Category: Adult/Erotica

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Vampirella Archives volume One


By Forrest J. Ackerman, Don Glut, Nicola Cuti, Bill Parente, R. Michael Rosen, Al Hewetson, Terri Abrahms, Nick Beal, Bill Warren, Richard Carnell, Jack Erman, T. Casey Brennan, Gardner F. Fox, Vern Burnett, Larry Herndon, Buddy Saunders, Doug Moench, Tom Sutton, Billy Graham, Reed Crandall, Neal Adams, Ernie Colon, Billy Graham, Mike Royer, Tony Tallarico, Jerry Grandenetti, Bill Fraccio, Dick Piscopo, William Barry, Jack Sparling, Ed Robbins, David St. Clair, Jeff Jones, Dan Adkins, Frank Bolle, Frank Frazetta, Vaughn Bodé, Ken Kelly Bill Hughes, Larry Todd & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-175-5 (HB/Digital edition) 978-1524126506 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times

After years of stifling restriction, the American comic book industry finally started to break out of a self-imposed straitjacket in the mid-1960s. Kids of the Counterculture had begun creating and disseminating material relevant to their lives in self-produced “Underground Commix” whilst other publishers sought other ways around the draconian Comics Code applied to comic books.

The most elegant solution was the one chosen by Jim Warren, who had originally established himself with black & white B-Movie fan periodical Famous Monsters of Filmland and satire magazine Help! In 1965 he took his deep admiration of the legendary 1950s EC Comics to its logical conclusion: reviving the concept of anthology horror short stories and pitching them at older fans of the new generation. Of course that actually meant all us kids under 10…

Creepy was stuffed with clever, sardonic, tongue-in-cheek strip chillers illustrated by the top artists in the field (many of them ex-EC stars). Warren circumvented the US’s all-powerful Comics Code Authority – which had ended EC’s glory days and eventually their entire comics line – by publishing his new venture as a newsstand magazine. It was a truly no-lose proposition. Older readers didn’t care to be associated with “kid’s stuff” comic books whilst magazines had tempting cachet (i.e. mild nudity and a little more explicit violence) for readers of a transitional age; moreover the standard monochrome format was a quarter of the costs of colour periodicals.

Creepy was a huge and influential hit, especially among the increasingly rebellious, Rock ‘n’ Roll-crazed teen market, frequently cited as a source of inspiration for the nascent commix underground and furiously feeding on growing renewed public interest in the supernatural. In true Darwinian “Grow or Die” mode, Warren looked around for new projects, following up with companion shocker Eerie and the controversial war title Blazing Combat.

As the decade closed he launched a third horror anthology, but Vampirella was a little bit different. Although it featured the now traditional “host” to introduce and comment on the stories, this narrator was a sexy starlet who occasionally participated in stories. Before too long she actually became the hero and crowd-pulling star of her own regular feature, but that’s material for a later volume…

The other big change was that here female characters played a far more active role. They were still ornamental, prizes, victims and targets but increasingly, whether name stars or bit players, they were as likely to be the big menace or save the day. Whatever their role, though, they were still pretty much naked throughout. Some traditions must be protected at all costs.

Another beguiling Warren staple was the eye-catching painted cover fronting every issue. Here, as crafted by Frank Frazetta, Bill Hughes, Larry Todd & Vaughn Bodé, Jeff Jones & Bodé and Ken Kelly, they are the only full colour pages in an otherwise magnificently monochrome/duo-toned tome. However to be fair I must say that the reproduction on some black-&-white pages leaves much to be desired…

This massive magazine-size (216 x 32 x 279 mm if you opt for physical editions) collection gathers in their entirety the contents of the first seven issues (spanning September 1969 to September 1970). This was a crucial transitional period which saw superheroes dying out at every publishing company; replaced by a genre revival and spearheaded by a tidal wave of horror titles after the Comics Code was frantically rewritten to combat plunging sales.

This volume begins with Vampirella #1, that aforementioned painted cover and a black-&-red Frazetta frontispiece – probably scripted by Editor Bill Parente – setting the blackly humorous tone for a fearsome fangtastic fun fest. The original contents page follows – as do they all in their appropriate place. The compendium also includes every letters page and fan feature – and even nostalgia-triggering ads of the era. If you’re a modern monster fan or kit collector you’ll probably simultaneously weep and drool at the sight of these lost treasures.

The strip sensationalism begins with ‘Vampirella of Drakulon’ by Forrest J. Ackerman & Tom Sutton; introducing a planet where the rivers ran with blood and life evolved to drink it.

However, following a withering drought, Drakulon is dying. Happily for the sultry starving vampire, a ship from Earth arrives, full of people with food in their veins and a ship that can take her to where there’s plenty more.

Vampi’s role from the outset was to be another story host and for the rest of this collection that’s what she mostly is. Her role as an active adventurer didn’t properly begin for quite a while. So, here the chills continue with ‘Death Boat!’ by Don Glut & Billy Graham with the survivors of a shipwreck being picked off one by one by a bloodsucker in their midst. They perish one per night but when the mortals number just two both are still wrong about who the killer is…

Glut & master draughtsman Reed Crandall conspired on ‘Two Silver Bullets!’ as a trapper fights to save his daughter from a werewolf after which ‘Goddess from the Sea’ by Glut and Neal Adams offers a splendid treat for art-lovers: the story of a man seduced by a sea-siren was shot directly from the illustrator’s incredible pencil art. Glut & Mike Royer offer a timely Halloween warning in ‘Last Act: October!’ whilst ‘Spaced-Out Girls!’ (Glut & Tony Tallarico) sees a saucer full of saucy extraterrestrial honeys come shopping for husbands before the premier package closes with Nicola Cuti & Ernie Colon’s mindbending magical murder mystery ‘A Room Full of Changes’.

The spooky story-bonanza resumes in issue #2, opening with coming attraction featurette ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ – courtesy of Sutton – after which Vampi’s putative cousin ‘Evily’ is introduced by Bill Parente & veteran horror-meister Jerry Grandenetti. Here Drakulonian émigré and Earthly sorceress climactically clash over star-billing and bragging rights…

‘Montezuma’s Monster’ is scripted by R. Michael Rosen (incorrectly credited to Glut) and illustrated by Bill Fraccio & Tallarico in their composite identity of Tony Williamsune, detailing the fate of a treasure-hungry explorer who doesn’t believe in feathered serpents whilst ‘Down to Earth!’ by Ackerman & Royer leaves the hosting to Vampirella’s blonde counterpart Draculine as our star auditions for a film role…

That theme continues in ‘Queen of Horror!’ (Glut & Dick Piscopo) wherein a B-Movie starlet uses unique and uncanny advantages to get everything she deserves whilst Cuti & William Barry reveal the tragedy of two brothers who discover a new predatory species of inland cephalopod in ‘The Octopus’. Cuti & Colon’s ‘One, Two, Three’ then explores the power of love in a world of robots and Glut & Graham render a ‘Rhapsody in Red!’ with weary travellers fetching up at a lonely house to deliver a big surprise to the resident vampire…

The third issue augmented ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ with correspondence section ‘Vampi’s Scarlet Letters’ before ‘Wicked is Who Wicked Does’ features the return of Evily in a short shocking battle against ogres by Parente & Sutton. Al Hewetson & Jack Sparling count ‘4- 3- 2- 1- Blast Off! To a Nightmare!’ in the tale of a spaceship full of 24-hour party people who end up as hors d’oeuvres for something very nasty even as ‘Eleven Steps to Lucy Fuhr’ (by Terri Abrahms [story]; Nick Beal [adaptation] and art by Ed Robbins) sees many men drawn to a bizarre bordello and a sinister fate… until the unlikeliest of saviours takes a hand.

‘I Wake Up… Screaming!’ is an all Billy Graham affair as a frightened girl is made aware of her true nature in a sci fi chiller whilst Cuti & Piscopo mine mythology to deliver a salutary tale of fairy tale oppression and bloody liberation in ‘The Calegia!’ A cunning vampire meets his lethal match in Graham’s ‘Didn’t I See You on Television?’ after which Rosen & Sparling close the issue detailing the downfall of a vicious spoiled brat caught in ‘A Slimy Situation!’

Vampirella #4 opens on Sutton revealing past episodes of witch killing in ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales: Burned at the Stake!’ prior to Parente & David St. Clair reaching psychedelic heights in a tale of alien amazons and their deadly ‘Forgotten Kingdom’ whilst Cuti & Royer combine murder and time travel in ‘Closer than Sisters’. A city-slicker falls for a hillbilly hottie and gets sucked into a transformative shocker after trying ‘Moonshine!’ (Glut & Barry), Bill Warren & Sparling reveal the fate of a beautiful and obsessive scientist who bends the laws of God and Man ‘For the Love of Frankenstein’ and a most modern black widow asks a controlling stalker to ‘Come Into My Parlor!’ in a wry yarn by Rosen & Piscopo. Richard Carnell (story); Jack Erman (adaptation) & Sparling then close the show with a weird and nasty tale of a nobleman auditioning women for marriage in ‘Run for Your Wife!’

The fifth issue begins with the usual ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ as Sutton exposes ‘The Satanic Sisterhood of Stonehenge!’ before Glut, Fraccio & Tallarico see a greedily impatient heir speed his benefactress to her ultimate end, unheeding of her beloved pets and ‘The Craft of a Cat’s Eye’. Cavemen battle dinosaurs in an arena of ‘Scaly Death’ – a visceral treat from Glut & Graham – whilst the astounding Jeff Jones lends fine art sensibilities to the murderous saga of a girl, a guy and ‘An Axe to Grind’, after which Parente & Sutton detail the crimes of a sadistic Duke whose fate is sealed by an aggrieved astrologer and astrally ‘Avenged by Aurora’…

Glut, Fraccio & Tallarico see graves robbed and corpses consumed in neat bait-&-switch thriller ‘Ghoul Girl’ whilst T. Casey Brennan & Royer reveal the solution of a bereaved husband who finds an ‘Escape Route!’ back to his dead beloved, before Glut & Sparling end it all again via an implausible invasion from the moon in ‘Luna’.

In Vampirella #6, Vampi’s Feary Tales…’ features Dan Adkins’ graphic chat on centaurs as prelude to romantic tragedy the ‘Curse of Circe!’ as Gardner Fox & Grandenetti combine to relate how a strange sea creature offers the witch’s latest conquest his only certain method of escape. Cuti & Sparling then share a story of civil war in the land of ghosts and how love toppled ‘The Brothers of Death’ whilst ‘Darkworth!’ by Cuti & Royer shows how a stripper graduates to murdered assistant of a stage magician and pulls off her own amazing trick in the name of vengeance, after which Fox & Adkins explore the lives of the recently dead with ‘New Girl in Town!’ and Vern Burnett & Frank Bolle return to gothic roots to depict embattled humans outwitting nocturnal predators by volunteering a ‘Victim of the Vampyre!’

Larry Herndon, Fraccio & Tallarico (as Tony Williamsune) get creepily contemporary as a doctor tries to fix an overdosed patient and sends him way, way out on a ‘One Way Trip!’ before Buddy Saunders & Bolle combine adultery and attempted murder in ‘The Wolf-Man’: a wickedly scientific shocker about a very different kind of feral killer…

Vampirella #7 saw Archie Goodwin join as Associate Editor and perhaps his influence can be seen as the issue experiments with a connected theme and extended tale scripted by Nicola Cuti. Graham & Frazetta start the ball rolling by explaining ‘Why a Witch Trilogy’ and Vampirella introduces ‘Prologue: The Three Witches’ before Sutton to segues into the sad story of ‘The White Witch’ who could never feel the sunlight. Ernie Colon picks up the experimental progression as ‘The Mind Witch’ trades magic for science to expose the fate of a psychic predator, after which Graham closes the deal with ‘The Black Witch’ who thought she could conquer love but failed to realise its appalling power…

After Cuti & Sutton’s palate-cleansing ‘Epilogue: The Three Witches’, Doug Moench graduates from letter writer in #3 to scripter as ‘Plague of the Wolf’ – illustrated by Bolle – tracks a bloody serial killer’s progress under the full moon and ‘Terror Test’ offers shocking psychological thrills by Rosen & “Williamsune” with more than one sting in the tail.

In ‘The Survivor’, Saunders & Colon unite to explore a post-apocalyptic world where dedicated archaeologists still struggle to escape their bestial natures and this mammoth first compilation concludes with Rosen & Grandenetti viewing ‘The Collection Creation’ with an artist who finds the wrong kind of immortality…

Stark, surprisingly shocking and packed with clever ideas beautifully rendered, this epic tome (narrowly) escapes and transcends its admittedly exploitative roots to deliver loads of laughs and lots of shocks: a tried and true terror treat for fans of spooky doings and guiltily glamorous games.
© 2012 DFL. All rights reserved.

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Madwoman of the Sacred Heart


By Jodorowsky & Moebius, translated by Natacha Ruck & Ken Grobe (Humanoids/Sloth Publishing UK)
ISBN: 978-1-908830-01-2 (Sloth HB 2011), 978-1-59465-046-8 (Humanoids HB 2013),

978-1643379548 (Jodorowsky Library vol. 6, 2023)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

Here’s a modern masterpiece of comics creativity, one of the most intriguing and engaging works by two creative legends of sequential narrative. To some people however, this superb piece of thought-provoking fiction might be shocking or blasphemous, so if you hold strong views on sex or religion – particularly Christianity – stop right now, spare yourself some outrage and come back tomorrow.

Born in Tocopilla, Chile in 1929, Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky is a filmmaker, author, playwright, actor, comics writer, world traveller, philosopher and spiritual guru. He is most widely known for films like Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Sante Sangre, The Rainbow Thief and the like, as well as a vast comics output, including Anibal 5, (created whilst living in Mexico) Le Lama blanc, Aliot, The Meta-Barons, Borgia and so much more, co-created with some of South America and Europe’s greatest artists. His nigh decade-long collaboration with Möebius on the Tarot-inspired adventure The Incal (1981-1989) completely redefined and reinvented what comics could aspire to and achieve.

Best known for violently surreal avant-garde films, loaded with highly-charged, inspired imagery blending mysticism and “religious provocation” and his spiritually informed fantasy and science fiction comics, Jodorowsky is also fascinated by the inner realms and has devised his own culture of therapeutic healing: Psychomagic, Psychogenealogy and Initiatic massage. He still remains fully engaged and active in all these creative areas today.

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in the suburbs of Paris in 1938 and raised by his grandparents. In 1955 he attended the Institut des Arts Appliqués where he became friends with Jean-Claude Mézières who, at 17, was already selling strips and illustrations to magazines such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Le Journal de Spirou. Giraud apparently spent most of his time drawing cowboy comics and left college after a year. In 1956 he travelled to Mexico, staying with his mother for eight months, before returning to France and a full-time career in comics: mostly westerns such as Frank et Jeremie for Far West and King of the Buffalo, A Giant with the Hurons and others in Coeurs Valliants, all in a style based on French comics legend Joseph “Jijé” Gillain.

Between 1959 and 1960, Giraud spent his National Service in Algeria, where he worked on military service magazine 5/5 Forces Françaises. On returning to civilian life, he became Jijé’s assistant in 1961, working on the master’s long-running (1954-1977) western epic Jerry Spring. A year later, Giraud and Belgian writer Jean-Michel Charlier launched the serial Fort Navajo in Pilote #210, and soon its disreputable, anti-hero lead character Lieutenant Blueberry was one of the most popular European strips of modern times. In 1963-1964, Giraud produced strips for satire periodical Hara-Kiri and – keen to distinguish and separate this material from his serious day job – first coined his pen-name “Möebius”.

He didn’t use it again until 1975 when he joined Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Philippe Druillet – all rabid science fiction fans – as co-founders of a revolution in narrative graphic arts: Les Humanoïdes associés. Their groundbreaking adult fantasy magazine Métal Hurlant utterly enraptured the comics-buying public and Giraud again wanted to utilise a discrete creative persona for the lyrical, experimental, soul-searching material he was crafting: series such as The Airtight Garage, The Incal (with Jodorosky) and mystical, dream-world flights of sheer fantasy contained in Arzach…

To further separate his creative bipolarity, Giraud worked in inks with a brush whilst the futurist Möebius rendered with pens. Both of him passed away on March 10th 2012.

Jodorowsky & Möebius’ second groundbreaking co-creation was originally released as 3 albums from Les Humanoïdes associés – La Folle du Sacree Coeur (1992), Le piège de l’irrationnel (1993) and Le Fou de la Sorbonne (1998) – before the saga was initially collected into one massive, ecstatic and revolutionary volume in 2004. The company’s American arm Humanoids, Inc. translated it into English in 2006, and it’s resurfaced on occasion ever since.

Professor Alan Mangel is a world-renowned aesthete, deep thinker and chief lecturer at the Sorbonne. As such he is the focus of much student attention – particularly female – but none as fervent as that of insular, fanatically, deeply disturbed bible-bashing Christian Elisabeth.

When the educator’s shrewish wife Myra denounces, shames and impoverishes him at the moment of his greatest triumph, the arrogantly cerebral, proudly austere, violently chaste and determinedly sexually-abstinent Mangel loses the awed respect of his once-doting students and disciples. They now shun his once overcrowded classes, mock and even assault him.

Only Elisabeth remains devoted to him, but she has designs both carnal and divine on the aging, flabby, secular, lapsed and born-again Jew. To make matters worse, when she throws herself at him and is repulsed, this awakens the philosopher’s own lustful youthful libido which takes form as a gadfly ghost constantly urging him to indulge in acts of vile debauchery and rampant lust. Eventually the pressure is too great and Mangel agrees to meet Elisabeth at the Church of the Sacred Heart. The journey there is awful: even the universe seems set against him as rude taxi-drivers, a mad old lady tramp and even dogs further humiliate the broken old man.

In the holiest part of the church Elisabeth again attempts to seduce the long sterile and wilfully impotent Alan, explaining that her researches have revealed him to be the biblical Zacharias reborn, destined to impregnate her with a son: the Prophet John who would in turn herald the rebirth of Jesus…

Again the rational scientist baulks at her words but Elisabeth promises a miracle and when Mangel’s horny, ghostly other self “possesses” him the dotard loses control and finally gives the mad girl what she’s been begging for…

Plagued with shame, despondent with remorse, still tormented by his inner letch and so very broke, Mangel resumes lecturing, gradually rebuilding his reputation until one day Elisabeth returns, her nude body declaring her to be forever the property of Alan Zacharias Mangel. She is three months pregnant with the sterile man’s baby and has already recruited a “St. Joseph” who will help them fulfil their sacred mission…

The divinely-dispatched protector, a drug addict and petty criminal previously called Muhammad, already has a line on “The Mary”: she’s his girlfriend Rosaura, currently imprisoned in a secure mental hospital. She’s also in a coma.

Dragged against the will he no longer seems capable of exerting, Mangel experiences his latest ongoing tribulation when St. Joseph breaks The Mary out with the aid of a gun and his distressed guts give way to what will be, for all of the chosen ones, an uncomfortable and prolonged period of stress-related explosive diarrhoea. Against all his rational protests and worries, things just seem to keep falling into place for the pilgrims. Rosura is no longer comatose, and they get away without a single problem… if you don’t count the olfactory punishment the Professor’s rebellious innards are repeatedly inflicting upon them all…

“Mary” is the most ravishing creature he has ever seen, but just as crazy as her friends. When she cavorts naked in a field during a midnight thunderstorm, frantically imploring God to impregnate her with the second Jesus, Mangel’s lustful ghost again overtakes him and he surreptitiously copulates with the wildly-bucking “lascivious loon”. One day later reality hits hard when the lecturer reads of two nurses executed when the comatose daughter of an infamous Columbian drug baron was abducted from a certain institution…

The second chapter opens with the four fugitives hiding out in a lavish seaside house and Mangel – as always – arguing with both his priapic phantom and rationalist conscience. His so impossibly, imperturbably persuasive companions are untroubled: they are simply passing the days until the birth of John the Baptist and imminently impending Second Coming of Christ.

The next crisis is pecuniary as the lavish spending of the trio soon exhausts the Professor’s funds and they are reduced to their last 100 franc note…

Elisabeth is unconcerned and simply places a bet with it. Operating under divine guidance the horse race wins the quartet 3.5 million Francs, but before the reeling rationalist can grasp that, there’s another insane development as The Mary/Rosaura declares herself to be the Androgynous Christ – both male and female – reborn and made manifest to save us all…

She still looks devastatingly all-woman however, and when she kisses the old fool and sends him back to the Church of the Sacred Heart to “obtain” a vial of holy Baptismal oil, he goes despite himself, arguing all the way with his imaginary sex-obsessed younger self. It’s all another humiliating and deranged debacle. The famous house of worship is hosting an ecumenical convention of argumentative theologians of all religions and that self-same crazy woman is still there, claiming to be God and challenging them all. After driving them away she even tries to have sex with the utterly bemused and bewildered fallen philosopher who barely escapes with the stolen oil.

The worst of it all is that, based on recent evidence, Mangel can’t even say with any certainty that the vile-smelling harridan isn’t telling the truth…

Driving back through the fleshpots of the city with his ghost tempting him every inch of the way, the weary savant is dragged back to appalling reality by a newspaper headline declaring that the police have a witness in the murder/abduction of Rosaura Molinares, daughter of the most wanted drug trafficker on Earth. However, when the nigh-unhinged thinker reaches his sanctuary from reason, the true believers already know. They taped the TV news and show him the witness describing a completely different killer: El Perro, chief hitman of Pedro Molinares’ Medellin Cartel…

With the last foundations of precious logic crumbling, Mangel reaches an emotional tipping point and when The Androgynous Christ demands he make love to her, the old fool submits to stress – and his ever-horny spectral alter ego – by surrendering to his lusts. Before long he is in the throes of a bizarre, eye-opening, life-altering four-way love session with all the mad people he has wronged in his head and heart. The epiphanic moment is rather spoiled when the wall explodes and a cadre of mercenaries working for a rival cartel burst in, seeking Rosaura’s dad. They’re followed by the Columbian Secret Service, also hunting the drug lord and quite prepared to kill everybody to find him.

… And they in turn are ambushed by American DEA agents who slaughter everybody in their sights in their desperation to capture Molinares’ daughter and her weirdo friends. The illegally operating Yanks drag their captives to a submarine waiting offshore just as French police hit the beach and El Perro attacks the sub, spectacularly rescuing the quartet and transporting them to safety by helicopter and cargo plane…

The concluding chapter of the blasphemous, ever-escalating cosmic farce opens with all of France astonished by the kidnapping of its most beloved thinker even as, in a Columbian Garden of Eden, a newly-enlightened and happy Mangel and his heavily pregnant Elisabeth prepare for the birth of The Child. The Androgynous Christ too has changed and grown, easily converting the hard-bitten drug gangsters into a holy army of believers in the redeemer Jesusa…

Top dog Pedro Molinares is dying from cancer and his devoted army are fully, fanatically in tune with Jesusa’s plans, especially after an impossible blood miracle seemingly proves their new leader’s earthbound divinity. Equally astounded, Mangel too reaches a spiritual crisis as he accompanies Elisabeth deep into the jungle to give birth.

Mangel’s journey and ultimate transformation at the hands of rainforest shaman Doña Paz then lead to even more astonishing revelations, changes and shocks that I’m just not prepared to spoil for you…

After years of exile by exclusion the tale was translated for English readers in 2004, and has since been seen many times, such as the sterling UK edition published by Sloth Comics, and most recently in 2023, when it was rereleased under the prestigious Jodorowsky Library imprint (specifically as Book Six: Madwoman of the Sacred Heart • Twisted Tales) paired with “Selected Stories” and mindbending short Twisted Tales…

Controversial, shocking, challenging, fanciful, enchanting and incredibly cruelly funny in an Armando Iannucci manner, this a parable you must read and will always remember.
™ & © Les Humanoïdes associés, SAS, Paris. English version © 2011 Humanoids, Inc., Los Angeles. All rights reserved.

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Last Gender: When We Are Nameless volume 1 (of 3)


By Rei Taki translated by Rose Padgett (Vertical/Kodansha)
ISBN: 978-1-6472191-4 (Vertical tank?bon PB) Digital edition 978-1-68491-721-1

A woman goes into a bar.

That’s usually shocking enough for Japanese fiction, but in Rei (Tada Ooki na Neko ni Naritai, Love-Kyo: Kateikyoushi ga xx Sugite Benkyou Dokoro ja Nai) Taki’s deft exploration of sexual diversity, it’s merely the start of a well-intentioned, honest appraisal of what infinite variety in human experience and being actually means. The tale is especially extraordinary as it comes from a country and culture currently involved in a (very polite and restrained) war of past and future and tradition vs. change, where gender and gender roles have always been cast in stone and a hot button topic…

After a short stand-alone try-out tale was reworked and developed (which is included at the end of this edition), Last Gender: Nani Mono demo nai Watashi-tachi debuted in 2022. Its brief interlocking vignettes eventually filled three volumes, employing a picaresque format – in many ways thematically similar to US sitcom Cheers – to peruse those people who generally inhabit the margins of society… either through choice or more often than not due to fear and shame.

In such a strictly formalised society those judgements are most likely to be self-inflicted and imagined, and painfully concrete and condemnatory, as we will see…

Chapter 1 opens with one person’s candid ruminations on what is gender before ‘Welcome to BAR California’ finds nasty, preachy gossip and media scandalmongering hanging in the air as assistant manager Yo prepares to open up for the evening. Checking bottles are full, glasses clean, rooms ready and restocked and all lube, fresh underwear and condom dispensers are full, they are soon distracted by a nervous and curious young woman. She has come in to the venue where “all are welcome” carrying her husband’s membership card and very much wanting to know what it exactly entitles her spouse to…

An explanation of facilities, by-laws, responsibilities, duties and potential rewards – further clarified by a new friend – results in Manami addressing her prior pre- and mis-conceptions, and signing up to discover lots more she didn’t know about herself…

With frequent subtle reminders, asides and dissertations on what staff and patrons consider constitutes gender, sexualities statuses, consent and suitable behaviour, the vignettes continue with ‘An Orchid Blooming in the Fog’. Transgender bisexual Ran shares with Yo early unhappy encounters (incidentally providing us with mindboggling factual detail on insurance cover and finance for gender affirmation surgery in Japan), and happy-go-lucky, persistently pally pansexual Mao adds his own unique perspective and past moments. Ultimately his benign attentions and upbeat manner manifest more revelations of his own unsettled life and its pressures…

The forces of expectation and tradition shaping Mao are more closely monitored in ‘Family of Mannequins’ even as stolid salaryman Sawada Masanori and college girl Amiru debut with their own individual flavours of difference. It’s a risky road to travel but bigender Sawada will only really be content once his wife and child can understand how and why he is also Marie and that will only happen if they can affirm their ‘True Love’, whilst the student still struggles to accept that any boundaries exist…

Amiru steps into the spotlight for closing episode ‘Aromantic Fairy Tale’ delving deeper into her innate belief that sex and love have nothing to do with each other and explaining how all the stories society train us with need to be re-examined if not revoked. Of course, nothing has worked yet to stop her yearning for “the one”, and some of the test candidates have been a bit extreme to say the least. Just look at Yukihiro, with his odd provisos and props… and just what is the secret he shares with only Yo?

To Be Continued…

Filling up this initial tome are ‘Translation Notes’, house ads, a featurette on sex bars and how the clientele adopts aliases in ‘BAR California’s Back Yard #1’ as well as an afterword from Rei Taki, prior to that aforementioned ‘Prototype Story: A Self For All Seasons’ showing how the initial explorations of spousal abuse and similar reasons for such sex bar venues was dialled down for a more subtle and forensic investigation of the people who need them…

There are – even by manga standards – fairly explicit and frequent sex scenes amidst all the character interplay, and the occasionally blunt yet potent evaluations, clarifications and reiterations of gender issues, minorities and status through the lens of Japanese frankness can be a bit breathtaking if we westerners aren’t braced. Nonetheless, Last Gender: When We Are Nameless is a compelling and intriguing foray into gender & sexual diversity, pansexuality, propensities, individuality and autonomy that needs to be seen by anyone still breathing and still dating. Over to you then…
© 2021 Rei Taki. English translation © 2022 Rei Taki. All rights reserved.

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The Last Days of American Crime



By Rick Remender & Greg Tocchini (Image Comics /Radical Books)
ISBN: 978-0-935417-06-4 (HB Radical) 978-1-53430437-6 (PB/Digital Image)

Elections on the horizon everywhere this year, and in advance of what I can pretty safely assume is more of the same and worse everywhere, followed by whole bunches of crushing dystopias, here’s a peek back at what we thought the end of civilisation would look like merely a decade ago…

If you’re in any more need of a sobering dose of deeply disturbing hyper-reality, I can highly recommend this brilliant, extremely adult, cross-genre thriller which posits a fascinating premise, starts a countdown clock ticking down and delivers a killer kick to finish the rollercoaster ride.

The Good Old USA is a mess and the government need to take drastic action if they want to keep control. Terrorism and crime are rampant but luckily the nerds and techies have come up with a radical solution: the American Peace Initiative – a broadcast frequency that utterly suppresses the ability to knowingly break a law.

Any law.

Taking the radical decision to make all lawbreaking impossible (which is the only logical flaw I can find: what politician is ever going to make bribery obsolete?), and fearing social meltdown in the run-up to going live, the Powers-That-Be also set up a distraction in the form of a complete switchover from a cash economy to universal electronic transfers – infallible, incorruptible, un-stealable digital currency.

From “D-Day” onwards, citizens will top up pay-cards from charging machines which are tamper-proof and impossible to hack. From that day every transaction in North America will be recorded and traceable thereby making every illegal purchase – drugs, guns, illicit sex – utterly impossible…

In the weeks before the big switchover there’s a huge exodus for the borders of Canada and Mexico and a total breakdown of law and order in the country’s most degenerate areas, but generally everyone seems resigned to the schemes – even after the anti-lawbreaking API broadcast plan is leaked…

With the world about to change forever, low-rent career crook Graham Bricke spots a chance for the biggest score of his life. He’s working as a security guard in one of the banks that will house the new currency technology and sees an opportunity to steal one of the charging machines before the system is locked down forever. Unfortunately, due to the API broadcast he has to pull off the caper before it becomes impossible to even contemplate theft…

In a hurry and needing specialised help, Bricke and his silent partner are forced to hire a crew of strangers, but as days dwindle he realises safecracker Kevin Cash and hacker Shelby Dupree are both trouble: a murderous psychotic and crazed libidinous wild-child with daddy issues. If only he can work out which is which…

There are other distractions. Graham is being hunted by a manic gangbanger and his posse and there’s a good chance at least one of his team is planning a double-cross…

A fascinating idea carried out with dizzying style and astounding panache: smart, sexy, unbelievably violent and utterly compelling: combining the brooding energy of The Wire, unremitting tension of 24’s first season and timeless off-centre charm of Reservoir Dogs. It had blockbuster movie written all over it – which is no surprise as Remender’s previous efforts include mainstream comic books like All-New Atom, X-Men and Punisher, computer games Dead Space and Bulletstorm and animated feature Titan A.E. and he’s since produced a welter of gritty stuff such as The Scumbag, Devolution and Anthrax: Among the Living.

Sadly, when it was filmed (released in 2020), none of that came through, so stick to the book not the box here…

Short. Sharp. Shocking, smartly concocted by Rick Remender and stunningly executed in dazzling colour by Greg Tocchini, the paperback includes an extensive sketch and design section, an interview with the author and a lavish cover gallery including variants by Alex Malleev, Jerome Opeña & Matt Wilson and Joel dos Reis Viegas.

What else do I need to say?
© 2010 Rick Remender and Radical Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Misadventures of Jane


By Norman Pett & J.H.G. “Don” Freeman & various (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-167-0 (HB)

For the longest time, Jane was arguably the most important and well-regarded comic strip in British, if not World, history. The feature panel debuted on December 5th 1932 as Jane’s Journal: or The Diary of a Bright Young Thing: a frothy, frivolous gag-a-day strip in The Daily Mirror, created by freelance cartoonist Norman Pett.

Originally a nonsensical comedic vehicle, it consisted of a series of panels with embedded cursive script to simulate a diary page. The feature switched to more formal strip frames and balloons in late 1938, when scripter Don Freeman came on board whilst Mirror Group supremo Harry Guy Bartholomew was looking to renovate the serial for a more adventure- and escape-hungry audience. It was also felt that a second continuity feature – like Freeman’s other strip Pip, Squeak and Wilfred – would keep readers coming back: as if Jane’s inevitable – if usually unplanned – bouts of near-nudity wouldn’t…

Jane’s secret was skin. Even before war broke out there were torn skirts and lost blouses aplenty, but once the shooting started and Jane became a special operative of British Intelligence, her clothes came off with terrifying regularity and machine gun rapidity. She infamously went topless when the Blitz was at its worst.

Pett drew the strip with verve and style, imparting a uniquely English family feel: a joyous lewdness-free innocence and total lack of tawdriness. The illustrator worked from models and life, famously using first his wife, his secretary Betty Burton, and editorial assistant Doris Keay, but most famously actress and model Chrystabel Leighton-Porter – until May 1948 when Pett left for another newspaper and another clothing-challenged comic star…

From then his art assistant Michael Hubbard assumed full control of the feature (prior to that he had drawn backgrounds and mere male characters), and carried the series – increasingly a safe, flesh-free soap-opera and less a racy glamour strip – to its end on October 10th 1959.

This Titan Books collection added the saucy secret weapon to their arsenal of classic British comics and strips in 2009 and paid Jane the respect she deserved with a snappy black and white hardcover collection, augmented by colour inserts.

Following a fascinating and informative article from Canadian paper The Maple Leaf (which disseminated her exploits to returning ANZAC servicemen), Jane’s last two war stories (running from May 1944 to June 1945) are reprinted in their entirety, beginning with ‘N.A.A.F.I, Say Die!’, as the hapless but ever-so-effective intelligence agent is posted to a British Army base where someone’s wagging tongue is letting pre-D-Day secrets out. Naturally (very au naturally) only Jane and sidekick/best friend Dinah Tate can stop the rot…

This is promptly followed by ‘Behind the Front’ wherein Jane & Dinah invade the continent, tracking down spies, collaborators and boyfriends in Paris before joining an ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) concert party, and accidentally invading Germany just as the Russians arrive…

As you’d expect, the comedy stems from classic Music Hall fundamentals, with plenty of drama and action right out of the patriotic and comedy cinema of the day – but if you’ve ever seen Will Hay, Alistair Sim or Arthur Askey at their peak, you’ll know that’s no bad thing – and this bombastic book also contains loads of rare contemporaneous goodies to drool over.

Jane was so popular that there were three glamour style-books – called Jane’s Journal – for which Pett produced many full-colour pin-ups and paintings as well as general cheese-cake illustrations. From those lost gems, this tome includes ‘The Perfect Model’, a strip feature “revealing” how the artist first met his muse Chrystabel Leighton-Porter; ‘Caravanseraglio!’ – an 8-page strip starring Jane and erring, recurring boyfriend Georgie Porgie – plus 15 pages of the very best partially- and un-draped Jane pin-ups.

Jane’s war record is frankly astounding. As a morale booster she was reckoned to have been worth more than divisions of infantry, and her exploits were regularly cited in Parliament and discussed with complete seriousness by Eisenhower and Churchill. Legend has it that The Daily Mirror‘s Editor was among the few who knew the date of D-Day so as to co-ordinate her exploits and fullest exposures with the Normandy landings…

In 1944, on the day she went full frontal, American Service newspaper Roundup (distributed to US soldiers) went with the headline “JANE GIVES ALL” and subheading “YOU CAN ALL GO HOME NOW”. Chrystabel Leighton-Porter toured as Jane in a services revue – she stripped for “the lads” – during the war and ultimately in 1949 starred in her own feature film The Adventures of Jane.

Although a product of simpler, far-less enlightened, indubitably more hazardous times, the naively charming, cosily thrilling, innocently saucy adventures of Jane, her patiently steadfast beau Georgie Porgie and especially her intrepid Dachshund Count Fritz Von Pumpernickel are incontestable landmarks of the art form, not simply for their impact but also for the plain and simple reason that they are superbly drawn and huge fun to read if you can suspend or hold in abeyance the truly gratuitous nudity.

Don’t waste the opportunity to keep such a historical icon in our lives. You should find this book, buy your friends this book, and most importantly, agitate to have her entire splendid run reprinted in more books like this one. Do your duty, citizens…
Jane © 2009 MGN Ltd/Mirrorpix. All Rights Reserved.

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The Cabbie volume 1


By Marti, with an introduction by Art Spiegelman (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-4504 (HB/Fantagraphics) 978-0874160420 (Album PB Catalan Communications)

Although out of print since 1987, in 2011 Fantagraphics rescued from relative obscurity one of the darkest yet most grimly illuminating classics of European cartooning in this remastered and augmented reissue of The Cabbie: a stylish, nightmarish psycho-sexual noir thriller that has as much seedy kick now as it had when first translated by Catalan Communications…

Now as the macabre maestro has died, my conscience prompts me to pay for neglecting such wonderful comics and it’s only right we should pause to revisit his greatest achievement. Maybe some publisher will endeavour to bring some of his other dark wonders – like Doctor Vertigo, Propaganda Moderna, crime fantasy-thriller Calvario Hills, Cien dibujos por la libertad de Prensa or Terrorista – to a wider international audience.

Marti Riera Ferrer (1955 – 19th January 2024) was born in Barcelona during the heyday of fascist rule. He studied at the Massana School of Arts and Crafts where his efforts coincided with the Generalissimo’s death, and from 1975 to 1979 a liberalisation saw “Marti” creating comics for alterative magazines like Rock COMIC and Star.

From its launch in 1979 he also began contributing to apocalyptic iconoclast El Vibora: short stories and series such as Tony Nuevaola and – with Rodolfo – Lola Lista contra los Nada. These efforts brought international interest and Marti began appearing in Raw and Drawn & Quarterly. Il Taxista – The Cabbie – began in 1982 and he episodically added to the canon over succeeding years, and although semi-retired from the early Nineties he continued generating other material at his own pace for the magazine Makoki and Tobalina. These tales varied from erotic fiction to general illustrated fare.

Dick Tracy is one of the most well-known strips on Earth and the super-cop’s contributions to the art form are many and indisputable. They occurred over many decades and the medium of graphic narrative grew up with it. Imagine the effect instant exposure – or overexposure – to such an uncompromising, bombastic, iconic property on the artists of a nation where free-expression and creative autonomy was suppressed for generations. That’s what happened when the death of General Franco (who had held Spain in a fascistic time-warp from his victory in April 1939 until his death in November 1975) opened up and liberalised all aspects of Spanish life. When Marti saw the strip he was changed for life…

As Art Spiegelman says in his introduction, “decades of political and social repression gave way to a glorious eruption of creativity that allowed a full-fledged counterculture to come to life at just about the same time that America’s “Love Generation” gave way to what Tom Wolfe labelled the “Me Generation.””

How odd yet fitting then that an American symbol of “The Establishment” so enchanted and captivated young cartoonist Marti Riera that he assimilated every line and nuance to create a bleak, stripped-down and extremely angry homage detailing the tribulations of a seedy, desperate taxi-driver trapped in an abruptly vanished past and prey to a world at once free and dangerous, ungoverned and chaotic…

Driving around the seediest part of town our hero picks up a high-rolling gambler who’s just won big, but the driver’s night goes horribly wrong when a knife-wielding thief hijacks the cab and robs his passenger. Luckily, the Cabbie can handle himself and he quickly, brutally subdues the thug.

Our protagonist is a decent, hard-working man who lives with his ailing mother, humouring her talk of a mysterious inheritance, and allowing her to keep the embalmed cadaver of his father in the spare bedroom, but he’s tragically unaware that his citizen’s arrest will have terrible repercussions for them both. When the son of the thief he captured is released from prison, the ingrate immediately begins a grim campaign of retribution against the Cabbie that creates a maelstrom of tragedy, degradation and despair.

This is a harsh, uncompromising tale of escalating crime and uncaring punishments: blackly cynical, existentially scary and populated with a cast of battered, desolate characters of increasingly degenerate desperation. Even the monsters are victims, but for all that The Cabbie is an incredibly compelling drama with strong allegorical overtones and brutally mesmerizing visuals.

Any mature devotee of comics should be conversant with Marti’s superb work, and with a second volume out there and the hope of digital editions (One bloody Day!), hopefully we soon all will be…
The Cabbie (Taxista) © 2011 Marti. Introduction © 2011 Art Spiegelman. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books.

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Terror – The Horror Comic Art of Jayme Cortez (volume 1) & Macabras – The Horror Comic Art of Jayme Cortez (volume 2)


By Jayme Cortez, with Fabio Moraes & various, translated by Joe Williams (Korero Press)
ISBN: 978-1-912740-22-2 (PB Terror) & 978-1-912740-21-5 (PB Macabras)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Whatever the Season, All Nights Are Dark … 8/10

Please pay careful attention: this art book contains stories and images of an explicit nature, specifically designed for adult consumption. Tomorrow I’ll write about something else – possibly more socially acceptable, with mindless violence and big explosions, so come back then if incredible art, a dedicated career and rectifying oversights is not to your liking.

We comic book guys tend to think we invented and run the medium and art form of graphic narrative, but – gasps in shock! – other countries have been doing the same or similar all along. Moreover, so very much of it is so very good…

Britain and the US have, over decades, employed a select few master craftsmen (and they were mostly men as far as I can see) and I’ve done my bit to point them your way, but until very recently we haven’t seen much of Brazil’s monolithic comics output. That changes here and now with a two-book collection highlighting the breathtakingly prolific career of Jaime Cortez Martins – AKA Jayme Cortez. He was born in Lisbon, Portugal on 8th September 1926 and his life changed at age six when he first saw imported American newspaper strips: particularly Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon. Jaime’s first drawing was published when he was 11, and in 1944 he was apprenticed to children’s magazine O Mosquito under its art director Eduardo Texiera Coelho. The prodigy generated numerous groundbreaking strips before – having discovered the rich world of Brazilian comics – he emigrated to São Paulo to find great fame fortune and renown. Celebrated globally except in English-speaking countries, Cortez died in 1987.

For more biographic detail resort to the internet or best yet buy these books where editor/writer-compiler/art historian Fabio Moraes and appreciative guests such as Paul Gravett, and Paulo Montiero offer their own insights in Forewords and Intoductions. What’s really important is what follows: a magnificent treasury of a passionate creator’s output (albeit mostly his horror genre material) encompassing Brazil’s “golden age” of scary stories.

Cortez made himself master of countless artistic techniques and although there are ads and a few comic book stories included, these volumes primarily gather a mindboggling number of painted covers (as many as 4 per week!) in chronological order. Whether in colour or monochrome, these stunning retrospective compendia of gloriously designed and delineated imagery in a wealth of styles incorporate a staggering arsenal of artistic techniques – even photographic – to highlight a stunning and prolific career you and I were utterly unaware of.

Terror – The Horror Comic Art of Jayme Cortez properly opens with a comprehensive biographical essay ‘The Life of a Master Illustrator’ relating that dazzling career and offering candid photos, early works, magazine covers, strips and extracts, original artworks and commercial jobs before the serious stuff begins with his entire covers run for landmark publication O Terror Negro (The Black Terror).

This launched in September 1951 and ran until 1967, with Cortez generating the covers from #2 until the end and also the regular annual editions Almanaque de O Terror Negro. From January 1954 he added Sobrenatural to his commissions list: another 31 covers (plus another Annual) until September 1956 and (from February 1954 to July 1956) 35 more covers for Contos de Terror (Horror Tales), another Almanque and a brace of Frankenstein fronts. Throughout the book are many original art reproductions and dozens of reference photos the artist used as part of his process in bringing ghosts, ghouls, goblins, aliens, psycho-killers, devils, demons and witches to life, and making realistic the demise of countless maidens, wives and sundry other innocents…

Macabras – The Horror Comic Art of Jayme Cortez continues the gruesome gallery of dark delights by including some more of his beguiling strip work and another cartload of intoxicating covers. Following another context-packed biographical essay – ‘A Virtuoso of Illustration’ – The Portrait of Evil 1961 reprints and deconstructs what is considered Cortez’s signature sequential narrative masterpiece, before The Portrait of Evil 1973 does the same for the improved version the tireless quester produced when he returned to the subject in a more mature and philosophical frame of mind…

From there it’s a return to eye-catching images and bold typography in a welter of covers for his minor magazine efforts, beginning with 62 issues of Seleçóes de Terror (beginning in 1959 and going on until 1967), 28 for Histórias Macabras, 19 for Clássicos de Terror, an even dozen for Histórias Sinestras, as well as Histórias Do Alem (4), Super B?lso (3), Terror Magazine (3), and 10 for indie company Jotaesse.

Also on view are a chapter on the artist’s fascination with Edgar Allen Poe, a photo-essay on Creating a poster (for his other job working in films) and 14 chilling Black and White Illustrations to round out the fright fest.

This long-past-due celebration of a truly unique artistic pioneer is both compelling and shocking, and something no mature-minded devotee of graphic excellence should miss. Moreover, if the subject matter intrigues you, Korero also publish a stunning line of companion volumes of unknown (to you and me) art masters in their “Sex and Horror” collections: thus far highlighting the mastery of Emanuele Tagglietti, Alessandro Biffignandi, Fernando Carcupino, Roberto Molinio…

It’s never too late to be scared witless or stunned by magnificent comic art so let’s open our eyes and get a little international here.
First published in 2023 © Korero Press Limited. All rights reserved.

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Bread & Wine – An Erotic Tale of New York


By Samuel R. Delaney & Mia Wolff (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-632-4 (HB/Digital edition)

The demands of drama dictate that true love never runs smooth but that’s not the case in real life. The trade-off is that those actual romances which stand the test of time and tedium are painfully devoid of the remarkable circumstance and miraculous “gosh-wow” moments of fiction.

But this remarkable account proves That Ain’t Necessarily So…

In 1999, independent publisher Juno released a small graphic novel memoir, written by Samuel R. Delaney and illustrated by Mia Wolff (Catcher, Above and Below: the Voyages of Virgilio), recounting how a celebrated gay black literary giant, college professor and social theoretician with a mantelpiece overstocked by awards, and a teenaged daughter in tow, met and romanced one of society’s most outcast and forgotten souls.

At time of publication, they had been a couple for some years and are together still. Julia Roberts and Richard Gere won’t be in their movie and not a single dragon or muscle car will have to die…

Following an Introduction from Alan Moore, this mainstream edition reveals how “Chip” Delaney took a walk on New York’s Upper West Side, bought a book from homeless vendor Dennis Rickett and struck up a conversation with the kind of person most people refuse to acknowledge the very existence of…

In seamlessly seductive understated style, the words and pictures detail how gradually, gently, unsurprisingly they became first friends and then lovers.

In the manner of all lasting true romances, this is the history of two full equals who accidentally find each other, not some flimsy rags-to-riches Cinderella tale of predestination and magical remedies. The brilliance and position of one is perfectly complemented by the warmth, intelligence and quiet integrity of the other, and although far from smooth – or rose scented or tinted – their path to contentment was and is both tension-fraught and heart-warming.

Oh, and there’s sex: lots of rapturously visualised sex, so if you’re the kind of person liable to be upset by pictures of joyous, loving fornication between two people separated by age, wealth, social position and race who happily possess and constantly employ the same type of rude bits on each other, then go away and read something else.

In fact, as I keep on saying, just please, GO AWAY.

And that’s all the help you get from me. This lyrical, beguiling tale is embellished throughout with interwoven extracts from the poem Bread and Wine by German lyric poet Friedrich Hölderlin and realised in a mesmerising organic monochrome variety of styles by artist and Delaney family friend Mia Wolff, and you really need to have it unfold for you without my second-hand blether or kibitzing…

This is one of the sweetest, most uplifting comics love stories ever written: rich with sentiment, steeped in literary punch and beautiful to behold. Moreover, this lavish, stout and steadfast tome also includes a celebratory commentary by Chip, Dennis and Mia as well as other protagonists in the Afterword. There’s also a sketch-packed, earnest and informative interview with the creative participants.

Strong, assertive, uncompromising and proudly unapologetic, this is love we should all aspire to, and Bread & Wine is another graphic novel every adult should know.
Introduction © 2013 Alan Moore. Contents © 2013 Samuel R. Delaney & Mia Wolff. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Hope and Hell’s Flaw – Shame books 4 and 5


By Lovern Kindzierski, John Bolton & Todd Klein (Renegade Arts Entertainment)

ISBN: 978-1-98782-548-0 (Hope TPB) ISBN: 978-1-98890389-7 (Hell’s Flaw TPB)

Comics are unequivocally a visual medium and that’s never more ably demonstrated than in a seductively bewitching allegorical fable from writer Lovern Kindzierski, painter John Bolton and letterer Todd Klein.

The story began with three Original Graphic Novels released between 2011 and 2013, before the entire epic was housed in its proper setting: a lavish and sublime full-colour hardback tome, liberally garnished with beguiling bonus features and all the usual digital equivalents.

So, if you’re sitting comfortably with all the doors locked and windows covered, let’s begin with a swift reprise…

Once upon a time in Conception a benevolent but homely witch named Mother Virtue spent all her days doing little favours and grand good deeds for the ordinary and unfortunate, and for these kind actions she was beloved by all. Spiritually, she was probably the most perfect woman in the world, but as for her looks…

She lived life well, growing old and content, but one day, after decades of joyous philanthropy, a single selfish thought flashed idly through her mind: a momentary longing for a daughter and wish for it to be true, that she might be a mother in fact as well as name…

The weak moment was instantly exploited by malign Shadow of Ignorance Slur. Through dark magics, he impregnated the champion of Good with a vile seed of evil, bragging to the wise-woman that her wish-made daughter would be a diabolical demon deserving the name Shame…

Deeply repenting that selfish whim and dreading horrors yet to come, Mother Virtue transformed her idyllic cottage in the woods into a floral prison; a Cradle reluctantly repurposed to isolate and eventually contain the thing growing in her belly. The miserable matron-to-be also assembled Dryads to care for and guard the baby. Once Virtue finally births Shame, she leaves the devil’s burden to be reared in the mystical compound, where it grows strong and cruel but so very beautiful…

After much concentrated effort, however, minions of Shame’s sire breach Cradle’s green ramparts and school the child in vile necromancy to ensure her dire, sordid inheritance. With malefic potency, Shame refashions her guardians into something more pliable and appropriately monstrous…

As the devil’s daughter physically ripens, Slur himself comes to his evil child and through him Shame learns the terrifying power of sex. With the aid of an infernal incubus which has stolen seed from many men, she quickens a child in her own belly and eventually births a beautiful baby girl.

Into that infant Slur pours Mother Virtue’s soul; gorily ripped from the despondent dotard’s aging carcase at the moment of her granddaughter’s delivery. Even the nunnery Virtue had locked herself within was no proof against the marauding Shadow of Ignorance…

With her despised mother now her own child, securely bound within the floral penitentiary, Shame goes out into the world to make her mark…

Pursuit took up the story sixteen years later. Infant Virtue has grown strong and lovely, despite every effort of malformed, mystically mutated Dryads and Shame’s own diabolical sorcery toiling constantly but to no effect in a campaign of corruption, making every day of her young life a savage test of survival. This daily failure makes Shame – now elevated by her own evil efforts to queen of a mortal kingdom – furious beyond belief.

When not burning witches and wise women who might threaten her absolute domination, or having her armies ravage neighbouring realms, the haughty hell-spawn spies upon her offspring/ancestor with infernal devices, but is always bitterly disappointed and enraged….

Elsewhere, a valiant knight lies dying and mournfully bids his afflicted son Merritt farewell. With his last breaths, the swift-failing father dreads how his foolish, naïve, beloved boy will fare in a world ruled by the Queen who has ended him…

The hopeless dreamer is stubborn above all else and – when Merritt discovers the vegetable hell-mound of Cradle – stories his mother told him long ago run again through his head. Odd, inexplicable yearning compels him to overcome appalling arcane odds and break in. He liberates the beautiful prisoner… although she actually does most of the work…

Freed from Cradle, Virtue’s mystic might blooms. Far away, Shame reels. Slur cares little for his daughter but much for his plans: disclosing Merritt is Destiny’s wild card: a Sword of Fate who could reshape the future of humanity. Of course, that depends on whose side he joins…

The young heroes near the capital but are ambushed. After a tremendous mystic clash, Merritt awakens in a palace with a compelling dark-haired vision ministering to his every need and desire. Meanwhile, far below in a rank, eldritch dungeon, Virtue languishes, patiently adjusting plans…

This eldritch esoterically erotic epic concluded with Redemption as Merritt fell deeper under the sultry sway of the dark queen, devolving into her submissive tool of human subjugation, whilst Virtue languished in fetid squalor, weaving intricate magic with the paltry, debased materials at hand…

In the Queen’s arms, Merritt remains a child shaped by his mother’s bedtime stories. When Virtue contacts him, he readily sneaks down to her cell, dreams of nobility and valiant deeds filling his addled head…

With a final confrontation between mother and daughter imminent, Virtue sends Merritt to Hell on a vital quest to recover the Hope of the World. His triumphant return saves the kingdom and redeems the downcast…

As with all great fairy tales, justice is delivered and the world is set right side up again, with Shame dead, Slur confined to the Pit and pure reborn soul Hope in charge…

But what actually happens on the first day of “Happy Ever After”? The answer comes as the initial trilogy is extended via a second tranche of Original Graphic Novels, with Kindzierski & Bolton picking up their eldritch tapestry again in Hope…

The day after Shame’s dismemberment and descent to Hell, chaos and uprising grips the kingdom, forcing Merritt and rebel wisewoman Miss Grace to escort bewildered Hope to safety outside the castle. The war has been won but evil cannot die and the rioting crowds are almost as much a danger as the Queen’s remaining stooges and free-roaming satanic spirits. Moreover, the child’s unschooled mystic force makes her a danger to herself and all around her…

Transporting her to the peaceful countryside fills Merritt with memories of his childhood and reveals what happened to his own mother, subsequently provoking Grace to review her own chequered past. Both have suffered grievously from Shame’s actions, and have no idea that the monster is still active in Hell, manipulating ghosts and demons to effect her return to Earth using the infernal contamination that used to be Cradle…

In the forests, Hope sees visions of forthcoming atrocity, which confirmed by Grace’s scrying, force the caravan to divert towards the once-green hell and meet the threat head on…

To Be Continued…

Fifth volume Hell’s Flaw resumes the epic quest, as Shame marshals her forces to secure the pathway from Hell to the living world, while the wary, weary band of heroes struggles to the verdant hellmouth.

Their way is blocked demonic forces too horrible to bear, but Grace has learned to tap Hope’s raw magic to fight them off. Slowly though, she becomes more controlling, her promises to teach the child somehow never materialising, although her need for her as a living battery constantly increases. Eventually, however, during a truly formidable assault, Hope asserts herself to save Merritt and the entire course of the quest changes…

In Hell, Shame’s own cunning endeavours have borne black fruit and she is ready to return…

To Be Concluded…

Epic and fanciful, the fairy tale trappings mask a most mature examination of Good and Evil, and the shimmering photorealistic expressionism of John Bolton’s lush painting transforms the familiar settings of fantasy standards and set-pieces into visions truly bleak and bizarre, perfectly complementing the grim, earthily seedy meta-reality of Kindzierski’s script.

Dark and nasty yet packed with sumptuous seductions of every stripe, the salutary saga of Shame is every adult fantasist’s desire made real and every comic fan’s most fervent anticipation in one irresistible package…

Hope, Hell’s Flaw and Shame: the series conceived and written by Lovern Kindzierski. The story, characters, world and designs are © Lovern Kindzierski, John Bolton and Renegade Arts Canmore Ltd.

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Skydoll: Decade


By Barbara Canepa & Alessandro Barbucci (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-736-7 (HB)

Astoundingly barbed political and anti-consumerist satirical allegory Skydoll has appeared sporadically since 2000. It’s the other work of frequent collaborators Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa, whose usual offerings include family-oriented fare such as W.I.T.C.H. and Monster Allergy. Although rendered in the seductive anthropomorphic style developed for and signifying decades of wholesome Disney cartooning, it’s a subtly strident attack on corporate consumerism, media mesmerism of the masses, political expediency, religion and the power of the Catholic church. It’s all wrapped up in the raunchy, beguiling trappings of super-sexy science fiction shenanigans with artificial people so that makes it all right, right?

The majority of the of the sporadic components thus far generated were beautifully bound up in a gloriously oversized (284 x 212mm) full-colour hardback edition for the English-speaking cognoscenti in 2016, which is still readily available physically if not yet digitally…

The subversive odyssey begins with prose ‘Preface: ten years of Skydoll’: a bold declaration of intent by The Authorsbefore speeding straight into fantastic fantasy with ‘Volume 1: The Yellow City’, introducing fetching, wind-up automaton Noa who’s asking God for a little fair treatment whilst working at the insalubrious Heaven Spaceshipwash. She’s not like all the other beautiful dolls working there. Although she still needs to be wound-up every 33 hours by her owner, this alluring animatron seems to have a memory that doesn’t delete itself every couple of days. This means she keeps thinking of difficult fresh questions to ask…

Furiously shoved back to work, Noa ignores the fabulously bland and vapid blather of TV talk show monolith Frida Decibel blasting out from every home and public broadcast screen, telling the populace of Papathea how good everything is now that they only have one Popessa… in the buxom form of the divine Ludovica.

Once upon a time there were two True Vicars of God: Agape – who embodied spiritual love – and Ludovica who personified its physical expression. When Agape mysteriously vanished, her corporeal partner became sole arbiter of the galactic empire the church controls, commencing a campaign of craftily concocted public miracles to pacify an increasingly irate and disillusioned populace. It’s not really working though, and a rising tide of rebellion and resentment is just beginning to pop…

Our story really begins when two of Ludovica’s “Diplomatic Agents” stop at Heaven to get their starcraft properly shined before heading out on their top-secret mission. Old Jahu is especially keen on the diversion: everybody knows lusting after or even indulging in pleasure with a Doll doesn’t count as sin. The Popessa said so…

However, whilst lathering up the ship of some fervent fundamentalists at the head of the queue, Noa accidentally kicks off a small riot, even as, across the city, Ludovica’s latest manufactured miracle kicks into high-gear with mesmerising effect…

By the time the barrage of supernal glitz and gaudy glitter subsides, Jahu and young idealistic Roy are well on their way. They have no idea there’s a dazed and surprised stowaway aboard, with her crucial, life-sustaining key still negligently left in her back…

On the rapidly dwindling planet behind them, Ludovica fumes. Despite getting rid of her rival, the lone Popessa’s grasp of power remains uncertain. The people still hunger for absent Agape and there are rumours of rebellion. The anxious, power-mad pontiff has no idea how close to home the sedition reaches…

Aboard ship, Roy has made a startling discovery. Unable to help himself, he turns the key in the inert innocent’s back and restores temporary autonomy to a vivacious creature he can’t help but like…

Doctrinaire Jahu is less sanguine, but the mission is too important to delay. They can always dump the doll on the way home…

Noa is eternally curious, asking questions about everything. Inexplicably, she is especially moved by an illicit image of Agape the voyagers encounter in a space restaurant. It triggers strange, terrifying visions and Roy has to physically restrain Noa. What happens next is regarded by the astounded onlookers as a miracle…

The story resumes with ‘Volume 2: Aqua’ as hints start circulating about Noa’s destiny and the unseen sponsors who seem to be guiding her destiny. The Popessa’s missionary ambassadors meanwhile land on the world without males: one successfully propounding a third spiritual way…

Governed by planetary Guru Gaia, the women of Aqua are steadily gaining support across the universe, supported and funded by their range of wellness centres and luxury goods which everyone wants to try. Roy is there to build diplomatic bridges between the Popessa and the completely antithetical Aquans in the cause of peace. He has no idea Jahu’s orders are a little different. That stalwart always knew the only way to really deal with heretics…

Noa inveigles her way into the official conference: she’s hopeful these strange women will have some insight into her own rapidly-expanding consciousness. She is stunned by what they do know and their connection to missing Agape.

And as Jahu goes about his bloody work, back on Papathea, bloody revolution breaks out…

The intrigue expands in ‘Volume 3: The White City’ when Roy, Jahu and constantly-maturing Noa return as triumphant heroes. When officially interviewed by the ubiquitous Frida Decibel, the web of intrigue and damnation expands to encompass some very unexpected personalities, even as the empire stands poised on the edge of Armageddon and real miracles are observed in the most unlikely places…

A broad, vast, clever and frustrating unfinished epic, Skydoll is still unfolding at its own tantalising pace. There has however been plenty of sidebar and ancillary material released such as ‘Volume 0: Doll’s Factory’ which offers a sequence of prequel events, fleshing out the main characters.

Here a strange woman visits a factory, placing something miraculous inside a doll in the final stages of manufacture, whilst ‘Heaven’s Dolls’ rewards the reader with information on the world and empire of the Popessa, affording insights into other Dolls such as Lovely Lou, Juicy Lee, Sandy Blue and God himself – proving just why he needed killing…

There’s also a hilarious Sky Doll ‘Psycho-grapho Test’ to further reveal how life and society really work…

This immaculate confection culminates in a huge collection of ‘Homages’: a breathtaking gallery of tribute images of the synthetic star and her chums by a staggeringly talented cast of fellow artists: Claire Wendling, Karla Diaz, Benjamin, Marguerite Sauvage, Mijin Shatje, Cyrille Bertin, Tony Infante, Bengal, Claudio Acciari, Tony Sandoval, Amélie Fléchais, Giovanni Rigano, Sefora Pons, Gradimir Smudja, Aurore, Augustin Rolland, Nenent, Guezav, Pierre-Mony Chan, Lucy Mazel, Véronique Meignaud, Matteo De Longis, Xavier Collette, Anne Cresci, Lilidoll, Jérémie Almanza, Lostfish and more.

Completing and concluding the quasi-religious experience is a comprehensive feature ‘About the Authors’ and ‘Acknowledgements & Credits’.

A phenomenal and beguiling work-in-progress, Sky Doll is a superbly engaging exploration of erotica, iconology and idolatry: one no fun-loving, deep-thinking devotee of comic iconoclasm or dedicated supportive lover of mechanical self-gratification (Eeew!) should miss.
Sky Doll and all contents are © Editions Soleil/Barbucci/Canepa. This translated edition © 2016 Titan Comics.