and Eclipso sharing space with Mark Merlin and later Prince Ra-Man in HoS).

However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and at the end of the 1960s the Silver Age superhero boom stalled and crashed, leading 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 global interest in all aspects of the Worlds Beyond, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious “no-brainer.” Even the ultra wholesome Archie comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle thrillers…

Thus with absolutely no fanfare at all issue #174, cover dated May-June 1968 presented a bold banner demanding “Do You Dare Enter The House of Mystery?” and reprinted a bunch of admittedly excellent short fantastic thrillers originally seen in House of Secrets from the heady days when it was okay to scare kids. Staring off was ‘The Wondrous Witch’s Cauldron’ (HoS #58) by an unknown writer and compellingly illustrated by the great Lee Elias, another uncredited script ‘The Man Who Hated Good Luck!’ limned by Doug Wildey and the only new feature of the issue – one which would set the tone for decades to come.

Page 13 was a trenchantly comedic feature page scripted by Editor and EC veteran Joe Orlando and cartooned by manic Hispanic genius Sergio Aragonés. It stated quite clearly that whilst the intent was to thrill, enthral and even appal it was all in the spirit of sinister fun, and gallows humour was the order of the day. The comic then concluded with a Bernard Baily tale of the unexpected ‘The Museum of Worthless Inventions’ (from #13) and concluded with the Jack Miller, Carmine Infantino & Mort Meskin fantasy fable ‘The Court of Creatures’ (a Mark Merlin masterpiece from HoS #43).

The next issue can probably be counted as the true start of this latter day revenant renaissance, as Orlando revived the EC tradition of slyly sardonic narrators by creating the Machiavellian Cain, “caretaker of the House of Mystery” and raconteur par excellence. Behind the first of a spectacular series of creepy covers from Neal Adams lurked another reprint ‘The Gift of Doom’ (from HoM #137, illustrated by George Roussos) followed by ‘All Alone’, an original, uncredited prose chiller.

After another Page 13 side-splitter, Aragonés launched his long-running gag page ‘Cain’s Game Room’ and the issue closed with an all-new new comic thriller ‘The House of Gargoyles!’ by veteran scaremongers Bob Haney and Jack Sparling.

With format firmly established and commercially successful the fear-fest was off and running. Stunning Adams covers, painfully punny introductory segments and interspersed gag pages (originally just Aragonés but eventually supplemented by other cartoonists such as John Albano, Lore Shoberg and John Costanza. This feature eventually grew popular enough to be spun off into bizarrely outrageous comicbook called Plop! – but that’s a subject for another day…) supplied an element of continuity to an increasingly superior range of self-contained supernatural thrillers. Moreover, if ever deadline distress loomed there was always a wealth of superb old material to fill in with.

HoM #176 led with spectral thriller ‘The House of No Return!’ by an unknown writer and the great Sid Greene and young Marv Wolfman (one of an absolute Who’s Who of budding writers who went on to bigger things) teamed with Sparling on the paranoiac mad science shocker ‘The Root of Evil!’

Another reprinted masterpiece of form from Mort Meskin (see From Shadow to Light for more about this unsung genius of the art-form) led off #177, ‘The Son of the Monstross Monster’ having previously appeared in House of Mystery #130. and 1950’s fearsome fact page was recycled into ‘Odds and Ends from Cain’s Cellar’ before Charles King and Orlando’s illustrated prose piece ‘Last Meal’ and dream team Howie (Anthro) Post and Bill Draut produced a ghoulish period parable in ‘The Curse of the Cat.’

Neal Adams debuted as an interior illustrator – and writer – with a mind-boggling virtuoso performance as a little boy survived ‘The Game’, after which Jim Mooney’s spooky credentials were recalled with ‘The Man Who Haunted a Ghost’ (first seen in HoM #35) and E. Nelson Bridwell, Win Mortimer & George Roussos delineated an eternal dream with ‘What’s the Youth?’ and ‘Cain’s True Case Files: Ghostly Miners’ closed the issue.

Bridwell contributed the claustrophobic ‘Sour Note’ in issue #179 rendered by the uniquely visionary Jerry Grandenetti and Roussos and the next generation of comics genius begun with the first Bernie Wrightson creepy contribution. ‘Cain’s True Case Files: The Man Who Murdered Himself’ was scripted by Marv Wolfman and is still a stunning example of gothic perfection in the artist’s Graham Ingels inspired lush, fine-line style.

This exceptional artists issue also contains the moody supernatural romance ‘The Widow’s Walk’ by Post. Adams & Orlando – a subtle shift from schlocky black humour to moody supernatural tragedy that would undoubtedly appeal to the increasingly expanding female readership. The issue ends with another fact feature ‘Cain’s True Case Files: The Dead Tell Tales’.

Going from strength to strength House of Mystery was increasingly drawing on DC’s major artistic resources. ‘Comes a Warrior’ which opened #180, was a chilling faux Sword & Sorcery masterpiece written and drawn by the da Vinci of Dynamism Gil Kane, inked by the incomparable Wally Wood, and the same art team also illustrated Mike Friedrich’s fourth-wall demolishing ‘His Name is Cain Kane!’ Cliff Rhodes and Orlando contributed the text-terror ‘Oscar Horns In!’ and Wolfman & Wrightson returned with the prophetic vignette ‘Scared to Life’ An uncredited forensic history lesson from ‘Cain’s True Case Files’ closed the proceedings for that month.

‘Sir Greeley’s Revenge!’ by Otto Binder and drawn by the quirkily capable Sparling was a heart-warmingly genteel spook story, but Wrightson’s first long story – a fantastic reincarnation saga entitled ‘The Circle of Satan’, scripted by Bob Kanigher, ended #181 on a eerily unsettling note and #182 opened with one of the most impressive tales of the entire run. Jack Oleck’s take on the old cursed mirror plot was elevated to high art as his script ‘The Devil’s Doorway’ was illustrated by the incredible Alex Toth. Wolfman and Wayne Howard then followed with ‘Cain’s True Case Files: Grave Results!’ an Orlando limned house promotion and the nightmarish revenge tale ‘The Hound of Night!’

Oleck and Grandenetti opened #183 with ‘The Haunting!’, ‘Odds and Ends from Cain’s Cellar’ returned with ‘Curse of the Blankenship’s and ‘Superstitions About Spiders’ and Wolfman & Wrightson contributed ‘Cain’s True Case Files: The Dead Can Kill!’ before the canny teaming of Kanigher with Grandenetti and Wally Wood resulted in the truly bizarre ‘Secret of the Whale’s Vengeance.’ The next issue saw the triumphant return of Oleck & Toth for the captivating Egyptian tomb raider epic ‘Turner’s Treasure’ and Bridwell, Kane & Wood for a barbarian blockbuster ‘The Eyes of the Basilisk!’

House of Mystery #185 saw caretaker Cain take a more active role in the all-Grandenetti yarn ‘Boom!’, Wayne Howard illustrated the sinister ‘Voice From the Dead!’ and veteran Charlton scribe Joe Gill debuted with ‘The Beautiful Beast’: a lost world romance perfectly pictured by EC alumnus Al Williamson. Next issue topped even that as Wrightson illustrated Kanigher’s spectacular bestiary tale ‘The Secret of the Egyptian Cat’ and Neal Adams produced some his best art ever for Oleck’s poignant tale of imagination and childhood lost ‘Nightmare’. Nobody who ever adored Mr. Tumnus could read this little gem without choking up… and as for the rest of you, I just despair…

Kanigher & Toth produced another brilliantly disquieting drama in ‘Mask of the Red Fox’ to open #187, and Wayne Howard was at his workmanlike best on ‘Cain’s True Case Files: Appointment Beyond the Grave!’ before John Celardo & Mike Peppe apparently illustrated the anonymous script for the period peril ‘An Aura of Death!’ (although to my jaded old eyes the penciller looks more like Win Mortimer…)

Another revolutionary moment began with the first story in #188, cover dated September-October 1970. Gerry Conway got an early boost scripting ‘Dark City of Doom’, a chilling reincarnation mystery set in both contemporary times and Mayan South America as the trailblazer for a magnificent tidal wave of Filipino artists debuted. The stunning art of Tony DeZuniga opened the door for many of his talented countrymen to enter and reshape both Marvel and DC’s graphic landscape and this black and white compendium is the perfect vehicle to see their mastery of line and texture…

Wrightson was responsible for the time-lost thriller ‘House of Madness!’ which closed that issue whilst Aragonés opened the proceedings for #189, closely followed by Kanigher, Grandenetti & Wood’s ‘Eyes of the Cat’ and a 1953 reprint drawn by Leonard Starr, ‘The Deadly Game of G-H-O-S-T‘ (from HoM #11) before another Charlton mystery superstar premiered as Tom Sutton illustrated Oleck’s ‘The Thing in the Chair’.

Kanigher and Toth teamed for another impeccable graphic masterwork in ‘Fright!’, Albano filled Cain’s Game Room and Aragonés debuted another long-running gag page with ‘Cain’s Gargoyles’ and this issue ended with a Salem-based shocker ‘A Witch Must Die!’ (by Jack Miller, Ric Estrada & Frank Giacoia). Issue #191 saw the official debut of Len Wein who wrote the terrifying puppet-show tragedy ‘No Strings Attached!’ for Bill Draut and DeZuniga returned to draw Oleck’s cautionary tale ‘The Hanging Tree!’ before Wein closed the show paired with Wrightson on ‘Night-Prowler!’ a seasonal instant-classic that has been reprinted many times since.

John Albano wrote ‘The Garden of Eden!’, a sinister surgical stunner, made utterly believably by Jim Aparo’s polished art, and Gray Morrow illustrated Kanigher’s modern psycho-drama ‘Image of Darkness’ and superhero veteran Don Heck returned to his suspenseful roots drawing Virgil North’s monstrously whimsical ‘Nobody Loves a Lizard!’

Wrightson contributed the first of many magnificent covers for #193, depicting the graveyard terrors of Alan Riefe & DeZuniga’s ‘Voodoo Vengeance!’, whilst Bill Draut skilfully delineated the screaming tension of Francis X. Bushmaster’s ‘Dark Knight, Dark Dreams!’

For #194, which saw House of Mystery expand from 32 to 52 pages – as did all DC’s titles for the next couple of years, opening the doors for a superb period of new material and the best of the company’s prodigious archives to an appreciative, impressionable audience – the magic began with another bravura Toth contribution in Oleck’s ‘Born Loser’ swiftly followed by the Russ Heath illustrated monster thriller ‘The Human Wave’ (from House of Secrets #31), a Jack Kirby monster-work ‘The Negative Man’ (House of Mystery #84) before Oleck and the simply stunning Nestor Redondo (see also The Bible: DC Limited Collectors Edition C-36) closed the issue and this first volume with the metamorphic horror ‘The King is Dead’.

These terror-tales captivated the reading public and comics critics alike when they first appeared and it’s no exaggeration to posit that they may well have saved the company during the dire downward sales spiral of the 1970. Now their blend of sinister mirth and classical suspense situations can most usually be seen in such 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 creepy cartooning The House of Mystery is the place for you…

© 1968-1971, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Zombies 2


By Robert Kirkman, Sean Phillips & Arthur Suydam (Marvel)

ISBN: 978-0-7851-2545-7
With the nights drawing in and assorted haunts roaming the land I thought I’d follow-up a previous graphic novel review with another nervous peek at one of modern Marvel’s most successful niche-franchises: a canny blend of gratuitous sarcasm, knowing, measured respect for canonical comicbook lore and sheer necrophilic bravado starring the departed-but-not-gone denizens of an alternate Marvel Universe.

In Marvel Zombies: Dead Days a dire extra-dimensional contagion ravaged Earth, and heroes, villains and all creatures in-between were eradicated by fearsomely frightful and discomfortingly familiar flesh-eating superheroes who weren’t so different from the ones we all know – except for a rapacious, all consuming taste for living flesh that only paused when there was no-one and nothing left to eat…

Against all odds a small band of mortals and mutants survived the catastrophe and the subsequent manic hunts of the zombies for one last morsel of living meat… until an ill-considered visit by the Silver Surfer and Galactus. These cosmic paragons were, after a cataclysmic struggle, utterly consumed by the undead super-humans, but not before the walking dead’s ranks were reduced to six – Tony Stark, Luke Cage, Giant-Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine and the Hulk.

Engorged on the extra-galactic planet-eater’s cosmic power and with all other food sources apparently consumed the cosmic sextet abandoned Earth: for the next forty tears they scoured their entire dimension, killing and eating every thing and every civilisation they could find, on the way swelling their ranks with the dead infected carcasses of intergalactic powerhouses Gladiator, Phoenix, Firelord and Thanos who had all fallen in battle against the unstoppable horrors.

Now, with the universe emptied of all life, but still just as ravenously, insatiably hungry, the zombies turned back towards Earth, intending to use the Fantastic Four’s old trans-dimensional travel technology to find a new universe – and eat that too.

In four decades the Earth’s meagre survivors had developed into a small but by no means viable colony, led by the aged T’Challa, onetime superhero Black Panther. With the aid of mutant machinesmith Forge he had welded an uneasy alliance between Humans, Homo Superior and another more startling faction: zombies who had lost their appetite for flesh…

It would seem that if the undead don’t taste flesh for long enough the irresistible hunger fades – a fact that was slowly becoming apparent to some of the cosmic zombies making their way back home through a universe cleansed of all life…

Life on Earth was no picnic either. Despite the end of the world, species tension remained undiminished and a civil war was brewing, human against mutant, fomented by the insanely ambitious Malcolm Cortez, leader of the long-gone Magneto’s Acolytes. An assassination attempt on T’Challa precipitated a final crisis, but when the cosmic undead arrived, intent on escaping to fresh hunting grounds, they discovered one last tasty snack just waiting there to tide them over on their intended journey…

However some of the monsters, tempted by the sight of hunger-free zombies battling beside their proposed last meal, change sides…

By no means as bleakly black and comedic as the first volume, this story thunders along as a far more cohesive tragic adventure, with a diminished gratuitous death-toll, coherent characterisation, genuine dramatic tension and spectacular action replacing the shock tactics and mordant slapstick of earlier tales: more a “What If?” crossover than a stand-alone, exploitative event, and the gripping saga ends on a moody downbeat that promises more and even better to come…

This book, reprinting the comicbook miniseries Marvel Zombies 2 #1-5, also includes the wealth of alternate and variant cover reproductions by painter Arthur Suydam whose astounding pastiche images of pictorial landmarks from Marvel’s decades-long-history has done so much to make the series a commercial success.

Although still very much a one-trick pony, there seems to be no way to sate the avid appetite of fans for these tales, which depend greatly on a deep familiarity with the regular Marvel pantheon, a fondness for schlock horror and the cherished tradition of superheroes fighting each other. Not for the squeamish or continuity-purist hardliners, there are certainly loud laughs, poignant pauses and frissons of fear awaiting the open-minded reader…

© 2007, 2008 Marvel Publishing, Inc, a subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.