Category: Adaptations

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Superman Smashes the Klan


By Gene Luen Yang & Gurihiru (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0421-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

It’s indisputable that the American comic book industry – if it existed at all – would have been an utterly unrecognisable thing without Superman. Siegel & Shuster’s unprecedented invention was rapturously adopted by a desperate and joy-starved generation, quite literally giving birth to a genre if not an actual art form.

Spawning an astounding army of imitators within 3 years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of breakneck breathtaking action and cathartic wish-fulfilment epitomising the primal Man of Tomorrow expanded to encompass cops-&-robbers crime-busting, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy, socially reforming dramas – and, once the war in Europe and the East engulfed America – patriotic relevance for a host of gods, champions and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

In comic book terms Superman was master of the world and, whilst transforming the fledgling funnybook industry, the Metropolis Marvel was also inexorably expanding into all areas of entertainment media. Although we all think of Jerry & Joe’s iconic invention as the epitome and acme of kid stuff creation, the truth is that very soon after his debut in Action Comics #1, the Man of Steel became an all-ages fictional multimedia monolith in the same league as Popeye, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse.

We parochial, possessive comics fans too often regard our purest and most powerful icons in purely graphic narrative terms, but the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, The Avengers and all their hyperkinetic kin long ago outgrew their 4-colour origins. These days, comics characters don’t really succeed until they’ve been fully mythologized creatures instantly recognisable across all platforms and age ranges… especially by TV, video games and movies…

Far more people have seen or heard an actor as Superman than have ever read his comic tales. The globally syndicated newspaper strips alone reached untold millions, and by the time his 20th anniversary rolled around at the very start of what we know as the Silver Age of Comics, Superman had become an immensely popular, thrice-weekly radio serial milestone with its own spin-off: a landmark novel by radio-show scripter George Lowther.

The audible exploits were translated into 17 astounding animated cartoons by the Fleischer Studios and latterly into live action via two movie serials (Superman 1948 and Atom Man vs Superman 1950) plus a proper movie in 1951 (Superman and the Mole Men).

These paved the way for groundbreaking television series Adventures of Superman which owned the 1950s: running 104 original episodes across six seasons, from September 1952 to April 1958 and for decades after in reruns.

The Man of Steel was a perennial sure-fire success for toy, game, puzzle and apparel manufacturers and had just ended that first smash live-action television presence. In his future were more shows (Superboy, Lois & Clark, Smallville, Superman & Lois), a stage musical, two blockbuster movie franchises and an almost seamless succession of games, bubble gum cards and TV cartoons beginning with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966 and continuing ever since. Even superdog Krypto got in on the small-screen act, and that’s not including spin-offs for Supergirl and even planet Krypton…

There have always been “other” versions of Superman, but arguably the most important – even more than his epic newspaper strip career – was the radio serial. The daily newspaper strip launched on 16th January 1939, supplemented by a full-colour Sunday page from November 5th and on February 12th 1940, the Mutual Network transmitted the Man of Tomorrow into homes across America. Initially sponsored by Kellog’s Pep and broadcast as 15-minute episodes three times a week (and in some regions 5 days a week), the show grew into half-hour instalments by August 1942 and continued until February 4th 1949. Thereafter it shifted to ABC in an evening slot and thrice weekly afternoons until March 1st 1951: a total of 2,088 episodes and 128 different storylines. There was even an Australian version with Anzac actors: a total of 1040 episodes from 1949 -1954…

The US serial’s scripters and directors (including B. P. Freeman & Jack Johnstone, Robert & Jessica Maxwell, George F. Lowther, Allen Ducovny & Mitchell Grayson) introduced many innovations that became canonical in comics continuity – such as team-ups with Batman & Robin, inventing Jimmy Olsen and Kryptonite and the immortal opening mantra that began “Up in the Sky! It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane!”…

The show fuelled the imaginations of millions through wonder and action, but also embraced the refugee hero’s socially crusading roots. In 1946, inspired by a resurgence of activity by the Ku Klux Klan, the writers used the 118th saga to fight back against intolerance and bigotry with ‘The Clan of the Fiery Cross’. It began on June 10th and ran16 episodes into July, detailing how a Chinese -American family moves to Metropolis and is targeted by hooded racists until the Action Ace steps in and steps up…

How that ancient tale was revived and adapted into a 3-issue miniseries for DC’s Young Adult imprint by award-winning Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese, Boxers and Saints, Avatar: The Last Airbender, New Super-Man) and Japanese women’s illustration collective Gurihiru AKA Chifuyu Sasaki & Naoko Kawano (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sonic, Unbelievable Gwenpool Power Pack, Tails of the Pet Avengers and more) is recounted at the end of this enthralling adaptation.

‘Superman and Me by Gene Luen Yang’ traces the turbulent and often ludicrous history of the Ku Klux Klan; slavery in the US, Jim Crow laws; The Chinese Exclusion Act; the advent and impact of Superman; abuses of the well-intentioned 1944 G.I. Bill and the radio show that uniquely united non-racist Americans whilst effectively setting the Klan back 20 years…

The story itself is charming, inspirational and decidedly hard-hitting in a manner easily accessible to youngsters; beginning with the Metropolis Marvel still learning about his powers. Strong, fast and able to leap tall buildings, Superman knows very little about his origins but still drives himself tirelessly to save the helpless and punish the guilty.

That starts to change after a titanic battle against leftover Nazi terrorist Atom Man. In the course of a brutal clash, our hero is exposed to a strange green crystal empowering his foe: one that which makes him sick for the first time in his life and triggers bizarre hallucinations – weird smells, odd conversations and images of being a monstrous alien…

As Superman’s friend – “negro” Police Inspector William Henderson – carts off the defeated Nazi, across town Lan-Shin Li is also feeling billious. Her family are driving into Metropolis and their new house, but she already misses Chinatown. She also can’t get used to being called “Roberta Lee” now…

Father’s new job as Chief Bacteriologist for Doctors Segret Wilson and William Jennings at the Metropolis Health Department is a huge triumph and advancement, and her easy-going brother Tommy is ecstatic to move into a white neighbourhood, but mother speaks very little English and is always frightened. Roberta just hates change and misses old friends…

Her anxiety remains high even after new neighbour Jimmy Olsen welcomes them and invites the kids to join the local baseball team. It only really fades after seeing Superman running past at superspeed. Something about him nudges Roberta’s brilliant scientific mind…

Sporting paragon Tommy is a big hit at the Unity House community center, but Roberta just feels out of place, especially after starting pitcher Chuck Riggs uses racist slurs and is fired from the team.

The incident escalates when Chuck sounds off to his Uncle Matt, and that unrepentant racist has his friends leave a burning cross on the Lee’s lawn. As Grand Scorpion of the Klan of the Fiery Kross, he strives to keep America free from impurity, and decides it’s time Chuck also started defending the besieged white race…

Scared and already regretful and repentant, Chuck goes along with the adults, but when he tries to firebomb the house, Roberta recognises him despite his hooded robes…

By-passer Bill Henderson and his buddies help extinguish the flames, but the Inspector cannot convince the Lees to file a complaint. The incident does, however, make Roberta determined to stay and fight back…

Clark Kent and Lois Lane soon arrive and start asking questions. Something about little Roberta reminds the clandestine Kryptonian of growing up in Smallville, particularly those times when his hidden abilities made him feel like an outsider… or even a monster.

… And elsewhere, the secrets of Atom Man and the alien green rock are being decoded by mysterious scientists with a nasty agenda: potential tyrants intent on making mischief at the heart of a brave new society. Soon after, events escalate when the Klan kidnap Tommy and Roberta furiously confronts Chuck…

Thus begins a powerful and rewarding adventure detailing not simply the antagonisms of outsiders and ultra-conservatives, and incomers against entrenched privilege, but also how diversity and inclusion benefits everyone on so many levels. It’s also a smart saga of good versus evil, growth, accommodation and acceptance and a parable of how a wise child taught the Man of Steel where he was going wrong and how to use his powers correctly…

An immigrant’s tale about knowing oneself and adapting to change, Superman Smashes the Klan is wise and welcoming and wants you to see the best in everyone everywhere.
© 2020, DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Essay by Gene Luen Yang © 2019 Humble Comics LLC.

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From the Files of… Mike Hammer: The Complete Dailies and Sundays


By Mickey Spillane & Ed Robbins: edited by Max Allan Collins (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-025-3 (HB/Digital edition)

Frank Morrison Spillane was Brooklyn born on March 9th 1918 and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He started writing in High School and, after trying a wide variety of jobs, joined a production shop in 1940, where he worked on articles for magazines (“slicks”), pulps and – thanks to a connection to Joe Gill (Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Peacemaker and more horror, war and science fiction tales than you can imagine) – comic books.

Spillane wrote dozens of text fillers (usually the only place you could sign your own name) for Funnies Inc. who supplied Timely Comics, Fawcett, National/DC and more, but also crafted comics tales too, including Blue Bolt, Captain Marvel, Batman, Captain America and Sub-Mariner. A rough, tough guy, and already qualified pilot, he enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor, but his expertise denied him the combat he craved and relegated him to the despised role of Army Air Corps flight instructor, stationed in Mississippi.

Married in 1945, he found employment scarce when peace broke out and turned his 1942 comic creation Mike Lancer P.I. (latterly Mike Danger) into a rough, tough, vulgar and compelling paragon of toxic masculinity. The 1947 novel I, The Jury was written in 9 days and, on the suggestion of Ray Gill (brother of Joe), offered to EP Dutton. They published it in hardback which sold moderately that year. One year later the paperback edition sold six and a half million copies in the US alone, was translated everywhere, kicked off a detective boom in film and books, and created both an iconic character and arguably an entire subgenre. Spillane died in July 2006.

Love him or loathe (and people have always fallen pretty equally on either side) Mike Hammer changed the world of entertainment. Apparently based on Texas Ranger Mike Hamer (who killed Bonnie & Clyde in 1934), Hammer is hard-boiled and smart but also brutally violent, mercurial and misogynistic. His hatred for criminality borders on psychosis and in his later books viciously anti-communist. Despite respecting law and cops he considers both a constant impediment to justice. He carries a Colt 45 M1911A1 and has a distinctly modern relationship with his secretary Velda – who might well be a harder man than him. His best pal is NYPD Homicide Captain Pat Chambers…

Spillane wrote 13 Hammer novels between 1947 and 1996: a tiny fraction of a frankly heroic output, with the canon further extended in later years by crime maven and comics marvel Max Allen Collins – a close friend and associate who added 30 more to the tally. Working from Spillane’s notes, he posthumously extended Spillane’s Hammer canon by writing a further 13 Hammer novels and 17 other characters from the author’s notes…

Collins (Dick Tracy, Batman, Ms. Tree, Wild Dog, Mike Danger, Nathan Heller, Mallory, Nolan & Quarry series, The Road to Perdition) also edited and curated this epic collected archival edition, gathering another controversial Hammer spin-off but one of the anti-hero’s few failures…

We open with his Foreword ‘Mickey and Me’ and informative Introduction ‘From the Files of… Mike Hammer’ relating history and building context in heavily illustrated features sharing novel dustjackets, posters and lobby cards from some of the many movies, logos, designs and original art from the strip, all augmented throughout by promotional ads.

The short run was distributed by Phoenix Features Syndicate from 1953-1954: written by Spillane, Joe Gill and illustrator Ed Robbins, narrated like the books, in first person by Hammer. The reason for the minor league management was to keep authorial control out of the hands of timid censorious editors but it proved the strip’s undoing…

Originally compiled by Ken Pierce Books as Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer – The Comic Strip volume 1 (The Sudden Trap and Other Stories) & 2 (The Dark City and Other Stories), this edition maintains their layout of up to 4 dailies per page and opens with ‘Half-Blonde’ as the grim gumshoe stumbles over a pretty singer, witness – or culprit – to senseless murder. Inserting himself into the case, Hammer is shot, beaten and lied to but still unearths a long-buried secret to expose high society schemes of embezzlement and casual execution…

Whilst recovering from the latest bullet wounds incurred in the line of duty, Mike discovers dark deeds in the hospital and intercedes on behalf of ‘The Bandaged Woman’ who doesn’t officially exist; bringing down a diabolical doctor happy to butcher and torture patients to mollify his own monstrous child and maximise his personal fortune. Hammer’s cure is suitably efficient and comes in a single treatment…

The strip was full of raw, violence, barely concealed sex and comparatively shocking violence for America’s prime family entertainment medium, which made the subject of ‘The Child’ a charged one as Hammer is gulled by one gangster inro saving a little girl from another mob of kidnappers. When he learns he’s been made a patsy and the actual bereaved parent is President Eisenhower things get really nasty in the name of patriotism…

Hammer was never a conventional hero and the stories always pushed boundaries. Emotional turmoil rages through ‘Another Lonely Night’ after best pal Pat callously makes Mike bait to draw out mob killers and sits back as a procession of assassins seek to rub him out. At least the wounded warrior can always depend on pistol-packing Velda…

Newspapers used seasons as key sales points and everybody worked a ‘Christmas Story’ angle. For Hammer it took a typically bleak turn as – after arguing with Velda – Mike sets out to catch a crook on Christmas Eve: the busiest day of the year for grifters, grafters, pickpockets and buttonmen. Although apparently proving his point, Hammer had to ultimately concede that there is such a thing as the spirit of the season…

The dailies wrapped up with an epic ideological challenge as Hammer is targeted by the greatest criminal in America and forced to hunt an even worse public enemy in ‘Adam and Kane’. Facing three generations of sheer evil, Mike suffers a psychological freeze and is helpless against the truly diabolical son of aged Adam Shaver.

That “Napoleon of Crime” retired when he found true love but the fruit of it was even more evil and Adam now wants the toughest man in New York to bring him down for the sake of all.

Despite being physically outmatched and intellectually dwarfed, Hammer’s biggest handicap is his own fear until gloating Kane attacks other innocents under Mike’s protection. From then on, the gloves are off…

Sundays began on May 17th 1953 and there were only three before reader complaints ended the run and both strips. It began in full colour splendour with ‘Comes Murder!’ as Hammer discovers a young couple who have been gulled and roughed up by pro gambling racketeers. Incensed, Mike goes after slick Art Selton and meets his match and a major setback in the mobster’s busty blonde “assistant”. Overpowered but undaunted, he changes tack and quickly realises he’s not the only one after Selton. All he has to do is stir things up and stand back, but it helps if you know who’s actually calling the shots…

Crime never rests and when Hammer takes a short country break he meets a ghost in ‘The Sudden Trap.’ His astonishment at seeing the wife of gang boss Al Quinn two years after she died in a car crash and hubby dearest collected a million-dollar insurance pay out obsesses the PI, and his bullish investigations soon have everyone gunning for him. Luckily, local reporter Miss Hayes (no first name; just loads of diminishing “terms of affection”!) backstops him as he crashes from one wrong conclusion to the next until the many murderous fiends who want the revenant dead again are caught and the incredible truth is exposed…

The series concluded with ‘Dark City’ as traumatised Korean War vet Buddie and his sister Eve hire Mike to keep her safe from unknown assailants. Whilst doing the job, Hammer learns that he’s been lied to again. However, before he can confront them, the shamus is compelled by sheer decency to rescue her from abductors.

The scene of her being tortured is extremely graphic even by modern standards, leading to artist Robbins being accused of doing what no man could… killing Mike Hammer…

The story was wrapped up rapidly with our hero exposing the siblings’ scam in two-fisted style and the dream was over…

At its best the strip was evocative and extremely competent as well as being true to its times and its tenets. For those who admired Hammer’s oeuvre they comprise a lost treasure…

Closing this collection is behind-the-scenes feature ‘Restoring Mike Hammer’ by Daniel Herman revealing how the scattered and distressed remnants of the series were saved for publication.

Then come more objects of interest in ‘Mike Hammer and Pop Culture’ delivering poster and book cover art, extracts from comic spoofs ‘My Gun is the Jury! By Melvie Splane’ (Panic! #1 1954) and Mad Magazine’s parody of the 1980’s TV show (illustrated by Sam Viviano), candid photos and more.

Certainly not everybody’s shot of rye, From the Files of… Mike Hammer: The Complete Dailies and Sundays is a glimpse at a global icon at his visual peak: one you can take or leave but never ignore if you love exploring the annals of crime fiction.
© 2013 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC.

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Crossroad Blues – A Nick Travers Graphic Novel


By Ace Atkins & Marco Finnegan (12-Guage Comics/Image)
ISBN: 978-1-5343-0648-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

Following the success of long-delayed originating Nick Travers tale Last Fair Deal Gone Down, Ace Atkins & Marco Finnegan regrouped and applied their brand of Southern discomfort to the first official published exploit. Prose novel Crossroad Blues was released in 1998, with three more following every two years thereafter until 2004.

Here history and myth collide with modern tastes and business practises as Travers reviews the celebrated legend of Robert Leroy Johnson who infamously sold his soul to the Devil for musical success. He “invented” the Delta Blues, was killed in still-mysterious circumstances, is a global presence and still personifies the image of a doomed musician at the mercy of his gifts and cruel commerce. Despite his fame then and influence since, Johnson’s recording career only lasted seven months in total…

Here, a glimpse at his last moments neatly segues into college lecturer/blues documentarian Travers who is momentarily stymied in his plans to make a film about his hero Guitar Slim. Keen to break the deadlock, he checks in with Tulane’s Head of Jazz Archives Professor Randy Sexton. A guy who likes to help and one easily distracted, Nick is soon heading into the Delta for Sexton, looking for absent colleague Professor Michael Baker, who has been missing since some big-time collector hired him to locate the fabled but apparently fictional “lost recordings of Robert Johnson”…

Disbelieving but still beguiled by the notion of the Holy Grail of Blues music, Travers dogs his trail across Mississippi, encountering many dubious characters and finding new girlfriend Virginia before being sent in the direction of negro-albino “Cracker”. This enigmatic “devil-touched” old coot actually met Johnson and now lives at the Old Three Forks Store where Johnson was murdered in 1938. Sadly, he’s not there now, having been abducted and tortured by a wannabe (possibly reincarnated?) new Elvis Presley. The gun for hire has been told the aged hermit knows the location of certain legendary recordings but is all shook up at the dotard’s resistance to pain and mockery of “The King”…

After rescuing Cracker, Travers and local sheriff Willie Brown join forces, but when Nick and multi-talented Virginia search another potential location, the sheriff is murdered and Travers takes the fall until Virginia provides an alibi…

In the interim, the closeted money man behind “Elvis” breaks cover and takes over questioning Cracker. When Nick gets home to New Orleans, trouble follows him back and begins hitting his closest friends – like JoJo and Loretta…

He also has a new suspect but nobody wants to tell him who Earl Snooks is or was, and many other people even try to kill just for saying his name…

In the end, it’s Professor Randy who supplies that information and also a possible prime suspect behind all the killings and horror. Just as Travers decides to come down heavy, he gets a message that the villain will trade the recordings no one has actually seen yet for Virginia…

When the dust and blood settles, the mystery of Johnson’s death is solved, but it’s only one of many homicides and the lost records are where they’ve always been as befits the dictates of a real myth…

Complex, compelling and sublimely orchestrated, this is a yarn to delight crime cognoscenti everywhere and one you cannot miss..
© 2018 Ace Atkins. 12-Guage Comics LL authorized user. All Rights Reserved.

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Last Fair Deal Gone Down – A Nick Travers Graphic Novel


By Ace Atkins & Marco Finnegan (12-Guage Comics/Image)
ISBN: 978-0-9836937-1-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

For the majority of private eyes, unshakable ethics, deductive reasoning and an attitude are not enough. The best ones also enjoy a specific time and/or location as well as a quirk or fascination that drives them. For Nero Wolf it was fine food and rare orchids, Marcus Didio Falco was an anti-establishment family man in first century Rome, Miss Marple was elderly and genteel, and both Phryne Fisher and Lord Peter Wimsey were posh, rich, and socialist. Moreover, Harry Dresden abets sleuthing with wizardry, Dirk Gently favours a holistic approach and Detective Chimp is a chimp…

Locale and an overarching outside interest flavours so many great crimebusting ratiocinators, none more so than Nick Travers: a music-loving history-driven investigator plying his twin trades in the moody Big Easy and its shady, murder & melody immersed environs.

The musical mystery prodigy was devised by former footballer award-winning investigative journalist Ace Atkins, a prolific writer who was himself compelled to re-examine cold cases and forgotten crimes.

Born in 1970, Atkins began his fiction-weaving aged 30: penning Crossroad Blues before going on to write three more Travers books between 1998 and 2004, 11 novels of former soldier Quinn Colson and standalone novels White Shadow, Wicked City, Devil’s Garden and Infamous. In 2011, the estate of Robert B. Parker commissioned Atkins to continue that author’s saga of P.I. Spenser, with a further ten books resulting thus far.

All that industrious fictive intrigue stemmed from an unfinished, abortive early exploit of the still unformed Nick Travers. The author’s Introduction for this stunning monochrome graphic grimoire details the strange circumstances leading to that abandoned outline finally being finished in 2016 to become something of a crime-writing sensation. It pays particular heed to the fevered efforts of fan Marco Finnegan to adapt the potent parable into comics…

A masterpiece of mood and style, the story sees Blues historian and occasional Tulane University lecturer Travers enjoying the distinctive Saturday night ambience of JoJo’s Bar (as well as Loretta’s cooking). In that suitably seedy dive, veteran sax player Fats beguiles drink-sodden listeners whilst continuing his own gradual self-extinction via booze and betting. It’s the founding myth of this city…

At the close, Nick spots him a meal and realises the little legend is especially troubled. He talks about being in love Real Love. Two days later, Fats is dead… an accidental fall…

The bluesman had no friends or family so JoJo and Travers are asked to clear his meagre belongings from the flop he rented. Fats had practically nothing left but his vintage sax. It was worth a fortune if he could have ever conceived of selling it, but it’s missing now…

Outraged and overwhelmed, Nick relentlessly employs his other skillset to discover how Fats actually died, who did it and why. As more far-from-innocents are killed, he kicks open a viper’s nest of betrayal, twisted hopes, frustrated desires, criminal exploitation and bitter disappointment – which only confirms all the legends and lies of the men who make the music and the lovers they despondently play it for…

And of course, even when the case closes and the bad guy is dealt with, there’s one last moment of revelation and another betrayal to avenge…

Atmospheric, moodily authentic and drowning in potent edgy drama and tension, Last Fair Deal Gone Down is a perfect example of comics crime and Southern Noir: a wonderful passport to the world of passion, idealism and shop-soiled justice…
© 2016 Ace Atkins. Image Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe: A Trilogy of Crime


Adapted by Tom DeHaven & Rian Hughes; Jerome Charyn & David Lloyd; James Rose, Lee Moyer & Alfredo Alcala, & various (iBooks)
ISBN: 978-0-7434-7489-4 (HB), 978-1-59687-839-6 (TPB 2016 edition)

If you’re going to adapt classic, evocative crime stories into graphic narrative there really isn’t no better source material than Chandler. This follow-up to the adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe: The Little Sister was last reissued in 2016 as Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe: The Graphic Novel: once again the fruit of comics visionary Byron Preiss.

It adroitly adapts three short tales from the master of hard-boiled fiction. Significantly, they are all rendered in a variety of unique and impressive styles by an international array of top-flight creators…

Opening the show is ‘Goldfish’, first published in 1949 and the writer’s ninth short story sale. It preceded his first Marlowe novel by three years and is here adapted by Tom DeHaven (Green Candles, It’s Superman!) & lettered by Willie Schubert. The stylish illustration comes courtesy of British designer/artist Rian Hughes (Dare, I Am a Number) using muted colour tones that have only the merest hint of hue to them. The effect is powerfully evocative and atmospheric.

When former cop Kathy Horne sidles into the tough guy’s seedy office, she brings a tale of lost pearls, an absconded convict and a huge reward just waiting to be claimed. Dragged far out of his comfort zone and sent up and down the Pacific Seaboard, our world-weary shamus is just steps ahead of sadistic, casually murderous Carol Donovan and her gang of thugs in a superb thriller of double-cross and double-jeopardy…

Next up is ‘The Pencil’, scripted by award-winning mystery novelist Jerome Charyn (Isaac Sidel series, The Magician’s Wife, New York Cannibals), brilliantly rendered by British comics legend David Lloyd (V for Vendetta, Hellblazer, Wasteland, Aces Weekly) in moody, dry-brush black and white, and lettered by long-term collaborator Elitta Fell. This was Chandler’s 21st – and final – Marlowe adventure, published posthumously in 1959, shortly after the author’s death. You might know it as Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate, Wrong Pigeon or even Philip Marlowe’s Last Case.

Hollywood 1955: Ikky Rossen is a bad man, a career gangster and mob leg-breaker. When he crosses his bosses he hopes Marlowe can get him safely out of the City of Angels before The Organization’s East Coast “button men” send him to Hell. Marlowe knows these are people to be avoided at all costs and only one thing is always true: everybody lies…

Closing the casebook – and somewhat ill-considered and misplaced to my mind – is ‘Trouble is My Business’ as interpreted by James Rose (Thundercats, Savage sword of Conan), Lee Moyer (Starstruck, Dungeons & Dragons) & Alfredo Alcala (Voltar, Swamp Thing, Man Thing, Batman, Savage Sword of Conan), with Schubert again filling the word balloons.

This is a weak tale of vengeful Harriet Huntress who intends to destroy two generations of wealthy socialites mixed up in the gambling rackets originated in 1939: a rather tame and straightforward yarn in comparison to the other stories here, not to mention the landmark first full novel The Big Sleep, which was also published in that year.

Moyer and Alcala do a solid job of illustrating the plot (although it’s a little pretty for my tastes) but the cynical edge that is the hallmark of Chandler’s iconic creation is muted if not actually extinguished here.

Despite ending on a sour note, this is still a superb sample of Detective comics any fan can revel in, with the incredible Steranko cover alone well worth the effort of tracking down…
Adaptations and illustrations © 2003 Byron Preiss Visual Publications Inc. Original stories “Goldfish” and “Trouble is my Business” © 2003 Philip Marlowe BV (Estate of Raymond Chandler) All Rights Reserved. “The Pencil” © 1971 Helga Greene, Executrix, Estate of Raymond Chandler. All Rights Reserved.

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Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: The Little Sister


Adapted by Michael Lark (A Byron Preiss Book/Fireside Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59687-535-7 (TPB)

If you’re going to adapt classic, evocative crime novels into graphic narrative you really can’t start from better source material than Raymond Chandler. His fifth novel, The Little Sister, was published in 1949, after nearly a decade of hard living and work as a Hollywood screenwriter, and it is a perfect example of his terse yet poetic hard-boiled style.

All the beloved and iconic imagery is present in Michael (Gotham Central, Legend of Hawkman, Terminal City) Lark’s static snapshot style as prim Orfamay Quest hires the laconic Marlowe to track down her missing brother, a spiritual soul who seems to have gone off the rails since hitting the sin city of Los Angeles.

Little Orfamay seems wound up pretty tight for such a run-of the-mill case, but the world-weary detective soon starts to take things a little more seriously after the bodies begin to drop and corpses start showing up in the strangest places…

This taut and twisted compote of mobsters, blackmail and double-dealing is an ideal example of a tale adapted well: underplayed art and direction augmented by controlled pace and a sensitive use of a deliberately limited colour palette.

A cool look at a period classic, this is a crime-fan’s dream book, and what’s truly criminal is that it’s been allowed to remain out-of-print.
© 1997 Byron Preiss Visual Publications Inc. Text of The Little Sister © 1949 Raymond Chandler, © renewed 1976 Mrs Helga Greene. All Rights Reserved.

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KIKI de Montparnasse


By Catel & Bocquet, translated by Nora Mahoney (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-90683-825-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

Like all art students in the 1970s and early 1980s I fell in love with Surrealism and Dada and even had a copy of Man Ray’s print of the naked chick mimicking a cello on a wall for a while. The model was his greatest muse – Kiki of Montparnasse.

I revelled in how the image was a clever juxtaposition of idea and image and never gave much thought to the actual woman in the picture. That was a huge mistake, thankfully rectified here in this supremely moving account of the life of an indomitable soul who encapsulated and epitomised an extraordinary era…

Please take heed: this book contains both nudity and nakedness in large amounts. Don’t read it if such drawings might affect you in unwholesome ways…

Alice Ernestine Prin (2nd October 1901 – 29th April 1953) was born in Châtillon-sur-Seine, Côte-d’Or. She was a child of shame and poverty, wilful and a bit wild: surviving life amongst the lowest classes. She grew up in northern France in a region of agriculture, heavy industry and especially winemaking: raised by a grandmother and often-visiting godfather. Alice had her first drink and danced for inn patrons at ten. It kept happening until her already-disgraced mother abruptly returned in 1913 before the girl was packed off to Paris to learn a trade.

That’s when her life really began.

That life is traced from cradle to grave in a rapid-fire procession of black-&-white vignettes, that first focuses on her childhood and brushes with education, whilst concentrating on her happy but unconventional family life and relationships.

Already wise beyond her years in the things that mattered, Alice clashed with a number of employers in crappy jobs – such as bakery assistant or domestic servant – and dreamed of love and adventure, independence and fame…

She reached her majority just as Europe was changed forever by “The War to End All Wars”, and was on hand and at the forefront as the entire continent – but especially France – survived the communal mass PTSD dubbed the Années Folles or “Crazy Years”. An era of wild excess, free thought and fresh art and literary exploration, much of it triggered by shock, disenchantment and crumbling social order: the reaction of a generation who thought they were rebuilding themselves and society, but were in fact only gearing up to do it all over again…

With wounded soldiers everywhere and employment scarce, in 1916 Alice agreed to model for a sculptor buying bread: a scandalous job she at first concealed from her mother. When the outraged matron learned the truth, she disowned her daughter…

Two years later, she was an occasional singer and dancer and a paid escort too, but poverty was still biting too deep. Modelling was not a highly paid profession and most artists were just as poor as their subjects, but life took an upward turn after she was introduced to a promising prospect named Amedeo Modigliani…

He showed her to Utrillo, and thus to Mendjinsky and…

By 1920 she had remade herself and was known only as “KIKI”: bold, brassy, shamelessly confidant and utterly in command of the close community and artistic colony of defiant non-comformists of Montparnasse. Her star was on the rise and everyone one wanted to capture her in their own way. Her intimate associations would include Sanyu, Chaïm Sountine, Jean Cocteau, Julie Mandel, Constant Detré, Francis Picabia, Arno Breker, Alexander Calder, Per Krogh, Hermine David, Pablo Gargallo, Tono Salazar, John Glassco, Moïse Kisling and so many others who would reshape the creative world.

In 1921 she met her most devoted acolyte in Tsuguharu Foujita and the man who would make her immortal: American photographer Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky). She had also begun selling her own paintings, starring in numerous surrealist and Dadaist films and even performed in Ferdinand Leger’s Ballet mécanique in 1923…

Somehow, however, fame never quite equated to fortune, even though in June 1924 Man Ray’s image Le Violon d-Ingres (Ingre’s Violin) was first published in Surrealist magazine Littérature, with her astounding energy, creativity and catalogue of innovations and successes acting as a mere spine to form an impression of the woman whose guiding motto was always “be natural”. In May 2022, an original print of the image sold at auction for $412,400,000.

In love with fame and too forgiving with her lovers, KIKI flowered through those wild days luxuriating in independence and glamour, approval and rejection, notoriety, renown, and – outside her world and the art world – utter anonymity. Always, though, she lived it on her own terms…

How that all worked out comprises the majority of this stunningly inviting and compellingly absorbing cartoon biography: an award-winning tale that is the very picture of a rags-to-“riches”-to-rags melodrama and one as charming and uncompromising as any carefully constructed work of fiction.

This sublimely moving episodic dramatised narrative is a tasty wonder in bite-sized pieces and the first multi award-winning collaboration between graphic novelist Catel Muller (Ainsi soit Benoîte Groult, Adieu Kharkov, Lucie s’en soucie, Le Sang des Valentines, Joséphine Baker, Olympe de Gouges, Alice Guy) and crime novelist, screenwriter, biographer/comics writer José-Louis Bocquet (Sur la ligne blanche, Mémoires de l’espion, Panzer Panik, Joséphine Baker, Olympe de Gouges, Anton Six, Alice Guy).

The result is an exceptionally entertaining, engaging and informative account which is supplemented by a vast supporting structure of extras, beginning with a heavily illustrated and highly informative ‘Chronology’ tracing in minute detail all the pivotal events in KIKI’s short sharp life, which never changed the world but certain embraced and enjoyed it…

That’s further augmented by ‘Biographical Notes’ offering scholarly character portraits in prose and sketch form: all key historical figures impacting the model’s life, including Chaïm Sountine, Amedeo Modigliani, Moïse Kisling, Tsuguharu Foujita, Henri-Pierre Roché, Man Ray, Marie Vassilieff, Pablo Picasso, Tristan Tzara, Robert Desnos, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Trieze, Ivan Mosjoukine, Jean Cocteau, Henri Broca, Lee Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Jamblan, and André Larocque, and a Filmography of the movies researchers have since confirmed and acknowledged, and a colossal ‘Bibliography’ of books about her.
© 2011 SelfMadeHero. Illustrated by Catel. Written by José-Louis Bocquet. All rights reserved. Digital edition © May 2016.

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Sax Rohmer’s Dope


Adapted by Trina Robbins from the novel by Sax Rohmer (It’s Alive/IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-957-8 (HB/Digital edition)

The 1980s were a hugely fertile time for American comics-creators. An entire new industry started with the birth of the Direct Sales market and – as dedicated specialist retail outlets sprung up all over the country (operated by fans for fans) – new companies experimented with formats and content whilst eager readers celebrated the happy coincidence that everybody seemed to have a bit of extra cash to play with.

Most importantly, much of the “kid’s stuff” stigma finally dissipated. America was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be a for-real actual art-form able to handle sophisticated themes and notions…

Consequently, many new publishers were soon competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown resigned to getting their on-going picture stories from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material had been creeping in and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Capital, Now, Comico, Vortex, First, Dark Horse Comics and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads.

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. Even smaller companies had a fair shot at the big time and a lot of great material came – and too often, as quickly went – without getting the attention or success it warranted.

At the forefront of the revolution – and a perfect example – was Eclipse Comics who entered the arena at the start in 1981 with a black-&-white anthology magazine; quickly followed by a terrific line of genre titles crafted by the industry’s top talents and emerging superstars.

Although the bold fledglings were gone a decade later, their influence still lives on, as does much of the material they originally released: picked up, reprinted and expanded upon by more fortunate successors…

The latest long-overdue returnee is a decades-anticipated and awaited (by me at the very least) cartoon compilation of a scarce-remembered book adaptation. The inspirational original tome was a scandalous classic of crime and debauchery from a semi-mythical era, penned by Sax Rohmer …mostly remembered these days for inventing the ultimate personification of stranger-danger… Fu Manchu.

Starting its serialised run in monochrome anthology Eclipse (The) Magazine and concluding in the pages of full-colour indie anthology Eclipse Monthly, Sax Rohmer’s Dope was deftly adapted by pioneering cartoonist, historian and activist Trina Robbins, beginning in issue #2 (July 1981) and featuring in all the rest until the 8th and final one (January 1983).

Uncompleted, the saga continued and climaxed over the first three issues of Eclipse Monthly (August – October 1983) before promptly vanishing from view, despite magazine stablemates such as Ms. Tree, I Am Coyote, Ragamuffins, Masked Man and others all going on to greater success – and collected editions…

Here then at last is Trina Robbins’ lost masterpiece: a moody interpretation of a rather infamous and groundbreaking book – sensationally based on the first recorded celebrity death due to recreational drug abuse, and available as a sturdy monochrome hardback or digital edition. The stark shenanigans are preceded by an effusive Foreword from artist and publisher C. Spike Trotman, and a revelatory, reminiscing Introduction by Robbins herself, disclosing the origins of her adaptation whilst confronting head-on the dreadful truth: Dope was a book of its time, unashamedly racist (as was its author) and probably even unaware of any harmful connotation to such an attitude…

Robbins then makes a rock solid and potently valid case for why we elevated 21st centurians should read it anyway…

The astounding shocker opens in ‘London, 1919’ as sound fellow Quentin Gray meets up with fellow swells Mrs. Irvin and her raffish companion Sir Lucien Pyne before being introduced to the seductive and tantalising half-world of the High Society drugs scene; as disseminated through the machinations of ostensible perfume trader Sheikh El Kazmah…

It’s the same old story: flighty Rita Irvin has succumbed to addiction but has no more money. Yet still she baulks when the seedy dealer suggests another manner of payment…

‘Chapter Two: The Fatal Cigarette’ opens a little later when Quentin greets formidable government official Commissioner Seton (recently returned from the east where he earned the title “Pasha” for his services to the Empire). The wise authoritarian has come to view the recently expired corpse of Pyne: stabbed to death soon after Gray left him and now lying in Kazmah’s apartments. Of Rita there is no sign…

On later meeting Rita’s physician Dr. Margaret Halley, Quentin’s disquiet grows. The boldly modern young woman even demands he throw away the cigarettes Pyne gave him before she speaks further. Of course, he had no idea until she warned him that they were laced with opium…

‘Chapter Three: A Star is Born – and Falls’ relates the sad tale of rising theatrical sensation Rita Dresden and how the nightly pressures of performing were temporarily assuaged by the scheming Pyne who offered her comfort and calming chemical gifts: comforts that she soon could not do without…

Rita’s fall retroactively continues in ‘Chapter Four: Pipe Dreams’ as she is introduced into a dope ring of well-heeled degenerates: attending the “poppy parties” of Mr. Cyrus Kilfane and encountering the striking and sinister Lola Sin…

Fleeing that debauched debacle, Rita literally ran into well-meaning Monte Irvin and was almost saved.

Almost…

‘Chapter Five: Limehouse Blues’ relates how the triply-addicted (veronal, cocaine and opium) Rita decides to marry Monte but cannot shake the corrupting influence of Pyne, his circle of privileged peers and the implacable beast her addiction has become…

Even her marriage proves no bulwark and ‘Chapter Six: To the Brink’ sees the new bride drawn into a cycle of abuse and exploitation as Madame Sin and her enigmatic husband fleece the newlywed and seek to use her to expand their clientele…

Events rush towards a sordid, inevitable conclusion in ‘Chapter Seven: Mollie Gets Amorous’ as Gray, Seton and formidable Police Chief Inspector Kerry close in on the poppy club and the nefarious dealers; leading to a daring Limehouse raid in Chapter Eight: A Visit to Sin’ with shocking disclosures in ‘Chapter Nine: Above and Below’ and the exposing of even darker secrets and an intoxicating conclusion in ‘Chapter Ten: The Song of Sin Sin Wa’…

Following an in insightful Afterword from groundbreaking cartoonist Colleen Doran, Jon B. Cooke offers a wealth of background and historical context in ‘Sax, Drugs, and the Yellow Peril’: describing the nativity of Rohmer’s novel and the very real scandal of London actress and rising Society ingenue Billie Carleton whose death from a cocaine overdose rocked the Empire and beyond in 1918.

The photo-filled feature section also offers “Background Dope” sidebars on Rohmer’s ‘The Red Kerry Mysteries’, ‘Her Other Drugs of Choice’, ‘Slumming in the East End’ and ‘The Devil Doctor in Comics’ as well as a captivating ‘Trina Robbins Biographical Sketch’ and other contributors.

Potent, innovative, powerful and – in comicbook terms at least – a damned fine read, Dope is a sheer delight no lover of the graphic medium should miss and this hard-hitting stylish hardback may be the best thing you’ll buy this year.
Dope © 1981-2017 Trina Robbins. Foreword © 2017 C. Spike Trotman. “Sax, Drugs, and the Yellow Peril”, Trina Robbins bio © 2017 Jon B. Cooke. Afterword © 2017 Colleen Doran. All Rights Reserved.

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Captain Action: Classic Collection


By Gil Kane, Wally Wood, Jim Shooter & various (IDW)
ISBN: 978-1- (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-64936-046-5

These days comics are about kids of varying ages looking back. So too are toys, and baby boomers like me are particularly prone to the fabled golden age and certain “must-have” items – whether we ever actually owned them or not. An added bonus comes if those toys made it to comics and vice versa…

Back then, the ultimate acme for so many of us in the UK was – no, not the Johnny Seven multi-gun, or Man from U.N.C.L.E. briefcase – but the Captain Action nine-heroes-in-1 doll (sorry, Action Figure)… 

Once upon a time comics were considered the nigh-exlusive domain of children, with many scrupulously-policed genres and subdivisions catering to particular and stratified arenas such as fact, fantasy, adventure and humour. They were even further codified by age and gender.

A particular and popular recurring theme was tapping into the guaranteed and hopefully mutual sales boost offered by licensing and cross-marketing. West Coast outfit Dell/Gold Key had early on specialised in out-industry licensing deals and adaptations…

Many titles depended on a media celebrity like Howdy Doody, Charlie Chaplin or Mickey Mouse and in America that eventually spread to the marketing of products also aimed at kids… such as sweets, cartoons and toys…

By the end of that era, comics for kids were almost exclusively released as a minor strand of a major maketing strategy. That comics like Thundercats, Micronauts, Transformers, Rom and G.I. Joe were actually good and entertaining on strictly strip terms was a happy coincidence and thanks solely to the diligent pride and efforts of the creators involved. Sadly, it also led to publishers intensifying efforts to add a toy component to their own properties. Hands up anyone out there who owns a Spider-mobile, Batboat or Supermobile…

For DC, that trend really began in 1968. Although the company – known as National Periodical Publications back then – had long benefitted from creating comics adventures of movie stars like Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis or Dale Evans and shows such as Gang Busters, A Date with Judy and Mr. District Attorney, they had stayed away from the toy biz – unless you count two issues of Showcase (#53 & 54 Novenber/December 1964 and January/February 1965) that unofficially tied-in to Hasbro’s release of the first G.I. Joe line.

Then, just as costumed superheroes boomed, peaked and began an inexorable die-back, an old connection resurfaced…

In 1964 inventor and promotions wizard Stan Weston devised a way to sell dolls to boys: a dilemma that had stumped toymakers for centuries. He devised an articulated mannequin that would represent all branches of the military and could be aurmented by add-on uniforms and equipment. He called it an “action-figure” and sold the notion to Hasbro, who marketed it with great and lasting success as G.I. Joe (in Britain it was rebranded Action Man).

With his remuneration, Weston – whose promotions company Leisure Concepts had secured representation rights to DC, Marvel and King Features characters – devised a similar boys toy figure designed to ride the then-current global superhero wave triggered by the Batman TV show. “Captain Magic” was not only a superhero in his own right but could also transform into other superheroes via costumes and masks purchased seperately…

Released in waves, these alter egos included Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Spider-Man, Captain America, Sgt. Fury, The Phantom, 2 different Lone Rangers, Tonto, Steve Canyon, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and the Green Hornet.

Weston sold this concept to Hasbro’s rival Ideal Toy Company who went all-out in producing and marketing the range. It launched in 1966, redesignated Captain Action…

A huge success, an expansion line in 1967 introduced a kid sidekick, pet panther, villains, an Action-Cave, secret lairs, a super car and lots of other paraphenalia. Latterly, distaff partner Lady Action was joined by doll versions (“Super Queens”) of Wonder Woman, Mera, Supergirl and Batgirl…

The line was an early casualty of the downturn in superheroes and discontinued in 1968. It has, however, cemented itself in popular memory, with the core character returning on many occasions. He now enjoys a new marketing company seeking to rebuild the brand, Since 2005, Catain Action Enterprises have been testing the waters and some of their efforts can bee seen as ads and addenda throughout the book…

However, back at the height if the craze that DC link led to Editor in Chief Mort Weisinger commissioning a comic book tie-in. It turned out to be one of the most lovely, powerful, experimental and maturely sophisticated titles of the era and – finally – all the legal loopholes have been circumvented so you can see it at last …or if you’re truly blessed, once again…

Weisinger tapped his youngest writer – teenager Jim Shooter – and teamed him with veterans on the potentially colossal project. Miracle-working editor Julie Schwartz was in charge, and Wally Wood started the ball rolling artistically, but the real revelation came after replacement penciller Gil Kane took over the writing…

Born Eli Katz and a pre-WWII infant immigrant from Latvia, Kane was one of the pivotal players in the development of the American comics industry, and indeed of the art form itself. Working as an artist, and an increasingly more effective and influential one, he drew for many companies from the 1940s onwards, tackling superheroes, crime, action, war, mystery, romance, animal heroes (Streak and Rex the Wonder Dog!), movie adaptations and, most importantly perhaps, Westerns and Science Fiction tales.

In the late 1950s he became one of Schwartz’s key artists in regenerating and rebooting the superhero concept. Yet by 1968, at the top of his profession, this relentlessly revolutionary and creative man felt so confined by the juvenile strictures of the industry that he struck out on bold new ventures that jettisoned the editorial and format bondage of comic books for new visions and media.

His Name Is Savage was an adult-oriented black & white magazine about a cold and ruthless super-spy in the James Bond/Matt Helm/Man Called Flint mould; co-written by friend and collaborator Archie Goodwin. It was very much a precursor in tone, treatment and subject matter of many of today’s adventure titles.

His other venture, Blackmark (1971, and also with Goodwin), not only ushered in the comic book age of Sword and Sorcery, but also became one of medium’s first Graphic Novels. Technically, as the series was commissioned by fantasy publisher Ballantine as eight volumes, it was also envisioned as America’s first comic Limited Series.

Before them, though, there was Captain Action…

Edited by Schwartz with covers by Irv Novick, Wood, Kane & Dick Giordano, the entire DC run is collected here, preceded by a fulsome and informative Introduction from Mark Waid.

Unable to play with the toy’s major attraction – multiple super-personalities – Shooter & Wood instead went with classical drama for issue #1’s ‘Origin of Captain Action!’: revealing how archaeologist Clive Arno and his assistant Krellik uncover a chest of coins left in antiquity by incredible superbeings remembered by humanity as gods.

These coins allow the holder to access the incredible powers of countless deities, but the temptation proves too much for the scheming assistant.

However, when he tries to steal them, an ancient failsafe painfully prevents him…

Driven away, the scoundrel is then found by the coin vindictively created by primal God of Evil Chernobog: one which imparts astounding magical abilities and feeds his hatred. As Arno designs a costumed identity to help the world via the coins, Krellik spies on and steals his thunder, resolved to taint the project before it even begins…

Returning to America, Arno learns ‘Where the Action is’ from his son Carl, as Krellik plunders museums dressed in Arno’s proposed uniform. A swift chase then results in a cataclysmic clash and brief cameo by Superman…

Trailing his enemy, the true Captain cannot stop Krellik obtaining more deadly artefacts of the lost gods. As the first issue ends he is savagely beaten and apparently defeated before he’s even started …

With Kane pencilling Shooter’s script and Wood inking, the saga concludes in #2 as ‘The Battle Begins!’ with the victorious villain repeatedly failing to appropriate the power coins: stymied by the remarkably astute and valiant Action Boy. When Krellik’s frustration boils over and he starts wrecking the city, our recently returned hero goes all out and at last overcomes in ‘Captain Action’s Reactions!’ Kane was eager to stretch his creative muscles in a period of great change and challenge and Schwartz was happy to oblige…

Although already distressingly high in drama and calamity, the series went into overdrive with #3 as the toy company’s preferred archfoe debuted. A blue skinned humanoid with an exposed brain. Dr Evil was fleshed out as Kane wrote and pencilled ‘…And Evil This Way Comes!’, revealing how a catastrophic earthquake in San Francisco caused hundreds of deaths and triggered an evolutionary aberration in the laboratory of Dr. Stefan Tracy…

The Nobel Laureate was also Arno’s father-in-law and both were united in grief over the death of his daughter (and Arno’s wife) Kathryn. They also shared an abiding love for Carl Arno.

All that seemed over when Tracy was elevated to the status of a futureman resolved to similarly improve mankind, no matter how many perished in the process…

The most telling consequence of the quake is the loss of all but a handful of power coins. Action Boy is given the superspeed inducing Mercury artefact, whilst his dad keeps the tokens of Zeus, Hercules and Heimdall (rationalising why the Captain needs cool tools like his supercar the Silver Streak), and they deploy to save lives in the aftershocks.

They are hindered and countered by Tracy/Dr. Evil: using his devices to amplify the natural disaster. His deed almost kills his grandson, until a fast-fading final shred of humanity hampers his deeds and hold back his damning hand…

The act is his last as a human being and allows the Captain a desperate chance to drive him away…

From this issue on a letters page – Action Line – was included, and they are reprinted from here on.

Kane went even more deeply into mature themes with #4 as ‘Evil at Dead World’s End!’, sees the hyper-evolved savant drawn across the universe to a dying planet peopled with beings just like him. Well, not quite: these beings are at the end of existence on a dying planet, worn out by eons and resolutely awaiting death. Dr. Evil refuses to let them go, inspiring their brief rejection of well-earned rest with the promise of a fresh young world: Earth. To offset his son-in-law’s interference, the mind master distracts the hero with a trio of rampaging monsters and cruel resurrection of dead Kathryn. The alluring spectre then implores her husband to forsake life and join her in the beyond…

The high impact dramas were far from what any kid might expect, and the series closed on an even more shocking premise as ‘A Mind Divided’ revealed a nation torn apart by a racist demagogue inciting insurrection and racial purity: a campaign polarising America’s youth and encapsulated in a single father’s descent into madness. Captain Action might be able to rescue victims, stop bombers, break up riots and beat uniformed thugs but saving a twisted soul from self-inflicted tragedy was beyond even the reach of gods…

Now, rush out and buy the Captain Action Parachute Mortar, kids…

The comics material closes with text and letters page Action Line and a reader competition – ‘The Two Faces of Dr. Evil’ – before even more avarice-inspiring found-features fill out the Captain Action Gallery.

The comics stories preceding this section were packed with ads for old and new Cap merch in the gaps originally filled by DC comics releases (some contemporarily crafted by Michael Polis) for dolls/action figures, toys, accessories, costumes, “Captain Action Action Facts!”, card & board games, choco bars, breakfast cereal, freezer pops and vintage comic book house ads and TV promos for the franchise.

Here however are full-page delights such as paintings of Captain Action; toy ads from the comics for Action Boy, Dr. Evil. Lady Action and pages from the Captain Action Yellow Book by Murphy Anderson, Kurt Schaffenberger, & Chic Stone, plus astondingly lovely original art pages and pencil art by Kane & Wood.

Although Captain Action couldn’t sustain a readership or toy-buying clientele, DC would dabble again and again with related topics (like Alex Toth & Neal Adams’s sublime Hot Wheels comic in 1970, MASK, Masters of the Universe, and DC in-house properties Mego Superheroes and Kenner’s Super Powers action figures) and publishing properities now make a large paart of every successful comics company…

The 1960s was the era when all the assorted facets of “cool-for-kids” finally started to coalesce into a comprehensive assault on our minds and our parents’ pockets. TV, movies, comics, bubble-gum cards and toys all began concertedly feeding off each other, building a unified and combined fantasy-land no kid could resist. That nostalgic force has never been more wonderfully expressed than in the stories in this book and you would be mad to miss it.
Captain Action: Classic Collection © & ™ 2022 Captain Action Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

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No Surrender


By Constance Maud: adapted by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-406-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Triumphant Tribute to Freedom Fighters and Literary Legends… 9/10

Constance Elizabeth Maud (1857-1929) was a child of privilege: daughter of a celebrated English scholar and cleric. She was primarily educated in France and lived there or in Chelsea for most of her life. Between 1895 and 1924 she wrote numerous articles and 8 novels – of which No Surrender was the penultimate – and became a member of the 400-strong Women Writers Suffrage League.

In 1908 she joined The Women’s Social and Political Union and The Women’s Freedom League: turning her writings to the needs of the cause. Her work subsequently appeared in many periodicals, especially magazines like the Suffragist movement’s newspaper Votes For Women.

In No Surrender (published in 1911 – and again in an annotated centenary edition released by publisher Persephone in 2011), Maud incorporated actual events with fictionalised analogues of many contemporary activists participating in the struggle to craft a history and playbook of the campaign for emancipation. The book became a rallying point and recruiting tool for the movement and was used to promote the soft end of the battle for equality. It inspired countless women (and presumable many male sympathisers) with a dramatised story of how the great and good would join with the humblest workers and unite to overcome…

Maud lived just long enough to see British women secure the right to vote: in 1918 with the Representation of the People Act – which enfranchised women over 30 years old – and at last witnessing universal female suffrage established in 1928’s Act, legislating that all Britons of 21 years or above could freely vote.

The main reason why No Surrender was such an effective weapon in the war to win the vote for all is that its propaganda and polemic were disguised by readily accessible drama. Beginning in industrial hub Greyston, ‘The Mill’ tells how northern mill worker Jenny Clegg is fired up by the many injustices afflicting women’s lives: with cruelty, unfair taxation, financial neglect, legitimised maltreatment and a status of second-class citizens chaining every female to a man of the gutter…

Rebelling, she forsakes her crusading socialist love interest Joe Hopton – a successful prime mover in winning better lives and wages for male workers – and dedicates her life to winning those same rights and representation for women. Upper class Suffragist Mary O’Neill has a more refined but similarly intransigent family at ‘The Country House’ all decrying her passion for women’s suffrage. She and Jenny will become friends, allies and leading lights in the struggle, inspiring millions of women, converting men, embarrassing the authorities and challenging a society where even other women refuse to see a status quo threatened…

Both driven by ‘The Calling’, they and a growing army of allies will invade London and suffer police and legal suppression in ‘The Courtyard’ and face ‘The Magistrate’ but never stray from their course. Whether testing tactics in ‘The Routes To Battle’ or challenging their detractors through heated debate on ‘The Cart’ the socially-distanced allies never stop their work, and gradually make converts even amongst the stratified intelligentsia who enjoy the closeted luxuries of ‘The Weekend Cottage’…

The story sees numerous characters interact on many levels like a soap opera, but underpinning it all is a roster of actual protest events woven into the plot, such as ambushing a number of off-duty cabinet ministers in ‘The Church’ and then infiltrating ‘The Dinner Party’ to reinforce their message.

The darkest and most notorious moments of the cause are also featured, as Clegg, O’Neill and other notable activists of every class endure imprisonment, abuse and medical torture – but each according to their own social rank and standing in ‘The Crushed Butterfly’, ‘The Prison’ and the deeply distressing culmination of ‘The Punishment’. Always, efforts to disunite and separate rich from poor, inherently virtuous from tawdry and lowborn, fails as the core principle – that they are all women together – completely eludes the smug, hectoring, insensate elitist male oppressors, prejudiced and scared working men and the Anti-Suffrage Women’s groups populated with ladies who know and defend their privileged place in the world…

Ultimately, Jenny and Joe are united in the cause and Mary makes her own converts in ‘The Homecoming’ before the story ends with a proud rallying of all in the march to inevitable universal enfranchisement and victory in ‘The Standard is Raised’ – a rousing graphic tour de force with illustrator Sophie Rickard crafting a stunning multi-page fold-out any art fan would cry to see…

Maud’s tale was ostensibly a romance and account of families in crisis with a thinly disguised moral message like a Dickens or Thomas Hardy novel. She explored and contrasted the lives of poor working folk with gentry and aristocracy, but also scrupulously catalogued the added travails and insecurities of working women. At this time women had been successively deprived of most financial and civil rights and privileges. They had to pay taxes but enjoyed no representation under the law; could not be legal guardians of their own children or property and, if married, could not divorce whilst their husbands could. The men could also beat them, but only with cudgels of judicially-mandated size…

At the end of this hefty and substantial graphic novel there’s a chart showing when – and how incrementally – the nations of the world instituted female enfranchisement, and an Afterword by adapting creators Scarlett & Sophie Rickard (Mann’s Best Friend, A Blow Borne Quietly, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists), naming names and offering factual provenance for the incidents and characters enriching the narrative.

It also declares why – in the current environment where a citizen’s right to dissent and protest is being deviously and criminally whittled away – the principles of organised resistance and role and consequences of righteous civil disobedience must be stridently defended…

Fair minded, honestly and powerfully expressing the views of all – including those opposing universal enfranchisement (and restoration of previously-removed social and civil rights) – Maud’s words are reinvigorated here with the authorities, capitalists, police and judiciary all given a fair hearing – and generally convicted out of their own mouths.

Of particular interest to modern readers will be the opinions of women who didn’t want a vote and the low workingmen who were generally the most passionate and violent opponents of change and equality…

Powerful, enraging, engaging and even occasionally funny, this never-more-timely tale of the force of the disenfranchised with their backs to the wall and ready to fight is supremely readable and should be compulsory viewing for all – as long as we don’t force anyone to…
© 2022 SelfMadeHero. Text © 2022 Sophie Rickard. Artwork © 2022 Scarlett Rickard. All rights reserved.