Author: NowReadThis

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The X Files


By Frank Spotnitz, Marv Wolfman, Doug Moench & Brian Denham (WildStorm)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2527-8

The X Files took the world by storm when it launched in 1993, running for nine seasons, a total of 202 episodes, before ending in 2002. In addition it spawned two television spin-offs Millennium and The Lone Gunmen as well as two big screen movies in 1998 and 2008. Its blend of drama, cynicism, paranoia and open-eyed wonder struck a deep cultural chord, echoing popular disquiet about government double-dealing, the rise of conspiracy theories and a search for spirituality, mysticism and non-human intelligence. Many of the show’s key features became pervasive pop culture slogans. Moreover, it was usually utterly engrossing adventure storytelling.

Of course there was a slew of associated merchandise including a superb run of comics from trading card and sometime publisher Topps (41 issues plus a number #0 from January 1995 to September 1998, two annuals, three digest reprint editions and the 1997-1998 miniseries ‘Ground Zero’).

Fox Mulder is a burned out FBI whiz-kid who had himself assigned to the organizational sin-bin of the X Files division: unsolved cases involving unexplained and irrational aspects (themes returned to in recent years with the TV series’ Fringe and FlashForward). A brilliant scientist, he is obsessed with all aspects of the paranormal and particularly evidence of extraterrestrial life, but was dragged out into the real(ish) world by rationalist and cynic Dana Scully. Over the years they formed a co-dependent relationship and found trustworthy allies as they continued to prove that “the truth is out there.”

WildStorm picked up the comics franchise with this intriguing, engaging volume, collecting another #0 and a six issue run reprising the classic format of the feature when Mulder and Scully roamed America, solving mysteries and piecing together an incomprehensible puzzle.

Illustrated by Brian Denham with colour art by Kelsey Shannon & Carlos Badilla, the first cases unfold courtesy of screen writer Frank Spotnitz, who has the dynamic duo seeking a violent killer in the wilds of Indiana. Unfortunately this murderer seems to be a phantom force that can jump into bodies and make monsters out of the most innocent of citizens…

A different kind of possession phenomena then leads the investigators to Virginia, where government military contractors have developed the most sinister and cost-effective anti-personnel weapon imaginable…

Comics veteran and horror specialist Marv Wolfman scripts the next two-part saga as Mulder and Scully tackle a baffling case involving Chinese Tongs and an assassin who can apparently teleport. Elderly Chinese-Americans are being murdered, some almost simultaneously, by the same person. Forensics and DNA can’t be fooled, but if matter transportation is ruled out what else could possibly account for the rising death-toll?

Doug Moench, another comic creator with a long track record and impeccable pedigree contributes the final conundrum as the FBI’s least wanted are dispatched to the Badlands of South Dakota to track down a number of missing girls. Further investigation uncovers a likely serial killer, but deeper digging reveals that victims have actually been disappearing for hundreds of years. Can the Indian legends of subterranean predators “the Pale People” hold more truth than fancy…?

Moody, atmospheric and unrelentingly clever these stories blend mystery and imagination with tense drama and blistering action. Moreover, stripped of the over-arching, big-story continuity of the television series, these tales afford newcomers a perfect opportunity to revel in the magic of great, baggage-free entertainment.

If you want to believe in great comics, the proof is in here…

© 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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Great British Comics


By Paul Gravett & Peter Stanbury (Aurum)
ISBN: 978-1-84513-170-3

We’re far too reluctant in this country to celebrate the quality and history of our own comic strip tradition; preferring simply to remark on the attention grabbers or impressive longevity of one or two classic and venerable holdovers when the actual truth is that for an incredibly long time the British comics and periodicals industry was vast, varied and fantastically influential.

After my now Customary Disclaimer where I admit that I know and have worked with an author or creator before, (in this case editor/designer/curator/writer/journalist/historian and genuinely brilliant dedicated devotee of all things panel-related, Paul Gravett) and admit to a possibly conflict of interest, I’d like to turn your attention fully to this truly marvellous pictorial dissertation, chronicle, memoir and celebration of the uniquely different world of comforting whimsy, raging tomfoolery, outrageous derring-do, jingoism, anarchy and class warfare that is British comics.

First released in 2006 this confabulation “celebrating 100 years of Ripping Yarns and wizard wheezes” traces the history and social impact of the medium from its earliest popular origins in such illustrated literary pamphlets as the Glasgow Looking Glass and Punch through the separation into adult and juvenile publications, prose story-papers, newspaper strip features and eventually the frenetic blend of words and drawings that we think of today as sequential art.

The book is liberally, bounteously stuffed with not just reams of illustrations but also loads of evocative photographs of the creators (for so long rendered invisible and uncredited by corporate dictat) and most importantly the generations of eager end-users who devoured these imagination-sparking treasures.

‘Lost Worlds of Topsy-Turvy’ tracks the progress of the medium and its lasting effects through an examination of nostalgia and fascination, providing an impressive overview of how and why we love these things and even including a chart marking the chronological timeline of British comics and how long they ran for. Got a favourite publication? Check it out here…

‘For Richer, For Poorer’ features the classic family and national set-up under the British class system, with examples from Alley Sloper’s Half-Holiday, The Broons, Weary Willie and Tired Tim and Posy Simmonds’ The Silent Three through to the terrifying modern icons The Fat Slags from Viz, also visiting with such varied neighbours as Giles’ immortal family, Donald McGill’s saucy postcards, Raymond Williams and the drawing room humour of Bateman, Fougasse, Heath Robinson and Reg Smythe’s Andy Capp.

The vast pictorial end-section includes further graphic examples including strips from Funny Wonder, The Joker, The Jester, John Millar Watt’s Pop, The Ruggles, The Gambols, and even such lost minor modern classics as Phil Elliott’s The Suttons makes a worthy appearance alongside more well-known strips as Alex, Bristow, The Fosdyke Saga and Colonel Pewter.

‘Spitting Images’ covers the British public’s love affair with entertainment and celebrities; spotlighting such publications as Dan Leno’s Comic Journal, Film Fun, Radio Fun, Look-In and others, with strips starring Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Askey, Laurel and Hardy, Terry-Thomas, Tommy Cooper, Norman Wisdom and The Beatles, proper heroes such as Horatio Nelson, Churchill, Isombard Kingdom Brunel, Dylan Thomas, James Joyce and Andy Murray, plus notionally lesser lights such as Troy Donahue, Adam Ant, Big Daddy, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Hitler and McFly plus so many others all rendered with tremendous skill, wit and not a little Anglo-Saxon charm and sarcasm…

‘Down on Jollity Farm’ explores our vast wealth of anthropomorphic modern fairy-tales from George Studdy’s Bonzo, Teddy Tail, Tiger Tim and the Bruin Boys, Muffin the Mule, Rupert Bear, Pip, Squeak and Wilfred, Count Duckula, Danger Mouse and Wallace and Gromit; even finding room for less savoury kiddies’ fare as the government sponsored adaptation of Animal Farm, Fungus the Bogeyman, Firkin the Cat and Savage Pencil’s punk poesy Rock ‘n’ Roll Zoo.

The anarchic animal stars of DC Thomson, Fleetway and Odhams Press are represented by such wild and woolly class acts as Kid Kong, The Crows, Sid’s Snake, The Three Bears, Mickey the Monkey, Mighty Moth and my own personal bete noir-et blanc, Reg Parlett’s fabulous Mowser the Priceless Puss…

Our preoccupation and virtual obsession with school days is made manifest in ‘Wheezes in the Tuck Shop’ examining the range of educational experience from Billy Bunter and Just William to The Bash Street Kids and the Swots and the Blots, and includes little gems such as Oor Wullie, Lord Snooty and his Pals, Nipper, Dennis the Menace, Roger the Dodger, Winker Watson, Baby Crockett, Sweeney Toddler, and Johnny Fartpants yet still finds room for such unconventional problem children as Ken Reid’s The Nervs, Dare-a-Day Davy and Faceache, Lew Stringer’s Tom Thug and Stephen White’s Dreadlock Holmes.

British kids of all ages have always been captivated by weird worlds and fantastic futures and ‘Things to Come’ traces the development of the science fiction and fantasy strips in the children’s papers from Tom Wilkinson’s fantastical Professor Radium, through such adventure stalwarts as Swift Morgan, Captain Conquest, Jet-Ace Logan, General Jumbo, Robot Archie, Rick Random and all the rest, with all appropriate attention paid to the iconic Dan Dare and Judge Dredd whilst still finding time and space for the likes of Jeff Hawke, the Trigan Empire, and such TV titans as Dr. Who, Thunderbirds, Stingray, Fireball XL5 and such truly groundbreaking strips as V for Vendetta and The Amazing Mr. Pleebus.

If you’d been paying attention instead of staring out the window you might have noticed that all the above cited specimens in ‘Wheezes in the Tuck Shop’ were boys, but don’t think we’ve forgotten the weaker sex (I just checked and there still isn’t an emoticon for trenchant, bitter irony); they just get a section all to themselves in ‘Jolly Hockey Sticks to Sheroes’.

Ladies and girls in comics haven’t always been well-treated. That’s more because the material was mostly created by men not women rather than for any male militant or subversive agenda. However the wealth of strips produced over the decades usually makes up in sheer visual quality what it might lack in relevance or political correctness.

This chapter delves into the female experience through full-on action stars such as Modesty Blaise, Lady Penelope, Judge Anderson and Tank Girl, thoroughly Modern Misses like Three Girls in a Flat, Carol Day, Tiffany Jones, Beryl the Bitch and Tamara Drew and the best from a century of unrepentant glamour pusses from Jane to the inimitable Arthur Ferrier’s assorted dazzling “Dizzy Dames”.

Those all important school days are covered with outings ranging from the little darlings of St. Trinians, to Bunty, Misty, an assortment of ballerinas, gymnasts and orphans and such daring vengeance-taking teams as the Silent Three and The Four Marys. Not-so-Good-Girls include Beryl the Peril, Pansy Potter (…the Strong Man’s Daughter), Keyhole Kate, Minnie the Minx and the formidable Bad Penny.

This compelling compendium concludes with a chapter on the broad spectrum of fantastic adventure heroes and the anti heroes we Brits have always seemed more comfortable with. Exemplars include The Spider, Marvelman, Chang the Yellow Pirate, P.C. 49, Captain Pugwash, Morgyn the Mighty, Desperate Dan, historical bravos like Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, Captain Blood, detectives including Sexton Blake, Blackshirt, Tug Transom, Buck Ryan and Romeo Brown, and a sporting pantheon which includes the Tough of the Track, Wilson – the immortal Man in Black, His Sporting Lordship, race car ace Skid Solo and of course the legendary Roy of the Rovers.

The British love of combat is represented by Biggles, Battler Britton, V for Vengeance, Charley’s War, Darkie’s Mob, the fearsome Captain Hurricane and a selection from the long running Commando Picture Library among others, western strips by Tony Weare, Denis McCloughlin, Robert Forest and Frank Humphris, and our frankly skewed take on superheroes is displayed in and counter-pointed by examples including House of Dollman, Frankie Stein, Jonah, Grimly Feendish, The Cloak, Charley Peace, Yellowknife of the Yard, Kelly’s Eye, Janus Stark, the Steel Claw, Billy the Cat and Captain Britain.

If you’re a lover of epics there are also stirring reminders of the spectacular grandeur of Michael Moorcock and Ron Embletons’s Wrath of the Gods, Wulf the Briton (Mike Butterworth and Embleton) and Tom Tully and Frank Bellamy’s Heros the Spartan…

Whilst not too detailed this splendid tome contains a magical abundance of images and information and presents them in a welcoming torrent of bite-sized facts and gloriously moving pictures pages that no old fan could resist and which cannot help but beguile and intrigue the unconverted. This is a perfect introduction to the medium and could almost act as a shopping list for any publisher looking to find the next big thing to bring back.

Just imagine: brand new collections of any or all of these immaculate confections…

© 2006 Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury. All Rights Reserved. All artwork © its respective owners and holders.

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Green Arrow/Black Canary: The Wedding album


By Judd Winick, Cliff Chiang, Amanda Conner & André Coehlo (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1841-6

Green Arrow is Oliver Queen, a cross between Batman and Robin Hood and one of DC’s Golden All-Stars. He’s been a fixture of the company’s landscape – often for no discernable reason – more or less continually since his debut in More Fun Comics # 73 in 1941. During those heady days origins weren’t as important as image and storytelling so creators Mort Weisinger and George Papp never bothered, leaving later workmen France Herron, Jack Kirby and his wife Roz to fill in the blanks with ‘The Green Arrow’s First Case’ at the start of the Silver Age superhero revival (Adventure Comics #256, January 1959).

As a fixture of the DC Universe since the early 1940s GA was one of the few costumed heroes to survive the end of the Golden Age, consistently adventuring in the back of other heroes’ comic books, joining the Justice League during the Silver Age return of costumed crusaders and eventually evolving into a spokes-hero of the anti-establishment during the 1960’s period of “Relevant” comics, courtesy of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams.

Under Mike Grell’s 1980/1990s stewardship he became a gritty and popular A-Lister; an urban hunter who dealt harshly with corporate thugs, government spooks and serial killers rather than costumed goof-balls.

And then he was killed and his son took over the role.

And then the original was brought back…

Black Canary was one of the first of the relatively few female furies in the DC universe, following Wonder Woman, Liberty Belle and Red Tornado (who actually masqueraded as a man) and predating Merry the Gimmick Girl. She was created by Bob Kanigher and Carmine Infantino, debuting in Flash Comics #86, August 1947. She disappeared with most of the other super-doers at the end of the Golden Age, only to be revived with the Justice Society of America in 1963.

Originally an Earth-2 crimefighter transplanted to our world, she has been ruthlessly retconned over and again, and (currently) Dinah Laurel Lance is the daughter of an earlier, war-time heroine. However you feel about the character two consistent facts have remained since her reintroduction and assimilation in Justice League of America #73-75 (see Showcase Presents Justice League of America volume 4): she has vied with Wonder Woman herself for the title of premiere heroine and she has been in a stormy romantic relationship with Green Arrow.

The affair which began during of the Summer of Love finally reached a dramatic culmination a few years ago when the couple at last named the day, and this fearsomely dramatic and cripplingly funny tome gathers those unforgettable moments in a celebratory chronicle that will warm the hearts and chill the souls of sentimental thrill seekers everywhere.

Reprinting Green Arrow and Black Canary Wedding Special and issues #1-5 of the monthly Green Arrow and Black Canary comicbook, the saga begins with a hilariously immature retelling of the path to wedlock from scripter Judd Winick and Amanda Conner: spats, tender moments, hen-nights, stag-parties and a tremendous battle as a huge guard of dishonour comprising most of the villains in the DCU attack the assembled heroes when they’re “off-guard”.

Naturally the bad-guys are defeated, the ceremony concludes and the newlyweds head off to enjoy their wedding night.

And then in circumstances I’m not going to spoil for you Green Arrow dies again…

Obviously it doesn’t end there. For the start of their new series and the story-arc ‘Dead Again’, by Winick and Cliff Chiang, Ollie Queen is only seen in flashbacks as the Black Widow Canary goes on a brutal crime-crushing rampage. ‘Here Comes the Bride’ finds her slowly going off the rails and only Ollie’s son Conner Hawke seems able to get through to her where friends like Green Lantern, Superman, Oracle and even Ollie’s old sidekicks Speedy and Red Arrow tell her to move on.

As usual it takes the ultra-rational Batman to divine what really happened on the wedding night…

In ‘The Naked and the Not-Quite-So-Dead’ Dinah and Mia Dearden – the new Speedy -infiltrate the island home of the miscreants who have abducted and imprisoned Green Arrow (notice how vague I’m being; all for your benefit?) where Ollie is already proving to be more trouble than he can possibly be worth. Conner is also on hand and whilst attempting to spring his wayward dad also falls captive to overwhelming forces…

‘Hit and Run, Run, Run!’ ramps up the tension as the heroes all escape but not before one of their number is gravely wounded by a new mystery assailant, and in ‘Dead Again: Please Play Where Daddy Can See You’ it’s Ollie’s turn to fall apart as his wounded young protégé fights for life.

The book concludes in the heart-warming ‘Child Support’ with another series of poignant flashbacks describing Green Arrow’s history and his extended family of sidekicks before Dinah leads Ollie back from the brink of utter despair…

Green Arrow and Black Canary are characters that epitomise the modern adventure hero’s best qualities, even if in many ways they are also the most traditional of “Old School” champions. This is a cracking example of Fights ‘n’ Tights done right and is well worth an investment of your money and time.

© 2007, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Twin Spica volumes 1 & 2


By Kou Yaginuma, translated by Maya Rosewood (Vertical)
ISBNs: 978-1-934287-84-2 & 978-1-934287-86-6

The mystery and imagination of space travel, so much a component of immediate post-World War II industrial society, returns in all its resplendent wonder and glory in this freshly translated new manga series from young talent Kou Yaginuma who first stormed to public attention with the poignant short story ‘2015 Nen no Uchiage Hanabi’ (‘2015: Fireworks’, published in Comics Flapper magazine, June 2000) before turning the subject, themes and characters into a longer epic combining hard science and fiction with lyrical mysticism and traditional school days growth pangs

2024AD: Asumi Kamogawa is a teenaged girl who has always dreamed of going into space. From her earliest moments the lonely child has gazed up at the stars with her imaginary friend Mr. Lion, staring at the heavens, and especially at the twinkling glow of Virgo and the alluring binary star Spica. An isolated, serious child, she lives with her father, a labourer who once worked for the consortium which built the space rockets for Japan’s Space Program.

In 2010, when Asumi was a year old the first Japanese space launch ended in complete disaster when the ship, dubbed Shishigō (“The Lion”), exploded and crashed to earth on the city of Yuigahama. Hundreds of people were killed and injured, including Asumi’s mother. Maimed and comatose, she took years to die and the trauma broke her grieving husband and utterly traumatised the infant Asumi.

In response to the disaster Japan founded an astronaut and space sciences training school and as the first volume opens Asumi discusses with her imaginary friend the best way to tell her dad that she has secretly taken the entrance exam. Tomoro Kamogawa is a no fan of the space program, having lost his wife, his engineering job and his pride to the race for space. He has raised his daughter alone by working two and often three menial jobs at a time for over a decade.

The problem is taken out of her hands when he opens her results letter and sees that she has been accepted for the next intake for the Tokyo National Space School. After initial resistance he surprises Asumi by not only allowing her to go, but also by giving her all his savings to pay her expenses. Arriving in Tokyo, Asumi moves into the dilapidated campus dormitory with a few other students too poor to live in private lodgings. A further surprise comes when she discovers that Shinnosuke Fuchuya, the boy who teased and bullied her all through school, has also been accepted for the Astronaut course. When questioned he grunts that he’d rather do anything other than run the family fireworks shop…

The course is heavily over-subscribed so the candidates are winnowed out by spending the first week in an adaptability stress test: three to a room, in complete isolation, taking mental and physical tests to determine how they would cope with conditions similar to an extended stay in a space capsule. Tiny Asumi (only four feet, eight inches tall) is placed with the jolly Kei Oumi and chilly, acerbic Marika Ukita whilst Fuchuya’s team is cursed with spooky, ultra-cool style-icon Shu Suzuki…

It quickly becomes clear that the tutors are being devious and the tests are actually designed to measure not just their survival capabilities but also their ability to get on in a crisis. As the week progresses tempers fray and Asumi suffers a flashback to the aftermath of The Lion’s crash…

Only thirteen teams make it through the test. However, even though she is a survivor, worse is to come for the young Asumi…

This first volume includes that painfully powerful and wistful tale‘Fireworks: 2015’, the first of five introductory stories the artist produced for Seinen (manga for older readers; mostly males aged 18-30) publication Comics Flapper. Asumi is a troubled little girl: always running away and even stealing the ashes of her mother, who has just died after years in a coma following the crash of the space rocket onto Yuigahama city.

On her travels the little girl meets a man with a lion’s head, who seems to know her teacher Suzinari. Deeply concerned for Asumi, Suzinari also has problems of her own. She still desperately misses her fiancé, who piloted The Lion and died in the tragic explosion five years previously…

‘Asumi’ is another prequel tale, showing the miserable, melancholic period immediately following the disaster. Bullied in elementary school the little stargazer runs away and gets lost in the wild woods, before chief miscreant Fuchuya heroically saves her from drowning. But were the people Asumi met just hallucinations of an oxygen-starved brain or something far more meaningful and miraculous…?

The first book ends with the vignette ‘Another Spica’ wherein wannabe manga artist Yaginuma is working part-time on a soft-drink stand one Christmas when he sees a little girl who twinkled like the stars and a man with a lion’s head…

The second volume follows space cadet Asumi as she adjusts to life in Tokyo: moving into women’s dorm “The Seagull”, making friends, starting classes and scraping by on her meager funds. An assiduous student, she nevertheless incurs the hostility of the astrophysics lecturer Professor Sano. Unknown to her Sano has bad history with her father and will seemingly do anything to thwart her dreams…

Asumi is far smaller than all the other candidates and though determined to succeed in the arduous physical and mental training incurs real problems in the swimming classes due to her near-drowning as a child. Moreover her size means she will need a custom-made pressure suit – giving Sano an opportunity to force her out by citing budget restrictions.

When this doesn’t work he steps up his campaign and really turns the screw on the unsuspecting Asumi, revealing a shocking secret about her father…

This volume also contains prequel stories of Asumi’s early life and in ‘Campanella’s Forest‘ (referencing author Kenji Miyazawa’s novel Night on the Galactic Railroad) and exploring the past of the astronaut who piloted The Lion and highlighting Suzinari’s relationship with him. Meanwhile, Asumi has got lost again and stumbled upon something wonderful in the woods…

Tomoro Kamogawa is the tragic star of ‘Our Stars, Leaf Stars’. In the wake of the Lion disaster Asumi’s father was assigned by the corporation who built the ship to head the reparations committee. Guilt-wracked and himself bereaved, the devastated engineer had to visit and apologize to each and every survivor or victim’s grieving family. Meanwhile, little Asumi has found a new friend: another little girl forever scarred by the crash.

And as always the faithfully attendant Mr. Lion looks sadly on …

The volume concludes with a second ‘Another Spica’ episode as the cartoonist relates the time he worked in a shopping mall and had to dress up in a monkey suit, as that girl and that lion-headed guy simply looked on and mocked…

Twin Spica ran for eight enchanting years (September 2001 to August 2009): sixteen full volumes tracing the path of Asumi and her friends from starry-eyed students to fulltime astronauts and the saga spawned both anime and live action TV series.

This delightful comicbook epic has everything: plenty of hard science to back up the savvy extrapolation, a believable, likable cast, an enduring mystery, tender moments, isolation and teen angst, dawning true friendships, all wrapped up in a joyous coming-of-age drama with supernatural overtones and gobs of pure sentiment.

This tale reinvigorates the magical allure of the Wild Black Yonder for a new generation and is a treat no imagineer with head firmly in the clouds can afford to miss…

These books are printed in the Japanese right to left, back to front format.

© 2010 by Kou Yaganuma/Media Factory. Translation © 2010 Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Fire & Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics


By Blake Bell (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-166-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: 9/10 Perfect for art lovers, Marvel Zombies, wannabe illustrators and lovers of pure comic magic

There’s currently a delightful abundance of beautiful coffee-table art-books/biographies celebrating the too-long ignored founding fathers and lost masters of American comic books, and this fabulous tome highlights the astounding wizardry of one of the most accomplished draughtsmen and yarn-spinners of that incredibly fertile early period.

As always you can save time and trouble by simply buying the book now rather than waste your valuable off-hours reading my blather, but since I’m going to froth on anyway feel free to accompany me as I delineate just why this tome needs to sit on your “favourites” shelf.

This lavishly illustrated, oversized tome traces the tragic life and awe-inspiring body of work of possibly the most technically accomplished artist of the US comicbook industry: a man of privilege and astonishing pedigree (he was a direct descendent and namesake of iconoclastic poet and artist William Blake) haunted by illness, an addictive personality and especially alcoholism, but a man who nevertheless raised a family, shaped an art-form and left twin legacies: an incredible body of superlative stories and art, and, more importantly, broken lives saved by his becoming a dedicated mentor for Alcoholics Anonymous.

William Blake Everett was born in 1917 into a wealthy and prestigious New England family. Bright and precocious he contracted Tuberculosis when he was twelve and whilst recuperating in Arizona began a life-long affair with and battle against booze. For the rest of his chequered life “Wild Bill” vacillated between magnificent artistic highs and heartbreaking personal lows, covered with chilling frankness in this excellent biography, written in conjunction with the artist’s surviving family.

Although telling, even revelatory and concluding in a happy ending of sorts, what this book really celebrates is not the life but the astounding legacy of Bill Everett. A gifted, driven man, he was a born storyteller who had the sheer naked ability to make all his own worlds real; and for nearly five decades his incredible art and wondrous stories, which began in the heydays of the Pulps (see also Spicy Tales Collection) enthralled and inspired successive generations of fellow dreamers.

His beautiful artwork featured in a variety of magazines before his fortuitous stumbling into the right place at the right time secured Everett’s place in history forever with his creation of the first anti-hero in comics.

Yet even before the advent of the mutant hybrid Sub-Mariner who, along with his elemental counterpart The Human Torch, secured the fortunes of the budding Marvel Comics (covered in a fascinating and detailed account which clears up many controversies that have raged amongst fans ands historians for decades) Everett was a valued and admired writer/artist/letterer/designer whose early seminal triumphs are lovingly covered here in many reproduced strip extracts, sketches and an utterly invaluable collection of original art pages.

Bill Everett was a jobbing cartoonist who drifted into the new world of comicbooks: a budding industry that combined his beloved drawing with his other compulsion – making up stories. The first chronological art selection here features a plethora of his compelling and irresistible covers for Amazing Mystery Funnies, Blue Bolt, Target Comics, Amazing-Man Comics, Victory Comics, Heroic Comics, and the landmark Motion Picture Funnies Weekly (for which he produced not only the pre-Marvel/Timely Sub-Mariner, but also the all-important back cover sales pitch) and many designs and roughs for unpublished titles, interspersed with pages and spreads from early creations Amazing-Man, Dirk the Demon, Skyrocket Steele, Music Master, The Chameleon, Hydroman, Sub-Zero and of course Prince Namor.

The early days of Marvel Mystery Comics and the Sub-Mariner’s own feature title are thoroughly represented with many pages of original art starring not only his aquatic antagonist but also The Fin and Human Torch, and this section is also full of delightful sketches from his four years of service in the Army Corps of Engineers.

The industry had changed radically by the time Everett mustered out: superheroes were on the wane and other genres were rising in popularity. Returning as a freelancer to Marvel/Timely, Everett worked again on Sub-Mariner and even created the sexy spin-off Namora and stillborn kid crusader Marvel Boy, but it was with the series Venus that he moved in a new direction: glamorous, glorious horror.

For over a decade he brought a sheen of irresistible quality to the generally second-rate chillers Timely/Atlas/Marvel generated in competition with genre front-runners EC Comics. It’s easy to see how they could compete and even outlive EC, with these lush and lurid examples of the hundreds of stunning covers and chillingly beautiful interior pages selected from such titles as Mystic, Menace, Astonishing, Adventures into Weird Worlds, Uncanny Tales, Suspense, Marvel Tales, Spellbound, Mystery Tales, Men’s Adventures and others. My only quibble is that unlike the companion volume featuring unsung genius Mort Meskin (see From Shadow to Light) there are no complete stories collected in this otherwise perfect primer.

Despite being unacknowledged as a master of terror, this period was probably Everett’s most technically adroit, but he also excelled in the other genre-ghettoes of the period. His ability to freeze manic action and convey tension into a single image made him the perfect choice for lead cover artist in the burgeoning military comics fields as can be seen in examples from Man Comics, Navy Tales, Battlefield, Navy Action, Navy Combat and others.

Everett truly excelled in the lush, stylistic depiction of action and horror themes – as well as the seductive delineation of sexy women, although he was equally effective in less histrionic arenas such as merchandising art, wholesome western, romances, cartoon and Bigfoot comedy styles, represented here by pages and covers from such diverse publications as Marvin the Mouse, Nellie the Nurse, Cracked, Jann of the Jungle, True Secrets, Girl Confessions, Bible Tales For Young Folk, Tales of Justice, Quick Trigger Western, Yellow Claw, Sports Action, Pussycat and so many others.

His final creative period follows his return to Marvel after time in the commercial art world and covers the creation of Daredevil, unsatisfactory runs on the Hulk, Dr. Strange, Sub-Mariner, Rawhide Kid and others as well as his stints inking Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, Ross Andru, Herb Trimpe, Dan Adkins and Barry Windsor Smith, before, clean and sober after decades, he produced a landmark run on his signature Sub-Mariner.

Tragically, decades of smoking and alcohol abuse had taken its toll, and only four years after turning his life around he died of complications arising from heart surgery, just when he seemed on the cusp of a brilliant creative renewal as remarkable as his meteoric rise in the 1930s and 1940s.

Evocatively written by biographer Blake Bell, with dozens of first hand accounts from family, friends and contemporaries; the sad, unjust life of this key figure of comics art is lovingly recounted here with hundreds of artistic examples from school days, army service, commercial and cartoon illustration and many intimate photographs supplementing the treasure trove of comics images. By tracking Everett’s early career as a pulp magazine illustrator, through his pioneering superhero art to the moody masterpieces of the 1950s and the Pop Art comics renaissance of the his later years, Fire and Water offers an opportunity to revel in the mastery of a truly unique pillar of America’s sequential Art establishment.

Most importantly for collectors and art-fans there is a overwhelming abundance of beautiful comics magic; from compelling page layouts, sketches and compositions to bold, vibrant pencils and slick luscious inking, and for we comics cognoscenti, the jackpot of never-before-seen unpublished pages: penciled, inked and camera-ready art-boards, as well as illustrations, family pieces and examples of his non-comics career

Brilliant, captivating, and utterly unmissable, this is the book Bill Everett deserves – and so do you.

© 2010 Fantagraphics Books. Text © 2010 Stephen Brower. All art © its respective owners and holders. All rights reserved.

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Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 3


By The Hernandez Brothers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-379-8

A year goes by like 365 days when you’re waiting for something really special and very often the anticipation is far headier than the eventual pay-off. Mercifully in the case of Love and Rockets: New Stories such in not the case, as the third annual volume proves to be the best yet, combining eccentric drama, bright fantasy, captivating whimsy and appalling human frailty into a package of stunning graphic intensity.

In the 1980s a qualitative revolution forever destroyed the clichéd, stereotypical ways different genres of comic strips were produced and marketed. Most prominent in destroying the comfy pigeonholes we’d built for ourselves were three guys from Oxnard, California; Jaime, Mario (occasionally) and Gilberto Hernandez.

Love and Rockets was an anthology magazine featuring slick, intriguing, sci-fi tinted hi-jinx of punky young things Maggie and Hopey – las Locas – and heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasies from the rural Central American paradise of Palomar. The Hernandez Boys, gifted synthesists all, enthralled and enchanted with incredible stories that sampled a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from Comics, TV cartoons, masked wrestlers and the exotica of American Hispanic pop culture to German Expressionism. There was also a perpetual backdrop displaying the holy trinity of youth: Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll – for which please hear alternative music and punk rock.

The result was dynamite. Mario only officially contributed on rare occasions but the slick and enticing visual forays by Jaime explored friendship and modern love whilst destroying stereotypes of feminine attraction through his fetching coterie of Gals Gone Wild and Gilberto created the hyper-real landscape of Palomar: a playground of wit and passion created for the extended serial Heartbreak Soup, in the quicksilver form of a poor Latin-American village with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast. The denizens of Palomar still inform and shape the latest tales from Beto both directly and as imaginative spurs for unassociated stories.

Everything from life death, adultery, magic, serial killing and especially gossip could happen in Palomar’s meta-fictional environs, as the artist mined his own post-punk influences in a deceptively effective primitivist art style which blended the highly personal mythologies of comics, music, drugs, strong women, gangs, sex and family using a narrative format that was the graphic equivalent to the literary discipline of Magical Realism.

Winning critical acclaim but little financial success the brothers temporarily went their own ways but a few years ago creatively reunited to produce these annual collections of new material in their particularly peculiar shared or rather, intermittently adjacent pen-and-ink universes.

This third volume commences with Gilbert’s ‘Scarlet by Starlight’ a multi-perspective narrative that appears at first to be a science fictional fable before evolving into something far more disturbing. On a distant world, a team of three earthling explorers are becoming far too intimate with the primitive yet buxom anthropoids that populate the planet and as the human relationships break down, unwise new bonds are formed with unpleasant and even harrowing results…

Savage and sexually explicit, this exploration of drives and desires takes a further step into forbidden territory when the explorers return home…

Maggie Chascarrillo – star of las Locas – takes centre stage in Jaime’s ‘The Love Bunglers Part One’, a lonely middle-aged lady, still looking for her life’s path and still an unsuspecting object of desire to the men who flock around her. But who is that particularly dangerous-looking bum stalking her?

The central portion again features Gilbert’s newest fascination: the young, rebellious and dangerously pneumatic underage Latina spitfire dubbed “Killer” – actually the juvenile character Dora Rivera – granddaughter of Palomar’s formidable Matriarch Luba (see Luba and Love and Rockets: New Stories volume 2) grown to a far more dangerous age.

As seen in the previous volume, Killer, who is slowly making her way into the exotic B-movie arena that fascinated and overwhelmed her Aunt Fritz (See also High Soft Lisp and The Troublemakers) is a highly strung creature on the verge of losing all her remaining innocence and in ‘Killer*Sad Girl*Star’ is considering remaking one of her aunt’s strangest movies whilst becoming involved in a senseless tragic crime… or is she?

Maggie’s turbulent childhood is revealed in Jaime’s startling and truly disturbing ‘Browntown’ as the Chascarrillo family move to a new city where both parents and all four kids undergo differing ordeals which reshape them forever. A note of warning: There are some heart-rending situations of child-abuse here that, although artistically valid and even necessary, are also genuinely upsetting, so please remember that this is a book strictly for mature readers.

The harrowing revelations of ‘Browntown’ lead directly into ‘The Love Bunglers Part Two’ as many of the mysteries set up in the first chapter are thrown into stark relief by the events from Maggie’s past, leading to a surprisingly warm-hearted conclusion to this deceptively hard-hitting book.

Stark, challenging, charming and irresistibly seductive, Love and Rockets: New Stories is a grown up comics fan’s dream come true and remains as valid and groundbreaking as its earlier incarnations – the cutting edge of American graphic narrative.

© 2010 Gilberto, Jaime and Mario Hernandez. This edition © 2010 Fantagraphics Books. All Rights Reserved.

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Angel: Not Fade Away


By Jeffrey Bell & Joss Whedon, adapted by Scott Tipton, Stephen Mooney & Ciaran Lucas (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-60010-529-6

When Buffy the Vampire Slayer stormed onto television screens and into the dark hearts of the world’s fantasy fans the show quickly began turning vampiric lore and traditions on their collective head. One of the most far-reaching storylines involved the feisty heroine falling in love with the enigmatic Angel, who was eventually revealed as the ultimate bad-boy in search of redemption. Once the most sadistic and brutal predator on Earth Angel was cursed by gypsy magic and subsequently regained his soul. Plagued by memory of his horrendous past deeds and driven by insatiable remorse he became a warrior on the side of righteousness – and promptly gained his own spin-off show.

For five seasons and 110 episodes Angel and his crew of assistants, which eventually included his arch-enemy, the other cool bad-boy poacher-turned-gamekeeper Spike (see Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spike and Dru) battled a all-pervasive demonic coalition intent on dimensional domination in the grim, dark environs of Los Angeles.

Masquerading as big-shot lawyers, Wolfram and Hart constantly worked their horrendous schemes until after years of battle they seemingly corrupted and co-opted Angel and his team, but it was of course a cunning plan to destroy the organisation from within and one which concluded in a an unforgettable final episode that was possibly television’s ultimate “Butch and Sundance” moment. This impressive oddity adapts that final small screen classic into a rather impressive sequential narrative, albeit one that must be utterly impenetrable to non-fans and newcomers…

‘Not Fade Away’ was originally scripted by Jeffrey Bell & Joss Whedon and is adapted here by writer Scott Tipton, illustrated by Stephen Mooney and colourist Ciaran Lucas, first seeing comic life as a three issue miniseries in 2009. It opens as Angel, Spike, defrocked watcher and neophyte wizard Wesley, benevolent demon Lorne and human vampire hunter Gunn seal a pact to murder Wolfram and Hart’s inner circle of demons, the Black Thorn, before the cabal can initiate the apocalypse and end humanity.

Untrusted and watched at all times the doomed band accept assassination assignments and spend the last day of their lives securing what allies they can (such as Angel’s son Conner, morally-ambivalent vampire PA Harmony, elder Goddess Illyria and the turncoat W&H lawyer Lindsey) paying off debts and making their varied peaces with the universe.

A cross between pure Greek tragedy and Scandinavian foreshadowed Ragnarok-in-waiting, this spectacular tale is moody, poignant, brutally action-packed and stuffed with dark humour. It’s no surprise that the heroes succeed in their mission but the saga ends as the supreme masters of supernal evil in the universe unleash all the hordes of hell to take vengeance on the monster hunters who have killed their agents and thwarted their millennial scheme…

As an added bonus for devoted fans and aspiring writer/directors this volume also includes the original shooting script for TV episode, beautifully illustrated by the extremely talented Jeff Johnson.

Somewhat diluted by recent comicbook sagas set after that glorious denouement, Angel and the surviving heroes are still actively holding back the final night…

Although visually impressive and engaging if you’re familiar with the vast backstory, this is still a chronicle best enjoyed by the already converted, although the shows are available on TV and DVD; so if you aren’t a follower yet you soon could – and should – be…

Angel © 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. © 2009 Idea and Design Works, LCC.

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Too Soon?: Famous/Infamous Faces 1995-2010


By Drew Friedman (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN 13: 978-1-60699-537-6

Technically, this isn’t a graphic novel or trade collection, it’s a picture book – but it is an absolutely stunning one, collecting some of the best and most trenchantly funny illustrations by a contender for the title of America’s Greatest Living Caricaturist in a lavish, full-colour hardback.

Drew Friedman began drawing commercially in the late 1970s. His meticulous, stippled monochrome satirical and socially biting cartoons of celebrities – and the rare comic strip – appearing in RAW, Screw, High Times, Weirdo, Comical Funnies, Heavy Metal, National Lampoon and the Holy of Holies MAD Magazine.

Gradually he moved into the publishing mainstream, and the phizzogs and foibles of the Rich and Famous gathered here are culled from a number of eclectic sources including Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, GQ Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, New York Observer, New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Village Voice, Mojo, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times, The Weekly Standard, Blab!, Maximum Golf and even the gun-totin’ sports organ Field & Stream among many others – an hilarious cavalcade of covers and spot illustrations by a master of the graphic ideal moment.

After a funny and extremely informative potted history the mostly painted (but with occasional pen, wash, tone and even charcoal examples), staggeringly cruel, cutting and insightful images are unleashed, beginning with a section covering political and business highflyers.

The period 1995 to 2010 turned up an unenviable horde of risible leaders and manipulative malcontents and included here are 107 cartoon snapshots of such luminaries as the Clintons, Monica Lewinsky, Helmut Kohl, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Ross Perot, Sarah Palin, “Mayor Mike” Bloomberg, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Dick Cheney and many other domestic demagogues as well as such international ideologues as Tony Blair, Yasser Arafat, Mother Theresa, Jacques Chirac and Osama Bin Laden among many others.

The second section deals with Showbiz types ancient and modern, an includes a couple of astonishingly grand panoramic gatefold fold outs amidst the 140+ illustrations featuring super-stars and should-have-beens from sports, music, acting, the media and that nebulous twilight world of people who are famous without actually doing or achieving anything.

The roster includes Tiny Tim, Dean Martin, Sinatra, John Lennon, Michael Jackson (lots of him at various stages of his life-long metamorphosis), Tommy Lee, Madonna, Fred MacMurray, Judy Garland, Jackie Chan, Bob Dylan, Brando, De Niro, Woody Allen, Stallone, Will Smith, Tiger Woods, Mike Tyson, Jack Nicholson and so many others. The volume also includes some book and CD covers and private commissions, and also a fresh selection of the artist’s favourite artistic subjects: sideshow freaks and obscure Jewish and vintage comedians.

Friedman is a master craftsman who can draw and paint with breathtaking power, and his work is intrinsically funny. It’s relatively simple to make Blair, Bush or Bin Laden look like buffoons but try it with Rod Serling, Marilyn Manson, Mother Theresa or Salman Rushdie…

His caricatures are powerful, resonant and joyful, but without ever really descending to the level of graphic malice preferred by such luminaries as Ralph Steadman or Gerald Scarfe. Too Soon? is a book for art lovers, celebrity stalkers and anyone who enjoys a pretty, good laugh.

© 2006 Drew Friedman. All Rights Reserved.

You can see sample pages on the arts website www.Drawger.com

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Knights of Pendragon: Once and Future


By Dan Abnett, John Tomlinson, Gary Erskine & Andy Lanning (Marvel/Panini Publishing UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-431-7

The world was a rapidly changing place in 1990 and fledgling offshoot Marvel UK was critically rising high thanks to the immensely impressive original Captain Britain material being created by Alan Moore and Alan Davis. On a roll, the company attempted to expand its line with an associated title, once more combining Arthurian fantasy with tried and true Marvel superheroic action. Or so everybody thought…

The Knights of Pendragon prominently featured Captain Britain on the covers but the epic tale that unfolded over the next few months was far more a supernatural horror story in the manner of prophetic TV show “Doomwatch” than a traditional Fights ‘n’ Tights slugfest – even by the often outré British standards.

Steeped in ecological hot-button topics and starring, initially at least, a podgy, over-the-hill welsh copper who had begun life as a authoritarian gadfly before becoming a solid, stolid comrade to Brian Braddock (Cap’s aristocratic Alter Ego), Knights of Pendragon followed Chief Inspector Dai Thomas as he seemingly went off the deep end, plagued by horrific premonitions of grisly massacres that all seemed linked to environmental crimes perpetrated by globe-girdling conglomerate the Omni Corporation. However as the months unfolded a pattern slowly unfolded that indicated something far older and more dangerous than money was flexing long dormant fangs and sinews…

This book gathers issues #1-9, July 1990-March 1991, of the first volume (a second far more traditional series followed in 1993) and sees the saga begin with ‘Brands and Ashes’ as Thomas is summoned by Captain Britain to a meeting of the clandestine agency the Weird Happenings Organisation. It appears the retired cop’s dream of 87 hungry patrons mysteriously suffocating in a spacious, airy well-ventilated burger-bar has come hideously true. Meanwhile Omni Corp exec Grace has sent her dashing leg-breaker Dolph to “reason” with the minister in charge of W.H.O….

As Thomas is briefed on an increasingly large and violent tide of bizarre eco-mysteries, down in Kent something horrible is occurring on an Omni farm using new and lethally dangerous pesticides. Rogue TV journalist Kate McClellan is circling too. She smells a big story and is ruthlessly open-minded. She wants and will publish the truth no matter how strange and impossible it might appear…

Thomas is getting worse. His visions now include blackouts and fugue episodes in which he sees himself as the medieval hero of the ancient epic “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” battling ogres, villains and monsters.

‘Skin and Bone’ finds him following a lead to Africa where ivory poachers are using helicopters and assault rifles to slaughter elephants in vast numbers. McClellan is there before him and has already discovered a link to smuggled diamonds and Omni but before Thomas can make an arrest the supernal force he is slowly coming to believe in exacts its own bloody justice, whilst ‘Oil and Water’ sees cop and reporter in Florida, investigating another bizarre Omni-related atrocity – smuggling endangered species – when an ambush goes wrong. Any doubt of supernatural involvement is abandoned when they are rescued from certain death by a creature that cannot possibly exist…

Thomas is gradually changing: evolving into a younger, fitter version of himself and the premonitions and dreams of Gawain are occurring more frequently. In ‘Blood and Feathers’, Grace decides to end the old copper’s interference with an elite squad of high tech mercenaries led by Dolph. After smashing another animal smuggling ring – with his bare hands – Thomas and McClellan are attacked in broad daylight. He overcomes the super-commandoes with ease, but the machinations of Grace have made him a liability to W.H.O. and Captain Britain is ordered to bring him in at all costs…

‘Hope and Glory’ reveals Kate is having visions of her own. As Thomas makes his way across Costa Rica hunting the thing that’s hunting Omni’s assorted enterprises, she is arrested by W.H.O. agents. Dai is close to the answers he’s been seeking as he enters an apocalyptic area of jungle deforestation, convinced he is Gawain reborn. The spirit of the planet has given man one final chance to live with, not against, the eco-system, but the forces of progress and destruction are subtle and have turned his greatest friend against him…

After a stupendous battle Thomas is beaten to death by Captain Britain, and in the concluding ‘Once and Future’ Gawain takes full control of his broken body, casually revealing the guilt-wracked superhero to be Lancelot whilst Kate houses the spirit of Guinevere. Attacked by demonic monsters the trio trek through the devastated rain-forest, making a pilgrimage to the home of the embattled animating force called the Green Knight, saving the Green Chapel, mystical heart of the world, from dark forces that have worked through Omni and other modern enterprises which value profit over the planet…

Its mission accomplished, Gawain’s essence leaves Dai’s body, resurrecting and healing him, but there has been no victory, only a truce. The Green Knight will no longer attack human greed and folly directly, but the latest Knights of Pendragon are expected to work in its stead. The second story-arc sees new men of goodwill chosen as hosts for the immortal heroic essences and a redefinition of the vague dark forces they must combat.

In ‘Revelations’ author Ben Gallagher is drawn to a remote Scottish island to bear witness to a brutal slaughter of dolphins, whilst in London a serial killer hunts successful businesswomen and in her technological ivory tower, Omni exec Grace is possessed by the Green Knight’s opposite number, a vile entity calling itself The Bane.

During the Great War the British Empire was championed by a pioneering band of costumed heroes. Union Jack was mere mortal who used brains, brawn and good British ordnance to battle the Hun in two world wars before being succeeded by his son. The third incarnation was Joey Chapman, a true working class hero who here finds himself the next recipient of the spirit of Lancelot.

Kate has a troubled son squirreled away at a remote boarding school. When Cam McClellan goes missing after being possessed by the Merlin analogue known as Herne the Hunter, the situation forces elderly history teacher Peter Hunter to reveal his darkest secret. ‘The Only Child’ describes how in the Great War the schoolmaster was masked mystic superman Albion, but with his surrendered Pendragon force now inhabiting a disturbed child he fears he must reassume the role he gratefully relinquished decades ago.

Captain Britain and Union Jack join the search for Cam but spend more time battling each other than actually helping, leaving the London serial killer free to attack his next target – the world-famous TV journalist Kate McClellan. However, even though the madman is old acquaintance he has not reckoned on her new status as a full-blown Pendragon.

Events take a truly dark turn when Grace arrives at the school to abduct the confused and immensely powerful Cam, intending to corrupt him as once she damned Arthur’s son Mordred…

Gallagher’s sensitively creative yet indomitable nature makes him a perfect host for the returned Sir Percival and in the untitled closing tale he sees the powers arrayed against the returned Knights in full flow, as an innocent dies and entire families of dolphins are sacrificed to the horrific greed and paranoia of humanity and the awful hunger of the Bane

The epic has been building across the nine issues of the series collected here, written with chilling passion by Dan Abnett and John Tomlinson and illustrated with stunning power by then fresh-faced new boy Gary Erskine, suitably inked by near-veteran Any Lanning.

With intriguing and revelatory reminiscences from the writers and original series editor Steve White describing the initial resistance and eventually outright hostility from upper management to the title plus a cover gallery by such leading lights as Alan Davis, Simon Bisley, John Bolton and others, this engrossing and still controversial epic revives a pivotal moment in British mainstream comics and still enthrals two decades later.

Ending on a pensive set of cliffhangers, this absorbing thriller is but half-done, with another utterly fabulous and morally challenging volume still to see. I can’t wait…

© 1990, 1991, 2010 Marvel Entertainment LLC and its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. A British edition published by Panini.

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Prison Pit Book Two


By Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-383-5

Johnny Ryan is a cartoonist with an uncompromising vision and an avowed intention of producing shock and even revulsion whenever he wants to. In Prison Pit he pushed the limits of taste with a brutal, primitive cascade of casual violence that sprung, teeth bared and claws extended, from his apparent obsession with casual violence, social decay and the mythology of masked wrestling, as well as his obvious fascination in the “berserk” manga strips of Kentaro Miura.

That initial volume presented a disturbingly child-like view of a science fictional Hell: an extra-dimensional purgatory where the most violent felons were dumped to live or die by a society that had no place for them. This barren landscape was littered with grotesque monsters, vile organisms and the worst specimens of humanity ever captured by the forces of civilisation. C.F., a masked wrestler, was dumped there and told to fight or die…

What followed was non-stop excessive force and graphic carnage: a never-ending Darwinian struggle which saw the wrestler damaged beyond comprehension, altered by horrors internal and external, but nevertheless still clawing his way to the top of the gory, scatological heap…

Unbelievably Ryan has gone even further in this second volume as the wrestler defeats what he had assumed to be the king of the heap, aided by a biological travesty that then turns on him, before being kidnapped by a robotic Dr. Moreau, who transforms the wrestler’s most intimate man-parts into a weapon of interpersonal destruction and sends him off violate a monster. Typically, nobody here is doing anything for anyone else’s benefit…

Man’s oldest gynophobic horrors and most simplistic delight in sheer physical dominance are savagely delineated in this primitive, appalling, cathartic and blackly funny campaign of cartoon horror. Resplendent, triumphant juvenilia is adroitly shoved beyond all ethical limits into the darkest depths of absurdist comedy. Not for children, the faint-hearted or weak-stomached, this is another non-stop rollercoaster of extreme violence, profanity and cartoon shock and awe at its most visceral and compelling.

And now that we’ve put off the intellectual and moral stuck-up sticky-beaks who just love to whine and complain, I’ll let you into a secret: this book is all-out over the top and flat out hilarious. Buy and see if you’re broad-minded, fundamentally honest and purely in need of ultra-adult silliness…

© 2010 Johnny Ryan. All rights reserved.