Category: Adaptations

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Tarzan and the Adventurers (Complete Burne Hogarth Comic Strip Library volume 5)


By Burne Hogarth & Rob Thompson with James Freeman, Dan Barry, Nick Cardy, Bob Lubbers & various (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78565-380-3 (landscape album HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

The 1930 and 1940s were decades of astounding pictorial periodical adventure. In the age before mass television, newspaper strips (and their bastard spawn comic books) were the only form of visually-based home entertainment for millions of citizens young and old, consequently shaping the culture of many nations. Relatively few strips attained nigh-universal approval and acclaim. The Gumps, Little Orphan Annie, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, Terry and the Pirates and Prince Valiant were in that rarefied pantheon but arguably the most famous was Tarzan.

Evolving from mock melodrama comedic features like Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs or Carl Ed’s Harold Teen, the full-blown dramatic adventure serial truly started on January 7th 1929 with Buck Rogers and Tarzan debuting that day. Both were skilful adaptations of pre-existing prose properties and their influence changed the shape of the medium forever. The following years saw an explosion of similar fare, launched with astounding rapidity to huge success. Not only strips, but also actual fictive genres were born in that decade, still impacting today’s comic books and all our popular entertainment forms.

In terms of art quality, adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ immensely successful novels starring jungle-bred John Clayton, Lord Greystoke by Canadian commercial artist Harold “Hal” Foster were unsurpassed. The strip soon became beloved by the masses, supplementing and nurtured by the movies, books, radio show and ubiquitous advertising appearances.

As detailed in previous volumes of this sublime oversized (330 x 254 mm), monochrome/full -colour hardback series, Foster initially quit at the end of a 10-week adaptation of first novel Tarzan of the Apes. He was replaced by Rex Maxon, but at the insistent urging of author Burroughs, returned when the black-&-white daily expanded to include a lush, full colour Sunday page offering original adventures. Maxon was left to capably handle the weekday book adaptations, as Foster crafted the epic and lavish Sunday page until 1936: 233 consecutive weeks. He then left again for good: moving to King Features Syndicate and his own landmark weekend masterpiece Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur which debuted in February 1937. Once the 4-month backlog of material he had built up was gone, Foster was succeeded by a precociously brilliant 25-year old neophyte.

Burne Hogarth was a passionate graphic visionary whose superb anatomical skill, cinematic design flair and compelling page composition revolutionised action/adventure narrative illustration. His galvanic dynamism of idealised human figures and animals can still be seen in today’s comic books: all that impossibly body-positive perfection in motion can be directly attributed to Hogarth’s pioneering drawing and, in later years, educational efforts. Burroughs was a big fan and cannily used the increasingly popular comic strip to cross-market his own prose efforts with great effect.

This fabulous fifth & final tome encompasses Sunday pages from October 1949 to September 1950 and the equivalent Daily strips (September 1947 through September 1950), with Hogarth gradually easing out of the now-onerous job and employing a legion of gifted ghosts to fulfil his obligations. During this period, commercially-led format changes reduced the size and changed the shape of the Sunday strip from tabloid to landscape framing, but the contents suffered no loss of wonder, action or drama. The transition and repercussions are discussed with some academic frontloading and fitting further explanation in the form of extended essay ‘Transforming Tarzan’s Jungle’ by Henry G. Franke III. Fully briefed for our trek, we resume the fun with ‘Tarzan and the Adventurers’: Sunday pages #973 – 1010 as seen spanning October 30th 1949 to July 16th 1950. The saga was crafted by Hogarth, writer Rob Thompson and latterly James Freeman – who was forced upon Hogarth after the syndicate fired his preferred collaborator. It sees the Ape-Man visiting old ally Masai chief N’Kola just as white explorers Baker and Cleveland arrive, seeking the tribes’ help in locating a medicinal herb which might be a malaria cure.

In truth, the scurrilous duo are hunting lost treasure sunk in kingdom-demarcating Lake Dagomba, and need help in convincing Dagomba headman Mabuli to allow them access. This chief hates Tarzan but the impasse is ended when wicked witch doctor Chaka strikes a sinister side deal that triggers valiant efforts and vile betrayal, double cross, murder and bloody civil warfare incorporating spectacular chases, fantastic duels with beasts, mortals and the very landscape, captivating readers for months until the saga ended with explosive irony and tons of TNT…

The end was near for Hogarth and the Jungle Lord, and the Sunday association closed in a short serial finished by a comic book artist slowly making strips his career. Born in 1922, Robert Bartow “Bob” Lubbers drew a host of features before WWII, but other than The Vigilante and The Human Fly after hostilities ceased, mostly settled on newspaper stars like The Saint, Big Ben Bolt, Li’l Abner, Secret Agent X-9 and his own creations Long Sam and Robin Malone. That all occurred after a stellar run assisting/replacing Hogarth.

Ostensibly crafted by – and still signed “Hogarth”, ‘Tarzan and the Wild Game Hunters’ (#1011-1019: July 23rd to September 17th 1950) saw the vine-voyaging valiant aid cowboy-turned safari man Russ Rawson in capturing a rhino and gorilla for Winchester Zoo… but only after determining that Africa would be a far better place without these pair of particularly perilous rogue beasts…

Before switching to moody monochrome and standard single tier-per-diem layouts for the dailies section, Franke III explores ‘The Daily Grind’ in another erudite prose prologue preceding the accumulated serial sequences: providing context and background on writer Thompson and artistic aids/replacements Dan Barry, Nick Cardy & Lubbers, with John Lehti and Paul Reinman also getting a worthy mention.

Monday to Saturday storylines were relentless and tough to get right. No matter how good you are, there’s only so much progress to be made in 3-4 panels at a time, and savvy creators usually combined classic themes with familiar material whenever they could. Here that notion resulted in a (very) broad adaptation/reinterpretation of ERB’s prose pulp serial Tarzan at the Earth’s Core, which had been first serialised between September 1929 and March 1930 ,before becoming the 13th canonical novel in 1932. The strips comprising ‘Tarzan at the Earth’s Core’ (#2509 to 2616, September 1st 1947 through January 3rd 1948) were supervised by Hogarth & Thompson but limned primarily by Dan Barry (1911-1997).

He also began as a jobbing comic book guy. Like his own brother Seymour “Sy” Barry – who produced The Phantom newspaper strip for three decades – Dan worked in a finely-detailed, broadly realistic style, blending aesthetic sensibility with straightforward visual clarity and firm, almost burly virile toughness: a gritty “He-man” attitude for a new era, contemporarily christened “New York Slick”.

He drew masked hero fare like Airboy, Skywolf, Boy King, Black Owl, Spy Smasher, Doc Savage and more before joining the US Air Force and, on returning after the hostilities, drew monster hero The Heap and sundry genre shorts for titles like Crimebusters whilst running his own outfit producing educational/informational comics. Dan began his  gradual withdrawal from funnybooks as early as 1947, joining Hogarth’s studio and assuming art chores on the Tarzan daily for a year, whilst still gracing DC’s crime, mystery and science fiction anthologies until as late as 1954. He was offered Flash Gordon and quickly accepted, but that’s the stuff of another review…

In deepest, darkest Africa, the Jungle Lord is tracked down by explorer Jason Gridley who has been in contact with a man named David Innes, and resolved to save that lost soul. Innes is an adventurer who joined Professor Abner Perry in a giant drilling vehicle that took them deep inside the Earth. They are now trapped in an incredible antediluvian realm more than 500 miles below the world’s crust: a land of beast men, lost empires, dinosaurs and even more incredible things…

Tarzan is largely a spectator for this sequence as ERB’s prose adventures in Pellucidar are updated and recounted for readers before Lord Greystoke joins the rescue party using another mole machine – built by boffin Dr. Dana Franklin – to reach the exotic underworld. Adding romantic interest is Franklin’s glamourous daughter/assistant Doris as they voyage deep into a myriad of incredible adventures.

As well as saving Innes and Perry and reuniting the former with his own true love Dian the Beautiful, the newcomers face sentient pterodactyl tyrants (Thipdars if you’re au fait with the books), clash with cavemen and ape beasts (Sagoths), fight a macabre menagerie of long-extinct monsters, war with lizard warriors (Horibs) and get utterly lost and reunited in a land where time does not pass and night never comes…

The series is a paean to primitivism and is a boost to all those besotted with wild kingdoms. There are even pulchritudinous primeval pairings… Gridley to cavegirl princess Jana and Doris with Clovian cave chief Ulan…

The drama is divided into individual overlapping adventures until all the players eventually reunite for a big, big finale. With the aforementioned ghost artists deployed to augment Barry & Thompson, the saga concludes with episodes #2617-2640 of ‘Tarzan at the Earth’s Core’ (January 5th – 31st January 1948) as all the plot threads cleave together and those who want to return to the surface do so…

Although he was still involved in a mostly administrative capacity, Hogarth’s signature had been missing for some time when ‘Tarzan and Hard-Luck Harrigan’ #3361-3414: 22nd May – 22nd July 1950) began. The strip sported the name of new illustrator Nick Cardy; AKA strip veteran Nicolas Viscardi, who had drawn Lady Luck and other features for Will Eisner, and post-war became a DC mainstay on Gang Busters, Congo Bill, Aquaman, Teen Titans, Bat Lash, Batman/The Brave and the Bold and so much more. The tale itself was lighter fare with humorous overtones as Greystoke encountered a decrepit and devious old western prospector/snake oil peddler who had foolishly hitched his wagon to an African adventure… The affable scoundrel initially tried to capture Tarzan’s monkey pals before attempting to catch and sell the Ape-man himself before learning the error of his ways…

Sadly, old habits died hard. When the odd companions encountered desert raider El Mahmud dying of wounds, they were forced by the bandit’s devoted lieutenant Rambul to “cure” him with Harrigan’s bottled nostrum. That’s when the literal gold-digger spots the treasure the raiders possess and reverts to type, determined to enjoy one last lucky strike, no matter who he must betray…

Again demarcated by an artist change, ‘Tarzan and Hard-Luck Harrigan’ concluded with episodes #3415-3420 (24th – 29th July 1950) signifying the beginning of Lubbers 3½ year tenure, with a rowdily raucous big battle and the old coot’s redemption before moving briefly on to final inclusion ‘Attack of the Apes’ (#3421-3462: 31st July – 16th September 1950) with Lubbers benefitting from Hogarth’s last moments of oversight in a spooky yarn where a renegade troop of Great Apes (the fictious subspecies that reared Tarzan) begin attacking native villages…

After investigating in the primal manner of the lord of the forests, Tarzan gains a new anthropoid assistant in brutal Bay-At, learns who, why and what the true culprits are and renders his own judgement…

And that was that for Hogarth’s Tarzan until a flurry of new material appeared as graphic novel prototypes in the 1970s, which helped usher in a more mature view of the comics medium itself.

Tarzan is a fictive figure who has attained immortal reality in a number of different creative arenas, but none offer the breathtaking visceral immediacy of Burne Hogarth’s comic strips. These vivid visual masterworks are all coiled-spring tension or vital, violent explosive motion: stretching, running, fighting, surging rushes of power and glory where even backgrounds and landscapes achieve a degree of dramatic interactive expressionism. It’s a dream come true that these majestic exploits are available in full for ours and future generations of dedicated fantasists to enjoy.
Trademarks Tarzan® and Edgar Rice Burroughs® owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. and Used by Permission. Copyright © 2018 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Planet of the Apes Archive volume 1: Terror on the Planet of The Apes


By Doug Moench, Mike Ploog, Tom Sutton, Herb Trimpe, Frank Chiaramonte, Virgil Redondo, Rich Handley & various (Boom! Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-60886-990-9 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-61398-661-5

The most effective and long-lasting exploration of human ambition failing and dystopia resulting is not the last 40 years of global government, but rather a film franchise built upon a seminal French science fiction novel released in 1963 – Peirre’s Boulle’s satirical La Planète des singes. A former secret agent and engineer, Boulle earned major accolades as an author. Your entire family has probable seen his other Oscar-winning blockbuster, never realising semi-autobiographical La Pont de la rivière Kwai was David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai…

Originally translated in 1964 as Monkey Planet, his other epic became – after a major rewrite by screenwriter Rod Serling – 1968 US movie sensation Planet of the Apes. It inspired four sequels and – from September to December 1974 – a television series which lived on in reruns and reedited TV movies for decades to come, an animated series, books toys, games, a home projector pack, records and comics.

… And that’s all before Tim Burton’s 2001 remake and the 2011 reboot of the still ongoing franchise…

There have been many comics adaptations, beginning with two manga interpretations (1968 & 1971); a 1970 Gold Key movie adaptation and assorted international versions. In 1974 – no doubt thanks to the impending TV show – a Marvel Magazine continuation, combining serialised comics adaptations of the movies, features and articles began. When Marvel abruptly cancelled PotA in December 1976 the franchise lay fallow until Malibu Comics picked it up in 1990 (reprints, new stories and franchise mash-up Ape Nation). Other companies also added new material over the years and much of that history is covered in erudite Introduction ‘Gorilla Warfare – and Tales of Terror’ by expert/editor/fan-addict Rich Handley…

This first monster compilation gathers a wholly new addition to the mythos, scripted in entirety by Doug Moench (Batman, Werewolf by Night, Moon Knight, Master of Kung Fu), who alternated these trenchant tales with two other Apes strands: “Future History Chronicles” and expanded comics adaptations of the five original films, which are the subject of a separate, future, review…

When Marvel secured the comics rights (also fully covered in Handley’s prose piece) they undertook to fabulously and fantastically expand upon the premise via a fantastic procession of scenarios. The most significant dealt with the much-strained friendship of two teens: a human named Jason and chimpanzee Alexander. They had grown up together in an idyllic integrated community of apes and humans, guided by benign spiritual leader The Lawgiver, but when the saint vanished on a pilgrimage, the garden of Eden began to rot…

The storyline had been devised by Gerry Conway, but his schedule couldn’t handle the increased workload and Moench took it all on. Initially, Terror on the Planet of The Apes was illustrated by Mike Ploog (Ghost Rider, Werewolf by Night, Man-Thing, Kull the Destroyer, Frankenstein’s Monster, Weirdworld, The Spirit), who produced some of his very best work up to #19 – his longest continual run on any strip – after which Tom Sutton (Vampirella, Doctor Strange, Western Gunfighters, Grimjack, Star Trek) took over.

Sporting an August 1974 cover-date and on sale from June 25th of that year, Planet of the Apes #1 blended photos and articles with Part 1 (of 6) of an adaptation of the 1968 movie plus all new ape-ventures set at a time when humans were still sapient talkers and lived in notional harmony with equally erudite orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas. That’s where this book – re-presenting Terror on the Planet of The Apes stories from PotA #1-4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 19-20, 23, 26-28 – starts off, following a Photo intro message.

Chapter One ‘The Lawgiver’ introduces best friends Jason and Alexander who witness chief Peacekeeper Brutus (a gorilla chosen by The Lawgiver to safeguard everyone until his return) leading a murderous lynching and burning raid on the human sector. Despite being disguised by hoods and robes (this was a time when the Ku Kux Klan was constantly in the headlines for terrorising African Americans emboldened by Civil Rights successes), the youngsters see gorillas murder Jason’s parents in the opening gambit of a scheme to make their kind the dominant species on Earth. In Chapter Two’s ‘Fugitives on the Planet of the Apes’ the witnesses’ attempts to expose the atrocity lead to Brutus murdering his own wife and framing Jason and Alexander for the deed.

After they spectacularly escape the city, another recapping Photo Intro segues into ‘The Forbidden Zone of Forgotten Horrors!’ as Jason and Alexander spy on Brutus’ terrorist base and are almost caught. This prompts another murder spree that the Peacekeeper blames them for. Wounded and scared, in ‘Lick the Sky Crimson’ they head for the radioactive wastes of the Forbidden Zone in search of The Lawgiver and encounter weird mutants, bizarre machines and monsters. These terrors thrive in a buried city run by a gestalt of giant bottled brains calling themselves The Inheritors. Worst of all, the chimp realises his human friend is becoming a vengeance-hungry savage in many ways the equal of Brutus…

The power of mutual hate is further explored after Photo Intro 3 leads us to ‘Spawn of the Mutant-Pits’ where hideous drone-slaves pursuing them clash with gorillas Brutus has set on Jason’s trail. Inker Frank Chiaramonte supplements Ploog’s inspired pencils as they butcher each other, before Jason & Alexander are captured by the Forbidden Zone’s hidden overlords and despatched to ‘The Abomination Arena!’ to fight fresh terrors beside a surviving gorilla…

Another hairsbreadth escape leads them to the captive Lawgiver and a lucky rescue/breakout in a stolen flying craft before Part 4 details their flight, crash and rendezvous with ‘A River Boat Named Simian’. Here largely film-inspired antics take a big broad pause as we see how other parts of the Planet of the Apes recovered from Armageddon. Brutus strikes a deal with the cerebral Gestalt Commanders: securing futuristic tanks, energy weapons and drone battle fodder in return for destroying the Lawgiver’s city and civilisation. It’s a deal neither side intends to honour but in the interim the fugitives he’s actually intent on eradicating are recuperating thanks to river traders bringing unity to scattered communities.

Daniel Boone-inspired orangutan ‘Gunpowder Julius’, his human pal Steely Dan and a feisty, gloriously rowdy crew of frontiers-folk do much to soothe the poison brewing in Jason’s soul, but the healing halts as soon as Brutus’ forces catch them all celebrating. Launching a devastating assault kills many and instantly reignites the hate in the human’s heart…

Shot from Ploog’s pencils, Part 5 ‘Malagueña Beyond a Zone Forbidden’ sees the survivors encounter a happy band of ape and human Romani with Jason distracted and then beguiled by a beautiful young woman. Jealousy and hot heads might have led to catastrophe and damnation, but the duel for her hand is interrupted by Brutus and his multispecies army in ‘The Planet Inheritors!’, resulting in a deadly stand-off until Julius thrashes Brutus in a vicious personal duel…

With the Peacekeeper a prisoner, Jason, Alexander, their wise patriarch and Malagueña set out for the integrated home city, blithely unaware of how much has deteriorated since they’ve been gone. Now humans are second-class citizens and although many apes are unhappy with the tyranny of gorillas, trouble is brewing and will boil over ‘When The Lawgiver Returns…’

This dramatic point sees the true plans of both Brutus and Gestalt Commanders explosively exposed prior to Terror on the Planet of the Apes Phase 2 opening with the introduction of a new character in ‘The Magick-Man’s Last Gasp Purple Light Show’. Although seemingly defeated, Brutus escapes punishment and flees, with incandescently enraged Jason following him back into the wilderness to extract true justice. Along the way he meets archaeologist/ philosopher Lightning Smith, a human whose pursuit of the secrets of the Ancients has unearthed a stockpile of pre-disaster wonders and a lot of woolly misconceptions about the masters of science who once ruled the planet…

“Lightsmith” and faithful companion Gilbert (a mute but fully sapient gibbon) seek further revelations – including the location of legendary stockpile of lost wonders “the Psycho-drome”. Proselytising technology at every stop, they take Jason under their wing, ultimately bringing him to their secret mountain home in ‘Up the Nose-Tube to Monkey-Trash’. The base is a masterful example of acerbic satire, eventually revealing to us, if not the players, the last days of human hegemony. Meanwhile Alex and Malagueña have been tracking Jason, but sadly catch up just as savage, primitive “Assisimians” attack Lightsmith, leading to a shocking show of salvaged wonders and the obsessive hatred of tribal shaman Maguanus…

Brutus has not been idle: once again duping the Gestalt Commanders and taking their last technological armaments to end Jason and anyone else in the Peacekeeper’s way. The tyrant finally finds him as Maguanus’ minions are besieging them, and a tenuous double-dealing truce drives our beleaguered heroes into new territory to face ‘Demons of the Psychodrome’ (art by Ploog & Tom Sutton).

Tragically, the answers Lightsmith hungers for almost destroy him as the truth of the psycho-drome exposes an extraterrestrial component to the Ancients’ downfall and a terrifyingly patient ‘Society of the Psychodrome’ (Sutton art) waiting for Earth to be pacified for them…

As Jason, Alexander & Malagueña scrape from calamity to clash to catastrophe, Brutus almost claims total victory by stealing enough nuclear missiles to exterminate all humans. Thankfully he doesn’t know how to use them and when Jason once more foils the plot in ‘Messiah of the Monkey Demons’, an atomic inferno apparently ends the alien threat…

However, a new menace appears when The Lawgiver’s devoted young apprentice is co-opted by another technological faction to survive the fall of man. As our stars – safely transported a vast distance away whilst the nukes went up – cavort in snow for the first time, ‘Northlands!’ (art by Herb Trimpe & Virgil Redondo with tones by Rudy Mesina) sees them meet ape Vikings and witness another crime of ignorance and bigotry before heading back south in an ice-riding dragonship…

Waiting for them is seemingly unkillable Brutus, the last remnants of The Inheritors’ forces and new threat The Makers. These human holdovers are kidnapping gorillas to make cyborg slaves and their unleashed ‘Apes of Iron’ seem likely to control the world, However, as seen in last chapter ‘Revolt of the Gorilloids!’ (Trimpe & Virgil Redondo) Jason and his allies won’t go down without a fight…

Frustratingly, the saga stopped there and remains uncompleted, but in postscript ‘Still Apey After all These Years’ Handley offers more information and partial closure with his efforts to share Moench’s unpublished last scripts. He also posits what might have been had the author been allowed to complete the saga abruptly curtailed when the magazine was cancelled without warning. It left three separate story strands… well, stranded…

Also of interest is a section on unique permutations of Marvel UK’s weekly Planet of the Apes iteration (ask your grandad about “Apeslayer” and see the reaction …or just google it).

This first volume closes with a ‘Full colour painted cover gallery’ of issues #3, 4, 13, 17. 19 & 23 by Bob Larkin, #14 & 26 by Malcolm McNeill and #11 by Gray Morrow – all seen sans logos and livery.

In equal parts vivid nostalgia and crucial component of current comics expansion, this compelling and lovely treat is pure whacky fun no film fan or comics devotee should miss… and there’s more to come…
Planet of the Apes ™ & © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Stories and illustration ™ & © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

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The Silver Metal Lover


By Tanith Lee, adapted by Trina Robbins (Harmony/Crown Books)
ISBN: 0-517-55853-X (Album PB)

In the 1980s, comics finally began fully filtering into the mainstream of American popular culture, helped in no small part by a few impressive adaptations of works of literary fantasy such as Michael Moorcock’s Elric or DC’s Science Fiction Graphic Novel line. In 1985 pioneering cartoonist, feminist, author and comics historian Trina Robbins (A Century of Women Cartoonists, It Ain’t Me, Babe Comix, Dope, The Legend of Wonder Woman, Choices: A Pro-Choice Benefit Comic Anthology for the National Organization for Women, Misty, Honey West) joined that small but proliferating throng with this deceptively powerful and effectively bittersweet romance adapted from Tanith Lee’s short tale about an earnest young girl in a spoiled, indolent world who discovers abiding love in the most unexpected of places….

In the far-flung, ferociously formal and crushingly civilised future everything is perfect – if you can afford it – but human nature has not evolved to match Mankind’s technological and sociological advancements. Plus ca change plus ca meme chose, right?

Jane has everything a 16-year old could want but is still unhappy. Her mother Demeta provides all she needs – except human warmth – whilst her six registered friends do their best to provide for her growing associative and societal needs. Of her carefully selected peer circle, Jane only actually likes flighty, melodramatic needily narcissistic Egyptia – whom Jane’s mother approves of but considers certifiably insane.

In this world people can live in the clouds if they want, with robots performing most manual toil and providing all those tedious but necessary services, but it’s far from paradise. Humans still get suspicious and bored with their chatty labour-saving devices and monumental Electronic Metals, Ltd strive constantly to improve their ubiquitous inventions…

One day Jane accompanies Egyptia to an audition where the fully made-up thespian is accosted by a rude man who mistakes her for a new android and persistently seeks to buy her.

Ruffled by the pushy lout’s manner, Jane’s attention is suddenly distracted by a beautiful metal minstrel busking in the plaza. The robot’s performance and his lovely song move and frighten Jane in way she cannot understand. When S.I.L.V.E.R. (Silver Ionized Locomotive Verisimulated Electronic Robot) affably introduces himself the flustered girl bolts, running for the relative security of the nearby home of sardonic friend Clovis, where the beautiful man-tart is in the process of dumping yet another lover.

He proves unsurprisingly unsympathetic to Jane’s confusion and distress, telling her to go home where, still inexplicably upset, she tries to talk the experience out with mother. Impatient as always, the matron simply enquires if Jane is masturbating enough before telling her to record whatever’s bothering her for mummy to deal with later…

Sulking in a bath, Jane is awoken from a sleep by ecstatic Egyptia who has passed her audition. Bubbling with glee the neophyte actress demands Jane join her at a big party, but whilst avoiding a persistent old letch creepily fixated on the fresh young thing, Jane stumbles again upon S.I.L.V.E.R. … and once more reacts histrionically to his singing.

As he profusely apologizes for the inexplicable distress he’s somehow caused her, Jane realizes the disturbing mechanical minstrel has been rented by Egyptia for quite another kind of performance later – a private and intimate one. With a gasp of surprise Jane finally understands what she’s feeling and kisses the alluring automaton before fleeing…

Her mother is as useless as ever. Whilst futilely attempting to explain her problem but failing even to catch Demeta’s full attention, Jane gives up and claims she’s in love with Clovis just to cause a shock. The next day the heartsick waif visits the offices of Electronic Metals, Ltd ostensibly to rent the droid of her dreams – as a minor she has to lie about her age – but is sickened when she finds him partially dissembled as techs try to track down an anomalous response in his systems…

Despondent, she is astonished when Machiavellian Clovis intervenes, renting S.I.L.V.E.R. for Egyptia and convincing the too, too-busy starlet to let Jane look after it for her…

Alone with the object of her affection, insecure Jane’s imagined affair quickly becomes earthily, libidinously real, but the honeymoon ends far too soon when Clovis informs her the rental period is over. Crippled by her burning love for the artificial Adonis, Jane begs her mother to buy him for her. When the coldly withholding guardian refuses, the obsessed child at last rebels…

When Demeta disappears on another of her interminable business trips, Jane sells her apartment’s contents, moves into the slums and desperately claims her dream lover with the ill-gotten gains…

Following a tragically brief transformative period of sheer uncompromised joy with her adored mechanical man, reality hits the happy couple hard when Demeta tracks Jane down and smugly applies financial pressure to force her wayward child to return. Undaunted, the pair become unlicensed street performers and grow even closer but as Jane grows in confidence and ability, and becomes fiercely independent, public opinion turns against the latest generation of far-too-human mechanical servants. When Electronic Metals recalls all its now hated products, the improper couple flee the city. However, the heartless auditors track them down and reclaim Jane’s Silver Metal Lover…

Lyrical and poetic, this is a grand old-fashioned tale of doomed love which still has a lot to say about transformation, growing up and walking your own path, with Trina Robbins’ idyllic and idealised cartooning deceptively disguising the heartbreaking savagery and brutal cruelty of the story to superb effect, making the tragedy even more potent.

Regrettably out of print for years, this is a comics experience long overdue for revival – perhaps in conjunction with new interpretations of the author’s later sequels to the saga of love against the odds…
Illustrations © 1985 Trina Robbins. Text © 1985 Tanith Lee. All rights reserved.

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Tarzan in the City of Gold (The Complete Burne Hogarth Comic Strip Library volume 1)


By Burne Hogarth and Don Garden (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78116-317-7 (HB)

Modern comics and graphic novels evolved from newspaper comic strips. These daily pictorial features were – until relatively recently – extremely popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as a powerful weapon to guarantee and even increase circulation and profits. From the earliest days humour was paramount; hence the terms “Funnies” – and of course, “Comics”.

The 1930s saw an explosion of action and drama strips launched with astounding rapidity and success. Not just strips but actual genres were created in that decade which still impact on not just today’s comic-books but all our popular fiction. Despite the odd ancestor or precedent like Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs (comedic when it began in 1924, but gradually moving through mock-heroics to light-action and becoming a full-blown adventure serial with the introduction of Captain Easy in 1929), the majority of strips in production were feel-good humour strips with the occasional child-oriented fantasy.

The full-blown adventure serial strip started on January 7th 1929 with Buck Rogers and Tarzan launching on the same day. Both were adaptations of pre-existing prose properties – although the Ape-Man had already conquered the silver screen – and their influence changed the shape of the medium forever. In terms of sheer quality of art, the adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels starring jungle-bred John Clayton, Lord Greystoke by Canadian commercial artist Harold “Hal” Foster were unsurpassed, and the strip became a firm favourite of the reading masses, supplementing movies, books, a radio show and ubiquitous advertising appearances.

As fully detailed in Tarzan historian/author Scott Tracy Griffin’s informative overview ‘Burne & Burroughs: The Story of Burne Hogarth and Edgar Rice Burroughs’, Foster initially quit the strip after the10-week adaptation of Tarzan of the Apes. He was replaced by Rex Maxon, but returned (at the insistent urging of Edgar Rice Burroughs) when the black-&-white daily was expanded to include a lush, full colour Sunday page of new tales.

Leaving Maxon to cater the Monday through Saturday series of novel adaptations, Foster produced the Sunday page until 1936 (233 weeks) after which he momentously moved to King Features Syndicate and created his own weekend masterpiece. Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur debuted on February 13th 1937. Once a four month backlog of material he had built up was gone, Foster was succeeded by a precociously brilliant 25-year old artist named Burne Hogarth: a young graphic visionary whose superb anatomical skill, cinematic design flair and compelling page composition revolutionised action/adventure narrative illustration.

The galvanic modern dynamism of the idealised human figure in comic books is directly attributable to Hogarth’s pioneering drawing and, in later years, educational efforts.

When he in turn finally left the strip, Hogarth found his way into teaching as co-founder – with Silas H. Rhodes – of the Cartoonist and Illustrators School for returning veterans. This became the New York School of Visual Arts and Hogarth produced an invaluable and inspirational series of art textbooks including Dynamic Anatomy and Dynamic Figure Drawing, shaping generations of aspiring pencillers. I can see my own well-worn copies from where I sit typing this.

In the early 1970s, Hogarth was lured back to the leafy domain of legendary Lord Greystoke, producing two magnificent volumes of graphic narrative in the dazzling style that had captivated audiences more than 30 years previously. Large bold panels, vibrantly coloured, with blocks of Burroughs’ original text, leapt out at the reader in a riot of hue and motion as they retold the triumphant, tragic tale of an orphaned scion of British nobility raised to puissant manhood by Great Apes in Tarzan of the Apes and Jungle Tales of Tarzan.

Burroughs cannily used the increasingly popular strip feature to cross-market his own prose efforts with great effect. Tarzan and the City of Gold was first serialised in pulp magazine Argosy in 1932 and released in book form the following year. So by May 17th 1936, Foster’s new and unconnected Tarzan in the City of Gold could be described as a brand new adventure on one hand, whilst boosting already impressively book sales by acting as a subtle weekly ad for the fantastic fantasy novels.

As discussed and précised in ‘Hal Foster’s Tarzan in the City of Gold – the Story So Far’, the illustrator and regular scripter Don Garden’s final yarn began with the 271st weekly page: revealing how the wandering Ape-Man had stumbled upon a lost outpost built by ancient refugees from Asia Minor in a desolate region of the “Dark Continent”.

The city of Taanor was so rich in gold that the material was only useful for weather-proofing roofs and domes of houses, but when white ne’er-do-wells Jim Gorrey and Rufus Flint discover the fantastic horde they marshalled a mercenary army, complete with tanks and aircraft to plunder the lost kingdom. Tarzan, meanwhile, had become war-chief of noble King Dalkon and his beautiful daughter Princess Nakonia and determined to use every trick and stratagem to smash the invaders…

After 51 epic weekly episodes, Foster was gone and we pick up the story of ‘Tarzan in the City of Gold’ (episodes #322-343, 9th May to October 3rd 1937) as the drama takes a bold new direction when the embattled Jungle Lord leads a slow war of attrition against the invaders whilst simultaneously recruiting a bizarre battalion of beasts comprising apes, lions and elephants to crush the greedily amassed armaments of 20th century warfare with fang and claw, sinew and muscle…

In those halcyon days the action was non-stop and, rather than cleanly defined breaks, storylines flowed one into another. Thus, Tarzan allowed the victorious Taanorians to believe he had perished in battle and journeyed to familiar territory, revisiting the cabin where he had been born and the region where he was raised by the she-ape Kala – stopping to punish a tribe of humans hunting and tormenting his old family/band of apes. Then, Hogarth’s first full epic began.

‘Tarzan and the Boers Part I’ (pages #344-377, 10th October 1937 – 29th May 1938) sees the erstwhile Greystoke lured to the assistance of duplicitous chieftain Ishtak who craves the Ape-Man’s assistance in repulsing an “invasion” by white pioneers from South Africa.

It isn’t too long before Tarzan discovers Ishtak is playing a double game. Having sold the land in question to families led by aged Jan Van Buren, the avaricious king intends to wipe them out and keep his tribal territories intact…

When Tarzan unravels the plot he naturally sides with the Boers and, over many bloody, torturous weeks, helps the refugees survive Ishtak’s murderous campaign of terror to establish a sound, solid community of honest (white) farmers…

When Hogarth first took over he had used an affected drawing style mimicking Foster’s static realism, but by the time of ‘Tarzan and the Chinese’ (#378-402, 5 June – 20th November 1938) had completed a slow transition to his own tautly hyper-kinetic visual methodology, perfectly suited to the electric vitality of the ever-onrushing feature’s exotic wonders.

Here, after leaving the new Boer nation, Tarzan finds a vast, double-walled enclosure and – ever curious – climbs into a fabulous hidden kingdom populated by the descendants of imperial Chinese colonists.

Once again he was just in time to prevent the overthrow of the rightful ruler – firstly by rebels and bandits, then a treacherous usurper and latterly by invading African warriors – before slipping away to befriend another clan of Great Apes and be mistaken for an evolutionary missing link by Professor John Farr in ‘Tarzan and the Pygmies’ (#403-427, 27th November 1938 to 14th May 1939). However, the boffin’s nefarious guide Marsada knows exactly who and what the Ape-Man is and spends a great deal of time and effort trying to kill Tarzan, as payback for his destroying a profitable poaching racket years before. Most infuriatingly, the husky newcomer had caught the passionate fancy of Farr’s lovely daughter Linda…

Following an extended clash with actual missing links – a mountain tribe of primitive, bestial half-men – Tarzan and Linda fall into the brawny hands of magnificent (white) tree-dwelling viragos who all want to mate with a man who seems their physical equal. The trials and tribulations of ‘Tarzan and the Amazons’ (#428-437, 21st May-23rd July 1939) only ends when the jungle Adonis fakes his own death…

More relatively aimless perambulations bring the hero once more to the nascent homeland of his Afrikaans friends. ‘Tarzan and the Boers Part II’ (#438-477, 30th July 1939 – 28th April 1940) has him perfectly matched against cunning, truly monstrous villain Klaas Vanger. This wandering diamond hunter has discovered a mother-lode of gems on Jan Van Buren’s farm and, after seducing his way into the family’s good graces by romancing impressionable daughter Matea, he tries to murder them all. When this also fails, Vanger instigates a new war between settlers and natives, whilst absconding with a cache of diamonds and massacring a tribe of baboons befriended by Tarzan…

These vile acts lead to a horrific boom town of greedy killers springing up on Boer lands, compelling Tarzan, baby baboon Bo-Dan and hulking. tongue-tied lovelorn farmhand Groot Carlus to take a terrible but well-deserved vengeance on the money-crazed monster and his minions and rescuing crestfallen Matea from the seducer’s vile clutches…

Edgar Rice Burroughs was a master of populist writing and always his prose crackled with energy and imagination. Hogarth was an inspired intellectual and, as well as gradually instilling his pages with ferocious, unceasing action, layered the panels with subtle symbolism. Even vegetation looked spiky, edgy and liable to attack at a moment’s notice…

His pictorial narratives are all coiled-spring tension or vital, violent explosive motion, stretching, running, fighting: a surging rush of power and glory. It’s wonderful these majestic exploits are back in print – especially in such a lavish and luxurious oversized (330 x 254mm) hardback format – even if only to give us comic lovers and other couch potatoes a thorough cardio-vascular work-out. Nevertheless, I won’t be completely happy until all this wild wonderment is online too…

Beautifully rendered and reassuringly formulaic, these masterful interpretations of the utterly authentic Ape-Man are a welcome addition to any comics’ connoisseurs’ cupboard and you would be crazy not to take advantage of this beautiful collection; the first of five in the Complete Burne Hogarth Comic Strip Library.
Tarzan® & © 2014 ERB, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All images copyright of ERB, Inc 2014. All text copyright of ERB, Inc 2014.

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Doctor Who Graphic Novel #21: The Eye of Torment


By Scott Gray, Mike Collins, Jacqueline Rayner, Martin Geraghty, David A. Roach & various (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-673-1 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Timely Seasonal Treat… 8/10

Today is the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Here’s another Timey-Wimey treat to celebrate a unique TV and comics institution in a periodical manner …

We Brits love comic strips, adore “characters” and are addicted to celebrity. The history of our comics includes an astounding number of comedians, Variety stars and television actors: such disparate legends as Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Askey, Charlie Drake and so many more I’ve long forgotten and you’ve likely never heard of.

As much adored and adapted were actual shows like Ace of Wands, Timeslip, Supercar, The Clangers and countless more. If we watched or listened, an enterprising publisher made printed spectacles of them. Hugely popular anthology comics like Radio/Film Fun/TV Fun, Look-In, TV Comic, TV Tornado, and Countdown would translate light entertainment favourites into pictorial joy. It was a pretty poor star or show that couldn’t parley the day job into a licensed strip property…

Doctor Who debuted on black-&-white televisions across Britain on November 23rd 1963 with episode 1 of ‘An Unearthly Child’. Months later in 1964, TV Comic began a decades-long association, as issue #674 began ‘The Klepton Parasites’ – by an unknown author with the art attributed to illustrator Neville Main.

On 11th October 1979, Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. Turning monthly in September 1980 (#44) it’s been with us – via various iterations – ever since: proving the Time Lord is a comic star of impressive pedigree, not to be trifled with.

Panini’s UK division ensured his comics immortality by collecting all strips of every Time Lord Regeneration in a series of graphic albums – although we’re still waiting for digital versions. Each time tome focused on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer, with this one gathering almost a year’s worth of stories plucked from the annals of history and the Terran cover dates August 2014 to August 2015. These yarns all feature The Twelfth Doctor as played by Peter Capaldi in a collection of full-colour episodes all given hues from James Offredi and letters by Roger Langridge.

It all kicks off with eponymous shocker ‘The Eye of Torment’ (Doctor Who Magazine #477-480, October-December 2014). Written by Scott Gray and drawn by Martin Geraghty – with inks from infallibly rewarding David A. Roach – it finds a newly-minted incarnation of the Time Lord and capable companion Clara Oswald fetch up inside a spaceship traversing the surface of the sun.

With inescapable flavours of Armando Iannucci’s 2020 comedy sci fi vehicleAvenue 5, the good ship Pollyanna is manned solely by women working for gigajazillionaire Rudy Zoom: a rich, over-achieving narcissist in love with his own legend. Surprisingly, he’s not the actual problem: that would a semi-sentient predatory alien infection imprisoned eons ago by Sol’s gravity. “The Umbra” mimic humanoid form: magnifying and feeding on despair. Once the horror broaches Pollyanna’s invulnerable hull, it/they start picking off the crew until the newcomers find a way to stop it/them and escape…

The epic yarn leads directly into the ‘The Instruments of War’ (DWM #481-483, January-March 2015) wherein writer/artist Mike Collins, ably assisted by Roach) deposit the time travellers in Earth’s Sahara just as German General Erwin Rommel is preparing to finish the Afrika campaign. Sadly, that’s when an agent of the Rutan Horde finally disinters a world-reshaping weapon long lost by their eternal arch-enemies The Sontarans…

Forced to ally with a few of the Sontaran clone-warriors, assorted Germans of various philosophies, righteously rebellious Tuaregs and the living enigma of an honourable warrior fighting for the wrong side, The Doctor and Clara are initially separated but soldier on to save everyone with a degree of success…

Skipping #484, we next arrive as south as we can get for some ‘Blood and Ice’ served up by Jacqueline Rayner, Geraghty & Roach, with actual schoolmarm Clara and the tall, rude one claiming to be Ofsted inspectors giving a college at the bottom of the world a cautious once-over. It’s 2048, the Antarctic Treaty protecting the polar continent from resource exploitation is about to expire and something strange is happening at Snowcap University: something Dr. Patricia Audley is very unhappy to acknowledge and a situation she is working very hard to remedy. However, even with fatal accidents, mutants appearing and students vanishing, both our heroes are a bit off their game. Fans will recall that on TV, Clara had been splintered into a million alternate versions scattered throughout the timestream and finding one of herself at Snowcap has truly unsettled her. The Doctor also has qualms: last time he was here it was a military base filled with cybermen and resulted in the death of his first generation (First Doctor William Hartnell, keep up, keep up!) and first re-generation…

The disorientation doesn’t stop them solving the riddle of the place, but not before a lot of people are dead or worse…

The dramas conclude in fine style and traditional form as a holding pattern allowing the TV Doctor’s debut to catch up with his print incarnation allows DWM #475-476 to deliver a Gallifreyan-adjacent sidebar saga from Gray, Collins, Roach, Offredi & Langridge. Set during London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 ‘The Crystal Throne’ is an untold adventure of “The Paternoster Gang” (Silurian Madame Vastra, her human wife Jenny Flint and their butler Sontaran Strax) who – with assorted associates – oppose weird terror, scurrilous sedition and deranged genetic meddler Lady Cornelia Basildon-Stone for rule of the British Empire. The battle at “The Crystal Palace” is made harder by their ruthless foe, who remakes men into insectoid monsters; employing stolen Silurian technology…

Supplemented with fascinating insights from all the creatives involved in each tale and augmented by tons of sketches and other pre-publishing artwork in the Commentary section, this is a splendid book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for dedicated fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our particular art-form to anyone minded to give comics another go…
All Doctor Who material © BBCtv 2015. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. All other material © 2017 its individual creators and owners. Published 2015 by Panini. All rights reserved.

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Doctor Who Graphic Novel 24: Emperor of the Daleks


By Dan Abnett, Paul Cornell, Warwick Gray, Richard Alan, John Ridgway, Lee Sullivan, Colin Andrew & various (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-807-0 (TPB)

Somewhere in time, it’s always that moment just before the TV got turned on and the Time Lord was born. This year is the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Here’s another Timey-Wimey treat to celebrate a unique TV and comics institution in a periodical manner …

We Brits love comic strips, adore “characters” and are addicted to celebrity. The history of our comics includes an astounding number of comedians, Variety stars and television actors: such disparate legends as Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Askey, Charlie Drake and so many more I’ve long forgotten and you’ve likely never heard of.

As much adored and adapted were actual shows like Ace of Wands, Timeslip, Supercar, The Clangers and countless more. If we watched or listened, an enterprising publisher made printed spectacles of them. Hugely popular anthology comics like Radio/Film Fun/TV Fun, Look-In, TV Comic, TV Tornado, and Countdown regularly translated light entertainment favourites into pictorial joy. It was a pretty poor star or show that couldn’t parley the day job into a licensed strip property…

Doctor Who debuted on black-&-white televisions across Britain on November 23rd 1963 with episode 1 of ‘An Unearthly Child’. Months later in 1964, TV Comic began its decades-long association, as issue #674 began ‘The Klepton Parasites’ – by an unknown author with the art attributed to illustrator Neville Main.

On 11th October 1979, Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. Turning monthly in September 1980 (#44) it’s been with us – via various iterations – ever since: proving the Time Lord is a comic star of impressive pedigree, not to be trifled with.

Panini’s UK division ensured his comics immortality by collecting all strips of every Time Lord Regeneration in a series of graphic albums – although we’re still waiting for digital versions. Each time tome focused on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer, with this one gathering stories plucked from the annals of history and the Terran recording dates November 1992 and July 1995. These yarns all feature Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy in a collection offering both monochrome and full-colour episodes. It all kicks off with sinister espionage thriller ‘Pureblood’ (from Doctor Who Magazine #193-196: November 1992 to January 1993) by writer Dan Abnett & artist Colin Andrew. Here the devious Time Lord and his formidable companion Benny save the last survivors of the Sontaran race from extinction at the hands of their immortal enemies the Rutan – despite hostage humans and a spy in the embattled clone-warriors’ midst. Why save a deadly enemy? Ah well, The Doctor has a rather convoluted plan…

The epic yarn leads directly into the ‘Flashback’ (Doctor Who Winter Special 1992, by Warwick Gray & John Ridgway) as we glimpse First Doctor (William Hartnell, keep up, keep up!) having a potentially universe- shattering falling out with his best friend: a proudly arrogant young Gallifreyan called Magnus (any guesses who he regenerates into?)

The main meat of this massive collection is eponymous epic ‘Emperor of the Daleks’ (DWM #197-202) reuniting the time meddler with his deadliest foe and their deadliest foe: Abslom Daak, a deranged maniac in love with a dead woman and determined to die gloriously exterminating Daleks…

Written by Paul Cornell and John Freeman with art from Lee Sullivan (and a chapter in full-colour courtesy of Marina Graham), the sprawling saga shows civil war between the murderous pepperpots’ creator Davros and their current supreme commander, with the Doctor (two of them, in fact) and a motley crew of allies stirring the bubbling mix and nudging the feuding megalomaniacs in a certain direction…

When the dust settles, Richard Alan & Sullivan provide a salutary epilogue in ‘Up Above the Gods’ (DWM#227, July 1995) as The Doctor explains his actions to Davros – or so, at least, the deluded devil believes…

Warwick Gray & Colin Andrew introduce a universe where The Doctor perished in his Third Regeneration: leading to a cross dimensional incursion by ours – plus Benny and Ace – to foil the ‘Final Genesis’ of Silurian/Sea Devil renegade Mortakk (from DWM #203-206) before full-colour fun returns in ‘Time & Time Again’ (#207, Cornell, Ridgway and hues-smith Paul Vyse) with all seven incarnations of the Gallivanting Gallifreyan in action to retrieve the Key to Time and stop the Black Guardian recreating the universe in his own vile image…

Abnett & Ridgeway return to the black & white days of 1840s Kent for ‘Cuckoo’ (#208-210) as Ace and Benny understandably revolt when The Doctor seeks to steal the limelight from the first woman palaeontologist Mary Anne Wesley. His motives are quite pure: what the young scientist has found is not a missing link in human evolution but something alien that its descendants are prepared to kill for…

The dramas conclude in fine style as Gray & Ridgway expose the ferocious spleen of the Doctor in full indignant mode when he is an ‘Uninvited Guest’ (DWM #211) delivering judgement and punishment to a soiree of indolent and callous timeless beings who enjoyed making sport and playing games with “lesser” creatures. They soon painfully learn that such valuations are all a matter of perspective…

Supplemented with commentaries by the original creators, this is a splendid book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for dedicated fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our particular art-form to anyone minded to give comics another go…
All Doctor Who material © BBCtv 2014. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. All other material © 2017 its individual creators and owners. Published 2017 by Panini. All rights reserved.

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Solomon Kane volume 1: The Castle of the Devil


By Scott Allie, Mario Guevara, Dave Stewart & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-282-6 (TPB)

Although Marvel have resumed control of Robert E. Howard’s star turns, they haven’t yet re-issued all the prior efforts of the previous licensee yet. That’s a shame as this particular tome has Halloween written all over it. Until they do, why not scour shoppes and online sites for a copy. The exercise will probably do you good and who knows what else you might find?

Following on from their revitalisation – if not actual creation – of the comic book Sword and Sorcery genre in the early 1970s (with their magnificent adaptation of pulp superstar Conan the Barbarian), Marvel Comics quite naturally looked for more of the same. They found ample material in Robert Ervin Howard’s other warrior heroes such as King Kull, Bran Mac Morn and dour Puritan Avenger Solomon Kane.

The fantasy genre had undergone a global prose revival in the paperback marketplace since the release of soft-cover editions of Lord of the Rings (first published in 1954), and the 1960s resurgence of two-fisted action extravaganzas by such pioneer writers as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline and Fritz Lieber. This led to a generation of modern writers like Michael Moorcock and Lin Carter kick-starting their careers with contemporary interpretations of man, monster and mage. Without doubt, though, nobody did it better than the tragic Texan whose other red-handed stalwarts and tough guys such as El Borak, Steve Costigan, Dark Agnes and Red Sonya of Rogatino excelled in a host of associated genres and like milieus.

Solomon Kane debuted in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales in a gripping tale of vengeance entitled “Red Shadows”. He made seven more appearances before vanishing in 1932 as his creator concentrated on far more successful Conan. Three further tales, some epic poems and a few unfinished ideas and passages remained unpublished until 1968, when renewed interest in the author’s work prompted publishers to disinter and complete the yarns.

Apart from two noteworthy 4-colour exceptions, during the 1970s and 1980s, Marvel was content to leave Solomon Kane to monochrome adaptations of canonical Howard stories (in Dracula Lives, Savage Sword of Conan, Monsters Unleashed and other older-reader magazines), but with his transfer to the Dark Horse stable the Holy Terror flourished in broader, lavishly-hued interpretations of the unfinished snippets left when the prolific Howard took his life in 1936.

Beginning in 2008 and released as a succession of miniseries, these nearly-new adventures offer modern fans a far darker, more moody glimpse at the driven, doom-laden wanderer.

Kane is a disenfranchised English soldier of fortune in the 17th century on a self-appointed mission to roam the Earth doing God’s Work: punishing the wicked and destroying devils and monsters. With no seeming plan, the devout Puritan lets fate guide his footsteps ever towards trouble…

Expanded upon and scripted by Scott Allie from tantalisingly unfinished fragment The Castle of the Devil, this initial volume collects a 5-issue story-arc from September 2008-February 2009 and also includes a short piece which originally featured online in the digital MySpace Dark Horse Presents site in June 2008.

The drama opens as the surly pilgrim bloodily encounters bandits and an horrific wolf-beast in Germany’s Black Forest, losing his horse in the attack. Proceeding on foot he finds a boy hanging from a gibbet and cuts the near-dead body down. Soon after, he meets mercenary John Silent, another Englishman in search of fortune…

From his new companion, Kane learns local lord, Baron von Staler, has an evil reputation and will not be happy to have his affairs meddled with. The puritan doesn’t care: he wants harsh words with the kind of man who would execute children…

Despite genuine misgivings, the insufferably jolly Silent insists on accompanying his clearly suicidal countryman. Soon the pair are admitted to a bleak and terrifying Schloss built on the remains of an old abbey…

Von Staler is not the mad tyrant they had been warned of. The gracious, pious old warrior with devoted servants and a beautiful young Moorish wife welcomes them in, offering the hospitality of his hearth and charming them with his easy manner. The lord is appalled by the tale of the hanged boy, denying any knowledge of the atrocity and swears to bring the culprits to justice.

Over supper he and his bride Mahasti explain that their ill-repute is unjustly earned. The simple peasants have unfairly conflated him with the manse’s previous accursed inhabitants: a chapter of monks who murdered their own Prior two centuries past.

Vater Stuttman had been a holy man until he sold himself to Satan. His desperate brethren had been forced to entomb and starve him to contain his evil. With the church determinedly ignoring their plight, the chapter faded from the sight of Man and eventually Staler’s family had purchased the lands, building their ancestral seat upon the ruins.

The peasants however, still called it “the Church of the Devil”…

Gratified to find a man as devoted to God as himself, Kane relaxes for the first time in months, thankful to spend a night in a warm bed with people as devout as he. The truth begins to out at ‘The Dead of Night’ as Silent goes prowling within the castle and kills one of the Baron’s retainers, even as Kane’s rest is disturbed by shameless Mahasti offering herself to him…

Spurning her advances, the furious puritan leaves the citadel to wander the forest, and again encounters the colossal wolf thing. Back in his bed Silent, nursing a deep wound, dreams of beleaguered old monks and their apostate Prior…

In ‘Offerings’ the truth slowly begins to dawn on the melancholy wanderer after discourse with the strangely ill-tempered Silent. Something is badly amiss in the household, but when Kane and the Baron ride out that morning, all suspicions are stayed by the discovery of another gibbet and another boy. This one, however, is nothing but ragged scraps for the crows that festoon his corpse, and Kane’s rage is dwarfed by the ghastly uncomprehending shock and disbelief of the Baron…

The servants are not so flustered and something about their muted conversations with the master sits poorly with the morose Englishman. In the castle, Mahasti finds Silent a far more amenable prospect, happy to listen to the secrets she wants to share…

‘Sound Reasons and Evil Dictates’ offer more insights into the incredible truth about von Staler, as Kane takes his countryman into his full confidence before Silent and Mahasti ride out into the wild woods, meeting a ghost who reveals the terrifying truth about Vater Stuttman and the appalling thing the monks uncovered two hundred years past…

The demonic cadaver whispered unknowable secrets to one of that long-gone congregation and has continued for all the days and years since. Now the man who was Father Albrecht is ready to welcome it and its appalling kin back to full, ravening life in these benighted grounds…

Von Staler and Kane are arguing and, as accusations become blows, the secret of ‘The Wolf’ is at last revealed, even as faithful retainers capture Mahasti and Silent, leaving them on the gibbets as fodder for a quartet of horrors returning for their fleshly tribute in ‘His Angels of the Four Winds’. Savagely battling his way free of the castle, Kane is only in time to save one of the monsters’ victims, but more than ready to avenge centuries of slaughter and blasphemy in ‘The Chapel of the Devil’: grimly cleansing the tainted lands in the ‘Epilogue: Wanderers on the Face of the Earth’…

The art is beguiling, emphatically evocative with Mario Guevara’s pencils astonishingly augmented by a painted palette courtesy of colourist Dave Stewart, and the book is packed with artistic extras and behind-the-scenes bonuses. These include a gallery of covers and variants and ‘The Art of Solomon Kane’ with sketches and designs by the penciller, architectural shaper Guy Davis and illustrators John Cassaday, Stewart, Laura Martin & Joe Kubert. The tome terminates with that aforementioned digital vignette wherein Kane applies his own savage wisdom of Solomon to a troubled village of ghost-bedevilled souls in ‘The Nightcomers’…

Powerful, engaging and satisfactorily spooky, this fantasy fear-fest will delight both fans of the original canon and lovers of darkly dreaming, ghost-busting thrillers.
© 2009 Solomon Kane Inc. (SKI). Solomon Kane and all related characters, names and logos are ™ © and ® SKI.

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Doctor who Graphic Novel #23: The Highgate Horror


By Mark Wright, Jonathan Morris, Steve Lyons, Roger Langridge, Jacqueline Rayner, Scott Gray, David A. Roach, Mike Collins, John Ross, Adrian Salmon, Martin Geraghty, Dave Gibbons, John Ridgway, Dan McDaid & various (Panini Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-749-3 (TPB)

Somewhere in time, it’s always that moment just before the TV got turned on and the Time Lord was born. This year is the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Here’s another Timey-Wimey treat to celebrate a unique TV and comics institution in a periodical manner …

The British love comic strips, adore “characters” and are addicted to celebrity. The history of our homegrown graphic narratives includes an astounding number of comedians, Variety stars and television actors: such disparate legends as Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Askey, Charlie Drake and so many more I’ve long forgotten and you’ve likely never heard of.

As much adored and adapted were actual shows and properties like Ace of Wands, Timeslip, Supercar, Pinky and Perky, The Clangers and countless more. If folk watched or listened, an enterprising publisher made printed spectacles of them. Hugely popular anthology comics like Radio Fun, Film Fun, TV Fun, Look-In, TV Comic, TV Tornado, and Countdown readily and regularly translated our light entertainment favourites into pictorial joy every week, and it was a pretty poor star or show that couldn’t parley the day job into a licensed strip property…

Doctor Who debuted on black-&-white televisions across Britain on November 23rd 1963 with the opening episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’. Mere months later, in 1964 a decades-long association with TV Comic began: issue #674 heralding the initial instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’ by an unknown author with the art attributed to illustrator Neville Main.

On 11th October 1979, Marvel’s UK subsidiary launched Doctor Who Weekly. Turning monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) it’s been with us – via various iterations – ever since. All proving the Time Lord is a comic star of impressive pedigree, not to be trifled with.

Panini’s UK division ensured the immortality of the comics feature by collecting all strips of every Time Lord Regeneration in a uniform series of over-sized graphic albums – although we’re still waiting for digital versions. Each time tome focused on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer, with this one gathering stories originally published in Doctor Who Magazine #484 and #489-500. Spanning March 2015 to July 2016; they star Peter Capaldi’s irascible old chrononaut the Twelfth Doctor and saucy sidekick/Impossible Girl Clara Oswald in action across the universe and every Elsewhen imaginable.

The adventures of the Grumpy Gallifreyan are – as always – described and delineated by a rapidly rotating roster of British creators who also provide a treasure-trove of background information in the Commentary section at the back. These comprise story-by-story history, background and insights from authors and illustrators, supplemented by scads of sketches, roughs, designs, production art and photos.

None of which is relevant if all you want is a darn good read. Thankfully, all imagineers involved have completed the ultimate task of any artisan – to produce engaging, thrilling, fun work which can be enjoyed equally by the callowest of neophytes and most slavishly dedicated and opinionated fans imaginable.

That feast of fun – coloured throughout by James Offredi and lettered by multi-talented Roger Langridge – opens with Mark Wright, Mike Collins & David A. Roach’s ‘Space Invaders!’ as The Doctor and Clara fetch up at an orbiting storage facility just as the owners start their latest sell-off of unclaimed items. Typically, the time-travellers are not quite quick enough to stop avid bargain-hunters opening a container of just hatched planet-eating monster eggs…

Following smart social satire is a multi-part action romp. ‘Spirits of the Jungle’ – by Jonathan Morris & John Ross – finds our stars joining an extraction mission to recover lethal intelligent weapons-tech before apparently walking into trap on a planet where the forests have their own definition of World Wide Web…

Gothic horror and vintage thrills permeate Wright, Roach & Collins’ superb chiller ‘The Highgate Horror’ wherein Clara, her immortal straight man and neophyte Companion Jess Collins experience the 1970s London cemetery by hunting vampires and satanic covens and encounter a race of ancient predators who want far worse than mere blood…

As conceived and realised by Steve Lyons & Adrian Salmon, ‘The Dragon Lord’ was a radical activist attempting to save magnificent saurians from human fun-seekers killing them for sport on a medieval-themed fantasy resort world. However, by the time our turbulent troubleshooters turn up, things have turned decidedly lethal and it looks like nobody is getting out alive…

Roger Langridge then offers an all-him treat as Harry Houdini sends out a distress call and his old chum The Doctor dutifully answers. Sometimes even fakers and charlatans have power and really resent being de-bunked by upstart human escapologists playing in the ‘Theatre of the Mind’…

A new time-bending miscreant debuts in Jacqueline Rayner, Martin Geraghty & Roach’s epic tale of persecution and justice when temporal prankster Miss Chief infiltrates Clara’s workspace. After causing havoc at Coal Hill School, said trickster drops Miss Oswald in the vicious clutches of Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, leaving The Doctor to either participate in a time duel or somehow search the whole 17th century for his missing school ma’am in a ‘Witch Hunt’ with potentially fatal and final consequences…

Our temporal tintinnabulations conclude with a splendidly appropriate anniversary party get-together of old friends – and foes – that will delight lifelong devotees without bewildering or baffling newbies or casual readers.

Written by editor Scott Gray, ‘The Stockbridge Showdown’ returns the Time Lord to the alien-beleaguered British village just as cosmic corporate conqueror Josiah W. Dogbolter thinks he’s finally leveraged the keys to time itself.

As the universe nears a shocking “Going Out of Business” sale, the wily Gallifreyan and many allies from the past 500 issues unite to teach the richest man in creation the paucity of his resources and the lesson of his life in a tale crafted by artists past and current, including Dave Gibbons, Langridge, Salmon, Dan McDaid, Ross, Collins, John Ridgway, Geraghty and Roach.

Another marvellous chronicle for casual comics readers, this is also an unmissable shelf-addition for dedicated fans of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our art-form to anyone minded to give comics a proper go.
All Doctor Who material © BBCtv. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and used under licence. Licensed by BBC Worldwide. Tardis image © BBC 1963. Daleks © Terry Nation. All commentaries © 2016 their respective authors. Published 2013 by Panini UK Ltd. All rights reserved.

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H.P. Lovecraft’s The Hound and Other Stories


Adapted by Gou Tanabe, translated by Zack Davisson (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-50670-312-1 (Tankobon paperback/Digital edition)

If you’re one of those people who’s never read a manga tale, or who’s been tempted but discouraged by the terrifying number of volumes these tales can run to, here’s a delicious feast of fantasy fables complete in one book revealing all that’s best about comics from the East in one darkly digestible big gulp.

Most manga can be characterised by a fast, raucous, even occasionally choppy style and manner of delivery but this volume of emphatically eerie adaptations is atmospheric, suitably scary and marvellously moody: just as you’d hope when recreating classic tales by the undisputed master of supernatural terror…

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was frail, troubled and remarkably ill-starred. Born August 20th 1890, he was truly afflicted with a hunger to write, but only achieved any degree of success after his death in March 1937 – following a life of desperate penury – from complications of intestinal cancer. Once he was gone, his literary star ascended, with posthumous publications making him a household name who changed the face of fiction forever.

His stories have deeply affected generations all over the world. One person particularly moved is international literary specialist Gou Tanabe who has previously adapted the works of Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekov to manga form.

Perfectly capturing the relentlessly oppressive and inescapably sombre sense of approaching fatality permeating most of Lovecraft’s potent prose, ‘The Temple’ was written in 1920 and first published 5 years later in the September issue of Weird Tales. The adaptor’s mildly updated version (migrated from WWI to WWII) originated in esteemed anthology magazine COMIC BEAM in March and April 2009: detailing the depredations of U-Boat U-29 and the doomed fools who man her.

After a particularly rewarding campaign, German Navy Commander Karl Heinrich Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein and his officers are taking the night air when they notice a dead British mariner gripping the sub’s handrail. Whilst trying to unlock the mariner’s death grip and eject the corpse, one of them salvages an ancient artefact – a small carved head – and pockets it.

From that moment, their voyage is damned…

Soon, madness and mishap grip the vessel. Death decimates the crew and inexorably the survivors drift ever deeper into depths both physical and metaphorical. When only one remains, he finds the U-boat drawn to a fantastic city and magnificent temple sunken beneath the waves. It is filled with statuary like the little head in his pocket…

Just as he raises his pistol to end the horror, the shattered sole survivor sees shining lights in the sunken edifice…

Lovecraft penned ‘The Hound’ in September 1922 and Weird Tales published it in 1924. Gou Tanabe’s chilling interpretation debuted in July 2014 in the online edition of Comic Walker. The tale is grim, grisly, exquisitely decadent and supremely shocking, detailing the extravagant excess of English gentleman grave-robbers and diabolist magical parvenus St. John and our unnamed narrator.

Bored and indolent, they renew their sordid, blasphemous hobby in a Dutch boneyard, exhuming an arcane trinket from a grave sealed for half a millennium and reap a ghastly bounty after liberating a vengeful howling horror…

After its first foray into the material world, the surviving dabbler attempts every stratagem to escape or expiate the beast, and finds some things have no use for apologies or reparations…

Concluding this first (hopefully of many) Lovecraft treasure trove is another export from Comic Walker (August 2014 this time).

‘The Nameless City’ was written in January 1921 and published 10 months later in The Wolverine. Tapping into the contemporary vogue for arcane exploratory adventure as also favoured by the likes of literary horrorist brethren Seabury Quinn, Clark Ashton Smith, and latterly August Derleth and Robert E. Howard, here Lovecraft shares the story of an itinerant western wanderer (think Indiana Jones without no sense of humour or chance in Hell) who survives Arabian deserts only to stumble upon a previously unsuspected deserted conurbation suddenly exposed by the roaring eternal winds.

Genned-up on local legends, the explorer cannot resist entering the vast metropolis. However, as he plunges deeper within, he finds thousands of boxes like a legion of coffins and realises the occupants are far from human. They may not even be dead…

Enthralling, understated and astoundingly effective, these classic tales have been reverently adapted and packaged in an inexpensive, digest-sized monochrome paperback that will delight avowed aficionados and beguile terror-loving newcomers alike.

© 2014 Gou Tanabe. All rights reserved. This English-language edition © 2017 Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

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Bad Magic – A Skullduggery Pleasant Graphic Novel


By Derek Landy, PJ Holden, Matt Soffe, Rob Jones & Pye Parr (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
ISBN: 978-000-858-5785 (TPB/Digital edition)

Have you heard of Skulduggery Pleasant? What about his biographer Derek Landy?

The latter is an occasional comics writer (All-Out Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America) who moonlights as a best-selling Irish author, thanks mostly to the addictive exploits of the former. Since 2007, Landy has detailed the training of mystic troubleshooter Valkyrie Cain by a veteran spook chooser/animated skeleton calling himself… Skulduggery Pleasant…

Other than my heartfelt recommendation, what more do you need to go get some of that? By my count there’s 15 novels thus far, with another due early next year. Technically, it was all supposed to end after three trilogies, but the only thing that can’t die or be killed is soaring success…

With snippets, novellas, sidebar stories and the like popping up when least expected (surely the best time?) it was inevitable that the haunt-hunters would migrate to comics too, and it’s fair to say that the result is a real cracker…

Scripted by Landy, limned by P.J. Holden (Rogue Trooper, Judge Dredd, Warhammer Monthly, The Moon Looked Down and Laughed, coloured by Matt Soffe and lettered by Rob Jones, the story opens in rural Termoncara, a rustic outpost that just happens to be the unsung murder capital of Ireland. Somehow, though, nobody outside seems to notice…

Inside the idyllic enclave of ordinary folk, all is not happy – especially for young Jamie, who truly regrets saying to Ethan what he did. Now Jamie’s despised: kept out of school and accused of killing his best friend. Moreover, he’s become the focus of enough hate, spite, hostility and intolerance to move mountains…

One month later, two flashy strangers arrogantly breeze into town, ruffling feathers, poking under stones and asking questions that better… beings… have died for. Soon, Valkyrie and Skulduggery are baiting and beating up a succession of racist, homophobic louts of all ages. Refusing to learn, these decent folk regularly confront them, but it’s just useful for misdirection as the strangers continue the actual task of finding out what kind of monster has turned a sleepy hamlet into the mystic equivalent of the Somme…

The root cause of all the grief is a deep mystery going back twenty years, and as the eerie investigators probe deeper and dodge multiple mundane and magical murder attempts, it becomes clear that it might be more than even Pleasant can handle…

Sadly, when they do unearth toxic, mystic agent provocateur Mr Friendly and his thuggish thaumaturgic pals, that proves all too true, but this kind of buried trauma can generate unlikely friends as well as appalling foes and in the end it’s all up to Jaimie to make a life- and reality-changing choice…

Fun, thrilling, smartly scripted and powerfully making a stand for diversity and inclusion in the face of intimidation and ignorance, even if this is your first encounter with the worlds of Skulduggery Pleasant, it one you will adore and never forget…
Text © Derek Landy 2023. Art © P.J. Holden 2023. Skulduggery Pleasant™ Derek Landy. Skulduggery Pleasant logo™ HarperCollinsPublishers. All rights reserved.

Bad Magic will be published 28th September 2023 and is available for pre-order now. If you’re of a sociable bent, there is a series of nine meet-&-greet events – such as a signing at Forbidden Planet Megastore London on 28th September and Henley Literary Festival on October 1st – so why not check out www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk for precise details, hmm?