Petey & Pussy


By John Kerschbaum (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-979-1

Finally generally available in England (as well as from your usual online sources) is this latest compilation from Xeric-Award winning cartoonist (for The Wiggly Reader) John Kerschbaum who regularly dispatches the strangest and most engrossing cartoon treats from his lair in 21st century Brooklyn.

Petey & Pussy is surreal, rude, crass, crude with studied obnoxiousness, and bitterly, bitingly funny in a perfect post-modern manner. Petey is the foulest of all dogs and he’s got a balding human head on his shoulders. His best pal is a sleek, short-sighted house-cat, afflicted with the same sort of bonce. Both drink, smoke and talk far, far too much. To themselves, each other, all the animals and even humans – especially Joe the Barman who keeps them supplied with booze and smokes…

Blending gross-out comedy, wry observation and sheer manic invention Kerschbaum takes the imagined lives of ordinary urban house-pets – such as Bernie the suicidal yet unkillable caged bird or Hercules, the Boa Constrictor of Death – and mixes them with the tribulations of modern society – senile dementia, thieving relatives, lost eye-glasses, bars where you can’t smoke and the inescapable fact that everybody is a total jerk – to reveal an utterly captivating world of bawdy, grown-up laughs that only the most po-faced conservative could resist.

Adult fun for slacker smart-asses of all ages guaranteed to make your beer spurt out of your nose so read carefully…

For more, check out his website.
© 2008 John Kerschbaum. All Rights Reserved.

Essential Spider-Man volume 1


By Stan Lee & Steve Ditko (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2192-3

Marvel is often termed “the House that Jack Built” and King Kirby’s contributions are undeniable and inescapable in the creation of a new kind of comic book story-telling, but there was another unique visionary at Atlas-Comics-as-was; one whose creativity and even philosophy seemed diametrically opposed to the bludgeoning power, vast imaginative scope and clean, broad lines of Kirby’s ever-expanding search for gods and the infinite.

Steve Ditko was quiet and unassuming, voluntarily diffident to the point of invisibility though his work was both subtle and striking: innovative, meticulously polished, always questing for detail he ever explored the man within. He found heroism – and humour and ultimate evil – all contained within the frail but noble confines of human scope and consciousness. His drawing could be oddly disquieting… and, when he wanted, almost creepy.

Drawing monster and mystery tales for Stan Lee, Ditko had been given his own title. Amazing Adventures/Amazing Adult Fantasy featured a subtler brand of yarn than Furry Underpants Monsters, invading aliens and the ilk which, though individually entertaining, were slowly losing traction in the world of comics since National/DC had reintroduced costumed heroes. Lee and Kirby had responded with Fantastic Four (and the ahead-of-its-time Incredible Hulk) but there was no indication of the renaissance to come when Amazing Fantasy #15 (the last issue) cover featured a brand new adventure character: Spider-Man.

In 11 captivating pages ‘Spider-Man!’ told the parable of Peter Parker, a smart but aloof High School kid who was bitten by a radioactive spider. Discovering his body had developed arachnid abilities which he augmented with his own natural engineering genius, he did what any lonely, geeky nerd would do when given such a gift – he tried to cash in for girls, fame and money.

Making a costume to hide his identity secret in case he made a fool of himself, Parker/ Spider-Man became a minor celebrity – and a self-important one. To his eternal regret, when a thief fled past he didn’t lift a finger to stop him, only to find a burglar had murdered his uncle Ben when he returned home.

Crazy for revenge Parker hunted the thief who had made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known, only to find that it was the felon he couldn’t be bothered with. His social irresponsibility had led to the death of the man who raised him and the boy swore to use his powers to help others…

It wasn’t a new story, but the setting was one familiar to every kid reading it and the artwork was downright spooky. This wasn’t the gleaming high-tech world of moon-rockets, giant monsters and flying cars- this stuff could happen to anybody… Amazing Fantasy #15 came out the same month as Tales to Astonish #35 (cover-dated September 1962) which was the first to feature the Astonishing Ant-Man in costumed capers, but it was the last issue of Ditko’s Amazing playground.

However the tragic last-ditch tale had struck a chord with the reading public and by Christmas a new comicbook superstar was ready to launch in his own title, with Ditko eager to show what he could do with his first returning character since the demise of the Charlton hero Captain Atom (see Action Heroes Archive volume 1, ISBN 1-4012-0302-7). Holding on to the “Amazing” prefix to help jog reader’s memories, the bi-monthly Amazing Spider-Man #1 had a March cover-date and two stories. It prominently featured the Fantastic Four and took the readers by storm. The first tale, again simply entitled ‘Spider-Man!’ recapitulated the origin whilst adding a brilliant twist to the conventional mix.

The wall-crawling hero was feared and reviled by the general public thanks in no small part to J. Jonah Jameson, a newspaper magnate who pilloried the adventurer from spite and for profit. With typical comic book irony, Spider-Man then had to save Jameson’s astronaut son John from a faulty space capsule… The second story ‘Vs the Chameleon!’ found the cash-strapped kid trying to force his way onto the roster of the Fantastic Four whilst a spy impersonated the web-spinner to steal military secrets, in a perfect example of the high-strung, antagonistic crossovers and cameos that so startled the jaded kids of 1963. Heroes just didn’t act like that…

With the second issue our new kind of hero began a meteoric rise in quality and innovative storytelling. ‘Duel to the Death with the Vulture!’ found Peter Parker chasing after a flying thief as much for profit as justice. Desperate to help his widowed Aunt make ends meet, the hero began to take photos of his cases to sell to Jameson’s Daily Bugle, making his personal gadfly his sole means of support. Along with comedy and soap-operatic melodrama Ditko’s action sequences were imaginative and magnificently visceral, with odd angle shots and quirky, mis-balanced poses adding a vertiginous sense of unease to the fight scenes. But crime wasn’t the only threat to the world and Spider-Man was just as (un)comfortable battling science-fictional menaces like ‘The Uncanny Threat of the Terrible Tinkerer!’

Amazing Spider-Man #3 introduced one of the young hero’s greatest enemies in ‘Versus Doctor Octopus’, a full-length epic wherein a dedicated scientist survived an atomic accident which grafted mechanical tentacles to his body. Power-mad, Otto Octavius even thrashed Spider-Man, sending the lad into a depression until an impromptu pep-talk from the Human Torch galvanized Spider-Man to one of his greatest victories.

‘Nothing Can Stop… the Sandman!’ was another instant classic as a common thug gained the power to transform to sand (another pesky nuclear cock-up) and invaded Parker’s school, whilst issue #5 found the web-spinner ‘Marked for Destruction by Dr. Doom!’ and not so much winning as surviving his battle against the deadliest man on Earth. Presumably he didn’t mind too much as this marked the transition from bi-monthly to monthly status for the series.

Sometime mentor Curtis Connors debuted in #6 when Spidey came ‘Face-to-face with… The Lizard!’ as the hero fought his battle away from the concrete canyons of New York – specifically in the murky Florida Everglades, but he was back in the Big Apple in #7 to tackle ‘The Return of the Vulture’. Fun and youthful hi-jinks were a signature feature of the series, as was Parker’s budding romance with “older woman” Betty Brant.

She was Jameson’s secretary at the Bugle and youthful exuberance was the underlying drive in #8’s lead tale ‘The Living Brain!’ a robot calculator that threatened to expose Spider-Man’s secret identity before running amok at beleaguered Midtown High, just as Parker was finally beating the stuffings out of school bully Flash Thompson. This 17 page joy was accompanied by ‘Spiderman Tackles the Torch!’ (a 6 page vignette drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Ditko) wherein a boisterous wall-crawler gate-crashed a beach part thrown by the flaming hero’s girlfriend with explosive consequences.

Amazing Spider-Man #9 was a qualitative step-up in dramatic terms as Aunt May was revealed to be chronically ill – adding to Parker’s financial woes – and the action was supplied by ‘The Man Called Electro!’ a super-criminal with grand aspirations. Spider-Man was always a loner, never far from the streets and small-scale-crime, and with this tale wherein he also quells a prison riot single handed, Ditko’s preference for tales of gangersterism began to show through; a predilection confirmed in #10’s ‘The Enforcers!’ a classy mystery where a masked mastermind known as the Big Man used a position of trust at the Bugle to organize all the New York mobs into one unbeatable army against decency. Longer plot-strands are also introduced as Betty Brant disappears, but most fans remember this one for the spectacularly climactic seven-page fight scene in an underworld chop-shop that has still never been topped for action-choreography.

‘Turning Point’ and ‘Unmasked by Dr. Octopus!’ saw the return of the deadly scientist and the revelation of Betty’s dark secret in a tragedy-filled tale of extortion and non-stop that stretched from Philadelphia to the Bronx Zoo and again tempered the melodrama with spectacular fight scenes in unusual and exotic locations.

A new super-foe premiered in #13 with ‘The Menace of Mysterio!’ hired by Jameson to capture Spider-Man but with his own dark agenda, whilst the next issue was a true landmark as a criminal mastermind manipulated a Hollywood studio into making a movie about the wall-crawler. With guest-stars the Enforcers and the Incredible Hulk ‘The Grotesque Adventure of the Green Goblin’ is most notable for introducing Spider-Man’s most perfidious and flamboyant enemy.

Jungle superman and thrill-junkie ‘Kraven the Hunter!’ made Spider-Man his intended prey at the behest of the Chameleon in #15, whilst the Ringmaster and his Circus of Evil prompted #16’s dazzling ‘Duel with Daredevil’ but separating those two classics here are the varied and captivating contents of Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 (Summer 1964), starting with a 41 page epic peppered with guest-stars from the burgeoning Marvel Universe as the Web-Spinner battled Doctor Octopus, Kraven, Sandman, Mysterio, Electro and the Vulture, collectively known as ‘The Sinister Six!‘ This bombastic clash was augmented by a pin-up gallery of Famous Foes, fact-features ‘The Secrets of Spider-Man’, ‘Spidey’s Super Senses’, ‘Secrets of Spider-Man’s Mask’, a selection of posters and the legendary comedy short ‘How Stan Lee and Steve Ditko Create Spider-Man!’

An ambitious three-part saga began in Amazing Spider-Man #17, which saw the hero touch emotional bottom before rising to triumphant victory over all manner of enemies. ‘The Return of the Green Goblin!’ saw the hero endure renewed print assaults from the Daily Bugle as the Goblin began a war of nerves using the Enforcers, Sandman and a host of thugs to publicly humiliate the hero, just as Aunt May’s health took a drastic downward turn.

Continued in ‘The End of Spider-Man!’ and concluded in ‘Spidey Strikes Back!’ featuring a telling team-up with friendly rival the Human Torch, this extended tale proved that the fans were ready for every kind of narrative experiment (single issue and even two stories per issue were still the norm in 1964) and Stan and Steve were prepared to try it.

The book closes with ‘The Coming of the Scorpion!’ wherein Jameson let his obsessive hatred for the arachnid hero get the better of him, hiring scientist Farley Stillwell to give a private detective Scorpion-based superpowers. Unfortunately the process drove the subject mad before he could capture Spidey, leaving the wall-crawler with yet another super-nutcase to deal with…

Such was the life of comic’s most misunderstood hero and this gloriously economical collection is especially welcome because of a secret I can now reveal:

Colour printing has never really been Steve Ditko’s friend.

His wealth of line variety, his blend of moody blacks and nuanced shading as well as his simplified, almost “big-foot” style of design and drawing is most powerful as dark against light – Black on White. These landmark tales still resonate with power and creativity and they’re at their very best without the pretty tints and hues – although don’t let me stop you from buying other versions of these oft-reprinted gems – just read this book first!

© 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Batgirl: Death Wish


By Kelley Puckett, Chuck Dixon, Damion Scott & Robert Campanella (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-707-8

Here’s another chronologically complex but swift-moving, sure-footed combat classic featuring Cassandra Cain, the third and by far most competent and compelling Batgirl.

When Gotham City was devastated by an earthquake and abandoned by the US government (Batman: Cataclysm ISBN13: 978-1-56389-527-2 and Batman: No Man’s Land Volumes 1-3, ISBN 13’s: 978-1-56389-564-7, 978-1-56389-599-9 & 978-1-56389-634-7 respectively), a few heroes stayed to protect the innocent. One of these was a new, mute incarnation of Batgirl.

The crisis ended and a semblance of normality returned to the battered metropolis. The new heroine was brought under the wing of Barbara Gordon, wheelchair-bound crime-fighter Oracle (and the previous Batgirl) who now runs the Birds of Prey.

Cassandra, unable to communicate in any manner but fluent in gesture reading and body-language, was raised as an experiment by super-assassin David Cain. Her brain’s language centres opened by a telepath, Cassandra was beginning to adapt to a normal world, when she encountered Lady Shiva – the most dangerous person on Earth.

This ultimate martial artist was initially defeated but the two agreed to meet again in a year – in one final death match.

This fourth collection of tales gathers together Batgirl #17-20, 22, 23, 25, and Batgirl Secret Files #1: a seemingly disjointed array of stories that read perfectly well in this order and clearly show how the old-fashioned stand-alone story can still work in a modern milieu.

Kelley Puckett is a master of fast-paced, visual story-telling, allowing the artist to carry the tales in frenetic bursts of information in motion. Pages go by without a single word and this discipline carries the reader through the adventures at dizzying speeds. Here Damion Scott and Robert Campenella give full rein to their cinematic impulses as the new Batgirl prepares for her date with death by invading a US government spook base in search of a corrupt agent, repeatedly trips over Boy Wonder Robin as both discover they’re working the same case from opposite ends, and explores the ramifications of the death penalty – by far and away the best and most troubling tale in the book – when she intervenes in the execution of a felon she’d previously captured…

Throughout these tales (if I’m vague it’s because most of the little gems are inexplicably untitled) Cassandra’s problems with speech and inability to read are handled cleverly and with sensitivity, and when Chuck Dixon guest-scripts a telling and bitterly funny parable about families that singular McGuffin is the trigger for Batgirl to join Stephanie Brown (the hero-in-training called Spoiler) in an attempt to handle the fallout of a kidnapping gone bad.

Puckett resumes with a moody tale as David Cain returns to Gotham with a contract to kill one of the “Bat-Squad”, and in the penultimate story ‘Little Talk’ Batman and Oracle debate the young hero’s motivation in meeting Shiva again in a moody prelude to the climactic ‘I am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds’ which features the ultimate confrontation between the two greatest martial artists on Earth – a tale full of style and surprise which still finds room to reveal a deep well of psychological subtext.

These gripping tales of flash and razzle-dazzle are picture-perfect examples of comics combat, with just the right ratio of action to plot, to keep the reader’s pulses pounding and eyes wide. Great, great stuff…

© 2001, 2002, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

House of M: Avengers


By Christopher Gage, Mike Perkins & Andrew Hennessey (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2750-5

In the company crossover event House of M reality was rewritten (yes, again!) when the sometime Avenger Scarlet Witch had a breakdown and altered Earth continuity so that Magneto’s mutants took control of society and where normal humans (“sapiens”) are an acknowledged evolutionary dead-end living out their lives and destined for extinction within two generations.

Collecting the ancillary miniseries House of M: Avengers this volume is set in a world of perfect order, but one where certain malcontents and criminals are determined not to go quietly. Rallying around escaped convict and artificial superman Luke Cage, a gang of criminals calling themselves the Avengers fight to survive and get by however they can, inadvertently becoming a rallying point for Sapiens in a world only too eager to see them all gone…

With the likes of Hawkeye, Tigra, Mockingbird, Moon Knight, Iron Fist, Misty Knight (no relation, not even close), Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu, Mantis, Swordsman, White Tiger and the Punisher on hand, as well as villains such as Kingpin, Elektra, Bullseye, Taskmaster, Black Cat, Typhoid Mary, the brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Gladiator among the cast there’s plenty of familiar faces and lots of action, but as the countdown ticks towards a big climax and the re-establishment of “real” continuity it’s hard to muster any sense of connection.

Marvel has used this plot to kill off and resurrect our favourites purely for momentary cheap effect so many times its difficult to care…

Weaving established Marvel continuity skilfully into their portion of the overarching epic Gage and Perkins tell an intriguing but frustratingly quick and facile tale that just can’t stand alone (so you will need to read at least some of the other House of M collections for the full picture) that doesn’t fairly reflect their great talents nor deliver the punch we were all hoping for. Pretty, but not for the casual or occasional reader

© 2007, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Blackhawk Archives Volume 1


By Will Eisner, Chuck Cuidera, Reed Crandall & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-700-8

The early days of the American comicbook industry were awash with both opportunity and talent and these factors also coincided with a vast population hungry for cheap entertainment. Comics had no fans or collectors; only a large market-place open to all varied aspects of yarn-spinning and tale-telling. Thus, even though loudly isolationist and more than six months away from active inclusion in World War II, creators like Will Eisner and publishers like Everett M. (better known as “Busy”) Arnold felt that Americans were ready for the themed anthology title Military Comics.

Nobody was ready for Blackhawk.

Military Comics #1 launched on May 30th 1941 (with an August off-sale or cover-date) and included in its gritty, two-fisted line-up Death Patrol by Jack Cole, Miss America, Fred Guardineer’s Blue Tracer, X of the Underground, the Yankee Eagle, Q-Boat, Shot and Shell, Archie Atkins and Loops and Banks by “Bud Ernest” (actually aviation-nut and unsung comics genius Bob Powell), but none of the strips, not even Cole’s surreal and suicidal team of hell-bent fliers, had the instant cachet and sheer appeal of Eisner and Powell’s “Foreign Legion of the Air” led by the charismatic Dark Knight known only as Blackhawk.

Chuck Cuidera, already famed for creating The Blue Beetle for Fox, drew ‘the Origin of Blackhawk’ for the first issue, wherein a lone pilot fighting the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 was shot down by Nazi Ace Von Tepp, who then went on to bomb the farmhouse sheltering the pilot’s family. Rising from his plane’s wreckage the distraught pilot vows vengeance…

Two years later, with the Nazis in control of most of Europe Von Tepp’s unassailable position is threatened by a mysterious paramilitary squadron of unbeatable fliers, dedicated to crushing injustice and smashing the Axis war-machine…

Eisner wrote the first four Blackhawk episodes and Cuidera stayed aboard until issue #11 – although the artist would return in later years. Many of the stories were originally untitled but have been conveniently characterized with such stirring designations as issue #2’s ‘The Coward Dies Twice’ wherein the team – “the last free men of the conquered countries” offer a deserter from a Spitfire Squadron a chance to redeem himself…

The easy mix of patriotism, adventure and slapstick was magnified by the inclusion of Chop-Chop in ‘The Doomed Squadron’: a comedy Chinaman painful to see through modern eyes, but a stock type considered almost as mandatory as a heroic leading man in those dark days, and not just in comics. At least the man was a brave and formidable fighter both on the ground and in a plane.

‘Desert Death’ took the team to Suez for the first of many memorable Arabian adventures as Nazi agitators attempted to foment a revolution among the tribesmen that would destroy the British. This tale was also notable for the introduction of a type of sexy siren beloved of Eisner and Quality Comics that would populate the strip until DC bought the property in 1957. There was also a secret map of Blackhawk Island, mysterious base of the ebon-clad freedom fighters.

With issue #5 Dick French assumed the writing role and ‘Scavengers of Doom’ tells a biting tale of battlefield looters allied to a Nazi mastermind setting an inescapable trap for the heroic fliers. More importantly French began to provide distinct and discrete characters for the previously anonymous minor players. In #6 the rapidly gelling team joined the frantic hunt for a germ weapon the Gestapo were desperate to possess in the spectacular alpine adventure ‘The Vial of Death’ whilst #7 (the first issue released after America joined the War – although the stories had not yet caught up to reality) found the boys prowling the Mongolian Steppe on horseback to thwart ‘The Return of Genghis Khan’.

‘The Sunken Island of Death’ from #8 was a striking maritime romp as the warring powers battled to possess an island freshly risen from the Atlantic depths strategically equidistant between The US, Britain and Festung Europa (that’s what the Nazis called the fortress they had made of mainland Europe). Although complete in itself it was also the first of an experimental, thematic three-part saga that stretched the way comics stories were told.

There were many melodramatic touches that made the Blackhawks so memorable in the eyes of a wide-eyed populace of thrill-hungry kids. There was the cool, black leather uniforms and peaked caps. The unique – but real – Grumman F5F-1 Skyrocket planes they flew from their secret island base and their eerie battle-cry “Hawkaaaaa!” But perhaps the oddest idiosyncrasy to modern readers was that they had their own song which André, Stanislaus, Olaf, Chuck, Hendrickson and Chop-Chop would sing as they dived into battle. And just to be informative and inclusive the music and lyrics were published in this issue and are re-presented here – just remember this is written for seven really tough guys to sing while dodging bullets…

Military #9 led with ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ as the team discovered that a fallen comrade did not actually die but was hideously disfigured saving them, whilst the next issue’s tale ‘Trapped in the Devil’s Oven’ was another desert adventure which focused on the new science of plastic surgery and restored said hero to full fighting trim. Issue #11, Cuidera’s last, saw the squadron turn their attention to Japan – as reality caught up with publishing schedules. Intriguingly, ‘Fury in the Philippines’ starts quietly with the entire team calmly discussing carrying on against the Nazis or switching their attentions to the Pacific Theatre of Operations, until comedy relief Chop-Chop sways the debaters with an impassioned stand. Though inarguably an offensive stereotype visually, the Chinese warrior was often given the best lines and most memorable actions. A subversive attempt to shake up those hide-bound prejudices, perhaps?

Notwithstanding, the resultant mission against the Japanese fleet was a cataclysmic Battle Royale, full of the kind of vicarious pay-back that demoralized Americans needed to see.

‘The Curse of Xanukhara’ added fantasy elements to the gritty mix of blood and iron as the team’s hunt for a stolen code book led them to occupied Borneo and even Tokyo; a classy espionage thriller that marked the start of a superlative run of thrillers illustrated by the incredible Reed Crandall. The artist’s realistic line and the graceful poise of his work – especially on exotic femmes fatale and trustworthy Girls-next-door – made his strips an absolute joy to behold.

‘Blackhawk vs. The Butcher’ (#13, November 1942) written by new regular scripter Bill Woolfolk returned the team to Nazi territory as a fleeing Countess turned the team’s attention to the most sadistic Gauleiter (Nazi regional leader in charge of a conquered territory) in the German Army. What follows is a spectacular saga of justice and righteous vengeance, whilst ‘Tondeleyo’ was a different kind of thriller as an exotic siren used her almost unholy allure to turn the entire team against each other.

The quasi-supernatural overtones held firm in the stirring ‘Men Who Never Came Back’ when the team travelled to India to foil a Japanese plot, in a portmanteau tale narrated by three witches, Trouble Terror and Mystery, eerily presaging the EC horror classics that would cement Crandall’s artistic reputation more than a decade later.

‘Blackhawk vs. the Fox’ pitted the heroes against a Nazi strategic wizard (a clear reference to the epic victories of Erwin Rommel) in the burning sands of Libya, one of the most authentic battle tales in the canon, and this volume concludes with a racy tale of vengeance and tragedy as Japanese traitor Yoshi uses her wiles to punish the military government of Nippon, with Blackhawk as her unwitting tool in ‘The Golden Bell of Soong-Toy!’

These stories were produced at a pivotal moment in both comics and world history, a blend of weary sophistication and glorious, juvenile bravado. Like the best movies of the time, Casablanca, Foreign Correspondent, Freedom Radio, Captain of the Clouds, The Day Will Dawn, The First of the Few, In Which we Serve and all the rest with their understated, overblown way of accepting duty and loss, these rousing tales of the miracles that good men can do are some of the Golden Age’s finest moments. In fact these are some of the best comics stories of their time and I sincerely wish DC had proceeded with further collections. And so will you…

© 1941-1942, 2001 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Batgirl: Fists of Fury


By Kelley Puckett, Scott Peterson, Damion Scott, Vincent Giarrano, Phil Noto & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-820-4

After Gotham City was devastated by an earthquake (Batman: Cataclysm ISBN13: 978-1-56389-527-2) it was abandoned by the US government in a prescient foretaste of what happened to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (see also Batman: No Man’s Land Volumes 1-3, ISBN 13’s: 978-1-56389-564-7, 978-1-56389-599-9, and 978-1-56389-634-7 respectively). From the rubble, a few heroes struggled to protect the innocent. One of these was a new incarnation of Batgirl.

The crisis ended, a semblance of normality returned to the battered metropolis, and the new heroine got her own series. Mentored by Babs Gordon, the wheelchair-bound crime-fighter called Oracle (and the previous Batgirl) who now runs the Birds of Prey, the new wearer of the cape-and-cowl is something of a problem.

Raised as an experiment by martial arts super-assassin David Cain, she could not speak or communicate in any normal manner since her language centres were over-ridden by Cain to make combat her only method of expression. An apparent runaway, she was adopted by Batman as a weapon in his never-ending battle, but the more humane Oracle has become her guardian and teacher.

Her learning disabilities alleviated by a telepath, Cassandra Cain is beginning to adapt to a normal world, but things are still skewed since she defeated Lady Shiva – the most dangerous person on Earth – in a martial arts duel. By beating someone even Batman never could, she’s forced her close circle of new friends to look at her in a different way, and the inevitable challengers for Shiva’s title are now dogging her tracks…

This third collection of tales gathers together Batgirl #15, 16, 21, and 26-28: a seemingly disjointed array of stories that actually blend together surprisingly well.

Puckett and Peterson’s scripts are always lightning paced, sparsely dialogued and both have perfect ears for the great one-liner. The art from Damion Scott, Vincent Giarrano, Phil Noto, Robert Campenella and Jesse Delperdang is light and brisk with a delightful flavour of anime – if not quite manga – about it, and three of the six untitled stories (don’t ask me why) run the range from the dramatic tale of a mad scientist’s murder ray, a boy’s desperate plea to stop his dad becoming a killer and a purely manic tie-in to the Last Laugh company crossover event (Batman: the Joker’s Last Laugh ISBN: 978-1-84576-843-0) featuring a startling battle with intangible villain Shadow Thief.

The remaining three adventures deal with the fallout of Batgirl’s defeat of Shiva (set during the time of Batman: Bruce Wayne Murderer? – ISBN-13: 978-1-56389-913-3): a fast-paced, captivating treatise on girl friends a la Thelma and Louise (or perhaps Buffy and Faith) as Robin-in-training Spoiler briefly becomes Batgirl’s best buddy to train, talk trash about dads and generally take care of Gotham in the Big Man’s absence.

Spellbinding, overwhelmingly rapid-paced and brilliantly executed, these tales are a breakneck, supercharged thrill-ride that concentrates on non-stop action yet still manages to be heavily plot-based with genuine empathy and emotional impact. A perfect book to remind you just why and how comics are so great…

© 2001, 2002, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Middle Earth – The World of Tolkien Illustrated


By David Wenzel, with an introduction by Lin Carter (Centaur Books Inc.)
ISBN: 0-87818-014-1

With all the fuss being generated by the perpetual hubbub in regard to the upcoming Hobbit movie I thought I’d take refuge in the distant past, to a time when the Ralph Bakshi animated feature had so soured most fans to the concept of film adaptations that the only acceptable visual interpretations of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien were those generated by devoted fan-artists.

By 1977 The Lord of the Rings and its test-run The Hobbit were world classics of literature. There had even been a consequent fantasy novel revolution which spawned hundreds if not thousands of similar tales from dozens of publishers. Even comic books were slowly making inroads into this new-ish sub-genre (in Marvel Super Action #1, 1976, Doug Moench and Mike Ploog produced a delightful strip called Weirdworld that eventually evolved via Marvel Premier #38 into the groundbreaking Warriors of the Shadow Realm specials) and the independent phenomenon Elfquest was not too far on the horizon…

Still and all, dedicated, passionate purists had the field mostly to themselves and foremost among these was a young illustrator and sometime comics creator named David Wenzel.

Now the most memorable thing about those times is the perpetual cries you’d hear at every convention, launch or bookshop. You couldn’t move for the plaintive “That’s not what Hobbits look like!” At all those occasions I heard it least about this book and this artist’s interpretations…

Wenzel moved from comics to the field of fantasy and especially children’s illustration in the 1980s where he’s worked with icons like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and creators like Maurice Sendak, but his greatest achievement is probably the three part adaptation of The Hobbit he produced with Chuck Dixon and Sean Deming for Eclipse Comics in 1989 (and which I’m saving for a later date).

Before that though there was this lovely piece of work featuring extracts of Tolkien’s prose wedded to 15 lovely line drawings and 11 beautiful, sensitive watercolours with such titles as ‘Bagend’s Quiet is Shattered’, ‘Spiders and Swords in Mirkwood’ and ‘Conversations with Smaug’ that perfectly display the artist’s love of and reverence for the source material and his debt to cited influences Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, , Howard Pyle, Alphonse Mucha, Barry Windsor-Smith and Frank Frazetta; as well as Dutch painters Pieter Bruegel and Jan Steen.

Probably impossible to find in its original low-print-run original, I hope some enterprising entrepreneur is preparing this lovely art-book for a timely re-issue…
© 1977 Centaur Books Inc. Art ©1977 David Wenzel. All Rights Reserved.

Essential Hulk volume 2


By Stan Lee, Herb Trimpe, Marie Severin & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0795-8

Bruce Banner was a military scientist who was caught in a gamma bomb blast. As a result stress and other factors can cause him to transform into a giant green monster of unstoppable strength and fury.

After an initially troubled few years the gamma-irradiated goliath finally found his size 700 feet and a format that worked, swiftly becoming one of young Marvel’s most popular features. This second Essential volume, covering Tales to Astonish #92 -101, Incredible Hulk #102-117 and his first Annual (plus a rather tasty page-filler from Hulk #147) in bombastic black and white, covering his last days of shared occupancy before regaining a solo title when the company expanded its publishing output in early 1968.

Following directly on from the previous volume (ISBN: 978-0-7851-2374-3) this blockbuster tome opens with ‘Turning Point!’ (Tales to Astonish #92, June 1967) by Stan Lee, the superb and criminally underrated Marie Severin and inker Frank Giacoia, which saw the Jade Giant hunted through a terrified New York City as a prelude to a cataclysmic guest-battle in the next issue. The Hulk didn’t really team-up with visiting stars, he just got mad and smashed them. Such was certainly the case when he became ‘He Who Strikes the Silver Surfer!’ ironically driving off a fellow outcast who held the power to cure him of his metamorphing affliction.

Herb Trimpe, associated with the character for nearly a decade, began his tenure as Marie Severin’s inker with #94’s ‘To the Beckoning Stars!’ a terrific three-part thriller that found the Hulk transported to the interstellar retreat of the High Evolutionary to battle against recidivist beast-men on ‘A World He Never Made!’ before escaping a feral bloodbath in #96’s ‘What Have I Created?’. Returned to Earth, the Man-brute fell into a plot to overthrow America in ‘The Legions of: the Living Lightning!’, but the subversives conquest of a US military base in ‘The Puppet and the Power’ soon faltered ‘When the Monster Wakes!’ (this last inked by John Tartaglione).

Tales to Astonish was a “split-book”, with two star-features sharing billing, a strategy caused by Marvel’s having entered into a highly restrictive distribution deal to save the company during a publishing crisis at the end of the 1950s. At the time when the Marvel Age Revolution took fandom by storm, the company was confined to a release schedule of 16 titles each month, necessitating some doubling-up as characters became popular enough to carry their own strip. Fellow misunderstood misanthrope the Sub-Mariner had proved an ideal thematic companion since issue #70, and to celebrate the centenary of the title Tales to Astonish #100 featured a breathtaking “who’s strongest?” clash between the two anti-heroes as the Puppet Master decreed ‘Let There be Battle!’ and Lee, Severin and Dan Adkins made it so.

The next issue was the last. With number #102 the comic would be renamed The Incredible Hulk and the character’s success was assured. Before that however Lee, Severin and Giacoia set the scene with ‘Where Walk the Immortals!’ as Loki, Norse god of Evil transported Ol’ Greenskin to Asgard in an effort to distract all-father Odin’s attention from his other schemes.

The premiere issue (#102) of The Incredible Hulk launched with an April, 1968 cover-date. ‘…This World Not His Own!’ completed the Asgardian adventure and included a rehashed origin. The issue was written by rising star Gary Friedrich, drawn by Marie Severin and inked by veteran artist George Tuska. With extra pages came not extra plot but more action: issue #103’s ‘And Now… the Space Parasite!’ and #104’s ‘Ring Around the Rhino!’ (both inked by Giacoia) are paeans to the Green Goliath’s destructive potential and visceral appeal before a longer plot-strand, tinged with pathos and irony began in Incredible Hulk #105, courtesy of surprise scripters Roy Thomas and Bill Everett, ably illumined by Severin and Tuska.

‘This Monster Unleashed!’ found a radioactive and violently mutating victim of Soviet aggression dumped in New York, and easily capable of burning our dull-witted hero into glowing ashes. The second part, ‘Above the Earth… A Titan Rages!’ by Thomas and Archie Goodwin, was pencilled by Trimpe over Severin’s breakdowns, with Tuska inking; a muddle nearly as great as the story itself since the action abruptly switched from New York to Russia when the battling behemoths were abducted by Yuri Breslov, the Soviet counterpart to Nick Fury and his agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. who promptly lost them over the a rural farm collective.

The story neatly segued into a much more polished yarn in #107’s ‘Ten Rings Hath… the Mandarin’(Friedrich and Trimpe with wonderfully rugged inking from the great Syd Shores) as the oriental despot tried to enslave the emerald engine of destruction. The extended tale concluded with epic success as Stan Lee and Trimpe, inked by the legendary John Severin (yep, big brother) pulled all the strands together in the action-packed ‘Monster Triumphant!’ guest-starring Nick Fury, Yuri Breslov and even Chairman Mao Tse Tung!

The Incredible Hulk Annual #1 was one of the best comics of that year. Behind an iconic Steranko cover, Friedrich, Marie Severin and Syd Shores (with lots of last-minute inking assistance) had concocted a passionate, tense and melodramatic parable of alienation that nevertheless was one of the most action-stuffed fight fests ever seen. In 51 titanic pages ‘A Refuge Divided!’ saw the Hulk stumble upon the hidden Great Refuge of genetic outsiders The Inhumans, overpower Maximus the Mad and his band of super-rebels before fighting the immensely powerful Black Bolt to a standstill. This is the vicarious thrill taken to its ultimate, and still one of the very best non-Lee-Kirby tales of that period.

Incredible Hulk #109 takes up from the end of the Mandarin saga with the Hulk rampaging through Red China, but still without a settled creative team in place. ‘The Monster and the Man-Beast!’ was written by Stan Lee, laid out by Giacoia, pencilled by Trimpe and inked by John Severin, wherein the Hulk trashes the Chinese Army and interferes with a Red super-missile, only to be blasted into the Antarctic paradise known as the Savage Land. This preserve of dinosaurs and cavemen is a visually perfect home for the Hulk and the addition of Tarzan analogue Ka-Zar and an alien device designed to destroy the world ramped up the tension nicely.

‘Umbu the Unliving!’ (Lee, Trimpe John Severin) was another extraterrestrial device left to facilitate Earth’s demise, but Banner and his green alter-ego dispatch it with Ka-Zar’s assistance, leading to a two-part outer space epic ‘Shanghaied in Space!’ and ‘The Brute Battles On!’ which sees the planet-destroyer’s builders come looking for the saboteurs at the behest of the cosmic overlord, Galaxy Master.

Issue #113 returned the Hulk to Earth to battle an upgraded Sandman in ‘Where Fall the Shifting Sands!’ and the sinister silicon villain popped right back with the Mandarin beside him in #114’s ‘At Last I Will Have My Revenge!’, two fast-paced yarns that whetted the appetite for the extended return of the Jade Giant’s greatest foe.

‘The Leader Lives!’ began with the man-monster a prisoner of the US Army, when the Gamma Genius – as smart as the Hulk is strong – takes over the base for his own nefarious purposes. ‘The Eve… of Annihilation!’ revealed the Leader’s plans for our pitiful planet as the Hulk escaped and the saga – and this volume – explosively concludes in the ticking clock thriller ‘World’s End?’ notable not just for its tense dramatic denouement, but also for Herb Trimpe’s taking over the inking of his own pencils.

At least that’s where the book should have ended. Obviously a few pages short, the editors have included a wonderful short tale by Roy Thomas, Herb Trimpe and John Severin entitled ‘Heaven is a Very Small Place!’, a dream-like, wistful taste of a better world for the embattled emerald innocent that is both clever and genuinely poignant, but which here acts as an abrupt antidote to the emotional high generated by all the pulse-pounding, cathartic destruction and villain-foiling that immediately preceded it. If you can, try reading this tale after the Annual segment, because that’s the last slow-moment before the rollercoaster ride starts…

These tales, in raw and gritty black and white, are the dawning of a renaissance in pure-action adventures that carried the Hulk to the large and small screen and proved a constant reminder that sometimes “breaking-stuff” is a primal thrill and necessary delight for the destructive eight-year-old in everyone. Just remember to read, not do…

© 1967, 1968, 1969, 2001, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume I


By Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-858-7

The Victorian era saw the birth of both popular and populist publishing, especially in the sub-genres of fantasy and adventure fiction. Writers of varying skill but with unbounded imaginations explored the concepts of honour and heroism, wedded unflinchingly to the underlying belief of English Supremacy in matters of culture and technology. In all worlds and even beyond them the British gentleman took on all comers for Right and Decency, viewing danger as a game and showing “Johnny Foreigner” just how that game was played.

For all the faults our modern sensibilities can detect in those stirring sagas, many of them remain unshakable classics of adventure and the roadmap of all modern fictional heroes. Open as they are to charges of Racism, Sexism (even misogyny), Class Bias and Cultural Imperialism, the best of them remain the greatest of all yarns.

As heroic prototypes a gaggle of these Imperialist icons were deputized by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill for a six-issue miniseries in 1999 that managed to say as much about our world as that far ago one, and incidentally tell a captivating tale as compelling as any of its antecedents.

Wilhemina Murray survived a clash with a supernatural monster but was forever altered. Recruited by the British Secret Service chief Campion Bond, she was charged with organising a team of superior operatives to defeat an insidious foreign menace growing within the very heart of the British Empire. To this end she travelled the globe and convinced the greatest hero and most iniquitous outlaws of the time to band together.

The aged Great White Hunter Allan Quatermain is unlikely company for the Invisible Man Hawley Griffin, Captain Nemo and Mister Hyde, although the diffident and cultured Dr. Henry Jekyll could be considered a suitable companion for a widow under almost any circumstance…

Together they foil a most dastardly plot only to discover that all is not as it seems…

This collected book probably best illustrates my discomfort with big budget movie adaptations, over and above the institutionalized and explicit slight that always comes with the blurb “now a major motion picture!”

The story grew beyond the authors’ avowed expectations of “a kind of Victorian Justice League” to become a steampunk classic, with fin de siècle technology, trappings, expectations and attitudes, becoming a powerful allegory for our own millennial events, and the act of its creation becoming a game for creator and reader alike as every character in the tale was culled from existing works of literature and the audience all-but challenged to identify them!

The wit, artifice and whimsy of the compelling mystery – for that, gentle reader is what it is – as well as the vast, complex array of sub-texts and themed extras such as faux advertising broadsheets woven into the text, must perforce be lost when building an entertainment for the widest possible audience: especially one that must conclude in under 120 minutes. The film might reach more sets of eyes but unless they then read the book have they actually been reached at all?

I admit I intensely disliked the film: The plot changes seem arbitrary, I could see no reason other than crass commerciality to include an American in the roster, completely counter to the covert nature of the mission – after all the USA was a rival foreign power. And if one why not all? Let’s see Davy Crockett, Huck Finn, Paul Bunyan, Ambrose Bierce and Lizzie Borden take on the Yellow Peril. Moreover I couldn’t stop laughing after the giant submarine with a draught of a couple of hundred feet surfaced from the canals of Venice – average depth 5 metres (on a good day).

I don’t hate films – I’d love them to make one from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; they just haven’t done it yet.

This book is an incredible work of scholarship and artistry recast into a fabulous pastiche of an entire literary movement. It’s also a brilliant piece of comics wizardry of the sort that no other art form can touch.

If you haven’t seen the film – and even more so if you have – I urge you to read this book. And then you can start in on Dickens, Rider Haggard, Stevenson, Wells, Verne, Conan Doyle, Stoker, Rohmer and all the glorious rest…

© 1999, 2000 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.  All Rights Reserved.

Stephen King’s Creepshow


By Stephen King & Berni Wrightson (Plume/NAL – Penguin)
ISBN13: 978-0452253803 Plume edition  ISBN13: 978-0452253803 Penguin edition

The EC comics of the Pre-code 1950s were possibly the most influential anthology strips of all time. The Crime, (anti-)War, Science Fiction and especially Horror tales that targeted mature readers before the term even existed, with sophisticated, cynical, sardonic and beautifully illustrated stories changed the lives of not only comics creators in waiting, laid the groundwork for the Underground Comix and counter-culture movements, but also spread far beyond the world of funny-book fans to influence novelists and film-makers.

In 1982 George A. Romero and Stephen King turned their fond childhood memories into another portmanteau film (Amicus Productions had already produced Tales from the Crypt in 1972 and The Vault of Horror the following year, directed by Freddie Francis and based on two paperback reprint collections issued in 1965) which used a horror comic-book as a maguffin and framing sequence for five darkly comedic tales of supernatural come-uppance’

To accompany the film comics star Berni Wrightson was commissioned to produce an actual graphic companion that delivered even more jolts than the surprise hit film. This volume, featuring some of the artist’s very best painted art, eschewed the framing sequence and plot bookends and simply presents the five component tales, complete with ghastly host narrator in all their gory glory beginning with ‘Father’s Day’. Written by King for the movie, it sees a murdered patriarch return to the bosom of his not-so loving family seven years after one of them murdered him…

‘The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill’ was adapted by the author from his previously published short-story “Weeds” and tells how a dim-wit hillbilly finds a meteor on his land. He thinks he’s found a means to financial security until the thing begins to mutate him… Famously King himself played the part of the bumpkin in the film (probably the inspiration for Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel on the Simpsons) – just as his son Jack played the kid who had his Creepshow comic confiscated.

‘The Crate’ was also a recycled yarn and detailed how a couple of college professor find an old packing case from an 1834 expedition to the Arctic in the college basement. Inside, still alive and very hungry is a slavering beast. Rather than academic kudos one of them thinks that it might be a foolproof way to rid himself of the harpy he married…

‘Something to Tide You Over’ wherein a cuckolded businessman suffers a grimly ironic fate after disposing of his wife and her lover is an original chiller as is ‘They’re Creeping up on You’ which closes the book on a truly creepy highpoint as a cleanliness obsessed millionaire determines to rid his apartment of bugs… at all costs!

Naturally these tales don’t have surprise endings – that’s not the point – but they are a delightfully gory and fun-filled tribute to spooky stories and the self-inflicted shocks of a misspent youth, lovingly crafted and perfectly rendered. Worth tracking down if you’re a comics connoisseur, and definitely an urgent candidate for a modern revival.
Text © 1982 Philtrum Corp. Illustrations ©1982 Laurel-Show, Inc. All Rights Reserved.