Category: Adventure

Posted on

Showcase Presents The Elongated Man


By John Broome, Gardner Fox, John Broome, Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, Irv Novick, Gil Kane, Neal Adams, Mike Sekowsky, Sid Greene & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1042-2 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are a bunch of comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few are going to be unjustly ignored. As a feverish fanboy wedged firmly in the past, I’m again abusing my privileges here to carp about another brilliant vintage book, criminally out of print and not slated for revival either physically or in digital formats…

Once upon a time, American comics editors believed readers would become jaded if any characters were over-used or over-exposed. To combat that potential danger – and for sundry other commercial and economic reasons – they developed back-up features in most of their titles. By the mid-1960s the policy was largely abandoned as resurgent superheroes sprang up everywhere and readers just couldn’t get enough – but there were still one or two memorable holdouts.

In late 1963 Julius Schwartz took editorial control of Batman and Detective Comics and finally found a place for a character who had been lying mostly fallow ever since his debut as a very long-legged walk-on in the April/May 1960 Flash. The Elongated Man was Ralph Dibny: a circus-performer who discovered an additive in popular soft drink Gingold which seemed to give certain people increased muscular flexibility. Intrigued, Dibny isolated and refined the chemical additive until he had developed a serum which granting him the ability to stretch, bend and compress his body to an incredible degree. Then Ralph had to decide how to use his new powers…

A quirky chap with his own small but passionate band of devotees, in recent years the perennial B-lister became a fixture of the latest Flash TV series, but his many exploits are still largely uncollected in any format. The only archival asset is this charming, witty and very pretty compilation gathering his debut and guest appearances from Flash issues #112, 115, 119, 124, 130, 134, and 138 (spanning cover-dates April/May 1960 to August 1963) plus the Stretchable Sleuth’s entire scintillating run from Detective Comics #327-371 (comprising May 1964 to January 1968).

Designed as a modern take on Jack Cole’s immensely popular Golden Age champion Plastic Man, Dibny debuted in a cunningly crafted crime caper by John Broome, Carmine Infantino & Joe Giella. Flash #112 went on sale February 25th 1960, cover featuring ‘The Mystery of the Elongated Man!’ He was presented as a mysterious, masked yet attention-seeking elastic do-gooder, of whom the Scarlet Speedster was nonetheless highly suspicious…

Proving himself virtuous, Dibny returned in #115 (September 1960, inked by Murphy Anderson) when aliens attempt to conquer the Earth and the Vizier of Velocity needs ‘The Elongated Man’s Secret Weapon!’ as well as the guest-star himself to save the day. In Flash #119 (March 1961), Flash rescues the vanished hero from ‘The Elongated Man’s Undersea Trap!’, thereby introducing vivacious and deadly smart Sue Dibny as a newlywed “Mrs Elongated Man”) in a stirring saga of subsea alien slavers by regular creative team Broome, Infantino & Giella. The threat was again extraterrestrial with #124’s alien invasion thriller ‘Space-Boomerang Trap!’ (November 1961), featuring an uneasy alliance between the Scarlet Speedster, Elastic Investigator and sinister rogue Captain Boomerang, who naturally couldn’t be trusted as far as you could throw him. Ralph collaborated with Flash’s junior partner in #130 (August 1962) only just defeating the wily Weather Wizard when ‘Kid Flash Meets the Elongated Man!’ before bounding back into action with – and against – the senior speedster in Flash #134 (February 1963). Seemingly allied with Captain Cold in ‘The Man Who Mastered Absolute Zero!’, Dibny excelled in an epic thriller that almost ended his heroic career…

Gardner Fox scripted ‘The Pied Piper’s Double Doom!’ in Flash #138 (August 1963), a mesmerising team-up seeing both Elongated Man and the Monarch of Motion enslaved by the sinister Sultan of Sound, before ingenuity and justice ultimately prevailed. Soon after, when a back-up spot opened in Detective Comics (previously held by Martian Manhunter since 1955 and only vacated because J’onn J’onzz was promoted to lead feature in House of Mystery), Schwartz had Ralph slightly reconfigured becoming a flamboyant, fame-hungry, brilliantly canny globe-trotting private eye solving mysteries for the sheer fun of it.

Aided by his equally smart, thoroughly grounded wife, the short tales were patterned on classic Thin Man filmic escapades of Nick and Norah Charles, blending clever, impossible crimes with slick sleuthing, all garnished with the outré heroic permutations and frantic physical antics first perfected in Plastic Man. These complex yet uncomplicated sorties, drenched in fanciful charm and sly dry wit, began in Detective #327 (May 1964) with ‘Ten Miles to Nowhere!’ (by Fox & Infantino, who inked himself for all early episodes). Here Ralph, who had publicly unmasked to become a (regrettably minor) celebrity, discovered someone had been stealing his car every night and bringing it back as if nothing had happened. Of course, it had to be a clever criminal plot of some sort…

A month later he solved the ‘Curious Case of the Barn-door Bandit!’, debuting his direly distressing signature trademark of manically twitching his expanded nose whenever he detects “the scent of mystery in the air”. Then he heads for cowboy country to unravel the ‘Puzzle of the Purple Pony!’ and play cupid for a young couple hunting a gold mine in #329.

Ralph & Sue were on an extended honeymoon tour, making him the only costumed hero without a city to protect. On reaching California, Ralph is embroiled in a ‘Desert Double-Cross!’ when hostage-taking thieves raid the home of a wealthy recluse, after which Detective #331 offered a rare full-length story in ‘Museum of Mixed-Up Men!’ (Fox, Infantino & Joe Giella) as Batman, Robin and Ralph unite against a super-scientific felon able to steal memories and reshape victims’ faces. Returned to his solo support role in #332, the Ductile Detective then discovers Sue has been replaced by an alien in ‘The Elongated Man’s Other-World Wife!’ (with Sid Greene joining as new permanent inker). Of course, nothing is as it seems…

‘The Robbery That Never Happened!’ occurred when a jewellery store customer suspiciously claims he had been given too much change, before ‘Battle of the Elongated Weapons!’ (#334) concentrates on a crook who adapts Ralph’s Gingold serum to affect objects, after which bombastic battle it’s back to mystery-solving as EM is invited by Fairview City to round up a brazen bunch of uncatchable bandits in ‘Break Up of the Bottleneck Gang!’ While visiting Central City again, Ralph is lured to the Mirror Master’s old lair and only barely survives ‘The House of “Flashy” Traps!’ before risking certain death in the ‘Case of the 20 Grand Pay-off!’ after replacing Sue with a look-alike – for the best possible reasons – but without her knowledge or permission…

Narrowly surviving his wife’s wrath by turning the American tour into a World cruise, Ralph tackles the ‘Case of the Curious Compass!’ in Amsterdam, by foiling a gang of diamond smugglers before returning to the US to ferret out funny-money pushers in ‘The Counterfeit Crime-Buster!’ Similarly globe-trotting creator John Broome returned to script ‘Mystery of the Millionaire Cowboy!’ in Detective #340 (June 1965) with Ralph and Sue stumbling onto a seemingly haunted theatre and finding crooks at the heart of the matter, and ‘The Elongated Man’s Change-of-Face!’ (Fox, Infantino & Greene) finds a desperate newsman publishing fake exploits to draw the fame-fuelled hero into investigating a town under siege, before ‘The Bandits and the Baroness!’ (by Broome) has our perpetually vacationing couple check in at a resort where every other guest is a Ralph Dibny, in a classy insurance scam yarn heavy with intrigue and tension.

A second full-length team-up with Batman filled Detective Comics #343 (September 1965, by Broome, Infantino & Joe Giella). ‘The Secret War of the Phantom General!’ is a tense action-thriller pitting the hard-pressed heroes against a hidden army of gangsters and Nazi war criminals determined to take over Gotham City. Having broken Ralph’s biggest case, the happy couple head for the Continent and encounter ‘Peril in Paris!’ (Broome, Infantino & Greene) after Sue goes shopping as an ignorant monolingual American and returns a few hours later a fluent French-speaker…

Fox’s ‘Robberies in Reverse!’ boasts a baffling situation wherein shopkeepers start paying customers, leading Ralph to a severely skewed scientist’s accidental discovery, whilst #346’s ‘Peephole to the Future!’ (Broome) sees Elongated Man inexplicably develop the power of clairvoyance. It sadly clears up long before he can use it to tackle ‘The Man Who Hated Money!’ (Fox) starring a bandit who destroys every penny he steals.

‘My Wife, the Witch!’ was Greene’s last inking contribution for a nearly a year: a Fox thriller wherein Sue apparently gains magical powers whilst ‘The 13 O’Clock Robbery!’ – with Infantino again inking himself – sees Ralph walk into a bizarre mystery and deadly booby-trapped mansion, before Hal Jordan’s best friend seeks out the Stretchable Sleuth to solve the riddle of ‘Green Lantern’s Blackout!’ – an entrancing, action-packed team-up with a future Justice League colleague. ‘The Case of the Costume-made Crook!’ then finds Ralph ambushed by a felon using his old uniform as an implausible burglary tool.

Broome conceived ‘The Counter of Monte Carlo!’ as the peripatetic Dibnys fall into a colossal espionage conspiracy at the casino and afterward become pawns of a fortune teller in ‘The Puzzling Prophecies of the Tea Leaves!’ (Fox), before Broome dazzles and delights one more time with ‘The Double-Dealing Jewel Thieves!’ with a museum owner finding his imitation jewel exhibit is indeed filled with fakes…

As Fox assumed full scripting duties, mystic nomad Zatanna guest-stars in DC #355’s ‘The Tantalising Troubles of the Tripod Thieves!’ as stolen magical artefacts lead Ralph into conflict with a band of violent thugs, before ‘Truth Behind the False Faces!’ sees Infantino bow out on a high note as Elongated Man helps a beat cop to his first big bust and solves the conundrum of a criminal wax museum. Detective #357 (November 1966) featured ‘Tragedy of the Too-Lucky Thief!’ (by Fox, Murphy Anderson & Greene) as the Dibnys meet a gambler who hates to win but cannot lose, whilst Greene handled all the art on ‘The Faker-Takers of the Baker’s Dozen!’ after Sue’s latest art project leads to the theft of an ancient masterpiece.

Anderson soloed with Fox’s ‘Riddle of the Sleepytime Taxi!’, a compellingly glamorous tale of theft and espionage, before Ralph & Sue visit Swinging England (Detective #360 February 1967, by Fox & Anderson) for ‘London Caper of the Rockers and Mods!’ Meeting the reigning monarch and preventing warring kid-gangs from desecrating our most famous tourist traps, they head home to ‘The Curious Clue of the Circus Crook!’ (Greene). Here Ralph visits his old Big-Top boss and stops a rash of robberies following the show around the country. Infantino found time in his increasingly busy schedule for a few more episodes, (both inked by Greene) beginning with ‘The Horse that Hunted Hoods’: a police steed with uncanny crime solving abilities, and continuing in a ‘Way-out Day in Wishbone City!’ wherein normally solid citizens – even Sue – go temporarily insane and riot, after which unsung master Irv Novick steps in to delineate the mystery of ‘The Ship That Sank Twice!’

‘The Crooks who Captured Themselves!’ (#365, by Greene) recounts Ralph losing control of his powers before Broome & Infantino reunite one last time for ‘Robber Round-up in Kiddy City!’ as, for a change, Sue sniffs out a theme-park mystery for Ralph to solve. Infantino finally bowed out with the superb ‘Enigma of the Elongated Evildoer!’ (written by Fox and inked by Greene) as the Debonair Detectives thwart a thief in a ski lodge who seems to possess all Ralph’s elastic abilities. The Atom guest-starred in #368, helping battle clock-criminal Chronos in ‘The Treacherous Time-Trap!’ by Fox, Gil Kane & Greene, before iconoclastic newcomer Neal Adams illustrates poignant puzzler ‘Legend of the Lover’s Lantern!’ and Kane & Greene return for intriguing all-action ‘Case of the Colorless Cash!’. The close of the year signalled the end of an era as Fox, Mike Sekowsky & Greene concluded Elongated Man’s expansive solo stretch with delightfully dizzy lost-loot yarn ‘The Bellringer and the Baffling Bongs’ (#371, January 1968).

With the next issue Detective Comics became an all Bat-family affair. Ralph & Sue Dibny temporarily faded from view until revived as bit players in Flash and were finally recruited into the Justice League of America as semi-regulars. Their charismatic relationship and unique, genteel style have, sadly, not survived: casualties of changing comics tastes and the replacement of sophistication with angsty shouting and testosterone-fuelled sturm und drang.

Witty, bright, clever and genuinely enthralling, these smart stories from a lost age are all beautiful to look at and a joy to read for any sharp kid and all joy-starved adults. This adorable collection is a shining tribute to the very best of DC’s Silver Age and a volume no fan of fun and adventure of any age should be without. It should not, however, be the only place you can stretch out and enjoy such classic fare.
© 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Mighty Marvel Masterworks presents Mighty Thor volume 4: When Meet the Immortals


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, with Vince Colletta, Art Simek, Sam Rosen & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5426-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

These stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before, but today I’m once again focussing on format. The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line launched with economy in mind: classic tales of Marvel’s key creators and characters re-presented in chronological publishing order. It’s been a staple since the 1990s, but always in lavish, hardback collectors editions. These editions are cheaper, on lower quality paper and – crucially – smaller, about the dimensions of a paperback book. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for digital editions, that’s no issue at all…

Even more than The Fantastic Four, Sci Fi fantasy title The Mighty Thor was the arena in which Jack Kirby’s boundless fascination with all things Cosmic was honed and refined through his increasingly groundbreaking graphics and captivating concepts. The King’s plethora of power-packed signature pantheons began in a modest little monster mag called Journey into Mystery where – in the summer of 1962 – a tried-&-true comic book concept (feeble mortal transformed into god-like hero) was revived by the rapidly resurgent company who were not yet Marvel Comics: adding a Superman analogue to their growing roster of costumed adventurers.

This cheap & cheerful epochal pocket tome re-presents more pioneering Asgardian exploits from Journey into Mystery Annual #1, JiM #120-125, and The Mighty Thor #126-127: altogether spanning cover-dates September 1965 to April 1966 as the venerable anthology title changed name to further magnify its magnificent wide-screen feature hero, in a blazing blur of innovation and seat-of-the-pants myth-revising and universe-building. It is lettered throughout by unsung superstars Art Simek & Sam Rosen, and an unjustly anonymous band of colourists.

As you already know: Once upon a time, lonely, lamed American doctor Donald Blake took a vacation in Norway and encountered the vanguard of an alien invasion. Trapped in a cave, Blake found a gnarled old walking stick, which when struck against the ground, turned him into the Norse God of Thunder! Within moments he was defending the weak and smiting the wicked. As months swiftly passed, rapacious extraterrestrials, Commie tyrants, costumed crazies and cheap thugs gradually gave way to a vast panoply of fantastic worlds and incredible, mythic menaces. Moreover, from JiM #110, the wild warrior’s Realm of Asgard was a regular feature and mesmerising milieu for our hero’s earlier exploits, heralding an era of cosmic fantasy to run beside young Marvel’s signature superhero sagas.

Every issue carried spectacular back-up sagas Tales of Asgard – Home of the Mighty Norse Gods gifting Kirby space to indulge his fascination with legends. They also allowed both complete vignettes and longer epics – in every sense of the word. Initially adapted myths, these yarns evolved into serial sagas unique to the Marvel universe where Kirby constructed his own cosmos and mythology, underpinning the company’s entire continuity.

Here – with everything attributed to Lee, Kirby & Vince Colletta and after Thor has defeated his malign step-brother Loki and The Destroyer in Vietnam – the Thunder God returns to America, leaving room for a special event and flashback tale too big for the regular periodical.

The blockbusting lead story from Journey into Mystery Annual #1 reveals how in undisclosed ages past the God of Thunder fell across dimensions into the realm of the Greek Gods for a landmark heroic hullabaloo ‘When Titans Clash! Thor vs. Hercules!’ The spectacular clash of theologies was an incredible all-action episode, and is augmented by a stunning double-page pin-up of downtown Asgard – a true example of Kirby magic…

Back in the now, Thor stops at Pittsburgh’s steel mills to repair Mjolnir – cut into pieces by the Destroyer – and ‘With My Hammer in Hand..!’ prepares to denounce Loki’s villainy to Odin. In the process he mislays one of his brother’s magical Norn Stones: a mishap that will cost him dearly later. Meanwhile, beloved Jane Foster has been abducted by a hidden miscreant with mischief in mind but before the Thunderer can act on that he is ambushed by Loki’s contingency plan as the awesome Absorbing Man returns…

In the back, the Tales of Asgard serial ‘The Quest’ further unfolded as hand-picked warriors on Thor’s flying longship endure further hardship in their bold bid to forestall Ragnarok. This month’s Asgardian edda sees their bold but misguided attempt finally start, as they ‘Set Sail!’ against their legendary prophesied foes…

JiM #121 opens mid-melee as the Thunderer’s attack against colossal Crusher Creel intensifies in ‘The Power! The Passion! The Pride!’ before the god’s compassion for human spectators sparks his downfall and defeat. Seemingly doomed Thor’s cliffhanger fate is paused as B-feature ‘Maelstrom!’ sees Asgardian Argonauts epically encounter an uncanny living storm…

In #122’s ‘Where Mortals Fear to Tread!’ triumphant Crusher Creel is prevented from finishing Thor when he is abducted by Loki to attack Asgard and Odin himself: an astounding clash capped by cataclysmic conclusion ‘While a Universe Trembles!’ Meanwhile at the rear, ‘The Grim Specter of Mutiny!’ invoked by seditious young Loki is quashed in time for valiant Balder to save the Argonauts from ‘The Jaws of the Dragon!’ in the ever-escalating Ragnarok Quest.

In modern times, with the latest threat to Asgard ended and Creel and Loki banished, Thor returns to Earth to defeat The Demon: a “witchdoctor” empowered by the magical Norn Stone left behind after the Thunder God’s Vietnamese venture. However, whilst the Storm Lord is away, Hercules is dispatched to Earth on a reconnaissance mission for Zeus. ‘The Grandeur and the Glory!’ opens another extended story-arc/action extravaganza, bouncing the Thunderer from bruising battle to brutal defeat to ascendant triumph…

As seen in Journey into Mystery Annual #1, long ago the God of Thunder inadvertently invaded the realm of the Greek Gods. Now with the Greek godling clearly popular with readers, Hercules properly enters the growing Mavel Universe. After the impending imbroglio with Thor, the Prince of Power would battle the Hulk and eventually join the Avengers but right now he’s still just another enemy for the Thunderer to face…

Issue #125 –‘When Meet the Immortals!’ – was the last Journey into Mystery for decades. With next month’s ‘Whom the Gods Would Destroy!’, the comic became The Mighty Thor and the drama amped up, culminating with ‘The Hammer and the Holocaust!’ In short order Thor crushes the Norn-fuelled Demon, tells Jane his secret identity and is deprived of his powers by Odin. He is then brutally beaten by Hercules, and subsequently seemingly loses Jane to the Prince of Power, yet still manages to save Asgard from unscrupulous traitor Seidring the Merciless who had usurped Odin’s mystic might while the All-Father was distracted with family matters. And in the wings another epic encounter opened as a certain satanic terror set his infernal sights on an unwitting godly prince…

To Be Continued…

The accompanying Tales of Asgard instalments see the Questers home in on the cause of all their woes. ‘Closer Comes the Swarm’ pits them against the Flying Trolls of Thryheim, before ‘The Queen Commands’ sees Loki captured until Thor answers ‘The Summons!’, promptly returning all Argonauts to Asgard to be shown ‘The Meaning of Ragnarok!’

In truth, these mini-eddas were, although still magnificent in visual excitement, becoming rather rambling in plot, so the narrative reset was neither unexpected nor unwelcome…

The episodic exploits then close with the original pencil art to the cover of JiM #123.

These Thor tales show the development not only of one of Marvel’s fundamental continuity concepts but more importantly the creative evolution of the greatest imagination in comics. Set your common sense on pause and simply wallow in the glorious imagery and power of these classic adventures for the true secret of what makes graphic narrative a unique experience.
© 2024 MARVEL.

Posted on

Golden Age Flash Archives volume I


By Gardner F. Fox, Harry Lampert, E.E. Hibbard, Hal Sharp & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0784-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are many comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few are going to be unjustly ignored. As a feverish fanboy wedged firmly in the past, I’m still abusing my privileges here by carping about another brilliant vintage book, criminally out of print and not slated for revival either physically or in digital formats…

The innovative fledgling company that became DC published the first ever comic book super-speedster and over the intervening decades has constantly added more to its pantheon of stars. Devised, created and written by Gardner Fox and initially visually realised by Harry Lampert, Jay Garrick debuted as the very first Monarch of Motion in Flash Comics #1. He quickly – how else? – became a veritable sensation. “The Fastest Man Alive” wowed readers of anthologies like Flash Comics, All Star Comics, Comics Cavalcade and other titles – as well as solo vehicle All-Flash Quarterly – for just over a decade before changing tastes benched him and most other first-generation costumed crimebusters in the early1950s.

His invention as a strictly single-power superhero created a new trend in the burgeoning action-adventure Funnybook marketplace, and his particular riff was specifically replicated many times at various companies where myriad Fast Furies sprang up including Johnny Quick, Hurricane/Mercury, Silver Streak, The Whizzer, Quicksilver and Snurtle McTurtle – the Terrific Whatzit amongst so many others…

After half a decade of mostly interchangeable cops, cowboys and cosmic invaders, the concept of human speedsters and the superhero genre in general was spectacularly revived by Julie Schwartz in 1956. Showcase #4 revealed how police scientist Barry Allen became the second hero to run with the concept. We’ve not looked back since – and if we did it would all be a great big blur…

This initial charmingly beguiling deluxe Archive (sadly not available in not-quite-faster-than-light digital) edition collects the first year and a half of publication, spanning January 1940 to May 1941 of the irrepressible Garrick’s whimsically eccentric exploits in 17 (regrettably untitled) adventures from anthology Flash Comics. These tales demonstrate an appealing rawness, light-hearted whimsy and scads of narrative experimentation starring a brilliant nerd and (ostensibly) physical sad-sack who became a social reformer and justice-dispensing human meteor.

Following a fulsome Foreword from sometime Flash scribe Mark Waid, the fast fictions commence with the debut of ‘The Fastest Man Alive’, speedily delivering in 15 pages an origin and returning cast, whilst staging a classic confrontation with a sinister cabal of gangsters. It all started years previously when student Garrick collapsed in a Midwestern University lab, only to awaken hyper-charged and the fastest creature on Earth thanks to “hard water fumes” he had inhaled whilst unconscious. After weeks recovering in hospital, the formerly-frail chemist realised the exposure had bestowed super-speed and endurance. He promptly sought to impress his sort-of girlfriend Joan Williams by becoming an unstoppable football player…

Time passed, the kids graduated and Garrick moved to New York where, appalled by rampant crime, he decided to do something about it. The Flash operates mostly in secret until one day, whilst idly playing tennis with himself, Jay meets Joan again, just as mobsters try to kill her in a drive-by shooting. Catching a storm of bullets, Jay gets reacquainted with his former paramour and discovers she is being targeted by criminal combine the Faultless Four: master criminals set on obtaining her father’s invention the Atomic Bombarder. In the blink of an eye Flash smashes the gang’s sinister schemes and defeats diabolical leader Sieur Satan, saving Joan’s life whilst revelling in the sheer liberating fun and freedom of being gloriously unstoppable…

In his sequel appearance Flash stumbles upon a showgirl’s murder and discovers that Yankee mobster Boss Goll and British aristocrat Lord Donelin plan to take over America’s entire entertainment industry with ruthless strong-arm tactics. The speedster is as much hindered as helped by “wilful, headstrong” (that’s old world coding for forceful, competent and independently-minded) Joan who begins her own lifetime obsession of pesky do-gooding right there, right then…

Everett E. Hibbard began a decade-long association with Flash in #3, when Major Williams’ Atomic Bombarder is coveted by foreign spies. The elderly boffin being framed for treason prompts Garrick to come to his future father-in-law’s aid, after which Jay & Joan smash an off-shore gambling ring graduating to kidnapping and blackmail in #4. During these early escapades, Flash seldom donned his red, blue and yellow outfit: usually operating invisibly or undercover to play super-speed pranks with merciless, puckish glee. That started changing in #5, when the speedster saves an elderly artist from hit-men to frustrate mad collector Vandal who uses murder to increase the market value of his purchases.

Flash Comics #6 saw Jay & Joan at old Alma Mater Midwestern, foiling a scheme to dope athletes seeking to qualify for the Olympics, before #7 saw a stopover in Duluth lead to the downfall of gambler Black Mike – industriously fixing motorcar races with a metal melting ray. For #8, the Vizier of Velocity tracks down seemingly corrupt contractors building shoddy, dangerous buildings only to find graft and skulduggery go much further up the financial and civic food chain, whilst in FC #9, gangsters “acquire” a scientist’s invention and the Flash finds himself battling a brigade of giant Gila Monsters. Flash #10 depicts the downfall of a political cabal in the pocket of gangster Killer Kelly and stealing from the schools they administered, before in #11, Garrick meets his first serious opponent in kidnap racketeer The Chief, whose sinister brilliance enables him to devise stroboscopic glasses to track and target the usually invisibly fast crime-crusher…

With the threat of involvement in the “European War” a constant subject of US headlines, Flash Comics #12 (December 1940) had the heroic human hurricane intervene to save tiny Ruritanian nation Kurtavia from ruthless invasion. His spectacular lightning war sees Garrick sinking submarines, repelling land armies and crushing airborne blitzkriegs for a fairy tale happy ending here, but within a year the process would become patriotic morale boosting repeated ad infinitum in every US comic book as the real world brutally intruded on the industry and nation.

Back in the USA for #13, Garrick assists old pal Jim Carter in cowboy country where the young inheritor of a silver mine is gunned down by murdering owlhoots. Jay then heads back east to crush a criminal combine sabotaging city subway construction in #14, before saving a circus from robbery, sabotage and poor attendances in #15. Throughout all these yarns Jay paid scant attention to preserving any kind of secret identity – a detail that would soon change – but as Hal Sharp took over illustrating with #16 (Hibbard presumably devoting his energies to the contents of forthcoming 64-page solo-starring All-Flash Quarterly #1: another landmark for the hero) Joan is kidnapped by Mexican mobsters aware of her connection to The Flash. Rushing to her rescue, Garrick battles a small army, not only saving his girlfriend but even reforming bandit chief José Salvez. This high-energy compilation closes with another light-hearted sporting escapade as the speedster intervenes in a gambling plot, saving a moribund baseball team from sabotage even as Jay Garrick – officially “almost as fast as the Flash” – becomes the Redskins’ (a nickname now thankfully consigned to history’s massive dustbin of insensitivity) star player to save them from lousy performances…

With covers by Sheldon Moldoff, Dennis Neville, George Storm, Jon L. Blummer, Hibbard and Sharp, this book is a sheer delight for lovers of the early Fights ‘n’ Tights genre: exuberant, exciting and funny, although certainly not to every modern fan’s taste. Of course, with such straightforward thrills on show any reader with an open mind could find his opinion changed in a flash.
© 1940, 1941, 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Golden Age Flash Archives volume II


By Gardner F. Fox, E.E. Hibbard, Hal Sharp & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0784-7 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The ever-expanding array of companies that became DC published many iconic “Firsts” in the early years of the industry. Associated outfit All-American Publications (co-publishers until bought out by National/DC in 1946) were responsible for the first comic book super-speedster as well as the iconic Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Atom, Hawkman, Johnny Thunder and so many others who became mainstays of DC’s pantheon of stars.

Devised, created and written by Gardner Fox and originally limned by Harry Lampert, Flash Comics #1 saw Jay Garrick debut as the very first Vizier of Velocity and quickly become a veritable sensation. “The Fastest Man Alive” wowed readers for just over a decade before changing tastes ended the first costumed hero as the 1950s opened.

This charmingly seductive deluxe Archive edition collects the Fastest Yarns Alive from Flash Comics #18-24, covering June-December 1941, plus the first two issues of the irrepressible Garrick’s whimsically eccentric full-length exploits from All-Flash Quarterly (Summer and Fall of that same fateful year). All were written by an apparently inexhaustible Gardner Fox.

After another informative Introduction from comic book all-star Jim Amash, the rollercoaster of fun and thrills gathers steam with ‘The Restaurant Protective Association’ (illustrated by Hal Sharp), with Jay and girlfriend/confidante Joan Williams stumbling upon a pack of extortionists and exposing a treacherous viper preying on Joan’s best gal-pal, after which ‘The Fall Guy’ in #19 reveals how a gang of agile fraudsters are faking motor accidents to fleece insurance companies. Both cases gave Garrick ample opportunity to display his hilarious and humiliating bag of super-speed tricks and punishing pranks to astound playful kids of the day and which still delight decades later.

Flash Comics #20 led with ‘The Adventure of the Auctioned Utility Company’ wherein Joan accidentally buys a regional power outfit and Jay uses all his energies to reconcile a feuding family whilst teaching a miserly embezzler an unforgettable lesson…

Sharp had been doing such splendid artistic service on the monthly tales because regular illustrator E. E. Hibbard had been devoting all his creative energies to the contents of a forthcoming solo title: 64-page All-Flash Quarterly #1. The epic premiere issue opened with tantalising frontispiece ‘The JSA Bid Farewell to the Flash’, celebrating the fact that the Fastest Man Alive was the third character to win his own solo comic – after Superman and Batman – and would therefore be “too busy for Justice Society get-togethers”…

Fox & Hibbard then retold ‘The Origin of the Flash’, revealing again how some years previously college student Garrick had passed out in a lab at Midwestern University, only to awaken hyper-charged and the fastest creature on Earth thanks to “hard water fumes” he inhaled whilst unconscious. After weeks in hospital, the formerly-frail apprentice chemist deduced he had developed super-speed and endurance, and promptly sought to impress his apparently unattainable sort-of girlfriend Joan Williams by becoming an unbeatable football star. Upon graduation Garrick moved to New York where, appalled by its rampant criminality, he employed his gift to fight it…

‘The Men Who Turned to Stone’ plunged readers back to the present as one of Garrick’s colleagues at Chemical Research Incorporated discovers an instant petrification process and is abducted by criminals hoping to make lots of illegal money with it. Hibbard also illustrated uncredited fun-fact featurette ‘The Flash Presents his Hall of Speed Records’ before ‘Meet the Author and Artist of the Flash’ offers an intimate introduction to the creative team, before ‘The Adventure of the Monocle and his Garden of Gems’ sees the debut of a rare returning villain with an unwise addiction to other people’s jewels, but enough brains to counter Flash’s speed, if not Jay’s courage and ingenuity.

When Flash prevents the murder of a cowboy performer in New York, ‘The Rodeo Mystery’ soon takes Jay & Joan to Oklahoma and a crooked ploy to steal a newly discovered oil well, after which the issue closes with Flash smashing a gambler trying to take over the sport of Ice Hockey in ‘Menace of the Racket King’.

Gambling was also a problem in monthly Flash Comics #21 as ‘The Lottery’ (illustrated by Sharp) sees the Speedster expose a cunning criminal scheme to bilk theatre patrons and carnival-goers. Issue #22’s ‘The Hatchet Cult’ offers a rare exceedingly dark walk on the wild side as the speedster gets involved in a Chinatown Tong war and exposes the incredible secret of modern Mongol mastermind Mighty Kong…

Hibbard & Sharp collaborated on issue #23’s ‘A Millionaire’s Revenge’ wherein wealthy plutocrat Leffingwell Funk decides to avenge an imagined slight inadvertently delivered by a poor but happy man. The methodology is unique: beginning with engineering unsuspecting shoe store owner Jim Sewell’s inheritance of half a million dollars. It would have ended with leg-breaking thugs, disgrace and prison had not Jim counted Jay Garrick amongst his circle of friends…

Cover-dated Fall 1941, All-Flash Quarterly #2 (another all Fox/Hibbard co-production) kicks off with a spectacular all-action ‘Title Page’ and informative recap in ‘A Short History of the Flash’ before the creators ambitiously undertake a massive 4-chapter saga of vengeance and justice. In an era where story was paramount, this oddly time-skewed tale might jar slightly with modern continuity-freaks, spanning as it does nearly a lifetime in the telling, but trust me, just go with it…

‘The Threat: Part One – The Adventure of Roy Revenge!’ opens as brilliant young criminal Joe Connor is sentenced to ten years in jail and swears vengeance on DA Jim Kelley. The convict means it too, spending every waking moment inside improving himself educationally, becoming a trustee to foster the illusion of rehabilitation. On his release Connor befriends Kelley – who is currently pursuing a political career – and orchestrates the abduction of the lawyer’s newborn son. Years later a bold young thug dubbed Roy Revenge begins a campaign of terror against Mayor Jim Kelley which even Flash is hard-pressed to stop. When the bandit is at last apprehended, Kelley pushes hard to have the boy jailed, unaware of his biological connection to the savage youth. In the intervening years Connor had truly reformed – until his angelic wife died, leaving him to care for their little girl Ann and “adopted” son Roy. Without his wife’s influence, Connor again turns to crime and raises the stolen boy to hate his biological father…

‘The Flash Presents his Hall of Speed Records’ and ‘How to Develop Your Speed by the Flash’ break up the rolling melodrama before the saga continues in ‘The Threat: Part Two – Adventure of the Blood-Red Ray’ wherein Connor rises through ranks of the Underworld. He now plans to take over the country. Ann has grown up a decent and upstanding – if oblivious – citizen whose only weakness is her constant concealment of her bad brother Roy, who has been hiding from the law for years…

Even when the elder master criminal’s plan to destroy the Kelleys with a heat-ray is scotched by the Flash, the canny crook convinces the Speedster that he is merely a henchman and escapes the full force of justice…

‘The Threat: Part Three – The Wrecker Racket’ sees a new gang plaguing the city, led by a monstrous disfigured albino. No one realises this is Connor – who escaped custody by a method which physically ruined his body and only increased his hatred of Kelley. Locating Roy – who has since found peace in rural isolation – the malign menace again draws the young man into his maniacal schemes. When the boy nearly kills his “sister” Ann in pursuance of Connor’s ambitions, only the Flash can save the day, leading to a swathe of revelation and a shocking conclusion in ‘The Threat: Part Four – The End of the Threat’…

After that monumental generational saga this splendid selection closes with a full-on alien extravaganza from Flash Comics #24 as Garrick investigates a series of abductions and foils a madman’s plot to forcibly colonise the Red Planet. Unfortunately, when inventor Jennings and his gangster backer reach their destination with Jay a helpless prisoner, nobody expected the arid world to be already occupied by belligerent insectoids. Fox, Hibbard & Sharp’s ‘The Flash and the Spider-Man of Mars’ ends the book on a gloriously madcap, spectacular fantasy high note.

Amazing, exciting and quirkily captivating – even if not to many modern fans’ taste, the sheer exuberance, whimsical tone and constant narrative invention in these tales of a nerd who became a social crusader and justice-dispensing human meteor are addictively appealing, and with covers by Sharp, Sheldon Moldoff & Hibbard, this book is another utter delight for lovers of early Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy. Of course, with such straightforward thrills on show any reader with an open mind could find his opinion changed in a flash.
© 1941, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Golden Age Hawkman Archives volume 1


By Gardner F. Fox, Dennis Neville, Sheldon Moldoff & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0418-1 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

There are many comics anniversaries this year. Some of the most significant will be rightly celebrated, but a few are going to be unjustly ignored. As a feverish fanboy wedged firmly in the past, I’m again abusing my privileges here to carp about another brilliant vintage book, criminally out of print and not slated for revival either physically or in digital formats…

Although one of DC’s most long-lived and certainly their most visually iconic character, the various iterations of Hawkman have always struggled to find enough of an audience to sustain a solo title. From his beginnings as one of the assorted second features in new anthology Flash Comics (the others being Cliff Cornwall, The King, The Whip, spoof hero Johnny Thunder and Ed Wheelan’s “Picture Novels/Minute Movies”), adding lustre to the soaraway success of the eponymous speedster helming the title, Winged Wonder Carter Hall has struggled through assorted engaging, exciting but always short-lived reconfigurations.

Over decades from ancient hero to re-imagined alien space-cop and post-Crisis on Infinite Earths freedom fighter, or the seemingly desperate but highly readable bundling together of all previous iterations into the reincarnating immortal berserker-warrior of today, the Pinioned Paladin has performed exemplary service without ever really making it to the big time. Hopefully that’s all changed now, thanks to modern movie trends…

Created by Gardner Fox & Dennis Neville, Hawkman first took to the skies in Flash Comics #1 (cover-dated January 1940, but actually on sale from November 20th 1939). He stayed there, growing in quality and prestige until the title died at the end of the Golden Age, with the most celebrated artists to have drawn the Feathered Fury being Sheldon Moldoff and Joe Kubert, whilst a young Robert Kanigher was justly proud of his later run as writer.

Together with his partner Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman, for over a decade the gladiatorial mystery-man countered fantastic arcane threats and battled modern crime and tyranny with weapons of the past before vanishing with the bulk of costumed heroes as the 1950s dawned. His last contemporary appearance was in All Star Comics #57 (1951) as official leader of the Justice Society of America, after which the husband-and-wife hellions were revived and re-imagined nine years later as Katar Hol and Shayera Thal of planet Thanagar. That was thanks to Julie Schwartz’s crack creative couple Gardner Fox & Joe Kubert – a space-age reinterpretation which even survived 1985’s winnowing Crisis on Infinite Earths. Their long career, regular revamps and perpetual retcons stalled during 1994’s Zero Hour crisis, but they’ve reincarnated and returned many times since. However, despite being amongst DC’s most celebrated and visually vibrant strips over the years, Hawkman & Hawkwoman always struggled to retain sufficient audience share to sustain their numerous solo endeavours.

This spectacular deluxe hardcover re-presentation of their formative years (collecting appearances from Flash Comics #1-22, spanning cover dates January 1940 to October 1941) opens with a fond reminiscence by artist Moldoff (Batman, Black Pirate, Sea Devils, Gang Busters, Mr. District Attorney, Moon Girl) in his Foreword before the magic begins as it should with Fox & Neville’s ‘The Origin of Hawkman’. In an first epochal episode, dashing Carter Hall is a playboy scientific tinkerer and part-time archaeologist with a penchant for collecting old, rare weapons, whose dormant memory is abruptly unlocked by an ancient crystal dagger newly purchased for his collection. Through dreams, the dilettante realises that once he had been Prince Khufu of ancient Egypt, murdered with his lover Shiera by Anubis’ High Priest Hath-Set. Moreover, with his newly returned memories, Hall realises the eternal struggle is primed to play out once more…

As if pre-destined, he bumps into equally reincarnated and recently-remembering Shiera Sanders just as a terrifying electrical menace turns New York City’s subway system into a lightning-fuelled killing field. The new couple soon deduce the deadly genius Doctor Hastor is their reborn ancient nemesis Hastor and, after fashioning an outlandish uniform and anti-gravity harness from mystic Egyptian “Ninth Metal”, Hall hunts the deranged electrical scientist to his lair. He’s just in time to save mesmerised Shiera from a second death-by-sacrifice: mercilessly ending the cycle – at least for now…

Flash #2’s ‘The Globe Conquerors’ concentrated on fantastic science as Hall & Saunders tackle a modern Alexander the Great who builds a gravity-altering engine in a ruthless quest to conquer the world, whilst ‘The Secret of Dick Blendon’ in #3 sees “The Hawk-Man” expose a wicked scheme by insidious slavers turning brilliant men into zombies for profit, to gather riches and to ferret out the secret of eternal life.

Sheldon Moldoff debuted as artist in Flash Comics #4, illustrating a splendidly barbarous thriller wherein the Winged Warrior clashes with ‘The Thought Terror’: a sinister mesmerist enslaving the city’s wealthy citizens, prior to ‘The Kidnapping of Ione Craig’ in #5 pitting the crimefighting phenomenon against “Asiatic” cultists led by legendary assassin Hassan Ibn Saddah. These killers are determined to stop a pretty missionary and secret agent from investigating distant “Araby”. Moldoff has received overly unfair criticism over the years for his frequent, copious but stylishly artistic swipes from newspaper strips – usually those of  master craftsmen Alex Raymond and Hal Foster – in his work of this period, but one look at the stunning results here as the feature took a quantum leap in visual quality should silence those quibblers for good.

Maintaining the use of exotic locales, the story extended in #6 as Hall and Ione struggle to cross burning Saharan sands to the African coast before defeating Arab slavers and their deadly ruler ‘Sheba, Queen of the Desert’ before in #7 further exploring the mystical and supernatural underpinnings of the strip. These readily lent themselves to spooky tales of quasi-horror and barbaric intensity. Generally, “The Eerie Unknown” and deluded dabblers in darkness were oft-used elements in Hawkman tales, as seen in ‘Czar, the Unkillable Man’, wherein the Avian Avenger, back in the USA and reunited with Shiera, contests a merciless golem animated by a crazed sculptor aiming to get rich at any cost. Issue #8 offered another deranged technologist as Professor Kitzoff – ‘The Sunspot Wizard’ – alters the pattern and frequency of solar blemishes to foment riot, madness and chaos on Earth… until the Winged Wonder intervenes, after which in ‘The Creatures from the Canyon’ Hawkman repels aquatic invaders living in the depths 5,000 feet below Manhattan Island after they decide to expand their ancient empire upwards…

Bidding for an old firearm at an auction in #10, Hall is inexorably drawn into a maddening murder-mystery and hunt for a lost Colorado goldmine in ‘Adventures of the Spanish Blunderers’, before ‘Trouble in Suburbia’ manifests after a hit-&-run accident draws plucky Shiera into a corrupt and convoluted property-scam. Boyfriend Carter is quite prepared to stand back and let her deal with the villains – even if Hawkman must exert some surreptitious muscle to close the case. Another murderous scam then involves an old High Society chum as ‘The Heart Patient’ reveals how a devious gold digger and a rogue doctor serially poison healthy young men to fleece them into paying for a cure, whilst in #13, ‘Satana, the Tiger Girl’ preys on admirers for far more sinister reasons: pitting Hawkman and Shiera against scientifically hybridised killer-cats…

‘The Awesome Alligator’ sees an elder god return to Earth, inspiring and equipping a lethal lunatic in a plot to conquer America with ancient secrets and futuristic super-weapons. None of those incredible threats could withstand cold fury and a well-wielded mace, however…

At this time the Pinioned Paladin usually dispatched foes of humanity with icy aplomb and single-minded ruthlessness, and such supernatural thrillers as #15’s ‘The Hand’ gave Fox & Moldoff ample scope to display the reincarnated warrior’s savage efficiency, as when he tracks down a sentient severed fist stealing and slaughtering at its inventive master’s command. In #16,‘The Graydon Expedition’ reinforces the hero’s crusading credentials after ferociously independent Shiera Saunders goes missing in Mongolia, and the Winged Wonder undertakes a one-man invasion of a fabulous lost kingdom to save her. Flash Comics #17 offered ‘Murder at the Opera’, putting the bold birdman on the trail of an arcane Golden Mummy Sect with a perilously prosaic origin and agenda, whilst #18 has him investigating skulduggery in the Yukon after the philanthropic Miss Saunders rushes north to offer aid to starving miners during ‘The Gold Rush of ’41’.

Evidently capable of triumphing in any environment or milieu, Hawkman next derailed deranged physicist Pratt Palmer in #19, when that arrogant savant attempts to become the overlord of crime using his deadly ‘Cold Light’ discoveries. One month later, ‘The Mad Bomber’ sees the Avian Ace ally with a racketeer to stop mad scientist Sathan destroying their city with remote-controlled aerial torpedoes, after which Hawkman must end the tragically terrible accidental rampage of an extraterrestrial foundling raised by a callous rival for Shiera’s affections in ‘Menace from Space’…

This high-flying compilation concludes with October 1941’s Flash Comics #22 and ‘The Adventure of the Killer Gang’, wherein stubborn Shiera witnesses a bloody hijacking and determines to make the bandits pay. Although she again helps Hawkman deal with the murderous vermin as a civilian here, big changes were in store for her…

Already in All Star Comics #5 (July 1941) she had first worn wings and a costume of her own, and in Flash Comics #24 (December 1941) she would at last become an equal partner in peril and fully-fledged hero: Hawkgirl. Sadly that’s a tale for another volume…

Exotic, engaging and fantastically inviting, these Golden Age adventures are a true high-point of the era and still offer astonishing thrills and chills. When all’s said and done it’s all about the heady rush of raw adventure, but there’s also a fabulous frisson of nostalgia here to wallow in: recapturing that magical full-sensorium burst of smell and feel and imagination-overload that finds kids at a perfect moment and provokes something visual and conceptual that almost literally blows the mind.

We re-read stories hoping to rekindle that instantly addictive buzz and constantly seek out new comics desperately hoping to recapture that pure, halcyon burst, and these lost mini-epics are phenomenally imbued with everything fans need to make that breathtaking moment happen. Hopefully DC will realise that one day soon and revive these compelling compulsive collections: either in solid form or at least as digital editions…
© 1940, 1941, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

The Phantom: The Complete Sunday Archive volume Four 1950-1953


By Lee Falk, Ray Moore & Wilson McCoy, with Dick Wood, Pat Fortunato, Bill Lignante, José Delbo, Sal Trapani & various (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-137-3 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes some Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

In this month of romantic anticipation and disillusionment, it’s worth remarking that every iconic hero of strips and comics has a dutiful, stalwart inamorata waiting ever so patently in the wings for a moment to spoon and swoon. Here’s another date with one of the earliest and most resolute…

Born Leon Harrison Gross, “Lee Falk” created the Ghost Who Walks at the request of his King Features Syndicate employers who were already making history, public headway and loads of money with his first strip sensation Mandrake the Magician. Although technically not the first ever costumed champion in comics, The Phantom became the prototype paladin to wear a skin-tight body-stocking and the first to have a mask with opaque eye-slits…

The generational champion debuted on February 17th 1936, in an extended sequence pitting him against an ancient global confederation of pirates. Falk wrote and drew the daily strip for the first two weeks before handing over illustration to artist Ray Moore. The spectacular and hugely influential Sunday feature began in May 1939.

For such a long-lived, influential series, in terms of compendia or graphic collections, The Phantom has been quite poorly served in the English language market (except for the Antipodes, where he has always been accorded the status of a pop culture god). Many companies have sought to collect strips from one of the longest continually running adventure serials in publishing history, but in no systematic or chronological order and never with any sustained success. That began to be rectified when archival specialists Hermes Press launched their curated collections…

This fourth fabulous curated conclave of rain forest romances and jungle action is a lovely landscape hardback (or digital) tome, displaying alternately complete full colour Sunday episodes or crisp monochrome instalments shot from press proofs and digitally remastered. Released in March 2016, its 208 pages are stuffed with sumptuous visual goodies like panel and logo close-ups, comics covers and original art, opening with publisher Daniel Herman’s Introduction ‘The Phantom Sundays March On’. This recaps all you need to know about the ongoing feature and discloses how the advent of a woman superhero might have changed the strip’s dynamic forever…

For those who came in late: 400 years ago, a British mariner survived an attack by pirates, and – after washing ashore on the African coast – swore on the skull of his father’s murderer to dedicate his life and that of his descendants to destroying all pirates and criminals. The Phantom fights evil and injustice from his fabulous lair deep in the jungles of Bengali. Throughout Africa and Asia he is known as the “Ghost Who Walks”…

His unchanging appearance and unswerving war against injustice led to his being considered an immortal avenger by the uneducated, credulous and wicked. Down the decades, one heroic son after another has inherited the task, fought and died in an unbroken family line, with the latest wearer of the mask indistinguishable from the first and proudly continuing the never-ending battle.

In his first published exploit, the Phantom met and fell for wealthy American sophisticate Diane Palmer. His passion for her was soon reciprocated and returned and she became a continuing presence in both iterations of the series as ally, partner, sounding board, a means of reader identification and naturally a plot pawn and perennial hostage to fortune. She was also a handy conduit as the hero occasionally shared four centuries of Phantom history, hearing tales of ancestral Ghosts Who Walked in earlier eras. As was the fashion of the feature almost every saga included powerful, capable and remarkably attractive women as both heroes and villains.

However as the new ultra conservative Fifties decade progressed, that femme fatale policy was gradually but increasingly downplayed. In Falk & Wilson McCoy’s opening tale ‘The Mysterious Passenger’ (running from May 14th 1950 to July 16th 1950), Diana is wholly absent as the mysterious “Mr. Walker” and his faithful wolf companion Devil board ship for Bengali, only to be quickly framed for a huge jewel theft…

Marooned in the vast trackless ocean after jumping ship, the pair are soon hot on the trail of the plunderers and soon bring them to justice.

Evil never sleeps, however, and in the Phantom’s absence horse thieves visited his “native” stable boy Toma and stole the hero’s fabulous steed Hero. ‘The Jungle King’ (July 23rd – October 22nd 1950) proves a far harder proposition to keep than to take, though, and when Mr Walker returns and sets out to recover the wonder horse, the trail leads all over the world and ultimately to an emotional showdown with the world’s richest sportsman and racehorse owner…

A key component of the Phantom’s appeal is the weight of history built into the premise, and that’s perfectly exploited in ‘The Phantom’s Ring’ (October 29th 1950 to June 10th 1951), as the signet that has adorned the fingers of every masked champion since the first one goes missing. Recognised by educated and illiterate alike across Africa and the east, the “Death’s head” has been used to mark felons and acted as a symbol of the ghost’s power for centuries. Now a succession of ne’er-do-wells briefly possess and exploit the soft power of the trinket, but the seasoned detective and his “dog” are rapidly gaining on them and dispensing plenty of jungle justice even without the skull printing adornment. Pursuit of the ring even ends a modern pirate brotherhood – much like the one the first Phantom fought – and acts as cupid bringing a prince and a pauper together forever…

Order restored, a tale very much of its time follows as The Phantom must rescue scientist Dr Archer and his pretty daughter June from cannibal terrors ‘The Rope People’ (June 17th to November 4th 1951), by repeating the herculean tasks he (in actuality his grandfather) had performed generations ago, after which ‘Tale of Devil’ (November 11th 1951 to March 23rd 1952) finds the mighty lupine relentlessly stalked by sadistic visiting royalty with vacant spots on his palace wall and a fondness for bear baiting and other acts of organised animal cruelty.

However, Devil is beloved by Prince Hirk’s son and wife, and even before the Phantom can save his faithful hound – and after the potentate refuses to change his ways – the royal family find a way to stop him for good…

An actual feel-good tale of redemption and repentance, the saga is followed by a return to all-out action as ‘The ‘Copter Pirates’ (March 30th to July 13th 1952) finally reintroduces potential Ghost-Who-Walks-wife Diana Palmer, as she sets out to rejoin her masked man in darkest Bengali, only to be kidnapped. An unwilling spoil of war taken by thieves plundering passenger planes with helicopters, she soon overwhelms unstable lothario Drake and is able to keep him at bay until the Phantom organises an army (navy?) of local tribal fisherfolk to search hundreds of islands and spectacularly lower the boom on the aerial upstarts…

A sublime lost opportunity comes next as ‘The Female Phantom’ (July 20th – October 12th 1952) introduces one of the only woman Crimebusters in US comics of this era. Reunited with “Kit Walker”, Diana has him delve into the meticulous family chronicles to reveal how, a few generations previously, the feisty twin sister of a former Ghost Who Walked took her brother’s place to police the jungles of Bengali after he was shot battling river pirates. Girl Phantom Julie briefly substituted for Kip, saving a hostage missionary that she later married, and kept the Phantom’s Peace until the natural order was restored.

The concept obviously intrigued Falk who carried it on in sequel saga ‘Diana and the Bank Robbers’ (October 19th 1952 to February 1st 1953) wherein Diana “borrowed” Julie’s well-preserved fitted costume for a prank and was captured and entombed by ruthless bullion thieves. Discovered and rescued by super-steed Hero, Diana then let the true, many masked manhunter settle their hash and resumed her rightful place as asker of leading questions…

Closing this section of this compilation, she enquires about ‘The Chain’ (February 8th – May 24th 1953) welded to the Phantom’s throne in the Skull Cave, just in time to reinvigorate the exhausted hero whose constant attempts to forestall an impending tribal war have led him to the brink of resignation and retirement…

As the couple listen to elder Woru, they learn how a similar situation plagued the fearsome forest peacekeeper’s own father and how, after solving his crisis of confidence, escaping slavery, saving his own intended (Kit Walker’s mother-to-be) from abduction and destroying a human monster through sheer persistence, the weary victor attached the links in hopes that they would serve as a reminder for all who followed in his footsteps…

And they do…

Closing this tome ‘Focus: The Female Phantom in the Comics’ discusses the female Phantom (who never appeared again in the 1950s) and provides two tales from her resurrection in the 1960s – albeit not in family oriented strips but in those rowdily anarchic comic books.

Between 1966 and 1967 King Features Syndicate dabbled with a comic book line of their biggest stars Flash Gordon, Popeye, Mandrake and The Phantom: developed after the Ghost Who Walks had enjoyed a solo-starring vehicle under the broad and effective aegis of veteran licensed properties publisher Gold Key Comics. The Phantom was no stranger to funnybooks, having been featured since the Golden Age in titles such as Feature Book and Harvey Hits, but only as straight reformatted strip reprints. The Gold Key exploits were tailored to a big page and a young readership, a model King maintained for their own run.

Here, from the era of superhero saturation and The Phantom #20 (cover dated January 1967, scripted by Dick Wood and illustrated by Bill Lignante) ‘The Adventures of the Girl Phantom’ expands upon the strip sequence above as Julia again dons the purple leotard, mask and gun belt to counter a crime wave following Kit’s incapacitation due to fever. Although more than a match for normal bandits, poachers and evil Europeans, she almost succumbs to the sinister plots of gang boss Lamont until her ferocious jungle cat Fury comes to her aid…

Closing the extra treats is vignette ‘The Secret of the Golden Ransom’ from Charlton’s The Phantom #30 ( February 1969, by Pat Fortunato, José Delbo & Sal Trapani) as Julie and faithful (human) friend Maru face a flamboyant pirate who demands a unique payment for returning her captive brother, the “real Phantom”…

If the kind of fare you’d encounter in a 1940s Tarzan movie or noir thriller might offend, you should consider carefully before starting this book, but if you’re open to oldies with historical cultural challenges there’s a lot to be said for these straightforward and pioneering thrillers. Finally rediscovered, these lost treasures are especially rewarding as the material is still fresh, entertaining and addictively compelling. However, even if it were only of historical value (or just printed for Australians – manic devotees of the implacable champion from the get-go) surely the Ghost Who Walks and fiancée/wife-who-waits is worthy of a little of your time?
The Phantom® © 1950-1953 and 2018 King Features Syndicate, Inc. ® Hearst Holdings, Inc. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Mighty Marvel Masterworks presents the Black Panther volume 2: Look Homeward


By Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Larry Lieber, Gerry Conway, Steve Englehart, Len Wein, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Gene Colan, Frank Giacoia, George Tuska, Don Heck, Bob Brown, Tom Palmer, Syd Shores, Mike Esposito, Joe Sinnott, Dave Cockrum & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4905-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

These stories are timeless and have been published many times before but here we’re boosting another example of The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line: designed with economy in mind and newcomers as target audience. These books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and smaller – like a paperback novel. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for digital editions, that’s no issue at all.

This tome gathers in whole or in part more early Black Panther adventures prior to his winning his own solo series. Included are The Avengers #77-79, 87, 112, 126, Daredevil #69, Astonishing Tales #6-7, Fantastic Four #119 and Marvel Team-Up #20, spanning June 1970-August 1974 and almost all showing The Great Cat as a collaborator. peripatetic guest star and team player…

Acclaimed as the first black superhero in American comics and one of the first to carry his own series, the Black Panther’s popularity and fortunes have waxed and waned since he first appeared in the summer of 1966. As created by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and inker Joe Sinnott, T’Challa, son of T’Chaka, is an African monarch whose secretive, hidden kingdom is the only source of vibration-absorbing wonder mineral Vibranium. The miraculous alien metal – derived from a fallen meteor which struck the continent in lost antiquity – is the basis of Wakanda’s immense wealth, making it one of the wealthiest and most secretive nations on Earth. These riches allowed the young king to radically remake his country, creating a technological wonderland even after he left Africa to fight as one of America’s mighty Avengers, beginning with #52 (cover-dated May 1968). At that time, the team had been reduced to Hawkeye, The Wasp and a recently re-powered Goliath. This changed when they welcomed new recruit Black Panther on the recommendation of Captain America…

This impactful assemblage of tales opens as the tone of the times shifted and comics titles entered a period of human-scaled storytelling dubbed “Relevancy”. Here Roy Thomas, John Buscema & Tom Palmer pit the heroes against a far more mundane and insidious menace – billionaire financier Cornelius Van Lunt who manoeuvres Tony Stark to bankruptcy to gain the team’s services. The Avengers (currently Cap, Goliath, The Vision, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) were compelled to become the mystery magnate’s ‘Heroes for Hire!’ to save their sponsor…

Sal Buscema then popped in to pencil ‘The Man-Ape Always Strikes Twice!’ as the embattled champions are targeted by a coterie of vengeful villains competing to join a new league of evil, spectacularly culminating in a grand clash with the aforementioned anthropoid, The Swordsman, Power Man, Living Laser and The Grim Reaper in ‘Lo! The Lethal Legion!’, which heralded the artistic return of big brother John and the apparent destruction of the malevolent miscreants.

It was the dawning era of crossover tales and gently simmering subplots in all-Thomas scripted titles, and the experimentation led T’Challa to Daredevil #69 (October 1970) where the author, Gene Colan & Syd Shores paired the heroes in a tale of kid gangs and the rise of the “Black Power” movement. The African king had been seeking to understand America by working undercover as high school teacher Luke Charles, where his need to save a good student from bad influences leads to tragedy, disaster and ‘A Life on the Line’…

Jumping to Avengers #87 (April 1971) T’Challa’s conflicted duties prompt the Black Panther to reviews his bombastic origin before opting to take leave of his comrades and reassume the throne of his hidden kingdom in ‘Look Homeward, Avenger’ (Giacoia & Sal B), segueing into Astonishing Tales #6 (June 1971, by Larry Lieber, George Tuska & Mike Esposito) as the Lord of Latveria invades Wakanda. ‘The Tentacles of the Tyrant!’ depicts Doctor Doom resolved to seize its Vibranium, only to be outwitted and fall to the furious tenacity of its king and prime defender in ‘…And If I Be Called Traitor!’ (by Gerry Conway, Colan & Giacoia).

Roy Thomas and his artistic collaborators were always at the forefront of Marvel’s second generation of creators: brilliantly building on and consolidating Lee, Kirby and Ditko’s initial burst of comics creativity whilst spearheading and constructing a logical, fully functioning wonder-machine of places and events that so many others could add to. He was also acutely aware of the youthful perspective of older readers which might explain a bizarre face-saving shuffle seen in Fantastic Four #119 (February 1972) as the African avenger cautiously adopts the designation “Black Leopard” – presumably for contemporary political reasons… In Illustrated by John B & Joe Sinnott, ‘Three Stood Together!’ offers Thomas’ damning, if shaded, indictment of South Africa’s apartheid regime as Wakanda’s king is interned in white-ruled state Rudyarda, leading to The Thing and Human Torch busting him out whilst clashing with mutual old enemy Klaw, who is attempting to steal a deadly new superweapon…

Escalating cosmic themes and colossal clashes recall the King to America in Avengers #112 (June 1973 by Steve Englehart, Don Heck & Frank Bolle) wherein a rival African deity manifests to destroy the Panther God’s human avatar in ‘The Lion God Lives!’ and T’Challa and his valiant comrades must tackle a threat that is not what it appears to be. It’s followed by the concluding chapter of a battle between Stegron the Dinosaur Man and the unlikely alliance of Spider-Man and Ka-Zar. When the clash expands from the Savage Land to Manhattan in Marvel Team-Up #20 (April 1974), the scaly rapscallion’s plans to flatten New York by releasing ‘Dinosaurs on Broadway!’ (Len Wein, Sal B, Giacoia & Esposito) is only foiled by the Black Panther’s help.

However it’s T’Challa’s deductive abilities that save the day and a group of hostages in Avengers #126 when ‘All the Sights and Sounds of Death!’ (Englehart, Bob Brown & Cockrum) finds villains Klaw and Solarr invading Avengers Mansion in a devious attempt to achieve vengeance for past indignities. The manner in which King T’Challa solves the case convinces The Black Panther that is once more time to take up the reins of rule in Wakanda…

But that’s a tale for the next volume..

With covers by John & Sal Buscema, Herb Trimpe, Don Heck, Gil Kane, John Romita and Ron Wilson, this tidy tome is a wonderful, star-studded precursor to the Black Panther’s solo exploits and a perfect accessory for film-fans looking for more context. It also offers art lovers a chance to enjoy the covers to reprint title Marvel’s Greatest Comics #39 & 40, by Jim Starlin & Sinnott and Sal Buscema respectively, as seen in November 1972 and January 1973 as well as unused Kirby/Sinnott cover art, and Jack’s origins designs for precursor the Coal Tiger.

These terrific tales are ideal examples of superheroes done exactly right and also act as pivotal points as the underdog company evolved into a corporate entertainment colossus. There are also some of the best superhero stories you’ll ever read…
© 2024 MARVEL.

Posted on

Green Arrow/Black Canary: Till Death Do They Part


By Judd Winick, Cliff Chiang, Amanda Conner, Mike Norton, André Coehlo, Wayne Faucher, Rodney Ramos, Patricia Mulvihill, Paul Mounts, David Baron & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-77950-929-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic and comedic effect.

Green Arrow is Oliver Queen, a cross between Batman and Robin Hood and one of DC’s Golden All-Stars. He’s been a fixture of the company’s landscape – often for no discernible reason – more or less continually since his debut in More Fun Comics # 73 in 1941. In those heady days origins weren’t considered as important as image and storytelling, so originators Mort Weisinger & George Papp never bothered, leaving later workmen to fill in the blanks. France Herron, Jack Kirby and his wife Roz crafted one that stuck in ‘The Green Arrow’s First Case’ at the start of the Silver Age superhero revival (Adventure Comics #256, January 1959), and variations of it still impact modern iterations.

As a fixture of the DC Universe GA was one of the few costumed heroes to survive the end of the Golden Age, consistently adventuring in the back of other heroes’ comic books, joining the Justice League during the Silver Age return of costumed crusaders before eventually evolving into a spokes-hero of the anti-establishment during the 1960’s period of “Relevant” comics, courtesy of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. Under Mike Grell’s 1980/1990s stewardship he became a gritty and popular A-Lister: an urban hunter dealing harshly with corporate thugs, government spooks and serial killers rather than costumed goof-balls.

…And then he was killed and his son took over the role.

…And then the original came back…

Black Canary was one of the first of relatively few Golden Age women crimebusters in DC’s universe, following Wonder Woman, Liberty Belle and Red Tornado (who actually masqueraded as a man) and predating Merry the Gimmick Girl. Bullet Girl, Phantom Lady and Mary Marvel all began their careers in the same time frame but only joined the DC pantheon after the Golden Age officially ended, snapped up in canny acquisitions that are still paying dividends. The Black Canary (Dinah Lance nee Drake) was created by Bob Kanigher & Carmine Infantino, debuting in Flash Comics #86, August 1947. She derived from a surge in femme fatales (mostly criminals or simply misunderstood) debuting due to equivalent exemplars appearing in gritty film noir B-features, but disappeared with most of the other print superdoers at the end of the Golden Age. However she was one of the first to be revived with the Justice Society of America in 1963.

Originally an Earth-Two crimefighter transplanted to our world, BC has been ruthlessly retconned over and again, but most often now Dinah Laurel Lance is the daughter of an earlier, wartime champion. However you feel about the character, two consistent facts have remained since her reintroduction/assimilation in Justice League of America #73-75 (see Crisis on Multiple Earths vol 1 please link to July 9th 2022 and The Justice League Hereby Elects  please link to September 15th 2017): she has vied with Wonder Woman herself for the title of premiere heroine and she has been in a stormy romantic relationship with Green Arrow ever since.

The tempestuous affair – which actually began during the Summer of Love – finally reached a dramatic culmination some years ago when the couple at last named the day, with this fearsomely dramatic and cripplingly funny tome gathering those unforgettable moments in a celebratory chronicle to warm the hearts and chill the souls of sentimental thrill seekers everywhere.

Reprinting Green Arrow and Black Canary Wedding Special and issues #1-14 of the monthly Green Arrow and Black Canary comic book that sprang from it, the saga begins with a hilariously immature retelling of the path to wedlock from scripter Judd Winick & Amanda Conner. Here the first cute-meet, passion, spats and tender moments are reviewed culminating in riotous hen-nights, rowdy stag-parties and a tremendous battle as a huge guard of dishonour – comprising most of the villains in the DCU – attack the assembled heroes when they’re utterly off-guard…

Naturally the bad guys are defeated, the ceremony concludes and the newlyweds head off to enjoy their wedding night.

And then – in circumstances I’m not going to spoil for you – Green Arrow dies again…

Obviously it doesn’t end there. The dramatic moment acts as springboard for a major restart. In the first issue of the new series Winick & Cliff Chiang’s ‘Dead Again’ only shows Ollie Queen in flashbacks as the Black (Widow) Canary goes on a brutal crime-crushing rampage.

‘Here Comes the Bride’ finds her slowly going off the rails. Only Ollie’s son Connor Hawke – heir to the Arrow mantle – seems able to get through to her where friends and allies like Green Lantern, Superman, Oracle and even Ollie’s old sidekicks Speedy and Red Arrow urge her to move on. As usual it takes the ultra-rational Batman to divine what really happened on the wedding night and send the grief spiral into useful new territory…

In ‘The Naked and the Not-Quite-So-Dead’ Dinah and latest Speedy Mia Dearden infiltrate the secret island paradise of the sinister miscreants who secretly abducted and imprisoned Green Arrow (notice how vague I’m being; all for your benefit?) and find where Ollie is currently; and constantly proving to be more trouble than he can possibly be worth. Conner is also on hand, but whilst attempting to spring his wayward dad also falls captive to uniquely overwhelming forces…

‘Hit and Run, Run, Run!’ ramps up the tension as the heroes all escape – but not before one of their number is gravely wounded by a mystery assailant, prior to ‘Dead Again: Please Play Where Daddy Can See You’ turning the tables and revealing that it’s Ollie’s turn to fall apart as his son and protégé fights for life…

With André Coehlo illustrating, heart-warming reverie ‘Child Support’ (another sequence of poignant flashbacks) describes Green Arrow’s history with his family and the extended team Arrow coterie of sidekicks. Soon, however, Dinah must drag Ollie back from the brink of utter despair when brain dead Connor is abducted from the hospital and life-support machines keeping him breathing…

Cliff Chiang returns for ‘Haystack – First Needle’ as the hunt goes global and felons from Prague to New Jersey to London, England learn that the green team don’t act like heroes when one of their own is imperilled.

Illo 2 here please


Limned by Mike Norton & Wayne Faucher ‘Greetings from Faraway Lands’ introduces super tech thief Dodger. As the team stalk the mastermind behind the botched hit on Ollie and abduction of dying Connor, this lovable rogue slowly graduates from an initially unwilling ally into something far more for one naively impressionable archer. With dubious intel now targeting global threat Ras Al Ghul as their foe and his League of Assassins as the murder weapon, ‘Haystack part 3: the Needle’ – by Winick, Norton & Rodney Ramos – exposes even more duplicity and misinformation as a rushed rescue mission successfully liberates a covert captive hero long gone but somehow unmissed…

Sadly for Ollie & Dinah, it’s the wrong one and a semi-delirious Plastic Man joins the expanding cast of hunters for new story arc ‘A League of Their Own’. Winick, Norton & Faucher’s opening chapter ‘Rubber and Glue’ introduces an alternative/impostor League of Assassins with their own outré agenda and incredible resources but as Team Arrow ‘Step Up to the Plate and Swing Away’ in ever stranger locales, it becomes increasingly clear that ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’ is not someone they regularly face.

In fact ‘The Son of the Father, the Father of the Son’ exposes a friend not an enemy behind the plot; albeit one motivated by tragedy and desperation and trapped in the vile manipulations of a true mad scientist mastermind’s vengeance-tinged plot and opportunistic attempts to build a super-powered slave army…

Unexpectedly defeated by the valiant acts of Team Arrow, the malign malefactor gets his comeuppance and a vastly changed, amnesiac but mostly cured Connor  rejoins his family in ‘Home Again, Home Again’ and as father and son seek to bond as they never could before, Oliver Queen realises that always ‘One Door Closes, Another Opens’…

To Be Continued…

The book concludes with a stunning and often hilarious variant cover gallery by Ryan Sook, Cliff Chiang, and Amanda Connor, reminding us that Green Arrow and Black Canary are characters who epitomise the modern adventure hero’s best qualities, even if in many ways they are also the most traditional of “Old School” champions. This witty and wild ride is a cracking example of Fights ‘n’ Tights done right and is well worth an investment of your money, time and emotional commitment.
© 2007, 2008, 2009, 2021 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Quick & Flupke: Fasten Your Seatbelts & Under Full Sail


By Hergé, translated by David Radzinowicz (Egmont UK)
ISBN: 978-1-4052-4742-9 (PB Album Seatbelts)  978-1-4052-4743-6 (HB/Sail)

These books include Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Georges Prosper Remi – known to all as Hergé – created a genuine masterpiece of graphic literature with his tales of a plucky boy reporter and his entourage of iconic associates. Singly, and later with assistants including Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and other supreme stylists of the select Hergé Studio, he crafted 23 splendid volumes (originally produced in brief instalments for newspaper periodicals) which have since grown beyond their popular culture roots and attained the status of High Art.

Globally renowned for the magnificent Tintin adventures, Hergé also did much to return comics to the arena of mass entertainment, a position largely lost after once television, video-recording and computer games became household standards. However, the bold boy and his opinionated dog were by not his only landmark. In the years before the junior journalist finally assured him immortality Remi was a prodigious jobbing cartoonist, generating a minor pantheon of topical strips and features such as Tim the Squirrel in the Far West, The Amiable Mr. Mops, Tom and Millie and Popol Out West. Among the best of the rest were the tales of Jo and Zette Legrand and their chimpanzee companion Jocko – in much the same wholesome action vein as Tintin – and episodic, all-ages shenanigans of a pair of mischievous ragamuffins in pre-WWII Belgium.

In 2005 Egmont translated three escapades of Jo, Zette and Jocko into English – although many more are just sitting fallow out there, all foreign and unreadable to potential fans too lazy to learn French or any of a dozen other civilised languages. In 2009 the publisher tried again with two collections of the Master’s second most successful creation: Quick et Flupke, gamins de Bruxelles.

These rambunctiously subversive, trouble-making working-class rapscallions and scallywags were precursors and thematic contemporaries of such beloved British boy acts as The Bash Street Kids, Winker Watson, Roger the Dodger et al, and literally hundreds of continental strips, and for more than a decade (from January 1930 to May 1940) rivalled untouchable Tintin in popularity. They undoubtedly acted as a rehearsal room for the humorous graphic and slapstick elements which became so much a part of future Tintin tales.

Just over a decade ago Egmont had a brief stab at reviving the likely lads and it was only the general public’s deplorable lack of taste and good sense which stopped the kids from taking off again…

On leaving school in 1925, Hergé began working for Catholic newspaper Le XXe Siècle, falling under the influence of its Svengali-like editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. Remi produced his first strip series The Adventures of Totor for Boy Scouts of Belgium monthly magazine the following year, and by 1928 was in charge of producing the paper’s children’s weekly supplement Le Petit Vingtiéme.

He was unhappily illustrating L’Extraordinaire Aventure de Flup, Nénesse, Poussette et Cochonnet (The Extraordinary Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonette) – written by the staff sports reporter – when Abbot Wallez beseeched him to create a new adventure serial. Perhaps a young reporter who would travel the world, doing good whilst displaying solid Catholic values and virtues?

Having recently discovered the word balloon in imported newspaper strips, Remi decided to incorporate that innovation into his own work. He designed a strip both modern and action-packed – and heavily anti-communist. From January 10th 1929, weekly episodes of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared in Le Petit Vingtiéme, running until May 8th 1930. Around this time he also developed weekly 2-page gag strips starring two working-class rascals on the streets of Brussels. They played pranks, got into good-natured trouble and even ventured into the heady realms of slapstick and surrealism: the sort of antics any reader of Dennis the Menace (ours, not the Americans’) would find fascinatingly familiar.

Officially the strip launched on January 23rd, but it only featured one half of the duo and was not truly complete until the partnership was formed with the introduction of Flupke three weeks later. Thus it’s joyeux anniversaire today lads, or Gelukkige verjaardag if you’re feeling a little Flemish…

Originally a black-&-white fixture in Le Petit Vingtiéme, the lads larked about for more than a decade until the war and mounting pressures of producing Tintin meant Hergé had to let them go. They were only rediscovered in 1985, when their collected adventures ran to a dozen best-selling albums – so there’s still plenty left out there to be translated into English…

Fasten Your Seat Belts contains a sublimely riotous celebration of childish high spirits, beginning with hosepipe pranks in ‘The Big Clean’, before a rare good deed leads to strife with ‘A Poor Defenceless Woman’ and a day ‘At the Seaside’ results in another round of fisticuffs. After that, their archfoe the policeman succumbs to the irresistible temptations of a handy catapult in ‘Everyone Gets a Turn’…

Quick – the tall one in the beret – learns to his cost ‘How Music Calms the Nerves’ and discovers the drawback of ‘Pacifism’, whilst portly Flupke tries tennis and finds himself far from ‘Unbeatable’…

‘Advertising’ proves to be a dangerous game and an annoying insect meets its end in ‘Instructions for Use’, whilst ‘Quick the Clock Repairer’ fall far short of his billing, and ‘Football’ becomes just another reason for friends to fall out. Although unwelcome ‘At the Car Showroom’, some Eskimos (you’re going to have to suspend some modern sensitivities every now and again, remember) seem happy to share in ‘A Weird Story’ whist Hergé himself turns up in ‘A Serious Turn of Events’, even as the kids are disastrously ‘At Odds’ over a funny smell in their proximity. Soon after, ‘Quick the Music Lover’ deftly deals with an annoying neighbour, Flupke goes Christmas skiing in ‘That’s How It Is’ and another good turn goes bad in ‘All Innocence’, before a sibling spat is sorted through ‘Children’s Rights’ before Quick cocks up cuisine despite possessing ‘The Recipe’…

A handy ‘Yo-yo’ causes traffic chaos and a milk run goes spectacularly awry in a buttery ‘Metamorphosis’ prior to this breezy blast from the past concluding with a cleverly appealing ‘Tale Without a Tail’.

Regrettably hard to find now (and long past time for a digital edition if not paper reissue), this book and the simple, perfect gags it contains show another side to the supreme artistry of Hergé – and no connoisseur of comics can consider life complete without a well-thumbed copy of their own…

Exactly the same holds true for sequel volume Quick & Flupke: Under Full Sail. Once upon a time in Belgium and many other places, the escapades of two mischievous scallywags rivalled the irresistibly indomitable adventurer Tintin in popularity. It wasn’t that big a deal for Hergé and his publishers as Quick & Flupke was being produced by a studio team in concurrently with the dashing boy reporter. The gag strip became a test lab for humorous graphic elements, so much a part of the future world classic that the little terrors often cameoed in the major magazine vehicle…

Running from January 10th 1929 to May 8th 1930, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared in weekly instalments in Le Petit Vingtiéme, generating a huge spike in sales. Editor Wallez allowed Hergé to hire Eugène Van Nyverseel and Paul “Jam” Jamin as art assistants and naturally wanted to see a return in terms of more product. According to Remi’s later recollections  he returned from a brief, well-earned vacation to find his staff had played an office prank by announcing that he was about to launch a second weekly strip…

Briefly flummoxed, Remi rapidly concocted a strip starring a little rascal over the next few days, based largely on his own childhood and French film Les Deux Gosses (The Two Kids). The impertinent pair (or at least one of them) premiered in the January 23rd 1930 issue of Le Petit Vingtiéme. The feature became Quick & Flupke three weeks later when a pint-sized partner in peril appeared, initially answering to “Suske” before evolving into Flupke (which is Flemish for “little Phillip”)…

Unleashed weekly in 2-page monochrome exploits, two working class Brussels louts played pranks, made mischief and ventured into heady realms of slapstick and surrealism in yarns any reader of Bart Simpson would find fascinatingly familiar. Readers everywhere loved them and the strip became immensely successful, but Hergé paid it little heed, frequently only beginning each week’s episode a day or even hours before press time. The fare was rapid-fire, pun-packed, stand-alone and often fourth-wall breaking which – as eny fule kno – never gets old.

Despite being increasingly sidelined after Hergé devised The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko for Cœurs-Vaillants at the end of 1935 – so Happy 90th to them, too! – our likely lads larked about for ten years, increasingly becoming an artefact of the assistants (and latterly artist Johan de Moor) until the global war and the pressure of producing Tintin meant they had to go.

Unimpeachable urchins Quick & Flupke were rediscovered in 1985, and – after a brief TV incarnation – returned to print where their remastered, collected escapades ran to12 full-colour albums in Europe and India until 1991. As English translations, we only ever saw a couple of volumes like this oversized (221 x 295 mm) hardcover compendium: delighting us with nearly two dozen sparkling romps for laughter-starved lovers of classic comics comedy.

Hopefully, now we’ve got a burgeoning digital reading base, they will all be available for folk too lazy to learn French (or Dutch or German or…) as digital editions. These lost classics are long-overdue for rediscovery and are perfect light reading for kids of all ages.
© Hergé – Exclusivity Editions Casterman 1986, 1991. All Rights Reserved. English translation © 2009 Egmont UK Limited. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Lucky Luke volume 59 – Bride of Lucky Luke


By Morris & Guy Vidal, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-305-5 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Doughty, dashing and dependable cowboy “good guy” Lucky Luke is a rangy, implacably even-tempered do-gooder able to “draw faster than his own shadow”. He amiably ambles around the mythic Old West, having light-hearted adventures on his petulant and rather sarcastic wonder-horse Jolly Jumper. Over nine decades, his exploits have made him one of the top-ranking comic characters in the world, generating nearly 90 individual albums and spin-off series like Kid Lucky and Ran-Tan-Plan, with sales totalling upwards of 300 million in 30 languages. That renown has translated into a mountain of merchandise, toys, games, animated cartoons, TV shows and live-action movies and even commemorative exhibitions. No theme park yet, but you never know…

Originally the brainchild of Belgian animator, illustrator and cartoonist Maurice de Bévère (AKA “Morris”) Lucky only truly expanded to global dominance via his 45 volume collaboration with superstar scripter René Goscinny (from Des rails sur la Prairie/Rails on the Prairie beginning August 25th 1955 to La Ballade des Dalton et autres histoires/The Ballad Of The Daltons And Other Stories in 1986).

On Goscinny’s death, Morris worked alone again and with others, founding a posse of legacy creators including Achdé & Laurent Gerra, Benacquista & Pennac, Xavier Fauche, Jean Léturgie, Jacques Pessis and more, all taking their own shots at the venerable vigilante. Morris soldiered on both singly and with these successors before his passing in 2001, having drawn fully 70 adventures, plus numerous sidebar and spin-off sagebrush sagas.

The taciturn trailblazer draws on western history as much as movie mythology and regularly interacts with historical and legendary figures as well as even odder fictional folk in tales drawn from key themes of classic cowboy films – as well as some uniquely European notions, and interpretations. As previously hinted, the sagebrush star is not averse to being a figure of political change and Weapon of Mass Satire…

Cinebook’s 59th Lucky Luke album was officially the frontier phenomenon’s 54th individual European exploit, originally seen au continent in 1985 as La Fiancée de Lucky Luke by Morris and jobbing scripter Guy Vidal – journalist, screenwriter, Editor-in-Chief of Pilote and author of books and comics such as Les Gringos, Une Éducation algérienne, Médecins sans frontières and many more.

Regrettably, in many places this yarn is a painfully dated monument to the sexist attitudes of the era it was written in. The book has been translated as Bride of Lucky Luke (occasionally Lucky Luke’s Fiancée) and here comes with an apologetic preface from the editors asking for a little understanding and forbearance.

I suspect these will become increasingly common in future with long-lived stars, as modern sensibilities clash with social and culturally outmoded material crafted for popular consumption over everchanging decades…

While we’re carping there’s an odd frisson of campaigning change throughout reviving a barely cooled hot button of the era. From inception, Luke laconically puffed on a trademark roll-up cigarette which hung insouciantly and almost permanently from his lip. However, in 1983 Morris – amidst pained howls and muted mutterings of “political correctness gone mad” –  substituted a piece of straw for the much-travelled dog-end, thereby garnering for himself an official tip of the hat from the World Health Organisation. Here however, although Lucky still chaws that barley stalk, most other characters still abuse tobacco in its assorted forms, drawing pointed remarks from one of the tale’s most powerful characters, primly dragging her reformist civilising nonsense into the land of unreconstructed, unsavoury he-men…

In scenes reminiscent of the Navy’s pleas in South Pacific, the tale opens in typical frontier town Purgatory where they ain’t got dames women are absent and pioneers are reverting to loutish, unwashed barbarism.

In St Louis – where US civilisation officially ends – the situation is exacerbated by an oversupply of single, marriageable women, compelling civic authorities to organise wedding wagon trains to ship willing wives-to-be to eager, not particularly picky bachelors. The process is fraught with peril and takes a terrible toll on wagon-masters and guides, so these powers that be want Lucky Luke to lead the next trek out…

Teaming up with old pal Hank Bully (The Stagecoach), Luke eventually agrees: ferrying fifteen spinsters of variable vintage – one of whom is not what they seem – across the prairies: overcoming natural hazards, the country’s previous occupants, freshly-imported villainy and a multitude of stereotypical him-versus-her cliches (especially about cooking, clothes, “queer fear” and driving) before some moments of novelty appear.

Strident Jenny O’Sullivan might want a husband, but she also has ironclad principles and spends much time lecturing anyone who can’t get away on the perils of strong drink and tobacco. That zeal even persists after she’s kidnapped by the nefarious Daltons. However, when the wagons arrive in Purgatory, one of the prospective husbands is unavailable – having been arrested – and Lucky is gulled/compelled to step in and agree to wed her. It’s that or take her back to St Louis…

Grasping the wrong end of the stick, Averell, Jack, William and devious, diminutive yet dominant Joe swoop and snatch, but soon learn they have saved their greatest enemy from a life of domestic drudgery, startling cooking and daily uplifting lectures. Happily for them, Lucky always puts duty before everything and rescues the most vicious and feared outlaws in America before finding a solution to his own dilemma and reuniting Jenny and her contracted spouse/consort…

Then he can go back to being as lonesome a cowboy as humanely possible…

Happily Lucky Luke also cherishes the old ways and is ready to set things right his way…

Augmented by a reproduction of an actual certificate of Holy Matrimony stemming from the widespread historical practise of catalogue weddings, Bride of Lucky Luke vacillates between being a wickedly wry exploration of the battle of the sexes and cheap misogyny, which can work for most readers but isn’t ideal for young readers to absorb unquestioningly. Nevertheless, the art and many of the gags do work on more mature levels so bear in mind that in Europe, this series is not strictly kids’ stuff. The yarn revels in classic set-piece slapstick and witty wordplay: poking fun at the fundamental components of the genre and relationships, whilst successfully embracing tradition with wild action.

Fine for older kids possessing some perspective and social understanding – and probably still safer than most Laurel and Hardy films or whatever TikTok clip the waifs of the coming generation can still access, these early exploits follow the grand old tradition of Destry Rides Again or Cat Ballou, superbly executed by a master visualist, commemorating the romantic allure of a Wild West that never was…
© Dargaud Editeur Paris 1985 by Morris & Vidal. © Lucky Comics. English translation © 2016 Cinebook Ltd.