Author: NowReadThis

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Superman – the Mightiest Superhero in the Galaxy!


By various (DC Comics/Tempo Books)
ISBN: 0-448-14532-4-125

Released in 1978 to coincide with and capitalise on the major motion picture starring Christopher Reeve, this dandy little black and white paperback was part of a continuing drive by DC to get out of the down-market newsstands and place their characters regularly onto the shelves of bookstores.

Comic books had always suffered low self-esteem when compared to “proper books” and even their newspaper strip cousins periodically took every opportunity to break out of the “kid’s stuff” ghetto – such as when the incredibly popular Superman radio show and animated cartoons of the 1940s resulted in the iconic Adventures of Superman novel by George F. Lowther in 1942 (coming soon! What I think about a really hard to find book from nearly seventy years ago!).

They achieved some success with the plethora of paperbacks that accompanied the 1960s “superhero/camp craze” which had every funny-book producer from Archie Comics to Tower Books churning out rapidly re-sized, monochrome editions of their wares, all-new material (See Dracula or Blackmark) and even prose novels such as Batman vs the Three Villains of Doom (also on my “to do” list!) and ever since then comics collections could be seen every so often in Waldenbooks or W.H. Smiths nestled between science fiction and movie novelisations.

Of course this was before they gave up trying to fit their only strengths into a limiting format and went the European route of albums/graphic novels/trade paperbacks – with spectacular success. And just in case you were wondering why they kept trying? At its best, a comics title could reach about a million unit sales through magazine vendor systems whilst a book – any book – had the potential of reaching four to twenty times that number…

The collection in question takes its content from the early 1960’s canon (when the book’s target audience would have been little kids themselves) showcasing a rather more sophisticated set of tales than you might expect, starting with a somewhat truncated ‘The Complete Story of Superman’s Life’ from 1961, illustrated by Al Plastino covering all the basics: death of Krypton, rocket to Earth, early life as Superboy, death of the Kents and moving to Metropolis, whilst ‘Superman’s Mermaid Sweetheart’ is a bittersweet sequel to the Man of Steel’s doomed college romance with the mermaid Lori Lemaris from 1959 illustrated by the legendary Wayne Boring.

Curt Swan drew the remaining three tales, a telling confirmation of his huge contribution to the mythology of the Man of Tomorrow, beginning with ‘Superman’s Greatest Secret’ (1961) one of the best secret identity preservation stories of the period – with a giant fire-breathing monster too – whilst the landmark ‘The Legion of Super-Villains’ from the same year is a stand-out thriller featuring Lex Luthor and the adult Legion of Super-heroes and the fun concludes with ‘When Superman Lost his Memory’ (1965) an excellent example of another favourite plot when our hero had to recover not only his lost identity but also his missing superpowers…

There is a nostalgia and comforting familiarity to these tales but the immense quality and talent of the artists and especially writers such as Jerry Siegel, Edmond Hamilton, Otto Binder, Leo Dorfman and all the rest. My own longstanding personal appreciation and regard for this kind of package stems from my own boyhood, when I discovered how perfectly such books fitted into a school blazer pocket…
© 1978 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Volume 2


By Mike Sekowsky, Dick Giordano & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-900-0

Back for a second delicious helping of pop nostalgia and startling action is Diana Prince, erstwhile Amazon superhero, but for a brief moment a mortal woman with all the power and wit that entails – solving problems and fighting injustice with great style and incredible fashion-sense.

In 1968 superhero comics were in decline and publishers sought new ways to keep audience as tastes changed. Back then, the entire industry depended on newsstand sales, and if you weren’t popular, you died. Editor Jack Miller and Mike Sekowsky stepped up with a radical proposal and made a little bit of comic book history with the only female superhero then in the marketplace.

The superbly eccentric art of Sekowsky had been a DC mainstay for decades, and he had also scored big with fans at Gold Key with Man from Uncle and at Tower Comics’ T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and war comic Fight The Enemy! His unique take on the Justice League of America had cemented its overwhelming success, and now he was stretching himself with a number of experimental, youth-market directed projects.

Tapping into the teen zeitgeist with the Easy Rider-like drama Jason’s Quest proved ultimately unsuccessful, but with the Metal Men and the hopelessly moribund Wonder Woman he had much greater impact. He would ultimately work the same magic with Supergirl.

When the Amazons were forced to leave our dimension, they took with them all their magic – including Wonder Woman’s powers and all her weapons … Now no more or less than human she decided to stay on Earth permanently, assuming her own secret identity of Diana Prince, dedicated to fighting injustice as a mortal. Blind Buddhist monk I Ching trained her as a martial artist, and she quickly became embroiled in the schemes of would-be world-conqueror Doctor Cyber. Her one true love Steve Trevor was branded a traitor and killed…

This volume (which collects issues #185-189 of her comic book, a guest shot from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #93 plus the first of two appearances in the Batman team-up vehicle Brave and the Bold #87) shows just how bold were those changes to the Amazing Amazon’s career. With young scripter Denny O’Neil moved to other projects Sekowsky took over the writing himself, surprising everyone with his savvy ear for dialogue and a refreshingly original take on the old conventions.

With apparently nothing to lose, the switch to espionage/adventurer in the fashionable footsteps of such popular TV characters as Emma Peel, The Girl from Uncle and Honey West, not to mention our own ultimate comic strip action-heroine Modesty Blaise, seemed like desperation, but clearly struck a chord with the public. Sekowsky opens this book with ‘Them!’ – one of the most original tales of the period, with few to match it written since.

Steeped heavily in the hippie counter-culture and Mod-fashion explosion, the New Wonder Woman had opened her own boutique and into it rushes a young girl seeking to escape three women who took her in and then made her their slave. Today this sort of psychological thriller is more recognisable, but in 1969 themes of bullying and peer abuse were utterly unknown in comic books, and this groundbreaking tale is uniquely informative: exploring other solutions than simply punching bad guys – although there’s enough of that so that the regular readers aren’t completely bewildered.

This is followed by ‘Morgana the Witch’, (WW #186) a spectacular flight of whimsy tapping into the then growing interest in the supernatural wherein a trio of teenaged girls with a talking frog (who was originally the boy friend of one of them) request help after accidentally summoning a powerful (and clearly bi-polar) sorceress to the 20th century.

Next is ‘The Superman-Wonder Woman Team!’ (by Robert Kanigher and Irv Novick from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #93), a less adventurous and unreconstructed yarn where the also socially evolving girl-reporter seeks to uncover the reason the ex-Amazon is making an ill-concealed play for her man, and a superbly tense thriller by Sekowsky and Giordano from Brave and the Bold #87 entitled ‘The Widow-Maker’, wherein the son of one of Batman’s foes tries to add to his tally of murders by luring the Caped Crusader into a rigged high performance car race.

The book concludes with a gripping three-part saga revealing some of I Ching’s past  and reintroducing the deadly Dr. Cyber before seamlessly transiting into an exotic Cold War thriller. In ‘Earthquaker’ and ‘Cyber’s Revenge’ Diana’s mentor is summoned by old friends to Hong Kong where he and his astonishing pupil happen upon a plan to blackmail the island with catastrophic artificial earthquakes, before attempting to smuggle an entire village out of Communist China in the delightfully epic ‘Red for Death’. The spectacle is broken up by a wonderful extra two page strip vignette ‘Crime does not Pay’ which brilliantly demonstrates the wit and economy of the medium

Comics are an art-form dictated by markets, driven by sales and influenced by fashion. For a brief moment all these factors coalesced to produce a compelling, engaging and utterly fabulous sequence of tales that are timelessly perfect and eternally fresh. And now you can read them whenever you feel the need for better times simply by opening these pages…

© 1969, 1970, 2008 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

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Charley’s War volume 5: Return to the Front


By Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-769-9

The fifth instalment of Mills and Colquhoun’s astonishing comic strip condemnation of the Great War (and war-mongering in general) picks right up from the previous volume (Blue’s Story) as recuperating boy-soldier Charley Bourne settles his affairs in London before reluctantly returning to the terrifying trenches and insane warlords on both sides of No-Man’s Land, whose callous and inept tactics and strategies decimated an entire generation of Europe’s manhood.

Charley’s War, originally published in the weekly comic Battle (from #200, 6th January 1979 until October of 1986), tells the story of an underage East-Ender who lies about his age to enlist in the British Army setting out to fight the Hun in 1916. Writer Mills fully exercised his own political and creative agendas on the series and, as his own always informative commentary relates, was always amazed at what he got away with and what seeming trivialities his editors pulled him up on. Here for example, as the lad rejoins his unit in April 1917, just in time for the third Battle of Ypres, the creators was allowed to wallow in historical accuracy, and some intriguing gallows humour, capitalising on the lengthy build-up of troops which forced a long period on tedious inactivity upon the already bored soldiery.

Life in the trenches was notoriously hard and unremittingly dull… except for brief bursts of action which ended so many lives. By closely following the events of the war, powerful episodes featuring such insanity as a Cricket match played out whilst shells rained down, brutal forced marches that incapacitated already shattered “Tommies”, dedicated heroes destroying their own equipment and a dozen other daily insanities of the military mind are exposed with devastating effect.

The saga focuses far more on the characters than the fighting – although there is still plenty of harrowing action – and reveals to the readers (which at the time of original publication were presumed to boys between ages 9-13) that “our side” could be as unjust and monstrous as the “bad guys”.

Charley receives the dubious honour of being seconded a servant to the callous officer Captain Snell who thinks the war a terrific lark: thereby revealing an utterly different side to the conflict, and acts as the only voice of reason when the veterans of earlier conflicts take out their resentment on the new replacement troops – all conscripted, and commonly seen by the hardened survivors of early years as cowards and shirkers for not volunteering.

But although the horrors and madness and incessant waiting for the big show to begin are omnipresent, things do proceed: as the book closes Charley discovers that his unit has been posted to join an engineering detail short of manpower. The losses were caused by cave-ins and flooding, and Charley realises that his next job will be to complete a year-long project to tunnel under a vast ridge of solid rock and undermine the German Guns on the Messine Ridge. If they don’t get killed he and his comrades will be packing the explosives for the biggest explosion the world has ever experienced…

Brutal, dark, beautiful, instantly affecting and staggeringly informative, there has never been a series like Charley’s War: it is something future generations will scorn you for not reading…

© 2008 Egmont Magazines Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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John Constantine, Hellblazer: Chas – The Knowledge


By Simon Oliver & Goran Sudzuka (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-140-3

It’s tough being a sidekick – especially when your guv’ner is the sardonic, ultra-cool laughing magician and arch-trickster John Constantine, and you’re just an over-the-hill granddad who drives a black cab in a London you recognise less and less every day. Your glory days are long gone – if there ever were any – and all you can look forward too is the big match, a few jars and not too much ear-ache from the dragon you married.

Chas Chandler (not the pop star) is probably Constantine’s oldest mate, at least this side of the grave, and his stolid, sensible “hit it don’t hex it” attitude has saved the street sorcerer from disaster on more than one occasion. His brushes with the unknown are mercifully limited but always terrifying (see for example “In Another Part of Hell” in Hellblazer: Rare Cuts) and he’s more than happy to keep it that way.

For such a man loyalty is sacrosanct and family worth dying – or killing – for.

Whilst his prospective son-in-law and a friend are researching “The Knowledge” one of them is involved in an accident that releases a spiteful demonic presence last seen during the Great Plague. This hateful spirit has nasty plans for London and quickly starts to enact them.

With Constantine pathetically unavailable Chas is forced to take action himself, aided by a few plucky cabbies and an extraordinarily tempting American lady he found in the back of his cab. Luckily this bloke at the pub, last guardian of the Secret History of Licensed Hackney Carriage Drivers, is on hand to explain the true meaning of The Knowledge: the mystic origin of the 320 routes all cabbies must learn before they qualify, and how the twenty-five thousand street names, esoteric stops and countless places of interest visited by tourists have kept our great metropolis safe and secure for four centuries…

More dramatic than terrifying, this is a cracking magical mystery (originally released as a 5 issue miniseries) with pitifully human heroes giving their all for just the right reasons; a delightful treat for jaded readers who might be in need of light refreshment before plunging back into the bleak and sordid cauldron of extreme, urban horror, but a terrific tale with which to break in prospective new fans.

© 2008, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Dracula


Adapted by Otto Binder & Craig Tennis, art by Alden McWilliams (Ballantine Books)
No ISBN: U2271

You’re never to young to be exposed to the classics or scared out of your wits, and this delightful remnant from my own far-distant youth always brings back the gory, glory days of Bela Lugosi on TV and trying to sneak in to the latest Hammer Horror at the pictures (too young, not too cheap!) as well as such diverse treats as Famous Monsters of Filmland and other assorted illicit thrills that made we baby-boomers such terrific well-rounded, fully-socialised individuals.

At a time when scary movies, as well as Super-Spies, superheroes and comics in general, were all experiencing a popular revival, lots of strips made the jump to paperback format as publishers courted new markets. Along with lots of Mad collections, newspaper comic-strips, resized black and white comicbook reprints (such as High Camp Superheroes) and a host of other retreads, the occasional all-new item appeared.

One such is this delightfully forthright, faithful and respectful – if tension and terror free – adaptation of Bram Stoker’s gothic classic, adroitly encapsulated by comics and pulp sci fi legend Otto Binder (and Craig Tennis – of whom I know almost nothing other than he was a TV scripter) and drawn by the “deserves-to-be-legendary” Al McWilliams, a superb comics illustrator and draughtsman often confused with and nearly as good as his near-namesake Al Williamson.

The story is as you remember it; effective and pretty rather than beautiful and terrifying, but for a little seven year old it was a treasured item to be pored over, traced and adored, and today’s film fans might be enticed by Christopher Lee’s voluble introduction.

Even though it was reprinted by Manor Books in 1975, I suspect this isn’t the easiest of books to find, and to be completely honest the alternating portrait and landscape layouts make reading it a bit of a juggling act, but still and all I wish somebody somewhere would rescue this little gem from near obscurity. Any opportunistic publishers listening out there?
© 1966 Russ Jones Productions.

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Giraffes in my Hair: a Rock ‘n’ Roll Life


By Bruce Paley & Carol Swain (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60669-162-6

Biographies are usually about interesting people and/or interesting times. Or at least famous ones. That makes this fascinating new book relating the incredible life-on-the-edge of ordinary hippie Bruce Paley an engrossing double-threat. Paley isn’t a superstar, he’s just a guy who turned 18 during the Summer of Love, bummed and scammed his way across America, saw some bands, met some girls, narrowly dodged the Draft and had a few memorable experiences along the way.

Captivatingly illustrated by Paley’s partner Carol Swain in her trademark monochrome line and textures style, we see his highs and lows: life as heroin addict, hookers and Black Panthers, getting by in crappy jobs, following the ever-changing music scene and even the rare brushes with real fame we’ve all experienced: in this case a short, intense friendship with doomed rock star Johnny Thunders.

Paley isn’t a particularly likable guy, but he and his life are real and human and worth recording – and this small saga of someone surviving some of our most turbulent times is a magical testament to creativity, durability and human adaptability. This is a captivating story and a brilliant use of our medium…

© 2009 Bruce Paley and Carol Swain. All rights Reserved.

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Priscilla Darling


By Maz (Humorbooks)
No ISBN:

This little gem is a relic from a simpler time (although a quick scan of the internet reveals it to be still delightfully popular and readily available) when innocent smut was good, solid business, and genteel ribaldry could be infinitely double entendred for gentle laughs. Priscilla’s tale is the slight saga of an innocent English girl of good character and solid breeding who leaves her decent, upstanding family to go in search of happiness; becoming a very modern miss after illuminating encounters with “Ban the Bomb” marchers, soviet spies, Arab slavers, Hindu gurus, Eton-educated cannibals, assorted bandits and the good old British Navy.

This type of tale was very popular in the 1960s as cautious publishers tentatively acknowledged the zeitgeist of the times by not so much “Swinging” as “Gently Swaying”, but the real appeal of this still marvelously funny book is the copious vignettes, cartoons and saucy illustrations by the author: Dutch master storyteller, film-maker, draftsman and cartoonist Alfred Leonard Mazure who worked in Britain under the pen-name Maz.

Self-taught, Mazure (1914-1974) began his career in the Netherlands in 1932 with The Chef in Nieuwe Utrechtse Courant and De Prins, before embarking on a six-year journey of discovery through Europe and Africa. On his return to Holland in 1938 he created the seminal martial arts detective strip Dick Bos, best known to older fans and cognoscenti for their unique packaging (7cm broad and 11cm high {3″ x 4″} pocket sized digests).

Maz was the victim of an appalling, draconian contract in his own country, and remained anonymous and underpaid before moving to England after the War, where he gained a certain degree of fame and success with newspaper strips such as Dad and Egbert in John Bull and Passing Show, Sam Stone and Bruce Bunter in The Daily Herald (1948 to 1950), the brilliant adventure comedy Romeo Brown in The Daily Mirror (from 1954 to 1957 when he left the strip to the even more gifted Jim Holdaway), Jane, daughter of Jane – also in the fabulously comics-friendly Mirror – from 1961 to 1963 and Lindy Leigh for “top-shelf” men’s magazine Mayfair from 1969 to 1970.

Produced at the beginning of the 1960s sexual revolution, Priscilla Darling is a book crafted for an adult audience that probably knew less about sex and relationships than the average nine year old these days, but it’s undoubtedly a true guilty pleasure for anybody who can remember chaste kisses, the thrill of pursuit and the (far too) occasional coy and joyous surrender, anybody who yearns for beautifully rendered, sexually simpler times and anyone with an undying love of great cartooning.
© 1964 A. L. Mazure. All rights reserved.

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Requiem Vampire Knight Tome 2: Dracula and The Vampires Ball


By Pat Mills & Ledroit (Panini Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-438-6

The second double compilation of Pat Mills and Olivier Ledroit’s darkly spectacular masterpiece of nihilistic anti-heroism intensifies the decadent horrors with the next two translated volumes that created such a storm when first released in France. Dracula and The Vampire Ball resumes the tale of Heinrich Augsburg, a Nazi soldier doomed to unlive his life as a vampire warrior in a macabre inverse world of evil, which began in Requiem Vampire Knight Tome 1: Resurrection and Danse Macabre.

Resurrection is a brooding, blood-drenched world of eternal strife and warfare: a grim, fantastic mirror of Earth with the seas and land-masses reversed, where time runs backwards, populated by all the worst sinners of Earth reincarnated as monsters of myth – a realm where the ranked dead expiate or exacerbate the sins of their former lives.

This tome further explores the deeds that brought Heinrich (now called Requiem) to the very apex of the hell-world’s hierarchy as a full knight at the court of Dracula, trapped in a spiral of bloodletting, debauchery and intrigue. His position is not secure. Not only has he earned the enmity of the treacherous faction of elite Nosferatu led by Lady Claudia Demona, Lord Mortis and Baron Samedi, but it appears that he may be a returned soul…

Long before Augsberg died on a frozen battlefield, killed by a Russian he was trying to rape, the Templar Heinrich Barbarossa had committed such atrocities in the name of Christianity that he was guaranteed a place in Dracula’s inner circle when he inevitably reached Resurrection. But soon this new Vampire Knight Thurim committed an unpardonable crime and was excised from the court and Resurrection itself.

But now Requiem, already plagued by memories of his doomed affair with the Jewess Rebecca, is the subject of dangerous talk. Far too many vampires are remarking how similar to the disgraced Thurim the newcomer seems…

And what’s worse for him is that as the interminable battles (incredibly realised by the epic mastery of Ledroit) with such foes as the Gods of Limbo, the arcane order of Archaeologists, Lamias, Werewolves, Ghouls and others, Requiem discovers that Rebecca too is on Resurrection and the only way she can find peace is to “expire” the one responsible for her being there…

Blending decadent, opulent, Machiavellian dalliance with the wildest dreams – and grim, black wit – of a new De Sade, the tensions of the palace even outstrip the constant eye-popping action on myriad battlefields, so this book ends far too quickly on yet another cliffhanger when Rebecca is first captured by the Vampires only to escape with the still besotted and now wildly off-reservation Requiem. And their headlong flight has catapulted the doomed ex-lovers straight into the mouth of a cosmic dragon storm…

Supplemented by a gallery of the artist’s series paintings this astonishing, captivating work for the Goth within is an adult fantasy fan’s darkest dream come true. More please and soon…

© 2000, 2001, 2009 Nickel, Mills, Ledroit. All rights Reserved.

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Wonder Woman: the Once and Future Story


By Trina Robbins, Colleen Doran & Jackson Guice (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-373

Every so often the intention to do good generates an above average comics product such as this one-shot created to raise awareness of domestic violence. A hugely important issue, and one that far too many unfortunate children are sadly aware of from an early age, it is also one of the oldest “relevant” topics in comic book history: Superman memorably dealt rough justice to a “wife-beater” in his very first adventure (Action Comics #1, June 1938).

Less visceral, but far more even-handed, is this beautiful, subtle tale-within-a-tale from Trina Robbins, illustrated by Colleen Doran and Jackson Guice. Wonder Woman is summoned to an archeological dig in Ireland by a husband and wife team to verify the finding of a 3000 year old tomb that contains the body and burial trappings of a princess from the fabled island of Themyscira.

As Wonder Woman translates the scrolls detailing the story of Princess Artemis of Ephesus, daughter of Queen Alcippe, who was taken as a slave by the Greek hero Theseus, she slowly realizes that the animosity of dig-chief James Kennealy is perhaps more than professional jealousy, and that his wife’s Moira’s defensive attitude and constant apologies mask a dark secret. Artemis’s brutal, painful quest to rescue her mother mirrors Moira’s journey to awareness as both women, separated by three millennia, take control of their so different, tragically similar lives.

Challenging, powerful but still wonderfully entertaining, this is a tale both worthy and worthwhile.
© 1998 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.